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THE ETIOLOGY AND TREATMENT OF CHILDHOOD
Jordan W. Smoller
University of Pennsylvania
Childhood is a syndrome which has only recently begun to
receive serious attention from clinicians. The syndrome itself, however,
is not at all recent. As early as the 8th century, the Persian historian
Kidnom made references to "short, noisy creatures," who may well have
been what we now call "children." The treatment of children, however, was
unknown until this century, when so-called "child psychologists" and
"child psychiatrists" became common. Despite this history of clinical
neglect, it has been estimated that well over half of all Americans alive
today have experienced childhood directly (Suess, 1983). In fact, the
actual numbers are probably much higher, since these data are based on
self-reports which may be subject to social desirability biases and
The growing acceptance of childhood as a distinct phenomenon is
reflected in the proposed inclusion of the syndrome in the upcoming
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition, or
DSM-IV, of the American Psychiatric Association (1990). Clinicians are
still in disagreement about the significan clinical features of childhood,
but the proposed DSM-IV will almost certainly include the following core
- Congenital onset
- Emotional lability and immaturity
- Knowledgy deficits
- Legume anorexia
Clinical Features of Childhood
Although the focus of this paper is on the efficacy of
conventional treatment of childhood, the five clinical markers mentioned
above merit further discussion for those unfamiliar with this patient
In one of the few existing literature reviews on childhood,
Temple-Black (1982) has noted that childhood is almost always present at
birth, although it may go undetected for years or even remain subclinical
indefinitely. This observation has led some investigators to speculate
on biological contribution to childhood. As one psychologist has put it,
"we may soon be in a position to distinguish organic childhood from
functional childhood" (Rogers, 1979).
This is certainly the most familiar marker of childhood. It is
widely known that children are physically short relative to the population
at large. Indeed, common clinical wisdom suggests that the treatment of the
so-called "small child" (or "tot") is particularly difficult. These
children are known to exhibit infantile behavior and display a startling
lack of insight (Tom and Jerry, 1967).
EMOTIONAL LABILITY AND IMMATURITY
This aspect of childhood is often the only basis for a
clinician's diagnosis. As a result, many otherwise normal adults are
misdiagnosed as children and must suffer the unnecessary social stigma
of being labelled a "child" by professionals and friends alike.
While many children have IQs with or even above the norm, almost
all will manifest knowledge deficits. Anyone who has known a real child
has experienced the frustration of trying to discuss any topic that
requires some general knowledge. Children seem to have little knowledge
about the world they live in. Politics, art, and science--children are
largely ignorant of these. Perhaps it is because of this ignorance, but
the sad fact that most children have few friends who are not, themselves,
This last identifying feature is perhaps the most unexpected.
Folk wisdom is supported by empirical observation--children will rarely eat
their vegetables (see Popeye, 1957, for review).
Causes of Childhood
Now that we know what it is, what can we say about the causes
of childhood? Recent years have seen a flurry of theory and speculation
from a number of perspectives. Some of the most prominent are reviewed
Emile Durkind was perhaps the first to speculate about
sociological causes of childhood. He points out two key observations about
- the vast majority of children are unemployed, and
- children represent one of the least educated segments of our
society. In fact, it has been estimated that less than
20% of children have had more than fourth grad education.
Clearly, children are an "out-group." Because of their intellectual
handicap, children are even denied the right to vote. From the
sociologist's perspective, treatment should be aimed at helping assimilate
children into mainstream society. Unfortunately, some victims are so
incapacitated by their childhood that they are simply not competent to work.
One promising rehabilitaion program (Spanky and Alfalfa, 1978) has
trained victims of severe childhood to sell lemonade.
The observation that childhood is usually present from birth
has led some to speculate on a biological contribution. An early
investigation by Flintstone and Jetson (1939) indicated that childhood
runs in families. Their survey of over 8,000 American families revealed
that over half contained more than one child. Further investigation
revealed that even most non-child family members had experienced childhood
at some point. Cross-cultural studies (e.g., Mowgli and Din, 1950)
indicated that family childhood is even more prevalent in the Far East.
For example, in Indian and Chinese families, as many as three out of four
family members may have childhood.
Impressive evidence of a genetic component of childhood comes
from a large-scale twin study by Brady and Partridge (1972). These
authors studied over 106 pairs of twins, looking at concordance rates
for childhood. Among identical or monozygotic twins, concordance was
unusually high (0.92), i.e., when one twin was diagnosed with childhood,
the other twin was almost always a child as well.
A considerable number of psychologically-based theories of the
development of childhood exist. They are too numerous to review here.
Among the more familiar models are Seligman's "learned childishness"
model. According to this model, individuals who are treated like
children eventually give up and become children. As a counterpoint to
such theories, some experts have claimed that childhood does not really
exist. Szasz (1980) has called "childhood" an expedient label. In
seeking conformity, we handicap those whom we find unruly or too short
to deal with by labelling them "children."
Treatment of Childhood
Efforts to treat childhood are as old as the syndrome itself.
Only in modern times, however, have human and systematic treatment
protocols been applied. In part, this increased attention to the
problem may be due to the sheer number of individuals suffering from
childhood. Government statistics (DHHS) reveal that there are more children
alive today than at any time in our history. to paraphrase P.T. Barnum:
"There's a child born every minute."
The overwhelming number of children has made government
intervention inevitable. The nineteenth century saw the institution of
what remains the largest single program for the treatment of childhood--
so-called "public schools." Under this colossal program, individuals are
placed into treatment groups based on the severity of their condition.
For example, those most severely afflicted may be placed in a "kindergarten"
program. Patients at this level are typically short, unruly, emotionally
immature, and intellectually deficient. Given this type of individual,
therapy is essentially one of patient management and of helping the child
master basic skills (e.g. finger-painting).
Unfortunately, the "school" system has been largely ineffective.
Not only is the problem a massive tax burden, but it has failed even to
slow down the rising incidence of childhood.
Faced with this failure and the growing epidemic of childhood,
mental health professionals are devoting increasing attention to the
treatment of childhood. Given a theoretical framework by Freud's
landmark treatises on childhood, child psychiatrists and psychologists
claimed great successes in their clinical intervention.
By the 1950's, however, the clinicians' optimism had waned.
Even after years of costly analysis, many victims remained children. The following
case (taken from Gumbie and Poke, 1957) is typical.
- Billy J., age 8, was brought to treatment by his parents.
Billy's affliction was painfully obvious. He stood only 4'3" high and
weighed a scant 70 lbs., despite the fact that he ate voraciously. Billy
presented a variety of troubling symptoms. His voice was noticably high for
a man. He displayed legume anorexia, and, according to his parents, often
refused to bathe. His intellectual functioning was also below normal--he
had little general knowledge and could barely write a structured sentence.
Social skills were also deficient. He often spoke inappropriately and exhibited
"whining behaviour." His sexual experience was non-existent. Indeed,
Billy considered women "icky." His parents reported that his condition
had been present from birth, improving gradually after he was placed
in a school at age 5. The diagnosis was "primary childhood." After years
of painstaking treatment, Billy improved gradually. At age 11, his
height and weight have increased, his social skills are broader, and he is
now functional enough to hold down a "paper route."
After years of this kind of frustration, startling new evidence
has come to light which suggests that the prognosis in cases of childhood
may not be all gloom. A critical review by Fudd (1972) noted that studies
of the childhood syndrome tend to lack careful follow-up. Acting on this
observation, Moe, Larrie, and Kirly (1974) began a large-scale
longitudinal study. These investigators studied two groups. The first
group consisted of 34 children currently engaged in a long-term
conventional treatment program. The second was a group of 42 children
receiving no treatment. All subjects had been diagnosed as children at
least 4 years previously, with a mean duration of childhood at 6.4 years.
At the end of one year, the results confirmed the clinical
wisdom that childhood is a refractory disorder--virtually all symptoms persisted
and the treatment group was only slightly better off than the controls.
The results, however, of a careful 10-year follow-up were
startling. The investigators (Moe, Larrie, Kirly, & Shemp, 1984) assessed
the original cohort on a variety of measures. General knowledge and
emotional maturity were assessed with standard measures. Height was
assess by the "metric system" (see Ruler, 1923), and legume appetite by the
Vegetable Appetite Test (VAT) designed by Popeye (1968). Moe et al. found
that subjects improved uniformly on all measures. Indeed, in most cases,
the subjects appeared to be symptom-free. Moe et al. report a
spontaneous remission rate of 95%, a finding which is certain to
revolutionize the clinical approach to childhood.
These recent results suggests that the prognosis for victims of
childhood may not be so bad as we have feared. We must not, however,
become too complacent. Despite its apparently high spontaneous remission rate,
childhood remains one of the most serious and rapidly growing disorders
facing mental health professionals today. And, beyond the psychological
pain it brings, childhood has recently been linked to a number of
physical disorders. Twenty years ago, Howdi, Doodi, and Beauzeau (1965)
demonstrated a six-fold increased risk of chicken pox, measles, and mumps
among children as compared with normal controls. Later, Barby and Kenn (1971)
linked childhood to an elevated risk of accidents--compared with normal adults,
victims of childhood were much more likely to scrape their knees, lose
their teeth, and fall off their bikes.
Clearly, much more research is need before we can give any
real hope to the millions of victims wracked by this insidious disorder.
American Psychiatric Association (1990). The diagnostic and
statistical manual of mental disorders, 4th edition: A preliminary
report. Washington, D.C.; APA.
Barby, B., & Kenn, K. (1971). The plasticity of behavior.
In B. Barby & K. Kenn (Eds.), Psychotherapies R Us. Detroit:
Flintstone, F., & Jetson, G. (1939). Cognitive mediation of
labour disputes. Industrial Psychology Today, 2, 23-35.
Fudd, E.J. (1972). Locus of control and shoe-size. Journal
of Footwear Psychology, 78, 345-356.
Gumbie, G., & Pokey, P. (1957). A cognitive theory of iron-
smelting. Journal of Abnormal Metallurgy, 45, 235-239.
Howdi, C., Doodi, C., & Beauzeau, C. (1965). Western
civilization: A review of the literature. Reader's digest, 60,
Moe, R., Larrie, T., and Kirly, Q. (1974). State childhood
versus trait childhood. TV Guide, May 12-19, 1-3.
Moe, R., Larrie, T., Kirly, Q. (1974). Spontaneous
remission of childhood. In W.C. Fields (Ed.), New Hope for Children
and Animals. Hollywood: Acme Press.
Popeye, T.S.M. (1957). The use of spinach in extreme
circumstances. Journal of Vegetable Science, 58, 530-538.
Popeye, T.S.M. (1968). Spinach: A phenomenological
perspective. Existential botany, 35, 908-813.
Rogers, F. (1979). Becoming my neighbour. New York:
Ruler, Y. (1923). Assessing measurements protocols by the
multi-method multiple regression index for the psychometric analysis of
factorial interaction. Annals of Boredom, 67, 1190-1260.
Spanky, D., & Alfalfa, Q. (1978). Coping with puberty.
Sears catalog, 45-46.
Suess, D.R. (1983). A psychometric analysis of green eggs
with and without ham. Journal of Clinical Cuisine, 245, 567-578.
Temple-Black, S. (1982). Childhood: an ever-so sad disorder.
Journal of Precocity, 3, 129-134.
Tom, C., & Jerry, M. (1967). Human behavior as a model for
understanding the rat. In M. de Sade (Ed.). The Rewards of Punishment.
Paris: Bench Press.
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Supporting people through diagnosis with chronic hepatitis B
- Australian research suggests that little or no pre or post test counselling occurs at the time people are diagnosed with chronic hepatitis B. People who have recently been diagnosed with chronic hepatitis B may be feeling confused, worried, shocked or afraid.
- As it is likely that newly diagnosed people will have many unanswered questions about hepatitis B, it is to provide information about hepatitis B in an appropriate format. Avoid giving too much information at once, and encourage people to meet with you a few times to go over their questions and concerns about their diagnosis. It could be useful if you are not confident about your hepatitis B knowledge to frame the discussion in terms of both of you learning more about hepatitis B.
- If you are working with a someone recently diagnosed with chronic hepatitis B, encourage them to think about if, when and how they might disclose their new diagnosis to others. Family and friends may be a great source of care and support, but unexpected reactions can and do happen. Generally speaking, hepatitis B is not very well understood in the community, so print resources might be useful to help the person manage any questions that may arise.
- Unfortunately printed resources about hepatitis B are not available in all languages and for all literacy levels, so face to face conversations are ideal in many instances. If you have printed resources, they can be useful as a prop for having a more in-depth discussion about hepatitis B and the realities of living with hepatitis B.
- People with chronic hepatitis B should regularly see hepatitis specialist such as a gastroenterologist or infectious disease physician at a local hospital. People will need to be referred to these specialists by a general practitioner (GP). Not all GPs are aware of this, so check with your patient/client whether they have had such a referral.
- GPs with a good understanding of hepatitis B are another useful resource, although many GPs are not aware of the implications of hepatitis B infection or of the impact of infection on their patients. Other support services can be found here.
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Editor’s note: Jon Margolis, a retired political reporter for the Chicago Tribune, is a VTDigger.org columnist.
Rural living isn’t necessarily a country idyll. In fact, for the last few decades, rural areas, such as most of Vermont, have been tougher places to live –and to earn a living – than the cities and suburbs.
Now comes word that rural life is not only harder but shorter. A new study called “Falling behind: Life expectancy in US counties from 2000 to 2007 in an international context,” shows life expectancy is actually declining in many rural counties.
As can be seen from its title, the study, whose lead writer was Sandeep C. Kulkarni of the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, was primarily focused on comparing longevity outcomes between the U.S. and other advanced countries. It found far more disparities between affluent and poorer counties in the U.S. than elsewhere.
The disparities were striking. On a county-by-county basis, “life expectancy in 2007 ranged from 65.9 to 81.1 years for men and 73.5 to 86.0 years for women,” the study found.
In all, the report found, life expectancy fell in 860 – or more than one fourth – of the nation’s 3,147 counties. More than 60 percent of those counties – 561 of them – are rural. In fact, in every rural state, life expectancy fell for at least one sex in at least one county.
Well, almost every rural state.
The exception? Vermont, where life expectancy for both men and women rose in all 14 counties.
Barely in Essex County (four tenths of a percent for men; three tenths for women) but at a healthy rate in the other counties. The longest life expectancy for men was 77.8 years in Lamoille County. Chittenden and Addison County women could expect to live 82.2 years, the longest of their sex. In every county, women lived longer, but male life expectancy had increased more between 1987 and 2007.
The results do not necessarily prove that Vermont is healthier than other rural states. Perhaps it’s just whiter. Everywhere, African-Americans and Hispanics had lower life expectancies. The lowest “were in counties in Appalachia and the Deep South, extending across northern Texas… (with) more isolated counties with low life expectancies in a number of western counties with large Native American populations,” the report found.
Still, even in comparison with other white, rural, counties around the country, Vermont’s appear relatively healthier and perhaps more prosperous. Before celebration gets out of hand, though, Vermonters might ponder the results of another new study – this one from the University of New Hampshire’s Carsey Institute – which found that “last year more people died than were born in nearly a quarter of U.S. counties,” and four of them were in Vermont: Bennington, Essex, Rutland and Windsor.
Bennington’s ‘natural decrease“ was 252 deaths over births. Rutland County’s was 157, Windsor’s 74 and Essex County’s 63. (In the Carsey study, all four counties also had total population declines. But these are 2009 figures, and differ from the 2010 Census, in which population declined only in Bennington, Essex, and Windsor Counties.
What have thee counties – or the state – been doing wrong?
Apparently nothing. Unless that is, being rural is doing something wrong.
“This is pretty typical for rural areas,” said the Carsey Institute’s senior demographer, UNH sociology professor Kenneth Johnson. “Natural decrease is pretty widespread across country, and is much more evident in the Great Plains.”
As Johnson explained it, natural decrease is especially common wherever farming, logging, or mining were important to a county’s economic foundation. Producing these goods needs far fewer workers than it did a few decades ago, so even where the mines and forests have not been depleted, there is less demand for young and middle-aged adult workers, which would include women – and the husbands of women – in their child-bearing years .
But, he said, there is also a generally positive development that can lead to natural decrease – the in-migration of “amenity-minded” relatively affluent, relatively young, retirees. If a county attracts new residents who are empty-nesters in their early sixties, 25 years or so later, they will start dying. Their children who are having children of their own are having them elsewhere.
Johnson said this factor is more evident in several counties in Florida and in Carroll County, N.H. , just north of Lake Winnipesaukee. But Vermont has also been a destination for not-quite-senior citizens, both retirees and professionals who can earn their keep from their homes. This influx started in the late 1960s and early 1970s. As Johnson pointed out, “natural decrease doesn’t occur immediately,” and people who moved to Vermont in their fifties and sixties in the late decades of the last century would be reaching their final years in the first decades of this one.
Just because Vermont’s rural population is declining no faster (and probably more slowly) than those in other states does not mean that falling populations are not a problem.
“People don’t want to see a decline,” Johnson said. “Usually natural decrease occurs because of the loss of so many young people. Probably some schools have to close because there aren’t enough kids any more. And there are other problems, such as not enough volunteer firefighters in towns that depend on them.”
So what can be done?
Perhaps little or nothing.
“Some of it is just inevitable,” Johnson said. Neither in Vermont nor on the Great Plans are so many small farms ever likely to be economically viable as was the case 50 and 100 years ago. Where natural decrease has ended, he said, is usually in rural counties “just beyond the edges of metropolitan areas,” where better transportation and cheaper homes encouraged people to move farther away from the cities and from their jobs.
That, of course, is the suburban sprawl solution, not the most popular course in Vermont.
There is a small-farm agricultural revival in the state, with an increasing number of farms growing fresh vegetables for local consumption or producing cheese from their own cows, sheep, and goats. But whether there are or will be enough of these farms to bring a critical mass of young and middle-aged people to rural Vermont remains unknown.
The other possibility, Johnson said, is expanding those “amenities” enough to attract newcomers to rural counties. Even if the first newcomers are older, he said, their presence eventually “creates opportunities for younger adults” to staff, restaurants, hotels, hospitals, and the other services the new residents want.
But to make a major difference, at least some of those “amenity” attractions would have to be big, and the creation of a new university (or even mid-size college, but bigger than the 700 or so students at Bennington) large national or state park, or cutting-edge research center does not seem to be in Vermont’s immediate future.
“There are no policy silver bullets,” Johnson said.
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A Barbados Family Tree With 'Sugar In The Blood'
In her new book, Sugar in the Blood, Andrea Stuart weaves her family story around the history of slavery and sugar in Barbados. Stuart's great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather landed on the island in the 1630s. He had been a blacksmith in England, but became a sugar planter in Barbados, at a time when demand for the crop was exploding worldwide. Stuart is descended from a slave owner who, several generations after the family landed in Barbados, had relations with an unknown slave.
Stuart was well into her research and writing of the book before she fully accepted the reality of her family's story. It was, she tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross, "not until maybe four years into the research that I realized that this was the truth of it ... of my family's story that ... one side of my family had owned another, and that that was as bleak and as straightforward as it got. ... That is the quintessence of the hideousness of slavery, isn't it? That a family member could own their child ... or own a series of children and live with that, and ... keep them in continued slavery and live comfortably with that. It made me understand slavery or see it in a very, very personal, intense way."
Stuart says that it was "completely common in the Caribbean" for planters to have many different family groups, meaning that a planter would have his legitimate, white family and then father children with enslaved women.
The thinking behind this practice was, in one sense, that the planter was breeding his own slaves to work the plantation after Britain outlawed the trans-Atlantic slave trade in 1807. More psychologically speaking, however, Stuart says, the practice also provided a "sense of claiming your ... total power over everybody in the plantation world over which you preside."
On when planters would baptize the slave women they had sex with
"That was often something that planters did if they were going to be in a slightly longer-term relationship with a new, individual female slave. While they have kind of one-off ... relations with a slave that they ... just sort of ... picked randomly on the plantation, usually if ... the relationship was going to last, it was quite common for them to get ... the slave woman baptized, which is an ironic thing because, obviously, they felt that that was ... a rather virtuous gesture, which is extraordinary when, in fact, they were basically raping underage girls."
On how, after some of her ancestors worked as slaves on a plantation, her grandparents bought and farmed a sugar plantation in Barbados
"It always seems to me an extraordinary irony that ... my grandfather would decide — or rather his father would decide — that it was a good idea to go back into sugar, after the history — the torrid history — that our family had had with that particular crop, but I think, you know, even at the turn of the [20th] century ... it must have felt like sugar was still the biggest game in town, still the historic crop of the island. To be a planter was to be at the absolute top of the social tree and so, in some ways, you can see that for successful businessmen — even those who came from a slave line — that becoming a planter must have felt like real success, and I think that is why my great-grandfather decided to buy and also start to farm a plantation again."
On how, after moving to England from Barbados in 1976 with her family, the color of her skin meant something different
"Whereas in the Caribbean my slightly lighter skin marked me out as being perhaps potentially a little more privileged, in Britain there was none of that subtlety or ideas ... about race. It was very much: I was a black person and that was that, and one was very much reduced to a series of stereotypes — and rather dull stereotypes at that — about what it was to be a black person."
On the current prospect of her family's Barbados plantation being sold for real estate
"I can remember and spent so much of my youth being at my grandmother's and grandfather's plantation and listening to the ... sound of the cane and running around ... this little magic world of beautiful gardens that surround the plantation house. ... It was all for me a very idyllic adventure, and so the idea of it being over is both painful, because it represents to me very much my Caribbean childhood, my past, my family, and then another part of me thinks that it's time ... for me — as well as the island — to close the door on the plantation story and walk into the future."
On how her research and knowledge of her family's past has changed her thinking about sugar
"It was not until I was reading some of the work by the abolitionists, and ... one of their big ... campaigns was that it was 'blood-stained sugar,' ... that it carried the blood of slaves, and I remember actually at that point putting some sugar into something and thinking, 'Ah, it's this!' And ... I thought again about the way that commodities — in my case it was sugar; in America the parallels would be, as I say, cotton or tobacco — how these ... commodities have such real, visceral impacts on the way our lives unfold and how extraordinary that is."
TERRY GROSS, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. I want to thank Dave Davies for filling in for me last week while I took the week off. My guest, Andrea Stuart, is the descendent of a slave owner and one of that man's slaves. She has a bloodline that she describes as blending the history of both oppressed and oppressor. She suspects this is true of many families, which, like hers, are mixed-race on both sides.
Stewart has written a new book called "Sugar in the Blood," which traces her family tree beginning with her white ancestor who left Ireland for Barbados in the late 1630s. His great-great-grandson owned a plantation in Barbados and fathered children with several of his slaves, including the woman who became Stuart's forebear.
Stuart's book also describes the history of slavery in the Caribbean, where she was born and raised. Her father became dean of the medical school at the University College of the West Indies in Jamaica. As a child, she spent her summers with her extended family in Barbados, where her grandparents owned a plantation.
Andrea Stuart, welcome to FRESH AIR. When did you start thinking about the fact that one of your ancestors was owned by another one of your ancestors?
ANDREA STUART: I don't think I actually thought about that until quite late in the process of writing my book. It was really one of those things that kind of hits you sort of later on. I mean, it very much began as a process of being interested in my family history. So it wasn't until quite late in the day that I had this moment of clarity, maybe four years into the research, that I realized that this was the truth of it, that was the reality of my life, of my family's story, that we - you know, one side of my family had owned another.
GROSS: And what did that mean to you?
STUART: I think I found that a real kind of one of those aha moments, you know, where you sort of think that is the quintessence of the hideousness of slavery, isn't it, that a family member could own their child and - or you know what I mean, or own series of children and live with that and remain - and keep them in continued slavery. And it made me understand slavery or see it in a very, very personal, intense way.
GROSS: In trying to find documentation of your slave-owning ancestors and of your ancestors who were slaves, one of the things you found was that there was documentation of your white ancestors, but for the slave the only documentation you found was what?
STUART: Well, the irony of slavery is that - and I think it's true whether it's on mainland America or in the Caribbean or South America, is that the system is such that you only know what the white planter who owns you has recorded about you. So it's always through the conduit of this other person.
So what I could know about my slave ancestors were the things that were recorded by their owner, and in the case of my ancestors, their father, in his inventories and mentions of slaves for sale or documents that he'd created, which are usually about transactions and/or money in relation to them as stock.
GROSS: So I'm going to open to the page now of the family tree.
GROSS: So here it is. There's Robert Cooper Ashby, who is your great-great-great-great grandfather.
GROSS: And then there's women on either side of him in this family tree. There's Mary Ann Ashby, who is a slave, who became kind of like his wife after Robert Cooper's wife died, although they couldn't marry because she had been a slave, and that would have been illegal at that time.
STUART: Yes, that's right, yes.
GROSS: But they had how many children together?
GROSS: That's a lot.
STUART: It is a lot, especially since many of the children were born concurrent with his legitimate white wife, who had only one child, and also with other relationships with slave women on the plantation. So, he was a very busy man.
GROSS: How many slave women were you able to document that he had either sexual relations with or children with?
STUART: Well, I think we kind of came down to about four or five groups. I suspect, of course, that there would have been more, it's just a question of what you can work out historically. And apparently, this was completely common in the Caribbean for planters to have, you know, kind of quite a large number of family groups.
A contemporary of Robert Cooper's had six separate little family groups. And there are rumors of plantation owners on the other islands who - one French planter declared that up to a third of his slave stock came from his "own loins," was the quote. So it was quite common, this very profligate sexual behavior with slaves.
GROSS: That's just kind of chilling, what you just said. It almost sounds like you're breeding your own slaves to work the plantation.
STUART: I think there is certainly a degree of feeling like that. It's sort of, you know, you are kind of producing your own workforce. But also I think it's that sort of sense of claiming you're in total power over everybody in the plantation world over which you preside. Your - his legitimate wife would have had very little redress. There was no chance, really, of her leaving him, as all the money that she had previously brought to the marriage was now in his name.
So everyone - from his wife, his legitimate white wife, to his various other liaisons really had very little say in what happened to them in the world that he presided over and created.
GROSS: One thing you speculate about, you speculate that your great-great-great-great grandmother, who had been a slave, was probably baptized before the slave owner had sexual relations with her because you say that most of the slave owners had no compunctions about sleeping with a young teenager, but they were reluctant to have sexual relations with somebody who hadn't been baptized and was therefore a heathen.
STUART: Yes, I mean, with one of his groups' of children, Suki Ann(ph), he baptized her at 14, and that was often something that planters did if they were going to be in a slightly longer-term relationship with the individual female slave. While they may have, you know, kind of one-off relations with a slave that they had just picked, sort of picked randomly on the plantation, usually if the relationship was going to last, it was quite common for them to get the slave woman baptized, which is an ironic thing because obviously felt that that was a, you know, a rather virtuous gesture, which is extraordinary, when in fact that they were, you know, basically raping underage girls. But that was - thus are the ironies slavery, I think.
GROSS: So the first documented slave ancestor is John Stephen(ph). He's the son of the plantation owner, Robert Cooper...
GROSS: ...and the unknown slave...
GROSS: ...who gave birth to John Stephen.
What's the first documentation you were able - the earliest documentation you were able to find for John Stephen?
STUART: The first moment I discovered John Stephen was in an old inventory, and he was described as being 14 years old, colored, which was the term the West Indian planters used for - certainly the Barbadian planters for those who were mixed-race, and a laborer.
I was looking for him because the good thing about Barbados, it's a very small place, and a lot of the lore or family lore does get passed down. So we had - I had a sense that I was going to find this person. You know, people had - we knew that he was Robert Cooper's because even in my generation, there has always been talk of Robert Cooper because he was such a large and affluent planter.
His reputation and his - the stories of him has kind of lingered in the community. So that's how - but all of it, I have to say, is hearsay. I mean, we as a family assume that all of the - I think we're talking about 18 children of mixed descent that he in some way prioritized, at no point does he ever admit, even when he was living with them - he doesn't describe him as his children in that way.
So we know this because of what the family knows, if you see what I mean, what's been passed on and what we know for sure.
GROSS: And the early documentation of John Stephen that you found is in what was called a slave return that was kept by Robert Cooper, the plantation owner, and that was required. A slave owner at that time in Barbados had to keep a registry of their slaves. What was the reason for that?
STUART: It was the end of the slave trade. One of the important decisions after the end of the slave trade in 1807 was in order to prevent illicit slave trading in the region, planters had to submit a yearly list of slaves on their plantation just to show that they couldn't sneak on slaves who had been illicitly sold in the region.
So, they started documenting their slaves very carefully. And then later on, of course, they would then become compensated when slavery was itself abolished because they were compensated per head of slave. So it was to their advantage to make sure that all the slaves on their plantation were indeed recorded so that they would get the maximum amount of money.
GROSS: And just to clarify here that, you know, in Barbados, the slave trade was ended before slavery was ended. So you couldn't, like, import slaves from Africa, but you could still own slaves.
STUART: Absolutely, that's right.
GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Andrea Stuart. We're talking about her new book that's part memoir and part history. It's called "Sugar in the Blood: A Family's Story of Slavery and Empire." Let's talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Andrea Stuart, and she's the author of the new book "Sugar in the Blood: A Family's Story of Slavery and Empire." And it's the story of her family tree in Barbados, where her great grandfather eight times removed first came to Barbados, and her great grandfather four times removed was a slave owner who had relations with an unknown slave, and that's where her family tree really starts. And her book is also basically a history of slavery in Barbados, and that history is a little different from the history of slavery in the U.S.
So let's get back to your family tree, which you've traced back to a slave owner, your great grandfather four times removed, and an unknown woman slave who he had relations with. Their son, John Stephen, spent three decades in slavery before slavery was ended in Barbados. What did he do after he was freed?
STUART: We have traces of him as, you know, doing kind of a number of - kind of finding a place in the community. He became a shoemaker. I assume he also went on being a carpenter because that was the trade he was given on the plantation. And he married a woman of a similar caste, also a mixed-race slave of a very prominent planter.
They had - I think it - I'm trying to remember now, I think it's six or eight children. And he - he kind of managed to have a certain genuine quality of life, really, in that the privileges that were set up by being this son of a planter carried on through his life. To some degree that meant that he had - he had advantages that ordinary slaves just didn't.
GROSS: After some of your ancestors worked as slaves on a plantation, how did your grandparents come to own a sugar plantation in Barbados?
STUART: Well, it always seems to me an extraordinary irony that my grandfather would decide, or rather his father would decide, that it was a good idea to go back into sugar after the history, the torrid history that our family had had with that particular crop.
But I think, you know, even at the turn of the century - and we're talking about the turn of the 20th century - it must have felt like sugar was still the biggest game in town. It was still the historical crop of the island. To be a planter was to be at the absolute top of the social tree. And so in some ways you can see that for successful businessmen, even those who came from a slave line, the idea of becoming a planter must have felt like real success. And I think that was why my great grandfather decided to buy and also start to farm a plantation again.
GROSS: So we're talking about grandparents who were what they would describe as mulatto, they were mixed-race. They were the descendents of the slave who had children through the slave owner. So who were their workers when they owned a plantation?
STUART: Well, yes, I mean, as I said, I was thinking about this when I was writing the book. And when I was a little girl going up to see my family's plantation, the workers were people who were darker skinned than us and who came - who were basically people who remained - who would have been the sort of bulwark of the kind of slave world the century before.
They were the ones who didn't marry or work - you know, when I say marry, they didn't become involved racially with the planters - or quite so much. So they tended to be the poorer and blacker Barbadians. So it was ironic that we had this juxtaposition of a family like mine who were given a certain degree of privilege, not least the color of their slightly lighter skin, because of their interrelationships with planters and their world being farmed by and cared for by workers who hadn't had that same history.
GROSS: How did your grandparents and great grandparents treat the workers?
STUART: I think that my grandfather was an eccentric, I would say is the nice way of putting it. And I think that he, he very much cast himself in the role of planter. Of course, times had changed enough that one - the kind of horrible extremities of being a planter with - along with violence, and - was no longer possibly legally or even, you know, in a social sense.
But he was, I think, rather overbearing. He very much cast himself in the role of planter, drank too much, gambled too much, womanized too much and, you know, was very much - it was a role that he couldn't quite shed.
GROSS: So knowing that your family is a result of, you know, quote, "illegitimate children" that a slave owner had with an unknown slave, how does it make you feel knowing that your, you know, your mixed-race grandfather and great grandfather had illegitimate children, too? It's not really a word I like to use, illegitimate children, but, you know, children out of marriage.
STUART: Well, I suppose, to be honest, it was completely so much a part of plantation culture and carried on being part of plantation culture all the way through up until the present day, really, that it feels - I wasn't at all surprised. I mean, when I discovered that my grandfather had four additional outside-of-marriage children, that's what they were called in Barbados, I was surprised that I didn't know because it's a small island, but I was not very surprised.
And I was - you know, my uncle, I remember my uncle telling me a story about how he found out about one of his illegitimate brothers and sisters because one guy in his class said to him, oh, you see that guy over there, he's your brother. And my uncle turned around and met this man, and he was indeed his brother by another woman who worked the plantation.
It's amazing how powerful the kind of - the kind of archetype of the plantation was, and I think this is true on mainland America and in the Caribbean, about how the behavior of the plantation carried on after slavery ended. It was an archetypal way of living that just has enormous power and resonance and just went on long after officially slavery was over.
GROSS: Your father is a doctor, and he was the dean at the medical school at the University College of the West Indies in Jamaica. He was knighted for his contributions to medical education. So I presume that when you were growing up, you had a pretty high status in the islands, you know, your grandparents owned a plantation, your father was dean of the medical school. So can you talk a little bit about your status in the islands and how race and the color of your skin did or didn't figure into that.
STUART: Yes, I mean, I had a very lucky upbringing as a child in that sense that I was - my father was a doctor, and we were - we had a very comfortable, pleasant life, really. I think I sort of mentioned in the book that we were the first generation of black children who, really, who could enjoy the fruits of a tropical Caribbean childhood without slavery, you know, kind of yawning over us, really.
And yes, I think I was very, very lucky. I think the idea of race and status in the Caribbean has changed - not entirely changed. I think that there's still a kind of recognition that people who have lighter skins, therefore who are obviously descendent from both planter and slave, do tend to still have certain amounts of privileges. And it's not an accident that up until say my mother's generation, people were very actively making sure that they married other light-skinned people. And I think there's very, very many sort of parallels with America in this regard so that people could maintain the privileges associated with those realities.
But I think now I think that's much less significant in that way. I think now certain Barbados and many of the islands are much more of a meritocracy, and there's a much stronger emergence of kind of, you know, my father being very typical of, quote-unquote, "darker skinned" but, you know, very dynamic men who have come forward and kind of dominate the middle classes.
So I think it's a privilege that now is kind of not as important.
GROSS: Andrea Stuart will be back in the second half of the show. Her new book is called "Sugar in the Blood: A Family's Story of Slavery and Empire." I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross, back with Andrea Stuart, author of the new book "Sugar in the Blood," which traces her family tree. Her great grandfather four times removed owned a sugar plantation in the Caribbean island Barbados, and fathered children with at least three of his slaves, including the woman who became Stuart's forbear. Those children became his slaves, too. Stuart describes her bloodline as blending the history of both oppressed and oppressor. Her book also describes the history of slavery in Barbados.
The history of slavery in Barbados is significantly different than the history of slavery in the United States, so I'd like to talk a little bit about that slavery. You describe Barbados as the first slave society in the British Americas and the first society entirely organized around its slave system. And you say it became the model for the plantation system throughout the Americas. What made Barbados the model?
STUART: I think that Barbados became the model, because it was the place in the British colonies where they found their cash crop - which was sugar, in their case, but on mainland America, we could discuss tobacco or cotton later. They found their mainland. They had found their crop, and they worked out how to create a working system which involves the importation of slaves from Africa, how to organize gangs and groups, how to organize it in a kind of working - as a workforce, how to create laws that would police it, how to create a kind of racial story that would justify it. They did all those things and created that model which then became - and you can see its links in kind of mainland America and, indeed, across the Americas generally.
I mean, we must remember that, for example, the Carolinas were settled by - the very early Carolinas were - at least half of their early governors were from Barbados. So - and you had a vast kind of backwards and forwarding between - I mean, now we think of America - mainland America and the Caribbean and South America as somehow very distinct, different places, but certainly, the Caribbean and mainland America in those days were described as the Americas by the British, particularly colonists. And many people who had great plantations on mainland America also owned plantations in the Caribbean, and vice versa. You had enormous trade links between the groups. They were, in the historical sense, the same place, which I know that we find to imagine now, but it was. And so those interactions meant that what happened in the Caribbean had enormous influence on what happened in mainland America.
GROSS: And you're saying that it was in the Caribbean, specifically in Barbados, that slavery was codified, that there were laws. They were practices that were written down and codified. There was a law in 1661 that was passed called For the Better Ordering and Governing of Negroes.
GROSS: And I think one of the things that this law did - correct me if I'm wrong - was that it clarified the differences between slaves and indentured servants. So there were also indentured servants in Barbados. What were the differences?
STUART: Yes, it's quite fascinating because, of course, we forget now that on mainland America and in the Caribbean, the first servants were indentured white laborers who worked a term. They were given - in exchange for their passage to the Americas, they were given - they worked for five years, or it could be six or seven, depending on the agreement they had with their owners. And then they were free, and they were given a certain amount in the hope that they could then start a new life in the New World.
So it was - Barbados, like much of the Americas, was actually, initially a European world, the dominant workforce being white and the owners also being white, were - you know. And so therefore, you had - it was only after the kind of realization that sugar was going to be able to - potentially - to make the money it was going to that they realized that they simply didn't have the same stock available of white indentured servants that they would need, and hence, shift over to slavery.
So the white indentured servants worked in parallel in the early days with black slaves. And there was an enormous sense that it was important that these two groups didn't become close. There were a number of rebellions where the two groups worked together, and - because they were actually, of course, suffering the same - much of the same terrible ill-treatment and abuse and neglect. So the laws of 1661 made a real effort to give certain privileges to white indentured servants that were not given to the black workers in order that the two groups would not feel that they had common cause, so that they would not get together. And mainly, they made a lot of - there was a lot of racial significance put on the separation between these two groups.
It's fascinating to see how racism is clearly invented at this point. There's a letter by one planter being sent home, saying: We describe ourselves here as the term whites, he said, is how we describe Europeans here. And they really used created that term whites, in order to separate themselves from blacks, who were, therefore, became the kind of complete opposite and so on. It was a very, very canny move to create - to make sure that these two groups didn't come together.
GROSS: You write that in Barbados, as slavery grew, whites in Barbados were afraid they'd be outnumbered by slaves. Was that more of a fear on the island of Barbados then it was, say, in mainland America, in the American South?
STUART: Yes. I think this is one of the acute differences between the two, and I think of the two countries - or the two sets of conditions, the Caribbean and indeed a lot of South America. There was this real, you know - Barbados, for example, was four - the slaves were four times the size of the white population by the 18th century. So there was a real reality that slaves outnumbered the white population, which created a kind of siege mentality that was extraordinary. This never happened in mainland America.
So the same population never had the same level of threat for the white population, which is not to say that they were not horribly and brutally maltreated. Of course they were. But it was not the slave owners of the Caribbean, and I think, you know, that some of them were of English descent, some French, some Dutch, Spanish - all lived in a state of extraordinary paranoia in relation to the number of slaves that they were surrounded by, hence the particularly draconian and disgraceful treatment of the slaves in the Caribbean and those parts of the Americas.
GROSS: Slavery in the United States ended with a Civil War. But several decades before that, in 1833, the slaves in Barbados were freed. What brought about that emancipation?
STUART: Well, I think one of the things I feel very passionately about was that in Britain, where I live, the story is very much around the importance of the abolitionist movement in Britain and, you know, all the various people who were associated with it and very much put this down to the abolitionists movement.
But the reality was, I think, that the slaves worked as hard for their freedom as the abolitionists did for them on their behalf. Because I think that what was happening more and more, particularly in the Caribbean - because that's where my story is set - was that more and more people, more and more slave revolts were happening. It was becoming so fractious and difficult that it was almost the point where the British authorities were feeling this is impossible for us to contain.
The great specter of Haiti was, of course, the great turning point. The 12-year struggle on that extraordinarily island, in which the black slaves of the island managed to defeat both the British Army and the great French Republic and create the first slave-free slate in the Americas, is one of the kind of biggest unforgotten stories of our age, and I think of that of the whole Americas. It's an extraordinary tale.
GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Andrea Stuart. We're talking about her new book "Sugar in the Blood: A Family's Story of Slavery and Empire." And it's about her family tree in Barbados, and also about the history of slavery in Barbados. She traces her family tree to a slave owner and one of his slaves.
Let's take a short break, here. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Andrea Stuart, and we're talking about her new book "Sugar in the Blood: A Family's Story of Slavery and Empire." And it's part family history and part history. It's the story of her family tree. She is from Barbados, where her ancestry traces back to a slave owner who impregnated one of his slaves, and those two people, the slave and the slave owner, are her ancestors. Her book is also a history of slavery in Barbados.
So slavery ends in Barbados in 1833.
GROSS: You've said that you were part of the first generation that grew up more out of the shadow of slavery.
GROSS: So what was different, do you think, for your generation? What's the point of demarcation there?
STUART: Well, I suppose I think that my father's generation, for example, the kind of the whole world of the plantation, its ethos, its ideas about what was not valuable and who was valuable really still overshadowed the life of - on the island. And I think, you know, very much, American - African-Americans will probably sympathize with that.
I remember my mother was rather beautiful and entered a beauty contest when she was - in the '50s. And, of course, she knew - she said she knew she just wouldn't win, because there had never been a black beauty queen in all the beauty contests, and that didn't happen until, I think, the '70s. So that there was - and, you know, my father, I remember, joined a club in Barbados when I was - where my grandfather worked, and it didn't allow black members until 1975.
So the kind of ethos of the plantation - the racism, the attitudes to, you know, kind of workers and people and so on - really cast a very long shadow, a shadow that was very, very evident for a very long time. And I think this, as I say, this is something that, you know, the African-American experience kind of echoes. Once slavery was over, it took a long time for it to really go away.
GROSS: So when you moved to England - which was back when you were a teenager - what year are we talking?
STUART: Seventy-six, I think it was.
GROSS: OK. And you moved with your family, because your father accepted a position there.
STUART: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
GROSS: Did the color of your skin - and you're, you know, you're a light-skinned black.
GROSS: To the color of your skin mean something in England that it didn't mean in Barbados or Jamaica, where you lived the previous part of your life?
STUART: The color of my skin did mean something different when I moved to Britain, whereas, in the Caribbean, my slightly lighter skin marked me out as being perhaps potentially a little more privileged, in Britain there was none of that subtlety or ideas about race. It was very much I was a black person, and that was that. And one was very much reduced to a series of stereotypes - and rather dull stereotypes, at that - about what it was to be a black person.
GROSS: Do you think that in England, there's a different understanding of slavery and of the racial aftereffects of slavery, because the slavery wasn't in England? You know, the English colonies had slaves, but - I mean, some of the English colonies had slaves, but that wasn't happening in England itself.
STUART: Yes. I think that - I think it's generally true that one of the reasons there is a difference between Britain and mainland America was that there is that sense in Britain that it was something that happened a long time ago and far away, while in America, the slave experience very, very much existed, coexisted on the same piece of ground. And I think that that reality has made it irretrievable in America's history to be something that was dealt with.
What I think is fascinating in Britain is how little memory contemporary Britons have of the reality of the fact that when that my family's family story first started, Britain was not very far away at all. I'm not talking geographically, but culturally. It was, you know, people like my first ancestor, who was an Englishman, were absolutely - called themselves and described themselves as Englishmen transplanted. They were still English. They still had the same mores, attitudes, behaviors, and they believed themselves to be English.
And I think - so there's a real difference in how these two groups have dealt with slavery. And I also think that the fact that America had such a strong population of - number population of black people has made it incredibly important to come to terms with this extraordinary history, while in Britain we're a relatively small minority. I think it's been easier for Britain to ignore the history of their slave past than it has been for the mainland America.
GROSS: Is the Plum Grove sugar plantation still owned by your family?
STUART: Yes. I mean, it's no longer a working plantation and I think they're going to sell it and it's going to become real estate which is now much more, sort of, lucrative than sugar plantation space is, if you see what I mean.
GROSS: Will you be glad when that chapter of your family history is over, the plantation chapter?
STUART: That's an - it's an extraordinary feeling. I have an enormous - and this is the irony of it all - is that I can remember and spent so much of my youth being at my grandmother's and grandfather's plantation and listening to the swaying sound of the cane. And running around, you know, this little magic world of beautiful gardens that surround the plantation house, then were bracketed all around by all the sugar cane and knowing the workers.
And, you know, generally it was all for me a very idyllic adventure. And so the idea of it being over is both painful, because it represents to me very much my Caribbean childhood, my past, my family, and then another part of me thinks that maybe it's time. For the island just - for me as well as the island to close the door on the plantation story and to walk into the future.
GROSS: I'm wondering, finally, if because of this book about the history of sugar and sugar plantations and slavery in Barbados, where you're from, and also your book is a history of your family tree, if eating sugar has a different meaning for you than it does for me. Like, if you think about all of that every time you put sugar in your coffee or, you know, eat something that has sugar sprinkled on it.
STUART: That's a fascinating question. Originally, when I started, oddly enough, doing the book I didn't have - it didn't particularly click. And it was not until I was reading some of the work by the abolitionists and one of their big, kind of, campaigns was that it was blood-stained sugar. That was what they described it, that it carried the blood of slaves. And I remember actually at that point putting some sugar into something and thinking, ah, it's this.
You know? And realizing that his commodity just is, you know, and I thought again about the way that commodities - in my case it was sugar, in America the parallels would be, as I say, cotton or tobacco - how these simple - these commodities have such real visceral impact on the way our lives unfold and how extraordinary that is. That we don't consume them with any of those realizations, but that's the truth of it.
GROSS: Well, Andrea Stuart, I want to thank you very much for talking with us.
STUART: It's been delightful. Thank you.
GROSS: Andrea Stuart is the author of the new book "Sugar in the Blood: A Family's Story of Slavery and Empire." You can read an excerpt on our website freshair.npr.org. Coming up, Milo Miles reviews the new Yo La Tengo album "Fade." This is FRESH AIR. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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Fractions, Number Lines, and Order
What is wrong with the following sample advertisement statement?
For one day only, save,, and even more‼! This is a sale you cannot miss‼!
Each fraction value is less than the previous value, , but the ending "and even more" implies that each fraction value is becoming greater in value. The statement is a common mistake that many people make when using fractions. Here, the order of the fractions in the statement is based on the value of the denominator and not on the true value of the fraction. The statement should be, For one day only, save ,, and even more‼! since the advertisement is implying that on some items a person can save more than half the listed price.
We use a number line model to illustrate fraction order for values between 0 and 1. We divide that length into two equal-sized pieces and label the point where the segment is divided with the coordinate . The distance from 0 to represents a length of one-half the whole segment from 0 to 1.
We further divide each of those halves in half; the points where each segment is divided are represented by the fractions and . As with equivalent fractions from the previous session, we may label the point at as , that is, this is another way to visualize equivalent fractions.
The next diagrams illustrate an extension of fraction order relationships to twelfths, sixths, fourths, thirds, and halves, and how they relate to each other on the segment between 0 and 1.
We bring these number lines together in the illustration below to a single number line with the coordinates labeled with the simplified form for each of the fractions in the above illustration.
When we compare values, the one that is farthest to the left on the number line has the least value. Looking at the diagram below, we see that (circled values). Likewise, we see that (boxed values).
If we did not refer to a completed number line, we could still determine these inequalities by changing each pair of fractions to fractions with common denominators.
Since , , and , we have . Twelfths is a common denominator for fourths and thirds.
Since and , we have . Sixths is a common denominator for halves and sixths.
Further note that we could have compared all four of the fractions , , , and by changing them all to the common denominator of twelfths. Since , we have . By converting the fractional values to fractions with common denominators, we are able to easily compare their relative sizes.
Notice that the least common denominator is the least common multiple (LCM) of 2, 3, 4, and 6. The value of the LCM(2, 3, 4, 6) is 12 as illustrated below with the set intersection method for finding the least common multiple.
Reminder: we can also find the least common multiple (LCM) by prime factorization into the exponential form.
2 = 2
Taking the largest exponent of each prime factor we get
22 · 3 = 4 · 3 = 12. So, LCM(2, 3, 4, 6) = 12.
Five students brought identical sized pans of bars to sell in a bake sale. The bars were all cut to be the same size. By the end of the sale, three-fourths of Cary's bars, two-thirds of Dana's bars, half of Jamie's bars, five-eighths of Lynn's bars, and seven-eighths of Terry's bars were sold. Whose pan of bars was the median amount sold?
The median of a set of fractions can be found by using the same method that we used for a set of whole numbers. Remember that the median is found by first ordering the set of values, and that a good method for ordering fractional values is to rewrite them with a common denominator.
Solution for the above problem: We first find the least common denominator by finding the least common multiple for 4, 3, 2, 6, and 8. We find the LCM by the prime factorization method.
Next, place the fractions in order from least to greatest.
The median value is the 3rd value of . We take the simplest form, so the median is .
We have found that Cary sold the median number of bars.
Example: Find the median of this list:
Solution: First we need to order these values from least to greatest. There are many ways to do this. We could use a number line like the one on the previous page. Here, we will change all of these values to a common denominator:
Now we place these in order from least to greatest and select the median.
Since there are 10 values in the list, we need to find the value that is halfway between the 5th and 6th values. So, the median is .
We may use bar diagrams to help solve some types of problems. For example, use a bar diagram to solve the following problem:
Missy had $45. She spentof her money on a book. How much money does she have left?
Solution: The answer to the question, "What is of $45?" gives us the amount she spent. The amount she has left would be the amount left after the amount she spent is removed.
We have that 1 unit is $9. So, 2 units would be $18 and 3 units would be $27.
Missy has $27 left after spending $18 of her $45.
One way of estimating solutions to problems involving fractions is to use 0, , and 1 as key points or anchors to help us visualize the relative size of fractions between 0 and 1. These are good reference points or landmarks to keep in mind when estimating solutions.
Example: Is closer to 0, , or 1?
Solution: First we notice that is equivalent to one-half, so is greater in value than . Next we notice that the numerator 5, is as close as we can get to the denominator 6, without reaching . So we conclude that is closer to one.
Example: Is closer to 0, , or 1?
Solution: First we notice that is equivalent to . We conclude that is slightly larger than one-half.
Example: Estimate the value of the sum for .
Solution: We estimate the value of the sum to be 3, since .
Note that the symbol, ≈, means approximately equal to. The symbol should be used anytime an estimate or approximation is made during a computation.
Order is Heaven's first law.
An Essay on Man IV - Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)
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Jane Brody on health and aging.
Since the start of the 21st century, Americans have made great progress in controlling high blood pressure, though it remains a leading cause of heart attacks, strokes, congestive heart failure and kidney disease.
Now 48 percent of the more than 76 million adults with hypertension have it under control, up from 29 percent in 2000.
But that means more than half, including many receiving treatment, have blood pressure that remains too high to be healthy. (A normal blood pressure is lower than 120 over 80.) With a plethora of drugs available to normalize blood pressure, why are so many people still at increased risk of disease, disability and premature death? Hypertension experts offer a few common, and correctable, reasons:
Jane Brody speaks about hypertension.
¶ About 20 percent of affected adults don’t know they have high blood pressure, perhaps because they never or rarely see a doctor who checks their pressure.
¶ Of the 80 percent who are aware of their condition, some don’t appreciate how serious it can be and fail to get treated, even when their doctors say they should.
¶ Some who have been treated develop bothersome side effects, causing them to abandon therapy or to use it haphazardly.
¶ Many others do little to change lifestyle factors, like obesity, lack of exercise and a high-salt diet, that can make hypertension harder to control.
Dr. Samuel J. Mann, a hypertension specialist and professor of clinical medicine at Weill-Cornell Medical College, adds another factor that may be the most important. Of the 71 percent of people with hypertension who are currently being treated, too many are taking the wrong drugs or the wrong dosages of the right ones.
Dr. Mann, author of “Hypertension and You: Old Drugs, New Drugs, and the Right Drugs for Your High Blood Pressure,” says that doctors should take into account the underlying causes of each patient’s blood pressure problem and the side effects that may prompt patients to abandon therapy. He has found that when treatment is tailored to the individual, nearly all cases of high blood pressure can be brought and kept under control with available drugs.
Plus, he said in an interview, it can be done with minimal, if any, side effects and at a reasonable cost.
“For most people, no new drugs need to be developed,” Dr. Mann said. “What we need, in terms of medication, is already out there. We just need to use it better.”
But many doctors who are generalists do not understand the “intricacies and nuances” of the dozens of available medications to determine which is appropriate to a certain patient.
“Prescribing the same medication to patient after patient just does not cut it,” Dr. Mann wrote in his book.
The trick to prescribing the best treatment for each patient is to first determine which of three mechanisms, or combination of mechanisms, is responsible for a patient’s hypertension, he said.
¶ Salt-sensitive hypertension, more common in older people and African-Americans, responds well to diuretics and calcium channel blockers.
¶ Hypertension driven by the kidney hormone renin responds best to ACE inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers, as well as direct renin inhibitors and beta-blockers.
¶ Neurogenic hypertension is a product of the sympathetic nervous system and is best treated with beta-blockers, alpha-blockers and drugs like clonidine.
According to Dr. Mann, neurogenic hypertension results from repressed emotions. He has found that many patients with it suffered trauma early in life or abuse. They seem calm and content on the surface but continually suppress their distress, he said.
One of Dr. Mann’s patients had had high blood pressure since her late 20s that remained well-controlled by the three drugs her family doctor prescribed. Then in her 40s, periodic checks showed it was often too high. When taking more of the prescribed medication did not result in lasting control, she sought Dr. Mann’s help.
After a thorough work-up, he said she had a textbook case of neurogenic hypertension, was taking too much medication and needed different drugs. Her condition soon became far better managed, with side effects she could easily tolerate, and she no longer feared she would die young of a heart attack or stroke.
But most patients should not have to consult a specialist. They can be well-treated by an internist or family physician who approaches the condition systematically, Dr. Mann said. Patients should be started on low doses of one or more drugs, including a diuretic; the dosage or number of drugs can be slowly increased as needed to achieve a normal pressure.
Specialists, he said, are most useful for treating the 10 percent to 15 percent of patients with so-called resistant hypertension that remains uncontrolled despite treatment with three drugs, including a diuretic, and for those whose treatment is effective but causing distressing side effects.
Hypertension sometimes fails to respond to routine care, he noted, because it results from an underlying medical problem that needs to be addressed.
“Some patients are on a lot of blood pressure drugs — four or five — who probably don’t need so many, and if they do, the question is why,” Dr. Mann said.
How to Measure Your Blood Pressure
Mistaken readings, which can occur in doctors’ offices as well as at home, can result in misdiagnosis of hypertension and improper treatment. Dr. Samuel J. Mann, of Weill Cornell Medical College, suggests these guidelines to reduce the risk of errors:
¶ Use an automatic monitor rather than a manual one, and check the accuracy of your home monitor at the doctor’s office.
¶ Use a monitor with an arm cuff, not a wrist or finger cuff, and use a large cuff if you have a large arm.
¶ Sit quietly for a few minutes, without talking, after putting on the cuff and before checking your pressure.
¶ Check your pressure in one arm only, and take three readings (not more) one or two minutes apart.
¶ Measure your blood pressure no more than twice a week unless you have severe hypertension or are changing medications.
¶ Check your pressure at random, ordinary times of the day, not just when you think it is high.
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Inaugurated in 1973, the Sydney Opera House is a great architectural work of the 20th century that brings together multiple strands of creativity and innovation in both architectural form and structural design. A great urban sculpture set in a remarkable waterscape, at the tip of a peninsula projecting into Sydney Harbour, the building has had an enduring influence on architecture. The Sydney Opera House comprises three groups of interlocking vaulted ‘shells’ which roof two main performance halls and a restaurant. These shell-structures are set upon a vast platform and are surrounded by terrace areas that function as pedestrian concourses. In 1957, when the project of the Sydney Opera House was awarded by an international jury to Danish architect Jørn Utzon, it marked a radically new approach to construction.
view from the air towards the south east
© Commonwealth of Australia
Outstanding Universal Value
The Sydney Opera House constitutes a masterpiece of 20th century architecture. Its significance is based on its unparalleled design and construction; its exceptional engineering achievements and technological innovation and its position as a world-famous icon of architecture. It is a daring and visionary experiment that has had an enduring influence on the emergent architecture of the late 20th century. Utzon's original design concept and his unique approach to building gave impetus to a collective creativity of architects, engineers and builders. Ove Arup's engineering achievements helped make Utzon's vision a reality. The design represents an extraordinary interpretation and response to the setting in Sydney Harbour. The Sydney Opera House is also of outstanding universal value for its achievements in structural engineering and building technology. The building is a great artistic monument and an icon, accessible to society at large.
Criterion (i): The Sydney Opera House is a great architectural work of the 20th century. It represents multiple strands of creativity, both in architectural form and structural design, a great urban sculpture carefully set in a remarkable waterscape and a world famous iconic building.
All elements necessary to express the values of the Sydney Opera House are included within the boundaries of the nominated area and buffer zone. This ensures the complete representation of its significance as an architectural object of great beauty in its waterscape setting. The Sydney Opera House continues to perform its function as a world-class performing arts centre. The Conservation Plan specifies the need to balance the roles of the building as an architectural monument and as a state of the art performing centre, thus retaining its authenticity of use and function. Attention given to retaining the building's authenticity culminated with the Conservation Plan and the Utzon Design Principles.
The Sydney Opera House was included in the National Heritage List in 2005 under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 and on the State Heritage Register of New South Wales in 2003 under the Heritage Act 1977. Listing in the National Heritage List implies that any proposed action to be taken inside or outside the boundaries of a National Heritage place or a World Heritage property that may have a significant impact on the heritage values is prohibited without the approval of the Minister for the Environment and Heritage. A buffer zone has been established.
The present state of conservation is very good. The property is maintained and preserved through regular and rigorous repair and conservation programmes. The management system of the Sydney Opera House takes into account a wide range of measures provided under planning and heritage legislation and policies of both the Australian Government and the New South Wales Government. The Management Plan for the Sydney Opera House, the Conservation Plan and the Utzon Design Principles together provide the policy framework for the conservation and management of the Sydney Opera House.
A major cultural centre for Sydney and its siting at Bennelong Point had been discussed since the 1940s. In 1956 the New South Wales Government called an open-ended international design competition and appointed an independent jury, rather than commissioning a local firm. The competition brief provided broad specifications to attract the best design talent in the world; it did not specify design parameters or set a cost limit. The main requirement of the competition brief was a design for a dual function building with two performance halls.
The competition generated enormous interest in Australia and overseas. The New South Wales Government’s decision to commission Jørn Utzon as the sole architect was unexpected, bold and visionary. There was scepticism as to whether the structure could be built given Utzon’s limited experience, the rudimentary and unique design concept and the absence of any engineering advice. The competition drawings were largely diagrammatic, the design had not been fully costed and neither Utzon nor the jury had consulted a structural engineer. Utzon’s design concept included unprecedented architectural forms and demanded solutions that required new technologies and materials. The New South Wales Government also faced public pressure to select an Australian architect.
The Sydney Opera House is often thought of as being constructed in three stages and this is useful in understanding the history of the three key elements of its architectural composition: the podium (stage 1: 1958–1961), the vaulted shells (stage 2: 1962–1967) and the glass walls and interiors (stage 3: 1967–1973). Architect Jørn Utzon conceived the overall design and supervised the construction of the podium and the vaulted shells. The glass walls and interiors were designed and their construction supervised by architect Peter Hall supported by Lionel Todd and David Littlemore in conjunction with the then New South Wales Government Architect, Ted Farmer. Peter Hall was in conversation with Utzon on various aspects of the design for at least eighteen months following his departure. Ove Arup & Partners provided the engineering expertise for all three stages of construction.
Design and construction were closely intertwined. Utzon’s unique design together with his radical approach to the construction of the building fostered an exceptional collaborative and innovative environment. His collaborative model marked a break from conventional architectural practice at the time. The design solution and construction of the shell structure took eight years to complete and the development of the special ceramic tiles for the shells took over three years. The Sydney Opera House became a testing laboratory and a vast, open-air pre-casting factory.
The Sydney Opera House took sixteen years to build; this was six years longer than scheduled and ten times more than its original estimated cost. On 20 October 1973 the Sydney Opera House was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II. After inauguration, new works were undertaken over time. Between 1986 and 1988 the land approach and forecourt were reconstructed and the lower concourse developed under the supervision of the then New South Wales Government Architect, Andrew Andersons, with contributions by Peter Hall.
Between 1998 and 1999 the recording and rehearsal room was converted into two areas: an assembly area for the orchestra and the Studio, a revitalised performance space for the presentation of innovative music and performing arts. In 1998, in accordance with the celebration of the 25th anniversary of inauguration, the Sydney Opera House Trust appointed Sydney architect Richard Johnson to advise on future development of the site and to establish planning principles. Through Johnson, the Sydney Opera House Trust began negotiations to reconcile with Utzon and to re-engage him with the building in an advisory capacity. In 1999 Utzon formally accepted Premier Carr’s invitation to re-engage with the project by setting down design principles that outline his vision for the building and explain the principles behind his design. Over three years he worked with his architect son and business partner, Jan Utzon, and Richard Johnson to draw up his design principles for the Sydney Opera House, including the refurbishment of the reception hall, construction of the western loggia, exploration of options for improving the Concert Hall acoustics, improving services to the forecourt to support performances, modification of the orchestra pit and interior of the Opera Theatre. In 2002 The Sydney Opera House Trust released the Utzon Design Principles. In 2004 refurbishment of the Utzon Room (formerly known as the reception hall) was completed. Source: Advisory Body Evaluation
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The universe may be a deterministic system, but that doesn't mean random chance doesn't exist, or that you can determine the exact path the future will take in advance. For example, Heisenburg's uncertainty principle shows that you can affect an electron's position by measuring its momentum, and vice versa. That's because electrons are so small that the act of observing them causes a change in their position or momentum, depending on whether you're measuring their momentum or position. There's a well-known experiment where you shoot electrons at a double-slit in a screen and then see what pattern they form; if you don't observe the electrons going through the slit, they generate a standard wave interference pattern (meaning the electrons are seemingly interfering with themselves), but if you do, the pattern changes to one generated by particles. Furthermore, if you delay the observation (i.e., by using a removable detector screen), you can cause a retroactive change from a wave pattern to a particle one, and if you make it possible to destroy the measurement of which slit the electron goes through, you can cause a second retroactive change, from a particle pattern to a wave one.
Here's something interesting to think about. Let's say you have two people, essentially identical, except one believes that free will somehow exists, and the other believes that it doesn't. The two people will act differently based on whether they believe in free will or not. Furthermore, if they later change their minds (in other words, make themselves believe the opposite of what they believed before), it will change their behavior. To make the point even clearer, if you had a third person who had never heard of free will, they'd act in a completely different way than the other two - but once they heard of it, depending on whether it was "free will exists" or "free will doesn't exist", it would instantly change their behavior from then on.
In other words, yes, I believe it's possible to change your own behavior by making yourself change what you believe. I don't know whether that would actually be considered free will, but I do know that it's close enough to count for me.
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The Roman Catholic Church in its Latin Rite traditionally distinguished between the major orders (holy orders) of bishop, priest, deacon and subdeacon, and four minor orders, that of acolyte, exorcist, lector and porter (in descending sequence).13
In 1972, the minor orders were renamed "ministries", with those of lector and acolyte being kept throughout the Latin Church.4 The rites by which all four minor orders were conferred are still employed for members of some Roman Catholic religious institutes and societies of apostolic life authorized to observe the 1962 form of the Roman Rite. In view of the 1972 renaming, what they are inducted into are now canonically called ministries, with those of lector and acolyte being kept throughout the Latin Church in general.
From the beginning of the 3rd century there is evidence in Western Christianity of the existence of what became the four minor orders (acolytes, exorcists, doorkeepers and readers), as well as of cantors and fossores (tomb diggers). The evidence for readers is probably the earliest. In the West, unlike the East, where imposition of hands was used, the rite of ordination was by the handing over to them of objects seen as instruments of the office.5
The Council of Sardica (343) mentions the lectorate alone as obligatory before ordination to the diaconate. The obligation to receive all four minor orders appears to date only from a time when they ceased to indicate exercise of an actual function. Even in the early years of the 20th century, no minimum age, other than that of the "age of reason", was laid down for receiving minor orders.2 However, the 1917 Code of Canon Law laid down that nobody was to be given clerical tonsure, which had to be received before minor orders, before beginning the regular course of theological studies.6 Before the entry into force of that Code, it was an almost universal custom to confer all four minor orders at one time, since the bishop was authorized to dispense from the rule that each order had to be exercised for some time before reception of the next highest order.2 Today, as indicated in the 1983 Code of Canon Law, anyone who is to be ordained to the diaconate must already have received the ministries of lector and acolyte and exercised them for a suitable period, with an interval of at least six months between becoming an acolyte and becoming a deacon.7
The 1917 Code of Canon Law also restricted conferral of tonsure and any order below that of the presbyterate to those who intended to become priests and who were judged likely to be worthy priests.8 Previously, there were lay cardinals and others, including the famous Franz Liszt, who received minor orders alone. They could even marry and remain clerics, the status of belonging to the clergy being at that time conferred through clerical tonsure, provided that they married only once and that to a virgin; but by the early 20th century a cleric who married was considered to have forfeited his clerical status.2 Today, a man who receives what were previously called minor orders is not yet a cleric, since today one becomes a cleric only upon ordination to the diaconate,9 a rule that applies even to members of institutes authorized to observe the 1962 form of the Roman Rite,10 such as the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter and others under the care of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei.
In the early 20th century, Auguste Boudinhon said that, on the grounds that minor orders did not originate with Jesus or the apostles, the view that minor orders and the subdiaconate were sacramental, a view held by several medieval theologians, was no longer held.2 The slightly earlier G. van Noort said that the view of their sacramentality, which was held by most scholastic theologians, including Thomas Aquinas, was then held only by a few, among whom he mentioned Louis Billot (1846-1931) and Adolphe Tanquerey (1854-1932).11 In the 1950s, Antonio Piolanti recognized as orders only episcopacy, priesthood (presbyterate) and diaconate,12 the three whose transmission is reserved to bishops.13 In speaking of the hierarchical structure of the Church, the Second Vatican Council mentioned only these three orders, not minor orders or subdiaconate.14
By Pope Paul VI's motu proprio Ministeria quaedam of 15 August 1972, the term "minor orders" has been replaced by that of "ministries".15 Two of what were called minor orders, those of reader and acolyte, are kept throughout the Latin Church, and national episcopal conferences are free to use the term "subdeacon" in place of that of "acolyte".16 The motu proprio specified the functions of each of these two ministries,17 A prescribed interval, as decided by the Holy See and the national episcopal conference, is to be observed between receiving them.18 Candidates for diaconate and for priesthood must receive both ministries and exercise them for some time before receiving holy orders.19
Conferral of the minor orders or ministries is by the ordinary: either a diocesan bishop or someone who is equivalent in law to a diocesan bishop or, in the case of clerical religious institutes and societies of apostolic life, a major superior.20 The two ministries that are in use throughout the Latin Church could be conferred even on men21 who are not candidates for holy orders.22
Eastern Christianity traditionally views the subdeacon as a minor order,23 unlike the practice of the West which considered it a major order. The other common minor order is lector (reader). The minor order of porter is mentioned historically in some service-books, but no longer is given; all of the rights and responsibilities of each minor order are viewed as contained in the subdiaconate.2
The 22 sui iuris Eastern Churches that are in union with Rome have their traditional minor orders, governed by their own particular law.24 In all Eastern Catholic Churches, subdeacons are minor clerics, since admission to major orders is by ordination as deacon.25 The Byzantine tradition allows for several orders of minor clerics. The sui iuris Byzantine Catholic Metropolitan Church of Pittsburgh, also called the Byzantine-Ruthenian Church, has the minor orders of candle bearer, cantor, lector and subdeacon, and in English uses the term "ordination" for their cheirothesis.26 The minor orders of candle bearer and cantor are given before tonsure during ordination to the lectorate.27
Eastern Orthodox Churches routinely confer the minor orders of lector and subdeacon, and some jurisdictions also ordain cantors. Ordination to minor orders is done by a bishop at any public worship service, but always outside the context of the Divine Liturgy.28 The order of taper-bearer is now used as part of ordination as a lector. The orders of doorkeepers, exorcists, and acolytes are no longer in common use.29
- The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church
- Auguste Boudinhon, "Minor Orders" in Catholic Encyclopedia 1911
- Catechism of the Council of Trent (Dublin 1829), p. 310
- Ministeria quaedam, II: "The orders hitherto called minor are henceforth to be spoken of as 'ministries'."
- A. Villien, H. W. Edwards, History and Liturgy of the Sacraments, pp. 237ff.
- Canon 976 of the 1917 Code of Canon Law
- Code of Canon Law, canon 1035
- Canon 973 of the 1917 Code of Canon Law
- Code of Canon Law, canon 266
- Instruction on the Application of the Apostolic Letter Summorum Pontificum, 30
- G. van Noort (revised by J. P. Verhaar), Tractatus de sacramentis (Paul Brand, Bussum, Netherlands 1930), vol. II, pp. 145-146
- Antonius Piolanti, De Sacramentis (fifth edition, Marietti 1955), pp. 461-463
- Piolanti 1955, pp. 463-468
- Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen gentium
- Ministeria quaedam, II
- Ministeria quaedam, IV
- Ministeria quaedam, IV-VI
- Ministeria quaedam, X
- Ministeria quaedam, XI
- Ministeria quaedam, IX
- Ministeria quaedam, VII
- Ministeria quaedam, III
- Faulk, Edward. 101 Questions & Answers on Eastern Catholic Churches. New York: Paulist Press, 2007, p. 51
- CCEO, Title X, Canon 327, 1992. Retrieved 2008-11-11.
- CCEO, Title 12, Canon 560 and Canon 565, 1992. Retrieved 2008-11-11.
- Particular Law for the Byzantine-Ruthenian Church in the USA (29 June 1999). Retrieved 2008-11-11.
- Eparchial Newsletter (October–November 1998) eparchy-of-van-nuys.org Accessed 2007-11-28
- The Sacramental Life of the Orthodox Church, Calivas (2005) Minor orders
- Orthodox Wiki, Minor Orders, N.D. Retrieved 2008-11-11.
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Viticulture - n. : the cultivation or culture of grapes
Enology - n. :a science that deals with wine and wine making
The V&E Department combines the sciences of viticulture and enology in a single research and teaching unit that encompasses all of the scientific disciplines that impact grape growing and winemaking. For over one hundred years the University of California has maintained an active and productive program in research and education in viticulture and enology. The continuing excellence of the Department has enabled California growers and vintners to develop practices that have allowed the Golden State to achieve its potential and become a premier wine-producing region.
Dr. Andy Walker; Unraveling an Olmo Mystery
In 1989, Dr. Harold Olmo gave Dr. Andy Walker a collection of grape seeds that he had produced the previous year. Walker believed they had the potential for resistance to both Pierces’ Disease (PD) and the dagger nematode (Xiphinema index) that vectors fanleaf virus. They were the offspring of two V. rupestris females and six M. rotundifolia males. The rotundifolia is known to confer resistance to PD, X. index and fanleaf virus. Walker’s lab began investigating the actual value of these rootstocks as parents in breeding new genotypes with effective resistance across a broad spectrum of applications, including rootstocks, raisin, table and winegrape production. For the next fifteen years, they tested and retested...
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Viticulture - n. : the cultivation or culture of grapes
Enology - n. :a science that deals with wine and wine making
The V&E Department combines the sciences of viticulture and enology in a single research and teaching unit that encompasses all of the scientific disciplines that impact grape growing and winemaking. For over one hundred years the University of California has maintained an active and productive program in research and education in viticulture and enology. The continuing excellence of the Department has enabled California growers and vintners to develop practices that have allowed the Golden State to achieve its potential and become a premier wine-producing region.
North Coast Grape Growers Research Fund
On March 10, 1971, the North Coast Grape Growers Association (NCGGA) created a fund to support research directly connected the cultural problems related to growing grapes in the North Coast premium table wine grape industry.
In August of 2006, after 43 years of service to the growing community, the North Coast Grape Growers Association voted to discontinue operations and join the California Association of Winegrape Growers. The membership was transfered with a margin of 96.8% of the NCGGA supporting the move.
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Louisiana Voodoo, also known as New Orleans Voodoo, describes a set of religious practices which originated from the traditions of the African diaspora. It is one of many incarnations of African-based religions rooted in West African Dahomeyan Vodun which developed within the French, Spanish, and Creole speaking African American population of the U.S. state of Louisiana. They became syncretized with the Catholicism and Francophone culture of south Louisiana as a result of the slave trade.
During the 19th century, Voodoo queens became central figures to Voodoo and presided over ceremonial meetings and ritual dances. They also earned an income by administrating charms, amulets, and magical powders guaranteed to cure ailments, grant desires, and confound or destroy one’s enemies.
The most famous voodoo Queen of New Orleans was Marie Laveau. In the 1830s she conducted private rituals behind her cottage on St. Ann Street of the New Orleans French Quarter, performed exorcisms, and offered sacrifices to spirits. Also a devout Catholic, Marie encouraged her followers to attend Catholic Mass. The influence of her Catholic beliefs further facilitated the adoption of Catholic practices into the Voodoo belief system. Today, she is remembered for her skill and compassion for the less fortunate, and her spirit is considered one of the central figures of Louisiana Voodoo.
Today, Voodoo is a major tourist attraction to the city of New Orleans. Shops selling charms, gris-gris, candles, and powders cater to both tourists and practitioners. The New Orleans Historic Voodoo Museum houses numerous artifacts and provides daily tours of the museum, the St. Louis Cemetery, and the New Orleans French Quarter. The museum also provides spiritual services including matrimony blessings, marriage ceremonies, consultations, and other rituals. Voodoo ceremonies have been held against contemporary problems facing New Orleans, such as crack cocaine abuse, burglaries, prostitution and assaults.
Louisiana Voodoo is often confused with but is not completely separable from Haitian Vodou and southern Hoodoo. It differs from Vodou in its emphasis upon Gris-gris, voodoo queens, use of Hoodoo occult paraphernalia, and Li Grand Zombi (snake deity).
The cure-all was a Voodoo spell that could solve all problems. There were different recipes in Voodoo spells for cure-all; one recipe was to mix jimson weed (Warning: due to the toxicity of Jimson Weed, it is not advised for unskilled practitioners to create) with sulfur and honey. The mixture was placed in a glass, which was rubbed against a black cat, and then the mixture was slowly sipped.
Li Grande Zombi is the major serpent spirit of worship which corresponds to the Loa Damballah-Weddo. It is most commonly linked to the name of Marie Laveau's pet snake, a huge boa constrictor or royal python (Ball python) who was worshipped at her New Orleans Voodoo rituals on Bayou St. John. St. John's Eve
The ouanga, a charm used to poison an enemy, contained the poisonous roots of the figure maudit tree, brought from Africa and preserved in the West Indies. The ground up root was combined with other elements such as bones, nails, roots, holy water, holy candles, holy incense, holy bread, or crucifixes. The administrator of the ritual frequently evoked protection from Jehova, the Christian God, and Jesus Christ.
A love powder is a half teaspoonful of sugar, teaspoonful of peppermint and a teaspoonful of grated candied orange peel; give a teaspoonful of this mixture in a glass of wine and the person will love you forever.
In New Orleans, gris gris is often carried in the form of a doll or a bag and is essentially a means of carrying a charm or a spell. Voodoo Mama's Authentic New Orleans gris gris (gree gree) are powerful magickal talismans created according to New Orleans Voodoo tradition.
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By Gene Emery
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Older women with thin bones should be screened every year and those with denser bones can safely wait up to 17 years to have their next bone mineral density test, according to new research.
Current recommendations have relied on bone mineral density readings to try to predict the speed at which bones weaken with time, said lead author Dr. Margaret Gourlay of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine. "This is the first U.S. study to do it based on patients."
Based on results from 4,957 women who were studied for 15 years, the report, "makes a major contribution toward filling a significant knowledge gap in the field of osteoporosis," said Dr. Margery Gass, executive director of the North American Menopause Society, whose guidelines for brittle bone disease suggest testing postmenopausal women every two to five years.
About 10 million Americans over 50, most of them women, have osteoporosis, according to the National Institutes of Health. The cost to the U.S. health care system is as much as $18 billion per year.
Gourlay's team found that the best time to have a subsequent bone density test depended on a woman's starting point, as gauged by the so-called T score derived from using X-rays to measure the density of bones in the hip. The lower the score, the weaker the bones.
Among women age 67 or older who started out with a normal T score of -1.00 or higher, it took an average of 16.8 years for 10 percent of the group to develop osteoporosis, indicated by a score of -2.50.
They also looked at women with osteopenia, in which "your bones are thinner but not at the osteoporosis level yet," Gourlay told Reuters Health. As those T scores fell, it took less time for osteoporosis to develop in 10 percent of the women.
For women with the lowest starting scores of -2.00 to -2.49, the interval was just 1.1 years. For women with a score of -1.50 to -1.99, it was 4.7 years. And among women who scored -1.01 to -1.49, it took 17.3 years for one in 10 to progress to osteoporosis.
The researchers adjusted the analysis to account for estrogen use and risk factors for osteoporosis. The volunteers were women from Maryland, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Oregon.
"We knew that the groups that had thinner bones to start with were going to transition to osteoporosis faster," said Gourlay. However, "we were not expecting this kind of separation between the low risk and high risk group. For those women with a T score above -1.5 to have just a 10 percent chance of making the transition to osteoporosis after 17 years was a great surprise. This was very good news."
However, the time intervals were not the same for all women age 67 and older. They shrank as women aged.
"For example, among women with moderate osteopenia, the estimated (bone density) testing interval was approximately 5 years for women who were 70 years old and approximately 3 years for those who were 85 years old," the researchers wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Gourlay cautioned that the time scales may also be very different for women under 67.
"The findings in this paper will enable clinicians to recommend bone mineral density testing from an evidence-based position," Gass said in an e-mail, adding that testing has been both under-used and over-used, depending on the setting, "primarily because of lack of data to inform guidelines."
It's under-used in women over 65 and over-used "in early postmenopausal women, the majority of whom are at very low risk of fracture," she said. "Some clinicians are even getting a 'baseline' in early postmenopausal women, something no medical society is recommending."
Her group recommends screening for all women who are age 65 and older and for women ages 50 to 64 if they are smokers, consume alcohol daily, weigh less than 127 pounds, have rheumatoid arthritis, have already had a fracture suggesting that their bones might be weak or had a parent who suffered a hip fracture.
The test itself typically costs $250.
Gourlay said it's not clear if the guidelines will save money. "This tells us how to use the test better, but we're still concerned that overall the test is not ordered enough."
She cited a 2008 study of female Medicare beneficiaries over age 64 in which only 13 percent had ever gotten an initial bone density test. "This is 13 percent of the women who, everyone agrees, should have the first test."
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/zpvV8U New England Journal of Medicine, online January 18, 2012.
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Key: "S:" = Show Synset (semantic) relations, "W:" = Show Word (lexical) relations
Display options for sense: (gloss) "an example sentence"
- S: (n) swing (a state of steady vigorous action that is characteristic of an activity) "the party went with a swing"; "it took time to get into the swing of things"
- S: (n) swing (mechanical device used as a plaything to support someone swinging back and forth)
- S: (n) swing (a sweeping blow or stroke) "he took a wild swing at my head"
- S: (n) swing, swinging, vacillation (changing location by moving back and forth)
- S: (n) swing, swing music, jive (a style of jazz played by big bands popular in the 1930s; flowing rhythms but less complex than later styles of jazz)
- S: (n) lilt, swing (a jaunty rhythm in music)
- S: (n) golf stroke, golf shot, swing (the act of swinging a golf club at a golf ball and (usually) hitting it)
- S: (n) baseball swing, swing, cut (in baseball; a batter's attempt to hit a pitched ball) "he took a vicious cut at the ball"
- S: (n) swing (a square dance figure; a pair of dancers join hands and dance around a point between them)
- S: (v) swing (move in a curve or arc, usually with the intent of hitting) "He swung his left fist"; "swing a bat"
- S: (v) swing, sway (move or walk in a swinging or swaying manner) "He swung back"
- S: (v) swing (change direction with a swinging motion; turn) "swing back"; "swing forward"
- S: (v) swing, swing over (influence decisively) "This action swung many votes over to his side"
- S: (v) swing, sweep, swing out (make a big sweeping gesture or movement)
- S: (v) dangle, swing, drop (hang freely) "the ornaments dangled from the tree"; "The light dropped from the ceiling"
- S: (v) swing (hit or aim at with a sweeping arm movement) "The soccer player began to swing at the referee"
- S: (v) swing (alternate dramatically between high and low values) "his mood swings"; "the market is swinging up and down"
- S: (v) swing (live in a lively, modern, and relaxed style) "The Woodstock generation attempted to swing freely"
- S: (v) swing (have a certain musical rhythm) "The music has to swing"
- S: (v) swing, get around (be a social swinger; socialize a lot)
- S: (v) swing (play with a subtle and intuitively felt sense of rhythm)
- S: (v) swing (engage freely in promiscuous sex, often with the husband or wife of one's friends) "There were many swinging couples in the 1960's"
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Key: "S:" = Show Synset (semantic) relations, "W:" = Show Word (lexical) relations
Display options for sense: (gloss) "an example sentence"
- S: (n) output, yield (production of a certain amount)
- S: (n) return, issue, take, takings, proceeds, yield, payoff (the income or profit arising from such transactions as the sale of land or other property) "the average return was about 5%"
- S: (n) yield, fruit (an amount of a product)
- S: (n) output, yield, production (the quantity of something (as a commodity) that is created (usually within a given period of time)) "production was up in the second quarter"
- S: (v) yield, give, afford (be the cause or source of) "He gave me a lot of trouble"; "Our meeting afforded much interesting information"
- S: (v) give way, yield (end resistance, as under pressure or force) "The door yielded to repeated blows with a battering ram"
- S: (v) render, yield, return, give, generate (give or supply) "The cow brings in 5 liters of milk"; "This year's crop yielded 1,000 bushels of corn"; "The estate renders some revenue for the family"
- S: (v) concede, yield, cede, grant (give over; surrender or relinquish to the physical control of another)
- S: (v) yield, relent, soften (give in, as to influence or pressure)
- S: (v) move over, give way, give, ease up, yield (move in order to make room for someone for something) "The park gave way to a supermarket"; "`Move over,' he told the crowd"
- S: (v) give, yield (cause to happen or be responsible for) "His two singles gave the team the victory"
- S: (v) concede, yield, grant (be willing to concede) "I grant you this much"
- S: (v) succumb, yield (be fatally overwhelmed)
- S: (v) yield, pay, bear (bring in) "interest-bearing accounts"; "How much does this savings certificate pay annually?"
- S: (v) give, yield (be flexible under stress of physical force) "This material doesn't give"
- S: (v) yield (cease opposition; stop fighting)
- S: (v) yield, give in, succumb, knuckle under, buckle under (consent reluctantly)
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Human rights or women's rights!
Where human rights are abused, women’s rights become a moon in the sky- Flaws in the Justice System.
Flaws in the Justice System.
In Bangladesh women litigants are deprived of justice for weaknesses in the legal system. Most of the civil laws promulgated during the British colonial regime; many of which treat women unequally, consequently become victims of inequality in all aspects of their live. In the last century women made advances in socio-economic fields notwithstanding innumerable hindrances, but cruelty to women has not been ceased, rather it seems to have increased. Although there are laws, yet they fail to establish the rights of women and assure justice to the litigant women. Had the state law become women-friendly, it would have been easier to ensure justice too. It is astounding that women become victims in the state which espouses full freedom for women. In spite of the abolition of the system of self immolation of Hindu wife on her dead husband's pyre and child-marriage, the rights of women could not be established in full in our social system. Women even today, are afraid of various social curses like dowry related murder, abduction, throwing of acid etc.
With the waxing up of law and order in the country oppression against women is mounting. For different causes women lag behind in terms of justice. But in the face of the demands spearheaded by women organisations the government promulgated the Family Court Ordinance on June 17, 1985. It was presumed that the Law would play an epoch-making role in maintaining the rights of women, but unfortunately even after the laps of 25 years it has done very little in this respect. The reasons for which the women community fails to establish its rights despite the existence of the Family Courts Ordinance are as follows:
1. According to Section 4 of the Ordinance all Assistant Judge Courts shall be treated as Family Courts. So the speedy trial is a far cry and the lengthy process of getting legal aid for women does not come to an end.
2. As per provisions of law only disputes relating to five matters like dissolution of marriage, restitution of conjugal rights, dower, maintenance, guardianship and custody of children may be solved in the family courts, but is the life of women in reality confined to these five subjects only? Consistently, this law and the court are not sufficient to change the problem and the position of a woman's life.
3. As per Article 27 of Bangladesh Constitution - all citizens are equal before law and entitled to equal protection of law. Though equality of all citizens in the eyes of law is mentioned in the Constitution, the districts of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bandarban and Rangamati have been excluded. Considering all sides this law does not fall within the status of a universal law.
4. Family courts have been empowered to deal with civil suits only, so it is not possible to file cases against criminal offences committed within the family in these courts.
5. Though provision for fixed court fee has been made, yet there are many other expenses which have not been fixed resulting in the problems faced by rural women seeking redress. Besides, we may say since the said law is in the light of the Muslim family law, it cannot render any service to the Hindus, Buddhists, Christians and tribal litigant women. Therefore, it is a weak law.
6. According to Section 20 of the Family Law Ordinance, no procedure of the civil procedure code except Section 10 and 11 shall apply to any proceedings brought to the family court. Thus the Family Court Ordinance 1985 is not a self sufficient law.
7. The code of civil procedure, 1908 needs to be amended to ensure that women get justice.
For ensuring justice to women it is necessary to treat women as a human being. It must be borne in mind that women and man are not opponents of one another. It is the demand of time to make the Family Law Ordinance a women-friendly law. The government for the greater interest of citizens will consider the genuine demand of more than half the population of the country.
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By Deborah Zabarenko
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is likely to shrink to a record small size sometime next week, and then keep on melting, a scientist at the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center said on Monday.
"A new daily record ... would be likely by the end of August," said Ted Scambos, lead scientist at the data center, which monitors ice in the Arctic and elsewhere. "Chances are it will cross the previous record while we're still in sea ice retreat."
The amount of sea ice in the Arctic is important because this region is a potent global weather-maker, sometimes characterized as the world's air conditioner. This year, the loss of sea ice in the Arctic has suggested a possible opening of the Northwest Passage north of Canada and Alaska and the Northern Sea Route by Europe and Siberia.
As parts of the Arctic melted, 2012 also set records for heat and drought in much of the Northern Hemisphere temperate zone, especially the continental United States.
This summer could see the ice retreat to less than 1.5 million square miles (4 million square km), an unprecedented low, Scambos said.
The previous record was set in 2007, when Arctic ice cover shrank to 1.66 million square miles (4.28 million square km), 23 percent below the earlier record set in 2005 and 39 percent below the long-term average from 1979 to 2000.
However, 2007 was a jaw-dropping "perfect storm" of conditions that primed the area for thawing sea ice: warmer and sunnier than usual, with extremely warm ocean water and winds all working together to melt the Arctic.
Last year, Arctic sea ice extended over the second-smallest area on record, but that was considered to be closer to a "new normal" rather than the extreme conditions of 2007, NSIDC said then.
This year is similar to 2011, Scambos said by telephone from Colorado. The melt season started between 10 days to two weeks earlier than usual in some critical areas including northern Europe and Siberia.
SIGNS OF CLIMATE CHANGE
If the sea ice record is broken this month, that would be unusually early in the season; last year's low point came on September 9, 2011.
Typically, the melting of Arctic sea ice slows down in August as the Northern Hemisphere moves toward fall, but this year, it has speeded up, Scambos said. "I doubt there's been another year that had as rapid an early August retreat," he said.
Overall, the decline of Arctic sea ice has happened faster than projected by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change five years ago, according to NSIDC data ( http://nsidc.org/news/images/20070430Figure1.png ).
To Scambos, these are clear signs of climate change spurred by human activities, notably the emission of heat-trapping greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide.
"Everything about this points in the same direction: we've made the Earth warmer," he said.
This summer has also seen unusual melting of the ice sheet covering Greenland, with NASA images showing that for a few days in July, 97 percent of the northern island's surface was thawing. The same month also saw an iceberg twice the size of Manhattan break free from Greenland's Petermann Glacier.
The change is apparent from an NSIDC graphic showing current Arctic ice cover compared with the 1979-2000 average, Scambos said. The graphic is online at http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/ .
"What you're seeing is more open ocean than you're seeing ice," he said. "It just simply doesn't look like what a polar scientist expects the arctic to look like. It's wide open and the (ice) cap is very small. It's a visceral thing. You look at it and that just doesn't look like the Arctic Ocean any more."
(Editing by Doina Chiacu)
(This story corrects the name of the agency to U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center, instead of U.S. National Climate Data Center, in the first paragraph)
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Because of the rapid elevation changes, the region is home to many species with specialized habitat requirements. This includes the world's smallest deer, the endangered pudu
, South America's largest woodpecker, the Magellanic woodpecker
, and 2 pine-seed eating parrots. A fascinating bird, the male Juan Fernández firecrown
, an endemic species of hummingbird is found here. It has earned its name from the colors on its crown, which shift from emerald to scarlet, depending on the light.
Valdivian temperate forests are very dense, with epiphyte-laden trees reaching up to 46 meters (150 ft) in height. The most abundant trees are Antarctic beech
, but many other trees are also present, including the threatened guaitecas cypress, as well as the monkey puzzle tree
. These forests are also home to the extraordinarily tall Alerce
trees that can reach heights of over 114 meters (375 ft) and live for more than 3,000 years!
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Giant Panda (En); Panda Géant (Fr); Panda gigante (Sp);
Temperate Broadleaf and Mixed Forests of Southwest China
Endangered (IUCN 3.1)
1,600 in the wild (2004)
did you know?
That the panda cub is 1/900th the size of its mother
Upto 150cm for adults
100 to 150 kg
Learn more about this amazing species!
About the Panda:
- Panda population
- Habitat: where they live
- Diet: what do they eat?
- How long do panda's live?
- What do they look like: size, weight, colors...
- Natural enemies and defenses
- Panda image gallery
- Evolutionary history
- The future
- Why are they endangered?
- Why save the panda?
- How we can save the panda?
- What can I do to help?
- Get answers...
- In 2004, a survey counted 1,600 pandas in the wild (read more)
- An adult panda can weigh about 100-150kg and grow up to 150cm
- Pandas have the digestive system of a carnivore, but they have adapted to a vegetarian diet of bamboos.
- A panda may eat 12-38kg of bamboo a day
- The panda cub is 1/900th the size of its mother, one of the smallest newborn mammals relative to its mother's size.
- Pandas are good tree climbers.
- When breeding, pandas require at least 30km² to support them over the short term.
Love Giant Pandas?
Emblem of hope for a nation and global biodiversity
Over 50 reserves created
By mid-2005, the Chinese government had established over 50 panda reserves, protecting more than 10,400km² and over 45% of remaining giant panda habitat.
However, habitat destruction continues to pose a threat to the many pandas living outside these areas.
Currently, only around 61% of the population, or about 980 pandas, are under protection in reserves. As China's economy continues its rapid development, it is more important than ever to ensure the giant panda's survival.
WWF on the ground
WWF has been active in giant panda conservation since 1980.
More recently, WWF has been helping the government of China to undertake its National Conservation Programme for the giant panda and its habitat.
This programme has made significant progress: Reserves for this species cover more than 16,000 km² of forest in and around their habitat. A survey (released in 2004) revealed that an estimated 1,600 individuals remain in the wild.
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Bornean Pygmy elephant (Elephas maximus borneensis) family, parents with calf. Danum Valley Conservation Area, Sabah, North Borneo, Malaysia.
Walt Disney himself couldn't have crafted a cuter elephant. The pygmy elephants of Borneo are baby-faced little pachyderms, with oversized ears, plump bellies and tails so long they sometimes drag on the ground as they walk.
They are also gentle-natured, leading to the belief for years that they were simply the semi-tame remnants of a domesticated herd abandoned on the island years ago.
But a WWF study proved that wrong and Borneo’s pygmy elephants are likely to be officially declared a new subspecies. That makes them a high conservation priority. Yet they remain the least-understood elephants in the world.
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All links within content go to MayoClinic.com
Vegetarian diet: A starter's guide to a plant-based diet
Special to CNN.com
Adopting a healthy vegetarian diet isn't as simple as scraping meat off your plate and eating what's left. You need to take extra steps to ensure you're meeting your daily nutritional needs.
Vegetarian diet planning
A healthy vegetarian diet consists primarily of plant-based foods, such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts and seed. Because the emphasis is on nonmeat food sources, a vegetarian diet generally contains less fat and cholesterol, and typically includes more fiber.
Vegetarians fall into groups defined by the types of animal-derived foods they eat:
- Vegans eliminate all foods from animals, including meat, poultry, fish, milk, eggs and cheese. They eat only plant-based foods.
- Lacto-vegetarians consume milk and milk products along with plant-based foods. They omit eggs as well as meat, fish and poultry.
- Lacto-ovo vegetarians omit red meat, fish and poultry but eat eggs, milk and milk products, such as cheese and yogurt, in addition to plant-based foods.
To keep your vegetarian diet on track, you may find using a vegetarian food pyramid helpful. This pyramid outlines various food groups and food choices that, if eaten in the right quantities, form the foundation of a healthy vegetarian diet.
Meatless products, such as tofu dogs, soy burgers, nut loaves or texturized vegetable protein, add variety to your vegetarian diet. These products, found in many grocery stores and health food markets, simulate the taste and texture of meat and usually have less fat and fewer calories. Many of the meatless products, such as tofu or tempeh, are made from soybeans.
If you follow a vegan diet, you may need to find alternatives for eggs and dairy products. Try these suggestions when meal planning or cooking:
Ensuring adequate nutrition
- Milk. Drink fortified soymilk, rice milk or almond milk in place of cow's milk.
- Butter. When sauteing, use olive oil, water, vegetable broth, wine or nonfat cooking spray instead of butter. In baked goods, use canola oil.
- Cheese. Use soy cheese or nutritional yeast flakes, which are available in health food stores.
- Eggs. In baked goods, try commercial egg replacers — a dry product made mostly of potato starch. Or you can use the following to replace one egg: 1/4 cup whipped tofu or 1 tablespoon milled flaxseed mixed with 3 tablespoons of water. For an egg-free omelet try using tofu instead of eggs.
The more restrictive a diet is, the more difficult it is to get all the nutrients your body needs. A vegan diet, for example, eliminates food sources of vitamin B-12, as well as milk products, which are a good source of calcium. Other nutrients, such as iron and zinc, are available in a meatless diet, but you need to make an extra effort to ensure they're in yours.
Here are nutrients that may be deficient in a vegetarian diet and how you can get these nutrients from nonmeat sources:
- Protein. Your body needs protein to maintain healthy skin, bones, muscles and organs. Vegetarians who eat eggs or dairy products have convenient sources of protein. Other sources of protein include soy products, meat substitutes, legumes, lentils, nuts, seeds and whole grains.
- Calcium. This mineral helps build and maintain strong teeth and bones. Low-fat dairy foods and dark green vegetables, such as spinach, turnip and collard greens, kale, and broccoli are good sources of calcium. Tofu enriched with calcium and fortified soymilk and fruit juices are other options.
- Vitamin B-12. Your body needs vitamin B-12 to produce red blood cells and prevent anemia. This vitamin is found almost exclusively in animal products, including milk, eggs and cheese. Vegans can get vitamin B-12 from some enriched cereals, fortified soy products or by taking a supplement that contains this vitamin.
- Iron. Like vitamin B-12, iron is a crucial component of red blood cells. Dried beans and peas, lentils, enriched cereals, whole-grain products, dark, leafy green vegetables, and dried fruit are good sources of iron. To help your body absorb non-animal sources of iron, eat foods rich in vitamin C — such as strawberries, citrus fruits, tomatoes, cabbage and broccoli — at the same time you consume iron-containing foods.
- Zinc. This mineral is an essential component of many enzymes and plays a role in cell division and in the formation of proteins. Good sources of zinc include whole grains, soy products, nuts and wheat germ.
The key to a healthy vegetarian diet — or any diet for that matter — is to enjoy a wide variety of foods. Since no single food provides all of the nutrients that your body needs, eating a wide variety helps ensure that you get the necessary nutrients and other substances that promote good health.
Start with what you know
If you're thinking of switching to a vegetarian diet but aren't sure how to begin, start with what you already know. Make a list of meals you prepare on a regular basis. Some of these may already be meat-free, such as spaghetti or vegetable stir-fry. Next, pick out dishes that could easily become meat-free with a couple of substitutions. For example, you can make vegetarian chili by leaving out the ground beef and adding an extra can of black beans or soy crumbles. Or make fajitas using extra-firm tofu rather than chicken. You may be surprised to find that some dishes require only simple substitutions.
Once you have compiled a list of vegetarian meals, add new meal ideas. Buy or borrow vegetarian cookbooks. Scan the Internet for vegetarian menus or for tips about making meatless substitutions. Check out ethnic restaurants to sample new vegetarian cuisine. The more variety you bring to your vegetarian diet, the better the chance you'll meet all your nutritional needs.
No matter what your age or situation, a well-planned vegetarian diet can meet your nutritional needs. Even children and teenagers can do well on a plant-based diet, as can older people, and pregnant or breast-feeding women. If you're unsure whether a vegetarian diet is right for you, talk to your doctor or a registered dietitian.
Flaxseed: Is ground or whole better?
Dietary fiber: An essential part of a healthy diet
Whole grains: High in nutrition and fiber, yet low in fat
Healthy diet decisions: Do you know what to eat?
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WebMD Medical News
Laura J. Martin, MD
Dec. 6, 2010 -- Flu season is here, and so far Georgia is the state hit the hardest by this year’s influenza virus, according to the CDC.
“Georgia is reporting high levels of influenza-like activity,” Anne Schuchat, MD, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said at a news conference. ” It gets a 10 of 10, and is leading the country in terms of what we will be seeing.”
The flu -- largely influenza type B -- has been reported throughout Georgia, and been seen mainly in school-aged children, she says.
In the U.S., flu season usually begins in the fall and runs through early spring. It peaks anywhere from late November through March.
“We know that the flu season has started here in Georgia, and there has been sporadic reporting of influenza-like viruses throughout the country,” including the Southeast region of the U.S. and some of the Western states, she says. “Places that don’t have as much flu as Georgia will.”
The good news is that this year’s flu vaccine, which is recommended for everyone older than 6 months, is likely a good match for this year’s flu, Schuchat says.
“Some H1N1, an A/H3N2 strain, and B-strains have been seen this year, [along with] a mixture of B strains and A strains that haven’t been characterized,” she says. This year’s vaccine protects against seasonal flu and the H1N1 swine flu. “Flu is unpredictable, but based on the viruses circulating so far, we do expect the vaccine to be a good match.”
As far as what type of flu season we can expect, Schuchat can’t predict, but there is ample vaccine to go around which can keep flu activity at a minimum.
Approximately 160 million doses of the vaccine have already been distributed nationwide, she says.
“Don’t be complacent because disease activity is low this year; flu is coming,” she says. “You don’t want to find out how bad the season is going to be before you get the flu vaccine.”
Schuchat says she is encouraged by the number of people who have already received a flu vaccine so far this season.
“We are a little ahead of last year’s seasonal flu vaccine, which we find encouraging because we haven’t had media talking back to back about flu,” she says. Last year, the H1N1 pandemic and a shortage of available vaccine generated many headlines.
“Flu activity is now increasing across the country and the flu season is now underway, so if you are thinking about influenza vaccine, now is a good time to do it,” says Howard Koh, MD, an assistant secretary for health in the Department of Health and Human Services.
This year’s National Influenza Vaccination Week is being observed on December 5-11.
SOURCES:Howard Koh, MD, assistant secretary, Health, Department of Health and Human Services.Anne Schuchat, MD, director, National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, CDC.
The Health News section does not provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. See additional information.
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Early complementary feeding may reduce risk of allergies in children
Published Online: November 26, 2012
Even though the timing of infant feeding has proven to be important in preventing a number of childhood diseases and for optimal growth, its role in the prevention of childhood allergies is inconclusive. Despite this insufficient evidence, expert bodies, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the European Society for Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition, and the Australian Society of Clinical Immunology and Allergy, all recommend that for the prevention of allergic diseases, the child should be exclusively breastfed for the first 4-6 months of life, thereafter complementary foods can be introduced. In recent times several studies have examined whether these recommendations are optimal and are supported by strong scientific evidence. The findings from the majority of these studies have largely indicated that delaying the introduction of complementary foods up to 4 to 6 months seems not to prevent the occurrence of allergies. Although these findings have come only from observational studies, the ethical dilemma in randomizing breastfeeding has made it impossible to confirm the results in a randomized controlled trial, which is currently the gold standard in guiding effective clinical decisions. Consequently, well-designed observational epidemiological studies remain the primary source to address the question of whether the timing of infant feeding may play any preventive role in the development of childhood asthma and allergies.
In a recent study published in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology (JACI), Nwaru et al investigated whether the duration of breastfeeding and the age when complementary foods are introduced may influence the risk of asthma and allergic symptoms among 5-year-old Finnish children who were recruited at birth. On a form parents recorded the age of the child when each complementary food was added to the diet. The form was kept at home and continuously completed as new foods were introduced to the child until the age of two years. When the children were 5 years of age, the parents also completed the International Study of Allergies and Asthma in Childhood (ISAAC) questionnaire for the assessment of the development of asthma and allergic symptoms. Blood samples were also collected from the children to assess allergic antibodies.
The authors did not see any association between the duration of exclusive breastfeeding and the development of asthma and allergic symptoms. However, they observed that children who were breastfed for less than 9.5 months compared to those with longer breastfeeding had almost three-fold risk of developing asthma, particularly non-atopic asthma, by 5 years of age. The authors also found that children who received cereals (oats, wheat, rye, barley) before 5 months, fish before 6 months, and egg before 8 months as complementary foods were at a decreased risk of developing asthma and allergic symptoms by the age of 5 years. The authors concluded that these results indicate that while the duration of exclusive breastfeeding seems not to play any role in the development of asthma and allergic diseases, introducing complementary foods early (at most by 5 months) while continuing breastfeeding may be beneficial for the prevention of childhood asthma and allergies. They suggested that by virtue of their findings, and in line with other recent evidence, current recommendations on the timing of infant feeding for the prevention of asthma and allergies in children may require further attention.
The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology (JACI) is the official scientific journal of the AAAAI, and is the most-cited journal in the field of allergy and clinical immunology.
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WebMD Medical News
Louise Chang, MD
Dec. 21, 2011 -- Offering a baby a french fry, piece of bread, or even a handful of cereal may set him up for a lifelong affinity for salty foods and the health risks that go along with it.
A new study shows that babies fed starchy table foods, which often contain added salt, before 6 months of age show a preference for salt that persists through their preschool years.
Infants who had been introduced to starchy foods preferred a saltier drink and drank 55% more of the saltier drink during a test at 6 months of age.
By the time they were preschoolers, the same children were also more likely to lick the salt from foods and eat plain salt.
Researchers say the results suggest the ability to detect salty taste matures sometime between 2-6 months of age.
“There could be quite a bit of difference in how that taste for salt matures, depending on whether or not an infant is exposed to sodium during that period,” says researcher Leslie Stein, PhD, senior research associate at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia.
If confirmed by larger studies, experts say the findings suggest that early exposure to salty foods in the first few months of life could play an important role in setting flavor preferences for a lifetime.
Eating too much sodium, often in the form of salt, is associated with an increased risk of high blood pressure.
Curbing salt intake has been a major public health goal for years, but researchers say efforts thus far have been largely unsuccessful, in part because people like the taste of salt.
In the study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, researchers tested a group of 61 infants at 2 months and 6 months of age for salt preference by measuring how much they drank from three different bottles. One bottle contained plain water, another contained a moderately salty concentration of sodium (about the saltiness of commercial chicken soup), and a third contained a higher concentration of sodium (which tastes extremely salty to adults).
Researchers found that 2-month-old infants were indifferent or rejected the salt solutions.
But at 6 months of age, the infants who were already eating starchy table foods preferred both salty solutions to water. The babies that had not yet been introduced to these foods were still indifferent or rejected the salt solutions.
Exposure to other types of table foods, such as fruits and vegetables, was not associated with an increased preference for salt.
Years later, the mothers of the 26 children returned for questioning about their child’s eating habits as preschoolers between ages 3 and 4.
Researchers found that 12 preschoolers who were introduced to starchy foods before 6 months of age were more likely to lick salt from foods like pretzels and crackers and were also slightly more likely to eat plain salt.
“What our study shows is that babies’ taste system is very malleable,” Stein tells WebMD. “If early exposure to salt increases the preference and taste for salt of an individual, then one might imply that down the road it might be harder to eat lower-salt food and enjoy it.”
Nutrition experts say the results emphasize the importance of starting healthy eating habits as early as possible.
“This study helps us appreciate that what we do in the first year of life is so important to how kids eat, how well they eat, how varied they eat, and what their food preferences are,” says pediatric nutritionist Jill Castle, RD.
Castle says that between 6 months and 8 months of age, babies should only be just starting to be exposed to starchy table foods like bread, crackers, and ready-to-eat cereals in small amounts. The bulk of their daily calories should still come from breast milk or formula, iron-fortified baby cereal, fruit, and vegetables.
Experts say many parents aren’t aware that ready-to-eat cereals, bread, crackers, and other starchy foods marketed to children contain sodium, which can add up over the course of the day if the child is eating a variety of these foods.
“There seems to be an increased preponderance of parents trying to choose those types of foods for their kids,” says pediatrician Christine Wood, MD. “These foods are being marketed as being appropriate for children, but I really try to focus in on parents trying to have the focus on a lot of fresh foods, fruits, and vegetables being the most important things.”
Aside from increasing the risk of high blood pressure and heart disease down the road, Wood says there are also more immediate health risks associated with children developing a taste for salty foods.
“We know that starchier foods in general are more calorie-dense foods,” says Wood, who is also the author of How to Get Kids to Eat Great and Love It! That may lead to a higher risk of childhood obesity.
Wood and Castle agree that the best advice for parents introducing their child to healthy foods is to keep food as wholesome and fresh as possible.
Their tips include:
The fewer foods that come out of a packaged box the better, Wood says. “Then you can control the amount of salt.”
SOURCES:Stein, L. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, January 2012.News release, Monell Chemical Senses Center.Leslie Stein, PhD, senior research associate, Monell Chemical Senses Center, Philadelphia.Jill Castle, RD, owner and founder, pediatric nutrition of Green Hills, Nashville, Tenn.Christine Wood, MD, pediatrician, El Camino Pediatrics, Encinitas, Calif.; author How to Get Kids to Eat Great and Love It!
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The Health News section does not provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. See additional information.
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Australian Bureau of Statistics
3301.0 - Births, Australia, 2007 Quality Declaration
Previous ISSUE Released at 11:30 AM (CANBERRA TIME) 28/10/2008
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The previous record was in 1971, when there were 276,400 births registered.
This gives Australia a total fertility rate of 1.93 babies per woman, up from 1.81 in 2006 and the highest since 1981 when it was 1.94.
The Northern Territory and Tasmania had the highest total fertility rates, recording 2.27 and 2.19 babies per woman respectively.
Women in the Northern Territory and Tasmania also had their children at a younger age; fertility for these two states was at its highest in 25-29 year-olds - compared to the rest of Australia where the highest fertility was in the 30-34 age group.
Nearly half (43%) of the 2007 births were to first time mothers, and a third (33%) were having their second child.
There were 14,200 births registered where at least one parent was an Indigenous Australian.
More details are available in Births, Australia, 2007 (cat. no. 3301.0) available for free download from the ABS website <www.abs.gov.au>. Regional, State and Territory information is also available on the website.
Media Note: The total fertility rate represents the average number of babies that a woman could expect to bear during her reproductive lifetime if current fertility rates continued.
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This page last updated 10 November 2009
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Add. MS 10336 in the British Library has hitherto been regarded as an unpromising-looking document dating from c. 1500, transmitting random notes by one John Tucke, an obscure scholar whose connection with the musical profession is unclear. As Dr Woodley disarmingly tells us in his preface, 'John Tucke is hardly a name which springs immediately to the lips of many historians of Tudor music, nor is he dignified with an entry in the standard musical dictionaries'.
No longer. From this material, Dr Woodley constructs a masterly 'case-study', as he modestly calls it, moving deftly between biography, palaeography, translation and analytical musicology to conjure up a fascinating picture, not only of Tucke, his notebook, its relevance to other composers' music and the role of music in the Quadrivium but also of many aspects of social life and behaviour in the early Tudor period.
The study is divided into three parts: an examination of Tucke's career, a translation and explanation of selected passages from the manuscript, and finally an attempt to apply Tucke's analytical approaches to some of the music of the period. The biographical section of the book is a lesson not only in how to pursue your subject but also in how to try to adduce the reason behind his actions. At every turn, with every scrap of evidence, Woodley is at hand to explain why, ask if this is normal, and discuss what the motivation may have been.
So, as with faltering steps we accompany Tucke to Winchester College in 1495, our parents have already been advised by Uncle Woodley that their action in renting property in Burford as tenants of New College, Oxford, despite (probably) living in London is perfectly reasonable, it being quite common practice for ambitious Tudor parents to ensure their sows education by becoming tenants of institutions such as New College with a view to his being admitted to …
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Criminal disfranchisement proved to be a hot issue in the Republican presidential debates recently, leading to a CNN poll asking, “Should felons be allowed to vote after serving their sentences?”
The results showed that the majority feel that those with past convictions should have that right. The Washington Post also editorialized on the issue Friday, making the point that it is unjust to prevent “individuals from having a full stake and a full voice in the community and its leadership” after they have already paid their debts to society and earned their right to freedom.
Additionally, the Post ran an op-ed by Charles Colson, founder of the Prison Fellowship and former counsel to President Richard Nixon who also saw no point in denying the right to vote for those who have already served their time.
“Voting does not put anyone in danger,” he wrote. “Sound public policy would teach us that if we want to turn ex-offenders into responsible citizens, we must demand of them responsible behavior. And once they demonstrate responsible behavior, what possible justification is there, beyond scoring political points during an election, for stripping them of their civil rights for the rest of their lives?”
Criminal disfranchisement laws, like recent laws requiring ID to vote or restricting third-party registration of voters, have a disproportionate and unfair impact on minorities. Criminal disfranchisement laws have their roots in the Jim Crow era and their harmful effects continue today as 13 percent of African-American men have lost their right to vote – a rate seven times the national average. Similarly, Latino citizens are also disproportionally disfranchised because they are over-represented in the criminal justice system.
Due to these laws in states throughout the nation, an estimated 5.3 million citizens cannot vote, and nearly four million of those are not in prison but working in our communities. The Democracy Restoration Act, which has been introduced in both the House and Senate, would eliminate the confusion around these laws and restore the right of millions to vote in federal elections.
“Citizens should not be denied their right to vote due to a past criminal conviction,” said Deborah J. Vagins, ACLU senior legislative counsel. “They are working, paying taxes, raising families and living in our communities. They deserve to have a voice.”
Criminal disfranchisement laws are another example of voter suppression tactics that threaten our democracy. Our government shouldn’t be in the business of deciding whose vote matters most. Elected officials should be seeking ways to encourage more Americans to vote, not erecting barriers to deny voters the access to the ballot.
Tell Congress to act now to restore one of our most fundamental rights by supporting the Democracy Restoration Act.
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Racial profiling is "a sloppy, lazy substitute" for actual policing, said Professor Deborah Ramirez from Northeastern University School of Law, at a House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties hearing called "Racial Profiling and the Use of Suspect Classifications in Law Enforcement." The witnesses at the hearing represented many different organizations and fields, like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Sikh Coalition, Muslim Advocates, police officers, and professors. This diverse group of experts agreed on the following key points:
- Racial profiling is an abusive practice that targets innocent citizens solely because of the way that they look.
- Racial profiling is not an effective law enforcement strategy. Research shows that racial profiling diverts officers' attention from using actual, objective signs of suspicious behavior to effectively assess situations.
- Racial profiling erodes trust between law enforcement and its community. As a result, people are less likely to report a crime or work with the police to give information that could apprehend an actual criminal.
Despite its ineffectiveness, racial profiling continues to persist in many law enforcement practices. It's not just at traffic stops either, as commonly thought. It's in airport security checks, where Sikhs are screened 100 percent of the time at some airports. It's in FBI monitoring actions, where innocent Muslim citizens fear a surprise visit from the FBI at their local mosque or at their front door. And, it's even being introduced as a part of civil immigration policy, about which Salt Lake City Chief of Police Christopher Burbank stated that aside from seeing the person run across the border, there is no way for an officer to suspect a person of being an illegal immigrant aside from basing their reasoning on physical characteristics.
To finally end the practice of racial profiling, Congress should pass legislation which incorporates the following:
- independent data collection tracking law enforcement officers' stops and searches to accurately measure the extent of racial profiling
- funds for better law enforcement training that teaches officers how to look for suspicious behavior , and
- a way for people to redress their grievances if they are a victim of racial profiling, which will hold officers accountable for their actions.
While there have been attempts to end racial profiling in Congress, no bill has successfully been passed. Communities across the country have been subjected to this useless, degrading tactic for too long. Now is the time for Congress to reintroduce and pass comprehensive legislature to end racial profiling!
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The Medici family was a powerful and influential family from Florence, a dynasty of skilled and influential aristocrats with exceedingly refined tastes that ruled the whole region from its capital from the 14th to 18th centuries. The family’s members included three popes (Leo X, Clement VII and Leo XI) numerous rulers of Florence (notably Lorenzo the Magnificent, patron of some of the most famous works of Renaissance art) and even great Queens, (like Catherine de Medici, Queen of France, and Marie de Medici, another Queen Consort of France.) Among many important things, the biggest accomplishments of the Medici were in the sponsorship of art and architecture, mainly during the Early and High Renaissance. The Medici were to thank for the flourishing of the majority of Florentine art during their rule. During the Renaissance, food became the focus of interest as never before: in such a bountiful area, it grew to be art, research, gustative and visual elaboration. The Medici family was made up of refined gourmands who liked hunting, banquets and good food “in general.” Catherine de Medici herself introduced the Italian School of Cuisine to France, bringing her cooks and her recipes with her when she became Queen of France.
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Explorers have long used horses to discover unfamiliar landscapes and many of our adventures provide an opportunity to experience this traditional form of exploration. Rides are generally short, under two hours, with the primary focus to experience the surroundings from horseback. Guides are experienced cowboys or caballeros and the animals are well taken care of. In many rural destinations horses continue to be a major source of transportation and culture. Exploring a forest or countryside by horseback is a fun and exciting way to interact with the local nature and culture.
A horseback ride is often combined with another activity or experience to make a full day. Ride in the morning or afternoon depending on the trip. On a typical ride you would not be in the saddle longer than two hours before taking a break to stretch. Longer rides may include a picnic lunch along the way. Many of our itineraries offer horseback riding as an optional activity to enjoy during your free time. If you are especially interested in exploring by horseback please let our staff know.
No experience is necessary ride horses, simply a sense of adventure and a sturdy back end. While physical requirements are modest you will enjoy your ride more if you are in decent physical condition. Horseback riding can be difficult for people with back conditions.
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What Sets Allergies in Motion? Thursday, August 2, 2012
TAU research identifies a protein group that may kick-start allergic reactions
Allergies, or hypersensitivities of the immune system, are more common than ever before. According to the Asthma and Allergies Foundation of America, one in five Americans suffers from an allergy — from milder forms like hay fever to more severe instances, like peanut allergies which can lead to anaphylactic shock.
While medications like antihistamines can treat the symptoms of an allergic reaction, the treatment is too limited, says Prof. Ronit Sagi-Eisenberg, a cell biologist at Tel Aviv University's Sackler Faculty of Medicine. Cells release dozens of molecules during an allergic reaction, and available medications address only a small subset. Now she and her fellow researchers are working to identify what triggers allergic reactions in the body, with the goal of stopping an allergic reaction before it starts.
The answer may lie within the Rab family, a group of 60 proteins that are known to regulate the distribution of proteins throughout the body. Along with her Ph.D. student Nurit Pereg-Azouz, Prof. Sagi-Eisenberg found that 30 of these proteins determined how cells react to an allergen, and two of these have been identified for further research as instruments of preventative medication. When the chain of events leading up to an allergic reaction can be understood, drugs can be developed to inhibit the initial reaction, explains Prof. Sagi-Eisenberg.
This research has been published in The Journal of Immunology.
Getting to the root
Allergic reactions can appear as rashes, respiratory difficulties, or swelling, but they're all caused by the same mechanism. When exposed to an allergen, the body activates the immune system. But mast cells, located throughout the body, sense that the immune system has mistakenly been activated against something that is not bacterial or viral, and they release biologically active molecules to create an inflammatory response.
So what causes mast cells to react? Prof. Sagi-Eisenberg and her team work to identify the exact chain of events in an allergic reaction. They looked to the Rab family of proteins as a potential source for answers, screening for the proteins' involvement in initiating allergic reaction.
"We genetically manipulated mast cells so that they contained mutated versions of these proteins, which were already active without an allergen," explains Prof. Sagi-Eisenberg. If a protein was relevant, it would cause an allergic reaction. "This new methodology allowed us to screen for the functional impact of each member of this family, determining if they either inhibited or activated the allergic process."
In the end, the researchers flagged 30 proteins that were relevant to the process of creating an allergic reaction in the body, and have identified two that appear to be the most involved. Further research will use these two proteins as tools to gain more understanding of allergic reactions.
Targeted drugs could prevent allergic reaction
An allergic reaction is not only a function of two proteins interacting — it's the result of a chain of events. By identifying crucial links in such a chain, researchers can create targeted drugs that break the chain. New medications that target tumor cells, for example, are directed at halting the tumor's ability to function and grow, starving it of crucial blood and oxygen supplies. Prof. Sagi-Eisenberg envisions similar medications for allergies, with medications that address the source of the allergic reaction instead of the symptoms.
The need for such medications is pressing. Steroids, the only available type of drug that effectively prevents mast cells from secreting biologically active agents, also cause harm to kidneys, bones, and the immune system. Patients may suffer more from the treatment than they do from the allergy itself. Alternative medications that are as effective as steroids but will be devoid of their adverse side effects are desperately needed. Prof. Sagi-Eisenberg's work will help to identify proteins that can be targeted by medications without impacting the function of other cells, she hopes.
For more medicine and health news from Tel Aviv University, click here
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Maricopa County residents and businesses will now be able to receive real-time text alerts when dust pollution reaches levels that are potentially dangerous.
The Rapid Response Notification System was launched on Wednesday by the Maricopa County Air Quality Department and is intended to both warn residents of health hazards and to prompt people to take action to reduce the amount of dust in the air.
The system uses the existing 12 monitors located around the Valley to measure the particles, but with new software it is able to send air quality data to the department every five minutes. Now officials will be able to take action the moment a problem is identified.
The need for such a system became evident after party-goers in south Phoenix stirred up enough dust to cause one monitor to register levels above those allowed by federal standards. The party was on a Saturday night and the violation was not discovered until Monday.
“We’d like to move forward and avoid this happening again,” said Holly Ward, public relations officer for the department, who adds “all of us are notified so we can stop pollution before it becomes a concern.”
Maricopa County has struggled with meeting the standards of the federal Clean Air Act in the past and is currently in the last year of a three-year plan to clean up the air. Failure to stay in compliance could mean sanctions and the loss of up to $7 billion in federal transportation dollars. This money is used to fund projects such as new roads and highways.
Health concerns are also a reason why the county is taking steps to warn residents about air quality as quickly as possible. According to Ward, small particles roughly one-eighth the size of a human hair can settle deep into the lungs and cause breathing problems.
“The federal health standard is good for those of us that breath because it is about our lungs and our health,” said Ward, who adds that the standard is based on what the lungs can take, not on climate.
“To have a heads up would really be a godsend for a lot of people with asthma,” said Joy Autore of Chandler, who moved to the Valley of the Sun from Nebraska because of her breathing problems.
Autore said that both she and her daughter, who also has asthma, have trouble breathing because of a decline in the air quality over the last 10 years. She welcomes the new text alert system and hopes it will help remind her daughter to use her inhaler.
“If you’re not near a TV or a computer you don’t see that stuff coming in, so a text alert would be wonderful,” Autore said.
While it is too soon to know exactly how many alerts the system will generate, Ward estimates that it will probably be around one or two every month. Those interested in receiving the alerts can sign up at maricopa.gov/aq. The website also provides tips on how to reduce the amount of dust in the air, such as keeping all-terrain vehicles on designated trails.
The Rapid Response Notification System upgrade was funded by the Maricopa Association of Governments.
• Morgan Sailor is interning this semester for the Ahwatukee Foothills News. She is a senior at Arizona State University.
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Who did God give the Torah to at Mount Sinai? Most people reply, "God gave the Torah to Moses."
And what were the Jewish people doing while Moses was receiving the Torah? "Worshipping the Golden Calf."
Correct answers – but NOT according to the Bible.
The above answers come from Cecil B. DeMille's classic film, "The Ten Commandments." Amazing the impact one movie can have on the Jewish education of generations of Jews. It's a great film, but DeMille should have read the original.
The version found in the Torah is quite different. The Torah's claim is that the entire people heard God speak at Mount Sinai, experiencing national revelation. God did not just appear to Moses in a private rendezvous; He appeared to everyone, some 3 million people. This claim is mentioned many times in the Torah.
[Moses told the Israelites]: 'Only beware for yourself and greatly beware for your soul, lest you forget the things that your eyes have beheld. Do not remove this memory from your heart all the days of your life. Teach your children and your children's children about the day that you stood before the Lord your God at Horev [Mount Sinai]...
God spoke to you from the midst of the fire, you were hearing the sound of words, but you were not seeing a form, only a sound. He told you of His covenant, instructing you to keep the Ten Commandments, and He inscribed them on two stone tablets.' (Deut.4:9-13)
'You have been shown in order to know that God, He is the Supreme Being. There is none besides Him. From heaven he let you hear His voice in order to teach you, and on earth He showed you His great fire, and you heard His words amid the fire.' (Deut. 4:32-36)
Moses called all of Israel and said to them: 'Hear, O Israel, the decrees and the ordinances that I speak in your ears today ― learn them, and be careful to perform them. The Lord your God sealed a covenant with us at Horev [Mount Sinai]. Not with our forefathers did God seal this covenant, but with us ― we who are here, all of us alive today. Face to face did God speak with you on the mountain from amid the fire.' (Deut. 5:1-4)
The Torah claims that the entire Jewish nation heard God speak at Sinai, an assertion that has been accepted as part of their nation's history for over 3,000 years.
DeMille's mistake is such a big deal because the Jewish claim of national revelation, as opposed to individual revelation, is the central defining event that makes Judaism different than every other religion in the world.
History and Legends
Two types of stories are part of any national heritage.
The first kind is legends. Included in this category is George Washington's admission to chopping down the cherry tree, along with his statement, "I cannot tell a lie." Johnny Appleseed planting apple trees across America with his discarded apple cores is another legend.
Then there is history. For example, George Washington was the first president of the United States. William the Conqueror led the Battle of Hastings in 1066 in which Harold, King of England, was killed. The Jews of Spain were expelled from their country in 1492, the year Christopher Columbus set sail.
What is the difference between legend and history?
A legend is an unverified story. By their very nature legends are unverifiable because they have very few eyewitnesses. Perhaps little George did chop down the cherry tree. We can't know if it happened. This does not mean that the legend is necessarily false, only that it is unverifiable. No one thinks legends are facts, therefore they are not accepted as reliable history.
History, however, is comprised of events we know actually happened. It is reliable because we can determine if the claimed event is true or false through a number of ways. One key to verification is the assertion that large numbers of eyewitnesses observed the specific event.
Why is the number of claimed original witnesses a principal determining factor in making historical accounts reliable? This can be understood through looking at the nature of the following series of claims and weighing their levels of credibility. The nature of the claim itself can often determine its degree of believability.
The Believability Game
Gauge the level of credibility of the following scenarios.
Some claims are inherently unverifiable. For example, would you believe me if I told you the following:
"Last week after dinner, I went for a walk through the forest near my house. Suddenly everything was awash in a tremendous light and God appeared to me, designating me as His prophet. He told me to announce this revelation to you at this time."
In theory this could have happened. It doesn't seem likely, but you don't know I'm lying. Would you choose to believe me?
Without any substantiating evidence, why choose to believe me? A foolish move, indeed.
Would you believe me if I told you the following:
"Last night while I was eating dinner with my family, the room started to suddenly shake and God's booming voice was heard by all of us. He designated me as His prophet and commanded me to announce this revelation."
This could have happened too. If I were to bring in my family to confirm the story it would be more believable than the first story. You certainly don't know if I'm lying.
Would you believe me? Would you fork over $10,000 dollars if I told you God commanded you to do so?
No way. There is still not enough evidence to trust my claim ― because it is very possible that my family is lying.
There is another type of claim that you can know is false. For example, would you believe me if I told you this:
"Do you remember what happened 10 minutes ago just as you began reading this article? Remember how the room started shaking, then the ceiling opened up to the skies, and you and I together heard God's booming voice come down and say 'Thou shalt hearken to the voice of Nechemia Coopersmith for he is my prophet!' And then the room went back to normal and you continued reading. You remember that, don't you?"
Is this believable?
This kind of claim is completely different. The two previous scenarios at least had the possibility of being true. You chose not to accept them because they were unverifiable. However this third scenario is impossible to believe. I'm claiming something happened to you that you know did not happen. Since you didn't experience it, you know I'm lying. I cannot convince you of something that you yourself know didn't happen.
I cannot convince you of something that you yourself know didn't happen.
This first type of claim ― that something happened to someone else ― is unverifiable, because you do not know for certain that the claim is a lie. Therefore it is possible for a person to decide to accept the claim as true if he really wanted to and take that leap of faith.
However, the other type of claim ― that something happened to you ― you know if it is inherently false. People do not accept patently false assertions, especially those that carry significant consequences.
Sinai: An Impossible Hoax
So far we have seen two types of claims ― one is unverifiable and the other is inherently false.
Could the revelation at Sinai have been a brilliant hoax, duping millions of people into believing that God spoke to them?
Let's imagine the scene. Moses comes down the mountain and claims, "We all today heard God speak, all of you heard the God's voice from the fire..."
Assuming Moses is making it up, how would the people respond to his story?
"Moses! What are you talking about?! Boy, you sure had us going there for awhile. We may have even believed you if you came down and claimed that God appeared to you personally. But now you blew it! Now we know you're lying because you're claiming an event happened to us that we know didn't happen! We did not hear God speak to us from any fire!"
If the revelation at Sinai did not occur, then Moses is claiming an event everyone immediately knows is an outright lie, since they know that they never heard God speak. It is preposterous to think Moses can get away with a claim that everyone knows is lie.
Revelation Claimed Later in History?
Perhaps a hoax such as this could have been attempted at a later period in history. Perhaps the claim of national revelation did not originate at Sinai, but began, for example, 1,000 years after the event was said to have occurred. Perhaps the leader Ezra, for example, appears on the scene, introducing a book purported to be written by God and given to a people who stood at Sinai a long time ago.
Could someone get away with this kind of hoax? For example, would you believe the following:
"I want to let you in on a very little-known, but true fact. In 1794 over 200 years ago, from May until August, the entire continent of North America mysteriously sank under the sea. For those four months, the whole continent was submerged and somehow all animal, plant and human life managed to adapt to these bizarre conditions. Then, on August 31, the entire continent suddenly floated up to the surface and life resumed to normal."
Is there a possibility that I'm telling the truth? Do you know for a fact that it is a lie? After all, it happened so long ago, how do you know it didn't happen? Maybe you learned about in school and just forgot about it.
A significant event with many eyewitnesses cannot be perpetuated as a hoax.
You know that North America did not sink hundreds of years ago for one simple reason: If it did, you would have heard about it. An event so unique and amazing, witnessed by multitudes of people would have been known, discussed, and passed down, becoming a part of history. The fact that no one has heard of it up until now means you know the story is not true, making it impossible to accept.
An event of great significance with a large number of eyewitnesses cannot be perpetuated as a hoax. If it did not happen, everyone would realize it is false since no one ever heard about it before. Thus, if such an event was indeed accepted as part of history, the only way to understand its acceptance is that the event actually happened.
Let's assume for the moment that the revelation at Mount Sinai is really a hoax; God did not write the Torah. How did the revelation at Sinai become accepted for thousands of years as part of our nation's history?
Imagine someone trying to pull off such a hoax. An Ezra figure shows up one day holding a scroll.
"Hey Ezra – what are you holding there?"
"This is the Torah."
"The Torah? What's that?"
"It's an amazing book filled with laws, history and stories. Here, take a look at it."
Very nice, Ezra. Where did you get this?"
"Open up the book and see what it says. This book was given thousands of years ago to your ancestors. Three million of them stood at Mount Sinai and heard God speak! God appeared to everyone, giving His law and instruction."
How would you respond to such a claim?
The people give Ezra a quizzical look and say,
"Wait a second, Ezra. Something is a little fishy here. Why haven't we ever heard of this before? You're describing one of the most momentous events that could ever happen, claiming that it happened to our ancestors – and we never heard about it?"
"Sure. It was along time ago. Of course you never heard about it."
"C'mon Ezra! It's impossible that our grandparents or great-grandparents would not have passed down the most significant event in our nation's history to some of the people! How could it be that no one has heard about this up until now?! You're claiming all my ancestors, the entire nation, 3 million people heard God speak and received a set of instructions called the Torah, and none of us have heard about it?! You must be lying."
If one cannot pull off a hoax with regard to a continent sinking, so too one cannot pull off a hoax to convince an entire people that their ancestors experienced the most unique event in all of human history.
Everyone would know it's a lie.
For thousands of years, Sinai was accepted as central to Jewish history. How else can this be explained?
Given that people will not fall for a hoax they know is a lie, how could national revelation have been not only accepted ― but faithfully followed with great sacrifice by the vast majority of Jews?
The only way a people would accept such a claim is if it really happened. If Sinai did not happen, everyone would know it's a lie and it would never have been accepted. The only way one can ever claim a nation experienced revelation and have it accepted is if it is true.
Sinai: The Only Claim Of National Revelation
Throughout history, tens of thousands of religions have been started by individuals, attempting to convince people that God spoke to him or her. All religions that base themselves on some type of revelation share essentially the same beginning: a holy person goes into solitude, comes back to his people, and announces that he has experienced a personal revelation where God appointed him to be His prophet.
Would you believe someone who claims that God appointed him a new prophet?
Would you believe someone who claims to have received a personal communication from God appointing him or her as God's new prophet?
Maybe He did. Then again, maybe He didn't. One can never know. The claim is inherently unverifiable.
Personal revelation is an extremely weak basis for a religion since one can never know if it is indeed true. Even if the individual claiming personal revelation performs miracles, there is still no verification that he is a genuine prophet. Miracles do not prove anything. All they show ― assuming they are genuine ― is that he has certain powers. It has nothing to do with his claim of prophecy.
Israel did not believe in Moses, our teacher, on account of the miracles he performed. For when one's faith is based on miracles, doubt remains in the mind that these miracles may have been done through the occult and witchcraft...
What then were the grounds of believing him? The revelation on Sinai which we saw with our own eyes, and heard with our own ears, not having to depend on the testimony of others... (Mishna Torah - Foundations of Torah 8:1)
A Bold Prediction
There are 15,000 known religions in all of recorded history. Given this inherent weakness, why do all of them base their claim on personal revelation? If someone wanted their religion to be accepted, why wouldn't they present the strongest, most believable claim possible ― i.e. national revelation! It's far more credible. No one has to take a leap of faith and blindly trust just one person's word. It is qualitatively better to claim that God came to everyone, telling the entire group that so-and-so is His prophet.
Why would God establish His entire relationship with a nation through one man, without any possibility of verification, and still expect this nation to obediently follow an entire system of instructions, based only on blind faith?
Yet, Judaism is the only religion in the annals of history that makes the best of all claims ― that everyone heard God speak. No other religion claims the experience of national revelation. Why?
Furthermore, the author of the Torah predicts that there will never be another claim of national revelation throughout history!
'You might inquire about times long past, from the day that God created man on earth, and from one end of heaven to the other: Has there ever been anything like this great thing or has anything like it been heard? Has a people ever heard the voice of God speaking from the midst of the fires as you have heard and survived?' (Deut. 4:32-33)
Let's consider the option that God did not write the Torah, and its author successfully convinced a group of people to accept a false claim of national revelation. In this book, the author writes a prediction that over the course of history no one will ever make a similar claim. That means if such a claim is ever made at some future time, the prediction will end up being false and his religion is finished.
How could the author include in the book he is passing off as a hoax the prediction that no other person will ever attempt to perpetuate the same hoax when he just made that exact claim? If he could do it, he can be certain that others will too, especially since it is the best possible claim to make. If you are making up a religion, you do not write something you know you cannot predict and whose outcome you would think is guaranteed to be exactly the opposite.
However, aside from the Jewish claim of Mount Sinai, it is a fact that no other nation has ever claimed such a similar national revelation.
Let's summarize two primary questions:
1. Out of 15,000 known religions in recorded history, why is Judaism the only one that claims national revelation, the best of all claims? Why do all other religions base themselves on the inherently weak assertion of personal revelation?
2. If Judaism's claim is indeed an example of a successful hoax that falsely asserts national revelation, the author just got away with passing off the best possible claim, and others will certainly follow suit. Why then would he predict that no one else will ever make a similar claim, a prediction he knows he cannot foresee, and whose outcome is likely to be the exact opposite?
There is one simple answer to both questions. A national revelation ― as opposed to personal revelation ― is the one lie you cannot get away with. It is one event you cannot fabricate. The only way to make this claim is if it actually happened.
If the claim is true, the people will believe it because they are agreeing to something they already know. Either they personally witnessed it, or their ancestors collectively passed down the account as part of their nation's accepted history.
If the claim is false, it's like trying to convince you that God spoke to you or your parents and somehow you never heard of it. No one would ever accept such a claim.
Therefore no other religion has ever made the best of all claims, because it is the one claim that can only be made if it is true. One cannot pass national revelation off as a hoax.
When inventing a religion, the originator must resort to personal revelation, despite its inherent weakness, since it is a claim that is unverifiable. The originator can hope to find adherents willing to take a leap of faith and accept his or her religion. After all, no one can ever know it is a lie. [Of course, no one can know if it's true either.] This simply cannot work with national revelation since it's the one claim that everyone will know is a lie.
It's no wonder that all other religions are based on 'personal' revelation.
Only Judaism can claim national revelation since the Jewish people is the only nation in the history of mankind who ever experienced it.
Furthermore, it is interesting to note that the other major religions of the world both accept the Jewish revelation at Sinai, including the Five Books of Moses in their Bible, and hold the Sinai revelation as a key component of their religion.
When starting their own religions, why did they build upon the Jewish claim? Why didn't they just deny the revelation ever happened?
The answer is that they knew that if national revelation can never be fabricated; so too, its validity can therefore never be denied.
Now it is understandable how the Author of the Torah can confidently predict that there will never be another claim of national revelation in history.
Because only God knew it would happen only once, as it did ― at Sinai over 3,000 years ago.
Based on a segment of Aish HaTorah's Discovery seminar.
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BEER ALERGY AND SYMPTOMS OF
Allergic reactions are found to be developing in many cases due
to alcohol contents in many beverages. Though beer is also full
of alcohol, but besides the several ingredients that fall under
the pronouncements of food chemical additions, there are no
legal bindings that may force the beer producers to display the
list of the ingredients used in their products, on the beer cans
The beer or wine may contain various other ingredients
besides some basic common elements such as: malted grains, hops,
water and yeast which causes allergy to some. Those elements may
be such as: wheat, rye, corn or even maize used to produce beer.
You can seek assistance from the Health Department for any
information on the breweries producing beer, as per the food
regulations of 1994.
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You can put this solution on YOUR website!
You have several questions here. Let's take one at a time.
$300 is borrowed the amount owed after 12 months is $00 what is the interest rate.
We need I = PRT for this question.
P = 300, t = 12 months. Time is measured in years, so t = 1. We don't have interest rate or amount of interest paid back. It appears according to the question that $300 is paid back after 12 months. Without some R or I info. I can't solve this one.
QUESTION #2: 25 is 12% of what number?
25 = (12/100)*N
cross multiply to get
2500 = 12N
divide to get
N = 208.33
X + Y =130
6.50X +250Y - 604.5
Don't know if we are solving algebraically or graphing. I will show solve algebraically. I think you mean
(i) X + Y =130
(ii) 6.50X +2.50Y = 604.5
step 1: multiply (i) by -2.50 to get
-2.5X - 2.5Y = -325
6.50X + 2.50Y = 604.5
step 2: add down to eliminate Y.
4X = 279.5
step 3: solve for X.
X = 69.875.
step 4: solve for Y.
Y = 60.125
Graph the solutions of equalities
(i) 4X + 5Y < 20
(ii) 4X - 2Y < 8
Find x and y intercepts for both equations.
(i) X-int = 5 ; Y-int = 4. Plot 5 on the X-axis and 4 on the Y-axis and connect with dashed line. Shade down toward you.
(ii) X-int = 2 ; Y-int = -4. Plot 2 on the X-axis and -4 on the Y-axis and connect with dashed line. Shade up away from you.
where there is double shading, you have the answer.
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Animal Rights Articles
Moo-ving people toward compassionate living
Visit the all-creatures.org Home Page.
Write us with your comments: [email protected]
What's Wrong With Xenotransplantation?
Merriam-Webster: Xenotransplantation is the transplantation of an organ, tissue, or cells between two different species
From Campaign for Responsible Transplantation (CRT)
Why CRT is Opposed to Xenotransplantation
The alleged chronic shortage of human organs has led some researchers and federal health officials in the US and elsewhere to consider using organs from animals such as pigs and nonhuman primates. Xenotransplantation, attempted since 1905, is marred by a history of failures and intense human and animal suffering. But the prospect of commercializing the technology has created huge financial incentives for biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies who have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in xenotransplantation. The desire to gain a return on such large investments has led many companies to make exaggerated claims about the alleged merits of the technology. CRT believes that these claims are baseless and that, in fact, the technology is dangerous, expensive, inhumane, and unnecessary, and should therefore be banned.
- Transplanting living animal organs into humans circumvents the natural barriers (such as skin and gastrointestinal tract) that prevent infection, thereby facilitating the transmission of infectious diseases from animals to humans.
- Many animal viruses have the ability to jump species barriers and kill humans. Viruses that are harmless to their animal hosts, can be deadly when transmitted to humans. For example, Macaque herpes is harmless to Macaque monkeys, but lethal to humans.
- Many viruses, as innocuous as the common cold or as lethal as Ebola, can be transmitted via a mere cough or sneeze. An animal virus residing in a xenograft recipient could become airborne, infecting scores of people, and causing a potentially deadly viral epidemic of global proportions akin to HIV or worse.
- Pigs, genetically altered to carry human genes, are being considered as the source animals of choice for xenotransplants, despite the existence of over 25 diseases in pigs that can infect humans. The influenza virus of 1918, which resembled a common swine flu, killed more people in modern history than any other epidemic including AIDS and the Black Plague. New mutations of swine influenza are being seen around the globe, and novel pig viruses keep surfacing. In October 1997, medical journals reported that Porcine Endogenous Retroviruses (PERVs), present throughout the pig genome, infected human cells in test tubes. That same year, the Australian "paramyxovirus" infected piggery workers with flu-like symptoms. And, most recently, the "Nipah" virus, discovered in Malaysia in late 1998, spread from pigs to hundreds of humans, killing 100+ and leading to the mass slaughter of some one million pigs, as well as several dogs and horses.
- There is no way to screen for viruses that are not yet known. Proceeding with xenotransplantation could expose patients and non-patients to a host of new animal viruses which could remain dormant for months or years before being detected. Xenotransplantation could thus be viewed as a form of involuntary human experimentation which violates US laws and United Nations charters.
- Xenotransplant proponents claim that they will breed "germ-free" animals, thereby diminishing the risk of viral transmission. But it is impossible to breed "germ-free" animals since no animal can remain completely free of parasites or endogenous viruses. In fact, genetically engineered animals are more susceptible to a host of diseases because of weaker immune systems.
- CRT believes that HHS violated the Public Health Service Act by ignoring the scientific evidence showing that xenotransplantation is dangerous and ineffective. HHS failed to adequately consider the legal, social, ethical, and economical implications of xenotransplantation. HHS issued voluntary draft guidelines on xenotransplantation, September 23, 1996, despite scientific evidence demonstrating that the xenograft recipient will suffer significant harm. Scientists have criticized the voluntary guidelines for being weak, ineffectual, and unlikely to protect the public. HHS did not adequately consider how to protect the public from contracting novel animal viruses, how to deal with the issue of informed consent, or the large costs associated with xenotransplantation. HHS issued voluntary guidelines to regulate the technology. It is highly probable that HHS will be unable to protect the xenograft recipient or the public from being infected by an animal virus. As a result, HHS should have considered how the government would handle an infectious epidemic before the guidelines for xenotransplantation were issued.
- HHS has not addressed how infected individuals will be identified and how those infected will be prevented from spreading diseases. HHS has also failed to address who will pay for treatment and care for those infected. Treating and caring for individuals infected with animal viruses will most likely cost the U.S. billions of dollars. So far, HHS has not stated whether it would compensate victims who inadvertently come into contact with a lethal animal virus. However, this should be a consideration because the government has already had to respond to compensation claims filed by Persian Gulf War veterans, victims of Agent Orange, hemophiliacs infected by HIV-tainted blood, and parents of vaccine-damaged children. Although HHS identifies procedures for obtaining informed consent in the xenotransplantation guidelines, the agency failed to consider several important issues. An Institute of Medicine 1996 report on xenotransplantation indicates that "more research needs to be done on the psychological, religious, and social interpretations of xenotransplants for patients and their families." HHS should have considered that xenograft patients will most likely be very ill when they decide to take part in xenograft procedures. These patients, many in desperate situations, must understand highly complex issues, including the experimental nature of xenotransplantation and the health risks not only to themselves, but also their close personal contacts. It is unlikely that patients would fully understand the consequences of their participation in such experiments.
- Health authorities were unable to prevent the worldwide spread of HIV infection. Similarly, they were unable to prevent Ebola outbreaks in Sudan, Zaire (1976, 1979, 1995) and the US (1989, 1996). Furthermore, there is evidence that humans have become ill after consuming or being injected with animal materials. There is a reported link between the smallpox vaccine (derived from animal cells) and AIDS, a recently acknowledged link between human lung, brain and bone cancer and the SV (simian virus) 40 (found in old batches of the Salk polio vaccine), and the threat of emerging infectious diseases, including human Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) from the consumption of "mad cows" in Europe, the Netherlands, and the US. It would be a tragedy if federal health authorities failed to respect the precautionary principle and facilitated the introduction and spread of a new viral epidemic. Responsible health authorities would steer clear of xenotransplantation in the interest of human health.
- In September 1996, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a set of draft voluntary guidelines on xenotransplantation. Currently, xenotransplantation is "regulated" by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA); Over the last several years, FDA has approved limited clinical trials with animal tissues, cells, and organs, typically pig livers, used outside the body as temporary "bridges" to "filter" the blood of patients awaiting human liver transplants. Xenotransplant products that utilize both a device and a biologic (such as the "liver-assist device") would be considered a combination product and regulated both by the FDA's Center for Biologic Evaluation and Research (CBER) and the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. Animal organs used in xenotransplantation would be considered biologics and covered by CBER. Ironically, CBER scientists have acknowledged that xenotransplantation presents a risk of introducing novel pathogens into the human population.
- The FDA's active support for xenotransplant research is inconsistent with positions the agency has taken in the past. In 1991, the FDA ordered a recall of a disinfectant, Sporicidin, used by dentists and doctors to sterilize equipment, claiming that it did not adequately protect patients from infectious microorganisms. FDA commissisoner at the time, David Kessler, said FDA would "not tolerate products that would permit the transmission of disease from one patient to another."
- Proposed regulatory oversight of xenotransplantation procedures is weak and would likely be highly flawed. Although xenotransplants subject patients and non-patients to significant health risks, HHS chose a lenient method for monitoring the health effects from the procedures by constructing voluntary guidelines on xenotransplantation. As it stands, the guidelines are to be "enforced" at the local level by institutional review boards (IRBs). Virologist Jonathan Allan has stated that, "in choosing voluntary guidelines to be enforced at a local level [via IRBs],…the FDA/CDC committee has chosen the least stringent and possibly least successful method of policing these transplant procedures."
- In a draft 1998 report, the HHS's own Inspector General June Gibbs Brown said that institutional review boards, whose members are unpaid, and who are charged with monitoring the treatment of participants in clinical trials, "face crushing workloads, inadequate training and potential conflicts of interest."
- Even if FDA were to assume the responsibility for monitoring all clinical xenotransplant trials, that would not necessarily be an improvement. FDA has already failed to successfully provide oversight for human tissue banks; the agency has also been criticized by scientists and consumer groups for approving the use of a controversial genetically engineered bovine growth hormone despite the existence of several studies questioning its safety.
- In the federal guidelines, HHS recommends a strict monitoring regimen for patients and their close contacts. The rigorous and potentially "life-long surveillance" program, would require complete physical exams and sampling regimens. But HHS fails to discuss the issue of noncompliance with the monitoring program. What would happen if individuals choose to sporadically participate or entirely withdraw from the program and HHS is not able to detect an infectious disease? A disease could spread before HHS recognizes its existence.
- In all areas of human activity, particularly when money is involved, the potential for fraud, error, and negligence exists. In the past, such behavior has placed human health at considerable risk. Witness the HIV-contaminated blood scandals in France, China, Japan and the US, for example, in which employees and/or medical authorities knowingly allowed HIV-contaminated blood to be used for transfusions and blood-clotting treatments for hemophiliacs.
- Given the enormous amount of data, paperwork, and filing xenotransplant procedures would generate, it would be naive (given human nature) to assume that data will be properly recorded, stored, reviewed, and updated. Regulatory mechanisms often fail to prevent or correct these errors and/or behaviors, the consequences of which could be disastrous in the face of a xenogeneic infection.
- Xenotransplantation is not a cost effective technology. It is riskier and promises to be even more expensive than human-to-human transplantation (roughly $300,000 per operation, not including the hidden costs of breeding, housing, feeding, medicating, testing, transporting, rendering, and disposing of the waste and remains of herds of transgenic animals).
- The FDA wants to establish a registry to archive xenograft patient and source animal tissue samples. This archive is to be funded by taxpayers. FDA officials estimate the cost of the registry at $250,000 to $300,000 a year, and the cost for the archive at $1 million a year.
- Xenotransplant researchers acknowledge that 'rearing pigs under germ-free conditions, is extremely expensive and time-consuming and the production of germ-free pigs would greatly add to the cost of providing donor organs.' Currently it costs from $25,000 to $100,000 to test just one pig for the presence of known bacteria and viruses. The biotechnology company Nextran explains that one of its pig organs will eventually cost the same as a human organ.
- Based upon this estimate, xenotransplantation is not cost effective.
- The current transplant costs for human organs range from $116,000 for a kidney to more than $300,000 for a liver. Factoring in years of follow-up care and immunosuppressive drugs, the cost rises to about $400,000 for a liver transplant and over $300,000 each for heart and lung transplants. A 1996 Institute of Medicine report predicts that xenotransplantation will push annual transplant cost from $3 billion to $20.3 billion. These costs are beyond the means of a majority of Americans and an already overburdened health care system.
- It is predicted that, by the year 2000, 48 million Americans will lack basic healthcare. Another 30+ million will be underinsured. The uninsured (largely minorities, 18 to 24-year-olds, and the working poor) who are chronically ill are least likely to receive proper care, with the result that untreated conditions can lead to serious health consequences. Can we justify spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on operations that, if they ever succeed, would at best benefit a small minority of patients, while dramatically driving up health care costs for all?
Animal Welfare Concerns
- Biotechnology companies are breeding pigs with human genes in the hopes of fooling the human immune system into accepting a foreign organ from another species. This disturbing genetic reconstruction of life (the creation of animals that are, in essence, part animal and part human) is advancing on a commercial scale with almost no informed public discussion or effective oversight.
- Scientific studies have demonstrated that pigs are highly intelligent and sensitive animals. Pigs used in studies at the University of Pennsylvania manipulated joysticks with their mouths to solve mazes and play games on a computer. Pigs used in biomedical research can be subjected to painful biological and surgical manipulations at experimenters' discretion, causing great pain and suffering before death. Policy-makers in the U.S. and elsewhere have decided that it is "ethical" to use pigs in xenotransplants because pigs are killed for food. But two wrongs do not make a right. Ironically, it is precisely because people eat too many pigs, and have unhealthy lifestyles, that pig organ transplants are being considered. A large majority of heart, liver, and kidney transplants could be prevented if people reduced their meat, (and alcohol and tobacco consumption). We should ask whether it is acceptable to make pigs and other nonhuman animals scapegoats for our species' self-destructive behaviors. Transgenic technology is very imprecise. Previous transgenic pig research programs have produced animals with various painful physical abnormalities including arthritis, stomach ulcers, muscular weakness, defective vision, and weakened immunity. Transgenic animals are destined to spend their lives confined in unnatural, sterile environments, unable to fulfill their basic behavioral needs, until death. In her book, Genetic Engineering: Dream or Nightmare (1998), British biologist Mae-Wan Ho wrote that, "the creation of transgenic animals for xenotransplantation . . .[is] scientifically flawed and morally unjustifiable. [It carries] inherent hazards in facilitating cross-species exchange and recombination of viral pathogens. These projects ought not to be allowed to continue without full public review."
- In CRT's opinion, HHS failed to consider the environmental consequences of xenotransplantation as required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). HHS issued guidelines for xenotransplantation without complying with any of NEPA's requirements. NEPA requires that agencies "take a 'hard look' at the environmental consequences before taking a major action." HHS failed to take the required "hard look" at the environmental and health consequences of its actions because no Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) was performed. By completely ignoring the entire EIS requirements, HHS has violated NEPA.
- CRT believes that xenotransplantation is a "significant" action because it is highly controversial and poses unique and unknown health effects to the xenograft recipient and the general public. Furthermore, xenotransplantation affects "the quality of the human environment." Federal regulations define "the quality of the human environment" to include "the natural and physical environment and the relationship of people with that environment." In this case, the relationship of people to their environment is affected by the HHS's action because xenotransplantation may create deadly new animal viruses. Due to this significant public health concern, HHS should have prepared an EIS.
- Xenotransplantation also poses significant threats to the environment. The animals needed for xenotransplantation will increase the environmental problems caused by animal-based agriculture. U.S. farms already generate about 1.4 billion tons of animal manure a year, 130 times the quantity of U.S. human sewage, according to a 1997 report by the Senate Agriculture Committee entitled, Animal Waste Pollution in America: An Emerging National Problem. This untreated and largely unregulated manure, contaminated with bacteria, parasites, chemicals and heavy metals, is washed off farmland by rain and discharged into streams and rivers, killing fish, and making people who eventually drink it, bathe in it, and wash their clothes with it, sick.
- In March 1999, a community in Sarpy County, Nebraska denied a permit to a xenotransplantation pig breeding/research facility because of environmental concerns alone.
- Surveys find animal waste is degrading 1,785 bodies of water in 39 states. Pesticides, insecticides and antibiotics which are commonly used in agriculture may also contribute to soil and ground water contamination and consequently, harm human health. Pollution from factory farms impairs more miles of U.S. rivers than all other industry sources and municipal sewers combined. During the past two decades, the number of coastal waters that host major and recurring attacks by harmful microbes has doubled. Pigs and pig waste pose a particular danger because they contract and transmit many human diseases including meningitis, salmonella, chlamydia, giardia, cryptosporidiosis, brucella, worms and influenza. The hazards from hogs increases when they are packed closely together.
- Hog farms pollute the air. In Minnesota, tests showed eight of 32 air samples taken near manure lagoons exceeded air quality standards for hydrogen sulfide. A study done at Duke University Medical Center revealed that those who lived downwind from hog factory farms suffered from a variety of illnesses including increased tension, depression, flu-like symptoms, fatigue, dizziness, blackouts, loss of appetite, and sleep disturbances.
- HHS also failed to address the environmental and health impacts caused by the disposal of numerous remains of genetically modified animals. Conventional agricultural operations continuously wrestle with the problems of how to dispose of millions of tons of perishable animal tissue each year. Incineration, burial, and composting are all expensive, unhygienic, and environmentally problematic. In fact, in 1997, the Sierra Club filed a lawsuit against a hog farm, citing 50 violations of federal environmental laws, including the farm's illegal pits for disposing dead pigs. Disposing of transgenic pigs is a significant environmental and health concern, because if the bodies of source animals are disposed of improperly, their DNA could replicate, spread, and recombine, picking up genes from viruses in other species, and consequently, create new pathogens. Thus, disposing of genetically modified animals is an issue that should have been addressed in an EIS.
- Can we justify raising more pigs for human use at a time when the Environmental Protection Agency is placing new restrictions on livestock pollution? Breeding animals for xenotransplantation would create a host of environmental problems, described above. Conventional farming and rendering operations have yet to solve these problems which continue to threaten public health across the US (see www.hogwatch.org).
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All Creatures Animal Rights Article: justice, peace, love, compassion, ethics, organizations, Bible, God, Lord, Jesus, Christ, Holy Spirit, grass roots, animals, cruelty free, lifestyle, hunting, fishing, traping, farm, farming, factory, fur, meat, slaughter, cattle, beef, pork, chicken, poultry, hens, battery, debeaking. Thee is also a similarity to the human aspects of prolife, pro life, pro-life, abortion, capital punishment, and war.
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An Articles Archives
Diet - Diseases - Enzymes - Exercise - Health - Herbs - Longevity - Medicine - Minerals - Natural Health - Nutrition - Stress - Vegan - Vegetarian - Vitamins
We began this archives as a means of assisting our visitors in answering many of their health and diet questions, and in encouraging them to take a pro-active part in their own health. We believe the articles and information contained herein are true, but are not presenting them as advice. We, personally, have found that a vegan diet has helped our own health, and simply wish to share with others the things we have found. Each of us must make our own decisions, for it's our own body. If you have a health problem, see your own physician.
Most of these quotations are from the book Moooove over milk (132 pp. published 1997 by Lets Eat, Hot Springs, U.S.A.)
BABIES AND INFANTS
"Babies who are fed whole cows milk during the second six months of life may experience a 30% increase in intestinal blood loss and a significant loss of iron in their stools." Paediatrics 1992; 89 (6):1105 -1109
"We should strive to use foods . . . . that meet the nutrient needs of the older infant . . . yet avoid toxicity. Cow milk simply does not meet this standard of quality." Journal of Paediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition 1993;16 (1):2
"Drinking cows milk may weaken immune function in children and lead to problems with recurring infections." Nature 1978; 272 (5654): 632
"About 20% of babies suffer from colic, or abdominal cramping and gas. Milk proteins may be one of the leading causes of this digestive disorder." Lancet 1978; 2 (8087): 437-439, Paediatrics 1991; 87 (4): 439 -444
"A young age at introduction of dairy products and high milk consumption during childhood may increase the childs risk of developing juvenile diabetes." Diabetologia 1994; 37 (4): 381 -387
"Early cow milk exposure may increase juvenile diabetes risk by about 1½ times." Diabetes Care 1994; 17 (1): 13
"Epedemiologic and serologic data in humans also suggest a relation between cows milk and diabetes." New England Journal of Medicine 1992; 327 (5): 302-307
("Cows milk protein) may play a fundamental role in the development of . . . IDDM." Diabetes 1996; 45 (2): 178 -182. [IDDM:Insulin Dependent Diabetes Mellitus]
"An estimated 50 million Americans experience intestinal discomfort after consuming dairy products. Symptoms include bloating, stomach-pain, cramps, gas or diarrhoea." Postgraduate Medicine 1994; 95 (1) 113 -120
"Adults who consume large quantities of milk, who have high lactase activity, . . . suffer repeated small galactose challenges, accumulation of galacticol in the lens, and a greater likelihood of developing senile cataracts." Digestive Diseases and Sciences 1982; 27 (3) 257 -264
"Milk fat has been identified as a (cholesterol-elevating) fat because it contains cholesterol and is primarily saturated." Journal of Dairy Science 1991; 74 (11): 4002 -4012
"Milk and many components of milk (butterfat, milk protein, calcium from milk, and riboflavin) . . . were positively related to coronary heart disease mortality for all 40 countries studied." Circulation 1993; 88 (6): 2771 -2779
"Two glasses of whole milk contain about the same amount of cholesterol as one 3-ounce beef steak." Lifestyle Capsules p.309
Substituting just 20 grams of soy protein for animal protein daily can "significantly lower serum concentrations of total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, and triglycerides." James Anderson MD, New England Journal of Medicine 1995; 333 (5): 276 -282 [the volunteers in this study all consumed the same amounts of fat and cholesterol; the reduction in blood cholesterol levels was due to the protective effect of soy.]
"Cultures with the highest milk consumption have the highest osteoporosis rates, a disease rarely found in non-milk-drinking cultures." Dr. Hans Diehl, Dynamic Living p.108.
"Osteoporosis is caused by a number of things, one of the most important things being too much dietary protein!" American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 1974; (9): 916 -925
"Dietary protein increases production of acid (in the blood) which can be neutralized by calcium mobilized from the skeleton." American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 1995; 61(4): 909
"Fruits, vegetables, nuts, and legumes are good sources of boron, which helps stop calcium loss in the body. Because milk is low in boron and high in phosphorous and protein, it is not a good osteoporosis-fighting food." Dr. Forest H. Nielsen, U.S. Department of Agriculture, in Nutrition Today Jan/Feb 1988; 4 -7
"Excessive protein intake could account for the 1.0% to 1.5% loss in bone mass each year typically seen in post-menopausal women." Journal of Laboratory and Clinical Medicine 1982; 99(1): 46 -55
"Sulphur amino acids in animal products seem to be primarily responsible for the increased calcium loss." Calcified Tissue International 1989; 44 (5): 335 -338
"Meat based diets are more acid producing than lacto-ovo vegetarian (LOV) diets; and LOV diets are more acid producing than vegan diets." Journal of the American Dietetic Association 1985; 85 (7): 841-845
"In Western countries eating more than 75g a day of protein is likely to cause excessive calcium loss." Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery (Am) 1967; 49 (5): 915 -924
"Soybean milk is an excellent source for increasing bone mineral density and mechanical bone strength . . . the peptides (proteins) in the soybean milk are effective for the acceleration of intestinal calcium absorption." American Institute of Nutrition 1993; Journal of Nutrition, Science and Vitaminology 1994; 40; 201 -211
"Nations with the highest dietary fat consumption also have the highest rates of prostate and breast cancer." Advances in Cancer Research 1980; 32:237 -345
"Dietary factors (mainly high fat and animal protein intake) appear to be the most important risk determinants for colon cancer." Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology 1986; 6 (1): 24 -54
In a study involving 3,334 cancer patients, frequent whole milk consumption led to "significant risk increases for cancers of the oral cavity, stomach, rectum, lung, and breast." Nutrition and Cancer 1990; 13 (1-2): 89-99
There is much evidence suggesting that compounds present in soya beans can prevent cancer in many different organ systems". Journal of Nutrition 1995; 125 (3 Suppl): 733S -743S)
"US government regulations permit pasteurised milk to have up to 750,000 lymphocytes [pus cells], 20,000 bacteria, and 10 coliform organisms per 1/5th. teaspoon about 8 drops! But at 40 F, the temperature of a good refrigerator, the population of those bugs can double every 35-40 hours!" Moooove over Milk
No wonder milk is a major source of human infection. For example as recently as Thursday 29 June 2000 over 5,000 people in Japan became seriously ill after drinking milk contaminated with the Staphylococcus germ, typically found in the pus of boils and abscesses.
"Any time a patient of mine is found to have streptococcal pharingytis or pyoderma, we can establish by history that he has ingested milk protein within five days . . ." Dr. Frank Oski, MD (paediatrician). Dont Drink Your Milk p.24
We have not touched on CJD, TB, Listeriosis, Campylobacter, Salmonella, E Coli, Crohns Disease, Lactose Intolerance, or Allergies. Fortunately there are many good alternatives to animal milk. Soy milk for example, especially that fortified with vitamin B12 and additional calcium. Plant-based milk is CLEAN and CRUELTY-FREE! It is admittedly more expensive than cows milk, but how much do you value your health? If the government subsidies were removed from livestock farming the price would be much more competitive. Turning soy into milk via a machine wastes nothing. Feeding the soy to dairy cows to produce cows milk wastes 90% of it. Which should be realistically cheaper? Over nine tenths of the worlds soy production is fed to livestock.
Governments continue to subsidise with taxpayers money the production of meat and milk. It is cruel to animals, harmful to human health, and wasteful of land, water and fossil fuels. We should make our voices heard in opposition to this policy.
HIPPO, Llangynog, Carmarthen SA33 5BS, Wales, U.K.
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Your Comments Are
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|A Number Pyramid is composed of the 10 different numbers 0-9 with
a top row of 1 number resting on a second row of 2 sitting on a third row
of 3 supported by a bottom row of 4. For example, a Number Pyramid
3 4 5
6 7 8 9
Given the clues below, can you determine the composition of Number
- The number at the top of Number Pyramid 6 minus the leftmost
number in row 2 equals 6.
- Both the four leftmost numbers in each row and the three numbers in row
3 sum to 17.
- In the bottom row of the pyramid, the second number from the left minus
the leftmost number equals 5.
- The rightmost number in row 3 minus the rightmost number in row 4
- The four numbers in the bottom row sum to 19.
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- Historic Sites
An entry from the Small Soviet Encyclopedia, Vol. IX,columns 240-41, before June 22, 1941
October 1960 | Volume 11, Issue 6
ROOSEVELT, Franklin (born 1882)—President of the U.S.A. From 1907—an active Democratic [party] leader. Became a member of the New York State Senate in 1910; Assistant to the Secretary of the Navy, 1913-21; Governor of the State of New York, 1928-32. Became President of the U.S.A. in 1933. Roosevelt was the spokesman of those strata of the American bourgeoisie which, under the conditions of economic crisis and acute class struggle, considered it imperative to grant sizable concessions to the working class and the farming masses. Roosevelt proclaimed the so-called New Deal, consisting of the passage of a number of laws designed to regulate industrial and agricultural production. He was responsible for establishing the National Industrial Recovery Administration (NIRA), the purpose of which was to create “class peace” in the U.S.A. by fixing maximum hours and minimum wages for all branches of industry. In foreign affairs, Roosevelt’s most outstanding achievements were the establishment of normal diplomatic relations between the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. (November 16, 1933), as well as the proclamation of the Good Neighbor policy toward Latin American countries.
It was this policy which met with the approval of the American people and which enabled him to become reelected in 1936. Having survived the most critical years of the crisis, the reactionary circles of financial capital came to regard Roosevelt’s concessions as excessive, and pressured the Supreme Court into declaring the NIRA and the New Deal unconstitutional. Under the influence of reactionary elements in the Republican as well as in his own Democratic party, Roosevelt became increasingly more reactionary. This reversal became particularly pronounced after the outbreak of the second imperialist war in Europe. In the interests of imperialist American circles, who demanded the U.S.A.’s active participation in the war for the purpose of redividing the world, the embargo on arms was repealed on behalf of France and Great Britain [ sic ]. In response to Roosevelt’s demands, the Congress systematically appropriated huge sums of money for rearmament. At the same time, the U.S. increased its pressure on Latin American countries, with the aim of subordinating their policies to American interests. Domestically, the Roosevelt Administration accelerated its offensive against the democratic rights of the American people; social legislation was largely wiped out. The presidential election of 1940, the fear of losing the votes of millions of working people opposed to the war, compelled Roosevelt to conduct an ambiguous policy on the international arena, as well as on the home front. After the presidential election, Roosevelt speeded up America’s preparations for war.
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- Historic Sites
Connecting With Eastern Europe
Americans have always sympathized with the Eastern European countries in their struggles for democracy, but for two centuries we haven’t been able to help much. Do we have a chance now? A distinguished expatriate looks at the odds.
November 1990 | Volume 41, Issue 7
Even in these days of nine-hour airplane journeys and instant telephony, the United States and Eastern Europe are very far apart. When it comes to the places and shapes of nations and states east of Germany and west of Russia, there occurs in the eyes of most Americans an instant blur. There are obvious reasons for this. One of them is the plain reality of perspective. When Americans look across the Atlantic, the shapes of the British Isles, of France, of Scandinavia, of the Iberian and Italian peninsulas are recognizable and familiar, even in these times of a scandalously neglected education in geography.
But this is not only a matter of shapes. The states of Western and Northern and Southern Europe are familiar because they are old. This may be true of the nations of Eastern Europe but not of their states. The independence of every one of them—except for Poland—is more recent than that of the United States. Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Albania, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland—their independent statehoods have come about during the last 160 years. Some of them—like Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia and, to some extent, Romania—were cemented together only after World War I, fewer than three generations ago. But the independence of every one of these countries has been cheered on, promoted, and encouraged by the American people and its governments during two centuries. This still holds true, even as the Russian occupation and the Communist regimes in the eastern half of Europe are vanishing.
The American-Eastern Europe connection is a long and complex story, often entangled with the vicissitudes of American domestic politics. Again the Polish-American connection stands out. Pulaski and Kosciusko are names known and respected by generations of Americans. But while many Americans venerated the cause of Polish independence, the governments of the United States before World War I did not espouse that cause, wishing instead to maintain their relations with the Russian, German, and Austrian empires, which had partitioned Poland among themselves at the time of the first Presidency of George Washington. This discrepancy between American popular sentiment and the interests of American foreign policy as seen by Presidents and Secretaries of State has confused, perplexed, and, on occasion, plagued politicians as well as the potential recipients of their sympathies.
Fifty years after the American War of Independence came the Greek War of Independence against Turkey. Oblivious of the fact that the Greeks could not achieve their independence alone—their independence had to be won through the armed intervention of Britain, France, and Russia, often at cross-purposes with one another—many Americans cheered on the Greek national rising, as had Byron and Lamartine during that halcyon decade of Romanticism. In the 182Os American philhellene societies multiplied; American towns adopted Hellenic names (including Ypsilanti, Michigan, named after a somewhat dubious foreign ad venturer who had brought Russia to the Greek side in the war against Turkey). It was this kind of sentimentalism that John Quincy Adams had in mind in his classic peroration on the Fourth of July in 1821 when he said that Americans are friends of liberty everywhere in the world but that they will not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy.
Thirty years later came another sentimental wave. The Hungarian nation had risen up against Austrian rule. Alone among all nations of the world, the United States gave official recognition to the Hungarian Republic. The Southern Whig President Zachary Taylor was persuaded to send a minister to represent the United States in Hungary. Before he got there, the Austrian and Russian armies had forced the Hungarian army to surrender. Hungary’s leader, Lajos Kossuth, a classic nineteenth-century figure of a republican and a democrat, had to flee. In December 1851 he came to visit the United States. Enormous crowds greeted him. He was the first foreign statesman, after Lafayette, to receive a ceremonial reception in Washington. By then the President was Millard Fillmore, whose Secretary of State was none other than Daniel Webster. “We shall rejoice to see our American model upon the Lower Danube and on the mountains of Hungary!” Webster declared at the Washington banquet in Kossuth’s honor. There were Kossuth hats, Kossuth coats, Kossuth beards, Kossuth cigars. A county of Iowa was named Kossuth; American children (like George F. Kennan’s father in Milwaukee) were given the first name of Kossuth. Yet except for a few rhetorical battles with the diplomatic representatives of the Austrian Empire, the Kossuth episode led to no change in the course of American foreign relations. Kossuth mania was a result of American domestic politics, exploited by a powerful wing of the Democratic party when the strength and the cohesion of the Whigs were weakening.
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December 1972 | Volume 24, Issue 1
For some men the only solution to the dilemma of blacks and whites together was for the blacks to go back where they came from
When, on August 14, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln spoke to a visiting “committee of colored men” at the White House, it was already becoming clear that one result of the War Between the States would be the freeing of millions of slaves. Slavery was toppling under the blows of war, and in just another month the President would issue the preliminary version of the Emancipation Proclamation. The “colored men” whom Lincoln addressed were free already; some of them had been free all their lives. The President, however, gave them no heartening affirmations of their equality. Instead, he proposed to them the resettling of American blacks, either in Africa or in Central or South America.
“You are cut off,” he reminded his visitors, “from many of the advantages which the other race enjoy. The aspiration of men is to enjoy equality with the best when free, but on this broad continent, not a single man of your race is made the equal of a single man of ours.” He felt it was “better for us both … to be separated,” that is, that the Negroes of America go elsewhere—all of them.
He ruminated aloud about their going to Liberia, in Africa. Perhaps, he suggested, that was too far away: “… some of you would rather remain within reach of the country of your nativity. I do not know how much attachment you may have toward our race. It does not strike me that you have the greatest reason to love them. But still you are attached to them at all events.” So he had in mind the possibility of a colony in Central America, and he asked for “a hundred tolerably intelligent men, with their wives and children,” to be the pioneer colonists there, although he admitted he would be satisfied with a quarter that number.
Thus did the Great Emancipator propose voluntary exile for the nation’s blacks. He was by no means the first, nor the last, to nourish such a solution to an agonizing American racial problem. Serious discussion of that prospect began as early as the 1770’s with Samuel Hopkins, a Rhode Island Congregational minister; Hopkins proposed training black missionaries to begin a Negro return to Africa. Thomas Jefferson, in the Virginia Assembly, put forward a program that would emancipate the slaves as they became adults. Having been trained in various useful arts, they would be sent to a distant colony. Jefferson believed slavery was evil, both morally and politically. Yet deeper than his abhorrence of the institution was his fear that American freed Negroes would become so -numerous that race war would be inevitable.
The fear of a genocidal blood bath has been a persistent argument in favor of an absolute separation of the black and white races—a proposal that has surfaced repeatedly in the nation’s history. The presumed inevitability and incurable nature of race prejudice have likewise been advanced to justify total separation.
Such fears and attitudes have been most evident in periods of heightened racial tension, and it is at those times that Negro emigration has appeared to many to be a reasonable, perhaps the only, solution. The quarter century after Reconstruction, for example, a particularly desperate era for American blacks, saw the creation of such enterprises as the Liberian Exodus Joint Stock Steamship Company, the United Transatlantic Society, and the International Migration Society. Just after the First World War, when honorable service brought blacks no bettered status and little relief from violently enforced prejudices, a black messiah, Marcus Aurelius Garvey, arose with ambitious plans for building an African empire with black Americans. There was an African Nationalist Pioneer Movement in the 1930’s, when the Depression compounded the problems confronting the Negro community. And in spite of improvement in the situation of Negroes since then, the still agonizingly slow advance of equality spawned a small frontier village of black “Hebrews” in Liberia in the 1960’s.
The resettlement idea thus appears to have had remarkable vitality. But it has never been particularly effective. Lincoln’s plans for moving Negroes south of the border is illustrative. It came a cropper, specifically, on the greed of white promoters of proposed colonies and the opposition of Central American governments. But those stumbling blocks might have been hurdled had it not been for the more basic problem common to all such projects. Any resettlement program had to expose, had to carry with it like a disfiguring scar, painful conflicts and contradictions in the racial practices and pretensions of the American community. Nowhere are these better shown than in the rise and fall of the largest and longest-lived of the resettlement organizations, the American Colonization Society, founded in 1816.
The sole purpose of the society was stated in its formal title, The American Society for Colonizing the Free People of Color in the United States. Free Negroes, as Henry Clay remarked to the society’s first organizational meeting, “neither enjoyed the immunities of freemen, nor were they subject to the incapacities of slaves.” Prejudice, Clay said, worked to keep them a lower caste, and it was “desirable … both as it respected them, and the residue of the population of the country, to drain them off.”
In 1750 there had been only a few thousand free Negroes in the American colonies. But the numbers would soon rise, because the philosophy that legitimized the American Revolution also encouraged emancipation. Slaveholder Joseph Hill of Virginia, for one, writing his will in 1783, gave his bondsmen their freedom upon his death, explaining that “after full and deliberate consideration, and agreeable to our Bill of Rights,” he was “fully persuaded that freedom is the natural life of all mankind.” Virginia law had closely restricted manumission until 1782. After the restrictions were removed, the number of free Negroes in the state rose from fewer than three thousand to nearly thirteen thousand by 1790. That year the number of free Negroes in the United States had grown to just under sixty thousand. Many northern states had abolished slavery or were about to, a process completely accomplished throughout the North by 1818. This further swelled the totals so that in 1820 the census would count more than 233,000 free Negroes.
Free they were, but in no sense equal. They did not live well. Their rights in law were restricted and growing more so; with rare exceptions they could not testify against whites in court, and without exception they could not serve on juries. The punishments for blacks were often more severe than for whites who committed the same crimes. In Virginia, for example, after 1831, free Negroes guilty of many minor offenses received the same punishments—including whippings—as those meted out to slaves for identical misdemeanors. A few states conferred the legal right to vote, but some withdrew it later as the number of free blacks multiplied. And where law did not deny Negroes the vote, custom often did. Circumscriptions were beginning to be placed on the right of free Negroes to move from state to state, as no state particularly relished being a repository for newly emancipated slaves. Education was either not available or was segregated. The jobs open to free Negroes were limited. The result of all this was distilled in the words of the valedictorian of a Negro school in New York in 1819: Why should I strive hard and acquire all the constituents of a man, if the prevailing genius of the land admit me not as such, or but in an inferior degree! Pardon me if I feel insignificant and weak. … What are my prospects? To what shall I turn my hand? Shall I be a mechanic? No one will employ me; white boys won’t work with me. Shall I be a merchant? No one will have me in his office; white clerks won’t associate with me. Drudgery and servitude, then, are my prospective portion. Can you be surprised at my discouragement?
There was plenty of reason for the complaint. Nonetheless, free Negroes, instead of earning sympathy for their disadvantages, were often described in the terms traditionally used to excoriate the poor of any race: they lived “that way” on purpose; they collected in horrid slums, bred disease and incredible numbers of children, committed all sorts of loathsome crimes, did no work unless it was absolutely necessary, were noted for drunkenness, and were, as Henry Clay put it, “a useless and pernicious, if not dangerous portion” of America’s population. In the ante-bellum South it was often said that free Negroes taught slaves to steal and helped them dispose of stolen goods, that they acted as a powerful lure to freedom for slaves, that they inspired and assisted slave rebellion. And there was no point in wasting education on them, for that would only give them an appetite for privileges unreachable. “The more you improve the condition of these people,” said a Washington lawyer (who was also chief clerk of the United States Supreme Court), “the more you cultivate their minds, the more miserable you make them.”
They were in a trap, with every exit blocked; every exit, that is, but one. The Reverend Robert Finley, pastor of the Presbyterian church in Baskingridge, New Jersey, a community with 1,500 free Negroes, remarked in 1816 upon the depressed condition of those of his parishioners who were black. “Every thing connected with their condition, including their colour, is against them,” he declared, “nor is there much prospect that their state can ever be greatly ameliorated, while they continue among us.” But he went on to propose a remedy. “Could not,” he suggested, “the rich and benevolent devise means to form a Colony on some part of the Coast of Africa … which might gradually induce many free blacks to go and settle, devising for them the means of getting there, and of protection and support till they were established.”
The “rich and benevolent” were much in evidence in that era between 1815 and the 1840’s, supporting a flood of societies that promoted the Bible, peace, temperance, Christian missions, Sunday schools, and the welfare of various underprivileged segments of the community. As it happened, Finley could even point to an existing project similar to the very one he had in mind. The British had freed a number of slaves during the Revolution and transported them to Great Britain. Many had gravitated to the slums, and British philanthropists had undertaken to relocate them in Africa by starting a colony at Sierra Leone. The financing and government had not been well managed, and shortly the Crown had felt constrained to assume responsibility from the philanthropists, but Sierra Leone was now a going concern.
An American colony in Africa would also have to be financed at least in part by the government, Finley knew. But it would benefit the nation in many ways. It would remove a trodden-down minority from the people who were doing the treading; it would give America a commercial outpost in Africa; and by supplying a catchall for emancipated slaves it would encourage manumission in the South—which Finley hoped would ultimately rid the nation of slavery. There was also an additional philanthropic attraction in the colony’s potential for redeeming Africa, since it would act as a spiritual, educational, and mercantile lighthouse on the Dark Continent.
Encouraged by the reception given the idea among his friends in New Jersey, Finley went to Washington at the end of 1816, and during the Christmas season the American Society for Colonizing the Free People of Color in the United States was formally established. Among the fifty or so leading lights who participated in its founding were Speaker of the House Henry Clay, representatives John Randolph of Virginia and Daniel Webster of New Hampshire, Secretary of the Treasury William Harris Crawford, Attorney General Richard Rush, the author of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” Francis Scott Key, General Andrew Jackson, and the nephew of George Washington, Supreme Court Justice Bushrod Washington, who became the society’s first president. It was an auspicious beginning.
Bushrod Washington memorialized Congress in January, 1817, asking legislative support for creating an African colony. But Congress did not respond favorably, and in hopes of becoming more convincing through the presentation of some solidly researched data on possibilities, the society sent out a two-man expedition to West Africa in the next year. The Reverend Samuel J. Mills and Professor Ebenezer Burgess visited Sierra Leone, Sherbro Island (a hundred miles southeast of the British colony), and a number of villages along the coast of Africa’s “shoulder,” close to the Gulf of Guinea. The best that Mills and Burgess took away from their many parleys with black native leaders was a few hedged promises that land for colonists might be made available. Most of the local Negroes were hostile to the idea. But the visitors’ impressions of what they saw and heard were strongly influenced by their hopes. When they headed home in May, 1818, they were highly optimistic, particularly about Sherbro Island as a location. Mills had been ill for much of their trip, and he died on the homeward voyage; but Professor Burgess communicated their joint enthusiasm to the society.
With the support of the colonizationists, a bill was now pushed through Congress to stiffen regulation of the African slave trade by making the federal government, rather than the states, responsible for suppressing it. The law gave President Monroe power to care for and relocate any slaves captured from the holds of slave ships by the government in its policing of the seas. It authorized him, moreover, to commit a naval squadron to the task and, most significantly from the society’s point of view, to create a station on the coast of Africa for the landing of “contraband” blacks rescued from their kidnappers. The colonizationists hoped that this might be the nucleus of their hoped-for colony. Monroe thought well of Negro resettlement, and he leaned toward such a liberal interpretation. But an adverse opinion from Secretary of State John Quincy Adams blocked the society’s attempt to get the President to buy land for a colony under the new statute. Adams felt that neither the law nor the Constitution could be construed as permitting the nation to set up a colony anywhere. At length, Monroe and the colonizationists worked out a compromise: the society would buy the land, and the federal government would post two agents to Africa, along with a number of Negro volunteer colonists as workmen, to set up the African station. In January, 1820, eighty-six black “workmen,” two thirds of whom were women and children, sailed for Sherbro Island aboard the merchant ship Elizabeth , with a sloop of war as convoy. The expedition was led by two federal agents, both nominated by the society, the Reverend Samuel Bacon and John P. Bankson. Also on board was the society’s own agent, Samuel Crozer.
On Sherbro they found a rude camp waiting for them, built by a former American slave, John Kizell; he had been Mills’s and Burgess’ interpreter on the island two years earlier. Crozer went off to negotiate with the island leaders for a larger tract of land. They, as it turned out, wanted the colony as little as they had when Mills and Burgess had talked to them earlier. The thwarted colonists moved into KizelPs camp, and shortly “African fever” began to strike them down. Crozer came back to find several of them dead. He himself fell ill and died. So did John Bankson. So did a Navy officer. And so, finally, did the last surviving agent, the Reverend Mr. Bacon. Crozer had turned over authority to one of the black colonists, the Reverend Daniel Coker of Baltimore, and Coker contended with a disunited and unhealthy colony for a while before giving it up and taking some of the survivors to a refuge on the mainland.
Nevertheless, despite this discouraging beginning, two more federal agents and two more colonization-society representatives were sent out, along with thirty-three more settlers, in 1821. Two of the four leaders died, but the team managed to work out arrangements for the use of forty square miles of land on the coast south of Sierra Leone. But the deal committed the society to an annual rent of three hundred dollars, and the society, when the issue was presented to it, refused to accept the agreement, considering the sum an unjustified tribute to the heathen king who controlled the land.
With all their difficulties, the colonizationists still had Monroe’s support, and now they arranged for a physician, Eli Ayres, and a Navy lieutenant, Robert F. Stockton, to be posted by the government to Africa to continue the search for a suitable site. Ayres and Stockton headed for Cape Mesurado, a promontory thirty-six miles long and three miles wide, on the Grain Coast. Earlier agents had not been able to buy the cape from the local chief, King Peter, and the first attempt by Ayres and Stockton was also fruitless. After days of waiting for King Peter to palaver again, they marched inland to his village and at pistol point forced him to sell. The price for Cape Mesurado was less than three hundred dollars in clothes, guns, powder, rum, tobacco, and trinkets. This “purchase” from an unwilling seller the American Colonization Society named Liberia—“free land”—and the first settlement there, Monrovia.
For more than forty years the society got along with varying degrees of the sort of limited federal support that had helped found Liberia. This backing was augmented by contributions from individuals and occasionally from state legislatures. Agents of the society toured the country, spreading information about colonization, raising money, starting state and local auxiliaries. This effort was aided after 1825 by the publication of a monthly paper, the African Repository and Colonial Journal . Liberia grew. By the time of the Civil War, some eleven thousand free Negroes—at least half of them newly emancipated slaves—had been resettled there.
The managers of the society never gave up hope that the federal government would eventually commit itself to resettlement on a massive scale. But they soon found themselves in an insoluble dilemma over that question. They were determined to act as a national, unifying force, but there was no way for the society to bid for federal aid and yet to avoid being caught up in the growing sectional debate or to become itself a cause for debate. For one of the burning issues of the day was the very question of whether the federal government had any power to deal with slaves (or ex-slaves) in any fashion.
Such controversy made it inevitable that until the Civil War, help for colonization from the national government would be small. And meanwhile the hope of federal assistance on a grand scale acted as a damper on private contributions, and these were further reduced by the competition of many other enterprises in philanthropy.
Moreover, the sheer size of the task to be performed was also defeating. Realistically, this was the sort of project that could not hope to succeed if left to private philanthropy. By 1830 the number of free Negroes in the United States was over 319,000; it had increased by nearly 86,000 in the preceding ten years. And in that ten-year span the American Colonization Society had raised $113,000 and resettled 1,430 free blacks.
But in spite of many obstacles and limited progress, the colonizationists remained confident that eventually the country would see things their way. Many respectable, influential men, of both North and South, belonged to the society or were in sympathy with the idea. Liberia had survived serious trials—the ever-present malaria, small wars with the native population, the unreliability of supply shipments, the difficulties of administration at long distance, and rebellions by the colonists. Settlers now held appointive posts in the government, and a newspaper, the Liberia Herald , was being published.
Still, the optimism of the society could not overcome a second paradox in its very nature. Just as they could not easily be healers of sectional strife while asking federal help for a program distrusted by many Southerners, so they could not avoid the fact that their program had both proslavery and antislavery implications, which conflicted with each other. Some indeed wanted emancipation and believed that if slave-holders were offered the prospect of getting rid of their bondsmen, they would be willing to sign the deeds of manumission. But others, especially in the South, wanted resettlement to be used simply to secure the peace and safety of the slave states by isolating the slaves from the contaminating influence of the free blacks. Even members of the society who were antislavery in principle had developed serious misgivings about emancipation unless it was accompanied by resettlement. As Francis Scott Key put it in 1838: I have emancipated seven of my slaves. They have done pretty well, and six of them, now alive, are supporting themselves comfortably and creditably. Yet I cannot but see that this is all they are doing now; and, when age and infirmity come upon them, they will probably suffer. … I am still a slaveholder, and could not, without the greatest inhumanity, be otherwise. … The laws of Maryland contain provisions… under which slaves, in certain circumstances, are entitled to petition the courts for their freedom. As a lawyer, I always undertook these cases with peculiar zeal, and have been thus instrumental in liberating several large families and many individuals. I cannot remember more than two instances, out of this large number, in which it did not appear that the freedom I so earnestly sought for them was their ruin. It has been so with a very large proportion of all others I have known emancipated.
Nor was this exclusively the view of a Southerner. John A. Dix of New York declared to a meeting of his state’s colonization society in 1830, “The mass of crime committed by Africans is greater, in proportion to numbers, in the non-slaveholding than in the slaveholding States; and as a rule the degree of comfort enjoyed by them is inferior. This is not an argument in favor of slavery; but it is an unanswerable argument in favor of rendering emancipation and colonization co-extensive with each other.”
Officially, the society took no line except advocating removal of free Negroes. But in the interests of “sound policy,” as a modern defender of the society points out, the organization let its members make what they wished of that aim, depending on where they worked. With some fairness, colonization was criticized in the North as being the tool of slaveholders and in the South as a tool of the abolitionists—as was bound to happen when it was depicted by its own members both as a way to eliminate and to guarantee slavery.
But the problems of trying to satisfy a northern and a southern membership were common to all organizations of the ante-bellum period, especially those seeking compromise. A much more serious handicap for the society was that it uncritically accepted the theory that blacks were inferior to whites. In this, of course, the members had the company of most of their contemporaries, for it was a belief deeply rooted in American life even though it ran against the grain of the official American credo. Both Jefferson and Lincoln had at least tentatively subscribed to it, and their support of resettlement proposals was motivated in part by it. The society did not conceal its prejudice. Negroes, said Ralph Gurley, secretary of the society and editor of the African Repository , were “a people which are injurious and dangerous to our social interests, as they are ignorant, vicious, and unhappy.” That was why it was necessary to send them to Africa.
The disparity of principles did not go unnoticed. “They can love and benefit [Negroes] four thousand miles off, but not at home,” wrote William Lloyd Garrison to a friend in 1831. “They profess to be, and really believe that they are, actuated by the most philanthropic motives; and yet are cherishing the most unmanly and unchristian prejudices.”
Garrison had himself been a supporter of colonization—had even spoken for it publicly in 1829. But he was struck by the racial bias that lay at the root of the colonization idea. It was entirely at odds with Christianity, he thought; and it was most certainly at odds with the American political philosophy that “all men are created equal.” He prepared a long essay, Thoughts on African Colonization , which he published in 1832. Taking as his keynote the phrase “out of thine own mouth will I condemn thee,” he built his attack around quotations from the colonizationists. For instance, the president of Union College, the Reverend Eliphalet Nott, was one who spoke of free blacks in terms Garrison found offensive: “ We have endeavored [he quoted Nott], but endeavored in vain, to restore them either to self respect, or to the respect of others .” It is painful to contradict so worthy an individual; but nothing is more certain than that this statement is altogether erroneous. We have derided, we have shunned, we have neglected them, in every possible manner. … Again: “ It is not our fault that we have failed . …” We are wholly and exclusively in fault. What have we done to raise them up from the earth? What have we not done to keep them down? Once more: “ It has resulted from a cause over which neither they, nor we, can ever have control .” In other words, they have been made with skins “ not colored like our own, ” and therefore we cannot recognize them as fellow-countrymen, or treat them like rational beings! One sixth of our whole population must, FOR EVER , in this land, remain a wretched, ignorant, and degraded race,—and yet nobody be culpable— none but the Creator who has made us incapable of doing unto others as we would have them do unto us! Horrible—horrible! If this be not an impeachment of Infinite Goodness,—I do not say intentionally but really ,—I cannot define it.
That was the crux of the matter, the essential contradiction that defeated large-scale resettlement. Prejudice, Garrison pointed out, ought not to be countenanced in a country founded on an assurance of the inherent nobility of every man. To be true to itself the nation should be putting on armor and battling against racial bias. Furthermore, by grounding their appeal in a view of blacks that was derogatory—however gentle and sympathetic it might sometimes be—the colonizationists bore a heavy responsibility for keeping free Negroes in a depressed condition. As for the society’s effect on slavery, it actually retarded the freeing of slaves, Garrison believed, since it concentrated on the slow process of voluntary emancipation and voluntary colonization—which showed no honest promise of success anyway. As Negro abolitionist James Porten had put it in 1817, “Let not a purpose be assisted which will stay the cause of the entire abolition of slavery.”
The direct assault of Garrison’s Thoughts proved disastrous to the society; for while Garrison was perhaps in a tiny minority, his views carried weight with the very humanitarians who might otherwise have unswervingly supported a high-minded organization like the society. But in addition, the society’s most important opposition came from free Negroes themselves. The colonizationists operated on the assumption that of course Negroes would want to go “home” to Africa. But most did not. Black resistance to the colonization idea was evident as soon as the society was founded. A Philadelphia meeting in January, 1817, resolved: “Our ancestors were, though not from choice, the first cultivators of the wilds of America, and we, their descendants, claim a right to share in the blessings of her luxuriant soil which their blood and sweat manured. We read with deep abhorrence the unmerited stigma, attempted to be cast on the reputation of the free people of color. … We declare that we will never be separated from the slave population of this country. …”
Outright deportation of unwilling Negroes would not have been at all in keeping with the society’s spirit of philanthropy; it would have represented too great a departure from its concept of Christian charity. Nonetheless, with the shadow of slavery behind it, the “offer” of deportation to the blacks had something of a threat about it. In any event, many of the manumitted slaves who were sent to Liberia were freed only on condition that they exile themselves there. Rarely did large numbers of free Negroes volunteer to go, and then only in times of extreme distress, as during the uproar that followed Nat Turner’s rebellion, when their situation was especially uncomfortable. The repression of free Negroes by law was aimed in part at “encouraging” their emigration.
The contradictions between resettlement under pressure and human dignity, as well as the inextricable entanglement of the venture in the sectional quarrel, began to tell. Many disillusioned and discouraged colonizationists defected to the ranks of abolition. State auxiliaries went off in separate directions—those of Maryland, Kentucky, Mississippi, New York, and Pennsylvania created their own settlements of Negroes in Liberia. Such losses multiplied the already serious financial difficulties of the national organization, which had been burdened all along with the cost of having to help support Liberia in addition to its normal organizational costs.
In 1847 Liberia was finally cut loose from the parental purse strings and given independence. The society continued to send out settlers—nearly six thousand in the final thirteen years before the war. Relocation of Negroes still appealed to many Americans, but after decades of denunciation by both sides in the sectional quarrel, the American Colonization Society was in such bad odor it could not even get the federal government to recognize Liberia as a nation until 1862. And by then President Lincoln was considering various resettlement programs of his own and giving Liberia short shrift.
The society outlasted the war and the nineteenth century. In 1909 it had five surviving members, who bequeathed its records to the Library of Congress, and one of its recent historians relates that a “skeletal organization” received “a small legacy” as recently as 1959. Help was given to Negroes immigrating to Liberia until 1899. But long before that year, the nation had turned—however haltingly—to a solution more in keeping with America’s best impulses. “… [i]t is the purpose of God, I am fully persuaded,” Garrison had declared, in a prophecy still not completely realized, “to humble the pride of the American people by rendering the expulsion of our colored countrymen utterly impracticable, and the necessity for their admission to equal rights imperative. … I see them here, not in Africa, not bowed to the earth, or derided and persecuted as at present, not with a downcast air or an irresolute step, but standing erect as men destined heavenward, unembarrassed, untrammelled, with none to molest or make them afraid.”
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Last Modified: Friday, June 22, 2012 7:55 PM
I’ve heard of concerns that fracking — a process that’s used for drilling for oil and gas — may be associated with causing earthquakes. Has the Environmental Protection Agency issued any warnings about its safety and the environment?
The EPA has issued no official warning about fracking and earthquakes. But it did mount an extensive investigation of allegations that the practice — formally called hydraulic fracturing — has contaminated groundwater around Pavillion, Wyo.
The town, with a population of 231, sits just west of the Pavillion Gas Field, site of 169 production wells and 33 surface pits used for drilling-fluid disposal and storage, according to a draft report on the EPA’s investigation.
The draft, released in December, says the agency, at the behest of residents, tested water from shallow wells and later drilled two monitoring wells to collect deep-groundwater samples for analysis.
The report says testing detected multiple synthetic chemicals related to hydraulic fracturing in samples from both the shallow and deep wells. Researchers said the contaminants in the shallow wells — including benzene and xylenes — likely came from the nearby storage and disposal pits.
The concentrations of chemicals found in the deep wells suggest the contaminants may have migrated upward from the gas field layer, according to the report.
“Alternative explanations were carefully considered to explain individual sets of data,” the report reads. “However, when considered together with other lines of evidence, the data indicates likely impact to ground water that can be explained by hydraulic fracturing.”
The EPA plans to open the study for peer review, but it has postponed the move until it finishes analyzing additional samples
from several wells. The agency will accept public comments on the report through October.
A National Research Council report released earlier this month — titled “Induced Seismicity Potential in Energy Technologies” — listed three major findings from a study of drilling operations’ and earthquakes:
Hydraulic fracturing “does not pose a high risk for inducing felt seismic events.”
Injection well operations “pose some risk for induced seismicity” — a fact The Informer pointed out in January.
Carbon capture and storage operations, “due to the large net volumes of injected fluids, may have potential for inducing larger seismic events.”
“Although induced seismic events have not resulted in loss of life or major damage in the United States, their effects have been felt locally, and they raise some concern about additional seismic activity and its consequences in areas where energy development is ongoing or planned,” the report reads.
“Further research is required to better understand and address the potential risks associated with induced seismicity.
The Informer recently addressed the questions of a couple readers who wrote to ask about what could have happened to the geckos they used to see regularly. The column offered several possible explanations, including predators, a lack of food and old age.
But The Informer also noted that it had noticed no shortage of geckos — an observation shared by reader Claude Beville. “Where have the geckos gone?” he wrote in an email Wednesday. “They are at my house ... on the window sills ... in my shop ... everywhere.”
The Informer answers questions from readers each Sunday, Monday and Wednesday. It is researched and written by Andrew Perzo, an American Press staff writer. To ask a question, call 494-4098, press 5 and leave voice mail, or email [email protected]
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Inverting the Turing Test
THE MOST HUMAN HUMAN: What Talking with Computers Teaches Us about What It Means To Be Alive. Brian Christian. xiv + 303 pp. Doubleday, 2011. $27.95.
In his book The Most Human Human, Brian Christian extrapolates from his experiences at the 2009 Loebner Prize competition, a competition among chatbots (computer programs that engage in conversation with people) to see which is “most human.” In doing so, he demonstrates once again that the human being may be the only animal that overinterprets.
You may not have heard of the Loebner competition, and for good reason. The annual event was inspired by the Turing test, proposed by Alan Turing in his seminal 1950 paper “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” as a method for determining in principle whether a computer possesses thought. Turing meant his test as a thought experiment to address a particular philosophical question, namely, how to define a sufficient condition for properly attributing intelligence, the capacity of thinking, to a computer. He proposed that a blind controlled test of verbal indistinguishability could serve that purpose. If a computer program were indistinguishable from people in a kind of open-ended typewritten back-and-forth, the program would have passed the test and, in Turing’s view, would merit attribution of thinking.
The Loebner competition picks up on this idea; it charges a set of judges to engage in conversation with the chatbot entrants and several human confederates, and to determine which are the humans and which the computers. At the end, a prize is awarded to the “most human” chatbot—that is, the chatbot that is most highly ranked as human in paired tests against the human confederates. “Each year, the artificial intelligence (AI) community convenes for the field’s most anticipated and controversial annual event,” Christian says. Well, not so much. The AI community pretty much ignores this sideshow. It’s the chatbot community that has taken up the Loebner competition. The Loebner prize has done little for AI beyond spreading confusions about Turing’s test, some of which unfortunately find their way into Christian’s (otherwise quite sound) book. For instance, Christian promulgates the common misunderstanding that Turing’s test would be passed by a computer if it “fool[ed] 30 percent of human judges after five minutes of conversation.” (Although Turing makes a side comment about this more limited criterion, he understood the test to have no time limit and a threshold of statistical indistinguishability, which is the only philosophically sustainable stance.) And most important, Christian conflates the Turing test with the Loebner competition. But the two are different in many ways. In particular, on the Turing test, unlike in horseshoes and hand grenades, close doesn’t count. Better performance on a Turing test is not a valid basis for concluding that a machine is “closer to thinking” or “more human.”
As a kind of afterthought, the promoters of the Loebner competition have been naming, in addition to the “most human” chatbot, the “most human” human—the confederate who performs best according to the same criteria in the paired tests against the chatbots. The conceit of the book is that Christian takes on a kind of moral charge to win this dubious distinction on behalf of humanity. Of course, there’s nothing “most human” about the person so named. Rather, the awardee is the person whose behavior is most distinguishable from the particular bag of tricks that the chatbots happen to use. If you’re interested in winning this award, it behooves you to understand how the chatbots work, and how to distinguish yourself from them.
Certainly Christian’s book is successful in providing this guidance. He points out that the chatbots tend to deal with each turn in the conversation independently; they have no memory. So a good confederate will tie multiple turns of dialogue together. The chatbots are light on factual knowledge, so they’ll deflect questions rather than answering them. A good confederate will answer directly. This is all useful information for the confederates, but it is even more important for the judges. In reading the transcripts, you wish that the judges had read Turing’s original paper, which does a great job of exemplifying a good judge’s probing approach. Under that kind of attack, the chatbots would have no hope at all, which is why the Loebner competition is such thin gruel.
With so little substance, can the Loebner competition really shed any light on what makes us human? Early on, Christian talks about an only slightly tongue-in-cheek claim made by Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert:
Gilbert says that every psychologist must, at some point in his or her career, write a version of “The Sentence.” Specifically, The Sentence reads like this: “The human being is the only animal that __________.”
When nonhumans rival humans in some area, we learn what can’t fill that blank. But given the vast gulf in verbal performance between chatbots and people, they don’t seem to illuminate the matter.
Why is it, then, that even with such poor performance the chatbots still hold people’s interest? Why, after rehearsing all of the limitations of chatbot performance, does Christian still stick to the claim that even the primordial chatbot ELIZA’s performance was “stunning, maybe even staggering”? It comes back to the issue of overinterpretation. Human cognition is geared toward finding patterns; that’s what we do, and we do it well. As infants, we track the changing conditional probabilities of sounds in human speech, which allows us to learn where the boundaries are between words. As children we learn new words at a rate of several per day. We hear the patterns in music, see the objects in images, understand the logic of a story in a sequence of sentences. We can’t help ourselves. We even do it when it isn’t appropriate. Sure, we learn to recognize the faces of our family members and our friends. But we also see faces where there aren’t any, in the moon, in clouds. We see causality where there is only coincidence—when a supplicant’s prayer is answered, or when the rain dance is followed by rain. And we hear coherent language use where there are only snippets of canned text. Turing understood all this, which is why he left his Turing test wide open, unconstrained by time limit or style of questioning. Christian understands this too; the book’s conceit is more honored in the breach than in the observance.
In the end, who cares about distinguishing oneself from the weak performances put on by even the best chatbots? I expect not even Christian, who admits the award is “disappointing, anticlimactic.” The book is most successful when it roams farthest from its ostensible subject. Christian uses the hook of pursuing the “most human human” award as an opportunity to explore a wide range of matters related, more or less, to issues of language use by humans and computers, and it is here that the book is most rewarding and entertaining. He riffs from the statelessness of chatbot conversation to Markov chains to information theory to text compression to morality, from phonagnosia to speed dating to the coherence of personality to the television show The Office to the travails of customer service. The connections of these subjects to the hook and to one another are tangential at best, but that’s okay in a popular science book. These are fascinating topics more or less related to cognitive science and its broad connections to the humanities. The “most human human” bit is the MacGuffin.
Stuart M. Shieber is James O. Welch, Jr., and Virginia B. Welch Professor of Computer Science and director of the Office for Scholarly Communication at Harvard University. He is the editor of The Turing Test: Verbal Behavior as the Hallmark of Intelligence (The MIT Press, 2004).
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August 6, 2011
Civil Gideon: An Idea Whose Time Should Not ComeBy Lawrence J. Siskind
The U.S. Supreme Court recently revisited the heavily disputed territory of "Civil Gideon" -- the doctrine delineating when, if ever, indigent civil litigants are legally entitled to counsel appointed and paid for by the state. The name "Civil Gideon" comes from the 1963 landmark decision of Gideon v. Wainwright, which held that the Sixth Amendment grants indigent defendants the right to state-appointed and state-paid counsel in criminal cases.
In Turner v. Rogers, the high court confronted the case of Michael Turner, a deadbeat dad with a drug problem. After repeatedly failing to pay child support, Turner was sentenced to serve a 12-month sentence for civil contempt. At the contempt hearing, Turner did not have counsel. Neither did Rebecca Rogers, the mother of their child, who sought the hearing and asked the court to confine Turner because of his pattern of nonpayment.
In its 5-4 decision, the court vacated the South Carolina judgment. The court acknowledged that the Sixth Amendment right to counsel established in Gideon v. Wainwright was inapplicable because Turner was sentenced to civil, not criminal, contempt, and in such cases, the defendant "holds the keys of his prison in his pocket." Once he complies with the order, he is discharged. If he is financially unable to pay, he cannot be held in contempt. Nevertheless, because Turner did not receive clear notice that his ability to pay was a critical question, the majority found that his incarceration violated the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause.
The dissenting justices maintained that the Due Process Clause never provides a constitutional right to appointed counsel in civil contempt hearings, even if those hearings may lead to incarceration. Justice Clarence Thomas pointed out that reading the Due Process Clause to provide a right to appointed counsel for indigent defendants facing incarceration would render the Sixth Amendment superfluous.
In the wake of its narrow holding, the court seems closely divided between those who believe that the Due Process Clause never provides a Civil Gideon right, and those who would cite the captain of HMS Pinafore: "What never? Well, hardly ever."
The closeness of the decision suggests that the Civil Gideon issue is likely to remain hotly debated in the legal profession and in the states. The ABA House of Delegates has passed a resolution urging the states "to provide legal counsel as a matter of right at public expense where basic human needs are at stake, such as ... shelter, sustenance, safety, health or child custody." The Alaska Bar Association Board of Governors and the Conference of Delegates of California Bar Associations (now known as the Conference of California Bar Associations) have passed similar resolutions. Many other state bar associations have set up committees to study the issue, as have local organizations, such as the San Francisco and Alameda County Bar Associations.
The California legislature has enacted a pilot program, funded by increased court cost fees, that is expected to funnel about $11 million to legal aid societies that provide counsel to civil litigants.
The idea of providing free legal counsel to poor civil litigants sounds not only idealistic, but also eminently sensible, at least at first blush. Our adversarial system rests on the notion that truth and justice will emerge from the crucible of a carefully structured contest, conducted under legal procedures and principles. Arming the litigants with professionals trained to utilize those procedures and principles should render the crucible more likely to generate fair results.
But even if providing poor civil litigants with counsel is a good idea, should it be a government entitlement program? Those who agree with the ABA House of Delegates and contend that counsel should be provided to poor litigants "at public expense" argue that privately funded legal aid societies aren't up to the task because their resources are limited. But limited resources are exactly why legal aid societies are a better solution than a government entitlement program.
Civil Gideon proponents inhabit a world in which every indigent is a deserving litigant. She is a tenant about to be evicted by a greedy landlord, or a loving parent denied access to his child. That is not reality. Legal aid societies, precisely because their resources are limited, are adept at choosing their cases carefully, screening out the frivolous and the undeserving.
Criminal Gideon illustrates the shortcomings of a system that lacks the screening mechanism.
At the trial level, because every indigent is entitled to free counsel, few if any receive competent representation. Attorney General Eric Holder, Jr. recently described a Missouri county where the public defender office refused to accept more criminal cases after its caseload exceeded 395 cases per lawyer per year. He mentioned a Tennessee public defender office where six attorneys were assigned to handle 10,000 misdemeanor cases in a single year. It is simply impossible to imagine the system providing adequate representation under those circumstances. The New York Civil Liberties Union is pursuing a class action against the state, alleging that its public defenders are so overwhelmed that they routinely fail to investigate their cases or make basic legal arguments.
Considering the sorry state of Criminal Gideon, one would expect proponents of a government entitlement program for poor civil litigants to have chosen a different title from "Civil Gideon." It's a badly tarnished brand.
Providing criminal counsel at public expense has ensured that deserving cases are lost in the sea of undeserving ones. The same will happen in the civil sphere if Civil Gideon proponents have their way, and the screening function now provided by legal aid societies is removed.
Apart from a lack of screening, a government entitlement program is also a bad idea because of plain economics. Economists may not agree on much, but they do agree on one basic idea. If you price a good or service below the market rate, people will want more of it. If civil litigation is free, there will be more of it. And that's not necessarily good for the litigants themselves, or for society as a whole.
Consider Turner v. Rogers, the case recently reviewed by the high court. On at least four occasions, Turner refused to pay child support until threatened with contempt. Then he somehow found the money to provide for his child. Had Turner been provided with counsel, free of charge, to oppose the mother's efforts to obtain child support, is it more likely he would have paid -- or that he would have taken advantage of the system to dodge his responsibilities?
Thousands of marital, landlord-tenant and debtor-creditor disputes are resolved every year by informal negotiation and settlement. Perhaps the results are not always "fair," a difficult term to define in these circumstances. But the fact that one or both parties cannot afford counsel ensures that there will be pressure to reach a quick and efficient resolution. Making counsel available for free, to any party below a certain income level, ensures that many ordinary disputes, once settled by discussions, will become clogs in an increasingly overloaded justice system.
A government-funded entitlement program is also problematic because such programs have to draw lines, and those lines are seldom fair. Take the California pilot program. To qualify for a state-appointed attorney, the litigant must earn under twice the federal poverty line, which comes out to roughly $44,500 for a family of four. Imagine two immigrants, one of whom has been here longer than the other, and has saved up enough to purchase his residence and rent out a room. In a landlord-tenant dispute between the two, why should one party earning $44,000 per year receive free legal service while his opponent making $45,000 pays full freight? That leads to a related question: Why should the public, through their tax dollars, take sides in any civil dispute? That may make sense in the Criminal Gideon context, where the resources of the state are mobilized against the defendant, and taking sides tends to level the playing field. But why should the public take sides in a private dispute between two neighbors?
Finally, Civil Gideon is a bad idea today because the states cannot afford it. The California court system has seen a 30-percent reduction in its resources over the past three years. The legislature has slashed the current $3.5-billion budget by $350 million. San Francisco has been particularly hard-hit. The court has sent layoff notices to 40 percent of its employees, and officials predict a five-year wait for lawsuits to get to trial. The situation is not much better in other states.
When the ABA House of Delegates passed its resolution urging the states "to provide legal counsel as a matter of right at public expense," it did not bother to calculate what that expense might be, or how the states might pay for it. Lawyers providing advice in other circumstances with such blithe indifference to the consequences might face malpractice charges. The lack of foresight is particularly galling when one considers that the ABA was asking the public to fund a program that would generate revenue and create employment for its own members. Of course, that apparent self-interest, by itself, should not bar the organization from taking a stand in favor of Civil Gideon. But it should at least motivate the ABA to explore and disclose all the potential pitfalls of the proposal.
In 2007, the California State Bar's 2007 Commission on Access to Justice Report found a $394-million gap in unfunded civil legal services. Ironically, that figure is about the same size as the recent budget cut. If California cannot afford its current legal budget, where is it going to find the money for a new legal entitlement program?
In an ideal economic climate, Civil Gideon would be problematic. In today's financial emergency, it is a non-starter.
There are measures the states can take, short of accepting the ABA's invitation to create a new entitlement program at public expense, to address the problem. States can encourage and expand clinics and help-lines which provide advice to pro se litigants. They can reduce our profession's monopoly by allowing non-lawyers, such as paralegals, to represent indigent parties in certain cases. They can expand the jurisdiction of small claims courts, where neither side is allowed to use counsel. They can increase opportunities for prevailing parties to recover attorney fees, so that deserving indigent parties will have a greater chance of attracting private counsel.
Ultimately, however, it falls on the shoulders of our own profession to address the problem. Helping poor people navigate the civil justice system remains a laudable goal, one which private attorneys should support. They should do so on their own time and on their own nickel. Thousands already do. A government entitlement program is not the solution.
Lawrence J. Siskind, of San Francisco's Harvey Siskind, chairs the ABA Intellectual Property Law Section's Pro Bono Committee.
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The Chronology of the New World:
two faces of one reality
by N. Guidon and B. Arnaud
The paper gives a review of archaeological work in the south-eastern part of Piaui State, Brazil, with particular reference to the chronology and geological history of rockshelter sites, such as Toca do Boqueirão da Pedra Furada, and Toca do Sitio do Meio. The article analyses critiques of early dates in South America, notes a bias towards the rejection of early dates, and gives additional documentation to the early dates in Piaui State. It concludes by urging that a new consensus be developed among archaeologists studying early American sites.
The chronology of the earliest period, of occupation in the New World is a subject of intensive controvesy. In the endless debate one might reflect that everything seems to have been said already. The situation does not change each time there is a new discovery, unfailingly the dehate takes up again around the same arguments. This results in dogmatic positions and a climate of ideological fervour. Today, it seems to us that we have no hope of writing an article ahout the chronology of Pleistocene America which will not convince the convinced, and augment the suspicions of the sceptics! Yet it is time for the 'cold war' of Americanist archaeology to come to an end; the two camps - those favouring early colonization, and those setting a limit at 12,000-14,000 before present - must seek out in collaboration the evidence necessary for building up a cultural sequence which can be accepted as the only really accurate record of the peopling of the continent
In this paper, as our contribution to such an exercise, we review the work of our own expedition in Piaui (Brazil), and the arguments for and against the evidence which we have revealed.
A climate of scepticism
First we draw attention to the climate of ,cepticism attending old dates. Reviewing work mried out in the Old Crow hasin of north-west Canada, Guthrie (1984) begin" The following critique deal, only with the Pleistocene archaeological interpretatio", pertaining to the Old Crow osteological material and is not intended to reflect negatively on the excellent paleontological, taphonomic, paleoecological, paleoclimatic, geographic, stratigrapt,ic and Holocene archaeological studies which have been and are being carried out by highly qualified Old Crow Basin re"arch team'.
One may wonder how 'highly qualified' teams can carry out excellent interdisciplinary work in the Holocene levels, and then suddenly to be unable to recognize the stratigraphic details, the signs of climatic change and the palaeontological evidence, the moment they come to the Pleistocene. In another example Guthrie (1984) declares that 'Beringia is tbe only realistic route for human entry to the New World', but he gives no explanation of what exactly 'realistic' means. Why should this have been the only route of entry? Everybody is willing to give humans the abilities necessary for voyaging across to Australia about 60,000 years ago. Why then would it have been impossible for them to pass from island to island along the Aleutians, just as one example? We have no justification for converting the humans who peopled the Americas to a single state of being, where they could do nothing but follow herds by a land route. Schmitz (1987) expresses his scepticism about radiocarbon dates older than 13,000 years nefoe the present, stating that 'their reliability is uncertain', but giving no analysis and presenting no justification. Our own work has not escaped this kind of judgement - Schmitz continues (1987: 63), in relation to the old dates from Toca do Boqueirão da Pedra Furada: the two earliest stages proposed by Guidon antedate the oldest generally accepted dates for humans in South America. This situation makes it necessary to view with caution both the antiquity and the sequence. The stratigraphy, artifacts and carbon samples are all subject to misinterpretation.
Such comments reflect a widespread bias against archaeological interpretations and facts relating to the early periods; new statements are accepted without any great fuss, and often with little foundation, provided that they conform with the classic theory which fixes the limit of acceptable dates for South America at 12,000 years. For twenty-one years our expedition has worked in Brazil, in the south-eastern part of Piaui State. For the Holocene, our results have never provoked controversy, even though we have discovered new aspects of culture. The unexpected age of a certain pottery type, and the ages of rock paintings covered by archaeological layers dating to 10,500 BP have drawn no reaction - even though rock paintings and pottery have always been considered as very recent features in the prehistory of North-eastern Brazil.
In spite of the bias seen above, we know now that Homo sapiens sapiens has an antiquity of 100,000 to 90,000 years in the Old World, and must concede that this is sufficient to allow the possibility that humans were in America from 70,000 to 50,000 years ago.
North-eastern Brazil showing the area of São Raimundo Nonato.
The excavations at Toca do Boqueirão da Pedra Furada
The area of São Raimundo Nonato in the south-eastern part of Piaui State occupies a region of broken country between the sedimentary basins of Piaui-Maranhão and the São Francisco river. All along the cuesta front which separates the two basins, and in the valleys inside the basins, thousands of rockshelters have formed - hundreds of which have traces of prehistoric human activity (Guidon and Delibrias 1985, 1986; Delibrias et al. 1988). For over twenty years we have carried out investigations in this area. We will give a rapid review of the excavations undertaken in the great rockshelter of Toca do Boqueirão da Pedra Furada (42o 33' 30" W, 8o 50' S) between 1978 and 1988.
The rockshelter is over 70 meters long. The initial area of excavation, up against the rockwall of the site, measured 7 m by 3 m. The subsequent seasons of work raised the extent up to 700 square metres, through an average depth of 4 metres. From 1978 to 1983 we encountered problems in interpreting the stratigraphy in the western part of the site. The Holocene layers were well preserved, but in the east they had been eroded. In contrast, the Pleistocene layers had been partly destroyed in the west, whereas to the east they were perfectly preserved, since they were protected by blocks fallen from the shelter roof. The slopes ofthe layers presented a complex picture, highly variable from place to place. It was only in 1983, after discovering a mass of fallen rocks almost directly in contact with the rocky floor, that we were able to understand how the site had been formed. This basic discovery allowed us the certainty that we had primary archaeological layers which had not been disturbed by erosion.
Let us pause for a moment over this assertion: it is effectively almost impossible to interpret a stratigraphic sequence, or the association between a charcoal sample and stone tools, if one is working in a small test-pit. Unfortunately a high proportion of American excavations are carried out using the technique of test-pits, and only small areas are excavated. Our experience at Pedra Furada is much more conclusive: we would never have been able to make interpretations with assurance or work out the details of deposition without uncovering the site almost completely.
The great abri (rockshelter) of Boqueirão da Pedra Furada was thus formed in the following manner, beginning with a major rockfall about 60,000 years ago. The rockfall isolated the part of the site under the overhang from the slope down to the valley (the shelter is situated 19 metres above a plain, and so safe from all flooding). Sands composed of material derived from the sandstone shelter walls then began to be deposited over the rockfall. The first humans arrived at the site, perhaps drawn by the presence of a water source towards the west, in the depths of a vertical crevice funneling water down from the plateau above. This water course was probably responsible for the erosion which destroyed the outer part of the Pleistocene layers, but it never penetrated the area of the archaeological site.
Plan and section of Toca do Boqueirão da Pedra
It appears that the first inhabitants then cleared a level area, using fire to break up the largest boulders. These events were not forest fires: the boulders destroyed were only those by the shelter wall, under the overhang, and none of the boulders isolating the shelter from the valley were touched. The first campsite thus lay protected between the pile of boulders and the back wall of the shelter. As the ancient rocks of the plateau are composed of conglomerates, the violent torrents of water which occurred during wet periods were able to transport quartz and quartzite pebbles downwards. As we have already explained, these pebbles were unable to fall down into the shelter, except for the outer parts which were not protected by the overhang. Under the overhang the only sediments are sands derived from the sandstone of the cliffs. In their fall, the pebbles sometimes broke naturally, forming flakes which are often larger than those produced in human stoneworking. A flake formed as the result of such a fall thus remains outside the covered part of the site. There is no possibility that such a flake could cross the wall of boulders and enter the interior of the shelter without human transport.
Radiocarbon (C14) dates in years before the present and correlation between divisions and sedimentological layers for the site of Pedra Furada.
In the area of human habitation, the flakes and other stone pieces are concentrated primarily around the edges of structures which contain charcoal. These structures were situated close to the shelter wall, and were made up of fragments of rock derived from it, and large cobbles (these could not have fallen in from outside the shelter, for the reasons already given). Large excavations made outside the overhang have not revealed any similar structures. Outside the shelter, in the talus, charcoal was rare and sparse. The features are therefore interpreted as hearths, and we regard any hypothesis invoking forest fires as quite impossible, since, whatever else, these would have had to move from the outside to the inside.
Over thousands of years the sediments accumulated gently, covering the boulders of the rockfall. Then around 22,000 to 18,000 years ago there was a further rockfall on the eastern side, creating a new entry for water to plunge down from the plateau. This ran along the edge of the shelter area, then changed its course at the middle of the shelter, finally taking the direction of the talus, down to the plain. It did not encroach upon the inhabited areas cose to the shelter wall. Another watercourse existed on the easlern side, around 12,000 to 11,000 years ago. Because of the topography of the site, the water in this new channel only ran in the eastern area.
Radiocarbon (c14) dates from Pedra Furada seen in relation to stratigraphy and granulometry (courtesy Fabio Parenti, 1991)
In summary. there were times, at different stratigraphic levels, when lorrents of rainwater ran across the east and west margins of the sheltered area, and also on its southern edge, in the direction of the talus - but the areas under the shelter itself have not been subjected to water action, either in the Pleistocene and the Holocene, owing to the palaeotopography of the site, and thanks to the protection offered by the pile of fallen rocks. A summary of the various occupations and dates is given in Table 1. We have given this account of the areas outside the abri. including the walercourses, so as to make comparisons with the area within the overhang. All this work. adding even more data to the mass obtained from a large excavation, allows us to interpret the totality of the depositional processes: and so we are happy to invite specialists in micro-stratigraphy to come and discuss issues on site. At Pedra Furada a favourable conjunction of natural factors allowed major complexes of prehistoric campsites of different ages to succeed one another on the site, and to be preserved intact. These factors include the rockfalls, the shape of the shelter, and the position of the crevasses carrying water. Their relative importance has only been discovered because we have excavated over 70 per cent of the total site area. In an excavation of large extent, it is possible to expose the areas surrounding any structures, and so easier to establish the relationships between them, the charcoal which they contain, and the lithic pieces deposited around them. The geological history of Pedra Furada has been reconstructed by geomorphologists, with whom we have worked for many years studying the stratigraphy and the sequence of formational episodes on the site in great detail. Fabio Parenti is writing a doctoral thesis on the Pedra Furada excavations under the direction of one of us (NG). This will provide much more detail of problems concerning formation of the site over a long period.
Other rock shelters have been investigated in the same area, including the rockshelter of Toca do Sitio do Meio (42o 33' W, 80 49' S), which is less than 2 km from Pedra Furada. The oldest date obtained for the site is 14,300 ± 400 years before the present (GIF-5399). The Holocene levels have been disturbed by modern use of the site, but the Pleistocene levels are sealed, like those at Pedra Furada, by a great rockfall, later than 15,000 before the present , and which we place provisionally at about 12,000 years. The site will be excavated again in 1991, which should allow us to ascertain the extent of the zone of human occupation sealed under the rockfall. Toca do Cima dos Pilao, 2 km from Pedra Furada, is a limestone site. The fossil fauna recovered from such limestone sites shows us that not long ago the area had a quite different climate. Prairies with scattered clumps of trees stretched across the plain, while the rims of the basin, including Pedra Furada, were covered with humid tropical forest. The excavations in the limestone caves have yielded long stratigraphic sequences. In these sediments deposited during drier periods succeed those of wetter periods. The former have not yet been dated, but excavations in Baixao do Perna I, a site on the massif of sediments, may provide answers, as this rockshelter contains almost exclusively Holocene layers. In the final Pleistocene the inhabited part of the site was only 4 m above the valley bottom. There was a rocky surface protected by a shelter wall covered with paintings. This floor was strewn with a cover of cobbles, indicating a former stream of great force. In the rainy seasons the water used to rise and flood the site completely, carrying everything away. Hence, the first hearths which survive probably indicate the end of a very wet period. A date of 10,500 ± 110 before the present (BETA 32971) has already been obtained for one of these hearths, situated 40 cm above the base of the site. This evidence tends to confirm - and it is a working hypothesis - that there was a very wet period about 12,000 years ago. Thus excavations carried out on sites protected from water action (Pedra Furada, Sitio do Meio, Caldeirao dos Rodrigues I) provide dates substantially earlier than 12,000 years, while sites in valley bottoms exposed to erosion preserve only material aged less than 12,000 years. This emphasizes that it is only through the total study of a region, including the systematic excavation of the various kinds of sites, from present-day levels through to their base, that we shall be able to explain in scientific terms the history of human arrival and human evolution in the Americas.
Critiques of the early Brazilian sites: a reply
We start by noting that even the period after 12,000 before the present is viewed in different ways by different authors. The bias against early dates on South American sites is sometimes linked with a tendency to oversimplify evidence. For example, Schmitz (1987) declares that 'the Itaparica tradition, emphasizing well-formed unifacial artifacts, had dispersed over the eastern tropical parklands. An enormous amount and variety of rock paintings and/or engravings are associated with the latter.' In fact, the industries of this 'Itaparica tradition' have never been studied in detail, nor the tradition defined. The present state of research makes plain that this tradition comprises various archaeological complexes and it is impossible to bring together under one label material that is so far separated in time and space. The association between 'rock paintings and/or engravings' has proven only for the art sites in Piaui State, where the name Itaparica is not in use. To the best of our knowledge, the engravings have never been dated. In the same article, in respect of chronological evidence Schmitz says (1987: 64): 'Between about 11,000 and 8,500 before the present, unifacial blade industries, in which endscrapers predominated, constituted a widespread tradition or horizon...'. We, however, have no industries on blades: those we have encountered in the period 11,000 to 8,500 were a small minority, and only rarely retouched. Moreover, endscrapers were not dominant. For the whole of Brazil we know of no technical complex which would merit the designation 'unifacial blade industries'. This is one more case of the tendency to define a complex by its most striking elements, the fine pieces. These simplistic labels hide the reality of great cultural complexity (cf. Hallam 1977). Then again, the reconstruction of the palaeoclimate presented by Schmitz (1987: 55,60, 71) is not substantiated. No pollen analyses are cited, nor any studies of palaeofauna as indicators of vegetation, and consequently of climate. The author continues (p. 59) 'The absence of gregarious animals (bison, horse, guanaco, etc.), which could support a specialized hunting economy, led to the development of a generalized hunting and gathering subsistence on the planalto dominated by parkland.' This statement is incorrect since numerous sites in the north-east of Brazil have yielded abundant remains of megafauna, including mastodon, llama and horse (Guerin 1991). Although no dates have been obtained as yet, the associated lithic material indicates that this fauna disappeared relatively late. The concepts of 'specialized hunting economy' and 'generalized hunting and gathering subsistence' are in our view artificial partitions created in the industrial age.
We now turn to some points made by Lynch (1990: 20-1). The author voices concern that the site lies 'at the level of the modern flood plain'. Since the rockshelter still exists, it can be verified that Pedra Furada is situated more than 19 metres above the immense plain surrounding the São Francisco river. This is an important point, since this is not a narrow valley subject to flooding. The sites are set into the cuesta front of the sedimentary basin which encompasses the plain, and on the east this is open to the Atlantic, some 1,200 km away. One can thus be quite sure that the waterlevel has never reached the height of the rockshelter. The watercourses which transported cobbles down from the plateau are found at the two ends of the great shelter, which is more than 70 metres long. We have considered in our analyses only the material coming from the protected area. Lynch is concerned that we have taken charcoal samples in disturbed areas, 'including parts ... in the stream channel itself, labelled "actual torrent's passage"'. Our plan, however, refers to a present-day watercourse which involves only one part of the site. It traverses only the upper layers in the eastern part. The plan shows the surface contours of the site before excavation began, and one should stress that the Pleistocene layers were four metres down, sealed in by a rockfall. The charcoal collected from the layer underlying this stream evidence was sampled in order to date the event responsible for creating the flow. It is extremely important, of course, to verify the entire complex of events, whether they are of natural or human origin, and one would not be able to reconstruct the geomorphological history of the site, if one were restricted to taking radiocarbon samples linked with human activity. Lynch also refers to photographs of Pedra Furada showing layers of stream-deposited sediments. We published these in a spirit of precision, so as to illustrate clearly the differences between them and the layers under the overhang of the rockshelter. Here - and this can be verified on site - the deposits consist only of sand and fine gravel, derived from the moderately coarse sandstone which is the country rock forming the rockshelter.
Nature of the lithic industry
A further question on early sites has been the status of the artefacts. Lynch doubts whether the lithic pieces associated with the early dates are of human origin (p. 21):
"these (are) crude artifacts. . . and numerous archaeologists and flintknappers, some of them with considerable Old World experience, including Bryan Fagan and myself, found it unconvincing." One wonders why early inhabitants would make use of these difficult raw materials if cryptocrystalline silica rocks were so easily available to later Archaic peoples.
In Lynch's view, the humans of the Pleistocene would have been very unlikely to have used quartz and quartzite, if they had access to flint, which was used from about 12,000 years ago. At Pedra Furada, however, as well as at other sites in the region of São Raimundo Nonato, the Holocene levels have yielded quartz and quarzite tools of the kind regarded by Lynch as 'crude artifacts'. But as these have been found in association with flint artifacts, nobody has called their anthropogenic nature into doubt.
Equally difficult to explain would be pottery using peoples, who are predominant in the region from about 3,000 years before the present, and who used exclusively quartz and quartzite for making tools, although they used jade for exquisite ornaments. As a further example, the inhabitants of some shell middens on the Brazilian coast were working in quartz at 5,000 years before the present.
As for the flint knappers, we would like the opportunity to show them certain specimens which have been made in these 'difficult raw materials'. Experiment enables us to understand certain parts of the 'operational chain' , but we will never have the same facility as an individual who has been knapping from childhood, and who does not have other techniques at his disposal. Technical competence is not acquired as easily as one might think, and the stone age knapper will use his hands and arms quite differently from a professor of archaeology.
In the case of Pedra Furada the work being carried out by Fabio Parenti at present will provide more precise answers, but we can state definitely now that there are retouched pieces. We agree with Butzer (1988) who suggests that, even if the pieces were naturally formed, the stone material has been carried by humans, since we have found cobbles, fragments flakes and retouched pieces in parts of the abri where they could not possibly have arrived by natural means.
Another alleged problem (p. 21) is that we have found no wooden or bone tools. This observation could be seen to increase doubts about the human manufacture of the stone industry, since in the classical scheme for this period, one ought always to find a stone industry associated with bone or wood tools. At Piaui we have never found any of these, even in the Holocene levels. On this point, Guidon recalls the advice of a great master of archaeology, Andre Leroi-Gourhan:
'Carry on excavating: sooner or later excavation resolves problems'.
Hearths and bushfires
Many hearths have been recorded and dated at Pedra Furada (cf. Guidon and Delibrias 1986), but these have also raised doubts. Lynch (1990: 21) writes 'it seems quite possible that these resulted from natural brush fires in the surrounding semi desert caatinga'. We do not accept this, since in that case:
- we should find charcoal scattered in layers, and not concentrated in the centre of the hearth arrangements;
- the quantity of charcoal should have been greater on the talus side than under the less-vegetated abri;
- patches of charcoal should have been found in the stratigraphy of the plain, since it would have been impossible for wind and water to have collected charcoal and placed it systematically and exclusively in small heaps inside the structures.
In relation to the critique which has been made of the hearth arrangements (foyers) at Pedra Furada we emphasize that they were made from blocks and cobbles, and that these cobbles could not have fallen naturally where they were found. The charcoal exposed existed only inside the structures.
Lynch attempts to link the dated charcoal with caatinga fires. In the present-day the site area of Pedra Furada is covered with forest vegetation. The caatinga covers the plain and the lower part of the talus. Contrary to what one might imagine, the trees and shrubs of the primary caatinga consist of very hard wood which burns only with difficulty. Some of these cannot even be used for firewood, and one has to select particular kinds for making a fire. When agriculturalists practise fire-clearing, the fire only takes in cut and dried trees, and does not survive more than 3 metres around. It takes hold only in secondary caatinga, resulting in bush-clearing in areas where shrubs and low growth are dominant. A further reason for rejecting the link between the charcoal and caatinga fires is the quite different nature of the Pleistocene vegetation cover, as noted above. Lynch is also concerned by the possibility of bioturbation by animals in the archaeological layers. This factor cannot be applied to the Pleistocene levels on this site, since they were protected from animal activities by a screen of boulders from the rockfalls.
Only the Holocene levels have suffered some disturbance, which can be attributed to an armadillo (thet tatouay). At Toca do Sitio do Meio, Lynch mentions 'badly disturbed contexts' and a date of over 40,000 before the present. In fact, the oldest date obtained for the site is 14,300 ± 400 before the present (GIF-5399). Although the Holocene levels have been disturbed by modern activity on the site, the Pleistocene levels are sealed, like those at Pedra Furada, by a great rockfall (see above). In relation to a third site, Toca do Caldeirao dos Rodrigues, Lynch considers that the charcoal is the result of natural fires, because we stated that the date of 18,000 before the present obtained for the site was not associated with a lithic industry, but we have indicated the presence of hearths (Guidon and Delibrias 1985). Carbon contamination has also been invoked to explain the old dates. The three rockshelters which have yielded dates older than 12,000 before the present are, however, sited in the sandstone cuesta, where it is impossible for the charcoal to have been contaminated by ancient carbon, for the simple reason that there is no carbon in the geological formations of the region. The only possibility of contamination, if there were any, would be from the humic acids of groundwater, or from roots, factors which could only tend to make the dates younger (Delibrias, pers. comm.).
A way forward
We have attempted to provide answers to certain doubts expressed about the interpretations in our work carried out in south-east Piaui. It is fair to stress that current theory about the peopling of the Americas is only a working hypothesis, based on conjectures rather than on facts. Reworking of the hypothesis is therefore necessary whenever new evidence indicates that it does not correspond with present realities. This procedure is the controlling rule of all scientific research. Often, one can sense the wish to reproduce in America a model derived from the Old World, where prehistoric people must be moulded to the needs of archaeological theories. We think, on the contrary, that archaeologists should build their models on the basis of the facts available to them. Many archaeologists could benefit from the article of Hallam (1977) concerning Australia. For an archaeology of the peopling of the Americas to progress, it must similarly free itself from Old World models. When one classifies a tool, for example a sidescraper (racloir), the critical judgement is based on the edge angle, and not on the fact that the piece in question can be identified as one of the types on Bordes' list, or some other Old World typology. These names are not satisfactory, and are used by default because there is a need for some common language, but the typology of the New World ought to free itself completely from this influence, and be reviewed in its entirety. It would be helpful if we could rise above the present state of controversy about New World chronologies, so as to establish an entente between the different currents of thought. It is unfortunate, for example, that authors, who doubt the discoveries made at Piaui have not visited the sites. Working parties, meetings of specialists on site, and formal debates, should take place regularly if we are to establish an agreed basis for evaluating evidence. It would be constructive for American prehistory if we could seek out a consensus upon the value of the factual material which accumulates year by. Then, on the basis of the evidence which we now possess, new theoretical propositions could be set forward.
Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales
Butzer, K. W. 1988. "A marginality' model to explain major spatial and temporal gaps in the Old and New World Pleistocene settlement records." Geoarchaeology, 3: 193-203.
Delibrias, G., Guidon, N. and Parenti, F. 1988. "The Toca do Boqueirão do Sitio da Pedro Furada: stratigraphy and chronology." In Early Man in the Southern Hemisphere, supplement to Archaeometry: Australasian Studies 1988.
Guerin, C. 1991. "La faune de vertebres du Pleistocene superieur de l'aire archeologique de São Raimundo Nonato (Piaui, Brésil)." Comptes rendus de l'Academie des Sciences (Paris), 312, Series II: 567-72.
Guidon, N. and Delibrias, G. 1985. "Inventaire des sites sud-Americaines anterieurs a 12,000 ans." L'Anthropoloqie, 89: 385-407.
Guidon, N. and Delibrias, G. 1986. "Carbon-14 dates point to man in the Americas 32,000 years ago." Nature, 321: 769-71.
Guthrie, R. D. 1984. "The evidence for Middle-Wisconsin peopling of Beringia: an evaluation." Quaternary Research, 22: 231-41.
Hallam, S. J. 1977. "The relevance of Old World archaeology to the first entry of man into the New World: colonization seen from the Antipodes." Quaternary Research, 8: 128-48.
Lynch, T. F. 1990. "Glacial-age man in South America? A critical review." American Antiquity, 55 (1): 12-36.
Parenti, F. 1991. "Deep in the South American past - Pedra Furada and Brazilian prehistory." In: Ice Age Peoples of Central and South America (eds R. Bonnichsen and T. Dillehay). Austin: Texas University Press.
Schmitz, P. I. 1987. "Prehistoric hunters and gatherers of Brazil." Journal of World Prehistory, 1: 53-126.
Addendum 2003 The article reproduced above was published in 1991 - but
it is not outdated! Niède Guidon and Elliany S. La Salvia (
Fundação Museu do Homem Americano, Piaui), have published "Some Evidence of a Date of the First
Humans to Arrive in Brazil" This highly technical article on dating with
thermoluminescence comes to the following conclusion: From the present work we can conclude that the calcite
was formed on the rockwall paintings at least about
36,000 years ago. See also in this context - the Pedra
Furada archaeological site in northeastern Brazil - the Monte
Verde archaeological site in Chile
Shiegueo Watanabe, Walter Elias Feria Ayta, and Henrique Hamaguchi (Instituto de Fisica, São Paulo),
Silvia Maranca (Museo de Arqueologia e Ethnologia, Universidade de São Paulo), and
Oswaldo Baffa Filho (Dep. Fisica e Matemática, Universidade de São Paulo)
in the Journal of Archaeoleogical Science, 2003, vol. 30:351-354
Hence, human beings that painted them did it before 36,000 years ago. This value reinforces results obtained by archaeologists
at Serra da Capivara (e.g. Pedra Furada, ed.) using C14 method.
The article reproduced above was published in 1991 - but it is not outdated!
Niède Guidon and Elliany S. La Salvia (
Fundação Museu do Homem Americano, Piaui),
have published "Some Evidence of a Date of the First
Humans to Arrive in Brazil"
This highly technical article on dating with thermoluminescence comes to the following conclusion:
From the present work we can conclude that the calcite
was formed on the rockwall paintings at least about
36,000 years ago.
See also in this context
- the Pedra Furada archaeological site in northeastern Brazil
- the Monte Verde archaeological site in Chile
Last changed 30 October 2007
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Cleon in "Wasps" and "Knights"
"Wasps was produced in 422, the year of Cleon's death; "Knights" was two years earlier. In 424, the mission to Pylos and the capture of the Spartans by Cleon was probably uppermost in most Athenians' minds as heralding a new and favourable phase of the war; it certainly was in Aristophanes' mind, if "Knights" is any evidence. After this date, the war became more remote from Attica, so there is not the same immediacy about it and this is reflected in the predominantly "civil" aspect of the references to Cleon in "Wasps". Overall, the picture of Cleon is consistent in the two plays, the arrogant behaviour of the victor of Pylos is inseperable from the patronising purchaser of votes in the assembly: we can say that Aristophanes can detect no false modesty in the man!
Pylos runs through "Knights". Aristophanes' major justification for critcising Cleon is that he did not acknowledge the preliminary roles of Demosthenes and Nicias (54-7), Aristophanes keeps returning to it and claiming that the rewards accruing are out of proportion to the gains (free dining rights (176 and 531), illicit "take-aways" (271ff) and front seat at public events (529 and 702 etc) until Cleon must have cringed at the very mention of Pylos - assuming him to have been present. But, what is more, an opportunity for peace was lost. Cleon had a vested interest in the war continuing; so long as it continued no one would know what he was doing - even though he was filling his coffers (1218) at the expense of the people of Athens - as a moment's reflection would have revealed. Cleon attempts (successfully, suggests Aristophanes) to avert suspicion by his "gifts", but these are small slices (1220) of big cakes (1219). He is relying on this policy - again with success- to remain in a position where he will wield influence and receive reward. He has forgotten the veterans, believing that if a real enemy, that is a non-Greek one, comes along then the aristos will again be needed - the knights - but that, in buying the "great unwashed", Cleon will destroy the whole class.
The main point of contact between the two plays is the demonstration that jurors receive a small share of the wealth of the empire (653ff) - and Anticleon proves that it is a very real wealth. The whole agon demonstrates how Cleon's mind works as he manipulates the citizen body and, in this context of the drama, how easily it is duped. Just as he is dismissive of Nicias and Demosthenes, his attitude to the old men is to ignore their value, and use them for his own glory. Aristophanes lodges the blame eith the whole army of demagogues (701), but it is unlikely that he is spreading the blame; more likely that he is branding Cleon as the worst of a thoroughly disreputable bunch! The trial of the dogs is pointed at Cleon, and he suggests that he is fiercely protective of his reputation as a general, inferring that the failure of Laches/Labes to produce a military victory was evidence of bribery by the enemy (236 and 895) and that he has bought the verdict beforehand. This very willingness to pursue litigation (of which Aristophanes has had first hand experience) contrasted with the "gentlemanly" behaviour of a Pericles, beneath whose dignity such a thing would have been. It was fair play for "Jack's as good as his master" when the "master" was only a tanner, but it took Aristophanes (Anticleon) to pont out that he was indeed the master!
The main point of consistency in the references, veiled or overt, to Cleon is that if he has any redeeming features, then they are incapable of detection.
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Share With Those Who Care
Spina Bifida Association of Delaware
PO Box 807
Wilmington, Delaware, 19899
Spina Bifida is a birth defect which involves damage to the spine and nervous system. Spina Bifida means that the vertebrae and the spinal cord did not form properly as the fetus developed in the motherís womb.
There are three forms of Spina Bifida. The mildest form, occulta, is harmless and may never be detected. The second is called meningocele, and can cause weak muscles and poor skin. The third and most serious condition is called myelomeningocele. When this condition occurs the spinal column does not form properly leaving the spine split in two. This usually results in paralysis of the legs and no control of the bowels and bladder.
Spina bifida is often accompanied by hydrocephalus (water on the brain)which can be controlled by a surgical procedure called shunting. Children with SB also have a condition called Arnold Chiari Malformation type II, an abnormality of the two parts of the brain.
Most of the children in our association and the tri-state area go to the "duPont Hospital for Children", located in Wilmington, Delaware for their medical care. The duPont hospital runs a spinal dysfunction clinic on Tuesdays of each week, which consists of Urology, Orthopedics, Rehab, Social Service workers and physical therapy evaluations. Neurosurgery is also available.
One out of 1,000 babies in the U.S. have spina bifida. More than 11,000 children are born with this defect every year. It is the second most common birth defect, the most disabling and one of the least understood.
What Causes Spina Bifida?
Many theories about spina bifida have been advanced but none have been substantiated. Even though the cause of spina bifida still remains a mystery, most researchers believe it is a result of a combination of factors, including heredity and environment.
One of the goals of the Spina Bifida Association of Delaware (SBAD) is to discover the cause. We are a group of parents, relatives, and friends of people who have spina bifida. By acting as a source of information, we can help organizations who are conducting spina bifida research.
The Spina Bifida Association of Delaware is a NON-PROFIT Organization.
All Donations are Tax Deductible
Table of Contents:
What Does SBAD offer?
Folic Acid Facts
Secondary Conditions Associated with SB
Arnold Chiari Malformation
SBAD Executive Board Members
SBAD Meetings,Activities & Events
2000 Annual Conference 2001 SBAA National Conference
SBAD Chapter Photo Album!
Visit "Our Award Page" for the FIRST PLACE AWARD for "Outstanding Website" & Honorable Mention for "Newsletter" at the 1999 Annual SBAA National Conference !!
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News release from The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents
As the warm weather continues, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) is issuing advice about how to stay safe in and around water.
Traditionally, the number of accidental drownings peaks during spells of warm weather, particularly when the warm conditions coincide with weekends, school holidays and national celebrations.
RoSPA's advice particularly covers inland waters, such as rivers, lakes, lochs, quarries and reservoirs, which are the most common locations for accidental drownings throughout the year. Figures from the National Water Safety Forum show that in 2010, 420 people died from accidents or natural causes in water across the UK, and, of these, more than half (217) died as a result of incidents in inland waters.
RoSPA believes that leisure should be "as safe as necessary, not as safe as possible", and the accident prevention charity is keen that families get out and about to enjoy the outdoors during the summer. To enable them to have fun and stay safe, RoSPA has put together the following water safety tips:
- Swimming at properly-supervised sites, such as beaches, lidos or swimming pools, is best, although RoSPA appreciates that not everyone can go to these locations
- If you choose to go to an unsupervised site, think through the hazards first and ensure you know what to do if something goes wrong
- Among the hazards to consider are that water can be a lot colder than you are expecting so be careful if you jump in or go for a swim to cool off. Also, there may be strong currents and underwater debris that you cannot see from the bank
- Before you get into the water, consider how you are going to get out again
- Be honest about your swimming ability
- Remember that alcohol and swimming never mix
- Parents and carers: discuss the hazards with your children and remind them that children should never swim alone at unsupervised locations.
David Walker, RoSPA's leisure safety manager, said: "RoSPA's advice is to swim at properly-supervised sites, such as lifeguarded beaches, lidos or swimming pools. However, we appreciate that not everyone can get to these locations and understand the temptation to go swimming in inland waters like rivers and lakes, especially during warm weather.
"Among the hazards to consider at inland waters are that, even on a hot day, water can be a lot colder than you are expecting and there may be strong currents and underwater debris. As well as considering physical hazards like these, it's really important to be honest about your ability to look after yourself and others around you."
See RoSPA's Water Safety for Children and Young People factsheet - www.rospa.com/leisuresafety/adviceandinformation/watersafety/watersafety-children-young-people.aspx - for more safety tips and advice about rescuing someone who gets into difficulty in water.
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Environmental Monitoring in Antarctica
Environmental monitoring is essential in Antarctica to allow assessment of the impacts of human activities. Examples of the this monitoring work carried out by BAS are given below.
Sewage outfall monitoring, Rothera Station
Until 2003, untreated sewage was discharged into the sea from Rothera Station. Monitoring of the receiving water before and after installation of a biological treatment plant showed a dramatic reduction in the sewage plume as indicated by faecal coliforms.
Concentrations of heavy metals in lichens and marine bivalves around Rothera Research Station.
Concentrations of lead, zinc, cadmium and other heavy metals in lichens and marine bivalves are measured. The results are used to assess whether any observed pollution is due to station activities, and to determine the area of contamination.
Skua Population breeding success
The impact of Rothera Research Station on the local South Polar Skua (Stercorarius maccormicki) population has been monitored for over 12 years. The monitoring programme has recently been expanded to include measurements such as chick weight, survival and egg dimensions.
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Circa: 600 BC to 300 BC
Dimensions: 13.5 " (34.3cm) high x 11.25" (28.6cm) wide
Style: Late Kingdom
This monumental granite head is a fragment from a stone sarcophagus of the Late Dynastic Period. In its complete state the head would have been attached to a recumbent body above a large rectangular coffin containing the mummified remains of the deceased. Hieroglyphic inscriptions would have the named the owner and possibly included spells from the Book of the Dead. The expense of the material and the quality of the carving indicate that the sarcophagus belonged to a high ranking official who had both the wealth and the status to place such a commission.
For the ancient Egyptians the furnishing of a tomb could be a life-long occupation. Preparing for the afterlife as well as displaying worldly wealth were the two main concerns. The mummified remains would not have been placed directly within the granite sarcophagus. For extra protection and ceremony another equally elaborate coffin, probably made of a more perishable material such as wood, would have been included inside. Anthropoid-shaped coffins originated during the Middle Kingdom and soon became the standard form. The preservation of the deceased’s image, albeit highly idealised, was considered critical to the soul’s rebirth.
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Most researchers agree that the roots of Tourette's syndrome are largely biological. The disorder's characteristic tics--head jerks, eye blinks and grunts, to name a few--seem to stem from abnormalities in the basal ganglia or with dopamine function. What's more, people with the disorder generally experience tics as involuntary, which would seem to make Tourette's a poor candidate for behavior therapy, notes psychologist John Piacentini, PhD, director of the Child OCD, Anxiety and Tic Disorders program at the University of California, Los Angeles.
"For the last 50 years, Tourette's has been considered a neurological disorder with very little role for behavioral interventions," Piacentini says.
However, attitudes are changing, he says. Though previously people believed that the tics of Tourette's could only be stopped by medication, new research indicates that environmental contingencies play a role in tic expression. For instance, people suppress tics if they are rewarded for doing so, according to several recent studies.
This finding is promising, but a barrier remains: Many medical professionals still falsely believe that holding in tics leads to an explosion of tics later, notes Michael Himle, a fifth-year graduate student and Tourette's syndrome researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
"There is a lot of belief out there that when a child suppresses their tics, what you get is a rebound effect," Himle says. "Some professionals have used this to caution against the use of behavior therapy."
Research by Himle and others is countering that belief, and, as a result, funding agencies are now taking a serious look at nonpharmacological treatments for Tourette's. In fact Piacentini and his colleagues recently received about $6 million in grants from the National Institute of Mental Health to try out a new behavioral technique for treating Tourette's. The treatment, known as the Comprehensive Behavioral Intervention for Tics, (CBIT) combines behavior therapy with an attempt to root out anything that might be inadvertently rewarding tic attacks.
"This is a really exciting time," Piacentini notes. "We are...developing behavioral interventions for what at root cause is a neurological disorder."
Fifty-five percent of medical professionals believe that Tourette's tics can't be controlled and 77 percent believe that if tics are suppressed, they will be even worse later, according to a 2004 survey published in Cognitive and Behavioral Practice (Vol. 11, No. 1, pages 298-305). The survey of 78 neurologists, family practitioners, psychiatrists and clinical psychologists showed that many members of the medical community held beliefs about Tourette's syndrome that were false or untested, says study author Douglas Woods, PhD, a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee psychology professor.
"It's almost Freudian, this idea that you can try to repress an unwanted urge, and the more you suppress it the more it will bubble up somewhere else," Woods notes.
Woods and his student Himle set out to test those assumptions. In a study published in a 2005 issue of Behaviour Research and Therapy (Vol. 43, No. 1, pages 1443-1451), they rewarded seven children, ages 8 to 11, for suppressing their tics. They told the children a "tic detector" would reward them with a token for every 10 seconds they did not tic. They also said the tokens were worth a few cents each, but regardless of their performance, all the participants received $2 at the end of the study.
While the children believed the tic detector worked automatically, a behind-the-scenes experimenter actually controlled the dispensing of the tokens. The tics exhibited by the participants in the study--which included throat clearing, nose scrunching and grunting--were too complex and subtle to be detected by a machine, Woods notes.
Before introducing the tic detector, the researchers recorded the frequency of the children's tics. Afterward, they also "turned off" the machine for five minutes and instructed the participants to tic freely, to measure any rebound effect.
They found that the children were able to suppress their tics--they expressed a tic during 16 percent of the 10-second intervals when they were being rewarded, as opposed to 50 percent of the intervals at the beginning of the experiment. Though the children returned to a high rate of tics once they thought the machine was off, they flinched and grunted less after the suppression period than they did at the beginning of the experiment.
That same year, another study--published in Behavior Modification (Vol. 29, No. 5, pages 716-745)--showed no rebound effect for tic suppression in five people with Tourette's syndrome, ranging in age from 7 to 20. In that study, psychology professor Raymond Miltenberger, PhD, and his colleagues.at North Dakota State University asked the participants to consciously suppress their tics for 30 minutes while watching television or while holding a conversation with an experimenter. In both cases the participants were only modestly able to control themselves--though some were much better than others. And, during a 30-minute period afterward they did not tic more than they had at the beginning of the experiment.
"There is really no support for a rebound effect, based on that study," says Miltenberger. "And what we found is that kids have variable ability to control their tics to begin with."
In addition to debunking the rebound myth, the studies demonstrate that environmental factors can influence the expression of Tourette's syndrome, says Woods.
The findings also show that people can control their tics--especially if rewards are involved, Woods adds. That is an important foundation for therapy; however, chasing after clients with a coin-dispensing "tic suppressor" would not be a good way to help them control their behavior, he notes.
Tools for tic suppression
Most people with Tourette's are treated with drugs, says Roger Kurlan, MD, a psychiatry professor and Tourette's syndrome researcher at the University of Rochester.
"Behavioral interventions for tics...have never been shown to have more than modest potential benefit," he notes. For that reason, people with Tourette's are generally prescribed medications like risperidone, an antipsychotic, or clonidine, a blood pressure medication. The drugs do reduce tics, but the side effects are often worse than the symptoms they treat, says Woods.
"The antipsychotics have a 70 to 80 percent tic reduction, but the side effects are abysmal," he notes. "They experience weight gain and fatigue, have dry mouths--and a lot of parents just don't want to put their kids on medication."
The time is ripe for an alternative treatment, says Piacentini. So he is leading a consortium of scientists who are using the basic science foundation to develop a new behavioral treatment for the disorder. Currently, they are testing CBIT with 120 adults and 120 children in a randomized controlled trial funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, with administrative support from the Tourette Syndrome Association.
The intervention hinges on findings that show Tourette's tics can be affected by environmental and internal reinforcement. While a tic attack in the lab might be discouraged by a token reward system, in school it might be discouraged by the likelihood of teasing. Or, alternately, a child who gets out of doing household chores due to a tic attack might tic more when it's time to wash dishes, notes Joyce Chang Lee, PhD, a clinical psychologist who is applying the CBIT treatment as part of her postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, Los Angeles.
"We try to change those things and stress that the child be treated as normally as possible," Lee says. For instance, parents might let children take a break if they have a tic attack during chore time, but should send them back to finish afterward, she says.
In addition to removing external rewards, Lee and her colleagues teach children to break the internal reward system for doing tics. Many people with Tourette's syndrome report a premonitory urge or sensation right before they flinch or flail, notes Lee. So, over the course of eight one-hour sessions, she teaches them to be aware of that feeling and then perform a quick countermeasure to quash the tic.
For instance, one child she worked with would feel tension build up in his arm right before he flung it outward. Lee taught him to hold his arms tightly by his side whenever he started to feel that tension build.
The training tends to weaken tics over time, Lee says.
"Usually what happens is, once they use the competing response, the premonitory urge fades away," she notes.
The treatment addresses the symptoms of Tourette's, not its root causes. But it can make a big difference in the lives of people with the disorder, Woods says. In fact, pilot data show that people who undergo the treatment have a 30 to 60 percent reduction in their tics--an improvement that is comparable to many medications, he says.
And giving children tools to control their tics can reduce embarrassment and social stigma, Lee says.
"My first time working with children with Tourette's was a difficult experience because they have behaviors that are so distressing for them; it was really hard to watch," says Lee. "But it has been so rewarding to see the changes that have been made and the improvements in their lives."
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Overview of content related to 'dcc'
This page provides an overview of 1 article related to 'web services'. Note that filters may be applied to display a sub-set of articles in this category (see FAQs on filtering for usage tips). Select this link to remove all filters.
A web service is a method of communication between two electronic devices over a network. The W3C defines a "web service" as "a software system designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network. It has an interface described in a machine-processable format (specifically Web Services Description Language WSDL). Other systems interact with the web service in a manner prescribed by its description using SOAP messages, typically conveyed using HTTP with an XML serialization in conjunction with other Web-related standards." The W3C also states, "We can identify two major classes of web services, REST-compliant Web services, in which the primary purpose of the service is to manipulate XML representations of Web resources using a uniform set of "stateless" operations; and arbitrary Web services, in which the service may expose an arbitrary set of operations. (Excerpt from Wikipedia article: Web service)
See our 'web services' overview for more data and comparisons with other tags. For visualisations of metadata related to timelines, bands of recency, top authors, and and overall distribution of authors using this term, see our 'web services' usage charts.
Ariadne contributors most frequently referring to 'web services':
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Battle Drill #1: Conduct Platoon Attack (7-3-D101)
TASK. Conduct Platoon Attack (7-3-D101).
CONDITIONS. An enemy squad has occupied defensive positions or is moving to the platoon front. The enemy has indirect fire and CAS capabilities. The platoon is attacking separately or as part of a larger unit. Plans, preparation, and movement to the objective have been accomplished. The platoon is directed to attack the enemy.
1. The platoon main body is not surprised or fixed by the enemy.
2. The platoon accomplishes its assigned task within the commander's intent. The platoon kills, captures, or forces the withdrawal of the enemy.
3. The platoon maintains a sufficient fighting force to defeat the enemy's counterattack and continue operations.
1. Action on Enemy Contact.
a. The platoon initiates contact. The platoon leader directs when and how his base of fire element will establish a base of fire. The element must be in position and briefed before it initiates contact. The base of fire squad leader (normally the weapons squad leader), upon the signal from the platoon leader, initiates contact with a high casualty-producing weapon. The squad marks the engagement area with ir illumination (MTETT dependent), while the squad leader uses his hand-held laser pointer and AN/PAQ-4 to designate enemy positions, crew-served weapons, and vehicles. Soldiers focus on the squad leader's laser as well as the team leader's tracers and AN/PAQ-4 to engage targets. If the platoon has not been detected, steps 1 and 2 consist of positioning the support element and identifying the enemy's positions.
b. If the enemy initiates contact, the platoon takes the following actions:
(1) The squad in contact reacts to contact (Battle Drill No. 2, React to Contact Platoon/Squad, 7-3/4-D103). It attempts to achieve suppressive fires with one fire team and maneuvers the other team to attack the enemy in the flank. The team providing suppressive fires marks its flanks by throwing ir chemlight bundles or ir flares and continues to use its AN/PVS-7B and AN/PAQ-4 to place well-aimed, accurate fires on the enemy. The squad employs M203 and hand-held ir smoke to screen the assaulting teams movement. The squad leader notifies the platoon leader of his actions.
(2) The platoon leader, his RTO, the platoon FO, the squad leader of the next squad, and one machine gun team move forward to link up with the squad leader of the squad in contact.
(3) The squad leader of the trail squad moves to the front of his lead fire team.
(4) The platoon sergeant moves forward with the second machine gun team and the weapons squad leader and links up with the platoon leader. If directed, he assumes control of the base of fire element and positions the machine guns to add suppressive fire against the enemy. The platoon sergeant uses his hand-held laser to designate the left and right limits of fires while the weapons squad leader uses the pointer to designate targets.
(5) The platoon leader assesses the situation. He follows the success of the squad's flank attack by leading the trail squads along the covered and concealed route taken by the assaulting fire team of the squad in contact. The base of fire element uses the AN/PVS-7B to monitor the movement of the assaulting element.
c. If the squad in contact cannot achieve suppressive fire, the squad leader reports to the platoon leader.
(1) The squad in contact establishes a base of fire.
(a) The squad leader deploys his squad to provide effective, sustained fires on the enemy position. The squad leader continues to designate targets using the hand-held laser pointer and AN/PAQ-4 while soldiers SEE through their AN/PVS-7B and place accurate fires on the enemy with the AN/PAQ-4.
(b) The squad leader reports his final position to the platoon leader. (2) The remaining squad (not in contact) takes up covered and concealed positions in place and uses the AN/PVS-7B to observe the flanks and rear of the platoon. (3) The platoon leader moves forward with his RTO, the platoon FO, the squad leader of the nearest squad, and one machine gun team.
2. Locate the Enemy.
a. The squad leader of the squad in contact reports the enemy size, location, and any other information to the platoon leader. The platoon leader completes the squad leader's assessment of the situation.
b. The squad continues to engage the enemy positions and mark the engagement area with ground ir flares, tracers, and AN/PAQ-4.
c. The platoon sergeant moves forward with the weapons squad leader and the second machine gun team and links up with the platoon leader.
3. Suppress the Enemy.
a. The platoon leader determines if the squad in contact can gain suppressive fire against the enemy, based on the volume and accuracy of the enemy's return fire. He SEEs through the AN/PVS-7B and makes the assessment by looking at the enemy's muzzle flashes and the strike of their rounds and tracers.
b. If YES, he directs the squad (with one or both machine guns) to continue suppressing the enemy:
(1) The squad in contact destroys or suppresses enemy weapons that are firing most effectively against it, normally crew-served weapons. The squad leader identifies the enemy crew-served by its muzzle flashes and rate of fire. He uses his hand-held laser pointer to designate priority targets for his squad.
(2) In addition, the squad in contact continues to place ir screening smoke (if enemy has NODs) to prevent the enemy from seeing the maneuver element.
c. If NO, the platoon leader deploys another squad and the machine gun team to suppress the enemy position. The second squad lead elements SEE the base of fire squad flank element's ir chemlights or flares through the AN/PVS-7B and links up either to the left or right flank of the base of fire squad as directed by the platoon leader. (The platoon leader may direct the platoon sergeant to position this squad and one or both of the machine gun teams in a better support-by-fire position.)
d. The platoon leader again determines if the platoon can gain suppressive fire over the enemy.
e. If YES, he continues to suppress the enemy with two squads and two machine guns.
(1) The platoon sergeant assumes control of the base-of-fire element (squad in contact, the machine gun teams, and any other squad designated by the platoon leader). He uses his hand-held laser pointer to designate sectors of fire for the squads.
(2) The machine gun team occupies a covered and concealed position and suppresses the enemy position. The gunners SEE through the AN/PVS-4 and identify the targets designated by the weapons squad leader's laser.
f. The platoon FO calls for and adjusts fires, based on the platoon leader's directions. (The platoon leader does not wait for indirect fires before continuing with his actions.)
g. If still NO, the platoon leader deploys the last squad to provide flank and rear security and guide the rest of the platoon forward as necessary, and reports the situation to the company commander. Normally, the platoon will become the base of fire element for the company and may deploy the last squad for suppressive fires. The platoon continues to suppress/fix the enemy with direct and indirect fire, and responds to orders from the company commander.
a. If the squad(s) in contact together with the machine gun can suppress the enemy, the platoon leader determines if the remaining squad(s) not in contact can maneuver. He makes the following assessment using his AN/PVS-7:
(1) Location of enemy positions and obstacles.
(2) Size of enemy force. (The number of enemy automatic weapons, presence of any vehicles, and employment of indirect fire are indicators of enemy strength.)
(3) Vulnerable flank.
(4) Covered and concealed flanking route to the enemy position.
b. If yes, the squad leader maneuvers the squad(s) into the assault:
(1) Once the platoon leader has ensured the base of fire squad is in position and providing suppressive fires, he leads the assaulting squad(s) to the assault position.
(2) Once in position, the platoon leader gives the prearranged signal for the base of fire squad to lift or shift direct fires to the opposite flank of the enemy position. The signal is normally FM or an ir signaling device. The assault squad leader identifies the targets (enemy positions) that have been designated by the support by fire squad leader through his AN/PVS-7B. Simultaneously, at the platoon leader's command for the support by fire squad to lift or shift, the assault squad leader uses his hand-held laser pointer to point out the targets. Team leaders use AN/PAQ-4 to control fires. The assault squads MUST pick up and maintain effective fire throughout the assault. Handover of responsibility for direct fires from the base of fire squad to the assault squad is critical to prevent fratricide.
(3) The platoon FO shifts indirect fires (including smoke) to suppress the enemy position.
(4) The assaulting squad(s) fight through enemy positions using fire and maneuver.
(5) The platoon leader controls the movement of his squads. He uses his hand-held laser pointer to assign specific objectives for each squad and designates the main effort or base maneuver element. (The base of fire squad must be able to identify the near flank of the assaulting squads.) Flanks are marked with ir chemlight bundles, ir flares, or phoenix beacons.
NOTE: The use of the hand-held laser pointer requires moderation because it can cause confusion as well as identify friendly positions for an enemy with night-vision capabilities. The laser should not be on for a period greater than three seconds when used.
(a) The squad leader determines the way in which he will move the elements of his squad based on the volume and accuracy of enemy fire against his squad and the amount of cover provided by terrain. In all cases, each soldier uses individual movement techniques as appropriate.
(b) The squad leader designates one fire team to support the movement of the other fire team.
(c) The squad leader designates a distance or direction for the team to move. He accompanies one of the fire teams.
(d) Soldiers SEE with the AN/PVS-7B and maintain contact with team members and leaders.
(e) Buddy teams time their firing and reloading to sustain their rate of fire.
(f) The moving fire team proceeds to the next covered position, using the wedge formation.
(g) The squad leader directs the next team to move using an ir signal.
(h) When the squad leader or team leader determines that moving by teams is no longer feasible, fire teams continue forward in buddy teams. Soldiers continue to use AN/PVS-7B and AN/PAQ-4 to place accurate fires on the enemy as well as identify/point out targets previously identified by their team leaders.
(1) Soldiers maintain contact with their buddies.
(2) Soldiers fire from covered positions, SEE with the AN/PVS-7B and select the next covered position before moving. They either rush forward (no more than 5 seconds) or use the high crawl or low crawl techniques, based on terrain and enemy fires.
(i) Fire team leaders maintain contact with the squad leaders and pass signals to team members.
c. If NO, or the assaulting squads cannot continue to move, the platoon leader deploys the squad(s) to suppress the enemy and reports to the company commander.
5. Consolidate and Reorganize.
a. For consolidating once squads have seized the enemy position, the platoon leader establishes local security. (The platoon must plan to defeat any enemy counterattack. At the conclusion of the assault, the platoon is most vulnerable.)
(1) The platoon leader signals for the base of fire squad to move into designated positions.
(2) The platoon leader assigns sectors of fire for each squad using his laser pointer.
(3) The platoon leader positions key weapons to cover the most dangerous avenues of approach.
(4) The platoon sergeant begins coordination for ammunition resupply.
(5) Soldiers occupy hasty defensive positions.
(6) The platoon leader and his FO develop a quick fire plan.
(7) The squad leader places OPs to detect enemy counterattacks. When an armor or mounted threat is likely, use the AN/TAS-5A in OPs.
b. To reorganize, the platoon performs the following tasks (only after it completes consolidation on the objective):
(1) Re-establish chain of command.
(2) Redistribute and resupply ammunition.
(3) Man crew-served weapons first.
(4) Redistribute critical equipment (radios, NBC, NVD, Laser Pointer).
(5) Treat casualties and evacuate wounded.
(6) Fill vacancies in key positions.
(7) Search, silence, segregate, safeguard, and speed EPWs to collection points.
(8) Collect and report enemy information and material.
c. Squad leaders provide ammunition, casualty, and equipment (ACE) reports to the platoon leader.
d. The platoon leader consolidates ACE reports and passes them to the company commander (or Executive Officer).
e. The platoon continues the mission after receiving guidance from the company commander. The company follows the success of the platoon's flanking attack.
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From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
A neologism (Greek νεολογισμός [neologismos], from νέος [neos] new + λόγος [logos] word, speech, discourse + suffix -ισμός [-ismos] -ism) is a word, term, or phrase which has been recently created ("coined") — often to apply to new concepts, to synthesize pre-existing concepts, or to make older terminology sound more contemporary. Neologisms are especially useful in identifying inventions, new phenomena, or old ideas which have taken on a new cultural context. The term "e-mail", as used today, is an example of a neologism.
Neologisms are by definition "new", and as such are often directly attributable to a specific individual, publication, period or event. The term "neologism" was itself coined around 1800; so for some time in the early 19th Century, the word "neologism" was itself a neologism.
Neologisms can also refer to an existing word or phrase which has been assigned a new meaning.
In psychiatry, the term is used to describe the creation of words which only have meaning to the person who uses them. It is considered normal in children, but a symptom of thought disorder indicative of a psychotic mental illness such as schizophrenia in adults. Usage of neologisms may also be related to aphasia acquired after brain damage resulting from a stroke or head injury.
In theology, a neologism is a relatively new doctrine (for example, rationalism). In this sense, a neologist is an innovator in the area of a doctrine or belief system, and is often considered heretical or subversive by the mainstream clergy or religious institution(s).
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As used in this chapter, unless the context otherwise requires, the following meanings apply:
(1) “Commission” means the American Samoa Natural Resources Commission.
(2) “Endangered species” means any species of fish, plant life, or wildlife which is in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant part of its range other than a species of insects determined by the Commission or the Secretary of the United States Department of the Interior to constitute a pest whose protection under this chapter would present an overwhelming and overriding risk to man.
(3) “Fish or wildlife” means any member of the animal kingdom, including any mammal, fish, amphibian, mollusk, crustacean, arthropod, or other invertebrate, and includes any part, product, egg, or offspring, or the dead body or parts thereof. Fish or wildlife includes migratory birds, nonmigratory birds, or endangered birds for which protection is afforded by treaty or other international agreement.
(4) “Import” means to bring into, or introduce into, or attempt to bring into, or introduce into, any place subject to the jurisdiction of this Territory.
(5) “Person” means an individual, corporation, partnership, trust, association, or any other private entity, or any officer, agent, department, or instrumentality of the federal government, of any state or territory or political subdivision thereof, or of any foreign government.
(6) “Plant or plant life” means any member of the plant kingdom, including seeds, roots, and other parts thereof.
(7) “Species” includes any subspecies of fish, plant life, or wildlife and any other group of fish, plants, or wildlife of the same species or smaller taxa in common spatial arrangement that interbreed or cross-pollinate when mature.
(8) “Take” means, in reference to fish and wildlife, to harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, collect, or attempt to engage in any such conduct.
(9) “Take” means, in reference to plants, to collect, pick, cut, dig up, or destroy in any manner.
(10) “Threatened species” means any species which is likely to become an endangered species within the foreseeable future throughout all or a significant portion of its range.History: 1982, PL 17-49 § 1.
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2008–2009 Projects on Multicultural Activities
Bilingual Performance on an Object and Action Battery: Preliminary Normative Data in Spanish and English
Lisa A. Edmonds
University of Florida
The U.S. has the fifth largest Spanish-speaking community in the world, with 30 million citizens (12% of the population) that speak Spanish. The Hispanic elderly population is expected to increase from <4 percent of the total elderly population in 1990 to 16 percent by the middle of the next century. Hispanics are 30% more likely than non-Hispanic Caucasians to have a stroke, and thus are at a greater risk for aphasia.
Lexical retrieval impairments are the most common deficit in aphasia. As a result, a fundamental aspect of aphasia evaluation is testing naming abilities. However, there are no available naming tests developed specifically for Spanish-English populations in the United States. Providing bilingual normative data on available naming tests is an alternative until appropriate tests can be developed.
The purpose of this study was to 1) examine naming performance of Spanish-English bilingual adult speakers on An Object and Action Naming Battery (Druks and Masterson, 2000), and 2) identify which language use/history and self-ratings factors best predicted naming performance in English and Spanish. The overall goal was to generally evaluate whether this test, which was developed for monolingual English speakers, would be appropriate to use in some form with Spanish/English bilinguals.
The preliminary results of the classical and Rasch analyses revealed a large number of noun and verb items able to distinguish between different levels of naming proficiency in English and Spanish for Spanish/English bilinguals.
Evidenced-Based Language Screening Procedures for Young Spanish Speakers (ELYSA)
University of Northern Colorado
Young children who have delayed language development are at risk for a number of concomitant developmental problems, including delays in social, behavioral, and academic development. Early intervention with children with language delays is critically important; many studies have demonstrated that early childhood is the greatest time of developmental change, and that children who receive early intervention demonstrate favorable long-term outcomes. Thus, identifying children at risk for language and learning problems is of paramount importance during early childhood. As a result, early childhood programs such as Head Start have made screening of preschoolers a priority.
Twenty seven percent of children enrolled in Head Start programs are from homes where languages other than English are spoken; 82% of these children are from Spanish speaking families and this percentage is expected to increase. Nationwide surveys have demonstrated that most SLPs lack confidence when assessing Spanish bilingual children and when working with parents who do not speak English. Many SLPs report the lack of adequate assessment tools and inability to speak a child's language as obstacles to serving/assessing linguistically diverse children.
The objectives of this project were 1) to increase normative data on language development in Spanish monolingual and emergent bilingual children, specifically in the area of screening procedures 2) and, to develop a collaboration between the University of Northern Colorado Audiology and Speech Language Sciences program and the Colorado Head Start community in developing evidence based screening procedures for Spanish speaking children. The primary investigator is collaborating with Dr. Barbara Rodriguez (University of New Mexico) in authoring a manuscript that describes the clinical usefulness and the sensitivity and specificity of the two tools used in this study.
Pathway to Excellence: Increasing the Number, Diversity and Cultural Competence of the Membership
Judith B. King
Northern Arizona University
Given only a mere 0.3% of the SLPs nationwide are Native American, this project responded to one of ASHA's Strategic Plan objectives: to increase the number, diversity and cultural competence of the Membership.
Because Northern Arizona University (NAU) is situated at the border of the largest Native American (Navajo) Nation in the U.S. and encircles the Hopi Reservation, it consistently ranks among the top three institutions in Native American enrollment, leading the nation in granting degrees to Native American students. Similarly, NAU's Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders (CSD) is well known for its successful efforts in recruiting and graduating Native American students and has an established record for obtaining graduate level funding for that group of students. Proud of it strong curriculum and the high PRAXIS exam pass record of its mainstream graduates, the program is also aware that for its Native American graduates, comparisons of those who pass the PRAXIS are negligible. Losing heart after repeated yet failed attempts to pass the PRAXIS, this group of Native American graduates simply give up, returning to their homeland with a sense of failure, in spite of having completed their graduate degree. Their dream of ASHA membership grows dim, as does any hope of impacting the number, diversity and cultural competence of the Membership.
The objectives of this project were (1) to develop an intensive, systematic intervention plan to support six CSD Native American graduates in passing the PRAXIS. Four participants had already graduated and were working as non-certified professionals on the Navajo and Hopi Reservations; the other two were currently enrolled in the CSD Summers Only program and were working on the Reservations as non-certified professionals; and (2) on passing the PRAXIS, to partner the current six-student cohort with Reservation-employed, certified, Native American SLPs (also CSD alumni to serve as their CFY supervisors).
The systematic, intervention plan was made up of several components: 1) a combination of three, 7-hour face-to-face and video conferencing sessions (requiring participant enrollment in 1 credit Independent Study) with study sessions at 4-weeks, 2-weeks and one day before the PRAXIS exam, 2) partnering the current cohort of Native American graduates with the aforementioned Native American SLPS who were to serve as mentors/supervisors and a current CSD graduate student who was to serve as their PRAXIS study partner, and finally (3) all project participants participated daily in the American Psychological Association's Mind Habits Program, a tool documented to help users reduce stress and boost self confidence and esteem.
The PRAXIS lecture series was professionally videotaped "live" using NAU's ITV services. All CSD students have access to the entire set of PRAXIS lectures and the accompanying handouts as well.
The PRAXIS exam results revealed that none of the four participants who took the exam- using the extended time for non-Native speakers of English- passed. Following this outcome, two participants dropped out of the project. On a repeat attempt, one participant passed and applied for ASHA membership.
Supporting Acquisition of Language and Literacy Through School-Home Based Activities (SALSA)
Lena G. Caesar
The improvement of literacy outcomes among language minority students has become a significant area of concern among educators, clinicians, and lawmakers. Research indicates that Spanish-speaking English Language Learners (ELLs) are twice as likely as their monolingual English-speaking peers to demonstrate sub-average literacy skills. Findings from the National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority children and Youth indicate that English oral proficiency is an important prerequisite for bilingual children's literacy development. One aspect of oral proficiency that especially warrants attention is that of narrative abilities.
The primary objective of this project was to examine the efficacy of a parent-school collaborative language and literacy intervention, Supporting the Acquisition of Language and Literacy through School-Home Activities (SALSA), for Spanish-speaking Head Start children. The intervention was designed to promote parents' abilities to support language and emergent literacy development in their preschool children through a parent-child journaling activity. The project's specific objectives were to: (a) pilot a literacy and language intervention method in the domain of narrative development using parent-supported journaling approach; (b) determine the efficacy of the intervention on children's narrative abilities; (c) provide parents with the skills and opportunities for encouraging language-focused parent-child interactions; (d) enhance the knowledge and competence of Head Start teachers regarding bilingual and language-literacy issues in the context of oral-written school-home connections; and (e) disseminate results in professional and scholarly venues.
Subjects of the study were 12 preschool children between the ages of 3 and 5, enrolled in a Migrant Head Start Center in southwest Michigan. An equivalent number of age-matched peers were randomly assigned to a control group. The study utilized an experimental, pretest-treatment-posttest design, and focused on expanding children's ability to produce oral narratives in English and Spanish based on simple drawings provided by parents in a take-home journal. This parent-provided journal content served as the basis not only for literacy enrichment in the classroom, but also for oral language enrichment therapy provided by speech-langue pathology and audiology students.
Research involved the collaboration of two university programs- Andrews University and Western Michigan University. Findings indicated that children in the experimental group outperformed their control peers on early literacy measures related to print concepts and alphabetic principles. Also, both groups demonstrated higher language and literacy gains in Spanish than in English.
2008–2009 Review Panel
Thomas J. Hallahan
Karyn B. Helms
Amee P. Shah
Yasmeen F. Shah
Greta T. Tan
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Following the Associated Press news release on the testing of inexpensive jewelry items for cadmium content by Dr. Jeff Weidenhamer, Trustees’ Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at Ashland University, Dr. Weidenhamer has conducted numerous media interviews and was interviewed for both ABC’s Good Morning America and CBS’s The Early Show.
The testing and subsequent news article has led the Consumer Products Safety Commission to launch an investigation into the high levels of cadmium in kids' jewelry. Also, according to news reports from various sources, Wal-mart, the nation's largest retailer, is taking some products containing cadmium off its shelves.
A total of 103 jewelry items were purchased at retail stores in Ohio, Texas, California and New York. The items were screened by Dr. Weidenhamer and two Ashland University toxicology students working under his supervision for the presence of high levels of cadmium using a technique called X-ray fluorescence. A total of 14 items contained more than 10% cadmium based on these tests.
Additional testing was done on several of the high-cadmium jewelry items to determine the amounts of cadmium that might leach from the items if swallowed, and to determine the total cadmium content of items based on digestion of the metal in acid.
The maximum cadmium content found was 91.0 percent, or 910,000, in a Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer charm purchase at a dollar store in New York by Judy Braiman of the Empire State Consumer Group of Rochester, N.Y. Charms on another bracelet contained 89 percent and 91 percent cadmium, and a necklace pendant contained 79 percent cadmium. All of these pieces released dangerously high amounts of cadmium in leaching tests.
Cadmium is a toxic metal that is classified as a probable human carcinogen by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The primary hazard of chronic cadmium exposure is kidney damage, however recent research also links cadmium exposure to learning disabilities and loss of IQ in young children. The World Health Organization estimates the tolerable weekly intake for cadmium to be 7 micrograms per kg body weight per week. There are currently no standards for the cadmium content of jewelry items intended for children.
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|This biography from the Archives of AskART:|
|A painter and major organizer of the Armory Show, Walt Kuhn is perhaps best known for his circus figure-clown depictions. They were unique in that he treated his subjects as human beings conditioned to specialized jobs. He also painted still lifes and some landscapes. He was inspired and influenced by many artists, most notably Paul Cezanne, and like Cezanne, he destroyed many of his canvases, saving only about a dozen paintings a year.|
He was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1877 (some older sources quote 1880 as his year of birth) with the name William, but in 1900 first used the name "Walt" when illustrating magazines in San Francisco. He studied at the Royal Academy in Munich from 1901 to 1903, and returned to New York where he worked as a cartoonist and magazine illustrator.
He was associated with "The Eight", New York modernist painters, and with Arthur B. Davies, was a the key figure in forming the American Association of painters and Sculptors that organized the Armory Show of 1913 that introduced modernist European art to America. Kuhn was executive secretary of the Association and traveled abroad to select entries for the Armory Show.
In 1941, he was granted a press pass to all of the Madison Square Garden performances of the Ringling Brothers Circus, which reinforced his focus on that subject matter.
He also had a major interest in the American West, and between 1918 and 1920 did 29 paintings in a series he called Imaginary History of the West, whose source material was primarily books. In 1936 and 1937, he was commissioned by the Union Pacific Railroad to design the interior of two club cars, The Frontier Shack and Little Nuggett.
Matthew Baigell, Dictionary of American Art
David Michael Zellman, 300 Years of American Art
Peggy and Harold Samuels, The Illustrated Biographical Dictionary of Artists of the American West
|This biography from the Archives of AskART:|
|Born in Brooklyn, NY. Kuhn began his career in 1898 as a cartoonist for a San Francisco newspaper. From 1901-03 he studied in Munich and in Paris at Académie Colarossi. By 1910 he was a successful artist and in 1913 was an organizer of the Armory Show. His painting forte was clowns and circus performers. One year before his death, he suffered a mental breakdown and was institutionalized. He died in New York on July 13, 1949. |
Exh: Beaux Arts Gallery (SF), 1928; SFAA, 1930. In: Brooklyn Museum; Cincinnati Museum; Detroit Inst. of Arts; LACMA; MM; AIC; Boston Museum; MOMA; Whitney Museum (NYC).
Edan Hughes, "Artists in California, 1786-1940"
AAA 1907-08; WWAA 1936-47; NY Times, 7-14-1949 (obit).
|Nearly 20,000 biographies can be found in Artists in California 1786-1940 by Edan Hughes and is available for sale ($150). For a full book description and order information please click here.|
|Biography from Chisholm Gallery:|
Rhys Adams wrote: "There is very little Impressionism or Cubism in
'Polo Game' and quite a bit of Raoul Dufy. There were two oils by Dufy
in the Armory Show, both dating from his best "fauve" period of 1909,
and Walt Kuhn may have seen many more in Paris. With its horizontal bands
and frieze of fluttering flags instead of a sunrise in the background
.... The horses and riders are boldly, clearly drawn, the audience a
Prendergast tapestry of color with a few sharply contoured parasols as
accents. It is both animated and decorative."|
paintings can be confidently assigned to 1914, and one of them, Polo
Game, is Kuhn's first fully post impressionist arrival. The first record
of its exhibition in New York, though it might well have hung along
with works by Davies and Jules Pascin at the Macbeth Gallery in the
spring of 1916, is the Maynard Walker Gallery showing of "Early Works
by Walt Kuhn" in April and May of 1966. John Canaday, in The New York
Times , called the exhibition 'a careful selection of early works by
this American painter who died in 1949, drawing from his estate.
often had trouble deciding just which of several artists he most
admired, and his various decisions en route are reflected in some of
these pictures. But he was always a strong painter never afraid to
declare his loyalties. Filled with collector's items, an exhibition of
Kuhn's polo art is also something of a documentation of American
painting during its transition from provincialism to internationalism
under the impact of the Armory Show.'
John Gruen, in The
Herald Tribune, mentioned Polo Game specifically: 'There are
fascinating stylistic struggles to be observed in such works as 'Tea!
(1923) in which the artist's wife with a lady friend [Brenda] are
painted in a mixture of Cubism and German Expressionism, or the 1914
'Polo Game' which combines pure Impressionism with Post-Impressionism.'
|Biography from Newman Galleries:|
|Walt Kuhn was born in 1877 in New York City. He began his artistic career as a cartoonist for Life, Judge, and Puck. In 1910, he began painting. He was educated at the Academy Colarossi in Paris, and the Munich Academy. He also studied in Holland, Italy, and Spain. When he returned, Kuhn taught at the Art Students’ League as well as the New York School of Art.|
Kuhn exhibited at the Harriman Gallery from 1930 to 1941; the Durand-Ruel Gallery from 1943 to 1945; and he had a retrospective exhibition in 1960 at the Cincinnati Art Museum. His works were also shown at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia in 1921.
Kuhn’s work is in many private and public collections, including the Dublin Museum in Ireland; the Museum of Modern Art in New York; the Addison Gallery of American Art; the San Francisco Museum of Fine Arts; the Art Institute of Chicago; and the art museums of Denver, Columbus, Los Angeles, Wichita, and Detroit.
As well as being an artist and cartoonist, Kuhn wrote The Story of the Armory Show in 1938, and in 1939, he wrote and produced a motion picture entitled Walt Kuhn’s Adventures in Art. In 1913 he and A.B. Davies organized the landmark Armory Show in New York City.
Walt Kuhn died in New York City in 1949.
|** If you discover credit omissions or have additional information to add, please let us know at [email protected].|
Walt Kuhn is also mentioned in these AskART essays:
New York Armory Show of 1913
San Francisco Panama-Pacific Exhibition 1915
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Animal Species:Redfish, Centroberyx affinis (Günther, 1859)
The Redfish has large eyes and an oblique mouth that extends back to the posterior margin of the eye. The species is endemic to Australia.
Eastern Nannygai, Golden Snapper, King Snapper, Koarea, Nannygai, Red Snapper, Red Squirrel-fish
The Redfish has a moderately deep, compressed body and a large head with serrated opercular and preopercular margins . It has large eyes and an oblique mouth that extends back to the posterior margin of the eye.
There is a single dorsal fin and an anal fin positioned on the lower margin of the body, opposite the soft rayed portion of the dorsal fin. The caudal fin is deeply forked.
Redfish are usually silvery-red with pale spots on the scales forming stripes.
The species grows to 51 cm in length.
Redfish only found in south-eastern Australia and New Zealand. In Australia it is known from southern Queensland to northern Tasmania.
The map below shows the Australian distribution of the species based on public sightings and specimens in Australian Museums. Source: Atlas of Living Australia.
Distribution by collection data
The Redfish is mostly found in deep coastal and offshore waters. Juveniles sometimes enter estuaries.
Other behaviours and adaptations
The Redfish is a schooling species.
- Edgar, G.J. 1997. Australian Marine Life: the plants and animals of temperate waters. Reed Books. Pp. 544.
- Kuiter, R.H. in Gomon, M.F., Glover, C.J.M. & R.H. Kuiter (Eds). 1994. The Fishes of Australia's South Coast. State Print, Adelaide. Pp. 992.
- Hutchins, B. & R. Swainston. 1986. Sea Fishes of Southern Australia. Complete Field Guide for Anglers and Divers. Swainston Publishing. Pp. 180.
- Kuiter, R.H. 1996. Guide to Sea Fishes of Australia. New Holland. Pp. 433.
- Kuiter, R.H. 2000. Coastal Fishes of South-eastern Australia. Gary Allen. Pp. 437.
Mark McGrouther , Collection Manager, Ichthyology
Tags fishes, ichthyology, Redfish, Nannygai, Centroberyx affinis, Berycidae, oblique mouth, endemic to Australia, Eastern Nannygai, Golden Snapper, King Snapper, Koarea, Red Snapper, Red Squirrel-fish, deep body, compressed body, silvery-red, pale spots, dots/spots, 30 cm - 1 m, deep coastal water, offshore water, schooling species,
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Female circumcision encompasses a wide range of procedures, ranging in severity from a nick on the clitoral hood to cutting off all the external genitals and sewing up the vaginal opening. In its more extreme form, it is known as Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).
This Al Jazeera Report gives a very brief overview of the practice:
The acknowledged authority on female circumcision, the World Health Organization (WHO), recognizes four types of female circumcision:
|TYPE I||Excision of the prepuce with or without excision of part or all of the clitoris.|
|TYPE II||Excision of the prepuce and clitoris together with partial or total excision of the labia minora.|
|TYPE III||Excision of part or all of the external genitalia and stitching/narrowing of the vaginal opening (infibulation).|
|TYPE IV||Unclassified: includes pricking, piercing or incision of clitoris and/or labia; stretching of clitoris and/or labia; cauterization by burning of clitoris and surrounding tissues; scraping (angurya cuts) of the vaginal orifice or cutting (gishiri cuts) of the vagina; introduction of corrosive substances into the vagina to cause bleeding or herbs into the vagina with the aim of tightening or narrowing the vagina; any other procedure which falls under the definition of FGM given above|
Age of Consent
The term is almost exclusively used to describe traditional or religious procedures on a minor, which requires the parents’ consent because of the age of the girl. When the procedure is performed on and with the consent of an adult it is generally called clitoridectomy, or it may be part of labiaplasty or vaginoplasty.
What are the health implications of this procedure?
FGM has no health benefits, and it harms girls and women in many ways. It involves removing and damaging healthy and normal female genital tissue, and interferes with the natural functions of girls’ and women’s bodies. Immediate complications can include severe pain, shock, hemorrhage (bleeding), tetanus or sepsis (bacterial infection), urine retention, open sores in the genital region and injury to nearby genital tissue.
Does Female Circumcision happen in Singapore?
Yes. In Singapore’s Muslim community, female circumcision involves nicking the prepuce, the skin covering the clitoris. It is markedly different from the more severe forms of genital mutilation. The procedure is usually done on babies or prepubescent children. Circumcisions in Singapore are done by female doctors at a handful of Muslim clinics. Anesthesia is generally not used. – source
Although a relatively common procedure, many young women are unaware that they have undergone this ritual or what it entails.
What is the religious basis for this procedure?
The practice is encouraged by some religious leaders however many historians say that there is no religious basis for this practice
According to the majority of ulama, circumcision is compulsory for men and women. It should be done early in life, preferably when still an infant, to avoid complications, prolong pain and embarrassment if done later in life. Any good Muslimah doctor can perform circumcision for women. It is just a cutting off the thin membrane on the top most part of the clitoris.
Islamic Religious Council of Singapore (MUIS)
Those practices originated 1,400 years ago, before the birth of the Prophet Mohammed, says Noor Aisha Binte Abdul Rahman, a professor at the National University of Singapore. But the custom has no religious basis and there are no guidelines except that it should not bring harm to believers, says Zhulkeflee Haji Ismail, manager of Singapore’s Islamic Scholars and Religious Teachers Association. “Some people just follow customs without knowing what they’re about,” the scholar says. “Traditions die hard.”
- WHO Factsheet
- Female Circumcision in Singapore
- Wikipedia: Female genital cutting
- Washington Post: Sheelan’s Circumcision
- Female Circumcision: A Viewpoint – Straits Times 1994
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World Magazine, Issue 2.10, January 1998
by Karl Cohen
Once upon a time there was a world without video tape. The
commerce in animation was on film and there were dozens of distributors
who listed cartoons and independent animation in their catalogs. School
districts and colleges were buying and renting almost anything animated
that was "educational." A new theatrical show called The Tournee
of Animation was showing the latest and greatest films from around the
world. Animation was sometimes shown at museums, libraries and art houses.
During this period television rarely showed anything animated except television commercials and limited animation stuff made for the tube. Of course there were daily cartoon shows that showed old Hollywood films, but nobody was seriously interested in buying rights to artistic works. They wanted to keep costs low and needed quantity, not quality, to fill all the air time between the commercials.
Non-Theatrical Distribution From 1900 - 1960
Before explaining what film distribution was like at its peak in the 1960s and 70s, a quick look at the history of non-theatrical distribution and the development of the 16mm format is in order. Distribution of films to places other than theaters (non-theatrical) began almost 100 years ago. Corporations were among the first to explore non-theatrical venues. A film about the Alaskan gold rush was made by the Northwest Transportation Company in 1899 and shown at the Paris Exposition in 1900. By the early teens some salesmen representing trade associations and corporations were traveling with 35mm films and portable projectors. They presented free shows to promote their sponsors' interests.
Another small non-theatrical industry developed around pornographic films before WWI. Animators created Eveready Harton in Buried Treasure, around 1928. This funny hard-core cartoon may have been made for a private party honoring Winsor McCay by Walter Lantz, Rudy Zamora Sr., George Stallings and George Canata. Other X-rated cartoons were produced in the 1920s and 30s.
The first non-theatrical catalog of education films was published by George Kleine in 1910. He offered to lease 35mm films. Apparently his venture was a failure and one account says he never recovered the cost of printing his 336 page catalog. Kleine went on to import some of the first successful feature-length films from Italy just before WWI.
In 1921 Kleine created a non-theatrical distribution system that brought "clean" films to schools, museums and other non-commercial users. He gave users of his "Cycle of Classics" free 35mm projectors and charged a per reel fee plus 65% of the admission income. The venture wasn't too successful and was abandoned in 1928 with the coming of sound. His silent projectors had become obsolete almost overnight.
The educational market slowly developed in the 1920s and 30s. Kodak introduced 16mm safety film in 1923. In the 1930s home movie cameras were introduced along with black and white reversal film stocks and Kodachrome film (1936). Bell and Howell and other companies vigorously marketed their 16mm sound projectors.
To further promote 16mm as a format, Eastman Kodak
went into the film rental and sales business. In the 1930s they introduced
the Kodascope Library which contained 16mm prints of Hollywood features
Several sponsored animated films were made in the 1930s. General Motors promoted itself in A Coach for Cinderella (1936), the first industrial produced in Technicolor. It was produced by the Jam Handy Organization in Detroit. The company had already animated Down the Gasoline Trail (1935) for Chevrolet and they later produced other animated shorts. Handy is best known for their post-war live-action films that glorified the product lines of GM. In the late 1950s the company had a staff of 500 and made between 150 and 200 films a year.
Another animated gem from the 1930s is The Sunshine Makers. It was directed by Burt Gillett and Ted Eshbaugh in New York at the Van Beuren Studio. It promotes the consumption of milk and was in fact sponsored by Bordens Milk.
The period from the late 1920s to the 1940s saw the beginning of artists in the U.S. using film as an art form. Among the first animated or partly-animated films to be seen by the American public were works by Mary Ellen Bute. Her films were shown at Radio City Music Hall in the late 1930s and early 40s. Norman McLaren came to the U.S. from England in the late 1930s. He worked on one of Bute's films (Spook Sport), did work for what later became the Guggenheim Museum, and was commissioned in 1939 to do a short work for NBC-TV when it was an experimental station.
In the 1940s the war brought on the rise of public information films (another name for propaganda) and some of it was animated. The 16mm format was used extensively by both the military and groups showing information films to the public. Bugs Bunny was used to sell war bonds, Donald Duck reminded people to pay their income taxes on time and Minnie Mouse recycled kitchen fats for the war effort.
After the war thousands of military surplus 16mm "JAN" sound projectors were sold to schools and other institutions at low costs. This helped make 16mm a more accessible format.
At the close of the war the company that was to become UPA made two animated films for the United Auto Workers and CIO. Hell Bent for Election was made to get out the vote for Roosevelt in 1944 and Brotherhood of Man, 1946, promoted racial tolerance. The latter was made to help the autoworkers integrate factories in the south. Both films are admired today for their use of contemporary graphic design.
Another popular animated sponsored film for the non-theatrical market was Hugh Harmon's Winky the Watchman, 1947. It was made for a dental association and it promotes the proper care of teeth. Harmon and his partner Rudolph Ising also produced a long animated work for Van de Camp Foods in their Los Angeles studio.
Some of the animated films made in the 1950s now seem unintentionally funny, like the animated turtle that tells us to "duck and cover" in case of an atomic blast, or the atomic man in John Sutherland's A is for Atom. John Sutherland Productions was formed in Los Angeles in 1945 and produced a great number of propaganda/informational films over the years.
Among the best educational films were a science series sponsored by Bell Labs. They hired Frank Capra to produce them and Dr. Frank Baxter was the host. Our Mr. Sun (1955) featured animation directed by Bill Hurtz at UPA. Shamus Culhane (NYC) provided animated sequences for three Bell Labs films: Hemo the Magnificent (1956), The Strange Case of Cosmic Rays (1957) and The Unchained Goddess (1958).
An early ad promoting the use of film projectors
How Non-Theatrical Animation Worked
The educational film market grew rapidly in the 1960s. When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957, the U.S. Congress realized something had to be done to better educate the baby boomers. By the early 1960s Congress had passed the National Defense Education Act which gave enormous sums of money to school districts. Some of the money was for the acquisition of films and other types of audio visual materials like film-strips, slides and records. There was also a growing market for films at colleges, public libraries, military bases, prisons, churches and other institutions.
The basic sales tool for these companies was their illustrated catalog. In addition to the catalog, distributors often produced slick flyers and supplements intended to promote an interest in a specific film or series of films. Educational film distributors also produced study guides to accompany some of their films. Aggressive companies promoted their product lines at conventions, conferences and workshops. The annual Educational Film Library Association conference (EFLA) was a major trade show that was once attended by thousands of film buyers.
Most distributors who sold films provided free preview prints to reviewers who wrote for the trade publications (Film News, EFLA Evaluations, Booklist, Film Library Quarterly, etc.) and to potential film buyers for libraries and school districts.
Distributors also promoted their films by entering them in festivals. Print sales often increased after a film won a major prize. Festivals were also a way for school teachers and other film people to see new product. Hopefully they would then ask their school district to buy a print of something they liked.
There was once a large number of distribution companies and they varied in size and focus. Some rented a full line of entertainment features and shorts while others specialized in well-made educational films. Some companies had lots of animated shorts in their catalogs, while others had only a few titles or none. A few companies specialized in the importation and sale of shorts from Canada and other countries. Others produced their own product lines.
A number of distributors specialized in films that required them to produce the work. Weston Woods Studios turns popular children's books into animated shorts. They still acquire the film rights and then hire artists to do the artwork. Gene Deitch, who has headed his own studio in Prague since 1960, has animated several of Weston Woods' award-winning shorts.
Contracts between distributors and animators is a subject that is somewhat difficult to discuss as there is no such thing as a standard agreement. A contract might offer a payment based on a film's gross or on its' net profit. A filmmaker could receive anywhere between 15% to 40% of the gross receipts (25% to 30% was more or less the average around 1970) or 50% of the net profit. If a film with a net deal is a hit and the distributor is honest the filmmaker can make a good deal of money. On the other hand, if the distributor pads the account with meals and gifts for his friends, etc. the filmmaker may get nothing.
Some distributors mainly sold films to which they had exclusive rights. Other companies had some exclusive films to offer. They supplemented that income with the rental of films that they sub-distributed. They would buy or lease a print for a fixed price from another distributor or the producer of the film and put it in their rental collection. They kept whatever income the print produced for them. The creator of the film only made money from the sale of the print. Sub-distribution deals are non-exclusive so more than one company could buy the print and rent it. Filmmakers made money by selling as many prints as possible.
I found a contract dated January 15, 1982, between King Features Syndicate Division and a non-theatrical distributor for the lease of a print of The Yellow Submarine. It called for the payment of $1,400 and allowed the distributor to use the print for non-theatrical rentals. The contract prohibited theatrical or commercial use of the print including exhibition to a paying audience. Distributors sometimes looked the other way if the film was rented by someone who was going to ask for a "donation" at the door. The company rented the film for $100 in their 1982 catalog.
An interesting contract was offered animators by Prescott Wright when he produced The Tournee of Animation (1970 - 1986). The producer, Wright and his associates, got 50% of the gross and the remaining 50% was split among the artists. About half of the money going to the animators was split evenly and the remaining amount was split based on how long each short was. That meant a really short film got slightly less than a film a minute or two longer. As the cost of producing the show rose, the percentage the producer took changed to 55% and finally 60%.
Another type of deal was offered by Mike Getz, who ran a midnight movie series for many years. He paid $1 a minute per screening. I had one film that Getz showed many times. It turned a profit for me after I deducted production and print costs. When the print eventually came back it was covered with scratches and was barely usable, but it had made me a profit.
The Distribution Companies
The following discussion covers a few of the companies that distributed animation in the 1960s and `70s. They were selected to give a fairly good idea of how divergent one company was from another. One catalog from each company was selected for the discussion. In the course of a few years a company would add and drop titles, but no attempt was made to show how the holdings of the companies changed.
The largest distributors in the country in the 1960s and `70s didn't go out of their way to handle unusual animated product. Films Incorporated just ended their film rental business and is now a video sales company. They used to rent features and shorts including MGM cartoons. They had exclusive rights to work from MGM, 20th Century Fox and other companies. At one time they had eight offices across the nation to better serve their customers.
Contemporary Films/McGraw Hill, founded around 1950, had a 384 page catalog in 1972. It included 20 films by Norman McLaren, a large selection from Zagreb, silhouette films by Lotte Reiniger, work by John Hubley, Jeff Hale, Jan Lenica, Alexander Alexeieff, Les Goldman, Halas and Batchelor, Ernest Pintoff, Karel Zeman, Jan Svankmajer, Jiri Trnka, and dozens of other animators from around the world. The McLaren films rented for $12.50 or $10. Most animated titles rented from $10 to $15.
United Artists' UA16 catalog #5 (1975) focused on the distribution of features, but it did devote space to early Warner Bros. cartoons (1930 - 1948), the Fleischer Popeye cartoons, Woody Woodpecker (Lantz) and the Pink Panther series. Most of their cartoons were available packaged in groups of three for $25. Individual titles rented for $20 each and an 85 minute program called The Popeye Follies rented for $200.
Another great selection was available from Ivy Film (NYC). They rented Paramount cartoons by the Fleischers (Betty Boop, Gabby, silent Koko, Color Classics and Screen Songs), the George Pal Puppetoons, and animation from Famous Studios. Cartoons were rented on a sliding scale based on the size of the audience. A Betty Boop rented in 1974 for $15 if the audience was under 100 people. The top rate was $35 for an audience of over 500 people.
Budget Films, founded in 1969, claimed to be "the biggest privately-owned film archive in the world." They have ended their participation in non-theatrical distribution and now provide stock footage to the industry. Their 1979 catalog is 1 3/4" thick and contains over 800 pages. They rented vintage Hollywood cartoons from $5 - 10 each. Color Godzilla features rented for $32.50 and $34 and John Halas' Animal Farm rented for $37.50. In the 1980s they expanded their line to include a small selection of independent animated shorts. In 1989 they rented Jankovics' Sisyphus for $10, Steve Segal's Red Ball Express for $10, John Hubley's The Hat for $15, Frédéric Back's Crac! for $25 and Richard Condie's The Big Snit for $25. Animal Farm and the color Godzilla features were available for $50 each.
Small Companies Had Great Animation Collections
By the early 1970s there were several companies that specialized in experimental and independently produced films. Probably the most visible of these companies was Pyramid Films in Santa Monica. Their 1974 catalog was a slick 1/2" thick, 240 page volume. It listed films by Jordan Belson, Charles Braverman, George Dunning, Oskar Fischinger, John and Faith Hubley, Caroline Leaf, Norman McLaren, Dan McLaughlin, Frank Mouris, John Whitney, Michael Whitney, Stan Vanderbeek, and other animators. Fischinger's Composition in Blue rented for $10 and sold for $100. The Oscar-winning Frank Film rented for $15 and sold for $150. Pyramid is still in business, but the nature of their business has changed considerably in recent years.
The above sales prices date from before the Hunt family in Texas tried to corner the silver market in the 1980s. They drove the price of silver up to record highs, resulting in Kodak almost doubling the price of film stocks. When the price of silver finally fell, Kodak's prices didn't. When Kodak took all of the silver out of their film stocks, the prices still remained steady and have since gone up. Needless to say, the lab cost of a 16mm print in the 1970s was considerably less than it is today.
Working out of her home in Berkeley, California, Freude Bartlett opened Serious Business in the mid-1970s. The preface to her 1976 catalog said, "We are committed to film as an art form and our collection includes experimental and documentary work... The independent filmmaker is an artist, reflecting and commenting on the world and its meanings." She offered films by Scott Bartlett, Mary Beams, Stephen Beck, Adam Beckett, Robert Breer, Sally Cruikshank, Ed Emshwiller, George Griffin, Suzan Pitt Kraning, Pat O'Neill, Kathy Rose, Stan Vanderbeek and other artists. George Griffin's one-minute long Trickfilm rented for $5 and sold for $35 while his 4 1/2 minute The Club rented for $10 and sold for $100. Pat O'Neill's Saugus Series (18 min.) rented for $25 and sold for $250. The company grew for several years, but went out of business around 1980.
When Serious Business closed many of the animators represented by Freude signed contracts with Ron Epple's Picture Start. The company issued catalog #1 in 1981. It listed animated work by Jane Aaron, Karen Aqua, Skip Battaglia, Robert Breer, John Canemaker, Vince Collins, Sally Cruikshank, Larry Cuba, Paul Demeyer, Geoff Dunbar, David Ehrlich, Paul Glabicki, John and Faith Hubley, Flip Johnson, Norman McLaren, Suzan Pitt, Gary Schwartz, Maureen Selwood, Henry Selick, Stan VanderBeek, and dozens of other artists. Their rental and sales prices were similar to those of Serious Business and the company is no longer in business.
Years ago I asked Sally Cruikshank about her non-theatrical distributors. She said that considering her work was short and that there was not a great demand for animated shorts on television or in theaters before features, she was quite pleased with the size of the checks she had gotten from Serious Business and Picture Start. She indicated the checks were never for enormous sums, but her income from her films was several thousand dollars a year.
There were other companies with interesting animation collections as well. Creative Film Society was founded by Bob Pike in 1957. The 1975 catalog offered work by Scott Bartlett, Jordan Belson, Oskar Fischinger, Len Lye, Pat O'Neill, James and John Whitney, John Hubley, the Fleischer Studio, Ernest Pintoff, and others. Pike died in 1974. His wife Angie runs the company from her home near Los Angeles.
Two important supporters of independent animation have been the late Charles Samu who imported outstanding animation from Eastern Europe, and Prescott Wright who runs Filmwright in San Francisco. Wright produced and distributed The Tournee of Animation from 1970 - 1986. He also rented individual animated titles, produced a few animated works, and is presently active in animation as a teacher, producer and consultant to the industry. In the 1970s he worked with Sheldon Renan to produce The International Animation Festival, a television series which aired on public television for three seasons.
Another important figure in 16mm distribution was Bernice Coe who founded Coe Film in 1971. Her main activity was to provide television broadcasters with short films. She began by producing packages of shows for cable television. At one time she had the television rights to thousands of films. Before she retired she helped place dozens of animated films by American independent animators on cable television.
There are other types of distributors that made/make animation available including several film co-ops (Canyon Cinema is alive and well in San Francisco) and university film libraries that rent and/or sell films. Berkeley's Extension Media Center continues to acquire works. One of their best selling titles in the 1990s has been Pat Amlin's Popul Vuh, an animated hour long work available on film and tape.
The Decline Of 16mm Film Distribution
The 16mm market for animated films is not dead, but it certainly has shrunk in size to the point that it is close to becoming an endangered species. There are several reasons why distribution of 16mm film has declined.
The first blow to the industry was the termination (about 1969) of government-funded programs that enabled school districts to buy audio visual materials. The funds for visual literacy in the early `60s fueled the rapid rise of independent film. With this subsidy for the arts gone, the industry slowly decayed.
In the 1980s the rise of distribution of films on video tape coupled with the rise of film stock prices had an adverse effect on the industry. For most consumers it no longer made sense to spend a great deal to buy a 16mm print of a work when a video copy was available for less. At first distributors tried to keep video prices high enough so they could continue to earn a profit similar to the income produced through film sales and rentals. Eventually video prices had to be cut to be competitive with companies selling tapes at mass market prices. You can still find rare material for sale on tape in the $50 to $100 range, but do these tapes sell well? The introduction of tape also changed America's viewing habits resulting in the decline of ticket sales at art houses.
Another problem in recent years has been the rising cost of doing business. It costs thousands of dollars to produce and distribute a large heavy sales catalog. Printing and mailing prices have gone up over the years. If a company's income declines, at some point it just doesn't make sense to continue running a business no matter how much the owner of the company loves film.
All images used to illustrate this article are
from the ArtToday Archive (http://www.arttoday.com)
Note: Readers may contact any Animation World Magazine contributor by sending an email to [email protected].
Table of Contents
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© 1998 Animation World Network
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Ever return from a hike wanting to know more about the yellow-bellied Marmot, Golden Eagle, or American Dipper you saw along the trail? Typically that required consulting a reference book, or heading to the local library. But a new website called the Encyclopedia of Life
wants to change that. Their goal is to create online reference pages for the 1.8 million species known to inhabit the Earth.
Last week organizers unveiled the first 30,000 pages, including 25 exemplar pages
packed with photos, videos, and detailed scientific information compiled and checked by experts. These feature-rich pages can teach you about the life history of the Peregrine falcon,eol.org/taxa/16990688
or plot the distribution of the Yellow-fever mosquito.
Created with backing and expertise from Harvard University, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Field Museum of Chicago, the Encyclopedia of Life aims to create reference pages for the remaining 1,790,000 species by 2017. But if you’re in a hurry to find out how long yellow-bellied marmots hibernate each winter, you can check out the Animal Diversity Web
, an online database of species managed by the University of Michigan’s Museum of Zoology. The answer: From September to May. —Jason Stevenson
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What is the CPI?
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) is an indicator that is used continuously to measure the price changes of households’ representative basket of goods and services.
What is the CPI used for?
The CPI is the statistical instrument that measures inflation.
The CPI is to inflation as a thermometer is to temperature, a barometer is to atmospheric pressure, and a speedometer is to speed.
Inflation can be defined as a continuous and widespread increase in goods and services prices.
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Synarthroses (immovable articulations).Synarthroses include all those articulations in which the surfaces of the bones are in almost direct contact, fastened together by intervening connective tissue or hyaline cartilage, and in which there is no appreciable motion, as in the joints between the bones of the skull, excepting those of the mandible. There are four varieties of synarthrosis: sutura, schindylesis, gomphosis, and synchondrosis.
Sutura.Sutura is that form of articulation where the contiguous margins of the bones are united by a thin layer of fibrous tissue; it is met with only in the skull (Fig. 296). When the margins of the bones are connected by a series of processes, and indentations interlocked together, the articulation is termed a true suture (sutura vera); and of this there are three varieties: sutura dentata, serrata, and limbosa. The margins of the bones are not in direct contact, being separated by a thin layer of fibrous tissue, continuous externally with the pericranium, internally with the dura mater. The sutura dentata is so called from the tooth-like form of the projecting processes, as in the suture between the parietal bones. In the sutura serrata the edges of the bones are serrated like the teeth of a fine saw, as between the two portions of the frontal bone. In the sutura limbosa, there is besides the interlocking, a certain degree of bevelling of the articular surfaces, so that the bones overlap one another, as in the suture between the parietal and frontal bones. When the articulation is formed by roughened surfaces placed in apposition with one another, it is termed a false suture (sutura notha), of which there are two kinds: the sutura squamosa, formed by the overlapping of contiguous bones by broad bevelled margins, as in the squamosal suture between the temporal and parietal, and the sutura harmonia, where there is simple apposition of contiguous rough surfaces, as in the articulation between the maxillæ, or between the horizontal parts of the palatine bones.
FIG. 297 Section through occipitosphenoid synchondrosis of an infant. (See enlarged image)
Schindylesis.Schindylesis is that form of articulation in which a thin plate of bone is received into a cleft or fissure formed by the separation of two laminæ in another bone, as in the articulation of the rostrum of the sphenoid and perpendicular plate of the ethmoid with the vomer, or in the reception of the latter in the fissure between the maxillæ and between the palatine bones.
Gomphosis.Gomphosis is articulation by the insertion of a conical process into a socket; this is not illustrated by any articulation between bones, properly so called, but is seen in the articulations of the roots of the teeth with the alveoli of the mandible and maxillæ.
Synchondrosis.Where the connecting medium is cartilage the joint is termed a synchondrosis (Fig. 297). This is a temporary form of joint, for the cartilage is converted into bone before adult life. Such joints are found between the epiphyses and bodies of long bones, between the occipital and the sphenoid at, and for some years after, birth, and between the petrous portion of the temporal and the jugular process of the occipital.
In these articulations the contiguous bony surfaces are either connected by broad flattened disks of fibrocartilage, of a more or less complex structure, as in the articulations between the bodies of the vertebræ; or are united by an interosseous ligament, as in the inferior tibiofibular articulation. The first form is termed a symphysis(Fig. 298), the second a syndesmosis.
Diarthroses (freely movable articulations).This class includes the greater number of the joints in the body. In a diarthrodial joint the contiguous bony surfaces are covered with articular cartilage, and connected by ligaments lined by synovial membrane (Fig. 299). The joint may be divided, completely or incompletely, by an articular disk or meniscus, the periphery of which is continuous with the fibrous capsule while its free surfaces are covered by synovial membrane (Fig. 300).
FIG. 300 Diagrammatic section of a diarthrodial joint, with an articular disk. (See enlarged image)
The varieties of joints in this class have been determined by the kind of motion permitted in each. There are two varieties in which the movement is uniaxial, that is to say, all movements take place around one axis. In one form, the ginglymus, this axis is, practically speaking, transverse; in the other, the trochoid or pivot-joint, it is longitudinal. There are two varieties where the movement is biaxial, or around two horizontal axes at right angles to each other, or at any intervening axis between the two. These are the condyloid and the saddle-joint. There is one form where the movement is polyaxial, the enarthrosis or ball-and-socket joint; and finally there are the arthrodia or gliding joints.
Ginglymus or Hinge-joint.In this form the articular surfaces are moulded to each other in such a manner as to permit motion only in one plane, forward and backward, the extent of motion at the same time being considerable. The direction which the distal bone takes in this motion is seldom in the same plane as that of the axis of the proximal bone; there is usually a certain amount of deviation from the straight line during flexion. The articular surfaces are connected together by strong collateral ligaments, which form their chief bond of union. The best examples of ginglymus are the interphalangeal joints and the joint between the humerus and ulna; the knee- and ankle-joints are less typical, as they allow a slight degree of rotation or of side-to-side movement in certain positions of the limb.
Trochoid or Pivot-joint (articulatio trochoidea; rotary joint).Where the movement is limited to rotation, the joint is formed by a pivot-like process turning within
a ring, or a ring on a pivot, the ring being formed partly of bone, partly of ligament. In the proximal radioulnar articulation, the ring is formed by the radial notch of the ulna and the annular ligament; here, the head of the radius rotates within the ring. In the articulation of the odontoid process of the axis with the atlas the ring is formed in front by the anterior arch, and behind by the transverse ligament of the atlas; here, the ring rotates around the odontoid process.
Condyloid Articulation (articulatio ellipsoidea).In this form of joint, an ovoid articular surface, or condyle, is received into an elliptical cavity in such a manner as to permit of flexion, extension, adduction, abduction, and circumduction, but no axial rotation. The wrist-joint is an example of this form of articulation.
Articulation by Reciprocal Reception (articulatio sellaris; saddle-joint).In this variety the opposing surfaces are reciprocally concavo-convex. The movements are the same as in the preceding form; that is to say, flexion, extension, adduction, abduction, and circumduction are allowed; but no axial rotation. The best example of this form is the carpometacarpal joint of the thumb.
Enarthrosis (ball-and-socket joints).Enarthrosis is a joint in which the distal bone is capable of motion around an indefinite number of axes, which have one common center. It is formed by the reception of a globular head into a cup-like cavity, hence the name ball-and-socket. Examples of this form of articulation are found in the hip and shoulder.
Arthrodia (gliding joints) is a joint which admits of only gliding movement; it is formed by the apposition of plane surfaces, or one slightly concave, the other slightly convex, the amount of motion between them being limited by the ligaments or osseous processes surrounding the articulation. It is the form present in the joints between the articular processes of the vertebræ, the carpal joints, except that of the capitate with the navicular and lunate, and the tarsal joints with the exception of that between the talus and the navicular.
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Word of the Day, Website of the Day, Number to Know, This Day in History, Today's Featured Birthday and Daily Quote.
Morning Minutes: March 3
Word of the Day
Flabbergast FLAB-er-gast (verb) To overcome with surprise and bewilderment; astound. - dictionary.com
Website of the Day
Frequently challenged books of the 21st century
The "Comstock Law," which prohibited the sending of "obscene materials" through the mail, was passed on this day in 1873. This law led to the banning of several books, including James Joyce's "Ulysses." Visit the American Library Association site to see the most commonly banned books of the last decade.
Number to Know
2/3: Majority needed in Congress to override a presidential veto. Congress voted to override a presidential veto for the first time on this date in 1845.
This Day in History
March 3, 1875: Indoor ice hockey makes its public debut in Montreal.
Today's Featured Birthday
Actress Jessica Biel (31)
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science." - Albert Einstein
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Why Study Japanese?
Japan is a country located in East Asia in the Pacific Ocean.The island of Japan is a little smaller than the state of California, but astonishingly holds a population of approximately 128 million. Japanese language consists of a complex system of casual, distal, and honorific styles reflecting the hierarchical nature of Japanese society, and the writing system employs three distinct styles:hiragana, katakana, and kanji (Chinese characters). At times, learning the Japanese language may
be challenging, but students will be fascinated by the unique heritage and traditions of the Japanese culture and language.
At Baylor University, the Japanese program welcomes students with various goals and interests. Our program aims to offer a strong language foundation that will open up opportunities for students to seek employment with Japanese companies upon graduation. We also provide the language instruction for those who are interested in exploring modern Japanese popular culture through literature, anime, and games. Therefore, our courses aim to provide students go beyond basic language instruction to include exposure to Japanese culture in a variety of forms and contexts.
Students interested in concentrating on Japanese language and culture may take up to 26 credit hours of Japanese language courses by electing a major or minor in Asian Studies. Students will learn to read, speak, and write Japanese, including hiragana, katakana, and a few hundred kanji characters. Students also have the opportunity to study abroad for one or two semesters in exchange programs at one of two Japanese Universities during their undergraduate studies. Some of our graduates have acquired teaching positions in various language schools in Japan, and others have participated in the Japanese government-sponsored JET program.
Current Students say:
Studying Japanese has been one of the best decisions I made in college. Joining JSA(Japanese Student Association) and making many friends in JSA were great, but the my favorite experience was the study abroad program in Hosei University in Tokyo. All was made possible by studying Japanese, and I'd recommend it to anyone. -- Hae, D Lee
I first became interested in Japanese during high school, when a friend introduced me to Japanese animation. By the time I came to college I'd realized what a fascinating, beautiful, and difficult language Japanese is, and I knew I had to learn more about it. – Katie Gilchrist
Thanks to the four years I've spent in the Japanese program here at Baylor University, I can sincerely say that I've fallen in love with the Japanese language and culture, and whether or not I use the language in the future, it has been an amazing experience!-- Celeste Mitchell
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down the chimney, circa 1930.
(Courtesy of Bettmann/CORBIS)
Hear Central Texans discuss favorite Christmas memories from their childhood in the segment that aired on KWBU-FM:
Christmas Gifts in the Great Depression
Original Airdates: December 21, 22, 23 (2010)
This is Living Stories, featuring voices from the collections of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. I'm Louis Mazé.
For most families during the Great Depression, Christmas was not a time for extravagance. Money and jobs were difficult to come by, and it was all some families could do to keep food on the table.
Retired Baylor physics professor Robert Packard remembers how hard times called for creativity. He describes a plan he came up with while visiting his cousins in the Temple area one Christmas during the Great Depression. Children looking forward to Santa's visit this year should not listen to the following:
"They lived in the country. And so Christmas, when it came, we got no presents. We might get a bag of—an apple or something. So I told my cousin, I said, 'Why don't we kidnap Santa Claus? He's got all these gifts, and he bypasses us, but he brings us something.' So we went to bed on Christmas Eve early. The bedroom I was in—and I was the only boy, and my sister and then my cousins were girls. So they had a room, and I had a small room. So anyway, we climbed out the window—out in the country—with a rope that we were going to tie up Santa Claus. (laughter) But we were standing there in the cold and waiting and waiting and waiting and probably shivering, and then we happened to look in the window and see our parents taking toys off the top shelf. So suddenly we realized there was no Santa Claus, but we knew we now could direct our interest directly to the parents."
Ruth and Charles Armstrong, both longtime Waco residents, remember the gifts they received as youngsters during the Depression:
"Now sometimes I would get a doll—not a real, real expensive doll but nice dolls, you know—and socks, a little iron, just typical little things that little girls would like."
"I was more fortunate, I guess. I don't know of a Christmas that I didn't get at least one large—what I call a large gift would be a full-size wagon. And I've got a picture there on my new bicycle, and I've got another picture where I was in a little old car you sit in there and pedal it, you know. But I had two older brothers that worked and my daddy, too—I was the youngest one for several years there—so I got a few extra things that some of the other kids didn't get. But as far as times, our times were just as—got rough, too. We had a hard time, too. But seem like on Christmas I came out ahead in the neighborhood."
Mr. Armstrong describes the tradition of hanging a stocking:
"Everybody hung their socks up. We didn't have a fireplace, but we'd hang them up wherever it was convenient, you know, around close to the tree after we started having a tree because we'd still put gifts under the tree. But before we had a tree we'd hang up near the stove, and the bigger the sock the better. I'd get the biggest sock I could find, hang up there, and you could always count on fireworks. There was always some firecrackers in there, always apples and oranges in there."
As hard as times were during the Great Depression, families with some type of income still managed to make sure the children had gifts at Christmas. With the current economy and ever-increasing commercialization of Christmas, it's helpful to look back and realize that children do not need heaps of presents to grow up with wonderful memories of Christmas.
Living Stories is heard every Tuesday on 103 point 3 FM, Waco's NPR. For more information about this program or the Institute for Oral History, visit us at baylor.edu/livingstories.
Search our collection of full transcripts available online.
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Thousands of cancer patients whose disease has spread to the bone are to benefit from a new drug which is to be made available on the NHS.
Denosumab (Xgeva) helps prevent bone complications in people whose cancer has spread from its original site.
These complications include bone fractures, spinal compression - when the spinal cord is compressed by the bone - and bone complications requiring radiotherapy or surgery. Symptoms include pain as well as weakening and eventual destruction of the bone.
The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) has published its final draft guidance which recommends the drug for certain groups of cancer patients whose disease has spread, most commonly to the spine, pelvis, hip, upper leg bones and skull.
The conditions include bone tumours from breast cancer and other solid tumours not relating to the breast or prostate, such as lung or kidney cancer.
Professor Carole Longson, director of the Centre for Health Technology Evaluation at Nice, said: "Bone metastasis can severely affect a person's quality of life, stopping them from doing things so many of us take for granted. We are therefore pleased that our draft guidance recommends denosumab for those patients who are most likely to benefit from the treatment."
Tara Beaumont, of Breast Cancer Care, said: "People whose breast cancer has spread to their bones can experience a reduction in quality of life, and currently have limited treatment options, so making denosumab available through the NHS means that there is another option for people for whom bisphosphonates are not appropriate.
"As denosumab can be given as an injection under the skin rather than intravenously (into the vein), it also offers patients a different route of administration, which may be more convenient.
"We hope that this announcement paves the way for similar positive developments in secondary breast cancer treatment and raises awareness of the importance of quality of life and symptom management for those living with incurable cancer."
If no appeals are lodged against the guidance, it will be published later this year and patients will be able to get the treatment on the NHS.
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Guest Author - Elizabeth Brennan
We are recommended to take a thirty minute brisk walk at least five days a week for optimum health benefits. However if you are obese this may be impossible and you may think it is unattainable. Do not lose heart as research at the University of Colorado has suggested that strolling for obese people could result in more calorie loss than brisk walking. While the conclusions of this study are open to debate if it gives hope and encouragement to people who find exercise difficult it will have achieved an enormous amount.
Strolling on a regular basis is better than taking no exercise at all and if you keep it up you will reap the benefits of feeling better, experience a sense of achievement and enjoy increased mobility.
There is a difference between being overweight and being obese. Your body mass index is used to assess whether you are obese or not. Each person has an ideal body weight depending on his/her height and whether or not he/she has a small, medium or large body frame.
Obesity is a medical condition in which excess body fat has accumulated to the extent that it may have an adverse effect on health, leading to reduced life expectancy and health problems. Overweight is being too heavy for your height. Muscle and bone mass as well as fat accumulation contribute to being overweight. If you are 20% or more over your ideal body weight you are considered mildly obese. You can calculate your BMI (body mass index) by dividing your weight in kilograms by your height in metres. If your BMI is more than 30 you are considered mildly obese.
Walking is a weight bearing exercise and as such there is likelihood that brisk walking increases the risk of osteoarthritis in obese individuals because of the body weight they are carrying and consequent stress on the knee joints. Walking at a slower pace puts less stress on a person’s lower body and it is likely that knee –joint load may be reduced by walking slower. This is why strolling as opposed to brisk walking is an acceptable form of exercise for obese people.
You will need good walking shoes that have adequate support and good shock absorbing qualities. Use a walking stick to help balance and take some of the weight. Make sure you are well hydrated before you start and bring a small bottle of water with you as obese people sweat more during exercise and may become dehydrated more quickly. Stroll on even terrain and test your ability to begin with. Try a short distance and remember you have to return to base. When you can walk your chosen distance comfortably you can then increase the distance until you can stroll comfortably for thirty minutes. This may take time but be patient.
Combine your daily exercise with some healthy modifications to your diet and you will notice a difference in your health before long. Always talk to your medical advisor before you embark on any exercise programme or diet modification.
Enjoy your stroll!
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occurance of ovulation in female humans
maga at vetbio.unizh.ch
Fri Jan 27 09:00:11 EST 1995
In article <3fs0k3$gc3 at ixnews2.ix.netcom.com>, randi2 at ix.netcom.com (Rhonda
> Is it possible for a female to ovulate at any time during her cycle?
> please respond with any articles or facts that you may have.
> your response is greatly appreciated!
> rrandi2 at ix.netcom.com
> first time user, obviously
It is possible (and indeed not rare) that a woman ovulate even more than
once during the intermestrual period. Ovulation should occur normally
around day 14, but this is a general rule which admits many exceptions.
Usually it is nothing to be worried about, but if this alteration occurred
suddenly in a subject who had always regular ovulation, maybe is better
make a check-in. This is also the reason why contraceptive natural methods
are not generally reliable and must be calibrated upon each individual
mestrual cycle. If you want to know exactly your day, you can try to
measure your body's temperature throughout the cycle and look at small
losses of white substance which should indicate the ovulation, but this
method is not always reliable too. The best way is to call your MD for an
echography at the time you think you are ovulating. Usually within 24-48h
before ovulation, fullicula are about 19-20 mm in diameter, thus easy to be
Hope this will help,
G. Maga, PhD
More information about the Bioforum
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With obesity becoming a worldwide epidemic, there’s no need to question why new treatment options are important. In fact, according to recent reports, obesity-related health and economic costs are estimated at $100 billion per year. Unfortunately, the options currently available to treat obesity only produce modest weight loss. But what about the conditions often associated with obesity, like diabetes, heart disease, osteoarthritis and sleep apnea? The majority of treatments currently available don’t account for improving these conditions and often don’t account for the dangerous side effects of quickly loosing an excessive amount of weight. Fortunately, according to leading companies and clinicians, there are several obesity products in development that could significantly improve both the weight and lives of obese patients. These new treatments aim to provide patients with a safe and effective treatment that will help them loose weight, improve their behavior, and ultimately, help reduce mortality rates. In today’s challenging regulatory environment for FDA approval, the FDA will look closely at the safety, efficacy and method of action for each treatment. Companies say approval may come in early 2011—positive news for the greatest medical problem facing the nation and the world.
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The Department of Biological Sciences Greenhouse Facility is located in the Virginia Tech University Greenhouse Complex on Washington Street, beside the Virginia Tech Horticulture Gardens.
The Department of Biological Sciences Greenhouse Facility supports the educational and research needs of the department. The Teaching Plant Collection is extensively used for teaching our undergraduate courses. The facility supports faculty and student research projects. In addition to meeting essential teaching and research needs, the facility provides tours for visitors and local schools. Also, other departments in the university use our plant collection for classes. For example, the Art Department uses the greenhouses for basic art and painting classes.
Undergraduate Courses Taught Using the Virginia Tech Greenhouses
BIOL 1015, 1016: General Biology Lab
BIOL 1115, 1116: Principles of Biology Lab
BIOL 1125, 1126: Biological Principles Lab
BIOL 2204: Plants and Civilization: The uses of plants as sources of food, medicine, drugs, spices, beverages, poisons, fiber, oils, and plant exudates.
BIOL 2304: Plant Biology: Introductory botany. Form, growth, function, reproduction, and ecological adaptations of major groups of plants.
BIOL 3204: Plant Taxonomy: Systematic survey of vascular plants, emphasizing identification, terminology, classification, evolutionary relationships.
Wage Position at the Greenhouses and VBI Plant Growth Facility
Maintain greenhouse facilities on weekends, Saturday and Sunday, holidays, staff vacation and sick leave days.
Properly water teaching collection and research projects.
Check the greenhouse's environmental equipment to maintain proper temperatures and functions.
Must be very independent, responsible, reliable, and have some knowledge in caring for plants.
Hours/week: 3-4 hours per day on weekends, plus 3-4 hours on staff vacation and sick leave days.
Contact: Debbie Wiley (231-5112) or [email protected].
This species has the largest unbranched inflorescence of any herbaceous plant in the world. Commonly known as the "Corpse Plant", A. titanum has an intensely powerful stench that is released when it blooms. The bloom will last only 2-3 days. After the bloom dies, a leaf stalk will begin to emerge that resembles a tree sapling.
For more information on the corpse flower, including photos, visit this link.
The Virginia Tech Biological Sciences Greenhouse Teaching Plant Collection provides educational opportunities and experiences through the availability of high quality plant specimens. The Teaching Plant Collection features over 300 species, hosting a variety of interesting and important genera, including aquatic, desert, tropical, local, rare and endangered species. Our teaching plant collection has been specifically acquired and maintained to meet the needs of the undergraduate courses.
Whereas the Department of Biological Sciences and the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute have limited access to plant growth facilities, a new facility was designed, funded, and constructed. The mission of the facility is to provide "state of the art" plant growth space to support and promote scholarship in plant systems by scientists at Virginia Tech. We strive to fully integrate this facility in the learning, discovery, and engagement activities of the department of Biological Sciences, the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute and other plant related departments and institutes at Virginia Tech.
Hours of Operation
8:00 am to 4:00 pm
Monday - Friday
From Rt. 460: Enter VT Campus at Southgate Road. Take first left onto Duckpond Drive. Take first right onto Washington Street. Turn right at the Horticulture Gardens. The greenhouse facilities are right next door, in Greenhouse #F5. Be sure to get a visitor's parking pass from the Southgate Information Center.
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3D Printing Materials
Your options for the plastic to use in your 3D printer
Bits From Bytes RapMan and 3DTouch 3D printers build models in a range of colours with either PLA or ABS plastic.
PLA or to use it's full name, Poly Lactic Acid is probably the best material to get started with when you first start 3D printing. With the help of the 3D printer's onboard fan it will cool and set very quickly. This means that you can avoid warping and achieve a range of shapes than would be difficult with other materials.
After 3D printing you can finish your model by sanding and spraying with automotive spray filler. You can also paint directly onto PLA with acrylic paints.
PLA is kinder to the environment that other plastics as it is derived from corn starch and not fossil fuels. It is also biodegrade in an active compost heap.
Solid: black, white, purple, yellow, blue and green
Translucent: clear, red, blue and green.
ABS, or Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene is popular in industry, being used for products such as car bumpers and LEGO® due to its toughness and strength. ABS is probably the second easiest material to 3D print with, but care must be taken when printing larger objects as it can suffer warping as the 3D model cools.
ABS can be finished by sanding, spraying with automotive spray filler and using Methyl Ethyl Ketone as a solvent. You can also paint directly onto ABS with acrylic paints.
ABS is produced from fossil fuels and is not biodegradable.
Solid: white, black, red, blue, green and yellow
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Elizabeth 1 (1558-1603)
This was a time of great social and cultural change in England. There were rich new developments in literature, sciences, medicine and the arts.
England was sending increasing numbers of ships to voyage overseas into unknown areas. Sea captains like Drake and Hawkins took every opportunity to capture the ships of other countries, especially those of Spain and Portugal. These men may have been seen as pirates or profiteers, depending which side you were on. The Queen did little to stop them.
So when the idea of a company trading with the East was first put to Elizabeth I she hesitated. She knew what her seamen were like and thought they might attack traders from other countries, especially the Portuguese and Dutch who were England's main rivals. But, on 31 December 1600 she gave a charter to The Company of Merchants in the City of London, granting them a monopoly of all English trade in Asia and the Pacific. This meant that no other English company or people were allowed to trade in that area.
When the first voyage of the East India Company embarked in 1601, it took with it a letter written by Elizabeth to the Sumatran Sultan Alauddin Shah.
James I of England (1603-1625) and VI of Scotland (1567-1625)
New styles of architecture were introduced in James I's reign, the Queen's House in Greenwich being an example. Unfortunately the Globe burnt down in 1613, but the theatre had become established by then.
When James came to the English throne, he was already James VI of Scotland. He needed money, and the Company seemed at times to be a good money-making venture. At other times it stood in his way. In 1603 James acquired large stocks of pepper. When the Company brought back tons of pepper from its first voyage, he tried to stop them selling it, so that he could make money on his own stock first.
In 1609 he launched one of the Company's ships. In that year he also gave the Company a new and better charter. He continued to take a lively interest in the Company for the rest of his reign. In return he received 'loans' which were never repaid.
It was during his reign that the Company's relations with India's Mughal emperors began, starting with an approach to Akbar.
Charles I (1625-1649)
The Company provided Charles I with a useful income. Charles I needed this money to help him fight the Civil War - the Crown was at war with Parliament, and eventually lost (Charles was beheaded and replaced by Oliver Cromwell). In a good year he could get as much as 20,000 in customs duties through the Company's trade. He could also obtain 'loans' for granting favours to the Company - one of these in 1641 was for ?60,000.
This didn't mean he was always a friend to the Company. He granted a charter to one ship, the Roebuck, allowing it to continue piracy near India. The Indians, seeing an English ship attack their cargo ships, wrongly imprisoned Company servants in Surat. To get them released, Charles had to write an apology to the Mughal emperor, Shah Jahangir.
Charles II's reign brought in a change from the drabness of the time of Cromwell. Once again fashion became important as did the theatre. More impressive buildings were built.
Charles II (1660-1685)
Soon after coming to the throne, Charles II gave the Company a new charter. The charter allowed the Company to fortify and colonize its factories, sending people, stores and ammunition. This meant they could build up their factories in India, which laid the basis for the future rule of India by the British. In 1662 Charles II signed the Treaty of Breda in which the spice island of Run was exchanged for the island of Manhattan. It was during the reign of Charles II that tea started becoming popular.
When Charles I was beheaded a period called the Commonwealth, when there was no king or queen but a Protector, started.
Oliver Cromwell (1649-1659)
Life changed greatly during Cromwell's rule. The leading Puritans simplified much of English culture, believing that many aspects of existing culture went against the teachings of the Bible. As they dressed in plain clothes they did not have the need for expensive fabrics such as silk. This led to a decline in the Persian silk trade. It was during Cromwell's reign that 'coho seeds' (coffee) were introduced into England's, and the first coffee house opened.
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Book Cliffs (also called Roan Cliffs), oil shale rocks located in the Piceance Basin of western Colorado.
BLM Planners: A Strange New Breed
By John Singlaub
When it was passed in 1976, the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) initiated a number of revolutionary changes at the BLM. Suddenly, the Bureau was faced with the prospect of the long-term retention and management of the public lands under multiple-use management and sustained yield. Budgets grew to accommodate the broad new requirements of FLPMA, and a wide variety of “-ologists” were hired to supplement the range conservationists, realty specialists, geologists, and mining engineers already employed by the BLM. These hires later became known as the post-1976 “FLPMA Boomers.”
None of these new characters were stranger to the BLM than the small cadre of professional planners hired to implement the requirements of FLPMA section 202, “Land Use Planning.” They helped develop new planning rules, finalized in 1979, that called for comprehensive, systematic plans, known as resource management plans (RMPs), for the public lands. These plans were intended to mesh with the new planning rules being implemented by the Forest Service and were to consider the plans and policies of local, tribal, and state governments. They also required intense public participation and compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) planning and decisionmaking process, which required the preparation of environmental impact statements (EISs). The plans eventually became known as RMPs/EISs.
I was hired fresh out of graduate school as a community planner for the BLM’s Craig District in Colorado. I arrived in October 1979, only days after the final RMP planning rules were approved as a replacement for the pre-FLPMA management framework plans, which were not NEPA-compliant. What seemed to me on first reading to be a rather straightforward process based on traditional land use planning concepts was being received by my BLM colleagues with some concern and more than a little trepidation. This was exacerbated by the fact that the Kremmling Resource Area, part of the Craig District, had been selected to complete a “pilot RMP” to test the new regulations. My assurances that this was no big deal and that it would be fun to get out in front of the rest of the BLM and showcase the Craig District got me a few strange looks.
I worked with Ade Neisius, the RMP team leader in Kremmling, to quickly come up with a schedule, intermediate project steps, and a commitment from the team and from management to move forward with the pilot plan. We met periodically with the other pilot RMP teams from throughout the BLM, shared ideas and stories, and ultimately completed the plan, albeit with the predictable delays and budget challenges we encounter in all of our work. Throughout the process, I was thrilled at the flexibility and support I found from managers throughout the BLM in exploring new approaches and trying out new ideas. District Manager Marv Pearson, Area Manager Roger Zortman, State Director Dale Andrus, and the state office staff, including Planning Branch Chief Fran Cherry and Environmental Branch Chief Elaine Zielinski, provided the support that made the RMP a success.
I soon found myself as the team leader for the Piceance Basin RMP in Meeker, Colorado. Driven by BLM Director Bob Burford’s interest in developing oil shale in the Piceance Basin, we began getting support from the Washington Office, including from Minerals Chief Monte Jordan. On one of his many visits to Meeker, I asked Jordan if we could have the funds for a geographic information system (GIS) to facilitate development of alternatives for the RMP. Before I knew it, he arranged for us to use a mainframe Data General computer, and in early 1981, we were embarking on the first GIS-supported RMP in BLM’s history, using what now seems like quite primitive GIS tools.
As the pilot RMPs were completed, RMPs/EISs were spreading throughout the BLM. The Washington Office recognized the need to share the experiences of the pilots and to develop common guidance so that each team could avoid plowing new ground. In 1984, Planning and Environmental Coordination Chief David Williams directed Ken Harrison and me to develop training programs for the field offices with the help of what was then the Phoenix Training Center. Although we were getting better results when several team members could attend the training, travel costs were prohibitive. Ken and I began going out to BLM offices to train onsite, focusing on local needs, concerns, and resource issues. This proved to be an excellent strategy. By 1986, the BLM had gained enough momentum and RMP experience that we could pass the baton to a new generation of planners. And you know, being a planner wasn’t as strange then as it was when I first started in 1979!
John Singlaub worked for the BLM as a planner and manager in Colorado; Washington, DC; New Mexico; and Oregon. He moved to Carson City, Nevada, as the district manager in 1994 and retired from the BLM in 2003.
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While the rest of the country wallows in sugary hearts and roses, native Oregonians know that the real holiday today is Oregon's Statehood Day. Granted statehood on February 14, 1859, our state is 147 years old.
Two simple questions that should provoke complex answers:
What does Oregon mean to you? Why do you live in Oregon - rather than somewhere else?
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Everything you need to understand or teach Sonnet XXIX by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Barrett Browning's first statement ("I think of thee!") is, in part, the subject of the poem, for the entire sonnet attempts to imitate, through its imagery and sound, the dynamics of her mind dwelling on Browning, her fond yet absent lover. (Though readers customarily use the term "speaker" to note the difference between a poet and the voice behind his or her work, in the case of "Sonnet XXIX" one can speak of Barrett Browning as the speaker, since the poems are deliberate and undisguised addresses to her husband.) Barrett Browning compares her thoughts of Browning to "wild vines" that "twine and bud" about a tree here, the "tree" is Browning. Like vines, Barrett Browning's thoughts of Browning grow more profuse with the passing of time; eventually, they grow to such length and density (as they "Put out broad leaves") that they cover the tree that gives them a place... View more of the Sonnet XXIX Summary
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Everything you need to understand or teach Yellow Woman by Leslie Marmon Silko.
The poem that prefaces "Yellow Woman" suggests that the story that follows is mythic. Whirlwind Man belongs "to the wind," and he and Kochininako, Yellow Woman, "travel swiftly / this whole world." At the story's opening, the unnamed female narrator awakens at dawn next to a man on a riverbank. She watches the sun rise, then gets up and walks south, following their footprints from the day before. She comes across their horses, and she looks for but cannot see her pueblo (a multi-storied dwelling built of adobe; capitalized, the word also means "people" in the sense of a tribal group).
She returns to the sleeping man to tell him she is leaving. He reminds her, smiling, that she must come with him. He calls her "Yellow Woman" and will not answer her questions about who he is, saying only that the night before she had guessed who he... View more of the Yellow Woman Summary
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|Name: _____________________________||Period: ___________________________|
This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.
Short Answer Questions
Directions: Answer the question with a short answer.
1. Who comes aboard Lydia in a small craft to speak with Hornblower?
2. With whom does Bush compare Hornblower?
3. What would the crew enjoy again when they reached St. Helena?
4. What did Lady Barbara say they needed in the cockpit?
5. Who is Polwheal?
Short Essay Questions
Directions: Answer the questions with a short paragraph.
1. What is Hornblower decked out in when he goes ashore at Panama?
2. What is Hornblower forced to due in order to close in on Natividad when there...
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(approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page)
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Mid-Book Test (up to Part 2 Section 1 (page 79 to 92))
|Name: _____________________________||Period: ___________________________|
This test consists of 15 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions.
Multiple Choice Questions
Directions: Circle the correct answer.
1. Where do the names in Part 2 of the story come from?
a) From Shakespeare.
b) From an adaptation that was printed in 1576.
c) From John Updike's presumptions about the origin of names.
d) From a different publisher's edition in 1890.
2. Which of the following is a name in Part 3?
3. How does Rorik attempt to change Gerutha's opinion of Horwendil?
a) He reminds her that she can not have an opinion because she is a woman.
b) He tells her the story of Ona and himself.
c) He tells her a fairytale.
d) He explains to...
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(approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page)
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Quiz: Book 1: The Creation | Book 1: The Ages of Mankind | Book 1: The Flood | Book 1: Deucalion and Pyrrha to Book 10: Myrrha | Book 10: Venus and Adonis | Book 10: Atalanta
|Name: _____________________________||Period: ___________________________|
This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions.
Multiple Choice Questions
Directions: Circle the correct answer.
1. What type of bird does Scylla's father transform into after his death?
a) A hawk.
b) A penguin.
c) A flamingo.
d) A swan.
2. After Minerva begins to beat her, how does Arachne commit suicide?
a) She holds her breath until she dies.
b) She stabs herself through the heart.
c) She drinks poison.
d) She hangs herself.
3. How does Juno punish the servants living in Athamas and Ino's house?
a) She transforms them into rats.
b) She drowns them in...
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(approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page)
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Quiz: Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 to Chapter 19 | Chapter 20
|Name: _____________________________||Period: ___________________________|
This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions.
Multiple Choice Questions
Directions: Circle the correct answer.
1. What does Mr. Bumble tell Mrs. Sowerberry was the cause of Oliver's bad behavior after Oliver's attack?
a) A fever.
b) Too much food.
c) Mocking and taunting.
d) Sleep deprivation.
2. What is Noah proud of even though he is a charity case?
a) He is learning a trade.
b) He has parents.
c) He is intelligent.
d) He owns some land.
3. What is Mrs. Sowerberry's main complaint about children?
a) They are weak.
b) They eat too much.
c) They are unintelligent.
d) They are too small.
4. What does Mr. Bumble see on a sign when he first arrives in London after Oliver is...
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Study foretold a consequence of oil leak
It wasn’t until seven weeks after the
But an unusual experiment conducted in 2000 off the coast of Norway, a trial run of a deep-water oil and gas spill that BP helped pay for, showed that oil could remain underwater for some time.
The North Atlantic exercise was designed to understand how a spill would behave as the drilling industry plumbed new depths to extract oil and gas. The federal Minerals Management Service and 22 companies took part in the test, at about half the depth of the gulf disaster.
Oil and gas were released close to the sea floor and only a fraction of it was spotted on the surface after about seven hours, defying conventional wisdom that oil would almost immediately surface because it’s lighter than water.
“Over time, it will rise, but the rate of rise can be quite slow,’’ said Eric Adams, senior research engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who helped perform several analyses on Project Deep Spill. “A lot of the oil [in the experiment] most likely rose after they went home.’’
A BP spokesman last week acknowledged the company participated in the Deep Spill experiment but refused to answer why officials flatly denied the possibility there could be significant amounts of oil trapped underwater — even the day after the federal government confirmed the existence of plumes on June 8.
“There is certainly oil in the water; we believe [it is] in low and small concentrations,’’ Toby Odone, the BP spokesman, said in an interview. Tony Hayward, BP chief executive, also downplayed the plumes last week during a congressional hearing. Under questioning from Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, he said the concentrations were low, and some of the oil was not from the ongoing spill.
Tests so far show that most of the underwater plumes are diluted: less than 1 part per million, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In those concentrations the water would not look polluted to the naked eye.
“But even though they are low concentrations, the biological community is very sensitive that far down,’’ said Steve Murawski, chief scientist for NOAA Fisheries Service.
Little is known about the plumes, which are largely separated from the surface slick. It is not clear how much oil they hold, how many and where there are, how quickly the oil will break down, and whether the plumes are harming marine life.
NOAA officials have confirmed the existence of underwater oil as far down as 3,300 feet below the surface and several miles from the wellhead. Other scientists have found evidence of plumes more than 10 miles long.
A research cruise headed by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution researchers and funded by the National Science Foundation set out Thursday to map one of the cloudy mixtures and dissect its components to better understand its toxicity, where it might travel, and how quickly it is being broken down by oil-eating microbes.
There are other concerns. Scientists say the high pressure of the gushing leak is creating tiny oil droplets, some that can become suspended in water. The use of large amounts of underwater chemical dispersants are making those droplets smaller still. All those droplets, suspended in the water and trapped by dense ocean layers, are probably forming the plumes. Scientists are also concerned about how much gas from the gushing well remains trapped underwater.
The use of dispersants is continuing, because scientists believe they help natural forces more easily break down the oil into less toxic compounds. Oil-eating microbes will do that under water. On the surface, they will be aided by sunlight, waves, and weather.
But it’s a careful balance. If there are too many oil droplets in the water, the microbes, which need oxygen, could grow out of control and suck up so much oxygen they create a dead zone. Samantha Joye, a University of Georgia scientist who was one of the first to discover the undersea oil, said oxygen levels were down 30 percent or more in some areas she sampled. Federal officials say ongoing testing shows oxygen levels in the gulf are normal.
“But there is a tipping point . . . that’s why you need continuous monitoring,’’ and NOAA is doing that, said Murawski, of the Fisheries Service.
The Deep Spill experiment, some 200 miles off Norway’s coast, was celebrated at the time as a forward-looking exercise for the next generation of drilling.
In all, four mixtures were released, including a combination of diesel oil and natural gas that, while not a perfect parallel to the crude oil leaking in the gulf, gives some comparison. Flow rates were comparable to the Gulf spill rate. No dispersants were used.
According to a 2005 analysis by MIT’s Adams and Scott Socolofsky, now a professor at Texas A&M University, between 2 and 17 cubic meters of the 60 cubic meters of released diesel made it to the surface before overflights looking for oil on the sea surface ended, about seven hours after the oil release stopped.
The scientists suggested that a significant portion of the oil rose slowly because it was comprised of very small droplets. Another colleague, Stephen Masutani of the University of Hawaii, found that one-third of the oil in Deep Spill would probably be found in droplets of half a millimeter or smaller, which could have taken a day or more to surface.
In the gulf spill, the dispersants probably made droplets much smaller still, Adams said, which means they could take much longer to surface.
Those droplets can get trapped by currents and dense water layers deep in the sea. “These small droplets have no choice but to follow the water once it leaves the upward-rising oil-and-gas mixture,’’ Socolofsky said.
After Deep Spill, there was no effort by the industry — or government — to better understand these submerged oil droplets.
Beth Daley can be reached at [email protected].
CLARIFICATION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly said that NOAA had confirmed the existence of oil underwater 142 miles from the wellhead. While NOAA did find evidence of oil, tests showed it did not come from the leaking BP wellhead.
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New Virus Found in Missouri; Ticks suspected
With early bow season right around the corner, and even already underway in some states, it's important to know you're not out of the woods from pesky insects. A new virus has been discovered in Missouri, and ticks are the likely culprit.
It started with fever, fatigue, diarrhea and loss of appetite.
But for two farmers in northwestern Missouri, the severe illness that followed a tick bite led epidemiologists on a journey to a new viral discovery.
"It's brand new to the world," said William Nicholson with the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Disease at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"It's unique in that it's never been found elsewhere and it is the first phlebovirus found to cause illness in humans in the Western Hemisphere. At this point we don't know how widespread it may be, or whether it's found in other states. We don't know how many people in Missouri may have had this virus, as the finding of a completely new virus was a surprise to us."
Nicholson, one of the authors of the report detailing the two cases published Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine, suspects the new virus is a member of the tick-borne phlebovirus and is a distant cousin to Severe Fever with Thrombocytopenia Syndrome Virus (SFTSV), a virus found in central and northeastern China and known to cause death in 13 to 30% of patients.
There are more than 70 distinct viruses in the phlebovirus family, and they're grouped according to whether they are carried and transmitted by sandflies, mosquitoes or ticks.
"We're not saying at this point that it is tick-borne," Nicholson said. "We suspect ticks. It might be a lone star tick or another tick, but we have not ruled out sandflies or mosquitoes."
According to Nicholson, this new virus "clusters genetically" - or is very similar, yet distinct - to other tick-transmitted phleboviruses and more distantly with the sandfly and mosquitoes. Researchers identified it by genetically sequencing the entire genome of the virus and comparing it to existing viral genomes.
"We're casting a wide net so we can really figure out where this virus is located and how it's being transmitted," he said. "We are also going to be doing laboratory studies to learn more about the biology of the virus and how it might be transmitted."
One farmer was a healthy 57 year-old man; the other, a 67-year-old man with type II diabetes. Recovery for both farmers was slow. Both were hospitalized for about two weeks in 2009, and took about a month and a half to recovery fully.
It's unknown whether this new virus can be transmitted from person to person, but no family members or caregivers reported symptoms similar to either patient.
At the moment, Nicholson said, there is no cause for concern. "I don't think anyone should be worried. We are not worried ... we are curious of what role the virus plays in human disease."
To that end, an epidemiological study is underway in western Missouri, where researchers hope to identify new patients with similar symptoms. For now, researchers will turn their attention to the large number of vertebrae hosts maintaining the virus in nature - mammals both wild and and domestic, as well as birds. In the fall, they will check out the deer and wild turkey population.
Tick-borne diseases are on the rise in the United States. And while this new disease might not be tick-borne, ticks are the number-one suspect. Nicholson says people should use repellent, check themselves for bites or ticks, and avoid certain areas - if possible - that might serve as good habitats for ticks, such as wooded areas and areas with fallen leaves.
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Free Strategy Games
The two games below are related to strategic thinking, which means that you don't play for immediate results, instead you should think ahead of time to plan for a chain of movements before doing anything. How to play the first game:
- Wait for the game to load.
- Press Start from the main menu, and again inside the game.
- You will be in control of a ball, by moving your keyboard arrows up/down, left/right.
- The ball can only push boxes, and cannot pull them.
- The objective is to move it to the end target (which looks like a hole filled with water), once you go inside that hole, you will be transported to the next level, with the help of your creativity you can find a way to pass the level you're playing, remember that the silver ball can only push boxes and not pull them, there are 25 levels in the SilverSphere game can you pass them all? Good luck in improving your brain strategy skills.
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Uncovering the past in Mississippi
For eight weeks last summer, Brandeis students were immersed in the legacy of the civil rights struggle
For Civil Rights and Racial Justice in Mississippi, one of the Justice Brandeis Semester (JBS) programs, Professor David Cunningham, 11 Brandeis undergraduates, and two teaching assistants spent eight weeks in Mississippi combining academic learning with investigative research.
Teamed with a handful of students from Jackson State University (JSU) and the University of Mississippi, they studied the legacy of the civil rights movement by collecting educational and government records as well as firsthand accounts through interviews.
"We're doing research that is academically sound and rigorous and often uncovering new findings and new insights," says Cunningham, an associate professor of sociology.
Working in small groups in four locations across the state, students collaborated with JSU's Margaret Walker Center and the University of Mississippi's William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation to support the Mississippi Truth Project by conducting an inquiry of the state's unjust and segregated past. Returning to Jackson each week to debrief, they shared insights on how to gain access to county courthouse documents, how best to sift through stacks of arrest logs or school board minutes, and ways to create an open atmosphere for individuals to share their often harrowing personal stories.
"This program takes advantage of all the things JBS provides in terms of opportunities for students," says Cunningham. "For one thing, we're able to leave campus and do something in a sustained way. We spend some of our time in class but the majority is spent working with community members gathering original and primary data. And there's also a social justice component."
At the conclusion of the program, students had created a repository of information that will be organized for and accessible to researchers, historians and communities.
Learn more about opportunities to gain college credit and real world experience through the Justice Brandeis Semester.
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Approximately 4% of the body's mass consists of Minerals (McArdle et al. 2000). They are
classified as trace minerals (body requires less than 100 mg/day), and major
minerals (body requires more than 100 mg/day).
The trace minerals are iron, zinc, copper, selenium, iodine,
fluorine and chromium.
The major minerals are sodium, potassium, calcium, phosphorus,
magnesium, manganese, sulphur, cobolt and chlorine.
Minerals serve three roles (McArdle et al. 2000):
- They provide structure in forming bones and teeth
- They help maintain normal heart rhythm, muscle contractility,
neural conductivity, and acid-base balance
- They help regulate cellular metabolism by becoming part of
enzymes and hormones that modulate cellular activity
Minerals cannot be made in the body and must be obtained in our
diet. The daily requirements of minerals required by the body can be obtained
from a well balanced diet but, like vitamins, excess minerals can produce toxic
The recommended daily requirements of minerals for men,
women are shown in the table below (NHS Direct Online 2007).
||milk, cheese and other dairy foods
green leafy vegetables, such as broccoli, cabbage and okra, but not spinach, soya beans, tofu, soya drinks with added calcium, nuts, bread and anything made with fortified flour, fish where you eat the bones, such as sardines and pilchards
||sea fish and shellfish, cereals, grains
||liver, meat, beans, nuts, dried fruit, such as dried apricots, wholegrains, such as brown rice, fortified breakfast cereals, soybean flour, most dark-green leafy vegetables, such as watercress and curly kale
||yellow and green (leafy) vegetables, such as spinach, carrots and red peppers, yellow fruit such as mango, melon and apricots
||green vegetables, fruit, nuts
||meat, wholegrains, such as wholemeal bread and whole oats, lentils, spices
||fish, nuts, green leafy vegetables, such as broccoli and spinach, cereals, such as oats
||nuts, shellfish, offal
||nuts, spinach, bread, fish, meat, dairy foods
||tea, bread, nuts, cereals, green vegetables such as peas and runner beans
||red meat, dairy foods, fish, poultry, bread, rice, oats
||fruit such as bananas, vegetables, pulses, nuts and seeds, milk, fish, shellfish, beef, chicken, turkey, bread
||brazil nuts, bread, fish, meat, eggs
|Sodium chloride (salt)
||ready meals, meat products, such as bacon, some breakfast cereals, cheese, some tinned vegetables, some bread, savoury snacks
||meat, shellfish, milk, dairy foods, such as cheese, bread, cereal products, such as wheat germ.
Vitamin and mineral interactions
Many vitamins and minerals interact, working alongside each other
in groups e.g. a good balance of vitamin D, calcium, phosphorus, magnesium,
zinc, fluoride, chloride, manganese, copper and sulphur is required for healthy
Many of them can enhance or impair another vitamin or mineral's
absorption and functioning e.g. an excessive amount of iron can cause a
deficiency in zinc.
- NHS Direct Online (2007) Vitamins and Minerals [WWW] Available from: http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/vitamins-minerals/Pages/vitamins-minerals.aspx [Accessed 08/08/2007]
- McARDLE, W.D. et al. (2000) Micronutrints and Water. In: McARDLE, W.D. et al., 2nd ed. Essentials of Exercise Physiology, USA: Lippincott Williams and Wilkins, p. 75
The reference for this page is:
- MACKENZIE, B. (2001) Minerals [WWW] Available from: http://www.brianmac.co.uk/minerals.htm [Accessed
The following Sports Coach pages should be read in conjunction with this page:
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Simply begin typing or use the editing tools above to add to this article.
Once you are finished and click submit, your modifications will be sent to our editors for review.
structure of lungs
...at the hilum. Depending on the subjacent structures, the parietal pleura can be subdivided into three portions: the mediastinal, costal, and diaphragmatic pleurae. The lung surfaces facing these pleural areas are named accordingly, since the shape of the lungs is determined by the shape of the pleural cavities. Because of the presence of pleural recesses, which form a kind of reserve space,...
What made you want to look up "pleural sac"? Please share what surprised you most...
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Calming West Nile fears - more advice from the American Academy of Pediatrics, Sept. 2002
Studies show insect repellents with a DEET concentration of 30% are more protective than lower concentrations, but that concentrations higher than 30% do not provide more protection. They simply last longer. In response to these findings, the Academy says a 30% concentration is safe for adults and children, but that 10% can be used for children if parents are concerned about the potential risks or if the threat of disease-carrying mosquitoes is small.
Update - June, 2003
Insect repellents containing DEET (N,N-diethyl-m-toluamide, also known as N,N-diethyl-3-methylbenzamide) with a concentration of 10% appear to be as safe as products with a concentration of 30% when used according to the directions on the product labels. DEET is not recommended for use on children under 2 months of age.
DEET-containing products are the most effective mosquito repellents available. DEET also is effective as a repellent against a variety of other insects, including ticks. It should be used when there is a need to prevent insect-borne disease. The concentration of DEET in products may range from less than 10% to over 30%. The efficacy of DEET plateaus at a concentration of 30%, the maximum concentration currently recommended for infants and children. The major difference in the efficacy of products relates to their duration of action. Products with concentrations around 10% are effective for periods of approximately two hours. As the concentration of DEET increases, the duration of activity increases; for example, a concentration of about 24% has been shown to provide an average of 5 hours of protection.
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Mold in Buildings
Mold is a common problem in buildings that affects human health and can also damage or destroy building materials. Because mold requires water to grow, controlling mold requires a thorough understanding of how water enters and travels (or doesn’t) through buildings. Because mold also requires a food source, controlling it also requires an understanding of which building materials are susceptible to mold and how best to use and protect them.
The following documents address these key issues of water movement and mold-susceptibility. They also discuss important topics such as health effects, mold testing, and what to do when mold is found.
There are currently no matching items available.
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Although researchers can't be exactly sure how old the bacteria are — or how they reproduce — microbiologists at Aarhus University in Denmark posit that the ancient organisms could be anywhere from several thousand to millions of year old, The Washington Post's Joel Achenback reports.
The bacteria, found living in sediments that formed 86 million years ago, have extremely slow metabolisms and are able to survive by living on very small amounts of energy.
"The slow rate of reproduction means that they cannot evolve at the same speed as bacteria in friendlier, energy-rich, nutrient-thick settings. That means, in turn, that they may preserve more primitive genetic features than other bacteria," scientist Robert Hazen told Achenback.
The ability of bacteria to stay alive in such a nutrient-starved environment supports the idea that similar organisms could live on other planets, requiring very little to sustain life.
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The Andalusian came
to the America's on Christopher Columbus second voyage as
ordered by Queen Isabella, that all ships that were bound for
the new world must carry 12 breeding pairs of Andalusian.
A great many horses perished in ship wrecks but many survived.
When the Spanish arrived on there war mounts the Indians thought
they were one great being and were aw struck.
Many of the North and
South American breeds carry the Spanish blood, the Paso Fino,
Lipizzan, Friesian, Mustang and many other breeds carry the
Spanish blood. It has even been said that the American
Quarter horse got his cow since from the Spanish.
crosses well with other breeds to strengthen bone, carriage,
movement, beauty and Brio.
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In 19th century America, east coast port cities such as Boston, New York and Baltimore matured and grew in population and industry. With the building of railroads and the creation of canals that linked up waterways, westward expansion took hold, establishing new cities like St. Louis and Chicago. In this program, Professor Alan Lessoff looks at the growth of U.S. cities in the 19th century. The class took place at Illinois State University in Normal, Illinois.
More Info »
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Can Kaposi sarcoma be prevented?
Kaposi sarcoma (KS) is caused by the Kaposi sarcoma herpesvirus (KSHV). There are no vaccines at this time to protect people against KSHV. For now, preventing KS depends on reducing the chance of becoming infected with KSHV and reducing the chance that people who are infected with KSHV will develop KS.
Most cases of KS in the United States occur in people with AIDS. Taking measures to avoid becoming infected with HIV could prevent most cases of KS in this country.
- Since HIV can be spread through sex, avoiding unprotected sex with people infected with HIV could help prevent these infections. Many people with HIV don’t know that they are infected, so many public health workers recommend using a condom during any sexual contact. (A condom may not be needed if both people are HIV-negative and are in a mutually monogamous relationship). Abstinence is the most effective protection.
- HIV can also be spread through the use of contaminated (dirty) needles to inject recreational drugs. For people who inject drugs, the safest way to avoid HIV is to quit. However, some people are unable to quit on their own or get help in quitting, and they may not be able to stop using drugs right away. For these people, clean needles and injection supplies can help protect them. In some areas, there are programs to make sure that drug users can get clean needles and syringes.
- HIV-infected mothers can pass the virus to their babies during pregnancy, delivery, or breastfeeding. Treating the mothers and infants with anti-HIV drugs and avoiding breastfeeding can greatly reduce the risk of these infections.
- In the past, blood product transfusions and organ transplants were responsible for some HIV infections. As a result of improved testing for HIV, there is now a very low risk of HIV infection from blood products or organ transplants in the United States.
For people who are infected with HIV and KSHV, taking the right medicines can reduce the chance of developing KS.
- Testing for HIV can identify people infected with this virus. People with HIV should get treatment to help strengthen their immune system, which usually includes highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART). HAART reduces the risk that people with HIV will develop KS (and AIDS). Treating infections that commonly occur in people with weakened immunity also reduces the likelihood of developing problems with KS.
- HIV-infected people who take drugs to treat herpesvirus infections (such as ganciclovir or foscarnet) are less likely to develop KS because these drugs also work against KSHV (which is a type of herpesvirus). Still, these drugs can have serious side effects, so they are only taken to treat certain infections, not to prevent KS.
Last Medical Review: 02/20/2013
Last Revised: 02/20/2013
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All about radiant barriers
Learn the facts about radiant barriers and reflective insulation products to determine if they are a wise investment for achieving energy and cost savings in your home.
What are radiant barriers?
Radiant barriers and reflective insulation products are installed in buildings to reduce radiant heat transfer, which is one of the ways buildings gain heat in the summer and lose heat in the winter. The idea is that by reducing radiant heat gain into the attic, for instance, you will use less energy to cool the house in the summer.
There are three primary types of radiant barrier products on the market:
Foils and films usually reinforced for strength
Coatings such as radiant barrier paints or sprays
Reflective insulation such as foil-faced bubble wrap products
Sometimes, products combine more than one type, such as foil-faced bubble wrap installed in an open attic. This is both an insulation and a radiant barrier.
Do they actually reduce radiant heat transfer?
In a word, yes. Most of the foil and reflective insulation products reduce radiant heat transfer by about 96 percent. The performance of the paints and sprays is much more variable. Some reduce radiant heat transfer by about 75 percent, some by much less. Some radiant barrier foil and reflective insulation products have qualified for the Energy Star label, indicating they may save energy when properly installed. None of the paints and coatings has qualified for the Energy Star label. None of the radiant barrier products qualifies for federal energy tax credits.
Do they actually save me energy?
Studies by Oak Ridge National Lab and Florida Solar Energy Center documented, on average, a 2–10 percent reduction in the air conditioning bills of homes with radiant barriers (foil) installed in the attic, but almost no savings on heating costs during the winter.
Are they worth it?
The answer to this question is more complicated and depends on cost. If you spend $200 and save $45 every year, that may be a worthwhile investment. But if you spend $1,000, it's not nearly as clear. Are there better ways to invest your money that would reduce your energy bills?
What other factors should you consider?
The more insulation you have in your attic — if it's properly installed without air leaks between the house and the attic — the less you will save with a radiant barrier. In many homes, it would cost less to seal all of the gaps and holes between the house and attic and add additional insulation.
Studies have shown that dirt and dust accumulation on radiant barriers degrades their performance fairly quickly and results in less savings over time.
If the roof is shaded, the savings will be less.
Some roofing materials — metals, tiles, light colored shingles — give off less heat to the attic. If you have these types of roofing, the savings from radiant barriers will be less.
If there is ductwork and/or handling equipment in the attic, the savings will be higher.
If you store valuables in the attic that will be harmed by high temperatures, installing a radiant barrier may help preserve them. This won't save you money, but it might save your stuff.
Saving energy has positive impacts on the environment, and many people will put this into the equation as well.
What about moisture issues?
Aluminum foil is one of the best vapor barrier products used in buildings. Neither liquid water nor water vapor goes through it. This can be a great product when there is a roof leak above a radiant barrier, and the foil directs the water to the exterior of the building, reducing the damage from the leak. On the other hand, foil installed over the insulation on an attic floor could trap moisture, which then condenses and drips into the insulation. Some products are perforated with a lot of small holes to help reduce this potential problem.
A word to the wise
If they make a claim that you will save 10 percent, ask them 10 percent of what? Is it 10 percent of your total utility bill, the heating and cooling portion, or just the cooling portion?
A source of confusion
Some energy saving product might claim that it "eliminates 86 percent of the radiant heat gain in your attic" or "reduces ceiling heat gains by up to 42 percent." These may be true statements, but that doesn't translate into energy savings so high. The radiant barrier will only affect the portion of the bill caused by radiant heat entering from the attic. It has no impact on the heat gained by your house from air leaks, windows and doors, walls or floors.
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February 27, 1922
US Supreme Court takes on Womens' Suffrage
The 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, was passed by Congress and sent to the states for ratification in June 1919. Although it had been approved by the required 36 (of 48) states by August 1920, Maryland still refused to allow women to register. After two lower courts had ruled against Maryland, the case--Leser v. Garnett--was sent to the US Supreme Court and argued on January 24-25, 1922.
The unanimous decision, which was handed down on February 27, 1922, agreed with the lower courts and upheld the Constitutionality of the 19th Amendment.
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According to the usage current in the British Isles the term regalia is almost always employed to denote the insignia of royalty or "crown jewels". The objects more immediately included under the collective term as commonly used are the following: the crown, the sceptre with the cross, the sceptre with the dove, the orb, the swords, the ring, the spurs, also the vestments in which the sovereign is arrayed after the unction, to wit the colobium sindonis , the dalmatic, the armill, and the royal robe, or pall, as well as a few other miscellaneous objects connected with the coronation ceremony, such as the ampulla for the oil, with the spoon, "St. Edward's staff", etc. All of these descend from pre-Reformation days, and many of them are directly religious in origin. Indeed there was a tendency not only in England, but also in Germany, France, and elsewhere, to connect these insignia with some saintly and sometimes legendary possessor of a former age, and to regard them strictly as relics. In point of fact all the English regalia were broken up and sold after the execution of Charles I, and the oldest of those now in existence had to be constructed anew at the Restoration in 1661; but it had always been the custom of old to regard them or most of them as connected with St. Edward the Confessor , to whose shrine in Westminster Abbey, where the coronation takes place, they were regarded as belonging. Even now the royal crown which the archbishop places on the king's head is still spoken of in a marginal note to the coronation service as "St. Edward's Crown", while we find in a chronicle of the fourteenth century, the "Annales Paulini", a vehement protest made in connection with the coronation of King Edward II that the unworthy favourite Piers Gaveston should have been suffered to carry the "Crown of St. Edward" with his "polluted hands" ( inquinatis manibus ).
Most of the regalia enumerated above call for no special comment, but with regard to some few, the significance of which has been misrepresented by Anglican writers with a more or less controversial purpose, a few words are necessary. To begin with, it has been pretended that the vestures in which the king is arrayed are the vestments of a bishop, and indicate an intention to endow the monarch with an ecclesiastical character. This contention forms part of a theory propounded by a prominent Anglican liturgist, Dr. Wickham Legg, that the king according to the medieval view was mixta persona (i.e., both layman and ecclesiastic) and therefore spiritualis jurisdictionis capax (a fit subject for spiritual jurisdiction ). The underlying and indeed the avowed purpose was to show that although it cannot be denied that the king is the official head of the Church of England , still there is nothing unbecoming in such a relation because the king is a minister of the Church and consecrated to this special office by the Church herself. But the various arguments by which this contention is supported, and notably that based upon the supposed ecclesiastical character of the coronation vestments, are wholly fallacious. The colobium sindonis (alleged to be the equivalent of the alb ) and the dalmatic, or supertunica , are simply the ordinary dress of the later Roman Empire, and they did not acquire their liturgical charcater until after they had become the customary apparel of emperors on state occasions. This form of underclothing can be plainly traced in the consular diptychs upon which the consuls are represented as presiding at the games. In these same diptychs the most prominent feature in the official vesture is an elaborately embroidered scarf which hangs down perpendicularly in front, passes round the body, and falls over the left arm. This scarf is called the lorum . It is almost certainly the ancestor of the archiepiscopal pallium, but it remained for long centuries, as numberless Byzantine paintings and sculptures show, the most conspicuous element in the imperial state costume. There is serious reason to believe, though the details cannot be gone into here, that the lorum is represented by the "armill", though this is now a sort of stole which two or three centuries back was tied at the elbows. The address originally made at the delivery of the armill declared it to be a symbol of the "Divine enfolding" ( divinae circumdationis ), which agrees much better with a wrap like the lorum than with a stole or bracelet. Again "the Robe Royal or Pall of cloth of gold", which is embroidered with eagles, cannot with any reason be described as an ecclesiastical cope. It certainly represents the royal mantle which was originally a four- square garment fastened with a clasp over the right shoulder, such as is seen to recur several times in the carvings of the ivory book-cover of Queen Melisende now in the British Museum; such also as was found vesting the body of Edward I when his tomb was opened in 1774.
Not less misleading is the interpretation recently attached to one of the three swords carried before the king and known as the "sword of the spirituality" or "the sword of the Church ". This does not in any way represent, as contended, a claim to exercise jurisdiction over the Church, but it only symbolizes the solemn promise of the king to protect the Church. There were three such promises originally made by the king: the first to defend and secure peace for the Church ; the second to punish wrong-doers; and the third to show justice and mercy in all his judgments. Now the three swords, now and anciently borne before the king at his coronation, were known as the sword of the clergy, the sword of the laity, and the third (curtana), which has no point, the sword of mercy. There is every reason to believe that these three swords typify the matter of the king's three ancient promises. As for the sword with which the king himself is girded in the coronation ceremony, this was originally in imperial coronations at Rome laid upon the tomb of Blessed Peter and, like the archbishop's pallium, presented as de corpore beati Petri sumptum and consequently as a kind of relic of the Prince of the Apostles, in whose name and to defend whose authority the power of the sword is given to rulers by the Church. A theory that the orb is only a variant of the sceptre with a cross is now generally rejected, and with reason.
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St. Turibius de Mogrovejo: Champion of indigenous people's rights
Feast day: March 23
Catholics in Latin America and throughout the world will celebrate the life and ministry of St. Turibius of Mogrovejo on March 23. The 16th century bishop upheld the rights of Peru's indigenous peoples, and became one of the first canonized saints of the Americas.
Turibius was born in Spain during 1538, to a noble family in the kingdom of Leon. Even as a child, he frequently prayed, fasted and gave to the poor, and he eventually developed the daily habit of praying the rosary along with the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
He went on to study law at the University of Salamanca and eventually served as a judge for five years in the territory of Granada. His judicial wisdom and diligence drew the attention of King Philip II, who wanted Turibius – who was still a layman – to be consecrated as a missionary archbishop for the Spanish colony of Peru.
Turibius became greatly dismayed, protesting to the king and Church authorities that he was not even a priest and could not possibly accept the charge. In a series of letters, he pleaded that he was not personally capable of serving as the archbishop of Lima – nor, he reminded them, did canon law permit a layman to become an archbishop.
Eventually, however, he had little choice but to comply. The 43-year-old was consecrated as a bishop in 1581 and immediately left for Lima, Peru.
The new archbishop undertook to travel throughout the rugged and mountainous diocese, where he observed many of the worst effects of colonialism – both upon the enslaved and oppressed natives, and on many of the colonists who seemed to have lost their souls in the pursuit of wealth.
He responded with constant prayer and penance as he traveled throughout his territory administering the sacraments, teaching the Catholic faith and establishing schools, seminaries and hospitals.
To the indigenous Peruvians, the archbishop was a herald of the Gospel who held their lives as more precious than their country's supplies of gold and silver. But to the many colonists whose behavior showed no sign of their Catholic origins, he was a prophetic scourge – whose efforts to awaken the public conscience earned him rebukes and opposition.
Turibius ultimately managed to make three visitations of his diocese, under rugged and dangerous conditions, which occupied about half of his 25 years as archbishop of Lima. He united the Peruvian Church at an administrative level by holding several local councils of its clergy, but he was also known to spend days traveling to reach a single person with the message of Christ.
The archbishop became seriously ill in 1606. He sensed that his death was imminent, and he decreed that his possessions should be distributed to the poor. St. Turibius died on March 23, and his body was found to be incorrupt the next year. He was declared a saint in 1726, and is now regarded as the patron of native peoples' rights and Latin American bishops.
— Benjamin Mann, Catholic News Agency
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David Hains: Close that unhealthy health centerThe Gosnell abortion mill in Philadelphia and A Preferred Woman's Health Center in Charlotte have something in common: little regard for human life. It should come as no surprise that women are being mistreated in these facilities since...
Peggy Bowes: Honor thy mother: Devotions to Mary"We never give more honor to Jesus than when we honor His Mother, and we honor her simply and solely to honor Him all the more perfectly. We go to her only as a way leading to the goal we seek – Jesus, her Son." — St. Louis de Montfort,...
Father Shawn O'Neal: In this debate, remember Church teaching on human rightsAs a means to develop a comprehensive plan to reform our nation's current immigration system, a group of senators has introduced legislation formally called the "Border Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013."...
Father Matthew Buettner: Radical ChristianityRecently, the Boston Marathon came to an abrupt end when two bombs exploded near the finish line. Three young people died in the explosion, including an 8-year-old boy who received his first Holy Communion just 11 months ago. Along with these...
The Poor Clares: Joy and sacrificeSt. Paul was a man passionate with zeal and consumed by love for God and desire for the salvation of souls. His actions and words were geared toward one purpose: the claiming of souls from the dominion of the devil, and the deceit used by him...
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Warrior saints are found throughout historyRegarding the April 26 letter criticizing St. Nicholas of Flue, I am disgusted that an American would insinuate that a soldier who distinguishes himself or herself in combat is not following...
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FROM THE PASTORS
Read and listen to homilies posted regularly by pastors at parishes within the Diocese of Charlotte:
- Fr. Frank Cancro at Queen of the Apostles
- Fr. Patrick Earl at St. Peter in Charlotte
- Fr. John Eckert at St. John the Baptist in Tryon
- Fr. Timothy Reid at St. Ann in Charlotte
- Fr. Benjamin Roberts at Our Lady of Lourdes in Monroe
- Fr. Patrick Winslow at St. Thomas Aquinas in Charlotte
- Watch full Masses live and on demand, listen to homilies and reflections from Sacred Heart Church in Salisbury
- Listen to homilies from St. William Catholic Church in Murphy
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If the Bush administration seems lukewarm to the more radical proposals the World Health Organization (WHO) is considering for its treaty on tobacco control, that’s good news. After all, tobacco use isn’t infectious. Nor is a wisp of smoke harmful as it crosses national borders. An adult’s decision to smoke is voluntary and individual. Children are different, of course, as proven by 50 state laws that make the sale of cigarettes to minors illegal. Clearly, we don’t need world government to deal with that issue.
As to specifics:
- Using the terms “mild” and “light” in ads? The more information the better, provided the ads are truthful. Consumers can distinguish puffery from hard evidence.
- Raising cigarette taxes? Not if you want to deter smuggling, which is now financing terrorist groups. Besides, cigarette taxes are regressive — another burden imposed on poor people who are supposedly the WHO’s beneficiaries.
- Curbing secondhand smoke? The science is questionable, and government regulation, more than cigarette smoke, has poisoned the atmosphere. Let private-property owners permit or prohibit smoking — for good reason, bad reason or no reason at all. Patrons who object may go elsewhere.
If we’ve learned anything from nourishing a free society for more than two centuries, it’s this: Individual decisions are best left to individuals. When occasionally those decisions impose costs on innocent bystanders, state government is sometimes justified in intervening. Rarely is there a need — much less constitutional authority — for the federal government to dictate private consumption choices. And never do we relinquish national sovereignty over such matters to a global organization, especially one like the WHO, which will only be encouraged to expand its social agenda without any sense of restraint or concern for personal liberty.
U.S. leadership does not consist of harmonizing international regulatory and tax policy, suppressing commercial advertising or banning cigarettes in private places. Real leadership — especially important for developing countries trying to shake off their stifling socialist traditions — promotes respect for private property and free choice. The best lesson the U.S. could teach is to reject the WHO tobacco treaty. Good riddance.
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Since its adoption, the programme of work was considered for in-depth review at the eighth meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP). This in-depth review revealed that good progress is being made towards the achievement of adequate coverage of protected areas with the exception of the temperate grasslands biome.
The review did reveal that implementation is weak when considering trends in the abundance and distribution of selected species and the status and trends of linguistic diversity, including the numbers of speakers of indigenous languages in dry and sub-humid lands.
of COP 8 calls for increased attention to climate change and governance and highlights the need for more detailed assessments to measure progress towards the achievement of the 2010 Biodiversity Target in dry and sub-humid lands.
A joint work programme with the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification on dry and sub-humid lands was also adopted by the COP to both Conventions in acknowledgement of the fact that biodiversity loss can be both a cause and a consequence of desertification. The joint work programme seeks to address the multiple and increasing threats to dry and sub-humid lands biodiversity, including climate change.
of COP 9 calls for more information on traditional knowledge regarding the management and sustainable use of the biodiversity of dry and sub-humid lands, experiences in the field of climate change mitigation and adaptation, soil management and pastoralism and the impacts of drought on the biodiversity of dry and sub-humid lands. It also requests the Executive Secretary to enhance cooperation and synergies concerning biodiversity, land degradation / desertification and climate change.
of COP 10 urges Parties to integrate issues related to dry and sub-humid lands into the revised national biodiversity strategies and action plans (NBSAPs), national action programmes to combat desertification (NAPs), and national adaptation programmes of action (NAPAs). It also requests the Executive Secretary identify best practices to address conflicts between biodiversity conservation and sustainable use and pastoralism and agriculture in dry and sub-humid lands.
Rio Conventions Pavilion: Linking biodiversity, climate change and sustainable land management
The Rio Conventions Pavilion
, a collaborative outreach activity involving the Rio Convention secretariats, is a partnership platform for raising awareness and sharing information about the latest practices and scientific findings on the co-benefits that can be realized through implementation of the three Rio Conventions.
The Pavilion was convened at the CBD COP 10 (18-29 October 2010) in Nagoya, Japan, the UNFCCC meetings (29 November - 10 December 2010) in Cancun, Mexico, the UNCCD COP 10 in Changwon, Republic of Korea (10-21 October, 2011), the UNFCCC meetings in Durban, South Africa (28 November – 9 December 2011), as well at Rio+20, in Brazil in June 2012.
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