Monday, October 1, 2007

Kate Holloway is running for the Ontario Liberal Party in the Ontario provincial election, in the Trinity-Spadina riding. Wikinews’ Nick Moreau interviewed her regarding her values, her experience, and her campaign.

Stay tuned for further interviews; every candidate from every party is eligible, and will be contacted. Expect interviews from Liberals, Progressive Conservatives, New Democratic Party members, Ontario Greens, as well as members from the Family Coalition, Freedom, Communist, Libertarian, and Confederation of Regions parties, as well as independents.

Saturday, January 12, 2019

A United-States-based team of scientists released findings on Thursday about the large statues that dot the island of Rapa Nui, also called Easter Island. The study, published on Thursday in PLOS One, employed quantitative spatial analysis to establish that the platforms, or ahu, built to support the Easter Island statues, or moai, are usually located near sources of drinkable water. This feeds into the scholarly discussion of whether the purpose of the statues was exclusively ritualistic, practical or some combination of these.

The study examined 93 statues on the western side of the island, all of which were built before contact with Europeans. They compared the sites of the statues to sites associated with the specific resources: the kind of rock the statues are made of, the kind of rock used for tools, fishing, vegetable and potato cultivation, and water sources. The archaeologists say that this study is the first attempt to formally examine the idea that the locations of the moai are correlated to locations of resources important to the people who built them, such as fresh water.

Easter Island does not have streams that run nonstop but it does have an aquifer that produces freshwater seeps of brackish but drinkable water during low tide. Most of these water harvesting sites are along the coast but a few are inland—and so are the ahu.

“What is important about it is that it demonstrates the statue locations themselves are not a weird ritual place – [the ahu and moai] represent ritual in a sense of there is symbolic meaning to them, but they are integrated into the lives of the community,” said study co-author Professor Carl Lipo of Binghamton University. He went on to add “The exceptions to the rule about being at the coast where water comes out actually are met by the fact there is also water there – it is found through cave locations,” referring to caves with fresh water, and that some historical evidence suggests there may have been wells dug near the ahu that are not near caves.

The researchers plan to gather information on more freshwater resources so they can evaluate statue sites on the rest of Easter Island.

Jo Anne Val Tilburg of the University of California, Los Angeles disagreed with these findings: “The existence of fresh water seeps near coastal ahu is well-known and was certainly important at European contact. However, such seeps are today, and probably always were, minor resources. It is highly unlikely, in my view, that these resources were of major importance in locating ahu during prehistory.”

The earliest moai date to the 13th century. They vary in size but are about fourteen feet (four meters) tall and can weigh about fourteen tons. Scholars have long wondered about the role they played for the people who built them.

Easter Island is today a relatively barren place with scanty resources. Easter Island is located 2300 miles (3700 km) off the west coast of South America and 1,100 miles (1770 km) from its nearest neighbor island. It today has a grass-dominated landscape but it was once mostly covered by palm forests and it was home to a significant human population for a few hundred years. Scientists debate whether its environmental degradation, in the form of the loss of its palm forests and soil to erosion, was caused by human activity, natural climate change, or by rats and other introduced species that stowed away on the colonists’ boats, but there is consensus that the island’s environment changed considerably over time.

See the discussion page for instructions on adding schools to this list and for an alphabetically arranged listing of schools.

Due to the damage by Hurricane Katrina and subsequent flooding, a number of colleges and universities in the New Orleans metropolitan area will not be able to hold classes for the fall 2005 semester. It is estimated that 75,000 to 100,000 students have been displaced. [1]. In response, institutions across the United States and Canada are offering late registration for displaced students so that their academic progress is not unduly delayed. Some are offering free or reduced admission to displaced students. At some universities, especially state universities, this offer is limited to residents of the area.

Thursday, October 4, 2007

Rick Morelli is running for the NDP in the Ontario provincial election, in the Vaughan riding. Wikinews’ Nick Moreau interviewed him regarding his values, his experience, and his campaign.

Stay tuned for further interviews; every candidate from every party is eligible, and will be contacted. Expect interviews from Liberals, Progressive Conservatives, New Democratic Party members, Ontario Greens, as well as members from the Family Coalition, Freedom, Communist, Libertarian, and Confederation of Regions parties, as well as independents.

Tuesday, March 29, 2005A team of Australian surgeons yesterday reattached both hands and one foot to 10-year-old Perth boy, Terry Vo, after a brick wall which collapsed during a game of basketball fell on him, severing the limbs. The wall gave way while Terry performed a slam-dunk, during a game at a friend’s birthday party.

The boy was today awake and smiling, still in some pain but in good spirits and expected to make a full recovery, according to plastic surgeon, Mr Robert Love.

“What we have is parts that are very much alive so the reattached limbs are certainly pink, well perfused and are indeed moving,” Mr Love told reporters today.

“The fact that he is moving his fingers, and of course when he wakes up he will move both fingers and toes, is not a surprise,” Mr Love had said yesterday.

“The question is more the sensory return that he will get in the hand itself and the fine movements he will have in the fingers and the toes, and that will come with time, hopefully. We will assess that over the next 18 months to two years.

“I’m sure that he’ll enjoy a game of basketball in the future.”

The weight and force of the collapse, and the sharp brick edges, resulted in the three limbs being cut through about 7cm above the wrists and ankle.

Terry’s father Tan said of his only child, the injuries were terrible, “I was scared to look at him, a horrible thing.”

The hands and foot were placed in an ice-filled Esky and rushed to hospital with the boy, where three teams of medical experts were assembled, and he was given a blood transfusion after experiencing massive blood loss. Eight hours of complex micro-surgery on Saturday night were followed by a further two hours of skin grafts yesterday.

“What he will lose because it was such a large zone of traumatised skin and muscle and so on, he will lose some of the skin so he’ll certainly require lots of further surgery regardless of whether the skin survives,” said Mr Love said today.

The boy was kept unconscious under anaesthetic between the two procedures. In an interview yesterday, Mr Love explained why:

“He could have actually been woken up the next day. Because we were intending to take him back to theatre for a second look, to look at the traumatised skin flaps, to close more of his wounds and to do split skin grafting, it was felt the best thing to do would be to keep him stable and to keep him anaesthetised.”

Professor Wayne Morrison, director of the respected Bernard O’Brien Institute of Microsurgery and head of plastic and hand surgery at Melbourne’s St Vincent’s Hospital, said he believed the operation to be a world first.