July 8, 2012
Fact Sheet on Infectious Salmon Anemia (ISA)
CLICK HERE to download this information sheet as a pdf.
Infectious Salmon Anemia (ISA) is a serious but manageable virus that occurs in nature and can also affect salmon farms. A recent confirmation by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) of ISA in Newfoundland and Labrador is the first of its kind in this province and has sparked media attention and some discussion and confusion in the community.
While all salmon farming companies view ISA as a serious virus, they have lived with and managed ISA for many years. This recent confirmation by CFIA of the presence of ISA on the Butter Cove site owned and operated by Gray Aqua Group shows that the surveillance and fish health program is working. Both levels of government and all companies are taking the necessary actions to manage the virus and to prevent its spread.
Here are quick facts on ISA:
- ISA is a natural virus, not something created by salmon farming
- ISA can be a serious threat but since we know it is in the environment we have learned how to test for it and manage it
- Although this is the first case in Newfoundland and Labrador, ISA has been confirmed recently in Nova Scotia, and through effective management strategies in New Brunswick, it has not been detected since 2006
- The confirmation of ISA in Newfoundland and Labrador shows that fish health monitoring is effective
- There remains no clinical signs of the virus on this site and so early detection allows the company to take precautionary and preventative measures to minimize the potential spread to other farming sites
- Ongoing monitoring and fish health sampling continues on all farms in the region. If further cases of ISA are detected, the same aggressive and proactive steps will be taken by industry in collaboration with the Province of NL and CFIA
- This confirmation of ISA in Newfoundland and Labrador is viewed as a part of farming on the East Coast – industry does not take this virus lightly but are confident it can be managed
- The aquaculture industry remains committed to its expansion and development plans on the South Coast of Newfoundland and Labrador
For more information, the following Q&A provides answers to some of the most common questions about ISA…
1. What is ISA?
Infectious Salmon Anemia (ISA) is a naturally occurring virus that spreads slowly and is present in wild fish in many parts of the world, including eastern Canada and the United States. While ISA is harmful to salmon, it poses no risks to human health.
2. Is the ISA virus harmful to humans?
No. While ISA is harmful to salmon, it poses no risks to human health.
3. Does ISA pose a threat to fish species other than salmon?
No. Veterinarians and scientists say that ISA poses no known threat to other fish species such as lobster, herring or cod. Although herring and cod can carry the virus, there is no adverse affect.
4. Doesn’t the fact that we suspect ISA prove that farming salmon is not safe?
No. Like all farmers we are affected by environmental conditions and the natural presence of parasites, viruses and pathogens. ISA is a virus that spreads slowly and is present in wild fish in many parts of the world, including eastern Canada and the United States. Rigorous testing and monitoring is in place to detect the presence of viruses as quickly as possible. That is what happened in NL recently.
5. What is industry doing to control ISA?
Evidence of ISA has existed in the wild fishery on the east coast for over 100 years. Since 1996 when ISA was first identified on New Brunswick salmon farms, farmers have worked with scientists, veterinarians and government to manage and prevent outbreaks and stop the virus from spreading. Through effective management strategies in New Brunswick, it has not been detected since 2006.
The New Brunswick salmon farming industry responded to the threat of ISA by developing a bay management area system and strict bio-security protocols for all farming, processing and fish transportation operations as well as the designation of wharves for specific activities and guidelines for vessel traffic. The Newfoundland and Labrador industry is learning from the experiences in other regions and are implementing strict bio-security protocols to minimize the potential threat of ISA in this province.
6. How do salmon farmers manage ISA?
Company veterinarians, biologists and oceanographic specialists and Provincial and Federal veterinarians and regulators provide advice and oversight on our everyday farming practices. Farmers follow innovative farming techniques such as area management, single year stocking, crop rotation, fallowing of farms between crops and strict bio-security protocols to keep fish healthy until they are ready for harvest. If ISA is suspected they take aggressive measures like culling a cage as a preventative measure.
7. What does this ISA virus detection mean for the public? Are the fish in the area at risk?
ISA is a naturally occurring virus that exists in the wild fishery and can also affect salmon farms. While it is harmful to salmon, ISA poses no risk to humans or to other species such as lobster, herring and cod. The ongoing testing and surveillance work of the CFIA and the provincial regulators make sure any new evidence of the virus is detected immediately and proactive measures are taken to prevent spread.
8. What does this ISA virus detection and the loss of the fish on this site mean for the development plans in NL?
While this is an unfortunate event, it is part of the farming business and industry has managed through many challenges like ISA over the years while remaining a successful Atlantic Canadian industry. The industry has strategically diversified in terms of geography, products and markets and is therefore in a strong position to deal with business and farming challenges. All companies remain committed to their NL expansion plans.
9. Why is Salmon Farming Important to NL and to Atlantic Canada for that matter?
Salmon farming has become critical to the social and economic fabric of rural Atlantic Canada. We already provide thousands of good direct and indirect jobs and have the capacity to do so much more. We not only offer high quality, healthy and nutritious food for the Canadian and US marketplace, we offer stability to a region that has been hard hit by economic decline and job losses. Aquaculture is building on the region’s marine and agriculture heritage and is becoming the new ‘traditional’ food sector.
July 1, 2012
NEWFOUNDLAND AQUACULTURE INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION
COLD HARVEST 2013
20th Annual Conference & Trade Show
February 19th – 21st
REFLECTING ON THE PAST, EMBRACING A PROMISING FUTURE
Wednesday, February 20th: Plenary Sessions, NAIA AGM
Thursday, February 21st: Plenary Sessions, Conference & Tradeshow end, Aquaculture Banquet, John Shehann Entertainment
- Industry-led Discussions of Both Shellfish and Finfish Aquaculture in NL
- Provincial Programs Update from the NL Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture
- Shellfish and Finfish Technical Sessions and much more!
- Luncheon with Guest Speaker
- 2013 Aquaculturist of the Year Award Presentation
- Annual Joe Brown Silent Auction, Social Events and more!
- Two conference registration passes (does not include banquet tickets).
- Business profile and a business card size color ad in the Cold Harvester magazine – conference program. (If space is booked before January 11th)
- Scheduled visits/networking breaks in the trade show area.
- Visitors from the Joe Brown Silent Auction which will also be held in the trade show area.
- Acknowledgement on NAIA website.
TRADE SHOW EXHIBITORS
Department of Fisheries & Aquaculture – Aquaculture Branch
Department of Innovation Business & Rural Development
Fisheries & Oceans Canada – Aquaculture Research Section
Silk Stevens Ltd.
Workplace, Health, Safety & Compensation Commission
Marine Institute of Memorial University of NL
Trinav Fisheries Consultants Inc.
(Check back soon for updates)
— A TREMENDOUS THANK YOU IS EXTENDED TO OUR PARTNERS AND SPONSORS THIS YEAR —
PLATINUM PLUS SPONSORS
Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency
Department of Fisheries & Aquaculture
Northern Harvest Sea Farms
Barry Group Inc.
Cold Ocean Salmon Inc.
Town of Grand Falls-Windsor
Canadian Center for Fisheries Innovation
Gray Aqua Group Ltd.
Canadian Aquaculture Industry Alliance/Agriculture and Agrifoods Canada
Go Deep International
Novartis Animal Health Canada Inc.
NUTRITION BREAK SPONSORS
Gray Aqua Group (2)
Gray Aqua Group Ltd.
Northern Harvest Sea Farms
Cooke Aquaculture/Cold Ocean Salmon
Nova Fish Farms
May 25, 2011
“As the aquaculture industry sets record production values, the Newfoundland Aquaculture Industry Association (NAIA) will use a $200,633 investment from the Provincial Government to continue workforce training and skill development. The continued development of a highly-skilled workforce creates a solid foundation on which the industry can continue to grow and prosper.”
Click HERE to read the full release


When asthma makes it hard to breathe, the impact on your ability to participate in your regular activities is enormous. Life can still go about as normally as it ever would, even with something as serious as asthma holding you back. Continue reading to learn from the advice within this article, giving you a chance to live with asthma and don’t let it control you.
Keep track of how often allergies trigger asthma attacks. If you experience two or more asthma attacks a week after taking allergy medicine, switch to a different allergy medication. Doctors agree that having more than two attacks a week can be dangerous.
Keep your home clean and well swept. You should wash sheets, pillows, and blankets very frequently. By doing this, you get rid of dust and dust mites. Both of these things can trigger an asthma attack. When dust builds, the air becomes much more irritating to those with asthma and can raise the chances of an attack.
Asthma sufferers will need to gradually adjust to physical exercise, warming up adequately prior and cooling down as fast as possible afterwards. Doing both will help you avoid experiencing asthma symptoms while exercising or after exercising.
Avoid aggravating your asthma condition while sleeping by covering your mattress and pillows with plastic before putting clean linens on. You could reduce the potential impact of these asthma inducers by cleaning your sheets regularly. Fresh bed linens, washed regularly, will ensure that you can breathe a little easier while you sleep.
If you have asthma, it might be helpful for you to buy a dehumidifier. When you use a dehumidifier, it will reduce the amount of dust mites. This will reduce asthma attacks. Dehumidifiers eliminate your home’s humidity, leaving dry air.
It is important to visit with your doctor often, every two months or so, in order to stay on top of your asthma. Your physician needs to evaluate how you are right now, and decide if any changes need to be made. The responsibility of scheduling these appointments falls on you. Make sure you attend each and every one so that your doctor can stay updated on how your treatment plan is working in order to help you remain healthy.
If you tend to suffer from any allergies or asthmatic conditions, always clean vaporizers very thoroughly, as well humidifiers and any associated apparatus. Permitting bacteria to grow inside the appliance will result in irritants being dispersed into the air you breathe.
You should avoid smoking at all costs and being exposed to vapors and perfumes if you suffer from asthma. Stay away from jobs that would expose you to toxic or heavy vapors, and refrain from any tobacco use.
For those who have asthma, the safest choice is to stick with unscented products. Scented products, like air fresheners, incense and perfume, raise indoor pollution levels and can trigger asthma attacks. Newly installed carpet or fresh paint in the home are both known to release chemical irritants. Keep your indoor air clean and free of pollutants to stay healthy.
Unfortunately, asthma sufferers must realize that their condition is chronic which requires ongoing treatment. It is crucial that you have the proper medications for controlling asthma, as well as medication, such as a rescue inhaler to treat sudden attacks. A variety of options are available for the treatment of asthmatic attacks. Consult your doctor and an allergist.
Asthma usually takes an extended interval of time to fully develop, and the warning signs are rarely obvious. There are actually many people that have passed away from an asthma attack without ever knowing they were even at risk. Given that fact, if you have any kind of consistent cough or respiratory ailments, consulting a physician for testing is a good idea, since you want to know if you are suffering from asthma and if so, what to do about it.
While asthma is condition that lasts a lifetime, it can be made easier to manage by following the advice from your doctor and articles such as this one. New medications and treatments are always under development, and hopefully a cure for asthma is not far off.


March 12, 2012
New Study Examines How Medical Symptoms Presented Online Makes A Difference In Health-Care Choices
A new study examines how symptoms presented online influence people's reactions to possible medical conditions
Maybe you've had a reoccurring sore throat or frequent headaches. Perhaps the pain in your leg won't go away. In the past, you might have gone to a doctor's office to diagnose symptoms.Today, people are more likely to go online to punch in their symptoms.
Details of a new study examining how symptoms presented online influence people's reactions to possible medical conditions will be presented in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Researchers found that identifying symptoms in "streaks" - sequences of consecutive items on a list that are either general or specific - prompted people to perceive higher disease risk than symptoms that were not identified in an uninterrupted series.
The research was conducted by Arizona State University Associate Psychology Professor Virginia Kwan, Sean Wojcik of the University of California, Irvine, Talya Miron-shatz of Ono Academic College, Ashley Votruba of ASU, and Christopher Olivola of the University of Warwick.
"A recent report by the Health Information National Trends Survey examined the use of Internet in seeking cancer-related information. More than 60 percent of individuals who are feeling ill go to the Internet to search for health information. Many decide to go to the doctor or not based on what they learn online," Kwan said. "This is really an era of self-diagnosis. To our knowledge, our study is the first to examine the impact of online presentation formats on medical decision making."
The research team reviewed the symptom presentations of the 12 deadliest forms of cancer for either males or females on five reputable cancer websites. All of the sites varied in how symptoms were given with some in bullet points, others in paragraphs, severe and common symptoms listed in varied ways and the number of symptoms.
Two studies were conducted, one where a fictional type of thyroid cancer was presented to study participants with six symptoms listed. Researchers varied the way the symptoms were presented from three common and frequently experienced symptoms (i.e. — feeling easily fatigued) followed by three specific symptoms (i.e. — lump in neck); another group was presented symptoms with three specific followed by three common; and the third group received a symptoms list with common and specific interspersed. Researchers used the fictional cancer to ensure no one had prior knowledge of symptoms.
Study participants in the first two groups reported similar results, but the perceived medical risk was significantly lower for the last group that received specific and common symptoms that were interspersed.
A second study for a real type of brain cancer reported the same results as the first study, but when the symptom list was expanded to 12, effects of a list of consecutive series of symptoms was diluted.
"The length of the list matters," Kwan said. "This is analogous to a dilution effect. If you don't have that many symptoms, you may not experience concern about getting that disease if you're looking at a long list."
Medical implications of the study include insight into how symptoms may be presented online, depending on goals. For instance, if someone wants to increase awareness of an emerging medical issue that requires treatment, symptoms that are more likely to be checked off in sequence can be grouped together, Kwan said.
According to Votruba, "If there are concerns that the perceptions of disease risk are too high, possibly resulting in over utilization of health services, then symptom lists should alternate common and specific symptoms or create longer symptom lists."
"Previous research shows that perception of risk of disease is a powerful predictor of health preventative behavior (such as going to the doctor)," Kwan said. "How information is presented online will make a substantive difference in behavior."
On the Net:


TUESDAY, June 17, 2008 (HealthDay News) -- The diabetes drug metformin slows the onset of early puberty and reduces the risk of insulin resistance in girls at risk for both conditions, a Spanish study concludes.
"The findings indicate that we can slow down puberty. This is important, because when puberty is faster in girls, the appearance of menses occurs earlier, and this sequence of events may ultimately result in a shorter adult height," senior author Dr. Lourdes Ibanez, of the University of Barcelona, said in a prepared statement.
In addition, getting a first menstrual period before age 12 has been linked to an increased risk of breast cancer, and early puberty is a known risk factor for polycystic ovary syndrome, a common cause of infertility.
The study included 38 girls who had not yet reached puberty but developed pubic hair before the age of 8, which typically means they'll start puberty earlier than their peers. The girls in the study had another risk factor for early puberty: They'd been born small and experienced rapid catch-up growth during infancy, leading to increased belly fat. That put them at increased risk for insulin resistance, a risk factor for type 2 diabetes, according to background information in the study.
The girls were about 8 years old when they were enrolled in the study. They were divided into two groups of 19 - one that received no treatment , and one that received treatment with low-dose metformin once a day for four years.
Compared to the girls who received no treatment, the girls in the treatment group started puberty and menstruation later, gained about 50 percent less fat, and became less insulin resistant. The girls in the treatment group continued to grow taller, while most of the girls in the untreated group had already stopped growing.
The study was presented June 16 at the Endocrine Society's annual meeting, in San Francisco.
The Nemours Foundation has more about puberty.


I thought a short essay on the treatment of holotypes would be worthwhile. In zoological sciences, many of us are involved in describing and naming new species - in order to maintain taxonomic stability, a type specimen must be designated in a new publication naming a new species. In plain english, the type specimen - also known as a holotype - is the specimen demonstrating the physical evidence for which a new species is named upon. Often when a new species is discovered, researchers will leap to name it - so often, we're stuck with a species named upon a single specimen. It happens frequently in paleontology; finding good fossils is (often) more difficult and more dependent upon sheer luck than going out and finding a second specimen of a newly discovered modern species. As a result, much of the vertebrate fossil record is composed of "singletons" - fossil species represented by single specimens. This problematic nature of the vertebrate fossil record is a favored talking point of young earth creationists, and has also unfortunately contributed to the bizarre opinion amongst some radical cladists that ancestor-descendant relationships are impossible to determine in the fossil record. Radical ideas by folks such as Nature editor Henry Gee come to mind, who rejects all non-cladistic methods in paleontology as being unscientific - an easy position to take if used to the fragmentary vertebrate record of singletons, but difficult to maintain in the face of the enormous and densely sampled record of fossil invertebrates (mollusks and foraminifera come to mind, in which non-cladistic methods can identify speciation events and bouts of anagenesis in vertical successions of fossil assemblages).
The typically fragmentary nature of the vertebrate fossil record, and dealing primarily with singletons, can lead one astray. Subdisciplines divorced from extant relatives and flooded with researchers who do not really look at modern species to get an idea of morphological variation - dinosaur paleontology comes to mind - may be dominated by an overabundance of taxonomic "splitters" (disclaimer: I have many friends who are dinosaur paleontologists and have a rather sober idea of morphological variation). For the uninitiated, splitters are researchers who tend to name more species than is probably likely; the opposite are "lumpers", who tend to lump species together into a more reasonable framework of fewer names. Many in biology prefer to use a third but unnamed category for the middle ground - I do not, as I consider the "lumper" category the middle ground, and "extreme lumpers" to be on the other end. One marine mammal related example of an extreme lumper is work by Caretto (1970) who lumped all known fossil balaenopterids into a single subspecies, including fossils now known to likely represent several genera. Most "lumpers" I know tend to use morphological variation in related extant species as a tool for interpreting species-level identifications/naming in the fossil record, which sounds reasonable ("eminently sensible" as my adviser would say) - and so I consider anyone reasonably taking a middle ground approach to fossil identification/naming a lumper (versus an extreme lumper).
Many smaller subdisciplines dominated by just a handful of researchers working more or less "unopposed" (i.e. without professional rivals to rigorously dispute work) may be plagued by splitting until some young turk who's spent more time playing with modern skulls comes along and rewrites everything - this has happened time and again in mammalian paleontology. I won't use any examples close to home as many of those researchers involved are still extant, so this discussion is largely going to consist of hypotheticals.
If you spend too much time looking at a relatively small group of fossils - and don't bother looking at modern specimens of extant relatives to take a stab at what sort of range of morphological variation you ought to expect - it's easy to fall into the trap of "typology". I don't necessarily mean the reliance upon type specimens (although I'll eventually get back to that), and the definition of typology is generally given as "a classification according to general type, especially in archaeology, psychology, or the social sciences." In paleontology, typology is a style of thinking in which every fossil species conforms to a different morphological/anatomical "type" (NOT to be confused with the similarly vaguely defined "kind" from young earth creationism). In other words, it should be relatively easy to identify two fossils (or, alternatively, living individuals) of the same species because according to typological thinking, they should look close to identical. For over a century, this was the founding principle of paleontology in practice: if you find something that looks a little different, it's a new species. Done. That's partially why folks like Cope, Marsh, and Leidy published so many damn papers.
The problem is, and this is a concept well known to most paleontologists - biological entities don't give a shit what you think about them. Domesticated animals and humans are some of the more extreme examples - all breeds of domesticated dogs belong to Canis familiaris and can healthily interbreed, but if the entire species was extinct and all we had were skeletons (no ancient DNA), paleontologists would readily name the skulls of a doberman and a chihuahua as different species. With humans, it's a similar case: obviously we know all extant humans can interbreed, but there is a fair amount of morphological diversity, and the human mind is hard wired to recognize familiar faces and as a result exaggerate differences between different populations of humans. Someone who is familiar with other primates would readily note that all humans share much more in common with one another relative to gorillas and chimpanzees, but someone who only looked at human faces and skulls would tend to focus more on the differences rather than the similarities.
Splitting versus lumping continues to be one of the biggest challenges in paleontology - is the new species you've named real, or is it just a morphological extreme? Or is it the opposite gender in a species that is sexually dimorphic? A recent paper just proposed that the Flores hominin - the "Hobbit", Homo floresiensis - is actually just a Homo sapiens with Down's Syndrome. As more and more paleontologists leave dark dusty fossil collections and dabble in neontology, variation is becoming more and more understood and embraced. In the 19th century, vertebrate zoology and paleontology was figuratively the Wild West (and in the case of Marsh and Cope, quite literally). New species which would later turn out to be junior synonyms were published by the bucketload; reading through Victorian era zoological papers often reeks of taxonomic anarchy, with the proliferation of all sorts of species and genus names no longer in use. In many cases, naturalists genuinely were unaware of some papers and discoveries - some species of modern whales and dolphins were independently named and "discovered" literally dozens of times (from different strandings on different continents) during the late 19th century - that's just one of the many problems facing naturalists in the pre-internet world. Some of the synonymy lists for modern dolphins are astoundingly long.
For those unfamiliar with taxonomy but have continued to read this anyway, one of the most important rules set out by the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) is the rule of priority: the species name published first has taxonomic priority. If you name a second species that turns out to be based on an individual from an already-named species, the earlier published name is used. This also applies to genus names - and can spark "nomenclatural wars" like the Aetogate controversy a few years back. If two researchers investigating the same fossil species, and 1) it is an already described species placed in the wrong genus and a new genus name is needed or 2) both parties have found separate fossils of the same, as yet unnamed species - whoever publishes the new name first "wins", so to speak - all other considerations (ethical or otherwise) are irrelevant according to the ICZN. This can both cause extreme tensions in an otherwise small and close knit discipline, or result in the proliferation of synonymous names published in disappointingly brief and poorly figured papers (sometimes called name grabbing, and is the paleontological equivalent of "saving a seat" for yourself).
Now that the discussion of zoological nomenclature has come full circle, it's time to address the title. When in the business of "splitting" and naming new species - particularly when dealing with a record dominated by singletons - it's sort of a no brainer to focus on differences between holotype specimens. There are other types of types - there are paratypes, if you want to clearly designate some key specimens other than a holotype, there are syntypes or cotypes, where a type series is designated but no holotype is selected. There's also lectotypes, where someone selects a single syntype as a retroactive holotype-like designation, and there's also the concept of a neotype - if a type specimen is lost, a neotype conforming enough to the anatomy of the original may be designated afterwards.
But what happens if you have a fossil record that's... better? Admittedly, many parts of the vertebrate fossil record are still awful - but many subsets of the record are pretty damn excellent. What happens when you find a new fossil you think is the same species, but better preserved than the holotype? Paleontologists call these referred specimens - any specimen possessing some evidence that it represents the same species can be considered a referred specimen (e.g. you refer the specimen to a particular taxon). Referred specimens are of immense importance because they can provide 1) information on the anatomy of parts not preserved in the holotype and provide 2) information on anatomical variation for parts that overlap with the holotype. We already know that modern species display an impressive amount of variation, and paleontology is science after all, so in theory we should be using as much evidence as possible to improve our understanding of extinct species in the fossil record.
Some researchers, however, prefer to focus only on holotypes. You can easily lead yourself into a trap where you assume that the holotype specimen either 1) faithfully represents the morphological "type" of a species or 2) faithfully represents the morphological midpoint of a particular species (and is thus not an outlier in terms of its morphology). Both of these are actually pretty terrible assumptions to make, because in the absence of additional specimens, there's no objective way to defend (or even evaluate) either assumption. I've been told to "stick to holotypes" before, and have heard some Researcher A casually dismiss the careful work of Researcher B who referred additional specimens to a species originally named by Researcher A - and the reasoning was that they were dealing with non-types! I've even had some curators and collections managers give me puzzled looks when I asked to see some obscure referred specimen that often gets overlooked by visiting researchers in favor of the (often more incomplete) holotype.
What exactly are type specimens for? What is their purpose? According to the ICZN, type specimens are nothing more than a physical record of a species to which a zoological name may be permanently attached. In fact, the use of many historical names through to the modern day demonstrates that holotypes need not even exist - the sperm whale and narwhal do not have type specimens. Extreme cases like this are "grandfathered" in, so to speak, and this practice is no longer acceptable (nor even recommended). Type specimens can even be a plaster cast of a fossil specimen that does not even exist any more, or a single feather plucked from a newly discovered and named but extraordinarily rare "living type" specimen still flying around in the jungles of Borneo. The holotype specimen of the archaeocete Zygorhiza kochii is a relatively useless and miserable shitty braincase without any redeeming features - nobody uses that specimen, and mostly everybody in our field examines USNM 11962, the "de facto reference specimen" which Remington Kellogg monographed in the 1930's.
If the utility of type specimens has no real scientific basis other than mere housekeeping, then there's no real reason we should exclude non-type specimens. I call this weird practice "holotype worship", and I think it moreso has to relate with stamp collecting rather than actual science. Holotype worship - and typological thinking, I believe, are responsible for resistance to many proposed instances of synonymy - the most famous ones that come to mind are the hypotheses that the horned dinosaur Torosaurus is simply an old adult Triceratops, advanced by my close friend John Scannella at Museum of the Rockies, that Nanotyrannus is a juvenile Tyrannosaurus (advanced by Jack Horner and others), and that the dome-headed dinosaurs Dracorex and Stygimoloch are juvenile Pachycephalosaurus, advanced by Mark Goodwin and Jack Horner. Each of these hypotheses incorporates information past holotypes and "de facto reference specimens", uses a larger body of data, and from additional sources - and as a result, arguably explains the fossil record in a superior manner to hypotheses based on fewer data. As an aside, many young folks I've met who are rabidly against John's Torosaurus-Triceratops synonymy hypothesis come from the fanboy part of the spectrum without a strong educational background in science (other than "dinosaurs are cool, ankylosaurus is my favorite"). Other cases of synonymy more relevant to the subject of this blog are the early pinnipedimorphs Pteronarctos goedertae (1989), Pteronarctos piersoni (1990), and Pacificotaria hadromma - which Annalisa Berta argued in 1994 were a single species, a conclusion I tend to follow.
George Gaylord Simpson challenged the focus on holotypes back in 1940, and even then it was apparent that holotype worship was an antiquated form of research from the prior century. Simpson proposed the concept of the Hypodigm - the complete body of all known material assignable to the species under consideration - in other words, the type and all referred specimens. Many researchers have embraced this 75-year old concept, but in some subdisciplines within paleontology there has been surprising resistance. Many older paleontologists are reluctant to let young turks synonymize some of the species they originally named in the process of cementing a long career. Another pet peeve of mine - and this is particularly relevant to large reviews of various fossil groups - but I've read many papers that flat out only discussed the type species of a particular genus, and ignored those described as additional species within formerly monotypic genera (e.g. a genus with only one species). All fossil species are important! Don't ignore some species just because they were named later (but ignore them if they are synonyms, sure), or worse - don't ignore them because they were named by somebody you don't necessarily like.
Every month I see new papers bringing paleontology into the mid-20th century (and occasionally, late 20th and even 21st centuries) in terms of methods and scope, which gives me hope. Marine mammal paleontology is advancing faster than ever before, largely due to an influx of young researchers attacking new problems with a set of new ideas and tools. Although nearly a century old now, Simpson's idea of the Hypodigm is still as relevant as ever yet hasn't caught on as much as it should. Do your part to help stop "holotype worship" - and use as many specimens as are available!
Berta, A. 1994. New Specimens of the Pinnipediform Pteronarctos from the Miocene of Oregon. Smithsonian Contributions to Paleobiology 78:1-30.
Caretto, P. G. 1970. La balenottera delle sabbie plioceniche di Valmontasca (Vigliano d’Asti). Boll. Soc.
Paleontol. 9: 3–75.
Simpson, G.G. 1940. Types in modern taxonomy. American Journal of Science. 238: 413-431.


In this section we will download and install the software that emulates a disk drive to the knitting machine. You can run this software on any kind of computer, mac/win/linux
Now that you have the cable running, its time to download the software. Visit the Adafruit github repository and click on Download to download the source code.
This code is based on Steve Conklin's knitting machine code which is totally awesome but doesn't support pattern insertion. Still, check out his site for a lot of detailed information.
Download the file and unzip it into a directory that is easy for you to get to. For windows, we're going to stick the folder in My Documents in a folder called brother but if you are comfortable with command lines put it where-ever you'd like!
You will need Python installed to run the code. To see if you have Python installed, open up a command line and type in python. If you're running Windows you probably don't have it, so download it from the official Python site. You'll also need PySerial (serial interface for python) from http://sourceforge.net/projects/pyserial/
Open up a command line (windows) or Terminal (mac) or xterm (linux) and cd to the brother directory and then type in ls (or dir if ls doesnt work) to list all the files
Now we need to figure out what the name of the FTDI cable is. This process differs a little for Mac, Linux and Windows people.
Under Mac, in the Terminal window, type in ls /dev/cu.* which should give the following responses or so
The name we are looking for is /dev/cu.usbserial-XXXX where the X's are going to be unique for each cable. Copy and paste the name into a text file so you'll remember it for later.
For Linux/Unix type ls /dev/ttyUSB* into a terminal window, you should see a device file called something like ttyUSB0
If you are using Windows, go to the Device Manager (From the Start Menu, select Settings→Control Panel. Double click on System and select the Hardware tab. Then click on the Device Manager button)


Our district is bounded by the south west coast from Redgate beach to Augusta, and eastwards into the Shire of Nannup and including all of the Scott River and bounded in the east by the Donnelly River.
The majority of our district is made of the "Lower Blackwood Catchment", a group of tributaries which drain into the lower reaches of the Blackwood River.
Just before the Blackwood River drains into the Southern Ocean at Augusta, the water pools in what known as the Hardy Inlet. This estuarine system is highly valued, ecologically as a breeding habitat for freshwater fish species and migratory birds, and socially as a summertime recreation area for holiday makers.
Towards a Sustainable Lower Blackwood Region
A whole of landscape perspective
In 2017 the Lower Blackwood Catchment LCDC engaged consultants, Associate Professor Laura Stocker & Dr Gary Burke, to conduct an action research mapping project that would provide us with an overview of the past & current status the district and its community. The information gathered from this action research has given us an amazing insight into our region and, importantly, points to where we could potentially go in the future in terms of sustainable food production & consumption.
Open the viewer to read the full report.
The Full Report
Rural communities and agriculture now more than ever experiencing increased economic, environmental and social pressures. A response to this situation requires a holistic approach to sustainability in the catchment, looking at all aspects of the landscape.
The project's overall aim is to improve understanding of the past and current status of the district and its community, and to create a “Whole of Landscape” framework for better natural resource management outcomes.
Google earth Interactive Map
Material from interviews with community members have been categorised, analysed and excerpts placed into Google Earth balloons to create a fascinating story-map about the Lower Blackwood District.
If you would like to access this interactive map then get in touch, we’ll be happy to share it with you.


Needless to say, before the development and widespread use of photography in mass publications, illustrations provided the only visual accompaniment to religious texts, novels, books of poetry, scientific studies, and magazines literary, lifestyle, and otherwise. The development of techniques like etching, engraving, and lithography enabled artists and printers to better collaborate on more detailed and colorful plates. But whatever the media, behind each of the millions of illustrations to appear in manuscript and print—before and after Gutenberg—there was an artist. And many of those artists’ names are now well known to us as exemplars of graphic art styles.
It was in the 19th century that book and magazine illustration began its golden age. Illustrations by artists like George Cruikshank (see his “’Monstre’ Balloon” above”) were so distinctive as to make their creators famous. The hugely influential English satire magazine Punch, founded in 1841, became the first to use the word “cartoon” to mean a humorous illustration, usually accompanied by a humorous caption. The drawings of Punch cartoons were generally more visually sophisticated than the average New Yorker cartoon, but their humor was often as pithy and oblique. And at times, it was narrative, as in the cartoon below by French artist George Du Maurier.
The lengthy caption beneath Du Maurier’s illustration, “Punch’s physiology of courtship,” introduces Edwin, a landscape painter, who “is now persuading Angelina to share with him the honours and profits of his glorious career, proposing they should marry on the proceeds of his first picture, now in progress (and which we have faithfully represented above).” The humor is representative of Punch’s brand, as is the work of Du Maurier, a frequent contributor until his death. You can find much more of Cruikshank and Du Maurier’s work at Old Book Illustrations, a public domain archive of illustrations from artists famous and not-so-famous. You’ll find there many other resources as well, such as biographical essays and a still-expanding online edition of William Savage’s 1832 compendium of printing terminology, A Dictionary of the Art of Printing.
Old Book Illustrations allows you to download high resolution images of its hundreds of featured scans, “though it appears,” writes Boing Boing, “the scans are sometimes worse-for-wear.” Most of the illustrations also “come with lots of details about their original creation and printing.” You’ll find there many illustrations from an artist we’ve featured here several times before, Gustave Doré (see “Gorgons and Hydras” from his Paradise Lost edition, above). As much as artists like Cruikshank and Du Maurier can be said to have dominated the illustration of periodicals in the 19th century, Doré dominated the field of book illustration. In a laudatory biographical essay on the French artist, Elbert Hubbard writes, “He stands alone: he had no predecessors, and he left no successors.” You’ll find a beautifully, and morbidly, 19th century illustrated edition of 17th century poet Francis Quarles’ Emblems, with pages like that below, illustrating “The Body of This Death.”
Not all of the illustrations at Old Book Illustrations date from the Victorian era, though most do. Some of the more striking exceptions come from Arthur Rackham, known primarily as an early 20th century illustrator of fantasies and folk tales. See his “Pas de Deux” below from his edition of The Ingoldsby Legends. These are but a very few of the many hundreds of illustrations available, and not all of them literary or topical (see, for example, the “Science & Technology” category). Be sure also to check out the OBI Scrapbook Blog, a running log of illustrations from other collections and libraries.
via Boing Boing


Women's Heart Health
Surpassing breast cancer, heart disease is the No. 1 cause of death for women, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Prevention is the best medicine, and there is so much women can do to avoid heart disease.
Too often, women’s heart problems go undiagnosed — because sometimes there are no symptoms or because symptoms go unchecked. Women might not check their symptoms for years, limiting their options by the time they seek treatment. Here are a few tips for women to maintain their heart health:
Get a primary care provider and schedule an annual checkup
Many women have an OB-GYN they see regularly, but it’s less common for women to have a primary care provider (usually an internal or family medicine doctor or nurse practitioner). Annual checkups include the following simple, noninvasive tests that are key to the early detection of heart problems:
- Blood pressure check. High blood pressure has almost no symptoms, but it is easily detected by a test using a blood pressure cuff and a stethoscope.
- Cholesterol check. A blood test for high cholesterol can reveal heart issues.
- Blood sugar check. Catching high blood sugar early makes it easier to treat, delaying or even preventing diabetes and heart disease.
- Weight check. Managing body weight is one of the most important factors that influence heart health. A primary care provider can help set a realistic goal and provide tools for success.
Testing for high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes and heart disease is important because while these conditions may appear on their own, having one makes it more likely that another will appear.
Watch for the warning signs of heart problems
These signs include:
- Shortness of breath during physical activity that goes away while at rest.
- Feeling unusually tired without explanation.
- Unexplained dizziness, light-headedness or nausea that lasts longer than a few days.
- Family history. If any close relatives have heart problems, tell your primary care provider. You could be at greater risk.
- Heart palpitations. Under normal circumstances, you shouldn’t be able to feel or hear your own heart beating. If you do, that can be a serious warning sign, especially if your heartbeat is too fast, too slow or irregular.
You may have all of these symptoms or none at all, which is why screenings are important.
Don’t ignore symptoms
The symptoms of a heart attack can be different for women than men. Here are some heart attack symptoms that women commonly experience:
- Pain or a strange feeling in the back, shoulder, jaw or abdomen.
- Heaviness or aching in either arm.
- Unexplained fainting. This needs to be checked by a medical professional immediately.
- Unexplained vomiting, severe nausea or sweating.
- A feeling of impending doom. Many patients describe this as knowing something very bad is happening, but they can’t explain why.


Learn approaches to help promote biodiversity on the farm while growing biofuel feedstocks.
Corn and soy fields in Minnesota. Photo: US EPA and National Archive and Record Administration; Wikimedia Commons.
Agriculture and Biodiversity
Biodiversity is the variation of life at all levels, from genes to organisms to populations. Healthy ecosystems tend to have greater biodiversity.
Most biofuel feedstocks come from agricultural crops grown in highly disturbed ecosystems with relatively low biodiversity. Agricultural practices that tend to make farms less diverse than wild lands include:
- large monocultures
- fertilizer and pesticide applications
- weed management
Impacts of Biofuels on Biodiversity
A surviving fragment of Amazon rainforest surrounded by cleared farmland in Brazil's Mato Grosso province. NASA image
Using more land to grow biofuel feedstock crops could lead to expansion of cultivated areas, reducing biodiversity by displacing forests, grasslands, peatlands and wetlands. Biofuel crops could also reduce biodiversity through the spread of invasive species intended for biofuel feedstock production and through pollution caused by fertilizers and pesticides used for biofuel crop production (Sala et al. 2009).
Biofuel production could also enhance biodiversity by reducing net carbon emissions from fuel burning, slowing the rate of global climate change (Sala et al. 2009).
Industrial farms tend to be less diverse than native ecosystems. Low-input farms that mimic native ecosystems -- for example, mixed perennial grasses in native grassland -- may be slightly less diverse, while those like corn monoculture in native forestland dramatically disturb their native ecosystems. Figure modified from Vandermeer and Perfecto (1995) by Michael Bomford.
A range of alternative approaches to biofuel feedstock production could conserve biodiversity:
- Establishment of biofuel production systems that mimic a region's native ecosystems (Vandermeer & Perfecto 1995, Tilman et al. 2006)
Organic and low-input production of biofuel feedstock crops (Ziesemer 2007).
- Growing mixtures of biofuel feedstock crops instead of monocultures (Tilman et al. 2006, Ranganathan et al. 2007).
- Using perennials for biofuel feedstock instead of annuals (Tilman et al. 2006).
- Growing biofuel crops on small acreages on diversified farms (Sala et al. 2009).
- Using organic waste for biofuel feedstock instead of dedicated crops.
- Rotating annual feedstock crops.
For Additional Information
- Jai Ranganathan, R.J. Ranjit Daniels, M.D. Subash Chandran, Paul Ehrlich, and Gretchen Daily. 2008. Sustaining biodiversity in ancient tropical countryside. PNAS 105: 17852-17854.
- Osvaldo E. Sala, Dox Sax, and Heather Leslie. 2009. Biodiversity Consequences of Increased Biofuel Production. pp. 127-137 In R.W. Howarth and S. Bringezu [eds]. Biofuels: Environmental Consequences and Interactions with Changing Land Use. Cornell University.
- John Vandermeer and Ivette Perfecto. 1995. Breakfast of Biodiversity: The Political Ecology of Rainforest Destruction. Food First, Oakland, CA.
- Jodi Ziesemer. 2007. Energy Use in Organic Food Systems. Natural Resources Management and Environmental Department, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
- David Tilman, Jason Hill,and Clarence Lehman. 2006. Carbon-Negative Biofuels from Low-Input High-Diversity Grassland Biomass. Science 314: 1598-1600.
Mike Morris, National Center For Appropriate Technology (ATTRA)
- Andrew R. Moss, SARE Fellow, University of Maryland


Getting Started with Robot Operating System (ROS) on Raspberry Pi®
This example shows you how to generate and build a standalone ROS node from a Simulink model on the Raspberry Pi hardware.
In this example, you will configure a model to generate C++ code for a standalone ROS node that runs on the Raspberry Pi board. You will use Raspberry Pi Simulink blocks together with a ROS Subscribe block to blink the Raspberry Pi user LED. If you are new to ROS, we strongly recommend reviewing Robotics System Toolbox documentation.
ROS is a communication layer that allows different components of a robot system to exchange information in the form of messages. A component sends a message by publishing it to a particular topic, such as "/odometry". Other components receive the message by subscribing to that topic. The Robotics system toolbox provides an interface between MATLAB and Simulink and the Robot Operating System (ROS) that enables you to test and verify applications on ROS-enabled hardware such as Raspberry Pi. It supports C++ code generation, enabling you to generate a ROS node from a Simulink model and deploy it to a ROS network.
In this example, you will learn how to:
- Set up the ROS environment on the Raspberry Pi board
- Create and run a Simulink model on the Raspberry Pi board to send and receive ROS messages
- Work with data in ROS messages
- This example requires Robotics Toolbox™.
- Review the Get Started with ROS example
- Review the Get Started with ROS in Simulink®(Robotics System Toolbox) example.
To run this example you need the following hardware:
- Raspberry Pi board
We strongly recommend a Raspberry Pi 2 board when working with ROS.
Task 1 - Get Started
The Raspbian Linux image provided by the Simulink Support Package for Raspberry Pi hardware includes a ROS Indigo installation. In this task, you will start a ROS master on the host computer and send messages to Raspberry Pi hardware using ROS communication interface.
1. First, start a ROS master on the host computer:
rosinit('NodeHost',<IP address of your computer>)
For example, if the IP address of your host computer is 10.10.10.2, use the following command:
2. Use rosnode list to see all nodes in the ROS network. Note that the only available node is the global MATLAB node created by rosinit.
Next, list the available ROS topics:
The output should just list /rosout topic used for console log messages.
3. Create an interactive Linux shell terminal to communicate with your Raspberry Pi board:
r = raspberrypi openShell(r)
The commands above will log you in with your username and password. Note that in the rest of this example, we assume that you logged in with the default username for the Raspbian Linux, pi.
4. On the interactive Linux command shell, initialize ROS environment and set the ROS master to the IP address of the host computer and monitor messages coming from the host computer using:
pi@raspberrypi:~ $ source ~/catkin_ws/devel/setup.bash pi@raspberrypi:~ $ export ROS_MASTER_URI=http://<Enter your host computer's IP address>:11311 pi@raspberrypi:~ $ rostopic echo /rosout
The last command does not return and waits for a new message published to the /rosout topic. On the MATLAB command line, execute the following commands to see that your Raspberry Pi has subscribed to the /rosout topic:
rostopic info /rosout
The IP address of your Raspberry Pi board should show up in the subscriber list.
5. To publish a log message to the /rosout topic from the host computer, execute the following commands on the MATLAB prompt:
b = rospublisher('/rosout'); msg = rosmessage(b); msg.Msg = 'Hello Raspberry Pi!' send(b,msg);
When the send(b,msg) is executed, you should see that the contents of the message you sent from your host computer is printed on the Raspberry Pi Linux shell.
6. Execute a Ctrl+C On the Raspberry Pi Linux command shell to stop listening messages published to /rosout topic.
Task 2 - Configure a Model to Generate a ROS Node
In this task, you will configure a model to generate C++ code for a standalone ROS node that runs on your Raspberry Pi board.
1. Open the Raspberry Pi Getting Started with ROS model.
2. Click on Simulation > Model Configuration Parameters and follow the steps illustrated in the diagram below to configure the model to generate a ROS node for Raspberry Pi:
Review the settings in the Hardware Implementation pane of the Configuration Parameters dialog, The Hardware board settings section contains settings specific to the generated ROS package, such as information to be included in the package.xml file, ROS Catkin workspace being used for model build, etc. In
3. The model is configured to generate a ROS node in the ROS Catkin workspace, ~/catkin_ws, and automatically deploy to the Raspberry Pi board. Click on Build Model button to start deployment process.
Click on the View Diagnostics link at the bottom of the model toolbar to see the output of the build process.
Task 3 - Run and Verify the ROS Node
In this task, you will run the newly-built ROS node and verify its behavior using a MATLAB command line interface for ROS.
1. Raspberry Pi Getting Started with ROS model receives messages published on the /led topic and sets the state of the Raspberry Pi user LED based on the contents of this message. First, verify that a new topic called /led has been generated:
rostopic info /led
You should see the IP address of your Raspberry Pi in the subscribers list.
2. Create a ROS publisher for the /led topic:
b = rospublisher('/led')
The publisher b uses std_msgs/Bool message type to represent the on / off state of the LED.
3. Send messages to Raspberry Pi board to blink the user LED for 10 seconds with a period of 0.5 second:
msg = rosmessage(b); for k = 1:10 msg.Data = 1; send(b,msg); pause(0.5); msg.Data = 0; send(b,msg); pause(0.5); end
4. Once you are done verifying the ROS node, stop it by executing the following on the MATLAB prompt:
You can re-start the ROS node at any time by executing the following command on the MATLAB prompt:
The second argument specifies the Catkin workspace used to build the ROS node.
Advanced Topics and Troubleshooting
Raspberry Pi ROS Indigo Installation The Raspbian Linux image provided by the Simulink Support Package for Raspberry Pi Hardware includes a ROS Indigo installation. A the time of writing, there were no binary packages available for ROS Indigo. Hence ROS Indigo was installed from sources following the instructions provided here. To keep the ROS Indigo installation small, only roscomm, std_msgs, geometry_msgs and sensor_msgs ROS packages have been installed. An installation script has been provided to document the steps taken for installation. A ROS Catkin workspace has been created for installation in the home directory of the default user pi. This workspace is called ros_catkin_ws. A second workspace has been created to build Simulink models, catkin_ws. You should use the catkin_ws as your default Simulink model workspace to reduce compilation time. Use ros_catkin_ws only to add new packages to the existing ROS distribution (see below).
Adding New Packages to ROS A script called install_ros_package.sh has been provided to help adding new ROS packages to the existing installation. To use this script to add nav_msgs package, for example, follow the procedure below:
On the MATLAB prompt:
r = raspberrypi; installScript = fullfile(codertarget.raspi.internal.getSpPkgRootDir,'src','install_ros_package.sh'); putFile(r,installScript); system(r,['chmod u+x ' installScript]); openShell(r)
On the Linux shell:
Note that this command may take several minutes. Some ROS packages may require additional dependencies in the form of Linux packages such as collada-dom. You may need to manually install the required Linux packages. For example, to install collada-dom follow the procedure below on a Linux shell:
mkdir ~/ros_catkin_ws/external_src sudo apt-get -y install checkinstall cmake sudo sh -c 'echo "deb-src http://mirrordirector.raspbian.org/raspbian/ testing main contrib non-free rpi" >> /etc/apt/sources.list' sudo apt-get update cd ~/ros_catkin_ws/external_src sudo apt-get -y install libboost-filesystem-dev libxml2-dev wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/collada-dom/Collada%20DOM/Collada%20DOM%202.4/collada-dom-2.4.0.tgz tar -xzf collada-dom-2.4.0.tgz cd collada-dom-2.4.0 cmake . sudo checkinstall -y make install
Starting a ROS Master on Raspberry Pi The raspberrypi object provides two methods to start and stop a ROS master on the Raspberry Pi board:
To start a ROS master on the Raspberry Pi, execute the following on the MATLAB prompt:
r = raspberrypi; startroscore(r);
To stop the roscore application running on the Raspberry Pi:
When using a ROS master running on your Raspberry Pi, set ROS Master network address for simulation accordingly:
This example showed you how to configure a Simulink model to generate C++ code for a standalone ROS node that runs on Raspberry Pi hardware. It also showed how to with the ROS node running on the Raspberry Pi hardware using MATLAB command line interface for ROS.


Speaker cautions local high school students about spending too much screen time on their devices
“The average 18-year-old is on pace to spend 94% of their remaining free time in life consuming online entertainment.”
That was a statement made by Dino Ambrosi, the founder of Project Reboot, who held a three-day seminar this week about screen time at the Mental Wellness Center in Santa Barbara. Meeting with about a dozen local high school students, Mr. Ambrosi sought to encourage them to be more mindful of the amount of time they’re spending on technology — particularly social media platforms — as well as strategies to help them in overall time management skills.
The concept of Project Reboot was born out of a course Mr. Ambrosi started and first taught as a senior at UC Berkeley, which he says has helped students cut down three-and-a-half hours on average of their daily use of technology. The course itself, which is still offered at the university, was inspired by his own struggles with phone addiction while he was a college student.
“I’m on a mission to help as many high school and college students as I possibly can build healthy relationships with tech,” Mr. Ambrosi told the News-Press Wednesday. “I had a really unhealthy relationship with my phone when I went to college. I just didn’t do a good job of handling the discomfort that came with that transition.
“Your phone is a 24/7 source of instant gratification that’s in your pocket at all times. I was just habitually turning to it, and it really messed up my college experience.”
One of the lessons that Mr. Ambrosi seeks to impart to people is that they think critically about the value they get out of using social media.
“The incentives of social media companies are not aligned with your best interests, whatsoever,” Mr. Ambrosi said. “If you don’t think carefully about how you want to interact with these platforms, you’re going to spend way more time on them than they really deserve because they have some of the world’s leading psychologists and access to trillions of points of data on user behavior to figure out how to keep you scrolling.”
“Define why you use the app in one sentence, and set a clear intention for how much of your time the value that app adds is actually worth,” he instructed.
Technology addiction has received increased attention over the years as medical professionals, tech researchers and elected officials try to make sense of how technology’s overuse is affecting people, especially teenagers and young adults.
“Young people themselves describe it in plain words that they know social media not only drains their personal time, but also their energy and that it has a direct impact on their own feelings of mental wellness,” said Mental Wellness Center CEO Annamarie Cameron. “We also hear a lot from parents about their concerns about it. So it’s clear, there’s no debate that it’s an issue that needs to be explored and given strategies.”
Dawson Kelly, a senior at San Marcos High School who will be serving as Associated Student Body president in the upcoming school year, was involved in bringing Project Reboot to Santa Barbara because he saw the impact of overusing social media in himself and among his peers.
“I believe that I have a pretty bad relationship with technology, and I think most of my peers do too,” Dawson told the News-Press. “It’s hard to recognize it when it’s so normalized. I think we’re all practicing bad habits but we’re allowing them to continue because we’re not talking about them — and when we do talk about them, we’re not actually owning up to it affecting our lives as much as it is.”
Dawson was also clear that the issue with social media overuse was much deeper than just the way it drains his and his peers’ time.
“A lot of my friends have negative images of their bodies because of social media,” he explained. “I don’t think that we as humans are meant to see so many people that aren’t in our immediate circle in such a glamorous way. You’re comparing yourself to the top people, and of course, it’s going to affect yourself when that image of what is perfect and what is ideal is constantly being shown to you.”
Reducing screen time is intended to help people effectively use their free time better and avoid the pitfalls of social media. But Mr. Ambrosi also believes that the overuse of technology and social media is preventing people from engaging in what he believes is a critical function for humans: being bored.
“I think people undervalue boredom. There have been a number of studies that show that spending more time alone with your thoughts makes you more creative,” he said. “Our brain changes based on how we use it, and when we cut out an activity like sitting alone with our thoughts, we’re decaying the neural circuits that run when we do that activity.”
“It’s almost like when you avoid thinking and processing emotions,” he explained. “It’s like you have this list of unread emails that’s piling up. And all of sudden your inbox is completely overflowing, and I feel that is at the root of a lot of the anxiety that people are feeling is that they’ve got this huge list of essentially unread messages that they’ve been avoiding by distracting themselves.”
However, Mr. Ambrosi makes clear that he’s not an advocate for completely ridding oneself of technology and social media, only that people engage with them in a healthy way.
“(Smart phones) are the best tools we’ve ever had access to, and thinking that completely getting rid of them is the right way to cope with the fact that they’re really easy to use unintentionally is a huge mistake,” he told the News-Press. “The biggest thing is to really think critically about what it is that you get out of these social media apps.”


Cleaning and Prevention
Oral Health for Overall Health
Proper oral cleaning and prevention does not only prevent cavities and periodontal disease but perhaps more importantly also affects our overall health and well-being.
A preventive program is a cooperative effort by the patient, dentist, and dental staff to preserve teeth supporting structures by preventing the onset, progress, and recurrence of dental disease.
This program starts at home with good oral hygiene and a balanced diet. It is continued in the dental office by our efforts to promote, restore, and maintain your oral health.
Dental cleaning and prevention also includes regular dental exams, cleanings, and x-rays.
Prevention helps avoid serious and costly dental problems and is the key to having a healthy, confident, beautiful smile.
We will perform a comprehensive dental exam at your initial dental visit. A regular check-up exam will include the following:
- Examination of diagnostic x-rays (radiographs): Essential for detection of decay, tumors, cysts, and bone loss. X-rays also help determine tooth and root positions.
- Oral cancer screening: Check the face, neck, lips, tongue, throat, tissues, and gums for any signs of oral cancer.
- Gum disease evaluation: Check the gums and bone around the teeth for any signs of periodontal disease.
- Examination of tooth decay: We check all tooth surfaces are for decay with special dental instruments.
- Examination of existing restorations: Check current fillings, crowns, etc.
Professional Dental Cleaning and Prevention
Professional dental cleanings (scaling and root planning) are performed by Registered Dental Hygienists. Your cleaning appointment will include the following:
- Removal of calculus (tartar): Calculus is hardened plaque that has been left on the tooth for some time and is now firmly attached to the tooth surface. Calculus forms above and below the gum line and can only be removed with special dental instruments.
- Removal of plaque: Plaque is a sticky, almost invisible film that forms on the teeth. It is a growing colony of living bacteria, food debris, and saliva. The bacteria produce toxins that inflame the gums. This inflammation is the start of periodontal disease!
- Teeth polishing: Remove stain and plaque that is not otherwise removed during tooth brushing and scaling.
Digital radiography (digital x-ray) is the latest technology used to take dental x-rays. This technique uses an electronic sensor (instead of x-ray film) that captures and stores the digital image on a computer. This image can be instantly viewed and enlarged helping us detect problems easier. Digital x-rays reduce radiation 40-60% compared to the already low exposure of traditional dental x-rays. Because we avoid the use of chemicals, digital x-rays are better for the environment. Dental x-rays are essential, preventative, diagnostic tools that provide valuable information not visible during a regular dental exam. We use this information to safely and accurately detect hidden dental abnormalities and complete an accurate treatment plan. Without x-rays, problem areas may go undetected. Dental X-rays may reveal:
- Abscesses or cysts
- Bone loss
- Cancerous and non-cancerous tumours
- Decay between the teeth
- Developmental abnormalities
- Poor tooth and root positions
- Problems inside a tooth or below the gum line
Detecting and treating dental problems at an early stage may save you time, money, unnecessary discomfort, and your teeth!
Are Dental X-Rays Safe?
We are all exposed to natural radiation in our environment. Digital x-rays produce a significantly lower level of radiation compared to traditional dental x-rays. Even though digital x-rays produce a low level of radiation and are considered very safe, we still take necessary precautions to limit the patient’s exposure to radiation. These precautions include only taking those x-rays that are necessary, and using lead apron shields to protect the body.
How Often Should You Have Dental X-Rays?
The need for dental x-rays depends on each patient’s individual dental health needs. Therefore, a full mouth series of dental x-rays is recommended for all new patients and is recommended to be taken every five years. Bite-wing x-rays (x-rays of top and bottom teeth biting together) are taken at recall (check-up) visits and are recommended once a year to detect new dental problems.
A sealant is a thin, plastic coating applied to the chewing surface of molars, premolars and any deep grooves (called pits and fissures) of teeth. More than 75% of dental decay begins in these deep grooves. Teeth with these conditions are hard to clean and are very susceptible to decay. A sealant protects the tooth by sealing deep grooves, creating a smooth, easy to clean surface.
Sealants are easily applied and the process takes only a couple of minutes per tooth.
The teeth to be sealed are thoroughly cleaned and then surrounded with cotton to keep the area dry. We apply a special solution to the enamel surface to help the sealant bond to the teeth. The teeth are then rinsed and dried. Sealant material is carefully painted onto the enamel surface to cover the deep grooves or depressions and then hardened with a special curing light.
Proper home care, a balanced diet, and regular dental visits will aid in the life of your new sealants.
A beautiful, healthy smile that lasts a lifetime is our ultimate goal when treating patients. Your personal home care plays an important role in achieving that goal. Your personal home care starts by eating balanced meals, reducing the number of snacks you eat, and correctly using the various dental aids that help control the plaque and bacteria that cause dental disease.
Tooth brushing: Brush your teeth at least twice a day (especially before going to bed at night) with a CDA approved soft bristle brush and toothpaste.
- Place the brush at a 45 degree angle to the gums and gently brush away from the gums, ensuring that you always feel the bristles on the gums.
- Brush the outer, inner, and biting surfaces of each tooth.
- Use the tip of the brush to clean the inside of the front teeth.
- Brush your tongue to remove bacteria and freshen your breath.
We recommend electric toothbrushes for certain patients. Research has proven that certain electric toothbrushes are more effective (if used properly) in removing plaque than manual tooth brushing.
Flossing: Daily flossing is the best way to clean between the teeth and under the gumline. Flossing not only helps clean these spaces, it disrupts plaque colonies from building up, preventing damage to the gums, teeth, and bone.
- Take 12-16 inches (30-40cm) of dental floss and wrap it around your middle fingers, leaving about 2 inches (5cm) of floss between the hands.
- Using your thumbs and forefingers to guide the floss, gently insert the floss between teeth using a sawing motion.
- Curve the floss into a “C” shape around each tooth and under the gumline. Gently move the floss up and down, cleaning the side of each tooth.
We recommend floss holders if you have difficulty using conventional floss.
Rinsing: It is important to rinse your mouth with water after brushing, and also after meals if you are unable to brush. If you are using an over-the-counter product for rinsing, it’s a good idea to consult with your dentist or dental hygienist on its appropriateness for you.
Family Dental Services in Guelph
We pride ourselves on our high standard of patient care. Being a preventative practice, we are interested in your long term oral health. We offer a wide range of treatment options utilizing the latest technology. When you join the practice you join our family. Your needs are addressed with precision, compassion and understanding.
100 Edinburgh Rd S.
Guelph, ON, N1H 5P4
Phone: (519) 824 – 5678
Monday: 8:00AM – 4:30PM
Tuesday: 8:00AM – 8:00PM
Wednesday: 8:00AM – 4:30PM
Thursday: 8:00AM – 8:00PM
Friday: 8:00AM – 4:00PM


Sure, you know that all your children act differently. But have you ever considered that the reason for their difference is the order in which they were born?
In the early 20th century, psychiatrist Alfred Adler proposed that children’s personalities are directly influenced by birth order. Since then, research has been conducted that has both confirmed and denied the associated links of birth order and personality. And while birth order theory is replete with contradictions, exceptions, and generalizations, those familiar with its basic tenets can often find at least a little bit of truth in the birth order classifications.
- Natural leaders
- Perfectionist tendencies
- Achievement oriented
- Don’t like surprises
- Can be aggressive
- Can be compliant people pleasers
- Model children
- Seek approval from authority figures
- A study in contrasts
- Opposite of their older sibling
- Value relationships
- Friends are a top priority
- Love a good time
- Can be irresponsible, especially with money
The traits listed above are general guidelines, as exceptions abound. Everything from adoption, divorce, blended families, alcoholism, disabilities, and sibling death can upset the traditional roles in birth order. The gender of children, such as all girls, or an older sister/little brother situation, can impact birth order, as well as age differences between the children.
Interested in learning more, including how birth order affects parenting? Check out psychologist Kevin Leman’s The Birth Order Book.


Children generally receive First Reconciliation and First Communion at St. Francis Xavier in Second Grade. Parents are expected to participate in their child’s preparation for these sacraments by attending formation meetings, sacrament workshops and liturgical celebrations planned throughout the year, as well as by working with their child to complete assignments that are given. Children learn the value of the sacraments long before they begin preparing to receive them. Be sure your children attend Mass weekly and you take them to Reconciliation regularly, once they have received First Reconciliation. The diocese requires that children have two consecutive years of religious instruction before receiving the sacraments. Students coming into Religious Education later than the usual time will be required to participate for two years before entering the sacrament program. Once prepared, older students will have a choice of receiving First Communion with the younger children or at another weekend Mass. These arrangements must be made with the Pastor.


Marengo River Subwatershed
The Marengo River, a major tributary to the Bad River Watershed, originates in the heart of the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest north of Clam Lake, Wisconsin. After flowing through the Marengo Semi-Primitive Non-Motorized area and Marengo Lake, the Morgan Creek adds to the rivers volume. Soon, the Marengo leaves the forest to the north and east through rural farmland and is joined by the Brunsweiler River just east of the Town of Marengo. A wide, winding Marengo River joins the Bad River east of Government Road on the south side of the Bad River Indian Reservation.


Southeast Asia & the Pacific: Water deficits forecast for Papua New Guinea, Myanmar, & Thailand
25 May 2017
The Big Picture
The 12-month forecast through January 2018 (below) indicates water deficits in eastern Myanmar, Thailand, Borneo, and Papua New Guinea. Deficits may be extreme to exceptional in northwestern Thailand into Myanmar, and in Papua New Guinea.
Myanmar's Rural Development Director from the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Irrigation estimates that 500 villages in the country may experience water shortages from lack of adequate rainfall. The government's water emergency supply program has already distributed 6.65 million gallons of water to 222 villages for 260,000 people, and has earmarked K81.5 million (Myanmar Kyat; ~USD$60,000) in fuel costs for drought-stricken townships. Villages in the States of Kayah, Rakhine, and Shan, and Mandalay Region have reported shortages of drinking water. Wells and reservoirs have dried up in 20 villages in Shan State where a youth group, police unit, and other civic organizations have donated water. In Rakhine State lakes are drying up, soldiers are delivering water, and dengue fever and diarrhea have broken out.
Across the border in Mae Hong Son Province, Thailand has also deployed soldiers to supply water to hospitals and communities. Farther south in Utai Thani Province the drought has forced farmers to take on supplemental jobs for income.
Severe drought has struck Central Java, Indonesia in recent weeks, affecting 15,000 residents. The Disaster Mitigation Agency is preparing delivery of 70 6,000-liter water tanks to Paranggupito district in Wonogiri Regency where wells and ponds - the primary sources of water - are going dry.
A new report compiled by an international research team indicates that the area of wildfires in Borneo during drought years is ten times larger than during non-drought years, increasing fire risk.
The 3-month maps (below) show the evolving conditions in more detail.
From May through July moderate to severe deficits are forecast to emerge in eastern Myanmar and western Thailand. Exceptional deficits in Papua New Guinea will downgrade but severe to extreme deficits will persist and emerge farther west into Papua, Indonesia. Moderate deficits are forecast to emerge in the western two-thirds of Indonesian Borneo. Surpluses reaching exceptional severity are expected to persist in Sumbawa and Flores Islands, Indonesia. Moderate surpluses are forecast for northeastern Borneo and southern Philippines.
From August through October deficits in the region will downgrade and surpluses will nearly disappear. Moderate deficits will continue to emerge across mainland Thailand, Indonesian Borneo, and southern Sumatra, and will emerge in central Java, Sulawesi, and north of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Scattered deficits will persist in Papua New Guinea but are forecast to be less severe than in prior months.
The forecast for the latter three months – November through January – indicates that the extent and severity of deficits will increase in Southeast Asia and Papua.
(It should be noted that forecast skill declines with longer lead times.)
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Solar Panels generate electrical power by converting solar radiation into direct current electricity using semiconductors that exhibit the photovoltaic effect. Solar panel electricity systems, also known as solar photovoltaics (PV), capture the sun's energy using solar (photovoltaic) cells. These cells don't need direct sunlight to work - they can still generate some electricity on a cloudy day. The cells convert the sunlight into electricity, which can be used to run household appliances and lighting.
Solar Cells produce direct current electricity from sunlight, which can be used to power equipment or to recharge a battery. The first practical application of photovoltaics was to power orbiting satellites and other spacecraft, but today the majority of photovoltaic modules are used for grid connected power generation. In this case, an inverter is required to convert the DC to AC. There is a smaller market for off-grid power for remote dwellings, boats, recreational vehicles, electric cars, roadside emergency telephones, remote sensing, and cathodic protection of pipelines.
Photovoltaic power generation employs solar panels composed of a number of solar cells containing a photovoltaic material. Materials presently used for solar panels include monocrystalline silicon, polycrystalline silicon, amorphous silicon, cadmium telluride, and copper indium gallium selenide/sulfide. Due to the growing demand for renewable energy sources, the manufacturing of solar cells and photovoltaic arrays has advanced considerably in recent years.
Photovoltaic (PV) cells are formed from a wafer of semiconductor material and although there are now several types of products using different materials, the most common semiconductor used is silicon. Pure crystalline silicon is a poor electrical conductor but treats it with tiny quantities of an impurity, either phosphorous or arsenic (a process called "doping") and enough electrons of these materials are freed to enable a current to pass through. Electrons are negatively charged so this type of silicon is called N-Type. Dope silicon with gallium or boron and "holes" are created in the crystalline lattice where a silicon electron has nothing to bond with. These holes can conduct electrical current and the lack of an electron creates a positive charge so this type of silicon is therefore called P-Type.
Both types of silicon are modest electrical conductors, hence the name semiconductors. Put a layer of each kind together in a wafer, such as in a PV cell, and the free electrons in the N side migrate towards the free holes on the P side. This causes a disruption to the electrical neutrality where the holes and electrons mix at the junction of the two layers. Eventually a barrier is formed preventing the electrons from crossing to the P side and an electrical field is formed, separating both sides.
This electrical field acts as a diode, allowing electrons to pass from the P side to the N side, but not vice versa. Expose the cell to light, and the energy from each photon (light particle) hitting the silicon, will liberate an electron and a corresponding hole. If this happens within range of the electric field's influence, the electrons will be sent to the N side and the holes to the P one, resulting in yet further disruption of electrical neutrality. Apply an external pathway connecting both sides of the silicon wafer and electrons will flow back to their original P side to unite with the holes sent there by the electric field. This flow of electrons is a current; the electrical field in the cell causes a voltage and the product of these two is power. Several factors affect the efficiency of a solar cell. Some cells, mainly ones made from a single material, are only efficient in certain light wavelengths.
Single material cells can at the very most expect to convert about 25% of the light hitting it to electrical power. Research is ongoing into multi-junction cells combining two or more different materials in a single cell. These can have a theoretical efficiency of up to 70% but the cells are problematical in that too many layers can put the crystals under too much strain. The most efficient multi-junction cell so far has attained a 30% efficiency with just two layers. A recent encouraging discovery has found that alloys of indium gallium nitride have the potential to convert the full light spectrum to electrical power with the added bonus that they could also be very cheap to produce.
The 89,000 TW of sunlight reaching the Earth's surface is plentiful - almost 6,000 times more than the 15 TW equivalent of average power consumed by humans. Additionally, the solar electric generation has the highest power density (global mean of 170 W/m²) among renewable energies. Solar power is pollution-free in use. Production end-wastes and emissions are manageable using existing pollution controls. End-of-use recycling technologies are under development and policies are being produced that encourage recycling from producers. PV installations can operate for many years with little maintenance or intervention after their initial set-up, so after the initial capital cost of building any solar power plant, operating costs are extremely low compared to existing power technologies.
As of 2011, the price of PV modules per MW has fallen by 60 percent since the summer of 2008, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance estimates, putting solar power for the first time on a competitive footing with the retail price of electricity in a number of sunny countries. There has been fierce competition in the supply chain, and further improvements in the levelised cost of energy for solar lie ahead, posing a growing threat to the dominance of fossil fuel generation sources in the next few years. As time progresses, renewable energy technologies generally get cheaper, while fossil fuels generally get more expensive:The less solar power costs, the more favorably it compares to conventional power, and the more attractive it becomes to utilities and energy users around the globe. Utility-scale solar power can now be delivered in California at prices well below $100/MWh ($0.10/kWh) less than most other peak generators, even those running on low-cost natural gas.
Lower solar module costs also stimulate demand from consumer markets where the cost of solar compares very favorably to retail electric rates. When grid-connected, solar electric generation replaces some or all of the highest-cost electricity used during times of peak demand (in most climatic regions). This can reduce grid loading, and can eliminate the need for local battery power to provide for use in times of darkness. These features are enabled by net metering. Time-of-use net metering can be highly favorable, but requires newer electronic metering, which may still be impractical for some users.
Grid-connected solar electricity can be used locally thus reducing transmission/distribution losses (transmission losses in the US were approximately 7.2% in 1995). Compared to fossil and nuclear energy sources, very little research money has been invested in the development of solar cells, so there is considerable room for improvement. Nevertheless, experimental high efficiency solar cells already have efficiencies of over 40% in case of concentrating photovoltaic cells and efficiencies are rapidly rising while mass-production costs are rapidly falling.
Solar electricity is not produced at night and is greatly reduced in cloudy conditions requiring alternate sources of power. While many buildings with photovoltaic arrays are tied into the power grid which absorbs any excess electricity generated throughout the day and provides electricity in the evening, such systems use a grid tie inverter to convert direct current (DC) alternating current (AC) incurring an energy loss of 4-12%. Off-grid systems use either storage batteries which also incur significant energy losses and require regular maintenance or engine-generators which consume costly fuel. Solar electricity production depends on the limited power density of the location's insolation. The average daily output of a flat plate collector at latitude tilt in the contiguous US is 3-7 kilowatt h/m²/day and on average lower in Europe.
Solar electricity is more expensive than most other forms of small-scale alternative energy production. Without governments mandating "feed-in tariffs" for green solar energy, solar PV is less affordable to homeowners than solar hot water or solar space heating. Photovoltaic panels are specifically excluded in Europe from RoHS (Restriction on Hazardous Substances) since 2003 and were again excluded in 2011. California has largely adopted the RoHS standard through EWRA. Therefore, PV panels may legally in Europe and California contain lead, mercury and cadmium which are forbidden or restricted in all other electronics. Much of the investment in a home-mounted system may be lost if the home-owner moves and the buyer puts less value on the system than the seller.


The double breasted style, like many styles for men and boys,
originated from militry uniforms. It was common in the 19th Century for
soldiers to have extensive rows of buttons on their uniforms.
The effect was purely ornamental. The style was at mid-century carried
over onto boys jackets with destinctive military styling. Eventually
the militarybtyling was lost, but rows of ornamental buttons
continued on many different garments.
Double breasted styling was used with some kilts. The double-
breasted style was more common
in dresses and suits, but the fashion was also used for kilt suits.
I do not yet have any historical information. I am collecting
available images which hopefully will provide some insights on the
development of this important style.
The double breasted styling on kilt suits seems to have been most common in the 1880s
and declined in popularity during the 1890s.
The styling and materials used for double breasted kilt suits appears tomhave been
much the same as for kilt suits in general.
The double breasted styling appearsvto have been most common on
boys' clothing, a confirmation of its miltary images. Thus double breasted
kilts and dress styling can be used as an indicator of gender when long
hair and curls makes it difficult to identify a child.
Some kilt outfits came with double breasted jackets. However, this
style does no appear to have been common. I have seen double-breasted
kilts as early as the 1870s, but they may have appeared earlier. Some
kiltsuits only had the double breasted styling on the jacket. In
some cases the designer was so taken with double breasted styling
that the buttons were continued from the jacket down to the kilt


A robot scientist that can generate its own hypotheses and run experiments to test them has made its first real scientific discoveries.
Dubbed Adam, the robot is the handiwork of researchers at Aberystwyth University and the University of Cambridge in the UK. All by itself it discovered new functions for a number of genes in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, aka brewer’s yeast.
Ross King, a computational biologist at Aberystwyth, who leads the project, said that Adam’s results were modest, but real. “It’s certainly a contribution to knowledge. It would be publishable,” he says.
Adam, which actually consists of a small roomful of lab equipment, has four personal computers that act as a brain, and possesses robot arms, cameras, liquid handlers, incubators and other equipment. The team gave the robot a freezer containing a library of thousands of mutant strains of yeast with individual genes deleted. It was also equipped with a database containing information about yeast genes, enzymes, and metabolism, and a supply of hundreds of metabolites.
To discover which genes coded for which enzymes, Adam cultured a mutant yeast with a certain gene knocked out, and monitored how well the mutant grew without a particular metabolite. If the strain grew poorly without the metabolite, Adam learned something about the function of the knocked out gene. The robot could carry out more than 1000 of these experiments a day.
In all, Adam formulated and tested 20 hypotheses about genes coding for 13 enzymes. Twelve hypotheses were confirmed. For instance, Adam correctly hypothesised that three genes it identified encode an enzyme important in producing the amino acid lysine. The researchers confirmed Adam’s work with their own experiments.
The team is now working on a new robot, called Eve, which will search for new drugs.
Adam, Eve and their ilk could soon automate routine and time-consuming scientific chores, leaving human scientists free to make higher level, creative leaps, says King. But ultimately the robots may even be capable of conducting truly independent research, he says.
Will Bridewell, an artificial intelligence researcher at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, says Adam is operating only at the level of a graduate student. Still, the robot is moving closer to the goal of an artificially intelligent machine that can cooperate with other scientists and write up their results in natural language, he says. “That’s probably far off, but it seems likely that we will get there. This is yet another step on the way.”
In a further step in this direction, researchers at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, have developed software that can observe physical systems and independently identify the laws that underlay them.
The software, which was not pre-programmed with any basic rules of physics or geometry, was shown images of moving systems such as a double pendulum. It then used an evolutionary algorithm to generate mathematical equations, and tested them to see if they accurately described the system it had observed. For instance, the computer produced an equation that described conservation of angular momentum.
More on these topics:


Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist. He is most noted for his novels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn(1885), the latter often called "the Great American Novel."
Twain grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, which would later provide the setting for Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. He apprenticed with a printer. He also worked as a typesetter and contributed articles to his older brother Orion's newspaper. After toiling as a printer in various cities, he became a master riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River, before heading west to join Orion. He was a failure at gold mining, so he next turned to journalism. While a reporter, he wrote a humorous story, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County", which became very popular and brought nationwide attention. His travelogues were also well-received. Twain had found his calling.
He achieved great success as a writer and public speaker. His wit and satire earned praise from critics and peers, and he was a friend topresidents, artists, industrialists, and European royalty.
He lacked financial acumen, and, though he made a great deal of money from his writings and lectures, he squandered it on various ventures, in particular the Paige Compositor, and was forced to declare bankruptcy. With the help of Henry Huttleston Rogers he eventually overcame his financial troubles. Twain worked hard to ensure that all of his creditors were paid in full, even though his bankruptcy had relieved him of the legal responsibility.
Twain was born during a visit by Halley's Comet, and he predicted that he would "go out with it" as well. He died the day following the comet's subsequent return. He was lauded as the "greatest American humorist of his age," and William Faulkner called Twain "the father of American literature."


Six Images You Need to See to Understand the Drought
The U.S. is experiencing its worst drought in more than 50 years, and one of the top 10 droughts on record. In terms of drought extent and intensity, it is the worst drought since at least 1956, and has been compared to the devastating droughts of the Dust Bowl era during the 1930s, although those droughts were more intense. As of July 31, 62.91 percent of the lower 48 states was in at least moderate drought, down slightly from 63.86 percent on July 24. The Agriculture Department has taken the unprecedented step of declaring more than 50 percent of all U.S. counties as natural disaster areas, making them eligible for federal assistance to help struggling farmers.
What's causing this drought, why did it develop so quickly, and how bad is it, really?
First, the causes. This drought developed due to a pronounced lack of rainfall, coupled with several unusual heat waves that struck during the spring and summer and helped to rapidly intensify the drought conditions. As you can see from this arresting image of the Morse Reservoir in Indiana, rainfall has not exactly kept pace with evaporation driven by the excessive heat. In fact, rainfall across the country has been well below average during the late spring and summer months in most of the lower 48 states. As Climate Central reported in July, the weather pattern that led to the drought may have had its roots in the tropical Pacific Ocean, related to a waning La Niña event.
This 16-second animation shows how quickly the drought intensified from late spring into summer, engulfing a large swath of the country.
The High Plains has been one of the driest areas of the country this year, with much below-average precipition and extreme heat, as can be seen in this colorful map from the High Plains Regional Climate Center. Unfortunately, the colors that farmers and ranchers want to see — greens and blues, indicating slightly above average precipitation — are almost nowhere to be found.
Although natural climate variability, such as a La Niña event that only recently dissipated, likely contributed to the drought, very warm temperatures have worsened the situation. This is the country's warmest year-to-date, with much of the nation broiling for most of the summer under the influence of a massive "Heat Dome" of High Pressure. The heat did not cause the drought, according to drought specialists, but it hasn't helped matters, since it accelerates the drying of soils and vegetation, thereby damaging crops.
In the exceedingly dry state of Oklahoma, Tulsa and Oklahoma City recorded back-to-back August days with a high temperature of 112°F. In Oklahoma City, this was the warmest it has been since the Dust Bowl, and just 1 degree shy of the city's all-time high temperature record. As you can see from this next map, the heat bullseye has been squarely focused on Oklahoma during late July into early August.
July was a particularly brutal month for farmers in the High Plains, as high temperatures were at or above 95°F nearly every day of the month. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, such high temperatures can damage corn and soybean crops.
As you might expect, soil moisture is running very low across much of the U.S., thanks to the 1-2 punch of the lack of rainfall and the heat. The soil moisture image below comes from the NASA GRACE Satellites, which detect small changes in the Earth's gravity field caused by the redistribution of water both on and beneath the land surface.
You can catch up with all of Climate Central's drought coverage, and read my earlier installment of exploring the drought through geeky weather maps. Please comment and offer suggestions of questions you'd like to see us tackle as the drought stretches into early fall, as well.