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So, naturalists observe, a flea
Hath smaller fleas that on him prey;
And these have smaller still to bite ’em
And so proceed ad infinitum
This verse is by Jonathan Swift, the 18th century Irish cleric and satirist. He wrote it about the time that Antonie van Leeuwenhoek began looking through the microscope and discovered ‘very little living animalcules’. Van Leeuwenhoek discovered many small life forms, including bacteria, protozoa, and nematodes. His work revealed to scientists that another world of microscopic life existed, which paved the way for the study of bacteria and, eventually, viruses.
I think the verse by Swift is wonderful. It crystallizes in a very amusing way the world of microscopic life that arose from van Leeuwenhoek’s studies.
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Time to Move On: Religion Has Cost Too MuchWhat is Religious Fundamentalism?The Causes of Fundamentalism, Intolerance and Extremism in World Religions, and Some SolutionsReligion, Violence, Crime and Mass SuicideDo We Need Religion to Have Good Morals?Christian Moral Theory and Morality in Action: Biblical Morals and Social DisasterGrowing Fundamentalism in Islam: How Moderates are Subjugated by Muslim Hardliners
Religious adherents no doubt find that their actions in life are influenced by their religious beliefs. The association between religion and violence is long-standing. This text looks more at individual acts of violence and crime, and not mass acts such as the Crusades or Holy Wars, as these become too intertwined with politics and culture.
Many religious wars have a political and cultural component. Often it is not just two groups of people fighting over religion, but, one culture fighting another. Some defend religion in general by saying that societal divisions are the main factor in such conflicts. However, such divisions are themselves worsened by the adhering to religious identities. Religion is not only just another way of separating them, but, it is often intrinsic to the religion that non-believers are less moral or less worthy. It seems that religious texts actively promote sectarianism, and, given that this is the case, even where cultural factors play a role in mass violence it seems that religion often makes it worse and is sometimes the cause of the conflict in the first place.
For example in Nigeria from 1990 to 2007, 20,000 have been killed specifically in the name of religion1. The country is divided between Christians and Muslim, and religious identity is highly important, more so than nationalism or any other element of identity. These problems are a feature of the entire region. This data comes from a report by The Economist in 2007, they summarize: "Evangelical Christians, backed by American collection-plate money, are surging northwards, clashing with Islamic fundamentalists, backed by Saudi petrodollars, surging southwards"1. Although Africa is the front-line, both groups of believers are supported financially and organisationally by their respective Churches around the world. Just as Iran and Israel support armed groups that antagonize each other in various countries of the Middle East, Africa is another front line between Islamic and Christian battles for power.
The them-and-us attitude is not just prevalent in monotheistic religions. India has seen much violence in the name of religion since the 1990s, as Hindu religionists are becoming increasingly anti-Christian and anti-Muslim. Churches have been burned down, Missionaries violently repelled, priests murdered, tens of thousands of Christians have fled their homes and in many states laws exist to make it harder to convert to Christianity, in contradiction to all ideas of equality and freedom of religion. Converts to Christianity are typically very poor, yet, there is an uproar against expanding welfare schemes that cover poor Hindus.2. If the instigators and the victims both decided to give up religion, then, there would be one less label for those fellow Indians to use to divide each other.
It is not the case that the "real" problem is with culture or language rather than with religion. National problems with communities that speak different languages are made much more problematic when those differences also coincide with religious differences, such as in Sri Lanka, where Hindu Tamils are opposed to Buddhist Sinhalese3. "The former Yugoslavia has broken into so many parts largely because of growing hostility between Muslims (mostly Bosnians) and Christians (Serbs and Croatians)"3. The religious difference "often plays a more important role than language", writes anthropologist Christophe Jaffrelot. He continues:
“... language-based multiculturalism is easier to maintain than religious-based multiculturalism, as illustrated by the integration of Quebec into Canada and of the Dravidian states into the Indian Union. This is probably due to the fact that federalism can help to diffuse tensions more effectively between linguistic groups than between religious communities. But it is also due to the emotional power of religion. Devotees are more ready to mobilize in defense of their religion because of its sacred, hence imperative, character.”
"Religion and Nationalism" by Christophe Jaffrelot (2011)4
This page will not, however, concentrate on large-scale cultural-religious conflicts and instead concentrate on the activities of criminal and violent religious folk acting in a more individual role.
The promotion of strange beliefs and associated mindsets is a danger of religious thought in general. For example, when Eden Strang attacked worshippers at a Church in South London, UK, in 1999, he was later found by the courts to be insane. He attacked the congregation because he thought they were demons in human form5. But if he didn't believe in demons, then, there is a chance his actions would have been different. He told psychiatrists that God had ordered him to do it6. Whilst it is true that most God-believers don't start murdering people; it is also true that they are one step closer to killing in the name of god than atheists who don't believe in gods.
“Words like "God" and "Allah" must go the way of "Apollo" and "Baal," or they will unmake our world.”
"The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason" by Sam Harris (2006)7
Sam Harris (2006) argues at length that in today's world, even seemingly innocent beliefs in things like a Paradise-after-death can lead to murder and a lost sense of the value of life in this world. Dawkins makes a similar warning about the irrationality of religion and its effect on morals and actions, in The God Delusion, concentrating on issues such as violence against abortion-clinics and various other activists with bizarre beliefs8. In "Fundamentalism" by Malise Ruthven (2007) the author warns that by giving things like murder, strife and war a place in God's ultimate (and perfect) plan, almost any action can be seen as endorsed by God - "the horrors and chaos of wars, as described in the Mahabharata and the Book of Joshua, as debated in the Baghavad Gita, as predicted in the Book of Revelation, and as alluded to in the Koran, are subsumed within an order seen to be meaningful and ultimately benign"9. When such beliefs are institutionalized or given free reign, it can spell disaster for those who disagree with them. Anti-Semitism for the last 2000 years has been fuelled from Christian theology, and many instances of violence against homosexuals stems from the intolerant religious teachings of the Abrahamic religions. If people understood religious myths to be unreal, and if they had a more rational and skeptical outlook, it would be much less common for such religious prejudices to translate into violent actions.
Take Mohammed Merah, a French national originally from Algeria, whose story was told by The Economist (2012)10. His beliefs led him to the wild conclusion that in order to be rewarded by God and thusly to live forever in paradise, he had to conduct a series of terror attacks in France. He did so, killing four adults and three children. He did it because in France, no-one is allowed to wear complete face and body coverings in public. But his victims included members of an Israeli family who were not even French and therefore were completely unrelated to the ban on complete body coverings - Mohammed Merah's excuse was that he also opposed Israel because it was also an enemy of Islam. When they raided his house on 2014 Mar 22, he shot and killed three paratroopers, before being himself killed. Try to imagine, exactly, how it is that this immoral monster can think that God endorses his actions? Because he has very strange beliefs, but not only that, but that he believes he must act on those beliefs no matter what. Only religion can instil such a dramatic sense of ultimate urgency and divine necessity upon murderers.
It is not just the worldwide monotheistic religions that provide motivation for irrational violence, sectarianism and murder. Superstitious beliefs in general can often provide people with the ultimate excuse for acting against those who they simply don't like. Take the example of witchcraft, widely believed in across the world except in the largely secular countries of the developed world. Here's a case from Assam, in north-east India.
“In early 2007 Mrs [Ranjita] Basumatary was driven from her original village after her neighbours accused her of being a dain - a witch. Around 100 villagers surrounded her home and beat her with sticks, leaving her badly bloodied and bruised. After receiving death threats, she fled with her husband and three children. [...] Local jealousy seems to have prompted the accusations of witchcraft. Her family had prospered, leasing livestock to other villagers. It led to resentment. When children in the village fell sick, the ojha accused Mrs Basumatary of casting spells - his own charms and potions having failed. Her case is not an isolated one. At least 17 people were killed in witch-hunts in the area last year.”
If only the locals understood the various neurological, physical and subtle causes of superstitious beliefs that mislead us humans into such superstitions. I lay out these causes in Errors in Thinking: Cognitive Errors, Wishful Thinking and Sacred Truths and The False and Conflicting Experiences of Mankind: How Other Peoples' Experience Contradict Our Own Beliefs. If only the locals understood the benefits of opening all beliefs to critical analysis. Their absurd behaviour can be fixed, if only they learn to question their own beliefs and therefore adopt a more rational outlook. But they can't, because religious taboos and the authority of the local spiritual leaders prevent it, just as similar people have done across the world, substituting dogmas for sensible inquiry into the world, and ousting those who dare to think differently.
It seems that in total the general religious mindset permits a kind of irrationalism that can easily lead to violence - although most people (religious or not) are not violent. Harris makes the undeniable argument that in a world where weapons such as nuclear arms and biological weapons are becoming easier to access, we must make up for it by promoting clear-thinking, and if that means discouraging religion, it is probably for the best.
During the Crusades, Christian and Muslim armies sallied back and forth across Europe and the Middle East. Christianity had plunged the West into the Dark Ages, and Islam was carrying only a dim light of Human progress. It is arguable that such a conflict was as much cultural and political as religious. But religious differences helped define Arabs and Christians as enemies. Today, such a bleak picture is mirrored in religious battles across the continent of Africa. It is a continent where democracies fail as frequently as they rise and where scientific enterprise is retreating from powerful (and armed) religious bodies. Take Nigeria and the summary presented by The Economist:
“Nigeria, evenly distributed between Christians and Muslims, is a country where people identify themselves by their religion first and as Nigerians second. Around 20,000 have been killed in God's name since 1990. [...] This is one of many religious battlefields in this part of Africa. Evangelical Christians, backed by American collection-plate money, are surging northwards, clashing with Islamic fundamentalists, backed by Saudi petrodollars, surging southwards.”
Once fired up with a particular set of religious beliefs - especially ones that teach that non-believers need to be converted for their own good - it is easy to see how this adds fuel to the fire in an already violent continent.
Humanity without religion is like a serial killer without a chainsaw.
Social research has found that the greater the perceived authority is, the more its opinions are taken seriously13. A soldier will fight for democracy because he is trained to respond to the authority of his seniors and he may understand the values of freedom. A gang leader or a religious leader can both inspire the same aggressive behaviour in their flocks. Sociologists have spent much time researching aggression but there is not much data that specifically focuses on the effects of religious texts on violent behaviour. The National Secular Society reports on one of those few studies:
“SCRIPTURAL VIOLENCE CAN FOSTER AGGRESSION, ESPECIALLY IN BELIEVERS. [...] A study published in this month's Psychological Science looks at the relation between aggression and recent exposure to accounts of biblical violence. Students were asked to read a story about the torture and murder of a man's concubine and his tribe's measured response: they assembled an army and razed several cities, killing every man, woman, child and animal they could find.
Half the students were told that this was based on an ancient scroll recently discovered by archaeologists. The other half were told that it was from the Book of Judges in the Old Testament (which it is). In addition to the scriptural distinction, half of the students from both the Bible and the ancient scroll groups read an adjusted version that included a sentence in which God commanded his followers to take up arms against the others "and chasten them before the LORD." [...]
Higher levels of aggression were measured in [...] in those who were told that the passage was from the Bible and in those who had read that the violence was sanctioned by God. Unsurprisingly, this effect was greater in believers than in atheists.”
If you combine the divine sanctioning of violence found in holy books such as the Christian Bible and the Holy Quran, with the desire for an afterlife attained through worldly actions, the recipe for violence is a potent one. Failed Islamic suicide bombers have, for example, explained that they want to attain Paradise for themselves (and friends of their choosing) by violently martyring themselves in the fight against non-believers15. The motivation was great because they truly believe the value of such actions are spelled out in God-given written texts.
There is a particular inclination towards organized violence in the histories of monotheistic religions (those with just one god). Monotheism is embodied by three world religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
“The God of the Abrahamic religions, so far as it is concerned in The Bible, The Koran, and in history, hates opposing Gods. The Israelites are described as being commanded by God, time and time again, to wage war against and kill nonbelieving pagans because they dare to worship icons, fake gods, and any number of unapproved things. Worshipping wrongly is prohibited in the traditional Ten Commandments, and is consistently one of the most punished crimes in the holy texts of Jews, Christians and Muslims. The emphasis on correctness of individual belief and individual salvation has led monotheism down an intolerant and often violent path in history. The development that "insiders are correct" and "outsiders are wrong" is not a feature of simple tribal religions16, but this idea of correctness developed alongside literacy, especially in monotheistic religions, finding particular prominence in Christianity of the first century17. It made the new monotheism sectarian, schismatic and aggressive; social and moral laws were deemed inferior to the new emphasis on textual fundamentalism. It heralded a new type of religion, fundamentally hostile to all other religions.18”
Imprisonment is linked to both poverty and lower intelligence. These are also linked to religiosity; and in the case of intelligence, low intelligence is a known cause of adherence to a religion. As crime is also linked to inner city populations, and this is also, again, where religion is found to be strongest, it seems that the religious have always been bound to find themselves over-represented amongst prison populations, such as Muslims19 and Catholics20.
“According to statistics from the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Christians make up almost 80 percent of the prison population. Atheists make up about 0.2 percent. [...] It is safe to conclude that the godless do not fill prisons. Published studies do indicate that a child's risk of sexual abuse by a family member increases as the family's religious denomination becomes more conservative, that is, when the teachings of scriptures and other doctrines are taken more literally. Similarly, the probability of wife abuse increases with the rigidity of a church's teachings pertaining to gender roles and hierarchy. [...] Even observers from the Christian side have expressed dismay that the current dominance of evangelical Christianity in America has not translated into a strengthening of the nation's moral character or the characters of evangelical Christians themselves. In an article in Christianity Today, theologian Ronald Sider lamented [...]:"The findings in numerous national polls conducted by highly respected pollsters like The Gallup Organization and The Barna Group are simply shocking. 'Gallup and Barna,' laments evangelical theologian Michael Horton, 'hand us survey after survey demonstrating that evangelical Christians are as likely to embrace lifestyles every bit as hedonistic, materialistic, self-centered, and sexually immoral as the world in general.' "”
"God, the Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist" by Prof. Victor J. Stenger (2007)21
While it is not true to say that this is proof that strict religion causes criminality, it is at last proof that a population's adherence to a religion does not reduce levels of socially unacceptable behaviour.
The liberal thinker Barbara Smoker remarked on in a (UK) Government discussion group that Catholics have a greater chance of being found in prison than many other social groups:
“I mentioned that the proportion of Roman Catholics in penal institutions is at least twice their representation in the population at large. Though I was under the impression that this was a well-known fact, it caused some derisive laughter. But on checking the statistics, I find that again I erred on the side of caution: RCs comprise 12 to 13 percent of the population of England and Wales, but 25 to 35 per cent of the inmates of borstals, detention centres, prisons and hostels for drug addicts, alcoholics, and the like [...] and similar ratios pertain in all Western countries.
A book entitled "The Church Now" (published in October 1980 by Gill and Macmillan) contains a chapter by a Catholic priest, Fr Terence Tanner, enquiring why this should be so. He points out that the answer generally given in the past - that RCs are unduly represented among the poorer sections of the community - is no longer valid.”
Now that poverty no longer excuses Catholic crime, another common answer is that many people convert to a religion during a stint in prison because it is generally thought (by both inmates and those in the world at large) that this increases the chance of an early release. Statistics have indeed shown that there is a strangely high rate of conversion amongst prisoners, and sociologists have also found that it does not generally coincide with genuine belief. But it is beside the point, because of the simple fact that Catholics are over-represented in many walks of life that do not include imprisonment:
“The Times of 3 October, 1980, carried a front page comment by its religious affairs correspondent, Clifford Longley (himself RC) under the heading 'The Dilemma over Roman Catholic Delinquents', the first sentence of which reads: 'Roman Catholics are vastly over-represented among drug addicts, alcoholics, compulsive gamblers, prostitutes, night-club strippers and convicted prisoners, for reasons no one seems to know.'
Catholic children are largely segregated in their own denominational schools. In any case, Cardinal Hume's contention that church schools are morally beneficial is hardly borne out by the facts.”
If we accepted that conversion-in-prison explained why there were more Catholics in prison, it wouldn't account for why there were so many Catholics amongst the other categories mentioned by Smoker; drug addicts, alcoholics, compulsive gamblers, prostitutes and night club strippers. The final point she makes is that this prevalence undermines the Catholic idea that Catholic schools tend to produce a better class of moral person.
We are about to see below that one reason for the higher rates of sex crimes may be explained by Christian ideology; their teachings on human sexuality do not mesh with reality and the mental dissonance that results can cause distorted behaviour.
A more prosaic possible cause of the higher rates of criminal and anti-social activity amongst the religious is an inherent bias within legal systems against such people. Whenever such biases are revealed in court, they will normally fall foul of anti-discrimination laws, but, what if a general and obscure bias permeates the entire legal system? As some Western countries have a strong tradition of historical Christianity, is it possible that such legal systems contain an inherent bias against non-Christian religions? Examples include the Sunday trading laws that have become accepted standards in the West and the definition of marriage which generally conforms to Abrahamic ideals (Judaic, Christian and Muslim) at the exclusion of other ideals.
More enlightening are the historical biases and battles between different Christian denominations themselves. The biggest conflicts were between the Protestant and Catholics; whenever one took power in England, the other became heavily suppressed under law. These intolerant law-making policies of major denominations may have contributed to a general bias in law that makes it likely that some religious adherents are likely to find particular laws difficult. Although specifics of such anachronisms are hard to find in the secular West (as the now-dominant secularist law-making attempts to treat all religions fairly), it does demonstrate the point that religion-specific legislation should be kept out of law as much as possible, but also that it is worth considering making changes to accommodate religious adherents if there is no strong rational argument against it.
That prostitutes and night-club dancers and other sex trades, and crimes, have a higher incidence of Catholics is an anomaly in the minds of most laypeople. Such behaviours revealed their darkest sides in the 1990s and 2000s when many child abuse scandals centered around the Christian priesthood gain much media coverage.
“The high child abuse and sexual abuse rates within the Christian priesthood highlight a problem that many religions face: We should not attempt to mould human sexuality around otherworldly religious ideals. Sexual dysfunction always results. Psychologists and sociologists have noted the association between extreme religious fervour and psycho-sexual problems (the former causing the latter), and the highly negative stance that many monotheistic religions take towards sexuality in general have contributed to a general malaise amongst their lay adherents, and a serious pandemic of abuse amongst professional religionists. The religious attitude towards religion is to behave like an ostrich and stick its head in the sand, hoping that theology can override biological truth, but merely making its victims unable to cope with adult sexuality. Witness the hateful and confusing statements that Christians and Muslims make about homosexuals, the anti-contraception stance that the Catholic church has in an over-crowded world ridden with disease, the harmful and simplistic rejection of abortion and the patriarchal dominance over women that has gone hand-in-hand with traditional religion on every continent.
Many religious practices are somewhat more positive towards sexuality than Christianity. The scholar Veronique Mottier gives the example of Judaism, which disapproves of abstinence22. Karen Armstrong reminds us that "Certain sects in Buddhism and Hinduism have used sex as a mystical activity. Everybody has heard of the Karma Sutra but not everybody is aware that this is not just a sex manual, but a method of achieving transcendence and spiritual enlightenment. Christianity is unique in having hated and outlawed sex and in making people feel guilty because they are sexual beings"23. But it is not just the subject of sex which is important to a discussion on sexuality - it still must be remembered that all traditional religions have normalized the dominance of men over women, and often obsessed over matters such as female dress.
In the modern world, many modern popular movements provide an alternative to traditional religions, and have enshrined normal sexuality. The secular world merely lets sexuality remain natural, and the New Age movement amongst many others, actively engage sexuality. The results have been much more positive and healthy than those of the classical monotheistic religions. This is one reason why countries that have liberal laws on abortion also have much lower rates of abortion than highly religious countries that restrict abortion heavily. An atmosphere of taboo and restriction serves limits responsible sexual behaviour. Rather than an ostrich, be a peacock!”
In 1978 over 900 people died when the People's Temple (frequently known as Jonestown) murdered their (276)24 own children with poison. The rest of the community then followed suit, 200 of them killing themselves and shooting the others. The dead included 383 Americans25. They had previously practised the suicide routine. Their leader shot himself. He was American Rev. James (Jim) Warren Jones, an ordained priest in the mainstream Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). He had previously left the Methodist Church because they did not allow African-Americans to be members. Jones preached "an apocalyptic end of the world through race war, genocide and nuclear war. He maintained that he was the manifestation of the Christ principle and that he had the power to heal"26. The sectarianism and religious extremism of the Christian community brought about its own isolation. Its religious ideals were not compatible with the demands of the practicalities of real life, and the group was fixated by a Bible-based fear of the end of civilisation. Conflicts led Jones to move the community to a remote part of Guyana in 1977, but a Congressman soon followed with two investigators, worried by the concerns of relatives of members of the cult, and the stories of defectors. The community murdered them in 1978, and the same night put their suicide plan into action.
“Jonestown might be better understood as a utopian and millenarian society where suicide and murder were the final strategy when the idealistic goals of the movement failed. The conflicts Jones had with the outside world and the isolation of the experimental commune are key factors [... of] self-destruction.”
The truth is a little more complex than saying that religious extremism, led by extremist leaders, leads to such delusion that human life is made second to otherworldly idealism. For in this case, Jim Jones is said to be not only rather unchristian, but a communist atheist (according to some). Whether this is true or not, it is the religious mindset of the community - the susceptibility of his followers to believe him - that led them astray. He put on fake shows of his healing powers, complete with bloody props (rabbit flesh) that he proclaimed to be cancers, and claims to be an embodiment of a principal of Christ. He attracted the poor, the uneducated, Christians and spiritualists. If only people would think more skeptically, and not take claims of resurrection and magical healing seriously, few would have believed such odd claims about reality.
The Ontario Consultants for Religious Tolerance look at sociological, radical and anti-cult studies of the causes of the Jonestown disaster, and offer the following four points as being the main contributing factors:
We saw the Jim Jones' Peoples Temple movement progress gradually from mainstream Christianity, through to a fully-fledged survivalist cult. An emphasis on the end times (when in Christian belief, apocalyptic wars and death scourge most of humanity) emerged slowly. Such ideas are present in most mainstream religions so it is hard to tell believers that it is a dangerous belief. Isolationism, extremism, idealism and an intolerance of people without the same beliefs: these are all commonplace across religious communities. Once you believe in some of those principles, it is hard to draw a firm line and stop a community progressing down a slippery slope to a place where they consider their ideals to be more important than human life. Such a slope met the Peoples Temple in the Jonestown disaster where over 900 of them lost their lives in 1978. Another American group, the Branch Davidians, also took on an increasingly them-and-us attitude. They started out with Biblical ideas about the cataclysms of judgement day, and ended up stockpiling weapons. It culminated with the Waco siege where over 80 of the religionists died during a shoot-out with authorities27 in 1993.
Irrationality and susceptibility to believe some unlikely things about the universe can lead to ideals and sectarianism that separate 'others' from their humanity, and allow despicable acts to be undertaken. Aum Shinrikyo was the religious movement responsible for the 1995 sarin gas attack on Tokyo's subway that killed a dozen people and injured thousands. The movement had also already murdered others in order to protect itself. The leader believed in karma, and preached that murder was justified because it stopped people accumulating bad karma28. He had picked up Christian ideas, and preached that such actions were an act of mercy, and started preaching about Armageddon. "Political failure and a feeling of national rejection led to increasing millenarianism"28; again, the idea of a cataclysmic end of the world fuels seemingly insane bloodshed. The victims are not only the suggestible adherents of the movement, but the relatives, friends and communities that are affected by the religion's otherworldly aims.
Mass suicide frequently punctuates the progression of self-isolating religious communities. They are nearly always associated with belief in another world that they can travel to after death - be it heaven or a paradise on Earth. They often do not see themselves as belonging to this world, and consider the whole world evil, and often think that there is about to be a great war, worldwide cataclysm, or, judgement day. These beliefs were strongly apparent in Jonestown, where Jim Jones led the Peoples Temple to murder their own children before mostly committing suicide themselves. They believed in an imminent apocalypse and Jim Jones had previously predicted when it would happen (it didn't). The Branch Davidians had similar, urgent beliefs, which is why they stockpiled weapons. The sources of strong life-denying beliefs have varied sources: one French New Age group, the Solar Temple, was steeped in new age beliefs and practices, complete with Rosicrucian, Knights Templar and other esoteric interests. 74 of them died, mostly by suicide in Switzerland and France, then Quebec, in 1994, 1995 and 199729. They believed that the Second Coming of Jesus was imminent, and that they had to prepare for this. As with all such groups, they had issues with the real world, and in their farewell letters, they spoke of the "hypocrisies and oppression of this world"30.
Heaven's Gate committed their final act of self-destruction when all 39 members killed themselves in San Diego, USA, in 1997. The leaders, Herff Applewhite and Bonnie Lu Nettles, believed that "they were the two witnesses mentioned in Revelation 11"31, and combined weird New Age beliefs with UFO theories and were committed to detaching themselves from this world through physical training and suppressing all emotions. Over time, they became more and more isolated, and in keeping with other religious groups discussed on this page, also embraced the idea of a final departure from this world and they sold all of their possessions. In the case of Heaven's Gate, when the Hale-Bopp comet approached, they decided it hid a spacecraft that they could enter by committing suicide. They would be reborn, according to New Testament lore, into physically perfect bodies31. Clearly the group had little grasp of cosmology or physics and their spiritualist beliefs about travelling souls and an idealistic life overrode their common sense. The Skeptical Inquirer describes it in this entertaining manner:
“[They] committed mass suicide [so] their souls could travel to Heaven, Nirvana, or somewhere else, flying to this indefinable infinity in the company of hypothetical aliens in their physics-proof starship.”
Superstitions and an obsession with spiritual ideas of purity, 'karma' and other strange beliefs are at the core of the ability for a leader to convince people that mass suicide is a way forward. It is hard to stop such beliefs from forming. The ability of devout parents to indoctrinate children into the belief system is a main reason why the children are later victims of the group, either through constant miseducation or actual murder (the Peoples' Temple and nearly all other religious suicide groups have first poisoned their own children). It may help to prevent children being removed from public educations systems to be taught at home by extremists, but the methods of measuring who an extremist is, or, of measuring which religious groups are destructive, has proven to be generally impossible.
“The characterization of being called a doomsday cult may actually affect the outcome of violent events related to the group. [...] Canada's Canadian Security Intelligence Service Report on Doomsday Religious Cults [... advises] members of the law enforcement community, noting: "authorities often fail to appreciate the leverage they have over doomsday movements, which depend upon them to fulfill their apocalyptic scenarios." In the conclusion of the Canadian Report, the potential effects of actions by authorities are described:
Sanctions applied by authorities are often interpreted by a movement as hostile to its existence, which reinforces their apocalyptic beliefs and leads to further withdrawal, mobilization and deviant actions, and which in turn elicits heavier sanctions by authorities. This unleashes a spiral of amplification, as each action amplifies each action, and the use of violence is facilitated as the group believes this will ultimately actualize its doomsday scenario."
Eileen Barker has compared these concepts to the notion of a deviancy amplification spiral in the media and its effects on new religious movements, and James Richardson has also discussed this effect. In the case of the Concerned Christians, use of the term "doomsday cult" as a characterization of the group served as a justification for deportation of its members by the Israeli government. In the book The Copycat Effect: How the Media and Popular Culture Trigger the Mayhem in Tomorrow's Headlines, author Loren L. Coleman discusses the affect the media can have on the seemingly innocuous intentions of a French doomsday cult. [...] In Apocalypse Observed, authors Hall, Schuyler and Trinh discuss the affect the media had on the events surrounding the Order of the Solar Temple group. They note that news commentators "could not [help? - Vexen] making a comparison to events in Waco, where the government siege of the Branch Davidians had just begun."”
People tend to find and learn scriptures from their religions that reinforce what they already believe about morality and ethics. But on top of that, the justifications offered by religions can sometimes be given enough loyalty and prominence in society that a religion's formal texts can support, and then cause, violence and murder. Such scripts obviously exist in warfaring religions such as Christianity and Islam, but also exist in Buddhism and Hinduism. Stories and arguments from all these religions are used to justify killing in circumstances that secular moralists find worrying.
“At the beginning of the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna is contemplating the forthcoming battle between the Pandavas and their cousins the Kauravas. Filled with sadness, he refuses to fight and tells his charioteer, Krishna, of his reason. Krishna replies:"Great warrior, carry on they fight. If any man thinks he slays, and if another thinks he is slain, neither knows the ways of truth. The Eternal in man cannot kill: the Eternal in man cannot die. He is never born, and he never dies. He is in Eternity: he is for evermore... When a man knows him as never-born, everlasting, never-changing, beyond all destruction, how can that man kill a man, or cause another to kill?...
Think thou also of thy duty and do not waver. There is no greater good for a warrior [kshatriya] than to fight in a righteous war. There is a war that opens the doors of heaven, Arjuna! Happy the warriors whose fate is to fight such war. But to forgo this fight for righteousness [Dharma] is to forgo thy duty [Dharma] and honour: is to fall into transgression... And to a man who is in honour, dishonour is more than death... Can there be for a warrior a more shameful fate?
In death thy glory in heaven, in victory thy glory on earth.
Bhagavad Gita 2:18-21, 31-4, 37. Quoted in:
The problem is that this gives divine assent, and ultimate sanction, to war or killing, that a person finds "righteous". Hindus and Muslims have, for example, been fighting throughout the lands of Pakistan and in India, for many decades with both sides attacking communities and religious centers. This is a 'righteous' war based on nothing but differences of religious belief. Any discontent can lead to 'righteous' killing when there are strong feelings, and (some) Hindu texts give people an intellectualized excuse to indulge in murder. People can't really die in Hindu mythology, therefore killing isn't really killing. And righteous killing is better than dishonour. These are dangerous ideas.
“The main scriptural justifications for killing may be briefly summarized. In the Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra it is told how the Buddha in one of his former lives killed some Brahmin heretics. This was done to protect the Doctrine, and to save them themselves from the consequences of continued attacks on it. When the Doctrine is in danger the Five Precepts, including the prohibition on taking life, may be ignored...”
The problem is that "threats" to Doctrine can mean almost anything. Science and modernism both threaten religion as a whole, including Buddhist Doctrine. Hardline Buddhists have fought violently against Muslims and Hindus in Asia, expressing fears that Buddhism is dwindling under the other religion's forceful expansionism. The Crusades and the Inquisition were both based on protecting Doctrine against heretics. The idea that ideas are more important than lives is one of the most dangerous ideas in religion, especially when you combine this with a general belief in eternal consequences and afterlives. It is better for stability and peace if we consider Humans to be more valuable alive than dead, no matter what their beliefs are.
The Old Testament was rife with occasions when God not only sanctioned the murder, pillage and rape of the enemies of his chosen people, but, often God itself joined in, directly smiting people itself. Jeremiah 48:10 declares: "A curse on him who is lax in doing the LORD's work! A curse on him who keeps his sword from bloodshed!". It reminds me of Exodus 15:3: "The LORD is a man of war: the LORD is his name".
It is clear that violence has a divine Biblical endorsement. But for what ends? Luke 14:23 says "Compel people to come in!" for the purpose of "filling" the Church. Jesus himself declared "think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword" (Matthew 10:34). And henceforth, Christian history contains many unfortunate chapters where Christian groups anathematized one another as heretics, and proceeded to burn, torture and murder those who disagreed. Victims have been anyone who disagreed even on confusing technical points of Christian doctrine, members of other religions such as Muslims and Jews, and it seems, many other innocent victims ranging from outcasts who were accused of witchcraft ("Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" - Exodus 22:18), homosexuals and finally, a small number who have genuinely plotted against the Church.
“The death sentence is a necessary and efficacious means for the Church to attain its end when rebels act against it and disturbers of the ecclesiastical unity, especially obstinate heretics and heresiarchs, cannot be restrained by any other penalty. [...] If there be no other remedy for saving its people it can and must put these wicked men to death.”
Pope Leo XII35
The section above is taken from "Is the Christian God Evil? Evidence from Scripture and Nature: 5. Genocides and Divine Incitements to Murder" by Vexen Crabtree (2006), click for a more comprehensive look at the many genocides committed by God, or ordered by God, in the Christian Bible.
There are too many themes of violence and aggression promoted in the Qur'an to document it all here. I'm going to quote from my page that concentrates on just one of these themes: Islam versus Unbelievers: Convert, Subjugate or Die.
The Qur'an propounds a harsh and violence doctrine, promoting the idea of an constant struggle between Muslims and others that can only be ended when everyone has converted to Islam, normally by going through a phase of paying a tax to Muslims after submitting to them, or, if all else fails, through being defeated through war or trickery. Now it might seem contradictory to also point out that there a great number of verses in the Qur'an that preach against Muslims trying to convert others to Islam, but the contradiction isn't that great because, whether or not you actively try to convert them, non-believers can still be fought against and subjugated, and the conversion can just be assumed to start happening "naturally" during that process. The Qur'an does not take a rational or tolerant stance - its very definition of "non-believer" and "disbeliever" is skewed against any chance of amicability, for example in Qur'an 38:74 Satan is called an "unbeliever" yet is standing there talking to God. This is an incorrect use of the word "unbeliever". Satan clearly believes that God exists, hence, is a believer. "Unbeliever" simply means "anyone who doesn't toe the line" - and with such a wide definition of the enemy, there is little scope for peace or human rights within Islamic communities, let alone between Muslims and others. There is little to give hope to liberal proponents of peace and tolerance in the hundreds of verses discussed on this page.”
Monotheism has bred the most violent individuals and cultures due its intolerance of 'other' gods and a general strictness on the specifics of belief but, other forms of religion also breed antisocial and violent individuals. Two factors lead believers into uncivil behaviour. (1) The irrationality of belief and (2) the legitimization given to actions by beliefs in higher authorities, without the teaching of any critical and skeptical way of judging between claims as to what those higher authorities would want. For some people, voices in their heads are all that are required as long as they believe in god(s) which have authority to speak to them. For others, including atheist skeptics, such voices are immediate warning signs of impending mental ill health. Thirdly, (3), an otherworldly idealism and fixation with the corruptness, evilness or immorality of this world often pushes groups into extreme isolation where they cease to consider outsiders to be worthwhile human beings. Both irrational and criminal behaviour are given freer rein within religious systems of thought, as is suicide to escape this world and move on to the 'next'. Mass suicide, shoot-outs, gas attacks and other atrocities have befallen groups whose main thing in common is self-isolation from wider society, and a dread of a generally Christian-themed apocalyptic judgement-day. Many such groups emerged from mainstream religious movements and gradually became more and more sectarian over time. The main causes that allow this slip are insipid supernaturalism, poor education, sectarian schooling and a lack of critical thinking.
Prison incarceration is inversely linked to intelligence. Intelligence is inversely linked to faith. Religious parenting causes a reduction in children's average IQs. Evidence for this is that religious types (notably Catholics) are over-represented amongst prison inmates and other nasty classes of human, such as drug addicts, alcoholics, compulsive gamblers and sex industry workers (including strippers); not to mention the fact that sectarian religious schools promote the social divisions that hundreds of sociological analyses have proven to destroy community cohesion and increase violence and crime. If religion makes a person more likely to fall foul of societies' penal codes and moral judgements, and so does lower intelligence, and also religion causes lack of intelligence, then we have a self-perpetuating cycle. Two ways forward are an increase in non-religious education and the reduction of the authority given to religious ideas.
To prevent the sectarianism and isolation that leads religious groups to the most atrocious actions is a difficult task in a free society; people are free to join groups and live with friends (call it a commune if you want), and are also free to believe crazy things. To stop social groups, even just exclusive ones, is a severe reduction in freedom and almost definitely not worth it on the balance. Restricting living arrangements would disrupt ethnic groups, religious groups and all kinds of innocent behaviour. It is impossible and reprehensible to try and police beliefs: that type of behaviour is a symptom of extremism, not a cause of it. Yet these three elements, when taken together, can lead to everything from mass suicide to genocidal attacks on humanity as a whole. The cure cannot be to deal with the errant groups as they emerge, but to stop them emerging in the first place.
Causes of the isolation of these groups stem from their social unacceptability; they feel rejected because others (accurately) judge their ideas as absurd. They reject the world just as it rejects them. This leads to the them-and-us attitude in extremo. The outcries against "cults" in the press, and official investigations, all feed the fire, but the government cannot fail to investigate pseudo-criminal groups, as things like child welfare are at stake.
My page on "Anti-Religious Forces: Specific Factors Fuelling Secularisation" by Vexen Crabtree (2011) describes many of the elements of modern life that reduce superstitious and religious beliefs in general. Without beliefs in god(s), afterlife, etc, it is impossible to believe any of the things that the leaders of these groups tend to say. And although most these groups do attract some outstanding individuals and persons of responsibility, in general they are the stay of the under-privileged and under-educated. Education is the main inverse correlate of divisive religious sectarianism. Comparative religion and skeptical thinking both serve to help people evaluate claims about spiritual reality in more reasonable and moral terms. This operates across the scale from the tutorship of individual children at home, to the mass-education of ethnic and religious groups in specially run schools. Most parents who educate their children at home do so for religious reasons37. Sectarian religious schools (who base entry criteria on religion) are a major cause of the type of social schism that leads to violent behaviour38.
Education should be secular, inclusive and mixed. This means emphasis on difference of belief, without assuming any particular belief system is true, and an abandonment of schools that split people along religious (or ethnic) lines (this applies during home education too).
Cult-bashing reactionary news broadcasts that actively attack small, isolated communities always make the situation worse. Engagement should be educational and sympathetic towards followers, not judgemental and aggressive (which makes them isolate themselves more).
The presentation of scientific reality in easy-to-understand terms on TV, complete with reality-based interpretations of spiritual-seeming events. Too much TV assumes that many otherworldly ideas about reality are true, and far too little employs any evidence-based skeptical thinking. A more responsible take on what beliefs mass media products encourage should be taken.
Beliefs in afterlife, god(s) and spiritual ideas should ideally be tempered with reasonable levels of doubt and common sense. Merely saying that this should be so doesn't help, however, so it is up to the three points above to bring this recommended state closer!
The Koran. Translation by N. J. Dawood. Penguin Classics edition published by Penguin Group Ltd, London, UK. First published 1956, quotes taken from 1999 edition.
The Bible (NIV). The NIV is the best translation for accuracy whilst maintaining readability. Multiple authors, a compendium of multiple previously published books. I prefer to take quotes from the NIV but where I quote the Bible en masse I must quote from the KJV because it is not copyrighted, whilst the NIV is. [Book Review]
Skeptical Inquirer. Pro-science magazine published bimonthly by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, New York, USA.
The Economist. Published by The Economist Group, Ltd. A weekly newspaper in magazine format, famed for its accuracy, wide scope and intelligent content. See vexen.co.uk/references.html#Economist for some commentary on this source.
(1986) The Gospel According to Woman: Christianity's Creation of the Sex War in the West. Subtitled "Christianity's Creation of the Sex War in the West". Hardback. Published by Elm Tree Books/Hamish Hamilton Ltd, London, UK.
Clarke, Peter B.. Peter B. Clarke: Professor Emeritus of the History and Sociology of Religion, King's College, University of London, and currently Professor in the Faculty of Theology, University of Oxford, UK.
(2011) The Oxford Handbook of The Sociology of Religion. Published by Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK. First published 2009.
(2008) "The Peacock vs. the Ostrich - Religious Behaviour and Sexuality" (2008). Accessed 2016 Mar 21.
(2010) "Time to Move On: Religion Has Cost Too Much" (2010). Accessed 2016 Mar 21.
(2010) "Faith Schools, Sectarian Education and Segregation: Divisive Religious Behavior (UK Case Study)" (2010). Accessed 2016 Mar 21.
(2003) Lost Christianities. Hardback. Oxford University Press, New York, USA.
(1995) The Dark Side of Christian History. Published by Morningstar & Lark, Windermere, FL, USA.
Fenn, Richard K.
(2009) Key Thinkers in the Sociology of Religion. A look at what 11 sociologists of religion think of "the sacred". Be warned that Fenn's book contains one chapter on each sociologist of religion but that his own mystical and specific take on 'the sacrad' is heavily intermingled with his commentary - see the book review for a proper description. Published by Continuum International Publishing Group, London, UK. [Book Review]
(2006) The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason. 2006 edition. Published in UK by The Great Free Press, 2005.
(2011) Religion and Nationalism. This essay is chapter 22 of "The Oxford Handbook of The Sociology of Religion" by Peter B. Clarke (2011) (pages 406-417).
(1999) Social Psychology. 6th 'international' edition. First edition 1983. Published by McGraw Hill.
(2004, Ed.) Encyclopedia of New Religions. Hardback. Published by Lion Publishing, Oxford, UK.
(2007) Fundamentalism. First edition 2005. New edition now published as part of the “Very Short Introduction” series. Published by Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.
(2007) Cults: Secret Sects and Radical Religions. Hardback. Published by Carlton Books.
Stenger, Prof. Victor J.
(2007) God, the Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist. Published by Prometheus Books. Stenger is a Nobel-prize winning physicist, and a skeptical philosopher whose research is strictly rational and evidence-based.
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Childhood sleep patterns predict risk of drug abuse, studies show
Recent research shows childhood sleep troubles may lead to an increased risk for depression, anxiety and drug abuse later in life.
Maria Wong, associate professor of psychology at Idaho State University, told the
Over-tiredness in childhood also predicts "binge drinking, blackouts, driving after drinking alcohol, and the number of lifetime alcohol problems in young adulthood," she said.
"We think that healthy, optimal sleep may be a buffer against developing anxiety and depression in kids," said Ronald E. Dahl, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
According to a 2004 poll by
Snoring, trouble sleeping through the night and difficulty staying awake during the day may be signs a child has a sleep disorder, according to
The time to tackle sleep problems is before puberty, the Wall Street Journal reported.
"The brains of children are far more plastic and amenable to change," said Candice Alfano, assistant professor of psychology and pediatrics at Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C.
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An emerging virus discovered in pigs and later in cows may have affected people without them even knowing it, according to South Dakota State University research assistant professor Natalie Thiex of the biology and microbiology department.
Thiex, an epidemiologist, and senior Alyssa Petersen, a psychology and premed major, will conduct a survey to determine if people have developed antibodies for bovine influenza through a one-year $6,970 grant from the SDSU Research and Scholarship Committee. Professor Feng Li, a virologist, and associate professor Russ Daly, SDSU Extension veterinarian, are also involved.
This summer the researchers hope to survey 300 people living on farms and in cities within a 50- to 100-mile radius of Brookings. Participants will fill out a questionnaire about their health history, exposure to livestock, and basic demographic data and then give a blood sample. Thiex estimates this will take about 30 minutes.
Those interested in participating can contact Thiex at 605-688-5874 or firstname.lastname@example.org to volunteer.
Thiex learned about bovine influenza through a presentation Li gave on campus. He and other veterinary science researchers are part of the team of scientists that identified and sequenced the genome of the virus, which has 50 percent similarity to the human influenza C virus that typically causes very mild respiratory symptoms in people. The virus was originally identified and characterized by Ben Hause, now an assistant research professor at Kansas State University, while completing his doctorate at SDSU.
Subsequently, the research team discovered bovine influenza antibodies in 1.3 percent of blood samples collected from residents in Connecticut and British Columbia during two influenza seasons from 2007 to 2009. However, no information was available about whether these people had contact with animals.
"We are hoping to find volunteers to be a part of this study so we can gather baseline data about this emerging virus. Characterizing the prevalence and pathogenicity of new influenza viruses is a public health priority," Thiex said.
She and Petersen also plan to recruit participants by attending events, such as regional dairy and veterinary meetings and Dakotafest.
Explore further: Reconstructed 1918 influenza virus has yielded key insights, scientists say
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April 24, 2013
SpaceX Grasshopper Makes Its Highest Leap Yet
[ Watch the Video: Grasshopper 250m Test | Ring of Fire ]
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe OnlineSpaceX, a private space transportation company, announced the fifth successful flight trial of its Grasshopper Vertical Takeoff Vertical Landing (VTVL) Vehicle. Grasshopper flew 820 feet straight up, hovered in place while holding against the wind, and then returned to the launch pad.
According to a Universe Today report, the 10-story Grasshopper was designed by SpaceX to test technologies needed to return a rocket back to Earth intact, rather than allowing the rocket to burn up during reentry.
The Verge says that the Grasshopper has hit some "impressive marks" prior to this launch, including a March 10 flight of 260 feet with a precisely controlled landing. The Grasshopper isn't ready for a spaceflight yet, and SpaceX hasn't released a timeline for that event. Their goal in designing the Grasshopper, which is based in part on the Falcon 9 rocket family with added metal landing legs, is to create the first viable, commercial, rapidly reusable rocket. Such technology would drastically reduce the costs associated with spaceflight, paving the way for more routine orbital launches. This might include launches by civilians at some point in the future.
To implement the reusability technology being tested, the company plans to retrieve a Falcon 9 first-stage rocket component from an ocean landing later this year and reuse it. There are plans to attempt a first-stage landing on dry ground using the landing legs in 2014.
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Sodium is a necessary nutrient, but most people overdo it on salt. The daily recommendation is to limit sodium intake to 2,300 milligrams per day (less if you suffer from high blood pressure). Given our love of the kitchen staple, it’s not surprising that more and more salt choices are appearing on store shelves. Besides standbys like table salt and kosher salt, you may have come across fancier options like pink Hawaiian or fleur de sel. But no matter which salt you choose, it’s best to keep the portions in check. Here’s how several salts differ in sodium content, flavor and culinary uses.
What it is: This is your most basic, run-of-the mill shaker salt, cultivated from salt mines. It has a tiny granular texture, elementary saltiness and a slight aftertaste.
Sodium in 1/4 teaspoon: 590 milligrams
Recommended uses: pickling, canning, baking
What it is: Table salt that’s fortified with iodine to prevent deficiency of the important mineral. It has the same flavor as table salt.
Sodium in 1/4 teaspoon: same as table salt
Recommended use: baking
What it is: This is another mined salt, only it’s processed a little differently. This creates a product that’s coarser, flakier and perfect for sprinkling. Popular among chefs, this salt disperses and dissolves more quickly. It has a clean and fresh flavor, no aftertaste and is perfect for everyday use.
Sodium in 1/4 teaspoon: 280 milligrams (fine kosher salt); 480 milligrams (coarse kosher salt)
Recommended uses: everyday cooking, salt-rimmed cocktails
What it is: Collected from seawater that has evaporated, sea salt will vary in color, texture and flavor depending on where it’s harvested. Sea salt also contains trace amounts of minerals like potassium and magnesium but the impact on your diet is negligible. The sodium content will also vary greatly depending on the grains’ texture/size and where the salt is from. These salts are some culinary gems. Types include:
gray salt (or sel gris): grayish-purple in color, mild in flavor; adds a great crunch
pink Hawaiian: coarse, with a distinct flavor; gets its pink color from volcanic clay
fleur de sel: bright white and full of flavor; it’s pricey but worth it–reserve for raw tomatoes and chocolate or caramel
Sodium in 1/4 teaspoon: anywhere from 400 to 600 milligrams
Recommended uses: finishing touches on prepared foods
Dana Angelo White, MS, RD, ATC, is a registered dietitian, certified athletic trainer and owner of Dana White Nutrition, Inc., which specializes in culinary and sports nutrition. See Dana’s full bio »
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Empathy is a powerful tool that you can use to help you connect with other people, which will increase your feelings of oneness. When you can identify a person’s emotional state it gives you more information about that person, which allows you to make a more informed decision about how you’ll interact with or communicate with them. The more you understand someone, the better you’ll communicate with them. Greater empathy could get you a job or the love of your life one day. Empathy can prevent arguments before they start, and end fights before they get out of hand. Why wonder what someone is feeling or thinking when you can know?
Empathy is the ability to identify or sense what another person is feeling. It’s like seeing through someone else’s eyes. Empathy should not be confused with compassion, which is the desire to alleviate the suffering of another, and sometimes contains empathy, but really goes beyond it. You can act compassionately even when you do not empathize with a person’s emotional state or situation.
Some people are naturally empathic, but it’s a skill that can be developed with practice. Here are 5 steps you can take that will lead to greater empathy:
1. Listen intently to others
Do you ever find yourself in an interesting or heated conversation and all you’re doing is thinking about what you’re going to say next without really hearing what the other person is saying? If you’re not listening, how can you understand their points? And if you’re not listening to them, there’s a real good chance they’re not listening to you! The next time you find yourself in a conversation with someone, listen intently. Quiet the chatter in your own mind and really listen to what the other person is saying. You might hear something you would normally have missed. Don’t decide in advance what you’re going to say. Just listen. When you do this, you’ll begin picking up feelings and emotions from the person talking which will help you understand them better. Then when you respond, you’re coming from a place of understanding.
2. Imitate body language
Many years ago Steve and I went to a Tony Robbins Firewalk seminar. During one portion we had to break into groups of three. I found myself paired up with two men I’d never met. Person A was supposed to think of a time in their lives when they were having a strong emotional reaction. They were then supposed to get into that state again. Person B was supposed to exactly model Person A’s physiology. And Person C was there to make sure that Person A and Person B were a total match down to eyelids twitching or blinking. So in our case, Person A got into a state and I had to model his physiology. One of my legs was jumping up and down, my breathing was fast, and my hands were clawing at my legs. Once Person C said we were a match I was supposed to say what emotion I was feeling. I said, “I feel really nervous right now. In fact, I feel like I’m about to jump out of an airplane.” Person A exclaimed, “Oh my God! That’s the exact memory I was thinking of. The first time I jumped out of an airplane.” Not only did I pick up on his emotion correctly, I knew the exact memory he was having. Total stranger. Picked it right out of his brain, or I should say, his physiology.
So what do you think would happen if you modeled or imitated the physiology of the person you’re talking to? Right! You will understand them better, you may even discover you have telepathy. 🙂 Modeling the physiology of other people will increase your empathy.
3. Put yourself in their shoes
One of the best ways to increase your empathy is to imagine what life is like in someone else’s shoes. Most people won’t go to the trouble, but if you can imagine what someone else might be going through, it will increase your level of empathy by a huge factor. The next time you’re with someone who is going through a rough time, or even a really exciting time, take a moment to get out of your own head and imagine what they’re feeling. Then ask them if that’s how they’re feeling. “Hey Johnny, I heard you lost your job. I imagine you’re feeling a depressed and anxious, right?” Or, “Sophia, congratulations on becoming a grandmother. You must be feeling excited!” See what she says.
You can do this with total strangers too. Ever witness a car accident and think, “Glad that wasn’t me,” or “I can’t be late for work so I hope they clear this out of the way fast!” That’s not empathy. Next time take a moment to imagine what the people involved in the accident are feeling. “Wow, I’ll bet that person is really shaken up. I hope he’s alright.” Spare a thought for your fellow man. But for the grace of God, it could have been you. If you offer help, that’s compassion, or what I like to think of as empathy in action.
4. Show understanding
Think about the last time you felt totally and completely understood by someone. Feels good doesn’t it? Return the favor. The next time a friend, child, or your partner is telling you about something that happened to them show that you are listening by repeating back what you heard. “So what you’re telling me is that you feel lonely when I go out every weekend with the boys and you want me to spend more time with you. Is that right?” This is also called empathic listening. It works great in an argument. The next time you’re fighting with someone listen to what they’re saying, don’t interrupt, and then repeat back to them your understanding of what they just said. I cannot tell you how powerful this is. Refrain from making your own point until your partner indicates he or she feels completely understood. They’ll be more willing to hear you speak when you’ve shown you’re willing to understand their point of view first.
5. Expand your awareness
You don’t live in a bubble, even though sometimes it might feel like it. The world doesn’t revolve around you either. You’re sharing it with billions of people. Expand your awareness of what other people are doing. For fun sit down in a crowded place like a movie theater, mall, bookstore, etc. and do some people-watching. You’ll see people who are in a hurry, people arguing with each other, people who are worried, teen boys checking out teen girls, and all manner of behavior. See if you can discern what’s going on.
I’ve often had interesting conversations with strangers when I see them struggling with something (or someone), or if I see them doing something I can totally relate to. I remember standing in my favorite vegetarian restaurant in Los Angeles one time and I saw a guy drinking a chocolate shake. Like I’d known him for years I said, “Oh, is that one of those non-dairy chocolate shakes you got there? Those are the best aren’t they?” He smiled and said, “Yeah, they’re sooo good. You should get one.” To which I replied, “Yeah, maybe I will. But I also love their fruit tart so I gotta pick my poison, know what I mean?” He said, “Yeah, their chocolate and vanilla swirl cake is also really good. But I love the shakes too.” Not a terribly meaningful conversation but a connection was made. He wandered around the store a bit and eventually came back to me and asked me out. I told him I was married and off he went.
This sort of interaction comes very naturally to me. Don’t be afraid to say something to a total stranger if you can sense they’ll be receptive to a conversation. I find the best way to treat people is as if we’ve known each other for a long time. I know it seems odd to approach a total stranger like this, but it works. People want to connect. People want to feel understood. People like friendly people. Be friendly people.
Increase your empathy and you increase your power and love. Feel at one with your fellow man. I think most people want to be empathized with. When you show you understand someone’s feelings you honor their human experience, and they’re more likely to honor yours.
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09 Jun 2014, BioSpectrum Bureau , BioSpectrum
Singapore: In a latest news report, Dr Lhamo Sharpa, a Nepal based Tibetan doctor has sounded a warning about the increased rate of Hepatitis B infections in Tibet.
Dr Sharpa has pointed out that 62 percent of Tibetans living in Nepal are infected with the virus that harms the liver and can cause serious long term health problems in some people. She has blamed the lack of education and vaccinations for the soaring number of infections.
She explained that since her domain of works revolves directly around the work with researchers in Tibetan areas of China, she realized that rural Tibetans are especially vulnerable because of a lack of access to proper vaccinations.
She illustrated a study that she conducted with her colleagues. The study concluded that atleast 64 percent of women in rural Tibet give birth at home. Further pointing out that they are not told about vaccines available for their babies.
She was quoted in reports as saying, "Those who give birth at home don't go to hospitals unless they are sick. They don't go to hospital because they are not aware of the vaccines and that is a problem."
Hepatitis B is usually transmitted from infected people through blood or body fluids. She said that many monks get Hepatitis B through sharing razors or going to hair salons that do not sterilize their equipment.
With recent controversy surrounding the Hepatitis B vaccines produced in China, more questions regarding the safety of people in Tibet are being raised.
Late last year, at least eight babies died in China after receiving the Hepatitis B vaccine. The deaths sparked an investigation of the companies that produce the vaccine.
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From Episode Two of the film series “The Century of the Self” by Adam Curtis. The nephew of Sigmund Freud, Edward Bernays started his business life as a publicist. While still in his twenties, he was part of the propaganda effort that drove the United States into in World War I.
He personally advised several U.S. presidents starting with Woodrow Wilson and counseled numerous corporations and business associations. Hitler’s propaganda chief and Nazi henchman Joseph Goebbels was a reader and fan of Bernay’s writing in particular Bernay’s book “Crystalizing Public Opinion.”
In this short excerpt from Curtis’s film we see one example of Bernays at work.
Bernays was one of the engineers of the Cold War. He perfected the technique of manufacturing a distant but ever-threatening enemy and then creating a constant state of fear by generating false news reports that endlessly re-stated and exagerated the threat.
The stated purpose of Bernay’s methods was to give those in power greater control over what he called “the mass mind.” It worked well in the 1950s and sadly, it appears to be working quite well today… but maybe not forever.
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Stay in a warm cozy bed all day. Shelter from the elements at all times. A fresh buffet at your doorstep open all hours -- even hooked up directly to your gut.
Yup, life as a parasite is pretty sweet.
Parasitic creatures may get a bad rap, but they are nevertheless living organisms, and often they provide very important functions in a healthy ecosystem.
“About 50 percent of animal diversity is parasites,” says Kevin Lafferty, a lead scientist with the USGS Western Ecological Research Center. Lafferty recently was featured in a Convergence magazine article from UC Santa Barbara, where he serves as an adjunct professor.
“There is as wide a range of life-forms inside a fish as there is in an estuary," Lafferty says. “It’s the most popular lifestyle on earth."
Lafferty and his UCSB colleagues study how parasites might serve as indicators of a healthy ecosystem. Additionally, they're trying to explore how parasites might be driving changes in animal behavior, such as an infested fish that is forced to twitch uncontrollably and expose itself to bird predators.
And, quite possibly, even examples like changes in human behavior or cancer risk after parasite infection.
In many senses, parasites take on similar roles as large predators like wolves and lions -- they feed on and gain energy from organisms very high in the food chain. This makes them unlike other organisms of similar size, which typically feed very low in the food chain.
For example, compare the Nerocila californica in the photo above (happily inside a mullet's mouth) with an ordinary garden pill bug (right). Both are types of small isopods, but one saps energy from a large fish, while the other forages in the dirt for decaying scraps
Clearly, there is a strong case for considering parasitic organisms, their impacts and their functions when trying to survey and understand our ecosystems, food webs and habitats.
“We’d like to see full integration of parasites into ecology as a discipline,” Lafferty says in the Convergence interview. “Most ecologists stop at the outside of the organism.”
Read more about Lafferty's work here.
-- Ben Young Landis
Top Image: A Nerocila californica isopod living inside a mullet's mouth. Image courtesy of UCSB.
Middle Image: Armadillidium vulgare is a common garden isopod. Image via Wikimedia/Franco Folini
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1.1. BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) is a contagious bacterial infection that mainly involves the lungs, but may spread to other organs and is caused by the bacteria Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tuberculosis) (Sauders, 2007). One can get TB by breathing in air droplets from a cough or sneeze of an infected person. This is called primary tuberculosis.
In Ghana, most people will recover from primary TB infection without further evidence of the disease. The infection may stay asleep or inactive (dormant) for years. However, in some people it can reactivate (Ghana Health Service (GHS) publications, 2000). Most people who develop symptoms of a TB infection first became infected in the past (Southwick, 2007). However in some cases the disease may become active in some few weeks after primary infection. In Ghana, there are approximately 10 cases of TB per 100,000 people. However, rates vary dramatically by area of residence and socioeconomic class (G.H.S publications, 2000).
The following people are at high risk for active tuberculosis: elderly, infants and people with weaken immune system, for instance, AIDS. The risk for contracting TB increases if one is in frequent contact with people living with the disease, poor nutrition and living in crowded or unsanitary living condition (Southwick, 2007).
The following factors may increase the rate of TB infection in a population: Increase in HIV infections, increase in number of homeless people (poor environment and nutrition), and the appearance of drug-resistant strains of TB (Southwick, 2007).
The primary stage of the disease usually doesn't cause symptoms. When symptoms of pulmonary TB occur, they may include: cough (sometimes producing phlegm), coughing up blood, excessive sweating, especially at night, fatigue, fever, unintentional weight loss. Other symptoms that may occur with this disease are breathing difficulty, chest pain, wheezing. Examination may show clubbing of the fingers or toes (in people with advanced disease), enlarged or tender lymph nodes in the neck or other areas, fluid around a lung, unusual breath sounds (crackles) (Southwick, 2007).
Tests that may be used in the diagnosis of this disease include biopsy of the affected tissue (rare), bronchoscopy, chest CT scan, chest x-ray, sputum examination and cultures, tuberculin skin test. Tuberculosis prevention and control takes two parallel approaches. In the first, people with tuberculosis and their contacts are identified and then treated. Identification of infections often involves testing high-risk groups for tuberculosis. In the second approach, children are vaccinated to protect them from tuberculosis. No vaccine is available that provides reliable protection for adults. However, in tropical areas where the levels of other species of mycobacterium are high, exposure to nontuberculous mycobacterium gives some protection against tuberculosis (Fine et al., 2001). Many countries use Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine as part of their TB control program, especially for infants. According to the WHO in 1993, this is the most often used vaccine worldwide, with 85% of infants in 172 countries immunized in 1993. This was the first vaccine for TB and developed at the Pasteur Institute in France between 1905 and 1921. However, mass vaccination with BCG did not start until after World War II. The protective efficacy of BCG for preventing serious forms of TB (e.g. meningitis) in children is greater than 80%; its protective efficacy for preventing pulmonary TB in adolescents and adults is variable, ranging from 0 to 80%. In South Africa, the country with the highest prevalence of TB, BCG is given to all children under age three. However, BCG is less effective in areas where mycobacterium is less prevalent; therefore BCG is not given to the entire population in these countries. In the USA, for example, BCG vaccine is not recommended except for people who meet specific criteria (W.HO, 2000).
The World Health Organization (WHO) declared tuberculosis a global health emergency in 1993, and the Stop TB Partnership developed a Global Plan to Stop Tuberculosis that aims to save 14 million lives between 2006 and 2015. Since humans are the only host of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, eradication would be possible. This goal would be helped greatly by an effective vaccine.
BCG provides some protection against severe forms of pediatric TB, but has been shown to be unreliable against adult pulmonary TB, which accounts for most of the disease burden worldwide. Currently, there are more cases of TB on the planet than at any other time in history and most agree there is an urgent need for a newer, more effective vaccine that would prevent all forms of TB—including drug resistant strains—in all age groups and among people with HIV (Southwick, 2007). Several new vaccines to prevent TB infection are being developed. The first recombinant tuberculosis vaccine rBCG30, entered clinical trials in the United States in 2004, sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). A 2005 study showed that a DNA TB vaccine given with conventional chemotherapy can accelerate the disappearance of bacteria as well as protect against re-infection in mice; it may take four to five years to be available in humans (W.H.O, 2005). A very promising TB vaccine, MVA85A, is currently in phase II trials in South Africa by a group led by Oxford University, and is based on a genetically modified vaccinia virus (W.H.O, 2005). In treatment, the goal is to cure the infection with drugs that fight the TB bacteria. Treatment of active pulmonary TB will always involve a combination of many drugs (usually four drugs). All of the drugs are continued until lab tests show which medicines work best. The most commonly used drugs include Isoniazid, Rifampin, Pyrazinamide, and Ethambutol (Southwick, 2007).
In other concept, haematological profile are those parameters of the blood forms (red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets) with normal range or value as reference for any value to know whether or not they are normal (Hoffbrand et al., 2005).Therefore there is the need to know those parameters of the blood which are abnormal in patients living with pulmonary tuberculosis. The erythrocyte sedimentation rate and few of red and white cell indices would be considered. It is true that when one gets infected with pulmonary tuberculosis there is some level of changes which occurs in the blood because it is a bacterial infection. These changes need to be looked at and the extent considered.
In the final concept, the setting for this study is the District Hospital in Cape Coast which is the Cape Coast Metropolitan Hospital. Patients with pulmonary tuberculosis visiting this hospital and those admitted in the hospital are the objects for this study. This means the study is based on patients identified already as pulmonary T.B patients.
1.2 PROBLEM STATEMENT
Pulmonary tuberculosis is a major public health concern in Ghana. In Ghana, there are approximately 10 cases of TB per 100,000 people. However, rates vary dramatically by area of residence and socioeconomic class (G.H.S publications, 2000). The continuous spread of TB, requires effort to know: what the haematological profile of the people living with pulmonary tuberculosis are, what abnormal changes occur in these haematological parameters, what effect age and sex have on these haematological parameters of the patients.
1.3 JUSTIFICATION OF RESEARCH
Looking at the continuous spread and mode of transmission of this disease resulting into haematological changes in the patient, there is therefore the need to check the haematological profile of patients in order to treat underlining haematological changes as a result of pulmonary T.B alongside the treatment of the disease itself.
People living with pulmonary tuberculosis may have abnormal changes in their haematological parameters. It is expected that these changes may be identified in this research in order to be treated alongside the treatment of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis.
1.5.1 GENERAL OBJECTIVE
To analyze the haematological profile of people living with pulmonary tuberculosis attending the district hospital, Cape Coast.
1.5.2 SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES
1. To determine the abnormal changes that occurs in the haematological parameters (FBC indices, erythrocyte sedimentation rates, ESR) of pulmonary tuberculosis patients.
2. To know the effect of age and sex on the haematological indices of pulmonary tuberculosis patients.
2.1 TUBERCULOSIS (T.B)
Tuberculosis or TB (short for tubercles bacillus) is a common and often deadly infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacterium, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis in humans (Kumar et al., 2007).Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body. It is spread through the air when people who have the disease cough, sneeze, or spit (Konstantinos, 2010). Most infections in humans result in an asymptomatic, latent infection, and about one in ten latent infections eventually progresses to active disease which, if left untreated, kills more than 50% of its victims.
The classic symptoms are a chronic cough with blood-tinged sputum, fever, night sweats, and weight loss. Infection of other organs causes a wide range of symptoms. Diagnosis relies on radiology (commonly chest X-rays), a tuberculin skin test, blood tests, as well as microscopic examination and microbiological culture of bodily fluids. Treatment is difficult and requires long courses of multiple antibiotics. Contacts are also screened and treated if necessary (Kumar et al., 2007). Antibiotic resistance is a growing problem in (extensively) multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis. Prevention relies on screening programs and vaccination, usually with Bacillus Calmette-Guérin vaccine. A third of the world's populations are thought to be infected with M. tuberculosis, (Jasmer et al., 2002) and new infections occur at a rate of about one per second. The proportion of people who become sick with tuberculosis each year is stable or falling worldwide but, because of population growth, the absolute number of new cases is still increasing (W.H.O, 2007).
In 2007 there were an estimated 13.7 million chronic active cases, 9.3 million new cases, and 1.8 million deaths, mostly in developing countries (W.H.O, 2009). In addition, more people in the developed world are contracting tuberculosis because their immune systems are compromised by immunosuppressive drugs, substance abuse, or AIDS.
The distribution of tuberculosis is not uniform across the globe; about 80% of the population in many Asian and African countries test positive in tuberculin tests, while only 5-10% of the US population test positive.
2.1.1 ORIGIN OF TUBERCULOSIS
Tuberculosis has been present in humans since antiquity. The earliest unambiguous detection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis is in the remains of bison dated 18,000 years before the present (Rothschild et al., 2001).Whether tuberculosis originated in cattle and then transferred to humans, or diverged from a common ancestor infecting a different species, is currently unclear (Pearce-Duvet, 2006). However, it is clear that M. tuberculosis is not directly descended from M. bovis, which seems to have evolved relatively recently (Ernst et al., 2007).Skeletal remains from a Neolithic Settlement in the Eastern Mediterranean show prehistoric humans (7000 BC) had TB, (Hershkovitz et al., 2008) and tubercular decay has been found in the spines of mummies from 3000–2400 BC (Zink et al, 2003). Phthisis is a Greek term for tuberculosis; around 460 BC, Hippocrates identified phthisis as the most widespread disease of the times involving coughing up blood and fever, which was almost always fatal (Hippocrates, 2006)
In South America, the earliest evidence of tuberculosis is associated with the Paracas-Caverna culture (circa 750 BC to circa 100 AD) (Konomi et al., 2002). In the past, tuberculosis has been called consumption, because it seemed to consume people from within, with a bloody cough, fever, pallor, and long relentless wasting. Other names included phthisis (Greek for consumption) and phthisis pulmonalis; scrofula (in adults), affecting the lymphatic system and resulting in swollen neck glands; tabes mesenterica, TB of the abdomen and lupus vulgaris, TB of the skin; wasting disease; white plague, because sufferers appear markedly pale; king's evil, because it was believed that a king's touch would heal scrofula; and Pott's disease, or gibbus of the spine and joints. Miliary tuberculosis—now commonly known as disseminated TB—occurs when the infection invades the circulatory system, resulting in millet-like seeding of TB bacilli in the lungs as seen on an X-ray (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2006). TB is also called Koch's disease, after the scientist Robert Koch (Ernst et al., 2007).
Before the Industrial Revolution, tuberculosis may sometimes have been regarded as vampirism. When one member of a family died from it, the other members that were infected would lose their health slowly. People believed that this was caused by the original victim draining the life from the other family members. Furthermore, people who had TB exhibited symptoms similar to what people considered to be vampire traits. People with TB often have symptoms such as red, swollen eyes (which also creates a sensitivity to bright light), pale skin, extremely low body heat, a weak heart and coughing blood, suggesting the idea that the only way for the afflicted to replenish this loss of blood was by sucking blood (Sledzik, 1994). Another folk belief told that the affected individual was being forced, nightly, to attend fairy revels, so that the victim wasted away owing to lack of rest; this belief was most common when a strong connection was seen between the fairies and the dead (Katharine, 1976).
Similarly, but less commonly, it was attributed to the victims being "hagridden"—being transformed into horses by witches (hags) to travel to their nightly meetings, again resulting in a lack of rest (Katharine, 1976). TB was romanticized in the nineteenth century. Many people believed TB produced feelings of euphoria referred to as Spes phthisica ("hope of the consumptive"). It was believed that TB sufferers who were artists had bursts of creativity as the disease progressed. It was also believed that TB sufferers acquired a final burst of energy just before they died that made women more beautiful and men more creative (Lawlor, 2003). In the early 20th century, some believed TB to be caused by masturbation (Laumann et al., 1994). The study of tuberculosis, sometimes known as phthisiatry, dates back to The Canon of Medicine written by Ibn Sina (Avicenna) in the 1020s. He was the first physician to identify pulmonary tuberculosis as a contagious disease, the first to recognize the association with diabetes, and the first to suggest that it could spread through contact with soil and water (Al-Sharrah, 2003).
He developed the method of quarantine in order to limit the spread of tuberculosis (Al-Sharrah, 2003). In ancient times, treatments focused on sufferers' diets. Pliny the Elder described several methods in his Natural History: "wolf's liver taken in thin wine, the lard of a sow that has been fed upon grass, or the flesh of a she-ass taken in broth" (Al-Sharrah, 2003).
Although it was established that the pulmonary form was associated with "tubercles" by Dr Richard Morton in 1689, due to the variety of its symptoms, TB was not identified as a single disease until the 1820s and was not named "tuberculosis" until 1839 by J. L. Schönlein (Konomi et al., 2002). During the years 1838 – 1845, Dr. John Croghan, the owner of Mammoth Cave, brought a number of tuberculosis sufferers into the cave in the hope of curing the disease with the constant temperature and purity of the cave air; they died within a year. The first TB sanatorium opened in 1854 in Görbersdorf, Germany (today Sokołowsko, Poland) by Hermann Brehmer (Konomi et al., 2002).
The bacillus causing tuberculosis, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, was identified and described on 24 March 1882 by Robert Koch. He received the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in 1905 for this discovery. Koch did not believe that bovine (cattle) and human tuberculosis were similar, which delayed the recognition of infected milk as a source of infection. Later, this source was eliminated by the pasteurization process. Koch announced a glycerin extract of the tubercle bacilli as a remedy for tuberculosis in 1890, calling it "tuberculin". It was not effective, but was later adapted as a test for pre-symptomatic tuberculosis (Ernst et al., 2007). The first genuine success in immunizing against tuberculosis was developed from attenuated bovine-strain tuberculosis by Albert Calmette and Camille Guérin in 1906. It was called "BCG" (Bacillus of Calmette and Guérin). The BCG vaccine was first used on humans in 1921 in France, but it was not until after World War II that BCG received widespread acceptance in the USA, Great Britain, and Germany (Comstock, 1994). Tuberculosis, or "consumption" as it was commonly known, caused the most widespread public concern in the 19th and early 20th centuries as an endemic disease of the urban poor. In 1815, one in four deaths in England was of consumption; by 1918 one in six deaths in France were still caused by TB. In the 20th century, tuberculosis killed an estimated 100 million people (Bannon et al., 1999). After the establishment in the 1880s that the disease was contagious, TB was made a notifiable disease in Britain; there were campaigns to stop spitting in public places, and the infected poor were pressured to enter sanatoria that resembled prisons; the sanatoria for the middle and upper classes offered excellent care and constant medical attention (Comstock, 1994).
Whatever the purported benefits of the fresh air and labor in the sanatoria, even under the best conditions, 50% of those who entered were dead within five years (1916) (Comstock, 1994).
The promotion of Christmas Seals began in Denmark during 1904 as a way to raise money for tuberculosis programs. It expanded to the United States and Canada in 1907 – 1908 to help the National Tuberculosis Association (later called the American Lung Association).In the United States, concern about the spread of tuberculosis played a role in the movement to prohibit public spitting except into spittoons. In Europe, deaths from TB fell from 500 out of 100,000 in 1850 to 50 out of 100,000 by 1950. Improvements in public health were reducing tuberculosis even before the arrival of antibiotics. The disease remained such a significant threat to public health, that when the Medical Research Council was formed in Britain in 1913, its initial focus was tuberculosis research (Bannon et al., 1999). It was not until 1946 with the development of the antibiotic streptomycin that effective treatment and cure became possible. Prior to the introduction of this drug, the only treatment besides sanatoria were surgical interventions, including bronchoscopy and suction as well as the pneumothorax or plombage technique — collapsing an infected lung to "rest" it and allow lesions to heal — a technique that was of little benefit and was mostly discontinued by the 1950s (Bannon et al., 1999).
The emergence of multidrug-resistant TB has again introduced surgery as part of the treatment for these infections. Here, surgical removal of chest cavities will reduce the number of bacteria in the lungs, as well as increasing the exposure of the remaining bacteria to drugs in the bloodstream. It is therefore thought to increase the effectiveness of the chemotherapy. Hopes that the disease could be completely eliminated have been dashed since the rise of drug-resistant strains in the 1980s. For example, tuberculosis cases in Britain, numbering around 117,000 in 1913, had fallen to around 5,000 in 1987, but cases rose again, reaching 6,300 in 2000 and 7,600 cases in 2005 (Ernst et al., 2007).
Due to the elimination of public health facilities in New York and the emergence of HIV, there was a resurgence of TB in the late 1980s. The number of patients failing to complete their course of drugs is high. New York had to cope with more than 20,000 TB patients with multidrug-resistant strains (resistant to, at least, both Rifampin and Isoniazid).The resurgence of tuberculosis resulted in the declaration of a global health emergency by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1993. Every year, nearly half a million new cases of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) are estimated to occur worldwide (Al-Sharrah, 2003). Tuberculosis has co-evolved with humans for many thousands of years, and perhaps for several million years. The oldest known human remains showing signs of tuberculosis infection are 9,000 years old.
During this evolution, M. tuberculosis has lost numerous coding and non-coding regions in its genome, losses that can be used to distinguish between strains of the bacteria. The implication is that M. tuberculosis strains differ geographically, so their genetic differences can be used to track the origins and movement of each strain (Al-Sharrah, 2003).
The current clinical classification system for tuberculosis (TB) is based on the pathogenesis of the disease.
Classification System for TB
Class Type Description
0 No TB exposure No history of exposure
Not infected Negative reaction to tuberculin skin test
1 TB exposure History of exposure.
No evidence of infection Negative reaction to tuberculin skin test.
2 TB infection. No disease Positive reaction to tuberculin skin test
Negative bacteriologic studies (if done)
Fibrocaseous cavitary lesion (usually in
upper lobe of lungs)
3 TB, clinically active M. tuberculosis cultured (if done)
Clinical, bacteriologic, or radiographic
evidence of current disease
History of episode(s) of TB
4 TB Not clinically active or
Abnormal but stable radiographic
Positive reaction to the tuberculin skin
Negative bacteriologic studies (if done)
And No clinical or radiographic
evidence of current disease
5 TB suspect Diagnosis pending
TB disease should be ruled in or out
within 3 months
2.1.3 SIGNS AND SYMPTOMS
When the disease becomes active, 75% of the cases are pulmonary TB, that is, TB in the lungs. Symptoms include chest pain, coughing up blood, and a productive, prolonged cough for more than three weeks. Systemic symptoms include fever, chills, night sweats, appetite loss, weight loss, pallor, and often a tendency to fatigue very easily (W.H.O, 2007). In the other 25% of active cases, the infection moves from the lungs, causing other kinds of TB, collectively denoted extra pulmonary tuberculosis. This occurs more commonly in immunosuppressed persons and young children. Extrapulmonary infection sites include the pleura in tuberculosis pleurisy, the central nervous system in meningitis, and the lymphatic system in scrofula of the neck, the genitourinary system in urogenital tuberculosis, and bones and joints in Pott's disease of the spine (W.H.O, 2007).
An especially serious form is disseminated TB, more commonly known as miliary tuberculosis. Extrapulmonary TB may co-exist with pulmonary TB as well (Madison, 2001).
The primary cause of TB, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, is a small aerobic non-motile bacillus. High lipid content of this pathogen accounts for many of its unique clinical characteristics (Cox, 2004).It divides every 16 to 20 hours, an extremely slow rate compared with other bacteria, which usually divide in less than an hour (Cox, 2004). (For example, one of the fastest-growing bacteria is a strain of E. coli that can divide roughly every 20 minutes). Since MTB has a cell wall but lacks a phospholipid outer membrane, it is classified as a Gram-positive bacterium. However, if a Gram stain is performed, MTB either stains very weakly Gram-positive or does not retain dye due to the high lipid & mycolic acid content of its cell wall (Madison, 2001). MTB can withstand weak disinfectants and survive in a dry state for weeks. In nature, the bacterium can grow only within the cells of a host organism, but M. tuberculosis can be cultured in vitro (Parish et al., 1999). Using histological stains on expectorate samples from phlegm (also called sputum); scientists can identify MTB under a regular microscope. Since MTB retains certain stains after being treated with acidic solution, it is classified as an acid-fast bacillus (AFB) (Madison, 2001).The most common acid-fast staining technique, the Ziehl-Neelsen stain, dyes AFBs a bright red that stands out clearly against a blue background. Other ways to visualize AFBs include an auramine-rhodamine stain and fluorescent microscopy.
The M. tuberculosis complex includes four other TB-causing mycobacteria: M. bovis, M. africanum, M. Canetti and M. microti (van Soolingen et al., 1997). M. africanum is not widespread, but in parts of Africa it is a significant cause of tuberculosis (Niemann et al, 2002). M. bovis was once a common cause of tuberculosis, but the introduction of pasteurized milk has largely eliminated this as a public health problem in developed countries (Thoen et al., 2006). M. canetti is rare and seems to be limited to Africa, although a few cases have been seen in African emigrants (Pfyffer et al., 1998). M. microti is mostly seen in immunodeficient people, although it is possible that the prevalence of this pathogen has been underestimated (Niemann et al., 2000).
Other known pathogenic mycobacterium includes Mycobacterium leprae, Mycobacterium avium and M. kansasii. The last two are part of the nontuberculous mycobacterium (NTM) group. Nontuberculous mycobacterium cause neither TB nor leprosy, but they do cause pulmonary diseases resembling TB. Persons with silicosis have an approximately 30-fold greater risk for developing TB (Restrepo, 2007). Silica particles irritate the respiratory system, causing immunogenic responses such as phagocytosis which consequently results in high lymphatic vessel deposits (Restrepo, 2007). It is this interference and blockage of macrophage function which increases the risk of tuberculosis (Nijland et al., 2006). Persons with chronic renal failure who are on hemodialysis also have an increased risk: 10—25 times greater than the general population. Persons with diabetes mellitus have a risk for developing active TB that is two to four times greater than persons without diabetes mellitus, and this risk is likely greater in persons with insulin-dependent or poorly controlled diabetes. Other clinical conditions that have been associated with active TB include gastrectomy with attendant weight loss and malabsorption, jejunoileal bypass, renal and cardiac transplantation, carcinoma of the head or neck, and other neoplasms (e.g., lung cancer, lymphoma, and leukemia) (Restrepo, 2007).
Given that silicosis greatly increases the risk of tuberculosis, more research about the effect of various indoor or outdoor air pollutants on the disease would be necessary. Some possible indoor source of silica includes paint, concrete and Portland cement. Crystalline silica is found in concrete, masonry, sandstone, rock, paint, and other abrasives. The cutting, breaking, crushing, drilling, grinding, or abrasive blasting of these materials may produce fine silica dust. It can also be in soil, mortar, plaster, and shingles. When you wear dusty clothing at home or in your car, you may be carrying silica dust that your family will breathe.
Low body weight is associated with risk of tuberculosis as well. A body mass index (BMI) below 18.5 increases the risk by 2—3 times. On the other hand, an increase in body weight lowers the risk (Niobe-Eyangoh et al., 2003). Patients with diabetes mellitus are at increased risk of contracting tuberculosis, and they have a poorer response to treatment, possibly due to poorer drug absorption (Restrepo et al., 2007)
Other conditions that increase risk include IV drug abuse; recent TB infection or a history of inadequately treated TB; chest X-ray suggestive of previous TB, showing fibrotic lesions and nodules; prolonged corticosteroid therapy and other immunosuppressive therapy; Immunocompromised patients (30-40% of AIDS patients in the world also have TB) hematologic and reticuloendothelial diseases, such as leukemia and Hodgkin's disease; end-stage kidney disease; intestinal bypass; chronic malabsorption syndromes; vitamin D deficiency (Nnoaham et al., 2008); and low body weight (Southwick et al., 2007). Twin studies in the 1940s showed that susceptibility to TB was heritable. If one of a pair of twins got TB, then the other was more likely to get TB if he was identical than if he was not (Jepson et al., 2001). These findings were more recently confirmed by a series of studies in South Africa (Jepson et al, 2001). Specific gene polymorphisms in IL12B have been linked to tuberculosis susceptibility (Tso et al., 2004). Some drugs, including rheumatoid arthritis drugs that work by blocking tumor necrosis factor-alpha (an inflammation-causing cytokine), raise the risk of activating a latent infection due to the importance of this cytokine in the immune defense against TB (Mutlu et al., 2006).
When people suffering from active pulmonary TB coughs, sneeze, speak, or spit, they expel infectious aerosol droplets 0.5 to 5 µm in diameter. A single sneeze can release up to 40,000 droplets. Each one of these droplets may transmit the disease, since the infectious dose of tuberculosis is very low and inhaling less than ten bacteria may cause an infection (Nicas et al., 2005). People with prolonged, frequent, or intense contact are at particularly high risk of becoming infected, with an estimated 22% infection rate. A person with active but untreated tuberculosis can infect 10–15 other people per year. Others at risk include people in areas where TB is common, people who inject drugs using unsanitary needles, residents and employees of high-risk congregate settings, medically under-served and low-income populations, high-risk racial or ethnic minority populations, children exposed to adults in high-risk categories, patients immunocompromised by conditions such as HIV/AIDS, people who take immunosuppressant drugs, and health care workers serving these high-risk clients (Cole et al., 1998). Transmission can only occur from people with active — not latent — TB. The probability of transmission from one person to another depends upon the number of infectious droplets expelled by a carrier, the effectiveness of ventilation, the duration of exposure, and the virulence of the M. tuberculosis strain (Behr et al., 1999). The chain of transmission can, therefore, be broken by isolating patients with active disease and starting effective anti-tubercles therapy. After two weeks of such treatment, people with non-resistant active TB generally cease to be contagious. If someone does become infected, then it will take at least 21 days, or three to four weeks, before the newly infected person can transmit the disease to others (Jepson et al., 2001). TB can also be transmitted by eating meat infected with TB. Mycobacterium bovis causes TB in cattle. About 90% of those infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis have asymptomatic, latent TB infection (sometimes called LTBI), with only a 10% lifetime chance that a latent infection will progress to TB disease. However, if untreated, the death rate for these active TB cases is more than 50% (Sepulveda et al., 1994).
TB infection begins when the mycobacterium reach the pulmonary alveoli, where they invade and replicate within the endosomes of alveolar macrophages (Cobat et al., 2010). The primary site of infection in the lungs is called the Ghon focus, and is generally located in either the upper part of the lower lobe or the lower part of the upper lobe (Griffith et al., 1996). Bacteria are picked up by dendritic cells, which do not allow replication, although these cells can transport the bacilli to local (mediastinal) lymph nodes. Further spread is through the bloodstream to other tissues and organs where secondary TB lesions can develop in other parts of the lung (particularly the apex of the upper lobes), peripheral lymph nodes, kidneys, brain, and bone (Houben et al., 2006). All parts of the body can be affected by the disease, though it rarely affects the heart, skeletal muscles, pancreas and thyroid (Herrmann et al., 2005). Tuberculosis is classified as one of the granulomatous inflammatory conditions. Macrophages, T lymphocytes, B lymphocytes and fibroblasts are among the cells that aggregate to form a granulomatous, with lymphocytes surrounding the infected macrophages. The granulomatous functions not only to prevent dissemination of the mycobacteria, but also provides a local environment for communication of cells of the immune system. Within the granuloma, T lymphocytes secrete cytokines such as interferon gamma, which activates macrophages to destroy the bacteria with which they are infected (Agarwal et al., 2005). Cytotoxic T cells can also directly kill infected cells, by secreting perforin and granulysin (Agarwal et al., 2005). Importantly, bacteria are not always eliminated within the granuloma, but can become dormant, resulting in a latent infection. Another feature of the granulomas of human tuberculosis is the development of abnormal cell death, also called necrosis, in the center of tubercles. To the naked eye this has the texture of soft white cheese and was termed caseous necrosis (Kaufmann, 2002).
If TB bacteria gain entry to the bloodstream from an area of damaged tissue they spread through the body and set up many foci of infection, all appearing as tiny white tubercles in the tissues. This severe form of TB disease is most common in infants and the elderly and is called miliary tuberculosis. Patients with this disseminated TB have a fatality rate near 100% if untreated. However, if treated early, the fatality rate is reduced to near 10% (Kaufmann, 2002). In many patients the infection waxes and wanes (Grosset, 2003). Tissue destruction and necrosis are balanced by healing and fibrosis. Affected tissue is replaced by scarring and cavities filled with cheese-like white necrotic material. During active disease, some of these cavities are joined to the air passages bronchi and this material can be coughed up. It contains living bacteria and can therefore pass on infection. Treatment with appropriate antibiotics kills bacteria and allows healing to take place. Upon cure, affected areas are eventually replaced by scar tissue.
If untreated, infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis can become lobar pneumonia (Grosset, 2003).
Tuberculosis is diagnosed definitively by identifying the causative organism (Mycobacterium tuberculosis) in a clinical sample (for example, sputum or pus). When this is not possible, a probable - although sometimes inconclusive (Konstantinos, 2010) - diagnosis may be made using imaging (X-rays or scans) and/or a tuberculin skin test (Mantoux test). The main problem with tuberculosis diagnosis is the difficulty in culturing this slow-growing organism in the laboratory (it may take 4 to 12 weeks for blood or sputum culture). A complete medical evaluation for TB must include a medical history, a physical examination, a chest X-ray, microbiological smears, and cultures. It may also include a tuberculin skin test, a serological test. The interpretation of the tuberculin skin test depends upon the person's risk factors for infection and progression to TB disease, such as exposure to other cases of TB or immunosuppressant (Konstantinos, 2010). Currently, latent infection is diagnosed in a non-immunized person by a tuberculin skin test, which yields a delayed hypersensitivity type response to an extract made from M. tuberculosis (Kumar et al., 2007). Those immunized for TB or with past-cleared infection will respond with delayed hypersensitivity parallel to those currently in a state of infection, so the test must be used with caution, particularly with regard to persons from countries where TB immunization is common(Cox, 2004). Tuberculin tests have the disadvantage of producing false negatives, especially when the patient is co-morbid with sarcoidosis, Hodgkin’s lymphoma, malnutrition, or most notably active tuberculosis disease. The newer interferon release assays (IGRAs) overcome many of these problems. IGRAs are in vitro blood tests that are more specific than the skin test. IGRAs detect the release of interferon gamma in response to mycobacterial proteins such as ESAT-6. These are not affected by immunization or environmental mycobacteria, so generate fewer false positive results (Pai et al., 2008). There is also evidence that the T-SPOT.TB IGRA is more sensitive than the skin test. Diagnosis of TB has also been done with use of various radiotracers using nuclear medicine methods, which not only detects but also locates tubercular infection (Lavani et al., 2005). New TB tests are being developed that offer the hope of cheap, fast and more accurate TB testing. These include polymerase chain reaction assays for the detection of bacterial DNA. The development of a rapid and inexpensive diagnostic test would be particularly valuable in the developing world (Reddy et al., 2002).
2.1.7 EPIDEMIOLOGY AND PROGNOSIS
Fig. (a) : The prevalence of TB per 100,000 people in sub – Saharan Africa in 2007.
In 2007, the prevalence of TB per 100,000 people was highest in sub-Saharan Africa, and was also relatively high in Asia (W.H.O, 2009).
Fig. (b): The annual number of new reported cases in the world.
Annual number of new reported TB cases. Data from W.H.O, 2007.
Roughly a third of the world's population has been infected with M. tuberculosis, and new infections occur at a rate of one per second (W.H.O, 2007). However, not all infections with M. tuberculosis cause TB disease and many infections are asymptomatic. In 2007, an estimated 13.7 million people had active TB disease, with 9.3 million new cases and 1.8 million deaths; the annual incidence rate varied from 363 per 100,000 in Africa to 32 per 100,000 in the Americas. Tuberculosis is the world's greatest infectious killer of women of reproductive age and the leading cause of death among people with HIV/AIDS (W.H.O, 2007).
The rise in HIV infections and the neglect of TB control programs have enabled a resurgence of tuberculosis (Iademarco et al., 2003). The emergence of drug-resistant strains has also contributed to this new epidemic with, from 2000 to 2004, 20% of TB cases being resistant to standard treatments and 2% resistant to second-line drugs (Lambert et al., 2003). The rate at which new TB cases occur varies widely, even in neighboring countries, apparently because of differences in health care systems (Sobero et al., 2006). In 2007, the country with the highest estimated incidence rate of TB was Swaziland, with 1200 cases per 100,000 people. India had the largest total incidence, with an estimated 2.0 million new cases (W.H.O, 2009). The Philippines ranks fourth in the world for the number of cases of tuberculosis and has the highest number of cases per head in Southeast Asia. Almost two thirds of Filipinos have tuberculosis, and up to an additional five million people are infected yearly (Philippine Department of Health). In developed countries, tuberculosis is less common and is mainly an urban disease. In the United Kingdom, the national average was 15 per 100,000 in 2007, and the highest incidence rates in Western Europe were 30 per 100,000 in Portugal and Spain. These rates compared with 98 per 100,000 in China and 48 per 100,000 in Brazil. In the United States, the overall tuberculosis case rate was 4 per 100,000 persons in 2007 (Sobero et al., 2006). In Canada tuberculosis is still endemic in some rural areas (Sobero et al., 2006).
The incidence of TB varies with age. In Africa, TB primarily affects adolescents and young adults (W.H.O, 2006). However, in countries where TB has gone from high to low incidence, such as the United States, TB is mainly a disease of older people, or of the immunocompromised (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 2006). There are a number of known factors that make people more susceptible to TB infection: worldwide the most important of these is HIV. Co-infection with HIV is a particular problem in Sub-Saharan Africa, due to the high incidence of HIV in these countries (Chaisson et al., 2008). Smoking more than 20 cigarettes a day also increases the risk of TB by two to four times (Davies et al., 2006), (Jha et al., 2008). Diabetes mellitus is also an important risk factor that is growing in importance in developing countries (Restrepo, 2007). Other disease states that increase the risk of developing tuberculosis are Hodgkin lymphoma, end-stage renal disease, chronic lung disease, malnutrition, and alcoholism (Kumar et al., 2007).
Diet may also modulate risk. For example, among immigrants in London from the Indian subcontinent, vegetarian Hindu Asians were found to have an 8.5 fold increased risk of tuberculosis, compared to Muslims who ate meat and fish daily (Strachan et al, 1995-02). Although a causal link is not proved by this data (Davis, 1995) this increased risk could be caused by micronutrient deficiencies: possibly iron, vitamin B12 or vitamin D (Strachan et al, 1995-02). Further studies have provided more evidence of a link between vitamin D deficiency and an increased risk of contracting tuberculosis (Ustianowski et al., 2005), (Nnoaham et al., 2008). Globally, the severe malnutrition common in parts of the developing world causes a large increase in the risk of developing active tuberculosis, due to its damaging effects on the immune system (Schaible et al., 2007), (Lönnroth et al., 2008). Along with overcrowding, poor nutrition may contribute to the strong link observed between tuberculosis and poverty (Davies, 2003).
Prisoners, especially in poor countries, are particularly vulnerable to infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS and TB. Prisons provide a condition that allows TB to spread rapidly, due to overcrowding, poor nutrition and a lack of health services. Since the early 1990s, TB outbreaks have been reported in prisons in many countries in Eastern Europe. The prevalence of TB in prisons is much higher than among the general population – in some countries as much as 40 times higher (Larouzé et al., 2008).
2.1.8 TREATMENT AND PREVENTION
Treatment for TB uses antibiotics to kill the bacteria. Effective TB treatment is difficult, due to the unusual structure and chemical composition of the mycobacterial cell wall, which makes many antibiotics ineffective and hinders the entry of drugs. The two antibiotics most commonly used are rifampicin and Isoniazid (Webber et al., 2001). However, instead of the short course of antibiotics typically used to cure other bacterial infections, TB requires much longer periods of treatment (around 6 to 24 months) to entirely eliminate mycobacteria from the body. Latent TB treatment usually uses a single antibiotic, while active TB disease is best treated with combinations of several antibiotics, to reduce the risk of the bacteria developing antibiotic resistance. People with latent infections are treated to prevent them from progressing to active TB disease later in life (Barder et al., 2006).
Drug resistant tuberculosis is transmitted in the same way as regular TB. Primary resistance occurs in persons who are infected with a resistant strain of TB. A patient with fully susceptible TB develops secondary resistance (acquired resistance) during TB therapy because of inadequate treatment, not taking the prescribed regimen appropriately, or using low quality medication. Drug-resistant TB is a public health issue in many developing countries, as treatment is longer and requires more expensive drugs. Multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) is defined as resistance to the two most effective first-line TB drugs: rifampicin and isoniazid. Extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB) is also resistant to three or more of the six classes of second-line drugs (C.D.C, 2006). The DOTS (Directly Observed Treatment Short-course) strategy of tuberculosis treatment recommended by WHO was based on clinical trials done in the 1970s by Tuberculosis Research Centre, Chennai, India. The country in which a person with TB lives can determine what treatment they receive. This is because multidrug-resistant tuberculosis is resistant to most first-line medications, the use of second-line antituberculosis medications is necessary to cure the patient. However, the price of these medications is high; thus poor people in the developing world have no or limited access to these treatments (Dietrich et al., 2006).
TB prevention and control takes two parallel approaches. In the first, people with TB and their contacts are identified and then treated. Identification of infections often involves testing high-risk groups for TB. In the second approach, children are vaccinated to protect them from TB. No vaccine is available that provides reliable protection for adults. However, in tropical areas where the levels of other species of mycobacteria are high, exposure to nontuberculous mycobacteria gives some protection against TB (Fine et al., 2001). The World Health Organization (WHO) declared TB a global health emergency in 1993, and the Stop TB Partnership developed a Global Plan to Stop Tuberculosis that aims to save 14 million lives between 2006 and 2015 (W.H.O, 2006). Since humans are the only host of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, eradication would be possible. This goal would be helped greatly by an effective vaccine (Martin, 2006).
2.2.0 HAEMATOLOGICAL INDICES
Haemoglobin is measured to detect anaemia and its severity and to monitor an anaemic patient’s response to treatment. Monitoring the haemoglobin level (or PCV) is also required when patients with HIV disease are being treated with drugs such as AZT. The test is also performed to check the haemoglobin level of a blood donor prior to donating blood (Cheesbrough, 2006).
The erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) is a non-specific test. It is raised in a wide range of infectious, inflammatory, degenerative, and malignant conditions associated with changes in plasma proteins, particularly increases in fibrinogen, immunoglobulins, and C-reactive protein. The ESR is also affected by many other factors including anaemia, pregnancy, haemoglobinopathies, haemoconcentration and treatment with anti-inflammatory drugs. Moderately raised sedimentation rates can sometimes be found in healthy people, particularly those living in tropical countries and a ‘normal’ ESR cannot exclude disease. In many tropical countries, ESR measurements have been discontinued because they add little to diagnosing disease, assessing its progress and monitoring response to treatment. When performed, test results must be interpreted in conjunction with clinical findings and the results of other laboratory tests (Cheesbrough, 2006).
A white blood cell (WBC) count is used to investigate HIV/AIDS, infections and unexplained fever, and to monitor treatments which can cause leucopenia. In most situations when a total WBC count is requested it is usual to perform also a differential WBC count (Cheesbrough, 2006). The main causes of a raised WBC count (leukocytosis) are: Acute infections e.g. pneumonia, meningitis, abscess, whooping cough, tonsillitis, acute rheumatic fever, septicaemia, gonorrhoea, cholera, septic abortion; acute infections in children can cause a sharp rise in WBC count; Inflammation and tissue necrosis e.g. burns, gangrene, fractures and trauma, arthritis, tumours, acute myocardial infarction; metabolic disorders e.g. eclampsia, uraemia, diabetic coma and acidosis; poisoning e.g. chemicals, drugs, snake venoms; acute haemorrhage; leukaemias and myeloproliferative disorders; stress, menstruation, strenuous exercise (Cheesbrough, 2006). The main causes of a reduced WBC count are: Viral, bacterial, parasitic infections e.g. HIV/AIDS, viral hepatitis, measles, rubella, influenza, rickettsial infections, overwhelming bacterial infections such as miliary tuberculosis, relapsing fever, typhoid, paratyphoid, bucellosis, parasitic infections including leishmaniasis and malaria; drugs (e.g. cytotoxic) and reactions to chemicals; hypersplenism; aplastic anaemia Folate and vitamin B12 deficiencies (megaloblastic anaemia); bone marrow infiltration (e.g. lymphomas, myelofibrosis, myelomatosis); anaphylactic shock; ionizing radiation (Cheesbrough, 2006).
In conclusion, pulmonary tuberculosis is a worldwide deadly disease which should be considered and tackled not forgetting other abnormal changes that it brings to the human body thereby tackling those changes too. Pulmonary tuberculosis is a major public health concern in Ghana. In Ghana, there are approximately 10 cases of TB per 100,000 people. However, rates vary dramatically by area of residence and socioeconomic class (G.H.S publications, 2000). The continues spread of TB, requires effort to know: what the haematological profile of the people living with pulmonary tuberculosis are, what abnormal changes occur in these haematological parameters, what effect age and sex have on these haematological parameters of the patients.
3.1.0 STUDY AREA AND WHERE RESEARCH WORK WAS UNDERTAKEN
Pulmonary tuberculosis patients who visited the district hospital (Cape Coast Metropolitan Hospital) in the Cape Coast Municipality in the Central Region of Ghana were the target population for the study. The research work was done in the laboratory within the same hospital.
3.1.1. STUDY PERIOD
The study was conducted between the months of December, 2010 and February, 2011. During this period the samples were taken weekly.
3.2.0 ETHICAL CONSIDERATION
The selection of subjects and the collection of specimens from the subjects was done after prior notice and approval from all protocols involved, was obtained.
3.3 SAMPLES, SAMPLING TECHNIQUE AND SIZE
A total number of one hundred (100) patients were sampled from the target population randomly. The blood samples only were taken into EDTA tubes using vacutainers for the venipuncture.
The vacutainer method of bloodletting into EDTA tubes was used in sampling the blood. Before the sampling all the necessary materials equipment (gloves, cotton wool, alcohol prep pad, tourniquet, plaster, needle and vacutainer holder) needed were prepared and set.
During the sampling, the patients name and age were taken. All specimen tubes were marked with the identification and pull on protective gloves to prevent contact with bodily fluids. Blood was drawn from the most common point--the median cubital vein--which runs on the inner part of the forearm. This is the optimum vein because it's close to the skin surface and there aren't a lot of nerves surrounding it. The chosen location was prepped by placing a tourniquet on the upper part of the arm, tight enough to make the vein bulge. The vein was gently patted and its size looked at. The best angle from which to draw the blood was then found. The needle was inserted into the vein with a smooth, fast motion. This technique lessened the pain. The vacutainer (blood specimen tube) was pushed into the holder, keeping the needle steady. The vacutainer automatically started filling with the right amount of blood needed for the specific specimen. The needle was pulled out at the same angle it was inserted once the specimen was collected. Immediately, after the needle was disposed off properly and cotton applied to the patient's wound, holding it to apply pressure and finally plastered it. The specimens were mixed thoroughly by gently swishing them around. Confirmation was made that each specimen was labeled correctly.
3.4.0 LABORATORY AND OR OTHER ACTIVITY
The laboratory activities that were carried out for the purpose of the study were the erythrocyte sedimentation rate, ESR (using the westergren method) and the full blood count, FBC (using the Sysmex XT- 20000i analyser).
Due to the lack of interest and state of some patients a large number of pulmonary tuberculosis patients were not sampled for the study.
The research involved only pulmonary tuberculosis patients who attended the district hospital in the municipality.
3.7.0 STATISTICAL TOOL AND ANALYSIS EMPLOYED
Pie charts and graphs percentages were used. Pie charts and graph where use to represent the values of the raw data taken and analysed using excel.
A total number of one hundred (100) patients were sampled from the target population randomly. The blood samples were taken into EDTA tubes using vacutainer method for the venipuncture.
4.1 The haemoglobin parameter studied in the study population.
Out of the 100 sampled, 62 (62%) had Hb below normal (<11.0g/dl) (anaemic), 38 (38%) had normal Hb (11.0g/dl-18.0g/dl) and none had Hb above normal (>18.0g/dl).
Fig 4.1 Haemoglobin parameter studied in the study population
4.2 The erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) parameter studied in the study population
Out of the 100 sampled 6(6%) were within E.S.R value 0-20mm/hr (1), 1(1%) was within the E.S.R value 21-40mm/hr (2), 9(9%) were within the E.S.R value 41-60mm/hr (3), 7(7%) were within the E.S.R value 61-80mm/hr (4), 77(77%) were >80mm/hr (5).
Fig 4.2 Erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) parameter studied in the study population
4.3 The total leucocyte count parameter studied in the study population
Out of the 100 sampled, 2(2%) had total leucocyte count below 4.0 * 10^3 / ul, 29 (29%) had normal total leucocyte count and 69 (69%) above 11.0 * 10^3 / ul.
Fig. 4.3 total leucocyte count parameter studied in the study population
4.4 The absolute neutrophil count (A.N.C) parameter studied in the study population
Out of the 100 sampled, 3(3%) had A.N.C below 2.5 * 10^3 / ul, 29 (29%) had normal A.N.C and 68 (68%) had A.N.C above 7.5 * 10^3 / ul.
Fig. 4.4 absolute neutrophil count (A.N.C) parameter studied in the study population
4.5 The absolute lymphocyte count parameter studied in the study population
Out of the 100 sampled, 17(17%) had absolute lymphocyte count below 1.5 * 10^3 / ul, 80 (80%) had normal absolute lymphocyte count and 3(3%) had absolute lymphocyte count above 3.5 * 10^3 / ul.
Fig. 4.5 absolute lymphocyte count parameter studied in the study population
4.6 The platelet count parameter studied in the study population
Out of the 100 sampled, 8(8%) had platelet count below 150 * 10^3 / ul, 49(49%) had normal platelet count and 43(43%) had platelet count above 150 * 10^3 / ul.
Fig. 4.6 platelet count parameter studied in the study population
4.7 The percentage of the study population’s sex
Out of the 100 sampled, 59(59%) were male and 41(41%) were female.
Fig. 4.7 Percentage of the Study Population’s Sex
4.8 The percentages of the study population’s age
Out of the 100 sampled 4(4%) were within the age range of 10 – 19, 55(55%) were within the age range of 20 – 29, 37(37%) were within the age range of 30 – 39, 4(4%) also were within the age range of 40 – 49, none of the patients were within the age ranges of 0 – 9 and 50 – 59.
Fig. 4.8 Percentages of the Study Population’s Age
5.0 DISCUSSION, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
Based on the results obtained from the study carried out on 100 pulmonary T.B patients between the ages of 1 and 66 in the Cape Coast Metropolitan Hospital, of which 59 subjects were males and 41 females, the following assertions were made.
In a research carried out on Haematological profile of patients with pulmonary tuberculosis in Ibadan, Nigeria, it was found that the haematological indices of sixty two pre-treatment, sputum-smear-AFB positive pulmonary tuberculosis patients were examined. Haematocrit, white cell count and differentials and erythrocyte sedimentation rates (ESR) were estimated by manual methods. Statistically significant heamatologic abnormalities found include high erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), anaemia occurred in 93.6%, leucocytosis in 22.3%, neutrophilia in 45.2% and lymphopaenia in 4.8% of the patients. Thrombocytosis occurred in 12.9%, while 8% had thrombocytopaenia. None of the patients had leucopaenia and only 8.4% had lymphocytosis (Olaniyi et al., 2003).
Also another research carried out on the haematological abnormalities in pulmonary tuberculosis in Hungary revealed the extent and severity of haematological abnormalities which occurred in 380 patients with pulmonary tuberculosis. Full blood count, bone marrow aspiration smears, and bone marrow trephine biopsy was analyzed by authors. Anaemia was present in 32% of patients. Leucocytosis with neutrophilia occurred in 18%. Leucopenia with neutropenia, and lymphopaenia was observed in 16% in patients with very severe clinical tuberculosis. Elevated platelet count occurred in 8% with deep vein thrombosis in legs in 50%. There was a close correlation between the haematological abnormalities and the severity of clinical findings of pulmonary tuberculosis. This survey has revealed that haematological abnormalities are relatively common in severe pulmonary tuberculosis. It seems that body weight loss, white blood cell count, haemoglobin level and erythrocyte sedimentation rate are useful indices of severity of the tuberculosis. The return of these indices to a normal level is a good indication of disease control in that they correlate with sputum conversion to acid-fast bacilli negative (Bozóky et al., 1997).
Anaemia occurs when the Hb of an individual falls below normal (11.0g/dl). Anaemia occurs in different forms, with anaemia due to chronic disease such as tuberculosis (Cheesbrough, 2006) considered here. With this, leucocytes changes reflect the condition (Cheesbrough, 2006). Therefore, high leucocyte changes with low Hb reflect anaemia due to chronic condition such as tuberculosis. Increase in leucocytes count may also be as a result of increase in neutrophil count (Cheesbrough, 2006). In bacterial infections, neutrophil counts are increased (Cheesbrough, 2006). This may count for neutrophilia in most patients as Mycobacterium tuberculosis is a bacteria. Infection such as tuberculosis may lead to thrombocytosis as well as thrombocytopenia (Cheesbrough, 2006). Pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) is a contagious bacterial infection caused by the bacteria Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tuberculosis) (Saunders, 2007). Significantly raised erythrocyte sedimentation rate can be caused by infection such as tuberculosis (Cheesbrough, 2006). The incidence of TB varies with age. In Africa, TB primarily affects adolescents and young adults (W.H.O, 2006)
The figures (4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, 4.5, 4.6, 4.7, and 4.8) above show the percentage of patients who fall below and above the normal ranges of each haematological profile (i.e., the percentage of patients with abnormal haematological changes) and also the percentages of the age and sex of the study population. In fig. 4.1, out of the 100 sampled, 62 (62%) had Hb below normal (anaemic), 38 (38%) had normal Hb and none had Hb above normal. This was because tuberculosis is one of the major causes of anaemia due to chronic infection (Cheesbrough, 2006). Also 94 out of the 100 patients had high erythrocyte sedimentation rate whereas only 6 of them where normal. People with infections such as pulmonary tuberculosis normally have high ESR. This was shown in fig. 4.2. Patients with high leucocytes count were 69 out of 100 patients making 69% of patients with leucocytosis. This was shown in fig4.3 as out of the 100 sampled, 2(2%) had total leucocytes count below 4.0 * 10^3 / ul, 29 (29%) had normal total leucocytes count and 69 (69%) above 11.0 * 10^3 / ul. Leucocytosis with low Hb reflects pulmonary tuberculosis (Cheesbrough, 2006). Also patients with high neutrophil count were 68 out of 100 patients making 68% of the patients with neutrophilia. Only a few (20) out of the 100 patients had abnormal values for lymphocyte count whereas 17 of the patients making 85% were below 1.5*103/ul (lymphopaenia) and 3 making 15% with lymphocytosis. A few of the patients (slightly above have of the total population (51)) also had abnormal platelet count with 43 of them making (43%) had thrombocytosis and 8 (8%) having thrombopenia and 49 (49%) were normal.
Fig.4.7 and 4.8 above shows the percentage of the study population (pulmonary TB patients) of various ranges of ages and sex (male and female). From fig. 4.8, 55% of the total population suffering from pulmonary tuberculosis was between the ages of 20 – 29 making up the largest age group suffering from pulmonary tuberculosis. The incidence of TB varies with age. In Africa, TB primarily affects adolescents and young adults (W.H.O, 2006). This was followed by the age group 30 – 39 with 37%. The age groups 10 – 19 and 40 – 49 were the least suffering from pulmonary tuberculosis with 4% of the population each. No samples were taken for ages 0 – 9 and 50 – 59.
Comparing the results that were gotten from the research carried out in the District hospital, Cape Coast with that of the study done in Ibadan, Nigeria, it was found out that both had majority of the patients being anaemic, high erythrocyte sedimentation rate occurred in most of the patients. Leukocytosis with neutrophilia also occurred in most patients.
The study of the haematological profile of Pulmonary tuberculosis patients in the Cape Coast Metropolitan Hospital indicates a significant change in their haemoglobin (Hb) (very low Hb indicating anaemia), Erythrocyte Sedimentation Rate (ESR) (high ESR values), total leukocyte count (high leukocytes indicating leukocytosis), neutrophil count (high neutrophil count indicating neutrophilia), lymphocyte count and platelet count. A figure also indicated that the age group with the highest frequency of pulmonary tuberculosis was age group 20 to 29 and the age groups with the least number of pulmonary T.B subjects were age groups 10 to 19 and 40 to 49.
The study also pointed out that, males were infected with pulmonary tuberculosis than females.
Therefore, from the study, haematological changes occur in patients with pulmonary tuberculosis which are high erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), anaemia, leukocytosis, neutrophilia occurring in most patients and lymphopaenia in some patients. Thrombocytosis occurred in some patients, thrombocytopaenia also occurred in some patient. A few of the patients had leucopaenia and lymphocytosis.
Based on this observation and the already stated conclusions, I therefore recommend that physicians treat patients suffering from pulmonary tuberculosis not only of pulmonary tuberculosis but underlining haematological disorders as a result of pulmonary tuberculosis. Further studies should also focus on finding the extent of damage caused by these abnormal changes as a co-infection with pulmonary tuberculosis. This will help establish whether these changes significantly affects the progress of pulmonary tuberculosis or the vice versa in pulmonary tuberculosis patients, or it will help establish the relation between pulmonary tuberculosis and abnormal haematological profile in pulmonary T.B patients.
Agarwal R, Malhotra P, Awasthi A, Kakkar N, Gupta D (2005). "Tuberculous dilated cardiomyopathy: an under-recognized entity?” BMC Infect Dis 5 (1): 29.
Al-Sharrah Y. A. (2003), "The Arab Tradition of Medical Education and its Relationship with the European Tradition", Prospects 33 (4), Springer.
Bozóky, Orv Hetil, Afr J Med Med Sci. 1997 Dec; 42(3):339-42
Cheesbrough M. (2006). “District Laboratory Practice in Tropical Countries” 2nd Edition, Cambridge press. Pages 299, 321 and313.
Cole E, Cook C (1998). "Characterization of infectious aerosols in health care facilities: an aid to effective engineering controls and preventive strategies". Am J Infect Control 26 (4): 453–64.
Comstock G (1994). "The International Tuberculosis Campaign: a pioneering venture in mass vaccination and research". Clin Infect Dis 19 (3): 528–40
Davies PD (2003). "The world-wide increase in tuberculosis: how demographic changes, HIV infection and increasing numbers in poverty are increasing tuberculosis". Annals of medicine 35 (4): 235–43.
Davies PDO, Yew WW, Ganguly D, (2006). "Smoking and tuberculosis: the epidemiological association and pathogenesis". Trans R Soc Trop Med Hyg 100 (4): 291–8.
Ernst JD, Trevejo-Nuñez G, Banaiee N (July 2007). "Genomics and the evolution, pathogenesis, and diagnosis of tuberculosis". 4th edn. J. Clin. Invest. Page 117.
Ghana Health Service (G.H.S) publications, 2009.
Hippocrates, www.wikipedia.com, aphorisms. Accessed 7 October 2006.
Hoffbrand A.V & Petit J.E (2000) “Clinical Haematology”, 3rd Edn. Mosby, London. Pg. 56
Kaufmann S (2002). "Protection against tuberculosis: cytokines, T cells, and macrophages". Ann Rheum Dis 61 Suppl 2: ii54–8.
Keeffe E. B. (2004). “A treatment algorithm for the management of chronic infection in the United States.” Clin Gastroenterology Hepatol, 2:87-106.
Kent A Sepkowitz (2001). AIDS – The first 20 years.The new Eng. J. Med. 344( 23): 1764 – 1722.
Konstantinos E.T (2010), “Infectious Diseases: A Clinical Course” 2nd edition McGraw Hill Medical Publishing Division. Pg. 104.
Madison B (2001). "Application of stains in clinical microbiology". Biotech Histochem 76 (3): 119–25
Niemann S, Rüsch-Gerdes S, Joloba ML. (September 2002). "Mycobacterium africanum subtype II is associated with two distinct genotypes and is a major cause of human tuberculosis in Kampala, Uganda". J. Clin. Microbiol. 40 (9).
Ogun SA, Adelowo OO, Familoni OB, Adefuye BO, Alebiosu C, Jaiyesinmi EAE, Fakoya EAO, Odusan B, Odusoga OL, Ola OO, (2003). Spectrum and outcome of clinical disease in adults living with AIDS at the Ogun State University Teaching Hospital. East Afr. Med. J. 80 (10): 513-518.
Olaniyi JA, Aken'Ova YA, Afr J Med Med Sci. 2003 Sep; 32(3):239-42.
Parish T, Stoker N (2003). "Mycobacteria: bugs and bugbears (two steps forward and one step back)". Mol Biotechnology 13 (3): 191–200.
Sauders E. (2007) “Robbins Basic Pathology”, 8th Edition Cambridge Press, London. Pages 516 – 520.
Schaible UE, Kaufmann SH (May 2007). "Malnutrition and infection: complex mechanisms and global impacts". PLoS medicine 4 (5): e115.
Smith EM, Samadian S (1994). Use of the Erythrocyte sedimentation rate in the elderly. Br. J. Hosp. Med. 51: 394.
Sobero R, Peabody J (2006). "Tuberculosis control in Bolivia, Chile, Colombia and Peru: why does incidence vary so much between neighbors?” Int J Tuberc Lung Dis 10 (11): 1292–5. PMID 17131791.
Southwick L. (2007) “Testing Tuberculosis”, 4th Edition Australian Publishing. Pages 12 –18.
World Health Organization (2009). "EpidemiologyGlobal tuberculosis control: epidemiology, strategy, finances. pp. 6–33
World Health Organization (WHO) WHO report 2008: Global tuberculosis control Retrieved on 13 April 2009.
Www.wikipedia.com; retrieved 18-03-2011; 10:45 am.
LABORATORY TEST PROCEDURE FOR E.S.R AND FULL BLOOD COUNT
THE ERYTHROCYTE SEDIMENTATION RATE (ESR) TEST
The erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) is a non-specific test. It is raised in a wide range of infectious (including pulmonary tuberculosis), inflammatory, degenerative, and malignant conditions associated with changes in plasma proteins, particularly increases in fibrinogen, immunoglobulin, and C-reactive protein. The ESR is also affected by many other factors including anaemia, pregnancy, haemoglobinopathies, haemoconcentration and treatment with anti-inflammatory drugs. Moderately raised sedimentation rates can sometimes be found in healthy people, particularly those living in tropical countries and a ‘normal’ ESR cannot exclude disease. In many tropical countries, ESR measurements have been discontinued because they add little to diagnosing disease, assessing its progress and monitoring response to treatment. When performed, test results were interpreted in conjunction with clinical findings and the results of other laboratory tests.
PRINCIPLE OF TEST
When citrated blood is vertically positioned and Westergren pipette is left undisturbed, red cells aggregate, stack together to form rouleaux, and sediment through the plasma. The ESR is the rate at which this sedimentation occurs in 1 hour as indicated by the length of the column of clear plasma above the red cells, measured in mm. Fibrinogen, immunoglobulin, and C reactive protein increase red cell aggregation. Sedimentation is increased when the ratio of red cells to plasma is altered, e.g. in anaemia. Sedimentation is reduced when the red cells are abnormally shaped, e.g. sickle cells. High temperatures (over 25 degrees Celsius) increase sedimentation.
EQUIPMENT USED FOR THE TEST
The following equipments were used for the test: westergren ESR pipette, westergren ESR stand with leveling device and timer capable of timing accurately 1 hour.
Tri-Sodium citrate, 32 g/l (3.2% W/v) anticoagulant, stored at 4-8 degrees Celsius.
1. 0.4 ml of sodium citrate anticoagulant was pipette into a small container for each patient.
2. 1.6 ml of the EDTA anticoagulated blood was added and mixed well. The cap of the container was removed and the sample placed in the ESR stand. A Westergren pipette was inserted and ensured it is positioned vertically.
3. Using a safe suction method, blood was drawn to the 0 mark of the Westergren pipette, avoiding air bubbles.
4. The ESR stand was checked if it was leveled by making sure that the bubble in the spirit level is central.
5. The timer was set for 1 hour. Ensuring that the ESR stand and pipette would not be exposed to direct sunlight.
6. After exactly 1 hour, the level at which the plasma meets the red cells in mm was read and recorded.
7. After reading the ESR, the blood was returned to its container; the pipette was carefully removed and soaked in sodium hypochlorite 2500 ppm av Cl (0.25%) disinfectant.
8. The blood was disposed off safely and decontaminated the container before washing it and also the ESR stand.
THE TEST FOR FULL BLOOD COUNT
The full blood count of the samples was done by using the Sysmex XT- 20000 I full count analyzer. The samples were mixed thoroughly before they were run on the analyzer. The sample then goes through some processes within the analyzer to produce results which come out printed on a sheet of paper.
The results of each sample are taken out and the necessary parameters needed to run the experiment was identified and recorded in a notebook.
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Entropion is the turning in of an edge of an eyelid, causing the lashes to rub against the eye. It most often is seen on the lower eyelid.
Entropion can be present at birth (congenital).
In babies, it rarely causes problems because the lashes are very soft and do not easily damage the eye. In older people, the condition is most often caused by a spasm or weakening of the muscles surrounding the lower part of the eye.
Another cause can be trachoma infection, which can lead to scarring of the inner side of the lid. This is rare in North America and Europe. However, trachoma scarring is one of the three leading causes of blindness in the world.
Risk factors for entropion are:
- Chemical burn
- Infection with trachoma
Exams and Tests
In most cases, your health care provider can diagnose this condition by looking at your eyelids. Special tests are not often necessary.
Artificial tears can keep the eye from becoming dry and may help you feel better. Surgery to correct the position of the eyelids works well in most cases.
The outlook is most often good if the condition is treated before eye damage occurs.
Dry eye and irritation may increase the risk of:
- Corneal abrasions
- Corneal ulcers
- Eye infections
When to Contact a Medical Professional
Call your health care provider if:
- Your eyelids turn inward
- You constantly feel as though there is something in your eye
If you have entropion, the following should be considered an emergency:
- Decreasing vision
- Light sensitivity
- Eye redness that increases rapidly
Most cases cannot be prevented. Treatment reduces the risk of complications.
See your health care provider if you have red eyes after visiting an area where there is trachoma (such as North Africa or South Asia).
Gigantelli JW. Entropion In: Yanoff M, Duker JS, eds. Ophthalmology. 4th ed. St. Louis, MO: Elsevier Mosby; 2013:chap 12.6.
Reviewed By: Linda J. Vorvick, MD, Medical Director and Director of Didactic Curriculum, MEDEX Northwest Division of Physician Assistant Studies, Department of Family Medicine, UW Medicine, School of Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle, WA. Also reviewed by David Zieve, MD, MHA, Isla Ogilvie, PhD, and the A.D.A.M. Editorial team.
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The Bruce Murray Space Image Library
United States Air Force map of Mars from 1962
Filed under pretty pictures, Mars, optical telescopes, planetary astronomy
This map of Mars, produced from telescopic observations by the United States Air Force, was used for planning the Mariner 4 flyby mission, the first successful Mars flyby. The original map has been processed to remove grids and names and reprojected into a simple cylindrical map projection, making it easier to compare to modern maps. The dark albedo markings on this map are linked by straight lines, the famous "canals," the idea of which had generally been abandoned by most planetary astronomers by 1962 but which remained in this map as something of an anachronism.
USAF / Phil Stooke
Original image data dated on or about December 31, 1962.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. For uses not allowed by that license, contact us to request publication permission from the copyright holder: Phil Stooke
Other Related Images
Pretty pictures and
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European brains behind Russian Space Station module
The Russian Zvezda (star) service module was the first fully Russian contribution to the International Space Station and serves as one of the living quarters for the crews.
Zvezda’s electronic 'brain' is ESA’s Data Management System (DMS-R) which performs overall control of all Russian station elements in orbit, as well as guidance and navigation for the whole Space Station in special cases.
The module is similar in layout to the core module of Russia’s Mir station – indeed the design was originally intended for a Mir-2 complex planned in the late 1980s. It was launched in 2000 by a Proton booster from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazahakstan, becoming the third Space station infrastructure element to reach orbit and dock with the Zarya/Unity pair that had been flying since 1998.
Zvezda's specification includes provision of a life support system, electrical power distribution, data processing, flight control, propulsion and a communications system that includes remote command capabilities by ground controllers.
The module, comprising three pressurised sections, is 13 m long and spans 30 m across its solar arrays, with a total pressurised volume of 89.0 m³.
Zvezda’s living accommodation provides two personal sleeping quarters, a toilet and hygiene unit, a galley with refrigerator-freezer and a table for securing meals while eating.
The 14 windows offer direct viewing of docking activities, the Earth and other Station elements. Exercise equipment includes a treadmill and a fixed bicycle.
Zvezda also provides data, voice and TV links with mission control centres in Moscow and Houston.
ESA, together with a European industrial consortium headed by Astrium (formerly DASA) in Bremen, Germany, and including Belgian, Dutch and French partners, was responsible for the design, development and delivery of the DMS-R core data management system.
ESA provided DMS-R in return for Rosaviakosmos supplying two flight unit docking systems for Europe’s Space Station ferry (the Automated Transfer Vehicle), so that both sides receive important elements with no exchange of funds.
DMS-R provides system and subsystem monitoring and control for Zvezda, including real-time computing for guidance, navigation and control of the whole Station.
Last update: 25 October 2001
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Although no formal definition exists, gifted students
can be described as having above average ability, task
commitment, and creativity. They rank in the top 5 percent
of their classes. They are usually capable of divergent
thinking. Students in your class who consistently finish
work more quickly than others and who have above average
ability, task commitment, and creativity may be considered
- Emphasize concepts, theories, relationships, ideas,
- Let students express themselves in a variety of ways,
including drawing, creative writing, or acting.
- Make arrangements for gifted students to work on independent
- Make arrangements for gifted students to take selected
- Encourage gifted students to take on a wide variety
of enrichment and independent practice activities that
will put them in contact with people in the "real
world" and allow them to observe the daily practices
that lead to success.
Second Language Learners
Some students speak English as a second language, or not
at all. The customs and behavior of people in the majority
culture may be confusing for some of these students. Cultural
values may inhibit some of these students from full participation
in the classroom.
- Remember that students' ability to speak English does
not reflect their academic ability.
- Try to incorporate students' cultural experiences
into your instruction. The help of a bilingual aide
may be effective.
- Include information about different cultures in your
curriculum to help build students' self-image.
- Avoid cultural stereotypes.
- Encourage students to share their cultures in the
- If your class includes any second language learners,
provide outlines of lecture notes or planned classroom
discussion topics in advance to give second language
learners the opportunity to review materials later at
a slower pace or to look up unfamiliar vocabulary.
- When discussing numbers, speak slowly and clearly
and write the numbers under discussion on the board
along with the signs indicating the operations being
- In regular classroom activities, allow sufficient
time for second language learners to answer verbal questions.
- Pair second language learners with native speakers
for verbal exercises when appropriate.
- Give extra attention to second language learners when
discussing telephone skills and interviewing techniques,
as these topics can be intimidating for students who
feel uncertain about using English.
Students With Behavioral Disorders
Students with behavior disorders deviate from standards
or expectations of behavior and impair the functioning
of others and themselves. These children may also be gifted
or have a learning disability.
- Work for long-term improvement; do not expect immediate
- Talk with students about their strengths and weaknesses,
and clearly outline objectives.
- Structure schedules, rules, room arrangement, and
safety for a conducive learning environment.
- Experiment to determine the best learning modality
for each student, and structure activities accordingly.
- Model appropriate behavior for students and reinforce
- Use enrichment materials that capitalize on their
Students with Learning Disabilities
All students with learning disabilities have problems
in one or more areas, such as academic learning, language,
perception, social-emotional adjustment, memory, or ability
to pay attention. In general, students with learning disabilities
require more support and structure and benefit from a
classroom that incorporates a wide variety of learning
modalities (visual, auditory, tactile, and kinesthetic).
- Clearly define rules, assignments, and duties.
- Distribute outlines of material presented in class.
- Allow for pair interaction during class time; utilize
- Allow extra time to complete tests and assignments.
- Make chapter audio tapes so students who find the
written text difficult to use can listen and read simultaneously.
- Advise students who have problems with verbal processing
to read materials before class discussion.
- Allow students with learning disabilities to read
notes taken in class by other students to ensure that
they are not missing any valuable information.
- Clearly specify the scope of assignments and review
the work of students with learning disabilities on a
regular basis throughout the course of projects.
- Break up complex tasks into self-contained steps and
provide additional assistance as needed.
Students With Physical Impairments
Students with physical impairments fall into two categories
those with orthopedic impairments (use of one or
more limbs severely restricted) and those with other health
- With the student, determine when you should offer
- Help other students and adults understand and accept
physically disabled students.
- Learn about special devices or procedures and whether
special safety precautions are needed.
- Allow students to participate in all activities, including
field trips, special events, and projects.
- To ensure their full participation in the class, make
sure they have full access to the classroom; be aware
of common items that can be barriers, such as a narrow
walkway or a heavy door.
- Keep in mind that some students in wheelchairs have
full use of their hands and others do not.
Students With Visual Impairments
Students with visual impairments have partial or total
loss of sight. Individuals with visual impairments are
not significantly different from their sighted peers in
ability range or personality. However, blindness may affect
cognitive, motor, and social development. Often, listening
skills are enhanced when visual impairment is present.
- To help students with visual impairments cope with
the volume of printed material in class, use a combination
of resources, such as readers, books in Braille, and
recorded books and class lectures.
- Modify assignments as needed to help students become
- Teach classmates how to serve as guides for students
with visual impairments.
- Encourage students with visual impairments to use
their sense of touch; provide tactile models whenever
- Verbally describe people and events as they occur
in the classroom for the students with visual impairments.
- Avoid standing with your back to the window or light
- Some students benefit from working with a peer "visual
translator" who is able to verbally describe visual
images, such as the photos in the textbook to the student.
Students With Hearing Impairments
Students with hearing impairments have partial or total
loss of hearing. They are not significantly different
from their peers in ability range or personality. However,
the chronic condition of deafness may affect cognitive,
motor, social, and speech development. Many students with
hearing impairments, ranging from complete loss to moderate
loss, communicate mainly by sign language.
- Provide favorable seating arrangements for hearing-impaired
students so they can see speakers and read their lips
(or interpreters can assist); avoid visual distractions.
- To encourage their maximum participation, look at
students with hearing impairments when you speak; this
allows students the option of viewing you and your lip
- Limit unnecessary noise in the classroom, as students
who wear hearing aids can be easily distracted by background
noise. Because each hearing aid has its own limited
range of use, you will need to learn how close to stand
so the student can hear you. Keep in mind that comments
made in the back of the room may be inaudible.
- Write out all instructions on paper or on the board;
overhead projectors enable you to maintain eye contact
- Pair students with hearing impairments with hearing
partners; this will benefit not only the students with
hearing impairments, but also the hearing students who
will gain knowledge about how students with hearing
impairments compensate for their challenge.
- If class materials involve technical terminology,
supply a list of these words in advance to students
with hearing impairments and their interpreters. Unfamiliar
words can be difficult to lip-read or sign without prior
Students With Speech Impairments
Students with speech impairments may have impediments
ranging from problems with articulation or voice strength
to being unable to speak. These impairments can include
stuttering, chronic hoarseness, or difficulty in expressing
an appropriate word or phrase. Typically, such students
refrain as much as possible from class participation.
- When speaking with a student with a speech impairment,
use normal communication patterns and refrain from completing
words or phrases for the student.
- Some students use electronic speaking machines or
are adept at using body language to communicate.
- Allow students with speech impairments or difficulty
with oral expression the opportunity to submit written
questions about material that they find challenging.
- Students with speech impairments often do not feel
comfortable participating in exercises devoted to interpersonal
skills because the physical difficulties they experience
can make the exercises uncomfortable for them. Even
so, these students can benefit from watching others
and participating at a level they select as comfortable.
- Students with speech impairments benefit from an opportunity
to make a contribution to the class in ways other than
in-class discussion. For example, students might prepare
a bulletin board display or a report on a topic that
could be distributed to all students.
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|The Center for Educational Research and Development|
Don't just say no - Berkeley researcher Dr. Joel Brown questions the effectiveness of the federal government's antidrug education policies
By Jason Cohn, San Francisco Bay Guardian, August 5, 1998
LAST MONTH, WHEN President Bill Clinton stood side by side with Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and drug czar General Barry McCaffrey to announce a new $1 billion antidrug advertising campaign aimed at kids, Berkeley-based researcher Dr. Joel Brown knew his phone would soon be ringing. Brown is one of the country's foremost authorities on drug-prevention education and his outspoken opposition to what he calls "the failed policies and programs of the past" has made him the voice of change in the field. His pivotal 1994 study of California's school-based drug, alcohol, and tobacco education programs concluded that the antidrug messages and programs -- the very ones the federal government is poised to spend $1 billion on in the new round of television ads -- have no positive impact on youth drug use and may even lead to more risky behavior.
Standing before a backdrop of young children in Atlanta in July, Clinton said, "We know that the more young people fear drugs, the more they disapprove of them, the less likely they are to use them." But Brown argues -- with substantial evidence to back him up -- that basing antidrug messages on fear is simply ineffective. "These types of fear-arousing messages initially shock people -- very initially -- and after that they become nothing more than the butt of a lot of jokes," Brown told the Bay Guardian. Images like the now infamous fried egg in a pan ("This is your brain on drugs") may have a short "halo period" during which they might frighten some potential drug users, according to Brown, but then they take on a life of their own. "We have to consider the possibility that these ads and the programs connected with them are actually placing kids at risk," Brown said.
Brown is in a better position to talk about how young people react to antidrug messages and programs than most experts in the field because his research has centered on extensive interviews with school-age children. Brown has shown that drug-prevention policies based on the "Just Say No" ethic of the early '80s shortchange the very nature of adolescence, which is to seek and challenge. "Just Say No" requires students to accept on faith what they are told in school or see on television. The problem is that a great deal of that message is contradicted by observable reality, Brown said.
"For example, these programs tell kids that marijuana is as bad as heroin, which is as bad as alcohol," Brown said. But having been told this, kids might observe a parent harmlessly drinking beer or wine with dinner or an older sibling smoking a joint with friends. Furthermore, kids learn about drugs from movies, music, the Internet, and what Brown calls an "informal underground network of informational transmission." Young kids know, for example, that doctors use marijuana to treat glaucoma and nausea, that moderate amounts of alcohol can help people relax, and that psychedelic drugs are used to explore alternate realities.
"The equation of all substances as just being 'bad,' with no possible benefits, ends up with young people rejecting the messengers as well as the message," Brown said. What is worse, he says, is that kids who exhibit the most need for drug counseling are the first to get kicked out of school, adding to the overall impression among students that educators don't really care about them. The result is that, while drug-prevention education makes up only a tiny part of the total curriculum, its effects play a disproportionately large role in the alienation of young people from their teachers and adult society.
Brown says the reason the zero tolerance, or "no use," policy has stayed in place despite its demonstrable failure is not the fault of educators but of policy makers who are more concerned with politics than science. His 1994 study, for instance, was commissioned by the California Department of Education. But the department immediately disavowed the study when it concluded that a decade of DARE and similarly oriented programs would likely lead to increased drug use among minors -- a prediction borne out by subsequent research and current statistics. "The discussion about drugs focuses on who is tough and who can be tougher, while the children suffer," Brown said.
Brown has been widely published and often quoted in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, radio, and television news programs. Nevertheless his research is not often included in critical program and policy discussions, and he and his like-minded colleagues are regularly labeled drug legalizers, which he calls "a rhetorical device used to exclude some researchers from the debate."
Frustrated by the difficulty of affecting ossified policy and finding acceptance within academia, Brown and a group of other researchers have formed a nonprofit organization, the Berkeley-based Center for Educational Research and Development, which works directly with school districts and family service centers to create progressive drug-prevention programs.
Brown, who carefully prefaces many of his statements with the insistence that he is not an advocate of drug legalization or drug experimentation for minors, said, "We're seeking a new vision for drug-prevention education that combines honest, accurate, and complete information with the courage to trust the capabilities of youth instead of dwelling on their disabilities."
Copyright 1998 The San Francisco Bay Guardian
TO READ OTHER MEDIA ARTICLES
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U.S. Energy Information Administration - EIA - Independent Statistics and Analysis
Today in Energy
Note: SP-15 is a trading point for electric generation transactions in Southern California; NP-15 is a trading point for electric generation transactions in Northern California.
Increased hydroelectric output in the Pacific Northwest drove daily, on-peak prices of electricity below $10 per megawatthour in late April (see chart above) at the Mid-Columbia trading point on the border of Washington and Oregon. The availability of low-cost hydropower in the West also depressed prices at the California-Oregon border and helped offset prices that were up in northern California as a result of nuclear outages. High levels of hydroelectric output are a seasonal occurrence in the Pacific Northwest, with significant effects on electric power markets from Washington to California.
The Pacific Northwest has large amounts of hydroelectric capacity, and the variable cost of producing electricity from this capacity is minimal because there is no fuel cost. Consequently, when the water flows, large amounts of hydropower are generated, and wholesale electricity prices drop. But peak water flow is typically a seasonal event influenced by melting snowpack, so the price-reducing effect of hydropower normally lasts only a few months each year, typically in the spring and early summer (see chart below). The Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) operates the largest electric system in the Pacific Northwest, including most of the hydroelectric units.
The increased hydroelectric output also helped moderate wholesale power prices at major electric power hubs in California, as significant levels of power from the Pacific Northwest flowed south. The combination of warm and wet weather in April and May in the Pacific Northwest melted low-elevation snow, filling hydroelectric dam reservoirs on the Columbia and Snake Rivers.
The relatively cheap electricity available from hydropower also displaced other sources of supply. Use of natural gas for power generation in the Pacific Northwest declined steeply in March as hydroelectric output increased.
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Small or Large, Communities Nationwide Face Fallout of Dirty Fuel Production
This past weekend, the oil and gas industry proved again that it cannot be trusted when it comes to protecting the people who live near their dirty fuel production facilities and pipelines. Two incidents -- one in Detroit, Michigan, and another in Bradford, Pennsylvania -- disrupted the lives of families in both areas, showing that communities large and small can face the dangerous consequences of fossil-fuel production.
In southwest Detroit, an explosion at the Marathon refinery caused plumes of smoke to fill the city air. In the small town of Bradford, an Atlas Energy pipeline leaked oil and gas onto a busy road in northwestern Pennsylvania.
The Sierra Club and allied environmental justice advocates have voiced their opposition to the expansion of the Marathon refinery for years -- and the latest incident there is further evidence that their warnings should have been heeded. According to the Detroit Free Press, residents had to be evacuated from their homes after the fire on Saturday evening, and the blast exposed residents to toxic chemicals and carcinogens that public health advocates had feared could contaminate the city's air and water.
In the small college town of Bradford, the setting for a dirty fuel disaster was different, but the dangers were the same. A dangerous mix of crude oil and natural gas shot out of a fossil fuel pipeline 60 feet into the air. The Bradford Era reported that a traveler along Route 219 spotted the gushing pipeline and reported it to authorities. Emergency responders closed the slippery, oil- and natural gas-covered road while workers fought to contain the spill. The road was closed for five hours, and cleanup continues today.
Environmental studies professor Stephen Robar of the University of Pittsburgh–Bradford referred to the spill as not an accident, but an inevitability.
"It will happen again, and again, as the record already indicates," said Professor Robar. "The state of Pennsylvania has a responsibility to do as much as it can to minimize such inevitabilities through rigorous oversight."
The two incidents are just the latest in a string of similar fossil fuel disasters across the country this year, including the tar sands pipeline rupture that dumped thousands of gallons of toxic crude in the suburban community of Mayflower, Arkansas. Meanwhile, fossil fuel companies continue to push for more dangerous drilling in places like our pristine Arctic and for more dirty fuel infrastructure across the country -- including the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.
However, as more communities suffer from increasingly common incidents like those in Detroit, Bradford, and Arkansas, more voices are speaking out to say that enough is enough and urging their lawmakers to pursue clean energy solutions. After all, the worst consequence of a solar energy spill is a sunny day.--Kristen Elmore, Sierra Club Media Team Intern
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The disease is largely benign, but it’s important to stop its proliferation.
The CDC has been ramping up its warnings about Zika virus on a near-daily basis. First, it was women in their first trimesters that were advised to stay away from the 24 countries where Zika-carrying mosquitoes have been documented; now, all pregnant women are being told to put their travel plans on hold. But what about otherwise healthy, non-pregnant travelers headed to the Caribbean or South America?
“The situation is evolving day by day,” said Dr. Daniel Caplivski, Associate Professor of Infectious Diseases and Director of Travel Medicine at Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine, who is following the CDC recommendation and advising pregnant patients—or those planning to get pregnant—to stay away from the affected areas.
For anyone else, the concern about contracting Zika virus is minimal. “One in five people infected with Zika will get sick; for people who get sick, the illness is usually mild,” says Dr. Mark S. DeFranseco, president of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, who has been working closely with the CDC on Zika virus research. He elaborated that “many people might not realize they have been infected.”
The unlucky few with symptoms have little to complain about: unlike other mosquito-borne viruses contracted abroad (dengue fever, chikungunya, malaria, or typhoid, for instance), Zika manifests itself with nothing more than joint pains, rashes, or a fever. “Most travelers who get it—adults or children—won’t have a severe illness at all,” explained Dr. Caplivski. The exceptions exist in cases where patients have developed Guillain-Barre syndrome, a neurological paralytic disease that has followed a few Zika cases.
What you really need to worry about is propagating the virus at home. According to Dr. Caplivski, introducing the virus to the United States (or any other country where it currently doesn’t exist) is just as much a concern as contracting it yourself—if not more so. “So far, there haven’t been any sustained incidents of local transmission,” he said. “But if a returning traveler who is symptomatic gets bitten by a non-infected mosquito in the United States, that mosquito could spread the virus to others.”
Prevailing theories say that this is precisely what led to the spread of Zika in South America in the first place. Thanks to mass events that happened on a global scale over the last two years (think: the World Cup), travelers passing through Brazil—possibly with bug bites from Zika-carrying mosquitoes—could have brought the disease to western hemisphere, where it had never been recorded until about 15 months ago. (The disease has been prevalent in Africa and Asia for decades, but communities there have since developed immunity.)
“The population in the Americas has never seen this virus or developed immunity,” explained Dr. Caplivski, “so Zika can replicate at higher levels [in this part of the world]. That’s how transmission is increased.”
So what to do if you might have been affected? The CDC recommends treating the symptoms by getting plenty of rest, drinking plenty of fluids to avoid dehydration, and taking medicines such as acetaminophen or paracetamol to reduce fever and pain.
Just as importantly, you might stay inside as much as possible, to avoid being bitten by anything else. “Zika virus is only present in the blood for around 3 to 5 days,” said Dr. Caplivski, though the incubation period can last up to 2 weeks. In other words, it doesn’t take long to get in the clear.
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Growing up in West Virginia, I was often told of the horrific and unbearable conditions that coal miners faced over the state’s history. The stories usually involved numerous accounts of how the conditions of the mines were unsafe, the miners were not fairly compensated, and miners were continually exploited by the owners of the mines. The most popular stories of exploitation surround examples of miners and their families living in over-priced, yet run-down company housing and having to shop at the company store where prices were heavily inflated.
Drawing on Price Fishback's work, Williamson persuasively argues that, once again, popular opinion is dead wrong. Miners enjoyed the benefits of a competitive labor market, got paid extra for dangerous condition, and didn't "owe their souls to the company store."
Ken Fones, WVU history prof takes issue with Williamson's chapter, though it's surprising how much ground he gives - and how many of his complaints reflect a poor grasp of basic econ. From his conclusion:
The people of West Virginia do not object to capitalism per se; they object to the unfettered sway of large corporations that have no interest in building a balanced and self-sustaining economy that promises high wages and high productivity in the market so that all of the state’s people might benefit.
It's almost like historians don't see that "unfettered "corporations increase productivity - and compete for workers - out of simple self-interest. Almost.
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To make decisions on whether a food requires time/temperature control for safety, the properties of the food itself must be considered. This chapter describes properties of common food commodities, including added preservatives and processing steps, and the environmental circumstances that may affect their microbial ecology. The microbiological hazards that may occur from consuming particular food commodities or their derived products are also discussed. The chapter emphasizes microbial concerns that would be associated with temperature abuse of the products, and discusses foods for which time/temperature control may be necessary for safety and those that might be safely stored at room temperature. Consideration is also given to processing technologies or other methods that may be useful in minimizing hazards. Special considerations unique to each food category are also provided. Pathogens of concern and control methods for the various product categories evaluated in this chapter was summarized by the panel and are listed in Table 4-1.
2. Meat and poultry products
2.1. Types of products
Raw meat and poultry products consist of raw products; shelf-stable, raw-salted and salted-cured products (salt pork, dry-cured bacon, country ham); perishable raw-salted and salted-cured products (fresh sausage, chorizo, bratwurst, Polish and Italian sausage); marinated products; and raw breaded products. Ready-to-eat products include perishable cooked uncured products (cooked roast beef, cooked pork, cooked turkey); perishable cooked cured products (franks, bologna, ham, and a variety of luncheon meats); canned shelf-stable cured products (Vienna sausages, corned beef, meat spreads, small canned hams, canned sausages with oil and water activity [aw] <0.92, dried beef, and prefried bacon); perishable canned cured products (ham and other cured meats); shelf-stable, canned uncured products (roast beef with gravy, meat stew, chili, chicken and spaghetti sauce with meat); fermented and acidulated sausages (German and Italian style salamis, pepperoni, Lebanon bologna, and summer sausage); and dried meat products (jerky, beef sticks, basturma, and other dried meats). Because of the complexity of the product/processing matrices, product parameters (moisture protein ratio, aw, and pH) and processing schedules are needed to ascertain whether ready-to-eat products require time/temperature control for safety or are shelf stable.
2.2. Microbial concerns
Red meats and poultry come from warm-blooded animals and, as such, their microbial flora is heterogeneous, consisting of mesophilic and psychrotrophic bacteria. These bacteria include pathogenic species from the animal itself and from the environment, and bacterial species introduced during slaughter and processing of raw products. Raw meat and poultry have an aw >0.99 and a pH range of 5 -7, which is an optimal combination for microbial growth. When red meats and poultry are cooked or processed and subsequently refrigerated, the bacterial load from the raw tissue is greatly reduced, leaving only spore-formers, enterococci, micrococci, and some lactobacilli. In addition, environmental post-processing pathogen contamination can occur and the reduction in competitive bacterial flora may allow for pathogen growth. Some products are shelf stable because they received either a botulinum cook or a lesser cook in combination with other controls, such as acidity or other additives (for example, spaghetti meat sauce and Sloppy Joe mix).
2.3. Pathogens of concern
The principal pathogens of concern are Staphylococcus aureus, enterohemmorrhagic Escherichia coli (ruminants), Salmonella spp. (all meats), Listeria monocytogenes (all meats), Campylobacter jejuni/coli (poultry), Yersinia entercolitica (pork), and Clostridium perfringens and Clostridium botulinum (mainly processed products). There is a particular concern when these species are present and/or can grow in cooked products without competition.
2.4. Effects of processing
Meat and poultry products require a wide array of control measures in their processing. Cured meats and some sausage products utilize additives such as salt, nitrate, nitrite, and sugars with processing procedures such as cooking and smoking. Salt, for example, may restrict bacterial flora to salt-tolerant species. Smoking and/or cooking will destroy many vegetative cells. However, the processing environment and product handling and packaging may introduce microorganisms, including pathogens, into the packaged product that also must be considered.
While some canned products may be processed as "commercially sterile", others are canned "semi-preserved" and must be stored under refrigeration. Some products utilize a secondary control such as acidity and are shelf stable though not necessarily "commercially sterile." Specific labeling for refrigeration is required on the semi-preserved products that require refrigeration as a control. Pickled products depend on a low pH, absence of oxygen, and the lack of a fermentable sugar to inhibit the growth of most bacteria. Acid-tolerant species may develop, such as certain lactobacilli, and if air is available, certain yeast and molds may grow. The activity of lactic acid bacteria in fermented sausages is desirable and is an integral part of the process control for achieving the desired pH for these products.
Because of the complexities of products and processing, the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) has provided guidelines for product parameters in its "Food Standards and Labeling Policy Book" (USDA 1996, with change 98-01). The FSIS guidelines include product specifications such as "meat sticks and cheese", along with general topic categories such as for example "Sausage - Shelf Stable"; "Moisture Protein Ratio -MPR;" and "Moisture Protein Ratio - pH." These policies must always be considered in conjunction with process controls under the HACCP Rule, 9 C.F.R. 417. A product processed in the retail environment is not covered by this rule; however, the variance requirements of the Food Code should require that meat and poultry products have equivalent product specifications for shelf stability and process records documenting control of hazards.
There is substantial history of safety of meat and poultry products that meet these criteria. In addition to the above criteria, certain combinations of pH, aw, and /or other factors can be used to prevent pathogen level increase when meat products are held at ambient temperatures. Products processed in the retail environment and exempt from the HACCP Rule should also follow these guidelines and maintain records documenting control of hazards.
2.5. Time/temperature control
Unless the specific product parameters referenced in the previous section are met, meat and poultry products must be considered as requiring time/temperature control. Raw meat and poultry products currently require safe-handling instruction labeling that includes a time/temperature control provision. For ready-to-eat foods, product parameters and processing schedules are needed to ascertain whether temperature control for safety is required. Post-processing contamination is also an important consideration and should not be overlooked. Because meat offers a rich nutrient media for microbial growth, products that incorporate meat and poultry as ingredients, such as meat salads and meat pastries, also must be considered as requiring time/temperature control.
3. Fish and seafood products
3.1. Types of products
Fish and seafood products include fresh and frozen fish and crustaceans; cooked crustacean products; breaded and prepared seafood products; salted and smoked seafood products; sushi and seafood products such as minced fish flesh, surimi, pickled fish products, fermented fish, and seafood analogs; and molluscan shellfish (oysters, mussels, and clams).
3.2. Microbial concerns
Seafood is more perishable than other high-protein products due to the high level of soluble nitrogen compounds in the tissue. Microbial activity is responsible for changes in flavor, odor, texture, and color that reflect the extent of decomposition. Seafood is largely harvested from the wild and is subject to environmental contaminants, including pathogens, from the harvest site and on-board-ship handling practices. The numbers and types of indigenous microorganisms on freshly harvested fish, crustaceans, and mollusks depend on the geographical location of the harvest site, the season, and the method of harvest. While microbial concerns center mainly on foodborne illness, poor quality (spoiled or decomposed) products rarely cause illness because they usually are discarded before consumption. With the exception of scrombroid poisoning in other foods, problems generally arise from contaminated harvest sites or from mishandling during or after processing.
3.3. Pathogens of concern
Inshore water sites increase the likelihood of enteric pathogen contaminants. Indigenous pathogens including Vibrio vulnificus, Vibrio parahaemolyticus, Vibrio cholerae, and C. botulinum Type E, and enteric microorganisms such as Salmonella spp. and Shigella spp. have been isolated from freshly caught fish, crustaceans, and mollusks due to contaminated harvest waters, but they are not present in deep sea waters. Other non-indigenous pathogens such as L. monocytogenes and S. aureus can be present in cooked products as a result of processing, handling, or post-processing environmental contamination.
Sushi products that incorporate raw fish as an ingredient must meet the additional requirements of a process for destruction of parasites. Sushi is also made from acidified rice and other ingredients that are subject to the environmental/processing contamination already discussed. Rice, without proper acidification control, introduces a risk of toxin formation from Bacillus cereus.
Cooked seafood, especially crustaceans that are heavily handled during processing, is subject to contamination by S. aureus, Salmonella spp., L. monocytogenes, Shigella spp., and other enteric microorganisms. In addition, poor manufacturing practices may result in cross contamination by indigenous pathogens, especially V. parahaemolyticus. Clostridium botulinum spores may survive depending on the nature of the heating process.
3.4. Effects of processing
Since 1997, all seafood processors must comply with the HACCP rule, mandated by FDA in an attempt to minimize the microbiological hazards in the final products. Seafood can be sold raw, frozen, canned, cured, smoked, or fermented. Much seafood is frozen, a factor that does not affect the level of pathogens, except in the case of Vibrio spp., which are sensitive to freezing temperatures. Vibrio parahaemolyticus, for instance, has been shown to survive freezing at sufficient levels to cause illness.
The cooking process usually eliminates vegetative pathogens. However, to maintain quality, the duration of these cooks may be shortened and may not fully destroy all pathogens. In addition, meat from cooked crabs and lobsters is picked by hand, a practice which can cause contamination by S. aureus and by Salmonella spp., Shigella spp., and other enteric pathogens. Listeria monocytogenes is also a significant contaminant in cooked/processed seafood because the cool, wet processing environment is conducive to its presence and subsequent product contamination. Cooked seafood products should be cooled and refrigerated immediately.
Canned seafood given a full retort process is shelf stable. Of concern with canned fish are those species with high histidine levels, such as tuna, mackerel, and sardines, that have been mishandled when fresh, and that may develop significant levels of heat-stable histamine and cause food illness.
Large amounts of fish are cured and/or smoked as a preservation technique. These products are subject to contamination by environmental species, especially L. monocytogenes. The curing process uses salt to lower aw and sometimes uses smoke to provide flavor. A wide variety both hot- and cold- smoked products are available. The safety of these products relies on the amount of water phase salt, preservatives, and the type and amount of heat treatment. Except for a fully salted and dried product (>20% salt), these products cannot be considered shelf stable without full validation and process control. Cold-smoked fish that are vacuum-packaged have been implicated in outbreaks from C. botulinum toxin. In addition, the high frequency of isolations of L. monocytogenes, especially in cold-smoked fish, has resulted in numerous product recalls. Several states have specific requirements based on the Association of Food and Drug Officials' Model Code: "Cured, Salted and Smoked Fish Establishment GMPs," for the amount of water-phase salt, heat treatment, and storage temperature for salt-cured, smoked fish (AFDO 1991). Curing and smoking of uninviserated fish is prohibited.
Fish is also preserved by fermentation. Fermented seafood uses salt and acids, such as vinegar, to produce acidic products with high salt contents that preclude pathogen survival.
3.5. Time/temperature control
Most seafood, including cooked seafood and sushi, requires time/temperature control. Only fully retorted or fully dried and salted products are considered shelf stable. Most smoked seafood products require time/temperature control because of the concern with C. botulinum growth and toxin production, in addition to their being highly perishable. Heavily smoked products with low water activities are spoiled primarily by molds.
4. Fruits and vegetables
4.1. Types of products
Fruits are the portions of plants that bear seeds, while vegetables are the edible components of a plant, including the leaves, stalks, roots, tubers, bulbs, flowers, and seeds (ICMSF 1998, p 253). A wide variety of products, including citrus fruits, apples, pears, bananas, tropical fruits, compound fruits (for example, berries), tomatoes, olives, cucumbers, and melons, as well as vegetables ranging from asparagus to zucchini, are available in the market place (ICMSF 1998, p 215-273).
Fruits and vegetables and related products include foods that are sold fresh, minimally processed (for example, cut, sliced, chopped, shredded, or peeled), canned, frozen, juiced, or dried. Some commodities are retained in storage under controlled or modified atmospheres before packaging, while others are packaged by using modified atmospheres in films that control the permeability of gases. In addition to being sold fresh, fruits are also sold dried and packaged with preservatives. Dried fruits are also used in a variety of products such as confectionary bars, cookies, chocolates, breads, and many cereal based products. Minimally processed fruit can be sold as fruit salads or incorporated into dairy products such as yogurt, cottage cheese, or ice cream (ICMSF 1998, p 253).
Fresh-cut vegetables include ready-to-eat washed, sliced, chopped, or shredded vegetables, dry coleslaw mixes (without dressing), and complex mixed salads, as well as stir-fry products. Raw or cooked vegetables (with or without fruit and meat or poultry) are used as ingredients in prepared (deli) salads with mayonnaise or other types of dressings. Due to their highly perishable nature, most fresh fruits and vegetables need temperature control to extend their shelf life. Preservation of fruits and vegetables is achieved by drying, salting, freezing, refrigeration, canning, fermentation, irradiation, and packaging under vacuum or modified atmospheres (ICMSF 1998, p 215).
Over the past several years, seeds, either fresh or cooked, have become a commonly consumed produce item. Seed sprouts may harbour very low levels of pathogens (Salmonella serotypes, B. cereus, E. coli O157:H7, and Y. enterocolitica) that can multiply to very high levels during the 3 to 10 d sprouting process and survive through the typical refrigerated shelf life of the products (IFT 2001). Whereas mung bean sprouts are often stir-fried or otherwise heated prior to consumption, which would reduce the risk of disease, other seed sprouts are often consumed raw and have been associated with foodborne illness (IFT 2001). For these products, time/temperature control would not prevent microbial hazards and, therefore, sanitation procedures that would reduce the contamination and growth of pathogens growth should be in place.
4.2. Microbial concerns
The initial bacteria of fresh produce derive from contamination from air, soil, water, insects, animals, workers, and harvesting and transportation equipment. In fruits, bacteria are usually present in low numbers, but contamination by yeasts and molds is more prevalent due to the lower pH of fruits and the lack of competition from other microorganisms (ICMSF 1998, p 253). Microorganisms also found in vegetables include Pseudomonas and Erwinia as well as coryneforms, lactic acid bacteria, spore formers, coliforms, and micrococci. Yeasts and molds are often present but in lower numbers than bacteria (ICMSF 1998, p 216). Sufficient moisture, abusive temperature, and adequate time will ensure a continuing increase in the bacterial population on fruits and vegetables, particularly in fresh-cut products.
4.3. Pathogens of concern
Since 1973, the number of reported outbreaks of foodborne illness associated with produce has more than doubled. As a result, pathogens on fresh fruits and vegetables have become a major concern. Pathogenic bacteria are not usually associated with fruit, but pathogens can be present due to fecal contamination. There have been a number of outbreaks of salmonellosis and E. coli O157:H7 infection associated with the consumption of a variety of fruits, including raw tomatoes, sliced watermelons, cantaloupes, and unpasteurized apple and orange juice. Human pathogens have been isolated from more than thirty kinds of vegetables and include Salmonella spp., Shigella spp, Y. enterocolitica, E. coli O157:H7, L. monocytogenes, C. botulinum, and B. cereus (ICMSF 1998, p 221). Fresh-cut produce presents a special concern because of the disruption of natural protective barriers that may result in increased pathogen multiplication.
4.4. Effects of processing
Fruits and vegetables are frequently consumed raw without being exposed to a process that reliably eliminates pathogens. Washing fruits and vegetables in chlorinated water can reduce bacterial levels but cannot be relied upon to eliminate pathogens. Traditional processing methods such as freezing, canning, dehydration, fermentation, and acidification are used to improve the stability of fruits and vegetables.
4.5. Time/temperature control
Outbreaks of salmonellosis and E. coli O157:H7 infection linked with a variety of fruits and vegetables have increased the concerns as to the safety of these foods. Strategies to reduce microbial hazards in produce include the implementation of Good Agricultural Practices on farms, and Good Manufacturing Practices in packing, handling, and storage. Due to their highly perishable nature, most fresh fruits and vegetables need time/temperature control to extend their shelf life. In any case, attention should be paid to storage times and temperatures since pathogens, if present, are able to grow- particularly in the case of fresh-cut produce or where internalization is possible. Storage temperature and time management are important in reducing the risks of foodborne illness, and become critical parameters for any fresh-cut produce. However, as mentioned above, the time/temperature for seed sprouts will not reduce the risk of presence of high levels of pathogens. While, traditional processing methods such as freezing, canning, dehydration, fermentation, and acidification are used to improve the stability of fruits and vegetables, and time/temperature control may not be a requirement for these processed products.
5. Cereal grains and related products
5.1. Types of products
Cereal grains and related products include baked goods (breads, muffins, cakes, pastries, cookies, biscuits, bagels, and so on), frozen and refrigerated dough, breakfast cereals (cold cereal, oatmeal, grits, and so on), refrigerated or dry pasta and noodles, and cooked grains (for example, rice). Some products, such as baked goods, have a long history of safe storage at room temperature; others, such as rice, require time/temperature control after preparation.
5.2. Pathogens of concern
Grains and milled products are raw agricultural commodities; therefore, a variety of microorganisms, including mold, yeast, coliforms and other bacteria, occur naturally. Grains and milled products are dried to inhibit mold growth during storage, a process that easily controls growth of bacterial pathogens. Therefore, while organisms such as Salmonella spp. may be present, the prevalence and levels are low (usually <1%). Raw ingredients used to prepare dough products (for example, eggs, dairy products, meats) may introduce Salmonella spp., and need to be considered when analyzing potential hazards. Staphylococcus aureus may present a potential hazard for certain raw dough, such as pasta dough processed at warm temperatures for extended periods of time (days); however, yeast leavened dough and cookie dough control the organism through competitive inhibition and low aw , respectively. Bacillus cereus presents a concern in cooked rice.
5.3. Effects of processing
Baking, boiling, steaming, or frying are the methods used to cook the cereal-grain products. The temperatures required to achieve product quality easily destroy vegetative pathogens that may be present. These temperatures are needed to properly set the starch structure and/or to rehydrate dry products. Baking and frying not only destroy vegetative pathogens such as S. aureus and Salmonella spp., but they also remove moisture from the product-especially at the exterior surface. This dehydrated surface inhibits the growth of most bacteria; thus, mold is the primary microbial mode of failure for baked goods. When stored at room temperature, baked and fried products typically continue to lose moisture to the atmosphere, further reducing the potential for pathogen growth. Thus, baked and fried cereal-grain products such as cakes, breads, muffins, and biscuits have a long history of safe storage at room temperature despite having an internal aw of approximately 0.94-0.95 (but may be as high as 0.98).
While boiled or steamed cereal products achieve temperatures lethal to vegetative pathogens during the cooking process, these products increase in aw to levels that support the growth of many microbial pathogens. Thus, time/temperature control is required to assure the safety of these products. For example, numerous B.cereus outbreaks have been associated with fried rice prepared using boiled rice that was held for hours at room temperature.
5.4. Time/temperature control
Although baked and fried cereal-grain products (for example, cakes, breads, muffins, and biscuits) have a high aw, a number of reasons may justify their shelf-stability: they have a long history of safe storage at ambient temperature; processing temperatures and moisture reduction, especially on the surface, preclude the growth of pathogens; and they are often formulated to include ingredients that enhance product safety and stability so as to permit distribution without temperature control for limited periods of time. Ingredients that are used to enhance safety and stability include humectants to reduce aw (sugars and glycerine), preservatives (calcium propionate, potassium sorbate, sorbic acid), acids to reduce pH (vinegar, citric acid, phosphoric acid, malic acid, fumaric acid), spices with antimicrobial properties (cinnamon, nutmeg, garlic), and water-binding agents to control free water (gums, starches). The primary mode of spoilage of baked goods is mold growth, which is visible and alerts the consumer to avoid consumption, further reducing the risk of illness due to spoiled product. These characteristics plus their long history of safe storage at room temperature would allow these products to be stored at ambient temperature. Boiled or steamed cereal products, such as rice, require time/temperature control after preparation due to the increase in aw.
Dough is frequently used to enrobe other food ingredients. Careful consideration must be given to these combination products to accurately assess the need for time/temperature control. For example, egg and dairy ingredients baked inside a pastry, such as cream-cheese croissant, will receive sufficient heat treatments to destroy vegetative pathogens and may therefore be stable at room temperature with water activities above 0.86. However, if the filling is injected after the baking process, as in the case of a cream-filled éclair, the potential for contamination must be assessed. Meat and vegetable-filled cereal products with high water activities (>0.94) and neutral pH generally require time/temperature control because the baking process can activate spore formers such as C. botulinum that are present in these ingredients.
6. Fats, oils, and salad dressings
6.1. Types of products
Fats and oils are primary components of many foods that are emulsions comprised of oil as the continuous phase and water as the discontinuous phase. Mayonnaise, salad dressings, and related products are examples where water is the continuous phase and oil (fat) the discontinuous phase. Product types have grown to also include pourable dressings and starch-based dressings that resemble mayonnaise. In addition, in recent years products such as garlic-in-oil, various herb/spices-in-oil, and flavored oils have proliferated.
6.2. Microbial/pathogen concerns
The form of the water-in-oil emulsion in mayonnaise and salad dressings, particularly the chemical composition of the water phase, plays a key role in their microbiological stability. The pH range is 3.2 to 4.0 due to acetic acid; the oil content, 65 to 80%; the aqueous phase salt content, 9 to 11%; and the sugar content is 7 to 10%. This composition provides an aw of ~ 0.925. Pourable dressings have a pH in the range of 3.5 to 3.9. Microbial stability is largely related to the maximum preservative effect of acetic acid, mostly undissociated at those low pH levels. Although the aw of mayonnaise and salad dressings is not sufficiently low to preclude growth of S. aureus, at pH 4.1 and below, S. aureus does not survive. Additionally, mayonnaise and salad dressings do not support the growth of C. botulinum because of the low pH and aw. The low aw also precludes the growth of B. cereus. The few documented cases of Salmonella-related foodborne illnesses have been related to deviations in pH and in the proportion of egg yolk and vinegar. These deviations typically occurred with non-commercially prepared products that lack the proper control of pH and the hold time to allow pathogen die-off.
Oil products that can create anaerobic sites of sufficient aw favorable for C. botulinum growth and toxin production are problematic; for example, the addition of fresh garlic to oil. The moisture surrounding the garlic fragments coupled with no acidulant creates the conditions necessary for C. botulinum growth and toxin production. To maintain a pH that precludes growth and toxin production, an acidulant is required in these products.
6.3. Effects of processing
Following Good Manufacturing Practices can protect these products from contamination. Formulating with appropriate levels of acetic acid is essential to protect fats and oils against pathogenic bacteria; salad dressings with a pH less than 4.0 are very safe. Refrigeration after opening is recommended to prevent oxidation of the oils and product separation, but not for safety. A recent review of the microbiological safety of mayonnaise, salad dressings, and other sauces revealed that Salmonella, E. coli O157:H7, L. monocytogenes, S. aureus, and Y. enterocolitica die when inoculated into mayonnaise and dressings (Smittle 2000).
6.4. Time/temperature control
Products with formulations that do not meet aw, pH, and acidity requirements as outlined above may require time/temperature control. Addition of flavoring components to traditional oils must be done in conjunction with added acidifying agents. Addition of other ingredients, such as garlic or herbs, would require an assessment or challenge testing before the product is designated shelf-stable.
7. Butter and margarine
7.1. Types of products
Butter, one of the few foods defined by law, must be at least 80% milk fat. It is a water-in-oil emulsion that can be salted or unsalted and may contain starter cultures for additional flavor. The composition and manufacturing process of butter are critical to its stability because uneven churning of butter may result in pockets of high moisture that would permit microbial growth if contamination is present. Additional stability is provided by salt, which normally results in a water-phase salt level around 16%.
Regular margarine, as defined in CFR 21.166.110, includes any plastic fat composition emulsified to at least 80% fat and with moisture in excess of 1%. A wide range of fats and oils are used to process margarine. Other ingredients in margarine include salt, emulsifiers, and preservatives, and some margarines may contain milk solids. Other margarine products may contain 40% to 60% fat with a corresponding increase in moisture content. Margarine spreads have various oil contents and usually do contain milk solids.
7.2. Microbial concerns
The bacteria found in butter products reflect the initial microflora of the cream and the sanitary condition of the processing operation, as well as the sanitary condition of the environment and handling during packaging. The high water-phase salt content of salted butter precludes all but S. aureus as a pathogen of concern. As with butter, the salt content of the aqueous phase in margarine and its distribution through a fine water dispersion are critical to product stability and safety. Three percent salt results in 15.8% water phase salt in the product that is inhibitory to all foodborne pathogens except S. aureus. On the other hand, 1% salt drops the level in the water phase to 5.9%, which would permit the growth of most foodborne pathogens. The need for time/temperature control depends on the pH and aw of the product, and on whether other preservatives have been added to the formulation. A special concern would be the post-processing contamination by psychrotrophic pathogens such as L. monocytogenes, which have been demonstrated to survive processing if introduced after pasteurization.
7.3. Effects of processing
The high-temperature-short-time pasteurization of the cream used for butter destroys all but the most heat-resistant vegetative forms of microorganisms, including pathogens. Toxin formed by S. aureus prior to pasteurization in poorly handled cream will result in toxin carryover to the finished butter product. Contamination from lack of sanitation during processing can carry pathogens into the finely dispersed water droplets where, if nutrients are present, they could multiply. Post-processing contamination of the pasteurized cream and/or butter by L. monocytogenes and/or Y. enterocolitica is a concern since survival and growth of both microorganisms at refrigerated temperatures have been shown to be possible. This is true for both butter and margarine products containing added milk solids.
7.4. Time/temperature control
Traditional butter and margarine have had a long history of safety without time/temperature control. The few problems that have occurred are related to modified products. As these traditional products have been modified by reducing the fat levels, increasing the water content, and reducing the salt levels, the built in microbiological inhibitory factors can also be expected to change. For example, a S. aureus enterotoxin outbreak has been associated with a whipped butter that had been temperature abused over an extended time period. Therefore, as these traditional product compositions are changed, other microbial inhibitors such as preservatives may have to be considered to enhance the safety of the finished product during its intended use. The need for time/temperature control depends on the pH and aw of the product, and on whether other preservatives have been added to the formulation.
8. Sugars and syrups
8.1. Types of products
A wide variety of products fall into the sugar and syrup category. Some of these products include beet and cane sugar, corn syrup, maple syrup, table syrups, and other specialty sugar syrups, such as cane syrup.
8.2. Microbial/pathogen concerns
Because of the high sugar content and resulting low aw, pathogen survival and growth is not an issue with these products. Some may, however, require refrigeration to prevent yeast and mold growth after opening if the aw is high enough to support growth. Clostridium botulinum may be a concern in light syrups, and acidulants are often used to inhibit growth and toxin production.
8.3. Effects of processing
Syrups are heated during processing to facilitate clarification and handling. Clarification steps involving precipitation and filtration serve to remove some of the microorganisms.
8.4. Time/temperature control
Traditional syrups do not need time/temperature control for safety because of high sugar content and low aw. Traditional syrups may be modified by reducing the caloric or reducing the sugar content which could result in a change in the microbial inhibitory characteristics of these modified products. As traditional products are modified, the changes could result in variations in the sugar to water ratios that could provide opportunity for the growth of pathogens. Therefore, the use of other microbial inhibitors may be necessary to prevent pathogen growth at ambient temperature. Using such ingredients as acidulants and preservatives as microbial inhibitors may maintain the modified syrups as shelf-stable products.
9. Eggs and egg products
9.1. Types of products
"Eggs," as a product category, refers to eggs in the shell. "Egg products" refers to eggs that have been separated from their shells to produce liquid, concentrated, dried, crystallized, frozen, coagulated, and reduced cholesterol products (ICMSF 1998, p 495). In the United States, approximately 83 % of the eggs are sold as shell eggs (ICMSF 1998, p 480). Liquid eggs are usually homogenized as whole eggs or separated into white and yolk. Sugar, salt, or acidulants may be added to yolks that will be further processed. All liquid eggs are usually pasteurized and require temperature control at refrigeration or frozen temperatures. Liquid egg products are used as ingredients in a wide variety of processed products including bakery products (meringues, custards, cream, angel food cakes, and egg washes), confectionary products, drinks, special dietary foods, infant products, sauces and dressings, mayonnaise, and noodles (ICMSF 1998, p 480).
9.2. Microbial concerns
Eggs can become contaminated through trans-ovarian or trans-shell infection (ICMSF 1998, p 481). Freshly laid eggs may be contaminated through the oviduct of an infected hen. The shell of a newly formed egg can become contaminated with a variety of microorganisms from the environment where the egg is laid. Although there are a number of antimicrobial barriers present in eggs (lysozyme, conalbumen, avidin, and alkaline pH), spoilage and pathogenicity are related to the ability of microorganisms to penetrate the shell and overcome these barriers (ICMSF 1998, p 479). The bacterial ecology of eggs is varied and consists of psychrotrophic (primarily Pseudomonads) and mesophilic bacteria and can also include some pathogens. Federal regulations stating that shell eggs must be kept refrigerated prior to use have been recently implemented ("Food Labeling, Safe Handling Statements, Labeling of Shell Eggs; Refrigeration of Shell Eggs Held for Retail Distribution," 65 FR 76092 [Dec. 5, 2000]). When properly cooked or processed (pasteurized) and stored at appropriate temperatures, the bacterial loads in these products are greatly reduced. Heat treatments used for liquid eggs do not produce shelf-stable products, so proper temperature control and safe handling after opening or thawing are necessary to prevent post-process or cross contamination and growth of pathogens.
9.3. Pathogens of concern
The principal human pathogens of concern in eggs and egg products are of the genus Salmonella (primarily Salmonella Enteritidis). These pathogens can enter the egg either by trans-ovarian transmission or by penetrating the surface of the egg in a way similar to that of spoilage organisms (ICMSF 1998, p 492). Listeria monocytogenes is also a concern in processed eggs, particularly in products with extended shelf life.
9.4. Effects of processing
Shell eggs are usually fried, boiled, or baked. In these cooking methods, it is important that eggs reach appropriate temperature to destroy any salmonellae that may be present. Eggs boiled or cooked long enough to solidify the yolk (~ 10 min of boiling) are heated sufficiently to inactivate salmonellae, but other cooking procedures that leave the yolk in a liquid state (for example, soft boiled and fried eggs "over easy") are not always sufficient to inactivate Salmonella spp (ICMSF 1998, p 493). Liquid eggs, white, and yolk that do not contain chemical additives are usually pasteurized at temperatures that vary from 55.6 °C (132 °F) to 69 °C (156 °F) at processing times that vary from 10 to 1.5 min. Lower temperatures and shorter processing times increase the risk of survival of Salmonella spp., whereas higher temperature and longer processing times increase damage to the functional properties of the egg (ICMSF 1998, p 496). It should be noted that reduced aw and longer heating times are required to achieve the same level of pathogen reduction. In the United States, pasteurization requirements are 60 °C (140 °F) for 3.5 min, which achieve more than a 3 log reduction of salmonellae (ICMSF 1998, p 497). Proper pasteurization reduces the initial level of other microorganisms; however, if the product is temperature abused, some bacteria, such as micrococci, staphylococci, Bacillus spp., enterococci, and catalase negative bacterial rods, survive the process and can grow.
9.5. Time/temperature control
Eggs and egg products will easily support the growth of spoilage and pathogenic microorganisms and clearly require time/temperature control to assure safety. Control methods require an integrated approach that begins at the egg production facility, and carries through to processing and further processing operations as well as to retail and food service facilities. Temperature control of shell eggs, followed by thorough cooking and proper handling, are essential in assuring safety.
As mentioned above, heat treatments used for liquid eggs do not produce shelf-stable products, so they should be kept refrigerated or frozen. These products should be safely handled to reduce the likelihood of post-process and/or cross contamination.
10. Milk and milk products (except cheeses)
10.1. Types of products
Milk, the lacteal secretion from warm-blooded animals, is commercially available most commonly from cows, goats, and sheep. Milk may be available to consumers as a single- or multiple-ingredient fluid pasteurized product. It can also be obtained in a concentrated form, such as evaporated or condensed milk, or in a dry form. Bacterial cultures can be used in making other products such as cultured milk, yogurts, and cheeses. Milk and milk products are also included as major ingredients in other food forms ranging from ice cream to prepared foods.
10.2. Microbial concerns
Milk is an excellent growth medium for many kinds of microorganisms, as it provides rich nutrients for microbes, is high in moisture, and has neutral pH. Due to these factors, it is subject to microbial spoilage from the moment it is secreted from a healthy animal. Milk is exposed to the potential for microbial contamination during collection, storage, transportation, and processing. Without basic sanitary practices in place and temperature control during handling, the product will quickly spoil and become unacceptable for human consumption. Uncontrolled microbial growth affects the flavor and appearance of the product and can affect its safety. On the other hand, controlled use of microbial cultures can produce many flavorful products and can also preserve milk and milk products. Milk and milk products are normally consumed after the application of a processing step to reduce pathogenic microorganisms.
10.3. Pathogens of concern
The principal pathogens of concern associated with milk and processed milk products are Salmonella spp., L. monocytogenes, S. aureus, enterohemorrhagic E. coli, Campylobacter jejuni, C. botulinum, and B. cereus.
10.4. Effects of processing
Non-spore forming pathogens are reduced in fluid milk through pasteurization. Milk used as an ingredient in other products is normally pasteurized or thermally processed in some form to reduce possible pathogens. The exceptions would be some cheese-making processes that rely on microbial cultures and the effects of their growth in the milk medium over time to render the finished food safe.
While most milk and milk products are sold refrigerated to prevent spoilage, some dairy products are shelf stable due to a combination of moisture content, salts, and pH that control the growth of microbes. Canned milks are shelf stable due to thermal processing of the product within the individual containers. Some milk and milk products may be aseptically processed and packaged to enable the product to be shelf stable. Other dairy products may be thermally processed and packaged hot in conjunction with product formulations designed to inhibit the growth and survival of pathogenic organisms in products stored at room temperature. Microbial growth in dried milk is prevented by removing most of the moisture in fluid milk. Other dairy products, such as ice cream, are sold in a frozen state to limit the growth of microbes.
Protection from post-pasteurization contamination before the milk product is packaged is a critical factor in achieving a safe food. Multiple-ingredient dairy products may raise the concern of contamination depending on the characteristics of the product and the location where the ingredient may be added in the process. Ingredients added after pasteurization of the milk portion of the food can be a source of pathogens. The control of potential sources of contamination can be addressed by following production practices based upon Good Manufacturing Practices.
10.5. Time/temperature control
During handling, basic sanitary practices and temperature control are required to maintain acceptable sensory qualities of milk and milk products. Similarly, most milk and milk products are sold refrigerated to prevent spoilage. Exceptions include canned milks, dried milk, ice cream, asceptically processed and packaged products, and thermally processed products that are packaged hot in conjuntion with specific product formulations. These milk products do not require refrigeration because of the combination of moisture content, salts, and pH that control the growth of microbes.
11.1. Types of products
Cheese is the product of milk coagulation, followed by curd separation and ripening. More than 500 cheeses are manufactured worldwide, with variations deriving from modifications in the cheesemaking technique; for example, type of milk, coagulation method, starting culture, addition of salt or other additives, and ripening period. The changes, including microbiological changes occurring during cheesemaking, are complex. Cheeses types can be can be classified according to many different criteria, but a general classification divides cheeses into fresh or unripened, soft, semisoft, hard, and processed cheese.
11.2. Microbiological concerns
The survival and growth of pathogens in cheese depend on the many factors affecting the cheesemaking process, including time and temperature during the ripening process, variations in pH and aw, competing microflora, biochemical changes during ripening, and addition of antimicrobials. The microbiological quality of the milk will also contribute to the microbial ecology of the final product, especially in cheeses where milk is not pasteurized. Salmonella spp., L. monocytogenes (mainly in soft, high moisture, high pH cheeses), enterohemmorrhagic E. coli O157:H7 (due to post-process contamination), S. aureus (due to faulty cheesemaking process), Shigella spp. and C. botulinum (due to faulty process) have been implicated in outbreaks associated with the consumption of various types of cheeses.
11.2. Effects of processing
Cheeses made with pasteurized milk generally would not be a concern unless post-process contamination with pathogenic vegetative cells occurs. To minimize post-process contamination, strict plant sanitation and Good Manufacturing Practices need to be followed throughout the cheese making process. In the United States, cheeses made with raw milk need to be ripened for at least 60 d to control for pathogens. If ripened for more than 60 d, pH, aw, salt, and other parameters were thought to inhibit the growth of pathogens. However, recent studies have shown that low levels of certain pathogens such as E. coli O157:H7 can survive beyond 60 d curing in hard cheeses (Reitsma and Henning 1996). In general, there have been very few documented illness outbreaks linked to consumption of properly ripened hard cheese. Therefore, time/temperature control of hard cheeses is primarily needed not for safety reasons but to maintain the organoleptic quality of cheese. However, if the cheesemaking process is faulty (for example, high pH) or if post-process contamination occurs, the potential growth of pathogens is possible and time/temperature control is needed for safety. Soft cheeses (ripened or unripened), which have a higher moisture content, do require time/temperature control for safety.
In processed cheese, heat and sanitary packaging are used to prevent microbial hazards unless the cheese is contaminated with heat-resistant pathogenic spores. If the product is contaminated with spore-formers such as C. botulinum, however, germination and toxin formation can cause serious public heath concerns, especially if the product is intended to be used at ambient temperature. In this case, pH, aw, moisture content, and antimicrobials (for example, phosphate, salt) become critical parameters that may preclude pathogenic growth and toxin formation and will determine the need for time/temperature control. Post-process contamination after opening is also possible, and therefore, processed cheeses often need refrigeration after opening.
11.3. Time/temperature control
For traditionally made hard cheeses, unless pH is high or post-process contamination occurs, time/temperature control for safety reasons is not required. Time/temperature control is needed, however, for high moisture soft cheeses because of the potential growth of pathogens. With processed cheeses, there is a concern with the growth and toxin production of C. botulinum. If a processed cheese is intended for use at ambient temperature, pH, aw, moisture content, and antimicrobials should be appropriately adjusted to inhibit botulin toxin formation.
12. Combination products
12.1. Type of products
The "combination products" category refers to products whose formula contains distinct food systems (for example, cheese with vegetable pieces), or products whose components are processed separately and assembled later (for example, pumpkin pie with crème topping). Examples of products that fall into this category are foccaccia breads, meat salads, meat-filled pastry and other stuffed products, and prepared foods (for example, fettuccine alfredo with chicken).
12.2. Microbial concerns
These products present special challenges to their identification as "potentially hazardous foods." Combination foods present the added complexity of the various components' microbial ecology compared to the ecology of single-component foods. The microbial concerns associated with combination products greatly depend on the food components from which they are processed. (For microbial concerns on products, see the hazard analysis of dairy, eggs, fruits and vegetables, meat and poultry, seafood, and cereal products earlier in this chapter.)
The interactions among the various foods combined, which contributes to the uniqueness of each food product, also need to be considered. Components of significantly different pH or aw produce an altered microenvironment at the interface of the components. An example of this scenario is a donut filled with an acidified filling. The donut has higher pH and lower aw than the filling. The pH and aw at the interface will be affected by this difference, which may result in the growth of microorganisms if the product has a long enough shelf life. Obviously, these changes may affect the survival and growth of microorganisms in a less predictable manner than they might in single component foods. In addition to pH and aw, other food characteristics such as redox potential and the effectiveness of antimicrobials are likely to differ at the interfaces, possibly resulting in unexpected pathogen behavior.
Another feature of combination foods that may affect their microbiological safety is the fact that products often are handled by employees, resulting in an increased risk of microbial contamination. Opportunities for post-processing contamination during handling may result in safety hazards associated with S. aureus, L. monocytogenes, Shigella, E. coli O157:H7, Salmonella spp., and other enteric pathogens. Clostridium botulinum is also of concern, especially for certain modified atmosphere, controlled atmosphere, and vacuum packaged products.
12.3. Effects of processing
Often, the food composed of other products is subjected to processing before consumption. For example, focaccia bread and fruit pastries are baked and the meat in meat salads is cooked. (For the effect of processing methods in microbial reduction, see the hazard analysis of dairy, eggs, fruits and vegetables, meat and poultry, seafood, and cereal products.) When considering the effect of processing in the microbial load of the product, one needs to consider if the components have been processed separately or after assembly. Processing of the food after assembly decreases the chances for contamination and growth of pathogens as compared to assembling the different components before processing.
12.4. Time/temperature control
In combination foods, the need for time/temperature control depends on the nature of the product. Both the potential for the development of microenvironments and the existence of interface areas contribute to the difficulties in accurately measuring the intrinsic factors of the food. Because of the complex interactions in multiple component foods, one cannot rely on the pH, aw, or other parameter measurements and, therefore, challenge studies are often performed to decide if the food requires time/temperature control for safety.
|Product Category (examples of possible foods for evaluation)||Pathogens of Concern||Types of Process Control1 (Alone and in Combination)|
|Meats and poultry (fermented sausage)||Clostridium botulinum5 and Clostridium perfringens, Salmonella spp., enterohemmorrhagic Escherichia coli, Camplylobacter jejuni, Yersinia enterocolitica, Staphylococcus aureus, Listeria monocytogenes||Time/temperature, pH, aw, preservatives, moisture protein ratio, fermentation, heat processing|
|Fish and seafood (smoked fish)||Vibrio vulnificus, Vibrio parahaemolyticus, Vibrio cholerae, C. botulinum5, L. monocytogenes, Salmonella spp., Shigella spp., S. aureus||Time/temperature, harvest site control, fermentation, pH, aw, water-phase salt, preservatives, drying, salting|
|Fruits and vegetables (peeled carrots)||Salmonella spp., Shigella spp., enterohemmorrhagic E. coli, L. monocytogenes, Bacillus cereus, C. botulinum5, Y. enterocolitica||Production control (Good Agriculture Practices), time/temperature, cooking, preservation techniques|
|Cereal grains and related products (fresh pasta, foccacia bread)||Salmonella spp., S. aureus, B. cereus, C. botulinum5||Cooking, aw, pH, preservatives, time/temperature|
|Fats, oils & salad dressings (garlic-in-oil)||S. aureus2, Salmonella spp. 2, B. cereus2, C. botulinum2,||pH, aw, salt|
|Butter and margarine (light salted butter)||S. aureus, L. monocytogenes, Y. enterocolitica||Production/raw ingredient quality control, moisture droplet size in the water-in-oil emulsion, water phase salt, aw|
|Sugars and syrups (light maple syrup)||C. botulinum3,||aw, acidification (light syrups)|
|Eggs and egg products (merengue)||Salmonella spp.4, L. monocytogenes4||Production control, cooking/pasteurization, time/temperature|
|Milk and milk products (yoghurt)||Salmonella spp.4, L. monocytogenes4, enterohemmorrhagic E. coli4, S. aureus4, B. cereus (cells4 and spores5), C. botulinum (cells4 and spores5), Campylobacter jejuni4||Production control, time/temperature, cooking/pasteurization, aw, preservatives|
|Cheese and cheese products (Natural Swiss cheese)||Salmonella spp. 4, L. monocytogenes4, enterohemmorrhagic E. coli4, S. aureus4, Shigella spp. 4, C. botulinum (cells4 and spores5)||Production control, moisture content, aw, pasteurization, preservatives, pH|
|Combination products (cheese with veg. pieces, pumpkin pie, stuffed pastry)||Variable, based on raw materials and processing||Variable, based on raw materials and product|
1Good Manufacturing Practices would help in reducing the hazards. For meats, poultry, and fish and seafood products the Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point principles should be implemented as a control system.
2A pH > 4.0 and aw ~ 0.92 in salad dressings and mayonnaise would preclude the growth of pathogens of concern.
3Only a concern in light syrups and can be controlled by acidification.
4In pasteurized products, all pre-processing vegetative pathogens would be controlled.
5Only a concern in anoxic environments.
[AFDO] Association of Food and Drug Officials. 1991 June. Cured, salted, and smoked fish establishments good manufacturing practices [model code]. [York (PA)]: Association of Food and Drug Officials. 7 p.
[ICMSF] International Commission on Microbiological Specification for Foods. 1998. Microorganisms in foods. Volume 6, Microbial ecology of food commodities. New York: Blackie Academic & Professional. 615 p.
[IFT] Institute of Food Technologists, Dept. of Science and Technology Projects. 2001. Analysis and evaluation of preventive control measures for the control and reduction/elimination of microbial hazards on fresh and fresh-cut produce. Beuchat LR, Busta FF, Farber JM, Garrett EH, Harris LJ, Parish ME, Suslow TV, editors. Chicago: IFT. (Journal of Food Science Supplement). Forthcoming.
Reitsma CJ, Henning DR. 1996. Survival of enterohemmorhagic Escherichia coli 0157:H7 during the manufacture and curing of cheddar cheese. J Food Prot 59(5):460-4.
Smittle RB. 2000. Microbiological safety of mayonnaise, salad dressings, and sauces produced in the United States: a review. J Food Prot 63(8):1144-53.
[USDA] U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Food Safety and Inspection Service. 1996 [with change 98-01 (Sept 1996 thru Feb 1998)]. Food standards and labeling policy book. Available from: Superintendent of Documents, PO Box 371954, Pittsburgh, PA 15250-7954; (202)512-1800.
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DENVER (Jan. 18, 2012) - A new study shows pregnant women exposed to armed conflict have a higher risk of giving birth to underweight babies, a result that could change the way aid is delivered to developing countries.
"From a development side we need to ask, `Who is the population we should be focusing on?'" said Hani Mansour, Ph.D., assistant professor of economics at the University of Colorado Denver who conducted the study with Daniel Rees, Ph.D., a CU Denver professor of economics. "Our results provide another reason why pregnant women deserve special attention when armed conflict breaks out."
The study, the first to examine the relationship between prenatal exposure to armed conflict and birth weight, will be published in an upcoming edition of the Journal of Development Economics. The manuscript is available at http://www.
The research focused on a major uprising in the Israeli-occupied territories.
The Second Intifada, which began in September 2000, had claimed the lives of more than 4,000 Palestinians by 2005. Mansour and Rees drew on data from the Palestinian Demographic and Health Survey, which was collected by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics approximately four years after the start of the uprising. These data were matched with data on Palestinian fatalities in the West Bank collected by B'Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization.
"We find that an additional conflict-related fatality nine to six months before birth is associated with an increase in the probability of having a low-birth weight child," Mansour said. "Psychological stress is a plausible explanation for this relationship, although we cannot rule out malnutrition."
The professors examined a sample of 1,224 births to women living in the West Bank. Conflict exposure in utero was measured by the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli security forces in the district where the mother lived.
The authors controlled for a variety of potentially confounding variables including education of the mother and father, mother's age when she gave birth, father's occupation, birth order, gender of the baby, number of prenatal care visits, whether a curfew was in place, and self-reported anemia.
Because they control for anemia, the professors believe that psychological stress, as opposed to malnutrition, is the likely mechanism behind low birth weight. In addition, they note that previous studies have shown that exposure to earthquakes and terrorist attacks in the early stages of pregnancy can lead to low birth weight.
Rees and Mansour said they had no political agenda going into their research. They chose to study the impact of the Second Intifada "because of the quality of the data and the fact that mobility was very low in the West Bank during this period."
The authors noted that, "armed conflict is often associated with migration, which would complicate this type of analysis." According to Mansour, who was born in Haifa, Israel, "fully 94 percent of the mothers in our sample had not moved to a new community since the start of the Intifada."
Rees and Mansour plan to follow up by examining whether intrauterine exposure to armed conflict affects longer-term outcomes in educational attainment and test scores.
The authors said their findings had implications well beyond the West Bank and should be considered by policymakers around the world.
"At a minimum our results are consistent with those of medical studies showing a positive association between self-reported stress and low birth weight, and suggest a heretofore unexplored rationale for intervention when armed conflict occurs," they said.
The University of Colorado Denver offers more than 120 degrees and programs in 13 schools and colleges and serves more than 28,000 students. CU Denver is located on the Denver Campus and the Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora, CO.
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Coefficient of Correlation?
help me to solve this..
(i)Calculate coefficient of correlation, using Excel function, for the above data.
What type of relationship is found between the variables X and Y?
(ii) Construct a Scatter diagram for the above Data.
(iii) Now subtract 10 from values of X and divide by 5.Also subtracts 4from values of Y and divide by 2.
Now again calculate coefficient of correlation .And give reason why answer do or do not match.
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What is Structural Integration?
The Rolf Method of Structural Integration is a hands-on process of re-educating the body through touch and movement. It systematically releases patterns of stress and impaired function. The primary focus of Structural Integration is facilitating the relationship between gravity and the human body.
What does Gravity have to do with Structural Integration?
The earth's gravitational field is the most potent physical force that the human body has to deal with. Although most people realize this tremendous force exists, they somehow believe they are immune to it. Gravity's constant effect on any soft, pliable mass is to make it a formless, chaotic and spherical unit. Since the body has a great deal of plasticity and is much broader at the top than at the base, it is greatly affected by gravity when imbalances exist. Most bodies are in a state of imbalance. As we grow older, we often "shrink" in height and slowly lose flexibility. Our bones stay the same length and our muscles can still function, but the connective tissue is what changes the most.
What is connective tissue?
It is a very tough, strong tissue, otherwise known as the myofascial system.
Connective tissue is the support system of our body. All of the major systems in the body - circulatory, digestive, nervous, musculo-skeletal, and organs - are en-sheathed in connective tissue. A healthy and balanced connective tissue system's characteristics are flexibility, elasticity, length and resilience. The tissue absorbs and responds to gravitational force, illness, injury, emotional trauma and plain everyday stress. Any of these factors will immediately, or over a period of time, cause an imbalance in the tissue system. When imbalance exists the system's healthy characteristics are affected. The imbalance is identified as a shortening, thickening, dehydration of the tissue which impairs joint mobility and muscle function. This is usually felt in the body as chronic pain, discomfort, stiffness, or decreased flexibility and impaired movement.
Connective Tissue has Memory
Any imbalance in the body - no matter what the cause - is imprinted as
change in the internal structure and has a long - range and cumulative effect. The body may attempt to return to its original state but without assistance it remains misaligned. For example, when someone sprains an ankle it is only natural to protect it by keeping as much weight as possible off the injured ankle and compensating with the other ankle by shifting as much weight as possible to the uninjured side of the body. This natural response to the injury changes the entire body's relationship to the gravitational field, and the neuromuscular system is re-patterned as part of this process. Patterns of neural activity, blood and lymph flow, and muscular contraction are altered. When the ankle heals and pain subsides, the person assumes that he/she is returning to normal movement and function; however, this is not the case. That new pattern created from the shift of weight has been recorded in the internal structure and remains there as part of that persons movement and holding pattern, and remnants of the injury will be maintained in the structure and function indefinitely. Although I have used a sprained ankle as an example, this change in the inner system and re-patterning can take place from something as simple as the habit of carrying a heavy bag on the same shoulder of holding the telephone receiver between one's shoulder and era. In order to remain upright the entire body has to compensate and some muscles are forced to shorten. When a muscle is chronically shortened it loses its ability to relax which then results in a constant state of tension. When these changes and patterns occur, the connective tissue needs assistance in order to return to its normal, health state. Structural Integration is of particularly great benefit at this point.
How does Structural Integration work?
SI works by lengthening and opening the patterns in the connective tissue. As a result the thickened, toughened tissue becomes soft, re-hydrated and more pliable, thus allowing movement and flexibility. Structural Integration changes the body's compensations because it organizes the imbalances in the tissue. The systematic approach to relating gravity through the myofascial layers aligns the body and improves posture. The body lengthens allowing muscles the space to work and joints the freedom to function.
What are the benefits?
Structural Integration is a very personal process. It is important to remember that because no two people are alike, their experience and the benefits will never be exactly the same. As a result of the process people often appear taller and slimmer. Some actually gain anywhere from 1/4" to over one inch in height. Feelings of discomfort or pain are often alleviated. Other often experienced benefits are greater flexibility, a feeling of lightness and fluidity, better balance, increased breathing capacity, increased energy and greater self-confidence.
Are there psychological benefits?
While Structural Integration is primarily concerned with physical changes in the body, it affects the whole person. We are made up of emotions, attitudes, belief systems and behavior patterns as well as the physical being. All are related. Align the physical structure and it will open up the individual's potential. Clients often report positive changes, stating less stress, greater self-confidence and improved ability to handle life's changes. Such changes have been reported in all age groups.
How does Structural Integration feel?
(Or in the words of so many, does it hurt?!) I find it interesting that many people who have opinions about Structural Integration being painful have never experienced the process. Much of this reputation for pain came from the early days when Structural Integration was first gaining public recognition. Since that time, the process has greatly evolved. As far as the actual experience is concerned, the area being worked will vary in sensation and feeling depending upon injuries to an area or holding of chronic stress as well as other factors. Feelings can range from pleasurable release to momentary discomfort. My goal is to make each client's experience one of self-empowerment. This process is yours not mine. We will work together at your level and pace.
Does Structural Integration last?
Yes, but keep in mind however, as life changes, bodies change in response. All injuries, accidents, lengthy illnesses and emotional stress may necessitate additional work.
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Robert M. Young Home Page Index of writings by Robert M. Young WORD version of this article Introduction to this article Email Robert M. Young Process Press Science as Culture Free Associations Kleinian Studies Human Relations, Authority and Justice
THE DEVELOPMENT OF HERBERT SPENCER'S CONCEPT OF EVOLUTION
by Robert M. Young
The scientific controversies surrounding the theory of evolution in the nineteenth century were primarily concerned with the interpretation of the geological, paleontological, and biological evidence. The public debate, on the other hand, centered above all on man's place in nature and the implications of evolution for the immortal soul, the mind, and it organ, the brain. It is somewhat surprising to find that the writings of historians and indeed of Darwin himself fail to pay close attention to the effects of the theory of evolution on the study of mind and brain. If we do turn our attention directly to this topic, we find that the major nineteenth century figures are Herbert Spencer, John Hughlings Jackson, and George J. Romanes. In this brief paper I want to confine my attention to the development and influence of Spencer's concept of evolution. Unlike Darwin, Spencer was never much of an observer or indeed a reader, and his independent formulation of a theory of evolution developed from his speculations in social theory and psychology. The idea of evolution itself was not, of course, original. He was converted to a belief in the so-called "development hypothesis" by reading Charles Lyell, whose supposed refutation of Lamarck led Spencer to the opposite conclusion. Spencer also took part in the debates surrounding the anonymous Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844) and discussed this book with T. H. Huxley, who later said of the period 18511858, "...the only person known to me whose knowledge and capacity compelled respect, and who was, at the same time, a through-going evolutionist, was Mr. Herbert Spencer... Many and prolonged were the battles we fought on this topic. But even my friend's rare dialectic skill and copiousness of apt illustration could not drive me from my agnostic position."l What was original and interesting about Spencers theory was
1 FRANCIS DARWIN (Ed.), The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, 3rd ed. London, Murray, 1887, vol. II, p. 188.
three-fold: the traditions on which it drew, the areas in which he applied it, and the tenacity with which he clung to belief in the inheritance of acquired characteristics. I want to point out that the origins, applications and influences of Spencer's evolutionism were not only different from those of Darwin but that they were also more significant for the development of our conception of mind and brain.
Spencer's first serious intellectual endeavours were devoted to the study of phrenology, and it was from phrenology that he drew the conception of society as an organism in which interdependent, specialized structures serve diverse functions. Similarly, his concept of the adaptation of the faculties of men to their organic, psychological and social needs was based on a phrenological view of man. These ideas were used as the basis of his attempt to refute Utilitarian social and ethical theory in his first book, Social Statics (1851), and he later reflected that two passages in that work were "the earliest foreshadowing of the general doctrine of Evolution.~2 In the next two years his reflections on odd phrases encountered in his desultory reading led him to generalize his evolutionism from organic phenomena to embrace absolutely everything.3 He declared his advocacy of "The Development Hypothesis" in an article which appeared in 1852, and these ideas were then developed further until they became the universal formula which appeared in his First Principles (1862).4 Rather than pursue the development of this rather fruitless cosmic cliché, I want to turn to the application of evolution to psychology.5
The second tradition which played an important part in Spencer's thinking was the theory of the association of ideas. Associationism is the
2 DAVID DUNCAN, (Ed.): The Life and Letters of Herbert Spencer, London, Methuen, 1908, p. 541; Cf. HERBERT SPENCER, Social Statics Abridged and Revised; together with the Man versus the State, London, Williams & Norgate, 1892, pp. 120n & 266n.
3 The first phrase was from Henri Milne-Edwards: "the physiological division of labour" (D. DUNCAN, op. cit., p. 542; Cf. H. SPENCER, An Autobiography, London, Williams & Norgate, 1904, vol. II, p. 166). The second appeared in William Carpenter's exposition of a formula devised by Karl Ernst von Baer: "the development of every organism as a change from homogeneity to heterogeneity" (H. SPENCER, op. sit., 1904, vol. II, pp. 89, 166).
4 Spencer's essay on "The Development Hypothesis" is mentioned by Darwin in the "Historical Sketch" which he added to later editions of the Origins. Spencer fussed with his (basically vacuous) general formula until the galley stage of the sixth edition of First Principles, London, Williams & Norgate., 1900, p. 321.
5 I should like to note in passing that the influence of phrenology on the early evolutionists and Victorian psychologists merits careful study. Robert Chambers, Spencer, A. R. Wallace, and Alexander Bain all owed significant intellectual debts to phrenology. This influence helps one to understand, e.g., Wallaces aberrant views on the evolution of mind and brain.
only serious alternative to belief in innate ideas that has been proposed. It is based on two assumptions:
1 ) that complex mental phenomena are formed from simple sensations, and
2) that this occurs by means of habit or repetition.
Modern Associationism began as an afterthought in Locke's Essay and was developed by David Hartley into a comprehensive explanatory principle in psychology.6 By the nineteenth century it had become the reigning psychological theory. Its modern form is the theory of conditioning of stimulus-response psychology, and it also provides the associationist principle in psychoanalysis. Thus, Associationism remains the basic assumption of psychological theory.
In one sense, Spencer's psychology of evolutionary associationism was a simple synthesis of "use inheritance" and the law of association. As he put it, "The familiar doctrine of association here undergoes a great extension; for it is held that not only in the individual do ideas become connected when in experience the things producing them have repeatedly occurred together, but that such results of repeated occurrences accumulate in successions of individuals: the effects of associations are supposed to be transmitted as modifications of the nervous system."7 That is, Spencer's psychology extends the theory of association from the tabula rasa of the individual to that of the race. What was novel in Spencer's view of psychological evolution was the implication which he took it to have for the place of mind in nature. When he was making notes for The Principles of Psychology in 1853, he was struck by the importance of adaptation for mental as well as bodily life.8 "There at once followed the idea that the growth of a correspondence between inner and outer actions had to be traced up from the beginning; so as to show the way in which Mind gradually evolves out of Life. This was, I think, the thought which originated the book and gave it its most distinctive character;..."9 Thus, two ideas were at the heart of his psychology: first, the continuity of all mental phenomena extending from the first contractions of a sensitive polyp to the evolution of the forms
6 Book II, chapter XXXIII was added to the 4th edition of Locke's Essay. Cf. D. HARTLEY, Observations on Man, His Frame, His Duty and His Expectations, 2 vols., London, Leake & Frederick, 1749.
7 H. SPENCER, op. cit., 1904, vol. I, p. 470. The union of use inheritance with associationism was not, however, an entirely new idea. Erasmus Darwin had extended Hartley's theory to provide the basis for an evolutionary theory over half a century earlier.
8 H. SPENCER, op. cit., 1904, vol. II, p. 11.
9 D. DUNCAN, op. cit., p. 546.
of thought; 10 and second, the emphasis on progressive adaptation as "increasing adjustment of inner subjective relations to outer objective relations. . ."11 Mental phenomena are therefore defined as "incidents of the correspondence between the organism and its environment."12 It would be difficult to overestimate the significance of this view for later psychological work. As it was increasingly applied, psychology was progressively seen as a biological science, and mental phenomena be came one albeit the most highly evolved among the many functions of the organism which bring about adaptation to its physical and social environment. For the present, there is only time to note that it significantly influenced modern neurology, neurophysiology and psychoanalysis. Spencer's conception of the mind as an adaptive function was also a crucial influence on the development of the pragmatic philosophy and functional psychology of William James and John Dewey. James said that "few recent formulas have done more real service of a rough sort in psychology than the Spencerian one that the essence of mental life and of bodily life are one, namely, 'the adjustment of inner to outer relations"l3 Although he had grave reservations about Spencer's speculative bent, James praised him lavishly for insisting that "since mind and its environment have evolved together, they must be studied together."14
There is, unfortunately, a very serious flaw in this rosy picture: Spencer's life-long belief in the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Since the 1880s, the temptation to dismiss Spencer because of his advocacy of this erroneous mechanism has overwhelmed most biologists, psychologists, and historians.l5 As a scientific judgement this is unimpeachable, but it is not very enlightening for the historian, whose first duty is to understand the past. Spencer could point triumphantly to Darwin's own writings to show that he had allowed an increasing role for use-inheritance at the expense of natural selection, just as Spencer had granted a role for natural selection in the early stages of evolution. In the 1880s, Spen-
10 For a recent expression of a similar idea, although based on the mechanism of natural selection, see H. J. BARR, "The Epistemology of Causality from the Point of View of Evolutionary Biology", Philosophy of Science, 1964, 31, pp. 286288.
11 H. SPENCER, op. cit., 1904, vol. II, p. 11.
12 H. SPENCER, The Principles of Psychology, London, Longmans, 1855, p. 584.
13 W, JAMES, The Principles of Psychology, New York, Holt, 1890, vol. I, p. 6.
14 W. JAMES Memories and Studies, New York. Longmans, Green, 1924, pp. 139-140.
15 Spencers ethical theory has also suffered for this reason. See: E. ALBEE, A History of English Utilitarianism (1901). Reprinted: New York, Collier, 1962, Chs. 1315.
16 H. SPENCER, The factors of Organic Evolution, London, Williams & Norgate, 1887.
cer was right to argue that on the evidence then available, this was a matter of emphasis, and the relative weight to be attached to various factors was very much an open question.17 However, these mitigating circumstances cannot fully account for the immense weight which Spencer attached to the role of use inheritance. He argued, for example, that it was the chief factor in the evolution of civilised man.l8 Much more was at stake than a simple debate over a biological mechanism. He prefaced his analysis of The Factors of Organic Evolution by pointing out that while its direct bearings are biological, "it has indirect bearings upon Psychology, Ethics and Sociology. My belief in the profound importance of these indirect bearings, was originally a chief prompter to set forth the argument;... "19 He was convinced that the evolution of complex mental phenomena was inexplicable unless one resorted to belief in the inheritance of functionally-produced modifications. But, most important of all, he could not bear to believe that institutions and circumstances do not affect a nation en masse. 20 It was, therefore, Spencer's belief in rapid social progress which most strongly influenced the way he viewed the biological evidence. Lest we remember Spencer too unkindly, we should recall that there have been more recent examples of this view, based on similar convictions about the improvement of society, for example, the genetic theory of Lysenko and Michurin.21 I submit, therefore, that we should be sympathetic toward Spencer's so-called "Lamarckianism", on the grounds that Victorian meliorism was too powerful a presupposition for him to overcome. The idea of progress was at the heart of his life's work, and we should attend to the heuri-
17 ibid., p. 75. It should be recalled here that A. R. Wallace had also made exceptions of man's mind and brain and had attributed their evolution to factors other than natural selection. See: "The Limits of Natural Selection as Applied to Man" (1870); in.: A. R. WALLACE, Natural Selection and Tropical Nature, London, Macmillan, 1901, Ch. X.
18 H. SPENCER, op. cit., 1887, p. 74.
19 ibid., p. iii.
20 ibid., pp. iiiiv.
21 The social and political overtones of recent Soviet genetics provide an excellent analogy for the point being made about Spencer. A statement by the Praesidium of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences claimed in 1948 that Michurin's theory was the only acceptable one, "because it is based on dialectical materialism and on the revolutionary principle of changing Nature for the benefit of the people". (Quoted in: A. E. E. MCKENZIE, The Major Achievements of Science, Cambridge 1960, vol. II, p. 146). One might also point to the psychology of J. B. Watson and the conditioning theory of Pavlov and his followers for other examples of the heavy stress which has been laid on the potential benefits of environmental manipulation at the expense of the biological evidence.
stic value of the "indirect bearings" of his evolutionism at least as carefully as we do to his biological accuracy.
If we still want to fault Spencer's evolutionism, we can easily do so on a number of counts.22 Even so, the net effect of his influence leads one to reiterate the full text of Darwin's cryptic statement of the most important consequence of his theory. You will recall the sentence, "Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history." In the sixth edition the preceding sentences read as follows: "In the future I see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be securely based on the foundation already well laid by Mr. Herbert Spencer, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation."23
22 Examples: (1) Spencer's "universal principle" of the instability of the homogenous is contradicted by the laws of thermodynamics. (2) His theory of universal evolution was vagueness incarnate, and his deductive method and penchant for framing universal principles have been deservedly ridiculed. (3) Finally, his theory of psychological development by use-inheritance took too passive a view of adaptation. Psychological theorists from James and Dewey to Thorndike, Watson and Skinner drew heavily on Alexander Bain's conception of spontaneous activity as the first step in learning process. Thus learning occurs as a result of the sensations suffered as a consequence of initially random movements. It is not sensations passively suffered, but those which follow from trial and error, which teach us. The result is that natural selection is a more useful paradigm for modern learning theory than was Spencer's passive "adjustment of inner to outer."
23 M. PECKHAM, (Ed.), The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin, a Variorum
Presented to XIe Internatrional Congress of the History of Science, Warsaw, August 1965; published in Actes du XIe Congrès International d'Histoire des Sciences. Warsaw: Ossolineum, 1967, vol. 2, pp. 273-78.
Copyright: The Author
Address for correspondence: 26 Freegrove Road, London N7 9RQ.
The Human Nature Review © Ian Pitchford and Robert M. Young - Last updated: 28 May, 2005 02:29 PM
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Should developing nations be held to the same environmental standards as developed nations? How should the World Bank weigh environmental concerns in lending? And how much should citizens be allowed to participate in such decisions? Frances Seymour, director of the World Resources Institute's Institutions and Governance Program, joins OnPoint to discuss how aid agencies and international lenders can be more environmentally efficient, effective and fair.
Mary O'Driscoll: Welcome to OnPoint. I'm Mary O'Driscoll. Our guest today is Frances Seymour, director of the institutions and governance program at the World Resources Institute. Welcome to the show.
Frances Seymour: Thanks for having me.
Mary O'Driscoll: You've been critical of the World Bank for not making sustainable development a real integral part of its lending program. Why should the World Bank put environmental concerns on par with the economic development?
Frances Seymour: It's a great question and actually, at least at the rhetorical level, it's not controversial. The World Bank published a new environment strategy about four years ago that laid out the case very well, which is that poor people are, in fact, the first to suffer and suffer the most from environmental degradation. It's poor people who get sick from breathing dirty air and drinking dirty water. It's poor people whose livelihoods get disrupted when ecosystems like fisheries collapse and it's poor people who are most vulnerable to 'natural disasters' that, in fact, aren't natural. For example, the kinds of flooding and landslides that happen in major storm events and the kind of change that we can expect to see with climate change as it progresses. The Millenium Ecosystem Assessment that came out just in March further reaffirms that problem in that the ecosystems that we see being undermined around the world will disproportionately adversely affect poor people. So if the World Bank is not focused on environmental sustainability it's not meeting its mandate for property reduction.
Mary O'Driscoll: But haven't some of the criticisms been that focus on environmental sustainability can drive up costs and slowdown project planning?
Frances Seymour: That criticism has been articulated, but I personally don't think it's very well founded on the merits. Yes, sometimes doing due diligence in advance takes longer to do the necessary environmental analysis and to consult with the affected stakeholders, often the local communities, but others as well, to sort of determine is this project the best answer to the particular problem or are there better alternatives? That may take longer upfront, but often if you don't do that due diligence early in a project cycle the problems will be much greater later on and projects often get delayed when some of these projects surface later in the project cycle.
Mary O'Driscoll: OK. Outgoing World Bank President James Wolfenson returned to funding the big interest projects that he called "high risk high reward," how do you see that affecting the banks approach to environmentally sensitive development?
Frances Seymour: I think it's problematic, and it poses a real challenge and it seems that the bank, in order to increase its lending to the middle income countries, which is important for the banks financial viability, is increasingly willing to loosen up the framework of environmental and social safeguards that have been painfully constructed over the last two decades. So for example, the World Bank is now already experimenting with something called the country systems approach, in other words, relying more on the environmental and social safeguards frameworks of the countries, borrower countries rather than the banks. In principle this is a great idea and I think we all want to live in a world where all countries have the equivalent safeguard procedures at least so that affected societies and communities can demand the quality of environmental protection that they want. But I also think we have to admit that we don't live in that world yet and that the World Bank safeguards are in place for a reason. That in the past investment in the name of development caused some very negative social and environmental outcomes and it's probably premature to remove those safeguards that are currently in place.
Mary O'Driscoll: OK. Well why is the bank returning to those kinds of the high-risk projects? They've come under pretty heavy criticism from nongovernmental organizations such as yours. Why are they doing that?
Frances Seymour: Again, I think one of the reasons is a desire to facilitate higher lending volumes to the middle income countries, which of course borrow at a higher rate than the poorer countries and so there's a financial issue involved. I also think that, unfortunately, there's been a subtle but significant shift in the discourse away from the focus, say back in the '90s, which valued environmental and social safeguards and protection is a very important component of development. Now there seems to have been a change where environmentalism is equated with extremism and this argument that it causes unreasonably high costs and delays, which as I said, I don't believe is true, but to the extent that that point of view is reflected in some levels of the banks senior management and on the Board that has facilitated this shift.
Mary O'Driscoll: Yeah, OK. Do you have a read yet on how incoming bank President Paul Wolfowitz feels about this high-risk, high-reward strategy?
Frances Seymour: I don't. He doesn't have a track record on this particular set of issues. So we'll all have to wait and see.
Mary O'Driscoll: OK, interesting to watch. The World Bank recently oversaw a major study that identified climate change as a major risk for developing nations. Should the bank be including an emissions analysis in its development decisions?
Frances Seymour: Absolutely. Clearly, the bank has two roles with respect to the climate issue. One is to help borrower governments deal with the adaptation challenge because developing companies and the poor within developing countries are the most vulnerable to climate change. When you think about farmers in sub-Saharan Africa, who are already on the edge with rainfall patterns as they are, will be tipped over that edge if those rainfall patterns change. What the bank has shied away from doing is addressing more straightforwardly the question of reducing emissions or at least emissions trajectories. Nobody argues that developing countries should take a disproportionate responsibility for reducing emissions. We're all clear that the industrialized countries are responsible for this problem at a cumulative level and need to take the lead in reducing emissions in our countries. At the same time, it's also pretty clear from the science that unless all countries and the world community get together and reduce emissions collectively we're not going to meet any kind of target that is going to lead to a stable climate. I think the bank has been reluctant to directly engage emissions reductions in developing countries for fear of being perceived as going beyond what the climate convention requires and being perceived as imposing emissions reductions on developing countries that they are not required to undertake under the convention. My own view is that there are a lot of things that the bank could be doing or doing more of that would fall far short of crossing that line of inappropriate.
Mary O'Driscoll: Such as?
Frances Seymour: Well for example, as you mentioned, the bank can do a better job of working with client governments to look at more emissions friendly development trajectories, even at the sector level, you know, when you're thinking about how to design a power sector strategy or how do think about a whole transport sector. You know, think about environmental issues in general, which is not always the case, but also, specifically, emissions trajections because there is often a correlation between, for example, air pollution that has local health impacts, forget climate change, that can co-vary with ways to reduce climate emissions. At the project level, I think the bank can do more in helping borrowers to inventory and account for the emission trajectories of the proposed project on the table, but also, alternative ways of meeting that same development objective. So you could actually compare a particular way of providing energy services to the poor that's based on fossil fuels to a way of doing it through distributed renewable energy. In some cases it may turn out that the distributed renewable energy is actually cheaper than the fossil fuels because for people who are way off the grid extending the grid to them and perhaps importing fossil fuels from abroad to service that need may actually be a less desirable alternative than a distributed renewables approach. But even in those cases where it turns out that the low emissions alternative is more expensive than the fossil fuel based alternative it's still worthwhile to do that calculation of what the difference is because that tells us how much the international community needs to get together and pony up in concessional funding to an able developing country bank clients to choose a low emissions trajectory and it's in everybody's interest to do that. So I think it's reasonable to ask the World Bank to exercise some leadership here.
Mary O'Driscoll: OK. Could emissions analysis though wind up, at least in the short term, giving more people less access to reliable electricity? I mean if you're talking about the renewables and that kind of thing, I mean the conventional wisdom is, is that the fossil fuel plants that, you know, the technology is pretty far advanced on those compared with the renewable energy technologies that could, you know, more people have less access?
Frances Seymour: Great question, but the answer is not at all and just to be clear, what I'm proposing, in terms of doing the accounting analysis and doing the options assessment and seeing what incremental costs might be, in no way prejudges the outcome and in no way suggests that developing countries have to choose the lower emissions alternative. It may be that, for the reasons that you suggest, whether it's reliability of the technology, maybe in some cases that isn't the best choice, but I think the citizens of those societies need to have all those choices in front of them to be able to choose wisely and the international community needs to have those choices and the cost of them put before us in some clear way so that we know what the financing challenge is to make some of those options more feasible.
Mary O'Driscoll: OK. I'm wondering if the emission analysis would give hydropower an advantage, considering the opposition by NGOs to some of these large hydropower projects around the world.
Frances Seymour: That's a very controversial issue. Clearly, the concerns about hydropower range far beyond the connection to climate change and some of the biggest problems with the large dam projects in the past have included the displacement of affected communities and the inability to resettle families in a way that leaves them at least as well off, if not better, than beforehand, but the track record is not very good at the ability to do that. The world commission on dams, several years ago, did an exhaustive study of large dam building around the world and found a systematic bias of overestimating the benefits of large dams, whether from the point of view of electricity generation or hydrological control or other kinds of benefits that were promised at the time versus systematic under budgeting of costs, not only the bricks-and-mortar costs, but the costs imposed on local communities, the costs imposed on the environment. For example, it was the rare occasion that people thought to think about what would be the impact on downstream fisheries and all the fishermen that depended on those fisheries for their livelihoods. So I think the big dams controversy is much larger than the link to climate.
Mary O'Driscoll: OK. How do you see the emissions analysis as affecting the size and type of World Bank projects? I mean, are they likely to go much smaller then or can you have, or will there be room for larger hydro projects that might fit the environmental criteria in other ways?
Frances Seymour: That's a good question that would require some more analysis, overall, I suspect that there's current, there currently remains a bias towards some of the larger projects, for a lot of reasons external to the bank. I mean, often borrower governments also want the larger project and that some of the smaller projects have been systematically disadvantaged because of the real or inferred transaction costs. I mean, sort of bundling lots of small renewable energy investments in a disbursed area. It's just a lot harder to do than one big centralized power plant, from that sort of transaction costs point of view. So it would be reasonable to assume that maybe this would level the playing field a little bit more and make the smaller projects look relatively more attractive than they currently do once these projects are analyzed.
Mary O'Driscoll: OK. I want to switch gears for just a second, just a little bit. The author Sebastian Mallaby recently wrote a book about the World Bank and his book accuses the environmental groups of undermining the World Bank's ability to help the poor. He said, NGOs are too concerned with applying, what he called, the Volvo standard to countries that have almost no electricity or water infrastructure. Does he have a valid point? What do you think of his views?
Frances Seymour: First let me say it's a great book. I really enjoyed reading it and I think he gets a lot right in terms of the politics inside the World Bank and the political environment that the bank has to work in and some of the tensions that the institution has to manage. But the point that you raise is the one thing that I think he gets wrong and it's hard for me understand how he could extrapolate from the analysis of a few notorious cases to come to the conclusion that somehow international environmental NGOs pose a major threat to the world's poor, because if anything, based on my experience, the opposite is true. It is the international NGO community working with NGOs in the client countries that have provided a very needed amplification of the voices of affected communities who are often the ones who suffer the negative affects of environmental and other impacts of these large projects. And beyond that, even in some of the cases that he cites, it's been the scrutiny from international NGOs that has revealed other flaws in these projects beyond just the environmental aspect, that has led to bad decisions, you know, being pulled back on. So I really regret that he came to the conclusion that he did in part because, unfortunately, there's a confluence with that conclusion and the interests of certain people within bank's management and on the banks board who would like to water down environmental standards and shut out NGOs from development decision making for other reasons. It's just unfortunate that that's the conclusion that he has come to and promoted in his spin off articles and other speaking that he's done.
Mary O'Driscoll: OK. Well what about that question about the Volvo standard that he talks about, because it's essentially trying to gold plate these programs that maybe they should be doing things on a little more incremental basis. That, you know, maybe gold-plated standards in the developed world probably would apply because we can afford them and that kind of thing, but in these countries where they're just trying to really get out of their economic problems and trying to pull themselves up, that maybe it doesn't apply there. What do you think of that argument?
Frances Seymour: I think that argument might have some merit if we were talking about absolute environmental quality standards. Different societies might choose to tolerate different levels of environmental quality, but what we're actually talking about here are procedural standards, things like whether the appropriate stakeholders or affected communities have been consulted. You know, whether the appropriate analysis of environmental impacts have been done, whether the appropriate information has been shared with the appropriate parties. So it's procedural things which I think are universal. I think citizens, no matter what country they live in, ought to have access to information about the projects that are coming down the pike in their backyard, what the social and environmental impacts are going to be. You know, what steps are being taken to mitigate those social and environmental impacts and just sort of be able to have the discussion, for example, about some of those alternatives I was mentioning earlier in the energy sector and to know, OK, well, compared to what? Is this project a good idea compared to what other way we might generate national revenue, provide electricity services, provide hydrological regulation or whatever else it is, the development benefit that's promised.
Mary O'Driscoll: OK. Has this, has the criticisms in the book, has that affected the environmentalists ability to influence World Bank decisions?
Frances Seymour: I think it has precipitated a subtle change in the discourse and I think that's unfortunate.
Mary O'Driscoll: For worse?
Frances Seymour: Yes, for worse.
Mary O'Driscoll: For worse from your perspective.
Frances Seymour: That's right.
Mary O'Driscoll: Are you trying to overcome that now or what are you, how do you try to overcome that if the discourse has gotten worse?
Frances Seymour: Well, I think we need to stick to our principles and continue to do what we think is good analysis and continue to be in touch with our colleagues and public interest groups around the world and continue to put forth the positions we think that are the right ones and hope that our interlocutors in client governments within the World Bank, on the World Banks board are persuaded by the merits of the analysis.
Mary O'Driscoll: I wanted to get just quickly to the issue of the client government ownership that the World Bank confers on these countries. Has this affected the way that they've implemented any environmental safeguards?
Frances Seymour: Well, I think part of what's underlying this shift to the country systems approach, which is still in a very experimental stage. I think, again, in the discourse sometimes country ownership is kind of used as an excuse for not pushing harder on some of the safeguards that are there in place, but it's subtle and often it's hard to recognize from the outside, what's really going on in a particular case.
Mary O'Driscoll: Do you think the World Bank now is more or less open to criticism?
Frances Seymour: Well, it sort of depends on the timeline. Clearly, over the last 15 years there's been enormous changes and that's beyond dispute. And I want to hasten to say that there are a lot of great people working inside the World Bank, who get it and are working to promote the very agendas that I've been talking about now. The problem is, is that the few examples where the bank really is doing a great job working with client governments and others to promote environmental sustainability, it's singled out as best practice, but it's not average practice and there are a lot of overwhelming internal institutional incentives as well as external ones that keep it from being average practice and I think that any president of the World Bank is really going to have to focus attention on this using the sort of Jack Welch management of relentless and boring to just continually hold bank managers accountable for integrating environmental sustainability concerns into everything they do and being clear that this is a fundamental part of the banks antipoverty agenda and not something that can be put off in a paragraph at the end of every report.
Mary O'Driscoll: OK. Do you expect any of that to happen under Wolfowitz or how do you think Wolfowitz will handle these kinds of questions?
Frances Seymour: I'm hopeful that he will be open to this agenda. I worry about the environment that he's stepping into and some of the shift in the discourse that I mentioned earlier and this pressure to increase lending to the middle income countries, but I'm hopeful that he will come in with an open mind.
Mary O'Driscoll: Have you met with Wolfowitz yet? Have you had a chance --
Frances Seymour: Not yet.
Mary O'Driscoll: Not yet, are you hoping to soon?
Frances Seymour: Well, I think, everyone is looking forward to the opportunity.
Mary O'Driscoll: I'm sure, I'm sure. Well thank you so much for coming. I'd like to thank our guest Frances Seymour of WRI. I'm Mary O'Driscoll. We'll see you next time on another edition of OnPoint.
[End of Audio]
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Like all arenaviruses, Chapare virus has a rodent host as its reservoir. Humans can contract CHHF through contact with an infected rodent. Contact can be direct or through inhalation of aerosolized Chapare virus from the urine or feces of infected rodents.
Although arenaviruses have been isolated from insects, neither they nor any other intermediary host appear to spread CHHF.
Person-to-person transmission of arenaviruses through aerosolization, although possible, is rare. From the only observed cluster of cases of CHHF, there was no evidence of person-to-person transmission.
Transmission, if it can occur with CHHF, is most likely the result of direct contact with an infected person.
- Page last reviewed: June 18, 2013
- Page last updated: June 18, 2013
- Content source:
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CO and CO2 – What’s the difference?
It’s easy to understand why people confuse CO-carbon monoxide and CO2-carbon dioxide. The names sound the same, they both are colorless and odorless gases, and at high concentration, both can kill you.
The media doesn’t help. Back in the old days, movies taught us that you could commit suicide by sticking a garden hose in your car’s tailpipe and window, then gunning the motor till the CO put you to sleep. Today they tell us the car’s tailpipe is a major source of the greenhouse gas CO2.
It’s important that you understand the difference:
About Carbon Monoxide
- CO does not occur naturally in the atmosphere
- CO is the result of oxygen-starved combustion in improperly ventilated fuel-burning appliances such as oil and gas furnaces, gas water heaters, gas ovens, gas or kerosene space heaters, fire places and wood stoves
- CO is generated by any gasoline engine that DOES NOT use a catalytic converter
- It is the most common type of fatal poisoning in many countries
CO Recommended Levels
- OSHA limits long-term workplace exposure levels to 50ppm (parts per million)
- Symptoms of mild CO poisoning include headaches and dizziness at concentrations less than 100ppm
- Concentrations as low as 700ppm can be life-threatening
About Carbon Dioxide
- CO2 occurs naturally in the atmosphere, and is required for plant life
- CO2 is a natural byproduct of human and animal respiration, fermentation, chemical reactions, and combustion of fossil fuels and wood
- CO2 is generated by any gasoline engine that DOES use a catalytic converter
- CO2 poisoning is rare; however scuba divers have to watch out for it (the bends)
CO2 Recommended Levels
- 385ppm is the current average on the planet
- ASHRAE recommends a 1,000ppm limit for office buildings and classrooms
- OSHA limits long-term workplace exposure levels to 5,000ppm
- Drowsiness can occur at 10,000ppm – common in closed cars or auditoriums
- Symptoms of mild CO2 poisoning include headaches and dizziness at concentrations less than 30,000ppm (3%)
- At 80,000ppm (8%) CO2 can be life-threatening
Posted by CO2 Meter on August 27, 2009.
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Dakshinamurti Stotra, translated by Alladi Mahadeva Sastri, , at sacred-texts.com
To Him in the Effulgent Form Facing the South, whose light, which is Existence itself, shines forth entering the objects which are almost non-existent,—to Him incarnate in the Guru who instructs the disciples in the Vedic text "That thou art;"—to Him who being realized there will be no more return to the ocean of samsâra, to Him (Siva) be this bow!
1. How have existence and light come to be conjoined with all existing things?
[paragraph continues] Thus questioning on the analogy of mirror and reflection, the disciple is enlightened (by the third stanza of the Hymn).
It has been said above that being and light manifested in objects do not inhere in the objects themselves, and that they are the attributes of the perceiver. Then the following question arises: If they do not inhere in the objects perceived, how is it that they are perceived in connection with them? It cannot be that they are manifested in objects, either by way of being reflected in them as in a mirror, or by way of actually conjoining with them as fire conjoins with a mass of iron; for existence and consciousness which are formless in themselves are incapable of being reflected in the objects or of conjoining with them.
The meaning of the stanza may be explained as follows:
2. The existence and light in all phenomenal things, which are insentient, momentary and almost non-existent, proceed from the eternal Isvara and become conjoined with them.
3. These things have their being in the being of Atman, and no more; and so also, the light by which they shine is the light of Atman and no more.
The questioner's standpoint may be either that the phenomenal things exist quite apart from Atman like the mirror existing apart from the objects which are reflected in it; or that they exist independently of Atman and shine by a light of their own, so that they do not depend on Atman for their existence and light. In the first case the Teacher answers as follows: The phenomena have no separate existence; they are unreal because they are inert and momentary, like the illusory serpent,—where a rope is mistaken for a serpent. Atman alone exists and appears as the things which we perceive, like a rope appearing to be a serpent. When we speak of the existence and light of Atman as conjoining with the phenomenal things, we mean only that Atman puts on the appearance of these phenomenal things. If these things could exist separately and shine by themselves, then they would have appeared independently of Atman, like the mirror appearing independently of the objects reflected in it. The
phenomenal things having thus no separate existence from that of Atman, we cannot speak of the existence and light of Atman either as being actually reflected in them or as actually conjoining with them.
If the question had been asked from the second standpoint of view, it may be answered as follows:
4. The manifold cognitions and their objects also are fast bound to the Ego, as pearls are strung on a thread.
The existence of phenomena and the light by which they shine pertain to the Ego, the self-conscious Existence, and reach them through the antah-karana with which the Ego identifies himself.
The two standpoints from which the question has been answered in the two different cases differ only in this respect: in the first case the answer has been given from the standpoint of Absolute Reality, and in the second case, from the standpoint of things regarded as phenomenally real.
5. To every living being this universe appears as quite inseparate from the Light. Billows and bubbles have no existence apart from water.
Whatever depends on something else for its existence and manifestation is only an imaginary form of that other thing, like the billows and bubbles which are only imaginary forms of water. Accordingly the phenomenal things which depend for their existence and light on the self-conscious Atman are only imaginary forms of Atman. Atman alone exists, one without a second.
6. The very consciousness which, first entering into phenomenal things, expresses itself in the words 'I know,' then returns to rest in the Self within, expressing itself in the words 'It is known by me.'
It is true that the object of cognition is present in both the expressions of consciousness. In the first, however, the mere act of cognising the object is alone intended, while the second conveys the idea that that act is conceived to inhere in the Ego.
7. All products such as pots rest in (their causes) such as clay. (So) the universe, as one with the Light, must rest in the Supreme Lord.
An effect does not exist apart from its cause. A pot, for example, does not exist apart from clay, its material cause. Likewise, the universe whose material cause is Atman is one with Atman and has no independent existence. Atman alone really exists, the universe being a mere illusory appearance thereof.
While in vartika 6 it has been shown that the Light by which the phenomenal things shine is no other than the light of Atman, the vartika 7 shows that the things themselves have no existence independent of Atman's existence.
8. Just as the mirror is dimmed by a stain attaching to it, so knowledge is veiled by avidyâ, and thereby creatures are deluded.
All creatures are deluded alto the real nature of Atman by avidya which leads them to look upon as real all distinctions in the phenomenal world such as perceiver and objects perceived, cause and effect, and so on.
9. As the âkâsa within a jar is marked off from the infinite (Mahâ) âkâsa by the upâdhi of the jar, so is the distinction between Jîvâtman and Paramâtman caused by the upâdhi of the body.
Like akasa, Atman is indivisible. All distinctions ascribed to Atman are due to the distinctions pertaining to the bodies. It is hard to make out any real connection between Atman and the bodies, so that all limitations ascribed to Atman are false and imaginary.
10. By scriptural texts, such as "That thou art," their unity is indeed taught.
[paragraph continues] On saying, for instance, "He is this person," one man alone is referred to.
11. The world 'that' denotes the Principle which is the cause of the universe; while Jiva limited by the body, etc., is denoted by the word 'thou.'
The word 'that' denotes Isvara, the self-conscious Atman, regarded by the Individual Ego as external to himself, embodied in the universe as a whole which has been evolved out of ajnana, otherwise called Maya whose characteristic function consists in vikshepa, in projecting the Self in the form of the external universe. The word 'thou' refers to Jiva, the self-conscious personal Ego,, the same self-conscious Atman viewed in association with the physical and subtle—sthula and sukshma—bodies born of ajnana, otherwise called avidya, whose characteristic function consists in avarana, in veiling the true nature of the Self.
In the sentence "he is this (person),"
12. A person seen at a former time and place and under the then state, etc., is spoken of as 'he'; and the same person seen now and here is spoken of as 'this.'
13–14. Just as the sentence "He is this person" points to an identical man, while the specific circumstances referred to by 'he' and 'this' are lost sight of, so, losing sight of inwardness and outwardness, the passage "That thou art" points to the identity of Jivâtman and Paramâtman.
As absolute Consciousness they are identical.
15. Here the two words—'that' and 'thou '—bear to each other the relation of apposition (sâmânâdhi-karanya); and the things denoted by them are said to bear
an attributive relation (viseshana-viseshya-bhâva) to each other.
16. The sentence as a whole teaches identity, the words being understood in a secondary sense (lakshana).
When two words in a sentence are put in apposition to each other, we are to understand that the things denoted by them can be predicated of each other. But the Isvara and Jiva, primarily denoted by the words 'that' and 'thou,' are so opposed to each other that neither can be predicated of the other. The unity of Jive, and Isvara taught in the Sruti is possible only when from each of them are eliminated such of the attributes as are opposed to those of the other, i.e., when we discard the primary sense of the words and understand them in a secondary sense.
The secondary sense of a word may either include or exclude the primary sense; or it may even include one part of the primary sense and exclude the other part. In the sentence 'That thou art.'
16–17. The secondary sense is not altogether exclusive of the primary sense, unlike that in the expression "a village on the Ganges"; nor is it altogether inclusive of the primary sense, unlike that in the expression "A white (i.e., a white horse) runs."
17–18. The secondary sense of sentences like "That thou art" is partial,—partially inclusive and partially exclusive of the primary sense,—like that of the sentence "He is this person," and the like.
In the above, the word 'Ganges ' which primarily means the stream has to be understood in the sense of 'the bank of the Ganges,' so that the whole of the primary sense is excluded. The word 'white' which primarily means 'white colour' has to be understood in the sense of 'a white horse,' so that the whole of the primary sense is included in the secondary. On the other hand, 'that' and 'thou' cannot be understood in either of the two ways. The primary sense of the word cannot be wholly lost sight of, since, then, there will be left
nothing of which unity can be predicated. Neither can it be wholly included, inasmuch as the mutual opposition between Jiva and Isvara will render it impossible to predicate a unity of them. When we eliminate from the primary sense of each word all that is alien to sentiency, which is common to both Isvara and Jiva, consciousness alone will be left; and thus the sentence 'That thou art' teaches the identity of Jiva and Isvara as the one indivisible, colourless, Absolute Consciousness.
18–19. The relation of apposition here (in vârtika 15) spoken of consists in words of different origin referring all to one and the same thing.
1g-21. The sentence cannot mean that Jîva is either a part or a modification of the
[paragraph continues] Supreme, since, in the form of Jîva, He (Isvara) Himself has entered into the forms created by His own Mâyâ. By Sruti as well as reason we are given to understand that He is partless and changeless, just as âkâsa in the jar is neither a part nor a modification of the infinite âkâsa.
The course of reasoning here referred to may be explained as follows: If Isvara, the First Cause, the Author of the Universe, were Himself made up of parts, He would have been preceded by those parts of which He was made. He would fall under the category of effects, and, as such, cannot constitute the Omniscient and Omnipotent Creator of the whole universe. Moreover, as an effect made of parts, He would have had a Creator preceding Him, and that other Creator would have had another preceding Him, and so on.
21. It cannot indeed mean mere praise, as does the sentence "thou art Indra."
When he who is not Indra is addressed as such, it is nothing hut a mere praise. The passage "That thou art" does not mean mere praise, because it occurs in a section which, interpreted
according to recognised principles of construction, points to nothing but absolute unity of Isvara and Jiva, and leaves no room for the alleged interpretation.
22. The passage cannot point to mere similarity, as the sentences like "The disciple is fire."
Nor does it signify a relation of cause and effect as does the sentence, "A pot is (mere) clay."
"The disciple is fire" means that the disciple is as pure as fire itself, and thus points to a similarity between the disciple and fire as regards purity. Similarity consists in one thing possessing some parts or attributes in common with another. Isvara being devoid of parts and attributes, He cannot be spoken of as similar to Jiva.
As devoid of parts, Isvara cannot be spoken of as actually giving rise to effects according to any of the theories of creation.
23 The sentence does not point to
a relation as genus and individual, as does the sentence "This lame (animal) is a Cow."
The sentences does not refer to a relation of substance and attributes, as does the phrase "the blue lotus."
The genus being regarded as insentient in itself, the sentient Isvara cannot be a genus.
If Jiva be an attribute of Isvara, then the latter would be a samsarin, of limited knowledge and power, subject to happiness and misery; which is opposed to the Sruti declaring that He is omniscient, etc. If, on the other hand, Isvara be an attribute of Jiva, then the Jiva would not be a samsarin; and all teaching as to bondage and liberation would be of no purpose.
24. Nor does the sentence point to mere contemplative worship, like the contemplating of idols as God.
Nor does the sentence imply mere courtesy as when a king's servant is addressed as king (by courtesy.)
The sentence "That thou art," does not enjoin the contemplating of Jiva as Isvara or vice versa, because there is no word or particle in the passage warranting such an interpretation. On the other hand, the word 'art' occurring in the passage signifies, not a command in the imperative, but a law of nature, a matter of fact.
If it were only by courtesy that Jiva is spoken of as one with Isvara, then there would be no occasion to emphasise the statement as is done in the Upanishad (Vide Chhandogya-Upanishad, 6) by way of reiterating it in nine different sections treating of the subject from as many standpoints. A statement made for courtesy's sake cannot bear emphasis by reiteration.
The reason why the sentence can be interpreted in none of the foregoing alternative ways is stated as follows:
25. For, Isvara is declared in the Sruti to have Himself entered into the universe as Jiva.
Wherefore the sentence 'that thou art' signifies that the Ego, regarded as Jiva only when viewed in relation to an upadhi, is in fact identical with Brahman.
25–26. When Atman becomes blended with the aggregate composed of Deha (body), Indriyas (sense-organs), Manas (mind), Buddhi (intellect), Prâna (vitality), and Ahankâra (egoism), the aggregate itself is regarded by the ignorant as the Atman, just as a piece of wood or a metallic mass blending with fire is regarded as the fire itself.
Now, by way of distinguishing the essential nature from the accidental aspects of Jiva and Isvara, the Vartikakara proceeds to show that the teaching of Sruti as to their identity is founded on fact:
27. Entering the Annamaya-kosa, the
physical body, Atman becomes self-conscious as stout, youthful, lean, dark, as belonging to a distinct caste and a religious order.
28. And in the Prâna-kosa, in the vital body, He feels thus: I am alive, I feel hungry, and thirsty. In the Manomaya-kosa, in the body of thought, Atman feels: I doubt, I feel sure, I think.
29–30. Entering the Vijnânamaya-kosa, He dwells in the consciousness "I understand." And in the Ahankâra, the Ego, called Anandamaya-kosa, the body of bliss, in virtue of His former good deeds and ways of devotion He joys in the consciousness "I am happy."
30–31. Thus garmented with the five kosas (sheaths), with five coats as it were, the Paramesvara, the Supreme Lord, though all-pervading, appears as though He were limited by them.
31–32. As the sun, entering water, appear as many, so, entering the bodies, does Isvara appear as many.
32–33. To speak of them as the cause and the effect is to define them by their accidental attributes, like defining the moon as being on the branch of a tree. Never is this deemed an essential definition.
33–34. The essential definition of the moon consists in speaking of it as a great
luminary. So the essential definition of Isvara and Jîva consists in describing them as Sat-chit-ânanda, as Existence, Consciousness and Bliss.
34–35. Unity of the two beings as one in their essential nature is taught by the scriptural text "That thou art." Hence the truth that the One Light is the Self in all.
35–36. Devas, animals and men have no existence apart from the Light. As one with the Light, Jîva is designated the Sarvâtman, the Self in all.
36–37. When this conviction of being one with the Light is steadied, one attains
to Kaivalya, to the state of Liberation, from which there is no more return.
37–33. Even he, who by chance but once cherishes the notion that he is the Self in all, is freed from all sins, is adored in Siva-loka, adored as Siva Himself.
38–39. That Mahâtman, that mighty-souled Being whose contemplation of the one Self in all has been perfected, He is the very Deliverer (of all) from samsâra, He is the Supreme Lord Himself.
39–40. Thus ends the third chapter, in brief, of the work called Mânasollâsa which expounds the meaning of the Hymn to the Blessed Dakshinâmûrti.
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MAIN CONCEPTUAL DIFFERENCES FROM THE CPI
4 A living cost index reflects changes over time in the purchasing power of the after-tax incomes of households. It measures the impact of changes in prices on the out-of-pocket expenses incurred by households to gain access to a fixed basket of consumer goods and services. The Australian Consumer Price Index (CPI), on the other hand, is designed to measure price inflation for the household sector as a whole and is not the conceptually ideal measure for assessing the changes in the purchasing power of the disposable incomes of households.
5 There are a number of ways to construct a price index for households with at least three widely accepted approaches used by national statistical agencies:
6 From the September quarter 1998, the CPI has been constructed using the acquisitions method. The ALCIs have been constructed using the outlays approach.
7 The item coverage of a living cost index is determined by reference to the actual money outlays of households on all but investment items.
8 In practice, for most goods and services purchased by the reference population, outlays and acquisition occur within a relatively short space of time. There are three areas of expenditure in which these conceptual approaches provide significantly different results:
9 Under the acquisitions approach used in the CPI, the net purchase of housing and the increase in volume of housing due to renovations and extensions and other costs (e.g. maintenance costs and council rates) are included for owner-occupied housing. Changes in rental are measured for that part of the reference population that resides in rented dwellings. The CPI does not include interest paid on mortgages.
10 Under the outlays approach used in the ALCIs, the changes in the amount of interest paid on mortgages (measured as part of financial and insurance services) and other costs (e.g. maintenance costs and council rates) are included for owner-occupied housing. In addition, changes in rental are measured for that part of the reference population that resides in rented dwellings. The ALCIs do not include the net purchase of housing and the increase in volume of housing due to renovations or extensions.
11 Insurance (other than health insurance) is treated differently in the ALCIs. Under the acquisitions approach, the weight for insurance in the CPI relates to the value of the service provided by the insurance company. In simple terms, this represents the amount of premiums paid by households less the amounts reimbursed by way of claims. Under the outlays approach used in the ALCIs, the weight relates to the gross value of insurance premiums paid by households.
12 Financial services are treated differently in the ALCIs. Mortgage interest and consumer credit charges are included in the ALCIs. However other financial services (i.e. deposit and loan facilities (direct charges) and other financial services) are not included.
13 The ALCIs will continue to be published at the national level only.
14 Construction of the ALCIs was undertaken in three stages. Stage one was concerned with calculating weights representative of the expenditure patterns of the defined household types, derived mainly from the 2009-10 HES. Stage two involved identifying appropriate measures of price change for each of the expenditure weights. The third and final stage was to use the weights to aggregate or average the price change measures.
15 From the September quarter 2011, the expenditure weights for employee households, age pensioner households and other government transfer recipient households changed from using state/territory expenditures to capital city level expenditures, consistent with the approach used for the CPI. The 2009-10 HES included additional sampling of age pensioner and other government transfer recipient households. Analysis of the results of the 2009-10 HES showed that the expenditure weights at the capital city level were sufficiently reliable for all household types with the exception of self-funded retiree households, thus improving the alignment and scope of the price collection and expenditure estimates leading to improved overall estimates.
16 The expenditure weights for self-funded retiree households was retained at the state/territory level. ALCIs for all four population subgroups are published as totals for Australia only. The ALCIs weighting patterns from the September quarter 2011 is available in the downloads tab in Analytical Living Cost Indexes and Pensioner and Beneficiary Living Cost Index: 16th Series Weighting Patterns, 2011 (cat. no. 6472.0).
17 The measures of price change, with the exception of those for interest charges, were sourced from the CPI. Most item price indexes were constructed by direct reference to the equivalent CPI expenditure class indexes. Expenditure classes are the lowest level at which the expenditure weights are fixed for the duration of an index series.
18 Some item price indexes were constructed by reference to lower level CPI price data. Such exceptions relate to those items where it is known that different household types face different prices, such as subsidised public transport fares and pharmaceuticals for senior citizens.
19 Price measures for interest charges have been collected separately by the ABS on a basis comparable with those employed in the CPI prior to the September quarter 1998.
20 For ease of comparison, the index reference period for the CPI data used throughout this publication has been re-referenced to June quarter 1998 = 100.0. Index numbers and percentage changes are always rounded to one decimal place. The percentage changes are calculated from rounded index numbers. Index numbers for periods longer than a single quarter (e.g. for financial years) are calculated as the simple arithmetic average of the rounded quarterly index numbers. All index numbers and percentage changes shown are calculated on this basis. This may lead to some minor differences (due to rounding) from the figures published in Consumer Price Index, Australia (cat. no. 6401.0).
21 The ALCIs were constructed using four sets of weights. The first set of weights, based on the 1993-94 HES, was used to construct the indexes from the June quarter 1998 to the June quarter 2000. The second set of weights, based on the 1998-99 HES, was used to construct the indexes from the September quarter 2000 to the June quarter 2005. The third set of weights, based on the 2003-04 HES, was used to construct the indexes from the September quarter 2005 to the June quarter 2011. The fourth set of weights, based on the 2009-10 HES, was used to construct the indexes from the September quarter 2011 quarter onwards.
EXPENDITURE PATTERNS OF THE SELECTED HOUSEHOLD TYPES
22 Calculation of the aggregate impact of price changes on each of the household types involves weighting together the price movements recorded for individual goods and services. For each household type, the weight assigned to any particular good or service reflects the proportion of total household expenditure accounted for by expenditure on the item. The ALCIs weekly average household expenditure, weighting patterns and comparison with the previous weighting pattern by household type are available in the downloads tab in Analytical Living Cost Indexes and Pensioner and Beneficiary Living Cost Index: 16th Series Weighting Patterns, 2011 (cat. no. 6472.0).
23 Table 1 shows average weekly expenditure per household during 2009-10 for each of the four household types, at June quarter 2011 prices. The commodity groups correspond to the commodity groups in the current (16th series) CPI.
24 Table 1 illustrates significant differences in expenditures, both in total and at the individual commodity group level across the household types. Although differences in incomes are likely to be a major reason for this, other factors such as the demographic make-up of the households and dwelling tenure would also play a part. For example, age pensioner households have on average the lowest number of persons per household and self-funded retiree households have a higher than average rate of outright home ownership.
25 Table 2 presents the same data in percentage terms, along with the CPI for comparison purposes. It is this expenditure data that produces the expenditure shares or weights that are given to each household type, and to which the price movements are applied.
26 There are some notable differences in the expenditure weights across the household types. For example, the proportion of expenditure allocated to Food and non-alcoholic beverages is highest for age pensioner households. It is also relatively high for other government transfer recipient households. Employee households allocate a higher proportion of their expenditure to Transport, Education and Insurance and financial services (which includes interest charges) than the other household types. Other government transfer recipients allocate higher proportions of their expenditure to Housing, Alcohol and tobacco and Communication than the other household types. Self-funded retiree households have higher relative expenditure on Furnishings, household equipment and services, and Recreation and culture than the other household types. Health costs account for a significantly higher proportion of expenditure of age pensioner and self-funded retiree households than the other household types.
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Poet and biographer Epstein (What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, 2001, etc.) brings insight from both his specialties to bear on two defining figures of the Civil War era.
Whitman and Lincoln never met, although the two were evidently in the same room on several occasions as the president greeted visitors to the White House while Whitman watched from an unobtrusive distance. Yet Epstein argues that the two exerted a powerful influence on one another. Lincoln reportedly read Leaves of Grass before he began his political career, and the author finds traces of Whitman’s rhetoric in Lincoln’s speeches. In Whitman’s case, the influence has long been recognized. Several poems pay tribute to the fallen leader, and in his latter years Whitman lectured on his memories of Lincoln and on the president’s place in the nation’s history. In this dual biography, Epstein undertakes to suggest a closer connection. He does so largely by connecting the two men’s lives in Washington during the war years, when Whitman served as a volunteer nurse to wounded Union and Confederate soldiers, supporting himself with clerical jobs for various governmental agencies. The heart of the book concerns Whitman’s nursing of the wounded soldiers, for whom he felt a strong empathy. (One of them became, for a time, his lover.) His volume of war poetry, Drum Taps, grew out of his direct experience of the conflict’s human cost. Whitman frequently observed Lincoln traveling around the district and was part of the crowd for several official appearances, including the Second Inaugural Address. Whether the shaggy bohemian poet made any impression on the busy president is anyone’s guess; Epstein understandably speculates, but generally manages not to overstate his case. He is at his best in his sensitive readings of Whitman’s poems about Lincoln, especially the elegy “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.”
Powerful and evocative.
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Their Eyes Were Watching God Gender Quotes
How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
"Womenfolks is easy taken advantage of. You know what tuh let none uh dese stray niggers dat’s settin’ round heah git de inside track on yuh. They’s jes lak uh pack uh hawgs, when dey see uh full trough. What yuh needs is uh man dat yuh done lived uhround and know all about tuh sort of manage yo’ things fuh yuh and generally do round." (9.13)
Ike Green tries to feed Janie the idea that women cannot function on their own, without a man. However, readers recognize that Ike is one of the "hawgs" that he is so quick to condemn. Janie isn’t as dumb and easily duped as Ike thinks, either. She recognizes Ike’s tactics and calls him a "pee-de-bed."
He [Tea Cake] set it [the checkers] up and began to show her and she found herself glowing inside. Somebody wanted her to play. Somebody thought it natural for her to play. That was even nice. She looked him over and got little thrills from one of his good points. Those full, lazy eyes with the lashes curling sharply away like drawn scimitars. Then lean, over-padded shoulders and narrow waist. Even nice! (10.25)
Because Tea Cake treats men and women relatively equally—thinking they both have the right and intelligence to play the same games—Janie finds herself attracted to him. His unconventional thinking makes him even more attractive to Janie, who finds herself admiring his physical assets.
"Yuh can’t beat uh woman. Dey jes won’t stand fuh it. But Ah’ll come teach yuh agin. You gointuh be uh good player too, after while."
"You reckon so? Jody useter tell me Ah never would learn. It wuz too heavy fuh mah brains."
"Folks is playin’ it wide sense and folks is playin’ it without. But you got good meat on yo’ head. You’ll learn." (10.34-36)
Tea Cake differentiates himself from Joe by assuring Janie that women are just as smart as men and have just as much potential to better themselves. Tea Cake’s sense of gender equality is unprecedented and Janie basks in his praise.
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The space near black holes is one of the most extreme environments in the Universe. The bodies' strong gravity and rotation combine to create rapidly spinning disks of matter that can emit huge amounts of light at very high energies. However, the exact mechanism by which this light is produced is uncertain, largely because high-resolution observations of black holes are hard to do. Despite their outsized influence, black holes are physically small: even a black hole a billion times the mass of the Sun occupies less volume than the Solar System.
A new X-ray observation of the region surrounding the supermassive black hole in the Great Barred Spiral Galaxy may have answered one of the big questions. G. Risaliti and colleagues found the distinct signature of X-rays reflecting off gas orbiting the black hole at nearly the speed of light. The detailed information the astronomers gleaned allowed them to rule out some explanations for the bright X-ray emission, bringing us closer to an understanding of the extreme environment near these gravitational engines.
Despite the stereotype of black holes "sucking" matter in, they attract it via gravity. That means stars, gas, and other things can fall into orbits around black holes, which may be stable for long periods of time. Gas often forms accretion disks and jets that release huge amounts of energy in the form of light. This energy can include X-ray emissions. So despite their name, black holes can be very luminous objects.
Nearer the boundary of a rotating black hole—its event horizon—the strength of gravity is such that the space matter occupies can be also dragged around the black hole. This effect is called "frame dragging," and is predicted by Einstein's general theory of relativity. The region in which frame dragging becomes significant, however, is very close to the black hole's event horizon, which is relatively small, especially when imaged from Earth. As a result, astronomers could not be sure whether ordinary orbital effects or relativistic frame-dragging is more important for producing the intense X-ray emissions.
Astronomers paid particularly close attention to the supermassive black hole at the center of the Great Barred Spiral Galaxy (also known by its catalog number NGC 1365) when a cloud of gas momentarily eclipsed it. That rare event allowed them to get a good size estimate for the accretion disk that surrounds the black hole. The current study followed up by monitoring fluctuations in the X-ray emissions, using the orbiting XMM-Newton and NuSTAR X-ray telescopes.
In particular, the researchers looked at emission from neutral and partly ionized iron atoms in the gas. Prior observations showed that the emission lines were broadened, which can be caused by several different phenomena. Researchers considered two primary hypotheses: absorption by other gas along the line of sight between the black hole and us, or very fast motion of the gas itself.
The new data strongly supported the latter option. In this scheme, the observed X-ray light reflected off the inner edge of the accretion disk, where the gas is moving at very close to the speed of light. According to the models, this scattering occured well within the frame-dragging region near the black hole. The inner edge of the accretion disk may be close to or at the minimum stable distance from the black hole. Closer than that distance, and matter can no longer orbit in a circular path—it will tend to spiral in.
The authors argued that any explanation of the X-ray emission that fails to account for the general-relativistic effects just won't work. Previous observations estimated that the black hole in the Great Barred Spiral Galaxy is spinning nearly as fast as possible; whether other black holes will have similar properties remains an open question.
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Transition: School to Work
A successful transition for individuals with learning disabilities from school to school, college, or work often requires collaboration. Students play an important role in planning their transition, and should be included throughout the process. Read more about how to engage in successful transition planning.
There are 27 articles in this section.
Sort by: | Date | Title |
This article addresses the rationale for the transition planning process as it applies to the education of students with learning disabilities, specifically the progression from secondary to postsecondary education.
Do you want to take the GED Test? This article, by the General Educational Development Testing Service (GEDTS), tells you how to get the accommodations you need. Detailed information is provided on how to fill out the forms that document your needs.
What happens after assistive technology is considered in an IEP? The National Assistive Technology Research Institute (NATRI) surveyed educators around the nation to find out. Learn from their “top ten” list of findings on the use and support of AT.
In telling other people about your disability, you should anticipate misunderstandings and have information ready that will correct these misconceptions. This article gives tips about how to disclose successfully in the workplace and in other settings.
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They all look the same, dress the same way, use the same facial expressions and body language but each will tell you he's 'doing his own thing'
When we meet others for the first time, we need to assess quickly whether they are positive or negative towards us, just as most other animals do for survival reasons. We do this by scanning the other person's body to see if they will move or gesture the same way we do in what is known as 'mirroring'. We mirror each other's body language as a way of bonding, being accepted and creating rapport, but we are usually oblivious to the fact that we are doing it. In ancient times, mirroring was also a social device which helped our ancestors fit in successfully with larger groups; it is also a left-over from a primitive method of learning which involved imitation.
One of the most noticeable forms of mirroring is yawning - one person starts and it sets everyone off. Dr. Robert Provine found that yawning is so contagious you don't even need to see another person yawn - the sight of a wide-open mouth is enough to do it. It was once thought that the purpose of yawning was to oxygenate the body but we now know that it's a form of mirroring that serves to create rapport with others and to avoid aggression - just as it also does for monkeys and chimps.
Wearing the same outfit as another woman is a mirroring no-no. But if two men show up at a party wearing the same outfit, they could become lifelong friends.
Non-verbally, mirroring says 'Look at me; I'm the same as you. I feel the same way and share the same attitudes.' This is why people at a rock concert will all jump to their feet and applaud simultaneously or give a 'Mexican Wave' together. The synchronicity of the crowd promotes a secure feeling in the participants. Similarly, people in an angry mob will mirror aggressive attitudes and this explains why many usually calm people can lose their cool in this situation.
The urge to mirror is also the basis on which a queue works. In a queue, people willingly co-operate with people they have never met and will never see again, obeying an unwritten set of behavioral rules while waiting for a bus, at an art gallery, in a bank or side by side in war. Professor Joseph Heinrich from the University of Michigan found that the urges to mirror others are hardwired into the brain because co-operation leads to more food, better health and economic growth for communities. It also offers an explanation as to why societies that are highly disciplined in mirroring, such as the British, Germans and ancient Romans successfully dominated the world for many years.
Mirroring the other person's body language and appearance shows a united front and doesn't let either get one-up on the other
Mirroring makes others feel 'at ease'. It's such a powerful rapport-building tool that slow-motion video research reveals that it even extends to simultaneous blinking, nostril-flaring, eyebrow-raising and even pupil dilation, which is remarkable as these micro-gestures cannot be consciously imitated.
Studies into synchronous body language behavior show that people who feel similar emotions, or are on the same wavelength and are likely to be experiencing a rapport, will also begin to match each other's body language and expressions. Being 'in sync' to bond with another person begins early in the womb when our body functions and heartbeat match the rhythm of our mother, so mirroring is a state to which we are naturally inclined.
When a couple are in the early stages of courtship it's common to see them behave with synchronous movements, almost as if they are dancing. For example, when a woman takes a mouthful of food the man wipes the corner of his mouth; or he begins a sentence and she finishes it for him. When she gets PMT, he develops a strong desire for chocolate; and when she feels bloated, he farts.
When a person says 'the vibes are right' or that they 'feel right' around another person, they are unknowingly referring to mirroring and synchronous behavior. For example, at a restaurant, one person can be reluctant to eat or drink alone for fear of being out of sync with the others. When it comes to ordering the meal, each may check with the others before ordering. 'What are you having?' they ask as they try to mirror their meals. This is one of the reasons why playing background music during a date is so effective - the music gets a couple to beat and tap in time together.
This couple on a picnic are acutely tuned into the flow of one another as evidenced by their body language mimicry.
American heart surgeon, Dr Memhet Oz, reported some remarkable findings from heart recipients. He found that, as with most other body organs, the heart appears to retain cellular memories, and this allows some patients to experience some of the emotions experienced by the heart donor. Even more remarkably, he found some recipients also assume the same gestures and posture of the donor even though they have never seen the donor. His conclusion was that it appears that the heart cells instruct the recipient's brains to take on the donor's body language. Conversely, people suffering from disorders such as autism have no ability to mirror or match the behavior of others, which makes it difficult for two-way communication with others. The same goes for drunk people whose gestures are out of sync with their words, making it impossible for any mirroring to occur.
Because of the phenomenon of cause and effect, if you intentionally assume certain body language positions you will begin to experience the emotions associated with those gestures. For example, if you feel confident, you may unconsciously assume the Steeple gesture to reflect your confidence, but if you intentionally Steeple you will not only begin to feel more confident, others will perceive that you're confident. This, then, becomes a powerful way to create a rapport with others by intentionally matching their body language and posture.
Geoffrey Beattie, at the University of Manchester, found that a woman is instinctively four times more likely to mirror another woman than a man is to mirror another man. He also found that women mirror men's body language too, but men are reluctant to mirror a woman's gestures or posture - unless he is in courtship mode.
When a woman says she can 'see' that someone doesn't agree with the group opinion she is actually 'seeing' the disagreement. She's picked up that someone's body language is out of sync with group opinion and they are showing their disagreement by not mirroring the group's body language. How women can 'see' disagreement, anger, lying or feeling hurt has always been a source of amazement to most men. It's because most men's brains are simply not well equipped to read the fine detail of others' body language and don't consciously notice mirroring discrepancies.
Men and women's brains are programmed differently to express emotions through facial expressions and body language. Typically, a woman can use an average of six main facial expressions in a ten-second listening period to reflect and then feed back the speaker's emotions. Her face will mirror the emotions being expressed by the speaker. To someone watching, it can look as if the events being discussed are happening to both women.
A woman reads the meaning of what is being said through the speaker's voice tone and his emotional condition through his body language. This is exactly what a man needs to do to capture a woman's attention and to keep her interested and listening. Most men are daunted by the prospect of using facial feedback while listening, but it pays big dividends for the man who becomes good at it.
Some men say 'She'll think I'm effeminate!', but research with these techniques shows that when a man mirrors a woman's facial expressions as she talks she will describe him as caring, intelligent, interesting and attractive.
Men, on the other hand, can make fewer than a third of the facial expressions a woman can make. Men usually hold expressionless faces, especially in public, because of the evolutionary need to withhold emotion to stave off possible attack from strangers and to appear to be in control of their emotions. This is why most men look as if they are statues when they listen.
The emotionless mask that men wear while listening allows them to feel in control of the situation, but does not mean men don't experience emotions. Brain scans reveal that men can feel emotion as strongly as women, but avoid showing it publicly.
The key to mirroring a man's behavior is in understanding that he doesn't use his face to signal his attitudes - he uses his body. Most women find it difficult to mirror an expressionless man but with males this is not required. If you're a woman, it means that you need to reduce your facial expressions so that you don't come across as overwhelming or intimidating. Most importantly, don't mirror what you think he might be feeling. That can be disastrous if you've got it wrong and you may be described as 'dizzy' or 'scatterbrained'. Women in business who listen with a more serious face are described by men as more intelligent, astute and sensible.
When two people live together for a long time and have a good working relationship, they often begin to look alike. This is because they are constantly mirroring each other's facial expressions, which, over time, builds muscle definition in the same areas of the face. Even couples who don't look facially similar can appear similar in a photograph because they use the same smile.
If actor Mario Lopez and wife Courtney Mazza stay married for a number of years will they further change to resemble each other even more as many couples do? ...
Musician / performer Sting and his wife Trudie Styler seeming to have developed a facial resemblance to one another over the course of time
In 2000, psychologist Dr John Gottman of the University of Washington, Seattle, and his colleagues, discovered that marriages are more likely to fail when one partner not only does not mirror the other's expressions of happiness, but instead shows expressions of contempt. Instead, this opposite behavior affects the smiling partner, even when they are not consciously aware of what is happening.
You can also see mirroring occur in the pets some people choose. Without realizing it, we unconsciously tend to favor pets that physically resemble us, or that appear to reflect our attitudes. To demonstrate the point, here are a couple of examples:
Do we choose pets that resemble us?
Be careful however not to extrapolate the metaphor too far and presume that our model of body language and social interpretation applies to a dog's body language.
The next time you attend a social function or go to a place where people meet and interact, notice the number of people who have taken the identical gestures and posture of the person with whom they're talking. Mirroring is the way one person tells another that he is in agreement with his ideas and attitudes. One is non-verbally saying to the other, 'As you can see, I think the same as you.' The person with the highest status often makes the first moves and the others copy, usually in pecking order.
In the image above it is apparent by virtue of the facial expressions and other body language that there is a good rapport between the US President's wife Michelle Obama, of informally superior status, and a university president. If Michelle changes her body posture, one might expect there is a reasonably good chance the gentleman will unconsciously emulate her posture, indirectly demonstrating they are of the same mind.
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard demonstrates her mutual respect of Barack Obama through playful mirroring.
Mirroring happens among friends or between people of the same status and it is common to see married couples walk, stand, sit and move in identical ways. Albert Scheflen found that people who are strangers studiously avoid holding mirror positions.
Intonation, voice inflection, speed of speaking and even accents also synchronize during the mirroring process to further establish mutual attitudes and build rapport. This is known as 'pacing' and it can almost seem as if the two people are singing in tune. You will often see a speaker beating time with his hands while the listener matches the rhythm with head nods. As a relationship grows over time, the mirroring of the main body language positions becomes less as each person begins to anticipate the other's attitudes, and vocal pacing with the other person becomes a main medium for maintaining rapport.
Never speak at a faster rate than the other person. Studies reveal that others describe feeling 'pressured' when someone speaks more quickly than they do. A person's speed of speech shows the rate at which their brain can consciously analyze information. Speak at the same rate or slightly slower than the other person and mirror their inflection and intonation. Pacing is critical when attempting to make appointments by telephone because voice is your only communication medium.
The significance of mirroring is one of the most important body language lessons you can learn because it's a clear way in which others tell us that they agree with us or like us. It is also a way for us to tell others that we like them, by simply mirroring their body language.
If a boss wants to develop a rapport and create a relaxed atmosphere with a nervous employee, he could copy the employee's posture to achieve this end. Similarly, an up-and-coming employee may be seen copying his boss's gestures in an attempt to show agreement when the boss is giving his opinion. Using this knowledge, it is possible to influence others by mirroring their positive gestures and posture. This has the effect of putting the other person in a receptive and relaxed frame of mind, because he can 'see' that you understand his point of view.
Mirroring the other person's body language to gain acceptance
Before you mirror someone's body language, however, you must take into consideration your relationship with that person. Let's say, for example, a corporate employee has asked for a pay rise and is called into his manager's office. The employee enters the office, the manager asks him to sit down and assumes the Catapult with a Figure-Four showing the employee a superior, dominant attitude. But what would happen if the subordinate then instinctively copied the manager's dominant body language while discussing the potential salary increase?
A boss might perceive a subordinate's mirroring behavior as being pushy or impertinent
Even if the employee's manner of speaking and phrasing was typical of a subordinate, the manager could feel affronted by the employee's body language, placing the employee's pay increase request in doubt and perhaps posing a threat to his future promotability. Mirroring is also effective for intimidating or disarming people who deem themselves 'superior' and try to take control of situations. Accountants, lawyers and managers are notorious for using superiority body language clusters around people they consider inferior. By mirroring, you can disconcert them and force a change of position. But never do it to the boss.
They have the same posture and the body language shows they are friends going about business in the same way with similar goals.
Through mirrored multi-tasking, these business associates are taking their minds off what can seem an awkward encroachment on their personal zones.
Research shows that when the leader of a group assumes certain gestures and positions, subordinates will copy, usually in pecking order. Leaders also tend to be the first of a group to walk through a doorway and they like to sit on the end of a sofa, table or bench seat rather than in the center. When a group of executives walks into a room, the person with the highest status usually goes first. When executives are seated in the boardroom, the boss usually sits at the head of the table, often furthest from the door. If the boss sits in the Catapult, his subordinates are likely to copy in order of their importance within the group You can see this in a meeting where people 'take sides' with others by mirroring their body language. This lets you see who will vote with you and who will vote against you.
Mirroring is a good strategy to use if you are part of a presentation team. Decide, in advance, that when the team spokesperson makes a gesture or takes a posture when speaking, the entire team will mirror. This not only gives your team the powerful appearance of being cohesive, it can frighten the hell out of competitors who suspect something is up, even though they can't quite figure out what it is.
Prince William and Kate Middleton demonstrate they are emotionally and behaviorally synchronized
When presenting ideas, products and services to couples, watching who mirrors whom reveals where the ultimate power or final decision-making ability lies. If the woman makes the initial movements, however small, such as crossing her feet, lacing her fingers or using a Critical Evaluation cluster and the man copies, there is little point in asking him for a decision - he doesn't have the authority to make it.
When we rub both of our eyes simultaneously, it is as if we are telling our psyches, "I wish I never saw that", or "I can't believe he did that". We are trying to wipe it from our minds. People will also display this body language tell when recalling a past event in the "mind's eye".
It happens on fall season Sundays in American football stadiums around the country. Suddenly, 50,000 individuals became a single unit, almost a single mind, focused intently on what was happening on the field - that particular touchdown grab or dive into the end zone. Somehow, virtually simultaneously, each of those 50,000 people tuned into what the other 49,999 were looking at.
Becoming part of a crowd can be exhilarating or terrifying: The same mechanisms that make people fans can just as easily make them fanatics. And throughout human history we have constructed institutions that provide that dangerous, enthralling thrill. The Coliseum-like stadiums that host American football games or soccer games throughout the world are, after all, just modern knockoffs of the massive theater that housed Roman crowds cheering their favorite gladiators 2,000 years ago.
In fact, recent studies suggest that our sensitivity to crowds is built into our perceptual system and operates in a remarkably swift and automatic way. In a 2012 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, A.C. Gallup, then at Princeton University, and colleagues looked at the crowds that gather in shopping centers and train stations.
In one study, a few ringers simply joined the crowd and stared up at a spot in the sky for 60 seconds. Then the researchers recorded and analyzed the movements of the people around them. The scientists found that within seconds hundreds of people coordinated their attention in a highly systematic way. People consistently stopped to look toward exactly the same spot as the ringers.
The number of ringers ranged from one to 15. People turn out to be very sensitive to how many other people are looking at something, as well as to where they look. Individuals were much more likely to follow the gaze of several people than just a few, so there was a cascade of looking as more people joined in.
In a study in Psychological Science, Timothy Sweeny at the University of Denver and David Whitney at the University of California, Berkeley, looked at the mechanisms that let us follow a crowd in this way. They showed people a set of four faces, each looking in a slightly different direction. Then the researchers asked people to indicate where the whole group was looking (the observers had to swivel the eyes on a face on a computer screen to match the direction of the group).
We follow a crowd via perceptual mechanisms that are quick almost beyond belief.
Because we combine head and eye direction in calculating a gaze, the participants couldn't tell where each face was looking by tracking either the eyes or the head alone; they had to combine the two. The subjects saw the faces for less than a quarter of a second. That's much too short a time to look at each face individually, one by one.
It sounds impossibly hard. If you try the experiment, you can barely be sure of what you saw at all. But in fact, people were amazingly accurate. Somehow, in that split-second, they put all the faces together and worked out the average direction where the whole group was looking.
In other studies, Dr. Whitney has shown that people can swiftly calculate how happy or sad a crowd is in much the same way.
Other social animals have dedicated brain mechanisms for coordinating their action - that's what's behind the graceful rhythms of a flock of birds or a school of fish.
Mirroring someone's body language makes them feel accepted and creates a bond and is a phenomenon that occurs naturally between friends and people of equal status. Conversely, we make a point of not mirroring those we don't like or strangers, such as those riding with us in a lift or standing in the queue at the cinema.
Mirroring the other person's body language and speech patterns is one of the most powerful ways to build rapport quickly. In a new meeting with someone, mirror his seating position, posture, body angle, gestures, expressions and tone of voice. Before long, they'll start to feel that there's something about you they like - they'll describe you as 'easy to be with'. This is because they see themselves reflected in you. A word of Warning, however: don't do it too early in a new encounter as many people have become aware of mirroring strategies. When someone takes a position you have one of three choices - ignore it, do something else or mirror it. Mirroring pays big dividends. But never mirror a person's negative signals.
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4,440 acres (6.9 square miles)
The proposed Hoosier Ridge Wilderness sits on the north side of the Continental Divide, between the upper Blue River and Pennsylvania Creek. Red Mountain (13,229 feet), a huge rounded arm of the divide, occupies the center of the area. Most of the proposed area consists of high peaks and supports extensive alpine meadows and rugged screefields. Engelmann spruce and subalpine fir trees are scattered in the high basins, with lodgepole pines dominating the lower drainages. The elevation is 10,100 feet at the bottom of Pennsylvania Creek, and rises to 13,352 feet on the crest of Hoosier Ridge.
What’s special about it
Forest linkagae: This proposed Wilderness Area provides a roadless link between the White River and Pike-San Isabel National Forests, as well as a rugged, high corridor from the area where the Mosquito, Tenmile, and Gore Ranges converge to the Mount Evans Wilderness.
Naturalness: This proposed Area, “untrammeled by man,” is surrounded by areas that were heavily mined in the past. Excellent hiking and camping may be had here.
Ecology: The Hoosier Ridge Research Natural Area straddles the Continental Divide in this proposal area, and is considered a prime example of a native alpine ecosystem. Its vast alpine grasslands and subalpine forest provide habitat for ten rare plant species, as well as boreal toads, and also contains great habitat for very rare wolverine. This is also critical habitat for the Canada lynx, a species listed by the USFWS as Threatened nationwide and by the CDOW as Endangered within Colorado.
Illegal motorized incursion into the roadless area from adjacent private land threatens to significantly devalue the habitat of the area.
Division of Wildlife habitat qualities, species of significance
The IRA is located within overall range, summer and concentration area, and migration area for elk. This area is also overall range and summer range for mountain goat.
The boundaries for this proposal have been adjusted to allow for continued operation of essential municipal water supply facilities and to allow for their possible expansion. Also, as the result of extensive conversations with Summit County local officials, firefighting agencies, and the U.S. Forest Service, this proposal reflects boundary changes that ensure effective management of forest fuel loads, wildfire fighting, and community safety.
The proposed Hoosier Ridge Wilderness Area is contiguous with a Roadless Area of the same name across the Continental Divide on the Pike-San Isabel National Forest. Together, they form a single roadless area of 11,157 acres (17.4 square miles).
How to get there
The proposed Hoosier Ridge Wilderness Area is located 4 miles south of Breckenridge. Approach from State Highway (SH) 9. There are no maintained trails in this area.
- For the best overview of the area, take SH 9 to Hoosier Pass and hike NE along Hoosier Ridge past a cellular telephone relay station.
- One mile south of Blue River, the Fredonia Gulch Road (FS 600) penetrates the area and climbs to an old mine NW of Red Mountain.
- From Blue River, the Pennsylvania Creek Road (FS 611) skirts the northern boundary of the unit and passes a couple of campsites. When this road fades out near treeline, continue on foot into beautiful Horseshoe Basin on the east side of Red Mountain.
- Access to Hoosier Ridge on the eastern boundary of the unit can also be gained from the Indiana Creek Road (FS 593).
- The USGS 7 1⁄2' quads for the proposed Hoosier Ridge Wilderness Area are Breckenridge, Alma, and Boreas Pass.
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Where would we be without our gut bugs? These bacteria help us do everything from digesting food to recovering from disease, but scientists are still learning exactly what gut bugs do, and even how to study them.
In the latest report from this inner frontier of science, Lawrence David, formerly a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and his adviser, Eric Alm, tracked their own bodily functions—which largely meant studying their poop and pee—to see what might alter the colonies of bacteria that live in their guts. (Related: "Why Has This Really Common Virus Only Just Been Discovered?")
They used cutting-edge DNA analysis and also perhaps the oldest health metric ever used by humans, studying their own feces. The results of their 2009-2010 adventure are published Thursday in the journal Genome Biology.
National Geographic talked to David, now an assistant professor at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, about the experience and what he learned.
For the most part, were gut bugs pretty stable across time?
The most abundant species you would see for days, weeks, months. We couldn't find very many lifestyle variables that would cause a new species to show up or disappear.
You write in the study that the biggest change you saw was from an accidental food poisoning.
In about a week, about half the [bacterial] species that had been very abundant became much, much, much less abundant. Many of them dropped to at or below our detection limit.
You also saw some quick changes in gut bugs from eating fiber. Were you intentionally eating fiber to see what would happen?
The subjects were instructed not to alter their diets. The power of our study was that we weren't telling people, "You have to eat fiber bars for this one week and then we're going to analyze it." We said, "Just live your life the way you normally would and we'll see what we can learn."
Wait a minute. You refer to the people in your study as "the subjects," but weren't they really you and your adviser, Eric Alm?
As scientists, we were trying to be as impartial as possible in how we analyze our data and interpret it. In many ways it was a pilot study. We were trying to figure out what kind of host actions could be tracked and what was feasible to look at in people over time. In a pilot study, we didn't want people doing things that we ourselves wouldn't really be comfortable doing.
Are there metrics that will be too difficult to ask future subjects?
Now I know that tracking things like urination [is too onerous]. Compliance would probably be abysmal.
What other activities change our gut bugs?
One of the links we picked out was that a bacteria that causes cavities—Streptococcus mutans—actually went down in abundance after one of the subjects flossed.
Did seeing that change your own behavior?
This was a lot better than my dentist telling me to floss, in terms of providing good evidence for why one might want to practice good oral hygiene.
Do you still track yourself?
We tracked for one year and then very much stopped it. It was a lot of work. You could invest about an hour a day writing down everything you ate, logging it, taking notes about your health: blood pressure, weight, things like that. Going forward, if people are interested in these types of things, it has to become a lot more convenient.
What do you think your study ultimately accomplished?
I think you can think of this study as the first road map, as "here are some of the first knobs you can turn." The floss thing would have an effect on one type of bacteria. You could dial up or down fiber and it would affect another group of bacteria. That kind of question about what are the rules and the tools available for altering the bacterial community inside of a normal healthy adult are what drive a lot of the questions now in our lab.
Do other people change our gut bugs? When we move in with someone, does that change our gut bugs?
There seems to be more similarity within families than between them. The question is why?
Are we attracted to people who have the same gut bugs?
Apparently, gut bacteria play a role in mating in flies. I've yet to see a similar study in humans. I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Follow Karen Weintraub on Twitter.
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Holes Theme of Power
Power definitely doesn't get a good rap in Holes. Most of the powerful people – the Warden and Mr. Pendanski, especially – abuse their power to no end. Even the boys at camp have their own little abusive power structure going on. And to top it all off, it all seems kind of random: why do these people have the power? And how do you survive in a world where power is so absolute? These are questions that Stanley grapples with. And now we'll ask you: do we ever get the answers?
Questions About Power
- Stanley figures out early on that if he's going to survive at Camp Green Lake, he'd better stay on X-Ray's good side. What are we to make of X-Ray's position as leader of D Tent? We know that he's not physically the strongest boy. Why do the other boys follow him?
- Mr. Sir and Mr. Pendanski express that power in very different ways, don't you think? Which of them do you think is more oppressive or abusive? Why?
- Is power necessarily a bad thing? Does every powerful person in the book somehow abuse his or her power?
- What are the sources of power in Holes? That is, what is it that makes people powerful?
Chew on This
X-Ray holds the boys together and keeps them going through all the tough times at Camp Green Lake. In exchange, he asks for a few understandable perks of leadership.
X-Ray is a bully who just happens to be the biggest bully in D Tent. He uses his power to exploit and control the other boys; he's really no better than the Warden.
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22 Apr. 1859–1 Mar. 1917
Ceasar Cone, industrialist and philanthropist, was born in Jonesboro, Tenn., the son of Herman and Helen Guggenheimer Cone. The parents were natives of Bavaria, born about ten miles apart but unacquainted until they met in Richmond, Va., where they were married in 1856. Herman Cone came to the United States in 1847, establishing a mercantile business near Richmond; he soon removed to Jonesboro and established there the same kind of business. In 1870 he moved his family to Baltimore, Md., and established a wholesale grocery business.
Cone attended the public schools of Baltimore until he was fourteen and then worked briefly in a stationery store and with his father. He and his brother, Moses (whose sketch provides further information), invested in the C. E. Graham Manufacturing Company in Asheville in 1887. Herman Cone's wholesale grocery firm closed in 1890 after twenty years, and Ceasar and Moses the next year established the Cone Export and Commission Company with offices in New York. It soon became the largest textile selling organization in the world, and in due time offices were opened in Atlanta, Baltimore, Nashville, St. Louis, Dallas, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. The two brothers began acquiring land in and around Greensboro and in 1895–96 opened a large cotton mill, the Proximity Manufacturing Company, with Ceasar serving as acting and active president. The original mill had only 240 looms, but in less than ten years the company had enlarged its capital stock and built another very large plant, the White Oak Mill. This second mill soon became the largest cotton mill in the South and the largest denim manufacturing plant in the world. The Cones' denim mill provided a durable, dependable, and lasting cloth for work clothes; and by reducing the cost of production, the Cones lowered the cost of clothes and helped to stabilize the world market. Within a short period, the Cones' various mills were consuming thirty-five million pounds of cotton yearly and producing more than seventy-five million yards of cloth.
Cone married Jeanette Siegel in 1894; they were the parents of three sons, Herman, Benjamin, and Ceasar. In addition to the family home in Greensboro, they maintained a summer home on Lake Placid in New York. Cone served as president of the American Cotton Manufacturers Association, the Greensboro Chamber of Commerce, and the Central Carolina Fair Association. He contributed a large sum of money to the Guilford County Tuberculosis Sanitarium and supported other public causes. He was also a trustee of the Stonewall Jackson Training School near Concord. Both the Cones actively supported Jewish affairs and interested themselves in the work of the YMCA. The brothers established model villages around their mills and generously supported the schools and churches there.
The Cone family has continued to render valuable support to worthwhile public and private causes in North Carolina and elsewhere. Dr. Claribel and Miss Etta Cone, sisters of Moses and Ceasar, early appreciated the work of Picasso and Matisse and also collected Cezanne, Modigliani, Rouault, Chagall, Braque, and Van Gogh. As a result of their interest and generosity, one of the most complete collections of modern art in the world may be seen in the Cone Wing of the Baltimore Museum of Art.
American Jewish Historical Society, Publications 26 (1918).
Samuel A. Ashe, ed., Biographical History of North Carolina, vol. 8 (1917).
American Wool and Cotton Reporter, Ceasar Cone: An Appreciation (n.d.).
Bettie D. Caldwell, Founders and Builders of Greensboro (1925).
Cone Export and Commission Company, Half Century Book, 1891–1941 (1941).
Greensboro Daily News, 2 Mar. 1917.
William P. Jacobs, The Pioneer (1935).
Orphans' Friend and Masonic Journal, 1 July 1941.
Cone, Edward. "Shirtsleeves to Matisses." Forbes. October 11, 1999. http://www.forbes.com/forbes/1999/1011/6409098a.html (accessed April 19, 2013).
Balliett, C. J. World leadership in denims through thirty years of progress; dedicated to the founders of the Cone mills at Greensboro, North Carolina. [Greensboro, N.C.]: Proximity manufacturing company, White Oak mills, Proximity print works. 1925. http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=wu.89097537807;seq=3;view=1up (accessed April 19, 2013).
"The Looms of Ceasar Cone." Sky-Land 1, no. 9 (August 1914). 573-583. http://archive.org/stream/skyland1913smit#page/572/mode/2up (accessed April 19, 2013).
"Greensboro, North Carolina." Encyclopedia of Southern Jewish Communities. Goldring-Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life. 2006. http://www.isjl.org/history/archive/nc/greensboro.html (accessed April 19, 2013).
Cone Mills Corporation Records, 1858-1997 (collection no. 05247). The Southern Historical Collection. Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/inv/c/Cone_Mills_Corporation.html (accessed April 19, 2013).
Oral History Interview with Caesar Cone [II], January 7, 1983. Interview C-0003. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007). Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. http://docsouth.unc.edu/sohp/C-0003/C-0003.html (accessed April 19, 2013).
"Cesar Cone The Man Behind the Looms that Weave Character as Well as Cloth." Sky-Land 1, no. 9 (August 1914). http://archive.org/stream/skyland1913smit#page/522/mode/2up (accessed April 19, 2013).
1 January 1979 | Powell, William S.
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Cognition Laboratory Experiments
John H. Krantz, Hanover College, email@example.com
Instructions for the
|Type of Prisoner's Dilemma||The scenario you can use. Current: Traditional and Evil Priate|
|Number of Trials||Number of times the scenario will be repeated.|
|Pattern of Computer Responses||The way the computer will respond to the users choices. Current only random and experimenter input (Entered Pattern) are implements. In entered pattern a button will appear to allow the experimenter to determine if the computer will defect (compete) or stay silent (cooperate) for each trial.|
|Delay between trials||How long of a break is there between two trials. From .25 to 2 seconds.|
After you have finished making your settings, press the Done button at the bottom of the screen. The Prisoner's Dilemma experiment screen will then be presented.
Instructions will be presented describing the scenario. At the bottom half of the screen the outcomes will be summarized. Pressing the start button will begin the experiment. When started, button will appear to allow the participant to respond. A summary table will appear tracking their last responses and outcomes and the computers and the current total outcome.
At the end of the experiment, your results will be presented. You can also get your trial by trial results. In the response part of the trial results, a null indicates that no selection was made. Closing your results window(s) will take you back to the setup window so you can run another experiment.
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Punctuation in lists
Punctuation has two main roles to play in the presentation of lists of items.
To separate the items in a list
Punctuation is used to separate the items in the list. The usual way of doing this is to place a comma after each item in the list:
The school has a vegetable garden in which the children grow cabbages, onions, potatoes, and carrots.
The last item in a list is often preceded by the words and or or. Some writers and publishers always put a comma before the word and or or but it isn’t wrong to leave it out. The important thing is to be consistent throughout any piece of writing.
If each item in the list is quite long, semicolons can be used instead of commas:
This criticism can be interpreted in various ways: as an attack on Shakespeare’s presumption in challenging the university-educated dramatist; as an accusation of plagiarism; and as an attack on Shakespeare’s plagiarism of Greene.
To introduce a list of items
If the list of items is quite a long one, you also need to use punctuation to introduce it. You can use a colon, as in the example above:
This criticism can be interpreted in various ways: as an attack on Shakespeare’s presumption [etc.].
Alternatively, you could use an em dash:
For the more energetic, there are lots of summer outdoor activities—mountain biking, whale watching, ocean kayaking, windsurfing, and golf.
Back to Punctuation.
You may also be interested in:
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Agile software development
Scrum and agile software development methodologies can reduce time & augment quality of projects significantly over traditional methods. Here's how.
On every software project, it is inevitable that that someone makes the statement, “Just give me a handful of developers and I could get this done in half the time!”
In large development projects everyone seems to spend most of their time in meetings, letting everyone else know what is happening and what the problems are. There often seems to be little effort done “in moving the ball forward” (using sports terminology). In fact a lot of the effort seems to be moving the ball backwards when user requirements change and new solutions are discovered.
There is a method to address these problems. The method is controversial because it goes against the belief that more requirements are better. Many project managers believe that if only the users could write better requirements, then projects would not be late and over budget. Unfortunately, often users cannot articulate their requirements for at least two reasons: requirements change over time, and users don't know what is actually possible. Methodologies known as “Scrum” and “Agile” address these problems.
Scrum is an incremental framework for managing projects and is often coupled with the Agile software development methodology for software projects. The name Scrum comes from rugby, where teams move the ball forward in small steps as a unit by passing the ball back and forth. In software development, Scrum describes a small team working closely with end users to move the project code forward in small steps.
Scrum defines a set of practices and predefined roles for running a project through a series of small iterations called sprints. Each sprint is 10 to 20 working days long. Scrum is designed for projects with rapidly changing or not well understood requirements.
Form a Scrum team
A Scrum team typically has five to nine members. These include a “product owner” who is the user or customer representative and the ScrumMaster who is responsible for helping the team use the Scrum process and protecting the team from irrelevant outside influences. The team members are identified as either “chickens” or “pigs.”
The terms come from a joke about a chicken and pig: 'A pig and a chicken are walking down a road. The chicken looks at the pig and says, “Hey, why don't we open a restaurant?” The pig looks back at the chicken and says, “Good idea, what do you want to call it?” The chicken thinks about it and says, “Why don't we call it 'Ham and Eggs'?” “I don't think so,” says the pig, “I'd be committed, but you'd only be involved.”
The product owner, ScrumMaster and team members are pigs—they are committed to the project and process. Managers, other users and stakeholders are chickens—they are just involved in the process. Both pigs and chickens are required for a Scrum project, but the pigs do the real work.
Agile defines a set of software development methodologies based on iterative development, where both requirements and solutions are co-developed through a collaboration process. Agile defines software development aspects which include continual peer review of developed code, real-time interaction with users to evaluate ideas and implementations, and rapid development cycles measured in hours or days.
Agile methodologies go by many names, including Extreme Programming [learn more from Control Engineering ] , Feature Driven Development, and Dynamic Systems Development. Early adaptors of the Agile methods were compared to “cowboy programmers,” but the methods are well-defined and, when honestly applied, can lead to significant reductions in project time and much higher rates of successful projects.
If your projects never seem to complete on time and budget, then Scrum and Agile may be your answer. They are a well proven approaches to software projects.
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Annual Salary Survey
Before the calendar turned, 2016 already had the makings of a pivotal year for manufacturing, and for the world.
There were the big events for the year, including the United States as Partner Country at Hannover Messe in April and the 2016 International Manufacturing Technology Show in Chicago in September. There's also the matter of the U.S. presidential elections in November, which promise to shape policy in manufacturing for years to come.
But the year started with global economic turmoil, as a slowdown in Chinese manufacturing triggered a worldwide stock hiccup that sent values plummeting. The continued plunge in world oil prices has resulted in a slowdown in exploration and, by extension, the manufacture of exploration equipment.
Read more: 2015 Salary Survey
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The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (abbreviated UDHR) is a foundational document of modern international human rights law. It was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly December 10, 1948, at Palais de Chaillot, Paris. It consists of 30 articles which outline the standards of the United Nations on the human rights guaranteed to all people. Although the Declaration is non-binding, it has proved influential since its passage and many of its articles have been adopted into important international treaties as well as constitutions of nations. Numerous Non-Governmental organizations (NGOs), have arisen dedicated to one or more articles listed in the Declaration.
The Declaration guarantees many important and fundamental human rights such as freedom of speech, press, assembly, religion, and the rule of law, as well as the right to leave one's country, to receive an education, to participate in government, to work, and to a decent standard of living and health care. It also affirms that everyone shall be free from slavery, gender inequality, racial discrimination, and exploitation. However, the Declaration also stipulates that these rights must be exercised according to the "just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society." The "public order" clause has often been used by authoritarian governments to abrogate some the rights guaranteed in other articles.
Prior to the proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, several countries had adopted declarations of human rights. Well known examples include the Bill of Rights in the United States, and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in France. However, neither of these is as detailed and far-reaching as the UNDR.
After the founding of the United Nations and considering the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany during World War II, a consensus within the world community soon emerged that the United Nations Charter did not sufficiently define the rights that it referenced. A universal declaration that specified the rights of individuals was deemed necessary. Canadian human rights expert John Peters Humphrey was called upon by the UN Secretary to work on the project and became the Declaration's principal drafter. Humphrey was assisted by Eleanor Roosevelt of the United States, Jacques Maritain and René Cassin of France, Charles Malik of Lebanon, and P. C. Chang of the Republic of China, among others.
To achieve a document acceptable to all parties in the United Nations, however, was no easy task. The philosophy of the United States, rooted in ideas of innate human rights, was offensive to the Soviet Union, which objected to the strong wording of several provisions guaranteeing individual rights. Saudi Arabia objected to the stipulation in Article 18 of the right to change one's religion, as well as to the wording of articles guaranteeing women's rights which it found offensive to Islamic tradition. South Africa could not agree to guarantees of racial equality which flew in the face of its own system of apartheid. Some capitalist countries were concerned about guarantees of economic rights that might conflict with the principles of a free market economy.
Nevertheless, the proclamation was ratified during the General Assembly on December 10, 1948, by a vote of 48 in favor, zero against, and eight abstentions (from Soviet Bloc states, South Africa and Saudi Arabia). Securing abstentions from these nations (rather than opposing votes) would have been impossible were it not for the Declaration's non-binding status. However, as a result, the Declaration has been criticized for not having "teeth." Moreover the "public order" clause of Article 29 has often been used by totalitarian states to abrogate the rights guaranteed in other articles.
The Guinness Book of Records describes the UDHR as the "Most Translated Document" in the world, having been translated as of 2004 into 321 languages and dialects.
The date of the Declaration's adoption, December 10, is now celebrated annually as international Human Rights Day.
The document is laid out in the civil law tradition, including a preamble followed by 30 articles. Articles 3-21 deal with civil and political rights, while Articles 22-27 outline economic, social, and cultural rights. (See text for details.) Although it is non-binding on UN members, the Declaration forms part of customary international law and is a powerful tool in applying diplomatic, political, and moral pressure on governments that violate any of its articles.
The 1968, United Nations International Conference on Human Rights decided the UDHR "constitutes an obligation for the members of the international community" to all persons. The declaration has also served as the foundation for several other UN human rights covenants including: the 1965 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the 1984 Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment and Punishment, the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the 1997 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
The Declaration continues to be widely cited by academics, advocates, and constitutional courts. The wording of several of the Declaration's specific articles was also adopted into the constitutions of several counties. It has also been an important source in the development of the European Union's standards for human rights legislation. Finally, numerous Non-Governmental Organizations have dedicated themselves to one or more of the Declaration's articles.
Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,
Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,
Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law,
Whereas it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations,
Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,
Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms,
Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge,
The General Assembly
Proclaims this Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.
Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.
Everyone has the right to life, liberty and the security of person.
No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.
No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.
All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.
Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.
Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair, and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.
1. Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.
2. No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed.
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
1. Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each State.
2. Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.
1. Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.
2. This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
1. Everyone has the right to a nationality.
2. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.
1. Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.
2. Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.
3. The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.
1. Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.
2. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
1. Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.
2. No one may be compelled to belong to an association.
1. Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.
2. Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country.
3. The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.
Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.
1. Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
2. Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
3. Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.
4. Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.
Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.
1. Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
2. Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.
1. Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.
2. Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.
3. Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.
1. Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.
2. Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.
Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.
1. Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.
2. In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.
3. These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.
The following national documents may be seen as historical precursors to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The following international documents may be seen as either directly or indirectly derivative of the UDHR.
All links retrieved January 11, 2016.
New World Encyclopedia writers and editors rewrote and completed the Wikipedia article in accordance with New World Encyclopedia standards. This article abides by terms of the Creative Commons CC-by-sa 3.0 License (CC-by-sa), which may be used and disseminated with proper attribution. Credit is due under the terms of this license that can reference both the New World Encyclopedia contributors and the selfless volunteer contributors of the Wikimedia Foundation. To cite this article click here for a list of acceptable citing formats.The history of earlier contributions by wikipedians is accessible to researchers here:
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Esophageal Cancer Risk Reduced by Intake of Plant Based Nutrients
A recent study highlights the advantage of consuming plant-based food in reducing the risk of highly lethal Esophageal Squamous Cell Cancer.
Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma, a major type of Esophageal cancer that affects the inner lining cells of the esophagus or the food pipe. The symptoms associated with this type of malignancy include pain while swallowing food and regurgitation, i.e. backward flow of the food.
AdvertisementThe study conducted in the high-risk region of Iran for esophageal squamous cell carcinoma, assessed the dietary intake of around 47 patients who were diagnosed with this cancer within six months and 96 in the control group, using a semi quantitative food frequency questionnaire. The participants were adults with normal BMI and hence the results are independent of risk due to adiposity.
The other factors that were considered in the study included the socio-demographic details, smoking history, eating habits, symptoms of gastroesophageal reflux disease and family history of cancer.
Experts, after analyzing the dietary intake of the participants, concluded that the risk of Esophageal cancer reduces with increased intake of nutrients, like carbohydrates, dietary fibers, folate, vitamin A, β-carotene, vitamin C, which are abundant in plants based food.
While, the risk increases with higher consumptions of saturated fatty acids, discretionary calories, sodium and fat. Discretionary calories are the extra calories consumed in addition to basic nutritional needs. These are mainly derived from solid fat and added sugar, found in food like cheese, meat, soda, etc.
The researchers observed that the participants with higher carbohydrate and dietary fiber intake had 78% and 71% reduced risk of esophageal squamous cell cancer, respectively. Folate, selenium and vitamin E were found to be most protective micronutrients against damages to esophagus, with folate and vitamin E associated with 98% reduction in risk of this cancer.
Along with these nutrients, intake of unsaturated fatty acids, commonly known as the omega-3 fatty acids were reported to cut down the risk by 68% among the participants.
Though the association of nutrient intake and Esophageal cancer risk had been clearly analyzed, the experts suggest that further studies which evaluate the dietary intake before cancer diagnosis are needed to clarify whether changes in dietary practices and/or vitamin and mineral supplementation can reduce the incidence of this cancer.
Reference: Macronutrients, vitamins and minerals intake and risk of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma: a case-control study in Iran; Mahsa Jessri et al; BMC Nutrition Journal 2012.
PUsing Olive or Sunflower Oil Prevents Heart Disease from Fried Foods Maintenance of Spinal Mobility Improves Lung Function in Ankylosing Spondylitis M
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So you were just given an assignment: the dreaded paper. But writing an academic paper doesn’t have to be a drag. In fact, it can be a thought provoking experience. It can challenge you to develop yourself as a writer and to think about your topic in greater detail.
So do not fear the paper! EasyBib’s Writing Center is here to help!
Keep in mind that there is no one ‘correct’ way to write a paper. Everyone has a slightly different style. Feel free to go back and forth between the steps of this writing guide. Writing is hardly ever a linear process and always involves revision and correction.
Furthermore, different teachers have different preferences for papers. Some of these are formatting-related–how a header looks, for example. Others are related to specific words, phrases, or types of content. Check with your teacher to learn about his/her preferences for writing. If possible, ask if you can see a sample essay to get an idea of what they are looking for.
Here are the main sections you’ll find within:
Note: This is a general writing guide. Information from this guide can be applied to different types of essays (expository, descriptive, etc.) and different types of subjects (English, history, political science, etc.). Any information directed towards a particular subject is denoted as such.
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What does an allergic response to food look like?
A food allergy is an immune system reaction that occurs when a person eats a specific food. Even a tiny amount will trigger a response. For some people the response is so mild they may not realize it’s a food allergy. For others, the response can be so severe their life is threatened if immediate action is not taken.
Children and adults affected
Food allergies affect six to eight percent of children under the age of five. They affect about three to four percent of adults. Obviously some allergies go away with time and maturity. Food allergies also get confused with food intolerance which is much more common. Food intolerance is less serious and does not involved an immune system reaction.
Symptoms to look for
Symptoms will develop a few minutes after eating the trigger food and up to two hours after. They can happen on the first exposure to the food or later exposures. The most common symptoms include:
- Tingling or itching in the mouth
- Hives, itching or eczema
- Swelling of the lips, face, tongue and throat, or other parts of the body
- Wheezing, nasal congestion or trouble breathing
- Abdominal pain, diarrhea, nausea or vomiting
- Dizziness, lightheadedness or fainting
Anaphylaxis takes allergic response to a whole other level. In some people this severe allergic reaction happens and causes life threatening symptoms which include:
- Constriction and tightening of airways
- Swollen throat or the sensation of a lump in the throat making it difficult to swallow or breathe
- Shock, severe drop in blood pressure
- Rapid pulse
- Dizziness, lightheadedness or loss of consciousness
Emergency treatment is absolutely critical. Without immediate medical attention coma or death may occur. People who are aware of their severe allergies often carry Epipen to treat such a reaction.
Source: Mayo Clinic
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Background to the schools Wikipedia
SOS Children have produced a selection of wikipedia articles for schools since 2005. SOS Children has looked after children in Africa for forty years. Can you help their work in Africa?
Analytic geometry, also called coordinate geometry and earlier referred to as Cartesian geometry or analytical geometry, is the study of geometry using the principles of algebra. That the algebra of the real numbers can be employed to yield results about the linear continuum of geometry relies on the Cantor-Dedekind axiom. Usually the Cartesian coordinate system is applied to manipulate equations for planes, lines, straight lines, and squares, often in two and sometimes in three dimensions of measurement. As taught in school books, analytic geometry can be explained more simply: it is concerned with defining geometrical shapes in a numerical way and extracting numerical information from that representation. The numerical output, however, might also be a vector or a shape. Some consider that the introduction of analytic geometry was the beginning of modern mathematics.
The Greek mathematician Menaechmus solved problems and proved theorems by using a method that had a strong resemblance to the use of coordinates and it has sometimes been maintained that he had analytic geometry. Apollonius of Perga, in On Determinate Section dealt with problems in a manner that may be called an analytic geometry of one dimension; with the question of finding points on a line that were in a ratio to the others. Apollonius in the Conics further developed a method that is so similar to analytic geometry that his work is sometimes thought to have anticipated the work of Descartes by some 1800 years. His application of reference lines, a diameter and a tangent is essentially no different than our modern use of a coordinate frame, where the distances measured along the diameter from the point of tangency are the abscissas, and the segments parallel to the tangent and intercepted between the axis and the curve are the ordinates. He further developed relations between the abscissas and the corresponding ordinates that are equivalent to rhetorical equations of curves. However, although Apollonius came close to developing analytic geometry, he did not manage to do so since he did not take into account negative magnitudes and in every case the coordinate system was superimposed upon a given curve a posteriori instead of a priori. That is, equations were determined by curves, but curves were not determined by equations. Coordinates, variables, and equations were subsidiary notions applied to a specific geometric situation.
The eleventh century Persian mathematician Omar Khayyám saw a strong relationship between geometry and algebra, and was moving in the right direction when he helped to close the gap between numerical and geometric algebra with his geometric solution of the general cubic equations, but the decisive step came later with Descartes.
Analytic geometry has traditionally been attributed to René Descartes who made significant progress with the methods of analytic geometry when in 1637 in the appendix entitled Geometry of the titled Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason in the Search for Truth in the Sciences, commonly referred to as Discourse on Method. This work, written in his native French tongue, and its philosophical principles, provided the foundation for calculus in Europe.
Abraham de Moivre also pioneered the development of analytic geometry. With the assumption of the Cantor-Dedekind axiom, essentially that Euclidean geometry is interpretable in the language of analytic geometry (that is, every theorem of one is a theorem of the other), Alfred Tarski's proof of the decidability of the ordered real field could be seen as a proof that Euclidean geometry is consistent and decidable.
Important themes of analytical geometry are
- vector space
- definition of the plane
- distance problems
- the dot product, to get the angle of two vectors
- the cross product, to get a perpendicular vector of two known vectors (and also their spatial volume)
- intersection problems
Many of these problems involve linear algebra.
Here an example of a problem from the United States of America Mathematical Talent Search that can be solved via analytic geometry:
Problem: In a convex pentagon , the sides have lengths , , , , and , though not necessarily in that order. Let , , , and be the midpoints of the sides , , , and , respectively. Let be the midpoint of segment , and be the midpoint of segment . The length of segment is an integer. Find all possible values for the length of side .
Solution: Let , , , , and be located at , , , , and .
Using the midpoint formula, the points , , , , , and are located at
- , , , , , and
Using the distance formula,
Since has to be an integer,
(see modular arithmetic) so .
Analytic geometry, for algebraic geometers, is also the name for the theory of (real or) complex manifolds and the more general analytic spaces defined locally by the vanishing of analytic functions of several complex variables (or sometimes real ones). It is closely linked to algebraic geometry, especially through the work of Jean-Pierre Serre in GAGA.
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Minority or regional languages:
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Scandinavia[a] // is a historical and cultural region in Northern Europe characterized by a common ethno-cultural North Germanic heritage[dubious ] and mutually intelligible North Germanic languages.
The term Scandinavia always includes the mainlands of the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Norwegian dependencies, including Svalbard and Jan Mayen, are usually not seen as a part of Scandinavia, nor is Danish Greenland. However, the Danish Faroe Islands are sometimes included, as sometimes are Iceland and Finland, because of their historical association with the Scandinavian countries and the Scandinavian peoples and languages. This looser definition almost equates to that of the Nordic countries. In Nordic languages, only mainland Denmark, Norway and Sweden, are commonly included in the definition.
In English usage, Scandinavia sometimes refers to the geographical area, also known as the Scandinavian Peninsula. The name Scandinavia originally referred vaguely to the formerly Danish, now Swedish, region Scania. The terms Scandinavia and Scandinavian entered usage in the late 18th century as terms for Denmark, Norway and Sweden, their Germanic majority peoples and associated language and culture, the term being introduced by the early linguistic and cultural Scandinavist movement.
The majority of the population of Scandinavia are descended from several (North) Germanic tribes who originally inhabited the southern part of Scandinavia, and spoke a Germanic language that evolved into Old Norse. Icelanders and the Faroese are to a significant extent descended from the Norse, and are therefore often seen as Scandinavian. Finland is mainly populated by Finns, with a significant minority of Swedish speakers. A small minority of Sami people live in the extreme north of Scandinavia.
The Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish languages form a dialect continuum and are known as the Scandinavian languages—all of which are considered mutually intelligible with one another. Faroese and Icelandic, sometimes referred to as insular Scandinavian languages, are intelligible in continental Scandinavian languages only to a limited extent. Finnish and Meänkieli are closely related to each other and more distantly to the Sami languages, but are entirely unrelated to the Scandinavian languages. Apart from these, German, Yiddish and Romani are recognized minority languages in Scandinavia.
The southern and by far most populous regions of Scandinavia have a temperate climate. Scandinavia extends north of the Arctic Circle, but has relatively mild weather for its latitude due to the Gulf Stream. Much of the Scandinavian mountains have an alpine tundra climate. There are many lakes and moraines, legacies of the last glacial period, which ended about ten millennia ago.
- 1 Terminology and use
- 2 Use of Nordic countries vs. Scandinavia
- 3 Etymology
- 4 Geography
- 5 Languages in Scandinavia
- 6 History
- 7 Political Scandinavism
- 8 See also
- 9 Notes
- 10 References
- 11 External links
Terminology and use
Scandinavia usually refers to Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Some sources argue for the inclusion of the Faroe Islands, Finland and Iceland, though that broader region is usually known by the countries concerned as Norden (Finnish Pohjoismaat, Icelandic Norðurlöndin, Faroese Norðurlond), or the Nordic countries.
The use of the name Scandinavia as a convenient general term for the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden is fairly recent; according to some historians, it was adopted and introduced in the eighteenth century, at a time when the ideas about a common heritage started to appear and develop into early literary and linguistic Scandinavism. Before this time, the term Scandinavia was familiar mainly to classical scholars through Pliny the Elder's writings, and was used vaguely for Scania and the southern region of the peninsula.
As a political term, "Scandinavia" was first used by students agitating for Pan-Scandinavianism in the 1830s. The popular usage of the term in Sweden, Denmark and Norway as a unifying concept became established in the nineteenth century through poems such as Hans Christian Andersen's "I am a Scandinavian" of 1839. After a visit to Sweden, Andersen became a supporter of early political Scandinavism. In a letter describing the poem to a friend, he wrote: "All at once I understood how related the Swedes, the Danes and the Norwegians are, and with this feeling I wrote the poem immediately after my return: 'We are one people, we are called Scandinavians!'"
The clearest example of the use of the term "Scandinavia" as a political and societal construct is the unique position of Finland, based largely on the fact that most of modern-day Finland was part of the Swedish kingdom for hundreds of years, thus to much of the world associating Finland with all of Scandinavia. But the creation of a Finnish identity is unique in the region in that it was formed in relation to two different imperial models, the Swedish and the Russian, as described by the University of Jyväskylä based editorial board of the Finnish journal Yearbook of Political Thought and Conceptual History;
The term is often defined according to the conventions of the cultures that lay claim to the term in their own use. When a speaker wants to explicitly include Finland alongside Scandinavia-proper, the geographic terms Fenno-Scandinavia or Fennoscandia are sometimes used in English, although these terms are hardly if at all used within Scandinavia. More precisely, and subject to no dispute, is that Finland is included in the broader term 'Nordic countries'.
Societal and tourism promotional organizations
Various promotional agencies of the Nordic countries in the United States (such as The American-Scandinavian Foundation, established in 1910 by the Danish American industrialist Niels Poulsen) serve to promote market and tourism interests in the region. Today, the five Nordic heads of state act as the organization's patrons and according to the official statement by the organization, its mission is "to promote the Nordic region as a whole while increasing the visibility of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden in New York City and the United States." The official tourist boards of Scandinavia sometimes cooperate under one umbrella, such as the Scandinavian Tourist Board. The cooperation was introduced for the Asian market in 1986, when the Swedish national tourist board joined the Danish national tourist board to coordinate intergovernmental promotion of the two countries. Norway's government entered one year later. All five Nordic governments participate in the joint promotional efforts in the United States through the Scandinavian Tourist Board of North America.
While the term Scandinavia is commonly used for Denmark, Norway and Sweden, the term the Nordic countries is used unambiguously for Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland, including their associated territories (Greenland, the Faroe Islands, and the Åland Islands). Scandinavia can thus be considered a subset of the Nordic countries. Furthermore, the term Fennoscandia refers to Scandinavia, Finland and Karelia, excluding Denmark and overseas territories; however, the usage of this term is restricted to geology, when speaking of the Fennoscandian Shield (Baltic Shield).
In addition to the mainland Scandinavian countries of:
- Denmark (Constitutional monarchy with a Parliamentary system)
- Norway (Constitutional monarchy with a Parliamentary system, independent since 1905)
- Sweden (Ceremonial monarchy with a Parliamentary system)
the Nordic countries also consist of:
- Finland (Parliamentary republic, independent since 1917)
- Iceland (Parliamentary republic, independent since 1944)
- Åland Islands (an autonomous province of Finland since 1920)
- Faroe Islands (an autonomous country within the Danish Realm, self-governed since 1948)
- Greenland (an autonomous country within the Danish Realm, self-governed since 1979)
- Svalbard, which is under Norwegian sovereignty, is not considered part of Scandinavia as a cultural-historical region; but as a part of the Kingdom of Norway (since 1925), it is part of the Nordic countries (Norden).
Estonia has applied for membership in the Nordic Council, referring to its cultural heritage and close linguistic links to Finland, and historical connections to both Denmark and Sweden, although normally Estonia is regarded as one of the Baltic countries. It is similar to the situation of Finland around the 1920s as Finland was considered to be one of the Baltic States as well, as it too had emerged from Russian domination along with the other three countries under similar circumstances. While Finnish and Estonian are Finnic languages, Latvian and Lithuanian are Baltic languages.
It should be noted that whereas the term "Scandinavia" is relatively straightforward as traditionally relating to the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden there exists some ambiguity as regards the ethnic aspect of the concept in the modern era. Traditionally, the term refers specifically to the majority peoples of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, their states, their Germanic languages and their culture. In the modern era, the term will often include minority peoples such as the Sami and Meänkieli speakers in a political and to some extent cultural sense, as they are citizens of Scandinavian countries and speak Scandinavian languages either as their first or second language. However, Scandinavian is still also seen as an ethnic term for the Germanic majority peoples of Scandinavia, and as such, the inclusion of Sami and Finnish speakers can be seen as controversial within these groups.
Scandinavia and Scania (Skåne, the southernmost province of Sweden) are considered to have the same etymology. Both terms are thought to go back to the Proto-Germanic compound *Skaðin-awjō, which appears later in Old English as Scedenig and in Old Norse as Skáney. The earliest identified source for the name Scandinavia is Pliny the Elder's Natural History, dated to the first century A.D.
Various references to the region can also be found in Pytheas, Pomponius Mela, Tacitus, Ptolemy, Procopius and Jordanes, usually in the form of Scandza. It is believed that the name used by Pliny may be of West Germanic origin, originally denoting Scania. According to some scholars, the Germanic stem can be reconstructed as *Skaðan- meaning "danger" or "damage" (English scathing, German Schaden, Dutch schade). The second segment of the name has been reconstructed as *awjō, meaning "land on the water" or "island". The name Scandinavia would then mean "dangerous island", which is considered to refer to the treacherous sandbanks surrounding Scania. Skanör in Scania, with its long Falsterbo reef, has the same stem (skan) combined with -ör, which means "sandbanks".
In the reconstructed Germanic root *Skaðin-awjō (the edh represented in Latin by t or d), the first segment is sometimes considered more uncertain than the second segment. The American Heritage Dictionary derives the second segment from Proto-Indo-European *akwa-, "water", in the sense of "watery land".
The Old Norse goddess name Skaði, along with Sca(n)dinavia and Skáney, may be related to Gothic skadus, Old English sceadu, Old Saxon scado, and Old High German scato (meaning "shadow"). Scholar John McKinnell comments that this etymology suggests that the goddess Skaði may have once been a personification of the geographical region of Scandinavia or associated with the underworld.
Pliny the Elder's descriptions
Pliny's descriptions of Scatinavia and surrounding areas are not always easy to decipher. Writing in the capacity of a Roman admiral, he introduces the northern region by declaring to his Roman readers that there are 23 islands "Romanis armis cognitae" ("known to Roman arms") in this area. According to Pliny, the "clarissima" ("most famous") of the region's islands is Scatinavia, of unknown size. There live the Hilleviones. The belief that Scandinavia was an island became widespread among classical authors during the first century and dominated descriptions of Scandinavia in classical texts during the centuries that followed.
Pliny begins his description of the route to Scatinavia by referring to the mountain of Saevo (mons Saevo ibi), the Codanus Bay (Codanus sinus) and the Cimbrian promontory. The geographical features have been identified in various ways; by some scholars "Saevo" is thought to be the mountainous Norwegian coast at the entrance to Skagerrak and the Cimbrian peninsula is thought to be Skagen, the north tip of Jutland, Denmark. As described, Saevo and Scatinavia can also be the same place.
Pliny mentions Scandinavia one more time: in Book VIII he says that the animal called achlis (given in the accusative, achlin, which is not Latin), was born on the island of Scandinavia. The animal grazes, has a big upper lip and some mythical attributes.
The name "Scandia", later used as a synonym for Scandinavia, also appears in Pliny's Naturalis Historia, but is used for a group of Northern European islands which he locates north of Britannia. "Scandia" thus does not appear to be denoting the island Scadinavia in Pliny's text. The idea that "Scadinavia" may have been one of the "Scandiae" islands was instead introduced by Ptolemy (c. 90 – c. 168 AD), a mathematician, geographer and astrologer of Roman Egypt. He used the name "Skandia" for the biggest, most easterly of the three "Scandiai" islands, which according to him were all located east of Jutland.
Neither Pliny's nor Ptolemy's lists of Scandinavian tribes include the Suiones mentioned by Tacitus. Some early Swedish scholars of the Swedish Hyperborean school and of the 19th-century romantic nationalism period proceeded to synthesize the different versions by inserting references to the Suiones, arguing that they must have been referred to in the original texts and obscured over time by spelling mistakes or various alterations.
The Latin names in Pliny's text gave rise to different forms in medieval Germanic texts. In Jordanes' history of the Goths (AD 551) the form Scandza is the name used for their original home, separated by sea from the land of Europe (chapter 1, 4). Where Jordanes meant to locate this quasi-legendary island is still a hotly debated issue, both in scholarly discussions and in the nationalistic discourse of various European countries. The form Scadinavia as the original home of the Langobards appears in Paulus Diaconus' Historia Langobardorum; in other versions of Historia Langobardorum appear the forms Scadan, Scandanan, Scadanan and Scatenauge. Frankish sources used Sconaowe and Aethelweard, an Anglo-Saxon historian, used Scani. In Beowulf, the forms Scedenige and Scedeland are used, while the Alfredian translation of Orosius and Wulfstan's travel accounts used the Old English Sconeg.
The earliest Sami yoik texts written down refer to the world as Skadesi-suolo (north-Sami) and Skađsuâl (east-Sami), meaning "Skaði's island" (Svennung 1963). Svennung considers the Sami name to have been introduced as a loan word from the North Germanic languages; "Skaði" is the giant stepmother of Freyr and Freyja in Norse mythology. It has been suggested that Skaði to some extent is modeled on a Sami woman. The name for Skade's father Thjazi is known in Sami as Čáhci, "the waterman", and her son with Odin, Saeming, can be interpreted as a descendent of Saam the Sami population (Mundel 2000), (Steinsland 1991). Older joik texts give evidence of the old Sami belief about living on an island and state that the wolf is known as suolu gievra, meaning "the strong one on the island." The Sami place name Sulliidčielbma means "the island's threshold" and Suoločielgi means "the island's back."
Another possibility is that all or part of the segments of the name came from the Mesolithic people inhabiting the region. In modernity, Scandinavia is a peninsula, but between approximately 10,300 and 9,500 years ago, the southern part of Scandinavia was an island separated from the northern peninsula, with water exiting the Baltic Sea through the area where Stockholm is now located.
Some Basque scholars have presented the idea that the segment sk that appears in *Skaðinawjō is connected to the name for the Euzko peoples, akin to Basques, that populated Paleolithic Europe. According to some of these intellects, Scandinavian people share particular genetic markers with the Basque people.
The geography of Scandinavia is extremely varied. Notable are the Norwegian fjords, the Scandinavian Mountains, the flat, low areas in Denmark, and the archipelagos of Sweden and Norway. Sweden has many lakes and moraines, legacies of the ice age.
The climate varies from north to south and from west to east; a marine west coast climate (Cfb) typical of western Europe dominates in Denmark, southernmost part of Sweden and along the west coast of Norway reaching north to 65°N, with orographic lift giving more mm/year precipitation (<5000 mm) in some areas in western Norway. The central part – from Oslo to Stockholm – has a humid continental climate (Dfb), which gradually gives way to subarctic climate (Dfc) further north and cool marine west coast climate (Cfc) along the northwestern coast. A small area along the northern coast east of the North Cape has tundra climate (Et) as a result of a lack of summer warmth. The Scandinavian Mountains block the mild and moist air coming from the southwest, thus northern Sweden and the Finnmarksvidda plateau in Norway receive little precipitation and have cold winters. Large areas in the Scandinavian mountains have alpine tundra climate.
The warmest temperature ever recorded in Scandinavia is 38.0 °C in Målilla (Sweden). The coldest temperature ever recorded is −52.6 °C in Vuoggatjålme (Sweden). The coldest month was February 1985 in Vittangi (Sweden) with a mean of −27.2 °C.
Two language groups have coexisted on the Scandinavian peninsula since prehistory—the North Germanic languages (Scandinavian languages) and the Sami languages. Due to later migrations, Finnish, Yiddish and Romani have also been spoken for over a hundred years. Denmark also has a minority of German-speakers. More recent migrations has added even more languages. Apart from Sami and the languages of minority groups speaking a variant of the majority language of a neighboring state, the following minority languages in Scandinavia are protected under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages: Yiddish, Romani Chib, Romanes and Romani.
North Germanic languages
The North Germanic languages of Scandinavia are traditionally divided into an East Scandinavian branch (Danish and Swedish) and a West Scandinavian branch (Norwegian, Icelandic, and Faroese), but because of changes appearing in the languages since 1600, the East Scandinavian and West Scandinavian branches are now usually reconfigured into Insular Scandinavian (ö-nordisk/øy-nordisk) featuring Icelandic and Faroese and Continental Scandinavian (Skandinavisk), comprising Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish. The modern division is based on the degree of mutual comprehensibility between the languages in the two branches. The populations of the Scandinavian countries, with a Scandinavian mother tongue, can—at least with some training—understand each other's standard languages as they appear in print and are heard on radio and television.
The reason Danish, Swedish and the two official written versions of Norwegian (Nynorsk and Bokmål) are traditionally viewed as different languages, rather than dialects of one common language, is that each is a well established standard language in its respective country. Danish, Swedish and Norwegian have, since medieval times, been influenced to varying degrees by Middle Low German and standard German. A substantial amount of that influence was a by-product of the economic activity generated by the Hanseatic League.
Norwegians are accustomed to variation, and may perceive Danish and Swedish only as slightly more distant dialects. This is because they have two official written standards, in addition to the habit of strongly holding on to local dialects. The people of Stockholm, Sweden and Copenhagen, Denmark, have the greatest difficulty in understanding other Scandinavian languages. In the Faroe Islands and Iceland, learning Danish is mandatory. This causes Faroese people as well as Icelandic people to become bilingual in two very distinct North Germanic languages, making it relatively easy for them to understand the other two Mainland Scandinavian languages.
Although Iceland was under the political control of Denmark until a much later date (1918), very little influence and borrowing from Danish has occurred in the Icelandic language. Icelandic remained the preferred language among the ruling classes in Iceland; Danish was not used for official communications, most of the royal officials were of Icelandic descent and the language of the church and law courts remained Icelandic.
The Scandinavian languages are (as a language family) entirely unrelated to Finnish, Estonian, and Sami languages, which as Uralic languages are distantly related to Hungarian. Owing to the close proximity, there is still a great deal of borrowing from the Swedish and Norwegian languages in the Finnish and Sami languages. The long history of linguistic influence of Swedish on Finnish is also due to the fact that Finnish, the language of the majority in Finland, was treated as a minority language while Finland was part of Sweden. Finnish-speakers had to learn Swedish in order to advance to higher positions. Swedish spoken in today's Finland includes a lot of words that are borrowed from Finnish, whereas the written language remains closer to that of Sweden.
Finland is officially bilingual, with Finnish and Swedish having mostly the same status at national level. Finland's majority population are Finns, whose mother tongue is either Finnish (approximately 95%), Swedish or both; the Swedish speaking minority lives mainly on the coast from the city of Porvoo, in the Gulf of Finland, to the city of Kokkola, up in the Bothnian Bay. The Åland Islands, an autonomous province of Finland, situated in the Baltic Sea between Finland and Sweden, is entirely Swedish speaking. Children are taught the other official language at school; for Swedish-speakers, this is Finnish (usually from the 3rd grade), and for Finnish-speakers, Swedish (usually from the 3rd, 5th or 7th grade).
The Sami languages are indigenous minority languages in Scandinavia. They belong to their own branch of the Uralic language family and are unrelated to the North Germanic languages other than by limited grammatical (particularly lexical) characteristics resulting from prolonged contact. Sami is divided into several languages or dialects. Consonant gradation is a feature in both Finnish and northern Sami dialects, but it is not present in south Sami, which is considered to have a different language history. According to the Sami Information Centre of the Sami Parliament in Sweden, southern Sami may have originated in an earlier migration from the south into the Scandinavian peninsula.
- Denmark, forged from the Lands of Denmark (including Jutland, Zealand and Scania (Skåneland) on the Scandinavian Peninsula.)
- Sweden, forged from the Lands of Sweden on the Scandinavian Peninsula (excluding the provinces Bohuslän, Härjedalen, Jämtland and Idre & Särna, Halland, Blekinge and Scania of modern-day Sweden, but including most of modern Finland.)
- Norway (including Bohuslän, Härjedalen, Jämtland and Idre & Särna on the Scandinavian Peninsula, and its island colonies Iceland, Greenland, Faroe Islands, Shetland, Orkney, Isle of Man and the Hebrides.)
The three Scandinavian kingdoms joined in 1387 in the Kalmar Union under Queen Margaret I of Denmark. Sweden left the union in 1523 under King Gustav Vasa. In the aftermath of Sweden's secession from the Kalmar Union, civil war broke out in Denmark and Norway. The Protestant Reformation followed. When things had settled, the Norwegian Privy Council was abolished—it assembled for the last time in 1537. A personal union, entered into by the kingdoms of Denmark and Norway in 1536, lasted until 1814. Three sovereign successor states have subsequently emerged from this unequal union: Denmark, Norway and Iceland.
The borders between the three countries got the shape they have had since in the middle of the seventeenth century: In the 1645 Treaty of Brömsebro, Denmark–Norway ceded the Norwegian provinces of Jämtland, Härjedalen and Idre & Särna, as well as the Baltic Sea islands of Gotland and Ösel (in Estonia) to Sweden. The Treaty of Roskilde, signed in 1658, forced Denmark–Norway to cede the Danish provinces Scania, Blekinge, Halland, Bornholm and the Norwegian provinces of Båhuslen and Trøndelag to Sweden. The 1660 Treaty of Copenhagen forced Sweden to return Bornholm and Trøndelag to Denmark–Norway, and to give up its recent claims to the island Funen.
In the east, Finland, was a fully incorporated part of Sweden since medieval times until the Napoleonic wars, when it was ceded to Russia. Scandinavia has, despite many wars over the years since the formation of the three kingdoms, been politically and culturally close.
Denmark–Norway as a historiographical name refers to the former political union consisting of the kingdoms of Denmark and Norway, including the Norwegian dependencies of Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands. The corresponding adjective and demonym is Dano-Norwegian. During Danish rule, Norway kept its separate laws, coinage and army, as well as some institutions such as a royal chancellor. Norway's old royal line had died out with the death of Olav IV in 1387, but Norway's remaining a hereditary kingdom became an important factor for the Oldenburg dynasty of Denmark–Norway in its struggles to win elections as kings of Denmark.
The Treaty of Kiel (14 January 1814) formally dissolved the Dano-Norwegian union and ceded the territory of Norway proper to the King of Sweden, but Denmark retained Norway's overseas possessions. However, widespread Norwegian resistance to the prospect of a union with Sweden induced the governor of Norway, crown prince Christian Frederick (later Christian VIII of Denmark), to call a constituent assembly at Eidsvoll in April 1814. The assembly drew up a liberal constitution and elected Christian Frederick to the throne of Norway. Following a Swedish invasion during the summer, the peace conditions of the Convention of Moss (14 August 1814) specified that king Christian Frederik had to resign, but Norway would keep its independence and its constitution within a personal union with Sweden. Christian Frederik formally abdicated on 10 August 1814 and returned to Denmark. The Norwegian parliament Storting elected king Charles XIII of Sweden as king of Norway on 4 November.
The modern use of the term Scandinavia has been influenced by Scandinavism (the Scandinavist political movement), which was active in the middle of the nineteenth century, mainly between the First Schleswig War (1848–1850), in which Sweden and Norway contributed with considerable military force, and the Second Schleswig War (1864).
The Swedish king also proposed a unification of Denmark, Norway and Sweden into a single united kingdom. The background for the proposal was the tumultuous events during the Napoleonic wars in the beginning of the century. This war resulted in Finland (formerly the eastern third of Sweden) becoming the Russian Grand Duchy of Finland in 1809 and Norway (de jure in union with Denmark since 1387, although de facto treated as a province) becoming independent in 1814, but thereafter swiftly forced to accept a personal union with Sweden. The dependent territories Iceland, the Faroe Islands and Greenland, historically part of Norway, remained with Denmark in accordance with the Treaty of Kiel. Sweden and Norway were thus united under the Swedish monarch, but Finland's inclusion in the Russian Empire excluded any possibility for a political union between Finland and any of the other Nordic countries.
The end of the Scandinavian political movement came when Denmark was denied the military support promised from Sweden and Norway to annex the (Danish) Duchy of Schleswig, which together with the (German) Duchy of Holstein had been in personal union with Denmark. The Second war of Schleswig followed in 1864, a brief but disastrous war between Denmark and Prussia (supported by Austria). Schleswig-Holstein was conquered by Prussia, and after Prussia's success in the Franco-Prussian War a Prussian-led German Empire was created, and a new power-balance of the Baltic sea countries was established.
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- Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (ed.), 2005. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Fifteenth edition. Dallas, Tex.: SIL International
- Jónsson, Jóhannes Gísli and Thórhallur Eythórsson (2004). "Variation in subject case marking in Insular Scandinavian". Nordic Journal of Linguistics (2005), 28: 223–245 Cambridge University Press. Retrieved 9 November 2007.
- Bernd Heine; Tania Kuteva (2006). The changing languages of Europe. Oxford University Press, USA. ISBN 978-0-19-929734-4.
- Iben Stampe Sletten; Nordisk Ministerråd (2005). Nordens sprog med rødder og fødder. p. 2. ISBN 978-92-893-1041-3.
- "Urban misunderstandings", Nordic Council and the Nordic Council of Ministers, Copenhagen.
- Faroese and Norwegians best at understanding Nordic neighbours, Nordisk Sprogråd, Nordic Council, 13 January 2005.
- Aðalnámskrá grunnskóla: Erlend tungumál, ISMennt, EAN, 1999.
- Holmarsdottir, H. B. (2001). "Icelandic: A Lesser-Used Language in the Global Community". International Review of Education/ Internationale Zeitschrift fr Erziehungswissenschaft/ Revue inter 47 (3/4): 379. doi:10.1023/A:1017918213388.
- Hálfdanarson, Guðmundur. Icelandic Nationalism: A Non-Violent Paradigm? In Nations and Nationalities in Historical Perspective. Pisa: Edizioni Plus, 2001, p. 3.
- Inez Svonni Fjällström (2006). "A language with deep roots".Sápmi: Language history, 14 November 2006. Samiskt Informationscentrum Sametinget: "The Scandinavian languages are Northern Germanic languages. [...] Sami belongs to the Finno-Ugric language family. Finnish, Estonian, Livonian and Hungarian belong to the same language family and are consequently related to each other."
- Suzanne Romaine (1995). Bilingualism. Wiley-Blackwell. p. 323. ISBN 978-0-631-19539-9.
- Oskar Bandle (March 2005). The Nordic languages: an international handbook of the history of the North Germanic languages. Walter de Gruyter. p. 2115. ISBN 978-3-11-017149-5.
- www.eng.samer.se – The Sami dialects Sapmi: The Sami dialects
- Oskar Bandle (2002). The Nordic languages: an international handbook of the history of the North Germanic languages. Mouton De Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-014876-3.
- "Treaty of Copenhagen" (2006). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 9 November 2006, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
- The Monarchy: Historical Background. The Royal House of Norway. Official site. Retrieved 9 November 2006.[dead link]
|Look up scandinavia in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.|
|Wikimedia Commons has media related to:|
|Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article Scandinavian Civilization.|
- "Scandinavia: Official Website of the Scandinavian Tourist Boards in North America". Scandinavian Tourist Boards in North America, Globescope Internet Services, Inc. 2005. Retrieved 5 September 2008.
- Nordic Council – Official site for co-operation in the Nordic region
- Nordregio – Site established by the Nordic Council of Ministers
- vifanord – a digital library that provides scientific information on the Nordic and Baltic countries as well as the Baltic region as a whole
- Where is Scandinavia? - Video link
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Christina Sarich, Contributing Writer
If the entire world’s information, (about 4.8 zettabytes in computer nerd speak) could be stored on 4 grams of DNA, and Harvard researchers have already sequenced about 70 billion copies of an HTML book onto small bits of DNA, what possibilities does this suggest about our species’ past and future spiritual evolution?
We already know, too, that our biological make-up is nearly the equivalent of stardust, comprised of the same essential elements. The late Carl Sagan pointed out that we, like stars, are composed of oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen. Join with this information, that over a decade ago, Russian scientist, Dr. Peter Gariaev discovered another fascinating quality of DNA. It absorbs light photons from its surrounding environment, and causes the photons to spiral through the molecular structure of a form, giving it its shape in material reality. With the help of another scientist, Vladimir Poponin, they found you could use DNA to essentially reprogram the human form (or any other comprised of DNA) as a bio-computer.
Furthermore, linguists have discovered that our DNA has the same semantics and syntax of languages as diverse as English and Chinese, Russian, Andangme, and Hawaiian. Similar, in that, like language regardless of geography or structure, certain phrases or words are used more commonly than others, and occur with a certain statistical frequency that is similar no matter what mother tongue you study. DNA has the same statistical frequency as far as use of ‘letters, phrases and words.’
A central lesson of science is that to understand complex issues (or even simple ones), we must try to free our minds of dogma and to guarantee the freedom to publish, to contradict, and to experiment. Arguments from authority are unacceptable.
— Carl Sagan
If our DNA is a language, it must have a message to convey. The fact that ‘junk’ DNA has only recently been studied, and heretofore been ignored as irrelevant to our biological functioning is quite laughable. Would a programmer write billions of lines of code for no reason at all? The answer is uncovered in recent research that shows, within ‘junk’ DNA there are codes to turn certain genes ‘on’ or ‘off’. It makes one wonder what these binary markers could do, if given the right interpretation and subsequent message. It may in fact, be the mutation, of these genes, for lack of a better phrase, which allows us to evolve spiritually. Some are even calling our DNA, an antennae to God.
If we are made of star dust and our DNA has embedded within it, a ‘code’ to allow us to project into the Universe, a message of some sort, what is the message itself? It seems we were given a pretty concrete self-referencing system to figure out how to discover ourselves through ourselves, right down to our elements and into our molecular form, and back out into the farthest reaches of the Universe.
“What is remarkable is that there are no traces of evolution from simple to sophisticated, and the same is true of mathematics, medicine, astronomy and architecture and of Egypt’s amazingly rich and convoluted religio-mythological system (even the central content of such refined works as the Book of the Dead existed right at the start of the dynastic period). 7 The majority of Egyptologists will not consider the implications of Egypt’s early sophistication. These implications are startling, according to a number of more daring thinkers. John Anthony West, an expert on the early dynastic period, asks: How does a complex civilization spring full-blown into being? Look at a 1905 automobile and compare it to a modern one. There is no mistaking the process of `development’. But in Egypt there are no parallels. Everything is right there at the start. The answer to the mystery is of course obvious but, because it is repellent to the prevailing cast of modern thinking, it is seldom considered. Egyptian civilization was not a `development’, it was a legacy.”
– Graham Hancock, Fingerprints of the Gods: The Evidence of Earth’s Lost Civilization
Dr. Leonard Horowitz has shown that DNA’s coiled design and vibrating action is ‘electrogenetic’ and allows not only physical evolution, but spiritual evolution as well. In fact our DNA is programmed to lead to a spiritual renaissance. According to Horowitz research, “Life’s genomes are empowered by waves and particles of energized sound and light which, more than chemicals or drugs, switch genes “on” or “off.” Likewise, genetic inheritance is energetically transmitted “bioacoustically and electromagnetically” through special water molecules that form the electrogenetic matrix of the “Sacred Spiral.” These hydroelectric geometric structures—most shaped like pyramids, hexagons, and pentagons—direct physical as well as spiritual development.”
People like Graham Hancock, go a step further, and suggest that people all over the world experience the same exact things in altered consciousness. We have a collective consciousness way beyond what Freud and Jung may have intuited. Our consciousness is, in fact, able to enter parallel dimensions when we activate our DNA. While some use plant-based elements like Ayahuasca, to turn the binary switch ‘on’ so that they can perceive “God,” there may be other means to translate the language of our DNA.
Even Francis Crick, the father of DNA, admitted before his death that he was under the influence of LSD when he realized the double-helix shape of our genetic building blocks, and it is a common assumption now that an intelligent being imprinted a ‘code’ to awaken our civilization to alternate realities which can only be accessed when those binary switches are activated, be it through an LSD trip, meditation, mantra repetition (bio-acoustics!) or some other means.
Mainstream science has reluctantly shared our collective intelligence, our collective promise for a differently shaped reality. However, like the secret code of our DNA, it may be just a matter of deciphering the clues that are embedded already. When Harvard starts publishing papers on the storage capacity of DNA, and any half-awake individual joins the proverbial dots, we can start to see the grand design behind the machine. The gears are shifting, and OZ is just behind the curtain, ready to reveal his true nature to us all. DNA may just provide the biological dial-in to quantum jump into spiritual awareness – the super-data encoded papyrus giving clues to the truth of our being.
Christina Sarich is a musician, yogi, humanitarian and freelance writer who channels many hours of studying Lao Tzu, Paramahansa Yogananda, Rob Brezny, Miles Davis, and Tom Robbins into interesting tidbits to help you Wake up Your Sleepy Little Head, and See the Big Picture. Her blog is Yoga for the New World.
Sagan, Carl. Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millenium (1998), 190.
This article is offered under Creative Commons license. It’s okay to republish it anywhere as long as attribution bio is included and all links remain intact.
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The super-senses of oilbirds
Bizarre birds elude an evolutionary explanation
What dwells in caves, has dolphin-like sonar, navigates like a bat, has eyes like a deep-sea fish, can hover like a kingfisher, finds its food by smell and can be boiled up to make oil?
Photo by Luiz Claudio Marigo
At home in the dark
Oilbirds nest in large colonies on high, rocky ledges, often a good distance into the cave. They build their cone-shape nests from a mixture of regurgitated fruit pulp, their droppings and undigested seeds. Both parents share the task of incubating the clutch of two to four eggs for about 33 days, and the nestlings stay put for up to four months.
A bird of course—but no ordinary bird. It’s the unique and intriguing oilbird (or Guacharo) of Central and northern South America—the only nocturnal, fruit-eating bird in the world. The great German explorer, Alexander von Humboldt, first drew attention to these bizarre birds. He observed oilbirds in a Venezuelan cave in 17991 and described them in the report of his travels a few years later.
Natives of South America call the oilbird ‘Guáchart’—Spanish for ‘One who cries/laments’2 and another name is ‘Diablotin’. The scientific name is Steatornis caripensis and this single species is placed in a family all of its own, Steatornithidae,3 highlighting just how unusual it really is.
|yet another example of a ‘bird of prey’ that is herbivorous|
There is nothing very remarkable about an oilbird’s appearance, which is basically that of a rather drab, hawk-sized bird of prey, about 45 cm (18 inches) long. It is yet another example of a ‘bird of prey’ that is herbivorous. Males and females look similar—brown coloured feathers with black bars and flecked with white spots. It has short, bare legs, long curved toes (armed with sharp claws) and a hooked bill.3 More noteworthy are its large wings (long and pointed—giving it a wing span of one metre4) and long, rounded tail that enable it to fly slowly and even hover.
This is an excerpt from Hema’s Atlas of the World
Oilbirds only eat fruit (i.e. they are frugivores), which they locate by smell. They are partial to figs and palm nuts, but a population in Trinidad has been observed eating more than 36 different fruits.5 Like fruit bats, they are responsible for ‘planting’ new fruit trees far and wide as seeds, inside the fruits, pass through their guts and often get dropped at a considerable distance from the host tree—oilbirds may range up to 240 km (150 miles) in a single night.6
Oilbirds feed their young exclusively on fruit pulp. This is very unusual because an all-fruit diet would not normally provide adequate nutrition for baby birds. Oilbird nestlings retain food in their intestines for longer than normal, enabling them to extract all the nutrients which they need in order to thrive on fruit. For instance, they are able to extract 80% of the lipids (fats) from their diet.7 This means that young nestlings grow fat (even half as heavy again as their parents8)—causing the literal downfall of many! Using long poles, native Indians knock them down from their nests on cave ledges, then melt the fat (which is concentrated between the thighs) to produce a pure oil1 for lighting torches.
Denizens of the night
|one wonders whether God had evolutionists in mind when He fashioned these curious and enigmatic birds|
During the daytime, oilbirds roost on cave ledges, digesting food eaten the previous night. While most other bird species roost at night and are active during the day, at night oilbirds show their true colours. They are one of only two types of birds that can navigate in the dark using a unique echolocation system—the other being the cave swiftlets of forest caves in South Asia (see ‘Echolocation—hearing is seeing’ below)9.
Just like bats (and many sea mammals), they emit clicking calls in rapid succession and listen to the returning echoes. This means that, in the pitch blackness of their cave home, they can fly around without bumping into the cave walls or each other. At dusk, they leave the cave to find food and their echolocation system works together with their keen smell and super-sensitive vision, helping them to snatch nuts and small fruits in mid-flight without needing to land. In fact it is thought that they never perch during foraging trips, using instead their ability to hover while feeding.
Published under the GNU Free Documentation License
According to some estimates there may be more than 15,000 oilbirds living in the Cueva del Guácharo (oilbird cave) in the mountainous district of Northern Monagas, Venezuela.
The eyes of oilbirds are highly specialized for their unique lifestyle (see ‘An oilbird’s—eye view’ below). While not apparently designed for distinguishing colour, it has recently been discovered that they are extraordinarily sensitive to light—a great advantage to a bird that ‘breaks all the rules’ by being nocturnal. This incredible light-sensitivity is achieved by each of the oilbird’s eyes having a large pupil (enabling them to gather the maximum amount of light) and millions of densely packed rods, the photoreceptor cells.10
Oilbird origin—a big mystery?
Evolutionists believe that mindless, purposeless, random natural processes have accomplished this marvelous design. If so, there ought to be some fossil evidence for this idea, but a recent technical paper admits, ‘The Steatornithidae have no certain fossil record …’.11 The same article reveals that certain features of the oilbird’s skeleton are virtually unique among all living species of birds. Unsurprisingly perhaps, the supposed evolutionary relationship between oilbirds and other birds has long been a matter of debate and speculation.
Evidence for a Creator!
Oilbirds possess many highly specialized and intricate design features for their peculiar way of life, method of feeding and navigation. The most cogent explanation is that the infinitely wise Creator designed the oilbird’s amazing super senses and unique behavioural instincts. To conclude otherwise is inexcusable because this Designer’s attributes are ‘clearly seen’ in His handiwork (Romans 1:20 ). As with the duck-billed platypus,12 one wonders whether God had evolutionists in mind when he fashioned these curious and enigmatic birds on the 5th day of Creation week!
References and notes
- Guacharo, www.showcaves.com/english/explain/Biology/Guacharo.html, 23 August 2005. Return to Text
- Brauer, O.L., Biological oddities that are unaccountable by evolution, CRSQ 9(1):41–44, 1972. Return to Text
- Scott, P. (Ed.), The world atlas of birds, Colour Library Books Ltd, Godalming, Surrey, p. 243, 1989. Return to Text
- Pilcher, H.R., Bird’s—eye view, Nature 427(6977):800, 26 February 2004. Return to Text
- Oilbird Steatornithidae, www.monterey bay.com/creagrus/oilbird.html, 23 August 2005. Return to Text
- As referenced on p. 576 of: Gutierrez, P.C., Mitochondrial-DNA polymorphism in the oilbird (Steatornis caripensis, Steatornithidae) in Venezuela , The Auk 11(3):573–578, 1994. Return to Text
- Bosque, C. and De Parra, O., Digestive efficiency and rate of food passage in oilbird nestlings, The Condor: A Journal of Avian Biology 94(3):557–571, 1992. Return to Text
- Oilbirds, www.asawright.org/tropical/oilbirds.html, 23 August 2005. Return to Text
- Ref. 3, p. 19. Return to Text
- See the abstract of: Martin, G., et al., The eyes of oilbirds (Steatornis caripensis): pushing the limits of sensitivity, Naturwissenschaften 91(1):26–29, 2004. Return to Text
- Mayr, G., On the phylogenetic relationships of trogons (Aves, Trogonidae), Journal of Avian Biology 34(1):81–88, 2003. Return to Text
- Weston, P., The platypus—still more questions than answers for evolutionists, Creation 24(2):40–43, 2002. Return to Text
In early 2004 there was a flurry of articles in the scientific press, reporting that researchers had discovered some astounding things about the eyes of oilbirds. Using microscopy, they found that each rod (photoreceptor cell) in an oilbird’s highly light-sensitive retina is unusually tiny, only 1.3µm in diameter by 18.6µm long.1,2 Furthermore, the rods are stacked up in three banks/tiers (an arrangement that has only previously be seen in deep-sea fish3) so that the density achieved is 1 million rods per sq. mm, higher than is known in any other vertebrate eye. In contrast, only a small number of cone photoreceptor cells (for discerning colour) is present. Although small, an oilbird’s eye nevertheless has ‘a light-gathering capacity that is the highest recorded in a bird’, due to a pupil that can enlarge to 9 mm in diameter.2 These unique eye features make oilbirds extremely sensitive to low light levels and, in tandem with their other senses (smell and echolocation) demonstrate the oilbird’s supreme design for a nocturnal lifestyle.
Of course, not everyone recognizes (or acknowledges) the Creator’s handiwork, e.g.: “So, just as in bats, a system of echolocation has evolved to help oilbirds locate their troglodytic roost ledges” (emphasis added).4 However, this just-so statement is a classic example of question begging. The research paper (a great example of operational science) gave no explanation about the origin of oilbird echolocation. Neither did it reveal how the super-sensitive eyesight of oilbirds evolved. The wishful belief in convergent evolution ignores the sheer impossibility of the complex sonar system evolving once, let alone twice, in different kinds of birds (see ‘Echolocation—hearing is seeing’ below)—not to mention in bats and dolphins! Here again, we have an example of so-called ‘convergent evolution’ (the same arrangement of rod cells in oilbirds and deep-sea fish) that defies any evolutionary explanation. Rather, we see the wisdom and skill of the Creator who has used the same retina design in very diverse creatures—equipping them beautifully to live where they live.
References and notes
- 1µm (one micron) is equal to one thousandth of a millimetre (0.00004 in.).
- From the abstract of: Martin,G., Rojas L.M., Ramirez, Y. and McNeil, R., The eyes of oilbirds (Steatornis caripensis): pushing the limits of sensitivity, Naturwissenschaften 91(1):26–29, 2004.
- Pilcher, H.R., Bird’s—eye view, Nature 427(6977):800, 26 February, 2004 .
- Atkinson, N., Sound and vision: the bird that’s the best vertebrate at seeing in the dark, BBC Wildlife 22(5):33, May 2004.
Oilbirds ... one of a kind?
God created … every winged bird after its kind; and God saw that it was good. God blessed them, saying, ‘ … let birds multiply on the earth.’ There was evening and there was morning, a fifth day. Genesis 1:21–23
Sometimes people say that ‘God created all the species of birds’. But ‘species’ is a human construct, theoretically designed to reflect which organisms are ‘reproductively isolated’ from one another. Biologists struggle to find a clear-cut definition of the term because many ‘species’ are observed to interbreed, or hybridize. For example, swans and geese hybridize to produce a ‘swoose’, showing that they are descendants of the same original ‘webbed foot’ bird kind. Similarly, descendants of the original ‘parrot’ kind include cockatoos, galahs, keas, budgerigars, lorikeets, rosellas, parakeets and lovebirds. Pigeons, doves and the extinct passenger pigeon and dodo all originated from the same original ‘pigeon’ kind. This variation within a kind gives no support to the evolutionary notion of reptiles changing into birds—there is no viable mechanism for inventing new DNA information for constructing feathers, for example.
But what about the oilbird? It has some truly unique features, such as echolocation, retina design (see ‘An oilbird’s—eye view’ above), etc., which have not been found in any other bird. And there’s no evidence of any hybridization with other species. So it looks like the oilbird is actually unique among birds—literally ‘one of a kind’. If there have been other members of this kind in the past, then they either left no fossils or the fossils haven’t been found (yet). Thus the oilbird—or an ancestor that’s pretty close to it, i.e. with all its unique characteristics that are featured on these pages—was created as a unique ‘kind’ on Day 5 of Creation Week, and rode out the Flood on board the Ark.
Oilbirds can navigate in pitch darkness—even in a cave full of other birds—by emitting sonar cries and judging the split-second timing of the returning echoes. Whereas bats echolocate using ultrasonic squeaks, which are not audible to the human ear, we can hear the oilbird’s cries, which are emitted at a frequency of between 1,000 and 15,000 cycles per second (hertz).1
Cave swiftlets of southern Asia have a similar echolocation apparatus and technique, but feed on insects rather than fruit.2 However, since both species are otherwise quite different, the evolutionists’ worldview forces them to see this as an impressive example of ‘convergent evolution’—the belief that similar environments or selection pressures (in this case, living in caves) can result in two unrelated creatures evolving very similar character traits. But the probability of such an exquisitely complex apparatus and behaviour evolving by chance, even once, let alone twice, is vanishingly small!
Imagine the precision required for a bird with a one metre wing-span to alight on a narrow ledge in a pitch black cave, without knocking its offspring out of the nest! In the mid-1960s, scientists plugged the ears of some oilbirds and found that they collided with the walls of their enclosure every time—indicating that oilbirds were navigating by listening to the echoes of their own clicks.3
The remarkable echolocation of oilbirds enables them to really ‘see’ in the dark. Young birds do not learn to navigate by this bat-like method but possess the mechanism from birth—the first time that these troglodytes4 (whose eyes have never seen the light of day) leap into the dark void, they must accurately fly or die.
All the information for this instinctive behaviour is already specified, in code form, in the young oilbird’s sophisticated software program, the marvellous message molecule called DNA. In accordance with the tenets of information theory, this fact dismisses any naturalistic origin—information must have an intelligent source.5
References and notes
- See abstract of: Konishi, M. and Knudsen, E.I., The oilbird: hearing and echolocation, Science 204(4391):425–427, 1979.
- Scott, P. (Ed.), The world atlas of birds, Colour Library Books Ltd, Godalming, Surrey, p. 19, 1989.
- Brauer, O.L., Biological oddities that are unaccountable by evolution, CRSQ 9(1):41–44, 1972.
- A troglodyte is a person or creature that lives in a cave.
- Gitt, W., In the beginning was information, Christliche Literatur-Verbreitung e. V., Bielefeld, Germany , 1997.
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All varieties of tomato plants fall into one of two basic types: determinate and indeterminate. Determinate tomato plants grow for only a short time, bearing fruit for just one season. Indeterminate tomato plants bear fruit for season after season, and with proper care will survive through the winter to produce tomatoes again after the weather warms up. If you have indeterminate tomato plants and want them to survive winter, here are some tips to help you keep them alive.
Prune some of the leaves from your tomato plant during the fall. Concentrate on removing leaves that block the sunlight from developing tomatoes, so that the tomatoes will develop before winter weather arrives. Sunlight doesn't make tomatoes ripen more quickly, but the sun's warmth does.
Prune off all the tomato blossoms that have not yet set fruit. This prevents new fruit from developing, and allows the tomato plant to concentrate its energy on developing the existing fruit.
Place the blade of a shovel 1 foot from the main stem of the tomato plant. Push the shovel into the earth, to sever the roots. If your winters are severe, repeat this around the perimeter of the plant. According to Tomato Gardening Guru, this action shocks the tomato plant, which makes it ripen the existing fruit faster. The shorter root system also requires far less water, which is essential in helping a tomato plant go into winter dormancy.
Place 3 to 4 inches of chipped wood mulch around the base of the tomato plant. The mulch serves to trap warmth and protect the plant's roots from severe winter weather.
Cover the tomato plant with sheets or light blankets when the weather dips to 32 degrees Fahrenheit or lower. Use a cage or stakes to create a tent, and secure the ends at the base of the cage or stakes with twine. In cold, wet weather, use sheets of plastic or oil cloth to keep the sheets or blankets dry.
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Definitions for gamelanˈgæm əˌlæn, -lən
This page provides all possible meanings and translations of the word gamelan
a traditional Indonesian ensemble typically including many tuned percussion instruments including bamboo xylophones and wooden or bronze chimes and gongs
A genre of music of Indonesian origin typically featuring metallophones, xylophones, drums, gongs and a bamboo flute (called a siuling).
The name of the ensemble performing this style of music.
Origin: From gamel.
A gamelan is a traditional musical ensemble from Indonesia, typically from the islands of Java and Bali, featuring a variety of instruments such as metallophones, xylophones, kendang and gongs; bamboo flutes, bowed and plucked strings. Vocalists may also be included. For most Indonesians, gamelan music is an integral part of Indonesian culture. The term refers more to the set of instruments than to the players of those instruments. A gamelan is a set of instruments as a distinct entity, built and tuned to stay together – instruments from different gamelan are generally not interchangeable.
The numerical value of gamelan in Chaldean Numerology is: 4
The numerical value of gamelan in Pythagorean Numerology is: 8
Images & Illustrations of gamelan
Translations for gamelan
From our Multilingual Translation Dictionary
Get even more translations for gamelan »
Find a translation for the gamelan definition in other languages:
Select another language:
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Bartholin Gland – Pictures, Location, Problems, Abscess and Inflammation
Ever heard about the Bartholin Gland? If you are not too familiar with medical terminology, you may be unaware of this very important secretor organ in the body which plays a vital role in sexual intercourse. Read on to know all about the Bartholin Gland.
What is Bartholin Gland?
The Bartholin Gland is one of the two small glands. These are found near the vagina in women. Bartholin Glands are only present in women and they perform a highly important role in sex. The glands are named after Caspar Bartholin the Younger, a late-17th century Danish anatomist. Caspar Bartholin was the first medical professional to form a report on the existence and function of these glands in 1677. The secretor organs are, naturally, named after him.
Bartholin Glands are also known as Bartholin’s Glands or Greater Vestibular Glands.
Bartholin Gland Location
Bartholin Glands are located in 4 O’ clock and 8 O’ clock positions in the Labia Minora, or the two inner folds of the vagina. They exist in pairs and are found on either side of the vaginal opening in women. Each Bartholin Gland is about 0.5 cm, or 0.2 inch, in diameter.
Bartholin Gland Purpose
In healthy females, Bartholin Gland functions normally during the time of copulation. These organs secrete mucus which lubricate the vagina. These are prominently functional in women during sexual intercourse. When a woman is sexually aroused, Bartholin Glands secrete 1-2 drops of lubricating fluid into a 1 inch long duct of the vagina known as Bartholin Gland duct or Bartholin duct. This Bartholin Gland discharge makes the Labia Minora slightly moist thus making vaginal penetration in women a more comfortable process.
Bartholin Gland Problems
In abnormal cases, the Bartholin Glands may suffer a blockage. A Bartholin Gland blockage arises if there is a Bartholin Gland infection or Bartholin Gland irritation. An irritation or infection of the Bartholin Gland leads to an obstruction of the vaginal duct. This results in the formation of a Bartholin Gland cyst.
Bartholin Gland Cyst
A Bartholin Gland cyst is an abnormal lump filled with fluid. It is usually a small pea-sized bump that can grow to be as big as a large marble. It is usually noted as a small bump around the vulva. A redness or swelling around the vulva indicates the presence of a Bartholin Cyst.
Bartholin Gland cysts are usually painless and go away on their own. But an infection in the cyst can produce painful symptoms. Bartholin cysts are normally diagnosed during a common gynaecological exam.
Bartholin Gland Abscess
An infection of the Bartholin Gland cyst can give rise to a Bartholin Gland abscess. The abscess grows larger over a period of 3-4 days. This makes it very difficult for the affected person to walk, sit or perform any other activity that puts pressure on the vulva. An infected Bartholin Gland becomes tender, painful and causes much discomfort in the sufferer. The person also suffers from Bartholin Gland pain during sexual intercourse.
In many infected cases of Bartholin Gland discharge from the vagina can occur. A vaginal discharge is generally more common if the Bartholin Gland infection is caused by a STD (Sexually transmitted Disease) like Gonorrhea or Chlamydia. STD-causing bacteria like Staphylococci and Streptococci can lead to a swelling of the Bartholin Gland. This causes an obstruction of the Bartholin Gland opening. Mucus accumulates inside the gland, thus further irritating the tissue and forming a cyst.
A person having a Bartholin Gland abscess may also suffer from fever. But high body temperatures are not always associated with this condition.
Bartholin Gland Inflammation
In the absence of a Bartholin Gland abscess treatment there may be case of serious Bartholin Gland enlargement. An enlarged Bartholin Gland cyst can push through the labia and form a soft, tangible lump. The cyst becomes tender to touch and causes pain during exercise or other physical activities. The labia may get inflamed and the cyst can burst to release milky white or whitish yellow pus. An untreated infection can result in recurring bacterial infections and labia inflammation.
Swollen Bartholin Gland Treatment
In case of an infectious Bartholin Gland swelling, immediate treatment is necessary. Doctors normally suggest washing the vulva (female genital area) with hot water. Soaking the affected area 3-4 times during a day can help the gland drain on its own.
If this does not help in Bartholin Gland drainage, a Bartholin Gland surgery is needed. The process is fast and can be carried out in the doctor’s office after using local anesthesia. The doctor makes a small surgical cut on the cyst to help drain it completely. A catheter is inserted to help draining while the gland heals. Recovery is usually fast and brings rapid relief to sufferers.
Oral medications for Bartholin gland treatment mainly comprises of antibiotics. Antibiotics are generally unnecessary if the abscess drains properly.
If the gland has suffered a severe damage, a surgeon might suggest carrying out a Bartholin Gland excision. This requires complete removal of the cyst. Bartholin Gland excision recovery is usually fast but depends on how long the operated area takes to heal.
Women suffering from recurring cases of abscesses are often advised to try Bartholin Gland marsupialization. This process involves creating a small, permanent aperture by surgical means to help the gland drain. Large, recurring Bartholin cysts are treated by this procedure. Doctors also suggest carrying out a complete removal of the glands if the patient continues to suffer from repeated Bartholin cyst formation.
Bartholin Gland Mass Prognosis
Recovery is usually complete after treatment. Bartholin abscesses recur only in 10% cases. Bartholin cysts and abscesses normally do not result in any complications. In rare cases of abnormalities in Bartholin Gland tumors of cancerous types are detected. This is mainly seen in women who are over 40 years old.
Pictures of Bartholin Gland
Want to know how Bartholin Gland cysts look like? Check out these Bartholin Gland cyst pictures. Here are also some Bartholin Gland abscess pictures. These Bartholin Gland images will help you know how cysts and abscesses in Bartholin Glands look like. You can also check out the Bartholin Gland diagrams to find out how the glands appear in normal circumstances.
If you have a swollen, painful lump near the vagina, it is necessary that you soak it repeatedly with warm water throughout the day. If it refuses to go away even after 3-4 days, you must get in touch with your doctor. Even though complications are rare, a painful Bartholin Gland mass can be very discomforting for you. Early treatment will help you evade future complications, if any, and let you enjoy life to the fullest.
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1 Answer | Add Yours
There is certainly a very definite sense in which this collection of stories represents tale-telling at its finest, as we have a collection of very different stories all jockeying aside one another, presenting us with very different views on topics and themes such as religion, marriage and hypocrisy. Let us remind ourselves that in the Prologue, the storytelling competition is suggested as a means of passing the time, and introduced as a kind of friendly competition, as there is a prize at stake:
It's that you each, to shorten the long journey,
Shall tell two tales en route to Canterbury,
And, coming homeward, tell another two,
Stories of things that happened long ago.
Whoever best acquits himself, and tells
The most amusing and instructive tale,
Shall have a dinner, paid for by us all,
Here in this inn...
Note the two criteria that are suggested for the stories that the pilgrims must tell. They are to be "amusing and instructive." This points towards the meaning implicit in the barage of stories that we read, as there is often a moral or didactic element in addition to the way in which so many of the stories are clearly mean to entertain us. Stories, in addition, serve as a very compelling insight into character, as we are forced to relate the content of each pilgrim's tale to what we are told about their identity. Often, stories are used as a response or a rebuke to the stories or ideas of other characters, and we can see that the kind of stories that are told and the characters that are in them can often be a subtle, or not so subtle, way of characters expressing their differences.
Storytelling therefore is a very important theme of this work, and it contains many different elements to it when we begin to think about the competition, the purpose of the tales, and the way that they both cast light on the pilgrims themselves and their interactions.
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Definitions for behindbɪˈhaɪnd
This page provides all possible meanings and translations of the word behind
buttocks, nates, arse, butt, backside, bum, buns, can, fundament, hindquarters, hind end, keister, posterior, prat, rear, rear end, rump, stern, seat, tail, tail end, tooshie, tush, bottom, behind, derriere, fanny, ass(adj)
the fleshy part of the human body that you sit on
"he deserves a good kick in the butt"; "are you going to sit on your fanny and do nothing?"
having the lower score or lagging position in a contest
"behind by two points"; "the 8th inning found the home team trailing"
in or to or toward the rear
"he followed behind"; "seen from behind, the house is more imposing than it is from the front"; "the final runners were far behind"
remaining in a place or condition that has been left or departed from
"when he died he left much unfinished work behind"; "left a large family behind"; "the children left their books behind"; "he took off with a squeal of tires and left the other cars far behind"
"the clock is almost an hour slow"; "my watch is running behind"
in or into an inferior position
"fell behind in his studies"; "their business was lagging behind in the competition for customers"
behind, behindhand, in arrears(adverb)
"he fell behind with his mortgage payments"; "a month behind in the rent"; "a company that has been run behindhand for years"; "in arrears with their utility bills"
the rear, back-end
butt, the buttocks
A 1 point score.
1880: A roar from ten thousand throats go up,For we've kicked another behind. uE000125107uE001 "The Opening Ball" in Comic Australian Verse, ed. G. Lehmann, 1975. Quoted in G. A. Wilkes, A Dictionary of Australian Colloquialisms, second edition, 1985, Sydney University Press, ISBN 0-424-00113-6.
an 1800s baseball term meaning the catcher
At the back part; in the rear.
Toward the back part or rear; backward; as, to look behind.
Not yet brought forward, produced, or exhibited to view; out of sight; remaining.
Backward in time or order of succession; past.
After the departure of another; as, to stay behind.
at the back of
to the back of
after, time- or motion-wise
in support of
The republicans are fully behind their candidate.
Origin: From behindan.
on the side opposite the front or nearest part; on the back side of; at the back of; on the other side of; as, behind a door; behind a hill
left after the departure of, whether this be by removing to a distance or by death
left a distance by, in progress of improvement Hence: Inferior to in dignity, rank, knowledge, or excellence, or in any achievement
at the back part; in the rear
toward the back part or rear; backward; as, to look behind
not yet brought forward, produced, or exhibited to view; out of sight; remaining
backward in time or order of succession; past
after the departure of another; as, to stay behind
the backside; the rump
Chambers 20th Century Dictionary
be-hīnd′, prep. at the back of (place, or as support): remaining after or coming after (time, rank, order): inferior to, or not so far advanced as.—adv. at the back, in the rear: backward: past.—adj. or adv. Behind′hand, being behind: tardy, or in arrears of debt, &c.: clandestine. [A.S. behindan; Ger. hinten. See Hind.]
British National Corpus
Spoken Corpus Frequency
Rank popularity for the word 'behind' in Spoken Corpus Frequency: #451
Written Corpus Frequency
Rank popularity for the word 'behind' in Written Corpus Frequency: #684
Rank popularity for the word 'behind' in Adverbs Frequency: #227
The numerical value of behind in Chaldean Numerology is: 4
The numerical value of behind in Pythagorean Numerology is: 6
Sample Sentences & Example Usage
Images & Illustrations of behind
Translations for behind
From our Multilingual Translation Dictionary
- وراء, خلف, وَراءArabic
- задница, зад, назад, задник, отзадBulgarian
- darrereCatalan, Valencian
- za, zpátky, vzaduCzech
- заOld Church Slavonic, Church Slavonic, Old Bulgarian
- bagside, bagdel, bag, efter, bagefter, rumpe, bundDanish
- hinter, Hintern, hintenGerman
- πίσω απόGreek
- después, detrás, atrásSpanish
- taga, tagaosa, tagumik, taha, põhiEstonian
- takana, peräpää, perä, takapuoli, jäljessä, taakse, takaosa, takamus, peppu, pakara, jälkeensä, piilossa, takaosassa, jälkeen, jäljelle, löytymättä, myöhässäFinnish
- derrière, après, reversFrench
- efterWestern Frisian
- taobh thiar deIrish
- air cùl, air cùlaibhScottish Gaelic
- detrás de, tras, detrásGalician
- מֵאָחוֹר, מאחוריHebrew
- पीछा, के पीछे, पीछेHindi
- dèyèHaitian Creole
- mögé, mögött, hátul, végénHungarian
- dietro, dopoItalian
- پشت گرتن, پاش, پشتKurdish
- hönjer, achterLimburgish, Limburgan, Limburger
- pirms, aizLatvian
- sesudah, ke belakang, di belakangMalay
- achterwerk, achteraan, achter, achterste, na, achterkantDutch
- bak, bakpart, rompeNorwegian
- zad, z tyłu, za, tył, dupa, (być) za, poPolish
- traseira, por trás, traseiro, bunda, depois, atrás, apoiando, para trásPortuguese
- după, urmă, spate, spre spate, îndărăt, spre-napoi, în spate, în urmăRomanian
- задница, за, позади, за спиной, зад, после, сзади, тыл, вспять, назадRussian
- за, zaSerbo-Croatian
- za, dél, nazáj, zádnjica, zádnji, po, zadájSlovene
- prapa, pasAlbanian
- baksida, botten, akter, bakom, ända, bak, efter, baktillSwedish
- వెనక్కి, వెనకTelugu
- nasa likod, sa likodTagalog
- поза, заUkrainian
- کے پیچھے, پیچھا, پیچھےUrdu
- padrî, dirîWalloon
Get even more translations for behind »
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The impetus for Russ’s investigation was the desire to buy Sawston Hall, a Tudor house in Cambridgeshire which had belonged to his distant ancestor, John Huddleston, a Roman Catholic who in 1553 had sheltered the future Mary I when she was being hunted down by the Duke of Northumberland .
After only a night at Sawston, Mary was forced to ride for her life dressed as a dairy maid, and legend has it that she and Huddleston watched from a hill as Sawston was set ablaze. “Don’t worry,” she assured him. “I’ll build you a much better house when I am queen.” And she did.
The Huddlestons lived there until 1980, when Russ’s uncle left the house to a cousin, after which it was eventually sold to a developer. But plans to transform it collapsed, and it was eventually put back on the market in 2009, for £5 million. Russ, who had himself been bequeathed Sawston’s contents, began to cast around for a way to raise the funds in order to fulfil his dream of buying the Hall and transforming it into a Catholic heritage centre and refuge.
In the collection he had inherited was an unsigned full-length portrait (which tests had dated to the 1550s) of a woman dressed in black and holding a miniature or mirror. After almost 500 years, the identity both of the artist and the woman in the painting remained a mystery. All that could be said for sure was that experts at the National Portrait Gallery considered it “very interesting and important”. Exhibited at the Tate in 1995, it was described simply as “A Lady in Black”.
But Russ began to suspect, and hope, that there was more to the canvas than met the eye. He was sure that the “Lady” in question was Mary I herself.
Expert opinion was divided. Sir Roy Strong, a former director of the NPG and an authority on Tudor portraiture, noted that “the mid-16th century was a very dark time and it is extremely difficult to be certain”. But Professor Jack Scarisbrick, the Tudor and Catholic scholar, was sure that the subject was indeed the queen. In 2009 he told The Times: “There was nobody outside the royal family important enough for such a lavish full-length painting — and if it is isn’t Mary, who is it? Nobody else fits the bill.”
The question remained, however: who was the painter? The more Russ looked at the canvas, the more he became sure he knew the answer.
It was not the “Lady” herself who presented him with clues to the artist’s identity, but allegories and puzzles in the background. Russ spent months identifying and analysing these visual devices, seeing in them allegories about the bloodshed of the Reformation.
For example, the sitter is placed in front of blood-red ruins — denoting, Russ thought, the destruction of Catholic churches. In a chip in a pillar on the left of the canvas, Russ said, some observers saw a face with a crooked triple tiara – as worn by the Pope. He himself saw in it a wolf, a symbol of the Papacy in an age when “Christendom is in danger of splitting”. Then, to the Lady’s right, Russ pointed out several tiny profiles – images, he was sure, of Henry VIII, of which there were nine in total.
Above all, he saw at the foot of one column a baby in swaddling — a reference, he thought, to Edward VI, who was born in 1537, superseding Mary in line to the throne. If so, Russ argued, it would also explain the sitter’s dress, for Mary would have been in mourning for her stepmother, Jane Seymour, who died giving birth to Edward.
The date, and the puzzles, led Russ to identify the artist as Hans Holbein, whose masterpiece, The Ambassadors (also filled with visual puzzles) was painted in 1533. Russ considered the possibility that he might have unearthed a lost work by Holbein to be “a small miracle”. In fact, it would have been a substantial miracle: worth at least £50 million, the potential “Holbein” would have been enough to buy Sawston 10 times over.
Around him, Russ gathered a loyal band of enthusiasts and supporters, among them the Catholic thinker Bruce Kent, Polly Toynbee and Count Nicolai Tolstoy, whose stepfather, the writer Patrick O’Brian, was Russ’s cousin.
But despite his efforts, Russ could not convince the art world of his case. In 2010 Sawston was sold again, but not to him. In December that year the painting, by now titled “Portrait of a Lady, Probably Lady Margaret Douglas (1515-1578)”, formed lot 256 at a Sotheby’s Old Masters sale. The estimate was £100,000 to £200,000, and it did not sell.
Timothy Vincent Russ was born in London on August 11 1943 to Rupert Russ, who died when Tim was 13 months old, and the former Ros Eyre-Huddleston. Educated at Downside, Tim would spend a week of every holiday visiting his uncle Anthony Eyre-Huddleston at Sawston. The Hall and the history of the Huddleston family soon became the love of his life.
He cherished, for example, the story of Zaide, daughter of the Dey of Algiers, who in 1270 during the siege of Tunis fell in love with a young Huddleston crusader. With a girlish passion she cut him down from his chains but removed his scalp in error. Happily, he survived, and the scalp became the crest of the Huddleston coat of arms.
Russ explored the fine priest holes at Sawston, which were built by the Jesuit St Nicholas Owen. The house is also associated with St John Rigby, one of the 40 Catholic martyrs, who was executed in 1600. Rigby represented the daughter of Sir Edmund Huddleston when she was summoned to the Privy Council for recusancy. Rigby attended in her place, admitted his Catholicism and was hanged, drawn and quartered. Not long afterwards, a Henry Huddleston was a close friend of the Jesuit priest John Gerard.
At Cambridge, where he read Economics, Russ was challenged about his faith by Monsignor Alfred Gilbey, the celebrated chaplain to the university. Against the wishes of his mother, Ros, who was dismayed that her son’s decision to go into the priesthood would deprive her of grandchildren, Russ trained at Oscott. He was ordained at Sawston and said his first Mass at Oxburgh Hall, Norfolk, before becoming curate at St Lawrence church, Cambridge, then at St Martin, Luton.
He was appointed secretary to Bishop Charles Grant in Northampton and went on to serve as a parish priest at Our Lady of Peace in Burnham before moving to Great Missenden, in Buckinghamshire, where he remained for his last 17 years.
At that time Great Missenden was the Blairs’ home parish. When asked in 2008 what made a Catholic of the former prime minister, who converted after leaving office, Russ replied: “In my opinion Tony is an idealist. And he found, in the English Catholic parish, what the Labour Party should ideally be: a place where everyone, no matter what their colour or race, could feel at home. I think that is one of the reasons why he converted.” The two men did not always agree, however, notably about the Iraq war, of which Russ deeply disapproved. But he received affectionate letters from the Blairs to the end of his life.
Away from his Sawston investigation and parish life, Russ was a leading scholar of the great Jesuit theologian Bernard JF Lonergan. He also campaigned on behalf of the descendants of 12,000 mainly Slovene Catholic soldiers who were deported by Britain back to their enemies in Yugoslavia in May 1945, after which almost all were executed. In October 2010 a Mass of Reparation was held at Great Missenden, celebrated by the Bishop of Northampton and the Archbishop of Ljubljana.
Canon Tim Russ, born August 11 1943, died June 29 2013
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Greenhouse gas emissions down in Europe
Greenhouse gas emissions in European Union (EU) nations decreased by 1.3 percent in 2012, putting the EU within reach of its 20 % reduction target, with eight years to go until the 2020 deadline.
According to the final EU greenhouse gas emissions for 2012 reportedly recently by the European Environment Agency (EEA) to the United Nations, emissions are below 1990 levels. Emissions have decreased by 1 082 Mt in the EU since 1990, which is more than the combined 2012 emissions of Italy and the United Kingdom. As a result, the EU was already very close to reaching its 2020 Climate and Energy Package target through domestic measures alone.
The first 15 EU Member States are also joint signatories to the Kyoto Protocol, with a collective target of 8 percent average reduction over the period 2008-2012. This group of countries have reduced emissions by an average of 11.8 percent during 2008-2012 compared to base year without counting 'sinks' or credits from Kyoto Protocol flexible mechanisms. The emission reduction from 2008 to 2012 in the EU15 was in absolute terms greater than Spain's total emissions in 2012.
Why did emissions fall in the EU in 2012?
Emissions fell by 1.3 percent between 2011 and 2012, largely due to reductions in transport and industry and a growing proportion of energy from renewable sources.
Italy alone accounted for 45 percent of the total EU net reduction in emissions in 2012, largely due to lower emissions from transport and industry. The second largest reduction, in Poland, was mainly due to a substantial decrease in solid fuel consumption. In contrast to their overall decreasing emission trend since 1990, the United Kingdom and Germany increased emissions in 2012 because of increased use of solid fuels.
Greenhouse gas emissions and changes in GDP
The EEA technical analysis of emission trends shows that changes in GDP, for example growth or recession, can explain up to one third of the change in total greenhouse gas emissions since 1990. During periods experiencing recession (including in the 2008-2012 period), changes in GDP can explain less than 50 percent of observed emission reductions for the EU as a whole. Other factors and policies have played at least as important a role in reducing emissions, including the sustained and strong growth in renewable energy and improvements in energy efficiency.
|"The EU has demonstrated that there is no conflict between a growing economy and reducing greenhouse gas emissions."|
Although GDP is a significant factor behind changes in greenhouse gas emissions on an annual basis, GDP and greenhouse gas emissions show an absolute 'decoupling' when compared to 1990, according to the EEA analysis. While GDP has increased 45 percent since 1990, emissions have fallen 19 percent, halving EU's 'emission intensity', the volume of emissions generated for each euro of GDP. In addition, Member States' emission intensities have been converging. Per capita greenhouse gas emissions in the EU have decreased by almost a quarter since 1990, from 12 to nine tonnes.
Hans Bruyninckx, EEA Executive Director, said: "The EU has demonstrated that there is no conflict between a growing economy and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Policies have been at the heart of this success. We need to go even further, but this will depend on countries implementing policies which already map a path towards a low carbon, energy secure society."
The downward emission trajectory seems to have continued in 2013, according to emissions data from EU Emissions Trading System and early estimates based on energy statistics from Eurostat. In the autumn the EEA and DG CLIMA will publish official estimates for total EU greenhouse gas emissions for 2013.
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On This Day - 28 January 1918
Theatre definitions: Western Front comprises the Franco-German-Belgian front and any military action in Great Britain, Switzerland, Scandinavia and Holland. Eastern Front comprises the German-Russian, Austro-Russian and Austro-Romanian fronts. Southern Front comprises the Austro-Italian and Balkan (including Bulgaro-Romanian) fronts, and Dardanelles. Asiatic and Egyptian Theatres comprises Egypt, Tripoli, the Sudan, Asia Minor (including Transcaucasia), Arabia, Mesopotamia, Syria, Persia, Afghanistan, Turkestan, China, India, etc. Naval and Overseas Operations comprises operations on the seas (except where carried out in combination with troops on land) and in Colonial and Overseas theatres, America, etc. Political, etc. comprises political and internal events in all countries, including Notes, speeches, diplomatic, financial, economic and domestic matters. Source: Chronology of the War (1914-18, London; copyright expired)
Aeroplane raid on London: 67 killed, 166 injured; one enemy machine down.
French make two small attacks in Champagne and one in Upper Alsace.
Air attacks by British on Roulers and other aerodromes.
German raid repulsed between Lens and Arras.
Heavy fighting between Bolsheviks and Ukrainians at Lutsk.
Romanian Legation ordered to leave Petrograd.
Civil War in Finland: Helsingfors captured by Socialists and Russian troops.
Italians attack between Asiago and Brenta Valley and capture Col del Rosso and 1,500 prisoners.
Asiatic and Egyptian Theatres
War Office reports further operations near Hejaz railway.
Naval and Overseas Operations
Further naval air attacks on Aertrycke and Engel.
H.M.S. "Hazard" sunk in collision in Channel.
Ankwalu (East Africa) occupied by British.
U.S.A.: Mr. Baker makes statement on strength of Army.
Germany: Great strikes in Berlin, etc.
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The Scottish crossbill, the UK's only endemic bird which is native to the Highlands of Scotland, faces extinction, according to a new report.
The Scottish crossbill is found only in the Highlands
The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds warns that unless action is taken to halt a rise in global temperatures, the species is under severe threat.
The bird, which lives only in Scots pine forests, is already on the conservation body's endangered list.
Other Scottish species, such as the capercaillie, could also suffer.
The Climatic Atlas of European Breeding Birds - published by the RSBP - shows that three quarters of all of Europe's nesting bird species are likely to suffer declines in range.
The results of the study have hastened calls by the RSPB for urgent action to cut greenhouse gases.
Professor Rhys Green, an RSPB scientist and one of the authors, said: "Climatic change and wildlife's responses to it are difficult to forecast with any precision, but this study helps us to appreciate the magnitude and scope of possible impacts and to identify species at most risk and those in need of urgent help and protection."
Red and black grouse, ptarmigan and snow bunting are other birds likely to be affected in Scotland. The birds could be left with few areas of suitable climate and populations could drop.
Dr Mark Avery, the RSPB's conservation director, said: "We must heed the wake-up call provided by this atlas and act immediately to curb climate change."
He claimed that some investment should also be made to help wildlife adapt to an "inevitable" level of climate change.
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SMALL EYED SNAKE Cryptophis nigrescens (GUNTHER, 1862)
Found from Melbourne, Victoria along the east coast, ranges and near slopes of Victoria, NSW and Queensland to the tip of Cape York this dangerous snake is usually black, grey or dark brown in colour. Adults average 50 cm although some Queensland specimens which tend to grow larger than southern specimens may exceed a metre in length. A closely related species occurs in the coastal parts of the Northern Territory and adjacent parts of Western Australia.
The scalation is smooth with 15 mid body rows, 165-210 ventrals, single anal and 30-45 single subcaudals.
This wholly nocturnal snake has killed at least two people from its' bite, and although both deaths were the result of 'exceptional' circumstances this snake should be treated with care. Most bites however seem to result in little more than local swelling.
Most specimens of this nocturnal snake are caught during the day under cover, particularly in cold weather. When caught this snake will usually attempt to bite and may flatten out its' body whilst doing so. This snake has been found inside termite mounds, where it feeds on lizards that enter
the mounds. The Small Eyed Snake is essentially a skink and gecko feeder. Winter aggregations of this snake numbering up to nearly thirty individuals have been found around Sydney. It is believed that mating occurs in late autumn, winter and spring with 2-8 (average 5) live young being produced in late summer. Young measure 10-12 cm at birth.
The above was from the book Australian Reptiles and Frogs by Raymond Hoser and now available on a fantastic CD-Rom along with a vast amount of other information, papers and the like on reptiles, frogs and other wildlife.
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This is a public outreach campaign, called the International Asteroid Search Campaign which has 7 participating countries located on 4 continents as participants. This campaign, called the NASA WISE Asteroid Search Campaign is "part of the public outreach program for the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer mission launched in December 2009." From the one of Galileo Teacher Training Program site in regards to the campaign...
The International Asteroid Search Campaign (IASC) is a program for high school and college students who search just hours-old astronomical images for original discoveries. These discoveries include Main Belt asteroids and near-Earth objects (NEOs). Students download the images on a daily basis, perform the analysis with provided software tools, and report their discoveries, which ultimately are recognized by the Minor Planet Center (MPC; Harvard University) and the International Astronomical Union (IAU).
This program is brought to schools at no cost for either participation or the software as an educational service provided by the Astronomical Research Institute (ARI; Charleston, IL), Hardin-Simmons University (HSU; Abilene, TX), Global Hands-On Universe Association (Portugal), and Lawrence Hall of Science (University of California, Berkeley). The software is provided by Astrometrica (Austria).
During times of Moon-less skies, the ARI takes images along the ecliptic using its 0.61-m and 0.81-m telescopes. The following morning these images are prepared and made available to the participating schools. The schools go to Hardin-Simmons University web site (http://iasc.hsutx.edu) where they download the images and use the software package Astrometrica to produce a plate solution and identify all of the moving objects. Astrometrica checks to see which of the objects are found within the MPC database. Those objects not found are identified as new discoveries
In order to complete the discovery, the ARI must take a follow-up image within seven days. When this is completed, the MPC officially recognizes the discovery and credits the students having conducted the analysis.
Search campaigns are run for 30 days at a time. A key goal of these campaigns is to establish ongoing astronomy research programs at high schools and colleges. These schools will be able to directly access the images from the Astronomical Research Institute on an ongoing basis, and integrate these searches into their science curriculums.
Link: International Asteroid Search Campaign
Link: Galileo Teacher Training Program on International Asteroid Search Campaign
This area will cover relevant news of the threat to the planet from Near Earth Objects (NEOs) including concepts and designs for mitigation. All opinions are those of the author.
Note: Any opinions expressed on the blog are solely those of the author. The site is not sponsored by, nor does it represent the opinions of, any organization, corporation, or other entity.
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When people find out that David Stein is an ichthyologist, they usually ask "what is that"? To which he replies, "a fish doctor" that is, a scientist who studies fish. Then they invariably ask if he keeps an aquarium at home. Without fail, his answer is always, no, "I study dead fish, not live ones."
Sounds pretty harsh but, as a fish taxonomist, David’s mission is to identify, describe and classify the finny creatures — and that means dissecting them. Stein works in the NOAA/NMFS Systematics Laboratory at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC.
As an expert taxonomist who studies deep-sea fishes, David was invited to join the ICEFISH (International Collaborative Expedition to collect & study Fish Indigenous to Sub-Antarctic Habitats) cruise, a scientific voyage aboard the 308-ft. Antarctic research vessel NATHANIEL B. PALMER, which is funded by the National Science Foundation. NSF is an independent U.S. government agency that funds science, scientific education and engineering through grants to highly qualified experts. It invests over $5.57 billion per year in almost 20,000 research projects, including the U.S. Antarctic Research Program.
Taxonomy is the identification and classification of organisms. Taxonomists identify known organisms, name and describe previously unknown ones, and place them in the scientific classification of all life. David explains, "Species are the fundamental units of the living world, and without being able to identify them, no studies of their evolution, relationships to other organisms, or biology can be accomplished."
During the next two months, David will share with us his observations about shipboard life, his work and the work being conducted by the PALMER’s other marine biologists, who hail from six countries in addition to the U.S. David will also write about the isolated, thinly populated and sometimes inhospitable subantarctic islands of the southern Atlantic Ocean.
The NATHANIEL B. PALMER will leave Punta Arenas, Chile, on May 17, 2004, and arrive two months later in Capetown, South Africa. Along the way, the scientists on board will sample the marine fauna of the sub Antarctic Atlantic islands and banks, including Burdwood Bank, the Falkland Islands, Shag Rocks, South Georgia, South Sandwich, Bouvet, and Tristan da Cunha. These rocky, often volcanic islands lie between 50°S and 60°S and will seem familiar to readers of Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin novels and to readers of the accounts of James Cook’s voyages in the 18th century and Ernest Shackleton’s Antarctic expedition in the early 20th century.
David’s goal on the cruise is to collect bottom fishes, especially
snailfishes, found in shallow intertidal waters around the islands and
banks to hadal waters (8200 m or about 26,600 ft.) of the South Sandwich
Trench. "Hadal," the word used to describe the deepest, least
hospitable parts of the ocean, derives from the Greek "Hades," the
name of the underworld abode of the dead. Never was a word more evocative
"I’ve worked in this field since 1969 and I am still astonished by fishes," he says. "How have such strange creatures come to exist and how do they make their living in such a harsh environment?"
published over 50 scientific papers in the past 30 years, mostly describing
his research on a variety of
particularly the little-known but widely diverse family
of fishes called Liparidae,
Liparids are distinguished by a sucking disc located on
their bottom surface below the gill openings. They also are nicknamed "snotfish," because
they have a thick layer of gelatinous mucous between the skin and body
muscles. The mucous may serve a buoyancy function, he says.
They are of great scientific interest because of their extremely wide distribution: snailfish species occur from estuaries and the intertidal zone to below 7000 meters (23,000 ft.) depth, and are in all the oceans where water temperatures are cool or cold. They have no commercial significance, although a closely related species, the lumpfish, yields tasty caviar.
David’s research has taken him to almost every continent and he has logged over three years of sea time on more than 60 scientific cruises, including over 40 dives in a variety of small scientific submersibles. He often works closely with colleagues at the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, and travels to Russia almost every year to continue research on on-going projects. David’s also something of a collecting gear guru and has designed special trawls and nets for collecting fish and plankton at various depths.
Having already described more than 80 new species of snailfish, almost a quarter of the 350 species known to exist, David expects (and hopes!) to find a few more on this trip, particularly because some of the deeper areas the PALMER will visit have not been plumbed for fish before.
So, how does a nice boy from Bennington, VT, end up on a 308 ft. ship trawling for fish in 50 ft. seas (about the seas he says, "We hope not!") off Antarctica in the dead of the austral winter? "There are a lot of ocean scientists from landlocked states," he says. "For me, it happened by accident,"
"It," the fish science thing, began in the early-1960s when he, like many other young people, migrated to California. After spending a few years at Berkeley, giving in, shall we say, to the lure of fast motorcycles and the counter-culture, David took a marine biology class at the local community college "because it seemed interesting."
"Two of my professors saw that I was enthusiastic and they hired me as a technician," David recalls. That means he learned fish science from the ground up by tending to laboratory equipment, keeping lab specimens alive (this pre-dates his taxonomy days) and acquiring the discipline needed to study and observe.
After getting a bachelor’s degree in marine biology from Humboldt State University in Arcata, CA, he moved north to Corvallis, OR, where he worked as a technician under the tutelage of Bill Pearcy, Professor of Oceanography (now retired) at Oregon State University. Pearcy is himself a world expert on nekton, or free-swimming aquatic animals (fishes, squid, and mammals), and the early life history of salmon. During that time, David became very interested in the lives of deep-sea fishes.
While earning his Masters degree in Fisheries at OSU, David worked on a project funded by the Atomic Energy Commission (now part of the U.S. Department of Energy) to study the fate of radioactive materials in the deep sea. "We needed to identify the critters we saw. First we studied grenadier (also known as rattails because of their tapering bodies and pointed tails) because they were the most abundant, then I started looking at the snailfish."
He discovered that there were 28 liparid species in deep waters off Oregon, and these included two new genera (a genus is a group of closely related species) and eight new species, all of which he described and named — but not after himself. Contrary to popular belief, it's not considered good form to name species after yourself!
He continued studying snailfish and earned his Ph.D. by describing and contrasting the biology and natural history of snailfish and grenadiers found between 800 m and 4200 m (2,600 ft. to 13,800 ft.). He remained at OSU on the research faculty until moving to Washington, DC, in 1991 to work at NOAA. Although his job there did not require him to do any research, he continued on his own time, often using his own money. "Relocating to the Systematics Laboratory at the Museum of Natural History has made it possible to do science full time again," David says.
"Participation in this cruise is a once in a lifetime opportunity," David says. "I’ve worked on fishes of the Antarctic since 1989, but I’ve never been there."
"On the way to the ship and back from it at the end of the cruise, I will be able to visit fish collections at scientific institutes in Santiago and Valdivia, Chile, and Grahamstown, South Africa."
On board, on the off chance that he’ll have time on his hands, he’s packing a selection of science fiction paperbacks and some Russian scientific papers to translate, so he can keep current on his language skills.
Is there a downside to the trip?
"I'll miss my regular exercise of swimming a mile three times a week and I won’t be able to ride the new motorcycle I just built." "Blue Ruin," whose name derives from a particularly potent form of moonshine, is a vintage British "special," a Vincent 1000cc twin engine in a Norton frame.
"Blue Ruin" will have to wait even longer. Several weeks after returning from the ICEFISH cruise, David is scheduled to join a Russian research vessel for a three-week cruise to the Arctic ice edge of the Chukchi Sea north of the Bering Strait.
Come September, when he’s back home in the Washington, DC, area, he has no intention of going anywhere for some time. For now, however, we get to travel along with him.
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|Product #: CCP5787|
MAPPING SKILLS WITH GOOGLE EARTH
Students will learn in-depth how to read and create maps with our engaging resource designed for students in grades three to five. Students will expand their knowledge of the elements on a map by exploring the lines of latitude, longitude and time zones. Then, students will learn about geographical and cultural features by exploring topographic and choropleth maps. Finally, students will learn the states and provinces found in North America as well as the different countries that make up the world. Comprised of reading passages, map activities, crossword, word search and comprehension quiz, our resource incorporates curriculum-based lessons with Google Earth™ so students can further understand map reading with the help of visual and interactive technology.
Submit a review
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Kindergarten and grade one students engage in many letter learning activities at home and school, and this video is an excellent example of a fun and meaningful way to do so. By using photos of family members and tactile letter stickers, kids will have fun doing the activity and learning about letters at the same time. The book used in the video is similar in structure to the alphabet book used in the Reading Recovery program and kindergarten and primary classrooms to help children consolidate what they already know about letters, and add to as they learn more.
In the attached video, this fun activity was done in alphabetical order as a gift for a child. It can be an interactive, instructional, letter learning activity as well. This activity works best with one child at a time, but can be done in pairs or small groups.
Creating a personal alphabet book:
- Get the book ready ahead of time, with a page dedicated to each letter, and the upper and lower case version of that letter written on the page before beginning the activity
- Have ready access to a large collection of images, whether it be photos, clip art, flyers, coloring books, stamps, stickers or the internet, or be prepared to do some drawing! It is helpful to have a photo of the child, mom, dad, siblings and a pet prepared ahead of time
- Materials such as scissors, glue stick and markers should also be handy
Explaining the process to the child:
- making a book takes time, and it will take a number of different days to create this very personal alphabet book
- the first letters to do are the ones the child knows best, perhaps his or her name, then some others
- when the child sees the letter, or hears that letter sound, the word that pops into his or her head right away is what the picture should show
- this book will be special because no one else will choose the same pictures for each letter, the pictures are individual to the child who creates the book
- the pictures that go into the book have to match the sound of the letter on the page (for vowels, the short letter sound, and try to avoid combination sounds and exceptions)
- once all of the known letters are finished, it is time to stop and ‘read’ the story so far
Following the initial creation of the alphabet book, the adult and child will read what is in the book, and select another one to three pages to add a picture to each day. There may be a letter that is too difficult, or unrecognizable to the child at that time. Name that letter and sound for him, give a couple of quick examples, then leave it for another day.
Children learn best when they are happily engaged in what they are doing, and when they have their own sound alphabet that they have created from the words and names most meaningful to them, they gain confidence in their memory of letter sounds and using these sounds, with and later, without, their alphabet book. It is the ultimate reference guide for the early readers and writers of the world!
A letter learning book filled with photos of family members, stamps, stickers and drawings of one’s favorite things, can you think of a more fun and meaningful way to learn about letters?
Do you remember letter learning from your own childhood? How are things different for your own child(ren)?
Enjoy this article? Receive email alerts when new articles are available by clicking on the 'subscribe' button above.
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As digital scaling requirements and the semiconductor technology roadmap push ICs to more advanced nodes, the analog blocks follow the same power reduction paradigm as the digital blocks in the same circuit, but not necessarily in the same manner.
| Download this article in .PDF format |
This file type includes high resolution graphics and schematics when applicable.
The quest for power reduction in electronic circuits is one of the main drivers of circuit design innovation. Recently, the need to reduce power consumption has extended beyond the territory of battery-powered applications such as handheld devices and remote sensors to plug-in applications such as home entertainment to meet green label requirements and even cloud storage and processing due to the sheer amount of power used in these compute farms (Fig. 1).
- Reduce Power In Computing And Memory Interfaces Without Impacting Performance
- Design Custom Chips That Maximize Battery Life
- Manhattan And Mr. Spock Offer Lessons In 3D FinFET Design
Furthermore, the use of ever more advanced process nodes, as described by Moore’s Law, leads to chips with higher functionality (gate density) in the same area. As a result, more power per area unit is generated inside the chip, despite the lower supply voltage. This excessive power is problematic unless it is properly dissipated, which requires expensive packages or heatsinks. The higher functionality of today’s systems-on-chip (SoCs) is driving the integration in the SoC of the analog interfaces with the multitude of signal sources that exist in modern devices, such as the output of wireless radios, wireline transceivers, and sensors.
Power consumption can be reduced in multiple ways. In the digital domain, power supply levels often are reduced in line with the evolution of technology. The well-known formula for dynamic power dissipation (P) shows quadratic gains when supply levels (Vdd) are reduced:
Additionally, this formula highlights other strategies that yield immediate gains in terms of power dissipation: reduce the capacitance (C) being toggled (typically comprising gate capacitance plus any additional routing parasitic) and reduce the activity (a) of the circuit, through clocking strategies and, eventually, clock gating. The toggling rate (fclk) can also be reduced in some cases, although it would have the unintended effect of reducing processing speed.
However, the analog interfaces are in the analog domain where static power components typically dominate power dissipation, limiting the potential gains that can be achieved through the equation above. Furthermore, analog performance requirements, especially linearity and noise, often limit the ability to reduce the supply levels and demand the use of power-hungry high-gain circuits.
In traditional analog circuits, power must be traded off for speed (bandwidth) and/or resolution (linearity), for example (Fig. 2). Based on these tradeoffs, one could conclude that high-performance analog blocks cannot offer low power consumption, and therefore limit the overall system power. All is not lost, though. This conclusion is, contradicted by the sheer amount of scientific and development work dedicated to the subject of low-power analog circuit techniques.
Many pure analog circuits have been implemented to save power and allow for low-supply-voltage operation by using techniques such as sub-threshold operation (a region below the transistors’ normal operating region). These established techniques are effective in low-speed, medium-performance applications such as remote sensors and wristwatches.
For applications with higher speed or performance requirements, designers can take advantage of the abundance of digital transistors available in any modern process to significantly reduce the power (and area) of analog blocks at the expense of a (typically) modest area and power increase for the digital block.
For example, designers can minimize the tradeoffs between performance and power dissipation by transferring some of the complexity and performance requirements from the analog domain to the digital domain. This can be achieved by relying on techniques such as digital compensation, digital calibration, and higher digital processing speed, leading to digitally enabled analog circuits.
Such techniques allow designs to attain high levels of accuracy with lower power dissipation. They are directly applicable to circuits that rely on matching, such as pipeline analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) and successive-approximation register (SAR) ADCs. They rely on digital calibration algorithms that are embedded in the same circuit, which can analyze the “errors” and compensate for them autonomously, at power-up or during normal operation. By running this background calibration, the circuit also benefits from corrections to potential temperature or voltage drifts.
Digital calibration and compensation techniques can be used in a wide variety of situations in analog interface circuits such as ADCs:
• Offset compensation: Circuit mismatches make offset unavoidable in analog circuits. The simplest way to improve matching is to increase the size of all devices, which directly penalizes power dissipation and area. Alternatively, measuring it can compensate for the offset—for example, by comparing the output voltage to 0 and then balancing the circuit by adding some adjustment voltage through a small digital-to-analog converter (DAC).
• Gain error compensation: Low gain accuracy across the operating range of an amplifier can adversely affect linearity. Closed loop gain requires high open loop gain, which is typically achieved at the expense of power dissipation. Gain calibration can compensate for gain inaccuracy, without requiring high open loop gain. It is achieved by injecting a small-scale signal (typically at noise level) that can be measured through correlation and then subtracted. Highest correlation is achieved when the gain is compensated. The algorithm’s task is to find the coefficients that maximize the measured correlation.
• Mismatch between devices: Switched capacitor circuits such as ADCs rely heavily on the matching of capacitors to guarantee their accuracy. Relative matching is a function of device area. Capacitor matching errors can be calibrated by observing that the nominal value of each capacitor is equal to the sum of the remaining lower-order capacitors in the array. This comes naturally from the binary weighted nature of the capacitor array. The total capacitance is only dictated by the noise constraint, reducing the power spent in switching a large capacitor.
Digital calibration and compensation techniques are not confined to the analog block level. By taking advantage of the fact that the analog block is embedded in a complete system, including all of the digital signal processing stages, the system can estimate the quality of the signal being processed across the complete signal chain. It can then determine the required adjustment parameters for the analog blocks across the complete analog signal processing chain. These techniques are very efficient for compensating for mismatches, phase deviations, and distortions (Fig. 3).
Overall, these circuit techniques relax the performance requirements of the analog blocks, which can minimize both power consumption and area. They are particularly effective when the circuit is implemented in advanced process nodes and can take full advantage of the benefits of scaling.
In addition to the techniques that improve on established architectures, the analog blocks’ power dissipation can be further reduced with simpler architectures while maintaining performance objectives. For example, when compared to a pipeline architecture, a SAR-based architecture is much simpler and does not rely on multiple stages (each containing large gain amplifiers) to achieve performance goals. Rather, the SAR-based architecture is a single-stage comparator, which is inherently very compact and low-power. The beauty of this architecture is that no power-hungry precision amplifier is required, as it employs only blocks that can be designed with no static consumption.
The drawback of SAR-based architectures is their limited speed. However, this limitation is overcome in advanced process nodes by taking advantage of the high speed of the process as well as the high processing power available to implement digital assisted algorithms that allow further power reduction.
Power consumption reduction is an overwhelming requirement for integrated electronic circuits. As digital scaling requirements and the semiconductor technology roadmap push ICs to more advanced nodes, the analog blocks follow the same power reduction paradigm as the digital blocks in the same circuit, but not necessarily in the same manner. The move to smaller technologies encourages innovation in analog interface circuit design techniques that enable aggressive power and area reductions.
For more information, visit www.synopsys.com/IP/AnalogIP/DataConversion.
Manuel Mota, technical marketing manager for data converter intellectual property (IP) within the Solutions Group at Synopsys, has worked in the semiconductor industry for more than 10 years as an analog IP designer for Chipidea Microelectronica (Portugal) with responsibility for the design of phase-locked loop (PLL) and data conversion IP cores as well as complete analog front ends for communications. He later assumed the role of business developer for data conversion products with the responsibility of product definition and pre-sales technical engagement with customers. He joined Synopsys from MIPS Technologies in May 2009, assuming the technical marketing manager role. He holds a PhD in electronic engineering from the Lisbon Technical University, which he completed while working at CERN (Switzerland) as a Research Fellow. He has authored several technical papers and presented at technical conferences on analog and mixed signal design. He can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.org.
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- freely available
Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2012, 13(7), 8628-8647; doi:10.3390/ijms13078628
Abstract: Abiotic stresses such as extremes of temperature and pH, high salinity and drought, comprise some of the major factors causing extensive losses to crop production worldwide. Understanding how plants respond and adapt at cellular and molecular levels to continuous environmental changes is a pre-requisite for the generation of resistant or tolerant plants to abiotic stresses. In this review we aimed to present the recent advances on mechanisms of downstream plant responses to abiotic stresses and the use of stress-related genes in the development of genetically engineered crops.
Global effects on desertification, soil salinization, atmospheric CO2 enrichment, nutrient imbalances (including mineral toxicities and deficiencies), and effects of other pollutants are predicted to cause dramatic changes in the environment of agricultural lands. In a world where population growth exceeds food supply, researchers should focus efforts to find solutions that may help plants overcome stress caused by increasingly challenging environmental conditions [1,2].
Plants respond and adapt to continuous environmental fluctuations by appropriate physiological, developmental and biochemical changes to cope with these stress conditions. The stress in plants is an induced physiological situation when there is severe or constant change in the environment or when normal conditions are aggressive, altering the physiological and adaptive pattern of plants. As an example of the changes that induce abiotic stress in plants, we can mention the variations of temperature, moisture, aqueous saline, soil pH, radiation, and pollutants, such as heavy metals and mechanical damage . All of these environment modifications produce physiological reactions in their cells of genetic origin .
These abiotic stress conditions also cause extensive losses to agricultural production worldwide, because they affect negatively plant development and productivity. It is estimated that less than 10% of the world’s arable lands may be free of major environmental stresses. Up to 45% of the world’s agricultural lands are subject to continuous or frequent drought and 19.5% of irrigated agricultural lands are considered saline . Also, crops and other plants are routinely subjected to a combination of different abiotic stresses . In drought areas, for example, many crops encounter a combination of drought and other stresses, such as heat or salinity. Together, these environmental stresses reduce the average yields for major crop plants by 50% to 70%. Individually, stress conditions such as drought, salinity, heat or cold have been the subject of intense research [1,5].
To survive under such conditions, plants have evolved intricate mechanisms to perceive external signals, allowing optimal response to environmental conditions. Responses to abiotic stresses occur at all levels of organization. Cellular responses to stress include adjustments of the membrane system, modifications of cell wall architecture, changes in cell cycle and cell division. To this list must also be included the synthesis of specific endogenous and low-molecular-weight molecules that primarily regulate the protective responses of plants against both biotic and abiotic stresses, such as salicylic acid, jasmonic acid, ethylene, and abscisic acid . At the molecular level, this response also includes the expression of stress-inducible genes involved in direct plant protection against stress [7–9]. Transcriptome analysis using microarray [10–12] has revealed that abiotic stress-induced genes could be divided into two major groups according to the functions of their products. The first group consists of a large number of proteins: enzymatic and structural proteins, such as membrane proteins, enzymes for osmolyte biosynthesis, detoxification enzymes (glutathione S-transferases, hydrolases, superoxide dismutases and ascorbate peroxidases) and other proteins for macromolecular protection (such as LEA protein, chaperons and mRNA binding protein) . The second group comprises a variety of regulatory proteins (such as transcription factors, protein kinases, receptor protein kinases, ribosomal-protein kinases and transcription-regulation protein kinase, etc.) and signal transduction proteinases (phosphoesterases and phospholipase C, etc.) involved in the regulation of cascades of gene expression .
Furthermore, plant acclimation to a particular abiotic stress condition requires a specific response that is linked to the precise environmental conditions that the plant encounters. Thus, molecular, biochemical and physiological processes set in motion by a specific stress condition might differ from those activated by a slightly different composition of environmental parameters. Transcriptome profiling studies of plants subjected to different abiotic stress conditions showed that each different stress condition tested generates a somewhat unique response, and little overlap in transcript expression could be found between the responses of plants to abiotic stress conditions such as heat, drought, cold, salt, high light or mechanical stress. Each abiotic stress condition requires a unique acclimation response, anchored to the specific needs of the plant, and that a combination of two or more different stresses might require a response that is also unique [14,15].
Therefore, the development of genetically engineered plants by the introduction and/or overexpression of selected genes, such as the silencing of specific genes, seems to be a viable option to the breeding of resistant plants . Genetic engineering would be a faster way to insert beneficial genes than through conventional breeding too. Also, it would be the only option when genes of interest originate from cross barrier species, distant relatives, or from non-plant sources. Indeed, there are several genes whose correlative association with resistance has been tested in transgenic plants. Following these arguments, several transgenic approaches have been used to improve stress tolerance in plants . Here, our goal was to show the main functional genes in plants in response to the most common abiotic stresses (drought, salinity, cold, heat and mechanical damage), and their biological roles in the improvement of plants to these stresses.
2. Heat-Shock Proteins
Temperatures above the normal optimum cause heat stress at different levels in all living organisms. Heat stress, often associated with salinity and drought stress, disturbs cellular homeostasis, and causes denaturation and dysfunction in many proteins, leading to severe retardation in growth, development and even death. Worldwide, extensive agricultural losses are attributed to heat, often in combination with drought or other stresses. The synthesis and accumulation of heat shock proteins (Hsps) are assumed to play a central role in the heat stress response and in tolerance to high temperatures in all plants, and other organisms [16,17].
The heat stress response is a highly conserved reaction caused by exposure of an organism tissue or cells to sudden high temperature stress, and it is characterized by rapid induction and transient expression of Hsps. As many molecular chaperones are stress proteins and many of them were originally identified as heat-shock proteins, the names of these molecular chaperones follow their early nomenclatures and are referred here as Hsps . So, these proteins primarily function as molecular chaperones to control the proper folding and conformation of both structural (i.e., cell membrane) and functional (i.e., enzyme) proteins, ensuring the correct function of many cellular proteins under conditions of elevated temperature. The primary protein structure for Hsps is well conserved in organisms ranging from bacteria and other prokaryotes to eukaryotes such as higher animals and plants. This conservation ensures a close involvement in the protection of the organism against heat shock and the maintenance of homeostasis [16,19,20].
Hsps are located in both the cytoplasm and organelles, such as the nucleus, mitochondria, chloroplasts and endoplasmatic reticulum. Five major families of Hsps are conservatively recognized, with some of them designated by their approximate molecular weights: the Hsp70 (DnaK) family; the chaperonins (GroEL and Hsp60); the Hsp90 family; the Hsp100 (Clp) family; and the small Hsp (sHsp) family, with proteins with molecular weight between 15 and 42 kDa. The best known families are the chaperonins and the Hsp70 family [18,21,22].
The transcription of Hsp encoding genes is controlled by regulatory proteins called heat stress transcription factors (Hsfs), which exist as inactive proteins mostly found in the cytoplasm . Thus, the heat stress response is controlled by Hsfs, which are activated by the presence of Hsps, acting by binding to the highly conserved heat shock elements in the promoters of target genes (Hsps), activating expression of them . Heat shock transcription factors and the promoter heat shock elements are among the most highly conserved transcriptional regulatory elements in nature . In addition to mediating a relatively large part of the defense response of eukaryotes to heat stress, Hsfs are also thought to be involved in different pathological conditions, cellular responses to oxidative stress, heavy metals, amino acid analogs and metabolic inhibitors, and certain developmental and differentiation processes [20,24,25].
Several studies have been reported about the role of Hsfs in heat stress. In the tomato, HsfA2 was up-regulated early in development . HsfA2 also improved heat and osmotic tolerance in wild Arabidopsis . Also in Arabidopsis, Hsfs are induced by all major abiotic stresses: heat, cold, osmosis and salt . There are reports about Hsfs regulating other Hsfs as well. HsfA1d and HsfA1e are key regulators of HsfA2 in Arabidopsis under heat and high light stress . Also, attempts to increase thermotolerance by overexpression of a single Hsf or Hsp gene have had limited impact because of the genetic complexity of the heat stress response . Hahn et al. found a versatile regulatory mechanism in the tomato, where Hsp70 and Hsp90, together regulate different Hsfs. Some reports also showed a role for Hsfs under other abiotic stresses. HsfA2 enhances the anoxia tolerance in wild Arabidopsis, besides the heat tolerance . HsfA2 also is induced under salt and drought stress, as reported in rice . The main studies on plant genetic transformation with Hsp genes have investigated mostly heat stress and thermo-tolerance. Positive correlations between the expression levels of several Hsps and stress tolerance have been described extensively by functional genomics and proteomics in different plant species. Comparison of expression data under variable conditions, for example from different tissue types, developmental stages, growth conditions, or applications and durations of stress treatments, shows related patterns of transcript accumulation, with the expression of about 2% of the genome being affected [16,17]. In the tomato, for instance, several Hsps are induced by heat stress . Nine Hsps were reported as up-regulated in rice under heat stress . In Porphyra seriata, PsHsp70 enhanced heat stress tolerance . Sung & Guy also related an altered expression in these proteins in Arabidopsis. They noticed an increased expression of some Hsp70 under heat stress. Overexpression of Hsp101 from Arabidopsis in rice plants, that are sensitive to heat stress, resulted in a significant improvement of growth performance during their recovery . sHsps were also up-regulated under heat treatment in Arabidopsis . Hsp17-CII is activated early in the development under heat stress . Hsp90 was greatly induced by heat stress, but not by other abiotic stresses . In a proteomic analysis, Neilson et al. found various Hsps up-regulated by heat stress in many plant species.
However, heat is not the only stress treatment that leads to elevated expression of many Hsps. Some are also induced by cold, salt, drought and other non-heat stresses . A study with Arabidopsis revealed there are some Hsps induced by different stresses, with changes in expression under a number of environmental conditions . Also, an enhanced salt tolerance was obtained in Escherichia coli transformed with the cytosolic chaperonin CCP-1a from Bruguiera sexangula, resulting in a significant osmoprotective effect . Salt stress induced the expression of six different Hsps in rice . Hsp100 was up-regulated under salt and drought stress, but not under heat stress . In rice, there was an increased expression of Hsp70 under different kinds of stress . Overexpression of Hsp17.6A improves heat and osmotic tolerance in Arabidopsis . In Ginkgo biloba, all three GbHSPs of the study were up-regulated under cold stress, whereas extreme heat stress only caused up-regulation of one of them . Heavy metal stress tolerance was also reported. For instance, Hsp90.3 was up-regulated in Arabidopsis under cadmium and arsenic stresses . Sometimes a second abiotic stress, when combined with heat stress, increases the Hsp expression. In wheat, the highest Hsp expression was established under the combined drought and heat stress . These results corroborated the hypothesis of Mitler (2006) that simultaneous exposure to different abiotic stresses results in the activation of several stress response pathways. On the other way, some Hsps can be down-regulated under specific stress, such as two Hsps from rice that were down-regulated under cold stress .
In conclusion, these data demonstrate divergent functions of Hsp and Hsf genes in response to distinct abiotic stresses. It is clear that the main role of the majority of Hsps/Hsfs is to increase heat tolerance. But there are a number of proteins in plants involved in many other abiotic stresses, individually or combined, that help plants respond to different degrees of environmental changes.
High soil salinity is one of the important environmental factors that limits distribution and productivity of major crops, causing yield losses. It reduces the ability of plants to take up water, thus leading to reduction in growth rate, due to a hormonal signal generated by the roots . Although salinity is a major problem for agriculture in arid and semi-arid regions of the world, this environmental adversary can be observed in other areas as well, since it affects approximately 40% of irrigated land to various degrees [45,46].
However, to combat this problem, a major strategy for the utilization of salt-affected lands is to grow salt-tolerant crops/cultivars on such soils. This strategy is considered the most efficient and economical means of utilizing salt-affected soils and hence a permanent solution to the problem. The most efficient way for this is through a transgenic approach . As different stress-regulated genes have roles in salt tolerance, transgenic research promotes the alteration of expression levels of native genes or by incorporating exogenous genes for a desired trait .
Salt stress results in a wide variety of physiological and biochemical changes in plants, such as the activation of salt-inducible genes, such as transcription factors , bZIP , LEA , RING zinc-finger and the large scale production and accumulation of osmolytes. Plants accumulate the derivatives of these low molecular weight solutes to mitigate the detrimental effects of salt stress by lowering the water potential of cells or by protecting various cellular structures and proteins during stress. The accumulation of compatible osmolytes involved in osmoregulation allows additional water to be taken from the environment [51,52]. On the basis of this understanding, enzymes that catalyze steps in the biosynthesis of these compatible osmolytes are considered to be examples of salt-stress-tolerance effectors [44,45].
Here, we will outline recent achievements in the generation of transgenic plants with modified molecular salt/osmotic stress responses. This has been attained through the expression of gene encoding enzymes that catalyze production of most common osmolytes: proline, glycine-betaine, trehalose, and sugar alcohols such as mannitol and sorbitol.
Proline is an amino acid known to occur widely in higher plants and in response to environmental stresses (especially salt/osmotic stress), and normally accumulates in large quantities. Under salt/osmotic conditions, it contributes to the stabilization of proteins, membranes and subcellular structures in cytosol, and protecting cellular functions by scavenging reactive oxygen species. Furthermore, it is known to induce expression of salt stress responsive genes, which possess proline-responsive elements [51,53]. Accumulation of proline could be due to de novo synthesis or decreased degradation, or both, and it is synthesized from glutamate and ornithine. In plants, the main pathway is from glutamate, which is converted to proline by two successive reductions catalyzed by pyrroline-5-carboxylate synthases (P5CS) and pyrroline-5-carboxylate reductases (P5CR), respectively. Ornithine is the alternative precursor for proline, which can be transaminated to P5C by Orn-d-aminotransferase (OAT), a mitochondrial located enzyme [51,54].
In recent years, several attempts were made to increase the level of proline accumulation in plants by transferring the genes associated with the biosynthetic pathway. Proline-level increase by overexpressing P5C enzymes were observed in several studies and in different plant species. In tobacco, the increase in expression of GK74 and GPR promoted the overproduction of proline . The activities of P5CS and P5CR were significantly enhanced in the leaves of Morus albas with decreasing leaf water potentials . In cactus pear, salt stress increased the expression of P5CS and induces proline accumulation . On the other hand, proline levels decreased when P5C enzymes are silenced. A P5CS in Arabidopsis was knocked-out, reducing the proline synthesis .
The down-regulation of proline dehydrogenase (ProDH) also increases proline levels. The transcription of antisensing ProDH improved the production of proline in tobacco . In the mulberry, the activities of proline dehydrogenase were reduced with progressive increase in water stress . Also, there are studies about the proline alternative pathway. The activities of ornithine transaminase were increased in Morus alba with low leaf water potentials . In cashew plants, it was reported that under salt-induced stress the levels of ornithine were increased . In Hibiscus tiliaceus a contradictory result was reported. Formate dehydrogenase, negatively associated with the accumulation of proline in response to osmotic stress, was found highly up-regulated during salt stress .
3.2. Glycine Betaine
Glycine betaine (GB) is a fully N-methyl-substituted quaternary ammonium derivative of glycine that is found in bacteria, hemophilic archaebacteria, marine invertebrates, mammals and plants [53,61]. Among the many compounds known in plants, GB is accumulated at high levels in response to abiotic stress, mainly to salt/osmotic stress. Levels of accumulated GB are generally correlated with the extent of stress tolerance, and vary considerably among plant species and organs . GB is abundant mainly in chloroplast where it plays a vital role in the adjustment and protection of the thylakoid membrane, thereby maintaining photosynthetic efficiency and its highly ordered state at non-physiological salt concentrations via ROS scavenging. Also, at lower concentrations, GB effectively stabilizes the quaternary structures of enzymes and complex proteins [62,63].
In higher plants, GB is synthesized and accumulated in chloroplasts from serine via ethanolamine, choline, and betaine aldehyde. Choline is converted to GB through a two-step pathway: first to betaine aldehyde, by choline monooxygenase or an enzyme with similar function, which is then converted to GB by betaine aldehyde dehydrogenase (BADH). Although other pathways such as direct N-methylation of glycine is also known, the pathway from choline to glycine betaine has been identified in all GB-accumulating plant species [53,64].
Many researches corroborate the hypothesis that GB plays an important role in tolerance to abiotic stress, showing natural accumulators such as spinach, maize, sugar beet, and barley, that synthesize GB during exposure to salt, drought, and low temperature stresses . Furthermore, both the exogenous application of GB and the introduction of the GB-biosynthetic pathway genes to create lines of GB-accumulating transgenic plants increased the tolerance of such plants to osmotic stress [61,62].
There are recent advances in salt tolerance via exogenous introduction of GB. In tobacco, accumulation of glycine betaine provides a protection against salt-induced stress . In the tomato, the application of exogenous GB also improved salt tolerance , as well as in Atriplex halimus , papaya , maize and soybean . Also, GB introduction confers tolerance to other abiotic stress: cadmium stress resistance has been reported in cultured tobacco cells , and high temperature stress tolerance in the tomato . On the other hand, an exogenous application of GB in the sunflower was not found to be effective in reducing the negative effects of drought stress .
With increasing knowledge of genomics and proteomics coupled with gene engineering technologies, several plant species have been engineered with genes of the GB biosynthetic pathway in order to generate plants with tolerance to osmotic stress. The heterologous expression of a choline dehydrogenase, an important enzyme in the GB synthesis pathway, improved salt tolerance in tobacco . He et al. reported similar results by the introduction into wheat of the betA gene, a choline dehydrogenase from Escherichia coli. A year later, the same research group also showed an improvement in drought resistance and biomass in wheat seedlings with increased glycine betaine . In cotton, salt stress resistance and improved seed yield were obtained by transformation of the same betA gene . Tobacco plants with a transgenic BADH gene showed similar results [78,79]. GB-accumulating transgenic plants also showed improved tolerance to other abiotic stresses, such as drought, heat and cold stress : all reported in wheat.
Some studies also have showed that the introduction of more than one transgene improves the tolerance to osmotic stress. Duan et al. has reported that tobacco plants, with the expression of two genes related to GB biosynthesis, are more tolerant than lines with a single transgene. In rice, lines expressing codA gene, that converts choline into GB in a single step, in association with several other stress responsive genes, were water-stress tolerants .
Trehalose, a non-reducing disaccharide sugar, is a compatible solute composed of two molecules of glucose bound by an α, α (1-1) linkage. It is well known as an abiotic stress protectant in a wide range of organisms, including bacteria, fungi, invertebrates and plants, working in the stabilization of membranes and lipid assemblies and in the stabilization of biological macromolecules in the folded state, forming a molecular complex [63,83,84]. These protective properties make trehalose an ideal stress protectant . In plants, its biosynthesis is catalyzed by two key enzymes: trehalose-6-phosphate synthase (TPS) and trehalose- 6-phosphate phosphatase (TPP) [84,85]. It is not thought to accumulate to detectable levels in most plants, with the exception of the desiccation-tolerant “resurrection plants”. Indeed, for years trehalose in plants was thought to be restricted to these resurrection plants. Later, it was detected in other plants with the application of inductors, such as validamycin A, an inhibitor of trehalase, the trehalose degrading enzyme .
There were significant advances in osmotic stress tolerance with the trehalose genetic engineering approach. In rice, the overexpression of TPP, the enzyme responsible for one step in the trehalose pathway from glucose, conferred abiotic stress tolerance . In the same crop, Li et al. and Redillas et al. also enhanced abiotic stress tolerance by expression of TPS. Under drought stress, transformed maize plants with high levels of trehalose improved their resistance and their biomass when compared to wild lines . Even a low expression of trehalose-related genes can show significant results. In the potato, the observed expression pattern of a TPS from Saccharomyces cerevisiae was weak, but was sufficient to alter the drought response of plants . Furthermore, multiple transgenes have strongly enhanced the response to abiotic stress. Suárez et al. reported a study with alfalfa, where yeast TPP and TPS genes were fused and expressed. As a result, transgenic plants displayed a significant increase in drought, freezing, salt, and heat tolerance. Induction of trehalose in symbiont organisms of some plants has also increased the resistance of plants to abiotic stress. In Bradyrhizobium japonicum, the root nodule symbiont bacteria of soybeans, trehalose accumulation due to different trehalose biosynthetic genes enhanced survival under conditions of salinity stress and also played a role in the development of nitrogen-fixing root nodules .
The exogenous application or induction of trehalose without genetic engineering to obtain salt/osmotic tolerance is also common. Li et al. has reported thermal tolerance with the addition of trehalose in wine yeast. The induction with validamycin A improved the salt tolerance of Medicago truncatula . Exogenous trehalose recovered rice seedlings from salt stress . Finally, trehalose treatment reduced the adverse effects of salinity stress on the metabolic activity of maize seedlings .
3.4. Other Sugar Alcohols
Mannitol is a widely distributed sugar alcohol found in many plants and other organisms. It is synthesized in mature leaves from mannose- 6-phosphate, through the combined action of a NADPH-dependent mannose-6-phosphate reductase (M6PR) and a mannitol-6-phosphate phosphatase. It is transported to sink tissues where it can be either stored or oxidized to mannose by an NAD-dependent mannitol-1phosphate dehydrogenase (mtlD) [97,98]. In addition to its role as a primary photosynthetic product and translocated carbohydrate, in many species mannitol production may confer several potential advantages, functioning in osmotic and salt stress tolerance by serving, when accumulated, as a compatible solute or osmoprotectant .
Plants transgenic for mannitol-related genes have shown increases in stress tolerance, particularly salt tolerance. Additional evidence for a role for mannitol in salinity tolerance was obtained when Nicotiana tabacum, Populus tomentosa and other plants were genetically engineered through introduction of mtlD, resulting in more salt-tolerant plants [27,98]. The overexpression of mtlD resulted in the accumulation of a small amount of mannitol and also in the improved tolerance to salinity and drought in Arabidopsis and tobacco . In Pinus taeda, salt tolerance assays demonstrated that transgenic plants with increased expression of mtlD had an increased ability to tolerate high salinity . In wheat, the induced expression of the mtlD gene for the biosynthesis of mannitol in wheat improves tolerance to water stress and salinity . Salt and drought significantly increased mannitol transport activity and the expression of a mannitol dehydrogenase gene in Olea europaea . In an alternative approach, plants can be transformed with the M6PR gene. Arabidopsis plants transformed with the M6PR gene from celery were dramatically more salt tolerant as exhibited by reduced salt injury, less inhibition of vegetative growth, and increased seed production relative to the wild type. In this study, the M6PR gene induced the expression of a variety of other stress-inducible genes .
Sorbitol, a six-carbon sugar alcohol and another important representative of osmoprotectants, is a primary photosynthate, a major translocated form of sugars and the preferential storage carbohydrate of fruit trees, mainly woody members of the Rosaceae family [102–104]. Sorbitol may be involved in providing tolerances against abiotic and biotic stresses. It plays a key role in osmotic adjustment under drought, cold and salinity conditions. Its synthesis shares a common hexose phosphate pool with sucrose production in cytosol. In source leaves, glucose-6-phosphate is converted to sorbitol-6-phosphate by sorbitol-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (S6PDH). Afterward, sorbitol-6-phosphate is used to form sorbitol via sorbitol-6-phosphatase by dephosphorylation. The reaction catalyzed by S6PDH is the key regulatory step in sorbitol synthesis [105,106].
A common approach to accumulate sorbitol is to submit the plant to stress conditions that induce sorbitol transporter genes. Transporters have been identified in various plants, such as sour berry, apple and Arabidopsis [107,108]. It has been shown that different sugar transporters are up-regulated or down-regulated by salt and drought stress . Assessment of sorbitol concentrations in Plantago major leaves revealed an accumulation of sorbitol within salt-stressed plants . Analysis of sorbitol levels via high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) showed that its concentration was elevated in roots, phloem tissues and the leaves of apple plants after the up-regulation of three sorbitol transporter under conditions of osmotic stress in apple plants, enhancing drought tolerance in vegetative tissues .
4. LEA Protein
Late embryogenesis abundant (LEA) proteins were first described almost 30 years ago in cotton seeds, where they are specifically produced and accumulated during late embryo development . LEA protein expression correlates closely with the acquisition of tolerance against drought, freezing, and salinity stresses in many plants [112–118].
The term “late embryogenesis abundant” has been used for more than 20 years to describe genes/proteins. However, numerous LEA genes were found to be not expressed during seed development and expressed only in vegetative tissues. In addition, considering the animal LEA proteins, the term “late embryogenesis abundant” cannot be applied to all situations. Dure et al. suggested a substitute term “water stress protein”, which is not acknowledged widely, possibly because it refers to proteins induced only during water stress. In the past decade, LEA proteins were also found in animals , including nematodes [121–125].
LEA proteins are mainly small molecular weight proteins ranging from 10 to 30 kDa ; they have been grouped into various LEA families based on the occurrence of amino acid motifs [117,119,127] and can confer protection against different stress conditions; in general, groups 1, 2 and 3 are considered as the three major groups containing most members of the protein family. Group 1 LEA proteins (Pfam 00477) are mostly present in plants and they contain at least one copy of a 20 amino acid motif. For example, group 1 LEA protein of wheat confers tolerance to osmotic stress in yeast . Group 2 LEA proteins or dehydrins (Pfam 00257) are also found in algae and share a common K-segment present in one or several copies; many dehydrins also contain an S-segment (polyserine stretch) that can undergo extensive phosphorylation and a Y-domain (DEYGNP), similar to the nucleotide-binding site of plant and bacterial chaperones. Group 3 LEA proteins (Pfam 02987), also found in nematodes and prokaryotes, contain at least one copy of a 11 amino acid motif. Also, the group 3 LEA protein of rice has been found to induce resistance to drought when over-expressed transgenically .
Studies have shown the great potential of LEA in controlling stress as reported by several authors. López et al. have studied several winter wheat cultivars for the evaluation on dehydrin accumulation during the exposure of drought stress. Some of them expressed a dehydrin after stress treatment while no dehydrins were detected in non-stress control plants. The presence of dehydrins was related to the acquisition of drought tolerance. Transgenic wheat and oat expressing HVA1, an LEA protein, showed increased desiccation tolerance, biomass productivity, and water use efficiency under high salt, osmotic, or drought conditions via membrane protection [131–133]. The accumulation of wheat WCS19, a cold regulated chloroplast LEA III protein, in transgenic Arabidopsis increased resistance to freezing stress, which suggested that WCS19 proteins enhanced freezing tolerance . Studies with cassava (Manihot esculenta Crantz) performed by Costa et al. revealed that levels of MeLEA3 transcripts were increased under in vitro salt stress treatment, indicating its potential role in stress response.
In transgenic rice expressing wheat PMA1595 (LEA I) or PMA80 (LEA II), the accumulation of PMA1595 or PMA80 proteins was associated with increased salt and drought stress tolerance. Accumulation of Arabidopsis AtRAB28 (LEA V) protein through transgenic approach improved the germination rate under standard conditions or salt and osmotic stress . The accumulation of the citrus dehydrin CuCOR19 in tobacco conferred less electrolyte leakage than control plants under freezing temperature. Transgenic plants also showed earlier germination and better seedling growth than control plants with chilling treatment (Hara et al., 2003). Wheat WCor410 (LEA II) gene introduced into strawberry improved chilling tolerance after previous acclimation treatment .
Rapeseed (Brassica napus) LEA III gene MEleaN4 introduced into Chinese cabbage (Brassica campestris) or lettuce (Lactuca sativa L.) resulted in improved drought tolerance [137,138]. The constitutive expression of maize dehydrin rab17 gene in transgenic Arabidopsis increased the sugar and proline contents; in addition, these plants showed more tolerance to high salinity conditions and recovered faster from mannitol treatment than non-transformed control plants .
5. Conclusions and Perspectives
Worldwide, the several kinds of abiotic stresses are major causes of plant diseases and death. Genetic engineering is a viable solution to these problems. Important findings as the role of several Hsps, osmoprotectants and LEA proteins help the construction of transgenic agricultural crops, such as soybean, a widespread transgenic crop in the Americas. As in 2010, USA, Brazil and Argentina have the greatest transgenic crop areas of the world . However, it is important to verify how the tolerance to specific abiotic stress is assessed, and whether the achieved tolerance compares to existing tolerance. The biological effects of changes in the production of different proteins and their effect on yield should be properly evaluated. Also, an approach combining the molecular, physiological and metabolic aspects of abiotic stress tolerance is necessary to acquire a better knowledge of gene expression, as well as the whole plant phenotype assessment under stress. Finally, the future of abiotic stress research should focus on targeting multiple gene regulation, because the change on a single gene expression may not have enough results on the field in question, since genetic regulation is complex. Working with a number of candidate genes can improve the tolerance to different abiotic stresses.
The authors thank: Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq), Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (Capes), Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Pará (FAPESPA), and Universidade Federal do Pará (UFPA), Brazil.
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This drove the concept that cells are in a state of dynamic equilibrium, constantly
What does the cell theory state? All living things are made of cells. Cells are the
basic unit of structure and function of all living things. All cells come from ...
The second part of cell theory states that cells are the basic unit of life. They are
the fundamental units of a living organism's structure. They are also the basic ...
cell theory states: • All living things or organisms are made of cells. • New cells
are created by old cells dividing into two. • Cells are the basic building units of life
In fact, if we were, it is likely we would be in a state of nonliving because of ...
Thankfully, we have a nervous system that handles that for us and does not ... His
work launched a new frontier in scientific exploration that led to modern cell
IB Biology notes on 2.1 Cell theory. ... 2.1.2 Discuss the evidence for the cell
theory. ... 2.1.3 State that unicellular organisms carry out all the functions of life. ...
As the volume of the cell increases so does the surface area however not to the ...
Today scientists have developed what we call the Cell Theory. This theory states
the following: All living things are made of cells. Cells are the basic units of ...
Cell theory refers to the idea as cells are the basic unit of structure in every living
thing. Development of this theory during the mid 17th century.
Nov 11, 2015 ... Cell theory of Scheilden and Schwann did not explain how new cells arise, It was
explained by Rudolf Virchow , he stated ' omnis cellula e ...
6 days ago ... ... British zoologist.Further cell theory was modified by Rudolf Virchow. Sc... ...
What does monism theory states? How valid is the theory that ...
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Dolores Beasley/Donald Savage
August 4, 2003
NASA'S First Scout Mission Selected For 2007 Mars Launch
NASA today selected Phoenix, an innovative and relatively low-cost mission, to study the red planet, as the first Mars Scout mission. The Phoenix lander mission is scheduled for launch in 2007.
The 2007 Scout mission joins a growing list of spacecraft aimed at exploring Mars. It also represents NASA's first fully competed opportunity for a dedicated science-driven mission.
"I am excited about the prospect of this compelling mission and its expected impact to our understanding of Mars. I look forward to a successful definition phase, so that it can be confirmed for implementation," said Dr. Ed Weiler, Associate Administrator for Space Science at NASA Headquarters, Washington. Weiler selected this mission from a group of four candidate missions following a competition over the past year. "This first Scout mission will explore the red planet in a unique way, and may mark the beginning of a line of innovative, competitively selected and lower-cost missions in the Mars Exploration Program," he said.
Phoenix, designed to land in the high northern latitudes of Mars, will follow up on Mars Odyssey's spectacular discovery of near-surface water ice in such regions. It will land in terrain suspected of harboring as much as 80 percent water ice by volume within one foot of the surface, and conduct the first subsurface analysis of ice-bearing materials on another planet.
The Phoenix lander includes an instrument suite designed to completely characterize the accessible ice, soil, rock, and local atmosphere using state-of-the-art methods. Included in the instrument payload are microscopic imaging systems capable of examining materials at scales down to 10 nanometers (i.e., 1000 times less than the width of a human hair), while others will investigate whether organic molecules are contained in ice or soil samples.
Upon final descent, an innovative camera system will photograph the Phoenix landing site just before it touches down in late 2008. A powerful robotic arm will dig down into the soil and ice-rich ground as deep at 3.3 feet, while imaging with a camera mounted on the arm itself.
Principal Investigator, Dr. Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson, Ariz., leads the Phoenix mission in a partnership with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, Calif., and Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver. In addition, the Canadian Space Agency is contributing a meteorological package that includes a lidar sensor to study polar climate.
"NASA's Mars Exploration Program continues its exciting, science-driven exploration of Mars by extending the quest for evidence of life using new vantage points, and by measuring the previously un-measurable," said Dr. Jim Garvin, the Mars Scout Program Scientist at NASA Headquarters. "Phoenix exemplifies this approach by seeking clues about habitats by landing a remarkable laboratory in known ice-rich polar regions", Garvin added.
The Mars Scout program is designed to complement major missions being planned as part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program, as well as those under development by foreign space agencies, within a total mission cost cap of $325 million. The Mars Scout Program is managed by JPL for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington.
For information about NASA and space science on the Internet, visit:
For information about NASA's Mars Exploration Program on the Internet, visit:
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Amendment I (Religion)
George Mason, Amendment to the Bill Exempting Dissenters from Contributions to the Established Church5 Dec. 1776Papers 1:318
[To stand before the preamble.]
Whereas several oppressive Acts of Parliament respecting Religion have been formerly enacted, and Doubts have arisen and may hereafter arise whether the same are in Force within this Common-Wealth or not, for Prevention whereof Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the Common-Wealth of Virginia, and it is hereby enacted by the Authority of the same, That all and every Act or Statute either of the Parliament of England, or of Great Britain, by whatsoever Title known or distinguished, which renders criminal the maintaining of any Opinions in Matters of Religion, forbearing to repair to Church, or the exercising any Mode of worship whatsoever, or which prescribes punishments for the same, shall henceforth be of no Validity or Force within this Common-Wealth.
The Papers of George Mason, 1725--1792. Edited by Robert A. Rutland. 3 vols. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1970.
© 1987 by The University of Chicago
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- freely available
Ochratoxin A: General Overview and Actual Molecular Status
AbstractOchratoxin A (OTA) is a mycotoxin produced by several species of Aspergillus and Penicillium fungi that structurally consists of a para-chlorophenolic group containing a dihydroisocoumarin moiety that is amide-linked to L-phenylalanine. OTA is detected worldwide in various food and feed sources. Studies show that this molecule can have several toxicological effects such as nephrotoxic, hepatotoxic, neurotoxic, teratogenic and immunotoxic. A role in the etiology of Balkan endemic nephropathy and its association to urinary tract tumors has been also proved. In this review, we will explore the general aspect of OTA: physico-chemical properties, toxicological profile, OTA producing fungi, contaminated food, regulation, legislation and analytical methods. Due to lack of sufficient information related to the molecular background, this paper will discuss in detail the recent advances in molecular biology of OTA biosynthesis, based on information and on new data about identification and characterization of ochratoxin biosynthetic genes in both Penicillium and Aspergillus species. This review will also cover the development of the molecular methods for the detection and quantification of OTA producing fungi in various foodstuffs.
Share & Cite This Article
El Khoury, A.; Atoui, A. Ochratoxin A: General Overview and Actual Molecular Status. Toxins 2010, 2, 461-493.View more citation formats
El Khoury A, Atoui A. Ochratoxin A: General Overview and Actual Molecular Status. Toxins. 2010; 2(4):461-493.Chicago/Turabian Style
El Khoury, André; Atoui, Ali. 2010. "Ochratoxin A: General Overview and Actual Molecular Status." Toxins 2, no. 4: 461-493.
Notes: Multiple requests from the same IP address are counted as one view.
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Wałbrzych (välˈbzhĭkh) [key], Ger. Waldenburg, city (1992 est. pop. 141,300), Dolnośląskie prov., SW Poland. Coal mining, chemical production, metallurgy, and textile milling are the chief economic activity. The city's importance dates from the 19th-century industrialization of the Lower Silesian coal basin. Wałbrzych sustained great damage during World War II, after which it passed from Germany to Poland.
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“Jane Austen’s fiction manuscripts are the first significant body of holograph evidence surviving for any British novelist. They represent every stage of her writing career and a variety of physical states: working drafts, fair copies, and handwritten publications for private circulation. The manuscripts were held in a single collection until 1845, when at her sister Cassandra’s death they were dispersed among family members, with a second major dispersal, to public institutions and private collections, in the 1920s.1 Digitization enables their virtual reunification and will provides scholars with the first opportunity to make simultaneous ocular comparison of their different physical and conceptual states; it will facilitate intimate and systematic study of Austen’s working practices across her career, a remarkably neglected area of scholarship within the huge, world-wide Austen critical industry.
Many of the Austen manuscripts are frail; open and sustained access has long been impossible for conservation and location reasons. Digitization at this stage in their lives not only offers the opportunity for the virtual reunification of a key manuscript resource, it will also be accompanied by a record in as complete a form as possible of the conservation history and current material state of these manuscripts to assist their future conservation.”
Being literate in a real-world sense means being able to read and write using the media forms of the day, whatever they may be. For centuries, consuming and producing words through reading and writing and, to a lesser extent, listening and speaking were sufficient. But because of inexpensive, easy-to-use, and widely available new tools, literacy now requires being conversant with new forms of media as well as text, including sound, graphics, and moving images.
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So, if the planet doesn't orbit a sun, can it still be called a planet?
Everyone knows what gold is, but the commodity's stellar origins might come as a bit of a surprise.
If you could see an alien planet from Earth, you wouldn't necessarily need to look for cities. You could just check for oxygen in the atmosphere.
Kepler’s Telescope has detected over 1200 possible planets. But this discovery is unique. Scientists found two planets in the same orbit in a system!
Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Where did our planets come from?
Nowadays everybody knows there are nine planets in our solar system, but that information was hard won.
Could Titan support life? Scientists hope to learn more about Titan's atmosphere to find out!
A Moment of Science gives a Science Hero Award to Galileo!
Black holes were always the most dangerous thing when traveling through space in science fiction shows. What are black holes and how do they form?
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Cystitis is a common type of lower urinary tract infection. Your urinary tract consists of your kidneys, ureters (the tubes that connect each kidney to your bladder), your bladder and your urethra.
Cystitis is thought to be less common in men because they have longer urethras so bacteria have further to travel to reach the bladder.
Symptoms of cystitis include:
- pain when you pass urine
- a frequent, urgent need to go to the toilet, but you only pass small amounts or no urine
- cloudy, dark or strong smelling urine
- blood in your urine – you might not always be able to see this but it can be detected in tests
- pain in your lower abdomen (tummy) or lower back
- feeling tired or generally unwell
- a fever
- feeling confused (particularly in older people)
The pain from cystitis can be quite mild. Or in some people, it can be so bad that it can affect your daily activities and stop you sleeping.
These symptoms can also be caused by conditions other than cystitis. If your symptoms don’t get better after a few days, or you have blood in your urine, contact your GP. They’ll rule out any other conditions that could be causing your symptoms or treat you if you do have cystitis.
Symptoms in children
As well as the above symptoms, some children may get a fever, have little appetite and have bouts of vomiting too.
If you think your child might have cystitis, contact your GP for advice. It’s important to seek medical help as soon as possible because these symptoms may be caused by other, more serious conditions.
Cystitis usually clears up on its own within a few days so you don’t usually need any treatment. If your symptoms get worse or don’t get better within this time, contact your GP for advice. They’ll be able to rule out any other conditions that could be causing your symptoms. If men or children have cystitis symptoms, it’s a good idea to contact your GP too.
Your GP will ask about your symptoms and examine you. They may ask you about your medical history too. Your GP may usually be able to diagnose cystitis just from this. They might ask for a sample of your urine to test using a ‘dipstick’. Depending on the results, they may send the sample to a laboratory for further tests.
You can sometimes have cystitis but have no symptoms, particularly if you’re older. Your cystitis may only be discovered when you have a urine test for other reasons, or you develop complications.
Cystitis usually clears up by itself, without any treatment. There are several things you can do during this time to ease your symptoms.
- Take over-the-counter painkillers, such as paracetamol and ibuprofen, to help ease your pain.
- Drink more fluids, such as water, to help flush out the infection.
- Put a warm hot water bottle on your lower back to help soothe any discomfort.
- Try to rest as much as possible.
If your symptoms last longer than a few days, contact your GP. They may prescribe you antibiotics to help get rid of the infection.
Antibiotics such as trimethoprim and nitrofurantoin are often used to treat cystitis. You take these as tablets. Your symptoms will usually start to get better within a few days of starting antibiotics and will clear up within eight days. Always read the patient information leaflet that comes with your medicine. If you have any questions, ask your pharmacist or GP for advice.
If antibiotics don't work, it's possible that you may have a different type of cystitis, called interstitial cystitis. This is a long-term condition where you have ongoing inflammation in your bladder. It isn’t caused by bacteria so can’t be treated with antibiotics. Your GP may refer you to a urologist (a doctor who specialises in the urinary system) for more tests. For more information, see our information on interstitial cystitis further down the page.
Cystitis is caused by a bacterial infection. A bacterium called Escherichia coli (E.coli), which usually lives harmlessly in your bowel, causes over eight out of 10 bouts of cystitis.
There are lots of ways that bacteria can get into your urinary tract and cause infection, which include the following.
- Sex. When you’re having sex, bacteria can pass into your bladder. Your urethra and bladder can also be bruised during sex, which can cause similar symptoms to cystitis.
- Poor hygiene. Women have shorter urethras than men so bacteria have a shorter distance to travel before reaching their bladder compared with men. Their urethra is also closer to their back passage (anus), which makes it easier for bacteria to get transferred from your anus into your urethra.
- Pregnancy. If you’re pregnant, your womb (uterus) may put extra pressure on your bladder. This could prevent your bladder from emptying completely. Holding small amounts of urine in your bladder could encourage bacteria to grow.
- Diabetes. If you have diabetes, your urine can contain more sugar than usual. This can encourage bacteria to grow in your bladder and urethra.
- Menopause. After you go through the menopause, the types of bacteria that usually live harmlessly in your vagina may change, increasing your risk of getting cystitis.
- Having a catheter (a tube that’s put into your urethra to drain urine out of your bladder). Bacteria could get into your bladder if you have a catheter. Your bladder and urethra could also be injured when your catheter is inserted, which could increase your risk of getting a bacterial infection.
- Contraception. Using a diaphragm or spermicide-coated condoms may increase your risk of getting cystitis. Diaphragms can prevent your bladder from emptying properly, which can encourage bacteria to grow.
- Kidney stones or bladder stones. These can prevent your bladder from emptying fully, which can encourage bacteria to grow.
- An enlarged prostate. In men, a common cause of cystitis is passing urine less often because your prostate is enlarged.
- Abnormalities of the urinary tract. You can be born with certain conditions that affect the structure of your urinary tract and this can increase your risk of getting cystitis.
Complications of cystitis include the following.
- A kidney infection called pyelonephritis. If the infection moves from your bladder into your kidneys, this can happen.
- Prostatitis. If the infection travels to your prostate gland, you can get prostatitis. This can make you more likely to keep getting bouts of cystitis in the future.
Cystitis and pregnancy
If you get cystitis when you’re pregnant, it can lead to you giving birth early. You’ll be screened for cystitis at your early antenatal appointments to prevent this and will be treated quickly if you get an infection.
There are lots of things you can do to help prevent cystitis, which include the tips below.
- Make sure you drink enough.
- Drink cranberry juice or take tablets that contain a cranberry extract. Some research has shown that cranberry products could help to prevent bacteria from growing and prevent cystitis coming back, although the research isn’t conclusive.
- Wear underwear that’s made of natural materials, such as cotton or linen – don’t wear thongs.
- After you go to the toilet, wipe from front to back.
- After a bowel movement, wash the area around your bottom.
- Go to the toilet as soon as you feel you need to go, don’t put it off.
- Wash your genital area before you have sex.
- Go to the toilet shortly after you have sex if you can, to help flush away any bacteria.
- If you have been through the menopause, use an oestrogen replacement treatment as it might help to prevent cystitis.
- If it suits your circumstances, use a non-barrier method of contraceptive (such as the contraceptive pill) that doesn’t require spermicide. Talk to your GP or family planning adviser about changing your method of contraception if necessary.
Prevention of reoccurring cystitis
If you get cystitis a lot, your GP may prescribe you a low-dose antibiotic to keep at home. You can take this if your cystitis comes back again.
Your GP will let you know how often to take your medicine depending on what type of antibiotic you’re prescribed. You may be prescribed trimethoprim, which you can take daily. Another medicine used to treat re-occurring cystitis is called nitrofurantoin. You take this immediately after you have sex.
If you get reoccurring cystitis, it’s important to see your GP. They will probably refer you to a urologist (a doctor who specialises in the urinary system). They may offer you some further tests.
No, cystitis isn’t a sexually transmitted infection (STI) but having sex can increase your risk of getting it.
Cystitis is usually caused by a bacterial infection. Escherichia coli (E. coli), a bacterium that usually lives harmlessly in your bowel. This causes over eight out of 10 bouts of cystitis.
Bacteria can get into your bladder when you have sex, but there are things you can do to reduce your risk of this.
- Go to the toilet urine after you have sex (within 15 minutes) to help flush away any bacteria.
- Wash your genital area (and hands) before you have sex.
- If you use a diaphragm for contraception, make sure it’s fitted correctly. If it isn’t, it could put extra pressure on your bladder and prevent your bladder from emptying properly. If you retain small amounts of urine in your bladder, it can encourage bacteria to grow.
- Use an alternative contraceptive method to spermicide-coated condoms if possible as these may increase your risk of getting cystitis. But make sure you protect yourself from STIs – ask your GP or family planning adviser for advice.
If you keep getting cystitis after having sex, see your GP. They may prescribe you antibiotics that you can keep at home and take immediately after you have sex. Always read the patient information leaflet that comes with your medicine. If you have any questions, ask your pharmacist or GP for advice.
Yes, you can make some changes to your diet that might help to relieve your symptoms of cystitis and prevent it coming back.
Cystitis is a bacterial infection that affects your bladder. It’s important to keep your immune system healthy, so you’re able to fight off infections. Making some changes to your diet could help to boost your immune system and lower your risk of getting cystitis.
- Eat plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables.
- Drink enough fluids to help flush out any bacteria.
- Don’t drink too much caffeine (such as in tea and coffee) and alcohol, as they may irritate your bladder.
- Drink cranberry juice or take cranberry extract tablets as it may reduce the likelihood of recurrent cystitis. Some research has shown that cranberry products may help to prevent bacteria from growing but the research isn’t conclusive.
You may find that certain food or drink triggers cystitis. If this is the case, try to cut it out of your diet or have less of it. Have a chat with your GP or dietitian if you’re thinking about making any changes to your diet.
Yes, there are lots of treatments for interstitial cystitis, but there isn’t a specific one that works for everyone. This means you may have to try several different treatments before you find one that works for you.
Interstitial cystitis (also known as painful bladder syndrome) is different from bacterial cystitis. It’s a long-term condition in which there is ongoing inflammation in your bladder. Symptoms include:
- passing urine frequently
- an urgent need to pass urine − this can be followed by pain, pressure or spasms in your bladder
- pain in your lower abdomen (tummy) or vagina, especially when your bladder is full
- pain when you have sex
As the symptoms are similar to cystitis it can be difficult to tell the difference. But interstitial cystitis isn’t caused by bacteria so can’t be treated with antibiotics. Other treatments that might help include the following.
- Over-the-counter anti-inflammatory medicines, such as aspirin or ibuprofen, may help to ease pain. Your GP may prescribe you other, stronger anti-inflammatory medicines if your pain is severe.
- Antispasmodic medicines may help to control your symptoms of bladder spasm. They can reduce your need to go to the toilet so much.
- Antidepressant medicines, such as amitriptyline, can help to reduce the amount of pain you may feel.
Always read the patient information leaflet that comes with your medicine. If you have any questions, ask your pharmacist or GP for advice.
There are support groups that can offer support and advice too. See Resources for details.
- The Cystitis and Overactive Bladder Foundation
0121 702 0820
- Urinary tract infection (lower) – men. NICE Clinical Knowledge Summaries. cks.nice.org.uk, published October 2014
- Urinary tract infections in adults. National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), June 2015. www.nice.org.uk
- Acute cystitis. Epidemiology. BMJ Best Practice. www.bestpractice.bmj.com, published 24 September 2014
- Fitzgerald A, Mori R, Lakhanpaul M, et al. Antibiotics for treating lower urinary tract infection in children. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2012, Issue 8. doi: 10.1002/14651858.CD006857.pub2
- Urinary tract infection (lower) – women. NICE Clinical Knowledge Summaries. cks.nice.org.uk, published July 2015
- Urinary tract infection. Oxford Handbook of General Practice (Online). Oxford Medicine Online. www.oxfordmedicine.com, published April 2014
- Bacterial cystitis. The Cystitis and Overactive Bladder Foundation. www.cobfoundation.org, accessed 20 November 2015
- Urinary tract infection in under 16s: diagnosis and management. National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), 22 August 2007. www.nice.org.uk
- Self help. The Cystitis and Overactive Bladder Foundation. www.cobfoundation.org, accessed 20 November 2015
- Interstitial cystitis. PatientPlus. www.patient.info/patientplus, reviewed 28 May 2014
- Management of suspected bacterial urinary tract infection in adults. Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network. www.sign.ac.uk, published July 2012
- Preventative measures. The Cystitis and Overactive Bladder Foundation. www.cobfoundation.org, accessed 20 November 2015
- Urinary tract infection in adults. PatientPlus. www.patient.info/patientplus, reviewed 22 April 2013
- BC diet and nutrition. The Cystitis and Overactive Bladder Foundation. www.cobfoundation.org, accessed 20 November 2015
- The Cystitis and Overactive Bladder Foundation
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One of the key reasons that I want to paddle in the East Arm of the Great Slave Lake is the fact that the area is in the process of being turned into a national park. The park will be called Thaydene Nene (sometime referred to as "Thaidene Nene"), which translates to "Land of the Ancestors."
The beauty of the area has been evident. An article on the park quotes British explorer George Back:
The country to the left became gradually less rugged, subsiding into round-backed hills, whose sloping sides were covered with wood; the uniformity being agreeably broken by two light columns of smoke issuing at separate points, most likely from the fires of straggling hunters.
But the scenery to the right increased in grandeur and boldness, and never, either in Alp or Apennine, had I seen such a picture of such rugged wildness. Rising to the perpendicular height of upwards of twelve hundred feet, the rocks were rent, as if by some violent convulsion, into deep chasms and ragged fissures, inaccessible to the nimblest animal. A few withered pines, grey with age, jutted their shrivelled arms from the extreme edge of the abyss: on one of which a majestic fishing eagle was seated, and then, unscared by our cries, reigned in solitary state, the monarch of the rocky wilderness.
Environment Canada outlined some of the resources that a park would protect:
- Noteworthy features in the area include the spectacular Pethei, Kahochella and Douglas Peninsulas, the Lockhart River canyons, Tyrell Falls, and Christie Bay, the deepest water in North America, and an abrupt transition from a boreal forest to a tundra environment.
- It is also an important wintering area for several herds of barren-ground caribou, and supports viable populations of native species such as wolf, moose, wolverine, great-horned owl, American marten, and other fur-bearers.
- Important cultural features found in the 'area of interest' include the traditional hunting and fishing areas of the Lutsel K'e Dene First Nation, the remnants of historic Fort Reliance, and Pike's Portage linking Great Slave and Artillery Lake.
The process of establishing a national park has been an extended one. This is to be expected given that a park involves land and land involves multiple interests with claims on the land. The efforts to establish a park have proceeded in fits and starts over the past half-century. Those efforts are summarized here.
The process has accelerated in recent years. In 2007 the Canadian government withdrew about 33,000 square kilometers of land, shown on the map above as the larger area shaded area, for consideration for possible inclusion in the park. This withdrawal included a smaller area that was the subject of an earlier withdrawal, which is also shown on the map. The land is protected against development--e.g., mining--for the five-year term of the withdrawal.
The following summary of recent developments gives some idea of the complicated negotiations:
1. The Akaitcho Dene First Nations (of which the Lutsel K'e Dene First Nation is one), Canada, and the Government of the Northwest Territories (GNWT) agreed to create a side table to the Akaitcho treaty negotiation process to discuss provisions for a new protected area in Thaidene Nene. The Parties committed to create this side table in 2009-10 when their negotiators initialled the Akaitcho Process workplan for 2009-10.
2. In order to kickstart the side table, the LKDFN and Parks Canada spent the better part of 2009 developing a draft Thaidene Nene Framework Agreement that would guide side table discussions. The GNWT was requested to participate in the development of this framework agreement, but it declined.
3. The LKDFN agreed in principle to a draft framework agreement in May 2009, after a public membership meeting. Soon after, Parks Canada indicated that they were comfortable with the wording of the draft.
4. On April 7, 2010, the LKDFN and Canada signed the Thaidene Nene Framework Agreement in Calgary. This agreement commits the parties to a Thaidene Nene Establishment Process, working together towards the execution of a Thaidene Nene Establishment Agreement, hopefully within a period of two years. The Establishment Agreement will include provisions for Thaidene Nene boundaries, management, operations, infrastructure, and First Nation participation.
5. With the signing of the Thaidene Nene Framework Agreement, Canada and the LKDFN officially recognized "Thaidene Nene" as the name of the proposed protected area.
6. Formal Thaidene Nene establishment discussions between Canada and the LKDFN commenced in September 2010. Execution of an Establishment Agreement will allow the Minister of the Environment to recommend to Parliament the legislated protection of Thaidene Nene.
I lack sufficient information at this point to say more, but in upcoming months hope to learn about the complicated process of establishing a park in land that has been lived on for centuries and that may contain mineral (e.g., gold, diamonds) and hydroelectric resources coveted by many. Thaydene Nene may shed some light on the culture and politics of the area as well as be a beautiful place to paddle.
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On the third day of Anodos' time in the palace, which the small boat has brought him to, he discovers a great library. He spends many hours there reading stories in which he finds "Mine was the whole story" . One of these stories is about Cosmo, a man who purchases an old mirror in which he is able to see a woman when she appears there in the evenings.
Cosmo was now in a state of extravagant delight. Most men have a secret treasure somewhere. The miser has his golden hoard; the virtuoso his pet ring; the student his rare book; the poet his favourite haunt; the lover his secret drawer; but Cosmo had a mirror with a lovely lady in it. And now that he knew by the skeleton, that she was affected by the things around her, he had a new object in life: he would turn the bare chamber in the mirror into a room such as no lady need disdain to call her own. This he could effect only by furnishing and adorning his. And Cosmo was poor. Yet he possessed accomplishments that could be turned to account; although, hitherto, he had preferred living on his slender allowance, to increasing his means by what his pride considered unworthy of his rank.
In MacDonald's listing of men and their secret treasures, he deviates from his list's structure when he describes Cosmo's treasure. Why does he set it apart? What makes Cosmo's treasure different from those of other men?
What is the effect of MacDonald's usage of one short sentence, "And Cosmo was poor" amidst a passage full of much longer sentences? Why does he choose to set this idea apart?
How can Cosmo's story be seen as Anodos'? Who in this story is most like Anodos?
MacDonald, George. Phantastes. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2000.
Last modified 7 February 2004
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Understanding Your Voice: Disorder Prevention
Editor's Note: This volume of Voices offers important information on the care and maintenance of your most important tool — your voice. We’ve invited expert physicians from the field — doctors recommended to us and used by our OPERA America member companies — to share their knowledge with you. In the following article, vocal health experts Clark A. Rosen, M.D., and Kimberly Steinhauer, Ph.D., both of the University of Pittsburgh Voice Center, along with members of the Watergate Voice Consortium, give instruction and advice on protecting your voice from damage and maximizing its potential.
Advisory Note Patient education material presented here does not substitute for medical consultation or examination, nor is this material intended to provide advice on the medical treatment appropriate to any specific circumstances.
Value Your Voice Through Healthy Diet and Lifestyle
Voice health follows overall health. Prevention of voice disorders requires individuals to value all aspects of their voices. Voice health follows the overall health of your body — things that help you stay healthy in general also preserve the quality and function of your voice. Additionally, healthy living can enable improved recovery in the event of a voice disorder.
A healthy voice requires specialized care and maintenance of all parts of the voice system: posture, breathing, vocalizing, and projecting. As in physical fitness, vocal fitness is reflected in diet and lifestyle.
A Healthy Diet for Voice
Each person’s voice may react differently to any number of common foods and beverages. Individuals should be aware of their voices and determine whether any voice complaints are associated with a particular food or drink. For example, some people report that drinking milk before speaking or singing causes an increase in phlegm or laryngeal mucous, making the voice unclear. These people should avoid or reduce exposure to these foods or drinks when possible. Certain types of food and beverages can complicate voice production.
Chocolates, spicy foods, caffeine, and alcohol can increase the stomach’s production of stomach acid. This increases the risk of backflow of stomach fluids, which can cause reflux laryngitis.
Caffeine and alcohol can have adverse effects on the nervous system, which can contribute to decreased voice quality. Caffeine is a nervous system stimulant that can cause hyperactivity and tremor, both of which can affect the voice negatively. Alcohol is a nervous system depressant that can impair coordination of speech and voice.
Caffeine and alcohol have also been associated with the “drying out” of vocal folds, which can contribute to voice problems.
The Role of Water
Proper hydration is key to the optimal function of vocal folds. When the body is even slightly dehydrated, the mucous made by the throat to lubricate the vocal folds becomes thicker. This thicker mucous can interfere with vocal fold vibration. The nutritional recommendation is to drink 6-8 glasses of water per day. Professional voice users and performing artists may require even more water.
A Healthy Lifestyle for Voice While the prevention of voice disorders begins with a healthy diet, leading a healthy lifestyle is equally significant. Individuals who smoke, consume excessive amounts of alcohol, and/or use illicit drugs are at increased risk for voice disorders. Excessive use may lead to chronic swelling and irritation of the vocal folds, which can lead to voice disorders such as Reinke’s edema, laryngeal atypia, cancer, and vocal scarring.
The Role of Voice Rest
A frequently overlooked component of lifestyle that contributes to a healthy voice is voice rest. Programming short periods of voice rest into the day’s routine can rejuvenate the voice and possibly make it stronger — especially for individuals who use their voice frequently in their job.
For example, by taking a quiet coffee break, not shrieking with the radio on the way home, and controlling cheers at a sporting event, one can “save” the voice and keep it prepared for times when it is needed most. The bottom line is that valuing voice by following a nourishing diet and healthy lifestyle is a great first step in preventing voice problems.
Optimize Voice Readiness Through Exercise
Regardless of how frequently an individual uses their voice during the day, voice disorders can be prevented by voice warm-up exercises that get the voice ready for optimal function. It is also important to “cool down” the voice at the end of the day.
Just as body conditioning and warm-ups are important to athletes, voice conditioning through voice exercises can improve strength, endurance, range, and flexibility of the voice.
Typically, voice exercise programs address four key aspects of sound production: proper posture, appropriate breath support, healthy sound, and adequate resonance.
Warm-up for Proper Posture
Posture is important to voice production since the body serves as the frame for voice support. Sample Posture Exercise: Stand with one foot slightly in front of the other at shoulder width to provide a firm base for the wellaligned head, neck, and torso (upper body). While standing, bend at the waist like a “rag doll” and gradually “roll up,” so that the head, neck, and body are in line. While standing, raise both arms to the sky, inhale and hold your breath,
With your body well aligned as described above:
Relax the facial muscles by massaging them with your hands. Relax the jaw muscles by chewing an imaginary piece of gum. Warm-up the neck muscles by: looking right, then center, looking left, then center, looking up, then center, looking down, then center. Warm-up for Voice Power (“Breath Support”), a Healthy Sound, and Adequate Resonance The consensus among voice care professionals is that exercises can help improve breath support, a healthy sound, and adequate resonance.
For examples of healthy exercises for support, sound, and resonance, talk to your voice teacher or see exercises provided at www.voiceproblem.org.
Invest in Proper Voice Technique, Training, and Consultation
Practice can help prepare the voice for almost any situation. As with all tasks, practicing good vocal habits is a key step in preventive voice care, and can improve voice function.
Invest in voice training provided by qualified voice teachers in order to increase vocal range and repertoire. Advice from accomplished local actors and singers is a great first step in finding such a professional.
Invest in medical consultation by seeking care from qualified voice care professionals when voice problems persist for two or more weeks beyond the end of cold and flu symptoms, especially if risk factors, such as smoking and reflux, exist. Timely evaluation of voice disorders by an ear, nose, and throat physician (ENT or otolaryngologist) or ENT-voice specialist (laryngologist) is important.
Cherish Your Voice
Voice is a reflection of an individual’s persona and physical well-being. Preventing voice disorders requires that one cherish all that goes into communicating that message. A person’s voice can reflect his or her psychological state. Singers have known for years that the voice reflects both mental and physical health. Cherishing and respecting your voice will ensure its vibrancy for years to come. Restraint
Cherishing one’s voice implies using restraint during potentially vocally abusive situations such as sporting events, loud concerts, noisy parties, and crowded nightclubs.
Almost everyone has experienced a phenomenon called the “Lombard effect,” which refers to raising the volume of the voice in the presence of competing background sound or noise. For example, suppose you are talking to your friends at a noisy party and the background music suddenly stops; when this happens, you end up surprised that you have been talking so loudly. In addition, you may also notice hoarseness or scratchiness in your voice the next morning — symptoms of inflamed or irritated vocal folds from yelling the night before.
Though voice disorders typically result after years of constant abuse, it is good to get into the habit of using your voice sparingly in noisy environments. Also, try to maintain an awareness of the background noise at each location so you continue to speak in a normal volume.
You may choose to move to a quieter part of the party t
About the Author: Kimberly Steinhauer, Ph.D., is a singing-voice specialist and received her doctorate in Communication Science and Disorders from the University of Pittsburgh. She earned her Bachelor of Science in Music Education from Indiana University of
Pennsylvania and a Master of Arts in Speech Communication from The Pennsylvania State University. She has taught vocal music in the elementary through high school grade levels, and has performed extensively in community and professional venues. As a singer highly committed to voice education, Dr. Steinhauer focuses her research on the relationship between teaching techniques and vocal skill learning. Dr. Steinhauer works collaboratively with Clark Rosen, M.D., to tailor vocal exercises and repertoire specifically for singers who have experienced vocal injury.
This article was written by Dr. Steinhauer in collaboration with the principals of the Watergate Voice Consortium: Charles N. Ford, M.D., F.A.C.S.,
Jamie A. Koufman, M.D., Clark Rosen, M.D., Robert Sataloff, M.D., D.M.A., Peak Woo, M.D., and Steven M. Zeitles, M.D., F.A.C.S.. This group of doctors serve as the board of editors for the VoiceProblem.org Web site (www.voiceproblem.org). The Voice Problem Web site is a nonprofit educational Web site funded through the Watergate Voice Foundation. The Web site’s entire purpose is to support patients with voice disorders as they seek healing for more complex, more intractable voice problems.
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An Aug. 17 meeting of the state Mining and Minerals Division revealed a struggle of uranium cleanup. The New Mexico Environmental Law Center and two nonprofit environmental groups are trying to get Rio Grande Resources Corp. to clean up uranium waste at the Mt. Taylor mine near Grants.
Rio Grande Resources Corp. is trying to renew a permit to leave the mine inactive without remediating the area. Uranium mining began there in 1979 and ceased in 1990; the element was extracted using underground mining techniques that reached 3,000 feet below the ground. According to Rio Grande Resource Corp.’s website, the Mt. Taylor mine is the largest uranium resource in the US and produced 8 million pounds of uranium before it was put on its current “standby” status.
If NMELC’s efforts are unsuccessful, Rio Grande Resources Corp. will be able to leave waste at the site for another five years. The National Trust for Historic Preservation listed Mt. Taylor as one of America’s most endangered places beginning in 2009. It also has been listed in the state’s register of cultural properties after petitioning from several Native American tribes that consider the area sacred.
Editor's note: Click here for updated information on the Mt. Taylor cleanup negotiations.
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According to a recent study, The Pace of Life Under Artificial Selection: Personality, Energy Expenditure, and Longevity Are Correlated in Domestic Dogs, there is a link between personality, metabolic rate, and life history traits. Researcher Vincent Careau and his colleagues conclude that dogs of obedient, docile and shy breeds live longer than breeds that are more typically bold or disobedient. They also found that aggressive breeds have higher energetic needs than breeds who are not typically aggressive. It is well known that large dogs don’t tend to live as long as small dogs. This study corrected for size and found that personality is related to canine life span without allowing size to confound their conclusions.
Some specifics of the study’s findings
are that both the German Shepherd and the Bichon live a long time for their size, and that Labradors and Newfoundlands burn less energy for their weight than other breeds. On the other end, Fox Terriers, Great Danes, Beagles and Pomeranians had short life spans relative to their size. The basic idea is that dogs who expend a lot of energy and don’t live that long are consistent with a pace-of-life syndrome that goes with a “live fast, die young” model. It has been used to explain varying life spans of a number of species.
The scientists who conducted this study assert that these results could be a result of either humans selecting for particular combinations of traits, but they believe another possibility is more likely: They think that these correlations probably arose from inadvertent correlations of these traits with the trait humans were truly selecting for—personality.
Many people will no doubt find this study fascinating, but there are already critics who view dogs as an unusual case in that the smaller breeds tend to live longer whereas in other animals, the longest-lived animals tend to be bigger. I myself am curious about how the breeds were categorized as bold, obedient, docile, aggressive etc. What do you think about this study?
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Financial Records Guide and Glossary
Financial Records Guide and Glossary
The financial records of a business can hold a wealth of information. With business records, a researcher can obtain much information, whether he or she is interested in nineteenth century purchasing patterns, the cost of materials used in textile manufacturing, or the everyday operations of a brewery. The main types of financial materials found among business records are account books, account statements, receipts, bills and shipping information. Correspondence, legal cases and minute books also offer more insight into the operations of a business.
In 2003, HSP undertook the Documentary Families Project, which focused on the access and preservation needs of some of the Society’s richest collections of family papers. This three-year effort enabled HSP to preserve and describe dozens of these important collections, which describe the founding and settlement of Pennsylvania, expansion into western counties and relations with Native Americans, and much more.
Project staff (Joanne Danifo, Katherine Gallup, Sarah Heim, and Leslie Hunt) created this glossary of terms in financial records found in the Documentary Families collections. However, this guide may be helpful for anyone conducting research in financial records from the 17th to the 20th centuries.
Researchers not accustomed to early penmanship, may also be interested in Kip Sperry's book, Reading Early American Handwriting (Baltimore, Md.: Genealogical Pub. Co., 1998; call number REF Z 115.A5 S64 1998).
Before one begins studying business records, there are basic terms that should be understood.
"Credit" refers to a positive balance and "debit" refers to a negative balance or money owed. When keeping track of credits and debits, a business lists its credits on the left and debits on the right or “contra.” For example, an account in a ledger would list a purchase on the left, because the account owes the business money for the merchandise. The payment for the merchandise is then listed on the right.
Another term frequently used in business financials is “sundries.” This is a general term given to items purchased by an account and appears most often in ledgers, which do not contain detailed information about items sold. For example, a daybook belonging to Dr. Benjamin Morris in the Coates and Reynell family papers might itemize every patient’s purchase (i.e. powder, medicine), but in his ledger the bookkeeper might abbreviate the entry and mention the purchase of “sundries.”
Understanding the relationship between credits and debits and the usage of sundries is vital to reading account books and other financial materials in business records.
Types of Records
The term account book can be used to describe many different volumes used in bookkeeping.
The daybook is the most fundamental financial record for a business and may be referred to as a waste book or blotter. In this volume, an employee records the business’ financial transactions at the time that they occur. Daybooks hold the record of both debits and credits and two slash marks in the margin (//) signify that this entry was recorded in the bookkeeper’s next tool, the journal.
A journal is the step between the daybook and the ledger. On a monthly basis, the bookkeeper copied the financial information from the daybook into the journal. However, the bookkeeper listed summaries of individual accounts under each date. The goal of the journal was to organize transactions according customer for each date in order to facilitate the creation of the ledger. The numbers that often appear in the margins of the journal correspond to pages in the ledger.
Whereas daybooks and journals are organized by date, ledgers are organized by account. Under each account, there is a chronological list of the account’s debits and credits for said period of time. The front of the ledger contains an alphabetical index of accounts and the corresponding page number. Sometimes the ledger’s index is a separate volume.
Often a business will want keep track of the amount of cash it has on hand, so the bookkeeper traces the flow of cash in a cashbook. The cashbook essentially is a daybook that contains only the transactions involving cash received or cash paid.
One final volume worth noting is a business’ bank book, which keeps track of deposits and withdrawals.
There are also many different types of financial records, but the main ones are bills, receipts, invoices, and account statements.
The term "bill" is loosely applied to a document that contains a record of the buyer, seller, items purchased, prices and bill total. Invoices, which may also be referred to as "accounts receivable," are issued by a person upon the delivery of a goods or services. They are closely related to shipping slips, which make note of the method of delivery, usually by rail or ship.
Recognition of payment can be written on the bill or a separate receipt is sent. A business may also have records of their receipts in a receipt book.
An account statement lists the debits and credits an account. It follows the same format as a ledger, but might be as detailed as a daybook.
One of the collections that contains almost every type of account book and financial document previously mentioned is the Hollingsworth family papers. The business of flour merchant Levi Hollingsworth is detailed in daybooks, journals, ledgers, cashbooks, bank books, shipping records, invoices, bills and receipts.
Other Record Types
While bookkeeping records shed light on the financial status of a business, there are also other materials that relate to administration, operations, relationships between business associates and customers, and other miscellaneous aspects of industry and mercantilism.
Minute books are vital to understanding the operations and administration of a business. They have the details of meetings held by the governing members of a business and offer insight to their decisions and outline how the business operates. In the Perot family papers, the minute books trace the activities of a nineteenth century brewery.
Many business collections include a great deal of correspondence. The Meredith family papers are rich in correspondence that sheds light on the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century tannery business of Jonathan Meredith. His letter books contain letters addressed to tanners, boot and shoe makers, coach makers, and a number of merchants and provide the researcher with insight into the process of tanning and the mercantile aspects of the business. In the Thompson family papers, John J. Thompson’s letters represent the type of correspondence that can most often be found in business records – inquiries concerning bill payments. Thompson and the members of his merchant firm wrote to different customers and associates on a daily basis in hopes of settling open accounts; the correspondence became more frequent during times of financial strife in a business.
Other business records include inventories of goods. The Thompson family papers have sketches for patent applications relating to George Thompson's involvement in the Pennsylvania Salt Company. The Hortsmann-Lippincott family papers include ribbon sample books among the papers of Horstmann Brothers & Company and William H. Horstmann & Sons, which were nineteenth century textile companies.
Some business collections also include employee information such as registers or wage lists. The employee registers in Hortsmann-Lippincott family papers offer details such as an employee’s hire date, duties, the room in which he worked, and his reason for termination, if applicable.
Whether a researcher desires insight into the financial practices of a company, their daily operations, or the relationships between merchants, financiers, and manufacturers, a company’s business records can provide a great amount of information.
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A New Approach to Predicting Epileptic Seizures
Torrents of data produced by implanted microelectrodes could finally yield a prediction system.
Anticonvulsant drugs don’t work for about 20 percent of people with epilepsy. That’s 10 million people worldwide. For them, many research groups have been studying brain-wave data to find patterns that can predict an oncoming seizure.
At Columbia University’s Medical Center, researchers have implanted a new kind of brain-wave recording device in seven patients. They hope that the device will point the way to predicting seizures—and some day, preventing them.
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Media applications, a key technology for today’s professionals.
We’ve looked at modern media applications in previous postings of this blog. They represent a critical core of the new world of end-user software.
The management of advanced media technology, something that a wide class of technical and nontechnical professionals must master, presents a difficult dilemma for both students and instructors. Professionals need to be able to create, edit, store, search, and reuse photographic images, video, music, voice and sound effects tracks, 2D and 3D models, web pages, diagrams, mathematical information, and formatted documents with embedded media. They need to use advanced media applications to get the job done – but they also need abstract knowledge about media management, so that they can continue to stay current, know how to find the right application for a given task, and know the limits of the software they use.
Animation presents a great example of this dilemma.
I’m a computer science prof and teach an introductory 3D animation course. Building an animation project is a complicated process and the applications that animators use are almost unbelievably complex. They have vast interfaces that take years to master. It is difficult to perform even simple tasks without being taught keystroke by keystroke how to get the job done.
It is also hard to apply skills learned in one application to a similar application. Two 3D animation applications, even if they are considered to be close cousins in terms of their functionality and with respect to how they should be used, typically present their own unique learning challenges.
Most instructors don’t want to deliver courses that leave students empty handed, feeling like their heads are full of fancy ideas but they have nothing tangible to show for their trouble. Indeed, it is very hard to teach concepts independently of teaching students how to use a specific animation application, to teach general principles and not have a class degenerate into a here’s-how-to-use-application-X session.
This explains why professional books on animation (as well as other books about media mega-apps) are so painfully prescriptive and why they are rarely used as primary university and college textbooks.
One way of getting the teaching/learning job done.
What I find myself doing is teaching from the bottom-up. First, I get the students intrigued by suggesting something that would be fun or useful to build, like a snowman. Second, we do it with Maya, the animation application which is very much an industry standard and what I use as a teaching tool. This second step, especially later in the class as we do more difficult and detailed things, can be very tedious. (Sometimes I do it wrong the first time or two!) Then third, we step back and address the general concept that underlies this fun or useful thing. In the case of our snowman, it’s the basics of creating solids, such as spheres, out of flat polygon shapes. This “geodesic dome” approach is a key component of most modeling and animation applications.
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Census Records - United States
Begin your Research with Census Records
Once you have the name of an ancestor and an idea of which state he or she resided in, you may want to begin by exploring census records. The Federal Population Census has been taken every 10 years, beginning in 1790. The National Archives has the census schedules on microfilm available from 1790 to 1930. (Note: Most of the 1890 Census was destroyed in a Department of Commerce fire, though partial records are available for some states.) There is a 72-year restriction on access to population census schedules, which is why 1930 is the latest year currently available.
How can Census Records help in my research?
Sample page from the 1930 Census
View larger image
Census records can provide the building blocks of your research, allowing you to both confirm information, and to learn a lot more. From 1790-1840 only the head of household is listed, (along with the number of household members in different age groups). However, beginning with 1850, details are provided for all individuals in households.
Depending upon the census year, some of the information that the records may provide includes:
- the names of family members
- their ages at a certain point in time
- their state or country of birth
- their parent's birthplaces
- year of immigration
- their street address
- marriage status and years of marriage
- value of their home and personal belongings
- the crops that they grew (in agricultural schedules), etc.
For details on what information was collected in each census year, see...
- Summmary of Information Collected in Census Records 1790-1930
- Detailed Instructions for Census Enumerators 1850-2000
- Census Findings - Questions asked in US Census Records
|Tip: It is best to begin with the most current census year available and to work backwards. With the 72-year restriction on access to the Census, the most current year now available is 1930.|
What Census information can I get on the NARA web site?
NARA does not have census records available online. However, it does have the microfilm catalogs online, which can help prepare you for your visit to the National Archives. Ancestry.com and Heritagequest.com have digitized many of the Federal Census records. These are subscription-based web sites, but access is unlimited and free-of-charge from any NARA facility.
How can I search the Census Records?
Please note, due to staffing limitations the National Archives cannot conduct census research on your behalf. However, you can access census records by:
- Visiting the National Archives Building in Washington, DC or one of our 13 regional facilities located in Anchorage, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Fort Worth, Kansas City, Laguna Niguel, CA, New York City, Philadelphia, Pittsfield, MA, San Francisco, and Seattle.
- Visit State Archives or State Libraries.
- Contacting public libraries, historical societies, and other research facilities.
- Renting microfilm reels through our microfilm rental program with public libraries. Your local public library may help arrange the loan.
- Purchasing rolls of the microfilm from us.
- Using online services, such as Ancestry.com or Heritagequest.com, which have digitized many census holdings from the National Archives. (Available free-of-charge at the National Archives facilities nationwide and through many libraries, otherwise by subscription.)
- Check with the USGenWeb project to see if census records from your states of interest have been transcribed (free of charge). See both U.S. Genweb Census Project and U.S. GenWeb State Census Index.
How to Use NARA's Census Microfilm Catalogs
If you know the state, county, and town in which your ancestor lived in the census year, go to the microfilm catalog. Locate the census year, state, and county from the list. This shows the microfilm publication number and roll number. For example, The 1790-1890 Federal Population Censuses: Catalog of National Archives Microfilm (Washington, DC: National Archives Trust Fund Board, 1993), shows that the 1860 census for Medina County, Ohio, is on roll number 1007 of microfilm publication M653, Eighth Census of the United States, 1860. (The microfilm publication number and title is shown at the beginning of the listings for the 1860 census--just before Alabama.)
Microfilmed Indexes, 1880-1930
Microfilmed indexes are available for these censuses. Microfilmed indexes for the 1880 and 1900-1930 censuses use the soundex indexing system. Read How the Soundex Indexing System Works for instructions.
The microfilmed index to the 1890 census is arranged alphabetically by surname, thereunder by first name.
Published indexes to the 1790-1870 censuses have been published by various private companies; these can be found at many public libraries and other institutions with large genealogical collections.
The 1880 census is indexed only for families with children age 10 years or younger. If your ancestor resided in a household that did not include a child age 10 or less, you will have to search the census of the community in which he/she lived line by line.
This census is indexed by microfilm publication M496, Index to the Eleventh Census of the United States, 1890, Roll 1 (surnames A-J), Roll 2 (surnames K-Z). A Department of Commerce fire in 1921 destroyed most of the 1890 census.
There is a soundex index for all states.
There is a soundex index for only the following states:
Alabama Missouri Arkansas North Carolina California Ohio Florida Oklahoma Georgia Pennsylvania Illinois South Carolina Kansas Tennessee Kentucky Texas Louisiana Virginia Michigan West Virginia Mississippi
If your ancestor lived in a state for which there is no soundex for 1910, you will have to search the census of the community in which he/she lived line by line or use other indexes listed above under "How can I search the Census Records?"
There is a soundex index for all states.
There is a soundex index for the following areas only:
Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky (only counties of Bell, Floyd, Harlan, Kenton, Muhlenberg, Perry and Pike), Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia (only counties of Fayette, Harrison, Kanawha, Logan, McDowell, Mercer, and Raleigh).
How to Use Soundex Microfilm
Go to the catalog for the appropriate census year (1880, 1900, 1910, 1920, or 1930), then find the state, microfilm publication number, and roll containing the soundex code. Note that only the beginning and ending soundex codes contained on each roll are shown. For example, The 1920 Federal Population Censues: Catalog of National Archives Microfilm (Washington, DC: National Archives Trust Fund Board, 1995), the shows that, for California for 1920 soundex code A-266 is included on microfilm publication M1551, Index (Soundex) to the 1920 Federal Population Census Schedules for California, roll 3, because roll 3 begins at A-246 Nathan and ends with A-350 Douranana.
Special Note: Within each soundex code, the microfilmed index cards are arranged alphabetically by name of head of household, such as A-266 Albert, A-266 Ann, A-266 Arthur, etc.
For additional information how to use the soundex indexes and census schedules, read the on-line introductory material to each census microfilm catalog.
Once you have located a soundex index card for the person or household in which you are interested, note the following information: county of residence; city, town, village, or township of residence; and the four numbers located in the upper right hand corner of the index card: volume number, enumeration district (E.D.) number, sheet number, and line number. Use the county name and enumeration district number to determine which roll of census microfilm you need. For example, for 1920 only, Los Angeles County, CA, Enumeration Districts 1-11, 13, 14, 33-37, and 16-32 are located in microfilm publication T625, Fourteenth Census of the United States, 1920, roll 102, while other enumeration districts for that county are located on rolls 103-120.
Note that the soundex indexes and census schedules are on microfilm; you will not be able to search them on-line. You can get access to census microfilm through the National Archives Microfilm Rental Program, in which many public libraries participate. Census microfilm is also widely available at public libraries, state archives, and other institutions with large genealogical collections.
For more information, see A Beginner's Guide to the U.S. Federal Censuses.
For a comprehensive guide to the 1930 U.S. Census, see the NARA Guide to the 1930 Census.
Census extraction forms are doubly valuable: not only do they allow researchers to see the format and column headings for various census years (especially if the schedules themselves are hard to read), they also provide a clean and convenient method for extracting and filing important information you find.
You can download blank U.S. census forms at http://www.ancestry.com/save/charts/census.htm
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Originally Published MDDI July 2005
A polymer coating applied to a coil surface enables the sustained release of drugs to the back of the eye.
Signe Varner, Nancy Hupfer, and John Buan
Unlike diseases of the front of the eye, where drugs can be delivered topically, retinal diseases require a more site-specific approach. Eye drops and ointments rarely penetrate the back of the eye, and the blood-ocular barrier hinders penetration of systemically administered drugs into ocular tissue. Improving the treatment of chronic ocular disease requires technologies that can provide sustained intraocular delivery of drugs for months or even years.
This article discusses the development of a new coating technology that provides a more patient-friendly and efficacious method of ocular drug delivery. Continuous intravitreal drug delivery enables the sustained release of drugs to the back of the eye, which offers versatility and flexibility for drug formulation and pharmacokinetics control. In addition to minimizing systemic drug levels and overcoming physiological barriers to drug penetration, sustained delivery also minimizes the dependence on patient compliance.
Retinal Diseases and Treatments
Retinal diseases, such as diabetic macular edema (DME) and age-related macular degeneration (AMD), represent the leading causes of vision loss in the Western world.
Diabetic Macular Edema. DME is the result of retinal microvascular changes that occur in patients with diabetes. Thickening of the basement membrane and reduction in the number of pericytes is believed to cause increased permeability and incompetence of retinal vasculature. This compromise of the blood-retinal barrier leads to fluid accumulation (edema) in the macula.1
Several factors give rise to the occurrence of DME in any one patient, including how long a patient has had diabetes, the type of diabetes the patient has, the presence of severe hypertension, fluid retention, low protein in body fluids (hypoalbuminemia), and high levels of fats in the blood (hyperlipidemia).1
DME is the leading cause of legal blindness among Americans between the ages of 20 and 74. There are an estimated 500,000 cases of macular edema in the United States, and 325,000 of these cases represent clinically significant macular edema, i.e., cases with a high risk of vision loss. An estimated 80,000 cases of macular edema, 56,000 cases of clinically significant macular edema, and 5000 new cases of legal blindness are reported each year as a result of diabetic retinopathy.
One currently accepted treatment for advanced DME is laser photocoagulation to close the leaking micro-aneurysms. Laser treatments can reduce the rate of moderate vision loss by 50%. However, while laser treatments reduce the rate of progression, once visual acuity is already reduced, laser-treated eyes are unlikely to improve to 20/40 or better. Also, the degree of visual gain following laser treatment is moderate and may take months to occur. These observations have led to the search for other approaches to the treatment of DME.2
A second option is to surgically remove the vitreous (pars plana vitrectomy). This treatment requires a complex surgery with inherent risks and recovery time. It may also be applicable only to a specific subset of eyes with DME. Additionally, numerous pharmacological agents, including antiangiogenesis compounds, statins, and corticosteroids are being investigated for the treatment of DME. In these studies, the drugs are delivered either systemically or intravitreally. No drug has been approved by FDA for treatment of DME.
Age-Related Macular Degeneration. The etiology of AMD is quite different from that of DME. AMD is a disease that blurs the sharp, central vision needed for straight-ahead activities such as reading, sewing, and driving. Although it causes no pain, AMD affects the macula, the part of the eye that allows people to see fine detail. Exudative, or wet, AMD occurs when abnormal blood vessels behind the retina start to grow under the macula. These new blood vessels tend to be very fragile and often leak blood and fluid. The blood and fluid raise the macula from its normal place at the back of the eye, leading to rapid damage to the macula.3
AMD is estimated to affect 28% of people between the ages of 65 and 75. It afflicts more than 46% of people aged 75 and older and is considered the leading cause of vision loss in Americans age 60 and older. There are approximately 200,000 new cases of AMD each year in the United States, and the annual incidence is expected to grow as the population ages. Currently, wet AMD is the only form of the disease with FDA-approved treatment options.
The three treatment pathways for wet AMD include laser surgery, photodynamic therapy, and pharmacotherapy. Laser surgery destroys the fragile blood vessels that are leaking into the space behind the retina. However, laser treatment may also destroy some surrounding healthy tissue and some vision, and the risk of new blood vessels developing after laser treatment is high. Repeated treatments may be necessary, and in some cases, vision loss may progress despite repeated treatments.3
In photodynamic therapy, Visudyne (QLT Inc.; Vancouver, BC, Canada), a photoactivated cytotoxic agent, is administered intravenously. A specially tuned laser is focused into the eye to activate the drug circulating in the retinal vasculature. The cytotoxic agent is released in the vessels targeted by the laser and the vessels are destroyed, stopping the flow and leaking. While this therapy brings positive results to some patients, the disease continues to progress in others.
Lastly, Macugen (Pfizer Inc.; New York City) was recently approved by FDA for the treatment of wet AMD. This drug is an antiangiogenesis agent that suppresses the formation of new blood vessels in the back of the eye. The drug is administered by intravitreal injection, using a syringe, once every 6 weeks for a duration determined by the patient's physician. As with Visudyne, Macugen does provide benefit to some, but not all, patients.
Intraocular Drug Delivery
Many other drugs intended for the treatment of retinal disease are in the trial phase of development. These drugs are administered by direct intravitreal injection rather than orally or by intravenous injection. The short intraocular half-life of these drugs necessitates repeat injections every 4–6 weeks for up to 2 years.
This schedule is difficult for patients to endure and maintain, and the regimen carries an increased risk of tissue damage and infection. With approximately 12 pharmaceutical compounds currently in randomized clinical trials for the treatment of retinal disease, the need for an improved method of ocular drug delivery has never been more acute.
Continuous Intravitreal Drug Delivery
|Figure 1. An intravitreal implant is shown here next to a dime, which indicates relative size.|
A new drug-delivery option for the sustained release of drugs to the back of the eye is expected to enter clinical trials sometime in 2005. Unlike intra-vitreal or intravenous injections, this technology platform offers versatility and flexibility for drug formulation and pharmacokinetics control. The coil seen in Figure 1 is an implantable platform that leverages a proven polymer drug-delivery technology with a unique mechanical scaffold (a wire coil). The small size of the coil enables implantation through a pars plana needlestick less than 0.5 mm in diameter.
The unique helical design maximizes the surface area available for drug delivery and ensures secure anchoring of the implant against the sclera, keeping it out of the visual field and facilitating retrieval. The thin cap is designed to reside under the conjunctival membrane of the eye (see Figure 2). The drug resides within the patented polymer coating applied to the coil surface. The drug-release characteristics are controlled by the combination of the polymers in the coating and the process by which they are applied.
|Figure 2. The cap of an intravitreal implant is shown 3 months after implantation.|
In addition to the intravitreal uses for retinal diseases such as DME and AMD, sustained intraocular drug delivery may also prove to be an attractive alternative to topical eye drops for anterior diseases such as glaucoma. Glaucoma medications, the majority of which are delivered topically, represented a $1.4 billion market in 2002. Patient compliance is a significant problem with topical administration, particularly in the elderly population. It is recognized that less than 30% of patients administer drops as indicated. Lack of patient compliance can lead to costly and invasive surgical procedures. A sustained intraocular delivery system capable of providing medications for months at a time would represent a significant improvement in the treatment of this patient population.
Case Study: An Intravitreal Drug, a Polymer Coating, and an Implant Design
The technical feasibility of such a combination system for long-term intraocular drug delivery has been demonstrated in a study of a polymer-coated implant developed to incorporate the sustained intravitreal release of the corticosteroid triamcinolone acetonide (TA).
Drug-Delivery Polymer Matrix Coating. Medical device and pharmaceutical companies now have the technology and ability to combine, or marry, controlled drug delivery with an implantable platform. This enabling methodology offers several advantages over systemic delivery of a drug: the drug is targeted to the intended site of action, ensuring that the tissue needing the drug receives it; there is no need to use high or toxic systemic doses to achieve sufficient local concentrations; and a sustained, controlled dosing level can be maintained over a predetermined period of time.
The intravitreal implant uses the same drug-delivery polymer coating to control release of the active drug as that used in the first-to-market coronary stent. Since its approval, that stent has been implanted in more than 1 million patients. The coating is a durable polymer matrix especially suited to the controlled release of entrapped hydrophobic molecules. This application, treatment of a chronic disease condition over many years, requires a longer drug-elution duration and higher drug loading than that used in drug-eluting stents. Additionally, the minimally invasive nature of the implant design allows repeated procedures until the therapy is complete. In the case of this intravitreal implant, triamcinolone drug release can be tuned for durations ranging from 6 months up to 2 years.
Triamcinolone Acetonide. While not specifically approved for ophthalmic use, TA has a relatively long history of use in the treatment of ocular inflammation, with administration through a variety of methods, including intra-vitreal injection. Published reports describe the use of intravitreal TA in a wide range of ophthalmic disorders, including AMD and DME.
The toxicity and pharmacokinetics of intravitreal TA injection have been investigated in animal models, and the duration of visible intravitreal crystalline triamcinolone has been shown to be approximately 2 months, thus providing an extended period of activity in ocular tissues adjacent to the vitreous cavity.
|Figure 3. This graph shows an example of in vitro drug release from drug-eluting coatings for the intravitreal drug-delivery system. This experiment shows that drug-elution control and extended release duration can be achieved for months to years by varying the polymer matrix composition.|
Proven Sustained Drug Delivery. As the polymer coating was optimized for delivery of TA, in vitro elution was monitored in parallel with chemistry and manufacturing development. Elution experiments performed on the coated coils showed that a high level of drug loading and a wide range of in vitro release rates can be achieved by modification and fine-tuning of the coating formulation. The duration of drug release from the coating into phosphate-buffered saline is approximately 140 days using a fast-release formulation, while the release duration from medium- and slow-release formulations is projected to approach 1 and 3 years, respectively (Figure 3). Slower-releasing formulations approximated the zero-order-release kinetics considered desirable to maintain consistent drug levels in the eye.
|Figure 4. In vivo elution of triamcinolone acetonide from the intravitreal implant. The graph shows 6-month results.|
The long drug-elution duration may not only improve the efficacy and ease-of-use of the product, but also obviate the patient-compliance problem often associated with traditional forms of drug delivery. Elution curves generated from explanted implants confirmed a controlled, sustained drug-delivery capability in vivo (see Figure 4). In the case of the Dose A (slow-release) implant, sustained delivery is predicted to last for at least 2 years.
Preclinical Safety and Biocompatibility. Safety and biocompatibility of the triamcinolone implant have been studied extensively in preclinical
models. In two comprehensive studies, sustained-release implants containing TA were placed in rabbit eyes and followed clinically for 6 months. Following a small incision in the conjunctiva, each implant was positioned intravitreally by insertion through the sclera, 3 mm from the edge of the iris. A 30-gauge needle was introduced through the sclera before placement of the implant. The implant was rotated through the sclerotomy using a custom surgical instrument. Once the implant cap firmly abutted the sclera, the conjunctiva was closed using one or two absorbable sutures.
The entire implantation procedure consistently took 15–20 minutes. Eyes were monitored by fundus examination, electroretinography, ocular coherence tomography, and histopathology. A total of more than 100 eyes were followed for up to 9 months postimplantation. The implant was well tolerated, with no observed retinal toxicity. In addition, very little fibrous encapsulation was observed, as demonstrated by histopathology (see Figure 5).4
|Figure 5. A 3-month postoperative, resin-embedded histology section from a study using rabbits. Very little fibrous encapsulation was observed.|
Removal of the implant was similarly straightforward. Following conjunctival dissection around the cap, the implant was gently rotated out of the original sclerotomy. The remaining opening in the sclera measured approximately 0.5 mm in diameter and was either closed with a single suture or left open. The conjunctiva was closed with one or two sutures. Both techniques prevented infection and resulted in wound healing. In no case did implant removal result in retinal detachment.
Additional in vitro and in vivo biocompatibility studies for the polymer and platform were performed to address requirements from the international standard ISO 10993, Biological Evaluation of Medical Devices.
Regulatory Issues. As the product proceeds to the next stage, discussions have taken place with FDA on the suitability of the development work to support a small safety study. Based on input from FDA discussion, work began on an investigational new drug (IND) application to support the use of the implant in a Phase I clinical trial for patients with DME. A Phase I clinical study will evaluate the safety of the drug-delivery implant therapy. Future clinical studies are also being designed that will address the efficacy of this treatment in AMD and other ocular diseases.
Retinal diseases, such as DME and AMD, represent the leading causes of vision loss in the Western world. Unlike diseases of the front of the eye, where drugs can be delivered topically, retinal diseases require a site-specific approach.
A new drug-delivery option for the sustained release of drugs to the back of the eye will likely enter clinical trials sometime in 2005. Technologies such as this can provide sustained intraocular delivery of drugs for months or years, dramatically improving the treatment of chronic ocular disease. The technical feasibility of developing a system for intraocular drug delivery has been demonstrated. An implant has been developed to incorporate the sustained intravitreal release of the corticosteroid triamcinolone acetonide. In addition to minimizing systemic drug levels and overcoming physiological barriers to drug penetration, this approach also minimizes the dependence on patient compliance.
1. Treatment and Prevention of Diabetic Retinopathy [online] (Atlanta: Center for Accredited Healthcare Education [cited 31 May 2005]); available from Internet: www.caringfordiabetes.com.
2. Stanley Chang, “Recent Developments in the Treatment of Diabetic Macular Edema,” The Eleventh Health Conference [online] (Teaneck, NJ: Federation of Chinese American and Chinese Canadian Medical Societies [cited 31 May 2005]); available from Internet: www.fcmsdocs.org/Conference/11th/Diabetic%20Macular%20Edema.pdf.
3. “Age-Related Macular Degeneration: What You Should Know” [online] (Bethesda, MD: NIH National Eye Institute [cited 31 May 2005]); available from Internet: www.nei.nih.gov/health/maculardegen/armd_facts.asp.
4. R Tano et al., “Helical Intravitreal Triamcinolone Implant: Surgical Method Development and Outcomes” (paper presented at the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology, Ft. Lauderdale, FL, May 1–6, 2005).
Copyright ©2005 Medical Device & Diagnostic Industry
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Kennedy Space Center Gaseous Nitrogen Freezer (GN2) - 06.18.15
The Kennedy Space Center Gaseous Nitrogen Freezer (GN2) is a double-middeck-locker replacement facility designed to provide a cryogenic preservation environment for experiment samples onboard the space shuttle and the International Space Station. Science Results for Everyone
Information Pending Facility Details
David R. Cox, Kennedy Space Center, Kennedy Space Center, FL, United States
Charles D. Quincy, Kennedy Space Center, Kennedy Space Center, FL, United States
NASA Kennedy Space Center, Space Life Sciences Laboratory, Cape Canaveral, FL, United States
Bionetics Corporation, Cape Canaveral, FL, United States
Sponsoring Space Agency
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate (HEOMD)
ISS Expedition Duration
September 2000 - November 2000
Previous ISS Missions
The Kennedy Space Center Gaseous Nitrogen Freezer (GN2) was used on STS-87, STS-95, and STS-111.
- The Kennedy Space Center Gaseous Nitrogen Freezer (GN2) is a passive freezer container (requires no power).
- It is designed to hold samples at cryogenic temperatures (-196 °C) for between 21 and 35 days, depending on the flight configuration and use scenario.
- The GN2 can be used to transport frozen samples to and from orbit and is certified to fly on the International Space Station.
The sample area inside the internal tank can hold up to four cylinders 6.0 in. long and 3.7 in. in outer diameter. In addition, one of the freezer compartments will be filled preflight with an insert of the same absorbent material to increase the thermal mass of the system. The additional insert is wrapped with cotton cloth to contain any particulate.
Quick disconnects are added to the freezer lid to allow for ease of use. The ladles containing the biological samples in the freezer are tethered to the external body pf the freezer via insulated wire. The freezer lid is stowed in a foam insert. The lid's quick-disconnect pin is tethered to the lid to prevent it from floating away. The gaseous nitrogen is held in the absorbent material by a vacuum and the insulation material. The freezer has a valve that ensures the integrity of the vacuum container. The total volume of liquid nitrogen when full is 6.5 L. The static evaporation rate of the unit is about 0.3 L/day. Depending on the flight configuration and use scenario, the GN2 can hold temperatures at approximately -196 °C for between 21 and 35 days. The GN2 is a passive facility which provides access for crew interaction for removal and insertion of biological samples in microgravity. ^ back to top
- The Kennedy Space Center Gaseous Nitrogen Freezer (GN2) is passive. It provides crew access for removal and insertion of biological samples into a cryogenic temperature environment as needed during the mission.
Information PendingResults Publications
Ground Based Results Publications
The Kennedy Space Center Gaseous Nitrogen Freezer (GN2) with lid removed. Image courtesy of Kennedy Space Center.
+ View Larger Image
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Mary Queen of Scots
- National Museum of Scotland |
- 28 June – 17 November 2013
- 50% off with National Art Pass.
- View venue & entry details
This exhibition is a re-appraisal of one of the greatest figures of British History, the charismatic, yet also enigmatic Mary Queen of Scots.
This is the largest exhibition ever held about the tragic Scottish queen and incorporates loans from across the world, in order to shed some light on this most mysterious person. From her early days in France to her enforced incarceration by Elizabeth I, little is really known about the mother of James I.
Her life was embroiled in scandal and intrigue, in particular the death of her husband Lord Darnley. Was she a murdering adulteress, scheming with a group of treacherous cohorts or a Catholic martyr? Through international loans of paintings, letters, objects and jewelry, this exhibition attempts to uncover the truth.
A memorial painting of Mary Queen of Scots dressed in the clothes she was wearing the day of her execution and holding a cross in her right hand. In the background is the scene of Mary on the scaffold, the executioner lifting his axe and the inhabitants of Fotheringhay Castle in Northamptonshire surrounding her.
There are also jewels she gave away before her death to her supporters and friends, revealing a woman with a voracious appetite for fine jewelry and stones.
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Alpha Centauri 3
|Home | Stars | Orbits | Habitability | Life ||
© Laro Schatzer (Artwork from Alpha Centauri, used with permission)
On March 25, 2015, a team of astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope revealed observations which indicate via the transit method that Alpha Centauri B may have a second planet "c" in a hot inner orbit, just outside planet candidate "b." After observing Alpha Centauri B in 2013 and 2014 for a total of 40 hours, the team failed to detect any transits involving planet b (previously detected using the radial velocity variations method and recently determined not to be observed edge-on in a transit orbit around Star B). Transit signals detected in 2013 observations indicate that planetary candidate c could be an Earth-sized planet with a year lasting no more than 20.4 days, putting it slightly further out than Bb but still scorchingly close to the star (Demory et al, 2015; and Jacob Aron, New Scientist, March 27, 2015).
On March 5, 2015, a team of astronomers announced that numerical simulations constrain the size of planetary candidate Alpha Centauri Bb (with orbital period P=3.24 days; and semi-major axis a = 0.042 AU) to less than 2.7 Earth-masses at an inclination of 45 to 53 degrees relative to Stars' AB orbital plane (Plavchan et al, 2015). Found via radial velocity variations, the planet's true mass could not be known with knowing whether its orbit around Star B is being viewed edge-on, face-on, or somewhere in between. The team's computer simulations indicate that the planet's orbit isn't face-on, which constrains its mass to one to 2.7 times that of Earth, implying that it has a terrestrial composition but its tidally locked day side should be hot enough to melt lead (Ken Croswell, Science Magazine, March 11, 2015).
On October 16, 2012, a team of astronomers announced the discovery of a planet with around 1.13 +/- 0.09 Earth-masses in a very hot and tight, circular orbit around Alpha Centauri B, using the European Southern Observatory's High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) instrument on the 3.6-metre telescope at ESOs La Silla Observatory in Chile. Due to the close binary orbital interactions of the host star with Alpha Centauri A and Star B's own increased stellar activity during recent years, the astronomers were only able to detect the radial-velocity variations of host star B that were caused by the 3.236-day orbit of the planet (with a semi-major axis of 0.04 AU) only after more than three years of careful observation. Given that the presence of one close-orbiting planet usually indicates the presence of others, many astronomers are now expected to devote more resources to detecting such potential planets around Star B (ESO press release; Dumusque et al, 2012; Eric Hand, Nature, October 16, 2012; and Aron Jacob, New Scientist, October 17, 2012; and Astronomy Picture of the Day).
Sky & Telescope,
Larger and jumbo maps.
Our nearest known stellar neighbors lie
in a triple-star system that has been
measured at just over four light-years
from Earth, where Alpha Centauri A is
the brightest star in Constellation
Sol's three closest stellar neighbors are located in the southeastern corner of Constellation Centaurus, the Centaur. Proxima Centauri (or Alpha Centauri C) is only 4.22 light-years (ly) away (14:29:42.95-62:40:46.14, ICRS 2000.0) but is too dim to be seen with the naked eye. The two bright stars, Alpha Centauri A and B (14:39:36.5-62:50:02.3 and 14:39:35.1-60:50:13.8, ICRS 2000.0), are a little farther away at about 4.36 ly. They form a close binary that is separated "on average" by only about 24 times the Earth-Sun distance -- an average orbital distnace or semi-major axis of 23.7 astronomical units (AUs) -- which is only slightly greater than the distance between Uranus and the Sun ("Sol").
In contrast, Proxima (Star "C") is located around 15,000 +/- 700 AUs from Star A and B. This is so far that Proxima may not be gravitationally bound to Star A and B and so may leave the system after some million years, and according to Anosova et al (1994), all three stars may be part of a stellar moving group of nearby stars that includes: the triple ADS 10288 (Gl 649.1); the binaries, Gliese 140.1 and 676; and six single stars. A subsequent analysis using the most recent kinematic and radial velocity data available in the literature, however, found Proxima "is quitely likely" to be bound to to Stars A and B based on calculations of the binding energy of Proxima relative to the center of mass of the entire triple system, where its orbital semi-major axis exceeds 10,000 AUs and is "on order the same size as Alpha Centauri AB's Hill radius in the galactic potential" (Wertheimer and Laughlin, 2006). Hence, it is quite likely that all three stars formed together from the same nebula at roughly the same time and so should share a similar elemental composition.
Being visible to the naked eye, Alpha Centauri has been known for centuries, if not millennia, although perhaps not as a double star until the 1752 observation of the Abbé [Abbot] Nicholas Louis de La Caille (1713-1762) from the Cape of Good Hope, the southernmost point of Africa, where he was studying the stars of the southern hemisphere with just an half-inch (8x) refractor. Dim Proxima, however, was not discovered until 1915 by Robert Thorburn Ayton Innes (1861-1933) of Edinburgh, Scotland who also was observing from Cape Hope, probably with the 7-inch refractor at the Royal Observatory. If our own Sun, Sol, were viewed from the Alpha Centauri system, it would be located in Cassiopeia near the border with Perseus and about five degrees north of a double cluster near the nebula IC 1805/1848, visible as a bright yellow star that would be almost as bright as Capella (Alpha Aurigae) appears in Earth's night sky.
Larger and alternative illustrations.
All three members of the system
(including B, which has not been
depicted between A and Proxima
at left) are main-sequence stars
(H-R diagram with Star B).
Due to their proximity to Sol, the stars of this system have been objects of intense interest among astronomers. Stars A and B were selected as two of the top 100 target stars for NASA's indefinitely postponed Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) to directly image small rocky planets in Earth-type habitable orbits. In addition, all three stars (including Proxima) were among the "Tier 1" target stars for NASA's optical Space Interferometry Mission (SIM) to detect a planet as small as three Earth-masses within two AUs of its host star (and so some summary system information and images on Stars A, B, and C are available from the SIM Teams), but the SIM project manager announced on November 8, 2010 that the mission was indefinitely postponed due to withdrawal of NASA funding. Astronomers are also hoping to use the ESA's Darwin group of infrared interferometers to analyze the atmospheres of rocky planets found in the "habitable zone" (HZ) around all three stars for evidence of Earth-type life (Lisa Kaltenegger, 2005).
Larger illustration of the TPF.
Astronomers have identified
Stars A and B as prime targets
for NASA's TPF, while all three
stars are targets for NASA's
optical SIM and the ESA's
infrared Darwin missions.
AB Binary Star System
The distance separating Alpha Centauri A from its companion star B averages 23.7 AUs (semi-major axis of 17.57" with a HIPPARCOS distance estimate of 4.40 light-years). The stars swings between 11.4 and 36.0 AUs away in a highly elliptical orbit (e= 0.52) that takes almost 80 (79.90) years to complete and are inclined at an angle of 79.23° from the perspective of an observer on Earth (see Pourbaix et al, 2002, or 2000 in the Sixth Catalog of Orbits of Visual Binaries; and Worley and Heintz, 1983). As viewed from a hypothetical planet around either star, the brightness of the other increases as the two approach and decreases as they recede. However, the variation in brightness is considered to be insignificant for life on Earth-type planets around either star. At their closest approach, Stars A and B are almost two AUs farther apart than the average orbital distance of Saturn around the Sun, while their widest separation is still about six AUs farther the average orbital distance of Neptune.
Research Consortium on Nearby Stars
Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory
Infrared image of Alpha Centauri AB, with
diffraction effects from partially closing the
mirror covers of the 1.5-m telescope. (See
Sloan Digital Sky Survey field images of
Alpha Centauri AB from WikiSky.org, and
and at Astronomy Picture of the Day.)
In a binary system, a planet must not be located too far away from its "home" star or its orbit will be unstable. If that distance exceeds about one fifth of the closest approach of the other star, then the gravitational pull of that second star can disrupt the orbit of the planet. Recent numerical integrations, however, suggest that stable planetary orbits exist: within three AUs (four AUs for retrograde orbits) of either Alpha Centauri A or B in the plane of the binary's orbit; only as far as 0.23 AU for 90-degree inclined orbits; and beyond 70 AUs for planets circling both stars (Weigert and Holman, 1997). Hence, under optimal conditions, either Alpha Centauri A and B could hold four inner rocky planets like the Solar System: Mercury (0.4 AU), Venus (0.7 AU), Earth (1 AU) and Mars (1.5 AUs).
Indeed, the AB system is significantly more enriched (1.7 to 1.8 times) in elements heavier than hydrogen ("high metallicity") than our own Solar System (Chmielewski et al, 1992; Cayrel de Strobel et al, 1991, page 297; Furenlid and Meylan, 1984; and Flannery and Ayres, 1978). Hence, either stars A or B could have one or two "rocky" planets in orbital zones where liquid water is possible. Astronomers are hoping to use NASA's Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) and the ESA's Darwin planned groups of observatories to search for rocky inner planets in the so-called "habitable zone" (HZ) around both Stars A and B. As originally proposed, the TPF will include two complementary observatory groups, a visible-light coronagraph and a "formation-flying" infrared interferometer, while Darwin would launch a flotilla of three mid-infrared telescopes and a fourth communications hub.
|AB Mass Center||0.0||...||...||...||...||...||...||...||...|
|Alpha Centauri A||10.9||79.9||0.519||79.23||1.10||1.23||...||...||1.3-2.3|
|Inner H.Z.-A Edge?||1.17||1.20||0||79.23||...||...||...||...||...|
|Outer H.Z.-A Edge?||2.33||3.39||0||79.23||...||...||...||...||...|
|Alpha Centauri B||12.8||79.9||0.519||79.23||0.93||0.86||...||...||1.3-2.3|
|Alpha Centauri Bb||0.04||0.0089||0.519||79.23||1.13||~1||...||...||...|
|Inner H.Z.-B Edge?||0.56||0.43||0||79.23||...||...||...||...||...|
|Outer H.Z.-B Edge?||1.10||1.20||0||79.23||...||...||...||...||...|
Rigil Kentaurus ("Foot of the Centaur" in Arabic) is the fourth brightest star in the night sky as well as the brightest star in Constellation Centaurus. Like Sol, it is a yellow-orange main sequence dwarf star of spectral and luminosity type G2 V. It has about 1.105 ± 0.007 times Sol's mass (Guedes et al, 2008; and Thévenin et al, 2002) and 1.23 its diameter (ESO science release; and Demarque et al, 1986), and is about 52 to 60 percent brighter than Sol (ESO science release; and Demarque et al, 1986).
Alpha Centauri A is a yellow-orange
star like our Sun, Sol.
Without consideration of interior seismic constraints, Star A (and B) has been estimated to be older than Sol, from 4.85 billion years in age (ESO) to around 7.6 (+/- around 10 percent) billion years or more -- or 6.8 billion years if it does not have a convective core (Guenther and Demarque, 2000). Recent recent interior modeling with seismic constraints, however, suggest that Stars A and B could be 5.6 to 5.9 billion years old (Mutlu Yildiz, 2007). Since Alpha Centauri A is very similar to our own Sun, however, many speculate whether it might contain planets that harbor life. Useful star catalogue numbers and designations for Alpha Centauri A include: Alp or Alf Cen A, Alp1 Cen, HR 5459, Gl 559 A, Hip 71683, HD 128620, CP(D)-60 5483, SAO 252838, FK5 538, and LHS 50.
Calculations by to Weigert and Holman (1997) indicated that the distance from the star where an Earth-type planet would be "comfortable" with liquid water is centered around 1.25 AUs (1.2 to 1.3 AUs) -- about midway between the orbits of the Earth and Mars in the Solar System -- with an orbital period of 1.34 years using calculations based on Hart (1979). More recent calculations based on Kasting et al (1993), however, allow for a wider "habitable zone." According to one type of model calculations performed for the NASA Star and Exoplanet Database, the inner edge of Star A's habitable zone should be located around 1.17 AU from the star, while the outer edge edge lies around 2.33 AUs. Viewed from a planet at Earth's orbital distance around Alpha Centauri A, stellar companion B would provide more light than the full Moon does on Earth as its brightest night sky object, but the additional light at a distance greater than Saturn's orbital distance in the Solar System would not be significant for the growth of Earth-type life.
© Torben Krogh & Mogens Winther,
(Amtsgymnasiet and EUC Syd Gallery,
student photo used with permission)
Alp Cen B is an orange-red dwarf star,
like Epsilon Eridani at left center of
meteor. (See a Sloan Digital Sky Survey
field images of Alpha Centauri A and B
from WikiSky.org, and at APOD.)
This much dimmer companion star is a main sequence, orange-red dwarf (K0-1 V). It appears to have only 93.4 ± 0.7 percent of Sol's mass (Guedes et al, 2008; and Thévenin et al, 2002), about 86.5 percent of its diameter, and 45 to 52 percent of its luminosity (ESO; and Johnson and Wright, 1983, page 681). Useful catalogue numbers and designations for Alpha Centauri B include: Alp or Alf Cen B, HR 5460, Gl 559 B, Hip 71681, HD 128621, and LHS 51.
|Alpha Centauri B||12.8||79.9||0.519||?||0.93||0.86||...||...||1.3-2.3|
|Inner H.Z. Edge?||0.56||0.43||0||?||~1.1||~1||>1?||>1?||...|
|Outer H.Z. Edge?||1.10||1.20||0||?||...||...||...||...||...|
Calculations by to Weigert and Holman (1997) indicated that the distance from the star where an Earth-type planet would be "comfortable" with liquid water is centered around 0.73 to 0.74 AU -- somewhat beyond the orbital distance of Venus in the Solar System -- with an orbital period under an Earth year using calculations based on Hart (1979). More recent calculations based on Kasting et al (1993), however, allow for a wider "habitable zone." Estimates provided by the NASA Star and Exoplanet Database, however, appear to be incorrect for this spectral class K star -- where the inner edge of Star B's habitable zone should be located around 1.20 AU from the star, while the outer edge edge lies around 2.38 AUs, and so estimates from 40 Omicron Eridani A (another K0-1 star) were applied as a rough proxy, which indicated that the inner edge of Star B's habitable zone could be located around 0.56 AU from the star, while the outer edge edge lies around 1.10 AUs.
Search for Planets around Stars A and B
In July 2008, astronomers (Michael Endl and Martin Kürster) analyzed used seven years of differential radial velocity measurements for Proxima Centauri to submit a paper indicating that large planets are unlikely to be orbiting Sol's closest stellar neighbor within its habitable zone -- around 0.022 to 0.054 AU with a corresponding orbital period of 3.6 to 13.8 days. A super-Earth as small as two to three Earth-masses was ruled out with a statistical significance exceeding 99 percent. In addition, their simulations also ruled out the presence of a planet of at least Neptune-class in a circular orbit within one AU of Proxima (Endl and Kürster, 2008).
In January 2008, astronomers working cooperatively within the Research Consortium on Nearby Stars (RECONS) issued a press release about their research project to estimate the size of the so-called habitable zone around nearby stars (RECONS press release). Based on the latest data that RECONS has collected on stars within 10 parsecs (32.6 light-years) of Sol, the astronomers are carefully estimating what they call the "habitable real estate" around each of the Sun's neighbors, where inner rocky planets like the Earth can support liquid water on their surface. Confirming previous modelling of the Alpha Centauri system, the RECONS astronomers found that Alpha Centauri A and B orbit in such a way that when the light and heat of the two stars was combined, neither star in the innermost AB system significantly changed the size of their respective habitable zones, regardless of where each was currently located in its orbit. Although stars A and B would be expected to interfere with each others' habitable zones, the areas of the available good "habitable real estate" around each star was affected by less than one percent. Not surprisingly, distant Proxima was completely unaffected by the other two stars.
Unknown artist, Planet
JPL, Caltech, NASA
Recent simulations suggest that
an Earth-life planet could have
formed within the habitable
zone around Alpha Centauri B,
which can be detected using
the radial-velocity "wobble"
On February 25, 2008, a team of astronomers released a paper on simulation results which support the conclusions of previous studies that multiple-planet systems could have formed in close orbits around both heavy-element rich, Alpha Centauri A and B. Their simulations suggest that at least one planet in the one to two Earth-mass range could have formed within orbital distances of 0.5 to 1.5 AUs around either Star A or Star B; an important finding was that the simulations frequently generated a Earth-like planet in or near Star B's habitable zone (where liquid water could exist on the planet's surface) which can be detected with three to five years of high cadence observations (Javiera Guedes, 2009). Additional simulation work presented in the paper also indicates that long-term telescopic observations may detect wobbles from such planets using the radial velocity method. Star B, a orange-red dwarf with a relatively calm chromosphere and acoustic p-wave mode oscillations, is an easier target for detecting wobbles from terrestrial planets, possibly within only three years of "high cadence" observations for a 1.8 Earth-mass planet (more from New Scientist and Guedes et al, 2008).
In the latter half of 2008, two teams of astronomers began technically difficult searches for small terrestrial planets around the two brightest stars of the Alpha Centauri triple system. One group (including Debra Fisher, Bernie Walp, Howard Isaacson, Greg Laughlin, Javiera Guedes, and Paul Butler) are hoping to find planets as small as the Earth around both Alpha Centauri A and B within three to five years, by assembling 100,000 radial-velocity observations using an unused 1.5-meter telescope and vintage equipment at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) in Chile. They have nearly $100,000 from the U.S. National Science Foundation for a one-year "design study" that was enough to pay for telescope time through November 2009 and hope to obtain another year of funds to seek promising results to justify additional grants. Since August 2008, however, a competing team of astronomers (including Michel Mayor and Stéphane Udry) has been collecting similar observations of just Alpha Centauri B that can find a planet as small as 2.5 Earth-masses, using the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher on a telescope more than twice as large at the European Southern Observatory, also located in Chile about 60 miles away from the CTIO (Lee Billings, SEED, May 19, 2009; and Joel Achenbach, Washington Post, June 1, 2009)
On January 15, 2010, a team of astronomers released the results of computer simulations indicating that kilometer-size planetesimals can form and accrete into rocky Earth-size planets around Alpha Centauri B despite gravitational perturbations from Alpha Centauri A. The binary system, however, does not offer "favorable" conditions for the formation of gas giants, like Jupiter and Saturn. Star B was chosen for analysis because efforts are underway to detect of an Earth-like planet in or near its habitable zone (between 0.5 and 0.9 AU) using available technology -- more discussion below (Xie et al, 2010; and Jessica Griggs, New Scientist, January 29, 2010). (See a larger, interactive animation of the orbits of Stars A and B and their potentially habitable zones in this system, with a table of basic orbital and physical characteristics.)
On October 16, 2012, a team of astronomers announced the discovery of a planet with around 1.13 +/- 0.09 Earth-masses in a very hot and tight, circular orbit around Alpha Centauri B, using the European Southern Observatory's the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) instrument on the 3.6-metre telescope at ESOs La Silla Observatory in Chile. Due to the close binary orbital interactions of the host star with Alpha Centauri A and Star B's own increased stellar activity during recent years, the astronomers were only able to detect the radial-velocity variations of host star B that were caused by the 3.236-day orbit of the planet (with a semi-major axis of 0.04 AU) only after more than four and a half years of careful observation. Given that the presence of one close-orbiting planet usually indicates the presence of others, many astronomers are now expected to devote more resources to detecting such potential planets around Star B (ESO press release; and Dumusque et al, 2012).
© Steve Quirk,
from Frog Rock
(used with permission)
Apparent motion of Proxima Centauri
over 25 years.
A real-color, field image of Proxima
by David Malin is available at
Astronomy Picture of the Day. See
black and white, close-up images
of Proxima from Schultz et al, 1998.
Proxima (Alpha Centauri C) is a very cool and very dim, main sequence red dwarf (M5.5Ve) that appears to have only 0.107 ± 0.021 percent of Sol's mass (Pourbaix et al, 2002) and 14.5 percent of its diameter (ESO press releases of 3/15/03 and 2/22/02; and Doyle and Butler, 1990, page 337). With a visual luminosity that has reportedly varied between 0.000053 and 0.00012 of Sol's (based on a distance of 4.22 light-years)the star is as much as 19,000 times fainter than the Sun, and so if it was placed at the location of our Sun from Earth, the disk of the star would barely be visible. With less than 20 percent of Sol's mass, Proxima is so small that it can transport core heat to its surface only through convection, unlike larger red dwarf stars like Gliese 752 A -- also known as Wolf 1055 A or Van Biesbroeck's Star (more).
Jeffrey L. Linsky,
Like Gliese 752 B, Proxima is so small,
with less than 20 percent of Sol's mass,
that it can transport core heat only through
convection, unlike larger larger red dwarf
stars like Gliese 752 A (more).
The star is located roughly a fifth of a light-year from the AB binary pair and, if gravitationally bound to it, may have an orbital period of around half a million years. According to Anosova et al (1994), however, its motion with respect to the AB pair is hyperbolic. Accounting for infrared radiation, the distance from Proxima where an Earth-type planet would be "comfortable" with liquid water is around 0.022 to 0.054 AU (Endl and Kürster, 2008; and Endl et al, 2003, in pdf) -- much closer than Mercury's orbital distance of about 0.4 AU from Sol -- with a corresponding orbital period of 3.6 to 13.8 days (Endl and Kürster, 2008), while the NASA Star and Exoplanet Database has calculated a slightly farther out habitable zone between 0.033 and 0.064 AUs around Proxima. In any case, the rotation of such a planet would probably be tidally locked so that one side would be in perpetual daylight and the other in darkness. Three star spots may have been observed recently with the Hubble Space Telescope (Benedict et al, 1998).
Like many red dwarfs, Proxima is a "Flare Star" that can brighten suddenly to many times its normal luminosity. Its flares can roughly double the star's brightness and occur sporadically from hour to hour. Moreover, more than one flare may be emitting at a time. From May to August 1995, several flares were observed with changes within a time-scale of weeks, and archival data suggests that the star may have a long-term activity cycle (Guinan and Morgan, 1996). It is chromosperically active with a rotation period as short as 31.5 +/- 1.5 days but may possibly as long as 84 days -- and an activity cycle from 442 to 1,100 days -- and appears to be between five and six billion years old (Endl and Kürster, 2008; Benedict et al, 1998; Hunch et al, 1998; Cincunegui et al 2007; and Guinan and Morgan, 1996). Its designated variable star name is V645 Centauri. Other useful catalogue numbers for Proxima include: Alp Cen B, Alp2 Cen, Gl 551, Hip 70890, and LHS 49.
High resolution and jumbo images (Benz et al, 1998).
Proxima is a flare star, like UV Ceti (Luyten 726-8 B)
shown flaring at left. UV Ceti is an extreme example
of a flare star that can boost its brightness by five times
in less than a minute, then fall somewhat slower back
down to normal luminosity within two or three minutes
before flaring suddenly again after several hours.
Proxima Centauri b?
Using data collected up to early 1994, astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope discerned a 77-day variation in the proper motion of Proxima (Benedict et al, 1994). The astrometric perturbations found could be due to the gravitational pull of a large planet with about 80 percent of Jupiter's mass at a 1994 separation from Proxima of about 0.17 AUs -- 17 percent of Earth's orbital distance in the Solar System from the distance, or less than half Mercury's orbital distance. The Hubble astrometry team calculated that the chance of a false positive reading from their data -- same perturbations without a planet -- to be around 25 percent.
© Estate of
-- larger image
(Artwork from Extrasolar Visions, used with permission from Whatmough)
Glowing red through gravitational contraction, the candidate brown dwarf companion
to Proxima Centauri is depicted with two moons (one eclipsing the flare star) with
distant Alpha Centauri A and B at upper right, as imagined by Whatmough.
In 1996, another group of astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope discovered that they might have directly observed a companion to Proxima with the implied brightness of a brown dwarf and an apparent visual separation of only about half the Earth-Sun distance -- 0.5 AU (Schultz et al, 1998). A substellar companion at that distance would imply an orbital period of around a year, or it could be in a highly eccentric orbit with a much greater average distance from Proxima. However, later observations by other astronomers using interferometric astrometry and recent radial velocity data found no evidence to support the existence of a companion greater than 0.8 Jupiter mass with an orbital period around Proxima Centauri of between one and about 2.7 years (Benedict et al, 1999). Proxima has been selected to be one of the Tier 1 target stars for NASA's Space Interferometry Mission (SIM) -- which is planned for launch as early as 2011 -- to detect a planet as small as three Earth-masses within two AUs of its host star.
Life Around a Flare Star
Many dim, red (M) dwarf stars exhibit unusually violent flare activity for their size and brightness. These flare stars are actually common because red dwarfs make up more than half of all stars in our galaxy. Although flares do occur on our Sun every so often, the amount of energy released in a solar flare is small compared to the total amount of energy that Sol produces. However, a flare the size of a solar flare occurring on a red dwarf star (such as Proxima Centauri) that is more than ten thousand times dimmer than our Sun would emit about as much or more light as the red dwarf does normally.
Flare stars erupt sporadically, with successive flares spaced anywhere from an hour to a few days apart. A flare only takes a few minutes to reach peak brightness, and more than one flare can occur at a time. Moreover, in addition to bursts of light and radio waves, flares on dim red dwarfs may emit up to 10,000 times as many X-rays as a comparably-sized solar flare on our own Sun, and so flares would be lethal to Earth-type life on planets near the flare star. Hence, Earth-type life around flare stars may be unlikely because their planets must be located very close to dim red dwarfs to be warmed sufficiently by star light to have liquid water (about 0.007 AU for Proxima), which makes flares even more dangerous around such stars. In any case, the light emitted by red dwarfs may be too red in color for Earth-type plant life to perform photosynthesis efficiently.
The following star systems are located within 10 light-years of Alpha Centauri AB.
|Star System||Spectra &|
|Barnard's Star||M3.8 V||6.5|
|Ross 154||M3.5 Ve||8.1|
|Wolf 359||M5.8 Ve||8.3|
|Sirius 2||A0-1 V |
|Epsilon Indi||K3-5 Ve||9.7|
Up-to-date technical summaries on these stars can be found at: the Astronomiches Rechen-Institut at Heidelberg's ARCNS pages on Stars A and B and Star C; the NASA Stars and Exoplanet Database for stars A, B, and C; and the Research Consortium on Nearby Stars (RECONS) list of the 100 Nearest Star Systems. Additional information may be available at Roger Wilcox's Internet Stellar Database.
For more discussion about the suitability of this star system for terrestial life, go to Laro Schatzer's website on Alpha Centauri.
Alpha Centauri is not visible in much of the Northern Hemisphere, as Constellation Centaurus cannot be viewed from middle northern latitudes of around 40 degrees, but should become more easily visible to observers that travel south of the equator. For more information about the stars and other objects in this constellation, go to Christine Kronberg's Centaurus. For an illustration, see David Haworth's Centaurus.
For more information about stars including spectral and luminosity class codes, go to ChView's webpage on The Stars of the Milky Way.
Note: Thanks to Andrew James for notifying us of updated orbit information for Stars A and B and to Aaron Freed for new calculations of the apparent brightness of Stars A and B on planets orbiting in the water zone of each star.
© 1998-2015 Sol Company. All Rights Reserved.
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NATIONAL ARCHIVES-FORT WORTH BRANCH
NATIONAL ARCHIVES–FORT WORTH BRANCH. The Fort Worth Branch of the National Archives is one of eleven regional branches of the National Archives of the United States. It was established in 1969 as the Federal Archives and Records Center to preserve records of permanent value that are produced or held by field offices of federal agencies in Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas. It received its present name in 1985. In addition to original records, the Archives Branch has copies of many National Archives microfilm publications. Research rooms, microfilm-reading equipment, and document-reproduction facilities are available to the public. The Archives Branch has a variety of archival functions, including arranging records, preparing finding aids, performing reference services, preparing exhibits of holdings, and working with colleges and universities to aid faculty and students to make effective use of archival resources. Public programs conducted by the Archives Branch include outreach programs, internships, teacher workshops, film series, symposia, exhibits, and tours.
Original records in the custody of the Archives Branch are stored in stack areas with automatically controlled temperature and humidity. The records include records of United States District courts of Arkansas (1865–1969), Louisiana (1806–1966), Oklahoma (1907–69), and Texas (1846–1975); records of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (1891–1971), which hears appeals from lower federal courts in Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas; records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs from field offices in Oklahoma (1870–1970), including a wide variety of records, such as reports, administrative and correspondence files, tribal censuses, and school records; and records of the United States Army Corps of Engineers from district offices in Albuquerque (1935–43), Galveston (1897–1943), Little Rock (1907–43), New Orleans (1837–1943), and Tulsa (1908–44), relating to flood-control projects, dams, bridges, defense installations, conservation, and navigation. Holdings also include records from the War Manpower Administration, the Southwestern Power Administration, the United States Park Service, the Federal Highway Administration, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge, Environmental Protection Agency, Drug Enforcement Administration, and other sources. Microfilm holdings of the Archives Branch has reached 60,000 rolls and includes most of the nineteenth-century correspondence of the Department of State, many German records captured during World War II, and federal census population schedules from 1790 to 1910. The Archives Branch has a staff of eight. In 1993 more than 15,500 people visited the Fort Worth branch of the National Archives.
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For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, is the preferred citation for this article.Handbook of Texas Online, Jeanette Ford, "National Archives-Fort Worth Branch," accessed June 28, 2016, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/lcn03.
Uploaded on June 15, 2010. Published by the Texas State Historical Association.
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Individual differences |
Methods | Statistics | Clinical | Educational | Industrial | Professional items | World psychology |
John Thibaut was a social psychologist, one of the last graduate students of Kurt Lewin. He spent a number of years as a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and was the first editor of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.
The research group which he headed at UNC was regularly attended by Harry Upshaw, Jack Brehm, Kurt Back, and Edward E. Jones. He is best known for "A Social Psychology of Groups", co-authored by his long-time collaborator Harold Kelley.
The examination of social exchange led John Thibaut and Harold Kelley to develop social exchange theory, a process which was facilitated by Thibaut spending a year at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences where he had significant interaction with Kenneth Arrow.
The early variations of Social Exchange Theory stem from Alvin Ward Gouldner's (1960) norm of reciprocity, which simply argues that people ought to return benefits given to them in a relationship. Peter M. Blau built on the work done by George C. Homans in Exchange and Power in Social Life (1964). Later modifications to this theory focus attention on relational development and maintenance rules (see Murstein et al.).
Thibaut's later research was in the area of procedural justice, where he co-authored a book with legal expert Laurens Walker.
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Although it has been established that equity, empowerment and sustainability can expand people’s choices, at the same time there are inherent challenges that reveal that these key aspects of human development do not always come together.
This notion, according to United Nation’s Development Programme’s (UNDP) Officer-in-Charge, Mr. Carlos del Castillo, was accentuated in the 2010 Human Development Report (HDR).
However, this year the HDR, which was recently unveiled and officially handed over to the Government of Guyana, has sought to explore the intersections between environmental sustainability and equity.
These factors, according to del Castillo, are fundamentally similar in their concerns when it comes to justice. “Sustainability is valued because future generations should have at least the same possibilities as people today; similarly all inequitable processes are unjust.”
People’s chances at better lives should not be constrained by factors outside of their control.
He said that inequalities are especially unjust when particular groups, whether because of gender, race or birth place, are systematically disadvantaged.
And in order to address this dilemma, next June world leaders will gather in Rio de Janeiro to seek a new consensus on global actions to safeguard the future of the planet and the right of future generations everywhere to live healthy and fulfilling lives.
“This is a great challenge of the 21st century…the 2011 Human and Development Report offers important new contributions to the global dialogue on this challenge showing how sustainability is inextricably linked to basic questions of equity,” del Castillo pointed out.
A summary of the 2011 report identifies pathways for people, local communities, countries and the international community to promote environmental sustainability and equity in mutually reinforcing ways. It was highlighted too that in the 176 countries and territories where the UNDP is working every day, many disadvantaged people carry a double burden of deprivation.
In fact it was amplified that “they are more vulnerable to the wider effects of environmental degradation, because of more severe stresses and fewer coping tools.” Such persons, according to the summary, must also deal with threats to their immediate environment from indoor pollution, dirty water and unimproved sanitation.
Forecasts suggest that continuing failure to reduce the grave environmental risks and deepening social inequalities threatens to slow decades of sustained progress by the world’s poor majority and even to reverse the global convergence in human development.
According to the 2011 report, “major disparities in power shape these patterns, and new analysis shows how power imbalances and gender inequalities at the national level are linked to reduced access to clean water and improved sanitation, land degradation and deaths due to indoor and outdoor air pollution, amplifying the effects associated with income disparities.”
It has also been asserted that gender inequalities also interact with environmental outcomes and can make them worse. However at the global level governance arrangements often weakens the voices of developing countries and exclude marginalized groups, the report outlines.
Moreover, the report points to the fact that there are alternatives to inequality and unsustainability, adding that growth driven by fossil fuel consumption is not a prerequisite for a better life in broader human development terms.
“Investments that improve equity in access for example to renewable energy, water and sanitation and reproductive health care could advance both sustainability and human development.”
In addition it has been asserted that stronger accountability and democratic processes in part through support for an active civil society and media can also improve outcomes.”
The report outlines, too, that successful approaches rely on community management, inclusive institutions that pay particular attention to disadvantaged groups and cross-cutting approaches that coordinate budgets and mechanisms across government agencies and development partners.
Jul 01, 2016Georgetown based Vanguard Volleyball Club emerged as the champions of the Guyana Volleyball Federation (GVF) Female Volleyball Tournament on Sunday last which was held in observance of Olympic Day....
Jul 01, 2016
Jul 01, 2016
Jul 01, 2016
Jul 01, 2016
Do you know the foreign fruits industry here is a money winner? I pass a company daily on my way to Georgetown from... more
By Sir Ronald Sanders The 12 English-speaking independent countries of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) have at the... more
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Teaching resources for 16-18 year olds
Our teaching resources for 16-18 year olds cover key science topics such as conservation, classification, Darwin and evolution. ARKive’s teaching resources are all free and feature the world’s best wildlife photos and videos, bringing science lessons to life.
Biodiversity and Evolution –
Explore the importance of biodiversity and how observing variation in the beak shape of Galapagos finches helped Darwin to formulate his theory of natural selection.
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"The future is spinning before your eyes"
What's A Website ?
A Website is space on a computer where anyone who subscribes can say "This is me, this is what I do, or what I am interested in, what I know, or what I can sell you". An electronic brochure and source of information available to the whole world 24 hours a day.
Within the website, each screenful of information is called a page. Pages may contain text, or graphic images, or even photographs, sound and video.
A main feature are the "links" embedded within a page that can be clicked with a computer mouse and which transport viewers to other pages. To continue with the brochure analogy, you would normally open a brochure at the front or the back and browse forwards or backwards a page at a time. With a website, the user decides the order they want to see the pages in by clicking the links that interest them.
This interactivity generates a sense of ownership and participation in the user, binding them to the information much more tightly than a traditional brochure.
To maximise this benefit, it really needs someone with an understanding of interactive programming to get the best out of creating the electronic pages and links that build the website.
What sort of websites are there?
There are many sorts of Websites, ranging from a single page "This is us" offering, through to mammoth Websites like the UK Open Government site which has several thousand pages full of information about legislation, taxation, grants and funding, VAT, employment, trade and industry, planning, commerce and so on, together with links to all the government departments and agencies.
Websites may be provided by individuals (in which case they are usually called homepages), special interest groups, such as "The Association of Widget Collectors", educational establishments like universities, or science and research centres, Governments, voluntary organisations, individual retailers, banks and businesses, manufacturers and importers, news, media and financial organisations and multinational corporations. Although the size of the organisations may differ, each has the same opportunity and scope.
A small businesses can have the same presence and create the same image as a multinational. Each chooses the style and content of its own pages.
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Springhill Medical Group:How can Not Sleeping Affect your Health
Posted in the Business News Forum
Since: Mar 13
#1 Mar 31, 2013
One night without sleep can make you feeling tired the whole day and yawning will probably annoy you and the people around. How about two nights of no sleeping or three? It will surely make you cranky and restless. But just a week of not enough sleep can radically change the activity of human genes.
According to a new study published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, just one week of abnormal, insufficient sleep is enough to dramatically alter the activity of human genes.
University of Surrey in England conducted a survey and the experiment discovered that lack of sleep, at least less than six hours a night will affect the activity of over 700 of our genes.
The genes that will be affected are associated with controlling response to stress, immunity, and inflammation.
Furthermore, the research demonstrates that insufficient sleep reduces the number of genes that normally peak and fall in expression during a 24-hour period from 1,855 to 1,481.
After a week of pitiable sleep the number of genes influenced by sleep deprivation is seven times greater.
Obesity, cognitive impairment, heart disease are just few of the complications of not having enough sleep.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, USA, sleep deprivation and sleep disorders affect from 50 to 70 million people in America thus making sleep disorders very common. But until recently, scientists were unaware how gene expression patterns were modified by poor sleep. These gene expression patterns offer critical clues on the possible molecular mechanisms that connect sleep with total health.
26 volunteers were followed; they were exposed to a week of sleep deprivation and a week of sufficient sleep. Each week, blood samples were collected and were controlled for the effects of light, activity, and food during the week of insufficient sleep.
The genes affected by poor sleep were linked to circadian rhythms, metabolism, and sleep homeostasis.
Macromolecular metabolism, gene-expression regulation, chromatin modification, inflammatory responses, immune responses, stress responses, these are the biological processes that the investigators found as being affected.
This research has helped us to understand the effects of insufficient sleep on gene expression. Now that we have identified these effects we can use this information to further investigate the links between gene expression and overall health. says Derk-Jan Dijk, Director of the Sleep Research Centre at the University of Surrey.
This study was made possible by a team up of researchers completed by sleep and circadian rhythm experts in functional bioinformatics and genomics, and physiologists.
The biological processes recognized may be involved with the negative results of poor sleep on health and stress the links between sleep homeostasis, circadian rhythmicity, and metabolism.
The current interest in sleep and circadian rhythms as determinants of health and disease is a vital area of research. By combining our expertise in sleep and genomics(the study of the full complement of our genes), we are starting to make breakthroughs that will have an impact on our understanding and treatment of poor health arising from insufficient sleep. says Colin Smith, Professor of functional genomics at the University of Surrey.
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|The seal is attached sideways by tags to the document. The figure in the middle represents St Edith with one hand raised in benediction and the other holding a book. According to a somewhat dubious 15th century chronicle, Wilton was refounded or rebuilt several times after its initial establishment as a nunnery around 800. Edith was the child of Wulfrid, who was carted off from Wilton by Edgar, king of the English (944-975), but who refused to marry him and returned to the nunnery where her baby was born and took the veil as a child. Edith purportedly rebuilt the church at Wilton, became its chief patron and perhaps the abbess, and died young. After a few handy miracles at her tomb, she became the patron saint of the monastery. Monastic chronicles are wondrous sources of origin myths, and this aspect of them could well be studied from an anthropological perspective.|
|Although the document is 13th century, the seal matrix from which the seal was made supposedly dates from the 10th century. The inscription around the seal is partially destroyed, but pass the cursor around the edge of the circular part of the seal to see what can be decoded.|
|13th century charter of the abbey of Wilton (British Library, Harleian Charter 45 A36). All images by permission of the British Library.|
|Click on each of the above to walk your way through the text. The transcript will appear in a separate window so that you can use it for reference at any time. These exercises are designed to guide you through the text, not test you, so you can cheat as much as you like.|
|Script sample for this example|
|Index of Exercises|
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If you are looking at this page without frames, there is more information about medieval writing to be found by going to the home page (framed) or the site map (no frames).
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The province of Alberta is usually only mentioned on this site when people are campaigning against the tar sands and the destruction of the environment. Today though, the capital of Alberta, Edmonton, has done something rather great. Edmonton is home to a large industrial-scale waste processing plant that converts what would normally go into a landfill into useful energy.
Thanks to its extensive composting and recycling facilities, the city of Edmonton, Canada is already diverting approximately 60 percent of its municipal waste from the landfill. That figure is expected to rise to 90 percent, however, once the city’s new Waste-to-Biofuels and Chemicals Facility starts converting garbage (that can’t be composted or recycled) into methanol and ethanol. It’s the world’s first such plant to operate on an industrial scale, and we recently got a guided tour of the place.
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(1861 - 1938)
A Brief Biography By Timothy P. Cassidy
In Martin Scorsese's latest film, Hugo, two French children from the 1930s explore the earliest days of cinema as they uncover the secret past of a train station toy peddler - the young girl's godfather - whom she calls, "Papa George." Although Hugo is a work of fiction, from an award winning book by Brian Selznick, called The Invention of Hugo Cabret, there really was a "Papa George." He was George Melies, and he really was a pioneer from the earliest days of cinema. In fact, he is considered the father of film special effects, having invented many of the tricks that are still used today, and was the first filmmaker to send men into outer space. This sometimes forgotten cinéaste was a true giant in the earliest days of the medium.
In a career that lasted just 16 years, from 1896 to 1912, Melies made over 500 films. In the excellent website Who's Who of Victorian Cinema, film historian David Robinson credits George Melies as the cinema's first true artist, and the most prolific technical innovator of the early years. He was a pioneer in recognizing the possibilities of the medium for narrative and spectacle. He created the basic vocabulary of special effects, and a few years after Thomas Edison had built the Black Maria film studio, Melies built a glass-house studio, which proved to be the prototype of European studios of the silent era. The success of his films contributed to the development of an international market in films and did much to secure the ascendancy of French cinema in the pre-1914 years. Besides this historical contribution, Melies' films are the earliest to survive as a total, coherent artistic creation with their own validity and personality. His films had a visual style as distinctive as any French painter, and they retain a sense of fantasy, fun and nonsense whose exuberance is still infectious after a century.
Melies was the third son of a successful shoe manufacturer. Although his father expected all his sons to follow in the family business, young George had an artistic temperament from an early age. As a young man he briefly entered the family trade and worked with the shop machinery, developing mechanical skills that he said proved very useful in his film career. "I was born an artist in my soul, very skilled with my hands, capable of inventing things and a comedian by nature. I was at once an intellectual and a manual worker." Besides his interest in the visual arts of drawing, caricature, painting, and sculpture from childhood, he was also interested in music and poetry, believing he would become a poet himself. But his father was convinced that poets and artists can only starve.
He was sent to London in 1884 to perfect his English and there he discovered stage illusion. He became very interested in magic and apprenticed with a magician. When Melies' father retired, George sold his share of the footwear business to his older brothers and bought the famous, but rundown, Robert-Houdin Magic Theater. In addition to the theater itself, the stage mechanisms and the automatons came with it. (It is one of the automatons that plays a central role in Scorsese's film Hugo.) Over the next 10 years Melies created at least 30 illusions for the theater, many of which he later recast into motion picture effects.
In 1894 the first Edison Kinetoscopes came to Paris. Thomas Edison had invented a device capable of recording moving pictures, but the Kinetoscope (as readers of this booklet know, the camera was called the Kinetograph and the viewer was called the Kinetoscope), was basically a peep show device in which a single viewer watched short films arranged in a loop housed in a wooden box. Melies was not very impressed with the Kinetoscope, and felt the images "somehow had to come out of their wooden box," otherwise the experience was limited.
Apparently, two brothers named Auguste and Louis Lumiere felt the same way. By 1895 they had invented a camera that could, with some modification, function as camera, projector and printer. The Lumieres called their device the Cinematographe, and they held the first public screening at the Grand Café in Paris on December 28, 1895.
(Edison also abandoned his single viewer system in favor of projection by 1896. He licensed a projector designed by Thomas Armat and called the projector the Edison Vitascope.)
George Melies was at the Lumiere brothers screening and immediately realized the machine could be a very useful adjunct in his arsenal of magic tools. However, when he attempted to buy or rent a machine from the brothers, Antoine Lumiere, their father (possibly fearing competition), told Melies that this was a serious device for scientists and researchers, and could not be used for entertainment. Melies was forced to go to England and purchase a projector from Robert Paul. He and another engineer modified the projector and turned it into a camera. Melies immediately started making his own films with the aid of another projector in 1896. By the following year he was making his own films under his trademark "Star Films" logo, and he built his own studio to help create the film tricks he would become famous for.
Although Melies would become best known for his fantasy films and his special effects, his total output is astonishing. He made news recreations such as the Dreyfus Affair and The Coronation of King Edward VII. He made documentaries, comedies, topical satires, social tracts, and he examined historical subjects. He even pioneered in the use of color films by having many of his films hand tinted. But, of course, he is best known for his "trick" films utilizing special effects that he invented and his followers merely adapted and modified.
He often related the story of how his first special effect, substitution, was discovered. He claimed that this effect, which was to be so basic to his work, was discovered one day in 1897 when his camera jammed while filming in la place de l'Opera. Melies worked for a full minute to free the jam and during this time the scene had changed. When the film was printed and screened, Melies was thrilled to find that a motor bus had changed into a hearse, and men became women. He realized that this trick was a more effective means of producing the disappearance of a lady than the elaborate machinery of his stage illusions. In addition to clients from the various fairgrounds near Paris, Melies also screened his films at the end of his stage shows in the Robert Houdin theater. The Vanishing Lady, his first film with special effects, was an exact reproduction of a famous trick by another magician. It required a number of elaborate props to have a lady underneath a shawl disappear after a magical incantation. Melies realized he could do it very easily on screen by the use of substitution, namely, by stopping the camera just after he placed the shawl over the woman. The woman exits the stage and Melies starts the camera back up. When he screened the film for the audience it appears as if the woman had vanished.
Melies said that his fairground clients were worried that the public would grow tired of "military marches," and "feeding the baby." They need not have. Melies fantasy films, featuring special effects of all kinds, went way beyond "feeding the baby" and such. His films developed a worldwide reputation in a very short time.
We must remember that we take all kinds of film special effects for granted in our own time, and in fact many of the latest generation of filmmakers are not even aware that films at one time were shot on "film" (many still are). This is especially true because digital processes allow filmmakers to do special effects fairly easily, although complicated special effects are still complicated. But for Melies and the turn-of-the-century filmmakers, special effects were always complicated. Melies experimented with many type of effects in his career, including models and miniatures, fades and dissolves, time lapse (accelerated motion), reverse action, and multiple exposure. The latter were often filmed on a black background because anything filmed with black is essentially unexposed. Melies especially used multiple exposures to impressive effect in The One Man Band (1900). In this film Melies plays the same musician multiplied seven times. This necessitated the film running through the camera seven times and being rewound seven times, all while in-camera. Melies calculated which frame he was on by the number of times he cranked the camera mechanism (cameras were hand-cranked; it would be another 25 years before electric motors appeared).
Film stocks were not equally sensitive to all natural colors, so sets were painted in gray by the set designer - Melies himself. Because he was such a gifted artist his sets were fantastic, eye-popping creations, although even he admitted they looked very bizarre painted in shades of gray. He did experiment with color effects by having some of his films tinted in color. This required every film to be hand painted with colored dyes, a painstaking process performed by a small army of mostly female artists. Fortunately, this was something that Melies did not do himself, although he oversaw the process.
Because of the nature of his special effects shots, it was necessary for Melies to have tight control over the process of production. Therefore, he built a studio in Montreuil in 1897. Coming four or five years after Thomas Edison's Black Maria studio, it was bigger than the Black Maria and made largely of glass with diffuse shutters in order to control for shadows. It was exactly the dimensions of the Robert-Houdin Theater, 6 meters x 17 meters. It contained everything Melies needed for his trick films, including a water tank through which he could shoot underwater scenes, and a trap door which allowed for the use of rolling vertical backdrops. (When Thomas Edison closed the Black Maria in 1901, he also had a glass studio built.)
In 1902, Melies made A Trip to the Moon, which became his best-known film. The film was inspired by novels by Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. One of the criticisms of Melies is that his films lack a dynamic narrative in the sense that D.W. Griffith made use of film narrative, with his varying close-ups, longshots, different camera angles, etc. But if you examine A Trip to the Moon you will see a definite narrative; there are a sequence of scenes which combine to tell a story, though the shots are certainly primitive compared to D.W. Griffith.
Through the film's great popularity, Melies learned that his films were being duplicated illegally in the United States. Although he began to copyright his films in America, it still was relatively easy for someone to buy a couple of prints and then duplicate the print hundreds of times to make illegal copies. Thus we can begin to see the downfall of "Star Films."
Melies and Star Films reached their peak in popularity and significance between 1902 - 1905. By this time, however, Melies painstaking production methods were no longer viable. He controlled every aspect of production, in front and behind the camera; he devised the effects, designed the costumes, painted the backgrounds, hired the actors (and usually played the lead role in all his films), developed and edited the films, and negotiated their distribution.
His methods were outdated and so was the style of his films. His main competitor in France, Charles Pathe, who came to the film industry as a manufacturer of film and phonograph equipment, viewed him as an artisan whose "art" had no place in the new mass production methods of the film business.
Meanwhile, Edison, who owned most of the patents on film equipment in America, threatened his competitors with lawsuits if they did not use his equipment (and pay licensing fees). Exhausted by the litigation, Edison and his competitors formed the Motion Picture Patents Company (also known as the Edison trust). In 1908, Melies joined the Edison trust and in order to meet their standard of producing "one reel a week" he had to put his own pace of production into such high gear that he could barely keep up with it. In fact, he built another studio. With two studios operating, in 1908 alone Melies equaled his entire 1896 - 1907 output in terms of overall running time. By 1909, his brother Gaston Melies had stepped into the breach and began producing Westerns in the United States, taking the pressure off Melies at home. (Although Gaston lost a lot of money with some ambitious productions that required him to go on location in the South Seas.)
But, George Melies' films began to look outdated. Since many of his trick films required a static camera, and because of an unvarying camera angle which always tried to duplicate the middle seat, middle row of the Robert-Houdin Theater, there is a certain "sameness" to his films, despite the incredible variety of the mise-en-scenes. He refused to have a partner and began to lose money. His last year in production, 1912, featured an ambitious project called The Conquest of the Pole. He designed and built an animatronic-type creature about 100 years before animatronics became commonplace in effects films. However, The Conquest of the Pole was not a success. Melies closed up shop.
World War I brought other troubles. His wife had died in 1913 and his brother Gaston died in 1915. The Theater Robert Houdin was closed by the war and eventually swept away by urban development. Melies turned his studio into a theater. but by 1923 that too had failed and the property was sold, along with the scenery, props and costumes from the films. About the same time, with nowhere to store them, he burned all of his negatives. Now penniless, he married his former actress and longtime mistress Jehanne d'Alcy. They lived from the proceeds of a tiny boutique selling toys and novelties on the Gare Montparnasse. This is recounted in the film Hugo, and in the film - and in real life -- Melies is rediscovered by a new generation of film enthusiasts. Eventually he and his wife were given a place in the home for cinema veterans at the Château d'Orly, where he spent his final days seemingly contented, still drawing, reminiscing and occasionally performing little conjuring tricks.
Film history remembers him as the first master filmmaker. Even though his films are over a century old, their sheer exuberance and inventiveness are still a source of delight and wonder.
As Abel Gance said, "Melies was a great poet."
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Spring is the perfect time to start a garden. Having your young child help with planting is a great way to bond and facilitate hands on learning experiences. “Ways to help children learn from gardening” also talks about the benefits of gardening with your child. Gardening uses a number of skills across many domains. Pointing out different parts of the process showcases these skills. For example:
Science- There are many things in gardening that you can focus on from a science aspect. You can talk about what a plant needs to grow: sun, dirt, and water. You can talk about the plants cycle: starts as a seed, then grows roots and stem, then grows into the plant.
Math- There are just as many math skills in gardening. Counting out how many seeds you are going to use. Sorting out different seeds you want to use. Measuring the space you need to plant the seeds.
Vocabulary- Expand your child’s vocabulary by teaching your child what each tool is called and what they are used for. Then teach them the different parts of the plants. The more you use these words the better your child will understand and be able to use them as well.
Literacy- Read is a great way to learn more information. Read books about plants and growing a garden. There are a lot of children’s books that talk about different kinds of gardens. Teaching them from a young age that they can learn from books is a great tool for your child.
Writing/Art- Depending on the abilities of the child they can document how the plants are growing by writing about it or drawing pictures of the plants. Make a notebook with your child to show how your plants grew.
Fine motor- Having your child take part in digging in the dirt and putting the seed in the hole helps them work on their fine motor control.
Sensory- Talk to your child about the colors they see while in the garden. Talk about how the dirt feels. Ask them what they think will happen when you add water to the dirt. Let your child feel the mud. Talk about what they smell. When you are gardening you use almost all your senses. Talk about each sense and how you can use it in the garden.
Whether you plant a couple of seeds in a see through cup inside so you can watch the roots grow as well as the stem. Or make a garden in your yard that you can plant more seeds and bigger plants. Sharing time and information with your child will not only teach them about gardening it also builds a stronger bond between you and your child. Just think of all the things your child can learn just by planting a garden. Enjoy watching you garden and child grow.
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How to Calculate How Many Months Pregnant
It not very difficult to calculate how far along your pregnancy is. All you have to do is recall the date of your last menstrual period. In case you are not able to recall it, then try to remember some incident or activity which you did at that time. Try all means to get the exact date which was the first day of your menstrual period.
Steps To Calculate The Age Of The Growing Fetus:
The steps to calculate the age of the growing fetus are as follows:
- Once you have the date of the first day of your last menstrual period, then calculate the number of weeks that have passed from that date including the current week. For instance, the day when you had your last period was Monday. So count all the time from then until the particular day on which you are calculating. The number you have calculated will be used in the next step.
- The number you got in the above step will determine the number of weeks you are pregnant and if you will divide this number by 4.34, then you will get the number of months you have been pregnant for. For example, if you are 16 weeks pregnant, then you have been carrying a baby for 3.68 months, which is a little more than 3 months.
- As each week passes from Monday (the first day of your last period), just add it in your calculation and you will keep on increasing the age in months and weeks of your developing baby.
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Brazos Bend State Park
Travel thousands of light years in the comfort of the George Observatory.
By Melissa Gaskill
The M15 star cluster is 33,000 light years from Earth, but you can see it by traveling a somewhat shorter distance to George Observatory in Brazos Bend State Park. A satellite facility of the Houston Museum of Natural Science, the observatory features three domed telescopes and a location on high ground surrounded by wetlands and woodlands that helps preserve a dark viewing sky (as does a model low-light ordinance for Fort Bend County). The short walk to the facility, through woodlands and over Creekfield Lake, is lined with low fixtures that light the way and also provide a graphic illustration of the immense distances in space; markers for the planets in our solar system are placed on the lights on a distance scale of 1 foot to 4.43 million miles. From the sun on the observatory building, it is roughly four-tenths of a mile to the marker near the parking lot for the last planet, Pluto. (Using this scale, you’d find the next closest star somewhere near Denver, Colorado.)
The observatory is open to the public every Saturday. Tickets costing $5 include viewing in two small domes at your leisure, and specific viewing times in the large dome, scheduled by group number every 15 minutes from dusk to 10:00 p.m., and 11 p.m. in the summer. Start with the orientation lecture that includes tips on how to make the most of your evening — important when you’re walking around in the dark and a few minutes might mean missing your viewing time. The large dome houses the 36-inch Gueymard Research Telescope, one of the largest regularly open to public viewing, and a high-quality, 11-inch F/15 refracting telescope. Hydraulics raise the floor of the dome up to the viewing station, then lower it when everyone has had a chance to peer in at star clusters, the Milky Way, Saturn’s rings, cloud belts on Jupiter or whatever stellar phenomenon is on the evening’s agenda. On the outdoor observation deck, amateur astronomers often set up their equipment and are happy to show you these and other sights free of charge. While the park closes at 10 p.m., telescope viewing continues until 11 for those who are camping in the park. A perk for campers: the 10:30 telescope time is just for them.
The ground floor exhibit room opens at 3 p.m. and houses fragments of several meteorites, a display on how to tell a meteorite from a mere rock, interactive computer panels that answer questions like “Why do stars twinkle?” (the proper term is scintillate) and more.
This 5,000-acre state park on the Brazos River also has camping, screened shelters, picnic areas, fishing and 21.6 miles of trails around its lakes and swamps, with observation decks and towers that make it easy to spot some of the many alligators and birds that live there. Stargazing around the campfire is encouraged as well.
Park entrance fee $3 per person age 13 and older. George Observatory, (281) 242-3055 or (979) 553-3400, <www.hmns.org/see_do/george_observatory.asp>. Brazos Bend State Park is on FM 762 about one hour south of Houston; (979) 553-5101, <www.tpwd.state.tx.us/spdest/findadest/parks/brazos_bend/>.
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Latest update: May 19th, 2013
The third of the arba parshiyot is Parshat Parah (Numbers 19:1-22), which discusses the unblemished red heifer, the parah adumah, that Moses was commanded to hand to Elazar the priest for sacrificial purposes. The verses detail the entire procedure, which the Torah refers to as a chok, a law for which we do not know the reason.
Rashi (Megillah 29a) s.v. “parah adumah” explains that the red heifer was sacrificed to warn the Jews to purify themselves of any ritual defilement so that they could participate in the upcoming paschal sacrifice in a ritually pure state.
Thus this parshah is timely in the weeks before Pesach, which is why we read it at this point. (Rashi ad loc. s.v. “Ba’revi’it hachodesh hazeh lachem” quotes the Jerusalem Talmud that this parshah should really be the last of the four because the Mishkan was erected on the first of Nissan and the red heifer was burnt on the second of Nissan. However, it is read third because it is crucial to the purification of Israel.)
The reading of this parshah is also viewed by the Mechaber (Orach Chayim 685:7, in the name of “yesh omrim”) as a biblical requirement.
Finally, the last of the arba parshiyot is Parshat HaChodesh (Exodus 12:1-20). This reading concerns rosh chodesh, the first commandment given to the Children of Israel, upon which our calendar (including the festivals, of course) is based. The first festival we celebrated as a nation was Passover. This section also contains the commandment of the paschal sacrifice and its laws.
This parshah is read on the Shabbat preceding Rosh Chodesh Nissan, unless rosh chodesh occurs on a Shabbat, in which case it is read on that Shabbat. Rashi (Megillah 29a) notes that since this section contains the laws of Pesach, the mishnah instructs us to read it at this time.
Thus we see that all arba parshiyot, as delineated in the mishnah (ibid.), are deliberately designated for these four specific Shabbatot. May we merit the speedy arrival of the Moshiach so we may once again fulfill the actual obligations that the arba parshiyot represent.
Rabbi Yaakov Klass, rav of Congregation K’hal Bnei Matisyahu in Flatbush, Brooklyn, is Torah Editor of The Jewish Press. He can be contacted at firstname.lastname@example.org.Rabbi Yaakov Klass
About the Author: Rabbi Yaakov Klass, rav of Congregation K’hal Bnei Matisyahu in Flatbush, Brooklyn, is Torah Editor of The Jewish Press. He can be contacted at email@example.com.
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