The Supreme Court Ignored the 19th Century "Voluntary Motherhood" MovementRoundup
tags: abortion, Supreme Court, womens history, reproductive freedom
Lauren Thompson is Assistant Professor of History and Interdisciplinary Studies at Kennesaw State University (GA).
Members of the National American Woman Suffrage Association participate in a 1910 parade in Washington, D.C. Paul Thompson/FPG/Archive Photos/Hulton Archive via Getty Images
The history of abortion in the U.S. guided some of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s arguments in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision. Alito argued that abortion has never been a “deeply rooted” constitutional right in the United States.
Alito argued in the opinion that abortion has always been a serious crime, but there were no laws about abortion at all in Colonial America. Beginning in the 19th century, most states barred it only after “quickening,” when a pregnant woman can first feel the fetus move, typically around the fourth to sixth month of pregnancy.
Abortion is indeed deeply rooted in the American experience and law. American women have always tried to personally determine the size of their families. Enslaved Black women used contraception and abortion as specific strategies of resistance against their physical and reproductive bondage.
The very passage of the 13th and 14th amendments, which ended slavery and guaranteed citizenship for all, is evidence that the Constitution actually does protect bodily autonomy. The 14th Amendment’s due process and equal protection clauses have long been the legal basis for gender equality cases. If, as the Supreme Court’s ruling suggests, the right to abortion is not constitutionally protected via the 14th Amendment, it opens up the possibility that other settled law concerning gender and racial equality also has the potential to be reversed.
Instead of examining abortion through the lens of past cases of gender law, however, Alito instead refers to the opinions of 17th-century male legal theorists, who believed in witches and the right of husbands to rape their wives. He also cites as evidence the passage of 19th-century state abortion laws by all-male legislatures, which criminalized abortion and birth control. The Comstock Postal Act of 1873 also made possessing or selling all sexual information and contraceptive items a federal crime.
Meanwhile, Alito’s opinion does not discuss the women’s rights movement in the 1800s or women’s ordinary, daily perspectives on abortion at the time. In this landmark decision, the court has skipped one of the biggest parts of U.S. history on abortion, creating a glaring gap in an understanding of how abortions and abortion law in the country worked in the past.
Candace Stitzman-Duley, center, a distant relative of Susan B. Anthony, poses with Democratic voting activists in Muhlenberg, Pa. Ben Hasty/MediaNews Group/Reading Eagle via Getty Images
Considering how suffragists like the Black journalist and activist Ida B. Wells and other prominent women’s rights activists in the 19th century thought about rights to their own bodies is an overlooked part of this history.
Suffragists in the 19th century focused on a woman’s right to vote – and did not openly support legalizing abortion or birth control.
The reason why reproductive rights were omitted from the suffragist campaign is complex.
Suffragists argued that legalizing birth control and abortion would hurt women, who already had few legal rights at the time. They said that men would then use these legal freedoms to further abuse and control women.
Instead, suffragists embraced an idea they termed “voluntary motherhood.” This meant that women had the right to reject unwanted sex and could choose if and when they had children.
Even in happy marriages, many women in the 1800s could not necessarily control the number of pregnancies they had. Marital rape was legal, and enslavers had total control over enslaved women’s bodies.
The idea of voluntary motherhood – meaning that women should have full control over their own bodies – was a powerfully radical idea.
This notion appealed to women across race and class lines, and it helped drive the emergent women’s rights movement, beginning in the 1840s.
Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, both noted suffragists, are shown in an 1890 photograph. Photo12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
What suffragists said about abortion
Suffragist reformers recognized that the right to vote meant little if they did not have control of their bodies or reproductive lives. Black suffragists like Wells and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, for example, spoke eloquently about the constant dangers Black women faced from white men raping and assaulting them.
They and White women suffragists like Lucy Stone argued that gaining the right to vote would help women have more power to combat these problems.
These activists recognized that women turned to contraceptives and abortion to control their own reproduction. But they also said that unscrupulous manufacturers and people who performed abortions sometimes took advantage of women, by selling them ineffective or harmful contraceptives or charging them large sums for abortions. Substances used to induce abortion, or abortifacients, also often contained harmful and poisonous ingredients that killed women, while surgical abortions were incredibly risky in an era where germ theory and understandings of infection were rudimentary at best.
Reformers also openly blamed harsh anti-abortion laws for contributing to these problems – driving women to desperate measures while still allowing men to have sex freely and shirk their responsibilities of fatherhood.
Suffragist Matilda Joslyn Gage agreed, writing in a suffrage newspaper in 1868 that “this crime of … abortion … lies at the door of the male sex.”
Using history for today’s arguments
Today, some anti-abortion rights women’s groups look to the suffragist movement to make the case that abortion should be limited or banned.
Feminists for Life and Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, for example, have long rested their funding and advocacy campaigns on attempting to prove that suffragists were “pro-life.” But research shows that their argument is an incomplete reading of suffragists’ complex views of abortion, while also falsely presuming that suffragists would have supported current laws banning abortion today.
There is ample primary source evidence in suffrage newspapers like “The Revolution” or in the private letters of the suffragists showing that they repeatedly insisted that anti-abortion laws punished women, without actually eliminating the practice of abortion.
White suffragists like Anthony held overtly racist and eugenic views, and their support for women who sought abortions often incorporated ideas of eliminating disability and what they deemed undesirable offspring. They prioritized rights for white, middle-class women and ignored or outright rejected Black reformers’ urgent pleas for reproductive justice.
But that messy, complex past nonetheless remains central to understanding Americans’ experiences with abortion and abortion law.
Alito wrote that women’s role in abortion history is too “conflicting” to be useful. Yet considering women’s historical attitudes about reproductive rights – and the reasons behind these views – was a critical omission in the court’s historical considerations of the role of abortion in Americans’ lives.
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Ferenc Husvéth (2011)
Debreceni Egyetem, Nyugat-Magyarországi Egyetem, Pannon Egyetem
Table of Contents
The mammary gland, like sebaceous and sweat glands, is a cutaneous gland. Histologically, in the more advanced mammals it is a compound tubuloalveolar type that originates from the ectoderm. Although the mammary gland is basically similar in all animals, there are wide species variations in the appearance of the gland and in the relative amounts of the components secreted.
The mammary glands of cattle, sheep, goats, horses, and camel are located in the inguinal region; those of primates and elephants, in the thoracic region; and those of pigs, rodents and carnivores, along the ventral structure of both the thorax and the abdomen (Fig.14.1.)
Figure 14.1. Figure 14.1.: Diversity in anatomic position, number and teat morphology among mammals (Singer (2003)
Normally, cattle have four functional teats and glands, whereas sheep and goats have two; each teat has one streak canal and drains a separate gland. The glands and teats of domestic animals are collectively known as udder. Pigs and horses usually have two streak canal per tea, with each canal serving a separate secretory area. Because more is known about bovine mammary glands than about those of other mammals, more attention will be given here to that species. A cow’s udder is composed of two halves, each of which has two teats and each teat drains a separate gland (quarter). The quarters are separated by connective tissue and each has separate milk collecting system (Fig.14. 2.).
Figure 14.2. Figure 14.2.: Duct system of the bovine mammary gland: 1.,: lobule; 2., intralobular duct; 2’., interlobular duct; 3., lactiferous ducts of various diameter; 4., lactiferous sinus; 5., gland sinus; 6., teat sinus; 7., papillary duct; 8., teat sphincter; 9., teat orifice; 10., parenchyma of gland; 11., skin. Dyce et al. (1996).
In addition to the four normal teats, there may be supernumerary teats associated with a small gland, with a normal gland, or with no secretory area. About 40 per cent of all cows have supernumerary teats. Supernumerary teats are also found in sheep, goats, pigs and horses. In these species, with the exception of the horse, rudimentary teats are usually found in the male.
The two halves of the bovine udder are separated by the median suspensory ligament, which is formed by two lamellae of elastic connective tissue originated from the abdominal tunic (Fig. 14.3.). The posterior extremity of its ligament is attached to the prepubic tendon. The lateral suspensory ligaments are composed largely of fibrous, nonelastic strands given rise to numerous lamellae that penetrate the gland and become continuous with the interstitial tissue of the udder. The lateral suspensory ligaments are attached to the prepubic and subpubic tendons, which in turn are attached to the pelvic symphysis. The lateral and median suspensory ligaments are the primary structure supporting the bovine udder.
Figure 14.3. Figure 14.3.: Transverse section of the pelvic floor and caudal quarters of the cow’s udder 1., Pelvic symphysis; 2., symphysial tendon; 3., lateral suspensory laminae; 4., mammary lymph node; 5. medial suspensory laminae; 6., branch of external pudendal vein. Dyce (1996)
The bovine teat has a small cistern terminating at its distal extremity in the streak canal, which is the opening to the exterior of the teat (Fig. 14.2.). Radiating downward from its internal opening into the streak canal is a structure known as Fürstenberg’s rosette, which is composed of about seven or eight loose folds of double layered epithelium and underlying connective tissue; each folds has a number of secondary folds. In cattle, the primary structure responsible for the retention of milk is a sphincter muscle surrounding the streak canal. Large ducts empty into a gland cistern located above each teat. These ducts branch profusely, ultimately ending in secretory units called alveoli or acini (Fig. 14.4.).
Alveoli are generally recognised as the basic functional units of the lactating mammary gland. Milk is formed in the epithelial cells of the alveolus. The alveolus, when filled with milk, is approximately 100 to 300 µm in diameter. The size of the alveolus is affected by many factors, primarily the amount of milk in the lumen. The alveoli are grouped together in units known as lobules, which are surrounded by more extensive connective septa. The alveoli are surrounded by contractile myoepithelial cells that are involved in the milk-ejection (or milkletdown reflex; Fig. 14.14). Myoepithelial cells also are located along the ducts. Apparently these cells are widely distributed among mammals, since they have been identified in the cat, dog, goat, pig, rabbit, rat, sheep, and human.
Figure 14.4. Figure 14.4.: An alveolus surrounded by blood vessels and myoepithelial cells in the mammary gland (Reece, 2004).
The blood supply to the udder is primarily through the external pudendal artery (Fig. 14.5.), a branch of the pudendoepigastric trunk. The external pudendal artery passes downward through the inguinal canal in more or less tortuous manner and divides into cranial and caudal branches that supply the front- and hindquarters on the same side as the artery. A small artery that may be single or paired (as determined by chance) is the ventral perineal artery, which continues from the internal pudendal artery and passes downward from the vulva just deep to the skin on the median line. The perineal artery usually supplies a small amount of blood to the caudal part of both halves the udder.
The venous drainage from the udder is largely by way of a venous circle at the base of the abdominal wall. The venous circle is formed from the main veins that drain the udder. The external pudendal vein of each side receives blood from both the cranial and caudal quarters of the same side. Cranially, each external pudendal vein is continuous with the subcutaneous abdominal veins (cranial and caudal superficial epigastric veins) and caudally with the perineal vein. An anastomosis between the subcutaneous abdominal veins just at or in front of the udder completes the venous circle.
Figure 14.5. Figure 14.5.: Blood circulation to and from the udder. RA=right atrium; LV=left ventricle; CA= caudal aorta; CVC=caudal vena cava; EIV=external iliac vein; EIA=external iliac artery; EPA=external pudendal artery; EPV=external pudendal vein; CMA&V=caudal mammary artery and vein; CrMA&V=cranial mammary artery and vein; SAV=subcutaneous abdominal vein. (Reece et al., 2004
The subcutaneous abdominal veins provide a potential route for passage of blood from the udder to the heart by way of the cranial vena cava. Before the heifer comes into milk, the connection between cranial and caudal superficial epigastrics is poorly developed. During first pregnancy, when the udder undergoes a marked increase in size and, consequently, blood supply, the two veins develop a functional anastomosis, after which they collectively constitute the subcutaneous abdominal vein or the milk vein. In high-producing dairy cows the subcutaneous abdominal vein is large and tortuous. It passes through a foramen in the rectus abdominis muscle (the milk well), joins the internal thoracic vein, and ultimately drains to the cranial vena cava.
The lymphatic vessels draining the udder show up rather well superficially just under the skin, particularly in high-producing cattle. They drain from the entire udder, including the teat, to the superficial inguinal (mammary or supramammary) lymph nodes near the superficial (external) inguinal ring above the caudal part of the base of the udder.


IT Center Audit: An information technology audit, or information systems audit, is an examination of the management controls within an Information technology (IT) infrastructure.
Types of IT audit: Technological innovation process audit. This audit constructs a risk profile for existing and new projects. The audit will assess the length and depth of the company's experience in its chosen technologies, as well as its presence in relevant markets, the organization of each project, and the structure of the portion of the industry that deals with this project or product, organization and industry structure.
Innovative comparison audit. This audit is an analysis of the innovative abilities of the company being audited, in comparison to its competitors. This requires examination of company's research and development facilities, as well as its track record in actually producing new products.
Technological position audit: This audit reviews the technologies that the business currently has and that it needs to add. Technologies are characterized as being either "base", "key", "pacing" or "emerging".
Systems and Applications: An audit to verify that systems and applications are appropriate, are efficient, and are adequately controlled to ensure valid, reliable, timely, and secure input, processing, and output at all levels of a system's activity. System and process assurance audits form a subtype, focussing on business process-centric business IT systems. Such audits have the objective to assist financial auditors.
Information Processing Facilities: An audit to verify that the processing facility is controlled to ensure timely, accurate, and efficient processing of applications under normal and potentially disruptive conditions.
Systems Development: An audit to verify that the systems under development meet the objectives of the organization, and to ensure that the systems are developed in accordance with generally accepted standards for systems development.
Management of IT and Enterprise Architecture: An audit to verify that IT management has developed an organizational structure and procedures to ensure a controlled and efficient environment for information processing.
Client/Server, Telecommunications, Intranets, and Extranets: An audit to verify that telecommunications controls are in place on the client (computer receiving services), server, and on the network connecting the clients and servers


464 pages | 8 1/2 x 11
Obesity poses one of the greatest public health challenges of the 21st century, creating serious health, economic, and social consequences for individuals and society. Despite acceleration in efforts to characterize, comprehend, and act on this problem, including implementation of preventive interventions, further understanding is needed on the progress and effectiveness of these interventions.
Evaluating Obesity Prevention Efforts develops a concise and actionable plan for measuring the nation's progress in obesity prevention efforts--specifically, the success of policy and environmental strategies recommended in the 2012 IOM report Accelerating Progress in Obesity Prevention: Solving the Weight of the Nation. This book offers a framework that will provide guidance for systematic and routine planning, implementation, and evaluation of the advancement of obesity prevention efforts. This framework is for specific use with the goals and strategies from the 2012 report and can be used to assess the progress made in every community and throughout the country, with the ultimate goal of reducing the obesity epidemic. It offers potentially valuable guidance in improving the quality and effect of the actions being implemented.
The recommendations of Evaluating Obesity Prevention Efforts focus on efforts to increase the likelihood that actions taken to prevent obesity will be evaluated, that their progress in accelerating the prevention of obesity will be monitored, and that the most promising practices will be widely disseminated.


When was the last time that you changed the design of your classroom? A lot of educators use the same design over and over. They figure that it’s worked before, so why not continue doing the same thing?
The issue is, the way that we learn is so much different than it used to be. In fact, it’s changing almost constantly. If educators want to remain effective, the way they teach has to evolve over time. And classroom designs need to reflect and support the methods being used.
Thinking critically about classroom design is important for creating a space that supports learning, a place where students can succeed and realize their full potential. Here are some tips that can help you create a more effective and innovative classroom design.
Innovative Tips for Improving your Classroom Design
Help your students succeed by eliminating distraction in your classroom and creating a space that caters to their needs. Here are some tips that can help you get started with creating a more innovative classroom design:
1. Ask your students. The best way to find out how to improve your classroom is to ask your students directly. What parts of the classroom help the most? Which are distracting? It’s important to do this throughout the year as posters or charts become irrelevant to the concepts you’re currently teaching.
2. Less is more. A lot of teachers overcrowd their walls and classroom space from trying to do as much as they can to help their students. But in reality, what they’re really doing is creating distraction. It makes it much harder to focus when there’s a hundred things to look at and pay attention to instead of just one. Once a quarter, get rid of things on your walls and shelves that doesn’t support upcoming curriculum.
3. Create collaborative spaces. Collaborative spaces where students can discuss, work together, and participate in hands-on projects support deeper learning. Try adding a makerspace to your classroom or use alternative seating options like beanbags, cushions, or couches.
4. Condense your teacher space. If you really want to create a sense of community, it’s important to create a space that encourages interaction. You should model that behavior yourself too. Getting rid of your teacher desk or condensing your space is a great way to convey the idea that you’re all part of a community. Everyone, including yourself, is supposed to work and learn together.
Get Help Designing Your Classroom
Would you like some advice on ways to improve your school or classroom design? We’d love to help. Contact our office today to get advice from an expert.


This article is part of HuffPost’s Project Zero campaign, a yearlong series on neglected tropical diseases and efforts to fight them.
“Out of Sight” is a series of 360-degree films telling the stories of the victims and health workers battling neglected tropical diseases in some of the most remote and underdeveloped regions of Nigeria and Congo. The series explores both the challenges of and progress toward eliminating three of those diseases.
The series begins in Nigeria with lymphatic filariasis, or elephantiasis. This disease is transmitted by mosquitoes and can cause the extreme swelling of body parts. Globally, a billion people live in areas that put them at risk of infection. Nigeria is one of the countries hardest hit by this disease.
The second film, shot in both Nigeria and Congo, focuses on river blindness. It was once widespread in tropical areas across the world, but efforts to control it have significantly reduced infection. However, the disease remains a major cause of preventable blindness in certain parts of the developing world, and nearly 300,000 people are blind from it.
The series ends with sleeping sickness, which was once a major cause of mortality in tropical Africa but now may be nearly eliminated, thanks to the intervention of health workers and national health programs. As many as 80 percent of the remaining cases are found in Congo, the location of this film.
All three films will be viewable here on Oct. 23.
This series is supported, in part, by funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. All content is editorially independent, with no influence or input from the foundation.
If you’d like to contribute a post to the series, send an email to ProjectZero@huffingtonpost.com. And follow the conversation on social media by using the hashtag #ProjectZero.
- This article originally appeared on HuffPost.


With the explosion of the Internet and the commoditization of autonomous robots (such as the Roomba) and small sensors (such as the ones in most cell phones), computer scientists have become more and more interested in distributed computing, or how disparate autonomous devices — whether servers in a network or robots investigating an underwater oil spill — can work together toward some common goal.
Distributed devices have to adjust their behavior to changing circumstances. Frequently, however, their understanding of their circumstances is based only on a few local observations — and even those could be slightly inaccurate. Behavior that is perfectly reasonable in one case could prove catastrophic in another that, to a device, looks identical. Device programmers thus have to find behavioral policies that strike a balance between advancing the common goal and minimizing the risk of something going badly wrong.
Optimizing that balance would mean weighing every possible option for each device against all other options for all other devices under all circumstances. For even simple distributed-computing systems, that calculation quickly becomes so complex that it’s basically insoluble. But Frans Oliehoek, a postdoc in MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, is developing new techniques to calculate policies for distributed-computing systems. Although those techniques aren’t guaranteed to find the perfect policy, they will usually come pretty close — and they won’t take centuries to yield an answer.
To get a clearer idea of the problem, consider a very simple example. Companies such as Google or Facebook maintain server farms with tens of thousands of computers. There’s a lot of redundant information on those computers, so that hordes of users can access the same information at the same time. If a given computer is falling behind in handling users’ requests, how long should it let its queue of unanswered requests get before it fobs them off on another computer? Ten? Fifteen? A thousand? A million? The optimal answer has to strike a balance among cases where the other servers in the farm are idle, cases where the other servers have even longer queues, and everything in between. A given server may be able to infer something about traffic as a whole by glancing at the queues of the servers next to it. But if it were continually asking all the other servers in the farm about the length of their queues, it would choke the network with queries.
Making the problem even more complicated, policy has to vary according to a device’s history. It may be, for instance, that a robot helicopter trying to find a way into a burning building is much less likely to get itself incinerated if it makes two reconnaissance loops around the building before picking an entry point than if it makes just one. So its policy isn’t as simple as, “If you’ve just completed a loop, fly through the window farthest from the flames.” Sometimes it’s, “If you’ve just completed a loop, make another loop.” Moreover, if a squadron of helicopters is performing a collective task, the policy for any one of them has to account for all the possible histories of all the others.
In a series of papers presented at the International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, Oliehoek and colleagues at several other universities have described a variety of ways to reduce the scale of the policy-calculation problem. “What you want to do is try and decompose the whole big problem into a set of smaller problems that are connected,” Oliehoek says. “We now have some methods that seem to work quite well in practice.”
The key is to identify cases in which structural features of the problem mean that certain combinations of policies don’t need to be evaluated separately. Suppose, for instance, that the goal is to find policies to prevent autonomous helicopters from colliding with each other while investigating a fire. It could be that after certain sequences of events, there’s some possibility of helicopter A hitting helicopter B, and of helicopter B hitting helicopter C, but no chance of helicopter A hitting helicopter C. So preventing A from colliding with C doesn’t have to factor in to the calculation of the optimal policy. In other cases, it’s possible to lump histories together: Different histories can still point to the same result for the same action.
The mathematical model of decision making that Oliehoek has been investigating “is a very general model, so you can model all sorts of decision problems with it,” says Francisco Melo, an assistant professor of computer science and engineering at Portugal’s Universidade Técnica de Lisboa. “It’s a very lively line of work right now.” But, Melo, adds, “it’s a very complex model. There’s not much hope of computing an exact solution except for very, very, very small problems.” Melo says that while other researchers have performed theoretical analyses of the complexity of the model, and still others have attempted to find practical algorithms that yield approximations of the ideal policy, Oliehoek’s work combines the virtues of both lines of research. “I think that Frans’ work is all trying to — from a theoretical point of view — understand, if we actually want to do planning, what sorts of structures can we explore?” Melo says. “And that is also useful when you’re trying to make approximate algorithms. So I think that his contributions were important.”


Since this is a very important concern of many people, it bears repeating from last December. Probably like you, I was brought up with the belief that poinsettias and mistletoe were very poisonous and that ingestion and close contact should be avoided. There was special concern for small children and pets. Well, a lot has been learned in the past several years about their toxicity to humans and pets.
- A brief history. Apparently the claim of their toxicity goes back to 1919, when an army officer’s two-year-old child reportedly died after eating part of a poinsettia leaf (bract). This claim is now is question because of the many reports of poinsettia ingestion with the end result being only mild symptoms such as nausea or vomiting, but no deaths.
- Current data. In 1996, a detailed analysis of some 22,000+ cases of ingestion of poinsettia was published in the American Journal of Emergency Medicine. This revealed no deaths, that 96% of the cases required no treatment outside of the home, and 92% of the people developed no symptoms after ingestion.
There has been one estimate that a 50-pound child would have to consume more that 500 leaves to approach a dose that could cause symptoms to appear.
- What about pets? Dogs and cats that ingest poinsettias may suffer gastrointestinal symptoms. However, apparently these plants pose no major threat to pets.
- A brief history. Mistletoe has been used for centuries as a treatment for arthritis, infertility, high blood pressure, and headache. However, American mistletoe is generally considered to be very toxic by both the lay public and many medical professionals despite that there is no data to support this contention.
- Current data. In 1997, a paper was published in the American Journal of Emergency Medicine in which the authors examined the outcomes of 1,754 exposures to this plant based on data collected during 1985-1992 by the American Association of Poison Control Centers. Exposures to children accounted for 92.1% of the cases, and 94.7% of these were from accidental exposures. They found that 99.2% of these cases had an outcome associated with no disease, and there were no deaths. They concluded that the accidental ingestion of American mistletoe is not associated with profound toxicity.
In another paper published in 1996 in the Journal of Toxicol Clinical Toxicology ??, the authors examined data associated with 92 human cases collected from 1990-1993, of which only 14 had any symptoms. In the cases of a known quantity ingested, 8 of 10 where 5 or more berries (range up to 20 berries) were ingested, they remained symptom free. In the 11 cases with leaf-only ingestion (range of 1-5 leaves), 3 patients had gastrointestinal upset and the one case of 5 leaves ingested had no symptoms. Symptoms appeared in 6 hours or less in the cases where symptoms appeared. They concluded that symptoms from exposure are infrequent, even with the ingestion of 5-20 berries or 1-5 leaves, and rarely require direct medical supervision. However, they did find one case of seizures in a 13-month-old infant where the consumption was not witnessed but berries and leaves were found in the infant’s crib.
Poinsettias and American mistletoe are not extremely toxic to humans or pets when ingested. Ingestion of low to moderate quantities of berries or leaves rarely results in symptoms, and symptoms are usually mild.
Most exposures are accidental and involve children. And, pets usually avoid these plants after a quick taste. So, it is prudent to position these plants such that they are not easily accessible to children and pets.
Have and enjoy these beautiful traditional holiday plants!
-Eric H. Smith, PhD, BCE


Adrenal fatigue is a term used in functional medicine that describes a collection of signs and symptoms that include fatigue, body aches, and digestive problems.
Some common symptoms of adrenal fatigue include the following:
When experiencing chronic bouts of prolonged stress, the adrenal glands will continue to make cortisol at the expense of the other hormones (estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone). This overstimulation of the adrenal glands and the hypothalamus and pituitary gland of the brain (the master glands) can result in a lowered ability to produce cortisol correctly. This can lead to what is known as adrenal fatigue.
An experienced adrenal-fatigue doctor can create a treatment plan to best address your specific case of adrenal fatigue. It may involve the following:


Growth in traffic has outpaced growth in population ever since the automobile went into mass production. This puts great demands on our transportation infrastructure. Trying to keep up with growing traffic by building more roadway capacity is a daunting task, particularly in urban regions. There are limits to how many lanes of roadway can be crammed into cities. The results are increased traffic congestion and potentially higher levels of air pollution in urban regions.
Advocates of government subsidies for public transit assert that this should help mitigate urban traffic congestion by replacing many automobile trips with a smaller number of high-occupancy-vehicle trips. In terms of carrying capacity, a bus can serve 15 times as many person-miles per vehicle-mile as a typical automobile. A light-rail train has a carrying capacity about 100 times larger. The prospect of reducing urban traffic congestion by luring would-be automobile drivers onto
public transit is thus tantalizing.
For a long time the assumption has been that offering more public transit service options would reduce traffic congestion. But despite the more than $300 billion in taxpayer money spent to expand the quantity and quality of public transit over the last four decades, its share of travel has declined. While the number of transit passenger-miles has risen slightly over this period, its share of urban travel has decreased (table 1).
In the last two decades, more and more cities have turned to light rail as a prospective savior in the battle against urban traffic congestion. A light-rail train in a three-car configuration can carry about six-to-seven times as many passengers as a standard bus. Light-rail tracks can also be built at-grade in city streets. This is considerably less costly than either an elevated or subway alignment. The high capacity compared to a bus and low cost compared to a subway or elevated track has great appeal to urban planners.
For light rail to reduce traffic congestion, though, the number of persons it diverts from driving must exceed the drawbacks of in-street alignment. When light-rail tracks are built in the street, they occupy space that could have been used by motor vehicles. The loss of two lanes of roadway for motor-vehicle travel (three where stations are located) squeezes the remaining traffic into a narrower facility. In addition, light-rail trains are typically granted the authority to preempt traffic signals. This further impedes the flow of motor vehicles.
The question of which effect is larger—the traffic-reduction impact of diverting drivers from their cars or the traffic-impeding impact of locating light-rail lines in city streets—has been addressed in a report by Valley Metro in Arizona.1 Among other things, the report attempts to project the traffic and air quality in 2020 with and without a 20-mile minimum-operating segment of light rail.
Traffic congestion results when too many vehicles try to use the same roadway at the same time. Vehicles impede each other and slow down the movement of traffic. If enough of those who would otherwise drive could be induced to switch to public transit, the number of vehicles trying to use the roadway would be decreased. This could reduce traffic congestion if the number of diverted automobile trips is larger than any negative consequence caused by public-transit vehicles’ larger size and slower speeds.
The prospect of carrying up to 500 persons at once in a three-car light-rail train is the transit bureaucrats’ plan for reducing automobile trips. Of course, not all 500 light-rail passengers on a given train are diverted from driving an automobile. Some will be diverted bus riders. Others will be taking newly generated trips. So the gain in reduced automobile trips is not as large as the total passenger ridership. Nevertheless, adding light rail is bound to reduce the number of trips made in privately owned automobiles.
As noted, however, adding light rail in an in-street alignment will unavoidably reduce the carrying capacity of the roadway. Typically, two lanes that previously would have been accessible to motor vehicles are taken up by light-rail tracks. Unlike the temporary use of the roadway represented by bus transit (once a bus passes, the lanes are again available to other motor vehicles), light rail often permanently removes access to these lanes. Motor vehicles may be permitted to drive over light rail tracks only at a limited number of designated crossings.
The question is whether the reduced capacity is more than offset by the reduced number of automobile trips or whether the reverse is the case. In an effort to answer this question, the Phoenix region’s urban planning agency, the Maricopa Association of Governments (MAG), ran its “Travel Demand Model” comparing the traffic impacts for conditions without light rail (“no build” option) and with 20 miles of newly added light rail (“build” option) for the year 2020. The results are in table 2.
The most outstanding feature of the data is the extraordinarily small difference between the “build” and “no build” alternatives. With one exception, all the impacts are in fractions of 1 percent. The exception is an impact slightly higher than 1 percent. It is clear that adding light rail will not be a significant factor in addressing traffic congestion in the region.
According to the MAG model, light rail is expected to reduce vehicle-miles of travel (VMT) in the region by 0.04 percent. This is the equivalent of taking one car in 2,500 out of the stream of traffic. The results projected for the corridor to be served by light rail are somewhat larger. Corridor VMT is expected to be reduced by 0.13 percent. This is the equivalent of taking one car in 750 out of the traffic stream. These percentage reductions in traffic resulting from adding light rail are dwarfed by the region’s projected annual 3 percent growth in VMT. If eventual gridlock is the fate to be averted, light rail’s impact on VMT would delay impending gridlock by about two weeks.
The reduction of VMT is normally expected to reduce delays for the remaining motor vehicles. However, since the roadway capacity is reduced by two lanes, the smaller VMT might be offset. The MAG model’s projected vehicle-hours of travel (VHT) indicate that the loss of capacity is a larger factor than the diversion of drivers from their cars. For the region, the addition of light rail is expected to increase VHT by 0.45 percent. For the corridor served by light rail, VHT are expected to increase by 1.23 percent. So even though fewer miles would be traveled, those trips would take longer if light rail is added to the traffic mix.
The expected increase in congestion from adding light rail is further illustrated by projected motor vehicle speeds. Under the “no build” option, speeds in the region are projected to average 22.4 miles per hour (MPH) by 2020. Under the “build” option, speeds are projected to average 22.3 MPH. Figures for the corridor to be served by light rail are similar. Under the “no build” option, speeds are projected to average 17.9 MPH. Under the “build” option, speeds are expected to average 17.7 MPH.
The effects are small, but the notion that building a light-rail track in the street will reduce future traffic congestion is confounded by these data.
Although it may not be widely known, urban air quality has been improving over the last few decades despite a dramatic increase in VMT. Taking carbon monoxide as an example, in Phoenix, violations of the Environmental Protection Agency standards used to be common everyday events. Now violations are rare (figure 1.)
These gains were attained at a time when public transit never carried as much as 1 percent of the person-miles of travel in the region. Consequently, the bulk of the credit for any improvements in air quality must go to advances in automobiles and the fuels they use. Compared to automobiles built in the 1960s, cars today emit 97 percent less carbon monoxide.2 With fleet turnover and existing employed technology, urban air quality should continue to improve despite an expected increase in vehicle-miles of travel. This, in fact, is what is projected in the Valley Metro environmental impact statement. According to that statement, regardless of whether light rail is built, future pollution levels are expected to decline. In Phoenix, air pollution is measured at a number of so-called “hot spots.” For the “build” option, pollution is expected to be lower at three sites and higher at eight sites than under the “no build” option. Overall, carbon-monoxide pollution is expected to be slightly higher under the “build” option.
Expectations for higher pollution as a result of adding light rail are confirmed by the statement’s acknowledgment that carbon-monoxide levels will increase, but not by enough to trigger any violations of EPA standards.3 This conclusion is consistent with the data showing projected increases in VHT if light rail is built.
Inasmuch as light-rail transit is often promoted as a means of improving air quality, the indication that it will actually increase pollution may strike many as counterintuitive. After all, aren’t we luring some people out of their cars? Don’t fewer cars mean less pollution? So far as it goes, the answer is yes. However, by placing the train tracks in the street, we reduce roadway capacity. The reduction in capacity more than offsets the reduction in numbers of vehicles using the roadway. The remaining vehicles take longer to travel through the narrower roadway. This leads to more fuel consumed and higher pollution.
Again, the effects are small, but the notion that building a light-rail track in the street will reduce air pollution, again, is confounded by these data.
Concerns about the growth of motor-vehicle traffic and its impacts on air quality are warranted. We can’t expect to keep adding vehicles to an existing road network without severe reductions in travel speeds. Solutions to the demand for more mobility in the face of this growing crush of traffic are sorely needed.
Solutions, though, must be sensible options that do more good than harm. Given the data for the Phoenix case study, it would appear that one frequently suggested solution—adding light rail—is counterproductive. At best, the likely impacts would be minimal, leaving the problem of traffic congestion virtually untouched. Worse, though, is the prospect that adding in-street light rail will actually make traffic more congested than it would otherwise be.
Granted, Phoenix is only one city. Results might differ in other cities. However, given the relatively poor drawing power of public transit combined with the unavoidable loss of roadway capacity from in-street alignments, it seems probable that similar outcomes would be common in other cities.
The billions “invested” in money-losing light-rail systems have not made a significant contribution toward reducing traffic congestion or air pollution. Tax dollars have been wasted. We need more promising options—like opening markets to independent bus, jitney, and taxi operators.
1. “Central Phoenix/East Valley Light Rail Project: Final Environmental Impact Statement and Section 4(f) Evaluation,” Valley Metro, November 2002, www.valleymetro.org.
2. Joseph Bast, et al., Eco-Sanity (Lanham, Md.: Madison Books, 1994), p. 13.
3. “Central Phoenix/East Valley Light Rail Project,” pp. 4-49.


As with any war, nurses and doctors were needed to take care of the wounded. The government decided around 10,000 nurses should fit the bill. Since so many nurses were needed, women were sped through the training process.
The October Manifesto was signed on October 30, 1905. The Russian people were thrilled, Nicholas wasn’t. The October Manifesto was a blow to his autocratic power. Now the people could have a Duma, an elected body they put into office. For the first time, people could say what they wanted without being beaten or arrested. But, there were also people who opposed the Manifesto.


[Dear Readers: It takes me the better part of each week to research, write, and edit my columns. Some weeks, like this one, events occur mid-week which have a bearing on the topic, but I don’t have time to fully rewrite the column to incorporate them. As I was putting the finishing touches on this one, the first ever case of local transmission of chikungunya in the United States occurred in Florida. Please keep that in mind as you read. – Jeff.]
Last week, in Part I of this series, I explained the background of chikungunya virus and why I believe an epidemic of this disease, which is transferred from person to person by mosquito bites, is likely to occur in the continental United States in the coming months. I received some feedback from several readers who thought I was being a bit alarmist. Let me respond to those comments before proceeding.
Mosquito-borne diseases are by no means unknown in the United States. In the early 1900s, malaria, a disease transmitted by mosquitoes, was common in every U.S. state other than Alaska. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) was created specifically to combat malaria and organized the National Malarial Eradication Program from 1947 to 1952, which primarily involved spraying massive amounts of DDT. This effort was successful, and malaria was eliminated from the U.S. Unfortunately, this public health achievement came at the expense of significant environmental damage, as famously summarized in Rachel Carson’s classic book from 1962, Silent Spring.
In 1999, the first case of West Nile Virus, another disease transmitted by mosquitoes, was detected in New York City, the first recorded local transmission in the U.S. In just 15 years, this disease has spread throughout the country, with an estimated annual infection rate in excess of 100,000. So as you can see, we here in the U.S. have no special magic powers to protect us from diseases that we may have thought only affect other people in far away places.
Despite the fact that it has been clear for a long time that chikungunya would eventually reach the U.S., we have not been preparing in a meaningful way. In particular, we have not created a vaccine, nor have we been trying very hard to do so. A vaccine for chikungunya would come from either government labs or the pharmaceutical industry. Government health research has been hampered for the last several decades due to funding cuts, and developing new vaccines is not viewed as sufficiently profitable by the shareholder-value-driven pharmaceutical industry. As a result, we are about to be caught with our pants down.
While it seems clear to me that the southeastern United States is about to experience an epidemic of chikungunya (the first two locally-transmitted cases occurred this week in Florida), what is unclear is its likely extent. The current epidemic in the Dominican Republic may provide some insight. Since chikungunya struck the Dominican Republic in early April, there have been almost 200,000 cases, an incidence rate of 20 per thousand for this nation of 10 million people. If the Southeast, with a population of approximately 80 million, had the same incidence rate as the Dominican Republic, we would expect 1.5 million cases in the first 100 days of an epidemic. However, due to widespread availability of insect repellent here and our stay-inside-the-air-conditioned-space lifestyles, our incidence rate is likely to be lower. For the sake of argument, let’s assume our incidence rate will be 1/3 that of the Dominican Republic. This would translate to half a million cases in the first hundred days, and we would then project approximately 10 million cases in the first year. With chikungunya’s fatality rate of 0.4%, an epidemic of this scale would kill 40,000, with fatalities being disproportionately among the very old and very young.
To put those 40,000 deaths in perspective, this is about the same number of annual deaths we see in the U.S. from each of the following causes: influenza, car accidents, suicides, and shootings. While we have become somewhat desensitized to deaths stemming from these familiar hazards, I anticipate that public reaction to an epidemic from a new and unfamiliar disease with a strange name will be something approaching widespread panic. Let me try to explain why.
First of all, nothing about the current level of function in either our state or federal government suggests that they could effectively coordinate either communications or logistics in a public health crisis. Now add to this the fact that a large portion of the public seems to have developed rather extreme anti-science views, for example the anti-vaccine and intelligent design communities. I think we can anticipate a fair number of non-productive conspiracy theories to arise from these factions and distract from addressing the problem. Furthermore, I think we can also safety assume the epidemic will be politicized almost immediately. Given that chikungunya has reached Florida already, we could only be hours away from claims that this epidemic is President Obama’s fault and that the public is being put at risk by “liberals” who valued salamanders over humans by banning DDT. I expect calls for the return of DDT as well. (1)
So what can or should we do here locally to prepare for chikungunya? Epidemics are all about math. In this case the key variables are the number of currently infected people, the number of mosquitoes that can transmit the virus, and the number of mosquito bites. As time passes, a fourth variable, the number of people who are immune from having had chikungunya already, will become a factor. We can collectively help to slow the spread of chikungunya by reducing the overall rate of mosquito bites in the county through common sense measures of which you are already aware: using bug repellent, wearing clothing the covers the body, minimizing pools of standing water near your home, and not going out at dusk and other times of day that mosquitoes are most active.
In addition, the Orange County Health Department should start making preparations. Cases of chikungunya will occur in geographic clusters. People who get the disease need anti-inflammatory and pain-reducing medications as well as fluids to fend off dehydration. Unfortunately, the United States is currently experiencing a shortage of sterile saline which is used to treat dehydration. In addition, if we had a cluster of cases in Orange County we could easily run out of hospital beds. We need to have a plan in place – and we may already have one – for a temporary clinic for hospital overflow, and we should work to build an inventory of saline solution. We also need a communications plan so that, at least here locally, people will have accurate information.
On the national level, an emergency allocation of money should be given to the National Institutes of Health to fast-track vaccine research and development. The economic return from avoiding waves of chikungunya epidemics will more than justify the expense. Plus, it’s just the right thing to do.
I will be continuing to monitor this situation as it develops. Follow my Twitter feed @commonscience for updates.
Have a comment or question? Use the interface below or send me an email to email@example.com. Think that this column includes important points that others should consider? Send out a link on Facebook or Twitter.
(1) In addition to its attendant environmental impact, DDT is not as well suited to fighting chikungunya as to malaria. Malaria is caused by a parasite rather than a virus. Having malaria does not make you immune to future infections, giving you the wonderful opportunity to have it over and over again. Therefore, the only effective way to get rid of malaria was to kill all of the mosquitoes and, therefore, the parasites. The CDC was able to do this in 5 years.
Chikungunya spreads much faster than malaria and you can only get it once. Long before we could even come close to killing off the mosquito population, the human population would have developed a fairly high level of herd immunity from the spread of the disease. So by the time we finished killing the mosquitoes it would not be necessary to do so any longer, and we would be despoiling the environment for no reason. Sadly, I expect the nuances of this to be too subtle for some.


Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968) become a Baptist minister and social activist who played a key role within the American civil rights motion from the mid-1950s till his assassination in 1968. discover 10 sudden facts approximately the civil rights chief and 1964 Nobel Peace Prize winner.
1. King’s delivery call turned into Michael, no longer Martin.
The civil rights leader changed into born Michael King Jr. on January 15, 1929. In 1934, but, his father, a pastor at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, traveled to Germany and became inspired by using the Protestant Reformation chief Martin Luther. As a end result, King Sr. changed his very own call as well as that of his 5-yr-vintage son.
2. MLK jr entered university on the age of 15.
King became this type of gifted student that he skipped grades 9 and 12 earlier than enrolling in 1944 at Morehouse college, the alma mater of his father and maternal grandfather. despite the fact that he become the son, grandson and awesome-grandson of Baptist ministers, King did not intend to comply with the family vocation until Morehouse president Benjamin E. Mays, a stated theologian, convinced him in any other case. King turned into ordained earlier than graduating college with a degree in sociology.
3. Dr Martin Luther King acquired his doctorate in systematic theology.
After incomes a divinity degree from Pennsylvania’s Crozer Theological Seminary, King attended graduate college at Boston college, in which he obtained his Ph.D. degree in 1955. The title of his dissertation become “A contrast of the Conceptions of God in the thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman.”
4. Martin Luther’s “i’ve a Dream” speech became now not his first on the Lincoln Memorial. Six years before his iconic oration at the March on Washington, King turned into a few of the civil rights leaders who spoke inside the shadow of the high-quality Emancipator at some point of the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom on may additionally 17, 1957. before a crowd anticipated at among 15,000 and 30,000, King introduced his first country wide cope with on the subject of voting rights. His speech, in which he entreated america to “give us the ballot ,” drew robust opinions and located him at the forefront of the civil rights management.
5. Martin King turned into imprisoned almost 30 instances.
in line with the King center, the civil rights chief went to prison 29 times. He become arrested for acts of civil disobedience and on trumped-up fees, which includes whilst he was jailed in Bernard Law Montgomery, Alabama, in 1956 for using 30 miles according to hour in a 25-mile-in step with-hour region.
6. King narrowly escaped an assassination strive a decade earlier than his demise.
On September 20, 1958, King became in Harlem signing copies of his new book, “Stride toward Freedom,” in Blumstein’s department store while he turned into approached by means of Izola Ware Curry. The female requested if he was Martin Luther King Jr. After he stated yes, Curry stated, “I’ve been seeking out you for 5 years,” and he or she plunged a seven-inch letter opener into his chest. the tip of the blade got here to relaxation along his aorta, and King underwent hours of delicate emergency surgical procedure. Surgeons later instructed King that just one sneeze should have punctured the aorta and killed him. From his hospital bed in which he convalesced for weeks, King issued a declaration maintaining his nonviolent concepts and pronouncing he felt no ill will towards his mentally ill attacker.


Within the English Commons of the city of Norris stands this magnificent American elm. Planted by the Tennessee Valley Authority in mid-1930 when the town was built, the tree is over eighty years old and stands some 83 feet over the Commons.
Norris, the first planned community in the country, was the first Tree City USA in Tennessee, certified in 1979. State Forester Max Young presented the Tree City flag within the shadow of this elm in 1980. The Norris Tree Commission is responsible for its care and protection. Through careful maintenance and pruning, the tree has survived the ravages of Dutch Elm disease and weather.
This tree in front of Norris Middle School remains a hallmark tree for the community.
Landmark Tree, 2007 • Nominated by Norris Tree Commission • Photograph by Jack Mitchell


i2 began with a 9 year old girl who liked to solve problems
School was fine, reading was fine, math was fine, but making something with her own hands was what she really liked, especially if it was something useful.
Recognizing the power of that sentiment a number of educators set out to create a program to provide those learning opportunities for middle school students throughout the world; and to reimagine how our children are educated.
We collaborated with 20 of the world’s leading STEM organizations
With curriculum partners that included MIT, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and The Museum of Science in Boston, an initial program was started outside of school, during the summer months. i2 launched in three locations: Boston, New York and New Jersey. Over 400 kids were exposed to hands-on, project-based learning in STEM courses such as Building an Interactive Friendly Monster, Crash Test Engineering and Fun with DNA.
The success of the program was immediate and obvious to all who participated or observed. Parents regularly commented on how they had never seen their children so excited about learning, teachers and outside evaluators from Teachers College, Columbia University and Harvard School of Education commented on how engaged the students were in the classroom, and kids themselves regularly wrote in feedback forms, “This is awesome” and “i2 rocks!”
Building on this success, we developed partnerships with more leading STEM organizations such as Stanford, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the Wyss Institute at Harvard. The next summer the i2 program was grown to run in 23 different locations across the US as well as in Amman, Jordan and Nairobi, Kenya.
Now we’re partnering with schools to bring the program into the regular school year
STEM immersion weeks are being set up for 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th graders in a wide range of STEM topics not usually found in regular middle school curricula. Students and teachers are being exposed to a different approach to learning science and math providing opportunities for all students to gain confidence and interest in these important fields.
While it will take time to measure the impact of these immersion programs, there have already been a number of successes. Teachers report that children show a stronger interest in science courses in school after attending the summer program. Parents have seen a stronger interest in STEM-related after-school programming such as Robotics or Maker Fairs from their kids.
As for the girl who inspired the program, after four weeks of i2, she told her mother as she was going to bed one night: “I want to go to MIT and become an engineer.”


Join us for a Discussion on 28 September, International Right to Know Day, To Talk About How to Promote Transparent Government
The right to access information held by public bodies, known as the right to information, is internationally recognised as a human right and protected under Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The right provides a range of benefits, including promoting democratic participation, combating corruption and helping to foster effective, accountable and responsive government. Although Canada was among the early adopters of right to information legislation, our laws are now seriously outdated. An assessment of national laws by the Centre for Law and Democracy puts the federal Access to Information Act at 59th position in the world. Most provinces and territories fare little better; Nova Scotia ranks 50th.
Against this gloomy backdrop, a ray of light has emerged. Newfoundland and Labrador has undertaken the most ambitious reform programme in recent memory and a new law adopted earlier this year has turned the province into a global leader. This event, held on International Right to Know Day, will discuss the right to information in a Canadian context, and consider how to strengthen and promote transparent government across the country.
Catherine Tully, Information and Privacy Commissioner, Nova Scotia
Steve Kent, Deputy Premier, Newfoundland and Labrador
Toby Mendel, Executive Director, Centre for Law and Democracy
Maria Lasheras, Chief Information Access and Privacy Officer, Nova Scotia
Sean Murray, Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner, Newfoundland and Labrador
Halifax City Hall: 28 September 2015, 6 pm-8 pm


India stands at an unprecedented moment in its history. In the six and half decades since independence, the country has brought about a landmark agricultural revolution that has transformed the nation from chronic dependence on food imports into a global agricultural powerhouse that is not only a net exporter of food but also the world’s largest producer of milk, legumes, and spices. Life expectancy has more than doubled, literacy rates have quadrupled, health conditions have improved, and a sizeable middle class has emerged. India is now home to globally recognized companies in pharmaceuticals and steel, as well as in information and space technologies.
The country is in the midst of an enormous wave of urbanization. Urban centers are growing exponentially as legions of people flock to towns and cities in search of a better life. This unparalleled movement of the population calls for massive investments in the creation of jobs, housing, and infrastructure to meet the people’s soaring aspirations.
The historic changes unfolding have placed the country at a unique juncture. India now has the opportunity to “bend the arc of history” by lifting its remaining 400 million poor people out of poverty, and ensuring that the sizeable numbers who have recently escaped poverty are no longer vulnerable to falling back. Low-income states will need support to catch up with more prosperous states, disadvantaged groups brought into the mainstream to reap the benefits of economic growth, and women — who “hold up half the sky” — empowered to take their rightful place in the socioeconomic fabric of the country.
Strategy reflects India’s historic changes
In keeping with recent changes, the World Bank Group’s new Country Partnership Strategy will guide its support to India over the next five years (2013-2017). The strategy aims to help the country lay the foundations for achieving its longer-term vision of “faster, more inclusive growth.”
A key feature of the new strategy is the significant shift in support toward low-income and special category states, where many of India’s poor and disadvantaged live. This is also the institution’s first country strategy to set specific goals for reducing poverty and increasing prosperity for the poorest people.
The new strategy proposes a lending program of $3 billion to $5 billion each year over the next five years. Sixty percent of the financing will go to state government-backed projects. Half of this, or 30% of total lending, will go to low-income or special category states, up from 18% of lending under the previous strategy.
The Bank’s India strategy outlines a scenario in which India improves the inclusiveness of the economic growth to that achieved by its best-performing states. This would cut poverty to 5.5% of the population by 2030 from 29.8% in 2010 and increase the share of people living above the threshold where they are at risk of falling back into poverty to 41.3% from 19.1%. If India were to grow as it did from 2005 to 2010 without making that growth more inclusive, poverty would fall to only 12.3% while 33.6% would remain above the vulnerability threshold by 2030.
Key focus areas
In the next five years the CPS will focus on three key areas: integration, transformation, and inclusion. A common theme across these areas will be improved governance, environmental sustainability, and gender equality.
- Integration: Clearly, India’s massive infrastructure needs cannot be addressed through public investments alone. The strategy will accordingly focus on improving both public and private investments in infrastructure. For instance, the power sector, vital for economic growth, will need to build greater capacity and improve the reliability of generation, transmission and distribution. A vibrant manufacturing sector— especially small and medium size enterprises that are critical for the creation of jobs — will require the reform of labor laws, and improved access to land and finance. Better integration would result in more-balanced growth among Indian states, helping low-income states converge more quickly with their faster-growing neighbors.
- Transformation: By 2031, it is projected that 600 million people will live in India’s cities. Well-managed urbanization can bring innumerable benefits; the strategy will focus on supporting the efforts of national, state, and city governments to improve the livability of urban areas, especially secondary cities, while at the same time working toward higher agricultural productivity.
- Inclusion: Economic integration and rural-urban transformation can benefit a large share of India’s population only if there is a stronger focus on human development and on policies that help make growth inclusive. The World Bank Group will support the central and state governments in strengthening the nutrition policy as well as systems and capacities to improve nutrition. It will support government efforts to improve education mainly at the secondary and tertiary levels, with a more pronounced focus on quality across all levels of education. Special focus will be placed on ensuring access to education for underprivileged children, retaining girls in secondary education, and opening opportunities in higher education. It will also work to improve access to finance and to enhance social protection coverage for the more than 90% of the labor force that works in the informal sector.


Most Americans take for granted opportunities they have regarding living arrangements employment situations, means of transportation, social and recreational activities, and other aspects of everyday life. For many Americans with disabilities, barriers in their communities take away or severely limit their choices. These barriers may be obvious, such as lack of ramped entrances for people who use wheelchairs, lack of interpreters or captioning for people with hearing impairments, lack of Brailed, digital or recorded copies of printed material for people who have visual impairments. Other barriers—frequently less obvious–can be even more limiting for efforts on the part of people with disabilities to live independently, and they result from people’s misunderstandings and prejudices about disability. These barriers result in low expectations about things people with disabilities can achieve.
So, people with disabilities not only have to deal with the effects of their disabling conditions, but they also have to deal with these barriers; otherwise, they are likely to be limited to a life of dependency and low personal satisfaction. This need not occur. Millions of people all over America who experience disabilities have established lives of independence. They fulfill all kinds of roles in their communities, from employers and employees to marriage partners to parents to students to athletes to politicians to taxpayers–an unlimited list. In most cases, the barriers facing them haven’t been removed, but these individuals have been successful in overcoming or at least dealing with them.
A Definition of Independent Living
What is independent living? Essentially, it is living, working and playing just like everyone else–having opportunities to make decisions that affect one’s life, able to pursue activities of one’s own choosing–limited only in the same ways that one’s neighbors who are not disabled are limited.
Independent living should not be defined in terms of living on one’s own, being employed in a job fitting one’s capabilities and interests, or having an active social life.
These are aspects of living independently. Independent living has to do with self- determination. It is having the right and the opportunity to pursue a course of action and it is having the freedom to fail–and to learn from one’s failures, just as people without disabilities do.
There are, of course, individuals who have certain mental impairments which may affect their abilities to make complicated decisions or pursue complex activities. For those individuals, independent living means having every opportunity to be as self-sufficient as possible. Independent living, it isn’t easy, and it can be risky, but millions of people with disabilities rate higher than a life of dependency, narrow opportunities and unfulfilled expectations.
The Independent Living Movement
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, this idea led people with disabilities from around the country to take active roles on local and national levels in shaping decisions on issues affecting their lives. A major part of these activities involved formation of community- based groups of people with different types of disabilities who joined together to identify barriers and gaps in service delivery. To address barriers, action plans were developed to educate the community and to influence policy makers at all levels to change regulations and to introduce barrier-removing legislation. To address gaps in services, a new method of service delivery was conceived – one which has people with disabilities determining the kinds of services essential to living independently, has people with disabilities directing the delivery of the services, and has people with disabilities actually providing these services. The catalyst for this new service delivery system was called the center for independent living.
The earliest center was formed in 1972 in Berkeley, California, soon followed that same year by centers in Boston and Houston. In 1978, following effective advocacy by people with disabilities and their supporters all over the country, federal legislation was passed that provided funding to establish centers for independent living, under (Title VII of the Rehabilitation Act). Today, there are centers in virtually every state and U.S. Territory.