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Alternate name: Devil's-gut
Family: Lauraceae, Laurel view all from this family
Description This subtropical parasitic vine forms dense mats of slender twining stems, pale green to yellow-green to orange, covering its host plants.
Habit: native perennial vine or herb; twining; stem parasite on woody and herbaceous plants.
Height: twining, climbing vine.
Leaf: tiny inconspicuous scales, alternate, less than 1/16 in (1 mm) long.
Flower: very small white cup, globular, in short cluster at tip of stem, 0.5-0.75 in (1-2 cm) long.
Fruit: very small white berry, to 0.3 in (7 mm) diameter.
Flower May to July, or year-round, depending on location.
Habitat Coastal areas, to 65 ft (20 m): sandhills, scrubs, hammocks.
Range Native to tropical and sub-tropical areas worldwide: in North America, found in Florida, Texas, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and Hawaii.
Discussion This plant has many other common names including devil's gut, fine-stem lovevine, woevine, air creeper, green thread creeper, moss creeper, princess hair, dodder, giant dodder, dodder laurel, laurel dodder. Sometimes mistaken for Cuscuta spp., whose common name is also dodder.
Love vine grows on a wide variety of host plants, including citrus, mango, and avocado trees. However, it would be a mistake to regard this plant as nothing more than a parasite. It is used ceremonially and medicinally in traditional societies around the world; in Hawaii it is used for leis, roofing, and food.


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How Rhode Island Wind Can Help Take Us Far, Quickly
Posted On June 13, 2013 by Sandra Whitehouse
I had the opportunity to meet with former Vice President Al Gore to discuss the impacts of climate change on Rhode Island. This included the marine impacts, such as warming bay waters, and increased intensity of storms.
The winds on Rhode Island's waters made them the location of choice for the America's Cup sailing races for over a century. While harnessing that wind for energy may be only a small piece of the global picture, it can contribute to broader efforts to mitigate climate change.

subset: commoncrawl


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Toggle: English / Spanish
Dyshidrotic eczema is a condition in which small blisters develop on the hands and feet. Blisters are often itchy.
Dyshidrosis; Pompholyx
This blistering type of eczema is twice as common in women than men.
People are more likely to develop dyshidrotic eczema when:
The cause is unknown. The condition seems to appear during certain times of the year.
Small fluid-filled blisters called vesicles appear on the fingers, hands, and feet. They are most common along the edges of the fingers, toes, palms, and soles. These blisters can be very itchy. They also cause scaly patches of skin that flake or get red, cracked, and painful.
Scratching leads to skin changes and skin thickening. Large blisters may cause pain.
Your health care provider may be able to diagnose this condition by looking at your skin.
A skin biopsy may be needed to rule out other causes, such as a fungal infection.
If your doctor thinks the condition may be due to an allergic reaction, allergy testing (patch testing) may be done.
Scratching only the condition worse.
Apply an ointments or creams to your hands at least two times per day, and after every hand washing.
Your doctor may prescribe steroid (or corticosteroid) ointments or creams. Other creams or ointments such as tacrolimus or pimecrolimus may also be used.
Your doctor may recommend the following if your symptoms are very bad:
Avoid frequent bathing, hand washing, and irritating substances, which can make itching worse.
There is no cure. Dyshidrotic eczema normally goes away without problems, but symptoms may come back. Excess scratching may lead to thick, irritated skin. This makes the problem harder to treat.
Call your health care provider if you have:
Veien NK. Acute and recurrent vesicular hand dermatitis. Dermatol Clin. 2009 Jul;27(3):337-53.
Reider N, Fritsch PO. Other Eczematous Eruptions. In: Bolognia JL, Jorizzo JL, Schaffer JV, et al, eds.Dermatology. 3rd ed. Philadelphia, Pa: Mosby Elsevier; 2012:chap 13.
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Deer sausage should be a requirement to enter a test.
I think Drake and Zach had a great weekend, but Zach out ate him!
See you at North Alabama's AKC test in 2 weeks.
Richard Gravely
GRHRCH UH Hammer MH ***
GRHRCH UH Zeus
Fixed the date on the title for you
http://www.oakdaleretrievers.com/Remembrance.html "You'll Cry"
Training is not science, it is art. A blend of this, a measure of that, a deep breath at the appropriate moment and always a loving touch.
Looks like we will be working on holding blinds, waiting your turn and walking to the bucket. Maybe a pheasant flyer walkup as a 2cd series if I can get some birds. No off it & run a blind. Then another single before they are allowed to pick up the flyer. Would love to train with the North Alabama crew but am trying hard to keep Mama happy
Mark Land
"So what is big is not always the Trout nor the Deer but the chance, the being there. And what is full is not necessarily the creel nor the freezer, but the memory." ~ Aldo Leopold
"The Greatest Obstacle to Discovery is not Ignorance -- It is the Illusion of Knowledge" ~ Daniel Boorstin
Richard Gravely
GRHRCH UH Hammer MH ***
GRHRCH UH Zeus
We used to hunt the river and would always be buzzed by hooded mergansers. Ocassionally someone would shoot one either on purpose or by mistake. The group always wanted to know "Who shot the fishduck?". Of course the guilty party would eventually have to reload and admit to his sin. The excuse was always "I shot it for the dog". Seemed like a good enough handle for me and I stuck with it . Put my real name in my signature to keep the janitor happy
I just hope I still have a bed at the white house!!
Mark Land


text: Speaking of Biden not being dumb ... read an interesting analysis of why Biden and Obama are a good match. Referred back to some things we have forgotten about Biden ... his father had been rich before Joe was born, but lost it all. Joe went to college on a 1/2 scholarship based at least partially based on financial need. Joe lied about having 3 undergraduate degrees when he only had one. He plagiarized in college, and then again when he ran for President. This is a fellow who can buy into the idea of "bad luck" preventing an individual from achieving his full potential. Or to put it another way, "You didn't build that."


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Results 1 to 3 of 3
06-23-2012, 09:34 PM #1Junior Member Guppy
- Join Date
- May 2012
- Location
- Toronto
- Posts
- 3
ADF's always swimming since tank move
I've had two ADF's in a 2.5 gallon cycled tank for a week. They mostly stayed in one spot or swam/crawled around the bottom - coming up for air every 15-20 minutes.
Today we carefully moved them to a new 10 gallon tank, using their water and new de-chlorinated water, temperature matched to what they were used to and fully acclimated before putting them in.
They spent an hour checking out the tank and seem to love the space and new decorations/hiding spots.
Now they are constantly swimming up and down the sides of the tank and breathing from the top often. They havent stopped swimming for an hour. They SEEM happy (as far as I can guess a frog is happy), but I'm concerned as I've never seen this behavior before.
I'm hoping they're just much happier in the new tank and swimming for activity, but thought I'd ask here just in-case.
I checked the water and ammonia is 0, Nitrites are 0 and nitrates are around 10.
Thanks for any advice!
Well since you said the tank is brand new today and the params are fine, they should just be swimming like mad because they are actually able to swim,and are having fun in their new roomy tank. :) But on another note, is the tank cycled? Frogs can be sensitive to water conditions, so if its not cycled read up on the sticky for cycling with fish in the cycling forum.10gal Betta Tank - Skye the crowntail and Squiggles the deformed albino cory
10gal Tank- Glofish
75gal- Everything
Did you simply use water from their other tank, and not move the filter over with them to run with the new filter? If so, the tank isn't cycled. the filter holds the cycle, not the water.2 10 gallon tanks, 1 20 gallon tank, 1 Fluval Edge, 1 29 gallon tank, and one backyard pond.


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Will Logan grad Degenhardt return to coach Chill?
ONALASKA, Wis. - The Coulee Region Chill's season began with some excitement.
Owner Michelle Bryant bought the team in June 2012. She hired John Hamre as Head Coach and General Manager. Hamre was fired in early January 2013.
Logan grad A.J. Degenhardt, who played at Wisconsin, took over on an interim basis. The Chill went 8-20 under his guidance.
Will he be back next season?
"I would hope that I'm back for next season," Degenhardt said after Saturday night's 5-1 loss to Austin. "There's never a guarantee in this sport but who knows? Time will tell, we'll sit down, talk about it in the next couple days I'm sure, and we'll go from there."
Degenhardt appears to have the support of his players.
"He came in, he had to fill a head coaching job, that's obviously tough, that's a tough thing to do, and he did a good job," forward Mac Jansen said.
"He respected us and we respected him, so it was a great relationship between player and coach," said defenseman Brady Riesgraff. "Some coaches can give up and blame it all on the team, but he didn't do that. He told us to keep working hard and that's what we needed to do."
Michelle Bryant said in an email to News 8 that the team will announce next season's coaching staff within the next few weeks, adding that Degenhardt has been a great part of their staff this season.19541052


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Dating the age of admixture via wavelet transform analysis of genome-wide data
DOI: 10.1186/gb-2011-12-2-r19
© Pugach et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2011
Received: 20 September 2010
Accepted: 25 February 2011
Published: 25 February 2011
We describe a PCA-based genome scan approach to analyze genome-wide admixture structure, and introduce wavelet transform analysis as a method for estimating the time of admixture. We test the wavelet transform method with simulations and apply it to genome-wide SNP data from eight admixed human populations. The wavelet transform method offers better resolution than existing methods for dating admixture, and can be applied to either SNP or sequence data from humans or other species.
An admixed population arises when individuals from two or more distinct populations start exchanging genetic material. Studying admixed populations can be particularly useful for understanding differences in disease prevalence and drug response among different populations. There is ample evidence that human populations have different susceptibility to diseases, exhibiting substantial variation in risk allele frequencies [1]. For example, genetic predisposition to asthma differs among the differentially-admixed Hispanic populations of the United States, with the highest prevalence observed in Puerto Ricans. Genetic variants responsible for the increased asthma prevalence in this population were localized using an admixture mapping approach [2]. This method allows the identification of disease causing variants by estimating ancestry along the genome, and narrowing the search to the genomic regions with ancestry from a population that has a greater risk for the disease [3, 4]. The same approach was used to identify genetic loci that influence susceptibility to obesity, which is about 1.5-fold more prevalent in African-Americans than in European-Americans [5].
Admixed populations are also of interest to population geneticists as they offer invaluable insights into the impact of various human migrations. For example, Polynesian populations are of dual Melanesian and Austronesian ancestry, with more maternal Austronesian and paternal Melanesian ancestry, highlighting the importance of sex-specific processes in human migrations [6]. The analysis of the pattern of sharing of chromosomal regions between populations has provided important insights into human colonization history including multiple migration waves into the Americas, and a complex movement of people across Europe [7]. A study of admixture patterns in Indian populations revealed that most Indians today trace their ancestry to two ancient, genetically-divergent populations [8].
Analyses of admixture patterns in human populations have also proven useful for studies of local selection. The genomewide distribution of ancestry has been examined and signals of recent selection have been identified in admixed populations of Puerto Ricans [9] and African Americans [10].
Over the years various methods have been developed to study genetic ancestry both at the level of an entire population [11], and at the level of individuals within admixed populations [4, 10, 12–17]. Because genetic recombination breaks down parental genomes into segments of different sizes, the genome of a descendant of an admixture event is composed of different combinations of these ancestral segments, or 'blocks'. The distribution of ancestry proportions within a population and the structure of an admixed genome can thus provide information on the timing of the admixture event itself. Previously, a likelihood-based method (HAPMIX) was developed to infer the time of admixture events from the haplotype block information [17]. Here we introduce a PCA-based genome scan approach to detect and date admixture events. Stepwise principal component analysis is carried out along each chromosome of an admixed individual and respective parental populations, and spectral decomposition of the resulting signal is used to infer the date of admixture. We validate the method on simulated data sets, and on a sample of African Americans, as a population with known admixture history. To test how the performance of our approach compares to HAPMIX, which uses a fundamentally different methodology to infer local ancestry, we apply our method to the Human Genome Diversity Panel (HGDP) populations [18] for which European admixture has been estimated and dated using HAPMIX [17]. Finally, we apply the method to elucidate the structure and admixture proportions, and estimate admixture time, in a Fijian population and in a diverse sample of Polynesians [19].
Results and discussion
Overview of the method
To analyze local genomic admixture structure for an individual in an admixed population and to use such structure to infer the date of admixture we introduce a two-part method. The first part of the method, named StepPCO, is an extension of principal component analysis (PCA) and is used to obtain a signal of admixture from an individual genome. The second part of the method relies on the wavelet decomposition of this admixture signal to extract information about the date of the admixture event. Here we provide a descriptive overview of the method; the actual methodology is formally developed in the Materials and Methods section below.
We start by performing a sequential stepwise PCA (StepPCO) along each chromosome of an individual from an admixed population and of individuals from respective parental populations. We consider an admixed population as a mixture of two ancestral populations, in which the admixture occurred at a single timepoint, and assume that no genetic drift occurred after the admixture event. These, of course, are simplifying assumptions, as most human populations are expected not only to have many incidents of admixture occurring at different points in time, and between different populations, but also to experience genetic drift relative to the parental populations. We try to circumvent this issue by finding the first principal axis (PA1) based on the samples from the proposed ancestral populations or their proxies, and then project the admixed dataset onto the axis of variation defined by these ancestral populations, thereby excluding any signal which potentially could originate from drift and/or other sources of ancestry [8, 20]. We then consider a sliding window along each chromosome. The size of this window is not fixed, but at each position is determined by the statistical properties of the collection of SNPs in the window. We take evenly spaced points along each chromosome (evenly spaced in terms of genetic distances); and each point serves as center for the next window. The number of points (windows) is chosen so that the windows span the entire chromosome, leaving no gaps in between. To simplify subsequent wavelet transform analysis, we also want the number of windows (or bins) equal to a power of two. Starting from the center of each window, we increase the window until the mean PC1 coordinates for the parental populations are separated by three standard deviations from each mean. The goal is to achieve a complete separation of the parental populations within each window, so there is no ambiguity in assigning chromosomal segments in an admixed genome to either ancestral population. Because human populations are closely related, there is an obvious trade-off between the signal resolution and uncertainty in ancestry estimation; by making the size of the window variable and dependent on the number of informative sites within a given chromosomal region, we always find the smallest possible window that gives us optimal signal resolution without introducing excess errors into the ancestry estimation. Using PA1 coefficients as weights, we find the average value of SNPs within each window. The resulting values are then normalized, so that the ancestral populations correspond to values with means of 1 and -1, respectively. Thus, for each individual we obtain a value for each of the windows, and the windows are evenly spaced along the chromosome. For an admixed individual, the value in each window will either correspond to one of the ancestral populations, or have an intermediate value corresponding to having one chromosomal segment from each ancestral population (we use unphased data, as phasing at the level of an entire chromosome infers haplotypes with significant phasing (switch) errors [14, 21], making such data unusable for time since admixture estimation). Thus for each individual and each chromosome we obtain a StepPCO signal, consisting of a sequence of values along the given chromosome. This part of the method is similar to a recently published approach [10], in which local genomic admixture estimates are inferred using PC analysis on a grid of points along the genome (and not genome-wide); unlike our method this approach works with very small windows of 15 SNPs, and requires a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) to infer ancestry state within each window. Our implementation is also different in that we not only estimate the local genomic level of admixture, but also use the identified ancestry block structure to date admixture events.
As mentioned earlier, because most SNPs are not fixed between human populations, it is necessary to use relatively large windows in order to have enough power to reliably assign chromosomal segments to an ancestral population. Large windows mean that the exact location and width of ancestral blocks in empirical data is difficult to determine, because small but informative blocks may be missed, while larger blocks that are actually noise may be inflated and falsely considered a true signal. Therefore rather than to attempt a direct estimation of the number of breakpoints [17] we have developed a method based on spectral analysis of the signal using Haar wavelets [22]. The wavelet transform represents the StepPCO signal (described above), as the sum of simple waves, each characterized by frequency (or period), and position. These wave frequencies are then used as a measure of the width of the ancestral blocks. There are several advantages to the wavelet transform approach. First, wavelet transform of the discrete signal is lossless, and describes the data completely [22]. That is, wavelet transform coeffiicients could be used to recover the original signal exactly. Second, wavelet transform also allows for the reduction of noise, which in this context is defined as high frequency or low amplitude oscillations that are not informative but may falsely be considered as true signals. By removing from the analysis wavelet coefficients corresponding to the high frequency or low amplitude waves within the signal, we are able to greatly reduce the noise and distill the admixture signal contained within the data. Finally, the dominant frequency present in the signal is related to the average width of the admixture blocks, and can therefore be used to infer the time of admixture (see Materials and Methods, Wavelet Transform section for details).
Since the recombination rate is uneven along the chromosome, with 80% of recombination events in humans occurring within hotspots [23], to measure distances along the chromosome we use genetic map distances (measured in cM) rather than physical distances (measured in base pairs). We interpolate genetic distances from genome-wide recombination rates estimated as part of the HapMap project [24].
Initial validation of the method was done using an in-house forward simulation approach. We start with two distinct populations (A and B), simulating chromosomes as an interval from zero to one. We choose the recombination rate to be 2.78 events per chromosome per generation, which corresponds to the recombination rate observed for human chromosome 1 [25, 26]. At time T0 the effective population size of population A equals 1,000 individuals, and it receives either 1%, 5%, 10%, 20%, 30% or 40% migrants from population B. The simulation then runs forward for 2,000 generations; the population at each generation is split randomly into pairs and each pair produces a random number of off spring, drawn from the Poisson distribution, with the average depending on the specified growth rate. The growth rate is chosen so that the population grows from an effective size of 1,000 to 10,000 in 2,000 generations. Since we are only interested in the dynamics of recombination, we only keep track of the recombination points, with their coordinates along the chromosome given as percentages of the total length of the chromosome. This significantly reduces computational time and makes modeling of the recombination dynamics feasible. We ran independent sets of simulations using either the genetic map [25], or the physical position map with variable rates of recombination along the chromosome, using previously-described parameter values for the strength and spacing of hotspots [27]. The recombination map was generated at the beginning of each simulation run. We ran 100 simulations for each of the migration parameters, and from each simulation we sampled 100 chromosomes at exponentially growing time points, and collected statistics on the total amount of admixture, the number of breakpoints, and the width of admixture blocks (as measured by the wavelet transform coefficients) for each chromosome in each sampled generation.
where N stands for the number of breakpoints, Tgen denotes time since admixture in generations, R corresponds to the number of recombination events per generation, α denotes the admixture rate for an individual, and Eα and var α are the mean and the variance of α. The deviation of the observed number of breakpoints from that expected after 50 generations (Figure 2b) is due to the fact that infinite populations the pattern of ancestral blocks (their width and distribution along chromosomes) becomes more uniform with time, that is the recombination events are no longer independent.
Sensitivity of the method to smaller effective population size and continuous migration
To test the sensitivity of our method with respect to the initial effective population size, we ran additional simulations where the effective size of population A at T0 equals 500 or 200 individuals, and it receives either 5%, 10% or 20% migrants from population B. The growth rate of the new admixed population was chosen so that in 2,000 generations the population grows to 10,000 or 2,000 individuals, respectively. Results are shown in Figure S1 in Additional file 1. There is no influence of initial population size on the performance of the method for admixture times up to about 20 generations ago. For populations with small Ne and admixture events older than 20 generations ago, our approach will tend to overestimate the date of admixture for more recent events, and not be able to detect more ancient events. Apparently, the diversity in the distribution of ancestry blocks diminishes (stabilizes) faster in smaller populations, thus making new recombination events undetectable. The same phenomenon is responsible for the deviation of the number of recombination breakpoints observed in our simulations from the value predicted by Equation 1. Our results further suggest that it is not so much the small Ne, but rather the growth rate of the population, which is primarily responsible for these deviations. Moreover, the effect is more pronounced when the admixture rate is low.
Additionally, we ran simulations to test how continuous admixture over time affects the method. Again we start with a population A, which at T0 comprises 1,000 individuals, and it receives either 5% or 20% migrants from population B over the period of either 10 or 30 generations. The growth rate of the new admixed population was chosen so that in 2,000 generations the population grows to 10,000, and 100 simulations were performed for each scenario. Results are shown in Figure S2 in Additional file 1. Because new ancestry blocks are being continuously introduced over the period of either 10 or 30 generations, potentially removing older block structure by replacing narrower ancestry blocks with new wider blocks, we expect ongoing admixture to reduce the wavelet transform coefficients and therefore lead to an underestimation of time since admixture. This is indeed what we observe: irrespective of the admixture rate throughout the duration of admixture (10 or 30 generations), the wavelet transform coefficients are lower than those observed in a population with the same admixture rate, but which has experienced not a continuous but a one-time admixture event. Once the influx of new genetic material into the simulated population A stops, the trajectory of growth of the wavelet transform coefficients is slowly recovered.
Sensitivity of the method to levels of linkage disequilibrium
As described in the Overview of the Method, to measure distances along the chromosome we use genetic map distances (measured in cM) rather than physical distances (measured in bp). As we measure distances in units of recombination frequency, chromosomal regions with high LD, that is low propensity towards recombination, will span smaller distances and be represented by a smaller number of windows, and conversely genomic regions that harbor recombination hotspots will be inflated and represented by a larger number of windows. We therefore do not expect levels of LD to affect our results. To demonstrate this we have measured LD [28] in fixed windows across chromosomes 6 and 8 in three HAPMAP populations: individuals of European ancestry (CEU), the Yoruban (YRI) individuals and the individuals of African ancestry from the Southwestern USA (ASW). Genotype data were downloaded from the International HapMap project home page [29]. The size of the fixed window was chosen as a fraction of a chromosome length to correspond on average to either 500 kb or to 0.5 cM. In accordance with our expectations we observed that the level of LD varies along the chromosome if the distances are measured in base pairs, but does not vary as much if the distances are measured in cM (Figure S3 in Additional file 1).
Sample size estimation
For some of the populations considered in this study the sample size was limited to 25 individuals. To ensure that the StepPCO method has adequate power, we therefore calculated how large a sample size is required for accurate and reliable estimates of admixture time. We sampled from 1 to 50 individuals at random from one randomly-chosen simulated population at 12 different time points. Average WT centers, based on different sample sizes, were calculated and used to infer time since admixture by comparing the observed WT centers to those obtained using the entire simulated dataset. The results (Figure S4 in Additional file 1) indicate that a sample size of 10 is sufficient for quite accurate time estimation with narrow confidence intervals up to about 200 generations ago. Point estimates become less precise, and confidence intervals become much wider, at time points exceeding 500 generations ago. This is caused by the threshold imposed on the simulated data to concur with the same limitation that is present in the empirical data, due to the elimination of levels containing wavelets of highest frequency (removal of noise, as described above).
Comparison to HAPMIX: simulated data
Various methods have been developed to quantify the admixture signal along individual chromosomes, such as ANCESTRYMAP [4], SABER [14], LAMP and LAMP-ANC [15], uSWITCH and uSWITCH-ANC [16], and HAPMIX [17]. To test the performance of the StepPCO approach relative to these other programs, we chose to compare the method only to HAPMIX, as this approach has been shown to perform better relative to the other methods in predicting ancestry transitions, especially for smaller ancestry segments which carry information on more ancient admixture events [17].
To compare to HAPMIX, we constructed an artificially admixed dataset from the phased genotypes of the Yoruban (YRI) individuals and individuals of European ancestry (CEU), downloaded from the International HapMap project home page [30]. Forty haploid admixed genomes were constructed as described previously [17], namely for each simulated chromosome we randomly selected one haploid Yoruban and one haploid CEU genome, and built a recombination map by drawing from an exponential distribution with weight λ, such that the ancestry switch occurred with probability 1 - e-λg for each distance of g Morgans. Starting at the beginning of each chromosome and at each of the recombination points from the recombination map, we sampled European ancestry with probability α and African ancestry with probability 1 - α, where the value of α was sampled once from a beta distribution with mean 0.20 and standard deviation 0.10, typical for African Americans [17]. We simulated the following values of λ: 6, 10, 20, 40, 60, 100, 200, 400. Once an artificial genome was constructed, parental chromosomes were never reused. Pairs of the resulting artificially admixed haploid genomes were merged to create 20 diploid admixed individuals.
We then compared the performance of our spectral decomposition method to HAPMIX on these artificially admixed genomes. We ran a StepPCO analysis, followed by the WT decomposition of the resulting StepPCO admixture signal. To investigate how the dominant wavelet frequency is related to λ for this artificial dataset, we generated a separate dataset of hybrids. Maps of recombination events for each of these additional hybrid genomes for the values of λ: 6, 10, 20, 40, 60, 100, 200, 400 were constructed as described in the previous paragraph. 20 hybrids genomes were constructed for each value of λ, and spectral decomposition analysis was carried out on the resulting admixture signal. Using the known number of breakpoints in these simulated hybrids, we have found that the dominant wavelet frequency is linearly related to the logarithm of the average (per Morgan) number of ancestry switches (breakpoints); linear regression was used to find the coefficients, and estimate the average number of ancestry switches per unit of genetic distance in the main simulated dataset.
However, accurate estimation of breakpoints does not imply accurate estimation of the admixture time. As demonstrated previously (Figure 2b), the number of breakpoints can deviate significantly from the value predicted by Equation 1, especially with higher admixture rates, lower ancestral Ne, and/or older admixture times. Furthermore, inference of breakpoints requires transformation of the 'raw' genomic signal into a discrete signal corresponding to the presence or absence of an ancestry switch, hence direct inference of number of breakpoints is inevitably error-prone. These errors, however small, will accumulate over the many measurements taken. WT analysis avoids such errors because rather than inferring the recombination events directly, the WT method compares the spectral properties of the given signal in the observed data with the properties of the model signal produced by simulations.
Empirical data
Quality-filtered genotypes for approximately one million SNPs for 25 Polynesians (PLY), 25 Fijians (FIJ), 23 Borneans (BOR) and 25 individuals from the highlands of Papua New Guinea (MEL), typed with Affymetrix 6.0 arrays, were obtained from a previous study [19] and are available from the authors upon request. Quality-filtered genotypes obtained with the Illumina Human1 M and Affymetrix 6.0 arrays for 20 Yorubans from Ibadan, Nigeria (YRI), 20 individuals of northern and western European ancestry living in Utah (CEU) and 20 individuals of African ancestry from the Southwestern USA (ASW), were downloaded from the International HapMap project home page [29]. SNPs were merged using the PLINK tool [31], to include only markers which were genotyped and passed the quality filters in both datasets. The final dataset comprised 653,498 SNPs. We also analyzed and dated admixture in Mandenka, Mozabite, Bedouin, Palestinian and Druze groups from the CEPH-HGDP [18]. These groups were previously analyzed via HAPMIX and reported to have European-related ancestry ranging from 2% to 97%, when analyzed using Africans and Europeans from the HapMap as the input reference populations [17]. These samples were genotyped for 650,000 SNPs on the Illumina platform [18]. The data were downloaded from the HGDP CEPH Genotype Database [32].
For the empirical admixture analyses, the parental groups are: the French and Yoruba for the admixed Mandenka, Mozabite, Bedouin, Palestinian and Druze groups; the YRI and CEU groups for the admixed ASW group; the BOR and MEL groups for the admixed PLY group; and the MEL and PLY groups for the admixed FIJ group. The StepPCO approach was first used to elucidate the local structure of the admixture signal for each admixed individual along each chromosome. We then estimated admixture proportions in each admixed group, and compared the StepPCO results for each chromosome to admixture proportions estimated using the maximum-likelihood based algorithm implemented in frappe [13]. We then applied wavelet transform analysis to the StepPCO signal and used the wavelet transform coefficients to infer time since admixture. After the wavelet transform coefficients were calculated we applied three filtering procedures to the signal. First, as explained previously, we replaced all coefficients smaller than an ascertained threshold value by zero, to remove low amplitude oscillations that are characteristic of noise (that is, wavelets of low height). This threshold value was chosen so that small oscillations present only within the distribution of the parental individuals are ignored. Second, we removed WT levels that correspond to the wavelets of the highest frequencies, which are also characteristic of noise (that is wavelets that are too narrow). Then we averaged the coefficients across each level and found a threshold amplitude, which is present in every individual whether admixed or not, and consider everything below it as noise (in effect this means that we subtract the parental signal, that is when we analyze the admixture signal in FIJ for example, with PLY and MEL being the ancestral populations, the fact that PLY themselves harbor Melanesian admixture has no effect on the inference of the admixture date for FIJ). Finally, we find the dominant frequency present in the signal (WT center) and use it to infer the time of admixture by comparing this observed dominant frequency to that obtained in simulated data generated using the admixture rate observed in the empirical data.
African-Americans, Polynesians and Fijians
HGDP populations
Comparison of results from HAPMIX and StepPCO
Estimated percent European ancestry from HAPMIX
Estimated percent European ancestry from StepPCO
Estimated time since admixture (in gens ago) from HAPMIX
Estimated time since admixture (in gens ago) from StepPCO
Although we estimated similar admixture proportions for these populations (Table 1), subsequent spectral analysis of the admixture signal in the Mandenka, Mozabite, Bedouin, Palestinian and Druze revealed older admixture dates for the Mozabites and the Druze populations (Table 1 and Figure S6 in Additional file 1). The Bedouin population appears to be structured, with 24 out of 45 individuals having a much higher proportion of European-related ancestry (Figure S7 in Additional file 1). If these individuals are removed from the analysis, the estimate for the admixture time in the Bedouins changes to 97 generations ago (CI: 83-131).
All programming and data analysis was performed using R (ver. 2.10.1) [34]. All scripts are freely available [35].
Using genetic data to infer the time of migrations has always been difficult, and the time estimates obtained often come within wide confidence intervals, making these dates unreliable and inferences problematic. Here, we have introduced an approach that takes advantage of dense genome-wide SNP data to improve precision and reduce bias in making inferences about the timing of human migrations. By using an admixed population one can capitalize on the property of the genome to recombine each generation, producing chromosomes that are a mixture of the parental genetic material. The structure of an admixed genome contains temporal information about an admixture event, as a greater number and narrower width of ancestry blocks indicates more recombination events, and hence greater time depth.
Simulations indicate that the WT coefficients can be used to obtain accurate estimates of the time of admixture from suitable genome-wide SNP data. We therefore applied the method to three datasets, consisting of about 650,000 SNPs, to estimate the amount and time of admixture for three human populations: African-Americans, Polynesians, and Fijians. In addition, we analyzed and dated admixture in five HGDP populations of African and Middle-Eastern origin. At first glance, it may appear that the simulated and empirical data differ in that the simulations used fully-differentiated populations, which is not the case for the empirical data. However, as explained in more detail in the Results and Discussion (Basic Setup section), the number of SNPs is adjusted in the StepPCO sliding windows until the ancestral populations can be statistically-differentiated, just as with the simulated data.
For African-Americans, we estimate an average of 19% European ancestry, with a wide range of less than 5% to more than 40% European ancestry across individuals. Both the average and the observation of a wide range of individual admixture estimates are in keeping with previous studies [10, 17, 36, 37]. The estimated time of admixture is about 180 years ago (95% CI: 120-240 years ago), which is probably an underestimate since admixture in the African-American population is ongoing (implying that new ancestry blocks are being continuously introduced by new recombination events, which potentially removes older block structure by replacing narrower ancestry blocks with new, wider blocks).
We tested the performance of the method on Fijians and Polynesians, as both populations are of admixed Asian and Melanesian ancestry [6]. Previous demographic analyses of the genome-wide SNP data used in this study strongly support both an admixed Asian/Melanesian ancestry for Fijians and Polynesians as well as subsequent additional gene flow from Melanesia into Fiji, but not Polynesia [19]. Based on this previously established scenario, we estimated an average of about 25% (from 18 to 28%) Melanesian ancestry in Polynesians, in good agreement with previous estimates based on the same [19] or other [6, 38–40] data. The estimated time of admixture is about 90 generations ago, or 2,700 years (95% CI: 2,300-3,900 years), in good agreement with a previous estimate of about 3,000 years ago based on an ABC simulation approach for the same data [19]. For Fiji, the estimated amount of Melanesian ancestry was about 40%, and the time for this admixture is estimated to have occurred about 37 generations ago, or 1,100 years (95% CI: 870-1170 years). An ABC-simulation based approach for the same data gave an estimated date of 62 generations for this admixture in Fijians, about twice as long ago as our estimate. We speculate that, as in the case of the African-Americans, the estimate based on WT coefficients may be biased toward more recent dates if the gene flow to Fiji occurred over a period of time, as more recent gene flow replaces older, narrower ancestry blocks with newer, wider ancestry blocks. Individual Melanesian ancestry estimates are much wider for Fiji (from 22 to 63%) than for Polynesia (from 18 to 28%), which may indeed indicate a longer period of gene flow into Fiji.
Our results for the Mozabite, Mandenka, Bedouin, Druze and Palestinian populations are similar to those for HAPMIX for inferring local ancestry, and in addition our method seems to perform better with respect to more ancient admixture events (as also shown with simulated data: Figure 4). In particular, we dated the admixture event in the Mozabites and the Druze to 131 and 90 generations ago respectively, 30 generations more than the corresponding estimates obtained with HAPMIX [17]. HAPMIX estimation of the time since admixture is based on the number of calculated ancestry transitions (that is, the number of breakpoints); both our simulations and previous simulations [17] indicate that infinite size populations the number of breakpoints does not increase with time according to expectations (see Equation 1 above), but rather stabilizes, leading to underestimates in admixture dates (Figure 2b). Furthermore, because human populations are closely related and not very well differentiated, direct estimation of the number of breakpoints and block width as a measure of time since admixture for human genetic data is problematic for two reasons. Firstly, to have enough power to reliably assign chromosomal segments to an ancestral population, it is necessary to use relatively large genomic windows, which correspondingly reduces detection of closely-spaced breakpoints. And secondly, for every location in the genome that potentially carries a breakpoint, a formal decision has to be made as to whether to consider it a true breakpoint or not. This transformation of the 'raw' signal into a discrete signal potentially leads to either some not well-defined breakpoints being overlooked, or conversely random effects becoming inflated and falsely considered as a true signal. These errors, however small, will accumulate over the many measurements taken. Conversely, the spectral analysis approach implemented here does not require any data transformation and is applied to the 'raw' signal directly. This has the advantage of preserving the statistical nature of the signal until the final averaging step, and thus does not involve detection of exact location (and presence) of breakpoints, where inevitably large errors in estimation could occur. Although we followed Price et al. 2009 in using African and European parental groups for the admixed Mozabite, Mandenka, Bedouin, Druze and Palestinian groups from the CEPH-HGDP, in fact previous studies have shown that the Druze, Bedouin and Palestinian populations are admixed primarily along a European-Central Asian axis, with little African admixture, and the Mandenka exhibit very little European admixture [18, 41]. Here, we report dates for the presumptive European gene flow, to compare our results to the previous study [17], but it is important to keep in mind that our method (like all admixture methods) requires the use of pre-defined parental groups. Incorrect identification of the ancestral groups contributing to an admixed group will obviously lead to erroneous conclusions, hence careful attention must be paid when identifying parental groups. This is especially true for groups that are suggested to have experienced admixture a long time ago, and hence had more time to experience genetic drift (which is always expected to act in a direction orthogonal to the axis of admixture). In such cases, it is difficult to distinguish between an admixed population that has been subject to genetic drift, and a population that has experienced admixture along a different axis of variation.
Theoretically, there are no limitations as to how far back in time one can get good estimates of admixture time with WT coefficients. The performance of the method is influenced by two factors: the density of SNPs analyzed and the degree of differentiation between the two parental populations. Increasing SNP density would allow the estimated time horizon for detecting admixture to be moved further back. We therefore expect that full sequence data will increase the sensitivity and resolution of our method. The analysis presented here was based on about 650,000 markers; the current estimates for the number of SNPs in the human genome is around 15 million SNPs [42]. Full sequence data will thus provide a twentyfold increase in SNP density, and thereby allow for a twentyfold reduction in the size of the sliding window. Thus, assuming that the newly added SNPs are no less informative for population differentiation than the SNPs on the Affymetrix arrays, we expect that analysis of full sequence data should offer at least a twentyfold improvement in the potential time depth for admixture estimates for human populations. However, given that there is relatively little genetic differentiation between human populations, to distinguish among parental populations requires relatively large segments of the genome, and this also poses a restriction on the time depth of the method. The more closely-related the parental populations, the larger the window size needed to span a sufficient number of informative SNPs. Obviously, this limitation will persist regardless of the type of molecular data considered. However, because of the strong ascertainment bias associated with the SNPs genotyped on the arrays, we expect that SNP-data generated using the array technology necessarily underestimates the variation that exists between human populations, and recent studies suggest that this underestimation could be considerable [43]. Moreover, the method introduced here can be used with any species for which suitable genome-wide data exist, and the larger the genetic difference among the parental populations, the less genome-wide data needed for accurate admixture estimates.
An additional advantage of the StepPCO method is that it provides an estimate of the admixture proportions for each individual within an admixed population. Individual-level estimates of admixture obtained here via StepPCO for African-Americans, Polynesians, and Fijians were quite similar to those obtained via the maximum-likelihood based approach frappe [13], indicating that StepPCO gives reliable results. Furthermore, the StepPCO method also provides information about the distribution of admixture along each chromosome. As such, this approach is also promising for disease gene mapping (in recently admixed populations), and for studying local selection. According to neutral expectations the admixture level should be constant along the genome, but a locus favored by positive selection in the admixed population should appear to have greater admixture proportions than would be expected from the genome-wide average. We are currently investigating the utility of this approach for identifying candidate genes subject to local selection.
In conclusion, we have shown that wavelet transformation is a useful and novel means of dating admixture events from genome-wide data. Other potential extensions of the methodology introduced here include admixture scenarios involving more than two parental populations, and implementing spectral analysis of the raw genomic signal directly, rather than from the StepPCO signal. There is potentially much more to be learned from surfing the wavelets of the genome.
Materials and methods
Basic setup
We consider a collection of N SNPs along a chromosome, which are ordered by their physical position, and indexed by numbers from 1 to N. For such a collection of SNPs we consider a vector of each SNP's physical position along the chromosome scaled with respect to the genetic distances, which were interpolated from genome-wide recombination rates, estimated as part of the HapMap project [24]. Suppose e is an individual chromosome. We also denote as a collection of calls at given SNP positions for the chromosome e. Each component in the vector e for each individual chromosome takes value 0, 1, -1 or NA, where -1 and 1 are assigned to the two possible homozygotes of a given SNP and 0 corresponds to a heterozygote. The space of all possible calls (excluding NAs) sits as a discrete set in an N-dimensional real vector-space E with canonical basis.
Suppose we are given an oriented line A in the vector-space E (later A will be taken to be a principal axis of a certain collection of individual chromosomes). Line A is spanned by a single non-zero vector with coordinates defined up to multiplication by a positive number.
Obviously, the resulting value does not depend on the choice of a vector spanning A.
where E stands for the mean and σ for the standard deviation estimators of the PC1 coordinate of populations P and Q.
Finally, a window w is called λ-optimal if it has the smallest size, such that populations P and Q are λ-separated in w (that is the smallest possible window that satisfies Condition 2). The size of this window at each position is chosen so that the ancestral populations are sufficiently well separated by the statistical properties of the collection of SNPs in the window. We set λ = 3, that is we consider a window as optimal, when the mean PC1 coordinates for the parental populations are separated by three standard deviations from each mean. Note that in general the optimal size will depend on the position of the window along the chromosome. In effect, by taking smaller windows in chromosomal regions that contain more informative SNPs, we are able to increase signal resolution without introducing excess errors into the ancestry estimation.
In summary, for the sample collections {p j } ⊂ P and { q j } ⊂ Q we construct the following data: a) the principal axis A spanned by a non-zero vector with coordinates for a collection of samples {p j , q j }; b) a collection of K equispaced points along the chromosome; and c) for each point x k , k = 1,..., K we construct a λ-optimal window w k centered at x k . These data we refer to as a StepPCO frame. (Special care needs to be taken so that the windows cover the entire chromosome, leaving no gaps in between. This can always be achieved by choosing the number of bins K sufficiently large.)
Using coefficients of PA1 as weights, we find the average value of SNPs within a window. The resulting values are then normalized, so that the ancestral populations correspond to values with means of 1 and -1, respectively.
Consider collections {p j } and { q j } of samples from two ancestral populations P and Q and a set of admixed individuals R = {r j }. Construct a StepPCO frame (in our applications λ = 3 and number of bins is K = 1,024).
Each component of the vector characterizes a stretch of chromosome r corresponding to each bin as belonging to one of the ancestral populations, and the confidence of such an assignment. The level of confidence will of course depend on λ.
Suppose the principal axis is directed from P to Q. Then the closer the value of the signal to 1, the more likely that the corresponding stretch of the chromosome of the sample r belongs to ancestral population Q.
Analogously, values close to -1 correspond to the stretches of DNA most likely tracing their ancestry to population P .
Wavelet transform
Wavelets (ω l, p ) are the orthogonal system of 2 L - 1 vectors in V . They are indexed by the level l = 1,..., L and the position p = 1,..., 2l-1. The level corresponds to a particular frequency of the wave, and is up to an additive constant the negative logarithm base 2 of the period (see formula 3), while the position denotes the position of the wavelet of the given frequency within the signal. Each wavelet at level l has a support of the size 2L-l+1 and is a rectangular wave of amplitude 1 and zero average.
Thus, to compare wavelet coefficients of signals corresponding to some physical phenomena, levels should be shifted by the logarithm base 1/2 of the physical length of the signal.
For the noise reduction, one decides which wavelet amplitudes at each frequency and location are to be considered unimportant, and filters the wavelet coefficients removing (setting to zero) corresponding coefficients. Inverse wavelet transform then produces a signal with the 'noise' removed. An example of this procedure is shown in Figure S8 in Additional file 1 where random noise is added to the signal and then removed using procedure described above.
Thus, C(γ) is a 'central' frequency of the signal γ, and is used as an indirect measure of the average width of the admixture blocks.
African Ancestry in SW USA
U.S. Utah residents with ancestry from northern and western Europe
Human Genome Diversity Panel
Hidden Markov Model
the highlands of Papua New Guinea
first principal axis
principal component analysis
wavelet transform
The Yoruba in Ibadan, Nigeria.
We are very thankful to Susan Ptak, Michael Lachmann, David Hughes and Roger Mundry for their advice and useful discussions. We also thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions. This research was funded by the Max Planck Society.
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Suspect begins to masterbate during police questioning.
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Police weren't aware that Jonathan B. Gambino was carrying a loaded weapon between his legs Friday night when they arrested him for a burglary.
But Gambino wasn't very discreet when he un-holstered his equipment and started masturbating in the Evesham, Burlington County police department's interrogation room.
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Gambino's unmasterful stroke earned him a lewdness charge to go along with the burglary, theft and drug charges police picked him up on. Police allege the Evesham resident stole about $88,000 worth of electronics, jewelry, and other items from a home on Ferguson Court on July 11 by breaking into a basement window.
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This program is part of the Reading Department.
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Results 41 to 48 of 48
Thread: Hybrids are not inherently wrong
Originally Posted by Fishguy2727
I have to give you by the common definition of hybrid such examples of various color/feather morphs of machaws interbreeding would be "hybrids" but I'd have to ponder by this definition what's the difference between 'species' and 'sub-species'? Among some invertebrates the only way to define species is to ascertain if two groups can produce viable male breeders (There has been recent research on Drosophila yielding new info as to the whys of male hybrid sterility http://academic.research.microsoft.c.../6448402.aspx). It is strange how male sterility is a common trait in hybrids across the spectrum of life though even among vertebrates sex isn't determined by the same pairing of XY and XX but the formation of the male gamate undergoes a homologous mitosis.
The debate in anthropology as to whether neandertals were a 'race' of H. sapiens or another species was somewhat settled through comparisons of neandertal DNA which found they had enough mutational differences to conclude any male offspring resulting from a cro-mag and neandertal union would be a sterile hybrid therefore making neandertals a separate species, designated H. neanderthalensis .
I'm kind of foggy on the hybridization leading to speciation hypotheses. Speciation is caused in good part by isolation of gene pools so any speciation forming from an interbreeding of two previously for a time non-breeding groups would still require a subsequent isolation of that 'hybrid' from either parent group.
But I digress....:-)
My original post was about how I used to have people argue with me that blood parrot cichlids were just inbred deformed creatures and how I knew they were in fact hybrids due to the sterile males.
I'm OK with hybrids, in fact hybrids can sometimes be hardier than either of their parent species, but I'm not so enthusiastic about inbreeding."In order to punish me for my contempt of authority the authorities have made me an authority myself" - Albert Einstein.
I took it about two years ago, I graduated in '08.
It all makes sense, but it was never brought up in my Evolution class so I don't know what the current exact concensus is among the pros of today.
It all makes sense though. And it is definitely true that just because 100 years ago we decided that cerain types of macaws were different species doesn't mean they are not truly a wide range of subspecies (after all it is mostly color which is usually the first thing to change).
The Red Wolf is supposed to be a good example of a species produced by hybridization. If interested you may want to check out some more info on them.
Thanks for all the info.Aquarist since 1995
Biologist and Published Author in Multiple Aquarium Magazines
Owner: Aquarium Maintenance Company
Advanced Aquarium Concepts: Articles about many aspects of aquarium care.
0Originally Posted by Fishguy2727
Interesting stuff
One of the grandest proofs of evolution in progress are the genetic differences between various Genera of the Cichlidae. It is demonstrable they share common ancestry, yes many can produce fertile offspring but some have been separated long enough that their divergence from separate accumulation of mutations produce hybrids with sterile males and sometimes even no offspring without human manipulation.
I sometimes argue with young earth creationists and so called "Flood Geologists" and they sometimes argue such Families of animals aren't evidence of evolution since they are just divergent from a single biblical "Kind" though the definition of "Kind' shifts in accordance with whatever they are arguing at the moment. They have no explanation for the phenomenon of sterile offspring from hybridization. If horses and donkeys are not of one "Kind" why can they produce offspring at all, if they are of one "Kind" why can they not "breed true"?"In order to punish me for my contempt of authority the authorities have made me an authority myself" - Albert Einstein.
Good article.. I must say I dont agree with the whole goldfish thing..them being balloon shaped and big bubbles i find it very sad for them and unhealthy. I dont have a problem with hybrids though..not if its just 2 fish but i think its bad when its forced
haha think about it were all hybrid whites blacks latino asian
For myself I let nature take it's course with a few exceptions, I don't allow guppies in with my Endler, we have enough of those LOL and I don't support altering fish by dying, injecting or warping Ie: Blood Parrots, but I do play God a bit, I look for oddball fish like my Dwarf Powder Blue Gourami, who doesn't have any red stripes to him just a red edge to his fins and hope to find a mayching female without any red just to carry on the odd look, or my Scarlet Krib male who has a scarlet female and a regular female, the gambusia female I raised with Endlers who is currently pregnant with endler/gambusia something, hopefully fertile LOL but honestly as long as your not shoving your fish into vats of acidic colors or binding their bodies does it matter? But this is just my opionion
05-16-2012, 08:34 PM #47Member Swordtails
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0Originally Posted by Fishguy2727
That is incorrect. They are fertile. And the parents being from geographically isolated areas does not inherently make the offspring sterile. Keep in mind they are from the same Genus (closer related than many other known hybrids).
I never said they were natural.Aquarist since 1995
Biologist and Published Author in Multiple Aquarium Magazines
Owner: Aquarium Maintenance Company
Advanced Aquarium Concepts: Articles about many aspects of aquarium care.


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Here's a preview of the dynamic interview. Visit Inkblot Arts to read it in its entirety!
Inkblot Arts: Tell us about who you are, specifically in terms of what you've said "yes" to in order to become who you are today.
SRT: That's a good question! I'm a poet, writer, activist, and founder of The Body Is Not An Apology (TBINAA). I think in order to become those things, I've had to continually embody "yes" in an intentional way of being and living my life. To step into any identity that counters the narrative of what we should be requires a whole lot of "yeses."
To step into any identity that counters the narrative of what we should be requires a whole lot of "yeses."
The same thing in some ways with The Body Is Not An Apology, where a small "yes" became a much larger "yes." I had a selfie on my phone. I'd been sitting on it for months, I thought I looked really hot, but the negative self-talk and the external voices of body shame were telling me, "No. No, the world is not going to embrace you as beautiful, no, you're not allowed to feel empowered or sexy in that large, dark-skinned, female body, no." And it took one tiny moment of me saying, "Actually, yes. Yes, I am going to share this photo on Facebook." And that small "yes" had a ripple effect. It gave other people permission to say "yes" to feeling empowered and beautiful. And then after that, it just kept growing, because there's something contagious about a "yes" that is an affirmation to our highest selves.
IA: That's beautiful. How do you describe The Body Is Not An Apology, and how have you seen the impact of its work?
SRT: We describe The Body Is Not An Apology as a global movement focused on radical self-love and body empowerment. It's a coalition of people around the world who've decided to live unapologetically in their bodies regardless of and because of age, race, gender, sexual orientation, ability, mental health status, or any other actionable identity that the world so often attempts to shame us for. We believe that injustice and oppression are at the core of our inability to make peace with the body, our own and others'. And so through information dissemination, community building, coaching, workshops, webinars, we foster an unapologetic radical self-love, which we believe translates into radical human action that help us toward a more just, compassionate, and equitable world. We believe as we change ourselves, we create the foundation of the outward change we're already seeking. As we begin to radically accept ourselves, we begin to see how the world really fights people who radically accept themselves, so we're actually wanting to change that not just for ourselves, but for the whole planet. And that makes us freedom fighters.
As we begin to radically accept ourselves, we begin to see how the world really fights people who radically accept themselves, so we're actually wanting to change that not just for ourselves, but for the whole planet. And that makes us freedom fighters.
The impact has been beyond anything I could've imagined. Every day, I get emails and letters from people who've been changed and shifted because of the work that we do. They say they've learned, "I don't have to apologize for my body. I can love me exactly as I am." I had a woman write me and she said, "I'm a cutter. I've been cutting for ten years, and when I have the urge to cut, I don't cut. I just come to The Body Is Not An Apology." I hear things like, "It has helped me shift my relationship with my own body. It has challenged me to think about bodies in the world. Before, I was judgmental; I'm not judgmental anymore. Things that I believe other people should do, I question myself when I find out they're doing that now." I was walking down the street after a party a few weeks ago, and this woman walked over to me and she said, "Are you Sonya Renee of The Body Is Not An Apology?" And I said, "Yeah..." And she said, "That work is changing my life." That's the feedback that comes from all corners of the planet, so I know the work is working.
IA: How do you describe WhenWeSayYES?
SRT: WhenWeSayYES is an invitation for the community to invest in a global platform that we are calling of the world's most comprehensive online information, education, and community-building platform focused exclusively on radical self-love as a tool for personal transformation and global change.
Click here to read the entire interview on Inkblot Arts and learn more about Sonya Renee Taylor's impactful work!


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Updated on 5 September 2013
AtCor Medical's SphygmoCor XCEL gets Mexico's Comisión Federal para la Protección contra Riesgos Sanitarios (Cofepris) nod
Singapore: AtCor Medical, the developer and marketer of the SphygmoCor system which measures central aortic blood pressures and arterial stiffness noninvasively, has got approval for its SphygmoCor XCEL system by the Comisión Federal para la Protección contra Riesgos Sanitarios (Cofepris), the authority that regulates medical devices in Mexico. This enables BCR Internacional, AtCor's Mexican distributor, to market and sell the system to clinicians and researchers in Mexico.
Mr Duncan Ross, CEO, AtCor Medical, said that: "Mexico is an important market for AtCor. The SphygmoCor XCEL system provides an opportunity to incorporate measurement of central aortic blood pressure into patient management and to positively impact healthcare in the Mexican population."
He further added, "The opportunity for countries such as Mexico to implement programs that identify patients at risk, educate them to modify their lifestyles and seek treatment ahead of critical incidents is important to governments for both its economic and quality of life implications. SphygmoCor XCEL is well positioned to provide this information in a cost effective manner."
Mr Enrique Cerrillo Romero, general manager, BCR Internacional, AtCor's Mexico distributor, said that, "We are very pleased to have achieved SphygmoCor XCEL registration and look forward to marketing this innovative and important technology to clinicians and researchers throughout Mexico. Interest during our premarketing period has been very strong."
Mexico is the second largest medical device market in Latin America with an estimated annual market of $4 billion. It has a population of 113 million, and a large proportion of Mexican adults have risk factors for heart disease and stroke. According to a 2010 study of 20,000 Mexican adults published in American Heart Journal, hypertension affected almost 30 percent of adults and about 13 percent of adults had diabetes.
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Whether you can't get enough of poses like the frog, the cobra or downward-facing dog, or those are just random animal names to you, you have an idea how relaxed yoga can make you. Now you can get the comfort of the mat without stretching at all in the Yoga Mat sandals from Sanuk. They feature a footbed made out of a real yoga mat with a new feminine cut and faux leather straps. It's a look that's so comfortable and so chic, you'll seriously consider becoming a yoga master.
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Campus Assault Resources and Empowerment (CARE) Line: (925) 878-9207
Students may access this line 24-hours a day, seven days a week by calling (925) 878-9207. Students can utilize the line in order to gather resources, learn their options for accessing medical and emotional care and to receive critical, time sensitive information about how to report their case on and off campus.
Members of the CARE Team are trained to assist victims by providing information and discussing available resources and options (medical, legal, emotional, and academic), by making referrals and providing access to appropriate College and community services as needed. Members of the CARE Team do not act as counselors.
Students who believe they have experienced a violation of the Sexual Assault and Sexual Misconduct Policy or of the sexual harassment provisions of the Policy Prohibiting, and Procedures for Reporting, Discrimination, Harassment, including Sexual, and Retaliation may choose to contact the CARE Team for assistance via text messaging or calling the line.
In order to ensure that students have as many options as possible when utilizing the line, students who are unsure if they would like to move forward with an on-campus disciplinary hearing board case should not reveal their names.
When an individual contacts the CARE Line team, no College discipline action will take place unless the individual chooses to give her or his name and the details surrounding the incident. Any reports that include a victim's name or alleged perpetrator's name will be considered formal reports and will initiate college action.


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Patton Oswalt
- Actor
Funny Or Die
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Eric Appel
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Dustin Bowser
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Funny Or Die Politics
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Written by and Starring Patton Oswalt. Directed by Eric Appel.
Stats & Data
President Obama
As you lead this country into this sort of 21 century
it is long deserved I ask you to appoint me
E. Hamish Plubrick
as the new poet laureate of
these United States
My qualifications are
[soothing music in the background]
- I have been teaching poetry and comparative literature
- at the [unintelligible word] College,
since 1981
I am a Price published poet
Who participates in regular poetry readings
And her nipples like pig dicks in a cyclone
Your current poet laureate a fearsome sapphic wordsmith
With the unlikely name of K. Ryan will not serve
you well in the new millennium
And despite JD McClasky's praise of Ms. Ryan's poem
she did not pack the quick silva gravatas and bantamweight
all of punch of poets such as Wallace Stevens,
[unintelligible name],
and the Notorious BIG
and she does not posses a chin waddle
that can turn poetry into hot sonic death
[guy growls]
Is there any secret in skulls, the castle skulls in the...
[laser sound]
I pledge my death waddle to the cause of poetry
and should you chose me I will also reveal the five other
forbidden poetic death talents I gained after defeating
Stanley Kunitz in the rhyming pit under vassa
the shadows lengthen obama, the shadows lengthen
Oh get it away
[music plays]


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Web Stories
DiIulio to speak on religious revival in universities, April 9
Posted April 7, 2003; 12:01 a.m.
DiIulio Jr. will speak on "God and Man at Yale Revisited: The Coming Religious Revival at Elite Universities" on Wednesday, April 9.
His lecture at 4:30 p.m. in 302 Frist Campus Center is part of the Charles Test, M.D., Distinguished Visiting Scholar Seminars sponsored by the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions .
DiIulio is the Frederic Fox Leadership Professor of Politics, Religion and Civil Society at the University of Pennsylvania. He served as assistant to the president of the United States and first director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives during 2000-01. He also was a professor of politics and public affairs at Princeton for 13 years.
A senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the Brookings Institution, he is the author, co-author or editor of a dozen books, including "American Government: Institutions and Policies," "What's God Got To Do With the American Experiment?" and "Medicaid and Devolution."
Contact: Tom Bartus(609) 258-3601


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Experts give advice on donating to charities
People urged to research nonprofits before giving money
MADISON, Wis. - Nissa Judd and her husband, Kevin, have worked hard to be able to give back -- and they take pride in their ability to do so.
"There are a lot of opportunities out there, and being a business owner, people approach me everywhere," Nissa Judd said.
The Judds own Affiliated Communications and Integral Building Systems in Middleton, and they are actively involved with a number of charitable organizations that touch their hearts. They do their homework when they're giving, but not everyone does.
Dane County has more 4,600 registered nonprofits, and many people are regularly asked for donations.
The requests for money come by telephone, by mail and even to one's front door. But Kimberly Hazen, regional director of the Better Business Bureau of Wisconsin, said if people aren't careful, their donation could cost more than they might think.
"A professional fundraiser can take up to 90 percent of your donation for their fee," Hazen said.
Haze said consumers need to be smart about their hard-earned cash and have a plan in place that's always ready.
"If you don't have an action plan, you end up tending to consider each request as it happens, and you know that we all get so many requests every month, every year," Hazen said.
The Better Business Bureau said before you give, ask questions. Ask who is actually requesting money -- is it the charity itself, or a middle man? Experts said the middle man usually takes a percentage of a person's donation, which could be upwards of 90 percent.
BBB said people should also ask about the charity's finances. Haze says at least 65 cents of your dollar should go toward the actual mission of the nonprofit.Experts give advice on donating to charities
Haze said people should ask about the charity's leadership, how often their board meets and who's on the board. She said a solid board usually means a better-run organization.
When you give, experts remind consumers to give responsibly by always using a check or a credit card -- never cash. People also shouldn't give over the phone, because they never really know who they're giving to.
Hazen said people should also have a refusal script. They shouldn't be afraid to say no, and they should know how they're going to do it.
Hazen said the best advice she can give consumers is to figure out if the charity asking you for money really is a legitimate charity.
"The worrisome ones for us are the folks that are acting like a reputable charity," Haze said. "They may use the word 'cancer' or the word 'American' or some sort of word that makes you think they're part of the bigger one that we all know. But they're really not."
For generous donors, like the Judds, the research literally pays off.
"I look at annual reports. I talk to executive directors. I find out information to say, 'Hey, this is a good place to give.'" Nissa Judd said.
She said while it feels good to give, it feels even better knowing how far her dollar really goes.
"I think people probably don't realize that a portion of your dollar isn't getting to the people who need it," Judd said.
Experts said turning to the Web is a great way to research the charity you're interested in supporting. Website www.charitynavigator.org is a great place to start. It's an independent site that rates local and national charities based on their finances, the amount spent on programs verses administration costs, and other criteria.
To check on local charities, experts recommend searching the database held by the Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions. Every nonprofit in the state is required to register with WDFI, and from its website, people can request copies of a charity's financial records and annual reports, and also find contact information.
Local And Regional News
- Robber points gun at motel clerk, flees empty-handed
- Wisconsin woman's play to take stage in San Diego
- Aging farmers in Wisconsin fear nursing care may cost farm
- Police questioning suspect in Middleton homicide
- Green Bay official explores ban on openly carrying guns
- Sheriff: Alcohol may be factor in crash that injured two