DENVER – Put on your poodle skirts and tune in Elvis on the transistor radio, because it’s starting to look a lot like the 1950s.
Unfortunately, this won’t be the nostalgic ’50s of big cars and pop music.
The 1950s that could be on the way to Colorado is the decade of drought.
So says Brian Bledsoe, a Colorado Springs meteorologist who studies the history of ocean currents and uses what he learns to make long-term weather forecasts.
“I think we’re reliving the ’50s, bottom line,” Bledsoe said Friday morning at the annual meeting of the Colorado Water Congress.
Bledsoe studies the famous El Niño and La Niña ocean currents. But he also looks at other, less well-known cycles, including long-term temperature cycles in the oceans.
In the 1950s, water in the Pacific Ocean was colder than normal, but it was warmer than usual in the Atlantic. That combination caused a drought in Colorado that was just as bad as the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.
The ocean currents slipped back into their 1950s pattern in the last five years, Bledsoe said. The cycles can last a decade or more, meaning bad news for farmers, ranchers, skiers and forest residents.
“Drought feeds on drought. The longer it goes, the harder it is to break,” Bledsoe said.
The outlook is worst for Eastern Colorado, where Bledsoe grew up and his parents still own a ranch. They recently had to sell half their herd when their pasture couldn’t provide enough feed.
“They’ve spent the last 15 years grooming that herd for organic beef stock,” he said.
Bledsoe looks for monsoon rains to return to the Four Corners and Western Slope in July. But there’s still a danger in the mountains in the summer.
“Initially, dry lightning could be a concern, so obviously, the fire season is looking not so great right now,” he said.
Weather data showed the last year’s conditions were extreme.
Nolan Doesken, Colorado’s state climatologist, said the summer of 2012 was the hottest on record in Colorado. And it was the fifth-driest winter since record-keeping began more than 100 years ago.
Despite recent storms in the San Juan Mountains, this winter hasn’t been much better.
“We’ve had a wimpy winter so far,” Doesken said. “The past week has been a good week for Colorado precipitation.”
However, the next week’s forecast shows dryness returning to much of the state.
Reservoir levels are higher than they were in 2002 – the driest year since Coloradans started keeping track of moisture – but the state is entering 2013 with reservoirs that were depleted last year.
“You don’t want to start a year at this level if you’re about to head into another drought,” Doesken said.
It was hard to find good news in Friday morning’s presentations, but Bledsoe is happy that technology helps forecasters understand the weather better than they did during past droughts. That allows people to plan for what’s on the way.
“I’m a glass-half-full kind of guy,” he said.


EPO is a nootropicWednesday, 10 September, 2008
Erythropoietin (EPO), a hormone that increases red blood cells and is used as a performance enhancer for athletic performance, has now been shown to enhance memory in normal, healthy mice. Mice that received EPO injections had enhanced memory for 3-4 weeks afterwards, which is longer than the elevation in red blood cell count lasts.
This effect isn’t actually novel, as other researchers had noticed that EPO improved brain function over 18 years ago (Grimm et al, 1990), and research into mental illness has also suggested that EPO has an effect on brain function (Ehrenreich et al, 2004). But it was always thought to be dependent on the change in red blood cells, but more recent evidence has suggested it works independently of effects on blood cells (Miskowiak et al, 2007). This mouse model confirms this.
Of course, the researchers have been focusing on this as a treatment, but anyone can see that this is a promising enhancement too. This mouse research showed that EPO enhanced memory and athletic function in healthy mice. It enhances both athletic and mental performance – how good is that?
Then again, if EPO becomes a common cognitive enhancer, it will mean that few of us normal people would ever be able to compete in the Olympics. It was only in 2004 that caffeine was allowed in professional competition, but pretty soon college students will be doping themselves with EPO as a biochemical study aid. It will be interesting when almost all normal people would not be able to pass an Olympic-level drug test.
The possibility exists, however, that we may want the cognitive boost without increasing our red blood cells too much. And now that we know the cognitive effects of EPO are independent of red blood cell production, this may be possible too. Make a drug that stimulates the brain like EPO does, but doesn’t effect an increase in red blood cells. And this study has gone a long way to unraveling the relevant effects of EPO on neuronal plasticity that underly the enhancement to memory circuitry in the brain, which means that we may be able to find drugs that do so more effectively than EPO or act on other brain functions.


Celebrate Princeton Invention: Craig Arnold
Posted December 21, 2009; 01:08 p.m.
Able to adjust its focus more than 100,000 times faster than the human eye, the TAG Lens invented by mechanical and aerospace engineering professor Craig Arnold and his colleagues has applications in materials processing and imaging. (Photo: Brian Wilson)
Name: Craig Arnold, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering
Invention: Tunable Acoustic Gradient Index of Refraction Lens (TAG Lens)
What it does: The TAG lens features a cylinder made of a special material that vibrates when electricity is passed through it, enclosed inside a fluid-filled chamber. Controlling the flow of electricity changes the vibrations that propagate through the fluid, changing the lens' focus more than 100,000 times faster than the human eye can refocus.
Inspiration: After developing a low-cost lens to shape laser beam output into different patterns, Arnold and his colleagues focused their attention on understanding how the device worked and its potential applications. Finding that the lens had the unique ability to focus rapidly at a wide range of focal lengths, they realized its potential went far beyond the original intended purpose, with numerous applications in materials processing and imaging.
Collaborators: Euan McLeod, a 2009 Ph.D. recipient, and Alexander Mermillod-Blondin, a former postdoctoral researcher in the Arnold lab
Back to main story


- 10 to 15 minutes
- Take turns introducing each other while pretending you are on a stage.
- Stand up, bow, and tell all the good things you can about the other person, his hobbies, good qualities, etc. Be sure to over-dramatize.
- Take turns introducing other family members, present or not.
- Challenge your child to introduce a best friend or a favorite teacher.
- Think of famous people and take turns introducing them.
Copyright © 2004 by Susan Kettmann. Excerpted from The 2,000 Best Games & Activities with permission of its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.
To order this book visit Amazon.com.


2012-2013 Service Learning Courses
Hispanic Literature in Translation—"Defiant Acts: Spanish and Latin American Theatre"
Isabel de Sena
This course will explore the full spectrum of theatre from the early modern period in Spain and colonial Spanish America to contemporary theatre on both sides of the Atlantic, including U.S. Latino playwrights. We will read across periods to identify preoccupations and generic characteristics as theatre evolves and moves between the street and the salon, the college yard and the court, enclosed theatres and theatre for the enclosed. In the process we will address a wide swath of ideas, on gender, class, freedom and totalitarianism, the boundaries of identity. Students will be introduced to some basic concepts and figures ranging from Lope de Vega’s brilliant articulation of “comedia” to Augusto Boal’s concept of an engaged theatre, and investigate the work of FOMMA (Fortaleza de la Mujer Maya) and similar contemporary collectives. And we will read plays as plays, as literature and as texts intended for performance on a stage. At the same time students will have the opportunity to explore creative practices, through engagement with different community organizations: schools, retirement homes, local theatre organizations, etc. Students are encouraged to apply concepts learned in class to their internships, and to bring their ideas and reflections on their weekly practices for discussion in class. Each other week one hour will be devoted to discussing their work in the community. NO Spanish required, but students who are sufficiently fluent in the language may opt to work in a community where Spanish is the primary language of communication. NO expertise in theatre required though theatre students are very welcome. Open to any interested student.
Fall & Spring
First Year Studies
Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu
[Isizulu: A person is only a person through other persons]
How do the contexts in which we live influence our development? And how do these contexts influence the questions we ask about development, and the ways in which we interpret our observations? How do local, national and international policies impact the contexts in which children live? Should we play a role in changing some of these contexts? What are the complications of doing this?
In this course, we will discuss these and other key questions about child and adolescent development in varying cultural contexts, with a specific focus on the United States and sub-Saharan Africa. As we do so, we will discuss factors contributing to both opportunities and inequalities within and between these contexts. In particular, we will discuss how physical and psychosocial environments differ for poor and non-poor children and their families in rural Upstate New York, urban Yonkers, and rural and urban Malawi, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Kenya and Tanzania. We will also discuss individual and environmental protective factors that buffer some children from the adverse effects of poverty, as well as the impacts of public policy on poor children and their families. Topics will include health and educational disparities; environmental inequalities linked to race, class, ethnicity, gender, language and nationality; environmental chaos; children’s play and access to green space; cumulative risk and its relationship to chronic stress; and the HIV/AIDS pandemic and the growing orphan problem in sub-Saharan Africa. Readings will be drawn from both classic and contemporary research in psychology, human development, anthropology, sociology, and public health; memoirs and other first-hand accounts; and classic and contemporary African literature and film.
This course will also serve as an introduction to the methodologies of community based and participatory action research within the context of a service-learning course. As a class, we will collaborate with local high school students in developing, implementing and evaluating effective community based work in partnership with organizations in urban Yonkers and rural Tanzania. As part of this work, all students will spend an afternoon a week working in a local after-school program. In addition, we will have monthly seminars with local high school students during our regular class time.
Environment, Race and the Psychology of Place
This service learning course will focus on the experience of humans living within physical, social and psychological spaces. We will use a constructivist, multidisciplinary, multilevel lens to examine the interrelationship between humans and the natural and built environment, to explore the impact of racial/ethnic group membership on person/environment interactions, and to provide for a critical analysis of social dynamics in the environmental movement. The community partnership/ service learning component is an important part of this class - we will work with local agencies to promote adaptive person-environment interactions within our community.
Children’s Health in a Multicultural Context
This course offers, within a cultural context, an overview of theoretical and research issues in the psychological study of health and illness in children. We will examine theoretical perspectives in the psychology of health, health cognition, illness prevention, stress, and coping with illness and highlight research, methods, and applied issues. This class is appropriate for those interested in a variety of health careers. Conference work can range from empirical research to bibliographic research in this area. Community partnership/service learning work is encouraged in this class. A background in social sciences or education is recommended.


BEMIDJI -The Governor's Task Force Prevention of School Bullying met with Bemidji students, parents and educators Wednesday evening kicking off a series of sessions to help redefine the state's anti-bullying statute.
"The Governor has organized a task force of citizens from around the state to make recommendations to the Governor and to the Legislature in regards that might be put forth that would direct all the school districts in the state as to how they should address bullying," said Nancy Riestenberg, School Climate Specialist at the Department of Education.
Riestenberg joined members of the task force to speak with students from Bemidji High School and students from Schoolcraft to discuss their concerns about bullying and ways in which they think it could be prevented.
Students like Thomas Caddy and Tia Siddens, 9th graders at Bemidji High School, bullying is present at the school and it is seen both physically and verbally.
"Words hurt more than fists in a lot of situations because if the physical wound isn't there it could still leave a mark on the mind," Siddens said.
The students said the most common targets of bullying in school are people of different race, sexual orientation or people with a mental disability.
"People who don't have a lot of friends are targeted more because if you don't always have those friends there to help speak up," Schoolcraft student Katie Fgevje said. "With less friends you are more vulnerable in my eyes because you don't have that person to kind of help you get through it."
When asked what the students would recommend the task force do to help the bullying problem in schools, a lot of students said there needs to be an effort to teach students from a young age why bullying is wrong, but also to teach the staff how to resolve and prevent bully situations.
"We have some programs that address bullying and I am happy we have them but I don't think they are exactly effective because if the person is doing it they are not going to be listening to the reasons why they are not supposed to be doing it," Thomas Caddy said.
Riestenberg said this was the first of many student sessions she and the task force will conduct but she said she was impressed by how engaging the students were.
"They confirmed for me what I teach in my job as the school climate specialist at the Department of Education and gave insight to the task force about what students face and what they need," Riestenberg said.
Following the parent session, the task force went to the middle school to meet with parents and educators to see what their concerns and recommendations were.
The common concern among the parents was the issue of cyber bullying in addition to racial and sexual orientation bullying. The parents agreed that the school and the parents need to make sure students know their resources on who they can talk to when being bullied.
"We need to be held accountable for our own actions and we not only need to listen to our kids but we need to show them that we are trying to do something," Marty Cobenais, a parent in attendance said. "If we don't make an effort to do something our kids are not going to come talk to us when they have a problem."
Bemidji School Superintendent James Hess said the bullying issue is one that does need to be addressed not only at the school level but also the community level.
"I think about bullying and I think about the school's role in bullying and I don't think the school is the place to lay all of the blame," Hess said. "I know that if you walk into any classroom in the district you won't find any teachers teaching bullying. I think we need to be a part of the search for a solution to bullying but I don't think we are the stopping place, we are the starting place. We need to look at the greater community to find solutions that are going to be the lasting solutions."
The task force will be meeting with schools across the state and will pass along recommendations to the Legislature by August.


A Soyuz rocket launched two Galileo satellites into orbit on Friday, marking a crucial step for Europe’s planned navigation system, operator Arianespace announced.
The launch took place at the Kourou space base in French Guiana, at 3:15pm (6:15pm GMT).
Three and three-quarter hours later, the 700kg satellites were placed into orbit.
The new satellites add to the first two in the Galileo navigation system, which were launched on Oct. 21, last year.
Together they create a “mini-constellation.” Four is the minimum number of satellites needed to gain a navigational fix on the ground, using signals from the satellite to get a position for latitude, longitude, altitude and a time reference.
Galileo will ultimately consist of 30 satellites, six more than the US Global Positioning System.
By 2015, 18 satellites should be in place, which is sufficient for launching services to the public, followed by the rest in 2020, according to the European Space Agency.
It is claimed that the system will be accurate to within one meter. The US Global Positioning System, which became operational in 1995 and is currently being upgraded, is currently accurate to between three and eight meters.
In May, the European Commission said the cost by 2015 would be 5 billion euros (US$6.45 billion).
As a medium-sized launcher, Soyuz complements Europe’s heavyweight Ariane 5 and lightweight Vega rockets.


Did You Know
Did you know that there is a town in Germany by the name of Reher??
That there is also one by the name of Stoltenberg??
Do you know where our Reher and Stoltenberg ancestors came from in Germany??
Johann Reher came from the town of Bebensee.
His father Casper came from Dreggers which was 6 miles east of there. Bad Segeberg is also associated with the family. It is about 7 miles north and the closest large town.
Since the town of Reher is 40 miles west of Bebensee and Dreggers I'm not sure if there is any connection to our name and family. Forty miles in the mid 1800's was quite a distance to travel.
Claus Stoltenberg came from Brodersdorf which is 46 miles north of Bebensee and about 10 miles northeast of Kiel, a major city on the Baltic Sea. Brodersdorf is two to three miles south of the Baltic Sea. Other towns associated with the Stoltenberg side of the family are all located in close proximity. They are LaBoe, Stein, Fahren, Probsteierhagen and Wentdorf.
The town of Stoltenberg is only seven miles to the southeast of Brodersdorf.
The above map of northern Germany will show you where the towns Reher, Stoltenberg, Bebensee, Dreggers, and Brodersdorf are located. I've marked these towns with a dark asterisk * to make them easier to find.
Click on the map to make it bigger and easier to see the towns marked with an asterisk. After the larger map comes up, click on that again to zoom in.
It is about 60 miles from Kiel at the top of the map to Hamburg which is towards the bottom of this map. From Reher to Bebensee it is 40 miles, to Brodersdorf it is 46 miles which is also the distance from Bebensee to Brodersdorf and Stoltenberg... almost a perfect equilateral triangle. See the map below... Reher is in the bottom left corner or the triangle, Bebensee in the bottom right and Brodersdorf in the top.
Hamburg is the port that our Johann & Sophia Reher sailed out of with their two small children, Emma and Ernest when they came to America in 1872.
The map above shows a closer view of the area where Bebensee & Dreggers are located... where Johann Reher and his father were born.
Once again, click on the map to make it larger.
The map above shows a closer view of the area where the Stoltenberg side of the family came from. You'll see all of the towns: Brodersdorf, LaBoe, Stein, Fahren, Probsteierhagen and Wentdorf. I've added the Stoltenberg name myself as the town didn't show up on this map.
So Now You Know


Thrombolytic drugs for heart attack
Small blood vessels called coronary arteries supply blood and oxygen to the heart.
- A heart attack can occur if a blood clot completely blocks one of these arteries.
- Unstable angina refers to chest pain and other warning signs that a heart attack may happen soon. It is most often caused by blood clots in the arteries.
Certain patients may be given drugs to break up the clot if the artery is completely blocked. These drugs are called thrombolytics, or clot busting drugs.
- These drugs should be given within 3 hours of when the patient first felt chest pain.
- The medicine is given through a vein (IV).
- Blood thinners taken by mouth may be prescribed later to prevent more clots from forming.
The main risk when receiving clot busting drugs is bleeding, especially bleeding in the brain.
Thrombolytic therapy is not safe for people who have:
- Bleeding inside the head or a stroke
- Brain abnormalities, such as tumors or poorly formed blood vessels
- Had a head injury within the past 3 months
- A history of using blood thinners or a bleeding disorder
- Had major surgery, a major injury, or internal bleeding within the past 3-4 weeks
- Peptic ulcer disease
- Severe high blood pressure
Other treatments that may be done instead of thrombolytic therapy are:
- Angioplasty is a procedure to open narrowed or blocked arteries that supply blood to the heart. It is often the first choice treatment.
- Heart bypass surgery to open narrowed or blocked arteries that supply blood to the heart may also be done. This procedure is also called "open heart surgery."
Anderson JL, Adams CD, Antman EM, Bridges CR, Califf RM, Casey DE Jr, et al. ACC/AHA 2007 guidelines for the management of patients with unstable angina/non-ST-Elevation myocardial infarction: a report of the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Task Force on Practice Guidelines (Writing Committee to Revise the 2002 Guidelines for the Management of Patients With Unstable Angina/Non-ST-Elevation Myocardial Infarction) developed in collaboration with the American College of Emergency Physicians, the Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions, and the Society of Thoracic Surgeons endorsed bythe American Association of Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Rehabilitation and the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine. J Am Coll Cardiol. 2007;50(7):e1-e157.
Antman EM, Hand M, Armstrong PW, Bates ER, Green LA, Halasyamani LK, et al. 2007 Focused Update of the ACC/AHA 2004 Guidelines for the Management of Patients with ST-Elevation Myocardial Infarction: a report of the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Task Force on Practice Guidelines: developed in collaboration with the Canadian Cardiovascular Society endorsed by the American Academy of Family Physicians: 2007 Writing Group to Review New Evidence and Update the ACC/AHA 2004 Guidelines for the Management of Patients With ST-Elevation Myocardial Infarction, writing on behalf of the 2004 Writing Committee. Circulation. 2008;117(20:296-329.
Reviewed By: Michael A. Chen, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Division of Cardiology, Harborview Medical Center, University of Washington Medical School, Seattle, Washington. Also reviewed by David Zieve, MD, MHA, Medical Director, A.D.A.M., Inc.


The “presidi” translates as “garrisons” (from the French word, “to equip”), as protectors of traditional food production practices
Monday, March 23, 2009
The “presidi” translates as “garrisons” (from the French word, “to equip”), as protectors of traditional food production practices
This past year, I have had rewarding opportunities to observe traditional food cultures in varied regions of the world. These are:
Athabascan Indian in the interior of Alaska (the traditional Tanana Chiefs Conference tribal lands) in July, 2008 (for more, read below);
Swahili coastal tribes in the area of Munje village (population about 300), near Msambweni, close to the Tanzania border in December, 2008-January, 2009 (for more, read below); and,Laikipia region of Kenya (January, 2009), a German canton of Switzerland (March, 2009), and the Piemonte-Toscana region of northern/central Italy (images only, February-March, 2009).
In Fort Yukon, Alaska, salmon is a mainstay of the diet. Yet, among the Athabascan Indians, threats to subsistence foods and stresses on household economics abound. In particular, high prices for external energy sources (as of July, 2008, almost $8 for a gallon of gasoline and $6.50 for a gallon of diesel, which is essential for home heating), as well as low Chinook salmon runs for information click here, and moose numbers.
Additional resource management issues pose threats to sustaining village life – for example, stream bank erosion along the Yukon River, as well as uneven management in the Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge. People are worried about ever-rising prices for fuels and store-bought staples, and fewer and fewer sources of wage income. The result? Villagers are moving out from outlying areas into “hub” communities like Fort Yukon -- or another example, Bethel in Southwest Alaska – even when offered additional subsidies, such as for home heating. But, in reality, “hubs” often offer neither much employment nor relief from high prices.
In Munje village in Kenya, the Digo, a Bantu-speaking, mostly Islamic tribe in the southern coastal area of Kenya, enjoy the possibilities of a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, and fish/oils.
Breakfast in the village typically consists of mandazi (a fried bread similar to a doughnut), and tea with sugar. Lunch and dinner is typically ugali and samaki (fish), maybe with some dried cassava or chickpeas.
On individual shambas (small farms), tomatoes, cassava, maize, cowpeas, bananas, mangos, and coconut are typically grown. Ugali is consumed every day, as are cassava, beans, oil, fish -- and rice, coconut, and chicken, depending on availability.
Even with their own crops, villagers today want very much to enter the market economy and will sell products from their shambas to buy staples and the flour needed to make mandazis, which they in turn sell. Sales of mandazis (and mango and coconut, to a lesser extent) bring in some cash for villagers.
A treasured food is, in fact, the coconut. This set of pictures show how coconut is used in the village. True, coconut oil now is reserved only for frying mandazi. But it also is used as a hair conditioner, and the coconut meat is eaten between meals. I noted also that dental hygiene and health were good in the village. Perhaps the coconut and fish oils influence this (as per the work of Dr. Weston A. Price).
Photos L-R: Using a traditional conical basket (kikatu), coconut milk is pressed from the grated meat; Straining coconut milk from the grated meat, which is then heated to make oil; Common breakfast food (and the main source of cash income), the mandazi, is still cooked in coconut oil
Note: All photos were taken by G. Berardi
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Despite maize in the fields, it is widely known that farmers are hoarding stocks in many districts. Farmers are refusing the NCPB/government price of Sh1,950 per 90-kg bag. They are waiting to be offered at least the same amount of money as that which was being assigned to imports (Bii, 2009b). “The country will continue to experience food shortages unless the Government addresses the high cost of farm inputs to motivate farmers to increase production,” said Mr. Jonathan Bii of Uasin Gish (Bartoo & Lucheli, 2009; Bii, 2009a, 2009b; Bungee, 2009).
Pride and politics, racism and corruption are to blame for food deficits (Kihara & Marete, 2009; KNA, 2009; Muluka, 2009; Siele, 2009). Clearly, what are needed in Kenya are food system planning, disaster management planning, and protection and development of agricultural and rural economies.
Click here for the full text.
Photos taken by G. Berardi
Cabbage, an imported food (originally), and susceptible to much pest damage.
Camps still remain for Kenya’s Internally Displaced Persons resulting from post-election violence forced migrations. Food security is poor.
Lack of sustained recent short rains have resulted in failed maize harvests.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Today I went to a lunch time discussion of sustainability. This concept promoted development with an equitable eye to the triple bottom line - financial, social, and ecological costs. We discussed the how it seemed relatively easier to discuss the connections between financial and ecological costs, than between social costs and other costs. Sustainable development often comes down to "green" designs that consider environmental impacts or critiques of the capitalist model of financing.
As I thought about sustainable development, or sustainable community management if you are a bit queasy with the feasibility of continuous expansion, I considered its corollaries in the field of disaster risk reduction. It struck me again that it is somewhat easier to focus on some components of the triple bottom line in relation to disasters.
The vulnerability approach to disasters has rightly brought into focus the fact that not all people are equally exposed to or impacted by disasters. Rather, it is often the poor or socially marginalized most at risk and least able to recover. This approach certainly brings into focus the social aspects of disasters.
The disaster trap theory, likewise, brings into focus the financial bottom line. This perspective is most often discussed in international development and disaster reduction circles. It argues that disasters destroy development gains and cause communities to de-develop unless both disaster reduction and development occur in tandem. Building a cheaper, non-earthquake resistant school in an earthquake zone, may make short-term financial sense. However,over the long term, this approach is likely to result in loss of physical infrastructure, human life, and learning opportunities when an earthquake does occur.
What seems least developed to me, though I would enjoy being rebutted, is the ecological bottom line of disasters. Perhaps it is an oxymoron to discuss the ecological costs of disasters, given that many disasters are triggered natural ecological processes like cyclones, forest fires, and floods. It might also be an oxymoron simply because a natural hazard disaster is really looking at an ecological event from an almost exclusively human perspective. Its not a disaster if it doesn't destroy human lives and human infrastructure. But, the lunch-time discussion made me wonder if there wasn't something of an ecological bottom line to disasters in there somewhere. Perhaps it is in the difference between an ecological process heavily or lightly impacted by human ecological modification. Is a forest fire in a heavily managed forest different from that in an unmanaged forest? Certainly logging can heighten the impacts of heavy rains by inducing landslides, resulting in a landscape heavily rather than lightly impacted by the rains. Similar processes might also be true in the case of heavily managed floodplains. Flooding is concentrated and increased in areas outside of levee systems. What does that mean for the ecology of these locations? Does a marsh manage just as well in low as high flooding? My guess would be no.
And of course, there is the big, looming disaster of climate change. This is a human-induced change that may prove quite disasterous to many an ecological system, everything from our pine forests here, to arctic wildlife, and tropical coral reefs.
Perhaps, we disaster researchers, need to also consider a triple bottom line when making arguments for the benefits of disaster risk reduction.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
This past week the Northwest experienced a severe barrage of weather systems back to back. Everyone seemed to be affected. Folks were re-routed on detours, got soaked, slipped on ice, or had to spend money to stay a little warmer. In Whatcom and Skagit Counties, there are hundreds to thousands of people currently in the process of recovering and cleaning-up after the floods. These people live in the rural areas throughout the county, with fewer people knowing about their devastation and having greater vulnerability to flood hazards.
Luckily, there are local agencies and non-profits who are ready at a moment’s call to help anyone in need. The primary organization that came to the aid of the flood victims was the American Red Cross.
The last week I began interning and volunteering with one of these non-profits, the Mt. Baker American Red Cross (ARC) Chapter. While I am still in the process of getting screened and officially trained, I received first-hand experience and saw how important this organization is to the community.
With the flood waters rising throughout the week, people were flooded out of their homes and rescued from the overflowing rivers and creeks. As the needs for help increased, hundreds of ARC volunteers were called to service. Throughout the floods there have been several shelters opened to accommodate the needs of these flood victims. On Saturday I was asked to help staff one of these shelters overnight in Ferndale.
While I talked with parents and children, I became more aware of the stark reality of how these people have to recover from having all their possessions covered in sewage and mud and damaged by flood waters. In the meantime, these flood victims have all their privacy exposed to others in a public shelter, while they work to find stability in the middle of all the traumas of the events. As I sat talking and playing with the children, another thought struck me. Children are young and resilient, but it must be very difficult when they connect with a volunteer and then lose that connection soon after. Sharing a shelter with the folks over the weekend showed a higher degree of reality and humanity to the situation than the news coverage ever could.
I posted this bit about my volunteer experience because it made me realize something about my education and degree track in disaster reduction and emergency planning. We look at ways to create a more sustainable community, and we need to remember that community service is an important part of creating this ideal. Underlying sustainable development is the triple bottom line (social, economy, and environment). Volunteers and non-profits are a major part of this social line of sustainability. Organizations like the American Red Cross only exist because of volunteers. So embrace President-elect Obama’s call for a culture of civil service this coming week and make a commitment to the organization of your choice with your actions or even your pocketbook. Know that sustainable development cannot exist with out social responsibility.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Its been two days now that schools have been closed in Whatcom County, not for snow, but for rain and flooding. This unusual event coincides with record flooding throughout Western Washington, just a year after record flooding closed I5 for three days and Lewis County businesses experienced what they then called an unprecedented 500 year flood. I guess not.
There are many strange things about flood risk notation, and this idea that a 500 year flood often trips people up. They often believe a flood of that size will happen only once in 500 years. On a probabilistic level, this is inaccurate. A 500 year flood simply has a .2% probability of happening each year. A more useful analogy might be to tell people they are rolling a 500 sided die every year and hoping that it doesn’t come up with a 1. Next year they’ll be forced to roll again.
But, this focus on misunderstandings of probability often hides an even larger societal misunderstanding . Flood risk changes when we change the environment in which it occurs. If a flood map tells you that you are not in the flood plain, better check the date of the map. Most maps are utterly out of date and many vastly underestimate present flood risk. There are several reasons this happens. Urban development, especially development with a lot of parking lots and buildings that don’t let water seep into the ground, will cause rainwater to move quickly into rivers rather than seep into the ground and slowly release. Developers might complain that they are required to create runoff catchment wetlands when they do build. They do, but these requirements may very well be based upon outdated data on flood risk. Thus, each new development never fully compensates for its runoff, a small problem for each site but a mammoth problem when compounded downstream.
Deforesting can have the same effect, with the added potential for house-crushing and river-clogging mudslides. Timber harvesting is certainly an important industry in our neck of the woods. Not only is commercial logging an important source of jobs for many rural and small towns, logging on state Department of Natural Resource land is the major source of funding for K-12 education. Yet, commercial logging, like other industries, suffers from a problem of cost externalization. When massive mudslides occurred during last year’s storm, Weyerhaeuser complained that it wasn’t it’s logging practices, but the fact that it was an unprecedented, out of the blue, 500 year storm that caused it. While it is doubtful the slides would have occurred uncut land, that isn’t the only fallacy. When the slide did occur, the costs of repairing roads, treatment plants, and bridges went to the county and often was passed on to the nation’s tax payers through state and federal recovery grants. Thus, what should have been paid by Weyerhaeuser, 500 year probability or not, was paid by someone else.
Finally, there is local government. Various folks within local governments set regulations for zoning, deciding what will be built and where. Here is the real crux of the problem. Local government also gets an increase in revenue in the form of property, sales, and business income taxes. Suppress the updating of flood plain maps, and you get a short term profit and often, a steady supply of happy voters. You might think these local governments will have to pay when the next big flood comes, but often that can be avoided. Certainly, they must comply with federal regulations on flood plain management to be part of the National Flood Insurance program, but that plan has significant leeway and little monitoring. Like the commercial logging, disaster-stricken local governments can often push the recovery costs off to individual homeowners through the FEMA homeowner’s assistance program, and off to state and federal agencies by receiving disaster recovery and community development grants and loans. Certainly, some communities are so regularly devastated, and are so few resources, that disasters simply knock them down before they can given stand up again. But others have found loopholes and can profit by continuing to use old food maps and failing to aggressively control flood plain development.
What is it going to take to really change this system and make it unprofitable to profit from bad land use management?
Here’s a good in-depth article on last year’s landslides in Lewis County. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008048848_logging13m.html
An interesting article on the failure of best management practices in development catchment basins can be found here: Hur, J. et al (2008) Does current management of storm water runoff adequately protect water resources in developing catchments? Journal of Soil and Water Conservation, 63 (2) pp. 77-90.
Monday, December 29, 2008
It’s difficult to imagine a more colorful book, celebrating locally-grown and –marketed foods, than David Westerlund’s Simone Goes to the Market: A Children’s Book of Colors Connecting Face and Food. This book is aimed at families and the foods they eat. Who doesn’t want to know where their food is coming from – the terroir, the kind of microclimate it’s produced in, as well as who’s selling it? Gretchen sells her pole beans (purple), Maria her Serrano peppers (green), Dana and Matt sell their freshly-roasted coffee (black), Katie her carrots (orange), a blue poem from Matthew, brown potatoes from Roslyn, yellow patty pan squash from Jed, red tomatoes (soft and ripe) from Diana, and golden honey from Bill (and his bees). This is a book perfect for children of any age who want to connect to and with the food systems that sustain community. Order from firstname.lastname@example.org.


The Brazilian Supreme Court's recognition of same-sex unions in early May marks the latest victory for gay rights in Latin America. The Court's ruling grants equal legal rights to same-sex civil unions as those enjoyed by married heterosexuals, including retirement benefits, joint tax declarations, inheritance rights, and child adoption.
An Unlikely Victory
As the world's largest Roman Catholic country, Brazil was an unlikely venue for such a promising gay rights victory. The Roman Catholic Church has actively fought proposals for same-sex unions in Brazil, arguing that the Brazilian Constitution defines a "family entity" as "a stable union between a man and a woman."2 The Catholic Church responded to the recent ruling with outrage. As Archbishop Anuar Battisti put it, the Supreme Court's decision marked a "frontal assault" on the sanctity of the family.3
The Catholic Church is losing its power in Brazil, which helped pave the way for the Supreme Court's recent decision in favor of homosexuals. Nevertheless, homophobia retains a tenacious grip on Brazilian society. Despite the fact that the nation boasts the world's largest gay pride parade, the LGBT movement has been unable to achieve fundamental progress and quell discrimination at a societal level. For instance, Marcelo Cerqueira, the head of the Gay Group of Bahia, claims the country is "number one when it comes to assassination, discrimination and violence against homosexuals."4 Additionally, in a disconcerting report, the Gay Group of Bahia found that 260 Brazilian gay people were murdered in 2010, exemplifying the level of hostility towards homosexuals.5 Because of this discriminating environment, gay rights activists traditionally have had little success in Brazil. Most notably, Congress disregarded proposals for gay rights legislation for nearly ten years.
The Supreme Court’s recent ruling was therefore a major turning point after a history of protracted, unsuccessful struggles. The judicial decision was made in response to two lawsuits, one of which was filed by Rio de Janeiro Governor Sérgio Cabral and the other by the Office of the Attorney General. While Congress repeatedly ignored requests for equal rights for gay Brazilian citizens, the Supreme Court argued that "Those who opt for a homosexual union cannot be treated less than equally as citizens."6 In this way, by appealing to the judicial system, the LGBT movement was able to achieve success despite deep-seated hostility throughout Brazilian society and in other branches of the government.
Latin America's Gay Rights Revolution
Professor Omar Encarnación of Bard College calls the recent string of gay rights legislation in Latin America a "gay rights revolution."7 Brazil's ruling came on the heels of several other noteworthy gay rights victories in Latin America, such as Uruguay’s legalization of same-sex civil unions in 2007. Shortly thereafter, in 2010, Argentina became the first Latin American nation and eighth nation worldwide to legalize gay marriage. Other landmark decisions in the past few years include Uruguay's decision to allow all men and women, regardless of sexual orientation, to serve in the military and Mexico City's legalization of same-sex civil unions.
The recent surge in gay rights victories throughout Latin America is altogether stunning, considering the region has generally been regarded as very homophobic. The Catholic Church has traditionally been a formidable enemy to gay rights movements in the region, but the secularization of much of Latin America has led to the impressive expansion of opportunities for gay rights movements.
Yet this success of gay rights movements throughout Latin America cannot be attributed solely to the declining importance of religion in the region. It is equally important, if not more so, to recognize the vital roles played by gay activist groups and the dynamic strategies these groups employ. For instance, gay rights groups in Brazil were able to reverse legislation banning gays from the workplace by forming partnerships with progressive businesses. In recent years, the use of social media has provided much of the gay movement's momentum by enhancing activist groups' ability to communicate and spread information. For instance, as Javier Corrales notes, by simply posting a video of a hate crime in San Juan or of a gay wedding in Argentina on YouTube, gay rights groups have been able to reach thousands of people and garner support.8 These innovative strategies have brought success despite a notably hostile environment towards homosexuals.
Through a comparison with the United States, we can see how remarkable the success of gay rights in Latin America has been. Latin America is marked by a much more homophobic environment than the US, according to a survey conducted by Mitchell Seligson and Daniel Moreno Morales.9 However, although the US has lower levels of societal discrimination towards gays, it is hard to imagine that the United States would completely legalize same-sex civil unions or gay marriage on a national scale. The fact that this legalization occurred in several Latin American nations, despite the formidable opposition there, makes these recent rulings even more significant.
Furthermore, the recent victories for gay rights exemplify the considerable progress toward the region's consolidation of democracy. The three Latin American countries that have now legalized same-sex unions—Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay—were each ruled by repressive military regimes just over two decades ago. Even Colombia, which is one of the region's worst human rights violators, granted same-sex unions equal rights regarding social security benefits and inheritance rights in 2007. The fact that gay liberation movements have been successful in these unlikely places is a testament to how far these countries have progressed in recent years.
 Marilia Brocchetto and Luciani Gomes. "Same-sex unions recognized by Brazil's high court." 5 May 2011.
Yana Marull. "Brazil top court recognizes same-sex civil unions." American Free Press. 5 May 2011.
 Omar Encarnación. "A Gay Rights Revolution in Latin America." Americas Quarterly. 17 May 2011.
 Javier Corrales. "Latin American Gays: The Post-Left Leftists." Americas Quarterly. 19 March 2010.
 Mitchell A. Seligson and Daniel E. Moreno Morales, "Gay in the Americas," Americas Quarterly, Winter 2010.


By Elliot Mamet
On June 23rd, 1972, President Nixon signed Title IX into law. Nearly 40 years later, the passage of Title IX is viewed as an unequivocal milestone in the struggle to protect, defend and expand civil liberties. As we celebrate Title IX’s 40th birthday, it is worth reflecting on its significance, as well as on the challenges that lie ahead.
Title IX mandates that federally funded institutions may not exclude or discriminate from an educational program or activity on the basis of sex. The law leverages federal funds in order to require equal opportunity for men and women. There are exceptions to Title IX (like sororities or the Boy Scouts), although in general, Title IX has applied quite broadly and unilaterally to different institutions. Through Title IX, the doors have opened a little wider for equal opportunity in the United States.
Title IX shattered the stereotype that women are too “fragile” or “weak” to play sports, but Title IX goes so much further than sports. By prohibiting discrimination based on non-conformity with gender stereotypes, Title IX has been used as an effective tool for defending the civil rights and civil liberties of LGBT students. Additionally, Title IX prohibits discrimination
and harassment based on students’ gender identity, change of sex, and/or transgender status.
Yet even with these successes, enforcing Title IX still has its challenges. One important concern for policymakers is applying Title IX in a way that is conscious of the diversity of gender expression. In a society where gender and sexual orientation mean different things to different people, self-identifying as the normative “male” or “female” can be difficult
. A sound approach to Title IX regulation would prioritize meeting the needs of participants in a particular sport or program. Federally funded institutions should allow students to participate in programs and sports based on the gender with which they identify, in a way that is conscious to individual needs. In this way, programs and activities could act as a safe space where program leaders are more sensitive to the diversity of gender expression.
Looking back at the past 40 years under Title IX, it is clear that Title IX has grown to reflect a fundamental mindset—that human institutions, whether the soccer team or a PhD program—shouldn’t shut out certain categories of people a priori
. If the Declaration of Independence and the Emancipation Proclamation mean anything at all to us today, surely they must be interpreted as another step on our quest to “make declarations of freedom real
,” as Martin Luther King Jr. said. And surely, in its own way, Title IX reflects that quest. It is today, nearly 40 years after Title IX was passed into law, that Title IX’s lessons must be heeded with the utmost resolve.
Elliot Mamet is the summer Colorado College Public Interest Fellow at the ACLU of Colorado. He is an incoming sophomore at Colorado College, a four-year, private liberal arts school, where he is studying political science.


Jonas Salk, with both eloquence and simplicity, once stated that there are two primary approaches to treating ill people. He said that there are therapeutic techniques that directly impact specific symptoms, and there are methods that stimulate the body's own immune and defense system.
Whereas conventional medical treatments today tend to focus on the former goal of treating or controlling symptoms, various natural therapeutics primarily attend to the latter goal of augmenting the person's own inherent defenses. Although the direct treatment of symptoms often has immediate effects, its benefits tend to be short-term. Because such therapeutic interventions do not usually strengthen the person's own defenses, the individual remains prone to recurrence of their problem.
In contrast, therapeutic methods that strengthen a person's immune and defense system has longer term benefit and can prevent recurrence, but the benefit is sometimes achieved more slowly.
These generalizations about therapeutic methods are, however, just that, generalizations. There are plenty of exceptions, but these generalizations create a useful framework from which to evaluate the benefits and limitations of various therapeutic approaches.
Homeopathy and Immune Response
Homeopathy obviously fits into the class of therapeutic methods that augment the body's own defenses. The basis of homeopathy, called the principle of similars, suggests that a microdose of a substance will heal whatever pattern of symptoms this substances causes in large dose. This principle is also observed in the use of vaccinations and allergy treatments, though homeopathic medicines are both considerably smaller and safer in dose and more individualized to the person they are being used to treat.
Although homeopathic medicines are thought to stimulate the body's own defenses, how they do so remains a mystery. One study published in the European Journal of Pharmacology1 showed that a homeopathic medicine, Silicea, stimulated macrophages (macrophages are a part of the body's immune system which engulf bacteria and foreign substances). How or why Silicea was able to have this action or why exceedingly small doses of it are so active is unknown. In the same way that physicians and pharmacologists do not understand how many drugs work, we do not understand how homeopathic medicine actually work.
Homeopathic medicine do not simply stimulate the body's immune system to treat ill people, for they can also calm it when this is necessary for the healing of the individual. An example of this latter effect was observed in a study of the homeopathic treatment of people with rheumatoid arthritis, a condition which is considered an autoimmune illness. People with auto-immune ailments suffer because their body's immune system is over-active and it attacks the person's own cells, not just bacteria, viruses, or foreign substances.
This study on 46 people with rheumatoid arthritis showed that those given an individualized choice of homeopathic medicine got considerably more relief than those given a placebo.2 A total of 82% of those people given a homeopathic medicine experienced relief of pain, while only 21% of those given a placebo got a similar degree of relief.
Homeopathy and Infectious Diseases
Toward the end of Louis Pasteur's life, he had come to realize that germs may not be the cause of disease afterall, but instead are probably the results of disease. In other words, various bacteria and other infective organisms may be present when there is some type of disease, but infection tends to establish itself primarily when a person's own defenses are compromised sufficiently to make him susceptible to the infection.


Racism can be a tough thing to study. In situations where all things appear even, they might not be even at all. For example, in situations where employers are refusing to hire minority candidates, the argument could sometimes be made (although maybe not successfully) that there are extenuating circumstances. A truly successful study of race should be made in a laboratory of sorts. The only difference between two people should be skin color.
Well, thanks to the internet, the great equalizer, we do have such a situation, eBay. Three Yale and Harvard researchers conducted a study called, “Race Effects on Ebay.” The results? Americans are racist.
Even when selling the exact same items, buyers responded more favorably to white people than to black. From Good Technology:
The researchers auctioned off moderately priced baseball cards, which were photographed held in either a dark black hand or a white hand. Though the cards themselves were the same, cards held in a black hand sold for about 20 percent less than cards held in a white hand. What’s more, “the race effect was more pronounced in sales of minority player cards.”
The eBay study mimics a similar one from 2010. While that experiment, from the Centre for Economic Policy Research, focused on iPods sold via general online classified ads, the results were sadly the same: Black sellers received fewer responses and fewer cash offers than white sellers, and the cash offers they did receive were significantly lower. Beyond that, buyers corresponding with black sellers “exhibited lower trust,” according to the researchers. In other words, they were far less likely to accept delivery by mail (44 percent) and far more likely to object to the idea of making a long-distance payment (56 percent).
The 2010 study also found that there were regional discrepancies. The Northeast part of the U.S. was the worst, where black people received 32% fewer offers. The Midwest had a 23% gap and the South, 15%. There was virtually no difference in the West.


Memory loss (amnesia) is unusual forgetfulness. You may not be able to remember new events, recall one or more memories of the past, or both.
Forgetfulness; Amnesia; Impaired memory; Loss of memory; Amnestic syndrome
Normal aging may cause some forgetfullness. It's normal to have some trouble learning new material, or needing more time to remember it.
However, normal aging does NOT lead to dramatic memory loss. Such memory loss is due to other diseases. Sometimes, memory loss may be seen with depression. It can be hard to tell the difference between memory loss and confusion due to depression.
Some types of memory loss may cause you to forget recent or new events, past or remote events, or both. You may forget memories from a single event, or all events.
Memory loss may cause you to have trouble learning new information or forming new memories.
The memory loss may be temporary (transient), or permanent.
Memory loss can be caused by many different things. To determine a cause, your doctor or nurse will ask if the problem came on suddenly or slowly.
Many areas of the brain help you create and retrieve memories. A problem in any of these areas can lead to memory loss.
Causes of memory loss include:
- Alcohol or use of illicit drugs
- Not enough oxygen to the brain (heart stopped, stopped breathing, complications from anesthesia)
- Brain growths (caused by tumors or infection)
- Brain infections such as Lyme disease, syphilis, or HIV/AIDS
- Brain surgery, such as surgery to treat seizure disorders
- Cancer treatments, such as brain radiation, bone marrow transplant, or after chemotherapy
- Certain medications
- Certain types of seizures
- Depression, bipolar disorder, or schizophrenia when symptoms have not been well controlled
- Dissociative disorder (not being able to remember a major, traumatic event; the memory loss may be short-term or long-term)
- Drugs such as barbiturates or benzodiazepines
- Electroconvulsive therapy (especially if it is long-term)
- Encephalitis of any type (infection, autoimmune disease, chemical/drug induced)
- Epilepsy that is not well controlled with medications
- Head trauma or injury
- Heart bypass surgery
- Illness that results in the loss of, or damage to, nerve cells (neurodegenerative illness), such as Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease, or multiple sclerosis
- Long-term alcohol abuse
- Migraine headache
- Mild head injury or concussion
- Nutritional problems (vitamin deficiencies such as low vitamin B12)
- Permanent damage or injuries to the brain
- Transient global amnesia
- Transient ischemic attack (TIA)
A person with memory loss needs a lot of support. It helps to show them familiar objects, music, or photos.
Write down when the person should take any medication or complete any other important tasks. It is important to write it down.
If a person needs help with everyday tasks, or safety or nutrition is a concern, you may want to consider extended care facilities, such as a nursing home.
What to Expect at Your Office Visit
The doctor or nurse will perform a physical exam and ask questions about the person's medical history and symptoms. This will almost always include asking questions of family members and friends. They should come to the appointment.
Medical history questions may include:
- Can the person remember recent events (is there impaired short-term memory)?
- Can the person remember events from further in the past (is there impaired long-term memory)?
- Is there a loss of memory about events that occurred before a specific experience (anterograde amnesia)?
- Is there a loss of memory about events that occurred soon after a specific experience (retrograde amnesia)?
- Is there only a minimal loss of memory?
- Does the person make up stories to cover gaps in memory (confabulation)?
- Is the person suffering from low moods that impair concentration?
- Time pattern
- Has the memory loss been getting worse over years?
- Has the memory loss been developing over weeks or months?
- Is the memory loss present all the time or are there distinct episodes of amnesia?
- If there are amnesia episodes, how long do they last?
- Aggravating or triggering factors
- Has there been a head injury in the recent past?
- Has the person experienced an event that was emotionally traumatic?
- Has there been a surgery or procedure requiring general anesthesia?
- Does the person use alcohol? How much?
- Does the person use illegal/illicit drugs? How much? What type?
- Other symptoms
- What other symptoms does the person have?
- Is the person confused or disoriented?
- Can they independently eat, dress, and perform similar self-care activities?
- Have they had seizures?
Tests that may be done include:
Cognitive therapy, usually through a speech/language therapist, may be helpful for mild to moderate memory loss.
See: Dementia - homecare for information about taking care of a loved one with dementia.
Kirshner HS. Approaches to intellectual and memory impairments. In: Gradley WG, Daroff RB, Fenichel GM, Jankovic J, eds. Neurology in Clinical Practice. 5th ed. Philadelphia, Pa: Butterworth-Heinemann; 2008:chap 6.
Luc Jasmin, MD, PhD, Department of Neurosurgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, and Department of Anatomy at UCSF, San Francisco, CA. Review provided by VeriMed Healthcare Network. Also reviewed by David Zieve, MD, MHA, Medical Director, A.D.A.M., Health Solutions, Ebix, Inc.
The information provided herein should not be used during any medical emergency or for the diagnosis or treatment of any medical condition. A licensed medical professional should be consulted for diagnosis and treatment of any and all medical conditions. Call 911 for all medical emergencies. Links to other sites are provided for information only -- they do not constitute endorsements of those other sites. © 1997-
A.D.A.M., Inc. Any duplication or distribution of the information contained herein is strictly prohibited.


CentOS uses both font systems and they use different folders: http://www.centos.org/docs/5/html/Deployment_Guide-en-US/s1-x-fonts.html
Red Hat Enterprise Linux uses two subsystems to manage and display fonts under X: Fontconfig and xfs.
The newer Fontconfig font subsystem simplifies font management and provides advanced display features, such as anti-aliasing. This system is used automatically for applications programmed using the Qt 3 or GTK+ 2 graphical toolkit.
For compatibility, Red Hat Enterprise Linux includes the original font subsystem, called the core X font subsystem. This system, which is over 15 years old, is based around the X Font Server (xfs).
On CentOS5/Redhat it seems that XFS gets its fonts from the X config file /etc/X11/fs/config which points to /usr/share/X11/fonts, and fontconfig gets its config from /etc/fonts/font.conf which points to /usr/share/fonts. By default neither font system sees the fonts from the other system.
Seems that RH wants to move to fontconfig but still has some things that use XFS. Why they didnt just put all the fonts in 1 folder and pointed everything there so that both font systems had all the same fonts is a mystery.


Ears, Nose, and Throat Surgery
One of the most critical areas on the human body is the Ear, Nose and Throat area, commonly called ENT. Many times, obstructions or complications in this area can affect basic health system functions such as breathing, eating and sleeping.
Various surgeries for the ear, nose, and throat are available to improve health and functionality. Airway reconstruction is an option for patients with breathing difficulties such as constriction and noisy breathing, while vocal cord surgery addresses similar problems with sound and articulation.
In many cases, surgeons operate on delicate structures such as minute blood vessels, which requires a level of precision and expertise that our medical staff are skilled at providing. Common procedures in the ENT area can include:
Head and Neck
To find a surgeon at Trinity visit our Physician Finder.


Mars is a cold desert world. It is half the diameter of Earth and has the same amount of dry land. Like Earth, Mars has seasons, polar ice caps, volcanoes, canyons and weather, but its atmosphere is too thin for liquid water to exist for long on the surface. There are signs of ancient floods on Mars, but evidence for water now exists mainly in icy soil and thin clouds.
Featured Mission: Mars Science Laboratory/Curiosity
Curiosity, a robotic rover about the size of a small SUV, is designed to find whether the Red Planet ever was -- or is still today -- an environment suitable for life. The rover landed on Mars in August 2012.
Read More About Mars


With the hope of encouraging Pennsylvanians to better understand their personal finances, Governor Tom Corbett has declared April to be “Financial Education Month” in the state.
The administration believes a basic financial education is essential to ensuring that Pennsylvanians of all ages are prepared to manage money, credit, investments, and debt.
Pennsylvania Department of Banking is looking to both celebrate and draw attention to public and private education efforts. “One of our goals is to empower people. In the run up to the economic downturn, we saw a lot of very hardworking people make poor decisions with credit cards, mortgage financing, and home purchases,” said Department of Banking spokesperson Ed Novak.
The governor believes in order for Pennsylvanians to fully recover from the economic slide, they need to be responsible for better educating themselves. “It’s clear to us that as a starting point for getting ourselves out of this economic downturn, Pennsylvanians need to increase their financial literacy to help them navigate what is becoming an increasingly complex financial marketplace,” said Novak.


Emacs Lisp uses two kinds of storage for user-created Lisp objects: normal storage and pure storage. Normal storage is where all the new data created during an Emacs session are kept (see Garbage Collection). Pure storage is used for certain data in the preloaded standard Lisp files—data that should never change during actual use of Emacs.
Pure storage is allocated only while temacs is loading the
standard preloaded Lisp libraries. In the file emacs, it is
marked as read-only (on operating systems that permit this), so that
the memory space can be shared by all the Emacs jobs running on the
machine at once. Pure storage is not expandable; a fixed amount is
allocated when Emacs is compiled, and if that is not sufficient for
the preloaded libraries, temacs allocates dynamic memory for
the part that didn't fit. The resulting image will work, but garbage
collection (see Garbage Collection) is disabled in this situation,
causing a memory leak. Such an overflow normally won't happen unless
you try to preload additional libraries or add features to the
standard ones. Emacs will display a warning about the overflow when
it starts. If this happens, you should increase the compilation
SYSTEM_PURESIZE_EXTRA in the file
src/puresize.h and rebuild Emacs.
This function makes a copy in pure storage of object, and returns it. It copies a string by simply making a new string with the same characters, but without text properties, in pure storage. It recursively copies the contents of vectors and cons cells. It does not make copies of other objects such as symbols, but just returns them unchanged. It signals an error if asked to copy markers.
This function is a no-op except while Emacs is being built and dumped; it is usually called only in preloaded Lisp files.
The value of this variable is the number of bytes of pure storage allocated so far. Typically, in a dumped Emacs, this number is very close to the total amount of pure storage available—if it were not, we would preallocate less.
This variable determines whether
defunshould make a copy of the function definition in pure storage. If it is non-
nil, then the function definition is copied into pure storage.
This flag is
twhile loading all of the basic functions for building Emacs initially (allowing those functions to be shareable and non-collectible). Dumping Emacs as an executable always writes
nilin this variable, regardless of the value it actually has before and after dumping.
You should not change this flag in a running Emacs.


35 - The Philosopher's Toolkit: Aristotle's Logical Works
Peter discusses Aristotle’s pioneering work in logic, and looks at related issues like the ten categories and the famous “sea battle” argument for determinism.
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• J. Hintikka, Time and Necessity. Studies in Aristotle's Theory of Modality (Oxford:1973).
• W. Leszl, “Aristotle's Logical Works and His Conception of Logic,” Topoi 23 (2004), 71–100.
• R. Smith, "Logic," in J. Barnes (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle (Cambridge: 1995), 27-65.
• S. Waterlow, Passage and Possibility (Oxford: 1982).
On the "sea battle" problem:
• G.E.M. Anscombe, “Aristotle and the Sea Battle,” in J.M.E. Moravcsik (ed.), Aristotle: a Collection of Critical Essays, (1967), reprinted from Mind 65 (1956).
• D. Frede, “The Sea-Battle Reconsidered: a Defence of the Traditional Interpretation,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 3 (1985).
• J. Hintikka, “The Once and Future Sea Fight: Aristotle’s Discussion of Future Contingents in de Interpretatione 9,” in his Time and Necessity (see above).


Find More Accuracy in the Treatment of Brain Tumor by Stereotactic Radiosurgery
Stereotactic radiotherapy (also called stereotaxy) is a type of minimally invasive surgical intervention. It uses radiation treatment to deliver a large and precise radiation dose to the tumor area in a single session. This type of surgery applies a three-dimensional coordinates system to locate small targets inside the body. With the help of gamma knife, radiation beams are focused at the tumor from various angles for a short period of time. Stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) can be performed by several other machines such as X-Knife, CyberKnife and Clinac. It is used to treat brain tumors and other brain disorders that are difficult to be treated by regular surgery.
This type of surgery works under three main components. The first one is stereotactic planning system; it includes multimodality image matching tools. The stereotactic atlas is a series of cross sections of anatomical structure. In most atlases, the three dimensions are as latero-lateral (x), dorso-ventral (y) and rostro-caudal (z). Another one is a stereotactic device or apparatus which uses a set of three coordinates (x, y and z). And the last one is stereotactic localization and placement procedure. This therapy works in the same way as other forms of radiation treatment. Instead of removing the tumor, stereotactic radiotherapy damages the DNA of tumor cells. In this way malignant and metastatic tumors may shrink more rapidly.
Stereotactic radiosurgery can effectively treat different types of tumors including benign, malignant, primary, metastatic, single and multiple. A study in 2008 by The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center revealed that SRS and Whole brain radiation therapy (WBRT) for the treatment of metastatic brain tumors have more that twice the risk of developing leaning and memory problems than treated with SRS alone.


NOLAN, MATTHEW (1834–1864). Matthew Nolan, Mexican War veteran, Texas Ranger, Nueces County sheriff, and Confederate cavalry officer, was born in 1834 in Providence, Rhode Island. He was the son of Irish immigrants. Some sources claim he was born in New York. His parents died when he and his older sister Mary and younger brother Tom were children, leaving them on their own. Mary married a soldier and enlisted her brothers as buglers in Zachary Taylor's Second Dragoons. She became a laundress so that she could travel with her husband and brothers to Texas on the eve of the Mexican War. They settled in Corpus Christi until Taylor moved his army to the Rio Grande valley at the beginning of the war. By this time Mary was working as a hospital matron. Matthew and Tom Nolan were at the battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma and traveled with the army until the end of the war in 1848 and then returned to Corpus Christi.
In 1850 Nolan joined John S. "Rip" Ford's Texas Ranger unit as a bugler where he distinguished himself in a May 26, 1850, skirmish with Comanche Indians near Fort Merrill. In Ford's memoirs he wrote that Nolan "rushed barefoot through prickly pear to get a shot at the retreating foe." Nolan stayed with Rip Ford and the Texas Rangers during the 1850s and fought minor territorial battles throughout Texas. In 1858 Nolan was elected sheriff of Nueces County, and he named his brother Tom a deputy sheriff.
At the outbreak of the Civil War, Nolan raised a company of volunteers from Corpus Christi and joined the Second Texas Cavalry. He fought along the Mexican border with his former commander Ford. He returned to Corpus Christi to marry Margaret J. McMahon on May 22, 1862. Nolan rejoined his regiment to take part in the January 1, 1863, recapture of Galveston Island. His actions in the battle of Galveston led to his promotion to major.
Later in 1863 Nolan was sent back to a volatile Corpus Christi to help keep the peace in South Texas and monitor the coast. Corpus Christi was equally divided between Northern and Southerner sympathizers. Ford employed Nolan to keep watch on Cecilio Balerio, Union sympathizer and rancher. With Ford's blessing, Nolan was reelected to county sheriff on August 1, 1864. His job was to arrest, "perfidious renegades." One of these "renegades," former sheriff H. W. Barry, was a Mexican War veteran who was providing cotton to Union ships in the Gulf of Mexico. Nolan reported to Ford that he had seen Barry in action. By December 1864 Corpus Christi was suffering the effects of war, and tensions ran high. On the night of December 22, 1864, Nolan and horse trader J. C. McDonald met outside of the Nolan home, and while they talked, two of Barry's stepsons, Frank and Charles Gravis, appeared and started an argument with Nolan. In the commotion that ensued, one of the Gravis brothers shot and fatally wounded Nolan. Other sources claim that Nolan was in the process of arresting McDonald, and the two brothers, intending to kill McDonald for seducing their sister, accidentally shot Nolan instead.
Matthew Nolan is buried next to his brother Tom in the Old Bayview Cemetery in Corpus Christi.
Murphy Givens, "Corpus Christi History: The Nolans arrive in Corpus Christi," Corpus Christi Caller–Times, August 23, 2000 (http://www.caller2.com/2000/august/23/today/murphy_g/2672.html), accessed March 23, 2011.
The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, is the preferred citation for this article.Stephanie P. Niemeyer, "NOLAN, MATTHEW," Handbook of Texas Online (http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fno33), accessed May 22, 2013. Published by the Texas State Historical Association.


scintillation counterArticle Free Pass
scintillation counter, radiation detector that is triggered by a flash of light (or scintillation) produced when ionizing radiation traverses certain solid or liquid substances (phosphors), among which are thallium-activated sodium iodide, zinc sulfide, and organic compounds such as anthracene incorporated into solid plastics or liquid solvents. The light flashes are converted into electric pulses by a photoelectric alloy of cesium and antimony, amplified about a million times by a photomultiplier tube, and finally counted. Sensitive to X rays, gamma rays, and charged particles, scintillation counters permit high-speed counting of particles and measurement of the energy of incident radiation.
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Learning how to read coherently and write effectively teaches you to think critically, increases your vocabulary, and improves your language and research skills. No matter what field you enter, communication and writing skills are important and highly sought after by employers. Maranatha’s English major will expose you to enduring literary works and teach you to write more effectively, whether you write sermons, correspondence, books, magazine articles, or other forms of communication. Because of its emphasis on critical thinking and writing, English is also one of the best ways to prepare for graduate school.
Unlike secular English programs that promote relativistic theory about language, Maranatha’s English major teaches students to “approve things that are excellent” (Phil. 1:10) and to evaluate literature from a moral and biblical perspective. The English major will not only immerse you in the wide world of literature and awaken your cultural awareness but also equip you to discern objective truth and beauty according to God’s standard.
An English minor is also available for those majoring in another field who want to improve their ability to think, read, and write effectively through an acquaintance with excellent literary works.
This is the suggested class list for the English major. You may also look over the details for our English Education major.
|English Composition 1||3||English Composition 2||3|
|Computer Information System Elective||1||Computer Information System Elective||2|
|Christian Life 1||1||New Testament Survey||2|
|Old Testament Survey||2||Minor||3|
|Fundamentals of Public Speaking||2||Music Elective||2|
|The Modern World||3||Science Elective||3|
|British Literature Survey to 1789||3||British Literature Survey: 1789 to Present||3|
|Composition and Literature||3||American Masterpieces||3|
|Elementary Spanish 1||3||Elementary Spanish 2||3|
|Computer Information System Elective||1||Baptist Heritage||3|
|Christian Life 2||1||Bible Elective||2|
|Principles of Bible Study||2||Minor||3|
|Writing Elective||3||Literary Criticism||3|
|Period Literature Elective||3||Computer Information System Elective||1|
|Intermediate Spanish 1||3||Intermediate Spanish 2||3|
|Introduction to Philosophy||2||Bible Doctrine 1||3|
|Christian Life 3||1||Minor||3|
|Minor||3||American Studies Elective||3|
|Period Literature Elective||3||Period Literature Elective||3|
|Writing Elective||3||Writing or Period Literature Elective||3|
|Bible Doctrine 2||3||English Elective||3|
|Humanities Elective||3||Humanities Elective||3|
- Copy editor
- Creative writer
- English as a Second Language teacher
- Linguistic specialist
- Literacy tutor
- Literature specialist
Chelsie (Czichray) Messenger (’08) is enrolled in the Professional Communications program at Clemson University and hopes to someday work in business communications or public relations. She previously taught English at Easley Christian School in Easley, SC. “My academic advisor, Nathan Huffstutler, helped me sort out my future career goals and helped me develop my love of technical writing,” Messenger said.


Dry, flaky skin, also referred to as xerosis, not only looks unattractive, it can be uncomfortably tight and itchy. In severe cases, the skin is so dry that fissures and cracks develop which can become inflamed or infected. The symptoms worsen in the winter months when skin is exposed to dry air and heat, but some people deal with xerosis all year round.
Dry skin is caused by a lack of moisture in the outer layer of the skin. The outermost layer of the skin contains lipids. These lipids consist of ceramides, fatty acids and cholesterol that help to hold in water and prevent dryness. People with dry skin often have lower levels of ceramides. This affects the skin’s ability to retain moisture. When the outer layer of skin is too dry, skin cells aren’t shed properly and the cells build up on the surface of the skin causing it to look rough and flaky.
Some people are prone towards dry skin genetically, but lifestyle habits play a role too. Ceramides that keep skin moist and supple can be stripped away by using harsh cleansers and detergents, washing skin in hot water, exposing skin to chemicals, frequent bathing and exposure to dry air or extremes in temperature. Areas with the fewest oil glands such as the extremities and trunk are most susceptible.
It’s important to reduce your skin’s exposure to elements that damage the lipid layer and remove moisture from the skin. Some people live in homes with a low humidity. Adding a home humidifier to increase moisture in the air is a simple way to sooth dry, irritated skin. Staying covered up outdoors in the winter helps too.
Another problem that aggravates xerosis is excessive exposure to water, especially hot water. Dry skin was less common years ago when people didn’t have the convenience of taking a shower every day. Using harsh cleansers and bath products including soap also worsen the problem by stripping away the lipids and oils that keep skin moist. A better alternative is to use a soap-free cleanser which contains ingredients that remove dirt while helping to repair the protective lipid barrier. Keep baths short, and use warm, not hot, water. A brief shower is a better alternative.
After cleansing, it’s important to moisturize. Pat skin dry and immediately apply a layer of moisturizer while skin is still slightly damp. Choose one that contains ingredients known to be effective for dry skin such as hyaluronic acid, glycerin, alpha-hydroxy acids or urea. Alpha-hydroxy acids have the additional advantage of smoothing the skin surface and improving its texture so it reflects light better, making skin look more youthful. Stay away from lanolin and fragrance which can irritate the skin.
A lotion works well for xerosis on the body, but creams are better for treating facial dryness. Select a product which contains hyaluronic acid and glycerin along with other moisturizers such as shea butter and safflower seed oil to retain moisture. Using a combination of moisturizers also helps to smooth out the appearance of fine lines and makes skin feel supple and silky.
Dry skin is more than just a cosmetic problem. It can make skin feel itchy and uncomfortable. Fortunately, it can be treated by making a few lifestyle changes and using the right skin care products.


Gonorrhoea - the drugs don't work
Published: 23rd Dec 2011 08:41:37
The prospect of untreatable gonorrhoea has provoked alarm around the world, and there are no new classes of antibiotics in development.
In this week's Scrubbing Up column, Peter Greenhouse of the British Association for Sexual Health & HIV (BASHH) argues financial incentives will be needed to seek a new cure.
We're all familiar with stories about hospital-acquired superbugs - MRSA and the like - becoming more difficult to treat, and are fearful whenever an elderly relative needs in-patient care.
But now, with a report from Japan of multidrug-resistant gonorrhoea, and the festive season in full swing, the spectre of an untreatable sexually transmitted infection looms over us - and our teenagers - for the first time in a generation.
Since penicillin was first used to treat gonorrhoea in 1943, the organism has gradually developed novel means of evading control by each new antibiotic.
For treatment to be effective and practical, it must be simple to administer by mouth as a single dose, achieving a high enough concentration of the drug in the body to treat over 95% of infections.
If the efficacy drops below this figure, the treatment has to change.
But over-the-counter medication, widely available in Africa and Asia means people self-medicate often taking the wrong dose at the wrong time, perhaps with alcohol which further reduces the concentration of the drug.
Strains of gonorrhoea which need a higher concentration of a drug to kill them become the dominant ones. This keeps happening until the drug no longer works.
If gonorrhoea becomes untreatable in these countries, the effect on increasing HIV rates could be disastrous - because any sexually transmitted infection which causes inflammation and discharge increases the transmission efficiency of HIV.
On average, transmission is five times more likely to occur if gonorrhoea or chlamydia are present
In the UK, the situation is monitored annually by the Health Protection Agency, providing an essential early warning of drugs which are about to fail, allowing a switch of treatment regimes before they become ineffective.
There's a desperate world-wide demand for new antibiotics, yet the drug companies aren't interested”
Ciprofloxacin - a drug introduced in the mid-1980s after the failure of penicillin - lasted in the UK until 2002: This may have survived longer because of the world-wide drop in gonorrhoea rates following the arrival of HIV, when fear of the new virus meant people practised safe-sex and changed partners less.
But it had already failed in the Far East, some four years previously.
Resistance develops faster in homosexual men, not just because of high rates of partner change.
Most people don't realise that oral sex is an important route of transmission for gonorrhoea, which doesn't usually cause a sore throat.
Gonorrhoea mixes with organisms which live naturally in the rectum and throat, picking up new types of antibiotic resistance from these bugs.
The next drug, cefixime, was introduced around 2003, but lasted only six years in the UK before resistance rose suddenly, hitting 25% among homosexual men.
Now, their only treatment option is an injection (Ceftriaxone) which has recently failed in Japan.
But why isn't there a new drug in development?
Since the mid-1980s and the arrival of HIV, almost all drug company research has focused on antiviral medicines, with no new classes of antibiotics being produced since the 1970s, and none on the horizon.
There's a desperate world-wide demand for new antibiotics, yet the drug companies aren't interested, so how could we motivate them?
Financial reality dictates research policy: Why bother to develop a drug which works in one day or one week, when you could make one - such as an antidepressant, statin or antiviral - which must be taken for months, for years, or for life?
So either the new drug(s) would have to be seriously expensive, precluding their use where they would be most needed, or there would have to be a substantial reward offered, perhaps of a magnitude only affordable by a fund such as the Gates Foundation.
Yet even if novel drugs could be produced, the biology and transmission dynamics of gonorrhoea mean that each new regime would probably fail within five-to-ten years of its introduction, unless we use multi-dose, multi-drug regimes, which will be less practical and more expensive to administer.
Faced with this, what can we do to stay sexually healthy? Stay at home, or take your partner to the New Year party: If that's not possible, use condoms - meticulously, and visit your local clinic - frequently.
Harvard CitationBBC News, 2011. Gonorrhoea - the drugs don't work. [Online] (Updated 23 Dec 2011)
Available at: http://www.ukwirednews.com/news.php/212819-Gonorrhoea-the-drugs-dont-work [Accessed 14th May 2013]
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2011 State Poverty Data Underscore the Need to Protect Programs for Low-Income Women
New data from the Census was just released, and NWLC’s calculations show that many women and their families around the country are still struggling in the wake of the great recession. Though poverty stabilized between 2010 and 2011, protecting low income programs remains absolutely critical for women.
In 2011, more than one in five women was poor in Mississippi (22.3 percent) and Louisiana (20.6 percent). Only one state, New Hampshire, had a poverty rate of less than ten percent for women, at 8.9 percent. In the other 47 states and the District of Columbia, between 10 and 20 percent of women lived below the poverty line.
In 2011, more than half of female-headed families with children were poor in Kentucky (51.3 percent), Louisiana (50.3 percent), Mississippi (51.8 percent), and West Virginia (51.6 percent). In eight more states (AL, AR, ID, MI, NM, OH, SC, and TN), their poverty rates were 45 percent and above.
What about women of color? In eleven states, about a third or more of black women were poor (IA, IN, LA, ME, MI, MN, MS, SD, WI, WV, and, VT). Roughly a third of Hispanic women were poor in six states (IN, MS, NC, PA, RI, TN).
Yet again, these numbers underscore the importance of federal and state programs for low-income people. We’ve talked about this before, but with poverty rates at record highs, programs like Social Security, Medicare, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly food stamps), and the Earned Income Tax Credit, among others, are essential for keeping millions of women and families above the poverty line. We know that women disproportionately rely on these programs, making the message from the state poverty data clear: Programs for low-income families and individuals must be protected. We sincerely hope Congress is taking note.
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The Founding Fathers, as a group, were a band of very wise men. Perhaps the wisest was Benjamin Franklin, a rare combination of genius and solid common sense. He also had that attribute of truly wise people: the sense to hide his intellect to some extent behind a fog of good humor. How fortunate for America that throughout his life he placed his intellect at the service of his country, a country he understood at an early date embraced all of the colonies in British America.
At the end of his life his final great service to America was at the Constitutional Convention where his calming words helped bring disputing factions together to achieve the task of hammering a document together that has endured through the centuries. Many of the delegates noted the importance of Doctor Franklin in the process of bringing the Constitution to life. One of the delegates, Dr. James McHenry of Maryland, a surgeon who had served as an aide to General Washington during the Revolutionary War, recorded that as Franklin was leaving Constitution Hall “A lady asked Dr. (Benjamin) Franklin, “Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” “A republic,” replied the Doctor, “if you can keep it.”
I have always been struck by that answer, because Franklin indicated in it that it is the responsibility of each individual American to keep the nation a Republic, not the responsibility of someone else. Sound advice in 1787, sound advice in 2011.


While Americans and others may celebrate Easter only on a Sunday, that occasion is marked in Spain by an entire week of festivities known as Semana Santa, or Holy Week. The Holy Week festivals that take place all over the country are especially marked in Andalucia. Here, the emphasis is less on doleful repentance and more on celebration of the central figures of Christianity.
The central feature of all those activities are the notable processions that take place in every town in the region. The times, participants and style varies considerably from town to town. But almost all have some common themes.
Typically, traffic is closed off to allow for the floats and the hundreds or sometimes even thousands of people that precede or follow them. The festival is marked by religious figures dressed in Church finery carrying candles and directing the parade. Encircled by them is the main focus of the event: the floats.
Every float is a unique and creative construction that contains a figure of Jesus, Mary or an important saint.
A small statue of Saint Rocco, for example, may be held aloft on one platform, displaying his bare leg. He is regarded as a patron of the sick and the hopeful will often toss money onto the float, seeking relief or improvement.
Other floats will depict scenes from the Bible, early Christian stories, or any of a thousand different images that evoke memories of tales passed down through hundreds of generations. There is the Gitano del Polvorín, the Virgen de la Victoria and the Señor de Sevilla, among many more.
The processions, like the stories, are an ongoing tradition that has its origins in the early Middle Ages. As far back as 1,500 years ago the faithful annually walked with the platforms to celebrate the Annunciation, the Sermon on the Mount, the Rising from the Dead and other well-known scenes from the Bible.
For centuries – during the period Spain was ruled by Islamic Moors, Berbers, Arabs and others from North Africa – the festivals were forbidden. Not surprisingly, therefore, after the Reconquest by Christian kings and the re-establishment of Christianity in the country, the festivals started anew. They have been a regular event in Andalucia, with few interruptions, ever since.
But the natives are not the only participants. Church officials from Rome and elsewhere, along with people from around the world merely wanting to take part, celebrate the Holy Week festivals, too.
The celebrations ramp up a notch the final few days before Easter, making that an especially good time to visit in order to see or participate in Semana Santa. Musicians will play and sing as others carry banners, followed by Nazarenos dressed in tunics and masks.
Whether taking place in Cadiz or Cordoba, or any of the other dozens of cities large and small in Andalucia, the scene is similar. At the end of the procession, which often takes place from dusk to the following dawn, the float enters its individual sponsoring church and a hush comes over the crowd, signifying the culmination of Semana Santa.


Objective: To determine the prevalence of infant exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) among infants attending child health clinics in regional NSW; the association between such exposure and household smoking behaviours; and the factors associated with smoking restrictions in households with infants. Methods: Parents completed a computer-based questionnaire and infant urine samples were collected. Information was obtained regarding the smoking behaviours of household members and samples were analysed for cotinine. Results: Twenty seven per cent of infants had detectable levels of cotinine. Infant ETS exposure was significantly associated with the smoking status of household members, absence of complete smoking bans in smoking households and having more than one smoker in the home. Smoking households were significantly less likely to have a complete smoking ban in place. Conclusions: This study suggests that a significant proportion of the population group most vulnerable to ETS were exposed. Implications: Future efforts to reduce children's exposure to ETS need to target cessation by smoking parents, and smoking bans in households of infants where parents are smokers if desired reductions in childhood ETS-related illness are to be realised.
Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health Vol. 34, Issue 3, p. 269-273


Did You Know... The Facts About HPV?
The Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania
Last Modified: January 13, 2008
- HPV is one of the most common sexually transmitted diseases in the world.
- By age 50, about 80% of women have been infected by some type of HPV.
- Most HPV infections do not cause any symptoms, therefore people are unaware that they are infected.
- 70-80% of HPV infections resolve spontaneously because our immune system fights them off.
- HPV is found in 99% of cervical cancers.
- There are 100 strains of HPV, 12 or more are classified as “high risk” and are linked to cancer.
- Most women with HPV do NOT develop cervical cancer.
- About 20% of women infected with HPV will develop chronic infection, and 2% of these will develop cervical cancer.
- Two strains of HPV are responsible for causing genital warts.
- Sexual intercourse is not necessary for transmission of HPV; skin to skin genital/genital, genital/anal and possibly genital/oral contact is sufficient for transmission.
- Use of condoms can reduce the risk of transmission, but it cannot prevent all transmission because some genital tissue remains uncovered.
- HPV is the cause of many high and moderate grade abnormal pap smears (CIN 2/3) and some low grade lesions (CIN 1).
- HPV is estimated to cause:
- 70% of anal cancers
- 50% of vaginal and vulvar cancers
- 50% of penile cancers
- 20% of head and neck cancers
- Researchers are looking at vaccinating men as well as women.