Finite supply remains the main drawback of this sort of transplant surgery. The most common form of hair loss in men is “male pattern baldness”, characterised by a receding hairline and the thinning of the hair on the crown. It is caused by hormones and mediated by genetic predisposition. Hair transplants work because the hairs at the back of a man's head are not vulnerable to hormonal attack, and will thus grow quite contentedly in their new home—assuming there are enough of them to transplant.
For those so follicularly challenged that they have little hair to move around in this way, however, there is now hope. This comes not in a jar, but in a test-tube from a Manchester-based company called Intercytex. The firm's technique exploits the regenerative properties of what are known as dermal papilla cells. These are the cells that create hair follicles in the first place. They remain at the base of the hair when they have finished their job.
http://louisfjfsheehan.blogspot.com
Some years ago it was discovered that when these cells are relocated, an entirely new hair will grow. That observation is only useful, though, if you can multiply dermal papilla cells—and do so in a way that allows them to keep their ability to induce hair growth. For, in normal culture, dermal papilla cells quickly lose this sought-after ability.
This, says Nick Higgins, Intercytex's boss, has taxed scientists for years. Intercytex appears to be working on two solutions. Although it is understandably tight-lipped about the exact mechanism behind its success, one probably enlists the help of cells called keratinocytes, which interact naturally with the dermal papilla cells of the hair follicle and secrete a chemical factor that supports their growth. At present, the identity of this growth factor is a mystery. However, it is likely that one of Intercytex's methods involves supplying this factor to cultured dermal papilla cells. Intercytex's second approach seems to involve culturing the dermal papilla cells with proteins that take part in signalling during the process that creates hair.
The long and short of it is that being able to multiply these cells while preserving their efficacy opens the way for unlimited supplies of head hair. Intercytex is therefore conducting a trial of the technology in Manchester. Nineteen “patients” have had a small amount of hair removed, follicles and all, from the backs of their heads. Their dermal papilla cells have been extracted, multiplied and re-injected into their scalps. The trial's full results will not be available until March 2009, but the company has already said that at least two-thirds of its patients have generated new hair within six months.
Unfortunately for eager baldies, regulations require more trials. As a result it is likely to be five years before any product is on the market. Nor will Intercytex's technique do anything about that other bane of ageing, the tendency of hair to go grey. For the time being, even Mr Berlusconi will have to continue to dye his locks.
Organ-transplant data provide more evidence that stem cells cause cancer
Doctors track the long-term health of organ-transplant patients in registries. Such registries make it possible to uncover trends or long-term problems in the population that may be missed in smaller samples. But they can also be pressed into service to support basic research. And a group of researchers led by Sanford Barsky of Ohio State University College of Medicine in Columbus has done just that. As they reported on June 2nd to a meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, in Chicago, they have used one such registry to support the increasingly popular idea that many if not all cancers are caused by stem cells gone bad.
Each organ and tissue in the body has its own collection of stem cells. When these cells divide, they produce two very different daughter cells. One resembles the parent stem cell and thus allows the whole process to continue. The progeny of the other differentiate into mature cells within the skin, kidney, lung or what have you. This is how organs renew themselves over the life of an individual. In a healthy organ, the stem cells divide only when needed—usually in response to injury or when other cells have died. Some cancer scientists, however, think that stem cells can lose this control function and thus divide endlessly, leading to tumours.
Dr Barsky reasoned that if the cancer stem-cell hypothesis is true, then stem cells from a donor organ may cause cancer somewhere else in a transplant recipient's body. Looking in a patient registry, he identified 280 people who had undergone an organ transplant and later developed a solid tumour. In nearly half of these cases donor and recipient were of different sexes, which means the cells from each would have different sex chromosomes (women have two X chromosomes, men an X and a Y). http://louiscjcsheehan.blogspot.com
That makes a cancer derived from the transplant easy to identify.
To find out if the tumour cells were the same sex as the body they inhabited, Dr Barsky labelled slices of tumour with green fluorescent tags that bind to the X chromosome and red tags that bind to the Y. And he found transplant-derived cancers in abundance: in 12% of cases, the sex of the tumour matched the donor rather than the recipient. For example, a 48-year-old woman developed skin cancer nine months after receiving a bone-marrow transplant from a man. The tumour cells had a Y chromosome, indicating that the cancer arose from the donated bone marrow. In another case, a 62-year-old man developed colon cancer ten years after receiving a kidney transplant from a female donor. The colon-cancer cells lacked a Y chromosome.
Closer examination of the DNA in the tumour cells and surrounding tissue showed that the tumours definitely did originate from the donor organs, not the recipients. Dr Barsky also found that if a tumour formed in the transplanted organ, it could be derived from either recipient or donor cells.
In each of these cases, the tumour that formed resembled any other tumour that would form in that site. The 48-year-old woman's looked like skin cancer, not cancer of the bone marrow. The 62-year-old man's looked like colon cancer and not like a kidney tumour. Thus, once a cell migrated to a new site, it took on the behaviour and appearance appropriate to that location—losing the identity it had held in its organ of origin.
This observation does not absolutely prove that the migrating cells are stem cells, but it would be astonishing if fully differentiated cells from one tissue could up sticks to another organ and then take on the characteristics of that organ. Besides, biologists do know that stem cells in the bone marrow move into the blood stream. Thus the formation of donor-derived tumours in distant tissues after a bone-marrow transplant is not entirely unexpected. A few reports also exist in the medical literature of donor-derived tumours arising after a solid organ, such as a liver or a kidney, has been transplanted. Dr Barsky's data, though, show that this is not such a rare event after all. Stem cells in one organ thus seem malleable enough to adopt a whole new developmental programme in another organ, even late in a person's life.
More important, though, in Dr Barsky's opinion, is that the new data support the idea that tumours arise from stem cells that have gone wrong. It is not clear whether those stem cells are healthy when they migrate to a new site and mutate into cancer stem cells after they have taken up residence, or if they mutate first and then migrate. Either way, however, transplant registries may just have shed light on a fundamental question in cancer biology. http://louishjhsheehan.blogspot.com
What happened after California abolished bilingual education
Ten years to the day after California banned teaching in any language other than English, Erlinda Paredes runs through a new sentence with her kindergarten class. “El payaso se llama Botones”, she intones—“the clown's name is Buttons”. When a pupil asks a question in English, she responds in Spanish. It is an improbable scene. But the abolition of bilingual education has not worked out in quite the way anybody expected.
Before 1998 some 400,000 Californian children were shunted into classes where they heard as little as 30 minutes of English each day. The hope was that they would learn mathematics and other subjects in their native tongue (usually Spanish) while they gently made the transition to English. The result was an educational barrio. So that year Ron Unz, a software engineer, sponsored a ballot measure that mandated teaching in English unless parents demanded otherwise. Proposition 227 passed easily, with considerable support from Hispanics. Voters in two other states, Massachusetts and Arizona, have since followed suit.
In Santa Ana, a mostly poor Latino city in Orange county, the number of children in bilingual classes promptly halved. Demand would have been even less had schools not prodded parents to request waivers for their children. In the past few years demand for bilingual education has fallen further. This year 22,000 pupils in Santa Ana are enrolled in “structured English immersion” programmes, where they hear little but that language. Just 646 are taught bilingually.
It has been a smooth transition, disappointing the many teachers and Latino politicians who forecast imminent doom for immigrant children. Yet the revolution in standards promised by Mr Unz's supporters has not come to pass either. State tests show that immigrants are indeed doing better in English. But so are native English speakers. In the second grade (ages seven and eight) the gap in reading ability between natives and the rest has narrowed only slightly; in higher years it has not narrowed at all. The results of national tests are even less encouraging.
Before 1998 many poor immigrant children in California received a dismal education informed by wrong-headed principles. They now just suffer from a dismal education. Fully 74% of English learners in the fourth grade read at “below basic” level, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. In 2006 a study found that, after six years, just one-quarter of Hispanic pupils could expect to be reclassified as fluent in English—which is, admittedly, a pretty high bar. This augurs badly for their economic future. And, since more than one immigrant child in five lives in California, it is also bad news for America's largest state.
Howard Bryan, who is responsible for English learners in Santa Ana, says that formal teaching methods matter surprisingly little. Pupils in well-run schools with demanding teachers, who are encouraged by their parents, tend to succeed whatever the language.
The problem is that many parents are unwilling or unable to push their children, and most programmes are weak. The abolition of bilingual education has revealed a much bigger problem. California's public education system is sclerotic, with a meddlesome central bureaucracy and mighty teachers' unions. Until it is reformed, immigrants will continue to struggle.
Few such problems afflict Ms Paredes's pupils. Hers is a “two-way” bilingual class in which exactly half of the children already speak English fluently. Most of them are the offspring of upper-middle-class Hispanics who worry that their children will grow up knowing no Spanish. The class is drip-fed English according to a strict formula. In kindergarten pupils speak English 10% of the time; by fifth grade they speak it 50% of the time. Not surprisingly, given the pupils' backgrounds, such classes score remarkably well in tests, Partly for this reason, two-way bilingual education is entirely uncontroversial.
Although such two-way programmes are much rarer than old-fashioned bilingual education, they have roughly doubled in number in the past ten years. They have even popped up in affluent white areas like Santa Monica. While the teaching of English to immigrants is not going too well, the teaching of Spanish to natives is going swimmingly. The clearest change wrought by Proposition 227 is that Spanish has turned from a remedial language into an aspirational one.
FEW people, other than scholars, will be familiar with the story of the Cambridge don whose study of China’s scientific history helped to change the West’s appraisal of a civilisation once thought hopelessly backward. By the time Joseph Needham died in 1995, he had published 17 volumes of his “Science and Civilisation in China” series, including several that he wrote entirely on his own.
http://louisbjbsheehan.blogspot.com
The Chinese began printing 600 years before Johannes Gutenberg introduced the technique in Germany. They built the first chain drive 700 years before the Europeans. And they made use of a magnetic compass at least a century before the first reference to it appeared elsewhere. So why, in the middle of the 15th century, did this advanced civilisation suddenly cease its spectacular progress?
So powerful has Needham’s contribution been to the historiography of Chinese science that this conundrum is still known as “The Needham Question”. Even the Chinese themselves use it: the phrase in Mandarin is Li Yuese nanti.
Simon Winchester’s lively biography (see article) focuses on what drove Needham to wrestle with this issue. In 1936 three Chinese assistants came to work in his biochemistry laboratory. One, Lu Gwei-djen, who came from Nanjing, began teaching him Chinese, which ignited Needham’s interest in the country’s technological and scientific past. He retrained as a Sinologist and took a job in Chongqing as Britain’s scientific emissary.
Mr Winchester draws much from Needham’s diaries which describe an unconventional lifestyle, an open marriage and numerous extra-marital affairs, as well as exotic adventures travelling across China in search of its science.
Among Needham’s destinations in his Chevrolet truck was Dujiangyan, a city badly hit by the recent earthquake in Sichuan Province. There he was able to study a huge irrigation project that was created 2,300 years ago and which still stands today, though now cracked by the earthquake. At that time, only the Mesopotamians had made such strides in controlling their rivers, Mr Winchester says.
Needham’s focus on China’s achievements naturally won him praise there. The Republican government granted him one of its highest honours shortly before it was overthrown by the Communist Party in 1949. But Needham also had strong ties with China’s new rulers. This controversial relationship threatened to blight his career. His participation in a Chinese-led inquiry into alleged American use of germ warfare during the Korean war, together with his failure to be more sceptical about what many believe to have been Soviet and Chinese fakery, prompted many of his peers in the West to shun him.
Needham’s Cambridge college, Gonville and Caius, however, retained its faith in his scholarship and gave him extraordinary freedom from normal academic duties to pursue his book-writing.
Needham never fully worked out why China’s inventiveness dried up. Other academics have made their own suggestions: the stultifying pursuit of bureaucratic rank in the Middle Kingdom and the absence of a mercantile class to foster competition and self-improvement; the sheer size of China compared with the smaller states of Europe whose fierce rivalries fostered technological competition; its totalitarianism.
With its unreformed one-party system, its rote-learning in schools and state control of big businesses, “new China” is hardly a haven for innovative thinking. Yet the Chinese continue to fret about the Needham question. A Communist Party chief of a middle school in central China recently said that it deserved deep thought and that the answer lay in an education system that fails to emphasise improving “character”. A former government minister also referred to Needham’s lament that China had produced no idea or invention of global impact for more than 500 years. Its contribution henceforth, the official said, should be “harmony”.
Lord Levy was the son of the shammas in the local Orthodox synagogue, himself the son of a Polish immigrant, who lived in contented poverty. There was no chance that the clever boy, Michael, would go to university. John Prescott was the son of a railwayman who was an active trade unionist. He failed the 11-plus and when he left secondary school at 15, the headmaster told his mother that he would never amount to much. He became a steward on ocean liners sailing out of Liverpool. Mrs Blair’s father was a well-known Liverpudlian actor called Tony Booth, a boozer who abandoned his family before Mrs Blair was ten years old. http://louisijisheehan.blogspot.com
She had a strict Catholic education. The nuns identified her as an ill-disciplined child who would never make prefect, never mind head girl, but she was clever and independent-minded. She chose to study law at the London School of Economics, where she was able to shower every day in her student residence instead of sharing a bath with the rest of her family once a week.
Lord Levy and Mr Prescott freely admit to having a chip on their shoulders, and a streak of vanity which drove them on. Mr Prescott became an MP sponsored by the National Union of Seamen, rising to become Labour’s leading class warrior, and deputy prime minister. Lord Levy, who started a record label (his star performer was Alvin Stardust) and became rich when he sold it, was a celebrated fund-raiser for Jewish charities. He performed the same role for Tony Blair so successfully that he became known as Lord Cashpoint.
Mrs Blair became a QC, and the story of her legal career is rather more interesting than her score-settling account of life as the prime minister’s wife. She was a junior in the chambers of the future Lord Chancellor, Derry Irvine, and watched him in combat with Tom Bingham, later Lord Chief Justice. “Derry was like an attacking rhinoceros. Tom Bingham on the other hand was like a snake, smooth, charming, almost hypnotic, exposing the weakness in the other side’s argument without ever raising his voice. Bingham subsequently became my role model. As a woman I could never have been as aggressive an advocate as Derry.”
Where did it all go wrong? Mr Prescott felt deeply that he was unappreciated: “I got branded as an uneducated yob. It was an image I suppose never left me. I began to hate the press.” He developed bulimia, caused in part, he says, by stress. An affair with his diary secretary tore at the last vestiges of his authority. His book, which is a lazy, once-over-lightly non-apology of a life, does not restore it.
Lord Levy comes across as a more sympathetic character. He has written the case for his defence in the recent cash-for-honours scandal that involved even Mr Blair. As a vain man, he was particularly proud of his role as Mr Blair’s Middle East envoy, but he acknowledges that he suffered from hubris. “I sometimes revelled in the public attention. In politics I had sometimes been blinded by the light.”
Mrs Blair’s problem is that she could never keep quiet: “I have never been taught the meaning of the phrase ‘discretion is the better part of valour’.” She is a doughty hater, with Gordon Brown as her principal antagonist, and Alistair Campbell and the Princesses Margaret and Anne not far behind. Her loyalty to Mr Blair is absolute: “There were times when I faltered...But I knew him and knew he would never do the wrong thing.” Her book is easily outselling the others, and deserves to, but each leads irresistibly to the same conclusion: there are very few happy endings in British politics.
Tens of thousands of teachers formed picket lines outside nearly 900 schools here Friday morning to protest cuts to education financing proposed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to help close California’s projected $17 billion budget gap.
If passed, the cuts would reduce financing for Los Angeles schools by $340 million next year, said A. J. Duffy, president of United Teachers of Los Angeles, the local teachers union.
Mr. Duffy said the union, which represents 48,000 teachers, had announced plans for the hourlong protest more a month ago, allowing principals and teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s second-largest K-12 public school system, to work together to plan supervision of almost 700,000 students between 7:30 and 8:30 a.m. Substitute teachers and administrators from neighboring districts were brought in to sit with students in auditoriums, gymnasiums and on playgrounds, he said.
When the protest ended at 8:30 a.m., teachers reported to their classrooms for their regular duties. http://ljsheehan.blogspot.com
School district officials said they opposed the budget cuts, but denounced the protest as a disruption of the school day. The district failed to win a court injunction in early May to prevent teachers from leaving their classes to take part in the protest.
On Thursday night, Superintendent David Brewer sent an automated call to parents, notifying them of the protest and calling it “the wrong message” to send to legislators and to the community.
At 7:30 Friday morning, teachers wearing red T-shirts and carrying signs with slogans like “Honk for No Budget Cuts” were joined by some parents on sidewalks outside their schools. Many smiled and waved at morning commuters, some of whom sounded their horns.
Retirements are increasing from a baby boomer generation of teachers and others in the state's public education system, taking with them years of invaluable classroom experience.
As many as 12,000 retirements are expected this year alone by the Pennsylvania Public School Employees Retirement System, while the Pennsylvania State Education Association says 30 percent of the state's teachers -- there were more than 123,000 in the profession as of 2005-06 -- are within five years of their normal retirement age.
Officials of several midstate school districts say colleges are producing enough capa ble graduates and that many are more sophis ticated in technology and other modern edu cation than prior generations.
But short ages exist in key subjects such as math, language, physics and chemistry -- skills needed by employers and ones that likely are going to become even more crucial in the future. There also continues to be a lack of minorities going into teaching, an issue that urban districts in particular are finding challenging.
The Harrisburg School District, for example, had a 94.7 percent minority student population last year, but only 23 percent of its teachers represented minorities.
There is much to be said for teacher training and majoring in education in terms of one's ability to be effective in the classroom. But the retirement wave on top of shortages of teachers in certain subject areas and the dearth of minorities reinforce the need to revisit federal and state certification requirements that have been tightened in recent years under the No Child Left Behind Act and Pennsylvania's Teachers for the 21st Century Initiative.
Although perhaps well-intentioned, they have presented huge obstacles for nonteaching professionals looking to make a career change and who have much to offer students. Prior to No Child Left Behind, a school district would take a person with an MBA and a background conducive to teaching math, economics or business, put him or her in the classroom immediately and have the individual work toward completing a list of courses needed for teaching certification.
Now, the certification must come first, meaning the applicant would likely have to bear the financial hardship of quitting his or her job while taking classes.
They do have the option of taking and passing the national teachers exam, something Mark Holman, director of human resources for the Harrisburg School District, has compared to "trying to pass the bar exam before going to law school."
Meanwhile, since the 2003-04 school year, the initiative launched under the Ridge administration require teachers graduating college to have a 3.0 grade point average. But some students for reasons of maturity, homesickness or personal hardship struggle with their studies their freshmen and sophomore years, then turn it around and become A and B students their remaining years. In those cases, the GPA is misleading.
The state should reconsider these GPA requirements and Congress should revisit the certification issue while debating reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act. Not only have the federal and state governments usurped local discretion in the hiring process, they are keeping some potentially good teachers out of the classroom.
Hose or no hose? That's the working woman's dilemma around this time of year. The weather grows warmer, and the debate heats up: Are bare legs proper?
In today's casual workplaces, many women have peeled off the panty hose, and it is now common to see bare legs even on conservative Wall Street and at business events. Yet the transition has highlighted a generational divide. For women who entered the work force before the 1990s, hose were considered as necessary as underwear. But many twentysomethings have never worn panty hose at all. http://louisajasheehan.blogspot.com
The fashion shift has left some baby boomer managers feeling that their hose make them look frumpy. Kathy Garland, the 54-year-old chairwoman of the Northern Dallas area for the National Association of Women Business Owners, says she finally threw out a bag full of hose last week. An executive coach herself, she noticed a few years ago that she was the only woman wearing hose at a formal business fund-raiser. "Younger women don't even think about panty hose," she says.
There are certainly weightier issues to ponder these days, what with a presidential election and a war going on. But to managers in offices encompassing several generations, panty-hose policies are an opportunity to set fair rules.
Attached to this memo is an update of our dress code that I have approved and is effective immediately, subject to final approval of our Board (as are all official policies).
This change makes the wearing of hose by females optional with both business and business casual. http://Louis-J-sheehan.info
Our standards are based on what is generally and widely accepted as the professional dress standard consistent with conservative professional appearance. The reason for this change is a result of legitimate questions by prospective staff members about this standard. Kristen contacted nearly two-dozen local financial institutions about their standard in this area. She also contacted the Wichita Eagle, and I consulted with the professional business-wear reporter for the Wall Street Journal. The vast majority responded that hose was an option with dresses, skirts and slacks in the professional world. Since this is the marketplace standard, we are adopting it.
Please be aware that these are minimum standards. What we truly want is for our members to see us in the most professional light that is reasonable. We encourage you to look your best with these minimum standards as your guide.
Personally, I believe hose enhance a woman's professional appearance and would be the preferred choice for upwardly mobile women both here and in other professional organizations. Please feel free to make the choice you believe presents you in the most professional way to our members-our ultimate judge.
This is the issue that lately has occupied the mind of Jim Holt, president of Mid American Credit Union, a small financial institution in Wichita, Kan. Mr. Holt is 58 and a three-decade member of the U.S. Army Reserves. He joined Mid American, which has 50 employees, four years ago, inheriting a dress code that prohibited, for women, such things as boots and mules, or backless shoes. The company required "hose" at all times -- even under pants.
When Mr. Holt attended a dress-for-success seminar that year, he got advice that caused him to loosen the reins on women's boots and mules. But not bare legs. The rule, "nylon hose and dress shoes are to be worn at all times," applied even to business-casual contexts. "We're not New York or San Francisco," Mr. Holt says, wearing ironed khaki slacks, an ironed golf shirt, and crisply creased socks. "We're the Midwest." http://Louis-J-sheehan.info
If there is a male equivalent of panty hose -- forcing wearers to balance comfort and formality -- it is probably the tie. Ties aren't required at Mid American. "The revolution has already taken place in the tie area," says Mr. Holt. He wears ties only on Mondays for his weekly Rotary Club luncheons.
As for fairness, it's hard to say whether ties or panty hose are more uncomfortable. One male reader of this newspaper, after making a bet with a female co-worker, attempted to discover the answer by secretly wearing panty hose under his business suit for several weeks. He claims ties are worse.
About a year and a half ago, Mr. Holt hired Kristen Spear as executive director of administration and human resources. Ms. Spear is 28. Like Ms. Garland in Texas, Ms. Spear found that wearing hose to professional events sometimes made her stand out awkwardly. Yet it was her job to counsel wayward employees on Mid American's dress code, which she did dutifully if not enthusiastically.
One bare-legged 23-year-old clerk in indirect loans -- where she dealt with customers by phone -- confessed she had never owned a pair of hose. Hose are "so foreign right now to Gen Y or Gen X," Ms. Spear says.
Ms. Spear encouraged Mr. Holt to reconsider his stand on hose. "According to her local research, hose are optional," Mr. Holt said in a recent email to me.
He relented just last week. "I didn't want to be so old-fashioned that people would be like, 'Do you require corsets, too?'" he said.
Mid American's newly loosened dress code, allowing bare legs, will be announced to employees in coming weeks in a series of meetings. Women at the credit union would be well-advised to listen closely. Mr. Holt says that when evaluating employees' performance in dress, as well as workmanship, he'll make a distinction between "who is meeting the minimum standards and who is exceeding them." In other words, hose will be optional but advised. http://Louis-J-sheehan.info
I suspect it is only a matter of time until Ms. Spear's point of view wins out entirely.
For the time being, Ms. Spear says she'll wear hose to board meetings "or if there is reason to exude the highest professional appearance. I will not wear them if I will be in the office all day, because I believe one can be professional-looking without wearing hose."
How to Date a Playboy Bunny
Step1
Be attractive. While you do not have to be the best looking person in the world, you do have be attractive or at least have an attractive personality trait. No Bunny wants to date a loser. You may need to have plastic surgery done to improve your appearance.
Step2
Find a retired Playboy Bunny. You need to find someone who worked as Bunny. You can hire a private detective, or you can attend one of the advertised events that the Bunnies hold. These events are generally charity fund-raisers. You could also plan to attend a Playboy Club reunion. The reunion is for former Playboy Club employees, but you can generally find the location for the event.
Step3
Visit the Playboy Mansion. While most of the women at the mansion are Playmates and might make you forget your quest to date a Bunny, a few Bunnies have been known to visit. You can also meet people who know Bunnies and can put you in contact with them.
Step4
Be open sexually. The premise of Hugh Hefner's "Playboy" is open sexuality. If you are not comfortable with your sexuality, you are in the wrong arena for dating. Some Bunnies prefer women, others look both ways and some just want to have an open relationship.
Step5
Watch for international Bunnies. Hugh Hefner currently has plans to revive the Bunnies at a new Playboy Mansion planned to open in China.
Dr. Jacob Robbins, whose studies of the thyroid gland at the National Institutes of Health helped explain how it helps govern metabolism and how thyroid cancers caused by radiation may be treated or possibly prevented, died on May 12 in Bethesda, Md. He was 85.
The cause was heart failure, his family said.
With another endocrinologist at the health institutes, Joseph E. Rall, Dr. Robbins embarked on a study of thyroxine, an important hormone produced by the thyroid that helps regulate metabolism. In the 1950s, the two researchers theorized that levels of thyroxine might vary in the bloodstream, but that the level of thyroxine actually in use would often be markedly lower. They found that thyroxine had to be “free,” or not bound to globulin and other plasma proteins, to be effective, whatever the overall thyroxine level in the bloodstream.
The findings of Dr. Robbins and Dr. Rall yielded insights about what are “normal and pathologic states in the thyroid, and how to distinguish between them,” said Dr. Phillip Gorden, an endocrinologist who directed the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases at the N.I.H. from 1986 to 1999. The observations have also aided physicians and pharmaceutical companies in developing targeted dosages of thyroxine, which in some pregnant women helps prevent or treat hypothyroidism, a hormone deficiency that can cause lasting developmental problems in infants.
In further fruitful collaborations with Dr. Rall and others, Dr. Robbins studied incidences of thyroid cancer in patients exposed to radioactive fallout from nuclear testing. Earlier, in the 1950s, he had examined the therapeutic properties of radioactive iodine when used to pinpoint and treat cancer in the thyroid. In the decades that followed, Dr. Robbins became an authority on the harmful effects of radioactive iodine released spontaneously into the atmosphere.
At the health institutes, Dr. Robbins helped direct long-term studies of the survivors of nuclear tests and accidents, and he followed the health effects of iodine fallout after the Chernobyl reactor meltdown in Ukraine in 1986 and after American weapons testing in the Marshall Islands from the 1940s to the 1980s. He joined a vocal group of scientists who called for wider availability of a drug that can help prevent thyroid cancers from showing up after intense exposures to radiation. That drug, potassium iodide, is taken orally and floods the thyroid with iodine to block the absorption of radioactive iodine.
Dr. Robbins argued that people living near commercial nuclear reactors, particularly children, should have immediate access to potassium iodide. He urged the federal government to stockpile the drug and widen its potential distribution. http://louisdjdsheehan.blogspot.com
In 2001, he told The New York Times, “To me, the smart thing to do would be to have it in homes, in blister packs with adhesive backs.”
Jacob Robbins was born in Yonkers. He studied chemistry at Cornell before earning a medical degree there in 1947.
Dr. Robbins joined the health institutes as an investigator in 1954. He was chief of the clinical endocrinology branch at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases from 1963 to 1991. The health institutes named him a scientist emeritus in 1995.
Dr. Robbins was a president of the American Thyroid Association. From 1968 to 1972, he was editor in chief of the journal Endocrinology.
Dr. Robbins is survived by his wife, the former Jean Adams. The couple lived in Bethesda. He is also survived by a son, Mark, of Seattle; two daughters, Alice of Amherst, Mass., and Susan of Shelburne Falls, Mass.; a brother, Lionel, of Bloomfield Hills, Mich.; a sister, Evelyn Savitzky of Pittsboro, N.C.; and four grandchildren.
how the business works and how the operators of the state’s estimated 500 dispensaries deal with the high risks and high costs of working in a legal gray area (cnbc.com).
Medical marijuana is legal in California, but federal law still bans sales. Amid the uncertainty that this creates — including the occasional raid by federal agents — a full-fledged industry has blossomed, taking in about $2 billion a year and generating $100 million in state sales taxes, CNBC reported.
Setting up a clinic “can cost as much as a hundred grand,” Ms. Wells reports. The equipment, the cuttings from which plants are grown and office space all tend to be expensive. And from there, the costs only grow, mostly in the form of legal fees. Many clinics keep lawyers on retainer.
Nonetheless, “this is the business model of the future,” says JoAnna La Force of Farmacy, an herbal remedy shop in Southern California. Ms. LaForce says her business is close to breaking even (medicalmarijuanafarmacy.com).
A slew of ancillary businesses has grown up around medical marijuana. Bill Britt, identified on the Web site as a patient, has found a new career as an expert witness in cases brought against dispensaries and patients, earning $250 to $350 a case.
He gained his expert knowledge by attending Oaksterdam University, a trade school in Oakland, Calif. At Oaksterdam (oaksterdamuniversity.com), students learn everything from “The Politics of Cannabis” to botany to business operations.
Getting into the quasi-legitimate marijuana business is a challenge, says Jeff Jones, chancellor of Oaksterdam’s Los Angeles campus. But, he adds, “The investment is well worth it, except for the federal risk.”
As air travel grows increasingly nightmarish even as it gets more expensive, Patrick Smith, writer of Salon’s Ask the Pilot column, has been singing the praises of Southwest Airlines, the (relatively) cut-rate, bare-bones carrier.
Southwest recently took first place in a survey of airline satisfaction conducted by the University of Michigan.
Mr. Smith’s initial explanation was this: “People don’t expect much. Southwest Airlines is nothing if not unpretentious” and has “mastered the art of get-what-you-pay-for satisfaction.”
His readers, though, thought otherwise. Many wrote to say that, though Southwest dispenses with a lot of perks, it offers a basic level of customer service that bigger airlines often do not.
Mr. Smith acknowledged that Southwest’s comparatively small size gave it an advantage in maintaining a consistent level of service. Nevertheless, it is “the last of a nearly vanished breed: an airline with a true personality, that large numbers of fliers have unwavering fondness for.”
As a test of airport security, a customs officer planted marijuana in the side pocket of a random suitcase at Narita International Airport in Tokyo, the BBC reports (news.bbc.co.uk).
The test failed when the sniffer dogs were unable to detect the pot. But the officer could not remember which bag he had used.
Using an actual passenger’s suitcase is against regulations, and the airport’s customs service has apologized.
Meanwhile, the marijuana is still out there. “Anyone finding the package has been asked to contact customs officials,” according to the BBC. So far, nobody has spoken up. http://louiskjksheehan.blogspot.com
For years, scientists have had a straightforward idea for taming global warming. They want to take the carbon dioxide that spews from coal-burning power plants and pump it back into the ground.
President Bush is for it, and indeed has spent years talking up the virtues of “clean coal.” All three candidates to succeed him favor the approach. So do many other members of Congress. Coal companies are for it. Many environmentalists favor it. Utility executives are practically begging for the technology.
But it has become clear in recent months that the nation’s effort to develop the technique is lagging badly.
In January, the government canceled its support for what was supposed to be a showcase project, a plant at a carefully chosen site in Illinois where there was coal, access to the power grid, and soil underfoot that backers said could hold the carbon dioxide for eons.
Perhaps worse, in the last few months, utility projects in Florida, West Virginia, Ohio, Minnesota and Washington State that would have made it easier to capture carbon dioxide have all been canceled or thrown into regulatory limbo.
Coal is abundant and cheap, assuring that it will continue to be used. But the failure to start building, testing, tweaking and perfecting carbon capture and storage means that developing the technology may come too late to make coal compatible with limiting global warming.
“It’s a total mess,” said Daniel M. Kammen, director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley.
“Coal’s had a tough year,” said John Lavelle, head of a business at General Electric that makes equipment for processing coal into a form from which carbon can be captured. Many of these projects were derailed by the short-term pressure of rising construction costs. But scientists say the result, unless the situation can be turned around, will be a long-term disaster.
Plans to combat global warming generally assume that continued use of coal for power plants is unavoidable for at least several decades. Therefore, starting as early as 2020, forecasters assume that carbon dioxide emitted by new power plants will have to be captured and stored underground, to cut down on the amount of global-warming gases in the atmosphere.
Yet, simple as the idea may sound, considerable research is still needed to be certain the technique would be safe, effective and affordable.
Scientists need to figure out which kinds of rock and soil formations are best at holding carbon dioxide. They need to be sure the gas will not bubble back to the surface. They need to find optimal designs for new power plants so as to cut costs. And some complex legal questions need to be resolved, such as who would be liable if such a project polluted the groundwater or caused other damage far from the power plant.
Major corporations sense the possibility of a profitable new business, and G.E. signed a partnership on Wednesday with Schlumberger, the oil field services company, to advance the technology of carbon capture and sequestration.
But only a handful of small projects survive, and the recent cancellations mean that most of this work has come to a halt, raising doubts that the technique can be ready any time in the next few decades. And without it, “we’re not going to have much of a chance for stabilizing the climate,” said John Thompson, who oversees work on the issue for the Clean Air Task Force, an environmental group.
The fear is that utilities, lacking proven chemical techniques for capturing carbon dioxide and proven methods for storing it underground by the billions of tons per year, will build the next generation of coal plants using existing technology. That would ensure that vast amounts of global warming gases would be pumped into the atmosphere for decades.
The highest-profile failure involved a project known as FutureGen, which President Bush himself announced in 2003: a utility consortium, with subsidies from the government, was going to build a plant in Mattoon, Ill., testing the most advanced techniques for converting coal to a gas, capturing pollutants, and burning the gas for power.
The carbon dioxide would have been compressed and pumped underground into deep soil layers. Monitoring devices would have tested whether any was escaping to the atmosphere.
About $50 million has been spent on FutureGen, about $40 million in federal money and $10 million in private money, to draw up preliminary designs, find a site that had coal, electric transmission and suitable geology, and complete an Environmental Impact Statement, among other steps.
But in January, the government pulled out after projected costs nearly doubled, to $1.8 billion. The government feared the costs would go even higher. A bipartisan effort is afoot on Capitol Hill to save FutureGen, but the project is on life support.
The government had to change its approach, said Clarence Albright Jr., the undersecretary of the Energy Department, to “limit taxpayer exposure to the escalating cost.” http://louisgjgsheehan.blogspot.com
Trying to recover, the Energy Department is trying to cut a deal with a utility that is already planning a new power plant. The government would offer subsidies to add a segment to the plant dedicated to capturing and injecting carbon dioxide, as long as the utility bore much of the risk of cost overruns.
It is unclear whether any utility will agree to such a deal. The power companies, in fact, have been busy pulling back from coal-burning power plants of all types, amid rising costs and political pressure. Utility executives say they do not know of a plant that would qualify for an Energy Department grant as the project is now structured.
Most worrisome to experts on global warming, the utilities have recently been canceling their commitments to a type of plant long seen as a helpful intermediate step toward cleaner coal.
In plants of this type, coal would be gasified and pollutants like mercury, sulfur and soot removed before burning. The plants would be highly efficient, and would therefore emit less carbon dioxide for a given volume of electricity produced, but they would not inject the carbon dioxide into the ground.
But the situation is not hopeless. One new gasification proposal survives in the United States, by Duke Energy for a plant in Edwardsport, Ind.
In Wisconsin, engineers are testing a method that may allow them to bolt machinery for capturing carbon dioxide onto the back of old-style power plants; Sweden, Australia and Denmark are planning similar tests. And German engineers are exploring another approach, one that involves burning coal in pure oxygen, which would produce a clean stream of exhaust gases that could be injected into the ground.
But no project is very far along, and it remains an open question whether techniques for capturing and storing carbon dioxide will be available by the time they are critically needed.
The Electric Power Research Institute, a utility consortium, estimated that it would take as long as 15 years to go from starting a pilot plant to proving the technology will work. The institute has set a goal of having large-scale tests completed by 2020.
“A year ago, that was an aggressive target,” said Steven R. Specker, the president of the institute. “A year has gone by, and now it’s a very aggressive target.”
The inhabitants of Israel's Village of the Blind, near Gedera, are shown off so often that they have become indifferent to visitors. But today, in words of Dr. Nissim Hagel, blind director of the village, they welcomed Helen Keller "not as a guest but as a sister."
Helen Adams Keller was born on 27 June 1880 in Tuscumbia, a small rural town in Northwest Alabama, USA. The daughter of Captain Arthur Henley Keller and Kate Adams Keller she was born with full sight and hearing.
Kate Keller was a tall, statuesque blond with blue eyes. She was some twenty years younger than her husband Captain Keller, a loyal southerner who had proudly served in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War.
The house they lived in was a simple, white, clapboard house built in 1820 by Helen’s grandparents. At the time of Helen’s birth the family were far from wealthy with Captain Keller earning a living as both a cotton plantation owner and the editor of a weekly local newspaper, the “North Alabamian”. Helen’s mother, as well as working on the plantation, would save money by making her own butter, lard, bacon and ham.
Helen falls ill
But Helen’s life was to change dramatically. In February 1882, when Helen was nineteen months old, she fell ill. To this day the nature of her ailment remains a mystery. The doctors of the time called it “brain fever”, whilst modern day doctors think it may have been scarlet fever or meningitis. http://louisjjjsheehan.blogspot.com
Whatever the illness, Helen was, for many days, expected to die. When, eventually, the fever subsided, Helen’s family rejoiced believing their daughter to be well again.
However, Helen’s mother soon noticed how her daughter was failing to respond when the dinner bell was rang or when she passed her hand in front of her daughter’s eyes.
It thus became apparent that Helen’s illness had left her both blind and deaf.
The following few years proved very hard for Helen and her family. Helen became a very difficult child, smashing dishes and lamps and terrorising the whole household with her screaming and temper tantrums. Relatives regarded her as a monster and thought she should be put into an institution.
By the time Helen was six her family had become desperate. Looking after Helen was proving too much for them. Kate Keller had read in Charles Dickens’ book “American Notes” of the fantastic work that had been done with another deaf and blind child, Laura Bridgman, and travelled to a specialist doctor in Baltimore for advice. They were given confirmation that Helen would never see or hear again but were told not to give up hope, the doctor believed Helen could be taught and he advised them to visit a local expert on the problems of deaf children. This expert was Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, Bell was now concentrating on what he considered his true vocation, the teaching of deaf children.
Alexander Graham Bell suggested that the Kellers write to Michael Anagnos, director of the Perkins Institution and Massachusetts Asylum for the Blind, and request that he try and find a teacher for Helen. Michael Anagnos considered Helen’s case and immediately recommended a former pupil of the institution, that woman was
Anne Sullivan had lost the majority of her sight at the age of five. By the age of ten, her mother had died and her father deserted her. She and her brother Jimmie were sent to the poorhouse in February 1876.
Anne’s brother died in the poorhouse. It was October 1880 before Anne finally left and went to commence her education at the Perkins Institution. One summer during her time at the institute, Anne had two operations on her eyes, which led to her regaining enough sight to be able to read normal print for short periods of time.
Anne graduated from Perkins in 1886 and began to search for work. Finding work was terribly difficult for Anne, due to her poor eyesight, and when she received the offer from Michael Anagnos to work as the teacher of Helen Keller, a deaf-blind mute, although she had no experience in this area, she accepted willingly.
Helen meets Anne
On 3 March 1887 Anne arrived at the house in Tuscumbia and for the first time met Helen Keller. Anne immediately started teaching Helen to finger spell. Spelling out the word “Doll” to signify a present she had brought with her for Helen. The next word she taught Helen was “Cake”. Although Helen could repeat these finger movements she could not quite understand what they meant. And while Anne was struggling trying to help her understand, she was also struggling to try and control Helen’s continuing bad behaviour.
Anne and Helen moved into a small cottage on the land of the main house to try and get Helen to improve her behaviour. Of particular concern were Helen’s table manners. She had taken to eating with her hands and from the plates of everyone at the table.
Anne’s attempts to improve Helen’s table manners and make her brush her own hair and button her shoes led to more and more temper tantrums. Anne punished these tantrums by refusing to “talk” with Helen by spelling words on her hands. http://www.myspace.com/louis_j_sheehan_esquire
Over the coming weeks, however, Helen’s behaviour did begin to improve as a bond grew between the two. Then, after a month of Anne’s teaching, what the people of the time called a “miracle” occurred.
Helen had until now not yet fully understood the meaning of words. When Anne led her to the water pump on 5 April 1887, all that was about to change.
As Anne pumped the water over Helen’s hand , Anne spelled out the word water in the girl’s free hand. Something about this explained the meaning of words within Helen, and Anne could immediately see in her face that she finally understood.
Helen later recounted the incident:
“We walked down the path to the well-house, attracted by the fragrance of the honey-suckle with which it was covered. Someone was drawing water and my teacher placed my hand under the spout. As the cool stream gushed over one hand she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly, then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten, a thrill of returning thought, and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me.”
Helen immediately asked Anne for the name of the pump to be spelt on her hand and then the name of the trellis. All the way back to the house Helen learned the name of everything she touched and also asked for Anne’s name. Anne spelled the name “Teacher” on Helen’s hand. Within the next few hours Helen learnt the spelling of thirty new words.
Helen’s progress from then on was astonishing. Her ability to learn was far in advance of anything that anybody had seen before in someone without sight or hearing. It wasn’t long before Anne was teaching Helen to read, firstly with raised letters and later with braille, and to write with both ordinary and braille typewriters.
Michael Anagnos was keen to promote Helen, one of the numerous articles on her that he wrote said of Helen that “she is a phenomenon”. These articles led to a wave of publicity about Helen with pictures of her reading Shakespeare or stroking her dog appearing in national newspapers.
Helen had become famous, and as well as again visiting Alexander Graham Bell, she visited President Cleveland at the White House. By 1890 she was living at the Perkins Institute and being taught by Anne. In March of that year Helen met Mary Swift Lamson who over the coming year was to try and teach Helen to speak. This was something that Helen desperately wanted and although she learned to understand what somebody else was saying by touching their lips and throat, her efforts to speak herself proved at this stage to be unsuccessful. This was later attributed to the fact that Helen’s vocal chords were not properly trained prior to her being taught to speak.
On 4 November 1891 Helen sent Michael Anagnos a birthday gift of a short story she had written called “The Frost King”. Anagnos was so delighted with the story that he had soon published it in a magazine hailing its importance in literary history.
However, it was soon discovered that Helen’s story was the same as one called “The Frost Fairies” by Margaret Canby. This was ultimately to be the end of Helen and Anne’s friendship with Michael Anagnos. He felt he had been made to appear foolish by what he considered to be Helen’s deception.
There had to be an investigation and it was discovered that Helen had previously been read the story some years before and had obviously remembered it. Helen always claimed not to recall the original story and it should always be remembered that Helen was still only 11 years old, however, this incident created a rift that would never heal between Helen, Anne and Anagnos. It also created great doubt in Helen’s own mind as to whether any of her thoughts were truly her own.
In 1894 Helen and Anne met John D Wright and Dr Thomas Humason who were planning to set up a school to teach speech to the deaf in New York City. Helen and Anne were very excited by this and the assurances of the two men that Helen’s speech could be improved excited them further. Helen thus agreed to attend the Wright-Humason School for the Deaf.
Unfortunately though, Helen’s speech never really improved beyond the sounds that only Anne and others very close to her could understand.
Helen moved on to the Cambridge School for Young Ladies in 1896 and in the Autumn of 1900 entered Radcliffe College, becoming the first deafblind person to have ever enrolled at an institution of higher learning.
Life at Radcliffe was very difficult for Helen and Anne, and the huge amount of work involved led to deterioration in Anne’s eyesight. During their time at the College Helen began to write about her life. She would write the story both in braille and on a normal typewriter. It was at this time that Helen and Anne met with John Albert Macy who was to help edit Helen’s first book “The Story of My Life” which was published in 1903 and although it sold poorly at first it has since become a classic.
On 28 June 1904 Helen graduated from Radcliffe College, becoming the first deafblind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree.
John Macy became good friends with Helen and Anne, and in May 1905 John and Anne were married. Anne’s name now changed to Anne Sullivan Macy. The three lived together in Wrentham, Massachusetts, and during this time Helen wrote “The World I Live In”, revealing for the first time her thoughts on her world. It was also during this time that John Macy introduced her to a new and revolutionary way of viewing the world. And in 1909 Helen became a member of the Socialist Party of Massachusetts.
In 1913 “Out of the Dark” was published. This was a series of essays on socialism and its impact on Helen’s public image was immense. Everyone now knew Helen’s political views.
Helen tours the World
Helen and Anne filled the following years with lecture tours, speaking of her experiences and beliefs to enthralled crowds. Her talks were interpreted sentence by sentence by Anne Sullivan, and were followed by question and answer sessions.
Although Helen and Anne made a good living from their lectures, by 1918 the demand for Helen’s lectures had diminished and they were touring with a more light-hearted vaudeville show, which demonstrated Helen’s first understanding of the word “water”. These shows were hugely successful from the very first performance, a review of which read as follows:
“Helen Keller has conquered again, and the Monday afternoon audience at the Palace, one of the most critical and cynical in the World, was hers.”
At this time they were also offered the chance to make a film in Hollywood and they jumped at the opportunity. “Deliverance”, the story of Helen’s life, was made. Helen was, however, unhappy with the glamorous nature of the film and it unfortunately did not prove to be the financial success that they had hoped for.
The vaudeville appearances continued with Helen answering a wide range of questions on her life and her politics and Anne translating Helen’s answers for the enthralled audience. They were earning up to two thousand dollars a week, which was a considerable sum of money at the time. http://ljsheehan.blogspot.com
In 1918 Helen, Anne and John moved to Forest Hills in New York. Helen used their new home as a base for her extensive fundraising tours for the American Foundation for the Blind. She not only collected money, but also campaigned tirelessly to alleviate the living and working conditions of blind people, who at that time were usually badly educated and living in asylums. Her endeavours were a major factor in changing these conditions.
Helen’s mother Kate died in 1921 from an unknown illness, and this left Anne as the sole constant in Helen’s life. However that same year Anne fell ill again and this was followed in 1922 by a severe bout of bronchitis which left her unable to speak above a whisper and thus unable to work with Helen on stage anymore. At this point Polly Thomson, who had started working for Helen and Anne in 1914 as a secretary, took on the role of explaining Helen to the theatre going public.
They also spent a lot of time touring the world raising money for blind people. In 1931 they met King George and Queen Mary at Buckingham Palace, who were said to be deeply impressed by Helen’s ability to understand what people said through touch.
All the while Anne’s health was getting worse, and with the news of the death of John Macy in 1932, although their marriage had broken up some years before, her spirit was finally broken. She died on 20 October 1936.
When Anne died, Helen and Polly moved to Arcan Ridge, in Westport, Connecticut, which would be Helen’s home for the rest of her life.
After World War II, Helen and Polly spent years travelling the world fundraising for the American Foundation for the Overseas Blind. They visited Japan, Australia, South America, Europe and Africa.
Whilst away during this time Helen and Polly learnt of the fire that destroyed their home at Arcan Ridge. Although the house would be rebuilt, as well as the many mementoes that Helen and Polly lost, also destroyed was the latest book that Helen had been working on about Anne Sullivan, called “Teacher”.
It was also during this time that Polly Thomson’s health began to deteriorate and whilst in Japan she had a mild stroke. Doctors advised Polly to stop the continuous touring she and Helen did, and although initially they slowed down a bit, the touring continued once Polly had recovered.
In 1953 a documentary film “The Unconquered” was made about Helen’s life, this was to win an Academy Award as the best feature length documentary .It was at the same time that Helen began work again on her book “Teacher”, some seven years after the original had been destroyed. The book was finally published in 1955.
Polly Thomson had a stroke in 1957, she was never to fully recover and died on March 21, 1960. Her ashes were deposited at the National Cathedral in Washington DC next to those of Anne Sullivan. It was the nurse who had been brought in to care for Polly in her last years, Winnie Corbally, who was to take care of Helen in her remaining years.
The Miracle Worker
It was in 1957 that “The Miracle Worker” was first performed. A drama portraying Anne Sullivan’s first success in communicating with Helen as a child, it first appeared as a live television play in the United States.
In 1959 it was re-written as a Broadway play and opened to rave reviews. It became a smash hit and ran for almost two years. In 1962 it was made into a film and the actresses playing Anne and Helen both received Oscars for their performances.
Helen retires from public life
In October 1961 Helen suffered the first of a series of strokes, and her public life was to draw to a close. She was to spend her remaining years being cared for at her home in Arcan Ridge.
Her last years were not however without excitement, and in 1964 Helen was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award, by President Lyndon Johnson. A year later she was elected to the Women’s Hall of Fame at the New York World’s Fair.
On June 1, 1968, at Arcan Ridge, Helen Keller died peacefully in her sleep. Helen was cremated in Bridgeport, Connecticut and a funeral service was held at the National Cathedral in Washington DC where the urn containing her ashes would later be deposited next to those of Anne Sullivan and Polly Thomson.
Helen’s legacy
Today Helen’s final resting place is a popular tourist attraction and the bronze plaque erected to commemorate her life has the following inscription written in braille:
“Helen Keller and her beloved companion Anne Sullivan Macy are interred in the columbarium behind this chapel.”
So many people have visited the chapel, and touched the braille dots, that the plaque has already had to be replaced twice.
If Helen Keller were born today her life would undoubtedly have been completely different. Her life long dream was to be able to talk, something that she was never really able to master. Today the teaching methods exist that would have helped Helen to realise this dream. What would Helen have made of the technology available today to blind and deafblind individuals? Technology that enables blind and deafblind people, like Helen, to communicate directly, and independently, with anybody in the world.
Helen Keller may not have been directly responsible for the development of these technologies and teaching methods. But with the help of Anne Sullivan, through her writings, lectures and the way she lived her life, she has shown millions of people that disability need not be the end of the world.
“The public must learn that the blind man is neither genius nor a freak nor an idiot. He has a mind that can be educated, a hand which can be trained, ambitions which it is right for him to strive to realise, and it is the duty of the public to help him make the best of himself so that he can win light through work.”
Further reading
The world has changed a lot since Helen's time. The internet now gives people the freedom to learn and communicate equally. From emailing, browsing, learning online, playing games, downloading music and shopping, it has opened up a new world to blind and partially sighted people. Find out how web designers can make their websites accessible to people who are deaf and blind - Web Access Centre.
We are UK’s leading charity offering information, support and advice to over two million people with sight problems. Find out more about RNIB.
Up to three million adults and children in the UK who are blind, partially sighted or have a reading disability such as dyslexia are denied the right to read. Support our Right to Read campaign.
More families are looking right under their feet to ease the problem of high food prices.
As consumers balk at the rising cost of groceries, homeowners increasingly are cutting out sections of lawn and retiring flower beds to grow their own food. They're building raised vegetable beds, turning their spare time over to gardening, and doing battle with insect pests. http://louis1j1sheehan1esquire1.blogspot.com
At Al's Garden Center in Portland, Ore., sales of vegetable plants this season have jumped an unprecedented 43% from a year earlier, and sales of fruit-producing trees and shrubs are up 17%. Sales of flower perennials, on the other hand, are down 16%. It's much the same story at Williams Nursery, Westfield, N.J., where total sales are down 4.6% even as herb and vegetable-plant sales have risen 16%. And in Austin, Texas, Great Outdoors reports sales of flowers slightly down, while sales of vegetables have risen 20% over last year.
The grow-your-own trend comes as the price of food has skyrocketed. The government recently reported that April's 0.9% increase in food prices from the previous month was the fastest pace in 18 years -- a reflection of global pressures, from drought in Australia to increased demand in India and China.
For Michele von Turkovich in South Burlington, Vt., those pressures hit home when she noticed her average grocery bill hit $800 a month. "I reached for the organic strawberries the other day and realized, 'I can't buy organic,' " says the research-lab technician and mother of three teenage daughters.
After chatting with a neighbor who has a large garden, Ms. von Turkovich in April decided to dig up a 10-by-12-foot patch of lawn struggling on the side of her house to plant vegetables. Her neighbor helped her to think about making the best use of the space so that there would always be something in the garden to harvest.
So far, the lettuce is an inch high, and she's looking forward to radishes in about a week. Also sprouting are about a dozen varieties of greens, including Swiss chard, kale, scallions and endive. A used soccer net serves as a makeshift trellis for the peas she is expecting. It's a lot of toil, though. Ms. von Turkovich says she typically spends at least an hour after work each day on her garden and about half the weekend. "It takes a significant amount of my spare time."
Even before this year's food-price crunch, the vigor for veggies was already gaining momentum. An annual survey of more than 2,000 households by the National Gardening Association shows the average amount spent per household on flowers was flat in 2007 compared with a year earlier. But spending on vegetable plants rose 21% to $58 per household last year, and spending on herbs gained 45% to $32.
Bruce Butterfield, the association's research director, expects 2008 will be another strong year for vegetable gardening thanks to "the combination of gas prices, food prices, and people staying at home because the world's gone crazy," he says. "At least they can have some control over their backyard."
George Ball, chief executive of seed giant W. Atlee Burpee & Co. in Warminster, Pa., says he thinks the veggie-gardening rage is prompted by more than just food costs. His business has seen more baby boomers "entering their prime gardening years," he says. Now, this generation has "a lot of time, the rat race is over, a home that is likely to be their last, and kids past puberty," he says. Burpee's sales of vegetables and herbs are up about 40% this year, twice last year's growth rate. Tomatoes, summer squash, onions, cucumbers, peas and beans continue to be top sellers. "We're running out of things like onions, that you think would never be that hot and raging," he says.
In West Columbia, S.C., Sarah Rosenbaum ripped up about a quarter of her family's landscaped yard to install six raised vegetable beds. "You get a pack of seeds for a dollar or two, and you have got a whole bed of organic vegetables for a fraction of what you'd pay at the store. And they taste better."
The project got under way in early March when Ms. Rosenbaum, her partner and his 12-year-old twins started seeds indoors for all their vegetables -- from bok choy to zucchini. "We're out in the garden after work every day, pretty much" she says. "We love doing the work, so it doesn't really feel like work." She hopes the experience will also inspire the twins to eat more vegetables.
To be sure, a new gardener can find himself plunking down a significant amount of money to get started. Ms. Rosenbaum says that the initial investment in her vegetable garden was around $500 for everything from lumber to wire cages. While that may seem high for someone trying to save on food costs, she plans on reusing the materials year after year. "We're even planning to save seeds for next year," she says.
In the Garden Grove neighborhood of Portland, Ore., a community garden got a big makeover. Not only did the 15 participating households decide to double the garden's size and install a rain-sensitive sprinkler system; they also set aside a section so that each family gets its own subplot. "I'm in no way a tie-dye wearing granola hippie," says Garden Grove resident Dylan T. Boyd, a vice president at an email marketing company and father to two small boys. "But I was looking at the price of blueberries the other day -- $5 for a fistful. I thought, 'Are you kidding me?' "
While it's a time commitment, he says, the payback is far greater. "It's so much easier to walk to the top of the street and grab your lettuce and tomatoes for dinner, fresh every day."
Talk to your local nursery or check the seed packet for instructions on ideal planting times, which vary depending on what part of the country you live in. Here are some other things to consider:
If you live near an industrial plant or even in an old house where lead-based paint may have seeped into the soil, you should consider getting the soil checked for contaminants. A cooperative extension affiliated with a state university can usually do this.
http://louis2j2sheehan2esquire.blogspot.com
If you build a separate or raised bed filled with compost and topsoil, you can forgo testing the soil you're worried about.
You can also buy a soil-testing kit at a garden center which will tell you the pH and key nutrient levels. Optimum pH for growing vegetables is generally slightly acidic (between 6.5 and 7). If you don't have enough nitrogen, phosphorous or potassium you should add organic matter, such as good compost mixed in with your existing soil. Also consider organic fertilizers to boost those nutrients, such as blood meal, alfalfa meal, sea kelp or fish emulsion.
Most vegetables do best when they get plenty of sun, so pick a spot that gets optimum sunlight, at least six to eight hours of direct sun daily. Leafy greens such as lettuce and spinach can tolerate shadier conditions. Also, those leafy vegetables typically want to be planted in the cooler part of the season, before average temperatures go much past 70 degrees. Vegetables that do best in the hotter months include tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and squash. To conserve space, consider planting lettuce underneath tomato vines or even mixing them in other parts of the garden, where the foliage, vines and flowers can be captivating in their own right.
"Sometimes people think they have to be in perfect rows, but there's no reason you can't put them in a little closer and mix them in with flower gardens," says Lori Bushway, a gardening outreach specialist at Cornell University. She adds that doing so is also a good foil for pests that tend to zero in more rapidly on plants that are massed together. When distributed around the landscape, "they're harder to find," she says.
If you see a pest, find out what it is before reaching for that scary-sounding spray can. "People are buying sprays without even knowing what the problem is in the first place," says John Traunfeld, director of the home and garden information center at the University of Maryland's College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. The local cooperative extension can help identify the problem and suggest the best remedy. "A lot can be taken care of by just hand picking," he says.
Do Americans save enough? That depends on what the meaning of the word "enough" is. Enough for our own good? Enough for that of our neighbors? Our grandchildren? Our neighbors' grandchildren and our grandchildren's neighbors?
Ronald T. Wilcox, a business professor at the University of Virginia, acknowledges that these are very different questions, but he believes that they all have the same answer. By any standard that Mr. Wilcox can imagine, he is sure that we save too little.
By most standards, he is probably right. Like philanthropy, saving is an act of self-denial that enriches your neighbors (by leaving more goods available for them to consume). But unlike philanthropy, saving is punished by the tax system (via the taxes on interest, dividends, capital gains and inheritance). That's nuts. When you tax saving, you encourage people – wealthy people in particular – to spend more and grab a larger share of the consumption pie. "More consumption by the rich" should not be among the primary objectives of the tax code.
The alternative is to tax consumption. Mr. Wilcox thus believes (as do I and probably most economists) that a consumption tax is better than an income tax, at least in principle. But he withholds his full endorsement for a variety of spurious reasons, mostly born of his false assumption that any consumption tax must be levied at the point of sale. He worries, for example, that a consumption tax is necessarily nonprogressive. But you can easily implement a consumption tax with a Form 1040 that says: "How much did you earn this year? How much did you save? Now pay tax on the difference." And you can make that tax as progressive as you like.
The tax code alone is reason to believe that Americans don't save enough. Mr. Wilcox offers a menu of other reasons, not all of them convincing. He repeats the canard, popularized by Robert Frank of Cornell University, that "keeping up with the Joneses" is a force for excessive consumption. One could argue equally well that it is a force for excessive saving. If I am trying to outshine the neighbors' Mercedes, I might well decide to be extra frugal until I can afford a Rolls Royce.
Mr. Wilcox makes another fundamental error when he points to high foreign savings as a cause of excessive U.S. consumption. When foreigners save, U.S. interest rates drop. This makes it smart for Americans to consume more. "More" is not always the same as "excessive."
Such errors aside, traditional economic theory does suggest that we save too little for the general good. It denies, however, that we save too little for our own good. Regarding the second point, I suspect, along with Mr. Wilcox, that traditional economic theory is wrong. Smart people make stupid investment decisions all the time. They thoughtlessly accept the default asset allocations in their retirement plans; they fail to grasp the miraculous power of compound interest; they hire financial advisers to help them pick individual stocks; they choose taxable savings vehicles instead of IRAs. I know an internationally renowned economist who, for 10 years, unknowingly put all his retirement savings in bonds instead of equities because he had checked the wrong box on a form.
Mr. Wilcox does an excellent job of addressing these problems. He stresses education, and indeed the single best investment you can make in your children's future is to teach them the returns to saving. You can do that by pointing to some of Mr. Wilcox's graphs, or you can just quote the numbers I always quote to my students: Invest $1,000 a month in 3% bonds and in 40 years you'll have almost a million dollars. Invest the same $1,000 a month in a diversified portfolio of stocks earning the historical average of 8% and you'll have more than $3.5 million. Give it 50 years instead of 40 and that $3.5 million grows to $8 million. (All these numbers are corrected for inflation. If inflation runs at 2%, you can expect a 10% return on the stock market. In the end, you'll have the equivalent of eight million of today's dollars; if prices double, you'll have 16 million instead of eight.)
It is worth noting that a 1% management fee on your mutual fund can easily eat up two of those eight million. Yet almost nobody pays attention to these fees. Moral: Stick with low-fee funds. Bigger moral: There are some very simple things that we can all do to become wiser investors. http://louis2j1sheehan2esquire.blogspot.com
In "Whatever Happened to Thrift?," Mr. Wilcox draws these morals and others to help individual savers. He also has advice for paternalistic employers who want their workers to save more: Offer a limited number of low-fee mutual funds; offer targeted financial education; above all, reset the defaults on your pension plans to something other than 100% cash, and so that 401(k) plans are opt-out rather than opt-in.
The idea here is to increase employee pension-fund participation, which means that you'll probably have to cut back on matching funds. That's good for your financially naïve employees but bad for the financially savvy ones who would have participated anyway. Mr. Wilcox acknowledges this fact but fails to acknowledge that your financially savvy employees are likely to be smarter and more valuable. (Interestingly, he makes this very observation earlier in the book but seems to forget it by the end.) I'm not sure that it is good company policy to make your most productive workers subsidize the rest.
Mr. Wilcox has an enviably lively prose style and an admirable commitment to brevity. Not everything he says is correct, but much of what he says is both correct and valuable. A conscientious reader could easily secure a comfortable retirement by taking his advice to heart.
Red wine may be much more potent than was thought in extending human lifespan, researchers say in a new report that is likely to give impetus to the rapidly growing search for longevity drugs.
The study is based on dosing mice with resveratrol, an ingredient of some red wines. Some scientists are already taking resveratrol in capsule form, but others believe it is far too early to take the drug, especially using wine as its source, until there is better data on its safety and effectiveness.
The report is part of a new wave of interest in drugs that may enhance longevity. On Monday, Sirtris, a startup founded in 2004 to develop drugs with the same effects as resveratrol, completed its sale to GlaxoSmithKline for $720 million.
Sirtris is seeking to develop drugs that activate protein agents known in people as sirtuins.
“The upside is so huge that if we are right, the company that dominates the sirtuin space could dominate the pharmaceutical industry and change medicine,” Dr. David Sinclair of the Harvard Medical School, a co-founder of the company, said Tuesday.
Serious scientists have long derided the idea of life-extending elixirs, but the door has now been opened to drugs that exploit an ancient biological survival mechanism, that of switching the body’s resources from fertility to tissue maintenance. The improved tissue maintenance seems to extend life by cutting down on the degenerative diseases of aging.
The reflex can be prompted by a faminelike diet, known as caloric restriction, which extends the life of laboratory rodents by up to 30 percent but is far too hard for most people to keep to and in any case has not been proven to work in humans.
Research started nearly 20 years ago by Dr. Leonard Guarente of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology showed recently that the famine-induced switch to tissue preservation might be triggered by activating the body’s sirtuins. Dr. Sinclair, a former student of Dr. Guarente, then found in 2003 that sirtuins could be activated by some natural compounds, including resveratrol, previously known as just an ingredient of certain red wines.
Dr. Sinclair’s finding led in several directions. He and others have tested resveratrol’s effects in mice, mostly at doses far higher than the minuscule amounts in red wine. One of the more spectacular results was obtained last year by Dr. John Auwerx of the Institute of Genetics and Molecular and Cellular Biology in Illkirch, France. He showed that resveratrol could turn plain vanilla, couch-potato mice into champion athletes, making them run twice as far on a treadmill before collapsing.
The company Sirtris, meanwhile, has been testing resveratrol and other drugs that activate sirtuin. These drugs are small molecules, more stable than resveratrol, and can be given in smaller doses. In April, Sirtris reported that its formulation of resveratrol, called SRT501, reduced glucose levels in diabetic patients.
The company plans to start clinical trials of its resveratrol mimic soon. Sirtris’s value to GlaxoSmithKline is presumably that its sirtuin-activating drugs could be used to treat a spectrum of degenerative diseases, like cancer and Alzheimer’s, if the underlying theory is correct.
Separately from Sirtris’s investigations, a research team led by Tomas A. Prolla and Richard Weindruch, of the University of Wisconsin, reports in the journal PLoS One on Wednesday that resveratrol may be effective in mice and people in much lower doses than previously thought necessary. http://louis3j3sheehan.blogspot.com
In earlier studies, like Dr. Auwerx’s of mice on treadmills, the animals were fed such large amounts of resveratrol that to gain equivalent dosages people would have to drink more than 100 bottles of red wine a day.
The Wisconsin scientists used a dose on mice equivalent to just 35 bottles a day. But red wine contains many other resveratrol-like compounds that may also be beneficial. Taking these into account, as well as mice’s higher metabolic rate, a mere four, five-ounce glasses of wine “starts getting close” to the amount of resveratrol they found effective, Dr. Weindruch said.
Resveratrol can also be obtained in the form of capsules marketed by several companies. Those made by one company, Longevinex, include extracts of red wine and of a Chinese plant called giant knotweed. The Wisconsin researchers conclude that resveratrol can mimic many of the effects of a caloric-restricted diet “at doses that can readily be achieved in humans.”
The effectiveness of the low doses was not tested directly, however, but with a DNA chip that measures changes in the activity of genes. The Wisconsin team first defined the pattern of gene activity established in mice on caloric restriction, and then showed that very low doses of resveratrol produced just the same pattern.
Dr. Auwerx, who used doses almost 100 times greater in his treadmill experiments, expressed reservations about the new result. “I would be really cautious, as we never saw significant effects with such low amounts,” he said Tuesday in an e-mail message.
Another researcher in the sirtuin field, Dr. Matthew Kaeberlein of the University of Washington in Seattle, said, “There’s no way of knowing from this data, or from the prior work, if something similar would happen in humans at either low or high doses.”
A critical link in establishing whether or not caloric restriction works the same wonders in people as it does in mice rests on the outcome of two monkey trials. Since rhesus monkeys live for up to 40 years, the trials have taken a long time to show results. Experts said that one of the two trials, being conducted by Dr. Weindruch, was at last showing clear evidence that calorically restricted monkeys were outliving the control animals.
But no such effect is apparent in the other trial, being conducted at the National Institutes of Health.
The Wisconsin report underlined another unresolved link in the theory, that of whether resveratrol actually works by activating sirtuins. The issue is clouded because resveratrol is a powerful drug that has many different effects in the cell. The Wisconsin researchers report that they saw no change in the mouse equivalent of sirtuin during caloric restriction, a finding that if true could undercut Sirtris’s strategy of looking for drugs that activate sirtuin.
Dr. Guarente, a scientific adviser to Sirtris, said the Wisconsin team only measured the amount of sirtuin present in mouse tissues, and not the more important factor of whether it had been activated.
Dr. Sinclair said the definitive answer would emerge from experiments, now under way, with mice whose sirtuin genes had been knocked out. “The question of how resveratrol is working is an ongoing debate and it will take more studies to get the answer,” he said.
Dr. Robert E. Hughes of the Buck Institute for Age Research said there could be no guarantee of success given that most new drug projects fail. But, he said, testing the therapeutic uses of drugs that mimic caloric restriction is a good idea, based on substantial evidence.
Now, some of the same collection agencies, as well as other firms that purchase debt outright, have begun participating as bidders in online auctions, in which they buy the debt or provide guaranteed payments to hospitals for access to the unpaid accounts. Some experts say this gives them more reason to aggressively pursue patients in arrears. Auctions can drive up the amount paid for debt, meaning a collector must recoup more money from patients to cover its initial investment and turn a profit. And the winning bidders often get to keep all the money they collect on the auctioned debt.
Winning bidders may "have to work harder" to make a profit from auctioned debt, says Michael Klozotsky, an analyst at Kaulkin Ginsberg Co., a collections-industry strategic-advice company. "Working harder means sometimes using strategies that are more aggressive."
Many of the auctions of hospital debt have been done through Web site ARxChange.com1 -- shorthand for "accounts receivable exchange" -- owned by TriCap Technology Group. Another site is medipent.com2, run by Medipent LLC. The auction-site owners, both small companies based in New York, say their systems create safeguards that protect patients from potential abuse. Collection firms are vetted for their tactics and approach to patient needs and concerns before they are allowed to participate in auctions, the site owners say. The site owners also try to ensure that collectors comply with hospital rules -- whether they must record phone calls, for instance, or get the hospital's permission before initiating a lawsuit against a patient. Hospitals have final say over who bids on their accounts, and, on ARxChange.com, don't necessarily award the contract to the highest bidder.
Hospitals "don't want a black eye from a PR standpoint," says Joseph LaManna, TriCap's chief executive. Both TriCap and Medipent receive fees from the hospitals and collectors, based on the size of the winning bid.
The auctions reflect hospitals' continuing search for ways to collect from the uninsured and underinsured. In 2006, nearly 5,000 community hospitals provided uncompensated care totaling $31.2 billion -- mostly unpaid patient bills or charity care -- representing nearly 6% of all costs, according to the American Hospital Association.
The amount of debt auctioned so far is relatively small. ARxChange.com says it has handled more than $400 million in patient debt in about 27 auctions, involving nine hospital systems and four individual hospitals. Medipent.com says it has hosted events involving 12 New York hospitals and $60 million of debt.
Participating hospitals say they are still testing the process, often putting up for bid some of their older debt with a low likelihood of being repaid. Bidders typically offer just pennies or fractions of pennies on each dollar owed, reflecting the small amount they expect to collect from patients while still pulling in a profit.
Woman's Christian Association Hospital of Jamestown, N.Y., last fall auctioned about $7 million of debt on ARxChange.com that had already gone through collection efforts by the hospital's staff and by CBJ Credit Recovery, an outside collection agency. CBJ decided to take another shot at the accounts and submitted the winning bid, an agreement to pay the hospital $80,000 over the course of a year in exchange for keeping what it collects from the debtors. "Even though [the unpaid bills] were very old, it was additional value we were able to extract from them," says Chuck Iverson, chief financial officer at the hospital.
CBJ co-owner Andrew Hartweg says his firm is approaching the collection effort in the same way it would if it were working on a traditional contingency basis. This generally involves sending letters to debtors, calling them on the phone, reporting them to credit bureaus and, as a "very last-ditch effort," getting clearance in court to garnish their paychecks, he says. Mr. Hartweg wouldn't say how much CBJ has collected so far on the accounts, but said it has extracted payments on bills dating back to 2003 and anticipates making a profit.
Consumer advocates say patients are less likely to successfully dispute bills or negotiate them downward if they are dealing with a third-party collector rather than a hospital directly. Collectors also are further removed from hospitals' financial-assistance policies.
"The hospital is an institution in the community, has a reputation, in many cases has a nonprofit mission to uphold," says Anthony Wright, executive director of the consumer-advocacy coalition Health Access California. http://louis3j3sheehan3esquire.blogspot.com
"Once it goes to collections, that starts a process that can get a lot more antagonistic, a lot more aggressive, and a lot more damaging to a family's credit history and financial future."
One health system that has backed away from the online auctions is St. John Health. The Detroit system, which owns six hospitals, says it learned recently that, without its knowledge, some of its patient debt had been posted on ARxChange.com by Accretive Health, an outside company that manages collections for St. John. The hospital system says it "expressed our displeasure" to Accretive and told it not to continue because "we do not believe an environment such as a Web site is appropriate in dealing with patient accounts." No transaction was completed, St. John says. Accretive declined to make a statement about its business with St. John.
The federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and some state laws govern how debt collectors can treat consumers. For instance, debt collectors aren't allowed to harass consumers or make false statements, including implying they will sue if they don't intend to do so. Consumer groups say calling the medical provider or your insurer could help clarify any confusion about what you owe. The hospital also could provide information about financial assistance or charity-care.
What the hospitals can do to help patients may depend on the terms of their agreement with the collector, says Mark Rukavina, executive director of the Access Project, a research and advocacy group that focuses on medical debt. Many hospitals include provisions in their contracts with the debt buyers that allow the hospitals to help resolve confusion over bills and retrieve patient accounts from the firms in circumstances such as charity-care qualification. (TriCap also says it looks for charity-care cases prior to auctions by guessing at incomes based on factors such as ZIP Codes.)
"We do not want our patients' debt handled in any egregious manner," says Neal Somaney, vice president of business office operations at Vanguard Health Systems, a Nashville, Tenn., company that owns 15 hospitals in four states. When Vanguard sold $48.8 million of patient debt in an auction in January on ARxChange.com, it chose to award the contract to a firm it had worked with previously and trusted, says Mr. Somaney.
New Island Hospital of Bethpage, N.Y., participated in medipent.com's first health auction last year, offering $7.3 million of unpaid patient bills that ranged from about four to 15 months old. Drew Pallas, New Island's chief financial officer, says the hospital received complaints from two debtors about the collection agency. But when the hospital subsequently listened to recordings of the agency's calls to those people, it determined that the collector had acted with professionalism, he says.
“I do not doubt that most or all of the facts in the article have a place, but they are a drop in the ocean. THERE IS NO ATMOSPHERE OF FEAR in the country, though the journalist is subtly painting the picture of a ‘bloody regime’ that pressures its citizens.
We do have problems and we will solve them in time. Democracy is great when you live under a warm roof and have your piece of bread with butter for lunch. For now, the people do not need democracy, but the possibility to live humanely.
Please, do not teach us how to live.” dmlord
“Russia has always needed to have a czar who tells people how to live and condemns things that are not right.” victor_aka
“You’re facing an uphill perception battle. Your article is a piece of investigative journalism; to you — but not to your audience. Most of what’s published in this genre in Russian are thinly veiled, slanted opinion pieces masquerading as reporting. Your work, to a greater or lesser extent, will be read in the same vein.” muphta
“We criticize our own government with pleasure, as well as the way of life that they impose on us. But we will never allow non-Russians to criticize our Motherland. Even Pushkin noted that.” 3rd_world_kid
“If it’s a propaganda material, it is very stupid and weak. If it’s a journalist’s text, such journalists have to fired for professional incapacity. It’s better not to translate such a nightmare into Russian. One can only repeat what McCain’s wife said: I am ashamed for The New York Times.” panam
“Anti-American propaganda is under the Russians’ skin, and will be for a long time.” Sashapyls
“It is funny to read this from people who, for 10 years, have invaded other countries, toppled the stable regimes that ruled and enforced their rules there. Especially funny to read it if you don’t forget about prisons and torture in Guantánamo. And completely funny when you recall how these people hanged the former president of the country they invaded. Why am I saying this? Because Mr. Putin and his team are evil, of course. And only cattle vote for him. BUT these are OUR problems. And WE will sort them out.” happy_bra
“People in Russia today have still failed to learn how to really look at things. For many Russians, it is still easier to blame some ‘enemy’ for all of their problems than to look for solutions to those problems.”
“How frightening it is to live in this country.” ouks
“This article is somehow strongly reminiscent of an editorial in Pravda from the Soviet days. The journalistic brainwashing techniques are identical.” Yurvur
“So much noise, so much noise and the article itself is absolutely objective, it tells truth. Why attack it? Yes, the newspaper does not depend on any authorities, it’s difficult for the Russian bloggers to imagine it.” boris_petrov
“Americans don’t understand an elementary thing.
There is no real opposition, not because ‘Putin banned’ it, but because it has discredited itself.” archer5
“Ah, freedom of speech, the foundation stone of democracy. How you got me with your ‘denunciation’ of the Putin regime. Sometimes I think that the majority of people see more ‘totalitarianism,’ ‘dictatorship’ and other frightening words than there is in reality, much more.
My grandmother told me how in the 1940s at night they came and took people. That was a police state.” chiga28
“Looks like everything is correct and that overall, the quite ugly picture of political reality in Russia is outlined with high authenticity.
But why do I have such an unpleasant feeling from what I’ve read?
As the patriots correctly noted, the opinion of the reporter is too contemptuous, which is very close to America’s and Americans’ foreign political views on the outside world.” mark_ars
“This can be a first pebble skipped on the water, just to send out feelers and find a pretext to start a dialogue. Not a dialogue between Bush and Putin, but between our peoples, who are neither dumb nor bright, simply different.” falcon icp
After years of watching President Bush ignore Congress, at best, or disdain it, at worst, there is relief in listening to the British prime minister face questions in Parliament. As seen on C-Span, these events feature literate parries and thrusts, complete sentences, artful arguments, all to a chorus of noisy yeas and brays.
Senator John McCain, the presumed Republican nominee for president, has now promised that if elected, he will bring this hallowed British tradition to America.
http://louis4j4sheehan4esquire.blogspot.com
This is a daring idea. The public might learn a great deal about its leaders both in the White House and in Congress. Of course, an American question time horrifies some politicians. Some argue that America is different. Congress is not a parliament. Some even contend that the president is elected to lead everybody, not just his or her party — a quaint notion to anyone who has paid attention in the last seven years. Mainly, the politically experienced say the idea is a death wish.
British experts like Peter Riddell of The Times of London suggest that the real problem might not be the president’s inability to answer questions, but getting members of Congress to ask decent ones. British queries tend to be short, fast and bitingly to the point, a skill set not widely available in Washington.
The high-wire displays required in the British Parliament also display a leader’s debating prowess. Or not. Margaret Thatcher was less than a natural but eventually she could show off better than the best of them. Tony Blair played the verbal ping-pong like a professional. Harold Macmillan once confessed that the thought of question time almost made him sick.
If a president did have the gumption to answer Congress face to face, there would certainly be rules. The prime minister’s question time lasts for about 30 minutes on Wednesdays. Some questions are submitted in advance, but the debate is often heated and unpredictable. Fortunately, there are limits. Calling the prime minister a liar (not an unknown event in the House of Commons) can earn a timeout. In Australia recently, one member of Parliament was barred for a day after calling the prime minister’s representative a “chicken man.”
Both sides would have to agree that the goal is exchanging information, openly. That would mean minimal preening, no long-winded questions or answers, and a dose of spontaneity. If that could happen, it would be a boon for democracy, not to mention for YouTube.
Question: Is "First Do No Harm" From the Hippocratic Oath? Myth vs Fact
Answer: A question was raised in the Ancient / Classical History forum:
"Having just read the translation to English of Hippocrates' oath, I was surprised to see that 'first do no harm' did not appear in the text as is commonly quoted. Any idea where the quote comes from?"
You're right, the dictum first do no harm doesn't exactly come from the Hippocratic Oath, but it does come from the Hippocratic Corpus, at least in esssence. A related section from the Hippocratic Oath has been translated as
I will follow that system of regimen which, according to my ability and judgment, I consider for the benefit of my patients, and abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous. I will give no deadly medicine to any one if asked, nor suggest any such counsel; and in like manner I will not give to a woman a pessary to produce abortion. With purity and with holiness I will pass my life and practice my Art. I will not cut persons laboring under the stone, but will leave this to be done by men who are practitioners of this work. Into whatever houses I enter, I will go into them for the benefit of the sick, and will abstain from every voluntary act of mischief and corruption; and, further from the seduction of females or males, of freemen and slaves.
But while not harming the patient is explicit, this section doesn't make doing no harm the first concern of the Hippocratic physician. The Hippocratic writing Epidemics is considered the more likely source:
5. With regard to the dangers of these cases, one must always attend to the seasonable concoction of all the evacuations, and to the favorable and critical abscesses. The concoctions indicate a speedy crisis and recovery of health; crude and undigested evacuations, and those which are converted into bad abscesses, indicate either want of crisis, or pains, or prolongation of the disease, or death, or relapses; which of these it is to be must be determined from other circumstances. The physician must be able to tell the antecedents, know the present, and foretell the future - must mediate these things, and have two special objects in view with regard to disease, namely, to do good or to do no harm. The art consists in three things - the disease, the patient, and the physician. The physician is the servant of the art, and the patient must combat the disease along with the physician.
When Pure Digital Technologies Inc. introduced its Flip point-and-shoot camcorder a year ago, it dramatically simplified video recording. The Flip measured the size of a small digital still camera, cost less than $150 and its videos could be emailed in one quick process. Consumers gobbled up the tiny, nonintimidating device.
But to the style-conscious set, the Flip looked like a clunky Fisher-Price toy -- especially when compared with a sleek, new iPod or more-sophisticated digital cameras -- and was too thick to comfortably slip into a pocket. Last fall, Pure Digital introduced an enhanced version: the Flip Video Ultra, but its biggest aesthetic difference was new orange, pink and green colors.
See clips of the Mino in action. http://louis5j5sheehan5esquire.blogspot.com
Today, the company will begin sales of its $180 Flip Video Mino (pronounced "minnow"), the hippest offering yet from Pure Digital. This 60-minute Flip includes many firsts for the company: rechargeable batteries; touch-sensitive buttons rather than old-school, push-down buttons; and a thinner build that measures 40% smaller, overall. The Flip Mino is also the first one in the family to enable publishing to MySpace; prior software limited Web-site sharing to YouTube and AOL Video.
I've been using a glossy, black Flip Mino (it also comes in white) for the past two weeks and it looks much cooler than older models. Its newly positioned USB adapter pops up from the top of the camera like something from a Swiss Army Knife. The Mino offers features such as the ability to lock the delete button, so no one accidentally deletes your videos, and mute all camera sounds, so as to record silently during quiet moments like wedding ceremonies or speeches.
I brought it along with me almost everywhere I went because of its small size and light weight, even fitting it into a thin clutch purse with a cellphone and BlackBerry. I used the Mino in various situations ranging from bright, scenic outdoor settings to indoors while eating dinner in a candle-lit restaurant. Overall, I was pleased with the sound and picture quality of the Mino, and I found its built-in software, which automatically starts when the camera plugs into your Mac or Windows PC, to be a pleasure to use.
Today, Pure Digital Technologies introduced its $180 Flip Video Mino, a thinner, more stylish version of its point-and-shoot camcorder.
It took just a few minutes to trim excess footage from my videos before saving them to my computer or sharing them with friends and family. Another way to share videos from the Flip Mino is via Pure Digital's server, which sends emails with embedded video links, saving upload and download time on both ends. Though I didn't publish any of my videos on a public Web site, AOL, MySpace and YouTube were just one step away.
The Flip Mino's touch buttons, while stylish, were difficult to use at first. I missed the tactile feel of physical buttons as I tried to hold this small video camera and press the zoom buttons using just one hand. The new, touch-sensitive buttons weren't as satisfying and stable to use, and I pressed them accidentally more than a few times. For instance, the Zoom Out button is directly below Record, making it easy to mistakenly touch it. After about a week of using the Mino, I grew more accustomed to using these new touch buttons, but it shouldn't take so long to make the adjustment.
Just looking at the Flip Mino's fresh new exterior makes it hard not to think about the things that this redesigned camcorder is still lacking, like a larger viewing screen (the Mino screen is 1.5 inches, no larger than that of the Flip Ultra), high definition video and wireless sharing capability. These features would likely raise the price and/or tax the battery, and many users of the Flip flock to it for its low price and simplicity. Still, Pure Digital says that it will offer HD video and a larger screen on a product within a year, and is looking into features that might include wireless transferring.
I grew fond of the Mino's rechargeable battery. Whenever I plugged this gadget into my computer to transfer videos, my Mino charged up via USB without me having to think about it. A full charge lasts four hours and recharging a dead battery takes about three hours.
Pure Digital says that the sound quality and lighting are improved in this model. Like previous models, this Flip records in 640x480 pixels at 30 frames per second.
The Mino didn't have a problem with lighting in most situations; indeed it did a nice job of capturing images of my family sitting around a table in a restaurant with little more than candlelight to brighten the picture. It doesn't use a flash or a built-in light, but instead uses automatic sensors to adjust to various levels of light.
This svelte camcorder seemed to handle noise more evenly than I remembered in prior Flip models. It didn't make my voice sound unbearably louder than everyone else's, even though I was closest to the camera's microphone, yet it managed to detect voices across the room. I did have some trouble on a windy day: While recording a quick video of a golf course in San Diego, wind audibly muffled my voice during a few moments in the video.
Along with the delete-lock and sounds-off settings, this Mino has a few other tricks up its sleeve. Each of the touch-sensitive buttons is designed to glow only when usable, so as to better help people who might not know which buttons to press while using this camcorder. For example, only the zoom buttons glow while recording since the other buttons (volume, play/pause and delete) can't function in this setting.
Shortcuts built into each button provide more functions: Holding the play/pause button down will set the playback mode to play all videos on the Mino; holding the seek ahead or seek back buttons while watching a video will fast-forward by seconds within that video; pressing the record button as the camera starts up opens up the settings menu.
In conjunction with the Flip Mino's introduction Wednesday, prices of the former Flip Ultra model will drop to $150 for the 60-minute model. The Flip Ultra 30-minute model will be phased out, as will the Flip Classic, which will cost $130 for a 60-minute unit.
Though the Flip Mino's touch-sensitive buttons look great, they aren't as functional as they needed to be. But if you really want a sleek, hip-looking gadget, you'll learn to adjust to these new buttons. No matter which Flip you choose, Pure Digital's software changes the way people capture and share videos, and that's a great thing.
There's something very English about the way William Hague's eyes light up when he spies crab cakes on the menu at a Midtown Manhattan bistro. Although they've lived with crabs for centuries, the English have still not mastered the art of rendering them as patties, and I've yet to meet a visitor from the scepter'd isle who will not eat a crab cake while stateside -- given half a chance.
http://louis6j6sheehan6esquire.blogspot.com
Distinctly un-English, however, is the diligence with which he sticks to a single glass of wine through lunch. But if there's one Englishman who can sparkle conversationally without the assistance of alcohol, it is this very charming, very loquacious, very precocious politician -- leader of Britain's Conservative Party at age 36, now its shadow foreign secretary at a relatively creaky 47.
Mr. Hague is in town to promote his book on William Wilberforce, the man who engineered the abolition of the slave trade in 1807. This massive biography -- to be released in the U.S. on June 16 -- is his second, his first being one of William Pitt the Younger, published in 2005. Taken together, the two books amount to almost 1,000 pages of serious text: How does he do it? Where on earth does he find the time?
"Well, I only found the time after I was out of what we might call the front line of politics -- when I resigned as leader of the party in 2001, after losing that election. I remained a Member of Parliament, but suddenly I had a lot of time on my hands, and I decided to do all the things I'd always wanted to do -- and that included earning a lot more money than is normally possible as a politician, and writing a book."
With a New Yorker's vulgarity, I ask if he's made any money off his books. "It's not been anything like the amount I've earned from after-dinner speaking, or my business activities. Let me put it this way: I wouldn't want to live entirely off writing! Although I also took up a weekly newspaper column in the News of the World."
That paper is arguably Britain's lowest-brow tabloid. Is it safe to presume, therefore, that there's no overlap between the readers of his books and those of his columns? "Probably none at all," he says with a chirp. But as a politician, he's used to changing gear: "You handle everything from a constituency surgery, where literally one minute you're dealing with Mrs. Smith's drain -- it needs unblocking and she's come to you to sort it out -- and the next minute you're on the phone dealing with issues of Iranian nuclear weapons."
So why do politicians write biographies? Are they identifying with their subjects, or claiming grandeur by proxy? "A mixture of factors," says Mr. Hague, savoring his crab cake, which is a plump little thing. "In Britain, there's a strong tradition of politicians who have written works of history. Roy Jenkins [a leading Labour MP, later president of the European Commission] is a part of it . . . Winston Churchill was very much a part of it.
"But you make a good point about identifying with one's subject, and in my case that did help start me off with William Pitt the Younger. I really did feel I could be inside his mind, and explain the way he did things and would have looked at things, having been a particularly young politician myself. And Pitt is the ultimate young politician, much more successful than me, having been prime minister at 24." Still there's one way in which Mr. Hague has had more luck than Pitt, who served as PM for 19 years: Pitt never made it to Mr. Hague's current age. "He died at 46," his biographer notes.
Here, as an uxorious aside, Mr. Hague tells me that his wife, Ffion Jenkins, has just finished her own first book, "The Pain and the Privilege," about the women in the life of David Lloyd George, the only Welshman to have served as prime minister. "It's not a scurrilous book; it's about Mrs. Lloyd George and his mistress in parallel for 30 years, and his daughter and mother. As I did to the life of Pitt, my wife brings something to this story, too. She's a native Welsh speaker, and she's married to a politician . . . " A politician who, presumably, does not have a mistress, I interject.
Mr. Hague laughs heartily. "Definitely not! Let me make that very clear! And so, for her, this is a great place to start. The mistress of Lloyd George was his private secretary, and my wife was my private secretary, and private secretary to other cabinet ministers, so she has a triple additional insight into the subject. So when you start writing in an ambitious way, you have to bring something extra to the party."
What drew Mr. Hague to Wilberforce? "Doing Pitt introduced me to the friends of Pitt, and one of the great -- but contrasting -- friends was Wilberforce. Pitt was the ultimate career politician, and Wilberforce the ultimate non-career politician, who never sought high office other than being a member of Parliament. Yet he accomplished -- through his eloquence and his morality -- much more than the vast majority of politicians who have achieved high office."
William Pitt, William Wilberforce. Will his next subject be yet another William? William the Conqueror, perhaps, or William Jefferson Clinton? "No," he says, with jovial emphasis. "I'm not writing now. I've gone back into the front line. I'm too busy. You know, the plan is to help the Conservative Party be elected in the next elections, and then to be in the next Conservative government."
So if all goes according to plan, I observe, he won't be writing a book anytime soon. "Not for a few years! However, I don't see myself as a career politician anymore. This is the nice thing now: Although I've come back into politics, I don't need it. I know I can live without it."
Is that liberating? "Yes! I don't ever want to be the leader of the party, and therefore the PM, in the future. And that allows me to approach politics on a completely different basis. As long as I'm of use to David Cameron [leader of the Conservatives] and my colleagues, I'll take part, but I don't want to be doing it all my life. At some point I'll get back to writing, and the electorate can decide how soon that is. And then . . . to answer your question -- will I do another William? Well, I might do William Pitt the Elder." (Toward the end of lunch, he ventures an interest, also, in Robert Clive and Warren Hastings -- "perhaps the two of them together, as a way of looking at a period of the British Empire in India.")
Who taught Mr. Hague the art of biography? "I had a wonderful lunch with Roy Jenkins," he says, "a few weeks before he died [in January 2003]. And I was very lucky, because he handed down, as it were, the tips for a politician writing a biography. First of all, he said, 'Start tomorrow. . . . You will think you have to get the whole structure of the book ready first. This is nonsense.'
"Roy said, 'Keep the artillery barrage just in front of the infantry,' by which he meant just keep the research ahead of where you are . . . so you're really immersed in whichever part of the person's life you happen to be in. You need to read around the whole subject and have a general view, but trying to understand the detail of your subject's final few weeks at the same time as his early education just won't work. Roy said, 'Just get going!' So I got going."
Mr. Hague reveals that Mr. Jenkins also told him that "the publishers will tell you to write so many words, but the first thing to know is to ignore them completely. If you're enjoying it, it doesn't matter how long the book is. So both my books are twice as long as had been asked for."
Is there anything, I ask Mr. Hague, that he regards as the acme of the biographical form? "Yes, there is," he says quite loudly, as if unable to contain himself. "And through your columns, I want to send the author a message."
http://louis7j7sheehan7esquire.blogspot.com
He then cites "The Years of Lyndon Johnson," by Robert Caro, a three-volume biography -- so far. "The last volume was 'Master of the Senate,' and to me these are the most magnificent books about politics, of the biographical sort, that I've ever read. Anyone who wants to understand politics needs to read Robert Caro's books."
If you buy a new Windows Vista PC, it comes with a decent built-in Web browser, Internet Explorer 7. If you buy a new Macintosh computer, it comes with a decent built-in Web browser, Safari 3.0. So why would you want or need a different Web browser?
That is the question that Mozilla, the nonprofit organization that makes the leading alternative browser, hopes to answer this month when it releases version 3.0 of its Firefox Web browser. In some tech-industry circles, Firefox already is preferred over Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Apple's Safari, but it still isn't used by most people, and Mozilla is hoping to broaden its appeal.
The new version will be released simultaneously for Windows and the Mac's OS X operating system, as well as for Linux. While each of the three editions will have the visual style of the operating system on which it runs, all three will have the same features.
I've been using prerelease versions of Firefox 3.0 for months, and have recently been testing a near-final version and comparing it closely to IE and to Safari. I have tested it on multiple Windows PCs and Macs, on desktops and laptops, over slow connections and fast ones. I have tried it with well over 100 Web sites.
My verdict is that Firefox 3.0 is the best Web browser out there right now, and that it tops the current versions of both IE and Safari in features, speed and security. It is easy to install and easy to use, even for a mainstream, non-technical user. It can be downloaded, free, at mozilla.com1 by clicking on "Firefox 3 Sneak Peek."
This situation may change. Microsoft is working on a new version of IE, scheduled to be unveiled later this year, with some impressive new features. And Apple is always working on new iterations of Safari, though it is secretive and hasn't disclosed its plans. But for now, in my view, Firefox 3.0 rules on both Windows and Mac.
I couldn't find any significant downsides to Firefox 3.0. Every page I tried rendered properly and rapidly on both platforms. I ran into only one glitch, in a preference setting. That problem appeared on only one of my four test machines and was fixable with the help of Mozilla, albeit via a geeky method.
In the one or two cases where Firefox lacked a feature I thought important, such as the "auto fill" feature in Safari that can quickly fill out an online form, I was able to find an add-on that did the trick from Mozilla's vast library of add-ons, which are written by people all over the world. (One caution: Some existing add-ons won't work with the new version until their authors update them.)
When Firefox first came out, it was the fastest browser, but it lost that title over the years. However, in my tests, this new third version of Firefox regained the speed crown. It beat IE 7 handily on my test Windows computers and edged Safari slightly on my test Macs.
For example, using a new Dell XPS One desktop, I opened identical folders containing the same 16 bookmarks on both IE 7 and Firefox 3.0. IE took 37 seconds to completely display the 16 pages, but the new Firefox did it in just 23 seconds. On a new Apple iMac, I did a similar, but more daunting, test -- opening identical folders containing 24 bookmarks. Safari rendered all of the pages in 36 seconds, but the new Firefox finished the job in 32 seconds.
The latest Firefox has a number of new and improved features. If you type any word or phrase into its address bar, the browser instantly searches your history and bookmarks for a possible match, to save you from typing or combing through your bookmark list.
The whole process of managing bookmarks has been vastly simplified. Every Web address is accompanied by a star icon at the right. To bookmark the site, you just click the star once. No other action is required. To specify where to file the bookmark, you click the star twice. You also can remove bookmarks by clicking the star. And you can tag bookmarks with key words, to make it easier to find them.
There are also smart bookmark folders, which gather your most visited sites, or most recently bookmarked sites, automatically into folders. You also now can more easily back up and restore your bookmarks, complete with tags.
Security is also improved. The old version of Firefox would warn you when a site you were visiting appeared to be a fake, designed to steal your identity. (IE has a similar feature, though Safari doesn't.) But Firefox 3.0 now warns you about sites that are known for trying to plant viruses, spyware and other malicious software on your computer, a warning the other big browsers don't yet provide.
With one click, Firefox 3.0 also provides details about who owns the site you're visiting, and whether it's encrypted, if the site owner has adopted a special type of security certificate.
My bottom line: Even though you already have a built-in browser, Firefox 3.0 can improve your Web experience.
A couple of years ago I received a letter from an American soldier in Iraq. The letter began by saying that, as we’ve all become painfully aware, serving on the front lines is physically exhausting and emotionally debilitating. But the reason for his writing was to tell me that in that hostile and lonely environment, a book I’d written had become a kind of lifeline. As the book is about science — one that traces physicists’ search for nature’s deepest laws — the soldier’s letter might strike you as, well, odd.
But it’s not. Rather, it speaks to the powerful role science can play in giving life context and meaning. At the same time, the soldier’s letter emphasized something I’ve increasingly come to believe: our educational system fails to teach science in a way that allows students to integrate it into their lives.
Allow me a moment to explain.
When we consider the ubiquity of cellphones, iPods, personal computers and the Internet, it’s easy to see how science (and the technology to which it leads) is woven into the fabric of our day-to-day activities. When we benefit from CT scanners, M.R.I. devices, pacemakers and arterial stents, we can immediately appreciate how science affects the quality of our lives. When we assess the state of the world, and identify looming challenges like climate change, global pandemics, security threats and diminishing resources, we don’t hesitate in turning to science to gauge the problems and find solutions. http://louis9j9sheehan9esquire.blogspot.com
And when we look at the wealth of opportunities hovering on the horizon — stem cells, genomic sequencing, personalized medicine, longevity research, nanoscience, brain-machine interface, quantum computers, space technology — we realize how crucial it is to cultivate a general public that can engage with scientific issues; there’s simply no other way that as a society we will be prepared to make informed decisions on a range of issues that will shape the future.
These are the standard — and enormously important — reasons many would give in explaining why science matters.
But here’s the thing. The reason science really matters runs deeper still. Science is a way of life. Science is a perspective. Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding in a manner that’s precise, predictive and reliable — a transformation, for those lucky enough to experience it, that is empowering and emotional. To be able to think through and grasp explanations — for everything from why the sky is blue to how life formed on earth — not because they are declared dogma but rather because they reveal patterns confirmed by experiment and observation, is one of the most precious of human experiences.
As a practicing scientist, I know this from my own work and study. But I also know that you don’t have to be a scientist for science to be transformative. I’ve seen children’s eyes light up as I’ve told them about black holes and the Big Bang. I’ve spoken with high school dropouts who’ve stumbled on popular science books about the human genome project, and then returned to school with newfound purpose. And in that letter from Iraq, the soldier told me how learning about relativity and quantum physics in the dusty and dangerous environs of greater Baghdad kept him going because it revealed a deeper reality of which we’re all a part.
It’s striking that science is still widely viewed as merely a subject one studies in the classroom or an isolated body of largely esoteric knowledge that sometimes shows up in the “real” world in the form of technological or medical advances. In reality, science is a language of hope and inspiration, providing discoveries that fire the imagination and instill a sense of connection to our lives and our world.
If science isn’t your strong suit — and for many it’s not — this side of science is something you may have rarely if ever experienced. I’ve spoken with so many people over the years whose encounters with science in school left them thinking of it as cold, distant and intimidating. They happily use the innovations that science makes possible, but feel that the science itself is just not relevant to their lives. What a shame.
Like a life without music, art or literature, a life without science is bereft of something that gives experience a rich and otherwise inaccessible dimension.
It’s one thing to go outside on a crisp, clear night and marvel at a sky full of stars. It’s another to marvel not only at the spectacle but to recognize that those stars are the result of exceedingly ordered conditions 13.7 billion years ago at the moment of the Big Bang. It’s another still to understand how those stars act as nuclear furnaces that supply the universe with carbon, oxygen and nitrogen, the raw material of life as we know it.
And it’s yet another level of experience to realize that those stars account for less than 4 percent of what’s out there — the rest being of an unknown composition, so-called dark matter and energy, which researchers are now vigorously trying to divine.
As every parent knows, children begin life as uninhibited, unabashed explorers of the unknown. From the time we can walk and talk, we want to know what things are and how they work — we begin life as little scientists. But most of us quickly lose our intrinsic scientific passion. And it’s a profound loss.
A great many studies have focused on this problem, identifying important opportunities for improving science education. Recommendations have ranged from increasing the level of training for science teachers to curriculum reforms.
But most of these studies (and their suggestions) avoid an overarching systemic issue: in teaching our students, we continually fail to activate rich opportunities for revealing the breathtaking vistas opened up by science, and instead focus on the need to gain competency with science’s underlying technical details.
In fact, many students I’ve spoken to have little sense of the big questions those technical details collectively try to answer: Where did the universe come from? How did life originate? How does the brain give rise to consciousness? Like a music curriculum that requires its students to practice scales while rarely if ever inspiring them by playing the great masterpieces, this way of teaching science squanders the chance to make students sit up in their chairs and say, “Wow, that’s science?”
In physics, just to give a sense of the raw material that’s available to be leveraged, the most revolutionary of advances have happened in the last 100 years — special relativity, general relativity, quantum mechanics — a symphony of discoveries that changed our conception of reality. More recently, the last 10 years have witnessed an upheaval in our understanding of the universe’s composition, yielding a wholly new prediction for what the cosmos will be like in the far future.
These are paradigm-shaking developments. But rare is the high school class, and rarer still is the middle school class, in which these breakthroughs are introduced. It’s much the same story in classes for biology, chemistry and mathematics.
At the root of this pedagogical approach is a firm belief in the vertical nature of science: you must master A before moving on to B. When A happened a few hundred years ago, it’s a long climb to the modern era. Certainly, when it comes to teaching the technicalities — solving this equation, balancing that reaction, grasping the discrete parts of the cell — the verticality of science is unassailable.
But science is so much more than its technical details. And with careful attention to presentation, cutting-edge insights and discoveries can be clearly and faithfully communicated to students independent of those details; in fact, those insights and discoveries are precisely the ones that can drive a young student to want to learn the details. We rob science education of life when we focus solely on results and seek to train students to solve problems and recite facts without a commensurate emphasis on transporting them out beyond the stars.
Science is the greatest of all adventure stories, one that’s been unfolding for thousands of years as we have sought to understand ourselves and our surroundings. Science needs to be taught to the young and communicated to the mature in a manner that captures this drama. We must embark on a cultural shift that places science in its rightful place alongside music, art and literature as an indispensable part of what makes life worth living. http://louis8j8sheehan8esquire.blogspot.com
It’s the birthright of every child, it’s a necessity for every adult, to look out on the world, as the soldier in Iraq did, and see that the wonder of the cosmos transcends everything that divides us.
How much Robert Vesco stole no one knew for certain. America's Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was after him for more than $224m, or more than $1 billion in today's money, which was then the biggest financial fraud in history. But oddly, once the crack teams of lawyers and accountants were on the case, they recovered almost twice as much. And they were still nowhere near the bottom of the schemes that brewed in Mr Vesco's head, behind the pencil moustache, the slicked-back hair and the dark glasses, the very essence of a Hollywood fraudster.
Money being such liquid, transient stuff, it is hardly surprising that financiers should be fugitive. But Mr Vesco capped them all. He was on the run for 35 years, sometimes in a million-dollar yacht eluding the FBI in the blue seas between the Bahamas and Antigua, sometimes in his own Boeing 707, the Silver Phyllis, steaming with a variety of nymphs in the on-board sauna or gyrating in the on-board discotheque. He became Tom Adams, a Canadian with four bodyguards and several addresses, and sported a dyed beard. Meetings with Arthur Herzog, his biographer, were held in the dark; once, Mr Vesco kept his back to him. For years only blurred telephoto shots gave proof he was alive. And those were dubious. To some, Mr Vesco's ultimate scam was to suggest that the emaciated man snapped last November in a coffin, with his friends grieving round it, had something to do with him.
A few of the stories about him may have been true. He was said to have poured $60m into the economy of Costa Rica, to which he fled in 1973, propping up single-handedly its ranching, industrial and oil sectors and being kicked out, in 1978, because he wanted to set up a machinegun factory. He was said to have offered Billy Carter, the president's brother, $10m in 1977 to persuade the Carter administration to sell C130 aircraft to Libya (which Mr Vesco could smuggle in on good terms, together with cocaine and Howitzers). Fidel Castro allegedly received a hefty bribe for sheltering him in Cuba after 1982, where he travelled in a convoy of Mercedes from his yachting berth to the golf club.
As long as he had money Mr Vesco was welcome all round the Caribbean, and extradition treaties with America were hastily rewritten to keep him and his dollars in place. But the charges were piling up and the money, after a while, ran out. In 1996 the Cubans sent him to jail for peddling to investors a spurious wonder-drug, Trixolane, as a cure for cancer and AIDS. The conman's patter could run out, too.
Crime, however, was not his whole career. Playing the 1960s markets like a violin was no offence. A clutch of failing machine shops in New Jersey were combined with a Florida public company called Cryogenics to form the dodgy-sounding International Controls Corporation (ICC) and take him public, in 1965, without an SEC filing; by the age of 30, Mr Vesco was a paper millionaire. He perfected the art of the hostile takeover when it was still new, spotting weak companies a mile off and gobbling up shares almost before the victim was aware of it. His buying strategy, sketched out in Magic Marker on flip-charts, was to borrow hugely in order to repay in dollars devalued by inflation, and his sweetest hunting ground became the then unregulated universe of offshore mutual funds.
The quarter-of-a-million dollars he siphoned away at one swoop had originally been invested by thousands of small depositors in Investors Overseas Services (IOS), owned by the arch-scammer Bernie Cornfeld. Mr Vesco, on his hostile takeover of IOS in 1971, immediately began to shift its assets into entities under his control. He meant to set up an independent company somewhere in the Azores, or Morocco, or off Haiti, and do lots of deals with the money; and he wanted to call it RPL, for “Rape, Plunder and Loot”. This may have drawn the SEC's attention.
Under all the oversell, an inferiority complex drove him. His background was poor, Sicilian-American in Detroit, his father a car-worker. He dropped out of school, and fiddled round with bricklaying and gaming parlours before starting to buy companies. On Wall Street his small but ravenous ICC cut no ice with the Lehmans and the Loebs; his rudeness and his loud jackets did not match the mahogany, and he was not invited back.
His chips-on-shoulders and paranoias made him more a potential soulmate of Richard Nixon, and when the SEC charges began to bite in 1972 a cash contribution of $200,000, stuffed in a briefcase, was handed over to the Committee to Re-Elect the President. It didn't work. Nor could Mr Vesco persuade John Mitchell, then attorney-general, to take pity on him. He sometimes interrupted meetings to take calls from him; but whether it was actually Mitchell, no one knew.
Rather than be a fugitive, which was tiring, he wanted to be untouchable. In 1981 or so he tried to buy half of the island of Barbuda, off Antigua, to set up “the Principality of the Sovereign Order of New Aragon”. There, on the vast pink beaches swept by frigate birds and scattered with the wreckage of other people's ships, the Feds could never get a hand on him. And indeed, save for a not-quite-reliable death certificate, they never did.
In 1997, a man's love for Julie Couillard forced him to make a tough decision, choosing to marry her over his successful career as a Hells Angels drug dealer.
It was a decision Stéphane Sirois would later regret. But it also set off a chain of events that turned him into one of the best witnesses to testify against the Hells Angels in Quebec.
Couillard has caused a storm on Parliament Hill. While recently dating Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier, the 38-year-old Laval resident drew public attention in August by wearing an eye-catching dress to the ceremony at Rideau Hall where the minister was sworn in. Now questions have been raised about her past relations with men in Quebec's murky underworld.
But there was nothing mysterious about the clear ultimatum Maurice (Mom) Boucher put to Sirois more than a decade ago.
With the biker gang war at its violent peak in 1997, the Hells Angels leader was seeing potential police informants underneath every rock.
So he wanted to be sure Sirois understood he had to make a clear choice between marrying Couillard, who had previously dated a man Boucher suspected was an informant, or continuing his life dealing drugs in Anjou and Tetreauville as a member of the Rockers, the Hells Angels puppet gang.
Sirois chose Couillard and later came to regret it. But, as he would later testify in court, it was also a choice that ultimately turned his life around. http://ljsheehan.blogspot.com
Sirois's marriage to Couillard lasted only two years before the couple divorced. The marriage seemed doomed from the start. Just hours before the wedding, members of the Rockers gang paid Sirois a visit and claimed he owed the gang $5,000.
Feeling that his life was in ruins, Sirois sunk into a deep depression in 1999 when he suddenly remembered the business card a police investigator gave him just after he married Couillard.
The Wolverine Squad, a collection of elite police investigators from various police forces assembled to target the province's biker gangs, knew Sirois had fallen out of favour with the Rockers by marrying Couillard and they took a chance and approached him about working for them.
"I told them clearly that I was not interested," Sirois would later say during a 2002 trial in reference to the Wolverine Squad's initial approach.
"I was already married and had been on my honeymoon. Two detectives from the Wolverine Squad approached me. I told them no. I kept their card."
Then in 1999, with his life in an mess, Sirois pulled out the business card and contacted Robert Pigeon, the investigator who gave it to him. It was the first step on a path towards becoming an undercover agent and one of the best witnesses used against the Hells Angels during the trials that followed the 2001 roundup of Boucher's monopolistic drug trafficking network. (By the time Sirois first testified Boucher had already been convicted of ordering the deaths of two provincial prison guards.)
Sirois signed a contract to work for the police in June 1999. His mission was to get back into the good graces of the Rockers by offering them his services as a drug dealer. Within months Sirois was given back his Rockers patch while he secretly recorded his conversations with fellow gang members and took careful notes on their activities.
It was Sirois who gathered perhaps the most damaging proof that the Hells Angels's Nomads chapter, run by Boucher, was seeking to kill any members of their rivals in the Rock Machine. While wearing a secret recording device called a bodypack, Sirois recorded a fellow Rocker while they dined at a Montreal sushi restaurant. When Sirois asked what it would take to impress their bosses in the Hells Angels, the Rocker revealed the biker gang was willing to pay up to $100,000 to kill off a full-fledged member of the rival gang.
Sirois would say in 2002, he rejoined the Rockers with trepidation because of Couillard. André Chouinard was the first Rocker to return Sirois's calls after he and Couillard split. Sirois testified that he felt it was necessary to clear the air about Couillard. He said he had confided a lot to her during their brief marriage and heard that she might have betrayed those confidences as their relationship fell apart.
"The contact went well. (Chouinard) made small talk at first. After that we got on to important subjects," Sirois said.
"The important subject, firstly, was about the person I had married. There were stories she had told certain people in the milieu. I wanted to see how they had been perceived. (The Rockers) told me to forget about them. They were the stories of a slut."
"I asked André Chouinard questions about that subject in particular for several minutes. I also told him I wanted to go back to work. I wanted to go back to the (Rockers). When I married (Couillard) they told me I didn't have the right to work."
When Sirois testified at a later trial in 2003 he elaborated more on what he told Couillard when they were married. He alleged that Boucher was so suspicious of Couillard he once had a contract out on her. Sirois said Couillard went around asking people tied to the Hells Angels if this was true.
Boucher's problem with Couillard apparently had to do with the fact she had previously dated Gilles Giguère, a close associate of Robert Savard, a notorious loanshark who operated in Montreal with Boucher's blessing.
Giguère was shot to death in April 1996 and his body was left in a ditch next to a road in L'Épiphanie. Although the slaying remains unsolved the Sûreté du Québec has long believed Giguère was killed by someone he knew.
In 1995, Giguère, Savard and lawyer Gilles Daudelin were arrested along with Couillard after the Wolverine Squad investigated alleged threats and the attempted extortion of a Montreal real estate agent.
Couillard was quickly released without being charged and reportedly filed a complaint to the provincial police ethics commissioner. According to a representative at the commissioner's office the complaint never made it to the hearing stage.
The charges against Savard, Giguère and Daudelin in the extortion case were eventually dropped. But Giguère was still in trouble.
It was later revealed in court that the Hells Angels thought Giguère turned informant while he was facing a possible trial for illegally possessing firearms and marijuana.
Sirois testified that when he started dating Couillard, shortly after Giguère's death, the relationship clearly bothered the Hells Angels. Eventually the issue was brought to Boucher.
"The choice was imposed on me by Maurice (Mom) Boucher," Sirois said during a 2002 trial. http://louis1j1sheehan1esquire2.blogspot.com
The choice meant Sirois had to turn over his drug trafficking business to another Rocker. By his own estimate, Sirois was making between $8,000 and $12,000 in profits per month selling cocaine and marijuana for the Rockers.
The movie title: "Another Harvest Moon."
The movie plot: Four elderly friends living in a nursing home struggle with the issues of quality of life versus quantity of life after one of the characters suffers a series of strokes.
The cast: Academy Award winner Ernest Borgnine, Doris Roberts, Anne Meara, Piper Laurie and Cybill Shepherd.
The location: Harrisburg State Hospital.
An action-packed summer blockbuster in the making? Hardly.
"There's not going to be a boat chase on the Susquehanna or any skydiving," said Camp Hill native Greg Swartz, the director, who on Tuesday stood before a two-story brick building being primed for shooting. "This film sinks or swims on this cast more than anything else."
"Another Harvest Moon," to be filmed starting Monday, joins the growing roster of films being shot in Pennsylvania as movie producers take advantage of friendly tax laws.
In July, state legislators approved a tax credit for productions spending 60 percent of their budgets in-state. Those productions are eligible for a 25 percent refund.
"All of us that are doing this are really trying to bring films to where we're from," Swartz said. "This area is underrepresented in film. There are stories to be told here."
"Another Harvest Moon" is not the first movie to be shot on the former state hospital grounds. The 1999 film, "Girl, Interrupted," which starred Angelina Jolie, Winona Ryder, Clea DuVall and Whoopi Goldberg, was filmed there. Jolie won an Academy Award for best supporting actress for her role.
This current production features a more experienced cast.
Borgnine, 91, has a lifetime of film and TV work that includes an Academy Award for his 1955 portrayal of the title character in "Marty."
Spending time in Russia is a bit like taking the psychotropic anti-malarial drug Lariam: anyone with a propensity to anxiety should probably avoid it. Jonathan Dimbleby, an accomplished British broadcaster, was by his frank admission in a state of considerable emotional turmoil when he travelled from the Arctic city of Murmansk to Vladivostok. The overwhelming landscape and the people who were often so rude did not help his mood, but his responses—awe, horror and frustration—were perhaps more acute as a result.
The ugly authoritarianism of Vladimir Putin's Kremlin and Russia's hydrocarbon-fuelled diplomatic bolshiness are now well documented. There are fewer worthwhile accounts of ordinary life across the vast, eccentric Russian continent in the Putin era. Mr Dimbleby's perceptive travelogue is one of them. He describes the spookiness of St Petersburg; the micro-cultures (and pointy shoes) of the Caucasus; the desolation of Beslan; the magic of Tolstoy's country estate; the ludicrously dangerous roads and dreadful hotels. He captures the way Russians are transformed by toasts, the romance of long-distance train rides and the squalor of train stations. He encounters a Karelian witch, a Siberian shaman and wild horses in the Altai mountains. He visits a plush Moscow banya. He drinks a lot of vodka.
Along the way he offers lively summaries of some of the key dramas of Russian history, including the exploration of Siberia, the tragic nobility of the Decembrists and the unspeakable siege of Leningrad. He meets the kind of near-saints that only places with so much bad history can produce: suicidally brave journalists in Samara; campaigning environmentalists in the Urals; a heroic AIDS worker in Irkutsk. They vary what might otherwise have become a dismal parade of villainy.
“We steal,” a Caspian sturgeon poacher says, “and we think nothing of stealing because everyone is stealing.” Mr Dimbleby notes the gangsterism of government at all levels, the brazen rackets and the cradle-to-grave corruption that Russians must negotiate to survive. He nicely portrays the fatal combination of savage indifference on the part of the country's rulers and the enraging fatalism of the ruled. He is perpetually baffled by what, to his Western ears, sound like contradictory attitudes: the Russians he meets are sophisticated, acquisitive and yet cynical to the point of hostility towards democracy. “Crypto-fascist” is his label for the system Mr Putin has built.
Mr Dimbleby loves Russian literature, and he hears Tolstoyan and Gogolian echoes as he travels. But he is not a Russia expert (he undertook the journey for a BBC television series), and makes some mistakes and simplifications, over Chechnya and the Yukos affair, for example. That, however, is also his book's main virtue. His novice's eye sees the moral outrage in everyday injustices—the use of malnourished teenaged conscripts as slave labour, say, or the routine persecution of migrant labourers—to which more practised Russia-watchers are too often desensitised. His disgust is mitigated by the fascination that Russia somehow inspires too, even in the most sceptical visitor.
"The whole thing is sort of a study," Swartz said. "I'd say it's a comic drama. You don't put Doris Roberts and Anne Meara in a movie without comic moments."
http://louis7j7sheehan.blogspot.com
Roberts is widely known for her role in CBS' sitcom "Everybody Loves Raymond." Anne Meara has appeared in television shows and movies, but is perhaps best known for her son, actor Ben Stiller, and her husband, Jerry Stiller, of CBS' sitcom "The King of Queens."
Laurie's trademark role was as the mother in "Carrie," and Shepherd, an award-winning TV actress, starred in "Cybill" and "Moonlighting."
The actors begin filming in Harrisburg on June 14.
According to Michael Chapaloney, spokesman for the Pennsylvania Film Office, several films are currently being made in Pennsylvania: "My Bloody Valentine," "Hollywood & Wine," "Shannon's Rainbow," "Fleas," "The Nail" and "Transformers 2."
"Happy Tears," "Marley & Me" and "Dare" are wrapping up production in the state, Chapaloney said.
"Another Harvest Moon" is being produced by Aurora Films of Lancaster. Chad Taylor, who plays guitar for the band Live, is one of the partners of the company. Taylor, who lives in Lancaster, is a producer of "Another Harvest Moon." He also worked as a producer on the full-length film "Home," which was produced by Haverstick Films. "One of my key roles will be to leverage my success in the entertainment industry to get the product out to a wider audience than it would otherwise," he said.
Swartz and Taylor said neither the release date nor distribution details have been set.
"We're certainly targeting theatrical releases, and we feel that our cast has put us in a good position to do that," Swartz said. "This is a smaller film than a lot of them are used to. None of them are getting a new pool out of this."
Word spread like wildfire in Catholic circles: Douglas Kmiec, a staunch Republican, firm foe of abortion and veteran of the Reagan Justice Department, had been denied Communion.
His sin? Kmiec, a Catholic who can cite papal pronouncements with the facility of a theological scholar, shocked old friends and adversaries alike earlier this year by endorsing Barack Obama for president. For at least one priest, Kmiec's support for a pro-choice politician made him a willing participant in a grave moral evil.
Kmiec was denied Communion in April at a Mass for a group of Catholic business people he later addressed at dinner. The episode has not received wide attention outside the Catholic world, but it is the opening shot in an argument that could have a large impact on this year's presidential campaign: Is it legitimate for bishops and priests to deny Communion to those supporting candidates who favor abortion rights?
A version of this argument roiled the 2004 campaign when some, though not most, Catholic bishops suggested that John Kerry and other pro-choice Catholic politicians should be denied Communion because of their views on abortion.
The Kmiec incident poses the question in an extreme form: He is not a public official but a voter expressing a preference. Moreover, Kmiec -- a law professor at Pepperdine University and once dean of Catholic University's law school -- is a long-standing critic of the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision.
Kmiec, who was head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel in the late 1980s, is supporting Obama despite the candidate's position on abortion, not because of it, partly in the hope that Obama's emphasis on personal responsibility in sexual matters might change the nature of the nation's argument on life issues.
Kmiec has drawn attention because he is one of the nation's leading "Obamacons," conservatives who find Obama's call for a new approach to politics appealing. Kmiec started life as a Democrat. His father was a soldier in the late Mayor Richard J. Daley's Chicago political machine, and Kmiec's earliest political energies were devoted to Robert F. Kennedy's 1968 campaign.
But like many Catholic Democrats, Kmiec was profoundly attracted to Ronald Reagan. For him, five words in Reagan's 1980 acceptance speech summarized the essence of a Catholic view of politics: "family, work, neighborhood, peace and freedom."
In an interview over the weekend, Kmiec argued that 35 years after Roe, opponents of abortion need to contemplate whether "a legal prohibition" of abortion "is the only way to promote a culture of life."
"To think you have done a generous thing for your neighbor or that you have built up a culture of life just because you voted for a candidate who says in his brochure that he wants to overturn Roe v. Wade is far too thin an understanding of the Catholic faith," he said. Kmiec, a critic of the Bush administration's Iraq policy, added that Catholics should heed "the broad social teaching of the church," including its views on war.
Kmiec shared with me the name of the priest who denied him Communion and a letter of apology from the organizers of the event, but he requested that I not name the priest to protect the cleric from public attack.
The priest's actions are almost certainly out of line with the policy of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. In their statement"Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship," issued last November, the bishops said: "A Catholic cannot vote for a candidate who takes a position in favor of an intrinsic evil, such as abortion or racism, if the voter's intent is to support that position."
The "if" phrase in that carefully negotiated sentence suggests that Catholics can support pro-choice candidates, provided the purpose of their vote is not to promote abortion.
Already, Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann of Kansas City has played an indirect role in the 2008 campaign by calling on Kathleen Sebelius, the popular Democratic governor of Kansas who has been mentioned as a possible Obama running mate, to stop taking Communion because of her "actions in support of legalized abortion."
But because Kmiec is a private citizen and has such a long history of embracing Catholic teaching on abortion, denying him Communion for political reasons may spark an even greater outcry inside the church.
Kmiec says he is grateful because the episode reminded him of the importance of the Eucharist in his spiritual life, and because he hopes it will alert others to the dangers of "using Communion as a weapon."
Stuhlinger was a German atomic, electrical and rocket scientist. After being brought to the United States as part of Operation Paperclip, he developed guidance systems with Wernher von Braun's team at the US Army, and later, NASA. He was also instrumental in the development of the ion engine for long-endurance space flight, and a wide variety of scientific experiments.
Stuhlinger was born in Niederrimbach, Germany, near Wurzburg in Bavaria. He earned his Ph.D. in physics at the University of Tubingen at age 23. In 1939 he went to work in Berlin, working on cosmic rays and nuclear physics. http://louis6j6sheehan.blogspot.com
Despite showing promise, in 1941 Stuhlinger was sent to the Russian front where he was wounded during the Battle of Moscow, and was one of the few members of his unit to survive the Battle of Stalingrad. His service complete, in 1943 he joined Dr. Wernher von Braun's team at Peenemünde, where he worked in the field of guidance systems.
Ernst Stuhlinger (middle) and Wernher von Braun signing U.S. citizenship certificates. The members of the Peenemünde team and their family members were awarded the United States citizenship on
Stuhlinger was one of the first group of 126 scientists who immigrated to the United States with Dr. von Braun after World War II as part of Operation Paperclip. In the 1950s Stuhlinger worked at the Redstone Arsenal, primarily on guidance systems. He played a small but important role in the race to launch a US satellite after the success of Sputnik 1. As there was little time to develop and test automated systems like guidance or staging systems, Stuhlinger developed a simple spring-powered staging timer that had to be triggered from the ground. On the night of January 31, 1958, Stuhlinger was at the controls of the timer when the Explorer 1 was launched, triggering the device right on time. He became known as "the man with the golden finger." On April 14, 1955, he became a naturalized United States citizen along with the other Paperclip members.
Stuhlinger spent much of his spare time developing designs for solar-powered spacecraft. The most popular of those designs relied on ion thrusters, which use ionize either caesium or rubidium vapor and accelerate the positively charged ions through gridded electrodes. The spacecraft would be powered by the one kilowatt of solar energy. He referred to the concept as a "sunship". He is considered as one of the pioneers of electric propulsion having, among many contributions, authored the classic textbook Ion Propulsion for Space Flight (McGraw-Hill, New York, 1964). In 2005, he was honored by the Electric Rocket Propulsion Society, and awarded its highest honor "The Medal for Outstanding Achievement in Electric Propulsion." http://louis1j1sheehan1.blogspot.com
Stuhlinger was director of the space science lab at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, from its formation in 1960 until 1968, and then its associate director for science from 1968 to 1975, when he retired and became an adjunct professor and senior research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Among his many other works at Marshall, he directed early planning for lunar exploration, worked on the Apollo Telescope Mount that produced a wealth of information about the Sun, led planning for the three High Energy Astronomical Observatorys, and worked on the initial phases of what would become the Hubble Space Telescope.
After retiring, Stuhlinger and historian Frederick Ordway collaborated on the biography Werhner von Braun: Crusader for Space. In it, Stuhlinger downplayed claims that von Braun had mistreated prisoners working on the V-2 program during the war. Author Michael Neufeld has called these claims highly dubious in his book, Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War, stating that Stuhlinger was not personally involved in these areas and would have no first-hand information. Stuhlinger reiterated the point that their aim was ultimately peaceful; in an Associated Press article, he wrote: "Yes, we did work on improved guidance systems, but in late 1944 we were convinced that the war would soon be over before new systems could be used on military rockets. However, we were convinced that somehow our work would find application in the future rockets that would not aim at London, but at the moon."
Operation Paperclip (also credited as Project Paperclip) was the code name under which the U.S. intelligence and military services extracted German scientists from Nazi Germany, during and after the final stages of World War II. In 1945 the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency was established and given direct responsibility for Operation Paperclip.
Following the German failure of its invasion of the Soviet Union (codenamed Operation Barbarossa) and the entry of the US into WWII, the strategic position of Germany was at a disadvantage since German military industries were unprepared for a long war. As a result, Germany began efforts in spring 1943 to recall scientists and technical personnel from combat units where their skills could be used in research and development.
‘Overnight, Ph.D.s were liberated from KP duty, masters of science were recalled from orderly service, mathematicians were hauled out of bakeries, and precision mechanics ceased to be truck drivers.’
— Dieter K. Huzel
The recall effort first required identifying such personnel and then tracking them (particularly for loyalty), which culminated in the Osenberg List by Werner Osenberg, a University of Hannover engineering scientist who headed the Wehrforschungsgemeinschaft (English: Military Research Association). In March 1945, a Polish laboratory technician found the shredded pieces of the Osenberg List in a toilet that hadn't flushed properly. US Army Major Robert B Staver, Chief of the Jet Propulsion Section of the Research and Intelligence Branch of the US Army Ordnance in London, subsequently used the Osenberg list to compile the Black List, the code name for the list of scientists targeted for interrogation, with the rocket scientist Wernher von Braun's name at the top.
The original unnamed plan to interview only the rocket scientists changed after Major Staver sent a cable (signed by Colonel Joel Holmes) to the Pentagon on May 22, 1945 of the urgency to evacuate the German technicians and their families as "important for Pacific war."Likewise, an equally strong desire was to deny German expertise to the Soviet Union. In the Operation Alsos case of Werner Heisenberg, a principal scientist in the German nuclear energy project: "…he was worth more to us than ten divisions of Germans."
In addition to scientists specialising in rocketry and nuclear physics, various Allied teams were also searching for experts in chemistry, medicine, and naval weapons. An effort that predated Overcast was the US Navy's acquisition in May 1945 of Dr. Herbert A. Wagner, who worked at Naval Air Station Point Mugu in 1947.
The majority of the scientists were involved with the V-2 rocket, and the rocket group was initially housed with their families at a housing project in Landshut Bavaria. Operation Overcast was designated by the US Joint Chiefs of Staff on July 19, 1945, but when the nickname "Camp Overcast" was being openly used for the housing, the code name was changed to Paperclip.
By 1958, many aspects of Paperclip had become common knowledge. It was openly mentioned in a Time magazine article about von Braun.
In early August 1945, Colonel Holger N. Toftoy, chief of the Rocket Branch in the Research and Development Division of Army Ordnance, offered initial one-year contracts to the rocket scientists. After Toftoy agreed to take care of their families, 127 scientists accepted the offer. In September 1945, the first group of seven rocket scientists arrived from Germany at Fort Strong in the US: Wernher von Braun, Erich W. Neubert, Theodor A. Poppel, August Schulze, Eberhard F. M. Rees, Wilhelm Jungert and Walter Schwidetzky.
http://louis1j1sheehan1esquire.blogspot.com
Eventually the rocket scientists arrived at Fort Bliss, Texas for rocket testing at White Sands Proving Grounds as "War Department Special Employees."
In early 1950, legal status for some "Paperclip Specialists" was obtained when visas were issued at the US consulate in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico; from which the scientists legally entered the US.[2] In later decades, some scientists' WWII wartime activities were investigated — Arthur Rudolph was linked to the Mittelbau-Dora slave labor, and Hubertus Strughold was implicated in Nazi human experimentation.
Eighty-six aeronautical experts were transferred to Wright Field, which had also acquired aircraft and other equipment under Operation Lusty.
The United States Army Signal Corps employed 24 specialists — including physicists Drs. Georg Goubau, Gunter Guttwein, Georg Hass, Horst Kedesdy, and Kurt Levovec; physical chemists Professor Rudolf Brill and Drs. Ernst Baars and Eberhard Both; geophysicist Dr. Helmut Weickmann; technical optician Dr. Gerhard Schwesinger; and electronics engineers Drs. Eduard Gerber, Richard Guenther and Hans Ziegler.
The United States Bureau of Mines employed seven German synthetic fuel scientists in a Fischer-Tropsch chemical plant in Louisiana, Missouri in 1946.
In 1959, 94 Paperclip individuals went to the US, including Friedwardt Winterberg, Hans Dolezalek, and Friedrich Wigand. Through 1990, Paperclip acquired a total of 1,600 personnel,with the "intellectual reparations" taken by the U.S. and the UK (mainly German patents and industrial processes) valued at close to $10 billion.
They say that every president gets the psychoanalyst he deserves. And every Hamlet gets his Rosencrantz.
So now comes Scott McClellan, once the most loyal of the Texas Bushies, to reveal “What Happened,” as the title of his book promises, to turn W. from a genial, humble, bipartisan good ol’ boy to a delusional, disconnected, arrogant, ideological flop.
Although his analytical skills are extremely limited, the former White House press secretary — Secret Service code name Matrix — takes a stab at illuminating Junior’s bumpy and improbable boomerang journey from family black sheep and famous screw-up back to family black sheep and famous screw-up.
How did W. start out wanting to restore honor and dignity to the White House and end up scraping all the honor and dignity off the White House?
It turns out that our president is a one-man refutation of Malcolm Gladwell’s best seller “Blink,” about the value of trusting your gut.
Every gut instinct he had was wildly off the mark and hideously damaging to all concerned.
It seems that if you trust your gut without ever feeding your gut any facts or news or contrary opinions, if you keep your gut on a steady diet of grandiosity, ignorance, sycophants, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, those snap decisions can be ruinous.
We already know What Happened, but it feels good to hear Scott say it. His conscience was spurred by hurt feelings.
In Washington, it is rarely the geopolitical or human consequences that cause people to turn on leaders behaving immorally. The town is far more narcissistic and practical than that.
The people who should be sounding the alarm for democracy’s sake, and the sake of all the young Americans losing lives and limbs, get truly outraged only when they are played for fools and fall guys, when their own reputations are at stake.
It was not the fake casus belli that made Colin Powell’s blood boil. What really got Powell disgusted was that W. and Dick Cheney used him, tapping into his credibility to sell their trumped-up war; that George Tenet failed to help him scrub his U.N. speech of all Cheney’s garbage; and that W. showed him the door so the more malleable Condi could have his job.
Tenet was privately worried about a war buildup not backed up by C.I.A. facts, but he only publicly sounded the alarm years later in a lucrative memoir fueled by payback, after Condi and Cheney tried to cast him as the fall guy on W.M.D.
McClellan did not realize the value of a favorite maxim — “The truth shall set you free” — until he was hung out to dry by his bosses in the Valerie Plame affair, repeating the lies Karl Rove and Scooter Libby brazenly told him about not being the leakers.
“Clearly,” McClellan says, sounding like the breast-heaving heroine of a Victorian romance, “I had allowed myself to be deceived.” He felt “something fall out of me into the abyss.”
And that was even before “the breaking point,” when he learned the worst about his idol — that the president who had denounced leaks about his warrantless surveillance program, who had promised to fire anyone leaking classified information about Plame, was himself the one who authorized Dick Cheney to let Scooter leak part of the top-secret National Intelligence Estimate.
“Yeah, I did,” Mr. Bush told his sap of a press secretary on Air Force One. His tone, the stunned McClellan said, was “as if discussing something no more important than a baseball score.”
He recalled the first time that he had begun to suspect that W. might be just another dissembling pol: when he overheard his boss, during his 2000 bid, ludicrously telling a supporter that he couldn’t remember, from his wild partying days, if he had tried cocaine. http://louis1j1sheehan.blogspot.com
“He isn’t the kind of person to flat-out lie,” McClellan said, but added, “I was witnessing Bush convincing himself to believe something that probably was not true.” He’d see a lot more of it over the next six years before Bush tearfully booted him out.
W.’s dwindling cadre hit back hard. In Stockholm, Condi — labeled “sometimes too accommodating” by the author — scoffed: “The president was very clear about the reasons for going to war.”
She’s right. He was very clear about it being because of W.M.D. Then he was very clear about it being to rid the world of a tyrant. Then he was very clear about it being to spread democracy. When that didn’t work out, he was very clear about it being that we can’t leave because we can’t leave.
He was always wrong, but always very clear.
Werner Dahm Rocket engineer. . Member of the German Rocket Team in the United States after World War II.
German aerodynamicist, working in guided missiles during World War II. His studies at the University of Aachen were interrupted by the war, and he was assigned to do research with Versuchskommando Nord. At Peenemuende he was involved in the aerodynamic design of the A9/A10, A7, A4b, and Wasserfall winged missiles. As of January 1947, was living at Bohn am Rhein. Thereafter evacuated to Bavaria. He returned to Aachen and finally completed his diploma in 1947. He then went to the United States and became part of Von Braun's rocket team at Huntsville. As of 1960, Head of Aerodynamics Analysis Branch, Aeroballistics Division, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center.
2 December 1960 - Apollo Technical Liaison Groups assignments. Representatives of Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) were assigned to eight of the nine Apollo Technical Liaison Groups by H. H. Koelle, Director, Future Projects Office, MSFC. They were Rudolph F. Hoelker (Trajectory Analysis), Edward L. Linsley (Configurations and Aerodynamics), Werner K. Dahm and Harvey A. Connell (Heating), Erich E. Goerner (Structures and Materials), David M. Hammock and Alexander A. McCool (Onboard Propulsion), Heinz Kampmeier (Instrumentation and Communications), Wilbur G. Thornton (Guidance and Control), and Herman F. Beduerftig (Mechanical Systems). Dual representation on two of the Groups would be necessary because of the division of technical responsibilities within MSFC.
Bibliography and Further Reading
* Objective List of German and Austrian Scientists, Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency, 2 January 1947.
* Neufeld, Michael, interviewer, Inteviews with Peenemuende Veterans, National Air and Space Museum archives.
The Shakespeare Authorship Coalition (SAC) is pleased to announce that Sir Derek Jacobi has agreed to join Mark Rylance as a Patron of the SAC. As you may recall, Mark and Sir Derek teamed up to launch the Declaration of Reasonable Doubt in Chichester, England, last year following the final performance of Mark's play, "I Am Shakespeare." The event, held on 8 September (dubbed "Doubters' Day"), was a smashing success; so we are pleased to be able to keep this outstanding team together. Sir Derek has long been an outspoken supporter of the view that the Shakespeare Authorship Issue should be taken seriously. It is therefore extremely gratifying to us that, in addition to very publicly signing the Declaration, he is also willing to serve in this capacity. Thank you, Sir Derek Jacobi!
Although the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust (SBT) declined our invitation to participate in the declaration-signing event in Chichester, we certainly got their attention. The September 27, 2007, issue of The Stage magazine featured an article by SBT Chairman Stanley Wells in which he criticized Mark and Sir Derek for signing the Declaration, warning them that they risked ending up in a lunatic asylum, like Delia Bacon. ("Beware, Mark and Sir Derek!") Openly angry at the Declaration, and especially at Mark and Sir Derek for promulgating it, Wells nevertheless controlled himself long enough to offer a number of specific criticisms. The current issue of The Stage contains Mark's reply, in which he refers readers to the SAC website where they can read Prof. Wells' original article, Mark's reply, plus a point-by-point rebuttal to Wells' specific criticisms of the Declaration. http://louis0j0sheehan.blogspot.com
To read this online "debate," go to the Contrary Views page on our website. See for yourself who has the better argument -- Mark in saying there's reasonable doubt, or his former Globe Theatre colleague, Wells, in claiming certainty?
(The entire exchange can also be read and downloaded in PDF format at the website of the Shakespearean Authorship Trust, of which Mark Rylance is chairman. The SAT will be holding its annual lecture series in London during the month of November again this year. Please check back at their website closer to that time for the specifics of the SAT lecture series.)
Over 1,300 people have now signed the Declaration, including more than 1,000 since the Chichester event. These include 223 (17%) current or former college/university faculty members, 177 (13.5%) with doctoral degrees, and 274 (21%) with master's degrees. The largest category by academic field continues to be English literature graduates (222), followed by those in the arts (134), theatre arts (89), education (80), math, engineering & computers (70), social sciences (68), history (64), natural sciences (57), medicine & health care (55), law (53), other humanities (52), management (45), and psychology (40). (The number residing in lunatic asylums was minuscule, so relax, Professor Wells.) We urge everyone to continue your efforts to recruit additional signatories, especially academics and other highly credible individuals. The Declaration is the best brief introduction to the authorship issue.
Finally, we would like to ask for your support. As a non-membership organization, the SAC charges no dues. We depend entirely on voluntary donations. We publish no newsletter, hold no conferences, and charge no fee to sign the Declaration. We are completely focused on promoting the Declaration, and on legitimizing the Authorship Issue in academia. Our expenses are low, but we do need money to operate our website, collect signatures, and seek publicity. Even small donations ($10 - $20) are very helpful. Please visit the Donations page on our website and make a tax deductible donation today, or send a check to: Shakespeare Authorship Coalition, 310 North Indian Hill Blvd., #200, Claremont, CA 91711.
The three major bond-rating firms are set to overhaul the way they collect fees as part of a settlement with New York state's attorney general, Andrew Cuomo, that could be announced as soon as this week, people familiar with the matter said.
If a deal is reached, it could change the $5 billion-a-year bond-rating industry as fundamentally as Mr. Cuomo's predecessor Eliot Spitzer did six years ago with his settlement with Wall Street firms over stock-research analysts whose recommendations were compromised by investment-banking ties.
Terms of Mr. Cuomo's settlement with Moody's Corp.'s Moody's Investors Service; McGraw-Hill Cos.' Standard & Poor's unit; and Fimalac SA's Fitch Ratings deal with what many critics claim has been a chronic problem with bond ratings: They are paid for by the entities being rated. That financial dependence has been blamed for the industry's failure to predict that risky subprime mortgages would crumble, resulting in losses and shaken confidence.
The accord attempts to change the incentive structure for the ratings agencies. Now, while more than one ratings agency reviews most deals, not all of them actually rate the deal and get paid. That gives the agencies an incentive to go easy on their rating in order to win the business.
Under the Cuomo settlement, which would cover the hardest-hit portions of the mortgage market, the firms would get paid for their review, even if they didn't end up getting hired to rate the deal. This would mean the firms would get paid even if they were tough. The plan, which requires final agreement by Mr. Cuomo's office and the rating firms, wouldn't dictate the exact fees rating firms could charge. But the firms would be required to charge more than a nominal fee for their preliminary work.
The bond-rating firms also have tentatively agreed to disclose on a quarterly basis the fees they're paid for nonprime-mortgage-backed securities, which includes subprime mortgages and so-called Alt-A mortgages that don't conform with the standards of government-sponsored mortgage companies. Such disclosures are seen as a potential red flag to help investors detect instances where bond issuers or their bankers may have essentially pitted different rating firms against each other in order to get a higher rating.
In an interview in December, Brian Clarkson, then the president and chief operating officer of Moody's Investors Service, acknowledged that "there is a lot of rating shopping that goes on...What the market doesn't know is who's seen" certain transactions but wasn't hired to rate those deals. Last month, Mr. Clarkson, who once ran the Moody's group overseeing mortgages and other structured-finance products, stepped down, effective in July.
The settlement is unlikely to satisfy critics who have urged that bond-rating firms stop being paid altogether by bond issuers or that the firms be permitted to rate any deal they choose, regardless of whether the issuer cooperates. Following the settlement, bond issuers still would get a strong say over which firms published the final rating, as well as those invited to look over a pool of loans in the first place.
For Moody's, S&P and Fitch, the agreement largely eliminates the possibility of a nasty showdown with Mr. Cuomo, whose office has been investigating the industry for about nine months, poring through thousands of pages in documents and emails and interviewing senior executives at each of the three big rating firms, people familiar with the matter said.
Mr. Cuomo has leverage over the bond-rating industry partly because Moody's and S&P are based in New York. The attorney general also has one of the most powerful legal tools in the nation: the 1921 Martin Act, which spells out a broad definition of securities fraud without requiring that prosecutors prove intent to defraud.
In a statement, Deven Sharma, S&P's president, said the firm "is pleased to work with New York Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo and other rating agencies on these important measures, which we believe will help ensure our ratings process continues to be of the highest quality." http://louis3j3sheehan3.blogspot.com
Moody's and S&P shares rose after The Wall Street Journal reported news of the settlement talks Tuesday afternoon. As of 4 p.m. composite trading on the New York Stock Exchange, Moody's was at $38.45, up $1.80, or 4.9%. McGraw-Hill was up 38 cents at $41.20.
As the probe proceeded, attorneys in Mr. Cuomo's office concluded that rating firms could be more effective if Wall Street had less control over which ones were paid, these people said. As part of the deal, the firms would cooperate with Mr. Cuomo's continuing investigation into investment banks and other financial firms that issued mortgage-backed securities later plagued by high levels of defaults. The New York attorney general is trying to determine if banks intentionally overlooked or hid flaws in loans that were securitized and sold to investors.
The decision not to seek fines from the three major bond-rating firms partly reflects Mr. Cuomo's firm but less-confrontational style than that of Mr. Spitzer. The 50-year-old Mr. Cuomo, elected in 2006, has promised to aggressively pursue financial wrongdoing, and the likely pact shows he believes investor confidence can be shored up without an all-out attack on the bond-rating industry.
Mr. Cuomo's final settlement will likely be structured in a way that doesn't contradict rules being proposed by the Securities and Exchange Commission or European regulators. The deal also needs to address antitrust concerns at investment banks that pay rating fees, but rating firms will continue to determine the level of fees they charge on mortgage deals.
LIMA has long been a cosmopolitan city hesitant to embrace its diversity. A capital founded by Spanish conquistadors that subsequently exploded with influxes from Asia and then from Peru’s own Andean highlands, it has remained a city of fairly segregated neighborhoods. But led by Lima’s cuisine — which is rapidly gaining worldwide renown for its freshness and creativity — that is changing. Sushi and ceviche chefs are learning from one another. The most popular street food is “five flavors” a rice and pasta dish with Italian, Chinese, Andean, Japanese and African influences. Restaurants that once hid their existence from all but the “in the know” are now advertising their presence with Web sites and — gasp — signs out front. For the tourist, it means days of exploring neighborhoods and attractions with distinct cultures and histories, interspersed with the spicy, sweet, and subtle gastronomic experience of how it all comes together.
Friday
4 p.m.
1) SINS OF THE SEA
In Lima, food rules. And in the cocina limeña, seafood is king. Just a block or two from the ocean with ceramic tile floors and an open-air foyer, Pescados Capitales (Avenida La Mar 1337; 51-1-421-8808, www.pescados-capitales.com) combines the relaxation of the beach with the European refinement of Lima’s upper caste. “Pecados capitales” refers to the seven deadly sins, all of which can be ordered from the menu. Start off with a little Freudian Lust (lujuria freudiana, grilled baby calamari for 26 soles), and then chow down on some creamy, indulgent greed (avaricia sole Rockefeller, 40 soles) or simple infidelity (infidelidad grilled swordfish, 34 soles) if you fear that your stomach may not forgive so easily.
6 p.m.
2) PARK IT IN THE PARKS
Far from the city center but right up against the beach is the upscale neighborhood of Miraflores, which roughly translates as “look at all the pretty flowers,” Miraflores’s parks of irises, cactuses, and palms make for a good stroll and introduction to Lima. Start off at Parque Kennedy at the heart of the neighborhood, which often holds spoken-word poetry and outdoor art exhibitions. Cross the Diagonal to Café Haiti (Diagonal 160; 51-1-445-0539) an old-school hangout of the Lima literati with bamboo chairs and a sidewalk cafe where you can sample Peru’s signature beverages: a tangy pisco sour for the alcoholically inclined (9 soles, or about $3.20 at 2.8 soles to the dollar), and the lemony-sweet hierba luisa (4 soles) for the abstainers.
9:30 p.m.
3) PYRAMIDS AND PIE
For dessert, take a quick cab (5 soles) to La Bodega de la Trattoria (General Borgoño 784; 51-1-241-6899), the casual wing of La Trattoria, run by the South American television dessert diva Sandra Plevisani. Get a table out on the patio and order a bocanera de chocolate, a fudge-filled chocolate soufflé (22 soles), looking out at Huaca Pucllana, the complex of Incan structures across the street.
Saturday
9 a.m.
4) HEART OF THE CITY
Start the morning with a stroll up Jirón de la Unión, the pedestrian zone that leads to the Plaza Mayor, Lima’s main square. Pass modish shops and colorful 200-year-old colonial facades and emerge into a wide square surrounded by some of Lima’s finest architecture. This is the spot in which Francisco Pizarro founded the city in 1535 and in which Peruvians declared their independence in 1821. Tour the gold-leaf altars and paintings of the Lima Cathedral on the eastern edge, and if you have the time, visit the Church of San Francisco a couple of blocks northeast with its 17th-century convent and extensive network of catacombs (Plaza San Francisco; 51-1-427-1381; www.museocatacumbas.com).
Noon
5) CHIFA, CHIFA, EVERYWHERE
From the city center, walk east a few blocks and a full hemisphere to Calle Capón, Lima’s Chinatown. As a product of early-20th-century immigration, Peru has a large Chinese population, a fact observable by the proliferation of chifa (Peruvian-Chinese) restaurants all over the city. Chifa is spicier than traditional Chinese food, relying more on seafood and sauces and less on vegetables. One of the best spots is Salon Capón (Jirón Paruro 819; 51-1-426-9286), where you can try steamed langostino dumplings with tamarind sauce (7 soles) and spicy garlic-fried calamari (calamar chiu jin, 28 soles). Afterward, stroll through the pedestrian zone with the classic Chinatown arch on either end, stopping to have your palm read, the smell of sandalwood incense filling the air.
1 p.m.
6) X-RATED POTTERY
Through December 2008, if you can make it to only one museum in Lima, it should be the Museo Rafael Larco Herrera (Avenida Bolívar 1515; 51-1-461-1312; www.museolarco.org) in the Pueblo Libre district, which showcases pre-Columbian artifacts. The Gold Museum (www.museoroperu.com.pe) is another popular choice, but this year the Larco is featuring a collection of gold headdresses, ornaments and jewelry that rival the Gold Museum’s in quality, if not quantity. The Larco’s real appeal, however, is its collection of erotic pottery dating from the first millennium A.D., which begins with the expected giant phalluses and moves on to detailed depictions of sexual acts that are otherwise unviewable outside seedy video stores and corners of the Internet.
3 p.m.
7) DESERT WORSHIP
Peru is known for the Inca, but Lima is a city built by and for the Spanish conquerors. Still, Inca sites remain, so take a cab to Pachacamác (20 to 25 soles from Miraflores; www.pachacamac.net; entry fee 6 soles), an archaeological site that housed an important oracle for more than 1,500 years with a beautifully restored Temple of the Moon. Skip the tour loop unless you pay your cabbie to drive you around, but shell out the extra 20 soles for a guide, since you can’t get into the areas under work (which are many) without one. Bring a hat and sunglasses, because a visit to Pachacamác reminds you that Lima is one of the world’s largest desert cities.
6 p.m.
8) MAKE MINE A MAKI
Not many cities offer both a world-class culinary scene and a currency significantly weaker than the dollar, so take advantage by visiting Matsuei (Manuel Bañon 260; 51-1-422-4323), a restaurant in San Isidro co-founded by Nobuyuki Matsuhisa of Nobu fame and Lima’s best spot for sushi.
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The Japanese settled in Peru around the same time as the Chinese, even eventually sending one of their own, Alberto Fujimori, to the presidency (and lately, to the jailhouse). Fish as fresh as Lima’s makes ideal ingredients in maki acevichado, a Japanese roll with the classic Peruvian ceviche sauce (30 soles), and pick up sushi (fried calamari with shrimp, salmon, and rice tartar, 24 soles).
10 p.m.
9) DISCOS ON THE OUTSKIRTS
Lima’s great population boom came in the 1950s when the Andean people migrated to the city in large numbers, creating scores of young towns, or pueblos jovenes, on the outskirts. These young towns have grown up and are now sporting some of Lima’s best night life in the form of a strip of clubs in the town of Los Olivos. Join the multigenerational crowds at the Karamba “salsoteca” for salsa music in a two-tiered club with dancing coconuts painted on the walls, or Kokus if you prefer rock, both on Boulevard Los Olivos, (www.boulevard-losolivos.com for both).
Sunday
10 a.m.
10) BOHEMIAN LIFE
If Miraflores is Lima’s Upper West Side, then Barranco is Greenwich Village. Home to Lima’s bohemian upper crust like Mario Vargas Llosa, this onetime summer resort neighborhood is filled with art galleries, European style parks and pubs. From the marigold-studded Plaza de Armas, walk west down to the Bridge of Sighs, an old wooden bridge over a bougainvillea-lined walkway that when accompanied by guitar players and women selling single roses, manages to be both touristy and romantic. Wind your way over to the Lucia de la Puente gallery (Paso Sáenz Peña 206A; 51-1-477-9740; www.gluciadelapuente.com), in Barranco, which has contemporary art exhibitions like an Incan ruin reconstructed out of old computer keyboards, changing monthly.
1 p.m.
11) GETTING CRAFTY
Rather than shopping the Inca Market’s repetitive stalls of textiles and figurines, walk across the street from Lucia de la Puente to the artisans’ collective Dédalo (Paseo Sáenz Peña 295; 51-1-477-0562), in Barranco. Each room in the labyrinthine century-old mansion houses a different type of craft, from jewelry and picture frames to lamps and leatherwork from more than 1,000 different local artists. A cafe in the back serves coffee, tea and selections from a decent wine list. It’s a nice spot to sit and figure out how to explain to your partner the beautiful but useless blown glass vase you just bought.
THE BASICS
Continental, LAN and American (through LAN) are among airlines that fly from the New York area to Lima at prices starting around $900 for June, according to a recent online search. Peru has no visa or special entry requirements.
Miraflores makes the best base for a visit with a wide range of quality hotels and a beachfront location. The Hotel Señorial (José Gonzáles 567; 51-1-445-0139; www.senorial.com), in Miraflores, is a lovely, relaxed place with a flowery courtyard and hearty breakfast at a nice price (216 soles, or about $77 at 2.8 soles to the dollar, for a double).
For upscale lodging, you can’t do better than the Miraflores Park Hotel (Avenida Malecón de la Reserva 1035; 51-1-610-4000, www.mira-park.com), also in Miraflores, with double rooms starting at $435 (rates are given in dollars). A taxi from Jorge Chávez Airport should be about 35 soles to both these locations.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: June 8, 2008
The 36 Hours column last Sunday, about Lima, Peru, referred incorrectly to the hours of operation for Pescados Capitales restaurant. It is open only for lunch, closing at 4:30 p.m., and is not open for dinner.
While pregnant with her first child, Meridith Duffy cried nearly every day -- to her dog trainer.
She feared she'd have to part with her pit bull, Haley, when her child was born. Haley "had never bitten anyone," says Ms. Duffy, who lives in Braintree, Mass. "But I knew she had that potential, and I was nervous."
The trainer had a solution: a program to get Haley used to having a baby around. Soon, Ms. Duffy was walking through the house with a stroller, playing a CD of annoying baby cries, and tugging the dog's ears and tail the way a toddler might. Haley also got many hours of obedience classes. "We had to learn that she was a dog, not a person," Ms. Duffy says. "That was hard for us."
Jenifer Vickery of The Pawsitive Dog helps new parents train their dogs to behave safely and comfortably around new infants. Dave Pickford reports.
The Duffys, whose baby, Isabella, arrived 19 months ago, are part of a new breed of parents-to-be who pay to baby-proof their dogs. At least a half-dozen dog-baby books and DVDs are on the market, with titles like "Your Baby and Bowser." A canine re-education course called Dogs & Storks, launched in 2006, now has 35 affiliated trainers in the U.S. and Canada, with hundreds of graduates.
"It's catching on because people are choosing to have kids later, and their dogs are really their first baby," says the course's creator, Jennifer Shryock of Cary, N.C., who sells it to trainers for $300.
Dogs bite about 4.7 million people a year in the U.S., the majority of them children, according to the American Veterinary Medical Association. Bonnie Beaver, a Texas vet and past president of the group, says that of the 15 to 20 people a year who die from dog bites, about 80% are children.
Ms. Shryock tells expectant parents, "When the baby comes, you are going to look at your dog for the first time as an animal. You will feel different about Fluffy."
That came as a shock to Tracy Fuquay, of Raleigh, N.C. For six years, her Shih-poo, Marcy, was the family princess: She traveled in a purse, dressed in colorful sweaters, sundresses or a denim jacket with heart sequins. When Ms. Fuquay graduated from the Raleigh School of Nurse Anesthesia in August 2006, Marcy wore a cap and gown.
In the eighth month of her pregnancy, Ms. Fuquay finally started saying no to Marcy. The dog was no longer allowed to ride in Ms. Fuquay's lap as she drove, and was banned from her bed. The result: "Marcy became racked with anxiety." http://louis0j0sheehan0esquire.blogspot.com
Things got worse after baby Leah's birth in December. Marcy now often cowers, and she urinates on the rugs. "I'm cleaning as much dog pee as I am changing diapers," the new mom says. "My husband is ready to give the dog away, but I can't."
She paid Ms. Shryock $160 for a two-hour house call. The result was a sobering assessment: "Because Marcy was used to being treated as 'the baby' for years, she will have a more difficult time and longer adjustment time to learn that she is not the only one needing attention."
Christopher Reggio, a publisher of pet-care books, says demand for prenatal dog prep is rising because "dogs today are real family members. They aren't 'owned' by people, they're 'parented' by people." His TFH Publications Inc. in Neptune, N.J., last year released "And Baby Makes Four: A Trimester-by-Trimester Guide to a Baby-Friendly Dog."
Natalie Rivkin is in the final days of her third trimester. But in her mind she's already been a mom for nearly six years -- to Luca, her chocolate Lab. "My schedule is built around her. When she's sick, I worry," says the high-school math teacher in Boston.
One recent day, Luca watched as Ms. Rivkin reached into her sport-utility vehicle, gently lifted a plastic doll in a blue "onesie" from the infant car seat and buckled it into a new stroller, then began pushing the stroller and doll through a local arboretum.
"Hey, that's not a real baby," yelled a passing runner. It was hard to know what Luca thought; she was busy nibbling grass.
Ms. Rivkin was doing her homework for Barks & Babies, a seminar taught to 10 couples at a local maternity store. Her instructor, Jenifer Vickery, owner of the Pawsitive Dog in Boston, suggests practicing with a fake baby four weeks before mom's due date. Other prebirth strategies: ignoring the dog more, and scenting dog toys with almond oil to distinguish them from baby toys.
Like older siblings, dogs can act out when stressed by a change like a new baby, trainers say. Barking, biting and soiling the house can all happen if dogs get less attention and exercise, feeling sidelined.
"It's harder to be a dog today," says Sue Sternberg of Accord, N.Y., a trainer and specialist in testing dogs' temperaments.
Not necessarily, though, for Phoebe and Zack, two large members of the Joe and Joelle Coretti household in Milford, Conn. Phoebe is an 85-pound golden retriever, and Zack, a German shepherd, weighs in at 120 pounds. "I was nervous about how big they were and how they might think the baby was a toy to play with," Ms. Coretti says. "But I was also nervous -- since they were our first babies -- that they might have some issues with the new baby. I wanted the dogs to feel they were still part of the family."
Ms. Coretti went to a Dogs & Storks Seminar and picked up some training tips. After she gave birth last year, her husband brought home the baby's T-shirt and cap for the dogs to sniff. Baby Kyle, age 1, now plays with the giant dogs, "who," Ms. Coretti adds, "still sleep in our bed."
Lynda Vanderhoven of Boston practiced relegating Bailey, her yellow Labrador puppy, to his "doggie den" in the house so she would be able to attend to her new son, Sam, when necessary. One difference between her two "babies," she says, is that the dog "can be legally locked in a crate."
By the time Susie Flaherty gave birth in 2006, her pit bull and Labrador mix, Rudy, had completed dozens of private and group classes. But it was hard for her and her husband to impose limits on Rudy, who'd been abused as a puppy. "He was our first child, and he was such a loving dog," she says. "Our need for the love and comfort he provided...made us inconsistent -- when we needed it, we had him up on the couch with us."
Shortly after her son, Angus, was born, Ms. Flaherty, a personal trainer in South Boston, couldn't cope. Unable to cuddle Rudy while breast-feeding around the clock, "I felt horribly guilty," she says.
She gave the dog to her childless brother in San Francisco. Rudy recently got a Facebook page so he can keep in touch.
As for Meridith Duffy and her husband, Keith, a marketing executive, they continue to send Haley, their female pit bull, to anger-management class. It seems to have worked. http://louis5j5sheehan.blogspot.com
"People think you're crazy to have a pit bull in the first place," Mr. Duffy says. "But now the dog lies down and the baby pokes her in the eye and pulls her ears, and she just takes it." A second Duffy baby is due June 7.
Michael Price has made millions buying shares in battered financial stocks. But he isn't buying Wachovia Corp. And the bank's dumping of its chief executive doesn't change his mind.
Mr. Price, who led the Mutual Series funds group and later sold it to Franklin Templeton Investments, isn't one who delights in piling on to wounded financial firms.
[Chart]
In the family portfolio that Mr. Price now runs, MFP Investors, he has sold Wachovia shares short, meaning he makes a profit if the stock declines. The reasons for Mr. Price's bearish bet: He said Wachovia is going to book much higher credit losses on its holdings of adjustable-rate mortgages.
As a result, Wachovia, which raised $8 billion in fresh capital in April after raising a combined $5.8 billion by selling preferred shares in December and February, will have to do another big round of fund raising, Mr. Price said.
"They are going to have to come back to the market and raise more money," he said.
During this credit crunch, plenty of investors have tried picking the bottom on names like Wachovia, only to see the stocks hit another low as the lenders reported more bad news.
But Mr. Price uses the balance sheet to get an idea of where the floor might be.
Put simply, he takes a bank's common equity -- the net worth available to common stockholders -- and slices and dices it to come up with a price target. Mr. Price has used this approach to buy shares recently in Sovereign Bancorp Inc., another lender that got hit hard in the mortgage crisis.
At Wachovia, removing goodwill and other intangible assets, as well as preferred shares, gets to a book value of about $14.80 a share, after the most recent capital raise. That is well below Wachovia's closing price Monday of $23.40, down 1.7%, or 40 cents, in 4 p.m. New York Stock Exchange composite trading.
But Mr. Price notes that Wachovia deserves some credit in this calculation for its low-interest-rate deposits, for which potential acquirers likely would pay a premium. Assuming a 5% premium on the bank's $278 billion of low-interest-rate deposits, $6.60 a share would have to be added to the $14.80 a share in book value. This gets to an approximate share-price target of $21.40, not that far below Monday's close.
But the bank has $121.2 billion of adjustable-rate mortgages, most of which were taken onto its balance sheet when it acquired Golden West Financial Corp. Any value calculation for Wachovia has to take into account the losses the bank likely will have to book as it builds its loan-loss reserve against defaults on these mortgages.
Mr. Price believes a new CEO at Wachovia likely would be more aggressive in recognizing the ARM problems. "More losses are coming. They need to fess up," he said.
The financial pain from doing that could be intense. At the end of March, the loan-loss reserve for Wachovia's adjustable-rate mortgages was equivalent to 1.55% of the $121.2 billion total, which looks too low given how fast they are going bad.
If Mr. Price is right, Wachovia's share price is wrong.
'Breakfast at Citi' for Vikram Pandit
Vikram Pandit must feel like Holly Golightly staring into the windows of Tiffany's in "Breakfast at Tiffany's." Wachovia and Washington Mutual Inc. are sitting behind the glass, ripe for the taking. Though both are somewhat tarnished, they each would solve Citigroup Inc.'s need for a big deposit base that would serve as a source of cheap funding.
[But Mr. Pandit likely will remain on the sidewalk since Citigroup isn't in the position to do any kind of deal.
That leaves J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. CEO James Dimon, who has made no secret that he wants to expand in the Southeast, which argues for Wachovia, and has already bid for WaMu. But Mr. Dimon would have a tough time pulling off a deal.
First, J.P. Morgan is busy integrating Bear Stearns, though in terms of size and cost, Bear isn't significant enough to keep J.P. Morgan from trying to do another deal. The bigger roadblocks are price and accounting. Neither bank's board likely would make a deal without a significant premium given the banks' low valuations, as well as the big recent capital raisings each has completed.
J.P. Morgan could pay the premium, but it would need to be pretty steep because an acquirer would have to mark to market the acquiree's entire balance sheet. According to Merrill Lynch & Co., that would add at least $15 billion to $20 billion to the purchase price.
That might be too much for Mr. Dimon to stomach. As for Mr. Pandit, he will be staring at the diamonds in the window for a long time to come. http://louis2j2sheehan.blogspot.com
Pancho is a long, small dog with big ears who was adopted from the Berkeley Humane Society in 2003. Everyone who meets him has her own guess at Poncho's mysterious parentage: a terrier mix, a little pit bull, or perhaps a Chihuahua-pit bull mix, otherwise known as a Chia pit?
Sixty-five dollars and a simple swab of the inside of the cheek could finally solve that riddle. A new genetic test, marketed by Maryland-based MetaMorphix, can determine a dog's mix of breeds with 90 percent accuracy. The company has processed thousands of tests since the product went on the market in February, CEO Edwin Quattlebaum said at the Biotechnology Industry Convention in Boston earlier this week.
Because many canine diseases are linked to particular breeds, the results could help owners make health decisions about their dogs. The test has also garnered interest from animal shelters: shelter employees say that being able to provide a bit of a dog's "back story" encourages people to adopt. "Owners get a kick out of knowing the heritage of their dogs," says Quattlebaum.
The test assesses genetic markers known as single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs. Each breed--the test can currently detect 38 of the most common--has a different SNP profile. The test is made possible by massive efforts to sequence the genome of different breeds of dogs, such as the dog genome project.
MetaMorphix, which also does genetic testing for the American Kennel Club, is now starting to use its canine DNA database to hunt for genetic variations linked to diseases. Its first target is chronic hip dysplasia, a degenerative joint disease most often seen in large breeds, such as German shepherds, Labrador retrievers, rottweilers, Great Danes, and golden retrievers. "Eventually, people buying dogs could use this test to ensure their dog is not predisposed to this disease," says Quattlebaum. "And breeders could use it to try to breed [that variation] out of their dogs."
Victoria Jaschob, Pancho's devoted human companion, says that she's thought about ordering the test. But for now, "we just use the generic term 'Pancho dog' to describe any small, long dog with short legs and big ears," she says. "There's a million of them out there."
We all bristle at people who put themselves ahead of the common good, whether it is by evading taxes, shirking military service, cheating on bus fares or littering. Many of us will go out of our way to shame, shun or otherwise punish them, researchers have shown. That's how we foster a community that benefits everyone, even at some cost to ourselves.
Economists analyzing ingredients of the social glue that holds us all together wonder whether that public spirit of rebuke and reward is an innate human value or a byproduct of the particular society in which we live. Until recently, however, they rarely have reached across cultural boundaries to compare how people in disparate communities actually weigh private gain against public good.
In the most sweeping global study yet of cooperation, a team of experimental economists tested university students in 15 countries to see how people contribute to joint ventures and what happens to them when they don't. The European research team discovered startling differences in how groups around the world react when punishment is handed out for antisocial behavior.
WSJ's Robert Lee Hotz speaks to Kelsey Hubbard about an important study that looked at how people responded to peer pressure in cooperative ventures across many societies.
In some countries, researchers found, almost no good turn went unpunished. "What kept popping up is this element of retaliation," said economist Benedikt Herrmann at the U.K.'s University of Nottingham, who reported the experiment this past March in Science. "It took us by surprise." http://louisjsheehan.blogspot.com
Among students in the U.S., Switzerland, China and the U.K., those identified as freeloaders most often took their punishment as a spur to contribute more generously. But in Oman, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Greece and Russia, the freeloaders more often struck back, retaliating against those who punished them, even against those who had given most to everyone's benefit. It was akin to rapping the knuckles of the helping hand.
To explore cooperation across cultures, Dr. Herrmann and his colleagues recruited 1,120 college students in 16 cities around the globe for a public-good game. The exercise is one of several devised by economists in recent years to distill the complex variables of human behavior into transactions simple enough to be studied under controlled laboratory conditions.
The volunteers played in anonymous groups of four. Each player started with 20 tokens that could be redeemed for cash after 10 rounds. Players could contribute tokens to a common account or keep them all to themselves.
After each round, the pooled funds paid a dividend shared equally by all, even those who didn't contribute. Previous research shows that a single selfish individual riding on the generosity of others can so irritate other players that contributions soon drop to nothing.
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That changes when players can identify and punish those who don't contribute (in this case, by deducting points that can quickly add up to serious money). Once such peer pressure comes into play, everyone -- including the shamed freeloader -- starts to chip in.
"Freeloaders are disliked everywhere," said study co-author Simon Gachter, who studies economic decision-making at Nottingham. "Cooperation always breaks down if people can't punish."
The students behaved the same way in all 16 cities until given the chance to punish those taking a free ride on the shared investment. Punishment was done anonymously, and it cost one token to discipline another player.
[Science Journal reading]
Studying peer pressure in 15 countries, economist Benedikt Herrmann at the UK's University of Nottingham reported on "Antisocial Punishment Across Societies"3 in Science.
The researchers also ranked the national responses against the World Values Survey4, which periodically assesses values and cultural changes in societies all over the world.
Searching for the origins of economic behavior, an international research team studied 15 primitive cultures in 12 countries and reported their findings in
"In Search of Homo Economicus: Behavioral Experiments in 15 Small-Scale Societies"5
We may be hard-wired to care about social standing, scientists at the US National Institute of Mental Health reported in "Know Your Place: Neural Processing of Social Hierarchy in Humans."6
At Japan's National Institute for Psychological Sciences, researchers reported in "Processing of Social and Monetary Rewards in the Human Striatum"7 that reputation activates the same brain areas as money.
Free-market philosopher Adam Smith, author in 1776 of An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations8 wrote first in 1759 on praise, blame, ethics and human nature in The Theory of Moral Sentiments9.
Among those punished, differences emerged immediately. Students in Seoul, Istanbul, Minsk in Belarus, Samara in Russia, Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, Athens, and Muscat in Oman were most likely to take revenge by deducting points from other players -- and to give up a token themselves to do it.
"They didn't believe they did anything wrong," said economist Herbert Gintis at New Mexico's Santa Fe Institute. And because the spiteful freeloaders had no way of knowing who had punished them, they often took out their ire on those who helped others most, suspecting they must be to blame.
Such a readiness to retaliate, researchers said, reflected relatively lower levels of trust, civic cooperation and the rule of law as measured by social scientists in the World Values Survey, which periodically assesses basic values and beliefs in more than 80 societies. In countries with democratic market economies, peer pressure goaded people to cooperate. Among authoritarian societies or those dominated more by ties of kinship, freeloaders instead lashed out at those who censured them, the researchers found.
"The question is why?" said Harvard political economist Richard Zeckhauser.
No one is sure. The freeloaders might be angry at being trumped by strangers, or be unwilling to share with people they don't know. They also might believe they are being treated unfairly.
But social appearances and the good opinion of others do regulate our behavior. In the only other major cross-cultural study of this sort, Dr. Gintis and his colleagues several years ago examined 15 primitive societies of farmers, foragers, hunters and nomads in 12 countries, not unlike those in which humanity might have first evolved. The researchers found that these people all cared as much about fairness as the economic outcome of a trade. "They care about the ethical value of what they do," said Dr. Gintis.
Independent brain-imaging teams in Japan and the U.S. have shown just how valuable approval can be, as they reported in April in Neuron. Researchers at Japan's National Institute for Psychological Sciences found that when they watched the brain respond to reputation and social status, the excited synapses looked awfully familiar: They were the same ones activated by money.
Kapustin Yar is a Russian rocket launch and development site in the Astrakhan Oblast, between Volgograd and Astrakhan in the town of Znamensk. It was established 13 May 1946 and in its beginning used technology, material, and scientific support from the defeated Germany. The first rocket was launched on October 18, 1947. It was one of eleven German A-4s (the V-2 rocket) that had been captured. Numerous test rockets for the Russian military, satellite and sounding rocket launches were also carried out at the site.
http://louis4j4sheehan4.blogspot.com
The 4th Missile Test Range "Kapustin Yar" was established by a decree of the Soviet Government "On Questions of Jet Propelled Weapons" on the 13th May 1946. The test range was created under the supervision of General-lieutenant Vasily Voznyuk (commander in chief of the test range 1946-1973) in the desert north end of the Astrakhan region.
The State R&D Test Range No 8 (GNIIP-8, "test range S") was established at Kapustin Yar in June 1951.
Five air nuclear tests of small power (10-40 kt) were performed over the site in 1957-1961 [1].
With the further growth and development, the site became a cosmodrome and served in this function since 1966 (with interruption in 1988-1998). A new town was established, Znamensk, to support the scientists working on the facilities, their families and supporting personnel. Initially this was a secret city, not to be found on map and inaccessible to outsiders.
Evidence of the importance of Kapustin Yar was obtained by Western intelligence through debriefing of returning German scientists and spy flights. The first such flight took place in 1953 using a high flying Canberra aircraft from the RAF.
Kapustin Yar is also the site of numerous Soviet-era UFO sightings and has been called "Russia's Roswell".
It's Tuesday and we're having dinner in a cavernous fish place in Washington Harbour. It's been a couple of days since Mr. Nader – again an independent candidate for president in this year's election – demanded the impeachment of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. "You must be the only man in America," I say to him, "who has called for the impeachment of Bush and Bill Clinton."
Mr. Nader laughs, his face breaking briefly into good cheer. "I'm a little bit more insistent with Bush and Cheney. I think Clinton was terrible. http://louis-j-sheehan.biz
But there's no comparison between him and the more clinical high crimes and misdemeanors of Bush."
Would Al Gore have made a better president than George Bush? "Yes," says Mr. Nader, looking, for all the world, as if I'd asked him the silliest question. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
"Bush is the worst president we've ever had – in terms of damage to the nation, and incapacity."
So does he regret that his own run for president in 2000, as the Green Party's candidate, might – as Democratic demonology would have it – have cost Al Gore the White House? "No . . . If the premise is that we have an equal right to run for election, no one's a 'spoiler' – unless we're all 'spoilers' of one another. So when they say, 'You cost Gore the election,' I say, 'I thought Bush took more votes from Gore.'"
This subject gets Mr. Nader quite indignant. "The smartest people," he continues – leaving a forkful of halibut with tequila-lime sauce unattended – "people like Larry Tribe, descend to a subelementary level of analysis when it comes to the results, and the tallies. If I ask them, 'Do you think Gore won the 2000 elections?' and they say 'Yes,' I say 'Well, who took it away from him? Was it Katherine Harris and Jeb Bush and the five Republican politicians on the U.S. Supreme Court? Well then, why don't you go after them? Why are you picking on the Green Party?'"
Here, Mr. Nader observes tartly that if Mr. Gore had carried his own state, Tennessee, and if "a quarter of a million Democrats hadn't voted for Bush in Florida," his Green Party run wouldn't have figured so prominently in the "Democrat Party's" arithmetic of betrayal. (Mr. Nader and I spoke for over two hours, and not once did he say "Democratic Party." Many Democrats would regard his usage, more common among Republicans, as a political slur.) http://louis2j2sheehan2esquire2.blogspot.com
"The Democrats," he continues, "hadn't been challenged from my side of the political spectrum since Henry Wallace," FDR's vice-president, who ran for president in 1948 as the nominee of the Progressive Party. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
"They're not used to third-party challenges, while the Republicans are challenged by the Libertarians all the time. So they still scapegoat the Green Party, instead of looking in the mirror and asking, 'Why didn't we landslide this bumbling governor from Texas?' And that's what they've been doing for eight years!
"Some of them even tried to ascribe Kerry's loss in 2004 to me, and I say, 'Wait a minute, Kerry lost by three million votes' . . . And he lost Ohio without my help, because the Democrats sued us: they got us off the ballot in Ohio, as they did in other states."
Mr. Nader, never lost for a fact or figure, points out that the "Democrat National Committee filed 24 lawsuits in 18 states in 12 weeks in '04 to get us off the ballot." http://Louis-J-sheehan.info
It's halfway through our bottle of Cabernet that the subject of Sen. Obama comes up. I ask Mr. Nader: Why run against him when he's carrying a progressive reform banner into the campaign? "He isn't," is the swift riposte.
"I think the central issue in politics in this country is the domination of corporations over our government, and over our elections, and over so many things where commercial values used to be verboten . . . I mean, they're commercializing childhood, they're commercializing universities. What's happened in the last 25 years is an overwhelming swarm of commercial supremacy, and he, Obama, has bought into that."
I point out here that Mr. Obama has opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement, and said that he wants it renegotiated; that he's chastised the Big Three in Detroit for opposing higher CAFE standards; and that he emphasizes at every opportunity that he takes no money from lobbyists. What does Mr. Nader think of that?
"You see, that's all permissible populist rhetoric that the corporations understand and wink at. Look at who gets the corporate money. Six out of seven industries giving money, through PACs and individual executives, etc., are giving more money to the Democrats than to the Republicans. I mean, John McCain's having trouble raising money, even now.
"Obama's taking large money from the securities industry, the health insurance industry . . . I've gotten used to this ritual where the companies give Democrats this leeway, and say, 'Well, Obama's gotta say that stuff, but he'll come around. There's no way he'll touch Nafta or touch the WTO.'"
So is it all just a charade? "Yes," says Mr. Nader, implacably, "a charade. His health-insurance plan lets the health insurance companies continue their redundant, wasteful, often corrupt – in terms of billing fraud – ways, ripping off Medicare. My vice-presidential candidate, Matt Gonzalez, has written a 3,000-word tract on Obama that's on our Web site, VoteNader.org1. You should read it."
I persist with Mr. Obama, pointing out that a lot of Democrats would find it hard to accept Mr. Nader's characterization of him as an agent of corporate America. After all, many non-Democrats find Mr. Obama disconcertingly left wing.
"He's not an agent," Mr. Nader grants, "but he moves in an environment that's conditioned by corporate power. If he wins, you'll see his appointments in the Defense department, the Treasury and so on, they'll be pretty much what the lobbies and PACs want."
Mr. Nader is clear that he prefers Mr. Obama to Hillary Clinton. "With her, we'll just get what Bill gave us. I think she's like Bill Clinton. With Obama, there's the possibility of some fresh start, just like Kennedy did the Peace Corps. You see, when Obama got out of Harvard Law School, he went to work for a short period with a group I started in New York, the New York Public Interest Research Group. Then he went and did neighborhood work in Chicago, so it's not like he's coming off some corporate mountain.
"But he's made up his mind to be a very conciliatory, concessionary, adaptive politician to the reality of corporate power. And people like him are told, 'Look, if you don't adhere to certain parameters and expectations, you're going to have a hard time winning any nomination or election.' And Obama's made his peace with that."
Proof of this, in Mr. Nader's view, is Mr. Obama's position on Israel. "So many people in Chicago regaled him because he was for Palestinian rights, a two-state solution. Now, he won't say many things on behalf of the Palestinians. After a while, you get an idea of his political character, his political personality. He's not a transforming leader. He was not a transforming senator. He was not a challenging senator, the way [the late Paul] Wellstone was."
What is it exactly that Mr. Nader would like Barack Obama – and the Democratic Party – to do in order to be kosher in his eyes? "Where do I start?" he asks with a twinkle. "Labor reform, repealing Taft-Hartley. You see, the labor unions line up in favor of the Democrat Party and they get nothing. For heaven's sake, they went 'x' number of years without even adjusting the minimum wage to inflation. I've never seen a less demanding organized labor movement, but what have the Democrats given them?"
Mr. Nader wants an end to "lip service" on Nafta and the WTO, and "better protection of individual investors' rights, rights that corporate capitalism violates repeatedly." On health care, "we believe in single-payer health, full Medicare for all." He is also "opposed unalterably to nuclear power. We think the country should go solar, in all of its different manifestations, including passive solar architecture." The Democrats are a world away from that position. http://louis4j4sheehan.blogspot.com
There's more: Mr. Nader wants to slash "the bloated, wasteful military budget. This thing is so out of control that it's unauditable. But Obama wants to increase the military budget, which is currently distorted away from soldiers and towards these giant weapons systems, and keeping troops in Korea and Japan." And as for the tax system, Mr. Nader wishes that the Democrats would adhere to his philosophy, which is that "we should first tax things that we like the least, or dislike the most, as a society, before we tax human labor, and necessities . . . through a sales tax.
"So we should tax securities speculation first, before we tax labor. If you go to a store and buy $1,000 worth of products, you pay a sales tax. You buy $1 million worth of derivatives, you pay no sales tax!"
Has he had trouble getting his message out to the American voter? Here, Mr. Nader shows a mild – and understandable – flash of anger over being shut out of the televised presidential debates.
He is also critical of the media. "Since I announced my run, I can't get on Charlie Rose. Or Diane Rehm or Terry Gross [of NPR]. I haven't been on Jim Lehrer yet. I got on Wolf Blitzer twice, on CNN. Fox News calls me more than anybody. They have the same attitude, of course – 'Here comes the spoiler!' But how can you spoil something that's spoiled already?
"I don't complain much publicly. I've been told by a lot of the television bookers around the country, 'Ralph, they don't like you.' So the door is shut. But I say to myself, 'Should we close down and go to Monterey and watch the whales?' No. Better to fight when you have a small chance, than to fight later when you have no chance at all."
Those stirring last words are from Winston Churchill, and Mr. Nader quotes the old conservative with relish – even though his favorite British politician, he tells me, is Aneurin Bevan, the man who gave Britain its National Health Service after World War II. Bevan and Churchill were from different planets, and we chuckle at the incongruity of Mr. Nader's rhetorical inspiration. Then we rise slowly from our table and leave – I for my hotel room in Georgetown, and he for the battle that never ends.
Stem Cells found in most, if not all, multi-cellular organisms. They are characterized by the ability to renew themselves through mitotic cell division and differentiating into a diverse range of specialized cell types. Research in the stem cell field grew out of findings by Canadian scientists Ernest A. McCulloch and James E. Till in the 1960s. The two broad types of mammalian stem cells are: embryonic stem cells that are found in blastocysts, and adult stem cells that are found in adult tissues. In a developing embryo, stem cells can differentiate into all of the specialized embryonic tissues. In adult organisms, stem cells and progenitor cells act as a repair system for the body, replenishing specialized cells, but also maintain the normal turnover of regenerative organs, such as blood, skin or intestinal tissues.
As stem cells can be grown and transformed into specialized cells with characteristics consistent with cells of various tissues such as muscles or nerves through cell culture, their use in medical therapies has been proposed. Louis Sheehan
In particular, embryonic cell lines, autologous embryonic stem cells generated through therapeutic cloning, and highly plastic adult stem cells from the umbilical cord blood or bone marrow are touted as promising candidates
The classical definition of a stem cell requires that it possess two properties:
* Self-renewal - the ability to go through numerous cycles of cell division while maintaining the undifferentiated state.
* Potency - the capacity to differentiate into specialized cell types. In the strictest sense, this requires stem cells to be either totipotent or pluripotent - to be able to give rise to any mature cell type, although multipotent or unipotent progenitor cells are sometimes referred to as stem cells. http://louis_j_sheehan_esquire.blogs.friendster.com/my_blog
Pluripotent, embryonic stem cells originate as inner mass cells within a blastocyst. The stem cells can become any tissue in the body, excluding a placenta. Only the morula's cells are totipotent, able to become all tissues and a placenta.
Pluripotent, embryonic stem cells originate as inner mass cells within a blastocyst. The stem cells can become any tissue in the body, excluding a placenta. Only the morula's cells are totipotent, able to become all tissues and a placenta.
Potency specifies the differentiation potential (the potential to differentiate into different cell types) of the stem cell.
* Totipotent stem cells are produced from the fusion of an egg and sperm cell. Cells produced by the first few divisions of the fertilized egg are also totipotent. These cells can differentiate into embryonic and extraembryonic cell types.
* Pluripotent stem cells are the descendants of totipotent cells and can differentiate into cells derived from any of the three germ layers.
* Multipotent stem cells can produce only cells of a closely related family of cells (e.g. hematopoietic stem cells differentiate into red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets, etc.).
* Unipotent cells can produce only one cell type, but have the property of self-renewal which distinguishes them from non-stem cells (e.g. muscle stem cells).
The practical definition of a stem cell is the functional definition - the ability to regenerate tissue over a lifetime. For example, the gold standard test for a bone marrow or hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) is the ability to transplant one cell and save an individual without HSCs. In this case, a stem cell must be able to produce new blood cells and immune cells over a long term, demonstrating potency. http://Louis2J2Sheehan2Esquire.US
It should also be possible to isolate stem cells from the transplanted individual, which can themselves be transplanted into another individual without HSCs, demonstrating that the stem cell was able to self-renew.
Properties of stem cells can be illustrated in vitro, using methods such as clonogenic assays, where single cells are characterized by their ability to differentiate and self-renew.[4][5] As well, stem cells can be isolated based on a distinctive set of cell surface markers. However, in vitro culture conditions can alter the behavior of cells, making it unclear whether the cells will behave in a similar manner in vivo. Considerable debate exists whether some proposed adult cell populations are truly stem cells.
(ES cell lines) are cultures of cells derived from the epiblast tissue of the inner cell mass (ICM) of a blastocyst or earlier morula stage embryos. A blastocyst is an early stage embryo—approximately four to five days old in humans and consisting of 50–150 cells. ES cells are pluripotent and give rise during development to all derivatives of the three primary germ layers: ectoderm, endoderm and mesoderm. In other words, they can develop into each of the more than 200 cell types of the adult body when given sufficient and necessary stimulation for a specific cell type. They do not contribute to the extra-embryonic membranes or the placenta.
Nearly all research to date has taken place using mouse embryonic stem cells (mES) or human embryonic stem cells (hES). Both have the essential stem cell characteristics, yet they require very different environments in order to maintain an undifferentiated state. Mouse ES cells are grown on a layer of gelatin and require the presence of Leukemia Inhibitory Factor (LIF). Human ES cells are grown on a feeder layer of mouse embryonic fibroblasts (MEFs) and require the presence of basic Fibroblast Growth Factor (bFGF or FGF-2). Without optimal culture conditions or genetic manipulation, embryonic stem cells will rapidly differentiate.
A human embryonic stem cell is also defined by the presence of several transcription factors and cell surface proteins. The transcription factors Oct-4, Nanog, and SOX2 form the core regulatory network that ensures the suppression of genes that lead to differentiation and the maintenance of pluripotency. The cell surface antigens most commonly used to identify hES cells are the glycolipids SSEA3 and SSEA4 and the keratan sulfate antigens Tra-1-60 and Tra-1-81. The molecular definition of a stem cell includes many more proteins and continues to be a topic of research.
After twenty years of research, there are no approved treatments or human trials using embryonic stem cells. ES cells, being totipotent cells, require specific signals for correct differentiation - if injected directly into the body, ES cells will differentiate into many different types of cells, causing a teratoma. Differentiating ES cells into usable cells while avoiding transplant rejection are just a few of the hurdles that embryonic stem cell researchers still face. Many nations currently have moratoria on either ES cell research or the production of new ES cell lines. Because of their combined abilities of unlimited expansion and pluripotency, embryonic stem cells remain a theoretically potential source for regenerative medicine and tissue replacement after injury or disease.
To ensure self-renewal, stem cells undergo two types of cell division (see Stem cell division and differentiation diagram). Symmetric division gives rise to two identical daughter cells both endowed with stem cell properties. Asymmetric division, on the other hand, produces only one stem cell and a progenitor cell with limited self-renewal potential. Progenitors can go through several rounds of cell division before terminally differentiating into a mature cell.
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
It is possible that the molecular distinction between symmetric and asymmetric divisions lies in differential segregation of cell membrane proteins (such as receptors) between the daughter cells.
An alternative theory is that stem cells remain undifferentiated due to environmental cues in their particular niche. Stem cells differentiate when they leave that niche or no longer receive those signals. Studies in Drosophila germarium have identified the signals dpp and adherins junctions that prevent germarium stem cells from differentiating.
The signals that lead to reprogramming of cells to an embryonic-like state are also being investigated. These signal pathways include several transcription factors including the oncogene c-Myc. Initial studies indicate that transformation of mice cells with a combination of these anti-differentiation signals can reverse differentiation and may allow adult cells to become pluripotent. However, the need to transform these cells with an oncogene may prevent the use of this approach in therapy. http://www.soulcast.com/Louis_J_Sheehan_Esquire_1
Medical researchers believe that stem cell therapy has the potential to dramatically change the treatment of human disease. A number of adult stem cell therapies already exist, particularly bone marrow transplants that are used to treat leukemia.In the future, medical researchers anticipate being able to use technologies derived from stem cell research to treat a wider variety of diseases including cancer, Parkinson's disease, spinal cord injuries, and muscle damage, amongst a number of other impairments and conditions.However, there still exists a great deal of social and scientific uncertainty surrounding stem cell research, which could possibly be overcome through public debate and future research, and further education of the public.
Stem cells, however, are already used extensively in research, and some scientists do not see cell therapy as the first goal of the research, but see the investigation of stem cells as a goal worthy in itself.
There exists a widespread controversy over human embryonic stem cell research that emanates from the techniques used in the creation and usage of stem cells. Human embryonic stem cell research is controversial because, with the present state of technology, starting a stem cell line requires the destruction of a human embryo and/or therapeutic cloning. However, recently, it has been shown in principle that embryonic stem cell lines can be generated using a single-cell biopsy similar to that used in preimplantation genetic diagnosis that may allow stem cell creation without embryonic destruction. It is not the entire field of stem cell research, but the specific field of human embryonic stem cell research that is at the centre of an ethical debate.
Opponents of the research argue that embryonic stem cell technologies are a slippery slope to reproductive cloning and can fundamentally devalue human life. Those in the pro-life movement argue that a human embryo is a human life and is therefore entitled to protection.
Contrarily, supporters of embryonic stem cell research argue that such research should be pursued because the resultant treatments could have significant medical potential. It is also noted that excess embryos created for in vitro fertilisation could be donated with consent and used for the research.
The ensuing debate has prompted authorities around the world to seek regulatory frameworks and highlighted the fact that stem cell research represents a social and ethical challenge.
* and Gopal Das present scientific evidence of adult neurogenesis, ongoing stem cell activity in the brain; their reports contradict Cajal's "no new neurons" dogma and are largely ignored.
* 1963 - McCulloch and Till illustrate the presence of self-renewing cells in mouse bone marrow. http://Louis-J-sheehan.info
* 1968 - Bone marrow transplant between two siblings successfully treats SCID.
* 1978 - Haematopoietic stem cells are discovered in human cord blood.
* 1981 - Mouse embryonic stem cells are derived from the inner cell mass by scientists Martin Evans, Matthew Kaufman, and Gail R. Martin. Gail Martin is attributed for coining the term "Embryonic Stem Cell".
* 1992 - Neural stem cells are cultured in vitro as neurospheres.
* 1997 - Leukemia is shown to originate from a haematopoietic stem cell, the first direct evidence for cancer stem cells.
* 1998 - James Thomson and coworkers derive the first human embryonic stem cell line at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
* 2000s - Several reports of adult stem cell plasticity are published.
* 2001 - Scientists at Advanced Cell Technology clone first early (four- to six-cell stage) human embryos for the purpose of generating embryonic stem cells.
* 2003 - Dr. Songtao Shi of NIH discovers new source of adult stem cells in children's primary teeth.
* 2004-2005 - Korean researcher Hwang Woo-Suk claims to have created several human embryonic stem cell lines from unfertilised human oocytes. The lines were later shown to be fabricated. http://louis_j_sheehan.today.com
* 2005 - Researchers at Kingston University in England claim to have discovered a third category of stem cell, dubbed cord-blood-derived embryonic-like stem cells (CBEs), derived from umbilical cord blood. The group claims these cells are able to differentiate into more types of tissue than adult stem cells.
* August 2006 - Rat Induced pluripotent stem cells: the journal Cell publishes Kazutoshi Takahashi and Shinya Yamanaka, "Induction of Pluripotent Stem Cells from Mouse Embryonic and Adult Fibroblast Cultures by Defined Factors".
* October 2006 - Scientists in England create the first ever artificial liver cells using umbilical cord blood stem cells.
* January 2007 - Scientists at Wake Forest University led by Dr. Anthony Atala and Harvard University report discovery of a new type of stem cell in amniotic fluid This may potentially provide an alternative to embryonic stem cells for use in research and therapy.
* June 2007 - Research reported by three different groups shows that normal skin cells can be reprogrammed to an embryonic state in mice.[35] In the same month, scientist Shoukhrat Mitalipov reports the first successful creation of a primate stem cell line through somatic cell nuclear transfer.
* October 2007 - Mario Capecchi, Martin Evans, and Oliver Smithies win the 2007 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for their work on embryonic stem cells from mice using gene targeting strategies producing genetically engineered mice (known as knockout mice) for gene research.
* November 2007 - Human Induced pluripotent stem cells: Two similar papers released by their respective journals prior to formal publication: in Cell by Kazutoshi Takahashi and Shinya Yamanaka, "Induction of Pluripotent Stem Cells from Adult Human Fibroblasts by Defined Factors", and in Science by Junying Yu, et al., from the research group of James Thomson, "Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell Lines Derived from Human Somatic Cells": pluripotent stem cells generated from mature human fibroblasts. It is possible now to produce a stem cell from almost any other human cell instead of using embryos as needed previously, albeit the risk of tumorigenesis due to c-myc and retroviral gene transfer remains to be determined.
* January 2008 - Human embryonic stem cell lines were generated without destruction of the embryo.
* January 2008 - Development of human cloned blastocysts following somatic cell nuclear transfer with adult fibroblasts.
* February 2008 - Generation of Pluripotent Stem Cells from Adult Mouse Liver and Stomach: these iPS cells seem to be more similar to embryonic stem cells than the previous developed iPS cells and not tumorigenic, moreover genes that are required for iPS cells do not need to be inserted into specific sites, which encourages the development of non-viral reprogramming techniques.
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Leave him alone. He wrote a book. It is true or untrue, accurately reported or not. If not, this will no doubt be revealed. It is honestly meant and presented, or not. Look to the assertions, argue them, weigh and ponder.
That's my first thought. My second goes back to something William Safire, himself a memoirist of the Nixon years, said to me, a future memoirist of the Reagan years: "The one thing history needs more of is first-person testimony." History needs data, detail, portraits, information; it needs eyewitness. "I was there, this is what I saw." History will sift through, consider and try in its own way to produce something approximating truth.
In that sense one should always say of memoirs of those who hold or have held power: More, please.
Scott McClellan's book is the focus of such heat, the target of denunciation, because it is a big story when a press secretary breaks with a president. This is like Jody Powell turning on Jimmy Carter, or Marlin Fitzwater turning on Reagan. That is, it's pretty much unthinkable. And it's a bigger story still when such a person breaks with his administration not over many small things but one big thing, in this case its central and defining endeavor, the Iraq war. The book can be seen as a grenade lobbed over the wall. Thus the explosive response. He is a traitor, turncoat, betrayer, sellout. If he'd had any guts he would have spoken up when he was in power.
I want to quote his defenders, but he doesn't have any.
Those in the mainstream media who want to see the president unmasked, who want to see the administration revealed as something dark, do not want to be caught cheering on the unmasker.
The left, while embracing the book's central assertions, will paint him as a weasel who belatedly 'fessed up. They're big on omertà on the left. It's part of how they survive. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
The right will—already has—pummel him for disloyalty. But those damning him today would have damned him even more if he'd resigned on principle three years ago. They—and the administration—would have beaten him to a pulp, the former from rage, the latter as a lesson: This is what happens when you leave and talk.
And Americans in general have a visceral and instinctive dislike for what Drudge called a snitch. This is our tradition, and also human nature.
So Mr. McClellan defends himself in the same way he defended the administration, awkwardly. He could not speak earlier because he did not oppose earlier; he came to oppose with time and on reflection. He is trying, now, to tell the truth.
He is a man alone, "a pariah," as Matt Lauer put it.
He does not appear to have written his book to bolster his reputation. He paints himself as a loser. "I didn't stay true to myself"; he loved "the theatre of political power" and "found being part of the play exciting"; he tried to play "the Washington game" and "didn't play it very well." But soon the mea culpa becomes a you-a culpa.
He has nothing to say, really, about the world he entered, about what it was to be there. His thoughts present themselves as clichés. Working in the White House is "a wow." Seeing it lit up at night "never got old." He'll never forget where he was on 9/11. He claims he was taught to "communicate" by Karen Hughes. This is all too believable. I did learn that the word visit— "Got a moment to visit?"—is apparently Texan for "I'm about to kill you" or "Let's conspire."
The book is not quite a kiss-and-tell, smooch-and-blab or buss-and-bitch. It is not gossipy, or fun, or lively. It is lumpy, uneven and, when he attempts to share his historical insights—the Constitution, he informs us, doesn't mention the word "party"— embarrassing.
http://louis-j-sheehan.biz
And yet the purpose of the book is a serious one. Mr. McClellan attempts to reveal and expose what he believes, what he came to see as, an inherent dishonesty and hypocrisy within a hardened administration. It is a real denunciation.
He believes the invasion of Iraq was "a serious strategic blunder," that the decision to invade Iraq was "a fateful misstep" born in part of the shock of 9/11 but also of "an air of invincibility" sharpened by the surprisingly and "deceptively" quick initial military success in Afghanistan. He scores President Bush's "certitude" and "self-deceit" and asserts the decision to invade Iraq was tied to the president's lust for legacy, need for boldness, and grandiose notions as to what is possible in the Mideast. He argues that Mr. Bush did not try to change the culture of the capital, that he "chose to play the Washington game the way he found it" and turned "away from candor and honesty."
Mr. McClellan dwells on a point that all in government know, that day-to-day governance now is focused on media manipulation, with a particular eye to "political blogs, popular web sites, paid advertising, talk radio" and news media in general. In the age of the permanent campaign, government has become merely an offshoot of campaigning. All is perception and spin. This mentality can "cripple" an administration as, he says, it crippled the Clinton administration, with which he draws constant parallels. "Like the Clinton administration, we had an elaborate campaign structure within the White House that drove much of what we did."
His primary target is Karl Rove, whose role he says was "political manipulation, plain and simple." He criticizes as destructive the 50-plus-1 strategy that focused on retaining power through appeals to the base at the expense of a larger approach to the nation. He blames Mr. Rove for sundering the brief post-9/11 bipartisan entente when he went before an open Republican National Committee meeting in Austin, four months after 9/11, and said the GOP would make the war on terror the top issue to win the Senate and keep the House in the 2002 campaign. By the spring the Democratic Party and the media were slamming back with charges the administration had been warned before 9/11 of terrorist plans and done nothing. That war has continued ever since.
Mr. McClellan's portrait of Mr. Bush is weird and conflicted, though he does not seem to notice. The president is "charming" and "disarming," humorous and politically gifted. He weeps when Mr. McClellan leaves. Mr. McClellan always puts quotes on his praise. But the implication of his assertions and anecdotes is that Mr. Bush is vain, narrow, out of his depth and coldly dismissive of doubt, of criticism and of critics.
If that's what you think, say it. If it's not, don't suggest it.
When I finished the book I came out not admiring Mr. McClellan or liking him but, in terms of the larger arguments, believing him. One hopes more people who work or worked within the Bush White House will address the book's themes and interpretations. What he says may be inconvenient, and it may be painful, but that's not what matters. What matters is if it's true. Let the debate on the issues commence.
What's needed now? More memoirs, more data, more information, more testimony. More serious books, like Doug Feith's. More "this is what I saw" and "this is what is true." Feed history. http://Louis-j-sheehan-esquire.us
Da Vinci Code Decoded Box Set: Totally Decoded
by Metzger, Richard (director)
Published at $39.98. Description: "The definitive documentary exploration of Dan Brown's thrilling novel The Da Vinci Code, answers the questions everyone is asking! What exactly was Leonardo da Vinci trying to tell us in his coded paintings? Was Jesus married to Mary Magdalene? Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Who were the Knights Templar? What is the secret of the mysterious church at Rennes-le-Chateau? What is the Priory of Sion? What secret did the real life Saunire know that threatened the Church? What are the Gnostic Gospels? Did Roman emperors rewrite the New Testament to control the population?" 360 minutes + 120 minutes bonus footage.
Plenty of Blame to Go Around: Jeb Stuart's Controversial Ride to Gettysburg (Hardcover)
une 1863. The Gettysburg Campaign is in its opening hours. Harness jingles and hoofs pound as Confederate cavalryman James Ewell Brown (JEB) Stuart leads his three brigades of veteran troopers on a ride that triggers one of the Civil War's most bitter and enduring controversies. Instead of finding glory and victory-two objectives with which he was intimately familiar-Stuart reaped stinging criticism and substantial blame for one of the Confederacy's most stunning and unexpected battlefield defeats. In Plenty of Blame to Go Around: Jeb Stuart's Controversial Ride to Gettysburg, Eric J. Wittenberg and J. David Petruzzi objectively investigate the role Stuart's horsemen played in the disastrous campaign. It is the first book ever written on this important and endlessly fascinating subject.
Stuart left Virginia under acting on General Robert E. Lee's discretionary orders to advance into Maryland and Pennsylvania, where he was to screen Lt. Gen. Richard Ewell's marching infantry corps and report on enemy activity. The mission jumped off its tracks from virtually the moment it began when one unexpected event after another unfolded across Stuart's path. For days, neither Lee nor Stuart had any idea where the other was, and the enemy blocked the horseman's direct route back to the Confederate army, which was advancing nearly blind north into Pennsylvania. By the time Stuart reached Lee on the afternoon of July 2, the armies had unexpectedly collided at Gettysburg, the second day's fighting was underway, and one of the campaign's greatest controversies was born.
Did the plumed cavalier disobey Lee's orders by stripping the army of its "eyes and ears?" Was Stuart to blame for the unexpected combat the broke out at Gettysburg on July 1? Authors Wittenberg and Petruzzi, widely recognized for their study and expertise of Civil War cavalry operations, have drawn upon a massive array of primary sources, many heretofore untapped, to fully explore Stuart's ride, its consequences, and the intense debate among participants shortly after the battle, through early post-war commentators, and among modern scholars.
The result is a richly detailed study jammed with incisive tactical commentary, new perspectives on the strategic role of the Southern cavalry, and fresh insights on every horse engagement, large and small, fought during the campaign. About the authors: Eric J. Wittenberg has written widely on Civil War cavalry operations. His books include Glory Enough for All (2002), The Union Cavalry Comes of Age (2003), and The Battle of Monroe's Crossroads and the Civil War's Final Campaign (2005). He lives in Columbus, Ohio.
J. David Petruzzi is the author of several magazine articles on Eastern Theater cavalry operations, conducts tours of cavalry sites of the Gettysburg Campaign, and is the author of the popular "Buford's Boys" website at www.bufordsboys.com. Petruzzi lives in Brockway, Pennsylvania.
REVIEWS
From Civil War Times Illustrated"A fast paced, well told yarn... exhaustively researched... the definitive analysis."
"..a well detailed history, that no matter what side one might view the ride, it would be a fair objective account...well-researched book on all points clearly and cleverly argued."Midwest Book Review, March 2008. http://Louis-J-Sheehan.de
I do not like to use "definitive", "settles the question" or "finial word" when reviewing books. Some questions will never be settled, someone will always have another thing to say and in time, even Coddington's book on Gettysburg could become second best. While I firmly believe the above to be true, I do not think that this book will see a superior treatment of this question for a very very long time.
"Has anyone seen JEB Stuart?" "Where is my cavalry?" were questions that Robert E. Lee often asks in the days preceding the Battle of Gettysburg. Stuart, commander of his cavalry, was missing separated from Lee by a Union army. Arriving at Gettysburg, his command exhausted by a grueling ride around the Union Army, complete with battles and numerous skirmishes. Stuart is greeted with an icy reception from Lee. The next day, on the East cavalry Field, his command is defeated and the Union right holds. Lee chose to ignore this and other actions by his subordinates during the battle, assuming full responsibility for Gettysburg.
Louis J. Sheehan
In time, Gettysburg looms larger and larger in Civil War lore. One battle becomes the reason for the Confederacy's defeat. Right or wrong, this idea becomes the foundation of the story of the South's defeat. The story is accepted and endlessly repeated until it becomes an American tragedy. Years later, after Lee's death, questions raised in 1863 became accusations as the finger pointing begins. General Lee cannot be wrong at the most important battle of the war. The rank and file cannot be less than heroic. Somewhere, somehow a failure or a series of failures have to occur that undermine General Lee's perfect plan and cause the battle to be lost.
The authors first present a straightforward campaign history of Stuart's orders, decisions and the resulting actions. This history builds the foundation for the history of the controversy that is the second half of the book. Both sections are detailed, well written, intelligent and very readable. Systematically, the reader sees how Stuart's orders caused him to embark on what was potentially a risky idea. Movement of the Union army blocks expect routes, causing detours and delays leading to a series of battles. Wittenberg and Petruzzi can write about cavalry operations with authority and full knowledge. They impart a confidence in their work that comes with knowing the background and the ability to communicate the right level of detail. Again, Savas Beattie has taken the time and spent the money to give us the maps and illustrations needed to make this an enjoyable learning experience. The reader is able to follow the cavalry battles because of excellent well-placed maps coupled with very good writing.
The second part of the book is a history of how "Stuart lost the Battle of Gettysburg". I find the history of the history of the Civil War almost as much fun as the history of the war. This book combines both into one very readable volume, giving me two books for the price of one. The indictment and defense of JEB Stuart runs from the late 1870s on. Presenting both sides, for the most part in their own words, giving the reader a good perspective of what is happening. The 30-page conclusion is balanced, detailed and comprehensive. This book changed my thinking on the subject to "Plenty of Blame to Go Around".
To complete things, we have a driving tour. Civil War books do not get better than this! Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Gettysburg's Forgotten Cavalry Actions (Paperback)
by Eric J. Wittenberg (Author), D. Scott Hartwig (Foreword), Eric Wittenberg (Author)
"For too many years the cavalry, especially the Federal cavalry, and their contribution to the success or failure of the armies to which they belonged has been largely ignored. Over the last decade that has slowly begun to change. Amid the continuing flood of publications on the battle of Gettysburg one might wonder in disbelief that any aspects of the battle are still 'unknown', but three cavalry actions on July 3rd on the southern flank of the armies fall into that category, especially Merritt's fight on South Cavalry Field. Eric Wittenberg's Gettysburg's Forgotten Cavalry Actions rights that wrong. Whether the proper term is forgotten, unknown, or ignored, few people visit these three fields. After reading this book that will change. Armed with Eric's account, John Heiser's maps and some tantalizing 'what ifs' tomorrow's visitors to the park will discover an aspect of the great battle that few before have seen or appreciated, and finally the soldiers who fought and died there will take their rightful place alongside their more well known comrades."
Book Description
This book describes and analyzes the little-known cavalry actions during the Battle of Gettysburg - Farnsworth's Charge, South Cavalry Field, and Fairfield, Pa.
Coming into Gettysburg from the south you will find cavalry markers on the roadside, most will drive by eager to get to the "good stuff" on Cemetery Hill. Very few that stop know about or understand the nasty little action fought in the fields in front of them. On July third, the Union Cavalry face Longstreet's regulars under command of Evander Law. The Union Cavalry probed, pushed and finally attacked the AoNV's right flank in the ill-advised Farnsworth's Charge. This small book covers the almost forgotten battles in this area. Eric J. Wittenberg has given as a readable and informative book on this aspect of the Battle of Gettysburg. Coupled with "Protecting the Flank: The Battles for Brinkerhoff' Ridge and East Cavalry Field" this book gives one of the most detailed accounts of the Union Cavalry on July 2 - 3, 1863.
The Cavalry at Gettysburg: A Tactical Study of Mounted Operations during the Civil War's Pivotal Campaign, 9 June-14 July 1863 (Paperback)
by Edward G. Longacre
"For cavalry and/or Gettysburg enthusiasts, this book is a must; for other Civil War buffs, it possesses the qualities sought by students of the conflict. . . . [It] bristles with analysis, details, judgements, personality profiles, and evaluations and combat descriptions, even down to the squadron and company levels. The mounted operations of the campaign from organizational, strategic, and tactical viewpoints are examined thoroughly. The author's graphic recountings of the Virginia fights at Brandy Station, Aldie, Middleburg, and Upperville, the Pennsylvania encounters at Hanover, Hunterstown, Gettysburg, and Fairfield, and finally the retreat to Virginia, are the finest this reviewer has read under a single cover. For those who enjoy the thunder of hoofbeats, the clang of sabers, and the crack of pistols and carbines, this book has all of it. Generals and privates share the pages, as the mounted opponents parry and thrust across hundreds of miles of territory from June 9 to July 14, 1863."-Civil War Times Illustrated (Civil War Times Illustrated ) http://louis-j-sheehaN.NET
"Edward Longacre's study is a much-needed, long overdue piece of the complex mosaic which makes up the Gettysburg story. No Civil War Library should be without it. The volume adds an important perspective to one's understanding of this critical military operation."-Military Images (Military Images )
This book, authored by Edward Longacre, tells the tale of Union and Confederate cavalry during the Gettysburg campaign--from Brandy Station to Lee's retreat to Virginia. As such, it does a good job of describing this subject. Longacre notes the value of this book (Page 9): ". . .no full length book has ever considered the contributions made by the mounted forces of the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac between 9 June and 14 July 1863."
The book begins with the structure of cavalry forces on each side, noting commanders down to the regimental level. The first full chapter described the Confederate cavalry, led by the flamboyant Jeb Stuart. The second chapter, likewise, explores the Union cavalry and its leadership structure. The key players on each side are noted. Confederate leaders of note: Fitzhugh Lee, Wade Hampton, Rooney Lee (Robert E. Lee's son). On the Union side: John Buford, David Gregg, Judson Kilpatrick (whose nickname was "Kill-Cavalry," given his reckless style). Other interesting figures: George Custer, Elon Farnsworth, Irvin Gregg, Thomas Devin, "Grumble" Jones, John Imboden, and Thomas Rosser.
The action begins at Brandy Station, as the Union cavalry showed greater ability than expected and surprised Stuart's cavalry, indicating that the northern mounted arm had become a force to be reckoned with. Then, the ongoing effort by Union cavalry to penetrate Stuart's screen of the southern infantry moving north to ascertain the Confederate columns' structure and progress(to no great success).
The story of Stuart's circuitous raid to the east, losing contact with Lee's army, is well told. As is John Buford's movement to Gettysburg, and his gutsy decision to take on Confederate infantry that would arrive on July 1st to begin the sanguinary struggle. The role of the mounted forces on both sides on the second and third days is well told, with the high point perhaps being Stuart's cavalry taking on the Union forces on the third day, ultimately unsuccessful.
The book closes with the telling of the role of cavalry on both sides as Lee's army retreated to the Potomac.
In the end, this is a useful depiction of the role of cavalry on both sides during the Gettysburg campaign. On both sides, cavalry played an important role. For those curious about the cavalry's place in this campaign, this would be worth looking at.
Of all the telltale signs of aging, the scariest are those that affect the mind. I sometimes think of one word and type another, an unsettling trait for a journalist. It's usually a word that's close to the one I want, like "of" instead of "for," or "there" instead of "their."
Turns out there's a name for this -- a literal paraphasia -- and it's just one kind of "senior moment," an unscientific term for a variety of mental glitches. Most common is the temporary inability to recall a name or a number or what you were about to do.
"We think the vast majority of these are probably benign, but many cases of Alzheimer's do start out as 'senior moments,'" says P. Murali Doraiswamy, chief of Biological Psychiatry at Duke University Medical School and co-author of "The Alzheimer's Action Plan," a new book for people who are worried.
Even in normal aging, there's a general slowing of cognitive function, starting in the 50s and 60s. Neurotransmitters, the chemicals that allow nerve cells to communicate, diminish. The brain itself shrinks. White matter -- the fiber tracks connecting the front of the brain to storage areas -- changes so that information takes longer to process. It's like a computer that freezes temporarily as it tries to call up a file. http://Louis-j-sheehan-esquire.us
Names and dates that take time to retrieve "generally aren't well-archived," says Dr. Doraiswamy. You may not have paid much attention to them in the first place -- especially if you were multitasking. "Your brain has an inexhaustible amount of storage, but you can't have too many programs running at the same time, or it's hard to attend to them," says Gayatri Devi, a psychiatrist and neurologist who runs the New York Memory Center. That may explain the in-one-ear-and-out-the-other phenomenon that plagues some people.
Paying attention is critical to laying down memories, which scientists now think are distributed all around the brain. What a rose looks like, smells like, the pain of the thorn and emotions attached to it are all in different parts. When you think of a rose, "it's like your frontal cortex does a Google search through every part of your brain for an association with 'rose' that's been stored," says Dr. Doraiswamy.
"The richer you can make the experience, the more memorable it is," says Dr. Devi. "If you have a fantastic evening with the best bottle of wine in a lovely setting, you'll remember that event because the trace that's created is very wide."
Louis J. Sheehan
And every time you play it back in your mind, you are physically reinforcing it.
Repetition also helps reinforce abstract things like names or numbers, as does a mnemonic association, like noting that Jane is far from plain. Such tricks are often automatic for people who pride themselves on remembering names. But it's harder if you are sleep-deprived, anxious or under stress -- like, say, a new CEO who starts to thank the chairman from the podium and suddenly blanks on his name.
It's just as important to forget extraneous things and minimize mental clutter, says Dr. Devi. You can't dump those 1960s TV jingles from long-term memory, but you can free up your short-term memory by using calendars, lists and personal-digital assistants. "Put the burden on gadgets," says Dr. Doraiswamy.
When should you be concerned about memory lapses?
In Alzheimer's, people often retain obscure old memories, but have trouble recalling recent events and conversations. Or they may forget the names of simple things. "If a person can't find their car in a six-floor garage at JFK because they forgot to look at the number, that's probably just a senior moment," says Dr. Doraiswamy. "But if they can't remember the color or make of the car they've been driving for years," that could be more serious.
Changes in behavior or mood or memory can also signal early Alzheimer's. "If you've always been a ditz, it's not so unusual if you can't remember well," says Dr. Devi. "But if you had a remarkable memory and now you can't remember things, that's more cause for concern."
Some of these distinctions are subtle -- and there's a vast middle ground of "mild cognitive impairment" in between normal aging and Alzheimer's. If you're concerned, get evaluated by a family doctor or a memory specialist, and the sooner, the better. A host of other conditions can cause memory problems -- including depression, alcohol abuse, thyroid problems, vitamin deficiencies and hormone fluctuations -- and many are treatable. If it is Alzheimer's, getting help early may be able to reduce symptoms and slow the progress of the disease.
Health-care reform is a major election issue. Yet while Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama offer comprehensive plans, important gaps remain. Neither plan addresses the need for more doctors, a problem that Gov. Mitt Romney ran into when he introduced comprehensive medical coverage in Massachusetts in 2006. http://louis-j-sheehan.com
The other problem is the cost, an issue that earlier this year killed Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's ambitious attempt at reform in California.
No presidential candidate can afford to ignore the potential of international trade in medical services to address these issues. Consider the four modes of service transactions distinguished by the WTO's 1995 General Agreement on Trade in Services.
Mode 1 refers to "arm's length" services that are typically found online: The provider and the user of services do not have to be in physical proximity. Mode 2 relates to patients going to doctors elsewhere. Mode 3 refers mainly to creating and staffing hospitals in other countries. Mode 4 encompasses doctors and other medical personnel going to where the patients are. All modes promise varying, and substantial, cost savings. http://louis-j-sheehaN.NET
Arm's-length transactions can save a significant fraction of administrative expenditures (estimated by experts at $500 billion annually) by shifting claims processing and customer service offshore. Nearly half of such savings are already in hand. Foreign doctors providing telemedicine offer yet unrealized savings. We estimate that the savings in health-care costs could easily reach $70 billion-$75 billion.
Mode 2, where U.S. patients go to foreign medical facilities, was considered an exotic idea 15 years ago. Now this is a reality known as "medical tourism." Today, many foreign hospitals and physicians are offering world-class services at a fraction of the U.S. prices. Costly procedures with short convalescence periods, which today include heart and joint replacement surgeries, are candidates for such treatment abroad. By our estimates, 30 such procedures, costing about $220 billion in 2005, could have been "exported."
Mode 3, with hospitals established abroad, will primarily offer our doctors and hospitals considerable opportunity to earn abroad. Of course, the establishment of foreign-owned medical facilities in the U.S. is also possible, and could lead to price reductions by offering competition to the U.S. medical industry.
Mode 4 concerns doctors and other medical providers going where the patients are. It offers substantial cost savings, since the earnings of foreign doctors are typically lower than those of comparable suppliers in the U.S.
But the importation of doctors is even more critical in meeting supply needs than in providing lower costs. According to the 2005 Census, the U.S. had an estimated availability of 2.4 doctors per 1,000 population (the number was 3.3 in leading developed countries tracked by the OECD).
Comprehensive coverage of the over 45 million uninsured today will require that they can access doctors and related medical personnel. An IOU that cannot be cashed in is worthless.
Massachusetts ran into this problem: Few doctors wanted (or were able, given widespread shortages in many specialties) to treat many of the patients qualifying under the program. The solution lies in allowing imports of medical personnel tied into tending to the newly insured.
This is what the Great Society program did in the 1960s, with imports of doctors whose visas tied them, for specific periods, to serving remote, rural areas. U.S.-trained physicians practicing for a specified period in an "underserved" area were not required to return home.
It is time to expand such programs – for instance, by making physicians trained at accredited foreign institutions eligible for such entry into the U.S. But in order to do this, both Democratic candidates will first need to abandon their party's antipathy to foreign trade.
Conrad most resists our understanding. There is sense in this. His largest theme is mystery, and the heart of all his greatest work is dark. He understood this early. "Marlow was not typical," we read of the surrogate who narrates the first and most celebrated of his major works; "to him the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze." An empty center, then, surrounded by mist. I have studied Conrad for years, yet I perpetually feel, as I don't with any other writer, that I am only just scratching the surface. Perhaps my mistake, as Conrad's image suggests, is that I still believe that there is a hard or steady surface to scratch.
And what is true of the work, as E.M. Forster was the first to point out, is true of the man who made it. "Behind the smoke screen of his reticence there may be another obscurity," Forster wrote, "preceding from ... the central chasm of his tremendous genius." Another enveloping mist, another absent center. Conrad, who lived three lives--Pole, mariner, and writer--devoted the third to writing about the second and erasing the first. But he knew himself too well to believe in self-knowledge. "One's own personality," he wrote, "is only a ridiculous and aimless masquerade of something hopelessly unknown." His own memoirs are anti-confessional: evasively genial, suspiciously neat, not to be trusted. http://louis-j-sheehan.com
Conrad did not understand himself, and did not pretend to understand himself, and did not expect to be understood.
Where does all this leave the biographer? In a fog, it seems. John Stape's new life follows by a year the re-publication, in revised form, of the leading work in the field, Zdzisaw Najder's Joseph Conrad: A Life. Najder's study is the more thorough, Stape's the more readable, but both have serious shortcomings, as does the other major biography, Frederick Robert Karl's Joseph Conrad: The Three Lives, now almost thirty years old. Karl gets a lot wrong, and also promulgates all manner of Freudian improbabilities. Najder's work, the result of half a century in the archives, is unimpeachable as to facts, but its interpretations are often vitiated by a rather free use of conjecture, a feeble textbook psychologizing, and--with respect to anything touching its subject's land of origin--its author's obvious but apparently unconscious Polish nationalism.
Stape's study is written with wit and bounce, and with the kind of ironic worldliness that would seem to be a prerequisite for a biographer but which years of mole-work in research libraries are not inclined to foster. In a spirit of accessibility, he has kept his story short, but at less than three hundred pages, excluding appendices, it is too short. Stape can tell us, of Conrad's collaboration with Ford Madox Ford, that the latter was supposed to act "as a goad on Conrad to produce, a kind of superior secretary with a stick, " but that the first result, Romance, turned out to be mostly Ford "topped with a drizzle of Conrad." Somehow he cannot find the space to mention that Ford later drafted a section of Nostromo, which many critics consider Conrad's greatest achievement, to buy time during serialization while his friend lay incapacitated with depression. Conrad's brilliant, despairing letters go largely unquoted, as do the many vivid descriptions his contemporaries left of him. Of literary appreciation, the book is similarly devoid: Heart of Darkness gets one wan sentence ("An artistic development of singular importance ... "). The last years of Conrad's life go by in a welter of visits, illnesses, and royalties. The reader will finish Stape's volume wondering what happened and what all the fuss is about. Louis Sheehan
A truly satisfying biography of Conrad has yet to be written, and possibly never will be.
Louis Sheehan
Joseph Conrad was born Teodor Jozef Konrad Nacz Korzeniowski into loss, self- division, and illusion--the very circumstances that thwart us in his life and work. The partition of his native land had been completed two generations before his birth in 1857, and there may have been no child of his time who was made to feel the condition of dispossession more acutely. His father, Apollo Korzeniowski, was a writer, and a dreamer, and a leading member of the "Reds," the most radical faction of the Polish nationalist movement. The poem that he composed on the occasion of his son's christening gives both the tenor of that movement--with its self-pity, its gloom, its spiritual hysteria, and its cult of the nation as martyr--and the weight of expectation thrust upon Conrad at birth. Titled "To My Son Born in the Eighty-Fifth Year of the Muscovite Oppression," it reads in part:
Baby son, tell yourself
You are without land, without love,
Without country, without people,
While Poland--your Mother is
entombed.
This was Conrad's patrimony, and the losses were just beginning.
The Russian yoke had always been the heaviest of the three partitioning empires'. Conrad's family, living in what is now Ukraine, were Polish gentry--szlachta--amid Jews and Ruthenian peasants. When Conrad was three, his father moved to Warsaw to help organize the resistance movement that was to culminate in the pointless disaster of the Insurrection of 1863. Within five months, he had been imprisoned; within another eight, the Korzeniowskis had been exiled to the killing climate of the Russian north. Conrad's mother was dead before his eighth birthday, his father before his twelfth. http://Louis2J2Sheehan2Esquire.US
His childhood--he had no siblings-- was not only grim, it was also terribly lonely. "Konradek is of course neglected," Apollo writes during his wife's last illness. After her death, "he does not know what a contemporary playmate is."
Whatever Conrad's feelings at the time, his ultimate relationship to his father's commitments was violently ambivalent. Under Western Eyes, the last of his great works and the one whose writing broke his spirit, expresses a loathing of Russian autocracy as a kind of vampiric force, but it also expresses a skepticism about revolutionary action as inevitably devolving into fanaticism and bad faith. Indeed, political idealism is put to examination in at least four of his five major novels--remember that Kurtz, too, is an idealist--and is seen in each to be at best naive and at worst monstrous. The ideological extremism that was the waxing power in European politics during the decades of Conrad's career, and that he anatomized so acutely, had been his intimate acquaintance since childhood.
With his father's death, a new influence came to bear. Tadeusz Bobrowski, a maternal uncle, took charge of Conrad's upbringing. Bobrowski was everything his late brother-in-law was not: moderate, rational, practical. But though he tried to scrub Conrad of his Korzeniowski heritage, he could not prevent his nephew, when he was only sixteen, from indulging in the oldest of youthful fantasies by running away to sea. Of his decision to leave his family for Marseilles and the French merchant service, Conrad would later write that "I verily believe mine was the only case of a boy of my nationality and antecedents taking a, so to speak, standing jump out of his racial surroundings and associations."
Like many of Conrad's autobiographical statements, this must be taken as a poetic rather than a literal truth. As Stape points out, some three million Poles migrated westward between 1870 and 1914. But "standing jump" would have had a specific meaning in Conrad's imagistic lexicon, evoking the moral crisis he had dramatized in Lord Jim. Jim's breach of faith comes about precisely because he jumps overboard rather than standing at his post while serving as first mate on a ship that seems about to sink. A "standing jump" would appear to combine the two choices, the "standing" of fidelity and the "jump" of betrayal. But to what was Conrad faithful in jumping away from the national ties he would repeatedly be accused of having betrayed? To Polish romanticism itself. He forsook his father's dream, but not his propensity for dreaming. Indeed, his awareness of this surely colors the fondness with which Jim, that dreamer, is presented. Marlow narrates that novel, too, and in his care for the younger man we can sense an older Conrad's protective love for the boy he once was.
Conrad's sea fiction and memoirs tend to mythologize his time at sea as so many years within a band of brothers devoted to the service of the British flag. The truth was more complicated and less happy. He left the French merchant fleet after a few years, not out of any sense that England was his destiny or her service the most noble, but because the far larger British fleet, in greater need of manpower, was more open to foreigners. Even so, the displacement of sail by steam, with its smaller crews, made work increasingly difficult to find. Conrad slowly rose through the ranks, but he was often forced to settle for jobs below his level of certification. In nineteen years at sea, eight of them as a qualified "master," he captained only one ship.
The young szlachcic also bucked against the conditions of service. Time and again he would quit a berth after quarreling with his captain. His education and background would also have cut him off from the scrum of ruffians, drunks, and drifters who made up the typical crew. He is likely to have been no less lonely as a young adult than he had been as a child. On shore, he lived a life of culture and expense. Uncle Tadeusz, delivering a long series of final warnings, ceaselessly admonished his extravagance and just as unfailingly funded it. Conrad's long periods ashore--he was afloat less than eight years altogether--were not always involuntary. Throughout his career, he plotted schemes of trade or investment as an alternative to further service; he gave up his only captaincy after little more than a year. His nearly two decades in the service were a series of false starts, and he seems never to have settled to life at sea. Only in retrospect did it assume shape, meaning, and value, and come to stand in his mind for fellowship and fidelity, duty and craft, labor and courage, honor and nation. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
This last would prove especially important. A Personal Record, Conrad's memoir of his youth, ends with his first glimpse of the Red Ensign, the flag of the British merchant service, "the symbolic, protecting warm bit of bunting flung wide upon the seas, and destined for so many years to be the only roof over my head." His fiction consistently underplays the proportion of foreigners he encountered in the service, which on some voyages ranged as high as 60 percent. In The Nigger of the "Narcissus," his most personal novel, only four of the sailors are foreign; in the real Narcissus, ten were--half the ship.
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Conrad's retroactive reconstruction of an English service served his active construction of an English identity. But during his years at sea, as he wandered from Poland toward an unforeseeable destination, his identity was protean, and in many ways it always would be.
The spaces that Conrad knew--ships and waters alike--were as multinational as they were British. His crewmates were Russian, Scandinavian, and West Indian as well as Scottish and Cornish; his realms of service were the Dutch East Indies, French Antilles, and Belgian Congo, as well as India and Australia. While his French was impeccable, he spoke English, as he always would, with a thick Polish accent. His letters make use of all three languages and a variety of signatures. In fact, his name seems to have been the least stable thing about him, especially during his years at sea. A company of ghost selves floats across the life--nicknames, pseudonyms, garblings, alter egos: Konrad, Korzeniowski, Konkorzentowski, Korgemourki, Kamudi, Monsieur Georges, T. Conrad, H. Conrad, Johann Conrad, and in one instance, touchingly, Comrad. The list suggests a ship of many hands and many nations. Like Kurtz, all Europe contributed to his making.
Only when he steps ashore does the identity we recognize appear: "J. Conrad, " used for the first time to sign off after what would prove to be his final voyage. By then he had undergone his most marvelous transformation of all. Conrad's emergence as a writer has no parallel in English literature, perhaps not in any literature. George Eliot was also thirty-seven years old when she published her first work of fiction, but she was already an accomplished essayist, and she moved in the highest intellectual circles. Nabokov, too, was a foreigner, but he had known English from early childhood, and he had already mastered the art of fiction before taking up the language as a literary instrument. Conrad had both their disadvantages and many others. When he began drafting Almayer's Folly one idle autumn, five years and four voyages before it was ultimately finished, he was an unknown seaman who had written almost nothing more ambitious than a letter, and he was venturing into a language that he had not started to learn until he was twenty.
Then as now, there was no shortage of obscurities nursing dreams of literary greatness, dragging their manuscript along from year to year. Conrad just happened to turn out to be a genius. "There is more--and different things too--in me yet," he could still declare at fifty. If he was skeptical about the possibility of self-knowledge, that must have been in part because he had experienced the mysterious depths of his own powers.
Conrad would eventually make art out of large areas of his life at sea, but one experience in particular incited him to fiction. In 1887, during his longest stint in the East, he spent four months sailing in Borneo and Celebes, the remotest parts of the Malay Archipelago. It was his first close look at the East, beyond the bubble of large Europeanized ports such as Bombay, Singapore, and Sydney. His voyages took him sometimes as much as thirty miles upriver, to far-flung trading posts set down amid a bewildering complexity of local cultures and dwarfed by their backdrop of jungle and fog. There Conrad stumbled upon the sea wrack of colonial civilization: idlers and adventurers, scoundrels and cranks, lost, lonely men who dreamed of Europe and wealth and consoled themselves with native women and the bottle. http://Louis-J-sheehan.info
In them he recognized what was to become his most enduring theme: moral isolation.
Even more than imperial rapacity or spiritual extremism, more than fidelity or toil or unrest, this is the red thread that runs through Conrad's greatest work and makes it a supreme expression of his time, which is still our time. Moral isolation--the sense of being without companionship, without even comprehension, in the perilous business of choice--marks his characters' existence for the same reason that it marked his own. The worlds of Conrad's fiction are shaped by imperialism, but they are not, by and large, imperial spaces. Forster, by contrast, gives us in A Passage to India the more typical colonial situation: two communities, European and native, living in precisely defined relations of subjugation and power, the lines of allegiance and conduct carefully laid down. Conrad's attention was drawn instead to the spaces between empires, between nations, the kinds of spaces in which he had passed his nautical career--intercultural spaces, permeated by the force fields of empire but not bound within a single imperial orbit: the Malay world of his early fiction, the Inner Station of Kurtz's domain, the republic of Costaguana in Nostromo, the anarchist cell in The Secret Agent, the circle of Russian exiles in Under Western Eyes. Each is made up of individuals who have lost the orientation of a familiar community and the restraining context of a stable moral framework. (His sea fiction, stories of fellowship and fidelity within a known horizon of expectation, gives the complementary perspective, a picture of the world that has been lost.) Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
This is not Dickens's London, an earlier and more bounded kind of modern space, domestic rather than imperial, where isolation and incomprehension finally give way to recognition and communion. In Conrad's world of expatriates and isolatoes, mutual estrangement is intractable, cultural fragmentation is irreparable, and neither authorial prestidigitation nor English good fellowship can relieve them. His characters cling instead to shards of broken meaning--a name, an idea, a dream. Each is left alone with his impulses and terrors and illusions, armed only with a fragile sense of right and wrong.
By the time he got to Borneo, Conrad was already several times an exile and many years a wanderer, and what he discovered must have resonated powerfully with his own experience, for he began composing Almayer's Folly, set in an upriver trading post and concerned with the type of man he had found there, upon his next return to England. Flaubert and Maupassant, long his reading, were now his models. Timely encouragement came from a Cambridge graduate to whom he showed the growing manuscript while serving aboard a passenger ship. Conrad was a man of culture and a writer's son, and he hungered for contact with the world of letters. His turn to fiction must have felt like a kind of homecoming--perhaps the only one he ever had.
Conrad's first works, shepherded by his editor Edward Garnett, a well- connected member of the literary world, were well received but modestly remunerated. Conrad would vacillate for years about returning to sea, but for the time being he pressed on. Meanwhile, through Garnett and a few other acquaintances, he groped his way into English life, constructing that masquerade of personality that he called "Joseph Conrad." His sense of alienation can be gleaned from "Amy Foster," the brilliant story he would soon write, in which a European castaway on English shores is met with uncomprehending hostility, viewed as a kind of gibbering monster. In person, Conrad could neither hide his accent nor conjure away his foreign looks, but print made for a better place to bury secrets. With a single, slight exception, his fiction would never give the faintest hint of his Polish background. In his first two novels--the name of the second, An Outcast of the Islands, suggests its continuity of setting and theme with the first--nothing directly reveals even his nautical one.
"When speaking, writing or thinking in English," Conrad had written as early as 1885, "the word Home always means for me the hospitable shores of Great Britain." The initial qualification is telling, given that Conrad often spoke, wrote, and thought in other languages. Equally telling is the generic nature of his imagined home: Great Britain in general, but not any particular place in it. Conrad had long yearned to find himself a specific English home, and in 1896, immediately after the publication of An Outcast--whose title can be read in more than one way--he made a precipitous jump into English domesticity, marrying an undereducated working-class woman he seems scarcely to have known. He was thirty-eight, Jesse George was twenty-three.
The record of Conrad's erotic life, both before and after his marriage, is exceedingly thin. S Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Sexuality seems to have been a less potent force for him than his desire for friendship--this is perhaps another reason we find him so difficult to understand. The Conrads settled in the countryside, near Ford, Stephen Crane, H.G. Wells, and other members of his growing circle. His fiction, too, moves toward comradeship and, haltingly, toward self-revelation. The Nigger of the "Narcissus" finally takes up his nautical experiences directly, but the novel is troubled by Conrad's difficulty in locating himself in relation to the shipboard community whose unself-conscious fellowship it depicts. He seems to have been unable to figure out how he wanted to appear before his English audience. His struggles with identity had become an impediment to his art. The answer that he discovered was not to place himself-- not even his "Joseph Conrad" self--as a narrating presence within his fiction. The answer was to invent yet another persona, comfortably nautical and solidly English, with his own circle of friends and listeners. The answer was Marlow.
Marlow unlocked the door to Conrad's major work, helping him produce, in the space of two years, "Youth," the first of his great short stories; Heart of Darkness; and Lord Jim. The second of these is not his most ambitious work, and arguably not even his greatest, but it will surely be the one by which he is longest remembered. A long string of imitations and counter-versions--by Wells, V.S. Naipaul, António Lobos Antunes, James Dickey, Caryl Phillips, Francis Ford Coppola, and many others--has ratified its canonical, or we might say (adopting a term coined for The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, that other river journey) its hyper-canonical status. Like Robinson Crusoe or Kafka's "Metamorphosis," Heart of Darkness achieves its transcendent stature by approaching the condition of myth. Indeed, like Ulysses or The Waste Land, though far less laboriously than those other modernist masterworks, it compresses a whole set of myths into a single narrative substance. The voyage of exploration, the heroic quest, the epic descent, the journey into the self: all are implicit in Marlow's odyssey.
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But Heart of Darkness has itself become a foundational modern myth by registering some of the chief anxieties of its historical moment. The menace that Marlow senses emanating from the jungle is a projection of his own guilt. He knows that he is going somewhere he does not belong, and he senses that the universe will intervene to restore the violated balance. The history of literary travel, whether of wandering, discovery, or conquest, holds no precedent for this intimation; in Conrad's consciousness, imperial expansion reached the limit of its own self-revulsion. That is what has made his tale so adaptable to Dickey's Appalachia, Coppola's Vietnam, and every other scene of neo-colonial intrusion.
Marlow returns to England a post-traumatic husk, and his confessions parallel Freud's development of the psychoanalytic monologue as a path into the darkness of the human heart. But the imperial system that he had discovered in the Congo resembles nothing so much as a parody of Weberian bureaucracy, another key theoretical articulation of the time. What Marlow finds among the accountants and the managers, with their "methods" and their bookkeeping and their reports, is procedural rationality run mad. The "cannibals" who man his steamboat are paid not in anything they can eat or trade, but in lengths of utterly useless copper wire--but they are paid, Marlow acknowledges, "with a regularity worthy of a large and honorable trading company."
The double reach, toward Freud and Weber, psyche and society, is characteristic of all Conrad's major work, and places him at the pivot point between the great social chronicles of the nineteenth century and the great psychological explorations of high modernism. He achieves the depth of the one without sacrificing the breadth of the other. And the place where the two orientations meet, where Weberian corruption becomes Freudian revelation, is language. Marlow asks the chief accountant how he manages to sport such clean linen in the midst of the jungle. "I've been teaching one of the native women," the accountant explains. "It was difficult. She had a distaste for the work." The last phrase points straight toward Orwell's "Politics and the English Language," toward "collateral damage" and "extraordinary rendition" and "enhanced interrogation techniques
http://Louis-J-Sheehan.de As always, its real purpose is not deception but self-deception, the disabling of the ethical gag-reflex.
Moral isolation is only the first step in the Conradian descent. His characters are strangers to one another, especially to those with whom they are most intimate, but above all they are strangers to themselves. Because they have been stripped of an encircling community, the only ideas that matter to them are the ones they have about themselves, and they can have any ones they want. Apocalypse Now is a profound gloss on the novel, but it simplifies Conrad's scheme by making Kurtz too glibly cynical, too comfortable with his own damnation. The original Kurtz, self-divided and self-deluded, hugs his fantasies to the last. That is finally what makes him such a supreme symbol of the modern soul, holed up in his Inner Station, ensconced in the throne room of his imperial self. Moral isolation is exactly what he wants, because it leaves him free to dream the dream of himself undisturbed.
To the decay of language and the gravitational force of self-delusion Conrad opposed the powers of literary art. "The conquest of the earth," Marlow famously says, "is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much." But Conrad's mission--as quixotic a venture as running away to sea, and equally true to his father's spirit--was precisely to "look into it too much." "My task, " he wrote in the Preface to The Nigger of the "Narcissus," his declaration of artistic purpose, "is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel--it is, before all, to make you see." Conrad may be the most visual of novelists, staging his lighting effects with the precision of a master cinematographer: candlelight, lamplight, blinding sunlight; shadow, gloom, and a dozen varieties of haze. An exquisite precision both of visual perception and verbal expression marks his narrative style, a disillusioned irony casting everywhere its cold illumination. "The reaches opened before us and closed behind," Marlow says, "as if the forest had stepped leisurely across the water to bar the way for our return."
Writing like that does not come without sweat and tears; for someone composing in a foreign language, it does not come without blood. Conrad's agonies rival Flaubert's, and his letters are some of the most colorful in the annals of writerly suffering. He is "lonely as a mole, burrowing, burrowing without break or rest"; he is "like a cornered rat, facing fate with a big stick that is sure to descend and crack my skull"; he is alone with a monster "in a chasm with perpendicular sides of black basalt"; he is about to be "ingloriously devoured" by "an irresistible march of black beetles"; he is trapped in "a kind of tomb which is also hell where one must write, write, write." He was writing against time--serialization deadlines, promises to agents and editors--and in the face of illness and money trouble. He suffered constantly from gout and depression. Jesse was no healthier, undergoing an endless series of operations to repair an injured knee whose condition was not improved by her steadily increasing obesity. The couple also had two sons. ." http://louis-j-sheehan.biz
Flaubert could afford to spend six or eight years on a novel, but Conrad turned out nearly a book a year, including short stories and prose sketches, and still grew deeper in debt. He was no better at handling money than he had been as a bachelor.
Jesse was scorned by more sophisticated women--Virginia Woolf called her a "lump," Lady Ottoline Morrell a "mattress"--but she was plucky and gregarious, and she kept the household together. Yet she couldn't do anything about Conrad's writing schedule, which was always hopelessly disorganized. He was the kind of person who used one project to procrastinate on another. Heart of Darkness interrupted the writing of Lord Jim, which had itself interrupted the writing of The Rescue, a book that finally took Conrad twenty-four years to wrestle to the ground. Almost every one of his novels began life as a short story before expanding beyond all prediction. Of course, another way to see this is that Conrad was willing to let himself be taken by surprise, and was smart enough to trust his intuition and let the deadlines be damned.
There was always more--and different things, too--in him yet. After Heart of Darkness, which must have given him an entirely new idea about what he could do, about what there was to do, he returned to Lord Jim, put Marlow at its center, and amid the pressure of serialization produced a novel that, in its fragmentation of linear sequence and its orchestration of competing narrative modes, represents English fiction's great leap forward into modernist complexity. After Lord Jim and a third volume of short stories (there would be six altogether), he felt that he had exhausted his experiences as a subject of fiction. "It seemed somehow," he would later note, "that there was nothing more in the world to write about." And then he remembered a little anecdote about a man who had stolen a boatful of silver, and within two years he had built the republic of Costaguana, and the pseudo-historical epic Nostromo, brick by brick.
His imagination, proving even deeper than he had imagined, had undergone a fundamental change. He had come to understand that he no longer needed to rely on his own experience as a source of material-- another reason that biography is so helpless before his art.
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
The Secret Agent, with its caustic irony and bitter skepticism, and Under Western Eyes, with its Dostoevskian tensions, would complete the trio of great political novels. But the three were not just unforeseeably different from his earlier work. Each of them--indeed, each of his five major novels--is radically different from all the others: in subject, in structure, in tone, even in style. It was not enough for him to reinvent himself as a writer after his career at sea. Fidelity to his sense of artistic vocation required him to re-invent himself again every time he sat down to write.
If his peers were in awe, the public was less impressed. Even before Nostromo, figures such as Edward Garnett, Edmund Gosse, and George Gissing had come to regard Conrad as the finest novelist of his generation. Henry James was genuinely admiring. But Wells had warned him early that "you don't make the slightest concessions to the reading young woman who makes or mars the fortunes of authors." Conrad proudly ignored the advice. Of "The Secret Sharer," another of his great short works, he would boast that it contained "no damned tricks with girls." ." http://louis-j-sheehan.biz
But tricks with girls-- romantic interest, as scarce in his major work as it is in the record of his life--was exactly what the reading young woman, and most other book buyers, wanted. Conrad's darkness and difficulty repelled them, and he refused to play the game of advertising and publicity.
He had fewer qualms about borrowing money from his agent, James B. Pinker, who, like Garnett, became a kind of father figure, even though both men were considerably younger than he. Finally, after years of patience and mounting subsidies, and just as Conrad had finished dragging himself through Under Western Eyes, Pinker put his foot down: no more loans. The ultimatum precipitated a nervous collapse unlike anything even Conrad had ever known. He raved in Polish, held imaginary conversation with his characters, and didn't emerge from prostration for three months.
When he did, he was a broken man. With scant exception, the work Conrad produced over the last fourteen years of his life is frankly second-rate, and even worse. He simply no longer had the moral energy left for the terrible daily struggle with words. For the first time in his career, in fact, he was able to write with ease, and he started filling his novels with tricks with girls. And so, in the wryest twist of all, he became a success. He finally wrote badly enough to attract a mass audience. Meanwhile the popular press had caught up with the judgments that more perceptive critics had been advancing for years. By the time he gained fame, as is often the case, his best years were behind him, and his late mediocrities fetched many times the price of, and much louder a volume of praise than, his finest works.
Success made Conrad wealthy, but it never made him easy. He spent money almost as fast as it came in, his failing powers tormented him, his wretched health persisted to the end. His towering achievement would make Joyce envious and Nabokov nervous, but for the aspiring writer, his example braces and terrifies in equal measure. It is never too late to begin, his story tells us, but there is no limit to what you will be asked to surrender. You may reach the Inner Station, but do not expect to make it back.
New radiocarbon measurements of burned human bones excavated earlier indicate that the famous Stonehenge site in southern England served as a cemetery for at least half a century, from around 5,000 to 4,500 years ago
Stonehenge, a set of earth, timber, and stone structures perched provocatively on England’s Salisbury Plain, has long invited lively speculation about its origin and purpose.
There was nothing lively about Stonehenge in its heyday, though. Medieval big-wigs used Stonehenge as a cemetery from its inception nearly 5,000 years ago until well after its large stones were put in place 500 years later, according to the directors of a 2007 investigation of the ancient site.
The new findings challenge a longstanding assumption that the deceased were buried at Stonehenge for only a 100-year window, from 4,700 to 4,600 years ago, and before the large stones—known as sarsens—were hauled in and assembled into a circle. ." http://louis-j-sheehan.biz
But the new findings indicate that Stonehenge was a cemetery for at least 500 years, beginning around 5,000 years ago.
“Stonehenge was the biggest graveyard of the third millennium B.C.,” says archaeologist Mike Parker Pearson of the University of Sheffield in England. “From its beginning, it was used as a cemetery for a large number of people.” Parker Pearson directs the Stonehenge Riverside Archaeological Project, which began in 2003 and runs through 2010.
Parker Pearson and archaeologist Julian Thomas of the University of Manchester in England described their latest findings May 29 at a teleconference held by one of their funding organizations, the National Geographic Society in Washington, D.C.
He and his colleagues obtained the first radiocarbon age estimates for cremated human remains excavated earlier at Stonehenge. These burned bones were unearthed more than 50 years ago and have been kept at a nearby museum.
The earliest cremation, a small pile of burned bones and teeth, dates from 5,030 to 4,880 years ago, about the time when a circular ditch and a series of pits were cut into the Salisbury Plain. The human remains originally lay in one of those pits, at the edge of where the circle of sarsen stones would later be placed.
An adult’s burned bones, originally found in a ditch that encircles Stonehenge, date from 4,930 to 4,870 years ago.
Remnants of a third cremation date from 4,570 to 4,340 years ago, around the time when sarsen stones first appeared at Stonehenge.
Another 49 cremation burials were unearthed at Stonehenge during the 1920s but later interred again because archaeologists at that time saw no scientific value in the bones. An estimated 150 to 240 cremated bodies were buried at Stonehenge over a span of 500 to 600 years.
Andrew Chamberlain, a biological anthropologist at the University of Sheffield who did not participate in last year’s dig, suspects that Stonehenge functioned as a cemetery for 30 to 40 generations of a single family, perhaps a ruling dynasty. In support of that hypothesis, the head of a stone mace had been buried with one set of cremated remains, Parker Pearson says. Maces symbolized authority in British prehistory.
If Stonehenge operated as a domain of the dead, the nearby village of Durrington Walls was built around the same time to accommodate the living, Parker Pearson asserts. In 2006, his team discovered remnants of this village, grouped around a timber version of Stonehenge. Stonehenge’s builders apparently lived at the site for part of each year beginning around 4,600 years ago.
Last year the researchers excavated four houses at Durrington Walls that once sat on a hillside. An especially well-preserved structure yielded a wall made of cobb, a mixture of broken chalk and chunky plaster. It’s the oldest such wall known in England, Parker Pearson says. The other houses consisted mostly of a more primitive, wattle-and-daub material.
The well-preserved house contained a few relics of everyday life, including flint tools and sharp flint chips swept into two teacup-sized holes in the corners. ." http://louis-j-sheehan.biz
Imprints of a bed and dresser were visible on the floor, as well as two thick grooves where someone once knelt near an oval-shaped hearth.
The researchers also uncovered remains of several three-sided structures along a broad avenue that linked Durrington Walls to the River Avon.
Parker Pearson suspects that Durrington Walls consisted of at least 300 houses, making it the largest village of its time in northwestern Europe.
New radiocarbon dates of an antler pick used for digging indicate that the Stonehenge cursus, a 3-kilometer-long earthen enclosure framed by parallel ditches, was constructed about 5,500 years ago. The cursus contains no bones or artifacts. It may have been either a sanctified or a cursed spot that people avoided, Thomas suggests. Analyses indicate that this monument was reworked several times from between 5,500 and 4,000 years ago.
“This landscape had symbolic importance that was maintained over a long period of time,” Thomas says.
Louis Sheehan In 1989, when Sean Connery showed up in the third Indiana Jones movie, as Indiana’s father, Henry Jones, he was no longer a young man. But Connery, then fifty-nine, had relaxed beautifully into middle age. Playing alongside Harrison Ford’s Indy, he was crotchety yet formidable. The father was a medievalist, the son an archeologist, and both were obsessed with lost treasures of unimaginable worth and extraordinary powers, and Connery turned a rivalry with the younger actor into high-style mischief. Nineteen years later, in the fourth movie in the series, “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” Ford, now sixty-five, is still playing Indy, but he can’t be described as a man relaxing into middle age. He’s in great shape physically, but he doesn’t seem happy. He’s tense and glaring, and he speaks his lines with more emphasis than is necessary, like a drunk who wants to appear sober. In the earlier movies, Indy was often surly, but his scowl turned into a rakish smile—he dared you to think he was afraid to do something, and then, before you had quite registered the dare, he raced away and did it. Ford combined swagger with charm, and he was quick; he moved as if he had steel springs in his legs. He rolls and jumps well enough in “Crystal Skull,” but his hostile unease in some of the dialogue passages is a real killjoy. And it doesn’t help that the screenwriter, David Koepp, who also worked with Steven Spielberg—the director of all the Indiana Jones movies—on the “Jurassic Park” series and “War of the Worlds,” isn’t good at the kind of arrogant banter that was so large a part of the earlier films. In “Crystal Skull,” Indy keeps his whip mostly furled, and his words don’t snap, either.
On balance, it was a mistake for Spielberg and George Lucas (who dreamed up the characters, co-wrote the stories, and produced the series) to revive “Indiana Jones” after so many years. “Crystal Skull” isn’t bad—there are a few dazzling sequences, and a couple of good performances—but the unprecedented blend of comedy and action that made the movies so much more fun than any other adventure series is mostly gone. Stretches of this picture are flat, fussy, and dull. Trying to regain the old rapture, you have to grasp at the few scenes that work—most of them at the beginning. The first three films were set in the nineteen-thirties and drew on Art Deco styling in clothes, cars, and aircraft. Spielberg has a taste for sleek modernism, enhanced by a boy’s-illustrated-book notion of cool—everything was a little more streamlined and snazzy than life. “Crystal Skull” is set in the nineteen-fifties, and it begins, in Nevada, with the same quintessence of period style. As kids hot-rod across military sites with Elvis on the radio, Spielberg catches the era’s uneasy mixture of blandness, latent revolt, and apocalypse, the jukebox-and-pompadour youth culture side by side with nuclear fears.
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There is a brilliant, unnervingly funny sequence in which Indy, after escaping some K.G.B. agents (they were trying to steal some of his earlier finds, hoping to use their powers to control America), wanders into a small town with neat wooden houses and square, close-cropped lawns adorned with smiling mannequins of typical American families. Indy enters a house, where “The Howdy Doody Show” blares from a TV. Suddenly, he hears a loudspeaker announce a countdown and realizes that he’s about to be nuked in a test blast. In a later sequence, young Shia LaBeouf makes his entrance wearing a black leather jacket and riding a motorcycle—like Marlon Brando in “The Wild One.” He’s a snarling kid named Mutt, with a thick, frequently combed wave of hair; he calls Indy “Teach,” and he needs a father—like James Dean in “Rebel Without a Cause.” The K.G.B. agent Irina Spalko, played by Cate Blanchett, takes off from Lotte Lenya’s slit-eyed Commie menace in “From Russia with Love.” ." http://louis-j-sheehan.biz
Blanchett wears a full-body flight suit in Soviet gray—drabness turned into fashion by her trim figure—and a rapier hangs from her waist. She enunciates like crazy in Russian-accented English and tilts her cheekbones toward the camera. As is often the case with this actress, she’s the best thing in the picture.
One tries hard not to be distracted from any available pleasure by the plot—thickly woven gibberish about the lost Amazonian city of Akator (formerly known as El Dorado), a crystal skull that has been taken from a temple, and a brain-fried archeologist nicknamed Ox (a quavering John Hurt, who is no ox). Sure enough, after a while the movie settles happily into one of those long chases which Spielberg does better than anyone else. The good guys hurtle down a jungle road in an open truck, while Blanchett and her henchmen follow in another truck on a parallel road. The two sides shoot at each other, various people jump, or are flung back and forth, like volleyballs, between the vehicles, and LaBeouf, after a sword fight and a karate match with Blanchett, winds up straddling the trucks and receiving many blows to the crotch from passing branches, before grabbing onto a vine and swinging his way through the jungle. The sequence ends with Indy and friends going over a cliff in their truck. As they fall, they hit a tree sticking out from the cliff wall, which bends slowly downward, like a giant sapling, and deposits them gently in a river below, where the truck turns into a pontoon boat. In a sequence like that, with wild improbabilities linked by speed and rhythm, Spielberg re-creates the spirit of Buster Keaton’s most elaborately synchronized gags, but on a much grander scale. (The Spielberg chase has been the subject of an hommage on TV’s “Family Guy,” in which Peter Griffin fights a giant chicken on many moving vehicles.)
The first Indiana Jones movie, “Raiders of the Lost Ark” (1981), had a romping confidence that was electrifying. It was not just an action-adventure movie; it was a spoof of an action-adventure movie, an exuberant parody of the kind of schlock shown at weekend matinées in the fifties—movies about cursed tombs and strange rites and “natives” chanting mumbo-jumbo in studio jungles, or waving swords amid the bazaars of some back-lot Middle East. The stolid hero would gently approach the “love interest,” a scientist’s daughter. In “Raiders,” Karen Allen was the love interest, and, flirting and scrapping with Ford, she had a huge smile and a directly sexual way about her that smashed old cautions. The pattern was set with that film and it varied little in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” (1984) and “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” (1989). At the center of the movies was a search for a buried sacred object (an ark, a stone, a grail) from the ancient world. To prevent the villains from getting hold of it (Nazis in crisp uniforms appeared in two of the pictures; a wild-eyed, blood-sacrificial Thuggee cult in the third), Indy set off from his quiet classroom for some exotic, sun-drenched place, where he would rout thirty excitable men in turbans by using just his fists, a whip, and a revolver. A hard-fighting woman joined his quest, only to prove more difficult to handle than the bad guys. To reach the tomb of the sanctified object, he entered filthy pits and mucky tunnels lined with snakes, tarantulas, scorpions, and rats. He had to be spiritually pure, as well as physically adroit, to get past the swords, spikes, and moving walls that booby-trapped the entrance to the inner chamber. Yet Indy never wanted the sacred object for himself (the relics the K.G.B. were after had been laid away in a warehouse); he usually returned it to its rightful owner or just left it in place. The search was everything; renunciation of the spoils was his purity. ." http://louis-j-sheehan.biz
As he left the chamber, it collapsed around him, but he escaped.
The movies managed to create a formula and add new surprises at the same time. Working before digital technology eliminated gravity, Spielberg kept his characters on the ground, where he was forced to be inventive. In “Raiders,” there was an eccentrically staged, infinitely dangerous fight between Indy and a bare-chested bruiser. As the wings and moving propellers of a partly unmoored Nazi warplane passed in a circle over their heads, the two men swung and ducked in alternating rhythm. There’s nothing that wonderful in “Crystal Skull”—fistfights with the K.G.B. henchmen go on forever, blow after blow. And, despite the greater flexibility of digital, Spielberg isn’t able to create the awed anticipation and tensions of the earlier films: the entrance-to-the-tomb scenes are pedestrian and unscary. Karen Allen turns up again, but her reunion with Ford is a sexless dud—a disappointment for older fans and probably a puzzler for people who have never seen the earlier movies. Blanchett should be the sexual aggressor here. You expect her to make a pass at LaBeouf (a trial that would test any young man), but it never happens. Reckless daring is what’s missing from “Crystal Skull.” The movie leaves a faint aura of depression, because you don’t want to think of daring as the exclusive property of youth. There must be a way for middle-aged men to take chances and leap over chasms, but repeating themselves with less conviction isn’t it.
The nonprofit Consumers Union is launching a new hospital-ratings service, adding to the growing competition to provide online consumer information about health care.
The effort by the publisher of the popular Consumer Reports magazine is a gamble that the credibility of the magazine's name and its no-advertising stance, identified with widely used ratings for cars and other products, can translate into the tricky field of health care, where doctors and other providers have objected to some evaluations proposed by insurers. The field is increasingly crowded, with an array of players trying to build definitive consumer-health information sources.
Consumers Union already offers assessments of health-insurance plans, drugs and some medical treatments. Other areas the nonprofit is considering include physician groups and elder care. The new hospital ratings, which are expected to be supplemented with further information later, are the first step in a broader effort to expand the nonprofit's health-care offerings.
The Consumer Reports online hospital service will include around 3,000 facilities. Consumers will be able to see a graph showing how intensely each hospital tends to treat patients, on a scale from zero for the most conservative to 100 for the most aggressive. Intensity of care is based on time spent in the hospital and the number of doctor visits. The index reflects the hospital's handling of nine serious conditions, including cancer and heart failure, when it treats patients in the last two years of life.
The new Consumer Reports online offering will also include a dollar figure that reflects an average out-of-pocket cost for doctor visits during the last two years of life for the nine conditions, though that doesn't match up to the charge for any particular service.
"Consumers need to know there are major differences in care," said John Santa, the director of the new Consumer Reports Health Ratings Center. ." http://louis-j-sheehan.biz
He said the nonprofit is looking at outcomes measures that could be added to the site.
The index is based on work from the Dartmouth Atlas Project, a research effort developed by researchers at Dartmouth College that uses data from the federal Medicare program. The Dartmouth research has shown that more intense care doesn't necessarily correlate with better results.
"On average, life expectancy with the high-intensity hospitals is not better," said Elliott Fisher, a Dartmouth professor who oversees the Atlas Project.
The question is whether consumers will care about the intensity of care, without some sense of whether it leads to better patient results at that particular hospital or not. "What would a consumer do with that information?" said Hindy Shaman, a director at PricewaterhouseCoopers in the health-industries practice. Consumers primarily want to know what they will pay, as well as health outcomes, safety and complication rates, she says.
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Other online hospital-information sites offer different approaches. The federal Hospital Compare site, for instance, includes information about whether hospitals adhere to recommended procedures, as well as some outcomes information and consumer-survey feedback. The Leapfrog Group, a not-for-profit consortium of big health-care buyers such as General Motors Corp., looks at practice measures, based on its own surveys.
The Battle of Stalingrad is a commonly used name in English sources for several large operations by Germany and its allies and Soviet forces conducted with the purpose of possession of the city of Stalingrad, which took place between 17 July 1942 and February 2, 1943, during the Second World War[12]. Stalingrad was known as Tsaritsyn until 1925 and has been known as Volgograd since 1961.
The results of these operations are often cited as one of the turning points of the war in the European Theater. Stalingrad was the bloodiest battle in human history, with combined casualties estimated to be above 1.5 million. The battle was marked by brutality and disregard for military and civilian casualties by both sides. The German offensive to take Stalingrad, the battle inside the city, and the Soviet counter-offensive which eventually trapped and destroyed the 6th Army and other Axis forces around the city was the second large-scale defeat of the Second World War. In Soviet and Russian historiography the struggle included the following campaigns, strategic and operational level operations:
On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany launched Operation Barbarossa (Unternehmen Barbarossa). The armed forces of Germany and its allies invaded the Soviet Union, quickly advancing deep into Soviet territory. During December, having suffered multiple defeats during the summer and autumn, Soviet forces counter-attacked during the Battle of Moscow and successfully drove the German Army (Wehrmacht Heer) from the environs of Moscow.
By spring 1942, the Germans had stabilized their front and were confident they could master the Red Army when winter weather no longer impeded their mobility. There was some substance to this belief: while Army Group Centre (Heeresgruppe Mitte) had suffered heavy punishment, 65 percent of its infantry had not been engaged during the winter fighting, and had been rested and reequipped.[13] Part of the German military philosophy was to attack where least expected so that rapid gains could be made. An attack on Moscow was seen as too predictable by some, most notably German dictator Adolf Hitler. Along with this, the German High Command (Oberkommando des Heeres or OKH) knew that time was running out for them, as the United States had entered the war following Germany's declaration of war in support of its Japanese ally. Hitler wanted to end the fighting on the Eastern Front, or at least minimize it, before the Americans had a chance to get deeply involved in the war in Europe[14].
The capture of Stalingrad was important to Hitler for two primary reasons. Firstly, it was a major industrial city on the Volga River — a vital transport route between the Caspian Sea and Northern Russia. Secondly, its capture would secure the left flank of the German armies as they advanced into the oil-rich Caucasus region — with a goal of cutting off fuel to Stalin's war machine. The fact that the city bore the name of Hitler’s nemesis, Joseph Stalin, would make its capture an ideological and propaganda coup. Stalin realized this and ordered anyone that was strong enough to hold a rifle be sent out to war.[15] Both Stalin and Hitler therefore had an ideological and propagandic interest in respectively defending or taking the city which bore Stalin's name, in honor of Stalin's defense of the city during the Russian Civil War, but the fact remains that Stalin was under tremendous constraints of time and resources. The Red Army, at this stage of the war, was less capable of highly mobile operations than the German Army. However, the prospect of combat inside a large urban area, which would be dominated by short-range firearms rather than armored and mechanized tactics, minimized the Red Army’s disadvantages against the Germans.
Army Group South was selected for a sprint forward through the southern Russian steppes into the Caucasus to capture the vital Soviet oil fields there. Instead of focusing his attention on the Soviet Capital of Moscow as his general staff advised, Hitler continued to send forces and supplies to the eastern Ukraine. The planned summer offensive was code-named Fall Blau (trans.: “Case Blue”). It was to include the German Sixth Army, Seventeenth Army, Fourth Panzer Army and First Panzer Army. Army Group South had overrun the Ukrainian SSR in 1941. Poised in the Eastern Ukraine, it was to spearhead the offensive. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Hitler intervened, however, ordering the Army Group to be split in two. Army Group South (A), under the command of Wilhelm List, was to continue advancing south towards the Caucasus as planned with the Seventeenth Army and First Panzer Army. Army Group South (B), including Friedrich Paulus’s Sixth Army and Hermann Hoth's Fourth Panzer Army, was to move east towards the Volga and the city of Stalingrad. Army Group B was commanded initially by Field Marshal Fedor von Bock and later by General Maximilian von Weichs.
The start of Operation Blau had been planned for late May 1942. However, a number of German and Romanian units that were involved in Blau were then in the process of besieging Sevastopol on the Crimean Peninsula. Delays in ending the siege pushed back the start date for Blau several times, and the city did not fall until the end of June. A smaller action was taken in the meantime, pinching off a Soviet salient in the Second Battle of Kharkov, which resulted in the pocketing of a large Soviet force on 22 May.
Blau finally opened as Army Group South began its attack into southern Russia on June 28, 1942. The German offensive started well. Soviet forces offered little resistance in the vast empty steppes and started streaming eastward in disarray. Several attempts to re-establish a defensive line failed when German units outflanked them. Two major pockets were formed and destroyed: the first northeast of Kharkov on July 2 and a second, around Millerovo, Rostov Oblast, a week later.
Meanwhile, the Hungarian Second Army and the German 4th Panzer Army had launched an assault on Voronezh, capturing the city on the 5th of July.
Operation Blau: German advances from 7 May 1942 to 18 November 1942 to 7 July 1942 to 22 July 1942 to 1 August 1942 to 18 November 1942
Operation Blau: German advances from 7 May 1942 to 18 November 1942 to 7 July 1942 to 22 July 1942 to 1 August 1942 to 18 November 1942
The initial advance of the Sixth Army was so successful that Hitler intervened and ordered the Fourth Panzer Army to join Army Group South (A) to the south. A massive traffic jam resulted when the Fourth Panzer and the Sixth both required the few roads in the area. Both armies were stopped dead while they attempted to clear the resulting mess of thousands of vehicles. The delay was long, and it is thought that it cost the advance at least one week. With the advance now slowed, Hitler changed his mind and re-assigned the Fourth Panzer Army back to the attack on Stalingrad.
By the end of July, the Germans had pushed the Soviets across the Don River. At this point, the Germans began using the armies of their Italian, Hungarian, and Romanian allies to guard their left (northern) flank. The German Sixth Army was only a few dozen kilometers from Stalingrad, and Fourth Panzer Army, now to their south, turned northwards to help take the city. To the south, Army Group A was pushing far into the Caucasus, but their advance slowed as supply lines grew overextended. The two German army groups were not positioned to support one another due to the great distances involved.
After German intentions became clear in July, Stalin appointed Marshall Andrei Yeremenko as commander of the Southeastern Front on August 1, 1942. Yeremenko and Commissar Nikita Krushchev were tasked with planning the defense of Stalingrad [16] . The eastern border of Stalingrad was the wide Volga River, and over the river additional Soviet units were deployed. This combination of units became the newly formed 62nd Army, which Yeremenko placed under the command of Lt. Gen. Vasiliy Chuikov on September 11, 1942. The 62nd Army's mission was to defend Stalingrad at all costs.
Before the Wehrmacht reached the city itself, the Luftwaffe had rendered the Volga River, vital for bringing supplies into the city, virtually unusable to Soviet shipping. Between 25 July and 31 July, 32 Soviet ships were sunk with another nine crippled[17]. The battle began with the heavy bombing of the city by the Generaloberst von Richthofen's Luftflotte 4, which in the summer and autumn of 1942 was the mightiest single air command in the world. Some 1,000 tons were dropped[18]. The city was quickly turned to rubble, although some factories survived and continued production whilst workers joined in the fighting. The Croatian 369th Reinforced Infantry Regiment was the only non-German unit [19] selected by the Wehrmacht to enter Stalingrad city during assault operations.
Soviet factory workers heading to the front lines.
Soviet factory workers heading to the front lines.
Stalin prevented civilians from leaving the city on the premise that their presence would encourage greater resistance from the city's defenders[20]. Civilians, including women and children, were put to work building trenchworks and protective fortifications. A massive German air bombardment on August 23 caused a firestorm, killing thousands and turning Stalingrad into a vast landscape of rubble and burnt ruins[21]. Ninety percent of the living space in the Voroshilovskiy area was destroyed[22][23].
The Soviet Air Force, the Voenno-Vozdushnye Sily (VVS), was swept aside by the Luftwaffe. The VVS unit in the immediate area lost 201 aircraft from 23-31 August, and despite meager reinforcements of some 100 aircraft in August, it was with just 192 servicable aircraft which included just 57 fighters[24]. The Soviets poured aerial reinforcements into the Stalingrad area in late September but continued to suffer appalling losses. The Luftwaffe had complete control of the skies.
The burden of the initial defense of the city fell on the 1077th Anti-Aircraft (AA) Regiment, a unit made up mainly of young women volunteers who had no training on engaging ground targets. Despite this, and with no support available from other Soviet units, the AA gunners stayed at their posts and took on the advancing Panzers. The German 16th Panzer Division reportedly had to fight the 1077th’s gunners "shot for shot" until all 37 AA batteries were destroyed or overrun.[21][25] In the beginning, the Soviets relied extensively on "Workers' militias" composed of workers not directly involved in war production. For a short time, tanks continued to be produced and then manned by volunteer crews of factory workers. They were driven directly from the factory floor to the front line, often without paint or even gunsights. http://Louis-J-Sheehan.de
By the end of August, Army Group South (B) had finally reached the Volga, north of Stalingrad. Another advance to the river south of the city followed. By September 1, the Soviets could only reinforce and supply their forces in Stalingrad by perilous crossings of the Volga, under constant bombardment by German artillery and aircraft.
On September 5, the Soviet 24th and 66th Armies organised a massive attack against XIV Panzerkorps. The Luftwaffe helped the German forces repulse the offensive by subjecting Soviet artillery positions and defensive lines to heavy attack. The Soviets were forced to withdraw at midday after only a few hours. Of the 120 tanks the Soviets committed, 30 were lost to air attack[26]. Soviet operations were constantly hampered by the Luftwaffe. On 18 September, the Soviet 1st Guards and 24th Army launched an offensive against VIII Armeekorps at Kotluban. VIII Fliegerkorps dispatched wave after wave of Stuka dive-bombers to prevent a breakthrough. The offensive was repulsed, and the Stukas claimed 41 of the 106 Soviet tanks knocked out that morning while escorting Bf 109s destroyed 77 Soviet aircraft, shattering their remaining strength[27]. Amid the debris of the wrecked city, the Soviet 62nd and 64th Armies, which included the Soviet 13th Guards Rifle Division, anchored their defense lines with strongpoints in houses and factories. Fighting was fierce and desperate. The life expectancy of a newly-arrived Soviet private in the city dropped to less than 24 hours, while that of a Soviet officer was about 3 days. Stalin's Order No. 227 of July 27, 1942, decreed that all commanders who order unauthorized retreat should be subjects of a military tribunal. “Not a step back!” was the slogan. The Germans pushing forward into Stalingrad suffered heavy casualties.
German military doctrine was based on the principle of combined-arms teams and close cooperation by tanks, infantry, engineers, artillery, and ground-attack aircraft. To counter this, Soviet commanders adopted the simple expedient of always keeping the front lines as close together as physically possible. Chuikov called this tactic "hugging" the Germans. This forced the German infantry to either fight on their own or risk taking casualties from their own supporting fire; it neutralized German close air support and weakened artillery support. Bitter fighting raged for every street, every factory, every house, basement and staircase. There were fire-fights in the sewers. The Germans, calling this unseen urban warfare Rattenkrieg ("Rat War"), bitterly joked about capturing the kitchen but still fighting for the living-room.
Fighting on Mamayev Kurgan, a prominent, blood-soaked hill above the city, was particularly merciless. The position changed hands many times.[28] During one Soviet counter-attack, the Russians lost an entire division of 10,000 men in one day[citation needed]. This division was the 13th Guards Rifle Division, assigned to retake Mamayev Kurgan and Railway Station No. 1, on September 13. Both objectives were successful, only to temporary degrees. The railway station changed hands 14 times in 6 hours. By the following evening, the 13th Guards Rifle Division did not exist, but its men had killed an approximately equal number of Germans. According to Antony Beevor, two bodies were exhumed atop Mamayev Kurgan in 1944 during restoration, one German, one Soviet, who had apparently killed each other by simultaneous bayonet impalement through the chests, and who had at that moment been buried by an exploding artillery shell. At the Grain Silo, a huge grain-processing complex dominated by a single enormous silo, combat was so close that at times Soviet and German soldiers could hear each other breathe. Combat raged there for weeks. When German soldiers finally took the position, only forty Soviet bodies were found, though the Germans had thought there to be many more Soviet soldiers present due to the ferocity of Soviet resistance. The Soviets burned the heaps of grain as they retreated.[who?] In another part of the city, a Soviet platoon under the command of Yakov Pavlov turned an apartment building into an impenetrable fortress. The building, later called “Pavlov's House,” oversaw a square in the city center. The soldiers surrounded it with minefields, set up machine-gun positions at the windows, and breached the walls in the basement for better communications[21]. They were not relieved, and not significantly reinforced, for two months. Well after the Battle, Chuikov liked to joke, perhaps accurately, that more Germans died trying to capture Pavlov's House than died capturing Paris. According to Beevor, after each wave, throughout the second month, of the Germans' repeated, persistent assaults against the building, the Soviets had to run out and kick down the piles of German corpses in order for the machine and anti-tank gunners in the building to have clear firing lines across the square. Sgt. Pavlov was awarded the "Hero of the Soviet Union" for his actions.
With no end in sight, the Germans started transferring heavy artillery to the city, including the gigantic 800 mm railroad gun nicknamed Dora. The Germans made no effort to send a force across the Volga, allowing the Soviets to build up a large number of artillery batteries there. Soviet artillery on the eastern bank continued to bombard the German positions. The Soviet defenders used the resulting ruins as defensive positions. German tanks became useless amid heaps of rubble up to 8 meters high. When they were able to move forward, they came under Soviet antitank fire from wrecked buildings.
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Soviet snipers also successfully used the ruins to inflict heavy casualties on the Germans. The most successful sniper was Vasily Zaytsev who is also the most famous [29][30]. Zaytsev was credited with 242 confirmed kills during the battle and a grand total of more than 300; he was also credited with killing a specially-sent, though potentially fictional German sniper known by the names Erwin König and Heinz Thorvald. Zaitsev fixed a standard Moisin-Nagant rifle scope to a Soviet 20mm anti-tank rifle for use against Germans hiding behind walls under window sills. The 20mm rounds easily penetrated the brick and the soldier behind it.
For both Stalin and Hitler, the battle of Stalingrad became a prestige issue in addition to the actual strategic significance of the battle. The Soviet command moved the Red Army's strategic reserves from the Moscow area to the lower Volga, and transferred aircraft from the entire country to the Stalingrad region.
The strain on both military commanders was immense: Paulus developed an uncontrollable tic in his eye, which eventually afflicted the left side of his face, while Chuikov experienced an outbreak of eczema that required him to bandage his hands completely. Troops on both sides faced the constant strain of close-range combat.
Attack on a factory in Stalingrad.
Attack on a factory in Stalingrad.
Determined to crush Soviet resistance, Luftflotte 4s Stukawaffe flew 700 individual sorties against Soviet positions at the Dzherzhinskiy Tractor Factory on 5 October. Several Soviet regiments were wiped out; the entire staff of the Soviet 339th Infantry Regiment were killed the following morning during an air raid[31].
By mid-October, the Luftwaffe intensified its efforts against remaining Red Army positions holding the west bank. By now, Soviet aerial resistance had ceased to be effective. Luftflotte 4 flew 2,000 sorties on 14 October and 600 tons of bombs were dropped while German infantry surrounded the three factories. Stukageschwader 1, 2, and 77 had silenced Soviet artillery on the eastern bank of the Volga to a large degree before turning their attention to the shipping that was once again trying to reinforce the narrowing Soviet pockets of resistance. The 62nd Army had been cut in two, and, due to intensive air attack against its supply ferries, were now being paralyzed.
With the Soviets forced into a 1,000-yard (910 m) strip of land on the western bank of the Volga, over 1,208 Stuka missions were flown in an effort to eliminate them[32]. Despite the heavy air bombardment (Stalingrad suffered heavier bombardment than that inflicted on Sedan and Sevastopol), the Soviet 62 Army, with just 47,000 men and 19 tanks, prevented the VI Armee and IV Panzerarmee from wrestling the west bank out of Soviet control.
The Luftwaffe remained in command of the sky into early November, and Soviet aerial resistance during the day was nonexistent, but after flying 20,000 individual sorties, its original strength of 1,600 serviceable aircraft had fallen 40% to 950. The Kampfwaffe (bomber force) had been hardest hit, having only 232 out of a force of 480 left[33]. Despite enjoying qualitative superiority against the VVS and possessing eighty percent of the Luftwaffe's resources on the Eastern Front, Luftflotte 4 could not prevent Soviet aerial power from growing. By the time of the counter-offensive, the Soviets were superior numerically.
The Soviet bomber force, the Aviatsiya Dalnego Destviya (ADD), having taken crippling losses over the past 18 months, was restricted to flying at night. The Soviets flew 11,317 sorties in this manner, from 17 July to 19 November over Stalingrad and the Don-bend sector. These raids caused little damage and were of nuisance value only.[34][35] The situation for the Luftwaffe was now becoming increasingly difficult. On 8 November substantial units from Luftflotte 4 were removed to combat the American landings in North Africa. The German air-arm found itself spread thin across Europe, and struggling to maintain its strength in the other southern sectors of the Soviet-German front[36].
After three months of carnage and slow and costly advance, the Germans finally reached the river banks, capturing 90% of the ruined city and splitting the remaining Soviet forces into two narrow pockets. In addition, ice-floes on the Volga now prevented boats and tugs from supplying the Soviet defenders across the river. Nevertheless, the fighting, especially on the slopes of Mamayev Kurgan and inside the factory area in the northern part of the city, continued as fiercely as ever. The battles for the Red October Steel Factory, the Dzerzhinsky tractor factory, and the Barrikady gun factory became world famous. While Soviet soldiers defended their positions and took the Germans under fire, factory workers repaired damaged Soviet tanks and other weapons close to the battlefield, sometimes on the battlefield itself. These civilians also volunteered as tank crews to replace the dead and wounded, though they had no experience or training in operating tanks during combat.[citation needed]
Recognizing that German troops were ill prepared for offensive operations during the winter, the Stavka decided to conduct a number of offensive operations of its own to exploit this weakness, with the recognition that most of the German troops were redeployed elsewhere on the southern sector of the Eastern Front.
Seen in post-war history as a pivotal strategic period of war that began the Second Period of the Great Patriotic War (19 November 1942 - 31 December 1943), these operations would open the Winter Campaign of 1942-1943 (19 November 1942 - 3 March 1943) taking on the strategic and operational planning structure below, employing several Fronts, and some 15 Armies.
Stalingrad Strategic Offensive Operation 19 November 1942 - 2 February 1943 Southwestern, Don, Stalingrad Fronts
* Operation Uranus 19 November 1942 - 30 November 1942
o Southwestern Front 1st Guards, 21st, 5th Tank, 17th Air Armies, and the 25th Tank Corps
o Don Front 24th, 65th, 66th, 16th Air Armies
o Stalingrad Front 28th, 51st, 57th, 62nd, 64th, 8th Air Armies
* Kotelnikovo Offensive Operation 12 December 1942 - 31 December 1942
o Stalingrad Front 2nd Guards, 5th Shock, 51st, 8th Air Armies
* Middle Don Offensive Operation (Operation Little Saturn) 16 December 1942 - 30 December 1942
o Southwestern Front
o Don Front
* Operation Koltso (English: Operation Ring) 10 January 1943 - 2 February 1943
o Don Front 21st, 24th, 57th, 62nd, 64th, 65th, 66th, 16th Air Armies
The German offensive to take Stalingrad had been halted by a combination of stubborn Red Army resistance inside the city and local weather conditions. The Soviet counter-offensive planning used deceptive measures that eventually trapped and destroyed the 6th Army and other Axis forces around the city, becoming the second large scale defeat of the German Army during Second World War.[37] During the siege, the German, Italian, Hungarian, and Romanian armies protecting Army Group B's flanks had pressed their headquarters for support.[38] The Hungarian Second Army, consisting of mainly ill-equipped and ill-trained units, was given the task of defending a 200 km section of the front north of Stalingrad between the Italian Army and Voronezh. This resulted in a very thin line, with some sectors where 1–2 km stretches were being defended by a single platoon. Soviet forces held several bridgeheads on the western bank of the river and presented a potentially serious threat to Army Group B. http://web.mac.com/lousheehan
Similarly, on the southern flank of the Stalingrad sector the front south-west of Katelnikovo was held only by the Romanian VII Corps, and beyond it a single German 16th Motorized Infantry Division.
However, Hitler was so focused on the city itself, that requests from the flanks for support were refused. The chief of the Army General Staff, Franz Halder, expressed concerns about Hitler's preoccupation with the city, pointing at the Germans' weak flanks, claiming that if the situation on the flanks was not rectified then 'there would be a disaster'. Hitler had claimed to Halder that Stalingrad would be captured and the weakened flanks would be held with 'national socialist ardour, clearly I cannot expect this of you (Halder)'. Halder was then replaced in mid October with General Kurt Zeitzler.
In autumn the Soviet generals Aleksandr Vasilyevskiy and Georgy Zhukov, responsible for strategic planning in the Stalingrad area, concentrated massive Soviet forces in the steppes to the north and south of the city. The German northern flank was particularly vulnerable, since it was defended by Italian, Hungarian, and Romanian units that suffered from inferior training, equipment, and morale when compared with their German counterparts. This weakness was known and exploited by the Soviets, who preferred to face off against non-German troops whenever it was possible, just as the British preferred attacking Italian troops, instead of German ones, whenever possible, in North Africa. The plan was to keep pinning the Germans down in the city, then punch through the overstretched and weakly defended German flanks and surround the Germans inside Stalingrad. During the preparations for the attack, Marshal Zhukov personally visited the front, which was rare for such a high-ranking general. http://louis_j_sheehan_esquire.blogs.friendster.com/my_blog
The operation was code-named “Uranus” and launched in conjunction with Operation Mars, which was directed at Army Group Center. The plan was similar to Zhukov's victory at Khalkin Gol three years before, where he had sprung a double envelopment and destroyed the 23rd Division of the Japanese army. Lou Sheehan
On November 19, the Red Army unleashed Uranus. The attacking Soviet units under the command of Gen. Nikolay Vatutin consisted of three complete armies, the 1st Guards Army, 5th Tank Army, and 21st Army, including a total of 18 infantry divisions, eight tank brigades, two motorized brigades, six cavalry divisions and one anti-tank brigade. The preparations for the attack could be heard by the Romanians, who continued to push for reinforcements, only to be refused again. Thinly spread, outnumbered and poorly equipped, the Romanian Third Army, which held the northern flank of German Sixth Army, was shattered. On November 20, a second Soviet offensive (two armies) was launched to the south of Stalingrad, against points held by the Romanian IV Corps. The Romanian forces, made up primarily of infantry, collapsed almost immediately. Soviet forces raced west in a pincer movement, and met two days later near the town of Kalach, sealing the ring around Stalingrad. The Russians later reconstructed the link up for use as propaganda, and the piece of footage achieved worldwide fame.
Stalingrad Pocket
Because of the Soviet pincer attack, about 230,000 German and Romanian soldiers Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire, as well as the Croatian 369th Reinforced Infantry Regiment http://www.myspace.com/louis_j_sheehan_esquire
and other volunteer subsidiary troops, found themselves trapped inside the resulting pocket. Inside the pocket (German: kessel) there also were the surviving Soviet civilians—around 10,000,[21] and several thousand Soviet soldiers the Germans had taken captive during the battle. Not all German soldiers from Sixth Army were trapped; 50,000 were brushed aside outside the pocket. The encircling Red Army units immediately formed two defensive fronts: a circumvallation facing inward, to defend against any breakout attempt, and a contravallation facing outward, to defend against any relief attempt.
Adolf Hitler had declared in a public speech (in the Berlin Sportpalast) on September 30 that the German army would never leave the city. At a meeting shortly after the Soviet encirclement, German army chiefs pushed for an immediate breakout to a new line on the west of the Don. But Hitler was at his Bavarian retreat of Obersalzberg in Berchtesgaden with the head of the Luftwaffe, Göring. When asked by Hitler, Göring replied, after being convinced by Hans Jeschonnek[42], that the Luftwaffe could supply the Sixth Army with an "air bridge". This would allow the Germans in the city to fight on while a relief force was assembled.
A similar plan had been used successfully a year earlier at the Demyansk Pocket, albeit on a much smaller scale: it had been only an army corps at Demyansk as opposed to an entire army. Also, Soviet fighter forces had improved considerably in both quality and quantity in the intervening year. But the mention of the successful Demyansk air supply operation reinforced Hitler's own views, and was endorsed by Hermann Göring several days later.
The head of the Fourth Air Fleet (Luftflotte 4), Wolfram von Richthofen, tried to have this decision overturned without success. The Sixth Army would be supplied by air. The Sixth Army was the largest unit of this type in the world, almost twice as large as a regular German army. Also trapped in the pocket was a corps of the Fourth Panzer Army. It should have been clear that supplying the pocket by air was impossible -- the maximum 117.5 tons they could deliver a day was less than the 800 tons/day needed by the pocket[43]. To supplement the limited number of Junkers Ju 52 transports, the Germans equipped aircraft wholly inadequate for the role, such as the bomber He-177 (some bombers performed adequately -- the Heinkel He-111 proved to be quite capable and was a lot faster than the Ju 52). But Hitler backed Göring's plan and reiterated his order of "no surrender" to his trapped armies.
The air supply mission failed. Appalling weather conditions, technical failures, heavy Soviet anti-aircraft fire and fighter interceptions led to the loss of 488 German aircraft. The Luftwaffe failed to achieve even the maximum supply capacity of 117 tons that it was capable of. An average of 94 tons of supplies per day was delivered to the trapped German Army. Even then, it was often inadequate or unnecessary; one aircraft arrived with 20 tonnes of Vodka and summer uniforms, completely useless in their current situation[44]. The transport aircraft that did land safely were used to evacuate technical specialists and sick or wounded men from the besieged enclave (some 42,000 were evacuated in all). The Sixth Army slowly starved. Pilots were shocked to find the troops assigned to offloading the planes too exhausted and hungry to unload food. General Zeitzler, moved by the troops' plight at Stalingrad, began to limit himself to their slim rations at meal times. After a few weeks of such a diet he'd grown so emaciated that Hitler, annoyed, personally ordered him to start eating regular meals again.
The expense to the Transportgruppen was heavy. Some 266 Junkers Ju 52s were destroyed, one-third of the fleets strength on the Soviet-German front. The He 111 gruppen lost 165 aircraft in transport operations. Other losses included 42 Junkers Ju 86s, nine Fw 200 "Condors", five He 177 bombers and a single Ju 290. The Luftwaffe also lost close to 1,000 highly experienced bomber crew personnel. http://www.myspace.com/louis_j_sheehan_esquire
So heavy were the Luftwaffe's losses that four of Luftflotte 4s transport units (KGrzbV 700, KGrzbV 900, I./KGrzbV 1 and II./KGzbV 1) were "formallydissolved" http://members.greenpeace.org/blog/purposeforporpoise
Operation Saturn
Main articles: Operation Saturn and Operation Wintergewitter
Soviet forces consolidated their positions around Stalingrad, and fierce fighting to shrink the pocket began. Operation Wintergewitter (Operation Winter Storm), a German attempt to relieve the trapped army from the South, was successfully fended off by the Soviets in December. The full impact of the harsh Russian winter set in. The Volga froze solid, allowing the Soviets to supply their forces more easily. The trapped Germans rapidly ran out of heating fuel and medical supplies, and thousands started to die of frostbite, malnutrition, and disease.
On December 16, the Soviets launched a second offensive, Operation Saturn, which attempted to punch through the Axis army on the Don and take Rostov. If successful, this offensive would have trapped the remainder of Army Group South, one third of the entire German Army in Russia, in the Caucasus. The Germans set up a "mobile defense" in which small units would hold towns until supporting armor could arrive. The Soviets never got close to Rostov, but the fighting forced von Manstein to extract Army Group A from the Caucasus and re-establish the frontline some 250 km away from the city. The Tatsinskaya Raid also caused significant losses to Luftwaffe’s transport fleet. The Sixth Army now was beyond all hope of German reinforcement. The German troops in Stalingrad were not told this however, and continued to believe that reinforcements were on their way. Some German officers requested that Paulus defy Hitler’s orders to stand fast and instead attempt to break out of the Stalingrad pocket. Paulus refused, as he abhorred the thought of disobeying orders. Also, whereas a breakout may have been possible in the first few weeks, at this late stage, Sixth Army was short of the fuel required for such a breakout. The German soldiers would have faced great difficulty breaking through the Soviet lines on foot in harsh winter conditions. http://louis2j2sheehan2esquire.blog.ca
The Germans inside the pocket retreated from the suburbs of Stalingrad to the city itself. The loss of the two airfields at Pitomnik on 16 January and Gumrak on the 25 January
http://louis1j1sheehan.usmeant an end to air supplies and to the evacuation of the wounded. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Other sources indicate Luftwaffe's last flight from Gumrak was night 21st to 22nd of January 1943. http://louis6j6sheehan.blogspot.com
. Third and last serviceable runway was Stalingradskaja flight school which reportedly had last Luftwaffe landings and takeoff night 22nd to 23rd of January 1943. [50]. After daytime 23rd of Jan 1943 there were no more reported landings except for continuous air drops of ammunition and food until the end. The Germans were now not only starving, but running out of ammunition. Nevertheless they continued to resist stubbornly, partly because they believed the Soviets would execute those who surrendered. In particular, the so-called "HiWis", Soviet citizens fighting for the Germans, had no illusions about their fate if captured. The Soviets, in turn, were initially surprised by the large number of German forces they had trapped, and had to reinforce their encircling forces. Bloody urban warfare began again in Stalingrad, but this time it was the Germans who were pushed back to the banks of the Volga. They fortified their positions in the factory districts and the Soviets encountered almost the same tooth-and-nail ferocity that they themselves displayed a month earlier. The Germans adapted a simple defense of fixing wire nets over all windows to protect themselves from grenades. The Soviets responded with the simple solution of fixing fish hooks to the grenades so they stuck to the nets when thrown. The Germans now had no usable tanks in the city. Those tanks which still functioned could at best be used as stationary cannons. The Soviets did not bother employing tanks in areas where the urban destruction ruined their mobility. A Soviet envoy made Paulus a generous surrender offer—that if he surrendered within 24 hours, the Germans would receive a guarantee of safety for all prisoners, medical care for the German sick and wounded, a promise that prisoners would be allowed to keep their personal belongings, "normal" food rations, and repatriation to whatever country they wished to go to after the war—but Paulus, ordered not to surrender by Adolf Hitler, did not reply, ensuring the destruction of the 6th Army. http://www.friendster.com/louis4j4sheehan4esquire44
Hitler promoted Friedrich Paulus to Generalfeldmarschall on January 30, 1943, (the 10th anniversary of Hitler coming to power). Since no German Field Marshal had ever been taken prisoner, Hitler assumed that Paulus would fight on or take his own life. Nevertheless, when Soviet forces closed in on Paulus' headquarters in the ruined GUM department store the next day, Paulus surrendered. The remnants of the German forces in Stalingrad surrendered on February 2; 91,000 tired, ill, and starving Germans were taken captive. To the delight of the Soviet forces and the dismay of the Third Reich, the prisoners included 22 generals. Hitler was furious at the Field Marshal’s surrender and confided that "Paulus stood at the doorstep of eternal glory but made an about-face". According to the German documentary film Stalingrad, over 11,000 German and Axis soldiers refused to lay down their arms at the official surrender, seemingly believing that fighting to the death was better than what seemed like a slow end in Soviet camps. These forces continued to resist until early March 1943, hiding in cellars and sewers of the city with their numbers being diminished at the same time by Soviet forces clearing the city of remaining enemy resistance. By March, what remained of these forces were small and isolated pockets of resistance that surrendered. According to Soviet intelligence documents shown in the documentary, 2,418 of the men were killed, and 8,646 were captured. http://louisjsheehan.blogstream.com
Only 5,000 of the 91,000 German prisoners of war survived their captivity and returned home. Already weakened by disease, starvation and lack of medical care during the encirclement, they were sent to labour camps all over the Soviet Union, where most of them died of overwork and malnutrition. A handful of senior officers were taken to Moscow and used for propaganda purposes and some of them joined National Committee for a Free Germany. Some, including Paulus, signed anti-Hitler statements which were broadcast to German troops. General Walther von Seydlitz-Kurzbach offered to raise an anti-Hitler army from the Stalingrad survivors, but the Soviets did not accept this offer. It was not until 1955 that the last of the handful of survivors were repatriated.
The German public was not officially told of the disaster until the end of January 1943, though positive reports in the German propaganda media about the battle had stopped in the weeks before the announcement. It was not the first major setback of the German military, but the crushing defeat at Stalingrad was unmatched in scale. On February 18, the minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, gave his famous Sportpalast speech in Berlin, encouraging the Germans to accept a total war which would claim all resources and efforts from the entire population.
The battle of Stalingrad was one of the largest battles in human history. It raged for 199 days. Numbers of casualties are difficult to compile due to the vast scope of the battle and the fact that the Soviet government did not allow estimates to be made, for fear the cost would be shown to be too high. In its initial phases, the Germans inflicted heavy casualties on Soviet formations; but the Soviet encirclement by punching through the German flank, mainly held by Romanian troops, effectively besieged the remainder of German Sixth Army, which had taken heavy casualties in street fighting prior to this. At different times the Germans had held up to 90% of the city, yet the Soviet soldiers and officers fought on fiercely. Some elements of the German Fourth Panzer Army also suffered casualties in operations around Stalingrad during the Soviet counter offensive. http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-jmbPCHg9dLPh1gHoZxLG.GpS?list=1
Various scholars have estimated the Axis suffered 850,000 casualties of all types (wounded, killed, captured...etc) among all branches of the German armed forces and its allies, many of which were POWs who died in Soviet captivity between 1943 and 1955,: 400,000 Germans, 200,000 Romanians, 130,000 Italians, and 120,000 Hungarians were killed, wounded or captured. http://ljsheehan.livejournal.com
Of the 91,000 German POW's taken at Stalingrad 27,000 died within weeks http://www.soulcast.com/post/show/132346
and only 5,000 returned to Germany in 1955. The remainder of the POWs died in Soviet captivity http://sheehan.myblogsite.com
. In the whole Stalingrad area the Axis lost 1.5 million killed, wounded or captured.
http://louis1j1sheehan1esquire.wordpress.com50,000 ex-Soviets Hiwis (local volunteers incorporated into the German forces in supporting capacities) were killed or captured by the Red Army. According to archival figures, the Red Army suffered a total of 1,129,619 total casualties Louis Joseph Sheehan, Esquire
; 478,741 men killed and captured and 650,878 wounded. These numbers are for the whole Stalingrad Area; in the city itself 750,000 were killed, captured, or wounded. Also, more than 40,000 Soviet civilians died in Stalingrad and its suburbs during a single week of aerial bombing as the German Fourth Panzer and Sixth armies approached the city; the total number of civilians killed in the regions outside the city is unknown. In all, the battle resulted in an estimated total of 1.7 million to 2 million Axis and Soviet casualties.
Besides being a turning point in the war, Stalingrad was also revealing of the discipline and determination of both the German Wehrmacht and the Soviet Red Army. The Soviets first defended Stalingrad against a fierce German onslaught. So great were Soviet losses that at times, the life expectancy of a newly arrived soldier was less than a day, Louis Joseph Sheehan
and the life expectancy of a Soviet officer was three days. Their sacrifice is immortalized by a soldier of General Rodimtsev, about to die, who scratched on the wall of the main railway station (which changed hands 15 times during the battle) “Rodimtsev’s Guardsmen fought and died here for their Motherland.” http://louis-j-sheehan.us/ImageGallery
For the heroism of the Soviet defenders of Stalingrad, the city was awarded the title Hero City in 1945. After the war, in the 1960s, a colossal monument, Mother Motherland was erected on Mamayev Kurgan, the hill overlooking the city. The statue forms part of a War memorial complex which includes ruined walls deliberately left the way they were after the battle. The Grain Silo, as well as Pavlov's House, the apartment building whose defenders eventually held out for two months until they were relieved, can still be visited. Even today, one may find bones and rusty metal splinters on Mamayev Kurgan, symbols of both the human suffering during the battle and the successful yet costly resistance against the German invasion.
On the other side, the German Army showed remarkable discipline after being surrounded. It was the first time that it had operated under adverse conditions on such a scale.
Hitler, acting on Göring's advice, ordered that the German 6th Army be supplied by air; the Luftwaffe had successfully accomplished an aerial resupply in January 1942, as a German garrison had been surrounded in Demyansk for four months. In this case, however, there were obvious differences. The encircled forces at Demyansk were a much smaller garrison, while an entire army was trapped in Stalingrad.
During the latter part of the siege, short of food and clothing, many German soldiers starved or froze to death.[21] Yet, discipline was maintained until the very end, when resistance no longer served any useful purpose. Friedrich Paulus obeyed Hitler's orders, against many of Hitler's top generals' counsel and advice including that of von Manstein, and did not attempt to break out of the city. German ammunition, supplies, and food became all too scarce.
Paulus knew that the airlift had failed and that Stalingrad was lost. He asked for permission to surrender to save the life of his troops but Hitler refused and instead promoted him to the rank of Generalfeldmarschall. No German officer of this rank had ever surrendered, and the implication was clear. If Paulus surrendered, he would shame himself and would become the highest ranking German officer ever to be captured. Hitler believed that Paulus would either fight to the last man or commit suicide. Choosing to live, Paulus surrendered, commenting that: "I have no intention of shooting myself for that Bavarian corporal".
The Order of Cistercians (OCist; Latin: Cistercienses), sometimes called the White Monks (from the colour of the habit, over which a black scapular or apron is sometimes worn) is a Roman Catholic religious order of enclosed monks. The first Cistercian abbey was founded by Robert of Molesme in 1098, at Cîteaux Abbey. Two others, Saint Alberic of Citeaux and Saint Stephen Harding, are considered co-founders of the order, and Bernard of Clairvaux is associated with the fast spread of the order during the 12th century.
The keynote of Cistercian life was a return to a literal observance of the Rule of St Benedict, rejecting the developments the Benedictines had undergone, and tried to reproduce the life exactly as it had been in Saint Benedict's time, indeed in various points they went beyond it in austerity. The most striking feature in the reform was the return to manual labour, and especially to field-work, which became a special characteristic of Cistercian life. The Cistercians became the main force of technological diffusion in medieval Europe.
The Cistercians were badly affected by the Protestant Reformation, the Dissolution of the Monasteries under King Henry VIII, the French Revolution, and the revolutions of the 18th century, but some survived and the order recovered in the 19th century. In 1892 certain abbeys formed a new Order called Trappists (Ordo Cisterciensium Strictioris Observantiae - OCSO), which today exists as an order distinct from the Common Observance.
The founders of Cîteaux: Saints Robert, Alberic, and Stephen Harding venerating the Blessed Virgin Mary.
The founders of Cîteaux: Saints Robert, Alberic, and Stephen Harding venerating the Blessed Virgin Mary.
In 1098 a band of 21 Cluniac monks left their abbey of Molesme in Burgundy and followed their Abbot, Robert of Molesme (1027–1111), to establish a new monastery. The group was looking to cultivate a monastic community in which monks could carry out their lives in stricter observance of the Rule of St Benedict. On March 21, 1098, the small faction acquired a plot of marsh land just south of Dijon called Cîteaux (Latin: "Cistercium"), given to them expressly for the purpose of founding their Novum Monasterium. http://louisjsheehanesquire.wetpaint.com
During the first year the monks set about constructing lodging areas and farmed the lands. In the interim, there was a small chapel nearby which they used for Mass. Soon the monks in Molesme began petitioning Pope Urban II to return their abbot to them. The case was passed down to Archbishop Hugues who passed the issue on down to the local bishops. Robert was then instructed to return to his position as abbot in Molesme, where he remained for the rest of his days. A good number of the monks who helped found Cîteaux returned with him to Molesme, so that only a few remained. The remaining monks elected Prior Alberic as their abbot, under whose leadership the abbey would find its grounding. Robert had been the idealist of the order, and Alberic was their builder.
Upon assuming the role of abbot, Alberic moved the site of the fledgling community near a brook a short distance away from the original site. Alberic discontinued the use of Benedictine black garments in the abbey and clothed the monks in white cowls (undyed wool). He returned the community to the original Benedictine ideal of work and prayer, dedicated to the ideal of charity and self sustenance. Alberic also forged an alliance with the Dukes of Burgundy, working out a deal with Duke Odo the donation of a vineyard (Meursault) as well as stones with which they built their church. The church was sanctified and dedicated to The Virgin Mary on November 16, 1106 by the Bishop of Chalon sur Saône.[2]
On January 26, 1108 Alberic died and was soon succeeded by Stephen Harding, the man responsible for carrying the order into its crucial phase. Stephen created the Cistercian constitution, called Carta Caritatis (the Charter of Charity). Stephen also acquired farms for the abbey in order to ensure its survival and ethic, the first of which was Clos Vougeot. He handed over the west wing of the monastery to a large group of lay brethren to cultivate the farms.
The lines of the Cistercian polity were adumbrated by Alberic, but it received its final form at a meeting of the abbots in the time of Stephen Harding, when was drawn up the Carta Caritatis,[3][4] a document which arranged the relations between the various houses of the Cistercian order, and exercised a great influence also upon the future course of western monachism. From one point of view, it may be regarded as a compromise between the primitive Benedictine system, in which each abbey was autonomous and isolated, and the complete centralization of Cluny, where the abbot of Cluny was the only true superior in the body.
On the one hand, Citeaux maintained the independent organic life of the houses: each abbey had its own abbot elected by its own monks, its own community belonging to itself and not to the order in general, and its own property and finances administered without interference from outside. On the other hand, all the abbeys were subjected to the general chapter, which met yearly at Cîteaux and consisted of the abbots only. The abbot of Cîteaux was the president of the chapter and of the order, and the visitor of each and every house. He had a predominant influence and the power of enforcing everywhere exact conformity to Cîteaux in all details of the exterior life observance, chant, and customs. The principle was that Cîteaux should always be the model to which all the other houses had to conform. In case of any divergence of view at the chapter, the side taken by the abbot of Cîteaux was always to prevail.
The spread of the Cistercians from their original sites during the Middle Ages
The spread of the Cistercians from their original sites during the Middle Ages
By 1111 the ranks had grown sufficiently at Cîteaux, and Stephen sent a group of 12 monks to start a "daughter house", a new community dedicated to the same ideals of the strict observance of Saint Benedict. It was built in Chalon sur Saône in La Ferté on May 13, 1113.[6] Also in 1113, Bernard of Clairvaux arrived at Cîteaux with 30 others to join the monastery. In 1114 another daughter house was founded, Pontigny Abbey. Then, in 1115 Bernard founded Clairvaux, followed by Morimond in the same year. Later, Preuilly, La Cour-Dieu, Bouras, Cadouin and Fontenay were established. At Stephen's death (1134) there were over 30 Cistercian daughter houses; at Bernard's death (1154) there were over 280; and by the end of the century there were over 500 daughter houses. Meanwhile, the Cistercian influence in the Roman Catholic Church more than kept pace with this material expansion, so that St Bernard saw one of his monks ascend the papal chair as Pope Eugene III.
There were 333 Cistercian abbeys in 1152.[7] By the end of the 13th century, the Cistercian houses numbered 500.[8] At the order's height in the 15th century, it would have nearly 750 houses.
Nearly half of the houses had been founded, directly or indirectly, from Clairvaux, so great was St Bernard's influence and prestige. Indeed he has come almost to be regarded as the founder of the Cistercians, who have often been called Bernardines. The order spread all over western Europe, chiefly in France, but also in Germany, Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, Croatia, England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Italy (where the Certosa di Pavia is their most famous edifice), Sicily, Poland, Hungary, Romania (Kerz), Norway, Sweden, Spain and Portugal (where some of the houses, like the Monastery of Alcobaça, were of almost incredible magnificence). One of the most important libraries of the Cistercians was in Salem, Germany.
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The keynote of Cistercian life was a return to a literal observance of St Benedict's rule: how literal may be seen from the controversy between St. Bernard and Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny.[9] The Cistercians rejected alike all mitigations and all developments, and tried to reproduce the life exactly as it had been in St Benedict's time, indeed in various points they went beyond it in austerity. The most striking feature in the reform was the return to manual labour, and especially to field-work, which became a special characteristic of Cistercian life.
To make time for this work they cut away the accretions to the divine office which had been steadily growing during three centuries, and which in Cluny and the other Benedictine monasteries had come to exceed greatly in length the regular canonical office: one only of these accretions did they retain, the daily recitation of the Office of the Dead.
http://louisjsheehanesquire100.ning.com
It was as agriculturists and horse and cattle breeders that, after the first blush of their success and before a century had passed, the Cistercians exercised their chief influence on the progress of civilisation in the later Middle Ages: they were the great farmers of those days, and many of the improvements in the various farming operations were introduced and propagated by them, and this is where the importance of their extension in northern Europe is to be estimated.
The Cistercians at the beginning renounced all sources of income arising from benefices, tithes, tolls and rents, and depended for their income wholly on the land. This developed an organised system for selling their farm produce, cattle and horses, and notably contributed to the commercial progress of the countries of western Europe. With the foundation of Waverley Abbey in 1128, the Cistercians spread to England, and many of the most beautiful monastic buildings of the country, beautiful in themselves and beautiful in their sites, were Cistercian, as Tintern Abbey, Rievaulx Abbey, Byland Abbey and Fountains Abbey. A hundred were established in England in the next hundred years, and then only one more up to the Dissolution.[11] Thus by the middle of the 13th century, the export of wool by the English Cistercians had become a feature in the commerce of the country.
In Spain, one of the earliest surviving Cistercian houses - the Real Monasterio de Nuestra Senora de Rueda in the Aragon region - is a good example of early hydrologic engineering, using a large waterwheel for power and an elaborate hydrological circulation system for central heating.
Farming operations on so extensive a scale could not be carried out by the monks alone, whose choir and religious duties took up a considerable portion of their time; and so from the beginning the system of lay brothers was introduced on a large scale. The lay brothers were recruited from the peasantry and were simple uneducated men, whose function consisted in carrying out the various fieldworks and plying all sorts of useful trades: they formed a body of men who lived alongside of the choir monks, but separate from them, not taking part in the canonical office, but having their own fixed round of prayer and religious exercises.
A lay brother was never ordained, and never held any office of superiority. It was by this system of lay brothers that the Cistercians were able to play their distinctive part in the progress of European civilisation. But it often happened that the number of lay brothers became excessive and out of proportion to the resources of the monasteries, there being sometimes as many as 200, or even 300, in a single abbey. On the other hand, at any rate in some countries, the system of lay brothers in course of time worked itself out; thus in England by the close of the 14th century it had shrunk to relatively small proportions, and in the 15th century the régime of the English Cistercian houses tended to approximate more and more to that of the Black Monks.
The first Cistercian abbey in Bohemia was founded in Sedlec near Kutná Hora in 1158. In the late 13th and early 14th centuries, the Cistercian order played an essential role in the politics and diplomacy of the late Přemyslid and early Luxembourg state, as reflected in the Chronicon Aulae Regiae, a chronicle written by Otto and Peter of Zittau, abbots of the Zbraslav abbey (Latin: Aula Regia, ie, Royal Hall; today situated on the southern outskirts of Prague), founded in 1292 by the king of Bohemia and Poland, Wenceslas II. The order also played the main role in the early Gothic art of Bohemia; one of the outstanding pieces of Cistercian architecture is the Alt-neu Shul, Prague.
Knowledge of certain technological advances was transmitted by the order, and the Cistercians are known to have been skilled metallurgists. According to Jean Gimpel, their high level of industrial technology facilitated the diffusion of new techniques: "Every monastery had a model factory, often as large as the church and only several feet away, and waterpower drove the machinery of the various industries located on its floor." Iron ore deposits were often donated to the monks along with forges to extract the iron, and within time surpluses were being offered for sale. The Cistercians became the leading iron producers in Champagne, France, from the mid-13th century to the 17th century, also using the phosphate-rich slag from their furnaces as an agricultural fertiliser.
For a hundred years, till the first quarter of the 13th century, the Cistercians supplanted Cluny as the most powerful order and the chief religious influence in western Europe. But then in turn their influence began to wane, chiefly, no doubt, because of the rise of the mendicant orders, who ministered more directly to the needs and ideas of the new age. But some of the reasons of Cistercian decline were internal.
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In the first place, there was the permanent difficulty of maintaining in its first fervour a body embracing hundreds of monasteries and thousands of monks, spread all over Europe; and as the Cistercian very raison d'être consisted in its being a reform, a return to primitive monachism, with its field-work and severe simplicity, any failures to live up to the ideal proposed worked more disastrously among Cistercians than among mere Benedictines, who were intended to live a life of self-denial, but not of great austerity.
Relaxations were gradually introduced in regard to diet and to simplicity of life, and also in regard to the sources of income, rents and tolls being admitted and benefices incorporated, as was done among the Benedictines; the farming operations tended to produce a commercial spirit; wealth and splendour invaded many of the monasteries, and the choir monks abandoned field-work.
The later history of the Cistercians is largely one of attempted revivals and reforms. The general chapter for long battled bravely against the invasion of relaxations and abuses.
The English Reformation was disastrous for the Cistercians in England, as Henry VIII's Dissolution of the Monasteries saw the confiscation of church land throughout the country. Laskill, an outstation of Rievaulx Abbey and the only medieval blast furnace so far identified in Great Britain, was the one of the most efficient blast furnaces of its time. Slag from contemporary furnaces contained a substantial concentration of iron, whereas the slag of Laskill was low in iron content, and is believed to have produced cast iron with efficiency similar to a modern blast furnace. The monks may have been on the verge of building dedicated furnaces for the production of cast iron, but the furnace did not survive Henry's Dissolution in the late 1530s, and the type of blast furnace pioneered there did not spread outside Rievaulx. Some historians believe that the suppression of the English monasteries may have stamped out an industrial revolution.
In 1335, Pope Benedict XII, himself a Cistercian, had promulgated a series of regulations to restore the primitive spirit of the order, and in the 15th century various popes endeavoured to promote reforms. All these efforts at a reform of the great body of the order proved unavailing; but local reforms, producing various semi-independent offshoots and congregations, were successfully carried out in many parts in the course of the 15th and 16th centuries.
In the 17th another great effort at a general reform was made, promoted by the pope and the king of France; the general chapter elected Richelieu (commendatory) abbot of Cîteaux, thinking he would protect them from the threatened reform. In this they were disappointed, for he threw himself wholly on the side of reform. So great, however, was the resistance, and so serious the disturbances that ensued, that the attempt to reform Cîteaux itself and the general body of the houses had again to be abandoned, and only local projects of reform could be carried out.
In the 16th century had arisen the reformed congregation of the Feuillants, which spread widely in France and Italy, in the latter country under the name of Improved Bernardines. The French congregation of Sept-Fontaines (1654) also deserves mention. In 1663 de Rancé reformed La Trappe (see Trappists).
The Reformation, the ecclesiastical policy of Joseph II, the French Revolution, and the revolutions of the 18th century, almost wholly destroyed the Cistercians; but some survived, and since the beginning of the last half of the 19th century there has been a considerable recovery. Mahatma Gandhi visited a Trappist abbey near Durban in 1895, and wrote an extensive description of the order:
The settlement is a quiet little model village, owned on the truest republican principles. The principle of liberty, equality, and fraternity is carried out in its entirety. Every man is a brother, every woman a sister. The monks number about 120 on the settlement, and the nuns, or the sisters as they are called, number about sixty… None may keep any money for private use. All are equally rich or poor…
A Protestant clergyman said to his audience that Roman Catholics were weakly, sickly, and sad. Well, if the Trappists are any criterion of what a Roman Catholic is, they are, on the contrary, healthy and cheerful. Wherever we went, a beaming smile and a lowly bow greeted us, we saw a brother or a sister. Even while the guide was decanting on the system he prized so much, he did not at all seem to consider the self-chosen discipline a hard yoke to bear. A better instance of undying faith and perfect implicit obedience could not well be found anywhere else.
At the beginning of 20th century they were divided into three bodies:
* The Common Observance, with about 30 monasteries and 800 choir monks, the large majority being in Austria-Hungary; they represent the main body of the order and follow a mitigated rule of life; they do not carry on field-work, but have large secondary schools, and are in manner of life little different from fairly observant Benedictine Black Monks; of late, however, signs are not wanting of a tendency towards a return to older ideals;
* The Middle Observance, embracing some dozen monasteries and about 150 choir monks;
* The Strict Observance, or Trappists, with nearly 60 monasteries, about 1600 choir monks and 2000 lay brothers.
There has also always been a large number of Cistercian nuns; the first nunnery was founded in the diocese of Langres, 1125; at the period of their widest extension there are said to have been 900 nunneries, and the communities were very large. The nuns were devoted to contemplation and also did field-work. In Spain and France certain Cistercian abbesses had extraordinary privileges. Numerous reforms took place among the nuns. The best known of all Cistercian convents was probably Port-Royal, reformed by Angélique Arnaud, and associated with the story of the Jansenist controversy.
Cistercian monasteries have continued to spread, with many founded outside Europe in the 20th century. In particular, the number of Trappist monasteries throughout the world has more than doubled over the past 60 years: from 82 in 1940 to 127 in 1970, and 169 at the beginning of the 21st century.In 1940, there were six Trappist monasteries in Asia and the Pacific, only one Trappist monastery in Africa, and none in Latin America. Now there are 13 in Central and South America, 17 in Africa, and 23 in Asia and the Pacific.In general, these communities are growing faster than those in other parts of the world.
Over the same period, the total number of monks and nuns in the Order decreased by about 15%. There are approximately 2500 Trappist monks and 1800 Trappist nuns in the world today.[18] There are on average 25 members per community - less than half those in former times. As of 2005, there are 101 monasteries of monks and 70 of nuns.Of these, there are twelve monasteries of monks and five of nuns in the United States.
The abbots and abbesses of each branch meet every three years at the Mixed General Meeting, chaired by the Abbot General, to make decisions concerning the welfare of the Order. Between these meetings the Abbot General and his Council, who reside in Rome, are in charge of the Order's affairs. The present Abbot General is Dom Bernardo Olivera of Azul, Argentina.
At the time of monastic profession, five or six years after entering the monastery, candidates promise "conversion" — fidelity to monastic life, which includes an atmosphere of silence. Cistercian monks and nuns, in particular Trappists, have a reputation of being silent, which has led to the public idea that they take a Vow of silence.This has actually never been the case, although silence is an implicit part of an outlook shared by Cistercian and Benedictine monasteries. In a Cistercian monastery, there are three reasons for speaking:
functional communication at work or in community dialogues, spiritual exchange with one’s superiors or with a particular member of the community on different aspects of one’s personal life, and spontaneous conversation on special occasions. These forms of communication are integrated into the discipline of maintaining a general atmosphere of silence, which is an important help to continual prayer.
Many Cistercian monasteries produce goods such as cheese, bread and other foodstuffs. Many monasteries in Belgium and the Netherlands, such as Orval Abbey and Westvleteren Abbey, brew beer both for the monks and for sale to the general public. Trappist beers contain residual sugars and living yeast, and, unlike conventional beers, will improve with age.These have become quite famous and are considered by many beer critics to be among the finest in the world.
In the United States, many Cistercian monasteries support themselves through argriculture, forestry and rental of farmland. Additionally, the Cistercian Abbey of Our Lady of Spring Bank, in Sparta, Wisconsin, supports itself with financial investing, real estate, and a group called "Laser Monks"; which provides recycled laser toner and ink jet cartridges.
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The Order of Saint Benedict (Latin name: Ordo Sancti Benedicti) is a Roman Catholic religious order of independent monastic communities that observe the Rule of St. Benedict. Within the order, each individual community (which may be a monastery, abbey, or priory) maintains its own autonomy, while the organization as a whole exists to represent their mutual interests. Today the terms "Order of St Benedict" and "Benedictine Order" are also used frequently to refer to the total of the independent Roman Catholic Benedictine abbeys, thereby giving the wrong impression of a "generalate" or "motherhouse" with jurisdiction over dependent communities. The Benedictine Confederation, which was established in 1883 by Pope Leo XIII in his brief Summum semper, is the international governing body of the order.
The monastery at Monte Cassino established in Italy by St. Benedict of Nursia circa 529 was the first of a dozen monasteries founded by him. Even so, there is no evidence to suggest that he intended to found an order. To the contrary, the Rule of St Benedict presupposes the autonomy of each community. Despite the absence of a Benedictine order, since most monasteries founded during the Middle Ages adopted the Rule of St Benedict, it became the standard for Western Monasticism.
The Benedictine monasteries went on to make considerable contributions not only to the monastic and the spiritual life of the West, but also to economics, education, and government, so that the years from 550 to 1150 may be called the "Benedictine centuries".
Even today Benedictine monasticism is fundamentally different from other Western religious orders insofar as its individual communities are not part of a religious order with "Generalates" and "Superiors General". Rather, in modern times, the various autonomous houses have formed themselves loosely into congregations (for example, Cassinese, English, Solesmes, Subiaco, Camaldolese, Sylvestrines) that in turn are represented in the Benedictine Confederation that came into existence through Pope Leo XIII's Apostolic Brief "Summum semper" on July 12, 1883. This organization facilitates dialogue of Benedictine communities with each other and the relationship between Benedictine communities and other religious orders and the church at large.
The Rule of Saint Benedict is also used by a number of religious orders that began as reforms of the Benedictine tradition such as the Cistercians and Trappists although none of these groups are part of the Benedictine Confederation.
The largest number of Benedictines are Roman Catholics, but there are also Benedictines within the Anglican Communion and occasionally within other Christian denominations as well, for example, within the Lutheran Church.
The Rule of St Benedict (ch. 58.17) requires candidates for reception into a Benedictine community to promise solemnly stability (to remain in the same monastery), conversatione morum (an idiomatic Latin phrase suggesting "conversion of manners"), and obedience (to the superior, because the superior holds the place of Christ in their community). This solemn commitment tends to be referred to as the "Benedictine vow" and is the Benedictine antecedent and equivalent of the evangelical counsels professed by candidates for reception into a religious order.
Benedictine abbots and abbesses have full jurisdiction of their abbey and thus absolute authority over the monks or nuns who are resident and have full authority to, for example, to assign them duties, to decide which books they may or may not read, to take charge of their comings and goings, and if necessary to punish and even to excommunicate them.
A tight communal timetable (horarium) is meant to ensure that the time given by God is not wasted but in whichever way necessary used in his service, whether for prayer, work, meals, spiritual reading, sleep.
The Benedictines make no vow of silence, nevertheless the hours of stricter silence are fixed, and even at other times, out of fraternal love, silence is maintained as much as is practically possible. Social conversations tend to be limited to communal recreation times. But such details, like many others details of the daily routine of a Benedictine house that the Rule of St Benedict leaves to the discretion of the superior, are set out in its customary.
In the Roman Catholic Church according to the norms of the Code of Canon Law 1983 a Benedictine abbey is a "Religious Institute", and its professed members are therefore members of the "Consecrated Life", commonly referred to as "Religious". All Benedictine monks and nuns who have not been ordained are members of the laity among the Christian faithful. Only those Benedictine monks who have been ordained as a deacon or priest are also members of the clergy of the Roman Catholic Church. Benedictine Oblates, who are not members of the consecrated life, nevertheless endeavour to embrace the spirit of the Benedictine vow in their own life in the world.
It's been called "the ultimate estate plan": moving to a desert island or other far-off locale to escape the clutches of the Internal Revenue Service.
Indeed, hundreds of Americans do formally renounce their U.S. citizenship every year, many in order to protect their wealth from income, estate and gift taxes. But last week, Congress may have made life less rewarding for tax exiles.
Some exiles were born and raised in the U.S., such as John Dorrance III -- grandson of the inventor and entrepreneur who helped found Campbell Soup Co. -- who renounced his citizenship in 1994 and emigrated to Ireland, which has significantly lower tax rates. Others have long lived outside the U.S. and are seeking to avoid the unique consequences of its tax system, which taxes its citizens no matter where in the world they live and earn.
In 2007, 470 Americans renounced their citizenship to move abroad, according to a Wall Street Journal review of Federal Register notices. The list of those who relinquished U.S. citizenship in the past 12 months includes a London-based office-supplies magnate and the daughter of an Iraqi private-equity billionaire.
Now, after years of threatening to do so, Congress has passed a law that will tax the assets of those who leave for good on their way out the door, as if they were selling those assets. But tax experts say the more significant change may be a provision that taxes U.S. heirs on amounts given or left to them by ex-U.S. citizens. Taxing the recipient instead of the donor will make it harder to get around the tax rules.
"The new rules say, if you leave any of your property to a U.S. person, it will be taxed at the rates for U.S. gift tax," which are currently 45%, says Henry Alden, a certified public accountant at Everest International Group, a Baltimore-based financial-planning firm.
The new taxes are included in legislation providing tax benefits for soldiers and military veterans and will apply only to those who renounce their citizenship after President Bush signs the bill into law, as he is widely expected to do.
Some of those permanently leaving the U.S. for tax reasons are private-equity deal makers, hedge-fund managers or entrepreneurs who have made fortunes here, whether born in the U.S. or elsewhere. Others are foreign-born, often academics, who have gained citizenship but are repatriating to their native countries after an extended stay.
One former citizen is Serra Nemir Kirdar, an advocate for Arab women in business and daughter of the Iraqi-born billionaire Nemir Kirdar, founder of private-equity powerhouse Investcorp. While born in the U.S., Serra Kirdar was educated at Oxford and now resides in the United Arab Emirates.
"I very much believe that it is the responsibility of people who hold citizenship where they reside to pay their taxes," Ms. Kirdar said in a telephone interview. "In the event that someone doesn't live there or make use of the protections that come from citizenship, they should not be liable for paying taxes to a country they just hold a passport from."
Another former U.S. citizen is George Karibian, founder and chairman of U.K.-based online office supplier Euroffice. Through a spokeswoman, Mr. Karibian declined to comment for this article. His biography posted on a trade-group Web site indicates that since graduating from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School in 1993, he has lived and done business in various European locales.
Lawmakers have been struggling for years to change a tax system for expatriates that was cumbersome yet easy to circumvent. "The old law was very easy to manage, with the right advice," says Evelyn Capassakis, an estate planner at PricewaterhouseCoopers in New York.
Under the old system, tax exiles were required to file annual U.S. returns for 10 years after they renounced their citizenship. For that time period, income tax was owed on all U.S.-source income. Estate and gift taxes also applied to U.S. assets transferred during that period.
The system encouraged people to hold onto their U.S. assets until after the 10-year period expired and then unload them. And while estate taxes still applied to intangible assets such as stock in U.S. companies, gifts of U.S.-based stock were not taxed after the 10-year period. "Patience was rewarded under the old regime," says Mr. Alden.
Under the new law, the 10-year transition rule is abolished. U.S. citizens and long-term residents who are terminating their status will be taxed once on their unrealized gains, at current market rates. Stock portfolios, real estate, art and most other types of assets will be captured by this new "mark to market" tax. Some experts say the new law could deter some citizens or residents from leaving the U.S., since the benefits of doing so will be reduced. Yet the simplicity of the new one-time tax may appeal to others.
One aspect of the new law that has practitioners concerned is that it applies not only to U.S. citizens but long-term residents. That means it will capture foreign executives who have been permanent residents of the U.S. for more than eight years. "There are a bunch of green-card holders who may fall prey," says Mr. Alden. They may now owe taxes to both their native country and the U.S., he says.
As in the old system, the new rules are triggered only for individuals with a net worth of $2 million or more, or who owed more than $124,000 in income taxes on average over the past five years, indexed for inflation. Even if one of those conditions is met, the first $600,000 in gains are not subject to the tax.
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THE NUMBER of high-income taxpayers who owed no income tax more than doubled from 2004 to 2005, according to IRS data released last week.
Of the 3.6 million taxpayers with adjusted gross income of $200,000 or more in 2005, 7,389 did not owe U.S. income tax. That compares with 2,833 with no income tax liability in 2004. The IRS attributed the jump to two tax-law changes: a temporary window in 2005 in which charitable contribution caps did not apply to donations to help victims of Hurricane Katrina and an increase in the amount of foreign tax credits that can be applied to an alternative minimum tax liability.
Taxpayers may now offset 100% of their AMT liability with foreign tax credits, up from 90%.
Patients suffer higher rates of death, complications and medical errors when they are treated during thinly staffed off hours. http://Louis2J2Sheehan2Esquire.US
Now, some hospitals are taking steps to improve safety and reduce their own legal liability from mishaps.
Institutions that long relied on having doctors on call at home are hiring physicians known as nocturnists, who work only night shifts. Some hospitals have begun staffing intensive-care units round-the-clock with critical-care specialists who do double-duty coping with a crisis anywhere in the hospital. And new policies are being put in place to improve communications at the hand-off between the day and night shifts.
"People get sick 24 hours a day, but there is a stark discrepancy in the quality of care on nights and weekends" when 50% to 70% of patients may be admitted, says David Shulkin, chief executive of New York's Beth Israel Medical Center. Dr. Shulkin has been making midnight rounds at his hospital on a regular basis to evaluate the quality of care and the need for additional staffing. In a recent editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine, he called on counterparts at other hospitals to do the same.
Of course, with rising medical costs and a shortage of nurses and doctors, hospitals will never be as fully staffed on nights and weekends as they are during weekdays. Indeed, hospitals do quiet down at night, when patients sleep, support staff go home and a skeleton crew mans many units. But that's also the time when dangerous delays in care can occur for patients. In a study published last month in the journal Circulation of 62,814 heart-attack patients, more than half arrived off hours. And this group was 66% less likely than daytime patients to get an angioplasty -- a critical procedure to open clogged arteries -- within the 90-minute window recommended by the American Heart Association.
One solution gaining in popularity is to hire more nocturnists, a subset of the specialty group known as hospitalists -- physicians who work as full-time staff doctors with no outside patients. As of last year, about 1,200 hospitals had either a nocturnist or hospitalist sharing night coverage, compared with just 700 hospitals with such staffing arrangements in 2003, according to the Society of Hospital Medicine.
Though only about 6% of the nation's 22,000 hospitalists are nocturnists, there is growing demand for their services. Some hospitals advertise higher salaries and shorter working hours. Larry Wellikson, the society's chief executive, says the job often appeals to younger doctors before they have children or those who aren't interested in daytime committee meetings. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
While staffing hospitals with nocturnists adds an extra cost, "the benefits in what we save the hospital in terms of liability, and the goodwill we create with specialists who don't have to come in at night, are endless," says Edward Chun, a nocturnist at Overlake Hospital Medical Center in Bellevue, Wash.
By contrast, at hospitals without a night doctor, patients admitted may have brief "holding orders" written at 2 a.m., and then have to wait until the next day before being seen in person by the "day" doctor, says John Nelson, a hospitalist at Overlake. http://Louis-J-sheehan.info
Even if nurses page a sleeping doctor, it may take a half-hour or more until a patient is seen.
Last week, for example, a patient was admitted after hours through Overlake's emergency room with a suspected infection in his leg. It was left to Dr. Chun to arrange for surgery. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
But Dr. Chun, suspecting it might instead be an injury, ordered a scan. The test showed that the patient had internal bleeding from a major artery, which required a minimally invasive fix with a special coil. "The ER doc's role is triage and their time is more limited," Dr. Chun says. "I have the time to think about these things and consider other possibilities."
Milind Gurjar, a nocturnist at Mercy Medical Center in Springfield, Mass., works 12-hour shifts, three to four nights a week. The schedule allows him time during the day to help care for his infant daughter. On duty, nurses may call on him if, for instance, a patient becomes acutely short of breath during the night, he says. Dr. Gurjar can determine the cause and may be able to stabilize the patient with medication or oxygen masks. This could prevent a worsening condition that requires the patient to be transferred to intensive care and placed on a ventilator -- a more expensive intervention that carries greater risk for the patient.
Carilion Clinic in Virginia is looking to recruit as many as three nocturnists for its flagship hospital in Roanoke, so the 15 hospitalists on staff don't have to always cover nights. Ralph Whatley, chair of medicine, says it is preferable for a physician to regularly work nights, because hospitalists who alternate between day and night work may be at higher risk of "the kind of cognitive lapses that result in medical errors."
Some hospitals are also asking intensive-care doctors to take on extra night duties. At Baptist Memorial Hospital-Memphis in Tennessee, ICU specialists who work the 6 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift help staff Rapid Response Teams to cope with emergencies anywhere in the hospital. The teams include a critical-care nurse and a respiratory therapist. "If patients are admitted to the hospital and their condition is not stable, a night-time intensivist will go see them right away," says Emmel Golden, the medical director of the ICU. What's more, to improve communication between day and night shifts, day staffers do rounds each evening with the oncoming intensivist, nurses and respiratory therapist.
Teaching hospitals have long relied on medical residents and interns for overnight duty. But changes in work rules in recent years have forced them to reduce the number of hours medical trainees can work. This has resulted in shorter shifts and more frequent "hand-offs" of patients between shifts.
The Institute for Healthcare Improvement, a nonprofit group in Cambridge, Mass., is adapting lessons from the United Kingdom, where hospitals also have been learning to cope with new work rules using pilot programs called "Hospital at Night." Traditionally, U.K. hospitals were fully staffed at night with doctors who worked during the day and slept at the facility overnight. Under new rules, U.K. hospitals are trying to deliver the same care with far fewer doctors on site, with the result that many doctors are coming on for night duty who haven't seen patients during the day. The pilot programs include new systems for identifying the most ill and deteriorating patients, and for handing off patients between shifts.
While American hospitals have never had the U.K. model of fully staffed hospitals at night, many of the issues are the same. "We've had to address many of the problems that have beset nighttime care for decades, which are a problem for health care wherever it is practiced," says David Gozzard, chief medical officer of Conwy & Denbighshire NHS Trust, one of the hospital systems in the U.K. program. Dr. Gozzard, who is working in a fellowship program at
The risks of seeking after-hour care are well documented. Recent studies show higher death rates for patients who arrive at the hospital with strokes after hours. This is also the case for patients who have a cardiac arrest at night when they are already in the hospital. And Stanford University researchers who examined close to five million hospital admissions in three states reported last year that rates of complications are significantly higher on weekends for surgeries including vascular procedures and obstetrical trauma during cesarean sections.
Night-shift nurses often have bigger patient loads than nurses during the day, and may feel under pressure to take unsafe shortcuts. David Longnecker, an official at the Association of American Medical Colleges in Washington, D.C., says he was in a New York hospital for a diagnostic procedure recently. A nurse came in to change the bag on his IV medications twice during the night, he says. Even though he was awake, the nurse didn't ask him to identify himself or check the name on his wristband against the medication, which is standard procedure. "Fortunately, there was no bad outcome, but it was a perfect setup for a major accident," Dr. Longnecker says.
Beth Israel's Dr. Shulkin says patients should ask about their hospital's night staffing plans, such as whether a hospital has an attending physician on staff 24 hours a day. Patients also should make sure they know how to get hold of their own doctor after hours. It's important to keep a copy of one's medical history and medication list, since many hospitals don't have electronic records linked to doctor's offices.
Should a patient or family member encounter a problem in a hospital, don't accept being told, "'Sorry, there is nothing we can do at this hour,'" Dr. Shulkin says. "That's not true -- there is always a process in place to make sure a patient's needs are met at any hour, and that goes all the way up to the CEO of the hospital."
Set in 1980, this smooth, predictable first novel by model, actress and children's book author Porizkova tells the story of Jirina, who arrives in Paris a beautiful 15-year-old aspiring model. A Swede of Czech background, Jirina escapes teasing classmates when she's discovered and shipped off to a well-known modeling agency. Leaving behind divorced, unsympathetic parents and a beloved little sister, Jirina moves into the apartment of agency head Jean-Claude; his depressed ex-model wife, Marina; their neglected baby daughter; and another Swedish teen model. As household tensions rise, Jirina strikes out on her own, befriending the famous model Evalinda (also from Sweden), a gay makeup artist and a rich, cultured man who worships her—all while nursing a crush on a dashing Australian photographer. Jirina slowly gains confidence; meanwhile, those around her abuse drugs, have abortions, attempt suicide, get gay-bashed and die tragically. Jirina loses her virginity, finds disappointment in love and learns to use sex to forward her career. Her drive is palpable and her voice believable, but Jirina isn't much fun (others, bien sûr, are downright mean), and you can see the plot points coming from way down the runway. Too many loose ends make for an unsatisfying finale.
Jirina is a tall, lanky 15-year-old Czechoslovak from Sweden. Teased and taunted for her inability to fit in, Jirina jumps at a chance to model in Paris. However, the idea of being a glamorous model doesn't live up to the reality. Subject to harsh physical scrutiny; smarmy photographers; long, grueling days; and hostile fellow models, Jirina has to grow up fast or go home. And grow up she does--experimenting with alcohol, drugs, and sex, eventually becoming pregnant. A Model Summer is the debut novel by Porizkova, a very famous model herself. But while revealing modeling's dirty secrets, Porizkova loses sight of her narrator, sacrificing Jirina for the expose. Jirina is supposed to be a teenager; her voice is more like that of a 35-year-old. And for a girl who is supposed to be smart--commenting on classical music and existential literature--she questions nothing about what is happening around her. Ultimately, it is a novel full of contradictions that ends without any real closure.
With its cocaine days in the past, the Colombian seaport of Cartagena has emerged as the belle of the ball. This tropical city on the Caribbean is pulsating like a salsa party, drawing well-heeled Latin Americans and European socialites to its restored colonial mansions, fancy fusion restaurants and Old World-style plazas. Other rhythms can be heard, too. Guitar players stroll through the cobblestone alleyways. Beauty pageants and dance festivals keep the city swinging after dark. And techno dance clubs keep Cartagena’s revelers up till dawn. But this stunningly beautiful city also has its quiet side. White sand beaches and crystal-clear water are just a short hop away.
Friday
4 p.m.
1) STORMING THE WALLS
Cartagena is a city for walking, and its historic walled district feels like a Moroccan medina, with 300-year-old Spanish colonial buildings huddled along brick streets. The palette is saturated with deep blue, dusty rose, burnt orange and ochre. Cool sea breezes and plenty of shade make the old city feel quite comfortable even in the 90-degree heat. To get your bearings, wave down one of the horse-powered taxis (www.paseosencoche.com). The 15-minute ride across the old city, a Unesco World Heritage site, costs 30,000 pesos (about $17 at 1,800 pesos to the dollar). The coachman will point out sites as you clip-clop along and, at sunset, will light the candles in the headlamps.
6 p.m.
2) ROMANCING THE STONES
The 400-year-old stone walls encircling the city are surprisingly intact and stretch for more than two miles. Walk west along the wide plaza on top of the wall; the Caribbean is on your right, and the lovingly restored medieval streets on your left. For a sunset cocktail, stroll over to Café del Mar (Baluarte de Santo Domingo; 575-664-65-13; www.cafedelmarcolombia.com), grab an outdoor stool near the rusty cannons that once guarded the city, and order a Colombian piña colada (14,000 pesos).
8 p.m.
3) BON APPÉTIT
Cartagena features a rich culinary palate, combining flavors and ingredients from the Caribbean, Europe, Africa and even Asia. For a sumptuous but atypical meal, go around the corner from Gabriel García Márquez’s home to El Santísimo (Calle del Santísimo No. 8-19; 575-664-33-16; www.restauranteelsantisimo.com), where French-trained chefs prepare classic Colombian dishes with modern sauces served in a brick courtyard with dripping vines, soft breezes and candlelight. A favorite is prawns in a tamarind coconut sauce (45,000 pesos). Don’t skip dessert or, as the menu calls it, “the Sins of the Nun.” That would apply to La Envidia, a decadent mango mousse with a tangy grape sauce (18,000 pesos).
Saturday
9 a.m.
4) TOURING AT DAWN
There are few reasons to leave the old city, but one of them is to climb the massive Castillo de San Felipe (www.fortificacionesdecartagena.com), a huge fort built over the 17th and 18th centuries by the Spanish (or, more precisely, their slaves) to defend the port’s terrestrial flank. Start early before the sun broils everything. The fortress contains an ant farm of hidden tunnels that you can explore with or without a guide and that adventurous kids will love. A taxi from the old city is about 5,000 pesos; admission, 13,000 pesos.
11 a.m.
5) JUICY FRUIT
Take a fruit break. Palenque women peddle a rainbow of ripe fruit along the streets of El Centro, nearly all of it in nature’s protective wrappers: bananas, mangos, papayas, guamas, ciruelas, coconuts and guayabas. Try a níspero, a kiwi-shaped fruit with the texture of pear and the heavenly taste of chocolate, caramelized sugar and blackberry.
Noon
6) ART AND INQUISITION
Three must-see museums are within a block of one another and can be seen in under 30 minutes each. The Museo de Arte Moderno (Plaza San Pedro Claver; 575-664-58-15) showcases the fantastical works of Colombian artists like Dario Morales. The Gold Museum (Plaza de Bolívar; 575-660-07-78) is housed in a Baroque mansion and exhibits jewelry that eluded the Conquistadors. And, for those with strong constitutions, head across the plaza to the Palacio de la Inquisición (Plaza de Bolívar; 575-664-73-81), where rusted instruments of torture document the Roman Catholic Church’s efforts to root out heresy in the New World.
1:30 p.m.
7) WHAT’S IN A NAME?
The working-class neighborhood of Getsemaní has two popular restaurants said to be feuding over the rights to a name: La Casa de Socorro and La Cocina de Socorro. La Cocina is the fancier of the two. Locals seem to prefer La Casa (Calle Larga 8E-112, Getsemaní; 575-664-46-58), a diner that serves big portions of traditional Colombian seafood like shrimp and crab claws with coconut rice and red snapper with fried plantains. Lunch is about 50,000 pesos.
5 p.m.
8) TRY THESE ON
Native crafts like hammocks, clay figurines and colorfully painted wooden masks are available everywhere. For more unusual items, head to the stores along Calle Santo Domingo and Calle San Juan de Dios. Even if you’re not female and size 4, check out Colombia’s leading fashion designer, Silvia Tcherassi (Calle San Juan de Dios 31-11; 575- 664-94-10; www.silviatcherassi.com). The Abaco bookstore (Calle de la Iglesia 3-86; 575-664-83-38; www.abacolibros.com) stocks photography books featuring local architecture and artisans. And the Galería Cano (Centro Calle 334-11; 575-664-70-78) sells high-quality reproductions of pre-Columbian jewelry.
7 p.m.
9) WEDDING CRASHERS
Arguably the best time to visit one of the city’s magnificent cathedrals is at sundown, the wedding hour. And one of the most romantic is the 16th-century Church of San Pedro Claver (Plaza San Pedro Claver; 575-664-72-56). Guests start arriving around 6 p.m., dressed in white linen or formal wear (corbata negra). Follow them into the cavernous nave, lighted by candles and decorated with bouquets of fragrant white flowers. The strains of “Dona Nobis Pacem” resonate along the vaulted ceiling from the choir in the balcony while the bride and groom exchange their vows.
9 p.m.
10) REVOLUTION STOPS HERE
Beg or steal your way into La Vitrola (Calle Baloco No. 2-01; 575-660-07-11), a stylish restaurant that has become the gathering place of sophisticated Colombians. The atmosphere is 1940s Cuban, with sepia photographs of the owners’ friends, high ceiling fans and mahogany wine racks. On a recent night, three senior military officers in full uniform were at one table; a fashionable couple was at another, smoking cigarettes. The food is Nueva Colombiana, with specials like onion soup with pimento, cheese and crema de leche (11,000 pesos) and a baked grouper in a mango and passion fruit sauce (38,500 pesos).
11 p.m.
11) CARTAGENA SOCIAL CLUB
Cartagena is a musical city. In the late evening, a sea breeze freshens the air and the rhythm of trotting horses blends with the laughter and singing of friends gathered in bars, clubs and public squares. Take a table outside Donde Fidel (Plaza de los Coches 32-09) and order a Club Colombia beer. Then again, to hear live music, there’s no reason to leave La Vitrola, where on most nights a talented combo performs merengue, salsa and Cuban music. Sit at the bar and sip an aguardiente, the anise-flavored drink that’s a national favorite.
Sunday
9 a.m.
12) BACK TO NATURE
Slip back into nature at La Ciénega, a mangrove forest that teems with wildlife. Tours on a wooden canoe are available through Turinco (575-665-70-23; www.turincoctg.com, 30,000 pesos) and meet near the Hotel Las Américas (575-656-72-22; www.hotellasamericas.com.co). You’ll see kingfishers, herons and pelicans on one side of your boat and Cancún-style high rises from the other. Cross the road to La Boquilla, a popular beach along the sea. Find an umbrella, a hammock and a cool coconut lemonade.
If two roads diverged in a yellow wood, random fluctuations would influence which road stem cells traveled.
A new understanding of how stem cells choose among their possible fates could aid development of stem cell therapies for diseases, scientists say. A type of adult stem cell in bone marrow can develop along one of two paths: either the red or white blood cell lineages. Scientists have wondered why some bone marrow cells follow one path while other, seemingly identical cells go down the other.
New research shows that these bone marrow stem cells are not in fact a single, sharply defined type of cell, but rather have a blurry range of traits. Gene activity determines a cell’s biochemical traits, and for these stem cells, this genetic activity varies over a period of days. Each stem cell slowly “wanders” within the range, sometimes producing proteins that prime the cell for the red blood cell pathway, other times prepping the cell for the white blood cell option.
So a large group of stem cells will always contain a variety of cells covering this complete range of traits, distributed in a familiar bell curve.
“It’s like a cloud of mosquitoes,” explains lead scientist Sui Huang of Harvard Medical School in Boston. The varied cells “kind of stay together, though each one of them is moving around” within the range of possible traits. When cues in the cells’ surroundings trigger the cells to choose a fate, each cell will follow the path that it happens to be primed for at that moment, Huang and his colleagues report May 22 in Nature.
The researchers isolated three subgroups of mouse bone marrow stem cells according to where the cells fell within the bell curve — the two edges or the middle. Surprisingly, after separation each subgroup remained for a few days in its region of the bell curve. The cells in each group took more than nine days to diversify and fill the full range of the bell curve — indicating that this variation was due to more than just “noise” in gene activity. If the bell curve was simply because of noise, this diversification would have only taken hours.
“I think it’s fantastic,” comments Mads Kaern, a systems biologist at the University of Ottawa in Canada. “If you ever want to control stem cells for clinical purposes for stem cell therapies, we have to be able to control what these cells are doing. This research really pushes this a great deal forward.”
“It’s very common that you want to create muscle progenitor cells to repair damaged muscles, but they’re really hard to get in high quantity because we don’t know how to control lineage choices appropriately yet,” Kaern says. Typically, scientists can only coax roughly 10 or 20 percent of a batch of stem cells to develop into a desired cell type, such as muscle cells. Immature stem cells implanted into a patient can grow out of control and form tumors, so for stem cell therapies to be safe, scientists must learn to convert virtually all of the stem cells in a batch.
Instead of further refining the cocktail of chemicals used to steer stem cells in the right direction, scientists could pre-sort the stem cells, selecting only those that happen to be at the correct end of the bell curve at the moment to become the desired cell type, Huang suggests.
In the study, Huang and his colleagues also noticed that the 3,000 or so genes they observed did not vary in activity independently of each other. Instead, the genes varied in a coordinated way as the cells “wandered” among the range of possible traits. This suggests that the fuzziness of that range arises from the fact that the network of interacting genes is riddled with feedback loops, which makes the network highly nonlinear, Huang says.
“If you don’t have a very highly nonlinear interaction network, then this would not be possible,” Kaern says.
Believe it or not, science has barely begun to fathom the peacock’s tail. Subtle as a pink tuxedo, one might think. Big flashy thing. Peahens love it. What’s not to understand.
Roslyn Dakin, though, has plenty of questions. There’s the matter of choreography. Already this year she has left Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada, to visit peacocks (the birds) in Los Angeles and New York. She has spent weeks collecting feathers and watching males fan out their finery before the ladies. “The males do all sorts of strange footwork,” she says.
With their tails a wall of shimmer, they sidestep or sometimes strut backward to their audience. Dakin is testing her idea that there’s a method here. For the final act of the show, males vibrate the big eye-bearing feathers so vigorously they make a rattling sound, and Dakin hypothesizes that the males’ footwork maneuvers them and their audience to line up with the sun for the finale.
A female with sun right behind her gets the most dazzling angle on the feathers, and for a peacock, angles are everything. The fiery greens and blues that have become a symbol of extravagant ornament have no green or blue pigment in them. There’s black pigment, but the rest is all just the play of light.
The trick for conjuring colors out of nothing depends on structure at the scale of hundreds of nanometers. At this scale, the smallest branchings within peacock feathers reveal themselves coated with arrays of rods. When light bounces off, certain wavelengths combine to intensify a color as other wavelengths interfere with, and cancel out, each other. The effect of this symphony of light shifts with the angle of view, the definition of iridescence.
Dakin described her work in February at a conference on iridescence held at Arizona State University in Tempe. The physicists who attended have been discovering that birds, beetles, butterflies and plenty of other creatures evolved cutting-edge optical systems long before modern technology did. Dakin and other biologists are now trying to figure out what the animals do with their light shows. These nano-marvels make excellent systems for testing ideas about how animal communication systems evolve.
One of the questions under lively debate at the meeting was whether iridescence has signaling power because it is difficult to manufacture or maintain. Only the best males would flaunt the brightest colors, and females would evolve to favor the flashiest fellows.
In contrast, Richard Prum of Yale University, a biologist at the conference, argues that searching for such clues to quality could be just wishful thinking. Iridescent glitter could appeal to female animals all right. But the driving force for evolving that preference could have nothing to do with the male’s health or any other quality. The majority of iridescence, he says, could be arbitrary, or “merely beautiful.”
Mere prettiness is no slur on the marvels of iridescent structures. A longtime iridescence specialist, developmental biologist Helen Ghiradella of the University at Albany, State University of New York, has published pages and pages of scanning electron microscope images revealing huge variety in the fine details of the textures of animal surfaces: bumpy surfaces like rows of Christmas trees, fields of latticework honeycombs, bristles that work like fiber optic cables (but better). She reels off examples of the cutting-edge developments in optics that she has observed in nature: thin films, photonic crystals ordered in one, two and three dimensions, plus surfaces that combine techniques.
She protests the unfairness of questions about which species flaunt the showiest iridescence. When pressed, though, she offers examples that include the Southwest’s scarab beetle Chrysina gloriosa. The naked human eye can’t detect the full light show, alas, so people have to make do with admiring the beetle’s shimmery green back. Equipped with the right instruments, though, an observer realizes that the beetle reflects the controlled spirals of both right- and left-handed circularly polarized light.
Even one of the field’s old classics, the Morpho butterflies that Ghiradella studied during the 1970s, still hold surprises. In 2007, she contributed to a Morpho article in the February Nature Photonics published by a General Electric research team led by Radislav Potyrailo of the company’s Niskayuna, N.Y., lab. Potyrailo had seen pictures of a Morpho wing nanostructure and realized that vapors of different gases should subtly alter the butterfly’s iridescence. The GE team and Ghiradella analyzed the effects, which Potyrailo says suggest new options for developing sensors that change color with a whiff of a certain vapor.
Natural structures for controlling colors certainly should be an inspiration for engineers, and physicists should pay attention, says Andrew R. Parker of the University of Oxford in England. His group studies optical biomimetics, or nature-inspired technology. The animals’ devices come from millions of years of evolutionary trial and error and, as he puts it, “the average physicist has rather less time.”
Imitating nature isn’t easy. Peter Vukusic, who estimates his research group at the University of Exeter in England has looked for these structures in 500 to 600 species of insects, still uses words like “unbelievable.”
He and his Exeter colleagues have attempted to replicate the surface complexity of a butterfly wing. Starting almost a decade ago, they experimented with building large-scale models of these structures, at first just for show-and-tell but then in the hopes of doing experiments to understand the novel optical properties.
Vukusic, a veteran of restoring old houses, started trying to create repetitious elements in wood the way a router shapes chair rails. He wasn’t even trying to build a whole wing, since he’d scaled up so much that a single butterfly would spread more than a kilometer.
Even at that extreme magnification, the skilled and inventive fabricators for Exeter’s laboratories struggled to produce even grossly simplified versions.
Then, while driving home one day, Vukusic says, he “experienced a moment of clarity—suddenly the mist rises.” Vukusic abandoned several years’ worth of wooden butterfly parts and used a rapid prototyping system to bring wings into the era of computer-controlled polymer shaping. He and his colleagues finally created chunks of opaque white plastic that mimic a fleck of wing surface accurately enough for research purposes.
“This thing looks like a dinner plate,” he says. At this large scale, the model bit of a Morpho butterfly wing, for example, holds shapes that resemble a row of white Christmas trees, each a few centimeters high. At this scale, the models do nothing to light but can manipulate the longer wavelengths of microwaves as stand-ins. Vukusic’s team is using these models and microwaves to study how insect wings create a silvery effect. His models starred at the February workshop in Tempe.
Animals might have a hard time with these specialized structures too. If they do, some biologists suggest that the challenges give iridescence its value.
In one scenario, the structures represent a handicap. Growing them might sap energy from other developmental processes. Or flying around as a living disco ball might stir up predators. Costly iridescence would become the male butterfly’s Porsche, says Darrell Kemp of James Cook University in Cairns, Australia. In a related scenario, “iridescence is just plain difficult, not necessarily costly, for all males to generate, like a good sense of humor in human males,” Kemp says.
Earlier work on what female butterflies like had resoundingly shown that color matters. When researchers blotted out the iridescent ultraviolet markings on the wings of male Colias butterflies, the researchers found that the males had a pretty lonely existence.
Yet Kemp argues these earlier experiments had created such drastic changes in male finery that researchers couldn’t say in what way the color mattered. The female might have rejected the male because she no longer recognized him as the right species. He revised experimental procedures and worked with Hypolimnas bolina butterflies. The upper surface of their wings are iridescent in ultraviolet wavelengths, which females of that species can see. The males must look like flashing beacons as they flap their wings.
To avoid the extremes of earlier experiments, Kemp used a screening substance to dull the males’ wings to about half their former UV brilliance. For comparison, he also blacked out the UV patches with a pen on some of the males. In tests in fields and enclosures, marked males failed to attract the attention that females bestowed on the full-UV fellows. The loss of brightness matters to female butterflies in choosing mates, he concluded last year in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
A similar experiment finds the same dynamic in Eurema hecabe butterflies. Dulled males meet with less success in mating, particularly in attracting the supposedly more desirable large females, Kemp reports in the January/February Behavioral Ecology.
So Kemp says he’s convinced that females pay attention to males’ iridescent light shows. Now he’s working on understanding what kind of information those shows might contain. He has raised caterpillars under sorry conditions and checked to see if their displays changed. Both those that had to make do with skimpy rations and those that as pupae endured great swings of heat and cold grew poorly. As adults, their wings did not flash as brightly. Also, he noted that the iridescence seemed to diminish more than other traits he checked, such as pigment colors. Thus the intensity of iridescence could serve as a sensitive indicator of a male’s history.
One theory had also proposed that color signals could carry information about genetic quality, perhaps identifying certain males with the built-in resistance to laugh off slings and arrows of developmental stress. Kemp looked for signs that clusters of related individuals looked pretty good despite the stresses. Nice idea, but in this case, no support.
Prum says he accepts that animals use traits like iridescence as signals. What he objects to is what he describes as a widespread presumption that signals routinely carry information pertinent to the decision at hand. Some human signals, like onomatopoeic words, do carry clues to their meaning. Pop, snap, murmur. But plenty of human signals, like the words plenty of human signals, don’t. Genetic modeling, says Prum, shows that animal signals can easily arise without some innate relevant clue, such as a connection to male quality. So he hypothesizes that most animal signals will turn out to be like plenty of human signals.
The smuggler in the public service announcement sat handcuffed in prison garb, full of bravado and shrugging off the danger of bringing illegal immigrants across the border.
“Sometimes they die in the desert, or the cars crash, or they drown,” he said. “But it’s not my fault.”
The smuggler in the commercial, produced by the Mexican government several years ago, was played by an American named Raul Villarreal, who at the time was a United States Border Patrol agent and a spokesman for the agency here.
Now, federal investigators are asking: Was he really acting?
Mr. Villarreal and a brother, Fidel, also a former Border Patrol agent, are suspected of helping to smuggle an untold number of illegal immigrants from Mexico and Brazil across the border. The brothers quit the Border Patrol two years ago and are believed to have fled to Mexico.
The Villarreal investigation is among scores of corruption cases in recent years that have alarmed officials in the Homeland Security Department just as it is hiring thousands of border agents to stem the flow of illegal immigration.
The pattern has become familiar: Customs officers wave in vehicles filled with illegal immigrants, drugs or other contraband. A Border Patrol agent acts as a scout for smugglers. Trusted officers fall prey to temptation and begin taking bribes.
Increased corruption is linked, in part, to tougher enforcement, driving smugglers to recruit federal employees as accomplices. It has grown so worrisome that job applicants will soon be subject to lie detector tests to ensure that they are not already working for smuggling organizations. In addition, homeland security officials have reconstituted an internal affairs unit at Customs and Border Protection, one of the largest federal law enforcement agencies, overseeing both border agents and customs officers.
When the Homeland Security Department was created in 2003, the internal affairs unit was dissolved and its functions spread among other agencies. Since the unit was reborn last year, it has grown from five investigators to a projected 200 by the end of the year.
Altogether, there are about 200 open cases pending against law enforcement employees who work the border. In the latest arrests, four employees in Arizona, Texas and California were charged this month with helping to smuggle illegal immigrants into the country.
While the corruption investigations involve a small fraction of the overall security workforce on the border, the numbers are growing. In the 2007 fiscal year, the Homeland Security Department’s main anticorruption arm, the inspector general’s office, had 79 investigations under way in the four states bordering Mexico, compared with 31 in 2003. Officials at other federal law enforcement agencies investigating border corruption also said their caseloads had risen.
Some of the recent cases involve border guards who had worked for their agencies for a short time, including the arrest this month of a recruit at the Border Patrol academy in New Mexico on gun smuggling charges.
The federal government says it carefully screens applicants, but some internal affairs investigators say they have been unable to keep up with the increased workload.
“It’s going to get worse before it gets better,” said James Wong, an internal affairs agent with Customs and Border Protection. “It’s very difficult for us to get out and vet each and every one of the applicants as well as we should.”
The Border Patrol alone is expected to grow to more than 20,000 agents by the end of 2009, more than double from 2001, when the agency began to expand in response to concerns about national security. There has also been a large increase in the number of customs officers.
James Tomsheck, the assistant commissioner for internal affairs at Customs and Border Protection, said the agency was “deeply concerned” that smugglers were sending operatives to take jobs with the Border Patrol and at ports.
Mr. Tomsheck said the agency intended to administer random lie-detector tests to 10 percent of new hires this year, with the goal of eventually testing all applicants. His office has contracts with 155 retired criminal investigators, adding 36 since last fall, to do background checks.
In one of the new corruption cases this month, at a border crossing east of San Diego, a customs officer allowed numerous cars with dozens of illegal immigrants and hundreds of pounds of drugs to pass through his inspection lane, investigators said.
The officer, Luis Alarid, 31, had worked at the crossing less than a year, and the loads included a vehicle driven by Mr. Alarid’s uncle, the authorities said. Mr. Alarid has pleaded not guilty to a charge of conspiracy to smuggle. Investigators found about $175,000 in cash in his house, according to court records.
In another recent case, Margarita Crispin, a customs inspector in El Paso, Tex., began helping drug smugglers just a few months after she was hired in 2003, according to prosecutors. She helped the smugglers for four years before she was arrested last year and sentenced in April to 20 years in prison and ordered to forfeit up to $5 million.
Although bad apples turn up in almost every law enforcement agency, the corruption cases expose a worrisome vulnerability for national and border security. The concern, several officials said, is that corrupt agents let people into the country whose intentions may be less innocent than finding work.
“If you can get a corrupt inspector, you have the keys to the kingdom,” said Andrew P. Black, an F.B.I. agent who supervises a multiagency task force focused on corruption on the San Diego border.
Comparing corruption among police agencies is difficult because of the varying standards and procedures for handling internal investigations, said Lawrence W. Sherman, the director of the Jerry Lee Center of Criminology at the University of Pennsylvania and an authority on corruption.
But he described policing the border as “potentially one of the most corruptible tasks in law enforcement” because of the solitary nature of much of the work and the desperation of people seeking to cross.
Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, declined an interview. But in response to questions at a recent news conference, he suggested that the breadth and depth of border security improvements would inevitably produce problem officers.
“There is an old expression among prosecutors,” he said. “Big cases, big problems. Little cases, little problems. No cases, no problems. Some people take the view we ought to make no cases and then we would have no problems. I think that is a head-in-the-sand view, which I do not endorse.”
A Veteran Gone Bad
The customs inspector stands just outside his booth, his hand waving a stream of cars through the Otay Mesa crossing just east of San Diego. They zip past, one after another, no questions asked, an unusually easy welcome into the United States where inspectors are known to grill citizens about their travels before allowing them through.
But time was running short for this Customs and Border Protection officer, Michael Gilliland, a revered veteran on the late shift expecting a special delivery — a vehicle with several illegal immigrants — in his crossing lane.
Rather than intercept them, he had arranged for their safe passage through his lane, federal prosecutors said.
Mr. Black, the F.B.I. agent from San Diego, shook his head as he watched a surveillance videotape of Mr. Gilliland.
“You’re basically giving that smuggling organization an opportunity to conceal whatever else they want in that vehicle,” he said, “whether it's drugs, weapons, terrorists.”
The smugglers use any ruse available to lure border workers but seem to favor deploying attractive women as bait. They flirt and charm and beg the officers, often middle-aged men, to “just this once” let an unauthorized relative or friend through. And then another and another.
Prosecutors believe this is how smugglers ensnared Mr. Gilliland, who eventually pleaded guilty to taking $70,000 to $120,000 in exchange for letting hundreds of illegal immigrants pass through his lane. He was sentenced last year to five years in federal prison. Two women he had befriended also pleaded guilty.
The case against Mr. Gilliland, 46, stands out for the number of immigrants he helped and the shock of a respected veteran gone bad.
To young inspectors, Mr. Gilliland was a mentor, quick with advice, even an embrace, a burly go-to type with 16 years under his belt.
“He knew the laws backward and forward,” said Edward Archuleta, an internal affairs agent with Customs and Border Protection who once worked with Mr. Gilliland and eventually helped bring him down.
A tip steered F.B.I. agents to Mr. Gilliland’s illegal activities, but it took agents two years to build the case. The evidence against him included secretly recorded phone conversations in which Mr. Gilliland coordinated with Mexican smugglers when to drive their cargo of illegal immigrants through inspection lanes.
One morning, while Mr. Gilliland was taking a break from his shift, agents called him over and told him he was under arrest. They had braced for Mr. Gilliland to become belligerent, but instead he collapsed into a chair, weak-kneed.
“My grandfather always told me that when you’re born, the only thing you’re born with is your word, and only you can give that away, your integrity,” Mr. Gilliland said at his sentencing hearing. “And I’m sorry.”
The case against the Villarreal brothers — the former Border Patrol agents in San Diego — illustrates how hard it has been for investigators to hunt for and root out corrupt officers, many of whom know how to game the system.
The Villarreals would meet illegal immigrants near the border. The doors of their government-issue truck would swing open and Mexicans and Brazilians would climb in. Off they drove, Border Patrol agents at the wheel, but not to a station or jail, investigators said.
Instead, they said, the migrants were taken to a drop house in San Diego and later transported by others in the smuggling ring to cities and towns far from the border.
The case against the Villarreals had shock value, even to those on the inside.
“Just really brazen, broad daylight,” said an investigator, who was granted anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss a continuing investigation. “They could say, ‘We picked these guys up, we’re taking them in.’ ”
As they closed in on the brothers, a squad of agents from several federal agencies met. Some had qualms about speaking openly in front of such a large group, fearing internal leaks.
Their fears were apparently borne out when, a couple of weeks after the meeting, the brothers quit their posts, left their badges at their family’s home in National City, Calif., and have not been seen publicly since.
A lawyer for the family, Jon Ronis, declined to say where the brothers were and said neither they nor family members would comment. Mr. Ronis said Raul and Fidel Villarreal were ready to defend themselves if the government brought a case.
Federal officials declined to comment because the case was still open. But investigators described some aspects of it on condition of anonymity. When the public service announcement was being made for Mexico, for example, Raul Villarreal spoke excitedly about his role in producing it, even suggesting camera angles and lighting, said a person familiar with its production.
Just when and why the brothers turned against the Border Patrol is unclear, even to the investigators. There is speculation that Raul had grown disgruntled with the work, chafing at having been moved back into the field from his public affairs job, considered a comfortable, high-profile position.
The Villarreal case is especially alarming for the level of trust the brothers had earned within the Border Patrol. Their betrayal has had the effect, at least in some investigations, of leading the authorities to move in more quickly when agents are suspected of wrongdoing.
In the case of Jose Olivas Jr., a Border Patrol agent in San Diego who was discovered serving as a scout for smugglers, an arrest was made within a year. Mr. Olivas, an agent for 10 years who had worked as a liaison between the agency and the United States attorney’s office, was sentenced in January to three years in prison.
The drawback to moving in fast, investigators said later, is that they probably will never know how deep Mr. Olivas’s ties were to the smuggling organization. He suggested to a judge that he had been drawn to smuggling to help pay his bills.
An internal Web site at Customs and Border Protection features a page devoted to a rogue’s gallery of agents and officers recently convicted of corruption-related charges.
The intention, homeland security officials say, is to send the message that corruption will not be tolerated. That message has taken other forms, as well. When Mr. Olivas, the San Diego border agent, was sentenced to prison, several agents attended the court hearing at the behest of homeland security officials to shame him publicly.
“I am truly embarrassed just looking at them,” Mr. Olivas told the judge. “I am truly sorry for the breach of trust that was given to me.”
But if the department is serious about catching wrongdoers, investigators of corruption cases say it also needs to make fundamental changes in the way it polices the border police.
One result of the awkward marriage of agencies that begat the Homeland Security Department is that three internal affairs units, in addition to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, have a hand in corruption investigations. In the best case, having more than one unit investigate corruption can be a “force multiplier,” in the words of one investigator, but more often, it can slow cases down and lead to confusion over who should take the lead, several investigators said.
The Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general has nearly 170 investigators to police 208,000 department employees — including other large agencies like the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Transportation Security Administration, the Secret Service — and gets first crack at cases. When it passes on an investigation, the case is picked up by either the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s office of professional responsibility or the Customs and Border Protection internal affairs unit.
The F.B.I. also develops its own cases. Don Allen, a retired agent who until 2005 supervised a multiagency task force in San Diego investigating corruption among border officers, said internal affairs units did not always readily share information and often resented any sense of being big-footed by an outside agency. He said law enforcement agencies often “had a negative impression of the bureau.”
Thomas Frost, an assistant inspector general with the Homeland Security Department, said the limited number of investigators meant his office focused on “those most important cases and what resources we can bring to bear.”
He suggested it would be “more efficient” if his office had more investigative resources under its control so that it could better track “everything going on.”
“Let’s face it,” Mr. Frost said, “part of the issue of the border is it is kind of a balloon. When you squeeze one part, another bulges.”
Some Recent Cases
Jose Ramiro Arredondo, 33, a Customs and Border Protection officer in Laredo, Tex., was arrested in March after a smuggler who had been detained told the authorities that Mr. Arredondo had helped bring illegal immigrants across the border.
Miguel Angel Avina, a trainee at the Border Patrol academy in Artesia, N.M., was arrested in May on fraud and conspiracy charges related to his participation last year in a ring that smuggled at least 110 guns into Mexico, the government said. He has been dismissed from the academy.
Juan Luis Sanchez, 31, a Border Patrol agent, pleaded guilty May 20 to drug, bribery and fraud charges. He admitted transporting at least 3,000 pounds of marijuana in his Border Patrol truck from summer 2002 to January 2004 in exchange for $45,000 in bribes.
Jose Magana, 44, a Customs and Border Protection officer at the San Luis, Ariz., border crossing, was arrested May 12 on charges of conspiring to smuggle illegal immigrants. The authorities say he allowed people to pass uninspected through.
Luis Francisco Alarid, 31, a Customs and Border Protection officer, was arrested May 16 on charges of conspiring to smuggle illegal immigrants and drugs into the United States. Mr. Alarid allowed numerous vehicles with migrants or drugs to pass through his inspection lane since at least February at a border crossing east of San Diego, the authorities say. One vehicle, containing 18 illegal immigrants, was driven by his uncle. He has pleaded not guilty.
Plant hormones (also known as plant growth regulators (PGRs) and phytohormones) are chemicals that regulate plant growth. Plant hormones are signal molecules produced at specific locations in the plant, and occur in extremely low concentrations. The hormones cause altered processes in target cells locally and at other locations. Plants, unlike animals, lack glands that produce and secrete hormones. Plant hormones shape the plant, affecting seed growth, time of flowering, the sex of flowers, senescence of leaves and fruits. They affect which tissues grow upward and which grow downward, leaf formation and stem growth, fruit development and ripening, plant longevity and even plant death. Hormones are vital to plant growth and, if they were to lack them, plants would be mostly a mass of undifferentiated cells.
The word hormone is derived from Greek and means 'set in motion.' They are naturally produced within plants, and very similar chemicals are produced by fungi and bacteria which also can influence plant growth. A large number of related chemical compounds also have been synthesized by humans that function as hormones too, which are called plant growth regulators, or PGRs for short. At the beginning of the study of plant hormones, "phytohormone" was the commonly-used term, but its use is less widely applied now.
Plant hormones are not nutrients but chemicals, that in very small amounts promote and influence the development and differentiation of cells and tissues. Plant hormones affect gene expression and transcription levels, cellular division and growth.
The biosynthesis of plant hormones within plant tissues is often diffuse and not always localized, because unlike animals, which have two circulatory systems (lymphatic and cardiovascular) powered by a heart that move fluids around the body, plant hormones often move passively about the plant. Plants utilize simple chemical hormones that move more easily through the plant's tissues. They are often produced and used in the same vicinity within the plant body, plant cells even produce hormones that have an effect on the same cell producing them.
Hormones are transported within the plant by utilizing four types of movements. For localized movement, cytoplasmic streaming within cells and slow diffusion of ions and molecules between cells are utilized. Vascular tissues are used to move hormones from one part of the plant to another, these include sieve tubes that move sugars from the leaves to the roots and flowers, and xylem that moves water and mineral solutes from the roots to the foliage.
Not all plant cells respond to hormones, but cells that do so, are programmed to respond at specific points in their life cycle. The greatest effects occur at specific stages during the cell's life, with diminished effects occurring before or after this period. Plants need hormones at very specific times during their growth and at specific locations within the plant. They also need to disengage the effects that hormones have when they are no longer needed. The production of hormones occurs very often at sites of active growth within the meristems, and are produced by cells before they have fully differentiated into their “adult” form. After production hormones are sometimes moved to other parts of the plant where they cause an immediate influence or they can be stored in cells to be released later. Plants use different pathways to regulate internal hormone quantities and moderate their effects; they can regulate the amount of chemicals used to biosynthesize the hormones. They can store them in cells, inactivate them, or cannibalize already-formed hormones by conjugating them with carbohydrates, amino acids or peptides. Plants can also break down hormones chemically, effectively destroying them. Plants can also move hormones around the plant to dilute their concentrations.
The concentration of hormones required for plant responses are very low (10-6 to 10-5 mol/L). Because of these low concentrations it has been very difficult to study plant hormones and only since the late 1970s have scientists been able to start piecing together their effects on, and relationships to, plant physiology.[3] Much of the early work on plant hormones involved studying plants that were genetically deficient in hormones or involved the use of tissue cultured plants grown in vitro that were subjected to differing ratios of hormones and the resultant growth compared. The earliest scientific observations and studies though, date back to the 1880s; the determination and observation of plant hormones and their identification was spread-out over the next 70 years.
It is generally accepted that there are five major classes of plant hormones, some of which are made up of many different chemicals that can vary in structure from one plant to the next. The chemicals are each grouped together into one of these classes based on their structural similarities and on their effects on plant physiology. Other plant growth regulators that are not easily grouped into these classes exist naturally, including chemicals that inhibit plant growth or interrupt the physiological processes within plants. Each class has positive as well as inhibitory functions, and they most often work in tandem with each other, with varying ratios of one or more interplaying to affect growth regulation.
The five major classes are:
Abscisic acid
Abscisic acid (ABA)
Abscisic acid (ABA)
Abscisic acid also called ABA, was discovered and researched under two different names before its chemical properties were fully known, it was called dormin and abscicin II. Once it was determined that the two latter named compounds were the same, it was named abscisic acid. The name "abscisic acid" was given because it was found in high concentrations in newly-abscissed or freshly-fallen leaves.
This class of PGR is composed of one chemical compound normally produced in the leaves of plants, originating from chloroplasts, especially when plants are under stress. In general, it acts as an inhibitory chemical compound that effects bud growth, seed and bud dormancy. It mediates changes within the apical meristem causing bud dormancy and the alteration of the last set of leaves into protective bud covers. Since it was found in freshly-adscissed leaves, it was thought to play a role in the processes of natural leaf drop but further research has disproven this. In plant species from temperate parts of the world it plays a role in leaf and seed dormancy by inhibiting growth, but, as it is dissipated from seeds or buds, growth begins. In other plants, as ABA levels decrease, growth then commences as gibberellin levels increase. Without ABA, buds and seeds would start to grow during warm periods in winter and be killed when it froze again. Since ABA dissipates slowly from the tissues and its effects take time to be offset by other plant hormones, there is a delay in physiological pathways that provide some protection from premature growth. It accumulates within seeds during fruit maturation, preventing seed germination within the fruit, or seed germination before winter. Abscisic acid's effects are degraded within plant tissues, during cold temperatures or by its removal by water washing in out of the tissues, releasing the seeds and buds from dormancy.
In plants water stressed, ABA plays a role in closing the stomata. Soon after plants are water stressed and the roots are deficient in water, a signal moves up to the leaves causing the formation of ABA precursors, these precursors move to the roots which release ABA that is translocated to the foliage through the vascular system,[6] which regulates the potassium or sodium uptake within the guard cells, which then loses turgidity, closing the stomata.[7][8] ABA exists in all parts of the plant and its concentration within any tissue seems to mediate its effects and function as a hormone, its degradation or more properly catabolism within the plant affects metabolic reactions and cellular growth and production of other hormones. Plants start life as a seed with high ABA levels, just before the seed germinates ABA levels decrease; during germination and early growth of the seedling, ABA levels decrease even more. As plants begin to produce shoots with fully functional leaves - ABA levels begin to increase, slowing down cellular growth in more "mature" areas of the plant. Stress from water or predation effects ABA production and catabolism rates which mediate another cascade of effects triggering specific responses from targeted cells. Scientists are still piecing together the complex interactions and effects of this and other phytohormones.
Auxins are compounds that positively influence cell enlargement, bud formation and root initiation. They also promote the production of other hormones and in conjunction with cytokinins, they control the growth of stems, roots, flowers and fruits.[10] Auxins were the first class of growth regulators discovered.[11] They affect cell elongation by altering cell wall plasticity. Auxins decrease in light and increase where its dark. They stimulate cambium cells to divide and in stems cause secondary xylem to differentiate. Auxins act to inhibit the growth of buds lower down the stems, affecting a process called apical dominance, and also promote lateral and adventitious root development and growth. Auxins promote flower initiation, converting stems into flowers. When auxins are no longer produced by the growing point of a plant, this initiates leaf abscission. Seeds produce auxins, that regulate specific protein synthesis,[12] as they develop within the flower after pollination, causing the flower to develop a fruit to contain the developing seeds. Auxins are toxic to plants in large concentrations; they are most toxic to dicots and less so to monocots. Because of this property, synthetic auxin herbicides including 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T have been developed and used for weed control. Auxins, especially 1-Naphthaleneacetic acid (NAA) and Indole-3-butyric acid (IBA), are also commonly applied to stimulate root growth when taking cuttings of plants. The most common auxin found in plants is indoleacetic acid or IAA.
Cytokinins
Cytokinins or CKs are a group of chemicals that influence cell division and shoot formation. They were called kinins in the past when the first cytokinins were isolated from yeast cells. They also help delay senescence or the aging of tissues, are responsible for mediating auxin transport throughout the plant, and affect internodal length and leaf growth. They have a highly-synergistic effect in concert with auxins and the ratios of these two groups of plant hormones affect most major growth periods during a plant's lifetime. Cytokinins counter the apical dominance induced by auxins; they in conjunction with ethylene promote abscission of leaves, flower parts and fruits.
Ethylene is a gas that forms from the breakdown of methionine, which is in all cells. Ethylene has very limited solubility in water and does not accumulate within the cell but diffuses out of the cell and escapes out of the plant. Its effectiveness as a plant hormone is dependent on its rate of production versus its rate of escaping into the atmosphere. Ethylene is produced at a faster rate in rapidly growing and dividing cells, especially in darkness. New growth and newly-germinated seedlings produce more ethylene than can escape the plant, which leads to elevated amounts of ethylene, inhibiting leaf expansion. As the new shoot is exposed to light, reactions by photochrome in the plant's cells produce a signal for ethylene production to decrease, allowing leaf expansion. Ethylene affects cell growth and cell shape; when a growing shoot hits an obstacle while underground, ethylene production greatly increases, preventing cell elongation and causing the stem to swell. The resulting thicker stem can exert more pressure against the object impeding its path to the surface. If the shoot does not reach the surface and the ethylene stimulus becomes prolonged, it affects the stems natural geotropic response, which is to grow upright, allowing it to grow around an object. Studies seem to indicate that ethylene affects stem diameter and height: When stems of trees are subjected to wind, causing lateral stress, greater ethylene production occurs, resulting in thicker, more sturdy tree trunks and branches. Ethylene affects fruit-ripening: Normally, when the seeds are mature, ethylene production increases and builds-up within the fruit, resulting in a climacteric event just before seed dispersal.
Gibberellins or GAs include a large range of chemicals that are produced naturally within plants and by fungi. They were first discovered when Japanese researchers noticed a chemical produced by a fungus called Gibberella fujikuroi that produced abnormal growth in rice plants. Gibberellins play a major role in seed germination, affecting enzyme production that mobilizes food production that new cells need for growth. This is done by modulating chromosomal transcription. In seedlings a layer of cells called the aleurone layer wraps around the endosperm tissue: During seed germination, the seedling produces GA that is transported to the aleurone layer, which responds by producing enzymes that break down stored food reserves within the endosperm, which are utilized by the growing seedling. GAs produce bolting of rosette-forming plants, increasing internodal length. They promote flowering, cellular division, and in seeds growth after germination. Gibberellins also reverse the inhibition of shoot growth and dormancy induced by ABA.[15]
Other identified plant growth regulators include:
1. Brassinolides - plant steroids chemically similar to animal steroid hormones. First isolated from pollen of the mustard family and extensively studied in Arabidopsis. They promote cell elongation and cell division, differentiation of xylem tissues, and inhibit leaf abscission.[16] Plants found deficient in brassinolides suffer from dwarfism.
2. Salicylic acid - in some plants activates genes that assist in the defense against pathogenic invaders.
3. Jasmonates - are produced from fatty acids and seem to promote the production of defense proteins that are used to fend off invading organisms. They are believed to also have a role in seed germination, the storage of protein in seeds and seem to effect root growth.
4. Signalling peptides
5. Systemin - a polypeptide consisting of 18 amino acids, functions as a long-distance signal to activate chemical defenses against herbivores.
6. Polyamines - strongly basic molecules of low molecular weight that have been found in all organisms studied thus far - essential for plant growth and development and affect the process of mitosis and meiosis.
7. Nitric oxide (NO) - has been found to serve as as signal in hormonal and defense responses.
Plant stress hormones activate cellular responses, including cell death, to diverse stress situations in plants. Researchers have found that some plant stress hormones share the ability to adversely affect human cancer cells [1]. For example, sodium salicylate has been found to suppress proliferation of lymphoblastic leukemia, prostate, breast, and melanoma human cancer cells. Jasmonic acid, a plant stress hormone that belongs to the jasmonate family, induced death in lymphoblastic leukemia cells. Methyl jasmonate has been found to induce cell death in a number of cancer cell lines.
Synthetic plant hormones or PGRs are commonly used in a number of different techniques involving plant propagation from cuttings, grafting, micropropagation, and tissue culture.
The propagation of plants by cuttings of fully-developed leaves, stems, or roots is performed by gardeners utilizing auxin as a rooting compound applied to the cut surface; the auxins are taken into the plant and promote root initiation. In grafting, auxin promotes callus tissue formation, which joins the surfaces of the graft together. In micropropagation, different PGRs are used to promote multiplication and then rooting of new plantlets. In the tissue-culturing of plant cells, PGRs are used to produce callus growth, multiplication, and rooting.
Plant hormones affect seed germination and dormancy by affecting different parts of the seed.
Embryo dormancy is characterized by a high ABA/GA ratio, whereas the seed has a high ABA sensitivity and low GA sensitivity. To release the seed from this type of dormancy and initiate seed germination, an alteration in hormone biosynthesis and degradation towards a low ABA/GA ratio, along with a decrease in ABA sensitivity and an increase in GA sensitivity needs to occur.
ABA controls embryo dormancy, and GA embryo germination. Seed coat dormancy involves the mechanical restriction of the seed coat, this along with a low embryo growth potential, effectively produces seed dormancy. GA releases this dormancy by increasing the embryo growth potential, and/or weakening the seed coat so the radical of the seedling can break through the seed coat. Different types of seed coats can be made up of living or dead cells and both types can be influenced by hormones; those composed of living cells are acted upon after seed formation while the sead coats composed of dead cells can be influenced by hormones during the formation of the seed coat. ABA affects testa or seed coat growth characteristics, including thickness, and effects the GA-mediated embryo growth potential. These conditions and effects occur during the formation of the seed, often in response to environmental conditions. Hormones also mediate endosperm dormancy: Endosperm in most seeds is composed of living tissue that can actively respond to hormones generated by the embryo. The endosperm often acts as a barrier to seed germination, playing a part in seed coat dormancy or in the germination process. Living cells respond to and also affect the ABA/GA ratio, and mediate cellular sensitivity; GA thus increases the embryo growth potential and can promote endosperm weakening. GA also affects both ABA-independent and ABA-inhibiting processes within the endosperm
Heel pain is common, affecting everyone from couch potatoes to athletes. When the pain is chronic, many podiatrists say they can bring relief with cryosurgery on the heel, in which a frozen probe is inserted briefly in the painful area. Physicians say the procedure is generally safe, but some argue the evidence that it works is inadequate.
The most common cause of heel pain is tiny tears in the plantar fascia -- a long fibrous section of tissue along the bottom of the foot -- that can cause pain and inflammation and result in plantar fascitis. The condition -- often at its worst just after getting out of bed in the morning -- affects more than 15% of Americans at some point in their lives, says Ross Taubman, president of the American Podiatric Medical Association.
Most patients get better with conservative therapies like stretching, icing, anti-inflammatory medicines, orthotics, night splints and steroid shots. If pain persists, the next step traditionally has been to cut a portion of the plantar fascia. The surgery has proven effective, but has a long recovery time and can sometimes result in flat feet, among other things. A newer, noninvasive option is bombarding the heel with high-energy sound waves to stimulate healing, but that therapy can cost $2,000 to $3,000 and generally isn't covered by insurance.
Cryosurgery is a simple office procedure in which a tiny probe is inserted in the heel under local anesthetic. It's brought to a freezing temperature, which destroys nerve fibers -- giving relief from pain, says Taylor, Mich., podiatrist Lawrence M. Fallat, who pioneered cryosurgery for plantar fascitis about seven years ago. The nerves regenerate in about six months, Dr. Fallat says, but the pain remains at bay. It isn't known why, but he believes it is because the previously irritated and swollen nerves become normal when they regenerate after the freeze.
The incision is about three millimeters wide, so recovery time is minimal. Cost, typically around $500 to $600, isn't covered by many insurers. Potential side effects include infection of the wound and numbness in a small area of the foot, which podiatrists say is temporary.
In a study of 59 plantar fascitis sufferers published last year in the Journal of Foot and Ankle Surgery, Dr. Fallat and his associates found pain decreased on average from 8.38 on a scale of 10 to 1.26 a year after cryosurgery.
Another podiatrist, Javier Cavazos of McAllen, Texas, reports in an abstract accepted for presentation at the APMA's July annual meeting that 76% of 168 subjects who had cryosurgery had little or no pain two years later, while 24% had at least a little bit of pain. Overall, pain was reduced from an average of 7.57 on the scale of 10 to 1.10.
However, neither study had a control group, drawing skepticism from some physicians since heel pain can resolve on its own.
"I don't think it works," says George Theodore, co-director of the Foot and Ankle Surgery Service at Massachusetts General Hospital and team physician for the Boston Red Sox. "There is no randomized double-blind, placebo-controlled study out there. Most of what we hear is anecdotal."
Dr. Theodore -- author of a study on shock-wave therapy that was funded by a manufacturer of the equipment involved -- says he generally recommends that treatment to athletes and other patients who can't afford the downtime of traditional surgery.
After a dramatic deceleration through Mars's thin atmosphere that ended with a gentle landing in welcoming rock-free terrain, NASA's Phoenix mission now stands ready to go to work.
"Everything just worked like a charm," says Barry Goldstein, the mission's project manager at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California, which ran mission control for the landing. Within a week, Phoenix will start to satisfy the curiosity of scientists who have been waiting since 1999 to sample Mars's subsurface ice for organic molecules and signs of recent thawing.
It took less than a year for the spacecraft to travel 680 million kilometres from Earth to the northern plains of Mars. But for many mission scientists, the journey was much longer. After years of planning and development, in 1999 NASA launched Mars Polar Lander, a similar mission aimed not at Mars's chilly north but at its cool south. But something went wrong with the craft's landing, which relied on a rocket system for a gentle touchdown rather than the more rough-and-tumble airbag approach that had proved successful for the Pathfinder mission in 1997. Unwilling to risk another failure, NASA cancelled the Polar Lander's sister mission, storing its already-built parts in a warehouse.
Phoenix started as a bid by scientists and engineers — many of them from the Polar Lander team — to rescue and rehabilitate the cancelled mission within a US$420 million (£212 million) budget, revamping it in the process and retargeting it at the northern plains, where orbiting instruments had shown signs of hydrogen near the surface, presumably in the form of ice. Even with years spent scrubbing its software free of anything that looked like a possible glitch, the descent that slowed Phoenix from 5.7 kilometres per second to 2.4 metres per second within seven minutes, using heat-shield braking, a parachute and thrusters, was a tense one for the team. "I thought I was being pretty cool. But after it landed, I realized that I had been sweating like a pig,” said Aaron Zent, a scientist at NASA Ames Research Center who has had a role in five failed Mars missions.
Parachutes and polygons
phoenix parachuteThe Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured this snap of Phoenix's parachute descent.NASA/JPL-Calech / Univ. Arizona
The successful descent was documented by a spectacular photo of the lander's white parachute and shell taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which, along with the Mars Odyssey Orbiter that provided the evidence for subsurface ice, is acting as a radio relay for the mission.
The only hint of the untoward was that Phoenix landed almost 30 kilometres east of where it was expected — at the edge of the landing ellipse that marked the teams 99% confidence expectation of where it would touch down — owing to a parachute opening seven seconds late. But it didn't matter. The site was free of awkward rocks and the lander settled down on an even keel, which will allow it to maximize solar power from its twin fan arrays. "This is a scientist's dream, right there on this landing site," says mission principal investigator Peter Smith, of the University of Arizona at Tucson.
Phoenix's first pictures showed tantalizing polygonal patterns in the terrain stretching to the horizon; the polygons, also visible from orbit, are similar to patterns associated with permafrost in polar regions on Earth. The material in the cracks, formed by the expansion and contraction of the ice underneath, could explain much about the history of water on the planet. Mars's climate may have changed over the past 100,000 years as its orbit and axial tilt have shifted.
Mission scientists will continue to check and calibrate instruments over the next few days. Next week, they hope to begin scooping soil with a robotic arm — although early pictures indicate that there may be only a few centimetres of soil, if any. A rasp on the back of the scoop will grind samples of the dirty ice. These materials will be fed into two instruments: a 'wet lab', where water is added to surface samples in tiny beakers; and a 'hot lab' with ovens that bake the samples to determine the chemical composition of their vapours.
In the 1970s, the Mars Viking landers, performing similar analyses, found no evidence for organic molecules. But the landers were at lower latitudes and scooped up strongly oxidized soil created by harsh ultraviolet radiation. Scientists say the polar ice could be a more hospitable environment for organics.
Phoenix scientists will have to be choosy with their samples. There are four beakers and eight ovens, each of which can be used just once. After they are used up, a meteorological station will continue to measure wind speed, temperature, pressure and cloud heights.
But mission scientists don't expect Phoenix to linger for years like the Mars rovers, which landed in 2004 and are still trucking on. As the midnight sun of martian summer sinks into the black of polar winter, Phoenix's power supply will run out. "We're going to operate until Mars freezes over," says Goldstein.
Cancer experts have suggested a new way to tackle particularly tenacious brain tumours known as glioblastomas. Attacking a common virus often found in these cancers may halt their growth, say researchers.
This technique might provide an alternative to current surgical treatments for glioblastoma, which, because of the tumours' position deep in the brain, carry a significant risk of brain damage.
This strategy may help doctors pursue their preferred tactic of allowing the body's own immune system to attack cancer cells, systematically eradicating them from the brain tissue without harming nearby healthy cells.
Until now it has been impossible for the immune system to distinguish brain tumour cells from healthy cells as they often have the same identifying marker proteins - called antigens - and because brain tumours often suppress immune function.
Delaying tactics
In the new study, oncologist Duane Mitchell at Duke University Medical Center and colleagues build on previous research showing the consistent presence of cytomegalovirus, a type of herpesvirus, in glioblastoma cells but not in surrounding healthy tissue.
Roughly 50-80% of healthy people in the United States are infected with cytomegalovirus, although in healthy people it remains latent. Virus particles multiply to high numbers only in those with compromised immune systems. So Mitchell and his team wondered if they could halt the cancer by guiding the immune system to attack the unique antigens of the virus in glioblastoma cells.
The team took white blood cells from 21 patients, exposed them to parts of the virus, and injected the cells back into the patients. Their preliminary results suggest that this technique is safe and effective.
“Because the immune system kills both the virus and the cell it resides in, we are hoping that we will be able use this vaccine to kill the tumour cells that standard therapy can't reach,” explains Mitchell.
Mitchell and his colleagues will unveil their findings1 on 1 June at a meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago. Although the results are preliminary, tumour progression for those in the trial was delayed by more than a year on average - and several patients had no sign of tumour growth after two years.
The delay in tumour growth using standard therapy is typically six to eight months compared with non-treatment, with average survival of less than 15 months.
Attack is the best form of defence
Nobody is certain whether the virus triggers the cancer or the cancer attracts the virus. But, “the fact that the brain tumour cells create an immunosuppressive environment where the virus can make its home makes a lot of sense,” explains Charles Cobbs at California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute in San Francisco, who first discovered the association between cytomegalovirus and the tumours.
If the virus is causing the cancer, then destroying it is all the more important. But even if it merely exists side by side with the cancer, “its unique antigens look like the perfect way for the immune system to go about attacking the tumour,” explains Cobbs.
The doughnut is making a comeback – at least as a possible shape for our Universe.
The idea that the universe is finite and relatively small, rather than infinitely large, first became popular in 2003, when cosmologists noticed unexpected patterns in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) – the relic radiation left behind by the Big Bang.
The CMB is made up of hot and cold spots that represent ripples in the density of the infant Universe, like waves in the sea. An infinite Universe should contain waves of all sizes, but cosmologists were surprised to find that longer wavelengths were missing from measurements of the CMB made by NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe.
One explanation for the missing waves was that the universe is finite (see 'Universe could be football-shaped').
A mirror ball
“You can think of the Universe as a musical instrument - it cannot sustain vibrations that have a wavelength that is bigger than the length of the instrument itself,” explains Frank Steiner, a physicist at Ulm University in Germany.
Cosmologists have suggested various 'wrap-around' shapes for the Universe: it might be shaped like a football or even a weird 'doughnut'. In each case, the Universe would appear to be infinite, because you would never physically reach its edge - if you travelled far enough in any direction you would end up back where you started, just as if you were circumnavigating the globe.
But the notion soon suffered a setback. Cosmologists predicted that a wrap-around Universe would act like a hall of mirrors, with images from distant objects being repeated multiple times across the sky. Glenn Starkman at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, and his colleagues searched for the predicted patterns, but found nothing.
Undeterred, Steiner and his colleagues have re-analysed the 2003 data from NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, looking for different shapes, including the so-called '3-torus', also dubbed the 'doughnut universe'.
Despite its catchy nickname, this shape is tough to visualize, says Steiner. The 3-torus is an extension of the familiar doughnut shape and can be formed from a rectangular piece of paper. You can imagine gluing together first one set of opposite edges to make a cylinder, and then the second set of opposing edges to make a doughnut shape, explains Steiner.
The 3-torus is formed in a similar way, but you begin with a cube and glue together each of the opposite faces. So if you were to attempt to exit one of the cube's faces, you would immediately find yourself entering again through the opposite one.
Other shapes are possible
Steiner’s team used three separate techniques to compare predictions of how the temperature fluctuations in different areas of the sky should match up in both an infinite Universe and a doughnut one. In each case, the doughnut gave the best match to the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe data. The team has even been able to pin point the probable size of the Universe, which would take around 56 billion light years to cross.
Jean-Pierre Luminet at the Paris Observatory in France, who proposed the football-shaped universe in 2003, likes Steiner's work. He agrees that the analysis shows that the doughnut is still a likely candidate, but adds that other shapes are also possible. “One must remember that the (football universe) is still alive and well,” says Luminet.
Starkman, however, is not convinced that Steiner’s team has done enough to win people over. “It could be true that the Universe is small,” he says, “but this doesn’t provide an answer one way or the other.”
Steiner believes that new and more precise measurements of the cosmic microwave background to be made by Europe's Planck satellite, which is due to be launched later this year, will help answer the question.
“Philosophically, I like the idea that the Universe is finite and one day we could fully explore it and find out everything about it,” Starkman says. “But since physics cannot be decided by philosophy, I hope it will be answered by Planck.”
If you thought a high-pitched growl would come only from a tiny dog, you could be in for a nasty surprise. Researchers have shown that it isn’t the fundamental frequency, or pitch, of a growl that humans use to gauge a dog’s size — it’s another acoustic property related to the length of the vocal tract.
It was known that within species, the formant — a property of a sound wave related to the length of the vocal tract — is used by animals to assess the size of other animals. But it had never been shown to happen between species. Anna Taylor, a doctoral student at the University of Sussex, Brighton, UK, set out to show that the formant is used between species as a cue for size by seeing how humans respond to growls from different-sized dogs. Her results are published in The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America .1
Taylor visited the homes of more than 100 dogs, armed with nothing but a microphone, a steely stare, and the dog owners' consent. Taylor made the dogs growl defensively by invading the dog's space and staring it in the eyes. She recorded these snarly responses, 30 of which she went to on to manipulate for her experiment.
That might sound like an unwise experiment for anyone who values their personal safety. But Taylor says that, as an experienced animal behaviourist, she managed to diffuse any encounters before they turned violent.
Taylor looked at the formants, and the fundamental frequency of the different growls. Examples of the biggest and smallest formants, and highest and lowest frequencies, can be heard in these sound clips.
A formant is a basic acoustic property, and can be thought of as a resonant frequency of a sound wave in a vocal tract. Dogs have between five and seven formants when they make a noise. In humans, changes in formant come across as different vowel sounds. Different length vocal tracts produce different resonant frequencies, and so the formants take on different values. “Larger vocal tracts belonging to larger animals produce lower formants,” says Taylor.
The fundamental frequency is the pitch of a sound. It is a “common fallacy” that pitch can be used to determine size, Taylor says. Pitch is related to the size of the fleshy vocal chords, which can grow to different sizes. The formant, on the other hand, is pretty much fixed.
To test human perception of dog size, Taylor separated out the formant and the fundamental frequency of each dog growl with computer-based acoustic software. She then resynthesised each growl in two ways: first by making five new versions of each growl each with different formants corresponding to a range of vocal tract lengths from the tiniest dog to the largest; and then making five new versions of each growl by altering the pitch to fit within a range of five frequencies – low to high pitch.
These new growls were played to human subjects in two separate experiments where they heard growls in random order and were asked to assess the size of the dog.
Where the formants were changed but not the pitch, the growls that had been manipulated to indicate a longer vocal tract were rated by the testers as coming from big dogs. When pitch was changed but not formant, the testers estimated dog size more accurately. When asked to say what they thought they were listening for, the testers all thought they were listening for changes in pitch, Taylor says.
The work has sparked interest in the acoustic community. “This step to analyse the vocal repertoire of dogs, especially the subunits of growling, is totally new,” says Dorit Feddersen-Petersen, who studies dog behaviour at the University of Kiel, Germany.
“People are using the same acoustic parameters that they use to assess body size from human voices as they use to assess body size from dog growls,” says David Feinberg, who studies voices at McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada. This is probably because all mammals have similar anatomy for producing sound, he says.
More than co-evolution?
Taylor thinks that this link between formant and size perception might be more widely applicable than just dogs and humans “Attribution of size based on formant is something we can do for all animals, and possibly all animals can do for each other,” she says.
That people use these cues to assess the size of dogs may be linked to the idea that humans and dogs have been co-evolving for the last 15,000 years, says Feinberg. Feddersen-Petersen suggests the same thing: “This interspecific form of signalling ... must be linked to the close evolutionary history between dogs and humans,” she says.
This co-evolution could make it particularly important for humans to pay attention to the size of dogs suggests Feinberg. “While dog may be man's best friend, it may also bite the hand that feeds,” he says.
Tasmanian tigers are back. Sort of. A small bit of the extinct marsupial’s DNA is alive and well in the cells of some genetically engineered mice.
Scientists have produced proteins from mammoth and Neandertal genes in cells, but the new study, appearing in the May 19 PLoS ONE, is the first to examine the activity of an extinct piece of DNA in a whole animal.
Scientists from the University of Melbourne in Australia and the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston extracted DNA from alcohol-preserved specimens of the Tasmanian tiger, also known as the thylacine. The researchers then inserted into mice a piece of thylacine DNA that controls production of a collagen gene. The thylacine DNA worked, switching on a marker gene in cartilage-producing cells in a mouse embryo, essentially resurrecting a bit of the extinct animal. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
But don’t expect mice to transform into the doglike marsupials, or for scientists to reanimate thylacines through cloning.
“This technology can tell us interesting things about thylacines bit by bit,” says Robin Lovell-Badge, a developmental geneticist at the Medical Research Council’s National Institute for Medical Research in Mill Hill, England. “As far as bringing back thylacines, this is not going to be able to do that.”
“I love the idea,” Lovell-Badge says of somehow engineering mice into thylacines, “but no, not like this.”
As for the cloning the extinct animal, it’s not likely to happen, says Carles Lalueza-Fox, a paleogeneticist at the University of Barcelona in Spain.
“It’s impossible to clone extinct animals like some people claim they will do with frozen mammoths. http://Louis-j-sheehan-esquire.us
That’s fantasy, not science,” Lalueza-Fox says.
But the researchers involved in the new study never intended to bring back the thylacine, just to learn something more about its biology and perhaps add to the evolutionary history books. This type of study could teach biologists how species use their genes to create the tremendous diversity in body shapes and sizes.
access
ThylacinesTasmanian tigers, also known as thylacines, were carnivorous marsupials. They were hunted to extinction in the wild in the early 1900s. The last thylacine died in captivity at the Hobart Zoo in 1936, but now scientists have resurrected a bit of the thylacine's DNA in a mouse.Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery
“We were very interested in finding out a little bit more about this iconic Australian carnivore, especially since we humans were responsible for its extinction,” says Marilyn Renfree, a reproductive and developmental biologist at the University of Melbourne and one of the authors of the new study. “This study has given us proof that one can ask these sorts of questions and get answers.”
To prove that DNA from an extinct species can still work, the team chose a regulatory element, called an enhancer, which regulates the Col2a1 gene and has been conserved throughout evolution in animals with backbones, says Andrew Pask, a molecular biologist at the University of Melbourne.
Enhancers serve as landing pads for proteins that turn genes on. Only specific proteins are granted landing privileges and only at prescribed times of development in particular types of cells. The Col2a1 enhancer turns the gene on only in chondrocytes — cartilage-producing cells— in mouse embryos. The enhancer works similarly in birds and mammals, so the researchers hoped that the thylacine DNA would also produce a familiar pattern of gene activity.
That hope was fulfilled. Mouse embryos engineered with the thylacine enhancer turned on production of a marker that the researchers use to track gene activity. The enhancer worked only in chondrocytes.
The new study is the first using extinct DNA that does not encode a protein but controls how genes are turned on and off. In previous studies, mammoth and Neandertal genes were used to produce proteins in cell culture, not in living animals.
“This is the next logical step to try to bring ancient DNA into an animal or biological system,” says Stephen Schuster, a genomicist at Pennsylvania State University in University Park. Researchers might use the technique to find enhancers and other regulatory elements that could make a chicken look like a dinosaur or an elephant look like a mammoth, he said. But such methods, even if they could achieve such dramatic results, would not bring back dodos, dinosaurs and mammoths.
“If you had a very hairy African elephant, that would be a first step to looking like a mammoth, but of course it wouldn’t be a mammoth. It would just be a weird-looking elephant,” Schuster says.
Even though the thylacine enhancer seems to work the same way as the mouse enhancer does, that’s no guarantee that the researchers have the correct answer to how thylacine DNA functions. Mice and marsupials are so different that sometimes enhancers might misbehave when placed in a mouse, giving researchers the wrong impression about how such bits of DNA worked in extinct animals, says Lalueza-Fox.
“To use an animal model is always difficult, but to use an eutherian [placental] animal model for a marsupial is really quite risky,” he says.
Other researchers concede that genetically engineered mice might sometimes yield misleading data, but see no alternative way to study gene function from extinct species.
“The problem with extinct animals is that they’re extinct,” says Michael Hofreiter, an evolutionary biologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. “Cell cultures or the mouse models are the only possibility we have of learning how non-coding DNA worked in extinct animals. The question is not whether this is the best way forward — it’s the only way forward.” Louis J. Sheehan
These kinds of studies are necessary to understand where and when genes are turned on and off in the bodies of extinct animals. That information may be encoded in the DNA of the animals, but predicting how variations between two species changes gene function is not well understood. Such studies could show how the thylacine got its stripes or what made mammoths so woolly.
Even armed with information about how thylacine genes worked, the technology used in the study is unlikely to bring back the Tasmanian tiger, Hofreiter says. In order to re-create the thylacine from a mouse using this technique, researchers would have to replace the mouse genome bit by bit, using about 10 million short pieces of DNA. That would take years and be would be extremely costly, not to mention that at some point, a chimeric animal (part-mouse, part-thylacine) would be unlikely to survive, he says.
Schuster favors a bigger, bolder approach to re-creating extinct animals, one that admittedly is still science fiction. He would stitch together entire chromosomes from an extinct animal and replace a host animal’s chromosomes with the synthetic creations. In that way, an elephant’s genetic material might be replaced with mammoth DNA, essentially reincarnating the Ice Age icon.
Scientists are only just beginning to learn how to create whole chromosomes.
“With DNA we’re very good at reading information, but we’re not good at writing. It’s like we’ve got a computer, but we don’t have a printer,” Schuster says.
Thylacines have no living counterpart. Their closest living relatives are Tasmanian devils, but no one has ever genetically engineered a Tasmanian devil, making it an unlikely host should the technology to clone extinct animals become available.
Re-creating extinct organisms captures the imagination, Schuster says, but it is far easier and less expensive to protect the endangered animals still living on Earth.
Introns, derived from the term "intragenic regions", are non-coding sections of precursor mRNA (pre-mRNA) or other RNAs, that are removed (spliced out of the RNA) before the mature RNA is formed. Once the introns have been spliced out of a pre-mRNA, the resulting mRNA sequence, composed of exons, is ready to be translated into a protein. The corresponding parts of a gene are known as introns as well.
Introns are common in eukaryotic pre-mRNA, but in prokaryotes they are only found in tRNA and rRNA. Introns, which are non-coding sections of a gene that are removed, are the opposite of exons which remain in the mRNA sequence after processing.
The number and length of introns varies widely among species, and among genes within the same species. Genes of higher organisms, such as mammals and flowering plants, have numerous introns, which can be much longer than the nearby exons. Some less advanced organisms, such as fungus Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and protists, have very few introns. In humans, the gene with the greatest number of introns is the gene for the protein Titin, with 362 introns. http://louis-j-sheehaN.NET
Introns sometimes allow for alternative splicing of a gene, so that several different proteins which share some sequences in common can be translated from a single gene. The control of mRNA splicing is performed by a wide variety of signaling molecules.
Introns may also contain "old code", or sections of a gene that were once translated into a protein, but have since been discarded. It was generally assumed that the sequence of any given intron is junk DNA with no function. More recently, however, this is being disputed.
Introns contain several short sequences that are important for efficient splicing. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
The exact mechanism for these intronic splicing enhancers is not well understood, but it is thought that they serve as binding sites on the transcript for proteins which stabilize the spliceosome. It is also possible that RNA secondary structure formed by intronic sequences may have an effect on splicing.
The discovery of introns led to the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1993 for Phillip Allen Sharp and Richard J. Roberts. The term intron was introduced by American biochemist Walter Gilbert.
"The notion of the cistron [...] must be replaced by that of a transcription unit containing regions which will be lost from the mature messenger - which I suggest we call introns (for intragenic regions) - alternating with regions which will be expressed - exons."
Some introns, such as Group I and Group II introns, are actually ribozymes that are capable of catalyzing their own splicing out of a primary RNA transcript. http://Louis-j-sheehan-esquire.us
This self splicing activity was discovered by Thomas Cech, who shared the 1989 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Sidney Altman for the discovery of the catalytic properties of RNA.
Four classes of introns are known to exist:
* Nuclear introns
* Group I intron
* Group II intron
* Group III intron
Sometimes group III introns are also identified as group II introns, because of their similarity in structure and function.
Nuclear or spliceosomal introns are spliced by the spliceosome and a series of snRNAs (small nuclear RNAs). There are certain splice signals (or consensus sequences) which abet the splicing (or identification) of these introns by the spliceosome.
Group I, II and III introns are self splicing introns and are relatively rare compared to spliceosomal introns. Group II and III introns are similar and have a conserved secondary structure. The lariat pathway is used in their splicing. They perform functions similar to the spliceosome and may be evolutionarily related to it. Group I introns are the only class of introns whose splicing requires a free guanine nucleoside. They possess a secondary structure different from that of group II and III introns. Many self-splicing introns code for maturases that help with the splicing process, generally only the splicing of the intron that encodes it.
There are two competing theories that offer alternative scenarios for the origin and early evolution of spliceosomal introns (Other classes of introns such as self-splicing and tRNA introns are not subject to much debate, but see for the former). These are popularly called as the Introns-Early (IE) or the Introns-Late (IL) views.
The IE model, championed by Walter Gilbert, proposes that introns are extremely old and numerously present in the earliest ancestors of prokaryotes and eukaryotes (the progenote). In this model introns were subsequently lost from prokaryotic organisms, allowing them to attain growth efficiency. A central prediction of this theory is that the early introns were mediators that facilitated the recombination of exons that represented the protein domains. Such a model would directly lead to the evolution of new genes. Unfortunately, the model cannot account for the variations in the positions of shared introns between different species.
The IL model proposes that introns were more recently inserted into original intron-less contiguous genes after the divergence of eukaryotes and prokaryotes. In this model, introns probably had their origin in parasitic transposable elements. This model is based on the observation that the spliceosomal introns are restricted to eukaryotes alone. However, there is considerable debate on the presence of introns in the early prokaryote-eukaryote ancestors and the subsequent intron loss-gain during eukaryotic evolution. It is also suggested that the evolution of introns and more generally the intron-exon structure is largely independent of the coding-sequence evolution.
Nearly all eukaryotic nuclear introns begin with the nucleotide sequence GU, and end with AG (the GU-AG rule). These, along with a larger consensus sequence, help direct the splicing machinery to the proper intronic donor and acceptor sites. This mainly occurs in eukaryotic primary mRNA transcripts.
In my line of work -- family law -- I often hear the same old refrain when my client explains to me why they split from their significant other. It goes like this, "I guess I didn't really know my partner after all." You might ask, "How could that be?" How could you have an intimate relationship with someone only to wake up one day to find out that the person you fell in love with is not the person they turned out to be?
I believe there are at least a dozen ways to know who someone really is -- indicators -- and if we do an inventory early on, we might stand a better chance of getting to know the real person before we fully commit. The following "observance" suggestions are important ones to make in the early stages of any relationship because each offers insight into habits, patterns, and behaviors. As you ponder these observations, know that there is no right or wrong; it's a matter of acceptance. Louis J. Sheehan
Sometimes we have to accept quirks and differences as part of the give-and-take process. As you do your assessment, however, the goal is to decide whether or not you can live with or without your real partner.
Here are the dozen indicators:
1. Protocol: First or Second? Whether it's walking through a door, ordering dinner, or taking a bite out of the freshly baked cookies you have made together, if your partner always have to go first this could indicate self- centeredness. Are you willing to always be the giver?
2. Politics: Liberal or Conservative? How your partner views what is right or wrong in a political sense tells you a lot about his deep inner beliefs about society, and ultimately, the way he will approach your relationship issues. Will his views cause a rift in your relationship?
3. Television: Sitcoms or News? If his tendency is to watch "escape" TV programs versus "newsy/event" oriented ones, you can learn a lot about one's intellect. Do you want a mate who can keep up with your every day interest in what is going on in the world or a person you can run away with to avoid the world we live in?
4. Money: Flash or Stash? If your partner throws money around while dating, he might well be reckless with your joint finances when you move in together. Do you want to hook up with a tightwad or splurger?
5. Stress: Freak or Peak? Under Pressure, does he go to pieces or rise to the top of his game? If the answer is the former, every minor incident in your relationship might become a crisis. Do you like a lot of drama?
6. Conversation: About You or Him? As you first get to know each other does he always talk about himself first or you? If he is usually the topic priority do not expect that to change. Can you subordinate yourself to the world revolving around him?
7. Pets: Warm or Aloof? Believe it or not, the way in which he treats animals will not be dissimilar to how he treats your children. How do you want him to treat your loved ones?
8. Communication: Listens or Ignores? If you have something you want to talk about and he tunes you out as a general rule, can you cope?
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9. Strangers: Kind or Rude? How he treats those they do not know (waiters, grocery clerks) often reflects on how he will treat people in general, including you, shortly after the glow wears off.
10. Priorities: Family or Work? You can tell almost immediately where a person's preferences lie in terms of what comes first (a family member's illness or a business trip) by the choices he makes when faced with an "either/or" situation. Do you care if he leaves on the next plane to present the such-and-such report if you or the kids have pneumonia?
11. Appearance: Fat or Fit? How he regards his appearance screams loudly about his sense of self-esteem. Those who eat sensibly, workout reasonably, and who take pride in their appearance are the ones who have a great sense of self. Does he really have self-confidence or might it be a front?
12. Faith: Strong or Weak? If you want a peak at his soul, learn more about his spirituality, or lack of it. What a person believes deep down is often what shapes the way in which they conduct their day-to-day affairs. What is your mate's "words to live by?"
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