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Hello Winter!

Winter is the coldest season of the year in some parts of the northern and southern hemisphere, this season is characterized by falling snow and freezing cold temperatures, usually exacerbated by strong winds. The season which usually lasts about three months is caused by the winter-stricken area being farthest away from the sun in the earth’s orbit around it.

Most schools take breaks during this period, whilst business in offices slows and schedules are rearranged according to the whims of the season. Around this time, the days are short and nights longer, this usually reverse slowly as the season progresses. The sun comes out very late on winter mornings and when it does is not hot.

People rarely come outdoors until daylight; most sit indoors by the fireside in the mornings and evenings. Everyone sees the essence of the weather report during winter, this service assumes added importance as the information they present can be the difference between having proper protective clothing and freezing to death, knowing if the roads would be navigate-able tomorrow morning, or if the night’s blizzard has called off engagements on their behalf.

Most people wake up to shovel snow out of their paths on winter mornings. On some particularly severe occasions, snow and strong winds has blocked roads and grounded flights, even frozen rivers for days, week and months.

People clothe themselves in thick apparels during winter to ward off the cold and keep their bodies warm, over the year’s winter clothing has evolved, today styles and designs are incorporated into them, far from the tattered animal skin that early man in these areas used to protect himself from the same grim weather.

In winter affected areas of the world, several outdoor and sporting activities have been designed to take advantage of the weather and give the people a chance to exercise and bring themselves some joy. These activities, taken as tradition and practiced at every winter (some depending on the ice level) includes; curling, ice skating, ice racing, ice sculpture, ice hockey, ice fishing, ice climbing, ice boating and more.

Plants and animal life respond to winter in varying ways. Some animals such as birds migrate when the winter season is approaching and only return during the summer, this is to ensure food supply as most of their food sources freeze in the winter.

Others go into hibernation, a state resembling sleep where the animal remains inactive, usually housed in a shell, remaining so until summer arrives. Some animals profusely gather and store food, in preparation for winter months when the sources are dead and gathering impossible. In response to the weather most animals have also adapted themselves, by developing thick furs that keep them warm during this season, others such as the snowshoe hare changes color to white and becomes indistinguishable from the snow as a survival tactic.

Whilst some plants completely die off in winter, others actually need the season to complete their life cycle. Some plants buried in snow are as a result insulated by it and survive the weather, some trees lose all their leaves during this season, but their roots are active, protected by the thick layers of snow that covers the earth surface.

Winter is also a time of fruits, many fruits such as guava and oranges as well as many vegetables become available during winter. Often times people complain of winter, cursing the cold and praying for the summer, but if we did not have winter, can we truly appreciate summer and vice versa?

6 Health Benefits of Black Pepper You Don’t Know About

Some foods are considerably healthier than others from a nutritional perspective, and certain foods are considered extra beneficial by health professionals and nutritionists. Black pepper is just such an example. Not only is black pepper a useful flavoring element, but it’s also a rich source of minerals and nutrients. Best of all, it’s easy to incorporate black pepper into your diet. Read this guide to find out more about this versatile seasoning.

Black Pepper Defined

Black pepper is actually a flowering vine indigenous to India that is grown for its fruit. When it is ripe, the plant’s fruit is dried and the peppercorn is born. You can buy peppercorns whole or purchase the product as a pre ground pepper seasoning.

An alkaloid called piperine gives black pepper its familiar spicy bite. Some people grind peppercorns in a mill at home. Many prefer this practice because it usually produces a fresher, more flavorful seasoning. Black pepper has been a part of human culture for millennia, both as a flavoring agent and as a medicinal remedy.

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Science Says Siblings Copy Each Other Throughout Their Entire Lives—Not Just as Kids

Anyone with siblings likely remembers a childhood spent imitating just about everything their brothers and sisters did. But according to researchers from the University of Cologne, this isn’t something you grow out of. In fact, the influence a brother or sister has on a person’s life carries on well into adulthood. Their study—which was just published in Advances in Life Course Research—analyzed data from a 32-year timeframe, and their findings led researchers to discover that people will often get married, divorced, or become a parent after seeing their sibling do it first, The Daily Mail reports.

To come to this conclusion, the team collected data from 4,521 people from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) that contained marital and family life information from 1984 to 2016. The biggest discovery was actually related to siblings’ influence on marriage. “An individual’s propensity to marry increases after a sibling’s marriage and remain significant in the long-term,” the researchers said. “This finding is in line with the idea that a sibling’s entry into marriage may exert pressure, especially through parents, to form a family.”

Having kids of their own also pushes a sibling to become a parent—this influence only lasting for a few years, though. “Similar to previous research, we find this effect to be short-lived, peaking in the first three years [of a child’s life] and declining afterward,” the scientists noted. And when it comes to seeing a brother or sister getting a divorce, the researchers found that other siblings will be less likely to tie the knot themselves down the road.

Zafer Buyukkececi, the lead author for the study, noted that their findings reveal that sibling relationships are a cornerstone in a family dynamic: “Taken together, our results support the idea that the process of family formation is interdependent among siblings.”

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Juneteenth marks an incredibly important moment in U.S. history that you probably never learned

Though many attribute the end of slavery to President Abraham Lincoln’s issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, the truth is that not every slave — especially those who lived in the Confederacy — was made entirely free by the decree.

Numerous Confederate loyalists refused to obey Lincoln’s executive order and continued to hold out, even well after General Robert E. Lee surrendered to the Union Army at Appomattox Court in Virginia in April 1865.

According to African American history scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr., slaveowners who had previously lived in Mississippi, Louisiana and other states decided to escape the Union’s reach by moving to Texas. In choosing to do so, they moved nearly 150,000 slaves, many of whom were unaware of Lincoln’s order. A number of slave masters, who had been aware of the proclamation, purposely chose to delay the news in an effort to maintain control, while others — including the Confederate mayor of Galveston — defied Lincoln’s proclamation by forcing free slaves back to work.

As Gates notes, the few slaves who eventually learned of their freedom acted on it at their own risks. Many were reportedly shot during their attempt to cross the Sabine River, which runs through Texas and Louisiana. It wasn’t until June 19 — two-and-a-half years after the Emancipation Proclamation — that General Gordon Granger, along with an army strong enough to combat the resistance, arrived to announce General Orders No. 3: “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.” Thus, the last of America’s slaves —  all 250,000 of them in Texas — were finally free.

One year later, in 1866, the free Black men and women in the Lone Star State came together and, as Gates points out, “transformed June 19 from a day of unheeded military orders into their own annual rite.” Since then, this celebration, which features gatherings, prayer services, reflection and more, has become known as Juneteenth — a holiday recognized by nearly all of the country’s 50 states and the oldest national celebration commemorating the end of slavery. It still has yet to be recognized as a federal holiday.

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Ways to Stay Connected (And Check On Seniors) While Social Distancing

(NewsUSA) – You know we’re all going a tad stir-crazy when a parody of the title song from Broadway’s “Oklahoma!” (“Oh, Corona!”) gets almost 1.7 million views on YouTube. But it’s far worse for seniors: Not only can’t even their kids and grandkids visit them, but there’s the extra stress that comes with the nagging suspicion that they’ll be advised to remain on lockdown long after younger people begin trickling back to work.

Whenever that is.

In fact, the AARP Foundation has even come up with this dire comparison: Prolonged social isolation, for those aged 50 and older, “is the health equivalent of smoking 15 cigarettes a day.” Fortuitously, some of the niftiest technology offers solutions both to keep us connected and protect against some of the miscreants taking advantage of the situation.

* Health Checks. If you are worried that all the anxiety is harming your loved ones’ overall well-being, the machine-learning algorithms that analyze activity data as part of Alarm.com’s Wellness solution can provide you with the very details you’ve suddenly found yourself obsessing about.

Did they open their medicine cabinet when they should to take their prescription? Have their sleeping, eating, and (yes) bathroom patterns changed? Are they up and about during the day?

All that and more is done by connecting their home to yours via smart-home technology, with real-time smartphone alerts to let you know if something’s amiss. “You don’t even know it’s there, but it’s here to protect you and let someone know if something does go wrong,” said Margarete Pullen of Dallas, Texas, whose son had the system installed by an authorized service provider for her and her husband along with a Wellcam video camera with two-way voice capability.

* Movie meet-ups. Most of us are just trying to find novel ways to cope with a situation that Nicholas Christakis, a social scientist and physician at Yale University, told Science magazine “calls on us to suppress our profoundly human and evolutionary hard-wired impulses for connection.”

Google’s new Netflix Party extension lets friends and family watch – and video chat their way through – a movie together on their computers. You’ll need a NetFlix subscription, but then you’re free to debate whether all the hype about Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman,” say, was justified. Plus, unlike in real theatres, not many people (if any) are physically there to complain if you’re making too much noise eating popcorn.

* Apps! Apps! Apps! No NetFlix subscription? With apps like FaceTime, Skype, Houseparty and Zoom comes more proof that social distancing needn’t mean social disconnecting. Mass virtual dinner parties. Mass virtual “happy hours.” Mass virtual gym classes. They’ve all become quite the rage, with one Vermont couple in their eighties even touchingly using Apple’s FaceTime to see and talk to each other after the husband had to be put in a nursing home that bars visitors during the pandemic.

And, oh, you say you want to be a hero in your neighborhood? Use an app like Instagram to share a video of someone that Alarm.com’s doorbell cameras caught swiping one of the many, many packages you’ve been having delivered.

Coronavirus: Time to Rethink the Handshake

handshake. A light kiss on the cheek. Rubbing noses. All are ways people greet each other in the workplace and elsewhere, depending on culture and country. But with communicable diseases such as the novel coronavirus, the flu and colds circulating, it’s a good idea to shake off such practices.

Since December, when the coronavirus was identified in China, there have been 90,893 reported cases around the world and 3,110 deaths—including 11 deaths in the U.S. Although 48 countries outside of China have reported cases, 80 percent of the latest cases are from three countries—Korea, Iran and Italy—the director-general of the World Health Organization said March 3.

People everywhere are being urged to rethink how they greet each other to contain the spread of the virus, also known as COVID-19.

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International Women’s day!

All around the world, International Women’s Day is celebrated on March 8. From small, informal gatherings to large, highly-organized events, this day honors women of the past, present, and future as it inspires all women to achieve their full potential. For Women’s History Month, then, let’s pay homage to some of America’s women.

_ Virginia Dare was the first person born in America to English parents. It happened in Roanoke Island, VA.

_ Anne Bradstreet’s book of poems was published in England, thus making her the first published American woman writer.

_ Mary Katherine Goddard became the first woman postmaster in the country. It was in Baltimore.

_ Deborah Samson enlisted in the 4th Massachusetts Regiment disguised as a man because women were not allowed to fight as soldiers during the Revolutionary War.

_ Mother Bernardina Matthews established a Carmelite convent near Port Tobacco, MD, the first community of Roman Catholic nuns in the original Thirteen Colonies.

_ Anne Parrish established the House of Industry in Philadelphia, the first charitable organization for women in America.

_ Mary Kies became the first woman to receive a patent. It was for a method of weaving straw with silk.

_ Elizabeth Blackwell received her M.D. degree from the Medical Institution of Geneva, NY, thus making her the first woman doctor.

_ Dr. Mary Edwards Walker was awarded a Medal of Honor for her service as a surgeon during the Civil War, the only woman to receive this highest military award.

_ Frances Elizabeth Willard became the president of Evanston College, thus making her the first woman college president.

_ Victoria Claflin Woodhull was nominated to be President of the United States by the Equal Rights Party, thus making her the first woman presidential candidate.

_ Belva Ann Lockwood became the first woman lawyer to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court.

_ Susanna Madora Salter became the first woman elected mayor. It happened in Argonia, KS.

_ Alice Guy Blache, as the first American woman film director, shoots her first film, La Fee aux Choux (The Cabbage Fairy).

_ Women were first allowed to compete in the Olympics. They numbered 19 out of 1,225 athletes.

_ Kate Gleason became the first woman president of the First National Bank of East Rochester, thus making her the first woman president of a national bank.

_ Edith Wharton was the first American woman novelist to win a Pulitzer Prize for fiction. It was awarded for her novel, The Age of Innocence.

_ All American women were granted the right to vote by the 19th Amendment to the Constitution.

_ Nellie Tayloe Ross became the first woman governor, being elected to replace her deceased husband in Wyoming.

_ Janet Gaynor became the first woman to receive the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role.

_ Jackie Mitchell was signed to be a pitcher for the Chattanooga Baseball Club, thus making her the first woman in organized baseball.

_ Amelia Earhart was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.

_ Frances Perkins was appointed Secretary of Labor, thus making her the first woman member of a presidential cabinet.

_ Lettie Pate Whitehead became the first American woman director of a major corporation. It was the Coca-Cola Company.

_ Annie G. Fox was the first woman to receive the Purple Heart.

_ Jerrie Cobb was the first Americn woman to undergo astronaut testing.

_ Birth control pills were approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

_ Muriel Siebert was the first woman to own a seat on the New York Stock Exchange.

_ Susan Lynn Roley and Joanne E. Pierce became the first women FBI agents.

_ Dr. Sally K. Ride became the first American woman in space.

_ Dr. Antonia Novello was sworn in as the first woman, and Hispanic, U.S. Surgeon General.

_ Lt. Kendra Williams, USNFree Reprint Articles, became the first U.S. woman combat pilot to bomb an enemy target. It was during Operation Desert Fox in Iraq.

_ Julia Roberts became the first actress to earn the same top-dollar amount as men for starring in a movie.

_ Nancy Pelosi became the first woman Speaker of the House of Representatives.

Activities

  1. I intentionally left out the dates so your children can do the research and create a timeline.
  2. Categorize the events above and list the appropriate women’s names in each.
  3. Find out about other women by areas of interest or decades.
  4. Choose a country and find out about its women’s progress.

Always believe in yourself!!I hope these ideas are useful and have inspired your own creativity.

Source: Free Articles from ArticlesFactory.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Freda J. Glatt, MS, is a retired K-6 teacher. Helping others reinforce reading comprehension through FUNdamental Reading Activities, including games and worksheets, is her new educational goal. Visit her site at http://www.sandralreading.com.

02/02/2020 is a rare palindrome that hasn’t happened in over 900 years

While various forms of palindrome dates are fairly common, 02/02/2020 has the unique distinction of reading the same backward and forward when written out in eight digits in multiple date systems, according to University of Portland professor Aziz Inan.

“We are so lucky to have such a special palindrome date occurring in our lifetime because it’s so rare,” Inan told USA TODAY Saturday.

For starters, it’s an eight-digit palindrome: 02022020. Many palindrome dates are only symmetrical if you write the date with seven digits (1-10-2011) — or in some cases even fewer (9-10-19).

But even more rare, according to Inan, is that Sunday’s date is an international palindrome: It works whether you write the date as “Month/Day/Year” or “Day/Month/Year,” as many countries do.

Inan calls such dates “ubiquitous palindromes,” and there won’t be another one for 101 years. After that, you’ll have to wait until March 3, 3030.

According to Inan’s calculations, the last such palindrome date to occur was 11/11/1111 – more than 900 years ago.

For years, Inan has been crunching numbers using a basic calculator and a pad of paper to find unique patterns  in dates.

“I advocate for these things because they’re so valuable for STEM education,” he said.

It’s an accessible kind of puzzle that he has used to engage students and get people talking about math.

And Inan sees puzzle everywhere – dates that form square roots (3/3/9), dates that make sequential numbers (11/12/13) and even his own name (if you write it in all caps, switch the vowels in “AZIZ” and rotate the Z’s to make N’s – “AZIZ” becomes “INAN”).

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Sunday’s date is a rare palindrome that hasn’t happened in over 900 years