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extends from 200 meters deep all the way down to the bottom of the ocean
the deepest parts of the ocean
the top layer of the ocean where sunlight penetrates
a chemical process where plants and algae use a sun's energy to make sugars from carbon dioxide and water
the plant and algae component of the plankton
a living thing that produces its own food within itself, usually by using sunlight energy in photosynthesis
the amount of dissolved solids in seawater
a volcanic peak that rises at least 3280 feet from the floor
capable of continuing over a long period of time without causing permanent damage
the upward movement to the ocean surface of deeper, cold and usually nutrient-rich waters
animal component of the plankton that feed on phytoplankton and other zooplankton
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Addiction is rarely simple and straightforward. It often presents as a tangled web of wide-reaching consequences and hidden underlying issues. Unresolved childhood issues, undiagnosed mental disorders, and disappointing life circumstances can commonly be found beneath the surface of addiction. Mental health issues, in particular, are extremely common in association with addiction. And some, like anxiety and depression, can be difficult to diagnose when drinking and drug use is involved.
Dual diagnosis is notoriously difficult to recognize because the effects of drugs and alcohol can often mimic common mental health issues like anxiety and depression. It can also cause symptoms seen in both like insomnia. However, addressing an addiction without screening for co-occurring mental disorders can lead to ineffective treatment. Without addressing the underlying mental issues, relapsing back into addiction is more likely, even if you go through fulladdiction detox and treatment. Unresolved mental issues will eventually lead to negative emotional, cognitive, and behavioral issues that may have originally led you to drugs or alcohol in the first place.
Dual diagnosis is incredibly common in addiction treatment. According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) 2014 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, an estimated 7.9 million people qualify for both a mental health disorder and a SUD at the same time. Because it is so common, addiction treatment services have developed ways to address the issue of dual diagnosis. There are a variety of treatment options and facilities that are equipped to treat addiction with common mental illnesses. And when mental illnesses are severe, like severe schizophrenia, the case may be referred to a specialist that can help.
Learn more about dual diagnosis, what causes it and how it can be treated!
The phenomenon of a mental health issue occurring at the same time as a substance use disorder (SUD) is referred to as a dual diagnosis, and the simultaneous mental health issue is called a co-occurring mental disorder. When you seek assistance for a dual diagnosis case, it can often be difficult to determine which came first, the mental health issue or the SUD. Alcohol and drug use can cause symptoms of anxiety and depression, especially after drug dependence develops. It can also worsen these symptoms in people who have preexisting anxiety and depression. Dual diagnosis treatment involves focusing on both issues at the same time rather than trying to target one and not the other or treating them one after the other.
Dual diagnosis can occur with any number of mental health issues and if you enter a treatment program your personal and family history with mental health can offer insight into your best treatment option. However, there are a few mental health problems that seem to be closely tied to drug abuse, dependence, and addiction.
Here are some of the most common mental health issues that occur alongside drug and alcohol addiction:
Major depressive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder are some of the most common mental disorders in the United States, affecting 16.1 and 6.8 million people respectively. They are also the most common mental health issues to overlap with addiction.
Depression can come in a few different forms: major depressive disorder, persistent depressive disorder, bipolar depression, seasonal affective disorder, and more. Depression is characterized by varying periods of time in which you feel a loss of interest or pleasure, lethargy, sleep issues, feeling worthless or guilty, trouble concentrating, and thoughts of suicide. Abusing chemical substances alongside a depressive disorder can increase your risk of suicidal actions, addiction, and other consequences associated with drug use. Nervous system depressants, like alcohol and certain sleep aids, are especially dangerous with depression. They can offer temporary relief to certain depressive disorders but they are ultimately made worse by drug use.
Anxiety disorders can range from feelings of worry to full panic disorders. They are usually characterized by insomnia, lack of concentration, racing thoughts, worry, and restlessness. Anxiety is also a common symptom of drugs like cocaine and other stimulants. They can mask an anxiety disorder or make it worse.
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is another disorder that is common in dual diagnosis. PTSD can occur as a result of a past mental, physical, or emotional trauma. It’s common among military veterans, a population in which illicit drug use is rare but alcoholism is significant. However, PTSD can also occur as a result of a childhood trauma, sexual assault, car accidents, and any other traumatic event. Trauma symptoms include flashbacks from the event, agitation, irritability, anxiety, self-destructiveness, and depressed mood.
Dual diagnosis is difficult to detect if you aren’t looking for it. In many cases, you may not even realize that you have a co-occurring mental health issue. SUDs and mental health problems will often exist with blurred lines. It’s difficult to pinpoint what came first and which one caused the other. In some cases, a SUD causes or contributes to a mental health issue. Overuse of certain drugs can lead to anxiety or depression. Active addiction can also lead to a number of serious life consequences that can exacerbate these issues.
Mental health issues as a result of addiction are often short-term, but in some cases, they can cause lasting effects. Common mental health effects of addiction can even include paranoia, hallucinations, and aggression, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). Certain drugs, like meth, can cause long-lasting mental health issues like confusion, anxiety, insomnia, and hallucinations.
In some cases, dormant mental health issues are triggered by drug abuse. In these situations, it can be mistakenly assumed that the drug caused a mental disorder that was actually pre-existing. Drugs and alcohol alter your brain chemistry and addiction changes the way you perceive substance use. With such a profound effect on the brain, it is no wonder how addiction can awaken or worsen mental health issues that weren’t noticeable before.
In a greater number of cases, a mental health issue noticeably predates a substance use disorder. Mental disorders and a history of mental illness are risk factors for addiction and it may be among the first things you explore in addiction treatment. Sometimes, in an attempt to alleviate troublesome symptoms or ease painful memories, people will turn to drugs or alcohol.
Using substances that are not designed or prescribed for medical use as a treatment for physical or mental health issues is a practice called self-medication. Though some illicit drugs and alcohol offer effects that can alleviate some of the symptoms of certain mental health issues, the way they affect brain chemistry often lead to more severe imbalances.
Alcohol and other central nervous system depressants, like benzodiazepines and barbiturates, are common drugs in self-medication. They work in the brain’s communication system to bind to receptors that are responsible for causing feelings of anti-anxiety and relaxation and they can promote sleep. However, when self-medication turns into chemical dependence, your brain will become used to the effects of the drugs, throwing off your normal brain chemistry.
After a period of dependence, your brain will stop producing its own calming chemicals. If you have a depression disorder, you may exasperate your already unbalanced brain chemistry. If you have an anxiety disorder, the effects of CNS depressant withdrawal can make symptoms worse.
Other illicit drugs work in the brain differently but they can have similar negative effects on existing mental health issues. Even improper use of prescription drugs can be dangerous when mixed with a mental health problem.
In some cases, a SUD and a mental health issue can develop simultaneously. Both addiction and mental health issues share some of the same risk factors, so someone who is at high risk for a mental disorder like depression may also be a high risk for alcoholism. Here are some of the risk factors that are shared by both SUDs and mental illness:
Your family history is an important factor in the development of either disorder. A family history of mental illness has proven to increase your likelihood to experience mental issues of your own. Researchers have also discovered links to parents and grandparents with addiction to children who also have substance abuse disorders. By studying twins and adopted children, they can also rule out the possibility that a history of addiction is completely due to upbringing.
Though addiction and mental health may not solely have to do with your childhood upbringing, it is a significant factor. The earlier children are exposed to alcohol or drug use, the more likely they are todevelop a substance use disorder later in life. Because of this, children that grow up in homes that permit alcohol use or normalize excess drinking are at a greater risk of developing alcoholism later in life. This can often collide with genetic factors when a child grows up with an alcoholic parent. Likewise, development has a large bearing on how a person learns to cope with stress. Poor coping can lead to mental health problems.
Outside factors apart from your childhood development can also influence your mental health and addiction risk. Advertisements, peers, and culture can have a serious impact on you mentally and emotionally. For instance, constant beer advertisements can normalize the idea of alcohol as a social lubricant. This may have some responsibility in the fact that the culture sees college binge drinking almost as a rite of passage. Likewise, culture can stigmatize mental health problems and prevent people from getting early treatment.
Head injuries have the potential to lead to mental disorders like PTSD, depression, learning and memory problems, and more. This is often observed as a result of military service and head injuries among servicemen and women increase the likelihood of both mental health issues and SUD.
Addiction treatment is complex on its own. There are a variety of potential underlying issues that have to be explored. When a co-morbid mental health issue is also present, it can be even more of a challenge. Before we began to develop modern addiction treatment methods, a dual diagnosis was often seen as too difficult to treat. When addiction was seen as a bad habit and moral failing, doctors may have even refused to treat a patient who was also drinking or using drugs. If they did decide to treat the patient, they would ignore or work around the substance use disorder. But treating one without addressing the other often leads to relapse.
However, with a significant number of people that attending addiction treatment, clinicians and addiction treatment specialists need to be able to address both disorders effectively. Today, we understand that properly treating addiction requires addressing multiple needs. According to NIDA, being able to address medical, psychological, social, vocational, and legal issues is aprinciple for effective treatment. The presence of a mental health disorder falls into the category of important problems to address alongside treatment, not before or after.
When you enter a treatment program, you will go through a process typically referred to as intake and assessment. During this time, you will talk to clinicians and answer some basic questions about your personal and family history with mental health. Then you will sit down with a therapist for a session designed to get to the root of your addiction. They will most likely go through a questionnaire called a biopsychosocial, which is an in-depth look at your biological, psychological, and social history and current issues. Through this process, your therapist will start to gain a better picture of the factors that may be at the root of your addiction. If you have a co-occurring mental health problem, it will start to become apparent through this session.
From there, you and your therapist will form your treatment plan. If it’s clear that you have a specific disorder like depression, one of the goals of your plans might be to address and learn to deal with depression through specific therapy options. If your current mental health is unclear, a goal may be to further explore how your potential mental disorder might be affecting a SUD.
There are a variety of therapy options in addiction treatment and some are ideal for treating dual diagnosis. There is no single addiction treatment option that will work for every person, but certain behavioral therapies are designed to address a wide variety of issues. Here are some excellent therapies for dual diagnosis:
One of the most popular addiction therapy options, CBT is designed to examine why thoughts lead to actions. Addressing poor coping mechanisms in your thinking can help you avoid addictive and destructive behaviors.
Support groups like Alcoholics Anonymous are commonly used in conjunction with addiction treatment. However, there are also support groups for people dealing with mental disorders and some that specifically help with dual diagnosis.
Addiction is sometimes called a “family disease” because of the way it affects the people in your life. Everyone in your family can play a role in helping or hurting your road to recovery and your addiction may be causing difficulties for them as well.
Some mental health disorders will need therapies to target specific issues. For instance, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) is specifically geared toward addressing trauma disorders and PTSD. Other behavioral therapies likemotivational enhancement therapy can help people who don’t believe they need treatment or are otherwise unmotivated to seek abstinence and dual diagnosis recovery.
Through a variety of evidence-based options, your addiction treatment plan should be tailored to your specific needs. And your therapist and clinicians can help you formulate a plan that addresses both your need for drug and alcohol abstinence and recovery and your mental health.
Addiction and co-occurring disorders are difficult to deal with on your own and they often feed into one another, preventing you from overcoming either one. However, with addiction treatment and evidence-based therapy, you can learn to deal with a dual diagnosis and live a life free of addiction.
To learn more about addiction treatment and how you can find help with addiction and co-occurring disorders, call the addiction specialists at Delphi Behavioral Health Group at 855-619-8070. Dual diagnosis may be difficult to overcome, but you don’t have to go through it on your own.
Fergusson, D. M., Lynskey, M. T., & Horwood, L. J. (1994, August). Childhood exposure to alcohol and adolescent drinking patterns. Retrieved from from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7950847
National Institute on Drug Abuse. (2010, September). Comorbidity: Addiction and Other Mental Illnesses. Retrieved from from https://www.drugabuse.gov/sites/default/files/rrcomorbidity.pdf
National Institute on Drug Abuse. (2018, June). Methamphetamine. Retrieved from from https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/methamphetamine
SAMHSA. (2014, June 20). Mental and Substance Use Disorders. Retrieved from from https://www.samhsa.gov/disorders | <urn:uuid:2decc5bc-9294-4a03-8e2a-02d3676e5118> | {
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Maybe it's not pseudoscience after all. Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), a technique that stimulates brain activity through externally-delivered magnetic pulses, has been alternately hailed and written-off for years, showing promise in some studies while proving ineffective in others.
Lately, though, scientists at several major universities have been saying that the technology is finally refined enough to start making a difference, and a new study to be published in Biological Psychiatry suggests they might be right. In a multi-center trial, 301 medication-free but severely depressed patients received either real or sham TMS for 4-6 weeks. The researchers report that side effects were minimal, and TMS proved to be an effective treatment—with the real TMS proving significantly more effective than the placebo version.—Gregory Mone | <urn:uuid:2fcc131c-8f69-4b31-9f10-2ed9d25b1a4d> | {
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How do babies develop core strength?
All preterm babies need to strengthen their “core” – that is the muscles in their trunk (stomach, sides, back). We all need core strength to stand, walk, reach, and live our daily lives – babies do too!
How do babies develop core strength? By being on the floor on their tummies and playing in a variety of positions. All former preterm babies prefer to be in an extended posture because they had a shorter time being curled up in the womb. While being cared for in the NICU, they can develop extensor muscle dominance that lead to ongoing weakness in the trunk and stiffness in their arms and legs. Most often, this is just habitual and not a permanent neurologic impairment.
Many premature babies like to sit or stand rather than roll and move about on the floor, but rolling and crawling are very important for your baby’s overall development. Be sure to help your baby have time on the floor so they can have these important experiences. These activities help to develop not just muscle strength, but also body awareness.
To help your baby develop the right muscle strength they need to spend as much time as possible on the floor.
Ways to get your baby to do tummy time on the floor:
- Always start your play time with tummy time.
- Get down low to the floor so that your baby has to be on their tummy to see you, hear you, and smell you.
- Support your baby with their arms forward and bottom down to encourage their head to lift up.
- Sing to your baby and use a favourite toy.
- Shift your baby’s weight from side to side to encourage him to lift his head and look around.
- Babies take time to get used to tummy time so expect your baby to be fussy at first. Start with putting them on their tummy while you keep their attention with one song. Then as they get used to being on their tummy, you can entertain them in that position for a longer and longer time. As a guide, by the time they are 4 months corrected age, they should be happy on their tummy for 10 minutes at a time.
SAFETY: Never leave a baby unsupervised during tummy time and use a clean blanket or other floor covering.
Simple everyday moments are important for play and learning
A newborn brain changes and develops with every experience a baby has, so even the smallest contact with another person teaches your baby’s brain what to expect and how to react. Repetition and simple patterns will help your baby learn – in play, in sleep, and in feeding.
Talk, sing, read
- Your baby’s language development is influenced by the sheer number of words that they hear in the first year of life.
- Talk with your baby as much as you possibly can. Tell your baby everything you do as you go about your day. It doesn’t matter what you say; it is all good for your baby’s language development. It may feel odd at first, but once you think of it as telling your baby the story of your day it becomes easier: “Now we are going to make your lunch! Your favourite: green beans and chicken. But first, we need to finish those dishes from breakfast and I am going to use warm soapy water…”
- Singing to babies is also very good for their brain development and the rhythm and cadence of music is great for language development.
Encourage your baby to experience the world
- Preterm babies often needing a lot of sensory stimulation. Give them a full range of experiences, with different textures, with water, and with messy play.
- It is also very important to find quiet moments as that is when your baby’s brain makes memories of what they have experienced and learned.
- Quiet times are also necessary for your baby to learn to calm himself.
Helping your baby develop fine motor coordination – using their hands and fingers
- Give your baby objects with interesting features to touch, things that require them to grasp, pinch, or poke. At first the movements may seem accidental, but if repeated over time babies will become more intentional in the movements.
- Just like any other developmental milestone, you can’t make a baby reach for objects, but you can give them the opportunity to reach. A parent’s job is just this: provide the opportunity and when your baby is ready, they will take advantage of it.
Helping your baby develop gross motor coordination – rolling, crawling and walking
- Older babies need tummy time too!
- Avoid using equipment that promotes extension of the trunk such as bouncy seats, jump-ups, jumparoos, bouncers and walkers.
- Tummy time is still important as your baby is beginning to learn to stand, cruise, and walk.
- Floor time will make their first walking much stronger and more confident.
- Some of these devices can encourage toe-walking which is not good for preterm babies who are already prone to this problem.
Positional preferences and head flattening
- Head preferences are very common for premature babies. If left alone, this can then develop into a flattening of the head.
- If you notice your baby likes looking to one side, do all your activity and play on the other side i.e. feeding, talking, toys etc.
- At the start your baby will look at lights and will turn towards your movement. Position their cot so they have to look at you away from their favourite side.
- Any time off the preferred side is good. Change their head position regularly, carry your baby, use a sling, and avoid too long in a car seat or pram.
- Regular tummy time is very important for developing the right muscles so that your baby has the strength to start holding their head in a good position.
- If your baby has started to develop head flattening it will take time to correct.
We know that babies born prematurely have different patterns of development (e.g in learning, growing and moving around) but the vast majority of premature babies will develop just like full term babies, but in their own time. By the age of 2 years, most parents will know whether their baby has major challenges in development such as cerebral palsy or intellectual delay. Some premature babies may need help through physiotherapy or occupational therapy in their first year to support their physical and mental development in order to reach their milestones. Many of them will then go on to develop normally without major lifelong challenges.
Some preterm children may be more at risk of developing sensory problems with touch, vision, hearing, balance, difficulties with focus and attention, difficulty with social situations, learning challenges, or regulating their emotions. Your baby’s healthcare team will be watching for these issues and recommend help as needed. If you develop any concerns about your baby’s development be sure to discuss them as often as you need to with the healthcare professionals involved in your baby’s care, including your GP, health visitor, physiotherapist or neonatologist or paediatrican.
Some of these challenges are not noticed until school age, and then parents often wonder if their child’s challenge is due to their preterm birth, their personality, or to conditions that run in the family. The reality is that it is likely a combination of these factors. Providing as many opportunities as possible to help support your child’s development when they are young can help to reduce these challenges as your child grows.
Preterm babies often needing a lot of sensory stimulation. Give them a full range of experiences, with different textures, with water, and with messy play.
Rolling and crawling are very important for your baby’s overall development.
We all need core strength to stand, walk, reach, and live our daily lives – babies do too! | <urn:uuid:e25cda3d-d6b6-4d1b-8bb8-ea48d102d1ae> | {
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SOUTHAMPTON scientists have discovered a shift in the seasons, with spring arriving early and autumn being delayed.
Peter Atkinson, professor of geography at the University of Southampton, has examined satellite images of vegetation across the northern hemisphere from the past 25 years and found signs that winter is being shrunk.
Earlier this month supermarkets Waitrose and Tesco both announced that English strawberries were ripening early and hitting the shelves a week earlier than last year.
Prof Atkinson said: “There is much speculation about whether our seasons are changing and if so, whether this is linked to climate change.
“Our study is another significant piece in the puzzle, which may ultimately answer this question.”
The researchers examined a range of vegetation types, with forests which have not been affected by human intervention acting as the best signifier for the changing seasons.
The most pronounced change found by the researchers was in the broad-leaved deciduous and needle-leaved deciduous forest groups, showing that autumn is becoming significantly later, with an early onset of spring. | <urn:uuid:eaa0dd0a-17dc-45bf-8e01-cc566067966a> | {
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For Americans who live along the east and Gulf of Mexico coasts, the end of the 2017 Atlantic hurricane season on Nov. 30 was a relief. This year forecasters recorded 17 named storms, 10 of which became hurricanes. Six were major hurricanes (Category 3 or stronger), and three made landfall: Harvey in Texas, Irma in the Caribbean and Florida, and Maria in the Caribbean and Puerto Rico. It was the most costly season ever, inflicting more than US$200 billion in damages.
Many scientists have found evidence that climate change is amplifying the impacts of hurricanes. For example, several studies just published this month conclude that human-induced climate change made rainfall during Hurricane Harvey more intense. But climate change is not the only factor making hurricanes more damaging.
In a study we co-authored with our colleague Jon Martin, we showed that two converging natural climate processes created a “hot spot” from Cape Hatteras, North Carolina to Miami where sea levels rose six times faster than the global average between 2011 and 2015. We also showed that such hot spots have occurred at other points along the Eastern Seaboard over the past century. Now we see indications that one is developing in Texas and Louisiana, where it likely amplified flooding during Harvey — and could make future coastal storms more damaging.
Solving a salinity puzzle
Our work started when Jon Martin showed one of us (Arnoldo) salinity data from water trapped between sediments lining the floor of the Indian River Lagoon in east Central Florida. Here groundwater with zero salinity pools along the coast behind several barrier islands. Jon and his research team were analyzing changes in water chemistry and found that salinity had increased dramatically over the preceding decade. This suggested that saltwater was rapidly intruding into the lagoon.
This process is typically driven either by sea level rise or humans pumping fresh water from underground, or some combination of the two. Arnoldo consulted online data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and found that sea level rise had accelerated rapidly at nearby Trident Pier between 2011 and 2015. While global sea level has been rising at an average pace of about 1 foot per century, this site had recorded an increase of about 5 inches in a mere five years.
When Arnoldo shared this finding with Andrea, an international expert in past sea level rise, she was floored. These rates were ten times higher than the long-term rates of sea level rise along the Florida coastline. Further investigation showed that all tide gauges south of Cape Hatteras showed a similar uptick over the same period. This raised two questions: Had similar rates of rapid sea level rise previously been observed in the southeast United States? And what was causing this temporary acceleration?
Converging climate patterns
Previous work along the Atlantic coast had identified the area north of Cape Hatteras as vulnerable to accelerated rates of sea level rise, particularly in the context of climate change. Warming of the planet is expected to weaken the Gulf Stream, a powerful Atlantic Ocean current that pulls water away from the east coast and carries it northward. Slowing down the Gulf Stream leaves more water in place along the coastline, raising sea levels.
But this mechanism could not explain a jump of this magnitude in sea levels south of the Cape. Another previous study offered an additional clue. It proposed that the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), a seesaw pattern in air pressure over different regions of the North Atlantic Ocean, could explain the shift in the position of short-term variations in sea level rise.
Shifts in the NAO alter the position of the jet stream, wind patterns and storm tracks, all of which affect the distribution of water in the North Atlantic basin. Ultimately, the cumulative effects of NAO on the ocean determine whether water will pile up to the north or south of Cape Hatteras. Thus, water piled up preferentially to the north of Cape Hatteras in the period 2009-2010, and to the south from 2011 to 2015.
This NAO-related mechanism explained where sea level accelerations might occur along the Atlantic coast, but did not seem to explain their timing. We filled in the blanks by examining tide gauge records over the last century along the entire U.S. Atlantic coast. This review showed that the timing of short-term sea level accelerations, lasting one to several years, was correlated with the accumulated signal of another recurring climate pattern: The El Niño Southern Oscillation, or ENSO, which is the result of an oscillation of atmospheric pressure in the Tropical Pacific Ocean basin.
Although ENSO occurs in the Pacific, its effects propagate across North America, altering air temperatures and wind regimes in the eastern United States. These changes in wind distributions can affect water transport in the North Atlantic Ocean, causing it to build up along the U.S. Eastern Seaboard at times. Other scientists have shown that this transport ultimately determines the timing of short-term accelerations in sea-level rise along the U.S. Atlantic coast.
In summary, we found that short-term accelerations in sea level rise have repeatedly occurred over the last century, sometimes occurring south of Cape Hatteras and sometimes focused north of the Cape. These hot spots can exceed rates of 4 inches in five years, and can occur anywhere along the U.S. Atlantic coast. They form when the accumulated signals of ENSO and the NAO converge, displacing seawater toward the coastline.
A wild card for coastal flooding
Our research has serious implications for coastal planners. Global warming is raising sea levels along the entire Atlantic coast, and communities should be preparing for it. In addition, our findings show that sea level can rise and fall around this level by more than 4 inches over a five-year period, due to variability in ocean-atmosphere interactions in the Pacific and Atlantic ocean basins. This variability can occur over the course of five to 10 years.
These hot spots amplify the severity of coastal flooding that is already occurring from storms and king tides. Residents between Charleston, South Carolina and Jacksonville, Florida — a stretch where sea levels are at least 4 inches (10 centimeters) higher now then they were in 2010 — have found this out the hard way.
Now we are looking at data from the Gulf of Mexico, where tide stations are also showing water levels which are typically higher than predicted. The increase along Florida’s Gulf coast is past its peak, but Texas and Louisiana are still seeing an acceleration in sea level rise. Accelerations in sea level rise are hard to predict, and it is unclear whether they will become more serious over time. But they make it even more urgent for coastal communities to take sea level rise seriously today. | <urn:uuid:fc3f5fb7-ef4a-4d8a-afdf-2ebb7473af6c> | {
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Brain rewinds while you sleep
Ever wondered why a good sleep makes you feel refreshed? It’s because during that time, your brain “resets” itself to make it ready to learn and process more information when you wake up, scientists say.Updated: May 28, 2012 00:10 IST
Ever wondered why a good sleep makes you feel refreshed? It’s because during that time, your brain “resets” itself to make it ready to learn and process more information when you wake up, scientists say.
And when you won’t get enough sleep, the brain cannot make itself ready for more and new information, making you an irritable and inefficient person, claimed the researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Psychologist Giulio Tononi, who led the study, says that brain wave activity is particularly strong during sleep — a sign that the brain is “wiping out” unnecessary impressions.
The brain literally “unwinds” during sleep — wiping itself clean in much the same way as a computer reboots,” says Tononi. “Sleep may be the price you pay so your brain can be plastic the next day,” he was quoted as saying by the Daily Mail.
Tononi’s pioneering research into sleep — using human volunteers, rats, and computer simulations — is considered to offer some of the first insights into the ‘purpose’ of sleep. His understanding of the brain and how it “rewires” itself may also lead to a deeper understanding of what consciousness itself is.
His hypothesis is that sleep allows the brain to regroup after a hard day of learning by giving the synapses, which increase in strength during the day, a chance to damp down to baseline levels. This is important because the brain uses up to 80% of its energy to sustain synaptic activity. Sleep may also be important for consolidating new memories, and to allow the brain to “forget” the random, unimportant impressions of the day, so there is room for more learning the next day.
“This could be why the brain waves are so active during certain periods of sleep,” says Tononi. “While there may still be no consensus on why animals need to sleep, it would seem that searching for a core function of sleep, particularly at the cellular level, is still a worthwhile exercise,” he adds.
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The Official Definition: A fictional character who originally appeared in Rudyard Kipling's short story "In the Rukh" and then went on to become the most prominent and memorable character in his fantasies, The Jungle Book and The Second Jungle Book.
My Definition: A young child who is in a state of wildness. This can be seen in untidy hair, mussed clothing, and/or bare, dirty feet. This state of being is usually seen in younsters at the end of the day or after playing outside.
Note the ill-fitting shirt, bad hair, and wild eyes
In this case, complete lack of clothing and unstyled hair a Mowgli makes
The term actually originated when my (much younger) cousin Tasha was little. When she'd run around my grandma's house playing, looking so wild and free, she reminded us of Mowgli from the Jungle Book. The term just stuck around after that, being used for my sisters' children and eventually mine too. So, if you ever hear me refer to a child as Mowgli or Mowgli-ish, now you know why. | <urn:uuid:5a786433-c61b-4071-9ce8-507bcb7b1b7d> | {
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We are very fortunate at Rucstall to have a wealth of different languages spoken in our school. At the moment, we speak nine different languages!
These children have been chosen to support children when they first start at Rucstall to make their transition into school a smooth one, to be a friendly face and help interpret in the first few weeks of a new school.
Language of the Term.
Each term, we shall be focusing on a different language spoken at Rucstall.
We believe that bi/multilingualism of our children and staff enriches our school and community.
We feel it is important that our children with EAL have opportunities to share and use their home languages at school.
The children help to create the Language of the Term displays found in our community room which is open for all to see.
We hope that by having an understanding of other languages will provoke interest and respect. | <urn:uuid:a5a26cee-6fc4-4929-bd66-1f7a73849d0d> | {
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Scientific journal articles report a latest research work and appear in a scientific journal. These articles help in furthering the progress of science by communicating research results and facilitating further research in the same field. To ensure quality and validity, scientific journal articles are peer-reviewed. As the core objective of scientific journal articles is to publish new research, they should include enough details regarding research calculations and procedures, so that an independent researcher can re-perform the experiment to verify original results. Each scientific journal article is then included in permanent scientific record and can be used for further research and higher education purpose. Such articles first appeared in 1665, when the French “Journal des scavans” and the English “Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society” commenced publishing research findings.
Some scientific journals, such as “Nature”, “Science” and “Physical Review Letters” publish articles that report a breakthrough in their respective fields. The most reputable journal is not just highly selective in its publication of articles but it is also privileged for causing the greatest impact in its related field.
Scientific journal articles are highly technical; representing the latest research and experimental results in the scientific field covered by the journals they are published in. These field-focused articles seldom interest a layman and are comprehensible merely to the researchers and advanced students of the same scientific field. Scientific writing rules are rigorous and vary from journal to journal.
There are different types of scientific journal articles. The precise terminology varies by field and journal. However, some of the basic article types include:
o Letters – They are also known as “communications”. Letters briefly cover latest research findings and tend to be immediately published because they are considered urgent.
o Research notes – Like letters, these are brief descriptions of latest research work. However, research notes are considered less urgent than Letters.
o Supplemental Articles – They represent research results in tabular format. This form is used where the data is in large volumes. Supplement articles may include hundreds of pages with mere numerical data.
o Review Articles – These do not convey the results of an original and single research work but provide the reader with results of numerous articles on a particular topic. Therefore, reviews are topic-focused and provide journal references to the original research work. They may be narrative or a quantitative summary.
Many scientific journal articles follow the popular IMRAD scheme which was recommended by the “International Committee of Medical Journal Editors” [ICMJE). An article, under this scheme, begins with a concise summary called “abstract”. Then “introduction” describes the research background. Details of the research are provided in the “materials and methods” or “experimental” section. Outcome of the research is detailed under the sub-heading of “results and discussion” while “conclusion” places the research in context and discuss avenues for further research.
Some scientific journals such as “Science” include a news section where various scientific developments are reported and discussed. These articles are not written by scientists but by science journalists. In addition, few journals may include an editorial section and the well known “letters to editors”. Although such articles can be found within the main body of a scientific journal, albeit they are strictly not what are known as “scientific journal article” because neither these articles are peer-reviewed, nor they further the progress of science. | <urn:uuid:aa0f2023-2059-4e5a-a9da-2b89cc421031> | {
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Shinmoe-dake Volcano Erupts on Kyushu
NASA Earth Observatory image by Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon, using ALI data from the EO-1 team. Caption by Robert Simmon.
Shinmoe-dake, a volcanic crater in Japan’s Kirishima volcanic field, continued to erupt several days after coming to life on January 26, 2011. By Friday, January 28, a lava dome began to fill the crater. Agence France-Presse reported that continuing growth of the dome prompted Japanese authorities to evacuate nearby residents. The volcano also erupted ash 17,000 feet (5,200 meters) into the air, according to the Tokyo Volcanic Ash Advisory Center.
Shinmoe-dake’s thick ash plume was visible above extensive cloud cover on January 29, 2011. This natural-color image was acquired on the morning of the 29th by the Advanced Land Imager (ALI) aboard Earth Observing-1 (EO-1). The ash is light gray, and surrounding clouds are white.
- AFP. (2011, January 31). Hundreds evacuate as Japan volcano erupts. Accessed January 31, 2011.
- Klemetti, Eric. (2011, January 31). Expanded evacuations as the Kirishima eruption continues. Accessed January 31, 2011.
- In pictures: Japan volcano threat. BBC News.
- Mt. Kirishima Live. (Webcam).
- Recent eruptions similar to those 300 yrs ago. Daily Yomiuri Online.
- Satellite images. JAXA.
This image originally appeared on the Earth Observatory. Click here to view the full, original record. | <urn:uuid:4149d403-54bb-4439-ae8e-bc1ffd7c1db9> | {
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The public is invited to help the Indiana Department of Natural Resources
dedicate the state’s first nature preserve at a shipwreck site at 11:00 a.m.
Monday, Sept. 30, at Indiana Dunes State Park.
The J.D. Marshall Nature Preserve comprises 100 acres in Lake Michigan,
located 600 yards off shore from the park’s beach. The J.D. Marshall, a
154-foot long, steam-powered sand barge built in 1891, sank in a storm on
June 11, 1911. Four crew members died and seven survived.
Nature-preserve status is intended to promote public understanding and
appreciation of the J.D. Marshall and Indiana shipwrecks in general.
The status also offers new protections to the site in addition to existing
protections offered under Indiana’s archaeological laws.
Fishing is permitted in the preserve by canoe, kayak, or any boat with a
draft of fewer than eight feet but anchoring in the preserve is prohibited.
Mooring buoys will be provided for dive and fishing boats to tie off.
Preserve boundaries will be identified by seasonally placed buoys. NOAA
nautical charts will be updated to show the preserve.
Information on the wreck and artifacts from it are available at the Indiana
Dunes State Park Nature Center. The park also offers regular educational
programs on shipwrecks in Lake Michigan.
The whereabouts of 14 shipwreck sites in Indiana’s portion of Lake Michigan
are known and have been documented by archaeologists.
Many more ships sank in Indiana’s 241 square miles but most underwater
wreckage has been swallowed by sand or flattened by waves and ice. | <urn:uuid:49eada4e-5ba1-4711-aee1-d831fd5ee355> | {
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1 in 4
1 in 4 girls will be sexually abused before the age of 18
1 in 6
1 in 6 boys will be sexually abused before the age of 18
Roughly 57,000 cases of sexual abuse are reported each year
Adults with 4 or more ACE’s have higher rates of depression and disease
Our Vision for the Future
You can HELP US bring hope and healing.
Everyone is aware of the signs and symptoms of child sexual abuse and takes steps to prevent it from happening.
Child sexual abuse awareness and reporting processes are part of the training model for all mandated reporters.
Adult victims have access to available resources, so they can begin their path to healing. | <urn:uuid:a54cb2a4-a4fb-4bcb-b09f-50e23c069945> | {
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TI-99/4A system usage
Starting up the system
If the console is working correctly, power is attached, and the console is connected to a TV set, you can simply move the front switch and be greeted with the Master Title Screen
As the screen says, press any key to proceed to the cartridge selection. In this case here, we have started the system with the Editor/Assembler cartridge plugged in, so it appears in position 2, right after the console built-in TI BASIC.
Using TI BASIC
We proceed directly to TI BASIC by pressing 1.
This is the TI BASIC command mode. You can type in any BASIC command like
or you can start to enter a BASIC program just by writing a line number before your BASIC command.
10 PRINT "HELLO"
All BASIC lines will be arranged by their line number. You can run the BASIC program at any time by using the RUN command
Clear your program space with
You call clear the screen without losing the program by
This is one of the numerous CALL subprograms of TI BASIC.
If you want to leave TI BASIC, use
This command closes all open files and returns you to the Master Title Screen. You can also press QUIT (FCTN-=) which will not close files and thus may lead to data loss (if there are open files). Keep in mind that your BASIC program will always be lost when exiting BASIC unless you save it to cassette or to floppy disk:
SAVE CS1 SAVE DSK1.MYPROGRAM
If you want to retrieve your program from the data storage (cassette or disk), use the OLD command:
OLD CS1 OLD DSK1.MYPROGRAM
How to check the contents of a disk
Situation: You have inserted a disk and wonder how to find out which files are stored on it and whether there is free space.
The disk directory is a pseudo data file and must be opened and read with the usual disk operations.
There are three ways to do that:
- You have to write a BASIC program that reads this pseudo file record by record. Each record is a file entry in the directory. There are ready-to-use BASIC programs around, and the BASIC manuals also explain how to do that.
- Plug in a Disk Manager cartridge. There is one function called CATALOG DISK that you use to view the directory contents.
- Use the subroutines offered by certain disk controllers. Disk controllers like the Myarc HFDC have built-in routines that are accessible from TI BASIC or Extended Basic. In this case, the DIR subprogram is available to read and show the disk directory.
lists the contents of the disk in drive 1. Analogously, drive 2 or 3 can be queried, and you can also provide full pathnames like
which would attempt to list the contents of the BASIC subdirectory on a device called WDS1 which is usually the first hard disk attached to a suitable controller like the HFDC.
Option 1 is preferred when you write a BASIC program that should also be able to process the disk directory contents. It is not recommended for quickly checking the contents while you already have another BASIC program in memory since you would lose that program when you load the directory reader program.
Option 2 was the standard way until more sophisticated disk controllers became available which also offered those subprograms. For instance, the original TI Disk Controller did not offer these convenience routines, so you only had option 1 or this option.
Option 3 is the preferred way if you have a suitable disk controller. Just try the call shown above to check out.
Note: Do not mix up this command with CALL FILES which is used to allocate memory for operations on more than one opened file.
How to run an unknown program
Situation: You have inserted a disk and wonder how to get the programs running which you find on it.
As with most systems there are two types of files:
- files containing data, and
- files containing executable code.
In most cases, executable code is stored in PROGRAM files.
- PROGRAM files are plain memory dumps
They must be loaded at the exact same positions in memory. Apart from them, there are files with other formats, also containing executable code:
- DIS/FIX 80 files are record-oriented files containing relocatable machine code.
That is, these files must be loaded by a special loader (which is part of the Editor/Assembler cartridge, but also of the Extended Basic cartridge). This loader is able to place the contents in almost any memory location, automatically adjusting references to addresses.
- DIS/FIX 163 files are MERGE files.
These files may be created in Extended Basic. They are used when you want to merge several files to one single BASIC program. For instance, you can store subroutines in MERGE files and select those that you need when running some application.
If you find a PROGRAM file it is either BASIC or Extended BASIC or a memory image machine language file.
BASIC: Get into BASIC, type
If you don't get an error message, do a LIST and see whether there are strange characters in the listing and whether the BASIC interpreter outputs very sluggishly. This means it's actually Extended Basic. Do the same with Extended Basic plugged in and selected.
If it is a DIS/FIX 80 file you need to load it in Editor/Assembler, use option 3.
Sometimes the file contains an autostart tag. If not, you will need to provide a name by which the machine language program has been registered. This can be a bit difficult to find out. If you look at the file in an editor, you can find some names near the end of the file. One of them may be the proper program name. | <urn:uuid:bbcd6f8c-b91e-48d9-8ff5-8a538e0f6fd6> | {
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Allergies affect millions of Americans. In fact, they’re the sixth leading cause of chronic illness in the country, with a wide range of mild to life-threatening symptoms. Michael Akpeke, MD, at Delta Internal Medicine Center in Downtown Orlando, Florida, offers men and women comprehensive allergy testing to find out which environmental and dietary factors provoke reactions. Find out what your allergies are. Get in touch with the office today by phone or through the online booking tool.
Allergies refer to the strong reaction of your immune system to a certain substance, otherwise called an allergen. Your body’s reaction to these allergens depends on how intolerant it is of it. There are multiple types of allergies. The most common ones include:
Dr. Akpeke runs diagnostics to determine which one affects you.
In most cases, an allergic reaction exhibits the following symptoms:
If you’re going into anaphylactic shock, you’ll most likely experience swelling in your tongue, lips, and throat. You should seek immediate medical attention.
Allergy testing is integral to identifying the substances to which you’re allergic. Dr. Akpeke uses two main types of allergy tests: skin prick tests and blood tests.
During the test, Dr. Akpekes administers a small number of allergens on your skin, most often on your arm or back. If your skin starts to react to the allergen, it means that you’re allergic.
Even though skin prick tests are generally safe for both children and adults, Dr. Akpeke might opt for a different kind of test if you:
Blood tests allow your doctor to determine the levels of antibodies your immune system produces to protect itself from up to 10 common allergens. Dr. Akpeke might also use an allergy blood test to track the number of white blood cells in your system, which typically increases during an allergic reaction.
If you suffer from a food allergy, stay away from the food you know is causing the allergic reaction. Dr. Akpeke might give you an epinephrine pen if you come in contact with the food allergen and have a severe reaction.
Dr. Akpeke might also recommend antihistamines, decongestants, and topical corticosteroids to treat mild allergies and alleviate your symptoms.
He might also suggest immunotherapy to relieve and eliminate your allergic reaction through regular allergen injections. Immunotherapy is designed to increase your tolerance to allergens.
Whether they're mild or severe, allergies can take over your life. Contact the office today by phone or online to learn more about allergy testing and treatment. | <urn:uuid:317b91a4-0cba-4ec2-822e-93a6d54bf58b> | {
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In the 1960s, billboards in conservative parts of the country urged, “Impeach earl warren,” the liberal chief justice.
Chief Justice earl warren had been a three-term governor of California.
Brennan enjoyed some unusually choice opinion assignments in his first term thanks to Chief Justice earl warren.
One is Anthony Kennedy, whose father was a prominent Sacramento lawyer who palled around with earl warren.
earl warren, a liberal Republican governor elected with Tribune backing, became more and more progressive as he aged.
Chief Justice earl warren administered the oath of office for the fifth time.
I recall seeing a sign on a certain billboard "Impeach earl warren."
late 14c., "piece of land enclosed for breeding beasts and fowls," from Anglo-French and Old North French warenne, Old French garenna "game park," possibly from Gaulish *varenna "enclosed area," related to *varros "post." Or the Old French forms may derive from the present participle of Old French warir "defend, keep," from the Germanic root *war- "to protect, guard" (source of Old English warian "take care;" see warrant (n.)). Later especially "piece of land for breeding of rabbits" (c.1400), which led to the transferred sense of "cluster of densely populated living spaces" (1640s).
Warren War·ren (wôr'ən), John Collins. 1778-1856.
American surgeon who gave the first public demonstration (1846) of the use of ether as an anesthetic for a surgical procedure. | <urn:uuid:ec30fafe-eead-4d67-8c32-b298f74ea71d> | {
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Build supportive muscles to help keep hips and knees healthy
Think joint pain affects only senior adults? Actually, about 32 percent of Americans over the age of 18 have experienced joint pain, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The good news is taking steps to protect your joints can help prevent injury and pain in the future. Here’s what you need to know about keeping your joints in good shape.
What Is a Joint?
A joint is any place where two bones come together, and different types of joints allow your body to move in a range of ways. Your knees are an example of hinge joints, which open and close to move your legs forward and backward. Your hips are an example of ball-and-socket joints, which allow for a greater range of movement, like a circle. Cartilage, a tough yet flexible tissue, covers and protects the end of your bones. Muscles are attached to bones and can provide support for your joints.
What Causes Joint Pain?
Everyday activities, such as standing, walking, and lifting, can create normal wear and tear on your joints. “Knee pain is the most common complaint,” says Leah Sarago, a fitness expert and founder of Ballet Body. Many people also experience hip pain from sitting all day. Joint pain can also be caused by injury, such as from playing sports, or a health condition, such as osteoarthritis. Call your doctor if you have severe, unexplained joint pain; joint pain that lasts longer than three days; or joint pain and other symptoms such as joint swelling or stiffness, fever or numbness.
Moves for Your Muscles
One of the easiest ways to protect your joints from normal wear and tear is to strengthen the surrounding muscles. Healthier muscles can relieve pressure on your joints by distributing your weight evenly during movement. To help your hips and knees, do these two beginner-friendly moves two to three times a week. Start with a fewer number of repetitions, and add on more over time. As always, check with your doctor before beginning a new exercise program.
- Hip Tuck
Stand with feet hip-width apart and toes turned out at 45-degree angles. Place hands gently on hips. Keeping your back and neck straight, shift your weight back onto heels. Bend knees, and lower hips until thighs are parallel with the ground or as far as comfortable. Make sure the ankles and knees are pointed in the same directions. Draw the belly in, and tuck hips forward and under to make a “C” shape with your body. Relax after five seconds. Repeat 10 to 20 times. To make it easier, rest your hands on a sturdy chair or wall for support.
- Pulsing Lunge
Stand with your right foot forward and your left foot 3 to 4 feet behind the right foot. Make sure both feet are pointed forward. Place hands gently on hips. Bend right knee, and lower hips until right thigh is parallel with floor. Shift right knee forward and backward gently over right ankle 8 to 16 times. Switch and repeat with left leg in front. To make it easier, rest your hands on a sturdy chair or wall for support.
Talk to your doctor before beginning any new exercise program. | <urn:uuid:9fcbdd76-17e7-408b-a965-a90dbe545261> | {
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by Wayne Jones
Updated by Kevin Dockendorf, Fisheries Biologist, 2009.
N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission.
Class: Osteichthyes (bony fishes)
Order: Centrarchidae (sunfish)
2 to 3 lbs.; the world record largemouth bass weighed 22 lbs, 4 oz. The North Carolina record is 15 lbs, 14 oz.
Worms, salamanders, frogs, crayfish, snakes, ducklings, insects and fish.
Spawning season occurs in spring when water temperatures reach 63 degrees.
Female deposits eggs in nest guarded by male bass. From 2,000 to 12,000 fry hatch. Only 5 to 10 will reach 10 in.
When hatched, largemouth bass are known as fry. Fry are less than 1 inch long and eat zooplankton. As they grow from 1 to 3 inches, largemouth bass are known as fingerlings and eat aquatic insects and small fish.
Females live longer than males. In North Carolina, 10 years is long-lived. Most survive only 3 to 4 years.
Range and Distribution
In North Carolina, the largemouth bass is found in ponds, reservoirs, streams and rivers throughout the state, as well as in brackish coastal waters alongside saltwater species. Populations are considered good in every area of North Carolina, with the best populations occurring in the Piedmont and Coastal Plain. Bass tend to grow faster and larger in reservoirs, although large fish are also common in many farm ponds and in some coastal rivers.
Largemouth bass are the most sought-after freshwater gamefish in the United States. There are several reasons for the popularity of this fish. Anglers can usually find waters that contain largemouth bass within a short distance from their homes; they can catch bass that regularly reach trophy size (7 to 15 lbs.); and these fish are exciting to catch, with a battle characterized by head shaking and explosive leaps from the water.
Largemouth bass belong to a group of fish collectively called black bass. Other black bass found in North Carolina include the smallmouth and spotted bass. All black bass belong to the sunfish family, but are distinguished from other sun fish by their elongated bodies. Largemouth bass are distinguished from other black bass by means of the lower jaw, which is longer than those of other bass. The largemouth bass is also a bigger species than the smallmouth or spotted bass. There are two subspecies of largemouth bass: the Florida largemouth bass and the northern largemouth bass.
History and Status
The largemouth bass is a native species of North Carolina. In North America it was originally found from southeastern Canada through the Great Lakes; south down the Mississippi Valley to Mexico and Florida; and up the Atlantic coast as far north as Maryland. As the fish grew in popularity with anglers, it was stocked in other areas and today is found throughout the continental United States and Hawaii, and southeastern Canada. It has also been stocked in Europe, Asia, Africa and South America.
Habitat and Habits
The largemouth bass prefers habitat with lots of structure. This structure may be in the form of weed beds, sunken logs, rocks, brush and standing timber. It uses structure as cover for ambush sites and to hide from larger predators.
Largemouth bass prefer temperatures between 77 and 86 degrees. Bass seldom feed at temperatures below 50 degrees and cannot survive for long at temperatures above 98 degrees.
When water temperatures approach 60 degrees in the spring, male bass swim to the spawning grounds. Male bass spend several days selecting their nest sites. The beds are usually in 1 to 4 ft. of water, but they may be deeper in clear water.
Spawning begins when the water reaches 63 to 68 degrees and remains in this temperature range for several days. A female largemouth bass lays between 2,000 and 7,000 eggs per pound of body weight.
The male guards the nest, fanning the eggs with his tail to keep off silt and debris. He will attack anything that swims near the nest. Despite the male’s vigilance, many eggs are eaten by other fish species. Hatching time for bass eggs depends on water temperatures. If the water is 72 degrees, eggs will hatch in only 2 days, but they take 5 days to hatch in water around 67 degrees. Approximately 2,000 to 12,000 fry hatch from each nest. Of these, however, only 5 to 10 are likely to survive to reach a size of 10 in. Newly hatched largemouth bass feed on tiny crustaceans and other zooplankton until they reach 2 in. in length. Young largemouth bass eat insects and small fish, including smaller bass. The adult largemouth bass will eat almost anything alive that will fit in their mouths. Fish, worms, frogs, insect larvae, crayfish, salamanders, snakes, small mammals, birds and ducklings are also eaten. Anglers use a variety of natural baits and artificial lures to catch largemouth bass.
Springtime movements center around spawning when bass move from deep to shallow water. During the summer months, bass are active in shallow waters during the morning and afternoons, but may move to deeper water at midday, when the water temperature increases in the shallows. When the water starts to cool in the fall, bass return to the shallows to look for food. As the water temperatures decrease during the winter months, bass become more sluggish, their metabolism slows down, and they require less food. They may become active during winter months if several days of warm weather heat the water temperatures above 50 degrees.
Largemouth bass have had a tremendous influence on many people. Tackle manufacturers, boat dealers and bait shops all provide specialized gear for largemouth bass fishing, especially for an increasing number of anglers involved in largemouth bass tournaments. Largemouth bass fishing is big business; many people make their livelihood from this popular sport. Although water pollution is a real threat to largemouth bass and other fish populations in some waters, the largemouth bass is an adaptable species and, overall, its future looks bright..
After fish kills associated with Hurricane Isabel occurred in northeast North Carolina in 2003, fisheries biologists began an intensive largemouth bass stocking project to evaluate stocking strategies that may be used after future hurricane-induced fish kills. In 2004, largemouth bass of different sizes (8, 2 and 5 inches, respectively) were cheek-tagged with a minute magnetic tag and stocked in the Roanoke and Chowan Rivers; stocking size was related to the time of year that certain sizes of largemouth bass may normally occur. Stockings were evaluated through an intensive electrofishing recapture period; the recapture period was completed in spring 2007. Although an initial boost of tagged individuals was observed in the population, the number of tagged largemouth bass contributing to the population over time dwindled to a mere fraction of the naturally produced largemouth bass. In this case, natural recruitment was likely a product of a few fish that must have survived to reproduce and repopulate a devastated fish community. Still, this study provided valuable insight on a management strategy to monitor largemouth bass recovery. Plans include implementing a sub-adult stocking strategy, when minimal to no natural recruitment occurs after hurricane-induced fish kills.
McClane, A.J. McClane’s New Standard Fishing Encyclopedia (New York, N.Y.: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965).
Oster, Don. Largemouth Bass (W.A. Krueger Company, 1983).
Page, Lawrence M. and Burr, Brooks M. Peterson Field Guide to Freshwater Fishes (Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1991).
Pflieger, William I. The Fishes of Missouri (Missouri Department of Conservation, 1975).
Illustrated by J.T. Newman. Photos by Dr. Amy Wethington, Chowan University and N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission.
Produced by the Division of Conservation Education, Cay Cross–Editor.
11 June 2010 | Dockendorf, Kevin; Jones, Wayne | <urn:uuid:91790e74-355b-40df-9c46-8b79db036a2b> | {
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Gold has been considered a form of currency for over 5,000 years and has always been one of the most desired commodities. While paper money can depreciate in value as governments print more and increase supply, gold supply is intrinsically limited and therefore holds its value. The price of gold has historically responded to the fluctuations in the stock market; when the stock market falls, the price of gold goes up.
With the recent economic downturn, the price of gold has nearly doubled compared to its worth in 2005. With a stable increase in value that shows no sign of slowing down, investing in gold has proven to be a worthwhile venture. | <urn:uuid:50276033-9d16-4c76-ba91-078311541b1b> | {
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official directives defining the goals, tasks, methods, and principles governing large units, units, and subunits of various branches and services of the armed forces during combat operations. Military regulations also define the duties of military personnel, the chain of command, daily procedure, and the services to be performed by the troops. Military regulations are revised as new weapons are developed, as troops and naval forces are reorganized, and as combat experience is accumulated.
The first Russian military regulations date from the 16th and 17th centuries and include The Boyars’ Rules of Stanitsa Guard Service (1571), Regulations Concerning Combat Cannon and Other Matters Which Relate to Military Science (1607 and 1621; 2nd ed., parts 1–2, 1777–81), and The Science and Technique of Infantry Combat Formations (1647). For the regular army, Peter I drafted the Army Regulations in 1716. From the 18th to the beginning of the 20th century, military regulations in the Russian army were issued on several occasions.
The first regulations issued for the Soviet armed forces included the Regulations of the Interior Services, the Regulations of Garrison Duty, and the Regulations of the Rear Services, all published in 1918, and the Disciplinary Code, published in 1919. Later, field service regulations, combat regulations, and others were put into effect. Contemporary regulations binding on military personnel in all units and subunits of the Armed Forces of the USSR are the Regulations of the Interior Services of the Armed Forces of the USSR, the Disciplinary Code, and the Garrison and Guard Duty Regulations of the Armed Forces of the USSR, all of which are approved by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. The Drill Manual is also considered part of the military regulations of the armed forces of the USSR. | <urn:uuid:dbb4711b-1e66-4d21-9749-f1521a0c37b4> | {
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U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIORBUREAU OF LAND MANAGEMENT
BLM Back Country Byways serve a unique niche in providing an “off-the-beaten-path” adventure through landscape settings as diverse as the West itself. Most Byways traverse remote country, providing solitude and spectacular scenery in landscape settings ranging from soaring mountains and alpine meadows to sagebrush prairies and saguaro cactus deserts. These landscapes offer visitors the opportunity to explore Oregon’s lush Coast Range, crest over Colorado’s lofty San Juan Mountains, follow Lewis and Clark’s epic journey across Montana and Idaho, pass ancient Anasazi petroglyphs in Utah, and traverse the Rio Grande’s wild gorge in New Mexico.
Educational opportunities abound along these narrow ribbons through the Nation’s public lands as travelers can search for deserted forts, ghost towns, fossils, wildlife, hot springs, and dormant volcanoes. These Byways also cross many cultural, historic, and working landscapes, helping showcase the Bureau’s balanced stewardship in managing public lands for multiple uses. Most of these routes connect western towns and places, fostering economic stimulus to many of the rural communities located near public lands.
Back Country Byway Categories
While most BLM-designated Back Country Byways are native surface or gravel base roads, BLM back country Byways fall into one of four category types. These categories range from “Type I” paved all-weather roads suitable for normal passenger vehicles, to Type IV single-track trails suitable only for dirt bikes, mountain bikes, or snowmobiles during winter season. Click here to see descriptions of all four Back Country Byway category types.
The National Back Country Byway Program is BLM’s unique contribution to the larger National Scenic Byways Program. Both programs were created following a study by the President’s Commission on Americans Outdoors that found 43 percent of American adults identified driving for pleasure as a favorite pastime.
Follow this link to view descriptions of BLM Back Country Byways on the America’s Byways® Web site. | <urn:uuid:227379ec-c7b2-4da8-8ea4-4ef39c2015c6> | {
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The founders created the Senate to be the legislative body that represented the states, while the House of Representatives represented the people. These two bodies were designed to
The same progressive philosophy that prevailed during the Wilson era, that produced the Income Tax Amendment and the Federal Reserve, also produced the 17th Amendment in 1913. This Amendment took from the state legislatures the right to choose their two Senators, and let the people of the state choose their Senators in a state-wide election.
What's wrong with the people choosing their own Senators? For starters, this amendment strips power from the states, which ultimately strengthens the federal government. This Amendment removes an important check and balance between the federal government and the states. This Amendment completely removes the states from participation in the:
Moreover, state-wide election of Senators seriously reduces the accountability Senators have to their constituents. Representatives are accountable to the people in their District; Senators have a much larger pool of voters to woo, and can afford to offend far more people than can Representatives. And they do!
Because the 17th Amendment was adopted; the federal government has lost all respect for the wishes of the states. Unfunded mandates would never have occurred had the 17th Amendment never been adopted. It's time to correct this mistake by repealing it.
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Home 1604 Methods Theory Women
ANTHROPOLOGY OF INDIA
Summer Quarter 1999 Instructor: Sharon Kemp
TTh 1400-1540 Office: 211 Cina, Hours: 1-2 TTh
Cina 214 Ph: 6110, Email: Skemp @d.umn.ub
The course examines the peoples and cultures of India from a dual perspective: 1. A look at the Great Tradition of India including, religion, caste, and gender, within the historical context of the Indian sub-continent, and 2. A more particularistic focus on various Little Traditions as found in village life and other sub-cultures, within the context of regional difference. The relative importance of caste, kinship and religion to the unity and diversity of modern-day India are stressed, with attention to present-day challenges the country faces.
Anth 1604 (Cultural Anthropology) and 40 cr., or consent of the instructor.
To be familiar with the development of Indian culture as it provides the context for life in India today, its pre-history, the effects of subsequent invasions and colonizations, and the role of religion in the development of a uniquely Indian world view.
To understand an alternative social structure that is essentially hierarchical and group-based through the examination of selected ethnographies.
India and South Asia, James H. K. Norton
Behind Mud Walls:1930-1968, William and Charlotte Wiser (Ed. With Wadleys chapter)
Consuming Modernity: Public Culture in a South Asian World, Carol Breckenridge, Ed.
Selected class handouts.
India Abroad is a weekly newspaper published in North America. It covers news from India, as well as news about the Indian community in Canada and the United States. The copies are in my office and available for your use.
EVALUATION AND GRADING
The final grade is based on the following:
MIDTERM 25% 75 pts. A = 276 - 300 pts.
IN-CLASS BOOK REVIEW 25% 75 pts. B = 249 - 275
PAPER/PRESENTATION 25% 75 pts. C = 213 - 248
FINAL EXAM 25% 75 pts. D = 186 - 212
100% 300 pts. F = -185
SPECIAL FACILITIES AND/OR ARRANGEMENTS
Individuals who have any disability, either permanent or temporary, which might affect their ability to perform in this class are encouraged to inform the instructor at the start of the quarter. Adaptations of methods, materials or testing may be made as required.
COURSE OUTLINE AND READING SCHEDULE
(This schedule may be revised based on the length of time required to cover the topics.)
WEEK DATE TOPIC READINGS
The Great Tradition
I 9/8-10 Introduction to India ISA pp. 3-51 Its Land and People ISA 1,2,11,22,23
II 9/15-17 History, Political and ISA 3,4,5,6,16,17
III 9/22-24 Religion, Caste and ISA 7,21; Eck; Rohinton
Gender ISA 8,9,10,13,14,15
IV 9/29 Indian Dinner at Kemps Dandekar
The Little Tradition
V 10/6-8 Village India Wiser Chs. 1-4
Caste and Family Chs. 5-7
VI 10/13-15 Politics and Economics Wiser Chs. 8-10
Development and Change Chs. 11-PS
VII 10/20-22 Villages Today Wadley; Kemp
WEEK DATE TOPIC READINGS
VIII 10/27-29 Urban India Breckenridge Chs. 1-5
Princes, Cricket, Music
IX 11/3-5 Films, Crafts and Comics Breckenridge Chs. 6,7,9
X 11/10-12 Contemporary India Class Presentations
XI 11/17FINAL EXAM Tuesday, 1600-1755 | <urn:uuid:03d9c80f-3543-482c-8512-21f5f941d64a> | {
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The Morning of the Resurrection, 1882, Edward Coley Burne-Jones
Hell took a body, and discovered God.
It took earth, and encountered Heaven.
It took what it saw, and was overcome by what it did not see.
O death, where is thy sting?
O Hell, where is thy victory?
Christ is Risen, and you, O death, are annihilated!
Christ is Risen, and the evil ones are cast down!
Christ is Risen, and the angels rejoice!
Christ is Risen, and life is liberated!
Christ is Risen, and the tomb is emptied of its dead;
for Christ having risen from the dead,
is become the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep.
(from the Easter sermon of John Chrysostom,
pastor of Constntinople ca. AD 400)
O almighty and eternal God through the death of Your Son You have destroyed death, and by His rising to life again you have restored innocence and everlasting life. Being delivered from the power of the devil, grant that I might live under You in Your kingdom and that I may be forever comforted by true faith in the resurrection of Your dear Son. Do not let the thought of death fill my heart with terror, but give me the blessed assurance that, just as You have with Christ, I will not remain in the grave but will rise again at the End of Days. And when, by Your grace I have finished my course let Your resurrection be for me a sure pledge that an inheritance that does not fade is reserved for me in heaven. While I live, guide me with Your holy counsel; and when I die give me the crown of life, that with all the holy angels and the elect I may praise and glorify You, world without end. Amen.
Eternal is the gift He brings,
Therefore our heart with rapture sings:
“Christ has triumphed! He is living!”
Now still He comes to give us life
And by His presence stills all strife.
Christ has triumphed! He is living!
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!
-Now All the Vault of Heaven Resounds, stz. 2, Paul Z. Strodach
‘Resurrection of Christ’ Piero della Francesca (c.1420 – 1492
Easter is a victory celebration, a time for all Christians to proclaim boldly their faith in a risen and victorious Savior. For the early Christians, Easter was not merely one day, it was (and is) a whole season that also includes the celebration of Jesus’ ascension. The fifty days between Easter and Pentecost, known as the Great Fifty Days, was the first liturgical season observed in the first three centuries of the Church. This fifty-day celebration is a week of weeks, renewed in the last decades by emphasizing the Sundays as being “of Easter.” The season’s length is fitting because we are dedicating one seventh of the year to the celebration of the Lord’s resurrection.
Easter begins with evening prayer on Holy Saturday, and ends with midday prayer on Pentecost.
The first celebration of Easter is the Easter Vigil, the evening of Holy Saturday. The Vigil includes a service of light, in which fire symbolizes Jesus as the light of the world. The service is designed to take the Christian from the solemnity of Good Friday to the predawn joy of Easter.
Easter is the richest and most lavishly celebrated festival of the Church Year. Congregations may hold a sunrise service, commemorating the surprise of the women visiting the empty tomb of Christ, as well as services that celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ. While not as lavish, this joyous and celebratory tone echoes down through the Sundays of the Easter season.
Forty days after Easter (Acts 1:3), the Church celebrates the Ascension of Our Lord, who ascended into heaven not only as God but also as man. The final Sunday of the Easter season, celebrated as Pentecost, was adopted by early Christians to commemorate the first great harvest of believers for Christ (Acts 2:1-41). Thus, Pentecost is the birthday of the Christian Church as the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples and they gave their compelling witness about the resurrected Lord. Pentecost is a day of joy in the gifts of the Spirit as He still reaches into our lives just as He did to the crowds on that first Pentecost: through the apostolic preaching of God’s Word and Holy Baptism. | <urn:uuid:a1d51013-d597-45e7-ab2d-1e18f95d9f1d> | {
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Cultural heritage concerns the various things, places and practices that people, worldwide, want to keep and pass on to the next generation. Heritage ranges from the medieval Utrechts Psalter to the historic centre of Salvador de Bahia, Brazil. It includes Aboriginal Australian artefacts dating from the time of Cook’s voyages, now in the British Museum; and plant specimens in the Natural History Museum collection in London. Cultural heritage involves processes of selection, classification, conservation, documentation, research, digitalization and display by public institutions; and may involve communities who remember the past in the wake of slavery, colonialism and Holocaust.
Heritage precipitates new forms of professional collaboration: artistic creation, innovative curation, scientific research, design, technological and architectural practices; it is debated, contested, and often entails consultation with diverse public stakeholders.
The UCU Cultural Heritage Program enables UCU students to engage with the complex responsibilities and practices of managing and understanding heritage in its diverse forms. By contributing as global citizens to the work of heritage institutions at home and abroad, UCU students gain immeasurably. | <urn:uuid:78ccfad4-d169-4c95-89e3-d1a5c13ae813> | {
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Surrealism essay conclusion
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Surrealism essay conclusion
Two surrealist manifestos were issued by the surrealist movement, in 1924 and 1929 they were both written by and© breton the first manifesto defined surrealism as: “psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express verbally, by meaner of the written word, or in any other manner the actual functioning of thought. Frida kahlo, essay , analysis she experimented with different styles and motifs and shocked the art world with her surrealist style works and conclusion: on. Immediately download the surrealism summary, chapter-by-chapter analysis, book notes, essays, quotes, character descriptions, lesson plans, and more - everything you need for studying or teaching surrealism.
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Essays related to dada & surrealism 1 dadaism & surrealism dadaism & surrealism has helped to educate and shape the way. How to write a proposal research paper xls persuasive argumentative essay conclusions alcohol essay conclusion related post of surrealism in film essays on. Surrealism in film essays on global short football research papers meaningful conclusions for essays child labour essay writing key essays on theater of. Dada and surrealism essaysdada and surrealism were two revolutionary art movements, which emerged in response to the events and ideas of. | <urn:uuid:d8beffb6-3e69-4556-a479-deabc58a804f> | {
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Some Canberrans may be confused about whether they should get more sun to make sure they get enough vitamin D. The reality is too many Australians get too much sun in summer and increase their risk of developing skin cancer, whilst some people don’t get enough, particularly in winter, and risk vitamin D deficiency with potentially serious health consequences.
To read more on vitamin D and the current recommended sun exposure time required to maintain adequate vitamin D levels view Cancer Council Australia's Position Statement - Risks and Benefits of Sun Exposure (published January 2016).
If you are concerned about your vitamin D levels then you should seek medical advice from your GP.
Canberra Schools and Early Childhood Services
Cancer Council ACT recommends Canberra primary schools and early childhood services adopt a combination of sensible sun protection behaviours when spending time outdoors when UV levels are 3 and above. For this reason sun protection behaviour like wearing a hat and applying sunscreen is not generally required around the June and July winter period in Canberra because daily UV levels drop and stay low (under 3) during this period. However sun protection may still be required if spending time in Alpine regions or extended time outdoors during this period, ie all day outdoor excursions and sport carnivals etc. This "Hats Off" period may assist Canberra children with their winter vitamin D requirements. | <urn:uuid:ca0f4874-450c-4e15-a7ef-49c2a9277ee8> | {
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olive shell | aceituna de Gatún
Shell is moderately slender, with a spire that is variably high and gradually tapering, or blunt, and a thickened callus. Shell exterior is smooth, but ribs on interior of aperture are prominent.
Size: 35-50 mm.
Ecology: inhabits shallow-offshore marine (10-100 m) waters, crawling on sediment surface or plowing through sand or silt near the surface; predatory carnivore, consuming molluscs and crustaceans, and known to seize prey with foot and drag it into sediment.
Geological range: Late Miocene (11-9 million years ago).
Geographic distribution: Caribbean – Panama; Pacific – Panama. | <urn:uuid:287d84ce-1d2f-40b7-a8f2-60b9cce4ca83> | {
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Study Science and Engineering at Waikato and you will be learning from lecturers whose expertise and knowledge in their subjects is respected both locally and internationally. Our progressive and innovative subject range allows our graduates to meet the needs of regional industries and to contribute to the development of the national and international knowledge economy.
Knowledge of animal behaviour is important for anyone interested in areas such as conservation biology of native birds, the control of pest species, evolutionary biology, population ecology and the efficient and humane management of farm animals.
A minor in Applied Physics will provide you with a broad introduction to physics principles and concepts, and is designed to strengthen and broaden a subject major in Earth Sciences, Biology or Chemistry.
By studying Aquaculture as a major at the University of Waikato’s Tauranga campus, you will be at the centre of New Zealand’s prime growth area for aquaculture.
Biochemistry – the study of life in chemical terms – is one of the fastest growing areas of modern science. You'll learn about the fundamental molecules of life – proteins, lipids, carbohydrates and nucleic acids – seeking to understand how they interact in living organisms, both in health and disease.
As a Biological Sciences student at the University of Waikato you will benefit from our practical and innovative approach to teaching, as well as one-on-one time with world-renowned researchers.
Chemistry is fundamental to our understanding of all branches of science and for a wide range of industries. A degree in Chemistry from the University of Waikato means you'll gain an excellent grasp of Chemistry theory, supported by a strong emphasis on practical expertise.
Examine the processes and factors that control coastal landforms, resources and hazards, evaluate human effects, and identify and assess options to avoid or mitigate adverse impacts.
The demand for experts in Earth Sciences continues to grow as we look to better manage our soil, water, minerals, energy and coastal and marine resources, as well as understand natural hazards such as floods, earthquakes, tsunami, landslides and volcanic eruptions.
In studying Ecology and Biodiversity you’ll learn about the distribution, abundance, and biology of organisms and their role in New Zealand’s most important ecosystems.
Science graduates with electronics skills are sought after by many industries that use or manufacture electronic equipment. New Zealand’s electronics manufacturing industry is one of the fastest-growing industries in the country. Our companies are targeting niche markets, such as telecommunications, and exporting their products all over the world.
The pressure on our environment is increasing as the human population grows. Environmental Sciences provide a basis for understanding environmental problems, and finding solutions to them.
Modern society is very dependent on mineral and energy resources, including aggregates and cement for construction, metals for manufacturing, rare earths for electronics and batteries, and energy for operating equipment.
By studying Hydrology at the University of Waikato, you’ll understand the key components of water storage and water movement on and beneath the surface of the Earth, and the role of water in weather and climate. You’ll also learn about flood and drought hazards.
Efficiently converting the world’s raw materials and commodity goods into products is important to the global economy. To do this, we need to understand the properties of materials as diverse as food, wood, metals, plastics and fuel.
Explore the world of metals, polymers, ceramics, composites and semiconductors. From levitating trains to electronic paper, there are some exciting developments underway in the world of Materials Science that you could be a part of!
Molecular and Cellular Biology is an interdisciplinary field combining biochemistry, microbiology, genetics and physiology to study how cells function at the molecular level.
Widely regarded as the centre of Applied Psychology in New Zealand, Psychology at Waikato offers numerous study options for those keen to pursue this remarkable discipline.
From the natural environment, to our own health and wellbeing, to the technology we use in our everyday lives – science is everywhere.
Crime Science uses evidence-based information together with scientific approaches and methods to reduce crime and threats to security.
The growing global population is very dependent on increasing production of food and fibre from soils around the world. | <urn:uuid:fcae7cc4-74c7-4a8b-8ddb-f5723062874c> | {
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Coronary Artery Disease is the hardening of arteries that supply oxygenated blood to the heart. These arteries are hardened due to the formation of plaque caused by fatty material and other substances being deposited in the arterial wall. This narrows down the artery and reduces blood flow to the heart and leads to several heart problems, including heart attacks. Heart attacks occur when there is less or no supply of oxygenated blood to the heart muscles causing that part of the muscles to lose function or die.
People suffering from heart problems can be treated using surgical and non-surgical methods. Angioplasty is also one such non-surgical method to treat heart diseases (also called as interventional technique). This method is used to widen blocked or narrowed arteries (a result of coronary heart disease or atherosclerosis) that carry oxygen-rich blood to the heart.
- Pain or discomfort in the chest is the most common symptom
- A squeezing pain in the chest, neck, back, stomach or arm
- Shortness of breath
Treatment of Coronary Artery Disease
Medicines may be prescribed to control high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels or diabetes.
In case the disease is severe, the following procedures and surgeries are done:
- Angioplasty and Stent Placement
- Coronary Artery Bypass Surgery (CABG)
- Minimally Invasive Heart Surgery
What Happens During Angioplasty Treatment?
Before starting the procedure, some pain medicine and blood thinning medicine are given to the patient. A local anaesthesia may also be given.
Angioplasty procedure: As a part of angioplasty, a cardiac catheterization is performed. A sheath (a thin plastic tube) is inserted through the groin or arm, into an artery. Through this sheath, a long, flexible, narrow and hollow tube called the catheter is passed and guided through the blood vessels to the arteries around the heart. A small amount of a contrast material (dye) is injected into the body to highlight blood flow through the arteries. The dye, injected during angioplasty, is photographed through an X-ray as it travels through the heart chambers, valves and arteries. Through these pictures, the doctor can tell if there are any blockages in the arteries or if they have narrowed down and if the heart valves are functioning properly.
In case a decision is taken to perform an angioplasty, the doctor will move the catheter to the artery with a blockage. An interventional procedure (as mentioned below) will be performed.
Balloon angioplasty: A catheter with a small balloon tip is placed at the point of narrowing of the blocked artery. Upon reaching there, the balloon is inflated to compress the plaque in the artery wall to widen (stretch) the artery and increase blood flow to the heart.
Stent: A stent is a mesh metal tube that is introduced as a scaffold into the coronary artery, with the help of a balloon catheter that is placed over a guide wire. When the balloon tip is inflated, the stent expands to the size of the coronary artery and stays in place permanently.
Rotoblation: An acorn-shaped, diamond coated tip is attached to the catheter, which rotates at high speed and grinds away the plaque upon reaching the blocked artery.
Atherectomy: A minimally invasive surgical method of removing, mainly, atherosclerosis from a large blood vessel within the body. It is generally used to effectively treat peripheral arterial disease of the lower extremities are also been used to treat coronary artery disease
Cutting Balloon: An angioplasty technique that has a special balloon tip with small blade that is activated when the balloon is inflated. The blade chips at the hardened calcific deposits on the artery
What is Angiography?
Many people tend to confuse angiography and angioplasty. There is a vast difference between these two terms. While angioplasty has been explained above, angiography is a medical imaging of blood vessels, which involves using water soluble ionic or non-ionic x-ray contrast material that is injected into the blood stream to visualise the blood vessels supplying blood to the heart and is a diagnostic tool. | <urn:uuid:7174f0c6-517c-4b7c-896b-8ea472fbc1ab> | {
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UC-FSNEP: Fifteen years of nutrition education to California's families
Nutrition education class in Alameda County
What Has ANR Done?UC-FSNEP is one of the university's largest and most diverse community education programs for low-income and high-risk families. Administered by the UC Davis College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences and UC Cooperative Extension in 35 California counties, it reaches a diverse group of more than 220,000 individuals annually. Since 1995 it has delivered science-based education to help food stamp families achieve nutrition and physical activity goals consistent with the USDA's Dietary Guidelines for Americans and MyPyramid. ANR curricula are delivered by advisors and nutrition educators who are sensitive to the needs of low income communities across California's diverse population groups. Objectives are to increase fruit and vegetable consumption, reduce soda and fat intake, promote physical activity, encourage food safety measures and examine possible links between obesity, hunger and nutrition practices.
Limited income families learn to eat healthy foods at lower costUC-FSNEP has been transformational for many California Cooperative Extension programs, offering opportunities for applied research, creative activities and stable funding for more than 15 years. It received close to $50 million in matching funds in the last decade. Direct nutrition education activities have reached almost 700,000 adult and youth. Of this number, about 140,000 adults and 80,000 children and youth were served in 2009. Since 1998, UC-FSNEP used pre/post Food Behavior Checklist indicators to evaluate adult graduates. Data for 6,488 multi-ethnic adults in 2009 showed increases in acceptable practices in nutrition from 17 percent to 47 percent, money management 22 percent to 54 percent, food safety 38 percent to 74 percent, and all three indicators 4 percent to 29 percent. These findings show UC-FSNEP advisors and nutrition educators in California are helping families change food behaviors by making healthy choices, spending food dollars wisely and preventing illness from eating unsafe foods.
Supporting Unit:Alameda County College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences UC-FSNEP Program
David Ginsburg, (530) 752-0555, [email protected]
Mary L. Blackburn, (510) 639-1274, [email protected] | <urn:uuid:88453013-792c-4114-a829-0c53c5e7267d> | {
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The stage cantata Carmina Burana (1936) is Carl Orff’s most famous opus, bringing the composer international acclaim and, along with a few other 20th century masterpieces, immediately becoming part of the “gold reserves” of the popular classical repertoire. In the early 1930 the composer came across the 12th and 13th century collection of poetry Carmina Burana (Songs from Beuern), found in a Bavarian monastery. This collection included works by vagrants and medieval wandering poets – students, scholars and nomadic monks. These poems in spoken dialects – in popular Latin, old German and French – indicate that in the dim and distant past people’s interests were largely similar to what they are today: wine, women, gambling, success and wealth… Bu the main idea of the whole literary diversity lay in the fact that there is nothing everlasting in this world and man, with his trifling joys and woes is merely a plaything in the hands of capricious Fate, with the spinning Wheel of Fortune a symbol of its inconstancy. It is this image that forms a leitmotif in Orff’s cantata.
Attempting to revive music’s “ancient foundations”, the composer used only the very simplest expressive means – clear and laconic melodious formulas and harmony reduced to its basic elements. The greatest secret of the work’s success was Orff’s turning to the primordial magic of powerful and bewitching rhythms, embodied not just through the use of the huge percussion section but also thanks to the clear and declaimed presentation of the poetic text. | <urn:uuid:4ad1801f-aae4-4c54-bec6-2f253c1382fc> | {
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Time would not rob them of their power, but would add wisdom to their strength; the Fathers would be subject to the people, and the consul to the Fathers. – Livy, History of Rome, 2.56.16
On my recent post on the Roman Saturnalia commentator ‘shebardigan’ noted that I had inadvertently confused (or rather, conflated) two very different divinities: Cronus and Chronos. What I said was misleading, and I am grateful for the opportunity to say what I should have said then, with a bit more care and clarity.
Greek and Roman religions lacked canonical scriptures; their mythology is notoriously complex and, to modern eyes, often contradictory. This does not mean that the ancient world was devoid of religious writing; just the opposite, in fact. There was anexcess of religious writing. And of religious images, too. There is so much writing from the ancient world about the gods, in fact, spanning so many centuries, that it is well-nigh impossible to make systematic sense of it all.
Add to that confusion the fact that Rome later adopted a great deal of Greek mythology as her own, creatively adapting all that she borrowed, and you have the recipe for some very creative confusion indeed. My original essay was thus a brief foray into what the Puritans would have called a “religious mingle-mangle.”
The Roman poet Horace famously quipped that “Captive Greece had conquered her conqueror,” as a way to describe the newfound Roman fascination with Greek mythology in the last century before the Common Era. But the conqueror was still a conqueror, so the later Romans felt free to make Greek myths over in Latin dress. As we will see, if we were to name a single religious trope that fascinated the ancient world to the point of obsession, it was sons taking over from their fathers, often wreaking havoc on what they took.
Which brings me, in a roundabout way, to Saturn (Cronus) and his relationship to Time (Chronos).
Perhaps the best known version of the story of Cronus comes from Hesiod’s Theogony, his long poem about the coming to be of the old gods. Hesiod tells us (126ff) that Mother Earth and Father Sky bore a large number of children, among them Ocean, and Hyperion, and Memory, as well as the goddesses Theia and Rhea (later on, Earth bore the Cyclopes and other Giants as well, according to Hesiod, though later authors would disagree with almost every aspect of these divine genealogies).
The youngest of the sons of Earth and Sky was also the most rebellious: this was Cronus. And so begins a story that recurs throughout the early portions of the Theogony: a father is jealous of his offspring and tries to erase them; the sons supplant the father and take his place.
In this case, Sky has taken to burying each of his offspring in the Earth until she groans under the pressure of it all. She shows her son Cronus a vicious weapon in the form of a sickle, and together they lay a trap for the Sky. When he returns to Earth, bringing Night with him in train, Cronus castrates him; the drops of blood give rise to the Furies and more Giants, whereas the severed genitalia Cronus tosses into the Sea gave birth to Aphrodite out of the bloody foam. As I have said, other Greek and Roman literary figures remembered these events very differently; Hesiod was never canonical in the ancient world.
Still later in the Theogony (435ff), Cronus impregnates his sister Rhea, and she bears Hestia, Demeter, Hera and Zeus. But, in strange imitation of his own father, Cronus devoured each of these children in turn, until Rhea substituted a stone for the infant Zeus, then bore him off to Crete where he was hidden away in a cave and cared for by some mysterious figures called the Couretes. This story is related by the Roman poet Lucretius in De rerum natura2.633ff, and according to another second-century Roman writer, Pausanias, one of the major mythic events commemorated at Olympia was this saving of the infant Zeus (Guide to Greece, 5.7.6ff).
After a year, Zeus had grown to manhood and supplanted his father, Cronus, who vomited up the other children he had devoured, initiating the reign of the Olympians. It is hard to imagine a more inauspicious start to an alleged reign of peace.
Yet that it precisely what the Romans did with the myths of Cronus; they re-fashioned him into a symbol of what they called “the Golden Age.” As is often the case with myths, this happened in a fairly scattershot and unsystematic way. That’s how religious poetry usually works.
In the later Roman period, the figure of Saturn was associated with Cronus, but a Cronus very different from the one Hesiod described. “Crooked-counseled and terrible,” Hesiod had called him (138-139). Not so the Romans.
The Augustan poet, Virgil, identified himself explicitly with the old Hesiodic (and Arcadian) tradition of Muse-inspired poetry (in hisEclogues 6.64ff). But when he claimed to be singing a Hesiodic song himself, he referred to Italy proudly as “the land of Saturn” (Georgics 2.173). No Greek had ever referred to the Greek mainland as “the land of Cronus”; such a boast would have seemed bizarre.
What Virgil meant by that name is complicated. He essentially re-invented this Saturnus/Cronus figure as a mythic, and subsequently deified, king of Latium who reigned during the Italic Golden Age (Georgics 1.336; 2.406, 539; 3.93; and Aeneid6.794; 7.49; 8.319; 12.830). He also regularly referred to the Olympian gods as “Saturnian”… and meant it as a compliment.
But it was Ovid who did the most to popularize a new Roman way of looking at the myths of Saturn/Cronus, in his Metamorphoses. This marvelous book is far more than an encyclopedia of Greek and Roman mythology; it is a book devoted to the fundamental tropes of flux and change, themes uniquely suited to the solstice, and the trope of becoming something other than you were, a theme uniquely well-suited to a party like the Saturnalia.
Ovid takes this image of the sons supplanting their fathers to new poetic heights. But what we soon discover is that Ovid’s entire epic is an extended meditation on time. Ovid begins (1.89ff) with an account of Saturn’s overthrow. But he remembers Saturn as presiding over the world’s one and only Golden Age; the Olympian gods who overthrew him presided over an Age of Silver, not Gold. The third Age Ovid calls an Age of Iron, and he sees it as fundamentally inferior to Saturn’s Golden Age in every way, with rebellion against the heavens breaking out continually. There is no belief in progress in Ovid’s topsy-turvy poetic world, the world of continuous-change-in-time. Saturn reigned at the very beginning of all these changes, and thus he was fast becoming the god for whom the word-play between Cronus (Saturn) and Chronos (Time) began to make sense, in a Latin world that did not speak much Greek.
This is all important poetic evidence of what Saturn was becoming in the Roman mind after the conquests in Greece: the symbol of a nostalgized, purer past, one lost in the fluidity of time and the frenetic repetition of conquest. It’s a hell of a poetic message for the newly emerging empire of Augustus that was already bragging about its “eternity” (and so it’s small wonder that the emperor eventually exiled Ovid from Rome to the Black Sea, though there are debates still today about what actually prompted this).
According to Livy, the Saturnalia was established very soon after a temple to Saturn was built in Rome (History of Rome 2.21.1). Still more interesting, he claimed that the public feasts later associated with the Saturnalia came quite a bit later (History of Rome 22.1.1). It was during the time when Hannibal’s forces were ravaging the Italian peninsula, Rome’s darkest days. The divine signs were uniformly bad: javelins spontaneously combusting; shields sweating blood; soldiers struck dead by lightning; glowing stones falling from the sky; even the most sacred statues along the Appian Way and in Rome herself had broken into a sweat. These were very disturbing developments for a people notoriously superstitious by nature.
So the Roman Senate ordered the Sybilline Books to be consulted, then made gold offerings to Jupiter, silver offerings to Juno and Minerva, called for public feasts (called lechisternium) with images of the gods reclining on couches, then ordered an enormous series of blood sacrifices for Saturn. The irony of these symbolic religious inversions could not have been clearer: blood sacrifice for the alleged king of the Golden Age, gold for the son who supplanted him, silver for his wife and daughter, iron to slay the sacrificial victims, food and drink for all the gods. That was the topsy-turvy reality the Saturnalia was designed to create, and it was all born of blood.
With the advent of Christianity in the empire, another son supplanted the religion of the fathers–but only up to a point. The trope of fathers, sons and sacrifice would receive yet another reinterpretation as Christians began to the develop their language of the divine Trinity and salvific sacrifice. In this sense, the feast for the Second Person of that Trinity, the Son–a son very unlike the Greek Cronus, and yet very much like the Latin Saturnus–would be held at the same time that the Roman Saturn had his.
Cronus… Chronos… Christ. That was the mythic connection I was trying to suggest when I concluded that “Saturnalia is a profound mythic meditation on death and rebirth, the refreshing cycles of natural time that make it seem obvious to celebrate life in the deadest season of the year, and to remember our losses at the high-point of the party.” | <urn:uuid:42df09a2-a9a6-478e-b047-4e8c242164ad> | {
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Chaparral, is a tough plant with a long history of medicinal use by the native peoples of North America. Traditionally, it was taken internally to treat joint pain and to eliminate worms. Chaparral tea was applied externally to painful joints and minor wounds, and also used as a mouthwash and hair rinse. When European herbalists encountered chaparral, they initially used it to treat colds, flus, and intestinal infections. Later, based on a number of unsubstantiated cases, chaparral gained a reputation as a miracle cancer cure.
What Is Chaparral Used for Today?
There are no scientifically established medicinal uses of chaparral, and reports of liver injury have made it substantially less popular in recent years.
Other proposed actions of chaparral and its constituents lack more than the most minimal of scientific evidence. These include anti-inflammatory, anti-microbial, and liver-protective effects.
We do not recommend using chaparral internally.
For external use, chaparral may be prepared as a tea or allowed to diffuse its contents into oil over several days or weeks. The resulting preparation is then applied in the form of a wet or oil-soaked cloth.
Almost all reports involved chaparral tablets or extracts rather than the more traditional tea; however, the significance of this distinction is not clear. It is quite likely, though not proven, that liver or kidney toxicity chaparral is an “idiosyncratic reaction,” something in the nature of a rare allergy. However, until this situation is cleared up, internal use of chaparral must regarded as presenting unknown risks. Since chaparral has no established benefits as yet, it is probably best to simply avoid it.
- Reviewer: EBSCO CAM Review Board
- Review Date: 08/2013 -
- Update Date: 08/22/2013 - | <urn:uuid:52ecace6-172e-4227-bcaf-7c90a0ad16db> | {
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• berserk •
Pronunciation: bêr-zêrk • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Adjective
Meaning: Frenzied, wild, out of control, acting in a crazy, reckless manner.
Notes: As the Word History below suggests, berserk is about serious lapses in acceptable behavior. Reserve it for noteworthy temper tantrums and don't apply it to peevish behavior. Someone who goes berserk may be called a berserker, though some prefer to use the adjective itself as a noun: a berserk.
In Play: This is a fairly common household word already: "A good way to send Naomi berserk is to offer parenting advice when her two brats are screaming." However, sports seem to bring on this state more than other human activities, "I would tell Dad what caused his golf clubs to slide into the pond, but he might go berserk and hit me with the one that is left."
Word History: This word comes from the name of an Old Norse warrior, a berserkr, a compound made up of some ancestor of bjørn "bear" (possibly bera, though we are not certain) + serkr "shirt." The berserkrs wore bearskin hides and went into battle screaming, foaming at the mouth, and gnawing at their shields (not unlike Mel Gibson in Braveheart). This word is Old Norse, suggesting that it might have entered English with the Viking invasions beginning in the late 700s. However, it doesn't appear in print until the early 19th century, introduced in a story by Sir Walter Scott. (Lest Rob Towart go berserk at the snub, we now thank him for the suggestion of today's Good Word.) | <urn:uuid:56669f12-de5d-46d3-af87-99c9b26d485d> | {
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By Sherry Posnick-Goodwin
Aaron Harkey discusses classroom behavior with Marssy
Are student suspensions hurting academic achievement?
Some CTA members are helping kids stay in school by finding alternatives to suspension while keeping safety as the first priority.
“Zero tolerance” policies emphasizing suspending or expelling unruly students became widespread in the 1990s as schools responded to fears of violence, weapons and drug use.
California schools issued 778,084 suspensions and expulsions in 2009-10, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Of these suspensions, 40 percent were for “defiance” and minor infractions. About 400,000 students were suspended in California; this number is smaller because some students were suspended more than once.
Students can’t learn if they are not in school. They fall further behind in their studies. They may be unsupervised. Students feel a lack of connection to school, which fosters worse behavior.
“It’s time to return to common sense,” says CTA Secretary-Treasurer Mikki Cichocki-Semo, a member of the hearing panel on suspensions and expulsions in San Bernardino Unified. “Kids, as well as teachers, are entitled to due process. And we need to look at what’s best for students. There should be alternatives to suspension and expulsion whenever possible.”
Educators question the value of suspending students for minor infractions, especially in light of last September’s passage of AB 1729, mandating that suspension be imposed only when other means fail to bring about proper conduct. Fighting, drugs and weapons are still cause for suspension.
With the support of, and in coalition with, The California Endowment, CTA and its members are helping to lower suspension rates and keep kids in school.
Here are CTA members who are helping to lower suspension rates, improve student behavior and improve the overall school climate.
Taking back Gardena High School
Years ago, students ignored the warning bell calling them to class at Gardena High School. They roamed the hallways. There were no consequences for being tardy or ditching class. Fights broke out constantly. Kids were running the school.
Today, when the bell rings, a loudspeaker reminds students they have 90 seconds to get to class. They sprint across campus as the countdown continues. Students know that if they’re late, they’ll receive a tardy and detention.
“Move it, let’s go, come on, my loves,” calls out Daron Andrade, dean of student discipline, to runners.
Andrade gestures to fellow United Teachers Los Angeles members standing outside their classroom doors, waiting for students to arrive.
“When that started happening, it was a new beginning,” she says proudly. “The presence of teachers in the hallway shows we have taken back our school.”
Improvement at the inner-city high school began in 2009 with a leadership change, says English teacher Brenda Gordon. The principal implemented a “tardy sweep.” Security staff started rounding up students who were not in class, escorting them to the office, and issuing tardy slips and lunch detentions before sending them back to class. Staff also began enforcing the dress code, to students’ surprise.
“It was a big cultural change not only for us, but for the kids,” says Gordon. “Once teachers got on board, kids knew what was expected of them.”
Students quietly file into the auditorium for lunch detention. Those who come voluntarily sit on one side of the room, writing one-page essays on how to be a better student. Those who come involuntarily write two-page essays. There is no chatter.
“Kids know that detention’s no joke,” says math teacher William Berry, who graduated from the school in 1970. “It’s nice to have an administration that backs us.”
Before, students were suspended for minor infractions, such as “defiance.” Now most things are handled by detention. Gardena reduced suspensions by 83 percent between 2008 and 2011.
Positive behavior and good attendance is rewarded with barbecues and assemblies honoring teens who bring up their grades. Gordon hands out awards to those caught “being good” and lets ticketholders pick a prize at the end of the month.
With online access to attendance records and grades, teachers in “advisory period” have a better handle on what’s going on with their students.
“We’re on top of it,” says Gordon. “I make phone calls and get parents and counselors involved. These kids are like, OMG, what are we going to do now?”
But things aren’t perfect. Two years ago, a gun went off inside a backpack, injuring two students. That was a wakeup call, says Andrade. The school now randomly “wands” students with metal detectors each morning. Gang activity is seldom seen on campus these days. API scores and CAHSEE pass rates have gone up.
“It’s a much different vibe now,” says Berry. “I used to walk around campus and feel the tension, but it’s not there anymore. The kids behave a lot better. Teacher morale is better.”
“It takes a village to raise these kids, and we have evolved into a village,” says Andrade. “Working together, we’ve made a difference.”
A restorative justice approach in Santa Barbara
Marssy has problems in science class. The seventh-grader talks instead of paying attention and skips homework. On the verge of failing the class, she’s sought help from a third party.
“Why is this happening, and who do you think is being harmed by this?” asks Aaron Harkey, the AVID teacher she’s sought out. “What can we do to fix it?”
Marssy says she talks because she sits near friends. She admits she’s harming herself, the science teacher and classmates by disrupting the learning environment. She suggests changing her seat so she’s not sitting near friends, then worries she’ll make new friends and talk to them. She offers to attend study hall to catch up.
Harkey offers an “intervention” with himself, the student and science teacher to work out a plan. Meanwhile, he’ll ask the teacher to put a Post-It on Marssy’s desk to signal when a seat change is necessary, so the lesson can continue uninterrupted.
Welcome to Santa Barbara Junior High School’s restorative justice approach, which improved student behavior and cut the suspension rate this year. It’s a novel approach to find out why things happen, letting students take responsibility for their actions and communicating about ways to prevent bad behavior in the future.
“I like talking with somebody I’m comfortable with,” says Marssy, who prefers that her last name not be disclosed. “It helps me.”
Concerned about high suspension rates, the school board asked the junior high to pilot the program before it went districtwide. Santa Barbara Teachers Association members jumped on board.
“We’re proud to lead the way,” says math teacher Kathleen Glenn, one of five school employees who went to Denver Public Schools for training.
Posters in every classroom depict the Five R’s: Respect, Responsibility, Relationships, Repair and Reintegration.
“There’s no one-size-fits-all approach,” says Glenn. “It has to be customized for each student and the offense. We still need traditional discipline and referrals. But it’s working for a lot of kids. We take care of issues at the classroom level with a few minutes in the hallway and a quick discussion. Kids feel empowered to talk about why they did what they did and their feelings. They don’t need to take it any further or act out, because they’ve been heard.”
Science teacher Marilyn Garza found it helpful to have her entire class sit in a circle with three teachers and a counselor when her students behaved badly for a substitute. They talked about what good behavior should look like when a substitute teacher is present.
“It was not defensive and better than detention,” says Garza. “When everyone sits in a circle and feels like they have buy-in, we can describe what a positive culture looks like. It didn’t happen again.”
Science teacher Julie Kluss refers fewer students to the principal with the new approach. “When you listen to students without judgment and ask how you can help them, you develop a better relationship with them.”
“Initially some teachers had dread and suspicion,” art teacher John Houchin recalls. “But teachers embraced the restorative justice approach. It changed the climate of our school. It’s not just a program; it’s a gift.”
To learn more, visit www.restorativejusticecolorado.org/restorative-justice-in-schools.html.
Pushing the positive in Elk Grove
During lunchtime at Jackman Middle School, students suddenly migrate into a large circle in the quad. No, it’s not a sign of an impending fight. It means a “Dance Off” competition is about to take place. Students congregate to watch contestants; the loudest applause determines the winner.
Creating a fun, positive environment where students want to be at school is the goal of teachers and Principal Paul Burke. It’s part of the school’s Positive Intervention and Support Program, put into place to improve the school’s discipline problem. It’s working quite well.
Five years ago, it was a different story.
“The tardy bell would ring, and 100 kids would stay out wandering the quad,” recalls history teacher Mike Phillips. “You’d write a tardy or a detention slip and send them to the office, and nothing would happen. It was frustrating. Morale was lagging.”
Suspensions spiked in 2008-09 after a former principal instituted a “zero tolerance” policy. The school had the highest number of suspensions in Northern California, with 52 percent of the school’s black students suspended at least one time, compared with 25 percent of its white students.
Elk Grove Education Association members and Burke decided to turn things around. Clear behavior expectations are now accompanied by consequences to avert suspensions. This includes lunchtime and Wednesday night detention. A “tools” program was formed — consisting of teachers, counselors, security and other staff members — to help students who do not respond to minor discipline. Team members determine the source of misbehavior and make sure students’ needs are being met. Outreach efforts increased parental involvement; parents are invited to sit with their unruly kids in class.
Counselors formed a conflict management program, training students to mediate disputes.
“When students can work it out, they’re not fighting, getting suspended and missing class,” says head counselor Tyrone Weaver.
When teachers formed professional learning communities, creating lessons to increase student engagement, academic achievement went up, says Lisa Adams, History Department chair. Teachers made more of an effort to form relationships with students, says Adams, who started attending students’ basketball games and sponsoring clubs.
“There’s a consistent effort to get everyone on board with common goals, and have students connect to the campus,” says math teacher Taira Redding.
Connection is fostered through events such as lunchtime dances, kendama contests and barbecues for students who increase their GPA. Teachers reward good behavior in their classrooms. Redding, for example, has a “banking” system where students rack up points for good behavior and can “buy” a pizza party.
Rewarding the positive helped suspensions plummet and achievement soar: The 2011-12 school year had 729 suspensions, compared with 1,242 in 2008. Last year the school’s API score went up by 42 points.
“It’s not perfect,” says Redding. “We’ve gone through tremendous strife to get everyone on the same page with a schoolwide focus, common expectations for students and common staff goals. While there are a lot of good things happening, we still have a long ways to go. We are a work in progress.” | <urn:uuid:85ca48d0-2171-4e4c-a7b6-b72190955ddc> | {
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Nonetheless, it has. Something has happened to belief-not religion's much disputed "loss of faith," but a shift in modes of cognitive activity. Abilities to distinguish, verify, and conclude are impaired. We still have our eyes and ears, of course. The instruments we use to extend them, however, not only deform indirect experience, but make direct apprehension seem narrow by comparison. As electronic media train us to see and hear in new ways, old ways fall into disuse, and one result is the odd epistemic mood that pervades our times. The Undecidability Principle seems to have seeped from physics into everyday life, and firm conviction slips away. Some of us have settled into skepticism; others, into the chronic fear of being deceived. Passion and ardor have drained away, with the emptied space silted up with distractions. We have lost our ability to believe in belief.
It hardly seems worth noting that things were not always so. The modern Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gassett suggested the term creencias to name those embedded certitudes and core convictions so taken for granted as not to be called into question. Creencias are assumptions that seem to need no assent-"what everybody knows"-conclusions settled for us so long ago that they stand merely as the background from which we always begin. Not exactly absolutes, they are simply there, in place, given. For Ortega, creencias seem to exist before we begin to think; they are less truths we "have" than truths we "inhabit."
Most anyone can think of examples:
For well over a century, believability has been in decline, as existing society came under attack, especially by the European intellectuals who tirelessly demonstrated how our cultural codes justify exploitation. Traditional religion was painted as superstition for pacifying underlings; polite society, as a screen for unconscious and illicit drives. Bourgeois rectitude was declared a mask for alienation from work, the self, and other people. From the upper intellectual and social classes, doubts about the codes governing civilized life spread gradually down the social ladder. Relationships between men and women, parents and children, no longer seemed transparent but were perceived to conceal dark secrets and self-deceptions. When stories of private life (once thought separate from the public sphere) became the stuff of everyday publishing, innocence became implausible.
Years of such critiques not only influenced our view of public life, but had important effects upon our trust in the givenness of our shared creencias. At the same time that we were taught to view political regimes as ideological-powered by justifications for appropriating authority-critics (especially partisans of Freudian or Marxist theory) were also teaching suspicion of the commonplace world: Neither official nor personal appearances should be trusted, for they conceal a drive for control beneath their seeming beneficence. As we were taught, so we learned; and this dual distrust of the political and the personal has long since become an integral part of the way we regard our everyday circumstances.
The breakup of comprehensive political ideologies-even of the comprehensive Communist doctrines that promised emancipation-accounts for only one of the flights from certainty. Consider the epistemological effect of television, which rains images upon us, cascading pictures claiming to be actualities and copies claiming to be originals. Not only does the jumble of sight and sound overwhelm sensibility, but the disjointed segments defy coherent form. The isolation of the viewer eliminates public interaction, just as the constantly flickering surface eliminates private reflection-and thus drains away from us trust in the creencias that require both public and private space. For the marketers who crave the trust of a mass audience, the sponsorship of nonstop distraction and discontinuity ends, ironically, in subverting any possibility of trust.
As electronics brings together television and computers, surrogates become more common, and actualities more neglected. And when materiality fades, the connection words once had with things is loosened. In some academic and entertainment realms the notion has been advanced that all perception is inevitably distorted by sensory bias. As audiences accede- not captive, of course, but unable to answer back-they accept an arbitrarily mediated world. Merging detached symbols, illuminated banalities, facsimiles without anterior substance, transient celebrities, and the laugh track, electronic presentation makes hitherto unimagined demands upon our cognitive abilities-and less and less is as it appears to be.
Even while contemporary science seems determined to reduce mental and emotional states to a material base, the legitimacy of the tangible is being eroded. Among computer programs now available is a sort of over- the-counter remedy for accuracy that permits one to "improve" photographs by taking out a face here or moving a limb there. Little concerned to distinguish the fake from the real, the copy from the thing, we learn to prefer simulations, and the actual-drab by comparison-is relinquished.
Day after day, the news brings catastrophes, incurable diseases, cruelty, avarice, fraud, and malfeasance. The media's tireless depiction of suffering ends by enfeebling the viewers who recognize their inability to correct it all. News analysis is of little help. Research reports disagree on putative causes and possible cures; they tell of ameliorative projects failing or even making things worse. News about such reports is often accompanied by the reactions of advocates who protest, make demands and accusations, claim rights ignored and victimization-followed by official denials, inconsistent versions of events, and contradictory statistics, all so tangled as never to be sorted out between commercials.
Even for inattentive watchers, the unceasing display of misery and of experts endlessly disputing creates a sense of disarray. Feeling not "compassion fatigue" but inadequacy in the face of cognitive overload, they may realize (at some critical mass of incoherence) that things are beyond their control-and the watchers feel abandoned by the civic world. But if they come to see that things are beyond anyone's control, then they are even more lost, and an even larger crisis of confidence can be anticipated. Politicians, referring in recent years to "the politics of meaning," must be aware of voter distrust. But they cannot admit, if they know, how deep go the sources of failed comprehensibility.
One openly acknowledged source of fading substantiality is the coup d'etat attempted in epistemology by the postmodernists. Their difficult tracts are largely unread outside academic circles, of course. But their orienting framework has nonetheless achieved remarkable currency among ordinary citizens, and their ideas have migrated into everyday speech.
The postmodernists are only the latest intellectuals to repudiate authority and foundations, but (perhaps more than any earlier thinkers) their style has struck a chord in street-level nihilism. Playful and faddish, strewing their talk with a chic vocabulary, they strike subversive poses even while declaiming theatrical phrases like "end of the subject" or "death of the author" that ought to be-but surprisingly seem not to be-foreign to the common citizen's understanding.
The reason for the visibility of these notions, I think, is that postmodernism names the actual discrepancies now in our public eye and ear: fragmentation, randomness, disconnection, irony, impermanence, ambiguity, and marginality. Beguiling surfaces are what count in a desubstantialized world where presence depends upon our "gaze"-as it does in the cyberspace of endlessly multiplied images.
A few decades ago, the "Death of the Enlightenment" was a phrase current among European intellectuals who saw corrupted everywhere the promise of progress and liberation under the rule of Reason. The Enlightenment, in breaking with archaic and biblical forms of understanding, had asserted that things are wholly accessible to scrutiny-and hence could be known, described, and explained in direct, comprehensive, and reliable forms. When narrowed into its instrumental uses, however, rationality (according to this view) fell into the service of a state apparatus and became a means for designing "rationalized" exploitation of man and nature.
To be sure, death was a premature verdict. Some scholars had recognized much earlier that flaws had been built into the foundations of the Enlightenment. Others pointed out that it thrust aside less assertive forms of knowing. Nonetheless, its aplomb, its sense of certainty and uniform intelligibility with mankind as center, long survived.
Recent radical challenges seem to have wounded that optimism. All observations, the postmodernists claim, are relative to the perspective of observers. Since each sighting is a partial fiction-one story told in one linguistic structure-no unified account can be expected. Exterior authority has been deposed, and no source for adjudicating competing versions is available. The task of critical postmodern thinking is the dismantling of narratives to expose their hidden interests and oppressive intentions-whereupon the old assumptions about foundational reality will be abandoned.
The cumulative effect of all this has been to push Enlightenment epistemology into senescence. While contradictions abound in postmodernist analysis, both its tone (smart, unsentimental, leveling, quarrelsome, transgressive, ridiculing) and its paranoia about power seem to speak for widespread popular disbelief-especially of the outpourings of quasi-official messages, excuses, and exhortations. Its attack on the foundations of knowledge has penetrated into areas once not open to question by showing how ambiguous are all those reported, second-hand worlds.
Cultural anthropology, for example, has become beset with doubts whether investigators can actually penetrate and translate findings about preliterate cultures into our first-world languages. Similarly, psychotherapists have come to see the self as a destabilized and contrived presence, with sexual identity a construction that will not withstand close inspection. Our old creencias of maleness and femaleness have begun to fall apart, oddly accompanied by creeping distrust of intimate relationships between any of the several sexes- contaminated anyway by fears of infection, with extensive instruction about safe practices given little credence.
Not surprisingly, chronic hesitancy toward truth claims, denial of personal agency, and radical relativizing of standards turn out to be disruptive and even cruel when adopted for everyday living. The acclamation of such notions breeds among vulnerable individuals a debility of moral sense and a draining away of resolution. Erased boundaries and multiple perspectives offered as therapeutic may seem to allow escape from the confines of custom, but they also blur distinctions needed to decide, to choose, and to change. One cannot, after all, stand either everywhere or nowhere.
It nearly goes without saying that another attack on the creencias has been made in the name of multiculturalism. The goal of diversity has come to rule our institutions, as multiculturalists routinely hector the citizenry about its indifference and parochial attitudes and various advocacy groups jostle for position, funds, and attention. The effect is to diminish the meaning of any outlook or practice. Assailed with charges and denunciations, the common audience feels not only the intended doubts about itself, but doubts about everything.
This process is easily traced in the arts. Despite years of subsidies by taxpayers, the art industry has scorned dissent from nonprofessionals- assuming their views to be tainted by prejudices and limited information. And as audiences have been treated, so they have become: For a large portion of the population, aesthetic and moral concepts once held as creencias have been displaced by a vocabulary of pragmatic utility and the relativity of taste.
The same process has become manifest in politics, where the very arguments by which special interests urge us to listen to them have undermined our ability to listen to anyone. The process also appears in the administrative use of experts whose depersonalized technical vocabulary (originally a way of asserting the significance of their speech) has succeeded only in diminishing the vitality of all language- especially the ordinary speech in which citizens once affirmed the creencias of their shared world. And the process shows up as well in the clumsy interventions of government agencies into realms formerly managed by the family: asserting that parents are incapable of proper child care and discipline, and then failing miserably to replace parents, the state at last manages to convince us only that proper child care and discipline is beyond reach.
But perhaps the clearest example of this process whereby the attempt to replace our creencias with other epistemic ways has undermined confidence in local ways of knowing occurs in research into the causes of crime and deviance. The claim that criminal behavior is explained by hidden social or psychological forces is difficult for nonprofessionals to challenge. The exculpation heard ever since sociology adopted its mechanical model of explanation has been matched with contemporary biomedical research arguing that the mind is merely an electrochemical apparatus. Belief in choice cannot be maintained, and our status as active moral agents is gradually diminished, with very real political implications. Democracy requires a belief in human agency, intention, and purpose. If we may no longer blame, convict, or reproach, how might we praise?
From a Fascist prison in the 1930s, Antonio Gramsci wrote at length to try to persuade fellow revolutionaries that culture was a force which could shape consciousness independently of material conditions. His point is one we should take seriously, for we have today evidence that a culture of opposition and distrust can be produced without a base in class structures or integrated political doctrine. The unity of the old political left in America has been successfully broken by a crowd of apparently freestanding causes. As the demands for change accumulate, the sense of permanent and irreconcilable grievance has spread. Unhindered by dialectical critique, "Hostile-Adversarial" becomes a familiar look on television, radio, films, and concerts, breeding a contagion of grudge, resentment, and sullen discontent.
While hostility was cultivated in early radical struggles to create party solidarity, current expressions offer only distraction. Among the young especially, a pervasive individualist bias, a lack of interest in locating underlying sources of common problems, and the physical arrangements of mass spectacles all insure that despite chanting for freedom the disaffected will never confront the contradictions of wealthy investors subsidizing pop nihilism or huge conglomerates managing radical performers.
Theodore Adorno notes the anomaly of unbridled individualism appearing at the same time in which the "individual" is vanishing. This anomaly is felt especially by the people who come to the cities to pursue professional careers. Having freed themselves from settled place and identity, isolated yet wary of binding commitments, they retreat to a sovereign selfhood and a refusal to believe in the interiority of other selves. Detached as individuals, they see themselves not only each as a center, but each as the only center. In response to fears of inauthenticity, and in pursuit of promises about personal reinventability, they continuously re-edit their public identity. Hyper- reflexive about the self, their attachment to external reality correspondingly weakens, and the objective world dissolves in subjectivity.
Curiously colliding with both reductionist neuro-science and postmodern nihilism-and brought indoors by television-this decay of objectivity only succeeds in a decay of subjectivity: the stable self dissolves into fragments, discontinuity, and freedom without content. Just as the self of radical individualism gradually derealizes the outside world, so too that self is derealized in turn.
It may be that the classical creencias of ordinary people could not have survived the decay of rural life. Knowledge may have been grounded in routines of farming, in the factuality of domesticated animals, in manual skills, in extended families living in long-settled communities in places known closely and well. However limited and incomplete its hierarchies of authority, obligation, and worth may now seem, it was comprehensive for a specific way of life, detailed in its implications for action, conveyed in ordinary language, and secure in its substance.
But with the rise of mass communication, new information collected by specialized methods and trained observers was gained without being learned and shared through practical activity. Until the late nineteenth century, it was commonly thought that the two lines of knowledge were complementary; the breakdown between the sources of knowledge (or at least the common acceptance of the fact of breakdown) is fairly recent. An immediately apprehended lifeworld of meaning based on experience and related to a body of practical knowledge vernacularly expressed is now in opposition to a more widely influential world of very different bodies of knowledge and the modes of acquiring them.
The old creencias, long relied upon, lost their monopoly, but their claimed replacements have grown away from general intelligibility. When Isaac Newton plotted planetary orbits from a vantage point in England, his work showed how significant knowledge could be gained even by a single observer. Nature was simply "there," commonly available for inspection and the tallying of regularities. But the idyll of direct reading of nature, of discovery by simple looking and counting, could not last. The stuff of physical reality was eventually perceived to be particles and energies well beyond individual sensibility. While physical data can be validated by physics' internal procedures, science now confounds Newton's world of stable objects in uniform motion, distinctly observed.
Similarly, no vantage allows a comprehensive vision of political economy. In the unbounded reaches of statistical complexity, exact forecast is a discarded hope. The ability to assume causal explanation fades when cause and effect become entangled in endless disagreements about mathematical models, predictive failures, cross-disciplinary integrations, orienting paradigms, and factorial determinants. Huge silos of computerized research findings from dozens of fields provide no steady place on which we might stand.
Since the first half of this century, people have noticed how less dependably authority can be asserted in everyday life. By the 1950s, Hannah Arendt, writing of "an ever-widening and deepening crisis," could put it directly: "Authority has vanished from the modern world." The method of doubt that guided early science reappears today as vagrant distrust of essential being. The relation between the knower and known is destabilized, and there appears a refusal of authoritative criteria for distinguishing between competing construals of how things reliably are. One can notice among the young, for example, a resentment of objectivity as somehow authoritarian, as a burden on freedom, imagination, and reinvention of selves, an impediment to some unnamed transcendence.
So, too, we find an operative denial that things have a resistant nature. Any entity can, with the application of sufficient force, apparently be changed into something quite else-and the transformation is taken to demonstrate the neutral and equivalent character of all things. Universal plasticity-of commodities, and even of the human body- declares a turning away from the integrity of being and a decline in the believability of qualities.
With believability challenged day by day, ordinary people try to cope by compartmentalizing their beliefs or by making gestures like the yellow ribbons tied around trees after a public tragedy. The huge rallies for short-lived causes, the bumptious street celebrations following team victories, the memorials for dead celebrities show a hunger not only for heroes but for being part of something, being for something, being somebody.
None of this tames the daily torrent of sound and facts into coherence. Dispossessed of our creencias, we come to see that we have been left alone to replace the sense that has been withdrawn or abandoned. When convictions flee, people are left (as Ortega y Gassett put it) with a feeling of "shipwreck." In the search for firm ground, some rely on therapists, counselors who are themselves immersed in modernity's contradictions. For young people, orphaned from exemplars of the good, prospects seem worse. Rushing to make new shrines of the natural environment, or computers, or space travel, or ethnicity, or nationalism, we find only ramshackle, one-owner cosmologies offering poor shelter.
It seems obvious to say that cognition-apprehending, knowing, believing, and discerning-is changing against a background of near-chaotic complexity. But such an assertion is difficult to accept for those whose work depends on intelligibility, and we must guard against the claim that we ourselves remain free to see things "as they really are," exempt from the reshaping movements or somehow standing on an Archimedean Point above any deformation.
We cannot deny, however, that great transformations of belief do take place. We all admit that when an age or culture has passed it is difficult to recapture its lost creencias. The fact that we are well into such a transformation is the conclusion of thinkers as serious as Jacques Barzun and Alasdair MacIntyre. At some point, of course, disorder provides the impetus for the creation of new forms of order.
Perhaps others have a plan for these new forms. I do not. But we need to think clearly about our responsibilities in our present circumstances. This implies, among much else, refusing the torpid, dumbed-down talk that numbs thought. It means turning away from the cant and humbug of "lifestyle," "role model," "self-esteem," "career path," and "human resources." It means espousing clarity and candor in speech, free of official guff and pretense-a valuing of vernacular plain telling. It means turning off the packaged voices, the river of mediated sight and sound, so as to hear one's own voice.
Thinking clearly also requires us to refuse the cognitive relativism casually passed about these days; not flinching from judging mediocrity and not explaining away human accountability. Thinking clearly could benefit as well from joining with others similarly troubled about our condition, helping to repair community and shared sensibility, and attending to the particularity of creation. It requires finally a resolve to speak for the presence of God in our lives. That could be a beginning. | <urn:uuid:e9fc5c00-2800-49be-8af1-051bcb4185fe> | {
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A hardiness zone is a geographically-defined zone in which a specific category of plant life is capable of growing, as defined by temperature hardiness, or ability to withstand the minimum temperatures of the zone. The zones were first developed by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), and have subsequently been adopted elsewhere. They are categorized according to the mean of the lowest temperature recorded each winter, termed the "average annual minimum temperature". Thus if five successive winters reach respective minima of −14 °C, −12 °C, −8 °C, −16 °C, and −13 °C, the mean coldest temperature is −12.6 °C, placing the site in zone 7.
|Zone||Celsius [°C]||Fahrenheit [°F]||Example Cities|
|0||Below -50 C||Below -60 F||Verkhoyansk, Russia|
|1||-45 to -50 C||-50 to -60 F||Fairbanks, Alaska; Yakutsk, Russia|
|2a||-43 to -45 C||-50 to -45 F||Prudhoe Bay, Alaska; Irkutsk, Russia|
|2b||-40 to -43 C||-45 to -40 F||Novosibirsk, Russia; Pinecreek, Minnesota|
|3a||-37 to -40 C||-40 to -35 F||Omsk, Russia; St. Michael, Alaska|
|3b||-34 to -37 C||-35 to -30 F||Yekatarinburg, Russia; Tomahawk, Wisconsin|
|4a||-32 to -34 C||-30 to -25 F||Kazan, Russia; Minneapolis/St.Paul, Minnesota|
|4b||-29 to -32 C||-25 to -20 F||Moscow, Russia; Northwood, Iowa|
|5a||-26 to -29 C||-20 to -15 F||St Peterburg, Russia; Des Moines, Iowa|
|5b||-23 to -26 C||-15 to -10 F||Helsinki, Finland; Columbia, Missouri|
|6a||-20 to -23 C||-10 to -5 F||Stockholm, Sweden; St. Louis, Missouri|
|6b||-18 to -20 C||-5 to 0 F||Berlin, Germany; Branson, Missouri; Beijing, China|
|7a||-15 to -18 C||0 to 5 F||København, Denmark; South Boston, Virginia; Xi'an, China|
|7b||-12 to -15 C||5 to 10 F||Amsterdam, Netherlands; Griffin, Georgia|
|8a||-9 to -12 C||10 to 15 F||Paris, France; Dallas, Texas|
|8b||-7 to -9 C||15 to 20 F||Istanbul, Turkey; Gainesville, Florida; Tokyo, Japan|
|9a||-4 to -7 C||20 to 25 F||London, England; St. Augustine, Florida; Shanghai, China|
|9b||-1 to -4 C||25 to 30 F||Rome, Italy; Brownsville, Texas; Osaka, Japan|
|10a||2 to -1 C||30 to 35 F||Lisbon, Portugal; Victorville, California; Melbourne, Australia|
|10b||4 to 2 C||35 to 40 F||Auckland, New Zealand; Coral Gables, Florida; Guangzhou (Canton), China|
|11||above 4 C||above 40 F||Santa Cruz, Tenerife; Mazatlan, Mexico; Brisbane, Australia|
|12||above 10 C||above 50 F|
Benefits and criticisms
The hardiness zones are effective in that, for many situations, extremes of winter cold are a major determining factor in whether a plant species can be cultivated outdoors at a particular location. However, it does have a number of drawbacks, most significantly in not incorporating summer heat levels into the zone determination. Thus sites which may have the same mean winter minima, but markedly different summer temperatures, will still be accorded the same hardiness zone. An extreme example is the Shetland Islands and southern Alabama, which are both on the boundary of zones 8 and 9 and share the same winter minima, but very little else in their climates; in summer, the continental climate of Alabama is about 20 degrees Celsius hotter than the oceanic climate of Shetland, and there are very few plants that can be grown at both locations. Due to its maritime climate, the UK is in AHS Heat Zone 2 (having 1 to 8 days hotter than 30 degrees Celsius), whereas Alabama is in Zones 7 to 9 (61 to 150 days hotter than 30 degrees Celsius).
Another problem is that the hardiness zones do not take into account the reliability of the snow cover. Snow acts as an insulator against extreme cold temperatures, protecting the root system of hibernating plants. If the snow cover is reliable (then present during the coldest days), the actual temperature to which the roots are exposed is not as low as the hardiness zone number would indicate. As an example, Quebec City in Canada is located in zone 4 but can rely on an important snow cover every year, making it possible to cultivate plants normally rated for zones 5 or 6, whereas in Montreal, located in zone 5, it is sometimes difficult to cultivate plants adapted to the zone because of the unreliable snow cover.
Other factors that affect plant survival but are not considered in hardiness zones are: soil moisture, humidity, the number of days of frost, and the risk of a rare catastrophic cold snap. Some risk evaluation – the probability of getting a particularly severe low temperature – often would be more useful than just the average conditions.
Lastly, many plants will survive in a locality but won't flower if the daylength is inappropriate or if they require vernalisation (a particular duration of low temperature). The low temperature statistic is only appropriate for woody perennial species, and even then its use is limited. With annuals the time of planting can often be adjusted to allow growth beyond their normal geographical range.
An alternative system for describing plant hardiness is to use indicator plants (the USDA also publishes a list of these to go with their map). Common plants with known limits to their range are used. For example, many people will know whether lemons will grow in their locality. If you then say Geraldton Wax will grow more or less where lemons will grow you have defined the range of Geraldton Wax with some accuracy (whether or not it will flower is another problem). Unfortunately no two plant species have exactly the same requirements and there are even within-species differences. 'Meyer' lemons, for example, are more cold tolerant than 'Eureka'. You can really only define core areas and they are often fairly arbitrary.
Europe hardiness zones
United Kingdom and Ireland Hardiness Zones
This means that the hardiness zones relevant to the UK are quite high, from 7 to 10, as shown below.
- 7. In Scotland the Grampians, Highlands and locally in the Southern Uplands and in England the Pennines.
- 8. Most of England, Wales and Scotland, and parts of central Ireland.
- 9. Most of western and southern England and Wales, western Scotland, also a very narrow coastal fringe on the east coast of Scotland and northeast England (within 5 km of the North Sea), London, and most of Ireland.
- 10. Very low lying coastal areas of the southwest of Ireland, and the Isles of Scilly.
North American hardiness zones
Using as its basis the average annual minimum temperature for a given location, the idea of the USDA map is that it provides an easy guideline for categorizing locations suitable for winter survival of a rated plant in an "average" winter. Since temperatures in the non-coastal-adjacent areas of the continent rarely present a consistent experience from year to year, and occasionally present a major--and often agriculturally devastating--deviation from the average minimum, it is difficult to use this map for much of the country with any long-term reliability, at least in areas close to the margin of a plant's rated hardiness-zone.
The USDA first issued its standardized hardiness-zone map in 1960, and revised it in 1965. A new map was issued in 1990, based on U.S. and Canadian data from 1974 through 1986 (and 1971-1984 for Mexico). While the 1990-issue map utilized approximately double the number of stations, it also divided the temperature-zones into five-degree a/b zones for greater accuracy. This revised map showed many areas to be suddenly colder than the 1960 map, due largely to a number of severely colder winters in the central and eastern U.S. in the 1974-1986 data-gathering period as opposed to the mid-20th-century data-sampling period used in the 1960 map.
The 1990 map shows 10 different zones, each of which represents an area of winter hardiness for the plants of agriculture and our natural landscape. This was revised to introduce zone 11, representing areas that have average annual minimum temperatures above 4°C and that are therefore essentially frost-free.
In 2003, a preliminary draft of a new USDA map was produced by the American Horticultural Society (AHS), compiled by Meteorological Evaluation Services Co., Inc. of Amityville, NY, using temperature data collected from July 1986 to March 2002. This was a period of warmer winters than the 1974-1986 period, especially in the eastern U.S.A., and thus the 2003 map placed many areas approximately a half-zone higher (warmer) than the 1990 map had. Many have noted that the map seemed to have drifted closer to the original 1960 map in its overall zone-delineations. While the 2003 AHS draft map purported to show finer detail, for example reflecting urban heat islands by showing the downtown areas of several cities (e.g., Baltimore, Maryland and Washington, DC) as a full zone warmer than outlying areas, the map also did away with the detailed a/b half-zones introduced in the 1990 map, an omission widely criticized by horticulturists and gardeners due to the coarseness of the resulting map. The USDA rejected the AHS 2003 draft map; the agency has stated it is creating its own internal map in an interactive computer format. As of May 2007 the AHS and the National Arboretum websites still present the 1990 map as current.
In addition, the National Arbor Day Foundation has recently completed an extensive updating of U.S. Hardiness Zones in 2004, utilizing essentially the same data used by the AHS, the then-most-recent 15 years’ data available from more than 5,000 National Climatic Data Center cooperative stations across the United States.
Once the Foundation analyzed the new data, hardiness zones were revised, generally reflecting warmer recent temperatures in many parts of the country. The Arbor Day Foundation used the updated versions of the same sources of data as had been utilized by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in the creation of its hardiness zone maps. The 2004 map appears to validate the data used in the 2003 draft completed by the AHS. Like the AHS map, it also did away with the more detailed a/b half-zone delineations. http://www.arborday.org/media/zones.cfm
Sunset Hardiness Zones
A plant's performance is governed by the total climate: length of growing season, timing and amount of rainfall, winter lows, summer highs, humidity. Sunset's climate zone maps take all these factors into account — unlike the familiar hardiness zone maps devised by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which divide the U.S. and Canada into zones based strictly on winter lows. The U.S.D.A. maps tell you only where a plant may survive the winter; Sunset climate zone maps let you see where that plant will thrive year-round.
Australian Hardiness Zones
The Australian continent, though surrounded by ocean, is drier than Europe or North America. Australia numbers its climate zones differently, but this system can be translated into the North American systems with minimal effort.
The main factors determining average minimum temperature are altitude, latitude and proximity to the coast.
- Zone 1 covers the alpine areas of south eastern Australia.
- Zone 2 the tablelands of south east Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria, and the uplands of central Tasmania.
- Zone 3 includes much of the southern half of the continent, except for near the coast.
- Zone 4, because of the warmer seaboard, covers a broad area from coastal Queensland across to Shark Bay and Geraldton in the west, and includes the Mornington Peninsula, areas adjacent to Spencer Gulf and Adelaide, the south western coastal zone, Sydney and the north coast of NSW, along with a number of localities dotted all around the southern coast of the continent.
- Zone 5 covers, some of the Queensland coast, Western Australia north of Shark Bay and across the top end.
- Zone 6 includes the Queensland coast north of Cairns, Cape York Peninsula and the coast of the Northern Territory.
- Zone 7 is mainly restricted to islands off the north coast.
There are problems with this classifications of this type: the spread of weather stations is insufficient to give clear zones and too many places with different climates are lumped together. Only 738 Australian stations have records of more than ten years (one station per 98,491 hectares), though more populated areas have relatively fewer hectares per station. Local factors such as aspect, altitude, proximity to the sea also complicate the matter. For example, Mt. Isa has three climatic stations with more than a ten year record. One is in Zone 4a, one in Zone 4b and the other is in Zone 5a. Likewise, Sydney residents can choose between Zones 3a and 4b. Most other cities have similar problems. Different locations in the same city are suitable for different plants, making it hard to draw a meaningful map. There may even be a case for publishing a list of weather stations and their zone classification to allow best use of local conditions. | <urn:uuid:75bcfc46-703e-4809-be6c-7352ac2ca584> | {
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What is Abelcet used for?
- Severe invasive infection with the yeast-like fungi Candida (candidiasis).
- Severe fungal infections affecting the body as a whole (systemic infection), for example invasive aspergillosis, cryptococcal meningitis and disseminated cryptococcosis in HIV patients, fusariosis, coccidiomycosis, zygomycosis and blastomycosis. (Abelcet is used only where conventional amphotericin or other antifungals have not been effective, or in people who cannot be given conventional amphotericin, for example because they have kidney problems).
How does Abelcet work?
Abelcet infusion contains the active ingredient amphotericin, which is a type of medicine called an antifungal. It is used to treat infections caused by fungi and yeasts.
Amphotericin kills fungi and yeasts by interfering with their cell membranes. It works by binding to a substance called ergosterol, which is an essential component of fungal cell membranes. This disrupts the fungal cell membrane, causing holes to appear in it.
The cell membranes of fungi are vital for their survival. They keep unwanted substances from entering the cells and stop the contents of the cells from leaking out. As amphotericin causes holes to appear in the cell membranes, essential constituents of the fungal cells can leak out. This kills the fungi and treats the infection.
Amphotericin is not absorbed into the bloodstream when given by mouth. To treat severe fungal or yeast infections that are affecting the whole body and are potentially life-threatening, amphotericin must be given by a drip into a vein (intravenous infusion). Unfortunately amphotericin given in this way commonly causes side effects.
Abelcet infusion is a lipid-based formulation of amphotericin that is less likely to cause side effects than conventional amphotericin infusion (Fungizone). This means it can be given at higher doses than conventional amphotericin. It is reserved for treating severe invasive fungal infections where conventional amphotericin or other antifungals have not been effective. It may also be used to treat people who cannot be given conventional amphotericin, for example because they have kidney problems.
How is Abelcet given?
- Abelcet infusion is given via a drip into a vein (intravenous infusion).
- The number of infusions given and the length of treatment will depend on the severity of the infection and how well it responds to the treatment.
Important information about Abelcet
- When amphotericin is administered into a vein it may rarely cause a severe allergic reaction (anaphylaxis). For this reason, it is recommended that a small test dose is given before the first infusion. The patient should be carefully observed for signs of an allergic reaction for about 30 minutes after the test dose.
- During treatment with this medicine you will need to have regular blood tests to monitor your kidney function, liver function, levels of blood cells and levels of electrolytes (salts such as potassium and magnesium) in your blood. This is particularly important if you already have any problems with your kidneys.
Abelcet should be used with caution in
- People with decreased kidney function.
- People with decreased liver function.
- People who require sodium restriction (the infusion contains sodium).
Pregnancy and breastfeeding
Certain medicines should not be used during pregnancy or breastfeeding. However, other medicines may be safely used in pregnancy or breastfeeding providing the benefits to the mother outweigh the risks to the unborn baby. Always inform your doctor if you are pregnant or planning a pregnancy, before using any medicine.
- This medicine is not known to be harmful when used during pregnancy. However, the manufacturer states that it should be used with caution during pregnancy, and only if the expected benefit to the mother is greater than any possible risk to the developing baby. For life-threatening disease, the benefit of treatment is likely to outweigh any risks. Seek further medical advice from your doctor.
- It is not known if this medicine passes into breast milk. However, due to the properties of the medicine only low levels would be anticipated in milk. If the medicine does pass into breast milk, it is unlikely to be absorbed into the baby's bloodstream as it is not absorbed when taken by mouth. Seek further medical advice from your doctor.
Possible side effects of Abelcet
Medicines and their possible side effects can affect individual people in different ways. The following are some of the side effects that are known to be associated with this medicine. Just because a side effect is stated here, it does not mean that all people using this medicine will experience that or any side effect.
Very common (affect more than 1 in 10 people)
- Fever (high temperature).
- Increased creatinine (marker of kidney function) in the blood.
Common (affect between 1 in 10 and 1 in 100 people)
- Nausea and vomiting.
- Low blood pressure (hypotension).
- High blood pressure (hypertension).
- Increased heart rate (tachycardia).
- Irregular heartbeat (arrhythmia).
- Shortness of breath.
- Abdominal pain.
- Abnormal results in liver function tests.
- Decreased number of platelets in the blood (thrombocytopenia).
- Electrolyte disturbances, including decreased level of potassium or magnesium in the blood.
- Decreased kidney function and kidney failure.
Uncommon (affect between 1 in 100 and 1 in 1000 people)
- Reaction at injection site.
- An extreme allergic reaction (anaphylaxis).
- Heart attack.
- Narrowing of the airways (bronchospasm).
- Pain in the muscles.
The side effects listed above may not include all of the side effects reported by the medicine's manufacturer. For more information about any other possible risks associated with this medicine, please read the information provided with the medicine or consult your doctor or pharmacist.
If you think you have experienced a side effect from a medicine or vaccine you should check the patient information leaflet. This lists the known side effects and what to do if you get them. You can also get advice from your doctor, nurse or pharmacist. If they think it's necessary they'll report it for you.
You can also report side effects yourself using the yellow card website: www.mhra.gov.uk/yellowcard.
How can Abelcet affect other medicines?
It is important to tell your doctor or pharmacist what medicines you are already taking, including those bought without a prescription and herbal medicines, before you start treatment with this medicine. Similarly, check with your doctor or pharmacist before taking any new medicines during treatment this one, to make sure that the combination is safe.
There may be an increased risk of side effects on the kidneys if this medicine is used in combination with other medicines that can have side effects on the kidneys. Some of these are listed below. People receiving treatment with any of these in combination with amphotericin should have their kidney function regularly monitored:
- aminoglycoside antibiotics, eg gentamicin
- zidovudine. (There may also be an increased risk of side effects on the blood cells if amphotericin is used with zidovudine. Blood counts and kidney function should be monitored in people on this combination.)
There may be an increased risk of a drop in the amount of potassium in the blood (hypokalaemia) if this medicine is used in combination with any of the following:
- corticosteroids, eg hydrocortisone, fludrocortisone, prednisolone, dexamethasone
- corticotropin (ACTH)
- diuretics, eg bendroflumethiazide, furosemide.
If hypokalaemia occurs due to amphotericin treatment, this may increase the risk of side effects from digoxin.
Amphotericin may increase the blood level of flucytosine, which could increase the risk of its side effects.
Amphotericin may be less effective at treating infection if it is used in combination with azole-type antifungals such as ketoconazole, itraconazole or miconazole.
Other medicines containing amphotericin as the active ingredient
For background information about our medicine factsheets, including the references used to produce them, click here. | <urn:uuid:ef66520f-a418-4176-825d-3040cf71d9a1> | {
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What is organizational change? Organizational change occurs when a company makes a strategic effort to improve the performance of the organization or functions of the organization, such as a group or a practice. The goal of organizational change is to increase the effectiveness of the change effort, while decreasing employee opposition and the cost associated with the change. Change is inevitable in today’s business community if an organization wants to remain competitive and to increase profits. With an increase in globalization and advancements in technology, companies are forced to make changes if they want to stay in business. Unfortunately, most change efforts fail due to resistance and lack of support. Most people are afraid of change, and managers have to be very skilled in getting the employees to commit to implementing the changes. Successful change efforts are based on individuals at the organization responding positively to the transformation. So what can an organization do to bring about successful change? Research suggests that change is more effective when it’s driven from within by the upper management team of the organization. Employees are more than likely to buy into the effort if they feel it’s being supported by the top brass. If the employees get a sense that upper management is not championing the cause, then they will not support it. In addition, the change effort must also tie in with the culture of the organization. Management must find a way to connect it with the values, beliefs and behaviors of the organization. Otherwise, the effort will fail. Successfully changing an organization is not an easy task for any company. However, a theory has been proposed that states there are steps a company can take to achieve their goal of organizational change.
In The Heart of Change, John Kotter and Dan Cohen describe eight steps that have lead organizations to successful large-scale change. The eight steps are as follows: 1. Increase Urgency, 2. Build the guiding team, 3. Get the vision right, 4. Communicate for buy-in, 5. Empower Action, 6. Create short-term wins, 7. Don’t let up and 8. Make change stick. This book offers real-life stories of companies going through large-scale-change efforts. It outlines the pitfalls they faced, the mistakes that were made and the lesson learned through the change process. Kotter and Cohen believe that change happens by making people feel differently through an approach that is referred to as see-feel-change. This method forces action as it shows people the reason for change by affecting their emotions. Furthermore, Kotter and Cohen believe that change fails because organizations rely too much on data gathering and reports to drive change instead of touching people’s feelings to encourage positive action. This book offers a play-by-play of the eight step approach Kotter and Cohen believe will change people’s behavior, which will enable any organization to overcome the resistance to change and bring about a successful change effort. In this paper, I will discuss four of the eight steps and show how Kotter and Cohen’s ideas relate to some of the theories and concepts in the textbook, Organizational Behavior and Management by John Ivancevich, Robert Konopaske and Michael Matteson.
The first step of Kotter and Cohen’s Eight Stages is known as “Sense of Urgency.” In this stage, Kotter and Cohen believe that complacency, fear and anger can cause a company not to make necessary changes. They point out that most companies have a false sense of pride or arrogance due to a perceived sense of success. These companies have the business as usual attitude because they have achieved their goals for a period of time and therefore don’t want to change, even though they may be faced with more competition and rising cost. Secondly, they believe that fear cripples most organizations from acting as these... | <urn:uuid:f69a2c3c-b37e-48a5-a8cd-23bdcdb3c540> | {
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Who among us has not gotten upset by an argument, an unsettling talk with our boss, or a bad grade?
And have you noticed that some of us get over these troubling encounters quickly, while others sulk or fume for a long time?
Just why people some people are better at recovery than others, and what that says about their brain function, was explained to me by Richard Davidson, the director of the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin. Richie, as I’ve known him for years, was a graduate student with me long ago, and I’ve often written about his groundbreaking neuroscience research in my books. This time I chatted with him for an audio CD, “Training the Brain: Cultivating Emotional Skills.”
To be sure, there’s nothing wrong with being upset by life’s setbacks or troubles; we’re wired for that. But some of us flip out at the smallest provocation, or hang on to the distress long after. And those differences, Davidson believes, represent underlying brain function.
When it comes to having a hair trigger or to staying preoccupied by an upset long afterward, the circuits around the amygdala, the brain’s alarm for threat, danger and fear, are at play. As Davidson told me, when his lab use brain imaging with such people, he finds a distinctive pattern in the mechanisms that release cortisol, a key stress hormone.
As I’ve described in Social Intelligence cortisol can be helpful at loswer levels; it’s crucial for mobilizing us to meet the demands of the day. But when cortisol surges through the body at high levels and stays there, we get stuck in emotional overdrive. This, Davidson tells me, impacts our health. David Spiegel at Stanford Medical School found that among women with metastatic breast cancer, those whose cortisol failed to go down at the end of the day ended up dying of cancer sooner.
People with phobias, Davidson finds, don’t have the problem of a prolonged stress response. Instead they have a super-quick amygdala response to what frightens them. That response trips with a wide range of innocuous things, too. It doesn’t take people phobic of spiders, say, any longer to recover than it does other people. But their initial surge of fear is so great that are apprehensive of that response itself – and go to great lengths to avoid whatever might trigger it (hence the phobia).
Then there are people who have very strong emotional responses, but who may or may not recover quickly or have a hair trigger. Davidson says that a strong response with a quick recovery may be quite adaptive emotionally.
Davidson’s intuition, he told me, is that people may gravitate to mates who have similar emotional styles – or perhaps drop partners whose style does not fit with their own. On the other hand, he conjectures, it would probably do well for someone prone to fits of anxiety to find an unflappable partner who might help them calm down.
And, he adds, whatever our emotional style, the very circuitry of the brain that determines it also happens to be the most plastic – that is, able to change with experience.
In our conversation he describes the good news: how mindfulness practice can help us modify these brain styles for the better. | <urn:uuid:30de69f9-62c2-4f41-95a4-ea30e7edcff3> | {
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Since the discovery of anthropic coincidences in the 1970s that
continue regularly, many skeptics of a distinctly designed universe have
taken a second look. Anthropic coincidences are astoundingly minuscule
factors of probability concerning everything from neutrons and electrons
to supernova eruptions in space, outside of which carbon-based life would
be impossible. Yet others have countered that no supernatural or outside-the-universe
intellect is required to explain these phenomena. Indeed, some hold that
our observance of life in a universe seemingly balanced on a razor's edge
is no cause for surprise whatsoever.
Fine-Tuned for Life?
For perspective, described below is just one of the 26 known anthropic
coincidences (or, necessary conditions for life as we know it), listed
in Hugh Ross' The Creator and the Cosmos:
"Unless the number of electrons is equivalent to the number
of protons to an accuracy of one part in 1037, or better,
electromagnetic forces in the universe would have so overcome gravitational
forces that galaxies, stars, and planets never would have formed.
Why would the cosmological constants of the universe, like the one above,
be so fine-tuned for life? What can explain the number of such so-called
coincidences? Are such questions a valid pursuit, or are there, for example,
an infinite number of universes, rendering one just like ours inevitable?
Many scientists have long resisted the possibility of a supernatural explanation
for both the universe's beginning and its incredible accommodation of
life. Yet, most scientists now concede that the Big Bang Theory is all
but certainly correct in pointing to a starting point and time for the
universe--a discovery certainly compatible with the Bible. In our Special
Focus, several scientists and philosophers likewise argue for the theistic
explanation for anthropic coincidences--or as theists often state
it, the fine-tuned universe--that our universe looks exquisitely tailored-for-life
because it, in fact, is.
One part in 1037 is such an incredibly sensitive balance
that it is hard to visualize. The following analogy might help: Cover
the entire North American continent in dimes all the way up to the
moon, a height of about 239,000 miles. (In comparison, the money to
pay for the U.S. federal government debt would cover one square mile
less than two feet deep with dimes.) Next, pile dimes from here to
the moon on a billion other continents the same size as North America.
Paint one dime red and mix it into the billion piles of dimes. Blindfold
a friend and ask him to pick out one dime. The odds that he will pick
the red dime are one in 1037. And this is only one of the
parameters that is so delicately balanced to allow life to form."*
Note: Some of the material found below contains somewhat advanced
logic and physics notations. We encourage you to work through or, if
necessary, skip over that which confuses you to catch the main ideas.
Think it over for yourself and let us know your questions
—Byron Barlowe, Editor/Webmaster, Leadership University
The Origin of the Universe
What is the newest evidence for the Big Bang? The cosmic background radiation
is exactly what was expected if the universe began as an immensely hot
event 10-20 billion years ago. But the universe that was created is "just-right"
for life. Dozens of factors are exquisitely fine-tuned for life to be
able to exist, at least on our planet.
The Designed 'Just
Walter L. Bradley, Ph.D.
This article provides a clear indication of what is meant by design
and then summarizes the factual basis from cosmology that our universe
is indeed uniquely designed as a habitat for life in general and humans
[Spanish Version: El universo diseņado 'justo a punto']
A "Just Right" Universe
Dr. Hugh Ross
Chapter Fourteen of The Creator and the Cosmos. From his book
published by NavPress, astrophysicist, author and radio host Hugh Ross
highlights the problems associated with the existence of a universe
suited to life, lists 26 fantastically narrow parameters for factors
that allow life and answers objections to the biblical theist viewpoint
on the above.
[Spanish Version: Un universo "justo a punto"]
Do Anthropic Coincidences
Require Explanation? (Lecture 11 and 12)
Dr. Robert C. Koons
Western Theism Lecture Notes (Phl 356): Spring 1998, University of Texas.
This lecture explores "anthropic coincidences," as Koons would improve
upon the term, "carbotic or biotic principle," and major objections.
The Teleological Argument
And The Anthropic Principle
William Lane Craig
The discovery during our generation of the so-called anthropic coincidences
in the initial conditions of the universe has breathed new life into
the teleological argument. Use of the Anthropic Principle to nullify
our wonder at these coincidences is logically fallacious unless conjoined
with the metaphysical hypothesis of a World Ensemble. There are no reasons
to believe that such an Ensemble exists nor that, if it does, it has
the properties necessary for the Anthropic Principle to function. Typical
objections to the alternative hypothesis of divine design are not probative.
The Prerequisites of Life in Our
One of the foremost authorities on (and critics of) the popular Anthropic
Principle, which explains away the need for divine intervention, Leslie
theorizes the possibility of "a Mind or by a more abstract Creative
Principle which can reasonably be called 'God'." Certainly no mainstream
theist, Leslie argues for outside intervention in the creation of the
universe, writing, "My argument...will be that Newton's blending of
science with theism is something glorious. I shall not, indeed, defend
him against Leibniz and Darwin since the notion that God constantly
intervenes in the world's workings seems unfortunate... But the forms
taken by the laws of physics, and perhaps also the distribution of material
early in the Big Bang, do suggest God's creative activity."
Related Video and Articles:
Stephen Hawking, the
Big Bang, and God
Henry F. Schaefer III
Dr. "Fritz" Schaeffer, the Graham Perdue Professor of Chemistry and the
director of the Center for Computational Quantum Chemistry at the University
of Georgia, makes comments on Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time.
Although Dr. Schaefer notes some areas in which he disagrees with Hawking,
he concludes, ". . . the reason for Hawking's success as a popularizer
of science, is that he addresses the problems of meaning and purpose that
concern all thinking people."
Dr. Fritz Schaefer
Distinguished research chemist and professor Dr. Henry F. "Fritz" Schaefer,
III, comments briefly on cosmological evidence of design and the fine-tuned
universe, as well as science and Christianity, biology and the origin
Is There a Role for Natural
Dr. Owen Gingerich
The author briefly sketches the modern scientific scenario of the creation
of the universe and the origin of the elements.
*Copyright Hugh Ross, The
Creator and the Cosmos, 3d ed. (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress,
2001). Used by permission.
We would love to get your | <urn:uuid:97055037-f522-498f-845a-bdfa8361de1a> | {
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This material must not be used for commercial purposes, or in any hospital or medical facility. Failure to comply may result in legal action.
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:
A chalazion is a lump on your eyelid. This lump develops because an oil gland in your eyelid is blocked. A chalazion may be small and then slowly grow bigger.
- Antibiotics: This medicine is given to fight or prevent an infection caused by bacteria. Always take your antibiotics exactly as ordered by your healthcare provider. Do not stop taking your medicine unless directed by your healthcare provider. Never save antibiotics or take leftover antibiotics that were given to you for another illness.
- NSAIDs: These medicines decrease swelling, pain, and fever. NSAIDs are available without a doctor's order. Ask which medicine is right for you and how much to take. Take as directed. NSAIDs can cause stomach bleeding or kidney problems if not taken correctly.
- Take your medicine as directed. Call your healthcare provider if you think your medicine is not helping or if you have side effects. Tell him if you are allergic to any medicine. Keep a list of the medicines, vitamins, and herbs you take. Include the amounts, and when and why you take them. Bring the list or the pill bottles to follow-up visits. Carry your medicine list with you in case of an emergency.
Follow up with your healthcare provider as directed:
You may need to return to have your eye checked. Write down your questions so you remember to ask them during your visits.
Help decrease eyelid swelling and pain:
- Apply a warm compress: Wet a washcloth with warm water and place it on your eye. This will help decrease swelling and pain. Your healthcare provider will tell you how often to use a compress.
- Massage your eyelid: If you had a steroid shot, gently massage the area. This will help decrease pain and inflammation.
Contact your healthcare provider if:
- The swelling and redness on your eyelid does not get better with treatment.
- You see or feel a new lump on your eyelid.
- You feel pressure behind your eyes.
- You have questions or concerns about your condition or care.
Seek care immediately or call 911 if:
- You have trouble moving your eyes.
- Your eyelid or eye begins to bleed.
- Your vision suddenly becomes worse.
- Your eyelid suddenly becomes more swollen.
© 2016 Truven Health Analytics Inc. Information is for End User's use only and may not be sold, redistributed or otherwise used for commercial purposes. All illustrations and images included in CareNotes® are the copyrighted property of A.D.A.M., Inc. or Truven Health Analytics.
The above information is an educational aid only. It is not intended as medical advice for individual conditions or treatments. Talk to your doctor, nurse or pharmacist before following any medical regimen to see if it is safe and effective for you. | <urn:uuid:64a3c514-b4b7-4a7c-b388-1edb625e8f03> | {
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A drinking craze in which users inhale alcohol fumes has the potential to be a “very dangerous phenomenon”, experts have warned.
The new trend involves heating alcohol in devices, available to buy on the internet, to at least 40C turning it to vapour, allowing the user to breath in the fumes and speed up the effects of alcohol consumption.
One brand, the ‘Vaportini’, promises a “revolutionary way of consuming alcohol” on its website adding that as the alcohol is “absorbed directly into the bloodstream and does not go through the digestive tract”, it has the advantage of “almost no calories; no carbs, no impurities and the effects of consuming alcohol are immediately felt, making it easier to responsibly imbibe.”
It goes on to state that the “revolutionary” method, while perhaps “intimidating”, is “simple, natural and enjoyable”.
However, UK charity Drinkaware, which promotes responsible drinking, has warned against the dangers of inhaling alcohol, as reported by The Express.
Professor Chris Day, from Newcastle University and an adviser to Drinkaware, said in a statement: “Inhaling alcohol is a very new trend so there isn’t yet any scientific data of the effects but it has the potential to be a very dangerous phenomenon and as such, we would advise people to be cautious if indeed they do decide to try it.
“The fact that it bypasses your body’s natural defence mechanisms against consuming too much alcohol means it is unsafe.”
Speaking to The Express, Professor Jonathan Chick, an Edinburgh-based psychiatrist, said: “There is greater ‘hit’ on the brain than when alcohol is taken by mouth, because some of it has not already been broken down on its way through the liver and this will increase the risk of damage to brain cells.
“So the method cannot be called safer to the body organs.
“There is an added risk of inhalation which is due to the direct impact on the brain – that is, risk of unsteadiness, falling or impulsive behaviour.
“It is possible that the vapour method may lead to some taking larger quantities of alcohol than they would have done if they were only ingesting by mouth through the stomach, because the stomach can limit its emptying rate with strong concentrations of spirit, and may sometimes cause vomiting, which is a limiting step.
“The vapour method will be used by those who are looking for rapid intoxication. Some unwanted effects of alcohol may also be felt more rapidly, by the consumer and those around.” | <urn:uuid:40418484-c99f-49ec-af9d-65e72d0db827> | {
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Turbidity curtains and floating containment booms typically have different uses, but the marriage of the two could mean big changes for aquaculture. Floating containment booms have most frequently been used to contain an oil spill, reduce the possibility of pollution and make recovery easier. Turbidity curtains are traditionally used to control silt and sediment water during construction or dredging. A new project recently fabricated by BTL Liners brings the functionality of both containment methods to aquaculture.
Aquaculture is the farming of aquatic organisms, which includes fish, crustaceans and aquatic plants. Aquaculture uses controlled conditions to cultivate both freshwater and saltwater populations of aquatic creatures. The latest development in aquafarming comes from the regulation of the aquatic life cycle using fabricated geomembranes.
Turbidity Curtains and Floating Containment Booms
BTL’s recent combination of a floating containment boom and a turbidity curtain may be the biggest aquaculture development in recent history. Fish are contained in a shallow bay that is covered with a floating containment boom. Attached to the floating containment boom is a turbidity curtain that features a heavy chain in the bottom to weigh it down to the surface floor. The turbidity curtain, or skirt, uses aluminum connectors to adhere to the the sides of the bay.
The fish won’t be moved from the containment pool during the life cycle. In this bay, nothing can hurt them. Here they will be feed and both fresh and saltwater will be regulated depending on the phase of their life cycle. With the turbidity curtain, water can pass through, or not, depending on the required functionality. All of the fish are kept in one area and they won’t be moved during the entire life cycle.
At BTL Liners, we’re excited about this new project and the possibilities it opens up in the aquaculture industry. Contact BTL for more information about this and other geomembrane possibilities for aquaculture. | <urn:uuid:66d189f1-26cd-4b51-88ce-b62666814004> | {
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Hot flushes disturbing your sleep? Not sleeping as well as you used to? How does menopause impact on sleep?
Sleep changes for a lot of women around the start of menopause and after menopause. For some it can be hot flushes which cause sleep disturbance whereas for others, sleep throughout and then after the menopause sleep feels lighter and more readily disturbed. I often see women who
had trouble with sleep prior to menopause but were managing, but the changes to sleep with menopause make enough of a difference that they find they are having trouble.
What is menopause?
Menopause is defined as the permanent cessation of menstrual periods, and women are said to have reached post-menopause when they haven’t had a period for 12 months. It occurs at a median age of 51 years in normal women, and if it occurs before the age of 40 is felt to be pre-mature. There is a transition, where periods are irregular, before menopause, which is called perimenopause. It’s often during this time that women experience symptoms such as hormonal changes and hot flushes.
During reproductive years, women have varying levels of oestrogen and progesterone throughout the menstrual cycle. (For more details on the menstrual cycle and it’s impact on sleep see this post.) With the onset of perimenopause, oestrogen levels gradually reduce and follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) increase. These changes in hormone levels can bring about a number of symptoms:
- Hot flushes – also called ‘hot flashes’ or ‘vasomotor symptoms’ are the most common symptoms of the menopausal transition. They can occur in up to 80% of women, with 20-30% of women seeking medical attention for treatment. When hot flushes occur at night, women typically describe them as ‘night sweats’.
- Depression – women have a 2.5 times increased risk of developing symptoms of depression in the menopausal transition compared to when they are premenopausal.
- Sleep disturbance – Around 40% of women develop sleep disturbance associated with menopause.
- Breast pain and tenderness – these symptoms are more common in early perimenopause
How does menopause affect sleep?
Women in perimenopause and post-menopause have more sleep disturbance than pre-menopausal women. Research on over 3,000 women published in 2008, showed that 40% of women post-menopause reported problems staying asleep or waking frequently at night. There are a number of contributing factors to disturbed sleep, but hot flushes are reported as being the major cause of sleep disturbance during perimenopause. In women with severe hot flushes, around 80% have chronic insomnia during perimenopause. (Archives of Internal Medicine 2006)
Other factors associated with disturbed sleep and the menopause are:
- depression and anxiety symptoms – as noted above, women are at higher risk of depression during the perimenopause, and can also have an increase in anxiety symptoms
- sleep disorders – are more common in women during perimenopause and post-menopause. In a study of 102 women reporting sleep disturbances, 53% had sleep apnea, restless legs syndrome or both.
What can be done to help with sleep?
With sleep being lighter and more readily disturbed, together with the sleep disturbance from hot flushes and sleep disorders, it’s important to give yourself the best chance of sleeping well, as well as minimise the impact of poor sleep.
- Managing hot flushes – most women with hot flushes don’t need medication as there are some simple strategies than can help reduce night sweats. Reducing the room temperature, using a fan in the bedroom and dressing in layers of bed clothing that can be shed can help. If hot flush symptoms are more severe, hormonal or drug treatment could be considered in discussion with your health professional. There has been recent research on treating hot flushes with a low dose of venlafaxine (a medication also used for depression and anxiety) showing a similar effectiveness to oestrogen or other hormone replacement therapy.
- Minimise the impact of disturbed sleep – looking after yourself, by ensuring you have time for yourself (see this post on prioritising ‘me’ time) are maintaining good general health can help you feel better throughout the day. If you’re feeling better during the day, even if sleep is disturbed, it won’t have as much of an impact.
- Look out for sleep disorders – recognise that you are at higher risk for sleep disorders such as sleep apnea or insomnia. So if you are having trouble with sleep despite doing what you can, talk to your health professional about getting a referral to a sleep specialist.
Related posts & links:
Need more information about how you can sleep better?
At Sleephub we understand the struggle people endure with sleeping problems which is why we have created a comprehensive FAQs page with information for those seeking information about sleep disorders and potential solutions. | <urn:uuid:dc88b0c7-754f-4efc-9430-c98ceb6198a4> | {
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Wood chips from low-value trees eligible for RECs in NC
The Appeal Court of North Carolina has unanimously turned down an appeal against a decision by the North Carolina Utilities Commission to allow the inclusion of wood chips derived from low-value whole trees in the state’s renewable energy definition.
In late 2010, power utility Duke Energy requested that cofiring wood chips derived from lower-value whole trees be eligible for renewable energy credits (REC) under the state’s renewable energy standard. The Environmental Defense Fund, Southern Environmental Law Center, and North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association then filed an appeal, claiming the decision allowed natural old-growth forests to be cut down, and that state renewable energy credits should be restricted to using waste wood as fuel.
Because of the appeal court’s unanimous denial of that appeal, the process is likely over, according to Megan Butler, Duke Energy’s manager of renewable strategy and compliance. “If there were any hold outs, I could see them filing another [appeal], but I would be surprised if they did,” she said.
The deadline for an appeal on the appeal court’s decision is Sept. 6 and if none are filed, the North Carolina Utilities Commission’s decision goes into effect, Butler said.
The decision has ruffled feathers in part because wood chips derived from low-value wood are often confused with whole tree wood chips. But forest management and thinning operations often leave unmerchantable whole trees and the promise of RECs for chipping and using those trees can create a market, and therefore an incentive for landowners to improve forest management. | <urn:uuid:47a05d1e-f186-4df8-bcbf-60a8d58c7e1c> | {
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The Basics of Western Medicine Drugs For Eastern Practitioners: Part I
By Bruce H. Robinson, MD, FACS, MSOM (Hon)
Those who seek your medical care are likely to be taking Western drugs. These medications have distinct effects on their physical condition, as well as their mental and emotional condition, which may affect the treatment you select for them and also their response to your treatment.
An important aspect of your careful medical evaluation is to sort through what medications your patients are taking. I will be covering Western drugs in three installments, to help you recognize types and classes of such medications, and their effects. I will review the more common drugs your patients will likely be taking, but I can only cover the highlights. The Physician's Desk Reference of all drugs in use in America is a very heavy book over 3,000 pages long.
I believe drugs are widely overprescribed in America today. We are an over-drugged nation. In particular, many people are on antidepressants and tranquillizers that should not be. A lot of these people are addicted to their medications, and it is very hard to get them off their drugs when the acute episode that prompted the use of the drug is over. They have become dependent on their pharmacological support. Yet, who really wants to spend the rest of their life on a drug that numbs or tranquillizes them? With those who are ill we should avoid the use of drugs where there are other valid alternatives we can chose to get them better. Yes, I know, I'm preaching to the choir!
It is also true that drugs are among the greatest beneficial developments of all time. General anesthesia, for example was one of the major discoveries of the 19th century. Then we have penicillin, and morphine, and insulin. I have always been a reluctant prescriber of drugs, but I've been very grateful for them when they were needed.
A Brief Primer on Drugs
All drugs have four descriptors:
The class of drug. Examples include corticosteroids, H2 inhibitors, NSAID's, beta-blockers, ACE inhibitors, and SSRI's (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors).
The chemical name of the drug.
The generic drug name.
The brand name.
Class: a benzodiazepine drug (a class of tranquillizers)
Chemical name: 7-chloro-1,3-dihydro-1-methyl-5-phenyl-1,4-benzodiazepin-2(3H)-1
Generic drug name: diazepam
Brand names: Valium (US and Canada); Antenex (Australia)
Rule to remember: the generic name of a drug is lower-case; the brand name of the drug is capitalized. Examples: The drug diazepam is better known by its brand name Valium. The drug acetylsalicylic acid is better known by its major brand name, Aspirin.
The FDA classifies and controls the availability of drugs according to their "abuse potential." This is often based on social convention as much as on research:
Schedule I: high abuse potential, with no accepted medical use: heroin, LSD, marijuana (still on this list, at least for now, although this is highly controversial, as you know). These drugs cannot be prescribed and their use is illegal.
Schedule II: drugs with high abuse potential but medical uses as well: opiates, barbiturates, amphetamines, cocaine. These drugs can only be obtained with a narcotic prescription written by a physician.
Schedule III: low to moderate abuse potential, with many medical uses: some tranquillizers and sedatives. These drugs require a regular prescription, written by a physician.
Schedule IV: low abuse potential, many medical uses: codeine, valium, some other widely-used tranquillizers, as well as a vast number of other drugs. These also require a regular prescription by a physician or nurse practitioner.
Schedule V: drugs with minimal abuse potential. These are over-the-counter drugs: NSAIDS, antacids, laxatives, etc.
Drugs should not be confused with food supplements. Supplements include Chinese and Western herbs, vitamins, protein supplements, memory aids, energy boosters, liver detoxification supplements, prostate shrinking supplements, etc. The term "Supplement Facts" must be printed on the label of all commercially marketed supplements, and all the ingredients must be listed, the amount per serving, and the percentage of any established "Daily Value." Proposed benefits of the supplement can be listed, but NO claim to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. There is usually a disclaimer by the FDA stating this, often printed in a separate box on the label.
Clinical trials in drug testing
To bring a new drug from its discovery to becoming a drug that can be prescribed takes up to 10 years (sometimes more), and costs many millions of dollars. Drug companies then charge consumers later on for this cost of bringing the drug to market. As a result, Viagra may now cost only a few cents per tablet to manufacture, but it can be marketed for over $20 a tablet. Knowing that drug companies need to recover their development costs does not seem to offset the sense of outrage we often feel when we pay an arm and a leg for such a drug. These drugs now reap enormous profits for the companies that market them. The newest drugs that are based on monoclonal antibodies, very popular in treating arthritis, various forms of cancer, and neurological conditions, are also very expensive.
There are four phases of testing and clinical trials required to get a drug approved for market distribution:
Phase 0: animal testing of a promising drug.
Phase 1: the drug is tried out on a small number of healthy volunteers, usually 20 to 100, to determine clinical safety of the drug in general terms, and the proper dosage for various people, based on age, gender, and weight of the patient.
Phase 2: usually about 300 volunteers: further testing to determine how well the drugs works compared to a placebo. These must be randomized double-blind clinical trials.
Phase 3: controlled multicenter trials on hundreds to thousands of patients, the actual number depending on the disease being studied (rarer diseases: fewer patients)
We will now discuss various classes of medications in use, starting off with nervous system drugs.
Minor episodes of depression are a part of daily life, and they are best treated without drugs. Unfortunately this wise rule is not regularly adhered to by physicians, who often place their patients on tranquillizers to bring them out of a down period in their life when what they really need is support, understanding, friendship and love.
Major depression is associated with chemical imbalances in the brain, and is characterized by anhedonia: the loss of the ability to enjoy life or find any pleasure or comfort in it. There are feelings of intense sadness, a strong sense of worthlessness, loss of sex drive, weight loss or weight gain associated with the depression, either insomnia or hypersomnia, and there are often thoughts of death or suicide (or actual plans to commit suicide). Major depression and suicide go together, and constitute serious problems and much heartbreak in our society, as we all know.
Drugs are very helpful in treating major depression. Again, they are vastly overprescribed for minor depression. There are three classes of effective medications for major depression: tricyclic antidepressants, monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAO inhibitors), and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs).
All three classes of antidepressants increase the levels of "feel good" neurotransmitters in the synapses of the brain: dopamine, epinephrine (adrenalin), norepinephrine (noradrenalin), and serotonin (5 hydroxytryptamine). These are all monoamine neurotransmitters (one amine group on the end of the molecule: NH2)
The best known are Elavil®, Tofranil®, and Sinequan®. They block the reuptake of monoamine neurotransmitters from the synapses of the brain, thus prolonging their availability at these brain receptor sites. These neurotransmitters enhance alertness, facilitate coping skills, and generally improve mood. Elavil is particularly popular, and although it is a stimulant its use before bedtime can curiously help with sleep, as it makes the person feel less nervous and anxious about his or her problems.
Monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAO inhibitors)
Nardil®, and Marplan® are the most common, but there are many others as well. These drugs block the chemical breakdown of monoamine neurotransmitters, increasing their concentration in the brain. Very popular a few years ago, they are less prescribed today because of their side effects, which we will discuss.
Side effects are frequent with both of these classes of drugs. The tricyclic antidepressants have anticholinergic effects on the body which decrease parasympathetic function and result in a dry mouth and throat, pupil dilation with possible blurred vision, tachycardia, trouble voiding, and constipation. Side effects of the MAO inhibitors include weight gain, impotence, postural hypotension, agitation, uncontrollable bursts of temper, and sometimes, hallucinations or seizures.
Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI's)
These drugs inhibit the reuptake of serotonin, and, with some of them, norepinephrine as well. This increases the concentration of these "feel good" neurotransmitters in the synapses of the brain, which elevates mood and enhances coping skills. Examples of these drugs are Prozac®, Zoloft®, Paxil®, Effexor®, Wellbutrin®, and many others.
SSRI's generally have milder side effects than the tricyclic antidepressants or the monoamine oxidase inhibitors. As a result they have become very popular and have largely replaced the other two classes of antidepressants (Elavil, as I noted, is still used by many patients). They do cause headaches, nausea, diarrhea, nervousness, skin rashes, or insomnia, and problems in some people with controlling their temper. Sometimes these side effects tend to diminish over time.
Drugs for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
ADHD, which diagnosis now includes ADD (with less of a hyperactivity component) is characterized by restlessness, easy distractibility, short attention span and compulsivity. Amphetamines or similar-acting drugs are mild CNS stimulants that reduce or even eliminate symptoms in almost 90 percent of children who take them reliably and appropriately. It is curious that these stimulants do indeed help people, especially children, with this group of related disorders. The increased serotonin and dopamine in the brain helps the child to focus better and filter out distractions.
Dextro-amphetamine (Dexadrine®), methyphenidate (Ritalin®) and the newer, longer-acting drug pemoline (Cylert®) are the most widely used drugs. Strattera® is also becoming popular. These drugs are combined with family counseling and psychotherapy for best results.
ADD and ADHD are highly over-diagnosed in the US. ADHD is often confused with gifted kids, or mentally challenged kids, kids with family or social problems, dyslexia, hearing disabilities, or other medical disorders that also cause children to not pay attention in school. These children are often wrongly put on these drugs. They do not improve or they actually get worse. ®If the ADD diagnosis is correct, most children really benefit from these medications (it can be dramatic).
The most common side effect is CNS overstimulation, with insomnia, dizziness, agitation, or loss of appetite. These symptoms tend to diminish with continued use of the drug. Hypertension can sometimes occur, or even cardiac arrhythmias, but both of these serious side effects are uncommon. Patients need to be carefully monitored and changed to another drug or have the drug withdrawn without replacement if these occur.
If the child with ADHD can be effectively managed by family and school counselors without drugs, that is best. If they are struggling, a drug such as Ritalin should be tried. The results can be amazing, if the diagnosis of ADHD was correct.
Rule to follow: it is best to avoid drugs in treating medical conditions whenever another treatment is likely to be successful. If drugs are resorted to, always weigh the benefits of using the drug versus the risks of not using it. Do the benefits clearly outweigh the risks? In the case of ADHD, drugs are often very helpful, above and beyond what can be accomplished without them.
Drugs for Excessive Anxiety and for Sedation
The two major classes of drugs used for these clinical situations are barbiturates and the benzodiazepines. They are among the most widely used drugs in the U.S. as well as in many other countries (modern life is very stressful). The most sedative neurotransmitter in the brain is GABA (gamma amino butyric acid). It resides in the reticular activating system and makes us relax and go to sleep when the time is right to do so. The challenge for drug inventors has been to design a drug that will make us relax (tranquillizer effects) without getting too sleepy (sedative effects). All of these drugs enhance the levels of GABA in the brain.
Barbiturates (such as phenobarbitol)
Phenobarbitol was first marketed by Bayer in 1912. It facilitates the retention of GABA and chloride, causing sedation, a sense of euphoria, and hypnosis. Barbiturates are more directly sedating than the newer benzodiazepines, and so they are no longer used as tranquillizers. They are still used as sleeping medications, as a supplement to general anesthetics, and for control of seizures.
Barbitol and phenobarbitol are long-acting barbiturates (effects last for 8-10 hours). They work well as sleeping pills but you wake up with a hangover! Well-known short-acting barbiturates include secobarbital (Seconal®, a popular sleeping pill in the 1960's and 1970's), amobarbital (Sodium Amytal®) and pentobarbital (Sodium Pentothal®, the so-called truth serum featured in many classic movies).
Many depressed individuals have attempted or succeeded in committing suicide taking a bottleful of these drugs. Ultra-short acting thiopental is used as an anesthetic agent (given IV).
Benzodiazepines (such as Valium)
These drugs enhance GABA secretion in the brain, thus causing sedative effects and skeletal muscle relaxation. They are used to treat anxiety states, nervous tension, agitation, delirium tremens during alcohol withdrawal, and as anticonvulsants. They work well as relaxants, without major sedative effects. These attributes have made them enormously popular all over the world. The most widely known and utilized is diazepam (Valium®), one of the most popular drugs of the last 50 years in America and other countries. Valium was first marketed in 1963.
Dalmane®, Librium®, Tranxene®, and Klonopin® are also widely used long-acting drugs of this class. Valium is the most rapidly absorbed of all these drugs and has a prolonged length of active time in the body. This is why it has been so popular. Shorter acting benzodiazepines include Versed®, Xanax®, Ativan®, Serax®, and Restoril®. Xanax works quickly and is very popular with those who need a quick calming-down in the midst of their stress-filled lives. It has a short half-life in the body which is also desirable for such situations. Klonopin helps the most with those who have muscle spasms or a sense of jerking movements with their attacks of anxiety, as it quiets these down. Versed, given IV, is widely used as a short-acting anesthetic (for colonoscopy, biopsies).
Side effects of both classes of drugs are similar: drowsiness, dysarthria (trouble speaking clearly), ataxia, dermatitis, and a curious paradoxical overstimulation with strange behavior due to the loss of inhibition that we normally have (somewhat similar to the effects of alcohol in this regard, but causing more bizarre behavior).
In my next article I will discuss pain medications, drugs for respiratory problems, and drugs for diseases of the gastrointestinal tract.
Click here for more information about Bruce H. Robinson, MD, FACS, MSOM (Hon).
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Is it 20 minutes, 30 minutes, or an hour? We’ve all heard different answers to this age-old question, but which one is correct? Throughout history the debate has raged on. Was your mom right all those years, or is it just a myth after all?
Do you have to wait?
The quick answer is no, you don’t have to wait to swim after eating. Because it’s such a widely accepted “fact,” a lot of research has been done on the subject. Despite being debunked several times over by countless research organizations, the myth of waiting to swim persists, and kids everywhere hear about it all summer long. So, for all those kids eagerly waiting to have some fun in the pool after lunch, go for it! There have been no documented cases of drowning after eating.
Where the myth came from
When you eat food, your body sends extra blood to the digestive system to help convert the food to energy. That is true. The myth comes from a mistaken belief that so much blood would be sent to the digestive tract that you wouldn’t be able to sufficiently power your arms and legs to stay above water. The alternative theory is that your arms and legs could use too much blood in the process of swimming and not allow enough to get to your stomach for digestion, resulting in debilitating cramps. Either way, the end result would be drowning.
The earliest written example of the myth comes from a Boy Scout handbook from 1908. It warned people to not go swimming at least 90 minutes after eating. If you did end up drowning after eating, it would be your own fault. Researchers debunked the myth, but the handbook had done its damage. The myth has survived for over a century.
Is there any truth to the myth?
While it may not hinder your ability to swim, the diversion of blood flow to your digestive system after eating is true, and you could develop cramps if you’re overly active right after a meal. If you feel a cramp coming, just get out of the pool for a couple minutes. It won’t cause your arms and legs to fail entirely as once believed. You could easily power through if you’re having too much fun to leave! Your body has enough blood to run all of your body parts simultaneously, even after a large meal.
If you want to keep telling your kids to relax for 30 minutes after eating just for some peace and quiet, that’s okay. Nobody will tell on you. Go ahead and make it the Boy Scout’s suggested 90 minutes if you like. But if your kids remain persistent, there’s no issue with letting them jump in right after lunch.
For exercising purposes
Eating is the way you fuel your body. When you eat, it takes at least two to three hours for the food to be fully digested and turned into energy. If you decide to hop into the pool right after lunch, it won’t hinder your ability to swim, but it also won’t allow enough time for your body to provide the maximum amount of energy possible. If you are swimming as a part of your exercise routine, maybe you should wait before doing your laps, or any other workout for that matter.
More important than when or what you eat is how much water you drink. Swimming is an intense cardiovascular activity that makes you sweat. You might not realize how much you’re sweating because you’re in the water. Dehydration, unlike muscle cramps, can absolutely cause you to drown if you’re not careful. Always drink plenty of water before and during any strenuous physical activities whether it’s for exercise or play. | <urn:uuid:8d36f149-7243-4836-8b76-21b60881cf7e> | {
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Despite years of wrongful demonization, eggs are one of the healthiest things you can eat.
When you are shopping and come to the egg section, you may have noticed the wealth of options at your disposal.
Look closely, and you will see a few with ‘omega-3’ on the label.
Everyone knows that omega-3 is good for our health, but are omega-3 enriched eggs really a healthier choice?
And how do they compare to other types of eggs?
Let’s take a look.
What Are Omega-3 Eggs?
We all know how nutritious eggs are, but where do omega-3 eggs stand?
First of all, there are two different ways for eggs to be ‘fortified’ with omega-3.
The first is by feeding the hens a source of ALA (alpha linoleic acid); flaxseeds are an excellent example and a standard choice.
An alternate way that really boosts the omega-3 content is by supplementing additional fish oil in the chicken’s diets, which contains DHA (docosahexaenoic acid).
Note: DHA and ALA are both types of omega-3 fatty acids with some slight differences, which we will come to shortly.
A typical omega-3 egg provides a much higher amount of omega-3 than regular eggs, but the total can vary wildly between brands.
Here are some examples of different egg brands from various countries;
|Brand||Omega-3 Content per Large Egg|
|Organic Valley||225 mg|
|4 Grain||150 mg|
|Sauder’s Eggs||325 mg|
|Fresh & Easy||160 mg|
|Gold Circle Farms||150 mg|
|Smart Balance||192 mg|
As you can see in the above table, there is no real consistency of omega-3.
The reason for this is that it depends on how much DHA and ALA are in the chicken feed.
DHA is More Important Than ALA
The main difference between these two omega-3 fatty acids is that our body can directly use DHA.
However, ALA is only a precursor to the omega-3 acids DHA and EPA.
What this means is that our body needs to convert ALA into DHA and EPA to be able to use it.
Given this, it’s important to note that the successful conversion of ALA into DHA is very unreliable (1);
- ALA to DHA conversion rate: 0-9%
- ALA to EPA conversion rate: 8-21%
In other words, we cannot use most of the ALA we consume, so it is a poor source of omega-3.
If you’re planning on buying omega-3 eggs, look for eggs with a high DHA content rather than ALA.
You should be able to see these values listed on the packaging.
How Do Omega-3 Eggs Compare to Regular Eggs?
Firstly, there isn’t really such a thing as ‘regular’ eggs given there are so many different methods of producing them.
Some different types of eggs you can find in stores are;
- Pastured eggs
- Free range eggs
- Caged eggs
- Cage-free eggs
- Omega-3 eggs
- Organic eggs
Pastured eggs are the best choice when it comes to eggs, for both health and the welfare of the chicken.
Chickens raised on pasture are free to walk around in the wild and scavenge for their food in woods and fields.
In other words, the chickens get to live a natural life and eat a species-appropriate diet; grass, plants, bugs, small animals and whatever else they can find.
The net result is a more nutritious diet, and this clearly shows in pastured eggs; the yolks are often dark orange in color, and they have a deeper flavor.
Free Range Eggs
Depending on the country where you live, the definition of ‘free range’ can wildly differ. As a result, it is best to check your own nation’s egg labeling requirements
In the UK for example, the ‘free-range’ term is interchangeable with the US ‘pastured.’ Free range eggs in the UK are therefore raised outdoors in their natural environment.
However, the requirements for labeling eggs as free range in the United States are completely different.
US free range hens live in a barn with access to the outdoors, but this might only be a door to a fenced off muddy yard with no sign of pasture.
In fact, these chickens may never even step outside and, similar to caged chickens, their diet revolves around commercial feed.
These eggs are otherwise known as ‘battery’ or ‘conventional’ eggs and come from chickens that live in confinement.
Sadly, the chickens barely have any room to move. They spend their lives in a small cage eating grains and seeds.
While cage-free sounds better than the last option, in reality, these eggs are not always so different.
For instance, thousands of chickens often live cramped together in an overcrowded barn.
There are some operations which focus on humane conditions and animal welfare, but there are others where the animals live in terrible conditions.
But either way, the animals do not have access to the outdoors, and they cannot eat their natural diet.
Depending on the operation, chickens producing omega-3 eggs will either be caged or cage-free.
The only difference is that they have their diet supplemented with a source of omega-3.
Upon hearing the word organic, many people automatically assume it is the best version of the food available.
However, this isn’t always the truth, and the welfare of chickens laying organic eggs can differ from place to place.
The only thing which the ‘organic’ label denotes is that the chickens eat organic feed free of pesticides and fertilizers.
Also, that the farmers use no antibiotics or hormones in the chickens.
That said, it does not mean that the chickens are raised on their natural diet or have access to pasture. Some chickens laying organic eggs have access to the outdoors, but some do not.
There have been numerous studies on omega-3 eggs, regarding both their composition and their health benefits in humans.
Here is an overview of what the research shows, covering both the health benefits and the impact on nutritional values.
- Compared to a control group eating four regular eggs per day, a group eating four omega-3 eggs daily experienced a decrease in triglycerides. Additionally, the omega-3 group had decreases in blood pressure, which the regular egg group did not (2).
- Nineteen healthy volunteers included either an extra omega-3 egg or a standard egg in their daily diet for one month. After one month, the health markers of those eating the regular eggs showed no change. However, the omega-3 eggs resulted in a lowering of markers associated with cardiovascular disease, and lower blood glucose (3).
- A study compared twenty healthy men with an average age of 20. Ten participants ate three omega-3 eggs per day, and the other ten ate three regular eggs. The results of the study showed the omega-3 group as having a “statistically significant decrease in lipid peroxidation” and oxidative stress. In other words, there was a reduction in markers of cardiovascular risk (4).
Egg Nutritional Composition
- Compared to fish oil and flaxseed, including chia seeds in the chicken’s diet produced the highest concentration of omega-3 fatty acids in the eggs. However, out of the three, only a diet supplemented with fish oil produced detectable levels of DHA and EPA in the eggs (5).
- By feeding chickens with fish extracts or fish oil, the level of DHA in their eggs increases by between 3 to 6-fold (6).
- A study investigating the differences between conventional, organic and omega-3 eggs analyzed the nutritional value of the yolks. Notably, omega-3 composed 6.57% of the yolk in the enriched eggs. However, conventional eggs and organic eggs only contained 1.36% and 1.34% respectively (7).
How Do Omega-3 Eggs Compare to Other Foods?
If we are specifically looking to increase the amount of omega-3 in our diet, are enriched eggs the best option?
Earlier on, we saw the omega-3 values per egg. Below is a table which compares these values to other foods rich in omega-3.
All data comes from the Nutrition Data database;
|Food and Amount||Omega-3 Content|
|4oz Ground Grass-fed Beef||98.4 mg|
|5oz Herring Fillet||3105 mg|
|5oz Mackerel Fillet||1990 mg|
|Omega-3 Enriched Eggs||115 – 660 mg (per egg)|
|5oz Wild Salmon Fillet||3620 mg|
|Sardines (92g can)||1362 mg|
|5oz Trout Fillet||1920 mg|
|1oz Walnuts||2542 mg|
As shown above, oily fish provides a more significant source of omega-3 than fortified eggs.
For this reason, we should ideally emphasize oily fish if we’re striving to increase dietary omega-3.
Furthermore, all omega-3 fatty acids in fish are DHA and EPA and need no conversion.
Which Are the Best Eggs to Buy?
Overall, it depends on what you are looking for.
If eggs from healthy animals living in their natural environment are important to you, then there is only one choice; pastured.
On the other hand, if you can’t quite afford pastured eggs (after all, they are pretty expensive) then omega-3 eggs might be worth a look.
However, if you do opt for these eggs then remember to look for a high DHA content primarily.
Caged eggs is a very controversial topic. Despite the lack of freedom caged and cage-free chickens enjoy, the nutrient profile of the eggs is still excellent.
Personally, I try to buy pastured eggs, but it very much depends on individual priorities and circumstances.
It is a choice for each person to make.
No matter what type of eggs you eat, they are one of the most nutritious foods available.
However, if you want an easy way to improve your omega 6 to omega-3 ratio, then omega-3 enriched eggs are a decent choice. | <urn:uuid:1d455cbb-644d-4dd0-807c-a65930216b0a> | {
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Reference books that entertain
Reference books may not be high on most youngsters' preferred reading lists, but several new titles pack a lot of information into fairly entertaining formats. The Physical World, by Tony Seddon and Jill Bailey (Doubleday, $12.95, ages 10 and up), is one good example. As they explore the formation of the earth's crust, its lakes, seas, and atmosphere, the authors ask their readers questions (answered at the end of the book) and suggest experiments to prove the points under discussion. The text is broken up into readable chunks. There are plenty of color photos and graphics, a glossary, index, and suggested additional reading.
Why Do the Seasons Change?, by Philip Whitfield and Joyce Pope (Viking Kestrel, $15.95, ages 10 and up), is a follow-up to last year's successful ``Do Animals Dream?'' which was named an Outstanding Science Trade Book for Children by the Children's Book Council. Here the knowledgeable staff of London's Natural History Museum field 113 of the questions they're most frequently asked by visitors - questions such as Why do bees buzz? Why are flowers so pretty?
One of the best new collections of reference works for readers aged 12 and up is a four-volume set produced by Facts on File, New York, with each 152-page book priced at $24.95. The Encyclopedia of Animal Ecology, edited by Peter D. Moore, looks at the diversity of life on earth and shows principles of ecology at work in specific environments. The Encyclopedia of Animal Behavior, edited by Peter J.B. Slater, examines such phenomena as the relative tameness of wild species living on uninhabited islands and the predator-prey relationships that are suspended from time to time among coral reef-dwelling fish. In The Encyclopedia of Animal Evolution, edited by R.J. Berry and A. Hallam, the reader is taken on a trip through time, from the formation of the earth through the theories of Aristotle and Charles Darwin. Finally, there's The Encyclopedia of Animal Biology, edited by R. McNeill Alexander, which discusses the main groups of animals, their structures, and ways of life. The color photography in all four books is outstanding. | <urn:uuid:9ed3d601-a4ca-4651-8510-3d13e3aca618> | {
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Single-crystal shape memory CuAlMn bar produced by unique heat treating process
September 13, 2017
Source: ASM International
Tohoku University, Japan, reports that its researchers and colleagues have found an economical way to improve the properties of copper-aluminum-manganese 'shape memory' alloys by a unique heat treating method. The method could make way for the mass production of these improved metals for a variety of applications, including earthquake-resistant construction materials.
The alloy is made of copper, aluminum, and manganese, and is a well-known shape memory metal that is easy to cut with machines. Increasing the size of the material's crystals drastically enhances its elasticity. Altering its shape also makes it quite strong. These combined features make it very attractive for building structures that can withstand earthquakes.
Most metals are made of a large number of crystals but, in some cases, their properties improve when they are formed of a single crystal. However, single-crystal metals are expensive to produce. Metallurgists have developed a cheaper production method that takes advantage of a phenomenon known as 'abnormal grain growth.' This process causes the metal's multiple 'grains', or crystals, to grow irregularly, some at the expense of others, when it is exposed to heat.
The team's technique involves several cycles of heating and cooling that result in a single-crystal metal bar 70 cm in length and 15 mm in diameter. According to Toshihiro Omori, the lead researcher in the study, this is very large compared to the sizes of current shape memory alloy bars, making it suitable for building and civil engineering applications.
To produce the large single-crystal bar, the alloy is heated to 900°C, then cooled to 500°C, five times. This is followed by four cycles of heating to 740°C then cooling to 500°C. Finally, the metal is heated one last time to 900°C. Omitting the lower temperature heating (740°C)/cooling (500°C) cycles does not lead to the single-crystal result.
"Since the present technique is advantageous for mass production of single crystals because of the simplicity of the process, this finding opens the way for applications of shape memory single crystals for structural materials, such as for seismic applications in buildings and bridges," conclude the researchers in their study published in the journal Nature Communications.
Industries and Applications | Marine Applications
Materials Processing and Treatment | Heat Treating
Materials Properties and Performance | Physical Properties
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Ramadan in 2018 will start on Wednesday, the 16th of May(16/5/2018) and will continue for 30 days until Thursday, the 14th of June.
Ramadan is the ninth month in the Islamic calendar, which is a lunar calendar based on the cycles of the moon.
Note that in the Muslim calendar, a holiday begins on the sunset of the previous day, so observing Muslims will celebrate Ramadan on the sunset of Tuesday, the 15th of May.
Fasting: the fourth pillar of Islam
Fasting during Ramadan is the fourth of the Five Pillars of Islam. These pillars, or duties, form the basis of how Muslims practice their religion.
- Shahada: faith in the Islam religion,
- Salat: pray five times per day facing the direction of Makkah
- Zakat: give support to the needy,
- Sawm: fast during Ramadan, and
- Hajj: make the pilgrimage to Makkah at least once during one’s lifetime.
Fasting is done out of the love for Allah (God) and shows devotion, willpower, discipline, patience, selflessness, adaptability, unity, and closeness to the supreme being. It’s a time to reflect and appreciate.
Not everyone can take part in fasting.
There are some exceptions, including the severely mentally ill, those who are sick or elderly, and people who are away from home on a journey of 50 miles or more. Also if women who are pregnant, breastfeeding or having their period are not expected to fast.
Children who haven’t yet reached puberty, usually around 14, are also exempt.
For the fasting to be valid, a serious intention, or niyyah, must be made to fast and adhere to the laws surrounding the fast. The commitment must be made each day before dawn. The fast will be considered to be nullified if one eats or drinks, intentionally vomits, has sexual intercourse or has menstrual or childbirth bleeding.
Many mosques around the world host interfaith celebrations to break the fast, this allows everyone to reflect on shared experiences within their own traditions involving fasting, including spiritual growth and social responsibility.
At the end of Ramadan, a three-day spiritual celebration known as Eid al-Fitr occurs. During this time, Muslims rejoice in the completion of the fast. Family members and friends gather to share in feasts and prayers. During Eid al-Fitr, it is customary to donate to the poor and disadvantaged.
Breaking the fast with dates is the only strictly traditional culinary custom associated with Ramadan. It is interesting to note the suitability of dates for this purpose as they are a concentrated source of energy and easily digestible. Different Muslim-populated countries have a variety of special dishes and desserts for Ramadan.
Benefits of Fasting
Doctors agree that fasting is extremely beneficial for lowering cholesterol levels and for other health benefits. Fasting is a means of purifying the body as well as the spirit, as it gives the body a rest from the continuous task of digesting food. | <urn:uuid:df9cc445-6832-42b5-b5b6-d51dece1068c> | {
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Nonallergic rhinitis is diagnosed based on your symptoms and ruling out other causes, especially allergies. Your doctor will perform a physical examination and ask questions about your symptoms.
He or she may also recommend certain tests. There are no specific, definite tests used to diagnose nonallergic rhinitis. Your doctor is likely to conclude your symptoms are caused by nonallergic rhinitis if you have nasal congestion, a runny nose or postnasal drip, and tests for other conditions don't reveal an underlying cause such as allergies or a sinus problem.
In some cases, your doctor may have you try a medication and see whether your symptoms improve.
Ruling out an allergic cause
In many cases, rhinitis is caused by an allergic reaction. The only way to be sure rhinitis isn't caused by allergies is through allergy testing, which may involve skin or blood tests.
- Skin test. To find out whether your symptoms might be caused by a certain allergen, your skin is pricked and exposed to small amounts of common airborne allergens, such as dust mites, mold, pollen, cat and dog dander. If you're allergic to a particular allergen, you'll likely develop a raised bump (hive) at the test location on your skin. If you're not allergic to any of the substances, your skin looks normal.
- Blood test. A blood test can measure your immune system's response to common allergens by measuring the amount of certain antibodies in your bloodstream, known as immunoglobulin E (IgE) antibodies. A blood sample is sent to a medical laboratory, where it can be tested for evidence of sensitivity to specific allergens.
In some cases, rhinitis may be caused by both allergic and nonallergic causes.
Ruling out sinus problems
Your doctor will also want to be sure your symptoms aren't caused by a sinus problem related to a deviated septum or nasal polyps. If your doctor suspects a sinus problem may be causing your symptoms, you may need an imaging test to view your sinuses.
- Nasal endoscopy. This test involves looking at the inside of your nasal passages. This is done with a thin, fiber-optic viewing instrument called an endoscope. Your doctor will pass the fiber-optic endoscope through your nostrils to examine your nasal passages and sinuses.
- Computerized tomography (CT) scan. This procedure is a computerized X-ray technique that produces images of your sinuses that are more detailed than those produced by conventional X-ray exams. | <urn:uuid:6794e892-3921-4ab7-82e7-4c27af6dcc2c> | {
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Beauty is a little girl from a small village in the North Dinajpur district of West Bengal, India. She lives with her father, mother and younger sister. Living in abject poverty, need and unhygienic surroundings, Beauty lost her older sister, Ratna, of tuberculosis in 2008. Ratna’s sudden death left everyone in the family emotionally broken and disintegrated.
In the midst of their grief, the whole family had to undergo a series of medical tests for their safety. The test results uncovered a shocking fact to Kamal and Seema, Beauty’s parents. Beauty tested positive and was in the first stage of tuberculosis. This was hard news for them, especially as they had just lost Ratna.
“We did not have words to express what we felt inside, as our hearts were frozen,” says Beauty’s mother.
Beauty comes from a poor community where typical houses are made of beaten bamboo walls with earthen tiles covering the roof. The families grapple with many problems daily.
Poverty has crept into their lives due to lack of hygiene, schooling, hospitals and better job opportunities. People end up pulling rickshaws, driving tricycle vans, and working at sporadic farming and a variety of daily jobs, which are hard to find.
The average daily income of a family here is a little over a dollar. Many children are so poor they cannot attend school at all. Hunger, disease and unsanitary living conditions are all around.
Beauty’s father Kamal works as a temporary carpenter in a small shop. He doesn’t have work every day as he works on contract. If he has work he earns about $1.30 a day. Beauty’s mother Seema is a homemaker. The land on which their house is built belongs to someone else.
As Beauty’s father is out of work most of the time, he was gripped with the fear of losing Beauty just like Ratna. He worked hard to earn enough to take care of his family’s needs. But it was difficult for Kamal to send Beauty to school, to feed the family, and especially to take care of Beauty’s medical tests, frequent examinations and medicine.
Kamal would go to work, but his mind would be elsewhere. He could not concentrate on his work properly.
“When she was younger, Beauty’s nature reminded me of Ratna … Ratna’s face came to mind every moment, making it hard for me to forget the pain and hurt caused by our loss.”
Beauty’s health gradually deteriorated, and her parents could only watch without being able to do much. She fell sick frequently and was often tired and inactive. Beauty lost her appetite and her growth was stunted. At the age of 8 she is tiny compared with other girls her age in the community.
In August 2009, Kamal heard about Compassion and took Beauty for admission at the new child development center.
Since her enrollment, the center has provided Beauty free tuition and nutritious hot meals consisting of rice, dal (lentil), vegetables andchicken/egg/fish every alternate day — food Beauty’s parents can’t afford.
The Compassion-assisted center also makes sure Beauty receives medical screenings, monthly doctor’s checkups and, based on need, free medicines and reimbursement of bills upon producing legitimate prescriptions. Beauty receives academic and hygiene supplies from the center once a month.
Today, Beauty is learning many things. She has learned good manners and discipline. She greets people older with respect.
Her health is improving as she is having both health screenings at the center and routine tests and examinations at the hospital for her tuberculosis — all of which the center is taking care of. She is studying well and winning medals and certificates in sports, too.
Beauty is like any other child who has God-given potential to perform but just needs timely medical intervention. | <urn:uuid:a2b57e2f-c81d-466e-9f6d-97cf53871cb4> | {
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Jan 30, 2013
Download The application programming interface (API) is an emerging technology for integrating applications using Web technology. This approach is exploding in popularity because it builds on well-understood techniques and leverages some existing infrastructure. But it is a mistake to think we can secure APIs using the same methods and technology with which we secured the conventional, browser-centric Web. While it is true that APIs share many of the same threats that plague the Web, APIs are fundamentally different from Web sites and have an entirely unique risk profile that must be addressed. | <urn:uuid:ab3e0b9f-5501-4fdc-b275-8773c0dd90d6> | {
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Requires: repository, working directory.
Create or modify a tag in the repository.
A tag is a snapshot of a single moment in time in the repository. Normally a tag would be applied to entire directories, although it is possible to tag individual files if required. See also the section called “Tags-Symbolic revisions”
A branch is a unit of parallel development, which may or may not be kepy in sync with the main trunk. See also Chapter 6, Branching and merging
Creating a tag or branch does not change the working directory. To create and work with a branch it is also necessary to use the cvs update command to move your working directory onto that branch.
Make an alias of an existing branch (requires -r). See the section called “Alias tags”
Make a branch tag.
Check that the working files are unmodified before tagging.
Delete the named tag. Deletion of branches is not recommended.
Move the tag if it already exists. Not recommended for branches.
Allow -d and -F to be applied to branch tags. Use of this option is not recommended as it does not affect the revisions within the branch and can result in them being orphaned.
Force a head revision match if the existing branch is not found.
Process local directory only.
Create a floating, or 'magic' branch. A floating branch always points to the head of its parent branch, unless a revision is checked into it. Once a revision is added it becomes a normal fixed branch.
Process directories recursively.
Select files based on existing tag/branch/revision.
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Over the last few decades, with increased awareness of ecological issues, cotton has become known as a thirsty and chemical intensive crop. Yet how much water is applied and what volume and types of chemicals are used on cotton varies with each growing region, and depends upon a host of considerations such as the farming systems used, resources available, financial considerations and regional policies, to name a few.
Here in California cotton is one of the top 20 most pesticide sprayed crops, and the chemicals used range from fairly benign to highly toxic. These chemicals impact the earth's air, water, and soil as well as the health of the people living in the state's cotton growing areas.
Chemicals to eliminate for 2012 Cleaner Cotton™
PAN Pesticide Database
The Sustainable Cotton Project (SCP) partners with conventional growers who recognize the need to reduce chemical use, helping them implement reduced-risk farming methods to minimize this impact. Our Cleaner Cotton™ field program disallows the use of the thirteen most toxic chemicals used on cotton in California (based on toxicity, volume of use and available alternatives), and requires farmers to use biological means to combat pests and pathogens.
Photo Credit: Karina Corbett
Why not organic cotton?
The answer is simple: the cost to grow organic cotton in California is higher than retailers are willing to pay. Studies show that organic cotton fields in California yield 40% less fiber than conventional, and lacking a secure market farmers are unwilling to risk the lower yields and corresponding decrease in financial return.
Since California's organic cotton acreage is minimal (average of less than 200 acres), the chemical reduction corresponding to this acreage is also minimal. Because Cleaner Cotton™ is grown on significantly more acres than organic cotton it achieves far greater chemical reductions due to its larger scale.
• In 2007 there were 2 organic cotton farmers growing 240 acres, reducing chemicals by a little over 500 pounds 9
• In contrast, in the same year, there were 22 Cleaner Cotton™ farmers growing 2000 acres, reducing chemicals by about 2000 pounds 10
What can you do?:
- By asking your favorite brand for locally grown Cleaner Cotton™, you can directly influence the type of cotton grown in San Joaquin Valley and help clean up soil air and water in California.
- Contact your favorite company and ask for products made with Cleaner Cotton™
- Advocate for local fiber production. When purchasing cotton, ask where the fiber comes from. How many miles did it travel to arrive here in your hands?
- Check out our fiber footprint calculator
- Educate yourself. Join us for a SCP Cotton Farm Tour and visit Cleaner Cotton™ farmers in California. Learn about cotton production first hand!
- Write an article in your local newspaper about the importance of Cleaner Cotton™ to your community.
9Estimate based on average of 2.13 pounds of chemicals per acre applied to conventional cotton grown in Fresno, Merced, and Madera Counties where the SCP program is active. California Pesticide Use Reporting data: 2002, 2003, and 2006.
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Would $4,000 make poor children cleverer?
It's not the $1m question. It's the million Swiss francs question.
It has become a depressingly universal truth in education that children from poorer backgrounds tend on average to do less well than their richer counterparts.
But what would happen if you took those poorer families and gave them money, real hard cash? If you make a poor family richer, will their children's chances of success rise accordingly?
Or is it much more complex?
Are children being held back not by lack of money, but by poverty's fellow travellers, such as bad housing, ill health, unemployment, chaotic parenting or family breakdown? Or are poor children getting stuck in a downward spiral of poorly educated parents and bad schools?
A US economist, Prof Greg Duncan, has won a million Swiss franc (£680,000) research prize to find out, in an annual award by the Zurich-based Jacobs Foundation, a charity that supports research into improving childhood.
Prof Duncan, an expert on the impact of poverty in childhood, wants to take a randomised group of a thousand low-income single mothers with a newborn child and give them $4,000 (£2,890) each for the first three years of the children's lives.
Another control group of mothers will get a much smaller amount.
Prof Duncan, from the School of Education at the University of California, Irvine, is going to to measure what happens next.Brain development
The experiment will be a big, expensive, long-term venture, with the prize money supporting the pilot stage. But Prof Duncan wants this to answer some big questions about what happens if you reduce hardship in the earliest years.
Can raising income deliver a measurable change in family life and children's progress? Will neuroscientists find a difference in cognitive development between those who receive the $4,000 and those who don't?
"We want to see whether we can find a direct link between poverty reduction and brain development in very young children," Prof Duncan says.
The idea of giving financial support to low-income families is well established - it underpins a range of family benefits, allowances and tax credits in many countries.
But what this study wants to discover is the specific impact of changing income in the years before school. Prof Duncan's earlier research has suggested strong links between experiences in the early years and how adults fare in later life.
This is the time when children are developing most rapidly, when the "architecture of the brain" is being established, he says.
There won't be any constraints on how these low-income families spend the extra money.
If families throw away the cash recklessly, rather than spending it on supporting children, that will be part of the findings.Real-life spending
The purity of the experiment is to see what happens in the real world if poor young parents are made slightly less poor. Will their children's school performance be less poor as well?
Prof Duncan's research has highlighted how the achievement gap is already entrenched by the age of five, suggesting that intervention needs to come earlier.
Before pupils turn up for their first day at school, middle-class children are already ahead of their poorer classmates at such tasks as recognising letters or putting numbers in order.
And children who are poor at the age of five are on a downward track that makes them more likely to leave education earlier, earn less money and suffer poor health than richer children.
There are also striking differences in family structure. A poor girl is more than five times more likely to grow up and have children outside of marriage than her wealthier classmates.
The experiment, which is planned to launch in 2015, will try to establish to what extent living on a low income is the "active ingredient" in such different outcomes.
If parents are under less financial pressure, will they behave differently to their children? Will family time change with more spending power?
The study will try to separate the low-income effect from other factors such as family relationships, individual character and personal resilience.
The determination of individuals to succeed might be more relevant than a bank balance.Climbing the ladder
This experiment has a particular resonance for the US education system.
In the past, even though the poor in the US might have lacked some social security "safety nets", Prof Duncan says there was a very valuable compensation from public investment in the education system. It provided a ladder upwards.
But that is no longer the case, he says.
The US education system had been a world leader, a superpower in education as well as in economic and military terms.
But more recently it has faced a stream of bad news.
Last month, there was a new low ebb when the influential the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development think tank published research showing that young people in the US workforce had the lowest levels of maths skills in the developed world.
Such weaknesses in education have a great significance for the life chances of children born into poverty.
A major study this month from the independent Pew Research group, based in Philadelphia, looked at the factors that helped people born into low-income families in the US to rise up the income ladder.
Such "rags to riches" stories are more common in Hollywood movies than in real life, the study concludes.
But where people do beat the odds and rise up the ladder, the key factor is education. Getting a college degree is the surest route to social mobility, the research shows.
College graduates were over five times more likely to escape the bottom rung of the ladder.
Family structure was also a big influence. Two-parent families were more than three times as likely to move out of the lowest-income bracket compared with single-parent families.
The study shows that education and family are the dominant influences on escaping poverty.
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NARRATOR: Stone Age America, 13,000 years ago: A virgin land, a world great beasts have ruled for millions of years, and for early human settlers it is an age in which stone weapons can be the difference between life and death.
This is a Clovis spear point. It is the greatest technological breakthrough of the Stone Age and long thought to be the oldest human artifact unearthed in the Americas. For years, these Stone Age weapons of mass destruction were thought to represent a culture of prehistoric big game hunters who came over a land bridge from Asia to become the first Americans. But new clues are forcing scientists to rewrite an epic story that, until now, had been considered the gospel.
Can these magnificent Clovis spear points, over 13,000 years old, help solve one of the greatest riddles of North American archaeology? Who were the first Americans and where did they come from? America's Stone Age explorers, up next on NOVA.
Major funding for NOVA is provided by the Park Foundation, dedicated to education and quality television.
We see you inventing the next big thing. Microsoft is proud to sponsor NOVA for celebrating the potential in us all.
Science: it's given us the framework to help make wireless communications clear. Sprint is proud to support NOVA.
And by The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you. Thank you.
NARRATOR: The ancestors of modern humans originated in Africa at least 150,000 years ago. By 40,000 years ago, they had radiated out of Africa and were occupying most of Europe, Asia and Australia. But half the Earth, humans had yet to explore. How people first came to America remains one of the greatest mysteries of our past.
PAUL MARTIN (University of Arizona): Archaeologists have been looking for the earliest for a long time. It's been a Holy Grail for them. Who was first?
MICHAEL COLLINS (University of Texas): The whole question of the peopling of the Americas is a huge piece of the total human experience. That's just a question we can't leave unanswered.
NARRATOR: Who were these earliest explorers? Where did they come from? How did they make this epic journey to the New World?
The first clue to the mystery was found in a dried up lake in Clovis, New Mexico. Here, in 1933, archaeologists uncovered a stone tool made by human hands, an ancient spearhead. It became known as the Clovis point.
Alongside the Clovis point was the skeleton of a mammoth, which, evidently, the spear point had been used to kill. Later, scientists were able to date the bones, establishing the age of the spearhead as 13,500 years old. It made the Clovis point the oldest human artifact ever found in America. Archaeologists have now discovered thousands of Clovis spear points across much of the continent.
MICHAEL COLLINS: There's Clovis in every one of the 48 states in the United States, Mexico, Belize, Costa Rica, in all kinds of environments.
NARRATOR: So many spear points, spreading widely across the continent, suggested a rapid expansion of a weapon crucial to the lives of the earliest Stone Age American explorers.
KENNETH TANKERSLEY (Northern Kentucky University): The Clovis point was the fundamental basis for survival in Ice Age America.
DAVID KILBY (University of New Mexico): Clovis points, arguably, represent the state of the art in hunting weapons on Earth at the time and are probably capable of taking down just about any animal on the late Pleistocene landscape.
NARRATOR: In an age defined by its most valuable resource, stone, the Clovis spear point represented a great technological breakthrough, transforming rock into a killing machine.
DENNIS STANFORD (Smithsonian Institution): It's a very distinctive type of artifact. As you can see here, it has a flake that's been taken out of the base and there's also a flake on the other side removed from the base, and these are called flutes. And beyond that the projectile point is flaked on both sides. You see it's worked here and it's worked on this side, which is what we call "bifacial."
NARRATOR: The bifacial design transforms a rough stone into a projectile with a serrated sharp edge. The fluting, some archaeologists speculate, allows Clovis hunters to rapidly load and reload the deadly blades onto spear shafts.
DENNIS STANFORD: And when you throw this at an animal, this goes in and sticks in the animal and this comes back out so you can put a new one on it and start hunting again.
DAVID KILBY: There have been some experiments carried out by archaeologists, using replicas of Clovis points and other stone tools, in which they were used to penetrate the hides of modern elephants, elephants which had already deceased. And it's found, in, in all these cases, that they actually are all very efficient weapons and could potentially kill mammoth where you'd get them into the soft, vulnerable underbelly and then quickly back away.
NARRATOR: Testimony to the deadliness of the Clovis spear point is that, in a dozen cases, they were discovered in the remains of butchered mammoths. This led scientists to connect the spear point to a catastrophe that befell these Stone Age giants. For around 13,500 years ago, all the mega fauna in the Americas went extinct—the mammoths, the giant armadillo, the giant sloth, the short-faced bear—all disappeared within a few hundred years.
But who were these big game hunters with their Stone Age weapons of mass destruction? Where did they come from?
When archaeologists looked for an answer, they found an important clue in the climate of the ancient world. Between 24- and 13,000 years ago was the last great Ice Age. Huge swaths of the northern hemisphere lay frozen under ice. These giant ice sheets locked up vast quantities of water, causing sea levels to drop far lower than they are today.
DAVID MELTZER (Southern Methodist University): When you've got that much ice on land, what happens is that it draws, essentially, water out of the oceans. So with that much ice on land, sea levels worldwide are lowered. By lowering sea levels, you expose the continental shelf between Siberia and Alaska, and that made it possible for people to walk to the Americas.
NARRATOR: Asia and North America were essentially one great continent, joined by a land bridge more than a thousand miles wide. But although it was possible to walk from Siberia to Alaska, giant ice sheets barred entrance to the rest of the continent. Then, as the climate warmed at the end of the Ice Age, the glaciers receded, opening up an ice-free corridor through the center of the continent. For the first time, it seemed, the door was open to the virgin landscape of the New World.
DAVID MELTZER: As that corridor opens up, that's just about the time when Clovis appears in the lower 48. So it all seemed to work out very, very beautifully in terms of the timing of getting these New World peoples from Asia into the Americas.
NARRATOR: The timing of the land bridge, the ice-free corridor and the Clovis dates all seemed to fit together in a simple elegant theory: 13,500 years ago, Clovis people, big game hunters from Asia, armed with their lethal Clovis spear point, walked across the land bridge to the Americas, followed the ice-free corridor down into the lower continent and spread across the land, killing all the great beasts. As ice age glaciers melted, the seas rose, submerging the land bridge. The descendents of the Clovis people, the Native Americans, remained isolated until their first contact with Columbus.
The theory became known as Clovis First. It was written into the textbooks and taught for the better part of a century. The Clovis spear point became the icon of the first Americans.
Clovis First was such a powerful story that, for years, few archaeologists looked back beyond 13,500 years ago. But then a few did. Jim Adovasio has spent the past 30 years excavating at Meadowcroft, a prehistoric site near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The deeper he dug, the further back he descended in time.
JAMES ADOVASIO (Mercyhurst College): On these surfaces that you see before us, we have signs of repeated visits by Native Americans to this site. These discolorations literally represent a moment frozen in time.
NARRATOR: Each tag marks ancient fire pits that can be carbon dated, creating a cross section of who lived here and when, stretching back 13,500 years.
JAMES ADOVASIO: Just below the surface I'm standing on is where the conventional Clovis First model says that the earliest material should stop, basically, that there ought not to be anything beneath it, no matter how much deeper we dug.
NARRATOR: But then, Adovasio did go deeper, below 13,500 years, to a time in the Americas, when no trace of humans should exist, according to the Clovis First theory. He was astounded by what he found.
JAMES ADOVASIO: The artifacts simply continued, and we recovered blades like this all the way down to 16,000 B.C.
NARRATOR: When he published his findings, he was immediately attacked.
JAMES ADOVASIO: The majority of the archaeological community was acutely skeptical, and they invented all kinds of reasons why these dates couldn't possibly be right.
NARRATOR: Some claimed that nearby coal deposits had contaminated Adovasio's samples, but he was known to be a meticulous excavator. Eventually, a few other archaeologists began to report evidence questioning the Clovis First theory, and they too were attacked.
MICHAEL COLLINS: The best way in the world to get beaten up, professionally, is to claim you have a pre-Clovis site.
DENNIS STANFORD: When you dig deeper than Clovis, a lot of people do not report it, because they're worried about the reaction of their colleagues.
MICHAEL COLLINS: I've been accused of planting artifacts. People will reject radiocarbon dates just simply because there's not supposed to be any people here at those times, and it just goes on and on and on.
NARRATOR: Even faced with evidence to the contrary, Clovis First supporters refused to accept that people could have arrived in America earlier than 13,500 years ago. For, as they pointed out, although it was possible to walk across the land bridge into present day Alaska, ice sheets blocked entry to the rest of the continent until at least that time. As they put it, "If people were coming to the New World before then, how could they get past the ice?"
Some archaeologists began to defy the dogma and search for an alternative route down the coast of Alaska.
JAMES DIXON (University of Colorado at Boulder): Well, when I was a student, we learned that the entire northwest coast of North America was covered by glacial ice all the way out to the continental shelf, so really, there was no opportunity for plants or animals, much less humans, to exist along that coastline during the last Ice Age.
NARRATOR: Today, Jim Dixon and Tim Heaton are finding evidence of abundant plants and animals at a time when the northwest coast was thought to be a lifeless, frozen wasteland.
TIM HEATON (University of South Dakota): We just cleaned up this caribou antler I want you to take a look at.
NARRATOR: Here, along the coast, the glaciers destroyed most traces of the Ice Age world, but Heaton and Dixon have investigated a rare undisturbed site, deep underground in an ancient bear cave.
The cave floor is excavated, inch by inch, from dated layers of soil going back tens of thousands of years.
TIM HEATON: I think it's a bone fragment.
NARRATOR: This excavation has uncovered a record of caribou, fox and bear bones dating back 50,000 years.
TIM HEATON: What this suggests is that bears survived the entire last period of glaciation, and if bears could have survived here, it's certainly clear that humans could have also.
JAMES DIXON: We now realize that those early portrayals of this massive continental glacier, all the way out to the ocean really is, is not accurate, and that by, oh, 14- to 16,000 years ago, this ice had retreated sufficiently to create habitat for plants and animals and ice-free areas that could have been used by humans.
NARRATOR: Abundant vegetation, temperate coastal climate and bear survival are all evidence of a possible Ice Age route to the Americas along the Alaska coast, by sea. But still no evidence that humans had actually made the voyage down the coast.
Then another surprise, from deep in the southern hemisphere, at a place called Monte Verde, this site of human habitation in Chile, 40 miles from the Pacific coast, was claimed to date back earlier than Clovis.
In 1997, a group of highly regarded archaeologists went to examine the evidence with their own eyes. They saw weapons, tools and other objects, the result of two decades of excavation. After intensely scrutinizing the dating, they confirmed the artifacts were older than Clovis by over a thousand years.
KENNETH TANKERSLEY: It wasn't until Monte Verde that we saw the first unambiguous, unquestionable evidence of people here before Clovis. It allowed us to think that perhaps the initial peopling of the New World was beyond 12-, 13,000 years ago and allowed us to look further.
NARRATOR: But even as more archaeologists allowed themselves to consider that Clovis might not have been first, the pillars of the Clovis First theory could not be completely toppled; Clovis First remained the entrenched answer to the question of the peopling of Americas.
And so it could have stayed until a remarkable discovery. Doug Wallace takes a different approach to the mystery of the first Americans. Instead of archaeology, he's using DNA to reveal traces of ancient migrations. Stored in his lab are DNA samples of indigenous people collected from all corners of the globe. DNA is the molecule of our genetic endowment expressed in a code of four letters representing four different chemical bases.
Every cell in these samples contains DNA. But Wallace studies a specific kind of DNA, not from the nucleus, which is a random mix of genes from both parents, but from the mitochondria, the cell's energy factories outside the nucleus.
This kind of DNA is inherited only from the mother and is passed intact from generation to generation as lineages diverge. But at a steady and predictable rate, tiny mutations creep, like spelling mistakes, into specific stretches of DNA. The amount of genetic variation between any two lineages can reveal how far back in time they shared a common ancestor.
DOUGLAS WALLACE (University of California, Irvine): So what we've been able to do, using genetic variation and comparing the genetic variation of aboriginal populations from all the major continents of the world, we've literally been able to reconstruct the history of migration.
NARRATOR: When Wallace and his team analyzed the mitochondrial DNA of Native Americans, they found four distinctive lineages that he labeled A, B, C and D. All four turned out to share common ancestors back in Siberia and northeast Asia.
So far, these findings were consistent with the Clovis First theory that the first Americans came from Asia. But when Wallace calculated how long ago the Asian and Native American DNA diverged, he was shocked. He repeated his work, as did other labs. The results were consistent. Three of the four main ancestral groups A, C and D, diverged from their Asian forbears at least 20,000 years ago. And even more striking, the first Americans didn't all come at once, but in at least three waves of migration.
DOUGLAS WALLACE: All of the papers that have been published have come to a very similar conclusion: that the first migration was in the order of 20- to 30,000 years ago.
NARRATOR: The DNA results made the Clovis First theory even more unlikely. Together with the evidence from Monte Verde, Meadowcroft and other sites, it now seemed as if Clovis people could not be the first Americans. The Pacific coast route offered a possible alternative to the Bering land bridge and the ice-free corridor, and the DNA suggested that humans had been coming to America in waves and far earlier than ever imagined.
Only one last pillar of the epic Clovis First theory was still standing: the artifact that inspired the theory, the icon of Stone Age America, the Clovis spear point itself. Where did it come from?
Archaeologist Dennis Stanford decided to search for its origins along the route from Asia to America. But as he worked back from Alaska to Siberia, the trail went cold. The weapons and tools he found in Asia were quite different.
DENNIS STANFORD: After looking at the collections, we were disappointed that we didn't find what we thought we would find, and I was surprised to find that the technologies were so much different.
NARRATOR: The Clovis spear point is a single stone, bifacial, or shaped on both sides, with a flute, or groove, at its base. The spear points in Asia are made from lots of small razor-like flints called micro-blades embedded in a bone handle.
DENNIS STANFORD: Microblade technology is making a projectile point or a knife blade out of bone and then cutting a slot in it and then putting the microblades in the slot. And that's a totally different philosophy, entirely, than using the bifacial projectile point, as you can see here. It's just a total different mindset.
NARRATOR: Now there was a real puzzle. The DNA says the earliest Americans are from Asia, yet the Clovis point, is nowhere to be found in Asia. It was a puzzle, not only for Stanford, but also his colleague Bruce Bradley. Bradley is an anthropologist and a skilled flint knapper, an expert at crafting stone tools.
One day, while making a Clovis point, he had a moment of inspiration. He remembered a popular science book he had seen when he was a student. It showed pictures of ancient spearheads made by the Solutreans, people who lived in Ice Age France and Spain. Their spear points resembled Clovis points. It seemed unbelievable, but Stanford and Bradley posed the question, "Could the Clovis point and some of the earliest Americans be from Europe?"
DENNIS STANFORD: I was going through the old arguments: "Yeah, well, Solutreans... 5,000 years older than Clovis." And "You've got the Atlantic Ocean out there." So I wasn't convinced that we really ought to push forward on it.
BRUCE BRADLEY (University of Exeter): I remember it a little bit differently. You said, "Are you out of your mind?"
NARRATOR: Despite the unlikelihood of the connection, Stanford and Bradley decided to pursue the idea. Bradley thought an important clue might lie in the specific technique involved in making Clovis points.
BRUCE BRADLEY: You can see how this, starting from this side, went and took off this whole other side. This is what we call an overshot or outre passe flake, a very intentional process.
NARRATOR: Overshot flaking was an unusual technique that left behind a distinctive byproduct, big flakes, at ancient Clovis stone working sites. Bradley wondered if traces of this technique might show up in southwestern France, where the Solutreans had lived 20,000 years ago.
When he went there to investigate, one thing soon became clear: the Solutreans were a remarkable people. The Solutreans were responsible for much of the great Stone Age art of Europe and were the forefathers of the artists who painted the Sistine Chapel of the Ice Age, the Caves of Lascaux.
DAVID MELTZER: They did a lot of carving in bone and in antler and in ivory, they fashioned spear throwers, they painted on cave walls; they had a fairly complex means of expressing themselves through their art.
NARRATOR: Could these remarkable Stone Age Europeans have brought the Clovis spear point to the Americas?
Bradley's research took him to the local museum in the town of Les Eyzies, France. What he saw were hundreds of what looked very much like Clovis points.
BRUCE BRADLEY: What we're seeing here is only the finished objects, only the things that museum people thought were really good for display. It doesn't always show you how things were made.
NARRATOR: To connect the Solutreans and Clovis, he needed to find out if they produced their spearheads using the same big flake technique.
BRUCE BRADLEY: So what we do is we go back to the collections of the broken materials, which is probably 99 percent of what there is here, and in that we're seeing the various ways that the Solutreans were making the things, not just the finished objects. And so it's the pieces that are hidden away that are going to tell us the most.
NARRATOR: And there in the drawers were big flakes, a clear sign that the Solutreans had made their spearheads in an identical technique to that of Clovis.
BRUCE BRADLEY: This is a good example here that shows a kind of flaking that...where the flake is struck from one side and went across the surface...removed some of the other side. And these pieces show it over and over and over again. I mean just about any piece you pick up shows this very special technique. I just knew there had to be some kind of a connection.
NARRATOR: Clovis and Solutrean spear points not only look alike, they are made the same unusual way. To Stanford and Bradley, this was a powerful clue that prehistoric explorers had come from Europe and brought with them the technology that transformed Stone Age America: the Clovis Spear Point.
It was an outrageous idea with a few big problems. The Solutrean's culture ended in Europe around 18,000 years ago, and the Clovis point would not arrive in America for another 5,000 years. If the Solutreans brought the Clovis point to America, where had they been?
Stanford and Bradley needed to find some artifact in the Americas to bridge the time gap. They scoured Clovis sites across the continent, places where other archaeologists had been digging for years. Then, from a site called Cactus Hill, in Virginia, a possibility, a point that resembled the Solutrean style, and it dated far earlier than the Clovis.
DENNIS STANFORD: Here we have a projectile point from a feature that dates right at 15,900 years or 16,000 years ago, which is clearly right in the middle between Clovis and Solutrean. And what's really exciting about it is that the technology here is very similar to Solutrean. In fact it's closer to Solutrean than Clovis where you can see that it's in a progression between Solutrean and Clovis, so you have Solutrean, Cactus Hill and Clovis.
NARRATOR: For Stanford and Bradley, the Cactus Hill point bridged the 5,000-year gap, connecting Solutreans in France and Clovis in America. But their fledgling theory now confronted another massive problem almost 3,000 miles wide: the Atlantic Ocean.
At the time of the Solutreans, ice sheets stretched down as far as southern France, where winter temperatures were 50 degrees colder than today. Unlike the more temperate Pacific coast, the Atlantic would, at times, have been thick with icebergs and blizzards.
LAWRENCE GUY STRAUS (University of New Mexico): There are 5,000 kilometers of open North Atlantic Ice Age conditions to be crossed. There are icebergs floating around in the Bay of Biscay, and it's a polar desert.
NARRATOR: Could the Solutreans, a Stone Age people, have made such a voyage?
Stanford flew to a place where he thought he might find the answer: Barrow, Alaska, on the edge of the continent at the northern most tip of the United States. Here he hopes the native people of Alaska, the Inupiat, might reveal how, thousands of years ago, the Solutreans could have made an epic transatlantic journey.
Today the Inupiat survive temperatures of minus 35 degrees. For warm waterproof clothing, traditionalists prefer caribou skin and sinew, the same materials available to their Stone Age ancestors. And for food on their seasonal hunting trips, the Inupiat turn to an age old resource, the sea.
RONALD BROWER (Inupiat Heritage Center): The sea has been our garden. We don't have any growth...growing things. There's nothing growing, up here, so we depend on the sea for our livelihood, and most of our hunting is based on sea mammal hunting. We have the great whales, polar bears, walrus, seals and fish.
NARRATOR: Even with warm clothing and food, could the Solutreans have made boats capable of crossing thousands of miles of treacherous, icy water? Today, traditional Inupiat build umiaks, whaling boats, using sealskin and caribou sinew stretched on wood frames and waterproofed with oil applied directly from seal blubber. These same techniques and materials would have been available to prehistoric people.
DENNIS STANFORD: Boats like these can...could have made the journey that we're hypothesizing for Solutrean people quite well. In fact, I was noticing on the distance signs here in the middle of town, they say it's about 1,500 miles to Greenland. And we know that, prehistorically, Eskimo peoples moved that distance from here to there several times.
NARRATOR: In Arctic seas filled with pack ice conditions similar to the Ice Age Atlantic, the boats pass the test as the Inupiat paddle from ice floe to ice floe.
DENNIS STANFORD: Well, it certainly is exactly the way I think the Solutrean guys were dealing with the ice edge, because you can get in and off of the ice real rapidly and, and if the weather gets a little, little nasty then you just pull up off...out of the water and onto the ice.
NARRATOR: For Stanford and Bradley, this ability to travel great distances in Arctic conditions suggested how the Solutreans could have made their epic journey during the Ice Age.
They had now gathered a broad range of evidence: physical similarities between the Solutrean and Clovis spear points, a similar technique used to make them, and the Cactus Hill point connecting Solutrean and Clovis in time. All added up to a radical and provocative theory, that the Solutreans invented the Clovis point technology, and Ice Age Europeans were amongst America's earliest explorers.
Immediately, the theory was attacked. The close resemblance of the spear points was not enough.
DAVID MELTZER: You can always find...if you're careful in your selection, you can always find one or two things that look alike. I'm not looking for one or two things. I'm looking for lots of things: the artwork, the antler spear throwers, where are they? Did they get left behind? There's no reason why they shouldn't be there, but we don't see it.
NARRATOR: Can one spear point bridge a 5,000 year gap?
KENNETH TANKERSLEY: Although Cactus Hill, its radiocarbon date and artifact have been used to bridge the gap between the Solutrean and Clovis, in reality, it will take a lot of sites, a lot of radiocarbon dates and a large assemblage of artifacts to make that connection.
NARRATOR: And although the Solutreans may have been capable of making a cross-Atlantic journey, there's little archeological evidence that they did.
LAWRENCE GUY STRAUS: There is absolutely no evidence of deep sea fishing. There's absolutely no evidence, for that matter, of boats.
NARRATOR: But Stanford argues that crucial evidence is missing, submerged under 300 feet of water as rising sea levels inundated the Solutrean coastline at the end of the Ice Age.
The debate raged on, with arguments for and against the Solutrean theory. Then came evidence that, again, seemed like it might end the battle: DNA.
It was the latest report from colleagues of Doug Wallace who were investigating early human migrations. They were puzzling over mitochondrial DNA samples from a Native American tribe called the Ojibwa.
DOUGLAS WALLACE: When we studied the mitochondrial DNA of the Ojibwa we found, as we had anticipated, the four primary lineages—A, B, C and D—but there was about a quarter of the mitochondrial DNAs that was not A, B, C and D.
NARRATOR: There was a fifth source of DNA of mysterious origin. They called it X, and unlike A, B, C and D, they couldn't find it anywhere in Siberia or eastern Asia. But it was similar to an uncommon lineage in European populations today. At first, they thought it must be the result of interracial breeding within the last 500 years, sometime after Columbus.
DOUGLAS WALLACE: We naturally assumed that perhaps there had been European recent mixture with the Ojibwa tribe and that some European women had married into the Ojibwa tribe and contributed their mitochondrial DNAs.
NARRATOR: But that assumption proved wrong. When they looked at the amount of variation in the X lineage, it pointed to an origin long before Columbus, in fact, to at least 15,000 years ago. It appeared to be evidence of Ice Age Europeans in America.
DOUGLAS WALLACE: Well, what it says is that a mitochondrial lineage that is predominantly found in Europe somehow got to the Great Lakes region of the Americas 14,000 to 15,000 years ago.
NARRATOR: Could X be genetic evidence of the Solutreans in America? Further investigation raised another possibility. The ancient X lineage may have existed in Siberia, but died out, though not before coming over to America with Ancient migrations.
DOUGLAS WALLACE: And so the DNA data itself cannot distinguish between those two alternatives. It could be either from Europe or from Siberia, of a population that is now lost.
NARRATOR: So X could have reached the Americas through Asia, or across the Atlantic directly from Europe. The DNA could not provide a storybook ending.
MICHAEL COLLINS: The hypothesis that Clovis may derive from Solutrean, it's going to be...it's going to take years to sort that out. That's, that's not the most important thing right now. The very fact that that hypothesis is being articulated forces us to think in, in much broader terms about the problem of the peopling of the Americas.
NARRATOR: With Clovis First in ruins and the Solutrean theory still hotly contested, now archaeologists must pull together their discoveries into an all-encompassing new theory of the peopling of the Americas. And central to that quest is the origin of the Clovis point.
KENNETH TANKERSLEY: Although the technology needed to produce a Clovis point was found among other cultures during the Ice Age, the actual Clovis point itself is unique to the Americas, suggesting that it was invented here in the New World.
NARRATOR: Perhaps the Clovis spear point was not brought by big game hunters from Asia or seafaring Solutreans from Europe. Could the Clovis point be the first great American invention?
A prime place for investigating Clovis culture in America is the Gault Site, in central Texas. Unlike its hot, arid surroundings, Gault is a shady park-like oasis. Michael Collins, from the University of Texas, started excavating at Gault in 1998.
MICHAEL COLLINS: As you can see, the Gault site is really a special place. It's well watered, got lush vegetation, an abundance of resources, both plant and animal. It's an ideal place for people who are hunters and gatherers.
NARRATOR: Gault is the best of both worlds: nearby is a parched plateau for hunting game, while down in a cool stream-fed valley, are pecans, walnuts and berries. And not far from the streambed is a natural resource so crucial to the survival of prehistoric people that it defines the whole age, stone.
MICHAEL COLLINS: We're at an outcropping here, a rich outcropping of cretaceous chert. This was the choice material for making stone tools for at least 13,000 years. It's pretty good stuff when you break it open. It...see how it breaks. You get nice flakes of it out of there.
NARRATOR: To a Stone Age craftsman, this particular rock was perfect for fashioning stone tools and may have drawn people for hundreds of miles. To date, nearly half a million Clovis artifacts have been found at Gault, but curiously, very few are spear points.
MICHAEL COLLINS: The Clovis spear point is the, sort of the icon of Clovis culture. But what we see at the Gault site is we only have about 30 projectile points—mostly broken and worn out and discarded Clovis points—in comparison to the several thousand other tools.
NARRATOR: What can explain the lack of spear points at one of Stone Age America's premiere stone quarries? And why would big game hunters need any other tools beside the spear point?
At the Texas Archeological Research Lab, Marilyn Shoberg examines the Clovis tools under a microscope. By studying the scratches on the tool she hopes to discover its function. The last hand to use this tool did so some 13,000 years ago.
MARILYN SHOBERG (Texas Archeological Research Laboratory): Very fine striations that are running parallel to the edge of the blade and these striations all parallel to the edge, indicate that it was used primarily in a longitudinal motion, sort of slicing, as in slicing grass.
NARRATOR: To test her idea, Collins and his colleagues created replica tools, made from the same Gault stone and used them at the site.
MICHAEL COLLINS: In cutting just this little bit of grass here I've already developed a bright sheen right along the edge and under the microscope that'll be a very bright polish built up on that edge, and it'll have striations in it going this way, because of my cutting motion.
NARRATOR: Under the microscope, the replica tool has the same sheen and pattern as the Clovis tool. Perhaps Clovis people were cutting grass or reeds for baskets, bedding or thatched roofs for shelter.
Shoberg examines other types of tools found at the site.
MARILYN SHOBERG: Deep troughed grooves, characteristic of contact with bone...
NARRATOR: A spear point used for hunting.
MARILYN SHOBERG: All along the edge of this artifact there is polish that's characteristic of contact with a soft material, like meat.
NARRATOR: A knife used for slicing food.
MARILYN SHOBERG: This is the hide punch.
NARRATOR: A punch or awl for sewing tailored clothing.
MARILYN SHOBERG: This little blade fragment was used to engrave or incise bone.
NARRATOR: Small pieces of limestone have been discovered at Gault, etched with mysterious geometric patterns among the only examples of Ice Age art in America. Art, tailored clothes, baskets and thatched roofs for shelter: all contradict the old Clovis First image of nomadic, mammoth murderers. And although the remains of a mammoth were found at Gault, Collins and colleagues have found far more bones of turtles, birds and small mammals. This menu suggests more variety than a big game hunter's diet of wooly mammoth and bison.
MICHAEL COLLINS: What emerges from the totality of all that information is these people were generalized hunters and gatherers. They were living on a variety of animals, staying in one place for quite a while and not simply pursuing large game as their primary way of life.
NARRATOR: There's even evidence of trade networks between Clovis people at different sites across the continent. It's not uncommon to find Clovis points hundreds of miles from the source of the original rock. And different bands of Clovis people probably traded more than just tools; they may have been exchanging potential spouses.
DAVID KILBY: Although we tend to think, sometimes, of hunter gatherers as being fairly simple in adaptation, it's actually a pretty complicated world in which they live. There have to be social mechanisms in place that allow you to sort of share information and relate to surrounding groups in some systematic way and to be on good enough terms with them that you're able to, sort of, exchange mates, and therefore genetic viability, across an otherwise, sort of, sparsely populated landscape.
NARRATOR: A clue that Clovis people had intimate knowledge of the landscape lies, once again, with the Clovis point. Many have been found in caches, bundles of spear points, hidden away for later use by Clovis hunters.
David Kilby has traveled the United States and studied all of the nearly two dozen known caches.
DAVID KILBY: This strategy of caching suggests intimate familiarity with the landscape and sort of a complex understanding of the distribution of different resources around the landscape. The fact that they're putting tools and raw material in specific places on the landscape and leaving them behind, suggests that they knew with some confidence where they were going to be in the future.
NARRATOR: Caching, trade and travel must have involved patterns of seasonal migration developed over dozens of generations. This emerging picture of the Clovis lifestyle contradicts the old image of Clovis as a single people, nomadic big game hunters, sweeping rapidly across the continent with their lethal spear, wiping out all the great beasts.
MICHAEL COLLINS: The longstanding notion of the rapid spread, the archaeologically rapid spread, of Clovis across the continent, has been taken to mean the spread of a people across the continent. An alternative to that might be that the spread of Clovis is actually the expansion of a technology across existing populations, a little bit analogous to the fact you can go anywhere in the world and find people driving John Deere tractors. Technology can spread across different languages, different cultures, quite readily.
NARRATOR: Perhaps this is the birth of an intriguing new theory for the peopling of America: the first Stone Age explorers arrive on this continent more than 20,000 years ago, much earlier than scientists ever imagined. They come from Asia, and maybe even Europe, by land and by sea. Tenuously, at first, these different groups spread across the virgin land, and over thousands of years they develop an intimate knowledge of the New World. Around 13,500 years ago, a stone weapon is invented, so powerful, so crucial to survival that it spreads swiftly across all the people of the Americas. With this new technology they take root, proliferate and prosper. Clovis is the first great invention of the New World and the icon of the peoples who may rightfully be called the first Americans.
Next time on NOVA: Piece by piece, they took apart a notorious Nazi P.O.W. camp and engineered an escape that went down in history. Today archeologists hunt for evidence the Nazis never found.
"This proves a theory."
The real story behind The Great Escape.
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America's Stone Age Explorers
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February is Black History Month. Some say Black Heritage Month. In this shortest month of the year we usually give emphasis to accomplishments of Black historical figures in the United States. Sometimes, though, it seems that instead of our heritage we celebrate and commemorate the month. There is nothing of deep historical significance about February that we should reverence it. And the heritage and history of African slaves in America and their descendants should not be articulated only in the shortest month but throughout the year, every year. Therefore, in this blog I want to focus on something of our heritage that demands constant focus throughout each year: resilience.
The institution of marriage among African-Americans in 2014 has collapsed. The decline has been steady since 1960 when around 30% of children were born into families without the benefits of the marriage of their biological parents. 50 years ago this was considered a crisis. Today those statistics have inverted to more than 70% and nothing is stemming the tide. Some cite our history of slavery, Jim Crow, and racism as causal to the conditions that shape family life today. Perhaps so. But I aver that while the ghosts of those negative elements of our history may haunt us today, we inherit a legacy of survival that gives us reason for hope.
It is ironic that a Black child born in slavery 160 years ago was more likely to be born into a family with and raised by biological parents than one born today. What resilience held families together then? Despite slavery, Jim Crow, and racism that characterize our history, there is resilience in us that give us hope. Another irony is that our Catholic faith, with our sacramental imagination that gives true substance to our invisible God, has no strategy for addressing this crisis in Black family life . . . until now.
The National Association of Catholic Family Life Ministers (NACFLM) and the National Association of Black Catholic Administrators (NABCA) are beginning to strategize on effective outreach to African-American families. Guided by the longstanding work of ArusiNetwork, a not-for-profit that focuses on strengthening, encouraging, and supporting healthy marriage among African-Americans, these national Catholic organizations will advance a “new paradigm” that will engage our sacramental imagination around marriage.
This new paradigm emphasizes marriage within a community context. Indeed, it takes a village not only to raise a child, but to sustain a marriage. The witness of covenantal love feeds the community and the sacramental union of marriage makes God more tangible. The stakeholding community supports and protects the union and the couple sees their role as bigger than themselves and more important than any transient sense of happiness.
In our Catholic community earnest catechesis on marriage begins at engagement. African-Americans have the lowest marriage rate among all measured groups. Even marriage preparation programs by and for African-Americans, if following convention, will miss the mark. The focus of marriage preparation must be broader than the engaged and target those couples forming families with or without marriage in their sights.
Our catechesis on marriage must articulate the community’s stakeholding role and not just the interpersonal dynamics of the couple. We must prepare couples for a role that is “bigger than them.” Henri Nouwen expresses this in his book Clowning In Rome1:
Marriage is not a lifelong attraction of two individuals to each other but a call for two people to witness together to God's love. The basis of marriage is not mutual affection, or feelings, or emotions and passions that we associate with love, but a calling, a vocation. It is to understand that we are elected to build together a house for God in this world.
The real mystery of marriage is not that husband and wife love each other so much that they can recognize God in each other's lives, but more because God loves them so much that they can discover each other more and more as living reminders of God's presence.
We must also prepare families, parishes, and communities to be stakeholders of marriage. Upon this “new paradigm” we will strategize how to bring our Catholic sacramental imagination to serve and strengthen African-American families. Through this fresh lens we will tap into the resilience that is our legacy, the “faith that the dark past has taught us” and the “hope that the present has brought us.2”
The fruits of NACFLM and NABCA’s collaboration are yet to be realized. Our hope is that it will reshape Catholic Family Life outreach to African-Americans and set higher standards for Catholic evangelization in the margins. It will require the resilience that is the legacy of African slaves in America, who made a way out of no way to sustain the bonds of kinship even while in bondage. In this Strategic Plan year that focuses on “Strong Catholic Families”, this is something to celebrate in and beyond the month of February.
1 Nouwen, Henri, Clowning In Rome: Reflections on Solitude, Celibacy, Prayer, and Contemplation Doubleday, New York, 1979.
2 From James Weldon Johnson’s “Lift Every Voice And Sing”, a poem acclaimed as the “Negro National Anthem.” | <urn:uuid:886fd257-61b6-4f3b-9e3a-3e74c9ba51ac> | {
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The tendon connecting calf muscles to the heel.
More example sentences
- A common sprain injury is a torn Achilles tendon, which connects the calf muscles to the heel.
- This is especially true if the rupture is in the Achilles tendon, the tendon just above the heel.
- Ankle and ligament damage is also common, as well as Achilles tendon rupture and calf tendon tears.
Definition of Achilles tendon in:
- The British & World English dictionary | <urn:uuid:5915c2e9-2fc0-4938-8ff9-30814b646a86> | {
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Definition: Hyperplasia of the cingulum of an anterior tooth.
Location: Any anterior tooth (primary or permanent dentition).
Shape: Triangular, superimposed over crown of associated tooth.
Internal: Radiopaque, same radiopacity as enamel.
Number: Can be either single or multiple.
(click image to enlarge)
(left – note yellow line over cusp) (right – note triangular radiopacity) | <urn:uuid:06a6c94a-9d3e-4f85-a193-22bef3b6a651> | {
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What Parents Need to Know About Teen Dating
Even when teens start dating, they are still not as close with romantic partners as they are with their same-sex friends. The security that teens feel in their friendships spills over into their romantic relationships. To add, parents influence those feelings of security. Dating too early is not right for both their physical and mental well being, but when teens enter late teens, dating can be a way to learn:
- cooperation skills and sharing of activities,
- socially appropriate behavior and manners,
- interdependence and companionship,
- empathy and sensitivity, and
- how to develop an intimate, meaningful relationship.
Although most adolescent romantic relationships do not last, warm and caring romantic relationships in the teen years tend to lead to satisfying, committed relationships in early adulthood.
The dark side of dating in the teen years is that it can put youth at risk. Frequent dating-or spending time with romantic partner(s) several times a week-in early adolescence, can lead to adolescent risk behaviors such as:
- school failure,
- drug use, and
Other problems for preteens or early adolescents who date frequently and/or exclusively include:
- having poor social skills that last through their later teenage years,
- depression, or
- sexual activity
Dating violence is also not impossible. Abusive family relationships, as well as frequent, early dating and/or sexual involvement can encourage teens to abuse other people, thereby exposing others to be “hit, slapped, or pushed.”
The expectation for sexual relationships in teens, can partially be blamed on the media who socializes teens on dating and sexual behaviors.
Peers may influence a teen’s dating life, but parents and families should have the final say. Families can provide support for their teens or add stress to their lives. | <urn:uuid:26f3b745-5fe5-4015-8ccc-8767f22c6220> | {
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There is no doubt that information gathering is one of the topics that hackers are most required to master, this is constituted of active and passive scanning. It is believed that active scanning is an essential factor for a successful penetration testing project. While this is extremely powerful, it is also complex. Hackers choose between different scanning techniques depending on the situation they are facing when mapping the network. Moreover, hackers are mostly concerned about their identity exposition during this process. However, there are several techniques that have been developed to avoid this, one of the most significant methods is idle scanning, and it is considered as one of the stealthiest scan types, idle scanning can also expose targets through a trusted host. So what is idle scanning? How does it hide the attacker’s IP? And how is it performed?
Idle scan is the process of detecting a target’s ports and running services through an idle host using spoofed IP address technique along with the observation of the ID IP (identification IP) changes. This procedure is carried out successfully with the help of Source Address spoofing and Identification detecting in the IP header. To understand this concept, the IP header will be examined, along with the Identification and the Source Address fields and how they can be exploited in order to perform the idle scan.
This will be shown by analysing a simple SYN scan type first, followed by an idle scan, a SYN scan is known as a half open connection, the attacker will firstly send a SYN packet using a scanning tool (example: NMAP, hping2..etc) to the target as shown below.
Next, a SYN/ACK packet is sent back to the attacker.
Lastly, the attacker will end the connection with a RST packet (RST flag= 1).
This scan type will obviously expose the attacker’s IP address to the target. Now let us see how the idle scan differs from the SYN scan. The first step of performing an idle scan is to find an idle host, speaking of which, what is an idle host? A host that is online and is not currently receiving or transmitting packets, for example, if you left your laptop on while taking a shower, at that time, your computer is at the risk of being an idle host, thus, taking the blame for a filthy scan attack! What are the reasons behind this?
Step one-Finding an Idle host:
It is possible to determine whether or not the host is idle by analysing its Identification field in the IP header.
Hang on, what is the purpose of the identification field? It mostly contributes to the fragments implementation; this is accomplished by incrementing the ID IP’s (Identification) internal counter by 1 every time a datagram is sent over a network in order to avoid the confusions of datagram fragments. The operation system however is in charge of this. So, a host that increment by 1 is idle, this can be examined and caused by the Attacker as shown below:
Target’s ID IP (Identification IP) value = 1234, this is before the Attacker sends interacts with the Target (no packets are sent).
Target’s ID IP (Identification IP) value = 1235? Nope, it’s still 1234, the Target did not send packets yet!
Target’s ID IP (Identification IP) value = 1235! The Target sent a packet, so its ID IP has incremented by 1.
This process is repeated couple of times to ensure that the Target’s ID IP is incremented by 1 (1235) every time a packet is sent, the value 1235 then is then placed in the identification field of the IP Header, Thus, an increase in the ID IP by 1 means that the host sent a packet (in this situation the Target is sending a packet back to the Attacker). When repeating this process for a second time the ID IP of the target will turn to 1236, and so on. In contrast, no change in ID IP simply means no packets were sent, also, an increment of different values (example: +2 +6 +3..etc) just means that the host is not idle; it is receiving more than one packet at a time, therefore not suitable to be used as an idle host.
Testing identification tracing of an idle host in a lab:
Now a real example is performed using Hping2 tool, for this lab, the Attacker machine is Backtrack 5, idle host machine however is Windows7, and finally Ubuntu is used as the main target. The aim here is to trace the ID IP of the RST packet that is coming from the idle host to Attacker.
Hosts IPs on this example:
Idle host (Windows7) = 192.168.1.10
Target (Ubuntu) = 192.168.1.14
One way to do this is to use the command:
hping2 –S [IP] (in this situation the [IP] is the windows7 host)
• -S; sets the SYN flag up.
It can be clearly seen how the ID IP is incrementing by 1, from 19695 to 19706 (11 packets), thus, this host can be used as a Zombie (the term Zombie is often referred to the idle host). After “Identification IP” is analysed in theory and practice, it’s time to move on to the next step.
Step two-Attacking the target through the idle host:
Now it is possible to scan the target through the idle host founded, for the purpose of hiding our own IP address. Although there is another powerful advantage of this development discussed later on. As mentioned before, “Source Address” is another factor that contributes to a successful idle scan beside Identification IP, the goal here is to scan the target using the idle host’s IP address (IP Spoofing).
Firstly, observations of the idle host’s ID IP need to be noted, so, by first typing the corresponding command as mentioned before:
hping2 –S [Idle host IP]
While this command is running on the idle host, a spoofed SYN packet needs to be sent to the target using a specific port that we are interested in (the idle host's IP is spoofed). to test this, run the command:
hping2 –a [idle host IP] –S –p 23 [Target’s IP] –c 1
• -a; spoof source address.
• -p; destination port.
• -c; packet count (to control how many packets are sent).
In other words, what we are really trying to do is recording the idle host’s ID IP, while sending a group of spoofed SYN packets to the target at the same time, remember the main goal is to determine the status of a port on the target without exposing the attacker’s IP address, Graph.3 shows this process:
Next, if the port we are examining (23 in this case) exists on the Target, the Target will respond to the idle Host with a SYN/ACK packet as shown in Graph.4
Note that until this stage, the idle host’s ID IP is increasing by one every time a RST packet is sent to the Attacker. From Graph.4 the idle host received an unexpected SYN/ACK packet from Target, Graph.5 shows how the idle host deals with this situation.
As it can be seen in Graph.5, a RST is sent to the Target as well to the Attacker, this will cause the ID IP of the idle host to increase by 2 (4114), and thus, an increase by two indicates that the port we are testing is open, what would happen if the port is closed? You guessed it right! the idle host in most cases will receive a RST packet, as a result the ID IP of the idle host will continue to increase by 1 only, in addition, if the port is filtered, the target will not send any packets back to the idle host, hence, ID IP will have +1 increase.
The analysis shown in Graph3, Graph4, and Graph.5 will be summarized and shown in action. After the idle host is founded by the steps mentioned earlier, the ID IP of the idle host is noted, and at the same time a spoofed packet is sent to the target, the following results are the outcomes of two commands:
hping2 –S [Idle host IP]
hping2 –a [idle host IP] –S –p 23 [Target’s IP] –c 1
Note: (192.168.1.10 is the idle host’s IP, 192.168.1.14 is the Target’s IP.)
By looking at the id field in the graph, it can be concluded that the port 23 is open in the Target host, the id field (ID IP of idle host) is increasing by 1 from 29957 to 29961, then it is incremented by two in the next packet's ID IP (29963), note that 29962 is missing because two RST packets are sent from the idle host to both Attacker and Target.
In conclusion, this scan type can have a huge effect when it comes to stealth scanning. Additionally, this is not the only advantage of this scan type, as it can be also used to identify a host, through a trusted host (example: printer to a server or a workstation). However, this tactic is blocked sometimes by firewalls, and a few of new Linux operation systems, yet evading those is still possible, the next tutorial will discuss how firewalls, and trusted hosts are included in idle scanning. | <urn:uuid:bcb3ae81-23fc-4709-b50f-02324122e7f9> | {
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On October 25th 2018 it will be thirty-five years since the USA and allies invaded the Caribbean island of Grenada, a Commonwealth country with a British Governor General, without the knowledge and against the wishes of the British Government.
Documents recently released under the thirty-year rule show conclusively that the justifications put forward by the United States Government to justify the invasion of this Caribbean island were false and bring into serious question whether the invasion was legal under international law.
The justifications given at the time by the US Government to justify the invasion were: –
1. That the request for intervention had been made by the then Governor General of the island, Sir Paul Scoon,
2. That Grenada was a potential threat to other islands in the region because of the construction of a military airbase, and
3. That there was a threat to US citizens and therefore the invasion was necessary to restore order.
Although it is the case that at some point Sir Paul Scoon signed a note seeking assistance, the released documents show that the note was written AFTER the invasion had taken place, not before it, and it seems clear that it was in fact brought to Sir Paul for signature by the invading forces after the event. In a letter to then Foreign Secretary Sir Geoffrey Howe the High Commissioner to the West Indies, Giles Bullard, wrote: “This attempt to give the intervention a retrospective legality reflects no credit on those concerned.”
Grenada is a small island and at the time of the invasion it had no air force or navy. The US Government claimed the airport under construction at Point Salines was a military installation which was intended for use by the Government of Cuba. In fact, the airport was wholly a civil installation to facilitate the growth in tourism.
The released documents include a very detailed Press Release from a UK company, named Plessy, who were one of the main contractors employed to construct the airport. In this document, Plessy explains at length the facilities required for a military airbase all of which were absent from the one being constructed. Remarkably, after the invasion the airport was completed to the original design.
The released documents show that there was no evidence that foreign nationals, or indeed Grenadians, were in any danger. The UK Deputy High Commissioner met with Sir Paul Scoon who confirmed US citizens were not in any danger but went on to voice concerns about potential loss of life if there was an invasion; during this meeting, he did not make any request for foreign assistance or intervention.
Bullard reported that the Revolutionary Military Council (RMC) were temporarily in control of the island after the tragedy on the fort; they made it clear that they were professional soldiers who had intervened to preserve law and order and has no desire for political power.
The bulk of the US citizens on the island were students at the medical school and they were given regular supplies of food and water. Reference in the documents is made to the RMCs intention to form a broad based interim Government and hold elections within a short period of time.
CHRG has documentary evidence that the RMC held a meeting with Sir Paul Scoon just before the invasion to discuss setting up such a broad based civilian Government within 14 days, and he offered to speak to some of the individuals who were proposed.
In the circumstances, the legality of the invasion of Grenada under international law is seriously in doubt. CHRG now calls upon the US Government to compensate those who suffered loss as a result of their illegal intervention.
Further information can be obtained from CHRG. Please see details below.
(Secretary of CHRG, UK) | <urn:uuid:94d868cf-40c8-465b-acf5-0f6ef426ff11> | {
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Cross-cutting issues: women and girls
In humanitarian crises characterised by forcible displacement, insecurity, and violence, women and girls are at particular risk.
Experiences from crises in places as diverse as the Balkans, Iraq, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Sierra Leone demonstrate that women are systematically targeted to become victims of both sexual and physical violence. Furthermore, violence against women, and notably systematic rape, has been used as a weapon of war in many conflicts1,2.
What is sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV)?
While there is no universal definition of SGBV, it typically includes physical and sexual violence perpetrated against women and girls, including rape, abuse or harassment, intimate partner violence (IPV), forced prostitution, or any physical, sexual or psychological violence. Wider definitions of SGBV include child marriage, female genital mutilation, social exclusion based on sexual orientation, infanticide, denial of education for girls or women, the forcible recruitment of boys into armed militia, honour killings, or sex trafficking1,3.
Prevalence of SGBV
The World Health Organization estimates (2013) indicate that 35% of women worldwide have experienced either physical and/or sexual violence in their lifetime4. In conflict and disaster settings, instability and insecure living environments can result in increased levels of SGBV perpetrated particularly against women and girls2. Insecure living environments, including a lack of lighting at night, lack of guardians or supervision, and/or latrines that are located far away from their shelters put women and girls at increased risk of experiencing SGBV.
Although boys and men are also targeted as victims of SGBV, these cases are less common. Despite recent initiatives, such as the 2014 Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict, SGBV is still an area that lacks large-scale reliable data in emergency settings2,5, and is likely underreported due to stigma, social norms, customs that support SGBV, inadequate laws, and a lack of enforcement to protect women and girls’ rights. In crisis settings underreporting is also likely to be worse as there is already a major breakdown of the system6,7.
What are the health impacts of SGBV in crisis settings?
Women and girls who experience SGBV are susceptible to a wide range of health issues. In conflict settings, women and girls have experienced being raped with the intent to impregnate them, been forced to carry pregnancies to term and in turn forced to have abortions, and infected with STIs or HIV8.
In humanitarian settings the risk of IPV is often higher too, as traditional gender roles tend to be further embraced in times of crisis. Women or girls who have experienced IPV are more likely to also experience death and injury, substance abuse problems, or give birth to low-weight babies. Additionally, women and girls who have experienced partner violence are nearly twice as likely to experience depression than those who have not experienced any violence8. Furthermore, SGBV can have a direct impact on a survivor’s sexual, physical, and emotional health, and increase the risk of future ill-health6,9.
SGBV interventions are often incorporated as elements of other programming, such as sexual and reproductive health, rather than a stand-alone intervention. Since the issue of SGBV cuts across many sectors this does make sense, but it also complicates the funding, and monitoring and evaluation of SGBV programming10. Furthermore, the lack of specific focus on SGBV may dilute its emphasis and make programmes less effective.
The most common interventions in humanitarian settings include awareness raising at the community level, women’s empowerment, psychosocial care, community based care, economic empowerment, counselling, and legal assistance. Even though one or more of these activities are often available in humanitarian settings, they frequently fail to address deeply ingrained social norms, or to effect changes in attitudes and behaviour at scale. Evidence on the impact of SGBV programming is also lacking, which hinders development of effective SGBV interventions1.
Further needs for SGBV programming include girl-friendly services, the integration of men and boys, improved coordination, integration of local partners, long-term sustainable funding, and better monitoring and evaluation to produce evidence. In addition, SGBV programming requires improved training and capacity building among humanitarian workers, community leaders, women and girls, and boys and men, both at local and international levels. Currently, there is no clear pathway for humanitarian actors to become SGBV specialists as there is a lack of learning and training opportunities1,10.
From each of these three cross-cutting issues we have seen that certain groups within society are more susceptible to harm during crises, and that there is much work to be done to reduce risks to their health and address those which may already exist.
Can you think of any further cross-cutting issues? If so, what problems do they present for affected populations during times of crisis? How can those problems be resolved?
© London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine | <urn:uuid:83fc8022-9c83-44fe-ad69-145fc30396bf> | {
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It is well known that when volcanos erupt and spew ash into the environment, those increased particles can block sunlight from reaching the earth and cause temperatures to drop. But now researchers have found that the opposite is true as well. When temperatures rise and glaciers melt quickly, changes in the stress on tectonic plates create more opportunities for magma to push its way out, increasing volcanic eruptions.
Working with Harvard University, researchers from the GEOMAR Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research Kiel in Germany reconstructed the history of volcanic eruptions in Central America for the past 460,000 years, according to GEOMAR volcanologist Dr Steffen Kutterolf, who works with the Fluids and Volatiles in Subduction Zones (SFB 574) research center. This study revealed periods of high and low volcanic activity that showed uncanny parallels with climate history. “The periods of high volcanic activity followed fast, global temperature increases and associated rapid ice melting,” Phys.org reports.
The researchers then studied the Pacific Ocean’s volcanic history and found similar results. “In times of global warming, the glaciers are melting on the continents relatively quickly. At the same time the sea level rises. The weight on the continents decreases, while the weight on the oceanic tectonic plates increases. Thus, the stress changes within in the earth to open more routes for ascending magma” says Dr Marion Jegen from GEOMAR.
However, scientists were quick to note that they can’t draw correlations between man-made global warming and volcanic activity, though they plan to study short-term variations in order to deepen their understanding of the relationship between rising temperatures, seas and volcano eruptions. These findings were originally published in the journal Geology. | <urn:uuid:e99ab1ec-7340-40c0-b8f2-dbced281e917> | {
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Latent Autoimmune Diabetes in Adults
Traditionally, doctors recognized only three types of diabetes. The first was type 1 diabetes, which mainly affected children and young adults. The second was type 2 diabetes, which often occurs in a person who is older. Gestational diabetes is another type of diabetes that occurs during pregnancy. Gestational diabetes looks a lot like type 2 diabetes and only occurs in the latter part of pregnancy.
Now doctors have identified another type of diabetes, called latent autoimmune diabetes in adults (LADA). LADA occurs in about 10 percent of individuals with diabetes. It is, in fact, more prevalent than type 1 diabetes.
Most people haven’t even heard of LADA. It is a type of diabetes that is a variation of type 1 diabetes but progresses more slowly than type 1 diabetes. It is often misdiagnosed as being type 2 diabetes and is treated with pills. No one knows exactly how LADA develops and yet it is important for patients to recognize that they have the disease.
History of LADA
Researchers first came upon the diagnosis of LADA accidentally in the 1970s. In testing for ways to identify the autoantibodies in patients who had type 1 diabetes, they discovered that type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease in which antibodies are made against the body’s own insulin-making cells (the beta cells) in the pancreas so that no insulin is being made.
While researching the phenomenon of type 1 diabetes and autoantibodies, the scientists looked for the presence of autoantibodies in normal people and in people who had type 2 diabetes, which isn’t considered to be an autoimmune disease.
They found no autoantibodies in people who did not have diabetes but about ten percent of type 2 diabetics showed antibodies to beta cells typical of type 1 diabetes. They determined that there was a subset of individuals who had LADA rather than ordinary type 2 diabetes. The symptoms of LADA were no different from those people who had type 2 diabetes.
Typical symptoms of LADA include:
- Increased frequency of urination
- Increased thirst
- Increased numbers of infections
- High blood sugar
Some people call this condition LADA, while others call it diabetes type 1.5 to distinguish it from type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes. According to research on the disease, the main criteria for having LADA include the following:
- Having beta cell autoantibodies in the bloodstream
- Being an adult at the time of diagnosis
- Needing no insulin to treat the disease, at least not in the first 6 months of diagnosis
People who meet these criteria have LADA instead of type 1 diabetes or type 2 diabetes. People with type 1 diabetes need insulin as soon as they are diagnosed and people with type 2 diabetes rarely need insulin at all and have no autoantibodies in their bloodstreams.
There is a lot of debate around the diagnosis of LADA. Doctors have now come to believe that diabetes follows a continuum. Some have autoimmune antibodies and need insulin right away, while others need insulin later on in the course of the disease. Still others never need insulin.
Researchers have determined that there are different types of autoantibodies associated with diabetes. Those who have type 1 diabetes have more types of autoantibodies and higher levels of autoantibodies when compared to people who have LADA so that the beta cells are destroyed much more quickly and the need for insulin happens right away. Those who have type 1.5 diabetes (LADA) have lesser levels of autoantibodies and don’t need insulin right away. Those who have type 2 diabetes have no autoantibodies and have mostly intact beta cells.
It was once believed that heredity could sort out the types of diabetes a person has. A study out of the journal Diabetes, however, found that LADA carries features typical of both type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes, making LADA a condition that is between type 1 and type 2 diabetes, leaning more towards being type 1 diabetes than type 2 diabetes.
Is there a difference?
Defining the different types of diabetes is satisfactory for scientists studying these types of diseases; however, it isn’t clear whether it is worth it to screen people for LADA once the diagnosis of diabetes is made. Doctors wonder if patients diagnosed with LADA would get better therapy if the exact diagnosis of LADA were to be made official early on in the diagnostic process. They wonder if diagnosing LADA will help these diabetics have better blood sugar levels and less chance of complications.
In order to diagnose LADA, doctors need to measure the amount of autoantibodies in the blood as well as the amount of insulin produced by the body. This may or may not change the treatment given and diagnosing LADA may be more expensive than it is worth. The treatment may not change if the patient is diagnosed with LADA versus being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.
Testing for LADA may be a good idea in patients who are not overweight and who are generally physically active. These people seem to be more likely to suffer from LADA and have less insulin resistance than is seen in type 2 diabetes. In such cases, making the diagnosis of LADA might change the way the patient is treated.
There is some research evidence that treating LADA patients early on with insulin might help the person’s beta cells last longer. In a research study out of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, researchers looked at giving insulin along with sulfonylurea drugs for 4000 patients with LADA. The subset of individuals who were given insulin early in the disease kept their beta cell function longer and didn’t require total insulin replacement for a longer period of time when compared to those who weren’t given insulin right away.
Giving insulin right away to LADA patients can help the beta cells last longer. If just pills are given for patients with LADA, there is a higher likelihood that they will lose their beta cell function faster and will be totally dependent on insulin sooner. This means that, in some cases, it might be beneficial to try to identify those patients who have LADA versus just having type 2 diabetes.
In addition, current therapies being developed to cure type 1 diabetes may also help those patients who have LADA. There could be a medication out there besides insulin that change the way the disease develops. Currently, however, no such medication exists.
- Stenstrom G, Gottsater A, e. al. Latent Autoimmune Diabetes in Adults. Definition, prevalence, beta cell function, and treatment. http://diabetes.diabetesjournals.org/content/54/suppl_2/S68.full.
- Gebel E. The other diabetes: LADA or Type 1.5. http://www.diabetesforecast.org/2010/may/the-other-diabetes-lada-or-type-1-5.html?referrer=https://www.google.com/. | <urn:uuid:f2f9fcb0-8316-44e6-b7d5-6904bbb65d72> | {
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1. On the night of her twenty-first birthday, Nell's father, Hugh, tells her a secret that shatters her sense of self. How important is a strong sense of identity to a person's life? Was Hugh right to tell her about her past? How might Nell's life have turned out differently had she not discovered the truth?
2. Did Hugh and Lil make the right decision when they kept Nell?
3. How might Nell's choice of occupation have been related to her fractured identity?
4. Is it possible to escape the past, or does one's history always find a way to revisit the present?
5. Eliza, Nell and Cassandra all lose their birth mothers when they are still children. How are their lives affected differently by this loss? How might their lives have evolved had they not had this experience?
6. Nell believes that she comes from a tradition of 'bad mothers'. Does this belief become a self-fulfilling prophesy? How does Nell's relationship with her granddaughter, Cassandra, allow her to revisit this perception of herself as a 'bad mother'?
7. Is The Forgotten Garden a love story? If so, in what way/s?
8. Tragedy has been described as 'the conflict between desire and possibility'. Following this definition, is The Forgotten Garden a tragedy? If so, in what way/s?
9. A 'plait' motif threads through The Forgotten Garden. What significance might plaits have for the story?
10. In what ways do Eliza's fairy tales underline and develop other themes within the novel?
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LitLovers © 2016 | <urn:uuid:33bbeb65-f799-4957-8dbd-e52cf0d47e35> | {
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Employment and Social Development Canada is spending $73 million over the next four years to create 10,000 paid work-placements for university, college and polytechnic students from across the country.
This Student Work-Integrated Learning program (SWLIP) sounds like a good thing for students. But it’s a selective band of students and companies that will benefit. The students must be from science, technology, engineering and mathematics related disciplines (STEM) or from business. This narrow focus raises serious questions of equity, both for students and for Canada’s extensive social and not-for-profit sector.
I am the director of a community service-learning (CSL) program at the University of Alberta. CSL is unique among experiential learning activities in that we partner specifically with not-for-profit and community-based organizations, as well as with social enterprises and government departments.
I am concerned that the good intentions of SWILP to link higher education to industry will support more students and companies that least need the assistance.
Discriminating against women
The narrow focus on STEM and business students amounts to discrimination on the basis of gender, even if it’s unintended.
Many of us wish to see more students identifying as women registered in STEM disciplines. But the reality is that SWILP disproportionately advantages male identifying students. The Canadian Association of University Teachers’ (CAUT) most recent data, for instance, reveals that in 2014/15 there were only 22 per cent of women undergraduates studying in the fields of architecture, engineering and related technologies. And just one quarter of the students in mathematics, computer and information sciences identified as female.
This stands in marked contrast to other fields. Humanities disciplines see 62 per cent of registered undergraduates identifying as women. In social and behavioural sciences and law, it is 63 per cent. In health sciences, it’s 72 per cent and in education, 77 per cent.
A STEM bias clearly leads to gender bias. Thankfully, undergraduate students identifying as female are a little better represented in business, management and public administration.
Supporting the privileged
A STEM bias in the work-integrated learning program is also likely to reward more privileged students. Research from the United States and from the U.K. has noted that undergraduates in engineering, for instance, are more likely to be from families where parents or caregivers have achieved a university or college degree. They are less likely to be from low socioeconomic status and “Black and ethnic minority” backgrounds.
In Canada, it seems a safe bet to say that students from low socioeconomic status backgrounds and Indigenous students would benefit little, overall, from SWILP.
These inequitable outcomes seem hard to square with the federal government’s “gender based analysis plus” (GBA+) lens. This is supposed to identify the often differing ways that women, men and gender-diverse people experience government policies and programs.
Excluding the not-for-profit sector
The exclusion of the not-for-profit or social sector and its organizations from the wage subsidies is a third inequity of the SWLIP program.
The industry sectors that will benefit from these students’ subsidized labour are clear from the bodies coordinating the program: Information and Communications Technology Council (ICTC), Information Technology Association of Canada (ITAC), Canadian Council for Aviation and Aerospace (CCAA), Environmental Careers Organization of Canada (ECO Canada) and Biotalent Canada.
Firms in these industries stand to receive government subsidies up to $5,000 of the student’s wage. This goes up to $7,000 for students from Indigenous or newcomer backgrounds, female STEM students and students with disabilities. In Ontario, the banking sector has also been a beneficiary of work-integrated learning programs.
This selective industry support seems short-sighted, given the vast contributions the not-for-profit sector has provided to Canadian society and the country’s economy. Although the data is more than a decade old, at last count, the not-for-profit sector in Canada employed more than two million people and engaged 13 million volunteers every year.
Across the country, the sector also accounts for $106 billion — or eight per cent of the GDP. It is larger than the automotive or manufacturing industries. In Alberta alone, not-for-profits employed 417,000 people and had revenues of more than $29 billion.
The social sector is sophisticated and advanced, growing and in need of high-quality students from universities, colleges and polytechnics.
Let’s fund social sector rejuvenation
Community Service-Learning programs across Canada work with instructors and students from many disciplines, including those within the humanities, fine arts, social sciences, education, native studies and yes, also with some students from STEM and business.
Technically, the definition of work-integrated learning used by Employment and Social Development Canada includes CSL within the scope of eligible activities. But most CSL students and community partners are excluded from government support under the program.
All Canadian post-secondary students deserve opportunities equivalent to those offered to STEM and business students.
And Canada’s social sector needs the rejuvenation that talented students with social innovation skills would bring. It needs these students to tackle Canada’s most intractable social problems — such as homelessness, reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, affordable housing, social cohesion and intercultural understanding.
Thankfully, there are some voices emerging, from Canadian students to provincial governments, arguing for the expansion of the SWILP program. They need our support. | <urn:uuid:e6d3d673-0067-4bd1-922d-f37b073a72de> | {
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Chromosomes and Rare Chromosome Disorders in General
Author Beverly Searle BSc(Hons) PhD CBiol MSB
Click on one of the topics below
|Consequences of Rare Chromosome Disorders|
|All About Chromosomes and Genes|
|Cells, Chromosomes, DNA and Genes|
|Chromosome & DNA Analysis|
|Karyotypes, FISH and Array CGH Analysis|
|Symbols Used in Karyotypes|
|Types of Rare Chromosome Disorders|
Rare chromosome disorders include extra, missing or re-arranged chromosome material but do not include the more common chromosome conditions such as Down's Syndrome. Using the latest technology, it is now possible for smaller and more complex chromosome defects to be identified. The amount of chromosome material duplicated, missing or re-arranged can vary a great deal. This means that it may be difficult to identify two people who have exactly the same chromosome disorder. The clinical problems of those affected can also vary enormously even when the chromosome diagnoses are similar.
Individually rare chromosome disorders are indeed very rare but collectively they are common. In fact at least one in every 200 babies is born with a rare chromosome disorder, many babies having symptoms from birth or early childhood. The rest might be affected when they grow up and try to have babies of their own - multiple miscarriages, fertility problems, stillbirths or the birth of a disabled child. Some of these chromosome disorders are so rare that they are actually unique. It is usually immediately following diagnosis that affected families and individuals have the greatest need for emotional and practical support and above all, for information. But even among the more common "rare" disorders, it is likely that the professionals in the local community - the GP, Social Worker or even hospital specialists - will have never before come across anyone with the same disorders. The usual sources of support are not available to affected families, yet the effects of the disorders can be devastating. The vast majority of families have a desperate feeling of isolation. Under the umbrella of Unique membership, families can benefit from mutual support and linking even though the chromosome disorders may be quite different.
General information on chromosomes and rare chromosome disorders can be found below or in our Little Yellow Book.
The effects of rare chromosome disorders can be very varied. The vast majority of carriers of balanced rearrangements will have no symptoms but might have problems in reproduction. Where there has been a loss or gain of chromosome material, the symptoms arising might include a combination of physical problems, health problems, learning difficulties and/or challenging behaviour. The combination and severity of effects occurring very much depend upon which parts of which chromosomes are involved. The outcome for the affected children can be quite different. In general, loss of a segment of a chromosome is more serious than the presence of an extra copy of the same segment. Defects of chromosomes 1 to 22 are usually far more serious than those of the sex chromosomes X and Y. It is very important that a child's chromosome disorder is specified in as much detail as possible. The description of a person's chromosome make-up is called their GENOTYPE. Sometimes children with the same genotype will show similar problems. However, even children with the same genotype can differ in some or even nearly all of their problems. Why should this be? The genotype as seen under a light microscope is called a KARYOTYPE and only gives us the "big" picture. New technologies like array CGH analysis and next generation sequencing (NGS) allow us to look at chromosome and DNA changes at a much greater magnification and often show us that the actual breakpoints in the chromosome might be many genes apart. But even that does not explain all the differences. Even brothers and sisters with the same genotype inherited as the result of a parent's chromosome rearrangement can still develop differently. There are many other factors besides a person's chromosome disorder that affect how they develop, for example, the unique mixture of genes on their other normal chromosomes, the environment in which they are raised and so forth. Sometimes a particular chromosome disorder will give a similar pattern of problems. If enough children are born with this similar pattern, then this can be called a SYNDROME. There are also some general characteristics of rare chromosome disorders that occur in the majority of affected people to varying degrees. For instance, most people with any loss or gain of material from chromosomes 1 to 22 will have some degree of learning disability and developmental delay. This is because there are many genes located across all these chromosomes that code for normal development of the brain. Defects in any one of them could have a harmful effect on normal development. You might have been dismayed if the doctors and geneticists that you have consulted about your child's chromosome disorder are not able to give you a definite idea of how your child will be affected in the long term, especially if the disorder is particularly rare. You might think that the doctors simply do not want to help or can't be bothered to find out. Nothing could be further from the truth. The point is that, like any other child, your child is UNIQUE and while there might have been other similar chromosome disorders reported in the medical literature, it does not mean to say that your child will develop in the same way. Like any of us, doctors do not have a crystal ball to look into the future. They might only be able to give you an idea of the possible problems that might arise. You, or your family and friends, might have asked what can be done to "cure" a chromosome disorder in your baby or child. Nothing can be done about the actual chromosome defect because every single one of the billions of affected cells would have to have the missing chromosome material and all the genes involved added or extra chromosome material taken away and this is not possible yet with today’s technology. However, symptoms caused by the chromosome disorder can be treated as they arise and the best environment given in order for the child with the chromosome disorder to reach their full potential.
When parents discover that their child has a rare chromosome disorder, they often find themselves confronted with a very steep learning curve. Any information learnt about genetics in biology classes at school may be a distant memory. Here we will try to provide you with the basic facts about chromosomes and the different types of rare chromosome disorders. If you find the information a bit complicated, please don't be put off but do ask if you aren't sure what anything means.
The human body is made up of billions of individual CELLS. With the exception of the red blood cells, each of these cells contains a structure called the NUCLEUS, which is held within a thick fluid called the CYTOPLASM. Inside the nucleus are found the CHROMOSOMES, which contain the GENES. Genes are "strung" along the chromosomes, a bit like beads along a necklace. Genes are the instructions that tell the body how to develop and work properly. Apart from the mother's EGG cells or the father's SPERM cells, every cell in the human body normally contains 23 PAIRS of chromosomes, making 46 chromosomes in total in each cell. This number of chromosomes is known as the DIPLOID number. The Human Genome Project has shown there to be about 20,000 to 25,000 genes in every cell. These genes are spread unevenly across the chromosomes, some chromosomes having many more genes than other chromosomes and some parts of each chromosome holding more genes than other parts. Of the 23 pairs of chromosomes in each of these cells, one member of each pair is normally inherited from the father and the other member is normally inherited from the mother. Members of each pair of chromosomes are called HOMOLOGOUS chromosomes. The first 22 pairs of chromosomes are called the AUTOSOMES and are numbered from 1 to 22 according to their length, starting with number 1 as the longest. The chromosomes in the 23rd pair are called the SEX CHROMOSOMES. Sex chromosomes are labelled X or Y. Males normally have one copy of the X chromosome and one copy of the Y chromosome in each cell; it is the Y chromosome that determines "maleness". Females, on the other hand, normally have two copies of the X chromosome but no Y chromosome. The number of chromosomes in the egg or sperm is different from that in other body cells. The mother's eggs each contain only 23 chromosomes (the HAPLOID number), made up of one copy of each autosomal chromosome (1 to 22) along with one copy of the X chromosome. The sperm from the father also contain 23 chromosomes, again made up of one copy of each autosomal chromosome but also either one copy of the X chromosome or one copy of the Y chromosome. So it is the father's sperm that determines whether a child will be a boy (XY) or a girl (XX).Under the microscope, chromosomes look like long, thread-like bodies. They have a SHORT ARM (labelled "p", which stands for petit, the French word for small) and a LONG ARM (labelled "q"). Linking the two arms is a narrower region called the CENTROMERE. The ends of the chromosomes are called the TELOMERES. The telomeres stop the chromosome from unravelling, a bit like the plastic tips of a shoe-lace. Chromosomes are so named because they are able to take up certain dyes or stains. "Chromos" is the Greek word for coloured and "soma" is the Greek word for "body". Different stains give each chromosome a particular pattern of light and dark bands. It is the location of the centromere and the specific banding pattern of a chromosome that allows it to be identified. Chromosomes are built up of a chemical called DNA (DeoxyriboNucleic Acid) and some proteins. Genes are composed of small stretches of some of the DNA in chromosomes. The DNA is held in a twisted shape called a DOUBLE HELIX. This double helix is tightly coiled but these coils are then coiled again and then yet again, a bit like if you twist a shoe-lace until it is coiled tightly into a ball. If you uncoiled all the DNA in just one diploid cell until it was pulled out to its fullest extent, it would measure around two metres! If all the DNA from the billions of cells in a mature adult human were stretched out end to end, it could be wrapped around the Equator up to 5 million times! DNA has two very important jobs. It works very much like an assembly line in a factory. It acts as the TEMPLATE or blueprint for assembly of all the proteins in our bodies. When most people think of protein, they tend to think of it as an important part of the food they eat or as a major component of the structure of their muscles. While some proteins are indeed very important as part of the structure of our bodies, others have essential parts to play in controlling how our bodies work properly. Some proteins act as enzymes, which make the chemical reactions in our bodies happen more easily and quickly, while others act as hormones, which help control our body's proper functioning and development. Some proteins even help control the production of other proteins by different genes. The process of protein production is a very complex one and yet, most of the time, the correct proteins are made to keep our bodies working properly and healthily. With rare chromosome disorders, though, many genes might be missing or extra and so essential proteins are either not made at all or are made in too many copies or are made incorrectly or at the wrong time. The second important function of DNA is to pass on the genetic blueprint from old cells to new cells and from parent to child. An accurate copy of the DNA in each chromosome has to be made every time a new cell is formed.
Specialist scientists called cytogeneticists examine a person's chromosomes or DNA for defects. Usually, they will analyse the chromosomes or DNA from the white cells (lymphocytes) in a person's blood. They can also analyse the chromosomes or DNA found in the cells of other body tissues like bone marrow or skin or they might analyse the cells from chorionic villus or amniotic fluid samples to see if a fetus is carrying an abnormality. For chromosome analysis down a microscope (karyotyping) the cell samples have first to be grown up under special laboratory conditions and this can be very time-consuming, especially if amniocentesis samples are to be analysed. This is one reason why it can take several weeks for the results of a chromosome analysis to be reported. Cytogeneticists will use special chemicals to stop the cells they are examining at an appropriate stage when the chromosomes are at their most compact. At this stage, called METAPHASE, the chromosomes can be stained with different dyes. The stain used most often is called GIEMSA in a technique producing G-BANDED chromosomes. Different stains give the chromosomes a characteristic pattern of light and dark bands which helps with their identification. Sometimes the chromosomes are analysed when they are a little less compact so that more bands can be seen and smaller extra or missing pieces of DNA can be identified. This is called High Resolution Analysis. Diagrams of chromosomes showing these banding patterns are called IDEOGRAMS. However, as the amount of material gained (duplicated) or lost (deleted) can often be extremely small and impossible to see on a routine chromosome test even by the most skilled of scientists, your child may have been told their chromosome analysis was normal. The clinician may have indicated that an underlying genetic basis was still likely. A newer test now available for looking at chromosomes is called a microarray-based comparative genomic hybridisation (also called an array CGH) test. Array CGH is an advance in technology that allows detection of chromosome imbalances that are smaller than can be detected through looking down the microscope. Karyotyping is only as good as the resolution of the microscope and is not able to detect subtle chromosome changes. These smaller alterations, often called submicroscopic alterations because they cannot be seen through the microscope, can still disrupt growth and development. These very small changes are often called microdeletions and microduplications. Array CGH is also sometimes called CGH array or simply a microarray. You can read more detail about Array CGH analysis in our information guide. Array CGH compares your child?s DNA with a control DNA sample and identifies differences between the two sets of DNA. In this way, deletions or duplications (imbalances) in your child?s DNA can be identified. From this, the gene content of any such imbalance can be established.
As we have already mentioned, a person's chromosome make-up is called their KARYOTYPE. Obviously, it would be impractical always to have to show a photograph of someone's chromosomes in order to describe precisely any chromosome disorder they might have. As a consequence, cytogeneticists have devised a standardised code to describe a person's karyotype. This system is called the International System for Human Cytogenetic Nomenclature (ISCN). The most recent version was published in 2013 and it now includes nomenclature for molecular cytogenetic techniques such as FISH and microarrays. This means that anyone understanding the code will have a fairly precise description of a person’s chromosome disorder. In general, under the ISCN convention, karyotype codes are written so that the number of chromosomes in a person’s cells come first, followed by their sex chromosome make-up and then by a description of any chromosome disorder. Using this method, a normal male karyotype would be described as 46,XY and a normal female karyotypeas 46,XX. Any breakpoints in chromosomes are described by a standardised numbering system based on the banding patterns produced in G-banded chromosomes. The bands allow the chromosomes to be mapped into REGIONS, which in turn are divided into BANDS and then into SUB-BANDS. This is a bit like being able to identify a house along a road if you know the house number. With the ISCN numbering system, the higher the number of the breakpoint, the further away from the centromere it is located. To help you understand this system more clearly, take a look at some examples of karyotype.
This karyotype tells us that this person has 46 chromosomes in each of their cells. The person has two X chromosomes and so is a female. The "del" stands for deletion and so the female has a deletion of part of chromosome 8. The chromosome has broken in the short arm ("p") at region 2, band 3, sub-band 1 and the rest of the short arm up to the terminus or end (pter) is missing. So band 8p23.1 is the BREAKPOINT in this deletion.
This describes a male (X and Y chromosomes present) with 47 chromosomes in one cell line, the extra chromosome being a complete copy of chromosome 9, with a second cell line with a normal chromosome make-up. This is what we would call Trisomy 9 Mosaic.
This describes a female with 46 chromosomes, one copy of chromosome 22 being a ring chromosome. There is no indication given of the breakpoints.
This describes a male with 46 chromosomes and a balanced reciprocal translocation between chromosomes 2 and 5 with breakpoints at bands 2p22 and 5p15.1. The segments 2p22 to 2pter and 5p15.1 to 5pter have swapped places with each other but no chromosome material has been lost or gained.
This describes a male with 46 chromosomes and an unbalanced translocation involving chromosomes 2 and 5. One chromosome 5 is a derivative (der) chromosome with loss of part of the short arm from band 5p15.1 to 5pter. An extra piece of chromosome 2 from 2p22 to 2pter has been attached to the derivative chromosome at 5p15.1. This means that the person with this unbalanced translocation has a deletion of part of chromosome 5 combined with a duplication of part of chromosome 2. The translocation has arisen as a result of a balanced translocation in the mother (mat).
FISH & Microarray (array CGH) analysis
Instead of, or in addition, to a karyotype, you may be given the results of molecular analysis such as FISH or a microarray. Results of a FISH analysis might look something like this: 46,XY.ish del(9)(q34.3)(D9S2168-)dn This means:
- 46 The total number of chromosomes in your child’s cells
- XY The two sex chromosomes, XY for males; XX for females
- .ish The analysis was by FISH
- del A deletion, or material is missing
- (9) The deletion is from chromosome 9
- (q34.3) The chromosome has broken at band 9q34.3, indicating a small deletion of the end of the chromosome just short of the 'telomere'
- (D9S2168-) A marker or probe whose position on the human genome is known, in this case marker D9S2168, is missing
- dn dn stands for de novo The parents’ chromosomes have been checked and no rearrangement found involving 9q34.3
With microarray analysis breakpoints at either end of a deletion or duplication are denoted either by the name of a DNA “clone” or by a base pair coordinate. A base pair is simply one of the “rungs” on the ladder of the double helix of DNA. The results are likely to read something like this: arr cgh 16p11.2(29581455->30106101)x1
arr cgh The analysis was by array-CGH
16p11.2 A change was found in band 16p11.2
(29581455->30106101)x1 This is a microdeletion with just one copy of this segment within band 16p11.2. The first base pair shown to be missing is number 29581455. The last base pair shown to be missing is 30106101. The microdeletion is 524,646 base pairs in size
You might already have been your child’s karyotype or the results of molecular analysis such as FISH or microarray and would like to work out exactly what the code means. If you do not know your child’s results, ask your doctor or geneticist for them, preferably with a copy of the original laboratory report(s), so that you have a correct description of your child’s chromosome disorder. Here is a list of the more common symbols used in karyotype descriptions and molecular analysis results.
- add Additional material of unknown origin
- arr Microarray
- arrow (->) From - to
- Brackets, square [..] Surround number of cells
- cen Centromere
- cgh Comparative genomic hybridisation
- single colon (:) Chromosome break
- double colon (::) Chromosome break and reunion
- comma (,) Separates chromosome numbers, sex chromosomes and chromosome abnormalities
- decimal point (.) Denotes sub-bands
- del Deletion
- de novo Designates a chromosome abnormality which has not been inherited
- der Derivative chromosome
- dic Dicentric
- dup Duplication
- h Heterochromatin
- i Isochromosome
- idic Isodicentric chromosome
- ins Insertion
- inv Inversion
- ish In situ hybridisation
- mar Marker chromosome (extra chromosome of unknown origin)
- mat Maternal origin
- minus sign (-) Loss
- MLPA Multiple ligation-dependent probe amplification
- mos Mosaic
- multiplication sign (x) Multiple copies of rearranged chromosomes or number of copies of a chromosome region
- p Short arm of chromosome
- parentheses (..) Surround structurally altered chromosomes and breakpoints
- pat Paternal origin
- plus sign (+) Gain
- psu Pseudo
- q Long arm of chromosome
- question mark (?) Questionable identification of a chromosome or chromosome structure
- r Ring chromosome
- rcp Reciprocal
- rea Rearrangement
- rec Recombinant chromosome
- rob Robertsonian translocation
- s Satellite
- semicolon (;) Separates altered chromosomes and breakpoints in structural rearrangements involving more than one chromosome
- semicolon (;) Separates altered chromosomes and breakpoints in structural rearrangements involving more than one chromosome
- slant line (/) Separates cell lines (used in mosaic karyotypes)
- subtel Subtelomeric region
- t Translocation
- tel Telomere
- ter Terminal (end of chromosome)
- trp triplication
- upd Uniparental disomy
- var Variant or variable region
- wcp Whole chromosome paint
Some changes or mutations in chromosomes are so small they only affect a single gene and these are known as single gene disorders. However, when changes in chromosomes are large enough to be seen using a light microscope, they are called chromosome aberrations or disorders. Visible disorders usually involve many genes and can be classified into two main types, NUMERICAL DISORDERS and STRUCTURAL DISORDERS. If these disorders arise during the formation of the egg or the sperm cells, then the disorder would be passed on to every cell in the body of a child produced. If the disorder arises in one of the new cells produced soon after the egg has been fertilised by the sperm, then only a proportion of the child's cells will be affected and this is called MOSAICISM. Unique publishes information guides on many different individual chromosome disorders and these are freely available from our website or on request. For rarer chromosome disorders not covered by the guides, Unique might hold information in the offline database. Please contact us with your information requests.
If cells carry complete extra sets of chromosomes, this is known as POLYPLOIDY. When there is one extra set, to give 69 chromosomes in total, this is called TRIPLOIDY. If only some of the body's cells carry the extra set of chromosomes, then this is known as Triploid Mosaicism, or Diploid Triploid Mosaicism or even Mixoploidy. When individual whole chromosomes are missing or extra, this is called ANEUPLOIDY. This can happen with any of the autosomal chromosomes (1 to 22) or the sex chromosomes (X and Y). If one extra complete chromosome is present, this is known as TRISOMY and the number of chromosomes in each affected cell would be 47. Probably the most well-known example of Trisomy is Down Syndrome (Trisomy 21). Two extra complete chromosomes would be called TETRASOMY and the number of chromosomes would be 48. If a complete chromosome is missing, this is known as MONOSOMY and the number of chromosomes in each cell would be 45.
Structural disorders occur because of breakages in a chromosome. They can occur spontaneously (this is called DE NOVO) or they can be inherited from a parent. Structural disorders include various types of translocation, deletions, ring chromosomes, duplications, inversions and isochromosomes.
A translocation happens when DNA is transferred from one non-homologous chromosome to another. They include reciprocal translocations, Robertsonian translocations and insertional translocations. Translocations can be balanced or unbalanced.
Balanced Reciprocal Translocations and Unbalanced Translocations
Balanced reciprocal translocations as a whole are thought to occur at a rate of about 1 in 500 in the general population. Balanced reciprocal translocations happen when breaks occur in two or more different chromosomes and the resulting fragments of DNA swap places. No chromosome material has been lost or gained and so the vast majority of carriers of a balanced reciprocal translocation do not have any symptoms. There can be rare exceptions to this. Symptoms can occur occasionally when children are born with de novo balanced reciprocal translocations, especially when more than two different chromosomes are involved. This is thought to be due, at least in part, to disruption of important genes at the chromosome breakpoints. However, if the child carries the same balanced reciprocal translocation as their symptomless parent, then they should also not experience symptoms caused by the translocation. The problems with balanced reciprocal translocations arise because carriers are at risk of producing offspring with part of one chromosome missing and part of another extra. Such translocations are unbalanced and may lead to miscarriage or the birth of children with symptoms including learning difficulties and physical disabilities. Balanced reciprocal translocations tend to be unique to individual families and so it is very important that families consult a genetic counsellor so that the specific risks of miscarriage and bearing children with disabilities can be discussed.
Robertsonian translocations occur when the short arm of certain chromosomes (chromosomes 13, 14, 15, 21 or 22) are lost and the remaining long arms fuse together. Loss of the short arms of these chromosomes should not cause any symptoms. A person with a Robertsonian translocation has a total chromosome number of 45. Robertsonian translocations are relatively common in the general population (about 1 in 1000), the most frequent being fusion of the long arms of chromosomes 13 and 14. The significance of a Robertsonian Translocation is the risk of miscarriage or of producing children with an unbalanced chromosome make-up.
Insertions occur when a segment of one chromosome is inserted into a gap in another chromosome. If someone carries a balanced insertional rearrangement, they should not have any symptoms (unless a critical gene is disrupted at the breakpoints) but they are at risk of producing a child with either a deletion or a duplication of chromosome material but not both disorders.
Deletions and Microdeletions
A DELETION involves loss of a part (a segment) of a chromosome and is sometimes known as a PARTIAL MONOSOMY. Deletions can occur in any part of any chromosome. If the segment is lost from near to the centromere, this is called a PROXIMAL DELETION. If the segment is lost from nearer to the end of the chromosome (the telomere), then the deletion is called a DISTAL DELETION. If there is just one break in the chromosome, then the deletion is called a TERMINAL DELETION. (Terminal just refers to the end of the chromosome and does not infer that the deletion will be lethal to the child.) If there are two breaks in the arm of the chromosome with the intervening segment being lost and the remaining parts of the chromosome joining up, then this is called an INTERSTITIAL DELETION. Some deletions are particularly small and are called MICRODELETIONS.
A RING chromosome usually forms when the ends of both arms of the same chromosome are deleted. The remaining broken ends of the chromosome are "sticky" and join together to make a ring shape. Usually it is the missing DNA that is significant. In effect, the person with a ring chromosome has a terminal deletion of both the short and the long arms of the chromosome. However, if the ring chromosome is present as an extra (or SUPERNUMERARY) chromosome, then it is the chromosome material that has NOT been deleted that is significant. The material in the extra ring chromosome has effectively been duplicated. Some geneticists believe that there can also be a general effect caused by any ring chromosome, poor growth and developmental delay being the outcome.
Duplications and Microduplications
A DUPLICATION occurs when an extra copy of a segment of a chromosome is present. A duplication is sometimes known as a PARTIAL TRISOMY. If a person has two extra copies of a chromosome segment, then this is known as a TRIPLICATION or a PARTIAL TETRASOMY. Some duplications are particularly small and are called MICRODUPLICATIONS.
Inversions occur when there are two breaks in a single chromosome. The segment between the breakpoints turns through 180 degrees and reinserts itself into the "gap" left in the chromosome. If both breaks occur in the same arm of the chromosome, this is called a PARACENTRIC INVERSION. If one break occurs in the short arm and the other in the long arm of the chromosome, then this is called a PERICENTRIC INVERSION. Usually, inversions do not cause problems in the carrier (unless important genes are disrupted) but there is a risk of producing sperm or eggs with unbalanced chromosomes. Carriers of paracentric inversions very rarely give birth to children with abnormalities. On the other hand, carriers of pericentric inversions more frequently give birth to children with abnormalities. These children will have a partial duplication of one arm of the affected chromosome along with a partial deletion of the end of the other arm of that chromosome or vice versa. The closer the breakpoints are to the ends (telomeres) of the chromosomes, the greater the chance of the child surviving to birth. This is because the chromosome segments deleted and duplicated will be smaller.
Isochromosomes and sSMCs
Sometimes people carry an extra or supernumerary chromosome made up of parts of one or more chromosomes. They will effectively carry a duplication or triplication of the material forming this extra chromosome. If the origin of the extra chromosome is unknown, it is sometimes referred to as a small supernumerary marker chromosome (sSMC) or a marker chromosome. If the extra chromosome is made up of two copies of the same segment of a chromosome, this is called an isochromosome. When these extra chromosomes carry two copies of the same centromere, they are called isodicentric chromosomes. | <urn:uuid:274e8e38-39e7-45c8-82c2-69c66db87921> | {
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Herb Gardening Glossary
Acidic: A soil pH less than 7 is considered acidic.
Alkaline: A soil pH greater than 7 is considered alkaline.
Annual: A plant whose life cycle lasts only one growing season, from seed to blooms to seed.
Aromatic Herbs: Produce pleasant smelling flowers or foliage. Essential oils from these herbs are often used in perfumes and other scents.
Beneficial Insect: Predatory or parasitic insects that eat or lay their eggs in garden pests thereby controlling them.
Biennial: A plant whose full life cycle lasts two growing seasons.
Cloning Gel: Commercial products used to seal, protect and initiate root cell formation in cuttings.
Companion Planting: Planting two or more plants in close proximity for their individual or mutual benefit.
Compost: A decomposed mixture of organic substances such as dead leaves or manure, used for fertilizing and building soil.
Culinary Herbs: A plant grown for its strong flavor that is used to cook with or flavor foods and drinks.
Cuttings: A technique for propagating plants in which a piece of the source plant is cut away and then placed in a growing medium. The cutting becomes independent of the source plant.
Cultivate: To promote, improve or begin growth by labor and attention.
Dead Heading: The act of removing spent flowers or flower heads to prolong bloom, to promote re-bloom, or to prevent seeding.
Direct Seeding: To sow a seed (not a seedling) into the ground or container where it will spend its life cycle.
Frost Date: The average yearly date that the last or first frost of the year occurs.
Germinate: The process of a seedling sprouting from a seed.
Growing Medium: The material used to grow a plant or germinate seeds.
Hardening Off: To slowly acclimatize a plant to living outdoors, usually accomplished by leaving them outside for increasing amounts of time over a one to two week period.
Herb: A seed-producing annual, biennial, or perennial that does not develop persistent woody tissue, but dies down at the end of a growing season.
Knot Garden: A formal garden using herbs that can grow in a low-lying hedge to form a complex, interwoven pattern.
Medicinal Herbs: A plant that is cultivated or gathered to make medicinal products.
Mulch: A protective cover, placed over the soil, primarily to modify the effects of the local climate. Mulches can be made from organic or inorganic substances.
Organic Gardening: A method and philosophy of gardening in which no chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, or additives of any kind are used or applied to the soil or plants.
Ornamental Herbs: An herb that is planted primarily for its aesthetic, not practical value.
Perennial: A plant with a life cycle of more than two years.
Perlite: A volcanic glass that greatly expands under intense heat. Used in gardening for the loosening of compact soil while still having high water retention qualities.
pH: A measurement of the acidity or alkalinity of the soil. The scale ranges from 0 to 14, 0-7 being acidic and 7-14 being alkaline. A pH of 7 is generally considered neutral.
Primary Metabolites: Chemical compounds that are directly concerned with growth, development and reproduction.
Propagation: The process of naturally or artificially distributing or spreading plants.
Secondary Metabolites: Chemical compounds in organisms that are indirectly involved in the development, growth or reproduction of organisms.
Spice: A dried root, seed, fruit, bark or other vegetative substance applied in nutritionally insignificant quantities as food additives for the purpose of flavor.
Theme Garden: A garden that is designed around a theme. Some common themes include rose gardens, kitchen gardens, and night gardens.
Topdressing: To add a slow release fertilizer or compost after the plant has already been established, by spreading it directly onto the soil and either leaving it as mulch or working it in to the top inch or so.
Transplanting: The technique of moving a plant from one place to another. If you start seedlings in flats, they must be transplanted to their final location.
Vermiculite: A natural mineral that expands with the application of heat, it is typically used in gardening as an additive to potting soil to increase its aeration. | <urn:uuid:698e6891-e5fd-479c-a0c5-74933a1daaaf> | {
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Final Test - Medium
|Name: _________________________||Period: ___________________|
This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.
Multiple Choice Questions
1. At first, what are Agnes' feelings toward the young poet?
(a) She is enthralled with him.
(b) She is offended by him.
(c) She sees him as a son.
(d) She hates him.
2. Is Michael happy with his daughter's choice of husband, and how does he address his son-in-law?
(a) Yes, Michael descibes him as perfect.
(b) No, Michael calls him poor.
(c) Yes, Michael thinks he is wealthy.
(d) No, Michael calls him a nit wit.
3. What is Michael doing when he is first seen in the last scene?
(a) Shaving in the mirror.
(b) Sleeping in bed.
(c) Packing a suitcase.
(d) Writing at his desk.
4. Why does Michael ask to reread the young poet's works a second time?
(a) Because he is trying to steal the poet's work.
(b) Because Michael sincerely likes the poet's work.
(c) To prove something to Agnes.
(d) To show that he is better than every other writer.
5. What does Agnes do with the "God Is Love" pillow when she hears Michael coming back into the room at the end of Act 3, Scene 2?
(a) Throws the pillow away in the trashcan.
(b) Hides the pillow in the cellar.
(c) Covers the pillow with the bed linens.
(d) Hands the pillow to Michael.
Short Answer Questions
1. What type of poetry is the young poet's work?
2. What does Michael say his son was wearing in Act 2, Scene 2?
3. What is different about the fourposter bed in Act 3, Scene 1?
4. What does Michael tell his son in Act 2, Scene 2?
5. In Act 2, Scene 2, what do both Agnes and Michael want to help ease their worry?
This section contains 300 words
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Britannica Web sites
Articles from Britannica encyclopedias for elementary and high school students.
- Peggy Whitson - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11)
Peggy Whitson is an American astronaut and scientist. She was the first woman commander of the International Space Station. She set a record for spending more time in space than any other American astronaut.
- Peggy Whitson - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)
(born 1960). American biochemist and astronaut Peggy Whitson was the first female commander of the International Space Station (ISS). She set a record among American astronauts and among women for spending the most time in space. | <urn:uuid:4f7a6fed-65f6-454c-841d-df8fb555e4c4> | {
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An anti-lock braking system (ABS) is a system that prevents the wheels from locking while you are braking. It is a very safe and effective system and the purpose of this is twofold: it allows the driver to maintain steering control under heavy braking and, in most situations, it shortens the braking distance (by allowing the driver to hit the brakes really hard without losing control of the vehicle).
If you have a vehicle that does not have an anti-lock braking system, you can manually pump the brakes to prevent the wheels from locking up. Whereas, in vehicles that are equipped with an anti-locking brake system, the drivers foot needs to remain firmly on the brake pedal, and this will allow the system to automatically pump the brakes.
A typical anti-locking braking system (ABS) has a central electronic unit. The electronic unit has four speed sensors for each wheel as well as hydraulic valves on the brake circuit. The electronic unit will constantly monitor the rotation speed of each of the wheels. When it senses that a wheel might be rotating slower than the others, it will decrease pressure on the brakes. This will reduce the braking force on that wheel and it will cause a pulsing feeling through the brake pedal.
If the sensors become contaminated with metallic dust, it will fail to detect any wheel slip.
On most surfaces, ABS equipped vehicles are able to achieve braking distance shorter than those without. In most conditions, ABS will reduce the drivers chances of crashing. A skilled driver who isn’t using ABS, can use techniques like cadence braking (technique used to stop the vehicle more quickly on a slippery surface) or threshold braking (the driver adjusts the control of the brake system in an attempt to maximize the braking force of the vehicle) to be able to match or even beat the performance of an average driver that has ABS. In emergency situations, ABS will reduce the chances of skidding and losing control.
Anti-Lock Brake System – Explained | <urn:uuid:fa31208b-752a-48ec-b575-aa7f86462fac> | {
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You can salvage some nice motors out of optical drives but they can be tricky to control. That’s because brushless DC motors require carefully timed signals used in a process called Electronic Speed Control (ESC). [Fileark] built and ESC using an Arduino and has a couple of posts explaining the concept and demonstrating how it works. His test circuit uses six 2N2222 transistors to protect the Arduino from excessive current. You can see six red LEDs above which are inline with the base of teach transistor. This gives visual feedback when a transistor is switched, a big help for troubleshooting your circuit.
Once you’ve seen the videos after the break you’ll probably come to the conclusion that this is an impractical way to use a brushless motor. But it is a wonderful way to learn about, and experiment with the concept of ESC. Chances are you can get your hands on an old optical drive for free, making this an inexpensive weekend project. | <urn:uuid:ae9f6cc3-0562-42e8-bda7-165e887304b8> | {
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Teen years are full of emotional and physical changes. Parents usually observe and guide a child’s physical and emotional health, but dental health is just as important. Dental health is a part of physical and overall health. The teen mouth undergoes changes, as well as the rest of the body. Teenagers’ lifestyle decisions and actions can affect their teeth, gums, and breath odor. So, what should parents know to ensure their teen has a healthy mouth?
Healthy mouth tips for your teen
Concerns that can become serious in adulthood are preventable in adolescence. So, talk to your teen about caring for their teeth and gums. Encourage them to make smart choices about food, drinks, and activities. You can help them to understand some of the effects of their choices on overall and oral health. From the American Dental Hygienists’ Association, these dental health issues are some that as not a concern in younger age groups, but they do affect teens:
Participating in contact sports
Many active adolescents participate in high-energy sports that do not require mouth guards. Soccer, for example, has a high risk of contact to the face by competitors or the ball. Teens participating in contact sports should consider various mouth guard options to ensure mouth safety.
Over-consumption of sugary sodas and foods
Most teenagers understand the effect of sugary or unhealthy foods on their body and teeth, but they overlook drinks. Sodas are very high in sugar, as are sweetened coffee drinks that have become a favorite of teenagers. Even diet sodas negatively affect the teeth, with high levels of phosphoric acid, which interferes with the body’s ability to absorb calcium.
Getting mouth piercings
Teenagers have a need to express themselves, sometimes with choices that affect their appearance, including “mouth art.” Piercings can harbor bacteria and lead to infections, swollen gums, and bad breath. Therefore, piercings should be surgical grade stainless steel and cleaned thoroughly after meals and snacks.
Suffering from eating disorders
Anorexia, bulimia, and binge eating disorders affect more than emotional state and body health. Eating disorders also create oral health concerns including enamel erosion, infections, and dry mouth, among others.
Presence of puberty gingivitis
Changes in hormones during puberty years can cause an increased reaction of the body to dental plaque. Hormones can pass through the gums and into the mouth, where the bacteria absorb them. The bacteria can release more harmful byproducts, resulting in red and swollen gums that bleed easily. Puberty gingivitis occurs most often in the very early teen years or around age 12.
The best way for your teen to enjoy a sparkling smile and strong teeth is to practice good oral and health habits. Parents should remind and encourage self-care behaviors and set appointments with a dentist. Keeping twice-yearly appointments with a dental professional will help to ensure a healthy and bright smile for your teen. | <urn:uuid:f85a025e-5dcb-4df0-b587-624fe45cda7a> | {
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Purdue Researcher's New 'Tool for the Organic Chemist Toolbox' Licensed to Sigma-Aldrich
News May 24, 2013
David A. Colby, a Purdue assistant professor of medicinal chemistry and organic chemistry, developed a chemical reagent that safely makes fluorine available during the creation of a new chemical compound. This reagent could provide drug manufacturers an improved method for using fluorine in the drug discovery process and enhance large-scale production of drugs for pharmaceutical manufacturers.
Aldrich Chemical Co. LLC has licensed the technology and will make the product available for sale through the Sigma-Aldrich catalog and website. Aldrich signed the license agreement with the Purdue Research Foundation and its Purdue Office of Technology Commercialization.
"Fluorine-carbon bonds are incredibly strong and are the secret to the strength of materials like Teflon and agricultural treatments that withstand the elements, and they also help pharmaceuticals hold up well inside our bodies," Colby said. "Fluorine has greatly advanced these industries, and now we have solved a key problem associated with using a commonly available starting material, fluoroform gas, an environmental hazard that is difficult to use in the laboratory. What we've done is create a new tool for the chemist's toolbox."
Fluoroform gas requires special handling and protection of the user and produces ozone-destroying fluorocarbons if released into the atmosphere. The reagent Colby developed is a stable solid that can be easily stored at room temperature, weighed and measured in the open air and requires no unusual protection measures. The reagent also has little waste and is made up of compounds that are safe for the environment. Once safely added to a solvent contained in the chemical processing equipment, the reagent releases fluoroform gas that is easily incorporated into the chemical process, he said.
Pharmaceutical companies have long recognized the beneficial effects of fluorine atoms in drug molecules because of their ability to improve such things as drug delivery, selectivity and efficacy. About 20 percent of all drugs on the market contain fluorine, including three of the current top-10 best-selling drugs including Lipitor® and Prevacid®.
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In January, Cambridge University Press will release “Constitutions and Religious Freedom” by Frank B. Cross (University of Texas, Austin). The publisher’s description follows:
Many of us take for granted the idea that the right to religious freedom should be protected in a free, democratic polity. However, this book challenges whether the protection and privilege of religious belief and identity should be prioritized over any other right. By studying the effects of constitutional promises of religious freedom and establishment clauses, Frank B. Cross sets the stage for a set of empirical questions that examines the consequences of such protections. Although the case for broader protection is often made as a theoretical matter, constitutions generally protect freedom of religion. Allowing people full choice in holding religious beliefs or freedom of conscience is central to their autonomy. Freedom of religion is thus potentially a very valuable aspect of society, at least so long as it respects the freedom of individuals to be irreligious. This book tests these associations and finds that constitutions provide national religious protection, especially when the legal system is more sophisticated. | <urn:uuid:ddcdf5e6-f610-4c9e-9542-a82378c555fb> | {
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The Book of Ruth contains one of the Bible’s best-known and most-loved stories. This major commentary by Robert L. Hubbard shows how the author of Ruth used, with great literary artistry, the story of Ruth and Naomi to convey important theological themes.
In his introduction, Hubbard discusses the issues of text, canonicity, literary criticism, authorship and date, purpose, setting, genre, legal background, and themes and theology, and concludes with an outline of the book and a thorough bibliography. The commentary proper is based on Hubbard’s own fresh translation and is accented by copious footnotes on textual, philological, and literary matters.
Gleaning the best from recent research on Ruth, Hubbard gives the story’s rich literary, grammatical, and theological dimensions a careful, rigorous treatment. He allows for the possibility that the anonymous author was a woman and argues that the narrative itself aims to counter opposition to the Davidic monarchy in Israel and Judah during Solomon’s reign. Throughout, Hubbard’s sensitivity to the literary genius of Ruth’s author and his coherent explication of the outworking of the book’s theological themes make this volume an invaluable tool for anyone desiring to explore the beautiful story of Ruth in depth. | <urn:uuid:ccf094ba-b524-413e-bc07-9d63f9418bb7> | {
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There’s plenty of egregious Department of Agriculture (USDA) programs that Congress needs to address. In addition to repealing programs, Congress can use the appropriations process to eliminate or condition funding for programs; the appropriations process can also be used to make important policy changes.
Here are just three USDA programs that Congress should address through appropriations.
1. Food Stamps: Heat and Eat
This loophole in the food stamp program allows states to artificially boost the amount of food stamp benefits a household receives by mailing out token checks, for amounts as small as $1, from the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program.
Congress attempted to close this loophole in the farm bill, but failed to do so. In 2012, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that getting rid of Heat and Eat would save an estimated $14.3 billion over 10 years. The savings may be smaller because of potential savings achieved by the farm bill.
Congress should close the loophole or at a minimum stop providing funding to states that are using the loophole.
2. Dietary Guidelines: Environmental Extremism
Every five years, the USDA and the Department of Health and Human Services issue dietary guidelines to inform the public about healthy eating.
The Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) is at work now preparing recommendations that will inform the 2015 guidelines. In addition to focusing on human health alone, the DGAC is also concerned with the health of the planet. Dr. Barbara Millen, chair of the DGAC, explained at the DGAC’s first meeting, “Overall, we want to be certain to make recommendations for a healthy, ecologically responsible diet.”
This environmental focus is dangerous. The guidelines are supposed to reflect the best advice on nutritional policy for humans, not advice that is being weighed (in any manner) against the interests of the environment.
There should be no funds provided to implement the dietary guidelines unless human health is the one and only consideration.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) inspects all seafood, but an exception was created in the 2008 farm bill that would require the USDA to inspect catfish. This requirement hasn’t been implemented yet, but it will require many seafood processors to comply with both FDA and USDA regulations.
The USDA has estimated that the cost for government and business would be $14 million annually (98 percent of this cost borne by the federal government).
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) hasn’t been subtle about its views on the program, publishing a 2012 report entitled “Responsibility for Inspecting Catfish Should Not Be Assigned to USDA.”
There’s no reason for special treatment for catfish. Claims that the program is needed for health reasons are unsubstantiated. GAO has explained that the program “would result in duplication of federal programs and cost taxpayers millions of dollars annually without enhancing the safety of catfish intended for human consumption.” The program also creates trade barriers for foreign exporters that would limit domestic competition and likely invite retaliation from foreign countries against other agriculture industries.
The program should be repealed. At a minimum, Congress should provide no funding for its implementation. | <urn:uuid:c9d20f29-b18f-4a6c-9f55-5084637ee392> | {
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Although Anopheles mosquitoes are the vectors for human Plasmodium spp., there are also other mosquito species–among them culicines (Culex spp., Aedes spp.)–present in malaria-endemic areas. Culicine mosquitoes transmit arboviruses and filarial worms to humans and are vectors for avian Plasmodium spp., but have never been observed to transmit human Plasmodium spp. When ingested by a culicine mosquito, parasites could either face an environment that does not allow development due to biologic incompatibility or be actively killed by the mosquito’s immune system. In the latter case, the molecular mechanism of killing must be sufficiently powerful that Plasmodium is not able to overcome it. To investigate how human malaria parasites develop in culicine mosquitoes, we infected Culex quinquefasciatus with Plasmodium falciparum NF54 and monitored development of parasites in the blood bolus and midgut epithelium at different time points. Our results reveal that ookinetes develop in the midgut lumen of C. quinquefasciatus in slightly lower numbers than in Anopheles gambiae G3. After 30 hours, parasites have invaded the midgut and can be observed on the basal side of the midgut epithelium by confocal and transmission electron microscopy. Very few of the parasites in C. quinquefasciatus are alive, most of them are lysed. Eight days after the mosquito’s blood meal, no oocysts can be found in C. quinquefasciatus. Our results suggest that the mosquito immune system could be involved in parasite killing early in development after ookinetes have crossed the midgut epithelium and come in contact with the mosquito hemolymph.
Citation: Knöckel J, Molina-Cruz A, Fischer E, Muratova O, Haile A, et al. (2013) An Impossible Journey? The Development of Plasmodium falciparum NF54 in Culex quinquefasciatus. PLoS ONE 8(5): e63387. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0063387
Editor: Luciano A. Moreira, Centro de Pesquisas René Rachou, Brazil
Received: January 15, 2013; Accepted: April 3, 2013; Published: May 3, 2013
This is an open-access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication.
Funding: This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health Intramural Research Program. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
Malaria, one of the most devastating human parasitic diseases, leads to ~1 million deaths each year. About 50% of the world’s population live in areas where malaria is endemic and are therefore at risk of infection .
The vectors of human malaria parasites are female Anopheles spp. mosquitoes. When ingested during a blood meal, male and female gametocytes are “activated” and transform into male and female gametes. They fuse and form a zygote, which then develops into a motile ookinete. The ookinete crosses the mosquito midgut epithelium, reaches the basal side of the epithelium, and develops into an oocyst, lying in the space between the basal membrane of the epithelial cell and the basal lamina. Sporozoites develop inside the oocyst and are released after approximately ten days into the mosquito hemolymph. They invade the salivary glands and are transmitted to a new host during blood feeding of the mosquito.
In malaria-endemic areas, other mosquito species are also present, among them culicines (Culex spp., Aedes spp.). Culicine mosquitoes are–like anophelines–important vectors for human disease, transmitting filaria and several arboviruses. Additionally, culicine mosquitoes transmit avian Plasmodium species to birds –. Culex quinquefasciatus is a member of the Culex pipiens complex, the latter showing a worldwide distribution . C. quinquefasciatus mosquitoes have been shown to be a major vector for West Nile , Rift Valley fever , , and St. Louis and Japanese encephalitis , viruses as well as filarial worms to humans . They are opportunistic feeders and rely on a variety of different hosts, showing great regional variability and ranging from humans to other mammals, birds, and sometimes reptiles and amphibians –. Although a number of studies confirm that C. quinquefasciatus feed on humans in malaria-endemic areas , , they have never been observed to transmit human Plasmodium spp. The same is true for other culicine mosquitoes. What causes the lack of parasite transmission is not known.
Several studies on field-caught as well as laboratory strains of different culicine mosquitoes revealed the presence of oocysts and sometimes even sporozoites after infection with human and other primate, mammalian, and avian malaria parasites. Among others, oocysts have been observed in Mansonia uniformis infected with Plasmodium cynomolgi as well as with Plasmodium falciparum , and in Culex bitaeniorhynchus after infection with P. falciparum , although another study finds this mosquito refractory to P. falciparum . Observation of sporozoites was very rare and with one exception did not lead to infection of the salivary glands, but it clearly demonstrates that partial development of mammalian parasites can take place in culicine mosquitoes.
In Anopheles gambiae, several immune pathways and molecules are activated upon infection with Plasmodium spp. A major component of the anti-plasmodial response is the thioester-binding protein (TEP1)-complex, consisting of TEP1 – and two leucine-rich repeat (LRR) proteins: LRIM1 (leucine-rich repeat immune protein 1) and APL1 (Anopheles-Plasmodium-responsive leucine-rich repeat 1). These proteins, present in the mosquito hemolymph, mediate lysis of ookinetes after crossing of the midgut epithelium. , –. Recent work has demonstrated that protein nitration during midgut traversal makes P. berghei parasites detectable to the mosquito immune system and TEP1 . TEP1 most efficiently eliminates P. berghei, but also mediates lysis of P. falciparum parasites in the A. gambiae Keele strain – and is involved in melanization of some P. falciparum clones in the An. gambiae L3-5 strain .
Several other major immune pathways have been shown to influence infection intensities, with the TOLL-pathway acting against P. berghei and the Imd-pathway being activated upon infection with P. falciparum, both targeting ookinetes early after invasion of the midgut epithelium , , , , . The JAK-STAT pathway is active in P. berghei as well as P. falciparum infected mosquitoes and targets early oocysts .
Several genetic loci have been associated with higher susceptibility or refractoriness to Plasmodium infection in An. gambiae , that contain a number of the above mentioned immune pathway genes. But despite the presence of powerful defense mechanisms, in susceptible anopheline mosquitoes, parasite numbers are only reduced and not completely eliminated, allowing parasite transmission to occur. In contrast, in culicine mosquitoes no transmission has been observed, but it is not known where and how parasites die. Understanding the mechanisms underlying the blockage of parasite transmission in a non-vector mosquito will provide insights into the requirements for successful development of the parasite in the human vector mosquito.
In this study, we investigate development of P. falciparum in C. quinquefasciatus. We show that ookinetes develop in the blood meal and are able to cross the midgut epithelium, but when they reach the basal side of the midgut, the parasites die.
Materials and Methods
The present study was carried out in strict accordance with the recommendations in the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals of the National Institutes of Health. All animal procedures were approved by the National Institutes of Health Animal Care and Use Committee (ACUC, Protocol ID: LMVR102).
Mosquito Rearing and Infection with P. falciparum NF54
Experiments were performed using An. gambiae G3 (MR4) and C. quinquefasciatus (Bamako) mosquito strains. The C. quinquefasciatus colony was established at NIH in 2005 from blood-fed and gravid females collected inside houses in Point G, Bamako, Mali. Mosquitoes are raised at 27°C and 75% relative humidity in a 13 hours light/11 hours dark cycle, and adult mosquitoes were maintained on a 10% Karo syrup solution and blood fed on chickens to maintain the colony.
For infection with P. falciparum NF54 parasites, 4- to 9-day-old female mosquitoes were fed by artificial membrane feeding. P. falciparum NF54 parasites were maintained in human O+ erythrocytes and RPMI 1640 medium supplemented with 25 mM HEPES, 50 mg/ml hypoxanthine, 25 mM NaHCO3, and 10% (v/v) heat-inactivated human serum type O+ –. Blood constituents were purchased from Interstate Blood Bank Inc., Memphis, TN. USA. Gametocytogenesis was induced as described , and 14- to 16-day-old mature gametocyte cultures (stage V) were fed to mosquitoes through parafilm-covered, prewarmed (37°C) membrane feeders for 30 minutes.
Midguts were dissected 8–11 days post blood feeding and stained with 0.1% mercurochrome in dH2O for ten minutes. To determine infection intensities, oocysts were counted by light microscopy.
Immunostaining of Parasites in Mosquito Blood Meals
Individual midguts were dissected 20 and 30 hours after the membrane feed in a drop of PBS and the blood meal washed out of the midgut epithelium. The blood meal was resuspended in 2–3 µl of PBS and spread in a defined field of 1 cm × 1 cm for An. gambiae and 1 cm × 1.5 cm for C. quinquefasciatus. Slides were dried for at least ten minutes and then stored at 4°C in a sealed bag with DriRite prior to immunostaining.
For immunostaining parasites in the blood meals, slides were warmed to room temperature (RT) for 45 minutes, removed from the bag, and fixed in ice-cold 90% acetone, 10% methanol for ten minutes at –20°C. Slides were dried and washed in PBS for five minutes at RT and subsequently blocked in 5% milk in PBS for ten minutes. Blocking solution was removed and the slides washed in wash buffer (PBS, 0.01% Tween 20) for five minutes, shaking at RT. Slides were then incubated with mouse-anti-Pfs25 antibody (4B7, 1:1000 in PBS, 1% BSA) in a humidified chamber for one hour and washed three times for ten minutes in wash buffer. The slides were placed in the humidified chamber and incubated with secondary Alexa Fluor® 555 goat anti-mouse IgG (Life Technologies, Gaithersburg, Maryland, USA) at 1:1000 in PBS, 1% BSA for one hour in the dark. Slides were washed two times for ten minutes in wash buffer and once for ten minutes in PBS. To seal the slides, a small drop of Vectashield hardset with DAPI was added and the slide covered with a cover slip. Slides were stored in the dark at 4°C until parasites were counted using a fluorescence microscope.
Determination of Ookinete Conversion Rate and Total Parasite Numbers in Mosquito Blood Meals
To determine the fraction of parasites that successfully transformed into ookinetes (ookinete conversion rate), 100 parasites were counted in each immunostained blood meal smear. Round forms (gametes or zygotes) and ookinetes were counted separately, and the percentage of each of the two developmental stages was calculated. Retort forms were included in the gamete counts, and only fully developed ookinetes were counted as such.To determine the total number of parasites, ookinetes were counted in 25 fields of 0.1 mm × 0.1 mm for each slide by fluorescence microscopy and subsequently extrapolated to the entire area of the field of 100 mm2 and 150 mm2 for An. gambiae and C. quinquefasciatus, respectively.
Determination of Blood Meal Size of An. gambiae and C. quinquefasciatus
The blood meal size of An. gambiae and C. quinquefasciatus was determined by hemoglobinometry , . Hemoglobin is converted into the stable cyanomethemoglobin, which has maximum absorbance at 540 nm. Color intensity at this wavelength is proportional to the total hemoglobin content of the sample. Briefly, female mosquitoes were fed by membrane feeding using uninfected human red blood cells at 40% hematocrit (40% uninfected red blood cells, 60% human serum). Blood-fed mosquitoes were individually flash frozen in liquid N2 at different time points after the blood meal. To the tubes, 500 µl of Drabkin’s reagent (Sigma-Aldrich, St. Louis, Missouri, USA) was added, and the mosquitoes were thoroughly ground and incubated for at least 30 minutes at room temperature. The tubes were vortexed and centrifuged at 5000×g for five minutes. Supernatant (300 µl) was transferred to a new tube containing 800 µl dH2O for dilution purposes. 300 µl of the diluted reaction mix were then transferred to a 96-well plate and absorption read at 540 nm using a Synergy HT spectrophotometer (BioTek, Winooski, Vermont, USA).
A calibration curve was created for each experiment using known volumes of the same blood mixture used for the feeding (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 µl) to determine the total amount of blood ingested by the mosquito. Additionally, five unfed mosquitoes were collected in each experiment and were processed the same way as the blood-fed females. The average absorption was used as a correction factor for the absorption obtained for blood-fed mosquitoes.
Immunostaining of Parasites in the Mosquito Midgut Epithelium
To determine the number of parasites in the midgut epithelium, midguts were dissected 30 hours after the blood feeding in cold Ashburner’s PBS. Midguts were fixed in 4% paraformaldehyde in Ashburner’s PBS for 30 seconds and the midgut contents were removed. The epithelial tissue was fixed in 4% paraformaldehyde in Ashburner’s PBS for one hour at RT or kept in 1% paraformaldehyde shaking at 4°C for longer storage. Midguts were washed three times for five minutes in Ashburner’s PBS and blocked for one to two hours in PBT (1× Ashburner’s PBS, 1% BSA, 0.1% Triton X-100 for An. gambiae and 0.25% Triton X-100 for C. quinquefasciatus). The midgut tissue was incubated overnight at 4°C with an anti-Pfs25-monoclonal antibody (4B7, 1:1000 in PBT) and washed three times for 20 minutes in PBT, followed by incubation with the secondary antibody (1:1000 in PBT) for three hours (Alexa Fluor® 555 goat anti-mouse IgG; Life Technologies). The tissue was washed two times for 20 minutes with PBT and once for 20 minutes with PBS. Subsequently, midguts were incubated with Phalloidin AlexaFluor® 488 (1:50 in PBS, 1% BSA) (Life Technologies) to stain the actin. Tissue was mounted on slides in Vectashield with DAPI (Vector Laboratories, Inc., Burlingame, Connecticut, USA) and stored in the dark at 4°C. Parasites were counted using a DEMIRE 2 epifluorescence microscope (Leica, Solms, Germany), and parasites were localized in the tissue using a TCS SP2 confocal microscope (Leica). Images derived from epifluorescence microscopy were processed using Adobe Photoshop 6.0 (Adobe Systems Inc, San José, California, USA), and confocal images were processed using Huygens Essentials (Scientific Volume Imaging, Hilversum, The Netherlands) and Imaris 7.5.2 (Bitplane, South Windsor, Connecticut, USA) software.
Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM)
An. gambiae and C. quinquefasciatus midguts were dissected 24 hours after a P. falciparum-infected blood meal and fixed overnight at 4°C with 2.5% glutaraldehyde, 4% paraformaldehyde in 0.1 M sodium cacodylate buffer, pH 7.4. Samples were post-fixed one hour with 0.5% osmium tetroxide, 0.8% potassium ferricyanide, one hour with 1% tannic acid, and overnight with 1% uranyl acetate at 4°C. Samples were dehydrated with a graded ethanol series and embedded in Spurr’s resin. Thin sections were cut with a Leica UCT ultramicrotome (Vienna, Austria) stained with 1% uranyl acetate and Reynold’s lead citrate prior to viewing at 120 kV on a BioTwin Spirit transmission electron microscope (FEI Tecnai, Hillsboro, Oregon, USA). Digital images were acquired with an AMT digital camera system (AMT, Chazy, New York, USA) and processed using Adobe Photoshop 6.0.
For statistical analyses of the ookinete conversion rate (Figure 1B), data from three independent experiments were combined. Because some samples could not be used for parasite counting (blood meals tend to flake off the glass slide during the staining procedure and parasites could not be counted), not all groups in each experiment had the same number of samples. For combination of the data, the group with the lowest sample number from each experiment was taken in full. The data for each of the remaining groups was randomized using Microsoft Excel 2010 software and equal numbers of samples from those groups were taken after randomization and combined with the data of the two other feeds (6 samples each were taken from Exp. #1, 9 from #2 and 10 from #3). To compare the number of ookinetes in the blood meals of An. gambiae and C. quinquefasciatus (Figure 1C), data from two independent feeds were combined. The medians were compared using the Mann-Whitney U test and Graph Pad Prism 5 (GraphPad Software, Inc., La Jolla, California, USA).
Figure 1. Development of Plasmodium falciparum NF54 in the mosquito blood meal.
(A) Epifluorescence images of parasite stages observed in the blood meal of Anopheles gambiae G3 (left panel) and Culex quinquefasciatus (right panel) 20 hours after the mosquitoes were fed on a P. falciparum NF54 gametocyte culture. Immunostaining was done using a monoclonal anti-Pfs25 antibody to stain the parasites (red) and DAPI to visualize the nuclei (blue). (B) Ookinete conversion rate at 20 and 30 hours after the mosquito blood meal. One hundred parasites were counted for each sample and the percentage of ookinetes calculated. Each dot represents the percentage of ookinetes in one blood meal and the lines are the medians for all samples. Three independent experiments were performed and the combined data from the three infections is shown here. The groups were compared using a Mann-Whitney U test. P-values for each comparison are indicated in the graph. (C) Total number of ookinetes in the mosquito blood meal 30 hours after infection. Each dot represents the number of ookinetes found in a given blood meal, the medians are indicated as lines. Two independent experiments were performed and the combined data is shown here. Similarity was tested using a Mann-Whitney U test, which revealed that the two groups are not significantly different (P = 0.972).doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0063387.g001
For analyses of parasite numbers in the midgut epithelium at 30 hours and 8 days, data from all five infections were combined and analyzed using the van Elteren test and SAS 9.3 software (SAS Institute Inc, Cary, North Carolina, USA).
P. falciparum NF54 Ookinetes Develop in the Blood Bolus of C. quinquefasciatus
We dissected mosquitoes 20 and 30 hours after a P. falciparum NF54-infected blood meal to investigate whether ookinetes can develop in the midgut lumen of C. quinquefasciatus. The blood bolus was extracted from the midgut epithelium, and blood meal smears were immunostained using an antibody targeting the ookinete surface protein Pfs25. As shown in Figure 1A, three forms of parasites are present in both An. gambiae and C. quinquefasciatus blood meals after infection of the mosquito. Round parasite forms are either female macrogametes or zygotes. Because expression of the targeted protein, Pfs25, starts in female gametes and continues until the early oocyst stage , macrogametes and zygotes cannot be distinguished with the antibody used in this study; however, retort forms as well as banana-shaped ookinetes can be observed, clearly showing that fertilization has taken place and ookinetes are able to develop in the blood meal of C. quinquefasciatus.
We were primarily interested in the efficacy of the development of mature ookinetes in the blood meal, since these parasite stages are the ones subsequently invading the midgut epithelium. We performed three independent feeding experiments and the combined data from all experiments is presented in Figure 1B. To determine the ookinete conversion rate, we counted a total of 100 parasites per blood meal and determined the percentage of ookinetes compared to round and retort forms combined.
As shown in Figure 1B, twenty hours after the blood feeding of the mosquito, in An. gambiae 25% of parasites are ookinetes and the proportion slightly increases to 32% at thirty hours (P = 0.034, Mann-Whitey U test). In C. quinquefasciatus, the percentage of mature ookinetes is only 11% at twenty hours, significantly less than in An. gambiae at this time point (P<0.0001, Mann-Whitney U test). However, the proportion of ookinetes increases significantly and reaches 21% thirty hours after the blood feeding (P = 0.0001, Mann-Whitney U test). The proportion of ookinetes is still significantly lower in C. quinquefasciatus than it is in An. gambiae thirty hours after the blood feeding (P = 0.01, Mann-Whitney U test). This could be an indication that the development of ookinetes in C. quinquefasciatus is less efficient than in An. gambiae. However, this result could also have been caused by differential loss of parasites in the blood meal, due to differences in digestion, the gut flora of the mosquito, or other factors.
For this reason we also determined the total number of ookinetes that are present in the blood meal thirty hours after the blood feeding. This would give us a better idea how many parasites are present in the blood bolus that are able to invade the midgut epithelium at this time point.
We counted the number of ookinetes in whole blood meals from two experiments which gave good infections in the An. gambiae control (8 day median >5 oocysts per midgut in An. gambiae) and combined the data from the two feeds for better statistical analyses. Generally, we observed a large variation of ookinete numbers between individual mosquitoes, for An. gambiae as well as for C. quinquefasciatus. Numbers range from approximately 100 ookinetes in one blood meal to over 1000 in another mosquito that had been fed with the same gametocyte culture (Figure 1C). Variations in parasite numbers are similar in both mosquitoes and the medians of 460 and 390 ookinetes per midgut are not significantly different between An. gambiae and C. quinquefasciatus (P = 0.972, Mann-Whitney U test).
Our results clearly show that thirty hours after the blood meal the number of mature ookinetes that are present in C. quinquefasciatus is only 15% lower than in An. gambiae. Those parasites are in principle able to invade the midgut epithelium. Even though zygote to ookinete transition might be compromised in C. quinquefasciatus to some extent, development of P. falciparum in the mosquito midgut lumen is not the limiting step for the observed lack of transmission.
Blood Meal Size in An. gambiae and C. quinquefasciatus is Similar, but Digestion in C. quinquefasciatus is Slower
The amount of ingested blood determines the number of gametocytes that reach the midgut of the mosquito and subsequently can fertilize and develop into ookinetes. Additionally, the rate of digestion can influence parasite development and survival in the midgut lumen. The total hemoglobin content of blood-fed female An. gambiae and C. quinquefasciatus mosquitoes was measured at different time points after a blood meal to determine the volume of blood ingested and the rate of digestion of the blood meal. As shown in Figure 2, our hemoglobinometry analyses reveal that the amount of hemoglobin immediately after feeding is similar in both mosquito species and corresponds to a total volume of 5.7±1.53 µl blood in An. gambiae and 5.7±1.82 µl blood in C. quinquefasciatus. The number of ingested parasites should thus be the same in An. gambiae and C. quinquefasciatus.
Figure 2. Comparison of blood intake of Anopheles gambiae and Culex quinquefasciatus during a blood meal.
Total hemoglobin content of female mosquitoes fed on a 40% hematocrit blood solution was determined by hemoglobinometry at different time points after a blood meal. Ten mosquitoes were analyzed for each time point and the average amount of ingested blood calculated using a standard curve. Values are shown as mean ± standard deviation. The volume of blood corresponding to the determined hemoglobin amount was compared between An. gambiae (--•--) and C. quinquefasciatus ( —▪— ).doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0063387.g002
The concentration of hemoglobin stays constant in An. gambiae and C. quinquefasciatus for the following ten hours; then digestion progresses faster in An. gambiae. After ten hours, the blood meal decreases steadily until minimal hemoglobin remains 40 hours post blood feed. In contrast, in C. quinquefasciatus, the hemoglobin remains at the same level for 30 hours and has only decreased by 30% after 40 hours. This indicates that digestion of the blood meal progresses slower in C. quinquefasciatus compared to An. gambiae and could affect parasite development.
P. falciparum NF54 Parasites are Lysed in the Midgut Epithelium
In susceptible Anopheles spp. mosquitoes, motile ookinetes that develop in the blood meal cross the midgut epithelium, reaching the basal lamina, where they develop into oocysts. We dissected mosquito midguts thirty hours after the mosquito blood meal to determine whether ookinetes or oocysts can be found on the basal side of the midgut epithelium in C. quinquefasciatus. The midgut epithelium was stained with an antibody against Pfs25 to visualize the parasites.
In the positive control–An. gambiae infected with P. falciparum NF54–ookinetes and young oocysts can be observed on the basal side of the midgut epithelium (Figure 3A, Figure S1 A-E). In C. quinquefasciatus, we also find ookinetes that appear normal (Figure 3B, Figure S1 H). Some parasites are round, indicating they started to transition into early oocyst stage (Figure S1 I). However, the observation of healthy appearing parasites is very rare in C. quinquefasciatus. In contrast to An. gambiae, many of the midguts contain parasites that are lysing. Figure 3C shows a parasite in the midgut epithelium of C. quinquefasciatus that resembles a young oocyst (yellow arrow). Parasites have also been seen in the more elongated banana-shape characteristic for ookinetes (Figure S1 K). In contrast to the even rim staining of Pfs25 in An. gambiae, in C. quinquefasciatus the parasite staining appears uneven and dotted. In some parasites, the nuclear staining is prominent inside the parasite (Figure 3C; xy, yellow arrow). However, the majority of parasites lack a nucleus. Parasite staining most of the times appears as single circles or accumulations of small circles, some with DNA staining, others without (Figure 3C, D, white arrows, Figure S1 L). Circular shapes with even or dotted rims stained with Pfs25 are smaller than parasites observed in An. gambiae and have diameters of 1.64±0.2 (n = 23) to 2.58±0.34 µm (n = 25). Only a few of the larger sized circles were observed to contain nuclei.
Figure 3. Confocal imaging of parasites in the mosquito midgut epithelium.
Midgut epithelial tissue was collected 30 hours after the mosquito blood meal. (A) Plasmodium falciparum NF54 parasite in Anopheles gambiae G3. (B–D) Culex quinquefasciatus midgut epithelium containing (B) a live P. falciparum parasite and (C, D) parasites in different stages of lysis. Parasites in (C) and (D) have lost their even rim staining, which now appears dotted. Some parasites still contain nuclei (C, yellow and white arrow), but most parasites do not contain nuclei anymore (D, white arrows). A midgut cell is “budding off” into the midgut lumen (C, orange arrow). Shown is a section of the z-stack in the location of the parasite (left) and a side view of the midgut epithelium to localize the parasites (right). (E) Epifluorescence imaging of a parasite in C. quinquefasciatus. Note the black pigment associated with the parasite, which is visible in all fluorescent channels (arrows). Parasites were stained with a monoclonal anti-Pfs25 antibody (red), actin was stained using Phalloidin (green), and nuclei were visualized with DAPI (blue). MF: Muscle fibers on the basal side of the midgut; MV: microvilli. The scale bar indicates 5 µm.doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0063387.g003
Another observation we made in our microscopy studies is that the parasites in the C. quinquefasciatus midgut epithelium with Pfs25 staining often have black particles that appear to be associated with the parasite (Figure 3E, arrows). The black areas are visible in the fluorescent channels, which is unusual and cannot be seen in live parasites. Healthy parasites contain hemozoin crystals, which are characteristic for P. falciparum parasites but can only be seen in brightfield or DIC images, not in the fluorescent channels. When imaged in the microscope’s brightfield channel, the black staining observed in the lysing parasites appears sometimes to colocalize with the hemozoin crystals; therefore, it could be hemozoin that is later released from the lysing parasites. Another possibility is that it is melanin deposited by the mosquito on the parasites as part of the killing process. Melanized parasites remain visible on the mosquito midgut and would be detectable at 8–10 days after the infection, as seen in the Plasmodium-refractory An. gambiae L3-5 strain that melanizes parasites . However, eight days after an infected feed, no melanized parasites can be found in C. quinquefasciatus. We therefore do not know what the black substance is, although it seems to appear as part of parasite degradation and is cleared by the mosquito.
Parasites are Localized on the Basal Side of the Midgut Epithelium
To investigate whether the parasites we observed in C. quinquefasciatus were able to cross the midgut epithelium of C. quinquefasciatus, we analyzed side views of the confocal z-stacks. To identify the location of the parasites, midgut cells were stained with Phalloidin to visualize actin. Phalloidin strongly stains the muscle fibers (Figure 3, MF) surrounding the midgut outside the basal lamina, marking the basal side, and the microvilli (Figure 3, MV), located on the apical side of the midgut cells. In Figure 3, B–D (right panel), live parasites as well as the remnants of lysing parasites are located in close proximity to the muscle fibers that surround the epithelial cells and are located above the basal lamina. This observation clearly shows that parasites are able to invade the midgut epithelial layer by 30 hours after the infection and reach the basal side of the midgut. In these samples we cannot determine if parasites are located inside the midgut cell or outside between the basal membrane of the midgut cell and the basal lamina. We only see they have traveled to the basal side of the cell, but the parasites could still be located inside, unable to exit the cell they invaded.
Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) of parasites in the midgut epithelium was performed 24 hours after the mosquito blood meal to visualize more precisely the subcellular localization of the parasites in the midgut epithelium. Figure 4A shows a parasite in the midgut epithelium of An. gambiae. The parasite is located in the space between the basal membrane of the midgut epithelial cells and the basal lamina (Figure 4A, inset, BL), which seems to be detached from the cells. The parasite crossed the midgut cells and reached the basal side, the place where parasites develop into oocysts.
Figure 4. Transmission electron microscopy of infected midguts 24 hours post feed on Plasmodium falciparum NF54-infected blood.
Shown are overviews including the entire midgut epithelial layer (left) and magnifications of the parasite (right). (A) Parasite in the midgut epithelium of Anopheles gambiae G3, which is located on the basal side of the midgut epithelium underneath the basal lamina. (B) P. falciparum NF54 in the midgut of Culex quinquefasciatus. Parasites are located on the basal side of the midgut epithelium (overview left panel) outside the midgut cells. Parasite 1 (top) is located underneath the basal lamina outside the midgut cell, as it is surrounded by two membranes, one belonging to a midgut cell (arrow, M) and one of parasite origin (arrow, P) (see insets in right panel). The organelles inside the parasite are less pronounced than in An. gambiae (A), indicating lysis of the parasite (right panel). Parasite 2 (bottom) is located between two adjacent midgut cells toward the basal side of the epithelium. Two membranes can be seen (right panel inset, arrows M, P), showing an extracellular location of the parasite. Note here that one midgut epithelial cell (asterisk) is not connected to the basal lamina and lacks microvilli and most organelles, indicating apoptosis. MV: microvilli; BL: Basal lamina.doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0063387.g004
In contrast to An. gambiae, in the C. quinquefasciatus midgut epithelium P. falciparum parasites appear to be disintegrating and missing most of the characteristic organelles (Figure 4B), indicating that the two parasites shown are lysing. The parasites are clearly located on the basal side of the midgut. One parasite is located on the basal side directly underneath the basal lamina (Figure 4B, top), whereas the second is located between two adjacent midgut cells (Figure 4B, bottom). Two membranes are present surrounding the parasites, of which one seems to belong to a midgut cell (Figure 4, insets, M) and the other to the parasite (Figure 4, insets, P). Ookinetes possess a double membrane. However, the resolution of our images does not allow us to clearly distinguish the inner and outer parasite membranes. In both samples, the inner of the two membranes surrounds the parasite, whereas the outer one follows the boundaries of the midgut cell, indicating that both parasites are located outside the midgut cell, one close to the basal lamina and the second one between two midgut cells.
Most Parasites are Lysed in C. quinquefasciatus
To determine how many live and lysing parasites are present in the midguts of C. quinquefasciatus compared to An. gambiae, we counted the parasites in five independent experiments thirty hours after an infectious blood feeding (Figure 5A). In An. gambiae, we mainly observe live parasites, only a few midguts contained some lysing parasites. Medians of live parasites range from one to seven parasites per midgut. In contrast, midguts of C. quinquefasciatus mainly contained lysing parasites and only a few live parasites could be seen. Taking into account the results from all five infection experiments, we find significantly fewer live parasites in the midgut epithelium of C. quinquefasciatus than in An. gambiae (P<0.0001, van Elteren test). The main difference we observed here is the presence of lysed parasites in C. quinquefasciatus, which we rarely find in An. gambiae mosquitoes (Figure 5A).
Figure 5. Parasite development in the mosquito midgut epithelium.
(A) Number of live vs. lysing parasites in the midgut epithelium of An. gambiae (top) and C. quinquefasciatus (bottom) 30 hours after a Plasmodium falciparum-infected blood meal. Parasites were stained with a monoclonal anti-Pfs25 antibody and counted using a DEMIRE 2 Epifluorescence microscope. The results of five independent infections are shown here (Exp. #1 - #5). Each dot represents one midgut and the number of live vs. lysing parasites in the given midgut. The medians are given as red lines on the axes of the graphs and the sample size (n) is indicated for each group. Infection intensities in An. gambiae and C. quinquefasciatus were compared combining data from the five experiments and using the van Elteren test and were significantly lower in C. quinquefasciatus compared to the An. gambiae control (P<0.0001). (B) Number of oocysts found on the midgut epithelium eight days after the infection in five independent infections (same as for 30 hours). Midguts were stained with mercurochrome and oocysts counted in a light microscope at 40× magnification. Infection intensities were compared between An. gambiae and C. quinquefasciatus. The median oocyst number in An. gambiae was 6 oocysts per midgut, whereas in C. quinquefasciatus no oocysts could be found (P<0.0001, van Elteren test). (C) Representative images of mercurochrome stained mosquito midguts 8 days after P. falciparum NF54 infection. The Anopheles gambiae midgut contains oocysts (orange circles), whereas in Culex quinquefasciatus no oocysts can be found.doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0063387.g005
To investigate if the few live parasites we observe in C. quinquefasciatus at thirty hours developed into oocysts, we also analyzed merchurochrome stained midguts 8 days after the infection with P. falciparum NF54. No oocysts are found in C. quinquefasciatus at this time point, whereas in An. gambiae, most of the midguts are infected and contain oocysts (Figure 5B; P<0.0001; van Elteren-test).
Damage of the Midgut Epithelium in C. quinquefasciatus after Parasite Invasion
It has been shown in different mosquito-parasite systems that parasite invasion causes massive epithelium damage and leads to the death of the invaded cell. We analyzed the integrity of the midgut epithelial cells of An. gambiae and C. quinquefasciatus after infection with P. falciparum NF54 parasites by confocal and electron microscopy. In our immunostained midgut samples we observed midgut cells extruding toward the midgut lumen in both, An. gambiae and C. quinquefasciatus (Figure 3C, yz, orange arrow, Figure S1 D, L, arrows), but these events were very rare. In C. quinquefasciatus, we found a damaged midgut cell close to an ookinete, in which the nucleus is fragmented and the DNA is condensed (Figure S1 H, arrows). The cell is still fully integrated in the epithelial layer, but the disintegration of the DNA is indicative of apoptosis, possibly caused by parasite invasion. Additionally, in one of our TEM images we observed a midgut cell in C. quinquefasciatus showing signs of apoptosis such as loss of microvilli and organelles (Figure 4B, bottom, asterisk). The cell is no longer connected to the basal lamina and is protruding into the midgut lumen. However, in both mosquito species, the majority of epithelial cells in close proximity to ookinetes that had reached the basal side of the midgut were intact, and exhibited no obvious signs of cell damage (Figure 3A, B and D, Figure S1 A-C, H, I). Cells were organized in a single layer, the nuclei were all in the same plane, in the middle of the cell and had intact microvilli. In An. gambiae, we noticed that some midgut cells near a parasite had an unusual shape. Instead of the regular “honeycomb” pattern in which the cells are usually organized (Figure S1 G), groups of cells showed a “flower-like” organization with one part of the cells stretched to the center (Figure S1 F, arrows). This suggests that a damaged cell had been expelled from the epithelium and the surrounding cells are stretching to fill in the space to keep the integrity of the midgut epithelial layer.
The main vectors for human malaria parasites are female Anopheles mosquitoes. When ingested by the mosquito during a blood meal, parasites develop and eventually sporozoites are transmitted and infect another human during the mosquito’s next blood meal. In contrast, Culex spp. mosquitoes have not been observed to transmit malaria to humans. Here, we investigate the ability of P. falciparum NF54 to develop in C. quinquefasciatus. Some Plasmodium species, such as P. berghei, fail to form ookinetes in Culex mosquitoes . However, our analyses of the blood meals of P. falciparum-infected mosquitoes revealed that the number of mature ookinetes that are present in the blood bolus of C. quinquefasciatus thirty hours after the blood feeding is only 15% lower than in An. gambiae. Therefore, development of P. falciparum in the midgut lumen is not severely affected and is not the limiting factor for parasite transmission in C. quinquefasciatus.
Recently published work by Baton and Ranford-Cartwright shows that P. falciparum 3D7 ookinetes develop in the blood meal of Anopheles albimanus, but fail to invade the midgut epithelium. This is in contrast to our findings, since in C. quinquefasciatus we observe P. falciparum ookinetes on the basal side of the midgut, showing that at least a small fraction of the parasites from the blood bolus invaded the midgut epithelium. This is consistent with other studies, in which oocysts of P. falciparum were found in different culicine mosquitoes , , . Oocyst development requires ookinete development and midgut invasion and therefore both events must have taken place in these mosquitoes.
Comparison of the total numbers of ookinetes present in the blood meal of An. gambiae and C. quinquefasciatus to the numbers of developing parasites on the basal side of the midgut epithelium reveals that egress of parasites from the midgut lumen is relatively inefficient and accounts for big losses in parasite numbers in both mosquito species. Even in An. gambiae, the number of ookinetes in the blood meal is about 50 times higher (Figure 1C) than the median number of parasites at thirty hours post infection (Figure 3A), showing that only a small fraction of ookinetes actually invade the midgut epithelium. Similar observations have been made in An. stephensi infected with P. falciparum 3D7 .
The peritrophic matrix (PM) is the first physical barrier that parasites must overcome before they can invade the midgut epithelium. The PM is a chitineous membrane formed during blood meal digestion around the blood bolus to protect the midgut epithelium from bacteria . Because we clearly observe that parasites are able to invade the midgut of C. quinquefasciatus mosquitoes, they must be able to cross the PM, but we do not know with what efficiency.
Ookinete invasion inflicts damage to the mosquito midgut, and different repair mechanisms that are activated to ensure the integrity of the epithelium have been described in other mosquito-parasite systems. One of them involves “budding off” of damaged cells into the midgut lumen – and a second one the formation of “actin cones” . In our microscopy studies, we found a few midgut cells that are extruding into the midgut lumen or show signs of apoptosis both in An. gambiae and C. quinquefasciatus. This may indicate that in both mosquitoes at least a portion of the parasites take an intracellular route when they cross the epithelium. We observed several examples of damaged cells “budding off” from the midgut, but found no evidence of “actin cone” formation.
In C. quinquefasciatus parasites die shortly after they reach the basal side of the midgut epithelium. We observed only a small number of live parasites thirty hours after the mosquito was infected. At this time most parasites were already dead and undergoing extensive lysis, indicated by uneven Pfs25 surface staining, loss of organelles and enucleated parasites. We were unable to find any mature P. falciparum oocysts in C. quinquefasciatus, in contrast to other studies in different culicine mosquitoes, in which oocysts were observed –. The presence of lysing parasites on the basal side of the midgut epithelium and the absence of oocysts later on clearly indicates that the final losses of parasites in C. quinquefasciatus take place early after invasion of the midgut.
On the basal side of the midgut epithelium, ookinetes need to interact with the laminin and other components in the basal lamina of the mosquito to form oocysts in Anopheles –, and likely also require other signals coming from the mosquito environment to proceed in their development into oocysts. Those triggers could be missing in C. quinquefasciatus mosquitoes and lead to parasite death, although it has been demonstrated in several non-vector insects that Plasmodium ookinetes can develop when they are injected directly into the hemolymph, bypassing the midgut epithelium –. Based on these findings, and our observations of young oocyst stage parasites on the basal side of the midgut in our confocal studies and a parasite that seems to be in close contact with the basal lamina, seen in TEM, it seems unlikely that a lack of receptors or signaling events cause the destruction of parasites we observe for P. falciparum NF54 in C. quinquefasciatus, although it cannot be absolutely excluded.
A major challenge the parasite faces after exiting the midgut cell is exposure to the mosquito hemolymph. The hemolymph contains antiparasitic effector molecules produced by the mosquito immune system to fight infection, resulting in either lysis or melanization of pathogens. We sometimes find black particles associated with the P. falciparum NF54 parasites on the basal side of the midgut epithelium in C. quinquefasciatus. This could be the beginning of a melanization reaction to eliminate the parasites. However, we do not observe fully melanized parasites on the mosquito midgut eight days after the infection, so the exact nature of the black substance remains unclear. The parasites we observe lyse on the basal side of the midgut epithelium or on exposure to the mosquito hemolymph. This could be an indication that the mosquito immune system, at least to some extent, is involved in parasite death.
However, most anopheline species, like culicine mosquitoes, do not transmit human malaria parasites. The main reason for this is maybe that most mosquitoes do not feed on humans and never come in contact with the parasite. But even among all the mosquitoes that feed on humans and therefore could transmit the parasite, there are significant differences in vector competence for a given parasite. So the question is what makes a good (competent) vector? Or the other way around, what is it that abolishes parasite transmission in most mosquitoes compared to a few that can harbor human Plasmodium? Could there be a gene that is so powerful that it eliminates all parasites? We show that P. falciparum NF54 parasites are able to develop in the blood meal and invade the midgut epithelium of C. quinquefasciatus. The 3D7A clone, originally derived from NF54, can form ookinetes in An. albimanus, but parasites remain in the midgut lumen . These differences suggest that there will not be one single mechanism that eliminates human Plasmodium in all non-vector mosquitoes. Additionally, one must take into account the parasite, and its ability to adapt to its vector. Only recently it has been shown that some African strains of P. falciparum are able to completely evade the TEP1 immune response in the An. gambiae L3-5 strain that efficiently melanizes P. falciparum isolates of American and Asian origin . These observations give a great example of the complexity of vector and parasite interactions required for transmission. The parasite has to overcome many obstacles before successful transmission occurs. In our case, the infection of C. quinquefasciatus with P. falciparum NF54, the fact that we observe lysing parasites on the basal side of the midgut, opens the possibility that mosquito immune factors could be involved in parasite death. Further studies of the immune response of C. quinquefasciatus to P. falciparum NF54 infection is needed to elucidate this possibility.
Confocal imaging of parasites in the mosquito midgut epithelium 30 hours post P. falciparum NF54 infection. Panels (A)-(F) show parasites in the midgut epithelium of An. gambiae G3. (A) An ookinete invading the midgut epithelium and reaching the basal side. (B), (C) Oocysts developing on the basal side of the midgut. (D) A parasite in the midgut epithelium. One midgut cell that was most likely damaged by parasite invasion is expelled into the midgut lumen. The nucleus is protruding towards the luminal side and located more apical than the nuclei of the surrounding midgut cells (arrow). (E) A young oocyst on the basal side of the midgut epithelium. The epithelial cells seem to be intact (yz), but a group of cells close to a parasite show a flower-like pattern (F) with one side of the cell extending towards the others (arrows). This is an indication for midgut repair after a damaged cell got expelled into the midgut lumen and the adjacent midgut cells stretch to fill in the space and ensure integrity of the midgut epithelium. The section of the midgut epithelium was taken in the central region of the midgut cells invaded by the parasite shown in (E). The asterisk marks the location of the parasite on the basal side. (G) A section of the midgut epithelium of An. gambiae 30 hours after an uninfected blood meal. Compare the regular “honeycomb” pattern of the cells to the “flower-like” shape caused by parasite invasion shown in (F). Panels (H)-(L) show parasites in the midgut epithelium of C. quinquefasciatus. (H) An ookinete on the basal side of the midgut epithelium. In one midgut cell close to the parasite, the nucleus appears to be condensed (arrow), which could be a sign of apoptosis after damage of the cell due to invasion of the parasite. (I) An oocyst and (K) an ookinete on the basal side of the midgut epithelium of C. quinquefasciatus. The surface staining is uneven, indicating that both parasites are lysing. (L) Two parasites located on the basal side of the midgut. A midgut cell close to the parasite on the bottom seems to be extruding from the midgut epithelium (xz, arrow). Shown are sections of the z-stacks in the location of the parasite (xy) and a side view of the midgut epithelium (xz or yz) to localize the parasites. The parasites were stained with a monoclonal anti-Pfs25 antibody (red), actin was stained using Phalloidin (green), and nuclei were visualized with DAPI (blue). MF: Muscle fibers on the basal side of the midgut; MV: microvilli. The scale bar indicates 5 µm.
The authors thank Kevin Lee and Andre Laughinghouse for providing mosquitoes used for the experiments. We thank Kazutoyo Miura, LMVR, NIAID, and Michael P. Fay, Biostatistics Research Branch, NIAID, for help with statistical analyses of the data and the Biological Imaging Facility, Research Technologies Branch, NIAID, for excellent technical assistance, especially Juraj Kabat for his help. We thank Tovi Lehmann and Jennifer Hume for sharing some initial observations that made us undertake the present study, and Yimin Wu for providing the anti-Pfs25-antibody (4B7) used for immunostainings. We also thank Brenda Rae Marshall, DPSS, NIAID, and Margery Sullivan, LMVR, NIAID, for editing.
Conceived and designed the experiments: JK AMC EF CBM LHM. Performed the experiments: JK AMC EF OM. Analyzed the data: JK AMC EF CBM LHM. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: AH. Wrote the paper: JK CBM LHM. Edited figures and wrote and edited the final draft of the manuscript: JK.
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by Richard Minsky
Center for Book Arts
New York City
As reading becomes more digital, there has been a rise in the creation and appreciation of the book as totemic or iconographic object. In the 1970's a scattering of artists amplified a tradition that evolved through
Egyptian papyrus scrolls,
illuminated manuscripts, William
Blake, Delacroix, William Morris, Vollard, the Bauhaus, the Constructivists,
Futurists, Dada and
Book Art has grown from an esoteric medium with a few dozen practitioners and no audience to a field with thousands of artists, a wide audience, and a developing K-12 curriculum.
The act of
publication for many of these authors is to produce a single copy rather
than an edition, and to place it in an exhibition. The works often
combine linguistic and visual literature.
Authors now integrate conservation bookbinding with conceptual art and all forms of printing technology,
and during the last ten years there have been numerous museum exhibits including this type of work. Binders like
Gary Frost and Hedi Kyle have invented new book structures which have been
widely disseminated in a short period of time. Kyle's concertina form with alternating tipped fractional sheets has been used by hundreds of artists for unique and printed works. Thousands of schoolchildren are now taught this form every day.
Book Art has developed
into a diverse field that includes fine press bookmakers like Andrew
Hoyem, Diarists like Raymond
Holbert, and authors who use photocopy machines to make books, like Sharon
Davids was one of the first to switch from letterpress to computers
to make book art. Many authors are using ancient book forms to express
contemporary ideas, like Edna
Lazaron's use of the scroll in a jar for a work on terrorism.
Alternative book structures that are metaphoric or sculptural in their
construction may employ several printing processes in one work, as in
Clarissa T. Sligh's What's
Happening With Momma? Material as metaphor is also used
in miniature books, such as Jo Anna Poehlmann's Drawings
in a Nutshell.
There is a large group of authors who do not create their texts from
blank pages, but whose work consists of altering existing texts. John
Eric Broaddus worked this way, and there was a major exhibition at
the Center for Book Arts titled The
Altered Page. This exhibition drew on works from The Ruth and Marvin
Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry in Miami Beach, Florida.
This collection, with some 65,000 catalogued works, has provided crucial
support to many authors working in this field.
A look at the works of Stella
Martorell, and Claire
Van Vliet gives a good idea of the range included in book art.
The idea for an organization devoted to advancing book art came from
Abram Lerner, Director of The Joseph H. Hirshhorn Museum, in 1970.
I had been the museum's bookbinder for a year, and then became their photographer.
After shooting about 2,000 of the works in the collection, I realized
that there was not one book in the museum as art. When I asked Mr.
Lerner how that could be changed, he said, "If you want your books
to be in museums, start an organization to promote book art and you will
get museum shows."
At the same time as I was starting the CBA, Terry Belanger was organizing the Book Arts Press at Columbia University's library school. We had different missions that had some overlap. Where Terry was oriented to preserving traditional book crafts and the techniques of fine bookmaking in an academic environment, the CBA
mission was to bring together contemporary artists and artisans in a public workspace,
encourage cross-pollination of ideas and techniques, encourage collaborations,
provide artists and small/fine press publishers with training and facilities in which to produce their work,
mount exhibitions of contemporary and historical book art, and publish journals and exhibition catalogs to expand the public awareness of book art. In September of 1974 the
Center for Book Arts opened in a storefront at 15 Bleecker Street in Manhattan.
The first year or two exhibitions included hand papermaker Douglass Morse Howell, Bookbinder Daniel Gibson Knowlton, Book Artist Barton Lidice Benes
(including his Book of the Dead, with rubber stamped text and illustrations made from the ashes of Hans Schneider), and Syl
Pleasure Beach, in which the images were created during the process of making the color separations. The
Labrot exhibit included all the stages of production, from the original photos through the stripped negatives to the final book. Since 1974 the Center has mounted over 140
exhibitions. These include William Gibson's
Agrippa, a limited edition with text on a computer disk that erased itself as you read it, published by CBA alumnus Kevin Begos; The National Women of Color Artists Book Project; and Bookworks by Tom Phillips.
The Center's first publication, Book Arts, was in a magazine format that included interviews with contemporary book artists like Barton Benes,
Stella Waitzkin and Babi Jeri, reprints of 19th century articles on bookbinding and printing, articles on such diverse topics as techniques, book burnings, and the
Diamond Sutra, and a calendar of events and exhibitions. Each issue contained an original print from a wood
engraving. The circulation was international. CBA also printed and distributed documents
that were considered important to the field, such as Ulises
Carrión's seminal manifesto,
The New Art of Making Books. Book Arts magazine was only produced in two issues, and was succeeded by
Book Arts Newsletter, Book Arts Review and Koob Stra.
The Center now has about 40 faculty members, all of whom are active book artists.
While Terry was organizing academically at Columbia and I was putting together the CBA, Lucy Lippard and Sol LeWitt organized
Printed Matter, an artists' bookstore in Tribeca (lower Manhattan). This store addressed the distribution of artists' books that were produced as visual literature at a modest price, using available technologies like photocopy and offset printing, and there were hundreds of titles available for under $20.
This represented a large and growing segment of the book art community.
Lucy Lippard's 1973 book, Six
Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972
bridged the relationship between conceptual art and artists' books.
not specifically a book art
Studio Workshop in
Rosendale, NY, founded by four
women artists in 1974,
provides facilities for
papermaking and printmaking, and
has been an important sponsor of
artist book projects. In
Rochester, NY The Visual
Studies Workshop, a media
studies school, has
produced over 400 artist's books
since the early 1970's at The
Visual Studies Press, under the
direction of Joan Lyons. Joan is
also editor of the 1984 classic,
Artists' Books: A Critical Anthology and Source
In 1975 Joe Wilfer organized The First North American Hand Papermakers' Conference in Appleton, Wisconsin.
This seminal event brought together about 30 papermakers who were
creating fine papers for printing and printmaking, as well as paper art
using dyed pulp, inclusions, and sculptural forms. During the following
25 years many authors made works in which the content was created
in the process of papermaking.
In 1977 The CBA organized a similar conference in New York, with 200 participants, that included a hand papermaker from Japan who was a Living National Treasure, and bookmakers
Walter Hamady of The Perishable Press and Henry Morris of Bird & Bull Press. Henry delivered an incredible rant against what he called "Song of Solomonitis," that disease afflicting the fine bookmaking world that caused so many printers to produce one more redundant edition of a classic text like Moby Dick.
In 1976 Martha Wilson started Franklin Furnace
Archive, which collected and exhibited artists' books, and also provided a venue for performance art. This collection eventually reached over 10,000 volumes and was acquired by the library of the Museum of Modern Art.
In the late 70's I had a visit from Barbara Lazarus Metz, a CBA artist member from Chicago who wanted to start a center there. She co-founded Artist Book Works in a storefront, with a letterpress shop, bindery and exhibits. That eventually merged and became
The Columbia College Chicago Center for Book and Paper
Arts, which is now directed by book artist Bill Drendel.
There are many academic programs.
Columbia College is particularly interesting because it bridges the zone between academic and public workspaces.
In addition to his own creative
work, Walter Hamady ran a program at
the University of
Wisconsin-Madison that was probably
the most prolific book arts program in the country during the 70s, 80s, and
early 90s. In 1984 Richard
Gabriel Rummonds organized a
meeting in Alabama of a
group that became the Collegiate Press Council.
The group was renamed Collegiate
Book Arts Press Council, and produced
the National Collegiate Book Arts Press Exhibition, that had an influential nationwide
tour 1986-88. They later changed
the name to the Council of Book Arts
Programs in order to be more inclusive and less academic.
There are many outstanding programs now producing book artists. Among them are those of John
Risseeuw at Arizona State University, Steve Miller at the
University of Alabama, Kitty Maryatt
at Scripps College, and Kathy Walkup at Mills College. Ed Colker started many programs, including those at SUNY
Purchase and The Cooper Union in New York City. He also updated and
expanded the program at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia,
which had been host to important book artists in the late 1960's. Kim Merker established a strong program at the
Iowa, connected to the Writers'
Workshop and the Typographic Lab run by Kay
Amertand. There are many more.
John Cole took a different direction in 1977
as the first Director of The
Center for the Book in the Library of Congress. It now has at least
42 affiliated centers nationwide, that promote literacy and book awareness. Not intended as workspace facilities, they have a broader mandate and work with regional partners to reach the
Pacific Center for the Book Arts (PCBA) was founded in 1978 by a group led by book artists and educators Frances Butler, Betsy Davids, and Kathleen Walkup. This was not a facilities based organization in the beginning, but in 1996 Mary Austin and Kathleen Burch recognized a growing need in San Francisco and the Bay Area for a facility specifically designed for the book arts. They organized The
San Francisco Center for the
Book, which includes PCBA and The Hand Bookbinders of California. According to its website, it is the first and only center of its kind on the West Coast, modeled after two similar organizations, The Center for Book Arts in New York and the
Minnesota Center for Book Arts
(MCBA) in Minneapolis.
The MCBA was formed in 1983 when Jim Sitter was brought to the Center for Book Arts by Annabel Levitt, who published under the imprint Vehicle Editions using the CBA presses. I met with him and we discussed strategies for establishing, organizing, administering and funding a book art center. Jim was an incredible entrepreneur, who went back to Minneapolis and raised what seemed to us an enormous amount of financial backing, and opened a Center three times the size of what we had in New York.
The Washington, D.C.
area is served by Pyramid Atlantic in Riverdale, MD, which has been
active since 1981. Artist Helen C. Frederick is the Founder and Executive Artistic Director.
Pyramid Atlantic is serving as the owner, developer and manager of a new center: The Site
for Electronic Media, Art and Technology (SEMAT) in downtown Silver Spring, MD.
In the late 1980's
and Research Center of The
National Museum of Women in the Arts started mounting an annual Book
as Art exhibit. Most museums, including the Metropolitan
Museum of Art and Museum
of Modern Art in New York, regarded book art a subcategory of library
research rather than as curatorial art. Clive Phillpot, the MOMA
Librarian, purchased the Franklin Furnace Artist Book Collection in
1993, shortly before he left that position.
1995 Steven Clay's Granary
Books published The Century of Artists' Books
by artist Johanna Drucker and
Artists Books: A
Critical Survey of the
Literature.. Though not
about the Book Art movement,
they extend the study of
Artist's Books begun by Joan
Lyons. Specific to this topic is the 2005 Granary publication of
Betty Bright's No
Longer Innocent: Book Art in America 1960-1980.
In the early 1990's Cheryl Shackleton Hawkins developed a program titled "Cultural Autobiography." Inner city teens came to the Center for Book Arts and learned to make books to express their inner feelings about their cultural heritage. The results were surprising and moving, and were good art. The program was written up in the School Library Journal, and similar programs developed nationwide. There are now courses for school teachers, project guide books, and other teaching aids directed at youth. Teaching book art has been shown to increase reading skills.
The next phase of the Book Art Movement will be a conference on
K-12 Book Arts Curriculum Development. By introducing kids to book art
and giving them projects throughout elementary schooling, we expect that
there will be a dramatic increase in both the number of authors
producing book art and the audience for these works.
Peter Verheyen's Book
Cor Knops' Book
Gary Frost's Future
of the Book
let me know if there are any corrections or additions. | <urn:uuid:adb75b05-77ab-418e-b4b9-44f17320e1a3> | {
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) was a form of hood or, later, highly versatile hat
worn in all parts of Western Europe in the Middle Ages
. Initially a utilitarian garment, it first grew a long partly decorative tail behind, and then developed into a complex, versatile and expensive headgear after what was originally the vertical opening for the face began to be used as a horizontal opening for the head. It was especially fashionable in mid-15th century Burgundy
, before gradually falling out of fashion in the late 15th century and returning to its utilitarian status. It is the most commonly worn male headgear in Early Netherlandish painting
, but its complicated construction is often misunderstood.
The chaperon began before 1200 as a hood
with a short cape
, put on by pulling over the head, or fastening at the front. The hood could be pulled off the head to hang behind, leaving the short cape round the neck and shoulders. The edge of the cape was often trimmed, cut or scalloped for decorative effect. There were wool ones, used in cold weather, and lighter ones for summer. In this form it continued through to the end of the Middle Ages, worn by the lower classes, often by women as well as men, and especially in Northern Europe. The hood was loose at the back, and sometimes ended in a tail that came to a point.
Terms and derivation
Chaperon is a diminutive of chape, which derives, like the English cap, cape and cope, from the Late Latin cappa, which already could mean cap, cape or hood (OED).
The tail of the hood, often quite long, was called the tippit or liripipe in English, and liripipe or cornette in French. The cape element was a patte in French and in English cape , or sometimes cockscomb when fancily cut. Later a round bourrelet (or rondel) could form part of the assemblage. Patte, cornette and bourrelet were the usual terms in the French of the 15th century Burgundian court, and are used here. In Italian the equivalent terms were foggia, becchetto, and mazzocchio.
Chaperon was sometimes used in English, and also German, for both the hood and hat forms (OED). But the word never appears in the Paston Letters, where there are many references to hats, hoods and bonnets for men. As with all aspects of medieval costume, there are many contemporary images of clothing, and many mentions of names for clothing in contemporary documents, but definitively matching the names to the styles in the images is rarely possible. In Italian the word was cappuccio [kap'put:ʃo], or its diminutive cappuccino, from which come the Capuchin friars, whose distinctive white hood and brown robe led to the monkey and the type of coffee being named after them (it also means the cap of a pen in Italian).
Little Red Riding Hood is Le Petit Chaperon rouge in the earliest published version, by Charles Perrault, and French depictions of the story naturally favour the chaperon over the long riding-hood of ones in English.
In French chaperon was also the term in falconry for the hood placed over a hawk's head when held on the hand to stop it wanting to fly away. It is either this or the headgear meaning that later extended figuratively to become Chaperon (in UK English, almost always chaperone) meaning a protective escort, especially for a woman.
Using the wrong hole
About 1300 the chaperon began to be worn by putting the hole intended for the face over the top of the head instead; perhaps in hot weather. This left the cornette
tail and the cape or patte
, hanging loose from the top of the head. This became fashionable, and chaperons began to be made to be worn in this style. Some authorities only use the term chaperon for this type, calling the earlier forms hoods - which was certainly their usual name in English. This is a categorisation for modern discussions only; there is no dispute over whether chaperon was the contemporary term. See the wearing Colley-Weston-ward
of the mandilion
for an analogous development in a type of coat.
A padded circular bourrelet (or rondel) evolved, which sat around the head, whilst the cornette became much longer, and gradually more scarf-like in shape, until by the 1430s it was usually straight at the sides and square-ended. Especially in Italy, the cornette was sometimes dispensed with, leaving just an un-flared tubular patte fixed to the bourrelet all round and hanging down to one side of the head. Reed (see refs) calls these sack hats.
By 1400-16, the period of the famous illuminated manuscripts of the Livre de Chasse of Gaston Phoebus (Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris Ms Français 616), and the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry chaperons are to be seen worn by many figures. In the famous Calendar scenes of the Trés Riches Heures, they are worn in the original form by the peasants working in the fields, both men and women (February, March and September), and huntsmen (December), and in the new form by some of the courtiers (January and May), who wear coloured and scalloped ones, probably of silk. However the Duke himself, and the most prominent courtiers do not wear them. In the Livre du Chasse they are most often worn by the lower huntsmen on foot in the original form, though they and mounted hunters also wear them on top of the head. Figures often have a hood chaperon and a hat as well. Interestingly, only the original form (trimmed with fur in one case - fol.51V) is worn by the very highest-ranking figures.
By the 1430s most chaperons had become simpler in the treatment of the cloth, and the cornette is long and plain, although the patte may still be elaborately treated with dagging. A perhaps overdressed courtier in a Van der Weyden workshop Exhumation of St Hubert (National Gallery, London NG 783) from this decade still has a very elaborately cut and dagged patte. A figure behind him is wearing his in church, which is unusual (both figures can be paralleled in the Seven Sacraments Altarpiece - see Gallery below).
By the middle of the fifteenth century the evolved chaperon (worn on top of the head, with bourrelet) had become common wear for males in the upper and middle classes, and were worn in painted portraits, including those of the Dukes of Burgundy. The amount of cloth involved had become considerable, and although chaperons seem to have normally been of a single colour at this period, a silk or damask one would have been a conspicuous sign of affluence. A Florentine chaperon of 1515 is recorded as using sixteen bracchia
of cloth, over ten yards (9.35 metres).
Chaperons are nearly always shown in art as plain-coloured at this period, but painting a patterned one would have been a daunting task.
The cornette now stretched nearly to the ground, and the patte had also grown slightly; both were now plain and undecorated by cutting or dagging at the edges. Bourrelets could be very large, or quite modest; some were clearly made round a hollow framework (a drawing survives of an Italian block for making them). The largest bourrelets are worn by very high-ranking men around 1445-50. Sometimes they seem to be just a ring (the doughnut analogy is hard to resist) with an open centre, and sometimes the opening seems to be at least partly covered with fixed cloth. Because the bourrelets were usually the same shape all the way round, several different parts of it could be worn facing forward. Probably for this reason, chaperons are rarely seen adorned by badges or jewellery. There were now many ways of wearing, and indeed carrying, this most complex and adaptable of hats:
- A) the cornette and patte could be tied together on top of the head, to create a flamboyant turban-like effect, sometimes with a short tail of cornette or patte hanging to the rear.
- B) the patte could be looped under the chin and tied or pinned to the bourrelet on the other side of the face, whilst the cornette hung behind or in front, or was tied on top.
- C) the patte could be worn to the loose to the rear, with the cornette tied on top, or hanging loose to front or rear.
- D) conversely the patte could be tied above, whilst the cornette hung loose to front or rear.
- E) the patte could be worn to the rear, loose or tucked into the other clothes at the back of the neck, whilst the cornette was wrapped round over the top of the head and under the chin a couple of times and secured. This was suitable for cold or windy weather, especially when riding.
- F) when the chaperon needed to be removed, in warm weather, or in the presence of a person much higher in rank (and, usually, in church) it could be put over the shoulder with the patte and cornette hanging on opposite sides, or round the shoulders. Which came forward and which went back varies considerably, but more often the bourrelet went behind. Possibly the chaperon was secured to the shoulder, as the assemblage often looks rather precarious. Donor figures in religious paintings always wear their chaperons in this way, as they are figuratively in the presence of the saints or the Madonna.
Examples of these styles are shown in the illustrations to the article and in the Gallery section below.
The height of fashion
The only surviving manuscript miniature by Rogier van der Weyden shows Philip the Good wearing a chaperon in style B. Next to him stands Chancellor Nicolas Rolin, using a less exuberant version of style B; only he has sufficient status to wear his chaperon indoors in the Duke's presence. Apart from the Bishop of Tournai, next to Rolin, all the other men are bare-headed, even Phillip's young heir, despite the fact that several of them are high-ranking intimates who, like the Duke, wear the collar of the Order of the Golden Fleece. But as far as can be seen, all have hats. The man in grey seems to be carrying another sort of hat, but all the other ones visible are chaperons worn in style F, mostly with the cornettes to the front. The young Charles the Bold has his patte wrapped round the back of his neck, and the man on the extreme right has his bourrelet further than usual down his back, with the patte hanging down from it. Most of the chaperons are black, although the man in blue has one in salmon-pink; black was having one of its earliest periods of being the most fashionable colour at the time.
The chaperon never became quite this dominant in Italy or France; nor does it seem to have been worn as often by grand personages, although this is sometimes the case. There is a famous bust of Lorenzo de Medici wearing one, although in this he may be deliberately avoiding ostentatious dress (see gallery section). They are more characteristic of merchants and lawyers in these countries, for example in the images of Jean Fouquet from the mid-century. In the Holy Roman Empire, Spain and Portugal they were generally less common, & appeared lower down the social scale. They were apparently never worn by the clergy anywhere.
Chaperons were used in France and Burgundy to denote, by their colour, allegiance to a political faction. The factions themselves were also sometimes known as chaperons. During the captivity in England of King John II of France
in 1356, the participants in a popular uprising in Paris against his son, the future Charles V
, wore parti-coloured chaperons of red, for Paris
, and blue for Navarre
as they supported the claim to the French throne of King Charles the Bad of Navarre
. In 1379 the ever-difficult citizens of Ghent
rose up against Duke Philip the Bold of Burgundy
wearing white chaperons. White was also worn in factional disturbances in Paris in 1413, by opponents of the Armagnacs
, during one of King Charles VI's
bouts of madness.
The chaperon was one of the items of male clothing that featured in the charges brought against Joan of Arc at her trial in 1431. This was apparently a hat rather than a hood, as she was stated to have taken it off in front of the Dauphin - cited as further damning evidence of her assuming male behaviours.
In 15th century Florence, cappucci were associated with republicans, as opposed to courtiers (see gallery). An advisor to the Medici told them in 1516 that they should get as many young men to wear "the courtier's cap" rather than the cappucci. Part of the connotation seems to arise because the chaperon was too complicated to be taken off on meeting one of higher rank (in Florence at any rate); it was merely touched or pushed back on the head slightly.
The cappuccio in Renaissance art
In addition to being featured in many Renaissance
portraits by virtue of being the fashion of the day, the Italian cappuccio was of interest because the mazzocchio's shape made it a good subject for the developing art of perspective
. The painter Paolo Uccello
studied the perspective of the mazzocchio and incorporated it in some of his paintings (e.g. in The Counterattack of Michelotto da Cotignola at the Battle of San Romano
Apart from portraits, many of the best, and least formal, depictions of the chaperon in art come from paintings of the Nativity and other scenes of the early life of Christ. It is of course always winter, when the chaperon was most likely to be worn. Saint Joseph is especially useful, as it is never part of his depiction to be fashionably dressed, and it is part of his character in the period that he is often shown quite dishevelled (see examples below). The shepherds are the lower-class figures most often shown in a large scale in paintings of the period.
By about 1480 the chaperon was ceasing to be fashionable, but continued to be worn. The size of the bourrelet was reduced, and the patte undecorated. St Joseph could, by this stage, often be seen with the evolved form. By 1500 the evolved chaperon was definitely outmoded in Northern Europe, but the original hood form still remained a useful headgear for shepherds and peasants. By this time the evolved chaperon had become fixed in some forms of civilian uniforms
for lawyers, academics and the members of some knightly orders. In these uses it gradually shrank in size and often became permanently attached to the clothing underneath, effectively just as an ornament. In Italy it remained more current, more as a dignified form of headgear for older men, until about the 1520s.
Funerary ornaments on horses
In a later related use of the term, the name chaperoon
passed to certain little shields
, or escutcheons
, and other funeral
devices, placed on the foreheads of horses that drew the hearses
to processional funerals. These were called chaperoons
, as they were originally fastened to the chaperonnes
, or hoods, worn by those horses with their other coverings of state.
- SD Reed, From Chaperones to Chaplets:Aspects of Men’s Headdress 1400–1519, M.S. Thesis, 1992, University of Maryland -NB Headgear Reed categorises as Hoods, Chaperones, & (some) Sack Hats are all covered by this article.
- J.O. Hand & M. Wolff, Early Netherlandish Painting, National Gallery of Art, Washington (catalogue) /Cambridge UP,1986, ISBN 0521340160
- National Gallery Catalogues: The Fifteenth Century Italian Paintings, Volume 1, by Dillian Gordon, London, 2003, ISBN 1857092937
- Gabriel Bise, The Hunting Book by Gaston Phoebus, Heritage Books, London, ISBN 0946470 545
- Edmond Pognon, Les Trés Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, Liber
- M. Vibbert, Headdresses of the 14th and 15th Centuries, The Compleat Anachronist, No. 133, SCA monograph series (August 2006)
- History of the chaperon, with simple diagrams
- Chaperon section of 1929 book by Adrien Harmond - in French, with many pictures and reconstructed cutting patterns
- CORSAIR database from the Morgan Library - search for chaperon gives 25 results from 2 French manuscripts, 1420-35
- Le Livre de Chasse of Gaston Phoebus, c 1400, from Ms Fr 616 from the Biblitheque Nationale, Paris. Feature with many illustrations, texts in French.
- Another stylish chaperon by [[Pisanello], from a medal in the NGA, Washington]
- The NGA bust of Lorenzo de Medici, after restoration
- 15th and early 16th Century Headress: A Literature Review -updated (1997) section from SD Reed thesis above
- Some related headresses of the 15th Century: theories on construction by Cynthia du Pré Argent | <urn:uuid:b2d921d6-884c-415f-b93b-a082512a401d> | {
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Ipiutak culture, Eskimo culture of northwestern Alaska, probably dating from the 2nd to the 6th century ad. A Siberian origin has been suggested, based on similarities in burial practices and ceremonialism, animal carvings and designs, and some use of iron; but evidence is not conclusive. There seem to be links with the Kachemak culture (q.v.) as well as with some areas of southwestern and western Alaska.
The Ipiutak people may have inhabited the coastal region only in the spring and summer months, moving inland for the rest of the year. Coastal dwellings were semi-subterranean huts. Seals and walrus were a major source of food and were hunted with harpoons from the edge of the ice. Bows and arrows were preferred for hunting caribou. Fish and birds were a minor part of the diet.
A distinctive feature of Ipiutak tools was the use of flint rather than rubbed slate. The abundant flint of Point Hope was used for weapon points, knives, and scrapers. Ipiutak artifacts show more decoration than those of any other Eskimo culture; both geometric and realistic designs were used. Their sculpture, carvings in ivory and antler of real or imaginary animals, was finely crafted.
Elaborate burial customs, a ghost and a bear cult, and shamanism are suggested.
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Huda Y. Zoghbi, M.D., a pediatric neurologist and neuroscientist who has worked on the genetic underpinnings of rare neurological diseases and advanced our understanding of brain disorders, has been selected to receive the tenth annual Pearl Meister Greengard Prize — one of the world’s preeminent honors recognizing outstanding achievements by women in science. Zoghbi was chosen by a selection committee of ten members, including five Nobel laureates and two recipients of the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences.
Zoghbi’s work on Rett Syndrome and spinocerebellar ataxia Type 1, rare brain disorders, have also significantly advancing research of more common conditions including childhood disorders such as autism, and adult-onset neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. She is a professor in the Departments of Pediatrics, Molecular and Human Genetics, Neurology and Neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas; Director of the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute at Texas Children’s Hospital and an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
The Pearl Meister Greengard Prize was founded by Paul Greengard, a recipient of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine and Vincent Astor Professor at The Rockefeller University, and his wife, celebrated Brooklyn sculptor Ursula von Rydingsvard. von Rydingsvard, whose most recent installation, Ona, was just unveiled at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, will present the prize on December 5, 2013 at 6:30 p.m. on the Rockefeller campus.
“Dr. Zoghbi exemplifies the spirit of the Pearl Meister Greengard Prize,” says Greengard. “She is a trailblazing scientist whose work — in a field often dominated by men — stands to revolutionize the way we approach and treat some of the most complex and devastating diseases of our time. Despite considerable progress, women in the sciences still experience discrimination, and role models like Dr. Zoghbi are inspiring a proud new generation of women scientists.”
Named after Greengard’s mother, who died during his birth, the Pearl Meister Greengard Prize was established to spotlight the extraordinary and often unsung achievements of women scientists, and to inspire young women’s pursuit of scientific careers. Greengard and von Rydingsvard created the Pearl Meister Greengard Prize in 2003, donating the monetary share of his Nobel to seed the prize, which carries a $100,000 honorarium. Since its inception, two winners, Elizabeth Blackburn and Carol Greider, have subsequently won the Nobel Prize.
“When I learned the story behind the Pearl Meister Greengard Prize, I got goose bumps,” Zoghbi says. “It’s such an honor to receive this award, not only because I am a great admirer of Dr. Greengard, but because it’s so important to draw attention to the achievements of women in science. The recognition helps inspire young women to believe that they too can succeed in these fields.” | <urn:uuid:b1a20a3e-271a-417e-8e02-0271a56e5be8> | {
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The gentleman uses learning to ennoble himself; the petty man uses learning as a bribe to win attention from others. –Xunzi (Hsun Tzu), c. 310-220 b.c.e.
Through this quote, Xunzi establishes the difference between a respectable person and a small-minded one, explicitly in terms of acquiring knowledge. He states that a “gentleman” is eager to learn out of interest and in the spirit of inquiry. On the other hand, “the petty man” uses learning to celebrate how brilliant he is. Instead of a desire to improve their writing or a willingness to get to know a fellow classmate, these “petty” people are more concerned with how they appear to the general public. They want the whole world to acknowledge what they have accomplished: the hours of charity work done in an underdeveloped country, the robotics research project lead at Harvard, the A+ received on a recent HONORS History paper. Not only do they want people to know of such accomplishments, but they also expect praise and celebration as a subsequent outcome.
Deerfield is known to attract some of the most motivated and talented students in the world. This collective group of exemplary work ethics and early successes generate a sort of pressure to always do well, whether it is in academics, sports, music, or social life. It is only natural for Deerfield students to take pride in their achievements, as they are fundamental ingredients in expressing who they are as individuals. Having said that, the burden of perfectionism often leads to a disastrous cycle of working to impress, or learning for the approval of our parents, teachers, coaches, and friends. For this reason, Deerfield students should refer to Xunzi’s quote and keep in mind the difference between genuine and inauthentic learning. We should challenge ourselves in order to enrich our interests and equip ourselves to become more capable people. So the next time you have optional crew practice or an abstract English essay prompt, don’t take the easy way out. Rather, learn “to ennoble” yourself by going harder at practice and by choosing the difficult topic that won’t necessarily get you a better grade. These opportunities will translate to a more enriching Deerfield experience, and make a greater impact on those around us.
–Hae June Lee ‘16 | <urn:uuid:a3366057-d07f-4326-985f-b6ab0f83260b> | {
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Near Loss in Uqweqwe, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
The Death of the Prince Imperial
The Prince held no rank and was officially merely an observer. During the period leading up to the second invasion of Zululand he was permitted to accompany a number of patrols. The Prince was then placed under Colonel Richard Harrison, the Second Division's Assistant Quarter Master General.
On 31 May 1879 the Prince requested permission from Harrison to scout ahead of the column in the vicinity of Fort Newdigate. This was granted, provided that an escort accompany him. Lieutenant J. B. Carey of the 98th Regiment, and a friend of the Prince, was given permission to accompany him.
On the morning of 1 June 1879 the party consisting of The Prince, Carey and a number of mounted soldiers left camp. They were ordered to collect the remainder of their escort from patrols that they passed,
Here they halted for a while before making their way down to a deserted homestead about 2590 metres from the jojosi River and some 175 metres from a donga joining the river.
Here the party stopped for coffee.
A Zulu guide reported that a Zulu warrior had been seen in the vicinity. As the party remounted, a volley rang out from the nearby maize fields and a party of Zulu warriors charged the group. The Prince's horse, Percy, shied and bolted. The Prince, although a fine horseman was unable to vault the horse, and ran at its side for while before falling and being trampled. The Prince drew his revolver and turned to face the attackers, whilst retreating down the bank of the donga. Here he was overrun and died from 17 stab wounds. After the war, Zulus who took part in the attack were interviewed and praised the Prince's bravery, claiming that he had "fought like a lion".
On 2 June 1879 the Prince's body along with those of Troopers Rogers and Abel were recovered. a funeral service was held that day. The body was embalmed and sent to Simon's Town on the ship HMS Boadicea. There it was transferred to HMS Orontes. It was transferred to "The Enchantress: for the final part of its voyage to Britain. The Prince's body, along with the first news
News of the death of the Prince became one of the most reported-on events in the media over the next three months. He was buried at Chiselhurst. but was later exhumed and reburied along with Napoleon III at Farnborough.
Before British troops left Zululand, a notice was erected at the site of the Prince's death. Queen Victoria ordered a memorial cross to be placed at the site. A year after the incident, on 1 June 1880, Empress Eugenia visited the site. She also met with Zabanga, a Zulu who had been involved in the attack. He told here that had they known the identity of the Prince, he would not have been killed.
Trees were planted here in the early 1900's and a surrounding wall was built.
Lieutenant J. B. Carey's military career suffered as a result of the incident. He was found guilty of deserting the Prince in the face of the enemy and was relieved of his duties and returned to England. Carey however persisted in trying to clear his name and the findings of the court were overturned. He returned to his regiment, but died of peritonitis three years later.
Erected by Amafa AkwaZulu Natali and the Government of Mauritius.
Location. 28° 7.955′ S, 30° 47.822′ E. Marker Touch for map.
Other nearby markers. At least 1 other marker is within walking distance of this marker. Prince Impérial Memorial (within shouting distance of this marker).
More about this marker. The illustration at the lower left of the marker (#1) is titled, "The Last Bivouac." It was featured in the Illustrated London News on July 6, 1879.
The illustration at the upper right of the marker (#2) shows, "The Prince's body is received on board the HMS Orontes a Simons Bay." It too is from the "Illustrated London News," July 16, 1879.
The illustration at the lower middle of the marker (#3) is a, "View of the spot where the Prince was killed." It appeared in the "Illustrated London News" on August 2, 1879.
The illustration at the lower right of the marker (#4) is of Lt. J. B. Carey.
Additional keywords. Anglo-Zulu War
Categories. • Notable Persons • Wars, Non-US •
Credits. This page was last revised on June 16, 2016. This page originally submitted on November 27, 2015, by Kevin W. of Stafford, Virginia. This page has been viewed 187 times since then and 32 times this year. Photos: 1, 2, 3, 4. submitted on November 27, 2015, by Kevin W. of Stafford, Virginia.
Editor’s want-list for this marker. Readable picture of the French language text on this marker. • Can you help? | <urn:uuid:ab487ed3-aa30-4ae8-9ef2-f82e614ea809> | {
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Talking About Koans
Although we have said that koans are to be done and not talked about, we still talk about them, of course. This is only in an effort to disclose information to the students that may be helpful in pointing them toward greater discovery.
There are traditionally different ways in which a koan may be discussed, including the following:
All of the above are encounters in which a teacher will try to move a student ahead in his or her practice, encouraging a mind-to-mind transmission of the true nature of reality. Each kind of koan talk is designed to impart dharma knowledge to the Zen student.
“To study Buddhism is to study the self.To study the self is to forget the self.To forget the self is to be enlightened by the ten thousand things.”—Dogen
Dokusan is a one-on-one meeting with your Zen teacher. During dokusan, a student will try to give an answer to a koan. The teacher will then let the student know if he or she is right or if it's time to go back and try again. When it is the student's turn for dokusan, he or she will enter a private room with the teacher and usually bow to the altar and the teacher before sitting in front of the teacher on a cushion that is there, waiting. You, the student, will attempt to answer the koan. It is often necessary to tell the teacher what koan you were undertaking, such as “My koan is Mu,” so that the teacher, who may have hundreds of students, can be ready for your answer.
You will then answer the koan to the best of your ability. Answers to koans are not necessarily related in words. You must show your teacher that you have an understanding of your koan. The answer to the koan, when you have reached it, will grip you, and you will be compelled to answer in a specific way. Dokusan is not a time for intellectual debates on koans. If you go in and try to explain a koan to your teacher, most likely the teacher will ring a bell and tell you to leave. The intellect is not your friend in koan practice, so try to kill the rational mind and move beyond it into bigger mind.
Your teacher will initially appear very supportive and encouraging, and your first efforts at dokusan will most likely be very positive encounters. But as you move into the koan, and the teacher senses that you are getting somewhere, approval disappears. The teacher will then push you further and further into frustration as you hit wall after wall. If you go into dokusan and meet with a wall you cannot seem to scale, try again. Try again and again. Try until you are frustrated beyond measure, until you are utterly beaten. It is not until you die on your cushion and give up that you will find the answer.
Koans are difficult to work on outside of a sesshin. A sesshin, a kind of Zen retreat with fifteen hours a day or more of Zen practice, is a time where the student can make the most practice on a koan as all outside distractions are taken away.
Have you ever been obsessed with finding the answer to a problem? You work on the problem, mull it over again and again, but you are completely frustrated when it comes to actually finding the answer. You spend hours, days, weeks, trying to figure the problem out. Finally, completely frustrated, you give up and go out to have some fun. Suddenly, there it is! The answer has just popped into your mind as if it has always been there. This has happened because you have let the answer move into the deeper parts of your working mind. Let it move from the surface thinking to another level, where it can be figured out without the distractions of consciousness.
Teisho is a dharma discourse in which the teacher tries to show the student the truth through commentary on a koan. Teishos are given to all students present and are not one-to-one encounters. Many modern literary compilations on Zen are actually transcribed and edited teisho talks.
During teisho talks, the students gather in the zendo and sit very still on their zafus. The teacher might open the dharma talk with some sutras. Then, a koan from one of the koan collections will be presented, and the teacher will offer his or her understanding of the koan to the students. The presentation presumes that the audience of students are enlightened beings. In order to hear the teisho and to take it in, the student must shift his or her ability to understand and listen in a wholly different manner.
Dharma combat is not a new video game, although it does sound like one. Dharma combat, or shosan, is an encounter with the teacher in which the teacher tries to push the student further into the realization of the koan by using a spirited exchange encounter with the students and the dharma community. The teacher presents a koan to the community and encourages the students to test their knowledge of the koan and ask questions. Dharma combat can also take place between senior students or two Zen masters.
Here is an example of dharma combat between two Zen masters.
In the early 1970s, two Buddhist masters met in Cambridge, Massachusetts. One was a Tibetan master named Kalu Rinpoche, and the other was a Korean Zen master named Seung Sahn. The audience was on the edge of their seats as the dharma combat began. Seung Sahn held up an orange and, in the tradition of Zen dharma combat fashion, demanded, “What is this?”
Kalu Rinpoche just stared at him, questioning.
Once more, Seung Sahn asked, “What is this?”
Finally, Kalu Rinpoche looked at his translator and asked, “Don't they have oranges in Korea?”
Another form of a koan discussion is the question-and-answer period, known as mondo. Everyone in attendance at a mondo can ask the teacher questions relating to the koan or other Zen-related topics. It is not as spirited as a dharma talk, and the answers tend to be intellectual and explanatory.
The mondo is a chance for students to get explanations for questions they may have, such as “How do you know when I have the answer to a koan?” The master answers in a way that encourages the student to reach a deeper level of perception. | <urn:uuid:301322d6-0181-41a9-ac86-c650a4e28e58> | {
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Date: October 18, 2006
Creator: Hildreth, Steven A.
Description: This report updates recent information concerning, specifically, North Korea’s long-range ballistic missile program. On July 4-5, 2006, North Korea test-launched seven ballistic missiles, including a new Taepo Dong 2 that failed soon after launch. Apparently successful shorter-range missile tests included some combination of SCUDs and No Dongs. More recently, North Korea conducted an underground nuclear test and said it would deploy nuclear weapons on their ballistic missiles, although there is no evidence they are doing so.
Contributing Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department | <urn:uuid:6a78fbfd-7e2c-4b7e-abc8-49156584f170> | {
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Next time you toss your baby’s pacifier in your mouth to “clean” it, you may also be lowering your child’s risk for allergies.
A new report showed that out of 136 infants who used a pacifier in their first six months, 65 were from parents who reported sucking on their kids’ pacifiers. Of the kids whose parents “cleaned” their pacifiers, both eczema and asthma were strongly reduced when they were examined at 18 months of age. At 36 months of age, the protective effect remained for eczema but not for asthma.
Bill Hesselmar, MD, PhD, of Queen Silvia Children's Hospital in Gothenburg, Sweden, conducted the study along with his colleagues. The research is published in Pediatrics.
According to their research, transferring oral microbes from the parent to the child could modify the allergy risk. The make-up of the bacteria in the infants’ saliva showed which belonged to parents who did—and did not—suck their child's pacifier.
“Exposure of the infant to parental saliva might accelerate development of a complex oral/pharyngeal microbiota that, similar to a complex gut microbiota, might beneficially affect tolerogenic handling of antigens by the oral/pharyngeal lymphoid tissues,” the scientists wrote in their report. “Moreover, oral bacteria are swallowed and hence also affect the composition of the microbiota in the small intestine, which may in turn regulate tolerance development in the gut.”
Parents sucking on pacifiers may not look cool, but maybe it's not as bad as we originally thought.
And you'll see personalized content just for you whenever you click the My Feed .
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Find Great Details Here About Improving NutritionDo you eat fast food often? Do you tend to snack on unhealthy packaged foods and lack a proper amount of fruits and vegetables? These things can lead to obesity, depression, and other serious disorders common in today's society! Read on to find out how you can change your nutrition to facilitate a better life!
collagen for skin glow are not the enemy. Your body needs carbs to survive and by cutting them out, you can cause your organs damage or even cause them to fail. That said, there are good and bad carbohydrates. The good ones tend to be complex carbs like whole-grain and other fiber-rich foods.
Always eat a balanced diet. The ideal diet for most people, consists of about 20 percent protein, 30 percent fat and between 50 and 55 percent carbohydrates. Most people are aware that too much fat is bad, however, too little can be bad, as well. The same goes for carbohydrates.
When considering a diet that provides an adequate nutrition level, be sure to include low fat milk. Milk provides many nutrients - including calcium and protein - that the body needs. Studies have shown that drinking milk does benefit both muscle growth, and also the body's ability to maintain a healthy body fat content.
If you are on the road a lot, it is important to always carry some healthy snacks and a meal bar or two. Typically, full meals are not provided in airports, as these bars can be useful. You may be tied up in security, waiting for your flight or flying on a plane that does not serve meals. With some protein bars or snacks with you, you can tide your hunger over until landing somewhere with a warm meal available.
People who are nutritionally aware have made an effort to reduce or eliminate hydrogenated fats in their diet. Studies have shown the dangers of hydrogenated fats, found most commonly in margarine, peanut butter, and bakery products. Hydrogenation increases the shelf life of products, but it "gums up" our bodily systems.
It is important to use your everyday calories to feed yourself wholesome fuel. You will feel and act much healthier if you eat your calories from good wholesome food rather than from junk foods and refined sugars. The quality of the foods you consume requires as much consideration as the quantity.
Iced Coffee Protein Shake Recipe to lose weight -- 115 Calories per serving!
I’ve never been much of a smoothie drinker, mostly because I feel like I’m drinking a boat load of calories that do nothing to fill me up, but not so with this recipe! It’s super filling (holds me over until lunch), low in calories, high in protein, and the perfect morning pick-me-up! To be honest, it’s not very sweet, but I’m a black coffee drinker, so it’s absolutely perfect for me. Iced Coffee Protein Shake Recipe to lose weight -- 115 Calories per serving!
When you want to gain weight you need to do it the healthy way. When you take in more calories than you can burn, you gain weight. Fat is a common ingredient in our food and has twice the amount of calories as protein or carbohydrate. To stay healthy, you need to get your extra calories from a beneficial combination of nutrients not just from fats.
When looking to improve your nutrition with a good source of antioxidants, don't overlook the value of the ever popular pumpkin. The antioxidant in pumpkin comes from beta-carotene. It can give a boost to your immune system function and reduce the risk of cancer and heart disease. Adding pumpkin to your diet also gives you added fiber.
Peanut butter is a great source of protein, but you should eat natural peanut butter. The ingredients are usually just peanuts and salt. Regular peanut butter contains hydrogenated fats and sometimes extra sugar or other ingredients. Since there is boost collagen protein , the oil will float to the top in the natural peanut butter. You will need to store it in the refrigerator and stir it before use.
Sticking to a solid nutrition plan is challenging sometimes. Remember to treat yourself occasionally if you're attempting to change bad habits. While this doesn't mean that you should eat a cake in a sitting, rewards that fit your nutritional goals and needs will encourage you to stay on the right track.
Most people know that a diet that is rich in fiber helps the body by preventing constipation. However, few realize that by improving the stomach's mobility, fiber facilitates a balanced water intake and can ultimately, improve the body's metabolic function. This makes the gastrointestinal system more efficient and healthy, overall.
If you are going to eat food with high calorie or sugar content, try to eat it early in the day when your metabolic rate is moving at a faster pace. You are more likely to end up with excess calories that get stored as fat if you eat such foods later in the day when your metabolism is slower.
Physically click for info over the age of 50, should consume approximately 2,000 calories, as part of their daily nutritional plan. If you are a male over the age of 50, who regularly participates in a more active lifestyle, you should increase your caloric intake for a total of anywhere from 2,400 to 2,800 calories.
Bananas are a wonderful, natural energy bar. They contain a great deal of natural sugars to give you an immediate pick me up, but also have potassium for stamina and recovery after a workout. Replace your high sugar, meal replacements bars or energy bars with a banana.
Proper nutrition doesn't necessitate going on a diet. Nutrition is a lifestyle change that ensures you receive the necessary vitamins and minerals to keep your body operating at peak efficiency. As this article has shown, there are many different nutrition plans available. If you discovered a body type that is the same or similar in the above article, you should utilize this nutritional plan in order to achieve a healthier body. | <urn:uuid:f656141c-5417-4aa1-b2d4-9da7318ed9d0> | {
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In this e-Learning-Module the basics of Watershed Management are explained by various figures, texts, animations and other media.
In this chapter you'll find information about
Information about the different functions of the module (menus, etc.) and the page reproduction you can find in the overview of the e-Learning environment 'GeoLearning' ('how to learn with this e-Learning environment'). In this chapter it is also listed which software has to be set up on your computer ('technical requirements'). Specific information for learning the Watershed Management concept are further given in the chapter 'how to learn with the e-Learning materials'.
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As certified athletic trainers we deal with many athletes, parents, coaches and colleagues who have varying degrees of asthma. While we typically know something about the condition, how much and how well do you know asthma?
Here is a little quiz for you.
- Do you know the law in your state about students being permitted to carry a controlled substance such as their inhaler with them in school?
- Did you know there is a federal law requiring schools to make certain that asthmatics have all the same opportunities as other students?
- On average if you have 30 athletes on your softball team, about how many of them may be asthmatic?
- How many asthmatic triggers can you name?
- Do you know the signs of an asthmatic episode? How about the signs of an asthmatic emergency?
- Does your school have an Emergency Action Plan that covers severe asthmatic episodes during the school day? after school? Is the EAP clear about duties and responsibilities?
- Can physical education class, sports, exercise actually cause an asthmatic episode?
- Do you know the Rule of Two’s ?
Question 1: check with your nurse or health officer to see how your district reflects the law of your particular state.
Question 2: the Individual with Disabilities Education ACT (IDEA) and Section 504 are federal laws that require arrangements to be made to include all students, even those with disabilities like asthma, to participate in all the educational experiences.
Question 3: about 3 or 10%
Question 4: indoor: dust, furry/feathered animals, mold, food allergies, strong odors/fragrances, poor air quality, temperature/humidity, tobacco smoke, illness/infection, exercise/sports and strong physical expressions of feelings
Question 5a: cough, shortness of breath, mild wheeze, tight chest, exposure to a known trigger. Remember being "winded" from exercise is different than "wheezing".
Question 5b: chest sucking in/neck muscles bulging, difficulty or discomfort when breathing, nasal flaring, trouble walking and/or talking, breathing does not improve or is worse after quick reliever medication is used
Question 6: check with your nurse, supervisor, central administration
Question 7: yes
Question 8: Does your athlete use a "quick-relief inhaler" more than Two times a week? Do they awaken at night with asthma more than Two times a month? Do they refill their "quick relief inhaler" more than two times a year? Does their peak flow drop more than Two times 10 (20%), when experiencing asthma symptoms? If, "yes" to any of these, your athlete may be clinically out of control. Have them see their physician. Rules of Two is a federally registered service mark of Baylor Health Care System. ©2008 Baylor Health Care System.
Having tools to assist your athletes with asthma should be of paramount importance to you. Check out tools and texts to help you by visiting Sports Health's asthma category >>.
Phil Hossler, ATC has been an athletic trainer on the scholastic, collegiate and Olympic levels. He has authored 4 books and numerous articles and served as an officer in state and regional athletic training associations for 20 years. He is a member of four halls of fame including the National Athletic Trainers’ Association’s. | <urn:uuid:635fd777-f3a8-4a4f-ab4e-0d79f83e2575> | {
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About this Course
Glaze Calculation Onlineis a three month course focused on the science behind glazes. No more myths and legends about how glazes work, only facts and science.
The course provides information and science to help everyone utilize glazes in ways that will help them take control of their materials and make their studios the best they can be.
Glaze Calculation Online consists of 14 on-demand video lectures presented over three months. The on-demand format is designed for the educational needs of the ceramicist. Students are able to watch lectures as often as they like, providing them with the ability to absorb and engage with the information like never before.
Students also can engage with the teachers in bi-weekly, live, online discussions. We they can discuss the class with the teachers and other students. We will discuss the questions from the class that arise, as well as explore experiments and the studio in general. In addition, students are provided with discussion forum for each lecture, so they may start the conversation, there and then. Students will have three months to engage in the course content. Extended access will be granted by supporting Ceramics Materials Workshop on Patreon.
Lecture content is complemented by short reading and experiments, that will make the online experience real, in your own studio.
- Introduction to Online Learning
- Introduction to Ceramic Science
- Ceramic Materials I-Clay
- Ceramic Materials II-Feldspar
- Ceramic Materials III-Fluxes
- The Seger Formula
- Unity Molecular Calculations
- Firing Temperature
- Glaze Flaws
- Special Effect Glazes | <urn:uuid:052ef40f-332a-4e8c-b824-3fc54bb2091a> | {
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Shade coffee farms can play major role in tropical forest regenerationDecember 23rd, 2008 - 5:25 pm ICT by ANI
Washington, Dec 23 (ANI): A study has found that shade coffee farms, which grow coffee under a canopy of multiple tree species, are beneficial for native birds, bats and other creatures, maintain genetic diversity of native tree species, and, can act as focal points for tropical forest regeneration.
The study was undertaken by University of Michigan researchers Shalene Jha and Christopher Dick.
Jha, a graduate student whose main interest is insects, initially wanted to find out whether shade coffee farms nurture native pollinators such as stingless bees.
When she began her fieldwork in Chiapas, Mexico, she focused on a particular tree, Miconia affinis, which is pollinated by an unusual method known as buzz pollination.
In order to release pollen from its flowers, bees grab hold and vibrate their flight muscles, shaking the pollen free.
According to Jha, non-native species such as Africanized honeybees dont perform buzz pollination, but native bees do.
So, I thought Miconia, which requires buzz pollination and is common both in forests and on coffee farms, could be a bio-indicator of how well native bees are pollinating native plants, she said.
As she spent time in the field, however, Jha realized that the story of how Miconia trees spread into coffee farms and how their dispersal affects the tree populations genetic diversity begged to be addressed before she proceeded with the pollen studies.
With guidance from Dick, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology who studies genetic diversity patterns in tropical tree species, Jha collected and analyzed DNA samples from Miconia trees growing in a network of coffee farms and forest fragments.
Typical of many coffee farms in the area, the three farms in the study were clear-cut and burned in the late 1930s and immediately replanted with coffee bushes and canopy tree species, including nitrogen-fixing legumes and fruit trees.
This study shows that shade coffee farms, by being hospitable to birds, support widespread dispersal of native trees, in effect connecting patches of surrounding forest.
In addition, shade coffee farms may serve as reservoirs for future forest regeneration, as the farms typically fall out of production in less than a century.
Given that potential - as well as their roles in connecting habitat patches, preserving genetic diversity and sheltering native wildlife - it is important to encourage this traditional style of agriculture, Jha said.
Its more essential than ever to pay attention to the ecological benefits shade coffee farms provide, she added. (ANI)
- Invading 'killer bees' may increase food supplies for native bees - Oct 02, 2009
- China resorts to artificial pollination - Feb 28, 2012
- Flowers produce chemicals to keep greedy bees at bay: Study - Feb 02, 2011
- Human noise affects plant, animal life - Mar 27, 2012
- Small family farms in tropics can feed the hungry and preserve biodiversity - Feb 23, 2010
- Bees buzzing about cities produce tastier honey - Aug 20, 2010
- New, exotic African mistletoe discovered just in time for Christmas - Dec 20, 2010
- Bumblebees on verge of extinction? - Jan 05, 2011
- City bees get richer diet than bees from farmlands: Study - Aug 18, 2010
- Global warming 60m years ago improved Tropical forest diversity - Nov 12, 2010
- Wild bees can serve as effective pollinators - Mar 25, 2009
- "Living fossil" tree may provide clues to past and future climate change - Oct 31, 2008
- India's vegetable farmers hit with 'pollination crisis' - Sep 28, 2010
- Tiny wasps provide hope for vanishing species - Jan 11, 2010
- Outer tree canopy leaves 'change shape to let inner ones get sunlight' - Apr 01, 2011
Tags: africanized honeybees, canopy tree, chiapas mexico, coffee farms, diversity patterns, dna samples, evolutionary biology, flight muscles, forest fragments, forest regeneration, genetic diversity, native bees, native birds, native pollinators, pollen studies, shade coffee, shalene, stingless bees, tree populations, tropical tree species | <urn:uuid:87110089-9c27-4772-a7d7-7b078e2e413a> | {
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I have to do a double comparison, I have tried many things, but nothing really works.. they are responsible for stopping a cycle.
First off, compared double's them selves using (double) Math.round(x*10000000)/10000000, worked fine but then.. Numbers were the same, but weren't(and vice versa), so the cycle continued endlessly.
Tried rounding them and comparing long values, still the same.
Lastly, tried using Big-decimal, ran into problems yet again.
Whats wrong with this code? As far as i know, it's best to use the string constructor, so I'm using it. The second line returns a juicy "java.lang.NumberFormatException", if I edit the 2nd line to, for example, 5.3222, after a while, the first line returns the same error. Should I replace doubles with BigDecimals, only for this comparison? That seems silly to me, there has to be an easy way to do this comparison.
Thanks in advance!
Janis Strautins wrote:As far as i know, it's best to use the string constructor, so I'm using it.
You should understand why people say it's best to use the constructor that takes a string, then you'd realise that if you already have a double, it makes no sense to first convert it to a string so that you can use BigDecimal's constructor that takes a string.
The reason why someone told you that it's best to use the constructor that takes a string, is because double is inherently imprecise, and it can't accurately store values such as for example 0.1. For example, if you do this:
If you specify the number in the form of a string "0.1", you won't suffer from the fact that double can't store it precisely:
I don't know what your code looks like, but precise comparisons of double values, using ==, often return false, because there are small rounding errors. Don't use == to compare double values; instead of that, check if they are close enough to each other. For example: | <urn:uuid:fe503185-fb39-4480-80b8-a80d28aa8958> | {
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A question we probably ask ourselves on a daily basis is “Are screens and or similar technologies bad for my child, is it good for children learning through technology?”
We’ve moved beyond the debate of mobile electronic devices as being either ‘bad or good’ for young children. Mobile electronic devices are entrenched in society and usage has grown exponentially in the last few years. This can be attributed in large part to the decreasing cost.
Research in 2011 found that 10% of children under 2 owned a mobile device, this jumped to 38% in 2013 and this number has continued to grow (Hilda, K et al., 2015) By the time children enter preschool over 97% will use a mobile electronic device of some kind on a regular basis. (Hilda, K et al., 2015).
Children Learning Through Technology
There is much conflicting evidence and advice when it comes to young children and the use of electronic devices such as smart phones and tablets. Emerging evidence supports that screens can be beneficial to learning as long as they are used in the right way. Looking at the “right way” more practically it can be broken into a few simple considerations.
These are three aspects that come up repeatedly when looking at the research around this question.
Many factors influence the positive and negative effects of electronic devices. What’s really clear though is that the more interactive the experience is the better the outcomes for learning.
Showing your child how to make a bed and then helping them with the task will get the task done faster and they’ll then know (hopefully) how to do it in the future.
Research from the University of Wisconsin found that children between the ages of 2-3 learn more from interacting with a screen than from just passive watching. This suggests that touch screens can hold educational potential for toddlers.
There is new research showing that learn-to-read apps can improve early literacy skills (Radesky et al., 2015). There are a plethora of interactive games and apps, LeapFrog being just one with hundreds of games and apps availble.
When looking at children learning through technology, time is an important factor. This is both the amount of time spent on the device and the time of day that the device is used.
Current government guidelines vary from country to country but on average guidelines recommend that children under the age of 2 should not use any electronic media. For children aged 2-5, no more than 2 hours per day is recommended.
Time of day is another consideration due to the effects that mobile devices have on sleeping patterns of both children and adults. Light is the most important cue in our bodies shifting from awake to sleep cycles. Blue light which is part of the visible light spectrum and which is found everywhere, in sunlight, in digital screens and in fluorescent lighting can be the most disruptive.
There is nothing wrong with blue light for the majority of the day but using these blue light emitting devices before bed can lower your levels of melatonin Our bodies start producing melatonin, also known as the sleep hormone, about 2 hours prior to us falling asleep. Lowering these levels can make it harder to fall asleep and lower the quality of your sleep.
Chang et.al (2014) Did a study on adults that found participants who read on light-emitting devices took longer to fall asleep, had less REM sleep [the phase when we dream] and had higher alertness before bedtime [than those people who read printed books]. They also discovered that after an eight-hour sleep episode, those who read on the light-emitting device were sleepier and took longer to wake up.
Maybe not such a big issue for adults, but for the little people in our life, sleep is a vital part of growth and development. We all know those days when the little one in our life hasn’t had enough sleep or has skipped a nap! Even without all the evidence we know that it has a negative effect on them and us. So don’t let your child use electronic devices at least 2 hours before your child would be going to bed.
It’s important that as a parent you decide which content is best for your child. While there is no shortage of entertainment or educational material online it varies greatly in terms of quality and appropriateness. A good rule of thumb is to test out any content yourself before letting children go exploring by themselves.
The American Association of Paediatricians provide a useful list of age-appropriate providers of educational content and suggest the use of the following resources to guide media choices.:
- PBS Kids (www.pbskids.org)
- Sesame Workshop (www.sesameworkshop.org)
- Common Sense Media (commonsensemedia.org)
They recommend that you should try a game or app first, play it with your child, and then ask them about it afterward to see what he or she is learning. This will help maximise the interaction benefits we spoke about earlier.
Electronic devices are here to stay
They can provide a fun and engaging way to interact with your child. It’s clear that depending on how they’re used, they can be beneficial or detrimental to the way our children learn.
I suspect that the debate of the role of electronic devices in learning will continue to rage for some time. It remains up to us as parents to seek out positive, interactive content for our children on their devices and to ensure we set reasonable time limits that are age appropriate. This is true of many things in life, the old motto everything in moderation remains true today.
Kabali, H. K., Irigoyen, M. M., Nunez-Davis, R., Budacki, J. G., Mohanty, S. H., Leister, K. P., & Bonner, R. L. (2015). Exposure and use of mobile media devices by young children. Pediatrics, peds-2015.
Kucirkova, N. (2014). iPads in early education: separating assumptions and evidence. Frontiers in psychology, 5, 715.
Chang, A. M., Aeschbach, D., Duffy, J. F., & Czeisler, C. A. (2015). Evening use of light-emitting eReaders negatively affects sleep, circadian timing, and next-morning alertness. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,112(4), 1232-1237.
Radesky, J. S., Schumacher, J., & Zuckerman, B. (2015). Mobile and interactive media use by young children: The good, the bad, and the unknown. Pediatrics, 135(1), 1-3. | <urn:uuid:949016c5-4948-4968-9e38-e6933722c1fb> | {
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Chernobyl's impact "not as great as feared"
The human health impact of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear explosion has not been as serious as is often popularly thought, according to the most comprehensive report on the disaster's after-effects. Published on Monday by several UN agencies, the report says fewer than 50 deaths have been directly attributed to radiation exposure resulting from the accident. "By and large we have not found profound negative health impacts," lead author Burton Bennett said. Nevertheless, a further 4,000 radiation-linked deaths could yet occur, the report concluded. See World health organisation news release.
The full text of this article is only available to subscribers and free trialists. To login,please enter your email address and subscriber access code below. | <urn:uuid:775fa17d-1f88-45f5-82c8-4285f7b15187> | {
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