The wonderful world of lime-rich render is part of our verbal archaeology, and every day we unwittingly relate to its origins. 'Plaster' might be defined as 'mouldable but usually level cementing material'. The Greek 'plastos', to mould or spread thin, comes from the same root as the Latin 'planus', spread flat. It evolved into 'emplastrum', a plaster (poultice, hence medical 'plaster'), which finally resulted in 'plastre', English and French medieval wall plaster. Modern 'plastic' has inherited the historic meaning of mutability.
Now 'stucco' seems a specific Italian word, probably coined with an inspired flourish during the Renaissance. But the Italians just applied a new meaning to another common stem. A dictionary of etymology will yield something like 'Stucco- n.
external plaster (Italian). Compare with Old High German stukk/stucki:
crust, piece, fragment. Also Middle English, stokki: made of wood.' Never mind our linguaphile ancestors, the German term is more prophetic as it anticipates that everything stucco will turn - if damp and exposed - into a fragmentary piece of crust.
It is remarkable how long plaster can take to get crusty in stable or dry conditions. Painted and delicately moulded lime plaster has survived for thousands of years around the Mediterranean. For the architectural busperson's holiday, one of the most remarkable and least-known survivals is at Ostia Antica (pictured above), ancient Rome's port, where a virtually complete bar/diner survives from the second century AD, its plaster complete with frescoes of food and still bearing the customers' toga rack. At the town's theatre, the soffits of the entrance tunnels bear traces of plaster in geometric relief patterns.
In about 30 BC, Vitruvius set out the basics of preparing the stuff to a formula which scarcely changed for almost 2,000 years:
'[Plasterwork] will be done properly if clods of first-rate lime are burned in the kiln, then, as it is softened over many days the remaining liquid, forced to boil away, will bake the clod to an even degree. If it has not been softened all the way through, but is used when only recently fired, then, when applied, it will develop blisters, because it has raw grains hidden inside. If these grains are put to work without having been softened to an even degree, they dissolve and break apart the finish of the plasterwork. If the softening has been done reasonably, and the work is to be prepared with care, take an axe, and chop through the softened lime to its core as it lies in the pit, just as if it were wood being chopped. If the axe meets with granules then the lime is not yet ready.
When the tool comes through dry and pure, it indicates that the lime is weakened and parched. When it is rich and properly softened, then, clinging all around that tool like glue, it shows that it has been tempered in every respect.
Then get the machines ready and set in the ceilings of the rooms?' Another long tradition is the plasterer's mate. In 1253 at Westminster Abbey we meet Adam the plaster, with his assistant (actually, Ada dealbatore cum serviente). It says something for the plasterer's status that he was mentioned by name among 31 anonymous marblers, two unknown glaziers and 13 nameless carpenters. Medieval painters used plaster and glue to form gesso, which was moulded to cover frames and to both achieve a ground for boards and heighten details of paintings. Plaster was also incised and painted to represent precious stones or mosaic, on tombs like that of Edward the Confessor, also part of the mid 13th century work at Westminster Abbey.
But the Middle Ages were not the high point of English plasterwork.
Much of lowland England built its humble dwellings from earth, rather than prepared plaster, and one of the few remnants of a long tradition is the thatched clay wall at Ashwell, Hertfordshire.
The 16th century developed the art of plastering into something quite distinct. One of the earliest importations of European stucco work was Cardinal Wolsey's adoption of sgraffito from Renaissance Italy. This technique, of painting black soot-based pigment or red ochre onto plaster which was incised and scraped to reveal white arabesque designs, featured from Milan to Rome, but particularly Florence, over whole external walls or, more usually, over arcades. It was a material recommended for cardinals in a book of 1510 called De Cardinalatu: the A-Z of how to be a cardinal, in which Chapter 2 explained the ideal cardinal's palace.
I come from Alabaster? Among other of Wolsey's Italianate innovations, he also brought geometric ceiling battens into vogue. His own examples were timber battens with arabesques of leather machÚ slid into a rebate along the underside, the junctions punctuated with gilded wooden knobs and lead leaves. Thereafter, especially once Serlio published his illustrated Book IV in 1537, stalactitic geometrical plaster ceilings became all the rage, and remain the greatest manifestation of the material in England.
Elizabethan plaster of Paris used burned alabaster instead of lime.
John Harrison observed: 'Within their doors, such as are of ability do oft make their floors and parget of [?] plaster of Paris, whereof in some places we have great plenty, and that very profitable against rage of fire.
In plastering likewise of our fairest houses over our heads [. . . ] we cover all with plaster, which, beside the delectable whiteness of the stuff itself, is laid on so evenly and smoothly as nothing in my judgment can be done with more exactness.' Such enthusiasm spawned the celebrity plasterer. Sir William Cavendish wrote to Sir John Thynne at Longleat in 1555: 'Sr I understand that you have A connyng plaisterer at Longlete wch hath in yor hall and in other places of yor house made Dyvse pendaunts and other pptye thyngs [?] I woolde pray you that I myght have hym in Darbyshere.' After his death five years later, Cavendish's widow, the accomplished heiress Bess of Hardwick, was still pressing Thynne for his man's skills: 'Thies are even to desire you to spare me your plaistere that flowered your halle whom I wold gladly have furthwith to be sent either to my howse at Chattesworthe - Or elles to London that I may sende him downe with all spede myselfe.' Stucco, or hard external render, became used for figurative high-relief work after Raphael somehow formulated the recipe in Rome. Henry VIII's Nonsuch, begun in 1538, was busy with Italian and French craftsmen modelling surfaces in slate and stucco, to such a high standard that well over a century later it was deemed as good an example of stucco as existed in England, confirmed by the fragments found in excavations more than 40 years ago.
It is worth asking to what extent 'pargetting' (a term once common for all manner of decorative plasterwork but now restricted to the moulded external plasterwork of East Anglia) was influenced by the stucco of Nonsuch, for it seems to have started at the end of the 16th century as an honest means of decorating thick plaster surfaces, often with moulds, which were once ubiquitous before the Victorian interest in naked timbers.
The Renaissance ranking of materials reinforced the burgeoning attitude that stone should supersede the socially awkward display of outmoded timber.
This 'keeping uppe with ye Joneses' led to the covering of timber houses, including projecting jetties, with thick stucco characterising masonry blocks.
The Elizabethan version of Bradstone could surely have kidded nobody.
Nevertheless two centuries later, Georgian terraces in stone-poor areas are everywhere to be seen with stucco rustication covering stock bricks on the ground floor yielding to a better quality brick above.
Split plasterwork Robert Adam's interiors are synonymous with the plasterwork executed by his master plasterer Joseph Rose.
Syon House in Middlesex contains a shockingly accomplished array of 18thcentury ceilings, in an age when a new array of preserved ancient coloured plasterwork was opening up to antiquarians at Pompeii and Herculaneum.
Adam himself recorded Diocletian's palace at Split with an archaeological eye. So it is perhaps ironic that his lacy plasterwork designs were coloured in shades of sugared almonds.
Plaster lost none of its popularity in the 19th century, despite the drive to cement-based Portland mixes and the truly horrible liquid brown rock made from pulverised septaria that was Parker's Roman Cement. At Harlaxton Manor in Lincolnshire, Salvin's neo-Baroque staircase was laden with garlands and ropes and billowing fabric all dipped in plaster and allowed to harden.
Victorian plasterwork at its best recovered its ancient use as a medium for painted surfaces, especially when it was used by artists such as Clayton and Bell at Garton on the Wolds, Yorkshire. But it arguably reached its nadir in theatres, where quadrigas of muses spill out over Rococo balconies in an apparent attempt to compete with, rather than complement, the entertainment. Le Corbusier's reaction to precisely this type of undisciplined, extraneous and retrospective garnishing was one of the formative moments of the modern era.


The debate regarding sexual orientation encompasses natural and social sciences, religious considerations, and legislative issues.
The implications of the debate are far-reaching. Some people maintain that legal rights, such as marriage, adoption, and protection from discrimination, should not be extended to homosexuals since their sexual orientation is a personality development and a choice (nurture). Other people claim these rights must be granted, as homosexuality is biologically derived (nature) and cannot be changed.
Some scientists speculate that discerning the origins of sexual orientation can help us unlock the mysteries of other human behaviors. Understanding which behaviors are inherited and which are adaptive may provide insight into why people behave and interact as they do.
The proposed causes of homosexuality range from distant fathers and aggressive mothers, to sexual abuse, to genes and hormones. Some people who argue that homosexuality is a choice offer reversal remedies, including therapy, prayer, and avoiding homosexuals and aspects of the perceived gay lifestyle.
Public figures, scientists and religious leaders, among others, are sharply divided on the issue. Numerous social and legal issues could hinge on whether society believes sexual orientation is an inborn trait or a choice. The pros and cons presented throughout this site explore the range of opinions on this debate.
2. Brief History of the Debate
Homosexuality has been referred to in literature and spiritual texts for thousands of years, yet it is only in the past 150 years that the scientific community has examined the cause(s) of sexual orientation.
1800's -- Germans Karl Heinrich Ulrichs and Magnus Hirschfeld, MD, introduced the theory that sexuality is inborn. Hirschfeld also proposed that sex was multidimensional, and "male" and "female" were abstractions.
In the early 1900's, these theories were contradicted by Sigmund Freud, MD, who proposed that "perversions" and neuroses were merely alternative ways of dealing with unresolved Oedipal conflicts. He believed, "The boy represses his love for his mother by putting himself in her place, identifies himself with her, and takes his own person as a model in whose likeness he chooses his new love objects."
1948 -- Dr. Alfred Kinsey, et al. published Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, which stated: "Males do not represent two discrete populations, heterosexual and homosexual. The world is not to be divided into sheep and goats. It is a fundamental of taxonomy that nature rarely deals with discrete categories...The living world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects." The book shocked Americans, especially with its claim that 10% of the population could be homosexual.
1954 -- Dr. Evelyn Hooker presented the results of her research to the American Psychological Association, which found that in comparing personality tests between homosexual and heterosexual men, "The responses of gay and straight men...are indistinguishable; gay men appear to be as well adjusted as straights."
1969 -- New York City police raided a gay bar in Greenwich Village - the Stonewall Inn - that started a series of riots lasting nearly a week. The first night of the riots, an estimated 2,000 gays fought back against 400 police officers. The Gay Liberation Front was founded later that year, thereby marking the beginning of the gay rights movement in the United States, and allowing a more public debate over the nature of sexual orientation to emerge.
1991 -- The peer-reviewed journal Science published an article, "A Difference in Hypothalamic Structure Between Heterosexual and Homosexual Men," in which Simon LeVay, et al. stated that the hypothalamus in the brains of gay men were a different size than those of straight men.
1991 -- The peer-reviewed journal Archives of General Psychiatry published an article by J. Michael Bailey and Richard C. Pillard et al., which examined identical twins, fraternal twins and adoptive siblings of gay men. The study found, "of the relatives whose sexual orientation could be rated, 52% of monozygotic cotwins, 22% of dizygotic cotwins, and 11% of adoptive brothers were homosexual." Critics, however, noted that the siblings were raised together, which could mean there was environmental influence on sexual orientation.
1999 -- Dean H. Hamer, PhD, published an article in the peer-reviewed journal Science which proposed: "Sexual orientation is a complex trait that is probably shaped by many different factors, including multiple genes, biological, environmental, and sociocultural influences."
2003 -- Some researchers claimed that individuals can change their sexual orientation, either through therapy or prayer. The Archives of Sexual Behavior published a study by Robert L. Spitzer, MD, on homosexuals who claimed to have changed sexual orientation: "There is evidence that change in sexual orientation following some form of reparative therapy does occur in some gay men and lesbians." Opponents countered that these patients were merely covering up their true feelings with denial.
2005 -- Swedish researchers published a study that shows that homosexual and heterosexual men respond differently to two odors that may be involved in sexual arousal, and that the gay men respond in the same way as women. The researchers speculated that their findings may "suggest a link between sexual orientation and hypothalamic neuronal processes."
British researcher Qazi Rahman, PhD, noted in a Mar. 25, 2003 interview:
"Because we know that performance on these cognitive tests depends on the integrity of specific brain regions, the differences implicate robust differences between the brains of homosexual and heterosexual men and women and suggest that hormonal factors early in development (probably during the 1st trimester of pregnancy) produce these differences." Mar. 25, 2003 Qazi Rahman
Amy Banks, MD, Clinical Instructor in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and Nanette K. Gartrell, MD, Assoc. Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at U.C. San Francisco, write in their article "Hormones and Sexual Orientation: A Questionable Link," published in 1995 in the Journal of Homosexuality:
"Studies of men and women who experienced prenatal defects in hormone metabolism have not found a concurrent increase in homosexual behavior.
Overall, the data do not support a causal connection between hormones and human sexual orientation." 1995 Amy Banks, Nanette Gartrell
Kenneth S. Kendler, MD, et al., in the American Journal of Psychiatry article "Sexual Orientation in a U.S. National Sample of Twin and Nontwin Sibling Pairs", wrote:
"In accord with findings from prior twin studies, resemblance for sexual orientation was greater in monozygotic twins than in dizygotic twins or nontwin sibling pairs. These results suggest that genetic factors may provide an important influence on sexual orientation." 2000 Kenneth Kendler
Jeffrey Satinover, MD, wrote in his article "The Gay Gene?" published on the Campus Crusade for Christ International website Leadership U on July 13, 2002:
"There is not any evidence that shows that homosexuality is 'genetic', and none of the research itself claims there is. Only the press and, sadly, certain researchers do-when speaking in sound bites to the public.
Homosexuality may run in families but you get viruses from your parents, too, and some bad habits. Not everything that is familial is innate or genetic." July 13, 2002 Jeffrey Satinover
The Traditional Values Coalition stated on its website in a 2003 article, "Born Gay":
"In summary, the most credible research to date on homosexuality -- and research conducted years ago -- demonstrates that no one is 'born gay.' The homosexual is suffering from a developmental problem, which frequently starts out in childhood as gender confusion, family dysfunction, or molestation." 2003 Traditional Values Coalition
Thomas A. Eccles, MD, et al., in a 2004 study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health "More Normal Than Not: A Qualitative Assessment of the Developmental Experiences of Gay Male Youth", stated:
"Few (2 of 13) participants reported overall developmental experience markedly different from nongay peers....Family dynamics were not substantively altered by open gay self-identification ... General developmental dysfunction is not inevitable for gay adolescents, nor is identifiable personal or family pathology directly related to sexual identity." 2004 Thomas Eccles
The ACLU, in its website article titled "Fight Discrimination Against Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Workers By Supporting the 'Employment Non-Discrimination Act,'" stated:
"Across most of the United States, it is perfectly legal to fire someone from their job solely because of their sexual orientation. Federal law could remedy this sorry state, but for the last several years, Congress has been unable to agree on legislation that would outlaw discrimination in the workplace based on real or perceived sexual orientation.
People should be judged at work by their performance, not by whom they choose to love." Dec. 16, 2004 ACLU
The Family Research Council (FRC), in its Dec. 20, 2000 website article "Homosexuality Is Not A Civil Right," by Daniel S. Garcia and Robert E. Regier, state:
"Essential to the homosexual agenda is the idea that homosexuals are fighting for basic civil rights denied them by an oppressive society. This argument strikes a sympathetic chord among many Americans, whose decency and sense of fair play demand that all people be treated fairly.
However, a closer look at the truth about homosexuality and the political goals of the 'gay rights' movement shows that homosexuals are not an oppressed minority, that opposition to special legal protection for homosexuality is not bigotry, and that extending such protection is dangerous to individuals and society.
...What homosexuals are actually calling for is not equal protection but special protection." Dec. 20, 2000 Family Research Council
Faris Malik, manager of two Muslim-oriented gay websites, "Born Eunuchs" and "Queer Jihad" wrote in 1999:
"Qur'an does not prohibit using, as passive sex partners, the ancient category of men who by nature lacked desire for women, since such men were not considered 'male' as a result of their lack of arousal for women. This kind of man is often known as 'gay' in modern times, but in the ancient world he was identified as an anatomically whole 'natural eunuch...'
Furthermore, the Qur'an recognizes that some men are 'without the defining skill of males' (24:31: 'ghair oolaa il-irbati min ar-rijaali') and so, as domestic servants, are allowed to see women naked. This is a reference to natural eunuchs, i.e. gay men." 1999 Faris Malik
CHRISTIANITY Rev. Walter Wink, ThD, Professor of Biblical Interpretation at Auburn Theological Seminary, wrote in a 2003 article:
"Where the Bible mentions homosexual behavior at all, it clearly condemns it. I freely grant that. The issue is precisely whether that Biblical judgment is correct. The Bible sanctioned slavery as well, and nowhere attacked it as unjust. Are we prepared to argue today that slavery is biblically justified?...
In the light of that [God's] supernal compassion, whatever our position on gays, the gospel's imperative to love, care for, and be identified with their sufferings is unmistakably clear." 2003 Walter Wink
Rabbi Harold Schulweis writes in his undated article, "A Second Look At Homosexuality," (accessed Mar. 16, 2004) and published on his temple's website:
"On both moral and Halachic grounds it is wrong to take one or two verses in the Bible, stripped of their historic context and devoid of medical knowledge, and apply them to punish innocent people who cannot deny their basic instincts, impulses and sexual attractions.
To inflict punishment upon the innocent violates the spirit and intent of Jewish law....Faith and religion are matters of choice. The non-Jew can freely become a Jew by choice. The non-Jew can convert, but the homosexual cannot convert his/her sexual orientation." Mar. 16, 2004 Harold Schulweis
Muzammil H. Siddiqi, PhD, Religious Director of the Islamic Society of Orange County, wrote in a 2004 article titled "Islamic Manners in Dealing with Homosexuals", on IslamOnline.net:
"Homosexual behavior is sinful and shameful. In Islamic terminology it is called 'al-fahsha' (an atrocious and obscene act)...
There are agencies and lobby groups that are working hard to propagate it and to make it as an acceptable and legitimate lifestyle. For this reason it is important that we should speak against it ...
Those who insist on this lifestyle, consider it legitimate and feel 'gay pride,' we should not associate with them and should not take them as friends." 2004 Muzammil Siddiqi
CHRISTIANITY The Church of Latter Day Saints (Mormons) wrote in a Mar. 1996 church statement on homosexuality, "Same-Gender Attraction":
"[T]he devil, who has no body, seeks to persuade mortals to corrupt their bodies by 'choos[ing] eternal death, according to the will of the flesh...which giveth the spirit of the defile power to captivate, to bring [them] down to hell, that he may reign over [them] in his own kingdom...
All of us have some feelings we did not choose, but the gospel of Jesus Christ teaches us that we still have the power to resist and reform our feelings (as needed) and to assure that they do not lead us to entertain inappropriate thoughts or to engage in sinful behavior." Mar. 1996 Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints
Rabbi Barry Freundel of Kesher Israel, a modern Orthodox synagogue in Washington, D.C., stated in a 2001 article in Moment Magazine:
"The Orthodox gay movement is organizing around something that is unacceptable. It's like saying we're a group of Orthodox Sabbath violators or Orthodox ham eaters.
The prohibition against homosexual sex comes from Leviticus: 'Do not lie with a male as one lies with a woman; it is an abhorrence' (18:22)." 2001 Barry Freundel
Joseph Nicolosi, PhD et al., in a 2000 study in Psychological Reports, stated:
"We present the results of a survey of 882 dissatisfied homosexual people whom we queried about their beliefs regarding conversion therapy and the possibility of change in sexual orientation. ...
Of the 882 participants, 726 of them reported that they had received conversion therapy from a professional therapist or a pastoral counselor. ...
Before treatment or change, only 2.2% of the participants perceived themselves as exclusively or almost entirely heterosexual, whereas after treatment or change, 34.3% perceived themselves as exclusively or almost entirely heterosexual. ...
As a group, the participants reported large and statistically significant reductions in the frequency of their homosexual thoughts and fantasies that they attributed to conversion therapy or self-help. They also reported large improvements in their psychological, interpersonal, and spiritual well-being." 2000 Joseph Nicolosi
The American Journal of Psychiatry published a 2000 article by the American Psychiatric Association Commission on Psychotherapy by Psychiatrists, which stated:
"...[A]necdotal reports of 'cures' are counterbalanced by anecdotal claims of psychological harm. In the last four decades, 'reparative' therapists have not produced any rigorous scientific research to substantiate their claims of cure.
'Reparative' therapy literature also tends to overstate the treatment's accomplishments while neglecting any potential risks to patients." 2000 American Journal of Psychiatry
John R. Diggs, Jr., MD, in his 2002 report for the Corporate Research Council, The Health Risks of Gay Sex, stated:
"It is clear that there are serious medical consequences to same-sex behavior. Identification with a GLB community appears to lead to an increase in promiscuity, which in turn leads to a myriad of Sexually Transmitted Diseases and even early death." 2002 John Diggs
Gregory M. Herek, PhD, in a 1991 article in American Psychologist titled "Avoiding Heterosexist Bias in Psychological Research" stated:
"Phenomena should not be assumed to result from sexual orientation simply because they are observed in the gay community. Alcoholism, for example, is a serious problem in some sectors of the gay community. Attributing it to homosexuality per se, however, exemplifies the fundamental attribution bias...It explains behavior entirely in terms of personal characteristics while ignoring situational factors." 1991 Gregory Herek
Kurt Freund, MD, et al. in their article "Pedophilia and Heterosexuality Vs. Homosexuality," published in 1984 in the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy, conducted a study of 457 male sex offenders against children. They wrote:
"Approximately one-third of these sexual offenders directed their sexual activity against males." 1984 Kurt Freund
Carole Jenny, MD, Head of the Division of Child Maltreatment at Brown University, in a 1994 article titled "Are Children at Risk for Sexual Abuse by Homosexuals?" published in Pediatrics, wrote:
"...[A] child's risk of being molested by his or her relative's heterosexual partner is 100 times greater than by someone who might be identified as a homosexual.
The children in the group studied were unlikely to have been molested by identifiably gay or lesbian people." 1994 Carole Jenny


Vermont State History
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General State History
General Vermont State History
The Native American inhabitants of the area now known as Vermont were the Abenaki, a tribe of the Algonquin nation. Archaeologists have discovered evidence of Abenaki villages along the shores of Lake Champlain near the mouth of the Winooski River. "Winooski" is an Abenaki term for "wild onion". Abenaki villages were also located along the Connecticut River.
Samuel de Champlain, an early French explorer of North America, was the first European to discover the Green Mountains. In the summer of 1609, Champlain left his encampment on the St. Lawrence River in Quebec and joined the Algonquians in an expedition against their enemies, the Iroquois. The journey up the river brought Champlain onto the lake that now carries his name on July 4, 1609.
The name "Vermont" is itself derived from the French, les monts verts, "the green mountains".
The first permanent English settlement was established along the Connecticut River in 1724 at Fort Dummer, near what is now Brattleboro. The fort was maintained by the colonial governments of Vermont and New Hampshire as a defensive outpost throughout the French and Indian Wars.
When peace was made with the French in 1760, the Green Mountains were quickly opened to settlement, and to considerable squabbling between the colonies of New Hampshire and new York as to which had the proper claim to the territory, then called the New Hampshire Grants. Most of the new settlers were from Connecticut or Vermont and persistently resisted the claims of authority by New York. Resistance to the "Yorkers" brought the organization of the Green Mountain boys under the leadership of Col. Ethan Allen in 1775; this small by experienced army came to play a significant role during the American Revolution at the battles of Hubbardton and Bennington in 1777.
On January 17, 1777, Vermont was declared an independent republic in a meeting held at Westminster. This independent course, with the little republic minting its own coin and providing postal service, was followed until 1791 when Vermont was admitted to the union, the first state to join the original thirteen. The first governor was Thomas Chittenden.
Vermont Historic Figures
Admiral George Dewey
1837-1917: Naval officer; born in Montpelier, Vt. He served under David Farragut during the Civil War, then followed the standard career of a peacetime naval officer. In 1897 he was assigned command of the Asiatic Squadron, and in May 1898 he directed the action in Manila Bay that totally defeated the Spanish fleet (during which he is said to have commanded his flagship's captain, "You may fire when you are ready, Gridley.") Dewey stayed on for over a year to oversee the American takeover of the Philippines, then returned to a tremendous hero's welcome. He was honored with a special rank, admiral of the navy, and urged to run for U.S. president; but he settled for presidency of the General Board of the Navy Department, serving as an adviser on naval affairs to his death.
1872-1933: Thirtieth U.S. president (was sworn in by lamplight in his Vermont home at 2:47 a.m. August 3, 1923, following the death of President Warren G. Harding.); born in Plymouth, Vt. After graduating from Amherst College (1895), he became a lawyer in Northampton, Mass. As a Republican, he held a series of local and state offices until becoming governor of Vermont (1919--20); he gained national attention for using the state militia to suppress a police strike. Elected vice-president in 1920, he succeeded to the presidency on Warren Harding's death in 1923. He was reelected the next year. A popular and deliberately hands-off president in prosperous times, he was noted more for what he did not do and say than for what he did (although among his oft-quoted phrases is his 1925 remark, "the business of America is business."). In his private life he was equally noted for his taciturn, thrifty ways. After leaving the White House, he retired to Northampton and wrote various articles promoting his conservative views as well as his autobiography (1929).
Chester A. Arthur
1830-86: Twenty-first U.S. president; born in Fairfield, Vt. A lawyer, he joined New York's Republican political machine, which led to a patronage appointment as New York customs collector and an uproar when antipatronage President Hayes removed Arthur. Nominated as vice-president to Garfield in 1880 to pacify party regulars, Arthur became president on Garfield's assassination in July 1881. He surprised all by making solid appointments and signing the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883. He lost the 1884 nomination due to his declining health as well as to his having antagonized many Republican politicians.
Stephen A. Douglas
1813-61: U.S. representative/senator; born in Brandon, Vt. Admitted to the Illinois bar in 1834, after a distinguished career in state politics Douglas was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives (Dem., Ill.; 1843--47) and to the U.S. Senate (1847--61). Known as the "Little Giant" to his followers (because he was short and dynamic) he supported sectional compromise to avoid the threat of disunion in the 1850s. In the 1858 senatorial campaign, he debated Republican politician Abraham Lincoln seven times in what became known as the "Lincoln-Douglas debates." Although he won reelection to the Senate, his increasingly inconsistent positions on the slavery issue would cost him the support of many Democrats. In 1860, as the Northern Democrats' candidate for president, he was defeated by Lincoln. He at once called for support of Lincoln in his efforts to preserve the union, but, exhausted by his speaking tour, he died of typhoid fever less than two months after the Civil War began.


Ear sensor used to develop new mouthguard for diagnosing concussions
University of Sydney researchers have developed an impact sensor being worn by players at Randwick Rugby Union Club to better diagnose and treat head knocks that can cause brain damage and death.
The hope is the sensor, which is worn behind the ear and measures G force impacts to the brain, will be developed into a mouth guard that changes colour to signal concussion.
Less than ten per cent of concussed athletes are knocked out and symptoms aren’t always apparent to players and people watching sports. It’s estimated 40,000 cases of concussion occur Australia each year across all levels of sport.
There is currently no uniform objective test of concussion, so there’s a need to remove subjectivity from an issue made more serious by deaths from Second Impact Syndrome, which is the acute risk arising when a person receives a second concussion shortly after the first.
“Concussion reflects the amount of energy the brain absorbs from an impact and can be very difficult to diagnose,” says Dr Adrian Cohen from Sydney Medical School.
“We’ve developed a small device that measures G forces that can be correlated with other tests of concussion, such as MRI brain scans, visual tracking tests, and the King–Devick Test, which is a quick definitive low-tech diagnostic tool for concussion.”
“Players risk serious brain injury if they receive a second impact before recovering from the first,” says Dr Clare Fraser of the University of Sydney’s Save Sight Institute, who is collaborating with Dr Cohen.
“They also risk long term degenerative brain diseases, including chronic traumatic encephalopathy, dementia, personality and mood changes, and psychological disturbance including depression.”
Dr Philip Boughton from the University of Sydney’s Faculty of Engineering & Information is working with Fraser and Cohen to develop a suite of technologies to better detect and assess traumatic brain injuries.
“We’re trying to build technology that can track and relay real-time data on the acceleration, deceleration and rotation of players’ heads and necks,” says Boughton, whose lab is developing wearable biosensors to monitor impacts.
“We want these biosensors to indicate not only concussive single impacts but cumulative, smaller impacts that can add up to a concussion,” he says.
“The plan is to implant that technology into a mouth guard that can change colour and alert the player, training staff and referee to the injury.”
Dr Cohen said the university’s research team isn’t trying to “soften” sport but make it safer for athletes and educate sports teams and the community about head injuries.
“Sport has so many positive benefits but we need to ensure players are aware of the risks they are taking. We also need to increase our understanding to give participants and their families confidence that we are looking after them throughout their careers and after they stop playing.”
- Concussion is caused by the sudden acceleration or deceleration of the brain
- Approximately 40,000 individual cases of concussion in Australia each year at all levels of sport.
- Less than 10 percent of concussions end up in hospital
- Less than 10 percent of concussions involve being knocked out
- Recovery is variable but most people are back to normal in 7-10 days
- Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) is a progressive degenerative disease of the brain found in athletes with a history of brain trauma
- CTE linked to repeated acute impacts, with or without concussion
- Helmets, soft headgear and mouth-guards do not protect against concussion
- Secondary Impact Syndrome can kill (5 deaths in last 4 years globally)
- Rugby players can suffer approximately 100 impacts per game
- Up to 180Gs of force have been measured in a single impact in rugby (Muhammad Ali hit with 60Gs of force)
Impacts above 95G are believed to indicate a higher likelihood of concussion


Built between 1911 and 1914, Fort Montecchio Nord is the only Italian military fort of First World War that has kept its original armament intact and remains one of the best preserved in Europe. The historical complex, well-placed in the defensive system of the Northern Frontier, the so-called Cadorna Line, is magnificent: built into the rock, it is characterized by walls of St. Fedelino white granite from the nearby quarries of Novate Mezzola carved by local highly skilled stonemasons. It also includes a variety of environments and underground walkways, including an explosives storage room over 60 meters deep. The main function of the fort was to control the roads from Spluga, Maloja and Stelvio in the event that the Austro-Hungarian Empire, violating the neutrality of Switzerland, decided to invade Northern Italy.
A visit of the fort today allows you to observe the architectural, technical and organizational solutions, some of which were quite innovative for the time, adopted by the military at the beginning of the century in the building. All details remain intact today, including not only the four imposing cannons in rotatable positions under armored domes, model Schneider 149 mm (with a range of 14 km), but also the electrical systems, all of the original armored windows and doors in addition to the complex systems of ventilation and the water supply.
The structure consists of two separate blocks: the floor that housed the four guns, and the shelter for the housing of the troops. The two blocks are connected by a covered walkway curved and fortified about 140 meters long and backing the mountain on the east side. The trench has a width of 2.5 meters and a height of 3 meters while the upper vault has a thickness of about 1.5 meters and is constructed with irregular stones of granite. The walls of the trench were made with ten slots which allowed a broad range for shooting the enemy, and at the same time reducing a particular target. The area devoted to the shelter is located in the lower part; in this space, obtained thanks to the partial excavation of part of the hill, was the dormitory place destined to the troops. One heated room could accommodate about 40 people and as many camp beds and lockers for personal belongings.
At the time of its construction the fort was called “Montecchio Nord”, after the place where it was located. This was typical procedure with Italian forts, naming them after the location on which they were built. Only later, in 1939, was it dedicated, as was customary at that time, to the gold medal holder for military valor Aldo Lusardi, mortally wounded on November 5th, 1935 in the Addi Gundi Italian zone in East Africa.
Given the events of the war, the fort, which was the strong point of a complex system of barriers that extended until Mount Legnone, remained inactive throughout the First World War. The structure was not even used in military actions during the Second World War. The only gun shots were fired on April 27th, 1945 to the opposite side of the lake against the Italian-German armed forces moving towards Switzerland after dropping Mussolini in the hands of the partisans in Dongo. The incident prompted the Captain Hans Fallmeyer to start negotiations with the partisans to put an end to incidents of war in the upper lake area. Later the fort was used as a weapons depot and was manned and active until 1981, when it was handed over definitively to the Civil State property. In 1998 the Ministry of Finance entrusted the management of the Montecchio Nord to the Council of Colico. Since 2009 the City of Colico has entrusted the management to the Museo della Guerra Bianca in Adamello in order to improve the tourist usability.
Thanks to its strategic location you can enjoy a splendid view of the upper lakes, with a lovely view also of the nearby nature reserve of Pian di Spagna, Lake Mezzola, the mouth of the Adda river and Mount Legnone.
(Text from the Brochure "Colico Outdoor")
Closed, reopening in Spring 2021.
The fort can be visited by appointment for organized groups any day of the year. For agreements contact the secretariat.
Adults: € 8,00
Children 6-17 years: € 5,00
Children up to 5 years: free of charge
Comulative ticket (Forte Montecchio Nord and Forte Fuentes): Adults € 10,00 - Children 6-17 years € 6,00


Kajian Daya Dukung Lingkungan Aspek Sumberdaya Air di Kabupaten Bogor
Shalihudin, Muhammad Ramdan
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The increase the number of residents is directly proportional to increase settlement. The need for spatial planning with consideration of the environmental carrying capacity so that no negative impact due to improper utilization of space. Analysis of the environmental carrying capacity of water resources aspect (DDLwater) can be done through four hierarchical analysis, including the determination of the status of environmental capacity based on water balance, agroclimatic zoning, the analysis of the potential for water supply, and water resource degradation assessment indicators. The aim of this research is analyzing the hierarchy DDL-water in Bogor District and assessing the environment in the city spatial plan (RTRW) in Bogor District DDL-water according to the analysis. The research was carried out using the secondary data and analyzed according to four of the hierarchy. The results obtained based on the status of water-DDL Bogor District in one year is a conditional safe with type agroklimat A1 according to the zone classification Oldeman. The results of the analysis water balance in 2003 was the rainfall (CHlebih) is 2316 mm/year, as much as runoff 1036 mm/year, as much as and groundwater by charging 1280 mm/year.


Vaporizing Smoking Harmful Compounds From ELECTRIC CIGARETTES
An electronic cigarette is basically an electronic device which simulate real cigarette smoking. It really is powered by batteries, much like those used in an electric cigarette. Rather than nicotine, the smoker inhales only vapor. Therefore, with an electronic cigarette, similar to smoking a regular cigarette, is frequently described as “vaping.” Electronic cigarettes are increasingly gaining in popularity with current youth.
Smoking tobacco has been connected with many serious health threats. Inhaling tobacco smoke has been shown to cause various forms of cancer; most notably, lung cancer. Electronic cigarettes usually do not contribute to this problem since they do not contain any tobacco or tar. Instead, electric cigarettes contain nicotine, which might have damaging affects on brain development. This is especially important with teenagers, who already show a lower life expectancy attention span and a tendency to be impulsive.
Nicotine from vapor can enter the bloodstream where it stimulates chemical reactions in the body. The blood absorbs the nicotine, diluting it into less dense blood globes. The mind is then stimulated release a neurotransmitters such as dopamine and epinephrine, which excite the respiratory muscles to take in more air and breathe harder. The increased oxygen intake stimulates more ventilation, which activates the muscles surrounding the lungs to improve ventilation, further enhancing blood flow.
Some vapers prefer to use an electronic cigarette or “e-juice”, that is a mix of glycerin, propylene glycol, along with other ingredients. Because glycerin is naturally sweet, some vapers think it is appealing to inhale the sweet aroma, which lingers on the throat and in the nasal passage. Propylene glycol is used as a stabilizing agent for e-juice, preventing it Element Vape from evaporating quickly. It has also been found to mimic the consequences of nicotine.
There are several theories about why people decide to stop smoking by switching to vapor products. One theory is that smokers who do not have enough nicotine in their system may find it hard to achieve the smoking point. By substituting tobacco products with one of these less harmful products, they may feel a similar level of stimulation minus the associated risks of nicotine. A second theory is that children who’ve not developed fully may develop issues with their lungs should they inhale tobacco smoke.
Generally, e-cigarettes usually do not contain nicotine, however they do contain other chemicals which could interest adult users. Many e-cigs come flavored with fruit flavors, candy, or other sugary flavors that interest children. Other flavors are not suitable for children, particularly if there are already significant chemical changes happening in the brains of young smokers. Even for adults, several vapor products contain herbal extracts and menthol, that are not good for the young or older people. It is important to browse the label of any e-liquid that you will be considering.
Some vapors come pre-filled, but there is also a danger of these chemicals being absorbed in to the skin. In case a heating element is roofed in the e-arette, then there is even more risk of contact with these potentially harmful chemicals. It will also be noted that the typical heating element is very small, making it very hard to heat the substance enough to destroy all of the harmful chemicals.
With the dangers of these chemicals, it is surprising that so many young people are attracted to the taste of e-cigarettes. They seem to think that by getting “high” they are going to feel better about their lives. These vapors remain relatively new, but you can find real concerns that needs to be addressed before this new technology becomes more mainstream. At least, we can comfort ourselves with the data that the vapor that originates from the unit poses little to no danger to your health.


that is made from natural elements such as plants, vegetables, and reusable materials. This type of fuel is better for the atmosphere
because, unlike other fuels, it does not give off harmful chemicals which can influence
negatively. The popularity of biodiesel fuel is consistently increasing as people search
out alternative energy resources.


Though retired, Penn State Extension Specialist Tom McCarty is still the go-to guy for solving water problems involving pesticides and other potentially dangerous potables. A case in point, chronicled by a Penn State magazine, showed how McCarty successfully solved the plight of a woman who was being plagued by an unknown malady. This Harrisburg, PA, woman had been experiencing nausea, diarrhea and skin rashes for three years. No one could determine what was causing her ailment; best guesses indicated some sort of possible allergy. Consequently the remedy, in light of that non-professional diagnosis, was to try to purge the house of possible toxins by getting rid of plastics, clothing made with synthetic fabrics, chemical cleaners, and furniture with formaldehyde. Air filters had even been added to the house but none of those steps were of any avail. It took the victim’s dogs getting sick to make her wonder about the property’s water supply. As an alternative, she started using bottled water, a measure that seemed to afford a measure of relief.
When the water was tested, the lab told her that the water had an e-coli count 16 times greater than what the Environmental Protection Agency considered unsafe. Furthermore, a total coliform count registered more than 200 times EPA standards. From there, Dottie Johns, the victim, was at odds about where to turn. An online web search directed her to the PSU extension website about drinking water, and Johns phoned Tom McCarty. McCarty met with her and explained exactly what the test results were saying. As a result, he recommended installation of a monitoring device that employs ultra-violet radiation to kill bacteria at the primary water line before it travels to the rest of the dwelling’s plumbing. The plumbing was also flushed with a bottle of chlorine to destroy any lingering bacteria.
McCarty was the kick-off speaker at a pesticide forum held in Lancaster at the beginning of March. He discussed water quality and pesticide issues. The sessions, which ran all day, were primarily for those interested in pesticide certifications and the subjects under discussion offered credits. Related topics included Transporting Chemicals, and Spill Response and Clean Up.
“We get good at measuring stuff,” said McCarty. “We used to pride ourselves with being able to measure parts per million. Then, parts per billion. Now, parts per trillion. If you keep going on down, you are liable to detect things that you weren’t able to detect earlier. The fact that we can find stuff isn’t necessarily a bad thing.”
Then McCarty got into the nitty-gritty of the topic by asking for a show of hands by anyone who had ever spilled anything. “Let’s make it more interesting,” he said. “How far from your well is it safe to spill a jug of herbicide?” An all-inclusive answer can be found at Penn State’s Ag Communications and Marketing offices. Four years ago, Winand Hock, professor emeritus of Plant Pathology, and Eric Lorenz, senior extension associate, Pesticide Education Program, authored a paper titled ‘How to Handle Chemical Spills.’ It advocates that, “The suggested guidelines in the event of a hazardous chemical spill are included under the ‘Three C’ program: Control the spill, Contain the spill, and Clean up the spill.”
“Act quickly,” the communiqué says when talking about Spill Control. “The sooner the spill is controlled the less damage it can cause. Immediate steps should be taken to control the flow of the material being spilled, regardless of the source. If a one-gallon can on a storage shelf has rusted through and is leaking, a sprayer has tipped over, or a hazardous chemical is leaking from a damaged tank truck, do everything possible to stop the leak or spill at once…However, stopping larger leaks or spills may not be so simple. If the spill is large or dangerous, have someone get help. Do not leave the site unattended.
“…At the same time the leak is being controlled,” the advisory continues, “contain the spilled material in as small an area as possible and keep it from spreading. In some situations, a shovel or power equipment may be needed to construct a dam. Liquid spills can be further contained by spreading absorbent materials such as fine sand, vermiculite, clay, or pet litter over the entire spill. However, a word of caution is needed here. Avoid using sawdust or sweeping compounds if the material is a strong oxidizer (check the label or MSDS) because such a combination presents a possible fire hazard.
“…The only effective way to decontaminate soil saturated with a hazardous chemical is to remove the top 2 to 3 inches of soil. This contaminated soil must be disposed of at a proper disposal site. The decontaminated area should be covered with at least 2 inches of lime and then topped with fresh topsoil.”
McCarty then asked a hypothetical question: “Isn’t contamination merely theoretical? We don’t really have to worry about it?” By that he means that if you believe certain theories, such as soil being low porosity and unable to contain outlandish chemical components, spills are likely to be minimal dangers. “Small pores,” in other words, “don’t necessarily have a lot of materials in them, and it holds them well, and it has all summer to decay. So if you have something with a reasonable half life, pesticides won’t be transported through or into ground water. You could say pesticides never move through the soil. We didn’t see that,” said McCarty. “We did see that there were some conditions where they may move in small quantities.” Returning to his original question about a herbicide spill near a well, McCarty then asked “Hasn’t anybody ever tested the groundwater to find if herbicides are present?”


In this post, I want to share basic sizing equation for sedimentation centrifuges. Based on previous post, sedimentation centrifuges used to separate materials based on the density difference between the solid and liquid phases. They are usually used to produce cleared liquid.
Basic sizing equation for sedimentation centrifuges use the term sigma (Σ). The sigma is used to describe a performance of a centrifuge regardless of the physical characteristics of solid-fluid system. The sigma value is equivalent to the cross-sectional area of a gravity settling tank with the same clearing capacity. The sigma value is often expressed in cm2.
The sigma theory is a description of how centrifuge performance is described. It offers a way to compare sedimentation centrifuge performance and to scale up from laboratory and pilot scale experiments. Read More


Getting enough to eat is a basic human need -- but at what cost to the environment? Research published in BioMed Central's journal Agriculture & Food Security demonstrates that as their crops on higher ground fail due to unreliable rainfall, people in countries like Uganda are increasingly relocating to wetland areas. Unless the needs of these people are addressed in a more sustainable way, overuse of wetland resources through farming, fishing, and hunting will continue.
In 2009 it was estimated that about a third of Uganda's wetlands had been lost to growing crops and grazing. While the environmental significance of wetland loss is important, so are National Food Security targets and the Millennium Development Goal of halving the number of people who suffer from hunger by 2015. In order to evaluate how people are using the wetlands researchers from Makerere University, Uganda, with financial support from IDRC surveyed residents living in either Lake Victoria crescent, Kyoga plains, and South Western farmlands.
The survey revealed that more than 80% of people in these areas use wetland resources including collecting water, catching fish, hunting bush meat (Sitatunga, a type of antelope, and wild rat), and harvesting wild fruits and vegetables. Some of these they consume but others they sell in order to be able to buy food. Over half admitted to growing crops in the nutrient rich soil wetlands with its ready water supply. The families who were most likely to use the wetlands in this way were the ones who had the least access to other sources of food.
The locals blame their bad harvests on global warming, and as global weather systems change this can only get worse. Dr Nelson Turyahabwe explained, "Food insecurity is a real problem across the world. In Uganda the families most at risk tended to have younger or female household heads, or were less educated. Large families were also at high risk of not having enough to eat. In these cases use of wetlands allows families to survive. In designing sustainable use policies for wetlands the needs of humans also needs to be considered."
- Nelson Turyahabwe, Willy Kakuru, Manson Tweheyo and David Mwesigye Tumusiime. Contribution of wetland resources to household food security in Uganda. Agriculture & Food Security, 2013; DOI: 10.1186/2048-7010-2-5
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If you're one of those Americans who does not leave the house without showering and applying deodorant, you may be surprised to learn that hundreds of millions of people around the world likely think that you're unclean, if not downright disgusting.
It's all about how you clean your butt.
In cultures that use water to clean down there after defecating, dry toilet paper as a substitute is something of an ass abomination. Yet to those of us raised on Charmin, using a bidet, even though it's more hygienic, is just as foreign.
Bathroom hygiene is just one of the foul and frankly fascinating aspects of what's euphemistically known as "sanitation," which British journalist Rose George explores in her new book, "The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters."
For her reporting, George ventured into the bowels of London's sewer system with an emergency breathing apparatus strapped on her waist. She squatted in a doorless public toilet in China. And she visited slum dwellers in Mumbai who live in areas with 100 public toilets for 45,000 residents.
Here in the industrialized world, where we happily flush it and forget it, it's hard to imagine that literally billions of people elsewhere have no access to a toilet. It may also be difficult to believe that 90 percent of the world's sewage ends up untreated in oceans, rivers and lakes, some of that filth burbling out of our supposedly sophisticated sewage systems. While the humble toilet has added decades to the lives of those of us lucky enough to have one, George reports, it's also created a whole host of environmental problems.
Salon talked toilet, latrine and bidet with George by phone from London.
Some 2.6 billion people have no access to a toilet whatsoever, and that includes a latrine, a bucket or a box. They literally have nowhere to go. Can you talk about what that means?
Anyone who has traveled to India and taken an early morning train will know exactly what that means because all you have to do is look out of the window. What you'll see is people just simply squatting there, doing their business where they can.
What it means in terms of public health is catastrophic. Human waste can be extremely toxic. It can carry millions of bacteria, viruses and worms. And you don't want that kind of stuff lying around. But these 2.6 billion people, who have absolutely no sanitation, have no choice but to use the nearest bush or roadside. That means it's being tramped around in the human environment. It's getting into people's food, it's getting into their water, and it's making them extremely sick.
The death toll from diarrhea, which is largely caused by poor sanitation, is astronomical. It's the second biggest killer of children in the world after respiratory diseases.
Why isn't this more of an international health issue?
It's quite simply that we don't want to talk about it. There is a linguistic problem. We don't have the language for it anymore because we've resorted to euphemism. In the West, we've been able to resort to euphemism because we have the wonderful flush toilet and waterborne sewage system, which gives us the luxury of being able to flush something away and assume it will be treated elsewhere.
We literally flush it out of our mind as well, and it's not in public discourse anymore. This wasn't always the case. Three hundred years ago it was considered an honor to attend kings when they were seated on their toilets. People in the West have this great system and I think they just assume that it's the same for everybody in the world.
Is there a celebrity out there who wants to be the Angelina Jolie of toilets, making this a popular issue?
Matt Damon has started to talk about school latrines, which is great news. It's inevitable because he does a lot of great work on clean water. For example, if you go to a school in a village in Africa, you've got a nice clear water supply, and you've got the nice tap, but you've got no latrines. So obviously the kids are going to be contaminating the water supply because they simply have no sanitation. You've got to make the connection. You can't have clean water without decent sanitation.
You found in your research there's no single solution. Why not?
The answer is not that everybody should have a sewer or everyone should have a toilet. That is simply impractical, and most countries can't afford it. Culturally, in sanitation, we're very different around the world. People have different attitudes to hygiene and toilets. Some countries are fecal-phobic and some countries are not. China is quite at home with excrement, and uses it as fertilizer, whereas Indians are not. They're quite averse to any use of human waste.
In Benin, Africa, some very interesting research was done into what would make people buy a latrine. Mothers, who didn't have a latrine, could see that their kids were getting sick every week with diarrhea. They were spending money on medicine, and their kids weren't going to school, but they still wouldn't buy a latrine.
An academic named Mimi Jenkins discovered that the biggest incentive for someone to buy a latrine in Benin was to feel royal, because the royal family had one. It was a question of pride and status, it wasn't about health. Health messages never work, because nobody wants to be nagged, even when they've got the evidence in front of them.
So telling people, "This is where the cholera is coming from," doesn't have as much impact as appealing to their pride?
Exactly. It's what I call the "doctors who smoke" understanding of people. Doctors who smoke know it's bad for them, yet they still do it. What a lot of sanitation activists are saying is that we have to make people want toilets. It has to be something they aspire to and desire.
Isn't part of that incentive making defecating in the outdoors unappealing?
Yeah, and there's a very interesting movement going on in many developing countries, including India, Cambodia and Bangladesh, called Community Led Total Sanitation. It appeals to people's sense of disgust.
A few visitors will go to a village, and the villagers will want to show off their village to the guests. They'll take them around the village, and then at the end of the tour, the visitors will say, "Well, yes, that's nice, but can we see your open defecation grounds?"
Because they're polite, the villagers will take them there. The technique is to make people stand there and confront it, to not be able to turn away from the fact that they're shitting in the open, and that their kids are tramping it back into the village, and that they're all eating it. Someone calculated that people in villages who are doing open defecation are probably ingesting 10 grams of shit a day. That's pretty disgusting.
People will run off and dig latrines. Once the whole village is cleaned up, nobody will want to be the dirty person in the village. And once the village is cleaned up, the clean village will be in competition with the next village, and that village will want to clean up. It's a chain reaction.
Don't some governments pay for latrines, and the people don't always use them?
Yes. For 20 or 30 years, India has been pouring money into sanitation, and has been building, or subsidizing, lots of extremely nice latrines all over the country. But because they're nicer than people's houses, they get turned into a temple, or an extra room, or a goat shed, or simply used for storage. Because people have this engrained habit of going out into the bush, they don't see anything wrong with it.
Well, if you're used to going outside, maybe it's kind of gross to go inside, in a bathroom, or even near your home.
That is a problem, and that's what makes sanitation very tricky. In India, it is considered unclean to have a latrine close to the home. The answer is to make sure that it is a decent latrine, and it doesn't smell. It has to be an adequate latrine, it has to have some kind of fly-proofing, and some kind of vent pipe so there is no odor. If it's a decent enough place, then people get used to it.
Let's talk about some of the slums you visited where there are 100 toilets for 45,000 people. What happens then? People don't end up using the toilet, right?
They use it if they can. But if it takes half an hour to get from one side of the slum to the other, or you're waiting in line and the doors are falling off, and it's unpleasant, then people won't use it. They just go in the street, or on the roadside, or they find the nearest beach. There are beaches in Mumbai that are absolutely filthy.
What are flying toilets or helicopter toilets?
A flying toilet is a plastic bag. You defecate into the plastic bag, you wrap the plastic back up, and you throw it. Hence it's a helicopter or flying toilet. This is the only form of sanitation available to a lot of slum residents in Africa, particularly in Kenya and Tanzania. At least it's potentially containing the toxic human excrement, but obviously it's not ideal, and they're all over the place in the slums. It's quite a nice phrase for an extremely unpleasant practice.
Isn't it true that your own shit isn't a danger to you, it's other people's?
If you wanted to, you could probably ingest your own shit, but it wouldn't necessarily be toxic. But the problem is that shit is such a good vehicle for disease transmission. That's why we in the West have such good sewer systems and waterborne waste treatment. In about 1850 or so in London, a doctor called John Snow realized that cholera was being carried in drinking water, and it was being carried in human shit.
By some accounts, the toilet has added 20 years to the modern lifespan, so this thing that we won't even discuss is actually responsible for perhaps decades of all of our lives.
Yes, exactly. Last year, the readers of the British Medical Journal voted sanitation the biggest medical advance in the past 200 years. It is an amazing thing -- the toilet. We do live longer because of the toilet. Before sewers and toilets became popular in the 19th century, one in two children in London died before their 5th birthday. There was an enormous mortality rate, and that dropped dramatically, especially when soap and hand washing also became popular. We should be on our knees before the toilet.
We should worship at it.
We should worship the toilet. It's been an enormous medical advance. It's been fantastic, so I think that we should give it its due.
Even in industrialized nations, where we have sewer systems, our bathroom habits vary widely. For instance, there are two main ways of cleaning your butt. Can you talk about what those are, and who does what?
The world divides into water cultures and paper cultures. This comes into quite stark relief in Japan because Japan used to be a paper culture. Two hundred years ago they used sticks or stones or paper. And now, because Japan has had a toilet revolution, they've turned into a water culture, and they have very high-tech toilets with in-built bidets and drying systems that can massage you and probably sing to you.
But the U.S. and the U.K. stubbornly remain paper cultures, and attempts to introduce bidet toilets have failed. Hygienically, bidet toilets are infinitely superior. Using toilet paper to clean yourself down there makes about as much hygienic sense as cleaning yourself with a towel and imagining you're rubbing off the dirt. We've got a very unhygienic way of cleaning a place of our body that we would like to be very clean.
Actually, we're pretty disgusting, and we just don't realize it.
We are kind of disgusting. I'm being polite about it. In water cultures like India, where you see all these people going to do their business with a little cup of water, they think we're extremely dirty. They can't believe it. Muslims, who have to be scrupulously clean according to the laws of the Quran, also think it's kind of weird that we have this habit of using paper, and imagining we're clean. We're not.
Can you talk about the attempt of the Japanese company Toto to bring bidet toilets to Americans?
In Japan, Toto is an enormous company, and it's one of the great names of Japanese industry, like Sony or Mitsubishi. More households have a Washlet toilet, which is a bidet toilet, than have a computer. They've had astonishing success in Japan, so quite reasonably they thought, "If we can do it in Japan then we can do it everywhere else," because Japan was also a paper culture.
So Toto USA started about 20 years ago and they've been trying to introduce the high-tech or high-function toilet over here. Americans really aren't that interested. The Neorest, which is this stunningly gorgeous toilet, the top-range Toto toilet, has been installed in various places, including one large casino hotel in Las Vegas. It's apparently popular with celebrities.
What are some of the features of one of these high-end toilets?
One of the basic features is the lid will lift automatically. It will deodorize the room. It has special dirt-repelling, extremely advanced chemicals layered on the ceramics. They all have a remote-control panel next to the toilet so that you can adjust the heat. All the seats are heated; that's just standard. Some of the toilets can check your blood pressure. Some can test your urine. Some of them can weigh you. They can play you music. You can plug in your MP3 player. I think the only thing they can't do is read to you.
There is so much technology fetishism in the U.S. about things like our iPhones, but we just don't seem to have much interest in innovations in toilets?
The way to convert someone to the beauty of a Washlet toilet is to use one. I've spoken to lots of people, Americans included, who have been to Japan, and they just go, "Oh God, yeah, the toilets are amazing." But because they're not the widely spread yet in the states, most people don't come across them.
So, we're just content with these high toilets, which actually physiologically are kind of impeding our normal bodily processes. You actually don't want to be seated high up on the toilet. That's not helping your evacuation processes.
Squatting is better for you?
Squatting is better. I'm not suggesting that we all go and get squat latrines. But certainly toilets in the U.S. are very high now because they're like thrones or chairs, and that's not the best physiological position.
What's the story with ecological toilets?
In Germany, ecological sanitation is quite popular, and one of the most common ecological toilets is called a urine-diverting toilet. It makes very good ecological sense because if you make sewage less liquid, it's much easier to treat afterward.
What happens with the urine?
You can just pipe it off somewhere else. It's a very good fertilizer. It contains a lot of nitrogen and phosphorous, so you can put it on your garden if you want to. The toilets require men to sit down to pee, so that is a bit of a stumbling block. But Germans do it.
There's also the composting toilet, which uses no water whatsoever. It used to be known as an earth closet. You just have a toilet and you add some kind of ash, or soil, and it just decomposes and it's apparently odor-free. You can use it in your garden if you leave it composting long enough. It should be perfectly safe and pathogen-free, but you have to do it properly. There are lots of composting toilets in America now. They're particularly useful in rural or mountain areas.
I spoke to an ecological sanitation professor in Norway -- Norway is also very fond of ecological sanitation -- and he said that he has a friend who has a composting toilet. He said the friend has a little girl who had obviously grown up using a composting toilet, and when she went to school and saw this normal water toilet she was freaked out. She said, "What is going on? There's all this water," and she couldn't believe it.
Because we have such water issues these days, we really do have to question whether throwing several liters of clean drinking water into a toilet, dirtying it and then spending millions and a loss of energy cleaning it again is really the best way to proceed.
Besides using water and energy, what are the other environmental impacts of industrialized sewage systems?
When human waste is treated it is separated into effluent, which is the cleaned liquid. Then it's put back into the water system, and what you have left is solids, or sludge. That's all the dirt that you've cleaned out of the sewage. In the states, the most common way of dealing with this is to apply it to land. It's been renamed "bio-solids," and it's applied to land all over the country.
There is an increasing activist movement which is very unhappy with bio-solids being applied to land. One of their concerns is that there are heavy metals in the sludge, because our sewer system is set up so that everybody can put anything down their toilets, or their sinks. A recent investigation found that it's common practice for hospitals to put their unused pharmaceuticals down the sink or down the toilet.
We don't know what's in the sludge; it can change from day to day. The people who are against sludge being applied to land say that, quite reasonably, until we know more about it, let's be more cautious. On the other hand, bio-solids proponents are saying it's perfectly safe, it's all regulated, the EPA thinks it is safe, so it's safe.
How have your own bathroom habits changed since you started researching this book?
I put the toilet seat lid down before I flush. When you flush with it open there is a very fine spray of whatever you've just flushed all over the room. So, I thought, well, I'll just put the lid down, and I've become a bit of a nag about that idea.
Otherwise, I do think about our sewers. You can find motorbikes down sewers. You can find hospital aprons or syringes. There are all sorts of chemicals and pharmaceuticals and storm water. Grit -- anything that comes off a road and goes down a drain -- ends up in a sewer.
So I really think about what I put down the drain. I won't put cooking oil down the sink anymore because I've seen congealed fat blocking a sewer. It was disgusting. It's just these enormous blocks of fat. That's what really disgusted sewer workers, more than excrement. They hate it. It gets into their pores, and it makes their lives extremely dangerous because they have to remove it. And it blocks the sewers. It's just a very bad idea. Restaurants are pouring used cooking oil down the drain but so is everybody. And so I've become a bit of a puritan about that. I will wipe it out of pans and pour it on the garden.
I wash my hands differently. I wash them a bit more and I wash my wrists as well, because that's in the CDC's hand-washing guidelines, which are five or seven steps. But I also frown when I'm in a public toilet and people don't wash their hands. I give them looks.


|February 27, 2014
The dirty facts behind tar sand transport
UM professor George Price details opposition to ‘megaload’ transports through aboriginal lands
By Lailani Upham
George Price, People's Action member and University of Montana Native studies and African American studies presents a 20-minute showing of part one of a 2011, film documentary, "To the Last Drop," a story of small town, Fort Chipewyan in northern Alberta and the consequences of being the first to witness the impact of the Tar Sands project. (Lailani Upham photo)
PABLO — Last Thursday George Price, Indian Peoples Action member and professor of Native American Studies and African American Studies at the University of Montana, paid a visit to the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribal Council on behalf of the voice that is echoing not only throughout Indian Country, but across the globe to save the Earth and the future generations from further harm.
The topic: opposing the Keystone XL pipeline project. Protestors see it clearly as a pathway to pollution than a gateway to the gas pumps.
It has been cited as a deadly threat to public health and crisis to the climate.
The $5.3 billion Keystone project is a 1,700 -mile pipeline that will transport 830,000 barrels of tar sands oil every day from Alberta, Canada to U.S. Gulf Coast refineries, largely for export.
Price’s presentation included a 20 minute YouTube clip, called, “To The Last Drop: Canada’s Dirty Oil Sands.”
During the discussion Price mentioned the January protest in Missoula when megaload trucks of the tar sands were en route through the area. The majority of the group were members of the People’s Action based in Butte.
Price said the group was acting on behalf of neighboring Tribes in Canada. “Our indigenous brothers and sisters in the First Nations communities of Alberta, have been affected most directly and severely from the contamination of their water, air and wild natural food sources,” he stated.
Price added that “We also expressed that all life on Earth is being deeply affected and endangered by this filthy and completely unnecessary business.”
What is a Megaload?
A “megaload” is an oversized transport longer than a football field and can weigh tons filled with equipment for processing bitumen, a tarry substance found in an area of Canada known as the tar sands, or oil sands that is hauled by a rig and trailer that takes up two lanes in a highway and can’t fit under a bridge. They have been known to crack highways and bridges, causing tax payers to pay the road reconstruction tab.
This was not the first time Montanans rallied to oppose tar sands megaloads. In 2010 and 2011, ConocoPhillips transported megaloads down Highway 12 through the Idaho’s Clearwater National Forest and into scenic highways in Montana, including Highway 93.
CSKT Arlee Representative, Terry Pitts, mentioned that action was taken at that time by council to support the opposition of the loads being transferred through the highways. CSKT filed with the Nez Perce Tribe regarding the transportation through Highway 12.
Pitts and the rest of the council agreed with Price by stating they supported the opposition tar sands transports.
In the tar sands news documentary, Paul Wihbe, Oil Industry Consultant, a person known to clear the path into the United States, stated the Alberta refinery was the largest and holds eight times more the reserves than Saudi Arabia. He stated, “American politicians are beginning to realize.”
Supporters say Keystone XL would create thousands of jobs and cut U.S. fuel costs by reducing the nation’s reliance on oil imports from nations that are less friendly than Canada.
Reuters reported on January 27 that the project is in limbo while the U.S. State Department finalizes an environmental review, a long-delayed process that has irked allies in Ottawa and advocates on both sides of the issue in the United States.
However, behind the scenes, a complex political calculus is at play from timing of the decision to the outcome.
A decision by President Obama, to approve the pipeline could undermine the Democratic president’s environmental credentials and anger activists who have supported him just as his administration is writing new rules to reduce heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.
Then again, a decision against the pipeline could undercut Obama’s pledge to boost employment and U.S. energy security while alienating an important international ally and oil supplier.
A 380-foot 450-ton megaload truck travels through Idaho in December. (Courtesy photo)
No matter what he decides, an announcement before the midterm congressional elections in November, could make Keystone a big issue in the races that will determine control of the U.S. Congress.
Regardless of political agenda, the bottom line is the air and water are becoming toxic already and will increase in years to come.
According to “The Last Drop” report, Jack Woodward, author of “Native Law,” stated under Canadian law and the British Superior Law the tribal people own that part of Alberta. “In the treaty the Cree Indians had the right to hunt and fish. Except now if you look at Alberta where the tar sands developments are. The developments are so vast and the destruction is so intensive that is now fair to say that treaty rights themselves are no longer meaningfully exercised, because the habitat of the animals are being destroyed right before our eyes.”
Fish in the Athabasca River have been deformed for years. Fort Chipewyan commercial fisherman Larry Paquette said, “We don’t eat the fish anymore because they are all deformed and their flesh looks like acid ate them.”
An article in the National Geographic described the tar sands as, “Dark satanic mills.”
Canada Fort Chipewyan Dene Chief, Allan Adam stated, “When I entered into politics I thought we were going to cash in on the economic development in the region and be part of the whole atmosphere and work on it from there. But as we got into it around seven to nine people were diagnosed with cancer in the last two years and have passed on and that is alarming number we have to deal with. We live by the lake shore of Lake of Athabasca. It’s our turn now to say, ‘Enough is enough.’”
Fort Chipewyan resident, Jonie Wanderingspirit tells of her two uncles, an aunt and a grandmother that all died of cancer, many of tumors in that region in the “The Last Drop” documentary report. She said she was worried about her children and parents and herself about getting cancer. “We all cope, everybody grieves.”
According to Andrew Nikiforuk, author of “Tar Sands: Dirty Oil” says arsenic is a cancer maker and is associated with bitumen production.
Bitumen is a various mixture of hydrocarbons (as tar) often together with their non-metallic derivative that occur naturally or are obtained as residue after heat-refining into petroleum. Nikiforuk stated, “The more you process those deposits the more you are going to bring arsenic, lead, and heavy metal to the surface and if you’re not careful over time you will see larger and larger pulses of arsenic and other cancer makers enter waterways.”
Whitefish from Lake Athabasca, collected by Ray Ladouceur, Dec. 2009. (photo courtesy of Kelly/Radmanovich.)
Dr. John O’Connor, a physician at Fort Chipewyan reported that he has seen a high number of lupus, rheumatoid arthritis and cancers in patients. “Statistically I am not supposed to see but one in 100,000. It is certainly one that can be connected to toxins in the environment.” He admitted testing is not being done in the community on the health tragedies regarding the environmental dangers.
Instead of health studies he then found accusations against him and had to leave his practice. The reason? “Raising undue alarm.”
Dr. Gina Solomon a professor of medicine at the University of California stated she looked into the elevated cancer cases in that area and found a soft tissue sarcoma cancer that is linked with exposure to oil and petroleum products. It is a tragic and fatal cancer. She said it surprising to see even two cases in a small town.
Price emphasized that we are down river of the tar sands and it’s a matter of time that our environment and treaty rights within the U.S. will be effected.
The 1,179 mile pipeline is expected to cross Montana and South Dakota before reaching Nebraska, to where it will then reach the Gulf.
According to the Associated Press, federal agencies have until early May to comment on the State Department report before Secretary of State John Kerry makes a recommendation to Obama on whether the project is in the national interest. State Department approval is needed because the pipeline crosses a U.S. border.
President Obama told governors at a White House meeting on Monday that he expects to decide on the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline in the next few months.


cancer cells 88.
(photo credit: )
The detailed mechanisms controlling metastasis of breast cancer cells have been discovered by Weizmann Institute of Science researchers in Rehovot.
Their findings - just published on-line in Nature Cell Biology - are said to contribute significantly to the understanding of how cancer cells detach from the original tumor and spread via the bloodstream to other parts of the body. In the future their research may help in the development of anti-cancer drugs.
"The mechanism we identified is clinically important," said the team leader, Prof. Yosef Yarden of the institute's department of biological regulation.
For a cancer cell to migrate, it must first detach itself from neighboring cells and the intercellular material to which it is anchored. Before it can do this, Yarden said, it receives an order from outside the cell - like an officer might tell his soldiers - saying: "Prepare to move."
This order comes in the form of a substance called a growth factor, which induces a number of significant other changes in the cell, including cell division and differentiation. The growth factor attaches to a receptor on the cell membrane, initiating a sequence of changes in the cellular structure.
The cell's internal skeleton - an assembly of densely packed protein fibers - comes apart, and the protein fibers then form thin threads on the outside of the cell membrane that push the cell away from its neighbors. In addition, the levels of a number of proteins change; some get produced in higher quantities and some in less.
Researchers first mapped all the genetic changes that occur in the cell after the growth factor signal is received. As they sifted through the enormous amount of data, including details on every protein level that went up or down, one family of proteins stood out: tensins, which are proteins that stabilize the cell structure.
But to the scientists' surprise, the changes were inconsistent. While the amount of one family member rose dramatically, the level of another dropped.
The researchers discovered that despite the familial similarity, the two proteins actually had opposite roles. The protein that drops off has two arms. One arm attaches to the protein fibers forming the skeleton, and the other anchors itself to the cell membrane, stabilizing the cell's structure.
The protein that increases is made up of one short arm that only attaches to the anchor point on the cell membrane. Rather than offer structural support, this protein acts as a kind of plug, blocking the anchor point and allowing the skeletal protein fibers to unravel into the threads that push the cells apart. The cell is then free to move and, if it's a cancer cell, to metastasize to a new site in the body.
In experiments with genetically engineered cells, the scientists showed that the growth factor directly influenced levels of both proteins, and that these controlled the cells' ability to migrate. Blocking production of the short tensin protein kept cells in their place, while overproduction of this protein plug increased their migration.
The scientists' next step was to perform tests on tumor samples taken from 300 patients with inflammatory breast cancer, a rare but swift and deadly form of the disease that has been linked with elevated growth factor levels.
The scientists found a strong correlation between high growth factor activity and levels of the "plug" protein. High levels of this protein were associated with cancer metastasis to the lymph nodes - the first station for migrating cancer cells as they spread to other parts of the body.
In another experiment, the scientists examined the effects of drugs that block growth factor receptors on the cell membrane. In patients who received these drugs, the harmful "plug" proteins had disappeared from the cancer cells.
The researchers hope that this discovery may aid in the development of drugs to prevent or reduce the production of the unwanted protein, and thus prevent metastasis in breast or other cancers.
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Stainless steel hexagonal screws are the most frequently used type of stainless steel standard parts, and their main function of external threads is to fit with nuts. By using this threaded connection method, the two parts are integrated.
Material: SUS304/SUS316 stainless steel The current production or sales of stainless steel hexagonal screws and the standards used include:
Hexagonal head full tooth stainless steel screw DIN933/GB5783/ISO4017/ANSIB18.2/1/JISB1180
Hexagonal head half tooth stainless steel screw DIN931/GB5782/ISO4014/ANSIB18.21/JISB1180
Hexagon SUS316 stainless steel screw, thin stem half tooth stainless steel screw GB5784
The above two types of half tooth screws, although both are half teeth, can be divided into thick and thin rods. The thick rod half tooth refers to stainless steel screws that have a larger polished rod diameter than the polished rod diameter before tooth rubbing. Taking M8 screws as an example, the polished rod diameter before tooth rubbing is 7.85mm~8.0mm, the polished rod diameter is 7.0mm~7.05mm, and the outer diameter of the teeth after tooth rubbing is 7.85mm~9.95mm, which is similar to the polished rod diameter. To the naked eye, the outer diameters of the two appear to be on the same outer plane; The so-called thin rod half tooth refers to the smooth rod with a tooth diameter of 7.0-7.05 before tooth rubbing. After tooth rubbing, the outer diameter expands to 7.85-9.95, while the smooth rod remains unchanged. To the naked eye, the tooth diameter appears thicker than the smooth rod. Of course, we can also conclude that the DIN931 standard stainless steel thick rod half tooth screw is more expensive than the DIN933 stainless steel thin rod half tooth stainless steel screw in terms of cost.