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AOD Farms is part of a white-meat explosion that rivals the fishy one. Saweda Liverpool-Tasie, an agricultural economist at Michigan State University, calculates that there are now around 1,000 medium and large poultry farms in Nigeria, up from around 400 during much of the 1990s and 2000s. The quantity of maize used f...
In some ways the west African chicken boom is different from the Asian fish boom. Whereas Asian fish farmers are often former rice farmers, African poultry farmers are more likely to be wealthy, well-connected urbanites. AOD Farms is owned by a civil engineer. Nigeria’s former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, has a large ...
But the parallels are more striking than the differences. As with fish in Bangladesh, the Nigerian chicken industry clusters around the fast-growing largest city. Lagos is estimated to have between 12m and 15m inhabitants, though it is hard to be sure as Nigerian population data are notoriously unreliable. Lagosians’ h...
In both countries the industries are becoming more professional. Bangladeshi fish farmers increasingly use medicines and floating fish feed, which is less wasteful than the sinking kind. AOD Farms is still a dusty work in progress—during a recent visit, some chickens had escaped through a hole in the fence. But a vet c...
In a final parallel, farmers in both Nigeria and Bangladesh complain bitterly about excessive supply. Nigerian chicken farmers insist that the domestic market has been flooded by foreign investors and foreign chickens. The Poultry Association of Nigeria claims that about 70% of the birds eaten in the country are illega...
It is hard to know for sure, though, because official statistics are so poor. Chicken and fish farmers have little idea what their competitors are producing, so they find it hard to predict what price their produce might fetch at market. Mohammad Mahfujul Haque, an aquaculture expert at Bangladesh Agricultural Universi...
So would a certification system. At present, a chicken is just a chicken and a pangasius is simply a pangasius. That prevents farmers from exporting to rich countries, where consumers insist on knowing where their food comes from and how it is produced. The lack of standards even causes problems at home. In place of re...
But the pressure on farmers is making them inventive. In a warehouse in Mymensingh, a town close to Mathabari, Shamsul Alam has installed eight large vats. When he shines his torch in, they are revealed to contain thousands of stinging catfish. Although the fish is tricky to handle, owing to the venom in its dorsal spi...
It is an expensive, technically complex way of farming fish. The indoor fish farm poses no competitive threat to open-air farmers. Still, Mr Alam’s innovation is an intriguing way of coping with persistent low prices for the most common fish. He says that one of his neighbours is already copying him.
This article appeared in the International section of the print edition under the headline "Counting chickens"
Movie Monday: The Los Gatos Library hosts a free screening of “Venom.” Feb. 11, 6 p.m. Technology Lab, Los Gatos Library, 100 Villa Ave. 408-399-5784, www.losgatos.ca.gov/42/los-gatos-library.
Saint Michael Trio: The trio performs a program of music by composers who were and are child prodigies. Works by Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and contemporary composer Alma Deutscher, age 12, will be explored. Feb. 10, 3 p.m. Montalvo Arts Center, 15400 Montalvo Road, Saratoga. $20-$38. montalvoarts.org, 408-961-585...
Joe Nichols: The country crooner performs with opening act Leaving Austin. Feb. 14, 8 p.m. Heritage Theatre, Campbell Community Center, 1 W. Campbell Ave., Campbell. $59. 408-866-2700, HeritageTheatre.org.
Apron Strings and Vintage Things: A new exhibit features more than 60 colorful aprons dating from 1870 to the present. Aprons have been around for hundreds of years, worn by both men and women and made from feed sacks, muslin, gingham and more and decorated with elaborate stitches. Through April 28; museum hours are 1-...
Human Trafficking Awareness: A lecture by the staff of Freedom House, a nonprofit organization that works to rescue human trafficking victims, provide care and safety, and restore hope in their lives. Feb. 9, 11:30 a.m. Los Gatos Library, 100 Villa Ave. 408-399-5784, www.losgatos.ca.gov/42/los-gatos-library.
Monday Morning Book Club: The club will discuss the book “The Devil’s Pool” by George Sand. Feb. 11, 11 a.m. Los Gatos Library, 100 Villa Ave. 408-399-5784, www.losgatos.ca.gov/42/los-gatos-library.
WASHINGTON — Academia may be a bastion of liberalism, but in the past two years, the higher education industry has often lined up opposite the White House and congressional Democrats — and has spent more on lobbyists in the process.
The most recent example is the resistance from for-profit colleges to the Obama administration’s proposal to raise standards for institutions receiving federal student aid. But traditional colleges and universities also have opposed several Democratic initiatives.
First there was President Obama’s plan to cap the charitable tax deduction for the wealthy, bringing their tax break closer to everyone else’s. The measure would have raised $318 billion over 10 years, but it died quickly on Capitol Hill.
Charities were the most visible opponents, but universities also worried that it would reduce giving by wealthy donors: the American Council on Education, higher education’s main trade group, lobbied on the issue in 2009, records show.
The next conflict was over the Democratic proposal to eliminate subsidies for student loan providers. The overhaul would provide billions of dollars in Pell grants for low-income students and billions more for colleges to improve graduation rates.
But schools were ambivalent about cracking down on private lenders, with whom they had built close relationships over the years. And they were opposed to the strings that would come with the additional institutional funding: requirements that they provide more data on student outcomes and submit to more state oversight...
The rules would apply mostly to community colleges, which were willing to accept them in return for extra funding, but four-year colleges opposed them anyway, wary of creating a precedent. They persuaded lawmakers to drop some of the provisions, and by the time the bill passed, the institutional funding was reduced so ...
The National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities has spent $514,000 on lobbying since the start of 2009. The American Council on Education has spent $442,626, in addition to $137,000 it paid Ernst & Young to lobby on tax issues.
The Career College Association, which represents for-profit colleges, increased its quarterly spending on the Podesta Group, a lobbying firm, from $50,000 to $80,000 in the second quarter.
Liverpool's Mohamed Salah scores their first goal.
Mohamed Salah's first-half strike gave Liverpool the 1-0 win over Napoli they needed at Anfield to qualify for the Champions League's last 16 on Tuesday, sending the Italian side crashing out.
Liverpool knew that a 1-0 win, or a victory by two goals or more, would be enough to seal a top two spot in Group C, and Salah was again the hero for the hosts, scoring what proved to be the winner in the 34th minute.
Napoli pressed for a leveller in the second half, with Liverpool goalkeeper Alisson denying Arkadiusz Milik in stoppage time, but the home side's resolute defence -- which has conceded just six Premier League goals all season so far -- stood firm.
Paris St Germain's victory at Red Star Belgrade meant they finished top while Napoli, who started the day leading the way, exited the competition as Liverpool snatched second spot on goals scored.
Rancho Cucamonga >> Real estate agent Steve Jacobson has a simple promise if he were elected president: He’d annex Mexico and Canada.
“Just about every president I’ve voted for or against has said the same things,” he said.
But not Jacobson: He wants to create a United States that spans the entire continent of North America.
“We’ve already annexed Texas and Hawaii,” he said.
To be clear, Jacobson, 78, doesn’t advocate invading Canada and Mexico; he just wants to erase the national borders from the map and unilaterally declare both countries to be part of the United States.
The move would be a boon for oil, iron and other national resources, would make a major dent in the United States’ immigration issues and effectively eliminate trade imbalances between the three countries, he said.
He doesn’t believe that Mexicans and Canadians will be upset at being merged into a single continent-spanning country.
Beyond just erasing two national borders, Jacobson’s platform includes other dramatic, sweeping gestures.
Running for president — to the extent that someone without financial backing or a political party’s backing is running for president — doesn’t scratch some long-felt itch for Jacobson.
Still, he’d need nearly 700,000 signatures to get on the ballot in California, something Jacobson admits he has no ability to do. He does have a website, however, and at some point will have a Facebook page.
Is pain all in your head?; What you feel is real — and your brain may be to blame when a disease isn’t.
Is pain all in your head?
What you feel is real — and your brain may be to blame when a disease isn’t.
Health problems always seemed to be more drastic for Bill More than for others. He wouldn’t just get a cold — he’d get bronchitis. While other kids were skinning knees or bruising elbows, he was breaking bones. But for most of his life, the Bend man was in great physical shape. He took up snowboarding in the 1980s and ...
He hurt his back and couldn’t seem to get over his injuries. Pain radiated from his lower back down to his foot. Unable to exercise or even work, he lost 20 pounds of muscle.
“I just could not recover from it,” he said.
The injury sent More on a medical odyssey. He jumped from doctor to doctor and tried procedure after procedure in a fruitless attempt to quell his pain. He put together a binder — now 6 inches thick — chronicling his journey through the health system: a discectomy to relieve nerve pressure in his back, a fusion of his ...
His doctors were out of ideas. “You’re just going to have to learn to live with it,” he recalls them saying.
None of his medical treatments were helping. Desperate and in constant pain despite being on massive doses of opiate drugs, More and his wife began preparing for his death.
Pain may be the most universal human sensation, having evolved as a way to protect the body against potential dangers. From our first days of life, we feel pain and quickly learn to avoid the things that cause it. Over the ensuing years, our experiences firmly ingrain the notion that damage to our body causes pain, and...
This construct, however, is based on an illusion of how pain — and particularly chronic pain — actually works.
There’s an emerging understanding among pain specialists and researchers that the brain doesn’t sense pain so much as it produces it, and that the sensation of pain is heavily dependent on the psychological and social stressors in a person’s life. Moreover, when that system goes awry, seemingly innocent sensations can ...
This disconnect leaves chronic pain patients searching for an answer to their suffering, trying surgeries, injections and painkillers that have little chance of addressing the true cause of their pain but leave them at risk for complications and early death.
Not all types of chronic pain are caused by this haywire reaction in the brain. Certainly many patients have injuries that haven’t healed or an ongoing disease with painful symptoms. Others develop damage to their nerves or the nervous system that creates ongoing pain. But the vast majority of patients living for years...
As patients seek a physical explanation for their pain, X-rays and MRIs lead to procedures and surgeries, none of which provide much relief. It’s this disconnect between physical damage and pain that underlies much of the futile treatment and duplicative care in the health system today.
More went from doctor to doctor seeking a cure, which he believes just reinforced the idea in their minds that he was exaggerating or inventing his pain. Chronic pain patients, who often have no visible defects or injuries, are regularly met with skepticism rather sympathy, forced to justify themselves to a society tha...
Soon, More began doubting himself.
Pain experts like Dr. Lorimer Moseley, a professor of clinical neurosciences at the University of South Australia, maintain that pain is all in the patient’s head, although not in the way you might think.
Let’s say you step on a sharp object with bare feet. Danger receptors, known as nociceptors, sense that object and send an electrical signal to the spinal cord. The spinal cord then sends that signal up the brain, which must then determine whether there’s a potential danger. The brain makes use of sensory inputs and me...
That may sound crazy, but consider that individuals who lose an arm or a leg often feel sensations in that limb even after it’s gone. Phantom limb pain affects up to 80 percent of amputees and can be mind-numbingly difficult to relieve. Imagine feeling an itch on your ankle that you can not scratch and or a cramp that ...
Doctors have developed techniques to address phantom pain that often rely on fooling the brain that the limb still exists. Dr. Vilayanur Ramachandran, a neurologist at the University of California, San Diego, developed mirror therapy to do just that. He had patients with amputated legs watch a reflected image of their ...
Moseley argues that all pain may in fact be phantom pain, not in the sense that it isn’t real, but that the brain projects pain onto the part of the body it is trying to protect. It’s much like the concept of vision. The image we see isn’t out in front of us, it’s in our brains, and as such we are easily fooled when wh...
His research team has found many variables can change how much something hurts, underscoring the disconnect between tissue damage and pain.
Dr. Lorimer Moseley, a professor of clinical neurosciences at the University of South Australia, and his team, once tested the pain threshold in the pinkie fingers of professional musicians. They found that violinists and string players had much lower pain thresholds in their left pinkie fingers than in their right. Bu...
Violinists couldn’t play very well without a little finger on their left hand, but could still hold the bow in their right without one.
“Your pain depends on how much danger your brain thinks you’re in, not how much danger you are really in,” Moseley said.
His most famous experiment to prove the point was one he came across naturally and described in a widely viewed TED Talk video. Years ago, he was walking through the Australian bush when he felt a tiny prick or scratch on the outside of his left leg. It was a sensation he’d felt plenty of times before, and so when the ...
Nine months later, he was back in the bush and he again felt something scratch the outside of his left leg. He felt “a white hot poker pain screaming up” his entire leg. As he looked to see how bad the snake bite was, he saw it was actually just a tiny scratch from a little twig.
Researchers believe the brain uses the information at its disposal to evaluate the danger to the body and protect it with a corresponding amount of pain. In chronic pain patients, the brain has learned to treat seemingly innocuous dangers as potentially catastrophic.
Pain researchers recognized the connection with danger or stress decades ago in soldiers who in the heat of battle would feel no pain despite enduring horrific injuries. Eventually, they realized that pain was a two-way street with signals rising from the site of the injury up to the brain, and signals coming back down...
Opioids are a class of drugs made from the poppy plant or synthesized to create the same effect. Natural versions include drugs like opium, heroin and morphine. Synthetic versions, such as Vicodin, Percocet or Oxycontin, are among the most potent pain relievers.
But the body also produces its own opioid-like chemicals, called endorphins, enkephalins and dynorphins, which function as neurotransmitters. Those natural opiates are released during times of stress as part of the fight or flight response to counteract pain. So a lion that injures its paw in the middle of a hunt can c...
It’s this hypersensitivity that researchers believe is at the heart of chronic pain. Ballantyne explains that an injury prompts electrical signals that are sent to the brain, causing a release of chemicals and a neuroinflammatory process in the brain. Brain cells die and the brain remodels itself. When that process con...
The constant reactivation of the body’s natural opioid system can create a state of hypersensitivity that responds to the slightest provocation with pain. The problem ceases to be the knee or back or whatever other injury first precipitated the pain. It’s now become a malfunction of the pain system, or as Dr. Daniel Cl...
To explain it to patients, Clauw likes to use the analogy of an electric guitar and amplifier. The volume of the sound doesn’t depend so much on what’s going on with the guitar as with the setting on the amplifier. In people with central sensitization, the dial on their amp has been turned way up. So sensory inputs tha...
Pain doctors now consider chronic pain as a malfunctioning of the pain system, where the brain, the spinal cord and the nerves that go down into the body, aren’t functioning in the way they should be.
Why such sensitization happens in some people and not others is still a mystery. But there are some clues. Clauw said that people are born with different levels of pain sensitivity that can be plotted on a standard bell-shaped curve.
Those born at the right side of the curve often start developing different types of chronic pain early in life. They experience growing pains as children, and then develop headaches or painful menstrual periods in their teens. In their 20s, they have low back pain, irritable bowel syndrome or painful bladder syndrome. ...
After several years of seeking a treatment for his pain, unable to work and unable to snowboard, More began to descend into despair.
Dr. Philip Wallace, a physical medicine and rehabilitation specialist with Northwest Brain & Spine, was one of the few doctors who never seemed to doubt More’s pain. There were days when they would spend an hourlong appointment just talking about options, and tearing up.
Then one day two years ago, More was sitting in an appointment room with sunlight shining directly onto his face, when Wallace noticed something unusual: a blue tint in the whites of his eyes. It could mean only one thing. More had a condition known as Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, a disorder of the connective tissues in the...
Caused by a genetic mutation, the syndrome, commonly referred to as EDS, causes a lack of collagen that leads to loose joints, stretchy skin and fragile tissue. The lack of collagen in the eye results in a characteristic blue tint. The condition, which may affect as many as 1 in 5,000 individuals, is little known and c...
It also explained why More had such trouble getting past his injuries and back pain. EDS has one of the highest rates of centralized pain among chronic pain conditions.
EDS falls in the same high range as sickle cell disease. Those with either condition often have lifelong histories of acute pain that lead to central sensitization.
Once researchers understood that pain is a product of the brain, it helped to explain how someone’s psychological and social state influences his or her pain. Over time, they came to believe that thoughts and emotions may play a larger role in pain than any tissue damage or injury.
The role of childhood trauma is particularly strong. By some estimates, up to 30 percent of chronic pain patients have experienced sexual abuse, and more have undergone some sort of physical or emotional abuse. Patients who end up seeking help at pain clinics are those who simply cannot throw off the stresses of life a...
Modern science is now allowing pain researchers to measure this effect of stress and emotion on pain, using tools such as functional MRI to see what parts of the brain were being activated. Researchers from Northwestern University recently showed that when pain becomes chronic, it activates an increasingly larger part ...
Fibromyalgia is one of many chronic pain conditions given the “itis” ending because it was once thought to be caused by inflammation, and later renamed to reflect a more central sensitization type of process: fibrositis became fibromyalgia; spastic colitis, irritable bowel syndrome; and interstitial cystitis, painful b...
“One of the things that has been fascinating about the research into fibromyalgia is it’s now becoming applicable to any pain state,” said Dr. Daniel Clauw, a pain expert with the University of Michigan.
The condition is diagnosed based on how many areas of the body are affected by pain and whether the pain occurs with fatigue, memory issues or sleep problems.
Clauw’s team used the fibromyalgia criteria to evaluate 500 consecutive osteoarthritis patients undergoing knee or hip surgery at the University of Michigan Health System. Those that scored higher on the fibromyalgia assessment — even if they didn’t meet the criteria for a fibromyalgia diagnosis — needed a higher level...
That may also explain why joint replacement often doesn’t relieve the pain of osteoarthritis. About 20 percent of patients with hip osteoarthritis and 30 percent of people with knee osteoarthritis don’t feel better after a joint replacement.
“We’re showing now that the people who seem to be at highest risk for not responding to a surgical procedure are the people that have so-called centralized their pain,” Clauw said.
Studies with laboratory rats have shown that pain is moderated by two types of pathways, one that inhibits pain and one that facilitates it, and that both can be activated either by external painful stimuli or the individual’s state of mind.
Dr. Howard Fields, director of the Wheeler Center for the Neurobiology of Addiction at the University of San Francisco, showed that when rats are placed in a cage with a predator, their brains are flooded with natural opiates, turning off the pathways that promote pain and turning on the pathways that inhibit it. Givin...
Opioids, whether produced by the brain or taken as medication, he found, could either worsen or relieve pain depending on the individual’s emotional state.
When patients are treated with very high doses of opiates after a surgery, for example, it changes their natural balance between pain relief and sensitivity to pain. But when patients stop taking those drugs, the balance does not revert to its original levels.
Patients end up developing a tolerance to the drugs.
Moreover, the longer the patient takes the medication, the greater the imbalance, and the patient will need higher levels of external opioids to restore their balance. They become dependent on the external opioids, and if they don’t get them, they begin to exhibit symptoms of withdrawal.
The pain treatment field has largely come to the conclusion that opioid medications make chronic pain worse, exacerbating the hypersensitivity of the pain system, leaving patients in worse pain than they had before starting the medications. Patients and their doctors often mistake this escalation of pain as a worsening...

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