What is Combinatorics?

Combinatorics is a branch of mathematics that focuses on the permutation, enumeration, and combination of sets of elements. Sometimes, mathematicians use the word “combinatorics” to denote a larger subset of discrete math that includes graph theory. What is commonly referred to as combinatorics, in that case, is then called “enumeration’.
First combinatorial problems were studied by ancient Greek, Arabian and Indian mathematicians. Interest in combinatorics increased during the 19th and 20th century, with the development of graph theory and the four color theorem. Blaise Pascal, Jacob Bernoulli and Leonhard Euler are some of the leading mathematicians.
The most classical area of combinatorics is enumerative combinatorics. It focuses on counting the number of some combinatorial objects. While counting the number of components in a set is a quite broad mathematical problem, numerous problems that arise in applications boast of a relatively simple combinatorial description.
Analytic combinatorics focuses on the combinatorial structures enumeration using tools from probability theory and complex analysis. Compared to enumerative combinatorics that use clear generating functions and combinatorial formulae to describe the outcomes, the aim of analytic combinatorics is to obtain asymptotic formulae.
Other subfields and approaches of combinatorics are partition theory, design theory, finite geometry, order theory, matroid theory, extremal combinatorics, probabilistic combinatorics, and algebraic combinatorics, combinatorics on words, infinitary combinatorics, arithmetic combinatorics and topological combinatorics.
Combinatorics has numerous applications in other mathematics areas, including coding and cryptography, graph theory, and probability.

Why is Your Computer Freezing?

If you find your computer unresponsive at times, it’s time to get an in-depth check of your system. First, you need to identify the cause behind computer freezing to detect if it is hardware related or software specific. Identifying the cause helps users to resolve the problem quickly. They are many types of computer freeze issues, and each type is detected by system behavior. System freeze can be grouped into hang, generic freeze, random hang and single-app freeze
Hang— every time a specific set of a procedure is carried out on a PC, it hangs up and requests to be restarted to recover.
Generic freeze—the system becomes unresponsive and automatically goes to usual functional state without troubleshooting.
Random hang— occurs when the PC turns unresponsive often at regular intervals of time, and the user has to restart it.
Single-app Freeze —this occurs when PC freezes abnormally when the user attempts to start a particular program, a game or a heavy browsing website.
The main reasons (software as well as hardware) that cause a computer to hang are too many apps running, driver issues, operating system issues, excess heating up, hardware misconfiguration, insufficient RAM, BIOS settings, power issues, external devices, and hard drive malfunction.

What is Geometry?

Geometry is a branch of mathematics that focuses on questions of size, shape, the properties of space, and relative position of figures. Mathematicians who work in the geometry field are referred to as geometers.
In several early cultures, geometry arose as a practical approach for dealing with volumes, areas, and lengths. While geometry has changed significantly over the years, there are several concepts that are more or less basic to geometry. These concepts include points, surfaces, angles, curves, and lines.
Geometry is applied in many fields, including physics, architecture, art, as well as other branches of mathematics. Modern geometry has several subfields:
Euclidean geometry—this is geometry in its classical sense. It has applications in crystallography, computer science, and various branches of contemporary mathematics.
Differential geometry—this subfield uses techniques of linear algebra and calculus to study problems in geometry.
Topology –This subfield deals with the geometric object’s properties that are unaffected by continuous mappings.
Convex geometry –examines convex shapes in the space of Euclidean and it’s more abstract analogs.
Algebraic geometry– studies geometry using multivariate polynomials or other algebraic methods.
Discrete geometry—it mainly focuses on relative position questions of geometric objects, such as lines, points, and circles.

What is Cybercrime?

You often hear the word ‘cybercrime’ discussed nowadays. Due to the high number of connected devices and people, cybercrime is very common. But what is it exactly?
Cybercrime is a crime that involves a network and a computer. The computer may be the target, or it may be used in a commission of a crime. Cybercrime can also be defined as an offense that is committed against an individual or a group of individuals with a motive to intentionally cause mental or physical harm, using modern telecommunication networks such as mobile phones and the internet.
Cybercrimes may threaten a nation or person’s financial health and security. Types of cybercrimes include hacking, unwarranted mass-surveillance, copyright infringement, child grooming, and child pornography. Other common types of cybercrime are online scams and fraud, attacks on computer systems, identity theft and prohibited or illegal online content. Globally, both government and non-state actors are involved in cybercrimes, including financial theft, espionage, and other cross-border crimes. Sometimes, an activity that involves the interest of at least one country and cross-international borders is referred to as cyber warfare.
In the past, computer-related crimes were committed mainly by individuals. Nowadays, we are seeing very complex cybercriminal networks bringing together people from various parts of the world in real time to commit offenses on an unprecedented scale.

Three Greatest Mathematicians of All Time

Mathematics is important to the understanding of the world. Often referred to as the language of the universe, mathematics has made an impact in almost all place, from the satellite that beams your TV to the faucet in your kitchen to your home. Based on their contributions to mathematics, the following are top three greatest mathematicians:
Leonhard Euler
Living from 1707 to 1783, Euler is the greatest mathematician to have ever walked on earth. It is believed that all mathematical formulas were named after the next person after being discovered by Euler. His primary contribution to the field of mathematics includes the introduction of mathematical notation such as the concept of a function, shorthand trigonometric functions, The Euler Constant, the letter ‘/i’ for imaginary units and the symbol pi for the ratio of a circumference of a circle to its diameter.
Carl Friedrich Gauss
Also referred to as the ‘Prince of Mathematics,’ Gauss is known for his outstanding mental ability. He made several important contributions to mathematics. For instance, he introduced the Gaussian gravitational constant and proved the fundamental theorem of algebra.
G. F. Bernhard Riemann
Born to a poor family in 1826, Bernhard Riemann rose to become one of the most prominent mathematicians in the world in the 19th Century. He has many theorems bearing his name including Riemannian geometry, the Riemann Integral, and Riemannian Surfaces.

What is a Spreadsheet?

A spreadsheet is a computer program or application that allows the user to arrange and collate data. Also referred to as a worksheet, a spreadsheet is made up of columns and rows that help to sort data, organize data, and calculate numerical data.
The ability to calculate values using the data in cells and mathematical formulas is what makes a spreadsheet program unique. Spreadsheet enables users to adjust any stored value and note the effects on calculated values. For example, a spreadsheet may be used to create an overview of an individual’s bank’s balance.
Spreadsheets have completely replaced paper-based systems in the business world. Even though they were first developed for bookkeeping or accounting tasks, today they are used widely in any setting where tabular lists are made, sorted, and shared.
Besides performing arithmetic and mathematical functions, spreadsheets offer built-in functions for common statistical and financial operations. Below are several uses of spreadsheets:
Finance– spreadsheets are best for financial data, such as checking account information, transactions, and budgets.
Forms–form templates are created to handle evaluation, inventory, quizzes, performance reviews, and surveys.
School and grades—teacher use spreadsheets to calculate grade, track students, and identify any relevant data.

What is Graph Theory?

In mathematics and computer science, graph theory is the study of graphs, mathematical structures that show the relation between variable quantities. A graph is made up of vertices, points, or nodes which are connected by arcs, lines, or edges. In discrete mathematics, graphs are one of the main objects of study.
Graphs are used to model numerous types of processes and relations in biological, physical, social and information systems. Graphs can be used to represent many real-world problems. Emphasizing their application to practical systems, the term network is occasionally defined to mean graphs in which attributes are associated with the edges and nodes.
In computer science, graphs are mainly used to represent data organization, networks of communication, the flow of computation, computational devices, etc. For example, a website link structure can be represented by a directed graph. In this case, directed edges will represent links from one page to another, and the vertices will represent web pages. A similar approach can be used to represent problems in biology, social media, computer chip design, travel, and many other fields. Therefore, the development of algorithms that handle graphs is of major interest in computer science.

World Maths Day: An International Mathematics Competition

World Maths Day is an online international mathematics competition that is powered by educational resource provider 3P Learning. It is an annual event that encourages thousands of students to take a break from standard mathematics lessons; instead, they participate in competitive math-themed games. Students who take part in the games have a chance to win prizes and certificates. The aim is to help raise numeracy standards.
Since it was first held on March 14, 2007, World Maths Day has been held the 1st Wednesday in March in every year. Despite the origins, the phrases “World Math Day” and “World Maths Day” are trademarks and should not be confused with other days such as Pi Day or competitions such as the International Mathematical Olympiad. World Maths Day made a Guinness World Record for the Largest Online Maths Competition in 2010.
In 2011, the team behind World Maths Day added a second event known as World Spelling Day. The event was later rebranded the World Education Games. World Science Day, the third event, was added in 2012. World Education Games and World Maths Day are now sponsored by Samsung.
Since it was founded, the World Maths Day has seen its popularity grow fast. It links schools from many parts of the world. Children as young as five years participate, competing against others from overseas in real time. This year, the event took place on 14th March 2017.

Introduction to Probability

Probability is the study of the likelihood of an event happening. Simply, it is how likely something is to happen. Probability plays a role in all activities, directly or indirectly. For example, we may say that tomorrow will probably be sunny because most of the days we have observed were sunny days.
Many events cannot be predicted with certainty. When people are unsure about the outcome of an event, they can talk about the probabilities of specific outcomes—their likelihood. The analysis of events that are governed by probability is known as statistics.
To understand probability, the best example is flipping a coin. There are two possible outcomes: tails (T) and heads (H). What is the probability of the coin landing on Tails or Head? The probability of the coin landing T is ½, and the probability of the coin landing H is ½. Another example that can help you understand probability is throwing a dice. When a die is thrown, there are six possible outcomes. The probability of any one of them is 1/6.
In general, the probability of an event = (Number of ways it can occur) / (total number of outcomes).
These lessons on probability often include the following topics: the probability of events, samples in probability, theoretical probability, probability problems, experimental probability, tree diagrams, independent events, mutually exclusive events, dependent events, permutations, factorial, combinations, probability, probability in statistics, and combinatorics.

What is Combinatorial Game Theory?

Combinatorial game theory is a branch of theoretical computer science and mathematics that studies sequential games. The study has been mainly confined to two-player games with a position in which players take turn changing. Traditionally, the combinational game theory has not studied games of chance or games that use incomplete or imperfect information, favoring games that provide complete information in which set of available moves and state of the game is always known by both players. As mathematical techniques advance, however, the types of games that can be analyzed mathematically expands, therefore, the boundaries of the field are constantly changing.
Examples of combinatorial games are Go, Checkers, Chess, and Tic-tac-toe. The first three games are categorized as non-trivial while the last one is categorized as trivia. In combinatorial game theory, the moves in these games are represented as a game tree. Some one-player combinatorial puzzles (such as Sudoku) and no-player automata (such as Conway’s Game of Life) are also categorized as combinatorial games.
In general, game theory includes games of imperfect knowledge, games of chance, and games in which player’s moves simultaneously, tending to represent actual decision-making situations.
An important notion in combinatorial game theory is that of solved game. Tic-tac-toe, for example, is considered a solved game because it can be established that if both players play optimally, a game will result in a draw.


Don’t Wait Until The Consultant’s Bags Are Packed

Why do clients hire consultants for ERP projects in the first place? Simply put, consultants fill the missing gaps in technical skill or business process knowledge that are critical for a technical project to succeed. While employees come up to speed on what’s possible (i.e. what the new technology can do), consultants learn how this system needs to be designed differently from prior implementations. Each side goes through a learning process, adjusting their expectations about what’s needed to “go-live”.

The challenge is that the focus of both consultants and clients is primarily concentrated on the act of going live. In most cases, there is very little early dialogue about how the transition of ownership will happen, as both parties assume it will be addressed at some later time. Once the consultants complete their piece of the engagement (“The system is live!”), it becomes painfully clear that the employees are not prepared to take on the work alone.

Let’s be clear that this is not about a lack of commitment on the part of consultants or a failing on the client’s side. It is simply the case that in the early stages of a project, turnover is an ambiguous topic; one that the client is often unprepared to address. The perception is that there is so much work and internal learning that needs to happen before the organization can begin to address issues of turnover.

With this in mind, here are some strategies that can help both sides begin to look at this issue so that it doesn’t come crashing down at the eleventh hour.

1. Break the “I’ll do it myself” habit
In the workplace, we must recognize our unconscious habit to “just do it ourselves.” How many times have you been faced with the option of completing a task that probably could have been performed by someone else, but chose not to let him or her fumble through it? Nine times out of ten, people will just do it themselves, even if it’s in their best interest to step back and let others struggle through some learning.

Both consultants and clients need to become more conscious of this tendency so that more opportunities for learning happen while the system is in the design phase. Giving tasks away may appear to slow down a process; but in the long run, it will contribute greatly to uncovering who in the organization is capable of taking on new responsibilities after the switch gets turned on.

2. Prepare a turnover plan early in the game
When consultants operate at their best, they’re equally focused on being topical experts and helping clients develop self-sufficiency. In a large technical project, consultants must place more emphasis on the roles that an organization needs to inherit, and to do this earlier in the process. Although this effort is often met with resistance or appears to fall low on the priority list, both sides must recognize that without a clearly defined turnover plan, the internal groups will be left with an incomplete solution.

Minimally the question should be asked, “if the system were turned over today, who would do what?” If nothing else, this will begin a dialogue and negotiation about what the current assumptions are for turnover and how much work needs to happen to make this real.

3. Create a Transition Team
One way to assist Project Management in a turnover plan is to establish a separate group whose charter is to focus on how the project can successfully get through the period when the consultants roll off the project.

A Transition Team can be comprised of members of the project team, along with employees in the organization. This group can be a critical set of eyes for project management, making increasingly important recommendations around turnover tasks. They can help articulate internal training needs for employees who will inherit the system; knowledge or skills that need to be transferred from person to person, and new internal structures that need to be put in place for the organization to succeed on its own.

It’s never too early to start a dialogue about how the system will run after the formal project is complete. The alternative is often an extended project timeline and lack of ownership by the clients themselves.

Remember, technical projects require a balance between the needs of the moment with the recognition that success is measured after the consultants leave. Don’t wait until the consultant’s bags are packed to at least begin this conversation.


Overcoming hidden bias to unlock talent's potential

Hidden biases involving factors such as race, gender, and age can make businesses lose out on great talent and opportunities. The good news is that these biases can be overcome.

At a recent dinner party the conversation turned to work, and I listened as another guest described candidates for a senior role in her organization. "Mary is more experienced, but she has nothing in common with the rest of the team," she said. "Finding the right fit is really important in my organization, so I hired Sue, who is more like the rest of the team." Many around the table nodded in understanding, but I thought the guest may have just let her unconscious bias rob her and her organization of the best candidate.

Unconscious bias is an automatic reaction. It's a subconscious preference for or against a person, thing or group. It's different from an explicit or conscious prejudice, but no less destructive. We all have these hidden biases — what's more, they've probably already affected our choices.

Biased, me? No way! That was my reaction when I first encountered the concept. Like many, I have strived to reject prejudiced behaviour in myself and others. But a growing field of research, led by Harvard University Prof. Mahzarin Banaji, shows that in spite of one's best intentions, most people harbour deep-seated resistance to the "different." That difference may involve factors such as race, gender, age or physical characteristics, or subtle qualities such as background, personality type or experiences.

Having these notions of normal or different, good or bad, doesn't mean we are bad people. Hidden biases exist in spite of our desire to be bias-free, and often in contradiction to the attitudes we believe we have. For example, a CEO of a Canadian corporation earned a good reputation for promoting women to senior management roles. Yet he was shocked to learn that he'd been ignoring ideas presented by these women executives, while accepting the very same ideas from their male colleagues. Once alerted to this unintentional behaviour, he was able to listen mindfully to all contributions.

There's positive bias, too, compelling us to favour personal connections and those with whom we share common experiences. Because I was an underdog who'd bucked the trend and expectations in my early career, I still over-identify with others in a similar position — meaning I sometimes help them unequally.

What's the impact? Though a growing number of companies have embraced diversity and its business benefits, hidden biases are likely shaping our workplace actions, affecting hiring, promotion, performance evaluations, budget decisions and openness to sources of ideas and innovative solutions.

The stakes are high. Talent languishes and leaves, innovation stalls, client service suffers and the organization may lose out on business opportunities.

The good news? It is possible to overcome hidden bias. We just need to outsmart ourselves.

It starts with identifying biases. Three good places to start include exploring the Implicit Association Test (implicit.harvard.edu), which helps companies and individuals identify their subconscious social attitudes; asking yourself whether you typically hire or promote the same type of person or personality; and considering your team. If everyone looks and behaves like you, you know that's not representative of our diverse society.

Once we acknowledge that our brains are hardwired this way and explore our blind spots, we can take steps to overcome them. Some tips: establish clearly defined criteria for evaluating interview candidates. Ask HR or other colleagues to observe if you are applying them fairly; sponsor people who are not like you — be purposeful about seeking out those who are different from yourself; set parameters around the way you help "special" connections to avoid helping one group unequally; and evaluate your actions regularly and seek feedback from trusted yet objective colleagues.

Overcoming hidden biases takes courage and vigilance. But research shows that leaders who confront their unconscious responses are better at building effective teams and delivering better results. Now is the time to improve our businesses and ourselves.


Floor Treatments

A closer look at the bottoms of those shoes and you'll find oil, dirt and heaven only knows how many tidbits of left over dog deposits. Small wonder why your floors stubbornly refuse to come clean. Do wear slippers or socks inside. The oil from the bottom of your feet also dirties the surface.
Always vacuum or dust hard floor surfaces before mopping. Start in the far corner of the room and work in small sections. If you don't have a rope mop, just use a hand towel or soft sponge to wipe the tile clean.

Polish Chrome

Clean Tarnished Brass

Baking Soda

Also known as Sodium Bicarbonate, the same qualities that make baking soda a tenderizer and a leaven, also make it a great cleaning product. Baking soda is weakly alkaline. As such, it acts to neutralize acids and break down proteins.

Baking soda’s finely gritty texture makes it an excellent, gentle abrasive cleaner. It is inexpensive, environmentally friendly, fragrance-free, and safe for nearly all surfaces, making it ideal for household use. As a mild abrasive agent, baking soda can also be used in place of toothpaste.

As an acid neutralizer, baking soda is a great first-aid tool. Dissolved into a lukewarm bath, it will soothe the discomfort of sunburn and the itch of poison ivy. Made into a paste with cool water and applied directly to the skin, it will ease the pain of bee stings. One-half teaspoon baking soda mixed into 4 ounces (120 ml) of water can be taken as an antacid. Note: Those taking prescription medications or following a reduced-sodium diet should check with a physician before consuming baking soda.

Sprinkled around the exterior entrances to and foundations of homes, it may prohibit ants and other insects from crawling in, as it is irritating to their chitinous exoskeletons and they avoid it.

Bleach-Free Toilet Bowl Scrub

Check out this toilet bowl scrub recipe that worked for me:
Combine 2 tablespoons of baking soda with one tablespoon of olive oil and a teaspoon of lemon juice. Throw this into your toilet and scrub away! It always gets my toilet clean.

Make up a batch and keep a bottle by the WC, but remember to shake well before using.


Date of Award

Degree Type

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

School of Natural Sciences

Faculty of Computing, Health and Science

First Advisor

Dr Ray Froend

Second Advisor

Dr Jeffrey Turner

Seasonal changes exist in source-water utilisation by Banksia woodland species overlying a shallow aquifer on the Swan Coastal Plain in Western Australia These were studied to identify the importance of groundwater as a water source to this vegetation. Intra-and interspecific variation in seasonal water use was investigated across the dominant overstorey and understorey species, with particular emphasis on species of different rooting morphologies. Seasonal water use was investigated across a topographical gradient ranging from a groundwater depth of 2.5 to 30 metres, a scenario representative of the coastal sand-dune system. An examination was also made of the response of woodland vegetation to an induced and rapid temporal separation from the groundwater able, beyond the normal range of groundwater fluctuation. To investigate a species' seasonal water usage, measurements of the naturally occurring stable isotope of hydrogen in water (deuterium, δ2H) were used to distinguish among potential plant water sources. Isotopic ratios from vascular water of the study species were compared with those of potential sources of precipitation, soil moisture and groundwater. The primary assumptions of this method were validated for the study species in laboratory experiments, and field-sampling strategies were developed. Through this process, the water sources available to plants were identified. Mixing models were employed to calculate the proportion of groundwater used. The results of this study confirm that groundwater is an important water source to both overstorey and understorey components of the woodland. Phreatophytic species were characterised by a deep root system, in which the tap root played a significant role in groundwater uptake. These species derived some of their water from groundwater throughout the dry-wet cycle. With the onset of the hot, Mediterranean summer, they increased their use of deep moisture sources, including groundwater. Variability in groundwater usage was observed at the interspecific and intraspecific level. This was dependent on root-system distribution and maximum root depth. For those species capable of using groundwater, the degree to which it was utilised was dependent on the proximity of groundwater (i.e. the depth to the water table), and the availability of moisture in shallower horizons of the soil profile (i.e. the season). For individuals occurring at shallow depth to water (< 8 m), groundwater was an important water source: whereas, at greater depths (≥8 m) its importance decreased as it was used in lower proportions and/or for shorter durations. Comparisons of within-species variation revealed disparities in groundwater usage, and possibly dependency, between the dominant overstorey Banksia species. Banksia ilicifolio, a species confined to habitats where groundwater depth is ≤8 m, was dependent on groundwater during the dry summer period (up to 90% of water used was groundwater) and may be considered a summer obligate phreatophyte. B. attenuata is a summer facultative phreatophyte, occurring where groundwater depth is 2 to >30m with groundwater accounting for between 5 to 75% of water used depending on depth to the water table. These results suggest the possibility of an obligate-facultative phreatophyte distinction. The response of phreatophytic Banksia species to changes in the groundwater regime beyond the normal range of groundwater fluctuation confirmed the seasonal nature of groundwater dependence, and varied sensitivity of individuals according to their position within the sandplain landscape (i.e. proximity to groundwater).


Wednesday, April 21, 2010

What are your values?

People often take values to be simple goods or commandments as in the ancient category of virtue. Therefore there is supposed to exist a certain class of people, usually regarded as the "bad guys", who lack values. To be sure, there are bad guys in the world, but none of them lack values. The most abject, degraded soul, say, a Ted Bundy, or Charie Manson
has certain values. But their values are rather chilling and disturbing ones involving
controlling or harming others, or seeking thrills at the expense of others. But it would
be a great mistake to say these lowest of examples are examples of meaninglessness or nihilism.
Those two criminals were extremely motivated people in their milieu. Had they followed
Pascal and stayed in their room - if solitude were their highest value - much suffering
would have been spared. In their own way they were as motivated as was Obama in his fight
for the White House but motivated to destroy the soul of girls and women.

I am saying that we need to retain a more neutral understanding of the word values, whereby the name refers to qualities or conditions of the soul, or attractions and repulsions of various kinds.

Now every epoch puts forth certain character or biography as the best or most desirable.
Since the presidency of Clinton, the most desirable traits are those of extreme giftedness in social
relations, of a kind of extraversion of a kind of uncanny excellence at being able to give
pleasure to others in some way or "feel their pain." Exceptions are made for those
tinkerers and inventors who create things we value which is why allowances are made for
socially impaired computer guys for example. But in general the Clintonian type (Obama is
the newest example) is most admired. The love for this particular personality type has been
bemoaned by those enamored with older, more "masculinist" types, but society has surely
benefited from individuals like Obama and Clinton.

In earlier times other types were put forth as a model: maybe it was stubborn adherence to a set of ideas, or the
ability to solve technical problems that was more admired. That had its virtues as well.
(An example would be LBJ forcing integration in the South rather than listening to the Southern point of view in a spirit of diplomacy).

I feel Marxism in particular and sociology in general to be utterly wrong in placing impersonal classes and social
structures at the helm, unless those classes can be said to share psychological traits in common that are emulated by the masses. But large groupings have too much internal diversity for any one
characteristic to be emblematic.

That is what Emerson means when he says that "there is no history only biography".

I think the renewed interest in virtue ethics confuses the issue and blinds people to just how powerfully the individual character shapes global affairs. Virtue ethics takes certain traits as
simply the best traits but fails to notice how many other traits historically embraced but just as soon discarded have had as much salutary results; indeed some values might become vices in a given moment: obsession with technicalities, the ability to focus on one thing at a time, (“single-tasking”) sensual
indulgence, stubborness at holding values that are unpopular (this last to be distinguished from courage). Virtue ethics blinds people to the many varieties
of the good and collapses genuine variety under rather unspecified categories like "courage" or
preserverence. Buddhism, (otherwise relatively unimpeacheable) makes this mistake as did
Aristotle and Aristotelianism.

Now human acts and habits may have a good or evil character in something like an absolute sense. But more often, the verdict is a matter of bias or historical convenience. I take value to mean whenever any human being responds
negatively or affirmatively to an external stimuli. Indeed, such initial responses, our
likes and dislikes, is a precondition for the possibility of human choice. That is, each of us RESPONDS, and in responding creates a self and, with all others, makes a world. Lance Armstrong, or Billie Jean King at first responded to a pleasure in
certain physical exertion, and achievement and recognition at that athletic endeavor. But before such figures become who they are as far as the media or admiring public is concerned, they
must first have some kind of initial liking for a certain bodily activity. To complicate matters, this kinaesthetic agility may be
mixed with an initial positive response to fame or reward (and punishment). For Lance Armstrong or King certain practices matter - cycling and tennis- and maybe
other things matter too - like status recognition, and in Billie Jean King's case, a need to
identify with her fellow females and represent them. Whatever the specifics, these leaves of
likes and dislikes shoots through all of life and any inquiry that starts from unconscious motivation or departs from people’s stated or acted desires is bound to miss something crucial.

The main conflict in human life is that there are so many human ends and aims and for every Lance Armstrong there is a sedentary scientist or thinker in their book lined room making another kind of contribution. And all of these types of people go through life evaluating the world around them and the people they meet from their own biases. This is what Thomas Nagel calls “mutual imaginative incomprehension” and an earlier philosopher named George Ramsey called “self-hugging” (as researched by Steven Reiss at Ohio State). We seem to have a natural narcissism wherein we truly want to see ourselves in others, or want others to be very much like ourselves and cover over this truth with slogans like "live and let live" and "different strokes."

I am saying everything involving human affairs has this value question at the root. There
is a great deal of debate about value in philosophy these days, all of it in fact valuable
- about internalism and externalism and cognitivism and realism. But before we come to these questions we must first come to terms with our values and our diversity.

  1. It's important to think about these things, as so few people do. I agree with you in essence that the lack of awareness of different values (which leads ultimately to the assumption that one's own values are the ONLY values that exist, or that are worth preserving) is a sad and even dangerous thing in culture. There are good and bad things about this new global economy, but one of the worst and most tragic things about it has to be the feeling of us all being one world family with one set of cultural values, and the systematic erasure of all other values. One can see this narcissism you speak of at play in myriad struggles and misunderstandings in everyday life, in a world in which eccentricity, singularity, and difference are, worse than being not tolerated, not even recognized. This is surely a regression from the time that people recognized different values and were threatened by them! Today if you present different values to people, you get not opposition, but only a blank stare.

  2. Anna: Are you saying that the ideal of "that's only my opinion" robs us of the grounds for genuine disagreement or even robs us of a kind of passion borne of a feeling of connection to something objective in our values? That would certainly make sense. I see problems on both sides, where sometimes people refuse to take a stand because they can't see its larger necessity; and at other times act moralistic (rather than moral) and make their personal life the standard for others.


Other Nations Involved

Thirty-four other nations contributed food, medicine, technical advisors,
equipment, training, economic aid and the like. Four more - Australia, New
Zealand, Thailand, and the Republic of Korea - all furnished combat troops. A
fifth - the Republic of the Philippines - provided a civic action group that
had its own security force of infantry, armor, and artillery. The total of
foreign troops was 68,800. This was more than had fought under the United
Nations in Korea.


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Meniere's Disease

What is Meniere's Disease?

Meniere's disease is a disorder caused by increased fluid pressure in the inner ear. The fluid chamber of the inner ear that has increased pressure is called the endolymphatic chamber and therefore the disease is also known as endolymphatic hydrops (increased fluid pressure in the endolymphic chamber). The exact cause of the disease is unknown, though genetic and environmental causes are thought to contribute to its development.

What are the Symptoms of Meniere's Disease?

There are 4 main symptoms associated with Meniere's disease. These are: episodic vertigo (spinning dizziness), tinnitus (roaring or ringing in the ears [usually just one ear]), fluctuating hearing loss, and pressure sensation in the ear. An episode of Meniere's usually starts with a pressure sensation in the ear with increasing roaring sound in the ear and hearing loss and a sudden attack of vertigo. The vertigo generally lasts at least 30 minutes and may last up to or greater than 24 hours. Once the vertigo stops, the patients generally experience some imbalance which takes days to weeks to resolve. The hearing generally returns, but over time, the hearing and balance function are lost with each attack of the vertigo. Some patients may just have fluctuating hearing loss without vertigo or episodic vertigo without hearing loss. These are termed cochlear hydrops and vestibular hydrops respectively.

What Causes an Attack to Occur?

There are some known triggers of a Meniere's attack, which include, high salt foods, too much caffeine, drinking alcohol, and stress. While the triggers differ between patients, the above 4 triggers are found most commonly.

I Know I have Meniere's Disease, What Will Happen To Me?

Approximately 60% of patients with Meniere's disease stop having attacks after a few years (also called the disease burning out). The rest continue to have problems. Of these, a high percentage (60%-80%) are controlled with a very strict control of their diet and lifestyle changes and sometimes medications. The strict diet includes limiting your diet to a daily sodium of 1500 mg, eliminating all caffeine (not even decaf coffee, which has caffeine), and no alcohol. The lifestyle change includes reduction of stress by biofeedback, meditation, yoga, daily exercise, etc.

Some people (20%-30%) may develop the disease in the other ear after a few years. A small percentage of the patients will continue to have episodes which may occur every day to once a few months or years. When despite maximal medical therapy and lifestyle changes the patients continue to have frequent episodes of Meniere's disease and the disease is affecting their daily life, then surgery is considered for treatment.

What Is the Treatment of Meniere's Disease?

The treatment of Meniere's disease follows a stepwise fashion from diet and stress control to medical treatment to surgical treatment. The dietary/lifestyle changes for treating Meniere's Disease are discussed above. The next step is taking medications which are believed to decrease the inner ear fluid pressure. The medicines that cause reduction of fluid pressure in the inner ear also make you lose extra water from the kidneys. These medications, called diuretics, include Dyazide, methazolamide, furosemide, among others.

For controlling the dizziness or imbalance, medications such as meclizine (Antivert), Robinul, scopolamine patches, among others is used. These medications decrease the abnormal signal that the  diseased inner ear sends the brain.

Other treatments include the use of the Meniett Device. The Meniett device is a device that is used after placing a small tube in the ear drum. It is used in the ear 3 times a day for 5 minutes each time. It is successful in controlling the symptoms in ~50% of patients. Unfortunately it is not always covered by health insurance companies and the cost is ~$3000.

The newest treatment for Meniere's disease is the placement of medications behind the ear drum. In a recent study, over 90% of patients with Meniere's disease were found to have significant control of their symptoms with intratympanic steroid (anti-inflammatory medications placed behind the ear drum). The injections (using dexamethasone or methylprednisolone [Solu Medrol]) are generally given after a local anesthetic in the office and are repeated every 2 to 4 weeks until the attacks stop. In our experience at UC Irvine, most patients with Meniere's undergoing intratympanic steroid treatment have only required 2-3 injections for full control of their symptoms. We recommend it for patients prior to doing any surgery or in those with a history suggestive of autoimmune Meniere's disease or those who are unable to take steroids by mouth.

These injections are different from gentamicin injections that cause destruction of the inner ear balance cells. We rarely use gentamicin injections in the ear for Meniere's disease due to the destruction of the inner ear it causes. Gentamicin injection is reserved for patients with end stage Meniere's disease with very little hearing or balance function.

Since starting intratympanic steroid therapy for Meniere's disease a few years ago, we have not needed to use any surgical treatment for patients suffering from Meniere's disease.


Here’s more evidence that proper public transportation tied to appropriate land-use planning can have have a major impact on climate change.

NASA Goddard reports on new research in an article entitled, “Road Transportation Emerges as Key Driver of Warming.” In the analysis,

We already know how to use this information, so we should get to it. Better cars, whether hydrogen powered or electric, are not a solution. We need to vastly improve growth and planning approaches,  so that public transportation works best. Besides, sprawl, and the accompanying traffic that goes with it, is bad, and we all know it.


Karen Calder

Karen has practised Iyengar Yoga since 2000 and gained her teaching certificate in 2009. She really enjoys the challenge Iyengar Yoga gives her and has opted to carry on training and now holds the Intermediate 3 teaching certificate. She has visited Pune to work directly with the Iyengar family and has attended conventions with both Geeta and Abhijata Iyengar - all deeply humbling experiences. She has also attended workshops with visiting senior teachers Glenn Cerescoli and Christian Pissano. "There is always so much more to learn, every time I return to my mat I make a new discovery, there are an infinite number of variables within every pose - it is an incredible journey".

A distinguishing feature of an Iyengar class is the use of props, e.g. blocks, belts and chairs so students with less flexibility or strength are able to work correctly and achieve their full potential.  This means everyone, from beginners to advancing students will gain something from the week.

During the course of the week we will explore the poses in detail and advance and develop practice to suit ability. I love meeting new students and introducing them to the joy of yoga and equally enjoy challenging those with more practice.  I look forward to meeting you!


Nettime mailing list archives

Felix Stalder on Thu, 1 Jul 2010 13:31:00 +0200 (CEST)

[This is my contribution to the current issue (#19) of 'open. Cahier on Art
and the Public Domain.' which focuses on 'Beyond Privacy. New Notions of
the Private and Public Domains.' In this text, I try to analyze why the
notion of privacy seems to be loosing its capacity to function as a
political category, despite all the privacy commissioners and NGOs fighting
to protext privacy. Felix]

One way to characterize Western modernity, the period we are just leaving,
is by its particular structure of control and autonomy. It emerged as the
result of two historic developments â one leading to large, hierarchic
bureaucracies as the dominant form of organization, the other to the
(bourgeois, male) citizen as the main political subject. Privacy played a
key role in maintaining a balance between the two. Today, this arrangement
is unraveling. In the process, privacy loses (some of) its social
functions. Post-privacy, then, points to a transformation in how people
create autonomy and how control permeates their lives.

Bureaucracies and Citizens, 1700-1950

The first of these developments was the expansion of large-scale
institutions, first state bureaucracies, then, since the late nineteenth
century, commercial corporations.1 Their attempts to organize social
processes on a previously unimaginable scale â in terms of space, time and
complexity â required vast amounts of information about the world, most
importantly about the subjects in their domain. In 1686, the Marquis de
Vauban proposed to Louis XIV a yearly census of the entire population, so
that the king would be âable, in his own office, to review in an hourâs
grandeur, his wealth, and his strengths.â2 At the time, such an endeavour
could not be conducted for practical reasons, but the vision spawned an
entire range of new theoretical approaches to render the world available in
such a way. In 1749, the German political scientist Gottfried Achenwall
(1719-1772) brought them together under the term âstatisticsâ, defined as
the âscience dealing with data about the condition of a state or
communityâ. Yet, handling such data became ever more difficult as the drive
to collect intensified. In the late nineteenth century, the US census, held
once a decade, reached a critical juncture when the processing of the data
amassed could not be finished before the next census was to be held. The
historian James Beniger put this âcontrol crisisâ at the beginning of the
computer revolution and the information age enabled by it.3 Without the
systematic gathering of standardized information and its processing into
actionable knowledge, none of the functions of the modern state, or the
modern economy, could have developed, beginning with centralized taxation,
standing armies, social welfare provisions, or international trade and
production of complex goods and services. Thus, modernity, and particularly
high modernity, was characterized by an expansion of control by large
bureaucracies based on massive amounts of information, conceptualizing
people as standardized data-points to be manipulated for their own, or
someone elseâs, good. But as long as life was lived in a largely analogue
environment, the comprehensive gathering of data remained such an extremely
labour-intensive affair that only massive bureaucracies were capable of
conducting it, and even highly developed states could do it only once every
ten years. Under such conditions of limited information processing capacity
(as we can see now), the drive to scale up these bureaucracies created
strategies to radically reduce complexity, rendering them rigid and

Yet, during the same period of expanding centralized control, new spaces of
autonomy were created. People, or, more precisely, educated townsmen,
forged a new type of subjectivity. They began to think of themselves less
as members of larger collectives (the guild, the church) and more as
persons individually endowed with capacities, self-responsibility and,
thus, a certain freedom from these collective entities. Central to this new
sense of individuality was the secular notion of an inner life.4 It was
characterized by the innate capacity to reflect and reason. This is,
perhaps, the central notion of the enlightenment which celebrated the
ability âto use oneâs understanding without guidance from anotherâ, to use
Immanuel Kantâs famous definition (1784). While these capacities were
located in the inner world of the individual, the enlightenment thought of
them as universal. In principle, every man (though not necessarily women)
should reach the same reasoned conclusion, if presented with the same
evidence. Based on this universality of reason, the subject could
justifiably contradict authority and tradition.

The notion of privacy protected this inner world (and by extension, the
home and the family life) from interference by authorities and thus
protected the ability of the person to come to reasoned opinions about the
world. In the liberal conception, this protected inner world provided the
foundation of the ability of each man to form his own opinions to be
exchanged in the public sphere in a rational deliberation of public
affairs.5 This capacity for reasoning, in turn, provided the legitimacy for
the inclusion of these reasoned men (and later women), elevated to the
status of citizens, in governing the state. Indeed, this claim to power was
increasingly regarded as the only legitimate one, superseding tradition as
the main source of authority. Much of the concerns about the loss of
privacy today stems from a commitment to this tradition of liberal

Starting in the late nineteenth century, however, the conception of the
inner world changed radically. With the emergence of consumer capitalism,
personal identity became a project and a problem with an urgency previously
unknown. Inner life was no longer viewed as comprised of a relatively
narrow set of coherent universals, but as an infinite expanse of
conflicting drives and influences, forming a dynamic pattern unique to each
person. Sigmund Freud, as the historian of psychoanalysis Eli Zaretsky
argues, became the leading interpreter of the psychological tensions
triggered by the consumer society.7 The inner world came now to be seen as
the ground on which individual identity (rather than universal reason) was
anchored. Privacy protected the complex, and potentially dangerous
exploration conducted by the individual as he or she tried to come to terms
with the pressures and desires at the core of individuality. If we follow
Zaretskyâs approach of charting the transformation of subjectivities (and
of psychoanalysis as the conceptual framework to articulate one type of it)
alongside the transformations of capitalism, the type of subjectivity
described by Freud started to lose its dominance in the 1960s.

New social movements began to react to the pressures and opportunities
created by yet another transformation, towards what was then called the
post-industrial society and is now called, more accurately, the network
society. Rather than focusing on introspection, the new social movements
promoted a new type of subjectivity emphasizing expressiveness,
communication and connection. At the same time, feminists began to develop
a sustained critique of privacy, understanding family relations not as the
counteracting force to capitalism, but rather as its continuation. Thus,
privacy would not shield from domination, but transfer it from the field of
economics to that of gender relations.8 However, despite the emergence of
these freedom-oriented social movements, hierarchical bureaucracies
remained the dominant form of social organization, and despite the feminist
critique of privacy, it could still function as an important concept to
shield people against the grip of these institutions. In Germany, for
example, popular resistance against the national census (VolkszÃhlung)
arose in the mid 1980s, mainly on grounds of privacy protection against the
preying eyes of the state.

Networked Individualism and Personalized Institutions

Fast forward 30 years. Many countries, including Germany, no longer conduct
national censuses because the data has already been collected and can be
aggregated flexibly from the various databases at the heart of government.
An ever growing number of people is willing to actively publish vast
amounts of information about themselves online for everyone to see and is
happily using services that collect very fine-grained data about very
personal affairs. While people still claim to be concerned about privacy
when asked in surveys, their practices seem to indicate that such concerns
have largely vanished in daily life. What happened? Here, I want to focus
on two pieces of this puzzle. The first concerns the transformation of
subjectivity on a mass scale. The second the changing relationships between
individuals and institutions concerning the delivery of personalized,
rather than standardized services.9

First, subjectivity. The values of the social movements of the 1960s,
severed from their political roots, have spread throughout society. They
are now dominant. Flexibility, creativity and expressiveness are regarded
today as generally desirable personal traits, necessary for social success,
and, increasingly, seen as corresponding to the âtrue natureâ of human
beings. As traditional institutions are losing their ability to organize
peopleâs lives (think of the decline of life-long employment, for example),
people are left to find their own orientation, for better or worse. While
this has often been seen as primarily a negative process of atomization,10
we can now also see new forms of sociability emerge on a mass scale. These
are based on the new infrastructures of communication and (relatively)
cheap transportation to which vast amounts of people have gained access.
But the sociability in this new environment is starkly different from
earlier forms, based largely on physical co-presence. In order to create
sociability in the space of flows people first have to make themselves
visible, that is, they have to create their representation through
expressive acts of communication. In order to connect within such a
network, a person has to be, at the same time, suitably different, that is
creative in some recognizable fashion, and abide by the social conventions
that hold a particular network together. There are both negative and
positive drivers to making oneself visible in such a way: there is the
threat of being invisible, ignored and bypassed, on the one hand, and the
promise of creating a social network really expressing oneâs own
individuality, on the other. This creates a particular type of subjectivity
that sociologists have come to call networked individualism. âIndividuals,â
Manuel Castells notes, âdo not withdraw into the isolation of virtual
reality. On the contrary, they expand their sociability by using the wealth
of communication networks at their disposal, but they do so selectively,
constructing their cultural worlds in terms of their preferences and
projects, and modifying it according to their personal interests and
values.â11 Since these networks of sociability are horizontal forms of
organization, based on self-selected, voluntary associations, they require
some degree of trust among the people involved. While trust deepens over
the course of interaction, as it always does, there needs to be a minimum
of trust in order to start interacting in the first place. What could be a
chicken-and-egg problem is in practice solved by the availability of the
track record of interests and projects that each person creates by
publishing â as an individual and voluntarily â information about
him/herself, what he or she is interest in, passionate about, and investing
time in. In other words, being expressive â about anything â is the
precondition of creating sociability over communication networks, which, in
turn, come to define people and their ability to create or participate in
projects that reflect their personality.12 This need to express oneâs
desires and passions in order to enter into a sociability that creates
oneâs identity slowly but surely erodes the distinction between the inner
and outer world, so central to the modern subjectivity, forged in the
Gutenberg Galaxy. Subjectivity is being based on interaction, rather than
introspection. Privacy in the networked context entails less the
possibility to retreat to the core of oneâs personality, to the true self,
but more the danger of disconnection from a world in which sociability is
tenuous and needs to be actively maintained all of the time. Otherwise, the
network simply reconfigures itself, depriving one of the ability to develop
oneâs personality and life.

Second, large institutions. One of the progressive promises of the modern
liberal state, and modern bureaucratic institutions in general, was to do
away with privilege and treat everyone equally, based on the premise that
no one is above (or below) the law and that all decisions are taken in
accordance to the law (or, more generally, written procedure). Rigidity and
impersonality have long been defined as core features of bureaucracies. Max
Weber, at the beginning of the twentieth century when bureaucracies grew to
an unprecedented scale, famously feared that their superior rationality
would force society into an iron cage. Today, such impersonality is seen
neither as a liberation from the injustices of privilege nor as rational,
but as the dead hand of bureaucracy. Because, neoliberal ideology holds, we
are not equal, but each unique. This creates both a push and a pull
profoundly transforming the relationships between institutions and
individuals. Even very large institutions are faced with demands to treat
everyone individually. This is best visible in new institutions that have
had to contend with these demands since their inception. The corporations
that make up Web 2.0 are all about personalization, recommendations and
individualized results. For that, they demand vast amounts of personal
data, either directly provided by the user (by filling out registration
forms, uploading personal contact lists and calendars, designating
favourites and exchange partners) or indirectly collected (through log-
analysis, processing of user histories, etcetera). Google, of course, is
the most ambitious in this area, but in principle, itâs not different from
other Internet companies.13 But this is not an isolated development in one
sector, but symptomatic for the uneven transformation of the economy as a
whole. On the level of manufacturing, this is expressed in the shift from
the Fordist model of standardized mass production to a networked model of
highly flexible production for precisely defined niches, all the way down
to the size of one. On the level of services, this is expressed in the
shift towards the delivery of personalized services. Virtually all
consumer-oriented industries and services are today employing customer-
relationship management (CRM) vastly increasing the amounts of personal
data collected across the board, allowing the delivery of highly targeted
products and services. Of course, there is also a very strong pull by the
corporations themselves to learn as much as possible about their
customers/users, in order to fine-tune each relationship to maximize
profit. There seems to be an implicit deal, accepted by the vast majority
of consumers/users: in exchange for personal data, one receives personal
service, assuming that personalized is better than standardized. In order
to succeed in such an environment, bureaucracies, even large-scale ones,
strive to become less hierarchical, more flexible and highly personal,
entering into intimate relationships with the people they deal with.

Autonomy and Control

The old balance between autonomy and control, represented by the figures of
the citizen and the large bureaucracy, sustained by privacy, is in the
process of disappearing. Autonomy is increasingly created within
(semi)public networks, held together by mass self-communication and more or
less frequent physical encounters.14 New projects to increase autonomy â
that is the ability for people to lead their own lives according to their
own plans â are being created on all scales and with the greatest variety
of definitions of what autonomy actually looks like. What is characteristic
to all of them is that the condition for autonomy is no longer understood
as being rooted in the inner world, withdrawn from the social world, but in
networked projects deeply engaged in the social world. Such projects range
from the global justice campaigns, to the resurgence of local identities,
from loosely coordinated political pressure campaigns to support groups
that help people cope with personal traumas. They can be left-wing or
right-wing, destructive or nurturing. Engagement in such projects is
voluntary and they are held together by common protocols of communication
and based on trust among their participants. Trust, in turn, is enabled by
the horizontal availability of personal information about each other. In
some ways, the dynamics of traditional offline communities â where everyone
knows everyone â are being transported, transformed and scaled-up to new
communities based on online communication. Of course, what âknowing a
personâ means is rather different, and often distributed communities are
too large to even superficially âknowâ or count as a âfriendâ everyone
involved. Yet, if need be, everyone can be looked up and become suitably
known very quickly, because everyone, voluntarily or involuntarily, leaves
personal traces than can be accessed in real time or after the fact with
great ease. While this, in itself, is not an entirely unproblematic
condition â what about the freedom to have certain acts fade from memory?15
â it provides the basis for the rise of new voluntary associations. This
can help to increase real autonomy of people, because it is focused on
creating inter-personal worlds in which autonomy can be lived on a daily
basis, even if its extends only to some fraction of oneâs life.

More problematic is the shift towards personalized institutions. With the
rising complexity of the services delivered, personalization does have its
benefits and the dead hand of bureaucratic formalism often can be, indeed,
rather deadly. Yet, personalization also increases the power and control
that such institutions can exercise, rather than the opposite. All the
knowledge that goes into framing the character of the personalization
resides at the end of the corporation that gets an ever increasing range of
tools to fine-tune each relationship to optimize the pursuit of its own
interests (usually profit maximization). As long as the actions of the
user/customer are aligned with those of the corporation, they are supported
and amplified through the granting of privileges, such as discounts, extra
features and opportunities, faster delivery, and so on. However, as soon as
the actions are no longer aligned (because they are hostile or not
profitable), personalization turns into discrimination, based on whatever
mechanisms are programmed into the underlying algorithms.16 For the user,
confronted with subtle, entirely opaque and unaccountable decision-making
mechanisms, it is nearly impossible to tell if one is being privileged or
discriminated. There is no more standard against which this can be

Thus, the possibilities to create meaningful autonomy are being expanded
through voluntary, horizontal associations that directly express their
membersâ interests and desires. At the same time and through the same
infrastructure, the return of privileges and discrimination expands the
ability of institutions to subtly or overtly shape other peopleâs lives
according to their agendas. Thus, we can observe a structural
transformation of the conditions for autonomy as well as the practices of
control. Privacy no longer serves to mediate between them. What should
replace it are two things. New strategies for connective opacity extending
both horizontally â modulating what those outside a particular network can
see of what is going on inside â and vertically â modulating what the
providers of the infrastructure can see of the sociability they enable. In
a way, this can be seen as privacy 2.0, but it takes as its unit not the
individual, but an entire social network. But that is not enough. We also
need mandatory transparency of the protocols, algorithms and procedures
that personalize the behaviour of these newly flexible bureaucracies, so
that the conditions of discrimination can be contested.

American Business (Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press, 1977).

2. Quoted in: James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to
Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (Yale: Yale University Press,
1998), 11.

3. James R. Beniger, The Control Revolution: Technological and Economic
Origins of the Information Society (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1986).

4. Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989).

5. JÃrgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An
Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, translated by Thomas Burger
with the assistance of Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989

6. See, for example, Wolfgang Sofsky, Privacy: A Manifesto, translated by
Steven Rendall (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2008),
or, if you read German, Beate RÃssler, Der Wert des Privaten (Frankfurt am
Main: Suhrkamp, 2002).

7. Eli Zaretsky, Secrets of the Soul: A Social and Cultural History of
Psychoanalysis (New York: Vintage, 2005).

8. Catherine MacKinnon, Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1989).

9. I have addressed the role of the preventive security regimes elsewhere.
Felix Stalder, âBourgeois Anarchism and Authoritarian Democraciesâ, First
Monday, vol. 13 (2008) no. 7 (July).

10. The classic here is: Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and
Revival of American Community (New York: Touchstone Books/Simon & Schuster,
2000). A recent addition to this perspective: Jacqueline Olds and Richard
S. Schwartz, The Lonely American: Drifting Apart in the Twenty-first
Century (New York: Beacon Press, 2009).

11. Manuel Castells, Communication Power (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2009), 121.

12. Christophe Aguiton and Dominique Cardon, âThe Strength of Weak
Cooperation: An Attempt to Understand the Meaning of Web 2.0â,
Communications & Strategies, no. 65 (2007).

13. For an analysis of Googleâs comprehensive data-gathering strategy, see
Felix Stalder and Christine Mayer, âThe Second Index: Search Engines,
Personalization and Surveillanceâ, in: Konrad Becker and Felix Stalder
(eds.), Deep Search: The Politics of Search beyond Google (Innsbruck/New
Jersey: Studienverlag/Transaction Publishers, 2009), 98-116.

14. For the relationship between communication and travel, see Jonas
Larsen, John Urry and Kay Axhausen, Mobilities, Networks, Geographies
(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006).

15. Viktor Mayer-Schoenberger, Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the
Digital Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009).

16. David Lyon (ed.), Surveillance as Social Sorting: Privacy, Risk and
Automated Discrimination (London/New York: Routledge, 2003).

-> http://felix.openflows.com/node/143

*|Deep Search.The Politics of Search Beyond Google.Studienverlag 2009

#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets


Agora Collection by Segis

Agora is a collection of upholstered seating, tables and partition panels which takes its name from the ancient Greek polis whose Agora was the center of the city’s life.

Lounge chair, sofa, bench, ottoman and partition are the elements that make up the pleasurable environment by creating comfortable waiting and meeting spaces. The versatile collection is represented by well sized products that can be easily placed in different contexts. Tables of varied heights and dimensions create a unique and elegant mood.


PUST in the news

A couple notes on the article:

  • While the school may have 250 acres if the affiliated cooperative farms are included, the actual campus is much smaller, with ~10 buildings built around two sports fields.
  • The supposition of leverage is, I feel, more nuanced than expressed in the article. Detentions of Americans have and continue to occur across the different engagements. While PUST got unlucky this time, it provides no more benefit to the regime in that regard than the tourism or other ongoing aid projects, which have also experienced similar actions in the past.
  • PUST is not even close to the largest foreign community in the country, as stated, that honor goes to the Chinese

Projects like PUST are an opportunity to put a human face on Americans in the minds of the next generation of educators and empowered thinkers in Pyongyang. It’s hard to overstate the value of that engagement.


You are here

Our working relationship

Submitted by Education on Mon, 09/11/2015 - 15:07

As part of our Poplar Partnership project, artist educator Adam Walker worked with artist-in-residence John Mayson and a group of Key Stage 2 students from Manorfield Primary School to explore the question “Can a conversation be an artwork?” The project took this question as the basis for a collaborative and open-ended exploration inspired by the Philosophy for Children approach to questioning and enquiry. Adam and John used practical sessions to explore the idea of the conversation itself as an artwork, including creating spaces for conversation to happen and exploring ways of sharing meaning and understanding that go beyond language. Here they discuss the benefits of collaborating on the project:

ADAM: A major benefit which I really enjoyed was the large amount of risk and not-knowing which was able to be carried through the project. John and I had many conversations before and during the workshops, and this enabled a really free exploration of ideas to take place, with the pupils seeing immediately that they were genuine collaborators: they weren’t being taken along a pre-determined path but were instead themselves determining the direction the project took. The level of understanding John and I had built up meant he really understood and enhanced the ideas I was seeking to explore, so trusted me to me to take the group down a route of exploration where the outcome was very much unknown until approaching the end.

JOHN: I don’t believe in the stereotype that artists work best in an empty room with only their own thought process to contend with. I think that creativity is like a virtuous common cold that spreads and grows with every sneeze and this was why it was great to have Adam come and work with us on our philosophical/conceptual art project. Bow Arts really understood the aims of the project and the pupils of Manorfield Primary School and by selecting Adam to work with us they ensured that our pupils, and myself, were challenged appropriately.

ADAM: While we had distinct roles (with me bringing the initial idea and continuing to develop and lead the project conceptually, and John of course knowing the pupils and handling practicalities from the school side), it was the blurring of these distinctions and shared excitement and language we developed around what we were exploring, and the way we both shared this with the pupils, that really made the project a success.  The unknowingness, freedom and risk that collaborating with John enabled, meant that this project really reflected the way I work as an artist and the distinction between the educational and non-educational parts of my practice was even less distinct.

JOHN: It was great to work with another artist who was generous with sharing his thoughts and ideas but sensitive enough to always combine the ideas of the group to move the project forward in really interesting and unexpected ways. Because Adam and myself trusted each other’s way of working and constantly fed back to each other how we felt the sessions went, it meant that we could ensure that the pupils were exposed to new ways of working artistically but that the pupils were supported throughout the entire project. In many ways, because our way of working is so different to each other, we were also challenged to work outside of our comfort zone meaning that we were more sensitive to the pupils experience of the project and that meant the project was exciting and weird and fresh for everyone involved.

John Mayson has been artist-in-residence at Manorfield Primary since 2006

Adam Walker is an artist who graduated from Camberwell College of Art in 2011. He has led Education projects for Bow Arts, Tate and Camden Arts Centre


ChesterRep Collection: Mon, 11 Dec 2017 11:40:18 GMT 2017-12-11T11:40:18Z Production of DNA aptamers with specificity for bacterial food pathogens Title: Production of DNA aptamers with specificity for bacterial food pathogens Authors: Kärkkäinen, Riikka M. Abstract: Aptamers are biomolecular ligands composed of nucleic acids. They can be selected to bind specifically to a range of target molecules and subsequently exploited in a fashion analogous to more traditional biomolecules such as antibodies. In this study a method for selecting new aptamers which specifically bind whole live bacterial cells is described. A non-pathogenic strain of Escherichia coli K12 was used to develop the method. A DNA library containing 100 bases long random nucleotide sequences was produced and the aptamer selection process was repeated nine times. An enzyme-linked technique was first used to detect bound aptamers thereafter fluorimetry and fluorescence microscopy methods were used for the detection. The aptamers were cloned and sequenced and the cloned aptamers produced with fluorescent labels. The E. coli K12-binding aptamers were used to demonstrate the detection of the bacterial cells in a complex food matrix, namely probiotic yogurt, by using fluorescence based detection method. The aptamer selection method with some modifications was also used to select aptamers with specificity for the food pathogens E. coli O157, Listeria monocytogenes, L. innocua, S. typhimurium and S. enteritidis. The aptamers against E. coli O157 and S. typhimurium were cloned and the sequences and the binding properties of these aptamers were analysed. The use of E. coli K12 as a target organism and the aptamer sequences presented in this study, have not previously been published in scientific literature. This is also the first report where the aptamers have been used in detection of live bacterial cells in yogurt. Sat, 01 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT 2012-09-01T00:00:00Z Vitamin D and cardiometabolic disease risk: A RCT and cross-sectional study Title: Vitamin D and cardiometabolic disease risk: A RCT and cross-sectional study Authors: Agbalalah, Tari Abstract: Given the strong evidence for a beneficial role of vitamin D in diabetes and CVD pathogenesis, and the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency, vitamin D supplementation has been advocated for the prevention of cardiometabolic disease. To provide information on the effects of 5,000IU (125µg) vitamin D3 on cardiometabolic risk, a double blind, RCT in a cohort of overweight and obese UK adult males with plasma 25(OH)D concentration < 75nmol/L for a duration of 8 weeks was conducted. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first RCT to investigate the effect of 5,000IU (125µg) vitamin D3 on cardiometabolic markers in vitamin D insufficient, non-hypertensive and non-diabetic overweight and obese adult males. Mon, 30 Jan 2017 00:00:00 GMT 2017-01-30T00:00:00Z Investigating the role of heatshock on diabetic wound healing Title: Investigating the role of heatshock on diabetic wound healing Authors: Contractor, Taha Abstract: The increasing occurrence of diabetes in the general population as a result of over nutrition and increasingly inactive lifestyle has led to an obesity epidemic which is set to grow over time. With an ever increasing obese population type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular complications are set to become the major causes of human mortality. Chronic non healing wounds are a major cause of mortality and morbidity in patients with type 2 diabetes. They are predominantly caused by macrophage dysfunction and a lack of migration of fibroblasts into the wound. This study aimed to investigate diabetic wound healing through development of an artificial scratch assay. An in vitro scratch assay developed in WS1 cells. The effect of heat shock treatments from 39°C to 45° was tested to determine if cell migration increased; however, no significant difference was seen. Mitomycin C was used to determine if wound closure occurred as a result of cell proliferation and migration or migration alone. 10μg/ml of mitomycin C inhibited cell division by 79.9% without exhibiting cytotoxicity over a 12h period. The effect of hyperglycaemia and heat shock was also tested and showed no significant difference when compared to control conditions, suggesting that fibroblast migration in vivo is hindered through other factors such as debridement or macrophage dysfunction in the wound. GLUT4 is present in insulin sensitive organs (liver, adipose and muscle) and is the major glucose transporter responsible for the clearance of glucose from the blood after a meal, thus playing a central role in glucose homeostasis. Monocytes are precursors to macrophages and can easily be isolated from whole blood. They have also been shown to express GLUT4 in response to insulin and could be used as model to assess inflammation in diabetes. A glucose uptake assay was developed in U937 cells using a fluorescent glucose analogue, 2NBDG. 2NBDG fluorescence was shown to be competitively inhibited by increasing concentrations of glucose suggesting that 2NBDG enters the cell through glucose transporters. 2NBDG uptake was also assessed at different pH and in presence of membrane fluidizers (DMSO, benzyl alcohol and phenethyl alcohol). Extremes of pH significantly reduced cell viability and only at pH 4 was 2NBDG fluorescence significantly reduced. Treatment with DMSO showed that at high concentrations (≤ 1.56%) cell viability was reduced with a concurrent reduction in 2NBDG fluorescence. The effect of benzyl alcohol and phenethyl alcohol was foundto be insignificant at the concentrations and time points tested. The presence of GLUT4 was also determined by flow cytometry and Western blotting and found to be situated in the cytoplasmic region of the cell. This study indicates that monocytes and macrophages could be a potential therapeutic target to improve diabetic wound healing as they are a source of growth factors and cytokines that can bring about resolution of inflammation and it is their dysfunction in diabetic wounds that causes poor clinical outcomes. Mon, 01 May 2017 00:00:00 GMT 2017-05-01T00:00:00Z A retrospective analysis of talent selection and progression within England’s Rugby Football Union Elite Player Performance Pathway Title: A retrospective analysis of talent selection and progression within England’s Rugby Football Union Elite Player Performance Pathway Authors: Velentza, Elisavet Abstract: The England Rugby Football Union (RFU) Elite Player Performance Pathway (EPPP) is a player development system, structured into five playing squads (Under 18 [U18], Under 20 [U20], National academy [NA, age: 18-23 years], Saxons [Saxon, age: 18+ years] and Senior National Squad [SNS, age: 18+ years]), which attempts to develop players to play within the SNS. Despite its importance however, there is yet to be any scientific appraisal of its efficacy in successfully producing SNS players. Appraising the performances of 396 players enrolled on to the EPPP between 2008 and 2014, the purpose of this programme of research was therefore to investigate the nature of player transition and determine the key features associated with match performance between respective squads of the EPPP. To achieve this, the progression rates to subsequent squads, and the anthropometrical and position-specific technical performance data was quantified in conjunction with individual player progression within the EPPP system. Of the 396 players assessed within the thesis, 121 reached the SNS. Involvement in the EPPP was defined by high rates of de-selection during progression to subsequent squads and this was most apparent within the U18, U20 and NA squads. Analyses revealed the proportion of selected players for higher squads was 48.70%, 37%, 57.10% and 61% for U18-U20, U20-NA, NA-Saxon and Saxon-SNS squads, respectively. Within the SNS (n = 121), only 5.80% experienced a linear development (U18-U20-NA-Saxons-SNS) whereas all other players displayed variability with respect to squad pathway trajectories (NA-SNS 0.82%, Saxon-SNS: 50.4%, U20-Saxon-SNS 4.95%, NA-Saxon-SNS 12.39%, U18-U20-NA SNS:2.57%, U18-U20-Saxon-SNS 3.30%, U20-NA-Saxon-SNS 2.47%, side entries [selection from outside the EPPP system] 17.35%) within the EPPP. Thus, progression within the talent development (TDE) system was typified by variable patterns of sequential selection and de-selection processes throughout U18 to senior squads. The prerequisite level of technical performance indicators (TPI), related to generic and position-specific performance characteristics, and anthropometrical features (body mass and stature) specific to six predefined positional groups (front row [FR], second row [SR], Back row [BR], scrumhalf [SH], inside backs [IB], outside backs [OB]), were examined. The SNS revealed similar TPIs to the Saxon squad in all positional groups, only SNS FR were heavier (p ≤ 0.01; r = 0.18) and taller (p ≤ 0.001; r = 0.25) than Saxons FR. Likewise, the results demonstrate that anthropometrical characteristics consistently differentiated respective squads though, on occasion, there were aspects of TPIs that discriminated youth (U18) adult (U20, NA) and senior (Saxons, SNS) age international squads for the six positional groups within the EPPP. Used in isolation therefore, TPIs might offer benchmarks across the respective squads, however the extent of the observed differences between younger (U18 and U20) and older (NA, Saxons & SNS) squads suggests they could be used in conjunction with coach intuition to improve the objectivity of player selection to future squads. Where the performances of progressed and non-progressed players were considered results revealed that taller and heavier players, competing within a higher number of matches, for an increased period of time, were the most important variables influencing progression or deselection from the programme. Where the match TPIs were considered, there were stochastic differences between groups though it appeared as though selected players typically outperformed the non-selected group albeit by small margins and there were fewer differences between progressed and non-progressed in older age squads. Finally, in players selected to progress and those deselected, there was notable within-group variation in the technical demands. Such variation was typified by overlapping IQRs when groups were compared meaning selected players could perform more, or less, effectively than deselected players in any given match. Clearly, such an issue suggests that the technical performance during competition cannot be used to determine talent in such instances. Collectively, the results provide insight to the key requirements of the EPPP, which could be used to develop future coaching, scouting methods, player TDE systems by providing normative levels of attainment for aspiring players, both enrolled or not, within the elite player developmental system. Wed, 01 Feb 2017 00:00:00 GMT 2017-02-01T00:00:00Z


The Crown Chakra

The crown is where our personal energy field becomes one with the universe, where we experience the oneness of all.  Whatever we understood intellectually and then intuitively now becomes complete comprehension.  With the six lower chakras we are able to control and influence whereas when the 7th chakra is open, we let things happen through us.  We’re in the flow, so to speak

Your Energy Tip of the Month: Ever try to think things through looking for an answer but intellectually you weren’t getting it?  But if you let your thoughts go for a couple of hours or overnight, the answer seems to show up effortlessly the next day?  That’s not unusual.  But it does show how often you do rely on your crown chakra for answers, without even knowing you’re doing it.  Imagine the calm you would derive if you were to consciously decide to just let go more often and let the answers to simply come to you.

Week 2: Breath

Assume the posture mentioned last week. Begin by counting to four as you breath in, hold (4), exhale (4), hold (4).  And repeat this process at least 5 times, morning and night.  It can be invigorating or calming depending on your state of mind.


Rogue planet could bring end of days this weekend, numerologists say

"There is no credible evidence whatever for the existence of Nibiru,” Dr. David Morrison, a scientist with NASA, said to the U.K.’s Daily Express. “There are no pictures, no tracking, no astronomical observations.”

Earth destroyed in collision - 3D artwork illustration of planetary explosion

Nibiru, also known as Planet X, was originally supposed to destroy our world on September 23 according to a Christian Numerologist who said it was to collide with Earth.  (iStock)

Morrison adds that there’s proof positive that Nibiru does not exist and is not a threat to Earth.

“FEMA partners with NASA to develop guidance on preparing for any potential impacts to Earth from natural space objects,” a FEMA spokesperson said to Newsweek. “Upon notification from NASA of an impending impact threat to the United States, FEMA would take the lead to notify appropriate federal, state and local authorities and emergency response institutions.”


The migration of wildbeasts once in every year into kenya in company of other animals like  the Zebras Eland and Impala is something that attracts lots of  tourists into the country.

Wildebeest migration animal facts African photo safari Masai mara safari wildebeest migration Masai mara national park Kenya safaris in Africa amazing beautiful wildebeest animal photosTheir movement is quite predictable.Their migration is thought to be aimed at achieving quality food and water.They move from Serengeti National park in Tanzania to Maasai Mara National park in Kenya.Once they get to Maasai Mara they don’t stay together but  spread out, and you can find them on different locations of the park to fulfill their mission of finding greener pastures.

Wildebeest_Running_In_River_In_The_Serengeti_Tanzania_Africa_600                            At the period when they are around one can spot them creating a beautiful scene while crossing river Mara.As time moves by they will be spotted moving towards western Loliondo and Serengeti’s southern part Lobo. In October,they start migrating from Kenya to Tanzania and the same thing happens the next year.wildebeests-jumping-kenya_28400_990x742As this happens many of us will be heading to Maasai Mara to witness the most anticipated wonder of the world.

This activity has made  Maasai Mara gain popularity both locally and internationally  attracting tourists thus making massive profits.


Friday, May 9, 2014

WiFi Of The Body: Our Biomagnetic Field

Our Nervous System And Signalling

Our nervous systems operate by signalling our brain of activity in our sensory receptors be they sight, sound, touch, taste or smell. This signalling occurs by electrical impulses which travel the length of our nervous system from the source of the sensation to our brain, where we perceive it and it becomes a sensation to us that occurred in a location in our body. The actual sensation occurred not in the area the event took place, but in our brain and mind. It started as an event, us touching an object, the nerves in our fingers create a chemical based electrical charge initiated by pressure and temperature. That signal has a particular signature that that travels all the way through the nerves of our arms, to our spinal column and the spinal cord and up into our brain where it is deciphered and translated into a sensation. All of that happens as a result of our biochemistry (temperature and pressure create the electrical current resulting from our touching the object), bioelectric current (a minute electrical charge which travels the length of our nervous system) and our brain which deciphers the electrical impulse and tells us that we fell something.

Our Nervous System And Substances That Affect Us

The same thing applies to substances that we consume. For instance some substances that we eat can make us feel good. It is a feeling that is much like the sensation of touch, though it effects our overall mood rather than acting as a feedback to interaction. Some sweets for example can have that affect upon people as consuming them causes the body to produce endorphins and sometime even dopamine, both of which are feel good hormones naturally produced by the body. The same process is going on except this time the signal occurs as a result of our taste buds and perhaps digestion to a small degree. Our taste buds produce and electrical current biochemically upon sampling whatever had happened to come into contact with them. The current travels through the nerve fibres to our spinal column and spinal cord and up into our brain. There is is interpreted by our brain (usually our hypothalamus) which signals our endocrine system to produce a hormone such as an endorphin or dopamine which gives us the sensation of feeling good.

Bioelectricity Is To Network Cables What Biomagnetism Is To WiFi

Any electrical current that travels through a conductive medium produces a magnetic field around the area electrical current travels, following it. A magnetic field if it were visible would resemble a three dimensional haze emanating from the area around the current. It would fluctuate in time to as a result of its interaction with the charged particles in the air and the level of current that produced it. The fluctuations in the level of current are likely how the body encodes information for the nervous system and the brain to decipher and to propagate the resulting input into sensory output or perception and cognition of some form. This information would be encoded into the level of current created and how it fluctuated over time in response to the sensory input such as that of touch or taste. This information would then also be encoded into the magnetic field that was produced as a result of that current as stated by Maxwell's Laws of Electromagnetism. Considering that the nervous system and spinal cord are alight with such electrical activity nearly constantly as such information passes between our senses and our brains, that must also mean that our bodies are surrounded by a constantly fluctuating magnetic field that contains all of the encoded information being communicated along our spinal column.

When a magnetic field travelling through the air passes through another conductor, it creates a resonant electrical current in the conductor mirrored by that of the magnetic field. Our bodies being conductors are just perfect for such a thing. What would stop this biomagnetic field from stimulating someone else's nervous system? In such a case that would make it like a WiFi signal that could connect to other bodies. If the signalling was interpreted similarly in the brains of the two people whose biomagnetic fields interfered in such a way, then those two people would likely feel the same sensations as the other that were compatible to the ability of the hypothalamus and other parts of the brain to interpret the signals and produce hormones via the endocrine system. That would mean that a person who was attempting such a thing could conceivably make another person feel the same way that they were feeling. That is if they ate a sweet that stimulated good feelings in their body, they could make someone else's body feel the sensations associated with eating that sweet. Likewise if the person had a high degree of anxiety or anger, they could make someone else feel that way biochemically as the endocrine system produces cortisol and adrenaline in such cases. Conceivably someone could affect someone else's body state from a distance via these methods as everything that I've mentioned here is valid scientifically and some of it is in the early stages of research.

The truth is that there are many people who practice this sort of thing as a form of healing art such as Qigong, Reiki and Yoga. While there are some that practice it invasively as a means to manipulate others emotionally as I've discussed on this blog in other sections. If our actions can be influenced at least in part by our emotions and our emotions can be influenced by the level of hormones in our body, then this would definitely be a way to affect someone emotionally. The truth is that there are many people that conduct this sort of activity without the consent of others and with complete disregard for their well being. Some even use it as a form of punishment and conditioning to further their ideology. So how do we protect ourselves and deal with this in the future and what moral implications does this hold for us?

A Simple Breakdown Of How It Works:

Maxwell's Law Of Electromagnetism states that an electrical current passing through a conductor creates a magnetic field and vice versa, a magnetic field passing through a conductor creates an electrical current in that conductor.

The nervous system utilizes electricity (electrochemical signals) as a means of sending signals from one part of the body to the part of the brain that decodes the meaning of the signal and back to another part of the body to create a response or reaction.

Most of these signals involve information received from our senses in response to perception or interaction with the world around us.

The human body produces a magnetic field of its own called a biomagnetic field.

This biomagnetic field contains all of the information encoded in real-time pertaining to the communications taking place between our senses, nerves, nervous system and our brain.

Because this biomagnetic field contains information that might be compatible from body to body and as it can be decoded by the original body that produced it, if this field passes over into the body of another person it might by way of the body being an electric conductor turn to an electric current that might be interpreted by the nervous system and brain of the body that it connects with.

Because much of the functioning of the nervous system is geared around producing hormones from the adrenal and endocrine glands, when another person's body is affect by the magnetic field from someone else's body, there is a chance the receiving person's body might respond to the signalling of the nervous system of the person from it originated. If there are instruction to produce hormones from the adrenal or endocrine glands, then the other person's body might also produce those hormones as well.

So if the transmitting person feels healthy or happy, then the receiving person might feel the same by the resulting production of dopamine and serotonin from the transmitting body.

If the transmitting person feels angry or in the midst of anxiety, then the receiving person might feel anger or anxiety by the resulting production of cortisol and adrenaline from the transmitting body.

The same would be the case from a person who was using a narcotic of some form or under the effects of some hormone enhancing/reducing drug.

In a future post I will discuss this in detail and hopefully arrive at some conclusive awareness for us all.

For the time being, suffice it to say that I believe that people who conduct the activity against the free will of another human being are conducting a great injustice upon them and I am sure that many people would agree.

Stay Well And Be Safe

Brian Joseph Johns

Signals and signs in the nervous system: The dynamic anatomy of electrical activity is probably information-rich by Theodore Holmes Bullock

Bioelectricmagnetism Portal

Bioelectricmagnetism by Jaakko Malmivuo and Robert Plonsey
A book full of information on the phenomenon. Chapter 21 is highly recommended as it pertains directly to stimulation of the nervous system by an outside means, in essence the simulating of the signalling involved in nerve responses. These responses directly affect the output of the adrenal and endocrine glands which play a big role in anxiety and a number of other mood effectors.

Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety
Endocrine Disruptors

Nervous System by Wikipedia

Endocrine Gland by Wikipedia

Adrenal Gland by Wikipedia

As related to healing

The International Center For Reiki Training

The International Institute Of Medical Qigong (Canada)

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Cristiano Ronaldo has won the 2017 Ballon d'Or.

Ronaldo also won the award last year, four out of the past five years and five times during his career.

Lionel Messi finished second while Neymar finished third. Gianluigi Buffon, Luka Modric, Sergio Ramos, Kylian Mbappe, N'Golo Kante, Robert Lewandowski and Harry Kane rounded out the top-10.