On Cancer’s Trail
by Florence Williams
Stefanie Raymond-Whish was 9 years old when her grandmother was diagnosed with breast cancer. A traditional Navajo who raised 15 children after her husband died in a car wreck, Raymond-Whish's ama' sa' ni seldom spoke about her illness. Even after her surgery, when she lived with the grandchildren and their mother, she always acted strong around the kids. It became a pattern: When Raymond-Whish was 13, her 38-year-old mother, Nellie Sandoval, was also diagnosed with breast cancer. And Sandoval was equally reserved on the subject. "My mother was really good about not appearing sick in front of us," says Raymond-Whish, now 32. "As a little girl, I knew about cancer, but didn't understand the impact of it at the time."
She understood it better by the time she was in college, in Flagstaff, Ariz., when a new tumor appeared in her mother's other breast. "When my mom had her recurrence, that's when it really hit me ... it was really upsetting. I went home to Farmington for her lumpectomy." Sandoval survived the disease, but not without a long struggle that included chemotherapy, radiation, and finally a double mastectomy. "My breasts were pretty mangled," says Sandoval, now 58. "So I said, 'Just get rid of them.' " Both Sandoval and her daughter have made breast cancer and its impact on Navajos the focus of their lives. Sandoval became an activist and filmmaker, working out of her papaya-colored home in Farmington, N.M. Raymond-Whish has taken her mission a step further: She works as a molecular biologist at the University of Northern Arizona, searching for breast cancer's root causes. "Is there any difference in how breast cancer develops in Native Americans and non-Native Americans?" she asks. One possible - and provocative - answer is emerging from her lab at the university: uranium.
Scientists have long known that uranium damages human cells. But in over six decades of atomic health testing, no one had ever noticed that uranium, at low doses, can act like an estrogen. No one, that is, until recently, when Raymond-Whish and her coworkers observed some unusual effects in lab animals.
Uranium can be found in several of the Jurassic sandstones that lie beneath the Four Corners region like a wrecked layered pastry. The target of frenzied mining throughout the Cold War, uranium ore has been wrenched from the ground, pulverized, milled and tossed in tailings across the Navajo Reservation. Low-level radioactive waste has dissolved into groundwater, escaped onto dust particles and blown off thousands of passing trucks to settle uneasily on surface soils. Over 1,000 abandoned uranium mines pockmark Navajo lands, but only half of them have been reclaimed. Exposure to uranium and its daughter elements has been linked to lung cancer, kidney damage and bone disease in Navajos, and it is the suspected culprit in numerous other medical conditions, from degenerative nerve disease and birth defects to a variety of other cancers.
Raymond-Whish's research lab is tucked inside a neo-Grecian edifice on the Northern Arizona University campus. With her gloved hands in a ventilated booth, the white-coated scientist carefully measures out uranium in solution into small test tubes. The solution will be injected into dishes of cultivated human breast cells, donated by a nun who died of breast cancer in 1979. The MCF-7 cells, as they are known, have been kept alive by the Michigan Cancer Fund through 178 generations of cell division. They are famous among researchers for the properties they exhibit in lab experiments. For example, estrogen causes them to proliferate rapidly - exactly as it does in real-life breast tissue, which is why many women diagnosed with breast cancer have their estrogen-producing ovaries removed. Raymond-Whish wants to see if the cells react in the same way to uranium.
"What I'm really interested in is the development of the mammary gland," says Raymond-Whish, who at this point is just weeks away from finishing her doctoral dissertation. A former teen rodeo star in barrel racing, she once wanted to be a veterinarian. But NAU didn't have a vet school, so she majored in zoology. That eventually landed her in the Discovery Research lab, where she studied the effects of pollution on tadpoles. She found she loved research. "It's like being a detective," she says.
The lab's discoveries have already demolished the conventional wisdom on the properties of uranium. Not only does the heavy metal appear to alter mammary cells at very low doses, but it also seems to interfere with normal hormonal signals. Sometimes the uranium follows the same pathways as estrogen, but sometimes it doesn't, which means it's triggering other endocrine responses as well. "We don't yet know the mechanism of how uranium is affecting these cells," Raymond-Whish says, "but we do know an estrogen receptor is involved. We see it in both animals and MCF-7 cells."
Although the work in Raymond-Whish's lab is considered pure research science, it is impossible to sift it from the real-world context of her family, her culture and her beliefs. Breast, uterine and ovarian cancers have risen steeply in Indian country since the advent of uranium mining. Having watched her grandmother and mother suffer, and now with two kids of her own, 14 and 4 years old, Raymond-Whish can't help but wonder if she's next in line.
But while Raymond-Whish's intimate acquaintance with cancer may harm her credibility as a dispassionate scientist, it may also propel her to help make startling discoveries where no one else has thought to look.
The lab's investigation started several years ago, when Northern Arizona University became part of a team that received a five-year grant from the National Cancer Institute. The project is designed to address community health care, so the local Navajo elders had a few suggestions. They told the scientists they wanted to know more about the health effects of uranium pollution.
"So I started adding uranium to the drinking water of my lab animals," recalls physiologist Cheryl Dyer, who was Raymond-Whish's faculty advisor at the time. "And because I'm an ovarian physiologist, I wanted to see what happened in the ovary." Uranium has long been known to be radioactive and toxic, but no one had ever looked at its effects on follicle counts, or the number of "pre" eggs - eggs in the ovary that have not yet been released for fertilization. Dyer and Raymond-Whish found that the number of pre-eggs declined with low exposure to uranium, and that the mice developed heavier-than-normal uteruses. Normally, a toxic chemical will cause an organ such as a kidney to shrink, not expand. "I said, 'Whoa, what is going on here?' " says Dyer. "I started to wonder if there were other heavy metals that cause these changes, and it turns out cadmium does the same thing. That's when a light bulb went off in my head. Cadmium is an estrogen mimic." All those decades of lab work with atomic elements, and "they had completely missed the boat on estrogen mimicry."
Raymond-Whish was the lead author of a paper showing the unexpected effects of uranium on mouse follicle counts, uterine weights and accelerated puberty. "Drinking Water with Uranium below U.S. EPA Water Standard Causes Estrogen Receptor Dependent Responses in Female Mice" was published in December in Environmental Health Perspectives, a peer-reviewed journal put out by the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences. Raymond-Whish concluded that uranium acts as an estrogen, and she recommended that Navajo girls and women be followed closely for reproductive cancers. In conversation, Dyer makes her opinion clear: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency should lower its drinking water standard for uranium from 30 micrograms per liter to 20 micrograms, the Canadian standard. But Dyer and Raymond-Whish are tip-toeing out on a treacherous scientific limb by suggesting policy changes that are based on controversial data.
Raymond-Whish's work and its results have landed her in the middle of a scientific and regulatory quagmire. It's one thing to regulate a chemical known to be toxic at high doses; it's entirely another to suggest regulating minute levels of a substance that is readily found across a large swath of the American West. Many communities, not just those on the reservation, are affected by uranium. Recent tests in Colorado, for example, revealed that 37 cities and towns in the state depend on drinking water that exceeds federal levels for uranium and its daughter nuclides.
Uranium is not just an emotional issue for Raymond-Whish, but for the tribe as a whole. The legacy of mining the element on the 27,000-square-mile reservation is so deeply and collectively felt that the Navajo Nation banned it altogether in 2005 in the face of globally rising ore prices. During the '40s and the Cold War period, the U.S. government used yellow cake - or milled and concentrated uranium ore - to build nuclear weapons. The government stopped buying the ore for weapons in 1971, but the commercial nuclear energy market picked up the slack until the early 1980s. Only about a quarter of all U.S. uranium miners were Native American - Laguna, Hopi, Zuni and Ute as well as Navajo. But Native Americans have been disproportionately affected: Their tribal lands are still contaminated, and former miners suffer illnesses and deaths for which many families are still awaiting compensation.
Despite the tribal ban, at least five companies are seeking state permits in New Mexico to mine lands just off the reservation, including on tribal allotment land. In Arizona, 700 individual mining claims were filed in 2005. The prehistoric sea and river beds that run underground from Naturita, Colo., to Grants, N.M., and across to Moab, Utah, still hold an estimated 600 million pounds of low-grade ore. But for every 4 pounds of uranium extracted, 996 pounds of slightly radioactive waste is left over, in piles, in pits and eventually in the soil, arroyos and underground aquifers.
Some Western tailings piles, like those outside of Monticello, Utah, or Grand Junction, Colo., have been cleaned up. But those on tribal lands have fallen through yawning bureaucratic and regulatory gaps. It's estimated that up to 25 percent of unregulated water sources on the Navajo Reservation exceed federal drinking water standards for uranium. And many families still haul water from these wells, despite warnings by health providers and advocacy groups.
In her lab experiments, Raymond-Whish applies concentrations of uranium that match those of water supplies in parts of the Four Corners, at or slightly above the current EPA standard. She will treat the mammary cells - which come bathed in a red wash of nutrients that resembles weak Kool-Aid - twice in nine days with differing doses. She will then collect the breast cells, extract their protein signatures, and use a tedious process to examine differences in the number of their estrogen receptors. She will also feed rats different mixtures of uranium-tainted water and examine their mammary glands for altered development. She will compare those results to rats fed a well-known synthetic estrogen, diethylstilbestrol, or DES, and to rats that have drunk plain tap water. She'll look for changes to the mammary glands' terminal end buds, lobules and milk ducts, changes that may make them more prone to breast cancer. The work is controversial, and its implications, both for the science of breast cancer and for the treatment of past and future mining pollution, could be profound.
Like Marie Curie over a century before, Raymond-Whish is both repelled and fascinated by the heavy element's mysterious abilities to alter living cells. In some respects, Raymond-Whish and Curie are not dissimilar. Curie, a Polish Jew working in anti-Semitic France, was the first woman to teach at the Sorbonne. As the first Navajo to be awarded a Ph.D. in the Biology Department of NAU, Raymond-Whish displays a confident ease in navigating a different dominant culture. Like Curie, she is driven by an unrelenting curiosity.
If it was a difficult journey from being Rookie of the Year in barrel racing to creating stunning presentations on heavy metals, Raymond-Whish doesn't show it. She moves through the fluorescent-lit lab in a quiet, deliberate fashion, her long, shiny hair neatly in place.
"I like it that you're working on something no one knows the answers to and you're finding the answers," says Raymond-Whish. She grew up in Colorado and New Mexico with her siblings, stepfather and mother, who was a high school guidance counselor before becoming a breast-cancer activist. Forty-four percent of Navajos do not graduate from high school, but Raymond-Whish's mother made sure that she did. "Everybody's saying it's a big deal for me to get a Ph.D. For me, nothing less was expected than, 'You're going to college.' "
The lab work is routine - even tedious - but it's also demanding and consuming. She is tired. With her oral defense looming before a committee of distinguished faculty, she doesn't slow down. In the mornings, she drops her two kids at school. Her husband, Bryan, a Wichita Indian, works nearby in the university's admissions office. She shuttles from the tissue culture room down a long linoleum-floored corridor to the animal histology lab with its wide-screened computer that magnifies mouse ovary sections 40 times over. Scrolling across the screen to count the follicles is her least favorite job. "I get motion sick," she says. The ovaries dominate the screen like giant pink potato chips, lightly salted.
The science of endocrine disruptors, which studies chemicals that mimic hormones, is a little over 10 years old and still rife with skeptics. It has only been in recent years that very low doses of chemicals - in the parts-per-billion range - have been measurable. (A part per billion is the equivalent of one kernel of corn in a corn-filled silo 45 feet tall.) But natural hormones do their work at these very low levels in the human body. One theory holds that certain environmental chemicals, both natural and man-made, can bind to and deceive the hormone receptors.
These receptors are the signal towers that trigger - or prevent - cellular responses that govern everything from metabolism to sex. Artificial chemicals scramble the signals. They appear to be interfering with normal cellular communication and altering how and when the cells, glands and organs develop. Endocrine disruptors have been implicated in obesity, infertility and the timing of puberty as well as in cancer. When many older women stopped taking synthetic estrogen a few years ago, breast cancer rates in this country dropped for the first time in 40 years. DES, the control substance used by Raymond-Whish, was given to pregnant women to prevent miscarriages up until 1971. Their daughters, who were exposed to it in the womb, have been stricken with unusual reproductive cancers, and recent studies have shown an increased risk of breast cancer as well.
Typical carcinogens cause a cell's DNA to mutate, eventually leading to cancer. Radiation causes the fragile chains of DNA to break, also leading to errors and mutations. Scientists know a lot about these two types of cancer-causing agents. But endocrine disruption is far more mysterious.
Which is why scientists like Raymond-Whish find themselves at a unique moment in science, just as the traditional models of understanding disease are shifting. The field of breast cancer research in particular is driving the debate. Chemicals such as atrazine and DDT (an herbicide and a pesticide, respectively), plastics - such as the bisphenol A compound found in Nalgene that was banned from baby bottles this spring in Canada - and now uranium, are challenging and confounding scientists seeking to understand the actions of chemicals in the human body.
In the dynamic field of environmental health, toxicologists - who study traditional dose-response curves of carcinogens - and endocrinologists - who study extremely low levels of chemicals that do not always follow expected linear curves - frequently disagree. Because it is not yet known exactly how chemicals like uranium act upon cells, some scientists flatly dispute Raymond-Whish's findings. "Uranium is not plausibly linked as an endocrine disruptor," says toxicologist Margaret Ruttenber, director of the environmental health studies program of the Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment. "There is an absence of a known mechanism."
Louise Canfield, director of the Native American Cancer Research Partnership at the University of Arizona, says: "My personal opinion is that obesity and other lifestyle factors are key risks (for breast cancer), along with access to care. Uranium in drinking water is a health hazard for sure, but I'm not sure it's a primary cause of cancer."
But others consider the work groundbreaking. "This is a science of subtlety," explains Andrea Gore, a neuroendocrinologist at the University of Texas, Austin, and former advisor to the National Science Foundation. "(Dyer's and Raymond-Whish's) work is consistent with other good labs. People criticize the field of endocrine disruption because we don't always understand the mechanisms, but the effects are still real. This is why animal studies are so important. The responses we see in lab animals can happen in humans, because we share the exact same hormones. The estrogen receptor is similar."
Still, more evidence is needed before scientists concede a link between uranium and breast cancer in humans. "You can make a very strong case with animal studies, but it will never be definitive," says cancer expert Joaquin Espinosa, professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder. "You hope that nature would have done the experiment for you out there at some point. You need to show that real people are affected."
But epidemiological data on the reservation is hard to come by. For one thing, it's difficult to sort out reliable cancer statistics and their changes over time. Some Navajo elders consult only medicine men, so some cancers go unreported. Cancer itself is translated in Navajo as Lood doo nadziihii, "the sore that does not heal." Some patients do not seek treatment, nor do they even speak of the disease for fear of wishing it upon their families, according to Fran Robinson, a nurse oncologist at San Juan Regional Medical Center in Farmington. Until recently, the Indian Health Services kept haphazard records in which diagnoses went unconfirmed and doctors came and went. For a variety of reasons, including instances of abuse of trust by researchers, the Navajo Nation guards its own data as closely as any member of the former Soviet bloc.
The New Mexico State Tumor Registry keeps statistics on cancers by county, including those on the New Mexico portion of the reservation, which is also where many uranium mines were located. In her published paper, Raymond-Whish cites registry data from the late 1970s showing a 17-fold increase in childhood reproductive cancers there compared to the U.S. as a whole. These are extremely rare cancers that are related to hormone systems. Another study looking at registry data from 1970-1982 showed a 2.5-fold increase in these cancers among all Native Americans in New Mexico. (Although these statistics are not broken down by tribe, most of the Native Americans in the state are Navajo.) A 1981 paper showed a possible link between incidents of birth defects in families and the proximity of those families to uranium mine tailings. The sample sizes of the first two studies were too small to draw solid conclusions, and the birth defects study was flawed, cautions Charles Wiggins, director of the Tumor Registry. He plans to re-examine childhood cancer statistics this fall, using new data gathered since 1982.
Overall, Native Americans in New Mexico actually suffer less cancer than the rest of the country, including about half the rate of breast cancer. But even as breast cancer rates in the U.S. have leveled or dropped slightly in recent years, they continue to grow among Native Americans, and the rate has increased more steeply over the past three decades. Breast cancer is the number-two killer (after heart disease) of Navajo women and the most common cancer found in Navajos. (In the U.S. as a whole, lung cancer is the most common cancer.) Navajos with cancer also suffer higher mortality rates due to poor access to medical care. One study found that between one-third and one-fifth of Navajo breast cancer patients receive substandard care. Relatively more young Navajo women get breast cancer, although much of this can be explained by demographics: Navajos have a younger population than other groups. To the doctors working on the reservation, the anecdotal evidence is disturbing. "When we see women in their 30s with breast cancer, it really knocks everyone for a loop," says physician Tom Drouhard, who has been practicing in Tuba City, Ariz., for 30 years. "Our ladies come in with later stages and higher death rates. It's hard to say what the trends are. All of these tumors are multi-factorial, and uranium could be another thing thrown at it. We are very paranoid about the situation with uranium. We had uncovered tailings five miles from Tuba City for 20 years. It's a reasonable concern."
Two other hormonally active cancers, uterine and ovarian cancers, have doubled or tripled in New Mexico Indians since 1970 while remaining essentially the same for Anglos and Hispanics. But although lung cancer in the Navajo population has been authoritatively linked to uranium exposure, it's harder to make the case for other cancers.
"It's a tough nut to crack," says Wiggins. "The rise in breast cancer everywhere almost certainly has to do with hormones more than anything else. Is something going on with hormones and hormone receptors? Our data is not going to make or break any one hypothesis, because there are a zillion factors going up or down. But you have to take seriously any proposition anyone comes out with, because we just don't have answers yet."
It's difficult to trace a disease to an environmental exposure that may have occurred years earlier. And so far, cancer cases have not been mapped in concert with drinking water sources. "Is there more breast and reproductive cancer here?" asks Dyer. "Yes, but you can't localize it geographically. It would be nice to establish a connection between where people are getting sick and where they drink their water. It's hard to get the data. It's frustrating."
One major effort is currently under way to do just that, but the sickness in question is kidney disease, not cancer. This five-year, $2.5 million study, a collaboration between the University of New Mexico Community Environmental Health Program, the Eastern Navajo Health Board and the Dine Network for Environmental Health, is being funded by U.S. Health and Human Services. The team is compiling illness data from 1,300 Navajos, backed up by urine and blood samples, and then overlaying the results on a map of 160 drinking wells that have been studied for uranium, arsenic and other contaminants. Preliminary data from 550 residents and 100 wells have already shown that living within .8 kilometer of an abandoned mine is a significant predictor of kidney disease and diabetes. Although the science linking uranium with kidney disease is solid, it's never before been demonstrated on a real-life map showing proximity to mines, says Chris Shuey, an environmental scientist at the Southwest Research and Information Center. Once the kidney data are in, the researchers might look at cancer next, he says.
Of course, Navajos are not the only population exposed to uranium. What about breast cancer rates in other areas with better data?
Susan Pinney is an epidemiologist at the University of Cincinnati. She and her colleagues looked at the population surrounding a nuclear processing facility in Fernald, Ohio, which operated between 1952 and 1989. The facility, which made fuel rods for nuclear power plants, was the site of numerous accidental releases of uranium into the surrounding air and water. As a result of a $73 million class action lawsuit in 1990 against National Lead of Ohio and the U.S. Department of Energy, the Fernald Medical Monitoring Project has accumulated 17 years worth of data on illnesses and exposures. Pinney examined the medical records of 8,770 people, including nearly 5,000 women, for a variety of cancers, and was able to model the exposure level of each individual. Her work is still being prepared for publication, and she declined to discuss it. However, a presentation of her preliminary, statistically significant findings last November to the annual conference of the Breast Cancer and the Environment Research Centers is now available on-line. Its provocative conclusion: "For women living within five miles of a uranium processing plant, degree of exposure to uranium particulates was related to risk of incident breast cancer."
A few months ago, Raymond-Whish held a traditional Kinaalda ceremony for her daughter, Darby, to mark her passage into puberty. One of the most important Navajo rituals, it celebrates fertility, the natural order and harmony with the earth through song and prayer. Raymond-Whish's mother was there along with dozens of other relatives, and Dyer from the biology department at NAU also attended. For Raymond-Whish, it was a happy, soulful event, but shadowed by the uncomfortable realities of her career in cancer research. From now until late middle age, Darby will produce the large pulses of estrogen that have been linked to breast and other cancers in so many women. And natural harmony, as her mother knows, is not what it used to be, especially now that pollutants are acting like even more estrogen in our bodies. Raymond-Whish can only hope that Darby's cells have the normal number of receptors, and that her genes and her environment haven't somehow conspired to reprogram her development.
"What does artificial estrogen do to the breast?" she asks. "It depends on the time of exposure. If you look at cells of a younger individual who's not yet through puberty, and you expose them to uranium, then that could promote earlier onset of puberty, earlier breast budding. And if they're exposed in the womb, you could be changing the way the receptors are expressed through life."
In breast cancer research in general, there is a fundamental shift from large epidemiological studies that look at women's current lifestyles and exposures to an examination of what the women were exposed to as children. "Most epidemiology starts with the moment a tumor is diagnosed," said Irma Russo, a molecular biologist at the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia. "We need to look at when normal cells may have transformed many years earlier."
Suzanne Fenton, a research biologist at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, agrees. "We think one of the main drivers of breast cancer is what changes occurred in very early life to alter breast development. It's a fairly radical re-thinking."
Among other experiments, Raymond-Whish is exposing pregnant rats to uranium in order to track what happens in their offspring. When she tried this earlier with mice, the female pups exposed in the womb entered puberty approximately two days earlier, just as they did when exposed to DES. It's a subtle difference, but when combined with other real-life exposures, it may add up.
Explains Fenton: "It's important to remember that breast cancer risk is likely determined by a number of compounds interweaving with genetic factors and not just any one exposure."
Certainly, lifestyles on the reservation have changed in many ways over the past 50 years. "Once upon a time there was no diabetes here, no diverticulitis, no colon cancer," says physician Drouhard. "We are now exposed to the same things you are: plastics, fast food, obesity. Now everybody I know eats at Kentucky Fried Chicken." One way to learn more is by working with all those nose-twitching rodents in the lab. In the coming months, Raymond-Whish will repeat her experiments, prepare to publish again, and spend more time staring at the nauseating giant ovaries on the computer screen. The rats are euthanized before they actually get sick. Still, she says, they do have to offer up their organs to science. It's not easy for her to kill the animals. "Culturally, it's an issue," she says. "But I'm searching for something that's going to help somebody or even lots of people. I always say, 'Thank you for your life.' "
Florence Williams is a 2007-2008 Scripps Fellow at the
University of Colorado, where she is researching endocrine
disruption and cancer. A former HCN staffer, she currently serves
on the HCN board.
This story was funded by a grant from the McCune Charitable Foundation.
Kathleen Tsosie, who has devoted her life to helping others, now faces the frightening possibility that her breast cancer has returned.
Glenda Rangel and her family grew up drinking from and swimming in water tanks dangerously polluted with uranium.
Nellie Sandoval, the mother of scientist Stefanie Raymond-Whish, has become an outspoken activist as a result of her own struggle with breast cancer.© High Country News


Columbia Disaster: What Happened, What NASA Learned
On Feb. 1, 2003, space shuttle Columbia broke up as it returned to Earth, killing the seven astronauts on board. NASA suspended space shuttle flights for more than two years as it investigated the disaster.
An investigation board determined that a large piece of foam fell from the shuttle's external tank and fatally breached the spacecraft wing. This problem with foam had been known for years, and NASA came under intense scrutiny in Congress and in the media for allowing the situation to continue.
A fatal strike
Columbia, on mission STS-107, left Earth for the last time on Jan. 16, 2003. At the time, the shuttle program was focused on building the International Space Station. However, STS-107 stood apart as it emphasized pure research.
The seven-member crew — Rick Husband, commander; Michael Anderson, payload commander; David Brown, mission specialist; Kalpana Chawla, mission specialist; Laurel Clark, mission specialist; William McCool, pilot; Ilan Ramon, payload specialist from the Israeli Space Agency — spent 24 hours a day doing science experiments in two shifts. They performed around 80 experiments in life sciences, material sciences, fluid physics and other matters.
During the crew's 16 days in space, NASA was investigating a foam strike during launch. About 82 seconds after Columbia left the ground, a piece of foam fell from a "bipod ramp" that was part of a structure that attached the external tank to the shuttle. Video from the launch appeared to show the foam striking Columbia's left wing.
Several people within NASA pushed to get pictures of the breached wing in orbit. The Department of Defense was reportedly prepared to use its orbital spy cameras to get a closer look. However, NASA officials in charge declined the offer, according to the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) and "Comm Check," a book about the disaster.
On Feb. 1, 2003, the shuttle made its usual landing approach to the Kennedy Space Center. Just before 9 a.m. EST, however, abnormal readings showed up at Mission Control. They lost temperature readings from sensors located on the left wing. Then, tire pressure readings from the left side also vanished.
The Capcom, or spacecraft communicator, called up to Columbia to discuss the tire pressure readings. At 8:59:32 a.m., Husband called back from Columbia: "Roger," followed by a word that was cut off in mid-sentence.
At that point, Columbia was near Dallas, travelling 18 times the speed of sound and still 200,700 feet (61,170 meters) above the ground. Mission Control made several attempts to get in touch with the astronauts, with no success.
It was later found that a hole on the left wing allowed atmospheric gases to bleed into the shuttle as it went through its fiery re-entry, leading to the loss of the sensors and eventually, Columbia itself.
Searching for debris
Twelve minutes later, when Columbia should have been making its final approach to the runway, a mission controller received a phone call. The caller said a television network was showing video of the shuttle breaking up in the sky.
Shortly afterward, NASA declared a space shuttle "contingency" and sent search and rescue teams to the suspected debris sites in Texas and later, Louisiana. Later that day, NASA declared the astronauts lost.
“This is indeed a tragic day for the NASA family, for the families of the astronauts who flew on STS-107, and likewise is tragic for the nation,” stated NASA's administrator at the time, Sean O’Keefe.
The search for debris took weeks, as it was shed over a field of some 2,000 square miles (5,180 square kilometers) in east Texas alone. NASA eventually recovered 84,000 pieces, representing nearly 40 percent of Columbia. Among them were the crew remains, which were identified with DNA.
Much later, in 2008, NASA released a crew survival report detailing the Columbia crew's last few minutes. The astronauts probably survived the initial breakup of Columbia, but lost consciousness in seconds after the cabin lost pressure and then died as it disintegrated.
Report calls for more funding, emphasis on safety
In the weeks after the disaster, a dozen officials began sifting through the Columbia disaster, led by Harold W. Gehman Jr., former commander-in-chief of the U.S. Joint Forces Command. The Columbia Accident Investigation Board, or CAIB, as it was later known, later released a multi-volume report on how the shuttle was destroyed, and what led to it.
Besides the physical cause – the foam – CAIB had a damning assessment about the culture at NASA that led to the foam problem and other safety issues being minimized over the years.
"Cultural traits and organizational practices detrimental to safety were allowed to develop," the board wrote, citing "reliance on past success as a substitute for sound engineering practices" and "organizational barriers that prevented effective communication of critical safety information" among the problems found.
CAIB recommended NASA ruthlessly seek and eliminate safety problems, such as the foam, to help astronaut safety in future missions. It also called for more predictable funding and political support for the agency, and added that the shuttle must be replaced with a new transportation system.
"The shuttle is now an aging system but still developmental in character. It is in the nation's interest to replace the shuttle as soon as possible," the report stated.
Returning to flight
The shuttle's external tank was redesigned, and other safety measures implemented. In July 2005, STS-114 lifted off and tested a suite of new procedures, including one where astronauts used cameras and a robotic arm to scan the shuttle's belly for broken tiles. NASA also put more camera views on the shuttle during liftoff to better monitor foam shedding.
Due to more foam loss than expected, the next shuttle flight did not take place until July 2006. After STS-121's safe conclusion, NASA deemed the program ready to move forward and shuttles resumed flying several times a year.
"We're still going to watch and we're still going to pay attention," STS-121 commander Steve Lindsey said at the time. "We're never ever going to let our guard down."
Columbia's loss – as well as the loss of several other space-bound crews – receives a public tribute every year at NASA's Day of Remembrance. That date is marked in late January or early February because, coincidentally, the Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia crews were all lost in that calendar week.
The crew has received several tributes to their memory over the years. On Mars, the rover Spirit's landing site was ceremonially named Columbia Memorial Station. Also, seven asteroids orbiting the sun between Mars and Jupiter now bear the crew's names.
— Elizabeth Howell, SPACE.com Contributor


One ugly legacy of the Reaganite drug war of the 1980s has found a home in the nation's schools. "Zero tolerance," a term first brought into the national consciousness courtesy of Reagan Attorney General Edwin Meese, who used it to refer to his policy of seizing vehicles and properties no matter how tiny the amount of drugs found, has evolved from a term of propaganda for drug warriors into a fuzzy philosophy for educators. Loosely translated, it means that any violation of the rules, no matter how minuscule or what the circumstances, will be punished severely.
Zero tolerance didn't work for the drug war; the Customs program championed by Meese choked on its own absurdities, finally dying a quiet death after Customs agents attempted to seize a scientific vessel belonging to the Woodshole Oceanographic Research Institute (Cape Cod, MA) because a crewman had a joint in his cabin. Zero tolerance in the schools is generating the same kind of absurd outcomes while failing to increase school safety, according to a new study from the University of Indiana's Indiana Education Policy Center.
The report, "Zero Tolerance, Zero Evidence: An Analysis of School Disciplinary Practice," reviewed the use of zero tolerance in schools since its inception in the 1980s. It found that not only does zero tolerance not achieve its stated goals, but that its most common punishments, suspension and expulsion, lead to increased drop-out rates and other negative consequences and that African American students are "overexposed" to such punishments.
"Zero tolerance is a political response, not an educationally sound solution," said Indiana University Professor Russell Skiba, director of the Safe and Responsive Schools Project in the IU School of Education and author of the report. "It sounds impressive to say that we're taking a tough stand against misbehavior, but the data say it simply hasn't been effective in improving student behavior or ensuring school safety."
Tell it to Congress. The Gun-Free Schools Act of 1994 mandates zero tolerance policies for weapons violations at schools. But Congress does not deserve all the blame. States such as California, Kentucky and New York began implementing zero tolerance policies for drugs, fighting and gang activity as early as 1989. By 1993, the trend had swept the nation, broadening as it went to include alcohol, truancy, insubordination, unauthorized use of pagers and laser pointers, and swearing.
As Berkeley researcher Joel Brown, head of the Center Research and Development, noted in his recent survey of drug education programs (http://www.drcnet.org/wol/187.html#cerdstudy), although zero tolerance is not a federal mandate when it comes to drug violations, under federal "no-use" guidelines, "students are to be suspended or expelled from school for use, possession or distribution of alcohol, tobacco or drugs." Brown found that such policies are in effect in nearly 90% of US schools, and their impact is staggering. In 1997, the only year for which national statistics are available, more than 177,000 students were suspended or expelled for drug, alcohol or tobacco violations. Eighty percent of those students, or about 136,000 kids, were suspended for more than five days or expelled. That ranked drug related reasons second only to physical fights as a reason for school discipline, Brown wrote. "Young people are removed from mainstream education for drugs nearly three times more often than they are removed for weapons, and ten times more often than the number of young people removed for carrying firearms," he noted.
"The extent to which those who are removed from school have a drug abuse problem versus the legal problem of being caught with drugs is not known," Brown noted wryly. He also reported that no demographic data on those students was available.
While the Indiana study did not explicitly look at racial disparities in zero tolerance drug punishments, it did find clear racial disparities in the administration of zero tolerance policies overall. In his survey of the literature, report author Skiba reported that "racial disproportionality in the use of school suspension has been a highly consistent finding." When Skiba controlled for socioeconomic status, he found that students from poor families were more likely to receive zero tolerance punishments, but that family wealth alone did not explain the difference between punishments for whites and blacks. Nor was there evidence that black students acted out more than white students, wrote Skiba.
There are signs of hope, according to the report. Zero tolerance policies, ridiculed for excesses such as suspending five-year-olds for kissing or junior high students for possessing organic cough drops, are beginning to lose favor in some districts, Skiba reported. For those districts pondering a change, the study has several commonsense recommendations:


About the Dictionary of Old English
The Dictionary of Old English (DOE) defines the vocabulary of the first six centuries (C.E. 600-1150) of the English language, using twenty-first century technology. The DOE complements the Middle English Dictionary (which covers the period C.E. 1100-1500) and the Oxford English Dictionary, the three together providing a full description of the vocabulary of English. Under the direction of editors Angus Cameron, Ashley Crandell Amos, and now Antonette diPaolo Healey, the Dictionary has published (as of 2009) the following major research tools: the Dictionary of Old English Corpus on the World Wide Web, the DOE: A to G online, the DOE: A to G on CD-ROM, the fascicles for the letters A-G on microfiche, and an online bibliography of Old English texts and Latin sources cited in the DOE. More than one third of the Dictionary -- eight of the 22 letters of the Old English alphabet -- has been published, and more than 60% of the total entries have been written to date. See DOE on YouTube.
The Dictionary of Old English Corpus
The DOE is based on a computerized Corpus comprising at least one copy of each text surviving in Old English. The total size is almost five times the collected works of Shakespeare. The body of surviving Old English texts encompasses a rich diversity of records written on parchment, carved in stone and inscribed in jewelry. These texts fall into several categories: prose, poetry, glosses to Latin texts and inscriptions. In the prose in particular, there is a wide range of texts: saints' lives, sermons, biblical translations, penitential writings, laws, charters and wills, records (of manumissions, land grants, land sales, land surveys), chronicles, a set of tables for computing the moveable feasts of the Church calendar and for astrological calculations, medical texts, prognostics (the Anglo-Saxon equivalent of the horoscope), charms (such as those for a toothache or for an easy labour), and even cryptograms.
From the outset, the project has employed innovative methods and technologies. Most dictionaries tend to be deeply indebted to their predecessors. By contrast, it is the database of the Dictionary of Old English Corpus which determines the headwords, definitions and quotations. Research based on a comprehensive analysis of the surviving records of Old English is perhaps the most significant difference between the DOE and the work of earlier scholars. The project has followed in the footsteps of those who have established new standards in modern lexicography by providing parsed lists of all attested spellings, grammatical information, and detailed sense divisions (supported by illustrative citations from the Corpus) for each word. The DOE has an International Advisory Committee with members from Canada, Great Britain, the United States and Germany. The editors also consult with scholars throughout the world who have expert knowledge of specialized vocabulary, such as legal, medical and botanical terms.
Use of Technology
The DOE is a pioneer in the application of technology to lexicography. In 1997 the project launched its most sophisticated research tool--the Dictionary of Old English Corpus on the World Wide Web, which makes the Corpus with its complex search capabilities available to any institution in the world with access to the Internet. In 2007, the Web Corpus was made available to individual subscribers. Also in 2007, the project released DOE: A to G online, the first web version of the first eight letters of the Dictionary. It offers Boolean searches on multiple fields of the Dictionary as well as links to the Oxford English Dictionary.
The DOE has received research grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Ottawa; the British Academy, London; the Connaught Fund, University of Toronto; the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, New York; the Early English Text Society, Oxford; the Marc Fitch Fund, Oxford; the Jackman Foundation, Toronto; the McLean Foundation, Toronto; the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, New York; the National Endowment for the Humanities, Washington, an independent federal agency; the Salamander Foundation, Toronto; the TAPoR (Text Analysis Portal) Project, funded by the Canada Foundation for Innovation; the University of Toronto; Lulu, Raleigh, NC; and Xerox Corporation, Palo Alto and Toronto, among others. Support has also been given by many scholars and friends throughout the world. The search for funds is ongoing.


Outer space is a term used to describe everything existing outside of the Earth's atmosphere. It mostly consists of empty space with clusters of stars, but also solid matter such as comets and meteoroids.
There is currently little knowledge on the subject of outer space. The basic observations of astronomy have given an understanding of planetary movements as well as basic predictions; from basic waxing and waning of the moon to the arrival of comets and eclipses.
The word "space" was specifically mentioned as the place from where the meteorite that made Toph's bracelet and Sokka's sword came. The characters demonstrated knowledge that the meteorite did not originate from Earth.


Chemotherapy is poison that happens to kill cancer cells faster than it kills healthy cells; that it wreaks havoc on the bodies of patients is unsurprising. But chemo may also affect their unborn children. According to a new study in PNAS, the offspring of mice treated with chemotherapy have higher rates of mutation, even though the offspring themselves were never exposed to the drugs.
The results suggest that these mutations arise from genome destabilization caused by exposure to chemo, rather than just mutated sperm from the treated father. Male mice in the study were exposed to one of three common anticancer drugs—cyclophosphamide, mitomycin C, or procarbazine—and then allowed to mate with untreated females. After sequencing a small piece of DNA from the offspring, the researchers found that mice with treated fathers had mutation rates up to twice that of mice with untreated fathers. Notably, these mutations were present in DNA inherited from both the treated father and untreated mother.
What this likely means, according to the researchers, is that chemotherapy induces epigenetic changes in the sperm. Epigenetic changes don’t affect the underlying DNA sequence, but they alter chemical tags that control how genes are expressed. This in turn lead to genome destabilization in the offspring, allowing sequence mutations to arise in DNA from the mother or father. The exact mechanism for genome destabilization and how it’s inherited is unknown.
Lead author Yuri Dubrova is also cautious about how this data translates to humans. Since most cancer patients are too old to reproduce or are sterilized by treatment, childhood cancer survivors seem to be the only group this can potentially affect. Because of their short life span, the mice in this study reproduced only a few months after chemotherapy, but humans would likely have years in between. If the phenomenon applies to humans though, the nasty effects of chemotherapy might be longer-reaching than we realized.
[via Nature News]


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Niger women campaign for inclusion in National Assembly, 1991
The 1990s in Africa was a period of broad political movement towards the greater involvement of women in positions of power—this campaign is a part of that change.
In November of 1990 in Niger, President Ali Saibou announced that a Preparatory Committee to organize a National Conference would take place before May 27 of the following year, on which date the National Conference would begin. The agenda of this National Conference, to be held at the National Assembly building in Niger's capital city of Niamey, was to transition the country from 17 years of military-led rule to a multi-party democracy. Out of 68 delegates for the Preparatory Committee, one, Houa Alio, was a woman.
On May 11, 1991, the Prime Minister Aliou Mahamidou met with a number of interest groups that were involved with the Preparatory Committee. The meeting participants agreed on a structure of representation in which the Union of Niger Women would have seven representatives at the Preparatory Committee.
However, many Niger women did not accept this low level of representation and wanted a greater input in the future direction of the nation. The first, and most well known protest showing disapproval of the scarce representation of women in the Preparatory Committee took place on May 13, 1991, two weeks before the scheduled National Conference date. Several thousand women marched from the national assembly to the Prime Minister's office in the center of the capital, and occupied the Ministry of External Affairs, where the Preliminary Committee was meant to meet. The women carried signs that read, "Down with the National Conference without women!", "Stop Injustice!", and "Equal Rights!" They also shouted, "Away with the National Conference without Women!"
Alio resigned from the Preparatory Committee in solidarity. Acting as the spokesperson of the movement, she had earlier given the Prime Minister a nine-point letter demanding to have female representation in all of the delegations taking place during the Preparatory Committee.
Despite the May 13th protest, the Prime Minister began the first meeting of the Preparatory Committee at noon of the same day.
Six days later, on May 19, the General Assembly of Niger Women urged the people of Niger to become more involved in the political process by joining unions, associations, and political parties with the end goal of contributing to the National Conference's nation building process. The women organized a general assembly in order to begin compromising with members of the Preparatory Committee for greater representation in the soon-to-be-held National Conference.
As of May 21, the General Assembly of Niger Women agreed to allow four more women to join the representation. A political party also said it would replace one of its own representatives on the commission with a woman.
The date of the conference was postponed allegedly due to a lack of funds, although several political parties in opposition to the Prime Minister at the time saw this postponement as an attempt on his part to keep himself in power, and to slow transitional movements towards a multi-party democracy. The National Conference was rescheduled to take place on July 15, and then postponed again to July 29. Upon this second postponement, women marched again in opposition to their lack of equal representation in the Preparatory Committee and scheduled National Conference.
By the spring of 1991 the women of Niger were able to increase their numbers in the formal reform efforts, going from one to five women representatives. Still, that was vastly lower than participation by men
On November 25, 1992, May 13th was designated as "National Women's Day" to commemorate the march held on that date the previous year.


Removal of Parathyroid Glands
Parathyroidectomy is surgery to remove hyperactive parathyroid glands.
Parathyroid disease is the most common cause of elevated blood calcium levels in adults. Elevated calcium levels can lead to kidney stones and other disturbing symptoms. Most parathyroid disease is due to a benign tumor of a single parathyroid gland that produces excess parathyroid hormone (PTH).
WHAT ARE PARATHYROID GLANDS?
There are typically four parathyroid glands (two pairs) that are located behind the thyroid lobes in the neck. The parathyroid glands secrete parathyroid hormone (PTH) that regulates the calcium level in the body. Parathyroid hormone signals the release of calcium from the bones and increases calcium absorption from the intestines. The correct secretion of the parathyroid hormone maintains a normal level of calcium in the bloodstream to ensure the normal function of muscles and the normal conduction of electrical currents along the nerves.
If one or more of the parathyroid glands secretes too much PTH (hyperparathyroidism), sustained elevations of blood calcium levels occurs. This event usually occurs in adults and is rare in children. Hyperparathyroidism is usually caused by an adenoma (non-cancerous tumor) of a single gland. It can also result from regulation problems within all of the glands (hyperplasia) or from parathyroid cancer – which is extremely rare.
SYMPTOMS OF PARATHYROID DISEASE
- Loss of energy & persistent fatigue (just don’t feel well)
- Inability to concentrate or changes in mood
- Bone pain due to osteoporosis (bone breakdown)
- Trouble sleeping and general irritability
- Kidney stones
- GERD – gastric acid reflux
It is not uncommon for people to suffer mildly with 2 or more of these problems at the same time. Due to increased blood testing, hyperparathyroidism is now diagnosed more frequently and often before patients are symptomatic. If left untreated, however, symptoms are likely to arise and worsen with time.
Over the years physicians have tried to treat parathyroid disease with medications – often without success. Removal of the parathyroid glands continues to be the most effective treatment for primary hyperparathyroidism. Because of the numerous glands and other important structures in the neck, the surgery can be technically challenging and usually is performed in conjunction with preoperative localization studies to help determine which parathyroid glands are responsible for the problem. Surgeons with extensive head and neck surgical training usually perform the operation. The procedure has been proven to have a >94% cure rate when performed by an experienced specialist. Dr. Gunnlaugsson has extensive experience with parathyroid surgery and uses minimally invasive techniques to achieve the best functional and cosmetic result.


|Huang Ti about 1000 BC|
That left as the oldest known medical book through most of history as Nei Ching written by Huang Ti about 2,697 BC. The work basically consists of conversations between the emperor and his physician Ch'i Pai. Parts of the dialog are recorded medical descriptions of asthma-like symptoms and possible remedies.
Huang Ti Nei Ching Su Wen was known as the Yellow Emperor who reined over Ancient China from approximately 2697-2598 B.C. He is known as the Father of Chinese Medicine. (1)
He is believed to have ruled China as the third of China's first five rulers from 2696-2598 B.C. There is an ongoing debate as to whether he actually existed or was the work of legends. There's also an ongoing debate as to whether he actually wrote the Nei Ching Su Wen or whether it was actually written about 1000 B.C and antedated "as to enhance it's value," according to one historian. Veith quotes one historian who questioned that Ti could possibly rule a nation and still have plenty of time for dialog with his physician ch'i Pai and also time to write it all down. (2)
Of significance in the Nei Ching is the relevance of Yang, Yin and Tao. Ilza Veith, in her 2002 book, "The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine," described that in the beginning there was chaos between the three primary substances -- force, form and substance. This ultimately results in a light substance rising to form heaven, and a heavy substance sinking to form the earth.
|The Nei Chung|
This whole concept was similar to other civilizations, such as in the West the belief was that disease was the result of an imbalance of the four humours. In China disease was believed to be caused by too much of the essence yang and/ or too little yin.
So in order to maintain health one would have to maintain a balance of Yang and Yin, which was ultimately accomplished by good behaviours towards Tao, which refers to "the way." Veith explains that man must completely adjust to the "flow" of the Universe, which was the responsibility of Tao. For example, the earth was dependent on the heavens, such as rain was needed to end drought, sun was needed to melt snow, etc. In this way the yearly cycle of life flowed smoothly and was completed in a year. This was Tao, or the way. Essentially, there was "the Tao of Heaven, the Tao of the Earth, and the Tao of Man, one fitting into the other as an indivisible entity."
The first paragraphs of the first chapter of the Nei Ching has the emperor asking his physician, Ch'i Po, why it is that ancient people used to live to be 100 years old and now people only live half that long. The physician answered:
"In ancient times those people who understood Tao (the way of self cultivation) patterned themselves upon the Yin and the Yang (the two principles of nature) and they lived in harmony with the arts of divination.... There was temperance in eating and drinking. Their hours of rising and retiring were regular and not disorderly and wild. By these means the ancients kept their bodies united with their souls, so as to fulfill their allotted span completely, measuring unto a hundred years before they passed away.... nowadays people are not like this; they use wine as beverage and they adopt recklessness as usual behavior. They enter the chamber (of love) in an intoxicated condition; their passions exhaust their vital forces; their cravings dissipate their true (essence); they do not know how to find contentment within themselves; they're not skilled in the control of their spirits. They devote all their attention to the amusement of their minds, thus cutting themselves off from the joys of long (life). Their risings and retiring is without regularity. For these reasons they reach only one half of the hundred years and then they degenerate." (3)
It is this "degeneration" then that causes diseases which plague a person in life, and many of which cause an early death. People that lived to be 100 are "in harmony with Tao, the Right Way." Health, or longevity, was completely dependent on a person's "behavior towards Tao, Veith explained. "Thus, man saw the universe endowed with a spirit that was indomitable in its strength and unforgiving toward disobedience." Longevity, thus, was a "token of sainthood." (4)
So asthma-like symptoms were believed to be caused by an imbalance of Yin and Yang. The lungs were believed to be responsible for metabolism and flow of fluids through the body, and an imbalance of Yang and Yin in the lungs will cause too much phlegm, edema, sweat and cause diseases such as breathing disorders. (5)
This ultimately obstructs Qi (also referred to as Chi). Imbalances of Yang and Yin are believed to be caused by obstruction of Qi, which may be described as the energy or life force that keeps the humors in balance and the body functioning properly.
The force of Qi was the essential force of keeping the body healthy, and it was inhaled with each breath after birth. Once inhaled it was up to each healthy organ to transfer both Qi and nutrients throughout the body.
In order for the organs of the body to function properly, Qi must continue to flow properly throughout the body. So dysfunction of the lung will result in failure of respiration, "leading to failure of fresh air to be inhaled and the turbid Qi of the body to be exhaled, with the resultant inadequate formation of Qi." (6)
Likewise, the lungs were associated with mucus. Yang was heat and Yin was cold. Cold was believed to diminish Yin in the lungs, and this resulted in an imbalance of Qi in the lungs, which resulted in an increase in mucus, which ultimately resulted in difficulty in breathing, or asthma-like symptoms.
It should be noted here that unlike Western medical doctrines such as the Hippocratic Corpus, the Nei Ching failed to specifically define any diseases. So terms equivalent to asthma and dyspnea were not used. Instead, diseases were referred to as "'injuries of the heart,' 'injuries of the lungs,' etc." (7)
The Nei Ching basically called for diagnosing diseases by measuring the pulse, and treating diseases by remedies that reset Yang and Yin, which mainly involved mental balance, herbal medicine, diet, massage, acupuncture (inserting needle into certain regions of the body) or moxibustion (placing cones of powdered leaves on various regions of the body and burning them until blisters form). Since diseases of the lungs were caused by an imbalance of Yin caused by cold, asthma remedies were believed to warm the lungs, balance Yin, decrease mucus, and make breathing easier.
Another neat similarity between the Nei Ching and the later written document the Hippocratic Corpus (such as the Hippocratic Oath) is that both writings mention the use of careful technique and responsibility by the physician.
The Nei Ching notes that "The most important requirement of the art of healing is that no mistake or neglect occur... poor medical workmanship is neglectful and careless and must therefore be combated, because a disease that is not completely cured can easily breed new disease or there can be a recurrence of the old disease... illness is comparable to the root; good medical work is comparable to the topmost branch; if the root is not reached, the evil influences cannot be subjugated... The superior physician helps before the early budding of the disease. The inferior physician begins to help when the disease has already developed; he helps when destruction has already set in. And since his help comes when the disease has already developed, it is said of him that he is ignorant. " (8)
While Nei Ching is the oldest known recorded Chinese medical treaties, Shen Nung, who lived from 2838-2698 is often considered as the founder of Chinese Medicine as well as the "Fire Emporor." (9)
|Shen Nung (2838-2698)|
The leaves and/ or stems of the Ma Huang plant were dried prepared in such a way that it was served as a drink, often as a bitter tasting tea. Nung believed Ma Huang worked by reversing the flow of Qi.
One of the truly interesting things about ancient Chinese asthma treatment is the use of Ma Huang to treat asthma-like symptoms. The modern world refers to this plant as ephedra, and from it was derived the bronchodilator ephedrine in 1901
Leaves of the plant were crushed and served in a bitter tasting yellow tea. This may actually have provided relief from an asthma attack. While Veith describes that Western medicine reached China early in the 17th century, (10) it would be another 300 years before ephedrine would play a significant role in the treatment of asthma in the U.S. and Europe, as I describe in this post.
So while Ancient Chinese asthmatics may have been able to obtain asthma relief by using ephedra, the rest of the world (except for maybe Japan and Korea) would have to wait.
Click here for more asthma history.
- Saunders, M, J.B. Dec, "Huang Ti Nei Ching Su Wen -- The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Mediciner," Calif Med. 1967 July; 107(1): 125–126
- Veith, Ilza, author /translator, "The Yellow emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine," 2002, Los Angeles, pages 4-6
- Ibid, page 97-8
- Ibid, pages pages 98 and 10-14
- "Qi Theory, damo-qigong.net, http://damo-qigong.net/qi-theory1.htm
- Ibid, http://damo-qigong.net/qi-theory.htm
- Veith, op cit, pages 49 and 50
- Veith, op cit, pages 57-8, also see chapter 26 beginning on page 217
- Navara, Tova, "The Encyclopedia of Asthma and Respiratory Disorders," 2003, New York, page 177
- Veith, op cit, page 1


Understanding the functioning of brain network is one of the grand challenges of Science: many methods have been applied to analyze and study its structure and function. Interest is clearly motivated by the fact that the some general principles of brain functioning seem to govern also other complex networks, including social, biological and communications networks.
In principle, a brain network can be modelled as graph representing activities in the brain, where the vertices represent anatomical regions and the edges their functional connectivity. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has been used to extract data about how networks of neurons are performing tasks. In these experiments the activity of the brain is measured, in time steps of a few seconds, in data associated to a number of “voxels” of dimension of about 27 mm3. Data are organised in correlation matrices (also with Multidimensional Scaling techniques) to see where there is a correlation among the variables. A correlation matrix can describe correlation among M variables: it is a square symmetrical MxM matrix with the (ij)th element equal to the correlation coefficient r_ij between the (i)th and the (j)th variable.
Over the last two decades, said data analysis techniques have transformed neuroscience: some scientists are even claiming they can identify the brain regions responsible for musical ability, food preference, fairness and even skills by analysing and correlating voxels data.
Also the recent explosion in gene expression experiments has generated a large amount of data to be correlated: think about The Cancer Genome Anatomy Project (CGAP), a program of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) that is researching the molecular patterns changes occurring when a normal cell is transformed into a cancer cell or the relationships between the gene expression profile of a tissue and the pattern of its neighbours.
These are just two example where the capabilities of correlating data have an incredibly high impact value. Analysing interconnectivity is so fundamental to understanding the behaviour of any complex networks.
Also Telecom Operators have huge amount of data, still to be leveraged: in this sense, methods and techniques adopted by neuroscience and genomics can provide valuable lessons learnt.


The Flat Rocks fossil site at Inverloch is located approximately 150 km south-east of Melbourne, on the south coast of Victoria. The area has special significance to Australia’s fossil history as the discovery of Australia’s first dinosaur bone, the Cape Paterson Claw, was found at a nearby site in 1903 by William Ferguson. The currently active site was discovered in 1991 when a group of researchers from Monash University and Museum Victoria were prospecting that part of the coastline for suitable locations for potential fossil dig sites.
The Cape Paterson claw, found by William Ferguson in 1903 at Eagle’s Nest, was Australia’s first dinosaur bone. Source: Museum Victoria.
The first formal dig at Inverloch was in 1992 when researchers spent two weeks testing the productivity of the site. In this time more than 300 fossil bones buried below the surface of the shore platform were recovered. The site proved so productive that organised annual summer digs called ‘Dinosaur Dreaming’ commenced in 1994 and have collected an average of 700 fossil bones and teeth from each field season. The fossil layer at the Flat Rocks site is still producing as many fossil bones and teeth as when digging first started. The Dinosaur Dreaming dig will continue for as long as financial support continues to fund the dig.
The sedimentary rocks along the Strzelecki coastline were laid down approximately 120 to 115 million years ago in the Early Cretaceous period. The rocks have been dated using both Fission Track Dating (based on radioactive content) and Palynology (based on the fossil pollen in the rock). Both methods of dating correlate the age of the rocks to about 120 million years plus or minus five million years.
The fossil bones of many different animals have been found at the Flat Rocks site. There is evidence of at least five different types of dinosaur as well as the fossil bones of other reptiles, birds, mammals and fish. The fossil bones found at the site are the remains of animals that lived in an ancient river and the surrounding valley. The bones were washed into the river during flooding events and concentrated in the river bed.
The Dinosaur Dreaming field dig at Inverloch. Photographer/Source: Lesley Kool
The most commonly found dinosaur at Flat Rocks is a small plant eater belonging to the Hypsilophodont family. This dinosaur was the size of a small wallaby and ran on its hind legs. Qantassaurus intrepidus is the latest hypsilophodontid dinosaur to be named from the site, however there are at least two other members of the hypsilophodontidae family represented. Evidence of tiny dinosaur bones at the site suggests that the area may have been a nesting ground for part of the year. There is also evidence of other dinosaurs including ankylosaurs and theropod dinosaurs at Flat Rocks and surrounding areas.
Flying reptiles (pterosaurs) are sometimes mistakenly called dinosaurs, but belong to a different group of reptiles. A number of unusual teeth found at the Flat Rocks site have been assigned to pterosaurs, as well as some limb bones. The turtles of Flat Rocks appear to have been rather primitive. They had short necks, unlike most of Australia’s modern turtles. A number of isolated teeth have been identified as belonging to small fresh-water plesiosaurs.
In 1997, a fossil jaw only 17mm long with four teeth was found. The jaw belonged to an insectivorous mammal no bigger than a mouse and was named Ausktribosphenous nyktos. The teeth resembled those of a placental mammal. However, because all previous fossil evidence supported the idea that marsupials arrived in Australia long before placental mammals, the description of this discovery as a placental mammal was not accepted by many researchers. There has been much debate since the discovery of this jaw, and there is still no agreement as to which group of mammals it belongs to.
Since 1997 a further 36 mammal jaws have been found at the site, some of which belong to a new group of monotremes (Teinolophos trusleri) and represent the world’s oldest and smallest monotremes. In 2004 a single tooth in a jaw fragment was found that may represent evidence in Australia of a group of extinct mammals called Multituberculates.
The fossilised remains of fish are very common at the Flat Rocks site. Before 1997 the only evidence of Early Cretaceous birds in Victoria came from Koonwarra, 40 km north of the Flat Rocks site. In 1997 the first definitive bird bone was found at Flat Rocks. A number of other possible bird bones have since turned up at the site and are currently being studied.
Please note: the Dinosaur Dreaming dig project is not currently accepting volunteers.
Vickers-Rich, P., Monaghan, J. M., Baird, R. F. and Rich, T. H. 1991. Vertebrate Palaeontology of Australasia. Pioneer Design Studio, Novacek.
Vickers-Rich, P. and Rich, T. H. 1993. Australia’s polar dinosaurs. Scientific American, July 1993: 50–55.
Vickers-Rich, P., and Rich, T., 2000. Dinosaurs of Darkness. Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest.
Interesting point, John. While projects like these may appear to have an eerie side, it's also true that almost everything we know about prehistoric life depends on palaeontology projects like this one.
Hi Justin, thanks for the enquiry. You are welcome to visit the beach at Inverloch and search for your own fossils, just as you can go and have a look at the Dinosaur Dreaming site. You will find the many links on this and the other Museum Victoria dinosaur information sheets useful in identifying fossils.
Hi Bob, the Discovery Centre has a free identification service. If you think you may have found a fossil, you can take advantage of this service. You can read all about the details and guidelines for identifications here
Hi Michael – If you contact the Queensland Museum through their Inquiry Centre they may also be able to provide you with advice about fossil hunting in the Ipswich region. Have fun!
Hi Alexander - sorry to say, but unfortunately you need to be over 18 to be involved in the the digging at Dinosaur Dreaming. However, on Sunday February 13 there will be a ‘Friends of Dinosaur Dreaming’ day onsite, where visitors are welcome to come and watch the dig in process, talk to the volunteers and see a selection of some of the fossils found there.
If you are interested in going and seeing this, you can visit the site on Feb 13 from late morning. Access to the dig is from ‘The Caves’ carpark on the Inverloch-Cape Paterson road; a few km outside Inverloch, take the steps down to the beach access and look for the Dinosaur Dreaming flags at the site not far from the base of the steps.
Hi Alexander's mum, thank you for checking in and doing the right thing. As the area is a reserve any fossicking/digging on the beach at Dinosaur Dreaming can only be undertaken by Dinosaur Dreaming workers and volunteers who have the required permission to dig in the Bunurong Marine Park from Parks Victoria.
Thank you for the feedback Christopher, however it's not clear to us which of the comments above this relates to; we think it is important that enquirers, regardless of their age, are given accurate information on the legal and safety issues associated with collecting fossils. This isn't intended as a 'brush off', more as responsible advice from our perspective at Museum Victoria.
Feel free to contact us via the 'Contact Us' link at the bottom of this page if you wish to discuss this further.
Hi Jacqui - there are a few legal issues about excavating fossils, and there is no single permit that is available which allows you to fossick - you would need to get the appropriate permission from the landholder of your fossicking locality; be they private land owners, or government bodies responsible for parks, reserves, council and crown land. Please also be aware of some of the safety precaustions when fossicking, there is some helpful information on this on our Information Sheet at http://museumvictoria.com.au/discoverycentre/infosheets/fossil-collecting---methods/
Hope this helps
Hello Brett; the Friends day for 2012 has not yet been scheduled, but once it is it will be posted here or you can simply call us in the Discovery Centre in early January 2012, and we will hopefully have clearer details by that date.
Hi Naomi and Josh; we'd be most happy to meet you on the 'Friends Day' onsite at Inverloch and show you some of the fossils and the work that is being done, but I'm sorry to say that all active participants in the dig must be 18 years or older for health and safety reasons.
The date and details of the 2012 Friends Day will be published on this page soon, stay tuned for an update...
Hi Belinda; unfortunately applications for prospective volunteers closed on September 30th, and the selection process for new volunteers based on these applications is now well underway. As a result, I am sorry to say we can’t assist you with becoming involved in the 2012 dig.
Should you be interested in participating in the 2013 dig, we recommend you contact the Discovery Centre via the "Contact us" link at the bottom of this page around August 2012; by this time we hope to commence the recruitment of new volunteers for the 2013 dig.
Hi Jamie - as excavation only occurs for less than two months every year, there really isn't much opportunity for public engagement beyond the 'Friends' day; you may wish to contact the Bunurong Environment Centre at Inverloch, who occasionally run school holiday activities that might be of interest.
Hi Jenni & Jim - unfortunately we're not able to involve you in this year's dig; applications for becoming a volunteer usually open in August or September in the preceeding year, and involves a selection process followed by specialised training for selected applicants. If you wish to be involved in next years dig, we reccommend you contact the Discovery Centre (via "Contact Us" at the bottom of this page) in August 2012 for details on applying for the 2013 dig.
We love receiving comments, but can’t always respond.
Hi Donna - the Dinosaur Dreaming dig may be of interest, but participants in the actuall digging are all over 18 for safety reasons; one option worth considering might be to come to the annual "Friends of Dinosaur Dreaming Day", which is usally in late February onsite at Inverloch; you may wish to check back on this page around the Christmas Holidays to see when this is scheduled for 2013.
Hi Paula - as the dig is on a public beach, you are free to come and look at any time, digging will be occurring on the beach every day for the next few weeks at low tide.
However, there will be a special "Friends Day" on February 17 on site, where the diggers will be set up to show visitors examples of the fossils being found, and can answer questions from the public. If you were interested, you could also sign up to become a "Friend of Dinosaur Dreaming" on the day.
I know it's a long time since your request, but did you have any success with your search. I'm in the same position regarding August 1966 sailing and w...
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Simple stain- single human cheek cell with bacteria covering its surface (approx. X 100). Taken from the Wistreich Collection, appearing exclusively in MicrobeWorld. Read More
Photo of Hut Cave taken by mountaineer Nick Giguere during the 2008 expedition Exploring the Rock Bottom of the Food Chain in McMurdo's Extreme Environments led by Dr. Laurie Connell and Dr. Hubert Staudigel. For more pictures go to their website: http://earthref.org/ERESE/projects/GOLF439/... Read More
An electron photomicrograph of two spiral-shaped Treponema pallidum bacteria.
Here we see two Treponema pallidum bacteria scanned by an electron microscope, magnified 36,000X. T. pallidum is the causative agent of syphilis. It contains one of the smallest prokaryotic genomes consisting of abo... Read More
A press release via EurekAlert issued by Howard Hughes Medical Institute:
Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers are reporting the first detailed molecular snapshots of a deadly gastrointestinal virus as it is caught in the grasp of an immune system molecule with the capacity to destroy ... Read More
The USA300 strain of Staphylococcus aureus bacteria, colorized in gold, shown outside a white blood cell.
Staphylococcus aureus: USA:300 is a strain of gram-positive coccus bacteria responsible for Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), or Staph infection in humans. This strain ... Read More
This is a live image of the of Diatom Arachnoidiscus under 40x magnification. The picture shows the diatom's silicified cell wall, which forms a pillbox-like shell (frustule) composed of overlapping halves that contain intricate and delicate markings. The picture was obtained with new video enha... Read More
Application of the mycopathogen, Beauveria Bassina, that make spores to introduce a fungus on tarnished plant bugs as an alternative to chemical control. Research and develop microbial control strategies for tarnished plant bugs on alternate hosts using entomopathogenic fungi.
(http://www.ars... Read More
This image of laboratory-grown cells was taken with the help of a scanning electron microscope, which yields detailed images of cell surfaces.
Tina Carvalho, University of Hawaii at Manoa. - NIGMS Image Gallery Read More
Photomicrograph of Chlamydia grown in culture. The sample was taken from rhesus monkey kidney cells and stained with giemsa. The cell nuclei appear red and the infective 'elementary bodies' of the Chlamydia, which develop in 'blisters' in the cells, fluoresce green. Chlamydia is a very common se... Read More
Cultures of a destructive mold called Phomopsis strains that infect both crop and noncrop plants. One of the species of this genus, Phomopsis viticola, cause a plant disease called phomopsis or dead-arm. Usually, infections begin during early growth stages in spring. This affects leaves, fruit, ... Read More
Under a moderately-high magnification of 2500X, this digitally-colorized scanning electron micrograph (SEM) of an untreated water specimen extracted from a wild stream mainly used to control flooding during inclement weather, revealed the presence of unidentified organisms, which included bacter... Read More
Chlamydia psittaci. Infected baby hamster kidney cell cultures, direct FA stain Read More
Microscopic view of the green algae Spirogyra filament and a number of primitive worms known as rotifers. (approx. 100X). Taken from the Wistreich Collection, appearing exclusively on MicrobeWorld. Read More
fluorescent antibody staining of wall deficient mycobacterium tuberculosis var. hominis Read More
Stan Maloy of the American Society for Microbiology participates in the first episode of This Week in Microbiology live from the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Washington, D.C.
This Week in Microbiology will officially launch next week. Other guests for the fir... Read More
The cyanobacterial mat is on the shores of Lake Fryxell in Taylor Valley- the McMurdo Dry Valley region of Antarctica. These organisms actively grow only a few weeks a year during December and January. Photo taken by Scott Craig and contributed by Dr. Laurie Connell. Read More
Safranin stained rods. (approx. 1000 X). taken from the Wistreich Collection, appearing exclusively on MicrobeWorld. Read More
This is a great visual resource for learning and teaching microbiology lab techniques. You have to join Flickr.com and then sign up to access the groups contents. Read More
An Ebola-like hemorrhagic fever has killed three people in western India and dozens of doctors will screen a community of about 16,000 people in efforts to contain the disease, a state health minister said this past Wednesday.
India's National Institute of Virology later confirmed that the th... Read More


Subsequent Nuremberg Trials
The Subsequent Nuremberg Trials formally the Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals were a series of twelve U.S. military tribunals for war crimes against surviving members of the leadership of Nazi Germany, held in the Palace of Justice, Nuremberg, after World War II from 1946 to 1949 following the Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal.
Although it had been initially planned to hold more than just one international trial at the IMT, the growing differences between the victorious allies (the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Soviet Union) made this impossible. However, the Control Council Law No. 10, which the Allied Control Council had issued on December 20, 1945, empowered any of the occupying authorities to try suspected war criminals in their respective occupation zones. Based on this law, the U.S. authorities proceeded after the end of the initial Nuremberg Trial against the major war criminals to hold another twelve trials in Nuremberg. The judges in all these trials were American, and so were the prosecutors; the Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution was Brigadier General Telford Taylor. In the other occupation zones similar trials took place.
The twelve U.S. trials before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals (NMT) took place from December 9, 1946 to April 13, 1949. The trials were:
- The Doctors' Trial (9 December 1946 - 20 August 1947)
- The Milch Trial (2 January - 14 April 1947)
- The Judges' Trial (5 March - 4 December 1947)
- The Pohl Trial (8 April - 3 November 1947)
- The Flick Trial (19 April - 22 December 1947)
- The IG Farben Trial (27 August 1947 - 30 July 1948)
- The Hostages Trial (8 July 1947 – 19 February 1948)
- The RuSHA Trial (20 October 1947 - 10 March 1948)
- The Einsatzgruppen Trial (29 September 1947 - 10 April 1948)
- The Krupp Trial (8 December 1947 - 31 July 1948)
- The Ministries Trial (6 January 1948 - 13 April 1949)
- The High Command Trial (30 December 1947 - 28 October 1948)
In total, 142 of the 185 defendants were found guilty of at least one of the charges. 24 persons received death sentences, of which 11 were subsequently converted into life sentences; 20 were sentenced to life imprisonment, 98 were handed down sentences of varying lengths, and 35 were acquitted. Four defendants had to be removed from trials due to illness, and four more committed suicide during the trials.
Many of the longer prison sentences were reduced substantially by decree of high commissioner John J. McCloy in 1951, and 10 outstanding death sentences from the Einsatzgruppen Trial were converted to prison terms. The same year, an amnesty released many of those who had received prison sentences.
Some of the NMTs have been criticised for their misguided conclusion that "morale bombing" of civilians, including its nuclear variety, was legal, and for their judgement that, in certain situations, executing civilians in reprisal was permissible.
Conduct of the prosecution
In a 2005 interview for the Washington Post, Benjamin B. Ferencz, Chief Prosecutor for the United States Army at the Einsatzgruppen Trial, revealed some of his activities during his period in Germany:
- "I once saw DPs beat an SS man and then strap him to the steel gurney of a crematorium. They slid him in the oven, turned on the heat and took him back out. Beat him again, and put him back in until he was burnt alive. I did nothing to stop it. I suppose I could have brandished my weapon or shot in the air, but I was not inclined to do so. Does that make me an accomplice to murder?"
In the interview, Ferencz also pointed out that the military legal norms at the time permitted actions that would not be possible today.
- "You know how I got witness statements? I'd go into a village where, say, an American pilot had parachuted and been beaten to death and line everyone one up against the wall. Then I'd say, 'Anyone who lies will be shot on the spot.' It never occurred to me that statements taken under duress would be invalid."
See also
- Auschwitz Trial held in Kraków, Poland in 1947 against 40 SS-staff of the Auschwitz concentration camp death factory
- Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials, 1963–65
- Majdanek Trials, the longest Nazi war crimes trial in history, spanning over 30 years
- Chełmno Trials of the Chełmno extermination camp personel, held in Poland and in Germany. The cases were decided almost twenty years apart
- Sobibor Trial held in Hagen, Germany in 1965, concerning the Sobibor extermination camp
- Belzec Trial before the 1st Munich District Court in the mid-1960s, eight SS-men of the Belzec extermination camp
- Belsen Trial in Lüneburg, 1945
- Command responsibility doctrine of hierarchical accountability
- Dachau Trials held within the walls of the former Dachau concentration camp, 1945–1948
- Mauthausen-Gusen camp trials, 1946–47
- Ravensbrück Trial
- Research Materials: Max Planck Society Archive
Further reading


Anorexia may be a disorder more of the metabolism than the mind, according to a new paper that argues the disease is a sort of cousin of diabetes.
But this theory of anorexia as a fundamentally biological disorder, rather than a psychological one, is untested, psychiatrists warn, and patients with the disease should not stray from proven treatments.
The review of past research on the topic, published in the June issue of the journal Molecular Psychiatry, finds that certain genetic and cellular processes get activated during starvation in organisms ranging from yeast to fruit flies to mice to humans. The idea, said study researcher Donard Dwyer, is that in people with a broken starvation response, a few initial rounds of dieting could trigger a metabolism gone haywire.
In this theory, it’s not stubbornness or a mental disorder that keeps anorexics from eating, it’s their own bodies. The theory could explain why it can be so difficult to convince anorexic patients that anything is wrong with them, Dwyer told LiveScience.
“Unless we conceive of it as more of a metabolic function, I don’t think we’ll get past the first stage of treatment with a lot of the real hard-core patients,” he said.
The diabetes of starvation
In the current understanding of anorexia nervosa, an eating disorder in which patients don’t maintain at least 85 percent of their normal body weight for their height, overachieving personality types attempt to control stress and emotion by restricting food and/or extreme exercising.
Dwyer sees the disease, instead, as a condition similar to diabetes. Someone who becomes obese and is genetically susceptible will develop insulin resistance, which then becomes diabetes. An initial trigger — the obesity — is required, but once the patient has diabetes, you can’t talk him or her out of the disease.
For anorexia, Dwyer said, the potential trigger is chronic undereating or dieting, and the messed-up molecular process could be any number of biological changes that happen during starvation. In the current review, he and his colleagues focus on a cascade of genetic and cellular events called the IGF-1/Akt/FOXO pathway. Organisms from yeasts to humans activate this pathway in response to starvation, triggering all sorts of biological changes, including a desire to look for food. If this pathway doesn’t work as it should, it could theoretically cause the warped approach to eating seen in anorexia. (The so-called epigenome, the supporting actor to our genes, is what helps determine which genes, or pathways, get switched on and off.)
If Dwyer is right, difficult-to-treat anorexic patients may need drugs to get their metabolisms back on track, much as diabetic patients have to take insulin shots. But so far, the idea has not been tested in humans.
“This is, at the moment, speculative,” Timothy Walsh, a psychiatrist at Columbia University who was not involved in the research, told LiveScience. “There’s no human data to support it, and it’s only part of the answer. It’s not proposed as the complete solution.”
Starvation and metabolism
Dwyer is careful to say that much more research is needed. But he says there is good reason to continue the work. Research on obesity has shown that being too heavy is more complex than simply calories in, calories out, he said. There are genetic and metabolic factors involved that make it hard for some people to shed weight. And obesity-related changes to the epigenome (our genes’ on-off switches) can even be passed down from mother to child. The same could be true on the flip side, with starvation, Dwyer said.
The genes linked to anorexia could be the same ones that regulate the metabolism during starvation, he said.
Additionally, studies on starving people suggest that many of the supposed causes of anorexia, including food obsession and anxiety, may be symptoms of starvation. And starving people, like anorexics, often report that they’re doing much better than their physical condition would suggest.
“Here we have our anorexic patients who are not aware of how sick they are despite how thin they have gotten. … We’re not going to be able to convince them otherwise until we understand that better,” Dwyer said. “It’s probably not going to be something we can just talk them out of.”


As my 3 year old daughter, Emerson, has grown and excelled in her Montessori school, I’ve thought more and more about what my hopes are for her future education and what I believe an education should provide.
There’s a great deal of talk these days about standards in education. I believe that it’s time for a new type of standards. I’ve attempted to put together a set of 10 belief statements that highlight the positive perspective of Emerson’s education and my own learning experiences.
I didn’t set out to write statements that are exclusive to Montessori, but rather aspirational for the schools that I hope will help Emerson become the best possible version of herself.
I believe children deserve a PERSONALIZED and PURPOSEFUL education. They should be free to do INDEPENDENT, SELF-DIRECTED and FASCINATION-DRIVEN work. The classroom should be an ENVIRONMENT OF BEAUTY that allows for FREE MOVEMENT and COLLABORATION. A commitment to EXPERIMENTATION and DISCOVERY during childhood will create a foundation for lifelong learning.
1) PERSONALIZED – I believe that a child deserves an education that is responsive to his or her individual spirit and learning style, utilizes all of the senses, and focuses on his or her dynamic development as a whole person (i.e. emotional, physical, social, spiritual, aesthetic and intellectual.)
2) PURPOSEFUL – I believe that a child with a positive conception of purposeful and concentrated work is prepared to be present and satisfied with his or her life’s work.
3) INDEPENDENT – I believe that a child provided an environment for independent decision-making is also prepared for responsibility in an ever-changing world.
4) SELF-DIRECTED – I believe that a child who learns the value of self-direction and self-correction will develop a positive self-image in a world requiring self-motivation.
5) FASCINATION-DRIVEN – I believe that a child with freedom to concentrate on his or her fascinations develops a capacity for both self-discipline and self-initiative.
6) ENVIRONMENT OF BEAUTY – I believe that a child who is taught the value and responsibility of learning in an environment of beauty and harmony will appreciate the value of beauty and harmony in one’s life.
7) FREE MOVEMENT – I believe that a child requires purposeful movement and activity as an integral component of realizing his or her full intellectual potential.
8) COLLABORATION – I believe that a child engaged in a classroom collaboration of diverse ages and cultures gains an open, empathetic, and respectful perspective on participation in a community.
9) EXPERIMENTATION – I believe that a child who is free to exercise critical thinking, experimentation and creativity will have an appreciation for the world of entrepreneurship and innovation in science and art.
10) DISCOVERY – I believe that a child started and supported on a journey of self-discovery will also discover the possibility of self-fulfillment and a lifetime of learning both inside and outside the classroom.
Is there something missing? Is something not clear? Does something seem misplaced, overstated or uncomfortable? Don’t worry about formal remarks. I’d just love some kneejerk wisdom from others who care as much about education as I have grown to.
Thanks to Bobby George and many others for feedback on this draft.


(455) At Coalface of Heating
In February 2003, a small factory closed down in Seoul; the demand for its product had dropped below the level which made production economically viable. Stories like this are common in Korea and they are seldom seen as newsworthy.
But the closure of the Samchully factory attracted the attention of the major media. The reason was simple: the factory was the last in Seoul to produce coal briquettes, known as yeontan. For decades, these briquettes kept Korean houses warm in winter. They were seen as a valuable commodity and, at some point, an embodiment of technical progress.
Heating has always been a major problem in Korea. In the cold winters one had to keep the house warm. Since times immemorial Koreans used a very efficient system of heated floors, known as ondol, but the ondol hearth had to be fed with fuel. For centuries, it was firewood, but by the early 1900s the use of firewood was increasingly inconvenient.
This was due to two major problems. First of all, population growth meant that most mountains around towns were virtually stripped barren (this is still the case in North Korea). Firewood was in short supply, and expensive.
Second, the available low-quality firewood was a capricious fuel. It was very time-consuming to feed the hearth. Thus, Korean housewives welcomed the arrival of yeontan with great relief.
What does a yeontan look like? I am pretty sure that many readers have seen these briquettes somewhere on Seoul’s streets. They are cylindrical and about the size of a paint can, with a number of drilled holes _ the standard yeontan had 22 holes. The holes are necessary to make it burn steadily and efficiently.
The standard briquette weighs 3.5 kg. Yeontan were produced from a mixture of coal dust and a special gluing agent which kept the dust particles together.
It was the standard weight and size that made yeontan so hugely popular. Unlike ``natural’’ coal and firewood, yeontan came in a predictable shape.
One could easily stack a few briquettes on top of each other in a stove and leave them burning slowly for hours. In addition, the technology of their composition made it possible to utilize low-quality coal and coal dust.
When did the history of yeontan begin? Despite my labors, I could not find a definite answer. These briquettes are not unique to Korea and their close cousins are widely used in China and Japan as well. This makes me suspect that the yeontan was invented in the early 1900s, but where and by whom I know not.
The first yeontan were introduced to Korea by the Japanese in the late 1920s, but for a long time these briquettes remained an expensive luxury. The spread of yeontan began only after the 1950-53 Korean War when the price went down just as firewood became prohibitively expensive.
Korean households enthusiastically took up the new fuel which _ as they soon discovered _ was so much more convenient than firewood. In a poll conducted in 1970, Koreans even chose yeontan as ``the most important product of our time’’ (in a 2000 poll, the same significance was ascribed to the mobile phone).
The government also supported the switch to yeontan _ it helped to protect the then dwindling forests.
However, yeontan was not without its dangers. The most serious one was the ever-present danger of carbon monoxide poisoning.
This odorless and colorless gas could filter through the cracks of a damaged ondol floor and suffocate the victims while they were sleeping. Strict precautions were always taken, but gas poisoning remained a major case of death in Korea until quite recently.
In 1988, 77.8 percent of all Korean households used yeontan briquettes for heating and/or cooking. By 1993, that percentage had dropped to 32.8 percent. The 1997-98 Asian financial crisis and high oil prices of the late 1990s briefly reversed the trend, but soon the retreat of the venerable coal briquettes continued.
In 2001 a mere 1.5 percent of families were still using yeontan. People were switching to oil and gas boilers, generally more expensive but also more convenient and safe (no danger of gas poisoning: the floor was heated not by fumes, but by hot water).
Thus, the good old yeontan is going to soon become extinct. New, automated and computerized heating systems are replacing the coal briquettes. The introduction of these systems has greatly changed the daily lives of Koreans.
Prof. Andrei Lankov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and now teaches at Kookmin University in Seoul.