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Steven H. Lin and Gopal K. Bajaj What is the incidence of oral cavity cancer (OCC) in the U.S.? ~23,000 cases/yr of OCC in the U.S. (2008 data) What % of H&N cancers are OCCs? OCCs comprise 25%–30% of all H&N cancers. Of what structures does the oral cavity (OC) consist? Lips, gingiva, buccal mucosa, retromolar trigone (RMT), hard palate, floor of mouth (FOM), and oral tongue What is the most and least commonly involved site in OCC? The lip is the most common site (45%), and the hard palate is the least common site (5%). The tongue is involved 16% of the time. What CNs provide motor and sensory innervation to the oral tongue? 1. Motor: CN XII 2. Sensory: CN V (lingual branch) What CNs provide the tongue with taste sensation? 1. Anterior two thirds of tongue: CN VII (chorda tympani) 2. Posterior one third of tongue: CN IX What nerve provides motor innervation to the lips? The facial nerve (CN VII) provides motor innervation to the lips. What nerve provides motor innervation to the tongue? The hypoglossal nerve (CN XII) provides motor innervation to the tongue. Where is the ant-most border of the OC? The vermilion border of the lips is the ant-most border of the OC. Where is the post-most border of the OC? The hard/soft palate border superiorly and the circumvallate papillae inferiorly are the post-most borders of the OC. What are some premalignant lesions of the OC, and which type has the greatest propensity to progress to invasive cancer? Erythroplakia (~30% progression rate) and leukoplakia (4%–18% progression rate) are premalignant lesions of the OC. What are some risk factors that predispose to OCC? Tobacco (smoked or chewed), betel nut consumption, alcohol, poor oral hygiene, and vitamin A deficiency What are the sup and inf spans of level II–IV LN chains/levels? 1. Level II: skull base to hyoid 2. Level III: hyoid to bottom of cricoid 3. Level IV: cricoid to clavicles Where are the level IA–IB nodes located? Level IA nodes are submental, and level IB nodes are submandibular. Where are the level V–VI nodes located? Level V nodes are in the post triangle, and level VI nodes are in the paratracheal/prelaryngeal region. What is the delphian node? The delphian node is a midline prelaryngeal level VI node. What are some important risk factors for LN mets in OCC? Increasing DOI, increasing T stage, muscle invasion, and high-grade histology What is the estimated risk of LN involvement with a T1-T2 primary of the lip, FOM, oral tongue, and buccal mucosa? The risk of LN involvement is ~5% for the lip, 20% for the oral tongue, and ~10%–20% for the other OC T1-T2 primaries. What is the estimated risk of LN involvement with a T3-T4 primary of the lip, FOM, oral tongue, and buccal mucosa? The risk of LN involvement is ~33% for the lip and ~33%–67% for the other OC T3-T4 primaries. What is the nodal met rate for a T1 vs. T2 lesion of the oral tongue? The nodal met rate is 14% for T1 tongue lesions and 30% for T2 tongue lesions. (Lindberg R et al., Cancer 1972) What is the overall and stage-by-stage nodal met rate for FOM lesions? 1. Overall: 20%–30% 2. T1: 10% 3. T2: 30% 4. T3: 45% 5. T4: >50% (Lindberg R et al., Cancer 1972) Lesions located where in the OC predispose to bilat LN mets? Midline and anterolat OC lesions (tongue, FOM) predispose to bilat LN mets. Which OC cancer has the greatest propensity for LN spread? Oral tongue cancer has the greatest propensity for LN spread. What OC subsite is 2nd only to the oral tongue in propensity for nodal spread? The alveolar ridge/RMT has the 2nd highest propensity for LN spread (3rd highest is FOM). Can ant oral tongue lesions involve other LN levels without involving level I LNs? Yes. ~13% of ant tongue lesions skip the level I LNs. (Byers RM et al., Head Neck 1997) Which anatomic structure divides the oral tongue from the base of tongue (BOT)? The circumvallate papillae divide the oral tongue from the BOT (per the AJCC). Some use the sulcus terminalis as the border. What type of tumors arise from the hard palate? Primarily minor salivary gland tumors (adenoid cystic, mucoepidermoid, adenocarcinoma) arise from the hard palate. What are common sites of DM for cancers of the OC? Lungs, bones, and liver What anatomic structure divides the FOM anteriorly into 2 halves? The lingual frenulum divides the FOM anteriorly. Where is the Wharton duct located, and what gland does it drain? The Wharton duct opens at the ant FOM (midline) and drains the submandibular gland. From where in the OC do most gingival cancers arise? Most (80%) gingival cancers arise from the lower gingiva. Do most lip cancers arise from the upper or lower lip? Most (~90%) lip cancers arise from the lower lip. What are some benign lesions that arise from the lip? Benign lip lesions include keratoacanthoma, actinic keratosis, hemangiomas, fibromas, HSV, and chancre. What nodal groups drain the tip of the tongue, the ant tongue, and the post tongue? 1. Tip of tongue: level IA 2. Anterior tongue: level IB and level III (mid jugular) 3. Posterior tongue: level IB and level II Which OC site lesions are notorious for skipped nodal mets? Oral tongue lesions can skip levels II–III and involve only level IV (so a full neck dissection is typically needed). What features of lip cancer predict for nodal spread? DOI, high grade, large size, invasion of buccal mucosa/dermis, or recurrent Dz after resection What nodal stations are involved with upper vs. lower lip lesions? Upper lip lesions spread to preauricular, facial, parotid, and IA–IB LNs; lower lip lesions spread to level IA–IB and level II LNs. A pt presents with tongue deviation to the left. What CN is involved? The left CN XII (hypoglossal) is involved with left tongue deviation (deviation is toward the involved nerve). A pt presents with an OC lesion and ipsi ear pain. What nerve is responsible? The auricotemporal nerve (branch of CN V3) causes ear pain in OCC. Which lesions in the OC are most and least likely to present with +LNs? 1. Most likely: tongue, FOM 2. Least likely: lips, buccal mucosa, gingiva What are some common presenting signs with OC lesions? Asymptomatic red/raised lesion, ill-fitting dentures, bleeding mass, pain, dysphagia (due to tongue fixation), trismus (if pterygoids are involved), and otalgia What does the typical workup of OC lesions entail? OC lesion workup: H&P with palpation, direct endoscopy + Bx, CBC, CMP, CT/MRI H&N, and CT or PET/CT What is the DDx for lesions of the OC? Squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), minor salivary gland tumors, lymphoma, melanoma, sarcoma, plasmacytoma, and ameloblastoma What defines T1–T3 lesions of the OC? 1. T1: <2 cm 2. T2: 2–4 cm 3. T3: >4 cm What defines T4a vs. T4b lesions of the OC? 1. T4a: invasion of adjacent structures (bone, deep tongue muscles, maxillary sinus), resectable 2. T4b: very advanced (invasion of masticator space, pterygoid plates, skull base, carotid artery) and typically unresectable What is the nodal staging breakdown for OCC? The nodal staging breakdown is the same system used for other H&N cancers (except for that of the nasopharynx): 1. N1: single, ipsi, <3 cm 2. N2a: single, ipsi, 3–6 cm 3. N2b: multiple, ipsi, ≤6 cm 4. N2c: bilat or contralat, ≤6 cm 5. N3: >6 cm What defines stage I–II OCC? N0 OCC is either stage I or II (T1N0 or T2N0). What defines stage III Dz in the OC? T3N0 or T1-3N1 OC lesions are considered stage III. What defines stages IVA–IVC OCC? 1. Stage IVA: T4a or N2 Dz 2. Stage IVB: T4b or N3 Dz 3. Stage IVC: M1 Dz If RT is anticipated for OCC, what should be done and when should it be done before starting Tx? Dental evaluation (teeth extractions, fluoride trays) should be done 10–14 days before RT. What is the most common location involved in oral tongue cancers? The lat undersurface of the tongue in the middle to post 3rd is most commonly involved. What is the overall bilat nodal involvement rate for oral tongue cancers? 5% of oral tongue cancers present with bilat neck Dz (most nodal Dz is ipsi). If N1-N2 ipsi Dz, there is an ~30% risk for bilat Dz. What 2 factors are most predictive of nodal involvement in oral tongue cancers? DOI and tumor thickness (not T stage) are most predictive of LN mets in oral tongue cancers. What are the 2 most important prognostic factors after surgery alone for buccal mucosa cancers? DOI≥3 mm or tumor thickness ≥6 mm are the most important prognostic factors for buccal mucosa cancers. (Urist MM et al., Am J Surg 1987) In general, what is the Tx paradigm for OCC? OCC Tx paradigm: surgery +/− PORT (+/− chemo) In what circumstances should chemo be added to PORT? Chemo should be administered with RT if there is a + margin, +ECE, and/or PNI (per Bernier and Cooper adjuvant chemoradiation data). What pathologic features of the OCC primary lesion call for prophylactic/elective neck management? Tumor thickness >3 mm, grade III Dz, +LVI, and a recurrent lesion are features that increase the need for prophylactic neck management. What are the indications for PORT to the ipsi neck in OCC? >N2a (>3-cm LN) or >2 LN levels, ECE, no neck dissection in high-risk pts, and a DOI (primary) >3mm are indications for PORT. When should bilat neck irradiation be considered for OC lesions? Bilat neck RT should be considered for midline primaries, for ant tongue tumors, and with ipsi LAD. When is bilat neck dissection recommended for lesions of the OC? Bilat neck dissection is recommended with ≥N2c Dz (bilat or bulky LNs). For what OC sites is definitive RT preferred and why? Definitive RT is preferred (over surgery) for lip commissure, buccal mucosa, and RMT lesions with tonsillar pillar involvement. There is better cosmesis with RT (surgery is too morbid). What is an adequate surgical margin for OC cancers? The adequate surgical margin is typically 1 cm (1.5 cm for the oral tongue). What are the indications for PORT to the primary site for OC lesions? + or close ( <2 mm) margin, DOI >2 mm, PNI/perivascular invasion, and T3-T4 Dz are indications for PORT. What RT doses are typically used in OCC, and how is RT delivered? 1. PORT: 54 (–margins) to 66 Gy (+margins) in 2 Gy/fx 2. Definitive RT: 54 → 70 Gy to gross Dz +/− chemo RT has been typically delivered via opposed lat fields (IMRT can now be considered for T3-T4 tumors). When is brachytherapy indicated for OCC? 1. Definitive: early (T1-T2) lip/early oral tongue/FOM lesions–LDR to 66–70 Gy in 1 Gy/hr 2. As a supplement: T4 tongue/FOM lesions, 40% of total dose or ~30 Gy For oral tongue lesions, which modality is associated with better LC: LDR or HDR? Both modalities yield similar results. 5-yr LC was 76%–77% for both HDR and LDR techniques in a phase III comparison. (Inoue T et al., IJROBP 2001) What are the common LDR and HDR doses used with an interstitial implant for OCC? 1. Low dose rate: 60–70 Gy (40–60 cGy/hr) 2. High dose rate: 60 Gy (5 Gy bid × 12 fx) What alternate teletherapy modalities can be employed for superficial OC lesions? An intraoral cone can be employed for superficial OC lesions: orthovoltage (100–250 keV) or electrons (6–12 MeV). What are the borders of the standard lat fields for oral tongue lesions? 1. Superior: 1–1.5 cm above dorsum of tongue or 2 cm above tumor 2. Inferior: thyroid notch 3. Posterior: spinous process 4. Anterior: 2 cm ant to tumor What beam-modifying device is used with standard opposed lat fields for the Tx of OC lesions? What beam energy is typically used? Wedges (usually 30 degree with heels ant) are typically used with standard fields, and the beam energy is 6 MV. How can the lat fields be tilted to spare the contralat parotid gland, and what wedge angle is used if this is done? The lat fields are tilted obliquely away from contralat parotid, and a 15-degree wedge is typically used if this is done. Why is a tongue depressor/bite block used when irradiating the OC? A tongue depressor is used to spare the sup OC/hard palate and to surround the lat oral tongue lesion with other mucosa to minimize any buildup effect on the lat surfaces. What kind of surgical resection is typically performed for leukoplakia or CIS of the lip? Vermilionectomy with advancement of the mucosal flap (“lip shave”), which involves simple excision from the vermilion to the orbicularis muscle When is surgery an option for cancers of the lip? Surgery is an option if the lesion involves <30% of the lip, if it is a T1 lesion, or the lesion does not involve the oral commissure; otherwise use RT, typically WLE with primary closure (W-shaped excision) and with a 0.5-cm gross margin. When is definitive RT used for cancers of the lip? Definitive RT is used for lip tumors >2 cm, large lesions (>50% of the lip), upper lip lesions, or if the lesion involves the oral commissure. Is elective nodal RT of the neck required for T1-T2 cancers of the lip? No. Elective nodal RT is not needed b/c the occult nodal positivity rate is only ~5%. What are the doses used for the Tx of T1-T2 cancers of the lip? 1. T1: 50 Gy (2.5 Gy × 20) 2. T2: 60 Gy (2.5 Gy × 24) with 100–250 keV photons or 6–9 MeV electrons + 1-cm bolus When is PORT indicated for lip cancers? PORT is indicated for lip cancers in case of T4 Dz (bone invasion), +margin, extensive PNI, +ECE, ≥2 nodes+, or T3-T4 Dz without dissection of the neck. What randomized evidence supports PORT over surgery alone for stage III–IV SCC of the buccal mucosa? Indian data. Mishra et al. showed improved 3-yr DFS with PORT (68% vs. 38%). (Eur J Surg Oncol 1996) Is bilat neck RT required for stage III–IV buccal mucosa lesions? No. Ipsi RT may be sufficient for stage III–IV buccal mucosa lesions. (Lin CY et al., IJROBP 2008) For buccal mucosa lesions, when is surgery preferred and when is RT preferred? Surgery is preferred for small T1 lesions and RT is preferred for >T1 lesions b/c of better cosmetic outcomes. What must the PORT field include for gingival lesions with PNI? PORT fields for gingival lesions with PNI must include the entire hemimandible (from the mental foramen to the temporomandibular joint). What randomized data supports the need for PORT for OC lesions based on specific risk factors? MDACC series (Ang KK et al., IJROBP 2001): pts with a +margin, PNI, and ECE had higher failure rates. What are the standard RT field borders for the postop Tx of oral tongue lesions? 1. Anterior: incisors 2. Posterior: vertebral spinous processes 3. Superior: 1.5 cm above dorsum of tongue 4. Inferior: thyroid notch For RMT/alveolar ridge tumors, in what circumstances is RT preferred over surgery and vice versa? Definitive RT preferred if there is no bone erosion or if the lesion extends to the ant tonsillar pillar, soft palate, or buccal mucosa. If there is bone erosion, then surgery is preferred → PORT. What is the preferred management approach for hard palate lesions? Generally, surgery is preferred 1st for all cases, except if there is extension to the soft palate or RMT, in which case definitive RT can be considered. Per NCCN guidelines, what is the recommended time interval between surgery and PORT for OCC? Per NCCN guidelines, the recommended time interval between surgery and PORT for OCC is 6 wks. Why is brachytherapy generally avoided for gingival lesions? There is a high risk of osteoradionecrosis with brachytherapy for gingival lesions. To avoid malnutrition during a course of RT or CRT, pts need at least how many calories/day? To avoid malnutrition during a course of RT or CRT, pts need at least 2,000 calories/day What are the side effects of amifostine, if used? Side effects of amifostine include hypotension (especially if given intravenously) and nausea. The mandible should be kept at or below what RT dose? The mandibular RT dose should be ≤70 Gy. What does the follow-up for OCC pts entail? OCC follow-up: H&P + laryngoscopy (q1–3mos for yr 1, q2–4mos for yr 2, q4–6mos for yrs 3–5, and q6–12mos if >5 yrs), imaging (for signs/Sx), TSH (if the neck is irradiated), speech/hearing/dental evaluation, and smoking cessation

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Not all bioluminescent creatures light up on their own. Kochi: A beautiful scene in the 2019 Malayalam hit 'Kumbalangi Nights' showcased backwaters sparkling in a fluorescent blue glow. Quantula striata is also known as Dyakia striata and belongs to the family Dyakiidae. Revival of Mulki Rules and Telangana Regional Committee. The light emitted by a bioluminescent organism is produced by energy released from chemical reactions occurring inside (or ejected by) the organism. Secluded bays and southerly beaches are some of the best locations to find bioluminescence. As a result, the chemical energy readily changes into light energy. About the author. These events are when the surface of the ocean, often from horizon to horizon, glows with a continuous uniform milky light. There are different types of luciferin, which vary depending on the animal hosting the reaction. Bioluminescence is the result of a chemical process named " chemiluminescence ", which is when light is produced due to a chemical reaction. Since the original study in 2015, much more is known about the exact mechanism behind how bioluminescent fungi produce their distinctive green glow. Mulki is a tiny town between Mangalore and Udupi, some 380 km from Bangalore. How many of you have experienced bioluminescence in India? It is a 10-15 minute kayak from Rum Point, Starfish Point and Kaibo, and approximately a 45 minute ride by boat from Seven Mile Beach. This article is about the Luminescent armor collection. 10) and Mermaid2 (ref. Although the origins of this light are not . If a large quantity is present it can appear as a red slick on top of the water during the day. Some organisms generate their own light through a photoprotein, which emits light in an oxygen- independent reaction already has the oxygen built in the photoprotein . From Guild Wars 2 Wiki. Bioluminescence is therefore a certain type of chemiluminescence, which is the term used for a chemical reaction where light is produced, but we use bioluminescence because this reaction is taking place . Bioluminescent algae are a group of tiny marine organisms that can produce an ethereal glow in the dark. A group of three lagoons, the Indian River Lagoon is made up of the Mosquito Lagoon, the Banana River, and the Indian River. 1 Achievement. Bioluminescence, the biochemical generation of light by a living organism, is a naturally occurring phenomenon. According to another version . The word bioluminescence comes from "bio" meaning life and "lumin" meaning light. For the past few weeks, the blue shimmers are being spotted by . Luciferin and luciferase are the two chemicals that must be present for an organism to luminesce. Bioluminescence is therefore a certain type of chemiluminescence, which is the term used for a chemical reaction where light is produced, but we use bioluminescence because this reaction is taking place . Bioluminescence. This mini-biome can be found in Snow Biomes, Volcanic Biomes, Tundra Biomes and Midnight Biomes. Bioluminescent dinoflagellates producing light in breaking waves at Manasquan, New Jersey; Photo by catalano82, shown as modified by Yikrazuul. Bioluminescence is an algal/phytoplankton bloom that is sometimes visible in the ocean. When this light is produced by a living . I think the bioluminescent plankton which is found there is Noctiluca scintillans. Bioluminescence in Mulki. Bioluminescence is light produced by a chemical reaction within a living organism. Spotting a bioluminescent milky sea from space. Mike Latz holds a swirling flask of bioluminescent organisms. Chemiluminescence (CL) and bioluminescence (BL) imaging technologies, which require no external light source so as to avoid the photobleaching, background interference and autoluminescence, have become powerful tools in biochemical analysis and biomedical science with the development of advanced imaging equipment. About 76% Of Marine Life Is Bioluminescent. BLI is particularly useful for tracking fastidious intracellular pathogens that might be difficult to recover from certain organs. Bioluminescence is a primarily marine phenomenon. Here are 10 interesting facts about bioluminesence. A team of researchers from Russia and Brazil collected bioluminescent fungi and isolated the compounds responsible for the illumination. Milky seas are unusual phenomena which have been noticed by mariners for centuries, but which remain unexplained by scientists. culture liquids. April 29, 2020: We are experiencing a red tide, a massive bloom of the dinoflagellate Lingulodinium polyedra, which is a common member of the local plankton community. It takes place inside the light-producing organ of a glowing creature. One of the most electric-looking creatures on this list, the sea snail is one of the dozens of species that use bioluminescence. In order to experience the full Bioluminescence phenomenon, this tour requires a dark sky in order for the bioluminescence to be seen properly. Mulki is a tranquil delight in surfing, kayaking, and wakeboarding. Since then, the group of small light-emitting protein molecules, known as luciferins, are . Bioluminescent Plankton Featured in. Bioluminescent Life Forms Bioluminescence has been found across a broad range of the major groups of organisms from bacteria and protists to squid and fishes, with numerous phyla in between Terrestrial species (e.g. The phenomenon has also been noticed at . We must allow our eyes to adjust to the darkness. Bioluminescence results from a chemical reaction that occurs between a light-emitting molecule termed a luciferin and an enzyme called a luciferase. If you have any questions or concerns about what date to go, our office is always happy to help. During the summer months you should see bright bioluminescence every night. This unstable energy is then released as light to reach a stable state. Since the original study in 2015, much more is known about the exact mechanism behind how bioluminescent fungi produce their distinctive green glow. Bioluminescent creatures are found throughout marine habitats, from the ocean surface to the deep seafloor. Triboluminescence is a phenomenon in which light is generated when a material is mechanically pulled apart, ripped, scratched, crushed, or rubbed (see tribology).The phenomenon is not fully understood, but appears to be caused by the separation and reunification of static electrical charges.The term comes from the Greek ("to rub"; see tribology) and the Latin lumen (light). 1.1 Collection items; 2 Notes; Someone might think there was a flood in the glowworm caves in New Zealand and now the worms are freely floating the waves. The light often looks beautiful to humans and has an important function for its producer. Bioluminescence is produced through a chemical reaction, which is what sets is apart from fluorescence or phosphorescence. #travelfact #travelguide #earthvisuals #islandsofadventure #adventurespirit #passporttoearth #wondersofourplanet #dreamingtravel #explorenation #flynote #flynotecommunity Bioluminescence is a Rare Collections achievement. "Dinoflagellate flashes cause a startle response in their predators, disrupting their feeding behavior and resulting in a decrease in grazing rate by reducing the number of dinoflagellates consumed. Jump to navigation Jump to search. Off of the Atlantic Coast of Florida, this is one of the most biodiverse places in the Northern Hemisphere! No torches or white light can be used. Noctiluca scintillans, commonly known as the sea sparkle, is a free-living, marine-dwelling species of dinoflagellate that exhibits bio luminescence when disturbed. fireflies) have the same ability Bioluminescence is the only source of light for the underwater creatures About 90 . A cold-water extract of the mollusk emitted light for several minutes . Bioluminescent imaging (BLI) technology is a powerful tool for monitoring infectious disease progression and treatment approaches. Bioluminescence is a process in which living organisms produce light. Bioluminescence is the production and emission of light by living organisms.It is a form of chemiluminescence.Bioluminescence occurs widely in marine vertebrates and invertebrates, as well as in some fungi, microorganisms including some bioluminescent bacteria, and terrestrial arthropods such as fireflies.In some animals, the light is bacteriogenic, produced by symbiotic bacteria such as those . For the Sunrise III: Dawn collection item, see Bioluminescence (trophy). In the warm and dark lagoon waters on the Space Coast of Florida lies a natural phenomenon of glowing blue waters alive with activity called bioluminescence. . Significant advances have been made in the characterization of luciferases and other lux-specific proteins as well as the lux genes from a number of different species of marine and terrestrial luminescent bacteria. It's thought that sea snails actually use their opaque shells to diffuse and spread bright bioluminescent light in all . In the deep sea, where sunlight is absent, more than 90% of the animals are luminescent. Dinoflagellate bioluminescence is also thought to act as a 'burglar alarm' to attract a secondary predator that threatens to eat the . The darker out it is, the better you will be able to see the bioluminescent lights San Diego style. A common lux gene organization (luxCDAB..E) modulated by the presence of specific gen In Australia, common locations include Port Lincoln in South Australia, Jervis Bay in New South Wales and a variety of locations in Tasmania. Two chemicals interact with each other, yielding an unstable high energy compound. Bioluminescence definition can be described as the natural phenomenon wherein certain living organisms light up because of certain chemical reactions. Describe the mechanism (s) by which neurons are stimulated by light. Credits: Wikipedia. The swirling of your hand, every paddle stroke, the darting trails of nearby fish swimming, the torpedo-like aura of a dolphin swimming by all spark . Bioluminescence is the production and emission of light by living organisms.It is a form of chemiluminescence.Bioluminescence occurs widely in marine vertebrates and invertebrates, as well as in some fungi, microorganisms including some bioluminescent bacteria, and terrestrial arthropods such as fireflies.In some animals, the light is bacteriogenic, produced by symbiotic bacteria such as those . The luminescent response of the enzymatic system of A. borealis on addition of the cold and hot culture liquids of Pholiota sp. Adventure Kayak will provide you will water, a short lesson on kayaking for beginners, and everything you need to have the best experience possible. Bioluminescence. Select and defend the choice of an appropriate animal/tool/method to study natural bioluminescence or another cellular/molecular neuroscience phenomenon. What: Our NeuroNex Undergraduate Practicum . Bioluminescent Fungal Luciferins. Guys let's give planktons the appreciation they deserve, They produce majority of oxygen that's present in our environment. Life in the sea most often use coelenterazine, a type of luciferin. A stunning bioluminescent sea snail, glowing with both red light and blue light. Bioluminescence has evolved independently many times; thus the responsible genes are unrelated in bacteria, unicellular algae, coelenterates, beetles, fishes, and others. Bioluminescent Fungal Luciferins. 371-D clearly establishes, that the MULKI Rules , which became operative by virtue of the Firman issued by HEH the Nizam, in Hyderabad state, of which the Telangana was an integral part and the . Dubois's protocol came from his study in 1885 on the bioluminescence of the mollusk Pholas dactylis. Pic: TOI. Mulki beach gets waves that are between 2-3 feet and in good shape; just ideal for a surfer to enjoy the spirit of the sport. Bioluminescence is the production and emission of light by a living organism. The less people and water vehicles are in the water, the more illuminating plankton grows.The Bioluminescence is a phenomenon caused by certain kinds of phytoplankton associated with red tide.By day, the ocean has a reddish hue that looks like pollution. If you've . Bioluminescence is a chemical reaction. This light can be produced both by the organisms themselves or via symbiotic bacterial strains. 1. At the molecular level, bioluminescence is produced when chemicals, or "substrates" intermingle at the right time and place: luciferin, luciferase, and a third player, oxygen. The adults and juveniles can emit light, but the eggs also produce green light at night. It is the only terrestrial gastropod that can exhibit bioluminescence. Propose a compelling research/business idea around bioluminescence technology. Dinoflagellate Bioluminescence Tour. Coelenterazine-dependent systems. This is a phenomenon where living organisms produce and emit light. This tour is great for couples as well as families and small and large groups alike. differed from that one observed on the I. obliquus samples. Bioluminescence refers to organisms which produce and emit light as a form of chemiluminescence. At the first sight, the neon blue balls washing up the shores might be confused with some alien form of life which is trying to invade the Maldives at night. In vivo bioluminescent imaging (BLI) is a versatile and sensitive tool that is based on detection of light emission from cells or tissues. Bio luminescence is a type of chemiluminescence, which is simply the term for a chemical react ion where light is produced. AA. Bioluminescence. Contents. Luciferase enzymes, such as that from the North American firefly (Photinus pyralis), catalyze . A team of researchers from Russia and Brazil collected bioluminescent fungi and isolated the compounds responsible for the illumination. It's a Bioluminescent Red Tide! Bioluminescence: Light emitted from an organism as a result of a biochemical reaction. It's been estimated that 90% of the animals living in the pelagic (water column) are bioluminescent. In the most basic sense, bioluminescence is the light emitted by a living organism through a chemical reaction happening in their bodies. Instead, red lights and dim-lit cell phone screens are used . Video is owned by @themermaidwoman solely. Bioluminescence imaging is a powerful technique to visualize and monitor biological processes in numerous systems. Early studies to discover the biochemistry of fungal bioluminescence applied Dubois's classic "cold" and "hot" extract procedure (Desjardin et al., 2008). It is the predominant source of light in the largest fraction of the habitable volume of the earth, the deep ocean . This phenomenon is magical, for it can transfer you to . The Official Subreddit for India The photons then create visible light. Udupi: Radiant blue colour shimmered on the waves gently crashing down on . #bioluminescence #karnatakadiaries #mulki #surfingvillage #magicalexperience #offbeattravel #offbeat #bucketlisttravel #travelindia #incredibleindia #travelkarnataka #midnightkayaking #travelreels. In the most basic sense, bioluminescence is the light emitted by a living organism through a chemical reaction happening in their bodies. To develop a ratiometric bioluminescent GEVI (bGEVI), we followed the paradigm of the fGEVIs such as the voltage sensitive fluorescent protein (VSFP) BF1.2 (ref. Sea Snail. Bioluminescence occurs through a chemical reaction. This means that about of ocean creatures possess some sort of glowing ability, granted some are more apparent than others. In 2009, a 530 nm maximum wavelength of green light emission in fungi was confirmed to be the result of an enzyme-mediated reaction in which a hot extract containing heat-stable factors (substrate/luciferin) mixed with a cold extract containing enzymes (luciferase) .The same team went on to detect bioluminescence from combinations of substrates/enzymes in different fungal lineages (Mycena . Frequently Asked Questions. In the sea, it is often the same luciferin, coelenterazine, that serves as a substrate for numerous independently evolved luciferases in phylogenetically distant groups of organisms.Coelenterazine is a modified tripeptide produced from one phenylalanine and two tyrosine residues . Pockets of Bioluminescence biome can be created via use of a Glowing Microformer . As shown in Figure 3, the luminescence intensity was enhanced upon the addition to the luminescence assay of both the cold and hot culture . Design and optimization of a FRET-based voltage sensor. Some good spots would include Torrey Pines, State Beach, Sunset Cliffs, and Solana Beach in San Diego's North County. sometimes . We will take our kayaks to glide in the water, wake-boards to catch the speed and roll in the water, and if water . Chemically, all involve exergonic reactions of molecular oxygen with different substrates (luciferins) and enzymes (luciferases), resulting in photons of visible light . It is noteworthy that the occurrence of bioluminescence in land and freshwater is quite rare when compared to its appearance in . This sequence portrayed the natural phenomenon known as sea sparkle or bioluminescence. Bioluminescence is a planetary Mini-Biome type characterized by its glowing plants of different sizes. Burkholderia mallei, the causative agent of glanders, is a facultative intracellular pathogen and has been classified by the CDC as a . CL imaging technology has been . This unit describes two strategies for bioluminescence imaging that can be used to study bacterial infection in mice. What is Bioluminescence? NATURAL PHENOM: Bioluminescence observed by Vrinda, Abhishek Maiya and friends at Padukere on November 7. One method is to express a luciferase gene in the bacteria; the second method is to use bacteria that express . Since bioluminescence is generated by using less than 20% thermal radiations, it is a "cold light". You can give us a call at (407) 519-8711 or email us at email@example.com. While the . The Bioluminescent Bay is located on the North Side of Grand Cayman. This video of bioluminescent plankton was shot while kayaking in Mulki, Karnataka. That said, the best place to see bioluminescence in San Diego is at a beach with as little man-made light as possible. A phenomenon known as the red tide (which is, as you might have guessed, when the water turns red, due to a bloom of microorganisms) has been linked to bioluminescence. Environmental Impact of Bioluminescent Algae. In reality . (Bioluminescence is chemiluminescence that takes place inside a living organism. Published: March 20, 2020 07:46 AM IST. On land it is most commonly seen as glowing fungus on wood (called . 5w. Bioluminescence is a fascinating phenomenon that is found in only a few species on land (e.g., fireflies), but is common in all the world's oceans. Sea sparkle can be witnessed along the backwaters abutting the sea off Kochi during . Its exact location is determined by the direction of the wind, which can either trap it in a bay for a few bays . 1. Sometimes it gets so abundant that it discolors the water reddish/brown, hence the name red tide. Scientifically, it is known as Noctiluca Scintillans, and it can be quite common in warm, calm waters. Sam Mun Tsai Beach, Hong Kong. The event spanned two complete moon-free cycles (26 July-9 August, and 25 August-7 . A wide variety of creatures produce light. The chemical reaction produces energy in the form of photons. Felling plants and vines here yield Glow Fibre. What is Bioluminescence? More than a century following Boyle's discovery, Raphael Dubois (1849-1929) (pictured right) , a French pharmacologist, was the first to identify luciferin, and luciferase, two critical molecular components of bioluminescence.Dubois' discovery differentiated bioluminescence from phosphorescence.. Mohith Shenoy K from Udupi, who has captured the phenomenon said that "It is learnt that bioluminescence is happening across the coastline. In contrast, bioluminescence is essentially absent (with a few exceptions) in fresh water, even in Lake Baikal. The next evening is a new moon, and a group of us make our way up the steep hill towards the Deep Bay track. Bioluminescence serves a number of important functions, including prey attraction, illumination of . Fireflies, for example, make light in their abdomens. Bioluminescence is light created by a living thing, such as the flash of a firefly or the glowing water created by microscopic protists called dinoflagellates (up to as many as 20 million dinoflagellates per liter!) This occurs mainly in marine vertebrates, invertebrates, fungi, bacteria and some other microorganisms when they undergo a chemical reaction in their bodies that gives a glow. @themermaidwoman experienced it in Mulki and we can say it looks magical! Bioluminescence is a kind of chemiluminescence (a chemical reaction that produces light) inside a living creature. However, information on bioluminescence in the deep-sea benthos (organisms that live on the . For a reaction to occur, a species must contain luciferin, a molecule that, when it reacts with oxygen, produces light. In simple words, the light produced through chemical reactions inside a living thing is called bioluminescence. It is a type of land snail that grows up to 5 to 6 cm in length. asia Maldives. The vast majority of bioluminescent organisms reside in the ocean; of the more than 700 genera known to contain luminous species, some 80% are marine ().These occupy a diverse range of habitats, from polar to tropical and from surface waters to the sea floor ().The ecological importance of bioluminescence in the ocean is manifest in the dominance of light emitters in open waters; luminescent . Bioluminescence living light is widespread in the oceans of the world. 11).These fGEVIs are composed of a voltage-sensing domain (VSD) fused with two different fluorescent proteins functioning as a FRET pair donor and acceptor. Luciferin produces the light and luciferase is the catalyst. Organisms use light for communication, for defense, or for attracting a mate or prey.

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When talking bout parliament, we will imagine the debate between MSP regarding political issues as this situation is shown by the media but they are not aware of the real functions of parliament that is to enact law and they don’t even make their own research about the parliament. This research is focusing on the publics awareness of the structures and functions of the Malaysian parliament. This research will attempt to distinguish the awareness of the parliamentary issues between Arts and Sciences programmer students. Malaysia practices Parliamentary Democracy and Constitutional Monarchy. The Parliamentary system is the system where the representative of each respective area discusses among them regarding any current issues that arise in Malaysia. Parliament of Malaysia consists of 292 members. Malaysia has three branches of power which are executive, legislative and Judiciary and parliament is under the legislative branch that acts as legislature which enacts laws. The comparison between the Malaysian Parliament and other nations is that the proceeding process in our parliament still in normal condition which can be classified as safe compared to others like Taiwan where the proceeding in their parliament has to be postponed cause of fighting between the two parties in the parliament hall. Same goes to Ukraine when both parties fight among them and as a result debates and discussions cannot be continued and public matters cannot be deliberated on. In Romania their situation goes a little bit worse than others not because of the parties fight but because of the suicide attempt in their parliament hall. As an introduction, this research will focus on observing the knowledge between arts programs and sciences programs students. The verdict for this project is the arts program students are more concerned about the parliamentary system in Malaysia marred to sciences program students. Although the objective of this research is to distinguish the knowledge of the arts students and sciences students regarding the Malaysian Parliament, but it also to provide extra knowledge to certain students who have no idea regarding the parliamentary system in Malaysia. On the other hand, it also enhances the students’ patriotism and also builds a new generation with a good knowledge of Malaysian parliament that will hopefully lead to producing good future leaders. ARTICLE SUMMARY The Doctrine of Ministerial Responsibility in Malaysia: Theory and Practice in a New Regime of Parliamentary Accountability There are some Members of Parliament (MSP) accountable as minister in Malaysia Cabinet; so, these people have two separate tasks; there is, first, the individual responsibility towards his people that he represented, and second, the collective responsibility in the government. Nevertheless, it is clear that their act is highly influenced by their political background and political parties in making decision; for example, during debating and voting process in order to pass a new bill or taxes. So the study of the accountability of Minister which is also MM is vital in order to tell the citizen the rower that he/she has when sit in both position. Individual ministerial responsibility states that a Minister is responsible for every action of his department. It would thus appear that ‘responsible’ in this context has a rather strong meaning than in the context of collective responsibility. L In that context, it amounts to little more than an obligation than to defend and support government policy. On the other hand, reference also should be made to the two types of responsibility in example individual responsibility for policy and administration and individual responsibility or personal conduct. The division is necessary while faced with question such as: should Minister resign simply because ‘something went wrong in their department? Or should the Minister quit on the basis of personal behavior like a sex scandal? As we can see the scenario in Malaysia in the case of Dates Series Chartist Bad Jail quits as a Minister due to her MFC scandals (bribery) which involved her family and herself. 2 Is her decision to leave his position is relevant? In my opinion, her decision is significant because a Minister shall be responsible for her personal conduct such s sincerely and honesty. Secondly, Collective ministerial responsibility emphasizes on the unanimity of government and its responsibility to parliament. The convention requires that all ministers be Jointly responsible as a team to parliament; individual ministers may not in public express views that contradict a government policy; and should be no criticisms from the decisions in public; thus convention requires that all Ministers are bound by the decisions that are taken or recommended in Cabinet and that Cabinet discussions must remain. Hence, whatever the origin of the doctrine of ministerial responsibility, the doctrine has been incorporated into the Constitution. 3 In conclusion, we can point out that there is vagueness on occasion as to the distinction between the two types of accountability which are both closely related and also complementary to one another. This in return has made it really difficult to address or deal with the issue of effectiveness of ministerial responsibility. Take for instance the convention that a Minister who is seriously criticized in Parliament must resign, has not taken hold because the government usually rallies behind a Minister who is being criticized in Parliament. On such an occasion, collective responsibility seems to defeat the notion of individual responsibility. The convention of collective responsibility thus becomes important in achieving party solidarity but it tends to prevent the full operation of the convention of individual responsibility. To sum up, every single matter that concluded in the parliament is always been effected by party’s constitutions and policies, thus the opposition can do nothing if they have different agenda and opinion to be arise and pass. Parliamentary Privilege and Its Practice in Malaysia: An Overview Parliamentary privilege is to provide the necessary remarks in which Parliament in its corporate capacity and its members as individuals can fulfill their responsibilities to the citizens whom they represent and not to protect individual Member of Parliament (MSP). 4 Under the Malaysian Federal Constitution, there are certain articles that mention about parliamentary privileges. For example, art 63 which states that the validity of any proceedings in Parliament shall not be questioned by court. 5 Apart from art 63, art 72 can also be referred to in which it provides the same validity of proceedings in the Legislative Assembly. Despite, as parliamentary privilege does not mean to protect individual MSP, art 63(4) is an exception. To implement Justice, these privileges shall not apply to any person charged with an offence. One of the privileges of Houses of Parliament is right to regulate its own internal proceedings/immunity from Judicial proceeding. Article 63(1) of Federal Constitution together with art 63(2) provides that the court cannot interfere any proceedings in Parliament as well as not liable to any proceedings regarding anything said or any vote given by Members of Parliament . Another privilege is decision as to disqualification. In this particular item, as refer to art 53(1) of the Federal Constitution states that if a member of a Parliament is disqualified, the decision shall be taken as final. There is no need for the Parliament to bring the case to the court as they have their own power. Next is freedom of speech and debate. In the article, it is said that, “its essence is that no penal or coercive action should be taken against members for what is said or done in Parliament”. 6 The protection applies to activities taken in course of or in connection with parliamentary proceedings. It must also be noted that this privilege is not personal in nature. Lastly is the freedom from arrest. In United Kingdom, this privilege does exist, but in Malaysia, no distinction in nature of the offence whether it is civil or criminal. If means rear, or the intention to commit the crime is there, no person shall be protected under this such privilege. Although these privileges are considered necessary for the proper functioning of Parliament and for the full execution of its powers, it is undeniable fact that the practice of parliamentary privilege in Malaysia faces a lot of challenges due to the fact that by asserting special owners and immunities for Parliament as a whole. And for its Members individually, Parliament throws around itself a cloak of protection which provides rights and immunities not accorded to individual citizens. In other words, when certain class of individuals are given special benefits as opposed to other class or classes of people. Issues of violations of rights and discrimination are bound to arise. This is particularly the case of Malaysia where there is a written constitution and fundamental rights are given pride place at the same time. Hence, the following are some of the challenges facing the operation of parliamentary privileges in Malaysia. Conclusively, this research helps people to know about the operation of parliamentary privileges among members of Parliament in Malaysia but it might be limited knowledge to certain people only. Thus, it is much safer if the researcher is asking the basic question about the membership. The Legislative Jurisdiction of the Federal Parliament in Matters Involving Islamic Law In this article, the writer discusses about the capacity of the federal parliament to enact laws where such laws encompass Islamic laws is with the state legislature and not with the federal parliament. There was a dispute arose when the federal reliant passed the system of Islamic banking and tactful which automatically shake the authority of the state legislature that has full authority to enact Islamic laws. Article 73 defines the Jurisdictional scope of the laws made by parliament and the legislature, with the federal laws having application over the whole or any part of the Federation and, where appropriate, outside it and States laws having authority only in the whole or any part of the State. 9 Thus, the power of the parliament is higher than the state legislative but in this case, it involve the Islamic laws which infuse the writer which types of legislature need to get involve either the parliament or the state legislature. In Federal Constitution, there are several articles that related with this case which explained in detail the role of the legislature. In Article 77 the legislature of a state shall have power to make laws with respect to any matter not enumerated in any of the Lists set out in the Ninth Schedule, not being a matter in respect which parliament has power to make laws. 0 Then the Article 75 explained if any State law is inconsistent with a federal law, the federal law shall reveal and the state law shall, to the extent of the inconsistency, be void. Al As to solve this case, the Judge refers to the Article 74 of Federal Constitution that consist the three lists. List I is the Federal List, List II is the State List and List Ill is the Concurrent List. For this case, it involve the Federal List and the State List as both lists need to be understand in detailed in order to distinguish their roles and importantly to solve this case. In Federal List, it has been stated that banking is within their role and in State List only stated that it govern only personal and family law matters of Muslims. In conclusion, the authority of the parliament in Islamic banking has been proved as matters such as banking (including Islamic banking), insurance (including tactful) and companies are in the Federal list and therefore the Federal Parliament has the Jurisdiction to enact laws to govern this matters. Parliament has the authority under the constitution to enact Islamic law in respect of all matters (including Islamic law and tactful) save those matters reserved for the States in List II. The matters covered by List II are only those that relate to Islamic personal law. This case increase our knowledge on the function and the structure of the Parliamentary system in Malaysia as for this case it gives clear view to us about the different of legislative jurisdiction between Parliament and State Legislative. Lastly, it help us to understand in deep regarding the advantages and disadvantages of the Parliament in Malaysia which in normal situation as to compare with others like Romania, Taiwan and Ukraine that within critical situation. RESEARCH OUTCOMES / ANALYSIS Background This research was conducted according to stream which was between Science students and Art students in CIFS Ill-KM. The purpose why we carried out this research is to distinguish the general knowledge between these two groups in the field of Parliamentary System in Malaysia. We had distributed 25 survey forms for each programmer. In order to ease our research we divided the questions into 3 types, which were Definition I. E. A Bill is a draft law, Functions ‘e the function of Parliament is to enact law, and Membership of Parliament I. E. A member of Dean Engage is a Senator. Figure 1 : Graph on Analysis on the awareness of Parliamentary issues according to stream based on Definition questions. This type of questions covered he term that used in Parliament such as Bill. Basically, only the art students know about this question because they learnt this in class. While the science students may know this if they read papers and magazines. Based on the data above, 18 students from Art programmer tend to answer correctly whereas only 12 students from Science program know the right answer. It is clearly that 72% of art students answer it right. On the other hand, only 48% get the right answer while majority (58%) of them failed this question. In the nut shell, Science students do not concern and do not even know about our fundamental Parliamentary System. In an article from thetas, it said that “Malaysian tend to read less as they grow older, according to Malaysian National Library director-general Dates Raisin ABA Baker . “12 Besides that, the second Deputy Speaker of Ghana Parliament, Proof. Aaron Michael Quays, has called on students in the country to inculcate the habit of reading themselves, to improve on their knowledge base. According to Proof. Quays, it was only through reading that one could acquire knowledge, in order to be part of the changing world. 13 From the two sources, it is proven that the awareness of Malaysian about Parliament is low because reading is the key to knowledge but as Malaysian grow older, they tend to read less. It can also be assumed that if they did not learn it in class, they have no effort to read it and to search about it by themselves. Figure 2 : Graph on Analysis on the awareness of Parliamentary issues according to stream on Function questions. Another type of question which is the functions of Malaysian Parliament, most students from both groups know more about this topic. It can be seen that the number of students that concern and aware more about the functions is higher than other topic of questions. They might aware more due to the exposition of media. For example, in thetas online, there was a news about functions of Parliament which is to enact law, “PITUITARY: The Government will table the International Transfer of Prisoners (TOP) bill 2012 when parliament reconvenes this Swept 24, in a bid to bring home Malaysian locked up abroad. “14 According to the research, even though the number of the students that aware increased, Arts Students still conquer the topic. Based on the graph above, it shows that arts students know more about Malaysian Parliamentary system. The number of arts dents that have more knowledge about this topic is 19, 2 students more than sciences students which is 17 only. Figure 3 : Graph on Analysis on the awareness of Parliamentary issues according to stream on Membership of Parliament questions. In terms of question of membership of Parliament, one study has found that Arts students are more concern about this type of questions. Based on the graph, it shows that among 25 students, 15 of them answer the questions correctly. In contrast, there are only 10 students of sciences programmer know about the membership of Parliamentary in Malaysia whereas 1 5 students do not concern very well about this tater. To be proven, different programmer have different awareness due to their subjects which are not related to this issue. In short, the topic on Membership of Parliament is rarely published in the media, this is the reason why less Sciences Students know about this. Media do play an important role in giving knowledge, especially with the topic that they do not learn in class. In Nepal newspaper, The Rising Nepal, an author stated the role of media in his article, “It plays a deciding role in assessing the political performance of the parties and the government. “15 Figure : Graph on Analysis on the awareness of Parliamentary issues according to stream. Overall, the graph illustrates the awareness of arts students pertaining to Parliamentary issues is slightly higher that sciences students. Unfortunately, the number of the students who are concern about this issue is not satisfying. From 50 students, only 9 arts students and 3 sciences students claim that they aware about Parliamentary issues which is only 24% from students in CIFS Ill-KM. our assumptions towards arts students especially Law students slumped when they themselves confess that they do not care much about this matter. In previous graphs, hey answer it correctly because they learnt it in class. On the other hand, this type of question talked about awareness which is something they get outside classes and by their own effort. As we mentioned before, usually students in Malaysia read less. Consequently, they do not have any knowledge about it and this symptom will make them failed to think out of the box. LIMITATION The hindrances that we encountered while conducting our research can be observed in distributing our survey forms and the article summary. At first, it took many hours in finding the articles on given topics and after we found the articles, it was very official to understand what the articles were all about. Such matter would lead to problems when summarizing all three articles, because understanding was important in summarizing the articles. Based on an article by Sir Swami Administration’s, said that “there is also an importance in developing our understanding, even if it seems somewhat esoteric and unnecessary compared to our normal practices. Because the truth is, unless we develop some understanding of what we’re seeking, even if we discover it, we won’t likely be able to recognize it. 16 Another limitation that emerged during our research was some students did not give lull cooperation while answering our survey. For example, some of them Just filled out the answer without reading the question. Then, there were certain students who did know the answers, but they pretended like they knew it and answered wrongly. This might lead to some problems when making a conclusion. While conducting our research, the facilities in CIFS are considered as good. The process of finding the articles was easy although there were some limitations regarding the slow internet of Wi-If in Ill-KM. Next, the cooperation among members of the group was very indeed needed in giving idea to understand the articles very well. In our opinion, based on what had happened, group members should be more considerate and cooperative as we need each other in the future. CONCLUSION We certainly achieved our objective which is to differentiate the knowledge of arts students and sciences students regarding Parliamentary System in Malaysia. We also provide a few information about the Malaysian Parliament to those who have no idea about what is parliament during the survey process in order to create a new generation that have great concern about our own legal system. Although we have provide some knowledge to the students but we also gain a little bit knowledge urine this research process in detailed during the process of searching facts about the parliament of other nations. For instance, we learnt others name of parliament like in Afghanistan called Short, in Azerbaijan called Millie Majors and Croatia called Saber. 17 Another example, we also have learnt the current situation of our own parliament and others which expose us to the new world of parliament that shows huge different as to compare with our parliament. For recommendation, the university should provide specific subjects that compulsory to all students like history hat enhance their basic knowledge of Malaysia. Apart from that, Malaysia’s media should show more programs about Malaysia legal system to give a extra knowledge about politics in Malaysia to all Malaysian. Delivering a high-quality product at a reasonable price is not enough anymore. That’s why we have developed 5 beneficial guarantees that will make your experience with our service enjoyable, easy, and safe. You have to be 100% sure of the quality of your product to give a money-back guarantee. This describes us perfectly. Make sure that this guarantee is totally transparent.Read more Each paper is composed from scratch, according to your instructions. It is then checked by our plagiarism-detection software. There is no gap where plagiarism could squeeze in.Read more Thanks to our free revisions, there is no way for you to be unsatisfied. We will work on your paper until you are completely happy with the result.Read more Your email is safe, as we store it according to international data protection rules. 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The DICT Development Group 7 definitions found From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 : Heart \Heart\ (h[aum]rt), n. [OE. harte, herte, heorte, AS. heorte; akin to OS. herta, OFies. hirte, D. hart, OHG. herza, G. herz, Icel. hjarta, Sw. hjerta, Goth. ha['i]rt[=o], Lith. szirdis, Russ. serdtse, Ir. cridhe, L. cor, Gr. kardi`a, kh^r. [root]277. Cf. Accord, Discord, Cordial, 4th 1. (Anat.) A hollow, muscular organ, which, by contracting rhythmically, keeps up the circulation of the blood. Why does my blood thus muster to my heart! --Shak. Note: In adult mammals and birds, the heart is four-chambered, the right auricle and ventricle being completely separated from the left auricle and ventricle; and the blood flows from the systemic veins to the right auricle, thence to the right ventricle, from which it is forced to the lungs, then returned to the left auricle, thence passes to the left ventricle, from which it is driven into the systemic arteries. See Illust. under Aorta. In fishes there are but one auricle and one ventricle, the blood being pumped from the ventricle through the gills to the system, and thence returned to the auricle. In most amphibians and reptiles, the separation of the auricles is partial or complete, and in reptiles the ventricles also are separated more or less completely. The so-called lymph hearts, found in many amphibians, reptiles, and birds, are contractile sacs, which pump the lymph into the 2. The seat of the affections or sensibilities, collectively or separately, as love, hate, joy, grief, courage, and the like; rarely, the seat of the understanding or will; -- usually in a good sense, when no epithet is expressed; the better or lovelier part of our nature; the spring of all our actions and purposes; the seat of moral life and character; the moral affections and character itself; the individual disposition and character; as, a good, tender, loving, bad, hard, or selfish heart. Hearts are dust, hearts' loves remain. --Emerson. 3. The nearest the middle or center; the part most hidden and within; the inmost or most essential part of any body or system; the source of life and motion in any organization; the chief or vital portion; the center of activity, or of energetic or efficient action; as, the heart of a country, of a tree, etc. Exploits done in the heart of France. --Shak. Peace subsisting at the heart Of endless agitation. --Wordsworth. 4. Courage; courageous purpose; spirit. Eve, recovering heart, replied. --Milton. The expelled nations take heart, and when they fly from one country invade another. --Sir W. 5. Vigorous and efficient activity; power of fertile production; condition of the soil, whether good or bad. That the spent earth may gather heart again. 6. That which resembles a heart in shape; especially, a roundish or oval figure or object having an obtuse point at one end, and at the other a corresponding indentation, -- used as a symbol or representative of the heart. 7. One of the suits of playing cards, distinguished by the figure or figures of a heart; as, hearts are trumps. 8. Vital part; secret meaning; real intention. And then show you the heart of my message. --Shak. 9. A term of affectionate or kindly and familiar address. "I speak to thee, my heart." --Shak. Note: Heart is used in many compounds, the most of which need no special explanation; as, heart-appalling, heart-breaking, heart-cheering, heart-chilled, heart-expanding, heart-free, heart-hardened, heart-heavy, heart-purifying, heart-searching, heart-sickening, heart-sinking, heart-sore, heart-stirring, heart-touching, heart-wearing, heart-whole, heart-wounding, heart-wringing, etc. After one's own heart, conforming with one's inmost approval and desire; as, a friend after my own heart. The Lord hath sought him a man after his own heart. --1 Sam. xiii. At heart, in the inmost character or disposition; at bottom; really; as, he is at heart a good man. By heart, in the closest or most thorough manner; as, to know or learn by heart. "Composing songs, for fools to get by heart" (that is, to commit to memory, or to learn to learn by heart, to memorize. For my heart, for my life; if my life were at stake. [Obs.] "I could not get him for my heart to do it." --Shak. Heart bond (Masonry), a bond in which no header stone stretches across the wall, but two headers meet in the middle, and their joint is covered by another stone laid header fashion. --Knight. Heart and hand, with enthusiastic co["o]peration. Heart hardness, hardness of heart; callousness of feeling; moral insensibility. --Shak. Heart heaviness, depression of spirits. --Shak. Heart point (Her.), the fess point. See Escutcheon. Heart rising, a rising of the heart, as in opposition. Heart shell (Zool.), any marine, bivalve shell of the genus Cardium and allied genera, having a heart-shaped shell; esp., the European Isocardia cor; -- called also heart Heart sickness, extreme depression of spirits. Heart and soul, with the utmost earnestness. Heart urchin (Zool.), any heartshaped, spatangoid sea urchin. See Spatangoid. Heart wheel, a form of cam, shaped like a heart. See Cam. In good heart, in good courage; in good hope. Out of heart, discouraged. Poor heart, an exclamation of pity. To break the heart of. (a) To bring to despair or hopeless grief; to cause to be utterly cast down by sorrow. (b) To bring almost to completion; to finish very nearly; -- said of anything undertaken; as, he has broken the heart of the task. To find in the heart, to be willing or disposed. "I could find in my heart to ask your pardon." --Sir P. Sidney. To have at heart, to desire (anything) earnestly. To have in the heart, to purpose; to design or intend to To have the heart in the mouth, to be much frightened. To lose heart, to become discouraged. To lose one's heart, to fall in love. To set the heart at rest, to put one's self at ease. To set the heart upon, to fix the desires on; to long for earnestly; to be very fond of. To take heart of grace, to take courage. To take to heart, to grieve over. To wear one's heart upon one's sleeve, to expose one's feelings or intentions; to be frank or impulsive. With all one's heart, With one's whole heart, very earnestly; fully; completely; devotedly. From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 : Heart \Heart\ (h[aum]rt), v. t. To give heart to; to hearten; to encourage; to inspirit. My cause is hearted; thine hath no less reason. --Shak. From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 : Heart \Heart\, v. i. To form a compact center or heart; as, a hearting cabbage. From WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006) : n 1: the locus of feelings and intuitions; "in your heart you know it is true"; "her story would melt your bosom" [syn: 2: the hollow muscular organ located behind the sternum and between the lungs; its rhythmic contractions move the blood through the body; "he stood still, his heart thumping wildly" [syn: heart, pump, ticker] 3: the courage to carry on; "he kept fighting on pure spunk"; "you haven't got the heart for baseball" [syn: heart, mettle, nerve, spunk] 4: an area that is approximately central within some larger region; "it is in the center of town"; "they ran forward into the heart of the struggle"; "they were in the eye of the storm" [syn: center, centre, middle, heart, eye] 5: the choicest or most essential or most vital part of some idea or experience; "the gist of the prosecutor's argument"; "the heart and soul of the Republican Party"; "the nub of the story" [syn: kernel, substance, core, center, centre, essence, gist, heart, heart and soul, inwardness, marrow, meat, nub, pith, sum, nitty- 6: an inclination or tendency of a certain kind; "he had a change of heart" [syn: heart, spirit] 7: a plane figure with rounded sides curving inward at the top and intersecting at the bottom; conventionally used on playing cards and valentines; "he drew a heart and called it 8: a firm rather dry variety meat (usually beef or veal); "a five-pound beef heart will serve six" 9: a positive feeling of liking; "he had trouble expressing the affection he felt"; "the child won everyone's heart"; "the warmness of his welcome made us feel right at home" [syn: affection, affectionateness, fondness, tenderness, heart, warmness, warmheartedness, philia] 10: a playing card in the major suit that has one or more red hearts on it; "he led the queen of hearts"; "hearts were From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 : 476 Moby Thesaurus words for "heart": Amor, Benzedrine, Benzedrine pill, C, Christian love, Dexamyl, Dexamyl pill, Dexedrine, Dexedrine pill, Eros, Methedrine, abatis, abdomen, admiration, adoration, affection, agape, amphetamine, amphetamine sulfate, angina, angina pectoris, anima, anima humana, animating force, anus, aortic insufficiency, aortic stenosis, apoplectic stroke, apoplexy, appendix, ardency, ardor, arrhythmia, arteriosclerosis, atherosclerosis, atman, atrial fibrillation, attachment, auricular fibrillation, axiom, axis, ba, backbone, basics, bathmism, beating heart, being, bench mark, beriberi heart, biological clock, biorhythm, blind gut, blood, bodily love, boldness, bones, bosom, bottom, bowels, brain, brains, bravery, breast, breath, breath of life, brotherly love, buddhi, callousness, cardiac arrest, cardiac insufficiency, cardiac shock, cardiac stenosis, cardiac thrombosis, cardinal point, carditis, caritas, cecum, center, center of action, center of gravity, center of life, centroid, centrum, charity, chief thing, chitterlings, chutzpah, climax, cocaine, cockscomb, coke, colon, compassion, concern, congenital heart disease, conjugal love, consideration, cor biloculare, cor juvenum, cor triatriatum, core, cornerstone, coronary, coronary insufficiency, coronary thrombosis, courage, crisis, critical point, crux, crystal, cue, dauntlessness, dead center, deepest recesses, desire, determination, devotion, dextroamphetamine sulfate, diameter, diaphragm, diastolic hypertension, distillate, distillation, divine breath, divine spark, duodenum, ecstasy, ego, elan vital, elixir, empathy, encased heart, endocarditis, endocardium, enthusiasm, entrails, epicenter, equator, esoteric reality, esprit, essence, essence of life, essential, essential matter, excitement, extrasystole, fabric, faithful love, fancy, fatty heart, feelings, fervency, fervidness, fervor, fibroid heart, fire, flame, flask-shaped heart, flower, focal point, focus, fondness, football, force of life, foregut, frame, frame of mind, free love, free-lovism, frosted heart, fundamental, fundamentals, furor, fury, generosity, giblets, gist, gizzard, goodness, gravamen, great point, grit, growth force, gusto, guts, gutsiness, guttiness, hairy heart, haslet, heart attack, heart block, heart condition, heart disease, heart failure, heart of hearts, heart of oak, heartbeat, heartblood, heartiness, heartlessness, heartstrings, heat, hero worship, high blood pressure, high point, hindgut, hub, humanitarianism, humanity, humor, hypertension, hypertensive heart disease, hypostasis, idolatry, idolism, idolization, impassionedness, important thing, impulse of life, inmost heart, inmost soul, innards, inner, inner essence, inner landscape, inner life, inner man, inner mechanism, inner nature, inner recess, inner self, innermost being, insensitivity, inside, insides, inspiriting force, interior, interior man, intern, internal, internals, intestinal fortitude, intestine, intrados, inward, inwards, ischemic heart disease, issue, jejunum, jiva, jivatma, jolly bean, kernel, keystone, khu, kidney, kidneys, kindliness, kindness, kishkes, landmark, large intestine, lasciviousness, libido, life breath, life cycle, life essence, life force, life principle, life process, lifeblood, like, liking, liveliness, liver, liver and lights, living force, love, lovemaking, lung, magnanimity, main point, main thing, manes, married love, marrow, material, material point, matter, mean, meat, median, medium, medulla, metacenter, methamphetamine hydrochloride, mettle, middle, midgut, midmost, midriff, midst, milestone, mind, mitral insufficiency, mitral stenosis, mood, morale, moxie, myocardial infarction, myocardial insufficiency, myocarditis, myovascular insufficiency, nave, navel, nephesh, nerve, nerve center, note, nub, nucleus, nuts and bolts, omphalos, ox heart, palate, palpitation, paralytic stroke, paroxysmal tachycardia, passion, passionateness, penetralia, pep pill, pericarditis, perineum, physical love, pile, pith, pity, pivot, pluck, pneuma, polestar, popular regard, popularity, postulate, prana, premature beat, principle, pseudoaortic insufficiency, psyche, pulmonary insufficiency, pulmonary stenosis, pump, purple heart, purusha, pylorus, quick, quid, quiddity, quintessence, real issue, recesses, rectum, regard, relish, resolution, rheumatic heart disease, root, round heart, ruach, salient point, sap, savor, sclerosis, seat, seat of life, secret heart, secret place, secret places, sensibility, sensitivity, sentiment, sentiments, sex, sexual love, shade, shadow, shine, sincerity, sine qua non, small intestine, snow, soul, spark of life, speed, spirit, spirits, spiritual being, spiritual love, spiritus, spleen, spunk, stamina, state of mind, stimulant, stomach, stony heart, storm center, stout heart, stroke, stuff, substance, substantive point, sum and substance, sweetbread, sympathy, tachycardia, temper, tender feeling, tender passion, tenderness, the bottom line, the nitty-gritty, the point, the self, thick, thick of things, thrombosis, ticker, tone, tongue, toughness, tricuspid insufficiency, tricuspid stenosis, tripe, tripes, true being, true inwardness, truelove, turning point, turtle heart, umbilicus, understanding, upper, uxoriousness, varicose veins, varix, vehemence, vein, ventricular fibrillation, vermiform appendix, verve, vis vitae, vis vitalis, viscera, vital center, vital energy, vital flame, vital fluid, vital force, vital principle, vital spark, vital spirit, vitals, waist, waistline, warmth, warmth of feeling, weakness, will, works, worship, yearning, zeal, zest, zone From Easton's 1897 Bible Dictionary : According to the Bible, the heart is the centre not only of spiritual activity, but of all the operations of human life. "Heart" and "soul" are often used interchangeably (Deut. 6:5; 26:16; comp. Matt. 22:37; Mark 12:30, 33), but this is not generally the case. The heart is the "home of the personal life," and hence a man is designated, according to his heart, wise (1 Kings 3:12, etc.), pure (Ps. 24:4; Matt. 5:8, etc.), upright and righteous (Gen. 20:5, 6; Ps. 11:2; 78:72), pious and good (Luke 8:15), etc. In these and such passages the word "soul" could not be substituted for "heart." The heart is also the seat of the conscience (Rom. 2:15). It is naturally wicked (Gen. 8:21), and hence it contaminates the whole life and character (Matt. 12:34; 15:18; comp. Eccl. 8:11; Ps. 73:7). Hence the heart must be changed, regenerated (Ezek. 36:26; 11:19; Ps. 51:10-14), before a man can willingly obey The process of salvation begins in the heart by the believing reception of the testimony of God, while the rejection of that testimony hardens the heart (Ps. 95:8; Prov. 28:14; 2 Chr. 36:13). "Hardness of heart evidences itself by light views of sin; partial acknowledgment and confession of it; pride and conceit; ingratitude; unconcern about the word and ordinances of God; inattention to divine providences; stifling convictions of conscience; shunning reproof; presumption, and general ignorance of divine things." From The Devil's Dictionary (1881-1906) : HEART, n. An automatic, muscular blood-pump. Figuratively, this useful organ is said to be the seat of emotions and sentiments -- a very pretty fancy which, however, is nothing but a survival of a once universal belief. It is now known that the sentiments and emotions reside in the stomach, being evolved from food by chemical action of the gastric fluid. The exact process by which a beefsteak becomes a feeling -- tender or not, according to the age of the animal from which it was cut; the successive stages of elaboration through which a caviar sandwich is transmuted to a quaint fancy and reappears as a pungent epigram; the marvelous functional methods of converting a hard-boiled egg into religious contrition, or a cream-puff into a sigh of sensibility -- these things have been patiently ascertained by M. Pasteur, and by him expounded with convincing lucidity. (See, also, my monograph, _The Essential Identity of the Spiritual Affections and Certain Intestinal Gases Freed in Digestion_ -- 4to, 687 pp.) In a scientific work entitled, I believe, _Delectatio Demonorum_ (John Camden Hotton, London, 1873) this view of the sentiments receives a striking illustration; and for further light consult Professor Dam's famous treatise on _Love as a Product of Alimentary Maceration_. email@example.com Specification=RFC 2229

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2.6. SST's constants The next step in building SST theory, which constitutes TetraSociology's backbone and foundation, is that of defining the constants for each of the SST's four coordinates. In conformity with the tetrism principle stating that to describe the social world and its phenomena, pointing out four components is necessary and sufficient, let us distinguish in each SST coordinate four variable constants - equally important, sufficient if taken together, but ranking differently in functional priority. The constants are qualitatively permanent and quantitatively variable. They are defined in appropriate theories of social statics, dynamics, structuratics, and genetics, which constitute parts of the SST theory as the base of TetraSociology. Social statics, considers society's resources (the relevant SST coordinate) and points out four classes - necessary, sufficient, but differently prioritised - PEOPLE, INFORMATION, ORGANIZATIONS (political, law, financial, managerial, relevant norms, order and forms of social relations), THINGS. The abbreviation is PIOT. These classes of resources constitute appropriate resource variable constants. All resources are reproduced and consumed by society, so they all are both society's products and components. With at least one PIOT resource missing, the social world cannot exist (make an imaginary test: reduce to zero at least one of the resources). People rank the highest in priority among resources, because only people produce all the PIOT resources; it is only through people's employment time that all social resources, processes, structures and society's states come into being; it is only through people that a quality of the social, its HIOM components get carried over to all the coordinates. In PIOT resources, HIOM components come to life: in each resource, a relevant component of the social, as a whole, exists having priority, while three others exist as parts subordinate to it. Toffler pointed to similar PIOT resources as "basic elements," and Bourdieu, as appropriate "capitals." Social statics considers PIOT resources as the past, as frozen social time, as products of finished employment immune to all changes and processes and, in this sense, as static, unchangeable. Social statics reveals the resource "anatomy" of the social world, pointing out, in the framework, PIOT resource constants. The resource anatomy is matched by various kinds of static, "anatomical" approaches in sociology. Four world-wide trends in monistic sociology provide the major argument for PIOT resources. Idealism (Plato, Weber, etc) distinguished such resource as information; materialism (Marx, etc) - things; organicism (Comte, Spencer, etc) - organisations (order); existentialism (Jaspers, etc) - people, their existence. The virtue of each of the world-wide monistic trends consisted in that each had been proving for centuries, and not without reason, the necessity of the appropriate resource for society. TetraSociology integrates the virtues of the monisms and recognises the four appropriate resources, while freeing them from monistic absolutization, from the "defining, primal, primogenital" role, and considering them EQUALLY necessary for the social world's existence. TetraSociology integrates monists' ideas with the pluralists': Montesquieu, Kant, Sorokin, Parsons and many others. TetraSociological synthesis is kindred to the "different sociological school's synthesis" rehabilitated "over the last decade" in the works of Giddens, Habermas, Luhmann, Bourdieu and the author of this phrase - J.Alexander. J.Coenen-Huther spoke in the same vein: "We should know how to gather the classics' ideas. It does not matter whose ideas are those - Marx's or Tocqueville's, Durkheim's or Weber's, Malinowski's or Sorokin's". TetraSociological synthesis makes TetraSociology a "new old" paradigm. It is "old" insofar as "four-dimensional" and similar ideas have been elaborated, in different forms, by Pythagoras, Plato, Montesquieu, Kant, Marx, Comte, Danilevsky, Weber, Jaspers, Sorokin, Parsons, Braudel, Toffler, Rozhin, Bourdieu, Alexander, Giddens, Barulin, Toshchenko, Sztompka, Hornung, Castells, etc. But it is "new" insofar as, within the framework of its four-dimensional continuum, there has been attempted a synthesis of the virtues of the most diverse sociological theories that seemed incompatible theretofore. Another, philosophical argument for the four fundamental resources of the social world is provided by tetraphilosophy or tetramentality. Tetraphilosophy pointed out not just any number of, but FOUR foundations as universal, necessary and sufficient parameters of any existence. In tetraphilosophy, ontological foundations of being are EXISTENCE - a phenomenon's measure of singleness and uniqueness; INFORMATION – a measure of diversity, which, according to Ashby and Wiener, every phenomenon in the world without exception possesses; ORGANISATION – a measure of orderliness inherent, from a synergetics viewpoint, to every phenomenon in the world; MATTER – a measure of energy, and universal substance-and-energy carrier of existence, information, organisation, which does not exist without and outside the three, and vice versa. Taken together, the resources constitute a continuous and indissoluble reality of existence. The four necessary and sufficient world-wide resources lying at the foundation of the universe. This is the tetramentality's key formula: all phenomena of reality, natural as well as social, have four equally necessary, interinclusive, but differently prioritised qualities (foundations, spheres, dimensions, bases): existential, informational, organisational, material (EIOM). Tetramentality draws a clear line between the relation of primordiality (where one of the foundations is primogenital) and priority (one of many equal foundations having a functionally leading role). Tetramentality rejects the monistic "primal-secondary" kind of relation; it recognises only the pluralistic "different priorities" relations. The four PIOT resources are a social construction of world resources and dimensions. Social dynamics, considers society's reproductive processes (the relevant SST coordinate) and points out four necessary, sufficient, but differently prioritised classes: PRODUCTION, DISTRIBUTION, EXCHANGE, CONSUMPTION (PDEC). Reproductive processes are identical with social processes. As P.Sorokin put it, a social process is "understood as any kind of motion,... any change ... of social object ... of its quantitative or qualitative characteristics". The classes of processes/ changes have pointed out represent relevant processual variable constants. Neither resources nor the social world can exist without these processes. It is only through these processes that all PIOT social resources, and therefore society itself, are reproduced. With at least one of these reproductive processes missing, social world cannot exist. Before becoming consumable, resources have first to become products of production and then to get distributed and exchanged for the other ones. The processes outlined have been analysed by many social thinkers and sociologists: Plato, Smith, Marx, Sorokin, Habermas, Luhmann, Giddens, Touraine, Bell, etc. Ranking higher in priority are processes of the reproduction of people as the source of the social. To define this source, TetraSociology introduces into social dynamics a radically new sociological category of people's reproductive or vital employment (r-employment or simply employment). Employment, in TetraSociology, is a process embracing all PDEC processes of the reproduction of PIOT resources that occur over people's lifetime. R-employment is the source of all social resources, processes, structures, states. It determines social and individual time, people's integral way of life, which is qualitatively different from the mode of life of other society resources. Creating, transforming, constructing all the social world's parameters, r-employment expresses people's supreme reproductive priority. R-employment's volume is identical with the category of "life," "lifetime." While other resources possess life too, r-employment is a feature of the individual alone, embracing all his life from start to finish. The totality of the individual's life, his whole lifetime is an employment involved with the reproduction of society's different resources, including and first of all himself. R-employment is identical with the totality of the individual's life practices, including individual (reproduction of himself as a resource) and social (reproduction of other resources) employment. R-employment is broader than activity, because the individual can be inactively employed: sleeping, illness, inactivity, passive. It is much broader than work, since the individual can be in a non-work employment: consumption, leisure, transportation, etc. It is r-employment that determines people's supreme functional and resource priority. Let us consider it in more details. R-employment is TetraSociology's chief category, which denotes the single substance of all SST coordinates and constants and all the social's components, combining them into a multi-dimensional whole. R-employment is as multi-dimensional as the social world. The social world is identical to r-employment because r-employment derives from it alone. Employment is the very beginning of the social world and the individual. R-employment's multi-dimensionality has the same parameters (coordinates, constants, indices) as SST. We will distinguish among employment's parameters forms, characteristics, kinds. Kinds of employment are differentiated by object and product, creating a vast array of the kinds of branch employment, which are grouped into employment spheres and charted in the spheres tables below. This is the staple of our analysis. Forms of employment are differentiated by the main types of employment's relation to an individual and society. Based on this, two main types of relation are designated: helpful and harmful. Further, employment is divided into socially helpful and individually helpful, and socially harmful and individually harmful. The employment that creates and/or maintains harmony of social resources, processes and structures is considered helpful (positive, constructive). The employment that destroys and/or restricts harmony of social resources, processes, and structures is considered harmful (negative, destructive). It includes employment in wars, violence (except self-defence), crime, drugs, terrorism, wrecking, environmental pollution and destruction, etc. (We define harmony as the optimal proportion of sphere components; we talk about it further.) Discrimination between helpful and harmful employments is fairly provisional and tentative: an employment socially and individually helpful in one circumstances and at one period of time can become harmful in different circumstances and at a different period of time. An employment that is socially helpful can be individually harmful, and vice versa. Here we have conflicts of employments. Each kind of employment has inherent aspects of harm and help: everything depends on the degree, proportion, and priority. For maintaining the socially necessary proportion and for limiting harmful employment we will designate the third form of employment: prophylactic, aimed at the prophylactics (prevention, restraint) of destructive employment and at ensuring individual's and society's safety. There are as many dangers of destruction and harm as there are kinds of employment. There are just as many kinds of safety and employment in safety (prophylactic employment). They are differentiated by spheres and branches and into the social and the individual. We can mention the following kinds of safety: social, informational, political, state-related, economic, environmental, internal, external, personal, family-related, corporate, property-related, copyright-related, etc. Over a set of kinds and forms of employment a set of its characteristics is superimposed, among which we will mention only the major ones: productivity/unproductivity, effectiveness/ineffectiveness. The table below charts the multi-dimensionality of people's r-employment. Table. Multi-dimensionality of people's employment. Employment characteristics / "Yes," "No" denote the presence or lack of a certain characteristic in a particular employment form. Importantly, the table is not intended to cover the full extent of employment's multi-dimensionality or to provide definite conclusions: they necessitate a more detailed and verifiable substantiation. To achieve this, the table below needs to be superimposed over the spheres table (further in the text), and calculations need to be made using appropriate indices. Social dynamics considers PDEC processes as the present social time, as current employment which includes all the changes in all social resources. Social dynamics reveals social world's "physiology," pointing out its functional/processual PDEC constants. Social dynamics correlates with various functional approaches in sociology. The notion of social dynamics, introduced by Comte, has been widely utilised by Sorokin, Sztompka, Therborn, Hornung, and many others. Social structuratics, considers society's structures (the relevant SST coordinate) and points out four necessary, sufficient, but differently prioritised social reproduction spheres: SOCIAL (humanitarian), INFORMATIONAL (cultural), ORGANIZATIONAL (managerial), TECHNICAL (material, economic) (SIOT). The abbreviations for these spheres are: sociosphere, infosphere, orgsphere, technosphere. Spheres are the most powerful, the broadest possible and, therefore, the social world's societal structural components. The spheres unite resources and processes and are expressed by relevant structural variable constants. The social world does not exist without spheres, any more than it does without resources and processes, which, in turn, do not exist separately, but only within various SIOT structural combinations. It is only within these structures that appropriate PIOT social resources get reproduced. With people as their object and product, the sociosphere reproduces them. With information as its object and product, the infosphere reproduces it. Similarly, the orgsphere reproduces organisations, and the technosphere, things. With at least one of the spheres missing, the social world cannot exist (make an imaginary test: reduce any sphere to zero.) Braudel spoke of these structures as society's "systems/sectors"; Toffler, as "society's spheres"; Parsons, as "societal subsystems"; Bourdieu, as "fields" of the social space of practices. Bell explores spheres too, fusing, however, two of them into one; Castells also explores them, though names them differently. Reproducing the top-priority resource - people, the sociosphere ranks higher in priority among spheres. Each sphere has a specific production mode, specific work and specific sphere classes of the employed: humanitarian class (P1), informational class (P2), organisational class (P3), technical class (P4), embracing the entire population. These classes are not antagonists but partners. They are different from Marx's economic classes, and from Giddens' stratified ones too, but, supplementing and incorporating them, sphere classes intersect with them. Sphere classes represent society's sphere social structure. The classes of sphere needs and abilities of both the individual and society are categorised according to spheres. Social structuratics considers sphere and sphere components as a union of the past (resources) and present (processes) social times, as an amalgamation of people's past and present employments. Pointing out SIOT structural constants in the social world, structuratics reveals its "morphology". "Morphology" is a form of amalgamation of resources and processes at all the social world's levels, it is unity of statics and dynamics. It corresponds with a variety of morphological, as well as systemic, sociocybernetic, structural, structural-functional, etc. approaches in sociology. Let us review briefly the sociocybernetic approach, elaborated by B.Hornung and others, which is fairly closed to TetraSociology. Its authors identify the approach with the macrosociological one. It constructs multilevel and multidimensional social space, with four levels of empirical systems: macro-, meso-, micro-, individual levels; three analytical dimensions: aggregational, functional, problem; six theoretical levels: philosophical, general system, sociocybernetic or macrosociological, mesosociological (societal subsystems), microsociological (social action), psychological (behaviour and information). The aggregated dimension has three "basic components of empirical systems" with "structures, processes, and relations between them". Their "substance is either matter/energy or information or some combination of both". The functional subsystems are social, economic, political, and psycho-cultural systems. The basic components, together with their substance, constitute the "empirical world's mechanisms". Comparing this approach with TetraSociological, we find in Sociocybernetics three spatial coordinates and some constants pointed out: resources (matter/energy, information), processes, structures, which we understand as amalgamation of or "relation" between resources and processes. Both theories recognise that "Dynamic systems are constituted by structures and processes, which form a particular ensemble in space-time". To these two coordinates is added the third one - resources as matter/energy and information. Although Hornung does not call them such, what are they if are not resources? Within the framework of processes and structures, Hornung points out the four functional subsystems, which we regard as constituting structures (SIOT), and which include components of the environment. As comparison shows, TetraSociology is not alone in pointing out the mentioned SST parameters. To a considerable degree, these parameters are present in Hornung's sociocybernetic/sociological analysis. While in Hornung's analysis the social time coordinate, as well as some constants, are absent, certain add-ons make up for it. An important concurrence should be stressed: TetraSociology and Sociocybernetics practically simultaneously and, most important, independently have constructed a largely identical system of social space's parameters and their classification. This points to a possible synthesis, supplementarity of TetraSociology and Sociocybernetics. Social genetics, considers the states of the evolutionary development of society (the appropriate SST coordinate) as qualitative changes in it, points out among the states four necessary, sufficient, but differently prioritised classes: PROSPERITY, DECELERATION, DECLINE, DYING (PDDD). These states of the social world and its different parts: societies, civilisations, formations, cultures, countries, branches, plants, cities, families, individual - constitute appropriate genetic/historical variable constants. In different forms, under different names, in different numbers and sequences, these states have been analysed by Danilevsky, Sorokin, Spengler, Toynbee and many others. Society's states are not unilinear, but reversible and cyclical. The object of social evolution consists in the spheres of social reproduction, in the appropriate sphere components, which develop unevenly, but being interdeterminable, they always strive for the highest possible degree of equilibrium, as the optimal state for them. States of PDDD development are interpreted on the scale (from 100% to 0%) as different degrees of spheres' equilibrium. The difference between the degrees largely determines the difference between the states of society. The state of society's prosperity as harmony of its spheres has top priority. Social harmony is defined as the utmost degree of spheres' equilibrium, as the optimum proportion of sphere components, ensuring prosperity and accompanied by a priority of social sphere. only spheres and sphere components are capable of deriving social harmony, rather than branches and branch components which are capable only of reproducing disharmony. Social harmony of branches cannot be achieved, because it is too much them; they are too partial and narrow. Therefore social harmony can only be achieved at the level of spheres. The social world's and its parts' immanent teleological quality consists in their aspiration for a higher degree of spheres' balance, namely - to harmony, ensuring prosperity to a society and priority to the social sphere. For history to reach a priority of the social sphere, with harmony and prosperity, it needs consistently to pass through change of stages of disharmony and priorities of material, organizational, information spheres. Social genetics has many approaches to a history, to change of disharmony states in it. The most famous among them - civilizational and formational, which, for all their difference, supplement each other to some extent. Social genetics considers society's states as an amalgamation of big stretches of the past, current and future social times, as a unity of big chunks of people's past, current and future employments. Big qualitative changes in society, expressed in different society's developmental states, occur over these stretches of time. Big stretches of employment processes turn into employment states, into social world's genetics. The latter is explored in theoretical genetics, which demonstrates the change of developmental states in historical, temporal PDDD constants. Theoretical genetics correlates with various genetic, historical, prognostic and futurological approaches in sociology, which explore the origin, development, and collapse of the social world or its parts in the past, present, and future. Exploring not only the past and present, but the future as well, sociology inevitably acquires an utopian quality, which cannot be erased. Thus, any sociology is more or less utopian: time determines to what degree. There are more than enough examples of this: from Plato to Marx, Comte, Parsons, Toffler, Castells, etc. TetraSociology is utopian too; however, it minimises this quality with its technologies and tetraempiricism (see below). Sociology on threshold of the XX1st century: new directions of researches. Moscow, 1998, p.157-158, 159. Ibid. p.17. Sorokin, Pitirim. Social and Cultural Dynamics, vols. 1-4, N.Y. 1937: American Book Company, v.1, p.153 Hornung, Bernd and Adilova, Fatima. Conceptual modelling for technology assessment of IT systems - smart cards and health information systems // Kybernetes. The International Journal of Systems & Cybernetics. V26, N6/7, 1997, p. 796 -798. Siciocybernetic theory of Hornung is one more example of transition from pluralism to postpluralism Hornung, Bernd. Constructing Sociocybernetic Society. Montreal, 1998, p.5.

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Blog post by Dr Mark Elliott BVSc VetMFHom MRCVS MLIHM PCH DSH RSHom In the UK many vets are now neutering dogs routinely before their first season. As a practice we refuse to do this and to answer why, it is useful to put some facts on record. But quite aside from these facts, our clinical experience suggests we see many more problems in neutered animals than those left entire, and even more in dogs that go through this procedure before puberty. As we see a lot of second opinion cases perhaps our views are coloured by that, but it remains a fact that neutering is banned, other than for clinical reasons, in at least 3 EU countries. It is quite arguably a mutilation with no arguable clinical benefit for the patient. The main reason neutering is actually done, is for the perceived social benefit for the human population as: 1.It avoids some inconvenience and expense for owners. 2.It stops heat [in season] cycles. 3.No accidental pregnancies. 4.Prevents unwanted puppies being born. Some studies (USA) have shown as many as 56 per cent of litters born are unplanned; 5.It reduces the risk of abandonment of unwanted pets, resulting in mass euthanasia and neglect (but human nature will ever mean this exists somewhat as an issue), but do consider that some charities are now importing dogs from overseas to rehome here - presumably as we don’t have enough unwanted dogs needing new homes in mainland Britain already?! 6.Male dogs are thought to be less likely to roam and are more likely to be better behaved - but more about that later. 7.Early neutering is said to offer breeders a chance to preclude others from using their bloodlines, allegedly also preventing use of substandard stock. 8.Vets also find that early neutering is often easier to carry out. Point 7 is perhaps currently especially relevant as we have been seeing puppies sent to their new homes already neutered at only 8 weeks old!!! Some of these pups are proving aggressive, untrainable, allergic and suffering growth problems. It seems a problem particularly affecting some of the designer Poodle cross bred dogs and really, in our opinion, it is animal cruelty to subject these dogs to a lifetime of problems. Since writing a former version of this article we have become increasingly concerned over the continued marketing of neutering as a health benefit despite articles in the veterinary literature debunking this myth, and arguing for decisions to be made on an individual evidence-based assessment of each patient. The recently updated Animal Welfare Act puts a greater obligation on owners to consider their animals' health and welfare, including their ability to display normal behaviour. Clearly, certain behaviour patterns are prevented and there is no way all owners could manage their pet if all dogs were left entire, but we do need to consider some of the broad assumptions and statements about neutering from a Canine perspective that all owners should be made aware of when deciding if neutering is best for their pet. So does neutering benefit a dog's health, and does early neutering (before the first season in bitches and from as early as nine weeks old) offer significant benefits over a later operation or, in fact, does it cause harm as we think it does? Please note that all figures given in this article relate to the studies I could find on the subjects (and there aren’t that many), and it is always difficult to research a negative result - and even harder to get funding for such! Accordingly all figures can only be viewed as approximate and will be defined better, I hope, by future research. The following chart is a summary of the benefits and potential adverse events of Neutering in large- and giant-breed dogs published in the veterinary literature. Of note, much of the literature on this topic is retrospective and based on smaller select populations, so relative risk is difficult to determine for individual animals. EFFECTS OF NEUTERING ON RELATIVE RISK |Condition||Effect of OHE on Relative Risk||Effect of Castration on |Overall longevity||Mild increase in longevity||Mild increase in longevity| |Obesity||Moderate increase||Moderate increase| |Cranial cruciate ligament disease||Moderate increase*||Moderate increase*| |Hip dysplasia||Mild increase*||Mild increase*| |Mammary tumors||Marked decrease*||N/A| |Uterine, ovarian, vaginal tumors||Prevents||N/A| |Perianal gland tumors||N/A||Marked decrease| |Prostatic carcinoma||N/A||Mild increase| |Lymphoma||Mild increase||Mild increase*| |Mast cell tumors||Mild increase||N/A| |Hemangiosarcoma||Mild increase*||Mild increase| |Osteosarcoma||Mild increase*||Mild increase*| |Transitional cell carcinoma||Mild increase||Mild increase| |Urinary sphincter mechanism incompetence||Moderate increase*||N/A| |Benign prostatic hyperplasia||N/A||Marked decrease| |Perineal hernia||N/A||Moderate decrease| *Age at time of surgery may be important. Is Neutering is a relatively safe procedure? Various studies incorporating neutering show that post-operative complications following elective surgery vary considerably. Some show frequencies between 1 and 24 per cent for all complications and 1 to 4 per cent for severe complications. Some dogs do die, but as best I could tell this is reported at around 0.1 per cent (or one in 1,000). I could find no studies showing reduced mortality risk with early neutering but as you can imagine it is very difficult to design a study to research a negative result. Ovariohysterectomy (OHE) prevents pyometra (a potentially fatal womb infection) since the uterus and ovaries have been removed. The incidence of pyometra by 10 years of age has been shown to be around 23/24 per cent which is significant. However, most cases of pyometra will be resolved by the bitch having a hysterectomy at the time, with death as a result of the condition being around 4 per cent. So, relatively speaking, whilst the risk of death from spaying routinely is 0.1 per cent the overall risk of death when older from Pyometra if left entire is possibly 1 per cent. Incontinence (Females – urinary sphincter mechanism incompetence (USMI) Studies vary considerably but, as best as I can determine, between 12 and 20 per cent of bitches are said to become incontinent to varying degrees after spaying, usually around two to three years later. Most will respond to long-term treatment, but not all. Incontinence is devastating, particularly for owners where the pet lives in close proximity and when she fails to respond to treatment it can be a reason for euthanasia or rehoming. In general, large dogs (>15 kg) have a significantly greater risk for developing USMI than smaller dogs.4,5 Although dogs that have OHE before 3 months of age show an increased risk for USMI as compared with dogs that have OHE between 3 and 12 months of age,6 other data and analyses have not supported a causal link between age at time of OHE and risk for USMI.4,5,7,8 Prepubescent OHE can result in a recessed or hypoplastic vulva in some dogs and may predispose these animals to perivulvar dermatitis and cystitis, particularly if they are overweight and have USMI. These findings may explain the greater reported incidence of cystitis in dogs undergoing OHE before 5.5 months of age.6 Benign prostatic hyperplasia is seen in 50% of intact males by 5 years of age.9 Castration prevents benign prostatic hyperplasia as well as other associated diseases (eg, prostatitis, prostatic cysts, perineal herniation).10-12 However, in older intact males with simple enlargement of the prostate, sometimes due to testicular tumours, late castration is usually curative, as it is with most testicular cancer. However, prostatic cancer, which logically you would think not a problem in neutered dogs, some studies suggest is actually is up to 8 times more likely (see below)! Overall Prostatic Cancer incidence is around 0.6% negating the benefit of the castration argument. Removing hormonal influence on the developing skeleton via Neutering can result in delayed physeal (growth plate) closure13,14 and longer-limbed conformation. The latter may play a role in the development of orthopaedic disease, as shown in studies of Labradors and Golden Retrievers neutered <6 months of age. These dogs had a 2× to 5× increased incidence of ≥1 joint disorders as compared with intact dogs.15,16 Canine Cranial Cruciate Ligament Disease Large-breed dogs that underwent Neutering at <6 months of age have shown a 3× increased risk for excessive tibial plateau angle and predisposition for earlier canine cranial cruciate ligament (CCL) injury.17 Dogs that underwent Neutering at a non-specified age had a 2× to 3× incidence of CCL disease as compared with intact dogs.18,19 In a study of 750 Golden Retrievers, none of the intact dogs had CCL disease, compared with an incidence of 5% in castrated dogs and 7.7% in spayed dogs that underwent neutering at <12 months of age.16 Body Condition Score (BCS) was the same for dogs with and without CCL disease. This suggests that change in conformation—not just increased body weight associated with neutering—was responsible.16 Hip dysplasia may be influenced by patient sex and breed as well as timing of neutering. In the Golden Retriever study,16 incidence of hip dysplasia in males neutered at <12 months of age was double that of intact males, with an earlier onset of disease. The BCS of the males with and without hip dysplasia and neutered at <12 months of age was not far greater. No significant difference in hip dysplasia incidence was seen in the females.16 Spayed or neutered Boxers with a mean age of 3 years at the time of neutering had a 1.5× increased risk for developing hip dysplasia.20 Data collected from a Veterinary Medical Database between 1964 and 2003 showed that neutering (at a non-specified age) increased the likelihood of hip dysplasia by 17%.18 Incidence of hip dysplasia was 6.7% in dogs that underwent neutering before 5.5 months of age and 4.7% in dogs that underwent neutering between 5.5 months and 1 year of age.6 Obesity plays a significant role in the development and progression of many orthopaedic diseases and osteoarthritis.21 Although neutering is a significant risk factor for obesity,6,22,23 neutering alone is most likely less important than other environmental factors (eg, diet, exercise regimen).24 Many Vets are aware of the effect and timing of spaying on incidence of mammary tumors based on Schneider, Dorn, and Taylor’s 1969 study.25 This is argued so often as a significant reason for neutering but does it really stack up? It is said that spaying after the third estrous cycle and after 2.5 years of age appears to provide minimal protection against mammary tumour development.25,26 However, a 2010 systematic review of this and other studies on the protective effect of OHE concluded that the evidence is weak because of confounding factors and bias.27 Whatever, the statements are somewhat misleading. Unneutered bitches have only a 3.4 per cent chance of developing this problem with age, with 50 per cent of those cases being malignant. Early neutering reduces this risk to 0.5 per cent of the 3.4 per cent (= 0.017 per cent), but spaying the bitch after the first season and before the second reduces it also to eight per cent of 3.4 per cent (= 0.27 per cent). So the argument for early neutering over leaving the bitch to have one season on the basis of this without considering all the other issues doesn’t really stack up as particularly significant to my mind. There is also a downside as regards to Cancer generally which is that some studies show increased incidence of other cancers following neutering including some of those discussed below. Reproductive Tumors & Tumors Influenced by Hormones Neutering eliminates the potential for developing uterine, ovarian, and testicular tumors through removal of the primary organ.31 Perianal gland tumors in male dogs are treated successfully via castration.32 OHE is protective against vaginal leiomyomas and can decrease recurrence, even with incomplete surgical resection.33,34 Neutered male dogs had 2× to 8× the incidence of prostatic carcinoma as compared with intact male dogs34,35; however, the overall prevalence of prostatic cancer is <1%.35-37 A large population study showed that intact female dogs had a significantly lower risk for developing lymphoma as compared with dogs that underwent Neutering (at a nonspecific age) or intact male dogs.38 This finding was consistent in studies of golden retrievers and vizslas, although castration at <12 months of age was also found to be a risk factor.16,39 Mast Cell Tumors Neutering has been associated with 2× to 4× the risk for mast cell tumors, particularly in female dogs.16,39,40 However, estrogen receptors have not been identified in mast cell tumors, so a direct hormonal link has not been established.41 Golden retrievers that underwent OHE after 1 year of age had 4× the incidence of hemangiosarcoma as compared with intact females or females that underwent OHE before 1 year of age.16 No significant differences in incidence of hemangiosarcoma were found in male Golden Retrievers.16 Similar findings were noted in a study of Vizslas, although dogs that underwent OHE before 1 year of age or castration after 1 year of age also had increased risk.39 Other non-breed-specific studies have shown similar findings for splenic and cardiac hemangiosarcoma.42,43 An increased risk for osteosarcoma was seen in Rottweilers that underwent OHE or castration before 1 year of age, although the overall 13% incidence of bone sarcomas in this study group seems disproportionately high.44 Historic studies have reported a 1.3× to 1.9× increased risk for osteosarcoma in animals that underwent neutering at a non-specified age.45,46 Transitional Cell Carcinoma Female dogs are more predisposed to bladder transitional cell carcinoma than male dogs, and neutering (at a non-specified age) increases the risk up to 3× in both male and female dogs.47,48 An 8× increase in prostatic transitional cell carcinoma has also been reported in male dogs that underwent castration at a non-specified age.36 Neutered pets are better behaved, and early neutered ones better still – NOT SO! Quite apart from the fact that most behaviour problems are created by owners failing to understand and/or train their dogs properly, knowing factors relative to the breed and individual characteristics, and possibly also failure to provide an appropriate environment, there are a number of arguments to consider here. Yes, neutered male dogs are less likely to take it upon themselves to roam freely and, yes, they are less likely to exhibit normal behaviour and try to assert male dominant behaviour, but all these things can be controlled by human interventions. However, the American Kennel Club Canine Health Foundation reported significantly more behavioural problems in neutered dogs and bitches. Other studies have also shown early neutering to be associated with increased incidence of noise phobias and undesirable sexual behaviour! Quite the opposite of what one would logically expect if neutering was a benefit. The most commonly observed problem in spayed bitches was found to be fearful behaviour, and in male dogs aggression (the very thing we castrate them for!). I wonder if some of the latter could well be due to confusion as to the individual's place in dog society as an adult-sized animal locked into a state of permanent puppyhood? On the upside, separation anxiety and inappropriate toileting when frightened have been found to improve. Perhaps the result of a suppression of mental development? Longer term, studies have also shown sexually intact males to show slower cognitive impairment with age than neutered dogs. Results with bitches were inconclusive. Studies on several thousand Golden Retrievers showed that those neutered were more likely to develop hypothyroidism and this affects mental function amongst its other concerns. Certainly I have diagnosed early neutered dogs that have developed this condition as early as seven months of age, and also have seen early neutered dogs fail expensive training programmes when they develop it young. This perhaps is the reason why behaviourists are telling me they are being called upon to help owners finding these early neutered individuals so hard to train? Other studies have confirmed this Hypothyroid link and, for interest, the most common clinical findings in hypothyroidism include obesity, seborrhoea (greasy skin), alopecia (hair loss), weakness, lethargy, bradycardia (slow heart rate), and pyoderma (skin infection). Skin diseases make up a lot of the work in current veterinary practice and most dogs are neutered – as they say in the USA “go figure”. I could go on, but it would be impossible within the scope of this article to cover all the possible other minor issues seen as a result of neutering, so I shall stop there! While existing studies on the benefits and detriments of performing neutering in large- and giant-breed dogs <12 months of age provide some conflicting data, and most literature is retrospective. In addition, because pet longevity is in some studies suggested as increased with neutering,31,49 the risk for developing cancer may be higher. On their completion, comprehensive prospective studies such as the Lifetime Golden Retriever study50 could provide clearer guidelines on when to perform OHE and castration if required by the owner. It is important that owners make an informed choice for their pet, but I would venture to ask 'where are the benefits for the individual dog in all this?' It should be accepted that most of the benefits are clearly associated with societal, human behaviour and convenience arguments. Many years ago dogs were domesticated and perhaps this is the price they pay as part of that bargain? Clinically the arguments for neutering dogs do not, in my opinion, stack up to much at all and it may actually be a negative action when looking at their long term health. While for bitches there are some apparent positive benefits, they are still minimal in my opinion, when compared to the risk factors and long term health issues should the individual be unfortunate enough to suffer them. Ultimately the choice an owner makes (and the choice should be the owners) will mostly depend on personal circumstances, the breed and how you wish the dog to interact with your family – all human factors. With regards to early neutering owners should be aware of the long term issues that appear to be associated with early neutering over letting the dog mature, and be prepared to cope should they happen. Promotion of early neutering without explanation of the risks is in my opinion unethical, and we have decided as a practice we will not do it anyway as the negatives are just too many and so it is contrary to our ethos. A decision as regards to whether or not to have your dog neutered should be an informed one - it does not have to follow others' agendas and media campaigns - and, hopefully, I have gone some way to helping with that. If the Decision is to Neuter I generally recommend OHE between the first and second estrous cycles in female dogs and castration after musculoskeletal maturity in male dogs. BCS = body condition score, CCL = cranial cruciate ligament, OHESMI = urinary sphincter mechanism incompetence References and Author Information 1Trevejo R, Yang M, Lund EM. Epidemiology of surgical castration of dogs and cats in the United States. JAVMA. 2011;238(7):898-904. 2Spain CV, Scarlett JM, Cully SM. When to neuter dogs and cats: a survey of New York state veterinarians’ practices and beliefs. JAAHA. 2002;38(5):482-488. 3Olson PN, Kustritz MV, Johnston SD. Early-age neutering of dogs and cats in the United States: a review. J Reprod Fertil Suppl. 2001;57:223-232. 4Forsee KM, Davis GJ, Mouat EE, Salmeri KR, Bastian RP. Evaluation of the prevalence of urinary incontinence in spayed female dogs: 566 cases (2003-2008). JAVMA. 2013;242(7):959-962. 5Stöcklin-Gautschi NM, Hässig M, Reichler IM, Hubler M, Arnold S. The relationship of urinary incontinence to early spaying in bitches. J Reprod Fertil Suppl. 2001;57:233-236. 6Spain CV, Scarlett JM, Houpt KA. Long-term risks and benefits of early-age Neutering in dogs. JAVMA. 2004;224(3):380-387. 7Beauvais W, Cardwell JM, Brodbelt DC. The effect of neutering on the risk of urinary incontinence in bitches: a systematic review. J Small Anim Pract. 2012;53(4):198-204. 8de Bleser B, Brodbelt DC, Gregory NG, Martinez TA. The association between acquired urinary sphincter mechanism incompetence in bitches and early spaying: a case-control study. Vet J. 2011;187(1):42-47. 9Berry SJ, Strandberg JD, Saunders WJ, Coffey DS. Development of canine benign prostatic hyperplasia with age. Prostate. 1986;9(4):363-373. 10Niżański W, Levy X, Ochota M, Pasikowska J. Pharmacological treatment for common prostatic conditions in dogs–benign prostatic hyperplasia and prostatitis: an update. Reprod Domest Anim. 2014;49Suppl2:8-15. 11Mann FA, Nonneman DJ, Pope ER, Boothe HW, Welshons WV, Ganjam VK. Androgen receptors in the pelvic diaphragm muscles of dogs with and without perineal hernia. Am J Vet Res. 1995;56(1):134-139. 12Snell WL, Orsher RJ, Larenza-Menzies MP, Popovitch CA. Comparison of caudal and pre-scrotal castration for management of perineal hernia in dogs between 2004 and 2014. N Z Vet J. 2015;63(5):272-275. 13Root MV, Johnston SD, Olson PN. The effect of prepuberal and postpuberal Neutering on radial physeal closure in male and female domestic cats. Veterinary Radiology & Ultrasound. 1997;38(1):42-47. 14Salmeri KR, Bloomberg MS, Scruggs SL, Shille V. Neutering in immature dogs: effects on skeletal, physical, and behavioral development. JAVMA. 1991;198(7):1193-1203. 15Hart BL, Hart LA, Thigpen AP, Willits NH. Long-term health effects of neutering dogs: comparison of Labrador retrievers with golden retrievers. PLoS One. 2014;9(7):e10224. 16Torres de la Riva G, Hart BL, Farver TB, et al. Neutering dogs: effects on joint disorders and cancers in golden retrievers. PLoS One. 2013;8(2):e55937. 17Duerr FM, Duncan CG, Savicky RS, Park RD, Egger EL, Palmer RH. Risk factors for excessive tibial plateau angle in large-breed dogs with cranial cruciate ligament disease. JAVMA. 2007;231(11):1688-1691. 18Witsberger TH, Villamil JA, Schultz LG, Hahn AW, Cook JL. Prevalence of and risk factors for hip dysplasia and cranial cruciate ligament deficiency in dogs. JAVMA. 2008;232(12):1818-1824. 19Slauterbeck JR, Pankratz K, Xu KT, Bozeman SC, Hardy DM. Canine ovariohysterectomy and orchiectomy increases the prevalence of ACL injury. Clin Orthop Relat Res. 2004;(429):301-305. 20van Hagen MA, Ducro BJ, van den Broek J, Know BW. Incidence, risk factors, and heritability estimates of hind limb lameness caused by hip dysplasia in a birth cohort of boxers. Am J Vet Res. 2005;66(2):307-312. 21Frye CW, Shmalberg JW, Wakshlag JJ. Obesity, exercise and orthopedic disease. Vet Clin North Am Small Anim Pract. 2016; doi: 10.1016/j.cvsm.2016.04.006. 22Lefebvre SL, Yang M, Wang M, Elliott DA, Buff PR, Lund EM. Effect of age at Neutering on the probability of dogs becoming overweight. JAVMA. 2013;243(2):236-243. 23McGreevy PD, Thomson PC, Pride C, Fawcett A, Grassi T, Jones B. Prevalence of obesity in dogs examined by Australian veterinary practices and the risk factors involved. Vet Rec. 2005;156(22):695-702. 24Courcier EA, Thomson RM, Mellor DJ, Yam PS. An epidemiological study of environmental factors associated with canine obesity. J Small Anim Pract. 2010;51(7):362-367. 25Schneider R, Dorn CR, Taylor DO. Factors influencing canine mammary cancer development and postsurgical survival. J Natl Cancer Inst. 1969;43(6):1249-1261. 26Sonnenschein EG, Glickman LT, Goldschmidt MH, McKee LJ. Body conformation, diet, and risk of breast cancer in pet dogs:a case-control study. Am J Epidemiol. 1991;133(7):694-703. 27Beauvais W, Cardwell JM, Brodbelt DC. The effect of neutering on the risk of mammary tumours in dogs: a systematic review. J Small Anim Pract. 2012;53(6):314-322. 28Egenvall A, Bonnett BN, Ohagen P, Olson P, Hedhammar A, von Euler H. Incidence of and survival after mammary tumors in a population of over 80 000 insured female dogs in Sweden from 1995 to 2002. Prev Vet Med. 2005;69(1-2):109-127. 29Brønden LB, Nielsen SS, Toft N, Kristensen AT. Data from the Danish veterinary cancer registry on the occurrence and distribution of neoplasms in dogs in Denmark. Vet Rec. 2010;166(19):586-590. 30Benjamin SA, Lee AC, Saunders WJ. Classification and behavior of canine mammary epithelial neoplasms based on life-span observations in beagles. Vet Pathol. 1999;36(5):423-436. 31Smith AN. The role of neutering in cancer development. Vet Clin North Am Small Anim Pract. 2014;44(5):965-975. 32Wilson GP, Hayes HM Jr. Castration for treatment of perianal gland neoplasms in the dog. JAVMA. 1979;174(12):1301-1303. 33Thacher C, Bradley RL. Vulvar and vaginal tumors in the dog:a retrospective study. JAVMA. 1983;183(6):690-692. 34Herron MA. Tumors of the canine genital system. JAAHA. 1983;19:981-994. 35Teske E, Naan EC, van Dijk EM, Van Garderen E, Schalken JA. Canine prostate carcinoma: epidemiological evidence of an increased risk in castrated dogs. Mol Cell Endocrinol. 2002;197(1-2):251-255. 36Bryan JN, Keeler MR, Henry CJ, Bryan ME, Hahn AW, Caldwell CW. A population study of neutering status as a risk factor for canine prostate cancer. Prostate. 2007;67(11):1174-1181. 37Cornell KK, Bostwick DG, Cooley DM, et al. Clinical and pathologic aspects of spontaneous canine prostate carcinoma: a retrospective analysis of 76 cases. Prostate. 2000;45(2):173-183. 38Villamil JA, Henry CJ, Hahn AW, et al. Hormonal and sex impact on the epidemiology of canine lymphoma. J Cancer Epidemiol. 2009:591753. 39Zink MC, Farhoody P, Elser SE, et al. Evaluation of the risk and age of onset of cancer and behavioral disorders in gonadectomized Vizslas. JAVMA. 2014;244(3):309-319. 40White CR, Hohenhaus AE, Kelsey J, Procter-Gray E. Cutaneous MCTs: associations with spay/neuter status, breed, body size, and phylogenetic cluster. JAAHA. 2011;47:210-216. 41Larsen AE, Grier RL. Evaluation of canine mast cell tumors for presence of estrogen receptors. Am J Vet Res. 1989;50(10):1779-1780. 42Prymak C, McKee LJ, Goldschmidt MH, Glickman LT. Epidemiologic, clinical pathologic, and prognostic characteristics of splenic heman giosarcoma and splenic hematoma in dogs. JAVMA. 1988;193:706-712. 43Ware WA, Hopper DL. Cardiac tumors in dogs: 1982-1995. JVIM. 1999;13(2):95-103. 44Cooley DM, Beranek BC, Schlittler DL, Glickman NW, Glickman LT, Waters DJ. Endogenous gonadal hormone exposure and bone sarcoma risk. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev. 2002;11(11):1434-1440. 45Priester WA, McKay FW. The occurrence of tumors in domestic animals. Natl Cancer Inst Monogr. 1980;(54):1-210. 46Ru G, Terracini B, Glickman LT. Host related risk factors for canine osteosarcoma. Vet J. 1998;156(1):31-39. 47Norris AM, Laing EJ, Valli VE, et al. Canine bladder and urethral tumors: a retrospective study of 115 cases (1980-1985). JVIM. 1992;6(3):145-153. 48Mutsaers AJ, Widmer WR, Knapp DW. Canine transitional cell carcinoma. JVIM. 2003;17(2):136-144. 49Hoffman JM, Creevy KE, Promislow DE. Reproductive capability is associated with lifespan and cause of death in companion dogs. PLoS One. 2013;8(4):e61082. Lifetime golden retriever study. Morris Animal Foundation. http://caninelifetimehealth.org. Updated 2016. Accessed November 2015. Long term risks and benefits of early age gonadectomy in dogs. C.V.Spain et al. JAVMA Vol 224, No3, Feb1, 2004 Canine Reproduction. Peggy Root DVM. Article for the Puli club of America http://www.puliclub.org/CHF/AKC2007Conf/Canine%20Reproduction.htm Early Spay-Neuter Considerations for the Canine Athlete. C Zink 2005http://www.caninesports.com/Spayneuter.html Age of Neutering in Large and Giant-Breed Dogs. Article in Clinicians Brief by Clara S.S.Goh BVSc MS DACVS, ACVS Founding Fellow (Surgical Oncology), Colorado State University. August 2016. From which many of the references and some of the text in this article are taken.

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Conceptual cognition mentally labels (‘dogs-pa) a metaphysical entity, such as a conceptual category or concept, onto a generic conceptual representation of a member of the category – either a nonstatic objective entity or another static metaphysical entity. It may further label the category and generic conceptual representation onto a specific item. Conceptual cognition is always a deceptive cognition (‘khrul-shes), because it confuses a category and generic representation of a member of a category with a specific item. Western languages call such conceptual labeling “projection.” For the sake of simplicity, we shall restrict our description of conceptual cognition in the remainder of this article to the presentation of conceptual cognition containing mental exclusions, in other words conceptual categories – audio categories or meaning/object categories – and omit the description of them in inferential cognition relying on lines of reasoning. We shall also omit the presentation of conceptual cognition of concepts that are non-implicative negation phenomena, such as space and the selflessness of persons. Audio categories are acoustic patterns adopted as conventions (tha-snyad) in a particular language by the members of a specific society. As the acoustic patterns of the sound of words, such as “apple,” they are categories in the sense that they are mental derivatives of the sounds of “ap” and “ple” mentally constructed from all individual soundings of the two in all voices, volumes, pitches, speeds, accents and pronunciations. The sounds may be made audibly by a voice, a mechanical device or naturally occurring, or they may be merely mental. The audio category is an imputable phenomenon on the basis of each of these instances of the sounds. Audio categories by themselves do not have any meanings associated with them. - Although the classical Buddhist texts do not mention them, we may, by extension, speak of written categories. Written categories would be patterns of lines and dots adopted as conventions for representing words in a particular language by members of a particular society. They are categories in the sense that they can be mentally labeled on lines and dots appearing in a variety of colors, fonts, sizes, scripts, handwriting, thickness, and substances out of which they are made. The lines and dots may be written by hand, mechanically produced, or naturally occurring. - Likewise, we may speak of gesture categories, such as those that are used in sign languages, which are adopted as conventions for representing words. - We may also speak of tactile sensation categories, such as patterns of tactile sensations of raised dots that are used in Braille systems, which are adopted as conventions for representing words. Meaning categories are patterns of significance of acoustic patterns, adopted as the meanings of words in a particular language by members of a specific society. By extension, meaning categories could also be patterns of the significance of written patterns, gesture patterns, or tactile sensation patterns. Meanings do not exist inherently within sounds, lines and dots, gestures, or tactile sensations. They are merely conventions coined, assigned to acoustic patterns and so on, and used as categories by the members of a specific society in order to communicate. For example, depending on the meaning category conventionally assigned to it, the same acoustic pattern can mean “to,” “too,” or “two” in English or “you” in mispronounced French. Similarly, the same written pattern, for instance “bear,” can mean “a large furry mammal” or “to endure something.” Moreover, meaning categories are categories in the sense that they can be mentally labeled on all the slightly different meanings that each person in a language group associates with a particular acoustic pattern of a word. Further, they are categories also in the sense that they can be mentally labeled on acoustic patterns each time the acoustic pattern is used by any person and even by the same person. Meaning categories refer not only to patterns of significance of acoustic patterns and so on, but also to patterns of objects that acoustic patterns and so on signify. In such cases, meaning categories are equivalent to object mental syntheses. For this reason, meaning categories may also be termed “meaning/object categories.” As a mental object synthesis, an object category apple, for example, is a mental derivative mentally constructed from all individual commonsense apples and from all their various kinds, shapes, sizes, colors, fragrances, tastes, textures and weights. The appearing objects (snang-yul) of conceptual cognitions are conceptual categories. These mental exclusions are also their cognitively taken objects (gzung-yul). Thus, in both non-conceptual and conceptual cognitions, the appearing objects are equivalent to the cognitively taken objects. - In sensory non-conceptual cognition, both are external objective commonsense objects. - In conceptual cognition, both are static metaphysical entities. Conceptual categories are static metaphysical entities that are mental derivatives (mental reflections) of the individual objective entities that fit into them. Static mental exclusions and non-static object exclusions both entail negation phenomena of the type “nothing other than” (ma-yin-pa-las log-pa), which are also known as an “isolator” (ldog-pa, specifier, isolate). Within the context of conceptual cognition: - A static mental exclusion (a conceptual category) arises (snang-ba, appears) in a conceptual cognition as an isolator specifying an individual item (rang-ldog) – for instance, like the category “being something nonstatic” (mi-rtag-pa-nyid yin-pa) abstracted from and signifying something that is nonstatic. Such an isolator is also known by the synonymous term an isolator specifying from a category (spyi-ldog). - An object exclusion is also known as an isolator specifying a basis (gzhi-ldog) – namely, a nonstatic isolator specifying an individual item that is a basis having the defining characteristic of a category and thus serving as a basis for mentally labeling a category. - Together with isolators specifying a basis are nonstatic isolators specifying a signifier (don-ldog). They isolate and specify the defining characteristic mark (mtshan-nyid) of a basis having the defining characteristic of a category. The category in a conceptual cognition arises as a static isolator specifying an individual member of a category. This static isolator is what appears (snang-ba) – in other words, what arises – in the conceptual cognition. For instance, the category “apple” arises as the static isolator “nothing other than an apple.” As an implicative negation phenomenon, the words of the negation “nothing other than an apple” exclude “anything other than an apple.” In the wake of this exclusion, they explicitly toss a mental appearance of an apple, which, like a generic appearance, pervades and represents all apples. Implicitly, they toss in their wake an apple as an objective external object. - The explicitly tossed generic appearance that is a mental representation of an apple that actually arises in the cognition is also a static metaphysical entity, unable to perform a function or do anything. It did not grow on a tree; it cannot be eaten; and it doesn’t rot. - As a static phenomenon, this generic appearance has no form of its own. The form that actually appears like a mental hologram is that of an apple that serves as what a generic apple looks like. That form is the conceptually implied object (zhen-yul) – literally, the object that clings to a basis clung to (zhen-gzhi), an objective externally existing apple that is conceptualized about. The conceptually implied object is a purely mental object that can only be cognized by mental consciousness and not by sensory consciousness. - The form of the mental hologram that arises in sensory non-conceptual cognition is a mental aspect of an external object cast by that external object on the appearing object of the non-conceptual cognition, which is a noncongruent affecting variable having no form of its own. The form of the mental hologram that arises in conceptual cognition is not like that. It is not cast on the mental consciousness from an external object. In conceptual cognition, the form that the static mental hologram takes on is that of a purely mental object, the conceptually implied object. - The conceptually implied object arises, together with the mental consciousness, from a karmic tendency (sa-bon) for such a thought. Just as the mental consciousness of the thought is non-static, likewise nonstatic is the mental form that is the conceptually implied object. - Thus, conceptual cognition does not have a focal object (dmigs-yul) serving as the focal condition (dmigs-rkyen) for its arising. - The conceptually implied object (zhen-yul), then – a representation of a generic apple – although an objective entity, is not an external objective entity. An objective external apple is the basis clung to by the conceptually implied object. The basis clung to is the locus of what is conceptualized about (zhen-sa), however, it does not serve as the focal object of the conceptual cognition. Conceptual cognition is a deceptive cognition (‘khrul-shes) because it mixes and confuses a generic appearance representing the members of a category with the objective entities that are the actual members of the category. In other words, it takes the conceptually implied generic apple to be what all apples look like. Thus, conceptual cognition is always deceptive. It gives the deceptive appearance that all apples look like this generic apple. As another example, when we think of “a dog” in general, a mental image of our pet spaniel may arise in our minds. It deceptively appears as though our pet spaniel is what “dogs” in general look like. - An external objective apple may or may not be present and cognized with non-conceptual sensory cognition simultaneously with the conceptual cognition of an apple. - When such an external objective apple is present, the conceptually implied apple will present with a form that resembles that of the external apple, provided that the conceptual cognition is not distorted. - Even if an external objective apple is present, only the conceptually implied apple is the involved object of the conceptual cognition, not the external objective apple. The category (the appearing object), appearing as a mental isolator, is semitransparent. It partially veils the appearance explicitly tossed by the mental isolator. The mental appearance that arises is totally transparent, allowing for cognition of the conceptually implied object. Since the mental appearance is partially veiled, likewise partially veiled is the conceptually implied object. That means that any non-conceptual sensory cognition of an external objective entity that occurs while, simultaneously, conceptually cognizing a generic representation of that object and projecting it onto that external object, is not as vivid as non-conceptual sensory cognition of the external object without simultaneous conceptualization. This is the case no matter how clear and in focus the external objective entity might seem to be. The same analysis applies to verbal conceptual cognition, which entails an audio category as its appearing object, and which may or may not be accompanied with a conceptual cognition having as its appearing object a corresponding meaning/object category. The audio category, like the meaning/object category, is a static isolate that explicitly tosses in its wake a generic appearance that is a static mental representation of, for instance, the sound of the word “apple.” The conceptually implied object is a purely mental generic sound, an objective entity representing all objective external sounds of the word “apple” that are members of the audio category. The verbal conceptual cognition is deceptive because it projects, mixes and confuses this generic sound with the objective external sounds. Despite being deceptive, conceptual cognition allows for seeing a commonsense apple and correctly cognizing it as “an apple” and associating it with the word apple and the meaning of that word. Conceptual cognition makes conventional language and communication possible. What appears (arises) in conceptual cognition are mental syntheses of commonsense objects and the conceptual categories – audio and meaning/object ones – into which they fit. The mental syntheses of commonsense objects and the categories are mental representations (snang-ba) that appear in the sense of “arise” in the conceptual cognition – for instance, the mental representation of a commonsense object, such as a commonsense apple, and the mental representation of the conceptual category into which it fits, such as “apple.” The mental synthesis of a commonsense object is an object exclusion and is both a collection synthesis and a kind synthesis. The conceptual category is a mental exclusion. Both are implicative negation phenomena of the type “nothing other than.” The appearing object (snang-yul) of a conceptual cognition is a mental derivative (mental reflection) of the mental synthesis of a commonsense object and the conceptual category. It is what is explicitly tossed in the wake of both these implicative negation phenomena and stands for the mentally synthesized commonsense object and an individual member of the category in the conceptual cognition. It too is a static metaphysical entity. As the appearing object, it is the object that is seemingly directly in front of the mental consciousness of the conceptual cognition. In the case of the conceptual cognition of a commonsense apple, for instance, the object exclusion is “nothing other than a commonsense apple.” What is explicitly tossed in the wake of this implicative negation phenomenon after excluding “everything other than a commonsense apple” is “a commonsense apple.” - The object exclusion, as a static isolator, is merely a fact about, for instance, a commonsense apple – namely, that it is nothing other than a commonsense apple. - Despite its technical name individually characterized object exclusion of something else, the fact itself is not an individually characterized object. It is a fact that individually or specifically characterizes a commonsense object. The fact itself is a static metaphysical entity. - The object exclusion merely specifies an individual commonsense apple as a mental derivative of the mental synthesis commonsense apple. - Thus, all exclusions – collection, kind, object and mental – are static metaphysical entities. Being a static metaphysical entity, the individual commonsense apple that is the mental derivative of the mental synthesis and is the appearing object of the conceptual cognition lacks any objective physical characteristics of its own. “A commonsense apple” does not exist objectively with objective sensibilia, such as a colored shape or texture. Yet, in order to conceive of and think about a commonsense apple or to associate the word “apple” with it, a conceptual cognition must take on an objective mental hologram that seemingly resembles a commonsense apple. Consider the case of a verbal conceptual cognition with an audio category appearing (arising) in it, accompanied by a second conceptual cognition having a corresponding meaning/object category appearing (arising) in it. Note that in the case of such conceptual cognition of an apple, for instance, the meaning/object category is the mental synthesis of a commonsense apple that is a member of both the object category “apples” and the meaning category of what the audio category “apple” and the word “apple” designated on it signify. In this example, in the verbal conceptual cognition: - The object that is the actual signifier (dngos-kyi brjod-byed) of a commonsense apple is the audio category “apple.” - The object conceptually implied as the signifier (zhen-pa’i brjod-byed) is the objective mental sound of the word “apple” that gives what appears as an audio form to the generic appearing object in the verbal conceptual cognition. In the conceptual cognition with a meaning/object category: - The object actually signified (dngos-kyi brjod-bya) is the meaning/object category “apple.” - The conceptually implied object being signified (zhen-pa’i brjod-bya) is the objective mental form of an apple that gives what appears as a physical form to the generic appearing object (a commonsense apple) in the conceptual cognition with the meaning/object category. Thus, despite being a metaphysical entity, the appearing objects in these conceptual cognitions appear as the objective mental sounds “ap” and “ple” and the objective mental colored shape of a specific individual commonsense apple. It is not, however, that an objective external sound or objective external colored shape is appearing in the conceptual cognition, let alone an objective external commonsense apple. Let us analyze further the conceptual cognition with the meaning/object category “apple.” As a mental derivative of a mentally synthesized commonsense apple and of the conceptual category “apple,” the appearing object stands for the shared commonality (gzhi-mthun, common locus) of all items that would fit into the mental synthesis or category. It is not equivalent to the mental synthesis itself. - In the case of the mental synthesis “a commonsense apple,” the appearing object stands for the shared commonality of the colored shape, smell, taste and tactile sensation of an apple. This shared commonality allows for the appearing objects of sensory cognition of each of these types of sensibilia to be validly labeled by the conceptual cognition as “a commonsense apple,” regardless of which type of sensibilia it is. - In the case of the category “commonsense apple,” the appearing object stands for the commonality of the appearing objects in all conceptual cognitions of mentally synthesized commonsense apples. This shared commonality allows for each of them to be validly labeled as “an apple,” regardless of what seems to be their shapes, sizes, colors, fragrances, tastes, textures or weight. The objective mental hologram that arises in conceptual cognition with the sensory features of the conceptually implied object being signified is opaque. Neither external objective entities, such as moments of patches of colored shapes, nor the mental holograms of such moments that are the appearing objects of sensory cognition, do not appear through them. Thus, conceptual cognition lacks any external objective focal object. There is no such thing, then, as an objective commonsense apple. Nevertheless, on the basis of conceptually implied objects being signified, objects have the ability to perform their functions (don-byed-nus-pa) and cause and effect operate without fallacy. Thus, objects conceptually implied as signifiers and conceptually implied objects being signified are objective entities despite not being externally “real.” Thus, they are the involved objects of conceptual cognition. - When conceptual cognition of a commonsense apple is accompanied by non-conceptual sensory cognition of a moment of the sight of a commonsense apple, the correlation between the two cognitions is maintained correctly by the non-fallacious reflexive awareness that is part of the two cognitions. - Because of that correct correlation, we conventionally eat an apple; we do not just eat colored shapes. The appearing object of the conceptual cognition of an apple is partly veiled by the mental synthesis commonsense apple and its conceptual isolate mentally labeled on it or by the category apple and its conceptual isolate mentally labeled on it. In both cases, this appearing object does not appear vividly in the conceptual cognition. This is the case no matter how clear or how much in focus this mental derivative may be. The conceptual cognition is deceptive, because it confusingly appears as though its appearing object – a mental representation arising in the form of an objective mental hologram resembling a commonsense apple – is an external objective entity. Since cognitively taken objects are defined as the direct causes of the cognitions of them and since conceptual cognitions do not have external objective entities present as their direct causes, conceptual cognitions do not have cognitively taken objects. - Thus, appearing objects are not synonymous with cognitively taken objects. Summary of Conceptual Cognition with a Meaning/Object Category |Conceptually implied object||Mental hologram||Meaning/object category| |nonstatic objective mental entity||static metaphysical entity||static metaphysical entity,| |not an external focal object||generic conceptual representation of an external object||mental derivative of external objective entities| |explicitly tossed by the conceptual isolate||mental exclusion appearing as a conceptual isolate (an implicative negation phenomenon)| |a generic commonsense object (as a collection synthesis and kind synthesis)||takes on the form of the conceptually implied object| |fully transparent||fully transparent||semitransparent| |partly veiled, confused with individual external objective entities||appears (arises), partly veiled||appearing object. cognitively taken object| |involved object||involved object of only the reflexive awareness of the conceptual cognition| |explicitly apprehended||implicitly apprehended only by reflexive awareness| |Conceptually implied object being signified||Mental hologram||Mental synthesis and meaning/object category| |non-external objective entity||static metaphysical entity||static metaphysical entity| |not an external focal object||mental derivative of the mental synthesis and meaning/object category||mental representation of a commonsense object| |explicitly tossed by the conceptual isolate||mental synthesis as an object exclusion (collection and kind syntheses) and category as a mental exclusion – both appearing as a conceptual isolate (an implicative negation phenomenon)| |a form representing the shared commonality of all mentally synthesized commonsense objects of a specific kind||takes on the form of the conceptually implied object being signified||commonsense object as a collection synthesis and kind synthesis, audio and meaning/object categories| |involved object||appearing object, partly veiled, not a cognitively taken object||appears (arises)| |confused with an external moment of one type of sensibilia||decisively determined as an item that fits in “these” and “not those” categories and mental syntheses|

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In chemistry and thermodynamics, calorimetry (from Latin calor 'heat', and Greek μέτρον (metron) 'measure') is the science or act of measuring changes in state variables of a body for the purpose of deriving the heat transfer associated with changes of its state due, for example, to chemical reactions, physical changes, or phase transitions under specified constraints. Calorimetry is performed with a calorimeter. Scottish physician and scientist Joseph Black, who was the first to recognize the distinction between heat and temperature, is said to be the founder of the science of calorimetry. Indirect calorimetry calculates heat that living organisms produce by measuring either their production of carbon dioxide and nitrogen waste (frequently ammonia in aquatic organisms, or urea in terrestrial ones), or from their consumption of oxygen. Lavoisier noted in 1780 that heat production can be predicted from oxygen consumption this way, using multiple regression. The dynamic energy budget theory explains why this procedure is correct. Heat generated by living organisms may also be measured by direct calorimetry, in which the entire organism is placed inside the calorimeter for the measurement. A widely used modern instrument is the differential scanning calorimeter, a device which allows thermal data to be obtained on small amounts of material. It involves heating the sample at a controlled rate and recording the heat flow either into or from the specimen. Classical calorimetric calculation of heat Cases with differentiable equation of state for a one-component body Basic classical calculation with respect to volume Calorimetry requires that a reference material that changes temperature have known definite thermal constitutive properties. The classical rule, recognized by Clausius and Kelvin, is that the pressure exerted by the calorimetric material is fully and rapidly determined solely by its temperature and volume; this rule is for changes that do not involve phase change, such as melting of ice. There are many materials that do not comply with this rule, and for them, the present formula of classical calorimetry does not provide an adequate account. Here the classical rule is assumed to hold for the calorimetric material being used, and the propositions are mathematically written: The thermal response of the calorimetric material is fully described by its pressure as the value of its constitutive function of just the volume and the temperature . All increments are here required to be very small. This calculation refers to a domain of volume and temperature of the body in which no phase change occurs, and there is only one phase present. An important assumption here is continuity of property relations. A different analysis is needed for phase change When a small increment of heat is gained by a calorimetric body, with small increments, of its volume, and of its temperature, the increment of heat, , gained by the body of calorimetric material, is given by - denotes the latent heat with respect to volume, of the calorimetric material at constant controlled temperature . The surroundings' pressure on the material is instrumentally adjusted to impose a chosen volume change, with initial volume . To determine this latent heat, the volume change is effectively the independently instrumentally varied quantity. This latent heat is not one of the widely used ones, but is of theoretical or conceptual interest. - denotes the heat capacity, of the calorimetric material at fixed constant volume , while the pressure of the material is allowed to vary freely, with initial temperature . The temperature is forced to change by exposure to a suitable heat bath. It is customary to write simply as , or even more briefly as . This latent heat is one of the two widely used ones. The latent heat with respect to volume is the heat required for unit increment in volume at constant temperature. It can be said to be 'measured along an isotherm', and the pressure the material exerts is allowed to vary freely, according to its constitutive law . For a given material, it can have a positive or negative sign or exceptionally it can be zero, and this can depend on the temperature, as it does for water about 4 C. The concept of latent heat with respect to volume was perhaps first recognized by Joseph Black in 1762. The term 'latent heat of expansion' is also used. The latent heat with respect to volume can also be called the 'latent energy with respect to volume'. For all of these usages of 'latent heat', a more systematic terminology uses 'latent heat capacity'. The heat capacity at constant volume is the heat required for unit increment in temperature at constant volume. It can be said to be 'measured along an isochor', and again, the pressure the material exerts is allowed to vary freely. It always has a positive sign. This means that for an increase in the temperature of a body without change of its volume, heat must be supplied to it. This is consistent with common experience. Quantities like are sometimes called 'curve differentials', because they are measured along curves in the surface. Classical theory for constant-volume (isochoric) calorimetry This means that in a suitably constructed calorimeter, called a bomb calorimeter, the increment of volume can be made to vanish, . For constant-volume calorimetry: Classical heat calculation with respect to pressure In a process of small increments, of its pressure, and of its temperature, the increment of heat, , gained by the body of calorimetric material, is given by - denotes the latent heat with respect to pressure, of the calorimetric material at constant temperature, while the volume and pressure of the body are allowed to vary freely, at pressure and temperature ; - denotes the heat capacity, of the calorimetric material at constant pressure, while the temperature and volume of the body are allowed to vary freely, at pressure and temperature . It is customary to write simply as , or even more briefly as . - denotes the partial derivative of with respect to evaluated for - denotes the partial derivative of with respect to evaluated for . The latent heats and are always of opposite sign. It is common to refer to the ratio of specific heats as Calorimetry through phase change, equation of state shows one jump discontinuity An early calorimeter was that used by Laplace and Lavoisier, as shown in the figure above. It worked at constant temperature, and at atmospheric pressure. The latent heat involved was then not a latent heat with respect to volume or with respect to pressure, as in the above account for calorimetry without phase change. The latent heat involved in this calorimeter was with respect to phase change, naturally occurring at constant temperature. This kind of calorimeter worked by measurement of mass of water produced by the melting of ice, which is a phase change. Cumulation of heating For a time-dependent process of heating of the calorimetric material, defined by a continuous joint progression of and , starting at time and ending at time , there can be calculated an accumulated quantity of heat delivered, . This calculation is done by mathematical integration along the progression with respect to time. This is because increments of heat are 'additive'; but this does not mean that heat is a conservative quantity. The idea that heat was a conservative quantity was invented by Lavoisier, and is called the 'caloric theory'; by the middle of the nineteenth century it was recognized as mistaken. Written with the symbol , the quantity is not at all restricted to be an increment with very small values; this is in contrast with . One can write This expression uses quantities such as which are defined in the section below headed 'Mathematical aspects of the above rules'. Mathematical aspects of the above rules The use of 'very small' quantities such as is related to the physical requirement for the quantity to be 'rapidly determined' by and ; such 'rapid determination' refers to a physical process. These 'very small' quantities are used in the Leibniz approach to the infinitesimal calculus. The Newton approach uses instead 'fluxions' such as , which makes it more obvious that must be 'rapidly determined'. In terms of fluxions, the above first rule of calculation can be written - denotes the time - denotes the time rate of heating of the calorimetric material at time - denotes the time rate of change of volume of the calorimetric material at time - denotes the time rate of change of temperature of the calorimetric material. The increment and the fluxion are obtained for a particular time that determines the values of the quantities on the righthand sides of the above rules. But this is not a reason to expect that there should exist a mathematical function . For this reason, the increment is said to be an 'imperfect differential' or an 'inexact differential'. Some books indicate this by writing instead of . Also, the notation đQ is used in some books. Carelessness about this can lead to error. The quantity is properly said to be a functional of the continuous joint progression of and , but, in the mathematical definition of a function, is not a function of . Although the fluxion is defined here as a function of time , the symbols and respectively standing alone are not defined here. Physical scope of the above rules of calorimetry The above rules refer only to suitable calorimetric materials. The terms 'rapidly' and 'very small' call for empirical physical checking of the domain of validity of the above rules. The above rules for the calculation of heat belong to pure calorimetry. They make no reference to thermodynamics, and were mostly understood before the advent of thermodynamics. They are the basis of the 'thermo' contribution to thermodynamics. The 'dynamics' contribution is based on the idea of work, which is not used in the above rules of calculation. Experimentally conveniently measured coefficients Empirically, it is convenient to measure properties of calorimetric materials under experimentally controlled conditions. Pressure increase at constant volume For measurements at experimentally controlled volume, one can use the assumption, stated above, that the pressure of the body of calorimetric material is can be expressed as a function of its volume and temperature. For measurement at constant experimentally controlled volume, the isochoric coefficient of pressure rise with temperature, is defined by Expansion at constant pressure For measurements at experimentally controlled pressure, it is assumed that the volume of the body of calorimetric material can be expressed as a function of its temperature and pressure . This assumption is related to, but is not the same as, the above used assumption that the pressure of the body of calorimetric material is known as a function of its volume and temperature; anomalous behaviour of materials can affect this relation. Compressibility at constant temperature For measurements at experimentally controlled temperature, it is again assumed that the volume of the body of calorimetric material can be expressed as a function of its temperature and pressure , with the same provisos as mentioned just above. Relation between classical calorimetric quantities Assuming that the rule is known, one can derive the function of that is used above in the classical heat calculation with respect to pressure. This function can be found experimentally from the coefficients and through the mathematically deducible relation Connection between calorimetry and thermodynamics Thermodynamics developed gradually over the first half of the nineteenth century, building on the above theory of calorimetry which had been worked out before it, and on other discoveries. According to Gislason and Craig (2005): "Most thermodynamic data come from calorimetry..." According to Kondepudi (2008): "Calorimetry is widely used in present day laboratories." In terms of thermodynamics, the internal energy of the calorimetric material can be considered as the value of a function of , with partial derivatives and . Then it can be shown that one can write a thermodynamic version of the above calorimetric rules: Again, further in terms of thermodynamics, the internal energy of the calorimetric material can sometimes, depending on the calorimetric material, be considered as the value of a function of , with partial derivatives and , and with being expressible as the value of a function of , with partial derivatives and . Then, according to Adkins (1975), it can be shown that one can write a further thermodynamic version of the above calorimetric rules: Beyond the calorimetric fact noted above that the latent heats and are always of opposite sign, it may be shown, using the thermodynamic concept of work, that also Special interest of thermodynamics in calorimetry: the isothermal segments of a Carnot cycle Calorimetry has a special benefit for thermodynamics. It tells about the heat absorbed or emitted in the isothermal segment of a Carnot cycle. A Carnot cycle is a special kind of cyclic process affecting a body composed of material suitable for use in a heat engine. Such a material is of the kind considered in calorimetry, as noted above, that exerts a pressure that is very rapidly determined just by temperature and volume. Such a body is said to change reversibly. A Carnot cycle consists of four successive stages or segments: (1) a change in volume from a volume to a volume at constant temperature so as to incur a flow of heat into the body (known as an isothermal change) (2) a change in volume from to a volume at a variable temperature just such as to incur no flow of heat (known as an adiabatic change) (3) another isothermal change in volume from to a volume at constant temperature such as to incur a flow or heat out of the body and just such as to precisely prepare for the following change (4) another adiabatic change of volume from back to just such as to return the body to its starting temperature . In isothermal segment (1), the heat that flows into the body is given by and in isothermal segment (3) the heat that flows out of the body is given by Because the segments (2) and (4) are adiabats, no heat flows into or out of the body during them, and consequently the net heat supplied to the body during the cycle is given by This quantity is used by thermodynamics and is related in a special way to the net work done by the body during the Carnot cycle. The net change of the body's internal energy during the Carnot cycle, , is equal to zero, because the material of the working body has the special properties noted above. Special interest of calorimetry in thermodynamics: relations between classical calorimetric quantities Relation of latent heat with respect to volume, and the equation of state The quantity , the latent heat with respect to volume, belongs to classical calorimetry. It accounts for the occurrence of energy transfer by work in a process in which heat is also transferred; the quantity, however, was considered before the relation between heat and work transfers was clarified by the invention of thermodynamics. In the light of thermodynamics, the classical calorimetric quantity is revealed as being tightly linked to the calorimetric material's equation of state . Provided that the temperature is measured in the thermodynamic absolute scale, the relation is expressed in the formula Difference of specific heats Advanced thermodynamics provides the relation From this, further mathematical and thermodynamic reasoning leads to another relation between classical calorimetric quantities. The difference of specific heats is given by Practical constant-volume calorimetry (bomb calorimetry) for thermodynamic studies No work is performed in constant-volume calorimetry, so the heat measured equals the change in internal energy of the system. The heat capacity at constant volume is assumed to be independent of temperature. Heat is measured by the principle of calorimetry. - ΔU is change in internal energy, - ΔT is change in temperature and - CV is the heat capacity at constant volume. In constant-volume calorimetry the pressure is not held constant. If there is a pressure difference between initial and final states, the heat measured needs adjustment to provide the enthalpy change. One then has - ΔH is change in enthalpy and - V is the unchanging volume of the sample chamber. - Isothermal microcalorimetry (IMC) - Isothermal titration calorimetry - Sorption calorimetry - Reaction calorimeter - Reardon, Francis D.; Leppik, Kalle E.; Wegmann, René; Webb, Paul; Ducharme, Miche B.; & Kenny, Glen P. (2006). The Snellen human calorimeter revisited, re-engineered and upgraded: design and performance characteristics. Med Bio Eng Comput, 44:721–728. - Laidler, Keith, J. (1993). The World of Physical Chemistry. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-855919-4. - Bryan, G.H. (1907), pages 21–22. - Partington, J.R. (1949), pages 155–157. - Prigogine, I., Defay, R. (1950/1954). Chemical Thermodynamics, Longmans, Green & Co, London, pages 22-23. - Crawford, F.H. (1963), Section 5.9, pp. 120–121. - Adkins, C.J. (1975), Section 3.6, pages 43-46. - Truesdell, C., Bharatha, S. (1977), pages 20-21. - Landsberg, P.T. (1978), page 11. - Maxwell, J.C. (1872), pages 232-233. - Lewis, G.N., Randall, M. (1923/1961), pages 378-379. - Truesdell, C., Bharatha, S. (1977), pages 9-10, 15-18, 36-37. - Truesdell, C.A. (1980). The Tragicomical History of Thermodynamics, 1822–1854, Springer, New York, ISBN 0-387-90403-4. - Lewis, G.N., Randall, M. (1923/1961), page 29. - Maxwell, J.C. (1872), page 73. - Crawford, F.H. (1963), Section 5.10, pp. 121–122. - Truesdell, C., Bharatha, S. (1977), page 23. - Crawford, F.H. (1963), Section 5.11, pp. 123–124. - Truesdell, C., Bharatha, S. (1977), page 24. - Truesdell, C., Bharatha, S. (1977), page 25. - Kondepudi, D. (2008), pages 66-67. - Truesdell, C., Bharatha, S. (1977), page 20. - Adkins, C.J. (1975), Section 1.9.3, page 16. - Landsberg, P.T. (1978), pages 8-9. - An account of this is given by Landsberg, P.T. (1978), Chapter 4, pages 26-33. - Fowler, R., Guggenheim, E.A. (1939/1965). Statistical Thermodynamics. A version of Statistical Mechanics for Students of Physics and Chemistry, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK, page 57. - Guggenheim, E.A. (1949/1967), Section 1.10, pages 9-11. - Lebon, G., Jou, D., Casas-Vázquez, J. (2008). Understanding Non-equilibrium Thermodynamics: Foundations, Applications, Frontiers, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, ISBN 978-3-540-74252-4, page 7. - Planck, M. (1923/1926), page 57. - Iribarne, J.V., Godson, W.L. (1973/1981), page 46. - Lewis, G.N., Randall, M. (1923/1961), page 54. - Guggenheim, E.A. (1949/1967), page 38. - Callen, H.B. (1960/1985), page 84. - Adkins, C.J. (1975), page 38. - Bailyn, M. (1994), page 49. - Kondepudi, D. (2008), page 180. - Kondepudi, D. (2008), page 181. - Gislason, E.A., Craig, N.C. (2005). Cementing the foundations of thermodynamics:comparison of system-based and surroundings-based definitions of work and heat, J. Chem. Thermodynamics 37: 954-966. - Kondepudi, D. (2008), page 63. - Preston, T. (1894/1904). The Theory of Heat, second edition, revised by J.R. Cotter, Macmillan, London, pages 700-701. - Adkins, C.J. (1975), page 45. - Truesdell, C., Bharatha, S. (1977), page 134. - Kondepudi, D. (2008), page 64. - Adkins, C.J. (1975), page 46. - Truesdell, C., Bharatha, S. (1977), page 59. - Truesdell, C., Bharatha, S. (1977), pages 52-53. - Truesdell, C., Bharatha, S. (1977), page 150. - Callen, H.B. (1960/1985), page 86. - Adkins, C.J. (1975). Equilibrium Thermodynamics, second edition, McGraw-Hill, London, ISBN 0-07-084057-1. - Bailyn, M. (1994). A Survey of Thermodynamics, American Institute of Physics, New York, ISBN 0-88318-797-3. - Bryan, G.H. (1907). Thermodynamics. An Introductory Treatise dealing mainly with First Principles and their Direct Applications, B.G. Tuebner, Leipzig. - Callen, H.B. (1960/1985). Thermodynamics and an Introduction to Thermostatistics, second edition, Wiley, New York, ISBN 981-253-185-8. - Crawford, F.H. (1963). Heat, Thermodynamics, and Statistical Physics, Rupert Hart-Davis, London, Harcourt, Brace, & World. - Guggenheim, E.A. (1949/1967). Thermodynamics. An Advanced Treatment for Chemists and Physicists, North-Holland, Amsterdam. - Iribarne, J.V., Godson, W.L. (1973/1981), Atmospheric Thermodynamics, second edition, D. Reidel, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, ISBN 90-277-1296-4. - Kondepudi, D. (2008). Introduction to Modern Thermodynamics, Wiley, Chichester, ISBN 978-0-470-01598-8. - Landsberg, P.T. (1978). Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics, Oxford University Press, Oxford, ISBN 0-19-851142-6. - Lewis, G.N., Randall, M. (1923/1961). Thermodynamics, second edition revised by K.S Pitzer, L. Brewer, McGraw-Hill, New York. - Maxwell, J.C. (1872). Theory of Heat, third edition, Longmans, Green, and Co., London. - Partington, J.R. (1949). An Advanced Treatise on Physical Chemistry, Volume 1, Fundamental Principles. The Properties of Gases, Longmans, Green, and Co., London. - Planck, M. (1923/1926). Treatise on Thermodynamics, third English edition translated by A. Ogg from the seventh German edition, Longmans, Green & Co., London. - Truesdell, C., Bharatha, S. (1977). The Concepts and Logic of Classical Thermodynamics as a Theory of Heat Engines, Rigorously Constructed upon the Foundation Laid by S. Carnot and F. Reech, Springer, New York, ISBN 0-387-07971-8.

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Human Rights Developments The Turkish government failed to build on the very modest progress of the preceding two years. Apparently genuine intentions to enact reform were not turned into practical measures permanently to ungag journalists, release prisoners of opinion, protect detainees from torture, or account for the "disappeared." Government ministers seemed to be hostages to the system they nominally controlled while progress was impeded by vested interests within the state and in particular the military, still an overriding political force. The chief of general staff openly instructed the government that leftist separatism and political Islam are the principal public enemies of Turkey. Political parties and organizations reflecting these beliefs were prosecuted or closed down, and their members detained, ill-treated, or otherwise harassed. High-ranking judges eloquently condemned the judiciary's lack of independence and the flawed constitution imposed by the military in 1982. They also criticized the prosecutions and imprisonments arising from laws which conflict with Turkey's obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights. Intense debate on human rights was stimulated when Abdullah Ocalan was brought to Turkey in February, and throughout his subsequent trial, but the limits to free expression constrained argument on the political, cultural, and language rights of the Kurdish minority. Brutal punitive security operations, marked by allegations of torture and extrajudicial execution, were carried out in the cities and countryside, though less frequently than in recent years. This reflected a lessening in activity by armed opposition groups. Death in police detention persisted because the government failed to take the key steps to combat torture. In January, President Demirel asked B\lent Ecevit, leader of the Democratic Left Party (DSP) and caretaker prime minister since November, to form a new government, pending elections which took place in April. No party won an overall majority, but the DSP and the extreme right-wing National Action Party (MHP), both strongly nationalist, formed a coalition, with B\lent Ecevit continuing as prime minister and the Motherland Party (ANAP) as a third partner. The conflict between the Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) and government forces has shaped Turkish political history since 1984 and therefore the capture and trial of Abdullah Ocalan, leader of the PKK, was the dominating fact of the year. Expelled from Syria in November, he soon thereafter appeared in Italy, where he stayed until January, when he was allowed to flee Italian custody. He was finally abducted from Kenya by Turkish special forces in February and transported to Turkey to stand trial. Abdullah Ocalan was charged with treason and tried at a special annexe of Ankara State Security Court established, for reasons of security, on Imrali island in the Sea of Marmara. The investigation and trial did not meet international standards. The initial interrogation contravened Turkish and international law, and the prisoner's access to legal counsel was unsatisfactory. International human rights organizations criticized the presence of a military judge on the panel that would preside over Ocalan's trial, pointing out that this had been criticized by the European Court of Human Rights ( Incal v. Turkey , 1998) as a breach of the right to a fair and independent tribunal. In June, the Turkish constitution was changed to remove the military judge from security court trials, including Ocalan's. In June, Abdullah Ocalan was sentenced to death under Article 125 of the Turkish Penal Code, pending appeal. Turkey has not carried out a death sentence since 1984. In September, the PKK announced its intention to abandon the armed struggle. As of this writing, it was unclear whether or not this declaration would be implemented. International governmental organizations (and some commentators within Turkey) urged the Turkish government to take advantage of the capture of Abdullah Ocalan and recent military success against the PKK as an opportunity to grant political, cultural, and language rights to the Kurdish minority. However, no progress was made on language or cultural rights. During the course of Abdullah Ocalan's trial, the People's Democracy Party (HADEP), a legal political party with a mainly Kurdish membership viewed by the authorities as close to the PKK, was subjected to repeated brutal police raids. HADEP narrowly escaped closure by the Constitutional Court on grounds of "separatism" prior to the April elections, when electorate and candidates were subjected to severe intimidation. Ballots cast for HADEP were destroyed in at least one constituency. The party failed to secure any parliamentary seats but gained control of thirty-seven local authorities in the southeast, including Diyarbakir. In February, the Democratic Mass Party (DKP), another party with a largely Kurdish membership, was the fifteenth political party to be closed down by the Constitutional Court since Turkey returned to civilian rule in 1983. The party's program (which urged recognition of minority rights within the existing state of Turkey) was deemed to have included separatist propaganda. In May, the Constitutional Court prosecutor brought an action to close the Islamist Virtue Party (Fazilet), successor to the Welfare Party (Refah) which was closed in January 1998. This initiative was precipitated by newly elected Fazilet deputy Merve Kavakci's attempt to take her parliamentary oath while wearing a full headscarf. Although there was no legal basis to deny her the right to wear a headscarf within the parliament building, her action was denounced by the prime minister as an affront to the secular state, and she was unable to take her oath. Regulations barring university students, civil servants, lawyers, and judges from wearing the headscarf while on government premises were made more restrictive and applied more widely. Those who protested headscarf restrictions risked prosecution. In March, Sadi Carsancakli, lawyer and president of the Istanbul branch of Mazlum-Der, was indicted for "incitement" at Istanbul State Security Court under Article 312 of the Turkish Penal Code, along with sixteen women and several journalists, for organizing and participating in a nationwide nonviolent demonstration against the headscarf restrictions in October 1998. In March, Fazilet mayor of Istanbul Recep Tayyip Erdogan, sentenced to ten months of imprisonment under Article 312, went to prison. His offense had been to read a few lines from a poem which contained no advocacy of violence and which had, in fact, been approved by the Education Ministry. He was released in July, with remission, but the conviction results in a lifetime political ban, apparently the chief motivation for the prosecution. Political influence over the judicial process and constraints on free expression were strongly criticized by two high-ranking judges. In March, the president of the Constitutional Court Ahmet Necdet Sezer stated that the constitution imposed unacceptable restrictions on the basic freedoms of Turkish citizens-including limits on language rights-and called for harmonization of Turkish domestic law with the European Convention. In September, at the official opening of the judicial year and in the presence of the president and prime minister, the president of the Appeal Court Dr. Sami Selcuk rated the legitimacy of the constitution as "almost zero" and expressed the hope that Turkey would not enter the 21st century under a regime which continues to "crush minds and stifle voices." Those present applauded the speech but neglected to take steps to remedy the shortcomings of the constitution or lift the legislation limiting expression. In May, Prime Minister and former newspaperman Bulent Ecevit expressed regret when journalist Oral Calislar was sentenced to twenty months of imprisonment under Article 8 of the Anti-Terror Law for conducting interviews with Kurdish political leaders, but his administration's only gesture towards freedom of expression was, in September, to suspend for three years all sentences imposed on writers and broadcasters. Even this unsatisfactory measure, which resulted in the release of about a dozen journalists and writers, did not apply to those who had been prosecuted for public speeches. Esber Yagmurdereli, a lawyer who has been in prison since June 1998 because of a speech he made at an HRA meeting in 1991, therefore remained in Cankiri prison. As a result of a 10-month sentence under Article 8 of the Anti-Terror Law he lost remission on an earlier life sentence imposed by a martial law court after an unfair trial, and has twenty-two more years to serve. Local courts confiscated newspapers and books almost daily. Mehmet's Book - soldiers who have fought in the southeast tell their stories by journalist Nadire Mater, for example, was confiscated in June by an Istanbul court for "insulting the armed forces." Torture was widespread. Detainees accused of theft and other common criminal offenses reported torture, and in one case died in police custody. As in previous years, those interrogated for offenses under the Anti-Terror Law were particularly at risk. Many detainees reported sexual assault and there were three allegations of rape in custody. Muzaffer Cinar, a HADEP official, was detained in July and interrogated in incommunicado detention for eight days at Siirt police headquarters on suspicion of supporting the PKK. After his release without charge, he reported that had been beaten, that his testicles been pulled using a noose, that he had been suspended by the arms and hosed with cold water under pressure. He stated that police officers detained his wife and threatened to rape her. Medical and photographic evidence of widespread grazing and bruising corroborate his account. At the time of writing, no prosecution had been opened against the alleged torturers. There were seven reported deaths in custody during the year. Suleyman Yeter, dockers' union official and one of nineteen plaintiffs in an ongoing trial of eight police officers who had allegedly tortured and raped detainees in 1997, was again detained during a police raid on the magazine Dayanisma (Solidarity) in March. He died during the third day of incommunicado interrogation at Istanbul police headquarters. While the chief of police announced that "preliminary findings indicate a heart attack," medical examination revealed that Suleyman Yeterhad wounds on both sides of his head and to his chin, and extensive bruising to the rest of his body. At the time of writing, no charges had been issued related to his death. One of the first actions of B\lent Ecevit's new government was to issue a circular announcing that priority would be given to human rights and warning that police stations would be subject to impromptu checks. Unfortunately, the urgent and energetic supervision promised in the circular failed to materialize. Blindfolding continued to be routine, and safeguards for the protection of children in custody were frequently ignored. Incommunicado detention, condemned by United Nations (U.N.) and Council of Europe specialists as a major factor in torture, was not abolished. There were no verified reports of "disappearance," but the authorities continued to ignore demands for investigation of the pattern of "disappearances" from the mid-1990s. The Saturday Mothers, relatives of the "disappeared" who who have held a vigil in Istanbul every Saturday since 1995, were finally forced off the street in May by weekly detentions, harassment, ill-treatment and prosecution on manifestly trumped up charges. Meanwhile, the European Court of Human Rights continued to investigate outstanding cases. In July, it found the Turkish government responsible for the torture and death of Ahmet Cakici, who "disappeared" in the custody of gendarmes in Diyarbak^r province in 1993, and in September, the court visited Turkey to question witnesses to the "disappearance" of Kenan Bilgin at Ankara police headquarters in 1994. Cases of ill-treatment in prisons mainly arose when police or gendarmes were permitted access to prisoners during times of unrest, or when transferring prisoners to other prisons, to the hospital, or to court. There were reports from a number of prisons, including the newly opened Soganlik Special Closed Prison in Istanbul, that inmates were held in small-group isolation, known to be a threat to prisoners' mental and physical health. At Soganlik prisoners held under the Anti-Terror Law are kept in a social and physical environment that is drastically limited and monotonous with no out of cell time. Human Rights Watch, while recognizing that the Turkish prison system's move away from traditional large wards may have benefits for the prison population, urged the Justice Ministry not to impose small-group isolation on any class of prisoners. Compared to past years, there were fewer reports of attacks on civilians and killing of prisoners by illegal armed organizations. Following the death sentence imposed upon its leader, the PKK carried out "punitive" bombings and other attacks which claimed civilian lives. PKK members machine-gunned a right-wing cafe in Elazig in July killing Ferhan Bulut, Sukru Tuna, Idris Yeter and Bilal Comert. The organization formally called off such attacks later that month. Defending Human Rights Human rights workers were harassed, ill-treated, prosecuted, and obstructed in their legitimate activities. In February, the Office of the Chief of General Staff made a public statement that human rights were partial and operated as a wing of armed organizations. Similar groundless accusations had provoked an attack on Akin Birdal, president of the Human Rights Association, in 1998, as a result of which he remains partially paralyzed. His imprisonment this year was a grave shock and affront to the human rights community. Akin Birdal was convicted under Article 312 of the Turkish Penal Code for a 1996 speech referring to "the Kurdish people" and began serving a one year sentence in June. Akin Birdal forfeited his HRA presidency and served three and a half months in prison until his sentence was suspended on health grounds in September. The Diyarbakir HRA branch remained closed on the orders of the local governor for the third successive year. The Gaziantep branch was temporarily closed for three months in July. The Bursa branch reopened in June after having been closed for seven months because it had hosted a hunger strike, and the Sanliurfa branch re-opened after closure for more than a year, when the appeal court overturned the local governor's decision that the branch had exceeded the terms of its statute. Three Izmir HRA members and its president Ercan Demir were convicted of holding an "unauthorized demonstration" by making a press statement about unrest in a local prison in 1996 and sentenced to terms of imprisonment of more than a year. They are at liberty, pending appeal. Other human rights organizations were also targeted. In January, the Sanliurfa branch of the Association for Human Rights and Solidarity with the Oppressed (Mazlum-Der) was closed indefinitely on the order of the local governor, pending the outcome of a prosecution for a calendar which allegedly contained statements insulting to the organs of state. Their Malatya branch was closed in May and other branches were raided by police. In September, Mehmet Ali Irtemcelik, state minister responsible for human rights, made a public statement that seemed to promise a change of approach, when he expressed a wish to "strike a sound and honest communication" with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) dealing with human rights. As of this writing, it was unclear whether or not this represented a genuine new initiative. The Role of the International Community The capture, trial, and sentencing of Abdullah Ocalan provoked responses from many governments and was intensely scrutinized by international governmental organizations. In March the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture visited Abdullah Ocalan on Imrali island to examine the conditions of custody and methods of interrogation. The committee was satisfied that he was not being subjected to torture, but raised concern about his access to legal counsel and the isolated character of his confinement. The European Parliament, the European Union, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights sent delegates to attend Ocalan's trial. When the court handed down a death sentence, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe reminded President Demirel that in 1997 he had joined other heads of state in a pledge to abolish the death penalty. Council of Europe The political, investigative, and judicial arms of the Council of Europe were closely and actively engaged with human rights developments in Turkey. The Turkish government finally gave permission for publication in February of the report of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture on the committee's visit to Turkey in October 1997. This represented a significant acknowledgement of the problem of torture, and progress towards openness - though several other reports remained unpublished. The report confirmed that Turkey was "moving in the right direction" but regretted that the committee had, as in previous visits, received many reports of torture, corroborated in some cases by medical evidence. In March, the Turkish authorities also gave the committee permission to publish observations from its visit that month to Abdullah Ocalan (see above). During that visit, the committee also inspected Istanbul police headquarters and reported in a tone of some exasperation that it had again found credible evidence that torture was still being inflicted there. In an unprecedented resolution in June, the Committee of Ministers censured Turkey for "repeated and serious violations" committed by its security forces, and expressed impatience that there had been "no significant improvement." As of September, over nine thousand petitions against Turkey were under consideration by the European Court of Human Rights. The court handed down decisions in a series of cases representing a wide variety of violations committed by the Turkish authorities: violations of freedom of speech, imprisonment for expression of nonviolent opinions, and violations of the right to life, including one "disappearance" case. In November, the European Union (E.U.) Commission produced its first regular report on Turkey's progress towards accession. The commission commented on the "persistent violations of human rights," the "great failings in the way minorities are treated" and the "lack of real civilian control over the army." In March, in response to an influx of asylum seekers from Iraq and surrounding countries, the European Parliament passed a resolution which referred to the instability caused by Turkish incursions into Northern Iraq, and called for the Turkish government to "seek a political solution to the Kurdish problem." In June, the E.U. presidency condemned the imprisonment of Akin Birdal and called for the sentence to be deferred at least on humanitarian grounds in view of his poor health. Significant differences between the E.U. and Turkey on issues that include Turkey's human rights record kept Turkey outside the E.U. enlargement process. Two thematic mechanisms published their reports on visits to Turkey made during 1998. The findings of the special rapporteur on torture complemented those of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture. The extent of torture was unambiguously stated as "widespread" and in some areas "systematic," to the extent that it is a pervasive technique used "regardless of approval or disapproval at higher levels of the public service." The report of the U.N. Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances, by contrast, was disappointing. Relatives of the disappeared had hoped that the working group's visit would uncover the truth in at least a small number of individual cases, and draw some conclustions about the general pattern. Instead, the working group failed to make a clear determination in a single case - even where there was a strong body of evidence of security force responsibility. Its description of the volume of reported disappearances in Turkey (not less than a hundred in the 1990s and perhaps several hundred) as "relatively low" betrayed a certain complacency in their approach. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) In March, at the Permanent Council in Vienna, the Representative on Freedom of the Media Freimut Duve urged Turkey to adopt "a more liberal attitude" in the application of laws currently used to inhibit political discussion, but expressed appreciation of Turkey's otherwise energetically pluralist media landscape. As of this writing, Turkey was planning to host the OSCE's Summit of heads of state and government in Istanbul in mid-November. Officials of the OSCE's member states expressed the hope that the summit would prove a catalyst for needed reform in Turkey. In various statements, the United States government contrasted the Turkish authorities' public commitment to respect for human rights with their lack of determination to combat persistent and serious violations. The State Department's Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1998 communicates the "substantial but indirect influence" exercised by the military over politics and its role in inhibiting free expression in Turkey. The report reflects the breadth and gravity of violations committed by government security forces, from torture and forcible evacuation to extrajudicial execution, and shows how those who torture or kill in the name of the state escape prosecution. Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, Harold Hongju Koh stated, during a tour of Turkey in August, that there could be "no purely military solution to Kurdish issues. Any enduring solution must lie in the expansion of democracy, and in bold and imaginative political, social, and economic measures to foster full democratic political participation for all of Turkey's citizens and to promote broader freedom of expression on the Southeast." This view met bitter criticism and warm praise from different quarters of the media. Harold Koh visited Ankara Central Closed prison to meet the Kurdish former member of parliament Leyla Zana where she is serving a fifteen year sentence on charges of separatism, and also Ak^n Birdal. U.S. Congress approved delivery, beginning in July, of fifty Sikorsky S-70 Black Hawk utility helicopters. This class of helicopter has been used to commit human rights violations in Turkey, including "disappearance." Human Rights Watch pressed the U.S. government to insist that effective systems are put in place to ensure end-use monitoring of this equipment.

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More than four decades have passed since one of the most brilliant missions ever undertaken in the annals of space science. Apollo 15, launched in July 1971, carried U.S. astronauts Dave Scott, Al Worden, and Jim Irwin to the Moon for an expansive program of research, both in lunar orbit and on the surface. Scott and Irwin spent three days exploring a place called Hadley, a small patch of Mare Imbrium at the base of the lunar Apennine Mountains—some of whose peaks rise to 4,000 feet (1,200 meters)—and a 25-mile (40-km) meandering gorge, known as Hadley Rille. To assist in their exploration, they utilized the first battery-powered Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV). Meanwhile, Worden conducted his own scientific studies from lunar orbit and during the return journey participated in the world’s first “deep-space” EVA, more than 180,000 miles (300,000 km) from Earth. Yet Apollo 15’s EVA extravaganza also emcompassed three lengthy Moonwalks, which made one of Apollo’s grandest scientific discoveries, and the first Stand-Up EVA (SEVA) on the lunar surface. One of the skills that Scott had learned from his scientific mentor, Professor Leon T. Silver of California Institute of Technology, was the need to gain a visual impression of the variety of the landing site that he and Irwin would explore on Apollo 15. With this in mind, Scott requested mission planners to schedule a SEVA a couple of hours after touchdown on the Moon, in which he would poke his helmeted head through the top hatch of the lunar module Falcon and photograph and describe his surroundings. Deke Slayton, head of the Flight Crew Operations Directorate (FCOD), initially opposed the idea, on the grounds that it would waste valuable oxygen, but Scott fiercely argued his case and won approval. To conduct the half-hour SEVA, Scott pulled a balaclava-like lunar excursion visor assembly over his clear bubble helmet, clambered onto the ascent engine cover and removed the top hatch. It was, he later wrote in his memoir, Two Sides of the Moon, “rather as if I was in the conning tower of a submarine or the turret of a tank.” Meanwhile, Irwin shaded the instrument panel from the sunlight and arranged Scott’s oxygen hoses and communications cables to enable him to stand upright. “He offered me a chance to look out,” Irwin wrote in his autobiography, To Rule the Night, “but my umbilicals weren’t long enough and I didn’t want to take the time to rearrange them.” In the weak lunar gravity, Scott found that he could easily support himself in the hatch on his elbows and beheld the stunning view of the brown-and-tan Apennines, tinged by the intense blaze of golden sunlight, against the ace-of-spades blackness of the sky. Irwin passed up a bearing indicator and a large orientation map, which Scott used to shoot a couple of dozen interconnected stereo pictures of the landing site now officially known as “Hadley Base.” As his eyes accustomed to the view, and his mind connected it with months spent examining Lunar Orbiter maps, Scott began reeling off the recognizable landmarks. There was Pluton and Icarus and Chain and Side—intriguing craters in an area known as the “North Complex”—and on the lower slopes of Mount Hadley Delta was the vast, yawning pit of St. George Crater. One particularly prominent, rocky landmark which they had dubbed “Silver Spur,” in honor of their professor, showed clear evidence of stratigraphy in its flanks. The tops of the mountains were smooth and rounded and bore little resemblance to the forbidding, 1950s-era paintings of the Moon, which showed jagged, menacing peaks. “The SEVA was a marvelous and useful experience, for a lot of reasons,” Scott later explained to the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal. “One of our problems at Hadley was that the resolution of the Lunar Orbiter photography was only 66 feet (20 meters), so they couldn’t prepare a detailed map. The maps we had were best guesses and we had the radar people tell us before the flight that there were boulder fields—massive boulders—all over the base of Hadley Delta, just boulders everywhere. So another reason for the Stand-Up EVA was to look and see if we could drive the Rover, because if there were boulder fields down there, and nobody could prove there were no boulder fields, it changed the whole picture.” The view set Scott’s mind at ease; not just because it looked totally unhostile, but because it contradicted pre-flight fears. He could clearly see that despite the undulating nature of the terrain, it was surprisingly gentle, with no rocks bigger than about 6-8 inches (15-20 cm) nearby. The “trafficability,” as he put it, would be excellent. The next three days of exploration, surely, would be charmed. As he prepared to come back inside the cabin after 33 adrenaline-charged minutes, Scott was electrified. “Tell those geologists in the back room to get ready,” he breathed, “because we’ve really got something for them!” Arguably one of the most significant events of Apollo 15 took place on their second Moonwalk, on 1 August 1971. “We’re looking now, primarily, for a wide variety of rock samples from the [Apennine] Front,” Capcom Joe Allen told the astronauts during their pre-EVA planning briefing that morning. “We think there may very well be some large crystal[line] igneous [rocks] and we’d like samples of those and whatever variety of rocks which you’re able to find for us, but primarily a large number of documented samples and fragment samples.” Scott was in full agreement; Allen was talking their language and after two years of geological training he felt ready and confident to explore. Shortly afterwards, safely buckled aboard the LRV, Scott and Irwin set off due south, heading for Mount Hadley Delta, upon whose slopes they would concentrate their energies. It was a scenic trip, Irwin recalled in To Rule the Night. Ahead of them, and all around them, the terrain was literally splattered with craters, right up the slopes of Hadley Delta, whose height rivaled the tallest peaks of the Rockies. After passing the vast cavity of Dune Crater, they started up the mountain. On the plain the going had been rough, but on the slope the surface smoothed out markedly. On reaching a point just below Spur Crater, they swung left and drove cross-slope. Looking down the slope, they were astonished to realize how far they had come. The lunar module Falcon was a tiny speck on the undulating plain, and the astronauts were now at an elevation of about 330 feet (100 meters), and the view, completely unimpaired by atmosphere or the slightest hint of haze, knocked Dave Scott’s socks off. Their first task was to find a small “drill-hole” crater that could have excavated material from the mountain, but the flank was remarkably clean. Scott curtailed the planned drive, and they sampled a small crater and then an isolated boulder which was coated in greenish material. The green hue captivated Jim Irwin, whose Irish descent and birthday on St. Patrick’s Day—and the fact that he stowed some shamrocks in the lunar module—made this a special find. At first, the two men wondered if their eyes or Sun visors were playing tricks on them, but when it was unpacked a few weeks later in the Lunar Receiving Laboratory (LRL), their initial suspicions would be confirmed: it was green, made entirely of minuscule spheres of glass, tiny droplets of magma spewed from a fissure by a “fire fountain.” In time, it and other samples would contribute to making Apollo 15 one of the greatest voyages of discovery ever undertaken in human history. Finally, they headed for Spur Crater, which proved to be a real gold mine of geological treasure. “As soon as we got there,” Irwin described, “we could look over and see some of this white rock. Immediately, I saw white, I saw light green and I saw brown. But there was one piece of white rock that looked different from any of the others. We didn’t rush over to it; we went about our job the usual way. First I took down-Sun shots and a locator shot about 45 degrees from the Sun-line and Dave took a couple of cross-Sun shots.” Scott and Irwin slowly threaded their way between the craters to the strange white rock that they had seen earlier. “It was lifted up on a pedestal,” Irwin wrote. “The base was a dirty old rock covered with lots of dust that sat there by itself, almost like an outstretched hand. Sitting on top of it was a white rock, almost free of dust. From four feet (1.2 meters) away, I could see unique long crystals with parallel lines, forming striations.” Scott used a pair of tongs to pick it up from its small, light-grey pedestal and held it up, close to his visor, to inspect it. The rock was about the same size as his fist and even as he lifted it, some of its dusty coating crumbled away and he saw large, white crystals. “Aaaahh!” he exulted. “Oh, man!” added Irwin. The rock was almost entirely plagioclase—an important tectosilicate feldspar mineral used by petrologists on Earth to help determine the composition, origin, and evolution of igneous rocks—and from their expeditions into the hills of California’s San Gabriel Mountains, Scott instantly recognized it as a specimen of “anorthosite,” which is the purest form of plagioclase. For some time, lunar geologists had suspected that anorthosite formed the Moon’s original, primordial crust; indeed, data from the unmanned Surveyor 7 lander had suggested its presence in the ejecta of the crater Tycho, and tiny fragments of it had actually been found in samples from both Tranquility Base and the Ocean of Storms. “Explaining why most of the Moon’s crust should be composed of anorthosite,” wrote Andrew Chaikin in his definitive account of the Apollo lunar missions, A Man on the Moon, “led some geologists to an extraordinary scenario. Within the infant satellite, they proposed, there was so much heat that the entire outer shell became an ocean of molten rock. As this ‘magma ocean’ cooled, minerals crystallized. The heavier species, including the iron- and magnesium-rich crystals, sank to the bottom. The lighter crystals, specifically, the mineral [aluminium-rich] plagioclase floated to the top.” Recognizing the find as probably a piece of the Moon’s primordial crust, Scott could hardly contain his enthusiasm. “Guess what we just found!” he radioed. “I think we just found what we came for!” “Crystalline rock, huh?” said Irwin. “Yes, sir,” replied Scott, which Capcom Joe Allen echoed in his excited, Iowan drawl. After briefly describing the rock’s appearance, Scott placed it into a sample bag by itself. It would be labeled as sample number 15415, but a keen journalist, inspired by the term petrogenesis, the study of the origin of igneous rocks, would later offer it a far more lofty title: “The Genesis Rock,” a sample of the original lunar crust, coming from one of the earliest epochs of the Moon’s history, some 4.1 billion years ago. This date was reached by geologists at the University of New York at Stony Brook and proved to be almost a billion and a half years older than the oldest rocks found on Earth. If the Moon was any older than that, noted Chaikin, it wasn’t much older; the Solar System itself was thought to have formed only a few hundred million years earlier. Dick Gordon, Apollo 15’s backup commander, had long since described the passage of time on a spaceflight as remorseless and Scott and Irwin had little time to linger at Spur Crater. Joe Allen passed on a request from the geologists to collect a series of walnut-sized fragments, and whilst Irwin set to work with the lunar rake Scott stole a minute or two to inspect a large boulder right on the rim of the crater. Back in the vicinity of Falcon, shortly before two in the afternoon and five hours into their second Moonwalk, Scott and Irwin had other chores to finish; first, there was the need to complete drilling a heat-flow hole which had hit resistant soil the previous day. Scott had already noticed inside the lander that his injured fingers were starting to turn black and so had to summon as much strength as he could muster—bringing his hands right up close to his chest just to squeeze the drill’s trigger—to complete the task. He could physically stand only about a minute of the pressure on his fingernails, before breaking off for a breather. At length, both sensor packages were in place to a depth of about 1.5 metres. However, when he attempted to extract the core sample he managed to lift it about eight inches (20 cm), after which it refused to budge any further. Joe Allen told him to leave it until EVA-3. Meanwhile, Irwin had dug a trench, photographed it and used a device known as a penetrometer to test the bearing strength of its walls and floor. “If you think digging a ditch is dog’s work on Earth,” he wrote in To Rule the Night, “try digging a ditch on the Moon. The big limitation is the suit and the fact that you are clumsy at one-sixth-G. I had practised on Earth and come up with a technique that most dogs use. You spread your legs and push the dirt between them. I solved a dog’s job with a dog’s technique. This method worked perfectly on the Moon.” He easily dug through a fine grey material which he likened to talcum powder or graphite, and then a coarser, darker soil, but had to give up on reaching a very resistant layer which, although it looked moist, had all the consistency of hardpan. Scott and Irwin wrapped up the second Moonwalk by planting the U.S. national flag in the soil and loading that day’s rock box aboard Falcon. By the time they completed their third EVA on 2 August 1971, they had totaled 18 hours and 35 minutes on the surface, more than any previous Apollo landing crew. Furthermore, EVA-2 ran for seven hours and 12 minutes, making it the longest extravehicular activity in history at that time. Three days later, during the return journey to Earth, the final EVA of Apollo 15 took place and secured a record as the furthest “spacewalk” ever performed from the Home Planet. Since the Service Module (SM) could not survive re-entry, it was the task of Al Worden to retrieve camera film from the Scientific Instrument Module Bay (SIMBay) on a so-called “Trans-Earth EVA,” about 180,000 miles (300,000 miles) from home. Yet, as he recounted in a May 2000 oral history interview for NASA, there were originally other methods studied for getting these films inside the command module before the agency went ahead and approved a deep-space EVA. “There had already been some preliminary work on how to get this film out of the SIMBay,” Worden pointed out. “Of course, it had been in the pipeline for several years and there were a lot of schemes to get the film from … the back of the Scientific Instrument Module all the way up into the Command Module, [which was] a distance of about 30 feet (10 meters). How do you get out there safely so that you don’t lose it, so that you don’t hurt something? One of the schemes was … an ‘arm’ on a hinge that would go out and pick up the film and … bring it back by the hatch, where you could pick it up.” Other suggestions included an “endless clothesline,” onto which the film canisters could be hooked and reeled down the length of the Service Module to the Command Module’s crew hatch. “I objected to all of those, once we [were] assigned to the flight,” Worden recalled. “None of them were very practical. We actually proved it with the clothesline. It’s nice to think about something like an endless clothesline, but the truth was, when you’re in space, if that canister started to bounce around, there [would be] nothing to stop it.” During a test in the parabolic aircraft, it proved exceptionally difficult and potentially damaging. In the end, it was decided that an EVA was the most effective option. By the time he set out to perform it on 5 August 1971, Worden had practised every move of the task more than 300 times aboard the parabolic aircraft. “The EVA itself was kind of unique,” Worden said of the relatively brief, 39-minute excursion, “sort of a unique perspective. I did have a chance to stand up on the outside [of the Service Module] and look. I could see the Moon and the Earth at the same time; and if you’re on Earth, you can’t do that, and if you’re on the Moon, you can’t do that! It’s a very unique place to be. I guess our biggest concern was that we had everything tied down so that when we opened the hatch, we didn’t have something go wandering off into space! But outside of that, it was pretty easy.” Obviously, since the cabin was reduced to vacuum for the EVA, Scott and Irwin also had to don their suits. Suddenly, as soon as the hatch opened, everything that had not been properly secured began drifting around. “When we opened the hatch,” wrote Irwin, “it was just like a vacuum cleaner pulling all the loose stuff from the inside out into space. My toothbrush floated by; it had been in hiding. A camera came by; one of us grabbed it. We were all leaping around, trying to catch the important stuff.” It was Irwin’s job to move slightly outside after Worden in order to televise his EVA, but he had “goofed” when hooking up his suit’s umbilicals by wrapping them the wrong way around a strut, which limited his range of movement. “I had to force my hand out to reach the movie camera,” he wrote in To Rule the Night, “attached to a boom, to turn it on. I saw the green light and thought the camera was on, but it wasn’t working.” Since they were so far from Earth, the experiences of both men were quite distinct from “traditional” spacewalks in orbit around the Home Planet. They were surrounded by pitch blackness, and one of the few sources of light was sunlight reflecting off the surfaces of the service module. Irwin considered it strange and eerie from his perch just inside the Command Module’s hatch, in silhouette against the full disk of the Moon. “The National Geographic did a painting of me,” he wrote. “It almost looks like a photo.” It is a pity that real photographs of what must have been an absolutely stunning event were never returned. This is part of a series of articles to commemorate 50 years of U.S. Extravehicular Activity. Tomorrow’s article will focus on the epochal EVA of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the Moon during Apollo 11 in July 1969. Missions » US EVAs »

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10 Artists Moving Us to Take a Stand Against Coal Ash Pollution Coal ash — the toxic waste left behind when power companies burn coal to produce electricity — can be a hidden source of pollution, leaching contaminants into communities’ groundwater. But around the country, artists are working to make the harms of coal ash more visible. U.S. coal-fired power plants generate over 100 million tons of coal ash waste each year, making it the nation’s second-largest industrial waste stream. Often, coal ash is stored in unlined pits or “ponds,” which may contain tens of millions of tons of dangerous waste. These pits leak toxic metals, like arsenic, chromium, cobalt, lithium, manganese, selenium, radium (and many more), into underlying groundwater and nearby surface waters. Heavy metals in coal ash have been linked to cancer, heart disease, reproductive failure, and stroke. Coal ash pits and ponds can also fail catastrophically and dump millions of tons of toxic waste into rivers and lakes. Coal ash puts nearby communities and their waterways at great risk. It is vital for communities living near coal plants and coal ash dump sites to have their voices heard and receive protection from the harms of coal ash. One creative way to call attention to this problem is through artistic activism. Photographers, sculptors, muralists, filmmakers, musicians, and poets have used their art to expose the threat of coal ash and advocate for clean air and drinking water. Earthjustice stands in solidarity with these artists as we use the power of the law to work toward the same goal. The Biden administration has pledged to alleviate environmental injustice and protect communities disproportionately burdened by industrial pollution. Please join us in calling on it to take action, and add your voice to artists, activists, and frontline communities throughout the nation living near one of over 1,000 coal ash dump sites. Greg Lindquist: Artist and Writer Originally from Wilmington, North Carolina, Greg Lindquist is a New York-based artist and writer whose work converges at the intersection of social justice, ecology, and environmental justice. His recent paintings and participatory installations focus on applying the beauty of landscape and abstraction to raise awareness of environmental concerns. Greg describes his interest in coal ash: “Many ecological disasters are problematically not able to be clearly seen. However, in 2014, when 39,000 tons of coal ash spilled through eighty miles of the Dan River in North Carolina and Virginia, I was captivated by an image of the ash swirling on the river’s surface. In particular, I was struck by the plain contradiction of how something so ruinous to both nature and humans could appear so beautiful and pleasing to the eye. “This spill was the conceptual, visual, educational, and political driver of the Smoke and Water project (2014 – 2018), a series of installations, paintings, and murals that were made collaboratively with numerous communities of families, non-profits, colleges, and museums. The participation of these diverse painting hands made this pollution both visible and deeply felt, bringing the story of coal ash’s ecological and human hazards to a larger audience. “At the same time, I began examining the larger life cycle of coal electricity — the material sources and means of production, as well as how the electric plants are geographically situated within rural residential communities, which primarily burdens people of color and of economic disadvantage. From photographic documentation of the six largest coal-fired electric plants in the United States in Texas, Alabama, North Carolina, and Georgia, I made a series of easel-sized oil-on-linen paintings, incorporating the ash by-product as a material painted on the canvases as grounds, skies, and frames. “While an artwork itself certainly cannot change the world, art practices and projects can and do work with larger social movements and struggles to glacially achieve change on a far greater scale than is capable with the efforts of any one artist acting alone as an individual. Ultimately, I am interested in the role the visuality of art as its own experience can take, as much as art’s potential for social change.” Mabette Colón Pérez: Children’s Book Writer, Illustrator and Activist Mabette Colón Pérez is a student artist-activist who grew up near the AES-PR coal plant and a massive coal ash pile in Guayama, Puerto Rico. Mabette testified at an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) hearing about how coal ash exposure has harmed her community, raising awareness about the harms of coal ash. Environmental Justice Is for You and Me is a Spanish-English-language bilingual children’s book that introduces young readers to the concept of justicia ambiental (environmental justice). Written by Catalina M. de Onís, Hilda Lloréns, Mabette Colón Pérez (also illustrator), and Khalil G. García-Lloréns (first translator into Spanish), the book defines key concepts of environmental justice for a child and youth audience, and its main goal is to raise awareness about the threats that exist against the environment. The book offers an essential educational tool to develop our sensitivity for the benefit of all forms of life, with special attention to the intersections between racism, poverty, and the environment in Jobos Bay, in southern Puerto Rico. In addition to Puerto Rican publisher Editora Educación Emergente offering a free download of the book, the authors are working with the publisher to produce physical copies of the book for purchase online. All royalties will be donated to the Comité Diálogo Ambiental (Environmental Dialogue Committee), a grassroots group affiliated with Iniciativa de Ecodesarrollo de Bahia de Jobos (Bahia de Jobos Ecodevelopment Initiative) that coordinates an annual environmental justice camp for youth in southeastern Puerto Rico. With this publication, Editora Educación Emergente revalidates its commitment to “an emerging education that guarantees life in justice for all. Another school is possible.” Find Mabette’s book on Editora Educación Emergent's website. Eve Morgenstern: Filmmaker and Activist Eve Morgenstern is a photographer and filmmaker based in the Hudson Valley. She has produced several documentary films for PBS and theatrical release. Below, Eve describes an award-winning film she created in 2019, which was inspired by a small town in Ohio destroyed by the pollution from a coal-fired power plant: “Cheshire, Ohio tells the story of a community that suffered years of consequences from the burning of coal at the power plant that for many years sat dangerously close to this centuries-old town. After years of concerning pollution problems, the company that owns the plant bought out most of the residents of the town and bulldozed their homes. Yet the plant still exists and continues to pump CO2, one of the leading causes of climate change, into the atmosphere. The coal ash landfill forms a mountain in Cheshire posing a risk to drinking water, aquatic life, and human health. Workers at the plant filed a lawsuit because of a cancer cluster that showed up amongst those who worked in the ash pile. “My film covers the three chapters of this coal story: the buyout of the town, the fight of nearby residents who were left out of the deal, and the lawsuit filed by the sick workers. Making this film truly inspired me to become an environmental activist. I serve as an officer of the Hudson Valley & Catskills chapter of The Climate Reality Project, and I am co-founder of our chapter’s Arts Committee. I truly believe art has the power to inspire action and I have the brave people of Cheshire to thank for sharing their stories and teaching me about the destructive history of coal as an energy source.” Visit Eve’s website to view more of her work. Chris Jordan-Bloch: Earthjustice Filmmaker, Producer and Photographer Since 2010, Chris Jordan-Bloch has filmed and produced stunning images for Earthjustice that tell the stories behind Earthjustice’s legal and legislative advocacy. Chris believes in the importance and power of visual storytelling, and it is his goal to tell the stories and show the personalities behind the cases and advocacy work of the organization. Chris describes his work as follows: “I am a producer, filmmaker, and photographer living in Oakland, California, and I believe that stories, activism, and the law can work together to create meaningful change. Currently, I am the managing producer for Earthjustice where I lead photo and video for the organization. “Even though coal ash is one of America’s largest toxic waste streams, I didn’t know much about it until I met William Anderson and Lisa Evans in Washington, D.C. William was the chairman of the Moapa Band of Paiutes, Lisa was a lawyer for Earthjustice, and both were fighting to clean up coal ash. By the end of our meeting, William had invited me to come out to Moapa, N.V., to experience coal ash firsthand. A few weeks later I was in William’s office, interviewing people and learning about what it was like to live in the shadow of a polluting monster. The Paiute people let me into their lives and shared their stories with me. I was profoundly upset by the injustice they were facing. A massive coal plant was blowing coal ash, laced with arsenic, mercury, and lead, directly into their homes — and lives. At the same time, I was profoundly heartened by the bravery and savvy that the residents showed as they battled against the pollution. The Moapa Band of Paiutes lobbied for local change in the media, the courts and the legislature, and as a direct result of their work, the coal plant was shuttered. As if that wasn’t enough, the Paiutes then went to the federal courts and the halls of Congress to advocate for national change. As a result, one of America’s largest toxic waste stream is now subject to its first-ever national regulation. “It was a true privilege to be their partner and play a small part with my film. After Moapa, I made more films about coal ash and met more advocates. These people shared the common enemy of toxic coal pollution, but more importantly, they all shared the same tenacity, savvy, and deep passion for justice that I had encountered in Moapa. The environmental advocate is a powerful person, and I have been deeply privileged to know a few who are fighting for justice against coal ash pollution. View more of Chris’s films and photos related to coal ash. Ashley Williams: Activist and Community Organizer Ashley Williams is a resident of Michigan City and is co-founder and executive director of Just Transition Northwest Indiana (NWI). Just Transition NWI seeks to educate and organize NWI communities and workers, give voice to their stories, and support a just transition to a regenerative economy that protects the environment, climate and future generations. Ashley describes the inspiring mural she helped create: “Our Ecopolis signifies a new vision for Northwest Indiana. The mural is based on the concept of the Ecopolis, also known as a regenerative city. Our Ecopolis tells the story of the people of Michigan City, Wheatfield, Gary, and the larger Northwest Indiana region rising up to reclaim their power from corporate polluters. In the mural, each fossil fuel site is transformed from places of extraction to places of resilience, regeneration, and environmental justice. In the summer of 2018, the mural was created with acrylic paint on canvas through a series of art builds with youth and students at First Presbyterian Church of Michigan City, Progressive Community Church in Gary, Kankakee Valley High School in Wheatfield, and Steel City Academy in Gary. The series was coupled with community conversations as well as a live play hosted by a coalition of community partners entitled Ecopolis Southshore, written and directed by author Jeff Biggers. We debuted the mural at Steel City Academy, a school that has been fighting back against the siting of a waste recycling facility directly across the street from them, to give further voice to their story. In September 2018, the mural was then presented during our utility’s, NIPSCO’s, future energy planning process meeting. That same day, the utility announced plans to retire all of their remaining coal plants by 2028 and to invest in renewable energy.” Kaitlyn Stancy: Artist, Satirist, and Advocate Born and raised in Northwest Indiana, Kaitlyn Stancy is an artist and designer who created a fictional, satirical solutions company called Sitting Duck with a campaign aimed to inform people about the coal ash threats in Town of Pines, Indiana, where coal ash contaminated the drinking water and turned the small town into a Superfund site. Combining sarcastic propaganda and impractical solutions with ironic realtor marketing strategies and trompe l’oeil installations, Stancy’s body of work encourages people to question big corporation’s use of media and to take action against health-threatening issues. Of her work, Kaitlyn writes: “The Town of Pines, Indiana, has been struggling with coal ash waste management issues caused by NIPSCO since the early 1980s. Higher than normal levels of arsenic, boron, molybdenum, manganese, and lead have all been found in the drinking water near NIPSCO’s coal ash dumping site, the Yard 520 Landfill owned by Brown Inc. Publicly known health and environmental issues such as the situation in Pines are improperly resolved and disregarded in the media every day. While we are not all experts on finding the proper solutions to these problems, the first step to addressing them is to inform people that they exist.” Will Warasila: Photographer Will Warasila is an artist from North Carolina who completed the MFA|EDA program at Duke University. He has worked on an in-depth project in Walnut Cove, North Carolina, called Quicker than Coal Ash, the first in a series of a larger group of projects addressing toxicity, sustainability, and the Anthropocene. Will describes his work: “The people of Walnut Cove, North Carolina, live in the shadow of Duke Energy’s Belews Creek Steam Station, where toxic coal ash is kept in a massive unlined storage pond, and toxins are pumped into the air, water, and soil. I spent a year and a half getting to know the residents, the landscape, the structures of energy and power. During my first recorded interview with Pastor Leslie Brewer, I asked her, What is coal ash? At first she replied that coal ash was simply a nuisance. Coal ash is what you got all over the cars and the roofs and anything you left outside... Then it changed from a nuisance into a poison. Growing up, she and her family had Belews Creek flowing by, and we'd swim in it. After the Steam Station was built, it became a sort of wasteland. Most of this transformation, the harm being done to the land and its residents, is invisible and impossible to photograph. Nevertheless, I have attempted to make images that address this shift.” J Henry Fair: Photographer and Environmental Activist J Henry Fair is a photographer, environmental activist and co-founder of the Wolf Conservation Center in South Salem, New York. Known for his “chillingly beautiful” (Audubon Magazine) environmental aerial photos, Fair has called attention to environmental and political problems in different regions of the world. Henry has taken aerial photos of countless coal ash ponds worldwide and created stunningly dramatic and haunting images. Speaking about his Industrial Scars series, Roberta Smith, chief art critic of The New York Times said, “The vivid color photographs of J Henry Fair lead an uneasy double life as potent records of environmental pollution and as ersatz evocations of abstract painting… information and form work together, to devastating effect.” Henry is also an activist for coal ash protections and has testified at EPA hearings as well as exhibited his work at the U.S. Capitol at an event educating lawmakers about the damage occurring from unregulated coal ash dumping. He is currently based in New York City and Berlin. About his work, Henry writes: “I make abstract-expressionist photographs based on nature and anti-nature. My work is about the conflict between our dependence on nature for life, and the damage we do to it with our desire for materialism. Art can bridge ideological divides where dialogue has failed. Beauty touches us and bypasses our preconceptions. Ironic beauty prompts us to question meaning and previously held beliefs.” Caroline Armijo: Environmentalist and Mixed-Media Artist Caroline Rutledge Armijo is a mixed-media artist, environmental advocate, and mother, who lives in Greensboro, North Carolina. Her work incorporates her concern for environmental issues threatening her home community — coal ash and fracking. She advocates for Residents for Coal Ash Cleanup based at Belews Creek, North Carolina, and Alliance of Carolinians Together (ACT) against Coal Ash. Caroline describes her work: “As a mixed-media artist, I spent years contemplating how we heal our community from the impacts of coal ash. What does that look like holistically? In 2018, The Lilies Project provided the opportunity to create art out of coal ash and the literal transformation of a burden into something beautiful. The experience became more than just making a piece of public art, but expanded into the art of building community, the power of advocacy, celebrating history, revering special places and believing in miracles. The work continues its final leg starting with 33 hexagonal-shaped posts of encapsulated coal ash configured into public art and installed in a walking tour in Walnut Cove, North Carolina. From here, I ponder how does the last decade of coal ash advocacy and creative placemaking tie into our current environmental crisis on a global scale? How can these concepts be applied immediately to make dramatic impacts in the face of climate change and seek sweeping changes that are equitable, beautiful, and joyful? How can art bring ideas into reality?” About the work above, Caroline says: “A decagon constructed from a coal ash encapsulated hexagonal-shaped post was dedicated on Juneteenth 2021 at the Centennial Celebration of the Walnut Cove Colored School. The community center was the first restored Rosenwald School in the U.S. and served as a model for additional community restoration projects. The exterior green ring of the circle references the logo for the Climate Reality Project. Many climate-related actions occurred at the Walnut Cove Colored School during Walnut Cove Town Council meetings. Local citizens advocated against fracking and for coal ash cleanup. Bailey-Lash won a seat on the Town Council on an environmental platform in 2019 general election. She passed away from a brain tumor on November 30th, 2019. The interior colors were inspired by the watercolor painting on the cover of Community School Plans, Bulletin No. 3, the Julius Rosenwald Fund. The colors reflect the grand vision of Booker T. Washington and his collaboration with Julius Rosenwald to transform the history of our country by building over 5,000 community schools for African-Americans. We need to collaborate on similar wide-sweeping visionary projects to address coal ash and the climate emergency issues we are facing. The Lilies Project produced a short documentary about the centennial history of the Walnut Cove Colored School. Visit Caroline's website to view more of her work. Wally McRae: Cowboy Poet Third generation-rancher Wally McRae, whose 30,000-acre Rocker Six Cattle ranch sits south of Rosebud, Montana, is also internationally known for his poetry and environmental stewardship. Wally was the first cowboy poet to win the National Heritage Award (1990) from the National Endowment for the Arts and was a recipient of the Montana Governor’s Award for the Arts (1989). In 1996, President Clinton appointed McRae to the National Council of the Arts. His collection, Stick Horses, was named the Montana Book of the Year in 2009. Since the 1960s, Wally has organized and spoken out against coal mining and coal plants in eastern Montana, and in the 1970s, he helped found the Northern Plains Resource Council to protect water quality and reclaim western lands harmed by industry. His efforts to preserve the land were highlighted in the book Charles Kuralt’s America, and his poetry and activism were featured in 60 Minutes and on the PBS series P.O.V. In 2014, Wally traveled to Washington, D.C., to brief members of Congress and the Obama administration on the harm caused by coal ash in Montana. Wally’s poem Things of Intrinsic Worth addresses the harm from coal mining and coal burning in Colstrip, Montana, where unlined pits of millions of tons of coal ash contaminate groundwater the water on McRae’s ranch. McRae could have long ago sold his ranch to developers and retired, but he stayed and still fights. “I think it's important,” Wally says, “for somebody sometime to say: ‘Don’t take this personal, fella. But this item, this body, this article, this ranch, is not for sale.’ If I can't provide any other service to people, maybe I can show that there are still a few people that cannot be bought.” About Things of Intrinsic Worth, Wally’s son Clint states, “Dad has spent a lifetime advocating for the protection of agricultural interests from the natural resource industry. Every place and event mentioned in this poem is real.” Earthjustice thanks all of the artists who have recognized coal ash as a critical issue, participated in this project, and permitted us to share their work.

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|Fiji Baat • Fiji Hindustani| |फ़िजी हिंदी (Devanagari script) | 𑂣𑂺𑂱𑂔𑂲⸱𑂯𑂱𑂁𑂠𑂲 (Kaithi script) فجی ہندی (Perso-Arabic script) |Ethnicity||Indo-Fijians and the Indo-Fijian diaspora| |(460,000 cited 1991)| Official language in Fiji Hindi (Devanagari: फ़िजी हिंदी; Kaithi: 𑂣𑂺𑂱𑂔𑂲⸱𑂯𑂱𑂁𑂠𑂲; Perso-Arabic: فجی ہندی) is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by Indo-Fijians. It is an Eastern Hindi language, considered to be a dialect of Awadhi that has also been subject to considerable influence by Bhojpuri, other Bihari dialects, and Hindustani. It has also borrowed some words from the English and Fijian languages. Many words unique to Fiji Hindi have been created to cater for the new environment that Indo-Fijians now live in. First-generation Indians in Fiji, who used the language as a lingua franca in Fiji, referred to it as Fiji Baat, "Fiji talk". It is closely related to Caribbean Hindustani and the Bhojpuri-Hindustani language spoken in Mauritius and South Africa. It is largely mutually intellegible with the languages of Awadhi, Bhojpuri, etc. of Bihar and the dialects of Hindi of eastern Uttar Pradesh, but differs in phonetics and vocabulary with Modern Standard Hindi. These are the percentages of each language and dialect spoken by indentured labourers who came to Fiji. |Bihari dialects (Mainly Bhojpuri as well as Maithili and Magahi)||17,868||39.3%| |Eastern Hindi dialects (Mainly Awadhi as well as Bagheli and Chhattisgarhi)||16,871||37.1%| |Western Hindi dialects (Hindustani, Bundeli, Braj Bhasha, Haryanvi, etc.)||6,903||15.2%| |Rajasthani dialects (Marwari)||1,111||2.4%| |Dravidian languages (Tamil, Telugu, etc.)||2,186||4.8%| Indian indentured labourers mainly spoke dialects from the Hindi Belt. Initially, the majority of labourers came to Fiji from districts of central and eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, while a small percentage hailed from North-West Frontier and South India such as Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Over time, a distinct Indo-Aryan language with an Eastern Hindi substratum developed in Fiji, combining elements of the Hindi languages spoken in these areas with some native Fijian and English. The development of Fiji Hindi was accelerated by the need for labourers speaking different languages to work together and by the practice of leaving young children in early versions of day-care centers during working hours. Percy Wright, who lived in Fiji during the indenture period, wrote: Indian children born in Fiji will have a mixed language; there are many different dialects amongst the Indian population, and of course much intercourse with the Fijians. The children pick up a little of each language, and do not know which is the one originally spoken by their parents. Other writers, including Burton (1914) and Lenwood (1917), made similar observations. By the late 1920s all Fiji Indian children born in Fiji learned Fiji Hindi, which became the common language in Fiji of North and South Indians alike. Fiji Hindi-based pidgin |ISO 639-3||None (| Later, approximately 15,000 Indian indentured labourers, who were mainly speakers of Dravidian languages (Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam), were brought from South India. By this time Fiji Hindi was well established as the lingua franca of Indo-Fijians and the Southern Indian labourers had to learn it to communicate with the more numerous Northern Indians and their European overseers. After the end of the indenture system, Indians who spoke Gujarati and Punjabi arrived in Fiji as free immigrants. A few Indo-Fijians speak Tamil, Telugu, and Gujarati at home, but all are fluently conversant and able to communicate using Fiji Hindi. The census reports of 1956 and 1966 shows the extent to which Fiji Hindi (referred to as 'Hindustani' in the census) was being spoken in Indo-Fijian households. Hindu schools teach the Devanagri script while the Muslim schools teach the Nastaliq script. |Language||Number of households in 1956||Number of households in 1966| Fiji Hindi is also understood and even spoken by Indigenous Fijians in areas of Fiji where there are large Indo-Fijian communities. A pidgin form of the language is used by rural ethnic Fijians, as well as Chinese on the islands, while Pidgin Fijian is spoken by Indo-Fijians. Following the recent political upheaval in Fiji, many Indo-Fijians have emigrated to Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States, where they have largely maintained their traditional Indo-Fijian culture, language, and religion. Some writers have begun to use Fiji Hindi, until very recently a spoken language only, as a literary language. The Bible has now been translated into Fiji Hindi, and the University of the South Pacific has recently begun offering courses in the language. It is usually written in the Latin script though Devanāgarī has also been used. A Fiji Hindi movie has also been produced depicting Indo-Fijian life and is based on a play by local playwright, Raymond Pillai. See also: Hindi–Urdu phonology The phonemes of Fiji Hindi are very similar to Standard Hindi, but there are some important distinctions. As in the Bhojpuri and Awadhi dialects of the Hindi Belt spoken in rural India, mainly Bihar and Eastern Uttar Pradesh — the consonant /ʃ/ is replaced with /s/ (for example, saadi instead of shaadi) and /ʋ/ replaced with /b/ (for example, bid-es instead of videsh). There is also a tendency to ignore the differences between the consonants /pʰ/ and /f/ (In Fiji Hindi a fruit is fal instead of phal) and between /d͡ʒ/ and /z/ (in Fiji Hindi land is jameen instead of zameen). The consonant /n/ is used in Fiji Hindi for the nasal sounds /ŋ/, /ɲ/ and /ɳ/ in Standard Hindi. These features are common in the Eastern Hindi dialects. Some other characteristics of Fiji Hindi which is similar to Bhojpuri and Awadhi are: |Pronoun||Fiji Hindi||Standard Hindi| |We||Hum log||Hum/Hum log| In Fiji Hindi verb forms have been influenced by a number of Hindi dialects in India. First and second person forms of verbs in Fiji Hindi are the same, there is no gender distinction and number distinction is only in the third person past tense. Although, gender is used in third person past tense by the usage of "raha" for a male versus "rahi" for a female. The use of the first and second person imperfective suffixes -taa, -at are of Awadhi origin. Example: तुम मन्दिर जाता हैं / तुम मन्दिर जात हैं। "tum Mandir jaata hai/tum Mandir jaat hai." (You are going to the Temple). While the third person imperfective suffix -e is of Bhojpuri origin. Example: ई बिल्ली मच्छरी खावे हैं। "Ee billi macchari KHAWE hai." (This cat is eating a fish). The third person perfective suffixes (for transitive verbs) -is and -in are also derived from Awadhi. Example: किसान गन्ना काटीस रहा। "Kisaan ganna katees raha." (The farmer cut the sugarcane). पण्डित लोगन रामायण पढ़ीन रहा/पण्डित लोगन रामायण पढ़े रहीन। "Pandit logan Ramayan padheen raha/padhe raheen." (The priests read the Ramayana). The third person definite future suffix -ii is found in both Awadhi and Bhojpuri. Example: प्रधानमंत्री हमलोग के पैसा दई। "Pradhanamantri humlog ke paisa daii" (The prime minister will give us money). The influence of Hindustani is evident in the first and second person perfective suffix -aa and the first and second person future suffix -ega. Example: हम करा। तुम करेगा। "Hum karaa, tum karega." (I did, you will do). The origin of the imperative suffix -o can be traced to the Magahi dialect. Example: तुम अपन मुह खोलो। "Tum apan muh khulo." (You open your mouth). Spoken in the Gaya and Patna districts, which provided a sizeable proportion of the first indentured labourers from Northern India to Fiji. Fiji Hindi has developed its own polite imperative suffix -naa. Example: आप घर के सफा कर लेना। "Aap ghar ke sapha kar Lena." (You clean the house (polite)). The suffix -be, from Bhojpuri, is used in Fiji Hindi in emphatic sentences. Another suffix originating from Awadhi is -it. Example: ई लोगन पानी काहे नहीं पीत हैं। "Ee logan paani kahey nahi peet hai." (Why aren't these people drinking water?), but is at present going out of use. Fiji Hindi tenses are relatively similar to tenses in Standard Hindi. Bhojpuri and Awadhi influence the Fiji Hindi tenses. |Sentence||Fiji Hindi||Standard Hindi| |(I) am coming|| हम आत (आवत) हैं Ham aat (aawat) hai मैं आ रहा हूँ ma͠i ā rahā hū̃ हम आया रहा Ham aaya raha |(I) will come|| |(I) was coming|| हम आत (आवत) रहा Ham aat (aawat) raha मैं आ रहा था ma͠i ā rahā thā |(I) used to play|| हम खेलत रहा Ham khelat raha मैं खेला करता था ma͠i khelā kartā thā |(He/she/they) is/are coming|| ऊ आवे हैं / ऊ लोगन आत हैं oo aawe hai / oo logan aat hai वो आ रहा है / वह आ रही है / वे आ रहे हैं vo ā rahā hai / vah ā rahī hai / ve ā rahe ha͠i वह आया / वह आई vah āyā / vah āī ऊ लोगन आईन Oo logan Aain Indo-Fijians now use native Fijian words for those things that were not found in their ancestral India but which existed in Fiji. These include most fish names and root crops. For example, kanade for mullet (fish) and kumaala for sweet potato or yam. Other examples are: |Latin Script||Devanāgarī Script||Fijian origin||Meaning| |bilo||बिलो||bilo||cup made of coconut, used to drink kava| Many English words have also been borrowed into Fiji Hindi with sound changes to fit the Indo-Fijian pronunciation. For example, hutel in Fiji Hindi is borrowed from hotel in English. Some words borrowed from English have a specialised meaning, for example, garaund in Fiji Hindi means a playing field, geng in Fiji Hindi means a "work gang", particularly a cane-cutting gang in the sugar cane growing districts and tichaa in Fiji Hindi specifically means a female teacher. There are also unique Fijian Hindi words created from English words, for example, kantaap taken from cane-top means slap or associated with beating. Many words of Hindustani origin have shifted meaning in Fiji Hindi. These are due to either innovations in Fiji or continued use of the old meaning in Fiji Hindi when the word is either not used in Standard Hindi anymore or has evolved a different meaning altogether. Some examples are: |Fiji Hindi word||Fiji Hindi meaning||Original Hindustani meaning| |bekaar||bad, not good, useless||unemployed, nothing to do, or useless| |bigha||acre||1 bigha = 1600 square yards or 0.1338 hectare or 0.3306-acre (1,338 m2)| |bihaan||tomorrow||tomorrow morning (Bhojpuri)| |Bombaiyaa||Marathi/Gujaratis (Indians)||from what is today the former Bombay Presidency| |gap||lie||gossip, idle talk, chit chat| |jaati||race||caste (more often misused/misunderstood as a term to reference a native Fijian)| |jhaap||shed||temporarily built shed| |jor||fast, quick||force, strength, exertion| |juluum||beautiful||tyranny, difficulty, amazing (Hindustani zalim, meaning "cruel", is metaphorically used for a beautiful object of affection)| |kal||yesterday||yesterday or tomorrow| |kamaanii||small spear (for prawns)||wire, spring| |khassi||male goat||castrated animal| |konchij||what||from kaun chij (Awadhi), literally meaning what thing or what stuff| |maalik||god||employer/owner or god| |Mandaraaji||South Indian||original word, Madraasi, meant "from Madras (or Tamil Nadu)"| |Punjabi||Sikh||native of Punjab, whether Hindu, Muslim or Sikh| Many words of English origin have shifted meaning in Fiji Hindi. |English word||Fiji Hindi meaning| |engine||locomotive (in addition to usual vehicle/boat engines)| |pipe||tap (faucet) (in addition to artificially made tubes)| |cabbage||Chinese cabbage or bok choy| |set||everything is ok (used as a statement or question)| |right||ok (used as a statement)| Though broadly based on standard Hindi, counting in Fiji Hindi reflects a number of cross-language and dialectal influences acquired in the past 125 years. The pronunciation for numbers between one and ten show slight inflections, seemingly inspired by Eastern Hindi dialects such as Bhojpuri. The number two, consequently, is दो (do) in standard Hindi, while in Fiji Hindi it is dui (दुइ), just as it is in Bhojpuri. Words for numbers between 10 and 99 present a significant difference between standard and Fiji Hindi. While, as in other north Indian languages, words for numbers in standard Hindustani are formed by mentioning units first and then multiples of ten, Fiji Hindi reverses the order and mentions the tens multiple first and the units next, as is the practice in many European and South-Indian languages. That is to say, while "twenty-one" in Standard Hindi is इक्कीस (ikkīs), an internal sandhi of ek aur biis, or "one-and-twenty", in Fiji Hindi the order would be reversed, and simply be biis aur ek (बिस और एक), without any additional morpho-phonological alteration. Similarly, while the number thirty-seven in standard Hindi is सैंतीस (saintīs), for saat aur tiis or "seven-and-thirty", the number would be tiis aur saat (तिस और सात), or 'thirty-and-seven' in Fiji Hindi. Additionally, powers of ten beyond ten thousand, such as lakh (100,000) and crore (10 million), are not used in Fiji Hindi. |21||twenty-one||इक्कीस (ikkīs)||bis aur ek| |22||twenty-two||बाईस (bāīs)||bis aur dui| |23||twenty-three||तेईस (teīs)||bis aur teen| |31||thirty-one||इकत्तीस (ikattīs)||tiis aur ek| |32||thirty-two||बत्तीस (battīs)||tiis aur dui| |33||thirty-three||तैंतीस (taintīs)||tiis aur teen| |41||forty-one||इकतालीस (iktālīs)||chaalis aur ek| |42||forty-two||बयालीस (bayālīs)||chaalis aur dui| |43||forty-three||तैंतालीस (taintālīs)||chaalis aur teen| Main article: Fiji Indian diaspora With political upheavals in Fiji, beginning with the first military coup in 1987, large numbers of Indo-Fijians have since migrated overseas and at present there are significant communities of Indo-Fijian expatriates in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States. Smaller communities also reside on other Pacific Islands and Britain. The last census in each of the countries where Fiji Hindi is spoken (counting Indo-Fijians who were born in Fiji) provides the following figures: |Country||Number of Fiji-born Indo-Fijians|

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A. To explain the government's role in regulating assisted migration B. To discuss ways in which plants and animals adapt to climate change C. To discuss a controversial approach to conserving plant and animal species D. To describe a recently discovered consequence of global warming NARRATOR:Listen to part of a lecture in a conservation biology class. FEMALE PROFESSOR:One consequence of global warming is extinction… there’s compelling evidence that global warming will be a significant driver of many plant and animal extinctions in this century.So, we’re considering various strategies to help some threatened species survive this unprecedented, this warming trend, which, as you know, is caused mainly by greenhouse gases produced by the burning of fossil fuels.Um, the most radical strategy being debated among conservation biologists is “assisted migration.” Assisted migration means picking up members of a species—or members of a group of interdependent species— and physically moving, or translocating them… …um, translocating threatened species to a cooler place, to higher latitudes or higher elevations, for example. [Backtracking]Now, migration’s a natural survival strategy.Over the past two million years, colder glacial periods have alternated with warmer interglacial periods, and so…um, in-in response to these gradual climatic swings, some species have shifted their ranges hundreds of kilometers.So, perhaps you’re wondering: Why not let nature take its course now?Well, we can’t.The main problem is today’s fragmented habitats.During previous interglacial periods, when glaciers retreated, they left behind open land in their wakes.Today, human development has paved over much of the natural world. Ecosystems are fragmented.Housing developments, highways, and cities have replaced or sliced through forests and prairies.There’re few corridors left for species to migrate through—without help. So, conservationists are trying to save as many species as possible.Now, assisted migration could become a viable part of our rescue strategy, but there are a number of uncertainties and risks.Without more research, we can’t predict if assisted migration will work for any given species.A translocated species could die out from lack of food, for example.At the other extreme, we might successfully translocate a species, but within five or ten years, that species could proliferate and become an invasive species.Like a nonnative plant that chokes out native plants by hogging the nutrients in the soil.Translocated animals can become invasive, too.It happened in Australia.The cane toad was introduced back in 1935 to control an insect pest that was destroying Australia’s sugarcane plantations.But the cane toad itself became a pest and has destroyed much of the wildlife on that continent. Also, many species are interdependent, intimately connected to one another, like animals that eat a certain plant, and that plant relies on a certain fungus to help it get nutrients from soil and on a certain insect for pollination.We’d probably have to translocate entire networks of species, and it’s hard to know where to draw the line.And, in addition to all that, it’s not even clear that assisted migration, or any migration for that matter, will help, at least for some species.Earth was already in one of its warm, interglacial periods when we started burning fossil fuels.And in the twenty-first century, global temperatures are expected to rise 2 to 6 degrees.That rate of heating’s far greater than during the last glacial retreat some 12,000 years ago. Um, whether to use assisted migration… this debate is mostly within the biology community right now.But the ultimate decision makers— in the United States at least— will be the government agencies that manage natural resources.Assisted migration really needs this level of oversight—and soon.Currently, there’s no public policy on using assisted migration to help species survive climate change.People aren’t even required to seek permits to move plants or invertebrate animals around, as long as they’re not classified as pests.In one case, a group of conservationists has already taken it upon itself to try, on their own, to save an endangered tree, the Florida torreya tree, through assisted migration. There’s only about a thousand individual Florida torreyas left, and global warming’s expected to significantly reduce or eliminate this tree’s habitat.So, this conservation group wants to translocate seedlings, Florida torreya seedlings, 500 kilometers north in order to expand the species’ range.The group believes that its effort is justified.[little skeptical, concerned]But I and many other biologists will be watching very closely how this maverick group makes out because, like I said, there could be unintended consequences. 原文定位：Now, assisted migration could become a viable part of our rescue strategy, but there are a number of uncertainties and risks. Without more research, we can't predict if Assisted Migration will work for any given species. A translocated species could die out from lack of food, for example. At the other extreme, we might successfully translocate the species, but within five or ten years that species could proliferate and become an invasive species. 文章前面一开始教授说到extinction，然后说到radical strategy 对Assisted Migration进行了定义，随后分别详细介绍了viable and risk. 最后说会有意想不到的结果 C选项即为文章核心关键词viable and risk的同义替换， 是对全文主旨最准确的概括

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To introduce the need for a genuinely Christian liberal arts education, and what it can do, I will paraphrase a statement from the biologist, and New Atheist, Richard Dawkins, about Darwin and Darwinian theory. Dawkins stated that while it was possible to be an atheist before Darwin, after Darwin, and particularly, after the development of what can be referred to as “Darwinian theory,” it is possible to be an intellectually satisfied atheist. What might this mean? What does Darwinian theory provide that can now make “new” atheism intellectually satisfying in a way that atheism wasn’t before? The clear answer is that Darwinian theory provides a coherent and comprehensive world view, an overarching philosophical position that provides a reasoned basis for atheist assumptions and explanations across a range of intellectual issues. It provides a comprehensive, reasoned grounding for secular perspectives across all scholarly disciplines. This happens in at least three important ways. First, Darwinianism provides a metaphysical (or ontological) foundation: material reality is the fundamental reality and non-physical (psychological and spiritual) phenomena, insofar as they might be genuine, arise from the fundamental substance of which all reality is composed. Darwinian-derived materialist approaches and explanations have subsequently become accepted in many fields. Does our worldview provide us with energy and power at a level comparable to what has emerged from the secularist worldview? Second, Darwinianism also highlights a particular epistemology, a trusted consensual method of verifying truth claims about the world and about human nature. Darwinian truth claims are grounded in systematic observations, and thus secular atheism tries to lay exclusive claim to empirical science—such that only materialist conclusions can be supported by empirical data. Finally, Darwinism presumes to provide a foundation even for the moral world, and all supportable moral systems, including religion. Darwinianism provides a mechanism for accounting for moral characteristics, behaviors, social systems, events, and phenomena, within which mechanism is taken to be operative at every level of our world. The ultimate foundation for morality is survival value, manifest chiefly in reproductive advantage. In short, secular Darwinianism is a complete intellectual worldview that provides a cohesive intellectual structure for making sense of the world and of us. In other words, it “bathes everything in the light and color” of scientistic, materialist, naturalist constructs and proposes itself as the grounds for understanding all. Daniel Dennett once likened Darwinianism to a universal acid that eats its way through every topic leaving them fundamentally altered. In our current cultural climate, this intellectual movement is at the core of most if not all species of secularism. In some important ways, it provides the intellectual energy for the steady march of secularism in the academic world and in the broader culture, including pop culture. The question for us, then, is whether we have a comprehensively Christian view of the world that accomplishes the same things for us that the Darwinian worldview has provided for the secular world. Does our worldview provide us with energy and power at a level comparable to what has emerged from the secularist worldview? If we do not have such a view with all the comprehensive historical, conceptual, intellectual work that supports and gives it life and persuasive coherence, then, if we are to resist secularization, we need to either develop such a view or surrender the intellectual, cultural, and spiritual field. It is my experience that we have no such comprehensive view—at least not in the robustly scholarly sense that can efficaciously ground our intellectual and moral understandings and undertakings. I have encountered many colleagues and students who have an “innate” sense of dis-ease about the increasingly secular academic world, and a few who have taken some aspect of that problem and worked out a more seriously Christian, and thus more satisfying, approach to certain topics, But this is extremely hard work not only in terms of time, but intellectual and spiritual energy especially while often working alone, and frequently with the need to educate oneself in various topics beyond what is available in the training received in one’s own discipline. a comprehensively Christian world view of the sort we need, must bear the marks of the highest level of rigor and sophistication. Such an intellectual world view would not, indeed cannot, be merely a “dumbing down” of pervasively secular academic work but rather, a raising of our intellectual sights and our intellectual scope and vision above the ordinary and traditional. The view we need would thereby be much better, fuller, and more defensible than what is currently on offer in the secular world, and eminently able to respond—and help students respond—to the ongoing secular drift. We need this higher worldview in its most sophisticated form—not merely “Christian-sprinkled” secular world views. Brigham Young University—a school grounded in a Christian, Latter-day Saint perspective—provides an important study for what such an education and intellectual effort must entail. Note 1 Regarding the Mission and Aims of a BYU Education Teaching with the spirit requires not just the presence of the spirit in the learning environment, but equally importantly, an intellectual environment informed and animated by the spirit of truth within an intellectual context of Christian truth. “ . . . the university must provide an environment enlightened by living prophets and sustained by those moral virtues which characterize the life and teachings of the Son of God . . .”. (Italics added.) We should note here the emphasis given in the Mission and Aims document to the importance of BYU’s providing an environment enlightened by prophets and sustained by Christian moral teachings. The document concludes then that “within that environment” the educational goals of the university should prevail. I do not want in the least to disagree with the absolute importance of creating and maintaining a Christian moral environment at BYU. Brigham Young University could not be what it is or do what it should do, without such an environment for a large number of reasons. However, while the restored gospel—its teachings, spiritual discipline, and moral standards—are essential to the environment of BYU in order for it to pursue its intellectual/educational mission; a gospel-informed environment is not enough for it to accomplish its mission and aims and make the difference it can and should make in the lives and minds of those who study and work here —and in the Church and society beyond. And to extend this analysis one step further, concentrating the influence of the restored gospel only on the environmental features of a BYU education will not allow BYU to accomplish what it might accomplish within the larger mission of the Church, including the project of helping to redeem a broader secular culture and those who live their lives within, and take their purpose and meaning from, Though very much adrift intellectually and morally, the secular culture, in one guise or another, is among the chief exports of our nation and its universities. A Christian moral environment is essential to this project, but so also is a Christian/restored-gospel-informed curriculum. The mission and aims document seems generally to be read and interpreted in such a way as to not so explicitly emphasize the absolutely essential role of the restored gospel in the intellectual content of a BYU education as much as in the environment in which the education is provided. However, it is the Christian restored-gospel intellectual content of a BYU education that may very well be our most important contribution to what can be understood more broadly as a high quality Christian liberal arts education. A Christian moral environment is essential to this project, but so also is a Christian/restored-gospel-informed curriculum. Indeed, the Gospel must be appropriately influential in the very content of a BYU education. Without Christian animated and informed curriculum content, a Christian environment will still provide a wonderful and morally safe environment for students to grow and develop, but, if firm and rigorous Christian/restored-gospel inspired moral and intellectual understandings do not enlighten our students as they finish their time in the spiritual environment, so much will have been wasted. And, lacking a firm and unflinching Christian inspired, life-anchoring education to sustain it, it is less likely that the moral and spiritual development provided by the spiritual environment will be sustainable in the long run—and given current moral trends, perhaps even in the short run. And the opportunity costs in the lives of students and members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, if Christian-informed intellectual life is not salient among the products of a BYU educational experience, will be substantial. Providing an essentially secular education—an education wherein the approach, assumptions, content, and foundations of knowledge presented throughout the curriculum on offer at BYU are largely indistinguishable from the approach, assumptions, content, and practices that are on offer at any secular university—within a gospel-informed environment might actually present the secular ideas in such ways as to give them greater credibility and perceived truth value—especially in the minds of students—than if they were packaged and presented within a purely secular environment. Students might actually be more discerning and cautious in a purely secular environment. This is not to say that BYU should simply avoid or ignore the standard intellectual and scholarly content of the disciplines. On the contrary, we absolutely must provide a first-class education that will equip our students for success in every way. However, it is to say that the gospel-informed environment must include a gospel-informed rigorous and comprehensive intellectual environment and gospel-informed intellectual content. We should have a Christian-morally-informed “take on,” or “perspective on” the actual intellectual content of the disciplines and the Western intellectual tradition itself. The need for, and the form and substance of a Christian/ restored gospel-informed perspective will be more readily discernable, and more obviously important, in some scholarly fields than others, and different from field to field. The form and function of such a perspective will be different for different disciplines. For many scholars at BYU, for example, I have found it difficult to convince them that the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, or the moral teachings of the Church have any relevance to their disciplines or to the intellectual issues in play in their disciplines. Often, it is the scholars in what are called the “professional” programs who, notwithstanding their sound and unquestioned testimonies and commitment to the gospel of Jesus Christ and to his Church, often struggle a bit to appreciate just how the Gospel and Christian commitment might play a role in the content or process of education within their disciplines or others’ disciplines. After all, a “professional” education often consists largely in training in the practice or the craft of the profession, including as examples, in law, education, business, nursing, engineering, information science, and many natural sciences, and even some social sciences. However, certainly the professional disciplines want well-rounded scholars, and, at BYU, we should want our students to leave their excellent professional programs with intellectual anchors, and with a sense of the wholeness of truth and its moral and intellectual fullness. I am convinced that the professional disciplines will benefit from students trained and grounded in Christian gospel-informed and infused education in every part of their curriculum. And for students in disciplines where the Christian/restored gospel implications are not salient, the required “liberal arts” component of their BYU education should provide for them the deeply Christian intellectual and moral grounding that is central to any BYU experience. From the perspective of a professional degree program (and even many liberal arts degree programs), it is common to talk of an undergraduate education as consisting of essentially two parts: 1) most importantly, the major requirements where the craft is learned (based on a settled body of knowledge and skilled practice) and one is prepared for employment or postgraduate education in the profession or craft, and 2) less importantly, a prerequisite requirement to largely be “gotten out of the way,” known commonly as “the generals.” This is more formally referred to as the “general education” requirement. It is often (as in BYU’s own Mission and Aims document) understood, or designed, to “broaden” students’ educations, and make them better informed, and better thinkers, in general. But, in my experience of nearly 40 years, it is difficult for students or even faculty to articulate beyond the bounds of terms like “general” and “broad,” any crucially important role for such education. Perhaps, many consider it to be, at worst, a holdover from an antiquated notion of university education—dating, perhaps, clear back to the Medieval trivium and quadrivium. Even in non-professional fields, those traditionally associated with the “arts and sciences,” it has become increasingly difficult to think in terms other than “general” (for introductory courses) and “specific, focused” (for upper division courses) curriculum requirements. Many of the sciences are much like professional disciplines in that they seek to educate students in the practice (intellectual or more hands-on) of the scientific craft—much of the content of which is agreed upon and settled within the discipline. This is certainly true of the natural sciences and life sciences, but increasingly so among many of the social sciences, such as psychology, sociology, political science, and economics as well. Indeed, the aspiration of many disciplines is to pursue just such a professionally-inspired model so that students are prepared with the skills to perpetuate the “scientific craft.” If one looks at one’s professorial role as inculcating professional skills and state-of-the-art intellectual approaches independent of religiously and morally relevant, and content-relevant, issues, the religious or moral environment in which this type of education takes place will seem relatively unimportant, so that the intellectual and spiritual missions of BYU are conveniently independent of each other, the former a matter of content, and the latter a matter of environment. Note 2 Regarding the Mission and Aims of a BYU Education Teaching “with the spirit” is a matter of content and completeness as well as a matter of personal sensitivity and a spiritual environment. We “feel” the truth spiritually based on the environment in which it is taught but also based on the meaning and truthfulness of the content of what is being taught. Some things cannot, and some things ought not, be “taught with the spirit,” which implies that we need to be careful about just what it is we are trying to teach and whether it is deserving of the label of “truth,” of which the spirit is tasked to witness. Brother Maeser, I want you to remember that you ought not to teach even the alphabet or the multiplication tables without the Spirit of God. — Brigham Young This quote from Brigham Young is probably the most widely cited and oft quoted part of BYU’s Mission and Aims document. Its particular meaning and interpretation are not, however, altogether clear, which means that, in my experience, it sometimes tends to produce lip service and surface-level, though sincere, attempts to be true to it. The prevailing understanding seems to be that, since there could be nothing—no educational content—more simple and straightforward than the alphabet or the multiplication tables (simple memorization tasks mostly), this admonition to teach with the spirit can only be aimed at the “spiritual atmosphere where the teaching takes place,” or the “spiritual qualities” of the teacher. This interpretation is reasonable, and perhaps was, in part, intended in the admonition cited. However, I think that President Young also must have had a larger meaning in mind. First, we should note that he knew that things much more complex and much grander than these simple things would be taught. That was his vision and purpose for the institution. He also had an expansive mind. It was a major intellectual theme of his day for religious thinkers to look at the world holistically and reconcile—or presume that one could reconcile—the best of expansive Enlightenment thinking (for example, natural science in the Newtonian tradition), with religion, social thought, and virtually all human endeavors. Teaching everything, including the alphabet and multiplication tables only with the Spirit of God is an important endeavor, and a larger challenge than most Latter-day Saint scholars might have understood. I am sure the prophet saw both the possibilities and the potential dangers in this. It is a fundamental tenet of the Restored Gospel that “all things . . . are spiritual” (D&C 29:34). In the end, when properly understood, all truth comes together, and constitutes the truth as it is known, we must presume, by, and to, God. Seen from this perspective, then, the common understanding of the admonition to not teach even such simple things as the alphabet and multiplication tables without the spirit of God—or, I suggest, without the broader enlightened spiritual perspective provided by the truths of the Restored Gospel—will likely miss an important point, and lack the broader spiritual and intellectual context that gives any and all academic content its fuller meaning, purpose, and place within the whole. Interpreted in this alternative light then, Brigham Young’s admonition reaches far beyond the spiritual sensitivity and personal spiritual commitment of the teacher or the spiritual atmosphere of the classroom or the university. It reaches into the very content and spiritual/intellectual context within which the whole of the curriculum is taught and understood under the influence of the Spirit, and in light of the whole of restored truth. It asks all of us to teach all that we teach from our intellectual traditions in the context of, and enlightened by, the whole of restored truth. It is interesting, and I think, important, that the word “truth” (at least in English scriptures) is not used in the plural—except to refer to some specific thing that God taught in the past and is now teaching again. It is never used in the plural as in “sacred truths” vs “secular truths.” Our contemporary disciplines use the concept of truth fairly freely and loosely, to include empirical observations, data, the models that explain them, theories of all kinds, and even stacks of published materials. However, He who identifies himself as “the truth” (John 14:6) recommends (D&C 63:61) “ . . . [that] all men beware how they take [His] name in their lips—.” In this way of looking at it then, I take President Young to be admonishing us to be intellectually and spiritually informed and educated enough to locate and appreciate even the alphabet and the multiplication tables in the context of the whole of revealed truth—i.e., “knowledge of things as they [really] are . . .” (D&C 93: 24). Teaching everything, including the alphabet and multiplication tables only with the Spirit of God is an important endeavor, and a larger challenge than most Latter-day Saint scholars might have understood, and sometimes larger than what we are able even to see. We all must be taught, and sometimes self-taught, to see anew our own disciplines and their learning, as well as our own understandings of the Gospel. Then when we search in the light of the restored gospel of Christ, for the whole, it will most surely be something different, larger, and richer than any “whole” one might construct within a purely secular intellectual regime, and different, larger, and richer than what we might have been able to construct without our renewed seriousness about the restored gospel of Jesus Christ and its intellectual, cultural, and moral reach. However, sadly, some attempts at this kind of integration have been premature, immature, superficial and sometimes damaging either to the academic subject or to the gospel, to to both. Examples of such ‘too-easy” integrations abound. A short example will suffice here. First, I have noticed that God’s acknowledged love for all of us such that nothing can separate us from the love of God (Romans 8:39) is too easily equated with the “unconditional positive regard” at the heart of the psychological theory of Carl Rogers and others in the humanistic movement. But at a (even slightly) deeper and more intellectually careful level it becomes clear that these two concepts are not reconcilable in substance, origin, or purpose. An easy conflating of the two is not only intellectually problematic, but religiously, and, perhaps, morally dangerous. It can certainly distort a person’s understanding of the nature and purpose of God’s love, and one’s understanding of what sorts of possibilities God’s love opens up for us. Such conflating also bestows on Rogers’ concept, and thus his larger work, an exalted character that it does not deserve. For students, it might influence them to aim much too low on their relationship with God. A long list of similar examples could be given. What is being recommended here as a mature and more substantive intellectual project is not easy; it will require the very best of us, and certainly more than we have been asked to do so farIn some cases, our intellectual and professional commitments will need to change, some surrendered, and some substantially altered—and this will be different in every academic discipline and more obvious in some disciplines than others. And perhaps equally often, our understandings of the Gospel will need to mature and extend past the easy interpretations that have allowed us to live out of “two pockets” in the past (easy secular non-religiously-demanding orthodoxy during the week, and easy non-intellectually-demanding, gospel orthodoxy on Sunday). Some very bright and spiritual people have erred on both sides—some adhering resolutely to the learning of their disciplines and waiting for the Church and revealed doctrine to “catch up,” and some trying to infuse some facile version of restored truth into their discipline without having to modify either one very much, or without having to go to the roots of either. And some are content to continually compartmentalize their lives. The kind of deep examination I am suggesting here—exposing our deepest and broadest intellectual and scholarly commitments to intense, sophisticated, and rigorous critical scrutiny in the light of the foundational, divinely given, and faith-defining truth and doctrines of the restored gospel, and concomitantly, doing the hard spiritual work of nurturing and maturing our spiritual understanding of the Restored Gospel so that we are not weaker but stronger and more fully engaged in the Gospel of Jesus Christ as revealed to prophets in our day. This we must do, whatever the implications may be for our academic training and pride, some of which might not come easily and some may certainly not feel easy. The first and most likely costs will be comfortable academic and intellectual orthodoxy. Such a piercing examination may seem risky because it requires examination at the deepest levels of both intellect and spirit, and a willingness to change. I have confidence that the truths of the restored gospel will emerge unscathed (though within each of us, perhaps, not unaltered, because enlivened and enhanced) from this struggle. It is of vital importance that such an intellectual struggle be waged at the proper levels—at the level of ontology itself, the level of our fundamental understandings and the starting points of our faith and intellect—rather than at the more superficial levels that tend to foster incomplete and superficial integrations, facile conclusions, or apathy and cynicism, as some Latter-day Saint scholars, those not convinced that the restored gospel can and should revolutionalize our intellectual lives, “wait for the Church to change” and align itself with the “wisdom of the wise.” If we do it right, at least the conversation will have been driven down to, and engaged at the level where it should be engaged, and disagreements will be clearer at that level – as it will be clearer exactly what is at stake and what the real options and alternatives are, and which inconsistencies and conflicts matter and which do not. This deeper level is the proper level on which a Christian scholar should function all the time. It is the proper level at which a Latter-day Saint liberal arts education should be delivered to every BYU student. Note 3 Regarding the Mission and Aims of a BYU Education Bathing a subject matter in the “light and color of the restored gospel” requires a rigorous, historically informed, and gospel animated knowledge of our intellectual heritage and tradition. “. . . every . . . teacher in this institution would keep his [or her] subject matter bathed in the light and color of the restored gospel.” It is fitting and instructive that Brigham Young’s quote about not teaching anything without the spirit of God is followed by President Kimball’s charge that subjects taught should be “kept bathed in the light and color of the restored gospel.” This juxtaposition adds some credence to the idea that the intent of President Young’s admonition involves much more than just the individual testimony of the professor or the broad spiritual environment at the university or in the classroom while instruction is going on. The admonition seems to be that the “subject matter,” i.e., the entire discipline, the content, and the knowledge claims it makes should be “bathed in the light and color of the restored gospel.” I do not mean to be glib, but my years at BYU have shown me that while faithful Latter-day Saint faculty and students might not ever confuse immersion with sprinkling as a form of baptism, they will often settle for sprinkling a little of the restored gospel on their disciplines rather than bathing the subject matter of the discipline in the light of the restored gospel. The metaphor of a spiritual light revealing truth has a long history in the Western intellectual tradition going back at least as far as the first great Christian apologist, Saint Augustine. The light of inspiration, or revelation, allows things to be “seen” as they are, just as physical light allows physical objects to be seen where they are. “Bathing” a subject matter or a discipline in the light and color of the gospel, is a serious and a comprehensive matter. It will require BYU faculty themselves to have walked that path, that is, to have cast the light upon, and applied the color of the restored gospel to, their disciplines (and the content of their disciplines) and upon the wider intellectual tradition in which their individual disciplines are embedded. This requires a broad and deep and discerningly critical education. It requires faculty to have developed breadth, depth, and historical sophistication, in their disciplines and in the academic currents of the contemporary world—and to have done so in ways that enfold and affirm the eternal truth at the core of the restored gospel. We as convicted members of the Church are uniquely positioned to do this fundamental and radical intellectual work because our restored Christianity is not, and never has been as tightly linked to and interwoven with the Western intellectual tradition The professor must also have situated, or “painted” this eternal truth confidently, comfortably, and faithfully (that is, not diluted) into the landscape of his or her own intellectual tradition and into his or her own personal intellectual landscape (though he or she may need a new, fresh, canvas to do this painting because the old ones of the discipline may not be able to take any new paint). This will require much, and first of all, a seriousness about one’s intellectual life and about the gospel. It will require the best of all of us. Finally it is important to note that it is the subject matter that is to be bathed in the light and color of the restored gospel, not the gospel that is to be bathed in the light (such as there may be) and color of the academic/intellectual disciplines. President Kimball’s phrase is that the teacher should keep his/her subject matter bathed in the light and color of the restored gospel. Significantly, President Kimball refers to both the light—a bolder metaphor that reveals things—and the “color” of the Restored gospel—a lighter, more nuanced metaphor that embellishes things. This seems to indicate that sometimes the effect of seeing a subject matter as revealed within the light of the restored gospel is going to be subtle like a shade of color, but nonetheless discernable and important; at other times it may be bold and revelatory. This admonition is a significant call to all LDS scholars at BYU to be thorough, sophisticated, critical, and discerning about their subject matter. The gospel, and not the discipline, is the standard of light and color through which and within which we understand what higher education offers, or should offer, us. While at the same time we must understand at the highest and most sophisticated levels whatever truth the disciplines do offer us. Lacking this higher, sophisticated understanding, nothing particularly compelling or important will come from bathing it in the light and color of the restored gospel. This concern—a global concern about how the gospel of Jesus Christ bathes all the disciplines in light and color, and how we need to continually see the disciplines as revealed within that light and color and teach students to see them in that same light and color—makes contact with the issue I have seen expressed by many who are concerned with, and who are trying to carry out, a genuinely Christian higher education. To even mention this term— “Christian Higher Education”—requires that we immediately dispose of the first critical comment that is likely to arise,and, sadly, has arisen so often, at BYU. The comment is that a genuinely and self-consciously Christian higher education will amount to BYU’s becoming just a “seminary” and will destroy rigor and scholarship while irreparably damaging BYU’s scholarly and academic reputation. This concern reflects a rather superficial understanding of the history of ideas (including science) and of universities, and of the role and effect of Christianity in the Western intellectual tradition and the development of higher education generally. I contend, based on my own limited and imperfect education and experience, and what I have observed in others from a variety of disciplines, and within a variety of Christian institutions of higher education, that just the opposite will be true. We will be intellectually better, deeper, and more sophisticated than we are now, if we take the idea of a Christian/LDS Higher Education seriously and pursue it as I believe we have been counseled to do. Those outside BYU with whom I talk about the topic of a genuinely Christian higher education have used a number of phrases that I find very helpful and meaningful to describe what a Christian higher education is, what it does, and what animates it (to which I will refer in a subsequent essay). In some ways these scholars are far ahead of many of us in thinking about the project of Christian higher education; however, all readily admit that it is a difficult thing, and still very much a work in progress. My clear sense is that we could provide much useful support, and even, perhaps, some leadership, in this area of deeply shared concern, while we can also most certainly benefit materially and substantially from the leadership others can provide based on their experience, their learning, and their Christian commitment. But, both of these possible roles for us will require that we ourselves do much better than we have done. This raises one final issue. Why is it important that “ . . . every . . .teacher . . . keep his subject matter bathed in the light and color of the restored gospel?” Surely the intent and the final aspiration is that every student be able to receive the knowledge, the subject matter, as bathed in the light and color of the restored gospel. And, ideally, each student should be intellectually and morally equipped to bathe in the light and color of the restored gospel, the knowledge, of all sorts, that he or she attains or is exposed to in the course of his or her “life-long learning and service.” Ideally, our students should leave BYU equipped to bathe in our culture itself, in all of its manifestations, in the light and color of the restored gospel. In other words, it is not enough for this bathing in the light and color of the restored gospel to just be evident in the individual life of the professor, or only in some “integrative” lecture or exercise. The subject matter must be presented to, made available to, and ultimately captured and incorporated into the life of students in its gospel-bathed form, fully and coherently immersed and infused, to the fullest extent that our best minds are capable of doing it. And students must be able to maintain the subject matter bathed in the same light and knowledge. This is, admittedly, a very comprehensive form of education, much richer and deeper than what is commonly on offer, even at BYU. Furthermore, this form of education—centered on an intellectual worldview that bathes subject matter in the light of restored truth—cannot be presented to students if it has not been mastered by the teachers themselves. And this, in turn, will only happen if we, as an institution, value it, insist on it, and reward it. It may take some time to produce it (perhaps even an academic generation or so), because it is not readily available in the graduate programs that produce our new faculty members; but I believe, and am completely confident, that it is possible. But it must start early in the lives of our students, especially those who are likely to return and become our future faculty members and scholars. And it must be an institutional imperative—from the top down. I firmly believe that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and we as convicted members of the Church, are uniquely positioned to do this fundamental and radical intellectual work because our restored Christianity is not, and never has been as tightly linked to and interwoven with the Western intellectual tradition that has come forward through the centuries to produce and perpetuate our most compelling questions and our scholarly disciplines. We of all people are not so beholden to the tenets of our intellectual tradition as essential to understand and maintain our faith. In fact, I believe, the Western intellectual tradition has been given to us, placed in our hands, to redeem it, much as it has been given us to redeem Christ’s church from its long exile, and all of our Father in Heaven’s children on both sides of the veil. This is a mission we share with all Christians and Christian scholars. This redeeming, however, as both a religious and an intellectual activity may, in many ways, seem to “turn upside down” both the religious and academic/intellectual orthodoxy of our day. This is our calling and our opportunity (Isaiah 29:16; 2 Nephi 27:26-27; Acts 17:6).

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If you’re like me, you use Android’s System Webview to get quick access to the web without having to open your browser. But what if you don’t want it running in the background? Your phone might be trying to open web pages in the background without your knowledge. The Android System WebView allows other apps on your smartphone to display webpages, which is possible because of its ability as a supplement for browsers that come standard with most smartphones today- but there are some things you should know about this new program before using it! It’s basically a web browser that is built into Android. A lot of people don’t even know it exists, but it can be really handy for looking at websites on your phone. I only had a little idea what it was until I decided to do research for this blog post. It turns out, that Webview is a pretty important part of the Android operating system! In this blog post, we will be covering everything you should know about Android System Webview. We will also look at how to enable and disable Android System Webview? So let’s get started- What is Android System Webview? As I stated earlier, Android System Webview is a built-in web browser that comes with your phone. It’s based on the open-source Chromium project, which is also used by Google Chrome and allows you to view web pages within apps. Webview has been a part of Android since KitKat (4.4) and is used by many apps to display web content. Since it’s based on Chromium, it shares a lot of the same features as Chrome. Webview is not a standalone app and you cannot launch it directly. However, it is used by many apps to display web content. For example, if you open a link in an email app, it will likely use Webview to display the page. The best thing about using Webview is that it is already integrated with Android and doesn’t need to be installed separately. This makes it more efficient than using a separate app for browsing. What does android system webview do? As I briefly mentioned earlier, Android System Webview is used to display webpages within apps. This means that you can open links in an app without having to leave the app and launch a separate browser. For example, if you’re using Facebook and click on a link to an article, it will open in the Facebook app using Webview. This is convenient because you don’t have to leave Facebook and launch a browser like Chrome. Webview also makes it possible to open links in apps that don’t have their own built-in browser. For example, if you’re using a news app that doesn’t have a browser, Webview will be used to open links. How Does Android System WebView Work? Now that we know what Webview is and what it does, let’s take a look at how it works. Webview is a part of the Android operating system and is pre-installed on all Android devices. It can be used by any app that wants to display web content. When you click on a link in an app, it will open in Webview if the app doesn’t have its own built-in browser. Android System WebView is based on the open-source Chromium project. This means that it uses the same rendering engine as Chrome and it can display web pages just like Chrome. Here is a list of some features of Webview- - Android System WebView is based on the Chromium open-source project. - It allows applications to display web content within the app. - It is used by some of the largest apps on the Play Store, such as Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Maps. - It is available for Android 4.4 and above. - It can be enabled or disabled easily. Do I need an android system webview? Now that we know what Webview is and what it does, you might be wondering if you need it. The answer is that it depends on your needs. If you use a lot of apps that open links in-app, then you will need Webview to be enabled. However, if you prefer to use a separate browser like Chrome, then you can disable Webview and save some space on your device. So the short answer is yes and no because it depends on your needs. If you want to enable it if not just disable it. And if you don’t have any idea how to Enable Or Disable Android System Webview? then don’t worry we will help you out. Keep reading. Where to find the android system webview? You can find Android System Webview in the Settings app on your Android device. To get there, go to Settings > Apps and scroll down to the bottom of the list. Tap on the three dots in the top-right corner and select “Show system apps.” This will show a list of all the system apps on your device. Scroll down until you find “Android System Webview” and tap on it. This will open the Webview settings where you can enable or disable the app. How to enable android system webview? Now that you know where to find the Webview settings, let’s take a look at how to enable and disable the app. To enable Android System Webview, simply go to Settings > Apps, scroll down to the bottom of the list, tap on the three dots in the top-right corner, select “Show system apps,” and then find “Android System Webview.” Tap on it and select “Enable.” This will enable the app and you can start using it. Once it’s been turned on, you’ll be able to use apps that rely on Webview to display web content. How To Enable Android System Webview On Android 4.3 And Below? If you’re using a device that’s running Android 4.3 or below, then you’ll need to enable Webview manually. This is because Google removed Webview from these versions of Android and left it up to the manufacturers to include it. Some manufacturers, such as Samsung, chose to include Webview in their devices. Others, such as HTC, chose not to include it. If you’re using a device that’s running Android 4.3 or below and Webview is not pre-installed, then you’ll need to install it manually. The easiest way to do this is by installing the Chrome app. Once you’ve installed Chrome, Webview will be enabled and you’ll be able to use apps that rely on it. How to disable android system webview? Be aware that disabling the WebView may cause problems for apps that rely on it. WebView is an app that you cannot delete from your phone. Because system apps cannot be uninstalled or deleted, you can’t delete the WebView app from your phone directly. However, you may deactivate it by removing the cache and data residue in the Application Manager on your phone. When you remove the app’s cache and data, it will effectively be “deleted” from your phone. However, the app may still be available on your phone if you’ve backed up your data or if the app is part of the system image. If you want to disable Android System Webview, simply go to Settings > Apps, scroll down to the bottom of the list, tap on the three dots in the top-right corner, select “Show system apps,” and then find “Android System Webview.” Tap on it and select “Disable.” This will disable the app and you won’t be able to use any apps that rely on Webview to display web content. Disable Android System WebView App In Older Android OS Versions You can also disable the app in older versions of Android by opening the Google PlayStore app and looking for the Android System WebView app. Once you find it, tap on the Disable option and that will disable the app. You can also go to your phone Settings > Apps > Android System Webview > Tap on Disable to disable it. Once it’s been disabled, you won’t be able to use any apps that rely on WebView to display web content. However, you can always re-enable the app if you need to use it again. So there you have it! This is how you can enable or disable Android System Webview on your phone. If you encounter any problems, simply re-enable the app and those problems should go away. What happens if Android system webview disabled? As we mentioned before, some apps rely on WebView to display web content. If you disable the app, those apps may no longer work. So, if you’re not using any apps that rely on WebView, then you can safely disable the app. However, we recommend that you keep the app-enabled. This is because the app is constantly being updated with security patches and new features. By keeping the app-enabled, you’ll ensure that your phone has the latest security patches and features. So, unless you’re absolutely sure that you don’t need the app, we recommend that you keep it enabled. Benefits of Android System WebView disabled There are a few benefits of disabling Android System WebView. First, it may improve your battery life since the app is no longer running in the background. Second, it may improve your phone’s performance since the app is no longer using up resources. And third, it may free up some storage space on your phone since the app is no longer installed. Of course, there are also some drawbacks to disabling Android System WebView. First, you won’t be able to use any apps that rely on the app to display web content. And second, you may no longer receive security updates for the app, which could leave your phone vulnerable to security threats. So, ultimately, the decision of whether or not to disable Android System WebView is up to you. If you’re not using any apps that rely on the app and you’re not concerned about security updates, then you can safely disable it. But if you’re using an app that relies on the app or you’re worried about security, then we recommend keeping it enabled. How to Android system webview update? To update Android System WebView, simply go to the Google Play Store and look for the app. If there’s an update available, tap on the Update button and the app will be updated to the latest version. Android System Webview is updated automatically as part of the Android operating system. However, you can check for updates manually by going to Settings > About phone > System updates. If an update is available, it will be downloaded and installed automatically. Why Android system webview showing update pending? If you see an “Update pending” message next to the Android System WebView app, it means that an update is available but has not been installed yet. To install the update, simply tap on the “Update pending” message and the update will be installed automatically. You may also see a ” Waiting for download ” message next to the Android System WebView app. This means that the update is downloading and will be installed automatically once it has finished downloading. If you don’t see either of these messages, it means that your phone is up to date and no updates are available. What to do if the Android system webview won’t update? There are a few things you can try if Android System WebView won’t update. First, make sure that your phone is connected to the internet and try again. If that doesn’t work, try uninstalling and reinstalling the app. And if that still doesn’t work, you can try clearing the Google Play Store’s cache and data. If none of these solutions work, it’s possible that your phone is not compatible with the latest version of Android System WebView. In this case, you’ll need to wait for a new update to be released that is compatible with your phone Or you can try using an older version of the app. How to fix android system webview? If you’re having problems with Android System WebView, there are a few things you can try. First, make sure that the app is up to date by going to the Google Play Store and looking for updates. If there’s an update available, install it and see if that fixes the problem. If that doesn’t work, try uninstalling and reinstalling the app. To do this, go to your phone’s Settings app, tap “Apps,” then find and tap Android System WebView in the list of apps. Tap “Uninstall,” then follow the prompts to confirm. Once it’s uninstalled, go back to the Play Store and install it again. If you’re still having trouble, there are a few other things you can try. One is to clear the app’s cache. To do this, go to Settings and find the app in the list of apps. Tap “Storage,” then “Clear Cache.” If that doesn’t work, try clearing the app’s data. Tap “Storage,” then “Clear Data.” Keep in mind that this will delete all of your Android System WebView data, so you’ll need to set up the app again from scratch. If none of these solutions work, there’s a chance that your problem is being caused by a bug in the app. The best way to fix that is to wait for a new update to be released. In the meantime, you can try using a different browser like Chrome or Firefox. Why Android system webview cannot uninstall? Android System WebView is a system component that is pre-installed on all Android devices. It is used by the Android operating system to display web content in apps. Because it is a system component, you cannot uninstall it. If you’re having problems with Android System WebView, there are a few things you can read in the How to fix android system webview section. Why Android System Webview Crashing Apps? Android System Webview is a system component powered by Chrome that allows Android apps to display web content. By default, it is enabled on all Android devices. However, some users have been reporting that they are experiencing crashes with certain apps after updating to the latest version of the Android System Webview. The most likely cause of this issue is that there is a compatibility issue between the latest version of Android System Webview and the app that you are using. To resolve this, you will need to update the app or downgrade the version of Android System Webview on your device. If you are experiencing crashes with multiple apps, then it is likely that there is an issue with the latest version of Android System Webview. In this case, you will need to downgrade the version of Android System Webview on your device. To do this, go to Settings > Apps > Android System Webview and tap on the “Uninstall Updates” button. This will revert the app to its factory state and should resolve the issue. How to Force stop android system webview? We often get frustrated when our Android devices start misbehaving. One such example is when the Android System Webview app starts acting up. If you’ve ever faced this issue, then you know how annoying it can be. The good news is that there is a way to force stop the android system webview and hopefully fix the issue. Here’s what you need to do: 1. Go to Settings on your Android device. 2. Tap on Apps or Application Manager (this may differ depending on your device). 3. Scroll down and tap on Android System Webview. 4. Tap on Force Stop. Hopefully, this will fix the issue and your Android device will start behaving normally again. How to Uninstall Android System Web View Updates? If you want to uninstall the Android System Web View updates, Which means you want to downgrade the app to its older version. But, before you proceed, there is one thing that you should know. Uninstalling updates for the Android System Web View app will not uninstall the app itself. The app will remain on your device, but it will no longer receive updates from Google. To uninstall updates for the Android System Web View app: - Open the Settings app on your device - Tap on “Apps” - Find and tap on the Android System Web View app - Tap on the “Uninstall updates” button - Confirm that you want to uninstall the updates by tapping on “OK” That’s it! You have successfully uninstalled the updates for the Android System Web View app. Frequently Asked Questions How do I enable the Android system WebView disabled? If you want to enable the Android system WebView, you need to go to Settings > Apps > Android System Webview and tap on the “Enable” button. This will enable the app and allow it to display web content. However, if you are experiencing crashes with certain apps after updating to the latest version of Android System Webview, it is recommended that you update the app or downgrade the version of Android System Webview on your device. Why is Android System Webview Enable Greyed out? If the Android System Webview Enable option is grayed out, it indicates that Chrome is handling the webview. Why Android is the System Webview Enable button not working? You must stop the Chrome app from running to update or use webview. Is the android system webview a spy app? No, Android System Webview is not a spy app. It is a default app that is enabled on all Android devices. It is used to display web content in apps. Webview is not able to access your personal data or information. However, like all apps, it is possible for malicious actors to create fake versions of Webview that could be used to spy on users. It is important to only download Webview from the Google Play Store and to be aware of the permissions that it requests. Why Does Android System Webview Component Get Disabled? Webview is a core component of the Android operating system that allows apps to display web content. However, there are some circumstances where the Webview component can become disabled, rendering apps that rely on it useless. There are a few possible explanations for why this might happen. One possibility is that the app itself has caused the Webview component to become disabled. This can happen if the app is not compatible with the version of Webview that is installed on the device. Incompatible apps can cause all sorts of problems, so it’s always a good idea to make sure that you’re using the most up-to-date version of any app. How do I enable WebView in Chrome? You can enable WebView in Chrome by going to chrome://flags/#enable-webkit-android . You will need to restart your browser for the changes to take effect. Once you’ve enabled WebView, you can use it to display web pages in your Android app. To use WebView in your Android app, you need to add the following line to your app’s manifest file: <uses-library android:name=”org.apache.http.legacy” android:required=”true” /> You also need to set up a WebViewClient and a WebChromeClient if you want to display web content in your app. For more information, see the Android Developers website. So there you have it! Everything that you need to know about the Android System Webview app. In this guide, we’ve covered what the app is, why it’s important, and how to enable or disable it. We’ve also answered some frequently asked questions about the app. If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment below.

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The country of Iceland is the smallest economy within the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) with a gross domestic product (GDP) in 2007 of about $11.8billion. The Icelandic economy has been based on marine and energy resources. More recently, Iceland has developed a very strong services sector, which accounts for two-thirds of the economic output. Since the start of the decade i.e. from 2000, Iceland has experienced particularly strong growth in its financial services sector. Trade accounts for a large share of Iceland’s GDP, with imports accounting for 46% in value and exports accounting for 35% in value of goods and services of GDP. If you need assistance with writing your essay, our professional essay writing service is here to help! Iceland’s main export item was fish and other marine products until the year 2006, when Iceland began to capitalize on its abundant thermal energy resources to produce and export aluminum. A combination of economic factors over the early to mid-2000s led to Iceland’s current economic and banking distress. In particular, access to easy credit, a boom in domestic construction that fueled rapid economic growth and a broad deregulation of Iceland’s financial sector spurred the banks to expand rapidly abroad and eventually played a role in the eventual financial collapse. Iceland benefited from favorable global financial conditions that reduced the cost of credit and a sweeping liberalization of its domestic financial sector that spurred rapid growth and encouraged Iceland’s banks to spread quickly throughout Europe. The 2008-2009 Icelandic financial crisis was a major ongoing economic crisis in Iceland that involved the collapse of all three of the country’s major banks (Kaupthing, Landsbanki, Glitnir) following their difficulties in refinancing their short-term debt and a run on deposits in the United Kingdom. Relative to the size of its economy, Iceland’s banking collapse was the largest suffered by any country in economic history of the world. This was the main reason why Iceland had to suffer so much in the crisis. Commenting on the need for emergency measures, Prime Minister Geir Haarde said on 6 October 2008, “There [was] a very real danger … that the Icelandic economy, in the worst case, could be sucked with the banks into the whirlpool and the result could have been national bankruptcy. He also stated that the actions taken by the government had ensured that the Icelandic state would not actually go bankrupt. At the end of the second quarter 2008, Iceland’s external debt was 9.553 trillion Icelandic krónur (€50 billion), more than 80% of which was held by the banking sector. This value compares with Iceland’s 2007 gross domestic product of 1.293 trillion krónur (€8.5 billion). The assets of the three banks taken under the control of the FME totaled 14.437 trillion krónur at the end of the second quarter 2008. Monetary policy is the process a the government, central bank, or monetary authority of a country uses to control (i) the supply of money, (ii) availability of money, and (iii) cost of money or rate of interest to attain a set of objectives oriented towards the growth and stability of the economy. Monetary theory therefore provides insight into how to craft optimal monetary policy. Monetary policy is contrasted with fiscal policy, which refers to government borrowing, spending and taxation. During the financial crisis, Iceland’s monetary policy credibility had been very seriously damaged. Unsatisfactory inflation outcomes had already undermined the credibility of the monetary framework, even before the financial crisis started and, consequently, inflation expectations were poorly anchored. Icelandic economists had said that due to the huge impact of the crisis, rebuilding the credibility was likely to take time, and also maintaining it might be very difficult. However, after the crisis, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) had voted to lower the Central Bank interest rates by 0.5 %. By supporting the interest rate cut, it lead to the appreciation of the krona in trade – weighted terms. As in the ISLM Model, a decrease in the interest rates leads to an increase in the money supply. Therefore, this has lead to an expansionary monetary policy, as the interest rates were lowered, and also the MPC supported or voted for lower interest rates. MONETARY POLICY GRAPH The above graph shows the shift in the LM towards right, which has lead to an expansion in the LM curve. Since the MPC voted for a lower interest rates , the money supply was increased. Therefore, the LM curve shifts from LM1 to LM2, leading to an expansionary of the monetary policy. In economics, fiscal policy can be defined as the use of government expenditure and revenue collection to influence the economy. Fiscal policy refers to the overall effect of the budget outcome on economic activity. There are three possible stances of fiscal policy: Neutral stance, which implies a balanced budget where, govt. spending = Tax Revenue Expansionary stance, increase in the govt. spending and reduction in tax revenue Contractionary stance, decrease in the govt. spending and increase in tax revenue During the financial crisis, there was an increased government debt. Due to the recession and rising debt servicing costs, the public deficit was projected to be above 10% of GDP in 2009, adding to the public debt burden. As a result, a considerable fiscal consolidation was therefore needed to put public finances back on a sustainable path and to pave the road for a successful euro-area entry. It was also important to reduce the deficit vigorously in the coming years, so that the country can reach the goal of balance. In order to eliminate the deficit, the government of Iceland had the option of tax increases as well as spending cuts, it then decided to opt for the former as they were easier to introduce immediately. The starting point for the tax increases would have been to reverse tax cuts implemented over the boom years, but Iceland could no longer afford. This would involve the increase in the personal income tax and also lift the reduced rate of VAT (Value Added Tax). This planned fiscal consolidation, would involve measures which would help to contain the expenditures. FISCAL POLICY GRAPH The above graph, shows the shift in the IS curve towards left, which leads to the contraction of the IS curve. Since the govt. decided to reduce their expenditure and increase the taxation, in order to consolidate the fiscal policy, the IS has moved towards left, leading to an contractionary fiscal policy. In economics, inflation can be defined as the rise in the general level of prices of goods and services in an economy over a period of time. When the price level rises, then each unit of currency buys fewer goods and services; consequently, annual inflation is also erosion in the purchasing power of money – a loss of real value in the internal medium of exchange and unit of account in the economy. The effects of inflation on an economy are manifold and can have both simultaneously positive and negative impacts. Since Iceland, comes from a small domestic market, the banks in Iceland have financed their expansion from getting loans on the inter-bank lending market and, more recently, by getting deposits from outside Iceland (which are also a form of external debt). Large amount of debt was also taken by the households, which was equivalent to 213% of the disposable income, causing inflation in the country. Due to the practice of the Central Bank of Iceland issuing loans (liquidity)to the different banks on the basis of uncovered bonds which are newly issued and printing money on demand, this lead to inflation being exacerbated. Due to the financial crisis, the country of Iceland suffered inflation. On 25th of March 2008, popular website, Bloomberg.com that Iceland had raised its rates to 15% by raising its repo rate by a huge 1.25% in one day. The website also reported that the country was facing an inflation rate of about 7%. However, the Central Bank of Iceland had a goal of maintaining the inflation rate of about 2.5%. Also the Icelandic currency, krona has declined against the euro, from about 100 ISK per euro at the beginning of the year (2008), to its nadir of 125 on March 19 2008. Due to the interest rate hike it had the effect of moving it to about 116 from about 122. In August 2006, the country of Iceland made news when it had increased its interest rate to 13.5%. At that time, the krona was very strong against the euro. Iceland made news previously in August, 2006 when it increased its interest rate to 13.5%. The krona was then trading at a stronger at 90 to one euro. Some main factors why Iceland incurred inflation was mainly due to, the value of krona depreciated, secondly the prices of various commodities kept on soaring, and lastly, there was uncertain effect on wage agreements on labour costs. Since the financial crisis brought a huge change in the development of the economies in the world, as well as making many banks go bankrupt, the Icelandic debt is now over 320 billion krona, which is roughly about $4 billion US dollars. This figure is huge; as one can say considering that it’s about a quarter of their GDP. The above graph shows Icelandic inflation rate over the past 3 years. In the graph, one can make out how the inflation rate climbed up consistently in the year 2008, whereas in the year 2009, the inflation rates kept on falling except in the month of June where it increased, but since then it had kept on decreasing. Our academic experts are ready and waiting to assist with any writing project you may have. From simple essay plans, through to full dissertations, you can guarantee we have a service perfectly matched to your needs. In the year 2008, the reason why inflation rate climbed up consistently, was because of the krona which had been depreciating, where as in the year 2009, the inflation rates kept on falling as the property prices fell, which resulted in the fall of prices. Unemployment can be defined as people who do not have a job, have actively looked for work in the past four weeks, and are currently available for work. Also, people who were temporarily laid off and are waiting to be called back to that job are counted as unemployed. Some types of unemployment are listed below: Since the financial crisis, lead to large percentage of unemployment all over the world, Iceland was also one of them which had a quite high rate of unemployment. Unemployment in Iceland increased tree times more by the end of November 2008. There were more than 7000 registered jobseekers (about 4% of the workforce) in November compared to just 2136 at the end of August 2008. The debt repayment had become more costly as household debt (80%) and 13% denominated in foreign currencies had become indexed. The impact of the crisis was such that since October 2008, 14% of the total workforce had experienced reductions in pay, whereas around 7% of the workforce had their working hours reduced. According to IFL (Icelandic Federation of Labour) president Gylfi Arnbjörnsson, the above figures were lower than expected More than 85% of the workforce who were currently registered as unemployed in the country, stated that they had become unemployed or lost their jobs in October after that, due to the economic collapse. In December 2008, the unemployed figures which were registered in Iceland was 4.8 per cent, or around 7,902 people – an increase of some 45 percent in November, according to the figures from the Directorate of Labour. These unemployment figures were the highest, Iceland had recorded since January 1997. In the same month i.e. December in the year 2007, unemployment rate partly was 0.8 percent, or 1.357 people. The Directorate of Labour had estimated that the figure will rise to 6.4-6.9 percent by the end of January 2009. Among those unemployed, the rate of unemployment among young people had increased the fastest, with the number of registered 16 to 24 year olds jumping from 1,408 to 2,069 in the month to the end of December 2008. This age group accounts for 23 percent of the entire jobless total. GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is defined in economics as a basic measure of a country’s overall economic output. It is the market value of all final goods and services made within the borders of a country in a year. It is often positively correlated with the standard of living, though its use as a stand-in for measuring the standard of living has come under increasing criticism and many countries are actively exploring alternative measures to GDP for that purpose. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) can be determined in three ways, all of which should in principle give the same result. They are the product (or output) approach, the income approach, and the expenditure approach. Prior to the 2008-2010 crises, the economy of Iceland had achieved high growth, also had a low rate of unemployment, and a remarkably even distribution of income all over the country. The economy depended heavily on the fishing industry which is the main source of their income, which provides 70% of export earnings and employs 10% of the work force. Iceland’s economy had been diversifying into manufacturing and service industries in the last decade, with new developments in software production, biotechnology, and tourism. During the global financial crisis, the crisis-stricken Icelandic economy’s GDP shrank by a record 6.5% in 2009, despite having a decent growth of 1% in 2008 and massive growth of 6% in 2007. The decrease in the gross domestic product (GDP) by 6.5% was a record in the national accounts of Iceland. There was a sharp decline in GDP in last year (2009) as the domestic expenditure plunged by 20.1%, then the household consumption also fell to 14.6% due to unemployment and government consumption dwindled by 3%. Also, Iceland’s fixed capital formation dropped by 49.9%. These were the reasons why the gross domestic product (GDP) fell by a huge margin, in the year 2009. After the crisis, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in Iceland managed to expand at an annual rate of 3.30 percent in the last quarter i.e. in the year 2009. Iceland Gross Domestic Product is now worth 17 billion dollars or 0.03% of the world economy, according to the World Bank. Iceland’s Scandinavian-type social-market economy combines a capitalist structure and free-market principles with an extensive welfare system, including generous housing subsidies. GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT (GDP) GRAPH The above graph, describes the changes in the gross domestic product (GDP) of Iceland over the past 3 years. During the years 2007 & 2008, Iceland recorded a growth in the GDP, which helped in boosting the Icelandic economy. However, most of the year in 2009, it recorded a huge decline of 6.5%, except in the last quarter i.e. in the month of December where it a recorded a positive GDP. The main reasons why the GDP declined in the year 2009 was because the household consumption, the government consumption, as well the domestic expenditure rate had fallen massively, resulting in a negative GDP for the most part of the year. In economics, the term currency can refer either to a particular currency, which comprises the physical aspects of a nation’s money supply. The other part of a nation’s money supply consists of money deposited in banks (sometimes called deposit money), ownership of which can be transferred by means of cheques or other forms of money transfer such as credit and debit cards Due to the effects of the financial crisis, there was In October 2008, the effects of the 2007/08 global financial crisis brought about a collapse of the Icelandic banking sector. The value of the Icelandic króna plummeted, and on 7 October 2008 the Icelandic Central Bank attempted to peg the it at 131 against the euro. This peg was abandoned the next day. The króna later fell to 340 against the euro before trade in the currency was suspended (by comparison, the rate at the start of 2008 was about 90 krónur to the euro). After a period of tentative, very low-volume international trading in the króna, activity had been expected to pick up again throughout November 2008, albeit still with low liquidity, as Iceland secured an IMF loan. However as of January 2009 the krona was still not being traded regularly, with the ECB reference rate being set only intermittently, the last time on December 3, 2008 at 290 ISK per euro. The Icelandic krona similarly fell in value against the US dollar, from ca. 50 to 80 per dollar to about 110-115 per dollar; by mid-November 2008 it had continued its slide to ca. 135 to the dollar. As of April 2, 2009, the value hovered around 119 per US dollar. Previously high costs for foreign tourists thereby dropped, which Iceland’s tourism industry hopes to exploit. The economy of Iceland is small and subject to high volatility. Iceland has a mixed economy with high levels of free trade and government intervention. Iceland has a free market economy with relatively low taxes compared with other OECD countries. However, government consumption is less than in other Nordic countries. Iceland’s trade policy is pursued along three main tracks: multilateral trade liberalisation through the WTO, regional liberalisation through the European Economic Area (EEA) with its EFTA/EEA partners and the European Union and finally, bilateral free trade agreements in cooperation with its EFTA partners Norway, Liechtenstein and Switzerland. Iceland’s international treaties have strengthened foreign trade. The EEA Agreement covers the free movement of goods, persons, capital and services. Membership in the EEA in 1994 and the Uruguay Round agreement brought greater market access for Iceland’s exports, capital, labor, and goods and services, especially seafood products. Agriculture is heavily subsidized and protected by the government, with some tariffs ranging as high as 700 percent. Iceland is a part of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The WTO was established on the 1st of January 1995. It is an organization designed to supervise and liberalize international trade. Since the early 1990s, Iceland and its other partners in the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) – Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland – have established an extensive network of contractual free trade relations in Central and Eastern Europe, the Mediterranean region and with countries in other parts of the world. The WTO deals with controlling of trade between participating countries; it provides a framework for negotiating trade agreements. The country has signed a large number of multilateral and bilateral agreements. Iceland is furthermore strongly committed to the Doha Development Agenda and a fair and equitable outcome that will benefit the entire membership. Iceland supports the Doha Development Agenda Global Trust Fund, which is intended to assist developing countries in taking advantage of the opportunities created by increased trade liberalization. Iceland exports 40% of fish and fish products, 40% of aluminum and alloys and animal products. The main imports are machinery and equipment, petroleum products, foodstuffs and textiles and Cement. Iceland’s primary import partner is Germany, with 12.6%, followed by the United States, Norway, and Denmark. Currently, the largest trading partner countries are Germany, the UK, the Netherlands and the Nordic countries. The fishing industry is one of the most important industries. It provides 70% of export income and employs 6.0% of the workforce; therefore, the state of the economy remains sensitive to world prices for fish products. [i] The diversity of Iceland’s exports has, however, increased significantly in recent years, due to structural reforms and privatisation of state owned entities in finance and other sectors. Exports of manufactured products have been growing rapidly. Services now account for 36% of total export revenues while in 1990 the share was 26%. Iceland’s ratio of services to total trade is one of the highest among OECD countries. It is the Government’s stated objective to provide Icelandic agriculture with a realistic opportunity to adapt to changes in its operating environment, to the benefit of farmers and consumers alike. The growth of international trade had been affected in the 1930s by the existence of tariffs and other barriers to international trade. To avoid such problems an agreement, the general Agreement of Trade and Tariffs, was concluded between 44 countries which included Iceland. Iceland joined GATT in 1968. GATT stated that an international agreement should be created which required a binding code of conduct for international trade; its main objective was the liberalization of world trade. Its principle was that there would be mutual benefits if international trade took place on the basis of non-discrimination and should be gradually reduced through negotiations. The liberalization for international trade gave Iceland confidence in their trade. During the period 2003-07, Iceland developed from a nation best known for its fishing industry into a country providing sophisticated financial services, but was consequently hit particularly hard by the 2008 global financial crisis, which extended into 2009. [ii] Self-protection and self-preservation have characterized Iceland’s foreign trade policy since its independence from Denmark. While Iceland is a highly developed country, until the 20th century, it was among the poorest countries in Western Europe. However, strong economic growth has led Iceland to be ranked first in the United Nations’ Human Development Index report for 2007/2008. [iii] Iceland enjoys some of the strongest economic freedoms among all countries However; Iceland is very isolationist as regards to the import of farm products and licenses as well as state monopolies of imports (undergoing a dismantling). Some plant products such as potatoes and flowers are subject to seasonal limitations. Iceland implements high tariffs on agricultural products in order to protect the domestic agricultural sector. Tariffs on certain varieties of vegetables, e.g. tomatoes, cucumbers and bell peppers are significantly higher during the growing season to protect domestic greenhouse producers. Meat and dairy products, and potatoes are also protected by substantial duties. Animal feed can carry tariffs up to 55%. Over 90% of imports are not subject to import restrictions or duties other than the same value-added tax applied to domestically produced goods. Special excise taxes are levied on sugar and some sugar products, potatoes, and motor vehicles. Agricultural products remain the most heavily taxed. In March 1970, Iceland acquired full membership in EFTA. On 28 February 1973, Iceland ratified a trade agreement with the European Community (later named the European Union) leading to the elimination of tariffs on industrial goods. A law authorizing the establishment of free trade zones went into effect in 1992. Iceland’s trade regime underwent considerable liberalization in the 1990s with accession to the European Economic Area (EEA) in 1993, and the Uruguay Round in 1994. Current duty rates generally range from 0% to 30% ad valorem and the average weighted tariff is 3.6%. Some goods enter duty-free, such as meat, fish, and dairy products. Iceland’s average MFN applied tariff is 5.9%. A high percentage of tariff lines (70%) benefit from duty free treatment. The average MFN applied tariff rate for agricultural products is 18.3% (WTO definition) compared with 2.5% for other goods. [iv] Iceland offers preferential tariffs on imports from 37 WTO Members under several free-trade agreements. Regional liberalization has advanced the most within the framework of the European Economic Area (EEA); nonetheless, the average tariff on products from EEA partners is still 3.2%, reflecting the exclusion of several agricultural products from duty-free treatment. A new Customs Law came into force on 1 January 2006 (Act No. 88/2005). According to the authorities, customs clearance for all importation aspects is computerized; electronic data interchange (EDI) covers 98% of the declarations of import and export firms. Customs clearance using EDI takes a matter of minutes, or a few hours if processed manually.

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CLOUDS, TORNADOES AND HYDROLOGICAL CYCLE HYDROLOGICAL CYCLE (WATER CYCLE) - Water is continuously exchanged between the atmosphere, the oceans and the continents through the processes of evaporation, transpiration, condensation and precipitation. - The moisture in the atmosphere is derived from water bodies through evaporation and from plants through transpiration (evapotranspiration). Evaporated water undergoes condensation and forms clouds. - When saturation is reached, clouds give shed water in the form of precipitation. - Since the total amount of moisture in the entire system remains constant, a balance is required between evapotranspiration and precipitation. The hydrological cycle maintains this balance. WATER VAPOR IN ATMOSPHERE - Water vapour is around 2% in the atmosphere. - Water vapour absorbs both incoming and outgoing radiation and hence plays a crucial role in the earth’s heat budget. - The amount of water vapour present decides the quantity of latent energy stored up in the atmosphere for development of storms and cyclones. - The atmospheric moisture affects the human body’s rate of cooling by influencing the sensible temperature. - Water vapour present in the air is known as A) Absolute Humidity - The actual amount of the water vapour present in the atmosphere is known as the absolute humidity. - It is the weight of water vapour per unit volume of air and is expressed in terms of grams per cubic metre. B) Relative Humidity - The percentage of moisture present in the atmosphere as compared to its full capacity at a given temperature is known as the relative humidity. C) Dew point - Saturated air has at the given temperature is incapable of holding any additional amount of moisture. - The temperature at which saturation occurs in a given sample of air is known as dew point. - Dew point occurs when Relative Humidity = 100%. D) Specific Humidity - It is expressed as the weight of water vapour per unit weight of air (grams of water vapour per kilogram of air). - The only way of changing specific humidity is by adding (evaporation) or removing (precipitation) of moisture. - Evaporation is a process by which water is transformed from liquid to gaseous state. - The oceans contribute 84% of the annual total and the continents 16%. - The highest annual evaporation occurs in the sub-tropics of the western North Atlantic and North Pacific because of the influence of the Gulf Stream and the Kurishino Current, and in the trade wind zone of the southern oceans. - The land maximum occurs in equatorial region because of high insolation and luxuriant vegetation. Factors Affecting Rate of Evaporation - Amount of water available. - Area of evaporating surface. - Relative humidity: low relative humidity has more space for moisture and hence evaporation increases. - Wind: Movement of air replaces the saturated layer with the unsaturated layer. Hence, greater the wind speed, the greater is the evaporation. - Whenever there is a combination of high temperature, very low relative humidity and strong winds, the rate of evaporation is exceptionally high. This leads to dehydration of soil to a depth of several inches. - Air Pressure: Evaporation is also affected by the atmospheric pressure exerted on the evaporating surface. Lower pressure over open surface of the liquid results in a higher rate of evaporation. - Composition of water: Evaporation is inversely proportional to salinity of water. - Rate of evaporation is always greater over fresh water than over salt water. [Because of the reduction in the vapour pressure (ability of the water molecules to bounce off the surface) - Under similar conditions, fresh water evaporates 5% faster than ocean water. - More evaporation by plants: Water from plants generally evaporates at a faster rate than from land. - The transformation of water vapour into water is called condensation. - Condensation is caused by the loss of heat (latent heat of condensation, opposite of latent heat of vaporisation). - When moist air is cooled, it may reach a level when its capacity to hold water vapour ceases (Saturation Point = 100% Relative Humidity = Dew Point reached). - Then, the excess water vapour condenses into liquid form. If it directly condenses into solid form, it is known as sublimation. - Condensation also takes place when the moist air comes in contact with some colder object and it may also take place when the temperature is close to the dew point. - Condensation, therefore, depends upon the amount of cooling and the relative humidity of the air. - After condensation, the water vapour or the moisture in the atmosphere takes one of the following forms — dew, frost, fog and clouds. - Condensation takes place when the dew point is lower than the freezing point as well as higher than the freezing point. Processes of Cooling for causing Condensation : A) Adiabatic Temperature Changes - When the air rises, it expands. Thus, heat available per unit volume is reduced and, therefore, the temperature is also reduced. - temperature change does not involve any subtraction of heat, and cooling of air takes place only by ascent and expansion, is termed ‘adiabatic change’. - The vertical displacement of the air is the major cause of adiabatic and katabatic (cold, dense air flowing down a slope) temperature changes. - Near the earth’s surface, most processes of change are non-adiabatic because horizontal movements often produce mixing of air and modify its characteristics. B) Non-Adiabatic Temperature Changes - Non-adiabatic processes include cooling by radiation, conduction or mixing with colder air. - The non-adiabatic processes of cooling produce dew, fog or frost. As they are incapable of producing a substantial amount of precipitation. - In case there is direct radiation from moist air, the cooling produces fog or clouds, subject to presence of hygroscopic nuclei in the air. - Cooling by contact with a cold surface produces dew, frost or fog depending on other atmospheric conditions. FORMS OF CONDENSATION - The forms of condensation can be classified on the basis of temperature at which the dew point is reached. - Condensation can take place when the dew point is - lower than the freezing point, - higher than the freezing point. - White frost, snow, hailstones and some clouds (cirrus clouds)are produced when the temperature is lower than the freezing point. - Dew, fog and clouds result even when the temperature is higher than the freezing point. - Forms of condensation may also be classified on the basis of their location, i.e. at or near the earth’s surface and in free air. - Dew, white frost, fog and mist come in the first category, whereas clouds are in the second category. - When the moisture is deposited in the form of water droplets on cooler surfaces of solid objects (rather than nuclei in air above the surface) such as stones, grass blades and plant leaves, it is known as dew. - The ideal conditions for its formation are clear sky, calm air, high relative humidity, and cold and long nights. For the formation of dew, it is necessary that the dew point is above the freezing point. B) White Frost - Frost forms on cold surfaces when condensation takes place below freezing point (0° C), i.e. the dew point is at or below the freezing point. - The excess moisture is deposited in the form of minute ice crystals instead of water droplets. - The ideal conditions for the formation of white frost are the same as those for the formation of dew, except that the air temperature must be at or below the freezing point. - When the temperature of an air mass containing a large quantity of water vapour falls all of a sudden (mostly due to temperature inversion), condensation takes place within itself on fine dust particles. - So, the fog is a cloud with its base at or very near to the ground. - Because of the fog and mist, the visibility becomes poor to zero. - In urban and industrial centres smoke provides plenty of nuclei which help the formation of fog and mist. Such a condition when fog is mixed with smoke is described as - Radiation fog results from radiation, cooling of the ground and adjacent air. These fogs are not very thick and are usualin winters. - Fogs formed by condensation of warm air when it moves horizontally over a cold surface, are known as advectional fog. These fogs are thick and persistent. Occurs over warm and cold water mixing zones in oceans. - Frontal or precipitation fog is produced due to convergence of warm and cold air masses where warm air mass is pushed under by the heavier cold air mass. - Precipitation in the warm air mass condenses to produce fog at the boundary of the two air masses. These are called frontal or precipitation fog. - In fog visibility is less than one kilometre. - The difference between the mist and fog is that mist contains more moisture than fog. - In mist, each nucleus contains a thicker layer of moisture. - Mists are frequent over mountains as the rising warm air up the slopes meet a cold surface. - Water droplets also form mist, but with less merging or coalescing. This means mist is less dense and quicker to dissipate. - Fogs are drier than mist, and they are prevalent where warm currents of air come in contact with cold currents. - In mist, visibility is more than one kilometre but less than two kilometres. - Smog = smoke + fog (smoky fog) caused by the burning of large amounts of coal, vehicular emission and industrial fumes (primary pollutants). - Smog contains soot particulates like smoke,sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and other components. - Smog is a combination of airborne particulate matter, like soot, and invisible toxic gases including ozone (O3), carbon monoxide (CO), sulphur dioxide (SO2), which are carcinogens (cancer-causing agents). - The atmospheric pollution levels of Los Angeles, Beijing, Delhi, Mexico City and other cities are increased by inversion that traps pollution close to the ground. - It is usually highly toxic to humans and can cause severe sickness, shortened life or death. - Temperature inversions are accentuated, and precipitation is reduced. - Smog-related Haze lowers visibility. - In a haze dust, smoke and other dry particles obscure the clarity of the sky. - There is no condensation in haze. Smog is similar to haze, but there is condensation in smog. - Sources for haze particles include farming (ploughing in dry weather), traffic, industry, and wildfires. G) Clouds ( discussed below ) - Cloud is a mass of minute water droplets or tiny crystals of ice formed by the condensation of the water vapour in free air at considerable elevations. - Clouds are caused mainly by the adiabatic cooling of air below its dew point. - As the clouds are formed at some height over the surface of the earth, they take various shapes. - According to their height, expanse, density and transparency or opaqueness clouds are grouped under four types: (i) cirrus; (ii) cumulus; (iii) stratus; (iv) nimbus. A) Cirrus Clouds - Cirrus clouds are formed at high altitudes (8,000-12,000m). They are made of ice crystals. - They are thin and detached clouds having a feathery appearance. They are always white. B) Cumulus Clouds - Cumulus clouds look like cotton wool. They are generally formed at a height of 4,000-7,000 m. - They exist in patches and can be seen scattered here and there. They have a flat base. C) Stratus Clouds - As their name implies, these are layered clouds covering large portions of the sky. - These clouds are generally formed either due to loss of heat or the mixing of air masses with different temperatures. D) Nimbus Clouds - Nimbus clouds are black or dark grey. They form at middle levels or very near to the surface of the earth. - These are extremely dense and opaque to the rays of the sun. - Sometimes, the clouds are so low that they seem to touch the ground. - Nimbus clouds are shapeless masses of thick vapour. A combination of these four basic types can give rise to the following types of clouds: - High clouds – cirrus, cirrostratus, cirrocumulus; - Middle clouds – altostratus and altocumulus; - Low clouds – stratocumulus and nimbostratus (long duration rainfall cloud; rain bands in tropical cyclones) and - Clouds with extensive vertical development – cumulus and cumulonimbus (thunderstorm cloud) - Condensation of water vapour followed by release of moisture is known as precipitation. - The process of continuous condensation in air helps the condensed particles to grow in size. - When the resistance of the air fails to hold them against the force of gravity, they fall on to the earth’s surface as different forms of precipitation. Precipitation may happen in liquid or solid form. - Precipitation in the form of drops of water is called rainfall when the drop size is more than 0.5 mm. - It is called Virage when raindrops evaporate before reaching the earth while passing through dry air. - Drizzle is light rainfall with drop size being less than 0.5 mm, and when evaporation occurs before reaching the ground, it is referred to as - When the temperature is lower than the 0° C, precipitation takes place in the form of fine flakes of snow and is called snowfall. Moisture is released in the form of hexagonal crystals. - Besides rain and snow, other forms of precipitation are sleet and hail, though the latter are limited in occurrence and are sporadic in both time and space. - Sleet is frozen raindrops and refrozen melted snow-water. When a layer of air with the temperature above freezing point overlies a subfreezing layer near the ground, precipitation takes place in the form of sleet. - Raindrops, which leave the warmer air, encounter the colder air below. As a result, they solidify and reach the ground as small pellets of ice not bigger than the raindrops from which they are formed. - Sometimes, drops of rain after being released by the clouds become solidified into small rounded solid pieces of ice and which reach the surface of the earth are called hailstones. - These are formed by the rainwater passing through the colder layers. Hailstones have several concentric layers of ice one over the other. - Rainfall: drop size more than 0.5 mm. - Virage: raindrops evaporate before reaching the earth. - Drizzle: light rainfall; drop size less than 0.5 mm. - Mist: evaporation drizzle occurs before reaching the ground leading to foggy weather. - Snowfall: fine flakes of snow fall when the temperature is less than 0° C. - Sleet: frozen raindrops and refrozen melted snow; mixture of snow and rain or merely partially melted snow. - Hail: precipitation in the form of hard rounded pellets (5 to 50 mm) is known as hail. TYPES OF RAINFALL - On the basis of origin, rainfall may be classified into three main types – the convectional, orographic or relief and the cyclonic or frontal. A) Convectional Rainfall - The air on being heated, becomes light and rises in convection currents. - As it rises, it expands and loses heat, and consequently, condensation takes place, and cumulous clouds are formed (when convection is rapid and intense cumulonimbus clouds are formed). - This process releases latent heat of condensationwhich further heats the air and forces the air to go further up. - Convectional precipitation is heavy but of short duration, highly localised and is associated with minimum amount of cloudiness. - It occurs mainly during summer and is common over equatorial doldrums in the Congo basin, the Amazon basin and the islands of south-east Asia. B) Orographic Rainfall - This type of precipitation occurs when warm, humid air strikes an orographic barrier (a mountain range). - Because of the initial momentum, the air is forced to rise. As the moisture-laden air gains height, it expands (because of fall in ambient pressure) and the temperature falls (adiabatic). - Condensation sets in, and soon saturation (dew point) is reached. The surplus moisture falls as orographic rainfall along the windward slopes. - After giving rain on the windward side, the winds are relatively dry and cold. They reach the leeward slope and descend (katabatic wind), and their temperature rises due to increase in ambient pressure. - Their capacity to take in moisture increases (relative humidity decreases) and hence the leeward slopes remain rainless and dry. - The area situated on the leeward side, which gets less rainfall is known as the rain-shadow area(some arid and semi-arid regions are a direct consequence of rain-shadow effect. Example: Patagonian Desert in Argentina, Eastern slopes of Western Ghats, etc.). - The rainfall in rain shadow area is known as the relief rain. Example: Mahabaleshwar, situated on the windward side of Western Ghats, receives more than 600 cm of rainfall, whereas Pune, lying in the rain shadow area, receives only about 70 cm. C) Frontal Rainfall - When two air masses with different temperatures meet, turbulent conditions are produced. - Along the front convection occurs and causes precipitation (we will study this in Fronts). - For instance, in north-west Europe, cold continental air and warm oceanic air converge to produce heavy rainfall in adjacent areas. D) Cyclonic Rain - Cyclonic Rainfall is convectional rainfall on a large scale - The precipitation in a tropical cyclone is of convectional type while that in a temperate cyclone is because of frontal activity. E) Monsoonal Rainfall - This type of precipitation is characterized by seasonal reversal of winds which carry oceanic moisture (especially the south-west monsoon) with them and cause extensive rainfall in south and southeast Asia. - Tornado is a small-diameter column of violently rotating air developed within a convective cloud and in contact with the ground. - Tornados occur most often in association with thunderstorms during the spring and summer in the mid-latitudes of both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. - Tornadoes generally occur in middle latitudes because of convergence of warm and cold air masses. - When warm, humid air meets a cold airmass, horizontally spinning winds are created. - As the warm air rises, it begins rotating vertically forming a mesocyclone in the centre of the Cumulonimbus cloud. This is a supercell. - The rotating warm air condenses into rain which in turn pulls the mesocyclone closer to the ground; then the tornado begins to form. - Heavy rains in front of the tornado cause downdrafts. - These whirling atmospheric vortices can generate the strongest winds known on Earth: wind speeds in the range of 500 km (300 miles) per hour. - They are often referred to as twisters. - Waterspout is an intense columnar vortex (usually appearing as a funnel-shaped cloud) that occurs over a body of water. - They are connected to a towering cumulonimbus cloud. - They are weaker than most of its land counterparts, e. tornadoes. - Most waterspouts do not suck up water; they are small and weak rotating columns of air over water. C) Distribution of tornadoes - The temperate and tropical regions are the most prone to thunderstorms and tornadoes. - Tornadoes have been reported on all continents except Antarctica. - United States has the most violent tornadoes. - Canada reports the second largest number of tornadoes. - In the Indian sub-continent, Bangladesh is the most prone country to tornadoes.

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This chapter provides an overview of data access methods that can enhance performance. It also warns of situations to avoid. This chapter also explains how to used hints to force various approaches. Topics in this chapter include: This section describes: Indexes improve the performance of queries that select a small percentage of rows from a table. As a general guideline, create indexes on tables that are queried for less than 2% or 4% of the table's rows. This value may be higher in situations where all data can be retrieved from an index, or where the indexed columns and expressions can be used for joining to other tables. This guideline is based on these assumptions: If these assumptions do not describe the data in your table and the queries that access it, then an index may not be helpful unless your queries typically access at least 25% of the table's rows. Although cost-based optimization helps avoid the use of nonselective indexes within query execution, the SQL engine must continue to maintain all indexes defined against a table regardless of whether they are used. Index maintenance can present a significant CPU and I/O resource demand in any I/O intensive application. Put another way, building indexes "just in case" is not a good practice; indexes should not be built until required. To maintain optimal performance as far as indexes are concerned, drop indexes that your application is not using. You can find indexes that are not referenced in execution plans by processing all of your application SQL through EXPLAIN PLAN and capturing the resulting plans. Unused indexes are typically, though not necessarily, nonselective. Indexes within an application sometimes have uses that are not immediately apparent from a survey of statement execution plans. In particular, Oracle uses "pins" (nontransactional locks) on foreign key indexes to avoid using shared locks on the child table when enforcing foreign key constraints. In many applications a foreign key index never, or rarely, supports a query. In the example shown in Figure 6-1, the need to locate all of the order lines for a given product may never arise. However, when no index exists with LINES(PCODE) as its leading portion (as described in "Choosing Composite Indexes"), then Oracle places a share lock on the LINES table each time PRODUCTS(PCODE) is updated or deleted. Such a share lock is a problem only if the PRODUCTS table is subject to frequent DML. If this contention arises, then to remove it the application must either: A key is a column or expression on which you can build an index. Follow these guidelines for choosing index keys to index: You can determine the selectivity of an index by dividing the number of rows in the table by the number of distinct indexed values. You can obtain these values using the ANALYZE statement. Selectivity calculated in this manner should be interpreted as a percentage. A composite index contains more than one key column. Composite indexes can provide additional advantages over single-column indexes: Sometimes two or more columns or expressions, each with poor selectivity, can be combined to form a composite index with more accurate selectivity. Additional data storage If all columns selected by a query are in a composite index, Oracle can return these values from the index without accessing the table. A SQL statement can use an access path involving a composite index if the statement contains constructs that use a leading portion of the index. A leading portion of an index is a set of one or more columns that were specified first and consecutively in the list of columns in the CREATE INDEX statement that created the index. Consider this CREATE INDEX statement: These combinations of columns are leading portions of the index: X, XY, and XYZ. These combinations of columns are not leading portions of the index: YZ, Z, and Y. Follow these guidelines for choosing keys for composite indexes: Of course, consider the guidelines associated with the general performance advantages and trade-offs of indexes described in the previous sections. Follow these guidelines for ordering keys in composite indexes: Even after you create an index, the optimizer cannot use an access path that uses the index simply because the index exists. The optimizer can choose such an access path for a SQL statement only if it contains a construct that makes the access path available. To be sure that a SQL statement can use an access path that uses an index, be sure the statement contains a construct that makes such an access path available. If you are using the cost-based approach, also generate statistics for the index. Once you have made the access path available for the statement, the optimizer may or may not choose to use the access path, based on the availability of other access paths. If you create new indexes to tune statements, you can also use the EXPLAIN PLAN statement to determine whether the optimizer will choose to use these indexes when the application is run. If you create new indexes to tune a statement that is currently parsed, Oracle invalidates the statement. When the statement is next executed, the optimizer automatically chooses a new execution plan that could potentially use the new index. If you create new indexes on a remote database to tune a distributed statement, the optimizer considers these indexes when the statement is next parsed. Also keep in mind that the way you tune one statement may affect the optimizer's choice of execution plans for others. For example, if you create an index to be used by one statement, the optimizer may choose to use that index for other statements in your application as well. For this reason, you should re-examine your application's performance and rerun the SQL trace facility after you have tuned those statements that you initially identified for tuning. In some cases, you may want to prevent a SQL statement from using an access path that uses an existing index. You may want to do this if you know that the index is not very selective and that a full table scan would be more efficient. If the statement contains a construct that makes such an index access path available, you can force the optimizer to use a full table scan through one of these methods: The behavior of the optimizer may change in future versions of Oracle, so relying on methods such as the first to choose access paths may not be a good long-range plan. Instead, use hints to suggest specific access paths to the optimizer. A crude way to determine whether an index is good is to create it, analyze it, and use EXPLAIN PLAN on your query to see if the optimizer uses it. If it does, keep the index unless it is expensive to maintain. This method, however, is very time- and resource-consuming. A preferable method is to compare the optimizer cost (in the first row of EXPLAIN PLAN output) of the plans with and without the index. Parallel execution uses indexes effectively. It does not perform parallel index range scans, but it does perform parallel index lookups for parallel nested loop join execution. If an index is very selective (there are few rows per index entry), then it may be better to use sequential index lookup than parallel table scan. The fast full index scan is an alternative to a full table scan when there is an index that contains all the keys that are needed for the query. A fast full scan is faster than a normal full index scan in that it can use multiblock I/O and can be parallelized just like a table scan. Unlike regular index scans, however, you cannot use keys and the rows will not necessarily come back in sorted order. The following query and plan illustrate this feature. The plan is as follows: Since index T2_C1_IDX contains all columns needed from table T2(C2), the optimizer uses a fast full index scan on that index. Fast full scan has the following restrictions: Fast full scan has a special index hint, INDEX_FFS, which has the same format and arguments as the regular INDEX hint. You may wish to re-create an index to compact it and minimize fragmented space, or to change the index's storage characteristics. When creating a new index that is a subset of an existing index, or when rebuilding an existing index with new storage characteristics, Oracle may use the existing index instead of the base table to improve performance. However, there are cases where it may be beneficial to use the base table instead of the existing index. Consider an index on a table on which a lot of DML has been performed. Because of the DML, the size of the index may increase to the point where each block is only 50% full, or even maybe less. If the index refers to most of the columns in the table, the index could actually be larger than the table. In this case, it is faster to use the base table rather than the index to re-create the index. Another option is to create a new index on a subset of the columns of the original index. Consider, for example, a table named CUST with columns NAME, CUSTID, PHONE, ADDR, BALANCE, and an index named I_CUST_CUSTINFO on table columns NAME, CUSTID and BALANCE. To create a new index named I_CUST_CUSTNO on columns CUSTID and NAME, you would enter: Oracle automatically uses the existing index (I_CUST_CUSTINFO) to create the new index rather than accessing the entire table. The syntax used is the same as if the index I_CUST_CUSTINFO did not exist. Similarly, if you have an index on the EMPNO and MGR columns of the EMP table, and you want to change the storage characteristics of that composite index, Oracle can use the existing index to create the new index. Use the ALTER INDEX ... REBUILD statement to reorganize or compact an existing index or to change its storage characteristics. The REBUILD statement uses the existing index as the basis for the new one. All index storage statements are supported, such as STORAGE (for extent allocation), TABLESPACE (to move the index to a new tablespace), and INITRANS (to change the initial number of entries). ALTER INDEX ... REBUILD is usually faster than dropping and re-creating an index, because this statement uses the fast full scan feature. It reads all the index blocks using multiblock I/O then discards the branch blocks. A further advantage of this approach is that the old index is still available for queries (but not for DML) while the rebuild is in progress. Oracle8i SQL Reference for more information about the CREATE INDEX and ALTER INDEX statements and for restrictions on re-building indexes. You can coalesce leaf blocks of an index using the ALTER INDEX statement with the COALESCE option. This allows you to combine leaf levels of an index to free blocks for re-use. You can also rebuild the index online. You can use an existing nonunique index on a table to enforce uniqueness, either for UNIQUE constraints or the unique aspect of a PRIMARY KEY constraint. The advantage of this approach is that the index remains available and valid when the constraint is disabled. Therefore, enabling a disabled UNIQUE or PRIMARY KEY constraint does not require rebuilding the unique index associated with the constraint. This can yield significant time savings on enable operations for large tables. Using a nonunique index to enforce uniqueness also allows you to eliminate redundant indexes. You do not need a unique index on a primary key column if that column already is included as the prefix of a composite index. You may use the existing index to enable and enforce the constraint. You also save significant space by not duplicating the index. An enabled novalidated constraint behaves similarly to an enabled validated constraint. Placing a constraint in the enabled novalidated state signifies that any new data entered into the table must conform to the constraint. Existing data is not checked. Placing a constraint in the enabled novalidated state allows you to enable the constraint without locking the table. If you change a constraint from disabled to enabled, the table must be locked. No new DML, queries, or DDL can occur because there is no mechanism to ensure that operations on the table conform to the constraint during the enable operation. The enabled novalidated state prevents operations violating the constraint from being performed on the table. An enabled novalidated constraint can be validated with a parallel, consistent-read query of the table to determine whether any data violates the constraint. No locking is performed and the enable operation does not block readers or writers to the table. In addition, enabled novalidated constraints can be validated in parallel: multiple constraints can be validated at the same time and each constraint's validity check can be determined using parallel query. Use the following approach to create tables with constraints and indexes: CREATE TABLE t (a NUMBER CONSTRAINT apk PRIMARY KEY DISABLE, b NUMBER NOT NULL); CREATE TABLE x (c NUMBER CONSTRAINT afk REFERENCES t DISABLE); At this point, use import or fast loader to load data into t. CREATE UNIQUE INDEX tai ON t (a); CREATE INDEX tci ON x (c); ALTER TABLE t MODIFY CONSTRAINT apk ENABLE NOVALIDATE; ALTER TABLE x MODIFY CONSTRAINT afk ENABLE NOVALIDATE; Now users can start performing inserts, updates, deletes, and selects on t. Now the constraints are enabled and validated. Oracle8i Concepts for a complete discussion of integrity constraints. A function-based index is an index on an expression. Oracle strongly recommends using function-based indexes whenever possible. Define function-based indexes anywhere where you use an index on a column, except for columns with LOBs, or REFs. Nested table columns and object types cannot contain these columns. You can create function-based indexes for any repeatable SQL function. Oracle recommends using function-based indexes for range scans and for functions in ORDER BY clauses. Function-based indexes are an efficient mechanism for evaluating statements that contain functions in WHERE clauses. You can create a function-based index to materialize computational-intensive expressions in the index. This permits Oracle to bypass computing the value of the expression when processing SELECT and DELETE statements. When processing INSERT and UPDATE statements, however, Oracle evaluates the function to process the statement. For example, if you create the following index: Oracle can use it when processing queries such as: Function-based indexes defined with the UPPER(column_name) or LOWER(column_name) keywords allow case-insensitive searches. For example, the following index: Facilitates processing queries such as: You can also use function-based indexes for NLS sort indexes that provide efficient linguistic collation in SQL statements. Oracle treats indexes with columns marked DESC as function-based indexes. The columns marked DESC are sorted in descending order. You must set the session parameter QUERY_REWRITE_ENABLED to TRUE to enable function-based indexes for queries. If QUERY_REWRITE_ENABLED is FALSE, function-based indexes will not be used for obtaining the values of an expression in the function-based index. However, function-based indexes can still be used for obtaining values in real columns. The secondary index on an IOT can be a function-based index. This section describes: This section describes three aspects of indexing that you must evaluate when considering whether to use bitmap indexing on a given table: performance, storage, and maintenance. Bitmap indexes can substantially improve performance of queries with the following characteristics: You can use multiple bitmap indexes to evaluate the conditions on a single table. Bitmap indexes are thus highly advantageous for complex ad hoc queries that contain lengthy WHERE clauses. Bitmap indexes can also provide optimal performance for aggregate queries and for optimizing joins in star schemas. For more information, please refer to the optimizing anti-joins and semi-joins discussion in Oracle8i Concepts. Bitmap indexes can provide considerable storage savings over the use of multicolumn (or concatenated) B*-tree indexes. In databases containing only B*-tree indexes, you must anticipate the columns that would commonly be accessed together in a single query, and create a composite B*-tree index on these columns. Not only would this B*-tree index require a large amount of space, but it would also be ordered. That is, a B*-tree index on (MARITAL_STATUS, REGION, GENDER) is useless for queries that only access REGION and GENDER. To completely index the database, you must create indexes on the other permutations of these columns. For the simple case of three low-cardinality columns, there are six possible composite B*-tree indexes. You must consider the trade-offs between disk space and performance needs when determining which composite B*-tree indexes to create. Bitmap indexes solve this dilemma. Bitmap indexes can be efficiently combined during query execution, so three small single-column bitmap indexes can do the job of six three-column B*-tree indexes. Bitmap indexes are much more efficient than B*-tree indexes, especially in data warehousing environments. Bitmap indexes are created not only for efficient space usage, but also for efficient execution, and the latter is somewhat more important. If a bitmap index is created on a unique key column, it requires more space than a regular B*-tree index. However, for columns where each value is repeated hundreds or thousands of times, a bitmap index typically is less than 25% of the size of a regular B*-tree index. The bitmaps themselves are stored in compressed format. Simply comparing the relative sizes of B*-tree and bitmap indexes is not an accurate measure of effectiveness, however. Because of their different performance characteristics, you should keep B*-tree indexes on high-cardinality data, while creating bitmap indexes on low-cardinality data. Bitmap indexes benefit data warehousing applications but they are not appropriate for OLTP applications with a heavy load of concurrent INSERTs, UPDATEs, and DELETEs. In a data warehousing environment, data is usually maintained by way of bulk inserts and updates. Index maintenance is deferred until the end of each DML operation. For example, if you insert 1000 rows, the inserted rows are placed into a sort buffer and then the updates of all 1000 index entries are batched. (This is why SORT_AREA_SIZE must be set properly for good performance with inserts and updates on bitmap indexes.) Thus each bitmap segment is updated only once per DML operation, even if more than one row in that segment changes. The sorts described above are regular sorts and use the regular sort area, determined by SORT_AREA_SIZE. The BITMAP_MERGE_AREA_SIZE and CREATE_BITMAP_AREA_SIZE parameters described in "Initialization Parameters for Bitmap Indexing" only affect the specific operations indicated by the parameter names. DML and DDL statements such as UPDATE, DELETE, DROP TABLE, affect bitmap indexes the same way they do traditional indexes: the consistency model is the same. A compressed bitmap for a key value is made up of one or more bitmap segments, each of which is at most half a block in size (but may be smaller). The locking granularity is one such bitmap segment. This may affect performance in environments where many transactions make simultaneous updates. If numerous DML operations have caused increased index size and decreasing performance for queries, you can use the ALTER INDEX ... REBUILD statement to compact the index and restore efficient performance. A B*-tree index entry contains a single rowid. Therefore, when the index entry is locked, a single row is locked. With bitmap indexes, an entry can potentially contain a range of rowids. When a bitmap index entry is locked, the entire range of rowids is locked. The number of rowids in this range affects concurrency. For example, a bitmap index on a column with unique values would lock one rowid per value: concurrency would be the same as for B*-tree indexes. As the number of rowids increases in a bitmap segment, concurrency decreases. Locking issues affect DML operations, and thus may affect heavy OLTP environments. Locking issues do not, however, affect query performance. As with other types of indexes, updating bitmap indexes is a costly operation. Nonetheless, for bulk inserts and updates where many rows are inserted or many updates are made in a single statement, performance with bitmap indexes can be better than with regular B*-tree indexes. To create a bitmap index, use the BITMAP keyword in the CREATE INDEX statement: Multi-column (concatenated) bitmap indexes are supported; they can be defined over no more than 32 columns. Other SQL statements concerning indexes, such as DROP, ANALYZE, ALTER, and so on, can refer to bitmap indexes without any extra keyword. For information on bitmap index restrictions, please refer to Oracle8i SQL Reference System index views USER_INDEXES, ALL_INDEXES, and DBA_INDEXES indicate bitmap indexes by the word BITMAP appearing in the TYPE column. A bitmap index cannot be declared as UNIQUE. The INDEX hint works with bitmap indexes in the same way as with traditional indexes. The INDEX_COMBINE hint identifies the most cost effective hints for the optimizer. The optimizer recognizes all indexes that can potentially be combined, given the predicates in the WHERE clause. However, it may not be cost effective to use all of them. Oracle recommends using INDEX_COMBINE rather than INDEX for bitmap indexes because it is a more versatile hint. In deciding which of these hints to use, the optimizer includes non-hinted indexes that appear cost effective as well as indexes named in the hint. If certain indexes are given as arguments for the hint, the optimizer tries to use some combination of those particular bitmap indexes. If the hint does not name indexes, all indexes are considered hinted. Hence, the optimizer tries to combine as many as is possible given the WHERE clause, without regard to cost effectiveness. The optimizer always tries to use hinted indexes in the plan regardless of whether it considers them cost effective. To obtain optimal performance and disk space usage with bitmap indexes, note the following considerations: Use SQL statements with the ALTER TABLE syntax to optimize the mapping of bitmaps to rowids. The MINIMIZE RECORDS_PER_BLOCK clause enables this optimization and the NOMINIMIZE RECORDS_PER_BLOCK clause disables it. When enabled, Oracle scans the table and determines the maximum number of records in any block and restricts this table to this maximum number. This enables bitmap indexes to allocate fewer bits per block and results in smaller bitmap indexes. The block and record allocation restrictions this statement places on the table are only beneficial to bitmap indexes. Therefore, Oracle does not recommend using this mapping on tables that are not heavily indexed with bitmap indexes. Bitmap indexes index nulls, whereas all other index types do not. Consider, for example, a table with STATE and PARTY columns, on which you want to perform the following query: Indexing nulls enables a bitmap minus plan where bitmaps for party equal to 'D' and NULL are subtracted from state bitmaps equal to 'CA'. The EXPLAIN PLAN output would look like this: SELECT STATEMENT SORT AGGREGATE BITMAP CONVERSION COUNT BITMAP MINUS BITMAP MINUS BITMAP INDEX SINGLE VALUE STATE_BM BITMAP INDEX SINGLE VALUE PARTY_BM BITMAP INDEX SINGLE VALUE PARTY_BM If a NOT NULL constraint existed on party, the second minus operation (where party is null) would be left out because it is not needed. The following two initialization parameters have an effect on performance. This parameter determines the amount of memory allocated for bitmap creation. The default value is 8MB. A larger value may lead to faster index creation. If cardinality is very small, you can set a small value for this parameter. For example, if cardinality is only 2, then the value can be on the order of kilobytes rather than megabytes. As a general rule, the higher the cardinality, the more memory is needed for optimal performance. You cannot dynamically alter this parameter at the system or session level. This parameter determines the amount of memory used to merge bitmaps retrieved from a range scan of the index. The default value is 1 MB. A larger value should improve performance because the bitmap segments must be sorted before being merged into a single bitmap. You cannot dynamically alter this parameter at the system or session level. For more information on improving bitmap index efficiency, please see "Efficient Mapping of Bitmaps to Rowids" . If there is at least one bitmap index on the table, the optimizer considers using a bitmap access path using regular B*-tree indexes for that table. This access path may involve combinations of B*-tree and bitmap indexes, but might not involve any bitmap indexes at all. However, the optimizer will not generate a bitmap access path using a single B*-tree index unless instructed to do so by a hint. To use bitmap access paths for B*-tree indexes, the rowids stored in the indexes must be converted to bitmaps. After such a conversion, the various Boolean operations available for bitmaps can be used. As an example, consider the following query, where there is a bitmap index on column C1, and regular B*-tree indexes on columns C2 and C3. EXPLAIN PLAN FOR SELECT COUNT(*) FROM T WHERE C1 = 2 AND C2 = 6 OR C3 BETWEEN 10 AND 20; SELECT STATEMENT SORT AGGREGATE BITMAP CONVERSION COUNT BITMAP OR BITMAP AND BITMAP INDEX C1_IND SINGLE VALUE BITMAP CONVERSION FROM ROWIDS INDEX C2_IND RANGE SCAN BITMAP CONVERSION FROM ROWIDS SORT ORDER BY INDEX C3_IND RANGE SCAN Here, a COUNT option for the BITMAP CONVERSION row source counts the number of rows matching the query. There are also conversions FROM rowids in the plan to generate bitmaps from the rowids retrieved from the B*-tree indexes. The occurrence of the ORDER BY sort in the plan is due to the fact that the conditions on column C3 result in more than one list of rowids being returned from the B*-tree index. These lists are sorted before they can be converted into a bitmap. Although it is not possible to precisely size a bitmap index, you can estimate its size. This section describes how to determine the size of a bitmap index for a table using the computed size of a B*-tree index. It also illustrates how cardinality, NOT NULL constraints, and number of distinct values affect bitmap size. To estimate the size of a bitmap index for a given table, you may extrapolate from the size of a B*-tree index for the table. Use the following approach: For a 1 million row table, Figure 6-2 shows index size on columns with different numbers of distinct values, for B*-tree indexes and bitmap indexes. Using Figure 6-2 you can estimate the size of a bitmap index relative to that of a B*-tree index for the table. Sizing is not exact: results vary somewhat from table to table. Randomly distributed data was used to generate the graph. If, in your data, particular values tend to cluster close together, you may generate considerably smaller bitmap indexes than indicated by the graph. Bitmap indexes may be slightly smaller than those in the graph if columns contain NOT NULL constraints. Figure 6-3 shows similar data for a table with 5 million rows. When cardinality exceeds 100,000, bitmap index size does not increase as fast as it does in Figure 6-2. For a table with more rows, there are more repeating values for a given cardinality. Bitmap indexes have the following restrictions: Domain indexes are built using the indexing logic supplied by a user-defined indextype. Typically, the user-defined indextype is part of a data cartridge. For example, the Spatial cartridge provides a SpatialIndextype to index spatial data. An indextype provides an efficient mechanism to access data that satisfy certain operator predicates. For example, the SpatialIndextype allows efficient search and retrieval of spatial data that overlap a given bounding box. The cartridge determines the parameters you can specify in creating and maintaining the domain index. Similarly, the performance and storage characteristics of the domain index are presented in the specific cartridge documentation. Refer to the appropriate cartridge documentation for information such as: Follow these guidelines when deciding whether to cluster tables: Consider the benefits and drawbacks of clusters with respect to the needs of your application. For example, you may decide that the performance gain for join statements outweighs the performance loss for statements that modify cluster key values. You may want to experiment and compare processing times with your tables both clustered and stored separately. To create a cluster, use the CREATE CLUSTER statement. For more information on creating clusters, see Oracle8i Application Developer's Guide - Fundamentals. Hash clusters group table data by applying a hash function to each row's cluster key value. All rows with the same cluster key value are stored on disk. Consider the benefits and drawbacks of hash clusters with respect to the needs of your application. You may want to experiment and compare processing times with a particular table as it is stored in a hash cluster, and as it is stored alone with an index. This section describes: Follow these guidelines for choosing when to use hash clusters: To create a hash cluster, use the CREATE CLUSTER statement with the HASHKEYS parameter. When you create a hash cluster, you must use the HASHKEYS parameter of the CREATE CLUSTER statement to specify the number of hash values for the hash cluster. For best performance of hash scans, choose a HASHKEYS value that is at least as large as the number of cluster key values. Such a value reduces the chance of collisions, or multiple cluster key values resulting in the same hash value. Collisions force Oracle to test the rows in each block for the correct cluster key value after performing a hash scan. Collisions reduce the performance of hash scans. Oracle always rounds up the HASHKEYS value that you specify to the nearest prime number to obtain the actual number of hash values. This rounding is designed to reduce collisions. For more information on creating hash clusters, see Oracle8i Application Developer's Guide - Fundamentals.

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Statistics from Altmetric.com If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways. In this article we offer an approach to management of functional symptoms based on our own experience and on the evidence from other specialities (because the evidence from neurology is so slim). We also tackle some of the most difficult questions in this area. What causes functional symptoms? Does treatment really work? What about malingering? We give two example cases adapted from real patients to illustrate our approach. WHAT CAUSES FUNCTIONAL SYMPTOMS? Table 1 is not comprehensive but it summarises a large literature on the suggested causes of functional symptoms. This is a question that has been approached from many angles—biological, cognitive, psychoanalytic, psychological, social, and historical. The factors shown have been found to be more common in patients with functional symptoms than in patients with similar symptoms clearly associated with disease pathology. Tables like this can help you to make a formulation of the aetiology of the patient’s symptoms rather than just a diagnosis. An important feature of the table is the recognition of biological as well as psychological and social factors in the production and persistence of functional symptoms. Most of the factors in table 1 have also been associated with other types of functional somatic symptoms such as irritable bowel syndrome and chronic pain as well as with depression or anxiety. Consequently they should be regarded more as vulnerability factors for developing symptoms, than as specific explanations for why some patients develop certain symptoms such as unilateral paralysis and others have attacks that look like epilepsy. Recent functional imaging studies of patients with functional motor and sensory symptoms1 are beginning to offer biological clues (fig 1); they also challenge the idea that that such symptoms are “all in the mind”—they are in the brain too.2 We will discuss the factors listed in table 1 later when considering an approached treatment. A fuller discussion of aetiology can be found elsewhere.3 EXPLAINING THE DIAGNOSIS In the first of these two articles we described our own approach to history taking and examination designed to be an efficient way of assessing the problem. The findings of this assessment will help you to tailor the explanation you give to individual patients. There is no “one size fits all” solution, but certain ways of saying things seem to work better than others. Most people who develop symptoms want to know what is causing them. Explaining the diagnosis in a clear, logical, transparent, and non-offensive way is the key to management by the neurologist. It may sometimes be sufficient to produce improvement. There are several reasons, both pragmatic and scientific, why we prefer the word “functional” in diagnoses such as “functional weakness” or “functional sensory disturbance”. It is a diagnosis that: (1) replaces an erroneous physical versus psychological debate, allowing for a more productive functional/reversible versus structural/irreversible dichotomy; (2) provides a rationale for any treatment designed to improve the functioning of the nervous system—in particular, it allows the use of both physical and psychological strategies; (3) avoids offence (fig 2) and thus can be used transparently with the patient. We do acknowledge, however, that all diagnostic terms have limitations. The usefulness of the term with patients would diminish if “functional” became seen as a euphemism for psychogenic (as it is by some doctors now). The word you use is probably not as important as the way that you use it. We probably underestimate our patients’ ability to detect an unconvincing explanation (or one that the doctor does not really believe). At a first encounter, our explanation of the diagnosis to the patient includes the following key points: Explain what they do have—For example, “You have ‘functional weakness’—this is a common problem. Your nervous system is not damaged but it is not working properly. That is why you cannot move your arm”. Indicate you believe the patient—We pay particular attention to overcoming the patient’s fear that you do not believe them or think they are mad, imagining or putting on their symptoms. If you have found that this is something they might be concerned about, simply saying “I don’t think you’re mad, imagining or putting on your symptoms” can be very effective. Explain what they don’t have—For example, “You do not have multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, etc”. Emphasise that it is common—For example, “I see lots of patients with similar symptoms”. Emphasise reversibility—For example, “Because there is no damage you have the potential to get better”. Emphasise that self-help is a key part of getting better—For example, “I know you didn’t bring this on but there are things you can do to help it get better”. Metaphors and comparisons may be useful—For example, “The hardware is alright but there’s a software problem”; “It’s like a car/piano that’s out of tune, all the parts are there, they just aren’t working right together”; “It’s like a short circuit of the nervous system” (non-epileptic attacks); “It’s like the opposite of phantom limb—they feel a limb that is not there, you cannot feel a limb that is (functional weakness)”. Show the patient their positive signs—For example, a patient (and their family) can be shown their own Hoover’s sign or talked through a video of their non-epileptic attack. Explain how this confirms the diagnosis that the nervous system is working at some times but not at others. Introducing the role of depression/anxiety—Use your judgement about whether this will be helpful or harmful at an early stage. For example, “If you have been feeling low/worried that will tend to make the symptoms even worse”. Use written information—Using this approach makes it much easier to send the patient their clinic letter. This in turn can do a lot to persuade them of your point of view. Leaflets perform a similar function (fig 3). Talk to the family and friends—Reinforce the diagnosis with family or friends. Making a psychiatric referral—For example, “Dr X has a lot of experience and interest in helping people manage and overcome symptoms like this. Referring you to him does not mean that I think you are mad”. Why not be more “psychological”? Our clinical experience is that an approach which does not force the issue paradoxically actually increases the subsequent emergence and discussion of relevant psychological symptoms and life problems. When they emerge we avoid the temptation to simply re-attribute the symptoms to them (for example, “…ah now I know that your husband is having an affair, that explains you weak leg”) but instead emphasise how important they may be as a factor making the symptoms worse. The patient may want to know why this has happened to them. An honest answer might be that you do not know or that the reasons are probably complicated. But just because you do not know why something happens does not mean you cannot diagnose it, or treat it. You can explain to the patient that you would have just as much trouble trying to provide a cause of their illness if they had multiple sclerosis, migraine, or Parkinson’s disease. For patients with mild symptoms, explanation and reassurance with encouragement to resume normal activity may be sufficient. In those with more resistant symptoms one or more of the following treatments may be helpful. Patients with physical problems often need physical treatments. Some of our best treatment successes have been accomplished by experienced neuro-physiotherapists who are able to combine hands on, physical treatments with explanation and encouragement. There have been encouraging results from studies of physical rehabilitation in patients with functional disability, but none of them has been randomised and few report long term outcome.3 In patients with chronic fatigue there is systematic review evidence that graded exercise is helpful overall. COGNITIVE BEHAVIOURAL THERAPY: HELPING THE PATIENT THINK AND BEHAVE DIFFERENTLY Many neurologists regard cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) as a mysterious treatment. It is not. Essentially it is an extension of the explanation, a way of helping the patient to become aware of, examine, and if appropriate revise the way they think, respond emotionally and behave in response to symptoms. The aim is to maximise function and reduce symptoms—but not necessarily to abolish them. In formal CBT the patient meets a therapist every one or two weeks and practices new ways of thinking about and responding to their symptoms between these sessions. In common with most neurological services we do not have ready access to specialist CBT therapists. We therefore try to incorporate the principles of CBT into medical care. Before you dismiss this suggestion as unrealistic you should be aware that it was well described by neurologists practising 100 years ago. They called it “rational persuasion” or “re-education”.2 CBT emphasises the interaction of cognitive, behavioural, emotional, and physiological factors in perpetuating symptoms (fig 4).4 The patient’s cognitive interpretation of bodily symptoms is key. This will depend on their knowledge and experience of disease. For example, it is hardly surprising if someone with paralysis misinterprets their symptoms as multiple sclerosis or a stroke and as evidence of irreversible damage to their nervous system. In keeping with these beliefs the patient may behave in a way that seems sensible but which actually make the problem worse—for example, by avoiding behaviours or situations that exacerbate the symptom (such as exercise) or endlessly seeking a medical diagnosis before considering treatment. These factors have been demonstrated to be relevant to both the aetiology and treatment of chronic pain and chronic fatigue. Evidence exists at systematic review level that CBT is effective for a wide range of functional somatic symptoms.5 Its use has also been described (although not properly tested) in patients with non-epileptic attacks,6 motor symptoms,3 and severe and multiple functional symptoms. How can you do it? Think back to the 35 year old patient with disabling unilateral weakness, fatigue, and pain (as well as anger about being told that her symptoms are “psychological”) described at the start of our first article. The following are some of the elements of CBT that you could incorporate into the consultation: Accept all symptoms at face value and give a positive explanation. Persuade the patient that change is possible, they are not “damaged”, and they do have the potential to recover. Give the patient a rationale for treatment—for example, exercise will help recondition your muscles and “tune up” your nervous system. Encourage activity, warning the patient that they may feel temporarily worse afterwards but that there will be benefits in the long term. Warn against “over doing it” on good days as much as “under doing it” on bad days. Explain that symptoms tend to be cyclical anyway and predict days when they will feel “back to square one”. Start with small goals such as walking around the garden once and build up. Establish a sleep routine. Give simple advice such as avoiding sleep during the day, getting up at a specified time, and getting out of bed for 15 minutes rather than lying worrying awake at night. Encourage the patient to reconsider unhelpful and negative thoughts. For example, patients with pain commonly think “If I go for a walk I’ll feel much worse afterwards and I’ll make the ‘wear and tear’ that my GP told me about worse”. Instead the patient should be encouraged to consider and test out an alternative possibility such as “If I go for that walk, I will be sore afterwards for a bit but in fact it will be strengthening my bones and muscles not making them worse and it will help build my confidence”. Look for modifiable physiological/dissociative trigger factors. If you can find evidence of dissociative or autonomic symptoms before symptom onset this may provide an additional extra rationale for this type of treatment. For example, if a patient with non-epileptic attacks discloses such symptoms a CBT approach similar to that used for panic (in which the patient is encouraged to be aware of “catastrophic” interpretations of symptoms and to consider more benign ones) can be used.6 In our experience, patients with paralysis, who also often report these symptoms just before onset and can have a relapsing course, can be helped by explaining the link between these “warning symptoms” and their weakness. Looking at obstacles to recovery. Rather than focus on possible “causes” from the past such as an unhappy childhood, focus on obstacles to recovery. These may include the hated job which they will have to return to, the legal case that may not settle for five years, and the benefit trap. It still surprises us how often these issues can discussed openly and frankly and the patient encouraged to actively address them once you have won the patient’s trust. Provide information about more detailed written material. There is so far little available but a self-help book on fatigue7 can help the patient get started by themselves. If you think they’ll accept it there are plenty of CBT based self help books for depression and anxiety.8 Further elements of treatment could involve spending more time discussing these explanations with key family members, discussing with the patient how to explain their improvement to other people, and negotiating a phased return to work. Case 1: A twisted ankle that remained twisted A 32 year old man was admitted for investigation of an abnormal foot posture. Twelve months earlier he had been in a car accident when he had twisted his right ankle. Although there was no head injury he only has a hazy memory of the accident and remembers feeling spaced out and shocked that he had crashed. There was no bony injury but instead of making a normal recovery his ankle gradually inverted until it remained in a fixed position (fig 6). In addition he complained of a lot of back pain and had gradually developed weakness of the whole leg. On questioning he said he felt constantly exhausted and had trouble sleeping. There was a history of recurrent groin pain which had not been diagnosed but had resolved. He was taking dihydrocodeine which only “took the edge off” his back pain. He had been working long hours as a van driver and said that he really enjoyed his job which he had been unable to do since the accident. He said he was not depressed but he found it hard to describe anything he enjoyed doing. His family had seen a big change in his personality. They said his ankle remained like that when he was asleep. There was no compensation case. On examination he looked miserable. He had collapsing weakness of all the muscles in his right arm and leg and Hoover’s sign was strongly positive. The ankle was in a fixed inverted position. Attempts to straighten it produced irregular shaking in the whole leg. Vibration sense and light touch were altered over the whole of the right side of his body including his face. Magnetic resonance imaging, neurophysiology, and other tests were normal. What would you do? How would you explain the diagnosis? What kinds of treatment might help? Read the outcome of case 1 at the end of the article As a final stage it may be possible to start making links between symptoms and stressful events—for example, “When you had that terrible day what were you thinking about—do you think that was relevant?”. This final stage is often the one that many doctors think should be at the “front end” of treatment, not appreciating that it can be one of the most difficult to pull off and, in our experience, not always essential in order to make a recovery. Reading this you may think “This is impossible to fit in to my busy neurology clinic”. But if you are in the habit of providing constructive explanations for symptoms and some pointers about what to do about them, you are probably already practising a CBT approach. ANTIDEPRESSANTS AND OTHER DRUGS Antidepressants can help many patients with functional symptoms, even those who are not depressed. A recent systematic review of antidepressant treatment in patients with a range of functional symptoms found a number needed to treat of only three (comparing favourably with many treatments in neurology).9 In practice, their use may be difficult because of: (1) psychiatric stigma; (2) a perception that they are addictive or harmful; and (3) side effects. All these therefore need to be discussed before prescribing—for example, saying to the patient: “So-called antidepressants often help these symptoms even in patients who are not feeling depressed. They have wider actions than treating depression—for example on pain, sleep, and appetite—and can reverse the abnormalities in brain function we have talked about”. The patient is best warned that they will probably experience side effects but that these will tend to wear off eventually so the treatment should be persisted with for at least four weeks. They should also be warned not to expect any benefit until this time. Case 2: Uncontrollable shaking A 24 year old auxiliary nurse working in a care home for the learning disabled was admitted with a three month history of shaking attacks. These were occurring up to five times a day and lasting between 2–10 minutes (fig 7). She initially did not report any prodromal symptoms but on direct questioning admitted to strong and frightening depersonalisation and a warm feeling in the minute or so before some attacks. During some of the attacks she reported being able to hear people around her but being unable to respond. She had been getting the feeling that ward staff thought she was “making it up”. She sometimes slept after the attack, but could be tearful. Otherwise she reported exhaustion, poor sleep, and poor concentration. She had a history of chronic pelvic pain and laparoscopic surgery. She was on anticonvulsants from a different hospital and had been told that she had epilepsy. Her case notes documented a history of childhood sexual abuse and previous contact with psychiatrists for depression. She angrily denied feeling low or anxious or any recent life stresses. She said that although her job could be challenging it was also very rewarding and she was upset to be off work. She had just left the parental home to live with her boyfriend. Examination was normal. During a witnessed attack, her eyes were observed to be shut, she had an increasingly fast respiratory rate, and limb movements were asynchronous. EEG during one of the attacks was normal. How are you going to explain the diagnosis? How are you going to handle the issue of her history of sexual abuse? What would you do to help? Read the outcome of case 2 at the end of the article There is not much evidence to guide us in the choice of antidepressant agent. Tricyclic antidepressants are particularly helpful in patients with insomnia and pain but can cause unacceptable drowsiness and a dry mouth. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and other more selective drugs have similar efficacy and are probably preferable in the medically unwell and elderly, but also have side effects such as nausea. They also may not be so good at treating pain. Other drugs used in chronic pain such as gabapentin should also be considered. Antidepressants do not help the symptom of depersonalisation. We generally explain to patients that they can get better without the tablets—which is true—but that they are worth trying if they want to “explore every therapeutic avenue”. OTHER MANAGEMENT TECHNIQUES Hypnosis and intravenous sedation There is some evidence for the use of hypnosis in patients with functional motor symptoms. Alternatively, examination under sedation can be used therapeutically to demonstrate to the neurologist, and by means of video to the patient, that an apparently paralysed limb can move or a fixed dystonic foot is not fixed. These methods merit more systematic study. Psychodynamic and other types of psychotherapy In classical psychodynamic theory, conversion disorder implies that distress resulting from intolerable mental conflict is converted in to a somatic symptom with consequent relief of distress. Another facet of this theory is symbolism—for example, where a symptom like a pseudoseizure may be said to represent a symbolic re-enactment of childhood sexual abuse. Symbolism is hard to test but the evidence overall is not consistent with “conversion”. For example, the more somatic symptoms a patient has the more emotional symptoms they will also tend to have. In addition, in our experience, when a patient looks as if they are not distressed, they often are— they just do not want to tell you about it. More recent psychodynamic theory has moved on from the ideas above and instead highlights the importance of early relationships and their effect on the relationships people form as adults. For example, it is plausible that poor parenting could produce interpersonal dependency in adulthood. If this dependency and excessive “attachment behaviour” was to a doctor or a family member only interested in physical problems you can begin to see how a tendency to repeatedly present somatic complaints might develop. Adverse experience in childhood may also influence the person’s tendency to develop certain symptoms. For example, chronic pelvic pain complaints are more common in women who have been sexually abused. In non-specialist practice awareness of these factors may help to make patients’ otherwise inexplicable symptoms more understandable. But they are hard to make use of in treatment. For some patients a more in depth psychotherapy that helps the patient to make links with these antecedents of symptoms may be of value, but has not been evaluated in randomised trials. WHICH PATIENTS SHOULD BE REFERRED TO A PSYCHIATRIST? Remember that if you sent everyone you see with functional symptoms to a psychiatrist, you will be sending one third of your neurology clinic to them. Patients with mild symptoms, symptoms that respond very positively to the initial explanation, or those with a good GP will probably not need (or accept) the complication of another referral. However, a patient who is unimproved after a receiving a careful explanation, a trial of antidepressants and physiotherapy should probably be referred. A patient who has previously not been helped by experienced psychiatric intervention is probably unlikely to benefit. If you do need to refer to a psychiatrist it is often easier to do this at a second appointment. Ideally, the psychiatrist will have be interested and experienced in managing patients with somatic symptoms. A liaison or neuropsychiatrist, if available, is often best. DIFFICULT MANAGEMENT ISSUES There is no doubt that simulation in order to make money (fig 5) does occur (as discussed in more detail below). Furthermore, very few of us would refuse the opportunity to make some money if it was suggested we might be entitled to it. Leaving aside the financial motivation, compensation is a potent obstacle to recovery for all patients regardless of whether their symptoms are functional or not. Seeking compensation implicitly involves a commitment to: (1) the idea that there is physical injury/damage; (2) the notion that someone else is to blame for the symptoms now and in the past; and (3) a desire on the patients part to “prove” that they really do have the symptom. Many patients with functional symptoms who are not seeking compensation share these feelings about their symptoms, often because they feel no-one believes them and they are being accused of imagining their symptoms. It is hardly surprising then that in the context of an injury many should get involved with a legal process that is prepared to back them up and get them some money in the process. These complex issues and the negative role that lawyers and doctors can play in this process are discussed in a highly readable if polemical book, Whiplash and other useful illnesses.10 Disability and incapacity benefits Should a patient with functional symptoms receive disability benefits? Such benefits can be substantial, be more than previous earnings, and can lead to a situation where a patient will lose money if they get better. This dilemma may be usefully discussed openly with the patient. Remember that there is little research to support the idea that secondary gain is a greater factor in patients with functional symptoms than in those with disease. Aids and appliances A similar dilemma arises when thinking about aids such as sticks and wheelchairs. They can be both helpful, in improving independence and confidence, and harmful, leading to dependence on them and decreased activity. Each case must be evaluated on it merits. THE PATIENT WHO DOES NOT GET BETTER Many patients with functional symptoms are hard to treat and follow a lifelong course of symptoms, disability, and medical consultations. It is important to have realistic expectations about who can be helped and to accept that you may have to treat several to make a big difference to one. If you have made an effort with a particular patient but it is clear that they do not really believe that things can change (or you do not have any more resources to help) then this may be the point at which to ask the GP to take over their long term chronic care. Rather then ending contact on a negative note you may wish to tell the patients that they are coping well with a difficult illness and that you are sorry you have not been able to help more. If the patient has a history of repeated presentation to secondary care with the associated risk of iatrogenic harm, a positive plan to “contain” the patient in primary care may help—for example, by the GP making regular monthly appointments regardless of whether there are new symptoms or not. This in itself may reduce the number of new symptoms and will enable more optimal management of things like recurrent depression, but the GP may still need to ask you to review the patient from time to time. Symptomatic recovery and other measures of outcome The natural history of functional symptoms in neurology has not been well described. In outpatients, a third to a half of patients can be expected to be unchanged or worse a year after diagnosis. Symptom persistence is more likely for those with motor symptoms or pseudoseizures than just sensory symptoms. Some patients will develop other functional symptoms and attend multiple medical specialities; iatrogenic harm from unwarranted surgery and drugs is a major problem. Known predictors of poor outcome are long symptom duration and personality disorder.3 Since an influential paper by Slater in the 1960s, many doctors have been worried that a high proportion of patients with functional symptoms, like paralysis and non-epileptic attacks, will go on to develop disease that with hindsight explains their symptoms. In fact, a number of recent studies have reported rates of misdiagnosis of around 5% in regional and tertiary neurological centres.3,11 This misdiagnosis rate is similar to that of other neurological disorders. In practice this means that occasionally you will get the diagnosis wrong and so you should be willing to re-evaluate the patient. When misdiagnosis does occur, it is most common in gait and movement disorder and where the clinician has placed too much emphasis on a bizarre or “psychiatric” presentation. MALINGERING AND FACTITIOUS DISORDER: IS THE PATIENT MAKING IT UP? Discriminating between consciously produced and unconsciously produced functional symptoms is difficult, if not impossible. Patients’ awareness of control over a symptom like paralysis is probably not “all or nothing” but rather on a continuum. It may also vary over time so that a patient may begin an illness with little awareness about what is happening but gradually gain a degree of conscious control with time (or vice versa). Doctors are almost certainly worse at detecting deception by a patient than we would like to think. A recent study where examiners were blind to whether subjects were feigning paralysis or genuinely experiencing it during a hypnotic state showed no greater than chance performance. As Miller put it, the detection of malingering is “nothing more infallible than one man’s assessment of what is probably going on in another man’s mind”. The only investigations that reliably tell you that someone is malingering are covert surveillance demonstrating a major discrepancy in function or a direct confession, but these are rarely obtained outside medicolegal scenarios. Functional imaging of the brain is opening up new possibilities of detecting differences in intention and action that are not visible clinically, but these remain experimental and may never be reliable. When conscious intention is discovered or confessed, a distinction must be made between those patients generating symptoms or behaviour merely to gain “medical care” (factitious disorder) and those who simulate for financial or other material gain (malingerers).12 Case 1: Outcome What would you do? How would you explain the diagnosis? The clinical features were consistent with a functional dystonia associated with back pain, fatigue, and functional right sided weakness. However, the dystonia part of the diagnosis was left as “probably functional” initially. We were also concerned about the possibility of a contracture. We opted to treat the other aspects of his illness first to see what would happen. He was given a positive explanation for the symptoms and shown a video of another patient with the same problem. We explained the role of physiotherapy and of antidepressants (even though we agreed that he was not feeling depressed). As a result of this he fairly quickly felt confident about the diagnosis and his back pain, fatigue, and weakness began to slowly improve. He started to make plans for the future and discussed changing his job if and when he could recover. He admitted that he had been feeling very frustrated and low in recent months. His foot, however, remained stubbornly inverted. What kinds of treatment would you attempt? Six months later, in the absence of any improvement in his ankle posture, he was brought in for videotaped sedation. In a highly clinical environment he was given a titrated dose of propofol so that he was awake but drowsy. In this state he was able to move his ankle normally for the first time in one and a half years. He was also able to watch the video afterwards. A few days later there was a “breakthrough” in his treatment and his foot straightened and started moving normally. He now is back at work and walking normally. Although he is not completely asymptomatic he is very grateful for his recovery. Asked what had made the difference he said he was terrified that something in his medial ankle would “snap” if it ever came back to a normal position. We made a diagnosis of definite functional dystonia. A bad experience of discovering that you have been “deceived” by a patient may lead to cynicism about all patients, since the true proportion of patients who malinger is unknown. When you feel like this it may be useful to ask yourself the following questions: Why do so many patients present such similar stories of bafflement and fear about their symptoms? Why do follow up studies show persistence of symptoms in the majority in the long term? Why are patients with these symptoms so keen to have investigations to “hunt down” an organic cause for their symptoms?—if they knew they were malingerers they would know that this could weaken their case. When you see a patient clearly exaggerating a symptom or groaning heavily during an examination, is this exaggeration to deceive or exaggeration to convince? Finally, you may want to ask yourself—is it your job to detect malingering anyway since it is not a medical diagnosis but a moral problem? Early management of functional symptoms involves demonstrating to the patient that you believe them and that you recognise their symptoms as being common and potentially reversible. A lot more research is needed in to the optimum approach but our experience is that using the “functional model” of symptom generation allows a transparent explanation and interaction with the patient that can facilitate later physical and psychological treatments. Much of the core of a cognitive behavioural approach to treatment is in fact simple advice about exercise, sleep, and ways about thinking about symptoms that can be given effectively by a neurologist. While it is unreasonable to expect everyone to get better, it is also a mistake to think that a neurologist cannot make a difference, even in a limited time. Case 2: Outcome How are you going to explain the diagnosis? The history and investigations are typical for non-epileptic attacks. This is exactly the kind of patient in whom it can be counterproductive to wade in with a psychological explanation. She has angrily denied any emotional symptoms and has already been given a diagnosis of epilepsy, a valid diagnosis that may be difficult to take away. Non-epileptic attacks can be explained as a common and treatable temporary “short circuit” of the nervous system but without the abnormal electrical activity of epilepsy. Repeated reminders that you do not think she is making the symptoms up will probably be necessary. Written information including a leaflet and a copy of your letter will help confirm to the patient and her family that this is a real diagnosis and that you are not just waffling. How are you going to handle the issue of childhood sexual abuse? It is usually inadvisable to make connections between remote events such as this and current symptoms unless you have established a good relationship with the patient over a period of time. Even if you think there is a connection between her abuse, her pelvic pain, and the non-epileptic attacks—and there may be—the patient is unlikely to want to hear your thoughts on the matter or be helped by them, at least for some time. What would you do to help? The most important first step is to undo the diagnosis of epilepsy and make a clear and unequivocal diagnosis of non-epileptic attacks. Her anticonvulsants should be stopped. The presence of prodromal symptoms is helpful. Explain that depersonalisation is common and not life threatening. Ask her to try rebreathing into a paper bag over her mouth and nose the next time she feels it coming on. Explain how patients can learn to stop attacks like these in time with practice. Make a careful referral to a liaison psychiatrist explaining you don’t think she’s crazy, but Dr X has special expertise in these kinds of symptoms. If you manage to get her to turn up for the appointment the psychiatrist ought to be able to engage her, begin to explore psychological aspects, and monitor progress. Ideally the neurologist should make sure the patient believes/understands the diagnosis at follow up as well. We would like to thank Dr Adam Zeman and Professor Charles Warlow for their valuable collaboration and support of this work. Thanks also to Will Whitely, Rustam Al-Shahi, Malcolm McLeod, and Patrick Fox for comments on the manuscript.

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This is a skate across some of the puzzles that arise for many people when trying to understand the common current thinking associated with autism. It is not written with any claim to expertise. It takes the view of the interested bystander. It does not seek to explain everything to do with autism. Nor does it seek to lessen the daily experiences of those living with lives influenced by autism. It aims to understand how current ways of talking about autism might get in the way of society adapting sufficiently quickly. The aim is to explore rather than pin things down, and to look at things as a set of recurring puzzles. Some of these puzzles stem from there being a variety of descriptions of autism, which lead to a range of understandings and misunderstandings amongst the general population that, in turn, get in the way of society being structured in ways that support people with autism. The article is deliberately rather wordy but, again, that is all part of taking an exploratory approach. The first part of what follows is an outline drawn from various documents and websites of people and organisations actively involved with autism. The second part lists the many detailed behaviours that organisations and individuals consider as recurringly observable in the range of autistic people. The third part tries to set out some of the difficulties that get in the way of everyday understanding of the issues around autism. This thing identified as autism exists as an absolute lived reality in a number of people’s lives. It is who they are. At the same time social descriptions and discussions of it rely on fragments of understandings put together in various ways. These understandings have changed over time and may change again in the future. It is seen as being neurological at root. It is a complex condition that is primarily concerned with the processing of information in the brain. It is better seen as a particular human condition, not as a medical problem or a psychological illness. It is more likely to be connected with the state of a large number of genes, operating in that person’s unique environment, rather than some single ‘switch’ mechanism. It is not specifically brought about by family dynamics, or emotional contexts, or culture. It can be viewed as one example of the many ways in which people can be neurodiverse. Autism is one way in which people think and respond in substantially different ways from the average. It results from a particular core set of ways in which the brain processes information from self and surroundings. Outwardly, these appear as observable characteristics, or traits, which – taken together – socially define a person as being autistic. Whilst these core behaviours may be common to all autistic people, they are individual: a feature of the specific ways each person’s brain neurology develops. They each occur to varying degrees so that each individual can have different intensities across each of the common characteristics. The sensory processing issues that add up to autism can be summarised in a number of ways. One of the most common (but not always helpful) classification is in terms of three coexisting sets of impairments. Although some argue that ‘impairment’ is too medical, or too negative, this is a widely accepted approach. These areas of difficulty are in social/emotional relations (difficulties forming friendships, difficulties working cooperatively, difficulties managing unstructured settings etc); use of language and communication in social contexts (difficulties processing and retaining verbal information, misunderstanding the non-literal nature of jokes and sarcasm, misunderstanding body language and gestures); and flexibility of thinking (difficulty coping with changes to routines, difficulties making generalisations). These three are put forward as the things that are necessary and sufficient for a diagnosis of autism. Not only do these three have to exist, they need to occur persistently (over time and across different contexts) and exist all together at the same time. They also need to occur with such strength that they limit everyday functioning. It has to be remembered that these are distinctions that have been made (largely by neurotypical people) between things that may be far more intertwined than such distinctions might imply. Such categorisations may not be helpful, or may even be misleading. In the USA a slightly different approach proposes that there are two defining features of autism: (a) Persistent deficits in social communication and interactions in a range of contexts, and (b) restrictive, repetitive patterns of behaviours, interests or activities. These two things, present from the early years of life, affect everyday functioning and are not able to be explained by other disabilities or delays in development. These kinds of approaches are based on trying to find the minimum description that covers autism as a discrete phenomenon ie the basic conditions that set it apart from everything else. They focus on distilling down to find the basic core. A different, more exploratory, way into thinking about autism might be to build up from the broader descriptions of what happens to different individuals in everyday situations. For a particular individual this could lead to headlines such as: - Attempts to minimise the volume of new/unknown information inputs - Senses being overwhelmed when too much is going on, too quickly or too suddenly - Struggles to express thoughts and feelings - Experiences strong reactions because of a lack of awareness of what others may be feeling There are ongoing debates about the kinds of statements that best answer the question ‘What is autism’? Various theories have been put forward as lines of understanding. Some have been abandoned (eg that autism is a result of the emotional state of the mother). The two main attempts to explain autism are the psychological and the physiological. Some versions of the psychological explanations – eg that autistic children fail to adequately develop a theory of how other people’s minds work may be descriptive rather than explanatory, falling back on a need for physiological accounts of what goes on in the human brain. This can be in terms of the structure/architecture of the brain, or in terms of interconnective chemical processes within the brain’s neuro-networks. Some other things frequently coexist with autism. Some prefer to use the term ‘co-morbidities’ (itself far too morbid a phrase). This is a pathological or medical approach and other terms may be better. Such cross-cutting characteristics may be concerned with learning abilities, ranging from strong learning difficulties to high levels of intellectual performance; or concerned with levels of clumsiness/dexterity – recognising that each of these labelling terms comes with its own set of understandings and misunderstandings. In whatever way the main features get described, these are not the full totality of each person. The cluster of neurological features, which taken together are seen as defining autism, overlap with a range of other features (with each of these other clusterings having its own degrees of intensity); all within a context where other things, eg gender, may also potentially have some shaping effect. An autistic person is first and foremost a unique individual person. How the defining features of autism can show as a range of behaviours It is possible to accumulate the many, many fragments of behaviour that autism organisations’ magazines and websites list as being potential features of autism. The sheer extensiveness of this list of, sometimes contradictory, behaviours demonstrates why autism remains something of a mystery to the general population (although it is far less ambiguous to those who themselves, or their relatives, have autistic behaviours). What follows is a long-listing of these many and varied observable features that frequently get linked to indicators of autistic behaviour. It is intended as more of a thinking tool around how things may be, rather than a definitive statement of the way things always necessarily are. It is the opposite of some assessment list of minimum requirements. It is a way of opening things up, to explore possibilities rather than to pinpoint precision. In the listings below, the wordings are loose rather than definitive; some things could be put under various headings; some details can be common to more than one characteristic; other wordings could have been chosen; and so on. The clustering of features under subheadings is not a fixed thing; other combinations are possible. Many of the details are phrased in negative-sounding terms. This partly reflects the way ‘normality’/’average’ is seen re children’s development; and partly reflects the wording of many of the documents looked at (which in turn reflect ideas around assessment and identification). As a society we seem more driven by establishing what people are not able to do rather than understanding what they are like. It is certainly not intended to be read that every autistic person will display all of the potential characteristics listed as detail. Each person is different in many ways. Within each of the broad headline features one person might exhibit a particular set of behaviours whereas another person might exhibit some details but not others. Most obviously, each bit of detail (where present at all) can exist to varying degrees of prominence, which can vary over time or in different settings. Whatever the behaviours of individuals, the features are more likely to be across the full range, with a larger number being present to a fairly extreme degree. Some of the particular details are contradictory so that a person can appear to be both one thing and its opposite within the fixed overall framework. People are complex beings. Some of these possible behaviours include: Likes repetition, pattern and known detail. Dislikes flexibilities: - Paces in circles; jumps up and down - Wears the same clothes until almost threadbare, then replaces with something almost identical - Passes the time through constant little rituals - Likes repeated actions and sayings - Panics if small things are out of position - Likes routines that repeat the same known sequences, rather than being in unstructured settings - Needs strong preparations for doing things - Able to hold large or complex known patterns in head - Takes the same routes to places; doing things in the same order - Feels the need to fix or rearrange things or put them back where they belong - Activity patterns or play patterns are often repetitive - Can be unusually or compulsively attached to people or objects - Experiences difficulties in making the change from one activity to another - Has expectations that others will comply with the ‘script’ that is in their own head Discomfort around others; may prefer to be off to one side of activities; self-absorbed: - May prefer to have only a few friends, or a very small number of strong friends - May not respond when others want to interact with them - May respond to social interactions but rarely initiate these - Does not share own observations or experiences with others - Does not respond much to peer pressure - Rehearses roles from books/films etc and uses these to work out ways of behaving - Prefers to have some solitary times - Shows minimal acknowledgement of others - Has little interest in getting other people’s attentions, except for particular things - Withdraws into private world - Can run off if things feel too disturbing - Resists choices/options if others not acting as expected - Can appear difficult in a group/in class - Finds cooperation difficult - Confused by laughter or facial expressions of others - Able to amuse self; happy with own company - Finds others annoying, intrusive, illogical, threatening – which makes cooperative working difficult - When entering a place, will tend to head for an object rather than focus on a person - Little idea of how others expect them to behave in public Issues with verbal processing, language levels, pronunciations: - Repeats what is said, rather than holding own conversation - Doesn’t initiate conversation; chooses not to speak (or is unable to speak) - Replies with minimal answers (yes/no) - Talks in lists of nouns, with few qualifier words - Has difficulties with sequencing (letters into words; words into phrases) - Can have difficulties memorising texts/stories - Can have extensive vocabulary yet have intellectual difficulties in constructing longer sentences or texts - Prefers logical sequences; may not appreciate ambiguous phrases, idioms, metaphors, extended imagery etc - Can over-focus on accuracy, use of words - Difficulty comprehending words relating to positions or sequences or directions - Can have difficulties with orientation of written letters - May have motor difficulties in holding pencil/pens - Can have fascination with numbers, letters, stories - Can use over-flowery, artificial-sounding language constructions - Can focus on unusual imagery - Good receptive language skills, but weak productive/expressive language - Good expressive skills but difficulty in processing things said to them - Speaks unusually loudly or unusually quietly - Makes verbal noises whilst listening - Repeats the last word or phrase several times - Uses the person’s name excessively when speaking to them - Talks excessively about the same few topics - Overwhelmed by too many verbal directions - Pulls person’s hand to get them to move in a certain direction, rather than asking - May have a keen interest in books and reading (or have little interest/ability in reading) - May hold conversations quite adequately, but maybe slowly or hesitantly because of their processing speed - May have strong personal memories of people, places, events; strong sense of order and place - Inability to follow instructions - Finds it hard to work out the rules of social conversations - Constantly tuned into conversations of those nearby; tuned into many input sounds at same time - Speaks literally and directly Experiences strong reactions because of a lack of awareness of what others may be feeling - Lack of eye contact; or gazing for long times at same thing - Not tuned in to body language, gestures, facial expressions – or tunes in but misreads these - Assumes that others are thinking same as they are, and have same interests - Can be empathetic once realise others are feeling hurt - Sees things from a point of view that is different from many others - Studies other’s expressions intently (can prefer simplified, cartoon characters – which may be poor role models) - Refers to self in third person - Unaware of degree of pressure being used when hugging others; may squeeze too tightly or for too long - Has little interest in other people’s opinions or preferences - Gets too close to others for their comfort - Aware of self as somehow different from others Not comfortable with being centre of attention, or lot of questioning, or too much praise: - Dislikes self-promotion; will hold back on things until sure of own abilities - Immobilised by anxieties or by feeling that has done wrong - Other people’s commands seen as being unnecessary intrusions Over- or under-sensitive to light, noise, touch, strong tastes or smells: - Everyday world can feel like a sensory assault - Fascinated by patterns, shapes, lights - Clothes feel scratchy - Dislike of sudden loud noises such as sirens, hand-drier, and burst balloon. - Likes sensations of different textures/objects - Pressure on skin felt as discomforting; resists being held or touched - Strong dislikes/likes re food and drinks – intolerance of colours, textures, arrangements on plate etc - Prefers to have times in own small space (in/under/behind) - Good sense of hearing; hypersensitive to small sounds or distant sounds - Reduced sensation of pain Can like self-generated sensations; likes controlled sensations and getting sense of control over own environment: - Fidgets; stretches feet against surfaces - Self-stimulates with familiar actions and objects - Likes spinning round; likes swinging, and being swung - Chews nails - Hums to self; talks to self; sings to self - Clashes things together to hear sound; pounds things - Drops things onto hard surfaces; smashes things for the sensation that gives - Squeezes into tight spaces; likes sensation of being held fast (but can also avoid hugs or being stroked) - Can self-harm eg bangs hands, fists, head - Applies pressures to own body or to bodies of others - Listens to, or generates, chosen music or noises in order to drown out other, potentially overwhelming, sounds Emotionally reactive; lack of emotional self-regulation. Can feel out of control, confused, frightened or anxious: - Reacts physically to situations - Lashes out; hits; bites - Has sudden verbal outbursts - Grabs at things; puts hand (or something being held) in the way of others - Small things can be triggers for sudden mood-changes - Emotions can feel illogical and out-of-control: easily overwhelmed to trigger an inconsolable meltdown - Hard to channel energy that can seem unruly - Has difficulty self-regulating own levels of anxiety - Has low levels of control over own impulses when things get too much - Gets emotionally exhausted and shuts down - Struggles with own strong feelings - Has difficulty taking turns or waiting in line - Has nervous laughter as a quick response to things - Demolishes things; knocks things over if frustrated - Can have strong fears and phobias - Shrieks or screams, as a defence or as a release Difficulties learning from contexts; repeats same mistakes: - Unaware of consequences - Finds it hard to predict what will happen next - Unaware of the danger in situations - Unable to understand the motives of others; overly trusting or overly suspicious of others - Repeats the same actions, with the same outcomes - Difficulties transferring skills from one setting to another Can be clumsy; has irregular movements; likes large sweeping gestures - Easily breaks things - Unaware of reach of body; misjudges some distances - Slow at developing sport-skills, coordination, fine and gross motor skills - Low awareness of where body/arms/legs are in relation to other people or things - Irregular patterns of walking/movement; walks on toes Likes being imaginative, creative, explaining and researching/questioning - Seeks out universal principles; fascinated by rules and laws - Fascinated by number relationships and counting - Creates an imaginary world; invents fantasy scenarios - Takes on roles of characters and acts these out - Sticks to particularities, has difficulty jumping to generalities - Follows through literally on things - May be good at sequencing - Fascinated by how things work - Strong sense of relationship between objects; good sense of direction - Strong visual memory - Ambitious to success in improbable/impractical things - Good at observing detail - Relentlessly curious (stops to look at everything) - Always listening and observing - Likes catchphrases - Relates separate bits to combined wholes - Can concentrate for long times in focused situations; lacks concentration at other times Autism clearly exists. The general public simply need to be more aware and accepting of this. Beyond that, there is an urgent necessity for society to be more arranged in ways that are comfortable for autistic people rather than (as at the moment) making autistic people’s lives incredibly more difficult than they need be. All of this is possible, but none is simple. Take awareness and understanding: If autism can appear to be anything and everything in the above lists (drawn from descriptions by autistic people and organisations) then it becomes difficult to get those common understandings and shared conversations necessary if society is to leap forward rapidly in meeting the everyday needs of people with autism. This is just one of a number of puzzles that get thrown up when an innocent bystander wanders into the field of ‘what is autism’? Other potential sources of common confusions are explored in the next section. Some of the issues and difficulties around the public perceptions of autism Numbers, prevalence and persistence Autism is a condition that shows up in around 1-2% of the population. Even though this is low as a percentage, it represents significant numbers within the total population of a place like the UK. This figure is derived from recorded identifications based on closely observed behaviours. There may be a number of people not identified which would take the number up a bit but, relatively, it is still not very prevalent. On these figures a classroom teacher, over the average classroom-based span, may have to directly teach only a few autistic children. At the same time we should expect that all teachers are prepared (both in awareness, in attitudes and in teaching skills). Similarly, many employers may never employ autistic adults in sufficient numbers for them to really make permanent organisation-wide adaptations, but we should still expect employers to be prepared for the possibility of making suitable work arrangements around individuals’ particular needs. In many people’s minds autism is associated with children more than with adults, even though it might be expected that autistic children are likely to grow up to be autistic adults. Certainly, autism is related to the development of the brain and is therefore being set during the first years of life. There is currently a strong emphasis on early intervention, early help and a focus on the early years being seen as important in identifying those patterns of development that result in any lifelong condition. There is (as yet) no simple laboratory test for autism. However, the observation of different levels of proteins in autistic people has led to a suggestion that a simple blood test might one day be developed. At the moment, autism is identified through close observation by a person (often a doctor) with a good experience of autism, in conjunction with others such as speech and language therapist, neurologist, special education teacher. Nor is there any simple ‘cure’. Autism is seen as a lifelong feature of the person. The basis for this gets firmly put in place during the first few months/years of life in ways that make it resistant to any subsequent reshapings of neural networks. At the same time, the brain has an ongoing plasticity and a capacity for change so that some of the associated behaviours can be modified, as well as becoming more manageable through support and self-management. It may be that some traits that might have developed more strongly may be able to be left relatively dormant (but not eliminated) by careful control of environmental triggers. In one report, a proportion of those with a childhood identification of autism do not retain this as they get older. This could be because the individual characteristics reduce in effect as the brain continues to develop, or the person manages the internal pressures so that the results of these are less externally observable, or it could be a feature of the availability of ongoing assessment for (and availability of) ongoing support. Origins and causes Autism is the natural expressions resulting from a person’s particular brain development. It is not a simple genetic defect. It is more a situation/a condition, relying on a mix of multiple genetic influences with the environment – maybe even being sustained over one or two generations. Many of the same gene processes associated with autism also have the potential to affect the rest of the population, as if everyone has some genetic risk but not everyone has the outcomes determining autism. Research, and explanations, can be explored at three levels: genetic, neurological and cognitive (recognising that these are interconnected levels of activity). It might seem logical to suggest that gene activities determine neurological activities which, in turn, determine cognitive activities. At the same time, things may not be simply linear but may include a variety of feedback mechanisms between the levels of activities as well as within each level. There is lack of certainty about the specific causes of changes in child brain development. There have been a number of theories put forward (with the usual issues of correlation cf causation; sample size; etc). There are conflicting sets of evidence around some aspects. Things are often indicative rather than definitive. There is also the problem that autistic characteristics vary strongly across individuals and altered brain connectivities can be unique to each individual: so things that correlate with characteristics in one person may not correlate to the same degree with characteristics in another person. Possible causes have been attributed to many things: the effects of common chemicals (such as pesticides, flame-retardants in furniture and clothing, plasticisers in tubes and bottles, gut bacteria and much else) which may have the potential for interference with brain chemical developments at various key stages (embryo, foetus, infant, teenage). Other potential linkages have been made between an increased risk of autism in children with a family history of those auto-immune diseases (eg hypothyroidism, psoriasis) where there is a failure in the body’s ability to recognise itself. Neurological studies involving brain scanning have advanced some understandings of brain developments. Comparison of autistic/non-autistic children has indicated various lines of thought, but can still be ambiguous (eg brain enlargement in some areas/ brain underdevelopment in others? Larger than usual number of neurons? More nerve fibres running from inputs, eg to auditory cortex, and on to two areas of brain associated with processing feelings and monitoring/evaluating emotions?) Where autism is seen as requiring a small number of developmental impairments all to be in place together (as in the three defining impairments most commonly put forward), this raises the question of whether or not they all stem from the same root cause. In some cases where two of the impairments seem closely related, the third may hardly be affected – or not sufficiently enough to meet the overall conditions for autism to be diagnosed. It appears that the three commonly proposed impairments are relatively independent of each other, emerge at different times, with different trajectories and may have different likelihoods of effect. This suggests three separate, or loosely linked, causes rather than one single underlying one. Rather than simple mechanisms there may be chains of relationships eg. Behaviours might get associated with increased levels of serotonin in the developing brain; this can itself get linked to a mother’s exposure to selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors; with other further linked ’causes’ being put forward as some form of chain sequence. Other things can be thrown into the mix, in the way that there has been a recent suggestion that excessive uptake of folic acid may play some role (which itself has to sit alongside evidence that intake of folic acid can be a protective factor); or the overdevelopment/underdevelopment of connections across different parts of the brain; or unusual levels of particular immune cells; or a host of other suggestions. Of course, various suggested causes have been rigorously put forward in the past and widely believed initially only to be later dismissed. Whatever the origins there may be no single ’cause’ but a range of ‘development pathways’. We may always be in a ‘best-yet’ position of understandings and explainings that get refined and amended over time. There is a social-determination aspect as well. The more society becomes fast-moving, complex, making rapid-response demands on people, and inundating people with noise and jagged flows of information from a variety of mechanical and electronic sources, and ramping up testing regimes of one kind or another at school – then the more any autistic traits will be highlighted. One ‘solution’, if it were only possible, would be to slow society down and make it a quieter, more orderly, more manageable/flexible place for everyone. For families experiencing autism there may well be less interest in speculating about causes and more interest in practical outcomes. Within all of the above, it has to be remembered that autism remains a lived reality in the lives of many families and individuals, whose time and energies get taken up in managing their situation within a wider set of social attitudes and structures. Social attitudes and levels of awareness In the absence of a wider social awareness of autism, children can easily be seen as oversensitive, overdramatic, naughty, spoilt, slow etc. Parents can be seen as overprotective, over-lenient, fussy, difficult, inadequate etc. Adults can be seen as detached, linear, literal, socially awkward, geeky etc. With more awareness, autistic people can be seen as having unique personalities, having a number of difficulties and having a range of positive attributes. Again, with wider awareness and clearer understandings, some of the difficulties that society puts in the way can be reduced or removed. Labels and language used There is a degree of clunkiness to the terminologies used. As with all situations, different terminologies have been used over time, across countries, or in different settings. – some of which a proportion of people find helpful; and some of which a proportion of people find unhelpful or offensive. A person can be said to be autistic, or be affected by autism, or have autism, or have autistic tendencies, or be on the autism spectrum, or exhibit autism spectrum disorder, or have an autistic condition – each of which is open to its own range of interpretations, understandings, misunderstandings and disagreements. Autism is described as being a spectral condition – but this, itself, has been understood (and misunderstood) in different ways, some of which include: - There is a spectrum of neurological disorders with autism at its core - There is a spectrum of autisms ie several autisms rather than a single thing - There is a variety of things that were once viewed as separate conditions but which are, now, more commonly seen as all being the single spectrum of autistic conditions - People can be in different positions on a range of types of autism (strongly autistic/mildly autistic; low functioning/high functioning etc). - Each person has their own profile spectrum of distinctive social communications and behaviours - Each autistic individual demonstrates all of the various autism-associated characteristics, but to different intensities – so each has their personal spectrum of observable behaviours. Whether correct or not, all of the above regularly appear in various popular articles about autism. One of the more useful ways of describing this ‘spectrum’ idea is that there is a range of issues (communication issues; social awareness issues; strength of mindset issues; information-processing issues; sensory-processing issues; behaviours issues; control of emotions issues) which can each be disabling in everyday life. Many people can have one or two of these impacting on their life. Autism, however, is where all (or most) of these exist, strongly, interacting together – so one either is/is not autistic (compared with ‘most people being a bit autistic…’). The differing intensities with which each of the several aspects occur can be unique to each autistic individual – ie each person has their own unique profile across all of the existing issues. Information about autism is becoming much more readily available in magazines, on websites, in books and through TV programmes. One result is that the issue is sometimes not a lack of information but a lack of interpretation of that information. It is understandable, therefore, that the general public have some difficulties getting to grips with what autism is/is not. The discussions have been particularly clouded around a number of recurring points: - Because some of the fragmentary behaviours commonly associated with autism can be observed within non-autistic people, there is a commonly-held belief that ‘we can all be a bit autistic’. This belief is reinforced by talk of there being an autistic spectrum, or of a person being on the autistic spectrum, which leaves room for people to wrongly believe that there is a linear gradient from non-autistic to fully-autistic. - There is a broad range of conditions that are classified as being autism(s) which have recently been gathered under one heading. It is difficult for many people to work with the idea that there is one entity that has a myriad of versions so diverse that we are left with each case being individual yet there being some defining features common to such a broad range. - Autism is highly individual in how it is developed in each person. This makes it difficult for those people who need to see clear types or well-defined symptoms. For every way in which autistic characteristics are manifested in one individual they may know of examples that run counter to that. - In popular culture autism has often been linked to being a genius or having special skills even where this is clearly not the universal case. - Autism, as a label, has taken on the normal collection of strong feelings (by those most closely involved with it) about what are approved ways of describing it. This creates the drives for stronger awareness, for better understanding, for more support. At the same time, if there is an over-fixation of positions and viewpoints, there is likely to be a reduction in people’s willingness to stay open to fresh ideas and insights. - On the street, in everyday life, it is the observable behaviours that are noticed. There is currently a strong emphasis on young children, parenting, behaviour management, upbringing, relationships etc. It then becomes easiest for bystanders to see children’s behaviour in these terms rather than as potentially being linked to autism. Does any of this matter? There is a growing awareness that autism has its complexities. In parallel, there is a need to get some clearer understandings in the way autism gets talked about and portrayed, in order that there is improvement in society’s general awareness of what autism is, is not, or can be – and, beyond simple awareness, so that society can order itself better to meet the needs of a wider range of people than at present. Has this exploring got anywhere? Despite its wordiness, this exploration around some of the issues connected to understanding autism can be seen as having some fixed points as pointers for any interested individual wanting to undertake further thinking. These include: There is an identifiable thing that is defined as autism. Yet every autistic individual is uniquely different; autism can be manifested in a wide variety of different fragments of behaviour; it gets entangled with other conditions (each of which may have its own range of understandings). This then clouds what can be pinned down as being ‘this thing called autism’ as a precise condition that can be so definitely observed and assessed. Areas of misunderstanding are likely to continue, making broader awareness harder to get to, which then delays any required structural and cultural improvements in society in general. In summary: Awareness is increasing but more needs to be done if there is to be a broad and proper understanding of what autism is, and is not, and that any generalisations can play out differently at the level of the individual person. We are still far from bringing about the widespread social changes necessary to accommodate the things that autistic people have to manage. We are even further from recognising the aspects of autism that require consistent and good-quality education, health, welfare support, justice systems, if the positive characteristics of all autistic people are to develop.

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In August 2021, the Taliban took Afghanistan by force for the second time in their history. This event coupled with the hasty US withdrawal ended the bloodiest and longest war of the United States. Amid the withdrawal of foreign troops, the lingering issue of ethnic discord once again is rearing its ugly head across Afghanistan. Afghanistan, unlike many other nation states, is an ethnically diverse country that has many ethnicities in sizable populations. It is a country of minorities, with no ethnic group representing a majority of the population. Of these ethnicities, the four major groups are Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazaras. There are also other sub-nationalities and ethnicities like Turkmens, Nuristanis, Aimaq, Baloch, and others. The Pashtuns, which comprise up to 40 percent of the population, have managed to rule the country for the last one and a half-centuries with the exception of three periods in the twentieth century. Rewinding back to the late nineteenth century, Afghanistan was created as a “buffer zone” between the British Raj in India and the Tsarist Empire in Russia, which took over Central Asia. It was thus under the suzerainty of the British, making Afghanistan’s foreign policy dependent on Calcutta, the seat of the Raj. The British and their indirect rulers in Afghanistan, the Pashtun elites, were well aware of the ethnolinguistic diversity of the country. They therefore developed a highly centralized political order right from the outset. Mastermind of this centralized political order was Amir Abd Ur Rahman, who was installed by the British and received annual cash payments and ammunition to pacify the population and establish a centralized monarchy. This political order not only favored Pashtuns but also sowed the seeds of ethnic discord in Afghanistan. Such ethnic discord has now transformed into an existential threat to the country. Fast forward to 1996, and the Taliban—a group dominated by Pashtuns—marginalized the other ethnic communities of Afghanistan during their stint in power. Now, the Taliban is once again at the helm of political affairs and as such the group has already repeated its history despite its claim of forming an inclusive national government. This time, however, Afghanistan’s other ethnic communities will not tolerate a centralized, Pashtun-exclusive government. Consequently, the uncompromising attitude of the militant group will likely only lead to another bloody civil war or the permanent geographical disintegration of Afghanistan. The birth of a monster: Ethnic discord in Afghanistan Globally, there have been two major models of nation state formation: multicultural and homogenous. In Afghanistan, the Pashtun political elite have historically carried out the attempted homogenization of society in order to suppress revolts by hostile groups or nationalities. Homogenization also can involve the process of relocating members of one ethnic community to the lands of other nationalities or communities. In the colonial period, this homogenization of society was common and frequently used by colonial powers for controlling their colonies. For instance, after conquering Central Asia, Tsarist Russia followed the policy of homogenization of conquered lands and as a consequence, one can now see a sizable chunk of Russian population and culture in the independent Central Asian states. The Pashtun kings of Afghanistan followed the same policy of homogenization for diluting other ethnic populations in their lands. Amir Abd Ur Rahman—famous among Pashtuns as the “Iron Amir” of the late nineteenth century—followed such a policy. Rahman learned the homogenization technique from Tsarist Russia while he was living in exile in Central Asia. Rahman pursued the policy in 1885 and relocated many Pashtun tribes from the south and southeast parts of Afghanistan to the north, northeast, northwest, and central parts of the country. Traditionally, Pashtuns were predominantly in the south and southeast of the country while the north, northeast, west, and central parts of the country belong to Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras, and other ethnic communities. Until 1885, Pashtun tribes were relocated to the north and central parts of the country as a punishment. After 1885, however, Rahman persuaded Pashtun tribes to migrate towards northern and central parts of the country through economic and other incentives. At that time, the government reimbursed travel expenses of the migrating Pashtun tribes, granted them cultivable lands seized from other communities, and exempted them from taxes for three years. In return, no one from other ethnic groups from the northern and central parts of Afghanistan were allowed to move to eastern and southern parts of Afghanistan where Pashtuns had previously dominated. In consequence, not only were a huge number of Pashtun tribes relocated into the lands of Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras, and the Baloch, but many of the tribes of the latter ethnicities were forced to leave their lands. Mass migration of the Hazaras, Nuristanis, and Baloch tribes into neighboring Persia and then-India are examples of this cruel and biased policy of Amir Abd Ur Rahman. This policy continued in subsequent governments until King Amanullah Khan institutionalized it by issuing The Settlers to Qataghan Act of 1923. King Amanullah’s successors maintained it just the same until 1973 and the end of monarchy in Afghanistan. Today it continues under the Taliban and has even intensified. It was also an attempt to subdue the Tajiks, Hazaras, and Uzbeks through “Pashtunization” of the north, west, and center of Afghanistan. As the northern territories of the kingdom were not under the control of Pashtun dynasties until the late nineteenth century, the aim was to bend the Tajik and Turk population of the north. The reason for this homogenization policy was to disconnect Tajiks and Uzbeks from their fellow community members in Afghanistan and the other side of the northern border. This move was to secure the northern border from the threats and infiltration of Russians. In addition, it was an attempt to subdue the Tajiks, Hazaras, and Uzbeks through Pashtunization of the north, west and center of Afghanistan. The Pashtun rulers wanted to effectively control the northern parts of the country which, due to its many marginalized non-Pashtun populations, were at odds with the central government. The Pashtun elite also wanted to benefit from the fertile lands in the north. With these factors in mind, starting in 1885 the seeds of ethnic discord were sowed in Afghanistan and would have a lasting impact that can still be felt today. From 1885 until today, this movement of Pashtun tribes from the south and southeast of Afghanistan (and other side of the Durand Line) to the northern and central parts of the country continued at a different pace and consequently the Pashtun population in the north and center steadily increased. Not only did the population of Pashtuns increase in the northern areas, but the developmental projects in these parts were executed to favor the Pashtun settlements. This further fueled ethnic discord and members of other ethnicities felt that they were only second-class citizens of the country. After the Soviet invasion in 1979, President Babrak Karmal rose to power and for the first time in history, Pashtun political dominance came to an end. Unfortunately, with the defeat of the Soviets and the conquest of the Taliban in 1996 Pashtuns once again, emerged as the dominant political and military group in the country. After capturing Kabul in 1996, the Taliban continued their Pashtun-centric policies and marginalized other ethnic communities. Throughout their rule, the Taliban were fiercely opposed by the United Front, a loose military conglomerate of Tajiks and other ethnicities led by Ahmad Shah Massoud. The United Front played a key role in dislodging the Taliban from Kabul. Their stronghold, the Panjshir Valley, was used as a launching pad for ground operations by the United States and allies in the 2001 invasion. After the fall of the Taliban in 2001, an interim government was established in the country. This US-backed constitutional and democratic political order, however, had a cardinal sin: it revived the same highly centralized political and administrative system through the 2004 constitution. Consequently, the shortcomings of old resurfaced yet again in an overly centralized political order backed by powerful western sponsors. As Afghanistan entered this new period in 2001, ethnic discord would continue to sow turbulence and instability across the country. The current state of affairs In August 2021, the Taliban insurgency finally prevailed and the group is in control of the capital once again. The new Taliban government is predominantly composed of Pashtun Taliban members and less than ten percent of the key posts and ministries are allocated to other ethnic groups, with no women represented. Even the less than ten percent of non-Pashtun individuals in the government are allocated to those who nevertheless subscribe to Taliban views and are active Taliban members. Even after announcing a general amnesty for the population of Afghanistan and former government officials in particular, the Taliban has arrested and tortured employees and army members from the previous government. They not only evict people from their lands but also burn down their homes. According to Human Rights Watch, “in early October 2021, the Taliban and associated militias forcibly evicted hundreds of Hazara families from the southern Helmand province and the northern Balkh province. These evictions followed earlier evictions from Kunduz, Daikundi, Uruzgan, and Kandahar provinces.” The lands of these non-Pashtun families are then redistributed to Pashtuns and Taliban sympathizers. Similarly, the Taliban also arbitrarily arrests individuals that criticize their atrocities and draconian rule. For instance, the Taliban arrested University Professor Faizullah Jalal when he publicly criticized the militant group in a live TV show. Though they later released him, this was not an isolated incident. According to media reports, the Taliban have imprisoned scores of individuals including women for mere expression of their opinions. Such discriminatory policies and practices of the Taliban this time are only reinforcing the narrative of other marginalized ethnic groups that they have few rights in the so-called Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. This time, this barbaric and centralized rule of the militant group is not acceptable to the members of other ethnicities. For instance, the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan—an anti-Taliban movement based in northern Afghanistan—is campaigning for a decentralized political order in Afghanistan. The movement stressed this aim through dialogue directly with their arch enemy, the Taliban. At a three-day meeting between the Taliban and the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan hosted by Iran in January of this year, representatives of the movement presented the proposal for a decentralized political order to the Taliban representatives chaired by Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi, which was rejected by the Taliban. Sibghatullah Ahmadi, spokesman for the National Resistance front, said in an interview with BBC Farsi after the talks, “on the third day of the meeting, the Taliban angrily left the talks and rejected our demands for a decentralized government with the presence of women, respect for women’s rights, citizens’ rights, and respect for freedom of speech and expression. He added, “the issue of women’s rights, children’s rights, establishing a lawful government through a fair election, eliminating tyranny, freedom of expression, and changing the system to decentralized are our red lines and we will never cross these red lines.” Several factors have led to the realization of other ethnicities that they must be included in the political order of the country. The first of these factors is the role of Babrak Karmal. The Babrak Karmal era empowered marginalized ethnic groups for the first time in Afghanistan. The second significant factor was the formation of the United Front. The United Front successfully defended their stronghold in the northeast against the Soviets and then against the Taliban in the late 1990s. Also, the United Front played a key role in defeating the militant group in 2001 along with foreign troops. The third factor of their empowerment is the experience of a US-backed constitutional and democratic political order in which they had a considerable say in governmental affairs, at least until former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani used his presidential powers to marginalize them. Ghani, during his eight years in office, had a very hostile relationship with non-Pashtun political leaders, and always sought to marginalize them. For example, General Abdul Rashid Dostum, who belongs to the Uzbek ethnic group of Afghanistan and has large influence among Uzbeks, was Ghani’s running mate in the 2014 presidential election. Once the election was over and Ghani won the votes of Uzbeks, he increasingly excluded Dostum from Afghanistan political affairs. He even spent the last two years of his vice presidency in exile in Istanbul. Likewise, he had a very controversial relationship with the leaders of other ethnic groups in Afghanistan, specifically the Tajiks and the Hazaras. Ghani, who himself is a Pashtun, during the eight years of his rule implemented many ethnic policies that favored a particular ethnic group (Pashtuns). During his eight year presidency, he made several controversial decisions that fueled political tensions among the country’s ethnic groups. For example, he repealed a law passed in parliament that would have allowed each citizen to choose what ethnicity they belong to. Instead, he issued a law that classified everyone as “Afghan.” Many non-Pashtuns do not consider themselves to be “Afghan,” a term that many in the country consider to refer to the Pashtun tribes. In addition, the eight-year government of President Ghani was always accused of systemic ethnic favoritism to Pashtuns. In September 2017, the daily newspaper Etilaat Roz published the details of a leaked memo in the Administrative Office of the President showing that jobs were awarded with an eye to keeping control in the hands of Pashtuns while giving the appearance of diversity. Similarly, in November 2017, another leaked memo published in the Afghanistan’s press showed that Ghani’s administration implemented the same policies in security sectors. Finally, the availability of social media and rising education access over the past twenty years also shaped youth perspectives on the state and society. This enthusiastic youth is demanding a just political order in which every individual has the right to govern through democratic means. Because of these factors, strong political opposition and a robust civil society developed in the country since 2001. For instance, Fawzia Koofi, a prominent leader of the Movement of Change in Afghanistan and a member of the Afghanistan delegation that negotiated with the Taliban in Doha, stated in an exclusive interview, “in Afghanistan, the political structure has always been such that one person is the decision-maker, and politically there has been an oral agreement that the main power should belong to a particular ethnic group and the speaker of a particular ethnic group (Pashtun). And this had always led to being in a way that political power must be in the hands of Pashtuns, administrative power in the hands of Tajiks, service works usually to Hazaras, and commercial and land-related work to the Uzbeks.” Similarly, in another exclusive interview, Dr. Latif Pedram, the founder and leader of the Afghanistan National Congress Party, maintained that “with the withdrawal of foreign troops, another war has begun in Afghanistan which is caused by ethnic injustices.” These political and civil society leaders have changed the people’s perspective about the government in the country and now the common person in Afghanistan demands a just political order that is responsive to the needs of every ethnic group rather than favoring the Pashtun elite. This time around, the Taliban will need to deal with a hostile population across the northern, central, and western parts of the country. In addition, the Taliban has also to face the armed forces of the National Resistance Front. Neither will compromise on their right to self-govern. On the other hand, the Taliban had made it clear that the group will rule via an excessively centralized political order where only the Pashtun elite will hold power. Given these factors, Afghanistan will likely head either towards a bloody civil war akin to the 1990s or to geographical disintegration. Still, there is a third likelihood, and this is that the country may transform into a functioning state. For this to occur, it will require a decentralized and just political order. The way out As discussed, Afghanistan is on the verge of yet another catastrophe, be it civil war or geographical disintegration. That said, it is not too late. The marginalized ethnic communities of Afghanistan are a formidable force for the Taliban to reckon with, but they can still coexist if a decentralized and just political order is established. Prominent figures from Afghanistan’s opposition and civil society are demanding the establishment of a decentralized government in the country. In the same interview, Fawzia Koofi also argued that “the issue of Afghanistan is ethnic. And to prevent ethnic wars and solve Afghanistan’s problems, and to prevent further destabilization of Afghanistan, power must be properly decentralized.” Similarly, Dr. Latif Pedram also argued that Taliban rule is unacceptable and due to the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate, the country is headed towards disintegration. In his words, “Afghanistan is collapsing due to ethnic injustice, class strife, oppression, and ethnic supremacy. At present, if the framework of such a country is to be maintained and rebuilt, a new social contract needs agreed upon, and this new social contract must be a federal government to maintain the framework. Otherwise, disintegration is the only solution.” In an interview with National Resistance Front leader Ahmad Massoud and Stefanie Glinski, Massoud argued that decentralization is the only solution to the Afghanistan dilemma. In April 2020, he published an op-ed in The New York Times announcing this demand. The united ethnic groups will put up stiff resistance to the centralized and unjust Taliban government which may ultimately lead to another bloody civil war or geographical disintegration. If the Taliban want peace to prevail in the country then they must tread the path of decentralization and the establishment of a just political order in Afghanistan. Decentralization means that political and administrative systems must be transmitted to the grassroots level. This objective can be achieved by several political arrangements. The first political arrangement is a federalist system like in neighboring Pakistan. But the problem of a federal state is that it requires a strong central government that has considerable say in the affairs of federating units. So, federalism is not for Afghanistan as in federalism, political power will likely once again become concentrated in the hands of one ethnic group. The next model of decentralization is a confederate state. In a confederate state, all the participating states form a loose coalition while retaining strong local governments. An example of decentralization of this type is in Switzerland. Though Afghanistan can’t achieve the level of decentralization that exists in Switzerland, it can learn from Switzerland’s model. There may be other forms of political decentralization that can solve Afghanistan’s dilemma as well. These forms of decentralization can be studied and then tailored to the needs of the country, but what is required now of all stakeholders and particularly of the Taliban is to discuss and agree on a new social contract and political order for the country. This new social contract and political order must be based on the principles of decentralization and social justice if the country wants to remain peaceful, intact, and sovereign. Natiq Malikzada is a freelance journalist and holds a master’s degree in International Relations and Middle Eastern Affairs. He tweets @natiqmalikzada. The South Asia Center serves as the Atlantic Council’s focal point for work on the region as well as relations between these countries, neighboring regions, Europe, and the United States. SouthAsiaSource Feb 28, 2022 An aid-trade corridor is key to the Afghan economy’s revival By Gul Maqsood Sabit Humanitarian assistance is a temporary solution to a long-term problem in Afghanistan. To reduce aid dependency and give hope to a suffering population, it is essential that the economy remains somewhat functional and the Afghan currency holds some value. SouthAsiaSource Feb 16, 2022 Experts react: Biden administration decision to split frozen Afghan funds By Atlantic Council Experts On February 11, 2022, US President Joe Biden issued an executive order paving the way for the splitting of $7 billion in frozen funds controlled by the former Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. This move has caused significant controversy.

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Bay of Pigs Invasion The story of the failed invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs is one of mismanagement, overconfidence, and lack of security. The blame for the failure of the operation falls directly in the lap of the Central Intelligence Agency and a young president and his advisors. The fall out from the invasion caused a rise in tension between the two great superpowers and ironically 40 years after the event, the person that the invasion meant to topple, Fidel Castro, is still in power. To understand the origins of the invasion and its ramifications for the future it is first necessary to look at the invasion and its origins. The Bay of Pigs invasion of April 1961, started a few days before on April 15th with the bombing of Cuba by what appeared to be defecting Cuban air force pilots. At 6 a.m. in the morning of that Saturday, B-26 bombers bombed three Cuban military bases. The airfields at Camp Libertad, San Antonio de los Baos and Antonio Maceo airport at Santiago de Cuba were fired upon. Seven people were killed at Libertad and forty-seven people were killed at other sites on the island. Two of the B-26s left Cuba and flew to Miami, apparently to defect to the United States. The Cuban Revolutionary Council, the government in exile, in New York City released a statement saying that the bombings in Cuba were . . . carried out by ‘Cubans inside Cuba’ who were ‘in contact with’ the top command of the Revolutionary Council . . .. The New York Times reporter covering the story alluded to something being wrong with the whole situation when he wondered how the council knew the pilots were coming if the pilots had only decided to leave Cuba on Thursday after ” . . . a suspected betrayal by a fellow pilot had precipitated a plot to strike . . .. Whatever the case, the planes came down in Miami later that morning, one landed at Key West Naval Air Station at 7:00 a.m. and the other at Miami International Airport at 8:20 a.m. Both planes were badly damaged and their tanks were nearly empty. On the front page of The New York Times the next day, a picture of one of the B-26s was shown along with a picture of one of the pilots cloaked in a baseball hat and hiding behind dark sunglasses, his name was withheld. A sense of conspiracy was even at this early stage beginning to envelop the events of that week. In the early hours of April 17th the assault on the Bay of Pigs began. In the true cloak and dagger spirit of a movie, the assault began at 2 a.m. with a team of frogmen going ashore with orders to set up landing lights to indicate to the main assault force the precise location of their objectives, as well as to clear the area of anything that may impede the main landing teams to be added when they arrived. At 2:30 a.m. and at 3:00 a.m. two battalions came ashore at Playa Giron and one battalion at Playa Larga beaches. The troops at Playa Giron had orders to move west, northwest, up the coast and meet with the troops at Playa Larga in the middle of the bay. A small group of men were then to be sent north to the town of Jaguey Grande to secure it as well. When looking at a modern map of Cuba it is obvious that the troops would have problems in the area that was chosen for them to land at. The area around the Bay of Pigs is a swampy marsh land area which would be hard on the troops. The Cuban forces were quick to react and Castro ordered his T-33 trainer jets, two Sea Furies, and two B-26s into the air to stop the invading forces. Off the coast were the command and control ship and another vessel carrying supplies for the invading forces. The Cuban air force made quick work of the supply ships, sinking the command vessel the Marsopa and the supply ship the Houston, blasting them to pieces with five- inch rockets. In the end the 5th battalion was lost, which was on the Houston, as well as the supplies for the landing teams and eight other smaller vessels. With some of the invading forces’ ships destroyed, and no command and control ship, the logistics of the operation soon broke down as the other supply ships were kept at bay by Casto’s air force. As with many failed military adventures, one of the problems with this one was with supplying the troops. In the air, Castro had easily won superiority over the invading force. His fast moving T-33s, although unimpressive by today’s standards, made short work of the slow moving B-26s of the invading force. On Tuesday, two were shot out of the sky and by Wednesday the invaders had lost 10 of their 12 aircraft. With air power firmly in control of Castro’s forces, the end was near for the invading army. Over the 72 hours the Cubans pounded the invading forces of about 1500 men. Casto fired 122mm. Howitzers, 22mm. cannon, and tank fire at them. By Wednesday the invaders were pushed back to their landing zone at Playa Girn. Surrounded by Castro’s forces some began to surrender while others fled into the hills. In total 114 men were killed in the slaughter while thirty-six died as prisoners in Cuban cells. Others were to live out twenty years or more in those cells as men plotting to topple the government of Castro. The 1500 men of the invading force never had a chance for success from almost the first days in the planning stage of the operation. Operation Pluto, as it came to be known as, has its origins in the last dying days of the Eisenhower administration and that murky time period during the transition of power to the newly elected president John F. Kennedy. The origins of American policy in Latin America in the late 1950s and early 1960s has its origins in American’s economic interests and its anticommunist policies in the region. The same man who had helped formulate American containment policy towards the Soviet threat, George Kennan, in 1950 spoke to US Chiefs of Mission in Rio de Janeiro about Latin America. He said that American policy had several purposes in the region, . . . to protect the vital supplies of raw materials which Latin American countries export to the USA; to prevent the ‘military exploitation of Latin America by the enemy’ [The Soviet Union]; and to avert ‘the psychological mobilization of Latin America against us.’ . . . . By the 1950s trade with Latin America accounted for a quarter of American exports, and 80 per cent of the investment in Latin America was also American. The Americans had a vested interest in the region that it would remain pro-American. The Guatemalan adventure can be seen as another of the factors that lead the American government to believe that it could handle Casto. Before the Second World War ended, a coup in Guatemala saw the rise to power of Juan Jose Arvalo. He was not a communist in the traditional sense of the term, but he . . . packed his government with Communist Party members and Communist sympathizers.” In 1951 Jacobo Arbenz succeeded Arvalo after an election in March of that year. The party had been progressing with a series of reforms, and the newly elected leader continued with these reforms. During land reforms a major American company, the United Fruit Company, lost its land and other holdings without any compensation from the Guatemalan government. When the Guatemalans refused to go to the International Court of Law, United Fruit began to lobby the government of the United States to take action. In the government they had some very powerful supporters. Among them was Foster Dulles, Secretary of State who had once been their lawyer, his brother Allen the Director of Central Intelligence who was a shareholder, and Robert Cutler head of the National Security Council. In what was a clear conflict of interest, the security apparatus of the United States decided to take action against the Guatemalans. From May 1st, 1954, to June 18th, the Central Intelligence Agency did everything in its power to overthrow the government of Arbenz. On June 17th to the 18th, it peaked with an invasion of 450 men lead by a Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas. With the help of air support the men took control of the country and Arbenz fled to the Mexican Embassy. By June 27th, the country was firmly in control of the invading force. With its success in Guatemala, CIA had the confidence that it could now take on anyone who interfered with American interests. In late 1958 Castro was still fighting a guerilla war against the corrupt regime of Fulgencio Batista. Before he came to power, there was an incident between his troops and some vacationing American troops from the nearby American naval base at Guantanamo Bay. During the incident some US Marines were held captive by Casto’s forces but were later released after a ransom was secretly paid. This episode soured relations with the United States and the chief of U.S. Naval Operations, Admiral Burke, wanted to send in the Marines to destroy Castro’s forces then but Secretary of State Foster Dulles disagreed with the measures suggested and stopped the plan. Castro overthrew Batista in 1959. Originally Castro was not a communist either and even had meetings with then Vice-President Richard Nixon. Fearful of Castro’s revolution, people with money, like doctors, lawyers, and the mafia, left Cuba for the United States. To prevent the loss of more capital Castro’s solution was to nationalize some of the businesses in Cuba. In the process of nationalizing some business he came into conflict with American interests just as Arbenz had in Guatemala. “. . . legitimate U.S. Businesses were taken over, and the process of socialization begun with little if any talk of compensation.” There were also rumours of Cuban involvement in trying to invade Panama, Guatemala, and the Dominican Republic and by this time Castro had been turn down by the United States for any economic aid. Being rejected by the Americans, he met with foreign minister Anasta Mikoyan to secure a $100 million loan from the Soviet Union. It was in this atmosphere that the American Intelligence and Foreign Relations communities decided that Castro was leaning towards communism and had to be dealt with. In the spring of 1960, President Eisenhower approved a plan to send small groups of American trained, Cuban exiles, to work in the underground as guerrillas to overthrow Castro. By the fall, the plan was changed to a full invasion with air support by exile Cubans in American supplied planes. The original group was to be trained in Panama, but with the growth of the operation and the quickening pace of events in Cuba, it was decided to move things to a base in Guatemala. The plan was becoming rushed and this would start to show, the man in charge of the operation, CIA Deputy Director Bissell said that, . . . There didn’t seem to be time to keep to the original plan and have a large group trained by this initial cadre of young Cubans. So the larger group was formed and established at La finca, in Guatemala, and there the training was conducted entirely by Americans . . . . It was now fall and a new president had been elected. President Kennedy could have stopped the invasion if he wanted to, but he probably didn’t do so for several reasons. Firstly, he had campaigned for some form of action against Cuba and it was also the height of the cold war, to back out now would mean having groups of Cuban exiles travelling around the globe saying how the Americans had backed down on the Cuba issue. In competition with the Soviet Union, backing out would make the Americans look like wimps on the international scene, and for domestic consumption the new president would be seen as backing away from one of his campaign promises. The second reason Kennedy probably didn’t abort the operation is the main reason why the operation failed, problems with the CIA. Part II: Failure and Ramifications. The failure at the CIA led to Kennedy making poor decisions which would affect future relations with Cuba and the Soviet Union. The failure at CIA had three causes. First the wrong people were handling the operation, secondly the agency in charge of the operation was also the one providing all the intelligence for the operation, and thirdly for an organization supposedly obsessed with security the operation had security problems. In charge of the operation was the Director of Central Intelligence, Allan Dulles and main responsibility for the operation was left to one of his deputies, Richard Bissell. In an intelligence community geared mainly for European operations against the USSR, both men were lacking in experience in Latin American affairs. Those in charge of Operation Pluto, based this new operation on the success of the Guatemalan adventure, but the situation in Cuba was much different than that in Guatemala. In Guatemala the situation was still chaotic and Arbenz never had the same control over the country that Castro had on Cuba. The CIA had the United States Ambassador, John Puerifoy, working on the inside of Guatemala coordinating the effort, in Cuba they had none of this while Castro was being supplied by the Soviet block. In addition, after the overthrow of the government in Guatemala, Castro was aware that this may happen to him as well and probably had his guard up waiting for anything that my indicate that an invasion was imminent. The second problem was the nature of the bureaucracy itself. The CIA was a new kid on the block and still felt that it had to prove itself, it saw its opportunity in Cuba. Obsessed with secrecy, it kept the number of people involved to a minimum. The intelligence wing of CIA was kept out of it, their Board of National Estimates could have provided information on the situation in Cuba and the chances for an uprising against Castro once the invasion started. Also kept out of the loop were the State Department and the Joint Chiefs of Staff who could have provided help on the military side of the adventure. In the end, the CIA kept all the information for itself and passed on to the president only what it thought he should see. Lucien S. Vandenbroucke, in Political Science Quarterly of 1984, based his analysis of the Bay of Pigs failure on organizational behaviour theory. He says that the CIA “. . . supplied President Kennedy and his advisers with chosen reports on the unreliability of Castro’s forces and the extent of Cuban dissent.” Of the CIA’s behaviour he concludes that, . . . By resorting to the typical organization strategy of defining the options and providing the information required to evaluate them, the CIA thus structured the problem in a way that maximized the likelihood the president would choose the agency’s preferred option . . . . The CIA made sure the deck was stacked in their favour when the time came to decide whether a project they sponsored was sound or not. President Kennedy’s Secretary of State at the time was Dean Rusk, in his autobiography he says that, . . . The CIA told us all sorts of things about the situation in Cuba and what would happen once the brigade got ashore. President Kennedy received information which simply was not correct. For example, we were told that elements of the Cuban armed forces would defect and join the brigade, that there would be popular uprisings throughout Cuba when the brigade hit the beach, and that if the exile force got into trouble, its members would simply melt into the countryside and become guerrillas, just as Castro had done . . . . As for senior White House aides, most of them disagreed with the plan as well, but Rusk says that Kennedy went with what the CIA had to say. As for himself, he said that he “. . . did not serve President Kennedy very well . . .” and that he should have voiced his opposition louder. He concluded that “. . . I should have made my opposition clear in the meetings themselves because he [Kennedy] was under pressure from those who wanted to proceed.” When faced with biased information from the CIA and quiet advisors, it is no wonder that the president decided to go ahead with the operation. For an organization that deals with security issues, the CIA’s lack of security in the Bay of Pigs operation is ironic. Security began to break down before the invasion when The New York Times reporter Tad Szulc “. . . learned of Operation Pluto from Cuban friends. . .” earlier that year while in Costa Rica covering an Organization of American States meeting. Another breakdown in security was at the training base in Florida, . . . Local residents near Homestead [air force base] had seen Cubans drilling and heard their loudspeakers at a farm. As a joke some firecrackers were thrown into the compound . . . . The ensuing incident saw the Cubans firing their guns and the federal authorities having to convince the local authorities not to press charges. Operation Pluto was beginning to get blown wide open, the advantage of surprise was lost even this early in the game. After the initial bombing raid of April 15th, and the landing of the B-26s in Florida, pictures of the planes were taken and published in newspapers. In the photo of one of the planes, the nose of it is opaque whereas the model of the B-26 the Cubans really used had a plexiglass nose, . . . The CIA had taken the pains to disguise the B-26 with “FAR” markings [Cuban Air Force], the agency overlooked a crucial detail that was spotted immediately by professional observers . . . . All Castro’s people had to do was read the newspapers and they’d know that something was going to happen, that those planes that had bombed them were not their own but American. In The New York Times of the 21st of April, stories about the origins of the operation in the Eisenhower administration appeared along with headlines of “C.I.A. Had a Role In Exiles’ Plans” revealing the CIA’s involvement. By the 22nd, the story is fully known with headlines in The New York Times stating that “CIA is Accused by Bitter Rebels” and on the second page of that day’s issue is a full article on the details of the operation from its beginnings. The conclusion one can draw from the articles in The New York Times is that if reporters knew the whole story by the 22nd, it can be expected that Castro’s intelligence service and that of the Soviet Union knew about the planned invasion as well. Tad Szulc’s report in the April 22nd edition of The New York Times says it all, . . . As has been an open secret in Florida and Central America for months, the C.I.A. planned, coordinated and directed the operations that ended in defeat on a beachhead in southern Cuba Wednesday . . . . It is clear then that part of the failure of the operation was caused by a lack of security and attention to detail on the part of the Central Intelligence Agency, and misinformation given to the president. On the international scene, the Bay of Pigs invasion lead directly to increased tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. During the invasion messages were exchanged between Kennedy and Khrushchev regarding the events in Cuba. Khrushchev accused the Americans of being involved in the invasion and stated in one of his messages that a, . . . so-called “small war” can produce a chain reaction in all parts of the world . . . we shall render the Cuban people and their Government all necessary assistance in beating back the armed attack on Cuba . . . . Kennedy replied giving American views on democracy and the containment of communism, he also warned against Soviet involvement in Cuba saying to Khrushchev, . . . In the event of any military intervention by outside force we will immediately honor our obligations under the inter-American system to protect this hemisphere against external aggression . . . . Even though this crisis passed, it set the stage for the next major crisis over Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba and probably lead to the Soviets increasing their military support for Castro. In the administration itself, the Bay of Pigs crisis lead to a few changes. Firstly, someone had to take the blame for the affair and, as Director of Central Intelligence, Allen Dulles was forced to resign and left CIA in November of 1961 Internally, the CIA was never the same, although it continued with covert operations against Castro, it was on a much reduced scale. According to a report of the Select Senate Committee on Intelligence, future operations were “. . . to nourish a spirit of resistance and disaffection which could lead to significant defections and other by-products of unrest.” The CIA also now came under the supervision of the president’s brother Bobby, the Attorney General. According to Lucien S. Vandenbroucke, the outcome of the Bay of Pigs failure also made the White House suspicious of an operation that everyone agreed to, made them less reluctant to question the experts, and made them play “devil’s advocates” when questioning them. In the end, the lessons learned from the Bay of Pigs failure may have contributed to the successful handling of the Cuban missile crisis that followed. The long term ramifications of the Bay of Pigs invasion are a little harder to assess. The ultimate indication of the invasions failure is that thirty-four years later Castro is still in power. This not only indicates the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion, but American policy towards Cuba in general. The American policy, rather than undermining Castro’s support, has probably contributed to it. As with many wars, even a cold one, the leader is able to rally his people around him against an aggressor. When Castro came to power he instituted reforms to help the people and end corruption, no longer receiving help from the Soviet Union things are beginning to change. He has opened up the Cuban economy for some investment, mainly in telecommunications, oil exploration, and joint ventures. In an attempt to stay in power, he is trying to adapt his country to the new reality of the world. Rather than suppressing the educated elite, he is giving them a place in guiding Cuba. The question is, will they eventually want more power and a right to control Cuba’s fate without Castro’s guidance and support? If the collapse of past regimes is any indication, they will eventually want more power. When Castro came to power in 1959, the major opponents in America to him, as with Guatemala, were the business interests who were losing out as a result of his polices. The major pressure for the Americans to do something came, not only from the Cuban exiles in Florida, but from those businesses. Today, the tables are turned and businesses are loosing out because of the American embargo against Cuba. It is estimated that if the embargo were lifted, $1 billion of business would be generated for US companies that first year. Right now, 100 firms have gone to Cuba to talk about doing business there after the embargo is lifted. Will American policy change toward Cuba because of pressure from business interests and growing problems with refugees from Cuba? Given the reasons why the United States got involved in Latin American politics in the first place, it is very likely that their position will change if they can find a face saving way to do so. American policy at this time though is still stuck in the cold war, the chairmen of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Jesse Helms said that, . . . Whether Castro leaves Cuba in a vertical or horizontal position is up to him and the Cuban people. But he must and will leave Cuba . . . . The failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion was caused by misinformation and mismanagement, the consequences of that was a horrible defeat for the Americans and an increase in tension between the superpowers at the height of the cold war. We will only have to wait and see if the Americans have really learned their lesson and will not miss another opportunity to set things right in Cuba. Fedarko, Kevin. “Bereft of Patrons, Desperate to Rescue his Economy, Fidel Turns to an Unusual Solution: Capitalism.” Time Magazine, week of February 20th, 1995. Internet, Meyer, Karl E. and Szulc, Tad. The Cuban Invasion: The Chronicle of a Disaster. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, Publishers, 1962 and 1968. Mosley, Leonard. Dulles: A Biography of Eleanor, Allen, and John Foster Dulles and their Family Network. New York: The Dail Press/James Wade, 1978. Prados, John. Presidents’ Secret Wars: CIA and Pentagon Covert Operations Since World War II. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1986. Ranelagh, John. CIA: A History. London: BBC Books, 1992. Rositzke, Harry, Ph.d. The CIA’s Secret Operations: Espionage, Counterespionage, and Covert Action. New York: Reader’s Digest Rusk, Dean and Richard. As I Saw It. New York and London: W.W. Norton and Company, 1990. The New York Times. 16 April to 22 April, 1961. New York: The New York Times, 1961. United States. Central Intelligence Agency. Cuba. Map, 22 by 52 cm, No. 502988 1-77. Washington, D.C.: Central Intelligence Vandenbroucke, Lucien S. “Anatomy of a Failure: The Decision to Land at the Bay of Pigs.” Political Science Quarterly, Volume 99, Number 3, Fall 1984.

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Unexpected reaction sets in — Exultation of revolutionists — Their misconception of the situation — Reaction versus Revolution — Aims of middle classes — Assembly, afraid of people, strengthens its position — Council of Three Hundred establishes its authority — Importance of Bailly and Lafayette — Martial law voted — Marat, Robespierre and Buzot alone protest — Intrigues of Duke of Orléans and Count de Provence — Mirabeau — Aims of educated middle class — Duport, Charles de Lameth and Barnavo — Bailly and Lafayette — Alarm of middle classes at insurrection — Proposal of Sieyès accepted — Ancient feudal divisions abolished — France divided into departments — Electoral Assemblies — Difference between passive and active citizens — General assemblies of village communes forbidden — Importance to Revolution of municipal centres — Parliaments abolished — Formidable opposition to new organisation Once more one might have thought that the Revolution would now freely develop of itself. Royal reaction was vanquished; “Monsieur and Madame Veto” had given in, and were held as prisoners in Paris; and the National Assembly would surely use now the axe in the forest of abuses, hew down feudalism, and apply the great principles it had proclaimed in the Declaration of the Rights of Man, the mere reading of which had made all hearts throb. There was, however, nothing of the sort. Against all expectations, it was reaction that began after October 5. It organised its powers, and went on, growing in strength until the month of June 1792. After having accomplished its task, the people of Paris retreated to their hovels; the middle classes disbanded them and made them leave the streets. And had it not been for the peasant insurrection, which followed its course until the feudal rights were actually abolished in July 1793, had it not been for the numerous insurrections in the provincial towns which prevented the government of the middle classes from firmly establishing itself, the final reaction, which triumphed in 1794, might have been already triumphant in 1791 or even in 1790. “The King is at the Louvre, the National Assembly at the Tuileries, the channels of circulation are cleared, the marketplace is full of sacks of corn, the National exchequer is being replenished, the mills are turning, the traitors are flying, the shavelings are down, the aristocracy is expiring,” thus Camille Desmoulins wrote in the first number of his journal (November 28). But in reality reaction was everywhere raising its head. While the revolutionaries exulted, believing that the Revolution was almost accomplished, the reactionaries knew that the great struggle, the real one, between the past and the future, was only to begin in every provincial town, great and small, in every little village; that now was the time for them to act in order to get the upper hand in the revolution. The reactionaries understood something more. They saw that the middle classes, who until then had sought the support of the people, in order to obtain constitutional laws and to dominate the higher nobility, were going, now that they had seen and felt the strength of the people, to do all they could to dominate the people, to disarm them and to drive them back into subjection. This fear of the people made itself felt in the Assembly, immediately after October 5. More than two hundred deputies refused to go to Paris, and demanded passports for returning to their homes. They met with a refusal, and were treated as traitors, but a certain number of them sent in their resignations all the same: they were not thinking of going so far! There was now a new series of emigrations, as there had been after July 14. But this time it was not the Court which gave the signal, it was the Assembly. However, there was in the Assembly strong nucleus of middle-class representatives who knew how to profit by the first moments of success — to establish the power of their own class upon a solid foundation. Consequently, even before moving to Paris, the Assembly voted, on October 19, the responsibility of the ministers, as well as of administrative officials before the National representation, and the assessment of all taxes by the Assembly. These two first conditions of a Constitutional Government were thus established. The title of the “King of France” was also changed into “King of the French.” Whilst the Assembly was thus profiting by the movement of October 5 to establish itself as the sovereign power, the middle-class municipality of Paris, i.e., the Council of the Three Hundred, which had set itself up after July 14, also took advantage of events to establish its authority. Sixty directors, chosen from among the Three Hundred, and divided between eight departments — food, police, public works, hospitals, education, land and revenues, taxes and the National Guard — were going to take over all these important branches of administration, and thus to become a respectable power, especially as the municipality had under its orders a National Guard of 60,000 men, drawn solely from well-to-do citizens. Bailly, the Mayor of Paris, and Lafayette, the chief commander of the National Guard, were becoming important personages. As to the municipal police functions , the middle classes assumed the right of supervision in everything: meetings, newspapers, the selling of literature in the streets, the advertisement posters, and so on; so as to be able to suppress all that might be hostile to their interests. And finally, the Council of the Three Hundred, taking advantage of the murder of a baker on October 21, went to the Assembly to beg for martial law, which was voted at once. Henceforth it was sufficient for a municipal official to unfurl the red flag for martial law to be proclaimed; after that every crowd had to disperse, and the troops, when required by the municipal official, could fire upon the people if they did not disperse after three summonses had been made. If the people dispersed peaceably without resistance, before the last summons, only the ringleaders of the disturbance were arrested and sent to prison for three years — if the crowd was unarmed; otherwise the sentence was death. But in case of any violence committed by the people, it was death for all concerned in the riot. It was death, too, for any soldier or officer of the National Guard — who should stir up any rioting. A murder committed in the street was thus sufficient excuse for this law to be passed, and, as Louis Blanc has aptly remarked, in the whole press of Paris there was but one voice, that of Marat, to protest against this atrocious law, and to say that in a time of revolution, when a nation had still to break its chains and to fight to the bitter end against its enemies, martial law had no right to exist. In the Assembly, Robespierre and Buzot were the only ones to protest, and these not on a point of principle. It was not advisable, they said, to proclaim martial law before having established a court which could try the criminals for felony against the nation. Profiting by the slackening of the people's ardour, which necessarily followed after the movement of October 5 and 6, the middle classes began, also in the Assembly, as in the municipality, to organise their new power — not, it is true, without some collisions between the personal ambitions which clashed and conspired against each other. The Court on its side saw no reason for abdicating; it conspired and struggled also, and made profit out of the necessitous and ambitious, such as Mirabeau, by enrolling them in its service. The Duke of Orléans, having been compromised in the movement of October 5, which he had secretly supported, was sent in disgrace, by the Court, as ambassador to England. But then it was “Monsieur,” the Count of Provence, the King's brother, who began intriguing to send away the King — “the log “(soliveau), as he wrote to a friend. Once the King had gone, Orléans could pose as a candidate for the throne of France. Mirabeau, always in want, and who, ever since June 23, had acquired a formidable power over the Assembly, was intriguing on his side to get into the Ministry. When his plots were thwarted by the Assembly, which voted that none of its members should accept a place in the Ministry, he threw himself into the arms of the Count of Provence, in the hope of getting into power by his intervention. Finally, he sold himself to the King and accepted from him a pension of fifty thousand francs a month for four months, and the promise of an embassy; in return for which M. de Mirabeau pledged himself “to aid the King with his knowledge, his power and his eloquence, in whatever Monsieur will judge useful to the State and in the interest of the King.” All this, however, only became known later on, in 1792, after the taking of the Tuileries, and, meanwhile, Mirabeau kept, until his death on April 2, 1791, his reputation as a champion of the people. Historians will never unravel the tissue of intrigues which was then being woven round the Louvre and in the palaces of the princes, as well as round the Courts of London, Vienna and Madrid, and in the various German principalities. Quite a world fermented round the royalty which was perishing. And even in the midst of the Assembly, how many ambitions were struggling to grasp the power! But after all, these are but incidents of small value. They help to explain certain facts, but they could change nothing in the progress of events, marked out by the very logic of the situation and the forces in the conflict. The Assembly represented the educated middle classes on their way to conquer and organise the power which was falling from the hands of the Court, the higher clergy, and the great nobles. And it contained in its midst a number of men marching straight towards this end with intelligence and a certain audacity, which increased every time that the people gained a fresh victory over the old régime. There was in the Assembly a “triumvirate” composed of Duport, Charles de Lameth, and Barnave, and at Paris there were the Mayor Bailly and the commander of the National Guard, Lafayette, upon whom all eyes were turned. But the real power of the mement was represented by the compact forces of the Assembly which were elaborating the laws to constitute the government of the middle classes. This was the work which the Assembly resumed with ardour, as soon as it was installed in Paris and could go on with its work with a certain amount of tranquillity. This work was begun, as we have seen, the very day after the taking of the Bastille. The middle classes were seized with alarm when they saw the people arming themselves with pikes in a few days, burning the toll-gates, seizing the breadstuffs wherever they found them, and all the while showing as much hostility to the rich middle classes as towards the “red heels” (talons rouges). They made haste to arm themselves and to organise their National Guard — to array the “beaver hats” against the “woollen caps” and the pikes, so that the popular insurrections could be kept in hand. And after the insurrection on October 5, they passed without delay the law about rioting, of which we have just spoken. At the same time they made haste to legislate in such a way that the political power which was slipping out of the hand of the Court should not fall into the hands of the people. Thus, eight days after July 14, Sieyès, the famous advocate of the Third Estate, had already proposed to the Assembly to divide the French into two classes, of which one only, the active citizens, should take part in the government, whilst the other, comprising the great mass of the people under the name of the passive citizens, should be deprived of all political rights. Five weeks later the Assembly accepted this division as the basis for the Constitution. The Declaration of Rights, of which the first principle was Equality of Rights for all citizens, was thus flagrantly violated as soon as proclaimed. Now, on resuming the work of political organisation for France, the Assembly abolished the ancient feudal division into provinces, of which each one preserved certain privileges for the nobility and the parlements. It divided France into departments, and suspended the ancient parlements, i.e., the ancient tribunals, which also possessed certain judicial privileges — and it went on to the organisation of an entirely new and uniform administration, always maintaining the principle of excluding the poorer classes from the Government. The National Assembly, which had been elected under the old régime under a system of elections in two degrees, was nevertheless the outcome of an almost universal suffrage. That is to say, that the primary assemblies, which had been convoked in every electoral division, were composed of nearly all the citizens of the locality. These primary assemblies had nominated the electors, who made up in each division one electoral assembly, and this, in its turn, chose its representative in the National Assembly. It is well to note that after the elections the electoral assemblies continued to meet, receiving letters from their deputies and keeping watch over their votes. Having now attained power, the middle classes did two things. They extended the prerogatives of the electoral assemblies, by confiding to them the election of the local councils (the directoires of each department), the judges and certain other functionaries. They gave them thus a great power. But, at the same time, they excluded from the primary assemblies the mass of the people, whom by this means they deprived of all political rights. They admitted into them only the active citizens, that is, those who paid in direct contributions at least three days' work. The rest became passive citizens, who could no longer take part in the primary assemblies, and accordingly had no right to nominate the electors, or the municipality, or any of the local authorities. Besides, they could no longer form part of the National Guard. Furthermore, to be eligible as an elector, it was necessary to pay, in direct taxes, the value of ten days' work, which made these assemblies entirely middle class. Later on, in 1791, when reaction was emboldened by the massacre on the Champ-de-Mars, the Assembly made an additional restriction: electors must possess landed property. And to be nominated a representative of the people in the National Assembly, it was necessary to pay in direct taxation the value of a marc of silver (eight ounces), that is to say, fifty livres. And finally, the permanence of the electoral assemblies was interdicted. Once the elections were over, these assemblies were not to meet again. Once the middle-class governors were appointed, they must not be controlled too strictly. Soon the right even of petitioning and of passing resolutions was taken away — “Vote and hold your tongue!” As to the villages, they had preserved, as we have seen, under the old régime, in nearly the whole of France, up to the Revolution , the general assembly of the inhabitants, like the mir in Russia. To this general assembly belonged the administration of the affairs of the commune, such as the re-division and the use of the communal lands — cultivated fields, meadows and forests, and also the waste lands. But now these general assemblies of the village communes were forbidden by the municipal law of December 22 to 24, 1789. Henceforth only the well-to-do peasants, the active citizens, had the right to meet, once a year, to nominate the mayor and the municipality, composed of three or four middle-class men of the village. A similar municipal organisation was given to the towns, where the active citizens met to nominate the general council of the town and the municipality, that is to say, the legislative power in municipal matters and the executive power to whom was entrusted the administration of the commune's police and the command of the National Guard. Thus the movement described as taking place in the towns in July 1789, and which consisted in obtaining by revolutionary means an elective municipal administration at a time when the laws of the old régime, still in full force, authorised nothing of the kind — this movement was sanctioned by the municipal and administrative law of December 22 to 24, 1789. And, as we shall see, an immense power was conferred on the Revolution by the creation, at its very outset, of these thirty thousand municipal centres, independent in a thousand matters of the central government, and capable of revolutionary action, when the revolutionaries succeeded in seizing upon them. It is true that the middle classes surrounded themselves with every precaution in order to keep the municipal power in the hands of the well-to-do members of the community, and the municipalities themselves were placed under the supervision of the councils of the department, which, being chosen by electors in the second degree, thus represented the wealthier section of the middle classes and were the support and the right hand of the counter-revolutionists during the Revolution. On the other hand, the municipality itself, which was elected by the active citizens only, also represented the middle classes more than the masses of the people, and in towns like Lyons and so many others it became a centre of reaction. But with all that, the municipalities were not dependent upon the royal power, and it must be recognised that the municipal law of December 1789 contributed to the success of the Revolution more than any other law. During the insurrection against the feudal lords, in August 1789, many municipalities were hostile to the revolted peasants, and we saw how the municipalities of the Dauphiné took the field against the peasants and hanged the rebels without mercy. But in proportion as the Revolution developed, the people came to get hold of the municipalities, and in 1793 and 1794 the municipalities in several parts of France became the real centres of action for the popular revolutionaries. Another very important step was made by the NationaI Assembly when it abolished the old courts of justice — the parlements — and introduced judges elected by the people. In the rural districts, each canton, composed of five or six parishes, appointed, through its active citizens, its own magistrates; and in the large towns this right was given to the electoral assemblies. The old parlements naturally strove to maintain their prerogatives. In the south, for instance at Toulouse, eighty members of the parlements, supported by eighty-nine gentlemen, even started a movement to restore to the monarch his legitimate authority and “liberty,” and to religion “its useful influence.” At Paris, Rouen and Metz, and in Brittany the parlements would not submit to the levelling power of the Assembly, and they headed conspiracies in favour of the old régime. But they found no support among the people, and they compelled to yield to the decree of November 3, 1789, by which they were sent on vacation until a new order was given. The attempts to resist led only to a new decree, on January 11, 1790, by which it was declared that the resistance to the law by the magistrates of Rennes “disqualified them from fulfilling any functions of the active citizen, until, having sent in their request to the legislative body, they had been admitted to take the oath of fidelity to the Constitution, as decreed by the National Assembly and accepted by the King.” The National Assembly, it can be seen, meant to make its decisions concerning the new administrative organisation for France respected. But this new organisation encountered a formidable opposition on the part of the higher clergy, the nobility and the upper middle classes, and it took years of a revolution, much more far-reaching than the middle classes had intended, to break down the old organisation for the admission of the new.

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This is a Kodak Bantam, a strut folding camera with an entirely Bakelite body, a single speed shutter, doublet lens, and a maximum aperture of f/6.3. This was Kodak’s first camera designed for their new 828 format of film. 828 was originally designed to be an inexpensive roll film alternative to 135 format 35mm film, but without the two rows of sprocket holes. The lack of sprocket holes meant the exposed image produced a negative 30% larger than that of 135 format film. Although 828 format film would not gain nearly the level of popularity of 135 film, it would remain in production until the 1980s. Kodak would make several other models in the Bantam line along with a few other 828 format cameras like the Pony 828. Film Type: 828 roll film (eight 28mm x 40mm exposures per roll) Lens: 53mm f/6.3 Kodak Anastigmat uncoated 2 elements Focus: Fixed Focus (~6 ft to Infinity) Viewfinder: Rigid Scale Focus Finder Shutter: Simple Leaf Speeds: Time and Instant only (probably 1/50 second) Exposure Meter: None Flash Mount: None You don’t have to be a camera collector or even a photographer to know who Kodak is. The Eastman Kodak company has been one of the most influential companies in the photography industry from the moment the company was founded in 1888, all the way to the start of the 21st century. They dominated the film and photographic paper market for over 100 years. As recently as 1976, the Kodak company accounted for over 90% of the film sold in the United States. In addition to film and photographic supplies, Kodak had several successful lines of cameras, starting with the Brownie box cameras of the early 20th century, a long line of folding cameras, and then several inexpensive casual cameras in the mid 20th century. Chances are very good that almost every person reading this blog has an ancestor that at one time owned a Kodak camera. One of George Eastman’s principles in founding the company was to sell cameras cheaply to people in an effort to get them to be repeat customers by buying film and other supplies from him. This type of sales model is still used today with smartphones and video game consoles where the product is sold to the consumer at a loss to the company, with the understanding that customers will be locked in with continuing purchases. Kodak would make no less than 30 different roll film formats starting in the late 19th century, through the first couple of decades of the 20th century. As cameras became more advanced, they also became smaller and more portable. In order to make smaller cameras, smaller film stocks needed to be used. Some creative camera makers began the practice of using 35mm cinema film in their ‘miniature’ still cameras. Cinema film was inexpensive, plentiful, and allowed for smaller cameras. Although some examples of cinema film being used in still cameras existed as early as 1905, it wouldn’t be until Leitz would release the original Leica I in 1925 that a widely accepted camera would use 35mm cinema film. Here is a link to a website that shows a list of early cameras to use 35mm film. Although the use of cinema film was growing in popularity, there wasn’t a consistent method in which to load and advance the film in the cameras designed for it. Many times, the 35mm film would require specialized film canisters that may or may not have required a dark room to load and unload. In 1934, Kodak would attempt to solve this problem by releasing a new film standard called format 135 35mm film which used a velvet lined metal cassette that would allow the film to be loaded into a camera in daylight. The film would be wound onto a takeup spool while shooting in the camera, and upon reaching the end of the roll, would be rewound back into the original cassette so it could be removed in daylight and sent in for developing. 135 format film turned out to be wildly popular and by the end of World War II became the most commonly used ‘miniature’ film format in the world. It would continue it’s popularity to this very day and is one of only two film formats still widely available. While 135 format film was extremely popular, it wasted space on the film stock by having two rows of sprocket holes above and below the exposed image. These sprocket holes were designed for cinema cameras that needed to continuously move, but in a still camera, they weren’t actually necessary. These sprocket holes limited the size of an exposed image to 24mm x 36mm. Despite this ‘legacy’ inclusion of both rows of sprocket holes, the format was still highly successful. In 1935, Kodak made an attempt to popularize a variant of 35mm film without the sprocket holes which would allow for a larger 28mm x 40mm negative. This increased size allowed for a nearly 30% larger exposed negative which meant that photographs could be printed in larger sizes, while retaining more detail. 828 format film would be the same overall width as 135 format film but instead of two rows of sprocket holes, there would only be a single hole in between each frame on the film stock, so a camera would know when it had reached the next frame. 828 film was a paper backed roll film and did not come in a daylight loaded cassette. This likely was done to keep the costs low as Kodak probably didn’t want to eat into it’s own profits from their newly released 135 format. See the image to the left of a 28mm x 40mm image on 828 film compared to a normal 24 x 36mm image on standard 35mm film. The Kodak Bantam being reviewed here was the very first camera designed to use 828 film. It would launch an entire series of Bantam cameras that would be produced through the 1950s. Although the Bantam series was generally aimed at the low end of the market, there would eventually be a couple of higher spec 828 cameras like the Bantam Special and Bantam 4.5. Kodak was the primary maker of 828 film cameras, but there were 828 cameras made by other companies such as the Argus Model M and Photavit 828. The Bantam was designed by industrial designer, Walter Dorwin Teague who had a long history designing cameras for Kodak and other companies. He helped create the unique lines of the Bantam series, along with the Kodak Jiffy, Brownie Special, and Medalist. Two Bantam models were available upon the release of 828 film, the Bantam 6.3, and a more basic model with an f/12.5 doublet lens. These first Bantams had rigid viewfinders, but these would be replaced in 1938 with models with flip up finders. The one reviewed in this article is an earlier model with the rigid viewfinder. Almost all Bantam cameras were folding cameras held open by ‘scissor’ struts like the earlier Kodak Jiffy. The Kodak Special from 1936 was a high spec clamshell model that more closely resembled the design of a Kodak Retina, and the Bantam f.8 from 1938 had a solid bodied front lens that had a sliding box instead of a folding bellow system. Perhaps the most successful in the Bantam line was the Bantam 4.5 and Bantam Flash models from 1938 and 1947 respectively. Together, these two models accounted for a majority of the sales of Bantam cameras and 828 film. Kodak would continue to produce 828 format cameras until the early 1960s, at which time the company would stop making new models. Despite no longer releasing any new models, it would continue to support the film standard until 1985. During my research for this article, I could not find any conclusive evidence at how well 828 film sold. On one hand, it was made for nearly 50 years, but based on the lack of many models that supported it, I just don’t think that 828 really caught on that well. Aside from the Bantam Special which was only available for a very short period of time, there were no other medium to high spec cameras that used the format. Today, Kodak Bantams have a small, but loyal following among people who appreciate their uniqueness. The increased image size gives a bit more detail than a standard 35mm image which partially bridges the gap between 35mm miniature film, and medium format images. While 828 film is a pretty obscure format to find today, some 828 enthusiasts roll regular 135 format film into 828 spools and shoot with it. Shooting 135 film in a 828 means that the sprocket holes will be visible in the exposed images, but for a vintage collector, this is rarely a deal breaker. More ambitious fans of 828 film can cut down 120 roll film to the same size as 828 film and use that instead. Perhaps the world’s authority on 828 film, Adam Paul has an entire article explaining how he cuts down 828 film using 120 film in a custom rig he made using a TLR and some razor blades. His process is one of only a few people willing to make “new” 828 film using stocks like Kodak Portra and Fuji Neopan which never existed when the format was widely available. I picked up this Bantam in the fall of 2015 with several other cameras from a collector who was liquidating his collection. He had a table of cameras for $5, and most of them were complete junk, but I saw this little thing sitting there and the only reason it caught my eye was because of how small it was. I didn’t even realize it was a Bantam at first. I picked it up, handed him a five-spot and went on my way. At the time, I never thought I would find the time to shoot it, after all, it uses extinct 828 film and its not easy to come by. It wasn’t until I started talking to my friend Adam who became an 828 enthusiast where I considered it. He saw the appeal of the 828 format because of it’s slightly larger negative size, and the fact that it often resulted in cameras much smaller than most 35mm cameras. Sensing that I required a bit more persuasion, he took it upon himself to send me a ‘box o’ goodies’ loaded with two rolls of 828 film. One, a sealed box of Kodacolor II from around 1984, and the other a fresh roll of Kodak Portra 120 film that he had cut down himself and rolled onto an 828 spool. Sensing the unique opportunity to shoot an unused 30+ year old roll of 828 that managed to escape the perils of time, and a fresh roll of a type of film that never existed when this camera was in production, I knew I had to pick and choose the right time to shoot with this camera. I didn’t want this to be a spontaneous roll that I wandered around my house hoping for a good shot. That opportunity took a while to reveal itself, but then in July, 2016, I had a work trip to Toronto and I knew I’d have a free evening to go sight seeing. My office is about 75 minutes away from Niagara Falls, so I loaded the Kodak Bantam with the Kodacolor II and took it with me. If it’s not obvious that the Kodak Bantam is a compact camera, it is more so obvious when you take it out shooting. In fact, it’s size almost worked to the camera’s detriment as for about 10 minutes in a souvenir shop in Niagara Falls, I lost the camera as it slipped out of my camera bag while I was looking at T-shirts. It wasn’t until about 10 or so minutes later when I was standing in line at Wendy’s to try out something called a “Baconator” where I noticed my camera bag was sans-one camera. I immediately panicked and left the line and retraced my steps. First it was to the Niagara Brewing Company where I knew I had last seen the camera. I asked the barely 21 year old bartender where I had been sitting if I left a camera behind. I doubt I could have sufficiently explained what a Kodak Bantam looked like to someone of her generation, but sadly, she said she didn’t see anything that I had left behind. I walked up the street to a souvenir shop where I picked up a shirt for my son and after walking up and down every aisle scanning for a small black plastic box, there it was, sitting nicely on the top of a pile of T-shirts. It was so neatly sitting there that it looked like the camera was placed there by someone. I wonder if someone saw it, not knowing what it was, or had it been more obviously something of value, if it would have been taken. In either case, I got my camera back no worse for wear so I went back outside. I never did go back to Wendy’s and try that Baconator. I guess it’ll have to wait til next time. With the drama of losing a camera that took me so long to find an opportunity to shoot (in a foreign country no less), I concentrated on using the Bantam. Shooting with the Bantam is similar to that of a box camera. This model has a fixed focus two-element lens that keeps everything 6 feet and beyond in focus. It offers two aperture sizes, small and large which translate to around f/6.3 and f/11 via a sliding metal plate with two round holes in it. The shutter is a simple spring loaded flap of metal with only a single speed and “T” mode. Although the camera lacks a proper “Bulb” mode, there is a threaded socket for a shutter release cable if you needed it. The manual does not specify at what speed the shutter fires in instantaneous mode, but its probably somewhere around 1/50th of a second like most single speed shutters of the era. Later Bantams like the 4.5 and Bantam Flash have more advanced lenses with the ability to focus and change apertures, but this is a pretty basic model without those luxuries. It’s the primitive feature set that makes the Bantam such a fun camera to use. While any manual camera requires some degree of preparation, the Bantam requires a bit more since your exposure options are so limited. Is my lighting appropriate for the shutter speed and aperture I’ve selected? You also need to make sure that whatever you are trying to shoot is more than 6 feet away to take advantage of the camera’s fixed zone focus. Adding to the complexity was the fact that I was shooting 30+ year old color film. Any time you shoot with expired film, there’s an unofficial rule of “overexpose 1 stop for every decade past the expiration date”. Kodacolor II from the 1980s was an ASA 100 speed film. If I overexpose by 3 stops, then I need to act as though I am shooting with an ASA 12 speed film. When shooting outdoors, I regularly use the Sunny 16 rule which says that you should use the reciprocal of your film speed as your shutter speed, and then for brightly lit outdoor scenes, set your aperture to f/16. Had I been using a more capable camera, I would set my shutter speed to somewhere around 1/10 and f/16 for bright lit sunny scenes. But the Bantam, neither has a 1/10 shutter speed or an f/16 setting. I am forced to use an approximate 1/50 shutter speed and either an f/6.3 or f/11 shutter speed. So lets do some math… Warning: If you have no interest in boring exposure math, just skip this next section and go back to safety. I need to figure out what the Sunny 16 equivalent of shooting ASA 12 speed film at 1/10 second and f/16 would be using the Bantam’s available shutter speeds and aperture sizes. 1/50 is roughly two stops faster than 1/10 so I need to open my aperture two stops to compensate for the faster shutter. Two stops faster than f/16 is f/8. 1/50 at f/8 is roughly the same as 1/10 at f/16. The Bantam can’t shoot at f/8, it can only do f/6.3 or f/11. Since f/6.3 is an oddball aperture size, I’ll just round it to the nearest “common” aperture, which is f/5.6 which is one stop wider than f/8. This is what we call in the film industry as “latitude”. Film is extremely forgiving. As long as I am plus or minus 1 stop off from proper exposure, my shots should still turn out OK. Had I been shooting black & white, I would have even more latitude. Ok, so back to the math, I know that if I am shooting in bright sunlight using ASA 12 speed film and I only can use a 1/50 shutter speed, I need to be at f/8 for proper exposure. Since I don’t have f/8 and am forced to use f/6.3 which is close enough to f/5.6, I need to either change my shutter speed (which I can’t), my film speed (which I can’t), or I just need to change my lighting. Tada! Since f/5.6 is one step wider than f/8 I need to shoot in a little less than bright sunlight. Had I been using Sunny 16, this would be equivalent to an f/11 scene which is slightly overcast. I ended up in Niagara Falls on a mostly sunny day in the evening. As the sky had already started to exhibit evening light, I already had my perfect “slight overcast” equivalent lighting. End of Boring Exposure Math So now that I had my camera loaded with film that could properly be exposed with a fixed shutter speed and single aperture (I never used f/11), I just knew that everything had to be no closer than 6 feet away and I would be good to go. For as complicated as the math above might have seemed, now that I knew I was all set to shoot in my surroundings, it was a relief to not have to worry about it. The only things I needed to be concerned with was composition, and remembering to advance the film after each shot. 828 film has a single sprocket hole in the film to indicate the next frame. Despite the simplicity of this camera or 828 film, this is a very welcome feature that takes the worry out of winding the camera to your next frame. If you don’t want to trust the automatic stop at the end of each new frame, there is also an amber window in the film door which shows frame numbers on the film backing. The Bantam does not have double exposure prevention, so pretty much the only thing you do need to remember is to advance the film after each shot. One thing that is immediately evident when shooting with the Bantam is that the viewfinder offers a wider view than a typical 35mm camera. While I understand an 828 negative is 30% larger, I didn’t really think I would notice the difference in shooting. On my trip to Niagara Falls, I also brought my Argus C3 since I hadn’t used it in a while and found that I enjoyed framing my shots with the Bantam much more than with the C3. The viewfinder seemed larger and more suited to the street scenes I was photographing at Niagara. The landscape shots of the falls themselves seemed to suit the 28mm x 40mm frame better than a standard 35mm frame. With the relief of exposure and focus, armed with an extremely compact camera with a surprisingly large and useful viewfinder, I found myself enjoying the Bantam much more than the Argus C3 which I have quite a bit of experience with. If I had one disappointment, it was that the original 828 film was designed for only 8 exposures per roll and I went through it far too quickly. The custom cut roll of Portra that Adam sent me is longer and should get me close to 15 shots, so I will definitely appreciate that roll once I get around to shooting with it. This brings me to the most disappointing attribute of an 828 format camera which is that the film format wasn’t very successful. Aside from the Bantam line (and it’s later Pony replacement) there aren’t many models to choose from. I often wonder what shooting with a modern rangefinder or SLR might have been like had 828 succeeded instead of 135? The larger 28mm x 40mm frame would have allowed for larger and more detailed exposures. The cameras themselves could have been even more compact. Heck, even now in the digital age, we would be shooting with DSLRs and mirrorless cameras with larger sensors since the digital revolution mimicked the original “full frame” 35mm exposure size. 828’s widespread success wasn’t meant to be I guess, so I’m thankful to have this experience, even if it’s not one I’ll get to repeat often. Knowing I was using a primitive single speed camera from the 1930s with film expired more than 30 years and having to do crazy math to even guess at getting exposure right, I knew I was asking a lot of the little Bantam. Upon receiving the scans back, when I saw the images, I could see that despite my best efforts, the film I had used was a bit too far gone. The thing with using expired film is that it’s condition varies wildly. You could try two different rolls of 1980s era Kodachrome II and get wildly different results using the same camera. The images came back extremely underexposed with obvious rippling to the film itself. In addition to the issues with the exposure and the film, there were pinkish orange orbs from where light had passed through the orange film counter window in the back. I find this curious as this was a real roll of 828 film and not something that was respooled from a much more sensitive film stock. This film should have had no issues with the window in the back, but obviously it did and the orbs were visible in all 8 shots. For my next roll through the Bantam, I will have to improvise something on that back window. For now, here are 3 shots from that roll, along with heavily Photoshopped versions of the same images. You can at least see that there is some detail to the image. If you zoom into the Maid of the Mist boat, the boat is sharp and nicely rendered. Its hard to see, but it doesn’t appear as though there were any focus issues with the camera at infinity. There is likely nothing I could have done to prevent the rippling of the film, and the orbs still puzzle me, but it looks like despite my best effort, I would have needed at least another 2-3 stops of overexposure to get anywhere near proper exposure using this film. Despite these results, I am still pretty optimistic about the Bantam. I’ll sort out the film counter window and try my luck at fresh 828 film and see what happens. Edit 6/5/2017: I originally wrote this review in the summer of 2016 with the intent of taking the camera out again and shooting a second roll through it. My hope was by using more viable film, I would get a better idea of what it was capable of. In the year that has passed, I have never come back to the camera, so I decided to post this review in it’s current state. I do not believe the poor images I got are representative of the Bantam, but in the last 12 months I never found the time to shoot it again, so I wanted to share with you what information I had written thus far. Since writing this review, I have acquired a Flash Bantam with the Anastar 4.5 lens which is a much better example of what an 828 film camera is capable of. In the event I ever want to shoot 828 film, I would be more likely to use that camera as it has a much better lens and shutter and is capable of far better shots. |My Final Word ||The Kodak Bantam was the 1930s equivalent of a point and shoot camera. Although it lacked modern conveniences of auto exposure and auto focus, it had just enough features to make for a capable shooter. The camera is incredibly small and light weight and fits into nearly any size pocket. Although 828 film would never catch on as a dominant alternative to 35mm, it likely met the needs of those who didn’t want to spend much on a camera, but still wanted respectable snapshots of family events. The Bantam with the 6.3 lens is a curious remnant of the past, and although it does nothing spectacular, it was a fun and extremely portable camera to shoot. If you find one for cheap and have access to working 828 film, I think it’s worth checking out, if only for it’s uniqueness.| |Images||Handling||Features||Viewfinder||Feel & Beauty||History||Age|

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I’m late publishing this article, and just as well, because since Friday, the day I normally publish, I came across a new study that sort of muddied the waters of this topic again. It just goes to prove just how much this area of research is evolving. As always I’ll revise this article as I find new info and endeavour to make the information as easy-to-understand as possible. I started writing this article back in 2018 when I read that reducing your meat and dairy intake is the single biggest way to reduce your impact on earth but held off completing it until I felt there was enough data, and analysis of that data to offer some reasonable guidance. Since that first article there have been other articles calling on us to reduce meat consumption by 90% in order to avert climate crisis (2019) and advocating for less meat and dairy (2019). But is eating imported plastic-wrapped fruit & veg or dairy / meat substitutes more sustainable? Read on to find out what we know about the environmental impact of our food choices. Nothing mentioned in this article has been sponsored. It’s all just my own personal opinion. If you like your sources to remain independent then please; share this article, or buy me a coffee on Ko-fi, or make a small monthly donation via Patreon. or with a one-time donation via Paypal Photo by Ella Olsson on Unsplash A quick note before you dive in First and foremost, this is a generalised article about the environmental footprint of meat and dairy. It is written from the perspective of someone living in a society where most meat and dairy is purchased from butchers or supermarkets. It doesn’t take into account meat derived from wildlife culls or backyard raised chickens. Also it doesn’t take into account areas of the globe where animal husbandry might be the only food of viable food production, as might be the case for nomadic communities or societies that border deserts. The article is based on published studies and publicly available interpretations of them. This means that there are gaps in data. There is also very little data of Irish origin so I’m having to refer to global and UK based studies in a lot of instances. I aim to present this information as objectively as possible, highlighting any discrepancies or omissions that I might notice or read about. If you know of published academic studies or government reports that contradict information given in this article please do send them to me. I promise to update the article with new information if it’s from a credible source This article is also not about the social value of farming nor is it about the geo-political question of where should the world’s beef or dairy be produced. This article is also not about the ethics of eating meat or the ethics of modern farming. I’m not saying that none of these are important, just that they’re intentionally excluded from this article in the interest of brevity. This article is written for those of use who are wondering whether cutting meat and dairy will have much impact on our carbon footprint and why. If you don’t want to read all of the supporting information you can skip down to the heading CONCLUSIONS at the bottom of the page. The Carbon Footprint of What we Eat The term carbon emissions used in this article is generally a short hand for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. GHGs are all of the gases that contribute to climate change and include carbon, methane and nitrous oxide to name a few. Sometimes you’ll see studies using the term ‘carbon dioxide equivalents – CO2eq/CO2e ‘. This is a combined figure for all the GHGs emitted by the item in question. It is worth noting that not all GHGs behave the same. Methane is considered to be approximately 30 times more damaging in terms of climate change than carbon but it only has a lifespan of about 15-30 years, unlike carbon which can exist for hundreds of years. Livestock generate a lot of methane from burping, which contributes to the high carbon footprint of the sector. Because methane is more damaging than carbon dioxide in the short term, some argue that we should restrict all livestock as an emergency measure to give ourselves time to develop strategies to solve the climate crisis. While others argue that we should focus more on strategies to deal with the longer-lasting problem of carbon dioxide in the comfort that today’s methane emissions will be gone in 15-20 years. This article gives a measure view of this issue. In terms of GHG emissions, the Irish agriculture sector emits nearly twice the amount of transport and more than 3 times the amount of residencies (source: EPA.ie), but it’s unclear if those figures take into account the amount of carbon captured and locked-in (sequestered) by grazed pastures in this country. Globally, food accounts for about a quarter of human greenhouse gas emissions and of this, livestock constitutes about 56%, while only providing 37% of our protein and 18% of our calories. On average, beef and lamb production have the highest carbon footprints of all the food types, with pork having a smaller footprint and chicken smaller again. The higher footprint of beef or lamb is generally down to the amount of land they use, the time it takes to slaughter and, in the case of lamb, the amount of meat you get from each animal. Interestingly it is possible for the lowest-emission beef (9kgCO2eq per 100g of protein) to have the same carbon footprint as chicken or eggs but only when compared to the high-impact chicken and eggs. The average carbon footprint for chicken is 4.3kgCO2eq per 100g of protein, and 3.8kgCO2eq per 100g of protein for eggs. Also, low-emission beef tends to be from dairy farms and partly due to the fact that the emissions are divided over a wider base of protein. So even though a dairy farm producing milk and meat generates the same carbon emissions as a beef farm, the very fact that its carbon footprint it being spread over more food products (milk & meat) makes the carbon footprint of those individual food products less. It’s like spreading icing on a big cake versus a small cake. If you use the same amount of icing you’ll end up with a thin layer on the big cake and a thick layer on the small cake. If the world moved to a vegetarian diet we’d save up to 60% of carbon emissions, and if we went vegan that increases to 70% . (To be honest, I am surprised that we’d only save an additional 10% by going vegan, but we have to remember that carbon emissions don’t take into account water quality and biodiversity impact.) But what about emissions from tillage? It would be wrong to suggest that growing plants for human consumption is not without its issues too. Tilling the land releases carbon and the use of herbicides and pesticides are devastating to biodiversity, not to mention pollution of waterways due to inappropriately applied fertiliser. Recent studies have found that a no-till approach to farming could reduce greenhouse gas emissions from arable farming by up to 30%. And use of legumes in a crop rotation could reduce the need for fertiliser by 50% reducing carbon emissions by 43% Actually some plant-based foods can be carbon negative, meaning the production of these foods removes more CO2eq from the atmosphere that is emitted when growing and processing them. This is particularly true for nuts because some nut trees can grown along other crops, thereby spreading the carbon footprint across more food items. But what about grasslands offsetting emissions from grazing? It is true that carbon emitted from grazing animals can be sequestered into the soil by the grass that the animals feed on. In 2010 the researcher Soussana found that grazed pastures in Europe absorb twice as much in terms of greenhouse gas emissions than livestock were emitting in terms of methane and nitrous oxide from fertiliser. One global research project looked into the issue and concluded that “In some specific contexts, where the climate, soil, land use history, and grazing management are just right, additional carbon [through grazing] can be removed from the atmosphere and sequestered in soils.” But they went on to add that “realistic rates for this are far below those claimed outside of the scientific literature. And only rarely can sequestration outweigh the greenhouse gas emissions from the grazing animals.” The authors of the study went on to say that, at a global level, the absolute largest possible sequestration potential from grazing management “offsets only 20-60% of annual average emissions from the grazing ruminant sector and makes a negligible dent on overall livestock emissions.” You can see an explanatory video of these findings here. Another analysis by the Food Climate Research Network in 2017 confirmed this, finding that grass-fed cows released more greenhouse gas emissions through belching and manure than they are able to offset through boosting soil carbon levels. A study into the possibility of a carbon-neutral dairy farm in Ireland is underway (Source: Agribusiness Report 2020, pg 24) and it will be great to read the results when they’re published. What about converting methane from pig & poultry into energy? Researchers in the Netherlands showed how methane from manure storage could be successfully oxidised in soil by methanotrophic bacteria but so far it hasn’t been explored commercially. Similarly the use of anaerobic digesters to help capture methane and convert it to energy has potential but it is not currently commonplace on farms. Is eating locally raised meat & dairy better than imported plants? Contrary to our expectation emissions from transportation is on average only 11% of the carbon footprint of a food item, and so buying local won’t trump low-emissions when comparing food types. It’s worth noting that transport emissions increase when food is flown or trucked rather than shipped or sent by rail. So as counterintuitive as it sounds, eating food that’s been shipped from very far away could actually have lower carbon emissions than food that travels by road from the UK or Europe. In aglobal study looking at imported plant-based milk versus locally sourced dairy milk, the authors concluded that even allowing for packaging and emissions from transportation, plant-based milk still have lower footprints than locally sourced dairy based milk. Is low-carbon meat better than imported plants? In terms of eating local meat versus imported plants this article does a very good job of outlining why eating plants is nearly always better than eating low-emission meat But it’s worth noting that there are some exceptions. The highest-emitting tofu (3.5 kgCO2eq) puts more carbon into the atmosphere than the lowest-emitting chicken (2.4 kgCO2eq) and high-emissions nuts (2.4 kgCO2eq) can have a carbon footprint on a par with low-emission chicken. But in general plant based foods are generally lower in emissions than meat and dairy and when it comes to beef that difference is substantial. It’s worth noting that low-emission meat typically means higher-density and younger slaughter ages. Because of the additional land use involved in raising free-range and organic chicken, meat from these sources will have a higher carbon footprint than intensively raised chicken so organically or free range raised meat wouldn’t be classed as low-emission. Is packaged-free meat & dairy better than packaged plants? In a similar way to transportation, packaging only adds a small percentage onto the carbon footprint of a food item. For example a carton only adds an additional 5% onto the carbon footprint of milk, and plastic packaging only adds a further 4% to the carbon footprint of pork. Is eating locally-raised meat better than lab-grown meat / meat substitutes? Interesting lab-grown meat was found to have a higher carbon footprint than chicken, and myco-protein based products (aka Quorn) were found to have a similar carbon footprint to chicken, but in comparison to beef meat alternatives have a dramatically lower carbon footprint. It’s worth noting that the comparison to chicken mentioned above is most likely to have been for intensively reared chicken as there was no reference to free-range or organic in the study. Therefore it is reasonable to conclude that the meat-free alternatives could have a lower carbon footprint than free-range and organic chicken. Here are two very interesting comparisons between Beyond Burger and beef and between Quorn and beef. They’re written by an Irish research scientist working in the University of California, Berkley in the US. In summary, they both beat beef in relation to emissions, land use and water use. Another useful article by the same writer is this one on the sustainability of tofu, although written from a US perspective the author has family in Ireland and so gives some advice to readers on this side of the pond too. Food also Impact Wildlife The carbon cost of land is already factored into the carbon emissions of a food type but there is another impact of using land and that’s the displacement of wildlife. Of the world’s approximately five billion hectares (12 billion acres) of agricultural land, 68% is used for livestock with one-third of that used for crops dedicated to producing food to feed to livestock. If we all went vegan, one study estimates that we could reduce the land used by agriculture by 75%. For example, if strawberries were grown on 1/100th of the cropland currently used to grow animal feed we could provide 1.9 million adults their 5 a day for an entire year. And if one third of cropland currently used to grow animal feed was assigned to fruit or veg it could provide 62 million adults their 5 a day for an entire year – almost the entire UK population. Does Soy-based Meat Alternatives cause Deforestation of the Rainforest? You may have heard the argument that soy-based food products are causing deforestation of the rainforest in South America. Deforestation of the rain forests is being caused by soy plantations and some of that soy is being grown for human consumption, but it is worth noting that only 7% of soy grown is used in human food and that most of that goes to Asia. This is primarily because South America tends to grow GM crops, which is not attractive to European customers and so most of the soy we eat in Ireland is sourced in Europe. In Ireland we import two thirds of fodder for livestock, a large percentage of which is soya bean, almost certainly from the USA, Argentina and Brazil (source: Irish Examiner). Industrial Livestock Farming causes Water Pollution In the UK, grasslands are the main user of nitrogen, with 425 kilotonnes applied in 2015. Permanent grassland used 73% of this amount. A global switch to plant-based food systems has been estimated to reduce eutrophication by 49%. In Ireland the weedkiller Glysophate has been detected in the water in Co Mayo. It’s not clear if this entered the water system from farms but this report suggests that quite a few farmers have been fined for failing to comply with restrictions regarding the application of chemicals to land. Sometimes the waste from pigs and poultry is applied to the soil as a form of fertiliser but it can contain high doses of copper and zinc, which the pigs are fed to promote growth. Also if the waste is too high in nitrogen and potassium it can overload the soil leading to water pollution and the degradation of the soil. (Source: fao.org). Industrial Farming threatens Biodiversity The farming of animals is listed as the main threat to biodiversity on a global level with 94% of the mammals on the planet (excluding humans) being livestock. In Ireland in 2017 there were 6,673,600 cattle, which is approximately 1.4 cows for every person on the island. Some suggest that grazing animals are important from the point of view of biodiversity, and I’ve seen a report from Natural England citing the importance of grazing animals for wildlife conservation cited frequently as evidence of this. I think it’s quite a point worth considering and investigating, and I’d be very interested to see how these grazed landscapes compare to other types of landscape. Interestingly the same report is very negative against scrub, which if you read/listen to Isabell Tree’s fabulous book ‘Wilding‘ you’ll learn is essential for the development of tree saplings, which ultimately go on to become forests. Finally the authors of the report cite over-grazing as one of the most devastating hazards to wildlife conservation, so as is often the case, it’s not always what is done but how it’s done. Industrial Farming threaten our Health Industrial Livestock Farming causes Air Pollution Another concern with intensively reared pigs and poultry, is the amount of ammonia the process creates. In research coordinated by Greenpeace it was found that the majority of ammonia pollution (94%) stems from livestock farming and in 2015 the EU agricultural sector emitted a total of 3.75m tonnes of the stuff. Ammonia can affect air quality, worsening the impact of fine particulate matter (Source: Poultry World). Just to put this in context ongoing exposure to fine particular matter has been linked to premature death in people with heart or lung disease, nonfatal heart attacks, irregular heartbeat, aggravated asthma, decreased lung function and increased respiratory symptoms, such as irritation of the airways, coughing or difficulty breathing (Source: EPA.gov). Interesting only farms raising more than 40,000 chickens, 2,000 pigs or 750 sows are required to submit data to the register so ammonia emission are in fact higher than reported in the European Pollutant Release and Transfer Register (E-PRTR) (Source: Poultry World) Overuse of Antibiotics in Livestock Farming Farmed animals are a major use of antibiotics, and there is evidence that overuse of antibiotics in animal rearing farms is contributing to the development of antibiotic resistant super bugs, contributing to antibiotic resistance in humans, which is a growing issue globally and regarded by the World Health Organisation as one of the biggest threats to public health. That said Ireland has amongst the lowest use of antibiotics use in Europe. and if an animal is raised organically they can only be given pharmaceuticals, including antibiotics, as a last resort and the farmer must wait a specified amount of time before the animal can be sent for slaughter as an organic animal. Also if the treatment is used for a second time the product (meat or milk) cannot be sold as organic (Source: organicmeat.ie) The Impacts of Eating Meating on the body Sometimes concerns over health prevent people from reducing their meat and dairy intake. This is despite numerous reports showing how a vegetarian and vegan diet can protect us from many diseases. “It is the position of the American Dietetic Association that appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence, and for athletes.” Also according to the NHS, you can get most of the nutrients you need from eating a varied and balanced vegan diet and research in 2019 confirmed that a vegetarian or vegan diet can provide enough protein and amino acids for older people too. Indeed a shift away from meat and dairy wouldn’t just positively impact our health, it would also impact our wallets. According to a study in 2016 a global shift to plant-based diets is capable of reducing health care costs by $31 trillion. The study also showed that, should everyone go vegetarian by 2050, we would see a global mortality reduction of 6-10%, thanks to a lessening of coronary heart disease, diabetes, stroke and some cancers. Eliminating red meat accounts for half of that decline, while the remaining benefits are thanks to scaling back the number of calories people consume and increasing the amount of fruit and vegetables they eat. A worldwide vegan diet would further amplify these benefits: global vegetarianism would stave off about 7 million deaths per year, while total veganism would knock that estimate up to 8 million. Fewer people suffering from food-related chronic illnesses would also mean a reduction in medical bills, saving about 2-3% of global gross domestic product. Of course there is devil in the detail. It is quite possible to become an unhealthy vegetarian or vegan by filling your diet with high-salt and high-sugar processed foods. In the same way that it’s possible to have a healthy meat and dairy based diet by eating small quantities of fresh, local, organic produce. Industrial Farming is Linked to a Rise in Pandemics Researchers have established that ‘since 1940, agricultural drivers were associated with more than 25% of all – and more than 50% of zoonotic (animal based) – infectious diseases that emerged in humans, proportions that will likely increase as agriculture expands and intensifies.‘ Which is healthier, veganism, vegetarianism re low meat / dairy consumption? In their Planet Healthy Diet the EAT- Lancet commission, a mix of 27 experts from farming to climate change to nutrition stated that we needed to reduce red meat down to one burger a week or one steak a month in order to feed 10 billion people by 2050 without destroying the planet. They do include a couple of portions of fish and chicken a week, 1.5 eggs a week and 1 glass of milk a day. Their proposal also included a cull on starchy veg like potatoes and cassava, but this was more for health reasons than environmental. Asked why they didn’t simple promote a vegan diet, Prof Willet stated “If we were just minimising greenhouse gases we’d say everyone be vegan, however, it was unclear whether a vegan diet was the healthiest option” This appears to be corroborated by the new study on influencing factors on low-impact diets that I referred to above. They found that eating meat could make a diet more sustainable than a poor plant-based diet but only in the absence of nutritional supplements. Once supplements were added into the mix the plant-based diet had the lowest-impact again. If you’re a big fan of cheese and have switched to vegan cheese you may find this article useful, as it talks about the low nutritional value of some vegan cheeses. Interestingly another study found that reducing all animal based products reduced carbon emissions more than going vegetarian, which typically results in an increase in eggs and dairy. This is particularly interesting if you’re female as a study found that women eating a vegetarian diet are 33% more likely to have a hip fracture. Is there a risk of Cancer from Soy-based products There has been some scaremongering in relation to a link between soy and cancer so here are some articles refuting the link from - Harvard University - Academic publication The Conversation - a medical doctor in the US - a non-commercial, science-based public service provided by Dr. Michael Greger, Can we make Meat and Dairy more sustainable? There is huge pressure to make the way we farm more sustainable and farmers across the globe are trying new ways to reduce carbon emissions and boost biodiversity. I have no doubt that our farming community has the skill and ambition to make farming in Ireland as sustainable and low-impact as policy allows them to. At this point I should mention that all of the carbon footprints quoted in the studies I cite don’t take into account the carbon that might be sequestered in the grass being grazed by livestock, or the soil in which fodder was grown in. Some argue that this gives a distorted view of the environmental impact of meat and dairy, but it depends on how you frame your enquiry. The data also doesn’t include the amount of carbon sequestered by the soil used to grow plant-based food for human consumption. It also doesn’t include the carbon we’re forgoing by not converting these fields to forest or bogs. It’s worth bearing in mind that some of the reduced carbon emissions in the meat and dairy industry is achieved through higher density and younger slaughter ages (Source: Agribusiness Report 2020, pg 16). Considering that currently most cattle are killed for meat between 16 and 24 months, pigs are slaughtered as adolescents (Source: independent.ie) and chicken in a conventional broiler chicken farm lives for 38 days before being sent to slaughter, we may want to pause and consider that before driving for lower carbon emissions achieved this way. For me, making meat and dairy farming more sustainable, carbon-neutral even, still leaves the question of whether this form of farming is a good use of our carbon allowance, given that we can provide the nutrition in less damaging ways. Even if meat and dairy production can be made more sustainable we cannot continue to eat it at current rates. Indeed the IDDRI, an environmental think tank, concurred with the Lancet Commission when it stated that it is possible to feed Europe’s population and farm sustainably, but only with a 40% decrease in the consumption. Conclusion – How to eat more sustainably! Reduce your meat and diary intake According to the Food Carbon Footprint Index 2018, which bases their data on the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations Balance Sheets, on average someone in Ireland eats the equivalent of 1428 kgCO2eq per annum. This equates to a one-way flight to Turkey or 3,590 miles in a car. To sequester that amount of carbon we’d need 10 years of growth from 23 saplings*. It’s worth highlighting that we wouldn’t save 1428 kgCO2eq by giving up meat and dairy, after all we’d have to replace them with other food products, but according to an Oxford University study in 2018 we could save between 61-73% of the carbon by switching to an exclusive plant-based diet. Other types of diets such as vegetarian or pescetarian also offer carbon savings but none as much as a vegan diet. This article gives an overview of the global carbon savings of various diets. Take supplements if you need them If you’re concerned about nutrition get your bloods tested and take supplements for the vitamins and minerals you’re short of. Prioritise locally-grown seasonal fruit and vegetables This is a no-brainer when it comes to sustainable eating but with only 1% of Irish farms growing vegetables in 2016, there is potential for growth in this sector. Aim to buy locally grown crops that need as little intervention as possible. Potatoes in Ireland need to be sprayed regularly to keep blight at bay and the same is true of strawberries, which are susceptible to botrytis. Apart from the health benefits of avoiding synthetic chemicals where possible you’ll also be saving on the carbon emissions created by the chemicals and the spraying process. Interestingly a new study looking at how country, season, sex, dietary supplements, and other details affect low-impact diets found that what might constitute a low-impact diet in one country might be a high-impact diet for another (Source: Antropocene Magazine). The article that I’ve linked to there gives a very good, easy-to-read, explanation of why this might be the case. The academic team behind this study are aiming to create a tool for people to determine which diet is more sustainable for them given their location etc. Prioritise organic food I would suggest that eating organic is more sustainable than non-organic but studies have shown that organic farms have a lower yield than non-organic. That said, proponents of organic say that once the soil on an organic farm has had time to rejuvenate itself the yield difference will be negligible. I think it’s important that we assess the long-term impact of any strategy to make sure we’re not creating more issues for ourselves down the road. Replace meat junk food with vegan alternatives Processed meat substitutes can be quite high in salt and fat so do limit your intake of them but if you’re going to eat junk food on occasion it makes sense to make it vegan. And seriously vegan sausage rolls are just as good as meat based ones Buy Meat Protein that Swims If you feel you must have non-plant protein in you diet opt for sustainably sourced fish. Buy Irish Meat & Dairy If you really want to buy some beef, lamb, pork or chicken make sure it’s Irish. It generates the same or less carbon emissions as meat from other countries but you get to save on transport emissions by buying local. If you’re interested in reading more about this here’s a link to a good database of research in the area of food. Thanks for Reading *I’ve taken the carbon emission figures from Our World in Data, which takes theirs from a 2018 global study looking at carbon emissions for various forms of food production. I’d love to have some specifically Irish figures to put in here instead but despite all my research I haven’t found any.

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Click to donate today! DAVID’S LAST INSTRUCTIONS AND DEATH (1 Chronicles 28, 29). David charges Solomon before the National Assembly to build the Temple (1 Chronicles 28:1-10), and delivers to him the plans and materials of the building and its furniture (1 Chronicles 28:11-21). (1) And David assembled all the princes of Israel.—As he had called the National Assembly before removing the Ark (1 Chronicles 13:1; 1 Chronicles 15:3). Who the princes (sârîm) were is defined in the following clauses. The princes of the tribes.—See the list of them in 1 Chronicles 27:16-22. Captains of the companies.—Rather, princes of the courses, who served the king: viz., those enumerated in 1 Chronicles 27:1-15. Stewards.—See 1 Chronicles 27:25-31. Both “captains” and “stewards” are sârîm in the Hebrew. Possession (miqnèh).—A word generally used, like the Greek κτῆμα (κτῆνος), of possessions in cattle—live stock. And of his sons.—Perhaps considered as his heirs, or rather, from the old tribal view of property, as sharing the royal domains with him. With the officers.—Heb., sarîsîm, eunuchs. The word appears to be used in a generalised sense, and to denote simply courtiers or palace officials. (Comp. Genesis 37:36; 1 Samuel 8:15; 1 Kings 22:9; Jeremiah 38:7; Jeremiah 41:16.) The mighty men.—“The heroes” (ha-gibbórîm) or “warriors” of 1 Chronicles 11:31-47; 1 Chronicles 11:12. But the LXX. and Vulg. interpret men of rank and wealth, magnates (τοὺς δυνάστας, Luke 1:52). And with all the valiant men.—Literally, and every mighty man (“gibbôr”) of valour, a phrase meant to include all other persons of importance. It is noticeable that in this meeting of the estates of the realm all the dignitaries of 1 Chronicles 27:0 are present (contrast 1 Chronicles 15:25; 1 Chronicles 23:2; 1 Chronicles 13:1), except the priests and Levites. (But comp. 1 Chronicles 28:21.) (2) Then David the king stood up upon his feet.—To address the assembly, the king naturally rose from his throne. Hear me.—Calling attention, as in Genesis 23:11-15. My brethren, and my people.—Comp. 1 Samuel 30:23; 2 Samuel 19:12. The words do not so much imply condescension as an acknowledgment of what every one of David’s hearers felt to be true—viz., that all Israel were kin, and David the head of the family. As for me, I had in mine heart to build.—See 1 Chronicles 22:7-8 and the Notes there. 1 Chronicles 28:2-7 of this chapter are in substance, and partly in expression, identical with 1 Chronicles 22:7-10 (David’s private charge to Solomon). An house of rest—i.e., a permanent abode instead of a sacred tent, which gave the idea of wandering from place to place, like the nomads of the desert. (Comp. Psalms 132:8.) The footstool of our God.—The so-called mercy-seat, the golden kappôreth suspended over the Ark, on which were the cherubim—the throne of Deity (Psalms 99:1). And had made ready.—Rather, and I made ready, by amassing stores of material (1 Chronicles 22:2-4; 1 Chronicles 22:14-16). (3) But God said unto me.—The emphasis lies on the word God, which is in direct contrast with the “I—in my heart it was,” of 1 Chronicles 28:2. (Comp. 1 Chronicles 22:8, of which this verse is a summary.) (4) Howbeit the Lord God of Israel chose me.—Comp. 1 Chronicles 11:2 and Notes. The Divine election of David preludes that of Solomon (1 Chronicles 28:5). For he hath chosen Judah to be the ruler.—Better, For Judah it was that he chose for prince (nâgîd), and in the house of Judah, my father’s house. (Comp. 1 Chronicles 5:2 and Notes.) And among the sons of my father he liked me.—The expression is scarcely adequate. The verb in the Hebrew is râçâh, which answers to the Hellenistic εύδοκεῖν, “to be satisfied, well pleased with.” Translate, therefore, “It was I in whom He took pleasure.”(Comp. Proverbs 3:12.) David uses of himself the very phrase which the Divine voice spoke from heaven at the baptism of the Son of David, the true King of Israel and of mankind (Matthew 3:17). (5) Many sons.—See 1 Chronicles 3:1-9, where nineteen are mentioned by name, “besides the sons of the concubines, and Tamar their sister.” He hath chosen.—Heb., then he chose, the construction being changed after the parenthesis. Solomon my son.—The son who has the best right to the name. (Comp. 1 Chronicles 22:10.) The throne of the kingdom of the Lord.—This expression is unique in the Old Testament. (Comp. 1 Chronicles 29:23; 1 Chronicles 17:14.) It brings out into strong relief the idea that the Israelite monarchy was only a vicegerency; not David nor Solomon, but Jehovah being the true and only King. (Comp. Gideon’s reply to the offer of the crown, Judges 8:23; 1 Samuel 8:7; 1 Samuel 12:12.) (6) He shall build.—Better, he it is that shall build. The pronoun is emphatic: he, and not thou. I have chosen him. . . . his father.—Literally, I have chosen him for myself as a son, and I—I will become to him a father. (7) Moreover I will establish his kingdom for ever.—So 1 Chronicles 22:10 (at end). If he be constant to do my commandments and my judgments.—The same condition is attached to the same promise in 1 Kings 9:4-5. (Comp. also 1 Kings 3:14, where the promise is length of days.) As at this day.—As we are doing in our present work. The same words occur in the same sense at the end of Solomon’s Prayer (1 Kings 8:61). (8) Now therefore in the sight of all Israel.—Literally, And now to the eyes of all Israel . . . and in the ears of our God; scil. I adjure you. David ends his address to the people by a solemn appeal, like that, of Moses (Deuteronomy 4:26; Deuteronomy 30:19 : “I call heaven and earth to witness,” &c.). David’s appeal is to the whole nation as represented before him, and to the God whose ear is ever open. Seek—i.e., do not neglect; resort to them always as the rule of right living (same word as 1 Chronicles 13:3; 1 Chronicles 15:13). That ye may possess this (Heb. the) good land.—Another reminiscence of Deuteronomy (1 Chronicles 4:1; 1 Chronicles 4:21). And leave it for an inheritance.—Leviticus 25:46. (9) And thou, Solomon my son.—The king now turns to his heir, urging a whole-hearted service to his father’s God (1 Chronicles 28:9-10). Know thou.—Regard thou, have care for (Psalms 1:6). The God of thy father might mean the God of Israel (comp. 1 Chronicles 29:10). But 1 Chronicles 28:20, where David speaks of “my God,” suggests the simpler meaning, God of David, here. (Comp. Psalms 18:2; Psalms 18:6; Psalms 18:22; also Genesis 31:29; Genesis 31:42.) With a perfect heart.—The word shâlçm means whole, sound, unimpaired; the Latin integer. Hence, what is urged is an undivided allegiance, such as is enjoined by the Decalogue. (Comp. 1 Chronicles 29:9; 1 Chronicles 29:19; 1 Kings 8:61.) A willing mind.—For service is not real unless it be voluntary, and so glad as well as free. For the Lord searcheth all hearts.—Search, i.e., seek (1 Chronicles 28:8 and below). For the thought, comp. Psalms 139:1-4; Psalms 139:23; 1 Samuel 16:7; Psalms 94:9; Acts 1:24; Hebrews 4:13. The Searcher of hearts will at once see through an insincere and half-hearted obedience. And understandeth all the imaginations of the thoughts.—And every fashioning (yççer, εἶδος, Bild) or cast of thoughts he discerneth (Genesis 6:5; Genesis 8:21). If thou seek him.—Deuteronomy 4:29. Seeking Jehovah in earnest always results in finding (Isaiah 55:6). Yet the Divine grace is not restricted even by this condition (Isaiah 65:1). If thou forsake him.—Deliberately and of set purpose, as choosing to live by other laws than His. He will cast thee off.—A strong word (hizniah), meaning strictly, to reject as noisome or foul-smelling. (Comp. Hosea 8:3; Hosea 8:5.) The verbal form hiphil is peculiar to Chronicles. (See 2 Chronicles 11:14; 2 Chronicles 29:19.) (10) Take heed now; for the Lord.—Or, See now that Jehovah hath chosen thee; consider this high commission, weigh it well and realise it thoroughly, then be strong, and act. (See 1 Chronicles 22:13; 1 Chronicles 22:16.) David now, in presence of the Assembly, hands over to his son the plans of the Sanctuary and its vessels, remarking, as he does so, that the whole is of Divine origin (1 Chronicles 28:19). (11) Then (and) David gave.—The description proceeds from the outer to the inner. The pattern.—Heb., tahnîth, the word used in Exodus 25:9 of the model, plan, or design of the Tabernacle. The porch.—See 1 Kings 6:3. The Syriac has prûstidê: i.e., παραστάδες, colonnade, portico. The houses thereof.—Its—i.e., the Temple’s—chambers. Throughout this verse the word thereof refers to the house mentioned in 1 Chronicles 28:10. The two principal rooms of the Temple, the “holy place” and the “Holy of holies,” or, as we might say, the nave and the chancel, are called its “houses” (bâttîm). The treasuries (ganzakkim), occurring here only. It appears to be a loan word from the Persian (ghanj, treasure, treasury; comp. the Latin and Greek gaza, treasure. In old Persian ka was a noun-ending; comp. bandaka, servant). With the singular, ganzak, comp. Persian Ghanjak (the classical Gazaca), the capital of Atropatene, which was a treasure-city. (Comp. also the word ginzê; Esther 3:9; Esther 4:7; Ezra 7:20, and ginzayyâ, Ezra 5:17; Ezra 6:1, meaning treasures.) Gesenius (Thesaur., p. 296) assumes that the root G N Z has passed from Semitic into Persian, and not vice versâ. This may be true, as the root exists in the principal Semitic tongues, and yet it may be that ganzak in Hebrew is a modern loan word. The “treasuries” or store-rooms of the Temple were probably in the side-building of three storeys (1 Kings 6:5). The upper chambers (‘alîyôth).—Only here and in 2 Chronicles 3:9. They were probably over the Holy of holies, the ceiling of which was twenty cubits from the floor, whereas the roof of the whole building was thirty cubits from the ground. A space of ten cubits high by twenty wide and twenty long was thus available for the upper chambers. The inner parlours.—The fore-court, or vestibule, and the holy place, or nave, in contrast with “the place of the mercy-seat,” or chamber of the Kappôreth: i.e., the Holy of holies, the inmost shrine of the whole bolding. (12) And the pattern of all that he had by the spirit.—Rather, the pattern of all that was (or had come to be) in the spirit with him: i.e., had come into his mind; the whole design as it lay in his mind. (Comp. the phrase in 1 Chronicles 28:2 : “with my heart it was to build.” See 1 Chronicles 28:19, which attributes the design of the Temple to Divine inspiration.) Of the courts.—For the courts. The chambers.—The cells (lĕshâkhôth). (Comp. 1 Chronicles 23:28.) The treasuries.—For the treasures (1 Chronicles 26:20, and Notes). (13) Also (and) for the courses of the priests and the Levites.—This connects immediately with the phrase “all the chambers round about,” in 1 Chronicles 28:12. The chambers or cells round the Temple court were intended not only for the stowage of the treasures, but also for the use of the priests and Levites who would sojourn in them by, course. The LXX. and the Vulg, render (David gave him) a description of the courses of the priests and Levites, a sense which the Hebrew admits, and which the Authorised version has adopted; but the former connexion of the words is preferable. For all the work of the service.—Such as cooking the flesh which fell to the priests from the sacrifices, and baking the shewbread. “The vessels of service,” that is, the utensils used by the Levites in the work just specified, would naturally be kept in the cells. The Syriac version paraphrases 1 Chronicles 28:11-13 as follows:—“And David gave to Solomon his son the likeness of the porch, and the measure of the house and of the colonnade (kĕsôstĕrôn = ξυστός), and of the upper chambers; and of the inner cloisters (’estĕwê=στοαι), and of the outer cloisters, and of the upper and of the lower (storeys); and of the treasury (bêth gazzâ), and of the house of service of the Lord’s house, and of the kitchens, and of the house of the water-carriers (or cupbearers), and of the house of lampmen.” The last words are interesting, as explaining the nature of “the work of the service” (1 Chronicles 28:13). (14) He gave of gold by weight for things of gold.—The Hebrew is very concise. Apparently it continues the construction of 1 Chronicles 28:12, so that the sense is: “He gave him a pattern or description for the golden vessels (literally, for the gold), by the weight for the golden vessels (Heb., for the gold), for all vessels of each kind of service (i.e., use); and he gave him a pattern for all the silver vessels, by weight, for all vessels of each kind of service.” In other words, David gave Solomon an account or schedule of all the different vessels of gold and silver that would be required for the sanctuary, specifying the exact weight of each. (Comp. Ezra 8:25, seq. Ezra 8:34.) (15) Even the weight for the candlesticks of gold.—Rather, and a (specified) weight for the golden lampstands, and their golden lamps, in the weight of each lampstand and its lamps; and (a weight) for the lampstands of silver by weight, for a lampstand and its lamps, according to the service of each lampstand. The meaning still is that David gave Solomon a description of the designated articles, fixing the proper weight for each. (Comp. Exodus 25:31 sqq., the great golden candelabrum of the Mosaic sanctuary.) No mention of the silver lampstands occurs anywhere else in the Old Testament. According to the Rabbis, they stood in the chambers of the priests. (16) And by weight he gave gold.—And the gold he gave (assigned in the schedule or written plan) a certain weight. For the tables of shewbread.—Only one table of shewbread is spoken of in the Law. (See Exodus 25:23-30, and comp. 1 Kings 7:48.) The chronicler was well aware of this, as appears from 2 Chronicles 29:18; and as he states elsewhere that Solomon made ten golden tables, and put them five on the right and five on the left in the holy place (2 Chronicles 4:8), those tables may be intended here. It may even be the case that the term “shewbread” (hamma‘arèketh) is a gloss which has displaced the word “gold” (hazzâhâb), and that the original text was “for the tables of gold.” (Comp. “for the tables of silver,” at the end of the verse.) The table of shewbread would then be included among the golden tables. (But comp. 1 Chronicles 6:57; 2 Chronicles 28:16.) For the tables of silver.—The silver tables are not again spoken of in the Old Testament. The rabbis assert that they stood in the court of the Temple, and that the prepared flesh of the sacrificial victims was laid upon them. (17) Also pure gold for the fleshhooks, and the bowls, and the cups.—Rather, and the forks, and the bowls, and the flagons were (in the schedule or inventory) pure gold. (See Exodus 27:3; 1 Samuel 2:13-14.) The bowls were used in lustral sprinkling, the golden flagons in libations (Exodus 25:29; Exodus 37:16; Numbers 4:7 only). The golden basons.—Tankards, or lidded pitchers (kĕphôrîm): a word only found here and in Ezra 1:10; Ezra 8:27 (among the sacred vessels restored by Cyrus). By weight.—By the (required) weight. The altar of incense stood within the Holiest (the Dĕbîr, or Adytum; Exodus 40:5). And gold for the pattern of the chariot of the cherubims, that spread out their wings.—Rather, and for the model of the chariot, that is, the cherubim (he assigned) gold; to wit, for beings out-spreading (their wings) and overshadowing the Ark of the Covenant of Jehovah. The two cherubs lying on the (kappôreth) above the Ark are here called “the chariot,” with obvious reference to such passages as Psalms 18:11, where it is said of God, “He charioted on a cherub.” (Comp. also Psalms 99:1.) The rest of the verse describes the purpose of the symbolical cherubic figures, in terms borrowed from Exodus 25:20. (Comp. also Ezekiel’s vision, called by the Jews “The Chariot,” Ezekiel 1:0) (19) All this said David.—The words with which David delivered the plans of the building and the schedule of its vessels to Solomon. The omission of any introductory formula, such as “And David said,” is dramatic. (Comp. 1 Chronicles 16:8; 1 Chronicles 23:4-5.) Literally rendered, after the Hebrew punctuation, the verse runs:—“The whole in a writing from the hand of Jehovah, to me he made clear; all the works of the model.” With the expression “a writing from the hand of Jehovah” (comp. Exodus 31:18; Exodus 25:40), David affirms his “pattern” of the sanctuary and its vessels to have been conceived, and described in writing, under that Divine guidance which he sought and followed in all the great enterprises of his life. Whether “the writing” was a communication “by the hand of” one of David’s seers, or merely the description of the Mosaic sanctuary (Exodus 25:0 seq.), is not clear. The verb “he taught” (hiskîl) requires an object, such as is supplied in the Authorised version: “made me understand.” It takes a dative (Proverbs 21:11), and probably the word rendered “upon me” is really a later equivalent of the same construction. Else we might compare Nehemiah 2:8, Ezekiel 1:3, and render: “The whole, in a writing from the hand of Jehovah upon me, he taught,” implying that David himself sketched out the whole design under Divine inspiration. Perhaps the text is corrupt. (20) And David said to Solomon his son.—The conclusion of the speech begun in 1 Chronicles 28:9-10, and interrupted by the transfer of the plans and designs (1 Chronicles 28:11-19). Be strong and of good courage.—So 1 Chronicles 22:13. “And do” is added here, because the time for action is imminent. Fear not . . . forsake thee.—From Deuteronomy 31:6; Deuteronomy 31:8. (See also Joshua 1:5-6.) My God.—Recalling, in a single word, all his own wonderful experience of the Divine Helper. Fail.—Drop, let go, and so dismiss, desert. Until.—The word implies nothing about the time beyond the expressed limit. (Comp. εws, Matthew 1:25.) (21) And, behold, the courses of the priests and the Levites.—The form of expression suggests that David pointed to them as he spoke. The representatives of religion would hardly be absent from an assembly of “all the princes of Israel” (1 Chronicles 28:1) (Comp. 1 Chronicles 24:5, “princes of God.”) They might also be included among “the valiant men.” (Comp. 1 Chronicles 9:13.) And there shall be with thee for all manner of workmanship.—Rather, And with thee in every kind of work will be every volunteer with skill, for every kind of service: that is to say, skilled craftsmen have volunteered for the work (1 Chronicles 22:15), and will support thy endeavours. The word rendered “volunteer” (nâdîb) strictly means one who offers free-will offerings. (Comp. Exodus 35:5; Exodus 35:22; and the verb Judges 5:1, hithnaddçb.) The phrase “volunteer with wisdom,” or artistic skill, is not found elsewhere. Also the princes and all the people.—Spoken, perhaps, with another gesture. The whole assembly would subserve the wishes of Solomon. Wholly at thy commandment.—Literally, For all thy words: i.e., orders (Vulg., praecepta), or matters, business (1 Chronicles 26:32). These files are public domain. Text Courtesy of BibleSupport.com. Used by Permission. Ellicott, Charles John. "Commentary on 1 Chronicles 28". "Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers". https://www.studylight.org/ the Week of Proper 14 / Ordinary 19

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What goes on inside the mind of a hacker? What are they thinking about when they hack into a system? Knowing the mindset of a hacker will enable you to understand them better and protect your systems more securely. Today, we break into the hacker’s mind and see what they see when breaking into systems. We will also study some of the factors that motivate hackers and keep them at their station all night hacking into systems and testing their exploits on weakly protected information systems. At the end of the article, you will have a piece of the hacker’s mind and what they think about when they take on a challenge to hack into a system. In today’s post, we will be looking at the mind of a black hat hacker whose intentions are always malicious, and they are known to cause some terrible damage to the information systems they manage to break into. When you understand what an evil hacker is like, you will protect your systems from them better. You will also keep them away from your information and applications when you are fully aware of the kind of damage that they are capable of causing to the information systems they have managed to hack. With this information, you will also be more cautious about updating software systems and ensuring that you do not stay behind on getting the latest security patches released by your software vendor. Points of Weakness Hackers are always looking for the fault in security systems. With their knowledge of computer systems, applications, and networks, they know what is supposed to be done and will always look for laxity in the security protocols in a system. If your local system administrator has not been keen on their work, they are likely to have left some systems on and accessible to the hackers. Even during the setup of your internal network, there might have been incorrect configurations that were done as a result of a hurry. These are potential ways for hackers to get into your information system, steal your information, or destroy it entirely. Hackers will also study systems to see where you did not follow the protocol in setting up the configuration. For instance, is the firewall server on your network insulated from the rest of the network? Can information leak between networks without getting stopped or rerouted correctly? When you have this information at hand, you will have a better idea of what the hacker is looking for. With the knowledge of computer systems, the hackers are always looking for places that you might have slipped up while setting up your system. They will be looking for any holes you might have left when setting up your system, information processing infrastructure, or network. The hackers will also want to see how well you have arranged your information system to ensure that damage on one end or portion of the structure does not spread or affect the other sectors significantly. Designing fault-tolerant systems make it harder for hackers to bring down your entire system. Even when they have managed to hack into several servers, they will not hack the entire system when you have a neat network. The network that can separate concerns makes sure that the hacker does not go from one section of the network to another and carry out more damage to your information system. With the proper network protocols and configurations in place, you can easily keep your entire system more secure. A good network also enables you to contain a cyberattack and prevent the damage from spreading to the entire information system. While you were setting up your information system or network, did you read the manual? Going through the instructions as you set up your network or information system is very important. The section that you should read most is the section about default configurations. Default configurations are e necessary evil when setting up computer systems and networks, but they are also the most significant point of weaknesses. When you leave all the settings of your new applications and equipment in their default configuration, the hacker will not even have to try hard when they are breaking in. The hacker will also be able to gain control over a more significant portion of your network and information system when you have left the settings in their default state. Default settings are a security concern for many companies, and you should always ensure that you have gotten rid of them as soon as you can. The instruction manuals and documentation for the software you use contain information about how you can change the default settings. With such a guideline, there is no reason to leave things as they are, making it a lot easier for the hacker to break in. Default usernames and passwords are easily accessible on the internet, and when the hacker is carrying out their attack, this information will be readily available to them. As such, they will not need to put in much effort to break into your information system. When they can find the default administration address for your networking applications, breaking into your network will be very easy. They can also reset passwords that they find in their default state, making it harder for you to do system maintenance on your end. Whenever you are setting up your information system, you should change the default usernames and passwords. This will ensure that you have added another layer of security which will also keep the hacker trying harder to get in. whenever you need to install a new system, ensure that you have identified all the default settings and made the changes while still installing the new system. With this in place, the hacker will not get in very quickly, which will also raise the bar for them. The hacker is always looking for the various ways in which they can enter your system. If there is more than one way, then it is much better for them. The more alternatives there are for entering your information system, the easier it will be for the hacker to enter your information system. Breaking in will be a lot easier once the hacker has analyzed your system and sees many alternatives to use when hacking into the system. If your network has many unused open ports, the hacker will make sure to note down all these ports and later create scripts and applications that can initiate a reverse connection through these ports. With this, the hacker will get into your system with much ease, and they will not spend much time crafting up an attack plan. Your network is the main point of access, and when you haven’t set it up correctly, the hacker will have found many ways to get past your defences. Poorly set up networks are also another reason the hacker is more likely to succeed with their attack. The reason hackers manage to get into information systems since they can make it past your network. When the hacker can hack your network, the rest of the system will be just as easy. Hackers always look for entry points into systems and try to identify as many vectors of attack as they can. Hackers will also want to see whether you have several layers of security in your network. Is the network logically and physically partitioned to manage the traffic more easily? Have you set up routers, switches, and bridges to ensure that the traffic routing is more effective? Without these things in place, then your entire network is one collective mess and a honeypot that the hacker will not be able to resist. Points of weaknesses for the hackers do not present themselves as configuration errors only. Human beings are another point of weakness that hackers will be welcome to use in breaking into information systems. When the system administrator is not regularly updating the software system that is in use, it will develop many unpatched holes that will be ideal entry points for the hacker’s scripts. The people who make use of the systems should also learn to use stronger passwords and change these more frequently. Good password habits are a strong deterrent against hackers, and one reason hackers avoid people who change their passwords regularly. The hacker will also look for other weaknesses in the habits that people have developed over time. If the people do not lock their systems when going for a break, then the hacker will have an easier time planting rootkits and installing malware on the system. The management of a company targeted by a hacker will also be studied for weaknesses and security lapses in the past. If the management has not been training the people on the importance of cybersecurity and the risk that hackers pose to them, the company will have become an easier target. Enforcing security deterrents against hackers starts with the individuals and the management of the company they work in. if people are more likely to click on any links that they are sent, then hacking will be a lot easier for the hacker. If people open email attachments without first scanning them for viruses, then the hacker will have found a point of entry into the systems. Using old and outdated systems is another weakness that the hackers will be looking for as they study an information system. Challenges are the reason hackers are willing to stay awake for an entire weekend. Without the challenges of breaking into systems that are well secured, the hackers might also be sleeping off their long weekends instead of breaking into systems. Hackers are all about the challenge and the rush that comes with these challenges. Hackers will always want to look for better challenges, and they are not always looking for something when they break into a system. At other times, the hackers will break into a system to prove that they can. Once they have finished breaking into one system, the hackers will move on to other systems they have never tried. Hackers will not give up easily, no matter what security measures you have in place for your information system and network. They will be willing to try as hard as possible to get into information systems and break into networks no matter how well they have been defended. The challenge of breaking into systems that other people have tried and failed is a driving force that keeps hackers on edge. The hackers will barely get any sleep when there is an unbroken challenge to be given a try. They will put as much effort as they can into the challenge and once they have beaten the challenge, consider it as one of their many trophies, which they will be picking up along the way. The hacker can be compared to an illegal game hunter looking for animals that are very hard to kill. When they have killed one animal, they will be in search of the next animal. They will not even spare a moment to celebrate their current kill as their search for a more significant challenge is all that boosts and fuels their dangerous journey. The hacker will also not pose to study a system that they have broken into merely for the challenge of breaking into it. Hackers will look for new challenges, and whenever you have secured your system entirely, they will be sure to give it an array of tests to ensure that it can stand up to the beating they will be sure to mete out on it. If you keep your software and firewall constantly updated, this will be a challenge for the hacker who will be looking for a moment when you forget to update your software. The challenge is catching you unaware of the security status of your system. The hacker will be ready to spend all the time as close to you as they can to be able to break your information systems. Whenever the hacker has finished one challenge, they will be looking for the next, more significant challenge. When the hacker fails on one of the challenges, they will feel disappointed and will even set up camp outside your firewalls for weeks. Hackers feel very bad when they cannot break into your information systems. The best way to serve humility to them hot is by ensuring that your network and applications are correctly configured. All the other security protocols are followed to ensure that your information is on a safe network and behind a powerful firewall that will keep the hacker outside. To the hacker, your well-secured system is a challenge to them, and they will dedicate a lot of time and effort to try and break in. when they cannot, then that is a dead Kiwi bird for them to keep in their list of failures. Challenges are an exciting attraction for the hackers, and it keeps them constantly awake and trying to break into new information systems. They will also try out new applications that the vendors have released. This enables them to find out the security weaknesses of the systems and other vulnerabilities before anyone else. Finding vulnerabilities before anyone else keeps the hackers ahead of the game and in a position to beat system administrators even when they have installed the latest version of an application. When there is no challenge to be pursued, the hacker will not try anything on your system. However, a more significant challenge always pulls them back to their desk and causes them to spend a lot of time trying to break into your information system. The availability of new challenges means that hackers will also be trying to outdo each other. When a hacker hears of a fellow hacker who has just broken into a system that they were unable to hack into, they will be more daring. They will try all they can to beat their fellow hackers at present challenges in the wild. The hackers will even post the challenge once they have finished breaking into the system for the sheer pleasure of it. Sometimes, the hackers break into systems for the mere sake of recognition. This keeps them motivated, and when they can get more comments from their fellow hackers, they will be more likely to make attempts on information systems, networks, and other applications. The hackers are always looking for challenges to keep their skills sharp and stay in top form for upcoming projects, contracts, and trends in their industry. Challenges are always presenting themselves to the hackers, which keeps their passion for their talent burning. Without the challenge, the hackers would not be creating new tools to add to their arsenal or developing exploits. They will be used to take advantage of the vulnerabilities they have discovered in various software applications. The challenge is the main driving force behind the efforts of the hacker and the reason they keep breaking into a system. The joy they get from being successful at breaking into systems means that the hackers will be more willing to sacrifice their time to create better attack strategies. More considerable challenges mean more incredible bounty for the hackers, and in their mind, the more challenging tasks mean more money. The hackers will always be looking for a task outside their comfort zone to ensure that they are on track with the rest of the security industry. They will also try as much as possible to keep looking for new challenges to ensure that their skills do not rust and fade away over time. A hacker is always a hacker. With new challenges, they have something to focus on, which means that your information systems and firewalls will be a testing ground for the new skills that the hackers have been developing over time. The hacker has a highly complex landscape to navigate through when they are hacking. They have to be careful about every move they make to maintain their reputation. Hackers that have relaxed their rules about staying anonymous have been tracked down and arrested. The hackers that break into systems are aware that what they are doing is not legal. As such, they will ensure that they have taken all the steps necessary to prevent them from getting tracked down. Their every move is cleaned and accounted for, which means that the hacker will not be traced to their home when they are in the process or have just completed a hacking encounter. The hackers will always try to improve their methods, update their skill-sets and upgrade their arsenal to keep themselves a step ahead of the law. The law is always hot on the hacker’s heels, and the hackers are ever-aware of this fact. They will always ensure that they have doubled back when getting back into their digital lair after a hacking adventure. They will also hide their digital footprint to ensure that forensic investigators do not build a profile of the hackers. The hackers are also known to be very careful with their activities, which is why they have been able to survive for very long. The hackers are always trying to make their efforts as unpredictable as possible, and you can be sure that the hackers will not be reckless when carrying out their attacks. The hackers will always make an effort to hide their point of origin. They mainly do this by rerouting all their traffic through random servers located at various points on the globe. With this in place, it will be tough to tell which country the hacker is carrying out their attack. As a result, the hackers that can hide their movements will carry out more sustained attacks that will last for a more extended period. Hackers also have to stay in top form, which is why they are known to hack into systems for no apparent reasons. Whenever they break into systems, they can improve their methods, which means that they can hack into more information systems. The hacker also needs to increase the number of methods and techniques that they have in their collection. An improved skill set means that the hacker will have better chances with more challenging systems. Additionally, the hackers will take less time when they break into other information systems when they have brushed up on their skills and improved their methods. Whenever a hacker is breaking into an information system, they will always try to take a unique approach to the attack and not leave any trace that will identify them. The investigators behind many of the hacking attacks have been known to collect information and evidence about hacking attacks. This information is then used to build the hacker’s identity and help trace them more easily. The hackers will be willing to hack more targets to ensure that they leave a unique impression in the digital space each time they take on a victim. Hackers always try to look for systems to refine their skills. Theirs is a highly competitive world, and the hackers have to try harder to survive. They also need to ensure that they can still hack into newer systems, and when they keep hacking into systems, they get better even with the new systems. As businesses move to the cloud as a computing infrastructure, the hackers are finding it increasingly difficult to break into the new scene. This means that they need better methods and a new approach if they are to make any progress. It is also why hackers have always been working hard to break into systems even when the security measures being installed are getting more effective at keeping the hackers outside. Better challenges for the hackers ensure that they can refine their skills. When the hackers can keep their tools sharp, they will not get thrown out of their trade, and their mastery of new systems will improve. Hackers have also been known to work on information systems to get better at breaking them. Newer systems are upping the ante for most hackers, which is why they are now working on getting better at breaking into new systems. In the hacker’s mind, the people’s and companies’ migration to the cloud means that they will soon be out of business, making them more willing to try anything to preserve their standing in society. Hackers are always looking for new methods of breaking into information systems as running out of ways to break into new systems, no matter how well they are secured, will mean an end to their career and a disruption of their ways of making a living. Defying the Authority Hackers are always on the wrong side of the law. Even when they connect to the internet, they ensure that they reroute their connection across several continents to avoid detection. Hackers are always looking for ways to protest against the government or some other way of thinking. This is why they will stay up all night breaking into systems and making a statement on the internet. Defiance of authority is a common theme for many hackers, and you will notice they will always use the government systems and websites as a test-bed for their hacking activity. Hackers who have been able to break government systems successfully are known to be very popular and authority figures in the hacking scene. The hackers that have been able to hack government websites and deface them are legends and celebrities of a kind. Whenever the government is making a move on the internet, they always expect a horde of hackers to throw everything they’ve got at them. This means that the government is the main target for hackers. The hackers are looking for ways to upset the government or bring down its primary services by hacking attacks on government systems. When the hackers can break into power companies and turn off the electricity for millions of people living in cities, they will have made a statement to the government in some unique way. Hackers who are in open defiance of the government will also reject any move made by the government and will do everything they can simply to show how angry they are at their government. Other kinds of hackers are known to hack for a cause. These will deface government websites with a banner that they would have carried out across the city in the form of a protest or a demonstration. These hackers are known as hacktivists and have been making a difference in many governments. The hacktivists will carry out a hack for a cause, and most of the time, they deface websites without causing any damage or destroying data on information systems. The hacker’s mindset is one of a rebel that has nothing else to do with their time. The hacker is always thinking of doing things in a way that will make a difference to them. Breaking into information systems is one of the main ways hackers can defy the governments with strict laws against hacking. They will also do this for the excitement of being noticed by the government or even getting traced by government investigators. Hackers defy the law a lot as even the mere act of hacking is a form of disobeying the government and many other authorities that are strictly against the practice. The people that have set up security systems might have left a flaw or two in their configuration. Even when the hacker can get services and information through conventional means, they will always break into the systems to circumvent the information system security measures that have been put into place. The hackers will always try to defy the odds and develop new means of getting into information systems. It can be compared to seeing a broken window at a public toilet and using this to get into the toilet instead of going through the door. This will be a lot more exciting and will also be a way of doing things differently. Hackers will always want to get information directly from the source. In this case, I mean very directly. They will want a copy of a press release that is still on your hard drive compared to downloading it from your website. That is how unique hackers are. Hackers are not ordinary people that you will see lining up and at ATMs to get their money. They are the people who will be willing to put in all efforts to create their credit cards. Usually, hackers will be ready to risk a lot to venture out into the unknown world of information security. Stakes are also a lot higher for the hackers and are the reason the hackers usually become the people they become. The hackers have an exciting life staying away from the cops and avoiding detection in their entire online life, and their minds are also a lot different as a result. Ordinary internet users who have been used to using the internet through ordinary browsers and their usual internet service providers contrast to the hackers. The hackers will not use the same combination of connections twice, and they will also clean up their traces after using an internet connection. The hackers will hack many things in their activity to ensure that they are not noticed on the internet. Hackers are unique people who have grown to become agents of change for many people and organizations. It is the activity of hackers that makes companies upgrade their security standards. Companies that have been victims of hacker attacks have also made changes to their information security systems due to the attacks. Hackers do not approach challenges in the same way as other people do. They will always be looking for a way past security safeguards that will get them in without getting noticed or triggering any alarms. Hackers also tend to avoid attention as much as they can. Only the very reckless and risk-averse hackers will proclaim the good news of their hacking escapades on internet forums. Usual, professional hackers will regard their victories silently and are more likely to evade detection for much longer. The noisy hackers are the young, excited kind who will not hold the news of their ability to break into an information system or get past a firewall. The Hackers Think Differently Owing to the unique nature of their activity, the hackers tend to stay ahead of the learning curve and are known to think in unique ways. They are intelligent people who are always ready to rise to any challenge that might present itself. As such, hackers will always try to think in different ways when they are breaking into systems. They will always try to develop their tools whenever they are attacking to use the vulnerabilities presented to them. Additionally, hackers have also been known to use different software than everyone else. This makes them unique people who lead unique lifestyles, but this does not mean that hackers do not destroy at the end of the day. Hacking attacks are known to wreak havoc on many information systems, and the damage that these attacks can cause to systems is extensive. They have crippled financial institutions worldwide by stealing their list of passwords and posting it up for the entire internet to see. Whenever hackers target a system, they bring about much damage to the company or business that maintains the system. Hackers are also always solving problems as they try to break into an information system. This means that their minds are always active, and they can tackle challenges more uniquely than the rest of us. As such, hackers are known to think differently even when carrying out their everyday life activities. A hacker’s mindset is unique and an exciting topic of study. It forms the basis for understanding the people behind the devastation that we have witnessed in recent years and their actions. When we understand how the hacker thinks, we can also tell what motivates them and what frustrates their actions. With this information, you can recognize a hacker more quickly. This way, you will be able to alert everyone about the hacker’s present threat and take steps to secure your systems better. Hackers are a dangerous lot, and the fact that they think from a destructive perspective means that they have no regard for the safety of your information. They do not think about leaving information systems intact and can even format your hard drives when they cannot decrypt the stored information on them. Knowing how the hacker thinks means that you will recognize and understand their behavior much more quickly. It also lets you look into their complex world of hacking and what makes them do what they do. Hackers are different in the way they think and act. You cannot expect them to do things like ordinary people, such as respecting the law and adhering to set standards. The hackers will always have a workaround for most things in their lives, which means that they will constantly be circumventing systems. However, an understanding of how the hacker thinks means that you can capture a hacker more easily. Knowing the hacker’s actions means that you can quickly build a honeypot to capture them the moment they try to break into your systems. You can also set up your systems more securely when you understand the approach that an attack is willing to take to ensure that they have broken into your system. With the information provided in this post, you will be more familiar with the thinking of a hacker. Having a unique perspective and a different point-of-view makes the hackers more dangerous and their attacks more severe. It would help if you were better prepared for the hacker when you know what they think about your system and the approach they will take to circumvent the security safeguards you have put in place. It is essential that you can get into the hacker’s mind as this will also ensure that you, too, are better equipped and ready to take on the hackers when they strike your system. Being in the hacker’s seat means that your information will be protected from the hackers and not from imaginary elements of insecurity lurking around your systems. Be ready for the hacker by learning about how the hacker thinks when encountering your network, firewall, or information system.

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Does CBD Affect Memory Function? Recent studies show that a single dose of CBD can have a multitude of benefits for the user. CBD, or cannabidiol, is known to help reduce symptoms associated with muscle and joint swelling, ease skin irritations, aid in disrupted sleep cycles, relieve tension, and support mental health. With these incredible effects of CBD, it will not enact a psychotropic effect on the body and mind like another cannabinoid derived from the Cannabis sativa plant, Δ-9-Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). Instead of causing psychoactive effects, CBD has a more subtle effect on the brain that can benefit our wellbeing and even play a role in memory function. How Does CBD Work Within The Body? Both THC and CBD interact with the body’s endocannabinoid system (the ECS), which helps regulate balance throughout the body’s multiple systems. The endocannabinoid system uses naturally produced chemical messages known as endocannabinoids to communicate. These endocannabinoids can bind with cannabinoid receptors (CB receptors) found in the brain and the nervous system to activate various biological functions, such as increased hormone production, working memory, or brain cell activity within the hippocampus. How Is CBD Different From THC? While THC and CBD share the same molecular formula makeup, which is 21 carbon atoms, 30 hydrogen atoms, and two oxygen atoms, their molecular arrangement sets them apart. Their molecular mass is nearly identical, but a slight variation in their molecular formation leads the two to play very different roles within the ECS. CBD cannot be psychoactive because of how it is built. The molecular structure will not allow it to bind with the endocannabinoid system’s CB1 receptors the way THC does. This allows the two phytocannabinoids to affect the brain in different ways. While THC can have the reputation of causing memory loss, recent studies have revealed that CBD might have the opposite effect. It is a non-intoxicating substance that can improve memory retention consolidation. How Does CBD Improve Memory Function? CBD is a chemical compound that is naturally derived from the cannabis plant. It hosts many practical medical and therapeutic health benefits without producing the high or potentially harmful feelings associated with THC’s psychoactive effects, such as psychosis, nervousness, paranoia, or increased heart rate. While CBD doesn’t bind directly with CB receptors in the brain, it can still support endocannabinoids that do bind with cannabinoid receptors, and has been found to interact with other receptors and neurotransmitters throughout the brain. The effect of cannabidiol (CBD) function within the brain is believed to help improve memory function and prevent memory deficits in several ways. CBD is considered neuroprotective, meaning it can help protect the neurons responsible for maintaining cognitive function from damage or degeneration. This can play an essential role in memory function and support those with memory and cognitive impairment. A 2016 study found sufficient evidence that regular cannabis use can help slow or potentially reverse the loss of memory function associated with dementia by helping protect vital neurotransmitters and brain tissue. The study also found that CBD may support memory function and reduce memory impairment by helping increase the connection between brain cells. These results have been validated by clinical trials and research from additional laboratories. As an antioxidant, CBD can help reduce oxidative stress within the body, which is known to damage healthy cells. Research has shown that oxidative stress can help reduce memory processing and retention by degrading brain cells. Memory function capabilities decrease as more oxygen is released inside of the brain. CBD’s antioxidant properties can help reduce problems associated with oxygen stress. By utilizing CBD, brain functions that are negatively impacted by increased oxygen levels in the brain can be improved. The body also becomes less capable of combating oxidative stress on its own as we age, meaning our cells have less natural protection from oxidative stress over time. By reducing the risk of oxidative stress as we age, CBD can help protect our brain cells, which in turn protects our memory function. Reduce Stress Levels High stress levels can impact memory function. When we are stressed, our brains have more trouble creating short-term memories and have a more challenging time translating short-term memories into long-term ones. The good news is that using CBD can relieve the user from feelings of stress, tension, and discomfort from physical movement. For someone living with certain health conditions, the common effects of cannabis include helping ease the symptoms of stress and tension, improving motor functions, and reducing memory decline. The soothing properties of CBD suppress agitation, allowing the user to calmly focus on the tasks at hand. This can help the brain better recall memories, as it takes away the stress associated with the struggle to remember. Using CBD can also relieve symptoms associated with memory disturbances. When the brain’s immune cells fail to clear dead brain cells, blockages in neural pathways occur. The more swelling there is, the more significant the impact will be. Swelling in the brain has been associated with neurodegenerative disorders, cognitive decline, and memory loss. But thanks to its anti-swelling properties, CBD can help reduce swelling and increase blood flow in the brain, helping to reduce the risk of memory loss. Limonene Terpenes And Memory Function Terpenes are compounds found in nature, particularly in plants, responsible for their fragrance, taste, and medical properties. Limonene terpenes, which are terpenes derived from citrus fruit, are the second most widely distributed terpenoid found in nature. These terpenes are bio-identical to CBD that are from a cannabis or hemp plant. Limonene terpenes that are transformed into essential oils have been utilized as a holistic remedy for centuries. Regular usage can improve the quality of life in many different ways, especially for those struggling with memory function. Scientific clinical studies suggest that citrus oil, due to the limonene terpenes, has soothing effects on the body and mind comparable to the impact of CBD derived from cannabis or hemp. It is a very safe ingestible substance that is also shown to soothe the gastrointestinal process for improved digestion. Citrus oil also has been shown to have a calming effect on the mind, allowing for relaxation and improved focus. This will overall help with maintaining healthy memory function. Scents trigger the olfactory system, which controls the body’s sense of smell. The olfactory sensors then trigger the emotional and memory centers of the brain. This is why smell is so closely related to memory and nostalgia. Just breathing in limonene terpenes in a citrus essential oil can evoke a calming response throughout the body. Peels CBD Oil: CBD Without the THC Using CBD has been shown to improve cognitive facial recognition skills when administered alone, without any THC compounds or impurities added. The addition of hemp, THC, pesticides, heavy metals, and mycotoxins are all too commonly present in CBD products that are derived from the cannabis plant. These additions can detrimentally alter sought-after results regarding using CBD to aid memory function. That is why it is vital to do your research and choose a product that is as healthy and clean of impurities as possible. Peels CBD Oil is made from terpenes found in orange peels. It is a natural substance that is absolutely guaranteed to be the purest and safest CBD oil on today’s market. Peels CBD is known as nature-identical, which means it is the same as CBD found in a cannabis or hemp plant. Due to its origin being orange peels, there is zero hemp or THC content in its formula. This pure tincture will allow for optimal benefits for the user in that additional and detracting ingredients and compounds will not muddle. Peels CBD is odorless and tasteless in its raw form. In addition to organic medium-chain triglycerides (MCT) oil (from coconut), our tinctures have a distinctive citrus flavor and aroma due to our organic, natural citrus flavor. There is no hemp or cannabis-related smell or taste because our CBD is not derived from either of those sources. Like CBD derived from the cannabis plant, both kinds describe a cannabinoid made through synthesis, which is chemically and molecularly identical to the same cannabinoid found in nature. Our process of taking CBD from natural inputs guarantees zero THC and hemp content in our products. Everything that goes into the process is found in nature, and everything that comes out of our process is found in nature. How To Use Peels CBD Peels CBD Oil comes in tincture form, which is a concentrated herbal extract. Simply place a dropper full of CBD under your tongue, release your preferred dosage, and then hold it under the tongue for 30-60 seconds before consumption. This will speed up the absorption time in the body. Try adding your CBD drops into your coffee, breakfast, or morning smoothie. With sublingual administration, CBD can begin to release its effects after only 30 minutes. When consumed with food or drink, they will take the same amount of time as ingesting an edible. Since CBD is a fat-soluble compound, taking CBD with a high-fat meal will increase absorption. CBD And Daily Life CBD emits benefits that soothe the body and calms the mind. Regular CBD use supports full-body wellness. Physically, CBD has been known to soothe joint discomfort and muscle tension temporarily. This is especially wonderful if you are an athlete or prone to recurring aches. Mentally, CBD brings peace and calm to the stress hormones in the body, allowing you to think clearer and focus on your tasks at hand. It relieves the stress response in the body and creates a literal inner sense of balance, or homeostasis, within. CBD is also used to help get a good night’s rest. While smaller doses of CBD are used as wakefulness and focusing agents, a slightly larger dose has been shown to have sedative effects. As the brain works on memory processing and storage while you sleep, quality slumber is essential to the brain’s optimal memory function. By falling asleep and staying asleep, you set your brain up for success in its memory comprehension and storage systems. CBD supports sleep by removing discomfort in the mind and body, creating a relaxed sense of peacefulness. It eases tension in the head, neck, and achy muscles or joints. Emotionally and mentally, CBD will soothe any feelings of stress that might keep you up at night. While there is still so much research that needs to be conducted regarding the relationship between CBD and memory, scientific studies support the findings that CBD increases region-specific blood flow in the brain, something that had previously been disputed. By increasing blood flow to specific areas of the brain, those brain systems will be able to function quickly and efficiently. Since it is safe and generally well tolerated with minimal side effects, it is an excellent option for a holistic and natural CBD treatment. The nature of CBD is complex, and so much is still yet to be discovered. However, these scientific findings can advance further research in a range of medical conditions characterized by how the brain processes memory and function. CBD and Memory: Can Hemp Oil Enhance Memory? Cannabis users have long been thought of as people with short-term memory problems due to an alleged negative impact of cannabinoids — the active ingredients in cannabis plants — on the brain cells. Ironically, the infamous THC has been recently shown to have neuroprotective effects on brain cells during studies. This means that cannabis, instead of killing healthy brain cells, protects them against damage. This fairly recent discovery sheds new light on the potential use of cannabinoids in the treatment of memory issues. And as for CBD, neuroprotection is believed to be one of the compound’s major roles. So, have we been misinformed all that time? Apparently yes, but this isn’t the subject of our article. Today, we’re going to cover CBD’s potential in fighting Cognitive Decline (CD), the scientific term used to diagnose memory loss. The condition is more likely to occur with aging; that’s why learning more about CBD, including its effects on catabolic processes in the brain, is essential to understand how it can help with memory issues. Does CBD Help with Memory? In recent years, CBD has been found to alleviate certain symptoms of memory loss conditions, including different types of dementia. People are turning to CBD oil to treat Alzheimer’s disease as well as to improve focus and enhance the daily performance of their brains. We have all experienced temporary memory glitches, but if memory loss becomes chronic and compromises your daily functioning, it may be time to seek out treatment. CBD interacts with the master regulatory network known as the endocannabinoid system (ECS). From there, it operates on over 65 molecular pathways, ensuring the balanced functioning of ECS and the maintenance of homeostasis (1). Homeostasis is a biological term describing the harmony between all biological functions in the human body. The interaction between CBD and the central nervous system (CNS) is where the cannabinoid manifests its benefits for memory. In the next section, we cover the most common memory issues CBD is known to help with, and back it up with scientific research. CBD and Memory Issues: The Benefits Perhaps the most important benefit of CBD for people with memory problems is that the compound is non-intoxicating. Unlike THC, CBD won’t get you high because it doesn’t have a direct affinity to any of the cannabinoid receptors in the brain. CBD can even negate the psychotropic potential of CBD by blocking the sites of these receptors when THC tries to bind to them. THC can help enhance memory in people with neurodegenerative disorders, but as we said, this article focuses specifically on CBD. And if you’re reading this, you’re probably interested in achieving memory improvements without the psychoactive buzz. CBD has been established as a potential remedy for people who struggle with a variety of cognitive disorders. However, because the research is in its early stages, more studies in this regard are needed to confirm preclinical findings. For now, let’s focus on the most important studies investigating the efficacy of CBD for common memory ailments. CBD for Alzheimer’s and Dementia Memory Loss Memory loss triggered by degenerative conditions, such as dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, is a significant area that CBD oil has been shown to alleviate inflammation of the brain, reduce oxidative stress, and improve the regeneration of neurons, all of which can help improve cognitive performance. Patients with Alzheimer’s disease experience progressive cognitive decline due to the degeneration of neurons in the brain, which further destroys neural pathways. Numerous studies have shown that CBD oil not only prevents the destruction of these neurons, but it also aids the body in creating new ones (neurogenesis). (2) CBD for Memory Loss Caused by Stress and Anxiety While analyzing the impact of CBD on the brain cells, researchers have discovered that it can actually mitigate brain damage caused by physical trauma and severe stress. Studies have shown that the body starts to release endocannabinoids (the body’s version of plant-based cannabinoids) to defend the brain and repair it (3). When phytocannabinoids like CBD are administered to the endocannabinoid system, it strengthens the defensive response, therefore strengthening the memory. Moreover, there is a large body of evidence supporting the use of CBD in the treatment of traumatic brain injury that derives from neuroinflammation (4). Since CBD is such a potent anti-inflammatory compound, it could help you after memory loss caused by an injury that brought inflammation to your brain. CBD for Memory Loss Due to Lack of Focus If your memory issues are caused by an inability to focus, CBD oil may come in handy, as shown by studies that tested the efficacy of CBD as a potential treatment for ADHD, including children. In a review published in the Journal of Pediatric Pharmacology and Therapeutics, the authors reported that CBD oil had been shown to support people with a range of medical conditions, including the behavioral symptoms of ADHD, such as a short attention span (5). Another study mentions anxiolytic (anti-anxiety) and sleep-regulating properties of CBD, both of which contribute to better memory retention (6). However, it is unclear whether CBD oil can improve your cognitive function if your memory loss doesn’t stem from a diagnosed condition or disease. A comprehensive review of 27 previously conducted studies found that apart from improving the mental health of patients with schizophrenia, CBD oil didn’t have significant effects on memory functioning in otherwise healthy subjects (7). So, whether the therapeutic effects of CBD on the brain are universal is still up to debate; that’s why we need more longitudinal human trials to draw definitive conclusions on CBD as a memory booster. CBD, Memory, and Addiction In addition to the aforementioned publications, an additional study suggests that CBD may be a promising treatment for people recovering from addiction due to its effect on memory (8). The study introduces the idea of CBD having “a disruptive effect on reconsolidation of contextual drug-related memories.” It also highlights CBD’s potential to “attenuate contextual memories” from drug abuse, reducing the risk of relapse. In simple words, the study concludes that CBD can help with addiction by altering memories linked to substance use. The research team used cue exposure to tempt mice with a rewarding drug (morphine) and observed that taking CBD disrupted the cue. In a perfect world, this would mean that human cravings in addicts can be curbed with CBD too. Long story short, the effects of CBD on memory may help addicts unlearn the habits of addiction. These habits give rise to cravings and pose a risk of relapse, long after withdrawal symptoms are gone. Some research also suggests that since CBD affects the memory in such a fashion, it may be able to help addicts in recovery by dissociating experiences with substance abuse. What Else Does the Research Say About Taking CBD for Memory Enhancement? Some studies suggest that even chronic low doses of THC can help to improve cognitive function — at least in animal models (9). As far as humans are concerned, there is growing data suggesting its positive effects on memory (as mentioned above). Here’s a summary of the current research: - A study from the Frontiers in pharmacology has found that CBD promotes neurogenesis — the growth and development of new cells in the brain. Neurogenesis prevents further cognitive deterioration. This specific study analyzed the effects of mice with induced Alzheimer’s condition prior to being treated with CBD. The CBD effectively reversed the cognitive impairments of the mice (10). - A separate study indicates that an 8-month CBD treatment can prevent the development of social recognition memory deficits. Similar to the previous study, this one was conducted on mice in a controlled laboratory environment (11). - According to a study from the American Journal of Psychiatry, CBD has a beneficial effect on schizophrenia. The authors claim that CBD’s activity is independent of dopamine receptor antagonism, which makes it a promising treatment for the condition (12). - The aforementioned Australian review suggested similar health benefits of CBD. After covering 27 publications in peer-reviewed journals, researchers concluded that CBD enhances cognition in “preclinical models of cognitive impairment.” Cognitive impairment examined in the study included disorders such as schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s disease, meningitis, sepsis, malaria, hepatic encephalopathy, and brain ischemia (13). That being said, we are still lacking clinical evidence on CBD for memory loss, and until more data is collected, we can only theorize about these effects and experiment with CBD on our own. The good news is that all animals share the same endocannabinoid system that responds to plant-based cannabinoids in a similar manner. This means that studies using animal models show a high degree of relevance, and positive results from such research usually give green light to human trials. Can CBD Cause Short Term Memory Loss? Perhaps one of the biggest stereotypes surrounding cannabis is that the long-term use of the plant may cause problems with short-term memory due to alleged brain damage. Now that we’ve established CBD and THC are both antioxidants and neuroprotectants, you may be wondering whether those alleged problems are caused by some other properties of these cannabinoids. The truth is, CBD doesn’t cause short term memory loss, and as the current evidence suggests, it can actually improve memory and focus, aiding people with cognitive disorders. It’s the THC that May Cause Short Term Memory Loss… But Here’s The Catch! When it comes to THC, this issue is less obvious. THC has been shown to cause short-term memory loss directly after use. The results came from adolescents and indicated problems with the ability to recall things. However, these results weren’t replicated in population studies, nor did they carry over to adult samples. THC has a very similar structure to anandamide, which is one of the two major cannabinoids produced by the body. Anandamide comes from Sanskrit and means “ananda,” which translates to “bliss,” “joy,” and “happiness.” Aren’t these the feelings you experience after hitting a vape pen with cannabis oil? Anandamide also plays an important role in the formation and processing of memories. Anandamide deficits are associated with a faster onset of PTSD in people who have gone through trauma; it also causes a person to experience more severe flash-backs from traumatic events. THC happens to alleviate the symptoms of PTSD because it makes the memory more selective. Now, when the user gets a bit too high for their tolerance, the brain takes it as if there was more anandamide than it actually needs to function on the optimal level. This is when the brain may become more selective than it should. Ever found yourself in a situation where in the middle of telling a story, you lose a thought and need a few seconds to recall the message you’ve been trying to convey? That’s the backfiring selectivity of your memory. It’s not chronic and it stops once your body gets flushed from THC. How Much CBD Should I Take? There are no officially established standards for CBD oil when it comes to dosage. All people are different, so the optimal CBD dosage may vary between individuals who are going to take it for a memory boost. Currently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) doesn’t regulate the safety and purity of dietary supplements. As you may guess, hemp-derived CBD products are categorized as supplements, so you also need to pay attention to the quality of your CBD oil. There are many products out there that contain less CBD than advertised. But, when you have a high-quality product in your hand, looking for advice on the dosage, here’s one simple advice: start low and go slow. Different studies recommend starting with 1–50 mg of CBD daily. While 1 mg is rather considered a microdose, most people start with 5–10 mg twice a day. For some people, CBD may provide fast relief, whereas others will need to give it some time to work in the endocannabinoid system. Still, if you don’t feel any difference after a week of testing your dose, increase it by another 5 mg, and monitor the results for next week. Once you’ve found the amount of CBD that boosts your focus and memory, you can stick to it, as people don’t build a tolerance to CBD. The cannabinoid is even known to induce “reverse tolerance,” where users take less CBD over time due to feeling better. Final Verdict: Does CBD Oil Really Improve Memory? CBD oil may be a natural and safe alternative for those seeking help for memory loss. CBD has remarkable antioxidant and neuroprotective effects on the brain, and unlike traditional treatments, its use doesn’t raise safety concerns among patients. Research from animal models and preliminary human studies has yielded promising results when it comes to the memory-boosting properties of CBD, although we’re still waiting for clinical trials to investigate its efficacy on a large scale. So far, we know that CBD reduces inflammation, curbs oxidative stress, and contributes to neurogenesis in the brain — all of which are essential for memory preservation. If you’re thinking of adding CBD oil to your supplementation plan, make sure to consult with your doctor to avoid any adverse interactions that CBD may have with your current medication. A visit to a knowledgeable professional will also help you establish an effective dosage range for your individual situation. Do you take CBD to boost memory? Let us know in the comments below! - Ibeas Bih, Clementino et al. “Molecular Targets of Cannabidiol in Neurological Disorders.” Neurotherapeutics: the journal of the American Society for Experimental NeuroTherapeutics vol. 12,4 (2015): 699-730. doi:10.1007/s13311-015-0377-3 - Watt, Georgia, and Tim Karl. “In vivo Evidence for Therapeutic Properties of Cannabidiol (CBD) for Alzheimer’s Disease.” Frontiers in pharmacology vol. 8 20. 3 Feb. 2017, doi:10.3389/fphar.2017.00020 - Panikashvili, D et al. “An endogenous cannabinoid (2-AG) is neuroprotective after brain injury.” Nature vol. 413,6855 (2001): 527-31. doi:10.1038/35097089 - Walter, Lisa, and Nephi Stella. “Cannabinoids and neuroinflammation.” British journal of pharmacology vol. 141,5 (2004): 775-85. doi:10.1038/sj.bjp.0705667 - Campbell, Christopher T et al. “Cannabinoids in Pediatrics.” The journal of pediatric pharmacology and therapeutics: JPPT: the official journal of PPAGvol. 22,3 (2017): 176-185. doi:10.5863/1551-6776-22.3.176 - Bériault, Maxime et al. “Comorbidity of ADHD and Anxiety Disorders in School-Age Children: Impact on Sleep and Response to a Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment.” Journal of attention disorders vol. 22,5 (2018): 414-424. doi:10.1177/1087054715605914 - Osborne, Ashleigh L et al. “A systematic review of the effect of cannabidiol on cognitive function: Relevance to schizophrenia.” Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews vol. 72 (2017): 310-324. doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2016.11.012 - de Carvalho, Cristiane Ribeiro, and Reinaldo Naoto Takahashi. “Cannabidiol disrupts the reconsolidation of contextual drug-associated memories in Wistar rats.” Addiction biology vol. 22,3 (2017): 742-751. doi:10.1111/adb.12366 - Bilkei-Gorzo, Andras et al. “A chronic low dose of Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) restores cognitive function in old mice.” Nature medicine vol. 23,6 (2017): 782-787. doi:10.1038/nm.4311 - Watt, Georgia, and Tim Karl. Op. Cit. - Cheng, David et al. “Long-term cannabidiol treatment prevent the development of social recognition memory deficits in Alzheimer’s disease transgenic mice.” Journal of Alzheimer’s disease: JAD vol. 42,4 (2014): 1383-96. doi:10.3233/JAD-140921 - McGuire, Philip et al. “Cannabidiol (CBD) as an Adjunctive Therapy in Schizophrenia: A Multicenter Randomized Controlled Trial.” The American journal of psychiatry vol. 175,3 (2018): 225-231. doi:10.1176/appi.ajp.2017.17030325 - Osborne, Ashleigh L et al. Op. Cit. Livvy is a registered nurse (RN) and board-certified nurse midwife (CNM) in the state of New Jersey. After giving birth to her newborn daughter, Livvy stepped down from her full-time position at the Children’s Hospital of New Jersey. This gave her the opportunity to spend more time writing articles on all topics related to pregnancy and prenatal care. Leave a comment Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked * Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Can CBD Help Seniors with Alzheimer’s & Dementia? CBD, or cannabi diol , has been suggested as a treatment to help seniors with dementia manage their symptoms. While there is currently no evidence to show that CBD can stop, reverse, or prevent dementia , there is research that sho ws that it could help manage symptoms. This could be great news for families and seniors who are struggling with the effects of dementia. In this post, we will explore what CBD is along with how CBD can be used to help seniors deal with Alzheimer’s or related dementias. What Is CBD? Let’s start with the basics of CBD. It comes from the hemp plant , which is related to the marijuana plant . The plant is dried and the resin is extracted. This compound contains 2 parts: tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD). - THC is the recreational form of cannabis, which is associated with generating a “high.” In the US, products with more than 0.2% THC are considered illegal. - CBD is the medicinal form of cannabis that generally helps improve mood and reduce damage caused by inflammation. It does not CBD is legal in various forms in 47 US states. It also does not exhibit the potential for dependence or health-related problems. This distinction is important because CBD does not have the intoxicating feeling associated with THC. Instead, it has been shown t o have anti-anxiety properties that can help manage behavior and promote calm. Additionally, CBD is the main ingredient in recent FDA-approved medication, Epidiolex, to treat epilepsy. CBD can be administered in different forms, but the most common is as oil, which can be dropped onto the tongue , contained in gel capsule s, or applied to the skin directly. However, it is also available in pill forms or as an inhalant. What Are the Benefits of CBD for Seniors with Dementia? CBD is commonly used to help with anxiety, insomnia, poor sleep, and even pain relief. B ecause CBD has been shown to help reduce anxiety and agitation, it is believed that it can help reduce these symptoms in seniors with dementia. Because of how dementia affects the brain, a senior may become agitated or anxious in everyday situations. Sometimes this agitation can even turn vio lent. But remember that these behavior changes are caused by the disease and are not your loved one’s fault. CBD may be able to help alleviate these symptoms . Additionally, Dementia Care Central indicates that CBD may also help: - Reduce inflammation - Reduce oxygen buildup - Stimulate the brain & reduce the decline of memory and other brain functions Let’s dive deeper into how CBD could help in each of these areas. Inflammation is the body’s natural response to injury. You might be used to seeing inflammation around a cut or wound. However, neuroinflammation is also associated with various forms of dementia. For example, Alzheimer’s disease causes clumps of proteins to build up in the brain. This can make it harder for the brain to function over time. As a result, the body may respond with inflammation in the area, which could make it even harder for the brain to make connections. However, CBD may help reduce that inflammation and help with dementia. Oxygen buildup ties in with inflammation in the brain. As brain tissue expands, oxygen is released. So, the more inflammation, the more oxygen that builds up. As more oxygen is released into the brain, the brain loses functionality. This can result in memory loss or other brain deterioration. Oxygen is also released when the body is stressed, which happens often for seniors with dementia. CBD may help reduce stress and reduce the negative effects of oxygen on the brain. Memory & Brain Function As dementia progresses, brain tissue actually dies and function is lost for good. This process can take the time or it can happen very rapidly. In some trials, CBD showed promising results to help stop or even reverse the loss of brain function and memory loss in dementia patients. Additionally, CBD may help stimulate the brain to help keep connections within the brain and help seniors potentially delay the effects of dementia. While this information gives us much hope in the fight against dementia, know that only small clinical trials have been conducted to determine the effects of CBD on dementia, making it difficult to come to a scientific conclusion. However, scientists are continuing to conduct rese arch to help further our ability to help those with dementia. Are There Any Risks Associated with CBD? The World Health Organization (WHO ) has stated that “no public health problems. have been associated with the use of pure CBD.” Additionally, it does not exhibit addictive properties and has not been shown to cause any health risks. However, this applies to pure CBD. There are some retailers who produce CBD products with other ingredients or strains of CBD that have been tainted with other substances. Some companies also misrepresent their products and place different packaging labels on the products. This could pose a risk for your loved one, so i t’s important for you to obtain any CBD products through a company that has been approved by a third party , meaning the products have been tested independently for quality. If you or your loved one is interested in using CBD to manage symptoms, make sure you talk to a doctor first to evaluate the risks and discuss the best options. There is still much we do not know when it comes to CBD and its effectiveness in treating the symptoms of dementia. However, we are hopeful that new research and medications will be developed that will end dementia for good!

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Some people are obsessed with making a great personality and revolutionary like the Buddha a follower of their own faith by making baseless, historically inaccurate and factually incorrect claims. One such claim is that Buddha was a Hindu Yogi who actually preached Vedanta. How do I refute this claim? This is a modified version of the answer that I posted on Hinduism.SE comparing the Buddhist Madhyamaka (by Nagarjuna) and the Hindu Advaita Vedanta (by Adi Shankara). Usually, the emptiness in Madhyamaka is equated to Nirguna Brahman (formless attributeless God) in Advaita by Hindu scholars like Prof. Chandradhar Sharma. Prof. Sharma also equated the Eternal Buddha concept (based on the Buddha's Dharma body) to God. I modified this answer for posting here. First: What did Adi Shankaracharya teach? We can see this from Adi Shankaracharya's own compositions: Brahman is real, the universe is an illusion. The jiva is Brahman itself and not different. (Brahmajnanavalimala 20) This Atman is a self-cognised entity because It is cognised by Itself. Hence the individual soul is itself and directly the Supreme Brahman, and nothing else. (Vivekachudamani 216) There exists no other material cause of this phenomenal universe except Brahman. Hence this whole universe is but Brahman and nothing else. (Aparokshanubhuti 45) The pot, wall, etc., are all nothing but clay. Likewise, the entire universe is nothing but Brahman. (Brahmajnanavalimala 19) Brahman is Existence, Knowledge, Infinity, pure, supreme, self-existent, eternal and indivisible Bliss, not different (in reality) from the individual soul, and devoid of interior or exterior. It is (ever) triumphant. It is this Supreme Oneness which alone is real, since there is nothing else but the Self. Verily, there remains no other independent entity in the state of realisation of the highest Truth. All this universe which through ignorance appears as of diverse forms, is nothing else but Brahman which is absolutely free from all the limitations of human thought. A jar, though a modification of clay, is not different from it; everywhere the jar is essentially the same as the clay. Why then call it a jar ? It is fictitious, a fancied name merely. None can demonstrate that the essence of a jar is something other than the clay (of which it is made). Hence the jar is merely imagined (as separate) through delusion, and the component clay alone is the abiding reality in respect of it. Similarly, the whole universe, being the effect of the real Brahman, is in reality nothing but Brahman. Its essence is That, and it does not exist apart from It. He who says it does is still under delusion - he babbles like one asleep. This universe is verily Brahman - such is the august pronouncement of the Atharva Veda. Therefore this universe is nothing but Brahman, for that which is superimposed (on something) has no separate existence from its substratum. (Vivekachudamani 225-231) Therefore the universe does not exist apart from the Supreme Self; and the perception of its separateness is false like the qualities (of blueness etc., in the sky). Has a superimposed attribute any meaning apart from its substratum? It is the substratum which appears like that through delusion. (Vivekachudamani 235) Becoming thyself the self-effulgent Brahman, the substratum of all phenomena - as that Reality give up both the macrocosm and the microcosm, like two filthy receptacles. (Vivekachudamani 289) The above quotes clearly show the teaching of eternalism. Brahman is eternal, infinite, self-existent and transcendental absolute reality. Brahman is the substratum or foundation of the universe. Brahman is the material cause of the universe. Brahman is the only thing that is permanent and ultimately real, while the universe is ultimately an illusion. The individual soul, which is a self-cognized entity, is ultimately the same as Brahman. While Brahman is without qualities, it appears as the universe and individuals with qualities, through delusion. This summarizes the nature of reality according to Advaita Vedanta. Second: What did the Buddha teach? It is widely speculated that some Buddhist schools teach annihilationism or nihilism, but this is not true. It is only non-Buddhists who have this wrong impression. The Buddha and 99.9% of Buddhist schools teach the middle way between eternalism and annihilationism. This "middle way" teaching is the unique feature of the Buddha's teachings. The Buddha rubbished the notion that there is no self of any kind: “So, brahmin, when there is the element of endeavoring, endeavoring beings are clearly discerned; of such beings, this is the self-doer, this, the other-doer. I have not, brahmin, seen or heard such a doctrine, such a view as yours. How, indeed, could one — moving forward by himself, moving back by himself — say ‘There is no self-doer, there is no other-doer’?” - Attakari Sutta However, the Buddha was very clear in the Ananda Sutta (SN44.10) that rejecting both eternalism and annihilationism, he teaches that "all phenomena is not self", which means that there is no permanent or eternal standalone entity of a self in all phenomena (sabbe dhamma anatta). "Ananda, if I — being asked by Vacchagotta the wanderer if there is a self — were to answer that there is a self, that would be conforming with those brahmins & contemplatives who are exponents of eternalism [the view that there is an eternal, unchanging soul]. If I — being asked by Vacchagotta the wanderer if there is no self — were to answer that there is no self, that would be conforming with those brahmins & contemplatives who are exponents of annihilationism [the view that death is the annihilation of consciousness]. If I — being asked by Vacchagotta the wanderer if there is a self — were to answer that there is a self, would that be in keeping with the arising of knowledge that all phenomena are not-self?" "And if I — being asked by Vacchagotta the wanderer if there is no self — were to answer that there is no self, the bewildered Vacchagotta would become even more bewildered: 'Does the self I used to have now not exist?'" The Buddha instead taught that the self is not eternal and not non-existent, but is dependently originated (Pratītyasamutpāda): When the Buddha was asked by the naked ascetic Kassapa whether suffering was of one's own making or of another's or both or neither, the Buddha replied "Do not put it like that." When asked whether there was no suffering or whether the Buddha neither knew nor saw it, the Buddha replied that there was, and that he both knew and saw it. He then said "Kassapa, if one asserts that 'He who makes (it) feels (it): being one existent from the beginning, his suffering is of his own making,' then one arrives at eternalism. But if one asserts that one makes (it), another feels (it); being one existent crushed out by feeling, his suffering is of another's making,' then one arrives at annihilationism. Instead of resorting to either extreme a Tathaagata teaches the Dhamma by the middle way (by dependent origination)" - summarized here from Acela Sutta A summary of dependent origination is that the self arises dependent on the inter-working of the five aggregates of form, feeling, perception, mental fabrications, and consciousness. Please see this answer for further elaboration, including the lute analogy. He taught that both the views of "I have a self" and "I have no self" are inaccurate in the Sabbasava Sutta. He also taught that the views of one being Nirvana, one being in Nirvana, one being apart from Nirvana, calling Nirvana "mine", and delighting in Nirvana, are inaccurate in the Mulapariyaya Sutta. The Buddha did teach emptiness, but it is restricted to the nature of the self i.e. all phenomena is empty of a self (see Shunya Sutta). The Buddha did not comment on the nature of all non-sentient things like the universe, besides noting them as being conditioned and impermanent. The Buddha was not interested in commenting on the nature or origin of the universe, because he considered it to be unimportant to the path to liberation from suffering - see the Parable of the Poisoned Arrow (from MN63). The Buddha was not interested in metaphysical speculations. It was not because he taught the Upanishadic truths through silence, as implied by Prof. Chandradhar Sharma. Third: What did Nagarjuna teach? While the Buddha stopped at describing the "middle way" and emptiness with respect to the nature of the self, Nagarjuna expanded these concepts to cover the nature of the universe and all reality. He did this in his magnum opus, the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, whose name itself means "Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way". Nagarjuna did not contradict the Buddha's teachings, but rather, expanded it. The Wikipedia article on Madhyamaka (which contains its own citations) summarized Nagarjuna's teachings very well: Central to Madhyamaka philosophy is śūnyatā, "emptiness." The term refers to the "emptiness" of inherent existence: all phenomena are empty of "substance" or "essence" (Sanskrit: svabhāva) or inherent existence, because they are dependently co-arisen. At a conventional level, "things" do exist, but ultimately they are "empty" of inherent existence. But this "emptiness" itself is also "empty": it does not have an existence on its own, nor does it refer to a transcendental reality beyond or above phenomenal reality. Nagarjuna's critique of the notion of own-nature (svabhāva) argues that anything which arises according to conditions, as all phenomena do, can have no inherent nature, for what is depends on what conditions it. Moreover, if there is nothing with own-nature, there can be nothing with 'other-nature' (para-bhāva), i.e. something which is dependent for its existence and nature on something else which has own-nature. Furthermore, if there is neither own-nature nor other-nature, there cannot be anything with a true, substantial existent nature (bhāva). If there is no true existent, then there can be no non-existent (abhāva). Rather than the annihilationism that nothing exists or the eternalism that something exists eternally, Nagarjuna taught the "middle way" that all phenomena is empty of its own "inherent existence" or "substance" or "essence" (what he called svabhāva). If nothing has inherent substance, then nothing can depend on something else for substance, so there is no other inherent substance (para-bhāva). Nagarjuna's unique philosophy however, is that even this emptiness is empty i.e. this emptiness does not have its own inherent substance. This means that there is no transcendental reality beyond phenomenal reality. This is what is implied by ultimate reality not being absolute reality. A very nice and simplified explanation of the Madhyamaka emptiness can be found in Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh's writing, "The Fullness of Emptiness". The only disagreement between Theravada and Madhyamaka is the need to expand the "middle way" and "emptiness" beyond what the Buddha taught. What is common between Theravada and Madhyamaka is that both reject eternalism and annihilationism. Fourth: Comparing Advaita and Madhyamaka Comparing what Adi Shankaracharya taught and what Nagarjuna taught, we come to see very clearly that both are not the same and in fact, completely incompatible: - Shankara said Brahman is eternal and absolute. Meanwhile, Nagarjuna said nothing is eternal and absolute. - Shankara's Brahman (clay analogy) implies that it is the only thing that has a true inherent substance (what Nagarjuna called svabhāva). Meanwhile, Nagarjuna says nothing has inherent substance. - Shankara's Brahman is the material cause (again, clay analogy) of the universe. Meanwhile, Nagarjuna's emptiness is not a material cause for anything including itself. - Shankara said that the universe depends on Brahman as its substratum (what Nagarjuna called para-bhāva). Meanwhile, Nagarjuna said there is no other inherent substance (para-bhāva) i.e. no substratum for anything else. - Shankara's Brahman is the Ultimate Reality that is the Transcendental Absolute Reality. Meanwhile, Nagarjuna's Ultimate Reality is an "emptiness of emptiness" that is devoid of transcendental or absolute reality. What is common between Advaita and Madhyamaka is that both proclaim the non-dualism between the Ultimate Reality and the phenomenal reality. However, Advaita's Ultimate Reality is a Transcendental Absolute Reality, while Madhyamaka's Ultimate Reality is the "emptiness of emptiness" that is devoid of any transcendental or absolute reality. My conclusion is that Adi Shankaracharya's Nirguna Brahman and Madhyamaka's "emptiness of emptiness" are not the same and in fact, completely incompatible. This is supported by Banaras Hindu University Professor T. R. V. Murti's statement (quoted below) in this book chapter: Murti T.R.V. (1973) Saṁvṛti and Paramārtha in Mādhyamika and Advaita Vedānta. In: Sprung M. (eds) The Problem of Two Truths in Buddhism and Vedānta. Springer, Dordrecht It has been the fashion to consider that the differences between the Madhyamika śūnyatā and Brahman are rather superficial and even verbal, and that the two systems of philosophy are almost identical. At least Professor Radhakrishnan thinks so, and Stcherbatsky's and Dasgupta's views are not very different. I hold a contrary view altogether: that in spite of superficial similarities in form and terminology, the differences between them are deep and pervasive. Fifth: Comparing Vedanta and Buddhism All Vedanta schools accept that Atman (soul) is eternal (according to Bhagavad Gita 2.20), and Brahman is absolute and eternal. This is based on the teachings of the Upanishads. Meanwhile, the anatman teaching subscribed by all schools of Buddhism, states that there is no eternal self (i.e. no permanent standalone eternal entity) in all phenomena. A very apt conclusion for this comes from eminent German indologist Professor Helmuth von Glasenapp's essay "Vedanta and Buddhism: A Comparative Study": In the light of these researches, all attempts to give to the Atman a place in the Buddhist doctrine, appear to be quite antiquated. We know now that all Hinayana (sic) and Mahayana schools are based on the anatma-dharma theory. ... Nirvana being a dharma, is likewise anatta, just as the transitory, conditioned dharmas ... Nirvana is no individual entity which could act independently. For it is the basic idea of the entire system that all dharmas are devoid of Atman, and without cogent reasons we cannot assume that the Buddha himself has thought something different from that which since more than 2000 years, his followers have considered to be the quintessence of their doctrine. Nothing shows better the great distance that separates the Vedanta and the teachings of the Buddha, than the fact that the two principal concepts of Upanishadic wisdom, Atman and Brahman, do not appear anywhere in the Buddhist texts, with the clear and distinct meaning of a "primordial ground of the world, core of existence, ens realissimum (true substance)," or similarly. by making baseless, historically inaccurate and factually incorrect claims. This is what you need to focus on. You have to show them why the claims are baseless, inaccurate and incorrect, both factually and historically. If you mention their arguments in detail, we can discuss them. Then you have to compare the core teachings of Vedanta with Buddhism and show them that they are not compatible. Ex: Hinduism talks about Atman and Brahma being the creator of the universe. Buddhism talks about Anatta and refutes creationism. But make sure to stick to Theravada Buddhism, the school of elders when you are doing this comparison. That's generally accepted as the school closest to the original teachings of the Buddha. [Many Hindu Gurus/Swamis/Pundits/Scholars opine that the Buddha taught something that is already found in Vedic/Upaniṣadic literature. However, in the following excerpted article, the author shows how Buddhist masters such as Sāntarakṣīta and Hindu Vedāntic gurus such as Ādi Samkharācārya have refuted each other’s view in their respective literature. Since Vedānta is based on Upaniṣadic literature, this shows that Buddhism in definitely not a branch of Vedic/Brāmanical Hinduism. Buddhism considers Vedāntic view as a wrong view (mithyā-dṛṣṭi)(because it is an eternalist view or sāsvatavāda), which doesn’t not bring realization/enlightenment.]. “Vedānta is based on the Upaniṣads…. Shankarācārya (also known as Sankara), who was from the 8th century, is the most famous commentator of the Upanishads, and today, the majority of the Hindus follow his commentaries. In the Bodhāyana commentary, according to him, the hermeneutic of the Upanishads existed even before his time. Although he was from around the 8th century, he became popular among the Hindus only after the 10th century when one of his lineage holders, Vācaspati Misra, wrote a sub-commentary on his commentary. Today, Shankarācārya is considered among the greatest Hindu philosophers and even educated Hindus in India subscribe to him. However, since he became well known only after the 10th century, no Buddhist scholars like Sāntideva, Śāntarakṣita, Ratnākarasānti, Jñānagarbha, etc., seem to mention him or refute him in their work. Śāntarakṣita has however refuted the Upanishadic non-dualism in the Tattva Sangraha’ chapter 7, section 5. In his refutation of the Upanishadic view he has referred to the followers of the Upanishad as those who postulate that the ātmā is eternal, one and of the nature of knowledge/conciousness/ Jñānasvarūpa. Kamalaśīla has also commented on this view describing it as, “That is the ātmā is of the nature of one eternal consciousness / knowledge.” Indeed, both Śāntarakṣita and Kamalaśīla are refuting almost the same view that Sankarācārya postulates although neither Śāntarakṣita nor Kamalaśīla mentions his name or his work. It is important to understand that according to Śāntarakṣita and Kamalaśīla, the Upanishadic view is that there is a non-dual consciousness or a non-dual knowledge which is eternal and this is the ātmā or this is called the ātmā. It is important to understand that Śāntarakṣita himself has refuted 6 different interpretations of the ātmā as accepted in Hinduism in his time. This non-dual cognition / consciousness / knowledge which is eternal (nitya) is one of the ātmā-s refuted by Śāntarakṣita in his ‘Tattva Sangraha’. This ātmā is not dualistic; therefore it is not vijñāna (Tib. rnam-shes). It is non-dual and it is eternal. It is called jñāna (ye-shes/knowledge) by Śāntarakṣita, who used the very word the Upanishad and Sankarācārya uses. This is how Śāntarakṣita refuted this view: “The error in the view of these philosophies is a slight one – due only to the assertion of eternality of cognition.” There is, however, a slight difference between this Upanishadic view refuted here by Śāntarakṣita and Sankarācārya’s Upanishadic view. Sankara’s view is called Maya-Vivartavād – i.e. the illusionist. The view refuted by Śāntarakṣita is called parināmavāda – modificationist. The difference is that this view considers the 5 elements, etc., and the world as illusory modifications of this non-dual eternal cognition / consciousness, while Sankara interprets the world and its 5 elements, etc., as illusory and therefore non-existent and this non-dual eternal cognition as separate from the illusion. Sankarācārya even mentions the exact opposite view of what Śāntarakṣita mentioned above and refutes him. In exact opposite of what Śāntarakṣita says, “The error in the view of these philosophers is a slight one – due only to the assertion of eternality of cognition.” Sankara says about the Cittamātra “The error in the view of these philosophies is only slight – they believe the non-dual mind as changing moment to moment; we believe it as unchanging eternal.” The Hindu ātmā is not only non-dual cognition but is also unchanging, eternal, and truly existing. Sankarācārya defines existence (sat) in his Tattvaboda as that which remains the same in all the 3 times (past, present, future). In the commentary by Gaudapāda (who was Sankarācārya’s Guru’s Guru), of the Māndukya Upanishada, in verse number 96, he calls the eternally really existing non-dual cognition is non-relational, i.e., free from reference points. In the 37th verse of the same work it is said that this non-dual, eternal, really existing cognition is free from all sense organs, i.e., free from the dualistic mind (namshe). So, the Upanishadic view is that the really existing, eternal / permanent, non-dual, non-referential cognition is the ātmā, and this is not dualistic mind. This Upanishadic view existed even before the Buddha, and this was what Sankarācārya expounded very clearly and most powerfully around the 6th century. This view, similar to this Sankara view, was refuted by Śāntarakṣita as a wrong view." ~ Excerpted from "Vedanta vs Shengtong" by Acarya Mahayogi Sridhar Rana Rinpoche. More on hindooism and buddhism differences can be found here. The Buddha avatar was contextual, aimed at ridding the attachment to the karmas prescribed in the Mimamsa portions of the Vedas, to the utter neglect of the need totranscrndthem and realise oneself. Karma presupposes a doer and a God dispensing rewards in return. To enjoy the benefits of reward, another birth is needed, this cycle goes on endlessly. Sankara advised karmas as a kind of scaffolding for a search within. This helps the mind to concentrate, through detachment from the results of karma. The scaffolding must be discarded, if the building has to be occupied. Therefore, Buddha helped to put karmas in better light, Sankara sculpted the idea into the homogenous concept of Advaita. For this, He was called a ‘prachhanna Buddha’ by some contemporaries.

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|Pfam Clan:||CL0442 | Tubulin in molecular biology can refer either to the tubulin protein superfamily of globular proteins, or one of the member proteins of that superfamily. α- and β-tubulins polymerize into microtubules, a major component of the eukaryotic cytoskeleton. Microtubules function in many essential cellular processes, including mitosis. Tubulin-binding drugs kill cancerous cells by inhibiting microtubule dynamics, which are required for DNA segregation and therefore cell division. In eukaryotes there are six members of the tubulin superfamily, although not all are present in all species (see below). Both α and β tubulins have a mass of around 50 kDa and are thus in a similar range compared to actin (with a mass of ~42 kDa). In contrast, tubulin polymers (microtubules) tend to be much bigger than actin filaments due to their cylindrical nature. Tubulin was long thought to be specific to eukaryotes. More recently, however, several prokaryotic proteins have been shown to be related to tubulin. Tubulin is characterized by the evolutionarily conserved Tubulin/FtsZ family, GTPase protein domain. This GTPase protein domain is found in all eukaryotic tubulin chains, as well as the bacterial protein TubZ, the archaeal protein CetZ, and the FtsZ protein family widespread in Bacteria and Archaea. See main article: Microtubule. α- and β-tubulin polymerize into dynamic microtubules. In eukaryotes, microtubules are one of the major components of the cytoskeleton, and function in many processes, including structural support, intracellular transport, and DNA segregation. Microtubules are assembled from dimers of α- and β-tubulin. These subunits are slightly acidic with an isoelectric point between 5.2 and 5.8. Each has a molecular weight of approximately 50 kDa. To form microtubules, the dimers of α- and β-tubulin bind to GTP and assemble onto the (+) ends of microtubules while in the GTP-bound state. The β-tubulin subunit is exposed on the plus end of the microtubule while the α-tubulin subunit is exposed on the minus end. After the dimer is incorporated into the microtubule, the molecule of GTP bound to the β-tubulin subunit eventually hydrolyzes into GDP through inter-dimer contacts along the microtubule protofilament. The GTP molecule bound to the α-tubulin subunit is not hydrolyzed during the whole process. Whether the β-tubulin member of the tubulin dimer is bound to GTP or GDP influences the stability of the dimer in the microtubule. Dimers bound to GTP tend to assemble into microtubules, while dimers bound to GDP tend to fall apart; thus, this GTP cycle is essential for the dynamic instability of the microtubule. Homologs of α- and β-tubulin have been identified in the Prosthecobacter genus of bacteria. They are designated BtubA and BtubB to identify them as bacterial tubulins. Both exhibit homology to both α- and β-tubulin. While structurally highly similar to eukaryotic tubulins, they have several unique features, including chaperone-free folding and weak dimerization. Cryogenic electron microscopy showed that BtubA/B forms microtubules in vivo, and suggested that these microtubules comprise only five protofilaments, in contrast to eukaryotic microtubules, which usually contain 13. Subsequent in vitro studies have shown that BtubA/B forms four-stranded 'mini-microtubules'. FtsZ is found in nearly all Bacteria and Archaea, where it functions in cell division, localizing to a ring in the middle of the dividing cell and recruiting other components of the divisome, the group of proteins that together constrict the cell envelope to pinch off the cell, yielding two daughter cells. FtsZ can polymerize into tubes, sheets, and rings in vitro, and forms dynamic filaments in vivo. TubZ functions in segregating low copy-number plasmids during bacterial cell division. The protein forms a structure unusual for a tubulin homolog; two helical filaments wrap around one another. This may reflect an optimal structure for this role since the unrelated plasmid-partitioning protein ParM exhibits a similar structure. CetZ functions in cell shape changes in pleomorphic Haloarchaea. In Haloferax volcanii, CetZ forms dynamic cytoskeletal structures required for differentiation from a plate-shaped cell form into a rod-shaped form that exhibits swimming motility. The tubulin superfamily contains six families (alpha-(α), beta-(β), gamma-(γ), delta-(δ), epsilon-(ε), and zeta-(ζ) tubulins). Human α-tubulin subtypes include: All drugs that are known to bind to human tubulin bind to β-tubulin. These include paclitaxel, colchicine, and the vinca alkaloids, each of which have a distinct binding site on β-tubulin. In addition, several anti-worm drugs preferentially target the colchicine site of β-Tubulin in worm rather than in higher eukaryotes. While mebendazole still retains some binding affinity to human and Drosophila β-tubulin, albendazole almost exclusively binds to the β-tubulin of worms and other lower eukaryotes. Class III β-tubulin is a microtubule element expressed exclusively in neurons, and is a popular identifier specific for neurons in nervous tissue. It binds colchicine much more slowly than other isotypes of β-tubulin. β1-tubulin, sometimes called class VI β-tubulin, is the most divergent at the amino acid sequence level. It is expressed exclusively in megakaryocytes and platelets in humans and appears to play an important role in the formation of platelets. When class VI β-tubulin were expressed in mammalian cells, they cause disruption of microtubule network, microtubule fragment formation, and can ultimately cause marginal-band like structures present in megakaryocytes and platelets. Katanin is a protein complex that severs microtubules at β-tubulin subunits, and is necessary for rapid microtubule transport in neurons and in higher plants. Human β-tubulins subtypes include: γ-Tubulin, another member of the tubulin family, is important in the nucleation and polar orientation of microtubules. It is found primarily in centrosomes and spindle pole bodies, since these are the areas of most abundant microtubule nucleation. In these organelles, several γ-tubulin and other protein molecules are found in complexes known as γ-tubulin ring complexes (γ-TuRCs), which chemically mimic the (+) end of a microtubule and thus allow microtubules to bind. γ-tubulin also has been isolated as a dimer and as a part of a γ-tubulin small complex (γTuSC), intermediate in size between the dimer and the γTuRC. γ-tubulin is the best understood mechanism of microtubule nucleation, but certain studies have indicated that certain cells may be able to adapt to its absence, as indicated by mutation and RNAi studies that have inhibited its correct expression. Besides forming a γ-TuRC to nucleate and organize microtubules, γ-tubulin can polymerize into filaments that assemble into bundles and meshworks. Human γ-tubulin subtypes include: Members of the γ-tubulin ring complex: δ and ε-Tubulin Delta (δ) and epsilon (ε) tubulin have been found to localize at centrioles and may play a role in centriole structure and function, though neither is as well-studied as the α- and β- forms. Human δ- and ε-tubulin genes include: Zeta-tubulin is present in many eukaryotes, but missing from others, including placental mammals. It has been shown to be associated with the basal foot structure of centrioles in multiciliated epithelial cells. BtubA and BtubB are found in some bacterial species in the Verrucomicrobial genus Prosthecobacter. Their evolutionary relationship to eukaryotic tubulins is unclear, although they may have descended from a eukaryotic lineage by lateral gene transfer. Compared to other bacterial homologs, they are much more similar to eukaryotic tubulins. In an assembled structure, BtubB acts like α-tubulin and BtubA acts like β-tubulin. Many bacterial and euryarchaeotal cells use FtsZ to divide via binary fission. All chloroplasts and some mitochrondria, both organelles derived from endosymbiosis of bacteria, also use FtsZ. It was the first prokaryotic cytoskeletal protein identified. TubZ (; pBt156) was identified in Bacillus thuringiensis as essential for plasmid maintenance. It binds to a DNA-binding protein called TubR (; pBt157) to pull the plasmid around. CetZ is found in the euryarchaeal clades of Methanomicrobia and Halobacteria, where it functions in cell shape differentiation. Phages of the genus Phikzlikevirus, as well as a Serratia phage PCH45, use a shell protein to build a nucleus-like structure called the phage nucleus. This structure encloses DNA as well as replication and transcription machinery. It protects phage DNA from host defenses like restriction enzymes and type I CRISPR-Cas systems. A spindle-forming tubulin, variously named PhuZ and gp187, centers the nucleus in the cell. Asgard archaea tubulin from hydrothermal-living Odinarchaeota (OdinTubulin) was identified as a genuine tubulin. OdinTubulin forms protomers and protofilaments most similar to eukaryotic microtubules, yet assembles into ring systems more similar to FtsZ, indicating that OdinTubulin may represent an evolution intermediate between FtsZ and microtubule-forming tubulins. Tubulins are targets for anticancer drugs like the vinca alkaloid drugs vinblastine and vincristine, and paclitaxel. The anti-worm drugs mebendazole and albendazole as well as the anti-gout agent colchicine bind to tubulin and inhibit microtubule formation. While the former ultimately lead to cell death in worms, the latter arrests neutrophil motility and decreases inflammation in humans. The anti-fungal drug griseofulvin targets microtubule formation and has applications in cancer treatment. When incorporated into microtubules, tubulin accumulates a number of post-translational modifications, many of which are unique to these proteins. These modifications include detyrosination, acetylation, polyglutamylation, polyglycylation, phosphorylation, ubiquitination, sumoylation, and palmitoylation. Tubulin is also prone to oxidative modification and aggregation during, for example, acute cellular injury. Nowadays there are many scientific investigations of the acetylation done in some microtubules, specially the one by α-tubulin N-acetyltransferase (ATAT1) which is being demonstrated to play an important role in many biological and molecular functions and, therefore, it is also associated with many human diseases, specially neurological diseases. Notes and References - Gunning PW, Ghoshdastider U, Whitaker S, Popp D, Robinson RC . The evolution of compositionally and functionally distinct actin filaments . Journal of Cell Science . 128 . 11 . 2009–19 . June 2015 . 25788699 . 10.1242/jcs.165563 . free . - Findeisen P, Mühlhausen S, Dempewolf S, Hertzog J, Zietlow A, Carlomagno T, Kollmar M "Six subgroups and extensive recent duplications characterize the evolution of the eukaryotic tubulin protein family" Genome Biol Evol (2014) 6:2274-2288. - Turk E, Wills AA, Kwon T, Sedzinski J, Wallingford JB, Stearns T "Zeta-Tubulin Is a Member of a Conserved Tubulin Module and Is a Component of the Centriolar Basal Foot in Multiciliated Cells" Current Biology (2015) 25:2177-2183. - Nogales E, Downing KH, Amos LA, Löwe J . Tubulin and FtsZ form a distinct family of GTPases . Nature Structural Biology . 5 . 6 . 451–8 . June 1998 . 9628483 . 10.1038/nsb0698-451 . 5945125 . - Jenkins C, Samudrala R, Anderson I, Hedlund BP, Petroni G, Michailova N, Pinel N, Overbeek R, Rosati G, Staley JT . 6 . Genes for the cytoskeletal protein tubulin in the bacterial genus Prosthecobacter . 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Make it necessary to dress professionally and groom your hair well. We would like to show you a description here but the site wont allow us. Body Language Presentation 1. See if they're mirroring you. PDF. POISE Student displays relaxed, self-confident nature about self, with no mistakes. No eye contact with audience, as entire report is read from note. The way you move and carry A presentation conveys information from a speaker to an audience.Presentations are typically demonstrations, introduction, lecture, or speech meant to inform, persuade, inspire, motivate, build goodwill, or present a new idea/product. Pros and cons. To make your audience comfortable, smile at them. Adopt a comfortable posture. First we have to understand the meaning of body language. Body language can happen consciously and unconsciously. Boring Presentation 4 5. How to assess a person through his body language lovely laura. 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Make Eye Contact. -- FILL-IN THE BLANKS STUDENT WORKSHEET - is a comprehensive and fun interactive worksheet that secondary teachers of all disciplines can use to accompany the Part I instructional Body Language PowerPoint. A window will open at the bottom right of your screen. That can change, though, with the help of this template! Gesture with your arms and hands. Start by inhaling normally. Make Eye Contact. What you need to communicate is a feeling of confidence and relaxation. Basics. Presentation Transcript. Why Presentation Skills Training? Hand gestures. Here are some practical tips on how to get a more open body language for your next presentation: A) Posture. Breathing and voice projection in presentations. Hold the person's hand firmly. The purpose of hand gestures during a presentation is to make your message clearer, not more complicated. Age range: 16+ Resource type: Other. What is the feeling of the baby? BODY LANGUAGE PPT - Part 1: "Body Orientation & How Others See YOU!" 3-Smiling: -The most strong body Control your face expressions. Do not lean on the podium or table. Grabbing the attention of your audience is vital for delivering an effective presentation. You cant win hearts and minds with drowsy faces and people constantly looking at their mobile phones. Hence, making sure that your content is rich enough to be attention grabbing is important. Moreover, getting the content right is only half the task, your presentation skills also need to be sharp Body language is used in nearly every aspect of daily life, and observing someone can sometimes tell you a lot about how a person is feeling and what is on their mind. Rehearse your presentation. While appearing in an interview, body language is undoubtedly a major factor you need to pay attention to. Top 10 ways to improve your body language 10. Smile. That is why it is extremely important to focus not only on what you say but what you think. Body language is defined as the non-verbal communication between two individuals or a group of individuals through physical behaviors such as limb movements, facial expressions, eye movements, other bodily gestures and postures. Movements of the hands. Here are eight presentation body language mistakes that you should avoid that include your movement, posture and facial expression: 1. 4.033333333333333 67 Share through facebook; Share through pinterest; File previews. Don't Crowd Your Slides . To deliver effective presentation. Having thought about what your face is doing in general, its time to get even more specific and think about eye contact. angry. What it Means: This handshake is a breath of fresh air and signals mutual respect for both parties. Crossed arms. Written by Mitch Carson. Body language sessionBody language session-- PedagogyPedagogy 2 Introduction/ Objectives 5 Trainer Presentation (TP) 3Importance of Body Language (BL) 10 TP 4Features of BL + Body language is the way your body communicates without the use of words. The Handshakes Ingredients of a Good Handshake Make eye contact and smile. For this reason, we are introducing a new capability that leverages your video camera to give you feedback on your body language. No movement or descriptive gestures. | PowerPoint PPT presentation | free to view Boost Your It's simple, but smiling is our most powerful weapon during presentations and face-to-face meetings. A free PowerPoint PPT presentation (displayed as a Presentation Prep is your complete, free guide to delivering speeches, lectures, and presentations more successfully and confidently. BODY LANGUAGE PPT - Part 1: "Body Orientation & How Others See YOU!" Presentation theme enhanced with a hand holding the team sign with bluish background. The audience immediately forms their opinion of you even before you speak and pull up your slides. 3. Remember to dress for the audience and not for yourself. Body Language is a kind of nonverbal communication, where thoughts, intentions, or feelings are Body Language and Presentation Tips for Beginners. The first is never let your hands drop below your waistline; you should always keep Team leaders and HR heads can use this aesthetically designed deck to illustrate the Made movements or gestures that enhances articulation. Presentations usually require preparation, organization, event planning, writing, use of visual aids, dealing with stress, and answering questions. 4.2 36 reviews. The less cluttered and complex a slide is, the easier it is for the audience to absorb. It makes us feel better. Therefore, you must be very selective . Tips for using Body Language in a Presentation. World's Best PowerPoint Templates - CrystalGraphics offers more PowerPoint templates than anyone else in the world, with over 4 million to choose from. Makes minor mistakes, but quickly recovers from them; Appearance and Impression Says a Lot. on June 21, 2021. Body Language. Groom appropriately to look your best. A lot of people like learning new languages, but some of them are more popular than others. As the speaker, you are the centre of attention and you know that everybody is looking at you. Body Language. Then exhale slowly and say the word hum. Body Language.ppt - Free download as Powerpoint Presentation (.ppt), PDF File (.pdf), Text File (.txt) or view presentation slides online. Winner of the Standing Ovation The template effectively has a text area, Check their arms. Dont sit on the edge of your chair. Google Slides is a presentation program included as part of the free, web-based Google Docs Editors suite offered by Google.The service also includes: Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Drawings, Google Forms, Google Sites and Google Keep.Google Slides is available as a web application, mobile app for: Android, iOS, Microsoft Windows, BlackBerry OS and as a desktop Corporate Business Company Powerpoint Template.This Presentation can be used for any type of presentation: Portfolio, Company Profile, Multipurpose, Creative Agency, and also can be used for Custom Production.There are 30+ unique, creative and modern slides. Pay attention to how close someone is to you. A funny presentation template with geometric elements and a minimalist layout; 100% editable and easy to modify Throw away your sweating's of fear by using this Body Language At Work PPT Presentation. power posing. Warming up ; Warming up II ; Pair work ; Speaking ; Talking I ; Talking II ; Exercises ; Summary ; 3 Warming up . Check your makeup. 10 Body Language Tips for Presentations. Plan. Action Research Teacher as a Researcher ILLUSTRATION Manoj Kumar Dash DEP-SSA, IGNOU New Delhi 110 068 email@example.com 0-9971728220 Problem: Poor performance of a A free PowerPoint PPT presentation (displayed as an HTML5 slide show) on PowerShow.com - Facial Expressions. slight forward lean toward the other person. Microsoft has rolled out a new preview capability for its PowerPoint Presenter Coach that will assess a speaker's body language during a virtual meeting presentation. Amy Cuddy argues that by faking it you can become it. body language shapes who you are. All speakers feel a little nervous, at least when starting a presentation. Creative Body Language Slides template. Posture is basic for a good presentation body language and to Scribd is the Subject: Vocational studies. Great presentations are about more than just how you speak.

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The brutal Russia-Ukraine war threatening to go on for “as long as it takes” is believed to be why Finland and Sweden sought NATO membership. On the day NATO leaders gathered in Madrid, a retired US Army Lt. Col. called the move “a US mistake.” Some critics in the West also reckon expanding NATO is not only “bad news for America,” it is more a threat than a boost to Europe. Besides, as US and NATO celebrate the two Nordic countries losing their neutrality, Biden’s claims have come under scrutiny that the two states are willingly entering the Organization. The news from Madrid was that NATO has formalized its invitation to Sweden and Finland to join the security alliance. The only delay in the way of the two Nordic countries joining the security bloc within a year or less from now is the 30-member countries’ parliaments ratifying the Madrid decision. Describing the decision as NATO’s most consequential enlargement in decades, the global media chose to downplay the move which potentially might turn Europe into a dangerous rather than safer place. Comments such as “NATO brought war into Ukraine, NATO membership expansion might push Europe into war,” are now commonplace in the major European capitals, as also in Washington. What is NATO? The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance founded by 12 countries in Washington, D.C., on April 4, 1949. During the Cold War, the purpose of the US-led European security alliance was to defend its member states against the perceived threat from the Soviet Union. Following the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, not only the alliance was not dissolved, it instead further expanded its membership and military operations. It now has 30 member states – 28 in Europe and the United States and Canada. In the post-Cold War years, analysts in Europe as well as in the US have argued that following its main security threat the Soviet Union gone, there was no rationale for NATO to continue and therefore it should be disbanded. However, in the ensuing years not only has the alliance increasingly come to be seen as no longer defensive, but it has been carrying out military operations in the Balkans, the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa. In China, analysts and foreign ministry officials now refer to the world’s most powerful military alliance as “global NATO.” Or, as Professor John Mearsheimer says: “It is a totally false account that the crisis in Ukraine is largely the result of Russian aggression. The United States and its European allies are mainly responsible for the crisis. The taproot of the trouble is NATO expansion.” NATO-ization of Finland: A Threat or Boost to Europe Welcoming the two Nordic countries into the NATO family, President Biden had said in May, “NATO is an alliance of choice, not coercion.” As if endorsing Biden’s above statement, Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson too emphasized: “I must say that Sweden has chosen a new path at a moment.” However, the truth is something entirely different. According to reports, efforts to bring Finland and Sweden into NATO were going on for months before the Russia-Ukraine conflict occurred in February. Speaking of expanded NATO membership and Europe’s shared security, Biden said in Madrid, “Putin thought he could break the transatlantic alliance. [Putin] wanted the Finlandization of NATO. He got the NATO-ization of Finland.” Well, for starters, the term “Finlandization” entered the German political debate during the 1960s and 1970s and it referred to the decision of a country – modeled on Finland’s – not to challenge a more powerful neighbor in foreign policy. Besides, it is now generally acknowledged in the West that by invading Ukraine, the Russian leader has “successfully” managed his “own goal.” Or in other words, an immediate short-term fallout for Russia – with a huge and irreversible specific military consequence – of Sweden and Finland’s swift decision to join the military alliance for Russia is the additional eight hundred miles of border with NATO. As Susan B. Glasser wrote in her New Yorker column that the two Nordic states will bring in two additional militaries that are among the most capable in Europe. “This will enhance the prospect of the alliance being able to bottle up the Baltic Sea and keep the Russians from coming out,” she added. On the other hand, for both NATO and Europe, there is an urgent need to overcome immediate challenges such as overcoming fissures in the alliance and forging political unity “against Russia among major European powers including Germany, France, Italy, the United Kingdom, etc. Or else, as forewarned by several analysts, the embracing of two new members “would increase instead of lowering the chances of war on one hand, and would increase the risk of future conflict for the entire alliance on the other.” NATO Enlargement: What is at stake for the US? In an attempt to put the “now hot, now cold” relationship between Russia and US-Europe in a historical perspective, the Polish scholar Dębski, cited above, called the Russia-NATO Foundation Act as the root cause of dramatic ups and downs between Russia and NATO. The Act, which today no one is talking about, was signed in 1997 between NATO and Russia and was essentially NATO’s political commitment to Moscow that it would not deploy substantial combat forces to the alliance’s new member states. Even as the brutal war rages on in Ukraine, like in the past when Russia assaulted Georgia and annexed Crimea respectively, the NATO establishment at the Madrid summit made all concerted efforts to protect the Foundation Act. In a June 29 statement, the White House claimed all NATO decisions at Madrid were made in the spirit of the Foundation Act. However, commentators are claiming that when some alliance members in Madrid asked that the Act be denounced, the response was a compromise formula, i.e. “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” Such indecisiveness or miscalculated signals from NATO to Russia could mean more war for Europe. [My emphasis] Indeed, the decision of the two Nordic countries to embrace NATO has received an overwhelmingly positive response in both Europe and the US. However, no one knows what further risks for Europe are in place coming from Russia (with currently only 6% of its borders with NATO) which is already feeling threatened and encircled by the existing 30-member NATO. Within days of Sweden’s announcement to abandon neutrality the Swedish capital was turned into a “naval garrison” with the arrival of the US amphibious battle group consisting of assault ships, etc. What is one to make of what are the security implications for Europe as the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley, standing atop the assault ship USS Kearsarge, declared the US intention to make the Baltic Sea a “NATO lake”? Furthermore, viewed against a former US Army Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis saying “Enlarging NATO might seem a wise thing, [but] adding more members is likely to have the opposite effect,” what does the claim that the Russian military aggression has “remade” US-European relations mean after all? Interestingly, according to a US political affairs analyst, even long-term supporters of US and European security concerns are apprehensive about NATO’s 31st and 32nd members. The analyst cited the former US State Department policy planning director Anne-Marte Slaughter as saying “[But] a weak and humiliated Russia is a dangerous Russia. Putin may well be able to stay in power even longer on the strength of ‘the foreign enemy’ encroaching on Russia’s borders.” To conclude, not only within Europe but opinions even in Sweden are at variance on whether NATO membership expansion will escalate tensions with Russia. “Joining NATO would be preparing for war,” Gabriella Irsten of the Swedish Peace and Arbitration Society has stated. It is no use denying that Finland and Sweden’s simultaneous declaration to join NATO has sparked off the fiercest debate in Europe since the end of the Cold War about NATO’s mission. The ongoing debate has once again brought back what one of NATO’s early critics had warned its European member states way back in the concluding years of the past century. In an Op-Ed for the NYT in 1997, George F. Kennan wrote: “NATO expansion after the Soviets’ demise would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era.” Now that the two Nordic countries’ NATO membership is almost granted, imagine which way Europe would transform, especially for Finland post-NATOization, recall what Liana Fix and Michael Kimmage had warned us about in the Foreign Affairs just a few days before Russia launched military attack on Ukraine on February 24: What if Russia wins? The East Expands into NATO: Japan’s and South Korea’s New Approaches to Security The 2022 NATO Summit in Madrid can be seen as a momentous occasion not just for NATO but also for security in the Asia-Pacific. For the first time in NATO’s 73-year-long history, Japanese and South Korean leaders participated in the meeting as “Asia-Pacific partners”. For the first time, the Alliance named China a threat in their documents. However, having approached the hic sunt dracones (here be dragons) mark, NATO and its partners will soon have to think about the limits and purpose of expanding the organization’s areas of activity. The Bargaining Yen Fumio Kishida was Japan’s first premier to ever attend a NATO summit. Japan’s leader called for enhancing Tokyo’s ties with NATO based on the 2014 Individual Partnership and Cooperation Programme. However, he also proposed permanently attaching representatives of Japan’s Self-Defense Forces to NATO’s headquarters, mutually exchanging observers at military drills, as well as to regularly involve Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and South Korea in NATO’s activities. We should note Japan’s rather loose interpretation of the concept of indivisible security. For instance, Russia and China insist that the security of any state cannot be bolstered at the expense of other states. However, Kishida believes that security in Europe and the Indo-Pacific are inseparable from each other; therefore, attempts to change the status quo by force in any region should be stopped through joint efforts. As part of the steps taken to assist European partners amid the events in Ukraine, Tokyo imposed additional sanctions on 70 Russian individuals and companies since Japan “is not ready to provide any military support to the Alliance.” In exchange, Japan hopes that NATO will fully support Japan’s course for militarization. Particularly, Japan is expected to publish its revised National Security Strategy to replace the 2013 Strategy by the end of 2022. Over five years, “the land of the rising sun” will ramp up its defense capabilities by significantly increasing its spending (up to 2% of the GDP) and by stepping up its interactions with the U.S. It is also possible that the Strategy will, for the first time, name China as a clear and present danger to Japan—previously, Tokyo avoided openly labelling China as its adversary. The West heard the Japanese leadership’s message of European stability being impossible without eliminating the threats in the Asia-Pacific. Ultimately, the NATO 2022 Strategic Concept that determines the activities of member states for the next ten years states that Beijing’s “ambitions and coercive policies challenge our interests, security and values.” Principal threats include China’s non-transparent conventional and nuclear military build-up, malicious hybrid and cyber operations, confrontational rhetoric and disinformation, attempts to control key technological and industrial sectors, critical infrastructure, and strategic materials and supply chains, and creating strategic dependencies intended to subvert the rules-based international order, including in the space, cyber and maritime domains. The list would certainly have been incomplete without sending an alarm regarding the deepening strategic partnership between Moscow and Beijing. NATO’s Madrid Summit declaration also contains a statement on competition with China and on Beijing’s challenge to NATO members’ security and development. At the summit’s sidelines, Kishida attended a trilateral meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden and South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol, and then a quadrilateral meeting with South Korea’s President and Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. The leaders discussed the threats from China and North Korea, while the U.S. President reaffirmed guarantees to every party present military aid in case of an attack on their states. At the same time, it appears that the idea of putting China on NATO’s agenda and generally under the organization’s purview had been spearheaded by Washington that has less and less strength and willingness to challenge the “dragon” to an honest battle. Korean Tanks in Polish Woods Similar to Japan’s leader, South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol noted in his debut NATO summit address that security in any given region has global ramifications. Consequently, a crisis cannot be resolved through the efforts of a regional alliance or union. Therefore, South Korea’s President announced plans to consistently bolster security cooperation between Washington, Seoul, and Tokyo, primarily for counteracting the threat of North Korea’s nuclear missile program. Moreover, since, in Yoon Suk Yeol’s opinion, Pyongyang’s actions posit a major threat to peace and stability and to the non-proliferation regime, all NATO members will need to assist in resolving this problem. Generally, South Korea raised the issue of North Korea’s denuclearization at every event at the Madrid Summit, including the plenary session, the three-party meeting between the leaders of the U.S., Japan, and South Korea, and a dozen of bilateral talks. In turn, in order to bolster European security, Seoul is ready to expand its economic interactions with NATO states—in particular, to ensure uninterrupted deliveries of semi-conductors—assist in building NPPs and modernizing power facilities, and also ramp up military technical cooperation. Among the successes already achieved by the South Koreans is an agreement to deliver FA-50 jet trainers/light combat aircraft, K-2 main battle tanks, K-9 self-propelled howitzers and AS21 IFVs to Poland, and to participate in building NPPs in the UK, the Czech Republic, Poland, France, Romania and the Netherlands. Curiously, unlike Japan, Yoon Suk Yeol avoided in every way directly mentioning Beijing in connection with threats to global and regional security. Moreover, Seoul believes that South Korea’s interactions, both with NATO and otherwise, should not be aimed against any specific country. Even though some surveys indicate that only 26% of South Koreans have a positive opinion of China, the country’s leadership is not prepared to oppose Beijing and fully commit to U.S.-led containment initiatives. Besides, in the near future, Yoon Suk Yeol’s administration will have to explain to China its own plans to deploy a second THAAD missile defense unit and Seoul actively arming its navy, air force, and ground forces with state-of-the-art strike missile weapons. Despite of both Japanese and South Korean leaders attending the 2022 NATO Summit, questions still remain regarding normalizing relations between Seoul and Tokyo. The parties noted that there is potential for improvements and the problems of the past and the future would need to be discussed together. At the same time, internal forces in both states have very mixed feelings concerning the prospects of setting up practical interactions on security issues. Kishida’s government is concerned with South Korea’s growing military capabilities, unacceptable compensation demands to victims of the Japanese occupation, and its intractable stance on the Liancourt Rocks (Dokdo/Takeshima islands). Particularly, Japan vehemently protested Korea’s military drill around the islands on July 30, 2022, although this time the drill was far more modest than before and did not involve a beach landing. One of the few shared sentiments between Seoul and Tokyo is their negative attitude to North Korea’s nuclear missile program, although Japan’s current potential for resolving this matter via talks is small since Tokyo has virtually completely severed contacts with Pyongyang. Beyond the Purview According to Le Monde, NATO’s focus on the events in Ukraine does not mean that the Alliance is ignoring threats emanating from beyond the organization’s traditional purview, for instance, like those from the Asia-Pacific. Asia-Pacific’s “collective West” representatives gradually expanding their involvement in the region evidences both the Alliance’s transformation into a certain global security body, and Seoul’s and Tokyo’s transforming approaches to protecting their interests by expanding their partnership network. Japan is already a member of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD) whose principal and implicit goal is to form a counterbalance to China. In Kishida’s opinion voiced on June 10, 2022 at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, Russia’s actions in Ukraine may spur a similar scenario in Asia Pacific, particularly toward Taiwan, especially given a recent surge in the regional activities of China’s People’s Liberation Army. That, however, did not prevent Japan from sending a parliamentary delegation, including two former defense ministers, to Taipei to “discuss extensively the regional security situation in Taiwan, especially in the context of the Russia-Ukraine military conflict.” In this situation, it would be odd to expect anything from Beijing except a protest boosted by military aircraft patrolling around the island. Yoon Suk Yeol seems intent on significantly increasing South Korea’s role in regional affairs by using the image of a liberal democracy in a crusade against authoritarian regimes around it. However, Seoul intends to wage such a battle solely against the neighboring regime, and even that is not quite a real crusade with clearly defined results. Getting North Korea, to abandon its nuclear weapons though intimidation during an exacerbating East Asian crisis is utterly impossible, particularly in view of Kim Jong Un’s proclaimed readiness for any military action against the U.S. NATO believes that comprehensive security cooperation with “partners in Asia Pacific” should be conducive to making the international situation more predictable. However, given the Alliance’s track record, should it interfere in the Korean Peninsula or in the Taiwan Strait, there will be little cause to expect a positive outcome. From our partner RIAC A war where the machine decides who to kill! (LAWs wars) Which country wants to be attacked by an AI-controlled system with no one in command? Which country wants their soldiers to be killed by an autonomous machine, and potentially, some civilians by mistake? The answer is evidently no one! No country wants that. But which country intends to possess such weapons, then the answer is more ambiguous. The last report of the Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) reflects this. After a week (25-29 July) of discussion at the Palais des Nations, UN Geneva, the adopted report is hollowed without meaningful conclusion or commitments. Lethal autonomous weapons Lethal autonomous weapons (LAWs) are military system that can autonomously search for and engage targets based on programmed constraints and descriptions. LAWs are also known as killer robots. Autonomous weapons have existed for many years; for example, land mines trigger and kill or an injury without any human action. With emerging technology, including AI, we understand the interest of certain states to include these technologies in weapons to improve their autonomy. Since the 70s, the US has used the Phalanx CIWS, which can autonomously identify and attack incoming missiles. With AI, its capacities are considerably increased! Continuing with the example of mines, Russia’s anti-personnel mines of the POM-3 type are particularly deadly. They are disseminated in the land of operations but do not explode immediately. When activated, they rise in the air before exploding and causing multiple ravages, which can be fatal within a radius of 16 meters. Equipped with sensors and software, they choose their target, when they explode or not, depending on the identity of the people or equipment that approach. There are, unfortunately, so many other systems that will be too long to cite here. To conclude this part, in Libya in 2020, a Kargu 2 drone hunted down and attacked a human target. According to a report from the UN Security Council’s Panel of Experts on Libya, published in March 2021. This may have been the first time an autonomous killer robot armed with lethal weaponry attacked human beings. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_robot] We quickly understand all potential ethical and legal issues. Autonomous systems can make mistakes; who is responsible then? Like mine killed millions of civilians, new systems may have bias and kill unstintingly, with no one to stop them. The range of potential problems is extensive. A slow-downed convention For nine years, the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons or CCW, also known as the Inhumane Weapons Convention, has tried to regulate it with its GGE. For the most ambitious, it would be a question of agreeing on a treaty, or another international instrument, which would guarantee the prohibition that a weapon can operate autonomously, i.e., without the intervention of human supervision. Many Latin Americans, and European states are now advocating for this outright ban. The answer is less clear-cut for other states, including the USA. They consent to the prohibition of specific weapon systems as well as to a certain regulation but refuse a binding legal framework. Finally, Russia is slowing down all negotiations and reducing its content. Russia and the game of consensus A majority of States are now convinced of the need to act significantly, even asking for more days to debate in 2023. But the main problem is the rule of consensus, which prohibits any discussion breakthrough”. Many little disagreements, for instance, delegations, wasted time discussing whether the CCW is an appropriate forum or the only appropriate forum for dealing with the issue of autonomous weapons. These discussions have even been theatrical when Russia attacked many times the presence of civil societies to limit their intervention and participation in informal meetings. It was a tool to slow down the discussion, focusing the debate on organizational points. At the same time, we can also be afraid that this Russian posture is appearing in others GGEs. Meanwhile, some other states, like Israel and India, are discrete and do not oppose it. They probably use this condition to their advantage. Russia is doing all the work for them. Therefore with the refusal of a few states, all the details about elements and possible measures for an agreement on autonomous weapons were removed. All conclusions about what kinds of control are necessary, and possible processes to achieve that control, were taken out. The present conclusions section just outlines the types of proposals discussed, recognizes ethical perspectives, and repeats the respect for international humanitarian law. It confirms then that states are responsible for wrongful acts in accordance with international law [link to report], so no new laws. Not only are the conclusions disappointing, but the way the discussion was carried out was disappointing, and the mandate for 2023 remains uncertain. We can not wait on CCW, the urgency of the problem is too critical. The slow process is to the advantage of countries using these technologies. The Russian POM-3 mines, for instance, have been used in Ukraine, accordingly to Human Right Watch. The development and deployment by Russia and other countries will continue as long as no agreement is reached. LAWs have to be outlaws! And the CCW seems not to be anymore the right platform. Escalating Big Power Contestation on Taiwan: Can It Lead to War? Xi Jinping is seeking to hide his humiliation over US Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan. His premature and unjustifiable warning to the US about the visit caused him embarrassment, and Pelosi’s purposeful visit after the warning not only hyped it, but humiliated him. China is using its Three Warfare Concept which entails public opinion warfare, psychological warfare, and legal warfare along with aggressive military posturing, air violations, firepower power exhibition and some symbolic economic boycott of Taiwan, thus creating heightened tension around Taiwan as a face saving exercise to amuse its domestic constituency. China is attempting to turn it as an opportunity to stoke national sentiments in favour of Xi Jinping on ‘Anti America’ theme highlighting Chinese mutilated version of his heroics to ensure that he doesn’t lose out on his third term in the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) later this year. The US side has likewise been under similar pressures. Following the announcement of Pelosi’s visit and the contentious debate between President Xi Jinping and Joe Biden, the US found itself in a difficult situation. The USA was unable to cancel the trip in response to Xi’s warning because doing so would have indicated that Joe Biden was caving in to Chinese pressure. This would have been catastrophic for the Biden Administration, which is already struggling to recover from the disaster in Afghanistan and the difficulties brought on by the Russia-Ukraine War. Although the visit was a risky move, it is still unclear whether the US will follow it up by replacing strategic ambiguity with strategic clarity to support Taiwan in any prospective Chinese attack or not. Can it Lead to War? With unprecedented military posturing by China, live missile fire East of Taiwan close to its coastline, and US aircraft carrier and maritime forces located not too far, the situation is tense and prone to accidental trigger causing escalation. It does not make any strategic sense for China to invade Taiwan, as it has all the negatives except false bravado, with bright chances of loss of face globally and domestically, in case the operations fail; hence, likely to contend with activities short of war. Chinese strategist Qiao Liang, a retired PLA Air Force Major General, has warned that taking Taiwan by force is ‘Too Costly’. Chinese redline of “Taiwan going nuclear/declaring independence” has not been crossed as yet, giving no justification for China to cross US red line of ‘Changing status Quo by Force’. Xi Jinping may find it too costly to take such a risk before sealing his third term. The military drills near Taiwan have been conducted by Taiwan and US also in past and the much publicised blockade of Taiwan through military drills, if prolonged may invite similar military drills by US and other democracies in Malacca Strait too, to block Chinese Sea Lines of Communication, beyond the realm of optics of the current Chinese aggressive posture, and it is well aware of this vulnerability. Taiwanese President Tsai has bravely given bold statements during visit of Speaker Pelosi and earlier to take on Chinese aggression. Taiwan with its national spirit, modern arsenal from US, determined armed forces and US backing is unlikely to give a walkover, although the first onslaught of potential offensive will have to be borne by it, till global response gets activated. Comparisons are being made with Hong Kong, but the major differences is that leadership, hierarchy in Hong Kong and police was manipulated by CCP, whereas the leadership in Taiwan is strong and resolute refusing to give in to Chinese coercion. The need for amphibious assault due to terrain friction makes Chinese misadventure in Taiwan more difficult than Hong Kong. Chinese amphibious capabilities to capture Taiwan are suspect, more so if US warships like the USS Ronald Reagan are around. China has enough missile arsenals to destroy Taiwan, but such a massive destruction of Han Chinese (95 percent of Taiwanese population is Han), who have relations, investments and inseparable linkages with their relatives in mainland and vice versa will not go well with domestic population of mainland. Over two million Taiwanese live in China, mostly in Coastal areas, and over 20 per cent have married there. This will also destroy Chinese and Taiwanese economy, which does not suit Chinese leadership struggling to revive its economy marred by trade war, failing BRI and COVID effect. China is top destination for Taiwanese export accounting for approximately 40% of total exports, with Taiwan having overall trade surplus of US$104.7 billion in 2021 with China. A public opinion poll in Taiwan in 2020 indicated 73 percent people identified themselves as Taiwanese, who were against China, and 77 percent supported democratic movement in Hongkong and this figure has increased in last two years. Getting Taiwanese under its wings will also bring a fresh democratic wave in China, which CCP may not be used to handle. Taiwanese people do not want to sacrifice their democratic freedom and prosperity, which is the main reason for success of President Tsai. The conflict if imposed by China will be deadly and Chinese, who want to win without fighting are not known for their appetite to accept body bags of Han Chinese, for a cause which doesn’t give them economic benefit but takes it away its dream of national rejuvenation, as indicated by General Qiao. Why Taiwan is a US-China Issue? PRC may keep claiming Taiwan to be its domestic issue, but it has much greater external dimensions. Diplomatically US may claim to follow ‘One China Policy’ but it treats Taiwan no less than an ally. The Taiwan Allies International Protection and Enhancement Initiative (TAIPEI) Act of 2019, effective from March 26, 2020 is an indication. The Taiwan Relation Act,1973, Taiwan Travel Act signed 2019, and National Defence Authorisation Act signed earlier this year to facilitate sale of state of the art weaponry and joint exercises justify the statement. US will always like to trade and strategically partner with democratic Taiwan outside Beijing’s influence, and not Taiwan under CCP. In any potential invasion of Taiwan, the spill over of the battle space to Japan is obvious due to geographic proximity, an ally which US is obligated to protect. Chinese initial offensive can be on Taiwan, but US could join forces with its allies in the region to use their sea and air advantages to cut off Beijing’s maritime lifeline in and outside South China Sea. Chinese supply lines outside Nine dash line are still vulnerable to choking, and it will draw out PLA to get into war outside its comfort Zone. Taking Taiwan by force, therefore involves mobilisation of all its combat resources, expecting an escalation from limited war to an all-out war, as the operation amounts to crossing US redline of “No Change in Status Quo of Taiwan”. Economically Chinese heavy reliance on the US dollar is far from over, and such a war over Taiwan would be a massive economic blow to China, that would see capital flooding out, and companies moving of the country, much sooner than it thought. If Chinese aggressive posturing, air incursions and military drills announced for four days end as scheduled without escalation, may be that situation may still remain under control, as US and Taiwan have also done military drills in that region earlier. If it escalates into an attempt to unite Taiwan by force, it will certainly up the ante with US, prove China as irresponsible bully, may lead to loss of life of Han Chinese both ways, lead to economic destruction of its one of the largest investors and jeopardise China’s goal of national rejuvenation. Internationally, China may have miscalculated US resolve and Taiwan’s resistance and all may not go their way. If Chinese ambitions grow beyond global tolerance, it has bright chances to bring rest of the world against China. While the visit of Nancy Pelosi may have given a strong message to China, but the US resolve is still under test, because Taiwan can’t be expected to handle Chinese aggression alone, more so if it has been hyped by super power contestation. US therefore must consider starting similar military exercise in Malacca Strait with other navies to remind China of its vulnerable SLOC before it starts blocking Taiwanese shipping. 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Background: Fabry disease is a rare X-linked lysosomal storage disorder characterised by severe multisystemic involvement that leads to major organ failure and premature death in affected men and women. Over the past 7 years, the Fabry Outcome Survey (FOS) has collected data on the natural history of Fabry disease, and the long-term efficacy and safety of enzyme-replacement therapy. This paper provides an update on the first analysis of FOS data. Design: Baseline data on clinical manifestations and causes of death in a cohort of 1453 patients (699 male, 754 female) from 19 countries worldwide were analysed. Causes of death of affected relatives were analysed separately. Results: The most frequently reported signs and symptoms of Fabry disease were neurological. Cardiac, ocular, gastrointestinal, dermatological, auditory and renal manifestations were also common. The principal causes of death among 181 affected relatives of patients in FOS (most of whom had died before 2001) were renal failure in males (42%) and cerebrovascular disease in females (25%). In contrast, of the 42 patients enrolled in FOS whose deaths were reported between 2001 and 2007, cardiac disease was the main cause of death in both male (34%) and female (57%) patients. Conclusion: These data suggest that the importance of renal disease as a cause of death in patients with Fabry disease is decreasing while the importance of cardiac disease is increasing. This pattern probably reflects improvements in the management of renal disease in patients with Fabry disease. Statistics from Altmetric.com If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways. Fabry disease is a rare X-linked lysosomal storage disorder caused by deficient activity of the enzyme α-galactosidase A. It is characterised by severe multisystemic involvement that ultimately leads to major organ failure and premature death in affected men and women.1 The condition has conventionally been considered to be rare, affecting only 1 in 40 000 to 1 in 117 000 live male births.1 2 However, a recent screening study suggested a much higher incidence of 1 in 3100–4600 individuals.3 α-Galactosidase A deficiency is caused by a number of mutations affecting the GLA gene, many of which are private (ie, occurring in only single or small numbers of families).4 The α-galactosidase A deficiency results in progressive accumulation of undegraded glycosphingolipids, predominantly globotriaosylceramide (Gb3), within cell lysosomes throughout the body. Common clinical manifestations of Fabry disease include acroparaesthesia and pain crises, gastrointestinal symptoms, angiokeratomas and corneal dystrophy. Despite the fact that Fabry disease follows an X-linked pattern of inheritance, it is now widely accepted that heterozygous females can be severely affected, although progression of the disease to organ failure generally occurs later in life and symptom severity tends to be milder and more variable than in males.5–7 Renal failure has been found to be a frequent cause of death in several studies, particularly in males.5 8 9 In females, data on small patient groups suggest that cardiac disease and cerebrovascular disease are the most frequent causes of death.5 9–11 Death occurs on average 15 years earlier in female patients and 20 years earlier in male patients compared with the general population.6 10 12 Enzyme-replacement therapy (ERT) has become an established treatment for Fabry disease, following demonstrations of both efficacy and safety in adults and children.13–16 Treatment guidelines concerning ERT have now been published.17 Early diagnosis of Fabry disease is therefore important, and both general practitioners and clinicians in a range of specialties should be aware of the signs, symptoms and natural history of the disease. This paper provides an update of the demographic and baseline clinical characteristics of a large cohort of patients with Fabry disease enrolled in the Fabry Outcome Survey (FOS) and examines the causes of death among patients and their affected relatives.5 FOS has been approved by the Ethics Institution Review Boards of participating centres (appendix A) and all patients gave written informed consent. Patients and data collection To minimise bias, data from all consenting patients are entered in FOS. All patients enrolled in FOS are receiving or are candidates for ERT with agalsidase alfa. On enrolment, each patient’s medical history is documented by a physician or nurse specialist, including the year of diagnosis of Fabry disease, signs and symptoms of the disease, treatment, demographic details and family history. All measurements performed routinely in clinical practice are entered into the database. Assessments of cardiac and renal function, ophthalmological, gastrointestinal and audiological examinations are optional. Anonymised data are submitted electronically by participating physicians to the central FOS database. Disease severity is systematically categorised in all patients using an adapted version of the Mainz Severity Scoring Index (FOS-MSSI).18 Student’s two-sample and one-sample t-tests and the Fisher exact test or χ2 test were used for statistical analyses, using SAS V.9.1. Values are presented as mean (SD) unless otherwise stated and p<0.05 was considered significant. Table 1 shows the baseline characteristics of the 1453 patients (699 male, 754 female) enrolled in FOS at the time of analysis (December 2007). Most were Caucasian (95.7%). The severity of Fabry disease was greater in males than in females in FOS, as indicated by FOS-MSSI total score (mean 16.9 (SD 10.8) vs 11.0 (SD 9.0), respectively; p<0.001). This was true for all four subcategories of FOS-MSSI score (general, neurological, cardiovascular and renal). Signs and symptoms in male and female patients The prevalence and age at onset of the main signs and symptoms of Fabry disease in males and females at entry into FOS are shown in table 2. As in the previous analysis of FOS data, the most frequently reported signs and symptoms of Fabry disease were neurological, affecting 75% of males and 61% of females (table 2). Cardiac, ocular, gastrointestinal, dermatological, auditory and renal manifestations were also common. Renal signs and symptoms of Fabry disease were reported in 693 patients in FOS. Proteinuria was the commonest renal manifestation, being seen in 332 males and 246 females. Renal failure was present in 134 males and 21 females. In total, 89 males and five females had end-stage renal disease (ESRD) (mean age of onset 32.3 (SD 19.7) and 23.3 (SD 21.3) years, respectively). Cardiac manifestations were recorded in 422 male and 376 female patients. Of these patients, 284 males and 180 females had left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH), which was reported to have begun at a mean age of 28.7 (SD 19.3) and 34.1 (SD 24.9) years, respectively. Cerebrovascular events occurred with approximately the same frequency in males and females (25% (n = 172) and 21% (n = 159), respectively). Stroke was reported in 39 females and 63 males (mean age of onset 51.4 (SD 14.1) and 39.2 (SD 11.5) years, respectively). Transient ischaemic attack (TIA) was recorded in 46 females and 60 males (mean age of onset 46.6 (SD 14.8) and 38.4 (SD 13.6) years, respectively). Deaths in patients in the Fabry Outcome Survey Data on age and cause of death in patients who have received ERT at any point in time have been collected in FOS since 2001. More recently (since August 2006) data have been collected on deaths in patients who had never received ERT. Information on any death can be entered retrospectively. At the time of this analysis, age and cause of death had been reported for 42 patients (35 male, 7 female) in FOS (table 3). Mean age at death was 51.8 (SD 9.3) years and 64.4 (SD 10.0) years for males and females, respectively. The primary cause of death in both male and female patients was cardiac disease, reported in 34% (n = 12) and 57% (n = 4) of cases, respectively. Of the 42 patients who died, 33 (28 males) had received ERT at some point during their life, and among these cardiac disease remained the commonest cause of death (n = 12; 36%), followed by infection (n = 5; 15%) and multisystemic disease (n = 4; 12%). Renal failure was responsible for three deaths (n = 3; 9%). Cardiac disease was also the commonest cause of death (n = 4 of 9; 44%) among patients who died but had not received ERT at any point. However, data on deaths in patients not receiving ERT have only been collected since August 2006 and therefore the untreated group is not entirely representative of all untreated patients. The 42 patients in FOS who died were severely affected by Fabry disease. From the available absolute data shown in table 4, both men and women who died had higher MSSI scores than patients who were alive. Data were also available on whether patients had specific manifestations either before or at/after the start of ERT (information recorded only as yes/no). Of the 42 deceased patients, LVH was reported in 29 (25 male, 4 female) cases. LVH was present before the start of treatment in all 22 of the patients who went on to receive ERT and in 7 of the 9 patients who never received ERT. Absolute data on left ventricular mass (LVM) were available for 19 of the 42 patients: mean LVM at entry into FOS was higher in patients who died than in patients who were still alive (table 4). Conduction abnormalities were evident in 19 patients (15 male, 4 female), 15 of whom received ERT; these abnormalities were present before the commencement of ERT in 11 (9 male, 2 female) of these 15 patients. Valvular disease was recorded in 16 patients (13 male, 3 female): in three males, this was recorded after the start of treatment only. Proteinuria was recorded as present at some point in time (yes/no) in 27 of the 42 patients (21 male, 6 female). Of the 22 patients in this group who received ERT, proteinuria was present before the commencement of ERT in 20 (16 male, 4 female). Absolute data were available for 23 patients, which showed higher proteinuria levels in patients who died than in those who were alive (table 4). Mean proteinuria levels based on the values available were also higher in patients who received ERT (females (n = 4), 1521.9 mg/24 hours (range 52.5–2495.0 mg/24 hours); males (n = 17), 900.4 mg/24 hours (range 21.0–3955.0 mg/24 hours)) than in those who did not (females (n = 1), 250.0 mg/24 hours; males (n = 1), 970.0 mg/24 hours). Hypertension was reported in 20 (15 male, 5 female) of the patients who died. Sixteen of these patients are known to have received ERT and in 15 cases (12 male, 3 female) hypertension was present before the commencement of ERT. In patients who received ERT at some point, haemodialysis was reported before the commencement in four, peritoneal dialysis in two and renal transplantation in seven (all male). After the start of ERT, one further male patient started haemodialysis and five underwent renal transplantation. Of the deceased patients who never received ERT, two males were on haemodialysis. Stroke was reported in 19 of the 42 patients who died (16 male, 3 female) and TIAs in 13 patients (11 male, 2 female). Of the 14 stroke patients who had received ERT, 10 (nine male, one female) experienced strokes both before and after commencement of ERT. Two males had no further strokes after the commencement of ERT, and two males had their first stroke at/after the start of ERT. The remaining five patients did not receive ERT (three male, two female). Chronic pain was reported in 25 (21 male, 4 female) and asthma in 14 (10 male, 4 female) of the 42 patients who died. Deaths in affected relatives of patients in the Fabry Outcome Survey Information was available on the cause of death of 181 affected relatives (118 male, 63 female) of patients in FOS (table 5). Precise data on the year of death were not available; however, most of these deaths occurred before ERT became available in 2001. The commonest causes of death in affected male family members were renal failure (n = 50; 58% aged 21–50 years) and cardiac disease (n = 31; 71% aged 21–50 years). The cause of death was unknown in 16 male relatives, but Fabry disease-related causes were suspected. Affected female relatives tended to live longer than affected male relatives. The commonest causes of death in female relatives were cerebrovascular disease (n = 16; 38% aged 21–50 years, 50% aged >50 years), followed by cardiac disease (n = 12; 92% aged >50 years) and malignancy (n = 10). Seven female relatives died from renal disease. In 16 cases where the cause of death was unknown, the family member was known or suspected to have Fabry disease. This report describes the baseline clinical manifestations of Fabry disease in a large cohort of patients from 19 countries worldwide who were enrolled in FOS. The number of patients enrolled in FOS has increased steadily over time since the first report in 2004.5 The present analysis confirmed that the major clinical manifestations of this multisystemic disease in early adulthood are pain (acroparaesthesia), angiokeratomas, and renal, cardiac and cerebrovascular disease. Gastrointestinal manifestations and sensory organ abnormalities were also common. Although some signs and symptoms, including pain and gastrointestinal disturbances, were evident from an early age, end-stage organ damage was not seen in children in FOS. Analysis of data on causes of death among patients currently in FOS and among their relatives suggests that the clinical course of Fabry disease may be changing. Consistent with previously published historical data,12 renal failure was the commonest cause of death in affected relatives of patients in FOS (31%), most of whom had died before 2001. When analysed according to sex, renal failure was the major cause of death in affected male relatives (42%) and cerebrovascular disease was the most frequently reported cause of death in affected female relatives (25%), as has been reported previously. Cardiac disease was the second most important cause of death in both affected male and affected female relatives. Data obtained for patients enrolled in FOS whose deaths were reported between 2001 and 2007 are somewhat different. In these 42 patients, cardiac disease was the most frequent cause of death in both males (34%) and females (57%), and only 3 patients died from renal disease (7%). These data suggest that deaths from renal failure are becoming less common over time and most patients are now dying from cardiac disease. This was true irrespective of whether or not patients had received ERT, although formal comparison of deaths in ERT-treated and non-ERT-treated patients was not possible because of the limited data available from the latter group. A recent retrospective review of 447 patients (279 male, 168 female) with Fabry disease19 confirms that Fabry nephropathy has a higher prevalence, occurs earlier and progresses more rapidly in the absence of ERT in males and females. This study also found a high prevalence of cardiac events (mainly arrhythmias) in 49% of males and 35% of females before commencement of ERT; strokes/TIAs occurred in 11% and 6% of males, and 8% and 4% of females, respectively. Evidence from our own study suggests that cardiac involvement was well established in many of the patients who died. LVH was present in almost 70% of patients enrolled in FOS who died and in seven of the nine patients who died without receiving ERT. Increased LVM, valvular heart disease, conduction disturbances and hypertension were also present before commencement of ERT in most of the deceased patients. It seems likely therefore that most deaths attributed to cardiac causes resulted from the progression of pre-existing cardiac involvement associated with Fabry disease. However, a proportion of these cardiac deaths may be unrelated to Fabry disease, as cardiovascular disease is a major cause of death in normal adults, accounting for nearly half of all deaths in Europe (48%).20 In addition, most of the patients who died from cardiac-related causes also had severe manifestations affecting other organ systems (primarily renal and central nervous systems). Considering that there is a high prevalence of renal disease, including ESRD, among patients currently in FOS, it is striking that there were few deaths associated with renal failure. Improvements in supportive care, greater access to dialysis facilities and improved management of hypertension may all have contributed to the lower number of deaths due to renal disease. Although ERT has not been shown to be effective in reversing ESRD, several studies confirm that both agalsidase alfa and agalsidase beta can slow the decline, or perhaps even stabilise, renal function in patients with lesser degrees of renal impairment.21–24 Current guidelines for the treatment of Fabry disease, emphasise the importance of angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors/angiotensin receptor blockade, careful management of hypertension and early initiation of ERT.25 As cardiac disease is now the most commonly reported cause of death, its treatment is clearly important. Studies have shown that both agalsidase alfa and agalsidase beta improve cardiac structure and function in males and females with Fabry disease.26–29 If treatment of cardiac and renal dysfunction are optimised and patients receive optimal supportive care, it is also conceivable that early stroke may be prevented, although recent reports suggest that premature stroke may still occur in patients receiving ERT.30 Unfortunately, owing to the lack of an appropriate control group, it was not possible to evaluate specifically whether ERT changed the progression of disease manifestations or increased the life expectancy of patients with Fabry disease in the present study. As is generally the case for most non-interventional observational databases, there are several limitations to this study. First, as all clinical decisions and data entry are at the discretion of the attending physician, datasets are often incomplete and there is a lack of standardisation in the assessments between the patients. There is also variability between patients in terms of the treatment protocols used and the supportive care provided. Thirdly, patient-reported data on the causes of death in relatives are subject to selective recall and these data have not been verified with reference to source documents. In addition, only simple data are available for some variables, such as cause of death. Finally, the nature of the database makes it likely that untreated and mildly affected patients are under reported. In conclusion, these data suggest that the natural clinical course of Fabry disease may be changing. The importance of renal failure as a cause of death is decreasing, whereas the importance of cardiac disease is increasing. This is partly a result of significant improvements in supportive care, particularly for renal failure and hypertension, which have occurred in recent years. Such improvements, in addition to the provision of ERT, may be contributing to changes in morbidity and mortality associated with Fabry disease. It is hoped that in the future these natural history data will enable the accurate assessment of the effect of ERT in patients with Fabry disease. There remains, however, a very real need for new treatments, particularly for oral therapies and for the development of treatment approaches that are better able to access the central nervous system and organs such as the heart and kidney. All the FOS Investigators who have submitted data from their patients to the FOS database (see www.globaloutcomesurveys.com for complete list of contributors). The FOS database is under the independent control of the FOS International Board. Editorial assistance to the authors was provided by Dr Harriet Crofts (Oxford PharmaGenesis Ltd, Oxford, UK). Ethics committee approval The FOS database has been approved by the institutional ethics review boards of the >100 participating centres and all patients gave written informed consent. As so many investigators and participating centres are involved in the FOS, we have provided a list of the investigators who submitted data to the FOS (correct as of December 2007), together with their location. Argentina: P Rozenfeld (La Plata). Australia: K Nicholls (Melbourne). Austria: G Sunder-Plassmann, J Kleinert, A-C Hauser, O Bodamer, W Kristoferitsch, W Schreiber (Vienna); B Plecko,T Kroepfl, I P Kotanko, C Binder, M Brunner-Krainz (Graz) Belgium: C Verellen-Dumoulin, F Dehout, D Roland, F Henry, J Jaumotte (Charleroi); F Eyskens, A Neirinck (Antwerp); M C Nassogne, Y Pirson, A Ballaut, P Goyens, M Libert (Brussels); N Mazoin (Verviers). Brazil: R Giugliani, L Kalakun, C Netto, T Vieira, L Jardim (Porto Alegre). Canada: B Lemieux (Sherbrooke); D Bichet, M F Arthus, C Fortier (Montreal); J Clarke, C Azcona (Toronto); M West, K LeMoine (Halifax); A Chan, E Kowal-Zuk (Edmonton); L Clarke (Vancouver). Czech Republic: A Linhart, L Golánv, J Bultas, J-C Lubanda, S Magage, D Karetová, G Dostalova. France: G Choukroun (Amiens); J Berthelot (Angers); S Carey Reomonnay (Besançon); D Lacombe (Bordeaux); S Benziane (Cambrai); A Khau van Kien (Montpellier); J M Mittelberger (Freyming Merlebach); C Thevenot (Laon); E Hachulla, D Dobbelaere (Lille); B Dussol (Marseille); R Reade (Maubeuge); P Kaminsky (Nancy); C Guyot, M Lino (Nantes); T Ghafari (Nice); E Monlun (Pau); D P Germain, N Ouali, G Touati, O Lidove, B Knebelmann (Paris); R Perrichot (Vannes); R Jaussaud (Reims); B Richalet (Saint Lô); V Klotz (Selestat); E Andres (Strasbourg); D Caraman (Thionville); J Bazex (Toulouse); P Hardy (Arras); P Bataille (Boulogne/mer). Germany: M Beck, K Baron, S Delgado-Sanchez, R Hartung, G Kalkum, C Whybra, C Kampmann, C Wiethoff, A Schwarting, A Keilmann, S Pitz, K Bruns, F Bähner, K Lackner (Mainz); B Koletzko, B Hoffmann, B Pontz (Munich); H P H Neumann, M Cybulla, G Schluh, A Winter (Freiburg); A Das, S Illsinger, T Lücke (Hannover); A von Arnim-Baas, J Hennermann, N Weinhold, J-M Berger (Berlin); S Stolz (Cottbus); S Grabbe, T Jansen, E Chrobot (Essen); A Gal, E Schäfer, K Ullrich, N Muschol, I Berkau (Hamburg); A Rolfs, T Böttcher, S Miethe, F Rimmele (Rostock); C Wanner, I Davydenko, R Wössner (Würzburg); S Al Sawaf, B Hoffmann (Düsseldorf); R Schueuermann (Mannheim); C Haase (Jena). Hungary: L Maródi (Debrecen). Italy: O Gabrielli (Ancona); D Concolino (Catanzano); W Borsini (Firenze); R Parini, S Sala, M Rigoldi (Monza); R Di Vito (Ortona); A P Burlina, A Burlina (Padova); C Feliciani, R Ricci, D Antuzzi, M Castorina, A Zampetti (Rome); S Feriozzi (Viterbo). The Netherlands: C Hollak, A Vedder, E Ormel, A van Duinen, F Wijburg (Amsterdam). Norway: G Houge (Bergen); Ø Kaarbøe (Ålesund). Slovenia: B Vujkovac (Slovenj Gradec). Spain: V Fernández (Clínico Santiago); J González (Puerta del Mar-Cádiz); A Rivera (Xeral Cies-Vigo); J Andreu (Virgen de Rocío-Sevilla); J Paniagua, F Rodriguez (El Bierzo-Ponferrada); I Martin (JR Jimenez Huelva); J Torras (Bellvitge-Barcelona); V Torregrosa (Clinic-Barcelona); F J Barbado, J Garcia-Consuegra, A Garcia de Lorenzo, M López (La Paz-Madrid); S Hernández (San Agustin-Linares); M A Barba (Albacete); A Perez García, I Febrer (Gral Univ Valencia); E Gómez Huertas (Central-Asturias); J Herrera (General-Asturias); J Ara, J Bonal, G Pintos (Trias i Pujol-Badalona); R Torra, J Ballarin (Puigvert-Barcelona); R Botella, A Franco (Alicante); V Valverde, J Martin (Elda); F Cabadés (Vinaroz); J M de Toro (Ourense). Switzerland: U Huyen-Do (Bern); F Barbey, J Theytaz, D Hayoz (Lausanne); G Schulthess, U Widmer, K Walter, B Steinmann, M Schärer, F Ruggieri (Zurich). UK: T M Cox, P Deegan, U Ramaswami, N Wright, P Desveaux (Cambridge); A Mehta, D Hughes, P Jeevaratnam, L Richfield, S Goodwin, S Pringle, A Milligan, R Bruce, P Elliott, A Muthumala, C Orteu, L Ginsberg, R Baker, D Hajioff, S Keshav, A Ioannides, B Cadge (London). USA: E Boyd, K Crandall (Asheville); G Pastores, N Barnett (New York); R Schiffmann, M Ashmus (NIH); H Lien, M Van Skiver (Arizona); R Martin (Washington). ▸ An appendix is available online only at http://jmg.bmj.com/content/vol46/issue8 Funding: Data collection and analysis in FOS are supported by Shire Human Genetic Therapies (HGT), Danderyd, Sweden. The sponsor had no role in the interpretation of data or writing of the report. Competing interests: AM received speaker fees, research funds and funding for symposium attendance from Shire HGT; JTRC received funding for symposium attendance from Shire HGT; RG received speaker fees and funding for symposium attendance from Shire HGT; PE received speaker fees, funding for symposium attendance and unrestricted educational grants from Shire HGT; AL and GSP received speaker fees, travel grants and research support from both Shire HGT and Genzyme; MB received speaker fees, funding for symposium attendance and unrestricted scientific grants from Shire HGT, Genzyme and Biomarin. Honoraria were not paid in relation to FOS data entry or for the writing of this report.

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Automation & Its Limitations, or, Why the Future is Humans & Robots/AI Working Together as Teammates Throughout history, improvements in technology have caused human labour to be supplemented, and then supplanted, by artefacts created by humanity, but after each period of technological growth, a new equilibrium between humanity and their tools occurred, although the period of disruption before a new equilibrium was reached was not fixed, and in the case of the first and second industrial revolutions, those equilibria took a while to reach. And those artefacts which humanity has created have allowed a new form of partnership between humanity and technology, and human ingenuity as expressed through technological development has undeniably led to massive benefits to the people of the Earth. There are limits though, as far as how far technology can go, or rather should go, given that technology, despite all of its promise, is not an unalloyed good. All of this drives towards an end of humans partnering with robots and/or AI to achieve tasks, not just entrusting the robots & AI with the labour on their own. Let us begin with an historical survey. Until the industrial age, the work needed to craft goods, was either performed by humans themselves, or by humans harnessing natural elements. Then came the first industrial revolution, from roughly 1770 to 1840, transitioning from hand production methods used by skilled artisans to machines which almost anyone could operate ergo boosting the demand for unskilled labour, and all of the incumbent accompanying innovations, which radically transformed the relationship between humanity and the Earth. After the first industrial revolution, there was a lull in technological change that occurred between the end of the first industrial revolution and the beginning of the second industrial revolution (and the related first period of globalisation that arose with technologies such as the railroad, electricity, the telegraph & telephone, interchangeable parts, transition from animal fats to petroleum to fuel heating and lighting, mechanisation of farming, etc.) from the 1870s to the start of the first Great Powers War in 1914. Along with the monumental technological growth that happened in the roughly 140 year span between the beginning of the first industrial revolution and the end of the second was a massive growth rate in human population from the dawn of the industrial age to 1914, and in effect, each new stage of technological innovations drove massive population growth. From 1770 to 1914, the population on Earth grew from 795 million to 1.797 billion in 144 years, a difference of over one billion people, an annual growth rate of 5.67 per mille (0.567 per cent). Even during the period of 1914 to 1949, a 35-year period of wars and revolutions that transformed the state of the world, the population still grew from that 1.797 billion to 2.503 billion (an annual growth rate of 9.51 per mille, even factoring the roughly 40 million killed in the 1914–1918 Great Powers war, the roughly 77 million killed in the 1939–1945 Great Powers war, the 10–15 million killed in the Russian Civil War, the 10–15 million killed in the Chinese Civil War, the 20 million killed in Stalin’s purges & famines, etc — roughly 160 million dead total from conflicts in that span, are still less than a quarter of the net estimated population growth of 706 million in that 35 years). The third industrial revolution (otherwise known as the digital revolution), which arose after the Second Thirty Years War, given the development of the ENIAC in December 1945 at the University of Pennsylvania, the development of the point-contact transistor in 1947 at Bell Laboratories by John Bardeen and Walter Brattain under the leadership of William Shockley, and the development of information theory by Claude Shannon (also of Bell Laboratories) in 1948. From the late 1940s until the present, increasingly more devices became electronically controlled, and now, virtually everything of note relies on integrated circuits. And again, the technological growth fuelled an even bigger population growth from 2.503 billion in 1949 to 7.875 billion as of 2021, an average annual population growth of 16 per mille (1.6 per cent) over that 72 year span, a growth rate higher than the period of the second industrial revolution, which in turn was higher than the population growth rate during the first industrial revolution. For an elucidation of the value of integrated circuits in driving technological progress, a brief discussion of the implications of Moore’s Law needs to occur. Imagine for a moment that you get in your car, and begin driving at 8 kph. In one minute, you’d travel 133.33 metres. In the second minute, imagine that you’re going twice that fast, so 16 kph. In that second minute, you’d travel 266.67 metres. In the third minute, you’d be travelling at 32 kph, and you would travel 533.33 metres. If you doubled your speed 27 times, you would travel 1.79*107 km in a minute. In five minutes at that speed, you could travel from the Earth to Mars. That is the approximately where information technology stands today, vis-à-vis when integrated circuits came into being in the late 1950s. Along with the three industrial revolutions spread over the last 252 years and counting, and the growth of the human population from 795 million in 1770 to 7.875 billion as of 2021 has come, the replacement of human labour to do things. The first two industrial revolutions, the replacement was mostly of human physical labour by manufactured artefacts, but the third industrial revolution, also called the digital revolution, has caused the replacement of the mental capacity of humans through technological innovations as well. As Harvard University economist Kenneth Rogoff noted in 2012: “Since the dawn of the industrial age, a recurrent fear has been that technological change will spawn mass unemployment. Neoclassical economists predicted that this would not happen, because people would find other jobs, albeit possibly after a long period of painful adjustment. By and large, that prediction has proven to be correct.” However, as Mr Rogoff stated in that same essay that: “Vasily Leontief, the Nobel Prize winning economist noted in 1983, worried that the pace of modern technological change is so rapid that many workers, unable to adjust, will simply become obsolete, like horses after the rise of the automobile.” It should be noted that the rise of the first industrial revolution led to the Luddites sabotaging textile machines in England, and even the word sabotage is reputed to have come from labourers in francophone countries throwing their wooden shoes (called sabot), into the early machines to stop them. As a 2017 article in The Economist noted that one significant factor in the rise of income inequality since the 1970s is the labour-market premium for those with university degrees, which have risen by over a third since 1963, whereas wages have dropped for those without a secondary school diploma. This was something that Vasily Leontief forecasted in 1983, where he said: “the new technology diminishes the role of human labour in production to such an extent that it is bound to bring about not only long- run technological unemployment, but-if permitted to operate within the framework of the automatic competitive price mechanism-also a shift toward a more skewed and, because of that, socially unacceptable distribution of income.” Related to this phenomenon is the fact that increasing automation drives productivity bonuses, and that increased productivity of machines and (higher-skilled) people together allows for that higher-skilled labour to be paid better…at a cost of replacing most of the previously employed labour pool. What distinguishes the advances of the digital revolution from those of the industrial revolutions is that they have, up until now, favoured skilled workers. This is a phenomenon known as “skill-based technological change”. So far, university degrees have been a reliable proxy for skill but this may change as artificial intelligence starts taking jobs away from white-collar workers. As was demonstrated by Martin Ford in his book Rise of the Robots (as well as elsewhere by other parties), employment for many skilled professionals, including: attorneys, journalists, scientists, and pharmacists, is already being significantly eroded by advancing information technology. Relatedly, it should be noted that to assume any current economic trend to persist is to assume an inefficient labour market, and as Kenneth Rogoff stated in a 2017 interview that as the wage premium for a particular group of workers rises, firms will have a greater incentive to replace them. However, a 2016 study by McKinsey & Co. noted that: “While automation will eliminate very few occupations entirely in the next decade, it will affect portions of almost all jobs to a greater or lesser degree, depending on the type of work they entail. Automation, now going beyond routine manufacturing activities, has the potential, as least with regard to its technical feasibility, to transform sectors such as healthcare and finance, which involve a substantial share of knowledge work.” What that McKinsey study also notes is that whilst technical feasibility is a necessary precondition for automation, but it is not a complete predictor that such an activity will be automated. A second factor to consider is the cost of developing and deploying both the hardware and the software for automation. A third factor is the cost of labour and related supply-and-demand dynamics: if workers are in abundant supply and significantly less expensive than automation, this could be a decisive argument against it. A fourth factor to consider is the benefits beyond labour substitution, including higher levels of output, better quality, and fewer errors. These are often larger than those of reducing labour costs. Regulatory and social-acceptance issues, such as the degree to which machines are acceptable in any particular setting, must also be weighed. A robot may, in theory, be able to replace some of the functions of a nurse, for example. But for now, the prospect that this might actually happen in a highly visible way could prove unpalatable for many patients, who expect human contact. The potential for automation to take hold in a sector or occupation reflects a subtle interplay between these factors and the trade-offs among them. It should be noted, that certain industries, such as most things in the health care sector, as well as in the education sector, have, over the last four decades or so, continued to grow in cost greater than the mean growth rate of wages, known as “Baumol’s Cost Disease”, which applies to sectors for which there have not been productivity increases. In effect, it takes the same number of doctors and nurses to staff a hospital now as it did 20, 40, or 60 years ago, and the same for education, for two examples of it. Min Kyung Lee noted in a 2018 study: “Advances in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data infrastructure are transforming how people govern and manage citizens and organisations. Now more than ever, computational algorithms increasingly make decisions that human managers used to make, changing the practices of managers, policy makers, physicians, teachers, police, judges, on-demand labour platforms, online communities, and more.” Part of the reason for this transition is that decisions made by algorithm are seen as unbiased (since computers, unlike humans, only respond to data). However, the rise in cases of algorithmic bias has demonstrated that, in many cases, the computer is being fed data that is biased, which is yielding biased outcomes, at least when the algorithm alone is doing the screening. This is because, as Nicol Turner-Lee of the Brookings Institution discussed in an interview by Vox in 2020, algorithmic bias happens in two primary ways: accuracy and impact. An AI can have different accuracy rates for different demographic groups. Similarly, an algorithm can make vastly different decisions when applied to different populations. As a for instance, an AI-infused platform for human resources, might have in it, historical data for successful hires, but given that the reference dataset might stretch back a long time, it might also, as a result, bias against women, people with less “White-sounding” names, veterans, or the disabled, results that are not just morally wrong, but also illegal. As Virginia Eubanks notes in her book Automating Inequality, algorithms used by social services agencies in administering to the poor and needy often times increase adverse impact versus human bureaucrats. Algorithms used by the criminal justice system are demonstrably worse in predicting recidivism rates amongst Blacks (and to a lesser degree Latinos) than Whites. Yael Eisenstat, former CIA officer and national security adviser to (then Vice President) Joe Biden, noted in a 2019 article in Wired, that: “No matter how trained or skilled you may be, it is 100 percent human to rely on cognitive bias to make decisions. Daniel Kahneman’s work challenging the assumptions of human rationality, among other theories of behavioural economics and heuristics, drives home the point that human beings cannot overcome all forms of bias. But slowing down and learning what those traps are — as well as how to recognize and challenge them — is critical. As humans continue to train models on everything from stopping hate speech online to labelling political advertising to more fair and equitable hiring and promotion practices, such work is crucial. Becoming overly reliant on data — which in itself is a product of availability bias — is a huge part of the problem. In my time at Facebook, I was frustrated by the immediate jump to “data” as the solution to all questions. That impulse often overshadowed necessary critical thinking to ensure that the information provided wasn’t tainted by issues of confirmation, pattern, or other cognitive biases.” This sort of thing is undeniably problematic. As that same 2018 study by Min Kyung Lee discussed above also noted about the limitations of algorithmic based hiring decisions, roughly half of the participants in the study thought that the decisions the algorithm made were unfair. To quote: “Most participants thought that the algorithm would not have the ability to discern good candidates because it would lack human intuition, make judgments based on keywords, or ignore qualities that are hard to quantify. ‘‘An algorithm or program cannot logically decide who is best for a position. I believe it takes human knowledge and intuition to make the best judgment.’’ (P169). ‘‘He could have a great resume but not hit the key phrases.’’ (P174).” The Lee 2018 study demonstrates that knowledge of if the decision-maker is human or computer can influence perceptions of the decisions made, but also whether or not the tasks required more human or mechanical skills also influenced perceptions of the decisions made, which can offer insights into helping to create trustworthy, fair, and positive workplaces with algorithms. This correlates to what was found by Pamela Hinds et al. in their 2011 study, whose finding suggest that there are significant differences in the extent to which people will rely on robots as compared with human work partners. When working with a person instead of a robot, participants relied more on the partner’s advice and were less likely to ignore their counsel. The McKinsey 2016 study also illustrates that the tasks least likely to be subject to automation, from a technical feasibility perspective are “managing others” (9 per cent) and “applying expertise” (18 per cent), which are the exact kind of tasks that the Lee 2018 study is discussing. These sorts of issues, which are most certainly difficult to overcome using a solely data-driven approach, and in fact may be made harder to achieve through such, as has been discussed. Meaning that the best approach is probably, instead of human oversight and decision-making being replaced entirely by computers using algorithms drawing on large datasets, might in fact be a partnership of sorts, humans being assisted by such algorithmic tools, given the lack of trust in management solely by algorithm (as Ms Lee has demonstrated in her research) & given that the data itself may be flawed (as has been noted by many sources), with regular reviews of the input data and output decisions to avoid an algorithmic bias problem brought on by biased data. In the context of humans and machines working together, the future is most presumably humans doing the “nice” tasks, whilst robots doing the dirtier and/or more dangerous tasks, this has been repeatedly discussed in popular and academic literature. The SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 pandemic has, most likely, accelerated the pace of automation for two main factors: 1) The pandemic has induced social changes that are likely to endure, including the “Great Resignation”, wherein millions around the world have quit their jobs, may in part be a consequence of lockdowns creating new opportunities for home working, and 2) the AI & robots are getting better, and more capable of taking on higher-order tasks. Now, what might a team of humans and robots working together, look like? As was discussed by Victoria Groom and Clifford Nass in their 2007 study: “The experiences of the few groups dedicated to developing true human–robot teams offer enough information to identify specific challenges to human–robot teams. Finding solutions to some of these problems appears inevitable. For example, human teammates often refer to objects by points of reference, and the objects and points of reference change frequently throughout the interaction. While robots currently struggle in this area, researchers are succeeding in improving their abilities to identify objects by reference point. Though it may be many years before robots can consistently understand human references to objects, there appears to be no major block that would prevent eventual success. Two major problem areas that show less promise of resolution are the robot’s inability to earn trust and lack of self-awareness. In high-stress situations, robot operators may experience physical and cognitive fatigue. In extreme cases, operators may forget to bring a robot to or from a disaster site (Casper & Murphy, 2003). Unlike human teammates who think not only about how to do their jobs, but also how to be prepared to do their jobs, robots require an external activation of their autonomy. They must be set-up to perform, but in cases of extreme stress, human teammates may lose their ability to babysit the robot. In these cases, the robot will not be in the appropriate position to complete its task.”. This, fundamentally, is a question of relatability between people and robots. And, on the basis of the literature, it seems as though, as with humans who form teams, and go through the Tuckman stages of group development (i.e., forming, storming, norming, and performing), that the only way robots will truly be trusted by their human teammates is to have enough emotional intelligence to recognise the emotional states of the human members and gain their trust, which is undeniably not a simple task when the robot doesn’t have the ability to feel. These are the sorts of limitations that will need to be overcome in order for robots to totally supplant humans, which is why, it appears, that the future is headed to another case of specialisation of labour, where robots will be entrusted with what they are best at, the predictable & repeatable tasks, and humans to be entrusted with the tasks that are unique & unpredictable. Note: This essay was my final project for INFO 6309: Robots & Work, at Cornell University (Instructor: Malte Jung, PhD), and despite its original purpose, I do think that this essay is of value to other audiences, so share it with that intent in mind. As was noted in The Economist in 2017 — “What history says about inequality and technology” (17 June 2017): “One study has found that the share of unskilled workers rose from 20% of the labour force in England in 1700 to 39% in 1850. The ratio of craftsmen’s wages to labourers’ started to fall in the early 1800s, and did not recover until 1960.” This article references the work of Scottish economist Gregory Clark at UC Davis, who put together a comprehensive dataset of English wages that stretches back to the 13th century. Mr Clark noted that in the past the skilled-wage premium, defined as the difference in wages between craftsmen, such as carpenters and masons, and unskilled labourers has been fairly stable, save for two sharp declines, the first, coming after the Black Death of the mid 1300s, and after the first industrial revolution. That dataset can be viewed here: http://faculty.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gclark/data.html This is drawn from many sources, but the author of this essay will point to the book The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present by economic historian David S. Landes published by Cambridge University Press (initially published in 1969, second edition published in 2003 — the version this author has read and referenced) for a discussion of the first and second Industrial Revolutions. There are many references that discuss the relationship between technology growth and human population growth. The author points to “Innovation and the growth of human population” by V. P. Weinberger et al. (2017); Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 372(1735), 20160415. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2016.0415 as a starting reference point. It should be noted that along with the industrial revolutions was also the rise of modern medicine and public health reforms (clean water, waste removal, vaccinations for infectious diseases, etc) which are also technological innovations no doubt, but of a different kind than those covered by the increased production efficiencies wrought by the industrial revolutions. Population figures from worldpopulationhistory.org. the war dead listed are estimates averaged from various sources and are meant to be demonstrative, not iron-clad declarations of fact. The discussion of the massive number of dead in the 1914–1949 span due to wars is not meant to be an exercise in fascination in the macabre, but as Brian Hayes notes in the beginning of his précis into the life and work of Lewis Fry Richardson with respect to modelling wars, “Demographically, it hardly matters. War deaths amount to something like 1 per cent of all deaths; in many places, more die by suicide, and still more in accidents. If saving human lives is the great desideratum, then there is more to be gained by prevention of drowning and auto wrecks than by the abolition of war.”, the point being that even with death on this massive scale, it hardly impacted the growth in human population (this is drawn from Everett (2016), MSc Thesis, University of Virginia, short title: “What are the Odds?”, and refers to Brian Hayes, Computing Science: Statistics of Deadly Quarrels, American Scientist. The author recognises that the concept of a “Second Thirty Years War” to discuss the period of 1914 to 1945 was originally proposed by French general and political leader Charles de Gaulle, and also adhered to by British soldier turned author turned political leader Sir Winston Churchill in the preface of volume one (The Gathering Storm) of his six-volume memoir The Second World War (https://www.amazon.com/Second-World-War-Volumes/dp/B005NS30ZG), which earnt him the 1953 Nobel Prize in Literature. The author adheres to an extension of this view, that the “war years” of the Second Thirty Years War were from the start of the first Great Powers War in 1914, through the Second Great Powers War ending in 1945 until 1949, which also encompasses the Chinese Communist Revolution in 1949, but also the Russian Revolution of 1917, etc. This is admittedly a bit arbitrary, but allows for a single period which covers both the duration of the Cold War, as well as the digital revolution, which started in the later 1940s. It also allows the demonstration of the modern social welfare state as part of that same post-bellum/modern period. For a discussion of this in the UK, see the essay by Derek Brown in The Guardian on 14 March 2001, “1945–51: Labour and the creation of the welfare state” (https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/mar/14/past.education) The author was once a doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania in electrical engineering (including taking classes in the room that once stored the ENIAC), and as such, is basically familiar with the history of digital computer technology. Other things to note, the development of the point-contact transistor (and quickly thereafter of the bipolar junction transistor (which was developed by William Shockley) which replaced the point-contact transistor given it was sturdier and easier to manufacture than the point-contact transistor) was used to replace the generally unreliable thermionic valve (aka vacuum tube) that was common in electronics such as the Colossus computer and the ENIAC until the creation of transistors. The (monolithic) integrated circuit, developed by Robert Noyce (a one-time protégé of William Shockley) at Fairchild Semiconductor in 1959, which combined multiple transistors in a single semiconductor now called a microchip, drove the miniaturisation of electronics, and their increasing ubiquity in society. There are whole papers and books that discuss this, it is summarised here to demonstrate recognition of the history of development of modern electronics. This example is drawn from Pg xiii of the introduction of the book Rise of the Robots by Martin Ford, Basic Books (2015). Given that it is now seven years past when this example was crafted, you’d have to multiply the example by a factor of 8, which would yield a distance of approximately 0.96 AU (or 1.432*108 km). Kenneth Rogoff aired this opinion in an essay on Project Syndicate, entitled: “King Ludd is Still Dead” (1 October 2012). The article that Kenneth Rogoff is referring to is: Leontief (1983); “Technological Advance, Economic Growth, and the Distribution of Income” Population and Development Review, 9(3), 403–410. https://doi.org/10.2307/1973315. Also note that Mr Leontief, who was born in Munich on 5 August 1905, used the German spelling of his given name Василий (Wassily) in countries that use Latin-based alphabets — primarily Germany (he performed his doctoral work (dissertation title: Die Wirtschaft als Kreislauf ) at Friedrich Wilhelm University (now Humboldt University of Berlin) earning his PhD in 1928, and worked at the Institute for the World Economy of the University of Kiel from 1927 to 1930) and the United States (where he emigrated to in 1931, working first at the National Bureau of Economic Research before joining the economics department of Harvard University in 1932. The author prefers to use the standard English rendering of the Slavic given name, Vasily (from the Greek name Βασίλειος, Basil in English), but recognises Mr Leontief’s preferred spelling. This supposed origin of the word sabotage is incorrect, the word came from the French word “saboter” (to walk loudly) which came from the word for the wooden clog known as a sabot, as the wooden sabot made a lot of noise walking on paved city streets. Sabotage, Online Etymology Dictionary — https://www.etymonline.com/word/sabotage. As it happens, this false history is actually reference in the film Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. This is from the previously referenced article in The Economist “What history says about inequality and technology” Pg 409, Leontief (1983). There are many examples of this, however, a recent example is discussed by Christopher Matthews in Axios, “Automation: raising worker pay while killing U.S. jobs” (15 December 2017) — https://www.axios.com/2017/12/15/automation-raising-worker-pay-while-killing-us-jobs-1513301264. The issues surrounding SBTC are massive and much academic research has been done on the topic. The author concedes that SBTC is certainly to play in part, but not entirely, for the worker displacement issue. If there is an interest to delve into this topic in greater depth, two papers worth reading are: 1) David Card & John DiNardo, Skill-Biased Technological Change and Rising Wage Inequality: Some Problems and Puzzles, Journal of Labour Economics, 2002, vol. 20, no. 4 — https://davidcard.berkeley.edu/papers/skill-tech-change.pdf; and, 2) Eli Berman et al., Implications of Skill-Biased Technological Change: International Evidence, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 113, №4 (Nov., 1998), pp. 1245–1279 — https://www.jstor.org/stable/2586980 This is also from the previously referenced article in The Economist “What history says about inequality and technology” Page xv, Ford (2015) for the summary, multiple chapters for the details. This is also from the previously referenced article in The Economist “What history says about inequality and technology” Michael Chui et al., McKinsey & Co., 8 July 2016, “Where machines could replace humans — and where they can’t (yet)” - https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/where-machines-could-replace-humans-and-where-they-cant-yet McKinsey & Co. (2016). In summary, the five factors are: 1) technical feasibility, 2) costs to automate, 3) the relative scarcity, cost, and skills, of the workers who might otherwise do that activity, 4) benefits of automation beyond labour-cost substitution, & 5) regulatory & social-acceptance considerations. A paraphrase of the original text is provided above given it was given examples that are useful. William Baumol started describing this phenomenon in the 1960s, published multiple papers on this topic, and distilled many of those papers into a book: The Cost Disease: Why Computers Get Cheaper and Health Care Doesn’t, Yale University Press (2012), which was the primary reference source by the author for this topic. Min Kyung Lee, “Understanding perception of algorithmic decisions: Fairness, trust, and emotion in response to algorithmic management”, Big Data & Society, January–June 2018: 1–16 https://doi.org/10.1177%2F2053951718756684 This assumption is discussed in the Min Kyung Lee paper discussed above. Rebecca Heilweil, “Why algorithms can be racist and sexist”, Vox/Recode (18 February 2020) Gideon Mann & Cathy O’Neil, “Hiring Algorithms Are Not Neutral”, Harvard Business Review, 9 December 2018 — https://hbr.org/2016/12/hiring-algorithms-are-not-neutral. This referenced a famous 2004 study by Marianne Bertrand & Sendhil Mullainathan published by the National Bureau of Economic Research “Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labour Market Discrimination”, American Economic Review, v94, 991–1013. The 2020 Vox piece by Rebecca Heilweil referenced before also references an example of this, the time when Amazon.com used an AI resume screening tool to improve the efficiency of screening job applications, but given the highly disproportionate number of men hired by Amazon from the sample period, that meant the system learnt, in effect, to discriminate against women, even though it wasn’t programmed with such a bias. This is from an essay the author wrote & published on his personal Medium page, “The limits of AI and why it will not replace human knowledge workers — from the perspective of a practitioner” (21 April 2021) — https://apdge.medium.com/the-limits-of-ai-and-why-it-will-not-replace-human-knowledge-workers-from-the-perspective-of-a-b7c345f06c2d . The referenced book — Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor, written by Virginia Eubanks, was published in 2018 by St. Martin’s Press Yael Eisenstat, “The Real Reason Tech Struggles With Algorithmic Bias”, Wired (12 February 2019) — https://www.wired.com/story/the-real-reason-tech-struggles-with-algorithmic-bias/ Pg 9, Lee (2018) From Section 5 (Discussion) of Pamela J. Hinds, Teresa L. Roberts & Hank Jones: Whose Job Is It Anyway? A Study of Human-Robot Interaction in a Collaborative Task, Human–Computer Interaction, (2004) 19:1–2, 151–181 Conversely, the McKinsey study found that the types of labour most susceptible to automation from a technical feasibility perspective are: 1) predictable physical work (78 per cent), 2) data processing (69 per cent), and 3) data collection (64 per cent). One example, in the field of urban search and rescue, is by Robin Roberson Murphy, Human–Robot Interaction in Rescue Robotics, IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SYSTEMS, MAN, AND CYBERNETICS — PART C: APPLICATIONS AND REVIEWS, VOL. 34, NO. 2, MAY 2004 The Economist, Covid has reset relations between people and robots, 25 February 2022 Victoria Groom and Clifford Nass; Can robots be teammates? Benchmarks in human–robot teams, Interaction Studies 8:3 (2007), 483–500.

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NCERT Solutions for Class 9 Maths, Science, English, Hindi & Social Science Have you ever felt less than adequately prepared for an examination and felt it making you extremely nervous and anxious? When we are under-prepared for a test or examination, it can take a toll on us mentally and make us do badly in an examination. This feeling of nervousness can even make us make mistakes in answers whose answers we do know. This is the reason why NCERT Solutions for Class 9 hold incredible importance in the life of a student. Having such NCERT Class 9 Book Solutions in our reach can help us avoid being under-prepared by allowing us to make sure that we study everything there is to be studied. NCERT Solutions Class 9 Maths, Science, English, Hindi & Social Science Class 9 NCERT Solutions hold utmost importance to a student because Class 9 is the year where things really start to heat up for the student, academics-wise. This is when parents and teachers begin to put pressure on students for doing well in the boards that will come the next year, so that students start preparing themselves for the academic rigorously that the board exams require. It is the introduction to the first make or break year in a student’s life, and this is why Class 9th NCERT Solutions are so important for the student. In addition, these Class 9 NCERT Solutions provide a great basis for studying for the students. We, at Vedantu, have provided NCERT Class 9 Solutions PDFs for every student to ensure that you all fare exceptionally well in your exams. Class 9th NCERT Solutions Explanation Here, we have provided you with Class 9 NCERT Solutions for all the subjects, namely, Social Science, Mathematics, Science, Hindi and English. Studying every subject thoroughly is necessary in order to score fantastic marks in an examination, and our Class 9th NCERT Solutions for each subject of Class 9 will help you do the same. Here is a brief breakdown of the subjects for which we have provided NCERT Solutions of Class 9: NCERT Class 9 Solutions for Maths The NCERT Class 9 Maths solutions consist of all the chapters and their solutions from the Class 9 NCERT textbook. The solutions cover all the topics and important points that are present. There are a total of 15 chapters present in the Class 9 Maths. All these chapters are properly explained by experts in the Class 9 Maths NCERT solutions. The Maths Class 9 Solutions are designed in such a way that they will help students learn and understand the concept. This will also help students score well in the examination. Chapters and Topics Covered in Class 9 Maths NCERT Solutions: Chapter-wise Importance of NCERT Class 9 Maths NCERT textbook of Class 9 Maths consists of 15 chapters. These chapters will help the students to have a clear understanding of the topics and will make them well prepared for the class 9 Math topics. NCERT Class 9 Maths Chapter 1 - Number System This chapter is a continuation of the chapter Number Line that you studied in earlier standards. This chapter will also teach you how to place various types of numbers on the number line. In Class 9 Chapter 1 will also focus on where to put the square roots of 2 and 3 on the number line, rational numbers, the laws of rational exponents and integral powers. Some of the topics that are covered in this chapter are terminating decimals and their examples, non-rational numbers, rationalization, laws of exponents. You must learn about natural numbers, whole numbers, integers, etc. Practice questions and examples from the exercises. Learn the properties and characteristics of rational numbers and irrational numbers. You must also learn the laws of radicals from this chapter. NCERT Class 9 Maths Chapter 2 - Polynomials This chapter walks you through polynomial algebraic expressions and the terminology associated with them. This chapter covers the definition and examples of polynomials, as well as the coefficient, degrees, and terms used in a polynomial. NCERT Class 9 Chapter 2 will also focus on different types of polynomials such as quadratic polynomials, linear constants, cubic polynomials, factor theorems, and factorization theorems. Some of the topics that are covered in this chapter are, coefficients of a polynomial, degree of the polynomial, cubic polynomials, quadratic polynomials, linear polynomials. Solve as many questions as possible from this chapter and learn all the definitions and formulas. Learn about zero polynomials and practice all the theorems. You can also solve additional questions from the NCERT solutions Maths Class 9. Factor and remainder theorems are important topics and you must practice them from the solutions. NCERT Class 9 Maths Chapter 3 - Coordinate Geometry This chapter has three exercises that will help you learn coordinate geometry in greater depth. In this chapter, you will learn about the Cartesian plane, and several terms linked with the coordinate plane. You'll also learn how to plot a point in the XY plane and how to name that point. This chapter is important and some of the topics that are covered in this chapter are the cartesian coordinates, coordinates of a point, plotting points on a plane, etc. Learn how to write points in different quadrants, signs of all the four quadrants, etc. You should also learn how to plot a graph and point on the Cartesian plane. Solve as many questions as possible and practice the examples to get an idea of the exercise questions. NCERT Class 9 Maths Chapter 4 - Linear Equations in Two Variables Class 9 Maths Chapter 4 will teach you to represent a linear equation using a graph plot along with finding solutions to linear equations with two variables. Students need to practice questions related to this chapter and be thorough with the formulas. Learn how to represent a linear equation in two variables using a graph. You must be thorough with the following topics from this chapter: lines passing through origin lines parallel to coordinate axes and solution of the linear equation in two variables on a graph. Practice and solve exercise questions also go through the examples before you start solving the exercise questions. NCERT Class 9 Maths Chapter 5 - Introduction to Euclid’s Geometry This chapter introduces several geometrical terminology and shapes. There are two exercises in this chapter where you will learn the relationship between theorems, postulates, and axioms. Students have to show relations between axioms and theorems. This chapter is important in the class 9th NCERT. Learn all the postulates and theorems. Go through the examples to understand the concepts better. This chapter is easy and you can score well. There are only two exercises in this chapter and you should be thorough with them both. NCERT Class 9 Maths Chapter 6 - Lines and Angles Class 9 Maths Chapter 6 includes several theorems and procedures to prove these theorems which are based on angles and lines. There are 2 exercises included in this chapter. Some of the topics that are covered in this chapter are, the sum of the angles of a triangle is always 1800, the sum of two interior opposite angles gives an exterior angle, etc. As you already know that this chapter is one of the most important chapters and you need to be very attentive while learning this chapter. You need to solve and practice questions from all the exercises. Topics such as linear pair, lines parallel to the same line, etc. are some of the basic topics of this chapter. Learn the types and properties of the angles and triangles. You need to have a clear understanding of the concepts from this chapter and you can use the NCERT Class 9 Maths solutions to learn all the above topics. NCERT Class 9 Maths Chapter 7 - Triangles Chapter 7 of NCERT Class 9 Maths will help the students learn about rules of congruence, properties of triangles and inequalities. This chapter is very important. To score well you have to be through with this chapter and practice all the topics and their questions and examples. Some of the topics that are very important in this chapter are as follows-side of triangles, hypotenuse theorem and prove SSS, ASA, SAS congruence. Learn all the properties of triangles, inequalities of triangles, LHS and RHS criteria for congruence. NCERT Class 9 Maths Chapter 8 - Quadrilaterals This chapter will help you understand the properties of quadrilaterals along with their combination with triangles. This chapter also requires students to prove theorems and formulas. You have to learn about the types of quadrilaterals and their formulas. There will be both short and long answer questions from this chapter. Learn how to calculate angles of quadrilaterals and practice questions from the exercises. NCERT Class 9 Maths Chapter 9 - Areas of Triangles and Parallelogram This chapter of Class 9 Maths is very important to get an understanding of the area and how to find the area of triangles as well as parallelograms. This chapter is also very important. You can score well in your exam if you prepare this chapter well. There are three exercises in this chapter and you have to solve all of them. Practice as many examples as possible from this chapter. You will be asked to prove the conditions of the given diagrams and check whether they satisfy or not. This chapter has many theorems thus, you have to study and practice this chapter properly. NCERT Class 9 Maths Chapter 10 - Circles Class 9 Chapter 10 is an interesting chapter for the students as well as an important one. It will help you learn about circles, chords, subtended angles and also to calculate the distance between the chord and the centre of a circle. Learn the definition of a circle. You also have to learn formulas for finding the area, perimeter, circumference, perimeter, etc. of the circle. There are some theorems and proofs that you must learn and practice. Go through the properties and solve examples before starting the exercise questions. NCERT Class 9 Maths Chapter 11 - Constructions This is a very important chapter and will majorly focus on the construction of triangles, bisectors on a line segment and measuring angles such as 45°, 60° and 90°. This chapter is very important and the questions from this chapter will carry more marks compared to others. Some topics such as the construction of triangles and bisector of line segments will be covered in this. NCERT Class 9 Maths Chapter 12 - Heron’s Formula In this chapter, you will learn how to find the area of triangles, various types of polygons and quadrilaterals. Here, you will learn the area of the triangle using Heron’s formula. NCERT Class 9 Maths Chapter 13 - Surface Areas and Volume In previous standards, every one of you had already studied mensuration. As a result, you must be aware of surface areas, which are included in this chapter. Some of the other important topics include the volume of cubes, cylinders, cuboids, cones, hemispheres, and spheres. In addition, you will learn how to convert one figure to another and compare the volumes of two figures in this chapter. Cube, cuboids, sphere surface areas, and volumes. Learn how to find the total and lateral surface areas of a cube and cuboid. Some of the important topics that you must learn and practice are as follows; right circular cone, right circular cylinder, etc. practice questions related to volume and capacity. NCERT Class 9 Maths Chapter 14 - Statistics This chapter will teach you about descriptive statistics and the collection of data. This is useful for interpreting any data and presenting the results obtained from it. In this chapter, you have to learn how to deal with the collection, interpretation, and analysis of data. You must learn how to sort and group data. Some of the topics that you need to learn and practice for the exam are; bar graph, frequency polygon, histogram, etc. You also have to learn about mean, mode, and median. Solve exercise questions and practice graphs. NCERT Class 9 Maths Chapter 15 - Probability It is important to solve Class 9 Maths Chapter 15 because all the questions included in this chapter are very interesting and are based on our daily life situations. This will make us understand Probability in a much easier manner. This chapter is also very important and students need to practice properly. Thus, students who follow the Class 9 NCERT solutions will be able to score well. NCERT Class 9 Solutions for Science Under Science in Class 9 NCERT Solutions, we have provided you with notes for Chemistry, Physics as well as Biology. All three subjects hold equal importance, especially for the students who wish to take up the Science stream in their post matriculation. There are 15 chapters in the Class 9 NCERT Science Solutions. Following are some of the important chapters and topics in the Class 9 NCERT science solutions: Matter in Our Surroundings: as we already know that all three subjects are included in the class 9 science syllabus, chemistry, physics, and biology. The matter in our surroundings is an important chapter in chemistry and Class 9 Science. You have to prepare to learn the states of matter, characteristics of the particles, etc. try to understand the concepts and learn them thoroughly. Atoms and Molecules: learn what an atom is. Learn the laws of chemical combinations, and how to write them. Study molecular and mole concepts. This chapter is important and questions will be asked from this chapter. Prepare well and you can score well in the exam. Tissues: this chapter is in Biology and it is one of the most important chapters. Learn the types of tissues and what they are made of. Practice and learn both plant and animal tissues. You also have to practice diagrams of the tissues. Solve all the exercise questions from the NCERT science solutions. Why Do We Fall Ill: this is a chapter that you can easily learn and prepare. You can score well in this chapter and you must take advantage of it. Motion: this chapter is from physics and you have to be very thorough with it. Learn about velocity, displacement, and acceleration. You also have to learn about the graphical representation of motion. Practice all the formulas and equations. Solve the exercise questions and use the NCERT solutions to your benefit. The topic circular motion is also a crucial topic and you must not neglect it. Work, Power, and Energy: this chapter is numerical based thus, you have to practice as many numerical questions as possible. Solve the exercise questions and study the examples. Learn formulas for work, energy, and power. You also have to learn about kinetic and potential energy. Sound: you have to be very thorough with this chapter and learn all the topics present. Practice the exercise questions and examples. Some important topics that you have to be thorough with are as follows: production and propagation of sound, the reflection of sound, and applications of ultrasound. The topic, structure of the human ear is also important and it is a sure question in the Class 9 Science exam. Natural Resources: this chapter is also very easy and you will be able to learn fast and score well in it. Learn about the types of resources and their use. Topics that you have to be careful with are the ozone layer, biogeochemical cycles, and minerals in the soil. Use the NCERT science solutions to practice all the exercises and additional questions. Above all the chapters are from the science subject and you can study them from the Class 9 NCERT Science Solutions. Prepare the chapters and their topics using the solutions as it will benefit you and help you to prepare properly for your exams. The Social Science part of NCERT Class 9 Solutions PDFs is inclusive of the solutions for all four books that come under the syllabus. These books are, namely, History, Civics, Economics and Geography, all of which hold great importance for a cultural and historical understanding of the world in which we live. These notes are especially important for those looking to take up Humanities or Arts later on. Students can use the NCERT solutions for Class 9 to prepare. Mathematics is an important part of every student’s life, whether they choose to continue it forward into their studies or not. Class 9 NCERT Solutions provided for you by Vedantu create the base for more complex Mathematics to be learned later on in higher classes. NCERT Class 9 Science Important Topics for Term I and Term II The table below consists of all the important topics for NCERT Class 9 Science Term I and Term II Examination: Class 9 Science Term I Topics Class 9 Science Term II Topics Unit I Chapter 2 - Is matter around us Pure Elements, compounds and mixtures Heterogeneous and homogeneous mixtures Colloids and suspensions Unit I Chapter 3 - Atoms and Molecules Particle nature and their basic units Law of constant proportions Atomic and molecular masses. Relationship of mole to mass of the particles and numbers Unit II Chapter 5 - The Fundamental Unit of Life Cell as a basic unit of life Prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells Cell membrane and cell wall Cell organelles and cell inclusions Chloroplast, mitochondria, vacuoles Endoplasmic reticulum, Golgi apparatus Nucleus and chromosomes Unit I Chapter 4 - Structure of Atom Structure of atoms Electrons, protons and neutrons Valency, the chemical formula of common compounds Isotopes and Isobars Unit II Chapter 6 - Tissues Structure and functions of animal and plant tissues Tissues, Organs, Organ System Unit II Chapter 13 - Why do we fall ill? Infectious and Non-infectious diseases Diseases caused by microbes (viruses, Bacteria and Protozoans) Unit III Chapter 3 - Motion Distance, Velocity, Uniform and Non-Uniform Motion Distance-time and velocity-time graphs Unit III Chapter 10 - Motion, Force and Work Universal Law of Gravitation Force of Gravitation of the earth (gravity) Acceleration due to Gravity Mass and Weight Unit III Chapter 9 - Force and Laws of Motion Newton’s Laws of Motion Action and Reaction forces Inertia of a body Force and Acceleration Unit III Chapter 11 - Work and Energy Kinetic and Potential energy Law of conservation of energy NCERT Class 9 Solutions for Hindi and English Hindi and English language subjects inculcate various stories and poems. These are incredibly important for the wholesome development of a student. Class 9th NCERT Solutions for languages not only help students learn and use proper grammar but also raise their worldly views through literature. NCERT Solutions of Class 9 Weightage Marks An important part of Class 9 NCERT Solutions is the distribution of the marks or the weightage marks of all the subjects. The total marks for all subjects are 100 marks, out of which 20 marks come from internal assessments such as projects, and the remaining 80 marks can be earned through the final year examinations. Under Social Science, each subject, i.e. History, Civics, Economics and Geography count for 20 marks each. Under Science, Biology counts for 26 marks, while Physics and Chemistry count for 27 marks each. The English, Hindi and Mathematics papers have their chapter-wise subdivisions within them and the Class 9 NCERT Solutions for the same have also been given by us accordingly. CBSE Class 9 Maths Unit Wise Weightage for First Term Statistics and Probability Internal Assessment Class 9 Term I Student Enrichment Activities-practical work CBSE Class 9 Maths Unit Wise Weightage for Second Term Statistics and Probability Internal Assessment Class 9 Term II Student Enrichment Activities-practical work NCERT Solutions of Class 9 Benefits There are so many great benefits of the NCERT Solutions of Class 9. We have listed a few of them below: They are completely free and downloadable notes and are also suitable for taking printouts so that they are handier for you. All the solutions have been provided in a detailed manner, leaving no room for the student to miss out on anything from the textbooks. NCERT Solutions Class 9 pdf can be downloaded for free. The Class 9th NCERT Solutions are systematically given, making the process of studying much easier and direct. Along with this, students can also download additional study materials provided by Vedantu, for Class 9 Solutions – 1. Why do I need to use NCERT Solutions for Class 9 by Vedantu? The Vedantu NCERT Solutions for Class 9 have been written down by seasoned professionals who know the topic about which they have provided solutions inside and out. The solutions provided here will be helpful for students because they are highly detailed and the points from the textbooks have been systematically broken down to provide better understanding of the subjects. These Class 9 NCERT Solutions are designed to make the lives of students easier. They are even downloadable and printable, totally free of cost. 2. Which are the subjects for which Vedantu has provided Class 9 NCERT Solutions? Vedantu has provided Class 9 NCERT Solutions for all subjects to ensure that there is no topic left untouched by the student and no room left to be under-prepared for exams. There are notes for the subjects of Physics, Chemistry and Biology under Science; Economics, History, Civics and Geography under Social Science, Mathematics, and English language as well as Hindi language. All the NCERT Class 9 Book Solutions that a student may need have been provided for their understanding and ease of scoring well in the examinations. 3. What are the important topics covered in the NCERT Solutions for Class 9 Maths? All topics taught in the Class 9 Maths syllabus hold equal importance in building the base of the subject. The NCERT Solutions Class 9 Maths covers all important topics. The following topics hold a higher weightage in the exams. Laws Of Exponents Zeros Of Polynomials Angle Sum Property Of A Triangle Pair of Linear Equations In Two Variables 4. Why are the NCERT Solutions for Class 9 Maths important? NCERT books are the most important source available for the preparation of exams. Exercises and questions in Class 9 Maths NCERT books are very helpful in scoring. Students should solve and practice regularly. NCERT Solutions are equally important since students might face difficulties in understanding or solving the questions correctly so, referring to these solutions can help them get a proper understanding of the methods used in solving the questions. 5. How can I get NCERT Solutions for Class 9th? Students can access the NCERT Solutions on Vedantu when they need help while attempting the questions provided in NCERT books. They can access NCERT Solutions Class 9 Maths on Vedantu’s app. All the resources are free of cost. Also, referring to these solutions will help students to understand the mathematical concepts well and they will be able to score good marks in exams. 6. Where can I get Chapter-wise Solutions for NCERT Class 9 Maths? NCERT Solutions for Class 9 Maths have been provided by Vedantu and can be accessed by students who require help in answering the questions provided in various exercises in the NCERT Book for Class 9 Maths. Students can find step-by-step solutions for all questions and exercises given in each chapter of the syllabus for Class 9. These solutions can be accessed and downloaded free of cost here. 7. Do I need to practice all the questions provided in Class 9 Mathematics NCERT Solutions? Questions provided in the NCERT books are very important for students to gain a proper understanding of the different and complex concepts of the Class 9 Maths syllabus. Question papers are also strictly designed on the basis of NCERT questions. Ignoring any of the questions can lead to a loss of marks in the exams. Hence, it is necessary to practice all the Class 9 Maths NCERT Solutions at least twice.

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Trentino, together with Alto Adige/Südtirol (South Tyrol), is Italy’s northernmost region, and it is almost completely mountainous. The mountain chains elevate to the altitude of 3,900 metres, which means that here are hosted some of the highest peaks within the whole Alpine range – and certainly on the Italian side. To the south, the shores of Lake Garda (at an altitude of just 70 metres) also imply that there are quite huge contrasts in store for whoever is going to visit this most enchanting region of the Alps. Trentino is also one of the least populated regions in Italy, with a density which is far below the national average – which also promises good when it gets to Nature, signaling its prevalence over the built environment. The whole region is extremely rich in forests – especially conifers, as may be expected, but also beech – while in several areas (especially high in altitude, but not exclusively) there is a predominance of meadows and pastures, owing the region its epithet of ‘Green Heart’: this is certainly true as far as the Italian Alps are concerned – if anything, for its central location in the middle of the range. This also means that there is a high number of plants growing here, with an elevated ratio of endemic species, which certainly makes Trentino one of the places to visit when it gets to the Alpine flora. The richness of grasses found here is in turn connected to the prevalence, over the centuries, of cattle farming (and therefore of animals grazing the land). Considering the orography (shape) of the territory, and the fact that the forests cover around 70% of the region, it will soon become evident to the visitor that there is quite a huge difference between the density of population in the main valleys (notably the Adige, Sarca and Brenta valleys, but also the lower Val di Non in the west and parts of the Primiero to the east) and the side valleys, more elevated and less populated. The same goes, of course, also for the highest grounds: these are a reign of rock and ice since time immemorial. The valleys are generally long and narrow, and their slopes covered by forests; the only exception is the Adige valley – the main axis of the region – which is of glacial origin, and therefore much wider. This valley runs from the border with South Tyrol in the north to that with Veneto in the south; its southernmost section is also known as Vallagarina. Trento and Rovereto (in the Adige valley) are the main cities, while Riva del Garda (on the northernmost tip of the lake), Arco (in the Sarca valley) and Pergine (in the Valsugana) are the main towns; the rest of the regional urban network is composed of a thread of smaller villages and hamlets along the valley floors, even though each of them will have at least one major centre. Trentino is an utterly Alpine region; it confines to the south and east with Veneto; to the north with South Tyrol and to the west with Lombardy; the Alps contained within it comprise a section of the Central Alps (west of the Adige) but most of Trentino’s mountains belong to the Oriental Alps, a sub-group of which also forms the Dolomites, which Trentino shares with South Tyrol and Veneto. To the south, the limit is less defined, as the mountains fade towards the Venetian Pre-Alps and the Sub-Mediterranean enclave of Lake Garda. The climate of Trentino can aptly be defined as one of transition between the sub-continental and the proper Alpine. Temperatures in January are comprised between -5/-10C, but with extremes in the high valleys and in altitude up to –30C, while in summer they can easily shoot above 30C, reaching 35C in the Adige valley. Even though most of the territory lies at quite an elevated altitude (about 77% of Trentino is above 1,000 metres, while only around 20% of the region is above 2,000 m), Trentino does not display those elements of climatic rigidity which are so characteristic of other Alpine regions. Starting with the lower altitudes, the climate of Trentino can therefore be divided into three main climatic bands: Sub-Mediterranean band: this is proper to the area of Lake Garda and part of the Sarca valley: it is the mildest area of the region, with cool (but not cold) winters and moderately hot summers – both seasons being mitigated by the ventilation coming from the lake (in the summer) and its influence over the temperatures (in winter). The vegetation here is comprised mostly of a mixture of Sub-Mediterranean and continental species, including olives (mostly cultivated), Holm Oak and cypress, plus shrubs like Strawberry tree, Phyllirea and Cistus. The sub-continental climate is a transitional band that mainly characterizes the lower valley floors. Winters tend to be more rigid here, with moderate snowfalls; this is the climate of the Adige, Sarca and lower Non valleys, which are particularly apt for the cultivation of apples, given the medium-low rainfall (about 700 mm yearly), the abundant presence of sunlight (250 to 300 days per year) and the strong temperature extremes between day and night, which favour the elimination of parasites. The native vegetation is composed mainly of chestnut (in the lower valleys) and beech (higher up), with some spruce; in any case, Sub-Mediterranean essences are not completely absent neither, especially in the more sheltered and sunny locations. In some valleys, vineyards make their appearance too. The Continental band is typical of the ‘proper Alpine’ valleys, such as the Valle di Fiemme, Val di Fassa and the Primiero subregion in the east, or the Sole valley in the west, with harsh winters, usually abundant snowfalls (even though the snow pattern has been quite patchy over the last few years), shorter and rainier summers and a vegetation decidedly dominated by conifers (mostly Silver fir, Norway spruce and larch). Above these three extends the Alpine climatic band, which only characterizes areas mostly devoid of human settlements (bar a few exceptions), running from an altitude of about 1,800 metres upwards. This area covers the highest areas of woodland, which are dominated by larch, Dwarf mountain pine, green alder and a more shrubby vegetation, such as Rhododendrons. This band extends far above the tree line up to the perennial snows. The highest peaks in Trentino are to be found in the west, with the groups of the Ortles-Cevedale (3,902 m), Adamello-Presanella (3,539 m) and the Brenta Dolomites (3,173 m). Most of the Dolomites, however, rise east of the Adige: these comprise the celebrated groups of the Marmolada (3,342 m), Sella (3,152 m), Latemar (2,864 m) and the Pale di San Martino (3,192 m), while to the south the mountains tend to get lower in altitude and fade into the Pre-Alps – even though there are quite important groups here too, such as Monte Baldo (2,218 m), the Lagorai chain (2,754 m) and the Pasubio (2,239 m), at the boundary with Veneto. Connecting the various mountain groups are several high mountain passes, some along very spectacular roads, amongst which are certainly to be counted the Stelvio (2,757 m), Pordoi (2,239 m), Fedaia (2,057 m), Rolle (1,984 m), Tonale (1,883 m) and Costalunga (1,753 m) passes; other passes include the Pampeago (1,983 m) and San Pellegrino (1,918 m), plus many others. Trentino is very rich in water courses – most notably the Adige (which has many important tributaries, such as the Noce and the Avisio), but also the Brenta to the east and the Sarca and Chiese in the west. Most of the valleys of Trentino stem out of the main Adige valley: the Noce forms the Val di Non (continuing into the Val di Sole) to the west, while the long axis of the Cembra-Fiemme-Fassa valleys to the east is watered by the Avisio, which takes you straight into the Dolomites’ heartland. Continuing on from the Sarca valley would lead you instead into the Valli Guidicarie, bordering with Lombardy, while Brenta is the river of the Valsugana in the east – eventually flowing into Veneto (and the same can be said for the small subregion of Primiero, formed by the Cismon river). In all of these valleys there are plenty of sights; for instance the Segonzano earth pyramids (a curious natural phenomenon due to erosion) are in the Cembra valley, while Primiero is the area of the Paneveggio-Pale di San Martino Regional Natural Park; close by is also the more secluded and less-frequented, but very green and pleasant, Tesino plateau. In Trentino extends the northernmost tip of Lake Garda, which is subdivided mainly between Lombardy to the west and Veneto to the east. Branching off at Riva del Garda is the small Valle di Ledro, which takes to the Lago di Ledro, famous for its archaeological finds. Numerous are the Alpine lakes, though, which are often of small dimensions: noteworthy are those of Caldonazzo, Levico, Fiavé (also important for its archaeologic sites), Molveno, Toblino and the Lago di Cei; among the artificial basins, the most important is Lago di Santa Giustina. Among the most notable parts of the territory one certainly has to include the different Protected Areas (mostly falling within Regional Natural Parks), which – all in all – account for about 1/5 of the region. In Trentino there are two important parks: the Adamello-Brenta, west of the Adige, and the Paneveggio - Pale di San Martino to the east, both covering a section of the Dolomites. In addition to these, there are also many other sections of territory enjoying some degree of protection, such as small biotopes, wetlands and peat-bogs ('torbiere'), or those reserves dedicated to specific mountain groups – such as the Bondone (hosting also an historical Botanic Alpine Garden), the Lagorai, the ‘Piccole Dolomiti’ and the Pasubio. Besides all this, there are also seven Eco-museums within Trentino, two of which are the Lagorai and Vanoi. Until 1918, what is now Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol (South Tyrol) belonged to the County of Tyrol, and therefore to the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, thus forming a unique administrative entity. Before the Restoration of 1815, Trentino was also part of the Holy Germanic Empire – the Prince Bishops of Trento – even though this was formally controlled by the Counts of Tyrol first, and by the Hapsburg (their successors) afterwards. This territory once comprised parts of what is now Veneto (actual province of Belluno) and Lombardy (province of Brescia); the Diocese of Trento also included the southern part of actual South Tyrol. Even the Prince Bishops of Brixen (Bressanone), who governed territories now part of Austria, survived since the beginning of the 11th century until secularization in 1802, at the hands of Napoleon. After Veneto was given to Italy in 1866, the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph – despite ample local autonomy remained for administrative purposes – started a policy of progressive linguistic and cultural germanization of the region, which prompted in turn a wave of ‘irredentism’ among some of the local intellectuals (basically, this was a movement for the annexation of Trentino to Italy), while the country people, on the whole, remained faithful to the Emperor. The waves generated by the movement for independence that agitated the region between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century eventually had as a natural outcome – with the Treaty of St. Germain – the annexation of Trentino to Italy at the end of WW1. This move caused the splitting of the ancient County of Tyrol, which had so far always represented a well-defined entity – and so it happened that Trentino (then often referred to as the ‘Italian Tyrol’) and South Tyrol both became part of the then Kingdom of Italy, while North Tyrol remained to Austria. At the end of WW1, which had seen the Italian soldiers mostly employed on the Eastern front of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, the Fascist government – in fear of a mutiny against the new Italian dominance – launched an aggressive campaign that aimed at leveling the German presence within the region. Even though this happened most strongly in South Tyrol (which was – and still is – predominantly German), echoes of that movement also affected Trentino, where there were some German-speaking communities (such as those of the Mocheni valley and the Cimbri of Luserna). It was a real terrorist repression: the use of German language was banned, and German-speaking schools were closed throughout the region. Following the armistice signed by Italy with the allied forces, the entire region was in fact annexed to the Third Reich, with a special degree of autonomy. Nonetheless, the province of Trento remained part of the Italian Social Republic; despite that fact, between 1943 and 1945 the integrity of Tyrol as a unity – which had been shattered in 1918 – was temporarily re-established. It would be too complicated and inappropriate here to go into a detailed story of what happened during this very tense time in the region, but most likely South Tyrol is actually the area that suffered the most. At the end of WW2, the movement for turning Trentino into an independent region became much more widespread, but while in South Tyrol the claim was for separation and re-annexation to Austria, the way chosen in Trentino was that of a higher degree of autonomy within Italy, and it was at this point that the destinies of the two provinces were somehow joined together to form a newborn region – Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol – within Italy, separated from its Austrian counterpart. Originally, in fact, autonomy was meant to be a reality for South Tyrol only – which, in the meantime, had been decided would remain part of Italy – but a certain degree of autonomy was later negotiated for Trentino as well; thus, with the so-called First Charter of Autonomy (Primo Statuto d’Autonomia), the Region ‘Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol’ (South Tyrol) – as we know it today – was officially born. Study of the German language was reinstated, and towns and villages were given again a bilingual denomination (even though this specific aspect concerned more South Tyrol than Trentino). The backlash of this outcome, however, was that in this way the original autonomy of South Tyrol resulted rather diluted, which prompted further problems. Until the mid 1950s, the Italian and Austrian political forces worked together harmoniously, to which a period of tension followed, when the movement for the separation of South Tyrol reached its peak. The German-speaking community felt harassed once again by the Italian majority; it opposed the regional autonomy project and threatened separation if a provincial autonomy (for South Tyrol) was not obtained; this highly-charged situation eventually led to serious incidents. This state-of-affairs, though, prompted new negotiations between the Austrian and Italian governments, which led at last to the Second Charter of Autonomy (Secondo Statuto d’Autonomia), when the people of South Tyrol finally obtained what they were asking for. Since then, as a matter of fact, the autonomy of the two provinces is such that in most respects they can be considered two small independent regions, nowadays only formally united as ‘Trentino - Alto Adige/Südtirol’. The two provinces – plus North Tyrol (which was always part of Austria) – all together now also form the ‘Euroregio Tyrol’: a multinational entity that somehow recreates the historical and cultural unity of Tyrol before its splitting. With such a tormented history behind its back, it can now be said that South Tyrol (and perhaps the whole region) has become a real laboratory on autonomy and peaceful co-existence, providing a good example of people of different origins inhabiting the same land, in a small but real melting pot where Mediterranean and Mitteleuropa meet. Perhaps, then, this small but finally harmonious region will serve as an example to help solving similar situations in troubled regions across Europe and the world at large. After such complex developments, now – as a matter of fact – the role of Trento as a regional capital can be defined as purely formal, as both main cities in the region (Trento and Bolzano/Bozen) have equal importance and status from a political and administrative (as well as historical and cultural) point of view. Monuments and Sights The heritage of Trentino is very rich, and many are the historical monuments within the region – especially castles. Even though it is not the intent of this page to expand on the historical and artistic aspects, it is at least worth listing some of the main monuments here. As it can be hinted from the historical outline presented above, the region Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol – over the course of its history – has passed under several dominations, and each of these passages has left its traces. Among the most important castles of Medieval origin, one certainly has to include Castel Tirolo (Schloss Tyrol – which gave its name to the entire region), Castel Roncolo (Schloss Runkelstein) and Castel Firmiano (Sigmundskron) near Bolzano – but all of these are in South Tyrol. The goal here is to focus on Trentino; so, as far as this province is concerned, the Castello del Buonconsiglio in Trento is probably its most important building, which also played a vital role during the sessions of the famous Council. Other notable castles include those in Rovereto, Sabbionara and Beseno in the Adige valley, while Arco and Riva del Garda castles are in the Sarca valley – just to mention a few of the most spectacular ones. Particularly outstanding – given also the accurate work of renovation that was undertaken in recent years – is Castel Stenico, in the lower Guidicarie valleys. There are many castles in the Val di Non too. Besides castles and fortresses, there are also several important churches, abbeys and monasteries – such as the majestic Duomo in Trento (pivotal during the Council too) and San Romedio Abbey: this is one of the most atmospheric buildings in the entire region, near Sanzeno, also in the Val di Non. Many are also the museums, and it is impossible to list them all here. One that is particularly noteworthy, as it gathers a lot of material from all the different parts of Trentino, is the main Ethnographic Museum, with its headquarters in the ancient fortified Monastery of San Michele at San Michele all’Adige; many smaller such institutions are located in the individual valleys. In Trento itself, it is particulary worthy to visit the Muse Trento, which is an innovative science Museum, at the forefront in Europe for its kind. The abundance of water and the conformation of the territory favor the production of hydroelectric energy. Trentino is also one of the Italian regions at the vanguard as far as the use of renewable energies is concerned, and one of the foremost producers of wind turbines, solar panels and photovoltaic systems. As can be imagined from what you have been reading so far, great importance is also attached to tourism too. Copyright © 2019 Italy-Tours-in-Nature

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In many ways, Saul and David were complete opposites. The king was full of bravado, while the shepherd boy was self-effacing. Saul was filled with hate, while David was clearly blessed by the Lord. Eventually, David would become king—the very thing that Saul feared. Yet even he would succumb to pride. Contrasting the two men, Alistair Begg points us forward to Christ, the only King who possesses perfect humility and sincerity. Sermon Transcript: Print Well, I invite you to take your Bibles and turn to 1 Samuel and to chapter 18. Any who are visiting this evening, we are seeking to conclude what we set out to do in the morning hour. And so, let me reread the portion that we have been giving our attention to. It begins at 1 Samuel 18:17: “Then Saul said to David, ‘Here is my elder daughter Merab. I will give her to you for a wife. Only be valiant for me and fight the Lord’s battles.’ For Saul thought, ‘Let not my hand be against him, but let the hand of the Philistines be against him.’ And David said to Saul, ‘Who am I, and who are my relatives, my father’s clan in Israel, that I should be son-in-law to the king?’ But at the time when Merab, Saul’s daughter, should have been given to David, she was given to Adriel the Meholathite for a wife. “Now Saul’s daughter Michal loved David. And they told Saul, and the thing pleased him. Saul thought, ‘Let me give her to him, that she may be a snare for him and that the hand of the Philistines may be against him.’ Therefore Saul said to David a second time, ‘You shall now be my son-in-law.’ And Saul commanded his servants, ‘Speak to David in private and say, “Behold, the king has delight in you, and all his servants love you. Now then become the king’s son-in-law.”’ And Saul’s servants spoke those words in the ears of David. And David said, ‘Does it seem to you a little thing to become the king’s son-in-law, since I am a poor man and have no reputation?’ And the servants of Saul told him, ‘Thus and so did David speak.’ Then Saul said, ‘Thus shall you say to David, “The king desires no bride-price except a hundred foreskins of the Philistines, that he may be avenged of the king’s enemies.”’ Now Saul thought to make David fall by the hand of the Philistines. And when his servants told David these words, it pleased David well to be the king’s son-in-law. Before the time had expired, David arose and went, along with his men, and killed two hundred of the Philistines. And David brought their foreskins, which were given in full number to the king, that he might become the king’s son-in-law. And Saul gave him his daughter Michal for a wife. But when Saul saw and knew that the Lord was with David, and that Michal, Saul’s daughter, loved him, Saul was even more afraid of David. So Saul was David’s enemy continually. “Then the commanders of the Philistines came out to battle, and as often as they came out David had more success than all the servants of Saul, so that his name was highly esteemed.” Father, we pray that as we turn now to these words, that you will guard my thoughts and my words and our minds and hearts. For your Son’s sake. Amen. We gave a title to the study this morning, “As a Man Thinketh, So Is He,” acknowledging the clear discrepancy that exists between the things that Saul said and the things that Saul was thinking. He said certain things in one way, and then, every so often, we discover that the thoughts of his heart do not match what the words are coming out of his mouth. The first attempt to be done with David involved his first daughter, and that has not been a success. He’s now on his second plan and with his second daughter. And it would appear that the response of David in the first instance, which was a response of reluctance, was a very sincere response and that Saul, anticipating a similar reaction on the second occasion, solicits the help of his servants to exercise a measure of persuasion in making sure that David will take up this invitation. I wonder if you noticed how, although we’re told just in a sentence that “Michal loved David”—incidentally, this is the only place in the whole Bible where you have a direct statement of a woman loving anybody else in the entire Bible. Check. So, “Michal loved David,” but all of the emphasis here is on him becoming the son-in-law of the king. And I thought about that. I thought, “That’s an interesting angle.” I don’t know about you, gentlemen, but as much I liked Harold J. Jones, becoming his son-in-law was not actually the draw in my case. He was a fine man, but the plan was not “Oh, I’d love to become his son-in-law!” There was another plan altogether. And I would think that that would be true in your case too—at least I certainly hope so. And so, again, David responds deferentially. And it’s clear that he believes this, and it is, of course, a straightforward expression of his circumstances: “I am a poor man … [I] have no reputation”—i.e., “I have no social standing”—apart, of course, from the standing that he could refer to that he had gained as a result of his victory over Goliath. That reaction on the part of David is then reported by the servants of Saul to Saul. David has said very clearly to them, he says, “You know, does it seem to you a little thing to become the king’s son-in-law?” The issue is not here so much focused on Michal—he’s got that, it would seem, very clear in his mind—but it’s the implications that go along with it: such a transformation in his circumstances, and also particularly in relationship to Saul. And so, that reaction, verse 24, is then reported to Saul himself: “Thus and so did David speak.” And Saul then comes back, and he says, “Well, listen, here’s what we’re going to do.” And he then informs the servants so that they can inform David that he has a special deal for him. We could put it, perhaps, that way. Incidentally, if 17:25—remember, the word on the street, “If you beat Goliath, you get his daughter, you get a big cash settlement, and you get a kind of tax-free program for your family for the rest of their lives”—if that actually was a categorical promise, then the fact that David is unable to produce the bride-price is an indication of the fact that Saul himself did not keep his part of the bargain. If that was a true statement of promise on his part, then it wouldn’t have been a problem for David in this circumstance to produce the bride-price. Because he would have already had it lodged in his account, if you like. It would have been wired in, so to speak. Therefore, when the challenge came, he would have been able to appeal to it. Clearly, that is not the case. Once again, I think, a discrepancy between what Saul said and what Saul thought. “As [a man] thinketh …, so is he.” So, instead of producing cash, he’s asked to produce something else. And it is quite an assignment, I think you will agree: “Kill a hundred Philistines”—that’s the word—“and bring back the evidence.” That’s essentially what is being stated here. So, this is going to test, if you like, both David’s interest in Michal and also appeal to his desire to be a warrior in dealing with these uncircumcised Philistines. This has been his focus when he had gone against Goliath back in chapter 17. You remember how, after Goliath has spoken to him so disparagingly, David had responded there: You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. … [I’m going to make sure that I] strike you down and cut off your head. And I will give the dead bodies of the host of the Philistines this day to the birds of the air and to the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel. So, he’s the man for this assignment. He really is. And so Saul gives it to him. The challenge is cast, again, from Saul’s mouth in terms that would make us think that he was really concerned about victory over the king’s enemies. I think it’s there in 25, isn’t it? “Now Saul thought to make David fall by the hand of the Philistines,” but what he actually said was “I don’t desire a bride-price except the foreskins of the Philistines, because I’m really interested that I would be avenged of my enemies.” Well, who’s enemy number one? Enemy number one is David. You see it at the end of it all that “Saul was David’s enemy continually.” But ostensibly he says, “Now, this is the plan if you want to go through with this marriage. And my great concern, of course, as always is to deal with these Philistines, and you’re the man to deal with the Philistines.” But actually, what he’s saying is every hope that he has is that the Philistines will deal with him. Probably said to himself, “You know, well, he’s made a big fuss around here by being a hero against Goliath. But even if Goliath is a big fellow, even so, he’s only one. Let’s see how he does in trying to deal with a hundred of these characters!” I think he must have said to himself, “The odds are pretty good that he will die in the attempt, because we know him, and he’ll definitely make a stab at it.” Well, what did David think of this? Verse 26: “When [the] servants told David these words, it pleased David well to be the king’s son-in-law. Before the time had expired…” In other words, the meter was going to run out at a certain point. And if you go back up, you have that same statement. It’s sort of enigmatic, isn’t it, that Merab got married to Adriel “at the time when” Saul would have given her to David. So there’s some time frame here that is of significance, and David is aware of that. He’s pleased with the plan. As we said this morning, Saul was pleased with the plan too. He came up with it. But they were pleased for very different reasons. So, David is not about to miss the deadline. Verse 27: “[And] David arose and [he] went, along with his men.” And clearly, he was planning to take things up a notch—or, we might say, one hundred notches. And you can only imagine how he goes out with these folks. And he says, “Now, what we’re going to do is this: we’re going to do this in a very orderly way. We’re gonna just kill them one at a time and deal with them one at a time; and you, if you’ll just take care of things and make sure; and you, if you’ll just count so that we know exactly where we are, because we do not only have a deadline, but we’ve got a number to meet.” You can imagine them saying, “That’s us at seventy-four, David! Seventy-four and counting.” “Very good. We’ve got a way to go. We’ve still got twenty-six to go to meet the king’s deadline.” And as they’re getting closer to a hundred, he says, “You know, I’ve got an idea: let’s double it! Let’s double it!” They said, “Double it, for goodness’ sake?” He said, “Have you ever seen Michal? Have you ever seen how good she is? Double it! I’m happy to double it.” You see what an enthusiast this fellow is. And what a picture it must have been. It must have been? It is! Now, there’s many times through this study that I’ve said to you, haven’t I? “Said what?” you say. Well, I’m about to tell you. I’ve said to you, “I wish I had a video of this, because I can’t see how their faces would have been.” Well, this is an occasion when I’m very, very glad that there is no video of this, and you should be perfectly glad as well. This is no time for an illustrated Bible; let’s put it that way! And there you have it. And David brought them “in full number to the king, that he might become the king’s son-in-law.” It really is quite an incredible picture: “And Saul gave him his daughter Michal for a wife.” What else could he do? He had no options now. He’d said, “This is how it goes. This is what you must do.” And somebody said, “And who gives this woman to be married to this man?” And Saul said, “Her mother and I do. Ahinoam and I, we do.” But there was no celebration on Saul’s part, because what he had been hoping for was an elimination. And the dreadful part of it from his perspective was that David was still in circulation. You say, “Well, those words all sound similar.” That’s how I remember things: celebration, elimination, and what was the last one? Circulation. Very good. See, that’s how you’ll remember it too. It actually works. And the overriding fact that dawns again on Saul is not simply that his daughter loved David but when Saul saw anew that “the Lord was with David”—and clearly not with him, because he is the rejected king. And the people that are around him in his own family love this man that he increasingly hates. And if “perfect love casts out fear,” as the Scriptures remind us, Saul knows nothing of that kind of love. And if your Bible is like mine, you only need to look down to the beginning of chapter 19, where you will realize that Saul at that point, then, immediately discards any attempts at subtlety. And all of the hatred that consumes him, that builds fear upon fear in him, is about to be out in the open. What a sentence it is there in verse 29—actually, two sentences: “Saul was even more afraid of David.” And that fear, which had revealed itself in all of these jealous and evil activities, embedded the fact that although they had started out, as it were, in good spirits with one another, “Saul was David’s enemy continually.” And what you have in verse 30 is really just the kind of summary statement that comes often in the narrative. So, it lets us know that with this circumstance resolved in this way, life was going to continue. And how did it continue? Well, “the commanders of the Philistines came out to battle, and as often as they came out David had more success than [any of] the servants of Saul.” And Saul must have hoped that it would go the other way, but it did not. The more victory he had, the more popularity he had, and “so that his name was highly esteemed.” An unequal success and an amazing sense of glory. Now, I said to myself, “Well, how are we going to finish this up and move into Communion?” Well, this is the best I can do. Let’s note the very clear contrast between David’s self-assessment and the esteem in which he was held. Verse 23: “I am a poor man and [I] have no reputation.” “I have no social standing at all.” Verse 30: “So … his name was highly esteemed.” There’s a lot of places we can go with that. It’s a reminder to us, isn’t it, of the general principle that you find, for example, in Isaiah the prophet, in 66:2, where we read these words: “This is the one to whom I will look[, says the Lord]: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.” All the bravado has been on the part of Saul. All of the expressions of humility have been found on the lips of David. Now, what do we know? Well, we know that David was the Lord’s anointed, that he was the king who was being set apart now in order that he might reign. The affection of the general populace was directly related to the fact that they knew that the Lord was with him, that they were beginning to understand that it was not just his personality or his style or his looks or his triumphs, but that there was something that was unique to this individual, and that was that the presence of Yahweh had come upon him and that the Spirit had rushed upon him—the same Spirit that had rushed out of the room, as it were, in relationship to Saul himself. So, he is the Lord’s anointed, and he is the one who is leading the people in battle, and he is the one who, apparently, in verse 30, every time he goes, it’s another victory, it’s another thing hitting the news: “They went against the Philistines today. David led them in battle and came home victorious once again.” But this is not where the story of David ends, remember. Because as you read on in the story of David—as we do read on in the story of David—we discover that in due course, he’s going to fail as a king. He cannot ultimately fill the bill. He is inevitably going to be shown for what he is. He’s going to crumble. He’s going to crumble before a woman bathing on a rooftop. He’s going to crumble before the implications of that. The lies that he has despised in Saul will be lies that he now takes upon his own lips. And what does this mean? Well, it means that the people then realize, “This cannot be the king. And the kings that follow, no matter how well they do for how long, end inevitably, somehow or another less than we might hope them to be.” And why is that? Why is it that by the time you get into the opening of the Gospels, after four hundred years of silence, after the emergence of John the Baptist, the last of the prophets, the one who is standing, as it were, bridging between the Old and the New, and he says, “Listen.” He said, “Look at this fellow here. Consider him.” And then, eventually, the words of the Old Testament ring out on the lips of the people: “Behold, your king comes to you, humble and riding on a donkey.” He is the one who “made himself of no reputation,” who visited us in the form of a man, who gave himself up even to death on a cross. And as a result, his esteem—his esteem—runs throughout our entire world today. And one day, “at the name of Jesus,” before this King, “every knee [will] bow” and “every tongue [will] confess.” But you know, I said this morning that I took the phrase “As a man thinketh” from Proverbs 23. And I said, “Don’t worry about the context; it has to do with hospitality.” It has to do with somebody issuing an invitation to a meal, and saying, “You know, you can have anything you want and enjoy it.” But the Bible tells us, Solomon tells us, “But his words did not go with his thoughts; he was actually stingy.” The ESV translates it, out of the King James version, “He is like one who is inwardly calculating.” That is very good. I like that. “He is like one who is inwardly calculating.” He’s saying, “No, help yourself. It doesn’t matter at all.” But inside he’s saying, “This is costing me a fortune.” Well, of course, that is antithetical to the one who invites us to this meal. He is not inwardly calculating. He is entirely sincere. He is the one who invites us, “Come, if you’re thirsty, and drink. Come, if you’re hungry, if you’ve got no money. Come, buy and eat.” What kind of King is this that sits down beside us and extends such a welcome? Jesus, what a friend for sinners! All these Old Testament kings leave us saying, “But there must be a king who out-kings the kings.” And there is. And we’re in his presence this evening. Well, just a brief prayer: Lord, help us to unscramble all these things in our own hearts and minds. Here we are, it’s Sunday night; we’ve got Monday tomorrow. In many ways, this seems so remote from the things that’re already pressing for our attention. Back to the responsibilities of the lab, or the OR, or the bank, the workplace, the schoolroom, whatever it may be, remind us how important it is that our yes is yes and our no is no. Save us, Lord, from the hypocrisy which so easily overwhelms us when we say one thing and mean something entirely. And thank you—thank you, Lord Jesus Christ—that all of your invitations are sincere, that your generosity knows no bounds, and that you have spread this table for those who know themselves to be sinners in need of a Savior. And so we come to you. We bring our evening offerings, Lord, at this point, and we do so with gladness of heart. In Jesus’ name. Amen. Proverbs 23:7 (KJV). 1 Samuel 17:45–46 (ESV). 1 John 4:18 (ESV). See 1 Samuel 16:13–14. See John 1:29. Matthew 21:5; John 12:15 (paraphrased). Philippians 2:7 (KJV). Philippians 2:10–11 (ESV). Proverbs 23:7 (ESV). Isaiah 55:1 (paraphrased). See Matthew 5:37. Copyright © 2022, Alistair Begg. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations for sermons preached on or after November 6, 2011 are taken from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. For sermons preached before November 6, 2011, unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version® (NIV®), copyright © 1973 1978 1984 by Biblica, Inc.TM Used by permission. 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Abstraction: With the globalisation of economic, the universe has been directed into cultural diverseness. The communicating among people from different parts and of different societal background are more frequent. As an surpassing developing state, China has assimilated sorts of political orientations from the western universe. Particularly for the young person coevals in China, the American chief watercourse individuality has done a immense impact upon them. At the same clip, Chinese traditional civilization are disregarding mercilessly. It is of import for all of us to pay attending sustainable development must be based on a steadfast traditional civilization. Accepting blindfold can merely ensue in an evil effect. In other words, when a thing reaches its extreme, it reverses its class. Cardinal words: individuality, Influence, China. I.The background information of the USA individuality Brief debut of the USA individuality Individuality is a distinctively American political orientation or myth whose adequateness for get bying with modern-day or future experience is under increasing attack even while commitment to it remains at a high degree. The outlook of broad individuality gained the upper manus in the 19th century over those disciplinary concerns for the public good Puritans, John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, and Adam Smith. Communitarian idea and a tradition of societal justness have ne'er died out, but the tide of unfavorable judgment is swelling. From diverse beginnings have come calls for recovery of the importance of interceding constructions, for alteration to a new American communitarian political orientation of socialism. In the thick of the unfavorable judgments, nevertheless, there is acknowledgment of assets in individuality that should non b... e abandoned along with the liabilities. Both pragmatism about American and the manner myths alteration and grasp for values in individuality prompt an effort at transmutation in a more communitarian way alternatively of sweeping renunciation. The political orientation or myth of individuality is important for spiritual research for several grounds. For many Americans, individuality is a sort of secular faith act uponing the manner they live more than the spiritual traditions some of them espouse. Besides, American spiritual traditions have both influenced and been influenced by individuality: the cultural myth has penetrated the churches and religious orders, and the assorted individualities of such spiritual orientations as Puritanism, sectarian Pietism, frontier revivalism, or `` the unseeable faith '' of the independent person in our society whose pursuit for self-expression takes him progressively into the private domain have had significant impact on the larger society. Individuality is of import to spiritual groups ' attempts to consequence societal alteration. The dominant spiritual traditions in this state, Judaism and Christianity, are committed to a position of the ego that is as basically societal as it is repetitive on the self-respect of the person and to a authorization for societal justness that is incompatible with some looks of American individuality. Those traditions hence have a interest both in the saving of individuality 's assets and in the unfavorable judgment of some of its liabilities. Individuality is an across-the-board term. Stephen Lukes delineates six assortments, but our focal point here is chiefly on what Americans have made of classical liberalism in political relations, market capitalist economy in economic sciences, and sectarian Protestantism in faith. Suspicious of the province, protective of personal autonomy, and wedded to voluntary associations, Americans have developed an individuality that has been questioned by both conservativists and socialists in Europe. Nothing is more American than individuality. Clinton Rossiter even charges that we have made a fetish of it. Yehoshua Arieli, in postulating that the construct is `` virtually of purely American beginning '' is non disregarding the fact that the term was brought here from Europe ; he means that, more than anyplace else, individuality took on typical significance and cardinal importance in America. As Robert Bellah has observed, the term had negative intensions when it was coined in Europe In the 19th century, and socialism had the positive associations. In this state, though, individuality `` resonated to so much that was latent in American political orientation that it quickly became the positive term '' . Many Europeans emigrated to this land because they believed that one could do a fresh start here and stand or fall on one 's ain virtues. The American Pevolution itself was made possible by a refusal to accept authorization unquestioningly, and, harmonizing to Alfred Kazin, its `` greatest historic consequence '' has been `` to make and perpetuate our secular faith, the free person. '' He concludes that `` individuality '' shortly came to intend something other than `` our British autonomies '' and `` the rights of adult male, '' viz. what Emerson called the `` infinitude of the private head. '' In Kazin 's words, The American Revolution raised the person and above all the theory of individuality to new highs. There was a political revolution, even a spiritual revolution, above all an rational and literary revolution. There was finally a revolution of the common manaˆ¦ Every adult male more or less, and some work forces surely more than others, become in theory, in some theoretical account carried around in American caputs, his ain revolution. The mythology of the Revolution is merely one of the myths that has evolved to give look and strength to individuality. Like the immigrants ' hopes, the frontier myth carries with it obvious individualistic cargo. Davey Crockett, `` King of the Wild Frontier '' and Daniel Boone seeking `` elbow room '' are archetypal frontier work forces, rugged persons who could digest and predominate in the wilderness. John Kennedy could still win in 1960 with a call to `` the Frontier, '' and even when spacemans with extended life-support systems are virtually the lone staying expanders of spacial frontiers in America, the desire to do it on one 's ain in the wilderness still beckons many. `` Americans realize that self-subjectivity, it gives single apprehension of the alone capableness, so personal gustatory sensations, sentiments, choice and creativeness was put to a preferable location. `` The United States are a matter-of-fact people, Commager said Americans '' for many of the jobs is about existent, although non to all of the issues. Americans on concern frequently with love affair, but political, spiritual, cultural and scientific and practical. `` American independent ego consciousness is built on the footing of solid work, their self-fulfillment is non achieved through as a member of the community, but accomplishments, accomplishments reflect the person 's abilities, so Americans less group construct. For illustration, in the United States, parents and kids live together there is a clip scope. In General, they for the behavior of the parents and kids do non hold with. Americans really stressed individualism, power to handle anything with independent and self-choice. Americans from an early age kids 's individualism, encourage and motivate kids autonomy. For illustration `` , forenoon, female parent girl under the age of discontent in babe high chair legs, and to give their kids fix for breakfast. Mother has selected two different types of babe cereal, each cereal box with the colour that has a important difference between female parent custodies took a box of cereal, allow the small girl cereal in forepart of the kids choose her favourite colour. Less than one twelvemonth old kid, at least in footings of nutrient, have begun to larn to show her personal involvements and do their ain picks. `` Encourages the kid head, organizing their ain positions, this is an American kid, alone methods of developing one 's personality. Children grow up to 18 old ages, will go forth his male parent, bargainers launch dress shop. 1.2 Features of USA individuality Self consciousness is United States civilization an built-in construct. In the United States individual `` , everyone is non merely an independent being, and besides as a alone psychological lives exist and single members of society. American ego occupies a dominant place in the American manner of thought, which individualist signifiers of incursion in the people 's action, and affects every country of activity. `` United States individuality is the chief content of '' ego motive, self-choice, by autonomy to accomplish self-fulfillment. And it most closely is the construct of equality, freedom and competition. Equal chance and single freedom is my basic protection, and competition is a basic manner to recognize the value of the person. `` Americans ' consciousness of ego, there is a scope of ego, self-concept with subjectiveness. Stewart cites an illustration. He says, `` pull a cringle around one, stage separation will self and others, we can hold identified about individuality. Is within the boundaries of the ego is an American, in the consciousness we refer to it as implicit in the analysis of causes, that the people engaged in the activities of the single beginning, is an independent person in the society, is besides a rational individual to take control of their environment. Ego is subjective in nature, it fundamentally non be cognizant of and understand, and it is hard to be understood by foreigners. `` Self-subjectivity of personal cultural distinguishes self and others. `` Self maintained his ain subjectiveness, he acts with their ain subjective properties. `` Americans in footings of wear, place trappingss, are really peculiar about personality, loath to follow the crowd to reflect the individualism of their cultural values. Their spirit of autonomy in the love on themselves. Exchange under magazine published has a article, said Americans `` from a little of irrelevant of work to a point demand complex engineering of major technology, are willing to ain hands-on: teenage aged of kids like flip has some broken of old auto ; took high wages of Manager forces like hands-on to lodging added with screens stopped up of anteroom ; household homemaker will have fix leaking of taking and unwilling to turned to plumber ; some household will developed program, inch dry border learn, household hands-on built lodging. Americans do non believe that important, whether household or some establishments or traditional, in a Word, they like the `` ego '' as the Center. For illustration, their attitudes towards art focused embodies the personal naturalism inclination of self-expression. Their aesthetic criterions, do non like being told what they are good at pulling or literature, they are willing to take `` you like is good '' . Derive from grasp of picture or reading merriment, arts characteristic get implemented. Self construct and self driven, direct impact on the American manner of life. In their position, the birth and the household is non of import, self-significance of the chief `` depends on the person 's accomplishment '' . One should hold its ain aims, so most Americans have a strong desire of success. `` To win thrusts the Americans in assorted Fieldss from top to bottom and geographic expeditions, maintain doing advancement. At the same clip, frequent publicity chances and assorted illustrations of success, which in bend stimulate desire greater success, get down another new end chase. This battle -- -- mode rhythm, the United States society is full of energy, full of battle. `` American aversion in keeping power of people '' in the signifier of bid, force or bullying to drive their `` , '' I do n't wish being around other people 's motives. `` However, they can accept a certain power of bid, such as the national control over natural resources, goods, services and money is considered sensible. In their position, sensible control over things, it is good for people, this despite the contradictions and the value of individuality, but can ease greater success for them. As such, they are for person to non needfully to the full recognizes, on another individual 's political positions, personal penchants or personal circle of life may non be to the full accepted. But `` Americans treat the human personality as a different disconnected parts of the whole, it is this thought and the desire to win, the Americans the power of cooperation. `` All in all, the Americans to '' self `` and '' personality `` and '' success `` as their codification of behavior, occupies a dominant place in American idea, profoundly rooted. 2. The background information of the Chinese traditional value 2.1 History of Chinese traditional value Research workers in the survey of Chinese cultural values may happen it astonishing that Chinese values have formed a clear and consistent system for coevalss ( Kindle, 1983 ; Hsu, 1970 ) . Of class, it does non connote that the values and the system have non been changed. In fact, the Chinese cultural value systems have late undergone rapid alteration. For illustration, during the Cultural Revolution in the People 's Republic of China, the Orthodox philosophy of Confucianism, which is the foundation of the Chinese value system, was badly criticised and workss harmonizing to the philosophy purely out. Therefore, the classical Chinese value system was disrupted and attempts are now being made to reconstruct it. Other Chinese-dominated societies, such as Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, have besides shown inevitable alterations in the value systems during the procedure of rapid societal and economic alteration ( Shively and Shively, 1972 ) 2.1.1 Political ground The construct of face is in struggle with individuality, which assumes the person 's wellbeing or involvement. Hofstede ( 1980 ) , a European bookman, used the term `` corporate '' alternatively of `` group oriented '' . He indicated that the Chinese, every bit good as Asians, are collectivized, although his list of values was uncomplete. The collectivized nature of the Chinese is reflected in the Chinese household and affinity system ( Hsu, 1968 ) . Hsu argued that `` the primary concern of a bulk of Chinese was to protect and heighten their private affinity involvements '' . He indicated that the Chinese see the affinity system as a footing for associating to others. It means uninterrupted and durable homo ties which do non hold clearly defined boundaries. For illustration, in many European states, the parent-child relationship lawfully comes to an terminal when kids reach the age of 18 or 21, after which parents lose their say over their kids 's matrimonies. The Western hubby and married woman besides maintain single privateness, which can non be intruded on except by invitation. Attempts at subject by grandparents and other grownups in the household system are regarded as intervention. Therefore, there exist in the household system spliting lines which make the boundaries clearly defined, and human ties supersede each other instead than being linear ( Hsu, 1968 ) . 2.1.2 Economic ground The Chinese tend to act in the opposite manner. When acquiring married, kids still see seeking blessing from parents as mandatary and necessary ( Salaff, 1981 ) . Sometimes, determinations of parents are concluding. Sons and girls after matrimony are still apt to back up the household ( in footings of their parents or parents-in-law ) , even though they may populate apart. Further, they spend their leisure clip continuing a feasible relationship with parents and parents-in-law by a assortment of activities, such as holding tea in Chinese eating houses, or banqueting at place on Saturday or Sunday eventides. Normally, parents live with one of their kids ( normally the eldest boy ) even after his/her matrimony. Therefore, in contrast with Europeans or Americans, matrimony for a Chinese means an addition of psycho-social engagement with his/her parents or parents-in-law. Marriage is non merely an matter between the bride and the bridegroom, but an juncture for the household to reciprocate fondness to friends and other members in the affinity system ( Salaff, 1981 ) . 2.1.3 Cultural ground From a different angle, the construct of mutuality is of import for Western executives working in Chinese society. They should be reminded that off-duty personal behavior, through which the relationship with the community is built, is extremely of import to the house 's image and its effectivity. Several facets of the value of group orientation are notable in selling, excessively. First, because the Chinese are strongly corporate may connote that informal channels of communications are of import in Chinese society, compared with those in the UK. Chinese consumers tend to trust more on viva-voce communicating. 3.The influence of Individualism in China Because of the high contact rate among group members, communications among Chinese consumers for a given merchandise thought may be diffused really rapidly. Furthermore, given that informal channels of communicating carry both facts and rumor, Chinese consumers are much more likely to trust on, and do usage of, the rumour moeity of the informal channel, instead than what is really claimed for the merchandise officially ( Kindle, 1985 ) . Chinese consumers tend to be more trade name loyal than their opposite numbers in the West. Chinese consumers frequently endeavour to conform to group norms and hence tend to buy the same trade name or merchandise other members of the group recommend. In other words, if a mention group has established a merchandise as the normative criterion, Chinese consumers are non likely to divert from the recognized merchandise on their ain by exchanging to a competitory merchandise. Since Chinese are merely group oriented towards societal units with which close interactions have been established, consumers tend to restrict their activities to a little societal circle. Hence, they are members of a little figure of mention groups. This may be one of the grounds that mass advertisement through formal channels ( e.g. telecasting ) is of limited potency for pulling attending when utilizing mention groups which are frequently little in size. In Hong Kong, Winston, an American coffin nail trade name, has been enduring from a uninterrupted diminution in gross revenues because of improper usage of mention groups in its advertizements. The construct of the drawn-out household is of import to advertizements of household merchandises. Unlike consumers in Western societies, the Chinese construct of household is one of the drawn-out household, which includes even distant relations. Therefore, if an advertizement which attempts to carry consumers to purchase a household merchandise includes merely hubby, married woman and kids, it does non truly demo a image of a household at all. Other members of the drawn-out household, such as gramps and grandma, should be included to do the advertizement more To sum up, individuality has played a function in history that there is no other alternate, became core cultural value of the United States. It helps the businessperson addition independency, and thrust development of United States capitalist economic. Basically, it is to protect capitalist private ownership, which is the most of import values of capitalist society. At present, it has been in problem, many Americans are looking for an unfastened, collaborative, originative, new individuality. We treat the United States attitude of individuality, should non be merely unfavorable judgment or negative, or blind superstitious notion and to retrieve from, and should be promoted to abdicate individuality, that is absorbed United States sensible composing of individualistic values. - Culture essays - Social Control essays - Citizenship essays - Social Justice essays - Caste System essays - Social Responsibility essays - Socialization essays - Deviance essays - Modern Society essays - Popularity essays - Civil Society essays - Community essays - Female essays - Filipino People essays - Gay Life essays - Homemaker essays - Igbo People essays - Indigenous Australians essays - Indigenous Peoples essays - Minority Group essays - Social Institution essays - The masses essays - Men essays - The nation essays - Middle Class essays - Social Norms essays - Discourse Community essays - Popular Culture essays - Car Culture essays - American Culture essays - Mormon essays - Indian Culture essays - Mexican Culture essays - Pop Culture essays - Cultural Differences essays - Culture Shock essays - Different Cultures essays - Steering essays - Alimony essays - Spouse essays - Society essays - Stereotypes essays - Social Change essays - Sociological Perspective essays - Social Movement essays - Charity essays - Social Science essays - Anthropology essays - Generation essays - Social Status essays

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|Part of a series on| Limerence is a state of mind which results from romantic or non-romantic feelings for another person and typically includes obsessive thoughts and fantasies as well as a desire to form or maintain a relationship with the object of love and to have one's feelings reciprocated. Limerence can also be defined as an involuntary state of intense desire. Psychologist Dorothy Tennov coined the term "limerence" for her 1979 book, Love and Limerence: The Experience of Being in Love, to describe a concept that had grown out of her work in the mid-1960s, when she interviewed over 500 people on the topic of love. Limerence, which is not exclusively sexual, has been defined in terms of its potentially inspirational effects and relation to attachment theory. It has been described as being "an involuntary potentially inspiring state of adoration and attachment to a limerent object (LO) involving intrusive and obsessive thoughts, feelings and behaviors from euphoria to despair, contingent on perceived emotional reciprocation". Willmott and Bentley remark that limerence has received little attention in the scientific literature. Attachment theory emphasizes that "many of the most intense emotions arise during the formation, the maintenance, the disruption, and the renewal of attachment relationships". It has been suggested that "the state of limerence is the conscious experience of sexual incentive motivation" during attachment formation, "a kind of subjective experience of sexual incentive motivation" during the "intensive ... pair-forming stage" of human affectionate bonding. The concept of limerence "provides a particular carving up of the semantic domain of love", and represents an attempt at a scientific study of the nature of love. Limerence is considered as a cognitive and emotional state of being emotionally attached to or even obsessed with another person, and is typically experienced involuntarily and characterized by a strong desire for reciprocation of one's feelings—a near-obsessive form of romantic love. For Tennov, "sexual attraction is an essential component of limerence ... the limerent is a potential sex partner".[clarification needed] Willmott and Bentley define limerence as an acute onset, unexpected, obsessive attachment to one person (the limerent object). Limerence is characterised by internal experiences such as ruminative thinking, anxiety and depression, temporary fixation, and the disintegration of the self, and Willmott and Bentley found in their case studies that these themes find relation to unresolved earlier experiences and attempts at self-actualization. Limerence is sometimes also interpreted as infatuation, or what is colloquially known as a "crush". However, in common speech, infatuation includes aspects of immaturity and extrapolation from insufficient information, and is usually short-lived. Tennov notes how limerence "may dissolve soon after its initiation, as in an early teenage buzz-centered crush", but she is more concerned with the point when "limerent bonds are characterized by 'entropy' crystallization as described by Stendhal in his 1821 treatise On Love, where a new love infatuation perceptually begins to transform ... [and] attractive characteristics are exaggerated and unattractive characteristics are given little or no attention ... [creating] a 'limerent object'". According to Tennov, there are at least two types of love: "limerence", which she describes as, among other things, "loving attachment"; and "loving affection", the bond that exists between an individual and their parents and children. She notes that one form may evolve into the other: "Those whose limerence was replaced by affectional bonding with the same partner might say ... 'We were very much in love when we married; today we love each other very much'".[clarification needed] The distinction is comparable to that drawn by ethologists "between the pair-forming and pair-maintaining functions of sexual activity", just as "the attachment of the attachment theorists is very similar to the emotional reciprocation longed for in Tennov's limerence, and each is linked to sexuality". Nicky Hayes describes limerence as "a kind of infatuated, all-absorbing passion" which is unrequited. Tennov equated it to the type of love Dante felt towards Beatrice—an individual he met twice in his life and who served as inspiration for La Vita Nuova and the Divine Comedy. It is this unfulfilled, intense longing for the other person which defines limerence, where the individual becomes "more or less obsessed by that person and spends much of their time fantasising about them". Limerence may only last if conditions for the attraction leave it unfulfilled; therefore, occasional, intermittent reinforcement is required to support the underlying feelings. Hayes notes that "it is the unobtainable nature of the goal which makes the feeling so powerful", and that it is not uncommon for those to remain in a state of limerence over someone unreachable for months and even years.: 457 A famous literary example of limerence is provided by the unrequited love of Werther for Charlotte in the novel The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe. Limerence is characterized by intrusive thinking and pronounced sensitivity to external events that reflect the disposition of the limerent object towards the individual. It can be experienced as intense joy or as extreme despair, depending on whether the feelings are reciprocated. It is the state of being completely carried away by unreasoned passion or love, even to the point of addictive-type behavior. Usually, one is inspired with an intense passion or admiration for someone. Limerence can be difficult to understand for those who have never experienced it, and it is thus often dismissed by non-limerents as ridiculous fantasy or a construct of romantic fiction. Tennov differentiates between limerence and other emotions by asserting that love involves concern for the other person's welfare and feeling. While limerence does not require it, those concerns may certainly be incorporated. Affection and fondness exist only as a disposition towards another person, irrespective of whether those feelings are reciprocated, whereas limerence deeply desires reciprocation, but it remains unaltered whether or not it is returned. Physical contact with the object is neither essential nor sufficient to an individual experiencing limerence, unlike with one experiencing sexual attraction. Where early, unhealthy attachment patterns or trauma influence limerence, the limerent object may be construed as an idealization of the figure or figures involved in the original unhealthy attachment or trauma. Lack of reciprocation may in such instances serve to reinforce lessons learned in earlier, unhealthy bonding experiences, and hence strengthen the limerence. Limerence involves intrusive thinking about the limerent object. Other characteristics include acute longing for reciprocation, fear of rejection, and unsettling shyness in the limerent object's presence. In cases of unrequited limerence, transient relief may be found by vividly imagining reciprocation from the limerent object. Tennov suggests that feelings of limerence can be intensified through adversity, obstacles, or distance—'Intensification through Adversity'. A limerent person may have acute sensitivity to any act, thought, or condition that can be interpreted favorably. This may include a tendency to devise, fabricate, or invent "reasonable" explanations for why neutral actions are a sign of hidden passion in the limerent object. A person experiencing limerence has a general intensity of feeling that leaves other concerns in the background. In their thoughts, such a person tends to emphasize what is admirable in the limerent object and to avoid any negative or problematic attributes. During the height of limerence, thoughts of the limerent object (or person) are at once persistent, involuntary and intrusive. Such "intrusive thoughts about the LO ... appear to be genetically driven": indeed, limerence is first and foremost a condition of cognitive obsession. This may be caused by low serotonin levels in the brain, comparable to those of people with obsessive–compulsive disorder. All events, associations, stimuli, and experiences return thoughts to the limerent object with unnerving consistency, while conversely the constant thoughts about the limerent object define all other experiences. If a certain thought has no previous connection with the limerent object, immediately one is made. Limerent fantasy is unsatisfactory unless rooted in reality, because the fantasizer may want the fantasy to seem realistic and somewhat possible. At their most severe, intrusive limerent thoughts can occupy an individual's waking hours completely, resulting—like severe addiction—in significant or complete disruption of the limerent's normal interests and activities, including work and family. For serial limerents, this can result in debilitating, lifelong underachievement in school, work, and family life. Fantasies that are concerned with far-fetched ideas are usually dropped by the fantasizer. Sometimes fantasizing is retrospective: actual events are replayed from memory with great vividness. This form predominates when what is viewed as evidence of possible reciprocation can be re-experienced (a kind of selective or revisionist history). Otherwise, the long fantasy is anticipatory; it begins in the everyday world and climaxes at the attainment of the limerent goal. A limerent fantasy can also involve an unusual, often tragic, event. The long fantasies form bridges between the limerent's ordinary life and that intensely desired ecstatic moment. The duration and complexity of a fantasy depend on the availability of time and freedom from distractions. The bliss of the imagined moment of consummation is greater when events imagined to precede it are possible (though they often represent grave departures from the probable). It isn't always entirely pleasant, and when rejection seems likely the thoughts focus on despair, sometimes to the point of suicide. The pleasantness or unpleasantness of the state seems almost unrelated to the intensity of the reaction. Although the direction of feeling, i.e., happy versus unhappy, shifts rapidly, with 'dramatic surges of buoyancy and despair', the intensity of intrusive and involuntary thinking alters less rapidly, and only in response to an accumulation of experiences with the particular limerent object. Fantasies are occasionally dreamed by the one experiencing limerence. Dreams give out strong emotion and happiness when experienced, but often end with despair when the subject awakens. Dreams can reawaken strong feelings toward the limerent object after the feelings have declined. Along with an emphasis on the perceived exceptional qualities, and devotion to them, there is abundant doubt that the feelings are reciprocated: rejection. Considerable self-doubt is encountered, leading to "personal incapacitation expressed through unsettling timidity in the presence of the person", something which causes misery and galvanizes desire. In most cases, what destroys limerence is a suitably long period of time without reciprocation. Although it appears that limerence advances with adversity, personal discomfort may foul it. This discomfort results from a fear of the limerent object's opinions. Limerence develops and is sustained when there is a certain balance of hope and uncertainty. The basis for limerent hope is not in objective reality but in reality as it is perceived. The inclination is to sift through nuances of speech and subtleties of behavior for evidence of limerent hope. "Lovers, of course, are notoriously frantic epistemologists, second only to paranoiacs (and analysts) as readers of signs and wonders." "Little things" are noticed and endlessly analyzed for meaning. Such excessive concern over trivia may not be entirely unfounded, however, as body language can indicate reciprocated feeling. What the limerent object said and did is recalled with vividness. Alternative meanings for the behaviors recalled are sought. Each word and gesture is permanently available for review, especially those interpreted as evidence in favor of reciprocated feeling. When objects, people, places or situations are encountered with the limerent object, they are vividly remembered, especially if the limerent object interacted with them in some way. The belief that the limerent object does not and/or will not reciprocate can only be reached with great difficulty. Limerence can be carried quite far before acknowledgment of rejection is genuine, especially if it has not been addressed openly by the limerent object. Shaver and Hazan observed that those suffering from loneliness are significantly more susceptible to limerence, arguing that "if people have a large number of unmet social needs, and are not aware of this, then a sign that someone else might be interested is easily built up in that person's imagination into far more than the friendly social contact that it might have been. By dwelling on the memory of that social contact, the lonely person comes to magnify it into a deep emotional experience, which may be quite different from the reality of the event.": 460 The physiological effects of intense limerence can include shortness of breath, perspiration, and heart palpitations. If there is extensive anxiety, incorrect behaviour may torpedo the relationship, which may cause physical responses to manifest intensely. Some people keenly feel these effects either immediately upon or after contact with the limerent object. What gets emotionally blended is blissful ecstasy and acute despair, depending on the turn of events. Awkwardness, stuttering, shyness, and confusion predominate at the behavioral level. Sufferers complain of abandonment, despair, and diabolically humiliating disappointment. A sense of paralyzing ambiguity predominates, punctuated by pining. Intermittent or nonreciprocal responses lead to labile vacillation between despair and ecstasy. This limbo is the threshold for mental prostration. The sensitivity that stems from fear of rejection can darken perceptions of the limerent object's body language. Conflicted signs of desire may be displayed causing confusion. Often, the limerent object is involved with another or is in some other way unavailable. A condition of sustained alertness, a heightening of awareness and an enormous fund of energy to deploy in pursuit of the limerent aim is developed. The sensation of limerence is felt in the midpoint of the chest, bottom of the throat, guts, or in some cases in the abdominal region. This can be interpreted as ecstasy at times of mutuality, but its presence is most noticeable during despair at times of rejection. Awareness of physical attraction plays a key role in the development of limerence, but is not enough to satisfy the limerent desire, and is almost never the main focus; instead, the limerent focuses on what could be defined as the "beneficial attributes". Nevertheless, Tennov stresses that "the most consistent desired result of limerence is mating, not merely sexual interaction but also commitment".[clarification needed] Limerence can be intensified after a sexual relationship has begun, and with more intense limerence there is greater desire for sexual contact. However, while sexual surrender at one time indicated the end of uncertainty felt by the limerent object – because in the past, a sexual encounter more often led to a feeling of obligation to commit – in modern times this is not necessarily the case. The sexual aspect of limerence is not consistent from person to person. Most limerents experience limerent sexuality as a component of romantic interest. Some limerents, however, may experience limerence as a consequence of hyperarousal. In such cases, limerence may form as a defense mechanism against the limerent object, who is not perceived initially as a romantic ideal, but as a physical threat to the limerent. Sexual fantasies are distinct from limerent fantasies. Limerent fantasy is rooted in reality and is intrusive rather than voluntary. Sexual fantasies are under more or less voluntary control and may involve strangers, imaginary individuals, and situations that could not take place. Limerence elevates body temperature and increases relaxation, a sensation of viewing the world with rose-tinted glasses, leading to a greater receptiveness to sexuality, and to daydreaming. People can become aroused by the thought of sexual partners, acts, and situations that are not truly desired, whereas every detail of the limerent fantasy is passionately desired actually to take place. Limerence sometimes increases sexual interest in other partners when the limerent object is unreceptive or unavailable. The limerent reaction is a composite reaction – that is, it is composed of a series of separate reactions. These reactions occur only where misperceptions meet adversity in the context of a romance. Perhaps because of this unique specificity, limerent reactions can be uniquely quantified and predicted according to the schema described below. Involvement increases if obstacles are externally imposed or if the limerent object's feelings are doubted. Only if the limerent object were to be revealed as highly undesirable might limerence subside. The presence of some degree of doubt causes the intensity of the feelings to increase further. The stage is reached at which the reaction is virtually impossible to dislodge. This adversity may be superficial or deep, internal or external, so that an individual may sometimes generate deep adversity where none exists. Also "romance", as it were, need not be present in any genuine way for a limerent reaction to occur. The course of limerence results in a more intrusive thinking pattern. This thinking pattern is an expectant and often joyous period with the initial focusing on the limerent object's admirable qualities: crystallization. Then, under appropriate conditions of hope and uncertainty, the limerence intensifies further. With evidence of reciprocation (real or imagined) from the limerent object, a state of extreme pleasure, even euphoria, is enjoyed. Thoughts are mainly occupied with considering and reconsidering what is attractive in the limerent object, replaying whatever events may have thus far transpired with the limerent object, and appreciating personal qualities perceived as possibly having sparked interest in the limerent object. At peak crystallization, almost all waking thoughts revolve around the limerent object. After this peak, the feelings eventually decline. Fantasies are preferred to virtually any other activity with the exception of activities that are believed to help obtain the limerent object, and activities that involve actually being in the presence of the limerent object. The motivation to attain a "relationship" continues to intensify so long as a proper mix of hope and uncertainty exist. Tennov estimates, based on both questionnaire and interview data, that the average limerent reaction duration, from the moment of initiation until a feeling of neutrality is reached, is approximately three years. The extremes may be as brief as a few weeks or as long as several decades. When limerence is brief, maximum intensity may not have been attained. According to David Sack, M.D., limerence lasts longer than romantic love, but is shorter than a healthy, committed partnership. Others suggest that "the biogenetic sourcing of limerence determines its limitation, ordinarily, to a two-year span", that limerence generally lasts between 18 months and three years; but further studies on unrequited limerence have suggested longer durations. In turn, a limerent may only experience a single limerent episode, or may experience "serial" episodes, in which nearly one's entire mature life, from early puberty through late adulthood, can be consumed in successive limerent obsessions. Main article: Human bonding Once the limerent reaction has initiated, one of three varieties of bonds may form, defined over a set duration of time, in relation to the experience or non-experience of limerence. The constitution of these bonds may vary over the course of the relationship, in ways that may either increase or decrease the intensity of the limerence. The basis and interesting characteristic of this delineation made by Tennov, is that based on her research and interviews with people, all human bonded relationships can be divided into three varieties being defined by the amount of limerence or non-limerence each partner contributes to the relationship. With an affectional bond, neither partner is limerent. With a limerent–nonlimerent bond, one partner is limerent. In a limerent–limerent bond, both partners are limerent. Affectional bonding characterize those affectionate sexual relationships where neither partner is limerent; couples tend to be in love, but do not report continuous and unwanted intrusive thinking, feeling intense need for exclusivity, or define their goals in terms of reciprocity. These types of bonded couples tend to emphasize compatibility of interests, mutual preferences in leisure activities, ability to work together, and in some cases a degree of relative contentment. The bulk of relationships, however, according to Tennov, are those between a limerent person and a nonlimerent other, i.e. limerent–nonlimerent bonding. These bonds are characterized by unequal reciprocation. Lastly, those relationship bonds in which there exists mutual reciprocation are defined as limerent–limerent bondings. Tennov argues that since limerence itself is an "unstable state", mutually limerent bonds would be expected to be short-lived; mixed relationships probably last longer than limerent-limerent relationships. Some limerent-limerent relationships evolve into affectional bondings over time as limerence declines. Tennov describes such couples as "old marrieds" whose interactions are typically both stable and mutually gratifying. In her study Tennov identified three ways in which limerence subsides: Tennov's research was continued in 2008 by Albert Wakin, who knew Tennov at the University of Bridgeport but did not assist in her research, and Duyen Vo, a graduate student. They intended to refine the term limerence so that it refers mostly to the negative aspects. The term "limerence" has been invoked in many popular media,[according to whom?] including self-help books, popular magazines, and websites. However, according to a paper by Wakin and Vo, "In spite of the public's exposure to limerence, the professional community, particularly clinical, is largely unaware of the concept." In 2008, Wakin and Vo presented their updated research to the American Association of Behavioral and Social Sciences. They reported that more research must be gathered before the condition is suitable for inclusion in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Critics point out that Tennov's account "is based on interviews rather than on direct observation", but conclude that "despite its shortcomings, Tennov's work may constitute a basis for informed hypothesis formulation".

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Search for Names, Places and Biographies Already layed Stumbling Stones Oswald Behrens * 1901 Lessingstraße 24 (Hamburg-Nord, Hohenfelde) Herbert Oswald Behrens, born on 15 Nov. 1901 in Hamburg, arrested on 15 Feb. 1938, detained from 31 Mar. 1938 in the Fuhlsbüttel police prison, from 23 June 1939 in the Bremen-Oslebshausen penitentiary, deported from there on 13 Jan. 1943 to the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp, murdered on 1 Feb. 1943 "I think it was only through our brother’s urgent letters from captivity that we realized that we had to emigrate. It was a difficult decision for me.” This was written by Oswald Behrens’ older sister Lily in the 1950s as part of her restitution proceedings. She, her mother, and her younger sister Helen had survived the Shoah as emigrants Britain. Their brother and son, the musician Oswald Behrens, could not save himself. He was murdered by the Nazis. Oswald Behrens was the son of the Jewish couple Richard Philipp and Thecla Behrens, née Heyman. Thecla Behrens came from the English industrial city of Manchester, where she was born on 22 Sept. 1869. Her well-off parents, Hermann S. and Helene Heyman, née Oppenheimer, were able to provide her with a comprehensive education. From 1876 to 1885, she attended Ellerslie Ladies’ College in England, then Owens College of Literature and History. She then studied art with a minor in music and passed the piano examination with distinction. After her father’s death in 1896, Thecla’s mother moved with her to Cologne in Germany. From there, Thecla continued her art studies and studied painting in Düsseldorf. On 15 Oct. 1898, she married the cotton broker Richard Behrens in Cologne. He was born in Lüneburg as the son of the paper merchant Bernhard Behrens and the Hamburg native Recha, called Emma, Warburg, but lived and worked in Hamburg at the time. Thus, Thecla moved to him to the Elbe River after the wedding. Almost two years later, on 15 June 1900, their first child, a girl, was born in Hamburg. Her parents called her Lily Emma. Herbert Oswald followed her one and a half years later. The third child, also a girl, was born on 16 June 1903 and received the first names Helen Alice. From mid-Mar. 1908 onward, the family lived in their own 12-room house at the intersection of Lessingstrasse 24 and Uhlandstrasse. All three children had inherited their artistic and creative talent from their mother. But while Lily and Helen first oriented themselves in this direction and then – like their father – completed a more practical commercial training, Oswald went the opposite way. After attending girls’ high school (Lyzeum), Lily Behrens studied painting and drawing at the State School of Arts and Crafts (Staatliche Kunstgewerbeschule), today’s College of Fine Arts (Hochschule für bildende Künste). Although she had been brought up "more aesthetically than practically,” as she later put it herself, she went to business school afterward. However, as she suffered from severe myopia, she had problems finding a job following her successful graduation in 1922. Because her mother Thecla was often ailing, but her parents also kept open house featuring many social events, she mainly took care of the family’s household. Having attended girls’ high school, Helen first decided to train as an advertising draftswoman at the State School of Arts and Crafts. Afterward, however, she also went to business school and initially worked in her father’s office, later at various companies as a commercial employee. Oswald, on the other hand, went to the Realgymnasium of the Johanneum [a high school focused on science, math, and modern languages]. Unlike the academic school of the Johanneum, it did not prepare its students for university studies, but for practical professions in the commercial and technical fields. However, both directions did not correspond to what Oswald wanted. Rather, he moved to Munich at the beginning of the 1920s and devoted himself to philosophy studies at the university and music studies at the Academy of Music (Akademie der Tonkunst). He took composition with Siegmund von Hausegger and studied with conductor Hans Knappertsbusch. His teachers also included the musicologist Adolf Sandberger and the composer Joseph Haas. In addition, he took private lessons in counterpoint, score reading, and coaching with Karl Blessinger, who also worked at the Academy. From Apr. 1924 onward, he worked for a year as a music editor for Mandruck AG für Notendruck und Notenstich in Munich, where he did corrections as well as arrangements of some of the compositions printed there. In the spring of 1925, Oswald Behrens returned to Hamburg to take up a position as a piano and theory teacher a few months later at the Brahms Conservatory headed by Raphael Seligmann-Ferara. On 25 Nov. 1925, he married Margarete (also Margareta) Emmy Luise Hoff in the Hanseatic city. She was born in Karlsruhe on 1 Mar. 1897. Her father was the portrait and genre painter Karl Heinrich Hoff, her grandfather, Karl H. Hoff, a professor at the Karlsruhe Academy of Art. Originally, Margarete had trained as a kindergarten teacher, but by then, she was writing stage plays. At the time of the wedding, the couple lived together as subtenants in Hamburg-Barmbek, at Lortzingstrasse 18, and Margarete and Oswald Behrens continued to live in subtenancy arrangements during the following years. At the end of 1928/beginning of 1929, they moved into the first apartment of their own in Eimsbüttel, at Moltkestrasse 50b. On 4 Feb. 1929, Oswald and Margarete Behrens became parents, naming their son Thomas Joachim. With the support of Raphael Seligmann-Ferara, Oswald Behrens had already received a provisional teaching permit; in May 1929, he successfully passed the state examination. In order to earn additional income, he gave private lessons, performed in nightclubs, and from 1928 to 1930, he was conductor of the St. Georger Orchesterverein von 1862, with which he gave concerts in the small hall of the Musikhalle and in Hamburg’s Conventgarten, the large event venue on Fuhlentwiete in Hamburg-Neustadt. Nevertheless, the financial situation of the small family was very difficult. For this reason, Margarete Behrens first asked the then Hamburg School Inspector for Vocational Education, Johannes Schult, to increase her husband’s fee – but in vain. Schult could not help her because the Brahms Conservatory was a private institution. In her distress, Margarete turned to Friedrich Bauer, who was Hamburg Senate Councilor at the time. She described to him "the downright sad conditions under which my husband [is] forced to live and work. How he – the 27-year old – has to play through the nights, in some obscure pubs, after [being] already strained enough during the day – through the lessons at the conservatory and some private lessons.” For his "Sonata for two pianos,” which premiered at the small Musikhalle with the composer and pianist Ilse Fromm-Michaels participating, the Senate Commission for the Cultivation of the Arts (Senatskommission für die Kunstpflege) actually granted Oswald Behrens a one-off scholarship of 500 RM (reichsmark) in Sept. 1930. Soon thereafter, he was also appointed to the jury of the Hamburg Tonkünstlerverein (Hamburg Musicians’ Association). In 1932, Oswald Behrens’ father Richard suffered a stroke and had to withdraw from his business. This meant considerable financial restrictions for the family, whose financial backbone he had been. A part of the house on Lessingstrasse was rented out. Although or perhaps precisely because Oswald and Margarete Behrens had to move together with their little son Thomas several times back then – from Moltkestrasse to Uhlenhorster Weg 15, then to Birkenau 16, and at the end of 1932/beginning of 1933 to Mundsburger Damm 41 – the center of their lives, too, was the house on Lessingstrasse. Oswald Behrens’ granddaughter Beatrice once wrote: "When my father [authors’ note: Thomas Behrens] spoke, he always spoke of the Behrens’ ancestral home [Stammhaus] on Lessingstrasse, how wonderful that house was. His memories probably reflect a happy childhood there. (...) On Lessingstrasse, my grandfather truly lived, this was everyone’s home.” The relationship between Oswald and Margarete Behrens nevertheless became complicated. On 11 Jan. 1933, they divorced. Not even four weeks later, on 30 Jan. 1933, Reich President Paul von Hindenburg appointed the party chairman of the NSDAP, Adolf Hitler, as Reich Chancellor. Thus, the Nazis came to power in the German Reich. As a result, Oswald Behrens first had to resign from his position as a member of the Hamburg Tonkünstlerverein; his working hours at the Conservatory also shrank to three to ten hours per week. Probably that’s why he focused more on composing. During this time, he composed several works such as an 18-part song cycle based on texts by Max Dauthendey and numerous pieces for the women’s choir at the Brahms Conservatory. Oswald Behrens’ father Richard died in Dec. 1933. As a result, his family had to economize even more. Lily Behrens was now looking for a job as a housekeeper, which turned out to be difficult. Being Jewish, she was only allowed to work in Jewish households and in view of the increasing economic plundering of Jews, fewer and fewer families were able to pay domestic workers. In addition, there was a first wave of emigration of Jews immediately after the National Socialists came to power. Eventually, Lily and her mother Thecla lived in only two rooms of the large house on Lessingstrasse, having to sublet the remaining rooms, to two pianists, among others. Helen had already moved out a few years earlier. She, too, had increasing problems finding work. Long periods without any employment were only briefly interrupted by temporary jobs with Jewish companies whose owners were also about to emigrate. Further training failed because, according to the Hamburg employment office, she was not allowed to sit in the same room as other students. She did not get a job at the radio station (from 1934 onward, Reichssender Hamburg) because, according to the station, it would have to pay a fine of 1,000 RM if employing a Jewish woman. After separating from his wife, Oswald Behrens found a new partner in Ilse Harmsen, with whom he became engaged. However, the marriage did not take place because Margarete and he reconciled after all by the end of 1935. However, at this time, the "Nuremberg Laws” stood in the way of remarrying. They came into force on 15 Sept. 1935 and forbade marriages between Jews and non-Jewish partners. They also made extramarital sexual intercourse between Jews and non-Jewish partners a punishable offense. Oswald Behrens was Jewish; Margarete came from a non-Jewish family. Starting in July 1935, Oswald Behrens worked as a music theory teacher at the Milee School on Rothenbaum, newly founded by dancer and choreographer Erika Milee. Probably due to financial difficulties, he had to take on an additional job in the Missing & Co. metal factory from Aug. 1936 onward. He also gave private piano lessons and occasionally played in a café run by a family he knew. In addition, he worked for the Hamburg Jewish Cultural Federation (Jüdischer Kulturbund Hamburg). Strictly controlled by the Nazi authorities, this organization allowed Jewish artists to present themselves to an exclusively Jewish audience after they had been excluded from the German cultural scene in 1933. Oswald Behrens wrote the music for the choral dance celebration entitled "The Victory of the Maccabees” – a tribute to the dancer Rudolf von Laban – on the occasion of a Hanukkah celebration organized by the Kulturbund and the Hamburg Zionist Association in 1936. Moreover, he acted as the musical director, and Laban’s former student Erika Milee served as the overall director. A training class and a children’s dance group of the Milee School as well as an amateur choir also participated. In 1937, Behrens also took over the musical direction of the actors’ ensemble in the Hamburg Jewish Cultural Federation together with Fritz Berend and Lutz Proskauer. With Kurt Behrens (who was not related to him), he was partly responsible for piano accompaniment in the field of stage music. He also composed music for Romeo and Juliet and for Scholem Alejchem’s play Amcha (Dein Volk) oder das grosse Los, which the Jewish Cultural Federation brought to the stage of the Conventgarten during the 1937/1938 season under the direction of Hans Buxbaum. Guest performances took him to Leipzig, Breslau, and Dresden, among other places. On 1 Apr. 1937, the Brahms Conservatory was "Aryanized” and Oswald Behrens was dismissed. By this point, he earned only a little money as a worker at Missing & Co. There, he was arrested by the Gestapo on 30 Mar. 1938 and taken to the Fuhlsbüttel pretrial detention facility. Someone had denounced him because of his relationship with Margarete. In addition, he allegedly maintained too close a relationship with one of his students at the Brahms Conservatory and thus purportedly exploited the dependent relationship. Margarete was also arrested and detained for several days. From prison, Oswald Behrens wrote the letters mentioned at the outset to his mother and sisters. At the end of 1938, Thecla Behrens had to sell the house on Lessingstrasse together with the remaining furnishings; in 1943, it was almost completely destroyed in an air raid. In Dec. 1938, Thecla Behrens fled Germany for Britain, followed in Feb. 1939 by her daughters Lily and Helen. Lily had worked as a housekeeper with Elsa Hartogh for the last six months before leaving the country and also received accommodation there (for Elsa Hartogh’s husband Emil, a Stolperstein is located on Claudiusstrasse in Marienthal; see www.stolpersteine-hamburg.de); Helen lived with various friends for the last two months. Each of them was only allowed to export 10 RM in cash, Thecla Behrens also a few pieces of furniture, and some household goods. They were also able to take compositions by Oswald with them, thus saving the works from destruction. Margarete and Oswald Behrens’ son Thomas, who was considered a "Jewish crossbreed of the first degree” ("Mischling 1. Grades”) according to the categories of the National Socialists, was to flee Germany as well and travel to Sweden on a children transport (Kindertransport). But appendicitis prevented this. When Thomas was healthy again, the beginning of the Second World War made it impossible to leave the country, and there was probably no money left for it. In Britain, Thecla Behrens, Lily and Helen sold the few rescued household effects to pay for a defense attorney for Oswald. But it did not help him. On 27 Feb. 1939, the verdict was passed: The Hamburg Regional Court (Landgericht) sentenced Oswald Behrens to 13 years in prison for sexual offense in violation of a dependent relationship "in two cases” and for "racial defilement” ("Rassenschande”) in five cases, followed by the loss of civil rights for ten years and a professional ban as a music teacher for the duration of five years. That was the last time Margarete Behrens saw her husband. More than 20 years later, still appalled by Oswald Behrens’ condition at the time, she described this sight in the following words: "His full black hair had turned white, his eyes completely rigid, his speech faltering. It crossed my mind: ‘Just how must he have been treated to look like that!’ Accordingly, it seems likely that they beat him up – like a dog.” He was imprisoned in the Fuhlsbüttel police prison until 23 June 1939, when he was transferred to the Bremen-Oslebshausen penitentiary. He probably also composed in prison, because he asked for music paper again and again. However, all notes from this time are lost. From the end of 1942 onward, the German prisons were to be made "Jew-free” ("judenfrei”). Oswald Behrens was transferred from Bremen-Oslebshausen to the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp on 13 Jan. 1943. Margarete Behrens later received the news that he had "died” there on 1 Feb. 1943, that is, he was murdered. Margarete Behrens later also reported how difficult the Nazi era had been for her son Thomas. For instance, he was "terribly mistreated” several times, especially by his classmates. Only when an older boy from the neighborhood stood up for him and took him along to join the Hitler Youth, he was protected from the assaults for a while. In 1944, he had to leave the Hitler Youth again (although actually even as early as 1941, Jewish "crossbreeds of the first degree” were excluded). As a "crossbreed,” he was also only allowed to attend the eight-grade elementary school (Volksschule) and not any secondary schools. In 1944, at the age of 15, he began an apprenticeship at the Hamburg Becker, Bauer & Co drugstore company. In the same year, he was summoned to the Gestapo headquarters, the Stadthaus, on Hamburg’s Stadthausbrücke. The Gestapo wanted to take him to Neuengamme concentration camp. However, in the Stadthaus, he later told his daughter Beatrice once, someone said to him, "Boy, go home, this will soon be over anyway,” and sent him away again. It saved his life. At the beginning of the 1950s, Oswald Behrens’ conviction was largely overturned. The marriage to Margarete was recognized as legally binding and the date of remarriage set as of 31 Jan. 1943. Margarete and Thomas Behrens received restitution as Oswald’s heirs for the harm he suffered to his body and health. Thecla, Lily, and Helen Behrens lived in great poverty after their escape to Britain. Thecla Behrens was already too old to find a regular job. She tried to earn some money by giving private language lessons and doing small paintings. The daughters initially worked as maids. Lily found a job in a medical library in late 1943, Helen in a print shop. Both supported their mother. Thecla Behrens died on 20 Feb. 1956, Lily Behrens on 15 Nov. 1977, and Helen Behrens on 2 July 1993, all three having lived in London until their deaths. In honor of the composer and teacher Oswald Behrens, several commemorative events took place in Germany and Britain in 1958. The "Sonata for two pianos” was performed on the radio by the North German Broadcasting Corporation (Norddeutscher Rundfunk – NDR) and a concert took place in the small hall of the Musikhalle Hamburg, in which two of Behrens’ former pupils, the alto Käthe Geyer and the pianist Gerda Berthold, among others, took part. Translator: Erwin Fink Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg. Stand: December 2019 © Tobias Knickmann, Frauke Steinhäuser Quellen: StaH 242-1 II Gefängnisverwaltung II Amtsgericht Hamburg 10940; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 6640 u. 666/1925; StaH 351-11 Amt für Wiedergutmachung 1488; StaH 351-11 Amt für Wiedergutmachung 19213; StaH 351-11 Amt für Wiedergutmachung 23610; StaH 351-11 Amt für Wiedergutmachung 25202; StaH 351-11 Amt für Wiedergutmachung 25267; StaH 351-11 Amt für Wiedergutmachung 27271; StaH 361-2 II Oberschulbehörde II 18 Höheres Schulwesen, Brahmskonservatorium; StaH 363-2 Senatskommission für Kunstpflege Eb 27; Diercks, Dokumentation Stadthaus, S. 26; o. A., Oswald Behrens zum Gedenken in: Hamburger Abendblatt v. 15.2.1958 (StaH 731-8 Zeitungsausschnittssammlung A 752 Oswald Behrens); E-Mail-Wechsel mit Frau Beatrice Behrens, März–Juli 2015; Tobias Knickmann, Oswald Behrens, in: Claudia Maurer Zenck u.a. (Hrsg.), Lexikon verfolgter Musiker und Musikerinnen der NS-Zeit, online unter: www.lexm.uni-hamburg.de/object/lexm_lexmperson_00004768 (letzter Zugriff 20.8.2015); Hamburger Adressbücher; Barbara Müller-Wesemann, Theater als geistiger Widerstand. Der Jüdische Kulturbund in Hamburg 1934–1941, Stuttgart, 1996, zugl. Diss., Hamburg, 1995; dies., Jüdischer Kulturbund Hamburg, in: Institut für die Geschichte der deutschen Juden (Hrsg.), Das Jüdische Hamburg. Ein historisches Nachschlagewerk, online unter: www.dasjuedischehamburg.de/inhalt/j%C3%BCdischer-kulturbund-hamburg (letzter Zugriff 12.1.2015).

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Background:Enterococci are considered as the third most common cause of nosocomial infections and their antimicrobial resistance has been a concerning issue. Objectives:In this study, we looked for resistance genes of vanA and vanB in vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus (VRE) isolated from intestinal colonization of children admitted to the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) and neonatal ICU (NICU) of Ali-Asghar Children's Hospital. Patients and Methods:In this descriptive study, 71 rectal swab samples were collected from the intestines of children admitted to the PICU and NICU of Ali-Asghar Children's Hospital. Enterococci were diagnosed in samples by appropriate microbiological tests. Antimicrobial resistance and VRE detection was performed by the Kirby-Bauer disk diffusion method on Mueller-Hinton agar based on Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) criteria. vanA and vanB genes were detected by PCR. Results:Enterococcus was detected in 64 (90.1%) rectal swab samples. The frequency rate of VRE strains was 47 (73.4%) and vancomycin-intermediate Enterococcus (VIE) strains was 6 (9.4%). PCR analysis of VRE samples showed that 42 samples had vanA gene (89.3%) but vanB gene was not identified in remaining five samples. VIR was detected in 4 cases with vanA gene (66.7%). Again, we did not d vanB gene in remaining samples. Conclusions:VRE colonization was very high among studied cases. Most important mechanism for high level of resistance to vancomycin is presence of van genes, which can be potentially transmittable to other enterococci and gram-positive organisms. More molecular studies are needed to clarify the trend of VRE colonization and the role of preventive measures in this setting. Enterococci can be considered as gastrointestinal and vaginal flora (1). However, these bacteria are also considered as the third most common cause of nosocomial infections, which are now spreading and are hard to treat around the world included Iran (2). Enterococci can invade bloodstream and can cause urinary tract infection, endocarditis, peritonitis, and many other types of infections (2, 3). Antimicrobial resistance of these organisms has been a concerning issue for a long time (1-4). These organisms are inherently resistant to cephalosporins, clindamycin, and many other antibiotics. Beta-lactamase production by some strains of Enterococcusfaecalis and Enterococcusfaecium is also another mechanism of resistance. Vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus (VRE) not only show high-grade resistance to vancomycin and aminoglycosides, but also may show resistance to penicillins (3). Resistance to vancomycin in these organisms is an important problem because this antibiotic is very effective against gram-positive bacteria whose rate of resistance has been increasing during recent years due to increase in the presence of plasmid bearing resistance genes (5). The resistance inducing gene for vancomycin is called van gene and is subtyped to type A and B on transposon Tn1546. These genes can be potentially introduced to conjugative plasmid, transferred within enterococcal strains as well as to the other organisms such as staphylococci, and can increase the potential risk of vancomycin-resistant Staphylococcus (VRS) in the community. These two genes cause high-grade resistance to vancomycin while genes type D, C, and E cause low-grade resistance to vancomycin and are located on chromosome (6, 7). Virulence factors specific to glycopeptide-resistant Enterococcus have not been identified so far (5). It seems that their virulence is similar to vancomycin-sensitive strains and although the mortality rate is higher, it can be attributed to failure of on time treatment. Strains positive for vanA are usually resistant to both vancomycin and teicoplanin but vanB positive strains usually respond to the later one (5). Therefore, determination of these resistance genes is important for therapeutic strategies. In this study, we looked for resistance genes of vanA and vanB in VRE isolated from intestinal colonization of children admitted to the pediatric and neonates intensive care units (PICU and NICU, respectively) of Ali-Asghar Children’s Hospital during 2012-2013. The Ethical Committee of Pediatric Infections Research Center of Mofid Children’s Hospital approved the study protocol. 3. Patients and Methods 3.1. Bacterial Identification and Patients Selection This descriptive study was conducted from January 2012 to June 2013. Surveillance of VRE colonization (rectal or stool swab) was performed on all children aged 18 months or younger admitted to the PICU and NICU of Ali-Asghar Children's Hospital, Tehran, who met the inclusion criteria. The inclusion criteria were serious systemic illness including admission to NICU or PICU for at least one week, malignancy, chronic kidney, lung, or liver diseases, treatment with chemotherapeutic agents, immunodeficiency, treatment with high-dose corticosteroids (more than 1 mg/kg/day for more than one month), malnutrition (body weight < 5th percentile for age), and previous treatment with second or third generation cephalosporins, aminoglycosides, or broad-spectrum β-lactams within the past three months. We exclude children with proven enterococcal infection and children whose parents were not willing to participate in this study. Rectal swab samples were transferred to the Pediatric Infections Research Center, Mofid Children’s Hospital, immediately after obtaining. Enterococci were diagnosed in samples by Gram staining, biochemical tests like catalase, growing on bile esculin agar and NaCl (6.5%) media, and ability to growth on selective media of Enterococcosel agar. 3.2. Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing Antimicrobial susceptibility to ampicillin (10 μg), penicillin (10 μg), ciprofloxacin (5 μg), rifampin (5 μg), teicoplanin (30 μg), chloramphenicol (30 μg), vancomycin (30 μg), quinupristin (15 μg), and linezolid (30 µg) (Mast Group, Merseyside, UK) was assessed by the Kirby-Bauer disk diffusion method on Mueller-Hinton agar (Merck, Germany) based on Clinical Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) criteria (8). Enterococcusfaecalis ATCC 29212 was used as the control strain (8). According to CLSI criteria, vancomycin-sensitive Enterococcus (VSE) is defined as inhibition zone equal or greater than 17 mm. In addition, vancomycin-intermediate Enterococcus (VIE) and VRE are defined as the inhibition zone of 15 to 16 mm and equal or less than 14 mm, respectively. 3.3. DNA Extraction Total DNA of the different bacterial isolates was extracted by the DNA extraction kit (Cat. No. K-3032-2, Bioneer Company, Korea). The process was performed as follows: Two hundreds of phosphate buffer was added to the microtubes and colonies of bacteria were solved in microtubes; proteinase K (20 mL) and binding buffer (200 mL) were added to the microtubes. Then microtubes were placed in a water bath for ten minutes and elution buffer was placed in water bath at the same time. Thereafter, isopropanol (100 ml) was added to the microtubes. Microtubes content were transferred to the filtered microtubes and they were centrifuged. Microtubes content were emptied and washing buffer 1 (500 mL) was added and they were centrifuged. Microtubes content were emptied again and washing buffer 2 (500 mL) was added and they were centrifuged. Microtubes content were empty once more and they were centrifuged. Then elution buffer (100 mL) was added to the microtubes and they were centrifuged. Extracted DNA samples were transferred to new microtubes. 3.4. Detection of Virulence Genes by Polymerase Chain Reaction Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method was performed on enterococcal isolates for detection of vanA and vanB genes. Used primers are presented in Table 1. Briefly, the 25 µL of PCR mixture contained 2.5 µL of bacterial DNA, 10 pM of each primers, 1.5 mM of MgCl2, 250 µM of each dNTP, 10 mM of Tris-HCL (pH = 9.0), 30 mM of KCL, and 1 U of Taq DNA polymerase (Bioneer Company-Korea, Cat. No. K-2012). Reactions were performed on thermal cycler (Eppendorf, Master cycler gradient). Amplification for vanA was performed with the following thermal cycling conditions: ten minutes at 95°C and 30 cycles of amplification consisting of one minute at 94°C, one minute at 57°C, one minute at 72°C, and ten minutes at 72°C for the final extension. Amplification for vanB was performed with the following thermal cycling conditions: 10 minutes at 95°C and 30 cycles of amplification consisting of one minute at 94°C, one minute at 60°C, one minute at 72°C, and ten minutes at 72°C for the final extension. PCR product bands were analyzed after electrophoresis on a 1% agarose gel at 100 V for 60 minutes in 1X TBE containing ethidium bromide and the result was checked under ultraviolet irradiation. |Target||Product Length, bp||Company| 3.5. Sequencing Method The PCR purification kit (Bioneer Co., Korea) was used to purify PCR products and sequencing was performed by the (Bioneer Company, Korea). The nucleotide sequences were analyzed with the Chromas 1.45 software and BLAST in NCBI. Seventy-one patients who met the inclusion criteria over a period of 18 months were enrolled in this study. Amongst them, 38 (53.5%) were males and 33 (46.5%) were females; mean age of patients was 29.1 ± 38.5 months (ranging from two days to 147.5 months). Sixty-four (90.1%) patients were colonized with enterococci. Of 64 strains, 47 (73.4%) were VRE. The remaining isolates were either VSE (11 strains, 17.2%) or VIE (six strains, 9.4%). Table 2 shows other demographic and clinical characteristics of the patients. The resistance rate of enterococci isolates to tested antibiotics were 85.11% to ampicillin, 80.85% to ciprofloxacin, 82.98% to penicillin, 87.23% to rifampin, 78.72% to teicoplanin, 46.81% to chloramphenicol, 23.40% to quinupristin and 2.13% to linezolid. PCR analysis of VRE samples showed that 42 (89.3%) samples had vanA gene but vanB gene was not detected in remaining samples. In VIE group, vanA gene was also detected in 4 (66.7%) cases. Again, we did not detect vanB gene in remaining samples (Figure 1). |Characteristic||Positive for Growth of Enterococcus||VIE (n = 6)||VSE (n = 11)||VRE (n = 47)| |Solid tumor||3 (4.2)||-||-||3 (4.2)| |Diabetes mellitus||2 (2.8)||-||1 (1.4)||1 (1.4)| |Chronic renal disease||4 (5.6)||1 (1.4)||2 (2.8)||1 (1.4)| |Treatment with chemotherapeutic agents||8 (11.3)||-||-||8 (11.3)| |Blood dyscrasia||8 (11.3)||-||-||8 (11.3)| |Chronic lung disease||3 (4.2)||-||1 (1.4)||2 (2.8)| |Immunodeficiency||3 (4.2)||-||-||3 (4.2)| |Treatment with corticosteroids||2 (2.8)||-||-||2 (2.8)| |Presence of invasive device||44 (62)||5 (7)||8 (11.3)||31 (43.7)| |Previous ICU admission in the past 3 months||11 (15.5)||-||2 (2.8)||9 (12.7)| |previous treatment with antibiotics||12 (16.9)||2 (2.8)||1 (1.4)||9 (12.7)| |ICU admission over 7 days||47 (66.2)||4 (5.6)||7 (9.9)||36 (50.7)| This study showed that vanA gene was the dominant resistance mechanism in isolated enterococcal colonization from patients admitted to ICU of this pediatric tertiary educational center in Tehran, Iran, during 2012-2013. Although many risk factors have been proposed to affect VRE colonization, assessment of these risk factors was not our primary goal in this study due to our small sample size. We used previous proposed risk factors to collect as much as possible VRE strain to look for resistance genes. However, it should be noted the among some of inclusion criteria, ICU admission over seven days, previous ICU admission in the past three months, presence of invasive devices, treatment with previous antibiotic, treatment with chemotherapeutic agents and having underlying hematologic problems seems to put patients more at risk of colonization (5, 9). VRE colonization rates were investigated in various settings with inconsistent results; in a study in a tertiary care center in Australia, univariate analysis showed that the use of any antibiotic including meropenem as well as ciprofloxacin, diarrhea, and longer length of hospital stay were associated with increased risk of VRE colonization. The predominant VRE genotype circulating in Australia is E. faeciumvanB. In contrast, the vanA gene was predominant one in our study; however, our result was more compatible with VRE genotype status in United States and Europe (9). In another study in Italia, it was shown that 20 out of 26 VRE isolates from patients admitted to an ICU had vanA gene (10) while remainder showed vanB gene; a finding that was different from our results. Although remainder of our non-vanA VRE isolates might have less resistant genotypes, such a hypothesis must be investigated in future studies. Increasing enterococci with vanA gene rate in a hospital is a concerning issue for whole country. A study in Germany investigated the samples of different origin in various hospitals over the country between 2004-2006 and analyzed them by multilocus sequence typing (MLST), SmaI macrorestriction analysis in pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE), and multiple-locus variable-number tandem repeat analysis (MLVA) (11). A dissemination of related vancomycin-resistant E. faecium among various hospitals and Federal States was proved by spreading an identical vanA gene clusters among clonally different strain types. Hence, adherence to infection control measures especially in ICU settings is very important (11). Our previous study in 2008 in Ali-Asghar Children Hospital, which was focused on VRE rectal colonization rate, detected VRE in stools from 33 (25%) of 130 children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). No clear risk factors were identified for VRE colonization in that study, but there was a trend towards an increased prevalence in children admitted to the ICU since their ALL diagnosis (P = 0.07). The vanA gene was found in 28 (85%) of the 33 stools, with all other enterococci being vanB (12). Although we assessed the rectal colonization in selected high-risk patients, the observed high rate in our study is concerning. Most studies in developed countries showed lower rates of colonization. In a study in Australia in a general hospital, VRE was detected from patients in each ward with the prevalence ranging from 3% to 29% and concluded that exposure to some antibiotics, especially meropenem, might explain the increasing rate of colonization. Therefore, the antimicrobial prescription in our setting should be closely monitored to prove their role in this high and increasing rate of colonization (9). Present study confirmed that ICU admission in our setting might be considered as a risk factor for VRE colonization and the fact that rate of colonization in selected cases was much higher in comparison with previous study. Moreover, the genotypes could be changed over time, as we did not detect any vanB gene in present study even in patients with malignancies. This finding necessitates further molecular studies to clarify the exact nature of resistant genes in these isolates. Our study has some limitations; the sample size for most potentially risk factors was too low to do statistical analysis; hence, a multicentric national study is suggested to investigate the trend and exact risk factors in each hospital setting that would lead to design scientific preventive measures. Sreeja S, Babu PRS, Prathab AG. The prevalence and the characterization of the enterococcus species from various clinical samples in a tertiary care hospital. J Clin Diagn Res. 2012; 6 (9) : 1486 -8 [DOI][PubMed] Firoozeh F, Akhi MT, Oskooei M. Antibiotic resistant in enterococcus isolated from clinical samples. J Tabriz Univ Med Sci. 2010; 32 (1) : 61 -7 Teymournejad O, Mohabati Mobarez A, Hosseini Doust R. Epidemiologic evaluation of Vancomycin Resistant genes in Enterococcus spp. isolated from clinical samples. J Fasa Univ Med Sci. 2011; 1 (2) : 1 -6 Hosseinzadeh A, Abtahi H, Shojapour M, Akbari M, Nazari R, Sofian M. Prevalence and antimicrobial susceptibility patern of vancomycin resistant enterococci spp isolated from clinical sample of educational haspitals in Arak. Arak medical university Jornal Arak Med Univ J. 2012; 15 (64) : 11 -6 Leclercq R, Courvalin P. Resistance to glycopeptides in enterococci. Clin Infect Dis. 1997; 94 : 245 -56 Murray PR. Manual of clinical microbioloty. 1995; Viera T. Restoration of vancomycin susceptibility in Enterococcus feacalis by anti resistant determinant gene transfer. Antimicrob Chemother. 2001; : 973 -6 Cockerill F. Performance Standards for Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing: Twenty-second Informational Supplement. 2012; Karki S, Houston L, Land G, Bass P, Kehoe R, Borrell S, et al. Prevalence and risk factors for VRE colonisation in a tertiary hospital in Melbourne, Australia: a cross sectional study. Antimicrob Resist Infect Control. 2012; 1 (1) : 31 [DOI][PubMed] Lambiase A, Del Pezzo M, Piazza O, Petagna C, De Luca C, Rossano F. Typing of vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium strains in a cohort of patients in an Italian intensive care Unit. Infection. 2007; 35 (6) : 428 -33 [DOI][PubMed] Werner G, Klare I, Fleige C, Witte W. Increasing rates of vancomycin resistance among Enterococcus faecium isolated from German hospitals between 2004 and 2006 are due to wide clonal dissemination of vancomycin-resistant enterococci and horizontal spread of vanA clusters. Int J Med Microbiol. 2008; 298 (5-6) : 515 -27 [DOI][PubMed] Nateghian A, Robinson JL, Arjmandi K, Vosough P, Karimi A, Behzad A, et al. Epidemiology of vancomycin-resistant enterococci in children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia at two referral centers in Tehran, Iran: a descriptive study. Int J Infect Dis. 2011; 15 (5) : e332 -5 [DOI][PubMed]

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Failure Analysis of Adhesively Bonded Joints Table of Contents Figure 1: (a) Adhesive Failure: Failure of joint at the adhesive/adherend interface; (b) Cohesive Failure: Failure of adhesive layer; (c) Adherend Failure: Adherend fails and not the adhesive (Ghorbani, 2018) Structural adhesives is a term that is used for any type of adhesive used to bond a load-bearing joint necessary for the structural integrity of a product (Hernon.com, 2018). In a wide range of applications in the automotive, aerospace and marine industries, structural adhesives have slowly begun replacing the conventional fastening method such as welding and riveting onto their structures. The implementation of welding or riveting method in a structure causes stress concentrations at the joint, which may affect the joint strength. Due to the stress concentration, welded joints are prone to fatigue cracking if subjected to high cyclic loads. Hence, as an alternative to reduce the stress concentration, adhesively bonded joints are now widely used in the industries. Besides reducing the stress concentration, the overall cost of a structure can be reduced as mechanical fasteners, such as rivets and bolts, are expensive on a large-scale which in turn reduces the overall weight of the structure. With the elimination of mechanical fasteners, the aesthetics of a structure is enhanced as adhesives are hidden in between adherends. Figure 1: (a) Adhesive Failure: Failure of joint at the adhesive/adherend interface; (b) Cohesive Failure: Failure of adhesive layer; (c) Adherend Failure: Adherend fails and not the adhesive (Ghorbani, 2018) In industry, with respect to the applied load, joint geometry and component properties, the adhesively bonded joints will experience three different failure types: adherend failure, adhesive failure and cohesive failure. The different failures are illustrated below in Figure 1 (Ghorbani, 2018). Hence, to determine the failure mechanism of a typical bonded joint such as single-lap, double-lap and scarf joints shown in Figure 2, a stress-strain distribution obtained from a finite element analysis based on the cohesive zone model will be carried out. The subject matter of this literature review is based on the existing approaches for a failure analysis of adhesively bonded joints. The failure analysis is conducted by the use of a finite element model such as the cohesive zone model. A parametric study on the bonded joints is also illustrated below. 2.1.1 Elastic analysis 18.104.22.168 Volkersen model Volkersen’s method shown in Figure 3 is the first analytical method to determine the stress analysis of adhesively bonded joints. It is also known as the shear-lag model, which introduced the concept of a differential shear where it was assumed that the adhesive could only deform in shear and the adherend deforms in tension due to its elasticity (da Silva et al., 2009). Figure 4 shows that the maximum tensile stress is in the upper adherend at point A which decreases to zero at B. This shows a progressive reduction in strain from A to B. The continuity of the adhesive-adherend interface causes a non-uniform shear strain distribution in the adhesive with maximum shear stresses at the ends of the overlap and a much lower shear strain in the middle. However, the eccentric load path governed by the bending effect is not considered in a single-lap joint (da Silva et al., 2009). 22.214.171.124 Goland and Reissner model Figure 5 shows the Goland and Reissner’s model where the effects due to rotation of the adherends were considered. The model was divided into two parts: the determination of loads at edges of the joints with the use of a finite deflection theory of cylindrically bent plates and the determination of joint stresses due to applied loads. A bending moment factor, k, and a transverse force factor, k’, were used to relate to the applied tensile load per unit width, to bending moment, M, and transverse force, V, at the overlap ends (Quispe Rodriguez et al., 2012). 126.96.36.199 Hart-Smith model In the Hart-Smith model, the adhesive plasticity was accounted for where the shear stress in the joints is modelled by using a bi-linear elastic-plastic shear stress model. The overlap between the adherend is divided into three regions, a central elastic region with a length d and two outer plastic regions as illustrated in Figure 6 (da Silva et al., 2009). In this stress model, the maximum lap-joint strength was determined by using the maximum shear strain as the failure criterion. In the case of a double-lap joint, thermal mismatch between adherends decreases the overall joint strength and is significant with the increase of adherend thickness and stiffness. For a single-lap joint, the effects of the peel stress are more significant due to the eccentric load path which causes a problem as adherend thickness increases; the total in-plane load carried is able to increase with thickness. However, the through-thickness tensile stresses due to load transfer mechanisms are limited by the transverse tensile strength of the composite (da Silva et al., 2009). Our academic experts are ready and waiting to assist with any writing project you may have. From simple essay plans, through to full dissertations, you can guarantee we have a service perfectly matched to your needs.View our services 188.8.131.52 Bigwood and Crocombe model Bigwood and Crocombe improved the closed-form elastic analysis to account for the non-linear behaviour present in the bonded joints. In the stress model, the non-linear stress response of the adhesive was accounted for and also subjected to different forms of loading (da Silva et al., 2009). To determine the non-linear behaviour of the adhesive, a hyperbolic tangent approximation is used. The yielding of the adhesive was modelled using the maximum von Mises stress criterion. However, the von Mises criterion does not consider the hydrostatic stress that the adhesives are dependent on (Bigwood and Crocombe, 1990). 184.108.40.206 Adams and Mallick The adhesive joint stresses such as shear, peel and longitudinal are defined as four independent functions. The influence of the adhesive plasticity was taken into account by means of an iterative procedure. Hence, successive load increments were applied onto the model until the maximum stress or strain reaches a failure condition or until the full load is applied. From the stress model, it was found that the adhesive shear strain from the model followed the shear strain distribution predicted by Volkersen as explained in 220.127.116.11 (da Silva et al., 2009). 18.104.22.168 Wang et al. model From the theory proposed by Bigwood and Crocombe, Wang et al. further extended their work to take into account of the adherend shear deformation to predict the adhesive failure in arbitrary joints subjected to a large-scale adherend yielding. Both the adhesive and adherend yielding were modelled based on the von Mises criterion with the hyperbolic tangent approximation for adhesive yielding and a bi-linear model for adherend yielding (da Silva et al., 2009). 22.214.171.124 Adams et al. model Adams et al proposed a simple design methodology based on adherend yielding. The methodology proposed is applicable to non-yielding adherends with ductile adhesives with 10% or more shear strain to failure. It is also applicable to adherends that are able to yield with any type of adhesive, either brittle or ductile. This can be done with simple calculation. However, with intermediate or brittle non-yielding adherends and adhesives, a finite-element method was found to be more efficient and accurate (da Silva et al., 2009). The maximum stress or strain criterion is known to be the starting point for joint strength predictions as it assumes that the adhesively bonded joint will fail when a critical value of stress or strain is reached at any point within the joint. Within this criterion, there are different quantities that were used to predict the bonded joint strength: - Maximum shear stress criterion: Based on the approach used by Greenwood et al., the maximum shear stress was assumed to be the main failure criteria in the bonded joints. Through the formulation developed by Goland and Reissner, it was determined that the maximum shear stress occurs at about 45° across the adhesive layer (Quispe Rodríguez et al., 2012). - Maximum peel stress criterion: Peel stress is a stress that is concentrated along a thin line at the edge of the bond where one substrate is flexible. Hence, this stress acts at a smaller area of the bond, which cause failure at a lower force level (Adhesives.org, 2018). Hart-Smith considered this criterion where he distinguished between the failure occurring in the adhesive or in the adherend. - Maximum von Mises stress criterion: The von Mises stress or equivalent stress is used as a failure criterion for bonded scarf joints. This criterion neglects the hydrostatic stress, which affects the yield and deformation behaviour of polymers. Hence, it is ineffective on double lap joints (Crocombe and Kinloch, 1994). - Maximum effective uniaxial plastic strain criterion: Crocombe and Adams used the maximum effective uniaxial plastic strain to predict the failure in peel joints by using a large displacement elastoplastic finite element analysis (Crocombe and Kinloch, 1994). Due to the presence of singularities, this type of criterion is used because of the high dependency on the mesh with the maximum value criteria shown in 2.2.1. Three approaches were used to determine this criterion: - Zhao, Adams and da Silva proposed using a weighted average maximum stress criterion where the adhesive thickness is used as the distance over which the stresses are averaged and is compared to the adhesive yield strength. However, it was determined that the averaged stress failure criterion only applied to sharp corners and to a small radius configuration. For a larger radius configuration, the maximum stress criterion must be used instead (Zhao et al., 2011). - Clarke and McGregor proposed a different approach where the maximum principal stress from an elastoplastic analysis must exceed the ultimate tensile stress of the adhesive over a finite zone where the zone size is independent of the joint geometry. In this approach, detailed finite element models of the joints were constructed and the stress patterns were compared in the adhesive by means of measured failure loads (Clark and McGregor, 1993). - Towse et al. proposed to use the critical strain at a distance for a double-lap joint. With the use of a non-linear analysis along with the effect of residual thermal stresses, the joint was shown to fail when the strain near the singularity reached the adhesive ultimate strain (Quispe Rodríguez et al., 2012). 2.2.3 Limit state criterion Crocombe introduced the limit state analysis that was known as the global yielding failure criterion. Global yielding is applied when a path of adhesive along the overlap region reaches the state in which the adhesive can no longer sustain any significant increase in applied loads. Three different joint geometries, single-lap joint, double-lap joint and compressive shear were analysed using non-linear finite element techniques (Crocombe, 1989). - The single-lap joint study was to understand the effect of adhesive layer thickness on the joint strength. From the study, it was shown that the thinner adhesive layer yielded at an earlier load. However, the thicker adhesive layer was the first to reach a state of complete yield (Crocombe and Kinloch, 1994). - The double-lap joint study was to investigate the effect of adherend cladding on the joint strength. The double-lap joint model was modelled similarly to a single-lap joint study but with different constraints applied to the nodes and along the line of symmetry. In this mode of study, the adhesive plasticity was modelled while the adherend remained elastic. The limit state criterion is only applicable to a limited range of adhesive joints. - The compressive shear test was carried out to investigate an alternative method of loading a joint in shear whilst avoiding the adhesive tensile transverse direct stresses that are present in single and double lap joints. In this study, it was shown that the yielding of the adhesive is that the initial yield does not occur at the loaded adherend corner but is within the adhesive itself (Crocombe, 1989). Fracture mechanics is the study of the strength of structures that contains flaws such as cracks. Hence, it is assumed the flaws present in the adhesive joint are a result of imperfect bonding or manufacturing defect. The flaws can grow slowly at first during service, then rapidly upon reaching a critical size which is dependent on the material properties and the nature of loading. The critical stress intensity factor, Kc is used to predict failure in fracture mechanics that determines the onset of rapid fracture (Sih, 1980). In a principle set out by Griffith, a brittle system that contains flaws will fail when the energy of the structure supplied to the crack tip under a loading (energy release rate G) is equal to the energy required for the crack to propagate (critical energy release rate Gc) (Crocombe and Kinloch, 1994). The damage mechanics criterion can be determined at different levels of complexity. The first step would be to remove the material when a critical condition is exceeded. As a continuation to that step would be to allow the material to soften gradually up to a state when it can no longer carry any load. The last step, also known as the continuum damage mechanics, would be to define the damage criterion and combine with the yield criterion in a constitutive model (Crocombe and Kinloch, 1994). The continuum damage criterion has proved to be efficient in damage modelling and is based on the damage parameter that is introduced as a new state variable, which is defined as the effective surface of micro-cracks and cavities that intersect with a plane. The damage parameter that is introduced is to describe the evolution of stress as damage progresses, with the concept of an effective stress. The initiation of a macro-crack takes place when an accumulated damage reaches a critical value where the accumulation of damage is expressed in terms of number of cycles to failure in fatigue cases or time to rupture in creep cases (Khoramishad et al., 2011). Finite element analysis is a computational method that subdivides a CAD model into very small but finite-sized elements of geometrically simple shapes, which constitutes into a finite-element mesh (Sjodin, 2016). To determine the failure mechanism in a typical bonded joint, a numerical analysis can be conducted to obtain the stress distribution and the failure criterion. In ABAQUS, a finite element modelling software, a damage-modelling database known as the cohesive zone model can be used to analyse an adhesively bonded joints. 2.3.2 Cohesive zone model The cohesive zone model is a standard model in ABAQUS used to describe the crack tip process zone that assumes the bonds stretch orthogonally to the crack surfaces until they break at a characteristic stress level. A pre-defined crack path has to be defined to model the progressive damage and failure in a CZM approach. The CZM simulates the macroscopic damage along the path by specification of a traction-separation response between initially coincident nodes on either side of the pre-defined crack path (Liljedahl et al., 2006). Linear elastic fracture mechanics (LEFM) is an efficient tool for solving fracture problems provided a crack-like notch or flaw exists in the body and the non-linear zone ahead of the crack tip is negligible (Elices et al., 2002). The singular region introduced from linear elastic fracture mechanics (LEFM) can be replaced by a lateral region over which non-linear phenomena occurs. In the simple formulation of a CZM, the fracture process is merged into the crack line and is characterised by a cohesive law that relates tractions (T) and displacements ( ) jump across cohesive surfaces. The whole body volume remains elastic while the non-linearity that is embedded in the cohesive law is the cohesive strength of the material while the area under the curve is the cohesive fracture energy, c (Alfano et al., 2007). The fracture process can be seen in Figure 7: - Section 1: A linear elastic material response prevails Section 2: As load increases, the crack initiates (T= - Section 3: Governed by a non-linear cohesive law, the crack evolves to complete failure Section 4: Appearance of new traction free crack surfaces ( 2.4 Parametric study There has been an increase in the use of adhesive bonding in different industries due to its suitability in different criteria such as a high strength to weight ratio, design flexibility, damage tolerance and fatigue resistance. Hence, the parameters that would affect the performance of the bonded joints are illustrated below. 2.4.1 Joint configuration The strength of the joint is dependent on the applied load and its stress distribution within the joint, which is affected by the joint geometry. The adhesively bonded joints should be designed to reduce the stress concentration where peel and cleavage stress are minimised and shear and compressive stress are maximised. A single lap joint is the most common joint used in the industry due to its simplicity and efficiency. However, the stress distribution, shear and peel stress, in the joint is concentrated at the ends of the overlap. To improve the efficiency of the joint, different techniques have been proposed such as changing the adherend geometry, adhesive geometry and spew geometry (Banea and da Silva, 2009). 126.96.36.199 Adherend geometry In a study carried out by Çalık, six models with different end geometries of an adhesively bonded single lap joint were generated as shown in Figure 8. Tapering, recessing and stepping are the ideal geometry alteration method, as fabrication of the joints would be made simpler. In the analysis, it was found that failure began at the ends of the overlap length as the maximum stress concentration occurs at the end of overlap length of the adhesively bonded joints. The peel stresses at the edges of the overlap are important as peel stresses may cause the initiation and propagation of failure in the region. It was concluded that altering the geometry of a bonded joints would have a significant effect on the stress concentration in the joints (Çalık, 2016). 188.8.131.52 Spew geometry Spew is known as the portion of adhesive that is squeezed out from the lap area and forms a bead at the lap ends as the two adherends are assembled together. In a study carried out by Lang and Mallick, eight different spew geometries, as shown in Figure 9, were modelled and analysed. An initial model without the spew was generated to act as a constant for the experiment. The joint, both adherend and adhesive, were assumed to behave in linear elastic. From the experiment, it was determined that with the presence of spew in the bonded joints, there was a significant reduction on stress concentration within the joints. The most significant effect was the reduction in peel stress on the edges of the overlap of the adhesively bonded joints. This reduction is important during design, as the peel stresses are generally high in a single-lap joint, which causes premature failure in the joint. As the spew size increases, the larger the portion of load it can carry. Thus, the presence of spew reduces the stress concentration occurring on the bonded joints (Lang and Mallick, 1998). This report has provided a brief literature review on the mechanics adhesively bonded joints. Three different analytical methods were carried out by different researchers: an elastic analysis by Volkersen and Goland and Reissner, a non-linear adhesive analysis by Hart-Smith and Bigwood and Crocombe along with Adams and Mallick and a full non-linear adhesive and adherend analysis by Wang et al. and Adams et al. The elastic analysis carried out became a starting point for the stress analysis of adhesively bonded joints but the limitation of an elastic analysis is that the variation of adhesive stresses through the thickness of the adhesive joints is not taken into account. To improve the stress analysis of the bonded joints, a non-linear adhesive and a full non-linear adherend and adhesive analysis were carried out which took into account the different adhesive stresses that are present within an adhesively bonded joints. The failure criteria of the adhesively bonded joints form the basis of the analytical model of a stress analysis. It was determined that the maximum stress or strain criterions such as the von Mises and the peel stresses are commonly used as the failure criterion in the analytical mode. It was shown that, in a single-lap joint, the peel stress is the main cause of failure. This was due to a stress concentration that occurs at the edges of the overlap length. From this study, it can be determined that the stress concentration of bonded joint can be reduced with the alteration of adherend geometry and spew geometry as explained in 184.108.40.206 and 220.127.116.11 respectively. The stress analysis of adhesively bonded joint can be carried out by using a finite element analysis. In ABAQUS, the cohesive zone model is used to analyse the stress concentration in the adhesive joints. To further improve the research, a stress analysis through the analytical method and finite element method will be carried out using different typical bonded joints such as the double-lap joints and scarf joints. Hence, the failure mechanism of the bonded joints can be determined from the analysis. - Adhesives.org. (2018). Types of Stress. [online] Available at: https://www.adhesives.org/adhesives-sealants/adhesives-sealants-overview/structural-design/types-of-stress [Accessed 4 Dec. 2018]. - Alfano, M., Furgiuele, F., Leonardi, A., Maletta, C. and Paulino, G. (2007). Cohesive Zone Modeling of Mode I Fracture in Adhesive Bonded Joints. Key Engineering Materials, 348-349, pp.13-16. - Banea, M. and da Silva, L. (2009). Adhesively bonded joints in composite materials: An overview. Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part L: Journal of Materials: Design and Applications, 223(1), pp.1-18. - Bigwood, D. and Crocombe, A. (1990). Non-linear adhesive bonded joint design analyses. International Journal of Adhesion and Adhesives, 10(1), pp.31-41. - Budhe, S., Banea, M., de Barros, S. and da Silva, L. (2017). An updated review of adhesively bonded joints in composite materials. International Journal of Adhesion and Adhesives, 72, pp.30-42. - Çalık, A. (2016). Effect of Adherend Shape on Stress Concentration Reduction of Adhesively Bonded Single Lap Joint. Engineering Review, 36(1), pp.29-34. - Clark, J. and McGregor, I. (1993). Ultimate Tensile Stress over a Zone: A New Failure Criterion for Adhesive Joints. The Journal of Adhesion, 42(4), pp.227-245. - Crocombe, A. (1989). Global yielding as a failure criterion for bonded joints. International Journal of Adhesion and Adhesives, 9(3), pp.145-153. - Crocombe, A. and Kinloch, A. (1994). [online] Adhesivestoolkit.com. Available at: http://www.adhesivestoolkit.com/PDFFiles/Project%202/P2r1.pdf [`Accessed 4 Dec. 2018]. - da Silva, L., das Neves, P., Adams, R. and Spelt, J. (2009). Analytical models of adhesively bonded joints—Part I: Literature survey. International Journal of Adhesion and Adhesives, 29(3), pp.319-330. - da Silva, L., das Neves, P., Adams, R., Wang, A. and Spelt, J. (2009). Analytical models of adhesively bonded joints—Part II: Comparative study. International Journal of Adhesion and Adhesives, 29(3), pp.331-341. - Elices, M., Guinea, G., Gómez, J. and Planas, J. (2002). The cohesive zone model: advantages, limitations and challenges. Engineering Fracture Mechanics, 69(2), pp.137-163. - Ghorbani, A. (2018). Stress analysis of composite adhesive bonded joints under incipient failure conditions. Procedia Structural Integrity, 8, pp.552-560. - Gunnion, A. and Herszberg, I. (2006). Parametric study of scarf joints in composite structures. Composite Structures, 75(1-4), pp.364-376. - Hernon.com. (2018). Advantages of Structural Adhesives over Welding, Rivets and Traditional Fastening Methods. [online] Available at: https://www.hernon.com/manufacturing-news/advantages%20of%20structural%20adhesives/ [Accessed 2 Dec. 2018]. - Khoramishad, H., Crocombe, A., Katnam, K. and Ashcroft, I. (2011). Fatigue damage modelling of adhesively bonded joints under variable amplitude loading using a cohesive zone model. Engineering Fracture Mechanics, 78(18), pp.3212-3225. - Lang, T. and Mallick, P. (1998). Effect of spew geometry on stresses in single lap adhesive joints. International Journal of Adhesion and Adhesives, 18(3), pp.167-177. - Liljedahl, C., Crocombe, A., Wahab, M. and Ashcroft, I. (2006). Damage modelling of adhesively bonded joints. International Journal of Fracture, 141(1-2), pp.147-161. - Quispe Rodríguez, R., de Paiva, W., Sollero, P., Bertoni Rodrigues, M. and de Albuquerque, É. (2012). Failure criteria for adhesively bonded joints. International Journal of Adhesion and Adhesives, 37, pp.26-36. - Shin, K., Lim, J. and Lee, J. (2003). The manufacturing process of co-cured single and double lap joints and evaluation of the load-bearing capacities of co-cured joints. Journal of Materials Processing Technology, 138(1-3), pp.89-96. - Sih, G. (1980). Fracture Mechanics of Adhesive Joints. Polymer Engineering and Science, 20(14), pp.977 – 981. - Sjodin, B. (2016). What’s the Difference Between FEM, FDM and FVM?. [eBook] Machine Design. Available at: http://www.machinedesign.com/fea-and-simulation/what-s- difference-between-fem-fdm-and-fvm [Accessed 7 Dec. 2018]. - X. Zhao, R. D. Adams & L. F. M. da Silva (2011) Single Lap Joints with Rounded Adherend Corners: Experimental Results and Strength Prediction, Journal of Adhesion Science and Technology, 25:8, 837-856 Cite This Work To export a reference to this article please select a referencing stye below: Related ServicesView all DMCA / Removal Request If you are the original writer of this essay and no longer wish to have your work published on UKEssays.com then please:

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Malaria is caused by protozoan parasites called Plasmodia, belonging to the parasitic phylum Apicomplexa. More than 200 species of the genus Plasmodium (=plasma + eidos, form) have been identified that are parasitic to reptiles, birds, and mammals. Four Plasmodium species have been well known to cause human malaria, namely, P. falciparum, P. vivax, P. ovale, and P. malariae. A fifth one, P. knowlesi, has been recently documented to cause human infections in many countries of Southeast Asia. Very rare cases of malaria have been reported due to other species such as Plasmodium brasilianum, Plasmodium cynomolgi, Plasmodium cynomolgi bastianellii, Plasmodium inui, Plasmodium rhodiani, Plasmodium schwetzi, Plasmodium semiovale, Plasmodium simium and Plasmodium eylesi. All malaria parasites infecting humans probably jumped from the great apes (in case of P. knowlesi, macaques) to man.[See] Phylum: Protozoa Subphylum: Apicomplexa Class: Sporozoa Subclass: Coccidia Order: Coccidiida Suborder: Haemosporina Subgenera: Plasmodium, Laverania Species: (affecting man) Quartan group: P. (Plasmodium) malariae, P. (P.) brasilianum Benign tertian group: P. (P.) vivax, P. (P.) cynomolgi, P. (P.) cynomolgi bastianellii Malignant tertian group: P. (Laverania) falciparum Ovale group: P. (P.) ovale, P. (P.) simium Knowlesi group: P. (P.) knowlesi Phylogenetic Trees of Plasmodia Source: Krief S et al. On the Diversity of Malaria Parasites in African Apes and the Origin of P. falciparum from Bonobos. PLoS Pathog 2010;6(2): e1000765.[Full Text] Subtypes of P. vivax: Plasmodium vivax is divided into two subtypes, a dominant form, VK210 and a variant form, VK247. This division is dependent on the amino acid composition of the circumsporozoite (CS) protein. A strain of P. vivax containing a variant repeat in its CS protein was first isolated in Thailand.[3,4]. The CS repeat of this variant strain (Thai VK247) differs at 6/9 amino acids within the repeat sequence found in all previously described P. vivax CS protein. Following this discovery, several studies have been conducted to evaluate the global distribution of variant VK247; it was detected in indigenous populations of China , Brazil , Mexico [7,8], Peru [8,9], and Papua New Guinea . It is known that the drug susceptibility of the VK247 subtype of P. vivax is slightly different than VK210 , as well as that Anopheles albimanus and Anopheles pseudopunctipennis differ in their susceptibilities to P. vivax circumsporozoite phenotypes. Anopheles albimanus is more susceptible to the VK210 subtype, whereas An. pseudopunctipennis is more susceptible to the VK247 subtype. Two species of P. ovale: P. ovale has been found to exist in two forms, classic and variant, with the latter accounting for the higher parasite density among humans. A new study has now proposed that ovale malaria in humans is caused by two closely related but distinct species of malaria parasite, Plasmodium ovale curtisi (classic type) and Plasmodium ovale wallikeri (variant type), named so in honor of malaria researchers Christopher F. Curtis (1939-2008) and David Walliker (1940-2007). These two nonrecombining, genetically distinct species coexist, being sympatric in Africa and Asia. Splitting of the 2 lineages is estimated to have occurred between 1.0 and 3.5 million years ago in hominid hosts.[12-16] [More at The Lancet] Molecular characteristics of malarial parasites have also been studied in India. Distribution of Plasmodia: Nearly 85% of cases in Africa are caused by P. falciparum, the remaining cases being caused by the other three strains. P. vivax is now the most geographically widespread of the human malarias, occurring in much of Asia, Central and South America, the Middle East, where 70–90% of the malaria burden is of this species and the rest due to P. falciparum.[1,18] P. malariae causes sporadic infections in Africa, parts of India, western Pacific and South America, whereas P. ovale is restricted to tropical Africa, New Guinea, and the Philippines. P. knowlesi has been reported from South East Asian countries such as Malaysia, Thailand, Viet Nam, Myanmar and Phillippines.[19-23] Analyses of the mtDNA data have revealed that P. knowlesi is derived from an ancestral parasite population that existed prior to human settlement in Southeast Asia, and underwent significant population expansion approximately 30,000–40,000 years ago. The results indicate that human infections with P. knowlesi are not newly emergent in Southeast Asia and that knowlesi malaria is primarily a zoonosis with wild macaques as the reservoir hosts. Ongoing ecological changes resulting from deforestation, with an associated increase in the human population, could enable this pathogenic species of Plasmodium to switch to humans as the preferred host. |Comparison of Malaria Parasites [21,25-32]| |P. falciparum||P. vivax||P. ovale||P. malariae||P. knowlesi| |Global Distribution||80-90% of cases in Africa, 40-50% of cases in western pacific and SE Asia, 4-30% in S Asia, S America and rest of tropics||70-90% of cases in most of Asia and S America, 50-60% of cases in SE Asia and western pacific, 1-10% in Africa||8% of cases in parts of Africa, stray cases in Asia||2-3% in Africa, sporadic in Asia and S America||Reported from SE Asia; 70% of cases in some of those areas| |Occurrence in India||30–90% of cases in Orissa, the NE states, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, and Andamans; <10% of cases in other areas||Nearly 50% of total malaria burden; predominant species in most parts other than P. falciparum dominant areas.||Stray cases reported from Delhi, Gujarat Kolkata, Orissa, and Assam||3-16% reported from some tribal areas, particularly Orissa; sporadic elsewhere; incidence may be higher||Not reported| |Tissue schizogony||5-6 days||8 days||9 days||13 days||8-9 days| |Erythrocytic phase||48 hours||48 hours||49-50 hours||72 hours||24 hours| |Red cells affected||All||Reticulocytes||Reticulocytes||Mature RBC’s||?| |Merozoites per tissue schizont||40000||Over 10000||15000||2000||?| |Merozoites per red cell schizont||8 – 32||12 – 24||4 – 16||6 – 12||10-16| |Relapse from persistent liver forms||No||Yes||Yes||No, but blood forms can persist up to 30 years||No| |Fever pattern||Tertian, sub tertian||Tertian||Tertian||Quartan||Quotidian| |Severe malaria||Up to 24%||Up to 22%||Very rare||Very rare||6-10%| |See Comparison of Four Human Plasmodium species at CDC| Ring Forms of Malaria Parasites on Thin Blood Smear (Courtesy: CDC DPDx Image Library) - Rich SM, Ayala FJ. Evolutionary Origins of Human Malaria Parasites. In Krishna R. Dronamraju, Paolo Arese (Ed). Emerging Infectious Diseases of the 21st Century: Malaria – Genetic and Evolutionary Aspects. Springer US 2006. pp.125-146. - Daneshvar C et al. Clinical and Laboratory Features of Human Plasmodium knowlesi Infection. Clinical Infectious Diseases 2009;49:852–860. - Tong-Soo Kim et al. Prevalence of Plasmodium vivax VK210 and VK247 subtype in Myanmar. Malaria Journal 2010;9:195. doi:10.1186/1475-2875-9-195. Available at http://www.malariajournal.com/content/9/1/195 - Rosenberg R, Wirtz RA, Lanar DE, Sattabongkot J, Hall T, Waters AP, Prasittisuk C. Circumsporozoite protein heterogeneity in the human malaria parasite Plasmodium vivax. Science 1989;245:973-976. - Han GD, Zhang XJ, Zhang HH, Chen XX, Huang BC. Use of PCR/DNA probes to identify circumsporozoite genotype of Plasmodium vivax in China. Southeast Asian J Trop Med Pub Health 1999;30:20-23. - Branquinho MS, Lagos CB, Rocha RM, Natal D, Barata JM, Cochrane AH, Nardin E, Nussenzweig RS, Kloetzel JK. Anophelines in the state of Acre, Brazil, infected with Plasmodium falciparum, P. vivax, the variant P. vivax VK247 and P. malariae. Trans R Soc Trop Med Hyg 1993;87:391-394. - Kain KC, Brown AE, Webster HK, Wirtz RA, Keystone JS, Rodriguez MH, Kinahan J, Rowland M, Lanar DE. Circumsporozoite genotyping of global isolates of Plasmodium vivax from dried blood specimens. J Clin Microbiol 1992;30:1863-1866. - Kain KC, Wirtz RA, Fernandez I, Franke ED, Rodriguez MH, Lanar DE. Serologic and genetic characterization of Plasmodium vivax from whole blood-impregnated filter paper discs. Am J Trop Med Hyg 1992;46:473-479. - Need JT, Wirtz RA, Franke ED, Fernandez R, Carbajal F, Falcon R, San Roman E. Plasmodium vivax VK247 and VK210 circumsporozoite proteins in Anopheles mosquitoes from Andoas, Peru. J Med Entomol 1993;30:597-600. - Kain KC, Brown AE, Lanar DE, Ballou WR, Webster HK. Response of Plasmodium vivax variants to chloroquine as determinated by microscopy and quantitative polymerase chain reaction. Am J Trop Med Hyg 1993;49:478-484. - González-Cerón L, Rodriguez MH, Nettel JA, Villarreal C, Kain KC, Hernández JE. Differential susceptibility of Anopheles albimanus and Anopheles pseudopunctipennis to infections with coindigenous Plasmodium vivax variants VK210 and VK247 in southern Mexico. Infect Immun 1999;67:410-412. - Sutherland CJ et al. Two nonrecombining sympatric forms of the human malaria parasite Plasmodium ovale occur globally. J Infect Dis. 15 May 2010;201(10):1544-1550.[Full Text] - Xin-zhuan Su. Human Malaria Parasites: Are We Ready for a New Species? J Infect Dis. 2010;201(10):1453-1454. [Extract] - Akpogheneta O. Researchers Identify New Malaria Species. The Faster Times. Available at http://thefastertimes.com/globalpandemics/2010/04/22/researchers-identify-a-new-malaria-species/ - Oguike MC et al. Plasmodium ovale curtisi and Plasmodium ovale wallikeri circulate simultaneously in African communities. Int J Parasitol. 23 Feb 2011 [Pub Med Abstract] - David Tordrup et al. Variant Plasmodium ovale isolated from a patient infected in Ghana. Malaria Journal 2011;10:15. doi:10.1186/1475-2875-10-15. Full text at http://www.malariajournal.com/content/10/1/15 - Characterization of Human Malaria Parasites. Available at http://www.mrcindia.org/MRC_profile/profile2/Characterization of human malaria Parasites.pdf - Carter R, Mendis KN. Evolutionary and Historical Aspects of the Burden of Malaria. Clinical Microbiology Reviews. October 2002;15(4):564-594. Full text at http://cmr.asm.org/cgi/content/full/15/4/564 - Cyrus Daneshvar, Timothy M. E. Davis, Janet Cox-Singh, Mohammad Zakri Rafa’ee, Siti Khatijah Zakaria, Paul C. S. Divis, Balbir Singh. Clinical and Laboratory Features of Human Plasmodium knowlesi Infection. Clinical Infectious Diseases 2009;49:852–860 - Chaturong Putaporntip, Thongchai Hongsrimuang, Sunee Seethamchai et al. Differential Prevalence of Plasmodium Infections and Cryptic Plasmodium knowlesi Malaria in Humans in Thailand. The Journal of Infectious Diseases 2009;199:1143–1150 - Balbir Singh, Lee Kim Sung, Anand Radhakrishnan et al. A large focus of naturally acquired Plasmodium knowlesi infections in human beings. The Lancet 2004;363(9414):1017-1024 - Janet Cox-Singh, Balbir Singh. Knowlesi malaria: newly emergent and of public health importance? Trends in Parasitology. 2008;24(9):406-410 - Peter Van den Eede, Hong Nguyen Van, Chantal Van Overmeir et al. Human Plasmodium knowlesi infections in young children in central Vietnam. Malaria Journal 2009;8:249. Full Text at http://www.malariajournal.com/content/8/1/249 - Lee K-S, Divis PCS, Zakaria SK, Matusop A, Julin RA, et al. Plasmodium knowlesi: Reservoir Hosts and Tracking the Emergence in Humans and Macaques. PLoS Pathog 2011;7(4):e1002015. doi:10.1371/journal.ppat.1002015. Available at http://www.plospathogens.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.ppat.1002015 - Dhangadamajhi G, Kar SK, Ranjit MR. High prevalence and gender bias in distribution of Plasmodium malariae infection in central east-coast India. Tropical Biomedicine 2009;26(3): 326–333. Available at http://www.msptm.org/files/326_-_333_Ranjit_MR.pdf - Rajagopalan PK, Pani SP, Das PK, Jambulingam P. Malaria in Koraput district of Orissa. Indian J Pediatr. 1989 May-Jun;56(3):355-64. - Ashwani Kumar, Neena Valecha, Tanu Jain, Aditya P. Dash. Burden of Malaria in India: Retrospective and Prospective View. Am. J. Trop. Med. Hyg. 2007;77(6_Suppl):69-78. Full Text at http://www.ajtmh.org/cgi/reprint/77/6_Suppl/69 - Malaria situation. National Vector Borne Disease control Programme. Available at http://nvbdcp.gov.in/Doc/Malaria%20Situation_Sep.pdf - Matteelli A, Castelli F, Caligaris S. Life cycle of malaria parasites. In Carosi G, Castelli F. (Ed) Handbook of Malaria Infection in the Tropics. Associazione Italiana ‘Amici di R Follereau’ Organizzazione per la Cooperazione Sanitaria Internazionale. Bologna. 1997. pp. 17-23. Available at http://www.aifo.it/english/resources/online/books/other/malaria/2-Lifecycle%20of%20malarial%20parasite.pdf - Rogerson SJ, Carter R. Severe Vivax Malaria: Newly Recognised or Rediscovered? PLoS Med. 2008;5(6):e136. Full Text at http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0050136 - Genton B, D’Acremont V, Rare L, Baea K, Reeder JC et al. Plasmodium vivax and Mixed Infections Are Associated with Severe Malaria in Children: A Prospective Cohort Study from Papua New Guinea. PLoS Med 2008;5(6):e127. Full Text at http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0050127 - Tjitra E, Anstey NM, Sugiarto P, Warikar N, Kenangalem E, et al. Multidrug-Resistant Plasmodium vivax Associated with Severe and Fatal Malaria: A Prospective Study in Papua, Indonesia. PLoS Med 2008;5(6):e128. Full Text at http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0050128 With the turn of the millennium, the genome of humans, the Anopheles mosquito and the P. falciparum parasite have been sequenced. Thus for the first time, a wealth of information is available for all the three species that comprise the life cycle of the malaria parasite and this would help in a better understanding of the interactions among the three species that have long been evolving together. The genome sequence of P. falciparum was published in Nature (Nature, Plasmodium genomics special issue, 3rd October 2002 See http://www.nature.com/nature/malaria/index.html) and of the mosquito Anopheles gambiae was published in the same week in Science (Science, The Mosquito Genome: Anopheles gambiae, 298:5591; 4th October, 2002 See http://nora.embl.de/ivica/publications/12364791.pdf). The human genome sequence was published simultaneously in Nature (Initial sequencing and analysis of the human genome. Nature 409, 860-921 (15 February 2001) Available at http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v409/n6822/full/409860a0.html ) and Science (Science Special Issue, February 2001 Vol 291, Issue 5507, Pages 1145-1434. Available at http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol291/issue5507/index.dtl16 ) in February 2001. The sequencing of the genes opens up new approaches to the development of drugs, vaccines, insecticides and insect repellents, as well as intervention into malarial transmission. Genetic tools will also enable sampling of parasite, mosquito, and human genomes in malaria affected areas to support the malaria control activities. The Malaria genome: The sequencing of P. falciparum resulted from an international collaboration established in 1996, comprising of NIAID (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases), the Wellcome Trust, the Burroughs Wellcome Fund and the U.S. Department of Defense. Sequencers worked at The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) in Rockville, MD, the Stanford Genome Center in Palo Alto, California, and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in the United Kingdom. The lead investigator, Malcolm Gardner of TIGR, co-authored the Nature paper with 44 researchers working in sites in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. The genome sequence of P. falciparum covers 22.8 million bases of DNA, split into 14 chromosomes. Within the genome, 5279 genes have been identified. Only 733 of the 5279 genes have been identified as enzymes. Most of the biosynthetic pathways appear to be localized in the apicoplast, a structure within the cell that has its own genome and is similar to the chloroplasts of plants and algae. Although this genome encodes only 57 proteins, it is calculated that around 10 per cent of the proteins encoded by the nucleus may be destined for this structure. The genome sequence also identifies the molecules within the apicoplast that are the targets of several existing drugs, like antibiotics and may open many potential drug targets. The parasite appears to lack some key biosynthetic pathways; for example, making or interconverting amino acids, making purines, two protein components of ATP synthase (a mitochondrial ATP-producing enzyme) and components of a conventional NADH dehydrogenase complex. It has also been proposed that the regulation of protein levels is controlled through mRNA processing and translation, rather than by gene transcription and this may be another potential drug target. Regions near the ends of each chromosome of the P. falciparum genome are interesting. The genes residing here encode surface proteins or antigens that are sometimes recognized by the human immune system to stimulate immune response. But exchange of material between chromosome ends gives the parasite a great capacity for change and thereby immune evasion. The Anopheles genome: France was the first country to undertake a large-scale sequencing program for the Anopheles genome. As early as 1998, Genoscope and the Unit of Insect Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Institut Pasteur sequenced and analyzed the ends of 12,000 large genome fragments from a “bank” set up by Frank Collins at the University of Notre-Dame in the United States. Subsequent work of sequencing the 14,000 genes of the Anopheles was a collective effort of the Anopheles Gambiae Genome Consortium (AGGC) set up in March 2001 and was performed at Genoscope with funds from the French government and at the Celera Genomics Group in Rockville, MD. The strategy selected for the sequencing of the Anopheles’ 280 million bases (Megabases – Mb) was the “whole genome shotgun” method. The institutions contributing to the effort included NIAID, the Special Program of Research on Tropical Diseases of the World Health Organization; European Molecular Biology Laboratory of Germany; the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology in Crete; the Institut Pasteur in Paris; TIGR; and the universities of Iowa, Rome, Notre Dame, and Texas A&M. Celera’s Robert A. Holt heads a list of 123 authors on the Science paper, submitted on behalf of the AGGC. Information from the Anopheles genome is giving researchers new insights into mosquito physiology and behavior. Identification of the mosquito genes involved in the parasite’s transmission, resistance to insecticides, the mosquito’s olfactory system, its immunity, its ability to digest blood, its choice of humans as a blood source etc should eventually lead to the development of ways to control the transmission of malaria by this vector. Some fifty genes are known to be related to the mosquito’s resistance to insecticides and four of these have been identified. Comparisons between the genome sequence of Drosophila fruit fly (obtained in year 2000) and that of the mosquito have helped in the discovery of the mosquito’s equivalent gene mechanism capable of blocking development of the parasite in the mosquito. This could be a potential target for preventing the development of the parasite. The mosquito’s smell receptors, are probably implicated in the female Anopheles’ attraction to humans and a whole range of genes associated with smell has been discovered. This will considerably facilitate research on these receptors, and will probably result in the development of new repellents or new attractants. Furthermore, the possibility of a better understanding of the metabolism of the mosquito’s resistance to current insecticides could allow a more ecological use of these products. - Gardner MJ et al. Genome sequence of the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum Available at http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v419/n6906/full/nature01097.html - Holt RA et al. The Genome Sequence of the Malaria Mosquito Anopheles gambiae Science Vol 298; 4 October 2002 Available at http://nora.embl.de/ivica/publications/12364791.pdf - The malaria genome unveiled - Malaria genomes cracked - Sequenced malaria genome exposes novel drug targets - MALARIA GENOME DATABASES - Plasmodium falciparum Genome Project - The malaria genome — and beyond - The Mosquito Genome: Anopheles gambiae - Genome sequence of the mosquito Anopheles gambiae: the prospects - Parasite, Mosquito Genomes Complete Malaria Picture ©malariasite.com ©BS Kakkilaya | Last Updated: Mar 9, 2015

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War seems to have been around pretty much since the dawn of humanity. Despite there not being as many people and weapons being far less efficient at killing people death tolls still managed to creep into the millions. But then in those days wars went on for decades, if not centuries. Since the advent of mechanized and long-range weaponry wholesale slaughter has become much more streamlined and massive casualties can now be racked up in a matter of years. So, it seems that at the end of the day mankind has learnt very little except how to make wars more effective. To add further insult to the millions have lost their lives to the various wars over the last century it seems in most cases very little was gained and despite all the bloodshed no one really wins. 10. Korean War (1950-1953) The Korean War is perhaps best known through the 70s TV series M*A*S*H which illustrated the senselessness of war in general but never really touched on the utter brutality of this particular war. Often referred to as the “Forgotten War” the war in Korea never really grabbed the World’s attention, probably because it occurred so close after the global devastation of World War II. Despite this well over a million people were killed during just 3 years of fighting during which time nuclear weapons were primed to go. The war in Korea was possibly the first skirmish of the Cold War. Prior to World War II Korea had been occupied by Japan but at the end of the war Russia had liberated the north of the country and the Americans had pushed up from the south. As Soviet-US relations soured over the following years it was agreed that Korea be divided into two countries with separate governments, both of whom saw themselves as the legitimate leaders of a unified Korea. The North was a communist state, heavily supported by neighbouring Russia and China, while the South was run by an equally unpleasant dictatorship with the loose backing of the US. On the 25th June 1950 tensions eventually spilled over and the North Koreans mounted a full scale invasion of the South. Two days later a United Nations backed force led by the US was sent to defend the South. To begin with the UN forces were overwhelmed and pushed back to the very south-eastern tip of the country. However further troops poured in and the situation was turned around with the combined forces of the UN pushing the North Koreans almost back to the Chinese border. It was at this point that things took a particularly serious turn. Unwilling to have the Americans so close to their border the Chinese sent in a massive force to push back the UN coalition troops. This involved direct fighting between the Chinese and US along with some air cover by the Soviets. Overwhelmed, the UN forces dropped back. It was at this point that the spectre of using nuclear weapons was raised by the Americans. This was raised as a possibility if all out defeat on the Korean peninsula became a reality. Fortunately this never happened and the was ground to a stalemate around the previous North / South border along the 38th parallel. Bitter fighting continued on the ground with neither side taking territory decisively. Meanwhile, in the air it was a different story. With virtually unrivalled air-superiority the US carried out an massive bombing campaign of the North. More ordnance was dropped than during the War in the Pacific and it is said virtually every building of any significance in the North was flattened. In the end they simply ran out of targets During this bitter conflict atrocities were carried out by both sides. It is also documented that the US operated a “shoot-first-ask-questions-later” policy where unidentified civilians approaching US battlefield positions would regarded as enemy combatants. At the end of 3 years of fighting nothing had really changed and the border remained exactly where it was. In the aftermath hundreds of thousands more would die from starvation and in concentration camps in the North. Nearly 70 years on and the conflict simmers on; in fact the war never officially ended. 9. Second Sudanese Civil War (1983-2005) As you can see by the name this is not the first civil war to have ravaged Sudan and just like the first it was long and bloody. Lasting almost 22 years this was one of the longest civil wars ever and as a result the death toll was particularly high. By the end of the war up to 2 million people had been killed, mostly civilians, due to starvation and drought which ripped through the country. The reason for the civil war is complex and various. Some cite religious divides, others old tribal rivalries and others still put it down to a central government exploiting those in other regions. What seems to have reignited the conflict between Sudan and the semi-autonomous South Sudan was the fundamentalist Islamic Sudanese central government attempting to roll out Sharia law and relinquishing the South’s powers of self-governance. During the war in Sudan many of the familiar patterns seen in conflict across Africa occurred. Civilians bore the brunt of the killing with atrocities carried out by both sides. Massacres were committed along both ethnic and religious divides with the most notorious of these being the Bor Massacre in which more than 2,000 civilians were killed by South Sudanese rebels. Child soldiers were also used by both sides with nearly 20,000 enlisted by the rebel army alone. By the end of the Sudanese civil war it wasn’t the fighting that had left well over a million dead, it was the famine that accompanied it. Although the root cause of the famine was drought the effects were massively amplified by the war. Many felt that the Sudanese forces deliberately exacerbated the situation in an act of genocide. 8. War in Afghanistan (1978-) Of all the wars in this article this is the only that has never officially ended. The fact that it has gone on for so long and seems largely unsolvable doesn’t raise any hope that it ever will either. The problem with Afghanistan is not only does it contain many opposing factions, but that it is bordered by a large number of countries, including regional powers, all of which have been keen to interfere with the nation’s running. There is also a history of imperial meddling from Britain and Russia in particular, which to some extent destabilized the country. The current conflict in Afghanistan has its roots in the communist military coup of 1978. The pro-Soviet leader was never popular with the masses and was eventually deposed himself. This led to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 – a conflict that soon became known as “Russia’s Vietnam”. It was during the 8 years of this war that most of the casualties occured. Estimates of between 500,000 and 2 million civilian deaths have been made and at the end of the war in 1988 Afghanistan was ranked the 4th poorest country in the world. Another low point in the Afghanistan conflict, at least for the Afghan people, was in the mid 1990s when the Taliban took control of the country. They took the country back to medieval times imposing their version of strict Islamic laws banning most things, particularly having fun. Punishments ranged from summary beatings and flogging to amputations and public executions by stoning (among other methods). 7. Nigerian Civil War / Biafran War (1967-1970) The Nigerian Civil War (or Biafran War) is the classic example of the legacy the European colonizers of the 18th and 19th centuries left for Africa. Back then Africa was divided up among the various European empires in a way that suited them. Lines were drawn on the map without consideration for the people living there. Unfortunately these imposed borders often cut through long-established ethnic, tribal and religious communities, forcing together opposing tribes. While this might not have been a big problem during the iron rule of the Europeans as soon as they left old grievances quickly resurfaced. Such was the case in Nigeria when it became independent from the British in 1960. The Hausa and the Igbo ethnic groups came from unrelated backgrounds and had different religions. Unable to decide how to share power over Nigeria the mainly christian Igbos in the southeast broke away and formed the country of Biafra. Coincidentally this new country controlled the oil-rich Niger Delta, a factor that probably encouraged both the Nigerian majority and outside interests to take back Biafra. The fighting was fierce at times with both sides going on the offensive. Atrocities were committed on both sides with perhaps the biggest being towards the end of the war. In order to force the Biafrans to capitulate the Nigerian federals, with the support of the British managed to surround Biafra and impose a total blockade. This led to a humanitarian disaster with famine sweeping the besieged area. Whether this was an act of genocide by the British and Nigerians is still debatable. By the end of the war in 1970 it is estimated that as many as 2 million people, half of them children, had died of starvation. 6. Vietnam War (1961-1973) Many movies have been made of World War II and until relatively recently very few of them touched on the grim reality of war. Vietnam on the other hand has been covered by any number of movies and pretty much every one of them has focused on the horror of it all. In previous wars (except maybe Korea) things had been pretty clear cut; we were the good guys going in to save the world from whatever evil was on the march. This was not the case in Vietnam; in fact it wasn’t even obvious to many Americans why they were being forced to fight an unknown enemy thousands of miles from home. 5. Second Congo War (1998-2003) If the World can have two wars why not Congo?! There was actually barely a year between the two wars and some experts don’t actually regard them as separate at all. What does separate them though is the casualty rate with the Second Congo War eclipsing the first in terms of bloodshed. Although most commonly referred to as the Congo War this conflict is sometimes referred to as the “African World War”, which should give some idea of the scale. At its height there were nine African countries fighting in the war and any number of armed groups. The exact causes of the war are complex and link in with the ethnic based genocides in Rwanda. Whilst perhaps not on the same scale, many atrocities took place during this conflict. The overall death toll from the war in Congo has never really been agreed on. The figure represents the number of people who died during the conflict who would not have died otherwise. This involves both direct and relatively indirect causes such as disease and famine. Regardless of the exact figures it is still likely the Congo war resulted in more deaths than any other conflict since World War II. 4. Russian Civil War (1917-1922) While the rest of Europe were busy killing each other in the final years of World War I the Russians had resorted to killing each other in what would be Europe’s bloodiest civil war. The war was to some extent a byproduct of World War I. This had been somewhat of a disaster for Russia both in terms of bloodshed and economically. As things deteriorated frustration and a long standing resentment of the all powerful ruling royal family boiled over. In 1917 a relatively bloodless revolution took place with Tsar Nicholas II being deposed and a provisional government being put in place. Unfortunately, that was only the beginning. Now, it would be easy to think of the Russian Civil war as a simple two-sided fight between the pro-monarchy ‘White’ and the communist ‘Red’ armies, but that would be a very simplistic view. There were also neutral ‘Green’ armies and the anarchist ‘Black’ army. Thrown into this already complex mix was the intervention of any number of foreign powers from Japan to the countries of Western Europe. The slippery slope to civil war began with the Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, seizing power from the provisional government. From here on it was more or less everybody against the Bolsheviks, not just the monarchists, but other socialist, left-aligned groups too. During the early stages of the war the White army took back much of Russia. However, in doing so their brutal tactics did not make them popular. Looting farms, burning towns, torture and execution were commonplace and played very much into the hands of the Bolsheviks. Under the highly effective leadership of Trotsky the Red army became a formidable force, and their ranks swelled as conscription was introduced. The Reds could be fairly ruthless too and were also masters of propaganda and manipulation. Early in the war they removed any hope of the monarchy being re established by executing the Tsar and his family. By the end of the Russian Civil War it is was estimated that over 1.5 million fighters had died. But as is always the case the civilian death toll was far higher with as many as 8 million dying either directly from the war or from the famine and disease that followed. 3. Chinese Civil War (1927-1949) There is a certain logic to the fact that the country with the biggest population also had the most deadly civil war. In that respect the Chinese Civil War does not disappoint. It was also a longer running war than the rest on this list with fighting taking place for around 15 years. There was however a ten year interruption between 1936 and 1945; unfortunately this was because the Japanese invaded swathes of China and there was no let up in the suffering of the Chinese population. The build up to the civil war was the collapse of the Qing Dynasty in 1911. China was already fairly fragmented and this created something of a power vacuum. Soon after two political parties formed and to begin with things looked quite positive as they worked together to unify China. These were the nationalist Kuomintang Party led by Chiang Kai-shek and the Communist Party (CPC) led by Mao Zedong. Sadly the honeymoon period didn’t last; internal rivalries bubbled to the surface and Kuomintang went for a power grab. In 1927 the so-called Shanghai massacre took place in which members of the Communist party were rounded up and killed. This is the event that sparked the full-blown civil war and for most of the next the CPC were on the back foot. One of the most famous episodes of this period was the “Long March” in which Mao led his troops on a 7,000 mile retreat across China. Starting with around 80,000 men only 8,000 made it to the end alive. During World War II the Japanese invasion halted the civil war, but in 1945 things began again with renewed vigour. This time the two sides were backed by the ‘superpowers’ with America supporting the Kuomintang and the Soviets supporting the CPC. After initial gains by the Kuomintang things began to turn around as the CPC gained the support of the population. Slowly but surely the communists retook the country and finally Beijing. Here they declared victory and set up the People’s Republic of China. The Kuomintang fled to Taiwan where they became the Republic of China. To this day relations between Taiwan and Beijing are somewhat complicated with both sides still claiming to be the righteous government of China. 2. World War I (1914-1918) “The War to End All Wars” – that’s what they called it. Unfortunately this now famous quote from American president Woodrow Wilson proved to be wildly optimistic. It does however give a sense of just how harrowing this war was and the huge toll it took on both sides. World War I was triggered by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria by a Serbian anarchist. Looking back it seems insane that a war that cost millions of lives could have been caused such an obscure event. However, this appears to have been the final straw as tensions in Europe had been simmering away owing to the lack of a good war for many years. At this time Europe’s major powers had divided into two pacts; The Triple Entente which consisted of Britain, France, Ireland and Russia, and the Central Powers: Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey. These rival blocs had agreements in place meaning if one was attacked the others would step in to provide defence. And this is what happened when Germany crossed into neutral Belgium on 4th August 1914 en route to attacking France. Shortly after Russia piled in to the East, marching on Prussia. World War I involved a new kind of warfare involving powerful weapons and machinery. Heavy artillery and tanks wrought carnage along the frontlines and the first chemical weapons were used. In the Battle of the Somme, the biggest of all World War I’s over a million men were killed in horrific trench warfare. 75% of these were killed by artillery shells with many of the remainder being mown down by machine guns whilst on virtual suicide missions to attempt to capture enemy positions. Despite this utter carnage neither side made any gains on the enemy during the 5 months it lasted. By the end of the war the Central Powers had been beaten into submission at a cost of up to 21 million lives. But no sooner than peace been established that a worse calamity was about to befall the world. The Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 was the deadliest disease outbreak in history and to a large extent its spread and development have been linked to the war. The increased mobility and poor conditions created by the war are believed to have been major factors. 1. World War II (1939-1945) Those of you with faith in humanity would have assumed that World War I should have been enough to put mankind from ever trying that again. Unfortunately not. Obviously the fashionable thinking at the time was that there was plenty of unfinished business to be resolved. Wars are often complex and have many different causes, to some extent this is true of World War II. On the other hand it is one of the few wars in history where there have been such clear cut bad guys. I would have said “vs good guys”, but in the years following WWII the actions of many of these countries hasn’t exactly been exemplary. Anyway, back to those bad guys, namely Germany and Japan (although there were a few other despicable players on that team). Ever since the end of WWI trouble had been fermenting in Germany. The loss of that war had humbled the German people and brought with it crippling economic problems as Germany paid reparations and rebuilt. Enter Adolf Hitler; he provided a stable, growing economy and a re-invigorated sense of national pride which had been missing for many years. But Hitler’s aspirations didn’t stop here. Whether the German people turned a blind eye as things were improving or were complicit in Hitler’s master plan are debatable. In a nutshell Hitler wanted to make Germany great again and this involved building an Empire. Starting off with excuses such as defending German-speaking majorities Hitler began invading his neighbours. This went unchecked by the other world powers but a line in the sand was drawn with the invasion of Poland. What the rest of the world seemed to have missed is Hitler had been building up massive war machine, to some extent in secret. When unleashed this army rapidly steam-rollered through much of Western Europe virtually unchecked. Peaceful countries such as the Netherlands, Belgium and France didn’t known what had hit them – and by the time they did it was too late. But Hitler was a classic megalomaniac – he didn’t know when to stop. Instead of regrouping and strengthening his grip on the west he decided to double cross Russia, breaking a pact, and invade the motherland. To begin with progress was much like it had been in western Europe – the tanks stormed through Russia taking city after city. However, things were about to take a turn and Hitler was about to learn a lesson, learnt by Europe’s last great megalomaniac, Napoleon. As winter set in in Russia things ground to a halt and the Russians had time to regroup. It was now that the Germans found out about the almost endless supply of troops the Russians seemed to be able to provide. In addition the factories of Russia went into overdrive, pumping out world class tanks. In the end the Germans were driven out of Russia but on the way they caused carnage, which was in turn taken out on them by the Russian soldiers. In total over 25 million people from the Soviet bloc were killed during the fighting – over half of whom were civilians. It was Hitler’s Russian adventure along with America’s decision to join the War that caused his downfall. However, this is probably not the act of evil that Hitler is best remembered for. It was his pathological hatred of the Jews (and several other groups). Whilst the Jews have always provided a convenient scapegoat throughout history the Nazis took this to the next level, declaring a desire to wipe them from the face of the earth. And they had a pretty good go at it. During the Holocaust the Nazis turned murder into an industry with up to 6 million men, women and children exterminated in industrial complexes built specifically for this reason. In addition to the staggering numbers there are plenty of stories of the horrific cruelty inflicted on the inmates of these concentration camps. Although the Nazis out did themselves in terms of atrocities committed the Japanese weren’t that far behind. Like the Germans, the Japanese were on an empire building mission. They thought it would be easier and cheaper to invade their neighbours than to trade with them to buy the raw materials they could not provide for themselves. Nothing particularly new here but the contempt the Japanese had for the civilians of these countries was almost unimaginable. The most notorious example of Japanese brutality during World War II occurred in the Chinese city of Nanjing. Before the Japanese army arrived the Chinese army had pulled out leaving behind virtually only civilians. After meeting no resistance the invading Japanese troops went on a 6 week orgy of murder and rape. Estimates put the death rate as up to 300,000. The stories are truly horrific with examples including babies being used for bayonet practice, competitions among troops to see how many civilians they could kill with swords and prisoners being buried alive. At the end of World War II it is estimated that around 3.5% of the entire global population had perished – in the order of 80 million men, women and children.

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A portmanteau (i//, //; plural portmanteaus or portmanteaux //) or portmanteau word is a linguistic blend of words, in which parts of multiple words, or their phones (sounds), and their meanings are combined into a new word. A portmanteau word fuses both the sounds and the meanings of its components, as in smog, coined by blending smoke and fog, or motel, from motor and hotel. In linguistics, a portmanteau is defined as a single morph that represents two or more morphemes. The definition overlaps with the grammatical term contraction, but contractions are formed from words that would otherwise appear together in sequence, such as do and not to make don't, whereas a portmanteau word is formed by combining two or more existing words that all relate to a singular concept which the portmanteau describes. A portmanteau also differs from a compound, which does not involve the truncation of parts of the stems of the blended words. For instance, starfish is a compound, not a portmanteau, of star and fish; whereas a hypothetical portmanteau of star and fish might be stish. The word "portmanteau" was first used in this context by Lewis Carroll in the book Through the Looking-Glass (1871), in which Humpty Dumpty explains to Alice the coinage of the unusual words in Jabberwocky, where "slithy" means "slimy and lithe" and "mimsy" is "miserable and flimsy." Humpty Dumpty explains the practice of combining words in various ways by telling Alice: You see it's like a portmanteau—there are two meanings packed up into one word. Humpty Dumpty's theory, of two meanings packed into one word like a portmanteau, seems to me the right explanation for all. For instance, take the two words "fuming" and "furious." Make up your mind that you will say both words, but leave it unsettled which you will say first … if you have the rarest of gifts, a perfectly balanced mind, you will say "frumious." In then-contemporary English, a portmanteau was a suitcase that opened into two equal sections. The etymology of the word is the French porte-manteau, from porter, to carry, and manteau, cloak (from Old French mantel, from Latin mantellum). In modern French, a porte-manteau is a clothes valet, a coat-tree or similar article of furniture for hanging up jackets, hats, umbrellas and the like. It has also been used especially in Europe as a formal description for hat racks from the French words porter (to carry) and manteau (cloak). Examples in English Many neologisms are examples of blends, but many blends have become part of the lexicon. In Punch in 1896, the word brunch (breakfast + lunch) was introduced as a "portmanteau word." In 1964, the newly independent African republic of Tanganyika and Zanzibar chose the portmanteau word Tanzania as its name. Similarly Eurasia is a portmanteau of Europe and Asia. Some city names are portmanteaux of the border regions they straddle: Texarkana spreads across the Texas-Arkansas-Louisiana border, while Calexico and Mexicali are respectively the American and Mexican sides of a single conurbation. A scientific example is a liger, which is a cross between a male lion and a female tiger (a tigon or tiglon is a similar cross in which the male is a tiger). Many company or brand names are portmanteaus, including Microsoft, a portmanteau of microcomputer and software; the cheese "Cambozola" combines a similar rind to "Camembert" with the same mold used to make "Gorgonzola"; passenger rail company "Amtrak", a portmanteau of "America" and "track"; "Velcro", a portmanteau of the French "Velours" (velvet) and "Crochet" (hook); "Verizon," a portmanteau of "veritas" (Latin for truth) and "horizon," and ComEd (A Chicago-area electric utility company) a portmanteau of "Commonwealth" and Edison (Thomas Edison). "Jeoportmanteau!" is a recurring category on the American television quiz show Jeopardy!. The category's name is itself a portmanteau of the words "Jeopardy" and "portmanteau." Responses in the category are portmanteaux constructed by fitting two words together. Portmanteau words may be produced by joining together proper nouns with common nouns, such as "gerrymandering," which refers to the scheme of Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry for politically contrived re-districting; the perimeter of one of the districts thereby created resembled a very curvy salamander in outline. The term gerrymander has itself contributed to portmanteau terms bjelkemander and playmander. Many portmanteau words receive some use but do not appear in all dictionaries. For example, a spork is an eating utensil that is a combination of a spoon and a fork, and a skort is an item of clothing that is part skirt, part shorts. On the other hand, turducken, a dish made by inserting a chicken into a duck, and the duck into a turkey, was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2010. Similarly, the word refudiate was first used by Sarah Palin when she misspoke, conflating the words refute and repudiate. Though initially a gaffe, the word was recognized as the New Oxford American Dictionary's "Word of the Year" in 2010. The business lexicon is replete with newly coined portmanteau words like "permalance" (permanent freelance), "advertainment" (advertising as entertainment), "advertorial" (a blurred distinction between advertising and editorial), "infotainment" (information about entertainment or itself intended to entertain by virtue of its manner of presentation), and "infomercial" (informational commercial). Two proper names can also be used in creating a portmanteau word in reference to the partnership between people, especially in cases where both persons are well-known, or sometimes to produce epithets such as "Billary" (referring to former United States president Bill Clinton and his wife, former United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton). In this example of recent American political history, the purpose for blending is not so much to combine the meanings of the source words but "to suggest a resemblance of one named person to the other"; the effect is often derogatory, as linguist Benjamin Zimmer states. By contrast, the public, including the media, use portmanteaux to refer to their favorite pairings as a way to "...giv[e] people an essence of who they are within the same name." This is particularly seen in cases of fictional and real-life "supercouples". An early known example, Bennifer, referred to film stars Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez. Other examples include Brangelina (Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie) and TomKat (Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes). "Desilu Productions" was a Los Angeles, California-based company jointly owned by couple and actors Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball. Miramax is the combination of the first names of the parents of the Weinstein brothers. Holidays are another example, as in Thanksgivukkah, a portmanteau neologism given to the convergence of the American holiday of Thanksgiving and the first day of the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah on Thursday, 28 November 2013. In vernacular Arabic, contractions are a pretty common phenomenon, in which mostly prepositions are added to other words to create a word with a new meaning. For example, the Hejazi word for "not yet" is لسع/لسه (lessa/lessaʕ), which is a combination of the words لـ (li, for) and الساعة (assaʕa,the hour). Other examples in Hejazi Arabic include: - إيش (eːsh, what), from أي (ay, which) and شيء (shayʔ, thing). - ليش (leːsh, why), from لـ (li, for) and أي (ay, which) and شيء (shayʔ, thing). - فين (feːn, where), from في (fiː, in) and أين (ayn, where). - إلين (ileːn, until), from إلى (ilaː, to) and أن (an, that). - دحين (daħeːn or daħiːn, now), from ذا (thaː, this) and الحين (alħiːn, part of time). - علشان/عشان (ʕashaːn/ʕalashaːn, because), from على (ʕalaː, on) and شأن (shaʔn, matter). - كمان (kamaːn, also/more), from كما (kamaː as) and أن (an that). - معليش (maʕleːsh, is it ok?/sorry), from ما (maː, nothing) and عليه (ʕalayh, on him) and شيء (shayʔ, thing). - إيوه (iːwa, yes), from إي (iː, yes) and و (wa , swear to or promise by) and الله (allaːh, god). A few rare or facetious examples would include: - لعم from ("naʕm", yes) and ("la", no), implying you are not sure - متشائل ("mutashaʔim", pessimist) and ("mutafaʔil", optimist), the title of a novel published by Emile Habibi in 1974. The title is translated in English to "The Pessoptimist." - كهرماء ("kahramaʔ", utilities) coined from كهرباء ("kahrabaʔ", electricity) and ماء ("maʔ", water), the national utilities company of Qatar - كهرطيسي ("kahratisi", electromagnetic) coined from كهرباء ("kahrabaʔ", electricity) and مغناطيسي ("magnetic") In the Bulgarian language the most common use of portmanteau is as a part of advertising campaigns. One such example is the word gintuition (джинтуиция pronounced dzhintuitsia), which is made up from the words gin and intuition. This one in particular is used, not surprisingly, as a part of a gin commercial. Another example is the word charomat, which consists of the words чар (the Bulgarian word for charm) and аромат (meaning aroma), made popular by an ad about a coffee brand. Several Chinese province names are portmanteau words. Anhui is a combination of Anqing and Huizhou, Fujian is a combination of Fuzhou and Jianzhou (ancient name of Jian'ou), Gansu is a combination of Ganzhou and Suzhou, and Jiangsu is a combination of Jiangning (ancient name of Nanjing) and Suzhou. Certain portmanteaus in Filipino have come into use to describe popular combinations of items in a Filipino breakfast. An example of such a combination order is kankamtuy: an order of kanin (rice), kamatis (tomatoes) and tuyo (dried fish). Another is tapsi: an order of tapa and sinangág. Other examples include variations using a silog suffix, usually some kind of meat served with sinangág and itlog (egg). The three most commonly seen silogs are tapsilog (having tapa as the meat portion), tocilog (having tocino as the meat portion), and longsilog (having longganisa as the meat portion). Other silogs include hotsilog (with a hot dog), bangsilog (with bangus (milkfish)), dangsilog (with danggit (rabbitfish)), spamsilog (with spam), adosilog (with adobo), chosilog (with chorizo), chiksilog (with chicken), cornsilog (with corned beef), and litsilog (with lechon/litson). An establishment that specializes in such meals is called a tapsihan or "tapsilugan". The name of a common Filipino mongrel dogs askal is derived from Tagalog words "asong kalye" or "street dog" because these dogs are commonly seen in streets. Askals are also called "aspins", a combination of "asong Pinoy" or "Philippine Dog". Despite its French etymology (modern spelling: porte-manteau), portmanteau is not used in French in this context. It is indeed a false friend. It refers to a coat stand or coat hook (literally a "coat support"), but in the past it could also refer to a cloth drape knight would use to pack their gear. It was in this context that it first came to its English use, and the metaphorical use for a linguistic phenomenon (putting one word inside another, as into a case) is an English coinage. The French linguistic term mot-valise, literally a "suitcase-word", is a relatively recent back-translation from English, attested only since 1970. Although French is regulated by the Académie française (which has had a conservative attitude to neologisms) it produced a number of portmanteau words such as franglais (frenglish) or courriel (courrier électronique = email) and has used the technique in literature (Boris Vian) or to create brands: Transilien (Transports franciliens = Île-de-France transportation system). French has a second regulatory body, named OQLF, an agency of the Government of Quebec, which is completely independent from the Académie. It has a tendency to produce neologisms in order to replace anglicisms. It created the portmanteaus courriel and clavardage (clavier + bavardage), for example. Another example in Quebec (but made outside of OQLF) is Centricois, which means person from the region Centre-du-Québec (winner of a contest organised by the SSJB of Centre-du-Québec in 1999). Galician has many portmanteaus, some existing also in Portuguese but many others not (or only in the North of Portugal, close to Galicia), which can be explained by its popular origin: carambelo (frozen candy), from caramelo (candy) and carámbano (icicle); martabela (a kind of dead bolt), from martelo (hammer) and tarabela (a kind of drill bit); rabuñar (to scratch with a fingernail, for instance a cat or a person), from rabuxa (a small tail, and also a common ill in tails) and rañar (to scratch); millenta ("many thousands", also common in Portuguese milhenta), from milleiro (one thousand) and cento (one hundred); runxir (to crackle, applied to some things only), from ruxir (to howl) and renxer (to grind the teeth), or vagamundo (tramp), from vagabundo (wanderer) and mundo (world), currently "vagamundo" and "vagabundo" mean the same, and the former is considered a vulgarism. Kofferwort, a German synonym for portmanteau, is a recent literal translation of French mot-valise, attested since 1983. However, the phenomenon is well known in German poetry. A modern example of German portmanteau is 'Teuro', combining 'teuer' (expensive) and 'Euro'. Other examples are Mainhattan, a Central business district in Frankfurt on the river Main like Manhattan, New York and Kreuzkölln, the Berlin area bordering between Kreuzberg and Neukölln. Modern Hebrew abounds with European mechanisms such as blending: Along with קומפקט דיסק (kompaktdisk, compact disc), Hebrew has the blend תקליטור (taklitor), which consists of the Jewish-descent תקליט (taklít, record) and אור (or, light). Modern Hebrew is full of portmanteau blends, such as: - ערפיח (arpiakh, smog), from ערפל (arafel, fog) and פיח (piakh, soot) - מדרחוב (midrakhov, (pedestrian) promenade), from מדרכה (midrakha, footpath) and רחוב (rekhov, street) - מחזמר (makhazemer, musical), from מחזה (makhazeh, play [noun]) and זמר (zémer, song) - מגדלור (migdalor, lighthouse), from מגדל (migdal, tower) and אור (or, light) - רמזור (ramzor, traffic light), from רמז (remez, signal) and אור (or, light) Sometimes the root of the second word is truncated, giving rise to a portmanteau that resembles an acrostic: - תפוז (tapuz, orange fruit), from תפוח (tapuach, apple) and זהב (zahav, gold) A portmanteau common in both Hindi and English is Hinglish, which refers to the vernacular of the people in (the Hindi-speaking regions of) India, where they mix Hindi and English in the spoken language. Another modern day example is the BrahMos missile, whose name is a portmanteau of two rivers, Brahmaputra and Moskva. There is a tradition of linguistic purism in Icelandic, and neologisms are frequently created from pre-existing words. Tölva ("computer") is a portmanteau of tala ("digit; number") and völva ("oracle or seeress"). In Indonesian, portmanteaux are often used as both formal and informal acronyms and referrals. Many organizations and government bodies use them for brevity. Journalists often create portmanteaux for particular historical moments. Examples include: Formal and journalism uses: - Golput: voters who abstain from voting, from Golongan Putih, "blank party" or "white party". - Jagorawi: a motorway linking the cities of Jakarta, Bogor and Ciawi. - Jabodetabek: the neighboring cities of Jakarta, consisting of Jakarta, Bogor, Depok, Tangerang, Bekasi, and sometimes Cianjur (Jabodetabekjur). - The Suramadu Bridge connects the cities of Surabaya and Madura - "Malari": refers to "Malapetaka 15 Januari" – a social riot that happened on 15 January 1974. - Military units, e.g. Kopassus army special forces unit, from Komando Pasukan Khusus, "special forces command". Another example is the Kopaska navy frogman unit, from Komando Pasukan Katak, "Frogman Command". - Governmental bodies, e.g. "Kemdikbud", refers to "Kementerian Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan" (Education and Culture Ministry), where the ministry leader is called "Mendikbud", "Menteri Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan" (Minister of Education and Culture). Informal uses, for example: - Asbun = Asal bunyi: carelessly speaking - Mafia = matematika + fisika + kimia: math, physics, and chemistry, three school subjects that are often related with arithmetic - Caper = cari perhatian: attention seeker - Warnet = warung internet: internet cafe - Alay = anak layangan: unfashionable people - Copas = Copy paste: copying other people's work without permission - Ropang = roti panggang: toasted bread - Nasgor = nasi goreng A very common type of portmanteau in Japanese forms one word from the beginnings of two others (that is, from two back-clippings). The portion of each input word retained is usually two morae, which is tantamount to one kanji in most words written in kanji. The inputs to the process can be native words, Sino-Japanese words, gairaigo (later borrowings), or combinations thereof. A Sino-Japanese example is the name 東大 (Tōdai) for the University of Tokyo, in full 東京大学 (Tōkyō daigaku). With borrowings, typical results are words such as パソコン (pasokon), meaning personal computer (PC), which despite being formed of English elements does not exist in English; it is a uniquely Japanese contraction of the English personal computer (パーソナル・コンピュータ pāsonaru konpyūta). Another example, Pokémon (ポケモン), is a contracted form of the English words pocket (ポケット poketto) and monsters (モンスター monsutā). A famous example of a blend with mixed sources is karaoke (カラオケ karaoke), blending the Japanese word for empty (空 kara) and the English word orchestra (オーケストラ ōkesutora). A modern example of a Latin portmanteau is lamprophrenia, combining lampron (bright) and phrenia (mind). Although not very common in Spanish (except for some compulsory contractions such as 'a el'='al'), portmanteaux are finding their way into the language mainly through marketing and media efforts, such as in Mexican Spanish 'cafebrería' from 'cafetería' and 'librería', or Teletón from 'televisión' and 'maratón'. However, it is very frequent in commercial brands of any type (for instance, "chocolleta", from "chocolate" + "galleta", cookie), and above all family owned business (of small size, for instance: Rocar, from "Roberto" + "Carlos", and Mafer, from "Maria" + "Fernanda"). Such usages are obviously prompted by the registering of a distinguishable trademark, but with time is common that a specific trademark became the name of the all similar products, like in Cola Cao, a name which is very common to use to refer any similar product. Neologisms are also frequently created from pre-existing words in the Tibetan languages. For example, kubkyab (the common word for "chair") combines the words kub ("butt"), kyag ("a stand"), and gyab nye ("cushion," often for the back). Gyabnye is itself a blend of gyabten ("back support") and nyeba, the verb for "lean against, recline, rest on." Thus the word for chair is "a standing support for one's butt and back to rest on." Tibetan also employs portmanteaus frequently in names of important figures and spiritual practices, such as His Holiness Penor Rinpoche, with Penor being pema norbu ("lotus jewel"), and the Buddhist practice of Dzogchen, or dzogpa chenpo, the "Great Perfection." Tibetan is rich with portmanteaus. In linguistics the term blend is used to refer to general combination of words, and the term portmanteau is reserved for the narrow sense of combining two or more morphemes in one morph. E.g. in the Latin word animalis the ending -is is a portmanteau morph because it is used for two morphemes: the singularity and the genitive case. In English two separate morphs are used (of an animal). The term may also be extended to include contractions. Examples of such combinations include: |West Frisian||bist do||bisto| |yn de||yn 'e| While in Portuguese, French, Spanish and Italian the use of the short forms is obligatory (with the exception of ès in French, which is archaic in most senses), German and Cornish speakers theoretically may freely choose the form they use. In German, portmanteaus clearly dominate in spoken language, whilst in written language both forms are in use. - Body Sweats: The Uncensored Writings of Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, a collection the poetry of Dadaist Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven featuring frequent and creative use of portmanteaux - Blend word - Border towns in the United States with portmanteau names - Double entendre - Finnegans Wake, James Joyce's novel with an unusually high proportion of portmanteau neologisms - Hybrid word - List of portmanteaus - Syllabic abbreviation - Garner's Modern American Usage, p. 644 - "Portmanteau". Merriam-Webster Offline Dictionary. Retrieved 21 June 2008. - "Portmanteau word". The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000. Retrieved 21 June 2008. - "portmanteau word". Webster's New World College Dictionary. Cleveland: Wiley. 2010. ISBN 0-7645-7125-7. - "Portmanteau word". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 23 August 2013. - "What is a portmanteau morph?". LinguaLinks Library. 2003. External link in - Thomas, David (1983). "An invitation to grammar". Summer Institute of Linguistics. Bangkok: Mahidol University: 9. - Crystal, David (1985). "A dictionary of linguistics and phonetics" (2nd ed.). New York: Basil Blackwell: 237. - Hartmann, R.R.K.; Stork, F.C. (1972). "Dictionary of language and linguistics". London: Applied Science: 180. - "portmanteau, n.". Oxford English Dictionary, third edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2010. Retrieved 23 February 2011. - Fromkin, V., Rodman, R., and Hyams, N. (2007) An Introduction to Language, Eighth Edition. Boston: Thomson Wadsworth. ISBN 1-4130-1773-8. - "Portmanteau." The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000. - Petit Robert: portemanteau - "malle penderie" (suitcase in which clothes hang) - "PORTEMANTEAU : Définition de PORTEMANTEAU". cnrtl.fr. - Such a "coat bag" is mentioned in Chapter 12 of Alexander Dumas' ″The Count of Monte Cristo″ The Count of Monte Cristo - Punch, 1 August 1896, 58/2 - "NEW OXFORD AMERICAN DICTIONARY'S 2010 WORD OF THE YEAR IS...". Retrieved 30 January 2012. - Zimmer, Benjamin (1 November 2005). "A perilous portmanteau?". Language Log. University of Pennsylvania. Retrieved 11 November 2008. - Winterman, Denise (3 August 2006). "What a mesh". BBC News Magazine. Retrieved 17 July 2008. - Christine Byrne (2 October 2013). "How To Celebrate Thanksgivukkah, The Best Holiday Of All Time". Buzzfeed. Retrieved 10 October 2013. - Stu Bykofsky (22 October 2012). "Thanks for Thanukkah!". Philly.com. Retrieved 11 October 2013. - Wallah (Arabic) - The name also combines the word lien (link) - Kristján Árnason; Sigrún Helgadóttir (1991), "Terminology and Icelandic Language Policy", Behovet och nyttan av terminologiskt arbete på 90-talet, Nordterm 5, Nordterm-symposium, pp. 7–21 - "Golput – Schott's Vocab Blog – NYTimes.com". The New York Times. 17 February 2009. Retrieved 19 June 2009. - "What are contracted words like rimokon?". Sljfaq.org. Retrieved 3 October 2013. - Rosen, Eric. "Japanese loanword accentuation: epenthesis and foot form interacting through edge-interior alignment∗" (PDF). University of British Columbia. sfu.ca. Retrieved 25 November 2010. |Look up portmanteau, portmanteau word, or Category:English blends in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.| - Lexiconcept.com—an online portmanteau generator - Portmanteaur.com—a tool for making portmanteaus - Portmanteau tool – Invent new words (with definition)

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BRCA Gene Mutation Testing - Also Known As: - BRCA1 and BRCA2 Testing - BRCA1/2 Testing - Breast Cancer Susceptibility Genes 1 & 2 Testing - Germline BRCA Testing Test Quick Guide BRCA gene mutation testing shows whether you have inherited mutations, also called variants, in your BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes. It is performed using a blood sample, saliva, or cells removed from the inside of your cheek. This test can reveal if you are at higher-than-average risk of developing certain cancers, especially breast or ovarian cancer. Knowing if a harmful mutation is present enables people to take steps to reduce their cancer risk. About the Test Purpose of the test Testing for BRCA genetic mutations reveals whether you have inherited gene mutations that can increase your risk of cancer. Mutations are permanent changes in the DNA that makes up a person’s genes. Genes are passed to you from your parents and contain the information needed to build and maintain your body throughout your life. Genes affect traits that are passed down, like your hair color, how tall you are, and the likelihood you’ll develop particular diseases. Genetic mutations may contribute to the development of disease, although not everyone with a harmful genetic mutation will develop a particular disease. All people have BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, which enable your body to make proteins called tumor suppressors. When your BRCA genes are normal, the proteins they produce help keep your cells from developing abnormally. If you inherited a harmful mutation in your BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene, your body is less efficient at making tumor suppressor proteins. This means it is easier for cells to grow abnormally and develop into cancer. The table below shows how BRCA gene mutations increase the lifetime risk of developing certain cancers: |Cancer Type||Approximate Lifetime Risk||Estimated Lifetime Risk withBRCA1 Mutation||Estimated Lifetime Risk with BRCA2 Mutation| |Female Breast Cancer||12.9%||55-70%||45-70%| |Male Breast Cancer||0.13%||1%||8%| Most of the time, these cancers are not caused by inherited gene mutations. Only about 5-10% of breast cancers and 15% of ovarian cancers are linked to mutations in the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes. It is even less common for prostate or pancreatic cancer to be related to a gene mutation. But certain patterns in your personal or family medical history make it more likely that a harmful gene mutation may cause cancer. What does BRCA gene mutation testing measure? There are many different mutations in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes that may be detected during BRCA gene mutation testing. Which genes are tested depends on your circumstances: - Most patients will have what is known as a multigene panel test. Multigene panel tests can detect a broad array of BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations, as well as harmful mutations in other genes that can increase cancer risk. - If a particular mutation has been found in a family member, you may be tested only for that known gene mutation. - In Ashkenazi (Eastern European) Jews, three particular BRCA mutations are much more common than in other ethnic groups. These mutations are known as “founder mutations.” If testing is performed because of concerns about ancestry, testing may be limited to these three mutations. When should I get BRCA genetic mutation testing? Certain patterns of cancer in a family or in an individual raise suspicion that a harmful gene mutation is present. Expert groups, including the National Comprehensive Cancer Network and the American College of Medical Genetics recommend BRCA testing for people whose personal history includes: - Female breast cancer diagnosed under the age of 45 to 50 or at any age if Ashkenazi Jewish - Triple negative breast cancer (estrogen receptor (ER)-, progesterone receptor (PR)-, and HER2-negative) diagnosed at age 60 or younger - Two or more primary breast cancers, with one diagnosed under the age of 50 - Breast cancer at any age and a relative with breast cancer under the age of 50 - Male breast cancer - Ovarian, fallopian tube, or primary peritoneal cancer - Metastatic prostate cancer - High-grade prostate cancer and Ashkenazi Jewish heritage - Pancreatic cancer Testing may be recommended if your family history includes: - A close relative (mother, father, sister, son, daughter, grandparent, grandchild, cousin, niece, nephew, aunt, uncle, or half-sibling) who meets one of the conditions above. - A biological relative who has been found to have a harmful BRCA gene mutation. - Ashkenazi Jewish adults, even if they have no personal or family risk of cancer. Harmful mutations can be inherited from either your mother or your father, so the cancer history of both sides of your family should be considered. Often, BRCA gene mutation testing is discussed after someone has been diagnosed with cancer. If a mutation is found in the cancer patient, other family members can be tested for that particular gene mutation. The patient’s parents, children, brothers, and sisters all have a 50% chance of having the same mutation. Finding a BRCA Gene Mutation Test How to get tested If you are concerned that certain cancers run in your family, your first step may be talking to your primary care provider. Talk to your doctor about the types of cancers that have occurred in your family, how old people were when the cancer was found, if any relatives had more than one cancer, and if you have Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry. Based on this information, a doctor can assess the likelihood that you could have a genetic mutation in your family. Your primary care provider can order BRCA gene testing for you or they may refer you to a genetic counselor. You can also find a genetics counselor on your own using the National Society of Genetic Counselors’ directory. A genetic counselor can perform a risk assessment, weighing a number of factors to determine whether you are likely to have a harmful gene mutation. They can also discuss the pros and cons of genetic testing and answer any questions you may have. The counselor can order genetic testing for you and may be able to take a blood or saliva specimen for testing in their office. Or you may be asked to provide your sample at a lab. Can I take the test at home? The FDA has approved one direct-to-consumer test that detects some BRCA mutations. Direct-to-consumer tests do not require orders from a health care provider. In addition, there are other at-home tests which require physicians’ orders for you to be tested. The companies that sell these tests may contact your personal physician or provide a physician consultation on their website. At-home tests may be appealing because they offer convenience and privacy. In addition, they are usually less expensive than tests ordered by a health care provider. However, they have some important drawbacks: - At-home tests are limited in scope. For instance, the FDA-approved direct-to-consumer test detects only 3 out of the more than 1000 mutations known to occur in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes. This limitation means that, even if your test results are negative, you could still have one of the many BRCA mutations that weren’t tested for. - If a harmful change is found, you will need to confirm the test in a clinically approved laboratory before you can proceed with steps to reduce your cancer risk. - The support of an expert is important. A doctor or genetic counselor can help you understand the significance of your test results and advise you about reducing your cancer risk. How much does the test cost? The cost of BRCA gene mutation testing varies depending upon what lab is used, and how broad the test is. Some tests look only for a mutation known to run in your family. Others look for a much wider range of mutations. The cost of testing ranges from under $100 to over $2000. If a doctor or genetic counselor orders genetic testing for you, your insurance usually covers the cost. Depending on your specific situation and health care plan, you may or may not be responsible for some out-of-pocket costs, such as copays and deductibles. If you do not have health insurance, you may still be able to get testing if your primary care provider or genetic counselor believes it is medically necessary. Many labs provide financial assistance for testing. It may also be possible to receive genetic counseling and undergo testing as part of a research study. At-home genetic testing that includes BRCA1 and BRCA2 costs around $200 to $300. However, these tests typically only detect three BRCA mutations out of the more than 1000 which have been identified. If you have a positive result with an at-home test, you will need to confirm the result with a clinical laboratory. Taking a BRCA Gene Test Before the test Usually, a blood sample will be taken by a health professional and sent to a specialty lab for analysis. Sometimes saliva or scrapings from the inside of your cheek may be used instead. To prepare for each type of test, take the following steps: - Blood sample: no special preparation is needed. It is okay to eat and drink before the test. - Saliva sample: be sure to follow guidelines from your doctor, nurse, or lab. You may be advised to avoid eating, drinking, or smoking for 30 minutes prior to the test. If you are using an in-home test kit, follow all instructions included with your kit. - Cheek swab: you will be given directions for rinsing and washing your mouth before the test. During the test What to expect during a genetic test depends on the type of sample being collected: - Blood sample: A health care provider will take a blood sample from a vein, usually in your arm. Blood draws typically take less than five minutes. First, the area will be cleaned with antiseptic, to kill any germs on your skin. Then an elastic band will be placed around your upper arm. Next, a needle attached to a tube will be stuck into your arm. You may feel a stinging sensation where the needle is inserted into your arm. After the blood is drawn into the sample tube, the elastic band is removed and the site where the blood was taken will be bandaged. - Saliva sample: The provider will ask you to either spit into a tube, or will use a cotton ball or pad to absorb some saliva. It takes most people 2 to 5 minutes to fill a tube. A preservative will be used to ensure the sample is suitable for testing when received by the lab. - Cheek swab: A health care provider will gently remove a sample of cells from the inside of your cheek with a small spatula-like instrument or foam brush. You may be given the instrument and instructed on how to do this yourself. This procedure is quick and painless. After the test After a blood draw, the site where the needle was inserted will be bandaged. Occasionally, people may have a little bruising at the site. You can drive and go about your normal activities after a blood test. If a saliva sample or cells from inside your cheek were taken, no special precautions are needed afterward. BRCA Gene Mutation Test Results Receiving test results It can take several weeks to receive your test results. Usually, the health care provider or genetic counselor who ordered your test will contact you to discuss your results. It is a good idea to schedule a visit to talk about how your results affect you and members of your family. Even if your test was ordered by your doctor, you may wish to follow up with a genetic counselor to discuss your results. At-home genetic testing companies will report your results via a written report or a secure website. To learn how long it will take to get results, check the information that came with your test kit or the company’s website. Interpreting BRCA gene mutation test results Your test results will tell you whether a harmful mutation is present or absent. Sometimes, the test detects a mutation that is not well-understood. This is called a variant of uncertain significance: - Negative results mean no known harmful mutations in your BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes were found. If a harmful variant is known to run in your family but was not detected in your sample, your result may be reported as a “true negative.” If no one in your family is known to have a harmful gene mutation, and your test is negative, it may be described as “uninformative.” - Positive results mean a gene mutation that is known to be harmful was found. This may be described as pathogenic on your test report. Pathogenic means disease-causing. While having a pathogenic or harmful gene mutation does not necessarily mean you will develop a hereditary cancer, your risk is increased. - Variants of uncertain significance (VUS) are variants in genes that have not previously been associated with a higher cancer risk. It is common for people who have multigene panel testing (which test many genes) to receive this result. Most VUS are later reclassified as negative. A small number may eventually be found to be harmful. If your BRCA test shows a harmful gene mutation, talk to your doctor about how your test results will affect your medical care moving forward. If you already have cancer, having a BRCA mutation may affect your treatment. If you have a harmful BRCA mutation and have not been diagnosed with cancer, a number of steps may be taken to reduce your risk. These include: - Changes in cancer screening tests: Screening tests look for disease before symptoms are present. You may have earlier tests, more frequent tests, or different tests from the general population. These may include imaging tests, like mammograms and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and blood tests. - Medication: Two drugs, tamoxifen and raloxifene, have been approved to prevent breast cancer in people at increased risk. If you are at risk of ovarian cancer, you may be encouraged to use birth control pills, which reduce the risk of this cancer by 50%. - Surgery: If you are at increased risk of breast or ovarian cancer, surgery to remove breast tissue and your ovaries will reduce your risk. It’s important to discuss the risks and benefits of these surgeries with a doctor. Are test results accurate? Genetic testing is generally quite accurate. Although no test is right 100% of the time, the current methods used to detect genetic mutations produce trustworthy results. A false-positive result is very unlikely. A false positive result indicates an abnormality when none is actually present. However, it is more likely that you could have a negative test result when you actually have a harmful gene mutation. This is because genetic tests will miss gene mutations they do not test for. Some genetic tests, such as direct-to-consumer tests, only look for particular gene mutations. They can miss other BRCA mutations or harmful mutations in other genes that may increase cancer risk. In addition, our understanding of gene mutations and cancer risk is growing rapidly. Research is ongoing to discover new gene mutations that increase a person’s risk of cancer. Do I need follow-up tests? If you receive a positive test result on a direct-to-consumer test, it will need to be confirmed with a test at a clinically-approved laboratory. If you are found to have a harmful mutation, cancer screening tests to detect cancer early may be ordered for you. A health care provider will advise you on what tests are most appropriate for you. Tests may include: - Mammograms or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to check for breast cancer - Ultrasound and CA-125 to check for ovarian cancer - Prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test to check for prostate cancer - Imaging tests like MRI or ultrasound to check for pancreatic cancer Questions for your doctor about test results It may be helpful to ask your doctor or genetic counselor these questions: - What do my test results say about my cancer risk? - Do you recommend taking preventive measures to reduce my cancer risk? What are the risks and benefits of those procedures? - Do my family members also need to be tested? - How will I know if a variant of uncertain significance (VUS) is reclassified as harmful or not harmful? - How do these test results change my medical care moving forward? Sources and Resources More information about BRCA gene testing and inherited cancer risk is available in the following resources: - National Cancer Institute: BRCA Gene Mutations: Cancer Risk and Genetic Testing - CDC: Genetic Testing for Hereditary Breast and Ovarian Cancer - American Society of Clinical Oncology: Hereditary Breast and Ovarian Cancer - National Society of Genetic Counselors: Find a Genetic Counselor - Facing Hereditary Cancer Risk Empowered: Genetic Testing for Inherited Mutations A.D.A.M. Medical Encyclopedia. What you need to know about blood tests. Updated April 24, 2019. Accessed May 30, 2021. https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/003414.htm A.D.A.M. Medical Encyclopedia. Venipuncture. Updated April 26, 2019. Accessed May 26, 2021. https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/003423.htm A.D.A.M. Medical Encyclopedia. BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene testing. Updated July 20, 2019. Accessed May 26, 2021. https://medlineplus.gov/ency/patientinstructions/000690.htm A.D.A.M. Medical Encyclopedia. Buccal smear. Updated May 25, 2021. Accessed May 26, 2021. https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/003414.htm American Cancer Society. Genetic counseling and testing for breast cancer risk. Updated September 10, 2019. Accessed May 26, 2021. https://www.cancer.org/cancer/breast-cancer/risk-and-prevention/genetic-testing.html American Cancer Society. Key statistics for breast cancer in men. Updated January 12, 2021. Accessed May 30, 2021. https://www.cancer.org/cancer/breast-cancer-in-men/about/key-statistics.html American Society of Clinical Oncology. How to share genetic test results with family. Updated March 30, 2017. Accessed May 30, 2021. https://www.cancer.net/blog/2017-03/how-share-genetic-test-results-with-family American Society of Clinical Oncology. Hereditary breast and ovarian cancer. Updated November 2020. Accessed May 25, 2021. https://www.cancer.net/cancer-types/hereditary-breast-and-ovarian-cancer American Society of Clinical Oncology. Genetic testing coverage and reimbursement. Date unknown. Accessed May 26, 2021. https://www.asco.org/practice-policy/cancer-care-initiatives/genetics-toolkit/genetic-testing-coverage-reimbursement Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. How to collect a saliva (spit) sample for parents. Updated June 12, 2013. Accessed May 26, 2021. https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/birthdefects/documents/foa/draft_salivainstructionsparent_engtest.pdf Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Hereditary breast cancer. Updated April 5, 2019. Accessed May 26, 2021. https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/breast/young_women/bringyourbrave/hereditary_breast_cancer/index.htm Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Genetic testing for hereditary breast and ovarian cancer. Updated June 10, 2019. Accessed May 25, 2021. https://www.cdc.gov/genomics/disease/breast_ovarian_cancer/testing.htm Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Genetic counseling. Updated March 23, 2020. Accessed May 25, 2021. https://www.cdc.gov/genomics/gtesting/genetic_counseling.htm Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Genetic counseling for hereditary breast and ovarian cancer. Updated March 25, 2020. Accessed May 26, 2021. https://www.cdc.gov/genomics/disease/breast_ovarian_cancer/counseling.htm Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Affordable care act implementation FAQs. Date Unknown. Accessed May 26, 2021. https://www.cms.gov/CCIIO/Resources/Fact-Sheets-and-FAQs/aca_implementation_faqs12 Food and Drug Administration. Direct-to-consumer tests. Updated December 20, 2019. Accessed May 30, 2021. https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/in-vitro-diagnostics/direct-consumer-tests Facing Hereditary Risk Empowered. BRCA counseling and testing for women, Updated 2021. Accessed May 26, 2021. https://www.facingourrisk.org/privacy-policy-legal/laws-protections/ACA/screening-preventive-services/genetic-counseling-testing Healthcare.gov. Preventive care benefits for women. Date unknown. Accessed May 26, 2021. https://www.healthcare.gov/preventive-care-women/ Hofman LF. Human saliva as a diagnostic specimen. J Nutr. 2001 May;131(5):1621S-5S. doi: 10.1093/jn/131.5.1621S. Hu C, Hart SN, Polley EC, Gnanaolivu R, Shimelis H, Lee KY, Lilyquist J, Na J, Moore R, Antwi SO, Bamlet WR, Chaffee KG, DiCarlo J, Wu Z, Samara R, Kasi PM, McWilliams RR, Petersen GM, Couch FJ. Association between inherited germline mutations in cancer predisposition genes and risk of pancreatic cancer. JAMA. 2018 Jun 19;319(23):2401-2409. doi: 10.1001/jama.2018.6228. Isaacs C, Peshkin BN. Cancer risk and management of BRCA1/2 carriers without cancer. In: Chagpar AB, Goff B, Burstein HJ, eds. UpToDate. Updated April 21, 2021. Accessed May 26, 2021. https://www.uptodate.com/contents/cancer-risks-and-management-of-brca1-2-carriers-without-cancer Makhnoon S, Shirts BH, Bowen DJ. Patients’ perspectives of variants of uncertain significance and strategies for uncertainty management. J Genet Couns. 2019 Apr;28(2):313-325. doi: 10.1002/jgc4.1075. MedlinePlus: National Library of Medicine. Genetic testing. Updated June 20, 2014. Accessed June 1, 2021. https://medlineplus.gov/genetictesting.html MedlinePlus: National Library of Medicine. BRCA genetic test. Updated July 23, 2018. Accessed May 30, 2021. https://medlineplus.gov/lab-tests/brca-test/ MedlinePlus: National Library of Medicine. What is the cost of genetic testing? Updated September 21, 2020. Accessed June 1, 2021. https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/understanding/testing/costresults/ MedlinePlus: National Library of Medicine. What are the benefits and risks of direct-to-consumer testing? Updated April 18, 2021. Accessed May 30, 2021. https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/understanding/dtcgenetictesting/dtcrisksbenefits/ MedlinePlus: National Library of Medicine. How to prepare for a lab test. Updated March 8, 2021. Accessed May 30, 2021. https://medlineplus.gov/lab-tests/how-to-prepare-for-a-lab-test/ National Cancer Institute. Breast cancer risk in American women. Updated December 16, 2020. Accessed May 30, 2021. https://www.cancer.gov/types/breast/risk-fact-sheet National Cancer Institute. BRCA gene mutations, cancer risk and genetic testing. Updated November 19, 2020. Accessed May 25, 2021. https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/genetics/brca-fact-sheet National Cancer Institute. Genetic testing fact sheet. Updated March 15, 2019. Accessed June 1, 2021. https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/genetics/genetic-testing-fact-sheet National Cancer Institute. Cancer stat facts: Ovarian cancer. Date unknown. Accessed May 30, 2021. https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/ovary.html National Cancer Institute. Cancer stat facts: Pancreatic cancer. Date unknown. Accessed May 30, 2021. https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/pancreas.html National Cancer Institute. Cancer stat facts: Prostate cancer. Date unknown. Accessed May 30, 2021. https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/prost.html National Comprehensive Cancer Network. Genetic/familial high risk assessment: Breast, ovarian, and pancreatic. Updated November 20, 2020. Accessed May 27, 2021. https://www.nccn.org/professionals/physician_gls/pdf/genetics_bop.pdf National Human Genome Research Institute. Human genome project FAQ. Updated February 24, 2020. Accessed May 25, 2021. https://www.genome.gov/human-genome-project/Completion-FAQ Peshkin BN, Isaacs C. Genetic testing and management of individuals at risk of hereditary breast and ovarian cancer syndromes. In: Changpar AB, Goff B, Burstein HJ, eds. UpToDate. Updated February 19, 2021. Accessed May 25, 2021. https://www.uptodate.com/contents/genetic-testing-and-management-of-individuals-at-risk-of-hereditary-breast-and-ovarian-cancer-syndromes Peshkin BN, Isaacs C. Patient Education: Genetic testing for hereditary breast, ovarian, pancreatic, and prostate cancer. In: Hayes DF, Raby BA, eds. UpToDate. Updated December 1, 2020. Accessed May 25, 2021. https://www.uptodate.com/contents/genetic-testing-for-hereditary-breast-ovarian-prostate-and-pancreatic-cancer-beyond-the-basics United States Preventive Services Task Force. Final recommendation statement: BRCA related cancer: Risk assessment, genetic counseling, and genetic testing. Published August 20, 2019. Accessed May 25, 2021. https://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/uspstf/recommendation/brca-related-cancer-risk-assessment-genetic-counseling-and-genetic-testing U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. My Healthfinder: Talk with a doctor if breast or ovarian cancer runs in your family. Updated October 15, 2020. Accessed May 27, 2021. https://health.gov/myhealthfinder/topics/health-conditions/cancer/talk-doctor-if-breast-or-ovarian-cancer-runs-your-family

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10.43 Open justice is one of the fundamental attributes of a fair trial. That the administration of justice must take place in open court is a ‘fundamental rule of the common law’. The High Court has said that ‘the rationale of the open court principle is that court proceedings should be subjected to public and professional scrutiny, and courts will not act contrary to the principle save in exceptional circumstances’. 10.44 In Russell v Russell,Gibbs J said that it is the ‘ordinary rule’ of courts of Australia that their proceedings shall be conducted ‘publicly and in open view’; without public scrutiny, ‘abuses may flourish undetected’. Gibbs J went on to say: Further, the public administration of justice tends to maintain confidence in the integrity and independence of the courts. The fact that courts of law are held openly and not in secret is an essential aspect of their character. It distinguishes their activities from those of administrative officials, for ‘publicity is the authentic hall-mark of judicial as distinct from administrative procedure’. To require a court invariably to sit in closed court is to alter the nature of the court. 10.45 The principle of open justice finds some protection in the principle of legality. French CJ has said that ‘a statute which affects the open-court principle, even on a discretionary basis, should generally be construed, where constructional choices are open, so as to minimise its intrusion upon that principle’. 10.46 Jason Bosland and Ashleigh Bagnall have written that this ‘longstanding common law principle manifests itself in three substantive ways’: [F]irst, proceedings are conducted in ‘open court’; second, information and evidence presented in court is communicated publicly to those present in the court; and, third, nothing is to be done to discourage the making of fair and accurate reports of judicial proceedings conducted in open court, including by the media. This includes reporting the names of the parties as well as the evidence given during the course of proceedings. 10.47 That the media is entitled to report on court proceedings is ‘a corollary of the right of access to the court by members of the public. Nothing should be done to discourage fair and accurate reporting of proceedings’. Common law limitations 10.48 The principle of open justice is not absolute, and limits on the open justice principle have long been recognised by the common law, particularly where it is ‘necessary to secure the proper administration of justice’ or where otherwise it is in the public interest. 10.49 Open justice may be limited where proceedings are conducted in camera (the media and the public are not permitted in court); where the court orders that certain information be concealed from those present in court; where the court orders that a person be identified in court by a pseudonym; or where the court prohibits the publication of reports of the proceedings. 10.50 In Russell v Russell, Gibbs J said that there are ‘established exceptions to the general rule that judicial proceedings shall be conducted in public; and the category of such exceptions is not closed to the Parliament’. His Honour went on to say that ‘the need to maintain secrecy or confidentiality, or the interests of privacy or delicacy, may in some cases be thought to render it desirable for a matter, or part of it, to be held in closed court’. 10.51 The common law has recognised a number of cases in which the principle of open justice may be limited in some circumstances, for example, to protect: secret technical processes; an anticipated breach of confidence; the name of a blackmailer’s victim; the name of a police informant or the identity of an undercover police officer; and 10.52 French CJ said that the categories of case are not closed, but they ‘will not lightly be extended’. 10.53 In John Fairfax Group v Local Court of New South Wales, Kirby P discussed some of the justifications for common law limits on the principle of open justice: Exceptions have been allowed by the common law to protect police informers; blackmail cases; and cases involving national security. The common justification for these special exceptions is a reminder that the open administration of justice serves the interests of society and is not an absolute end in itself. If the very openness of court proceedings would destroy the attainment of justice in the particular case (as by vindicating the activities of the blackmailer) or discourages its attainment in cases generally (as by frightening off blackmail victims or informers) or would derogate from even more urgent considerations of public interest (as by endangering national security) the rule of openness must be modified to meet the exigencies of a particular case. 10.54 Similar exceptions are provided for in international law. Article 14(1) of the ICCPR provides, in part: The press and the public may be excluded from all or part of a trial for reasons of morals, public order (ordre public) or national security in a democratic society, or when the interest of the private lives of the parties so requires, or to the extent strictly necessary in the opinion of the court in special circumstances where publicity would prejudice the interests of justice; but any judgement rendered in a criminal case or in a suit at law shall be made public except where the interest of juvenile persons otherwise requires or the proceedings concern matrimonial disputes or the guardianship of children. Statutes that limit open justice 10.55 Among other common law powers to limit open justice, courts may in some circumstances conduct proceedings in camera and make suppression orders. Such powers are also provided for in Commonwealth statutes. There are a range of such laws, including those that concern: the general powers of the courts; national security; and General powers of courts 10.56 Federal courts have express statutory powers to make suppression orders and non-publication orders. The Federal Court of Australia Act (Cth) s 37AE, for example, provides that ‘in deciding whether to make a suppression order or non-publication order, the Court must take into account that a primary objective of the administration of justice is to safeguard the public interest in open justice’. 10.57 Section 37AG sets out the grounds for making a suppression or non-publication order: (a) the order is necessary to prevent prejudice to the proper administration of justice; (b) the order is necessary to prevent prejudice to the interests of the Commonwealth or a State or Territory in relation to national or international security; (c) the order is necessary to protect the safety of any person; (d) the order is necessary to avoid causing undue distress or embarrassment to a party to or witness in a criminal proceeding involving an offence of a sexual nature (including an act of indecency). 10.58 These grounds are reflected in other statutes, discussed below, that concern limits on open justice. 10.59 Under the Federal Court of Australia Act 1976 (Cth) s 17(4), the Federal Court may exclude members of the public where it is ‘satisfied that the presence of the public … would be contrary to the interests of justice’. 10.60 These provisions will have a relatively limited effect on criminal trials, given that criminal trials are rarely heard in federal courts, although in 2009 the Federal Court was given jurisdiction to deal with indictable cartel offences. 10.61 A number of provisions limit open justice for national security. For example, the Criminal Code provides that a court may exclude the public from a hearing or make a suppression order, if it is ‘satisfied that it is in the interest of the security or defence of the Commonwealth’. 10.62 Similar provisions appear in the Crimes Act 1914 (Cth) s 85B and the Defence (Special Undertakings) Act 1952 s 31(1), although the relevant proviso reads: if ‘satisfied that such a course is expedient in the interest of the defence of the Commonwealth’. 10.63 In making orders under these provisions, courts may consider the principles of open justiceand the need to provide a fair trial. In R v Lodhi, McClellan CJ said: Neither the Crimes Act or the Criminal Code expressly acknowledges the principle of open justice or a fair trial. However, by the use of the word ‘may’ the Court is given a discretion as to whether to make an order. Accordingly, the Court must determine whether the relevant interest of the security of the Commonwealth is present and, after considering the principle of open justice and the objective of providing the accused with a fair trial, determine whether, balancing all of these matters, protective orders should be made. 10.64 Under the Service and Execution of Process Act 1992 (Cth) s 127(4), a court may direct that a proceeding to which the section applies, which concerns matters of state, is to be held in camera. Suppression orders can be made under s 96. 10.65 The Nuclear Non-Proliferation (Safeguards) Act 1987 (Cth) s 40 concerns closing courts and making suppression orders and other orders when the court is satisfied that it would be expedient to prevent the disclosure of information related to nuclear weapons and other such material. 10.66 The National Security Information (Criminal and Civil Proceedings) Act 2004 (Cth) (NSI Act)aims to prevent the disclosure of information in federal criminal and civil proceedings where the disclosure is likely to prejudice national security. Among other things, it provides that courts must, in some circumstances, consider closing the court to the public, where national security information may be disclosed. 10.67 Decisions about whether certain sensitive information will be admitted as evidence may also be decided in a closed hearing—without the defendant and their lawyer, if the lawyer does not have an appropriate security clearance. 10.68 In deciding to make certain orders, the courts must consider whether there would be a risk of prejudice to national security and whether the order would have ‘a substantial adverse effect on the defendant’s right to receive a fair hearing, including in particular on the conduct of his or her defence’. Section 31(8) provides that the court ‘must give greatest weight’ to the question of national security. However, in R v Lodhi, Whealy J said that this: does no more than to give the Court guidance as to the comparative weight it is to give one factor when considering it alongside a number of others. Yet the discretion remains intact … The legislation does not intrude upon the customary vigilance of the trial judge in a criminal trial. One of the court’s tasks is to ensure that the accused is not dealt with unfairly. This has extended traditionally into the area of public interest immunity claims. I see no reason why the same degree of vigilance, perhaps even at a higher level, would not apply to the Court’s scrutiny of the Attorney’s certificate in a s 31 hearing. 10.69 On appeal, in Lodhi v R, Spigelman CJ said: This tilting or ‘thumb on the scales’ approach to a balancing exercise does not involve the formulation of a rule which determines the outcome in the process. Although the provision of guidance, or an indication of weight, will affect the balancing exercise, it does not change the nature of the exercise. 10.70 The Independent National Security Legislation Monitor (INSLM) discussed s 31(8) and its judicial interpretation and suggested it nevertheless be repealed. While it has ‘survived constitutional challenge, if its tilting or placing a thumb on the scales produces no perceptible benefit in the public interest, it would be better if it were omitted altogether’. 10.71 The protection of national security information in criminal proceedings was the subject of the ALRC’s 2004 report, Keeping Secrets: The Protection of Classified and Security Sensitive Information. 10.72 The other major ground for limiting open justice is to protect certain witnesses, particularly children and other vulnerable witnesses. 10.73 In the Federal Court, all witnesses in ‘indictable primary proceedings’ may be protected (ie not limited to those in a criminal proceeding involving a sexual offence). Under the Federal Court Act s 23HC(1)(a), the Court may make such orders as it thinks appropriate in the circumstances to protect witnesses. However, although the Federal Court has been given jurisdiction to hear indictable cartel offences, criminal trials are otherwise rarely heard in federal courts. 10.74 Under the Witness Protection Act 1994 (Cth) s 28, courts must hold certain parts of proceedings in private and make suppression orders when required to protect people in the National Witness Protection Program. However, it will not make such orders if ‘it considers that it is not in the interests of justice’. 10.75 Similarly, law enforcement operatives are given some protection under the Crimes Act s 15MK(1), which permits a court to make orders suppressing information if it ‘considers it necessary or desirable to protect the identity of the operative for whom [a witness identity protection certificate] is given or to prevent disclosure of where the operative lives’. 10.76 The courts may exclude members of the public from a proceeding where a vulnerable witness is giving evidence under the Crimes Act s 15YP. Depending on the proceedings, this may include children (for sexual and child pornography offences) and all people for slavery, slavery-like and human trafficking offences. 10.77 The court may also make such orders for a ‘special witness’. The ‘court may declare a person to be a special witness … if satisfied that the person is unlikely to be able to satisfactorily give evidence in the ordinary manner because of: (a) a disability; or (b) intimidation, distress or emotional trauma arising from: (i) the person’s age, cultural background or relationship to a party to the proceeding; or (ii) the nature of the evidence; or (iii) some other relevant factor’. 10.78 It is an offence under the Crimes Act s 15YR(1) to publish, without leave, information which identifies certain children and vulnerable adults or ‘is likely to lead to the vulnerable person being identified’. 10.79 Other Commonwealth statutes that may limit open justice, but not in the context of criminal trials, include: Family Law Act 1975 (Cth) s 121—offence to publish an account of proceedings under the Act that identifies a party to the proceedings or a witness or certain others; Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act 1984 (Cth)—court can order that proceedings occur in camera if it is in the interests of justice and the interests of ‘Aboriginal tradition’; Migration Act 1958 (Cth) s 91X—the names of applicants for protection visas not to be published by federal courts; Child Support (Registration and Collection) Act 1988 (Cth) s 110X provides for an offence of publishing an account of proceedings, under certain parts of the Act, that identifies a party to the proceedings or a witness or certain others; Administrative Appeals Tribunal Act 1975 (Cth) ss 35(2), 35AA; Australian Crime Commission Act 2002 (Cth) ss 25A(9), 29B; Law Enforcement Integrity Commissioner Act 2006 (Cth) ss 90, 92. 10.80 This chapter focuses on criminal trials, but laws that limit open justice and other fair trial rights in civil trials also warrant careful justification. Open justice is ‘a fundamental aspect of the common law and the administration of justice and is seen as concomitant with the right to a fair trial’: Jason Bosland and Ashleigh Bagnall, ‘An Empirical Analysis of Suppression Orders in the Victorian Courts: 2008-12’ (2013) 35 Sydney Law Review 674. John Fairfax & Sons Limited v Police Tribunal of NSW (1986) 5 NSWLR 465, – (McHugh JA, Glass JA agreeing). Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police v Zhao (2015) 316 ALR 378, (French CJ, Hayne, Kiefel, Bell and Keane JJ). Russell v Russell (1976) 134 CLR 495, 520. French CJ has said that this principle ‘is a means to an end, and not an end in itself. Its rationale is the benefit that flows from subjecting court proceedings to public and professional scrutiny. It is also critical to the maintenance of public confidence in the courts. Under the Constitution courts capable of exercising the judicial power of the Commonwealth must at all times be and appear to be independent and impartial tribunals. The open-court principle serves to maintain that standard. However, it is not absolute.’: Hogan v Hinch (2011) 243 CLR 506, . Hogan v Hinch (2011) 243 CLR 506, (French CJ). Bosland and Bagnall, above n 55, 674. John Fairfax Publications v District Court of NSW (2004) 61 NSWLR 344, – (citations omitted). ‘It has long been accepted at common law that the application of the open justice principle may be limited in the exercise of a superior court’s inherent jurisdiction or an inferior court’s implied powers. This may be done where it is necessary to secure the proper administration of justice’: Hogan v Hinch (2011) 243 CLR 506, (French CJ). ‘A court can only depart from this rule where its observance would frustrate the administration of justice or some other public interest for whose protection Parliament has modified the open justice rule’: John Fairfax & Sons Limited v Police Tribunal of NSW (1986) 5 NSWLR 465, – (McHugh JA, Glass JA agreeing). Bosland and Bagnall, above n 55, 674. Russell v Russell (1976) 134 CLR 495, 520. Ibid 520 . These examples are taken from Hogan v Hinch (2011) 243 CLR 506, (French CJ) (citations omitted). Concerning national security, French CJ said: ‘Where “exceptional and compelling considerations going to national security” require that the confidentiality of certain materials be preserved, a departure from the ordinary open justice principle may be justified’: Ibid . Hogan v Hinch (2011) 243 CLR 506, . John Fairfax Group v Local Court of NSW (1991) 36 NSWLR 131, 141 (citations omitted). ‘It has long been accepted at common law that the application of the open justice principle may be limited in the exercise of a superior court’s inherent jurisdiction or an inferior court’s implied powers’: Hogan v Hinch (2011) 243 CLR 506, and cases cited there. ‘The federal courts also have such implied powers as are incidental and necessary to exercise the jurisdiction or express powers conferred on them by statute: DJL v The Central Authority (2000) 201 CLR 226, 240–1. The Federal Court has held that it has power to make suppression orders as a result of these implied powers, including in relation to documents filed with the Court (Central Equity Ltd v Chua FCA 1067): Explanatory Memorandum, Access to Justice (Federal Jurisdiction) Amendment Bill 2011 (Cth). Eg, Federal Court of Australia Act 1976 (Cth) ss 37AE–37AL. Model statutory provisions on suppression and non-publication orders were endorsed by Commonwealth, state and territory Attorneys-General in 2010. These were implemented in the High Court, Federal Court, Family Court of Australia and the Federal Magistrates Court and other courts exercising jurisdiction under the Family Law Act 1975 (Cth) by amendments made by the Access to Justice (Federal Jurisdiction) Amendment Act 2011 (Cth). NSW and Victoria have also implemented the model provisions. Ibid s 37AE. Ibid s 37AG(1). The Explanatory Memorandum for the relevant Bill said the amendments were designed to ‘ensure that suppression and non-publication orders are made only where necessary on the grounds set out in the Bill, taking into account the public interest in open justice, and in terms that clearly define their scope and timing’: Explanatory Memorandum, Access to Justice (Federal Jurisdiction) Amendment Bill 2011 (Cth). See Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Cth) s 163. Criminal Code Act 1995 (Cth) sch 1 s 93.2(1) (Criminal Code). ‘At any time before or during the hearing, the judge or magistrate, or other person presiding or competent to preside over the proceedings, may, if satisfied that it is in the interest of the security or defence of the Commonwealth: (a) order that some or all of the members of the public be excluded during the whole or a part of the hearing; or (b) order that no report of the whole or a specified part of, or relating to, the application or proceedings be published; or (c) make such order and give such directions as he or she thinks necessary for ensuring that no person, without the approval of the court, has access (whether before, during or after the hearing) to any affidavit, exhibit, information or other document used in the application or the proceedings that is on the file in the court or in the records of the court.’ Lodhi v R (2006) 65 NSWLR 573; R v Benbrika (Ruling No 1) VSC 141 (21 March 2007). Lodhi v R (2006) 65 NSWLR 573, 584 (McClellan CJ at CL). National Security Information (Criminal and Civil Proceedings) Act 2004 (Cth) s 3. Ibid s 31. Ibid s 29(3). Ibid s 31(7)(8). There are also related provisions for civil proceedings in Pt 3A of the Act. R v Lodhi NSWSC 571, . The reasoning of Whealy J in this case was upheld in the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal: see Lodhi v R (2006) 65 NSWLR 573, . Lodhi v R (2006) 65 NSWLR 573, . Independent National Security Legislation Monitor, Australian Government, Annual Report (2013) 139. Australian Law Reform Commission, Keeping Secrets: The Protection of Classified and Security Sensitive Information, Final Report No 98 (2004). This protection can also be made in relation to ‘information, documents and other things admitted or proposed to be admitted’: Federal Court of Australia Act 1976 (Cth) s 23HC(1)(b). See Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Cth) s 163. Witness Protection Act 1994 (Cth) s 28A(1). Crimes Act 1914 (Cth) s 15Y. Ibid s 15YAB(1). Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act 1984 (Cth) s 27.

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Impacts Patient Outcomes Electronic records can be accessed from anywhere in a hospital setting, and all the information that was added, such patient visits and diagnosis along with relevant information such allergies and medication can be lifesaving to patients with comorbidities. Big data is described as a process of using software to sort through data to discover patterns and ascertain or establish relationship (Mcgonigle & Mastrian, 2018). Electronic records can create algorithms that can be used for data and can be used to predicting illness in populations. Big data can also be helpful to find cause and analysis, such as SSIs in hospitals. The data can generate people who are more at risk of getting infections post-surgery from the data they have from patient history and physical.Impacts Patient Outcomes And Diagnosis Essay Nurses can retrieve information from old records that are recorded in the electronic document. Big Data has its challenges such as security, HIPPA, data subjects where the data is going to be pulled to be analyzed, finally where it will be stored (Big Data in HealthInformatics[ Video File], 2014). The ability to implement all this information will deliver excellent care to patients in the future. Along with all the technology available and all the questions that are asked such social demographics, we can understand many things from the patient’s habits and where the nursing teaching can be done for the patient to have a better outcome for their disease process. An example, the data can demonstrate that the patient continues to come to be seen for high blood pressure. The doctor can see that he is on certain medications. They can be changed or discontinued that leads to the health care team to address what other things might be an issue for further evaluation, such as new tests or labs for the patient. Big Data gives health care provides so much information in a short time by accessing patient records.Impacts Patient Outcomes And Diagnosis Essay Big Data in HealthInformatics[ Video file] [Video]. (2014). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4W6zGmH_pOw Guest editorial: Basing practice on the best available evidence: A new inclusion in nursing & health sciences: Best practice information sheets. (2010). Nursing & Health Sciences, 12(3), 287–287. Retrieved June 19, 2020, from https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1442-2018.2010.00547.x Macieira, T. G., Smith, M. B., Davis, N., Yao, Y., Wilkie, D. J., Dunn Lopez, K., & Keenan, G. (2018, April 16). Evidence of Progress in Making Nursing Practice Visible Using Standardized Nursing Data: a Systematic Review. AMIA Annu Symp Proc. 2017; 2017: 1205–1214.. Retrieved June 19, 2020, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5977718/ Mcgonigle, D., & Mastrian, K. (2018). Nursing informatics and the foundation of knowledge (4th ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning. Silvia Bonilla RE: Discussion – Week 4COLLAPSE Main Question Post According to McGonigle and Mastrian (2018), “Hospitals and medical centers have more to gain from big data analytics than perhaps any other industry” (p. 197). Sensmeier (2015) writes that The McKinsey Global Institute defines big data as “datasets whose sizes are beyond the ability of typical database software tools to capture, store, manage, and analyze” (p.24). The problem that hospitals are currently facing is not on how to analyze the data but how to store it (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2018). As with any technology, big data has its benefits and challenges. One of the most important benefits of using big data as part of a clinical system is the ability to enter data once and reuse that data multiple times. It is essential for a clinical system to be able to share and compare data to inform outcomes; this allows nurses as knowledge workers to leverage that clinical data (Sensmeier, 2015).Impacts Patient Outcomes And Diagnosis Essay One challenge of using big data as part of a clinical system is the lack of data standardization, making it challenging to make decisions about changes when different units use different standards and terminology (Thew, 2016). Through research, I have found that to mitigate this challenge, nurses must promote standards and interoperability. One way to do this is to promote “the use of standardized and accepted terminologies that address the documentation needs of the entire care team regardless of care setting” (Sensmeier, 2015, p. 26). Nurses must also recommend “consistent use of research-based assessment scales and instruments that are standardized through an international consensus body” (Sensmeier, 2015, p.26). Until we are all on the same page, we cannot bring about the full potential that big data offers our profession and our patients. McGonigle, D., & Mastrian, K. G. (2018). Nursing informatics and the foundation of knowledge (4th ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning. Sensmeier, J. (2015). Big data and the future of nursing knowledge. Nursing Management, 46(4), 22-27. doi: 10.1097/01.NUMA.0000462365.53035.7d Throughout this essay I am going to look at how team communication and collaboration are key factors in patient safety. I shall look at the factors that lead to communication failure. I am going to critically analyse how communication tools can impact on patient safety and look at the benefits and barriers and the challenges that arise from the implementation of these tools can be overcome. I shall look at the challenges I’ve discussed and with reference to experiences from my own clinical practice discuss how the communication tools I have used in practice affected patient safety.Impacts Patient Outcomes And Diagnosis Essay Providing safe patient care is a challenge in today’s health care environment. Even with the many advances in technology basic, effective, interpersonal communicationInterpersonal communication is the process of sending and receiving information between two or more people. Types of Interpersonal Communication This kind of communication is subdivided into dyadic communication, Public speaking, and small-group communication.Impacts Patient Outcomes And Diagnosis Essay Communication failures have been cited as the leading cause of inadvertent patient harm. Communication failures include issues such as insufficient information, faulty exchanges of existing information, ambiguous and unclear information and lack of timely and effective exchange of patient information. Increasing recognition of these issues has made improving teamwork and communication a priority for advancing patient safety and quality of care. Effective interaction between team members has been associated with greater efficiency and decreased workloads, improved clinical outcomes, reduced adverse drug events, reduced patient morbidity, improved job satisfaction and improved patient satisfaction, (Velji & Baker, 2008). It is well recognised that the increased perception and complexity of patients’ needs in a busy surgical or medical ward presents challenges for both nursing and medical staff. The National Patient Safety Agency (2007) suggested that effective communication is a key factor in improving clinical practice and patient outcome. Hospitals consist of multiple complex systems that rely on rules, contingencies, expectations and multiple inter-professional communications for patient care. Within these complex care delivery systems, nursing plays a primary role in ensuring patient safety. Effective communication amongst healthcare providers is crucial for ensuring that patients receive safe, high-quality care. However, within most healthcare settings, effective communication is hampered by a number of barriers Discussions about patients are often conducted within a busy work environment in which providers are dealing with many patients and numerous tasks. Instructions are sometimes communicated over the phone, rather than in person. In emergency situations, information has to be presented quickly, and in an attempt to present information in a concise way, information can be missed, which can lead to inappropriate interventions that directly affect patient outcomes. Rosenstein & O’Daniel, (2006) state that efforts to improve health care safety and quality are often jeopardised by the communication and collaboration barriers that exist between clinical staff. It is critically important that clinicians have standardised communication tools and create an environment in which individuals can speak up and express concerns.Impacts Patient Outcomes And Diagnosis Essay “When a team needs to communicate complex information in a short period of time, it is helpful to use structured communication techniques to ensure accuracy.” (Lingard & Espin, 2005) Many factors can contribute to communication failures. When implementing communication tools into practice there will be benefits as well as barriers and challenges to overcome. Efforts to improve health care safety and quality are often jeopardised by the communication and collaboration barriers that exist between clinical staff. There can be many barriers between different clinical groups as well as differences within the professional hierarchy. Doctors and nurses often have different communication styles in part due to differences in training. Nurses are taught to be more descriptive of clinical situations, whereas physicians learn to be very concise. Rosenstein (2007) expresses that even though doctors and nurses interact numerous times a day, they often have different perceptions of their roles and responsibilities to patient needs, and thus different goals for patient care. Standardised communication tools are very effective in bridging these differences in communication styles. A further common barrier to effective communication and collaboration could be hierarchies. Sutcliff’s research in (2000) shows us that communication failures in the medical settings arise from hierarchical differences, concerns with upward influence, role conflict, ambiguity and struggles with interpersonal power and conflict. Communication is likely to be inaccurate or withheld in situations where there are hierarchical differences between two communicators, particularly where one person is concerned about appearing incompetent or inexperienced, does not want to offend the other, or perceives that the other is not open to communication. In health care environments characterised by a hierarchical culture, physicians are often at the top of that hierarchy.Impacts Patient Outcomes And Diagnosis Essay Consequently, they may feel that the environment is collaborative and that communication is open while nurses and other direct care staff perceive communication problems. Haig, Sutton & Whittington, (2006) state that hierarchal differences can often come into play and weaken the collaborative interactions required, to ensure that the proper treatments and care are delivered appropriately. When hierarchy differences exist, people on the lower end of the hierarchy could feel distressed or uneasy at speaking up about problems or concerns. Intimidating behaviour by individuals at the top of a hierarchy can hinder communication and give the impression that the individual is unapproachable. Effective leadership flattens the hierarchy, creates familiarity makes it feel safe and encourages staff to speak up and participate. Teaching the skills of how to speak up and creating the dynamic where teams will express their concerns is a key factor in maintaining patient safety. In all interactions, cultural differences can also exacerbate communication problems. For example, in some cultures, individuals may refrain from being assertive or challenging opinions openly. As a result, it is very difficult for nurses from such cultures to speak up if they see something wrong. In cultures such as these, nurses may communicate their concern in very indirect ways. Cultural barriers can also hinder nonverbal communication. For example, some cultures ascribe specific meaning to eye contact, certain facial expressions, touch, tone of voice, and nods of the head which others may not be able to interpret correctly.Impacts Patient Outcomes And Diagnosis Essay Communication methods and tools are potential sources of innovation for healthcare teams, enhancing teamwork and reducing risk. Leonard and Permanente (2004) developed a communication tool that has proven to be one of the most valuable, collectively known as SBAR; Situation, Background, Assessment and Recognition. The SBAR technique organizes communication into four types of information. First, the provider briefly describes the situation; for example, who the patient is, where the patient is located and a description of the problem. Secondly, relevant background information is communicated, diagnosis at admission, recent vital signs, and other clinical information. The final two pieces are the provider’s assessment of the situation, such as how severe the problem is, and an initial recommendation of what should be done and the plan of care needed. The SBAR tool provides a framework for communication between members of the health care team about a patient’s condition. It is used to help create mechanisms useful for framing any conversation, especially critical ones, requiring a clinician’s immediate attention and action. It allows for an easy and focused way to set expectations between members of the team for what will be communicated and how, which is essential for information transfer and cohesive teamwork. It can also be used effectively to enhance handovers between shifts or between staff in the same or different clinical areas. The SBAR tool provides a standardised means for communicating in patient care situations; it is effective in bridging differences in communication styles and helps to get all team members using the same approach, providing a common structure for communication and it can be used and applied in any clinical area, (Denham, 2008). SBAR also presents guidelines for organising relevant information when preparing to contact another team member, as well as the framework for presenting the information, appropriate assessments, and recommendations.Impacts Patient Outcomes And Diagnosis Essay Find out how NursingAnswers.net can help you! Our nursing and healthcare experts are ready and waiting to assist with any writing project you may have, from simple essay plans, through to full nursing dissertations. The tool can be used to shape communication at any stage of the patient’s journey, from the content of a GP’s referral letter, consultant to consultant referrals through to communicating discharge back to a GP. When clinical staff use the tool in a clinical setting they can make a recommendation which ensures that the reason for the communication is clear. This is particularly important in situations where staff may be uncomfortable about making a recommendation i.e. those who are inexperienced or who need to communicate up the hierarchy. As well as SBAR there are a variety of other communication tools devised to help promote and ensure patient safety. Some tools were designed to be used in any clinical area while others were developed for a specific purpose. Surgical procedures are undertaken in many healthcare settings, these procedures are undertaken in day surgery units and on an outpatient basis as well as during inpatient care. Adverse events occur in approximately 10% of hospital admissions. Approximately 40% of these events are associated with surgery. The National Patient Safety Agency found that between October 2006 and September 2007, over 128,000 reports of patient safety incidents from surgical specialties were reported to its National Reporting and Learning System. In November 2008 the NPSA also released a warning over wrong site neurosurgery, with 15 cases occurring between January 2005 and September 2008, (Peyton & Soar, 2009). These incidents varied from incorrect treatment or procedure to misplaced patient notes. Not all incidents were serious, but some led to patient harm or death and most could have been prevented. Impacts Patient Outcomes And Diagnosis Essay Problems in communication and information flow, as well as workload and competing tasks have a measurable negative impact on team performance and patient safety. Clinical staff have frequent interruptions, usually multi-task and often work with incomplete information about the tasks they are expected to undertake. Clinical uncertainty and occasional surprise add to this complex situation. It is also often assumed that safety checks have been completed by others without confirming they have actually taken place. Increased team working and the implementation of fail-safe systems are therefore necessary to help prevent human error. Hospitals are under ever increasing pressure to develop sound hospital systems that are put in place to prevent catastrophic, harmful events. This is where surgical communication tools can play a vital role in ensuring no harm, or avoidable mistakes, take place during surgical procedures.Impacts Patient Outcomes And Diagnosis Essay The WHO Surgical Safety Checklist is an important development, which may help to prevent a number of these surgical errors. The World Health Organisation (WHO) Surgical Safety Checklist launched June 2008, and was adapted by the National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA). One of the key error prone areas that the surgical checklist can help is that of wrong site surgery. Panesear and Cleary (2009) state that wrong site or wrong patient incidents are rare, but the consequences can result in considerable harm and psychological damage to the patient. Research by Haynes (2009) indicates that the use of a simple checklist can substantially and significantly reduce risk of morbidity and mortality associated with surgery. The Checklist is a tool to improve preoperative safety for patients and improve communication and teamwork. The checklist has five steps of; Briefing, Sign In, Surgical Pause, Sign Out and De-brief which improve patient safety through enhanced team performance. Having more than one step and a whole team present at each step, increases the reliability of the tool. Adding briefings before the lists starts and de-briefings at the end of the list, in addition to the Checklist, further improves communication between the team. The better the team communication, the better the chance of highlighting any errors or inaccuracies.Impacts Patient Outcomes And Diagnosis Essay The WHO Safety Checklist incorporates the surgical pause as well as the surgical safety briefs. Incorporating more than one communication tool with another should help improve patient safety by repeating the safety checks at different stages throughout the procedure. The surgical pause rule provides that, except in life-threatening emergencies requiring immediate resuscitative measures, once the patient has been prepared for the elective surgical procedure, and immediately prior to the initiation of any procedure, the team will pause and the physician performing the procedure will verbally confirm the patient’s identity, the intended procedure and the correct surgical/procedure site. The physician’s operative report or procedural notes must reflect that the pause and the confirmation took place. This Surgical Pause tool was issued by the Board of Medicine in 2006 and seeks to prevent wrong site, wrong side and wrong patient surgeries.Impacts Patient Outcomes And Diagnosis Essay Another strategy to help improve patient safety in surgery is the use of theatre briefings and debriefings. These discussions, initiated and led by the surgeon, are intended to prevent and alleviate adverse events by promoting communication through improved teamwork. Specifically, they encourage any team member to speak up if they perceive a problem that could result in patient harm. The briefing consists of introductions by name and role of each theatre team member, a surgical pause, and discussion of expectations for the operative plan, paying special attention to potential problems that could be encountered. The team leader also conducts debriefings at the end of the case to note lessons learned for future patients and procedures. Peyton and Soar (2008) state that preliminary evidence suggests that preoperative theatre briefings are associated with an improved safety culture, reductions in wrong-site/wrong procedure surgeries, early reporting of equipment issues, and reduced operational costs. Although briefings and debriefings are not end all solutions to the problem of errors or inefficiencies in theatres, they help to minimise errors by allowing personnel to discuss potential problems before they lead to potential or actual harm. Safety briefings are a straightforward tool designed to help multidisciplinary teams communicate safety problems and concerns. They increase staff awareness of safety, encourage more open communication about safety issues, and over time assist in creating a culture of safety while helping to reduce errors, (The Health Foundation, 2009). Safety briefs can also be used on the ward as well as the operating theatre. Patient safety briefings are an easy, efficient tool to share information. The purposes of these briefings are to keep members of the clinical unit informed, anticipate needs, and make appropriate plans. Any member of the team can institute unit-based patient safety briefings, but often the charge nurse orchestrates them. Briefings are conducted at a designated place at predetermined times and should last no more than 5 minutes. They give the team a chance to communicate and discuss any problems, thoughts or put ideas forward. It also gives the team a chance to discuss previous problems brought up and how they can overcome them; with a view to use the briefings to bring a more effective and efficient way of managing patient safety concerns.Impacts Patient Outcomes And Diagnosis Essay During the clinical placements I have experienced whether it be on a hospital ward or in the community I know that nothing is as crucial as the safety of the patients in your care. Safety precautions and tools are used on a daily basis, numerous times a day by a variety of clinical staff. As I am now a third year student nurse with many different clinical experiences, it is important that I not only understand the vital importance of using these communication tools properly and precisely but also gain the confidence to communicate information verbally as well as non-verbally. During my placements I have come across most of the communication tools that I have discussed previously. The SBAR Tool is one I have come across most frequently. In every clinical area I have been in SBAR was used on a daily basis; in handovers, transfers, discharges, updates, safety briefs and referrals. It seems to be adopted through clinical practice and staff then go on to use it subconsciously after a period of time. It is a very effective tool if used correctly, but only if implemented by all members of staff on the ward. I have had some experience using SBAR and find it a very easy tool to implement and an extremely beneficial skill to have. I can adopt it to different situations and I find it a good base for starting handovers and transfers. On my current clinical placement I work in our triage area with a number of emergency admissions every day. With every admission into triage, SBAR is used several times; when receiving the emergency handover over the phone, handing over to the medical team, writing in the patient’s notes, handing over to the nurse on the ward once the patient is transferred and recording the handover onto the dictaphone for the nurse next on shift. In my opinion it definitely encourages communication between staff and as a student has increased my confidence in participating in handovers. It is a useful tool for both verbal and non-verbal types of communication due to the fact it can be used for a variety of different situations in numerous clinical settings. In my opinion it helps break the actual and perceived barriers between clinical staff and allows the understanding that communication between staff from different areas should be of a high standard and easily exchanged due to the use of this common model. While observing staff at work in a busy ward environment, and how the passing of information between for instance the doctor and nurse can be difficult at times and even miscommunicated, it makes it clear to me that structured use of communication tools can lead to improved patient health and safety and should be common practice in all clinical situations.Impacts Patient Outcomes And Diagnosis Essay My experience with the surgical safety tools has been more limited but I am still aware of the importance they are to patient safety and how necessary it is to have frequent checks from the beginning to the end of the operation or procedure as well as having a variety of staff present at each check. I have had experience with completing pre-operative charts which is the beginning of these surgical safety checks. That would be the first time you check the patient identity, procedure, pre-op checklist and consent form. Without having the WHO surgical safety checklist and the other surgical safety tools in place, communication between staff would be less efficient and would probably take more staff time. In my opinion all the communication tools I have discussed are extremely significant and all have their own place within healthcare. From my experience I have observed that is critical that staff use these communication tools to help play their own part in maintaining patient safety and encourage others to do too. On a busy medical or surgical ward, where there are lots of admissions and emergencies and staff have to carry out numerous tasks, I have learnt that effective communication is essential as when staff are extremely busy, information can be missed, forgotten and wrongly communicated. The communication tools that I have discussed can and do all play a part in ensuring and assisting patient safety if used correctly and if applied appropriately and correctly by staff throughout healthcare.Impacts Patient Outcomes And Diagnosis Essay Each representative of the medical profession certainly at least once in life thought about the essence of healing art. The traditional answer to this question is something like this: “healing art consists of the knowledge needed to understand the causes and pathophysiological mechanisms of diseases, from clinical experience, intuition and a set of qualities that together constitute the so-called “clinical thinking”.Impacts Patient Outcomes And Diagnosis Essay Cultivated in the traditional medical education concept “clinical thinking” does not have clear meaning and holistic vision of healing and is based on analogies. At the turn of 80-90-ies the new fild of knowledge was formed in medicine – clinical epidemiology. The most popular became the works of the group of Canadian scientists – D. Sackett, B. Haynes, G. Guyatt and P. Tugwell from the McMaster University, Ontario. They were the first who tried to study the medical skill in terms of rigorous scientific principles. These scientific principles have a great impact on the style of medical practice and ideology of doctors. Clinical epidemiology is developing the scientific basis of medical practice – a set of rules for clinical decision-making. The central tenet of clinical epidemiology is that: every clinical decision should be based strictly on proven scientific facts. This postulate is called “evidence-based medicine”. Evidence-based medicine is an approach to medical practice in which decisions on the use of preventive, diagnostic and therapeutic measures are taken based on the available evidence of their efficacy and safety, and such evidence undergoes search, comparison, compilation, and wide dissemination to be used in the interest of patients (Evidence Based Medicine Working Group, 1993).Impacts Patient Outcomes And Diagnosis Essay Evidence-Based Medicine is a conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence for making decisions about care of individual patients. The practice of evidence-based medicine involves the union of individual expertise with the best available external evidence obtained from systematic research. By individual clinical expertise experts mean the professionalism and clinical thinking, acquired through the accumulation of clinical experience in clinical practice. Increasing professionalism is manifested in many ways, but most pronounced it is in the more efficient and effective diagnosis, the more thoughtful identification and compassionate attitude to the difficulties of patients, their rights and preferences in making clinical decisions regarding the provision of medical care. Under the best available external proof, specialists mean clinically relevant research. External clinical justified evidence not only invalidates the previous diagnostic tests and treatments, but also replaces them with new, more powerful, precise, effective and safe. (Sackett, DL et al. (1996) Evidence based medicine: what it is and what it isn’t. BMJ 312 (7023), 13 January, 71-72).Impacts Patient Outcomes And Diagnosis Essay Principles of evidence-based medicine include the testing of the efficacy and safety methods of diagnosis, prevention and treatment in clinical trials. The practice of evidence-based medicine is the use of data from clinical trials in daily clinical work of a doctor or a nurse. In most countries there were recognized some of the rules for conducting clinical studies outlined in the standard GCP (Good Clinical Practice) as well as the rules of production of drugs (standard GMP) and perform laboratory tests (standard GLP). The International System of evidence-based medicine evolves exponentially: since its establishment in the early 90’s to the present time the number of centers, books, publications and forums on the problem is huge. The U.S. Agency of Health Policy and Research subsidized in 1997 12 such centers established at leading universities and research institutions of different states, a growing number of centers on individual issues (child health, primary care, general practice, mental health, etc.). The common thing for all directions is the use of the principle of evidence at any level of decision-making – from the state program till the appointment of individual therapy.Impacts Patient Outcomes And Diagnosis Essay Nowadays evidence-based practice is widely implemented in professional nursing practice. The idea of evidence-based practice for nursing was developed from the evidence based medicine movement. Currently, nursing is an integral part of the health system. It is a multifaceted health discipline that has a social health importance, as it is meant to maintain and protect public health. Nursing is a science and art, aimed at solving existing problems related to human health in a changing environment. Thus, evidence-based nursing is the kind of evidence based medicine. It involves identifying the necessary research and implementation of them into practice care in order to improve the quality of patient care. The aim of EBN is to provide high quality and most cost-effective care ever possible. EBN is a process based on the collection, interpretation and integration of important research results. Some experts define the EBN narrowly, considering only the use of randomized clinical trials, while others also include the use of case reports and expert opinions. In order to apply the practice in the right way, a nurse must understand the concept of research and know how to properly evaluate the study. These skills are taught in modern institutions of nursing education, as well as at training.Impacts Patient Outcomes And Diagnosis Essay Nurses serve instrumental roles in ensuring and providing evidence-based practice. They must continually ask the questions, “What is the evidence for this intervention?” Or “How do we provide best practice?” And “Are these the highest achievable outcomes for the patient, family, and nurse?” Nurses are also well positioned to work with other members of the healthcare team to identify clinical problems and use existing evidence to improve practice. Numerous opportunities exist for nurses to question current nursing practices and use evidence to make care more effective. For example, a recently published evidence-based project describes the potential benefits of discontinuing the routine practice of listening to the bowel sounds of patients who have undergone elective abdominal surgery. The authors reviewed the literature and conducted an assessment of current practice, and they subsequently developed and evaluated a new practice guideline. These authors reported that clinical parameters such as the return of flatus and first postoperative bowel movement were more helpful than bowel sounds in determining the return of gastrointestinal mobility after abdominal surgery. The authors found that this evidence-based project resulted in saving nursing time without having negative patient outcomes (Madsen et al., 2005).Impacts Patient Outcomes And Diagnosis Essay To understand what Evidence-based practice in nursing is better while defining the process it describes. In every day activity of clinical nursing, EBP provides nurses with a tool with the help of which they can provide the best and safest health care ever possible. The new emphasis of the EBP nursing comes from the problems that have emerged in recent years regarding the safety of the health system.Impacts Patient Outcomes And Diagnosis Essay As it is written on the Yale University Nursing Library website and the website of University of Minnesota, the first step in EPP is to formulate right, necessary questions. Such questions consist of background questions such as “what causes some particular disease?” Such kind of questions has a practical application – the need to solve an exact clinical problem. The clinical questions should include foreground questions also. These pertain to how the disease or condition in question is usually treated.Impacts Patient Outcomes And Diagnosis Essay Finding the Answers As soon the right questions have been formulated, the nurse can then look for possible solutions to the problem by making some necessary research. The aim of the research is to find sources that tall about the possible treatments and outcomes of the disease. Nurses in clinics often use databases such as CINAHL and MEDLINE for performing their searches. The next step is to evaluate the evidence as soon as it is found. Not all clinical treatments are the same, and not all sources that pretend to provide evidence of a possible clinical treatment are the same. Implementing the evidence-based practice in nursing process there is a need to understand that there not only various levels of possible treatment, but also various levels of quality in terms of research sources. The research quality is based on the quality of the research design and its applicability to the exact clinical case.Impacts Patient Outcomes And Diagnosis Essay Having evaluated the evidence, the nurse can start its application in her practice. One of the main questions that appear at this stage is how the evidence can be applied in order to meet nurse’s specific need or situation. Concerns of nurses include the validity of the diagnosis, how possible therapeutic techniques can affect the patient, whether there is any adverse risk to the patient and the prognosis of the treatment. As soon as the decision is made about the provision of a certain treatment, application of the treatment is usually made.Impacts Patient Outcomes And Diagnosis Essay Re-evaluation of the result As soon as the treatment has been made, the clinical nurse should reevaluate if the implemented evidence was adequate and useful for the particular patient and situation. Clinical nurse should assess whether or not the intervention was successful. Nurses ought to know whether their findings might contribute new knowledge to the nursing field. They also should know how they will apply these findings throughout their future nursing practice. (Http://www.ehow.com/about_6728914_define-evidence_based-practice-nursing.html) “Evidence based clinical practice is an approach to decision making in which the clinician uses the best available evidence, in consultation with the patient, to decide upon the option which suits that patient best”. (Muir Gray JA. (1997) Evidence-based healthcare: how to make health policy and management decisions. London: Churchill Livingstone).Impacts Patient Outcomes And Diagnosis Essay Find out how NursingAnswers.net can help you! Our nursing and healthcare experts are ready and waiting to assist with any writing project you may have, from simple essay plans, through to full nursing dissertations. So evidence-based practice helps nurses to provide high-quality patient care based on research and knowledge rather than because “this is the way we have always done it,” or based on traditions, myths, hunches, advice of colleagues, or outdated textbooks. For example, when clinical questions arise, should one look to a nursing textbook for the answers? Remember that books are not published every year, and new information may not be included in the edition you have. Also, when using textbooks, consider whether you have the most current edition.Impacts Patient Outcomes And Diagnosis Essay There are also issues to consider when asking colleagues for advice-specifically, be mindful that their responses may be based on their personal experiences, their observations, what they learned in school, what was reviewed during nursing orientation, or myths and traditions learned in clinical practice. A recent study provided evidence that most nurses provide care in accordance with what they learned in nursing school and rarely used journal articles, research reports, and hospital libraries for reference (Pravikoff, Tanner, & Pierce, 2005). That finding, combined with the fact that the average nurse is more than 40 years of age, makes it apparent that many nurses’ knowledge is probably outdated. Practice based on such knowledge does not translate into quality patient care or health outcomes. Evidence-based practice provides a critical strategy to ensure that care is up to date and that it reflects the latest research evidence.Impacts Patient Outcomes And Diagnosis Essay So, EBP important to nursing practice because it results in better patient outcomes; it contributes to the science of nursing; it keeps practice current and relevant; it increases confidence in decision-making; policies and procedures are current and include the latest research; integration of EBP into nursing practice is essential for high-quality patient care. Thus, evidence-based practice is very important for modern professional nursing practice. Impacts Patient Outcomes And Diagnosis Essay Get your Plagiarism-free essays from Tutorsgallery.com

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Starting in the early 2000's, atmospheric composition has gradually become an increasingly important (optional) component of the Integrated Forecasting System (IFS). We provide operational daily global forecasts of aerosols and atmospheric pollutants such as ozone, carbon monoxide, and nitrogen dioxide. As part of the European Copernicus programme on environmental monitoring, greenhouse gases, aerosols, and chemical species have been introduced in the ECMWF model allowing assimilation and forecasting of atmospheric composition. At the same time, the added atmospheric composition variables are being used to improve the Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) system itself, most notably through the interaction with the radiation scheme and the use in observation operators for satellite radiance assimilation. For the CO2 modelling in the IFS, the land vegetation fluxes are modelled on-line by the CTESSEL carbon module (Boussetta et al., 2013). The anthropogenic fluxes are based on the annual mean EDGARv4.2 inventory (Janssens-Maenhout et al., 2012) using the most recent year available (i.e. 2008) with estimated and climatological trends to extrapolate to the current year. The ocean fluxes are from the Takahashi et al (2009) climatology and the fire fluxes are from GFAS (Kaiser et al., 2012). Because the budget is currently not constrained by observations, the CO2 global bias can grow from one year to the next. In order to avoid this, the initial CO2 forecast fields are updated every year with the most recent atmospheric 3D fields from the MACC-II CO2 flux inversion system (Chevallier et al., 2010), whenever these become available, typically in October. Methane fluxes are prescribed in the IFS using inventory and climatological data sets, consistent with those used as prior information in the CH4 flux inversions from Bergamaschi et al. (2009). The anthropogenic fluxes are from the EDGAR 4.2 database (Janssens-Maenhout et al, 2012) for the year 2008, i.e. the last available year. All the anthropogenic categories are based on annual mean values, except for rice, which has been modulated with a seasonal cycle of the Matthews monthly inventory for rice (Matthews et al., 1991). The wetland fluxes are from the Kaplan climatology described in Bergamaschi et al. (2007). The biomass burning emissions are from the MACC-II GFAS dataset (Kaiser et al., 2012). The other sources/sinks include wild animals (Houweling et al., 1999), termites (Sanderson et al., 1996), oceans (Houweling et al., 1999 and Lambert and S. Schmidt, 1993) and a soil sink (Ridgwell et al., 1999). For the chemical sink in the troposphere and the stratosphere, the climatological chemical loss rates from Bergamaschi et al. (2009) are used. These are based on OH fields optimised with methyl chloroform using the TM5 model (Krol et al., 2005) and prescribed concentrations of the stratospheric radicals using the 2-D photochemical Max-Planck-Institute model. - Bergamaschi, P., C. Frankenberg, J. F. Meirink, M. Krol, F. Dentener, T. Wagner, U. Platt, J. O. Kaplan, S. Koerner, M. Heimann, E.J. Dlugokencky and A. Goede (2007), Satellite chartography of atmospheric methane from SCIAMACHY on board ENVISAT: 2. Evaluation based on inverse model simulations, J. Geophys. Res., 112 , D02304, 10.1029/2006JD007268. - Bergamaschi, P., C. Frankenberg, J. F. Meirink, M. Krol, M. G. Villani, S. Houweling, F. Dentener, E. J. Dlugokencky, J. B. Miller, L. V. Gatti, A. Engel, and I. Levin (2009), Inverse modeling of global and regional CH4 emissions using SCIAMACHY satellite retrievals, J. Geophys. Res., 114, 10.1029/2009JD012287. - Boussetta, S., G. Balsamo, A. Beljaars, A. Agusti-Panareda, J.-C. Calvet, C. Jacobs, B. van den Hurk, P. Viterbo, S. Lafont and E. Dutra, L. Jarlan, M. Balzarolo, D. Papale and G. van der Werf (2013), Natural carbon dioxide exchanges in the ECMWF Integrated Forecasting System: Implementation and offline validation, J. Geophys. Res., 118, 1-24, doi:10.1002/jgrd.50488. - Houweling, S., T. Kaminski, F. Dentener, J. Lelieveld, M. Heimann (1999), Inverse modeling of methane sources, sinks using the adjoint of a global transport model, J. Geophys. Res., 104, D21, 26137-26160, DOI:10.1029/1999JD900428. - Janssens-Maenhout, G., F. Dentener, J. Van Aardenne, S. Monni , V.Pagliari, L. Orlandini, Z. Klimont, J. Kurokawa, H. Akimoto , T. Ohara, R. Wankmueller, B. Battye , D. Grano, A. Zuber and T. Keating (2012), EDGAR-HTAP: a Harmonized Gridded Air Pollution Emission Dataset Based on National Inventories, Ispra (Italy) , European Commission Publications Office, JRC68434, EUR report No EUR 25 299 - 2012, ISBN 978-92-79-23122-0, ISSN 1831-9424. - Kaiser, J.W., A. Heil, M. O. Andreae, A. Benedetti, N. Chubarova, L. Jones, J.-J. Morcrette, M. Razinger, M. G. Schultz, M. Suttie, and G. R. van der Werf (2012), Biomass burning emissions estimated with a global fire assimilation system based on observed fire radiative power, Biogeosciences, 9, 527-554, doi:10.5194/bg-9-527-2012. - Krol, M., S. Houweling, B. Bregman, M. van den Broek, A. Segers, P. van Velthoven, W. Peters, F. Dentener and P. Bergamaschi (2005), The two-way nested global chemistry-transport zoom model TM5: algorithm and applications, ACP, 5, 417-432. - Lambert G. and S. Schmidt (1993), Reevaluation of the oceanic flux of methane: Uncertainties and long term variations, Chemosphere Global Change Sci., 26, 579-589. - Matthews, E., I. Fung and J. Lerner (1991), Methane emission from rice cultivation: Geographic and seasonal distribution of cultivated areas and emissions, Global Biogeochem. Cycles, 5, 3-24, doi:10.1029/90GB02311. - Ridgwell, A.J., S. J. Marshall and K. Gregson (1999), Consumption of atmospheric methane by soils: A process-based model, Global Biogeochem. Cycles, 13, 59-70, doi: 10.1029/1998GB900004. - Sanderson, M.G. (1996), Biomass of termites and their emissions of methane and carbon dioxide: A global database, Global Biogeochem. Cycles, 10, 543-557, doi: 10.1029/96GB01893. - Takahashi, T., S.C. Sutherland, R. Wanninkhof, C. Sweeney, R.A. Feely, D.W. Chipman, B. Hales, G. Friederich, F. Chavez, C. Sabine, A. Watson, D.C.E. Bakker, U. Schuster, N. Metzl, H. Yoshikawa-Inoue, M. Ishii, T. Midorikawa, Y. Nojiri, A. Körtzinger, T. Steinhoff, M. Hoppema, J. Olafsson, T.S. Arnarson, B. Tilbrook, T. Johannessen, A. Olsen, R. Bellerby, C.S. Wong, B. Delille, N. R. Bates and H.J.W. de Baar (2009), Climatological mean and decadal changes in surface ocean pCO2 and net sea-air CO2 flux over the global oceans, Deep-Sea Res. II, 56, 554-577. The physical parameterizations dedicated to aerosol processes mainly follow the aerosol treatment in the LOA/LMD-Z model (Boucher et al. 2002; Reddy et al. 2005). Five types of tropospheric aerosols are considered: sea salt, dust, organic and black carbon, and sulphate aerosols. Prognostic aerosols of natural origin, such as mineral dust and sea salt are described using three size bins. For dust, bin limits are at 0.03, 0.55, 0.9, and 20 microns; for sea salt, bin limits are at 0.03, 0.5, 5 and 20 microns. Emissions of dust depend on the 10-m wind, soil moisture, the UV-visible component of the surface albedo and the fraction of land covered by vegetation when the surface is snow-free. A correction to the 10-m wind to account for gustiness is also included (Morcrette et al. 2008). Sea-salt emissions are diagnosed using a source function based on work by Guelle et al. (2001) and Schulz et al. (2004). In this formulation, wet sea-salt mass fluxes at 80% relative humidity are integrated for the three size bins between 2 and 4 µm merging work by Monahan et al. (1986) and Smith and Harrison (1998). Sources for the other aerosol types which are linked to emissions from domestic, industrial, power generation, transport and shipping activities, are taken from the SPEW (Speciated Particulate Emission Wizard), and EDGAR (Emission Database for Global Atmospheric Research) annual- or monthly-mean climatologies. More details on the sources of these aerosols are given in Dentener et al. (2006). Emissions of OM, BC and SO2 linked to fire emissions are obtained using the GFAS system based on MODIS satellite observations of fire radiative power, as described in Kaiser et al. (2011). Several types of removal processes are considered: dry deposition including the turbulent transfer to the surface, gravitational settling, and wet deposition including rainout by large-scale and convective precipitation and washout of aerosol particles in and below the clouds. The wet and dry deposition schemes are standard, whereas the sedimentation of aerosols follows closely what was introduced by Tompkins (2005) for the sedimentation of ice particles. Hygroscopic effects are also considered for organic matter and black carbon aerosols. A detailed description of the ECMWF forecast and analysis model including aerosol processes is given in Morcrette et al. (2009) and Benedetti et al. (2009). - Benedetti, A., J.-J. Morcrette, O. Boucher, A. Dethof, R. J. Engelen, M. Fischer, H. Flentjes, N. Huneeus, L. Jones, J. W. Kaiser, S. Kinne, A. Mangold, M. Razinger, A. J. Simmons, M. Suttie, and the GEMS-AER team, Aerosol analysis and forecast in the ECMWF Integrated Forecast System. Part II : Data assimilation, Journal of Geophysical Research, 114, D13205, doi:10.1029/2008JD011115, 2009. - Boucher, O., M. Pham, and C. Venkataraman, 2002: Simulation of the atmospheric sulfur cycle in the LMD GCM: Model description, model evaluation, and global and European budgets, Note 23, 26 pp., Inst. Pierre-Simon Laplace, Paris, France. - Dentener, F., et al., 2006: Emissions of primary aerosol and precursor gases in the years 2000 and 1750 prescribed data-sets for AeroCom, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 6, 4321 – 4344. - Guelle, W., M. Schulz, Y. Balkanski, and F. Dentener, 2001: Influence of the source formulation on modeling the atmospheric global distribution of the sea salt aerosol, J. Geophys. Res., 106, 27,509– 27,524. - Kaiser, J.W., A. Heil, M.O. Andreae, A. Benedetti, N. Chubarova, L. Jones, J.-J.Morcrette, M. Razinger, M.G. Schultz, M. Suttie, and G.R. van der Werf, 2011: Biomass burning emissions estimated with a global fire assimilation system based on observed fire radiative power. Biogeosciences Discuss., 8(4), 7339-7398. - Monahan, E. C., D. E. Spiel, and K. L. Davidson, 1986: A model of marine aerosol generation via whitecaps and wave disruption, in Oceanic Whitecaps, edited by E. C. Monahan and G. MacNiocaill, pp. 167–174, D. Reidel, Norwell, Mass. - Morcrette, J.-J., A. Beljaars, A. Benedetti, L. Jones, and O. Boucher, 2008: Sea-salt and dust aerosols in the ECMWF IFS model , Geophys. Res. Lett., 35, L24813, doi:10.1029/2008GL036041 - Morcrette, J.-J., O. Boucher, L. Jones, D. Salmond, P. Bechtold, A. Beljaars, A. Benedetti, A. Bonet, J. W. Kaiser, M. Razinger, M. Schulz, S. Serrar, A. J. Simmons, M. Sofiev, M. Suttie, A. M. Tompkins, and A. Untch, 2009: Aerosol analysis and forecast in the ECMWF Integrated Forecast System. Part I: Forward modelling, Journal of Geophysical Research, 114D, D06206, doi:10.1029/2008JD011235, 2009. - Reddy, M. S., O. Boucher, N. Bellouin, M. Schulz, Y. Balkanski, J.-L. Dufresne and M. Pham, 2005: Estimates of global multi-component aerosol optical depth and direct radiative perturbation in the Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique general circulation model, Journal of Geophysical Research, 110, D10S16, doi:10.1029/2004JD004757. - Schulz, M., G. de Leeuw, and Y. Balkanski, 2004: Sea-salt aerosol source functions and emissions, in Emission of Atmospheric Trace Compounds, edited by C. Granier, P. Artaxo, and C. E. Reeves, pp. 333–354, Kluwer Acad., Norwell, Mass. - Smith, M. H., and N. M. Harrison, 1998: The sea spray generation function, J. Aerosol Sci., 29, Suppl. 1, S189–S190. - Tompkins, A. M., 2005: A revised cloud scheme to reduce the sensitivity to vertical resolution, Tech. Memo. 0599, 25 pp., Res. Dep., Eur. Cent. for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, Reading, U. K Atmospheric chemistry is fully integrated in the Integrated Forecasting System (IFS), complementing the aerosol modules and greenhouse gas variables for atmospheric composition. IFS with atmospheric chemistry supersedes a coupled system IFS-CTM, in which a global Chemistry Transport Model was two-way coupled to the IFS. The current system is computationally much more efficient than the IFS-CTM, and it avoids inconsistencies of the coupled approach. - The currently implemented chemical mechanism is an extended version of the CB05 chemical mechanism (Yarwood et al., 2005) as implemented in the Transport Model 5 (TM5), which describes tropospheric chemistry with 53 species and 107 reactions (Huijnen et al., 2010). - Stratospheric ozone concentrations are currently parameterized with the Cariolle scheme (Cariolle and Teyssèdre, 2007). - The chemical solver used in C-IFS is the Euler Backward Iterative (EBI) solver (Hertel et al., 1996). - The chemical time step employed is typically 15 minutes. - Dry deposition is simulated using pre-calculated dry deposition velocities. - Wet deposition in C-IFS is based on the Harvard wet deposition scheme (Jacob et al., 2000 and Lui et al., 2001). It accounts for sub-grid wet removal by considering cloud and precipitation area fraction. The input fields to the wet deposition routine are provided by the cloud scheme (Forbes et al. 2011). - No emissions from lightning are a considerable contribution to the global atmospheric NOx budget. The estimate of the flash-rate density (flashes per time unit and area unit) is based on parameters of the convection scheme. C-IFS currently uses the formulation of Meijer et al., 2001, which is based on convective precipitation. - A global mass fixer is applied to ensure the mass conservation of the semi-lagrangian advection scheme. - Cariolle, D. and Teyssèdre, H.: A revised linear ozone photochemistry parameterization for use in transport and general circulation models: multi-annual simulations, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 7, 2183-2196, doi:10.5194/acp-7-2183-2007, 2008 - Forbes, R., A.M. Tompkins and A. Untch, A new prognostic bulk microphysics scheme for the IFS, ECMWF tech. memo. 649, 2011. - Hertel, O., R. Berkowicz, and J. Christensen, Test of two numerical schemes for use in atmospheric transport-chemistry models Atmos. Environ., 27A,16, 2591-2611, 1993 - Huijnen, V., Williams, J., van Weele, M., van Noije, T., Krol, M., Dentener, F., et al.: The global chemistry transport model TM5: description and evaluation of the tropospheric chemistry version 3.0, Geosci. Model Dev., 3, 445-473, doi:10.5194/gmd-3-445-2010, 2010 - Jacob, D.J. H. Liu, C.Mari, and R.M. Yantosca, Harvard wet deposition scheme for GMI, Harvard University Atmospheric Chemistry Modeling Group, 2000. - Liu, H., Jacob, D.J., Bey, I., Yantosca, R.M., 2001. Constraints from 210 Pb and 7 Be on wet deposition and transport in a global three-dimensional chemical tracer model driven by assimilated meteorological fields. Journal of Geophysical Research 106, 12109e12128 - Meijer, E.W., P. F. J. van Velthoven, D. W. Brunner, H. Huntrieser and H. Kelder: Improvement and evaluation of the parameterisation of nitrogen oxide production by lightning, Physics and Chemistry of the Earth, Part C, Volume 26, Issue 8, Pages 577-583, 2001. - Yarwood, G., S. Rao, M. Yocke, and G.Z.Whitten, Updates to the carbon bond chemical mechanism: CB05, Report to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, RT-04-00675, Yocke and Company, Novato, California, United States, 2005

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economy falls into 3 categories fo decision makers - 1. consumers - 2. firms. - 3. governments factors of production sold in markets includes: labour, natural resoources, capita; and entrepreneurship. Final output is goods and services sold in a market economy examines choices by economic agents and how their choices interact in a market economy. how demand and supply interact to determine prices and levels of production of goods and services in an economy. Law of Demand the PRICE for a given product INCREASES, the QUANTITY demanded of the product DECLINES. Law of Supply the PRICE of a product INCREASES, the QUANTITY of that product supplied INCREASES prices where quantity demanded equals the quantity supploed PRICE is referred to as the EQUALIBRIUM PRICE deals with ecomic behaviour at the aggregate level. * focuses on issues such as unemployment, inflation, economic growth, and government policies GDP- Gross Domestic Product the value of all final goods and services produced in a country in a given year. * it must equal to gross domestic income, which will be the same for gross domestic expenditure. income earned by labour (wages and salaries), business (corporate profits. lenders (interest), government (taxes) - C= Consumer Spending - G= Government Spending - I = investment in household residences, business investment inventories and capital equipment - (X-M)= foreigner's spending on Canadian exports -minus- Canadian's spending on foreign exports GNP- Gross National Product - Value of all goods and services produced by Canadians at home or abroad. - GNP= GDP+ Income from canadians investments abroad- Income to foreign holders of Canadian Investments level of output in prices prevailing in that year. A gross domestic product (GDP) figure that has not been adjusted for inflation. level of output after adjusting for increase in price level. * economic growth is measured by Real GDP because it considers inflation Ex. nominal GDP= 5% [(105-100)/100] if inflation is 3% Real GDP is 2%= 5% - 3% Growth of Real GDP (3 factors) - 1. increase in population - 2. increase in capital stock - 3. technological innovation normal fluctuations in long term growth which has a series of patterns. PHASES of Business Cycle... - 1. Expansion - 2. Peak - 3. Recession - 4. Through - 5. Revocery - Normal Growth Stage - 1. stable inflation - 2. rise in corporate profits - 3. increased job start-ups and reduced bankruptcies - 4. increasing inventories and investments by business to deal with increased demand - 5. strong stock market activity - 6. job creation and falling unemployment - 1. Demand has begun to outstrip economic capacity - 2. increasing inflationary pressures, leads to increasing interest rates and falling bond prices - 3. Investment and sales od durables fall and eventually stock market activity and stock prices decline - 1. TWO consecutive quarters of negative growth - StatsCan. depth, duration & diffusion of decline in business activity - 1. Near the end of a recessionary period - 2. falling demand - 3. excess capacity leads to drops in prices and wages. * the decline in inflation leads to falling interest rates, which will begin to rally the economy. The period of time it takes for GDP to return to its previous peak. Initiated with an increase in demand for interest rate sensitive items like... houses, cars, and durable goods and spreads througn the economy. Another expansionary phase is said to begin once GDP passes its previous peak When economic growh declines sunstantially BUT DOES NOT return negative and inflation remains in check. When the economy is growing at strong rate, the Fed will try to engineer a soft landing by raising interest rates enough to slow the economy down without putting it into recession generally change before changes in overall economic activity. - * useful for predicting the future direction of the economy. - 1. Housing starts - 2. manufactuerer's new orders, especially for durables - 3. spot commodity prices - 4. average hours worked per week - 5. stock prices - 6. money flows Statistics Canada's Composite Leading Indicators... - 1. S&P/ TSX Composite Index - 2. Realy Money Supply- M1 - 3. U.S. Composite Leading Index - 4. new orders for durable goods - 5. shipments to inventory ratio finished goods - 6. average work week - 7. employment in business and services - 8. furniture and appliance sales - 9. sales of other retail durable goods - 10. housing spending index change in conjuction with changes in overall economic activity * USEFUL for identifying changing points in the business sycle adter they have occured INCLUDES- GDP, industrial production, personal income and retail sales Change after changes in overall economic activity have taken place. - 1. business investment spending - 2. the unemployment rate - 3. labour costs - 4. inventory levels - 5. inflation. Labour Market Indicators - 1. Participation Rate - 2. Unemployment Rate measures the percentage of the working age population that is in the labour force, either working or looking for work. measured as the percentage of the labour force that is looking for but hasn't found employment. Types of unemployment... - 1. Cyclical - 2. Frictional Unemployment - 3. Structual employment arises due to temporary hirings or layoffs that me attributable to the business cycle unemployment caused by people in the job 'transition' stages caused by workers being unable to find work because they do not possess the neccesary skills FRICTIONAL and STRUCTUAL is caused by... - 1. regulations such as minimum wage laws - 2. strengths of union in negotiating wages - 3. welfare and employment insurance plans that reduce workers' incentive to work - 4. technological changes that make new skills neccessary Natural or full employment unemployment rate or NAIRU- non-accelerating inflationrate of unemployment. fristional and structural unemployment will exist in an economy even if it is healthy they represent the price of credit. * Determined by supply and demand High Interest Rates tend to 1. Raise the cost of capital to firms, which reduces business investment 2. Discourage consumer spending such as durable goods 3. Reduce disposable income available for net borrowers due to hhigher debt servicing charges Key Interest Rate Determinants... - 1. Inflation - 2. Foreign Development and Exchange Rate - 3. Demand and Supply of capital - 4. Default Risk - 5. Central Bank Operations - 6. Central Bank Credibility. Key Interest Rate Determinants- INFLATION... Rates rise to compensate lenders for loss in purchasing power as inflation rises Key Interest Rate Determinants- FOREIGN DEVELOPMENT and EXCHANGE RATE... Foreign Interest rates and Domestic exchnage rates affect the demand for Canadian debt instruments. Key Interest Rate Determinants- DEMAND and SUPPLY of CAPITAL... Government deficits or increases in investment spending cause an increase in demand for capital, which increases rates unless there is a corresponding increase in savings Key Interest Rate Determinants- DEFAULT RISK of the borrower... The greater the risk of default, the greater the rate that must be paid to borrow funds. Key Interest Rate Determinants- Central Bank Operations... The Bank of Canada can affect short-term rates directly and may affect long-term rates less directly through its credibility of commitment to controlling inflation. Key Interest Rate Determinants- Central Bank Credibility... When government establish a credible, long-term commitment to maintan low inflation, lower interest rates are possible, since there is less need to compensate lenders for the risk of rising inflation. How are Interest Rates determined? they are based on future expectations on future levels of inflation. This is because the real interest rate equals the nominal interest rates minus expected inflation. Real Rates were historically in the 5% to 7% range however the have fallen to 1.5%, recently What is MONEY? they serve as 'medium of exchange' for transactions. It serves as a 'unit of account' which establishes the relative values on items. Represents a 'store of value' since it contains no expiration date. What are the.. Measures of Money Supply - 1. M1 - 2. M2 - 3. M2+ - 4. M2++ - 5. M3 - 1. currency held outside the bank - 2. personal accounts - 3. demand deposits at banks held by business and people - 1. M1 - 2. personal savings accounts - 3. non personal notice deposits - 1. M2 - 2. deposit at trusts - 3. mortgage loan companies, credit unions, casisses populaires - 4. money market mutual funds - 5, insurance annuities - 1. M2+ - 2. Canada Savings Bonds - 3. non-money market mutual funds - 1. M2 - 2. Non-personal fixed term deposits - 3. foreign currency deposits of residents booked in Canada What is the CPI- Consumer Price Index measure of Inflation. Tracks the price of a given 'typical' basket of goods and services What is the cost of a Basket? it is related to a base year cost, which is presently 2002. it may overstate the true level of inflation by failing to capture improved quality of the 'basket' and consumers' tendencies to switch to less expensive items. How do you calculate the INFLATION RATE - the percentage change in the CPI level over a given period. - CPI is 145 today and it was 140 last year. - ---the inflation rate over the last year was 3.57% What is INFLATION general decline in the value of money due to a sustained trend of rising prices. An important factor affecting securities markets, because it ERODES THE REAL VALUE OF LONG-TERM INVESTMENTS. What are the COSTS asssociated to INFLATION? 1. erodes the standard of living on a fixed income, can aggravate social inequities. 2. reduced the real value of investments such as fixed-rate loans, since they are paid back in dollars that are worth less. 3. distorts signals to economy participants that are normally given through asset prices 4. accelerating inflation generally causes increase in interest rates, which may lead to reccessionary periods. When does INFLATION occur. when demand for goods and services exceeds or grows faster than supply. What is the OUTPUT GAP refers to the difference between the potential full capacity level of output from actual output. What is the DEMAND PULL INFLATION When Actual output is neal full capacity, increased demand will lead to inflation. When does COST PUSH INFLATION OCCUR When prices rise or fall due to changes in the cost of production - such as the increase in production costs that occurs when oil prices rise significantly. What is the Phillips Curve? inflation moves in the opposite direction of unemployment in the short run and also increases in the money supply fuel inflation. What are the INDICATORS for changes of INFLATION? - 1. commodity and wholesale prices - 2. wage settlements - 3. bank credit. - 4. exchange rate movements What is Disinflation decreases in inflation. Why does DISINFLATION occcur - the cost arise because of the Phillips Curve relationship, - which suggest that declines in inflation tend to cause an increase in unemploymnet, as well as a corresponding slowing of economic growth. Evidense of DISINFLATION and SACRIFISE RATIO Sac Ratio measures the extent to which GDO must be reduced with increase unemployment to achieve a 1% decrease in the inflation rate, with estimates ranging as high as 5 (which implies that 5% od output must be sacrificed to reduce inflation by 1% 1988 to 1994 inflation fell 4% to 0.2% but unemployment rose 7.8% to 10.4% When does DEFLATION occur sustained fall in prices (CPI is negative) cheap goods in short run it will affect corporate profits and in turn will turn in layoffs and increase unemployment which leads to overall decline in economic growth. Decreasing interest rates my offsett but rates can be lowered to an extent. What is included in the BALANCE OF PAYMENTS and what is it for Current account and Capital account it allows Canada to interact with other countries What is the Current Account records all payments between Canadians and foreigner for goods, services, interest and dividends (similar to an Income Statement) it includes investment income, services and transfer of funds (ex. foreign aid and or wealth brought to canada by immigration) What is the most important item in the current account? Merchandise trade- determines the amount imported and exported by a country. What is a Capital Account reflects new equity and debt financing by Canada with foreigner (Similar to a Balance Sheet) - Major components - - direct investment in assets or companies - - portfolio investment in debt (t-bills or bonds) - - international reserve transaction currency markets How do coutnries finance current account deficits a country must issue foreigners an IOU like a bond or t-bill and/ or sell domestic assets as land or coampnies to foreign interests. implies that current account deficits require capital account surpluses since two accounts must balance What is the Exchange Rate affects the economy by TRADE. a high exchange rate would tend to lower Canada's trade balance. What are some factors that affect the Exchnage rate trade. 1. lower inflation rates may offset the impact on foreign trade of a higher exchange rate, due to the lower associated costs. What is the trade-weighted exchnage rate measures the value of the Canadian dollar against 10 major currencies, based on the proportion of our traded maintained with each of those countries What are Exchnage Rate Systems - 1. Floating Systems - 2. Fixed exchange rate system What is the Floating System allow the exchange rate to be freely determeined in foreign exchnage market What is the Fixed exchange rate system central bank 'pegs' the domestic currency against another currency or composite of other countries. Can be achieved by forcing all purchases and sales of domestic currency to be handled only through its own banks, at its price. What is created if a country does not have a FIXED EXCHANGE RATE SYSTEM Can be costly and distortive to the operation of the economy and typically leads to the development of black markets. What should a country do with a Fixed exchange rate system Maintaining a fixed exchange rate by central bank to buy and sell currency in the open market and adjust interest rates as required to maintain a certain exhcnage rate range. This approach requires the maintenance of a sizeable foreign exchnage reserve that must be utilized when the currency faces substantial market pressues. What is the advantage of a Fixed exchange rate system in accordance with INFLATION used to assist with high inflation countries in 'importing' the stability of the coutnry to which it pegs its currency; however it restricts the local monetary authority's ability to deal with interest rates at the local level. Factors that affect the exchange rate - 1. Inflation differentials - 2. interest rate differentials - 3. current account. - 4. economic performance - 5. public debt and deficits - 6. term of trade - 7. political stability What is Inflation differential (factors that affect the exchnage rate) coutrnies with lower inflation tend to appreciate through time to reflect their increased purchasing power relative to other countries what is Interest Rate Differentials (factors that affect the exchnage rate) Higher interest rates tend to attract more capital and make a currency value increase, provided the difference is not merely a reflection of higher inflation What is current account (factors that affect the exchnage rate) Countries that continually run deficits will have excess demand for foreign currencies, which puts downward pressure on the domestic currency. What is the Economic Performance (factors that affect the exchnage rate) A strong economy attracts investment capital by offereing higher returns and thus leads to more favourable exchange rates What is the Public debt and deficits (factors that affect the exchnage rate) Countries with large debts are less attractive to foreign investors because 1. higher incentive to allow inflation to grow and repay in cheaper dollars. 2. rely on foreign investment 3. debt accumulation affects the country's ability to repay What is the Term of Trade this is the ratio of export prices o import prices an increase which suggest increased demand for the local currency What is the Political Stability (factors that affect the exchnage rate) Capital tends to exhibit a 'flight to quality' particularly in time of increase uncertainty, which implies that instability exerts downward pressure on exchnage rates What is Canada's Foreign Exchange reserve and what do they do? Its called the Exchange Funbd Account it is a federal government account that is managed by Bank of Canada and it is made up of foreign currencies, gold and reserves in the IMF

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Because of Wyoming’s dependence on oil, coal, and gas, the existing demand for labor relies heavily on commodity prices and production. Since the year 2000, there have been two large commodity price changes; the first during the latter half of the U.S. Great Recession, 2007 to 2009 and the second in late 2014 and early 2015 (see Figure 6.1). The over-the-year percentage change in average monthly employment in Wyoming, shown in Figure 1.1, closely follows the price of oil. Table 6.1 shows the employment level for industry sectors that experienced a substantial decline in employment during the economic downturn from 2009Q1 to 2010Q1. The industries that experienced the largest decline in employment during this period were mining (-4,100 jobs, or 14.6%), construction (-2,591 jobs, or -11.6%), retail trade (-1,583 jobs, or -5.2%), and accommodation & food services (-1,466 jobs, or -5.1%). Mining (-3,196 jobs, or -11.8%) and construction (-913 jobs, or -3.7%) also experienced substantial declines from 2014Q2 to 2015Q2. Not all industries experienced a decline in employment during the economic downturn of 2009Q1 to 2010Q1. As shown in Table 6.1, industries such as public administration, health care & social assistance, and educational services grew during the economic downturn of 2009Q1-2010Q1. During the period from 2014Q2 to 2015Q2, total employment in public administration declined slightly and remained flat in health care & social assistance and educational services. These industries have an older workforce and R&P has demographic data for selected occupations for these industries. The natural resources and mining industry plays a significant role in Wyoming’s economy. According to NAICS, the mining industry “comprises establishments that extract naturally occurring mineral solids, such as coal and ores: liquid minerals, such as crude petroleum; and gases, such as natural gas.” (U.S. Census Bureau, n.d.). The overall change in employment in Wyoming across all industries followed that of the mining sector. During the last economic downturn (2009Q1 to 2010Q1), mining experienced a 14.6% decrease in employment (see Table 6.1). Figure 6.2 shows the over-the-year employment change in mining which followed the same trend as total employment across all industries, though with substantially greater peaks and troughs. As mentioned in the introduction, the price of oil and coal experienced a substantial decline in the fall of 2015. Between 2014Q2 and 2015Q2, employment in mining experienced a decline of 3,196 jobs (11.8%), which was the largest percentage decline for any industry. The construction sector, which represented about 9.0% of total Wyoming employment in 2014, includes “erecting buildings and other structures (including additions); heavy construction other than buildings; and alterations, reconstruction, installation, and maintenance and repairs” (U.S. Census Bureau, n.d.). The nature of construction is highly seasonal, with employment peaking in the summer months. The long-term quarterly employment growth rate in construction is 1.2%. However, between 2005Q2 and 2008Q4, construction grew rapidly (9.8% per quarter) and then declined quickly between 2009Q1 and 2010Q1 at an average quarterly rate of -14.5% per quarter. State and federal government are large players in total demand for construction. Between 2010 and 2026, the Wyoming Department of Transportation anticipates spending $5 billion on the Highway Improvement Program from its total of $9.88 billion in expected revenue; about half of the expected revenue may take the form of federal aid, but 25.4% of the remainder (or $1.24 billion) is projected to come from state sources, including “royalties and other severance taxes on oil, natural gas, and coal” (Wyoming Department of Transportation, 2010). An unanticipated decrease in commodity prices could result in lower-than-expected income from royalties and severance taxes, leaving fewer state dollars available for the Highway Improvement Program. As part of this construction sector analysis, this section will present historical construction employment data, review the changing demographics of the construction industry, take a closer look at Wyoming’s construction industry’s most employed occupations, and conclude with possible government initiatives which could influence aggregate demand for construction in Wyoming. During the most recent period of rapid economic expansion (2005Q2 to 2008Q4), construction employment grew at an average rate of 9.8% per quarter, and then decreased by approximately 14.5% per quarter between 2009Q1 and 2010Q1. Aside from the rapid expansion and following contraction, employment growth in the construction sector has maintained an over-the-year growth rate of about 1.2% per quarter since 2001Q1. Over-the-year construction employment, as a share of total statewide employment, has maintained an 8.6% average since 2001Q1, when omitting the high growth period leading up to the economic downturn of 2009Q1 to 2010Q1 and the economic downturn itself. Including all quarters since 2001Q1, the share of construction employment relative to total employment is slightly higher at 8.9%. The mining industry is a major driver of the Wyoming economy, and the percent change in construction employment over time closely follows the changes in mining employment, but with a higher degree of seasonality (see Figure 6.3). The over-the-year change in employment in both construction and mining is also correlated to the over-the-year change in the Henry Hub Spot Price of natural gas. As previously noted, royalties and severance taxes from the mining industry contribute to the funds available for state construction projects. The manufacturing industry is defined by NAICS as “establishments engaged in the mechanical, physical, or chemical transformation of materials, substances, or components into new products. Establishments in the Manufacturing sector are often described as plants, factories, or mills and characteristically use power-driven machines and materials-handling equipment. However, establishments that transform materials or substances into new products by hand or in the worker’s home and those engaged in selling to the general public products made on the same premises from which they are sold, such as bakeries, candy stores, and custom tailors, may also be included in this sector. Manufacturing establishments may process materials or may contract with other establishments to process their materials for them. Both types of establishments are included in manufacturing” (U.S. Census Bureau, n.d.). As shown in Figure 6.4, the over-the-year percentage change in manufacturing followed that of the mining industry. The over-the-year percentage change was not as rapid in the manufacturing industry as in the mining industry, but the changes did take place at roughly the same time. During the economic downturn of 2009Q1-2010Q1, both mining and manufacturing experienced declines in over-the-year change in employment and after the downturn, the manufacturing industry grew at a much slower rate than the mining industry. During the previous economic downturn (2009Q1-2010Q1), employment among all industries in Wyoming declined 4.7% (12,741 jobs) and 8.6% (797 jobs) in manufacturing. Prior to the economic downturn of 2009Q1 to 2010Q1, the average monthly employment in the manufacturing industry showed fluctuations during the year, due to the change of the seasons, with a small decline in the 12-month moving average in 2002 and 2003. After 2010Q1, the trend in average monthly employment in the manufacturing industry continued to increase, but had not reached the pre-downturn levels in 2015Q2. From 2014Q2 to 2015Q2, the average monthly employment in manufacturing declined 0.1% (13 jobs) and declined 0.8% (2,154 jobs) among all industries in Wyoming. The educational services sector (NAICS 61) includes elementary and secondary schools; colleges, universities, and professional schools; exam preparation and training; and educational support services. In 2014, this sector represented approximately 10.0% of total Wyoming employment. Employment in educational services may also be affected by population changes, as the loss of jobs in other industries may influence population out-migration as school-age children may move out of state with parents searching for employment elsewhere, especially in light of relatively strong regional employment growth. As shown in Figure 6.5, employment in educational services grew steadily between 2000 and 2015. In January 2001, there were 25,377 jobs in educational services and in June 2015 there were 29,181 jobs, a net gain of 3,804 jobs. During this period, the largest growth occurred in 2004 and 2009. Employment growth in educational services has been mostly flat since 2010. Employment in educational services could be affected by several factors including an aging population of workers, state population trends, and budgetary issues. In 2013, R&P prepared a report detailing wages, turnover, workforce retirement trends, and data on an aging workforce and replacement need within state elementary and secondary schools (NAICS 6111). This report can be found here. In 2014, 28.1% of people employed in educational services were age 55 or older, compared to a statewide average of 18.4%. However, nonresidents only made up 8.0% of people working in educational services, compared to the statewide average of 17.1% for total employment. This indicates that many employees working in educational services are nearing the traditional retirement age of 65 and hiring tends to be local. This may provide potential workers for jobs that could be filled by people who have lost their jobs in other sectors, such as mining or construction. Budget deficits due to declining tax revenues from mining may also affect employment in the educational services sector. Community colleges in the state receive “about 60 percent of their budget revenue from the state based on enrollment” (Richards, 2015). Some of these schools are currently introducing hiring freezes similar to those in state government. It’s possible the University of Wyoming could be similarly affected in the future. The public administration sector, which represented about 10.4% of total Wyoming employment in 2014, includes “federal, state, and local government agencies that administer, oversee, and manage public programs and have executive, legislative, or judicial authority over other institutions within a given area” (U.S. Census Bureau, n.d.). Public sector employment has less seasonality, or quarter-to-quarter fluctuation, than the economy as a whole. On average, public administration employment has kept pace with total employment with a long-term average quarterly growth rate of 1.0% from 2002Q2 to 2015Q3 (see Figure 6.6). During the economic expansion that lasted from 2005 to 2008, total employment grew at an average over-the-year rate of 3.8% per quarter, compared to 2.7% for public administration. Public employment continued to grow during the economic downturn of 2009Q1 to 2010Q1, at a rate of 2.1%, when total employment was decreasing by 4.1%. However, since 2010Q2, average over-the-year employment in public administration has decreased by 0.7% per quarter, in contrast with the total employment increase of 0.9% per quarter. As a percent of total quarterly employment, public administration accounted for an average of 10.7% between 2000Q1 and 2015Q2; public employment as a percent of total employment peaked at 11.5% in the second and third quarters of 2010, up from a low of 9.8% in 2007Q4. Percent changes in the share of public employment are mainly a result of changes in total employment, as the number employed in public administration has remained relatively constant over time. The percent change in public administration employment over time is relatively independent of changes in mining employment, which is closely related to the price of natural gas. Government shutdowns, such as the federal shutdown of October 2013, and hiring freezes, such as the Wyoming state government hiring freeze initiated by Governor Matt Mead in October 2015, are key drivers in public administration employment. As noted by Barron (2013), Governor Mead’s goal has been “a smaller and more efficient state government” since his inauguration in 2011, and in response to the reduced revenues forecasted by the Census Revenue Estimating Group report of October 2015, Governor Mead announced a hiring freeze for state employees (Hancock, 2015). Since the state receives royalties and severance taxes based on the price of coal, oil, and natural gas, future employment in public administration may depend on the future of these commodities. While lower crude oil prices certainly hurt Wyoming oil producers and the associated employment generated by the mining industry, lower prices of gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel benefit consumers nationally. Lower transportation costs for consumers leave them with more discretionary income. Ferrell and Greig (2015) estimate that for every dollar saved at the gasoline pump, consumers spend at least 73 cents on other items. The total extra spending is likely to be higher, since the institute could not necessarily account for all purchases. Declining gasoline and diesel prices tend to lead to more vehicle miles traveled (VMT). Wyoming leads the nation in VMT per capita at 16,272 based on 2011 data (Baxandall, 2013). That is more than 20% higher than the next highest state, Alabama. Therefore, Wyoming consumers are aided proportionally more than consumers in other areas. Additionally, Hopper Research (2015) found that airfare prices were 17% lower in October 2015 than the previous October. Hopper Research attributed this decline to this year’s dramatic decline in oil prices. For November and December 2015, prices were projected to be 16% lower than 2014, and prices were projected to bottom out in January 2016 (Hopper Research, 2015). This increase in discretionary income and cheaper travel costs may lead to increased tourism, which could help Wyoming’s economy. For example, Yellowstone National Park had record attendance in 2015 (Reuters, 2015). While increased tourism cannot fully alleviate the negative impacts from low energy prices, it does lend some stability to the economy, in part due to its contribution to the diversification of Wyoming’s economy that policymakers have been striving to achieve. While tourism and related industries only comprise approximately 3.3% of gross state product (GSP; U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, 2015), these industries account for approximately 12.3% of overall employment based on 2013 data (Research & Planning, 2015). Note that some of the activity in industries such as food service and accommodations is not fully attributable to tourism. Even if consumers’ destination is not in Wyoming, increased VMT along major Interstates 25, 80, and 90 will add sales tax and fuel tax to Wyoming’s tax revenue. While the effects of increased VMT are relatively stable in terms of employment – such as moderate increases in employment at restaurants and gas stations or convenience stores – consumer demand for many of the tourist attractions in Wyoming is highly seasonal. Therefore, employment in tourism-related industries fluctuates with demand. Figure 6.7 displays two industries that are highly seasonal: skiing facilities (NAICS 713920) and marinas (NAICS 713930). For example, skiing facilities employ the most workers in the first quarter of each year while marinas employ the most workers in the second and third quarters of each year (Research & Planning, 2015). In addition to seasonal-related demand, societal factors such as the start and the end of the school year and holidays are also factors. At the national level, consumers benefit from lower fuel prices in two main ways: an increase in discretionary income, and the suppression of inflation due to the impact on transportation costs of consumer goods. Lower fuel prices provide consumers with more discretionary income, which can lead to more VMT and leisure spending, such as vacations. Some of this spending may occur in Wyoming, such as trips to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. While tourism and related industries in Wyoming provide a substantial amount of employment (12.3%), these jobs tend to pay much lower wages than jobs in the mining sector and the value added component (3.3% of GDP) is much lower than mining. Wyoming’s economy is highly dependent on the production of crude oil (along with natural gas, coal, and other extractive resources). The mining sector provided 33.0% of GDP and 9.5% of employment in 2013. Therefore, the net effect of lower energy prices is extremely detrimental to Wyoming’s economy. Research & Planning publishes quarterly wage and employment estimates for industries that have been identified as technology related in Wyoming. Technology-related subsectors can be found in manufacturing technology (measuring & control instruments), communications services (wireless telecommunications carriers), software & technology services (computer systems design & related services), and engineering services. During 2015Q2, technology-related industries made up a small portion of Wyoming’s total employment and payroll. As shown in Table 6.2, the 924 establishments in technology-related industries made up 3.5% of all establishments, and the 4,981 jobs in these industries accounted for 1.8% of total employment. Technology-related industries also accounted for 2.4% of total wages. However, the average weekly wage for technology-related industries ($1,199) was considerably higher (138.1%) than Wyoming’s average weekly wage across all industries ($868). According to Brennan (2014), the proportion of technology-related employment and wages in Wyoming has remained consistent for the last decade. Since 2005, technology-related industries have accounted for between 1.7% and 1.8% of Wyoming’s average annual employment and 2.3% and 2.5% of the state’s total wages. Barron, J. (2013, August 24). Wyoming state government employee numbers down the past three years. Casper Star-Tribune. Retrieved May 17, 2016, from http://trib.com/news/state-and-regional/govt-and-politics/wyoming-state-government-employee-numbers-down-the-past-three-years/article_e4d426c5-39a0-556d-9ce6-8e1ca9e85685.html Baxandall, P. (2013). Moving Off the Road: A State-By-State Analysis of the National Decline in Driving. U.S.PIRG Education Fund. Retrieved from November 13, 2015, from http://uspirg.org/sites/pirg/files/reports/Moving_Off_the_Road_USPIRG.pdf Brennan, N. (2014). Technology jobs in Wyoming, 2003 to 2013. Wyoming Labor Force Trends, 51(12). Retrieved May 9, 2016, from http://doe.state.wy.us/LMI/trends/1214/a3.htm Farrell, D., and Greig, F. (2015, October). How falling gas prices fuel the consumer evidence from 25 million people. JPMorgan Chase Institute. Retrieved November 16, 2015. Hancock, L. (2015, October 26). New report projects state revenues will be down by $600M over 3 years. Casper Star-Tribune. Retrieved May 9, 2016, from http://tinyurl.com/trib1015 Research & Planning. (2015). Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages. Retrieved May 9, 2016, from http://doe.state.wy.us/LMI/toc_202.htm Reuters. (2015, Oct. 5). Yellowstone in midst of record attendance year. Retrieved November 13, 2015, from http://triblive.com/usworld/nation/9215224-74/park-yellowstone-million#axzz3rODDnuPC Richards, H. (2015, November 11). Some Wyoming community colleges brace for bust. Casper Star-Tribune. Retrieved November 20, 2015, from http://trib.com/news/state-and-regional/some-wyoming-community-colleges-brace-for-bust/article_3e2f7490-9d07-5b00-8cc8-b4847bf785d4.html Surry, P. (2015, November 5). Hopper’s consumer airfare index remains at historic lows. Hopper Research. Retrieved November 16, 2015, from http://www.hopper.com/research/hoppers-consumer-airfare-index-remains-historic-lows/ U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. (2015). Gross domestic product (GDP) for Wyoming by industry (millions of current dollars using 2013 data). Retrieved November 12, 2015, from http://eadiv.state.wy.us/i&e/WyoGDP97_14.htm U.S. Census Bureau. (n.d.). 2007 NAICS. North American Industry Classification System. Retrieved May 9, 2016, from http://tinyurl.com/NAICS07 Wyoming Department of Transportation. (n.d.). Wyoming Connects: The Long Range Transportation Plan. Retrieved May 9, 2016, from http://tinyurl.com/wydot2010plan

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David found many new songs in his violin those early winter days, and they were very beautiful ones. To begin with, there were all the kindly looks and deeds that were showered upon him from every side. There was the first snowstorm, too, with the feathery flakes turning all the world to fairy whiteness. This song David played to Mr. Streeter, one day, and great was his disappointment that the man could not seem to understand what the song said. "But don't you see?" pleaded David. "I'm telling you that it's your pear-tree blossoms come back to say how glad they are that you did n't kill them that day." "Pear-tree blossoms—come back!" ejaculated the old man. "Well, no, I can't see. Where's yer pear-tree blossoms?" "Why, there—out of the window—everywhere," urged the boy. "There! By ginger! boy—ye don't mean—ye can't mean the snow!" "Of course I do! Now, can't you see it? Why, the whole tree was just a great big cloud of snowflakes. Don't you remember? Well, now it's gone away and got a whole lot more trees, and all the little white petals have come dancing down to celebrate, and to tell you they sure are coming back next year." "Well, by ginger!" exclaimed the man again. Then, suddenly, he threw back his head with a hearty laugh. David did not quite like the laugh, neither did he care for the five-cent piece that the man thrust into his fingers a little later; though—had David but known it—both the laugh and the five-cent piece gift were—for the uncomprehending man who gave them—white milestones along an unfamiliar way. It was soon after this that there came to David the great surprise—his beloved Lady of the Roses and his no less beloved Mr. Jack were to be married at the beginning of the New Year. So very surprised, indeed, was David at this, that even his violin was mute, and had nothing, at first, to say about it. But to Mr. Jack, as man to man, David said one day:— "I thought men, when they married women, went courting. In story-books they do. And you—you hardly ever said a word to my beautiful Lady of the Roses; and you spoke once—long ago—as if you scarcely remembered her at all. Now, what do you mean by that?" And Mr. Jack laughed, but he grew red, too,—and then he told it all,—that it was just the story of "The Princess and the Pauper," and that he, David, had been the one, as it happened, to do part of their courting for them. And how David had laughed then, and how he had fairly hugged himself for joy! And when next he had picked up his violin, what a beautiful, beautiful song he had found about it in the vibrant strings! It was this same song, as it chanced, that he was playing in his room that Saturday afternoon when the letter from Simeon Holly's long-lost son John came to the Holly farmhouse. Downstairs in the kitchen, Simeon Holly stood, with the letter in his hand. "Ellen, we've got a letter from—John," he said. That Simeon Holly spoke of it at all showed how very far along his unfamiliar way he had come since the last letter from John had arrived. "From—John? Oh, Simeon! From John?" Simeon sat down and tried to hide the shaking of his hand as he ran the point of his knife under the flap of the envelope. "We'll see what—he says." And to hear him, one might have thought that letters from John were everyday occurrences. Twice before I have written [ran the letter], and received no answer. But I'm going to make one more effort for forgiveness. May I not come to you this Christmas? I have a little boy of my own now, and my heart aches for you. I know how I should feel, should he, in years to come, do as I did. I'll not deceive you—I have not given up my art. You told me once to choose between you and it—and I chose, I suppose; at least, I ran away. Yet in the face of all that, I ask you again, may I not come to you at Christmas? I want you, father, and I want mother. And I want you to see my boy. "Well?" said Simeon Holly, trying to speak with a steady coldness that would not show how deeply moved he was. "Well, Ellen?" "Yes, Simeon, yes!" choked his wife, a world of mother-love and longing in her pleading eyes and voice. "Yes—you'll let it be—'Yes'!" "Uncle Simeon, Aunt Ellen," called David, clattering down the stairs from his room, "I've found such a beautiful song in my violin, and I'm going to play it over and over so as to be sure and remember it for father—for it is a beautiful world, Uncle Simeon, is n't it? Now, listen!" And Simeon Holly listened—but it was not the violin that he heard. It was the voice of a little curly-headed boy out of the past. When David stopped playing some time later, only the woman sat watching him—the man was over at his desk, pen in hand. John, John's wife, and John's boy came the day before Christmas, and great was the excitement in the Holly farmhouse. John was found to be big, strong, and bronzed with the outdoor life of many a sketching trip—a son to be proud of, and to be leaned upon in one's old age. Mrs. John, according to Perry Larson, was "the slickest little woman goin'." According to John's mother, she was an almost unbelievable incarnation of a long-dreamed-of, long-despaired-of daughter—sweet, lovable, and charmingly beautiful. Little John—little John was himself; and he could not have been more had he been an angel-cherub straight from heaven—which, in fact, he was, in his doting grandparents' eyes. John Holly had been at his old home less than four hours when he chanced upon David's violin. He was with his father and mother at the time. There was no one else in the room. With a sidelong glance at his parents, he picked up the instrument—John Holly had not forgotten his own youth. His violin-playing in the old days had not been welcome, he remembered. "A fiddle! Who plays?" he asked. "Oh, the boy. You say you—took him in? By the way, what an odd little shaver he is! Never did I see a boy like him." Simeon Holly's head came up almost aggressively. "David is a good boy—a very good boy, indeed, John. We think a great deal of him." John Holly laughed lightly, yet his brow carried a puzzled frown. Two things John Holly had not been able thus far to understand: an indefinable change in his father, and the position of the boy David, in the household— John Holly was still remembering his own repressed youth. "Hm-m," he murmured, softly picking the strings, then drawing across them a tentative bow. "I've a fiddle at home that I play sometimes. Do you mind if I—tune her up?" A flicker of something that was very near to humor flashed from his father's eyes. "Oh, no. We are used to that—now." And again John Holly remembered his youth. "Jove! but he's got the dandy instrument here," cried the player, dropping his bow after the first half-dozen superbly vibrant tones, and carrying the violin to the window. A moment later he gave an amazed ejaculation and turned on his father a dumfounded face. "Great Scott, father! Where did that boy get this instrument? I know something of violins, if I can't play them much; and this—! Where did he get it?" "Of his father, I suppose. He had it when he came here, anyway." " 'Had it when he came'! But, father, you said he was a tramp, and—oh, come, tell me, what is the secret behind this? Here I come home and find calmly reposing on my father's sitting-room table a violin that's priceless, for all I know. Anyhow, I do know that its value is reckoned in the thousands, not hundreds: and yet you, with equal calmness, tell me it's owned by this boy who, it's safe to say, does n't know how to play sixteen notes on it correctly, to say nothing of appreciating those he does play; and who, by your own account, is nothing but—" A swiftly uplifted hand of warning stayed the words on his lips. He turned to see David himself in the doorway. "Come in, David," said Simeon Holly quietly. "My son wants to hear you play. I don't think he has heard you." And again there flashed from Simeon Holly's eyes a something very much like humor. With obvious hesitation John Holly relinquished the violin. From the expression on his face it was plain to be seen the sort of torture he deemed was before him. But, as if constrained to ask the question, he did say:— "Where did you get this violin, boy?" "I don't know. We've always had it, ever since I could remember—this and the other one." "The other one!" "Oh!" He hesitated; then, a little severely, he observed: "This is a fine instrument, boy,—a very fine instrument." "Yes," nodded David, with a cheerful smile. "Father said it was. I like it, too. This is an Amati, but the other is a Stradivarius. I don't know which I do like best, sometimes, only this is mine." With a half-smothered ejaculation John Holly fell back limply. "Then you—do—know?" he challenged. "The value of that violin in your hands." There was no answer. The boy's eyes were questioning. "The worth, I mean,—what it's worth." "Why, no—yes—that is, it's worth everything—to me," answered David, in a puzzled voice. With an impatient gesture John Holly brushed this aside. "But the other one—where is that?" "At Joe Glaspell's. I gave it to him to play on, because he had n't any, and he liked to play so well." "You gave it to him—a Stradivarius!" "I loaned it to him," corrected David, in a troubled voice. "Being father's, I could n't bear to give it away. But Joe—Joe had to have something to play on." " 'Something to play on'! Father, he does n't mean the River Street Glaspells?" cried John Holly. "I think he does. Joe is old Peleg Glaspell's grandson." John Holly threw up both his hands. "A Stradivarius—to old Peleg's grandson! Oh, ye gods!" he muttered. "Well, I'll be—" He did not finish his sentence. At another word from Simeon Holly, David had begun to play. From his seat by the stove Simeon Holly watched his son's face—and smiled. He saw amazement, unbelief, and delight struggle for the mastery; but before the playing had ceased, he was summoned by Perry Larson to the kitchen on a matter of business. So it was into the kitchen that John Holly burst a little later, eyes and cheek aflame. "Father, where in Heaven's name did you get that boy?" he demanded. "Who taught him to play like that? I've been trying to find out from him, but I'd defy Sherlock Holmes himself to make head or tail of the sort of lingo he talks, about mountain homes and the Orchestra of Life! Father, what does it mean?" Obediently Simeon Holly told the story then, more fully than he had told it before. He brought forward the letter, too, with its mysterious signature. "Perhaps you can make it out, son," he laughed. "None of the rest of us can, though I have n't shown it to anybody now for a long time. I got discouraged long ago of anybody's ever making it out." "Make it out—make it out!" cried John Holly excitedly; "I should say I could! It's a name known the world over. It's the name of one of the greatest violinists that ever lived." "But how—what—how came he in my barn?" demanded Simeon Holly. "Easily guessed, from the letter, and from what the world knows," returned John, his voice still shaking with excitement. "He was always a queer chap, they say, and full of his notions. Six or eight years ago his wife died. They say he worshiped her, and for weeks refused even to touch his violin. Then, very suddenly, he, with his four-year-old son, disappeared—dropped quite out of sight. Some people guessed the reason. I knew a man who was well acquainted with him, and at the time of the disappearance he told me quite a lot about him. He said he was n't a bit surprised at what had happened. That already half a dozen relatives were interfering with the way he wanted to bring the boy up, and that David was in a fair way to be spoiled, even then, with so much attention and flattery. The father had determined to make a wonderful artist of his son, and he was known to have said that he believed—as do so many others—that the first dozen years of a child's life are the making of the man, and that if he could have the boy to himself that long he would risk the rest. So it seems he carried out his notion until he was taken sick, and had to quit—poor chap!" "But why did n't he tell us plainly in that note who he was, then?" fumed Simeon Holly, in manifest irritation. "He did, he thought," laughed the other. "He signed his name, and he supposed that was so well known that just to mention it would be enough. That's why he kept it so secret while he was living on the mountain, you see, and that's why even David himself did n't know it. Of course, if anybody found out who he was, that ended his scheme, and he knew it. So he supposed all he had to do at the last was to sign his name to that note, and everybody would know who he was, and David would at once be sent to his own people. (There's an aunt and some cousins, I believe.) You see he did n't reckon on nobody's being able to read his name! Besides, being so ill, he probably was n't quite sane, anyway." "I see, I see," nodded Simeon Holly, frowning a little. "And of course if we had made it out, some of us here would have known it, probably. Now that you call it to mind I think I have heard it myself in days gone by—though such names mean little to me. But doubtless somebody would have known. However, that is all past and gone now." "Oh, yes, and no harm done. He fell into good hands, luckily. You'll soon see the last of him now, of course." "Last of him? Oh, no, I shall keep David," said Simeon Holly, with decision. "Keep him! Why, father, you forget who he is! There are friends, relatives, an adoring public, and a mint of money awaiting that boy. You can't keep him. You could never have kept him this long if this little town of yours had n't been buried in this forgotten valley up among these hills. You'll have the whole world at your doors the minute they find out he is here—hills or no hills! Besides, there are his people; they have some claim." There was no answer. With a suddenly old, drawn look on his face, the elder man had turned away. Half an hour later Simeon Holly climbed the stairs to David's room, and as gently and plainly as he could told the boy of this great, good thing that had come to him. David was amazed, but overjoyed. That he was found to be the son of a famous man affected him not at all, only so far as it seemed to set his father right in other eyes—in David's own, the man had always been supreme. But the going away—the marvelous going away—filled him with excited wonder. "You mean, I shall go away and study—practice—learn more of my violin?" "And hear beautiful music like the organ in church, only more—bigger—better?" "I suppose so." "And know people—dear people—who will understand what I say when I play?" Simeon Holly's face paled a little; still, he knew David had not meant to make it so hard. "Why, it's my 'start'—just what I was going to have with the gold-pieces," cried David joyously. Then, uttering a sharp cry of consternation, he clapped his fingers to his lips. "Your—what?" asked the man. "N—nothing, really, Mr. Holly,—Uncle Simeon,—n—nothing." Something, either the boy's agitation, or the luckless mention of the gold-pieces sent a sudden dismayed suspicion into Simeon Holly's eyes. "Your 'start'?—the 'gold-pieces'? David, what do you mean?" David shook his head. He did not intend to tell. But gently, persistently, Simeon Holly questioned until the whole piteous little tale lay bare before him: the hopes, the house of dreams, the sacrifice. David saw then what it means when a strong man is shaken by an emotion that has mastered him; and the sight awed and frightened the boy. "Mr. Holly, is it because I'm—going—that you care—so much? I never thought—or supposed—you'd—care," he faltered. There was no answer. Simeon Holly's eyes were turned quite away. "Uncle Simeon—please! I—I think I don't want to go, anyway. I—I'm sure I don't want to go—and leave you!" Simeon Holly turned then, and spoke. "Go? Of course you'll go, David. Do you think I'd tie you here to me—now?" he choked. "What don't I owe to you—home, son, happiness! Go?—of course you'll go. I wonder if you really think I'd let you stay! Come, we'll go down to mother and tell her. I suspect she'll want to start in to-night to get your socks all mended up!" And with head erect and a determined step, Simeon Holly faced the mighty sacrifice in his turn, and led the way downstairs. The friends, the relatives, the adoring public, the mint of money—they are all David's now. But once each year, man grown though he is, he picks up his violin and journeys to a little village far up among the hills. There in a quiet kitchen he plays to an old man and an old woman; and always to himself he says that he is practicing against the time when, his violin at his chin and the bow drawn across the strings, he shall go to meet his father in the far-away land, and tell him of the beautiful world he has left.

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"The claims for the Montessori methods far exceed their actual value..." Day three of a week of highlights from the history of education This week we’re sharing 5 of the best pieces from the history of education initiative on Montessorium, one per day. Yesterday we looked at Jason Rheins on skepticism about classical education in the classical period. Monday we saw Kerry Ellard analyze the so-called “factory model” in education and bust some common myths around it. Today we’re back with Kerry, looking at the early reception of Montessori in America. Montessori has always had a grassroots flavor in the US, operating largely outside of the intellectual establishment, and at no time was that more true than her initial reception in the 1910s. She had a tremendous amount of popular support and enthusiasm—and a tremendous amount of academic opposition. As late as 1915, Montessori’s “glass classroom” was the talk of the Panama Pacific World Fair in San Diego. By 1916, she was essentially vanquished from the US, her direct influence dropping to near-zero until after her death. Kerry has collected and analyzed some remarkable passages in early newspaper coverage of Montessori, presented below. Early American Newspaper Commentary on Montessori By Kerry Ellard A look at the early press coverage of the Montessori Method in America indicates that interpretations varied significantly. It was likely in part a case of seeing what one wanted to see, but it likely also had to do with the way in which people were introduced to the method, what they saw as the goals of education, and what methods they were contrasting it with. Additionally, people who had a vested interest in other education methods naturally tended to find the enthusiasm overblown. But they all seemed to have pretty similar general expectations about early childhood education, indicating the prevailing worldview among educators. Two newspaper articles from Washington, DC illustrate this dynamic. In 1913, the Evening Star ran a piece on a group of locals who were urging that the city become the American “headquarters” for the Montessori method. The group was sponsored by Dr. Alexander Graham Bell and his wife, and it was to launch in a room at his home. “If the efforts of a group of Washingtonians who are intensely interested in the Montessori method of child-education are successful, Washington will become the American center for the spread of this new method; its educational system will absorb the Italian psychologist's ideas, and the parents of the children who are now being educated … will be the sponsors for the awakening in America of this twentieth-century discovery as to the best way of getting the best out of a child. The parents of children who have been attending this "laboratory" since November met at Dr. Bell's home yesterday morning, determined to keep the Montessori center of America right here in Washington. It is more than a mere matter of having a small private school here: the movement has for its object a much larger thing. They want Washington to adopt the method for its educational system and to have the adopted system become the show piece of the nation, from an educational standpoint....There is something unique and of historic importance in the pioneer school in the Bell Home. It is important because the head of it is Anne George, the first American graduate of the famous Dottoressa Maria Montessori of Rome, the woman who upset all previous notions as to educating children and whose discoveries are fast getting out of the "fad" stage and are attracting the serious wonder and attention of the scientific world. Miss George is a pioneer in Montessori, and has always been a free lance in education, kicking over the traces of convention and seeking for the latest and best developments. She was in Chicago, a private school teacher, when she heard of Dr. Montessori in Rome. That was before the magazine writers had begun their assault of interviews on the doctor in Rome. Miss George went to Rome, saw that a new continent had been discovered in the world of educating children and went to work to conquer its difficulties..."The Montessori method," Bell wrote, "may be illustrated by the ordinary method of feeding chickens, which is to scatter the food on the ground where the chickens may get at it and then leave the chickens to pick it up for themselves." To read these notes of Dr. Bell's and to read what Miss Fletcher had to explain about the method is wonderfully clear in the light of having seen exactly what the children do, but it is probably true that a wider range of interest may be found by citing some bald examples of what the children accomplish without accompanying the citations by the scientific explanations, beyond the rather interesting observation that Dr. Montessori started out with the theory that education of children should proceed from a biological standpoint. The Froebel kindergarten methods are left ‘centuries behind,' in the opinion of the Montessori enthusiasts…The little Montessori-taught lads and lassies have a distinct air of independence, initiative, self-reliance, or call it what you may; there is none of the running to nurse or parents with a "What shall I do next?" query. That shows, the expert will tell you in scientific manner, what sort of an education is going on in the little life. They get a grip on the child, start him doing something in a manner that takes his whole attention, and before one realizes it, he is developing the manliness in him at a startling rate. Another odd and useful little Montessori-taught trait is the custom of these children to dress themselves at a far earlier age than the ordinary child...This latter bit is a part of the ‘exercises in practical life.’ All sorts of buttons and lacing and hook and eye effects are given to the children, and so interested do they become that they will not be satisfied until they have mastered the mysteries of all the fastenings that the human dress is heir to. This is not the end and ambition of Montessori--to teach a child to dress. By no means. It is but a single occupation chosen as an illustration Along the same lines do the children learn to read and to write before they know what they are doing. If the word auto-education can be used at all, it can be used for Montessori's methods... Whatever ‘it’ is, it seems to get children in a state where they attack their problems with a strength and firmness not seen ordinarily….” While the reporter’s own views and sensationalism may somewhat color the story, what can be taken away from it is this: There was much discussion over what the Montessori Method actually was, and whether it was new. It tended to be promoted by young female educators, usually socially connected and who had traveled to Europe, who had a passion for theories of education and innovative methods. One gets the sense Bell is charmed by their enthusiasm. Part of the attraction was the perception that it was based in “science” and “biology,” and that it was novel, with unprecedented potential. In education circles, there was an ongoing rivalry with the kindergarten crowd, and a feeling that there was no greater sin than being “behind” the times. (“The Froebel kindergarten methods are left ‘centuries behind’…”) There were a number of fads and ideals popular in education circles that were being compared with the Montessori method. The author’s references, somewhat playful, to “reading ‘out of the air,’” an “orderly, modern, scientific and far from freakish method,” “auto-education,” etc. It seems people were rebelling simultaneously against ideas seen as rather silly and against the older “pate de foie gras” method Bell spoke of. Both Bell’s chicken-feed comment and the emphasis on independence and manliness, especially the keyword “self-reliance,” reflect Emersonian philosophy, which permeated American culture. Emerson never proposed specific methods—he was not concerned mainly with education, and certainly not childhood education. He was concerned with cultivating individual judgment by observing the world’s operations. But it is clear that many 20th-century American educators were influenced by the 19th-century literary themes that Emerson represented. (Emerson’s writing is full of allusions to classical literature, history, philosophy, mythology, all major religions, and even scientific treatises, so many of these themes were “universal” or “timeless.”) These themes generally appealed to them, so they used a lot of the same language, but many believed Emerson’s unstructured individualist approach was wholly inadequate and that his ideas remained underdeveloped and unmodernized. A little over a year later, another DC paper looked into the ongoing debate over the Montessori method. The reporter interviewed Catherine Watkins, director of public kindergartens in the Washington public schools, who said that Washing kindergarten programs included “all the benefits claimed for the Montessori system, and comprises additional merits not included in the Montessori kindergartens.” Watkins had studied the Montessori methods used in Chicago and Washington Montessori classes, the latter of which presumably included the school at Bell’s home. “The claims for the Montessori methods far exceed their actual value to education…And I make that statement with a full realization, that Madam Montessori has contributed much that will be of lasting value if it awakens Italy, and America, as well, to the needs of the young child… The use of the steps.... indicates one point of difference between the two systems. In a kindergarten the child climbs the steps unconsciously, for the purpose of coming down the slide. In the Montessori school they are encouraged to climb steps for the sake primarily, it is stated, of cultivating grace of carriage and correlation of muscles. But whatever may be true of the Italian child, we have not found it necessary to expend much thought on American children in that particular. They perform the act or climbing steps with poise and ease…” What stands out from this interview is that the characterizations of the Montessori Method are almost the reverse of the ones in the piece from a year earlier. From Watkins’ perspective, which is clearly invested in the kindergarten model, this is not at all “something entirely new,” although the interviewer paraphrased Watkins as saying that “light, easily moved furniture is required by both the kindergarten and Montessori methods.” She perceives the Montessori method as much more familiar and structured—she emphasizes the directed, almost drill-like tasks more than Bell does, to the point of explaining that Montessori students climb stairs to cultivate graceful movement, rather than “unconsciously, for the purpose of coming down the slide.” This does not sound very much like self-directed learning. But Watkins continued in a way that contradicts this, speaking of similarities between both systems. “Both believe in working with concrete material. Both encourage children in the care of material, in the performance of practical duties, such as cleaning the floor, in feeding animals, in taking off and in putting on their own wraps [shawls or coats]...Both systems observe the luncheon period in about the same manner, encouraging the children to help in its serving, and in cleaning and putting away the dishes… Both systems feel the child can be given ethical and mental instruction by a contact with natural phenomena…” Watkins describes these tasks not as having a practical value in themselves or developing specific skills (i.e., learning to get dressed) so much as an expression of a child being allowed to interact with their natural environment and discern how to navigate it using one’s own judgment (i.e., putting on or removing coats as needed). Here is where she thought the systems differed: “The Montessori system emphasizes the individual. The kindergarten, while providing abundant opportunity for individual development and variation, emphasizes the group. Thus the individual life is extended and enriched and a foundation is laid for those virtues which arise only through social relationships and social co-operation…Children, at play, tend to reproduce the life about them. This may be made a potent element in developing their sense of social relationships, if it is wisely directed. So far as I can see the Montessori system provides no opportunity for such group play. We have some interesting experiences in kindergartens by this inborn aptitude of children to formulate games from what they observe among adults. In a Montessori school the teacher merely is the silent observer of the child. In the kindergarten she performs that function, and also is the mediator between the instinct of the child on the one hand and the complex problems of modern living on the other." Watkins told the interviewer that the observation role “involves either a lack of restraint or lack of incitement.” It was evident that kindergarten was seen as something designed to prepare kids for “the complex problems of modern living,” which had a heavy social component, as well as the cultivation of independent judgment that was admired about the Montessori method. Watkins’s next comments are significant: "The Montessori system subordinates imagination and language to the senses…Montessori materials are restricted to exact, definite uses, with little provision for creative expression. Kindergarten materials stimulate creative power in many directions. The kindergarten is cultural, the Montessori School merely aims to be scientific…Though modifications have been introduced in Washington schools, the simon-pure Montessori class room rejects, wholly or in part, all stories, pictures, songs and music generally. The rhythm work used in the Montessori schools here was introduced through Miss Alys Bentley, and is similar to that she gave to the kindergarten long ago, while she was director of music in the schools. " It seems that Watkins perceived the method as overly literal and robotic, focusing on almost a sort of muscle memory rather than being a more cultured member of the social “body.” Something like today’s STEM v. humanities debate. This perception may have been simply due to what American Montessori proponents chose to emphasize, or due to the socioeconomic disadvantages of the students Montessori was working with. Watkins also said that while Montessori schools claimed the absence of punishment or reward is what distinguished them from other schools, this approach had in fact long been “in vogue” in kindergartens. "In the kindergarten there is no concrete letter or number work. It is believed that it is more natural to lead the child to the grasp of ideas before he is introduced to the symbols that express those ideas." Watkins emphasized that “the Montessori and kindergarten ideas should not be antagonistic,” saying she believed that “the Montessori methods so far used are not so comprehensive as the kindergarten ideas,” but that “the Montessori system makes excellent provision for children from two to four years, while the kindergarten then could continue their development in their fifth and sixth years.” What Watkins said next was interesting, and may shed some light on confusing complaints that the Montessori method was both overly rigid and overly permissive. "A kindergarten has been aptly described as a 'republic of childhood' The Montessori gives older children too little chance to express their own ideas; on the other hand, it gives them too much leeway in directions where they have not had sufficient experience to correlate things they observe to their own experience. The daily program of a kindergarten includes the morning hour for conversation and songs, wherein the teacher is brought into close contact with the children's viewpoint, and gets into close sympathy with them. They are given full opportunity to express themselves freely and frankly. The group relationships develop certain virtues which can be developed in no other way. These group relationships the Montessori system overlooks. I was impressed by an incident I noticed in a recent visit to one of our kindergartens. The children were arranging, at their own suggestion, to make a Jack o'lantern, later to be taken by them to the home of a child who was ill. I attended another kindergarten, where a girl, lame from an accident, had returned, and it was interesting to watch the spontaneous courtesy with which the boys treated her, quietly placing a chair near her as she moved about, and performing other thoughtful acts." This is interesting because the previous piece emphasized that the Montessori method made the little boys more manly and able to socialize among themselves without assistance! Watkins concluded by saying that the lack of religious training in the Montessori system was one of the most serious issues she had with it. “In each kindergarten there is a morning prayer and hymn. We believe this is a valuable asset in character building. There is no set prayer. Children simply are led to the idea that the things in which they delight, the sunshine, the flower, and all nature's beauty. Is something for which they should give thanks to a higher power, and gradually they are led, in their own words, to utter a brief prayer of thanks for these things. Spiritual development of the child cannot be left to chance any more than his physical nourishment can be left to care for itself. I do not wish to be unfair to the Montessori system. But so far as I have observed, or read, there is no evidence that the Montessori school provides for this spiritual growth of children.” This is a pretty Emersonian statement, but it is complicated by the fact that Emerson was always writing to self-reliant adults and urging them to develop their own judgment from observing Nature. It was a solo affair. How this relates to early childhood development is more complicated. Washington Star. (1913). Hildebrand, J.R. (1914) “Kindergarten Expert Finds Ideas Long Familiar Here in Montessori Schools,” The Washington Times". During the Progressive era, Chicago was one of the most fashionable cities, and the culture generally favored both innovation and female independence. This may explain why so many young women were introducing innovative education techniques in Chicago. Hildebrand, J.R. (1914) At this time, anti-Catholic prejudice was strong in many circles, even among non-devout Protestants, and that could have had some influence on these sorts of remarks. I do not think he denied the reality that children have to be raised and properly educated, even though he pretty much rejected the idea that adults should automatically follow anyone else’s system—some of his ideas on this can be gleaned from scattered comments, but he just did not focus much on how adults should educate children. In the community in which he grew up, the norm for children was a very strict religious education, but this was combined with a lot of free-ranging play and an exciting intellectual climate. It seems possible that he thought an old-fashioned classical and religious education was an ideal foundation for independent pursuits in adulthood, but he believed self-education could be entirely adequate for poor but motivated young men, and even superior to a university education. About the Author Kerry Ellard earned a B.S. in Communication and a B.A. in Political Science from Boston University, and a J.D. from Boston College Law School. During school and after graduation, she worked in law, education, and government. Most recently, she has worked as a tutor, independent historian, and sociological analyst. Kerry lives in Boston, where she enjoys playing with her dog and attending concerts.

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***The animated video version of this article can be found here*** Of all the indigenous civilisations and cultures of the Americas, there are three that stand above the rest within modern popular culture: The Mayans, the Inca, and the Aztecs. However, even among the Big Three, the Aztecs seem to loom larger than the rest, possibly because of the undeniable glory of their civilization, the wonder of the great city of Tenochtitlan, the fact they were still at their peak when they made contact with the Spanish and finally because of the dramatic and tragic story of their fall. The so-called Aztec Empire, or the Triple Alliance as we should really call it, was the largest polity in the history of Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. However, when looking at Triple Alliance territory as it stood 1519 on a map, one thing immediately stands out. What is that island in the middle of an Aztec sea? Well, this region is now known as the Puebla Valley and was, amongst others, the home of the confederation of Tlaxcallan, whose people are perhaps most famous for providing decisive military support for the Spanish during the Conquest. From our modern perspective, it is incredibly difficult to imagine how a territory that was literally surrounded by the largest empire in Mesoamerican history could possibly resist for any length of time, something that is made all the more baffling by the fact that the Puebla Valley is essentially right next door to the Valley of Mexico, the very heartland of the empire. Well, for centuries the answer to the question of why the Triple Alliance did not conquer the Puebla Valley lay in a cultural practice that has fascinated historians and scholars for generations: In the native nahuatl language it is known as xōchiyāōyōtl, which translates as Flowery War or sometimes just Flower War or even Garland War. The exact character and form of the Flower Wars is a matter of significant debate. However, it is almost always framed as a smaller, less intense conflict than a full-scale war of conquest and almost always fought between the Triple Alliance and the states of the Puebla Valley, though there are a few notable exceptions. Beginning around 1450, the Flower Wars supposedly represented a decades-long intermittent conflict that was still ongoing when the Spanish arrived in 1519. The first to offer a rationale for this strange practice was the Huey Tlatoani or emperor of Tenochtitlan, Moteczuma II himself. We are lucky from a historical record point of view that many of the Spanish soldiers who took part in the Conquest wrote accounts of what they saw and luckier still that we also have several indigenous sources written in the decades after the Conquest. One Spanish soldier, Andres de Tapia, directly asked Moteczuma why the Triple Alliance had not conquered Tlaxcallan and recorded his response. According to Tapia, Moteczuma answered that “we could easily do so, but then there would be nowhere for our young men to train, except far from here, and also we wanted there to always be nearby people to sacrifice to our gods.” While this explanation went virtually unquestioned for centuries after the Conquest, it has some significant issues, perhaps the most obvious being that not all of the post-Conquest native chroniclers actually record these Flower Wars as they are traditionally understood or explained by Moteczuma himself. The earliest known events explicitly referred to as Flower Wars, and the only such occasions that were not part of the intervalley conflicts, come from the extensive works of the Chalca annalist Chimalpahin, writing in the early 17th Century. Chimalpahin uses the term to describe a series of incidents in 1324, 1376, and 1381. Given that one of these battles was little more than an unusually violent neighbourhood feud in his home city of Chalco, it appears he uses the term Flower War to describe any battle where the aim was not explicitly to kill the enemy. In terms of the more famous Flower Wars from around 1450 to 1519, the Tetzcoca chronicler Ixtlilxochitl gives a fully fleshed-out explanation for the origin of the conflicts, asserting that they were a response to a terrible famine in 1454 caused by several years of severe drought. “The priests of the Mexica said that the gods were angry at the empire and to placate them it was necessary to sacrifice many men, and this had to be done regularly. Xicotencatl, one of the lords of Tlaxcallan, was of the opinion that from this time forward they should begin to have frequent wars between the señoria of Tlaxcallan and that of Tetzcoco and their allies and that they should designate a battlefield on which to have frequent battles and that those who were made captive in them should be sacrificed to the gods.”Fernando de Alva Cortés Ixtlilxochitl, Codex Chichimeca Ixtlilxochitl goes on to give even greater detail about these battles, including the monthly date they were to be fought and a rotating roster of combatants. It is also worth noting that Ixtlilxochitl records that not only was Tlaxcallan a willing party to this scheme, but the whole thing was their idea in the first place. However, most of the details provided by Ixtlilxochitl appear in only one other ethnographic source, the writings of Juan Pomar, who was also from Tetzcoco. The famine of 1454 is not mentioned by any of the other contemporary native sources as the original impetus for the Flower Wars. Additionally, Ixtlilxochitl does not use the term ‘flower war’, nor does he record the practice he described continuing once the drought crisis had subsided. In contrast, Moteczuma’s grandson, the noted chronicler Tezozomoc, actually records a conversation between his ancestor Moteczuma I and his senior advisor Tlacaelel in the 1450s in which the latter proposes that they “make cruel war upon them [Huexotzinco and Tlaxcallan] to render vassalage from them and to have something to sacrifice to our gods.” He goes on to list all of the spoils that would be gained from such a conquest. Regardless of the actual historicity of this conversation, which is seriously dubious at best, it is nonetheless noteworthy that Moteczuma II’s own grandson records a far more imperialistic rationale for the Puebla Valley campaigns than the answer Moteczuma himself supposedly gave to Andres de Tapia. For their part, the Tlaxcalteca – that is, the people of Tlaxcallan – clearly felt that they were fighting not to acquire sacrifices, but for their very independence. Camargo, a 16th-century Tlaxcaltec chronicler, goes out of his way to explicitly dismiss the claims made by his Mexica and Acolhua counterparts and it is worth reading the passage in full. “Some thinkers are of the opinion that, if Moteczuma had wanted to destroy the Tlaxcallans he would have done so, but rather he kept them like quail in a cage in order to not lack training for war and because he had to occupy the sons of the lords and also to have people with whom to sacrifice and serve their idols, which I am not able to bring myself to believe for many reasons; because if it were so, the lords of this province would not have accepted so earnestly the Spanish request to go against the Mexicans.”Diego Muñoz Camargo, Historia de Tlaxcala The conflicting accounts from the post-conquest ethnographic sources have led historians to offer a range of different interpretations and hypotheses as to the exact nature and purpose of the Flower Wars. Perhaps the most common, and the one typically cited in popular culture, is that the Flower Wars were a means of capturing prisoners for the purposes of religious sacrifice. On the surface, this might suggest that the Flower Wars were the only means of acquiring sacrificial victims, which was categorically not the case. Taking captives was an important part of every military campaign the Triple Alliance ever conducted. Indeed, the status and rank of warriors, and thus what they were allowed to wear into battle, was, in large part, dictated by the number of captives they had taken on the battlefield. However, many proponents of this theory have argued that the Puebla valley, by virtue of its geographic proximity, was merely a more convenient source of captives than the distant frontiers, with one scholar going so far as to describe the Puebla Valley as a “human stockyard.” This explanation seems to be based almost entirely on the writing of Ixtlilxochitl. But, of course, this particular theory rests heavily on the idea that the goal of the battles was to capture, not kill the enemy, a deeply problematic assertion as we will soon see, and also requires one to ignore other equally credible ethnographic sources that contradict this explanation, not to mention the glaring omissions on the topic within the Tetzcoca chronicler’s own writings. Despite the Flower Wars’ popular perception as pseudo-wars to generate sacrificial victims, there are many historians who dismiss the idea that taking captives was the primary purpose at all. Instead, various, more militaristic motivators are offered, such as the idea that the primary goal was to season young warriors or that the Triple Alliance was actually using the Flower Wars as means of subjecting Tlaxcallan to low-level, grinding attrition to slowly deplete its strength in anticipation of a true war of conquest in the future, with a secondary benefit of being an opportunity to display the military power and prestige of the Triple Alliance. The common thread through all of these explanations is that the Flower Wars are distinct from full-scale war, that the intensity and the stakes are lower. This is the fundamental premise of the Flower Wars, regardless of which rationale one subscribes to. However, all of these explanations are deeply flawed in their own way. What’s more, an analysis of the Triple Alliance’s military activities in the Puebla Valley brings the entire notion of the Flower Wars into doubt. For starters, while Tlaxcallan was the dominant power in the valley when the Spanish arrived in 1519, and is thus the subject of their inquiry, this was actually only a relatively recent development. In reality, for the vast majority of the decades of Triple Alliance military operations in the valley, the focus was instead on the city of Huexotzinco. Huexotzinco had a long history as a major regional player. It was, according to tradition, one of the cities that provided crucial military support in the war against Tepanec rule in the early 15th century. As it happened, this was the conflict that paved the way for the creation of the Triple Alliance between Tenochtitlan, Tetzcoco, and Tlacopan in the Valley of Mexico. In terms of its own territorial backyard in the neighbouring Puebla Valley, Huexotzinco was of sufficient strength that it was the senior partner in a three-way alliance of its own, with both Tlaxcallan and Chollolan. Traditionally, the Flowery War supposedly began around 1450. Unfortunately, there are almost no surviving details about what happened for the next 30 years. The first concrete record comes from Chimalpahin, who records that Nezahuapilli of Tetzcoco “put his hand upon Huexotzinco” in 1484 and then again in 1490. This has generally been interpreted as Nezahuapilli acting independently as ruler of Tetzcoco to subjugate Huexotzinco twice only for the city to reassert its independence both times. In 1503, the Triple Alliance itself went on the offensive, launching a massive attack on Huexotzinco. The Huexotzinca and their Tlaxcaltec and Cholloltec allies met the invaders at the huge Battle of Atlixco, which likely involved over 100,000 combatants, though the 16th century Spanish chronicler Friar Diego Duran gives an improbably high 200,000 men in total. In any case, this was a truly titanic clash and it ended in a crushing defeat for the Triple Alliance. Two of Moteczuma’s own brothers were among the fallen. The battle of Atlixco was described by Duran as “a great slaughter” and he recounts that upon receiving field reports from the battlefront, Moteczuma himself “began to weep bitterly at the loss of his brothers and the other warriors.” The chronicler Tezozomoc, Moteczuma’s grandson, wrote that “the bodies of the dead impeded the living” and that the combined casualties of the battle were over 40,000 dead, with both sides suffering roughly equal losses. Even if this figure is an exaggeration, which it probably is, it nonetheless makes it clear that this was a particularly bloody battle that cost many thousands of lives on both sides. Not to be deterred, the Triple Alliance launched another assault on Huexotzinco three years later in 1506. This time the invaders emerged victorious but it came at great cost, with various accounts recording battlefield deaths of between 8,000 and 18,000 for the Triple Alliance alone. This figure does not include those lost to disease or captivity. And even though this bloody defeat left Huexotzinco severely weakened, the city itself remained unconquered, rendering the entire campaign indecisive. However, like a shark sensing blood in the water, Tlaxcallan turned on its ally in 1507 and attacked the vulnerable Huexotzinco, overwhelming the kingdom, ravaging its land, and ultimately taking its place as the dominant power in the valley. Many Huexotzinca took refuge in the foothills of the nearby mountains. In response to ongoing Tlaxcaltec attacks and the famine they left in their wake, Huexotzinco turned to the very enemy that it had resisted so fiercely for so long: the Triple Alliance. There is some doubt about the exact year, but it seems most historians agree that in 1512, a Huexotzinca petition to actually join the Triple Alliance was granted and Huexotzinca refugees poured into the Valley of Mexico. With the support of its new ally, the Triple Alliance went on the offensive once again, meeting the Tlaxcaltec host somewhere in the region of Atlixco. The subsequent battle was recorded by Duran and the Mexica annalists as a Triple Alliance victory, but other sources suggest the result was indecisive. Whatever the real outcome was, it nonetheless came at a terrible price, with Ixtlilxochitl writing that “there was so much blood that the battlefield looked like a flowing river.” The campaign apparently consisted of 20 days of hard fighting and the exhausted Triple Alliance army was only saved by the arrival of emergency reinforcements. Nonetheless, the Triple Alliance had been fought to a standstill and was forced to abandon the campaign. Four years later, Huexotzinco reasserted its independence from the Triple Alliance, prompting yet another invasion. This campaign was an utter disaster, in which all of the senior Triple Alliance officers present were captured and fully half of the contingent from Tenochtitlan was killed and most of the remaining Tenochta warriors were taken prisoner. The disgrace of this defeat was only redeemed by a subsequent, more successful campaign the following year in 1517 that nonetheless failed to bring Tlaxcallan or Huexotzinco to heel, though Chollolan did realign itself with the Triple Alliance around this time. As it happened, this was the last Triple Alliance campaign in the Puebla Valley prior to the arrival of the Spanish. So upon analysing the details of the Triple Alliance campaigns in the Puebla Valley, it is abundantly clear that these were major military operations on a huge scale and that the overall battlefield losses suffered by the Alliance in the space of about 15 years ran into the tens of thousands, not to mention the many thousands more who were almost certainly captured, later died from their wounds or succumbed to disease. Certainly, the frequently espoused claim that the warriors were trying to avoid actually killing each other seems almost comical in its inaccuracy. The seemingly massive casualty rate the Triple Alliance suffered during its operations in the valley would seem to preclude a policy of or even a preference for taking prisoners over killing the enemy, as would the fact that the alliance actually accepted Huexotzinco into the fold in 1512, no matter how temporary that arrangement turned out to be. If the city was only allowed to preserve its independence because it was either an important source of sacrificial victims or a means of seasoning young warriors, why would the Triple Alliance then decide to deprive themselves of that resource by allowing Huexotzinco to join its ranks? The realignment of Chollolan to a welcoming Triple Alliance in 1518, further reducing the supposed pool of potential sacrifice victims, only reinforces this point. Furthermore, the perception of the Flower Wars as smaller-scale, less intense, more ritualistic, more restrained, and less costly than full-scale war stands in stark contrast with the colossal bloodbath that was the Battle of Atlixco in 1503, and indeed all of the Triple Alliance campaigns in the Puebla valley, which were shown to be extremely bloody affairs without exception. Given that all of the various hypotheses regarding their purpose are inherently tied to the idea that these conflicts were distinct from regular, full-scale war, the fact that, based on surviving records, the intervalley wars actually had all the characteristics of full-scale war and very few of those often pointed to as unique features of the Flower Wars would suggest that no such distinction existed at all. This, in turn, essentially calls into question the very idea of the Flower Wars in general. So, with all this in mind, it is worth returning to Moteczuma’s original response to Andres de Tapia. Why hasn’t the Triple Alliance conquered Tlaxcallan? “We could easily do so, but then there would be nowhere for our young men to train, except far from here, and also we wanted there to always be nearby people to sacrifice to our gods.”Moteczuma II Given the Triple Alliance’s military record in the valley is…spotty to say the least, it is easy to see this statement for what it really is: propaganda. In reality, it is apparent that the reason the Triple Alliance did not conquer the Puebla Valley is not because they chose not to, but because they couldn’t, and certainly not for lack of trying. And, in fairness, it is not particularly surprising that Moteczuma would respond as he did to Tapia. He was hardly going to admit any kind of military weakness to these strange newcomers from across the sea, especially since they appeared to have an uncomfortably close relationship with the very people in question, the Tlaxcalteca. ISo between conflicting ethnographic sources that offer a range of explanations of the origins of the Flower Wars, with some that are clearly propagandistic in nature, the fact that the interpretations and rationales offered by historians over the centuries do not reflect surviving records of the intervalley wars and finally that the wars have all the hallmarks of full-scale warfare…it seems clear that the Xōchiyāōyōtl, the famous Flower Wars, were little more than propaganda spread by the Aztecs themselves to explain away the awkward reality of an unconquered Puebla Valley right next door. - Hassig, Ross. Aztec Warfare: Imperial Expansion and Political Control, University of Oklahoma Press, 1988. - Hassig, Ross. War and society in ancient Mesoamerica, University of California Press, 1992. - Isaac, Barry L. “The Aztec ‘Flowery War’: A Geopolitical Explanation.” Journal of Anthropological Research 39, no. 4 (1983): 415–32. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3629865. - Hicks, Frederic. “‘Flowery War’ in Aztec History.” American Ethnologist 6, no. 1 (1979): 87–92. http://www.jstor.org/stable/643386. - Smith, Michael E. The Aztecs, Wiley-Blackwell, 2012 - Davies, Nigel. The Aztecs: A History, University of Oklahoma Press, 1973

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In finance, a swap is an agreement between two counterparties to exchange financial instruments or cashflows or payments for a certain time. The instruments can be almost anything but most swaps involve cash based on a notional principal amount. The general swap can also be seen as a series of forward contracts through which two parties exchange financial instruments, resulting in a common series of exchange dates and two streams of instruments, the legs of the swap. The legs can be almost anything but usually one leg involves cash flows based on a notional principal amount that both parties agree to. This principal usually does not change hands during or at the end of the swap; this is contrary to a future, a forward or an option. In practice one leg is generally fixed while the other is variable, that is determined by an uncertain variable such as a benchmark interest rate, a foreign exchange rate, an index price, or a commodity price. A mortgage holder is paying a floating interest rate on their mortgage but expects this rate to go up in the future. Another mortgage holder is paying a fixed rate but expects rates to fall in the future. They enter a fixed-for-floating swap agreement. Both mortgage holders agree on a notional principal amount and maturity date and agree to take on each other's payment obligations. The first mortgage holder from now on is paying a fixed rate to the second mortgage holder while receiving a floating rate. By using a swap, both parties effectively changed their mortgage terms to their preferred interest mode while neither party had to renegotiate terms with their mortgage lenders. Considering the next payment only, both parties might as well have entered a fixed-for-floating forward contract. For the payment after that another forward contract whose terms are the same, i.e. same notional amount and fixed-for-floating, and so on. The swap contract therefore, can be seen as a series of forward contracts. In the end there are two streams of cash flows, one from the party who is always paying a fixed interest on the notional amount, the fixed leg of the swap, the other from the party who agreed to pay the floating rate, the floating leg. Swaps were first introduced to the public in 1981 when IBM and the World Bank entered into a swap agreement. Today, swaps are among the most heavily traded financial contracts in the world: the total amount of interest rates and currency swaps outstanding was more than $348 trillion in 2010, according to Bank for International Settlements (BIS). Most swaps are traded over-the-counter(OTC), "tailor-made" for the counterparties. The Dodd-Frank Act in 2010, however, envisions a multilateral platform for swap quoting, the swaps execution facility (SEF), and mandates that swaps be reported to and cleared through exchanges or clearing houses which subsequently led to the formation of swap data repositories (SDRs), a central facility for swap data reporting and recordkeeping. Data vendors, such as Bloomberg, and big exchanges, such as the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the largest U.S. futures market, and the Chicago Board Options Exchange, registered to become SDRs. They started to list some types of swaps, swaptions and swap futures on their platforms. Other exchanges followed, such as the IntercontinentalExchange and Frankfurt-based Eurex AG. According to the 2018 SEF Market Share Statistics Bloomberg dominates the credit rate market with 80% share, TP dominates the FX dealer to dealer market (46% share), Reuters dominates the FX dealer to client market (50% share), Tradeweb is strongest in the vanilla interest rate market (38% share), TP the biggest platform in the basis swap market (53% share), BGC dominates both the swaption and XCS markets, Tradition is the biggest platform for Caps and Floors (55% share). Size of marketEdit While the market for currency swaps developed first, the interest rate swap market has surpassed it, measured by notional principal, "a reference amount of principal for determining interest payments." The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) publishes statistics on the notional amounts outstanding in the OTC derivatives market. At the end of 2006, this was USD 415.2 trillion, more than 8.5 times the 2006 gross world product. However, since the cash flow generated by a swap is equal to an interest rate times that notional amount, the cash flow generated from swaps is a substantial fraction of but much less than the gross world product—which is also a cash-flow measure. The majority of this (USD 292.0 trillion) was due to interest rate swaps. These split by currency as: |Currency||Notional outstanding (in USD trillion)| |End 2000||End 2001||End 2002||End 2003||End 2004||End 2005||End 2006| Major Swap ParticipantEdit A Major Swap Participant (MSP, or sometimes Swap Bank) is a generic term to describe a financial institution that facilitates swaps between counterparties. It maintains a substantial position in swaps for any of the major swap categories. A swap bank can be an international commercial bank, an investment bank, a merchant bank, or an independent operator. A swap bank serves as either a swap broker or swap dealer. As a broker, the swap bank matches counterparties but does not assume any risk of the swap. The swap broker receives a commission for this service. Today, most swap banks serve as dealers or market makers. As a market maker, a swap bank is willing to accept either side of a currency swap, and then later on-sell it, or match it with a counterparty. In this capacity, the swap bank assumes a position in the swap and therefore assumes some risks. The dealer capacity is obviously more risky, and the swap bank would receive a portion of the cash flows passed through it to compensate it for bearing this risk. Swap market efficiencyEdit The two primary reasons for a counterparty to use a currency swap are to obtain debt financing in the swapped currency at an interest cost reduction brought about through comparative advantages each counterparty has in its national capital market, and/or the benefit of hedging long-run exchange rate exposure. These reasons seem straightforward and difficult to argue with, especially to the extent that name recognition is truly important in raising funds in the international bond market. Firms using currency swaps have statistically higher levels of long-term foreign-denominated debt than firms that use no currency derivatives. Conversely, the primary users of currency swaps are non-financial, global firms with long-term foreign-currency financing needs. From a foreign investor's perspective, valuation of foreign-currency debt would exclude the exposure effect that a domestic investor would see for such debt. Financing foreign-currency debt using domestic currency and a currency swap is therefore superior to financing directly with foreign-currency debt. The two primary reasons for swapping interest rates are to better match maturities of assets and liabilities and/or to obtain a cost savings via the quality spread differential (QSD). Empirical evidence suggests that the spread between AAA-rated commercial paper (floating) and A-rated commercial is slightly less than the spread between AAA-rated five-year obligation (fixed) and an A-rated obligation of the same tenor. These findings suggest that firms with lower (higher) credit ratings are more likely to pay fixed (floating) in swaps, and fixed-rate payers would use more short-term debt and have shorter debt maturity than floating-rate payers. In particular, the A-rated firm would borrow using commercial paper at a spread over the AAA rate and enter into a (short-term) fixed-for-floating swap as payer. Types of swapsEdit The generic types of swaps, in order of their quantitative importance, are: interest rate swaps, basis swaps, currency swaps, inflation swaps, credit default swaps, commodity swaps and equity swaps. There are also many other types of swaps. Interest rate swapsEdit The most common type of swap is an interest rate swap. Some companies may have comparative advantage in fixed rate markets, while other companies have a comparative advantage in floating rate markets. When companies want to borrow, they look for cheap borrowing, i.e. from the market where they have comparative advantage. However, this may lead to a company borrowing fixed when it wants floating or borrowing floating when it wants fixed. This is where a swap comes in. A swap has the effect of transforming a fixed rate loan into a floating rate loan or vice versa. For example, party B makes periodic interest payments to party A based on a variable interest rate of LIBOR +70 basis points. Party A in return makes periodic interest payments based on a fixed rate of 8.65%. The payments are calculated over the notional amount. The first rate is called variable because it is reset at the beginning of each interest calculation period to the then current reference rate, such as LIBOR. In reality, the actual rate received by A and B is slightly lower due to a bank taking a spread. A basis swap involves exchanging floating interest rates based on different money markets. The principal is not exchanged. The swap effectively limits the interest-rate risk as a result of having differing lending and borrowing rates. A currency swap involves exchanging principal and fixed rate interest payments on a loan in one currency for principal and fixed rate interest payments on an equal loan in another currency. Just like interest rate swaps, the currency swaps are also motivated by comparative advantage. Currency swaps entail swapping both principal and interest between the parties, with the cashflows in one direction being in a different currency than those in the opposite direction. It is also a very crucial uniform pattern in individuals and customers. An inflation-linked swap involves exchanging a fixed rate on a principal for an inflation index expressed in monetary terms. The primary objective is to hedge against inflation and interest-rate risk. A commodity swap is an agreement whereby a floating (or market or spot) price is exchanged for a fixed price over a specified period. The vast majority of commodity swaps involve crude oil. Credit default swapEdit An agreement whereby the payer periodically pays premiums, sometimes also or only a one-off or initial premium, to the protection seller on a notional principal for a period of time so long as a specified credit event has not occurred. The credit event can refer to a single asset or a basket of assets, usually debt obligations. In the event of default, the payer receives compensation, for example the principal, possibly plus all fixed rate payments until the end of the swap agreement, or any other way that suits the protection buyer or both counterparties. The primary objective of a CDS is to transfer one party's credit exposure to another party. Subordinated risk swapsEdit A subordinated risk swap (SRS), or equity risk swap, is a contract in which the buyer (or equity holder) pays a premium to the seller (or silent holder) for the option to transfer certain risks. These can include any form of equity, management or legal risk of the underlying (for example a company). Through execution the equity holder can (for example) transfer shares, management responsibilities or else. Thus, general and special entrepreneurial risks can be managed, assigned or prematurely hedged. Those instruments are traded over-the-counter (OTC) and there are only a few specialized investors worldwide. An agreement to exchange future cash flows between two parties where one leg is an equity-based cash flow such as the performance of a stock asset, a basket of stocks or a stock index. The other leg is typically a fixed-income cash flow such as a benchmark interest rate. There are myriad different variations on the vanilla swap structure, which are limited only by the imagination of financial engineers and the desire of corporate treasurers and fund managers for exotic structures. - A total return swap is a swap in which party A pays the total return of an asset, and party B makes periodic interest payments. The total return is the capital gain or loss, plus any interest or dividend payments. Note that if the total return is negative, then party A receives this amount from party B. The parties have exposure to the return of the underlying stock or index, without having to hold the underlying assets. The profit or loss of party B is the same for him as actually owning the underlying asset. - An option on a swap is called a swaption. These provide one party with the right but not the obligation at a future time to enter into a swap. - A variance swap is an over-the-counter instrument that allows investors to trade future realized (or historical) volatility against current implied volatility. - A constant maturity swap (CMS) is a swap that allows the purchaser to fix the duration of received flows on a swap. - An amortizing swap is usually an interest rate swap in which the notional principal for the interest payments declines during the life of the swap, perhaps at a rate tied to the prepayment of a mortgage or to an interest rate benchmark such as the LIBOR. It is suitable to those customers of banks who want to manage the interest rate risk involved in predicted funding requirement, or investment programs. - A zero coupon swap is of use to those entities which have their liabilities denominated in floating rates but at the same time would like to conserve cash for operational purposes. - A deferred rate swap is particularly attractive to those users of funds that need funds immediately but do not consider the current rates of interest very attractive and feel that the rates may fall in future. - An accreting swap is used by banks which have agreed to lend increasing sums over time to its customers so that they may fund projects. - A forward swap is an agreement created through the synthesis of two swaps differing in duration for the purpose of fulfilling the specific time-frame needs of an investor. Also referred to as a forward start swap, delayed start swap, and a deferred start swap. - A quanto swap is a cash-settled, cross-currency interest rate swap in which one counterparty pays a foreign interest rate to the other, but the notional amount is in domestic currency. The second party may be paying a fixed or floating rate. For example, a swap in which the notional amount is denominated in Canadian dollars, but where the floating rate is set as USD LIBOR, would be considered a quanto swap. Quanto swaps are known as differential or rate-differential or diff swaps. - A range accrual swap (or range accrual note) is an agreement to pay a fixed or floating rate while receiving cash flows from a fixed or floating rate which are accrued only on those days where the second rate falls within a preagreed range. The received payments are maximized when the second rate stays entirely within the range for the duration of the swap. - A three-zone digital swap is a generalization of the range accrual swap, the payer of a fixed rate receives a floating rate if that rate stays within a certain preagreed range, or a fixed rate if the floating rate goes above the range, or a different fixed rate if the floating rate falls below the range. Valuation and PricingEdit The value of a swap is the net present value (NPV) of all expected future cash flows, essentially the difference in leg values. A swap is thus "worth zero" when it is first initiated, otherwise one party would be at an advantage, and arbitrage would be possible; however after this time its value may become positive or negative. While this principle holds true for any swap, the following discussion is for plain vanilla interest rate swaps and is representative of pure rational pricing as it excludes credit risk. For interest rate swaps, there are in fact two methods, which will (must) return the same value: in terms of bond prices, or as a portfolio of forward contracts. The fact that these methods agree, underscores the fact that rational pricing will apply between instruments also. As mentioned, to be arbitrage free, the terms of a swap contract are such that, initially, the NPV of these future cash flows is equal to zero. Where this is not the case, arbitrage would be possible. For example, consider a plain vanilla fixed-to-floating interest rate swap where Party A pays a fixed rate, and Party B pays a floating rate. In such an agreement the fixed rate would be such that the present value of future fixed rate payments by Party A are equal to the present value of the expected future floating rate payments (i.e. the NPV is zero). Where this is not the case, an Arbitrageur, C, could: - assume the position with the lower present value of payments, and borrow funds equal to this present value - meet the cash flow obligations on the position by using the borrowed funds, and receive the corresponding payments - which have a higher present value - use the received payments to repay the debt on the borrowed funds - pocket the difference - where the difference between the present value of the loan and the present value of the inflows is the arbitrage profit. Subsequently, once traded, the price of the Swap must equate to the price of the various corresponding instruments as mentioned above. Where this is not true, an arbitrageur could similarly short sell the overpriced instrument, and use the proceeds to purchase the correctly priced instrument, pocket the difference, and then use payments generated to service the instrument which he is short. Using bond pricesEdit While principal payments are not exchanged in an interest rate swap, assuming that these are received and paid at the end of the swap does not change its value. Thus, from the point of view of the floating-rate payer, a swap is equivalent to a long position in a fixed-rate bond (i.e. receiving fixed interest payments), and a short position in a floating rate note (i.e. making floating interest payments): From the point of view of the fixed-rate payer, the swap can be viewed as having the opposite positions. That is, Similarly, currency swaps can be regarded as having positions in bonds whose cash flows correspond to those in the swap. Thus, the home currency value is: - , where is the domestic cash flows of the swap, is the foreign cash flows of the LIBOR is the rate of interest offered by banks on deposit from other banks in the eurocurrency market. One-month LIBOR is the rate offered for 1-month deposits, 3-month LIBOR for three months deposits, etc. LIBOR rates are determined by trading between banks and change continuously as economic conditions change. Just like the prime rate of interest quoted in the domestic market, LIBOR is a reference rate of interest in the international market. - Category:Swaps (finance), for a list of articles - Constant maturity swap - Credit default swap - Cross currency swap - Equity swap - Foreign exchange swap - Fuel price risk management - Interest rate swap - Multi-curve framework - PnL Explained - Swap Execution Facility - Total return swap - Variance swap - Yield curve - Saunders, A.; Cornett, M. (2006). Financial Institutions Management. McGraw-Hill Irwin.[ISBN missing] - Financial Industry Business Ontology Version 2, Annex D: Derivatives, EDM Council, Inc., Object Management Group, Inc., 2019 - "What is a swap?". Investopedia. Retrieved 14 October 2017. - Finance: A Quantitative Introduction by Piotr Staszkiewicz and Lucia Staszkiewicz; Academic Press 2014, pg. 56. - John C Hull, Options, Futures and Other Derivatives (6th edition), New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2006, 149 - SEC Charges International Dealer That Sold Security-Based Swaps to U.S. Investors - "Understanding Derivatives: Markets and Infrastructure - Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago". chicagofed.org. Retrieved 23 September 2017. - Ross; Westerfield & Jordan (2010). Fundamentals of Corporate Finance (9th ed.). McGraw Hill. p. 746. - "OTC derivatives statistics at end-June 2017". www.bis.org. 2017-11-02. Retrieved 2018-07-16. - "Swaps Execution Facilities (SEFs)". U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Retrieved 9 December 2019. - "Data Repositories". U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Retrieved 9 December 2019. - "Bloomberg Launches Its Swap Data Repository". Bloomberg L.p. Retrieved 9 December 2019. - "CME Swap Data Repository". - "Exchange for Swaps". Eurex Exchange. Retrieved 8 December 2019. - Khwaja, Amir (9 January 2019). "2018 SEF Market Share Statistics". ClarusFT. Retrieved 9 December 2019. - INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT, THIRD EDITION, PART TWO, Chapter 10: "Currency and Interest Rate Swaps", by Eun Resnick; The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2004. - "Intermediaries". U.S. Commodities Futures Trading Commission. Retrieved 8 December 2019. - Geczy, C.; Minton, B.; Schrand, C. (1997). "Why firms use currency derivatives". Journal of Finance. 52 (4): 1323–1354. doi:10.1111/j.1540-6261.1997.tb01112.x. - Goswami, G.; Nam, J.; Shrikhande, M. (2004). "Why do global firms use currency swaps?: Theory and evidence". Journal of Multinational Financial Management. 14 (4–5): 315–334. doi:10.1016/j.mulfin.2004.03.003. - Li, H.; Mao, C. (2003). "Corporate use of interest rate swaps: Theory and evidence". Journal of Banking & Finance. 27 (8): 1511–1538. doi:10.1016/S0378-4266(02)00275-3. - "Financial Industry Business Ontology" Version 2, Annex D: Derivatives, EDM Council, Inc., Object Management Group, Inc., 2019 - "How Liquid Is the Inflation Swap Market?" Michael J. Fleming and John Sporn, 2013 - Frank J. Fabozzi, 2018. The Handbook of Financial Instruments, Wiley ISBN 978-1-119-52296-6 - "Introduction to Variance Swaps", Sebastien Bossu, Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, Wilmott Magazine, 16 April 2018 - Understanding Derivatives: Markets and Infrastructure Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Financial Markets Group - Investment-foundations: Derivatives, CFA Institute - swaps-rates.com, interest swap rates statistics online - Bank for International Settlements - International Swaps and Derivatives Association - First take, Dodd-Frank's SEC’s Cross-Border Derivatives Rule

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For years, science battled to understand whether multiple personality disorder was real or not. Today, the condition is known as dissociative identity disorder to reflect new understandings that the condition is about so much more than just personality changes. Memories, behaviours, attitudes and even perceived age can all switch together as people transition from one self to another. Until she was 40 years old, Melanie Goodwin had no memory of her life before the age of 16. Then, a family tragedy triggered a cataclysmic psychological change. Suddenly she was aware of other identities inside her, and the barriers between them were crumbling. The different identities belonged to her, Melanie felt, but ‘her’ at different ages, from three years old to 16 and on into adulthood. These ages were not random. Amid the confusing, terrifying mingling of different voices in one consciousness came memories of child abuse, the first episode occurring when she was three, the last when she was 16. “I have no proof,” she notes. “I have to go with what I believe happened, and my reality.” Melanie has what used to be called multiple personality disorder, which is now more commonly referred to as dissociative identity disorder (DID). The change in name reflects an understanding that it’s more than just changes in personality that are involved. Memories, behaviours, attitudes, perceived age — all can switch together. “We” — she generally refers to herself as ‘we’ — “had lots of adult parts. Development should be seamless… But because we didn’t grow up naturally, we would update ourselves… Finally, there were nine different adult parts, each managing a stage of our abuse-free adult life.” Living with DID can be “hell”, she says. It is a breakdown of an aspect of everyday existence that the rest of us take for granted — our sense that we are one individual self. For Melanie, the abrupt awareness of her many different identities warring inside her was overwhelming. How could she possibly find a way to accommodate them all? Melanie is talking from a sofa in a quiet consulting room at the Pottergate Centre for Dissociation and Trauma in Norwich, UK. The centre is run by Remy Aquarone, an analytical psychotherapist and a former director of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation. Over a 30-year career, Aquarone has worked with hundreds of people with a dissociative disorder. In most cases, he says, they have a history of childhood abuse, generally starting before the age of five. In an attempt to cope with the traumatic experiences, the theory goes, the child ‘dissociates’ — it splits itself into parts. One part endures the abuse and contains the horrific emotional and physical impacts; another part exists afterwards. Or, there might be one part that endures the abuse, another that gets the body back to its bedroom, and another that goes down to breakfast in the morning. If the abuse goes on over years, and also if different scenarios and perpetrators are involved, many different parts may splinter off. It’s the dissociation that allows the child to keep going. In fact, “it’s the ultimate adaption system. It’s using your unconscious cognition to adapt your way of thinking and behaviour in order to be more safe,” Aquarone says. Melanie describes it this way: “If you’re in a totally impossible situation, you dissociate to stay alive. Trauma can freeze you in time. And because the trauma is ongoing over years, there are lots of little freezings happening all over the place.” Not everyone who endures childhood abuse — or any other form of ongoing major trauma — develops a dissociative disorder. Based on his work, Aquarone says there’s another critical factor involved: the absence of a normal, healthy attachment to an adult. In the field of developmental psychology, ‘attachment’ has a specific meaning: it’s a bond that forms between an infant and a care giver who supports and looks after that child, emotionally and practically, while also helping that child to learn about and manage his or her responses. Without that bond — prevented by bereavement, neglect or abuse — a child undergoing a trauma is left to fend for itself. Reflecting on people with DID as a group, Melanie says: “What we didn’t learn as small children is a parent metaphorically holding you and helping you learn how to manage yourself.” Infants who do develop secure attachment go on to cope better generally with life, says Wendy Johnson, a psychology professor at the University of Edinburgh. “First of all, they’re better at dealing with other people in a way that is successful. Their relationships tend to be smoother. They tend to earn more money, be better appreciated and recognised by others, and get into less fights. They also tend to experience life more smoothly, so it’s more pleasant to them.” This is not to say that our personalities are set for life in those early years. A relatively stable environment, in terms of relationships and work, helps to maintain a relatively stable personality. “I think the fact our environments tend to have a lot of stability to them contributes to the consistency that we tend to display,” says Johnson. But if these external influences change, we can change too. Parenting, losing a job — these kinds of major life changes can provoke behaviours that surprise us, as well as changes in traits such as conscientiousness and extraversion. It’s no wonder that young adulthood frequently involves a major questioning of identity, adds Johnson, as this is so often a time when lots of things — home, surroundings, friends — are in flux. Without the unified sense of self that attachment and stability brings, dissociated identities can make someone’s personality appear to swing wildly. Melanie has an anorexic part, and a part that attempted suicide twice because the pain of the barriers coming down felt unbearable. Her three-year-old part is easily scared by things that remind her of past traumas — like a scent or a man’s way of walking — and in these situations she will freeze or even hide. On the other hand, the 16-year-old can be flirty. It makes sense that Melanie will behave differently depending on ‘who’ is to the fore in her mind. She is not acting like her three-year-old self, or even remembering what it was like to be three. She is that three-year-old — until another identity comes to the fore. Because memories of time spent in one identity are not always accessible to others, some people with DID ‘lose’ chunks of time — they feel as though they’re often jumping forward days or even weeks. “Some people go off and have affairs. Well, they’re not really affairs, because they have no memory that they’re married,” Melanie observes. For her, the effect is that she has no sense of the order in which things have happened in her life: “As babies, you get born and you have a timeline that goes through your whole being. If you get fragmented, you don’t get that timeline.” Her memories are further blunted by the subduing of normal emotional reactions — which are essential, both she and Aquarone say, to helping a person cope with severe trauma. But this lack of emotion didn’t end when the abuse stopped: it had become the way Melanie’s brain worked. “I know I got married,” she says, for example. “But I watched and observed it, rather than being fully engaged.” People with a dissociative disorder often report feeling very superficial, says Aquarone. “And in a way, they are, because the essence of who you are is held inside.” For most of us, our memories, enhanced by the emotions we felt at the time, provide a personal chain that reaches all the way back into childhood, providing a sense of self-continuity. “I can refer back to my behaviour as a teenager, for example,” he says, “and hold on to a bigger picture [of myself]… The price of [dissociation] working is that… there’s no tracking back to see how things were.” Being with people — whether family or old friends — with whom you have plenty of shared memories stretching right back can enhance that sense of an ongoing self persisting through the years. But the problem with relying on connections with people from the past, of course, is that old friends can move away — and people can die. One psychological benefit of religious belief may be that, in theory, a relationship with God, with all its associated memories, can extend from early childhood through to death, and no matter where you are on the planet, it is there. As Aquarone says, “You can’t take it away — and it transcends where you are.” There are other ways to help connect your present ‘self’ with the past. Psychologists used to think that nostalgia — the use of memory to sentimentally hark back to good times in the past — was negative and harmful. But there is now work finding the opposite. In fact, nostalgia seems to foster a sense of the self continuing, and enhances a sense of belonging in the world. This sense of a single, consistent self through time helps people to navigate life, and the social world in particular. But if it can be strengthened — and weakened — by experience, or lost altogether in DID, does it reflect the real you? “Consider the musical ‘Grease’, where Sandy sheds her goody-goody persona to become a leather-clad, pelvis-thrusting bad girl. Surely all this smokiness and gyration is Sandy. But just as surely, this is a performance designed to gain the approval of her peers, not the ‘real’ Sandy.” The case of Sandy is highlighted in a review paper by Nina Strohminger and colleagues at Yale University on the concept of the ‘true self’, not just in relation to people with DID but to anyone at all. Or, suggests Strohminger, consider the case of a man who’s very religious and has homosexual impulses. “His religion prohibits him from acting on [them]… so every day he’s fighting them,” she explains. “Who is the real person? Is it the person who is resisting the homosexual impulses, or the person who has them?” The answer, she’s found, is that it depends who you ask. “When you ask liberals, they say, ‘Oh, it’s the person with homosexual impulses.’ But ask conservative people and they say, ‘It’s the part of him that wants to resist these impulses.’ It all boils down to what you value. If you think it’s okay to be gay, you’re not going to see anything wrong with those deeper impulses.” Strohminger isn’t aware of any work that has asked someone experiencing this kind of inner conflict what they actually think. “But from everything I’ve observed in my studies, the prediction would be that… [whatever] you are projecting on to other people, the same standard would hold for you as well. “I’m a psychologist, not a metaphysician,” she adds, “but if you wanted to draw some metaphysical conclusions, you’d have to understand that when normal, everyday people are thinking about their own identity and the identity of other people, this is informed by their own values and circumstances.” In other words, it’s all relative. Strohminger has found that there is, however, one aspect of a person’s typical pattern of behaviour that, consistently, is rated as being most fundamental to who someone is — even more so than their memories, or whether they’re extravert or introvert, placid or easily driven to excitement or anger. She started with thought experiments. In one, she asked volunteers to imagine other people changing in a variety of ways. And it was alterations to their moral traits — their relative honesty or dishonesty, loyalty or disloyalty, and so on — that the volunteers felt most changed them as people. Next, Strohminger turned to families of people with dementia, which can involve not only memory loss but also changes in personality and moral sense (sometimes negative changes, such as a shift to pathological lying; sometimes positive ones, such as greater kindness). The relatives reported that it wasn’t when their loved ones lost their memories that they became a ‘different person’, but rather when their moral sense altered. “Traditionally, morality has not been given much attention in scholarly work about the nature of personal identity. Rather, it was thought that memory and distinctive characteristics, like your personality, is what made you,” Strohminger says. “Our results run counter to centuries of thought from philosophers and neuropsychologists.” Melanie says that some parts of her do seem to have a different moral sense. But she traces this back to varying life experiences for each part, and to the anchoring of some in past decades when different attitudes prevailed. And people’s moral sense can change over time, notes Wendy Johnson. “I do think there are people who realise where they went wrong, and who decide they are going to be different, and they become different,” she says. The fundamental heart of who we are — as far as other people are concerned, at least — can change, therefore. This suggests that the solid, fixed sense of self most of us have is at least partly an illusion that allows us to avoid the mental distress that comes with multiple identities. And as the experiences of Melanie and others with DID show, this illusion is a vital one. It was about four years after her parts started fully emerging that Melanie, who worked as a librarian, picked up a book called The Flock by Joan Frances Casey. She realised that, like Casey, she had DID. She raised the idea with her husband of more than 20 years. “He said, ‘You know what: that makes sense.’ Because, he said, he’d say to me one day, ‘Do you want a coffee?’ And I’d say, ‘Yeah, I’d love a coffee.’ Then, the next day, ‘Do you want a coffee?’ And I’d say, ‘You know I don’t drink coffee, I’m allergic to it!’ The 16-year-old can’t drink coffee and I love coffee. He used to say he never knew what he was coming home to. I never understood what he meant by that!” Is it surprising that she was married for so long to someone who didn’t realise there were different parts inside her? “[Now] he thinks it’s mad he didn’t pick up on this… But he loved me. And I was a good mum, in a practical sense… I was good at copying how other people behaved.” Unlike some people with DID, Melanie does feel that she has a dominant, leading part, whose age matches that of her body. Is it possible, though, to say that the ‘real’ Melanie is not the three-year-old who’s easily terrified, and the 16-year-old who flirts, and the 64-year-old who’s sitting on the sofa in Remy Aquarone’s consulting room, talking eloquently about a sense of being that she now realises is so different to most people’s? Good treatment has made a big difference. The first step was for the disorder to be correctly diagnosed, however, as DID can appear to be many other things. People who hear the voices of parts may be labelled schizophrenic; people who switch between depressed and excitable parts may be diagnosed with bipolar disorder; people who hide in a hospital because their identity is a terrified three-year-old may be thought to be having a psychotic episode; people whose emotional states seem to shift drastically might be diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. And in the UK, at least, DID is a controversial diagnosis. It is listed in both of the main psychiatric manuals used around the world (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, produced by the American Psychiatric Association, and the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, produced by the World Health Organization). But in practice, says Aquarone, there can still be reluctance among psychiatrists to accept it. DID is now thought to affect perhaps 1% of people (about the same rate as schizophrenia), yet there have been claims from skeptics that perhaps patients are simply acting out different identities, and that a proneness to fantasy explains the entire disorder. Brain imaging work supports the idea that people with DID are not acting, and there is other research refuting such claims. In 2016, for example, a team at King’s College London published a study of 65 women, including some diagnosed with DID. They concluded that the women with DID were no more fantasy-prone, suggestible or likely to generate false memories than those without a diagnosis. According to the authors, this result challenges the core hypothesis of the ‘fantasy model’. Melanie is now a director of First Person Plural, a dissociative identity disorders association, and she frequently talks to psychologists, psychiatrists, GPs and care workers, spreading the word that DID is real. She and Aquarone recently helped to organise the first conference on services for people with trauma-related dissociation — it brought together clinicians from the NHS and the private and voluntary sectors. One of the big challenges, they note, is that it can take many months of therapy with a specialist in dissociative disorders to help a patient, but this is generally only available privately. This was the kind of therapy that changed everything for Melanie, she says. When the barriers between the parts began to break down, she was overwhelmed. It took a strong bond with a therapist who could help the parts to talk to each other and respect each other for the “war” inside her to begin to settle down. For ten years after her different identities began to break out, Melanie found it impossible to manage anything beyond the fundamentals of life. Then, as she learned to listen to the parts and the stories they had to tell, “we learnt to share the one life between us”. When she felt able to start going away again for nights with her husband, the child identities inside her would help to gather what she needed. “Everybody would help pack. So we’d have to take things for the three-year-old, like teddies and comforters, and I’d end up packing three or four bags, because everybody had to bring their things.” But still, if they got to their destination and she found she didn’t have the right clothes for that moment, she couldn’t go out. At any given moment, it could have been an eight-year-old who was to the fore in her consciousness, or the 16-year-old, and they just wouldn’t go out unless age-appropriately attired. At one point, she used to allow the 16-year-old to “dress the body”, as she puts it, and get it to the library where she worked: “We’d cycle, because of course the 16-year-old couldn’t drive.” This was on the understanding that the adult would have the day at work, then she’d give the younger parts time in the evenings. “They’d get to do the things they couldn’t do in the day — from the little one having Smarties and watching Teletubbies, to making things, playing with teddies, doing a jigsaw. “Over time, we began to understand what was happening as a whole,” she adds. In a threatening situation, perhaps someone walking into the library in a way that triggered awful memories, “I could talk to the little ones and say, ‘I’m going to keep you safe… the library’s a safe place. Just allow me to stay still and see if we really are in danger, and I promise you if we are, I’ll handle it.’” Now, the parts are all still there, but they coexist. “We are not one, but we all agree to live harmoniously together,” says Melanie. “Which works well most of the time.” If you or someone you know are in crisis, please call the South African Depression and Anxiety Group on their 24-hour helpline on 0800 12 13 14. And in the event of a suicide emergency, contact them on 0800 567 567.

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The world economy or global economy is the economy of all humans of the world, referring to the global economic system which includes all economic activities which are conducted both within and between nations, including production, consumption, economic management, work in general, exchange of financial values and trade of goods and services. In some contexts, the two terms are distinct "international" or "global economy" being measured separately and distinguished from national economies while the "world economy" is simply an aggregate of the separate countries' measurements. Beyond the minimum standard concerning value in production, use and exchange, the definitions, representations, models and valuations of the world economy vary widely. It is inseparable from the geography and ecology of planet Earth. It is common to limit questions of the world economy exclusively to human economic activity and the world economy is typically judged in monetary terms, even in cases in which there is no efficient market to help valuate certain goods or services, or in cases in which a lack of independent research, genuine data or government cooperation makes establishing figures difficult. Typical examples are illegal drugs and other black market goods, which by any standard are a part of the world economy, but for which there is by definition no legal market of any kind. However, even in cases in which there is a clear and efficient market to establish a monetary value, economists do not typically use the current or official exchange rate to translate the monetary units of this market into a single unit for the world economy since exchange rates typically do not closely reflect worldwide value, for example in cases where the volume or price of transactions is closely regulated by the government. Rather, market valuations in a local currency are typically translated to a single monetary unit using the idea of purchasing power. This is the method used below, which is used for estimating worldwide economic activity in terms of real United States dollars or euros. However, the world economy can be evaluated and expressed in many more ways. It is unclear, for example, how many of the world's 7.8 billion people (as of March 2020[update]) have most of their economic activity reflected in these valuations. According to Maddison, until the middle of 19th century, global output was dominated by China and India. Waves of Industrial Revolution in Western Europe and Northern America shifted the shares to the Western Hemisphere. As of 2022, the following 18 countries or collectives have reached an economy of at least US$2 trillion by GDP in nominal or PPP terms: Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union. Despite high levels of government investment, the World Bank predicted that the global economy would decrease by 5.2 percent in 2020. Cities account for 80% of global GDP, thus they would face the brunt of this decline. |Country group||List of country groups by in 2022 (or at peaked level) |List of country groups by in 2022 (or at peaked level) (in millions of US$) (in millions of US$) |Major advanced economies (G7)||45,107,745||43.4%||49,365,287||30.8%||7|| United States| |Emerging and developing Asia||27,008,220||26.0%||53,075,051||33.1%||30|| China| |Other advanced economies (advanced economies excluding the G7) |14,140,022||13.6%||18,082,059||11.3%||33|| South Korea| |Middle East and Central Asia||6,011,585||5.8%||11,869,342||7.4%||32|| Saudi Arabia| United Arab Emirates |Latin America and the Caribbean||5,462,553 (peaked at 6,060,353 in 2013) |Emerging and developing Europe||4,073,723 (peaked at 4,573,783 in 2013) (peaked at 11,343,072 in 2021) |Sub-Saharan Africa||2,063,261||2.0%||5,047,744||3.2%||45|| Nigeria| |The 25 largest economies by GDP (nominal), twenty largest economies by GDP (PPP) as of 2022. Members of the G-20 major economies are in bold.| |List of the 25 largest economies by GDP (nominal) at their peak level as of 2022 in million US$ |List of the 25 largest economies by GDP (PPP) at their peak level as of 2022 in million Int$ |List of the 25 economies by highest GDP (nominal) per capita at their peak level as of 2022 in US$ |List of the 25 economies by highest| GDP (PPP) per capita at their peak level as of 2022 in Int$ Main article: List of countries by past and projected GDP (nominal) |The following is a list of the twenty largest economies by nominal GDP at peak value as of the specific year according to the International Monetary Fund.| |1||United States||United States||United States||United States||United States||United States||United States||United States||United States||United States||United States| |3||Soviet Union||Soviet Union||West Germany||Germany||Germany||Germany||Japan||Japan||Japan||Japan||Japan| |4||West Germany||West Germany||France||France||United Kingdom||United Kingdom||Germany||Germany||Germany||Germany||India| |5||France||France||United Kingdom||United Kingdom||France||China||United Kingdom||United Kingdom||United Kingdom||India||Germany| |6||United Kingdom||United Kingdom||Soviet Union||Italy||Italy||France||France||France||France||United Kingdom||United Kingdom| |12||Mexico||Argentina||Brazil||South Korea||South Korea||Mexico||Canada||Spain||South Korea||South Korea||Russia| |14||India||Brazil||Australia||Netherlands||India||Russia||South Korea||South Korea||Australia||Iran||Iran| |17||Brazil||Saudi Arabia||South Korea||Switzerland||Australia||Iran||Turkey||Netherlands||Turkey||Mexico||Mexico| |19||Belgium||Sweden||Sweden||Argentina||Argentina||Switzerland||Switzerland||Saudi Arabia||Iran||Saudi Arabia||Turkey| |20||Switzerland||Belgium||Argentina||Belgium||Taiwan||Sweden||Iran||Switzerland||Saudi Arabia||Taiwan||Saudi Arabia| |List of twenty largest economies by GDP based on purchasing power parity at peak value as of the specific year according to the International Monetary Fund and the CIA World Factbook.| |1||United States||United States||United States||United States||United States||United States||United States||United States||China||China||China| |2||Soviet Union||Soviet Union||Soviet Union||Japan||China||China||China||China||United States||United States||United States| |4||West Germany||West Germany||West Germany||Germany||Germany||India||Japan||Japan||Japan||Japan||Japan| |8||United Kingdom||United Kingdom||United Kingdom||France||United Kingdom||Brazil||France||United Kingdom||United Kingdom||United Kingdom||United Kingdom| |9||Saudi Arabia||China||Brazil||Brazil||Russia||United Kingdom||United Kingdom||France||Brazil||Brazil||Brazil| |14||Canada||Spain||Indonesia||Saudi Arabia||Canada||Canada||Spain||South Korea||South Korea||South Korea||South Korea| |15||Iran||Iran||Saudi Arabia||Canada||Saudi Arabia||South Korea||Saudi Arabia||Saudi Arabia||Spain||Spain||Spain| |16||Indonesia||Indonesia||Iran||Iran||South Korea||Saudi Arabia||Iran||Spain||Canada||Canada||Canada| |17||Argentina||Turkey||Turkey||South Korea||Iran||Iran||Canada||Canada||Saudi Arabia||Saudi Arabia||Saudi Arabia| Telephones – main lines in use: 843,923,500 (2007) Transportation infrastructure worldwide includes: The Royal Society in a 2011 report stated that in terms of number of papers the share of English-language scientific research papers the United States was first followed by China, the UK, Germany, Japan, France, and Canada. In 2015, research and development constituted an average 2.2% of the global GDP according to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics. Metrics and rankings of innovation include the Bloomberg Innovation Index, the Global Innovation Index and the share of Nobel laureates per capita. See also: Primary sector of the economy, Sustainable development, Economic impacts of climate change, Environmental resource management § Economics, Planetary management, Agriculture, Overexploitation, Overconsumption, and Ecosystem service Further information: 2021 in the environment and environmental sciences § International goals From the scientific perspective, economic activities are embedded in a web of dynamic, interrelated, and interdependent activities that constitute the natural system of Earth. Novel application of cybernetics in decision-making (such as in decision-making related to process- and product-design and related laws) and direction of human activity (such as economic activity) may make it easier to control modern ecological problems. |Estimations of world population and GDP from a 2020 research paper| |GDP per capita ($1990 in PPP) |GDP in billion | ($1990 in PPP) One example for a comparable metric other than GDP are the OECD Better Life Index rankings for different aggregative domains. Explained by: Housing Explained by: Income Explained by: Jobs Explained by: Community Explained by: Education Explained by: Environment Explained by: Civic engagement Explained by: Health Explained by: Life Satisfaction Explained by: Safety Explained by: Work-Life Balance |OECD Better Life Index rankings for 2016| |Country||Housing||Income||Jobs||Community||Education||Environment||Civic engagement||Health||Life Satisfaction||Safety||Work-Life Balance| The index includes 11 comparable "dimensions" of well-being: To promote exports, many government agencies publish on the web economic studies by sector and country. Among these agencies include the USCS (US DoC) and FAS (USDA) in the United States, the EDC and AAFC in Canada, Ubifrance in France, the UKTI in the United Kingdom, the HKTDC and JETRO in Asia, Austrade and the NZTE in Oceania. Through Partnership Agreements, the Federation of International Trade Associations publishes studies from several of these agencies (USCS, FAS, AAFC, UKTI, and HKTDC) as well as other non-governmental organizations on its website globaltrade.net.

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This Scholarly Library of Facts about Domestic & Worldwide Zionist Criminality The Jew Watch Project Is The Internet's Largest Scholarly Collection of Articles on Zionist Top: Jewish Occupied Governments: United States: Zionists and Jewish Communists in the Democratic Party: Iron Curtain Chapter 1 Since the fall of the Roman Empire of the West in 476 A.D., a principal weakness of Western Europe has been a continuing lack of unity. Charlemagne (742-814) - who was crowned Emperor of the West in Rome in 800 - gave the post-Roman European world a generation of unity, and exerted influence even as far as Jerusalem, where he secured the protection of Christian pilgrims to the shrines associated with the birth, the ministry, and the crucifixion of Christ. Unfortunately, Charlemagne's empire was deveded shortly after his death into three parts (Treaty of Verdun, 843). From two of these France and Germany derived historic boundaries - and a millennium of wars fought largely to change them! After Charlemagne's time, the first significant power efforts with a continent-wide common purpose were the Crusades (1096-1291). In medieval Europe the Church of Rome, the only existing international organization, had some of the characteristics of a league of nations, and it sponsored these mass movements of Western Europeans toward the East. In fact, it was Pope Urban II, whose great speech at Clermont, France, on November 26, 1095, initiated the surge of feeling which inspired the people of France, and of Europe in general, for the amazing adventure. The late medieval setting of the epochal speech is re-created with brilliant detail by Harold Lamb in his book, The Crusades: Iron Men and Saints (Doubleday, Doran & Co., inc., Garden City, New York, 1930, Chapters VI and VII ). The Pope crossed the Alps from schism-torn Italy and, Frenchman himself, stirred the people of France as he rode among them. In the chapel at Clermont, he first swayed the men of the church who had answered his summons to the meeting; then, surrounded by cardinals and mail-clad knights on a golden-canopied platform in a field by the church, he addressed the multitude: You are girded knights, but you are arrogant with pride. You turn upon your brothers with fury, cutting down one the other. Is this the service of Christ? Come forward to the defense of Christ. The great Pope gave his eager audience some pertinent and inspiring texts from the recorded words of Jesus Christ: For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them (The Gospel According to Saint Mattew, Chapter XVIII, Verse 20). And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name,s sake, shall receive a hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life (Saint Matthew, Chapter XIX, Verse 29). To the words of the Saviour, the Pope added his own specific promise: Set forth then upon the way to the Holy Sepulcher. . . and fear not. Your possessions here will be safeguarded, and you will despoil the enemy of greater treasures. Do not fear death, where Christ laid down His life for you. If any should lose their lives, even on the way thither, by sea or land, or in where Christ laid down His life for you. If any should lose their lives, even on the way thither, by sea or land ,or in strife with the pagans, their sins will be requited them. I grant this to all who go, by the power vested in me by God (Harold Lamb, op.cit., P.42). Through the long winter, men scanned their supplies, hammered out weapons and armor, and dreamed dreams of their holy mission. In the summer that followed, they "started out on what they called the voyage of God" ( Harold Lamb, op. cit., p. VII) As they faced East they shouted on plains and in mountain valleys, "God wills it." Back of the Crusades there was a "mixture of motives" (Encyclopedia Britannica, Fourteenth Edition, Vol. VI, p. 722). The immediate goal of those who made the journey was the rescue of the tomb of Christ from the non-Christian power which then dominated Palestine. Each knight wore a cross on his outer garment and they called themselves by a Latin name Cruciati (from crux, cross), or soldiers of the cross, which is translated into English as Crusaders. A probable ecclesiastical objectives were the containment of Mohammedan power and the protection of pilgrims to the Holy Land (encyc. Brit., Vol. VI, p.722 Inspired by the promise of an eternal home in heaven, alike for those who might perish on the way and those who might reach the Holy Sepulcher, the Crusaders could not fail. Some of them survived the multiple perils of the journey and reached Palestine, where they captured the Holy City and founded the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (1099). In this land, which they popularly called Outremer or Beyond The Sea, they established the means of livelihood, built churches, and saw children and grandchildren born. The Latin Kingdom's weaknesses, vicissitudes, and final destruction by the warriors of Islam, who had been driven back but not destroyed, constitute a vivid chapter of history - alien, however, to the subject matter of The Iron Curtain Over America. Many of the Crusaders became members of three military religious orders. Unlike the Latin Kingdom, these orders have survived, in one form or another, the epoch of the great adventure, and are of significant interest in the middle of the twentieth century. The Knights Hospitalers - or by their longer title, the Knights of the Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem were "instituted" upon an older charitable foundation by Pope Paschal II in 1113 (Encyc. Brit. Vol. XIX, pp. 836-838). The fraternity of the Knights Templars (Poor Knights of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon) was founded not as a Hospital but directly as a military order about 1119, and was installed by Baldwin I, King of Jerusalem, in a building known as the "Temple of Solomon" - hence the name Templars (Encyc. Brit., Vol.XXI, pp. 920-924). Both Hospitalers and Templars are fairly well known to those who have read such historical novels as The Talisman by Sir Walter Scott. The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem maintained its rule for nearly a hundred years, 1099-1187 (see Lamb, op. cit., and The Crusade: The World's Debate, by Hilaire Belloc, Cassell and Company, Ltd., London, 1937). Still longer the Crusaders held Acre on the coast of Palestine. When their position on the time of its dissolution (1306-1312) as an international military brotherhood. The Hospitalers move to the island of Rhodes, where their headquarters buildings - visited and studied by the author still stand in superb preservation facing the waters of the Inland Sea. From Rhodes, the Knights of the Hospital moved to Malta hence their later name, Knights of Malta - and held sovereignty on that famous island until 1798. The two principal Mediterranean orders and their history, including the assumption of some of their defense functions by Venice and then by Britain, do not further concern us. It is interesting to note, however, as we take leave of the Templars and the Hospitalers, that the three Chivalric Orders of Crusaders are in some cases the direct ancestors and in other cases have afforded the inspiration, including the terminology of knighthood, for many of the important present-day social, fraternal, and philanthropic orders of Europe and America. Among these are the Knights Templar, which is "claimed to be a lineal descendant" of the Crusade order of similar name; the Knights of Pythias, founded in 1864; and the Knights of Columbus, founded in 1882 (quotation and dates from Webster's New International Dictionary, Second Edition, 1934, p. 1370). The third body of medieval military-religious Crusaders was the Knighthood of the Teutonic Order. This organization was founded as a hospital in the winter of 1190-91 - according to tradition, on a small ship which had been pulled ashore near Acre. Its services came to be so highly regarded that in March, 1198, "the great men of the army and the [Latin] Kingdom raised the brethren of the German Hospital of St. Mary to the rank of an Order of Knights" (Encyc. Brit., Vol. XXI, pp. 983-984). Soon, however, the Order found that "its true work lay on the Eastern frontiers of Germany" (Encyc. Brit., Vol. XXI, p. 894). Invited by a Christian Polish Prince (1226) to help against the still unconverted Prussians, a body of knights sailed down the Vistula establishing blockhouses and pushed eastward to found Koenigsburg in 1255. In 1274, a castle was established at Marienburg and in 1309 the headquarters of the Grand Master was transferred (Encyc. Brit., Vol. XIV, p. 886) from Venice to this remote border city on the Nojat River, an eastern outlet of the Vistula (The Rise of Brandenburg-Prussia to 1786, by Sidney Bradshaw Fay, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1937). It was to the Teutonic Order that the Knight of Chaucer, edited by Clarence Griffin Child, D. C. Heath & Co., Boston, 1912, p. 150). Chaucer's lines (prologue to the Canterbury Tales, II., 52-53): Ful ofte tyme he hadde the bord bigonne Aboven alle naciouns in Pruce tell us that this Knight occupied the seat of Grand Master, presumably at the capital, Marienburg, and presided over Knights from the various nations assembled in "Puce" (Prussia) to hold the pagan East at bay. In his military-religious capacity Chaucer's Knight "fought for our faith" in fifteen battles, including those in Lithuania and in Russia (Prologue, II., 54-63). The Teutonic Knights soon drove eastward, or converted to Christianity, the sparsely settled native Prussian people, and assumed sovereignty over East Purssia. They encouraged the immigration of German families of farmers and artisans, and their domain on the south shore of the Baltic became a self-contained German state, outside the Holy Roman Empire. The boundaries varied, at one time reaching the Gulf of Finland ( see Historical Atlas, by William R. Shepherd, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1911, maps 77, 79, 87, 99, 119). "The hundred years from 1309 to 1409 were the Golden Age of the Teutonic Knights, Young nobles from all over Europe found no greater honor than to come out and fight under their banner and be Knighted by their Grand Master" (Fay, op. cit., pp. 32-33). As the years passed, the function of the Teutonic Knights as defenders, or potential defenders, of the Christian West remained unchanged. Those who founded the Teutonic Order on the hospital ship in Palestine spoke German and from the beginning most of the members were from the various small states into which in medieval times the German people were divided. As the Crusading spirit waned in Europe, fewer Knights were drawn from far-off lands and a correspondingly larger number were recruited from nearby German kingdoms, duchies, and other autonomies. Meanwile, to Brandenburg, a neighbor state to the west of the Teutonic Order domain, the Emperor Sigismund sent as ruler Prederick of Hohenzollern and five years later made him hereditary elector. "A new era of prosperity, good government, and princely power began with the arrival of the Hohenzollerns in Brandenburg in the summer of 1412" (Fay, op. cit., pp. 7-9). After its Golden Age, the Teutonic Order suffered from a lack of religious motivation, since all nearby peoples including the Lithuanians had been converted. It suffered, too, from poor administration and from military reverses. To strengthen their position, especially against Poland, the Knights elected Albert of Hohenzollern, a cousin of the contemporary elector Joachim I (rule, 1499-1535), as Grand Master in 1511. Unlike Chaucer's Knight, a lay member who was the father of a promising son, Albert was a clerical member of the Teutonic Order. He and his elector cousin were both great grandsons of Frederick. the first Hohenzollern elector (Fay, op. cit., Passim). In most German states in the first quarter of the sixteenth century, "things were not right," "there was discontent deep in men's hearts," and "existing powers," ecclesiastical as well as lay, "Abused their trust." The quoted phrases are from an essay, "Luther and the Modern Mind" (The Catholic World, October 1946) by Dr. Thomas P. Neill, who continues: This was the stage on which Luther appeared when he nailed his ninety-five theses to the church door at Wittenberg on Hallowe'en of 1517. The Catholic Church had come on sorry days, and had there been no Luther there would likely have been a successful revolt anyway. But there was a Luther. The posting of the famous "ninety-five theses" by Martin Luther foreshadowed his break, complete and final by the spring of 1522, with the Church of Rome. Since the church in Germany was temporarily at a low ebb, as shown by Dr. Neill, Luther's controversy with its authorities won him "the sympathy and support of a large proportion of his countrymen" (Encyc. Brit., Vol.XIV, p. 944). The outcome was a new form of Christianity, known later as Protestantism, which made quick headway among North Germans and East Germans. Its adherents included many Teutonic Knights, and their German chief was interested. Still nominally a follower of the Church of Rome, Albert visited Luther at Wittenberg in 1523. "Luther advised: Give up your vow as a monk; take a wife; abolish the order; and make yourself hereditary Duke of Prussia". (Fay, op. cit., p. 38). The advice was taken. Thus since a large proportion of its members and its chief had embraced Protestantism, the Knighthood severed its slender tie with the Church of Rome. In the words of the Encyclopedia Britannica (Vol. I, p. 522), "Albert of Hohenzollern, last Grand Master of the Teutonic Order" became "first Duke of Prussia." In this manner the honorable and historic heritage of extending Christianity in the lands south of the Baltic passed from a military-religious order to a Germany duchy. Prussia and not the Teutonic Order now governed the strategically vital shore land of the southeast Baltic, between the Niemen and Vital shore land of the southeast Baltic, between the Niemen and Vistula rivers. Proud of their origin as a charitable organization and proud of being a bulwark of Christianity, first Catholic and then Protestant, the people of Prussia, many of them descended from the lay knights, developed a "strong sense of duty and loyalty." From them came also" many of the generals and statesmen who helped to make Prussia great. . ." (Fay, op.cit., p. 2) This duchy of Prussia was united with Brandenburg in 1618 by the marriage of Anna, daughter and heiress of the second Duke of Prussia, to the elector, John Sigismund (Hohenzollern). Under the latter's grandson, Frederickk William, the "Great Elector" (reign, 1640-1688), Brandenburg-Prussia became second only to Austria among the member states of the Holy Roman Empire some of its territory, acquired from the Teutonic Order, extending even beyond the loose confederation and it was "regarded as the head of German protestantism" (Encyc. Brit., Vol. IV, p. 33 and passim). By an edict of the Holy Roman Emperor, the state of Brandenburg-Prussia became the kingdom of Prussia in 1701; the royal capital was Berlin, which was in the heart of the old province of Brandenburg. Under Fredirick the Great (reign, 1740-1768), Prussia became one of the most highly developed nations of Europe. A century later, it was the principal component of the German Empire which the Minister-President of prussia, Otto von Bismarck, caused to be proclaimed in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles (January 18, 2022). Prussia's historic function, inherited from the Teutonic Order of standing as a bastion on the Baltic approach to Europe, was never fully forgotten by the west. The Hohenzollern monarchy was the strongest Protestant power on the continent and its relations with the governments of both England and America were intimate and friendly. The royal family of England several times married into the Prussian dynasty. Frederick William II of Brandenburg-Prussia, later to be Frederick, first king of Prussia (see preceding paragraph) helped William of England of Orange, the archenemy of Louis XIV of France, to land in England, where he became (1688) co-soverign with his wife, Mary Stuart, and a friend and helper of the American colonies. It was a prussian Baron, Frederick William von Steuben, whom General George Washington made Inspector General (May, 1778), responsible 1815 Prussian troops under Field Marshal von Bluecher helped save Wellington's England from Napoleon. In 1902 Pruce Henry of Prussia, brother of the German Emperor, paid a state visit to the United States and received at West Point, Annapolis, Washington, and elsewhere, as royal a welcome as was ever accorded to a foreign visitor by the government of the United States. The statue of Frederick the Great, presented in appreciation, stood in front of the main building of the Army War College in Washington during two wars between the countrymen of Frederick of Hohenzollen and the countrymen George Washington, an evidence in bronze of the old Western view that fundamental relationships between peoples should survive the temporary disturbances occasioned by wars. The friendly relationships between the United States and Germany existed not only on the governmental level but were cemented by close racial kinship. Not only is the basic blood stream of persons of English descent very nearly identical with that of Germans; in addition, nearly a fourth of the Americans of the early twentieth century were actually of German descent (Chapter IV, below). Thus, in the early years of the twentieth century the American people admired Germany/ It was a strong nation, closely akin; and it was a Christian land, part Protestant and part Catholic, as America had been part Catholic since the Cavaliers leave to Virginia and the Puritans to New England. Moreover, the old land of the Teutonic Knights led the world in music, in medicine, and in scholarship. The terms Prussia and Prussian, Germany and German had a most favorable connotation. Then came World War I (1914), in which Britain and France and their allies were opposed to Germany and her allies. Since the citizens of the United States admired all three nations they were stunned at the calamity of such a conflict and were slow in taking sides. Finally (1917), and to some extent because of the pressure of American zionists (Chapter III, below), we joined the Entente group. which included Britain and France. The burden of a great war was accepted by the people, even with some enthusiasm on the Atlantic seaboard, for according to our propagandists it was a war to end all wars. It was pointed out, too, that Britain among the world's great nations was closest to us in language and culture, and that France had been traditionally a friend since the Marquis of Lafayette and the Count of Rochambeau aided General Washington. With a courage fanned by the newly perfected science of propaganda, the American people threw themselves heart and soul into defeating Germany in the great "war to end all wars." The blood-spilling the greatest in all history and between men of kindred race was ended by an armistice on November 11, 1918, and the American people entertained high hopes for lasting peace. Their hopes, however, were soon to fade away. With differing viewpoints, national and personal, and with the shackles of suddenly revealed secret agreement between co-belligerents. President Woodrow Wilson, Prime Minister David Lloyd George, Premier Georges Clemenceau of France, and Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando of Italy had much difficulty in agreeing on the terms of peace treaties (1919), The merits or shortcomings of which cannot in consequence be fully chalked up to any one of them. It remains indisputable, however, that in what they agreed to in the treaty made with Germany at Versailles (June 28, 2022) and in the treaty made with Austria at St. Germain (September10,1919) the four American delegates, dominated by President Wilson, departed at least to some extent from our tradition of humane treatment of a defeated enemy. The heavily populated German nation was deprived of much territory, including vital mineral areas and a "Polish Corridor" which, under the terms of the treaty, separated the original duchy of Prussia from the rest of the country. Germany was deprived also of its merchant fleet and was saddled with an impossible load of separations, As a consequence, the defeated country was left in a precarious position which soon produced an economic collapse. The Austro Hungarian Empire, ancient outpost of the Teutonic peoples and of Western Christian civilization on the Danube Valley invasion route from Asia, was destroyed at St. Germain. The result was the serious general economic dislocation to be expected from the collapse of an imperial government, and the inevidable dire distress to the people, especially in the capital city of Vienna (population over 2,000,000), which was left with little sustaining territory, except scenic and historic mountains. Moreover, although Austro-Hungary was broken up under the theory that its people should be put into small pigeon-hole nations on racial and linguistic considerations, the new Czechoslovakia state was given 3,500,000 persons of German blood and speech. In this treatment of Germany and Austria our leaders not merely set up conditions conducive to the extreme distress of millions of people; they also by those same conditions flouted the recognized principles of sound military and national policy, for the strategic use of victory demands that the late enemy be drawn into the victor's orbit as friend and ally. As one example of the strategic use of victory, our War of 1812, with Britain, was followed by an earnest bilateral effort at the solution of mutual problems by the Monroe Doctrine (1823) in the field of international relations, and by the crumbling of unused forts on the U.S. Canadian border. As a second example, Britain's war with South Africa, which ended in 1902, was followed by such humanity and fairness that a defeated people, different in speech and culture, became an ally instead of an enemy in the great war which began only twelve years later in 1914. The crash in Germany came in 1923, when German money lost its value,. There was terrible suffering among the people everywhere and especially in the cities and industrial areas. As the mark's purchasing power approached zero, a widow would realize from her husband's life insurance "just enough to buy a meal" ("Inflation Concerns Everyone," by Samuel B. Pettengill, Reader's Digest, October, 1951). "Berlin in 1923 was a city of despair. People waited in the alley behind the Hotel Adlon ready to pounce on garbage cans immediately they were placed outside the hotels kitchen." A cup of coffee "cost one million marks one day, a million and a half the next and two million the day following" (Drew Pearson, March 22, 2022). In hunger and desperation, many Germans blamed their troubles on Jews, whom they identified with Communism. "The fact that certain Jews, such as Kurt Eisner, Toller, and Levine, had been leaders of Communist Movements [1918, 1919]. . .gave the conservatives the opportunity of proclaiming that the Jews were responsible for the national misfortunes and disorders" (Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. I, pp. 366,367). The German attitude was intensified by the new power German Jews acquired in the terrible year 1923 from using funds derived from rich race-conscious Jews inn other countries and by an inrush of Jews from the destroyed Austro-Hungarian Empire and from the East. "Some of those Eastern European Jews took an active part in the speculation which was rampant in Germany because of the unstable currency and the shortage of commodities" (America's Second Crusade, by William Henry Chamberlin, Henry Regnery Company, 1950, pp. 30, 31). The influx from the East had also the effect of reviving the viewpoint of certain earlier Germans that Jews were not assimilable but were really invaders. "In 1880 the learned but fanatical Professor Treitschke's phrase, 'Die Juden sind unser Unglueck' [The Jews are our misfortune], gained currency all through the German empire" (H. Graetz, Popular History of the Jews, Vol. VI, by Max Raisin, The Jordan Publishing Co., New York, 1935, p. 162). Also, "according to Grattenauer's Wider die Juden (1803), the Jews of Germany were, as early as that period, regarded as 'Asiatic Immigrants' " (Univ. Jew. Encyc., Vol. I, p 341). This fateful German-Jewish tension was destined to have a major role in the history of the United States, and will be dealt with further in subsequent chapters. The Immediate result of the events of 1923 was an increase of Jewish power in the Reich. "Bled white" in World War I, like Britain and France, Germany bent to its economic tragedy without significant resistance, but the resentment of the people at being starved and humiliated (as they believed) by a minority of less than one percent smoldered like live coals awaiting almost any fanning into flame. Our usual helping hand so generously extended in the Japanese earthquake tragedy of 1923 and in other calamities -- was withheld, while this small group increased its control (for some idea of the extent of the control by Jews in the city of Berlin five years after Hitler assumed power, see the Reader's Digest for May, 1938, p. 126). After 1919, anti-German propaganda in the United States did not cease, as was strategically desirable, but was continued unremittingly in the press and by the new opinion-controlling medium, the radio. Americans were taught to hate Germany and Germans and to loathe Prussia and Prussians, not any longer as a war-time "psychological" attack, but as a permanent attitude. The task of the propagandists was made easier by the appearance on the world's stage (1933) of the demagogue Adolph Hitler, whose assumption of the combined offices of Chancellor and President of Germany (Chapter IV, below), under the alien and repugnant title of "Furhrer," shocked the sensibilities of the American people who were accustomed to a Republican form of government with the still effective checks and balances of the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial branches. In 1936, Britain was making efforts to establish workable arrangements with Germany. Symbolically, and with much publicity, a thousand German war veterans were entertained in England by a thousand British war veterans. A naval ratio, most favorable to Britain, had been agreed upon. The President of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt, had in his first year of office (1933) recognized the Communist Government of Russia (Chapter III, Below), but was otherwise "isolationist" in his general attitude toward Europe. Then on October 5, 1937, in Chicago, he made an about-face (Chapter IV, below), in his famous "Quarantine" speech against Germany. Though his sudden "fears" had no foundation in facts--as known then or as discovered later--our policy was charted, and England, forced to a decision, became a partner in our anti-German action. With no enthusiasm, such as was generated in 1919, the American people soon found themselves (December, 1941) involved in a second and even more frightful World War against two of our former allies, Japan and Italy, and against our World War I opponent, Germany ( see Chapters IV and V, below). The propagandists against Germany and the German people did not cease, however, with Hitler's defeat and death (1945) and the resultant effacement of his government and his policies. After Hitler, as before Hitler, these propagandists did not allow the American public to realize the strategic fact that a country like an individual needs friends and that a permanent destructive attitude toward a nation because of a former ruler is as stupid, for instance, as a hatred for the people of an American state because of an unpopular ex-governor. Thus, instead of correcting our error of 1919 and making certain at the end of World war II to draw a properly safeguarded but humanely treated Germany definitely into our orbit, we adopted in 1945 an intensified policy of hate, denied the Germans a peace treaty more than six years after the suspension of active warfare, and took additional steps (Chapters IV, VI, and VIII, below) which could have had no other purpose -- concealed of course, even from some of those who furthered it -- than the final destruction of Germany. Woodrow Wilson, despite the terrible and still largely undocumented pressures upon him, had at least preserved Prussia at the close of World War I. Franklin Roosevelt, however, tossed it from his failing hands to the minority (see Chapter II) who, with converts to their Marxist concept of statism, had succeeded the Romanov Czars as masters of Russia. With Malta lost in 1798 and Prussia destroyed in 1945, the temporal state-structures of the Crusaders and their successors ceased to exist. Under the preaching of Urban II, most of the Western World had developed a frenzy of unity; under Roosevelt II, or rather under those who manipulated him, it did so again. The goal this time, however, was not the defense of Europe or the rescue of the of Christ; the goal, on the contrary, was a monstrous surrender of the Western heritage of Christian civilization. Yes, it was actually the United States of America which was mainly responsible for destroying the successor state to the Teutonic Knights and for delivering the ruins, with the hegemony of Europe, to the Soviet Union, The new Communist power of our creation. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in the Jew Watch Library is archived here under fair use without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in reviewing the included information for personal use, non-profit research and educational purposes only. If you have additions or suggestions Email Jew Watch

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The Charge at Kaukab and took place on 30 September 1918 about 10 miles (16 km) south of the Damascus during the pursuit by Desert Mounted Corps following the decisive Egyptian Expeditionary Force victory at the Battle of Megiddo and the Battle of Jisr Benat Yakub during the Sinai and Palestine Campaign of World War I. As the Australian Mounted Division rode along the main road north, units of the division charged a rearguard position located across the main Nablus to Damascus road on the ridge at Kaukab. Following the victories at the Battle of Sharon and Battle of Nablus during the Battle of Megiddo, remnants of the Ottoman Seventh and Eighth Armies retreated in columns towards Damascus from the Judean Hills. They left rearguards at Samakh, at Tiberias and at Jisr Benat Yakub all of which were captured by the Australian Mounted Division. Remnants of the Fourth Army retreating in columns towards Damascus along the Pilgrims' Road through Deraa, were pursued by the 4th Cavalry Division which attacked a rearguard at Irbid. The surviving German and Ottoman garrisons from Samakh and Tiberia, (formed from remnants of the Seventh and Eighth Armies) which had withdrawn from Jisr Benat Yakub with part of the defenders of Damascus, entrenched themselves on the high ground on both sides of the main Jerusalem to Damascus road at Kaukab. Here the 4th and 12th Light Horse Regiments charged up and onto the ridge capturing part of the rearguard while the remainder withdrew in disorder as the 5th Light Horse Brigade on the western side outflanked their positions. The pursuit to Damascus began on 26 September when the 4th Cavalry Division advanced east via Irbid to Deraa which was captured by Feisal's Sherifial Forces on 27 September. Their pursuit continued with the cavalry's right flank covered by Sherifial forces, north to Damascus 140 miles (230 km) away. The Australian Mounted Division with the 5th Cavalry Division in reserve, began their 90 miles (140 km) pursuit to Damascus on 27 September around the northern end of the Sea of Galilee, also known as Lake Tiberias, via Jisr Benat Yakub and Kuneitra.[Note 1] Liman von Sanders and Yildirim Army Group withdraws By 26 September the Fourth Army's Amman garrison (less the rearguard captured at Amman) had not been "heavily engaged," and "was still intact as a fighting force even though it was in rapid retreat" north along the Hejaz railway and Pilgrims Road, some miles to the east of the Jordan River, towards Damascus. Between 6,000 and 7,000 German and Ottoman soldiers remaining from the Ottoman Fourth, Seventh and Eighth Armies had managed to retreat via Tiberias or Deraa, before these places were captured on 25 and 27 September, respectively. The retreating columns which moved via Deraa were at or north of Muzeirib on their way to Damascus by 27 September. When Mustapha Kemal Pasha, commander of the Seventh Army arrived at Kiswe 50 miles (80 km) from Deraa, with his army's leading troops on 29 September, Liman von Sanders ordered him to continue on north of Damascus to Rayak. By the next morning; 30 September, the leading column of the Fourth Army consisting of an Ottoman cavalry division and some infantry, was approaching Kiswe 10 miles (16 km) south of Damascus, followed along the Pilgrims' Road by the 4th Cavalry Division 30 miles (48 km) behind. Australian Mounted Division During the cavalry phase of the Battle of Sharon the Australian Mounted Division's 3rd Light Horse Brigade had captured Jenin, the 4th Light Horse Brigade had captured Samakh and during the infantry phase of the Battle of Sharon the 5th Light Horse Brigade had assisted the 60th Division to capture Tulkarm. The Australian Division orders for 30 September were to secure and hold the Kuneitra area with "a strong force, with headquarters and the bulk of its troops" while Brigadier General L. C. Wilson's 3rd and Brigadier General G. M. M. Onslow's 5th Light Horse Brigades and Bourchier's Force (4th and 12th Light Horse Regiments commanded by Lieutenant Colonel M. W. J. Bourchier) were ordered to continue the advance to the west of Damascus to cut the lines of retreat, west to Beirut and north to Homs. At dawn Bourchier's Force took over from the 3rd Light Horse Brigade, as the Australian Mounted Division's advanced guard and by 05:00 had passed through the Sa'sa position, while the 5th Light Horse Brigade at Khan esh Shiha, with the 3rd Light Horse Brigade in reserve, rode out at 07:30 having reassembled after the engagement at Sa'sa the previous night. They were ordered to outflank Damascus moving via Qatana north-easterly along the foothills of the Kalabat el Mezze. The pursuit towards Damascus via Daraya on the road to Damascus, continued with difficulty at first, "through narrow passes with snipers on both sides," before entering a plain when daylight allowed the advance to quickly attack an enemy column .5 miles (0.80 km) from Kaukab. The leading troop of 4th Light Horse Regiment, "broke a disorganized body of the enemy ... cutting off 180 men ... [then] groups of three or four horsemen riding at bodies of Turks ten times their own strength and calling upon them to surrender." The captured 350 prisoners, a field gun, eight machine guns and 400 rifles were collected at Khan esh Sheikh 3 miles (4.8 km) from Kaukab. After collecting their prisoners, the 4th Light Horse Regiment arrived near Kaukab ridge when patrols found the Nahr Barbar, flowing through a valley to the slopes of Mount Hermon, easily fordable "at almost any place for mounted troops." Defence of Damascus Liman von Sanders ordered the 24th, 26th and 53rd Infantry Divisions, XX Corps Seventh Army and the 3rd Cavalry Division, Army Troops Fourth Army, under the command of Colonel Ismet Bey (commander of the III Corps Seventh Army) to defend Damascus, while the remaining Ottoman formations were ordered to retreat northwards. The Tiberias Group commanded by Jemal Pasha, commander of the Fourth Army was also ordered to defend Damascus. Defence of Kaukab The 4th Light Horse Regiment saw a strong column about 2 miles (3.2 km) long take up a defensive position on Kaukab ridge. They occupied all the commanding places from the western edge of a volcanic ridge stretching eastwards along the high ground. "From the right, a large enemy force appeared and headed across the Australians' front. They then set up a strong line of machine–gun posts ... [across] their line of advance." The Ottoman rearguard had been established on the road from Kuneitra, between Kaukab and Qatana, about 10 miles (16 km) south of Damascus and 5 miles (8.0 km) west of Kiswe. Patrols reported no sign of troops to protect the right flank of this new Kaukab position estimated to be 2,500 strong. Plan of attack The 4th and 12th Light Horse Regiments of Bourchier's Force with the 19th Brigade RHA in support were to advance straight on while the 5th Light Horse Brigade moved to the west between Artuz and Qatana to Daraya towards El Mezze with the 3rd Light Horse Brigade in Divisional Reserve led by Divisional Headquarters. The 4th and 12th Light Horse Regiments (4th Light Horse Brigade) were deployed on the right, while the 14th Light Horse Regiment and the Régiment Mixte de Marche de Cavalerie (RMMC) (5th Light Horse Brigade) took up a position on the left with the 3rd Light Horse Brigade in the rear; "each in column of squadrons in lines of troop columns." The uncontested advance of the Régiment Mixte de Marche de Cavalerie quickly got behind the enemy's right flank; riding "up the valley, swinging westward near 'Artuz to get beyond reach of fire from the high ground at Kaukab." After "A" Battery HAC and the Notts Battery RHA opened effective fire from a hillock 2,500 yards (2,300 m) from the rearguard line, at 11:15 the 4th and 12th Light Horse Regiments charged mounted "with the sword." These two regiments rode across stony ridges and ravines to find protection behind a ridge 1 mile (1.6 km) away, where two squadrons of each regiment drew swords, leaving two squadrons in reserve, and charged up the slope towards the crest of the ridge in artillery formation. I moved them off with drawn swords in line and broke into a trot and then gallop ... I never looked around but when I came down to top speed and sword at the 'charge', I could hear the noise behind me ... We expected to go through heavy machine–gunfire. I heard someone yell as we galloped along, 'Why don't you fire, you bastards?' It was hard on the nerves, waiting for the blizzard of bullets, until the men realised that the 2,500 Turks were breaking and running."—Major Norman Rae leading "A" Squadron 4th Light Horse Regiment When the 4th Light Horse Regiment on the left and the 12th Light Horse Regiment on the right, charged up the slope, the defenders "broke and fled into the gardens at his rear, a squadron of Turkish cavalry galloping wildly up the road towards Damascus". About 72 prisoners were captured along with 12 machine guns while large numbers of infantry retreated into nearby woods heading for Daraya. The Ottoman rearguard had been heavily fired on by the two Australian Mounted Division batteries, and would have seen the advance of the Régiment Mixte de Marche de Cavalerie to their right rear. From Kaukab, Damascus was 10 miles (16 km) away. The Australian Mounted Division was ordered to move west of Damascus to block the road to Beirut and the road north to Homs. During the afternoon a redoubt defended by machine guns on the road to Damascus was attacked and captured, and refugees retreating from Damascus towards Beirut were attacked. The Régiment Mixte de Marche de Cavalerie (5th Light Horse Brigade) continued their advance from Kaukab, riding 5 miles (8.0 km) on to the Baniyas to Damascus road beyond Qatana, and on to the southwest of El Mezze where they were heavily fired on by machine guns. The regiment dismounted to attack the position "in a narrow corridor between the enclosed gardens on the right and the hills of the Anti-Lebanon on the left," with one squadron of the 14th Light Horse Regiment following. The French regiment slowly fought their way along the Qalabat el Mezze ridge which runs parallel with the Baniyas to Damascus road, until horse artillery batteries advanced up the main road at 13:00 and commenced firing on the enemy position which silenced them. The 5th Light Horse Brigade advanced north westwards towards the Beirut road, closely followed by the 3rd Light Horse Brigade, the latter with orders to continue round to the north of the city to block the Damascus to Homs road, but the precipitous cliffs of the Barada gorge blocked their way. The fast flowing Abana River cascaded between banks overgrown with trees and bushes along the Barda gorge also called the Abana Pass. Along the floor of the gorge ran the main road and railway line to Beirut, which cross and re–cross the "tumbling stream" on their way out of Damascus to Beirut, with high cliffs of the desert on either side. A column many miles long crowded into the deep, narrow gorge, less than 100 yards (91 m) across. The 3rd and 5th Light Horse Brigades[Note 2] opened fire on the leading section of the column, causing large numbers of casualties, while those in the rear of the column retreated back to Damascus. Return fire by German machine gunners on top of "motor wagons and lorries, fought to the death; 370 men were killed, and fell among the dead and dying horses in the wild tumult of chaotic column." 5th Light Horse Brigade Following the capture by the Régiment Mixte de Marche de Cavalerie of the El Mezze position, Commandant Lebon was ordered at 15:00 to continue his regiment's advance to cut off the line of retreat towards Baalbek. While the 5th Light Horse Brigade's 14th Light Horse Regiment advance took them along lower ground, the Régiment Mixte de Marche de Cavalerie reached the clifftops overlooking the Barda Gorge, west of Er Rabue soon after 16:30; an hour before sunset. Six machine guns of the 2nd New Zealand Machine Gun Squadron opened fire from the height on the front of the retreating column in the gorge. Those who turned back; about 4,000, were captured by the 14th Light Horse Regiment. Another six machine guns of the 5th Light Horse Brigade squadron reached the Barda Gorge higher up to the southeast of El Hame also firing on the retreating columns. Part of our squadron, racing ahead of the screen and reaching the brink of the precipice, quickly took up positions almost invisible to the dense mass of enemy below. The head of the column was felled, and, as the unfortunates behind kept pressing forward, they were mown down as by some invisible scythe. Horses and men went down together in hundreds and died in one tangled bleeding mass. Many fell into the river and were drowned. The Germans fought desperately from the tops of lorries and from a train with their machine guns, but, seeing not where to fire, their shots were wild, and they too went down in the slaughter. The water in the MG jackets hissed, and bubbled, and steamed. The barrel in one of the guns was so hot that it bent like a crooked stick. Australian Hotchkiss guns and rifles joined in the work of destruction. Above the rattle of the machine guns and the roar of the river, the cries of anguish and despair swept up from this valley of death. With every avenue of escape cut off, the stricken survivors surrendered to their unseen foes.—Sergeant M. Kirkpatrick, 2nd New Zealand Machine Gun Squadron attached to the 5th Light Horse Brigade 3rd Light Horse Brigade The leading squadron of the 9th Light Horse Regiment, arrived shortly after the Régiment Mixte de Marche de Cavalerie about 2 miles (3.2 km) to the west of their position "at a point above the Barda Gorge overlooking the village of Dummar." From here they also fired on the retreating columns. Position of Desert Mounted Corps By midnight on 30 September/1 October, the Australian Mounted Division was at El Mezze 2 miles (3.2 km) to the west of Damascus, the 5th Cavalry Division was at Kaukab 10 miles (16 km) to the south of the city and the 4th Cavalry Division was at Zeraqiye 34 miles (55 km) from Damascus on the Pilgrims' Road with the 11th Cavalry Brigade at Khan Deinun and the Arab Sherifial forces north east of Ashrafiye. Chauvel ordered the 5th Cavalry Division to move to the east of Damascus while the 4th Cavalry Division continued their advance from the south. Next morning, 1 October, Damascus was captured. - These advances have been characterised as a "race for Damascus". [Gullett 1919 pp. 39–40] See also Falls 1930 Vol. 2 p. 567 - Only the 5th Light Horse Brigade was involved. [Bou 2009 p. 196] - Keogh 1955 pp. 252–3 - Falls 1930 Vol. 2 pp. 582–3 - Wavell 1968 pp. 224–5 - Bruce 2002 p. 241 - Cutlack 1941 pp. 167–8 - Falls 1930 Vol. 2 p. 567 - Falls 1930 Vol. 2 p. 595 - Wavell 1968 p. 227 - Falls 1930 Vol. 2 p. 574 - Falls 1930 Vol. 2 pp. 487, 529–32, 542–5 - Falls 1930 Vol. 2 p. 569 - Bruce 2002 pp. 243–4 - Falls 1930 Vol. 2 pp. 569–74 - 3rd LHBwd AWM4-10-3-44 Appendix 4 Report pp. 5–6 - Falls 1930 Vol. 2 pp. 569–71 - 4th Light Horse Regiment War Diary AWM4-10-9-45 - Australian Mounted Division General Staff War Diary AWM4-1-58-15 - Falls 1930 Vol. 2 pp. 570–1 - Falls 1930 Vol. 2 p. 571 - Erickson 2001 pp. 200–1 - Falls 1930 Vol. 2 p. 674 - Baly 2003 pp. 284–7 - Falls 1930 Vol. 2 p. 572 - Blenkinsop 1925, p. 205 - Jones 1987 pp. 155–7 - Wavell 1968 p. 229 - Hill 1978 p. 175 - Carver 2003 p. 242 - Cutlack 1941 p. 168 - Bruce 2002 p. 244 - Gullett 1919 p. 43 - Falls 1930 Vol. 2 pp. 572–3 - Falls 1930 Vol. 2 p. 573 - Powles 1922 pp. 244–5 - Falls 1930 Vol. 2 p. 586 - "4th Light Horse Regiment War Diary". First World War Diaries AWM4, 10-9-45. Canberra: Australian War Memorial. September 1918. http://www.awm.gov.au/collection/records/awm4/subclass.asp?levelID=1460. - "3rd Light Horse Brigade War Diary". First World War Diaries AWM4, 10-3-44. Canberra: Australian War Memorial. September 1918. http://www.awm.gov.au/collection/war_diaries/first_world_war/subclass.asp?levelID=1469. - "Australian Mounted Division General Staff War Diary". First World War Diaries AWM4, 1-58-15. Canberra: Australian War Memorial. September 1918. http://www.awm.gov.au/collection/records/awm4/subclass.asp?levelID=1342. - Baly, Lindsay (2003). Horseman, Pass By: The Australian Light Horse in World War I. East Roseville, Sydney: Simon & Schuster. OCLC 223425266. - Blenkinsop, L.J. & J.W. Rainey, ed (1925). History of the Great War Based on Official Documents Veterinary Services. London: H.M. Stationers. OCLC 460717714. - Bou, Jean (2009/2010). Light Horse: A History of Australia's Mounted Arm. Australian Army History. Port Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521197083. - Bruce, Anthony (2002). The Last Crusade: The Palestine Campaign in the First World War. London: John Murray. ISBN 978-0-7195-5432-2. - Carver, Michael, Field Marshal Lord (2003). The National Army Museum Book of The Turkish Front 1914–1918: The Campaigns at Gallipoli, in Mesopotamia and in Palestine. London: Pan Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-283-07347-2. - Cutlack, Frederic Morley (1941). The Australian Flying Corps in the Western and Eastern Theatres of War, 1914–1918. Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918. Volume VIII (11th ed.). Canberra: Australian War Memorial. OCLC 220900299. http://www.awm.gov.au/histories/first_world_war/volume.asp?levelID=67894. - Erickson, Edward J. (2001). Ordered to Die: A History of the Ottoman Army in the First World War: Forward by General Hüseyiln Kivrikoglu. No. 201 Contributions in Military Studies. Westport Connecticut: Greenwood Press. OCLC 43481698. - Falls, Cyril; A. F. Becke (maps) (1930). Military Operations Egypt & Palestine from June 1917 to the End of the War. Official History of the Great War Based on Official Documents by Direction of the Historical Section of the Committee of Imperial Defence. Volume 2 Part II. London: HM Stationery Office. OCLC 256950972. - Henry S. Gullett, Charles Barnet, Art Editor David Baker, ed (1919). Australia in Palestine. Sydney: Angus & Robertson. OCLC 224023558. - Hill, A. J. (1978). Chauvel of the Light Horse: A Biography of General Sir Harry Chauvel, GCMG, KCB. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press. OCLC 5003626. - Jones, Ian (1987). The Australian Light Horse. Australians at War. Australia: Time-Life Books. OCLC 18459444. - Keogh, E. G.; Joan Graham (1955). Suez to Aleppo. Melbourne: Directorate of Military Training by Wilkie & Co.. OCLC 220029983. - Wavell, Field Marshal Earl (1968) . "The Palestine Campaigns". In Sheppard, Eric William. A Short History of the British Army (4th ed.). London: Constable & Co.. OCLC 35621223. |This page uses Creative Commons Licensed content from Wikipedia (view authors).|

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Ancient Greek and Roman Libraries - Extra Reading Although Mesopotamian civilisations had assembled texts, the ancient Greeks brought the idea of the universal book collection to its near-legendary consummation in the Library of Alexandria, which edited and housed thousands of papyrus rolls on every subject and attracted brilliant scholars from all over the ancient world. But there were many other libraries, serving also as scientific laboratories, public record offices, restaurants, mausoleums and even baths. This illustrated lecture investigates their history and the continuing influence on our modern world. Libraries are commonly regarded as serious, even austere environments, so it may come as a surprise that it is in a comedy that the earliest literary response to a library occurs. The library belongs to the hyper-intellectual tragedian Euripides, and he is visited by the peasant farmer protagonist in Aristophanes’ Acharnians, first performed in Athens in the late winter of 425 BC. In this wonderful episode we can see the very birth of the comic image of the library as a place inhabited by cerebral individuals who seem inherently funny to ordinary people of common sense. But the scene also demonstrates how the idea of book assemblage could stimulate artistic inventiveness. The finds at Qumran alone have revealed the physical, material realities of the painstaking ancient process of book reproduction—not just in the Dead Sea Scrolls themselves, but in the ink wells and even the plaster coverings of the desks at which the scribes laboured. But my discussion today is about the idea of the library (which we inherit more or less directly from the ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern worlds), rather than those nuts and bolts, or the cataloguing systems which the poet and librarian Callimachus pioneered more than two millennia before Melvil Dewey created decimal classification. The subject-matter is enormous, even if we focus on the libraries of the pagan Greeks and Romans, to the exclusion of the Babylonians and Assyrians from whose library organisation systems they learned, or of the Phoenicians, Egyptians, and Jews, let alone the early Christians, who inherited their basic library building plan from their pagan precursors. The erudite Varro in the mid-first century BCE compiled a monumental study of libraries, de Bibliothecis. Varro was an encyclopaedist, whom Julius Caesar appointed public librarian in Rome in 47 BCE. He was the only known ancient author to be granted the privilege of having a bust in his likeness installed in one of the main Roman libraries while he was still alive. His treatise may have been commissioned as an ideological accompaniment to Caesar’s quest to expand the incipient Roman realm, ‘to connect world-literature with the world-empire’. Even as early as the first century BCE, before the surge in library-building under the high Empire, notably under the Emperor Trajan in the early 2nd century CE, Varro’s project in compiling a universal historical treatise on libraries would have daunted anyone but him. And the history of pagan libraries was to continue for several centuries thereafter, until 543 CE, when the Emperor Justinian finally closed down the temple of Isis at Philae in Egypt, built under the same Ptolemies who built the library at Alexandria. Behind the massive colonnade of the Philae temple at least one massive room had functioned as a library. The papyrus on which most ancient Greek and Latin books were recorded, as an organic material, was vulnerable to rotting, wear and tear. Yet forgers sometimes stained brand new papyri to make them look like authentic ancient texts. The ancients laughed at the difference between the materialistic bibliophile who collected books as commodities, and the cultured person who actually understood their contents. Lucian wrote a diatribe Against the Ignorant Book-Collector. This rich man buys shiploads of books, and endlessly glues and trims them, applying cedar-oil and saffron, and keeping them in purple silk and leather cases. But he is deluding himself because ‘he thinks that by the multitude of books’ he can rectify his ‘deficient education’. The nouveau-riche Trimalchio whose banquet is described by Petronius boasts that his libraries rivalled those of the Emperor. Seneca confirms that some rich men did indeed use banquets as opportunities to display books which they had never studied. Some of the most important to advance in ancient intellectual life were the specialist libraries such as the collection of theatre scripts in the state depository at Athens, organised by the theatre-loving statesman Lycurgus. Others collected the writings of members of a particular philosophical school, such as the Stoics, whose centre of learning was on the island of Rhodes. There the great Stoic polymath scholar Posidonius practised during the first half of the first century BCE. Pompey, Caesar, Cicero and Brutus all studied there. Rhodes was also renowned as a centre of astronomical studies, a particular interest of the bookworm Emperor Tiberius, who spent several years on the island. Libraries varied massively in scale as well as contents. Some private libraries were large enough to accommodate the leading lights of a whole philosophical school comfortably, such as the ‘Villa of the Papyri’ found in 1752 at Herculaneum. This was the vacation villa of no less a figure than Julius Caesar’s father-in-law Calpurnius Piso, where the famous philosopher Philodemos of Gadara supervised his patron’s magnificent collection of Epicurean texts. Multi-spectral imaging has allowed the remains of some of them, burnt by same volcanic eruption which destroyed Pompeii in 79 CE, to be deciphered. On the other hand there were small book collections which could be carried around in handy containers, like this portable scrinium or cista on a Roman mosaic in Tunis. It probably held the ‘parts’ or whole plays in which the actor portrayed here specialised; the seated man may be an author who has collaborated with the actor or, more likely, his patron. In between these extremes there were small private libraries in which solitary misanthropes hid from the world; Xenophon remarks on the book collection amassed by the philosopher Euthydemus (Mem. 4.2.8). The first public library may have been established by Clearchus, tyrant of Heraclea on the south coast of the Black Sea, who died in 353 BCE. This Pontic despot had been educated at Athens by the two leading intellectuals of the time, Plato and Isocrates, and the tradition that he built a library is connected with the ancient perception that the Greeks of the Black Sea were anxious to avoid the accusation that they lived in a cultural backwater. But it was the people of the first two generations after Alexander the Great who saw the establishment of the first libraries which can be described as ‘public’ in the modern sense, even though scholars disagree on the nature and degree of public access, especially given that literacy rates in many ancient cities may not have exceed ten to twenty per cent of the population. Moreover, we are not in a position to tell whether most public libraries allowed borrowing of books at all, even to respected and trusted members: an inscription believed to have belonged to the library which Trajan built at Athens in 132 CE specifies its opening hours and proclaims, ‘No book shall be taken out. We have sworn it!’ The first great public libraries were set up in the kingdoms established by Alexander’s successors, notably the Ptolemies’ near-legendary library in the Egyptian-Greek city of Alexandria, founded by the Macedonian conqueror himself in 331 BCE. He had been instructed on the precise location by the shade of Homer, who visited him in a dream. The Alexandrian library was said to have been designed with the assistance of the Athenian Peripatetic philosopher Demetrius of Phaleron, taught by Aristotle’s student Theophrastus. The library was either adjacent to or (at least originally) constituted part of the Alexandrian ‘Museum’ (Mouseion or ‘temple of the Muses’); other book collections, of all sizes, were often attached to or housed within temples. Indeed, in the late fourth century, Demetrius had educated himself by reading Aristotle’s own books, assembled in another Mouseion at Athens. Some libraries could be housed in public baths, which served as the ancient equivalent of a ‘leisure centre’, where social and sexual transactions could be conducted; Caracalla’s imposing baths, built at Rome in the second decade of the third century CE, contained one room of texts in Greek and another one in Latin. Some libraries also served as public records offices, as bookshops, restaurants, and scientific laboratories. The library of Pantainos at Athens supported itself by renting out shops within the building complex, including one to a marble mason. Libraries under Augustus could host meetings of the Roman Senate; large ones with a colonnade often provided a place to take a lengthy stroll. Libraries penetrated the unconscious mind to feature in people’s dreams: Tiberius dreamt about the vast and beautiful statue of Apollo Temenites, which he brought from Syracuse to adorn the library of the New Temple (Suetonius, Life of Tiberius). You could build a library to serve as a sepulchre for your eminent family or forebears. Celsus buried his father, who had been governor of the province (Roman Asia), in a lead coffin, encased within a marble sarcophagus which he had set into a vaulted recess of the Ephesus library; Dio Chrysostom interred his wife and child in the courtyard of the library at Prusa in north-western Turkey. Libraries could even be used in courtship rituals: in his attempt to impress Cleopatra, Mark Antony made her a present of the great library of Pergamum, all 200,000 volumes of it, collected by the ancestral rivals of Cleopatra’s Ptolemy family—the Attalids. We have dug up large library buildings with no books left, like the beautiful Roman provincial library excavated in the grid-city at Timgad in Algeria by the French in the early 20th century. This became the colonial set for avant-garde Modernist actresses from the Comedie Francaise, such as Mme. Silvaine, who performed a version of Sophocles’ Electra there in 1907. We have dug up a rubbish dump containing whole libraries, but not a single brick, at the site of the ancient Greek town of Oxyrhynchus on a branch of the Nile in Upper Egypt. The ‘Oxyrhynchus papyri’ include some of the contents of at least one impressive Oxyrhynchite private book collection, which contained copies of esteemed poetic works such as Euripides’ Hypsipyle, Pindar’s Paeans and an extensive collection of prose writers. On the other hand, we know about some fascinating libraries even though they have disappeared altogether. One example is of course the Library of Alexandria, but another, later and more typical instance is the library which Pliny the Younger funded lavishly at Comum (now Como) in northern Italy, north of Milan, in about 97 CE. We know about Pliny’s library because there survives an inscription recording his benefactions to the town, along with a letter to a friend about it, which accompanied a copy of the speech he delivered to town magistrates at its inauguration. The speech itself does not survive, but the letter does. Now this Pliny was a rich and well-regarded imperial administrator and senator. He describes some of the other themes the missing oration addressed: the presence of the library would itself encourage his townsmen in virtuous studies; his own contempt of riches and freedom from the chains of avarice; the commendation his benefaction deserved because it was the result not of a passing fancy but of deliberate resolution; his decision to bestow upon his townsmen a library rather than shows or gladiators. This last point is interesting, because another inscription shows that a city’s populace might have reason to hope that the sort of benefactor who gave them a library might also donate gladiators: one such man capped a gift of a library to his grateful public with no fewer than twelve pairs of these violent public entertainers! Pliny’s seems to have been the first library ever donated by a private individual to a town in the Roman Empire, but it preceded ‘a spate of library-building throughout.’ These benefactions signalled the importance of an individual statesman, from a particular landowning senatorial family, and his role in fostering what was (in the case of Comum) still a relatively new colonia of the Roman Empire. The selection of the books within it might be assumed fundamentally to reinforce, rather than undermine, the self-framing of that individual, his family, and the imperial regime he served. The selection or de-selection of books for inclusion in a library’s collection was already acknowledged by historians in antiquity to have been a political issue. Suetonius tells us that if the Emperor Caligula had been allowed to have his way, Homer, Virgil and Livy, whom he loathed, would have been expelled, both their works and their images ‘from all libraries’ (Suetonius, Life of Caligula, 34): he said Virgil was ‘a writer devoid of literary skill and erudition’, and Livy ‘a wordy and inaccurate historian’! On the other hand, we may have so much of the historian Tacitus solely because a third-century Emperor ordered all the libraries to make comprehensive collections of his works (Historia Augusta, ‘Tacitus’ 10.3). The social and political role of the ancient library, however, is arguably of less lasting importance than the actual concept of the library as an institution where the whole resource constitutes something infinitely greater than the sum of the parts. The parts are the individual records left by individual writers; the whole is something far more ambitious: an instrument designed to preserve intact the memory of humankind. The scholars at the library of Alexandria undoubtedly undertook the Herculean task of preserving the entire literary output of the Greeks, which is why they went to extreme lengths to obtain a copy of every known work, even placing all books which arrived in the port of their city under embargo until copies could be made. By conceiving this idea, the ancient Greeks also had to have conceived the opposite idea, that such a memory could be lost--a new, literate version of the universal myth of the fall or of the apocalypse. That is, the ancient experiment in the creation of collections of texts that could even attempt to include everything that had ever been written in the history of the world changed our mental landscape forever, and so did the idea that the entire memory of the human race was vulnerable to erasure. And there really were attempts in the library at Alexandria to include at least Greek translations of the great works of other cultures and religions, notably the great books of the Jews, which lies behind our desire today for libraries to symbolise a cosmopolitan and tolerant ideal. This is ideal represented by the ancient library of Alexandria in, for example, the Spanish movie Agora (2009). The thoughtful actress Rachel Weisz leapt at the role of Hypatia, an Egyptian Greek scholar in the early fourth century CE. Hypatia was the daughter of the Euclidean mathematician Theon, alongside whom she worked at the library of Alexandria. In the film she attempts—in vain—to save the library’s unique collections from destruction when the Roman administration allows angry Christians to destroy the institutions symbolising what they regarded as abominable pagan lore. But in this twenty-first century reading, Hypatia virtually personifies the library, as representative of a questioning, science-based intellectual culture failing to withstand the arrival of an ignorant and fundamentalist strain of Christianity. Weisz has said that she was attracted to the role because the science and philosophy physically embodied in Hypatia as she worked at the library represent the possibility of a tolerant multicultural future for humankind. Weisz claims that the conflict in the movie is analogous to the struggle in America of ‘Christian fundamentalism vs. science.’ Hypatia stands for ‘teaching Darwinian evolutionary theory or stem cell research’. She is ’trying to come to grips with our place in the universe and she’s thinking not existentially of herself, she’s thinking of the planet Earth… it’s a humanist film’. This Hypatia is a direct descendant of the heroine of Charles Kingsley’s Hypatia of 1853, a novel which first put her on the map of popular culture as a romantic figure. Paradoxically, for Kingsley, Hypatia and her library did not so much represent Greek humanism as his own brand of adversarial and combative theology; he reassures us that his pagan Hypatia does indeed convert to an esoteric brand of Christianity before she is destroyed. But Kingsley’s ‘muscular Christianity’, although embracing science and celebrating sex, was anything but tolerant towards other denominations and religions. It was a strident polemic against Roman Catholicism and High-Church Anglicanism. Kingsley’s novel was enormously popular, and produced several spin-offs in the Victorian theatre, including a famous stage adaptation performed at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, in 1893. The novel, the plays and the recent movie all describe the Library of Alexandria and the woman who represents it in similar terms. The fall of the library is epitomised by the sadistic assault on Hypatia’s inevitably beautiful, fragile, papyrus-like white body, finally narrated in Kingsley’s chapter 29. But readers have first met her in chapter 2, evocatively entitled ‘A dying world’, which finds the heroine at work in ‘that famous library’, which ‘towered up, the wonder of the world, its white roof bright against the rainless blue; and beyond it, among the ridges and pediments of noble buildings, a broad glimpse of the bright blue sea.’ When we hear Hypatia’s thoughts in this section of Kingsley’s novel, she is contemplating the destruction of the library that she now fears is imminent: she visualises in her mind the smashing of the statues: ‘The libraries are plundered. The alcoves are silent.’ She pledges to ‘struggle to the last against the new and vulgar superstitions of a rotting age, for the faith of my forefathers, for the old gods, the old heroes, the old sages who gauged the mysteries of heaven and earth’. Of course, Hypatia herself, as a Greek-speaker, did not call the library a ‘library’, but a bibliothēkē, a ‘place to put rolls made out of papyrus (bublos)’. This Greek word itself was not the sole contender: we might instead have inherited the word bibliophylakion, used in Greek of the royal archives in Egypt, which as a place to guard papyri rather than just put them might have been preferred by a certain stereotype of the possessive librarian. The Greek word which came to be universally used in antiquity, however, is preferred in German (Bibliothek), Russian, French, Spanish, Italian and many others. The English word has different resonances: its root is liber, (with a short ‘i’), the ancient term for the skin, bark or rind of plants. It was used to designate the thin rind of the ancient Egyptian papyrus, and eventually, much as the term for tree-trunk caudex was adopted in the word for a codex, the bark itself, the liber became the book. But our idea of the library in English-speaking lands is affected by a word from another semantic root than the factual, descriptive bibliothēkē. There has been confusion between the idea of books and the foliage-related Roman god Līber Pater, whose name was connected with the root līber where the ‘i’ is long, an adjective which means ‘free’: Līber Pater, associated with adult rights to free speech, was a favourite of the plebeian class and the recipient of the great festival of the Līberalia on March 17th. But the false etymology, disguised by the variation in length of that vowel ‘i’, seems already to have been causing problems in antiquity, since Līber Pater is often depicted with accoutrements which remind the viewer of botanical bark. A fine example comes from Dacia in modern Romania, the last province to be added to the Roman Empire. A major sanctuary and statue of the Roman god Līber Pater has been discovered: his thyrsus is clearly decorated with bark. And in English-speaking lands, the visual rather than aural similarity between the words library, liberty, liberalism and liberal arts has been an ideologically potent result of a completely false etymology. We have already seen that Julius Caesar saw the potential of libraries as a tool or at least adornment of empire. But he is also one of the several putative villains in the longstanding mystery tale Who Destroyed the Library of Alexandria? (The other main suspects are anti-intellectual Christian bishops in the years after the death of Hypatia and the Arabs in the 7th century CE). In Act II of Bernard Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra, there is a dialogue in the royal palace of Alexandria between Julius Caesar and Theodotus of Chios, an historical figure. Theodotus is characterised as an unscrupulous rhetorician and tutor to the young King Ptolemy; he is also one of the opportunist and brutal murderers of Pompey. Theodotus brings news to Julius Caesar that fire has spread from his ships and the ‘library of Alexandria is in flames.’ Caesar’s response is simply, ‘Is that all?’ Theodotus is incredulous, outraged: ‘All! Caesar: will you go down to posterity as a barbarous soldier too ignorant to know the value of books?’ Caesar answers that although he is an author himself, ‘it is better that the Egyptians should live their lives than dream them away with the help of books.’ The dialogue continues: THEODOTUS What is burning there is the memory of mankind. CAESAR A shameful memory. Let it burn. THEODOTUS (wildly). Will you destroy the past? CAESAR Ay, and build the future with its ruins. Caesar dismisses the library as merely ‘a few sheepskins scrawled with errors’. The context is imperialism—indeed, the advance into North-East Africa of the Roman Empire, destined to become the greatest Empire the west had ever yet seen. Ethnicity is a crucial issue; Shaw has Caesar refer to the users of the library not as Ptolemaic or Macedonian Greeks but rather patronisingly as ‘Egyptians’, a term which bore a particular meaning to an audience of Britons at the play’s premiere in 1898; their armed forces had themselves bombarded and ruined Alexandria in 1882 and were currently occupying the country. But Shaw also sets up a series of antitheses which the idea of the library triggers in his ancient interlocutors’ minds: memory versus action, the past versus the future, vicarious experience versus first-hand experience of life, dream versus reality, the rights to survival of living humans over the right to survival of the thoughts of dead humans, recorded on the skin of dead animals. Here the contrasting images also insinuate the conflict between war and peace, the man of action versus the passive recluse, the soldier’s weapon and the shepherd’s staff, between European war stories and European pastoral. The ancient library becomes a sign of infinitely more than a collection, however large, of papyrus rolls. It takes on a quasi-metaphysical status. Just as the Sumerians called libraries ‘the ordainers of the universe’, the Romans could even envisage the goddesses who determine human destiny, the Parcae or Fates, as librarians: in the fifth century AD the late pagan writer Martianus Capella described the Parcae as ‘librarians of the gods and the guardians of their archive’. The Library is a tool which can both liberate and oppress. Bernard Shaw had of course not read Michel Foucault’s The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969), in which book collections or archives of any kind were subjected to their first major critique as institutions for the collation of knowledge, created by mechanisms of power. Shaw did not know that by the late 20th century there would emerge a powerful feminist and postcolonial suspicion of the universal, monolithic repository of knowledge. He did not know that people would claim the impossibility in any ideologically conflicted world, let alone a truly democratic one, of a single institution accommodating the inevitably antithetical subjectivities of its inhabitants. Nor had George Eliot read Foucault when in Middlemarch (1874) she made the library of the classical pedant Edward Casaubon stand for everything that which prevented the flowering of real intellectual enquiry, let along love, in the education-starved Dorothea’s soul. When he claimed that Alexandria was the cultural capital of the world by founding its library in the early 3rd century BCE, Ptolemy I Soter had certainly not read Foucault any more than Eliot or Shaw. Ancient creators of libraries were always either very powerful (like Ptolemy or Trajan) or just rich (like Pliny): they always presented the creation of a library, whether public or private, as a self-evidently good thing. They would all have decried the destruction of the libraries of Alexandria or anywhere else in univocal chorus with Shaw’s hyper-intellectual professor of rhetoric, Theodotus of Chios. Most of voices we can hear from antiquity, almost by definition the voices of well-read men, talked about libraries only in ways which imply that they improved and refined the quality of their own literary outputs. The orator and philosopher Cicero greatly valued his own collection of books and regarded the library as the ‘mind’ or ‘brain’ of a household (ad Atticum IV.8). The famed rhetorical teacher and literary critic Longinus was described wholly flatteringly by Eunapius in his Lives of the Sophists (456 B) as a ‘living library (bibliothēkē empsychos) and a walking museum’. So, it is important to ask whether there were voices in ancient Greek or Latin which ever foreshadowed Shaw’s Caesar or Foucault in suggesting that there might be negative consequences for culture or civilisation—politically, intellectually, or aesthetically negative--in the uncritical adulation of libraries. The answer is ‘yes, a few’. Polybius was a Greek from Arcadia who rose to prominence at Rome at the time of the Republic in the 2nd century BCE and travelled incessantly. In his Histories he launched an assault on an earlier Greek historian, Timaeus of Sicily. Timaeus is said to have spent four decades in Athenian libraries writing a massive 40-book Histories of Greece from earliest times to the Punic Wars. Polybius has at least two axes to grind against Timaeus, one political and one more private and Oedipal, but even so, what he says about libraries reveals in the ancient discourse one strand to which we rarely have access. Timaeus, he says (12.27), ...he entirely avoids employing his eyes and prefers to employ his ears. Now the knowledge derived from hearing being of two sorts, Timaeus diligently pursued the one, the reading of books...but was very remiss in his use of the other, the interrogation of living witnesses... Inquiries from books may be made without any danger or hardship, provided only that one takes care to have access to a town rich in documents or to have a library near at hand. After that one has only to pursue one's researches in perfect repose and compare the accounts of different writers without exposing oneself to any hardship. Personal inquiry, on the contrary, requires severe labour and great expense, but is exceedingly valuable and is the most important part of history. Polybius certainly had a point: how many of us have had our perspectives altered on a poem or historical event by visiting a physical place related to it or talking to an eyewitness? The experimental although different ways in which the traveller Herodotus and the soldier Thucydides write history, in an era before libraries on any scale and with few predecessors in historiography, might have become severely compromised if they had stayed in Athens all their adult lives. Yet the Hellenistic Greek libraries fertilised many genres of scholarly prose—geography, scientific treatises, biography, Lucianic dialogue. The third director of the Alexandrian Library was Eratosthenes of Cyrene, an incomparable geographer who succeeded in calculating the circumference of our planet to within fifty miles. It is almost inconceivable that Claudius Ptolemy could ever have made the advances in astronomy which resulted in his Almagest without the earlier treatises on cosmology, trigonometry and geometry which he could consult in the libraries of Roman Egypt. When it comes to poetry, a few brave souls proposed that libraries were not always beneficial to the artistic quality of new works produced. The most famous of all is the satirical poet Timon, a coeval of the famous poets associated with the early decades of the library in Alexandria under Ptolemy II: Theocritus (most famous for his pastoral Idylls), Apollonius (author of our only surviving Greek epic, albeit a short one, on the theme of Jason and the Argonauts), and Callimachus. The independent-minded Timon despised their great project of editing all the text of the old poets, and Zenodotus, the first librarian and ‘corrector’ or critical editor of Homer. When Timon was asked how best to obtain the ‘pure’ text of Homer, he replied that the only way would be ‘If we could find the old copies, and not those with modern emendations’. Timon, who was not financially supported at Alexandria, sarcastically expressed his views on its library in another famous quip. This is traditionally translated, ‘Many are feeding in populous Egypt, scribblers on papyrus, ceaselessly wrangling in the nest of the Muses’. Timon’s brilliant image is of rivalrous chicks in a nest, trying to out-squawk each other to get the most feed. These poets, financially supported in Ptolemy’s library and guzzling his food, are all scribbling on the papyri, but are also, of their own free will, vying for stipends, in contrast to Timon’s own far more independent and freely spoken satires. These did not survive for us to read in more than pitiful quotations. Perhaps not enough librarians believed that they were worth copying out for posterity. Might we have enjoyed better poetry from these men if they had not been so immersed in the contents of the library, let alone so focused on praising the monarchy which bankrolled it? The aesthetic and the political became entwined in early Alexandria in a wholly new way precisely because of the presence of all those old books. The weight of the past Hellenic literary tradition necessarily exerted an influence over the new poetry of the new political order. That first generation of Hellenistic poets certainly produced fascinating new mixtures of pre-existing genres and created new and sometimes striking aesthetic effects in the process. But almost as quickly as Ptolemy had brought the great poets of his new empire to its headquarters in Alexandria, innovation in Greek poetry began to dry up; the only genre in which really experimental advances are subsequently perceptible is the epigram. But the Latin poets needed book collections as they began their project of creating a Latin poetry out of the much smaller vocabulary, rougher consonants and more limited metrical precedents available in their Latin tongue. Catullus implies that the personal library he needed to help him write poems contained a myriad of texts (68.36). In order to write satire, Horace felt he needed copies of Plato, Menander, Eupolis and Archilochus at hand, as well as creative energy (2.3.11-12). By the mid-first century BCE, Greek Literature had been in existence for at least seven centuries, but literature in Latin for not much more than two, and the simple quantitative difference between the outputs in the two languages must have become painfully obvious with the opening of the first public Roman libraries in the early Augustan era, especially as it was customary to shelve works in the two languages separately, often in quite different rooms. The Augustan poets consciously strove to fill up the ‘Latin’ shelves erected for the desired new Latin canon with their new works. For by 30 BCE, the time of the deaths of the last Ptolemies on the Egyptian throne, Cleopatra VII and her son by Julius Caesar, Ptolemy Caesar or ‘Caesarion’, the Romans were implementing ‘the most momentous cultural appropriation that has ever taken place anywhere in the world. They conducted the wholesale transfer of the major elements of Hellenic religion, myth, legend, philosophy, literature, manners, customs, and plastic arts to Roman setting and their translation into a Roman idiom, through which they have come down to us.’ Libraries were central to this project. The idea of the library, for Ovid, exiled from Rome in what is now Rumania, become representative of civilisation as a whole. The first poem of his exile collection, the Tristia, mostly takes the form of a speech by the book itself. The book, like Ovid, is homeless, and desperately seeking a library shelf on which to settle. It finds one man who can point out the libraries of Rome. At this chronological moment there were three public libraries, and Ovid’s poetry book visits each of them in turn. First it approaches the Palatine Hill, home of the Temple of Apollo, with its library that had been established by Augustus himself. This library refuses the book entrance. Then the book fails to be allowed into the Library at the Portico of Octavia, Augustus’ sister. Third and last, the book is refused entrance to the oldest of the three, the library in the Atrium Libertatis opened no later than 28 BC. Ovid’s poem shows is a literary reflection of the truth that the great public libraries of Rome partly functioned if obliquely, as instruments of censorship. To underline this intuition, I conclude with the final elegy of the same book by Ovid, Tristia 3.14. It is addressed to a senior librarian. Augustus died in 14 CE, to be replaced by the Emperor Tiberius, and Ovid died about three years later: we do not know the exact date of Tristia 3. But we do happen to know the name of the man whom Tiberius appointed to the august office of Commissioner of Libraries as well as the less well-defined role of ‘adviser’: Tiberius Iulius Pappus, a freeborn Roman citizen from the Greek East. This super-librarian’s tomb inscription survives, having been discovered east of Rome on the Via Praenestina. It is just possible that the august post may not have existed during Ovid’s lifetime, but its creation soon after his death indicates the cultural power which the men in charge of the imperial book collections were already accumulating. Ovid’s voice from the Pontus was addressed to a man or men just like Commissioner Pappus, begging him to make sure that his works are given places on the library shelves: I beg you, as an enthusiast for new poets, To do anything in your power to keep my corpus of work in town. I was sentenced to exile, but no exile sentence was passed on my books. They don’t deserve to be punished along with their master. This is the most profound statement of the importance of libraries to have survived from antiquity. In closing book 3 of his Tristia with this direct appeal to the ‘Keeper of Learned Men’ back in Rome, Ovid’s voice speaks as none other from Mediterranean antiquity of the vital symbolic role that great book collections played in its imaginative life. © Professor Hall 2021 Gresham College has offered an outstanding education to the public free of charge for over 400 years. 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Like UPSC, State Public Service Commission is also constituted to meet the needs of state level administrative officers. In this article, we will discuss the State Public Service Commission in a simple and easy way and understand all its important aspects; राज्य लोक सेवा आयोग: पृष्ठभूमि State Public Service Commission: Background Just as there is a Union Public Service Commission to carry out the recruitment process of civil servants at the central level, there is a State Public Service Commission in the states. If you have read the article on Union Public Service Commission , then you will notice one thing here that the provision for the formation of State Public Service Commission is also in Article 315. To put it in other words, both the Union Public Service Commission and the State Public Service Commission have been explained in the same article. That is, it is also an independent and constitutional institution and the provision for its constitution, independence and powers, appointments and dismissal of members etc. has been made under Article 315 to 323 under the 14th part of the Constitution. Composition of State Public Service Commission The State Public Service Commission consists of a Chairman and some other members, who are appointed by the Governor of the State. Nothing has been said in the constitution about the total number of members in the commission, hence the determination of the composition of the commission has been left to the governor. Moreover, the constitution does not even mention the qualifications for the member of the commission. However, under the current system, it is necessary that half of the members of the commission should have at least 10 years of working experience under the Government of India or the State Government. Under Article 318 of the Constitution, the Governor has been empowered to determine the conditions of service of the Speaker and the members. Article 316 deals with the tenure of the chairman and members of the commission. It provides that the Chairperson and the members of the Commission hold their office for a term of six years from the date on which they assume office or till the age of 65 years (whichever is earlier). By the way, he can resign anytime by addressing the Governor. When the office of the Chairman is vacant, or when the Speaker is unable to perform his duties due to absence or other reasons, the Governor may appoint a member of the Commission to be Acting Chairman. This Acting President serves until the President resumes his duties or the President is re-appointed. Dismissal and suspension The provisions related to dismissal and suspension are mentioned in Article 317. The most important point here is that even though the chairman and members of the State Public Service Commission are appointed by the Governor, but they can be removed only by the President, not the Governor. and the President may remove the Chairman and members of the UPSC on the same grounds, that is, (1) if he is declared insolvent, or (2) outside the duties of his office during his term of office. is engaged in any other paid work, or (3) if the President considers that he is not fit to continue in office by reason of incapacity of mind or body. The President can remove the Chairman or other members of the State Public Service Commission for their misconduct, but if the President is thinking of removing the Chairman or other members of the Commission on account of their mispractice, he must first take the matter to the Supreme Court for investigation. Will have to send in If the Supreme Court upholds the advice of dismissal after inquiry, the President can remove the Speaker or other members from office. According to this provision of the Constitution, the advice given by the Supreme Court in this matter is binding on the President. Independence of State Public Service Commission Some provisions have been given in the constitution so that the commission can do its work without any political pressure. like (1) The Chairman or members of the Commission enjoy the security of the term of office, that is, once appointed, they can continue in their office till the end of their term. If there is a chance to remove it, then the President can remove it only on the grounds mentioned in the Constitution, which we have discussed above. (2) The Governor decides the conditions of service of the Chairperson or a member, but cannot change them unfavourably after appointment. That is, its features cannot be reduced. (3) All expenses including salary, allowances and pension to the Chairman or Member of the Commission are received from the Consolidated Fund of the State, which is not voted on in the Legislature. (4) The Chairman of the Commission (after term) shall be eligible to be the Chairman or Member of the Union Public Service Commission and the Chairman of any other State Public Service Commission, but shall not be eligible for any further employment under the Government of India or the Government of any State. it happens. (5) The Chairperson or Member of the Commission cannot be reappointed to the same post at a later date. That is, there is no second term on the same post. Functions of State Public Service Commission The State Public Service Commission does the same work for the State Services as the Union Public Service Commission does for the Central Services:- 1. It conducts examinations for appointment to the State Services. 2. The Commission assists the State in planning and carrying out joint recruitment for any services which require candidates with special qualifications. 3. Provides advice on the following matters relating to personnel management:- (1) on all matters relating to the methods of recruitment to the civil services and civil posts, (2) in making appointments to civil services and posts and on promotion and promotion of services. In relation to the principle to be followed for transfer from one service to another, (3) on the suitability of candidates for transfer to civil services and posts, for promotion or for transfer or deputation from one service to another. The concerned department recommends the promotion and urges the State Public Service to approve it. 4. 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- Research article - Open Access Feeding styles of caregivers of children 6-23 months of age in Derashe special district, Southern Ethiopia BMC Public Health volume 12, Article number: 235 (2012) Apart from basic determinants, appropriate child care practices are important in prevention of growth faltering and undernutrition. Providing safe and appropriate quality complementary foods is crucial to child growth and development. However, some children in low-income communities grow normally mainly due to proper caregiver feeding behaviors. Hence, the objective of this study was to determine caregivers' feeding styles as well as to indentify predictors in Derashe special district, Southern Ethiopia. A community based cross-sectional study design was employed in the seven randomly selected Kebeles (smallest administrative unit) of Derashe special district. A total of 826 caregivers provided data pertaining to socio-demographic variables. However, 764 caregivers had complete data for the outcome variable (caregiver feeding style). A multistage stratified sampling technique was used to identify study subjects. An adapted Caregiver's Feeding Styles Questionnaire (CFSQ) was used to gather information about caregivers' feeding styles. Multivariate multinomial logistic regression was employed to identify predictors of caregivers' feeding style. The majority (80.6%) of caregivers were biological mothers. Nearly seventy-six percent of the caregivers practiced a responsive feeding style. Caregivers other than the biological mother favoured a laissez-faire feeding style, while caregivers residing in rural Kebeles were more responsive. Caregivers with a breastfeeding frequency of more than eight times predicted both laissez-faire (RRR = 1.88; 95% CI = 1.03-3.41) and controlling (RRR = 1.7; 95% CI = 1.02-2.85) feeding styles as compared to responsive feeding. Responsive feeding was the commonest style practiced by the caregivers. Many of the caregivers who were rural residents and birth parents have been responsive in child feeding. The instruments needed to be validated in the Ethiopian context and an additional prospective study based on direct observation of caregiver-child interactions is recommended. Malnutrition is the largest risk factor in the world for disability and premature mortality among young children, especially in developing countries [1, 2]. Although the condition is entirely preventable, malnutrition is a significant underlying factor in more than half of the deaths of young children in these countries [1, 3]. Malnutrition is a background factor for deaths from diarrhea, measles, acute respiratory infection, meningitis and malaria . In Ethiopia, 47%, 11% and 38% of children under five years of age are stunted, wasted and underweight, respectively . An Ethiopian child is 30 times more likely to die by his or her fifth birthday than a child in Western Europe and the most common cause of child death is the interacting combination of malnutrition and infection . Malnutrition is a complex phenomenon that stems from various underlying determinants, including a lack of optimal feeding practices for infants and young children. In UNICEF's conceptual framework for determinants of nutritional status, maternal and child care practices have been given due attention in addition to sufficient food supply at the household level, access to health services and a clean environment . Some children in low-income countries with high rates of malnutrition grow normally due to better education and household management, or coping skills of their mothers . Moreover, proper feeding practices, which ensure intake, are as important as the provision of complementary foods that meet nutritional requirements. The caregiver-child interaction (feeding style) critically influences dietary intake on top of the dietary aspect of child feeding . However, comparing feeding styles between studies prior to 1995 was difficult due to a lack of consistency in terminology and unclear definitions of feeding styles . Later on, feeding styles were conceptualized and defined by Birch and Fisher as controlling, laissez-faire, and responsive feeding styles , and have been used in different researches [9, 12, 13]. The "controlling" feeding style occurs when a caregiver has complete control of when, what and how much the child eats, and includes restriction and force-feeding the child. In the "laissez-faire" feeding style the caregiver makes little effort to encourage eating; feeding is not encouraged even when the child may be marginally nourished . Birch and Fisher defined the term "responsive" feeding as a condition in which "the caregiver is in close proximity to the young child during the meal and responds to the child's hunger cues in a reasonable time" . Responsiveness is now viewed by different authors as a three-step process, namely observation of child cues by the caregiver, interpretation of the signs and taking action as quickly as possible in response to those cues [8, 13, 15]. Appropriate child feeding practices and behaviors of parents have a positive effect on growth of infants and young children . For instance, an analysis of data sets from several Latin American countries demonstrated that appropriate breastfeeding and complementary feeding practices were positively associated with child height-for-age in most of the countries studied . However, the majority of the literature on child feeding and parental practices are based on women in affluent societies and their emphases have been on child overweight or obesity [18–20]. Control over feeding appears to vary among cultures, socioeconomic status and child's gender . Hence, results of the effect of different parental or caregiver feeding behaviors among various socio-cultural settings should be used cautiously. Most studies carried out in Ethiopia have focused mainly on identifying factors associated with undernutrition instead of overweight or obesity [5, 22]. To the best of our knowledge, no studies have been conducted to assess child feeding behavior of caregivers and the association between these behaviors and child growth and development, dietary intake, eating behavior or morbidity in Ethiopia. Current interventions mainly address the issue of what to feed young children instead of how to feed them . The aim of this study was to identify the different types of child feeding behaviors (styles) of caregivers and the factors that influence these behaviors. Study area and setting A community based cross-sectional study was conducted in January 2009 in Derashe special district, Southern Ethiopia. Based on the 2007 census, the projected total population of the district in 2009 was 149,901 and the total household count was 29,980. Children 6-23 months of age constituted 6.7% of the total population. The livelihood of more than 92% of the district population is based on farming. The main crops grown in the area are maize, sorghum and teff (a species of Eragrostis native to Ethiopia). The source population of this study included all residents of Derashe district who were caregivers of children aged 6-23 months and resided in the district for more than 6 months. The sample size was calculated by using the single population proportion formula. Assumptions for the calculation were that 50% of caregivers practiced a "responsive" feeding style (P) with a 95% confidence level and 5% tolerable error. The calculated sample size was 384. As a multistage sampling technique was employed to identify study subjects, a design effect of 2 was used to reach a sample size of 768 to which 10% was added for non-responses. Thus, the final sample size was 845. A multistage stratified sampling technique was used to identify study subjects after the Kebeles (smallest administrative units) were stratified into urban and rural Kebeles. Based on the proportion of population by urban-rural residence , seven rural and one urban Kebele were randomly selected in the district. A census was conducted in the selected Kebeles to identify households with children aged 6-23 months and to generate a sampling frame. A total of 3021 children in this age group who were started with complementary food were identified and listed. The calculated sample (845) was proportionally allocated to the selected Kebeles based on the total number of caregivers of 6-23 months children in each Kebele and study subjects were identified by simple random sampling technique. Method of data collection Data was collected by a face-to-face interview technique using the adapted Caregiver's Feeding Styles Questionnaire [24, 25]. The questionnaire was first prepared in English and later translated into Amharic (the local language) and back translated into English to check for its conceptual equivalence. Prior to the actual data collection, the questionnaire was pre-tested using 5% of the sample from a similar population outside the study area. Twelve high school complete data collectors, with previous experience in nutritional surveys, were recruited and trained by the principal investigators on the study instrument and data collection procedures. Reliability of the measurements was assured by training two health officers from the district for close follow-up. The principal investigators constantly checked strict adherence to the standards agreed upon by all field workers. Measurement of caregivers' feeding styles Data collectors asked the caregivers to respond to behavioral and belief items pertaining to each feeding style. However, many caregivers displayed behaviors and beliefs of more than one feeding style which made strict categorization into the three styles (controlling, laissez- faire or responsive) according to Birch and Fisher difficult. Hence, those caregivers practicing a particular style most of the time for behavioral items, or agreeing or highly agreeing with a belief item, were considered as practicing responsive, controlling or laissez-faire feeding styles depending on the response to each behavioral and belief item. The behavioral and belief items of the questionnaire were adapted to the local context from similar studies conducted using a validated instrument. The data was analyzed using Stata version 11 (StataCorp, College Station, TX, USA). Nineteen caregivers were not found despite repeated visits. Sixty two questionnaires with inadequate information to measure caregiver feeding style were excluded making the total observation with complete information 764. Bivariate and multivariate multinomial logistic regression was employed to assess statistical associations between caregivers' feeding style and caregiver and child characteristics. Residence, age of caregiver and the study child, relation of the study child with the caregiver, educational status of the caregiver and the father of the study child, parity of the biological mother, birth interval between the study child and older sibling, frequency of breastfeeding and advice on child feeding by a health professional were entered as independent variables in the model. Responsive feeding style was used as a reference category in the model. Variables which showed a significant association with caregivers' feeding style in the bivariate analysis, were entered into the multivariate multinomial logistic regression. Relative Risk Ratios (RRR), the relative risk ratios for the multinomial logistic model, were determined to assess whether the risk of the outcome falling in the comparison group (either controlling or laissez- faire feeding style) compared to the risk of the outcome falling in the reference group (responsive feeding style) increases or decreases with the independent variable. The p-value (P > |z|), is the probability that the z test statistic would be as extreme as, or more so, than what has been observed under the null hypothesis. If P > |z| is less than 0.05, the null hypothesis can be rejected and the RRR is considered significant at the 5% level. Ethical approval was obtained from the Ethical Review Committee of Jimma University. Informed consent was secured from all caregivers of study children before commencing the interview. General characteristics of caregivers and study children Of the 845 sampled caregivers, 826 were successfully included in the study making the response rate 97.7%. Biological mothers accounted for 666 (80.6%) of caregivers, while 160 (19.4%) were other caregivers such as grandmothers, sisters and other relatives. Most of the caregivers (87.6%) were rural residents. Fifty percent of the respondents were 25-34 years of age. Seventy percent of the caregivers did not attend any formal education and 172 (71.7%) of those who attended school attended only elementary school. Three hundred fifty-nine (54.5%) of the biological mothers, who were at the same time caregivers, had given birth to only one child. Five hundred and sixty five (79.9%) received advice from health professionals about child feeding (Table 1). The majority of interviewed caregivers (61.6%) had 12-23 month old children (Table 2). Biological mothers were the main caregivers of most of the 6-11 month old children (87%), while grandmothers were caregivers of 20 (6.4%) of these children. Mothers and grandmothers were the main caregivers of 396 (76.5%) and 64 (12.5%) of the 12-23 month old children, respectively (data not shown). Breastfeeding and complementary feeding practices of caregivers Six hundred sixty three (80.2%) of the caregivers were breastfeeding at the time of the study. Among the caregivers who specified breastfeeding frequency, 64.9% were feeding their children less than eight times per day. Two hundred ninety three (38.7%) of the interviewed caregivers had started giving complementary foods or drinks other than breast milk (mostly water, gruel and other semisolid cereal-based preparations) to their infants before they reached 6 months of age. For half of the caregivers, the reason for introducing foods/drinks too early was the belief that breast milk alone is not sufficient at that age. The mean (± SD) complementary feeding frequency was 4.6 ± 1.3, 5.1 ± 1.4 and 6.2 ± 1.6 times per day for study children 6-8, 9-11 and 12-24 months of age, respectively. Thirty eight percent of the study children ate from a separate bowl (data not shown). Feeding styles of caregivers The majority (75.7%) of caregivers fed their children mostly with a "responsive" feeding style, followed by "controlling" and "laissez-faire" in 98 (12.8%) and 88 (11.5%) of the caregivers, respectively. On the other hand, 660 (80.0%) and 670 (81.2%) of the caregivers replied that the study child refused to eat if he/she was not hungry and when he/she was ill, respectively. Seventy seven (9.3%), 52 (6.4%) and 7 (0.9%) of the caregivers replied that the study child refused to eat if he/she was forced to eat, if someone other than the caregiver was feeding him/her and if he/she was not encouraged to eat, respectively (data not shown). In response to food refusal by the child, 512 (66.9%) of the caregivers encouraged their children to eat either verbally or physically. According to the responses of 405 (53.0%) of the caregivers, the children ate more when encouraged verbally, while 292 (38.2%) of the respondents replied that the children ate more when food was provided on a separate plate (Table 3). Five hundred eighty (70.3%) of the caregivers fed their sick child by verbal or physical encouragement. However, 182 (22.0%) of the caregivers force-fed their children during illness while 71 (8.7%) used other options to help their children eat under similar circumstances. Predictors of caregiver feeding styles Laissez-faire relative to responsive feeding style The laissez-faire style is characterized by the lack of extra effort by the caregiver in making the child eat even if the child is at risk of undernutrition. Caregivers from rural villages were less likely (RRR = 0.16; 95% CI = 0.08-0.33) to practice a laissez-faire feeding style compared to a responsive feeding style given that the other variables in the model are kept constant. Caregivers other than biological mothers (RRR = 2.5; 95% CI = 1.43-4.38), who breastfed more than eight times during the previous day (RRR = 1.88; 95% CI = 1.03-3.41) and biological mothers with an optimal birth interval between study child and older sibling (RRR = 2.46; 95% CI = 1.38-4.40) were more likely to practice a laissez-faire feeding style compared to a responsive feeding style (Table 4). Controlling relative to responsive feeding style Caregivers with a controlling feeding style try to control the time, type and the amount of food the child eats. They may also practice force-feeding when the child refuses to eat. Caregivers who were not biological mothers, compared to biological mothers, were more likely (RRR = 1.86; 95% CI = 1.1-3.15) to practice a controlling feeding style compared to responsive feeding. Caregivers who breastfed more than eight times during the previous day compared to those feeding less frequently were more likely (RRR = 1.7; 95% CI = 1.02-2.85) to practice a controlling feeding style. Moreover, it was also found that biological mothers with an optimal birth interval between study child and older sibling were less likely (RRR = 0.55; 95% CI = 0.32-0.95) to practice a controlling feeding style compared to a responsive feeding style (Table 4). This study examined three types of caregivers' feeding styles (laissez-fair, controlling, responsive) from a socio-demographic, child feeding and caregivers' behavior perspective. The majority of the studies investigating these three child feeding styles were carried out in developed countries and used a variety of techniques and instruments. This made direct comparisons of the findings from this study with other findings difficult. In this study, 51% of the children were exclusively breastfed at 6 months of age. This is much higher than the findings reported in the Ethiopian Demographic and Health Survey 2005 (EDHS 2005). The EDHS 2005 report showed that only one in three children of 4-5 months of age were exclusively breastfed and that the rate of exclusive breastfeeding for those less than 6 months was 49% . This might be because EDHS 2005 was a nationally representative survey with a wide range of exclusive breastfeeding proportions in different regions of Ethiopia. The WHO recommends children of 6-8, 9-11 and 12-23 months of age to be fed 2-3, 3-4 and 3-4 times per day, respectively, with the addition of 1-2 snacks . In this study, 95% of the children within each of these respective age groups received complementary foods as frequent or more than the WHO recommendation. The mean (± SD) complementary feeding frequency per day was 4.6 ± 2.0, 5.2 ± 1.8 and 5.2 ± 2.0 times for children in the respective age groups. This result was comparable to the findings from rural Malawi where the mean (± SD) complementary feeding frequency was 3.1 ± 1.2, 4.1 ± 1.1 and 4.4 ± 1.4 times, respectively . The majority of caregivers were classified as practicing a responsive child feeding style (75.7%) which is consistent with the findings from a study in Vietnam . In this study, 80.6% of caregivers were biological mothers. A study conducted in Nicaragua showed that mothers, as caregivers, were more likely than other caregivers to offer encouragement for eating . Most of the caregivers in this study were rural dwellers but practiced a responsive feeding style most of the time. Two thirds of rural mothers in Bangladesh practiced active feeding ("behavior that encourages the child to eat or the mother to feed, either indirectly through words or directly through forcing food into the child's mouth") but only a third of them were responsive . Caregivers' behavior in child feeding are part of the broader socio-cultural context of societies in different geographical locations . Several studies suggested that appropriate child feeding practices have an impact on child nutritional status [10, 15–17, 20, 30]. Responsive or active feeding was found to be more beneficial to the child in some low- or middle-income countries [15, 27, 31, 32] and non-responsive feeding was associated with child BMI and overweight or obesity in high-income countries though, cross-study definitions of responsive feeding were inconsistent. Responsiveness was also observed in reaction to a child's decreased appetite during diarrheal episodes in Guatemala and Peru ; and low interest in food in Nicaragua . However, recent reviews concluded that the effect of responsive feeding on child weight or growth was mixed and failed to isolate the effect of responsive feeding, as most of these studies were done together with broader health or nutrition education and food supplementation programs and used cross-sectional designs . Moreover, the mechanism of linking feeding behavior and child weight or growth differs between low- and middle-income and high-income countries [15, 20]. In developing countries, there is very little information on the practice of controlling or laissez-faire feeding and implications for child nutrition. In Ghana, it was found that using force during feeding was common among caregivers with negative deviance in child feeding and had a direct effect on child's nutrient intake . In Nigeria, force-feeding and pressurizing was followed by food refusal by the child . In Vietnam, non-responsive feeding, characterized by pressure or force-feeding, was associated with the child's rejection of the food . A recent study in Malawi revealed that controlling feeding behavior was negatively associated with the acceptance of food by the child . Unlike the present study, a laissez-faire feeding style was the most frequently observed behavior among caregivers in Peru and Guatemala [33, 34]. Encouraging feeding in these circumstances was a response only to a decrease in child food intake because of illness and hence was not pro-active. This study did not assess the outcome of a particular feeding style practiced by caregivers, though the available literature on feeding styles underlined the association of feeding style with child growth and development, acceptance of food or child eating behavior and overweight or obesity [14, 30, 38–41]. As a limitation of the cross-sectional study design, temporality could not be established. Hence, it is difficult to determine whether a positive child response to the provided food leads to responsive feeding by caregivers or vice versa . Nevertheless, behavior at any point in time could reflect prior caregiver-child interactions. The results of this study are also dependent on the reporting of the caregiver. Most studies used additional observations through videotaping of caregivers feeding behaviors which can increase the validity of the finding from interview-based studies . Conclusions and Recommendations Responsive feeding was the commonest style practiced by the studied caregivers. In this study, rural residence and being a biological mother were found to be independent predictors of responsive feeding after controlling for potential confounders. As this study was the first of its kind in the country, more research is needed to check the validity and reliability of the Caregiver's Feeding Styles Questionnaire in Ethiopia and to evaluate the effect of caregivers' feeding style on child dietary intake and nutritional status in different socio-cultural settings within the country. Moreover, longitudinal research starting from early infancy is recommended to see the factors affecting caregiver's child feeding behavior and other care practices. Muller O, Krawinkel M: Malnutrition and health in developing countries. Can Med Assoc J. 2005, 173: 279-286. 10.1503/cmaj.050342. FAO/WHO: International Conference on Nutrition Goals. World Declaration and Plan of Action.FAO, Rome and WHO, Geneva. 1992. Pelletier DL: The relationship between child anthropometry and mortality in developing countries: implications for policy, programs and future research. J Nutr Oct. 1994, 124 (10 Suppl): 2047S-2081S. Pelletier DL, Frongillo EA, Schroeder DG, Habicht JP: The effects of malnutrition on child mortality in developing countries. Bull World Health Organ. 1995, 73: 443-448. Central Statistical Authority, ORC Macro: Ethiopia Demographic and Health Survey 2005. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and Calverton, Maryland, USA: CSA and ORC. 2006. Joan J, Mesfin BH: Report on review of Incorporation of Essential Nutrition Actions into Public Health Programs in Ethiopia; Food and Nutrition Technical Assistance (FANTA) Project, Academy for Educational Development (AED). 2008, Ethiopia: Addis Ababa UNICEF: The care initiative assessment, analysis, and action to improve care for nutrition. New York: UNICEF Nutrition Section. 1997 Pelto GH: Improving complementary feeding practices responsive parenting as a primary component of interventions to prevent malnutrition in infancy and early childhood. Pediatrics. 2000, 106: 1300-1301. Ruel MT, Brown KH, Caulfield LE: Moving forward with complementary feeding: indicators and research priorities. International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) discussion paper 146 (April 2003). Food Nutr Bull. 2003, 24: 289-290. Dettwyler KA, Fishman C: Infant Feeding Practices and Growth. Annual Review of Anthropology. 1992, 21: 171-204. 10.1146/annurev.an.21.100192.001131. Birch LL, Fisher JA: Appetite and eating behavior in children. PediatrClin N Am. 1995, 42 (4): 931-953. Ha PB, Bentley ME, Pachón H, Sripaipan T, Caulfield LE, Marsh DR, Schroeder DG: Caregiver styles of feeding and child acceptance of food in rural Viet Nam. Food and Nutrition Bulletin. 2002, The United Nations University, 23 (4(supplement)): Eshel N, Daelmans B, Mello MCd, Martines J: Responsive parenting: interventions and outcomes. Bull World Health Organ. 2006, 84: 991-998. 10.2471/BLT.06.030163. Dettwyler KA: Styles of Infant Feeding: Parental/Caretaker Control of Food Consumption in Young Children. American Anthropologist. 1989, 91: 696-703. 10.1525/aa.1989.91.3.02a00100. Bentley ME, Wasser HM, Creed-Kanashiro HM: Responsive Feeding and Child Undernutrition in Low- and Middle-Income Countries. J Nutr. 2011, 141: 502-507. 10.3945/jn.110.130005. Saha KK, Frongillo EA, Alam DS, Arifeen SE, Persson LÃk, Rasmussen KM: Appropriate infant feeding practices result in better growth of infants and young children in rural Bangladesh. Am J ClinNutr. 2008, 87: 1852-1859. Ruel MT, Menon P: Child Feeding Practices Are Associated with Child Nutritional Status in Latin America: Innovative Uses of the Demographic and Health Surveys. J Nutr. 2002, 132: 1180-1187. Crouch P, O'Dea JA, Battisti R: Child feeding practices and perceptions of childhood overweight and childhood obesity risk among mothers of preschool children. Nutrition & Dietetics. 2007, 64: 151-158. 10.1111/j.1747-0080.2007.00180.x. May AL, Donohue M, Scanlon KS, Sherry B, Dalenius K, Faulkner P, Birch LL: Child-feeding strategies are associated with maternal concern about children becoming overweight, but not children's weight status. J Am Diet Assoc. 2007, 107: 1167-1175. 10.1016/j.jada.2007.04.009. Hurley KM, Cross MB, Hughes SO: A Systematic Review of Responsive Feeding and Child Obesity in High-Income Countries. The Journal of Nutrition. 2011, 141: 495-501. 10.3945/jn.110.130047. Hupkens CLH, Knibbe RA, van Otterloo AH, Drop MJ: Class differences in the food rules mothers impose on their children: a cross-national study. Social Science & Medicine. 1998, 47: 1331-1339. 10.1016/S0277-9536(98)00211-1. Girma W, Timotiows G: Determinants of Nutritional Status of Women and Children in Ethiopia: further analyis of Ethiopia Demographic and Health Survey 2000. 2002, Calverton, Maryland, USA: ORC Macro Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia Population Census Commission: Summary and statistical report of the 2007 population and housing census; population size by age and sex. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. 2008 Hughes SO, Power TG, Orlet Fisher J, Mueller S, Nicklas TA: Revisiting a neglected construct: parenting styles in a child-feeding context. Appetite. 2005, 44: 83-92. 10.1016/j.appet.2004.08.007. Patrick H, Nicklas TA, Hughes SO, Morales M: The benefits of authoritative feeding style: caregiver feeding styles and children's food consumption patterns. Appetite. 2005, 44: 243-249. 10.1016/j.appet.2002.07.001. Hotz C, Gibson RS: Complementary feeding practices and dietary intakes from complementary foods amongst weanlings in rural Malawi. Eur J ClinNutr. 2001, 55: 841-849. Engle PL, Zeitlin M: Active feeding behavior compensates for low interest in food among young Nicaraguan children. J Nutr. 1996, 126: 1808-1816. Moore AC, Akhter S, Aboud FE: Responsive complementary feeding in rural Bangladesh. SocSci Med. 2006, 62: 1917-1930. 10.1016/j.socscimed.2005.08.058. Engle PL, Bentley M, Pelto G: The role of care in nutrition programmes: current research and a research agenda. ProcNutrSoc. 2000, 59: 25-35. Galler JR, Ramsey FC, Harrison RH, Brooks R, Weiskopf-Bock S: Infant Feeding Practices in Barbados Predict Later Growth. J Nutr. 1998, 128: 1328-1335. Aboud FE, Moore AC, Akhter S: Effectiveness of a community-based responsive feeding programme in rural Bangladesh: a cluster randomized field trial. Matern Child Nutr. 2008, 4: 275-286. 10.1111/j.1740-8709.2008.00146.x. Nti CA, Lartey A: Effect of caregiver feeding behaviours on child nutritional status in rural Ghana. International Journal of Consumer Studies. 2007, 31: 303-309. 10.1111/j.1470-6431.2006.00553.x. Bentley M, Caulfield L, Torun B, Schroeder D, Hurtado E: Maternal feeding behavior and child appetite during acute diarrhea and subsequent health in Guatemala. FASEB J. 1992, 6: A436- Bentley M, Stallings RY, Fukumoto M, Elder J: Maternal feeding behavior and child acceptance of food during diarrhea episodes, convalescence, and health in the Central NorthernSierra of Peru. Am J Public Health. 1991, 83: 1-5. Brown KH, Dickin KL, Bentley ME, Oni GA, Obassajju VT, Esrey SA, Mebrahtu S, Alade I, Stallings RY: Consumption of weaning foods from fermented cereals: Kwara State, Nigeria. InImproving Young Child Feeding in Eastern and SouthernAfrican Household-level Food Technology. Proceedings of a Workshop, pp 181-197 [D Alnwick, S Moses and OG Schmidt, editors] Ottawa, Ont: IDR. 1988 Ha PB, Bentley ME, Pachón H, Sripaipan T, Caulfield LE, Marsh DR, Schroeder DG: Caregiver styles of feeding and child acceptance of food in rural Viet Nam. Food Nutr Bull. 2002, 23: 95-100. Flax VL, Mäkinen S, Ashorn U, Cheung YB, Maleta K, Ashorn P, Bentley ME: Responsive feeding and child interest in food vary when rural Malawian children are fed lipid-based nutrient supplements or local complementary food. Maternal & Child Nutrition. Sacco LM, Bentley ME, Carby-Shields K, Borja JB, Goldman BD: Assessment of infant feeding styles among low-income African-American mothers: Comparing reported and observed behaviors. Appetite. 2007, 49: 131-140. 10.1016/j.appet.2007.01.004. Hoerr S, Hughes S, Fisher J, Nicklas T, Liu Y, Shewchuk R: Associations among parental feeding styles and children's food intake in families with limited incomes. Int J BehavNutrPhys Act. 2009, 6: 55- Birch LL, Fisher JO: Mothers' child-feeding practices influence daughters' eating and weight. Am J ClinNutr. 2000, 71: 1054-1061. Aboud FE, Alemu T: Nutrition, maternal responsiveness and mental development of Ethiopian children. SocSci Med. 1995, 41: 725-732. 10.1016/0277-9536(94)00377-6. The pre-publication history for this paper can be accessed here:http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/12/235/prepub We would like to forward our gratitude to Jimma University, College of Public Health and Medical Sciences for the financial support. We also thank the supervisors, data collectors and respondents, and the Derashe special district health office. The authors declare that they have no competing interests. MW, TA and MW designed the study, analyzed the data, drafted the manuscript, and hence had equal contribution. All authors read and approved the final manuscript. Mekitie Wondafrash, Tseganeh Amsalu and Mirkuzie Woldie contributed equally to this work. About this article Cite this article Wondafrash, M., Amsalu, T. & Woldie, M. Feeding styles of caregivers of children 6-23 months of age in Derashe special district, Southern Ethiopia. BMC Public Health 12, 235 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-12-235 - Study Child - Biological Mother - Relative Risk Ratio - Complementary Feeding - Complementary Food

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Written accounts of witchcraft, witch trials, cunning folk, and folk magic were largely recorded by the Church, with all the prejudices associated with a one-sided narrative. Given these practices were handed down generation to generation through oral histories as a form of intangible heritage, only the Church’s ‘official’ version of these practices has traditionally survived as our record. Luckily for researchers, instructions for creating witch bottles were written down and tangible items such a old shoes and written curses were tucked into walls kept safe from destruction in their hidden places. Stepping away from the ‘official’ texts to these scraps and personal finds can help us learn from another perspective about these practices, offering a fascinating look at the fears—and sometimes wrathful vengeances—secreted away in hearths and walls by our ancestors. The following is an excerpt from a talk I gave at the Museum of the Home (formerly the Geffrye Museum) in November 2019, ‘Witch Bottles & Worn Shoes: Home Protection Folklore Practices’. The advent of the printing press and the resulting mass sharing of frightening tales regarding witchcraft raised awareness and fears of witches and the harm they could inflict. This led to the popularisation of counter-witchcraft folklore—such as home protection practices. Clearly the period of the witch trials, which varies in different countries but broadly occured between the 16th and 18th centuries, also had an impact on people feeling a dire need for personal spiritual protection. People believed it was possible for dark forces to travel through the landscape and attack them in their homes. These forces could be emanations from a witch in the form of a spell, a witch’s familiar pestering their property, an actual witch flying in spirit—or a combination of all these together. Additional sources of danger could also be lurking ghosts, fairies, and demons. The nighttime landscape was full of dangers, and a home is only as secure as its most vulnerable portals. But the main fear our ancestors warded against—and the one that still captures our imaginations most today—are witches. Witches were believed to be able to pass through the slightest of gaps, even keyholes. The front door was particularly vulnerable to intrusion, both from regular thieves and enemies, but also from witches and evil spirits. As a consequence, much of folk magic practice was concerned with thresholds and openings. We know from the archives that some concealed objects were the results of anti-witchcraft rituals conducted by people known as cunning-folk, or wise women and wise men. For centuries these individuals offered magical services to their local communities for myriad purposes. Above all, cunning folk were the formidable foe of witches and their spells. What we tend to see in historical studies is a concentration on witch trial records, where official beliefs about witchcraft are imposed upon accused and accusers. This produces a distorted account of supposed witchcraft, often based on false accusations in the first place. Which is all quite fascinating to read about—but while the witch trials may teach us a lot, they are not necessarily the best place to look for information about what ordinary people thought about witchcraft. Over the course of this research into home protection folklore, I began to wonder why the charms and practices used in the fight against witchcraft looked so much like witchcraft itself—and why these practices seemed to be used without fear in violently paranoid and toxic times. This is where we start to divide these practices between witches and cunning-folk—which is complicated a bit by the fact that cunning folk were themselves sometimes accused of witchcraft. The line between protection and threat was a fine one to tread—especially when a cunning person who couldn’t fix the community’s problems could be accused and turned from protector into sinister agent. The term ‘cunning-folk’ was just one of several terms used in England to describe practitioners of magic who healed the sick and the bewitched, who told fortunes, identified thieves, induced love, and sundry tasks for their local community. However, both the ecclesiastical and secular authorities made little distinction between good and bad magic. Both were sinful, and many benign practices were denounced as heretical pagan worship. And this is where it gets confusing from our modern-day perspective, cunning-folk were often called upon to help people ward off witches, when the very practice of this pagan warding was itself considered witchcraft. The most iconic of counter-witchcraft objects that we have today are witch bottles. These objects look quite sinister, but contrary to their name, these bottles were not made by witches, but rather to ward off witches. They were made by people who believed that they were victims of witchcraft. Of the apotropaic objects I’ve studied, the witch-bottle is considered the most powerful. One reason for this is these bottles were not general preventative measures, but rather created to fight against a current bewitching attack from a specific witch. Other than their potency as folk magic objects, another aspect that makes witch-bottles so alluring to researchers, is that unlike other home protection rituals performed, instructions for creating witch-bottles and what to do with them were actually written down, not just handed down through oral histories, so we don’t need guesswork to learn of their preparation and purpose, we have firsthand accounts. These descriptions were written in pamphlets and books from the 17th century and later. Like the other items used in protection folklore, witch-bottles were intentionally concealed so that it’s only when buildings are demolished, repaired, or when archaeologists excavate building sites that they come to light. Not everyone who finds a witch-bottle gets excited and contacts their local museum. Just as with the case of hidden shoes, the likely finders of witch-bottles are the builders who quite often just throw them away, because they don’t know what they are. However a witch-bottle isn’t a shoe. Sometimes the opposite is true, and builders know exactly what they are, and they’re destroyed for superstitious reasons. Due to these problems of ambivalence on one hand, and superstition on the other, it is estimated that only very few witch-bottles get reported to local museums or archaeology units. The number of witch-bottles found is also limited by how many buildings survive from any given period. So the number of examples that can be studied are likely to be only a tiny proportion of the total number that were concealed. Until the mid-19th century, the most popular form of witch-bottle was the type of German stoneware which became popularly known as ‘bellarmines’. The bellarmine bottle’s appearance, with the face of a wild bearded man on the neck and the large, round belly, would most certainly have made people gravitate towards choosing them for magical purposes. The nickname ‘bellarmines’, appears to have evolved around tales of Cardinal Bellarmine. Cardinal Bellarmine was hostile to Protestants in the volumes on heresy he wrote in the 16th century. It appears that some comparison between the mean face on the bottles and the perceived nature of the Cardinal was the satire here. The highly durable nature of stoneware meant that these bottles could be reused many times and had a very long life. The long useful life of the bottles means that its manufacture date might not correspond with its date of burial. Some of these stoneware bottles also bear patterns with spoked wheel forms, resembling the apotropaic daisy wheel symbol in some ways that people would carve on doors, lintels, and mantelpieces, which may have been another reason for people using them. Historian Ralph Merrifield cites four key early modern text for a study of witch-bottles, which all contain references to the practice of creating counter-witchcraft bottles: — Joseph Blagrave’s Astrological Practice of Physick (1671) — Joseph Glanvil’s Sadducismus Triumphatus (1681) — Increase Mather’s An Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providences (1684) — Cotton Mather’s Late Memorable Providences (1691) The reference in Blagrave’s 1671 work appears in a section on ‘experimental Rules, whereby to afflict the Witch, causing the evil to return back upon them’. He describes the practice as follows: Another way is to stop the urine of the Patient, close up in a bottle, and put into it three nails, pins, or needles, with a little white Salt, keeping the urine always warm: if you let it remain long in the bottle, it will endanger the witches life: for I have found by experience that they will be grievously tormented making their water with great difficulty, if any at all, and the more if the Moon be in Scorpio in Square or Opposition to his Significator, when its done. Blagrave is prescribing a method of turning the witch’s power back upon them using the supposed sympathetic link between witch and victim. The idea was that the bottle represented the witch’s bladder and that inserting pins and the victim’s urine into the bottle would cause intense pain in that region of the witch’s body, forcing the witch to lift whatever spell it was believed they had placed on the victim. A witch-bottle is essentially a supernatural UTI. The instructions to “keep the urine always warm” meant to keep it over a fire. Of course, when suspending nails, pins, and urine in a container under pressure over a fire, what could possibly go wrong? There is an early 19th century example of boiling of a witch-bottle in this way with terrible results. In 1804, the cunning man John Hepworth of Bradford took his witch-bottle-making one step further, he experimented with a different kind of witch-bottle made of iron—the thinking being that iron is a notable material to use against fairies and other nefarious sorts, so a witch-bottle made of iron would surely do the trick. He boiled this iron witch-bottle over a fire, which then exploded, killing his client. Using the more standard container type, it is more likely that the cork or bung would have simply exploded outwards, showering its contents in whichever direction the bottle was pointing—which, while gross, is vastly preferable. Hepworth’s experiments are the only notes on record for using iron for witch-bottles—and given the disastrous results, this is a good thing. It’s important to note that the bottles described in 17th century instruction texts would not generally have been concealed in buildings; if the boiling of the witch-bottle was successful, it is likely then that the bottle would have just been thrown away. All the examples of witch-bottles found for study have been recovered from being buried, and so have had a different treatment to the ones mentioned in the historical texts. The accounts only refer to the bottles being buried or concealed if heating them had been deemed unsuccessful. Since all the examples that we can now analyse today are buried or concealed bottles, this suggests that the process of heating the bottles did not work very well—spoiler alert—and the secondary practice of burying bottles was widespread and well known. Contents of Witch Bottles One aspect not mentioned in the 17th-century texts about witch-bottles—but for which there is ample evidence from the bottles themselves—is the process of bending the pins or nails that were put in them. Alan Massey has demonstrated that in virtually all cases where pins or nails have been found in bottles they have been deliberately bent prior to inclusion in the bottle. It seems that this was done to ritually ‘kill’ the pins, activating a ghost pin which would be effective against spiritual enemies who came into contact with the bottle. The idea of deliberately ‘killing’ the pins and nails hinges on the perception of an invisible supernatural or spirit world which included the dead, magical forces, and perhaps divine forces. This ritual killing of objects has been seen in many cultures since prehistory. Dr Massey has also noted chips to the neck or rim of several of the bottles which he believes may be evidence of the bottles being deliberately damaged for a similar reason. Some of the unusual items also found within the witch-bottles include written charms, small bones, frog skin, seaweed, stones, masses of lead, insects, and in one case small lizards. Hearth Witch Bottles Half of all bellarmine bottles were found either beneath the hearth stone or within the construct of an inglenook fireplace. The idea appears to be that the spell or evil intent sent by the witch would seek out its intended victim and try to enter the home. It would smell its victim, then plunge down the chimney to attack—only to discover it had been fooled and was now trapped inside the belly of a tiny, urine-filled jug, and skewered by the ghosts of dead pins, nails, and thorns. In this way, the bottle acted as a spirit trap, similar to the way in which concealed shoes may have worked, but with much more powerful consequences. The most famous bellarmine finding was in 2004 in Greenwich of a 17th-century witch-bottle. Workmen found a bellarmine jug buried 5 feet underground. Miraculously, the jug was still sealed; and when it was shaken it splashed and rattled. The Greenwich Maritime Trust called in Dr Massey to study it, because among other things, he is a retired chemist, and he was delighted with what they had discovered: it was the first complete and still-sealed 17th century witch-bottle ever to be found. They x-rayed the bottle to see what inside: They found pins and nails stuck in the neck of the jug, which is consistent with the jug being buried upside down—the common mode of burial—and that it was half full with liquid. It was clear this was a witch-bottle. Until then, the best example was a glass bottle buried in 1720 in Surrey, but it had been opened years before it could be examined. For the Greenwich bottle, they now had their first opportunity for a complete analysis. The liquid was drawn through the cork with a long-needled syringe, chemical analysis revealed that the liquid was unequivocally human urine. Furthermore, the urine contained a metabolite of nicotine: which means the urine had been passed by a smoker, probably of a clay pipe. Acting on a hunch, Massey tested a black solid in the urine, and showed it to be iron sulphide. It was virtually certain that the sulphur in the jug had reacted with the iron in the nails. In other words, to add to the lured lure of this bottle, it was found to contain actual brimstone. Scientists then removed the cork, which disintegrated, and the rest of the contents, which consisted of: 12 iron nails, eight brass pins, quantities of hair, a piece of leather pierced by a bent nail, which could be described as heart-shaped, in keeping with common shapes for cloth interments in witch-bottles, 10 fingernail pairings—which were found to be not from a manual labourer, but a person of some social standing—and what could be navel fluff. There were also no less than 18 hair lice found floating in the urine, and given the small amount of hair placed in the bottle, it was concluded that the person must have been quite infested indeed. Evidence of Darkness So, alongside all these examples of protection magic, you might wonder what provoked it? Was there also evidence of actual witchcraft, or at least nefarious deeds? Well, a few examples of that have been found as well. Over the course of Hoggard’s research into magical home protection, many odd objects were discovered. Some were innocent-looking things, like time capsules, and some not-so-innocent things—such as hidden swords and a crossbow recovered from inside walls, and in one case a child’s preserved arm. But in addition to these rather obscure finds, there were also those items which clearly point to dark magic. Of the dark items found, most were written curses. Perhaps one of the most eerie examples is a 17th century curse scratched into a lead tablet which was discovered in a cupboard in 1892 at Wilton Place, Dymock in Gloucestershire, known as the Dymock curse. It reads: ‘Make this person to Banish away from this place and country amen, to my desire amen’, with the name Sarah Ellis written backwards along the top. On the lead tablet there are also a variety of sigils alongside the curse which all relate to the moon. Which makes this tablet not only a written curse, but also a magical object combining sources of supernatural power, in this case astrological images, and other shapes meant to be demonic magic symbols, alongside the amen from Christian prayer. The Dymock curse is held at the Gloucester Folk Museum, where they tell of a local legend that there was an actual Sarah Ellis, who was so affected by the curse that she took her own life and was buried at a crossroads with a stake through her heart. To add to the validity of this story, there is indeed an Ellis’ Cross on the boundary of the parishes of Dymock and Oxenhall about two and a half miles from Wilton Place where this curse was found. Gatherley Moor Curse There was a similar curse found on Gatherley Moor, Yorkshire. This one was found on top of a pile of stones and reads: ‘I did make this that the James Phillip, John Phillip, and Aitkin Phillip and all The Issue of them shall Come to utter Beggery and nothing joy or prosper with them in Richmondshire’. This curse is also engraved onto a lead tablet. There is a small cross after the text and some large symbols which are to represent the Spirit of the Moon and of the Spirit of the Spirits of the Moon. And for good measure, on the reverse of this tablet, is the complete table of the moon. Throughout legends and folklore, we can find references like this to the moon – sometimes as a bringer of warnings or as a source of punishment for not being a good Christian. However, in pagan culture, they revered the sun and the moon. They followed their journeys and knew their meanderings through the night sky. For most of us today, knowledge of the heavens has been left to astronomers, but the people of the past lived close to the sun, and the moon, and the earth. They lived their whole lives by their rhythms. They wouldn’t need to consult an almanac to know the path of the moon, it was memorised and inscribed in their every routine. And for that reason, moonlore would’ve been top of mind for practitioners of folk magic looking to bolster the power of a curse. Mabe Cornwall Slate Curse In 2008, an Atlantic storm blowing in from the sea dislodged a slate from a granite barn in the parish of Mabe, Cornwall. On close examination they found some words had been etched onto the surface. It reads: May he who steals My round stones Make early dry bones No one is certain what is referred to by the round stones. The author of the paper studying this slate suggests that it could relate to the work of a mason, a magical Kenning stone—or possibly testicles. However it seems that might be a one-time crime, rather than a recurring problem. Hereford City Museums have a good collection of charms and curses. One 19th century curse was found in East Street, Hereford. It consists of a crudely made doll, with the body made of wood with arms and legs of cotton material. Within the skirt area of the dress was found a curse written in black ink on paper. The curse reads: ‘Mary Ann Ward, I act this spell upon you from my whole heart wishing you to never rest, nor eat, nor sleep, the rester part of your life. I hope your flesh will waste away and I hope you will never spend another penny I ought to have. Wishing this from my whole heart.’ Alfred Taylor House Curses In Alfred Taylor House, Worcester, dating from the year 1500, some interesting objects were discovered. Behind the early 20th century fireplace, among the brick rubble in the damaged ancient stone of the original fireplace was found an old wooden doll. This doll was assumed to be early 20th century and put there when the fireplace was updated. Its face is square, described to be like the old wood Betsy dolls of the Victorian era and is masked in plaster. Its foot is peg-like and etched with a pattern of claws. Its black chest is faintly marked with a drawing of a goat’s head. On the back is a light patch where paper has covered it. On this patch, written in faded ink are the words ‘help me to—’ … but the rest of this sentence has faded from exposure. The current whereabouts of this doll are unknown, but it certainly sounds like it was involved in some nefarious activity. The Church Inn, Manchester At the Church Inn pub, Church Lane, Manchester, workmen discovered that there was a bricked up alcove in the cellar. When they removed the wall they discovered a small bag containing three carved wooden naked female figures. The pub dates from the early 17th century and the figures were deemed stylistically similar to 16th to 17th century country carvings. While it was not possible to say with absolute certainty, it appears that these items were bricked up in the cellar when the pub was first built. In the bag with the figures, they also found a pile of vegetable matter and a dried cat. It would appear that some kind of ritual was being enacted, using roots or other plant matter, a sacrificial cat, and these naked figures. The pub’s direct proximity to the church graveyard suggests a possible ritual connection with the buried dead that lie just the other side of the cellar wall. The fact that these objects were bricked up strongly suggests a secret activity of some kind was taking place down in that cellar. The 20th Century While there is plenty of evidence for the continued popularity of astrologers, fortune-tellers, and all sorts of occult practitioners throughout the 20th century, for the most part people began to lose their fear of witches. And without witches, there became less need for cunning-folk. Claims have been made that the last of the cunning-folk passed their magical knowledge to Wiccans and other modern ‘witches’, thereby maintaining a continuous link with the magical as well as the herbal traditions of the past. And fundamentally, there is little intrinsic difference between an aspiring conjuror today learning practical invocations from internet grimoires and a 19th century cunning-man who gained his knowledge from second-hand books. Modernity and cunning-folk are not incompatible concepts. Some modern witches feel no need to claim to be part of a continuous, indigenous tradition at all. They celebrate the ideas and practices of popular magic, but seek to define themselves in new ways. Perhaps the most prolific of these new definitions is that of ‘hedge witch’, which gained popularity following the publication of Rae Beth’s book of the same name. The term has now caught on in both the UK and in the U.S. Like cunning-folk, hedge witches are solitary practitioners and similarly practise herbalism, divination, and simple spells and rituals using everyday objects rather than the grand accoutrements of ceremonial magic. It’s the dawn of a new day for people who choose to practice home protection rituals—without the fears of Church persecution or the trappings of embedded beliefs, we now have the space to create our own rituals that make us feel safe. And just as people today can define the space that they call ‘home’ in myriad ways, so too can we reinvent the ways in which we all can keep those home spaces safe; whether that’s through modern alarm systems, family dogs—or burying bottles of urine under our fireplace. Sources and further reading… Davies, Owen; Houlbrook, Ceri; ‘Concealed and Revealed: Magic and Mystery in the Home’, Spellbound: Magic, Ritual & Witchcraft, (Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford) 2018. Book. – Popular Magick: Cunning Folk in English History, (London: Hambledon Continuum) 2003. Book. Davies, Owen, ‘The Material Culture of Post-Medieval Domestic Magic in Europe: Evidence, Comparisons, and Interpretations’, Boschung, Dietrich; Bremmer, Jan N. (editors), The Materiality of Magic, (Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink) 2015. Book. Eastop, Dinah, ‘Outside In: Making Sense of the Deliberate Concealment of Garments Within Buildings’, Textile, Volume 4, Issue 3, p238-25. 2006. Journal. Gazin-Schwartz, Amy, ‘Archaeology and Folklore of Material Culture, Ritual, and Everyday Life’, International Journal of Historical Archaeology’, Volume 5, Issue 4, p263-280. 2001. Journal. Hoggard, Brian, ‘Witch Bottles: Their contents, Contexts, and Uses’, Physical Evidence for Ritual Acts, Sorcerty, and Witchcraft in Christian Britain, A Feeling for Magic, (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan Publishers Limited) 2015. Book. p284-327 – Magical House Protection: The Archaeology of Counter-Witchcraft, (New York: Berghahn Books) 2019. Book. Hutton, Ronald (editor), Physical Evidence for Ritual Acts, Sorcerty, and Witchcraft in Christian Britain, A Feeling for Magic, (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan Publishers Limited) 2015. Book. Pennick, Nigel, Skulls, Cats, and Witch Bottles: The Ancient Practice of House Protection, (Cambridge: Nigel Pennick Editions) 1986. Book. Swann, June, ‘Shoes Concealed in Buildings’, Costume, Number 30, p56-69. 1996. Journal. – ‘Shoes Concealed in Buildings’, Physical Evidence for Ritual Acts, Sorcerty, and Witchcraft in Christian Britain, A Feeling for Magic, (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan Publishers Limited) 2015. Book. p364-402 Watkins, Carl (2004), ‘’Folklore’ and ‘popular religion’ in Britain during the middle ages’, Folklore, Volume 115, Issue 2, 2004, p140-150. Journal. DOI: 10.1080/0015587042000231246 Wingfield, Chris, ‘A case re-opened: the science and folklore of a ‘Witch’s Ladder’, Journal of Material Culture, Volume 15, Number 3, p302-322. 2010. Journal.

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Paresthesia is a burning or prickling sensation or partial numbness resulting from neural injury. Paresthesia resulting from periapical pathosis or various stages of root canal treatment is of great importance in the field of endodontics. The purpose of this paper is to review paresthesia caused by periapical lesions, local anesthesia, cleaning, shaping and obturation. Sensory disturbances such as paresthesia, anesthesia, hypoesthesia and hyperesthesia may occur in the oral cavity. Paresthesia is defined as a burning or prickling sensation or partial numbness caused by neural injury. Patients have described it as warmth, cold, burning, aching, prickling, tingling, pins and needles, numbness and formication (itching in the absence of stimuli).1-3 In dentistry, paresthesia can be caused by systemic or local factors. Multiple sclerosis,4,5 sarcoidosis,6 metastasis,7 viral and bacterial infections,8,9 leukemia and lymphoma10 are some of the systemic disorders that may cause orofacial paresthesia. Local factors include traumatic injuries, such as mandibular fractures, expanding compressive lesions (benign or malignant neoplasia and cysts), impacted teeth, local infections (osteomyelitis, periapical and peri-implant infections), iatrogenic lesions after tooth extractions, anesthetic injection, endodontic therapy (overfilling and apical surgery), implantology, orthodontic surgery and preprosthetic surgery. The purpose of this paper is to review the endodontics-related causes of paresthesia: periapical infections, overfilling and apical surgery.11 Diagnosis of Paresthesia Diagnosis of neural anesthesia or paresthesia requires an accurate patient history to determine the onset of the sensory alteration and its evolution. Examination of the affected area can be carried out using thermal, mechanical, electrical or chemical tests that elicit subjective responses.12 A more objective test is based on electrophysiologic analysis of the nerve. Radiographic and neurophysiologic screening are also required.13 Radiographic measures may also be helpful in determining the cause of paresthesia. In addition to periapical and panoramic radiographs, a computed tomography (CT) scan will be helpful in displaying small structures and revealing their spatial relations in 3 dimensions.14 In cases of nonpersistent episodes of nerve irritation, paresthesia should resolve within days or weeks as the cause is removed. Beyond the trigeminal ganglion, the fifth cranial nerve divides into 3 branches; the lateral branch is the largest and is the sensory root of the mandibular nerve. The mandibular branch leaves the cranium through the oval foramen and runs into the infratemporal fossa. When it emerges from the cranium, it unites with the motor root to form the mandibular nerve—a mixed nerve. The mandibular nerve immediately divides into many sub-branches, including the buccal nerve, the masseteric nerve, the pterygoid nerves, the temporal nerves, auriculotemporal nerve, the lingual nerve and the inferior alveolar nerve (IAN).15 The IAN runs posteriorly and slightly to the lateral side of the lingual nerve, between the pterygoid muscles. It turns laterally and enters the mandibular canal through the mandibular foramen. The IAN, which is strictly sensory, then passes through the mandible to the premolar region, where it divides into the incisive branch, which innervates the anterior segment of the mandible, and the mental nerve, which leaves the mandible through the mental foramen and innervates the overlying tissues.16 Within the mandible, the IAN has dental and interdental branches. The dental branches form the dental plexus and innervate the teeth; the interdental branches innervate the alveolar bone, the periodontium and the gingivae. The IAN's route through the mandible is located beneath the roots of the teeth close to the dental apices.17 The anatomy of the IAN is more complicated than previously thought; paralleling the alveolar artery, it divides into subcanals forming a sort of plexus. Moreover, the neurovascular bundle has been shown to be in contact or close to the lingual cortical plate between the mandibular and mental foramina.18 According to Littner and colleagues19 the upper border of the mandibular canal is located 3.5 to 5.4 mm below the root apices of the first and second molars. The apices of the third molar are closest to the alveolar nerve. Denio and colleagues20 revealed that the apex of the second molar is 3.7 mm from the upper border of the mandibular canal and that the mesial root apices of the first molars are farther from the alveolar canal by about 6.9 mm. Therefore, although the relation between the IAN and the molar root apices varies, these structures are sometimes very close, allowing pathologic periapical conditions to affect the nerve structures in the mandibular canal. Endodontics-Related Causes of Paresthesia Paresthesia due to periapical lesions may be caused by mechanical pressure and ischemia associated with the inflammatory process (edema), local pressure on the mental nerve resulting from accumulation of purulent exudate in the mandibular bone as well as the toxic metabolic products of bacteria or the inflammatory products released with tissue damage. The expanding infectious process and the associated edema can cause pressure on the nerve fibres severe enough to induce the symptoms of paresthesia. A subsequent hematoma can also cause sufficient pressure on the nerve fibres to induce paresthesia.21 Mental nerve paresthesia (MNP) and IAN paresthesia (IANP) due to periapical pathosis have been reported. (IANP includes paresthesia of both mental and incisive branches of the IAN.) Giuliani and colleagues17 reported a case of IANP caused by endodontic pathosis in a lower right second molar. Di Lenarda and colleagues12 reported a case of MNP caused by a periapical infection of the right mandibular second premolar. In another case, MNP was reportedly caused by infection in an impacted tooth.21 Morse21 reported a case of mental nerve paresthesia caused by periapical infection of a mandibular canine tooth. In this case, MNP had occurred even though the canine tooth and the periapical pathosis were not in direct contact with the neurovascular bundle, were far from the anterior border of the mental nerve and only slight swelling was present. Ozkan and colleagues11 reported MNP originating from apical pathosis of a mandibular canine tooth. Anesthesia that persists for days, weeks or months following injection of local anesthetic solution signals a potential problem. Injection of local anesthetic solutions contaminated by alcohol or sterilizing solution may produce irritation resulting in edema and increased pressure, leading to paresthesia. Alcohol, especially, is neurolytic and can produce paresthesia lasting for months to years. Another factor to consider is trauma to the nerve sheath by the needle. In these cases, the patient reports the sensation of an electric shock. Hemorrhage into or around the neural sheath may increase pressure on the nerve and lead to paresthesia.22 Cleaning and Shaping According to Rowe,23 the IAN can be directly damaged during root canal preparation because of overinstrumentation. Grossman24 found that repair of mechanical damage to the IAN by scarring can cause immediate but temporary paresthesia. Furthermore, excessive preparation of the root canal often results in disruption of the apical constriction,25 which in turn, is responsible for extrusion of irrigants, medicaments and obturation materials (gutta-percha and sealer) into the periapical region and subsequent chemical and mechanical nerve injury.26 Another potential cause of paresthesia is the irrigation solution, especially sodium hypochlorite (NaOCl), used during cleaning and shaping. Inadvertent injection of NaOCl beyond the apical foramen may occur in teeth with wide apical foramina or when the apical constriction has been destroyed during root canal preparation or by resorption. In addition, extreme pressure during irrigation or binding of the irrigation needle tip in the root canal leaving no room for the irrigant to leave the root canal coronally may result in large volumes of the irrigant contacting apical tissues. If this occurs, the excellent tissue-dissolving capability of NaOCl will lead to tissue necrosis.27 Becking28 has presented 2 cases of NaOCl injection into the periapical soft tissues. In the first, NaOCl of unknown concentration was extruded through the apical foramen of a mandibular left second molar with a perforation at the cementoenamel junction, resulting in progressive swelling of the left side of the face extending to the patient's neck. After 1 day, necrosis of the mucosa and anesthesia of the mental nerve were apparent. With antibiotic and analgesic therapy, pain and swelling diminished after 5 days, paresthesia of the nerve resolved after 10 days and healing of the mucosa occurred in 2 months. In the second case, apical overextrusion of NaOCl occurred during root canal preparation of a mandibular left second premolar resulting in severe pain, swelling and anesthesia of the mental nerve. Hulsmann and Hahn,27 as well as Gernhardt and colleagues,29 have questioned the use of NaOCl during root canal irrigation of mandibular molars and premolars. Another possible inadvertent complication of root canal treatment of mandibular premolar and molar teeth with apical periodontitis is the extrusion of infected debris into the mandibular canal or mental foramen. All hand and rotary instrumentation techniques potentially extrude debris and bacteria beyond the root canal.30 According to Morse,21 this infected debris might breach the protective perineurium of the IAN and impair nerve conductivity. Root Canal Filling Root canal irrigants, intracanal medicaments and filling materials should be limited to the root canal and not extend to periapical tissues or other neighbouring structures.31 Root canal filling materials, including gutta-percha and sealers, can induce paresthesia via mechanical or chemical mechanisms.32 Their spread beyond the apical foramen can result in clinical manifestations related to the toxicity of the product, although minor material extrusions are generally well tolerated by the periradicular tissues.33 When the filling materials come into contact with nerve structures, the toxic effects can manifest in the form of anesthesia, hypoesthesia, paresthesia or dysesthesia that may prove irreversible.34 Gutta-percha is the most common solid root canal filling material.35 Gutta-percha cones generally contain 20% gutta-percha, 60%–70% zinc oxide, plasticizing agents (waxes and resins), barium sulfate, colouring agents and trace metals. Gutta-percha has a low level of toxicity, which makes it a material of choice in endodontic treatment.35 Thus, the passage of a gutta-percha cone beyond the apex rarely causes paresthesia.36 Indeed, the cone tends to deform without compressing the nerve or artery. In addition, it is a relatively inert material that causes no lesions of chemical origin if it contacts the neurovascular bundle.32 Gutta-percha has been evaluated in various cell culture systems and found to elicit no or low cytotoxicity, although cytotoxic effects varied among brands.37 However, depending on the gutta-percha product used, in vivo studies in both soft and hard tissues resulted in reactions varying from none to chronic inflammation. The observed inflammation may have been induced by anti-oxidants and oxides associated with the gutta-percha compound.37 Systemic reaction to gutta-percha products has not been reported.36 Another potential cause of paresthesia is root canal sealer. Paresthesia caused by sealers is mainly of chemical origin.37 Zinc oxide and eugenol-based sealers are among the most commonly used in endodontic treatment. Toxicity is mainly due to eugenol,31,36 whose neurotoxic effect and its involvement in paresthesia or anesthesia when in direct contact with the IAN has been demonstrated.38 Ozeki39 reported that a concentration of 200 ppm eugenol can anesthetize crayfish. Trowbridge and colleagues40 showed that freshly mixed zinc-oxide eugenol inhibits intradental nerve activity. Calcium hydroxide (Ca[OH]2)-based sealers are also common. Boiesen and Bodrin41 found that they caused irreversible nerve damage in an experimental model, and this was confirmed in clinical studies.42 Ahlgren and colleagues43 reported a case in which extrusion of a large amount of a Ca(OH)2-based sealer into the periapical area and near the IAN caused paresthesia due to mechanical compression. Regarding thermal nerve injury, Blanas and colleagues44 reported a case of paresthesia caused by apical extrusion of gutta-percha following obturation of the root canal with a thermoplastic technique. This method of obturation, described by Schilder,45 can, in fact, cause paresthesia if used after excessive root canal preparation.46 Paresthesia results from overheating of the inferior alveolar artery or nerve.44 The temperature for softening thermoplastic gutta-percha ranges from 53.5° to 57.5°C47 but intracanal temperatures of 50–100° C have been reported.46 Because temperature elevations of as little as 10°C can cause bone damage and necrosis48 and nerve tissue is thought to be even more sensitive to thermal insult than bone,46 the mechanism of nerve injury is understandable with overfill or overextension of thermoplastic gutta-percha into the inferior alveolar canal. In cases of nonpersistent episodes of nerve irritation, paresthesia should resolve within days or weeks as the cause is removed. Infection-related paresthesia subsides after appropriate nonsurgical endodontic therapy.11,21 Paresthesia related to local anesthesia resolves within approximately 8 weeks without treatment.22 Long-term or even permanent paresthesia can result in cases of nerve fibre laceration, prolonged pressure on the nerve or contact with toxic overfilled endodontic materials.10 The immediate therapy should be based on removal of the cause (when possible) and control of inflammation, edema, hematoma or infection. Drugs for such therapy include antibiotics, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and corticosteroids, proteolytic enzymes to disintegrate the coagulum and vitamin C, which has antioxidative action and reduces the effects of ischemia. During the reparative phase (within 30 days of the damage), both pharmacologic and instrumental methods can be used. Drugs include topical steroids, cocarnitine, somatotropic hormone, nerve growth factor, vitamins C and E (antioxidative), vasodilators (to reduce ischemia) and ozone, which improves the activity of red corpuscles and increases tissue oxygenation.11,49 Instrumental therapy includes magnetotherapy, laser therapy and application of electrical fields. In a late phase, when repair is no longer possible, the pharmacologic approach is limited to the treatment of persistent neuralgia.49 Another approach to managing paresthesia is surgical intervention. Although studies of IAN repair are limited, some have reported acceptable patient response to surgical treatment. In 1 study, the overall postoperative satisfaction of more than 55% of patients receiving surgical repair for inferior alveolar and lingual nerve injuries was good to excellent.50 Strauss and colleagues51 found that 92.2% of patients who underwent IAN microsurgery had statistically significant neurosensory improvement. According to Zuniga,52 better treatment outcomes are achieved if mental nerve paresthesia is treated as early as possible. On the other hand, Gregg53 stated that, because most IAN injuries are known to resolve spontaneously, there is no conclusive evidence that early intervention is better than delayed nonsurgical management (more than 3 months after injury). There seems to be a correlation between duration, origin, significance of the injury and prognosis of paresthesia. The longer the mechanical or chemical irritation persists, the more the nerve fibres degenerate and the greater the risk that the paresthesia will become permanent.32 - Morgan GW. Proprioception, touch and vibratory sensation. In: Goetz CG, Pappert EJ, editors. Textbook of clinical neurology. Philadelphia: Saunders; 1999. p. 315-32. - Lambrianidis T, Molyvdas J. Paresthesia of the inferior alveolar nerve caused by periodontal-endodontic pathosis. Oral Surg Oral Med Oral Pathol. 1987;63(1):90-2. - Morse DR. Endodontic-related inferior alveolar nerve and mental foramen paresthesia. Compend Contin Educ Dent. 1997;18(10):963-8, 970-3, 976-8. - Vicente A, Herrero C, Martin E, Valls J, Graus F, Mascaro JM. Trigeminal sensory-neuropathy in systemic sclerosis. Clin Exp Dermatol. 1991;16(5):403. - Farrell DA, Medsger TA Jr. Trigeminal neuropathy in progressive systemic sclerosis. Am J Med. 1982;73(1):57-62. - Bonnet F, Mercie P, Morlat P, Loiseau H, Lifermann F, Lacoste D. [Isolated involvement of the trigeminal nerve of sarcoidosis origin.] Rev Neurol Paris. 1997;155(1):59-61. French. - Chin A, Liang TS, Borislow AJ. Initial presentation of hepatocellular carcinoma as a mandibular mass: case report and review of the literature. Oral Surg Oral Med Oral Pathol Oral Radiol Endod. 1998;86(4):457-60. - Schwartz O, Kvorning SA. Tooth exfoliation, osteonecrosis of the jaw and neuralgia following herpes zoster of the trigeminal nerve. Int J Oral Surg. 1982;11(6):364-71. - Barrett AP, Smith MW. Maxillary nerve involvement in bacterial endocarditis. J Oral Maxillofac Surg. 1985;43(10):816-7. - Barrett AP. Selective anesthesias of the inferior alveolar nerve in leukemia and lymphoma. J Oral Maxillofacial Surg. 1985;43(12):992-4. - Ozkan BT, Celik S, Durmus E. Paresthesia of the mental nerve stem from periapical infection of mandibular canine tooth: a case report. Oral Surg Oral Med Oral Pathol Oral Radiol Endod. 2008;105(5):e28-31. - Di Lenarda R, Cadenaro M, Stacchi C. Paresthesia of the mental nerve induced by periapical infection: a case report. Oral Surg Oral Med Oral Pathol Oral Radiol Endod. 2000;90(6):746-9. - Zuniga J, LaBanc J. Advances in microsurgical nerve repair. J Oral Maxillofac Surg. 1993;51(1 Suppl 1):62-8. - Gluskin AH. Mishaps and serious complications in endodontic obturation. Endod Top. 2005;12:52-70. - Sicher H. The nerves of head and neck. The trigeminal nerve. In: Sicher H, editor. Oral anatomy. St Louis: Mosby; 1965. p. 369-86. - Williams PL, Warwick R, Dyson M, Bannister LH. Trigeminal nerve. In: Davies DV, Coupland RE, editors. Gray's anatomy: descriptive and applied. 34th ed. London: Longman Group Ltd; 1967. p. 1089-92. - Giuliani M, Lajolo C, Deli G, Silveri C. Inferior alveolar nerve paresthesia caused by endodontic pathosis: a case report and review of the literature. Oral Surg Oral Med Oral Pathol Oral Radiol Endod. 2001;92(6):670-4. - Gowgiel JM. The position and course of the mandibular canal. J Oral Implantol. 1992;18(4):383-5. - Littner MM, Kaffe I, Tamse A, Dicapua P. Relationship between the apices of the lower molars and mandibular canal — a radiographic study. Oral Surg Oral Med Oral Pathol. 1986;62(5):595-602. - Denio D, Torabinejad M, Bakland LK. Anatomical relationship of the mandibular canal to its surrounding structures in mature mandibles. J Endod. 1992;18(4):161-5. - Morse DR. Infection-related mental and inferior alveolar nerve paresthesia: literature review and presentation of two cases. J Endod. 1997;23(7):457-60. - Malamed SF. Local complications. In: Malamed SF, editor. Handbook of local anesthesia. 4th ed. St Louis: Mosby; 1997. p. 248-9. - Rowe AH. Damage to the inferior dental nerve during or following endodontic treatment. Br Dent J. 1983;155(9):306-7. - Grossman LI. Paresthesia from N2 or N2 substitute. Report of a case. Oral Surg Oral Med Oral Pathol. 1978;45(1):114-5. - Gutiérrez JH, Brizuela C, Villota E. Human teeth with periapical pathosis after overinstrumentation and overfilling of the root canals: a scanning electron microscopic study. Int Endod J. 1999;32:40-8. - Scolozzi P, Lombardi T, Jaques B. Successful inferior alveolar nerve decompression for dysesthesia following endodontic treatment: report of 4 cases treated by mandibular sagittal osteotomy. Oral Surg Oral Med Oral Pathol Oral Radiol Endod. 2004;97(5):625-31. - Hulsmann M, Hahn W. Complications during root canal irrigation — literature review and case reports. Int Endod J. 2000;33(3):186-93. - Becking AG. Complications in the use of sodium hypochlorite during endodontic treatment. Report of three cases. Oral Surg Oral Med Oral Pathol. 1991;71(3):346-8. - Gernhardt CR, Eppendorf K, Kozlowski A, Brandt M. Toxicity of concentrated sodium hypochlorite used as an endodontic irrigant. Int Endod J. 2004;37(4):272-80. - Er K, Sümer Z, Akpinar KE. Apical extrusion of intracanal bacteria following use of two engine-driven instrumentation techniques. Int Endod J. 2005;38(12):871-6. - Poveda R, Bagán JV, Fernández JM, Sanchis JM. Mental nerve paresthesia associated with endodontic paste within the mandibular canal: report of a case. Oral Surg Oral Med Oral Pathol Oral Radiol Endod. 2006;102(5):e46-49. - Tilotta-Yasukawa F, Millot S, El Haddioui A, Bravetti P, Gaudy JF. Labiomandibular paresthesia caused by endodontic treatment: an anatomic and clinical study. Oral Surg Oral Med Oral Pathol Oral Radiol Endod. 2006;102(4):e47-59. - Pertot W, Camps J, Remusat M, Proust J. In vivo comparison of the biocompatibility of two root canal sealers implanted into the mandibular bone of rabbits. Oral Surg Oral Med Oral Pathol. 1992;73(5):613-20. - Brodin P, Røed A, Aars H, Orstavik D. Neurotoxic effects of root filling materials on rat phrenic nerve in vitro. J Dent Res. 1982;61(8):1020-3. - Pascon EA, Spångberg LS. In vitro cytotoxicity of root canal filling materials: 1. Gutta-percha. J Endod. 1990;16(9):429-33. - Khabbaz MG, Papadopoulos PD. Deposition of calcified tissue around an overextended gutta-percha cone: case report. Int Endod J. 1999;32(3):232-5. - Dahl JE. Toxicity of endodontic filling materials. Endod Top. 2005;12:39-43. - Kozam G. The effect of eugenol on nerve transmission. Oral Surg Oral Med Oral Pathol. 1977;44(5):799-805. - Ozeki M. The effects of eugenol on the nerve and muscle in crayfish. Comp Biochem Physiol C. 1975;50(1):183-91. - Trowbridge H, Edwall L, Panopoulos P. Effect of zinc oxide-eugenol and calcium hydroxide on intradental nerve activity. J Endod. 1982;8(9):403-6. - Boiesen J, Bodrin P. Neurotoxic effect of two root canal sealers with calcium hydroxide on rat phrenic nerve in vitro. Endod Dent Traumatol. 1991;7(6):242-5. - Yatsuhashi T, Nakagawa K, Matsumoto M, Kasahara M, Igarashi T. Ichinohe T, et al. Inferior alveolar nerve paresthesia relieved by microscopic endodontic treatment. Bull Tokyo Dent Coll. 2003;44(4):209-12. - Ahlgren FK, Johannessen AC, Hellem S. Displaced calcium hydroxide paste causing inferior alveolar nerve paraesthesia: report of a case. Oral Surg Oral Med Oral Pathol Oral Radiol Endod. 2003;96(6):734-7. - Blanas N, Kienle F, Sándor GK. Inferior alveolar nerve injury caused by thermoplastic gutta-percha overextension. J Can Dent Assoc. 2004;70(6):384-7. - Schilder H. Filling root canals in three dimensions. Dent Clin North Am. 1967;11:723-44. - Fanibunda K, Whitworth J, Steele J. The management of thermomechanically compacted gutta percha extrusion in the inferior dental canal. Br Dent J. 1998;184(7):330-2. - Cohen BD, Combe ED, Lilley JD. Effect of thermal placement techniques on some physical properties of gutta-percha. Int Endod J. 1992;25(6):292-6. - Eriksson AR, Albrektson T. Temperature threshold levels for heat-induced bone tissue injury: a vital-microscopic study in the rabbit. J Prosthet Dent. 1983;50(1):101-7. - Franco A, Ferronato G. Nervo mandibolare in odontostomatologia. Padova, Italy, Frafin Sas; 1996. - Lam NP, Donoff RB, Kaban LB, Dodson TB. Patient satisfaction after trigeminal nerve repair. Oral Surg Oral Med Oral Pathol Oral Radiol Endod. 2003;95(5):538-43. - Strauss ER, Ziccardi VB, Janal MN. Outcome assessment of inferior alveolar nerve microsurgery: a retrospective review. J Oral Maxillofac Surg. 2006;64(12):1767-70. - Zuniga JR. Surgical management of trigeminal neuropathic pain. Atlas Oral Maxillofac Clin North Am. 2001;9(2):59-75. - Gregg JM. Surgical management of inferior alveolar nerve injuries (Part II): The case for delayed management. J Oral Maxillofac Surg. 1995; 53(11):1330-3.

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Bullying has been a problem among both children and adults since long before any of us can remember. From small cases to more serious ones, the act of hurting others emotionally or physically is an unfortunate side effect of human nature. The internet and social media platforms like Facebook have given bullies a new forum in which to taunt their victims. And while the landscape is different, the effects can be similar and often worse than those resulting from face-to-face interactions. Whether you or someone you know is being bullied, or you’re concerned about it happening in the future, arming yourself with knowledge about online bullying can help you avoid or diffuse the situation. What constitutes Facebook bullying? Much like bullying that occurs face-to-face, Facebook bullying can take many different forms. Even a seemingly mild bullying offence can have a lasting psychological impact, depending on the person being bullied. Here are just a few general examples of Facebook bullying: - Private messages involving derogatory comments or threats - Public comments within profiles, pages, or posts - Sharing sensitive or unflattering images or videos of the victim - Posting explicit or threatening images or videos to the victim’s profile or page - Pages or groups set up for the purpose of tormenting a victim or victims - Exclusion from private pages or groups causing the victim to feel left out Note that bullying doesn’t have to involve words. In many cases, images, memes, or videos are used to make a victim feel bad. It’s also important to note that Facebook bullying is often not confined to the platform itself. It may be taking place across several social media platforms, and possibly via emails, texts, or face-to-face interactions too. So how prevalent is the issue of cyberbullying on Facebook and other social media platforms? There have been a variety of reports released in recent years, and the results really depend on where and how the studies are carried out. The general consensus though is that most people (adults and children) have been victims of or witness to cyberbullying in some form. Here are some key finding from various reports. This UK study questioned 1,089 young people, aged 11-25. - 56% of young people have been excluded from conversations or groups on social media. - 83% say that social media platforms should be doing more to prevent cyberbullying on their platforms. - Almost half of the respondents had experienced nasty or threatening social media messages, texts, or emails. - Two-thirds admitted that if they experienced something upsetting while online, they wouldn’t tell their parents. This US study questioned 5,700 middle and high school students aged between 12 and 17. - 34% had experienced cyberbullying at some point in their lifetime. - 70% had experienced having rumors spread about them online. - 12% admitted to having cyberbullied others. - Girls were more likely to have been cyberbullying victims while boys were the more likely perpetrators. - 64% of those who had been cyberbullied said it affected their learning and their ability to feel safe while at school. - 83% of those who had been recently cyberbullied (within 30 days) had been bullied recently while at school as well. While this study is older, it offers some insight into the world of adult online bullying. - 73% have witnessed online harassment and 40% report having been harassed online. - 60% have witnessed offensive name-calling online and 27% have experienced being called offensive names. - 53% have witnessed someone making efforts to purposely embarrass another person online and 22% have experienced such actions against themselves. - 25% have witnessed someone being physically threatened online and 8% have been threatened themselves. - 24% have witnessed sustained online harassment over a period of time and 7% have experienced this firsthand. - 19% have seen sexual harassment online and 6% have been sexually harassed. - 18% have witnessed online stalking and 8% have been stalked. This study also found that men and women suffer different forms of online harassment as shown in the chart below. Facebook bullying implications Although the effects of Facebook bullying can be similar to those of face-to-face emotional bullying, there are a couple of factors that set these two types far apart. One of the allures of using social media as a platform for bullying is the anonymity factor. While Facebook’s Terms of Service doesn’t allow people to use fake names, it doesn’t actually verify users on signup. As such, it’s very easy for someone to hide their real identity while using the platform. Over on Facebook-owned Instagram, these anonymous accounts have the name “finstas,” short for “fake Instagram,” but really this is happening across platforms. In some cases, bullies even make accounts in their victim’s name for the sole purpose of ruining their reputation. This means that many would-be bullies who wouldn’t dream of carrying out these acts in a public landscape have a different avenue to pursue. An alarming and largely unexplained trend that’s surfacing amidst cyberbullying is kids actually cyberbullying themselves. The Cyberbullying Research Center study we discussed above found that six percent of children questioned admitted to creating anonymous profiles for the purposes of sending themselves hateful messages. This has been compared by psychologists to acts of physical self-harm, and dubbed “digital self-harm.” Regardless of who is doing it, there’s no doubt that anonymity is propagating cyberbullying. Plus, Facebook bullying is not limited to kids; adults bully other adults, and some even bully kids. In particular, there have been a number of examples of parents bullying the kids that have bullied their own. Before the age of the internet and social media, if someone was being bullied at school or at work, chances are they would find a safe haven upon returning home. Once inside that door, they would be safe from the verbal or physical abuse of their bullies. However, with social media, bullies can follow their victims home and step right inside, figuratively speaking. With many kids and adults spending their downtime on social media, bullies could potentially torment them from morning to night. Facebook bullying examples To better understand what happens in Facebook bullying cases, it’s helpful to look at some real-life examples. There are a plethora of cases and you could probably find some that are ongoing while browsing the platform yourself. Some of these examples are extreme, but they prove that you never really know how far someone will go with cyberbullying. Also see: Cyberbullying statistics Derogatory comments and threats A young Irishman, Darren Hughes, was just 17 when he committed suicide after being bullied via Facebook. His mother reported that he was bullied because of the color of his skin and because he wore a hearing aid. Darren was targeted through “horrific” and “threatening” Facebook messages and his mother has fought to convince the government to do more to prevent similar cases. Another teen, Kenneth Weishuhn, was bullied at school after coming out as gay, and the torment continued online. Classmates created a Facebook hate group and some even sent him death threats. Unfortunately, this is another case that ended terribly as Kenneth later committed suicide. Celebrities are far from immune from cyberbullying. In 2017, actress Maya Karin and her family were targeted by cyberbullies on Facebook and Instagram. While the details haven’t been disclosed, the perpetrator reportedly “hurled profanities in Malay and English and made the family fear for their safety.” She’s not the only celebrity to be targeted. Lena Dunham, Tom Daley, Leslie Jones, Blac Chyna, and many more have been victims of cyberbullying. In the case of Jones, the actress was forced to quit Twitter for a time in response to ongoing harassment. She tweeted: “I feel like I’m in a personal hell. I didn’t do anything to deserve this. It’s just too much. It shouldn’t be like this. So hurt right now.” I feel like I’m in a personal hell. I didn’t do anything to deserve this. It’s just too much. It shouldn’t be like this. So hurt right now. — Leslie Jones ? (@Lesdoggg) July 19, 2016 Sharing intimate videos Harassment through the sharing of intimate images and videos is a common form of cyberbullying. In South Wales, one woman was horrified as she realized a sex video featuring her had been shared on Facebook by someone she had trusted. Blac Chyna, mentioned above, was the victim in a case of revenge porn published on Instagram. She has described the anguish she felt after her former partner, Rob Kardashian, shared intimate images and videos as revenge after seeing her kiss another man. Blue Whale and Momo challenges As if some of the examples above aren’t enough, if you haven’t already heard about these “games,” they will bring a new level of horror to the world of social media. The Blue Whale challenge and the Momo challenge are similar to each other in that they encourage participants to carry out a series of self-harming acts of increasing danger, ending with the final act of committing suicide. After two related deaths in the country, India’s government released an advisory about the MOMO challenge in August 2018. It told parents to be aware of the game, but not to speak to kids about it unless they were sure their children were already aware of it. The challenge is said to have started on Facebook, with perpetrators targeting adolescents with suicidal tendencies. Parents were warned about the Blue Whale challenge (also dubbed A Silent House, A Sea of Whales, or F-57) back in 2016, with the Miami Police Department even releasing a video detailing the dangers. This was in reaction to a string of related deaths. In general, there aren’t specific laws that cover cyberbullying. While this is likely set to change as online bullying becomes increasingly relevant, for now, most countries prosecute cyberbullying under existing laws. Although most states have passed some law or policy related to bullying, these are often up to schools rather than law enforcement to implement. There aren’t any federal laws specifically related to bullying or cyberbullying but some other laws may be used to prosecute in both cases. That being said, it is often difficult to prosecute under a law that’s not designed to cover the specific actions involved in cyberbullying. One case in the US highlighted the vague nature of laws related to cyberbullying. In 2009, Lori Drew got revenge on her daughter’s bully through a fake MySpace account. The girl, Megan Meier, eventually committed suicide. Drew was originally convicted in the case via the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act on the basis she violated MySpace’s Terms of Service. However, the ruling was eventually overturned. Currently, the majority of US states have some type of cyberbullying law, but they vary in scope and penalty. One notable law is set to be passed in Michigan. This law would rule the following maximum penalties for cyberbullying: - First offence (misdemeanor): 93 days in jail and $500 fine. - Second offence (misdemeanor): One year in jail and $1,000 fine. - Repeated pattern of bullying causing serious injury (felony): Five years in prison and $5,000 fine. - Bullying causing death (felony): 10 years in prison and $10,000 fine. Currently, cyberbullying is not specifically covered by any UK law. However, certain acts that constitute cyberbullying may be punishable under other laws, such as the Protection from Harassment Act 1997, the Malicious Communications Act 1988, the Communications Act 2003, the Obscene Publications Act 1959, the Public Order Act 1986, and the Computer Misuse Act 1990. It appears that lawmakers are planning to put more of the onus on the platforms themselves. The goal is to introduce statutory codes of conduct which must be followed by platforms like Facebook. If they don’t comply, they could be faced with multimillion-dollar fines. According to UK Culture Secretary, Matt Hancock, he was prompted to get the ball rolling on this legislation after only four out of 14 tech giants sent representatives when invited to discuss the issue of cyberbullying with him. Similar to the UK, there are no specific laws related to cyberbullying in Canada. However, according to the Government of Canada website: “Depending on the exact nature of the behaviour, the following current offences could be charged: - Criminal harassment - Uttering threats; - Mischief in relation to data; - Unauthorized use of computer; - Identity fraud; - False messages, indecent or harassing telephone calls; - Counselling suicide; - Incitement of hatred; and, - Defamatory libel” The site also discusses in detail that it’s an offence to share intimate images of anyone without their consent. In Australia, things are a little more clear. According to the Australian Cybercrime Online Reporting Network (ACORN): “Under the Criminal Code Act 1995 (Cth) it is an offence to use the internet, social media or a telephone to menace, harass or cause offence.” This offence carries a maximum penalty of up to three years in prison or a fine in excess of $30,000 AUD. It’s also noted that stalking laws — which vary between state and territory — may be applied to online behavior. These tend to carry large maximum penalties. Steps Facebook is taking to prevent cyberbullying Although cyberbullying is carried out by the social media platforms themselves, there’s’ no doubt that the creators of platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat have provided bullies with a new forum from which to exert their wrath. As such, it makes sense that many people see social media platforms as facilitators of cyberbullying who should take at least partial responsibility for its prevention. In the past, platforms have all but shunned this responsibility, but in recent years, the problem has become so prevalent, they’ve had no choice but to step up and do something about it. While many would argue they could still be doing more, there has definitely been progress. Facebook has a short FAQ section related to bullying and harassment, but this barely scratches the surface. Thankfully, it is seemingly doing more and more to help in the fight against cyberbullying. Here are the main actions it’s taking: - Bullying Prevention Hub - Parent Portal - New tools and features - Community events Let’s take a look at each of these in more detail. 1. Bullying Prevention Hub In 2013, Facebook launched its dedicated Bullying Prevention Hub that was developed in partnership with the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. This is described as “a resource for teens, parents and educators seeking support and help for issues related to bullying and other conflicts.” It offers guides aimed at various parties, including kids being bullied, parents of bullied kids or accused bullies, and educators. The guides cover how to have conversations about bullying and steps you can take to stop it. While this may be helpful in some cases, going through a lot of the literature, it seems to undermine the serious nature of some cases of cyberbullying. For example, when it discusses actionable steps for a parent to take if their child is being threatened, there is no mention of involving law enforcement. The main piece of advice is to report the offence to the social media platform and talk to a school principal. Given that many cases will involve kids who don’t attend the same school or even live in the same region, the advice seems largely over-simplified. What’s more, the one piece of advice for people who have been accused of bullying is that they should apologize to their victim. This doesn’t begin to address very serious cases, for example, when a crime has been committed. Surely, in some cases, advice would involve turning oneself over to law enforcement or seeking some form of professional treatment, such as psychotherapy. 2. Parents Portal The Facebook Parents Portal was rolled out in 2016 and offers parents some basic tips about helping their child navigate social media. While there isn’t a large focus on bullying, there are some helpful sections about online privacy and links to guides for blocking and reporting other users within the platform. 3. New tools Thankfully, Facebook is taking more actionable steps in a bid to help thwart online bullying. In 2017, it implemented a couple of new features that could help prevent bullying and harassment. For example, if you block an account and the user creates a new one, then Facebook will automatically block the new account on your behalf. Of course, this likely isn’t foolproof because it’s believed that Facebook uses IP addresses to identify users. As such, the blocked party creating the new account could simply use a VPN to bypass the restriction. Nonetheless, it’s a step in the right direction. Another helpful feature that was introduced at the same time was the ability to read a message without the sender being notified that it had been seen. In addition, in October 2018, Facebook announced that it would implement tools that give users more control over what is posted about them on social media. For example, multiple comments on posts can be deleted or hidden at once, which can help when people are being bombarded with multiple hateful comments. Facebook will also give people the option to report bullying or harassment on behalf of another user. Another feature Facebook is testing is the option for users to block certain words from appearing in their comments. Facebook-owned Instagram already has an anti-bullying feature that was released in May 2018. 4. Community events In September 2018, Facebook announced that it will be attempting to tackle cyberbullying head-on in the US by organizing 200 free community events across 50 states. The idea is that the initial events — organized in association with the National PTA — will spark an ongoing forum in which parents can share stories about bullying and learn about how to keep kids safe online. Although, there’s no guarantee that steps taken by Facebook and other platforms will actually have an effect. Indeed, a recent initiative by Facebook and Snapchat in the UK appeared to fall on deaf ears. The initiative included a recommendation for bullying victims to call a national hotline, but no calls were made as a result. Cyberbullying prevention and reporting Unfortunately, there are always going to be bullies in the world and while it would be wonderful if, in the famous words of Rodney King, we could “all just get along,” it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen any time soon. That being said, there are still steps you can take to help prevent you or someone else enduring more emotional or physical stress as a result of Facebook bullying. Adjust privacy settings While it’s not true in every case, accessibility can make a difference when it comes to who bullies decide to target online. Facebook enables you to control who can see your posts, make comments on your profile, and send you friend requests, among other things. And it’s not just profiles. If you run a page and you want to avoid having to deal with online harassment, it’s possible to stop visitors from posting on your page altogether. Have a group on Facebook? You can make it private so that unwanted visitors can’t come in and post inappropriate messages. If you’re a parent, you can help your child navigate social media by going through privacy settings with them and setting some guidelines for using various platforms. You can also employ the use of parental control software such as Qustodio. This enables you to monitor your child’s social media activity, as well as what they’re doing elsewhere on the web. Avoid sending sensitive information or material online Many cases of online bullying and harassment involve the sharing of sensitive or private information, images, or videos. Ideally, you shouldn’t be sharing any of this type of material online, in case it falls into the wrong hands. Unfortunately, unlike many other forms of prevention, this isn’t foolproof. Hackers can get into your computer and steal sensitive files or even take control of your computer camera. There are also cases of revenge porn, as mentioned earlier, where the material was shared with someone the victim had trusted in the past. Use a VPN As mentioned, information and material used in online bullying and harassment isn’t always handed over intentionally. Hackers are able to get their hands on your information by other means, such as using man-in-the-middle attacks. These involve internet traffic being intercepted so that a third party can see its contents. One way to prevent this is to use a Virtual Private Network (VPN). A VPN will encrypt all of your internet traffic so that it is unreadable by anyone who intercepts it. Unfriend, block, and report If you are on the receiving end of any unwanted comments or messages, you have several options within the Facebook platform. First, you can “unfriend” someone. If you have set up your privacy settings correctly, they will no longer be able to see or comment on any of your posts or send you a message. Another measure is to “block” them. This will prevent them from being able to see you on Facebook at all. Finally, you can report the offender to Facebook. However, there have been reports that people have not received timely responses from Facebook. You may want to pursue other avenues of reporting. This is especially the case if you have endured or witnessed bullying of a serious nature. In that case, contacting the police is advisable. If relevant, the school should also be notified, although schools have mixed track records for dealing with bullies appropriately. Although you may want to simply delete unwanted messages or comments as soon as you see them, it’s smart to keep a record of them. One way to do this is to take a screen grab of the message (including the sender’s name and the date stamp) and storing it in a folder on your computer. Then you can go ahead and delete the original comment or message. This way, if needed, you’ll have your own proof to show whomever necessary. While investigations carried out by Facebook or law enforcement agencies can often recover deleted messages or comments, it’s simpler if you have your own record to refer to. Image credit: “Bullying” licensed under CC BY 2.0

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This article is transcribed from a lecture delivered at FEE in 1971. Advertising has been badly treated by many scholars who should know better. Not only Marxists and liberals, but even conservatives have given advertising a bad press. Let us examine some of the criticisms. First, many advertising messages are said to be offensive — by esthetic or ethical and moral standards. Unfettered, unhampered, laissez-faire capitalism, it is contended, would propagate such messages in a way that could very well demoralize and offend the tastes and morals of members of society. Second, advertising, it is argued, is deceitful, fraudulent, full of lies. Misinformation is spread by advertising, in print, on the airwaves, and this does harm to the members of society; for that reason advertising should be controlled, limited, taxed may. Third, it is argued that where advertising is not deceitful, it is at best persuasive. That is, it attempts to change people’s tastes. It attempts not to fulfill the desires of man but to change his desires to fit that which has been produced. The claim of the market economist has always been that the free market generates the flow of production along the lines that satisfy consumer tastes; their tastes determine what shall be produced — briefly, consumer sovereignty. On the contrary, the critics of advertising argue, capitalism has developed into a system where producers produce and then mold men’s minds to buy that which has been produced. Rather than production being governed by consumer sovereignty, quite the reverse: the consumer is governed by producer sovereignty. A fourth criticism has been that advertising propagates monopoly and is antithetical to competition. In a competitive economy, it is pointed out, there would be no advertising; each seller would sell as much as he would like to sell without having to convince consumers to buy that which they would not otherwise have bought. So, advertising is made possible by imperfections in the market. More seriously, it is contended, advertising leads toward monopoly by building up a wall of good will, a protective wall of loyalty among consumers which renders a particular product immune to outside competition. Competing products, which do not share in the fruits of the advertising campaign, find themselves on the outside. This barrier to entry may gradually lead a particular producer to control a share of the market which is rendered invulnerable to the winds of outside competition. Finally — and this in a way sums up all of these criticisms — advertising is condemned as wasteful. The consumer pays a price for a product which covers a very large sum of money spent on advertising. Advertising does not change the commodity that has been purchased; it could have been produced and sold at a much lower price without the advertising. In other words, resources are being used and paid for by the consumer without his receiving anything that he could not have received in their absence. These are serious criticisms. We have learned to expect them to be emphasized by contemporary liberal economists. To Marxist thinkers, again, advertising is essential for capitalism; it is seen as a socially useless device necessary in order to get excess production sold. They see no positive elements in advertising at all. But even conservative thinkers and economists have pointed out some apparent limitations, weaknesses, criticisms of advertising. The Free Economy and How It Functions It is not my purpose here to defend each and every advertising message. I would rather discuss a free economy, a laissez-faire economy, pure capitalism. I would like to show that in such a world, advertising would emerge with a positive role to play; that it would add to the efficiency with which consumer wants are satisfied; and that, while the real world is far from perfect, a large volume of the criticism would fade away were it understood what role advertising, in fact, has to play in a pure market economy. Let me imagine a world, a free market, in which there are no deceitful men at all. All the messages beamed to consumers and prospective consumers would be, as far as the advertisers themselves believe, the strict truth. We will consider later the implications of the fact that men are imperfect and that men succumb to the temptation in selling something to say a little bit less, a little bit more, than the exact truth. In the meantime, let us talk about a world of honest men, men who do not try to deceive. Further, let us imagine a pure market economy with government intervention kept to the absolute minimum — the night watchman role. The government stands to the sidelines and ensures the protection of private property rights, the enforcement of contracts freely entered into. Everyone then proceeds to play the game of the free market economy with producers producing that which they believe can be sold to the consumers at the highest possible money price. Entrepreneur producers, who detect where resources are currently being used in less than optimum fashion, take these resources and transfer them to other uses in the economy where they will serve consumer wants which the entrepreneurs believe are more urgently desired, as measured by the amounts of money consumers are willing to pay for various products. We will assume that there is freedom of entry into all industries. No entrepreneur has sole control over any resource that is uniquely necessary for the production of a given product. No government licenses are required in order to enter into the practice of a given profession or to introduce a particular product. All entrepreneurs are free to produce what they believe to be profitable. All resource owners are free to sell their resources, whether labor, natural resources, capital goods. They are free to sell or rent these resources to the highest bidder. In this way the agitation of the market gradually shuffles resources around until they begin to be used to produce those products which consumers value most highly. Consumers arrange their spending to buy the commodities they believe to be most urgently needed by themselves. And the market flows on in the way that we understand it. We say this is a free market, a laissez-faire, competitive system. But we do not mean a perfectly competitive market, as this notion has been developed by the neo-classical economists. In a perfectly competitive market, each seller faces a demand curve which is perfectly horizontal. That is to say, each seller believes that he can sell as much as he would like to sell without having to lower the price. Each buyer faces a perfectly horizontal supply curve and each buyer believes that he can buy as much as he would like to buy of anything without having to offer a higher price. In such a world of "perfect competition," we have what we call an "equilibrium" situation, that is a situation where all things have already been fully adjusted to one another. All activities, all decisions have been fully coordinated by the market so that there are no disappointments. No participant in the economy discovers that he could have done something better. No participant in the economy discovers that he has made plans to do something which it turns out he cannot do. In this model of the perfectly competitive economy, there would in fact be no competition in the sense in which the layman, or the businessman, understands the term. The term "competition" to the businessman, the layman, means an activity designed to outstrip one’s competitors, a rivalrous activity designed to get ahead of one’s colleagues, or those with whom one is competing. In a world of equilibrium, a world of "perfect competition," there would be no room for further rivalry. There would be no reason to attempt to do something better than is currently being done. There would, in fact, be no competition in the everyday sense of the term. When we describe the laissez-faire economy as competitive, we mean something quite different. We mean an economy in which there is complete freedom of entry; if anyone believes that he can produce something that can serve consumers’ wants more faithfully, he can try to do it. If anyone believes that the current producers are producing at a price which is too high, then he is free to try to produce and sell at a lower price. This is what competition means. It does not mean that the market has already attained the "equilibrium" situation, which goes under the very embarrassing technical name of "perfectly competitive economy." Now, economists and others understand generally that competition means price competition: offering to sell at a lower price than your competitors are asking, or offering to buy at a higher price than your competitors are bidding. Entrepreneurs will offer higher prices than others are offering for scarce labor. They will offer to sell a product at lower prices than the competing store is asking. This is what price competition means. This is the most obvious form in which competition manifests itself. However, we must remember that there is another kind of competition, sometimes called "non-price competition," sometimes called "quality competition." Competition takes the form not only of producing the identical product which your competitors are producing and selling it at a lower price, not only in buying the identical resource which your competitors are buying and offering a higher price. Competition means sometimes offering a better product, or perhaps an inferior product, a product which is more in line with what the entrepreneur believes consumers are in fact desirous of purchasing. It means producing a different model of a product, a different quality, putting it in a different package, selling it in a store with a different kind of lighting, selling it along with an offer of free parking, selling through salesmen who smile more genuinely, more sincerely. It means competing in many, many ways besides the pure price which is asked of the consumer in monetary terms. With freedom of entry, every entrepreneur is free to choose the exact package, the exact opportunity which he will lay before the public. Each opportunity, each package has many dimensions. He can choose the specifications for his package by changing many, many of these variables. The precise opportunity that he will lay before the public will be that which, in his opinion, is more urgently desired by the consumer as compared with that which happens to be produced by others. So long as there’s freedom of entry, the fact that my product is different from his does not mean that I am a monopolist. A Disservice to Economics The late Professor Edward H. Chamberlin of Harvard did economics a great disservice in arguing that because a producer is producing a unique product, slightly different from what the fellow across the street is producing, in some sense he is a monopolist. So long as there’s freedom of entry, so long as the man across the road can do exactly what I’m doing, the fact that he is not doing exactly what I’m doing is simply the result of his different entrepreneurial judgment. He believes that he can do better with his model. I believe I can do better with mine. I believe that free parking is more important to consumers than fancy lighting in the store. He gives a different package than I do. Not because he couldn’t do what I’m doing, not because I couldn’t do what he’s doing, but because each believes that he knows better what the consumer is most anxious to acquire. This is what we mean by competition in the broadest sense, not merely price competition, but quality competition in its manifold possible manifestations. Professor Chamberlin popularized a distinction which was not original with him but which owes its present widely circulated popularity primarily to his work. That is a distinction between "production costs" and "selling costs." In his book of almost forty years ago, The Theory of Monopolistic Competition, Chamberlin argued that there are two kinds of costs which manufacturers, producers, sellers, suppliers incur. First, they incur the fabrication costs, the costs of producing what it is they want to sell. Second, they incur additional expenditures that do not produce the product or change it or improve it, but merely get it sold. Advertising, of course, is the most obvious example which Chamberlin cited. But "selling costs" of all kinds were considered by him to be sharply different from "production costs." In his original formulation, Chamberlin argued that "production costs" are costs incurred to produce the product for a given Demand Curve while "selling costs" simply shift the Demand Curve over to the right. That is to say, the same product is now purchased in greater quantities at a given price but the product is the same. A False Distinction The fallacy in the distinction between production costs and selling costs is fairly easy to notice. In fact, it is impossible for the outside observer — except as he resorts to arbitrary judgments of value — to distinguish between expenditures which do, and expenditures which do not, alter the product. We know as economists that a product is not an objective quantity of steel or paper. A product is that which is perceived, understood, desired by a consumer. If there are two products otherwise similar to the outside eye which happen to be considered to be different products by the consumer, then to the economist these are different products. Ludwig von Mises gives the example, which cannot be improved upon, of eating in a restaurant. A man has a choice of two restaurants, serving identical meals, identical food. But in one restaurant they haven’t swept the floor for six weeks. The meals are the same. The food is the same. How shall be describe the money spent by the other restaurant in sweeping the floor? "Production costs” or "selling costs?" Does sweeping change the food? No. Surely, then, it could be argued that this is strictly a "selling cost." It is like advertising. The food remains the same; but, because you have a man sweeping out the floor, more people come to this restaurant than to that. But this is nonsense. What you buy when you enter a restaurant is not the food alone. What you buy is a meal, served in certain surroundings. If the surroundings are more desirable, it’s a different meal, it’s a different package. That which has been spent to change the package is as much production cost as the salary paid to the cook; no difference. Another example that I recall was the case of the coal being run out of Newcastle and traveling along the railroad toward London. Every mile that coal travels nearer the London drawing room, the Demand Curve shifts over to the right. How shall we describe that transportation cost? "Production cost" or "selling cost?" Of course, it’s "production cost." In fact, it’s "selling cost" too. All "production costs" are "selling costs." All costs of production are incurred in order to produce something which will be more desirable than the raw materials. You take raw meat and turn it into cooked steak. The act of changing the raw meat into cooked steak is to make the consumer desire it more eagerly. Does this simply shift the Demand Curve over to the right? Of course, it does that. It does it by changing the product. Another example supposes there are two identical pieces of steel, except that one piece has been blessed, while the other piece is subject to a spiritual taint, which to the scientist is not there but which is very vivid and vital to the consumer. How shall we describe the expenditure on the commodities? Shall be describe the difference between them as nonexistent? Or should we not recognize that, if something is spiritually tainted to the consumer —in his view, not necessarily in mine or yours or the economist’s or other than in the mind of the consumer — then he will not buy the tainted item, even though to the objective laboratory scientist there’s no difference between the items? The economist has recognized these as two different commodities. There’ll be two Demand Curves. The fact that the scientist doesn’t see any difference — they look the same, they smell the same, if you touch them they feel the same — is irrelevant. We know, as economists, that what we find in a commodity is not the objective matter that is inside it, but how it is received by the consumer. Clearly then, the distinction between a so-called "selling cost" and "production cost" is quite arbitrary. It depends entirely on the value judgments of the outside observer. The outside observer can say that this particular selling effort does not change the product, but in that situation he is arrogating to himself the prerogative of pronouncing what is and what is not a product. That is something which violates our fundamental notions of individual consumer freedom: that a consumer’s needs are defined by no one else other than himself. This may seem quite a detour from advertising and yet it is all relevant to the question of what role advertising has to play. The Provision of Information Let us consider how some of these notions apply to the matter of information. One of the standard defenses for advertising is that it provides a service which consumers value the provision of knowledge, the provision of information. People buy books. People go to college. People enroll in all kinds of courses. Advertising is simply another way of providing information. To be sure, it would seem that the information provided by suppliers comes from a tainted source, but don’t forget that we are imagining for the meantime a world without deceitful people. We can even relax that assumption for a moment. It may be cheaper for the consumer to get his information from the supplier or the producer than from an outside source. In other words, if you, a consumer, have the choice of acquiring information about a particular product — either more cheaply from the producer or more expensively from an outside, "objective" source — you may decide that, on balance, you’re likely to get a better deal, penny-for-penny, information-wise, by reading the information of the producer, scanning it perhaps with some skepticism, but nonetheless relying on that rather than buying it from an outside source. Technically, this involves what is known as the problem of transactions costs. It may be more economical for the information to be packaged together with the product, or at least to be produced jointly with the product, than to have the information produced and communicated by an outside source. This is a possibility not to be ignored. Advertising provides information, and this goes a long way to explain the role which advertising and other kinds of selling efforts must play. Does this not seem to contradict the point just made, that there is no distinction between "production costs" and "selling costs"? Surely information about a product is distinct from the product. Surely the costs incurred to provide information are a different kind of costs than the costs incurred to produce the product. The answer is clearly, no. Information is produced; it is desired; it is a product; it is purchased jointly with the product itself; it is a part of the package; and it is something which consumers value. Its provision is not something performed on the outside that makes people consume something which they would not have consumed before. It is something for which people are willing to pay; it is a service. You can distinguish different parts of a service. You can distinguish between four wheels and a car. But the four wheels are complementary commodities. That is to say, the usefulness of the one is virtually nil without the availability of the other. The car and gasoline are two separate products, to be sure, and yet they are purchased jointly, perhaps from different producers, different suppliers, but they are nonetheless parts of a total package, a total product. If it happens that the information is produced and sold jointly with the product itself, then we have no reason to question the characteristics of the costs of providing information as true "production costs," not producing necessarily the physical commodity about which information is produced, but producing information which is independently desired by consumers, independently but jointly demanded, complementarily used together with the "product" itself. In other words, the service of providing information is the service of providing something which is needed just as importantly as the "product" itself. Why the Shouting? There is another aspect of advertising which is often overlooked. Information is exceedingly important. But, surely, it is argued, information can be provided without the characteristics of advertising that we know, without the color, without the emotion, without the offensive aspects of advertising. Surely information can be provided in simple straightforward terms. The address of this and this store is this and this place. These and these qualities of commodities are available at these and these prices. Why do illustrated advertising messages have to be projected? Why do all kinds of obviously uninformative matter have to be introduced into advertising messages? This is what renders the information aspects of advertising so suspect. The Marxists simply laugh it away. They say it is ridiculous to contend that advertising provides any kind of genuine information. If one rests the defense of advertising on its informative role, then one has a lot of explaining to do. One has to explain why information that could be provided in clear cut, straightforward terms is provided in such garish and loud forms, in the way that we know it. The answer, I think, is that advertising does much more than provide information which the consumer wishes to have. This is something which is often overlooked, even by economists. Supposing I set up a gas station. I buy gasoline and I have it poured into my cellar, my tanks. I have a pump carefully hidden behind some bushes, and cars that come down the road can buy gas if they know that I’m here. But I don’t go to the effort to let them know I’m here. I don’t put out a sign. Well, gas without information is like a car without gas. Information is a service required complementarily with the gas. Customers Want to Know Where to Find the Product Supposing, then, I take a piece of paper, type very neatly in capital letters, "GAS," and stick it on my door. Cars speed down the road in need of gas, but they don’t stop to read my sign. What is missing here? Information is missing. Don’t people want information? Yes. They would like to know where the gas station is, but it’s a well kept secret. Now, people are looking for that information. It’s my task as an entrepreneur not only to have gas available but to have it in a form which is known to consumers. It is my task to supply gas-which-is-known-about, not to provide gas and information. I have not only to produce opportunities which are available to consumers; I have to make consumers aware of these opportunities. This is a point which is often overlooked. An opportunity which is not known, an opportunity to which a consumer is not fully awakened, is simply not an opportunity. I am not fulfilling my entrepreneurial task unless I project to the consumer the awareness of the opportunity. How do I do that? I do that, not with a little sign on my door, but with a big neon sign, saying GAS; and better than that I chalk up the price; and better than that I make sure that the price is lower than the price at nearby stations; and I do all the other things that are necessary to make the consumer fully aware of the opportunity that I am in fact prepared to put before him. In other words, the final package consists not only of abstract academic information but in having the final product placed in front of the consumer in such a form that he cannot miss it. Free $10 Bills! The strange thing about the world in which we live is that it is a world in which $10 bills are floating around, free $10 bills! The problem is that very few of us notice these $10 bills. It is the role of the entrepreneur to notice the existence of $10 bills. An entrepreneur buys resources for $10 and he sells the product for $20. He is aware that resources available for $10 are currently being used in less than optimum fashion, that commodities for which consumers are willing to pay $20 are not being produced, and he puts these things together. He sees the $10 bill and makes the combination which other people do not see. Anybody might do it — freedom of entry. The entrepreneur notices the $10 bill, gets it for himself by placing in front of the consumer something which he had not noticed. If the consumer knew where he could buy resources for $10 and get the product that is worth $20, he wouldn’t buy from the entrepreneur. He would do it himself. Since he doesn’t know, I, as entrepreneur, have to create this opportunity and make the consumer aware. It is not enough to buy gas and put it in the ground. The entrepreneur puts it in the ground in a form that the consumer recognizes. To do this requires much more than fabrication. It requires communication. It requires more than simple information. It requires more than writing a book, publishing it, and having it on a library shelf. It requires more than putting something in a newspaper in a classified ad and expecting the consumer to see it. You have to put it in front of the consumer in a form that he will see. Otherwise, you’re not performing your entrepreneurial task. The Growth of Advertising Advertising has grown. Compare the volume of advertising today with the volume of 100 years ago and it has grown tremendously. More! Consider the price of a commodity that you buy in a drug store or in a supermarket. Find out what portion of that price can be attributed to advertising costs and it turns out that a much larger percentage of the final cost to the consumer can be attributed to advertising today than could have been attributed 50 years ago, 70 years ago, 100 years ago. Why is this? Why has advertising expenditure grown in proportion to total value of output? Why has advertising expenditure grown in proportion to the price of a finished commodity? Why has advertising apparently grown more offensive, more loud, more shrill? It’s fairly easy to understand. I give, as example, the lobby walls of a college building that I know very well. At one time this was a handsome lobby with walls of thick marble; you could walk from one end of the building to the other and the walls would be clear. Some years ago an enterprising entrepreneur decided to use some free advertising space. He pasted up a sign. It was the only sign on the wall; everybody looked at it, saw the message. I don’t remember what the message was or whether it was torn down, but I do remember that soon afterward those walls were full of signs. As you walked down the passage, you could read all kinds of messages, all kinds of student activities, non-student activities, student non-activities. It was fairly easy to learn about what was going on simply by reading the signs. At first, the signs did not have o be big. But as advertisers saw the opportunity, the free space gradually filled up. The Ricardian rent theory came into play; all the free land was in use. And as the free land or space was taken, of course, it became more and more important to get up early to paste up your sign. That was the "rent," the high price, getting up early. But more than that, it became necessary now to arouse all kinds of interest in me in order to get me to read these signs. In other words, the variety and multiplicity of messages make it harder and harder to get a hearing. The Price of Affluence We live in a world which is often described as an "affluent society." An affluent society is one in which there are many, many opportunities placed before consumers. The consumer enters a supermarket and if he is to make a sensible, intelligent decision he is going to have to spend several hours calculating very carefully, reading, rereading everything that’s on the packages and doing a complete research job before feeding all the information into the computer and waiting for the optimum package to be read off. It’s a tough job to be a consumer. And the multiplicity of opportunities makes it necessary for advertisers, for producers, to project more and more provocative messages if they want to be heard. This is a cost of affluence. It is a cost, certainly; something that we’d much rather do without, if we could; but we can’t. The number of commodities that have been produced is so great that in order for any one particular product to be brought to the attention of the consumer a large volume of advertising is necessary. And we can expect to get more and more. Is it part of production costs? Very definitely, yes. It is completely arbitrary for anyone to argue that, whether or not the consumer knows it, the commodity is there anyway, so that when he pays the price which includes the advertising communication he is paying more than is necessary for the opportunity made available. For an opportunity to be made available, it must be in a form which it is impossible to miss. And this is what advertising is all about. One more word about the offensiveness of advertising. Ultimately in a free market, consumers tend to get what they want. The kinds of products produced will reflect the desires of the consumer. A society which wants moral objects will get moral objects. A society which wants immoral objects will tend to get immoral objects. Advertised communication is part of the total package produced and made available to consumers. The kind of advertising we get, sad to say, is what we deserve. The kind of advertising we get reflects the kind of people that we are. No doubt, a different kind of advertising would be better, more moral, more ethical in many respects; but I’m afraid we have no one to blame but ourselves, as in all cases where one deplores that which is produced by a market society. A final word about deceit. Of course, deceitful advertising is to be condemned on both moral and economic grounds. But we have to put it in perspective. Let me read from one very eminent economist who writes as follows: The formation of wants is a complex process. No doubt wants are modified by Madison Avenue. They are modified by Washington, by the university faculties and by churches. And it is not at all clear that Madison Avenue has the advantage when it comes to false claims and exaggerations.1 Take with a Grain of Salt In other words, we live in a world where you have to be careful what you read, to whom you listen, whom to believe. And it’s true of everything, every aspect of life. If one were to believe everything projected at him, he would be in a sorry state. It is very easy to pick out the wrong messages to believe. Now, this doesn’t in any way condone or justify deceitful messages of any kind. We have to recognize, however, while particular producers may have a short-run interest in projecting a message to consumers of doubtful veracity, that so long as there’s freedom of competition the consumer has his choice not only of which product to buy but who to believe. And notice what is the alternative in this world of imperfect human beings. The alternative, of course, is government control — still by imperfect human beings. So there is no way to render oneself invulnerable to the possibility of false, fraudulent, deceitful messages. It would be nice to live in a world where no deceitful men were present. It would be cheaper. You could believe any message received. You wouldn’t have to check out the credentials of every advertiser. But that is not the world in which we live. You check out the credit standing of individuals, the character of people with whom you deal; and this is an unavoidable, necessary cost. To blame advertising for the imperfections and weaknesses of mankind is unfair. Advertising would exist under any type of free market system. Advertising would be less deceitful if men were less deceitful. It would be more ethical, less offensive, if men were less offensive and more ethical. But advertising itself is an integral, inescapable aspect of the market economy. 1 H. Demsetz, "The Technostructure, Forty-Six Years Later," (Yale Law Journal, 1968), p. 810.

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It is becoming increasingly apparent that food and agriculture across the world is in crisis. Food is becoming denutrified, unhealthy and poisoned with chemicals and diets are becoming less diverse. There is a loss of plant and insect diversity, which threatens food security, soils are being degraded, water tables polluted and depleted and smallholder farmers, so vital to global food production, are being squeezed off their land and out of farming. A minority of the global population has access to so much food than it can afford to waste much of it, while food poverty and inequality have become a fact of life for hundreds of millions. This crisis stems from food and agriculture being wedded to power structures that serve the interests of the powerful agribusiness corporations in the Western countries, especially the US. Over the last 60 years or so, Washington’s plan has been to restructure indigenous agriculture across the world. And this plan has been geopolitical in nature: subjugating nations by getting them to rely more on US imports rather and grow less of their own food. What happened in Mexico under the banner of ‘free trade’ is outlined further on in this article. Agriculture and food production and distribution have become globalised and tied to an international system of trade based on export-oriented mono-cropping, commodity production for the international market, indebtedness to international financial institutions (IMF-World Bank) and the need for nations to boost foreign exchange (US dollar) reserves to repay debt (which neatly boosts demand for the dollar, the lynch pin of US global dominance). This has resulted in food surplus and food deficit areas, of which the latter have become dependent on (US) agricultural imports and strings-attached aid. Food deficits in the global South mirror food surpluses in the West. Whether through IMF-World Bank structural adjustment programmes related to debt repayment, as occurred in Africa, bilateral trade agreements like NAFTA and its impact on Mexico or, more generally, deregulated global trade rules, the outcome has been similar: the devastation of traditional, indigenous agriculture. Integral to all of this has been the imposition of the green revolution. Farmers were encouraged to purchase seeds from corporations that were dependent on petrochemical fertilisers and pesticides to boost yields. They required loans to purchase these corporate inputs and governments borrowed to finance irrigation and dam building projects for what was a water-intensive model. While the green revolution was sold to governments and farmers on the basis it would increase productivity and earnings and would be more efficient, we are now in a position to see that it served to incorporate nations and farmers into a system of international capitalism based on dependency, deregulated and manipulated commodity markets, unfair subsidies and inherent food insecurity. As part of a wider ‘development’ plan for the global South, millions of farmers have been forced out of agriculture to become cheap factory labour (for outsourced units from the West) or, as is increasingly the case, unemployed or underemployed slum dwellers. And many of those who remain in agriculture find themselves being steadily squeezed out as farming becomes increasingly financially non-viable due to falling incomes, the impact cheap subsidised imports and policies deliberately designed to run down smallholder agriculture. Aside from the geopolitical shift in favour of the Western nations resulting from the programmed destruction of traditional agriculture, the corporate-controlled, chemical-laden green revolution has adversely impacted the nature of food, soil, human health and the environment. Sold on the promise of increased yields, this has been overstated. And the often stated ‘humanitarian’ intent and outcome (‘millions of lives saved’) has had more to do with PR rather than the reality of cold commercial interest. Moreover, if internationally farmers found themselves beholden to a US centric system of trade and agriculture, at home they were also having to cater to the needs of a distant and expanding urban population whose food needs were different to local rural-based communities. In addition to a focus on export oriented farming, crops were being grown for the urban market, regardless of farmers’ needs or the dietary requirements of local rural markets. Impacts of the green revolution on the farm In an open letter written in 2006 to policy makers in India, farmer and campaigner Bhaskar Save summarised some of the impacts of green revolution farming in India. He argued that the actual reason for pushing the green revolution was the much narrower goal of increasing marketable surplus of a few relatively less perishable cereals to fuel the urban-industrial expansion favoured by the government and a few industries at the expense of a more diverse and nutrient-sufficient agriculture, which rural folk – who make up the bulk of India’s population – had long benefited from. Before, Indian farmers had been largely self-sufficient and even produced surpluses, though generally smaller quantities of many more items. These, particularly perishables, were tougher to supply urban markets. And so the nation’s farmers were steered to grow chemically cultivated monocultures of a few cash-crops like wheat, rice, or sugar, rather than their traditional polycultures that needed no purchased inputs. Tall, indigenous varieties of grain provided more biomass, shaded the soil from the sun and protected against its erosion under heavy monsoon rains, but these very replaced with dwarf varieties, which led to more vigorous growth of weeds that were able to compete successfully with the new stunted crops for sunlight. As a result, the farmer had to spend more labour and money in weeding, or spraying herbicides. Moreover, straw growth with the dwarf grain crops fell and much less organic matter was locally available to recycle the fertility of the soil, leading to an artificial need for externally procured inputs. Inevitably, the farmers resorted to use more chemicals and soil degradation and erosion set in. The exotic varieties, grown with chemical fertilisers, were more susceptible to pests and diseases, leading to yet more chemicals being poured. But the attacked insect species developed resistance and reproduced prolifically. Their predators – spiders, frogs, etc. – that fed on these insects and controlled their populations were exterminated. So were many beneficial species like the earthworms and bees. Save noted that India, next to South America, receives the highest rainfall in the world. Where thick vegetation covers the ground, the soil is alive and porous and at least half of the rain is soaked and stored in the soil and sub-soil strata. A good amount then percolates deeper to recharge aquifers or groundwater tables. The living soil and its underlying aquifers thus serve as gigantic, ready-made reservoirs. Half a century ago, most parts of India had enough fresh water all year round, long after the rains had stopped and gone. But clear the forests and the capacity of the earth to soak the rain drops drastically. Streams and wells run dry. While the recharge of groundwater has greatly reduced, its extraction has been mounting. India is presently mining over 20 times more groundwater each day than it did in 1950. But most of India’s people – living on hand-drawn or hand-pumped water in villages, and practising only rain-fed farming – continue to use the same amount of ground water per person, as they did generations ago. More than 80% of India’s water consumption is for irrigation, with the largest share hogged by chemically cultivated cash crops. For example, one acre of chemically grown sugarcane requires as much water as would suffice 25 acres of jowar, bajra or maize. The sugar factories too consume huge quantities. From cultivation to processing, each kilo of refined sugar needs two to three tonnes of water. Save argued this could be used to grow, by the traditional, organic way, about 150 to 200 kg of nutritious jowar or bajra (native millets). The colonisation of Mexico by US agribusiness If Bhaskar Save helped open people’s eyes to what has happened on the farm and to ecology as a result of the green revolution, a 2015 report by GRAIN provides a wider overview of how US agribusiness has hijacked an entire nation’s food and agriculture under the banner of ‘free trade’ to the detriment of the environment, health and farmers. In 2012, Mexico’s National Institute for Public Health released the results of a national survey of food security and nutrition. Between 1988 and 2012, the proportion of overweight women between the ages of 20 and 49 increased from 25 to 35% and the number of obese women in this age group increased from 9 to 37%. Some 29% of Mexican children between the ages of 5 and 11 were found to be overweight, as were 35% of the youngsters between 11 and 19, while one in 10 school age children suffered from anaemia. The Mexican Diabetes Federation says that more than 7% of the Mexican population has diabetes. Diabetes is now the third most common cause of death in Mexico, directly or indirectly. The various free trade agreements that Mexico has signed over the past two decades have had a profound impact on the country’s food system and people’s health. After his mission to Mexico in 2012, the then Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier De Schutter, concluded that the trade policies in place favour greater reliance on heavily processed and refined foods with a long shelf life rather than on the consumption of fresh and more perishable foods, particularly fruit and vegetables. He added that the overweight and obesity emergency that Mexico is facing could have been avoided, or largely mitigated, if the health concerns linked to shifting diets had been integrated into the design of those policies. The North America Free Trade Agreement led to the direct investment in food processing and a change in the retail structure as well as the emergence of global agribusiness and transnational food companies in Mexico. The country has witnessed an explosive growth of chain supermarkets, discounters and convenience stores. Local small-scale vendors have been replaced by corporate retailers that offer the processed food companies greater opportunities for sales and profits. Oxxo (owned by Coca-cola subsidiary Femsa) tripled its stores to 3,500 between 1999 and 2004. It was scheduled to open its 14 thousandth store sometime during 2015. De Schutter believes a programme that deals effectively with hunger and malnutrition has to focus on Mexico’s small farmers and peasants. They constitute a substantial percentage of the country’s poor and are the ones that can best supply both rural and urban populations with nutritious foods. Mexico could recover its self-sufficiency in food if there were to be official support for peasant agriculture backed with amounts comparable to the support granted to the big corporations. In Mexico, the loss of food sovereignty has induced catastrophic changes in the nation’s diet and has had dire consequences for agricultural workers who lost their jobs and for the nation in general. Those who have benefited from this devastation include US food and agribusiness interests, drug cartels and US banks and arms manufacturers. The writing is on the wall for other countries because what happened in Mexico is being played out across the world under the banner of ‘free trade’. GMOs a bogus techno quick-fix to further benefit global agribusiness Transnational agribusiness has lobbied for, directed and profited from the very policies that have caused the agrarian/food crisis. And what we now see is these corporations (and their supporters) espousing cynical and fake concern for the plight of the poor and hungry (and the environment which they have done so much to degrade), and offering more (second or third generation… we have lost count) chemicals and corporate-patented GM wonder seeds to supposedly ‘solve’ the problem of world hunger. GM represents the final stranglehold of transnational agribusiness over the control of seeds and food. The misrepresentation of the plight of the indigenous edible oils sector in India encapsulates the duplicity at work surrounding GM. After trade rules and cheap imports conspired to destroy farmers and the jobs of people involved in local food processing activities for the benefit of global agribusiness, including commodity trading and food processor companies ADM and Cargill, the same companies are now leading a campaign to force GM into India on the basis that Indian agriculture is unproductive and thus the country has to rely on imports. This conveniently ignores the fact that prior to neoliberal trade rules in the mid-1990s, India was almost self-sufficient in edible oils. In collusion with the Gates Foundation, these corporate interests are now seeking to secure full spectrum dominance throughout much of Africa as well. Western seed, fertiliser and pesticide manufacturers and dealers and food processing companies are in the process of securing changes to legislation and are building up logistics and infrastructure to allow them to recast food and farming in their own images. Today, governments continue to collude with big agribusiness corporations, which seek to eradicate the small farmer and subject countries to the vagaries of rigged global markets. Agritech corporations are being allowed to shape government policy by being granted a strategic role in trade negotiations and are increasingly framing the policy/knowledge agenda by funding and determining the nature of research carried out in public universities and institutes. “This country has more than 150 agricultural universities. But every year, each churns out several hundred ‘educated’ unemployables, trained only in misguiding farmers and spreading ecological degradation. In all the six years a student spends for an M.Sc. in agriculture, the only goal is short-term – and narrowly perceived – ‘productivity’. For this, the farmer is urged to do and buy a hundred things. But not a thought is spared to what a farmer must never do so that the land remains unharmed for future generations and other creatures. It is time our people and government wake up to the realisation that this industry-driven way of farming – promoted by our institutions – is inherently criminal and suicidal!” At the end of the above quote, Save is referring to the near 300,000 farmer suicides that have taken place in India over the past two decades due to economic distress resulting from debt, a shift to (GM)cash crops and economic ‘liberalisation’ (see this report about a peer-reviewed study, which directly links suicides to GM cotton). The current global system of chemical-industrial agriculture, World Trade Organisation rules and bilateral trade agreements that agritech companies helped draw up for their benefit are a major cause of structural hunger, poverty, illness and environmental destruction. By its very design, the system is parasitical. Agroecology as a credible force for change Across the world, we are seeing farmers and communities resisting the corporate takeover of seeds, soils, water and food. And we are also witnessing inspiring stories about the successes of agroecology: a model of agriculture based on traditional knowledge and modern agricultural research utilising elements of contemporary ecology, soil biology and the biological control of pests. Reflecting what Bhaskar Save achieved on his tremendously successful 14-acre farm in Gujarat, the system combines sound ecological management, including minimising the use of toxic inputs, by using on-farm renewable resources and privileging endogenous solutions to manage pests and disease, with an approach that upholds and secures farmers’ livelihoods. Agroecology is based on scientific research grounded in the natural sciences but marries this with farmer-generated knowledge and grass-root participation that challenges top-down approaches to research and policy making. It may also involve moving beyond the dynamics of the farm itself to become part of a wider transformative agenda, which addresses the broader political and economic issues that impact farmers and agriculture (see this description of the various modes of thought that underpin agroecolgy). Last year the Oakland Institute released a report on 33 case studies which highlighted the success of agroecological agriculture across Africa in the face of climate change, hunger and poverty. The studies provide facts and figures on how agricultural transformation can yield immense economic, social, and food security benefits while ensuring climate justice and restoring soils and the environment. The research highlights the multiple benefits of agroecology, including affordable and sustainable ways to boost agricultural yields while increasing farmers’ incomes, food security and resilience. The report described how agroecology uses a wide variety of techniques and practices, including plant diversification, intercropping, the application of mulch, manure or compost for soil fertility, the natural management of pests and diseases, agroforestry and the construction of water management structures. There are many other examples of successful agroecology and of farmers abandoning green revolution thought and practices to embrace it (see this report about El Salvador and this from South India). Various official reports have argued that to feed the hungry and secure food security in low income regions we need to support small farms and diverse, sustainable agroecological methods of farming and strengthen local food economies (see this report by the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food and this (IAASTD) peer-reviewed report). Olivier De Schutter, former UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food: “To feed 9 billion people in 2050, we urgently need to adopt the most efficient farming techniques available. Today’s scientific evidence demonstrates that agroecological methods outperform the use of chemical fertilizers in boosting food production where the hungry live especially in unfavorable environments.” De Schutter’s report indicated that small-scale farmers can double food production within 10 years in critical regions by using ecological methods. Based on an extensive review of the recent scientific literature, the study calls for a fundamental shift towards agroecology as a way to boost food production and improve the situation of the poorest. The report calls on states to implement a fundamental shift towards agroecology. The success stories of agroecology highlight what can be achieved when development is placed firmly in the hands of farmers themselves. The expansion of agroecological practices can generate a rapid, fair and inclusive development that can be sustained for future generations. This model entails policies and activities that come from the bottom-up and which the state must invest in and facilitate. Proponents of agroecology appreciate that a decentralised system of domestic food production with access to local rural markets supported by proper roads, storage and other infrastructure must take priority ahead of exploitative international markets dominated and designed to serve the needs of global capital. Small farms are per area more productive than large-scale industrial farms and create a more resilient, diverse food system. If policy makers were to prioritise this sector and promote agroecology to the extent ‘green revolution’ practices and technology have been pushed, many of the problems surrounding poverty, unemployment and urban migration could be solved. While many argue in favour of agroecology and regard it as a strategy for radical social change, some view it as a niche entity and are happy for it to bring certain benefits to farmers and local communities and see nothing wrong with it being integrated within a globalised system of capitalism that continues to centralise power and generally serve the interests of the global seed, food processing and retail players. And that is the danger: a model of agriculture with so much potential being incorporated into a corrupt system designed to suit the needs of these corporate interests. But there is only so much that can be achieved at grass-root level by ordinary people, often facilitated by non-governmental agencies. As long as politicians at national and regional levels are co-opted by the US and its corporations, alternative models will continue to be marginalised and seeds will continue to be appropriated, lands taken, water diverted, legislation enacted, research institutes funded and policy devised to benefit global agribusiness. And that’s something that only a broad-based, global movement of peoples, spanning continents and nations, countryside and cities, farmers and consumers, can take on with assurance of ultimate victory. Colin Todhunter is an independent writer

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T HESEUS was one of the most celebrated heroes of ancient times, but he lived so many centuries ago that no one knows the date of his birth. He was a Greek of noble descent, Æthra, his mother, being the granddaughter of one of the most powerful of all the Peloponnesian kings. Ægeus, his father, was not of royal blood, but he was descended from the oldest inhabitants of Attica, and became a sovereign before Theseus was born. A short time after he was chosen to rule over Athens he had occasion to travel, and one of the cities he visited was Trœzene, where he was invited to court. There he met the Princess Æthra, with whom he fell in love. She returned his affection, and the two were married; but Ægeus did not mention this important event when he returned to Athens, because of the displeasure that he knew it would cause his relations, and still less did he dare to do so when the birth of his son was announced to him. This was on account of his nephews, the Pallantidæ, a band of fifty brothers who expected to mount the throne in turn, and would not have hesitated to destroy anybody who might stand in their way. So Ægeus carefully preserved his secret, although it was his intention to recognize his son as soon as he felt that it would be safe to do it. Before his departure from Trœzene, Ægeus had hidden a sword and a pair of sandals beneath a huge stone, and had told Æthra that when their boy should reach manhood and should become sufficiently strong to raise the stone without aid, he was to carry the articles concealed under it to Athens. In that way, after the lapse of many years, Ægeus hoped to recognize his son. He had no fear that Æthra would betray the secret, for he had taken great pains to make her understand the danger to himself and Theseus if the existence of the latter should become known to the Pallantidæ. Pittheus, Æthra's father, took charge of his grandson, and engaged a tutor named Connidas to educate him. In later years the Athenians sacrificed a ram to this tutor on the day before the celebration of the Thesean feasts, simply because he had been honored with the care of the person whom they loved, and for whom they entertained the most profound reverence. Æthra was true to her trust, and told nobody who was the father of her son; but Pittheus declared that it was Neptune, the god of the sea. This pleased the Trœzenians, because they considered Neptune their special deity, offered sacrifices to him, and stamped their money with a three-pronged sceptre called a trident, which was the symbol of his power. In course of time Theseus became a robust, healthy youth, and his mother was so pleased on account of his strength of mind and body, as well as the excellent judgment he displayed on various occasions, that when he was only sixteen years of age she resolved to inform him of the secret of his birth; so taking him by the hand one day, she led him to the stone under which his father had placed the sword and sandals, bade him remove it, and with what he would find concealed beneath hasten to Athens and present himself before Ægeus. The youth obeyed in so far as lifting the stone was concerned, for, as we have said, he was strong, and the task was by no means a difficult one; but he astonished his mother by refusing to sail to Athens at her request. To Athens, he replied, he would certainly go, but not by sea. This announcement troubled the fond Æthra, for traveling by land was at that time made extremely dangerous by the bandits and cut-throats who overran Greece, and whose cruelty, strength, and desperate deeds were world-renowned. But Theseus was inspired with the spirit of the Heroic age in which he lived, and before following him in his travels we will say a few words about this period. What is known as the Heroic age in history is supposed to have extended over about two hundred years. The Greeks believed that during that time their country was governed by a noble race of beings who, though not divine, possessed more than human strength, and were in many ways superior to ordinary men. These are the heroes, mentioned in Grecian mythology, whose exploits and noble deeds furnished themes for the early writers. The Heroic age closed with the Trojan war, 1184 B.C. Homer has given the best picture of the government, customs, and society of that age, and his poems furnish the earliest knowledge we have of the Greeks. This renders them valuable, even though they may not always be based on facts. Among the most prominent heroes of Grecian mythology are Hercules, Theseus, and Minos. Now Hercules and Theseus were of the same family, and the latter had heard so much about the wonderful feats of strength and the glorious valor of his ancestor that he burned to imitate him and have his name enrolled among the heroes. He had longed for the day when he might set forth to perform great deeds, and when at last it dawned he eagerly began his plans, and before long he started on his journey, determined to destroy all those who should offer violence to himself or who had been cruel to other travellers. Thus he hoped to benefit his country and all mankind. The first creature who tried to stop him was Periphetes, the Club-bearer. Theseus killed him and took the enormous club with which he had put an end to his victims for so many years. As Hercules carried a huge lion's skin to show what a ferocious beast he had slain, so now did Theseus appear with the club of Periphetes, which, in his hands, became a most formidable weapon. Theseus next slew Sinnis, the Pine-bender, whose very name had long been a terror to the world. His way of destroying people was to fasten their limbs to branches of pine-trees which were bent together for that purpose; then suddenly the trees would be unfastened, when they would return to their upright position and tear the victim to pieces. Sinnis suffered the very fate he had imposed on others. At Commyon there was an immense sow, so fierce and wild as to keep the whole neighborhood in a state of constant dread. Theseus went out of his way to meet the horrible creature, because he did not wish it to appear that he would avoid peril of any sort; besides, he thought that a truly brave man ought to rid the world of dangerous beasts as well as of wicked human beings. So he put an end to the sow, and then travelled on to Megara. At Megara there lived a notorious robber named Sciron, who made any person that came his way wash his feet. That would not have been a fatal operation performed in the ordinary way, but Sciron would seat himself at the edge of a lofty precipice for the washing, and while it was going on he would give his victim a violent kick and send him headlong down the rock into the sea. Theseus did not go through the ceremony of foot-washing with Sciron, but seized him and dashed him over the precipice. In putting these creatures out of the world in the same way they disposed of others, Theseus imitated Hercules, as students of mythology will perceive. Thus, in boxing-matches he killed Cycnus and Cercyon, celebrated wrestlers; he broke to pieces the skull of Termerus, who had killed people by butting his head against theirs; and Procrustes, a famous robber of Attica, he punished in the following way: Procrustes had a bed on which he made all his victims lie to see how nearly they would fit, but it was of a size that was sure to be too short for some people and too long for others. So the tall ones were lopped off and the short ones stretched out. The powerful giant's whole head had to come off before he could lie on the bed, and so Theseus punished him, much to the delight of the neighbors. On his arrival at Athens, Theseus found public affairs all in confusion, for the inhabitants were divided into parties that were constantly disputing with one another. He did not at once present himself before his father, but Medea, to whom Ægeus was then married, found out who he was, and made up her mind that he should not stay to inherit the throne if she could help it, particularly as she had a son of her own for whom she desired it. So she told Ægeus that the appearance of the young stranger at court just then, when the government was so disturbed, meant mischief, and he must be put out of the way. She advised him to give a banquet and invite Theseus, for whom she would prepare a cup of poison. Ægeus, who was always in dread of plots against his throne, readily consented. When all the guests were assembled he took the cup of poison in his hand and was on the point of offering it, when Theseus drew out his sword and prepared to cut the meat with it. The father recognized the token and dashed the cup to the ground. A few questions convinced him that the stranger was his son, and he forthwith tenderly embraced him and publicly proclaimed him his heir. The Athenians, who had heard of the daring deeds of Theseus, shouted with joy, for they were delighted at the prospect of one day having so brave a king. Not so the Pallantidæ; seeing their hopes thus destroyed, they became desperate, and, dividing themselves into two companies, they broke out into open warfare. Their plan was for one party to attack the city while the other lay in ambush ready to set upon the enemy from the opposite side. They might have met with success had it not been for a herald named Leos. He pretended to work with them, but treacherously repeated all he heard to Theseus. That young hero speedily destroyed one party, whereupon the other thought best to disperse. Having no special business to attend to after that, Theseus amused himself by going to Marathon to destroy a furious bull that was doing great damage to the fields and frightening the people. This bull Hercules had brought from Crete, and when Theseus led it in chains through Athens, the people were filled with wonder at his having captured so ferocious a creature alive. Theseus was now ranked next to Hercules among the heroes; but the adventure which won for him the greatest glory was this: The island of Crete was governed by Minos, a wise, good king, much beloved by his subjects on account of his justice and honesty. It so happened that his son, Androgeus, when on a visit to Attica, had been treacherously murdered, and in order to avenge the dreadful deed the disconsolate father made perpetual war against the Athenians. The gods sided with Minos, and not only sent famine and pestilence to punish his enemy, but dried up all their rivers. At last their sufferings became so intense that the Athenians could no longer bear them, so they sent to the oracle for advice. The oracle told them that if they could devise some means of satisfying Minos the anger of the gods would be appeased, and their distress would come to an end. Messengers were forthwith despatched to Crete to see what could be done. The king proposed a treaty, which required that every nine years seven young Athenian men and as many girls, of noble families, should be sent to Crete as victims to the Minotaur. The Minotaur was a huge monster that had the body and limbs of a man and the head of a bull. His abode was at the central point of several winding paths, that crossed and recrossed one another in such a puzzling manner that nobody who got into the labyrinth, as it was called, could ever find his way out again. Well, Ægeus had agreed to King Minos's treaty, and two sets of Athenian maids and youths had been devoured by the Minotaur. The period for sending the third lot came around just after Theseus had captured the Marathon bull. The sorrow in Athens was so great that Theseus was much affected by it. Parents lamented loudly, and in the bitterness of their grief accused the king of signing the cruel treaty only because he had no child to sacrifice. No sooner did Theseus hear this than he unhesitatingly offered himself. Ægeus was shocked, and tried to dissuade his son from taking such a rash step, but Theseus remained firm, and the other thirteen victims were chosen as usual, by lot. The treaty provided that the Athenians should furnish their own ships, and that no weapons of war should be carried to Crete. But it set forth distinctly that if, by any fair means, the Minotaur should be destroyed, the tribute should cease forever. On the two previous occasions the ships had carried black sails only, but Theseus had so encouraged his father by declaring that he felt certain of being able to kill the monster, that Ægeus gave the pilot a white sail, commanding him to hoist it on his return if he brought Theseus safely back, but should such not be the case, the black one was to appear as a sign of misfortune. On his arrival in Crete, Theseus took part in the public games that Minos yearly celebrated in memory of his lost son, and showed such superiority as a wrestler that Ariadne, the daughter of Minos, fell in love with him. This proved a blessing, for she secretly informed Theseus how to reach the centre of the labyrinth, and gave him a thread which he was to unwind as he passed along, and thus be able to find his way back. With such a clue the killing of the Minotaur became an easy task to so powerful a man as Theseus, and having accomplished it, he set out with his companions in triumph for Athens. But when the ship neared the coast, so great was the excitement on board that neither Theseus nor the pilot remembered the signal of success they had been ordered to hoist. So when Ægeus beheld the vessel with its black sail, he naturally concluded that his son was dead. In despair he threw himself headlong from a rock and perished in the sea. The first thing Theseus did on stepping ashore was to offer sacrifices to the gods, but while thus engaged he sent a messenger to Athens to announce his victory and safe return. The city was filled with mourning on account of the king's death, but the lamentations were changed to rejoicing when the good news was made known. The messenger was crowned with garlands, which he hung upon his staff, and hastened back to the sea-shore. Theseus was still sacrificing when the death of his father was reported to him. He was much grieved, and so were his companions, all of whom took part in the funeral ceremonies, and helped Theseus to do honor to the memory of the late king. They then marched through the city in triumph, the people flocking out to welcome them, and to gaze at the hero who had relieved them from the cruel tribute imposed on them by King Minos. Theseus was now king of Attica, and he set about improving the condition of his subjects at once. Instead of living near together, they were scattered over such a large space that they could not be easily governed, so disputes, and even battles, were constantly taking place. Theseus thought of a remedy, and, after consulting the Oracle of Delphi and getting a favorable answer, proceeded to apply it. He went from town to town, from tribe to tribe, and explained his plan for establishing a commonwealth, which he promised to protect. It required a vast deal of persuasion before he could convince people that he was working for their good, and not for the purpose of increasing his own power; but at last he was rewarded for his trouble by seeing the various little state houses closed and one grand council hall established for the use of the whole kingdom. A public feast was given to celebrate this union of the people, and the state was henceforth called Athens. Strangers from other countries were now invited to settle in Athens, and they flocked there in crowds. Much confusion might have resulted; but Theseus was wise enough to provide against this at the outset. He divided the people into three classes,—the noblemen, the husbandmen, and the mechanics,—each class having its duties and position clearly defined. The nobles had charge of religious affairs, appointed the magistrates, and saw that the laws were not violated. The husbandmen tilled the ground and raised cattle, and the mechanics attended to buildings and improvements in machinery, etc. The new money was stamped with the image of an ox; probably in memory of the brute Theseus had slain at Marathon; so the Athenians valued an article at so many oxen, instead of dollars, as we do. Theseus took possession of the country about Megara and added it to Athens, but wisely set up a pillar to mark the boundary-line, so as to avoid dispute on that point. Indeed, he seemed to be ever on the alert for anything that might disturb the peace and order he had established at home; but he was not so considerate of other nations, as his expedition against the Amazons proves. The Amazons were a race of warlike women represented in the ancient pictures and writings as fighting the Greek heroes. Theseus seized Antiope, their queen, fled with her to his ship, and set sail forthwith. The rash act led to a disastrous war, which lasted four months; for the Amazons followed their queen to Athens and fought desperately. Antiope was slain, and so were many of her race, before peace was declared. Theseus performed several exploits which we need not relate, because they were not of great importance, but when he reached the age of fifty he was guilty of a deed that by no means adds to his glory. That was the carrying off of Helen, who was supposed to be the daughter of the god Jupiter. She was considered the greatest beauty in the world, although she was then only nine years old. Helen was dancing in the temple of Diana when Theseus went there, accompanied by his friend Pirithoüs, and stole her away. Armed men pursued the robbers, but could not overtake them, for they hastened on through Peloponnesus, and were soon beyond danger of arrest. Then they drew lots to see which of them should marry Helen when she should grow up, agreeing beforehand that the successful one should assist the other in getting a wife. Theseus proved the lucky man, and he bore the beauty to the house of a friend of his named Aphidnus, bidding him take the very best care of her and keep her hiding-place a profound secret. Æthra was conducted to the same house by Theseus, who begged her to assist in the care of the precious charge. Now Pirithoüs had to be provided with a wife, and Cora, daughter of Pluto, god of the lower regions, was fixed upon. Accordingly, the two friends set out to secure Cora; but this was by no means so easy a task as they had supposed, for Pluto kept a fierce dog, named Cerberus, and all the suitors for Cora's hand had to fight the brute before they could be received. Cerberus must have been wonderfully intelligent, for he knew that Pirithoüs had come to steal the young lady, not to sue for her, so he rushed at him and tore him to pieces. Theseus escaped a similar fate; but he was captured by Pluto and locked up. Theseus was still in prison when Helen's brothers, Castor and Pollux, went to Athens to seek their sister. The inhabitants assured them that she was not with them, and that they did not know where she was to be found. But an Athenian, named Academus, had discovered her hiding-place, and informed Castor and Pollux of it. They gathered together an army, marched to the town where Aphidnus lived, assaulted and got possession of it. Helen was rescued and sent to Troy, where it is supposed Æthra went to live with her. Castor and Pollux returned to Athens and became citizens; for the people felt so grateful to them for not punishing them on account of Theseus's crime that they received them with every mark of friendship. In course of time Hercules, while travelling, went to visit Pluto, who related to him how Theseus and Pirithoüs had tried to steal his daughter, and the punishment each had received. Hercules was grieved at what he heard of Theseus, whom he had long admired, so he entreated Pluto to release his prisoner, telling him that so great a hero deserved a better fate. So Pluto opened the prison door, and Theseus returned home, where, as a mark of gratitude, he dedicated all the sacred places to Hercules. Now Theseus expected to resume his place on the throne and govern the Athenians as before, but he soon found he was mistaken. All the good he had done was overshadowed by the silly actions that had made the people despise and distrust him. At first he thought of fighting for his rights; but deciding that no benefit could result from that, he gave up hope and set sail for Scyros, where he owned land that had belonged to his father. He thought that Lycomedes, King of Scyros, was his friend, and that he should have no trouble in laying claim to his own possessions; but such was not the case. Lycomedes received him courteously, and invited him to walk with him to a cliff, under pretence of pointing out the estate he owned. When they reached the highest point Lycomedes threw his visitor headlong into the sea, killing him instantly. In course of time the Athenians began to worship Theseus as a demi-god; and when they were at war with the Medes and Persians part of their army declared that he appeared at their head, completely armed, and led them against the enemy. After that sacrifices were offered to him, and the Oracle of Apollo ordered that his bones should be placed in a sacred spot at Athens. But for a long time it was impossible to find them, for the people of Scyros were not friendly, and would not tell where Theseus was buried. At last Cimon, who had conquered the island, saw an eagle one day pecking at a certain mound and trying to scrape up the earth. It suddenly struck him that the gods were thus pointing out to him the burial-place of Theseus; so he dug until he came to a coffin, which he opened. It contained the bones of a very large man, by whose side lay a sword and a brass spear-head. Cimon was now convinced, and lost no time in carrying the coffin to Athens. Had Theseus returned alive his countrymen could scarcely have rejoiced more than they did when his remains were brought to them. They made a grand public funeral, and erected a tomb in his memory just in the heart of the city. Ever after, sacrifices in honor of the benefactor of Athens were offered on the anniversary of his return from Crete.

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Birmingham is a city in Oakland County in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is a northern suburb of Detroit located along the Woodward Corridor (M-1). As of the 2010 census, the population was 20,103. |City of Birmingham| "A Walkable Community" |• Mayor||Pierre Boutros| |• Manager||Thomas M. Markus| |• City||4.80 sq mi (12.45 km2)| |• Land||4.79 sq mi (12.42 km2)| |• Water||0.01 sq mi (0.03 km2)| |Elevation||778 ft (237 m)| |• Density||4,551.01/sq mi (1,756.98/km2)| |• Metro||4,296,250 (Metro Detroit)| |Time zone||UTC-5 (EST)| |• Summer (DST)||UTC-4 (EDT)| |GNIS feature ID||0621444| The area comprising what is now the city of Birmingham was part of land ceded by Native American tribes to the United States government by the 1807 Treaty of Detroit. However, settlement was delayed, first by the War of 1812. Afterward the Surveyor-General of the United States, Edward Tiffin, made an unfavorable report regarding the placement of Military Bounty Lands for veterans of the War of 1812. Tiffin's report claimed that, because of marsh, in this area "There would not be an acre out of a hundred, if there would be one out of a thousand that would, in any case, admit cultivation." In 1818, Territorial Governor Lewis Cass led a group of men along the Indian Trail. The governor's party discovered that the swamp was not as extensive as Tiffin had supposed. Not long after Cass issued a more encouraging report about the land, interest quickened as to its suitability for settlement. The earliest land entry was made on January 28, 1819, by Colonel Benjamin Kendrick Pierce (brother of future U.S. President Franklin Pierce) for the northwest quarter of section 36. Colonel Pierce visited his land several times, but never settled on it. In March 1818, John W. Hunter and his brother Daniel left Auburn, New York, by sleigh and traveled to Michigan by way of Upper Canada. They waited in Detroit for their father and other family members, who arrived by schooner via Lake Erie in July. The family remained in Detroit until spring 1819, when Hunter made an entry for the northeast quarter of section 36, now in the southeast section of current-day Birmingham. Lacking a proper land survey, Hunter mistakenly built his log house on a tract later purchased by Elijah Willits. That house was later occupied by William Hall, a son-in-law of Elisha Hunter, while John W. Hunter built another log house a short distance to the southeast. On September 25, 1821, Elijah Willits made a land entry for the southwest quarter of section 25. Two days later, Major John Hamilton made an entry for the southeast quarter of section 25. Each of these initial land entries met at what is now the intersection of Maple Road and Pierce Street. For a time, all three men, John W. Hunter, Hamilton, and Willits, operated hotels and taverns from their houses within a short distance from each other. While Hunter did not continue for very long, Hamilton and Willits continued a rivalry for many years, competing with each other for business from travelers on Woodward Avenue between Detroit and Pontiac. The growing settlement was known variously as "Hamilton's", "Hunter's", or "Willits'"; it was later known as "Piety Hill". The settlement's original plat was surveyed and recorded on August 25, 1836, in the northwest quarter of section 36, then owned by Rosewell T. Merrill, who also ran the town foundry and the thrashing machine factory. Merrill named his plat "Birmingham" after Birmingham, England; he envisioned that it would also become a great industrial center. Elijah Willits recorded a plat on his property on December 20, 1837. John W. Hunter followed suit with two plats on his property on January 31, 1840, and June 21, 1842, while Major Hamilton laid out a plat on October 7, 1846. Several other properties were subsequently platted as additions. The plats made in 1836 and 1837 were in anticipation of completion of the Detroit and Pontiac Railroad. Now known as 'Birmingham', the village first received mail through the "Bloomfield" post office. Birmingham established its own post office on April 5, 1838. The settlement incorporated as a village in 1864, comprising the northern half of section 36 and the southern half of section 25, with a total land area of one square mile. The first village elections were held March 1, 1864. It was soon governed by a seven-man board of trustees, who appointed a marshal and a treasurer. Birmingham re-incorporated as a city in 1933. Prior to this, the area just north of 14 Mile along Woodward was known as "Eco City". The names of the city's founders appear throughout Birmingham in civic institutions and commercial businesses: Pierce Elementary School, Hunter House Hamburgers (which was located on the road formerly known as Hunter Boulevard, which bypassed downtown to the east and was renamed Woodward, with the original Woodward Avenue section renamed Old Woodward), Hamilton Hotel, Willits Building, and Merrill Street. Hall & Hunter Realtors adopted their name in honor of the builder and occupier of Birmingham's first home. Birmingham is bordered by Bloomfield Hills on the northwest, Royal Oak on the southeast, Bloomfield Charter Township on the west and north, Southfield Township on the south, and Troy on the northeast. |U.S. Decennial Census| As of the census of 2010, there were 20,103 people, 9,039 households, and 5,307 families living in the city. The population density was 4,196.9 inhabitants per square mile (1,620.4/km2). There were 9,979 housing units at an average density of 2,083.3 per square mile (804.4/km2). The racial makeup of the city was 92.3% White, 3.0% African American, 0.1% Native American, 2.5% Asian, 0.4% from other races, and 1.6% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 2.1% of the population. There were 9,039 households, of which 29.8% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 48.4% were married couples living together, 7.6% had a female householder with no husband present, 2.7% had a male householder with no wife present, and 41.3% were non-families. 36.2% of all households were made up of individuals, and 10.8% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.22 and the average family size was 2.96. The median age in the city was 41.1 years. 24.6% of residents were under the age of 18; 3.9% were between the ages of 18 and 24; 27.7% were from 25 to 44; 30.1% were from 45 to 64; and 13.7% were 65 years of age or older. The gender makeup of the city was 48.1% male and 51.9% female. As of the census of 2000, there were 19,291 people, 9,131 households, and 5,076 families living in the city. The population density was 4,038.4 per square mile (1,558.2/km2). There were 9,700 housing units at an average density of 2,030.6 per square mile (783.5/km2). The racial makeup of the city was 96.13% White, 0.91% African American, 0.15% Native American, 1.50% Asian, 0.04% Pacific Islander, 0.19% from other races, and 1.09% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 1.19% of the population. There were 9,131 households, out of which 24.7% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 47.6% were married couples living together, 6.1% had a female householder with no husband present, and 44.4% were non-families. 38.0% of all households were made up of individuals, and 10.1% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.11 and the average family size was 2.85. In the city the population was spread out, with 21.2% under the age of 18, 3.9% from 18 to 24, 34.9% from 25 to 44, 26.0% from 45 to 64, and 14.0% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 39 years. For every 100 females, there were 91.5 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 88.2 males. The median income for a household in the city was $80,861, and the median income for a family was $110,627. Males had a median income of $78,865 versus $51,834 for females. The per capita income for the city was $59,314. About 1.6% of families and 2.9% of the population were below the poverty line, including 2.5% of those under age 18 and 3.3% of those age 65 or over. Arts and cultureEdit Settlers founded the First United Methodist Church in 1821 and conducted services in Elijah Willets' tavern. Its current structure was built in 1839; it is now the oldest church building in the city. Other houses of worship represent many religions. George H. Mitchell and Almeron Whitehead were two of a small group of bachelors who had formed a club called The Eccentrics; they published a newspaper of the same name, issuing the first edition on May 2, 1878. At a price of 2 cents, The Eccentric provided a "live home paper, replete with all the news of the day", with considerable emphasis on the "local items of importance occurring in Birmingham and immediate vicinity". By the turn of the 20th century, The Eccentric ran advertisements for Detroit stores and theaters, as well as offers of property and houses suitable for the "commuter". In the 1920s, the slogan of The Eccentric was "For a Bigger and Better Birmingham". Today, the Birmingham Eccentric newspaper continues its role as reporter of the community's local news. In 1923, a group of friends formed The Village Players of Birmingham, a private theatre club. Originally, performances were given in the community house. In 1928 the group commissioned their own theater just outside the downtown area. Today this all-volunteer group is open to everyone and puts on five shows each year. In 2008, the Birmingham Little League won the nine- to ten-year-old Little League state championship. The team beat Western Little League 12–5 to earn the title. Parks and recreationEdit The city has more than twenty parks, with many amenities, including tennis courts, baseball diamonds, playgrounds, golf courses, sledding hills, nature trails, picnic areas, and deep woods. Shain Park, the city's main commons, is the site of the Village Fair, art shows, summer music concerts and numerous community events. At the center stands Freedom of the Human Spirit sculpted by Marshall Fredericks. The Holy Name School is a co-educational parochial school founded by the Roman Catholic Holy Name Church. It educates children grades pre-K to 8. The private school was established in 1928, along with a convent for IHM nuns. (That has since closed.) The church and school continue to operate in conjunction today. The Japanese School of Detroit (JSD), a supplementary school for Japanese citizens, first began holding classes in Birmingham in 1987, when its operation at Seaholm High started. It began holding classes at Covington School in 1989, and it also had classes at West Maple Elementary. At one point its school offices were in Birmingham. In 2010 the school announced it was moving its operations to Novi. The Baldwin Public Library serves the city of Birmingham and nearby communities of Beverly Hills, Bingham Farms, and Bloomfield Hills. The original building first opened to the public on December 19, 1927. In October 1959, an extension for the Youth Department was added to the east side of the building. In 1983, another addition opened, changing the entrance to Merrill Street. There are over 120,000 books in the library, along with CDs, DVDs, periodicals, educational toys, databases and free Wi-Fi. The library is named after Martha Baldwin, a civic leader and lifelong resident of Birmingham who was instrumental in establishing the first library. She also helped get improvements such as sidewalks laid for the business section, street lights, seats placed at interurban transit stops, flowers and trees planted, and trash baskets placed at the street corners. Birmingham was a stagecoach stop in the 19th century between Detroit and Pontiac. In 1839, the railroad tracks were extended to Birmingham with two steam trains a day running to Detroit. On June 18, 1896, the Oakland Railway, the electric interurban, was constructed to Birmingham; it provided service to Detroit in 40 minutes. This service ended in 1931 as many passengers switched to the commuter rail and automobiles. Amtrak provides long-distance passenger rail service on the Pontiac–Detroit–Chicago Wolverine. It stops in Birmingham three times per day in each direction at the Birmingham, Michigan Amtrak station. Class one freight rail service is provided by Canadian National Railway (CN). By 1931, the Grand Trunk Western Railroad (GTW) moved the railroad tracks to their present location. It provided commuter rail service from Pontiac to downtown Detroit with a stop in Birmingham. The Southeastern Michigan Transportation Authority (SEMTA) took control of this service in 1974 but it was ended on October 17, 1983, after subsidies were discontinued. Efforts continue to this day to restore such service. In the 21st century, the Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation (SMART) and the Regional Transit Authority (RTA) operate local and regional bus transit. - Tim Allen, actor (raised in Birmingham) - Shane Battier, basketball player for four NBA teams - Mike Binder, film director, screenwriter and actor - Randal Bryant, dean, Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science - Elaine Crosby, pro golfer - Patricia Ellis, 1930s film actress, born in Birmingham - Virgil Exner, automobile designer - Marshall Fredericks, sculptor - Wallace Frost, architect - Pat Gillick, Baseball Hall of Famer - Clarence Dayton Hillman, businessman - Laura Innes, actress (attended Seaholm High School) - Calvin Johnson, former NFL wide receiver - Christine Lahti, Emmy-winning, Oscar-nominated actress - Alexi Lalas, former pro soccer player - Anita Lo, restaurateur - Kurt Luedtke, journalist and Oscar award-winning screenwriter - Michael J. Malik Sr., businessman - Alonzo L. McDonald business man and philanthropist - Gerald S. McGowan, US ambassador to Portugal - Ruth McNamee, Michigan state legislator and Mayor of Birmingham - Steve Morrison, pro football linebacker - Meg Oliver, anchor of CBS's Up to the Minute - Mike Posner, singer - Sam Raimi, film director (attended Groves High School) - Andy Roeser, former president of NBA's Los Angeles Clippers - Kurt Schottenheimer, former NFL assistant coach - Alexandra Silber, actor and singer - David Spade, actor and comedian - Paul Stookey, member of the trio Peter, Paul, and Mary - Elaine Stritch, actress and vocalist - Tom Tjaarda, automobile designer (attended Seaholm High School) - Tom Tracy, pro football running back - Dave Trott, US congressman - Florence Signaigo Wagner (1919–2019), botanist who served as president of the American Fern Society - Sheila Young, Olympic gold-winning speed skater and track cyclist - Avery, Lillian Drake (2005) [1925?]. "Birmingham". An Account of Oakland County. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Library. pp. 33–35. Retrieved 2007-10-21. - Durant, Samuel W. (2005) . "Bloomfield Township". History of Oakland County, Michigan. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Library. pp. 318–328. Retrieved 2007-10-21. - Seeley, Thaddeus De Witt (2005) . History of Oakland County Michigan a narrative account of its historic progress, its people, its principal interests. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Library. Retrieved 2007-10-21. - "City of Birmingham, Michigan". City of Birmingham, Michigan. Archived from the original on August 16, 2012. Retrieved August 24, 2012. - "Welcome to Birmingham, MI". Archived from the original on 2016-03-06. Retrieved 2013-09-17. - "2020 U.S. Gazetteer Files". United States Census Bureau. Retrieved May 21, 2022. - "U.S. Census website". United States Census Bureau. Retrieved 2008-01-31. - "Birmingham". Geographic Names Information System. United States Geological Survey. - "Race, Hispanic or Latino, Age, and Housing Occupancy: 2010 Census Redistricting Data (Public Law 94-171) Summary File (QT-PL), Birmingham city, Michigan". United States Census Bureau. Retrieved August 18, 2011. - Seeley pp. 188-189 - Seeley,pp. 27-28 - Description of the military land in Michigan, report by surveyor-general Edward Tiffin, November 30, 1815, in Michigan As a Province, Territory and State, the Twenty-Sixth Member of the Federal Union Vol. 2, by Henry M. Utley and Clarence M. Cutcheon. pg. 254-255. - Seeley p.372 - Woodward Ave. History Archived July 14, 2012, at archive.today - Romig, Walter (1986) . Michigan Place Names. Detroit, Michigan: Wayne State University Press. ISBN 0-8143-1838-X. - Walter Romig, Michigan Place Names, p. 175 - "US Gazetteer files 2010". United States Census Bureau. Archived from the original on 2011-02-20. Retrieved 2012-11-25. - "Census of Population and Housing". Census.gov. Retrieved June 4, 2015. - "U.S. Census website". United States Census Bureau. Retrieved 2012-11-25. - First United Methodist Church History Archived October 4, 2011, at the Wayback Machine - Tutag, Nola Huse, and Lucy Hamilton. Discovering Stained Glass in Detroit - City of Birmingham, MI: The Birmingham EccentricArchived October 30, 2007, at the Wayback Machine - hostmaster (2016-12-29). "The Community House". Michigan. Retrieved 2020-12-19. - "The Community House". The Community House. Retrieved 2020-12-19. - Budner, Marty. "Birmingham Little League teams win 3 district titles". HometownLife.com. Retrieved September 12, 2018. - "Elementary." French School of Detroit. Retrieved on June 20, 2015. - "JSD History" (). Japanese School of Detroit. May 2, 2001. Retrieved on April 16, 2015. "昭和４８年 ６月 デトロイト日本語補習授業校開設、私立クランブルック・ブルックサイド校借用。 （１９７３）" and "（１９８１） １０月 児童・生徒増のため、私立ケンジントン・アカデミー校に移転。" and "（１９８７） ４月 児童・生徒増のため、ケンジントン校に加え、公立シーホーム校との２校体制に拡大。" and "４月 児童生徒増のため、ケンジントン校・シーホーム校に加え、公立コビントン校との ３校体制に拡大。 " and "（１９９９） 事務局移転（インターナショナル・アカデミー校→旧オークランド・シュタイナー校） " - "HANDBOOK For Teachers of Japanese Students." () Japanese School of Detroit. p. 4 (4/12). Retrieved on June 19, 2013. "4. Now, about 1,000 students are studying at two different school buildings. a. West Maple Elementary School Kindergarten ~ 3rd grades b. Seaholm High School 4th ~ 12th grades" - "りんごネットへようこそ！" (). Japanese School of Detroit. October 4, 2002. Retrieved on April 7, 2015. "連絡先 Japanese School of Detroit 2436 W.Lincoln, Suite E101 Birmingham, MI 48009, U.S.A." - "Japanese School of Detroit to relocate to Novi." (Archive, PDF version, Archive) Novi Community School District. December 16, 2010. Retrieved on April 17, 2011. - "RTA RefleX Regional Service". RTA Michigan. Regional Transit Authority of Southeastern Michigan. Archived from the original on 5 September 2016. Retrieved 4 October 2016. - "Anita Lo." "Most Powerful Women in New York 2007." Crain's New York. Retrieved on September 6, 2014. "Born in Birmingham, Mich., to Chinese immigrant parents,[...]" - "Alexandra Silber". Downtown Newsmagazine. Archived from the original on 2016-01-02. Retrieved 2015-10-20.

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By Julio Montes During World War II, the British Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) gained experience in performing daring raids behind enemy lines using Canadian Chevrolet WA trucks. As soon as the American Jeeps arrived to the hands of the British Special Air Service (SAS) in North Africa, they were adopted for the same daring tasks entrusted to the LRDG trucks. The Jeeps were ideal as weapons carriers, or “gunjeeps.” The Jeep went to inspire post-war generations of 4×4 light utility vehicles around the world, and the modern high mobility multipurpose vehicles. The LRDG Jeeps in particular evolved into today’s light strike vehicles. The gunjeeps used by Central American armies are tasked with missions typical of armored vehicles: reconnaissance, including advance to contact, battle reporting, rapid forward reconnaissance and observation and surveillance. The combination of firepower, size and mobility allows troops to perform independent raids and deep penetration tasks. Military security outfits use them for escorting unprotected columns, and base perimeter response. The infantry has used them to exploit a gap in the advance, and for internal security. Gunjeeps can also be used for counter-insurgency tasks, to include: armored close support of infantry and fire support. Additional tasks include mobile patrols, anti-arms smuggling patrols, roadblock, escort for convoys and V.I.P.s, peace keeping duties, liaison and communications tasks. The gunjeeps are considered force multipliers and can be used to perform delaying actions in withdrawal, or for operations as flank guards and for anti-airborne and anti-heliborne tasks. THE M151 MUTT Due to this versatile employment, it is not surprising that the Central Americans use gunjeeps in considerable quantities. Armed light utility vehicles are pressed to provide convoy and perimeter security, in addition to the main task of liaison. In large armies with strong armored formations, the duties of perimeter response, antitank, reconnaissance, and liaison duties are entrusted to light armored vehicles. In Central America, this role falls on anti-tank and recce armed utility vehicles instead. Their use also include delaying action in withdrawal, acting as flank guards and for anti-airborne and/or anti-heliborne operations. The first Central American CJ-3 gunjeeps, which arrived soon after WWII, were equipped with a single machine gun pedestal in the bed. Some were equipped with either a heavy 12.7mm M2HB machine gun, or a lighter .30” M1919. In Salvadoran and Honduran service, one of the most common matches consisted of single or double mounts of the Madsen Model 1950. The CJ-3 served until replaced by either the M38, the CJ-8 or the M151. The US delivered considerable quantities of M151s in all its variants to Honduras and El Salvador starting in the mid-1970s; however, few remain in service due to the lack of spare parts. In the weapon carrier configuration (better known as gunjeep), the M151 utility vehicles are used for roadblocks, retaining the capacity to respond with high mobility and firepower. They are used for route and area reconnaissance, mobile patrolling, and security on the move convoys. They are also useful for immediate tactical response. In 1998, Salvadorian Colonel1 Gustavo Perdomo Hernandez found five M151A2 abandoned at the Special Forces Command base. Perdomo and his mechanics worked overtime to recover all five vehicles. By doing so, Perdomo proved the feasibility and necessity to establish a line to recover this type of equipment. The rebuilt Salvadorian M151A2s were baptized “Centaurs”. The Salvadorian Special Forces now operate these rebuilt vehicles. They have had their beds extended to accommodate additional radio equipment. One variant is used as command post. There is another variant configured to FAV standards with a M2HB and a M249 SAW; and a third variant sports an M60MG and an M249 SAW. One more variant has been equipped with a 60mm mortar and ammunition boxes. A fifth variant has been equipped with a GE 7.62 mm Mini-gun. The Nicaraguan National Guard pressed Spanish made CJ-3 and M151 gunjeeps into service during the first revolutionary war of 1977-1979. These sported either a MAG-58 or an M1919 machine gun in the bed. They proved extremely vulnerable during ambushes by the guerrillas, and most were destroyed during the war. Guatemala was the first Central American recipient of the new M151A1 in the late 1960s, and continuing with M151A2 models after 1970. Guatemala continues to be the largest user of the US-made M151 Jeep in the region. The Chapin2 Army does not use any other type of light utility vehicle, and has avoided purchasing the more common M38/CJ type, or clones. So pleased is the Army with the little utility tactical vehicle, that has even established a “production” line to rebuild them. The Guatemalan Material War Service has rebuilt and delivered fifty of 70 rebuilt M151s to the newly established National Civilian Police in 1999. There are 200 bare chassis waiting for the budget to go through the process, and the Army would like to purchase some additional 300 chassis. When this author visited the production line, there were some 20 M151 in various stages of recovery, and two models were ready for “redelivery.” The vehicles are stripped down to the bare chassis, and then put back together using new, remanufactured, or overhauled parts. The most powerful M151 gunjeep type deployed in Central America is the M825 variant (M151 jeeps equipped with M40A1 RCL) for antitank and support roles. The M40A1 RCLs in use in Central America come from the US, Israel or Spain. THE M38A1 AND ITS MANY CLONES The other widely used “Jeep” in the region is the M38 light utility vehicle. American Motors Corporation (AMC) produced the M38 and M38A1 soon after WWII. The M38 was adopted by the US Army in the 1950s, and was widely distributed to Central American armies. There were also “civilian” variants-the CJ5 and CJ7-that entered service with the various regional armies. The M38 was, in fact, a larger Jeep Willys. The CJ-5 sported an AMC 4-121 4-cylinder petrol engine, developing 80bhp. The CJ-7 came with a 2.5 liter 4-cylinder petrol engine and the usual manual 4F1R transmission, but there were some models that mounted a more powerful 4.2 liter 6-cylinder engine. By far the most popular version deployed by the Honduran and Salvadoran armies was the CJ-8 Jeep, equipped with a 6-cylinder diesel engine (4.2 Ltr). The Salvadoran models are said to have come from commercial sources, through mediation by an American Colonel, and paid by US aid funds. There have been numbers of CJ8 Jeep clones that have been delivered to the Hondurans, Salvadoran and Nicaraguan armies. Honduras received the Ford U-50, a variant of the CJ-5 built by the Brazilian Ford. These models sported a 4-cylinder OHC petrol engine, developing 91bhp, matched to a 4F1R transmission. In Honduran service, the Brazilian made U-50 were supplemented with Brazilian-made Toyota LAND CRUISERS. These mounted a 6-cylinder petrol engine, developing 145bhp. In the 1980s, Nicaragua received numbers of UAZ-469 4×4 light vehicles. The UAZ-469 vehicles mount the ZMZ 451M 2.445 liter 4-cylinder petrol engine, developing 75hp. However, these Soviet utility vehicles are nothing like the CJ Jeep series. Therefore, the Nicaraguan Popular Army (EPS) acquired several KOREANDO Jeeps in 1990. The KOREANDO built by South Korea resembles the CJ-8, and it is the civilian version of the KEOHWA M-5 & M7 series, equipped with an AMC 6-cylinder petrol engine developing 114bhp. The KOREANDO did not prove to be satisfactory in service, so the Nissan PATROL-made in Spain-were purchased starting in 1996. These Spanish made Nissans are equipped with a P-40 6-cylinder, developing 130bhp. In El Salvador, the M151 gunjeeps were usually equipped with either a 7.62mm Madsen SAETTER or an M1919 machine gun on a pedestal in the bed. The CJ-8 gunjeeps sported either an M1919 or an M60D. These gunjeeps were used for security convoy and rapid response, and therefore, received serious losses in battle. By 1985, the Maestranza (Armed Forces National Workshop) had developed an armored CJ-8 Jeep variant. This carried armored plates around the cab and bed, and a turret equipped with an M2HB machine gun. The suspension was reinforced, and double tires were placed in the rear. The experiment failed since the CJ-8 engine, the AMC 4.2 liter 6 cylinder diesel engine, developing 115hp, overheated due to the excessive weight. The armored CJ-8 project was abandoned and the prototype was relegated to base security at the Military Detachment 1, Chalatenango, where it survived the war, and it was dismantled in 1992. Very few “civilian” Jeep Wranglers have been deployed in Central America. Nevertheless, the “look and power” of the Wrangler pickup appear to be preferred by the military. The American YJ-L Wrangler pickups are fitted with a Cummins B3.9 diesel engine, developing 105hp, matched to a Chrysler A727 3-speed automatic transmission and New Process M231 2-speed transfer box. The similar (less powerful) CJ8 long bed was a favorite of the Salvadorans, since it was common to use the Jeeps as transport, cramming as many as five soldiers in the bed, plus two crewmen. All the M40A1s in Salvadoran service were fitted to the long bed (LB) variants of the M38/CJ8 during the civil-war of 1979-1992. These vehicles were deployed as close support, a role proper for an armored vehicle. Therefore, many CJ-8 LB/M40A1 vehicles were equipped with a front armored shield. The Infantry also used their M38 LB/M40A1 in a similar fashion to self-propelled artillery, firing salvoes at the guerrillas and then changing positions before firing again. The matching of the M40A1 to a long bed jeep has continued with the latest CJ Jeep clones acquired by the Salvadorans. In 1990, the Salvadoran Army took delivery of 36 M240 Storm antitank vehicles (with the M40A1 RCL) and two M-240 reconnaissance and command variants. The M240 MMV series (Multi Mission Vehicles) were designed by Automotive Industries Limited of Nazareth Illit (Israel). The M240s are produced in two frame lengths. The Salvadorans chose the long bed variant (4.5 m) (the other length option is 4.15 m). The M240 is an Israeli near copy of the US-made CJ-8. As designed, the M242 series are equipped with the same CJ-8 engine, a DANA 300 2-speed transfer box and a TREMEC T-176 4F1R transmission. The Salvadorans opted for the more powerful M240 AMC 4L V-6 diesel engine, developing 180 hp, and matched to an AISIN AX-15 5F1R transmission and a NP231 2-speed transfer box. A couple of variants were delivered: Armed (Reconnaissance & antitank/support) and utility (control & communications). The Reconnaissance variant is the typical armed variant, with an adjustable pedestal in the bed for either a heavy machine gun (12.7mm M2HB) or an automatic grenade launcher. The front passenger door mounts a second 7.62mm machine gun (a M60D in Salvadorian service). The antitank/support variant carries the M40A1 RCL. Surprisingly, the AT/Support variant lacks the light machine gun for the use of the front mounted passenger3. The Honduran Army has taken delivery of several M998 HUMMER transports to operate as light pickup trucks for the three Infantry Brigades and to operate alongside the Saladins of the 1st Armored Cavalry Regiment (RECABLIN). These are the most modern light utility vehicles deployed by any Central American army or police force. The high mobility performance and payload capacity makes the HUMMERs particularly powerful weapon platforms. Therefore, all the Honduran M998s have been equipped with a central mount for a single 12.7mm M2HB in the bed. A second 7.62mm MAG-58 machine gun can be mounted at the front passenger side. The Honduran HUMMERs have also replaced the M825 utility cars (M151A2 jeeps with 106mm RCL). The HUMMER is ideally suited as a platform of the powerful M40A1, able to carry comfortably a crew of four, in addition to some five times the ammunition carried by a M825. The Honduran Army also distributed some M1069 Prime Mover variants to the RECABLIN, which tow the four M102 howitzers and four M55A2 systems assigned to the Regiment. THE RBY & CASHUAT The American experiments with the “dune buggie” as part of the Fast Attack Vehicle program of the early 1980s, inspired a number of experiments around the world. Perhaps one of the most interesting “gunjeeps” deployed by the Central Americans is the RBY-Mk1 supplied by Israel. The Israelis determined that the idea of the Fast Attack Vehicle (FAV) needed refinement. The FAV concept was sound, providing for speed, mobility and great firepower, but it lacked protection. The Israelis developed their own version of the FAV. The RBY is not strictly speaking a Jeep or a light utility vehicle. In general, the RBY is based on a concept of the legendary LRDG patrols developed by the SAS during WWII, but providing better speed and improved protection to the crew. The crew can raid the enemy with a large array of light and heavy weapons. The Honduran Army uses the RBYs in the context developed by the Israelis, much like gunjeeps. The RBYs are organized in a reconnaissance squadron, comprising 4 sections each equipped with two Recce RBYs and 2 Tank Hunter RBYs in addition to four M38 gunjeeps. The RBYs and armed utility M38 vehicles were used in their classical supporting role. Colonel Emilio David Rodriguez Alvarado, of the Honduran Armored Cavalry Regiment, explained to us that he participated as a young lieutenant in the battle of the Amatillo Bridge in 1984. At the time, Salvadoran FMLN guerrillas overran the local police outpost on the El Salvador side, and prepared to blow up the bridge. The RBYs arrived in time to receive a baptism of fire, pushing back the rebels until Salvadoran troops arrived late the following day to take control of the bridge. One vehicle of this reconnaissance section was sufficient in 1984, to provide enough firepower to beat back the Salvadoran guerrillas who had just wiped out a complete Salvadoran National Police company. The Honduran 1st Armored Cavalry Regiment (RECABLIN) Commander, Colonel Jorge Andino Andrade, assured that 13 RBYs are operational; however, they denied access to the units’ motor pool to verify this-most likely due to the Salvadoran background of this author. His second in command indicated that Nicaragua is no longer considered a potential enemy, but war with El Salvador is only a matter of time. Ironically, at that particular time, Honduras coast guard units were raiding Nicaraguan fishing boats around Lempira in the North and Fonseca in the South. The officers also complained of the tight budget to keep the machines running, imposed by the civilian administration. However, with the reluctance of the Armed Forces to open-up to civilian authority, and with some trigger-happy officers still calling for a war with El Salvador, it is only sensible that the civilian authorities retain certain reservations over the military. The Guatemalan Army considers the RBYs to be light armored vehicles, and they are deployed accordingly. Due to the broken Guatemalan terrain, and the characteristics of the RBYs, they were relegated to operations in the coastal regions and around Jutiapa. CASHUAT VAL (VEHICULO DE ASALTO LIGERO) In 1985, the US made available $3 millions to upgrade and re-equip the Salvadoran Cavalry Regiment. Cavalry officers were invited to the 9th Infantry Division, Fort Lewis, Washington, to observe and test the Fast Attack Vehicle being developed by the Special Forces in those days. According to then Cavalry Regiment S3, Captain Miguel Castillo4 the Fast Attack Vehicle was rejected by the Salvadorians because it was too expensive, lacked armored protection and did not provide for a light armored transport variant. The Salvadoran terrain is broken, presenting only a few open areas; therefore, operations of motorized equipment are restricted to paved and dirt roads. The Cavalry Regiment had been tasked with keeping the roads open to transit, so a light armored vehicle for convoy escort and road patrol was needed. Based on the concept of the Fast Attack Vehicle presented to them in Fort Lewis, the Salvadoran Cavalry Regiment officers requested the Light Assault Vehicle (VAL-Vehículo de Asalto Ligero) from the local National Workshops (Maestranza). The Cavalry provided a Tactical Group and Maestranza a Technical Group to study the production of a locally-made armored pickup truck. The M37B1 4×4 Dodge pickup chassis was selected to mount a mild steel shell for trials. After all details and problems were resolved, a line was established at the Maestranza HQ, San Salvador. The US Tank Automotive Command supplied 66 kits to ensemble the new armored cars in El Salvador. The Army collected 100 M37B1 chassis from Army barracks nationwide, and more were offered from the Military Assistance Program. The Salvadorian hoped to build 100 armored pickups. The Army had found that troops riding on the enclosed armored trucks would go to sleep due to the intense heat inside the armored vehicles. Therefore, an open-topped design was selected for the new Light Assault Vehicle to provide some sense of insecurity so troops would keep awake and alert. The Maestranza produced 66 armored pickups denominated Cashuats (“Horse” in Nahuat Amerindian language). They were built in two variants: light armored transport and weapons carrier. As designed-a light armored road patrol vehicle-the Cashuat was a complete success. The VAL program called for a light armored vehicle for roles typically assigned to gunjeeps; in reality, they only supplemented the smaller utility cousins. The M151 and M38 continued to be used by the Cavalry Regiment in reconnaissance sections of 5 gunjeeps. Furthermore, the Salvadorans deployed the Cashuats for counter-insurgency tasks as armored close support of infantry, fire support, and armored troop transports. The Cashuat had not been designed for these roles as they can be considered “light armored long wheelbase gunjeeps.” It lacked the firepower of the Panhard AML-H90 and the mobility of the UR-416. In this supporting role the Cahsuat VAL was considered to be a complete failure. Modernization programs of older vehicles are good investments. The recovery of the M35A2 truck to the A3 standard is one example. The “new” M35A3 consists of an old M35A2 modified with a Cummins 478-ci engine developing 170hp, new 4-speed automatic transmission, 2-speed transfer box, and new axles with super single radial tires. The changes include a new cooling system, split air/hydraulic breaks, new power assisted steering, and central tire inflation system. Ideally, the M151A2 chassis would go through a similar transformation to a M151A3. This would include an overhauled manual or a new automatic transmission, a Perkins Prima 80T turbocharged 80hp diesel engine (or similar), power steering, improved suspension, wide tires and central tire pressure. As a light strike vehicle, a modernized M151 can be modified Israeli-style, with wire-cutter front post, roll bars, storage boxes, additional radios, a MAG-58 forward over the dashboard for the use passenger side crew, and either an M1919 or MAG-58 in the bed facing rearguard. In fact, the USMC used something similar until 1997. The Guatemalan Army in their M151 “production” line could easily incorporate these suggested modifications. Guatemala is happy with the M151, and the Hondurans have opted for the HUMMER. The Salvadoran Army is left behind having a number of different light utility vehicles, but without enough of them to make a difference. El Salvador has a requirement for some 300 to 500 modernized M151, and between 300 and 500 modernized M35 trucks in all variants. Salvadoran sources indicate that all US material military assistance has stopped. The only assistance being received is in training. This leaves considerable US-made material relegated to warehouses or the junk yard. The Army lacks even trucks for mobility. The Salvadorans are also to blame since they have been unable to establish a reliable logistic branch and those making military arms and parts purchases appear to be either inept or highly corrupt. 1 Now General, Special Military Security Brigade Commander. 2 Chapin: Accepted regional nickname, applied to Guatemalans (not a diminutive name). 3 This author considers that the investment on the Storm was unwise. A better investment for the Salvadoran Army would have consisted in acquiring second-hand M113 vehicles, refurbished to A3 standards, or the establishing a recovery line for M151A2s. 4 Today Brigadier General, Salvadorian Army General Inspector. |This article first appeared in Small Arms Review V4N10 (July 2001)| and was posted online on May 2, 2014

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Quantum computers have the potential to shake up finance, cybersecurity and other sectors. But investors hoping to profit from the new technology must be patient – and separate reality from hype. In 2017, Chinese scientist Juan Yin and her team conducted a unique experiment. Using quantum technology, they linked two photons on a satellite called Micius, then dispatched them to different locations on Earth, thousands of miles apart. Even across this vast distance, the two photons maintained their connection: when one was observed, the other immediately changed its properties, as if the particles were magically communicating. In scientific parlance, they were entangled.1 Welcome to the weird world of quantum mechanics, where up is down, here is there and the usual laws of physics no longer apply. In the early 20th century, Albert Einstein dismissed entanglement as “spooky action at a distance”, but it is now being observed in laboratories across the world.2 Quantum theory appears to explain the inner workings of the universe, however counterintuitive it may seem in the context of our everyday lives. Spooky indeed. Entering the quantum era Before they fully grasped the implications of quantum physics, scientists used its principles to design technologies such as lasers and semiconductors, ushering in the information age. Today, the bizarre characteristics of the quantum realm are being harnessed more directly, opening new possibilities. Governments and technology companies are racing to develop quantum computers Governments and technology companies are racing to develop quantum computers made up of strings of entangled quantum bits, or qubits, that promise to increase computing speeds exponentially. These machines could theoretically revolutionise any sector that relies on rapid processing power, including finance, while posing a serious threat to existing cybersecurity systems. Quantum algorithms have the potential to model chemical processes with unprecedented accuracy, yielding new discoveries in pharmaceuticals and biotech. A great deal of uncertainty surrounds the efficacy of the technology, and big technical challenges must be addressed before it becomes a practical tool. But experts argue that if these obstacles are overcome, quantum methods could be used to improve medical treatments, optimise energy and financial networks, and even tackle global problems such as climate change. “There is enormous potential for quantum simulation – and quantum computing, once we have it – to enable us to better understand the details of the world around us, to make better drugs, to improve society,” says Lene Oddershede, professor of physics at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, and senior vice president at the Novo Nordisk Foundation. To understand how quantum computing works, you need to get your head around one of the spookiest aspects of quantum physics: the notion that reality behaves differently depending on whether it is being observed. Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger illustrated this concept with a famous thought experiment. Imagine a cat is kept in a box where a quantum phenomenon has a 50:50 chance of occurring, thereby triggering the release of poison. The point is not simply that we don’t know whether the cat is alive or dead until we open the box; according to the rules of quantum mechanics, the cat is both alive and dead at the same time, until it resolves into one of the two possibilities once it is observed. In quantum mechanics you do not know the state of a system before you have made a measurement “One of the fundamental statements of quantum mechanics is that you do not know the state of a system before you have made a measurement,” Oddershede explains. “Until the box is opened, the cat is in a superposition of two distinct states, dead and alive. You cannot know the state before you do the measurement, and when you do the measurement, you have determined whether the cat is dead or alive.” Thankfully, no real cats have been harmed in quantum experiments – but the superposition effect has been recorded at a micro scale in laboratories, where light particles behave differently if they are being measured. Scientists and philosophers struggle to explain how this effect tallies with the laws of classical physics. According to one view, everything in the universe has a hidden shadow, an unobservable layer of reality where the numbers add up. Other experts have suggested we are living in many parallel universes simultaneously (when I look in the box and see a dead cat, there is another “me” in a different universe who sees the cat contentedly purring).3 What we do know is that we can use superposition to build a new type of computer. Traditional computers are made up of long chains of bits, which can be described in a binary way: 1 or 0. By contrast, quantum bits can be in various superpositions of 1 and 0 states, only resolving definitively into one or the other once a measurement is taken. This means quantum computers can work through huge numbers of potential solutions to a problem simultaneously. What’s more, qubits can be entangled in pairs, like the photons in the satellite experiment in China. In effect, their quantum states are linked: a qubit and its entangled partner will always take the same form when observed. Thanks to the combined power of superposition and entanglement, a quantum computer could reach processing speeds only a planet-sized classical computer could match. Figure 1: The quantum bit4 Source: Volkswagen, November 5, 2019 This is all the more significant given classical computers are not improving as rapidly as they once were. Moore’s Law – the theory that the number of transistors on a computer chip doubles every two years – is breaking down as it becomes ever more difficult (and expensive) for technology firms to cram nanometre-long transistors onto microchips. We are some way from seeing quantum computers in our offices or homes, however. One issue is decoherence – qubits can be knocked out of superposition by miniature vibrations or tiny shifts in temperature, making quantum computers extremely challenging to build. A quantum computer needs to be kept very well isolated from the environment “Quantum information is very delicate, and a quantum computer needs to be kept very well isolated from the environment,” says Adrian Kent, professor of quantum physics at the University of Cambridge. “The individual quantum circuits need to be kept isolated from each other so that they don't interfere. And a programmable quantum computer needs to allow you to control quantum interactions quite precisely, so that you can create the right circuit for the given program.” US and Chinese technology companies with the resources to assemble and maintain these temperamental machines are leading the way, along with some large universities. The likes of Alibaba, Google and IBM have developed working quantum computers, although the most advanced only have around 50-100 qubits, some way short of the 1000-plus qubit machines that would be of any use in the real world (see Figure 2). Figure 2: Quantum progress: quantum computers over time5 Source: Science, May 6, 2021 Most of the larger tech companies are aiming to build what are known as “universal” quantum computers based on quantum logic gates, which should eventually be able to handle a range of different applications, along with a stack of software to run on them. Others, including Canadian firm D-Wave, are building more specialised machines known as annealers, designed specifically for optimisation problems, which involve finding the most efficient solution from a range of options. All these firms are vying to achieve what’s known as “quantum supremacy” In a competitive field, all these firms are vying to achieve what’s known as quantum supremacy: proof their quantum computer can complete a task that would be impossible for a classical one. In 2019, Google proclaimed it had achieved quantum supremacy on an obscure calculation with its 53-qubit machine (IBM fired back, arguing Google had not benchmarked its test against the best modern supercomputers, which could complete the same task more accurately given a little more time).6 In December 2020, a team of Chinese academics published a paper demonstrating their computer had achieved supremacy in a narrow, photon-based experiment – an impressive feat, albeit one with no obvious practical applications.7 “People have probably seen headlines about Google, and more recently Chinese researchers, achieving so-called quantum supremacy. Those are really impressive technical achievements, but it's important to understand what they mean,” says Kent. “These groups built relatively small quantum devices, using different technologies, which can do something that would be effectively impossible to simulate on any standard computer. There’s a little room for debate even about those claims but, taking them at face value, it doesn’t mean you can run any program, or even necessarily a single useful program, on the quantum computer.” The fierce nature of the race has led to media hype and occasional climbdowns by the companies involved The fierce nature of the race has led to media hype, and there has been the occasional climbdown by the companies involved. In early 2021, Microsoft was forced to retract a paper claiming it had discovered a way to build quantum computers using a new group of particles less prone to decoherence, admitting it had made mistakes in its research.8 D-Wave has been criticised for exaggerating the amount of quantum mechanics actually involved in its annealing devices and testing them against inferior classical computers.9 Despite these controversies, tech companies are targeting rapid improvements. Google recently demonstrated its quantum computer can be used to simulate chemical reactions,10 while IBM says it will build a 1000-qubit machine by 2023; both companies believe a million-qubit machine is feasible by the end of the decade.11 Whether or not this timeline is realistic, the technical difficulties involved in operating full-scale quantum computers mean they will probably be used for specific problems classical computers tend to struggle with. These include modelling large systems and performing complex mathematical calculations, such as the factorisation of prime numbers. However, even limited to these areas, a quantum breakthrough could have significant implications for a wide variety of sectors. Finance is a good candidate for quantum improvements. Markets are just the kind of complex, unpredictable systems quantum computers should be able to model more accurately than their classical equivalents. And companies are not waiting for the advent of full-scale quantum computers to investigate quantum solutions. Large financial institutions are teaming up with tech firms to try out quantum algorithms Large financial institutions are teaming up with tech firms to try out quantum algorithms using intermediate, error-prone (or “noisy”) quantum machines, made available using software accessible over the cloud. Willis Towers Watson is working with Microsoft on new quantum-powered risk management protocols, while JPMorgan has partnerships with both IBM and Honeywell to take advantage of two different quantum technologies (the former uses superconducting loops in its computers, while the latter has a different kind of architecture based on trapped ions). Using these methods as a stepping stone, experts have determined quantum tools could be used for a variety of financial tasks. Quantum computers should speed up the machine-learning algorithms used by hedge funds, for example, and lay the ground for quicker, more efficient trading strategies. Spain’s Caixa Bank says it has proved a hybrid classical-quantum computing model – which combines quantum computing and conventional computing in different phases of the calculation process – can be used to precisely segment customers based on their risk profiles.12 Quantum risk management Other firms are investigating quantum solutions to speed up Monte Carlo simulations, the complex calculations used to price derivatives options and measure risk. Research shows quantum-powered methods can speed up option pricing from an overnight process to an instantaneous one and allow organisations to stress test and immediately adjust portfolios based on a real-time picture of their risk exposures. Many financial institutions are investigating quantum algorithms for quantifying and pricing risk in financial markets “Many financial institutions are investigating quantum algorithms for quantifying and pricing risk in financial markets,” says Matthias Rosenkranz, scientific project manager at start-up Cambridge Quantum Computing. “The main workhorse is a quantum algorithm called Amplitude Estimation, which improves Monte Carlo simulations. This algorithm promises to estimate risk or instrument prices using fewer samples compared to a standard Monte Carlo simulation. This can translate to faster execution of Monte Carlo-based pricing engines or higher accuracy for a given time budget.” Goldman Sachs and IBM, which have a quantum computing partnership, recently published the results of a study that showed a quantum computer with 7,500 qubits could price derivatives faster and more accurately than classical computers (see Figure 3).13 Figure 3: Quantum-driven risk calculation offers improvements over traditional Monte Carlo methods Note: While the existing small, error-prone quantum computers do not outperform classical computers when gauging portfolio risk, quantum computers with more qubits could perform the same calculations quicker and more accurately than the most sophisticated classical algorithms. Source: IBM, 2019 Other companies are investigating the use of quantum algorithms in asset management to optimise portfolios and boost returns. Using historical trading data, Spanish start-up Multiverse Computing and Spanish bank BBVA used a quantum annealer to determine the optimum portfolio composition out of 101300 possibilities, more than the number of atoms in the known universe. (Simply put, annealing works by using quantum properties to find the lowest energy state of a system, thereby flagging up the simplest way or organising or navigating it.) The simulated portfolio delivered returns of between 20 and 80 per cent over a four-year period, depending on the amount of volatility investors were willing to accept, compared with a return of 19 per cent on the part of BBVA’s human traders and their classical computer models.14 When will quantum methods deliver real-world results in finance beyond such simulations? The key question is when quantum methods will deliver real-world results in finance beyond such simulations. Rosenkranz says it is difficult to estimate with any degree of certainty. “It has been suggested that certain applications such as quantum-assisted portfolio optimisation may provide an advantage within five years. However, such estimates hinge on overcoming two main challenges. First, quantum computing hardware needs to reduce the levels of noise we find in today’s devices. Second, we need to develop better software and algorithms that can leverage today’s devices to accelerate the quantum advantage,” he says. A recent study from Boston Consulting Group estimates Monte Carlo-based modelling applications will be widely available within five to ten years, with powerful quantum algorithms being used for portfolio optimisation within the next decade (see Figure 4).15 Other estimates suggest the practical uses of quantum methods in finance will arrive sooner – Zapata, a US quantum start-up, believes quantum-powered credit scoring will be available within 18 months.16 Some large investment banks are hiring quantum physics graduates to build expertise internally, but for the most part financial institutions prefer to work with specialists who have direct access to the hardware. IBM’s Quantum Network is popular in finance, counting Goldman, Wells Fargo and Barclays among its customers. This may be because of its accessibility and user-friendly software tools: IBM allows companies to build virtual quantum circuits and test them out on real quantum computers using a simulator. (You can try building a simple quantum circuit using IBM’s interface here.) Figure 4: Estimated timeline for quantum applications in finance Note: Quantum advantage over classical computing is uncertain in many areas listed. Business impact assumes that quantum advantage is realised in each area and is not risk-adjusted. QFT = quantum Fourier transform. QAOA = quantum approximate optimisation algorithm. Source: QC Ware, BCG, November 2020 There is another, more pressing reason why financial institutions are investigating quantum computing: security. Modern cryptographic protocols rely on factorising large numbers back into their constituent prime numbers, a calculation too difficult for even superfast classical computers to perform. Using a process known as Shor’s algorithm, quantum computers could theoretically crack these codes and punch holes in cybersecurity defences. Quantum computers could theoretically crack these codes and punch holes in cybersecurity defences Metaculus, a forecasting platform that aggregates expert predictions of future events, has a running estimate on the date when Shor’s algorithm will be used to factor one of the large RSA numbers used in current cryptography.17 As of May 2021, the median prediction for the date was 2048 – a long way away, but soon enough that companies and governments should start worrying about the safety of their data, according to experts in the field. “A lot depends on how highly you value privacy, how long you need to maintain it, and how big a disaster it would be if your cryptosystem were hacked. Bear in mind that if we take the median estimate as representing a 50 per cent chance, then shorter timescales still have a significant chance,” says Kent. “Some government secrets are meant to be kept secure for 50 years or longer, and a one per cent chance they could be broken sooner might be unacceptable. People responsible for keeping those secure should be, and I’m sure are, very, very concerned about the possibility adversaries will store the encrypted data now and be able to decrypt it later when they have a large quantum computer. They probably shouldn’t be using any cryptosystem that relies on factorisation for its security,” Kent adds. A related problem is that quantum computers pose a threat to the blockchain technology underpinning cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin. They could rapidly crack the one-way mathematical functions used to generate the digital signatures that authenticate users and validate the digital ledger of previous transactions. Quantum computers could accelerate bitcoin mining In addition, quantum computers could accelerate bitcoin mining, the process used to add new blocks to the chain using random numerical searches. Because of the limitations of classical computers, mining is a laborious and energy-intensive process that naturally slows down the rate new blocks are added to the global ledger; this ensures the new additions can be properly recorded and checked. But a quantum computer could complete these searches in an instant, monopolising the mining process and potentially subverting the system for nefarious ends. “Within ten years, quantum computers will be able to calculate the one-way functions, including blockchains, that are used to secure the internet and financial transactions. Widely deployed one-way encryption will instantly become obsolete,” according to a Nature paper by a team of researchers led by Alexander Lvovsky, professor of physics at the University of Oxford.18 “Quantum computers will find solutions quickly, potentially enabling the few users who have them to censor transactions and to monopolize the addition of blocks to the bitcoin ledger… These parties could sabotage transactions, prevent their own from being recorded or double-spend,” Lvovsky and his colleagues added. The quantum sword, the quantum shield Given the threat to state secrets and financial stability, it is no wonder governments are investing heavily in quantum computing technology, with a special focus on quantum cybersecurity. In a speech in April 2021, the head of the UK intelligence service, GCHQ, warned the government needed to spend more on improving its quantum capabilities to keep pace with China.19 China has invested more than $1 billion in a quantum research institute in Hebei province and is leading the way on patents for commercial quantum applications. The US, meanwhile, has ploughed $1.2 billion into quantum technology as part of the National Quantum Initiative Act, passed by Congress in 2018.20 One line of state-sponsored research centres on “post-quantum” cryptography, the attempt to design cryptosystems that use processes other than factorisation and will therefore be resistant to quantum hackers. The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is currently running an international contest to find the most effective post-quantum encryption system and is expected to decide on new standards in 2022. (Some companies already offer off-the-shelf quantum-based cybersecurity products, based on quantum algorithms generated on small, noisy quantum devices. However, governments recommend large organisations wait until new standards are agreed, to avoid having to invest twice in new security upgrades.)21 As for bitcoin, Lvovsky and colleagues argue the currency could be secured using quantum communication, which harnesses the mysterious properties of quantum physics to flag network breaches. Because of the principle that an observation changes the state of a quantum object, eavesdroppers on a quantum communications system can be immediately detected. Quantum communications do not require full-scale quantum computers to work Quantum communications do not require full-scale quantum computers to work and the technology is already available, although there are limitations on distance when using fibre-optic cables. China’s Micius satellite could represent a solution – scientists have used it to relay quantum keys, setting up a quantum-encrypted video call between Beijing and Vienna.22 Quantum technology is even being used to explore the possibility of entirely new kinds of currencies, whose security is guaranteed by quantum physics. Kent is working on a theoretical framework known as “S-money”, which is both secure and potentially much faster and more flexible than existing financial technology. “It's specifically designed for settings where time is critical, and so you want a recipient to be able to verify the money without having to send signals around the network to cross-check. A key realisation here was that the very concept of what money is or does needs to be extended to make it as useful as possible in settings like this, the global financial network being an example,” he says. S-money consists of secure virtual tokens that materialise at given points in a network in response to real-time data flows, as opposed to existing physical or digital currencies that need to travel on definite paths through space. In fact, S-money could conceivably be used for commerce on a galactic scale with no time lags – although, like so much else in quantum tech, interstellar trade is a theoretical prospect at this point. This is not to say there are no implications for investors in the here and now. According to recent analysis from Berenberg, quantum computing is unlikely to move the dial on revenues for the large, diversified tech companies building the most advanced machines. Nevertheless, governments and private organisations will need to start securing their systems against quantum computers long before they become widely available, creating a fast-growing quantum cybersecurity industry in the interim. Berenberg forecasts quantum cybersecurity will be worth $32.5 billion by 2028 (compared with $5 billion for quantum computing proper).23 This is not simply a matter of upgrading IT infrastructure: as the Internet of Things spreads and our physical world becomes more connected, manufacturers will have to future-proof their products against the quantum threat. Take autonomous and internet-connected vehicles: Berenberg observes “auto models being designed today could still be operating on the roads well beyond the expected timeline for the development of a quantum computer powerful enough to present a threat to current encryption methods”.24 Figure 5: Estimated growth of post-quantum cybersecurity market ($ millions) Note: QKD = Quantum key distribution, QSC = quantum-safe cryptography, PQC = post-quantum cryptography, HSM = hardware security module. Source: Berenberg, 2018 Investors will also need to ensure the companies they hold in their portfolios are resilient against the quantum cyber threat. Today, a data breach occurs once every 39 seconds in the US, affecting nearly one in three Americans, with the mean cost of each data breach to businesses around $3.9 million.25 When user data is compromised, companies can be subject to regulatory fines and class-action lawsuits worth hundreds of millions. The financial costs of security breaches are only likely to escalate in a world where all cryptographic protocols are vulnerable to quantum attack. As for the beneficiaries of the quantum cyber trend, much will depend on the outcome of NIST’s competition over the next 18 months. The winning post-quantum method will probably become the global standard, opening up government and private contracts for quantum cybersecurity companies to run the relevant algorithms. Based on its shortlist, NIST looks to be favouring so-called lattice systems, which generate public and private keys based on coordinates in mathematical grids, although an alternative method based on error-correcting codes, developed by London-based quantum cryptography firm Post Quantum, is among those being tested in the final stages of the competition.26 Many quantum cybersecurity companies, Post Quantum included, are small start-ups. But there are some listed exceptions, including Canada’s 01 Communique, which recently agreed a deal with PwC to secure its China-based operations with quantum-powered cryptography.27 Data management, drug discovery and systems optimisation Another investment route into the industry is to invest on the “picks and shovels” side. The manufacturers of dilution refrigerators, photonic systems, vacuum technology and other high-tech gizmos are likely to see increased demand over the next decade as larger, more sophisticated quantum computers are constructed. Honeywell, Oxford Instruments and Keysight Technologies are among the companies that specialise in quantum computer components. Over the longer term, the advent of quantum computing should increase the value of large datasets by speeding up the machine-learning algorithms that analyse and make sense of them. This would benefit companies already adept at managing data, along with firms supplying them with hardware. Quantum computing is yet another set of tools which makes data more useful “Quantum computing is yet another set of tools which makes data more useful – both existing historical datasets and data-gathering infrastructure. If you know you will get better, more precise, faster answers from looking at your data, you will value the historic data more. This benefits data-rich companies with strong existing datasets,” says Giles Parkinson, global equities portfolio manager at Aviva Investors. “There will also be more investment in gathering new data, benefiting manufacturers of sensors, memory and connectivity chips that provide the nuts and bolts of data collection and transmission to the point where it’s analysed for answers. This is already the case – quantum computing just extends this ‘data utility’ megatrend further into the future,” Parkinson adds. Quantum methods should also find applications in the pharmaceuticals industry, promising to cut costs and improve the effectiveness of new treatments. Because quantum mechanics align with the deep workings of nature, quantum systems are much better equipped than classical ones to simulate its effects, aiding drug discovery. Quantum computers with a relatively modest number of qubits could replicate molecules such as penicillin and simulate their interactions; to do the same thing, a classical computer would need more bits than there are atoms in the known universe (see Figure 6). Figure 6: Modelling molecules: To model a complex molecule, a classical computer would need more bits than there are atoms in the known universe Note: To accurately simulate a molecule and model its chemical reactions, you would need a traditional computer of impossible size - for complex molecules, such a machine would require more bits than there are atoms in the known universe. A quantum computer with a relatively small number of qubits could perform the same calculation with ease. Source: Cambridge Quantum Computing “Quantum mechanics is at the heart of the complexity of the problem of drug discovery, because the underlying biomechanical processes take place on the molecular scale, which is where quantum interactions rule,” says Professor Oddershede at Novo Nordisk. “Because of the quantum nature of these building blocks, there is an advantage to using quantum simulation in drug exploration. Quantum simulators can be used because they are quantum in nature and can mimic the system being investigated. When we have a full-blown quantum computer, just the computational power it will provide is going to revolutionise drug discovery,” she adds. In the meantime, US biotech multinational Biogen has partnered with Canada-based quantum computing specialist 1Qbit to develop a molecule comparison tool, using the small, noisy quantum devices already available. It says this gives it a competitive advantage in the early stages of drug discovery, by improving accuracy and cutting costs in what is a notoriously error-prone and expensive process.28 Biogen is not the only company experimenting with quantum: almost one third of all life sciences companies globally have started evaluating quantum methods for drug discovery, according to McKinsey.29 “We’re already benefiting from scientific breakthroughs that enable better analysis, diagnostics, modelling and design of both the mechanics of diseases and possible cures,” says Matt Kirby, global equities portfolio manager at Aviva Investors. “Cryogenic electron microscopy, more affordable gene sequencing, gene and cell therapies are all part of this change. In-silico, or computer-aided, drug discovery and modelling of drug interactions with the human body is another one of these progress vectors. It looks like quantum computing will aid that further.” Tools and service providers are likely to benefit from an acceleration in the productivity of R&D in pharmaceuticals and biotech The whole ecosystem of tools and service providers in this area – including contract manufacturers of novel biological drugs, suppliers of diagnostic and analytical tools, and clinical research organisations – are likely to benefit from an acceleration in the productivity of R&D in pharmaceuticals and biotech. Quantum tools are also being used to model electrochemical materials, such as those found in batteries. Carmaker Volkswagen has developed algorithms capable of simulating some of the key molecules used in battery production on the existing quantum computers offered by Google and D-Wave, raising the possibility of better-performing batteries (and higher-performance electric vehicles) once a whole battery can be modelled on a more sophisticated piece of hardware. Such are the myriad possibilities of quantum computing, first movers are beginning to find applications across very different parts of their businesses. As well as its battery experiments, VW is working with D-Wave’s quantum annealing technology on a traffic optimisation project. By crunching data from vehicles in Beijing, the two companies were able to cut journey times between the airport and the city centre.30 VW used this proof-of-concept experiment to develop an app that is being used in a real-world pilot project to improve traffic congestion in Lisbon, providing data to bus drivers they can use to amend their journeys in real time. Similar methods are now being used to improve supply chain logistics and streamline production inside factories. Japanese manufacturer Denso is applying a hybrid classical-quantum process to reduce gridlock on its factory floors, for example.31 Energy efficiency and climate change Perhaps more significant are the potential uses of quantum optimisation and chemical modelling in the renewable energy sector, which could eventually make quantum computers a vital tool in the battle against climate change. In July 2020, Microsoft said it was using quantum algorithms to devise new carbon fixation methods, with a view to creating technology to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.32 Oddershede believes governments should be looking at quantum solutions to improve the efficiency of national energy grids – the kind of large, data-spewing systems quantum computers will be able to manage more efficiently than today’s supercomputers, which have gargantuan carbon footprints (the world’s current largest supercomputer guzzles 17.8 megawatts of power, enough to supply electricity to 13,500 American households).33 Microsoft has made steps forward in this area, too: the company is working with the Dubai Water and Electricity Authority to implement quantum algorithms to optimise the energy mix based on the city’s real-time consumption needs.34 “The energy sector generates enormous amounts of data. Imagine the energy grid of Europe; calculating where energy is needed, and how to get energy to that place, requires processing enormous amounts of data. Once we have a quantum computer, that process is going to be revolutionised,” says Oddershede. “Solely for security reasons, every country should have large efforts on the quantum computation front, but also for the benefits related to climate change and renewable energy.” Governments and companies across a swathe of sectors are looking to become early adopters of quantum technology Given the range of its possible applications, it is no wonder governments and companies across a swathe of sectors are looking to become early adopters of quantum technology, despite the question marks over its efficacy in the present. Timescales are relative – while a quantum-powered smartphone or desktop PC may be a remote prospect, those in charge of cybersecurity for large organisations will need to start thinking about quantum-proofing their systems sooner rather than later. In this respect, quantum computing is no different from any other disruptive technological advance. Think of the hype surrounding the internet in the mid-1990s, which prompted scepticism as to its true value over the longer term. As Microsoft founder Bill Gates sagely warned in his book The Road Ahead (1996): “We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Don’t let yourself be lulled into inaction.”35

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- Integrative article - Open Access Understanding the phases of vaccine hesitancy during the COVID-19 pandemic Israel Journal of Health Policy Research volume 11, Article number: 16 (2022) Vaccine hesitancy is an important feature of every vaccination and COVID-19 vaccination is not an exception. During the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccine hesitancy has exhibited different phases and has shown both temporal and spatial variation in these phases. This has likely arisen due to varied socio-behavioural characteristics of humans and their response towards COVID 19 pandemic and its vaccination strategies. This commentary highlights that there are multiple phases of vaccine hesitancy: Vaccine Eagerness, Vaccine Ignorance, Vaccine Resistance, Vaccine Confidence, Vaccine Complacency and Vaccine Apathy. Though the phases seem to be sequential, they may co-exist at the same time in different regions and at different times in the same region. This may be attributed to several factors influencing the phases of vaccine hesitancy. The complexities of the societal reactions need to be understood in full to be addressed better. There is a dire need of different strategies of communication to deal with the various nuances of all of the phases. To address of vaccine hesitancy, an understanding of the societal reactions leading to various phases of vaccine hesitancy is of utmost importance. The deluge of COVID patients has overwhelmed healthcare systems all over the world. The only hope to controlCOVID-19 during the pandemic was earnest research on developing and producing vaccines against COVID-19. Whenever there is vaccine introduction, vaccine hesitancy also comes into play due to the complex interaction of vaccine related factors, vaccinees’ dynamics, and other external issues . The phenomenon of vaccine hesitancy existed long before the current pandemic and has recently been considered as one of the top ten threats to health by the World Health Organization . The 3 “Cs” that inadvertently or otherwise influence vaccine acceptance are complacency, convenience and confidence . In due course of time, some experts have tried to develop a measuring tool for assessing vaccine hesitancy in terms of 5C psychological antecedents of vaccination: confidence, complacency, convenience (constraints), calculation, and collective responsibility . Stimulating the acceptance of vaccines against COVID-19 requires the comprehensive understanding of the reasons of willingness and related concerns of people and the trustworthy sources of information in their decision-making. In relation to the COVID-19 pandemic, the world has also faced the unprecedented public health crisis of an infodemic, too much information including false information; and this has negatively impacted good decisions pertaining to health . The spread of misinformation was not limited to disease transmission, but also accompanied the COVID vaccine roll out . Different phases of vaccine hesitancy Since the emergence of COVID 19 pandemic, there have been numerous studies on vaccine hesitancy related to COVID 19 vaccine [7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15]. Understanding of vaccine hesitancy has been different by experts in different parts of world. This has led to a diverse array of definitions [16, 17]. There is a need to understand this phenomenon as a behavioural characteristic which changes according to human mental capacity and thoughtfulness. Considering this, the very existence of vaccine hesitancy in an individual, family, community and global is dynamic and very complex. It has been observed that the nature of vaccine hesitancy changes over time in the same population; and it changes as people experience subsequent vaccination . In this paper, we describe various phases of vaccine hesitancy (Fig. 1) and how vaccine hesitancy has changed during the COVID 19 pandemic. During the early stages of COVID pandemic, when there was great fear of mortality and morbidity due to SARS COV-2 virus amongst the general population, significant keenness towards vaccines amongst the public was observed [19, 20]. Most people all over the world were eagerly waiting for COVID 19 vaccine in order to get rid of the strict lockdowns and resume their normal life . At that stage, the public was aware that even after the introduction of vaccine, they might have to wait to get vaccine access based on the prioritization criteria. This was because of limited vaccine availability in the initial phase and it took some time before it was made available widely. The waiting period for some sections of people in the society made them more desperate for vaccines. This was also seen amongst the parents who were more concerned about their children when there was no COVID 19 vaccines approved for children. During this phase of eagerness, a vast number of vaccine trials all over the world were conducted to test the efficacy and safety of the various vaccine candidates . This societal reaction may not be considered as part of vaccine hesitancy by some experts but was an important phase encountered during this pandemic. Ignorance may seem like bliss; but sometimes ignorance can be deadly. The United States has a process for Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) of new drugs and biologics. It is faster than full licensure but considered temporary . The US Food and Drug Administration has issued EUAs for COVID-19 vaccines, but ignorance about the EUA of COVID 19 vaccines and the effectiveness of vaccine has led to some untoward results regarding acceptance of these vaccines all over the world. After the EUA of COVID-19 vaccines, people out of their ignorance started questioning the vaccine development, its efficacy, safety, and appropriateness for roll out in the general population [9, 24]. And moreover, none of the experts or researchers were aware of the effectiveness of the vaccine candidates against the then prevalent strains and subsequent mutant strains in future . Some health experts also raised their eyebrows over the vaccine roll out after the EUA which prevented a major chunk of population from getting vaccinated. Either they were unaware of EUA and its procedural mechanism or they may not have been convinced with the EUA for COVID vaccines, as it was never done before. With the ignorance and confusion over COVID 19 vaccines roll out, people perceived themselves as guinea pigs for the COVID 19 vaccine drive by the government agencies . The ignorance phase was inevitable since even some health care providers were not fully confident about the vaccine’s safety and efficacy. Another aspect of hesitancy due to ignorance followed the lowering of preventive measures by vaccinated and even unvaccinated people under the misconception that the vaccine was the complete solution to COVID-19. People also were unaware of the fact that after partial or even a full course of vaccination, they may contract infection but the severity would be less. This was the phase when the concept of break-through infections was not common. These factors led to a rising incidence in infections due to increased transmission of COVID 19 virus in the community. This ignorance also fuelled vaccine hesitancy in the communities and gave antivaxxers material to propagate their agenda . Intertwining with the phase of vaccine ignorance, the phase of vaccine resistance also showed its presence during the COVID 19 pandemic. Amidst bizarre theories of staunch anti-vaxxers, reduction in number of severe cases and reporting of Adverse Events Following Immunization (AEFI) led to this phase of vaccine hesitancy. Though most of the AEFI were mild, a few rare ones were serious or severe. Arzarpaneh and colleagues associated 15 types of cognitive bias as possible contributors to vaccine hesitancy . In this phase, social media was rife with posts disparaging the vaccines . The theories of antivaccine supporters spreading the infodemic online through various social media platforms resulted in vaccine resistance in various communities [9, 28]. The anti-vaccine movement swept through privileged as well as under privileged communities all over the world. The rise of anti-vaccine movements may correspond with different characteristics of members of the population such as unawareness, anxiety and religious beliefs . This phase occurs when the morbidity and mortality due to an infection such as COVID-19 is primarily seen in unvaccinated individuals. It suggests to people that the vaccine is effective against the disease particularly in reducing hospitalizations and deaths . In this phase, those who were hesitant initially due to their concern regarding vaccine novelty, composition and the processes of manufacture and delivery become vaccinated either for professional or personal reasons. As per protection motivation theory (PMT) and the health belief model, protective health behaviours, such as COVID-19 vaccination, will be adopted in due course of time if the individual rationally assesses threat to be severe with a high probability of occurrence [28, 30], and the individual perceives the overall benefits to exceed the risks and costs. Most countries have undergone severe waves of the pandemic and in most countries COVID 19 vaccines are either free or affordable to most sections of society. The combination of these conditions increased confidence in getting the vaccine during this phase. Vaccine complacency is a recurring impediment to vaccination . With respect to COVID 19 vaccination coverage, this occurs during the period when there is a low rate of transmission and illness between the waves of the pandemic. During this phase, although people may have taken no dose or just a first dose of the vaccine, complacency prevents them from getting fully vaccinated. This continues to make the public as a whole vulnerable to COVID 19 due to inadequate population immunity against the virus and it also increases the risk of development of new mutant strains. There have been instances of vaccine complacency in the past against other vaccination drives . Vaccine complacency for the same vaccine differs from region to region at the same or different periods of time depending on socio-behavioural factors. This temporo-spatial variation of vaccine complacency occurs with COVID 19 too. During COVID-19, there has also been a much lower occurrence of influenza across the world. Although higher influenza immunization rates were seen in some places , use of masks and social distancing probably also played a major role in this phenomenon. Experts fear that this may lead to complacency towards periodic influenza vaccination in the coming seasons [32, 33]. However, while the benefits of COVID 19 vaccination are distinct and well acknowledged by international agencies, vaccine complacency continues to reduce the prospective assistances of vaccination at population level in combating this pandemic. This may also arise when milder strains are in circulation and people become complacent to vaccination. Although only a few experts describe vaccine apathy as different from vaccine hesitancy , we consider vaccine apathy as a component of vaccine hesitancy. Vaccine apathy is defined as disinterest or feeling of not being interested in vaccination. It is characterized by weak attitudes towards getting vaccinated and associated with little time spent considering vaccination . This may occur distinctly, or it may co-exist with complacency or other phases of vaccine hesitancy in the community. Vaccine apathy occurs across various socioeconomic groups. For some, vaccination may be low-priority due to loosening of COVID-19 restrictions and return of life back to normal; whereas some individuals may be overwhelmed with higher priority problems of daily earning and other social responsibilities. Determining the magnitude of the vaccine-apathetic population is challenging. It is difficult to predict, like voters’ turnout in polls. Another problem in determining the true magnitude of the vaccine-apathetic population is that people tend to want to present themselves in a manner they think is favourable, so-called social desirability bias . Hence apathetic people may describe their disinterest in personal terms, e.g. lack of concern, indifference to preventive health care, health disinterest/fatalism, rather than in terms related directly to vaccine efficacy and safety, and issues with the clinical trials. Persons with antivaccine positions differ from apathetic people. The former have strongly held and highly defended attitudes, whereas in comparison the latter have weakly negative attitudes toward vaccines. Therefore, effective communication strategies to influence these two groups differ markedly. In the apathy phase of vaccine hesitancy, vaccine promotion approaches specifically addressing the apathetic population may be a vital component in increasing the vaccination coverage and for achieving the national vaccination goals. Though the phases of vaccine hesitancy have been described in sequential manner in this article, various phases can co-exist at the same time in different regions or even in the same region. Several factors leading to various societal reactions can influence the phases of vaccine hesitancy with respect to stage of the pandemic and geographical location. Various solutions to the problem of vaccine hesitancy have been proposed, but the comprehension of its complexity and the origin, existence and spread of each of its types or phases is essential to address it more convincingly [36,37,38]. Humanity is in dire need of a solution for vaccine hesitancy, and we believe that the solution lies ineffective communication and appropriate mass education. The communication strategies for each phase need to be planned and implemented meticulously. We may learn from the experiences of Israel’s successful COVID vaccination program in addressing vaccine hesitancy and achieving a very high coverage rate during the first three months of the initiation of COVID 19 vaccination . There are many countries which have handled vaccine hesitancy and rolled out the vaccination program successfully with effective communication. Learning from different parts of world in dealing various phases of vaccine hesitancy may help each country make effective communication plans for individuals, families, communities, and the nation as a whole. The societal reaction to the vaccine inequity in regards to vaccine availability in different parts of world may also lead to vaccine hesitancy which has not been discussed here and is a limitation of this paper. In addition, COVID-19 vaccination has been primarily an issue of adult immunization. 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Fam Med Community Health. 2021;9(3):e001080. https://doi.org/10.1136/fmch-2021-001080. Rosen B, Waitzberg R, Israeli A. Israel’s rapid rollout of vaccinations for COVID-19. Isr J Health Policy Res. 2021;10:6. Rosen B, Waitzberg R, Israeli A, Hartal M, Davidovitch N. Addressing vaccine hesitancy and access barriers to achieve persistent progress in Israel’s COVID-19 vaccination program. Isr J Health Policy Res. 2021;10(1):43. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13584-021-00481-x. Lahariya C, Bhardwaj P. Adult vaccination in India: status and the way forward. Hum Vaccin Immunother. 2020;16(7):1508–10. https://doi.org/10.1080/21645515.2019.1692564. Ethics approval and consent to participate Consent of publication The authors declare that they have no competing interests. Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. About this article Cite this article Kumar, D., Mathur, M., Kumar, N. et al. Understanding the phases of vaccine hesitancy during the COVID-19 pandemic. Isr J Health Policy Res 11, 16 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13584-022-00527-8 - COVID 19 pandemic - COVID vaccine - Vaccine hesitancy - Vaccine eagerness - Vaccine ignorance - Vaccine resistance - Vaccine confidence - Vaccine complacency - Vaccine apathy

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Investigating the Theft of the American Dream with Hedrick Smith (INTERVIEW)News at Home tags: interviews, plutocracy, Hendrik Smith Robin Lindley (email@example.com) is a Seattle writer and attorney, and features editor for the History News Network. His interviews with scholars, writers and artists have appeared in HNN, Crosscut, Writer’s Chronicle, Real Change, The Inlander, Truthout, Daily Kos, Common Dreams, and other publications. He is a former chair of the World Peace through Law Section of the Washington State Bar Association. In his provocative book, Who Stole the American Dream (Random House), Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Hedrick Smith explores the historical context of our present political and economic situation in an America that has become a modern plutocracy run for the benefit of the richest few while increasing inequality and immobility limit the aspirations of most citizens. Based on extensive research and interviews with experts as well as people who have suffered the cruel reality of division, unfairness and neglect, Mr. Smith details the policies and decisions of the past forty years that have fostered a modern Gilded Age, forsaken the foundations of post-World War II prosperity, and created “Two Americas ... divided by power, money and ideology.” He explains how deliberate strategies have led to today’s gross inequality of income and wealth. With outsourcing, business shutdowns, tax breaks for the rich, corporate slashing of medical benefits and pensions, and other changes, Mr. Smith contends that the American Dream has been stolen and the middle class has stagnated as the government has become an enabler of the rich and as ideological conservatives have pursued the politics of gridlock. Mr. Smith’s book brims with statistics, facts, and the comments of scholars, but it also depicts the human face of an America wounded by a financial culture driven by greed and by a political culture dominated by wealthy interests, leaving average citizens marginalized and bearing the brutal consequences. Journalist Jim Lehrer wrote of Who Stole the American Dream: “It almost seems to tame to call this simply a book. It is an indictment that is as stinging, stunning and important as any ever handed down by a grand jury.” The book earned a starred rating in Kirkus Reviews with the comment that Mr. Smith presents “... one of the best recent analyses of the contemporary woes of American economics and politics.” Hedrick Smith, one of America’s most esteemed journalists, is a bestselling author and a prize–winning reporter and documentary producer. His books include The Russians, The Power Game: How Washington Works, and The New Russians, among others. As a reporter at The New York Times, Mr. Smith shared a Pulitzer Prize for the Pentagon Papers series and won a Pulitzer for his international reporting from Russia in 1971–1974. Also, Mr. Smith’s documentary work has won many of television’s major awards. Two of his Frontline programs, The Wall Street Fix and Can You Afford to Retire? won Emmys and two others, Critical Condition and Tax Me If You Can were nominated. Along with the George Polk, George Peabody and Sidney Hillman awards for reportorial excellence, his programs have won two national public service awards. And, for more than 25 years, Mr. Smith was a principal panelist on Washington Week in Review and as a special correspondent for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Mr. Smith recently talked by telephone about his book and the grave situation for many Americans, as well as his ideas to restore the American dream. * * * * * Robin Lindley: What inspired your book Who Stole the American Dream and your desire to look into the history of how this theft occurred? Hedrick Smith: I began work on the book in the fall of 2009. Like everybody else at that time, I was troubled by what had happened to America: the financial collapse, the housing boom and bust, all of the foreclosures, the rising unemployment, the fear that we were in for another round of depression -- not recession. I had done a number of PBS documentaries and mini-series on subjects such as Wall Street, Wal-Mart, off-shoring of jobs, healthcare, and retirement, but I had never tackled the housing sector. So I was interested in understanding the housing bubble and bust, and that led me into the banking system and how it works and the Wall Street collapse. As I came to understand what was going on, I saw parallels with the work I had previously done on healthcare, on retirement, on job off-shoring, on global competition with Asia and with Europe. I began to see a pattern and I decided I needed to do something bigger, to go beyond the housing issue and look at what had happened to the economy and the middle class in general. I knew that our problems went back further than the collapse itself. It didn’t all begin in 2007 or 2008. My reporting and research led me back to the 1970s as the watershed time when we moved from one era to another in America, and I believe we are still living in that era today. The concept of the book evolved. I signed a contract with Random House to write a book called The Dream at Risk. Only after two and a half years of research and reporting did I come to the conclusion that literally the dream had been taken away from average Americans by the financial elites, the power elites in Washington, by big business, and by certain policy makers who may not have been out to hurt the middle class but in conceiving policies that helped big business and the Wall Street banks, they severely damaged most Americans: the middle class, the working poor and even some of the upper middle class. It’s fortunate that you were able to go back and explore the history of this complex situation. What do you see as the “American Dream” and how did going back in history help you understand the dream? In the fifties, sixties and seventies I had the personal experience of seeing the middle class share in America’s general prosperity. I had seen middle-class political movements and bipartisan government work. So I had a pretty good idea that most Americans were doing reasonably well in that era. After going back and looking at what it meant that most Americans were doing well, I got a clearer picture of the American dream, which to me is fairly simple. The dream of most Americans is to have a job, to have a steady rise in income over your lifetime as you build up your skills, to have security in your job, to have some health benefits from your employer, to have a retirement benefit from your employer plus Social Security, to make enough money so you can afford a down payment and make the monthly payments on your home. It’s the job, it’s health care, it’s the pension, and then owning a home and the hoping for a better future for your kids. Some Americans who think of the Horatio Alger story want to go from rags to riches, but that’s much more individual and it’s much more rare now. Then you have the immigrant dream that you come from somewhere else -- Greece, Albania, Vietnam, Turkey, Central America, or wherever -- and you live a better life in the U.S. than you lived back there. Your historical findings are fascinating. You trace the origins of the situation now back to an early 1970s memo by Lewis Powell, a business attorney who was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Nixon. Why was this memo so significant? It was a surprise to me, particularly because I was the Washington bureau chief of The New York Times in the 1970s, and the chief correspondent well into the eighties. Like many other people, journalists or not, I had thought the changes began in the 1980s under Ronald Reagan and with the return of Republican Party control of the Senate, and Reagan’s two terms followed by the first Bush. So it was a surprise to me that the pivotal moment came in the late 1970s under my watch at The New York Times . We had seen some of the symptoms, but we didn’t understand the causes. At that time, I was more involved in national security and foreign policy coverage than domestic economics and politics because of my experience as a foreign correspondent. But I don’t remember economic stories that explained the degree to which business lobbies had moved in powerfully in that period. And I never heard the congressional reporters saying that there had been a major power shift in favor of business on Capitol Hill - to the detriment of policies for the middle class. It was a discovery to me to find out two things. Number one, that Lewis Powell, a famous corporate attorney who was later put on the Supreme Court by Richard Nixon in 1972, was such an ardent advocate for the free market system that he became a Paul Revere for a political revolt by business leaders. Powell was alarmed by what he saw as threats - the power of labor unions, the consumer movement, the women’s movement, the environmental movement and government regulation of business, largely propounded by the Nixon Administration. He saw all of these as a threat to the very survival of American free enterprise. Today, the memo Powell wrote in 1971 looks like considerable exaggeration. He saw business on the political defensive, said they were in dire straits and in danger of seeing the free enterprise system go down the tubes. I don’t think so. It was not like the Depression or like Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal when businessmen warned that we were becoming a socialist country. But Powell was alarmed and he wrote a powerful, moving memo saying that the businessman was the forgotten man. Although business was doing well economically, Powell wrote that free enterprise was being beaten terribly in the political arena. Business had to learn from the union movement and get politically aggressive, Powell contended - identify its enemies, organize, move lobbyists into Washington, take the high ground, create a long-term political plan, feed it with money, and take charge. The second thing that astonished me is that’s exactly what happened. It’s not that Powell was that powerful an individual voice. But when the U.S. Chamber of Commerce privately circulated his memo to business leaders around the country, that gave Powell’s call to action credibility, strength and support. By the early 1970s, many business leaders, particularly in the Sun Belt -- as you saw with the rise of Barry Goldwater in the 1964 campaign, were chafing at the power of the trade union movement, the consumer movement, the women’s movement, and the environmental movement. Powell’s memo set things off. Within seven or eight years, before Reagan was in office, they had rallied what I call “Powell’s Army.” There were 9,000 registered corporate lobbyists. There were 2,425 companies that had offices in Washington, compared to only 175 when Powell wrote his memo. There were 50,000 people working for business trade associations. This was a veritable army of lobbyists that were organized and focused and they began to turn policy around -- under Jimmy Carter, to my surprise. Carter was in trouble because as president he was not able to get his way with Congress, even though the Democrats controlled both houses. He was not a very effective political leader. And business groups won many victories, with legislation creating the 401(k) plans and making changes in the bankruptcy laws that favored corporate management. These were policy wonk issues, but they were very important. What we didn’t understand at the time was that they were symptoms of a change in the political tide of American history. The landscape of power was changing and business was able to fight for and get the legislation it wanted. At that time, there was a push by Democrats to index the minimum wage so that there would be automatic raises as inflation went up. Business lobbyists blocked that. There was a move by labor to get laws to make it easier for trade unions to organize. Business lobbyists blocked that. Jimmy Carter wanted to change the tax system by closing loopholes for the wealthy and raising corporate taxes. Business lobbyists blocked that, and they moved taxes the other way, getting Congress to drop corporate tax rates and drop the capital gains tax rate and keep loopholes for the wealthy. When you go back today and look at the success of the business lobbyists, you can see that period, that session of Congress, was a political watershed. From the New Deal up to that period, 1978-1979, policies had generally moved in one direction, to expand safety nets and regulate business. Then, it was as if the tides shifted and went into reverse. I didn’t understand that until I did the research for this book. And when it hit me, it struck me as a really important personal discovery and as a place to start this book because that’s where our story today begins. The role of Lewis Powell was a surprise to me. You’re a renowned journalist and historian. How did you go about your historical research for your sweeping examination of our economy and politics over the past four decades? I read a lot of scholars and other authors. I learned a lot from historians. I found things in different places. I found references to the Powell memo, read more and more about it, and began to realize its importance. Research and reporting are often like a cat with a ball of twine. You pull on a string and it leads you somewhere new. Some very good political scientists in academia by the late 1990s began to understand the shift that had taken place and the importance of the Powell memo, and they wrote academic studies. A lot of the data that I gathered on the growth of the business lobby came from academic work by good scholars who had checked the records of Congress to find the numbers of registered lobbyists and the numbers of trade associations. Like other writers, I stood on the shoulders of other people who did good research. Then I had the benefit of knowing some of the important historical players -- Ray Marshall, Carter’s secretary of labor; former House Speaker Newt Gingrich; former senate Majority leader Bob Dole; White House officials in the Reagan and Clinton Administrations. I knew people in business who had been sources of mine, and I went back and talked some of them. When I got into how the 401(k) got slipped into the tax code, I knew about that from reporting for my PBS documentary Can You Afford to Retire? I vigorously researched the history of the 401(k), and I knew people in the retirement analysis field and talked to them, so I could flesh out the story. It’s a combination of classic journalistic field work or reportorial work: getting a clue, building on it, calling a source, that source leads to another and you flesh out more of the story. Then reading the historical record, including Congressional hearings dealing with legislation and so forth. Some of it is flat out quoting or citing research done by others. It’s a book with more than a thousand footnotes. You can tell how much I relied on the work others had done. In the journalism of the time, there was a smattering of coverage of the issues that I discuss in the book. But journalists didn’t see or understand the pattern back then. And if you don’t see the pattern, you don’t know how to connect the dots. But when you go back and see events through a prism with some insight and you know where to look, you can find significance in details that you hadn’t noticed before. So it’s trial and error. It’s a little bit like drilling for an oil well. You think you have a story, a find, if you will, and you develop it. It could be a dry hole or a good hit, and sometimes it takes a turn in a different direction, and you simply have to follow where it leads. And you also did many interviews with people who are directly affected by the shift of wealth to the very rich. I’m glad you brought that up. I think that’s one aspect of this book that makes it very different from some excellent academic books written by economists like Bob Reich at UC Berkeley or Joe Stiglitz at Columbia or Paul Pierson at Berkeley and Jacob Hacker at Yale, all of whom I benefited from reading. I had plenty of experience with average Americans out across the country who had gone through the personal struggle of this wrenching change in their personal economic fortunes and had experienced deep economic losses firsthand. In many cases, I had interviewed them in the 1990s or early 2000s. I went back to them years later, and sometimes to the towns they lived in or to factories where they had worked, to find out what had happened. Having that historical continuity in their personal lives strengthens the narrative of the book. It’s not just analysis and data but it’s also a zoom lens into individual people’s lives - not just for a moment, as in daily journalism, but over years of covering them in the past and coming back later to see how they were faring - finding that some people were unemployed or bouncing around from one job to another. Maybe a pension wasn’t being paid and they had to go back to work in their seventies. The stories I could tell based on years of reporting, enrich the book and make it more human and compelling. You comment to the effect that many people who are doing all right now don’t appreciate the suffering that others are going through. I talked recently with Zoriah Miller, a photojournalist, about his stunning photographs of people in Detroit who are surviving by scavenging metal from abandoned buildings at great risk to themselves. The scenes are haunting and other worldly -- and it seems a story out of an extremely impoverished developing area, not the U.S. Do you see a lack of empathy or indifference to the poor as part of the polarization of the country you describe? To me, there are two Americas. There’s the one percent and the 99 percent. The one percent are off the charts financially and don’t even see the other America. They’re so far from everybody else that they’re almost a separate country. But the Two Americas are not extreme rich and poor. It’s those who have enormous plenty and people in the middle who don’t have enough. I was struck by a poll done by the Pew Center for Media and the People on experiences during the recession. The headline on it was revealing - “One Recession: Two Americas.” What they found was that everyone had stumbled in some way from the recession. For people of extreme wealth, their luxury homes, their stocks and their yachts were worth less. And for the upper middle class, their stocks and their houses were worth less, too, but they were still doing okay. They still had their jobs, they had their income, and they hadn’t been foreclosed out of their homes. Their kids were still headed for college. Basically, they didn’t have to adjust their lives very much. But another half of the country had a totally different experience. People were either thrown out of work or cut back and put on part time. Or they were foreclosed out of their homes. They lost their health insurance coverage. If they had a 401(k) through their employer, the employer stopped contributing to the 401(k), plus they couldn’t afford themselves to make any contributions to it. They were going into debt. They were borrowing from relatives. They were foregoing not just a Friday night out or a movie. They were foregoing healthcare. They wouldn’t see the doctor because they couldn’t afford it. They weren’t buying prescriptions because they couldn’t afford them. Or, if they got their prescriptions, instead of taking four pills a day, as they were supposed to, they took one a day. They scrimped in every imaginable way to try to get by. I don’t think these Two Americas understand each other at all, particularly the better-off one. I remember thinking on Saturday nights in Bethesda, Maryland, near where I live, seeing restaurants jammed with people who were having expensive meals and not hesitating to buy an expensive wine and have a nice dessert. There was no cutback visible, and yet this was exactly at the time when unemployment was skyrocketing over 10 percent officially, but probably much more like 20 percent, if you count people who had dropped out of the work force or were forced into part time work. Those were totally different worlds. That world I was living in -- that upper- middle-class-successful world of professional people -- was doing well in the midst of a recession. Yes, some couldn’t afford the trip to Europe or Galapagos or Tahiti, but they weren’t giving up anything essential. The other part of America was hurting painfully and this poll laid out the gulf between those two worlds. I think we still have this problem today. I don’t think those of us who were fortunate enough to have a good education, steady work, live in nice homes in nice communities, and go to the theater and the opera, and take summer vacations, have any idea of what it’s like for the couple who works four jobs between them and one has a two-hour commute, and they can’t find time to buy groceries, and they’re just skimming along. I don’t think we understand what it feels to live that way. I think that’s a tragedy and I think our policies are defective in part because we are so divided, so separate from each other. Speaking of division, Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker spoke to a conservative group in Seattle on September 5, 2013. Outside the event, pro-union and progressive picketers greeted attendees of this Washington Policy Center event. In introducing Walker, supposedly moderate Republican and former U.S. Senator Slade Gorton told the gathering that the picketing they ran into “is the reaction of losers.” This seems an illustration of the divide you describe. We got that from Mitt Romney in spades. There’s that attitude of people who have been successful, especially the newly rich in America. “I made it, and therefore it’s your fault if you didn’t make it. Anybody can make it in America.” That’s simply not true. We are no longer the land of opportunity. If you grow up in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Germany, France, Australia, New Zealand, Canada -- it’s easier to move up the ladder than it is in America. Statistics demonstrate that. People are handicapped in the U.S. by who their parents are, where they live and the quality of schools they go to. Experts talk about a digital divide and whether there are computers or Internet services in inner city and rural schools. Some imply that the students in those schools are losers because they don’t try hard, that it’s their fault, they could have fixed it. But lots of times, it’s not their fault. We are in an economy today -- five years after we hit bottom -- in which more than 20 million people do not have full-time jobs but want them. That is an economy that has failed 18 or 19 percent of the American work force. It’s not their fault. The jobs aren’t there. You set out a kind of Marshall Plan to restore the American Dream and address the economy. What are the one or two most important things to do now? We need a far stronger recovery and millions more jobs. But recovery in itself will not solve the problem of economic inequality in America. Economic inequality has gotten worse over the past four years -- during recovery -- than it was at the bottom. Corporate profits went up 20.1 percent a year for the past four years in a row, and median household income went up only 1.4 percent a year in the same period. So the corporations are making money but they are not sharing it with the average employee. We’ve got to recover to generate the jobs to put people to work. But we’ve got to do more than recover. To do that, the single most important thing now is generating solid, high wage jobs. How do you get those jobs? There are two big things we could do in terms of policy. One, we could invest in modernizing the ports, the airports, the bridges, the railroads and the highways in this country. We are way behind countries like China in terms of how modern our seaports, airports and our rail systems are. We are way behind them. We could put people to work if we invested in modernizing our transportation system, and we would be more globally competitive as a nation. We could do that with five, six trillion dollars of investment, some public but mostly private, over the next decade and it would immediately generate some jobs and benefit the whole country. Some people say that would put us in debt, but if you generate jobs and generate growth, that’s how you pay off debt. You don’t pay off debt by tightening down and doing nothing. A second thing we could do is level the playing field on corporate taxes. Corporations that make profits overseas pay lower tax rates than companies who do all their production in America. That’s senseless. That is cutting the heart out of our own economy. We should level the rates - in fact, probably give a lower rate to companies that operate inside the U.S. generating jobs for us at home. Third, we should invest in manufacturing in this country. Germany has more than 20 percent of its work force in manufacturing and Germany is doing a much better job competing globally than we are. We have a huge export deficit, and they have a large surplus, and yet they pay their middle class workers more than we do. So there’s something wrong with the philosophy we’ve been sold -- that the middle class can’t be paid more. Pay the middle class more, then they’ll have more money. And it’s their spending, it’s consumer demand, that drives American economic growth. We need to understand the economics that worked for America in the forties, fifties, sixties and seventies, and put that back to work now. We’ve been cutting back. We’ve been running an economy to benefit the big banks, the financial elite, and the multi-national corporations, and they are chewing up America. We’ve got to change that and make our economy work better for the middle of America. Those are policy decisions. That leads me to the most important thing we have to do. We in the middle class have got to organize. We have to get out in the streets and demonstrate the way we did before - for civil rights, women’s rights, consumer rights, the environmental movement, and the labor movement. Americans have gotten soft. They say “it’s up to Washington to do it.” Sorry. Change is not going to come from Washington. We the People have to change the power equation in Washington. We have to make Washington change. Average people have to stay engaged between elections. Yes, vote, but not just vote. My book ends with these six words: “We the People must take action.” We have to change our mindset. We’re counting on someone else to do it or complaining that the lobbyists in Washington have too much power. Instead of that, we have to go out and change the policies and get the kind of policymakers that will help the middle class. And by the way, if the middle class does better, the country will do better because there’s all kinds of economic evidence that the high inequality of income we have now is bad for growth, and not just bad for people in the middle -but bad for the whole country. We need to change direction. Thank you for your comments and for your thoughtful analysis of vexing problems today -- and how they got that way. comments powered by Disqus - Leading Expert on Housing Discrimination Suing Appraisers for Discrimination - A Century After the Elaine Massacre, Black Farmers in Arkansas Demand Justice - American Democracy Wasn't Built to be Democratic - VP Menon, the Civil Servant who Held India Together - Nicole Hemmer on Alex Jones and the Right-Wing Media Machine

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Three guiding principles of isopublic |1. Greatest equal freedom–making isopublic a state without government, i.e. a self-governing society.| 2. Democratic integrity of state–to keep the Authority free of corruption and accountable to the People. 3. The Compact as a literal social contract–making isopublic a voluntary state. Isopublic is the “rule yourself and no one else” society where all possess the equal right to pursue their greatest well-being as long as they do no harm to others. Isopublic is not about “equal opportunity” or “equal outcome,” but equality of being under equal selfdom, i.e. equal self-dominion. In isopublic, you are what you are and what you strive to become so long as you don’t do harm to others in the process. Isopublic is a new model of state based on the political doctrine of the Trilibrium which is expressed as, “equal freedom, equal rule, and equal justice maintained in steady-state equilibrium.” The principle of equal freedom was first posited by 17th century English philosopher, John Locke, the father of political individualism and what today is called “classical liberalism.” In his Two Treatises of Government , Locke argued that the Bible grants no divine authority to kings, contributing to the demise of divine right of kings, and that the only morally legitimate purpose of government is to secure individual freedom and personal property. Then by 19th century English evolutionary philosopher and classical liberal, Herbert Spencer, who argued equal freedom produces the social conditions for optimal human progress in his treatise, Social Statics . It’s Spencer’s vision of equal freedom upon which isopublic is based. Equal freedom meaning greatest equal freedom in the context of natural scarcity. Meaning that absolute equal freedom is the target, the unattainable ideal, while greatest equal freedom recognizes the need to constrain individual freedom, but only so far as is necessary to have a viable society. For example, we can’t occupy the same physical space at the same time, thus, there must be a governing principle who has the rightful claim to occupy the space both might want, e.g. the non-aggression principle or non-interference principle. These natural conflicts are to be resolved with moral and legal precepts such that greatest equal freedom is achieved. What’s on this site The greatest equal freedom for the greatest well-being of the greatest number. ~ Evolutionary utilitarianism The moral philosophy of evolutionary utilitarianism or fittest society principle The moral philosophy of isopublic is evolutionary utilitarianism meaning–the greatest equal freedom of each to exercise their personal evolutionary advantages of tool-use, cognition (i.e. thought, reason, space-time awareness, dreaming, etc.), and speech resulting in the greatest well-being of the greatest number. By fittest society, this refers to greatest equal freedom producing the greatest evolutionary fitness for Homo sapiens in nature, as in survival of the fittest properly understood. Evolutionary utilitarianism is the moral foundation for the Eudemic Code (see below) which is the system of morality for isopublican civil society, i.e. the Eudemic Society. Where is isopublic on the political compass? From Wikipedia, “A political spectrum is a system to characterize and classify different political positions in relation to one another. These positions sit upon one or more geometric axes that represent independent political dimensions. The expressions political compass and political map are used to refer to the political spectrum as well, especially to popular two-dimensional models of it.” Read the source The political compass (left) uses state-sponsored aggression (social and economic) as the axes. As the graphic illustrates, the political system of isopublic in principle affords the People the theoretical maximum protection against state violence, all things considered over time. Great minds agree on the moral imperative of equal freedom (even if for different reasons) John Locke proposed equal freedom as a logical conclusion of natural law, i.e. God’s law, and the Christian belief that all are equal in the eyes of God. Not only did Locke denounce divine right of kings as unchristian, but it seems voting as unchristian too (right in bold). Thus, the concept known as “consent of the governed” (written by Thomas Jefferson, a deist, in the Declaration) is unchristian because being governed means to be ruled. ~ Christian morality ~ “[Since God has not ordained that anyone have power over others] then man has a natural freedom, … since all that share in the same common nature, faculties and powers, are in nature equal, and ought to partake in the same common rights and privileges, till the manifest appointment of God, who is Lord over all, blessed for ever, can be produced to shew any particular person’s supremacy; or a man’s own consent subjects him to a superiour.“ Herbert Spencer proposed equal freedom as the means to producing the greatest happiness–what he rather offhandedly called “rational utilitarianism.” Note that Spencer’s “rational utilitarianism” is the same as “evolutionary utilitarianism” of isopublic and the eudemic society just more appropriately renamed. ~ Evolutionary utilitarianism ~ “If we start with an à priori inquiry into the conditions under which alone the Divine Idea—greatest happiness—can be realized, we find that conformity to the law of equal freedom is the first of them (Chap. III.). If, turning to man’s constitution, we consider the means provided for achieving greatest happiness, we quickly reason our way back to this same condition; seeing that these means cannot work out their end, unless the law of equal freedom is submitted to (Chap. IV.). If, pursuing the analysis a step further, we examine how subordination to the law of equal freedom is secured, we discover certain faculties by which that law is responded to (Chap. V.). If, again, we contemplate the phenomena of civilization, we perceive that the process of adaptation under which they may be generalized, can never cease until men have become instinctively obedient to this same law of equal freedom (Chap. II.). To all which positive proofs may also be added the negative one, that to deny this law of equal freedom is to assert divers absurdities (Chap. VI.).“ The Tricuria and the self-governing society The essential relationship between the state and the People is to promote social well-being via the evolutionary process of spontaneous order. Though Spencer uses the word “government” below, the political authority of isopublic does not govern society thus the isopublic is a state without government. Instead of using the word “government,” the political authority of isopublic is called the Tricuria, the institutions of the isopublican state that secure and administer the Trilibrium doctrine. To that end, the Tricuria consists of courts, police, jails, and administers the national defense, and national monetary system. The Tricuria does not govern the People of the isopublic per se. Rather the Tricuria makes manifest and secures civil society with the “greatest equal freedom for the greatest well-being of the greatest number” via cultural use-inheritance. Societal prisoner’s dilemma and preventing the “race to the bottom” The prisoner’s dilemma is a classic problem of game theory demonstrating logically that cooperation provides the best overall outcome in social exchanges, i.e. a positive-sum outcome with all participants being better off (see graphic below left). Yet, if individuals act purely in their own self-interest, they can maximize their gain by cheating. By cheating the other person, they get the maximum benefit by gaining actual value without giving up any themselves. The cheating strategy, however, only works if the other party doesn’t cheat, i.e. the classic con. The prisoner’s dilemma shows that if both parties cheat, they’re both worse off than if they’d cooperated and exchanged in good-faith. On a societal level (see graphic below right), if people can cheat with impunity and most people act in good-faith, the cheaters are highly incentivized to cheat. But if they do, others will too because the cheaters will be the most successful. Game theory suggests that cheating eventually results in an overall worse outcome for everyone including the cheaters, i.e. a societal negative-sum ultimate outcome. If participants can cheat with impunity, thus maximizing their gain at the expense of others, they’re motivated to do so and, with success, motivate others to cheat too. Thus, when cheating is a successful strategy in society, either by absent or ineffective countermeasures, i.e. a corrupt system of justice, all are forced to either cheat or exit and society overall suffers and the race to the bottom manifests. In the societal prisoner’s dilemma, the different transactions indicate a win-win outcome (top-left), win-lose (top-right and bottom-left), and the lose-lose (bottom-right). With the win-win (i.e. positive-sum) outcome, both parties get what they want, i.e. each get what the other considers equal value. With the win-lose outcome, the winner gains without giving up equal value and the loser loses what they had and what they expected to get. With the lose-lose outcome, not only do both get nothing but, if unchecked, leads to retribution, e.g. gang wars, mob hits, i.e. tit-for-tat violence. The only way to solve the societal prisoner’s dilemma is to enact proper laws and enforce them with an effective system of justice. The laws must punish cheaters and the state effectively and consistently prosecute those laws. In plutocracy (as is the United States and every other “democracy” so-called of the West), the rich and their paid-for politicians are cheaters. They cheat the People with impunity causing harm to everyone else, i.e. a societal zero-sum outcome. Under isopublic, cheaters are more effectively prosecuted and punished, and no one gets special treatment. Isopublic provides maximum freedom for the People by… - Employment in the isopublic is to be arranged through private employment contracts between employer and employee. There is to be no state regulation of employment. - Except science necessary to national security and defense, science research, including basic research, is funded via the private sector. - There is to be no Authority interference in the sexual affairs between consenting adults (i.e. legally independent persons). Children and other mentally immature or unfit individuals (i.e. legally dependent persons) are to be prohibited by law from engaging in sexual activity. - In isopublic, there are no marriage licenses. Consenting adults are free to enter any kind of living arrangement they choose typically by voluntary marriage contract honored by the courts. - The Authority is not to interfere in the family except as a matter of remedying harm done to children (e.g. child abuse, child sexual exploitation, etc.). There is to be no state regulation of the family. - Education in the isopublic is market-based with parents deciding how their children are to be educated. - Under isopublic, there is to be no regulation of medicine or healthcare. The Authority via the courts is to remedy harm done in cases of medical malpractice, adverse drug effects, etc. Remedies could be civil damages or punitive (i.e. jail sentence plus civil damages). - The Authority is not to engage in social engineering or propagandizing for or against lifestyle choices. The state acts only to remedy harm done as a matter of criminal or civil justice. - The Authority is not to engage in propagandizing the People via entertainment (e.g. movies, TV, news, etc.). eudemic /judemɪk/ – relating or belonging to the fit society, i.e. greatest social well-being, based on the fittest society principle and evolutionary utilitarianism. eu- from Greek eu “good, fit, happiness, well-being; sense of greatness, abundance, prosperity” + -dem- dēmos “society or people” + -ic ikos “in the manner of; pertaining to.” The Eudemic Code The Eudemic Code serves as a system of secular morality for the isopublican civil society, i.e. the eudemic society. Note: The Code isn’t intended to be law itself but the standard for judging the morality of civil law and personal choices. The Code is the measure by which all laws of the Tricuria that act or are proposed to act (via nomothesion) on the People are judged. 1ST IMPERATIVE. The People shall possess the unalienable equal Rights of Selfdom, Freedom and Property. 2ND IMPERATIVE. The People shall not act to cause a nontrivial, nonconsensual, objective 1ST IMPERATIVE violation of another except in rightful defense of oneself and or others. 3RD IMPERATIVE. The Authority shall not act on the People except to dutifully and justly; (1) remedy not prevent a 2ND IMPERATIVE violation, or (2) to fulfill ALLOWANCES OF VITAL NECESSITY. ALLOWANCES OF VITAL NECESSITY. Only by the Citizens’ Will shall be granted or denied to the Authority express allowances to infringe, no more than justifiably necessary, upon the People’s 1ST IMPERATIVE Rights to perform only those functions vital to the viability of the State. THE GOLDEN MAXIM. Be egoistic foremost, altruistic as able, and always virtuous. Click on the link below to download the Code as a pdf. Eudemic Virtue and the Golden Maxim Eudemic Virtue means living by the Golden Maxim which expresses the values of acting in one’s self-interest first, helping others as one can, and always striving to be virtuous in either case. Virtuous meaning a synthesis of the do no harm principle and Aristotle’s virtue ethics repurposed for the equal freedom society, i.e. the Eudemic Society. It’s important to distinguish Eudemic Virtue from other moralities such as Christian ethics. Thus for example, Christian morality treats adultery as an unqualified sin which would condemn the adulterer to eternal damnation. Eudemic Virtue is concerned with promoting maximum personal well-being in the material world, not in an afterlife. Under Eudemic Virtue, adultery isn’t itself immoral per se. To be immoral in the Eudemic sense, one must act to cause ill-being to oneself and or others. So for instance, adultery isn’t Eudemic vice in-and-of-itself (e.g. an “open marriage” isn’t itself a vice per se), but becomes eudemically wicked when the activity involves breach of contract (e.g. violating a marriage contract), deception, or endangering spousal health (e.g. exposing to an STD) without their informed consent. The three conditions of Eudemic Virtue: - Do no harm to yourself. - Do no harm to another. - Do not act such that a virtue becomes a vice (either by single egregious instance or habituated). There are three conditions of Eudemic Virtue–don’t do harm to yourself, don’t do harm to others, and don’t behave such that a virtue becomes a vice (i.e. a virtue in deficiency or excess of Aristotle’s “middle state,” i.e. the Golden Mean). This, because a vice increases the risk of violating the first two conditions, i.e. of doing harm to yourself or another. There are 50 Eudemic Virtues each, if exercised appropriately at all times over a lifetime, is intended to maximize one’s well-being, all things considered. Click on the thumbnail (below) to see a table of Eudemic Virtues and corresponding vices. Egoism before altruism, but altruism is a moral obligation. Why “Golden Maxim”? Isn’t that confusing with the Golden Rule? Maybe, but almost every English speaker uses the term “Golden Rule” and almost none say, “Golden Maxim.” Though the two can be synonymous, maxim and rule are different words–with “rule” being more general in usage, and “maxim” meaning a fundamental principle. And the fact is, the Golden Maxim is more “golden” since it’s superior to the Golden Rule. The Valen: true money The Valen is the official money of isopublic. Valen refers to both the Value Exchange Network (also VEN or ValEN) and the value exchange unit, e.g. 1 valen. The Valen is to be a digital cryptocurrency administered by the Tricuria. The Valen is true money because it provides for the most accurate price information of any monetary system. It does this based on two primary operating principles: 1) a constant supply of currency units called the Grand Sum, and 2) a regular demurrage fee that also serves as the sole means of revenue for the Tricuria. The other principles of the Valen are: 3) anonymity, 4) convenience, 5) digital, 6) divisible, and 7) secure. These monetary principles are to be inscribed in the Compact, the law of isopublic. The Valen produces the most accurate price information with the Grand Sum and regular demurrage. The former by eliminating inflation and deflation of the currency, and the latter to encourage constant circulation of currency discouraging hoarding and currency speculation to reduce price volatility. The combined effect of these principles and their effects is for prices to reflect accurately underlying market conditions leading to optimal economic decision-making. Each year the National Executive Council sets an annual statutory rate which is charged for every transaction. This is the National Transfer Tax (NTT) which is a flat rate expected to be no more than 1% (except during a declared national emergency) and serves as the sole source of revenue for the Tricuria. Taxes are “pay as you go” and everyone pays the same rate. Thus, the NTT is a passively progressive tax (since the wealthy consume more capital goods) and there’s no tax liability (meaning the Tricuria needs no enforcement agency like an IRS, there’re no income taxes, no sales taxes, no property taxes, etc., no social engineering or wealth transfer via the tax code, and so on). Just war theory in practice Just war theory is, as interpreted here, the doctrine that a nation goes to war only when attacked or under a direct and credible threat of attack. In this way, the nation is non-interventionist and doesn’t aggress against other nations. National defense of isopublic is a citizen-militia modeled after the Swiss military. By signing the Compact (i.e. the citizen contract) thus becoming a citizen, the individual (male and female) also becomes a member of the militia. Thus unlike Swiss military conscription, serving in the isopublican national militia would be consensual. A citizen-militia is effective for defensive war and ineffective for offensive war. Thus, isopublic would be unable to engage in empire-building or colonialism, i.e. unjust war. The isopublican military maintains a small cadre of careerists. The militia is vital to maintaining a free society, not only as an alternative to a dangerous standing army, but serves as a manner of secular “civic religion” that brings the isopublic citizenry together under an umbrella of shared vital national interest. Doing so is necessary in a free society to overcome tribalism and “us and them” mentality that comes with freedom of association and disassociation. The militia improves the character of the People by developing personal skills in areas such as survival, first aid, gun safety, self-reliance, self-discipline, teamwork, community cohesion, and more, i.e. the militia builds national character. Service in the militia should fun, but serious fun–like the Boy and Girl Scouts but for adults with guns. Finally, the militia instills the sentiments of patriotism and national pride. “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” – Lord Acton But Acton got it wrong. All humans are born corrupt by our primal nature–it’s in our genes. Civilization is less than 10,000 years old but Homo sapiens is 100s of thousands of years old with little change in human physiology. Thus, our primal genes still have considerable influence on our behavior. And possessing political power allows primal human tendencies we call “corruption” to manifest (e.g. cheating, lying, stealing, killing), i.e. politics is something akin to Lord of the Flies in suits and ties. The more power possessed, the more the primal human is unmoored from our more recently evolved moral sentiments. As for elections, they attract the most primal humans like moths to a flame—the dark triads who through their control of the state prey upon us. Even if there are a few angels who walk the Earth, because we can’t know who is until it’s too late, we must take extraordinary precautions against corruption of power. Thus in isopublic, everyone selected to posses political power is to be subjected to democratic methods of accountability and transparency, thus maintaining the integrity of state. Ending political corruption with democratic integrity of state Whatever criticisms are leveled at Athenian democracy, political corruption isn’t one. The political authority of isopublic, the Tricuria, is arranged to minimize political corruption through the adoption of numerous conventions of ancient Athenian democracy. These include: Note: True democracy (i.e. Athenian democracy) means selecting public officials by lottery from the entire body of citizens, thus in the isopublic, all citizens possess an equal chance to hold high office. Electing office holders is oligarchy. Ending political anacyclosis Anacyclosis is a classical Greek political theory held by philosophers such as Aristotle and Polybius. The theory proposes that governments are forced to change by first becoming corrupted then by revolution sequentially from monarchy (kingship) to tyranny to aristocracy to oligarchy to democracy then finally ochlacracy (mob rule)–then the cycle repeats. Anacyclosis doesn’t happen in such explicit terms as the cycle formulation indicates, but we do see a general historical pattern of less corrupt government (i.e. kingship, aristocracy and democracy) change to a truly corrupt form of government (i.e. tyranny, oligarchy and mob rule) then back to less corrupt government usually by violent revolution. Anacyclosis, the cycle of corrupt government and revolution, is very destructive to human well-being–that isopublic could end for good. As one of the two fundamental operating principles of isopublic, democratic integrity offers the potential of ending the spiraling descent into political corruption combined with the other principle of equal freedom. In combination, these two principles could be the best political pathway to sustained progress and increasing well-being for all. Isopublic will be the most Christian-friendly state— even more than a Christian theocratic state, even more than a state with no Christians Christ taught that all humans are God’s children equally, and that only by individual choice and action can one sincerely demonstrate their Christian virtue. The inescapable conclusion of Locke’s 1st Treatise of Government is that Christians mustn’t accept or consent to being ruled over by anyone but God. This means that to be ruled over by anyone else, the Christian is unable to truly act by exercising their free will. And if unable to act freely, one is inhibited from acting in accordance with God’s will thereby usurping God and interfering with one’s relationship with God. It would seem vitally important to a Christian’s salvation that one possess the maximum freedom to act in accordance with his or her conscience to show, through their voluntary choices, that they do sincerely live according to Christ’s teachings and in honor of their Lord. Thus, by voting to be ruled, i.e. consenting to be governed, is acting contrary to the will of God by forsaking personal responsibility. Thus, the Christian is morally bound to choose to live, as much as possible, under political equal freedom—even if by doing so, the Christian is surrounded by sinners and heretics. And if Christians must be free of being ruled over (either by force or consent), Christians mustn’t rule over others. Thus, for Christians not to sin against God, they mustn’t accept any political office that involves ruling over others (Christians or unbelievers alike). Thus, running for political office is sinful if that office means acting on the People more than to secure their equal freedom. Even a theocratic Christian nation would be an affront to God since by forcing others to “act” Christian without sincere belief subverts God’s will, i.e. to be a true Christian, one must be so in one’s heart. Even to demand the display of the 10 Commandments in public school classrooms, the words “In God we trust” on the dollar bill, a prayer at political functions, “under God” sworn in political oaths, are to act most unchristian and sinful. It can be asserted, and is consistent with Locke, that for Christians to be Christian, the only political stance available to them is maximum equal freedom. What should be important to Christians isn’t for the state to be Christian but for it to minimally interfere with Christians being Christian. To understand that the state being truly neutral toward Christianity, i.e. neither for or against, i.e. atheistic, is the best political arrangement for Christians. Only by embracing equal freedom and selection of political leadership by sortition (i.e. by lottery thus leaving selection of political leaders to God) is the Christian able to live in greatest accord with God’s will. Only isopublic offers the Christian that political arrangement. Isopublic could offer Christians the best of both worlds–the greatest well-being in the material world; and the greatest opportunity for eternal salvation by possessing the greatest freedom to live according to Christ’s teachings with the least interference from the state. The Christian case for isopublic - Humans possess free will (Genesis 3:6). - Humans possess the faculty of reason (Genesis 3:7). - To please God, one must act in accordance with Christ’s teachings (Matthew 7:24). - One must voluntarily and sincerely choose to act in accordance with Christ’s teachings to be saved (Hebrews 4:12). - All humans are equal in the eyes of God (Romans 2:11). - Christians must of necessity possess equal freedom to have the maximum freedom to choose to act in accordance with God’s will (Romans 2:5-7). - Only under law that enacts equal freedom can equal freedom be made manifest. - Isopublic via the Trilibrium Doctrine and the Eudemic Code’s 1st Imperative produce the greatest equal freedom to be enacted under Compact Law. Thus, does isopublic become the most Christian choice of state. The above conditions to be a good Christian are reasonably what Locke was striving to elucidate. That equal freedom to Locke entailed equal rights of life, liberty and estate (i.e. property). And given that elections are oligarchic, voting is inherently unchristian. Thus by voting, the Christian consents to political conditions that diminish equal freedom and move them further from God, i.e. by voting for a ruler, Christians consent to put the state between themselves and God. Thus, though being ruled without consent is an unchristian condition, so too is a Christian voting to be ruled, i.e. “consent of the governed” must be considered sinful. Even though prostitution and adultery are sinful to Christians, it’s a sin for Christians to interfere or prohibit those activities by law using the power of the state. This, because people must voluntarily act in accordance with Christ’s teaching. By forcing abstinence, Christians interfere with people choosing not to be sinful, and thus, with God’s judgment. Other features of isopublic compatible with Christian values are—the Eudemic Code including the Golden Maxim and the do no harm principle, practice of just war with a citizen-militia only used in defending the nation, a virtuous and laissez-faire Tricuria that doesn’t interfere with Christian practices as long as Christians don’t interfere with non-Christians. The isopublic permits the People to engage in almost all activities freely so long as they don’t harm others in the doing. Christians should agree since doing harm to others also infringes on their equal freedom to choose to act with Christian virtue. Isopublic is the most Christian-friendly model of state because it produces the greatest freedom for individuals to be Christian. The ideal political arrangement for Christians is under the Eudemic Code and isopublic whereby each person has the maximum freedom to choose to live in accordance with Christ with the least interference from the state. Even a theocratic Christian state would itself be unchristian if it means imposing Christian values and not allowing individuals to come to Jesus voluntarily. Even if there’re no Christians in the state, isopublic is still the more Christian state because it affords the greatest opportunity for individuals to be Christian, i.e. its not the number of Christians but the operating principles of the state that makes it the more Christian. Destroying the “One Ring” We can bring an end to most social conflict and systemic evildoing throughout by bringing an end to the metaphorical “One Ring,” i.e. ending government, i.e. ending the idea of governing society in favor of the self-governing society. What’s even the relevance of “leftwing” and “rightwing,” “liberal” and “conservative” when there’s no government to use to rule over the People? What’s even the meaning of “politics” when there’re no rulers but the People themselves? Isopublic, a true land of the free and home of the brave Being free means being courageous and not expecting “Mommy and Daddy” government to solve all one’s problems or make one safe from all that offends. Liberty means taking responsibility for one’s own actions and living in peaceful cooperation with others–even with those one’s challenged to tolerate. And in the isopublic, there’s jail for those who would force others to submit to their will (i.e. intimidate, harass, bully and crybully, or otherwise interfere with the peaceful activities of others), i.e. unable to live by the laissez-faire ethos demanded by isopublic. As long as no one is being harmed, live and leave alone. To be free, one must have courage. This, because freedom makes one responsible for one’s choices. Personal responsibility means acting with greater care and dutifully, making one more useful to everyone else. Isopublic encourages personal responsibility and by multiplying this value across society and down through subsequent generations, society becomes far more fit in nature. In addition to courage and responsibility, another important virtue of isopublic is laissez-faire, i.e. “let people do as they will,” meaning we must be willing to accept that not everyone will do as we will. That on an individual basis (i.e. not by group or demographic), if a person does harm to another, the isopublican state is obligated to remedy. That it’s not up to individuals (i.e. not “social justice warriors”) to remedy what they consider to be social wrongs. A sickness today is too many who want everyone else to bend to their will. This mentality leads to constant social conflict and its own brand of societal “race to the bottom.” What’s absent from isopublic (a partial list) Isopublican metric / decimal calendar and time day and date: short date: (IEy-Mon-d) or (IEy/m/d) or (IEy.m.d) long date: (IEy Month d) - IE is Isopublican Era to avoid confusing Gregorian dates. - The isopublican decimal calendar has a zeroth year. - IE0 Gaion 1 equals March 20, 2020. Not easy to do the below with the Gregorian calendar and 24-hour clock! With decimal date and time, a single value contains the following information with no need of calendar or computer–month, day of month, day of week, time of day, and week of year at a glance. The decimal day.time values are directly useable for basic computation with no unit conversions. Decimal day.time example: decimal time of day (decidays) hour of day decimal day of year (year day.milliday microday) percent hour done percent day done percent week done Example spoken decimal times: - 0.00 dd is "zero-oh-zero decidays" - 0.01 dd is "zero-oh-one decidays" - 2.06 dd is "two-oh-six decidays" - 3.40 dd is "three-forty decidays" - 4.43 dd is "four-forty-three decidays" - 5.00 dd is "five-oh-zero decidays" A deciday is a decimal hour. Omit "decidays" or use "hour" if unconcerned over confusing with 24-hour time. Example spoken decimal partial decidays: - 00 md is "zero millidays" - 23 md is "twenty-three millidays" - 3.40 dd could be said as "forty millidays after three" Millidays can be shortened to say, "md's" or "minutes." One milliday is a decimal minute. Unit equivalents (decimal to 24-hr): 1 hour = 2.4 24-hr hours 1 minute = 1.44 24-hr minutes 1 second = 0.864 24-hr seconds As a matter of policy, the Tricuria is to consider operating on a decimal (or metric) calendar and time. The isopublican decimal calendar is base-10 with a 10-day week (1 decaday), three weeks per month, and 12 months per year. The remaining 5-6 days are added as a partial week at the end of the year. Five days if not a leap year and six days if a leap year for a 365-day or 366-day year, respectively. The isopublican decimal calendar differs from the French Republican calendar (1793-1805) improving on the latter in several important ways such as having 4-day weekends, moving New Year's Day to the spring equinox, being Christian-friendly, adding holidays throughout the year, and having sensible month names. Isopublican decimal time is base-10 using a 10-hour day with 100 minutes per hour and 100 seconds per minute. The main advantage of decimal time is convenient calculation. Unlike 24-hour time which uses awkward base-24 hours and base-60 minutes and seconds, decimal time uses the much simpler base-10 for hours, minutes, and seconds. With decimal time, arithmetic operations don't require unit conversion as 24-hour time does. This is true for all math operations, i.e. subtraction, division, multiplication, etc. Unlike Gregorian dates and 24-hour time, decimal date and time are mathematically combined allowing for date and time of day to be represented as a single decimal value. See example bottom left. Decimal time is also the same for both civilian and military use which is important to isopublic because all isopublican citizens are to be members of the national militia. Note that the isopublican decimal calendar and time are not to be imposed on civil society, but only as the official calendar and time of the Tricuria.

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For example, as of January 2001, one of the w3.org DNS servers is w3csun1.cis.rl.ac.uk. This server has the power to define the address of www.w3.org. It can flood the other servers to prevent them from providing contradictory information. When the cache wants the address of w3csun1.cis.rl.ac.uk, it may contact the rl.ac.uk DNS servers, the ac.uk DNS servers, the uk DNS servers, or the root DNS servers. For example, ns.eu.net, one of the ac.uk DNS servers, has the power to define the address of w3csun1.cis.rl.ac.uk. Consequently it also has the power to define the address of www.w3.org. Similarly, all names under eu.net, hence ac.uk and w3.org, are controlled by sunic.sunet.se; all names under sunet.se, hence eu.net and ac.uk and w3.org, are controlled by beer.pilsnet.sunet.se; and beer.pilsnet.sunet.se is running an ancient version of BIND, known to allow anyone on the Internet to take over the machine. Are the www.w3.org administrators aware that their DNS service relies on beer.pilsnet.sunet.se and 200 other obscure computers around the world? In contrast, if w3.org had used in-bailiwick names for its servers, such as a.ns.w3.org and b.ns.w3.org and c.ns.w3.org and d.ns.w3.org, then it would not be relying on the servers for ac.uk and eu.net and sunet.se. I pointed out this type of problem in January 2000. At that time, these same 200 computers had control over practically all names on the Internet, including *.com. The .com server names were subsequently fixed to avoid the problem. Most country-code TLDs have not been fixed. www.nasty.dom NS ns1.yahoo.com www.nasty.dom NS ns2.dca.yahoo.com www.nasty.dom NS ns3.europe.yahoo.com www.nasty.dom NS ns5.dcx.yahoo.com ns1.yahoo.com A 220.127.116.11 ns2.dca.yahoo.com A 18.104.22.168 ns3.europe.yahoo.com A 22.214.171.124 ns5.dcx.yahoo.com A 126.96.36.199The nasty.dom server can now wait for (or encourage) the cache to ask about www.nasty.dom. When the cache receives the answer, it will, according to RFC 1034, save the forged yahoo.com addresses for future reference. Subsequent queries for yahoo.com will be misdirected. Cache poisoning was widely known in 1990. But it was viewed as merely a reliability issue, a result of sloppy administration. Someone who listed munnari.oz.au as a backup server with an out-of-date IP address would accidentally poison caches and destroy legitimate connections to munnari.oz.au. Vixie's first BIND release, version 4.9 in 1992, featured a notion of ``credibility'' that managed to prevent the most severe cases of accidental poisoning. From a security point of view, Vixie's ``credibility'' is garbage; it doesn't even stop the yahoo.com attack described above. It's obvious how to eliminate all poisoning. Caches must discard yahoo.com information except from the yahoo.com servers, the com servers, and the root servers. This stops malicious poisoning, so of course it stops accidental poisoning too. End of problem. BIND finally adopted this poison-elimination rule in 1997, after cache poisoning became a popular attack tool. Did Vixie scrap his obsolete ``credibility'' rules? No! As of January 2000, they were still in BIND 8.2.2-P5, more incoherent than ever. For example, if records had ``additional section credibility,'' and if someone sent a query asking for those records, BIND would reduce the TTL of the records by 5%. Some of the other rules appear in RFC 2181. I pointed out on bugtraq in January 2000 that, when a domain changed all its DNS server names (e.g., to switch ISPs), an attacker could trivially exploit BIND's ``credibility'' rules to break access to that domain. I also tried to point this out on namedroppers, but my message was censored by Randy Bush. dnscache doesn't discriminate against additional records. Valid records are accepted whether they're additional records in one packet or answer records in the next; timing doesn't affect the semantics. In practice, however, some parents limit the number of NS records that they will list; some parents have painful update procedures; and, for many years, the largest .com registrar pointlessly refused NS records listing host names with IP addresses that had already been registered under different host names. So a child server often lists more NS records than its parent. It includes the NS records along with its answers, so that caches will replace the NS records from the parent with the NS records from the child. If the NS records (and associated addresses) expire after the answers do, the caches will use the complete NS list to find the new answers, and will obtain a fresh NS list at that point. The load is spread among all the servers, though not as evenly as it would be if the parent listed more servers. Unfortunately, BIND 8.2 won't cache the fresh NS list. After the old list expires, BIND contacts the parent servers and again obtains the incomplete NS list. Beware that, because of the ``credibility'' rules described above, the NS records from the child servers must include the NS records from the parent. Otherwise an attacker can break BIND's access to the child servers. So you contact ns-1.disney.corp. But what's the address of ns-1.disney.corp? You have to put the original question on hold while you search for the address of ns-1.disney.corp. You happen to know an address of a .corp DNS server, so you ask it for the address of ns-1.disney.corp. ``I don't know, but I know that .disney.corp has two DNS servers, zone.espn.tv and night.espn.tv,'' it says. ``Try asking them.'' Bottom line: You can't reach espn.tv, and you can't reach disney.corp. If zone.espn.tv had been a DNS server for .espn.tv, the .tv server would have provided glue for zone.espn.tv, i.e., the IP address of zone.espn.tv. So you would have been able to contact zone.espn.tv. RFC 1034 specifically requires glue for referrals to in-bailiwick DNS servers. (Some people use the word ``glue'' only in this case.) For referrals to out-of-bailiwick DNS servers, however, RFC 1034 says that glue is unnecessary. RFC 1537 says the same thing. RFC 1912 says the same thing. The comp.protocols.tcp-ip.domains FAQ says that ``you do not need a glue record, and, in fact, adding one is a very bad idea.'' (This is an obsolete reference to accidental poisoning; see above.) Some DNS server implementations ignore out-of-bailiwick glue by default. So the glueless domains espn.tv and disney.corp are following the rules---yet neither of them is reachable. There can be trouble even when there are no loops. Suppose a BIND cache is looking up www.espn.tv in the following situation: espn.tv NS ns-1.disney.corp espn.tv NS ns-2.disney.corp disney.corp NS ns-1.disney.corp disney.corp NS ns-2.disney.corpWhen BIND sees the glueless delegation to ns-1.disney.corp, it drops the www.espn.tv query and begins a ``sysquery'' for ns-1.disney.corp, hoping to have the ns-1.disney.corp address cached by the time the www.espn.tv query is retried. (The BIND developers refer to this bug as ``no query restart.'') Clients generally don't retry more than four times, so an initial query for a domain with four levels of gluelessness will fail; an initial query for a domain with three levels of gluelessness will be very likely to fail, and very slow if it succeeds. ``As far as I know, the Internet has not yet lost any domains to gluelessness,'' I wrote in 2000. ``But there are an increasing number of glueless domains, and I've spotted a glueless domain with glueless DNS servers. How much gluelessness must a cache tolerate? Currently dnscache allows three levels of gluelessness. This seems to be enough for now, but will it be enough in the future?'' I subsequently learned about www.monty.de, which had so many levels of gluelessness that BIND caches were completely unable to reach it: monty.de NS ns.norplex.net monty.de NS ns2.norplex.net norplex.net NS vserver.neptun11.de norplex.net NS ns1.mars11.de neptun11.de NS ns.germany.net neptun11.de NS ns2.germany.net mars11.de NS ns1.neptun11.de mars11.de NS www.gilching.de gilching.de NS ecrc.de gilching.de NS name.muenchen.roses.dednscache was able to find the address of www.monty.de, but it needed fourteen queries to various servers. I recommend that all DNS servers be in-bailiwick servers with glue. External DNS servers should be given internal names, with address records copied automatically (preferably by some secure mechanism) from the external names to the internal names. DNS should have been designed with addresses, not names, in NS records and MX records. The ``additional section'' of DNS responses should have been eliminated. RFC 1035 observes correctly that NS indirection and MX indirection ``insure [sic] consistency'' of addresses; however, this indirection should have been handled by the server, not the client. (On a related note: Microsoft Exchange Server 2000 reportedly fails to deliver to MX records that point to CNAME records; fixed in the first Service Pack.) I have a separate page discussing A6 and DNAME from this perspective. aol.com NS dns-01.ns.aol.com aol.com NS dns-02.ns.aol.comUsually this means that the A records accompanied the NS records but with lower TTLs, and the cache didn't contact the servers soon enough to refresh the A records as described above. (If the cache is BIND 8.2, then the A records won't be refreshed anyway, and an attacker can force the TTLs down even if they originally matched.) In this situation, the RFC 1034 resolution algorithm fails. According to RFC 1034, if the cache wants the address of yb.mx.aol.com, it looks for the ``best servers'' among ``locally-available name server RRs,'' obtaining the names dns-01.ns.aol.com and dns-02.ns.aol.com; it then starts ``parallel resolver processes looking for the addresses'' of dns-01.ns.aol.com and dns-02.ns.aol.com; those resolver processes look for the ``best servers,'' and so on. The cache loops until it runs out of patience and gives up. Fortunately, real caches use a different algorithm. dnscache starts from the roots, ignoring cached NS records, when it reaches gluelessness level 2. BIND reportedly starts all its glue requests from the roots. RFC 1034 says that an alias ``should'' not point to another alias. In reality, however, if an administrator decides to set up www.espn.go.com as an alias for espn.go.com, he probably won't remember to change www.espn.tv---but users will kick and scream if www.espn.tv breaks. ``CNAME chains should be followed,'' RFC 1034 says. Aliases, like gluelessness, force DNS clients to chew up time and memory. How many layers of aliases must a cache tolerate? Currently dnscache allows four levels of aliases. This seems to be enough for now, but will it be enough in the future? I recommend that all CNAME records be eliminated. DNS should have been designed without aliases. In practice, however, the ISP might instead use CNAME records. It makes 188.8.131.52.in-addr.arpa an alias for 100.cust184.108.40.206.in-addr.arpa, and similarly for 101 and 102; and then it delegates cust220.127.116.11.in-addr.arpa to the customer's DNS server. This is a valid configuration, although RFC 2317 says that some old versions of BIND can't handle it. Why would an ISP want to add this extra layer of complication? Answer: With the simple approach, if the customer is running BIND, he'll have to put the 100 and 101 and 102 records in three separate files. With the complicated approach, the customer can put the records into a single file. I recommend that, in this situation, the CNAME records be eliminated, and the customer upgrade to a better DNS server. dnscache simply contacts a random server, to balance the load as effectively as possible. BIND keeps track of the round-trip times for its queries to each server, with various bonuses and penalties, and then sends all its queries to the ``best'' server. Simulations show that the increasingly frequent .com server overloads (as of March 2000) could be caused by BIND's transmission strategy. This procedure requires an incredible amount of bug-prone parsing for a very small amount of information. The underlying problem is that DNS was designed to declare information in a human-oriented format, rather than to support crucial operations in the simplest possible way. Warning about NXDOMAIN: It is clear from RFC 1034 and RFC 1035 that an NXDOMAIN guarantees the nonexistence of every subdomain of the query domain. For example, if a cache sees an NXDOMAIN for ns.heaven.af.mil, it can conclude that a.ns.heaven.af.mil and b.ns.heaven.af.mil don't exist. If a server has records for a.ns.heaven.af.mil and b.ns.heaven.af.mil, but no records for ns.heaven.af.mil. it sends a zero-records (#5) response, not an NXDOMAIN. However, RFC 2308 allows NXDOMAIN even when the domain exists, to indicate that there are no records of any type under the query name. So it is essential for interoperability that caches not draw the above conclusion. DNS clients and DNS caches begin by transmitting a query (which always fits into 512 bytes) through UDP. The response is sent back through UDP. If the response does not fit into a UDP packet, it is truncated, and the TC bit is set at the beginning of the UDP packet. Clients and caches that support TCP see the TC bit and retry their query through TCP. RFC 1035 does not make clear exactly what ``truncated'' means. The obvious interpretation is to end the packet at exactly 512 bytes. However, this causes interoperability problems: in particular, the Squid cache dies if a packet is truncated between records. BIND ends the packet before the first record that went past 512 bytes. dnscache ends the packet before all records. One problem with DNS compression is the amount of code required to parse it. Reliably locating all these names takes quite a bit of work that would otherwise have been unnecessary for a DNS cache. LZ77 compression would have been much easier to implement. Another problem with DNS compression is the amount of code required to correctly generate it. (RFC 1035 allowed servers to not bother compressing their responses; however, caches have to implement compression, so that address lists from some well-known sites don't burst the seams of a DNS UDP packet.) Not only does the compressor need to figure out which names can be compressed, but it also needs to keep track of compression targets earlier in the packet. RFC 1035 doesn't make clear exactly what targets are allowed. (Most versions of BIND do not use pointers except to compressible names; suffixes of the query name are excluded. dnscache uses pointers to suffixes of the query name.) Another problem with DNS compression is that it's not particularly effective. LZ77 would have done a noticeably better job on current data, and a much better job on new record types that might become popular in the future. (BIND versions 4.9.* through 8.1.2 compress names in new record types, such as RP and SRV, in blatant violation of RFC 1035. The names are not decompressed by caches that do not know about the new types. This is an interoperability disaster.) Experienced programmers stored hostnames in lowercase, and converted uppercase to lowercase as part of the user interface. Hostname comparisons were simple binary comparisons. DNS, however, was not designed by experienced programmers. DNS clients send hostnames exactly as typed by the user, without converting uppercase to lowercase. DNS servers send some hostnames as typed by the system administrator, without converting uppercase to lowercase. All implementors are forced to waste time worrying about case. The DNS protocol allows arbitrary bytes in hostnames. This flexibility would have been convenient for several applications, notably in-addr.arpa, if the designers hadn't screwed up their case handling. As is, binary names in DNS are practically useless. Unfortunately, in DNS packets, the list of mail exchangers is divided into separate MX records. The MX records can even be (and, in responses to * queries, often are) interleaved with other records. A cache has to sort the list of records, preferably using a method that isn't painfully slow for large packets, and partition the result into complete record sets. Queries ask for records in a particular class. RFC 1034 allows queries to ask for records in all classes, but this makes no sense: if multiple classes were actually used then they would almost never be on the same server. The client knows what class it's looking for, so it can specify a class; RFC 1123 section 18.104.22.168 requires this for the Internet class and recommends it in all cases. RFC 1034 says that classes ``allow parallel use of different formats for data of type address.'' This doesn't make sense. If DNS is used in a network with multiple address formats, then one DNS server will want to provide addresses in more than one format; but that DNS server is only in charge of one class. Address format extensibility should have been provided in the address data itself. dnscache discards queries for non-Internet classes. The Ultrix version of BIND sends queries with AD+CD set. A client will receive a bogus response from a BIND cache if the client asks about X, the cache already knows X CNAME Y, and the cache has to ask a server about Y. The cache will forward the server's Y response, with Y as the query, to the client. This bug was fixed in BIND 8.2.3. There is at least one server that incorrectly produces NXDOMAIN for all non-A queries, even for domains that exist: % date Sat Nov 2 15:45:22 CST 2002 % dnsq any www.css.vtext.com njbdcss.vtext.com 255 www.css.vtext.com: 35 bytes, 1+0+0+0 records, response, nxdomain query: 255 www.css.vtext.com % dnsq aaaa www.css.vtext.com njbdcss.vtext.com 28 www.css.vtext.com: 35 bytes, 1+0+0+0 records, response, nxdomain query: 28 www.css.vtext.com % dnsq a www.css.vtext.com njbdcss.vtext.com 1 www.css.vtext.com: 51 bytes, 1+1+0+0 records, response, authoritative, noerror query: 1 www.css.vtext.com answer: www.css.vtext.com 0 A 22.214.171.124 %If a client looks up AAAA before A, the NXDOMAIN will be cached, so the A query will fail.

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Teaching number skills and concepts with Numicon materials This paper discusses the use of Numicon number teaching materials with children with Down syndrome. The theory underlying the design of the materials is discussed, the teaching approach and methodology are described and evidence supporting effectiveness is outlined. Wing, T, and Tacon, R. (2007) Teaching number skills and concepts with Numicon materials. Down Syndrome Research and Practice , 12(1), 22-26. doi:10.3104/practice.2018 Number ideas are very abstract, and children need to have these presented to them in a wide variety of ways. In the Numicon approach we offer children multi-sensory activities with patterned shapes, rods, number lines, and a broad range of everyday experiences and contexts so that their understanding of number ideas is very richly varied. We do not believe that any single approach or sets of particular apparatus can be adequate in themselves, nor that children will understand numbers just by working with 'figures'. Figure 1 | Numicon number shapes representing 1-10. Very importantly in Numicon activities, children can physically combine all patterns, rods, and everyday objects representing numbers with each other in order that their calculating is made 'real'. For example the Numicon patterns themselves physically fit together so that when combining numbers children can physically 'do' the calculations that we want them to 'think'. As they physically combine and compare these patterns they simultaneously 'see' the effects of their actions, and as they speak about what they do and see, their ability to internalise their actions, i.e. 'think with number ideas' gradually becomes secure. In using the Numicon 'feely bag' children learn to relate their physical handling of patterns to their visual impressions, and incorporate both into their growing mental understanding of what number words and figures actually mean; feeling, seeing, thinking, speaking, reading, and writing all come together. Figure 2 | Part of the Numicon number line. It is essential that children experience number in a wide range of ways and situations because the wider their experiences the more they will be able to use their understanding in new situations. And connecting their experiences with each other always deepens their understanding greatly. Because children with Down syndrome are relatively strong in their visual thinking, the Numicon approach appeals to their strengths and relies much less on their auditory capacities, with which they generally have more difficulty. Again essential to Numicon is the belief that because number ideas are so abstract and complex, most children will need to develop them in very small steps. As adults who encountered these ideas long ago, most of us have forgotten just how many times we felt puzzled or simply lost before we gave up and just learned 'how to do sums' without having much of a clue as to what it all meant. The Numicon programme of activities has been developed from innumerable experiences with children in which they have shown us exactly how small many of the steps need to be. Finally, central to the Numicon approach is the conviction that when children truly feel they understand numbers through physically doing and seeing calculations, their personal self confidence with the ideas will be a key support to them through increasingly difficult later learning. Confidence will encourage perseverance, and perseverance brings success. Figure 3 | Numicon pegs grouped to show 16 as 1 ten and 6 units. It is important that every child meeting Numicon for the first time learns the Foundation activities. As the name suggests, these help children to establish the foundation for success in number. All the materials needed for teaching the Foundation activities are included in the Numicon Foundation Kit, including twelve double-sided, illustrated activity cards which explain the teaching activities. The activities are designed to build up children's skills in small steps. In her recent book , Nye gives helpful suggestions for adapting the activities to the specific needs of children with Down syndrome. Nearly all the activities are designed as games so there is lots of opportunity for turn taking and naturally showing the child what to do when the adult takes a turn; helpfully this means that the activities play to the social strengths of children with Down syndrome. Mathematical language is difficult for all children, so the language that can be developed through each activity is shown clearly on the cards. Of course Numicon is only part of the child's experience with numbers, so on each of the activity cards there are suggestions for making connections with other activities that reinforce the learning and help the child to use and apply the new understanding. Importantly, from the very beginning, children need to be learning and practising their counting alongside all Numicon activities. The Foundation activities fall into eight broad stages from the earliest familiarisation with Numicon shapes and patterns to practical arithmetic. The first activities are designed to introduce the Numicon shapes and for children to learn to recognise the patterns without using number names or numerals, although they may use number names independently. We suggest that this is encouraged by displaying the Numicon number line which has pictures of Numicon images linked to each number. Several parents have this up permanently where their children can easily reach it. We suggest that children as young as eighteen months can start to become familiar with Numicon, indeed some parents have strung Numicon shapes on ribbons to hang on their children's pushchairs! Figure 4 | Numicon shapes showing 3 plus 4 equals 7. The next stage is for children to start to put the shapes in order, again without using number names or numerals. To start with only the first four or five shapes are ordered, gradually building up to ordering all ten. Ordering is such an important activity for mathematical understanding that we suggest also ordering a wide variety of objects so that children can learn the difficult language of size, order and position while playing these activities. The third stage is to give number names to the Numicon shapes, specifically counting the holes in each shape, filling them with pegs and learning to recognise the numerals. Children then move on to stage four where they order the shapes and the numerals together. This is a huge step for many children and can take some time to master; children are connecting their counting and ordering skills, and as they match the appropriate numeral to each Numicon shape they are learning to order numerals and shapes in relation to each other. Stage five is really designed to consolidate all the learning achieved up to this point. The activities are designed to help children to confidently recognise Numicon shapes, use number names, recognise numerals, and make connections between their varied counting experiences and the Numicon shapes. Children are also encouraged to consciously visualise the shapes in their minds' eye, preparing for the time when they will cease to rely on actual Numicon shapes because they have a clear mental picture of number that they can use in mental maths. Children are now ready to begin to understand the structure our 'place value' system so in stage 6 Numicon patterns are used to show how grouping counters into patterns is an efficient way to find out and see 'how many' objects there are in a collection. For instance, 16 objects can be arranged in a Numicon ten-shape pattern and in the Numicon six-shape pattern. Understanding place value is essential for later work when children learn to add and subtract two and three digit numbers, decimals, money, percentages, multiplication and division. All of which are important for basic numeracy life skills. Children now have a firm foundation for understanding the sizes and order of numbers, and how numbers relate to one another. They can now begin to relate addition to combining two or more Numicon shapes and learn to use the vocabulary involved in adding. In this seventh stage children meet their first mental arithmetic strategies: In 'One more' children can see with the Numicon shapes that if you add one to any number it becomes the same as the next number; 'Doubles' are also introduced as special combinations of two numbers. Subtraction is introduced in the eighth and final stage of the Foundation Kit. It is introduced first as taking away but as you can't actually 'take away' from a piece of Numicon we use the idea of hiding a part of the Numicon shape. The language involved in subtraction is also introduced on these cards. For instance children see that when 1 is taken away from any number the preceding number is always the answer. The tricky 'comparison and difference structure' of subtraction (for example, what's the difference between 8 and 3?) is easily seen by comparing two Numicon shapes. Children are now ready to move on to Numicon Kit 1 which relates to the English National Curriculum Levels 1 and 2 and the Primary Numeracy Strategy. To check their children's progress and follow through the teaching programme parents can refer to the Numicon Assessment Signposts and Record of Progress, available from Numicon at a cost of £12.50. It is in Numicon Kit 1 that children begin to gain sufficient mathematical understanding to start to understand money and work with simple measures. In Kit 2 children start to work with higher numbers and so are ready to work on measuring in metres and centimetres, litres and millilitres. The Kit 2 work on introducing fractions and multiplication builds the skills children need for learning to tell the time with understanding. Parents and teachers often ask 'how long will it take to do the Foundation activities?' and of course this will vary hugely from child to child, depending on age and previous experiences as well as aptitude. Older children coming to Numicon for the first time will sometimes move through the stages quite swiftly, some very young children may take three years or more to cover them. What is important to remember is that learning is not a race, every step is significant and is to be celebrated and practised so that children build confidence and positive attitudes. When children enjoy what they are learning they are very likely to be successful. Parents of children with Down syndrome support one another in the use of Numicon through their local associations and there is also a very helpful international discussion group where parents share their successes and questions email@example.com . Numicon has five training consultants who specialise in Down syndrome, and full details of the training is available from firstname.lastname@example.org . The Numicon approach first began to be developed in 1996 (with UK government funding) by practising teachers in mainstream schools as an approach that would support children of all ages and abilities, and success was quickly shown in dramatically improved SATs scores across the whole ability range .Devon Education Authority's Primary Maths Team later undertook their own research project into the use of Numicon in mainstream schools during 2003-4, and based upon the success of their findings published a booklet of guidance on the use of Numicon for all Devon primary schools . Apart from this original work in mainstream schools however, several other local education authorities (LEAs) have seen a particular advantage in using Numicon to support children with a range of special educational needs, and have undertaken their own research to test whether the approach really can help children who are finding number work difficult. Between 2001 and 2006, supported and scrutinised by their educational psychology services, Wiltshire , Leeds , and Brighton and Hove LEAs have all independently undertaken teaching programmes based upon the Numicon approach for children who were not succeeding with their school mathematics. Using standard psychological tests to measure results, all studies showed notable improvements in both children's scores and also very importantly in their personal confidence and attitudes to number work. Currently Cambridge and Doncaster LEAs are also trialling the Numicon approach with children with special educational needs, and are reporting very encouraging initial feedback (including again, significantly increased personal confidence in children) informally. In the Wiltshire project the Numicon approach was used to support specifically children with Down syndrome, and there the reporting educational psychologists found, "..results to be extremely pleasing in view of the fact that (these) children do not normally make one month's progress per month, yet the average gain exceeds this, and many individuals have improved their skills at a much faster rate than the average." ( REF 4 , p.4 ) Down Syndrome Education International has been working with the Numicon approach since 2000 [6-14] . There have also been a number of reports about Numicon in the national journal of the Association of Teachers of Mathematics, Mathematics Teaching [15-17] . Jo Nye has recently reported on a carefully conducted research project undertaken with 16 children with Down syndrome in Portsmouth, UK. The detailed results from the first year of this project show that all children following the Numicon approach made better progress than other children with Down syndrome not using the system, whilst some children made considerably more progress than their counterparts who were not using the Numicon approach. Other conclusions were that, "[Numicon] enables teaching staff to 'see' what the child is thinking, which is important for identifying both successes and confusions in the child's understanding" ( REF 1 , p.3 ), and "Children are motivated to engage with the materials as they are so attractive, and they develop confidence in maths work as they can succeed with the materials" ( REF 1 , p.3 ). A multi-sensory approach to arithmetic teaching that uses patterns that are structured to encourage the understanding of number and number relationships. The statutory teaching curriculum in England for pupils up to the age of 16. It determines the content of what will be taught and sets attainment targets for learning. Primary National Strategy A strategy to support teachers and schools to raise standards set out for England by the UK government. National Curriculum - Key Stages and levels The English National Curriculum Key Stage 1 is for pupils aged 5-7 years, Key Stage 2 for 7-11 years, Key Stage 3 for 11-14 years and Key Stage 4 for students aged 14-16 years. The programmes of study also map out a scale of attainment within the subject. In most Key Stage 1, 2, and 3 subjects, these attainment targets are split into eight levels. By the end of Key Stage 1 (aged 7), most typically developing children will have reached level 2, and by the end of Key Stage 2 (aged 11), most will be at level 4. SATs - Standard Attainment Tests UK National Curriculum teacher assessments and Key Stage tests at the end of Key Stages 1,2 and 3. These give parents and school information about how children are doing. Relationship to UK Primary National Strategy Since the Numicon approach was originally developed at the same time as the introduction of the Primary National Numeracy Strategy, both Numicon and the UK government have drawn upon the latest research available on mathematics learning and teaching. Consequently there are key similarities between Numicon and the approaches currently being undertaken in schools (not just in the UK), and this has important implications for parents who wish their children with special educational needs to be included as far as possible in mathematics work with their classmates in schools. Numicon activities are all cross-referenced to the number objectives of the current Primary National Strategy, and both approaches address the number requirements of the National Curriculum for Mathematics. (Incidentally, in physically manipulating and combining the Numicon patterns children address many of the 'shape and space' objectives as well.) The 'Problem Solving' activities in the Numicon approach closely relate to the categories of problems in the National Strategy, and also to the 'Using and Applying' sections of the National Curriculum. Very importantly, both the Numicon and Primary Strategy approaches place great emphasis upon the use of visual 'number lines' as central to all children's understanding of number, as well as encouraging as wide as possible a variety of other 'models and images' for numbers. This means that children working with Numicon and its distinctive number lines are developing a mental imagery for numbers that is closely related to that offered in schools for all children. Interestingly also, as many teachers begin to realise that what works with children with special educational needs is also usually good mathematics teaching for all children, a rapidly increasing number of schools are introducing Numicon and making it part of the normal everyday classroom scene for everyone. A further vital connection between the Numicon and Primary National Strategy approaches is the shared emphasis upon mental arithmetic and how to write down the answers to sums. Because we nowadays ask children to first do sums in their heads (using their mental images), then to say how they did them, and finally to learn how to write down what they have done, children learn first to say, and then to write what are called 'number sentences', e.g. 13 + 5 = 18 This is very different from the Victorian approach most of us learned in schools, called 'tens and units' column recording. 'Tens and units' work was based on a 19th century approach to arithmetic, well before electronic calculators were envisaged, and when every child had to do calculations with paper and pencil from the beginning of their schooling. Modern teaching is based upon children learning mental arithmetic first, and only later learning to do complicated calculations on paper. Consequently, our ways of writing out 'sums' has needed to change to reflect our modern emphasis upon mental arithmetic. Background of developers and trainers The developers of the Numicon approach are all graduate (and post-graduate) UK qualified teachers with between them some 85 years experience teaching mathematics to children and students of all abilities, from nursery settings through to university level. Until very recently, all were full time teachers working in schools and university implementing the National Numeracy Strategy with children of all abilities - which of course is the challenging context in which the Numicon approach was first developed. Five of the team of Numicon consultants who undertake training in the use of the approach are experienced in teaching children with Down syndrome and three of them are themselves parents of children who have Down syndrome. All the Numicon consultants are, like the authors, formally qualified teachers with a great deal of successful experience teaching mathematics in schools, with one exception - Dr Joanna Nye (formerly at Down Syndrome Education International) is a practising research psychologist at the University of Bristol, UK. Box 1 | Materials required and costs To begin with an individual user would need to buy the Numicon Single User Foundation Kit @ £86 + VAT. As the child begins to make progress with this first stage, it would be helpful to buy also a set of Number Rods @ £30 + VAT. The Numicon Kit 1 Plus Pack then supports the middle phase of the Numicon programme, and this currently costs £76 + VAT. The current final phase of the Numicon programme is supported with the Numicon Kit 2 Plus Pack @ £64 + VAT. Thus the current whole Numicon programme, taking the learner from the first introduction to basic number ideas through addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and problem solving, would cost £256 + VAT to support an individual learner. The cost to a school for the equivalent whole class kits would be: Foundation Class Kit @ £120 + VAT Kit 1 Class @ £160 + VAT Kit 2 Class @ £180 + VAT A set of Number Rods £30 + VAT. - Nye J. Teaching number skills to children with Down syndrome using the Numicon Foundation Kit . Portsmouth: Down Syndrome Education International, 2006. ISBN: 978-1-903806-92-0. - Devon Primary Maths Team. An Image of Number: the use of Numicon in mainstream classrooms . Exeter, UK: Devon County Council, 2006. - Ewan C, Mair C. Wiltshire Pilot Project - Numicon (March-July 2001). Down Syndrome News and Update . 2002; 2(1): 12-14. doi:10.3104/practice/159. - Leeds Primary National Strategy Team. Multi-sensory approach to the teaching and learning of mathematics - Pilot Project 2005. Leeds, UK: Education Leeds, 2005. - Buckley SJ, Bird G. Number skills for individuals with Down syndrome - An overview. Portsmouth, UK : Down Syndrome Education International, 2001. - Bird G. Number skills for infants with Down syndrome (0-5 years) . Portsmouth: Down Syndrome Education International, 2001. - Bird G, Buckley S. Number skills for children with Down syndrome (5-11 years). Portsmouth: Down Syndrome Education International, 2001. - Buckley SJ, Horner V, Wing T, Bird G. The Numicon approach. Down's Syndrome Association Journal . 2001;98:18-22. - Nye J, Buckley SJ, Bird G. Evaluating the Numicon system as a tool for teaching number skills to children with Down syndrome. Down Syndrome News and Update . 2005;5(1):2-13. - Uttley W. Introducing numbers and Numicon to young children who find it difficult to sit and concentrate. Down Syndrome News and Update . 2003;3(1):18-19. - Uttley W. An update on Sam and the progress he has made in numeracy using Numicon. Down Syndrome News and Update . 2004;4(1):15-16. - Saunders E. Number fun? You can count on it! Down Syndrome News and Update . 2004;4(1):11-14. - Lander A. Feely Bags. Down Syndrome News and Update . 2006;6(1):14-15. - Horner V. Numicon, numeracy and a special need. Mathematics Teaching. 2002,179, p.28-31. - Wing T. Serendipity and a special need. Mathematics Teaching . 2001;174:27-30. - Saunders S. Joining Luke's Wires. Mathematics Teaching. 2005;191:31-33. Received: 2 February 2007; Accepted 14 February 2007; Published online: 30 July 2007.

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By Tom Engelhardt 1. Off the coast The wooden sailing ship mounted with cannons, the gunboat, the battleship, and finally the “airship” — these proved the difference between global victory and staying at home, between empire and nothing much at all. In the first couple of centuries of Europe’s burst onto the world stage, the weaponry of European armies and their foes was not generally so disparate. It was those cannons on ships that decisively tipped the balance. And they continued to do so for a long, long time. Traditionally, in fact, the modern arms race is considered to have taken off at the beginning of the twentieth century with the rush of European powers to build ever larger, ever more powerful, “all-big-gun” battleships — the “dreadnoughts” (scared of nothings). In “Exterminate All the Brutes,” a remarkable travel book that takes you into the heart of European darkness (via an actual trip through Africa), the Swede Sven Lindqvist offers the following comments on that sixteenth century sea-borne moment when Europe was still a barbaric outcropping of Euro-Asian civilization: “Preindustrial Europe had little that was in demand in the rest of the world. Our most important export was force. All over the rest of the world, we were regarded at the time as nomadic warriors in the style of the Mongols and the Tatars. They reigned supreme from the backs of horses, we from the decks of ships. “Our cannons met little resistance among the peoples who were more advanced than we were. The Moguls in India had no ships able to withstand artillery fire or carry heavy guns… Thus the backward and poorly resourced Europe of the sixteenth century acquired a monopoly on ocean-going ships with guns capable of spreading death and destruction across huge distances. Europeans became the gods of cannons that killed long before the weapons of their opponents could reach them.” For a while, Europeans ruled the coasts where nothing could stand up to their ship-borne cannons and then, in the mid-nineteenth century in Africa as well as on the Asian mainland, the Europeans moved inland, taking their cannons upriver with them. For those centuries, the ship was, in modern terms, a floating military base filled with the latest in high-tech equipment. And yet ships had their limits as indicated by a well-known passage about a French warship off the African coast from Joseph Conrad’s novel about the Congo, Heart of Darkness: “In the empty immensity of earth, sky, and water, there she was, incomprehensible, firing into a continent. Pop, would go one of the six-inch guns; a small flame would dart and vanish, a little white smoke would disappear, a tiny projectile would give a feeble screech – and nothing happened. Nothing could happen. There was a touch of insanity in the proceeding, a sense of lugubrious drollery in the sight.” Well, maybe it wasn’t quite so droll if you happened to be on land, but the point is made. Of course, sooner or later (sometimes, as in Latin America or India, sooner) the Europeans did make it inland with the musket, the rifle, the repeating rifle, the machine gun, artillery, and finally by the twentieth century, the airplane filled with bombs or even, as in Iraq, poison gas. Backing up the process was often the naval vessel — as at the battle of Omdurman in the Sudan in 1898 when somewhere between 9,000 and 11,000 soldiers in the Mahdi’s army were killed (with a British loss of 48), thanks to mass rifle fire, Maxim machine guns, and the batteries of the gunboats floating on the Nile. Winston Churchill was a reporter with the British expeditionary force and here’s part of his description of the slaughter (also from Lindqvist): “The white flags [of the Mahdi’s army] were nearly over the crest. In another minute they would become visible to the batteries. Did they realize what would come to meet them? They were in a dance mass, 2,800 yards from the 32nd Field Battery and the gunboats. The ranges were known. It was a matter of machinery… About twenty shells struck them in the first minute. Some burst high in the air, others exactly in their faces. Others, again, plunged into the sand, and, exploding, dashed clouds of red dust, splinters, and bullets amid the ranks… It was a terrible sight, for as yet they had not hurt us at all, and it seemed an unfair advantage to strike thus cruelly when they could not reply.” And — Presto! — before you knew it three-quarters of the world was a colony of Europe (or the United States or Japan). Not bad, all in all, for a few floating centuries. In the latter part of this period, the phrase “gunboat diplomacy” came into existence, an oxymoron that nonetheless expressed itself all too eloquently. 2. Our little “diplomats” Today, gunboat diplomacy seems like a phrase from some antiquated imperial past (despite our thirteen aircraft carrier task forces that travel the world making “friendly” house calls from time to time). But if you stop thinking about literal gunboats and try to imagine how we carry out “armed diplomacy” — and, as we all know, under the Bush administration the Pentagon has taken over much that might once have been labeled “diplomacy” — then you can begin to conjure up our own twenty-first century version of gunboat diplomacy. But first, you have to consider exactly what the “platforms” are upon which we “export force,” upon which we mount our “cannons.” What should immediately come to mind are our military bases, liberally scattered like so many vast immobile vessels over the lands of the Earth. This has been especially true since the neocons of the Bush administration grabbed the reins of power at the Pentagon and set about reconceiving basing policy globally; set about, that is, creating more “mobile” versions of the military base, ever more stripped down for action, ever closer to what they’ve come to call the “arc of instability,” a vast swath of lands extending from the former Yugoslavia and the former SSRs of Eastern Europe down deep into Northern Africa and all the way to the Chinese border. These are areas that represent, not surprisingly, the future energy heartland of the planet. What the Pentagon refers to as its “lily pads” strategy is meant to encircle and nail down control of this vast set of interlocking regions — the thought being that, if the occasion arises, the American frogs can leap agilely from one prepositioned pad to another, knocking off the “flies” as they go. Thought about a certain way, the military base, particularly as reconceived in recent years, whether in Uzbekistan, Kosovo, or Qatar, is our “gunboat,” a “platform” that has been ridden ever deeper into the landlocked parts of the globe — into regions like the Middle East, where our access once had some limits, or like the former Yugoslavia and the ‘stans of Central Asia, where the lesser superpower of the Cold War era once blocked access entirely. Our new military bases are essentially the 21st century version of the old European warships; the difference being that, once built, the base remains in place, while its parts — the modern equivalents of those 16th century cannons — are capable of moving over land or water almost anywhere. As Chalmers Johnson has calculated it in his new book on American militarism, The Sorrows of Empire, our global Baseworld consists of at least 700 military and intelligence bases; possibly — depending on how you count them up — many more. This is our true “imperial fleet” (though, of course, we have an actual imperial fleet as well, our aircraft carriers alone being like small, massively armed towns). In the last decade-plus, as the pace of our foreign wars has picked up, we’ve left behind, after each of them, a new set of bases like the droppings of some giant beast marking the scene with its scent. Bases were dropped into Saudi Arabia and the small Gulf emirates after our first Gulf War in 1991; into the former Yugoslavia after the Kosovo air war of 1999; into Pakistan, Afghanistan, and several of the former Central Asian SSRs after the Afghan war of 2001; and into Iraq after last year’s invasion. The process has speeded up under the Bush administration, but until recent weeks, if you read our press, you would have had almost no way of knowing this; on Iraq, since in April 2003 the New York Times front-paged Pentagon plans to build four permanent bases there, none at all unless you wandered the Web reading the foreign press. Basing is generally considered here either a topic not worth writing about or an arcane policy matter best left to the inside pages for the policy wonks and news junkies. This is in part because we Americans — and by extension our journalists — don’t imagine us as garrisoning or occupying the world; and certainly not as having anything faintly approaching a military empire. Generally speaking, those more than seven hundred bases, our little “diplomats” (and the rights of extraterritoriality that go with them via Status of Forces Agreements) don’t even register on our media’s mental map of our globe. Only recently, however, a few basing articles have suddenly appeared and, miracle of miracle, Christine Spolar of the Chicago Tribune has actually written one about our permanent Iraqi bases, endearingly referred to in the military as “enduring camps.” Such bases were almost certainly planned for by the Pentagon before the 2003 invasion. After all, we were also planning to withdraw most of our troops from Saudi Arabia — Osama bin Laden had complained bitterly about the occupation of Islam’s holy sites — and they weren’t simply going to be shipped back to the U.S. But the numbers of those potential enduring camps in Iraq are startling indeed. The title of Spolar’s piece tells the tale: 14 ‘enduring’ bases set in Iraq and it begins with the line: “From the ashes of abandoned Iraqi army bases, U.S. military engineers are overseeing the building of an enhanced system of American bases designed to last for years.” Think about 14 bases “for years,” and keep in mind that some of these bases are already comparable in size and elaborateness to the ones we built in Vietnam four decades ago. Spolar continues: “As the U.S. scales back its military presence in Saudi Arabia, Iraq provides an option for an administration eager to maintain a robust military presence in the Middle East and intent on a muscular approach to seeding democracy in the region. The number of U.S. military personnel in Iraq, between 105,000 and 110,000, is expected to remain unchanged through 2006, according to military planners. “‘Is this a swap for the Saudi bases?’ asked Army Brig. Gen. Robert Pollman, chief engineer for base construction in Iraq. ‘I don’t know. … When we talk about enduring bases here, we’re talking about the present operation, not in terms of America’s global strategic base. But this makes sense. It makes a lot of logical sense.'” And keep in mind as well that all of this construction is being done to the tune of billions of dollars under contracts controlled by the Pentagon and, as Spolar writes, quite “separate from the State Department and its Embassy in Baghdad” (which, after June 30, is slated to be the largest embassy in the world with a “staff” of 3,000-plus). As the Pentagon planned it, and as we knew via leaks to the press soon after the war, newly “liberated” Iraq, once “sovereignty” had been restored, was to have only a lightly armed military force of some 40,000 men and no air force. The other part of this equation, the given (if unspoken) part, was that some sort of significant long-term American military protection of the country would have to be put in place. That size Iraqi military in one of the most heavily armed regions of the planet was like an insurance policy that we would “have” to stay. And we’ve proceeded accordingly, emplacing our “little diplomats” right at a future hub of the global energy superhighway. But we’ve made sure to cover the other on and off ramps as well. As James Sterngold of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote recently in a rundown of some of our post-9/11 basing policies (After 9/11, U.S. policy built on world bases): “One year after U.S. tanks rolled through Iraq and more than two years after the United States bombed the Taliban out of power in Afghanistan, the administration has instituted what some experts describe as the most militarized foreign policy machine in modern history. “The policy has involved not just resorting to military action, or the threat of action, but constructing an arc of new facilities in such places as Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Qatar and Djibouti that the Pentagon calls ‘lily pads.’ They are seen not merely as a means of defending the host countries — the traditional Cold War role of such installations — but as jumping-off points for future ‘preventive wars’ and military missions.” In fact, our particular version of military empire is perhaps unique: all “gunboats,” no colonies. The combination of bases we set down in any given country is referred to in the Pentagon as our “footprint” in that country. It’s a term that may once have come from the idea of “boots on the ground,” but now has congealed, imagistically speaking, into a single (and assumedly singular) bootprint — as if, as it strode across the planet, the globe’s only hyperpower was so vast that it could place only a single boot in any given country at any time. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith has been the main Pentagon architect of a plan to “realign” our bases so as to “forward deploy” U.S. forces into the “arc of instability.” (On a planet so thoroughly garrisoned, though, what can “forward” actually mean?) In a December speech to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (Transforming the U.S. Global Defense Posture), he offered a Pentagon version of sensitivity in discussing his forward deployment plans: “Realigning the U.S. posture will also help strengthen our alliances by tailoring the physical US ‘footprint’ to suit local conditions. The goal is to reduce friction with host nations, the kind that results from accidents and other problems relating to local sensitivities.” (Moccasins, flip-flops, sandals anyone?) In the meantime, to ensure that there will be no consequences if the giant foot, however enclosed, happens to stamp its print in a tad clumsily, causing the odd bit of collateral damage, he added: “For this deployability concept to work, US forces must be able to move smoothly into, through, and out of host nations, which puts a premium on establishing legal and support arrangements with many friendly countries. We are negotiating or planning to negotiate with many countries legal protections for US personnel, through Status of Forces Agreements and agreements (known as Article 98 agreements) limiting the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court with respect to our forces’ activities.” Bradley Graham of the Washington Post recently offered a more precise glimpse at Feith’s realignment strategy, which would move us away from our Cold War deployments, especially in Germany, Japan and Korea (U.S. May Halve Forces in Germany): “The Pentagon has drafted plans to withdraw as many as half of the 71,000 troops based in Germany as part of an extensive realignment of American military forces that moves away from large concentrations in Europe and Asia, according to U.S. officials… U.S. officials have said before that they intended to eliminate a number of large, full-service Cold War bases abroad and construct a network of more skeletal outposts closer to potential trouble spots in the Middle East and along the Pacific Rim.” In fact, the structure of major bases and “forward operating sites” in the arc of instability and, from Eastern Europe to the Central Asian ‘stans, inside the former Soviet empire, is already in place or, as in Iraq, in the process of being built or negotiated. As Michael Kilian of the Chicago Tribune writes: “[T]he United States now has bases or shares military installations in Turkey, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, as well as on the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. “Rumsfeld and Pentagon officials are soon expected to unveil plans for a new U.S. military ‘footprint’ on the rest of the world. The plan is expected to include a shift of resources from the huge Cold War-era bases in Western Europe to new and smaller ones in Poland and other Eastern Europe nations as well as a relocation of U.S. troops in South Korea.” In the meantime, Pentagon strategic planning for ever more, ever more aggressive future war-fighting is likely only to intensify this process. Los Angeles Times‘ military analyst William Arkin recently wrote of the unveiling of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld’s plan for a new military map of the globe (War Plans Meaner, not Leaner): “The Rumsfeld plan envisions what it labels a ‘1-4-2-1 defense strategy,’ in which war planners prepare to fully defend one country (the United States), maintain forces capable of ‘deterring aggression and coercion’ in four ‘critical regions’ (Europe, Northeast Asia, East Asia, and the Middle East and Southwest Asia), maintain the ability to defeat aggression in two of these regions simultaneously, and be able to ‘win decisively’ – up to and including forcing regime change and occupying a country – in one of those conflicts ‘at a time and place of our choosing’.… In the Clinton era, the Pentagon planned for fighting two wars simultaneously (in the Middle East and Northeast Asia). Under the new strategy, it must prepare for four…. “The planning model Rumsfeld and company have embraced is certainly more ambitious. It covers domestic and foreign contingencies and favors preemption over diplomacy, and military strikes over peacekeeping operations. The plan signals to the world that the United States considers nuclear weapons useful military instruments, to be employed where warranted.” Or just consider another kind of footprint — the tap dancing kind. The Pentagon’s website informs us that at Lackland Air Force base in Texas, the Air Force has just held auditions in a “worldwide talent search” that even included a Robert de Niro impersonator. All of this was for the Tops in Blue (TIB) 2004 tour. Let me emphasize that we’re not talking about an “All-American” talent contest, but a worldwide one. And, in fact, according to the Air Force press release, the winner of the “male vocalist” spot on the tour was Airman 1st Class Antonio Dandridge from the 35th Civil Engineer Squadron at Misawa Air Base, Japan. A recent TIB tour managed to hit 27 countries (read military bases), including Bagram Air Base in embattled Afghanistan. We’re talking a globe-girdling Baseworld here. Assumedly, the show’s finale will be a rousing chorus of “We Are the World.” 3. Twenty-second century gunboat diplomacy At least as now imagined in the Pentagon, twenty-second century “gunboat diplomacy” will be conducted by what the Air Force’s Space Command refers to as “space-based platforms” and the “cannons” will be a range of “exotic” weapons and delivery systems. In still unweaponized space (if you exclude the various spy satellites overhead), we plan for our future “ships” to travel the heavens alone, representatives of a singular heavenly version of gunboat diplomacy. Among the “five priorities for national security space efforts in 2004” set out by Peter B. Teets, undersecretary of the Air Force and director of the National Reconnaissance Office, in recent testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, the most striking, if also predictable, is that of “ensuring freedom of action in space” — as in freedom of action for us, and no action at all for anyone else. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has long been riveted by the idea of dominating space, and in his hands space, a void, is now being re-imagined as the ocean of our imperial future, thanks to space weaponry now on the drawing boards like the nicknamed “Rods from God.” These are to be “orbiting platforms stocked with tungsten rods perhaps 20 feet long and one foot in diameter that could be satellite-guided to targets anywhere on Earth within minutes. Accurate within about 25 feet, they would strike at speeds upwards of 12,000 feet per second, enough to destroy even hardened bunkers several stories underground.” Planning among “high frontier” enthusiasts for the conquest and militarization of space began in the 1980s during the Reagan administration, but it has now reached new levels of realism (of a mad sort). Theresa Hitchens of the Center for Defense Information recently wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle (Reining in our weaponry): “[T]he service’s gloves came off with the Feb. 17 release of the new U.S. Air Force Transformation Flight Plan. The document details a stunning array of exotic weapons to be pursued over the next decade: from an air-launched missile designed to knock satellites out of low orbit, to ground- and space- based lasers for attacking both missiles and satellites, to ‘hypervelocity rod bundles’ (nicknamed Rods from God)… Far from being aimed solely at the protection of U.S. space capabilities, such weapons are instead intended for offensive, first-strike missions.” Ever since H.G. Wells wrote The War of the Worlds in 1898, we humans have been imagining scenarios in which implacable aliens with superweapons arrive from space to devastate our planet. But what if it turns out that the implacable aliens are actually us — and that, as in the 16th century, someday in the not-too-distant future American “ships” will “burst from space” upon the “coasts” of our planet with devastation imprinted in their programs. These are, of course, the dreams of modern Mongols. Additional dispatches from Tom Engelhardt can be read throughout the week at TomDispatch.com, a web lob of The Nation Institute.

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Asatru is a modern neo-pagan reconstruction of Old Norse pre-Christian beliefs, with a religious structure of its own, and surprisingly on the rise in many countries these past fifty years, especially on European countries and in North America. Please consider taking a look at the video on Asatru produced by Arith Härger: What is the religion Asatru? And what does the word “Asatru” mean? Asatru the name created by the followers of the Nordic neo-pagan religion during the 19th century, to designate the modern reconstruction of the religious traditions of Scandinavia before the introduction of Christianity. The name roughly translated means “to be true to the Æsir”, one of the tribes of Norse gods depicted in Norse mythology. Although I must reinforce that this is the common designation and that the origins of the name might come from the old Norse word ǫ́ss or áss (plural æsir), meaning the “principal” pantheon in Norse religion; and from trú, meaning “faith” – “The faith of the Æsir”. Therefore, during the 19th century, Asatru meant to be true to the Norse gods in general, to be faithful and worship the Norse gods and their symboles, but with the increasing knowledge about pre-Christian Scandinavian pagan traditions, and with the creation of other branches of this pagan faith, Asatru also became the term to refer to a religion much more focused on the Æsir tribe of gods. Since when does Asatru exist? The 19thcentury was the period in which archaeology started to progressively awake some interest within the European nobility. It became an amateur activity for the wealthier members of the society , because it was very prestigious to have such an occupation as a hobby. Consequently, the interest in archaeology grew and 19thcentury nations whose political notions turned around nationalism and the need to find a common past to unite the masses and new nations under construction, turned to archaeology for answers. People became aware of their past, and because the 19th century was a historical period of great changes with the increasing process of industrialization and the abandonment of traditions and the family in Returning to the roots didn’t mean people wanted to return to a religious pagan past, rather, they wanted to return to the land, to tradition, to the domestic and farming activities less stressful and depressive when compared to the new reality of The archaeological and historical perception of ancient European civilizations was that the ancestors of modern Europeans worshipped nature, and this was the line of thought that perfectly fit into both the associations devoted consciousness of the 19th century, and the political ideas of nationalism – to return to the land, to be auto-sufficient, family values and traditions. In this way, many pre-Christian European cultures were seen as nature-worshippers. Which wasn’t far from the truth to a certain extent, since the archaeological interpretations of the time were focused on European civilizations from the Neolithic onwards; civilizations whose societies turned around the seasons – planting the soils, harvests, storing food for winter, and so on. This led to the belief that pagan European societies were nature worshippers and most of their gods and goddesses were fertility deities. However, during the 20th century, to be more precise during the early 1970s, groups of people from Iceland, the United States and the British Isles, more or less at the same time, formed new religious association devoted to the revival of the ancient religious beliefs and practices of pre-Christian Northern Europe, particularly those of pre-Christian Iceland and Scandinavia but also the related traditions of the Germanic peoples of continental Europe and the Anglo-Saxons of England. Ásatrú gained a new meaning and progressively became a faith with strong Asatru isn’t an ancient religion, older than Christianity. Asatru is a modern neo-pagan religious reconstruction, focused on the set of religions and spiritualties which springs from the specific spiritual beliefs of pre-Christian Northern Europe. Obviously, our Norse ancestors did not refer to their religions as Asatru. In fact, pre-Christian Scandinavians did not subscribe to one single religion, but to many cults belonging to a spirituality with similarities shared by various pre-Christian tribal communities scattered all over Northern Europe. These ancient faiths were revived as Ásatrú in the 19th century as previously said, although it received a special boost in the late 1960s and early 1970s when Sveinbjorn Beinteinsson (poet and a farmer) was the instrumental figure in getting Ásatrú recognized by the Icelandic government in 1973 and from that moment on several organizations started to appear all over Europe and in North America. Is Asatru a recognized religion? Sveinbjorn Beinteinsson with a group of friends, many of them also poets and devotees of early Icelandic literature, formed the association known as Asatruarfelagid, “the fellowship of those who trust in the ancient gods,” quite often described as Ásatrú. In the United States, Stephen McNallen and Robert Stine formed the Viking Brotherhood, which was soon renamed the Asatru Folk Alliance, and in Great Britain, John Yeowell and associates formed the Committee for the Restoration of the Odinic Rite. These were the first recognized Neo-Pagan revival organizations of the It’s clear that a wide variety of people are embracing Northern European pagan traditions, and most of them speak of their faith as Asatru or calling themselves Ásatruar (“Ásatrú believers”). Alternately, they also refer to themselves as Heathens (the ancient Germanic term for non-Christians)and their religion as Heathenry. Those less aware of what Ásatrú is, often refer to it as the “Religion of the Vikings”, and in general during the faith is seen as “Nature Worship”. So first things first. Let’s start clearer religious why Ásatrú is referred to as “The Religion of the Vikings”: As previously said, during the 19thcentury and early 20th century, archaeology was greatly led by nationalist minds. They were trying to find a common past in each other’countries to have a reference and a factor that showed such nations were once united under one single culture. To Central Europe it was the Germanic; to Great Britain is was the Anglo-Saxons and to the Scandinavians it was the Vikings (although being a Viking was a profession and a way of life, and not a specific ethnical group, but it was a culture nonetheless). The Viking Period was practically what placed Scandinavians in the books of history. Not much was known about center before the Viking Period, which was precisely a time when Scandinavians introduced themselves to the rest of Europe. Viking Age archaeology was the means of finding a common culture that in the past united Scandinavians, and this historical fact was the key point of nationalist politics of Scandinavia, especially of Norway, during the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. Subsequently, the Viking culture became widespread and very much a trend with J.R.R. So a religion such as Asatru was easily referred to as “The Religion of the Vikings”, due to its obvious connection with the Norse myths and folklore, but also because the formation of Ásatrú and its basic religious beliefs are very much Asatru has Been Described as a “Nature Religion”. What Does That Mean? In terms of being a religion referred to as“Nature Worship”, much of this stigma comes from the Within Asatru itself, at least the original founders and the very first generations of followers, there is a strong belief that the Gods manifest themselves through nature, and this reinforces the belief that Ásatrú is a Nature-Worshipping Religion. However, with the increasing modern heathens in various academic fields of social-sciences, we came to progressively reshape the idea around Asatru as a Nature-Worshipping faith. Pre-Christian Norse and Germanic peoples seldom had faiths around nature-worshiping. It’s more common to see in the archaeological record cults around death, the ancestors, war and magic, then fertility cults or cults based on a spiritual notion that we can immediately connect to nature. Certainly there were fertility cults and other cults around nature; a person could worship Freyja in her fertility aspect, to care for the crops and cattle; groups of people would worship Freyr in cults related to this deity as a fertility god; others would worship Njördr for plenty, a good catch on high seas; some would worship Ullr for good luck in hunt, etc. But the gods had many aspects, and the same people who sometimes worshiped Freyja and Freyr, or any other deity in In fact, until quite recently, even within Asatru (especially within Ásatrú), it was believed that magic had a secondary role in pre-Christian Scandinavian beliefs. This is something I (as an archaeologist and historian), and others in the academic field of This is a change on the perspective people had of Ásatrú. Maybe, Ásatrú wants to continue to be We Keep Talking About the Vikings. Does This Mean That Asatru is Only for People of Scandinavian Ancestry? Perhaps one of the most important questions that arise when people want to know more about Asatru, is if Ásatrú is Only for people of Scandinavian ancestry? It’s true that Ásatrú has been And there is even that stigma of Neo-Nazism and far-right political parties involved with Ásatrú. Many studies have been conducted due to the tendency of linking Norse Paganism to certain racist and Neo-Nazi elements within the Nordic Pagan communities. Unlike what is led to believe that Ásatrú is filled with Neo-Nazis, the great majority of modern Nordic Pagans devoted to Northern European cultural heritage, are firmly opposed to Nazism and racism. The minority of NordicPagans with Neo-Nazi and far-right political perceptions are firmly denounced by most modern Nordic Pagans, as being members of groups most Heathens wish to have nothing to do with. Within Heathenry, there is a constant fight against racism and Neo-Nazism. In reality, the number of non-Europeans who practice Northern European pagan traditions has increased since the early Asatru in America began to encourage people to seek their cultural-heritage, but let’s not have a miss-interpretation around that. This doesn’t mean that the pride in ethnic heritage felt by Nordic Pagans is linked to racism, nor should devotion to Nordic culture be wrongly equated with Nazism. It began by simply seeking cultural-heritage and embrace it. Nowadays, at least in Europe, Ásatrú and other forms of Heathenry isn’t much to seek cultural-heritage but to seek a spirituality that fits into our cultural perceptions. This increasing shift from organized religion into spirituality gave freedom for other people to embrace the Norse gods and Old Nordic traditions. There are many people, even organizations, from Non-European and Non-Northern American backgrounds who embraced this faith. Is the Norse religion still practiced? Nowadays Asatru religion has hundreds of followers all over the world, especially organizations in the United States and Europe; in What are the Basic Beliefs of Asatru? They are mainly guiding lines in how we should conduct our lives in order to achieve greatness and enjoy this world, taking the best advantage of everything that surrounds us, and as such, the gods are often seen as part of nature and often manifest themselves through nature, and we lthough it’s necessary to point out that we are on our own and we only communicate with the gods for help when all human efforts and recourses have been spent, and there is no other option, because when worshipping the Norse gods, a gift calls for a gift, and so sacrifices must be made, often in the form of ceremonies when the community shares with the gods personal objects, food, drink, etc., to maintain strong the bounds of friendship between us and the gods. What are the Standards of Behaviour Taught in Asatru? Asatru adheres to the Scandinavian pagan believe that objects play an important role in the religious connection with the gods, the gods can infuse objects with power, there is a flow of energy which lies within all things. For instance, we create something, we bend our thought to it, we give it shape and so we give apart of ourselves to the object, it is infused with our essence. This can be given to the gods as an offering and in We require this force, the How is Asatru religion Organized? The Ásatrú organizations are known as Kindred. The priests of a Kindred are known as Gothar, the plural form of This is an important aspect of this religion, because The ceremonies performed within the kindred are known as blóts(Old Norse “Sacrifices”; blóta – to worship, hallow or sacrifice), and the altars on which the The Asatru bible, does Asatru Have a Holy Book, Like the Bible? There is no Asatru Bible but for people to become Gothar, the “priests - The wisdom of Odin, - The strength of Thor - The love of Freyja. These 3 aspects are often expressed by possessing sacred texts, be part of a Kindred and care for the Folk. Guiding the Kindred with wisdom, being strong for the community and work for the benefit of the community, which also requires a certain amount of love, friendship The Gothar also need certain items to perform the rituals, like the hammer of Thor The Hávamál is not seen as a definite holy text. The Hávamál is a poem that establishes the guidelines of Ásatrú. There are other sources of knowledge, of course, often used but the Hávamál is a very important poem in the modern religious structure of Ásatrú, and mind that I continue to reinforce that I’m speaking about Ásatrú the modern reconstruction, and not the pre-Christian Scandinavian religions. Like many modern pagan reconstructions, this is a religion that shapes itself to our modern needs, and as such, many Ásatrúorganizations may do things differently, but the cannons of this religion, the basics, are the ones I’ve just mentioned. Of Ásatrú is the most famous Nordic neo-pagan branch and although there are clear differences from organization to organization, the foundations of this religion still cling to the 19th century religious reconstruction, and indeed the gods people worship in this religion are mainly the Æsir, such as Odin, Thor, Týr, Baldr and also two Vanir deities often included – Freyr and Freyja. The other gods are seldom heard What are the Runes, and what do They Have to do With Asatru? The Runes played an important role in Pre-Christian Scandinavia. They were not just a form of writing but also used in all sorts of religious and magical activities. Nowadays, within Ásatrú, runes have the tendency to be used as a writing system, whilst in other branches of Northern European pagan Rune poems are the original literary sources from which the knowledge of the meaning of each rune comes from, and such interpretations are currently in use more or less the same way the Hávamál is used in Ásatrú – as guiding lines. Does Asatru Involve Ancestor Worship? When it comes to worshipping the Ancestors, it’s a question that can hardly be answered in a short text. But suffice to say the pre-Christian Scandinavian peoples worshipped their ancestors. We have references of festivities such as the Dísablót, Álfablót, “Cult of the HearthFire”, and private celebrations in burial mounds, hills What is performed nowadays in religious terms connected to the Ancestors, are modern recreations (shared either with the community or in private) based on the little information For now what can be done is to compare the archaeological findings and the historical references of pre-Christian Scandinavia, with contemporary living communities whose spiritualties are very much based on polytheism, shamanism How Does Asatru Differ From Other Religions? So this is what Ásatrú is, a neo-pagan polytheistic reconstruction based on certain religious and historical aspects of pre-Christian Scandinavia. and Scandinavia of the pre-Christian indigenous faith of the Norse peoples. Nevertheless, it’s important to refer that the believers of this faith attempt to interact with the Norse gods and in addition they recognize that other people have their own gods, so by no means do the followers of Ásatrú believe that their gods are the only true gods. It is a religion, or a reconstruction of a religious tradition, without a hierarchical structure, dogmas, or sacred books being the center of the entire religion, and as such, the religious practices may suffer a lot of changes and different interpretations according to the social environment in which they are inserted. Amster, Matthew H.; (2015). “It’s Not Easy Being Apolitical: Reconstructionism and Eclecticism in Danish Asatro”, in Rountree, Kathryn, Contemporary Pagan and Native Faith Movements in Europe: Colonialist and Nationalist Impulses, New York and Oxford: Berghahn, p. 43–63. Asbjørn Jøn, A.; (1999). “‘Skeggøld, Skálmöld; Vindöld, Vergöld’: Alexander Rud Mills and the Ásatrú Faith in the New Age”, in Australian Religion Studies Review, 12 (1), p. 77–83. Blain, Jenny; Wallis, Robert J.; (2009). “Heathenry”, in Lewis, James R.; Pizza, Murphy, Handbook of Contemporary Paganisms, Leiden: Brill, p. 413–432. Boyer, Régies; (1986). Le monde du double: la magie chez les anciens Scandinaves. Paris, Berq International. Calico, Jefferson F.; (2018). Being Viking: Heathenism in Contemporary America, Sheffield: Equinox. Cragle, Joshua Marcus; (2017). “Contemporary Germanic/Norse Paganism and Recent Survey Data”, in The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies, 19 (1), p. 77–116. Gregorius, Fredrik; (2015). “Modern Heathenism in Sweden: A Case Study in the Creation of a Traditional Religion”, in Rountree, Kathryn, Contemporary Pagan and Native Faith Movements in Europe: Colonialist and Nationalist Impulses, New York and Oxford: Berghahn, p. 64–85. Harvey, Graham; (1995). “Heathenism: A North European Pagan Tradition”, in Harvey, Graham; Hardman, Charlotte, Paganism Today, London: Thorsons, p. 49–64. Haywwod, John; (2000). Attitudes to sex, in Encyclopaedia of the Viking Age, London, Thames and Hudson, p. 169. Horrell, Thad N.; (2012). “Heathenry as a Postcolonial Movement”, in The Journal of Religion, Identity, and Politics, 1 (1), p. 1–14. Jónína K. Berg; (2004). “Sveinbjörn Beinteinsson skáld og allsherjargoði frá Draghálsi” from Vor Siður, No 5, p. 5-6. Kaplan, Jeffrey; (1996). “The Reconstruction of the Ásatrú and Odinist Traditions”, in Lewis, James R., Magical Religion and Modern Witchcraft, New York: State University of New York, p. 193–236. Langer, Johnni; (2005). Religião e magia entre os vikings: uma sistematização historiográfica, in Brathair 5 (2), p. 55-82. Paxson, Diana L.; (2006). Essentinal Ásatrú, walking the path of Norse Paganism, Citadel Press, New York. Paxson, Diana; (2002). “Asatru in the United States”, in Rabinovitch, S.; Lewis, J., The Encyclopedia of Modern Witchcraft and Neo-Paganism, New York: Citadel Press, p. 17–18. Price, Neil; (2005). L’sprit Viking: magie et mentalité dans la scieté scandinave ancienne, in Boyer, Régis, Les Vikings, premiers européens. Paris, Éditions Autrement, p. 196-216.

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Coretta Scott was born in Heiberger, Alabama and raised on the farm of her parents, Bernice and Obadiah Scott, in Perry County, Alabama. She was exposed at an early age to the injustices of life in a segregated society. She walked five miles a day to attend the one-room Crossroad School in Marion, Alabama, while the white students rode buses to an all-white school closer by. Young Coretta excelled at her studies, particularly music, and was valedictorian of her graduating class at Lincoln High School. She graduated in 1945 and received a scholarship to Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. As an undergraduate, Coretta Scott took an active interest in the nascent Civil Rights Movement; she joined the Antioch chapter of the NAACP, and the college’s Race Relations and Civil Liberties Committees. She graduated from Antioch with a B.A. in music and education and won a scholarship to study concert singing at New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. In Boston she met a young theology student, Martin Luther King, Jr., and her life was changed forever. They were married on June 18, 1953, in a ceremony conducted by the groom’s father, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Sr. Coretta Scott King completed her degree in voice and violin at the New England Conservatory, and the young couple moved in September 1954 to Montgomery, Alabama, where Martin Luther King, Jr. had accepted an appointment as pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. They were soon caught up in the dramatic events that triggered the modern Civil Rights Movement. When Rosa Parks refused to yield her seat on a Montgomery city bus to a white passenger, she was arrested for violating the city’s ordinances giving white passengers preferential treatment in public conveyances. The black citizens of Montgomery organized immediately in defense of Mrs. Parks, and under Martin Luther King’s leadership organized a boycott of the city’s buses. The Montgomery bus boycott drew the attention of the world to the continued injustice of segregation in the United States, and led to court decisions striking down all local ordinances separating the races in public transit. Dr. King’s eloquent advocacy of nonviolent civil disobedience soon made him the most recognizable face of the Civil Rights Movement, and he was called on to lead marches in city after city, with Mrs. King at his side, inspiring the citizens, black and white, to defy the segregation laws. The visibility of Dr. King’s leadership attracted fierce opposition from the supporters of institutionalized racism. In 1956, white supremacists bombed the King family home in Montgomery. Mrs. King and the couple’s first child narrowly escaped injury. The Kings had four children in all: Yolanda Denise; Martin Luther, III; Dexter Scott; and Bernice Albertine. Although the demands of raising a family had caused Mrs. King to retire from singing, she found another way to put her musical background to the service of the cause. She conceived and performed a series of critically acclaimed Freedom Concerts, combining poetry, narration and music to tell the story of the Civil Rights Movement. Over the next few years, Mrs. King staged Freedom Concerts in some of America’s most distinguished concert venues, as fundraisers for the organization her husband had founded, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Dr. King’s fame spread beyond the United States, and he was increasingly seen not only as a leader of the American Civil Rights Movement, but as the symbol of an international struggle for human liberation from racism, colonialism and all forms of oppression and discrimination. In 1957, Dr. King and Mrs. King journeyed to Africa to celebrate the independence of Ghana. In 1959, they made a pilgrimage to India to honor the memory of Mahatma Gandhi, whose philosophy of nonviolence had inspired them. Dr. King’s leadership of the movement for human rights was recognized on the international stage when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. In 1964, Mrs. King accompanied her husband when he traveled to Oslo, Norway to accept the Prize. In the 1960s, Dr. King broadened his message and his activism to embrace causes of international peace and economic justice. Mrs. King found herself in increasing demand as a public speaker. She became the first woman to deliver the Class Day address at Harvard, and the first woman to preach at a statutory service at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. She served as a Women’s Strike for Peace delegate to the 17-nation Disarmament Conference in Geneva, Switzerland in 1962. Mrs. King became a liaison to international peace and justice organizations even before Dr. King took a public stand in 1967 against U.S. intervention in the Vietnam War. On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. Channeling her grief, Mrs. King concentrated her energies on fulfilling her husband’s work by building The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change as a living memorial to her husband’s life and dream. Years of planning, fundraising and lobbying lay ahead, but Mrs. King would not be deterred, nor did she neglect direct involvement in the causes her husband had championed. In 1969, Coretta Scott King published the first volume of her autobiography, My Life with Martin Luther King, Jr. In the 1970s, Mrs. King maintained her husband’s commitment to the cause of economic justice. In 1974, she formed the Full Employment Action Council, a broad coalition of over 100 religious, labor, business, civil and women’s rights organizations dedicated to a national policy of full employment and equal economic opportunity; Mrs. King served as Co-Chair of the Council. In 1981, The King Center, the first institution built in memory of an African American leader, opened to the public. The Center is housed in the Freedom Hall complex encircling Dr. King’s tomb in Atlanta, Georgia. It is part of a 23-acre national historic site that also includes Dr. King’s birthplace and the Ebenezer Baptist Church, where he and his father both preached. The King Center Library and Archives houses the largest collection of documents from the Civil Rights era. The Center receives over one million visitors a year, and has trained tens of thousands of students, teachers, community leaders and administrators in Dr. King’s philosophy and strategy of nonviolence through seminars, workshops and training programs. Mrs. King continued to serve the cause of justice and human rights; her travels took her throughout the world on goodwill missions to Africa, Latin America, Europe and Asia. In 1983, she marked the 20th anniversary of the historic March on Washington by leading a gathering of more than 800 human rights organizations, the Coalition of Conscience, in the largest demonstration the capital city had seen up to that time. Coretta Scott King led the successful campaign to establish Dr. King’s birthday, January 15, as a national holiday in the United States. By an Act of Congress, the first national observance of the holiday took place in 1986. Dr. King’s birthday is now marked by annual celebrations in over 100 countries. Mrs. King was invited by President Clinton to witness the historic handshake between Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Chairman Yassir Arafat at the signing of the Middle East Peace Accords in 1993. In 1985, Mrs. King and three of her children were arrested at the South African Embassy in Washington, D.C. for protesting against that country’s apartheid system of racial segregation and disenfranchisement. Ten years later, she stood with Nelson Mandela in Johannesburg when he was sworn in as President of South Africa. After 27 years at the helm of The King Center, Mrs. King turned over leadership of the Center to her son, Dexter Scott King, in 1995. She remained active in the causes of racial and economic justice, and in her remaining years devoted much of her energy to AIDS education and curbing gun violence. Although she died in 2006 at the age of 78, she remains an inspirational figure to men and women around the world. “When I went to the movies with other black children, we had to sit in the balcony while the white kids got to sit in the better seats below. We had to walk to school while the white children rode in school buses paid for by our parents’ taxes. Such messages, saying we were inferior, were a daily part of our lives.” Young Coretta Scott’s gift for music and enthusiasm for education led her far beyond the segregated world of her childhood, but when she met the young Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the two resolved to return to the Deep South together and pursue the cause of justice in her own home state of Alabama. The Montgomery bus boycott thrust the young couple to the forefront of a revitalized civil rights movement, even as it exposed their growing family to the retaliation of those who opposed any change in the old system. Braving death threats and surviving the bombing of their home by white supremacists, Coretta Scott King stood by the cause and her husband, from the Birmingham jail to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, from the March on Washington, to a stage in Oslo, Norway, where he accepted the Nobel Prize for Peace. After his assassination, she inspired the world with her courage, dignity and tireless devotion to preserving Dr. King’s legacy. As founding President, Chair, and Chief Executive Officer of The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, she saw that tens of thousands of activists from all over the world were trained in the philosophy and practice of nonviolence. She served as an advisor to freedom and democracy movements all over the world, and as a consultant to world leaders including President Corazon Aquino of the Philippines, President Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia, and President Nelson Mandela of South Africa. One of the world’s most admired women, she remained an outspoken champion of justice and human dignity to the end of her days. (On June 18, 1999, Coretta Scott King addressed the American Academy of Achievement at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. Excerpts from her remarks on that occasion are interspersed throughout two video interviews — one from 1999 and the other from 2004.) You were a music student in Boston when you met Martin Luther King, Jr. for the first time. Did you ever imagine that the two of you would play such an important part in the Civil Rights Movement? Coretta Scott King: No, I didn’t. I don’t think that my husband, although he said he was going to go back south and fight to change the system — and he was thinking about not just in Alabama or in Georgia, but he was talking about making our society more inclusive, changing the system so that everybody could participate — although he talked about that at that time, we never dreamed that we would have an opportunity, that we would be projected into the forefront of the struggle as we were. We were just going to work from, as he said, a black Baptist Church pulpit. That was the freest place in the society at that time, but we had no idea what God had in store for us. And I do believe it was divine intervention that we were thrust into the forefront of the struggle. After we married, we moved to Montgomery, Alabama, where my husband had accepted an invitation to be the pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. Before long, we found ourselves in the middle of the Montgomery bus boycott, and Martin was elected leader of the protest movement. As the boycott continued, I had a growing sense that I was involved in something so much greater than myself, something of profound historic importance. I came to the realization that we had been thrust into the forefront of a movement to liberate oppressed people, not only in Montgomery but also throughout our country, and this movement had worldwide implications. I felt blessed to have been called to be a part of such a noble and historic cause. When Dr. King was asked to lead the Montgomery bus boycott, you had just had your first child. What are your memories of those days? What stands out for you? Well, first of all, I was extremely excited about what was going on because this was something that had never happened before, and I knew this was history-making, and I also knew that it was not only happening in Montgomery but it was — the impact of this was maybe much further — much more extensive than Montgomery because during the Montgomery boycott we heard that there was a boycott in Johannesburg, South Africa of buses, and also there was one in Mobile and in Tallahassee, so it was like it was spreading but we also knew that the struggle was much bigger than a boycott. It was about the injustices in our society. It was about changing the society in such a way and changing the laws of the government locally, and certainly nationally we had to create new laws to protect us and protect the rights once they were won. On a personal level, you had an extraordinary realization during the time of the Montgomery, Alabama bus desegregation court hearings. Can you take us back to that time in your life and express your personal concerns, but also the results of your soul searching? We even experienced what was like modern day miracles when things happened. Like when the Supreme Court had ruled on bus desegregation, we were in court that day because the City of Montgomery was having a hearing and was trying to outlaw our transportation system and, if it had, maybe the people would have gotten tired and gone back to the buses. And my husband was very worried, and I said to him, “You know what? I think that by the time we go to court, and by the time the judge rules, that the Supreme Court will have ruled.” And we felt that if the Supreme Court ruled it would be in our favor and that was my consolation. Sure enough, while we were in court Associated Press — an Associated Press reporter handed a note to my husband and it said, “The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled today that bus segregation in Montgomery is unconstitutional.” So that ended the court session. So it was that kind of thing and intervention again that helped us to realize that we were doing the right thing, and we continued to do that, and more importantly that we had been called. I had been called personally to be in Montgomery at that time because I had always sought my purpose. As a teenager I began to think about what my life was going to be like and going to college. That was one level. Going beyond there was the next level. Going to prepare for a music career, but when I got to Boston there was, I realized, another reason for me being there. And then I wondered why Martin Luther King, Jr., a minister, that I didn’t think I would ever marry a minister, and then he was going back south, I wanted to go back south, but I wasn’t prepared to go at that time, because I had to finish my work, and finally in Montgomery — and then things began to happen and the house was bombed. So I did a lot of soul searching after that and tried to remember, you know, try to think back of how I got there, and I realized that all my life I had been being prepared for this role, and that we were supposed to be there in Montgomery. And it was a great feeling of satisfaction because I realized that I had found my purpose. There were threats on your husband’s life, your life and your family. When did you realize that you would be dedicating your life to this movement? I realized when Montgomery started that this was probably the reason we were called to Montgomery. After my house was bombed, and of course, all the threats on my husband’s life, on my life too. I realized I could have been killed as well — because I was in the house when the bomb hit the front porch — with my young baby. And the callers had been calling, and they said that they were going to bomb our house, told my husband they were going to bomb his house and kill his family if he didn’t leave town in three days. And of course he didn’t leave town in three days, and they did bomb the house. So knowing that they meant what they said, because they actually did bomb the house — the bomb was not strong enough to destroy the house, but if it had been, then that would have been very, very sad for all of us, certainly for me and my baby and my husband. But the fact is that I had to deal with the fact that if I continued in the struggle, I too could be killed, and that’s when I started praying very seriously about my commitment and whether or not I would be able to stick with my husband to continue in the struggle. And of course it wasn’t that difficult. It was a struggle, but I knew that we were doing the right thing. I always felt that what was happening in Montgomery was part of God’s will and purpose, and we were put there to be in the forefront of that struggle, and it wasn’t just a struggle relegated to Montgomery, Alabama or the South, but that it had worldwide implications. And I felt, really, a sense of fulfillment that I hadn’t felt before, that this was really what I was supposed to be doing, and it was a great blessing to have discovered this, and to be doing what was God’s will for your life. After we were successful in desegregating the buses in Montgomery, the nonviolent revolution we launched in Montgomery spread like a prairie fire across the southern states. My husband led nonviolent protest campaigns against racism and segregation in cities across the South as well as in Chicago, Cleveland, and other cities in the North. During this time, I had three more children and participated in movement activities as much as possible. People asked me how was I able to do this and raise four children at the same time. I can only reply that when God calls you to a great task, he provides you with the strength to accomplish what he has called you to do. Faith and prayer, family and friends were always available when I needed them, and of course Martin and I always were there for each other. I learned that when you are willing to make sacrifices for a great cause, you will never be alone, because you will have divine companionship and the support of good people. This same faith and cosmic companionship sustained me after my husband was assassinated, and gave me the strength to make my contribution to carrying forward his unfinished work. What inspired you? What kept you going? Well, it was the belief that we were doing the right thing. Because it had never happened before, it was like, you know, the Supreme Court decision had been rendered in 1954, and this was in 1955, and we were all motivated by that and knowing that this meant the beginning of breaking down the system of segregation. We recognized that if the schools could desegregate, this means that other things can desegregate as well, so with Montgomery happening, it was like an intervention there that God had planted Rosa Parks and also Martin Luther King, Jr. And so you had the sense that something very, very significant was happening and that it had — it would have impact beyond — around the world that we were not only struggling to free the people of the South but oppressed people around the world. And we had no idea where it was leading but we had a sense that it was leading to something much more significant than what we were involved in at the time. And each time there was things — for instance, the stabbing incident when Martin was stabbed in Harlem. I mean, it’s like it made no sense except that God was preparing us for something even bigger. And then when the Nobel Peace Prize came along, which we were rewarded in a sense for our struggles, it was like, but this is still not it, because we have not achieved the peace that he was awarded — the award represented, but we still have a long way to go. So it was always not knowing what the future held, but we knew that we were on the right path, and you had a sense of, as Martin used to say, “cosmic companionship,” and that kept you going. Someone else in your position might have felt that she had given enough, or sacrificed too much, and that someone else could carry the burden for a while. Why didn’t you feel that way? When I say I was married to the cause, I was married to my husband whom I loved — I learned to love, it wasn’t love at first sight — but I also became married to the cause. It was my cause, and that’s the way I felt about it. So when my husband was no longer there, then I could continue in that cause, and I prayed that God would give me the direction for my life, to give me the strength to do what it was, and the ability to do what it was that he had called me to do. And I was trying to seek, “What is it that I’m supposed to do, now that Martin is no longer here?” And I finally determined that it was to develop an institution. I was already involved in building the institution, but I wasn’t sure that that was it. I thought maybe it might have been with women, but then, of course, I didn’t get that feeling in particular, but always, because I felt there was a need to have more women involved, in organizing them as a support group to my husband, and I encouraged him to do that. And he didn’t do that in particular, and I thought, well maybe then, that might be what I’m supposed to do. But then I finally determined that it was the King Center, because Martin’s message and his meaning were so powerful, and his spirit I felt needed to be continued. I know that people’s spirits live on, but I think in a very positive, meaningful way, that young people would know that that influence was being continued. So I felt that my role, then, was to develop an institution, to institutionalize his philosophy, his principles of nonviolence and his methodology of social change, and that’s what I have spent my years doing. For 27 years, I was the president, founder, CEO — I’m still a founder; you’re always the founder — but I retired from that position in 1995, and my son Dexter is now in that position, but I still continue to do all the work that I can, to reach as many people as I can with the message.

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A research by the 2nd Vocational School of Katerini (partner of the DO-IT project) The reality of the new Covid-19 coronavirus and the effects of the pandemic on international level form an unprecedented setting for citizens and organized societies. International education systems were called upon to take on the responsibility of moving to a new one in the shortest possible time emergency home learning support environment. According to UNESCO data updated on 27 April 2020, the 91.3% of pupils/students in 188 countries around the world do not go to school / university (UNESCO, 2020). What happened in Greece? It is very important to know the structure of the Greek Education System and how it works, in order to fully understand the actions taken to address the truly unprecedented situation created with Covid 19. Given that the Greek Education System is essentially divided into Primary, Secondary and University Education, it is important to study in depth the actions carried out at each level of education separately in the Covid period for students with an immigrant background. However, in our case the interest is more focused on students of Secondary education, although more or less the same methods were followed in the other levels of education. Most immigrant students come from neighboring countries such as Albania and Bulgaria but also from Germany. So, these students, since they are in Greece for many years from primary education, are already fully integrated in secondary education and follow the program followed by all students. Students with an immigrant background can attend additional support classes after the end of the regular duration of each school unit (remedial teaching) in specific subjects, but so can the rest of students. Therefore, all students in the Covid period were treated in the same way. In general, all students attended synchronous distance education courses through the Cisco Webex platform as well as asynchronous distance education courses, all of which provided support material with the platform of the Panhellenic School Network called eclass (similar to Moodle). In Greece, only the refugees, coming the last five years from countries such as Syria, Afghanistan and others were treated differently, mainly because they did not know the Greek language but also had not previously attended any level of education of the Greek system. Thus, in the pre-covid era, the students were partially integrated in various levels of education in integration departments with special teachers for learning Greek language and literature, as well as teaching other basic subjects such as mathematics and physics. During the rest of the school hours, they attended some courses such as Informatics together with the other students in order to integrate into the school community. This process was followed in the Covid period as well. The students attended online classes with their teachers as before and entered the other classes online as well. As we will see below in the first Covid period there was a large abstention of students from online courses, for various reasons, such as lack of equipment and internet. In the second period – Covid school year things were clearly better but again there was a large abstention of students from the educational process. Various incentives and facilities for the students were given by the Ministry of Education, such as equipment purchase voucher 200 euros and free internet but the whole process was delayed considerably. Greece before it manages to recover from the painful social and economic effects of the crisis that started in 2009 (reduction of 25% of GDP), is called to tackle the unprecedented challenges of the COVID-19 epidemic when at the same time 15% of the population is experiencing extreme poverty. According to official figures, although eight out of ten households have Internet access, less than half of citizens have basic ICT knowledge. This finding acquires special value in the current period as well parents are called, among others, to support their children in order to access the new environment remotely support (Anastasiadis, 2020). The Greek education system is called upon to deal with the pandemic COVID-19 under adverse conditions (underfunding, infrastructure backlog and accessibility to online learning environments, lack of training on the pedagogical use of ICT etc.) with teachers to have lost a significant part of their purchasing power lately years. At this point we point out that 72.68% of the permanent teachers are over 50 years old. 1st Period of Covid-19 in Greece During the 1st period (Spring 2020) of the Prohibition / Lockdown and after one first short period of searching for the best solutions that followed the decision to close schools, the central planning at the level Ministry of Education for Primary and Secondary Education set as primary aimed at strengthening technological infrastructure at national level (environment record management, synchronous and asynchronous learning environments) while at the same time ensured free access from mobile phones on services and applications of the Panhellenic School Network. The response of teachers and students exceeded all expectations (Panhellenic School Network – PSN Report, 2020), as until November 30, 2020: - from a total of 180,000 teachers (permanent and substitute) have been registered 151,639 teachers (85% of the total) and approximately 1,022,864 students in total 1,448,916 (70.5% of the total). - 83,462 Teachers and 465.688 students have registered in the e-me environment and 131747 “Cells-Lessons” have been created (Digital Education E-me Platform, November 2020). - Respectively in the e-class environment according to the latest statistics data of the PSN, of November 2020, for the current school year 2020-2021, the Electronic School Classroom (eclass.sch.gr) hosts 301.626 e-lessons, 1.012.750 students and 148.535 teachers from 9.899 schools across the country. In a very short time the educational radio and television took over support of distance education for all grades of primary school with creation of videotaped lessons, while at the same time ensuring the free access to all available digital services for on-demand viewing of emissions and their integration into Internet learning environments (Papadimitriou, 2020). During the 1st period (Spring 2020) there were obvious objective difficulties where they acted as a deterrent to the design and implementation of central level of a coherent framework for action for the Distance Learning (fast – track training, preparation of concise guides, indicative educational material, etc.), which would allow the pedagogical support of teachers in order to be able to meet the requirements of the new teacher environment. The focus of central planning in the first period was focused more on remote technology support for teachers and students with an emphasis on asynchronous learning environments. On March 10, 2020 the Greek government published the act “Tefkhos B’ 783/10.03.2020” suspending face-to-face educational processes in all schools and educational facilities in the country (Ephimerida tis Kiverniseos tis Ellinikis Dimokratias, 2020a). More specifically, this decision was of mandatory character and referred to educational institutions of all levels –public or private- as well as private tuition centers and foreign language teaching centers (Skoumpopoulou, 2021). Nevertheless, children were left out of educational processes only for six days, as the government soon released an announcement for the onset of distance learning on March 16, offering guidelines for its operation (Greek Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs, 2020a). According to the same source, Ministry’s official site, lessons would occur via both synchronous and asynchronous tools, as students would participate in online classes, using the online conference platform “Cisco WebEx Meetings”, but also receive the teaching material through the digital platforms “e-me” (e-me.edu.gr) or “e-class” (eclass.sch.gr), after being registered to the “PanHellenic School Network”. The government, also, made provision for free access to all these platforms through just a cellphone (Anastasiadis, 2020). Students of the upper grade of secondary education were the first to begin with distance learning, due to the fact that they were preparing intensively for their final exams for graduation, while the rest of the grades followed some days later (Greek News Agenda, 2020). It is important to clarify that the participation of either teachers or students to online education was not mandatory (Alfavita, 2020a, Nikiforos, Tzanavaris & Kermanidis, 2020). As regards the efficacy of online education in Greece during the first lockdown, research data agree that it was implemented adequately. According to the first official assessment made and published by the Greek Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs (2020b) as regards the first two months of operating distance education, almost 41,000 online synchronous courses took place per day, with 766, 458 students participating. Another research also claims that teachers of primary education –specifically kindergarten teachers responded adequately in the online teaching procedures, using both synchronous and asynchronous means (Foti, 2020). The study of Nikiforos, Tzanavaris and Kermanidis (2020), on the experience of both primary and secondary teachers during the first period of distance education, claims that only 3.8 % of them did not implement distance teaching at all. On the other hand, the same research underlines that, although teachers expressed a positive attitude on the experience, there were significant difficulties that they had to deal with (Nikiforos, Tzanavaris and Kermanidis, 2020). Teachers’ lack of digital skills and previous experience in teaching online, in combination with “poor, or non-existing” internet connection for both educators and students, made the process challenging (p.2). The research of Tzifopoulos (2020) points out that students were, also, unprepared for using technology in education. Although the same research confirms that teaching procedures had already been adapted to the new distance-teaching conditions within the first month, with students and teachers being engaged in online learning, it, also underlines that is doubtable whether teachers responded properly in using the digital tools in a way that benefited the students. 2nd Period of Covid-19 in Greece During the 2nd period (October-November 2020) at central level design: - The role of educational television was upgraded with the addition of new ones objects, which should be further enriched and mainly to be interconnected with the school routine (to be used as asynchronous supplementary educational material by teachers and teachers); - The level of technological capabilities of the PSN was upgraded as well access to asynchronous environments eclass and e-me, but which are still two “parallel universes” causing significant malfunctions throughout the community; - The technological access to the environment of Synchronous Distance Learning (WEBEX) in all teachers and students despite their dysfunctions first days managed to respond to an unprecedented for the data technological venture; - The emphasis in the 2nd period (as in the 1st) was given to the technological dimension of Distance Learning. The absence of a pedagogical framework was obvious and this resulted in the strumentalisation of the Distance Learning in technological terms with what this means for the quality of the courses offered and ultimately the effectiveness of the whole effort. On November 14, 2020, due to fear for a second attack of the Covid-19 virus, the Greek government ordered another suspension on the function of schools of all levels from November 16, publishing the act “Tefkhos B’ 5043/14.11.2020” (Ephimerida tis Kiverniseos tis Ellinikis Dimokratias, 2020b). The differences of this publication, in comparison to that of March 2020, lied on the fact that this time the decision mentioned only synchronous distance learning and public television as the methods of distance education that would be applied (Greek Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs, 2020c). This means that students would attend online courses, exactly like the previous time and, also, watch recorded lessons delivered by teachers in the state channels. What is more, this time the participation of teachers and students in synchronous courses was mandatory (KATHIMERINI, 2020). Almost no research data were found as regards the results of the second attempt to implement distance education in Greece, probably due to the very little time intervening between the second lockdown and the publication of the present paper. Nonetheless, an article was published, a few days after the new governmental decision was announced, by“Alfavita”, one of the most popular sites with updates for educators in Greece (Alfavita, 2020b). According to the article, the second distance-learning experience found educators and students almost as unprepared as they were during the first lockdown, although the new measures were obligatory. More specifically, the authors claim that educators were forced, once again, to use their personal digital equipment, as the State never provided them with everything they needed, while some educators and students did not even possess a computer, neither on the first nor at the second lockdown. What is more, it is stated that this ministerial decision required synchronous courses to follow the schedule of face-to-face lessons, meaning that this time students and teachers had to sit in front of their computers for several hours; according to the authors, the instruction during the first lockdown was to implement two thirty-minute lessons per week, while on the second they would have to work online at least for three hours every day. The last point made in the article concerned the recorded lessons projected in the state channels; the authors claim that those lessons were recorded during the first lockdown and, therefore, corresponded to non-relevant teaching material (Skoumpopoulou, 2021). The impact of COVID-19 in refugee education Nevertheless, online education was, as mentioned before, a new experience for primary and secondary teachers (Nikiforos, Tzanavaris & Kermanidis, 2020) and, more than that, it had to be carried through in such difficult times, when public health was threatened. If this was the case for mainstream classes during the pandemic, then it is reasonable to assume that educators involved with refugee students had even more obstacles to overcome, as their students are more likely to face challenging living conditions. This section is dedicated to data found on the latter aspect (Skoumpopoulou, 2021). Even before the pandemic, refugee students were much more likely to be left out of school –twice as likely- than other students (UNHCR, 2020b). More specifically, research data reveal that during the school year 2019-2020 –which started before the COVID-19 effect in the Greek school system- no afternoon preparatory classes took place in the islands of Northern Aegean (Greek Council for Refugees, 2021). The same source claims that, even a year back, in the school year 2018-2019, the two thirds of refugee children between 4-17 years were left out of formal education. Nevertheless, research data point out that the Covid-19 pandemic brought to light even more inequities in health, economy and educational opportunities for refugee and migrant populations in general (Endale, Jean & Birman, 2020). A study concerning the effect of pandemic to refugees in Germany and Turkey points out that a significant percentage of refugee children do not have access to online education (Kollender & Nimer, 2020). As regards the situation in Greece specifically, a very recent report on the refugee educational crisis in the country claims that these populations not only were left without healthcare during the pandemic, but also that education for them “has almost entirely been stopped” (Jalbout, 2020, p.10). What is more, during the first months of distance education it was estimated that half of the refugee female students attending secondary schools would not return to school when they would have the chance (UNHCR, 2020b). Although education in Greece is compulsory, which means that parents are obliged by law to send their children to school, according to Crul et al. (2019) “this is rarely applied to vulnerable groups such as refugee parents” (p.4). More data confirm that opportunities for vulnerable groups to access education in Greece during the pandemic is unequal to other groups of people (Lambert et al., 2020), due to the delayed provision of technological equipment (Anastasiadis, 2020). Emphasizing more on the reasons behind these inequities, research has shown that learning at home entails having the digital tools needed, while this is not the case for 85% of the refugee/forced migrant students living in developing countries (UNHCR, 2020b). The study of Colucci et al. (2017) underlines the efficiency and efficacy of Free Digital Learning (FDL) for refugees and migrants, pointing out that FDL can really make a difference in refugee/migrant education, but only if we reassure those populations access to technology. Other sources emphasize as a problem the possibility of refugee parents being “preliterate and new to technology” (Kallin, 2020), which means that they are incapable of handling digital tools to help their children –or themselves- participate in their online classes. Another study regarding a pilot program for distance language teaching to adult refugees in Argentina revealed some of the problems that could rise in such an initiative (Corradi, 2019). The low level of language comprehension in some cases made the communication between teachers and students very challenging and students’ knowledge was not properly assessed. Nevertheless, the research proposes to solve this problem by sharing with the students a document with some basic instructions in the target language combined with icons or translation to their mother tongues. Another issue mentioned in the study was students’ difficulty to connect to the internet properly or use the necessary equipment, but the worse consequence of that was just a delay at the beginning of the lesson. The last problem spotted was that learners “did not show the qualities or characteristics typically found in a language learner”, as some of them had never learned another language before or felt uncomfortable when asked to interact with other students (p. 139) On account of the latter, we can find the reason behind the lack of the typical behavior if we take into consideration the definition of the word “refugees” itself; “people who have fled war, violence, conflict or persecution and have crossed an international border to find safety in another country” (UNHCR, 2020c). Interviewing refugees living in European host countries, revealed that, for the majority of them, learning -digitally or not- comes after more important things, such as settling in the new place and solving their status problems (Colucci et al.,2017). - Alfavita. (2020b, November 17). Shetika me deytero lockdown kleisimo ton sholeion kai tin ex apostaseos. https://www.alfavita.gr/ekpaideysi/337749_shetika-me-deytero-lockdown-kleisimo-ton-sholeion-kai-tin-ex-apostaseos?fbclid=IwAR0SJh89ETQJfnwpy4IsiKqQm8F5ZZ1svD8im1RdoWTCO0ouK - Anastasiadis, P. (2020). School Distance Education: Pedagogical and Social dimension. In the Proceedings of the Conference: “Distance Education and School Reality”, April 2020. https://pekesexae2020.pdekritis.gr/anastasiadis/ - Colucci, E., Smidt, H., Devaux, A., Vrasidas, C., Safarjalani, M., & Castaño Muñoz, J. (2017). Free Digital Learning Opportunities for Migrants and Refugees. An Analysis of Current Initiatives and Recommendations for their Further Use. European Union. - Corradi, L. (2019). Language for resilience: remote teaching of Spanish for refugees in Argentina. In G. Stanley (Eds.), Innovations in education: Remote teaching (pp. 138-141). British Council. - Crul, M., Lelie, F., Biner, O., Bunar, N., Keskiner, E., Kokkali, I., Schneider, J., & Shuayb, M. (2019). How the Different Policies and School Systems Affect the Inclusion of Syrian Refugee Children in Sweden, Germany, Greece, Lebanon and Turkey, Comparative Migration Studies, 10(7). https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40878-018-0110-6 - Digital Educational Platform e-me, (2020), https://auth.e-me.edu.gr/ - Endale, T., Jean, N., & Birman, D. (2020). COVID-19 and refugee and immigrant youth: A community-based mental health perspective. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 12(S1), 225-227. - Ephimerida tis Kiverniseos tis Ellinikis Dimokratias (2020b). Tefkhos B’ 5043/14.11.2020. National Printing House of Greece. - Jalbout, M. (2020). Finding solutions to Greece’s refugee education crisis. Their world. https://reliefweb.int/report/greece/finding-solutions-greece-s-refugee-education-crisis - Kallin, J. (2020, September 30). COVID-19 school closures amplify challenges for refugee youth. Parenting for a Digital Future. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/parenting4digitalfuture/2020/09/30/refugee-youth-during-covid/ - KATHIMERINI (2020, November 14). Klínoun apó ti Deftéra óla ta skholía éos 30 Noemvríou. https://www.kathimerini.gr/society/561157999/live-kleinoyn-apo-ti-deytera-ola-ta-scholeia-eos-30-noemvrioy/?fbclid=IwAR0LVxCU4HTGjPU4ga2hkJZu3a04IbwUTbTKrJUDOuYDMtH - Kollender, E., & Nimer, M. (2020). Long-Term Exclusionary Effects of Covid-19 for Refugee Children in the German and Turkish Education Systems: A Comparative Perspective. Istanbul Policy Center. https://ipc.sabanciuniv.edu/en/search-content?type=Publication&id=bdb9353c-7c8e-4991-88d3-904a722f1a04 - Nikiforos, S., Tzanavaris, S., & Kermanidis, K. L. (2020). Post-pandemic Pedagogy: Distance Education in Greece during COVID-19. Pandemic through the Eyes of the Teachers. European Journal of Engineering and Technology Research, Special Issue: CIE 2020 https://www.ejers.org/index.php/ejers/article/view/2305 - Papadimitriou, S. (2020). The contribution of Educational Television to Distance School Education. In the Proceedings of the Conference: “Distance Education and School Reality”, April 2020. - Skoumpopoulou S. (2021). Refugee and Migrant Education in Greece during the Pandemic of Covid-19: Educators’ Challenges, Policies and Experiences. Postgraduate Dissertation, School of Humanities, Hellenic Open University - Tzifopoulos, M. (2020). In the shadow of Coronavirus. Distance education and digital literacy skills in Greece. International Journal of Social Science and Technology, 5(2). 1-14 https://pekesexae2020.pdekritis.gr/papadimitriou/ - Unesco Report, Global education monitoring report, 2020: Inclusion and education: all means all, https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000373718?fbclid=IwAR2L8j0jjrRBoLGFDf65VEjdGnt_nTMtHOT1yb-ZFco_Z57Iobr8HO5-WXI - United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). (2020a). Mediterranean situation Greece. https://data2.unhcr.org/en/situations/mediterranean/location/5179 - United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). (2020b). Coronavirus a dire threat to refugee education – half of the world’s refugee children out of school. https://www.unhcr.org/news/press/2020/9/5f4cc3064/unhcr-report-coronavirus-direthreat-refugee-education-half-worlds-refugee.html - United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). (2020c). What is a refugee? https://www.unhcr.org/what-is-a-refugee.html

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Symbionts modify interactions between insects and natural enemies in the field. ABSTRACT: Eukaryotes commonly host communities of heritable symbiotic bacteria, many of which are not essential for their hosts' survival and reproduction. There is laboratory evidence that these facultative symbionts can provide useful adaptations, such as increased resistance to natural enemies. However, we do not know how symbionts affect host fitness when the latter are subject to attack by a natural suite of parasites and pathogens. Here, we test whether two protective symbionts, Regiella insecticola and Hamiltonella defensa, increase the fitness of their host, the pea aphid (Acyrthosiphon pisum), under natural conditions. We placed experimental populations of two pea aphid lines, each with and without symbionts, in five wet meadow sites to expose them to a natural assembly of enemy species. The aphids were then retrieved and mortality from parasitoids, fungal pathogens and other causes assessed. We found that both Regiella and Hamiltonella reduce the proportion of aphids killed by the specific natural enemies against which they have been shown to protect in laboratory and cage experiments. However, this advantage was nullified (Hamiltonella) or reversed (Regiella) by an increase in mortality from other natural enemies and by the cost of carrying the symbiont. Symbionts therefore affect community structure by altering the relative success of different natural enemies. Our results show that protective symbionts are not necessarily advantageous to their hosts, and may even behave more like parasites than mutualists. Nevertheless, bacterial symbionts may play an important role in determining food web structure and dynamics. Project description:Animal-associated microbes are highly variable, contributing to a diverse set of symbiont-mediated phenotypes. Given that host and symbiont genotypes, and their interactions, can impact symbiont-based phenotypes across environments, there is potential for extensive variation in fitness outcomes. Pea aphids, Acyrthosiphon pisum, host a diverse assemblage of heritable facultative symbionts (HFS) with characterized roles in host defense. Protective phenotypes have been largely studied as single infections, but pea aphids often carry multiple HFS species, and particular combinations may be enriched or depleted compared to expectations based on chance. Here, we examined the consequences of single infection versus coinfection with two common HFS exhibiting variable enrichment, the antiparasitoid Hamiltonella defensa and the antipathogen Regiella insecticola, across three host genotypes and environments. As expected, single infections with either H. defensa or R. insecticola raised defenses against their respective targets. Single infections with protective H. defensa lowered aphid fitness in the absence of enemy challenge, while R. insecticola was comparatively benign. However, as a coinfection, R. insecticola ameliorated H. defensa infection costs. Coinfected aphids continued to receive antiparasitoid protection from H. defensa, but protection was weakened by R. insecticola in two clones. Notably, H. defensa eliminated survival benefits conferred after pathogen exposure by coinfecting R. insecticola Since pathogen sporulation was suppressed by R. insecticola in coinfected aphids, the poor performance likely stemmed from H. defensa-imposed costs rather than weakened defenses. Our results reveal a complex set of coinfection outcomes which may partially explain natural infection patterns and suggest that symbiont-based phenotypes may not be easily predicted based solely on infection status.IMPORTANCE The hyperdiverse arthropods often harbor maternally transmitted bacteria that protect against natural enemies. In many species, low-diversity communities of heritable symbionts are common, providing opportunities for cooperation and conflict among symbionts, which can impact the defensive services rendered. Using the pea aphid, a model for defensive symbiosis, we show that coinfections with two common defensive symbionts, the antipathogen Regiella and the antiparasite Hamiltonella, produce outcomes that are highly variable compared to single infections, which consistently protect against designated enemies. Compared to single infections, coinfections often reduced defensive services during enemy challenge yet improved aphid fitness in the absence of enemies. Thus, infection with multiple symbionts does not necessarily create generalist aphids with "Swiss army knife" defenses against numerous enemies. Instead, particular combinations of symbionts may be favored for a variety of reasons, including their abilities to lessen the costs of other defensive symbionts when enemies are not present. Project description:Heritable symbionts have been found to mediate interactions between host species and their natural enemies in a variety of organisms. Aphids, their facultative symbionts, and their potential fitness effects have been particularly well-studied. For example, the aphid facultative symbiont Regiella can protect its host from infection from a fungal pathogen, and aphids with Hamiltonella are less likely to be parasitized by parasitic wasps. Recent work has also found there to be negative fitness effects for the larvae of two species of aphidophagous lady beetles that consumed aphids with facultative symbionts. In both species, larvae that consumed aphids with secondary symbionts were significantly less likely to survive to adulthood. In this study we tested whether adult Harmonia axyridis and Hippodamia convergens lady beetles avoided aphids with symbionts in a series of choice experiments. Adults of both lady beetle species were as likely to choose aphids with symbionts as those without, despite the potential negative fitness effects associated with consuming aphids with facultative symbionts. This may suggest that under natural conditions aphid secondary symbionts are not a significant source of selection for predatory lady beetles. Project description:BACKGROUND:Many animals exhibit variation in resistance to specific natural enemies. Such variation may be encoded in their genomes or derived from infection with protective symbionts. The pea aphid, Acyrthosiphon pisum, for example, exhibits tremendous variation in susceptibility to a common natural enemy, the parasitic wasp Aphidius ervi. Pea aphids are often infected with the heritable bacterial symbiont, Hamiltonella defensa, which confers partial to complete resistance against this parasitoid depending on bacterial strain and associated bacteriophages. That previous studies found that pea aphids without H. defensa (or other symbionts) were generally susceptible to parasitism, together with observations of a limited encapsulation response, suggested that pea aphids largely rely on infection with H. defensa for protection against parasitoids. However, the limited number of uninfected clones previously examined, and our recent report of two symbiont-free resistant clones, led us to explicitly examine aphid-encoded variability in resistance to parasitoids. RESULTS:After rigorous screening for known and unknown symbionts, and microsatellite genotyping to confirm clonal identity, we conducted parasitism assays using fifteen clonal pea aphid lines. We recovered significant variability in aphid-encoded resistance, with variation levels comparable to that contributed by H. defensa. Because resistance can be costly, we also measured aphid longevity and cumulative fecundity of the most and least resistant aphid lines under permissive conditions, but found no trade-offs between higher resistance and these fitness parameters. CONCLUSIONS:These results indicate that pea aphid resistance to A. ervi is more complex than previously appreciated, and that aphids employ multiple tactics to aid in their defense. While we did not detect a tradeoff, these may become apparent under stressful conditions or when resistant and susceptible aphids are in direct competition. Understanding sources and amounts of variation in resistance to natural enemies is necessary to understand the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of antagonistic interactions, such as the potential for coevolution, but also for the successful management of pest populations through biological control. Project description:A gammaproteobacterial facultative symbiont of the genus Rickettsiella was recently identified in the pea aphid, Acyrthosiphon pisum. Infection with this symbiont altered the color of the aphid body from red to green, potentially affecting the host's ecological characteristics, such as attractiveness to different natural enemies. In European populations of A. pisum, the majority of Rickettsiella-infected aphids also harbor another facultative symbiont, of the genus Hamiltonella. We investigated this Rickettsiella symbiont for its interactions with the coinfecting Hamiltonella symbiont, its phenotypic effects on A. pisum with and without Hamiltonella coinfection, and its infection prevalence in A. pisum populations. Histological analyses revealed that coinfecting Rickettsiella and Hamiltonella exhibited overlapping localizations in secondary bacteriocytes, sheath cells, and hemolymph, while Rickettsiella-specific localization was found in oenocytes. Rickettsiella infections consistently altered hosts' body color from red to green, where the greenish hue was affected by both host and symbiont genotypes. Rickettsiella-Hamiltonella coinfections also changed red aphids to green; this greenish hue tended to be enhanced by Hamiltonella coinfection. With different host genotypes, Rickettsiella infection exhibited either weakly beneficial or nearly neutral effects on host fitness, whereas Hamiltonella infection and Rickettsiella-Hamiltonella coinfection had negative effects. Despite considerable frequencies of Rickettsiella infection in European and North American A. pisum populations, no Rickettsiella infection was detected among 1,093 insects collected from 14 sites in Japan. On the basis of these results, we discuss possible mechanisms for the interaction of Rickettsiella with other facultative symbionts, their effects on their hosts' phenotypes, and their persistence in natural host populations. We propose the designation "Candidatus Rickettsiella viridis" for the symbiont. Project description:Aphids maintain mutualistic symbioses involving consortia of coinherited organisms. All possess a primary endosymbiont, Buchnera, which compensates for dietary deficiencies; many also contain secondary symbionts, such as Hamiltonella defensa, which confers defense against natural enemies. Genome sequences of uncultivable secondary symbionts have been refractory to analysis due to the difficulties of isolating adequate DNA samples. By amplifying DNA from hemolymph of infected pea aphids, we obtained a set of genomic sequences of H. defensa and an associated bacteriophage. H. defensa harbors two type III secretion systems, related to those that mediate host cell entry by enteric pathogens. The phage, called APSE-2, is a close relative of the previously sequenced APSE-1 but contains intact homologs of the gene encoding cytolethal distending toxin (cdtB), which interrupts the eukaryotic cell cycle and which is known from a variety of mammalian pathogens. The cdtB homolog is highly expressed, and its genomic position corresponds to that of a homolog of stx (encoding Shiga-toxin) within APSE-1. APSE-2 genomes were consistently abundant in infected pea aphids, and related phages were found in all tested isolates of H. defensa, from numerous insect species. Based on their ubiquity and abundance, these phages appear to be an obligate component of the H. defensa life cycle. We propose that, in these mutualistic symbionts, phage-borne toxin genes provide defense to the aphid host and are a basis for the observed protection against eukaryotic parasites. Project description:The evolution of herbivore-host plant specialization requires low levels of gene flow between populations on alternate plant species. Accordingly, selection for host plant specialization is most effective when genotypes have minimal exposure to, and few mating opportunities with individuals from, alternate habitats. Maternally transmitted bacterial symbionts are common in insect herbivores and can influence host fecundity under a variety of conditions. Symbiont-mediated effects on host life-history strategies, however, are largely unknown. Here, we show that the facultative bacterial symbiont Candidatus Regiella insecticola strikingly alters both dispersal and mating in the pea aphid, Acyrthosiphon pisum. Pea aphids containing Regiella produced only half the number of winged offspring in response to crowding and, for two out of three aphid lineages, altered the timing of sexual reproduction in response to conditions mimicking seasonal changes, than did aphids lacking Regiella. These symbiont-associated changes in dispersal and mating are likely to have played a key role in the initiation of genetic differentiation and in the evolution of pea aphid-host plant specialization. As symbionts are widespread in insects, symbiont-induced life history changes may have promoted specialization, and potentially speciation, in many organisms. Project description:Insects use endogenous mechanisms and infection with protective symbionts to thwart attacks from natural enemies. Defenses that target specific enemies, however, potentially mediate competition between rivals and thereby impact community composition. Following its introduction to North America to control pea aphids (Acyrthosiphon pisum), the parasitoid Aphidius ervi competitively displaced other parasitoids, except for the native Praon pequodorum. The pea aphid exhibits tremendous clonal variation in resistance to A. ervi, primarily through infection with the heritable bacterial symbiont Hamiltonella defensa, although some symbiont-free aphid genotypes encode endogenous resistance. Interestingly, H. defensa strains and aphid genotypes that protect against A. ervi, provide no protection against the closely related, P. pequodorum. Given the specificity of aphid defenses, we hypothesized that aphid resistance traits may contribute to the continued persistence of P. pequodorum. We conducted multiparasitism assays to determine whether aphid resistance traits mediate internal competition between these two solitary parasitoid species, but found this was not the case; P. pequodorum was the successful internal competitor across lines varying in susceptibility to A. ervi. Next, to determine whether resistance traits influence competitive interactions resulting in the stable persistence of P. pequodorum, we established replicated cages varying in the proportion of resistant aphids and recorded successful parasitism for each wasp species over time. As expected, A. ervi outcompeted P. pequodorum in cages containing only susceptible aphids. However, P. pequodorum not only persisted, but was the superior competitor in populations containing any proportion (20-100%) of resistant aphids (20-100%). Smaller scale, better replicated competition cage studies corroborated this finding, and no-competition and behavioral assays provide insight into the processes mediating competition. Genetic variation, including that acquired via infection with protective symbionts, may provide a supply of hosts susceptible only to particular enemies, mediating competition with effects on community richness and stability. Project description:Heritable symbionts are common in terrestrial arthropods and often provide beneficial services to hosts. Unlike obligate, nutritional symbionts that largely persist under strict host control within specialized host cells, heritable facultative symbionts exhibit large variation in within-host lifestyles and services rendered with many retaining the capacity to transition among roles. One enigmatic symbiont, Candidatus Fukatsuia symbiotica, frequently infects aphids with reported roles ranging from pathogen, defensive symbiont, mutualism exploiter, and nutritional co-obligate symbiont. Here, we used an in vitro culture-assisted protocol to sequence the genome of a facultative strain of Fukatsuia from pea aphids (Acyrthosiphon pisum). Phylogenetic and genomic comparisons indicate that Fukatsuia is an aerobic heterotroph, which together with Regiella insecticola and Hamiltonella defensa form a clade of heritable facultative symbionts within the Yersiniaceae (Enterobacteriales). These three heritable facultative symbionts largely share overlapping inventories of genes associated with housekeeping functions, metabolism, and nutrient acquisition, while varying in complements of mobile DNA. One unusual feature of Fukatsuia is its strong tendency to occur as a coinfection with H. defensa. However, the overall similarity of gene inventories among aphid heritable facultative symbionts suggests that metabolic complementarity is not the basis for coinfection, unless playing out on a H. defensa strain-specific basis. We also compared the pea aphid Fukatsuia with a strain from the aphid Cinara confinis (Lachninae) where it is reported to have transitioned to co-obligate status to support decaying Buchnera function. Overall, the two genomes are very similar with no clear genomic signatures consistent with such a transition, which suggests co-obligate status in C. confinis was a recent event. Project description:Insects and other animals commonly form symbioses with heritable bacteria, which can exert large influences on host biology and ecology. The pea aphid, Acyrthosiphon pisum, is a model for studying effects of infection with heritable facultative symbionts (HFS), and each of its seven common HFS species has been reported to provide resistance to biotic or abiotic stresses. However, one common HFS, called X-type, rarely occurs as a single infection in field populations and instead typically superinfects individual aphids with Hamiltonella defensa, another HFS that protects aphids against attack by parasitic wasps. Using experimental aphid lines comprised of all possible infection combinations in a uniform aphid genotype, we investigated whether the most common strain of X-type provides any of the established benefits associated with aphid HFS as a single infection or superinfection with H. defensa We found that X-type does not confer protection to any tested threats, including parasitoid wasps, fungal pathogens, or thermal stress. Instead, component fitness assays identified large costs associated with X-type infection, costs which were ameliorated in superinfected aphids. Together these findings suggest that X-type exploits the aphid/H. defensa mutualism and is maintained primarily as a superinfection by "hitchhiking" via the mutualistic benefits provided by another HFS. Exploitative symbionts potentially restrict the functions and distributions of mutualistic symbioses with effects that extend to other community members.IMPORTANCE Maternally transmitted bacterial symbionts are widespread and can have major impacts on the biology of arthropods, including insects of medical and agricultural importance. Given that host fitness and symbiont fitness are tightly linked, inherited symbionts can spread within host populations by providing beneficial services. Many insects, however, are frequently infected with multiple heritable symbiont species, providing potential alternative routes of symbiont maintenance. Here we show that a common pea aphid symbiont called X-type likely employs an exploitative strategy of hitchhiking off the benefits of a protective symbiont, Hamiltonella Infection with X-type provides none of the benefits conferred by other aphid symbionts and instead results in large fitness costs, costs lessened by superinfection with Hamiltonella These findings are corroborated by natural infections in field populations, where X-type is mostly found superinfecting aphids with Hamiltonella Exploitative symbionts may be common in hosts with communities of heritable symbionts and serve to hasten the breakdown of mutualisms. Project description:Legumes can meet their nitrogen requirements through root nodule symbiosis, which could also trigger plant systemic resistance against pests. The pea aphid Acyrthosiphon pisum, a legume pest, can harbour different facultative symbionts (FS) influencing various traits of their hosts. It is therefore worth determining if and how the symbionts of the plant and the aphid modulate their interaction. We used different pea aphid lines without FS or with a single one (Hamiltonella defensa, Regiella insecticola, Serratia symbiotica) to infest Medicago truncatula plants inoculated with Sinorhizobium meliloti (symbiotic nitrogen fixation, SNF) or supplemented with nitrate (non-inoculated, NI). The growth of SNF and NI plants was reduced by aphid infestation, while aphid weight (but not survival) was lowered on SNF compared to NI plants. Aphids strongly affected the plant nitrogen fixation depending on their symbiotic status, suggesting indirect relationships between aphid- and plant-associated microbes. Finally, all aphid lines triggered expression of Pathogenesis-Related Protein 1 (PR1) and Proteinase Inhibitor (PI), respective markers for salicylic and jasmonic pathways, in SNF plants, compared to only PR1 in NI plants. We demonstrate that the plant symbiotic status influences plant-aphid interactions while that of the aphid can modulate the amplitude of the plant's defence response.

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en

In this section, we briefly describe different criteria used to measure and define SMEs. Also, we review the status of debt and equity markets and consequences for small firms. Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises: Their Contribution to the Economy Numerous studies have explored alternative criteria for firm size. The term ‘small and medium-sized enterprise’ used here has no agreed-upon international definition. Thus, the definition of an SME varies across diverse countries and sectors. To be sure, SMEs can be defined in terms of sales volume, number of employees, or level of investment. Moreover, many countries use different criteria to measure firm size. For example, in Brazil, various organizations, such as the Institute for the Support of Micro and Small Firms (SEBRAE), have adopted criteria for firm size based on the number of employees in the firm. In contrast, both the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES) and Brazilian policymakers use sales volume as their criterion. Brazil defines SMEs using three broad categories: micro-proprietorships, micro-enterprises and small enterprises. Micro proprietorships are defined as companies with gross revenues not exceeding BRL81,000. In contrast, micro enterprises have gross revenues not exceeding BRL360,000, while small enterprises have revenues not exceeding BRL4,800,000. The majority of SMEs shown in Table 1 are micro and small enterprises.Footnote 20 These data are consistent with earlier studies that show the presence of a large number of micro-enterprises and small firms in developing economies. Figure 1 shows the share of the sectors with the largest share of SMEs. In terms of the three categories of SMEs, they are likely to play different roles in the economy due to the access of information and other resources. The figure shows the majority of SMEs are involved in commerce, industry, food and lodging, services and construction. Another factor likely to influence the growth of SMEs concerns the effect of burdens created by bureaucracy and administrative procedures. In Brazil, this concern initially led 11.5 million companies to adopt the special tax regime for micro and small businesses provided under Complementary Law No. 123/06 (‘Simples Nacional’ program).Footnote 21 For the period 2007–2011, the effects of the tax burden reduction resulted in a payroll increase of 25% and a 21.5% increase in jobs for firms participating in the Simples Nacional program (with a R $2.4 M threshold).Footnote 22 This highlights the fact that such simplification strategies are particularly important for the growth of SMEs operating in developing counties with high tax compliance costs. Note that the recent introduction of a new law, MP/881/2019, in April 2019 is another attempt by policymakers to reduce the costs for new and small firms to start a company and to make it easier to obtain the necessary permits. Our discussion so far has focused on the perceived factors impacting the growth of SMEs.Footnote 23 So the main concern is not to simply reduce the regulatory burden, but to effectively address the institutional impediments to the creation and growth of innovative SMEs. Prior studies report that SMEs with a broad diversity of strategies face obstacles to innovation. Where these obstacles are likely to play an important role, a set of broad-based reforms and methods may curtail the learning and innovation obstacles in order to achieve growth of SMEs in high priority areas, such as knowledge-intensive industries.Footnote 24 Furthermore, it has been argued that a relationship exists between the age and the type of companies that get involved in innovation. In Brazil, between 2011 and 2015, approximately 4.55 million companies with at least ten employees were approximately 11 years old. An analysis of the relative size of companies highlights the fact that smaller companies are less likely to survive, particularly in the Brazilian market. Indeed, out of all the companies existing at the beginning of 2011, 67.1% of firms with ten or more employees were still active at the end of 2015, compared with 57.8% of firms having between one and nine employees and 31.8% of firms with zero employees. That said, the evidence presented in this paper shows that there is a clear relation between the number of employees/size of the company and longevity. In short, the Brazilian experience suggests that smaller companies have a lower probability of survival than larger ones. Figure 2 also displays that there has been a downward trend in the survival rate of firms, with fewer than 37.8% still in existence at the end of 2015. One may expect that successful SMEs have the ability to produce innovative products and services.Footnote 25 Indeed, a key challenge for governments is to promote policies associated with the development of inputs needed to produce innovations and exploit long-term outputs. An important consequence of SMEs’ innovative role is public policy support for programs linked to the development of skills and innovative activity. This type of policy focus to increase the role of SMEs in relation to innovation is seen as crucial in many developing economies, such as Brazil’s. Yet broad-based government policies to enhance the growth and development of innovative SMEs may involve considerable risk. First, there are different types of entrepreneurial SMEs that require a tailored mix of non-financial and financial policies to shape the outcome and behavior of these firms.Footnote 26 Second, there is a question that pertains to the ability of policymakers to identify high growth SMEs ex ante.Footnote 27 To get a better sense of innovative SMEs in Brazil, Fig. 3 shows that of the firms with at least ten employees, approximately 36% were involved in some level of innovative activity (either their processes or their products) between 2012 and 2014. These data confirm earlier studies that the SME performance in terms of innovations significantly lags behind other countries.Footnote 28 But, as noted above, it is expected that the recent easing of licensing and other regulatory requirements may also help encourage innovative activities by SMEs. In order to determine the financing options for SMEs, in the next section, we will examine alternative sources of debt and equity available in Brazil. Debt and Equity Markets in Brazil Bank loans and lines of credit remain the main sources of external financing for SMEs. The bank-lending channel was weakened during the financial crisis, as evidenced by banks’ reduced lending capacity and the increase in interest rates on new loans. The higher sensitivity to external shocks led to changes in the supply of short- and long-term financing to SME borrowers. Data from the Central Bank of Brazil show that, as of February 2016, more than 173 financial institutions were approved to conduct bank-clearing operations in the country (see Fig. 4). There are also striking differences across regions in terms of total banking-sector assets. Notably, most financial institutions are headquartered in the State of São Paulo, the richest of the Brazilian federation. This number includes foreign banks doing business in Brazil, as well as state-owned or state-controlled banks. This number is not large by any standard, mainly when considering that Brazil has the 9th largest economy and 6th largest population in the world. Yet the financial system in Brazil cannot be considered small and is mostly bank-oriented.Footnote 29 In fact, many parts of the country are largely without adequate bank-branch coverage. Significantly, even in the most populated areas, approximately only half of the potential market is actually serviced by banks.Footnote 30 Figure 5 shows that most banks are located in the SoutheasternFootnote 31 and SouthernFootnote 32 states. Moreover, more than half of the Brazilian states have no banks headquartered in their jurisdiction, suggesting a greater overall need for banks. With a population of approximately 206 million people distributed across 5570 municipalities,Footnote 33 Brazil still has relatively few bank branches. Moreover, their distribution varies significantly across states, and the great majority of branches are located in the states of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro (see Fig. 6). Although there are 26 states and a Federal District in Brazil, 16 have fewer than 500 bank branches. Starting from a very low base, the population would seem to be seriously underbanked if no alternatives were available. However, a different approach, based on Brazilian regulation, has attempted to address this problem by allowing banks to create banking service stations. As a result, there are now 10,645 banking service stations in Brazil, most of which are in São Paulo (3124). As the case of banks, it is worth noting that, as Fig. 7 shows, there are fewer than 500 banking service stations in the other states. As banking service stations are limited and under-resourced, ‘bank correspondents’ may often provide an alternative.Footnote 34 While bank correspondents are not financial institutions, they can enter into a contractual relationship with a full-fledged bank to offer a wider range of financial products and services. On the supply side, the mere existence of bank correspondents is not equivalent to a larger number of banks or more credit being available. To be sure, there is a definite potential to expand the number of bank correspondents, as evidenced by increased numbers until 2013 (reaching a total of 375,315), but then a sharp drop reduced the number in February 2016 (see Fig. 8). In recent years, there has been growing concern that the Brazilian banking market is extremely concentrated.Footnote 35 We see that, as of December 2016, the four largest banks—Banco do Brasil, Itaú, Caixa Econômica Federal and BradescoFootnote 36—together, held 72.70% of all banking assets, 78.48% of all deposits and 78.99% of all credit transactions in Brazil, compared with 52.58%, 59.32%, and 54.67%, respectively, in December 2007. On the whole, this represents a steep and important increase in bank concentration and is likely to have a strong influence on interest rates across the market (see Fig. 9). In particular, the concentration in the Brazilian banking system plays an important role in the SME financing gap. In practice, smaller (local) banks with low-scale operations tend to develop long-term relationships with borrowers, which may facilitate greater availability of loans.Footnote 37 As noted above, evidence suggests that closer relationships with creditors is an important mechanism to reduce information asymmetries. Consequently, the information gained may lead banks to offer lower rates.Footnote 38 However, larger banks have a more difficult time developing long-lasting relationships with SMEs, as loan officers constantly rotate, and merged banks (which makes them grow bigger) may shut down offices and transfer employees from the location where the firm typically obtains its bank financing.Footnote 39 Also, larger banks tend to be more focused on transactions than on long-term relationships, preferring a smaller number of larger deals to a large number of loans. We note that banks undergoing growth tend to devote a smaller percentage of their portfolios to small firms, which suggests that the greater the consolidation, the lower the percentage of credit that will be available to SMEs.Footnote 40 In addition, we can observe a similar influence on financial institutions that have SMEs as borrowers. Perhaps the most prominent feature of the banking sector is the high levels of banking spreads and interest rates charged by financial institutions. In terms of the business environment, high spreads have negatively impacted the expansion of credit and economic growth.Footnote 41 Specifically, the average annual bank interest rate was 23.7% for all types of transactions available in the Brazilian credit markets in 2014. In terms of market segmentation, the Central Bank of Brazil divides the credit markets into (i) directedFootnote 42 and (ii) non-directedFootnote 43 transactions. For directed credit transactions, which include government and other subsidized lending, the average interest rate was 7.8%, whereas the non-directed average rate was 37.3%.Footnote 44 Brazilian companies face significantly higher interest rates than their counterparts around the world.Footnote 45 Figure 10 shows the range of interest rates in Brazil from 17 to 23 August 2017. For example, the rates charged by banks for certain types of business lending, such as short-term working capital financing, were extremely high, with a fixed interest rate between 10.8 and 83.7%. Table 2 show the differences in the average annual interest rates on a variety of loans by the four largest Brazilian banks: Banco do Brasil, Itaú, Caixa Econômica Federal and Bradesco. In this context, a number of scholars have challenged the existence of a competitive market. For example, some critics argue that the Brazilian banking market operates as an oligopoly, and banks have few incentives to improve market efficiency.Footnote 46 Others claimed that the Bertrand oligopoly model closely resembles the banking market in Brazil. On the other hand, Fiche raises similar concerns that spreads in Brazil are higher than in other countries.Footnote 47 However, he finds no support for the view that higher concentrations in the banking systems directly affect the rates offered to firms seeking financing. In sum, Fiche’s study is consistent with studies that have suggested bank system concentration does not explain market power.Footnote 48 Another dimension of bank market power has to do with borrower discouragement.Footnote 49 A large empirical literature on the relation between bank concentration and borrower discouragement has emerged in recent years. For example, small firms in developed economies, like the US and Europe, are less likely to be discouraged as bank market power increases.Footnote 50 Examining banking relationships, Han et al. find evidence that relationships provide banks with better performance on borrower screening, which in turn reduces screening errors and discouraged borrowers. In contrast, other studies focus on the concern that borrowers might suffer hold up problems in a relationship with their bank and reduce the demand for relationship lending as bank market power increases.Footnote 51 Also, prior literature considering the impact of bank concentration in developing economies find that bank concentration limits SMEs’ access to external finance.Footnote 52 Figure 11 below provides a summary of survey questions describing the response to SMEs applying for a bank loan between 2015 and 2017. As such, we would expect that the risk of discouragement would be high for SMEs seeking short term external financing. Figure 11 presents the responses of SMEs who were asked about whether in the past 6 months they attempted to obtain a loan from a bank. In Brazil, 24% of the companies did manage to apply for a loan in 2015. It means that 76% of the SMEs did not manage to apply for a loan, which is consistent with prior empirical research on some countries in the European Union.Footnote 53 The figure shows that the firms that actually applied for a loan has been declining since 2015. Moreover, the loan applicants surveyed in the SEBRAE study indicated that a number of factors influenced whether or not to apply for a loan. First, 51% of firms responded that they were no longer attracted to taking out a loan. Second, a significant number of firms (39%) cited that they do not need a loan. Third, a smaller number of firms reported that they did not like loans or paying high interest rates. Consistent with our expectations, we find, between 2015 and 2017, a significant number of SMEs did not apply for a loan because of possible rejection. In summary, these results confirm previous studies on borrower discouragement in developing economies, such as Brazil.Footnote 54 Support for Loan Granting and Guarantee Programs Before we address alternative forms of financing for SMEs, we pose the more fundamental question about the growing concern that SMEs need guarantees to access credit. With stringent collateral and guarantee requirements, SMEs are likely to have few external funding options through traditional banking channels. In general, credit guarantee schemes are used to provide credit support in lieu of collateral granted by the SME and may be effective in reducing the risk premium charged and help them qualify for a loan under the bank’s loan policy.Footnote 55 In Brazil, two important guarantee programs provide support to SMEs. The main funds are: (i) SEBRAE’sFootnote 56 ‘FAMPE’ (Fundo de Aval às Micro e Pequenas Empresas, or Micro and Small Enterprise Co-Signer Fund); and (ii) BNDES’Footnote 57 ‘FGI’ (Fundo Garantidor para Investimentos or Co-Signer Fund for Investments). SEBRAE’s FAMPE can serve as a co-signer for eligible borrowers. Active since 1995, it has co-signed with more than 260,000 SMEs and raised approximately BRL 11 billion (of which BRL 7.81 billion became the liability of the FAMPE). The fund participates in a variety of transactions, including fixed capital, working capital, pre-export production and commerce and technological investments and innovation. Note that FAMPE will co-sign for up to 80% of the amount of the total credit granted to SMEs, according to the limits noted in Table 3.Footnote 58 In order to gauge the importance of support between 2015 and 2017, a total of 39,700 guarantees were granted by FAMPE. Table 4 shows that the vast majority of those guarantees went to small enterprises, while a very small percentage (about 5%) was granted to micro proprietorships and micro enterprises. In practice, the number of guarantees granted by FAMPE is not excessive relative to the total number of SMEs in Brazil. This also suggests that the smallest companies are more likely to be denied guarantees and have limited access to bank credit. However, the data show that the number of guarantees granted to firms in the commercial sector is more than double the number seen in the manufacturing industry. Turning to BNDES’ FGI, this fund also serves as a co-signer for eligible borrowers for bank credit. Tables 5 and 6 show FGI’s total amount and total percentage guaranteed, respectively, from 2014 to 2016. Interestingly, FGI has been active since 2010 and has provided support to more than 24,100 beneficiaries in 31,200 credit transactions totaling approximately BRL 5.8 billion (of which BRL 7.81 billion became the liability of the FGI). In summary, despite the importance of guarantees to a small segment of SMEs, denials made to borrowers across Brazil are likely to increase as the banking system becomes less competitive, and fewer firms have access to credit. Private Equity and Venture Capital Recent studies have suggested that alternative sources of financing may provide credit access to support economic development. For example, many private equity and venture backed companies completed IPOs on Bovespa, which collectively raised US$ 2.29 billion between 2004 and 2006.Footnote 59 It is worth noting that analysis of the trends after the financial crisis shows an increased demand for financing coupled with a stagnation of stock markets and a significant drop in the supply of private equity and venture capital in Brazil. A further difficulty is that the numbers show that Brazilian private equity (PE) investment financing of SMEs is very small compared to that of similar countries. If we look at the breakdown of investment over the last decade, we can spot some notable features: a decline in the number of deals and capital raised through IPOs or follow-on offerings. However, despite the low levels, Fig. 12 illustrates that the PE and VC markets have experienced steady growth in the last few years. For example, the total amount committed by investors rose from BRL 63.5 BB in 2011 to 153.2 BB in 2015. Figure 13 also shows that, if we focus on capital distributed to investors, there is an upward trend for the period between 2011 and 2015. Similarly, only a small fraction of capital committed by venture capitalists is invested in smaller companies. Moreover, Fig. 14 shows that of the total committed by investors, only 3.5% is allocated to venture capital, while 96.5% is dedicated to private equity. Interestingly, Fig. 15 shows that a larger percentage (60.4%) of the deals involve venture capital transactions. In recent years, especially after the financial crisis in 2008, the sector turned to VC and PE for alternative channels of financing. Figure 16 shows that 63 companies received investments as private equity, with an average investment of BRL 277 MM and a median investment of BRL 35 MM. As far as venture capital is concerned, 96 firms received investments of BRL 12 MM, on average, with the median investment being BRL 4 MM (Fig. 17). When considering both private equity and venture capital deals together, 159 companies received investments, with an average investment of BRL 177 MM and a median investment of BRL 5 MM (Fig. 18). Note that between 2013 and 2015, the number of deals (private equity and venture capital together) went from 186 in 2013, down to 101 in 2014, and back up to 159 in 2015, while the average investment was BRL 95 MM in 2013, BRL 132 in 2014, and BRL 177 in 2015, as demonstrated in Fig. 19. Regarding the origin of committed capital, while the percentage of foreign capital decreased from 2011 to 2012 (from 54 to 49%), there was a steady increase in the years of 2013 (55%), 2014 (56%), and 2015 (57%). The percentages of domestic capital, on the other hand, went from 46% in 2011 to 49% in 2012 and experienced a decline in the years of 2013 (45%), 2014 (44%), and 2015 (43%), as illustrated in Fig. 20. In this section, we lay out the importance of SMEs in the economy and map out the potential sources of capital market financing in Brazil. The data suggest that banks’ lending capacity shrank after the financial crisis, possibly due to higher risk aversion at a time when economic growth had slowed. In addition, equity financing, especially for the SME sector, declined in this period. In light of these findings, the SME sector faces increasingly limited access to financing, as it competes with larger firms for a shrinking pool of resources. In the next section, we seek to provide an estimate of the size of the financing gap for SMEs in Brazil.

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|home Java Script MS Access Perl HTML Delphi C ++ Visual Basic Java CGIPerl MS Excel Front Page 98 Windows 98 Ms Word Builder PHP Assembler Link to us Links| Congratulations. You've got HTML under your belt, and you're ready to graduate from the school of Web publishing and enter the real world of Web development. The World Wide Web of the past was simply a way to present information, and browsing wasn't too different from sitting in a lecture hall, watching a blackboard, or staring at an overhead projector screen. But today's Web surfer is looking for interactive, animated sites that change with each viewer and each viewing. To achieve that level of interactivity, this chapter introduces a number of ways you can go beyond passive text and graphics into the dynamic world of modern Web site development. It would take a book many times the length of this one to teach you all the scripting and programming languages that can be used to create interactive programs for the Web. However, you can easily learn the HTML to incorporate prewritten programs into your Web pages. To Do: Reading this chapter will give you enough information to decide what types of programs or scripts might be best for your Web site. If you decide to take the leap into actually using some (or even creating your own) on your pages, you should look to the following resources: Until very recently, there were only two ways to enhance the functionality of a Web browser. You could write and place programs on the Web server computer to manipulate documents as they were sent out, or you could write and install programs on the user's computer to manipulate or display documents as they were received. You can still do both of these things, and they may still be the most powerful and flexible means of enhancing Web pages. Unfortunately, both involve a high level of expertise in traditional programming languages (such as C++) and knowledge of Internet transfer protocols and operating system architecture. If you're not fortunate enough to already be an experienced UNIX or Windows programmer, as well as something of a Net guru, you're not going to start cranking out cool Web applications tomorrow (or the next day, or the next...). On the server side, simplified scripting languages like Perl can flatten the learning curve quite a bit. Many people who don't consider themselves real programmers can hack out a Common Gateway Interface (CGI) script to process Web forms or feed animations to a Web page without too many false starts. With visual programming tools such as Visual Basic, you can learn to produce a respectable client-side helper application fairly quickly as well. But there is an easier way, and because this chapter is intended to take you on the fast track to Web development, I have to recommend that you avoid the old ways until you run into something that you just can't accomplish any other way. Before dashing into the inside lane, though, I do need to tell you about one very new way to enhance the Web that is not any easier than the old ways. It is, however, even more powerful when used well. I'm referring to Netscape Navigator plug-ins, which are custom applications designed especially to extend Netscape's capabilities. The Live3D, LiveAudio, and LiveVideo capabilities that are built in to Netscape Navigator 3.0 are actually accomplished through plug-ins, for example. You're probably familiar with some of the more popular plug-ins, such as Shockwave and Acrobat. Because these programs (which are usually written in C++) have direct access to both the client computer's operating system and Netscape's data stream, they are usually faster, more user-friendly, and more efficient than any other program you can create. They can draw directly to the Netscape window, making their output seem as though it were embedded into a Web page, or they can process invisibly in the background. All this power comes at a price, however. The user must manually download and install your plug-in, and you must write a completely separate plug-in for every operating system you want to support. And woe betide you if your plug-in is distributed with a bug in it. Because plug-ins run at the machine level, they can easily crash Netscape and/or the user's computer if they malfunction. Therefore, developing plug-ins is not for the faint of heart. Yet the lure of power has seduced many a programmer before, and if you can call yourself a "programmer" without blushing, you too may find it well worth the effort. All in all, writing and debugging a plug-in is still considerably less daunting than developing a full-blown business application. Suppose you just want your Web order form to add up totals automatically when customers check off which products they want. This is not rocket science. Implementing it shouldn't be either. You don't want to learn UNIX or C++ or the Windows 95 Applications Program-ming Interface. You don't want to compile and install half a dozen extra files on your Web server, or ask the user to download your handy-dandy calculator application. You just want to add up some numbers. Or maybe you just want to change a graphic depending on the user's preferences, or the day of the week, or whatever. Or maybe you want to tell a random joke every time somebody logs on to your home page. Until now, there really was no simple way to do these simple things. Time Saver: For maximum compatibility with older Web browsers, you can put the old comment tag <!- just after the <SCRIPT> tag, and put -> just before </SCRIPT>. This will hide the script from any browser too old to recognize the <SCRIPT> tag. Java also includes a complete graphics drawing library, security features, strong type check-ing, and other professional-level programming amenities that serious developers need. The biggest limiting factor with Java mini-applications (called applets) is that they must be small enough so that downloading them won't delay the display of a Web page by an intolerable amount. Fortunately, Java applets are extremely compact in their compiled form and are often considerably smaller than the images on a typical Web page. You'll find many ready-to-use Java applets on the Web, and Figure 20.3 shows how to include one in a Web page. The following HTML inserts a Java applet named RnbText.class (which must be placed in the same directory as the Web page) with the <APPLET> tag. This applet makes some text wiggle like a wave while rainbow colors flow through it, as shown in Figure 20.4. <APPLET CODE="RnbText.class" WIDTH=580 HEIGHT=50> <PARAM NAME="text" VALUE="H a w a ii's C o m p u t e r N e w s"> </APPLET> The WIDTH and HEIGHT attributes do just what you'd expect them to--specify the dimensions of the region on the Web page that will contain the applet's output. The <PARAM> tag is used to supply any information that the specific applet needs to do its thing. The NAME identifies what information you're supplying to the applet, and VALUE is the actual information itself. In this example, the applet is designed to display some text, so you have to tell it what text to display. Every applet will require different settings for the NAME and VALUE attributes, and most applets require more than one <PARAM> tag to set all their options. Whoever created the applet will tell you (usually in some kind of readme.txt or other documentation file) what NAME attributes you need to include, and what sort of information to put in the VALUE attributes for each NAME. Note that in Figure 20.3, the same applet is used twice on the page. This is quite efficient, because it will only need to be downloaded once, and the Web browser will then create two copies of it automatically. Figure 20.4 shows a still snapshot of the resulting animated Web page. Figure 20.3. Java applets are pre-written programs that you place on your Web page with the <APPLET> tag. Just A Minute: In the near future, the standard tag for inserting a Java applet on a Web page will change from <APPLET> to <OBJECT>. You'll read more about that change in Chapter 24, "Preparing for the Future of HTML." Figure 20.4. The <APPLET> tags in Figure 20.3 insert a pro-gram to draw wiggly, colorful animated text on the page. For quite some time, Microsoft Windows has included a feature called object linking and embedding (OLE), which allows all or part of one program to be embedded in a document that you are working on with another program. For example, you can use OLE to put a spreadsheet in a word processing document. When the Internet explosion rocked the world in the mid-90's, Microsoft adapted their OLE technology to work with HTML pages online and renamed it ActiveX. Everybody likes to invent their own jargon, so ActiveX programs are called controls rather than applets. Though ActiveX is touted as the main competitor of Java, it actually isn't a specific programming language. It's a standard for making programs written in any language conform to the same protocols, so that neither you, the Web page author, nor the people who view your pages need to be aware of what language the control was written in. It just works, whether the programmer used VisualBasic, VBScript (a simplified version of VisualBasic), C++, or even Java. It's not surprising that support for the Microsoft ActiveX protocol is built into Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0. For users of Netscape Navigator 2.0 and 3.0 to be able to see ActiveX controls, they need to download and install a plug-in from Ncompass Labs (http://www.ncompasslabs.com). Just A Minute: Version 4.0 of Netscape Navigator hasn't been released as of this date, but Netscape is promising that it will have some limited support for ActiveX built-in. Note, however, that ActiveX controls will still only work on Windows and Macintosh computers. Also, ActiveX controls must be separately compiled for each different operating system. Because ActiveX is the newest of the technologies discussed in this chapter, you must use the new <OBJECT> tag to insert it into a page. As Figure 20.5 shows, an ActiveX <OBJECT> tag looks rather bizarre. Here's the relevant HTML from that page: <OBJECT CLASSID="CLSID:812AE312-8B8E-11CF-93C8-00AA00C08FDF" ID="cntrl"> <PARAM NAME="ALXPATH" REF VALUE="cntrl.alx"> </OBJECT> The bizarre part is the CLASSID attribute, which must include a unique identifier for the specific ActiveX control you are including. If you use an automated program such as Microsoft's ActiveX Control Pad to create your ActiveX pages, it will figure out this magic number for you. Otherwise, you'll need to consult the documentation that came with the ActiveX control to find the correct CLASSID. As if the long string of gibberish in CLASSID wasn't enough, the ID attribute must include another unique identifier, but this time you get to make it up. You can use any label you want for ID, as long as you don't use the same label for another ActiveX control in the same document. (ID is used for identifying the control in any scripts you might add to the page.) Time Saver: If you are something of a whiz with Windows, you can look in the Windows class registry for the CLSID in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT. If the previous sentence makes no sense to you, you'll need to rely on the person who wrote the ActiveX control (or an automated Web page authoring tool) to tell you the correct CLASSID. The <PARAM> tags work the same with <OBJECT> as discussed earlier in this chapter with the <APPLET> tag. It provides settings and options specific to the particular ActiveX control you are placing on the Web page, with NAME identifying the type of information, and VALUE giving the information itself. In the example from Figure 20.5, the REF attribute indicates that the <PARAM> tag is specifying the location of the ActiveX control itself. No other <PARAM> parameters are needed by this particular control. Notice that nothing in the HTML itself gives any clue as to what the ActiveX control on that page actually looks like or does. Only when you view the page, as in Figure 20.6, do you see that it is a nifty little program to mix custom colors by combining red, green, and blue brightness settings. Figure 20.5. The <OBJECT> tag on this page embeds an ActiveX control. Figure 20.6. The ActiveX control on this page is a program for mixing custom colors, though you wouldn't know it by looking at the HTML in Figure 20.5. Neither Figure 20.5 nor Figure 20.6 reveal what language the person who created the ActiveX control used to write it. If you opened the cntrl.alx file itself, you'd see that Ken Cox used a version of VisualBasic specifically designed for Web page use, called VBScript. I'll spare you the rather lengthy source code listing here, but you can find this and other controls by Ken Cox at Coffee Break: This and the previous chapter have introduced a whirlwind of different options for adding cutting-edge multimedia and programming to your Web site. For an example of how to use multimedia and interactive elements with discretion (and, in some cases, "gee-whiz" abandon), meet the latest incarnation of the 24-Hour HTML Café at You may find it difficult to distinguish the custom programming from the more traditional animation and HTML tricks, which is exactly as it should be in a well-balanced, integrated site. Always try to leave your audience free to experience the content of the site, rather than trying to awe them with your high-tech prowess. (Okay, okay, so there's just a little too much high-tech prowess visible at the HTML Café. That's okay in a site that's trying to teach HTML, but try to show a little more restraint than I did, and stick to only one or two types of interactive media!) You didn't get enough technical stuff in this short chapter to write your own programs and scripts, but you did learn the basic HTML to insert prewritten ones into your Web pages. Table 20.1 summarizes the tags covered in this chapter. Table 20.1. HTML tags and attributes covered in Chapter 20. |<!-- ... -->|| |An interpreted script program.| |SRC="..."||Specifies the URL of a file that includes the script program.| |Inserts a self-running Java applet.| |CLASS="..."||The name of the applet.| |SRC="..."||The URL of the directory where the compiled applet can be found (should end in a slash / as in "http://mysite/myapplets/"). Do not include the actual applet name, which is specified with the CLASS attribute.| |ALIGN="..."||Indicates how the applet should be aligned with any text that follows it. Current values are TOP, MIDDLE, and BOTTOM.| |WIDTH="..."||The width of the applet output area in pixels.| |HEIGHT="..."||The height of the applet output area in pixels.| |Program-specific parameters. (Always occurs within <APPLET> or <OBJECT> tags.)| |NAME="..."||The type of information being given to the applet or ActiveX control.| |VALUE="..."||The actual information to be given to the applet or ActiveX control.| |Inserts images, videos, Java applets, or ActiveX OLE controls into a document (see Chapter 24).| Just a Minute: In addition to the standard <APPLET> attributes in Table 20.1, you can specify applet-specific attributes to be interpreted by the Java applet itself.

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A woman on her bed experiencing abdominal pain.Source: iStock Abdominal pain definition and facts - Abdominal (belly) pain is pain or discomfort that is felt in the part of the trunk below the ribs and above the pelvis. - It comes from organs within the abdomen or organs adjacent to the belly. - It is caused by inflammation, distention of an organ, or by loss of the blood supply to an organ. - In irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) it may be caused by contraction of the intestinal muscles or hyper-sensitivity to normal intestinal activities. - Symptoms associated with it may include: - The cause of abdominal pain is diagnosed on the basis of its characteristics, physical examination, and testing. Occasionally, surgery is necessary for diagnosis. - The medical diagnosis of the cause is challenging because the characteristics may be atypical, tests are not always abnormal, diseases causing pain may mimic each other, and the characteristics of the pain may change over time. - Medical treatment depends upon the patient’s history of the disease or other health conditions that may be the cause. Abdominal Pain Causes Abdominal pain is a common symptom, and most people have experienced some sort of abdominal pain (belly or stomach pain). Causes of more serious causes of abdominal pain include: - Bloody stools - Black tarry stools - Painful urination - Lack of urination - Abrupt cessation of bowel movements A doctor points to intestines on the anatomic model.Source: iStock What is abdominal pain? Abdominal pain is felt in the abdomen. The abdomen is an anatomical area that is bounded by the lower margin of the ribs and diaphragm above, the pelvic bone (pubic ramus) below, and the flanks on each side. Although pain can arise from the tissues of the abdominal wall that surround the abdominal cavity (such as the skin and muscles), the term abdominal pain generally is used to describe discomfort originating from organs within the abdominal cavity. Organs of the abdomen include the stomach, small intestine, colon, liver, gallbladder, spleen, and pancreas. Technically, the lowermost portion of the area described previously, is the pelvis, which contains the urinary bladder and rectum, as well as the prostate gland in men, and the uterus, Fallopian tubes, and ovaries in women. Often, it can be difficult to know if lower abdominal pain is coming from the lower abdomen or pelvis (pelvic pain). Occasionally, pain may be felt in the belly even though it is arising from organs that are close to, but not within, the abdominal cavity, for example, conditions of the lower lungs, the kidneys, and the uterus or ovaries. On the other hand, it also is possible for pain from organs within the belly to be felt outside of the it. For example, the pain of pancreatic inflammation may be felt in the back. These latter types of pain are described as "referred” because it does not originate in the location that it is felt. Rather, the cause is located away from where it is felt (i.e., it is referred to a different area). Picture of the organs and glands in the abdomen. An illustration of the digestive tract highlighting causes of abdominal pain.Source: iStock/MedicineNet What causes abdominal pain? Abdominal pain is caused by inflammation of an organ (for example, appendicitis, diverticulitis, colitis), by stretching or distention of an organ (for example, obstruction of the intestine, blockage of a bile duct by gallstones, swelling of the liver with hepatitis), or by loss of the supply of blood to an organ (for example, ischemic colitis). To complicate matters, however, abdominal pain also can occur without inflammation, distention or loss of blood supply. An important example of the latter is the irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). It is not clear what causes the belly pain in IBS, but it is believed to be due either to abnormal contractions of the intestinal muscles (for example, spasm) or abnormally sensitive nerves within the intestines that give rise to painful sensations inappropriately (visceral hyper-sensitivity). This often is referred to as functional pain because no recognizable specific abnormality to account for the cause of the pain has been found - at least not yet. A collage highlighting the locations of abdominal pain on a female model at various angles.Source: iStock Signs, symptoms, locations, types, and severity of abdominal pain Doctors will ask you a variety of questions about your belly pain in order to help find the possible causes of it, for example: How did the pain begin? - If it comes on suddenly, this may suggest a problem with an organ within the belly; for example, the interruption of the supply of blood to the colon (ischemia) or obstruction of the bile duct by a gallstone (biliary colic). Where is the pain located? - Appendicitis typically causes discomfort in the middle of the abdomen, and then moves to the right lower abdomen, the usual location of the appendix. - Diverticulitis typically causes discomfort in the left lower abdomen where most colonic diverticula are located. - Discomfort from the gallbladder (biliary colic or cholecystitis) typically is felt in the middle, upper abdomen, or the right upper abdomen near where the gallbladder is located. What is the type and pattern of the pain? - Is it severe, crampy, steady; or does it wax and wane? Obstruction of the intestine initially causes waves of crampy pain due to contractions of the intestinal muscles and distention of the intestine. True cramp-like pain suggests vigorous contractions of the intestines. - Obstruction of the bile ducts by gallstones typically causes steady (constant) upper belly pain that lasts between 30 minutes and several hours. - Acute pancreatitis typically causes severe, unrelenting, steady pain in the upper abdomen and upper back. - The pain of acute appendicitis initially may start near the umbilicus, but as the inflammation progresses, it moves to the right lower abdomen. - The character of pain may change over time. For example, obstruction of the bile ducts sometimes progresses to inflammation of the gallbladder with or without infection (acute cholecystitis). When this happens, the characteristics change to those of inflammatory pain. How long does the pain last? - The discomfort of IBS typically waxes and wanes over months or years and may last for years or decades. - Biliary colic lasts no more than several hours. - The pain of pancreatitis lasts one or more days. - The pain of acid-related diseases - gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) or duodenal ulcers - typically occurs over a period of weeks or months that is worse followed by periods of weeks or months during which it is better (periodically). - Functional pain may show this same pattern of periodicity. What makes the pain worse? - Pain due to inflammation (appendicitis, diverticulitis, cholecystitis, and pancreatitis) typically is aggravated by sneezing, coughing, or any jarring motion. Individuals with inflammation prefer to lie still. - What health conditions make abdominal pain worse or better? What relieves the pain? - The pain of IBS and constipation often is relieved temporarily by bowel movements and may be associated with changes in bowel habits. - Pain due to obstruction of the stomach or upper small intestine may be relieved temporarily by vomiting which reduces the distention that is caused by the obstruction. - Eating or taking antacids may temporarily relieve ulcer pain from the stomach or duodenum because both food and antacids neutralize the acid that is responsible for irritating the ulcers and causing the pain. - Pain that awakens a patient from sleep is more likely to be due to non-functional causes and is more significant. - Other associated symptoms that accompany abdominal pain may suggest: - Fever suggests inflammation or infection. - Diarrhea or rectal bleeding suggests an intestinal cause. - Fever and diarrhea suggest inflammation of the intestines that may be infectious or non-infectious. - How is the cause of abdominal pain diagnosed? - Doctors determine the cause of the pain by relying on: - Its characteristics, physical signs, and other accompanying symptoms - Findings on physical examination - Medical laboratory, radiological, and endoscopic testing How is the cause of abdominal pain diagnosed? Doctors determine the cause of the pain by relying on: - Characteristics, physical signs, and other accompanying symptoms - Findings on physical examination - Laboratory, radiological, and endoscopic testing What's Causing Your Abdominal Pain? A doctor examines a small boy that is experiencing stomach and abdominal pain.Source: iStock What exams and tests help diagnose the cause of abdominal pain? Examining the patient will provide the doctor with additional clues to the cause of the pain. The doctor will determine: - The presence of sounds coming from the intestines that occur when there is obstruction of the intestines, - The presence of signs of inflammation (by special maneuvers during the examination), - The location of any tenderness - The presence of a mass within the abdomen that suggests a tumor, enlarged organ, or abscess (a collection of infected pus) - The presence of blood in the stool may signify an intestinal problem such as an ulcer, colon cancer, colitis, or ischemia. - Finding tenderness and signs of inflammation in the left lower abdomen often means that diverticulitis is present, while finding a tender (inflamed) mass in the same area may mean that the inflammation has progressed and that an abscess has formed. - Finding tenderness and signs of inflammation in the right lower abdomen often means that appendicitis is present, while finding a tender mass in the same area may mean that the inflammation has progressed and that an abscess has formed. - Inflammation in the right lower abdomen, with or without a mass, also may be found in Crohn's disease. (Crohn's disease most commonly affects the last part of the small intestine, usually located in the right lower abdomen.) - A mass without signs of inflammation may mean that cancer is present. While the health history and physical examination are vitally important in determining the cause of abdominal pain, other medical tests often are necessary to determine the cause. Laboratory tests such as the complete blood count (CBC), liver enzymes, pancreatic enzymes (amylase and lipase), pregnancy test and urinalysis are frequently ordered. - An elevated white count suggests inflammation or infection (as with appendicitis, pancreatitis, diverticulitis, or colitis). - A low red blood cell count may indicate a bleed in the intestines. - Amylase and lipase (enzymes produced by the pancreas) commonly are elevated in pancreatitis. - Liver enzymes may be elevated with gallstone attacks or acute hepatitis. - Blood in the urine suggests kidney stones. - When there is diarrhea, white blood cells in the stool suggest intestinal inflammation or infection. - A positive pregnancy test may indicate an ectopic pregnancy (a pregnancy in the fallopian tube instead of the uterus). Plain X-rays of the abdomen Plain X-rays of the abdomen also are referred to as a KUB (because they include the kidney, ureter, and bladder). The KUB may show enlarged loops of intestines filled with copious amounts of fluid and air when there is intestinal obstruction. Patients with a perforated ulcer may have air escape from the stomach into the abdominal cavity. The escaped air often can be seen on a KUB on the underside of the diaphragm. Sometimes a KUB may reveal a calcified kidney stone that has passed into the ureter and resulted in referred abdominal pain or calcifications in the pancreas that suggests chronic pancreatitis. - Ultrasound is useful in diagnosing gallstones, cholecystitis appendicitis, or ruptured ovarian cysts as the cause of the pain. - Computerized tomography (CT) of the abdomen is useful in diagnosing pancreatitis, pancreatic cancer, appendicitis, and diverticulitis, as well as in diagnosing abscesses in the abdomen. Special CT scans of the abdominal blood vessels can detect diseases of the arteries that block the flow of blood to the abdominal organs. - Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is useful in diagnosing many of the same conditions as CT tomography. - Barium X-rays of the stomach and the intestines (upper gastrointestinal series or UGI with a small bowel follow-through) can be helpful in diagnosing ulcers, inflammation, and blockage in the intestines. - Computerized tomography (CT) of the small intestine can be helpful in diagnosing diseases in the small bowel such as Crohn's disease. - Capsule enteroscopy uses a small camera the size of a pill swallowed by the patient, which can take pictures of the entire small bowel and transmit the pictures onto a portable receiver. The small bowel images can be downloaded from the receiver onto a computer to be inspected by a doctor later. Capsule enteroscopy can be helpful in diagnosing Crohn's disease, small bowel tumors, and bleeding lesions not seen on x-rays or CT scans. Surgery. Sometimes, diagnosis requires examination of the abdominal cavity either by laparoscopy or surgery. An illustration of a constipated colon that is associated with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).Source: Getty Images How does IBS (irritable bowel syndrome) cause abdominal pain? As previously mentioned, the discomfort of irritable bowel syndrome is due either to abnormal intestinal muscle contractions or visceral hypersensitivity. Generally, abnormal muscle contractions and visceral hypersensitivity are much more difficult to diagnose than other diseases or other health conditions, particularly since there are no typical abnormalities on physical examination or the usual diagnostic tests. The diagnosis is based on the history (typical symptoms) and the absence of other causes. Foods, natural remedies, and OTC treatments for certain causes of abdominal pain If you aren’t sure if you need to seek medical advice for belly pain, contact your doctor or other health care professional before using any home remedies. Common home remedies and over-the-counter (OTC) medicines include: - Eat less food - Take small amounts of baking soda - Use lemon and/or lime juice - Start a BRAT diet (banana, rice, applesauce, and toast) for a day or so for symptom relief. - Don’t smoke or drink alcohol. Some health care professionals recommend: Some of these may help reduce symptoms, but if symptoms persist, seek medical care. Beware of "cures" advertised as a single treatment that can cure all causes of this problem because no such remedy or cure exists. Taking aspirin or NSAIDs should be avoided until the cause of the pain is diagnosed because the medications could make some causes worse (for example, peptic ulcers, intestinal bleeding). A doctor examining a woman’s abdomen to understand her pain.Source: iStock Why can diagnosis of the cause of abdominal pain be difficult? Modern advances in technology have greatly improved the accuracy, speed, and ease of establishing the cause of belly pain, but significant challenges remain. There are many reasons why diagnosing the cause of it can be difficult. Symptoms may be atypical - For example, the pain of appendicitis sometimes is located in the right upper abdomen and diverticulitis on the right side. Elderly patients and those taking corticosteroids may have little or no pain and tenderness when there is inflammation, for example, with cholecystitis or diverticulitis. This occurs because corticosteroids reduce inflammation. Tests are not always abnormal. - Ultrasound examinations can miss gallstones, particularly small ones. - CT scans may fail to show pancreatic cancer, particularly small ones. - The KUB can miss the signs of intestinal obstruction or stomach perforation. - Ultrasounds and CT scans may fail to demonstrate appendicitis or even abscesses, particularly if the abscesses are small. - The CBC and other blood tests may be normal despite severe infection or inflammation, particularly in individuals receiving corticosteroids or other drugs that suppress the immune system. Diseases can mimic one another. - IBS symptoms can mimic bowel obstruction, cancer, ulcer, gallbladder attacks, or even appendicitis. - Crohn's disease can mimic appendicitis. - Infection of the right kidney can mimic acute cholecystitis. - A ruptured right ovarian cyst can mimic appendicitis; while a ruptured left ovarian cyst can mimic diverticulitis. - Kidney stones can mimic appendicitis or diverticulitis. The characteristics of the pain may change. - Examples discussed previously include the extension of the inflammation of pancreatitis to involve the entire abdomen and the progression of biliary colic to cholecystitis. Subscribe to MedicineNet's General Health Newsletter A close-up of a doctor holding a bottle of pills and writing a prescription.Source: Getty Images What medications can be used to treat certain causes of abdominal pain? Medications that are used for the treatment of underlying cause(s) of the pain are the medications of choice. For example, medications are not needed for the treatment of simple viral gastroenteritis (stomach flu or stomach bug), while surgery and/or chemotherapy may be the best approach to treat certain cancers in the abdomen. Other causes may require antispasmodics, antimicrobials, H2 blockers, or even nitrates or morphine. The diagnosed cause usually narrows the choice of medications. A few causes can only be treated by surgery (for example incarcerated hernia, abdominal adhesions from previous surgeries, and certain abdominal injuries), although some medications may be used (for example, morphine) while the person is waiting to have surgery. A woman makes a heart with her hands over her stomach.Source: iStock What lifestyle choices can I make to prevent abdominal pain? Lifestyle changes really depend on the cause of the pain. - Eat a healthy diet, exercise, and avoid smoking and excess alcohol consumption to reduce the chances that you will experience certain causes. - Good hygiene, especially hand washing and avoiding materials and foods contaminated with viruses and bacteria will reduce your chances of developing illness from many infectious causes. When should I call my doctor about abdominal pain? Some doctors suggest that if you have a "less serious" cause of abdominal pain you likely won’t need to see a doctor if the symptoms resolve in about 24 to 48 hours. For example, if you have viral or bacterial food poisoning, have had discomfort, but aren’t dehydrated. If you have a chronic problem that occasionally causes abdominal discomfort, most doctors suggest you contact the person treating you for the ailment for an appointment or prescription (refill). However, if you have any of the problems or symptoms listed in the "serious abdominal pain "section above, you should seek immediate medical care. Health Solutions From Our Sponsors Medically Reviewed on 3/23/2022 Jameson, JL, et al. Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine, 20th ed. (Vol.1 & Vol.2). McGraw-Hill Education 2018. Pasero, MS, RN-BC, Acute Abdominal Pain: Mange Without Delay. Medscape. Updated Aug 02, 2013. Penner, RB., MD. et al. "Evaluation of the adult with abodminal pain." UptoDate. Updated: Feb 22, 2016.

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Nigeria EMERGENCE OF NIGERIAN NATIONALISM Source: The Library of Congress Country Studies British colonialism created Nigeria, joining diverse peoples and regions in an artificial political entity. It was not unusual that the nationalism that became a political factor in Nigeria during the interwar period derived both from an older political particularism and broad pan-Africanism rather than from any sense of a common Nigerian nationality. Its goal initially was not self-determination, but rather increased participation in the governmental process on a regional level. Inconsistencies in British policy reinforced cleavages based on regional animosities by attempting simultaneously to preserve the indigenous cultures of each area and to introduce modern technology and Western political and social concepts. In the north, appeals to Islamic legitimacy upheld the rule of the emirs, so that nationalist sentiments there were decidedly anti-Western. Modern nationalists in the south, whose thinking was shaped by European ideas, opposed indirect rule, which had entrenched what was considered to be an anachronistic ruling class in power and shut out the Westernized elite. The ideological inspiration for southern nationalists came from a variety of sources, including prominent American-based activists such as Marcus Garvey and W.E.B. Du Bois. Nigerian students abroad joined those from other colonies in pan-African groups, such as the West African Students Union, founded in London in 1925. Early nationalists tended to ignore Nigeria as the focus of patriotism; rather, the common denominator was based on a newly assertive ethnic consciousness, particularly Yoruba and Igbo. Despite their acceptance of European and North American influences, the nationalists were critical of colonialism for its failure to appreciate the antiquity of indigenous cultures. They wanted self-government, charging that only colonial rule prevented the unshackling of progressive forces in Africa. Political opposition to colonial rule often assumed religious dimensions. Independent Christian churches had emerged at the end of the nineteenth century because many European missionaries were racist and blocked the advancement of a Nigerian clergy. European interpretations of Christian orthodoxy also refused to allow the incorporation of local customs and practices, even though the various mission denominations themselves interpreted Christianity very differently. It was acceptable for the established missions to differ, but most Europeans were surprised and shocked that Nigerians would develop new denominations independent of European control. Christianity long had experienced "protestant" schisms; the emergence of independent Christian churches in Nigeria was another phase of this history. The pulpits of the independent congregations provided one of the few available avenues for the free expression of attitudes critical of colonial rule. In the 1920s, there were several types of associations that were ostensibly nonpolitical. One group consisted of professional and business associations, such as the Nigerian Union of Teachers, which provided trained leadership for political groups; the Nigerian Law Association, which brought together lawyers, many of whom had been educated in Britain; and the Nigerian Produce Traders' Association, led by Obafemi Awolowo. Ethnic and kinship organizations that often took the form of a tribal union also emerged in the 1920s. These organizations were primarily urban phenomena that arose after large numbers of rural migrants moved to the cities. Alienated by the anonymity of the urban environment and drawn together by ties to their ethnic homelands--as well as by the need for mutual aid--the new city dwellers formed local clubs that later expanded into federations covering whole regions. By the mid-1940s, the major ethnic groups had formed such associations as the Igbo Federal Union and the Egbe Omo Oduduwa (Society of the Descendants of Oduduwa), a Yoruba cultural movement, in which Awolowo played a leading role. A third type of organization that was more pointedly political was the youth or student group, which became the vehicle of intellectuals and professionals. They were the most politically conscious segment of the population and stood in the vanguard of the nationalist movement. Newspapers, some of which were published before World War I, provided coverage of nationalist views. The opportunity afforded by the 1922 constitution to elect a handful of representatives to the Legislative Council gave politically conscious Nigerians something concrete to work on. The principal figure in the political activity that ensued was Herbert Macauley, often referred to as the father of Nigerian nationalism. He aroused political awareness through his newspaper, the Lagos Daily News, while leading the Nigerian National Democratic Party (NNDP), which dominated elections in Lagos from its founding in 1922 until the ascendancy of the National Youth Movement (NYM) in 1938. His political platform called for economic and educational development, Africanization of the civil service, and self-government for Lagos. Significantly, however, Macauley's NNDP remained almost entirely a Lagos party, popular only in the area with experience in elective politics. The NYM first used nationalist rhetoric to agitate for improvements in education. The movement brought to public notice a long list of future leaders, including H.O. Davies and Nnamdi Azikiwe. Although Azikiwe later came to be recognized as the leading spokesman for national unity, his orientation on return from university training in the United States was pan-African rather than nationalist, emphasizing the common African struggle against European colonialism. He betrayed much less consciousness of purely Nigerian goals than Davies, a student of Harold Laski at the London School of Economics, whose political orientation was considered left-wing. By 1938 the NYM was agitating for dominion status within the British Commonwealth of Nations, so that Nigeria would have the same status as Canada and Australia. In elections that year, the NYM ended the domination of the NNDP in the Legislative Council and moved to establish a genuinely national network of affiliates. This promising start was stopped short three years later by internal divisions in which ethnic loyalties emerged triumphant. The departure of Azikiwe and other Igbo members of the NYM left the organization in Yoruba hands; during World War II, it was reorganized into a predominantly Yoruba political party, the Action Group, by Awolowo. Yoruba-Igbo rivalry had become a major factor in Nigerian politics (see Ethnic Relations , ch. 2). During World War II, three battalions of the Nigeria Regiment fought in the Ethiopian campaign. Nigerian units also contributed to two divisions serving with British forces in Palestine, Morocco, Sicily, and Burma, where they won many honors. Wartime experiences provided a new frame of reference for many soldiers, who interacted across ethnic boundaries in ways that were unusual in Nigeria. The war also made the British reappraise Nigeria's political future. The war years, moreover, witnessed a polarization between the older, more parochial leaders inclined toward gradualism and the younger intellectuals, who thought in more immediate terms. The rapid growth of organized labor in the 1940s also brought new political forces into play. During the war, union membership increased sixfold to 30,000. The proliferation of labor organizations, however, fragmented the movement, and potential leaders lacked the experience and skill to draw workers together. In the postwar period, party lines were sharply drawn on the basis of ethnicity and regionalism. After the demise of the NYM, the nationalist movement splintered into the Hausa- and Fulani- backed Northern People's Congress (NPC), the Yoruba-supported Action Group, and the Igbo-dominated National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC, later the National Council of Nigerian Citizens). These parties negotiated with the British government over constitutional changes, but cooperation among them was the result of expediency rather than an emerging sense of national identity. Because of the essentially regional political alignments of the parties, the British government decided to impose a political solution for Nigeria based on a federally structured constitution. Nigeria's first political party to have nationwide appeal was the NCNC, founded in 1944 when Azikiwe encouraged activists in the National Youth Movement to call a conference in Lagos of all major Nigerian organizations to "weld the heterogeneous masses of Nigeria into one solid bloc." The aged Macauley was elected president of the new group, and Azikiwe became its secretary general. The party platform renewed the National Youth Movement's appeal for Nigerian self-government within the Commonwealth under a democratic constitution. At its inception, party membership was based on affiliated organizations that included labor unions, social groups, political clubs, professional associations, and more than 100 ethnic organizations. These bodies afforded unusual opportunities for political education in existing constituencies, but the NYM, which was fading out, was absent from the list of NCNC affiliates. Leadership of the NCNC rested firmly with Azikiwe, in large part because of his commanding personality but also because of the string of newspapers he operated and through which he argued the nationalist cause. In the late 1940s, the NCNC captured a majority of the votes in the predominantly Yoruba Western Region, but increasingly it came to rely on Igbo support, supplemented by alliances with minority parties in the Northern Region. The NCNC backed the creation of new regions, where minorities would be ensured a larger voice, as a step toward the formation of a strong unitary national government. The Action Group arose in 1951 as a response to Igbo control of the NCNC and as a vehicle for Yoruba regionalism that resisted the concept of unitary government. The party was structured democratically and benefited from political spadework done by the NCNC in the Western Region in the late 1940s. As a movement designed essentially to exploit the federal arrangement to attain regional power, however, the Action Group became the NCNC's competitor for votes in the south at the national level and at the local level in the Western Region. The Action Group was largely the creation of Awolowo, general secretary of Egbe Omo Oduduwa and leader of the Nigerian Produce Traders' Association. The Action Group was thus the heir of a generation of flourishing cultural consciousness among the Yoruba and also had valuable connections with commercial interests that were representative of the comparative economic advancement of the Western Region. Awolowo had little difficulty in appealing to broad segments of the Yoruba population, but he strove to prevent the Action Group from being stigmatized as a "tribal" group. Despite his somewhat successful efforts to enlist non-Yoruba support, the regionalist sentiment that had stimulated the party initially could hardly be concealed. Another obstacle to the development of the Action Group was the animosity between segments of the Yoruba community--for example, many people in Ibadan opposed Awolowo on personal grounds because of his identification with the Ijebu Yoruba. Despite these difficulties, the Action Group rapidly built an effective organization. Its program reflected greater planning and was more ideologically oriented than that of the NCNC. Although he did not have Azikiwe's compelling personality, Awolowo was a formidable debater as well as a vigorous and tenacious political campaigner. He used for the first time in Nigeria modern, sometimes flamboyant, electioneering techniques. Among his leading lieutenants were Samuel Akintola of Ibadan and the oni of Ife. The Action Group was a consistent supporter of minority-group demands for autonomous states within a federal structure, and it even supported the severance of a midwest state from the Western Region. This move assumed that comparable alterations would be made elsewhere, an attitude that won the party minority voting support in the other regions. It also backed Yoruba irredentism in the Fulani-ruled emirate of Ilorin in the Northern Region and separatist movements among non-Igbo in the Eastern Region. The Northern People's Congress (NPC) was organized in the late 1940s by a small group of Western-educated northern Muslims who obtained the assent of the emirs to form a political party capable of counterbalancing the activities of the southern-based parties. It represented a substantial element of reformism in the Muslim north. The most powerful figure in the party was Ahmadu Bello, the sardauna (war leader) of Sokoto, a controversial figure who aspired to become the sultan of Sokoto, still the most important political and religious position in the north. Often described by opponents as a "feudal" conservative, Bello had a consuming interest in the protection of northern social and political institutions from southern influence. He also insisted on maintaining the territorial integrity of the Northern Region, including those areas with non-Muslim populations. He was prepared to introduce educational and economic changes to strengthen the north. Although his own ambitions were limited to the Northern Region, Bello backed the NPC's successful efforts to mobilize the north's large voting strength so as to win control of the national government. The NPC platform emphasized the integrity of the north, its traditions, religion, and social order. Support for broad Nigerian concerns occupied a clear second place. A lack of interest in extending the NPC beyond the Northern Region corresponded to this strictly regional orientation. Its activist membership was drawn from local government and emirate officials who had access to means of communication and to repressive traditional authority that could keep the opposition in line. The small contingent of northerners who had been educated abroad--a group that included Abubakar Tafawa Balewa and Aminu Kano--was allied with British-backed efforts to introduce gradual change to the emirates. The support given by the emirs to limited modernization was motivated largely by fear of the unsettling presence of southerners in the north and by the equally unsettling example of improving conditions in the south. Those northern leaders who were committed to modernization were firmly connected to the traditional power structure. Most internal problems within the north--peasant disaffection or rivalry among Muslim factions--were concealed, and open opposition to the domination of the Muslim aristocracy was not tolerated. Critics, including representatives of the middle belt who plainly resented Muslim domination, were relegated to small, peripheral parties or to inconsequential separatist movements. In 1950 Aminu Kano, who had been instrumental in founding the NPC, broke away to form one such party, the Northern Elements Progressive Union (NEPU), in protest against the NPC's limited objectives and what he regarded as a vain hope that traditional rulers would accept modernization. NEPU formed a parliamentary alliance with the NCNC. The NPC continued to represent the interests of the traditional order in the preindependence deliberations. After the defection of Kano, the only significant disagreement within the NPC related to the awareness of moderates, such as Balewa, that only by overcoming political and economic backwardness could the NPC protect the foundations of traditional northern authority against the influence of the more advanced south. In all three regions, minority parties represented the special interests of ethnic groups, especially as they were affected by the majority. The size of their legislative delegations, when successful in electing anyone to the regional assemblies, was never large enough to be effective, but they served as a means of public expression for minority concerns. They received attention from major parties before elections, at which time either a dominant party from another region or the opposition party in their region sought their alliance. The political parties jockeyed for positions of power in anticipation of the independence of Nigeria. Three constitutions were enacted from 1946 to 1954 that were subjects of considerable political controversy in themselves but inevitably moved the country toward greater internal autonomy, with an increasing role for the political parties. The trend was toward the establishment of a parliamentary system of government, with regional assemblies and a federal House of Representatives. In 1946 a new constitution was approved by the British Parliament and promulgated in Nigeria. Although it reserved effective power in the hands of the governor and his appointed executive council, the so-called Richards Constitution (after Governor Arthur Richards, who was responsible for its formulation) provided for an expanded Legislative Council empowered to deliberate on matters affecting the whole country. Separate legislative bodies, the houses of assembly, were established in each of the three regions to consider local questions and to advise the lieutenant governors. The introduction of the federal principle, with deliberative authority devolved on the regions, signaled recognition of the country's diversity. Although realistic in its assessment of the situation in Nigeria, the Richards Constitution undoubtedly intensified regionalism as an alternative to political unification. The pace of constitutional change accelerated after the promulgation of the Richards Constitution, which was suspended in 1950. The call for greater autonomy resulted in an interparliamentary conference at Ibadan in 1950, when the terms of a new constitution were drafted. The so-called Macpherson Constitution, after the incumbent governor, went into effect the following year. The most important innovations in the new charter reinforced the dual course of constitutional evolution, allowing for both regional autonomy and federal union. By extending the elective principle and by providing for a central government with a Council of Ministers, the Macpherson Constitution gave renewed impetus to party activity and to political participation at the national level. But by providing for comparable regional governments exercising broad legislative powers, which could not be overridden by the newly established 185-seat federal House of Representatives, the Macpherson Constitution also gave a significant boost to regionalism. Subsequent revisions contained in a new constitution the Lyttleton Constitution, enacted in 1954, firmly established the federal principle and paved the way for independence. In 1957 the Western and the Eastern regions became formally self-governing under the parliamentary system. Similar status was acquired by the Northern Region two years later. There were numerous differences of detail among the regional systems, but all adhered to parliamentary forms and were equally autonomous in relation to the federal government at Lagos. The federal government retained specified powers, including responsibility for banking, currency, external affairs, defense, shipping and navigation, and communications, but real political power was centered in the regions. Significantly, the regional governments controlled public expenditures derived from revenues raised within each region. Ethnic cleavages intensified in the 1950s. Political activists in the southern areas spoke of self-government in terms of educational opportunities and economic development. Because of the spread of mission schools and wealth derived from export crops, the southern parties were committed to policies that would benefit the south of the country. In the north, the emirs intended to maintain firm control on economic and political change. Any activity in the north that might include participation by the federal government (and consequently by southern civil servants) was regarded as a challenge to the primacy of the emirates. Broadening political participation and expanding educational opportunities and other social services also were viewed as threats to the status quo. Already there was an extensive immigrant population of southerners, especially Igbo, in the north; they dominated clerical positions and were active in many trades. The cleavage between the Yoruba and the Igbo was accentuated by their competition for control of the political machinery. The receding British presence enabled, local officials and politicians to gain access to patronage over government jobs, funds for local development, market permits, trade licenses, government contracts, and even scholarships for higher education. In an economy with many qualified applicants for every post, great resentment was generated by any favoritism authorities showed to members of their own ethnic group. In the immediate post-World War II period, Nigeria benefited from a favorable trade balance. The principal exports were agricultural commodities--peanuts and cotton from the Northern Region, palm products from the Eastern Region, and cocoa from the Western Region. Marketing boards, again regionally based, were established to handle these exports and to react to price fluctuations on the world market. During the 1950s, the marketing boards accumulated considerable surpluses. Initially, imports lagged behind exports, although by the mid-1950s imports began to catch up with exports, and the surpluses decreased. Expansion in the nonagricultural sectors required large imports of machinery, transport equipment and, eventually, intermediate materials for industry. In time there also were increased administrative costs to be met. Although per capita income in the country as a whole remained low by international standards, rising incomes among salaried personnel and burgeoning urbanization expanded consumer demand for imported goods. In the meantime, public sector spending increased even more dramatically than export earnings. It was supported not only by the income from huge agricultural surpluses but also by a new range of direct and indirect taxes imposed during the 1950s. The transfer of responsibility for budgetary management from the central to the regional governments in 1954 accelerated the pace of public spending on services and on development projects. Total revenues of central and regional governments nearly doubled in relation to the gross domestic product (GDP--see Glossary) during the decade. The most dramatic event, having a long-term effect on Nigeria's economic development, was the discovery and exploitation of petroleum deposits. The search for oil, begun in 1908 and abandoned a few years later, was revived in 1937 by Shell and British Petroleum. Exploration was intensified in 1946, but the first commercial discovery did not occur until 1956, at Olobiri in the Niger Delta. In 1958 exportation of Nigerian oil was initiated at facilities constructed at Port Harcourt. Oil income was still marginal, but the prospects for continued economic expansion appeared bright and further accentuated political rivalries on the eve of independence. The election of the House of Representatives after the adoption of the 1954 constitution gave the NPC a total of seventy-nine seats, all from the Northern Region. Among the other major parties, the NCNC took fifty-six seats, winning a majority in both the Eastern and the Western regions, while the Action Group captured only twenty-seven seats. The NPC was called on to form a government, but the NCNC received six of the ten ministerial posts. Three of these posts were assigned to representatives from each region, and one was reserved for a delegate from the Northern Cameroons. As a further step toward independence, the governor's Executive Council was merged with the Council of Ministers in 1957 to form the all-Nigerian Federal Executive Council. NPC federal parliamentary leader Balewa was appointed prime minister. Balewa formed a coalition government that included the Action Group as well as the NCNC to prepare the country for the final British withdrawal. His government guided the country for the next three years, operating with almost complete autonomy in internal affairs. The preparation of a new federal constitution for an independent Nigeria was carried out at conferences held at Lancaster House in London in 1957 and 1958 and presided over by the British colonial secretary. Nigerian delegates were selected to represent each region and to reflect various shades of opinion. The delegation was led by Balewa of the NPC and included party leaders Awolowo of the Action Group, Azikiwe of the NCNC, and Bello of the NPC; they were also the premiers of the Western, Eastern, and Northern regions, respectively. Independence was achieved on October 1, 1960. Elections were held for a new and greatly enlarged House of Representatives in December 1959; 174 of the 312 seats were allocated to the Northern Region on the basis of its larger population. The NPC, entering candidates only in the Northern Region, confined campaigning largely to local issues but opposed the addition of new regimes. The NCNC backed creation of a midwest state and proposed federal control of education and health services. The Action Group, which staged a lively campaign, favored stronger government and the establishment of three new states, while advocating creation of a West Africa Federation that would unite Nigeria with Ghana and Sierra Leone. The NPC captured 142 seats in the new legislature. Balewa was called on to head a NPC-NCNC coalition government, and Awolowo became official leader of the opposition. Data as of June 1991 NOTE: The information regarding Nigeria on this page is re-published from The Library of Congress Country Studies. No claims are made regarding the accuracy of Nigeria EMERGENCE OF NIGERIAN NATIONALISM information contained here. All suggestions for corrections of any errors about Nigeria EMERGENCE OF NIGERIAN NATIONALISM should be addressed to the Library of Congress.

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BISAC NAT010000 Ecology BISAC NAT045050 Ecosystems & Habitats / Coastal Regions & Shorelines BISAC NAT025000 Ecosystems & Habitats / Oceans & Seas BISAC NAT045030 Ecosystems & Habitats / Polar Regions BISAC SCI081000 Earth Sciences / Hydrology BISAC SCI092000 Global Warming & Climate Change BISAC SCI020000 Life Sciences / Ecology BISAC SCI039000 Life Sciences / Marine Biology BISAC SOC053000 Regional Studies BISAC TEC060000 Marine & Naval “The special law” on the environmental conservation of the Seto Inland Sea, Japan and governmental basic plan for the environmental conservation of the sea based on the law were both revised recently in 2015. Two major aims of the previous basic plan (1. conservation of water quality, 2. conservation of natural landscape) were reformed to broaden four new major aims (1. conservation and restoration of coastal environment, 2. conservation and appropriate management of water quality, 3. conservation of natural and cultural landscapes, 4. sustainable utilization of fish resources) in the revised basic plan. Historically, environmental management policy of the Seto Inland Sea had firstly made emphasis on water pollution control such as total pollution load control (TPLC). However, this kind of passive conservation policy is gradually being sifted recently to active conservation such as Satoumi which includes restoration of biodiversity, biological productivity, habitat and well balanced nutrient cycle between land and sea. Holistic approaches such as integrated coastal management (ICM), ecosystem-based management (EBM) and adaptive management were incorporated into new policy in Japan. These clear changes of management policies of the Seto Inland Sea will make change more detailed policy of every related prefecture and hence will promote Satoumi activities in near future. environmental conservation, Satoumi, Seto Inland Sea. Brief History of the Seto Inland Sea The Seto Inland Sea, the largest enclosed coastal sea in Japan, has long history in which plenty of ecosystem services have been provided. However, serious environmental changes due to land-based human activities occurred during the postwar reconstruction age after WWII. Rapid economic growth during 1960s to 70s was accompanied by serious water pollution, eutrophication and destruction of habitat such as tidal flat and sea grass bed in the shallow coastal areas . Among many countermeasures, “the special law (Seto Inland Sea Law)” applied only for the Seto Inland Sea (Law Concerning Special Measures for Conservation of the Environment of the Seto Inland Sea) first enacted in 1973 played an important role. Major functions of “the special law” were area wide total pollution load control (TPLC) and suppression of land reclamation . Brief Introduction to Satoumi What is Satoumi? Why much attention is paid to Satoumi nowadays? Since in Japanese “Sato” means local village or community where people live their life and “Umi” means the sea, simple literal meaning of Satoumi is the sea associated with local village or community. In many seas of that kind, sustainable community-based management of the sea had long been made historically in Japan with traditional manner. Satoumi is a traditional Japanese coastal ecosystem and landscape that used to be found in many coastal areas throughout Japan in days gone by. However, during the phase of nation’s high economic growth, this type of traditional coastal management was gradually deteriorated affected by changes of local community and life style of the people. As a result, social demand to create a new type of Satoumi defined as high biological productivity and high biological diversity in the coastal sea with human interaction has arisen and been strong. In Japan, community-based habitat restoration activities have been gaining ground in recent years partly because concept of Satoumi was incorporated into official institutional systems of national policy. Since Satoumi is originated in Japan but is sometimes said to be grown up in the Seto Inland Sea, Satoumi has close relationship with the deterioration of the sea and active conservation of the area by local people. As a recent status of Satoumi, new concept for coastal sea management called Satoumi has been recently noticed not only in its originated place of Japan but also in many countries including both western and Asian countries. International edition of the books on Satoumi published by such international organization as United Nations University and Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) also contributed to expand Satoumi activities in the world ,. II. CHANGE OF THE ENVIRONMENT AND ECOSYSTEM TPLC system in terms of COD, Total Nitrogen (TN) and Total Phosphorus (TP) has given significant effects on the improvement of water quality. For example, number of the occurrence of red tide decreased from about 300 a year.at the peak age to about 100 in recent years. Concentration of TN and TP in sea water also decreased and recently it cleared legal environmental standard in many areas of the Seto Inland Sea. However, since suppression of land reclamation does not mean total ban of land reclamation, effect of the policy was restricted. As a result, shallow area in particular of tidal flat and sea grass bed has been drastically lost during recent 50 years. Change of pollutant load from land and change of water quality in the Seto Inland Sea due to TPLC system is very clear. The load of COD, TN and TP decreased during the year of 1979 to 2014. Generally, concentration of TN and TP in sea water is proportional to TN and TP load per unit area of the sea. It means that water quality in terms of TN and TP have been much improved. While, biodiversity of the Seto Inland Sea seems to be decreased because species number of observed sea shore animals in Kure area decreased drastically from mid 1960s . Tidal flat and sea grass bed around the Seto Inland Sea decreased mainly due to land reclamation and therefore artificial coastline increased. These indicate that habitat condition is deteriorated. Fish catch data indicate that fisheries production is decreasing after the peak age of mid 1980s. From these results, it can be said that ecosystem services available is decreasing in the Seto Inland Sea although water quality has been improved so far to some extent. Major environmental and related problems in the Seto Inland Sea in recent years can be summarized as following. In broad sense: - Deterioration of ecosystem, natural resources and ecosystem services - Decrease of biological diversity and biological productivity (fish catch) - Weakened relationship between human and the sea In narrow sense: - Occurrence of red tides and oxygen depleted in bottom water - Deterioration of benthic environment and sediment quality - Disappearance of biological habitat for reproduction and spawning - Insufficient nutrient in laver (Nori) culture ground in winter III. PRESENT STATUS OF SATOUMI Satoumi in Japan Historically, Satoumi has evolved as traditional Japanese way of coastal management in which local communities co-existed with nature. In Satoumi concept, people’s livelihood and their culture are deeply involved，biological productivity is sustained, biological diversity is protected and conserved while ecosystems are able to sustained and material cycling is maintained. These community efforts were undertaken through comprehensive and integrated manner from upland forest and rivers to coastal seas. Therefore, concept of Satoumi primarily provides holistic management of watershed including forest, local communities and coastal environments . Combination of Satoyama that focuses on forest and agricultural land with Satoumi is also expected to develop a Japanese model of integrated coastal management (ICM) . In many Satoumi-like coastal seas in Japan, sustainable community-based management of the sea had long been continued historically with traditional manner. However, during the phase of nation’s high economic growth after the World War II, this type of traditional coastal management was gradually deteriorated affected by changes of local community and life style of the people due to social changes based on the economic development of the nation. During the same period, coastal environment, habitat and living resources were also seriously damaged by water pollution, eutrophication and land development based on urbanization and industrialization of coastal area . Instead of obtaining efficiency and convenience due to industrial development, valuable natural capital such as natural environment, natural resources and natural landscape was lost. As a result, social demand to create and establish new type of Satoumi defined as high biological productivity and high biological diversity in the coastal sea with human interaction has arisen and gradually gained ground. In other word, “Satoumi Renaissance” is taking place in order to restore once lost rich and healthy coastal sea by community-based participatory activities. In other word, the sea where Satoumi activity is necessary, conditions of natural environment and ecosystem are so deteriorated as not to be able to recover by themselves without support by human behavior. In Japan, community-based habitat restoration activities have been also gaining ground in recent years , . This is partly because concept of Satoumi was incorporated into official institutional systems of national policy such as the Basic Ocean Plan (2008) based on Basic Ocean Act (2007) and some national environmental strategies. The Governor’s and Mayor’s Conference for Environmental Conservation of the Seto Inland Sea has been seeking new policy based on the concept of Satoumi since 2004. Some local governments out of Seto Inland Sea area also introduced Satoumi concept as official policy. For example, Shima city, Mie prefecture which has long promoted environmental restoration of Ago Bay established an official Basic Plan for Satoumi Creation of the city in 2012 based on the concept of Satoumi. Satoumi in the international society New concept for coastal management called Satoumi has been recently noticed not only in its originated place of Japan but also in some international meetings held in both western and Asian countries. Major points of discussion on Satoumi so far done at international meetings were on the relationship between the original concept of Satoumi and already proposed related concepts such as ecosystem based management (EBM), community based management (CBM) and integrated coastal management (ICM). The first presentation on Satoumi by the author in the international meeting was made in 2005 at the PEMSEA (Partnership in Environmental Management of Seas of East Asia) meeting held in Korea, where strong attention to Satoumi was paid by Asian participants. In 2006, at EMECS7 (7th Conference on Environmental Management of Enclosed coastal Seas) held in Cean, France, concept of Satoumi and related local activities were introduced by Yanagi and Matsuda, respectively, with other case studies in Japan on Ago Bay. At the reviewing session of EMECS7, Satoumi was highly evaluated as symbiosis among human communities and coastal area. In 2008, at EMECS8 held in Shanghai, China, specialized Satoumi Session was held in order to deepen the concept collecting many similar cases of management and good practices from various countries. As a result of this workshop, it was made clear that there were many similar types of sustainable coastal management, ecosystem-based management and community-based practices in the world. Indigenous knowledge, traditional culture and community-based actions have already contributed significantly in protecting and restoring coastal ecosystem, island environment and natural resources in several countries. And finally, outcome of the workshop was incorporated into the Shanghai Declaration adopted on the final day of the conference. In 2009, another “Satoumi Workshop” was organized in the EAS-Congress 2009 which was held in Manila in order to discuss Satoumi from the view point of indigenous approaches to habitat protection and restoration in Asian countries for farther understandings of Satoumi and related practices. And then CBD-COP10 was held in Nagoya, Japan in October 2010 in which many Satoumi related activities were made. In EMECS9 which was held in Baltimore, USA, in 2011, Satoumi session was organized in order to disseminate the concept of Satoumi internationally. IV. RECENT SHIFT OF MANAGEMENT POLICY IN THE SETO INLAND SEA Environmental conservation and management policy firstly made emphasis on water pollution control. However, this kind of passive conservation policy is gradually being sifted recently to active conservation such as Satoumi which includes restoration of biodiversity, biological productivity, habitat and well balanced nutrient cycle between land and sea. Holistic approaches such as ecosystem-based management (EBM), integrated coastal management (ICM) are also being incorporated in new policy. In the recently revised governmental basic plan for the environmental conservation of the Seto Inland Sea (2015) based on “the special law”, 2 major aims of the previous basic plan (1. conservation of water quality, 2. conservation of natural landscape) are reformed to 4 major aims (1. conservation and restoration of coastal environment, 2. conservation and appropriate management of water quality, 3. conservation of natural and cultural landscapes, 4. sustainable utilization of fish resources). Fig. 1. Conceptual view on recent shift of environmental management in the Seto Inland Sea Conceptual view on future direction of environmental management in the Seto Inland Sea is presented in Fig.1. This figure shows past, present and future environmental condition are indicated on X-Y axis in which horizontal axis shows natural environmental condition such as habitat condition and vertical axis shows water quality. Recent shift means that not only improvement of water quality but also more active conservation such as restoration of deteriorated habitat and promotion of Satoumi activity are neccessary. This shift of management policy may help to realize smooth material circulation and rich ecosystem. V. SATOUMI IN NEAR FUTURE UNDER NEW POLICY In close relation to Satoumi, ecosystem-based management (EBM), community-based management (CBM) and ICM were so far discussed in the international meeting. Since Sato means community and Satoumi also focuses on relationship between human and nature, Satoumi can be a type of diversified CBM. Satoumi is also focusing on biological diversity and biological productivity, and therefore, Satoumi can be a part of EBM. Besides, combination of Satoyama and Satoumi can be a type of ICM including both land and sea. Similarities and differences among Satoumi, CBM, EBM and ICM should be made clearer with easy-to-understand manner in near future. As an outcome of the specialized Satoumi session of EMECS8 in 2008, the Shanghai Declaration adopted on the final day of the conference incorporated Satoumi as follows. “Satoumi places increased emphasis on promoting positive interaction between humankind and our enclosed coastal seas. That interaction can take many forms. It may be realized through concerned, continuous environmental conservation activities. Sustainable economic return through ecosystem-based resource management and agricultural practices are other aspect of Satoumi.” “Finally, Satoumi places a high premium on an education that connects young people with the natural world and provides them opportunity to learn through hands-on experiences how their sincere concern for the natural world relates to the well-being of their community, family, and themselves.” And the Declaration was concluded by saying “We must act on the principle that land, water, and people are integral components of the world’s coastal seas. Economy and environment are intertwined with art and nature. All are bound together by education. This is the lesson of Satoumi. This will help us keep our course on today’s troubled waters. This is what we wish to pass to the next generations. This is our commitment. This is our promise.” This message is still very true at present and in the way forward. As a result of the “Satoumi Workshop” of EAS-Congress 2009, understanding of Satoumi deepened in relation to indigenous knowledge and community-based management in Asian countries. During the discussion session of the Workshop, Tri Hita Karana, Balinese philosophy of life was presented from a participant from Indonesia. In Bali, outlook and philosophy is called Tri Hita Karana, which literally translates as the Three Causes of Prosperity, bringing about harmonious relationships: Human to God, Human to Human, and Human to Nature. Since Tri Hita Karana has something in common with Satoumi, comparative discussion between Tri Hita Karana and Satoumi is very suggestive to the relationship between human and nature giving new insight into Satoumi in future. . As a result of EMECS9 2011, the Baltimore Declaration has been adopted in Baltimore, Maryland USA, on the shores of Chesapeake Bay. The declaration was saying that “The adapting of our activities to regional environmental conditions is tacit acceptance that we are integral components of coastal ecosystems. We strongly believe that this recognition is long overdue: throughout history mankind has modified the ecology of enclosed coastal seas for better or for worse, and they have in turn influenced the economy, culture, and prosperity of coastal communities. The innovative concept Sato-umi (=Satoumi), high productivity and biodiversity in the coastal sea with human interaction, is an example of this perspective. We encourage policy makers to adopt the point of view that, by taking actions to benefit our enclosed coastal seas, we are also benefiting ourselves.” This is also very suggestive to Satoumi activities in near future. From these above, next possible step of Satoumi might be as follows. Integration of science into management decisions and managing habitats through application of biological information from all available data sources is necessary. Recognizing the importance of ecological networks from forest, river to the sea including human dimension is also necessary. A comprehensive management of the material flow from hilltop to the coastal environment is essential for successful costal management. Managing coastal habitats by participatory activities of people based on increasing public awareness, adopting appropriate legislation and enforcement is also essential. Coordination across sectors to improve governance and efficiency, and addressing trans-boundary issue are most important in the future management of Satoumi both in domestic and international context. In order to restore once lost rich and healthy coastal sea in the deteriorated area, Satoumi can play a role of active conservation measures to restore deteriorated ecosystem . Valuable coastal area such as tidal flat and sea grass bed which were already lost by land development were historically a kind of commons or shared space for people. And therefore to take back such kind of common space for people is also important role of Satoumi in future. Fig.2. Kagawa prefecture established new vision for the creation of Satoumi in 2013 Based on the revised special law and national basic plan on the Seto Inland Sea, every local government of prefecture around the Seto Inland Sea is requested to revise the environmental management plan of the prefecture level by the end of 2016. This new management plan of each prefecture level is to reflect the concept of recent shift directly and will contribute to promote Satoumi activities. In the case of Kagawa prefecture, the prefectural government has ever promoted Satoumi as an official policy (Fig. 2). This Satoumi policy of Kagawa prefecture will be incorporated into the revised prefecture plan based on the revised special law. This kind of enhanced policy will promote local activities for the creation of Satoumi in near future. 1. T. Okaichi and T. Yanagi (eds), Sustainable Development in the Seto Inland Sea, Tokyo, Terra scientific Publishing Company, 2003. 2. O. Matsuda et al.: ‘Western Japan Cluster: Seto Inland Sea as Satoumi’ in Duraiappah et al. (eds) Satoyama-Satoumi Ecosystems and Human Well-Being (in this reference list), 2012, pp. 381 – 402. 3. T. Yanagi, Sato-Umi: A New Concept of Coastal Sea Management, Tokyo, Terra scientific Publishing Company, 2007. 4. A. K. Duraiappah et al. ed., Satoyama-Satoumi Ecosystems and Human Well-Being, Socio-Ecological Production Landscape of Japan, Tokyo, United Nations University Press, 2012. 5. Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, Biological and Cultural Diversity in Coastal Communities – Exploring the Potential of Satoumi for Implementing the Ecosystem Approach in the Japanese Archipelago, CBD Technical Series No. 61, Montreal, Secretariat of CBD, 2012. 6. Y. Fujioka, ‘Change in Ecosystem in Hiroshima’, Technologies and Humans 29 (2), 2009, pp.32 – 43 (in Japanese). 7. M. Ukita, ,M. Sekine and H. Yamano, ‘Tidal Flat Restoration in the Yamaguchi Estuary’ in CBD Technical Series No. 61 (in this reference list), 2011, pp. 76 – 83. 8. O.Matsuda, ‘Combining Activities of Sato-Umi and Sato-Yama in Japan: Towards a New type of Integrated Coastal and Watershed Management’ in Makoto Taniguchi and Takayuki Shirakawa (eds) The Dilemma of Boundary – Toward a New Concept of Catchment, Tokyo, Springer, 2012, pp. 211 – 220. 9. O. Matsuda, ‘Eutrophication and its Causes/Consequences: The Case of the Seto Inland Sea’ in Nobuo Mimura (eds) Asia-Pacific Coasts and Their Management, Tokyo, Springer, 2008, pp. 78 – 92. 10. Y. Ota and M. Torii, ‘Mobilizing Local Wisdom and Scientific Knowledge: Re-creating Eelgrass Beds in Okayama’ in CBD Technical Series No. 61 (in this reference list), 2011, pp. 70 – 75. 11. O. Matsuda and H. Kokubu, ‘Towards Satoumi in Ago Bay’ in CBD Technical Series No. 61 (in this reference list), 2011, pp. 62 – 69. 12. O. Matsuda, ‘Recent Attempts towards Environmental Restoration of Enclosed Coastal Seas: Ago Bay Restoration Project Based on the New Concept of Satoumi’, Bulletin of the Fisheries Research Agency, 29, 2010, pp. 9 – 18. 13. J. Berque and O. Matsuda, ‘Coastal Biodiversity Management in Japanese Satoumi’, Marine Policy, 39, 2013, pp. 191 – 200.

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- Understand what crime is. - Compare and contrast the differences between criminal law and civil law. - Understand the constitutional protections afforded to those accused of committing a crime. - Examine some common defenses to crime. - Learn about the consequences of committing a crime. - Explore the goals or purposes of punishment for committing a crime. Imagine a bookkeeper who works for a physicians group. This bookkeeper’s job is to collect invoices that are due and payable by the physicians group and to process the payments for those invoices. The bookkeeper realizes that the physicians themselves are very busy, and they seem to trust the bookkeeper with the task of figuring out what needs to be paid. She decides to create a fake company, generate bogus invoices for “services rendered,” and send the invoices to the physicians group for payment. When she processes payment for those invoices, the fake company deposits the checks in its bank account—a bank account she secretly owns. This is a fraudulent disbursement, and it is just one of many ways in which crime occurs in the workplace. Check out "Hyperlink: Thefts, Skimming, Fake Invoices, Oh My!" to examine several other common embezzlement schemes easily perpetrated by trusted employees. Hyperlink: Thefts, Skimming, Fake Invoices, Oh My! Think it couldn’t happen to you? Check out common schemes perpetrated by trusted employees in this article posted on the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners’ Web site. When crime occurs in the workplace or in the context of business, the temptation might be to think that no one is “really” injured. After all, insurance policies can cover some losses. Sometimes people think that if the victims of embezzlement do not immediately notice the embezzlement, then they must not “need” the money anyhow, so no real crime has been committed. Of course, these excuses are just smokescreens. When an insurance company has to pay for a claim arising from a crime, the insurance company is injured, as are the victim and society at large. Similarly, the fact that wealthy people or businesses do not notice embezzlement immediately does not mean that they are not entitled to retain their property. Crime undermines confidence in social order and the expectations that we all have about living in a civil society. No crime is victimless. A crime is a public injury. At the most basic level, criminal statutes reflect the rules that must be followed for a civil society to function. Crimes are an offense to civil society and its social order. In short, crimes are an offense to the public, and someone who commits a crime has committed an injury to the public. Criminal law differs from civil law in several important ways. See Figure 10.2.1 "Comparison between Criminal Law and Civil Law" for a comparison. For starters, since crimes are public injuries, they are punishable by the government. It is the government’s responsibility to bring charges against criminals. In fact, private citizens may not prosecute each other for crimes. When a crime has been committed—for instance, if someone is the victim of fraud—then the government collects the evidence and files charges against the defendant. When someone is charged with committing a crime, he or she is charged by the government in an indictment. The victim of the crime is a witness for the government but not for the prosecutor of the case. Note that our civil tort system allows a victim to bring a civil suit against someone for injuries inflicted on the victim by someone else. Indeed, criminal laws and torts often have parallel causes of action. Sometimes these claims carry the same or similar names. For instance, a victim of fraud may bring a civil action for fraud and may also be a witness for the state during the criminal trial for fraud. In a criminal case, the defendant is presumed to be innocent unless and until he or she is proven guilty. This presumption of innocence means that the state must prove the case against the defendant before the government can impose punishment. If the state cannot prove its case, then the person charged with the crime will be acquitted. This means that the defendant will be released, and he or she may not be tried for that crime again. The burden of proof in a criminal case is the prosecution’s burden, and the prosecution must prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. This means that the defendant does not have to prove anything, because the burden is on the government to prove its case. Additionally, the evidence must be so compelling that there is no reasonable doubt as to the defendant’s guilt. To be convicted of a crime, someone must possess the required criminal state of mind, or mens rea. Likewise, the person must have committed a criminal act, known as actus reus. Compare this to the standard of proof in a civil trial, which requires the plaintiff to prove the case only by a preponderance of the evidence. This means that the evidence to support the plaintiff’s case is greater (or weightier) than the evidence that does not. It’s useful to think of the criminal standard of proof—beyond a reasonable doubt—as something like 99 percent certainty, with 1 percent doubt. Compare this to preponderance of the evidence, which we might think of as 51 percent in favor of the plaintiff’s case, but up to 49 percent doubt. This means that it is much more difficult to successfully prosecute a criminal defendant than it is to bring a successful civil claim. Since a criminal action and a civil action may be brought against a defendant for the same incident, these differences in burdens of proof can result in verdicts that seem, at first glance, to contradict each other. Perhaps the most well-known cases in recent history in which this very outcome happened were the O. J. Simpson trials. Simpson was acquitted of murder in a criminal trial, but he was found liable for wrongful death in a subsequent civil action. Check out "Hyperlink: Not Guilty Might Not Mean Innocent" for a similar result in the business context. Hyperlink: Not Guilty Might Not Mean Innocent Richard Scrushy of HealthSouth was acquitted of several criminal charges relating to accounting fraud but was found civilly liable for billions. He was subsequently found guilty in a later criminal case for different crimes committed. This extra burden reflects the fact that the defendant in a criminal case stands to lose much more than a defendant in a civil case. Even though it may seem like a very bad thing to lose one’s assets in a civil case, the loss of liberty is considered to be a more serious loss. Therefore, more protections are afforded to the criminal defendant than are afforded to defendants in a civil proceeding. Because so much is at stake in a criminal case, our due process requirements are very high for anyone who is a defendant in criminal proceedings. Due process procedures are not specifically set out by the Constitution, and they vary depending on the type of penalty that can be levied against someone. For example, in a civil case, the due process requirements might simply be notice and an opportunity to be heard. If the government intends to revoke a professional license, then the defendant might receive notice by way of a letter, and the opportunity to be heard might exist by way of written appeal. In a criminal case, however, the due process requirements are higher. This is because a criminal case carries the potential for the most serious penalties. Constitutional Rights Relevant to Criminal Proceedings A person accused of a crime has several rights, which are guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. Many crimes are state law issues. However, many provisions of the U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights, which contains the rights of concern to criminal defendants, have been incorporated as applicable to the states. This is known as the incorporation doctrine. The Sixth Amendment guarantees that criminal defendants are entitled to an attorney during any phase of a criminal proceeding where there is a possibility of incarceration. This means that if a defendant cannot afford an attorney, then one is appointed for him or her at the state’s expense. The Fifth Amendment guarantees the right to avoid self-incrimination. This right means that the government cannot torture someone accused of committing a crime. Obviously, someone under the physical and psychological pain of torture will admit to anything, and this might be a strong incentive to allow torture if the government wanted someone to confess to a crime. However, the Fifth Amendment guarantees that people can choose to remain silent. No one is compelled to testify against himself or herself to make self-incriminating statements. The Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. We do not employ many techniques that were once used to punish people who committed crimes. For instance, we do not draw and quarter people, which was a practice in England during the Middle Ages. Recently, however, the question of the use of torture by the United States against aliens on foreign soil has been a hot topic. Many people believe that our Eighth Amendment protections should be extended to everyone held by U.S. authorities, whether they are on U.S. soil or not. The Fourth Amendment provides a prohibition against illegal searches and seizures. This means that if evidence were obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment, then it cannot be used against the defendant in a court of law. For Fourth Amendment requirements to be met, the government must first obtain a search warrant to search a particular area for particular items if there is a reasonable expectation of privacy in the area to be searched. The search warrant is issued only on probable cause. Probable cause arises when there is enough evidence, such as through corroborating evidence, to reasonably lead to the belief that someone has committed a crime. If a valid search warrant is issued, then the government may search in the area specified by the warrant for the item that is the subject of the warrant. If a search occurs without a warrant, the search might still be legal, however. This is because there are several exceptions to the requirements for a search warrant. These include the plain view doctrine, exigent circumstances, consent, the automobile exception, lawful arrest, and stop and frisk. The plain view doctrine means that no warrant is required to conduct a search or to seize evidence if it appears in the plain view of a government agent, like a police officer. Exigent circumstances mean that no warrant is required in the event of an emergency. For instance, if someone is cruelly beating his dog, the state can remove the dog without a warrant to seize the dog. The exigent circumstances exception to the warrant requirement is used in hot pursuit cases. For example, if the police are in hot pursuit of a suspect who flees into a house, the police can enter the house to continue the pursuit without having to stop to first obtain a warrant to enter the house. Consent means that the person who has the authority to grant consent for a search or seizure has granted the consent. This does not necessarily have to be the owner of the location to be searched. For example, if your roommate consents to a search of your living room, which is a common area shared by you and your roommate, then that is valid consent, even if the police find something incriminating against you and you or your landlord did not consent to the search. The automobile exception means that an automobile may be searched if it has been lawfully stopped. When a police officer approaches a stopped car at night and shines a light into the interior of the car, the car has been searched. No warrant is required. If the police officer spots something that is incriminating, it may be seized without a warrant. Additionally, no warrant is required to search someone who is subject to lawful arrest. This exception exists to protect the police officer. For instance, if the police could not search someone who was just arrested, they would be in peril of injury from any weapon that the person in custody might have possession of. Similarly, if someone is stopped lawfully, that person may be frisked without a warrant. This is the stop and frisk exception to the warrant requirement. In the business context, it is also important to note that administrative agencies in certain limited circumstances may conduct warrantless searches of closely regulated businesses, such as junkyards, where many stolen cars are disassembled for parts that can be sold. If the government violates a defendant’s constitutional rights when collecting evidence, then the evidence gathered in violation of those rights may be suppressed at trial. In other words, it may not be used against the defendant in trial. This is because evidence obtained through an illegal search is “fruit of the poisonous tree.” The fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine is known as the exclusionary rule. You should know, however, that lying to the defendant, or using forms of trickery and deceit, are not constitutional violations. Another common defense arises under the exclusionary rule regarding confessions. This is when the government, while holding someone in a custodial interrogation, questions that person without first reading the Miranda warnings. If someone is subjected to a custodial interrogation, he or she must first be read the Miranda warnings, which you have probably heard in the movies. Though the U.S. Supreme Court did not script the warnings specifically, the warnings are usually delivered in language close to this: “You have the right to remain silent. Anything that you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided to you by the state. Do you understand your rights?” The purpose of the Miranda warnings is to ensure that people understand that they have the right not to make self-incriminating statements and that they have the right to have counsel. If someone wants to invoke his or her rights, he or she has to do so unequivocally. “Don’t I need a lawyer?” is not enough. The Miranda warnings are not required unless someone is in custody and subject to interrogation. Someone in custody is not free to leave. So if a police officer casually strikes up a conversation with you while you are shopping in the grocery store and you happen to confess to a crime, that confession will be admissible as evidence against you even though you were not Mirandized. Why? Because you were not in custody and you were free to leave at any time. Likewise, if the police are not interrogating a person, then any statement made can also be used against that person, even if he or she is not Mirandized. Someone is being interrogated when the statements or actions by the police (or other government agent) are likely to give rise to a response. Another defense provided by the U.S. Constitution is the prohibition against double jeopardy. The Fifth Amendment prohibits the government from prosecuting the same defendant for the same crime after he or she has already stood trial for it. This means that the government must do a very thorough job in collecting evidence prior to bringing a charge against a defendant, because unless the trial results in a hung jury, the prosecution will get only that one chance to prosecute the defendant. Other defenses to crime are those involving lack of capacity, including insanity and infancy. Insanity is a lack of capacity defense, specifically applicable when the defendant lacks the capacity to understand that his actions were wrong. Infancy is a defense that may be used by persons who have not yet reached the age of majority, typically eighteen years of age. Those to which the infancy defense applies are not “off the hook” for their criminal actions, however. Juvenile offenders may be sentenced to juvenile detention centers for crimes they commit, with common goals including things like education and rehabilitation. In certain circumstances, juvenile offenders can be tried as adults, too. Last, the state may not induce someone to commit a crime that he or she did not already have the propensity to commit. If the state does this, then the defendant will have the defense of entrapment. If convicted in a criminal case, the defendant will be punished by the government, rather than by the victim. Once a defendant is convicted of a crime, he or she is a criminal. Punishment for criminal offenses can include fines, restitution, forfeiture, probation, civil disabilities, and a loss of liberty. Loss of liberty means that the convicted criminal may be forced to do community service, may be subject to house arrest, may be incarcerated or, in some states that have the death penalty, may even lose his or her life. Length of incarceration varies depending on whether the conviction was for a misdemeanor or a felony. A misdemeanor is a less serious offense than a felony, as determined by the legislative body and reflected in the relevant statutes. Even an infraction, such as a parking ticket, is a criminal offense, typically carrying a penalty of a fine. An infraction is considered less serious than a misdemeanor. When someone is convicted of violating a state criminal statute—a felony, misdemeanor, or infraction—the penalty will be set by the statute. For instance, the statute might state that the punishment will be “up to $5,000” or “up to one year in jail.” Often, the possible punishments are given in a range, which allows the judge leeway to take other matters into consideration when sentencing the offender. For example, if someone is convicted of a misdemeanor that carries a penalty of up to one year in jail, but that person is a first-time offender with no prior criminal history, the judge might impose a sentence of some lesser time in jail, such as thirty days, or no jail time whatsoever. Historically, all judges had the leeway to use their judgment when sentencing convicted criminals. However, disparities in sentences gave rise to concern about unequal treatment for similar offenses. In the 1980s the U.S. Sentencing Commission established the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, which were understood to be mandatory guidelines that federal judges were expected to use when sentencing offenders. The mandatory nature of these guidelines led some to observe that extremely harsh penalties were mandated for relatively minor offenses, given certain circumstances. Today, however, the federal guidelines are only advisory, due to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Booker, which held that a wide range of factors should be taken into consideration when sentencing offenders.United States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220 (2005). This opinion restored to federal district court judges the power to exercise their judgment when sentencing federal offenders. Several states, however, passed their own versions of sentencing guidelines, and state trial court judges in those states must rely on those guidelines when sentencing state offenders. This has led to controversial “three strikes” laws, which can also carry extremely harsh penalties—such as incarceration for twenty-five years to life—for relatively minor offenses. Often, the convicted criminal will be subject to various civil disabilities, depending on the state in which he or she lives. For instance, a felon, which is a criminal that has been convicted of a felony, may be prohibited from possessing firearms, running for public office, sitting on a jury, holding a professional license, or voting. A felon may be subject to deportation if he or she is an illegal immigrant. Besides loss of liberty and civil disabilities, other forms of punishment exist. Some of these are also appropriate in civil cases. Punishment for crimes also includes a fine, which is a monetary penalty for committing an offense. Fines can also be levied in civil cases. Restitution, which is repayment for damage done by the criminal act, is a common punishment for property damage crimes such as vandalism. Restitution can also be an appropriate remedy in civil law, particularly in contracts disputes. Forfeiture, which means involuntarily losing ownership of property, is also a punishment, and it is commonly used in illegal drug trafficking cases to seize property used during the commission of a crime. Check out "Hyperlink: Shopping, Anyone?", which is the U.S. Marshall’s Assets Forfeiture page, to see forfeited property currently available for sale. Finally, probation is a common penalty for committing crime. Probation is when the criminal is under the supervision of the court but is not confined. Typically, the terms of the probation require the criminal to periodically report to a state agent, such as a probation officer. Hyperlink: Shopping, Anyone? Purpose of Punishment Conviction of a crime carries criminal penalties, such as incarceration. But what is the purpose of punishment? We do not have a vigilante system, where victims may bring their own form of justice to an offender. If we had such a system we would have never-ending feuds, such as the infamous and long-standing nineteenth-century dispute between the Hatfields and McCoys from the borderlands of West Virginia and Kentucky. Several goals could be the focus of a criminal justice system. These could include retribution, punishment, rehabilitation, the protection of society, or deterrence from future acts of crime. Our criminal justice system’s penalties ostensibly do not exist for the purpose of retribution. Rather, rehabilitation, punishment, the protection of society, and deterrence from committing future crimes are the oft-cited goals. The Federal Bureau of Prisons captures some of these concepts in its mission statement. Federal Bureau of Prisons, “Mission and Vision of the Bureau of Prisons,” www.bop.gov/about/mission.jsp (accessed September 27, 2010). Sadly, rehabilitation programs are not always available or, when they are, they are not always considered appropriate—or, when appropriate, they do not always work. Additionally, the goal of deterrence is not always achieved, as reflected in high recidivism rates in the United States. Punishment of Business-Related Crime Punishments committed by “white-collar criminals” are the same as those committed by any criminal. White-collar crime is a term used to describe nonviolent crimes committed by people in their professional capacity or by organizations. Individuals involved in white-collar crime are criminally liable for their own actions. Additionally, since a corporation is a legal person, then the corporation can be convicted of committing crimes, too. Accordingly, corporations can be punished. However, not all constitutional protections afforded to individuals are available to corporations. For instance, a corporation does not have the right against self-incrimination. One difficulty that arises is the question of how to punish a corporation for engaging in criminal activity. After all, as they say, a corporation does not have a soul to rehabilitate or a body to incarcerate. Albert W. Alschuler, “Two Ways to Think about the Punishment of Corporations,” American Criminal Law Review, Public Law and Legal Theory Series, No. 09-19, 2009, p. 13, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1491263 (accessed September 27, 2010).This is a paraphrase of a remark first uttered by Lord Chancellor Thurlow between 1778 and 1792: “No soul to damn, no body to kick.” This is very different from a human being, who will stand to lose his or her liberty or who might be subject to mandatory counseling. We might argue that a criminal corporation should have its corporate charter revoked, which would be equivalent to a corporate death penalty. However, if that happened, a lot of innocent people who were not involved in the criminal activity would be harmed. For instance, employees would lose their jobs, and suppliers and customers would lose the goods or services of the corporate criminal. Entire communities could suffer the consequences of a few bad actors. On the other hand, corporations must be punished to respect the goal of deterrence of future crimes. One way that corporations are deterred is by the imposition of hefty fines. It is not uncommon to base such penalties on some percentage of profits, or all profits derived from the ill-gotten gains of criminal activity. Corporations that are criminals also lose much in the way of reputation. Of course, reputational damage can be very difficult to repair. Crime is a public injury. Criminal law differs from civil law in important ways, including who brings the claim, the burden of proof, due process, postconviction civil disabilities, and penalties. Those who are accused of committing a crime are afforded a high level of due process, including constitutional protections against illegal searches and seizures, and self-incrimination; guarantee of an attorney; and prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Several common defenses to crimes exist. If convicted, criminals can face loss of liberty, with sentencing structures based on statutory language and, in the federal system, guided by the U.S. Federal Sentencing Guidelines. The goals of imposing penalties for violating criminal laws include protecting society, punishing the offender, rehabilitating the offender, and deterrence from future acts of crime. Corporations can also be convicted of crimes, though unique questions relating to appropriate means of punishment arise in that context. - Imagine a woman who suffers from dementia and lives in an assisted living facility. One day, she wanders into another resident’s room and picks up an antique vase from the other resident’s bureau. As she holds the vase, she forgets that it belongs to someone else and walks out of the room with it. Later, she places it on her own nightstand, where she admires it greatly. Has there been a crime here? Why or why not? - Consider the case of O. J. Simpson, in which a criminal jury acquitted him of murder, but a civil court found him liable for wrongful death. Both trials arose out of the same incident. Do you think that the burden of proof should be the same for a civil case as it is for a criminal case? Why? - What should be the goal of penalties or punishments for criminal offenses? Compare and contrast how our criminal justice system would differ if the goal of punishment was each of the following: retribution, rehabilitation, protection of society, or deterrence from future acts of crime. - Consider the difference between minimum security federal prison camps and medium or high-level securities facilities, described here: www.bop.gov/locations/institutions/index.jsp. Should white-collar criminals receive the same punishment as those convicted of committing a violent crime? Why or why not? - Before listening to the link in this assignment, write down your perceptions of “federal prison camp.” Then, listen to an interview with a convicted white-collar criminal here: discover.npr.org/features/feature.jhtml?wfId=1149174. Compare your initial perceptions with what you have learned from this interview. How are they the same? How do they differ? - How should a corporation be punished for committing a crime? Find an example of a corporation that was convicted of a crime. Do you believe that the punishment was appropriate? Discuss. - What kinds of crimes do college students commit? While the vast majority of college students wouldn’t even think of committing a violent crime, many students do engage in crimes they believe to be victimless, such as downloading movies or buying and selling prescription drugs like Adderall or Ritalin. Are these crimes actually victimless? - The exclusionary rule was created by the Supreme Court as a means of punishing the police for violating a defendant’s constitutional rights. Some legal commentators, including several members of the Supreme Court, believe the exclusionary rule should be abolished. Without it, how do you think society can ensure the police will not violate a citizen’s constitutional rights?

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AGENDA SETTING AND COMMUNITY CONSENSUS: FIRST AND SECOND LEVEL EFFECTS. This study explores two sets of hypotheses: An increment in media use for political information corresponds to (1) an increment in community consensus about social priorities (first level agenda setting); and (2) an increment in community consensus about politicians' attributes (second level agenda setting). The analysis of first level effects, which largely replicates research conducted in the United States, shows that a trend toward consensus in an agenda of issues is also present among the Spanish public. Analysis of the agendas of substantive and affective characteristics of political candidates shows that the pattern of increasing social consensus is also present at the second level of agenda setting. Increasing consensus in the affective agenda of candidates' characteristics among different population subgroups suggests that the news media, especially television, contribute to more homogeneous evaluations of rival political candidates, leveling out ideological changes within democratic societies. Mass media have a significant influence on the focus of public attention. Over the past 25 years a wealth of evidence has accumulated about the influence of the mass media on the contents of the public agenda, especially the agenda of key issues facing a community (Dearing and Rogers 1996; McCombs and Bell 1996). In channeling the agenda towards a relative unification of opinions about the social priorities of the moment, the mass media help structure a practical approach to public issues, which are both ranked according to their relative importance and limited in number. This situation allows the community to concentrate its efforts and to focus governmental and social action. Without a compact set of issues or affairs to be resolved, a set ranked as priorities, the functionality of society would be all but impossible (McCombs 1997). Considering the short cycles of time in which the public gives attention to specific community preoccupations and maintains them as social priorities (Downs 1972), it is indeed reasonable to think that a society cannot function without appreciable levels of consensus in what agenda setting theory calls the public agenda. One also has to add that the number of issues the government, journalists and the public alike can address at any given time is also limited. The human mind (both `individual' and `public') has only a limited capacity to process information (Miller 1965; Shaw and McCombs 1977). Therefore a considerable social consensus about which issues reach the agenda is necessary. Perhaps the very possibility of society's existence as such resides precisely in this double limitation on processing and retention. REPLICATING AND EXTENDING FINDINGS ON CONSENSUS AND MEDIA USE Shaw and Martin (1992) concluded that greater consensus in the public agenda among demographic subgroups corresponds to greater exposure to the mass media.(1) Their study of North Carolina residents examined five distinct social groups, defined by age, gender, race, income, and education, in order to measure the consensus subgroup agendas as a function of frequency of contact with the news media. The clearest tendency toward consensus as the frequency of daily newspaper reading increased was found between men and women. Similar tendencies were found with respect to differences in race and age, although no appreciable increase in consensus between income or education groups was found. This last finding was explained by relatively high levels of consensus among the education subgroups at all reading levels. Shaw and Martin also found similar patterns of consensus in limited comparisons of the same subgroups when their television viewing habits were considered. However, the television analysis was based only on survey data, while the newspaper analysis considered both the level of correspondence between subgroup agendas measured in the survey and the match of each subgroup agenda with the newspaper agenda measured in a content analysis. Additional evidence of consensus as an outcome of media exposure was found in Taiwan (Chiang 1995), where the sample was divided according to gender, income, and education. For each of the three demographic comparisons consensus increased with newspaper reading. But the effects of television viewing found in the North Carolina study were not replicated, perhaps due to tight governmental control of television broadcasting in Taiwan. The effects of television on community consensus still need to be tested since neither Shaw and Martin's nor Chiang's study yielded a full comparison of newspapers' and television's role in the achievement of consensus. It should be noted that newspapers are frequently regarded as more influential than television in setting the agenda of the public (Shaw and McCombs 1977; Wanta 1997). If this is so, we could hypothesize that the contribution of newspapers to consensus is greater than that of television, but particular differences may still result when studying different demographic subgroups. This research project was designed and conducted in a seminar organized by the Department of Public Communication at the University of Navarra, under the direction of Maxwell McCombs and Esteban L6pez-Escobar. Our objective was to replicate and extend the original American research of Shaw and Martin during the May 28, 1995, elections for members of the regional parliament in the northern Spanish province of Navarra. In addition to a full comparison of newspapers and television news in a new cultural and political setting, Spain, we also sought to extend this research beyond the traditional domain of agenda setting, public issues, to additional levels of influence. In the vast majority of agenda setting studies to date, including Shaw and Martin (1992) and Chiang (1995), the unit of analysis on each agenda is an object, a public issue. Each of these objects in turn has numerous attributes, those characteristics and properties that sketch out the picture of each object in our heads and in the news coverage. Just as objects vary in salience, so do the attributes of each object. When members of the public and journalists describe objects, public issues, political leaders, or whatever, some attributes are emphasized, some mentioned only in passing, and others not at all (McCombs and Evatt 1995). Both the selection of objects for attention and the selection of attributes for describing these objects are powerful agenda-setting roles. The transmission of object salience, the traditional emphasis of agenda setting research, is the first level of agenda setting. The transmission of attribute salience, the emphasis of much current research (e.g. McCombs et al. 1997b; Lopez-Escobar et al. 1998) is the second level of agenda setting. HYPOTHESES AND METHODS We focused our study of the 1995 Spanish regional elections on the major issues in the city of Pamplona, the capital of Navarra, and on the images of the candidates for leader of the Navarra parliament, representing the five major political groupings: UPN (Union del Pueblo Navarro, right wing), CDN (Convergencia de Democratas Navarros, a new political party that had just splintered off from UPN), PSN (Partido Socialista de Navarra, an affiliate of PSOE, the national Spanish Workers Socialist Party), IU (Izquierda Unida, a coalition of left-wing parties), and HB (Herri Batasuna, a Basque nationalist party with an extreme left-wing ideology). Replicating and extending Shaw and Martin (1992), we will test four hypotheses, the roles of newspaper and television news exposure in the achievement of consensus at both the first level of agenda setting-the salience of public issues--and at the second level--the salience of attributes of political candidates. * Hypothesis 1. Increased exposure to newspapers corresponds to increased consensus among demographic subgroups regarding the public agenda of issues. * Hypothesis 2. Increased exposure to television news corresponds to increased consensus among demographic subgroups regarding the agenda of issues. * Hypothesis 3. Increased exposure to newspapers corresponds to increased consensus among demographic subgroups regarding the agenda of attributes of major political candidates. * Hypothesis 4. Increased exposure to television news corresponds to increased consensus among demographic subgroups regarding the agenda of attributes of major political candidates. Hypotheses were tested using data from a telephone survey conducted immediately after the election, as well as data from an analysis of the contents of local press and television during the electoral campaign. To define the subgroups we selected the variables of age, gender, education, and ideology or political affiliation. Two variables used by Shaw and Martin, income and race, are not included here because variations in income in Pamplona is relatively small, and the city is racially homogenous. Ideology was added to the Shaw and Martin design because in Spain public discourse strongly emphasizes differences between the `right' and the `left,' and these differences are therefore more relevant than would generally be the case in a purely bipartisan society. Telephone interviews lasting about 10 minutes were conducted June 1-5, 1995 with 299 residents of Pamplona randomly selected from the telephone directory. At the time of the survey 94.25 percent of the homes in Pamplona had telephones. The response rate for the survey was 60.8 percent. The balance, 39.2 percent, consists of refusals and persons not at home. To measure the first level of agenda setting, the relative salience of different issues, we used the Gallup poll question on `the most important problem' facing the community. The replies to this open-ended question yielded six categories, which constitute the public agenda of the city of Pamplona's most important problems: (1) `Disturbances' (30 percent), which refers to street violence in the old city center of Pamplona; (2) `Unemployment' (29 percent); (3) `Traffic' (23 percent), which refers to automobile congestion in the city; (4) `Reconstruction of the old city center' (10 percent) which includes the topics of unoccupied housing, and quality of life in the city center; (5) `Pedestrianization of the city center' (4 percent), which refers to an initiative to prohibit traffic in specified areas, granting access only to pedestrians; (6) `Demonstrations by HB' (3 percent), which refers to the problems created by street demonstrations organized by Herri Batasuna. At the second level of agenda setting, the agendas of candidate attributes, the survey asked another open-ended question: `Imagine that you had a friend who didn't know anything about the candidates for the Parliament. What would you tell your friend about ... (each candidate)?' The data on the candidates' image were organized according to two dimensions: (a) an affective dimension, referring to the (i) `positive,' (ii) `negative' or (iii) `neutral' terms with which the candidates were described, and (b) a substantive dimension which included three descriptive categories: (i) the candidate's `ideology' and his issue positions, (ii) his `qualifications' and experience, and (iii) his personal characteristics and `personality.' The agenda of candidate's substantive characteristics reflects the distinctive characteristics of those who aspire to elected office; characteristics that are considered more or less important by the mass media and by society. It tells us which aspects are salient when the public considers the character of politicians. Considering an affective public agenda about candidates for elected office suggests a possible contribution by the mass media to an appraisal of political leaders that in some manner is shared by individuals belonging to different groups--and even to groups supposedly in conflict, as is the case of voters leaning to the right or to the left. Comparisons of substantive descriptions of the candidates, plus the affective tone of these descriptions, both aggregated across all five candidates, will reveal how much similarity there is in various social groups' descriptions of political candidates. Using the survey data we defined four pairs of demographic subgroups: `younger', i.e. those less than 43 years old (48 percent) or `older', i.e. those aged 43 or more (52 percent); those with a university education, whether completed or not (39 percent) and those without (61 percent); men (38 percent) and women (62 percent); those on the `right' (58 percent) and those on the `left' (42 percent). Age groups were defined according to the median age of the population in Pamplona. The categories of `right' and `left' were defined according to the declared vote in the May, 1995 election, taking into account that the UPN (Union of the Navarran People) is ordinarily associated with the `right'; whereas the `left' generally comprises the PSN-PSOE (Navarran Socialist Party-Spanish Workers' Socialist Party), IU (United Left), and HB (Herri Batasuna). In the case of voters for the new party, CDN (Convergence of Navarran Democrats), the assignment to the `right' or `left' was based on respondents' recall of their vote in previous elections. Despite the under-representation of men in the sample, the distribution of male respondents in terms of age, ideology, media use, etc., is adequately random to test the hypotheses. Previous studies of consensus determined media use by the frequency of exposure, i.e. the number of days a week in which a newspaper is read or a news program is watched. In contrast, exposure was measured here by the level of attention given by the reader or viewer of the news to content that is understood as political. In the survey 32 percent of the respondents affirmed that they read `all' of the political information in the press, 57 percent `little or some,' and 12 percent, `none'; 41 percent of those surveyed affirmed that they paid attention to `all' of the political information on television, 46 percent to `little or some,' and 13 percent to `none.' To determine the first level media agenda, the news coverage of the local daily newspapers, Diario de Navarra and Diario de Noticias, and the regional TV news programs, Pamplona TV, and Telenavarra, were content analysed. Pamplona TV is a local commercial channel; Telenavarra is the regional program of TVE1, one of two channels of the Spanish state television service. The content analysis used the issue categories that emerged from the survey question of the most important issues. Content of both papers and of both TV channels was aggregated into a consolidated newspaper agenda and a consolidated TV agenda because of high correlations among the agendas and high overlap of the audiences within each news medium. For the analysis of consensus at the second level of agenda setting, the images of the candidates in terms of both the substantive and affective dimension were content analysed in the two local newspapers and Telenavarra. Again, the newspaper agendas were consolidated to form a single newspaper agenda for the analysis. The local TV news was omitted because the survey found that it was not an important source of information about the political candidates. The same coding sheets were used for the newspapers and television. Ten coders, all familiar with the current political environment in Navarra, but none a member or activist of any of the parties, carried out the content analysis. A preliminary coding of the data to determine reliability yielded a median Pearson's r of 0.91.(2) CONSENSUS AT THE FIRST LEVEL The overall correlation between the agenda of the newspapers, Diario de Navarra and Diario de Noticias, and the public's agenda was .80 for the six `problems of the city of Pamplona.' Turning to the analysis of the public agenda among the various demographic subgroups, Figure 1 displays the results according to the three levels of newspaper reading. The triangular model, originally proposed by Shaw and Martin (1992), presents the values of the correlations between demographic subgroups at the base of each triangle. [Figure 1 ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In the original study conducted in North Carolina, there was no tendency toward consensus among education subgroups, whereas in Pamplona this is the subgroup showing the strongest tendency. But the increase in agreement is not monotonic across the three levels of readership. Rather the distinction is between readers and non-readers of political information in the newspaper. Among men and women there is a similar pattern, a sharp distinction between readers (to any degree) and non-readers. Shaw and Martin also found increased consensus among men and women. For ideology the pattern is curvilinear, but again readers are distinctly different from non-readers. For age the pattern is also curvilinear, but the distinction between readers and non-readers is blurred. Shaw and Martin found a clearer pattern in the age groups. In sum, the patterns for three of the four demographics analyses--education, gender and ideology--support Hypothesis 1. But among the three demographic variables used in both this study and the original North Carolina study there is an identical outcome for only one, gender. The tendency toward convergence among demographic subgroups can also be examined by applying the `index of convergence' proposed by Shaw and Martin (1992, p. 914), a measure which takes into account the strength of each group's relationship with the media agenda (the legs of the triangles in Figure 1) as well as the degree of correlation between the subgroup agendas that was the focus of our initial analysis.(3) Again, as Figure 2 shows, there is a clear difference between those persons who are interested in political processes and participate in them by acquiring information and those who show no interest in political information. The patterns across the levels of readership match those found in Figure 1. Hypothesis 1 is supported by the difference between those who do not read newspapers at all and those who do. [Figure 2 ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Turning to the television audience, the overall correlation of the television news agenda with the public agenda was .66, slightly lower than the match with newspapers. The analysis, proceeding in the same way as for the newspaper readers, shows the convergence of the ideological subgroups increases monotonically with attention to political news on television, supporting Hypothesis 2 even more strongly than for these subgroups among newspaper readers. There also is support for Hypothesis 2 among the education subgroups. The pattern here is identical to that found among newspaper readers, i.e. a sharp distinction between consumers and non-consumers of political information. The pattern is also identical for the TV and newspaper audiences among the age subgroups. Unfortunately, neither pattern supports the hypotheses. Finally, the gender analysis for the television audience directly contradicts Hypothesis 2. Convergence among men and women steadily declines with the amount of attention paid to political information on television. In sum, there is some evidence of convergence among the television audience, but the evidence is weaker than for newspaper readers. Analysis of the index of convergence replicates the four patterns. There is support for Hypothesis 2 among the ideological and education subgroups, but not among the age and gender subgroups. CONSENSUS AT THE SECOND LEVEL For the study of consensus at the second level of agenda setting, we selected those data on the attribute agendas of both the media and the public in the elections for the parliament of Navarra. We present first the substantive dimension, the candidates' characteristics, and then the affective dimension, the appraisal of the candidates. The overall correlation between the substantive images of the candidates in the newspapers and the public's images of these candidates is .41. In the case of television news the overall correlation is .12, essentially no match at all. Summarizing the results of the direct comparisons--corresponding to the baseline of the triangles in Figure 1--the median correlation between the four demographic subgroups steadily increases with level of attention paid to political information in the newspaper. It is the same pattern that we saw in the level one analyses, a sharp distinction between non-readers and readers of political information. The same pattern prevails for the television audience, but the distinction between non-consumers and consumers of political information is not quite as distinct. What also stands out here to a certain extent is the high level of consensus even among non-consumers of political information in either newspaper or television, a benchmark measure of the shared political culture (results not shown). Turning to the detailed comparisons based on the index of convergence, Figure 3 shows increased convergence in the agenda of substantive attributes among both young and old with increased consumption of political information in the newspapers and on television. There is a modest monotonic increase across all three levels of consumption, providing good support for Hypotheses 3 and 4 in terms of substantive attributes. [Figure 3 ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] However, among the education, gender and ideology subgroups there is little variation across the three levels of a function to newspaper use, although it should be noted that the index of convergence is relatively high in all cases. That is to say, there is little support for Hypothesis 3 for these subgroups. In contrast, the support for Hypothesis 4, convergence rising with increased consumption of political information on television, is strong among all four groups. The same monotonic increase noted for the age groups is also present among the education and gender groups. For the ideology groups, the distinction is between non-consumers and consumers of political information on television. The overall correlation between the affective images of the candidates in the newspapers and the public's images of these candidates is .86. In the case of television news, the overall correlation is. 18, essentially no match at all. Summarizing the results of the direct comparisons of the four demographic subgroups, results show a familiar pattern of support for the hypotheses. For both the newspaper audience and the television audience, there is a sharp distinction between non-consumers and consumers of political information. Although the pattern is the same, the median correlations are consistently weaker than their counterparts for the substantive dimension of second level agenda setting (results not shown). Turning to the detailed comparisons based on the index of convergence, Figure 4 shows a strong pattern of support for the second level agenda setting hypotheses. Looking first at the newspaper data, there is a monotonic increase in the index of convergence corresponding to levels of reading among men and women. The familiar distinction between consumers and non-consumers is apparent among the education and ideology subgroups. Only among the age groups is there lack of support for Hypothesis 3. The negative monotonic trend there is directly contrary to the hypothesis. [Figure 4 ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In the television audience there is support for Hypothesis 4 in all four demographic comparisons. Among the age, gender, and ideology groups there is a monotonic increase in the index of convergence corresponding to increased use of TV for political information. The trend is not monotonic in the education subgroups, but the familiar distinction between non-consumers and consumers is readily apparent. Although the overall level of support is higher for the television hypothesis than for the newspaper hypothesis, the values of the index of convergence for the affective dimension are consistently lower in the television data. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS The degree of support for the general proposition that there is an increase in consensus corresponding to increased use of news media for political information varies considerably across the 24 settings examined here. But overall our hypotheses about consensus and media use are supported in 17 of the 24 sets of comparisons displayed in Table 1. The total of 24 is obtained from four demographic groups times six different agendas (the various combinations of levels and media). TABLE 1 A summary of the support for the consensus hypotheses Consensus at first Consensus at second level of agenda level of agenda setting setting Substantive dimension Demographic groups Newspapers TV Newspapers TV Age [check] [check] Education [check] [check] [check] Gender [check] [check] Ideology [check] [check] [check] Consensus at second level of agenda setting Affective dimension Demographic groups Newspapers TV Age [check] Education [check] [check] Gender [check] [check] Ideology [check] [check] Comparing the two levels of agenda setting, the agenda of issues and the agenda of attributes, the degree of support slightly favors the agenda of attributes. Five of the eight patterns examined for level one and 12 of the 16 patterns examined for level two support the proposition. Within level two, there is stronger support for agenda setting at the affective dimension than at the substantive dimension-seven of eight comparisons vs. five of eight. Even though the values of the index of convergence for the ideology groups in Figure 4 are smaller than those found in Figure 2 (the agenda of issues) or Figure 3 (the agenda of substantive attributes), the clear trend of an increase in the convergence of the tone of candidate descriptions is a remarkable finding in a political setting where, typically, positions on the right and left are firmly held. In short, despite firm partisan views there is a movement toward similar affective pictures of the candidates corresponding to use of the news media for political information. For comparisons of newspapers and television, the levels and dimensions of agenda setting also must be taken into account. At level one, three comparisons support Hypothesis 1 (newspapers) and only two comparisons support Hypothesis e (television) At level two, only one comparison supports Hypothesis 3 (newspapers at the substantive dimension) and all four comparisons support Hypothesis 4 (television at the substantive dimension). For the affective dimension, three comparisons support Hypothesis 3 and all four comparisons support Hypothesis 4. That is to say, across both levels of agenda setting, there is more evidence for a converging effect of television than for a similar effect for newspapers. Among the four demographic subgroups the clearest distinctions are found among the education and ideology subgroups, five out of six comparisons in both cases. The weakest pattern is found among the younger and older subgroups, only three out six comparisons confirm the hypotheses. For gender, four of six comparisons support the proposition. Of course, all of these comparisons must also be considered in terms of the actual values of the index of convergence, which vary considerably from setting to setting. In sum, the theory of the mass media agenda setting offers a useful perspective--whose implications have still not been completely developed--for examining the influence of news on the public mind. Most of the research until now has been centered in the first level of agenda setting, namely an agenda of issues. This investigation, which focused on the maintenance of consensus within society, deals with both the first as well as the second level of the agenda. It addresses not only the transfer of issues, but also the transfer of characteristics and appraisals--attributes--from the mass media to the public. Increasing consensus in the attribute agenda of candidates' characteristics among different population subgroups suggests that the news media make an important contribution to the political environment in democratic societies, leveling out divergent appraisals of political actors that are a reflection of deep ideological cleavages. (1) The idea that heavy media use evens out differences between socio-demographic (or ideological) groups draws somewhat on the notion of mainstreaming introduced by Gerbner et al. 1980. (2) Additional details from the content analysis and survey, including full descriptions of the issue and image agendas, are presented in McCombs, Llamas, Lopez-Escobar and Rey (1997a). (3) a and b being the two correlation coefficients for media and the two subgroups with a [is greater than or equal to] b, and c being the correlation between the two subgroups, the index is computed by (a + b) - (a - b) + c. Chiang, C. (1995): `Bridging and Closing the Gap of our Society: Social Function of Media Agenda Setting, A Case Study in Taiwan'. Unpublished master's thesis, University of Texas at Austin. Dearing, J. and Rogers, E. (1996): Agenda Setting, Thousand Oaks, CA; Sage. Downs, A. (1972): `Up and Down with Ecology: The Issue Attention Cycle', Public Interest, 28, 38-50. Gerbner, G., Gross, L., Morgan, M., and Signorielli, N. (1980): `The "Mainstreaming" of America: Violence Profile No. 11', Journal of Communication, 30, 10-29. Lopez-Escobar, E., Llamas, J., McCombs, M., and Le Reyon, F. (1998): `Two Levels of Agenda Setting Among Advertising and News in the i995 Spanish Elections', Political Communication, 15, 225-38. McCombs, M. (1997): `Building Consensus: The News Media's Agenda Setting Roles', Political Communication, 14, 433-44. McCombs, M. and Bell, T. (1996): `The Agenda Setting Role of Mass Communication'. In: Salwen, M. and Stacks, D. (eds.) An Integrated Approach To Communication Theory and Research. Mahwah, NJ, Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 93-110. McCombs, M. and Evatt, D. (1995): `Los temas y los aspectos: Explorando una nueva dimension de la agenda setting', Comunicacidn y Sociedad, 8, 7-32. McCombs, M., Llamas, J., Lopez-Escobar, E., and Rey, F. (1997a): `Candidate Images in Spanish Elections: Second-level Agenda-setting', Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 74, 703-172 McCombs, M., Shaw, D., and Weaver, D. (eds.) (1997b): Communication and Democracy: Exploring the Intellectual Frontiers in Agenda Setting Theory, Mahwah, NJ, Lawrence Erlbaum. Miller, G. (1965): `The Magic Number Seven Plus or Minus Two'. Psychological Review, 63, 81-97. Shaw, D. and Martin, S. (1992): `The Function of Mass Media Agenda Setting', Journalism Quarterly, 69, 902-20. Shaw, D. and McCombs, M. (eds.) (1977): The Emergence of American Political Issues, St. Paul, MN, West Publishing. Wanta, W. (1997): `The Messenger and the Message: Differences among the Mass Media'. In McCombs, M., Shaw, D., and Weaver, D. (eds.) Communication and Democracy: Exploring the Intellectual Frontiers in Agenda Setting Theory, Mahwah, NJ, Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 137-51. Esteban Lopez-Escobar is Professor of Public Opinion and Communication Theory, School of Communication, University of Navarra, 31080 Pamplona, Spain. Tel: +34 948 425600; fax: 7 34 948 425636; E-mail:email@example.com. |Printer friendly Cite/link Email Feedback| |Author:||Lopez-Escobar, Esteban; Llamas, Juan Pablo; McCombs, Maxwell| |Publication:||International Journal of Public Opinion Research| |Date:||Dec 22, 1998| |Previous Article:||A SHIFT FROM THE RIGHT TO THE LEFT AS AN INDICATOR OF VALUE CHANGE: A BATTLE FOR THE CLIMATE OF OPINION.| |Next Article:||AUSTRALIA'S `STOLEN CHILDREN': WHICH POLL WOULD A POLL-FOLLOWING PRIME MINISTER HAVE FOLLOWED?|

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“What would talk of the Holocaust be like in America if a skeptical rationalist like Primo Levi, rather than a religious mystic like Wiesel, had been its principal interpreter?” The first time I bumped into this question was not in the book where it was originally published – more precisely, in a footnote of Peter Novick’s 1999 The Holocaust in American Life –, but at the beginning of a paper published in 2006 by a British literary critic, as I am myself, on the journal “Italian Studies”. Its author, Robert Gordon, opened it by reformulating Novick’s question as a non-hypothetical one, thus asking himself and his reader: “What was talk of the Holocaust like in Italy, where Primo Levi was indeed its principal interpreter over many decades?”1 The question, and the article containing it, was the first step in a long research, which has now led to the significant results displayed in Gordon’s volume The Holocaust in Italian Culture 1944-2010.2 Gordon himself explains its genesis by stating that “the idea for the book grew out of a long period of intense work on one remarkable survivor-writer, Primo Levi. I began to be curious about the world beyond Levi’s texts, the cultural field in which he was embedded” (p. ix). The book has already been translated into Italian by Giuliana Oliviero.3 The translation bears a different title, which emphasizes once more the centrality of Primo Levi’s work in the history of how knowledge of the Holocaust took its peculiar Italian shape, since the first and new part of the title – Scolpitelo nei cuori. L’Olocausto nella cultura italiana (1944-2010) – is actually a slightly altered verse from Shemà, the poem we read at the opening of Levi’s first book Se questo è un uomo. Gordon himself defines Primo Levi as “the prime mediator of Holocaust awareness and the embodiment of the dignified figure of the survivor” in Italy (p. 20). However, and despite Gordon’s university specialization, The Holocaust in Italian Culture is not a book that can appeal exclusively to literary critics or literary historians – in fact, quite the contrary. Throughout the book, Gordon acts as an historian and sometimes a sociologist of culture, rather than a literary analyst. The perspective from which Gordon produces his research is the same from which during the last two decades similar works in this academic discipline were born. From the point of view of the actual centrality of the Holocaust in Western cultures, Gordon tries to explain how we got so far, by analyzing a specific national context that is continually blending and interrelating with transnational and global levels. But there is a salient difference between Gordon’s and seminal studies of the same sort (I am referring especially to Novick’s 1999 book and Annette Wieviorka’s 1998 L’Ère du témoin4): Gordon is not interested in the “memory” of the Holocaust, neither collective nor individual. He rather intends to investigate cultural artefacts that convey knowledge and representations of the Holocaust, by detailing how they shaped up in the context where they were produced, and how they in turn gave form to the knowledge and representation of those past events. To say it with Gordon’s own words, his book tells “the history of how […] Italy confronted and gave shape in cultural forms to what we now call the Holocaust or the Shoah” (p. 15). By effectively doing so, Gordon’s work will serve as a powerful tool against the risks implicated in every cultural canonization: those of forgetting the historically and culturally specific background in which a given cultural product is created and firstly received. I shall give just an example of this kind of misinterpretations, taking it from one of the subjects I know better, namely the troubled history of the reception of Primo Levi’s work. At the end of the Nineties, the first of Levi’s biographies, written by the French journalist Myriam Anissimov, triggered an animated debate amongst the still relatively few experts in the writer’s opus.5 The dispute concerned the judgemental account given by Anissimov of the first rejection of Se questo è un uomo in 1947 by the publisher Einaudi and its editors Cesare Pavese and Natalia Ginzburg. According to the biographer, this refusal was just the beginning of a long-lasting failed recognition by the Italian cultural establishment of one of its best contemporary writers. Levi’s relatively marginal position in the field of Italian literature, at least during his life, is a fact, which needs however to be explained through subtler cultural and sociological analytical tools than those employed by Anissimov, whose biography, unlike those by Ian Thomson and Carole Angier,6 repeatedly reveals an embarrassing lack of detailed knowledge about Italian cultural, social and political history. It is not, however, just a matter of details. I also believe it historically misleading and ethically unfair to judge the behaviour of writers, editors or literary critics, who came into contact with a text for the first time, on the basis of present-day cultural or literary evaluation criteria. Not only in 1947 the reasons why we now consider Se questo è un uomo an essential feature of the Holocaust literary canon, as well as a masterwork of Italian contemporary literature, did not exist; in 1947, the very idea of what we now call “Holocaust” or “Shoah” did not exist. This stage in our cultural history is thoroughly detailed in Chapter 4 of Gordon’s book (“New Knowledge”), which is dedicated to the period between the end of WWII and 1963. In particular, Gordon’s accurate bibliographical survey clearly shows that during the first decade after the war, in Italy as everywhere else, the first accounts written by people who survived extermination or concentration camps used to encounter editorial rejections and public indifference. The editorial trajectory of Levi’s book should thus be no matter of scandal, and rather contributes to illustrate a larger bundle of similar stories. Gordon’s overview of the period helps us understand the meaning a book such as Se questo è un uomo could acquire in the eyes of its contemporaries, and also why it was so difficult for Pavese or Ginzburg to recognize its value in 1947. The risks I have pointed up to through the example of Anissimov’s biography are nowadays far more widespread than singular instances of inaccurate research. Since the annual, worldwide celebrations of Holocaust Remembrance Days are based more often than not on ahistorical, even metaphysical perception and awareness of the past, studies such as The Holocaust in Italian culture are something we cannot consider relevant exclusively in the academic field, but acquire a broader social meaning. The value of Gordon’s work also lies in the author’s ability to move its discourse between a plurality of levels: national, transnational and global; cultural and political. This is a result of the organization of the material in the book, whose structure continuously shifts the focus brought on the scrutinized objects. Sections such as Chapter 4, containing a broader outline and discussing the cultural products of a period in a more or less well-ordered chronology, alternate with others focusing instead on the story of singular artefacts or events, whose trajectory through the decades is followed and explained from their first appearance to the various meanings they acquire in different times and stages of the social and political scene. The design of the volume is something we should therefore focus on more in detail. To begin with, the book is divided in two parts, the first of which provides a theoretical framework and an effective synthesis of the more relevant issues addressed by the research. Chapter 1 (“The Shape of Italy’s Holocaust”) begins with describing five templates of cultural elaboration concerning the Holocaust that occurred with common features in every Western culture from 1945 on. The succession of these phases shows a progression from the mid-Forties, when what we now call “Holocaust” was not an event perceived as such, to present-day common-sense reading of it as “The Absolute Evil”. Obviously, “the Holocaust” is not strictly speaking an event, but rather a way to gather under a same labelling and understanding a bundle of singular, different, but also interrelated historical facts. The five templates of cultural elaboration have produced over time a series of meanings of the word that differ precisely in including or excluding certain historical phenomena, and which also began to be “remembered” in different historical periods. Gordon’s first chapter proceeds thus on detailing the principal among these meanings and on correlating them with specifically Italian issues. Hence, thinking of the “Holocaust” as a “Nazi genocide” has been a way to avoid measuring the extent of Italians’ complicity in it; using “Lager” – namely, the network of Nazi labour, concentration and extermination camps – as a metaphor for “Holocaust” have corresponded to early exclusively antifascist or Resistance interpretations of the figure of the deportee; the late definition of “Holocaust” as comprehending non-industrialised massacres, such as those carried out by the Einsatzkommandos, along with industrialised mass extermination, coincided with a renewed attention paid to the massacres (“eccidi”) committed by German troops in Italy; finally, the tendency to identify the “Holocaust” as something exposing the dark side of modernity has contributed to a consideration of Fascism as a typically modern totalitarianism. Chapter 3 (“The Field”) accounts for the complex network of phenomena scrutinized in the book. Gordon distinguishes four “spheres of cultural production” involved in the apprehension and representation of the Holocaust. The first concerns the undertakings of associations and institutions, from those more directly involved (Aned, Cdec, Jewish communities) to the apparatuses of the State, of political parties and of the Church. We may loosely designate this first sphere as a “political” one, while the second relates instead to the knowledge developed inside the university, particularly by historians. The third and fourth spheres cover what should more correctly be apprehended as a common ground, since it is difficult to draw a line between what Gordon designates as “cultural sphere” and that of “cultural industries and media”. Such a distinction is vaguely reminiscent of a sociologically outdated polarity between “high” and “low” culture, according to which the cultural products disseminated through media are necessarily to be regarded as pertaining to a lower-rank culture. It is true, however, that Gordon does not make a divide between these two spheres in order to attribute different values to the cultural products he examines, but rather in order to distinguish between two types of audiences, of which the one targeted on by newspapers, magazines, television, radio and the internet corresponds to a “broad, non-expert and semi-participatory public” (p. 35). As I see it, although, the distinction remains arguable, since it implies, for instance, to include publishers in the fourth sphere, while on the contrary agents from the publishing world are thoroughly involved in the cultural production, as their activity is the channel through which literary or scientific works are disseminated between expert and non-expert publics likewise. Be that as it may, the sphere of production Gordon calls “cultural” is the main area he investigates. Consequently, he identifies various subcategories inside this major one: “works, sites, artefacts and events” (p. 33). We may detail the contents of this area through a different set of categories: namely, fictional and non-fictional narratives (including early and late testimonial writings, poems, novels, short stories, theatrical pieces, fictional and documentary movies, television serials, songs, both produced in Italy or imported from abroad); monumental architecture; “events”, that is, public displays of art or official commemorations (and their political resonance). Gordon declares not to be interested in a formal or textual analysis of these different artefacts; what really matters to him “is rather how they are positioned within their field of production and transmission, how they are projected into the public sphere and translated into forms of knowledge and awareness” (p. 34). Gordon’s objective thus appears to be that of elaborating a sociological history of these cultural products; as a matter of fact, in a note at the beginning of chapter 3 he introduces a reference to the theory of fields by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu: “The field of Holocaust culture loosely resembles this model, insofar as it contains agent groups and individuals “competing” to give shape to definitions and understanding of, and values and meanings drawn from, the Nazi genocide, in the context of both the larger field of Italian culture and the international field of Holocaust culture” (p. 213n). I shall discuss later the author’s appropriation of Bourdieu’s “elusive” – according to Gordon – theory. The combination of the three chapters in Part I is an example of how the book continually shifts its focus between a synthetic and an analytical approach. Embedded between the theoretical and panoramic Chapters 1 and 3, Chapter 2 (“Villa Torlonia”) offers the first of numerous and exemplary close-readings of a singular cultural object, which is in this case the Italian national museum of the Shoah, still under construction in Rome. By discussing the significance of the decision to put the Museum in the site of Villa Torlonia, Gordon reveals it as a place where four major nodes of the Italian public discourse concerning the Holocaust symbolically interweave: firstly, having been Mussolini’s private residence, Villa Torlonia recalls the relationship between Fascism and the Holocaust; secondly, since under the grounds of Villa Torlonia were discovered several Jew catacombs a couple of centuries older than the Christian era, the site recalls the very ancient and peculiar history of Italian Judaism; thirdly, the choice to put the museum in the capital city abandoning an earlier project to create it in Ferrara show how impossible it is not to take into account regional and local issues as opposed or simply interlaced with national ones; finally, the name the museum will bear, “Museo della Shoah”, exemplifies a linguistic choice that distinguishes the Italian from the global context, where “Holocaust” is the more wide-spread naming option. The chapter highlights other connections between Italy and the world: the architectural concept of the project shows many similarities with homologous national museums built since the Nineties in Washington, Paris and Berlin, and the decision to establish the museum in Rome was influenced by the support of Spielberg’s Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation. Gordon also explains how the museum educational plan reflects peculiar features of the Italian cultural elaboration of the Holocaust: for instance, an entire hall is to be dedicated to Primo Levi, and a “Percorso dei giusti” will echo not only the “Righteous among the Nations” celebrated in Yad Vashem, but also the myth of the “good Italian” as exemplified by Giorgio Perlasca’s paradigmatic story. By exploring the meaning of every feature of the future museum, Chapter 2 acts as a synopsis of the second part of the book, since many themes firstly presented in relation to the museum’s plan are thoroughly discussed in the following chapters. Moreover, though Part II opens and closes with two chapters that detail in almost chronological sequence the events occurred during the years 1944-63 and 1986-2010, its more fascinating sections are those constructed in the same way as Chapter 2, where Gordon’s historical narrative focuses on cultural products or facts on which several layers of memory and knowledge have sedimented. Chapter 4 is followed by two monographic chapters that highlight the role played by a singular agent in making the Italian apprehension of the Holocaust different from elsewhere. In the first case, the agent is an individual, in the second, a place. Chapter 5 is thus dedicated to Primo Levi, since “local inflections of larger cultural and memorial discourse can also be determined by the agency and accidental influence of single voices in a given cultural field” (p. 64). The protagonist of this chapter is not the powerful, subtle and morally complex writer, who in the last two decades have been finally recognized as such, but rather the public intellectual: “a low-level, public Levi”, who exercised his influence “in schools and other public arenas” by means of “occasional and pedagogical writings” (p. 68). Gordon begins by analyzing the picture of the Holocaust implied by “Levi’s Holocaust library”, namely the books the writer suggests as further readings at the end of the first school edition of Se questo è un uomo (1973); he then expands the perimeter of this “library” by surveying the network of historical works, testimonial and literary writings, in which Primo Levi was involved as translator, reviewer or promoter. Finally, the last paragraph examines Levi’s choices about how to name the Holocaust, and how they have differed over the years. According to the persuasive Chapter 6, “Rome”, the millennial history and heritage of the capital have been as influential in shaping the Italian Holocaust as the singular voice of the extraordinary intellectual and writer Primo Levi was. A brief chronicle of the events occurred in Rome between July 1943 and June 1944 is followed by an impressive account of books (fictions as well as testimonial writings or essays), movies, monuments, public debates, even judicial trials and urban mythologies, which in the following decades have been generated from or in regard to those events. Chapters 7 (“Shared Knowledge”), 8 (“Grey Zones and Good Italians”) and 9 (“Transnational Lines”), by cross cutting through the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties, deal with cultural objects of the most disparate nature. I shall mention just a few of the issues arisen by them, those I have found most thought-provoking: why in Italy the prevailing naming choice for the racial deportation and extermination has been “Shoah”, instead of “Holocaust”; how, when and thanks to whom several Italian Holocaust memorials have been built, from the first in Milan (1946) to those built in Auschwitz in 1967 and 1980; how the Italian and other national Holocaust cultures have interrelated, especially the Israeli and American ones. Regarding the latter, I have found particularly remarkable Gordon’s choice to analyze this cultural exchange from an original point of view, namely, by following the direction leading from Italy to the Usa (the other way round being usually the more spoken of). The cultural products exported from Italy that met with an American success – a success then rebounding all over the world – are chiefly movies, especially those consecrated by an Oscar prize or nomination (Lina Wertmüller’s Pasqualino Settebellezze and Roberto Benigni’s La vita è bella), but a similar trajectory has also characterized Primo Levi’s international renown, having the writer’s fame become global since the “American discovery” of his work in 1984. Talking of Primo Levi, in Chapter 8 a book of his becomes once again the point of departure of a significant track through the Italian cultural and political scene. “Grey Zones and Good Italians” relates the story of how, during the late Eighties and Nineties, the formula “la zona grigia” strayed from the use and meaning Primo Levi forged it for in I sommersi e i salvati (1986). This story of misreading and misuses is a telling one, since it mingles with an important renewal in historiography, which at the beginning of the Nineties led to question the prevalent interpretations of Fascism, Resistance and Italian’s behaviour during WWII. In particular, historians began to demolish the defensive myth of “good Italians”, according to which the Italian people was one of the most reluctant and less cooperative in the racial extermination process. “One of the stories this book needs to tell”, Gordon states since the beginning of the book, “is about Fascism’s and Italians’ apparent distance from the Holocaust, and about how this notion seems to have been so completely turned on its head by the end of the century” (p. 16). Finally, I would like at least to enumerate several noteworthy analyses of a singular cultural product we find disseminated in Part II: a detailed description of Giacomo Debenedetti’s, Curzio Malaparte’s and Umberto Saba’s seminal writings about the Holocaust in Chapter 4;7 a comparison between Carlo Lizzani’s movie L’oro di Roma (1961) and Ferzan Ozpetek’s one La finestra di fronte (2003) in Chapter 6; an examination of the background and significance of Francesco Guccini’s song Auschwitz (1965) in Chapter 7; an account of the international production of Gillo Pontecorvo’s movie Kapò (1959) put into relationship with the director’s subsequent career between Italy and France in Chapter 9. The last chapter of the book (“After Such Knowledge”) covers almost three decades: a period that witnessed a global explosion of Holocaust-related cultural production, in the context of a public acknowledgment of the event as something placed at the core of Western identities: “in 21st-century Europe, there is an imperative, embodied in international conferences and treaties, and in UN resolutions, to provide an official channel of memory of the Holocaust, as if to be a legitimate European democracy now is also to acknowledge and commemorate this “Event”” (p. 17). In Italy this universal trend was officially ratified in 2000, when the 27th of January was established by law as the Holocaust “Day of Memory”. Gordon’s overview of those years is no less meticulous than that we find in Chapter 4, but the outcome is less satisfying, undoubtedly due to the huge amount of facts and objects to be accounted for, which inevitably results in none of them receiving a specific consideration. Furthermore, the author’s attention is less focused on cultural productions than on political issues, most of which were already hint at in previous chapters; their coming back well arranged and explained in chronological order produces a more opaque narrative than the prior close-up accounts of singular objects. The sensation is perhaps more intense for an Italian reader, for whom most of the information here provided is common knowledge; a non-Italian reader probably gains as much intelligence from this chapter as from the others. The material gathered in Chapter 10, if examined as in detail as in previous parts of the volume, could fill up an entire new book. In fact, one of the research directions I see ensuing from The Holocaust in Italian culture leads towards a further investigation specifically devoted to the last three decades of Italian culture. Another one could have its point of departure in taking seriously Bourdieu’s description of the inner working of the fields differentiating a national cultural production. “For Bourdieu”, explains Gordon, “a given cultural field is structured by a set of possible positions and strategic orientations across which agents in the field – agents of cultural consumption and production – organise themselves, accruing authority or cultural capital and common sense ideas of value (doxa) that are at stake in the field” (pp. 212-213). Gordon defines Bourdieu’s concept as “elusive”, but I rather find vague his appropriation of it. I do not think that that “of production of Holocaust discourse” (p. 213) can be considered a proper “field” in Bourdieusian terms, at least not since the mid-Forties. Present-day academic discipline of “Holocaust Studies” probably now works as such, but the people creating Holocaust-related novels, movies or songs were (and are) engaged primarily in their specific field of cultural production, namely the literary, cinematographic or musical ones; it is there they tried to position themselves and their works by acting according to a specific logic and in the middle of conflicting values. Following such a pathway, I see the possibility of studying how the peculiar logic and inner history of the various fields of cultural production have influenced the ways in which literature, cinema, historiography and so on have shaped the Italian knowledge and representation of the destruction of the European Jews. Just to give a few examples, taken from my field of expertise: which conflicts regarding literary values and which dominant/dominated positions inside the literary field do explain for instance why Giorgio Bassani was “the first story-teller of Italian-Jewish life and the Shoah to penetrate widely across the national culture” (p. 22)? Why in the mid-Fifties the conflict to acquire a symbolic capital did engage leading publishers like Einaudi, Feltrinelli and il Saggiatore in a race to publish or translate a series of Holocaust-related books?8 Which state of the publishing field around 1980 did create the conditions of possibility for the birth of a publisher exclusively dedicated to Jewish culture like la Giuntina? Which specific literary logic did cause the massive import of Israeli literature in Italy starting from the Eighties?9 My criticism regards however just a marginal aspect of Gordon’s volume, and it would be impossible even to begin to answer the questions suggested above in the absence of it. The impressive amount of information, the extraordinary clarity in the use of language and of conceptual distinctions that characterize the book make it bound to become a milestone of the Holocaust Studies in and regarding Italy.

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The FINANCIAL — Results of National Health Interview Survey of 2,704 adults who self-reported diabetes and 25,008 adults without reported diabetes in the 2009 shows that among all adults with diabetes, 90% had some form of health insurance coverage, including 85% of people 18–64 years of age and ∼100% of people ≥65 years of age; 81% of people without diabetes had some type of coverage (vs. diabetes, P < 0.0001), including 78% of people 18–64 years of age and 99% of people ≥65 years of age. More adults 18–64 years of age with diabetes had Medicare coverage (14% vs. no diabetes, 3%; P < 0.0001); fewer people with diabetes had private insurance (58% vs. no diabetes, 66%; P < 0.0001). People 18–64 years of age with diabetes more often had two health insurance sources compared with people without diabetes (13 vs. 5%, P < 0.0001). The most common private plan was a preferred provider organization (PPO) followed by a health maintenance organization/independent practice organization (HMO/IPA) plan regardless of diabetes status. For participants 18–64 years of age, high health insurance cost was the most common reason for not having coverage. CONCLUSIONS Two million adults <65 years of age with diabetes had no health insurance coverage, which has considerable public health and economic impact. Health care reform should work toward ensuring that people with diabetes have coverage for routine care. The number of adults in the U.S. without health insurance is substantial; in 2010, 23% of people 18–64 years of age (43 million) reported being uninsured, and 17% (32 million) reported having been uninsured for >1 year (1). Lack of health insurance coverage is often a barrier for receiving routine, preventive medical care, yet these services are essential for people with diabetes who need regular check-ups to monitor metabolic control, diabetes complications, and disease progression. National data from the 2000 Behavioral Risk Factor and Surveillance System have shown that uninsured adults with diabetes are less likely to report annual dilated eye exams, foot examinations, and hemoglobin A1c (A1C) tests, and less likely to perform daily blood glucose monitoring, than those with private health insurance (2). In the 2009 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), uninsured people with diabetes were six times more likely to forgo needed health care because of cost compared with those who were continuously insured (3). In the 1999–2004 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, uninsured adults with diabetes more often reported not having a standard site for care when sick and not visiting a health professional in the past 12 months compared with those who were insured (4). Thus, health insurance coverage is an important policy issue both for people with diabetes and for public health planning officials. Lack of coverage can have large economic costs due to delays in diagnosis and treatment, especially among a population that requires frequent routine medical care. However, few studies have examined health insurance coverage and type of coverage among people with diabetes and whether coverage is different for people without diabetes. A comprehensive look at health insurance coverage in the U.S. diabetic population has not been presented for many years (5). To investigate these issues and to update estimates from 1989, we analyzed data from the 2009 NHIS, which included extensive information on health insurance. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS The NHIS is a cross-sectional household interview survey that has been conducted annually since 1957 across the U.S. The survey is implemented by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) and uses a multistage area probability design among the noninstitutionalized U.S. population. Details of the survey methods have been described elsewhere (6). Study population, demographic, and diabetes data The sample included 27,712 adults (≥18 years of age) who completed the 2009 adult sample questionnaire and indicated whether they had diabetes based on the question “(If female, other than during pregnancy) Have you ever been told by a doctor or health professional that you have diabetes or sugar diabetes?” Participants were excluded if they did not know their diabetes status (n = 9) or refused to answer the question (n = 10); 2,704 participants reported a diagnosis of diabetes. Demographic characteristics and diabetes-related factors were self-reported. Nondiabetic individuals included four participants who reported prediabetes and current insulin use and 78 participants who reported oral medication use. Family income was categorized broadly by the NCHS as ≤$35,000, $35,000–49,000, $50,000–74,000, $75,000–99,999, and ≥$100,000. Income was unknown in 5.8% of participants. We included 347 sample adults who had a proxy respondent; the percentage with health insurance coverage was similar with inclusion/exclusion of these individuals. Health insurance coverage Participants were queried on their type(s) of health insurance coverage, which included Medicare, Medicaid, military benefits, private insurance, other public (e.g., state-sponsored health plan), other government, and state children’s health insurance program (SCHIP). Since the number of participants with other public (n = 304), other government (n = 116), and SCHIP (n = 56) coverage was low, participants with these types of coverage were grouped with participants who reported Medicaid coverage, a common government-funded medical insurance plan for low-income people and those with long-term disabilities. Private health insurance categories included health maintenance organization/independent practice organization (HMO/IPA), preferred provider organization (PPO), point-of-service, and fee-for-service plans. Individuals could have more than one type of health insurance. Participants with single disease coverage only (e.g., dental) or Indian Health Service coverage were considered uninsured, consistent with the methods used by others (3). Reasons for no health insurance coverage were reported by participants who were uninsured. Participants with private insurance self-reported the amount spent on out-of-pocket private insurance premiums in the past year, with values capped at $20,000; 38% of participants with private insurance were unaware of costs. The amount spent on family medical costs in the past year, excluding premium costs, was self-reported as one of six categories: $0, <$500, $500–1,999, $2,000–2,999, $3,000–4,999, and ≥$5,000. Descriptive statistics (means, %, and SE) were used to show health insurance coverage, types of coverage, number of health insurance sources by diabetes status, participant characteristics by health insurance and diabetes status, and reasons for no health insurance coverage in uninsured people 18–64 years of age by diabetes status. Differences in means and proportions were tested for statistical significance by two-tailed, large-sample z tests, with no adjustment for multiple comparisons. To determine the proportion of income spent on private premiums, mean and median costs were divided by the midpoint of the family income category. For a large proportion of people with private insurance, the percentage of income spent on premiums could not be determined due to missing values (n = 6,776, 41%, predominantly for missing premiums [see above]). To determine the proportion of income spent on family medical costs, the midpoints of cost categories were divided by the midpoints of family income categories; 8% of the study population had missing values for income or medical costs (n = 1,699). All statistical analyses used sample weights and accounted for the cluster design using SUDAAN (SUDAAN User’s Manual; release 9.2, 2008; Research Triangle Institute). Health insurance coverage Among adults with diabetes, 90.1% had some form of health insurance coverage compared with 81.4% of adults without diabetes (P < 0.0001) (Fig. 1). For people 18–64 years of age, 84.7% of people with diabetes had health insurance compared with 78.3% of people without diabetes (P < 0.0001). Coverage for diabetic people 18–64 years of age was higher for those taking both insulin and oral medications (90.7%) compared with those not taking any diabetes medication (80.5%, P = 0.007) (Table 1). Nearly 100% of people ≥65 years of age had health insurance coverage regardless of diabetes status. Data from the 2009 NHIS indicate that 20.5 million adults had diabetes; applying the above rates of health insurance coverage, 2.02 million adults with diabetes had no health insurance coverage, including 2.0 million adults 18–64 years of age and 25,700 ≥65 years of age. For adults without diabetes, 38.4 million had no health insurance, including 38.1 million 18–64 years of age and 251,550 ≥65 years of age. Type of health insurance coverage For people 18–64 years of age, 13.6% of people with diabetes had Medicare coverage compared with 2.7% of those without diabetes (P < 0.0001) (Fig. 1). Fewer people with diabetes had private insurance coverage than those without diabetes (P < 0.0001). More people with diabetes were insured by Medicaid/other public coverage compared with people without diabetes (P < 0.0001). The proportion of diabetic individuals with Medicare coverage was not significantly different for those using both insulin and oral medications (24.9%) versus those using insulin alone (17.4%, P = 0.290), but was significantly greater than that for people only taking oral medications (10.3%, P = 0.0008) and for those on no medications (12.4%, P = 0.027). Only a small percentage of diabetic (4.0%) and nondiabetic (2.6%) individuals had coverage through military benefits. Among people ≥65 years of age, 95% of people had Medicare regardless of diabetes status (Fig. 1). Fewer people with diabetes had private insurance (50.6%) compared with people without diabetes (58.6%, P = 0.0001). Medicaid and military benefits were higher for people with diabetes compared with people without diabetes (P = 0.0001 and P = 0.005, respectively). Number of health insurance sources For adults 18–64 years of age, the majority of both diabetic (71.6%) and nondiabetic (73.1%) individuals had one source of health insurance; nevertheless, 15.3% of people with diabetes and 21.7% of those without diabetes had no insurance (P < 0.0001) (data not shown). More people with diabetes (12.9%) than without (4.9%) had two health insurance sources (P < 0.0001). Only 0.2% of diabetic and 0.3% of nondiabetic adults 18–64 years of age had three or more sources. For people ≥65 years of age, the number of sources of health insurance was similar for diabetic and nondiabetic adults, with about one-third (34.5% diabetic and 33.7% nondiabetic) having one source, the majority (60.2% diabetic and 61.8% nondiabetic) having two sources, and ≤5% having three or more sources. Type of private health insurance Among all adults with private coverage, most had PPO plans, followed by HMO/IPA plans (Fig. 2). Among people 18–64 years of age, significantly fewer diabetic (58.3%) than nondiabetic (64.6%) individuals had a PPO (P = 0.011); significantly more diabetic (33.7%) than nondiabetic (28.9%) individuals had an HMO/IPA plan (P = 0.049). Among people ≥65 years of age, types of private health insurance coverage were similar by diabetes status; other private insurance included Medi-Gap or Medicare Advantage plans. Additional health insurance coverage Among diabetic adults 18–64 years of age who reported having private insurance, the vast majority (90.7%) had only private coverage; 6.3% had additional Medicare coverage, 2.0% had additional military benefits, 0.9% had additional Medicaid/other public coverage, and 0.2% had a combination of three plans (data not shown). For those with private insurance, 91.1% had prescription coverage and 47.3% had dental coverage through the private plan; 45.9% had both. Dental and prescription coverage through a private plan did not differ by diabetes status (P > 0.05). For diabetic adults ≥65 years of age with Medicare, 31.8% had only Medicare coverage and 47.5% had additional private health insurance; more people without diabetes had an additional private plan (56.0%, P < 0.0001) and fewer had additional Medicaid coverage (5.5%, P = 0.0008). For diabetic people, the majority (52.6%) had both Part A (hospital insurance) and Part B (medical insurance) Medicare insurance; an additional 41.9% had Parts A, B, and D (prescription plan). The percentages having Medicare Parts A, B, and D did not differ by diabetes status. Reasons for not having health insurance For people 18–64 years of age, high health insurance cost was the predominant reason for not having coverage, regardless of diabetes status (51.5% of diabetic and 46.5% of nondiabetic individuals, P = 0.275). Thirty-five percent of people with diabetes and 29.9% of those without diabetes reported job loss or a change in employer as a reason for no coverage (P = 0.220). Fewer people with diabetes reported that their employer does not offer or they are not eligible for health insurance (8.2%) compared with those without diabetes (13.8%, P = 0.005). Demographic and diabetes-related characteristics by health insurance coverage In both diabetic and nondiabetic adults 18–64 years of age, non-Hispanic whites (vs. Hispanics) and people with more education (higher education vs. less than high school) and income (family income ≥$100,000 vs. <$35,000) were more likely to have health insurance coverage (P≤ 0.0002 for all) (Table 1). Among people with diabetes, the percentage of individuals with health insurance coverage was similar across categories of duration of diabetes and glycemic medication use. People with diabetes who had hypertension or a heart condition more often had health insurance coverage than their counterparts without these conditions (P < 0.05 for both). For people who reported a heart condition, the percentage with health insurance coverage was higher in those with diabetes compared with those without (P = 0.004). Regardless of diabetes status, the percentage with health insurance was higher in people seeing a regular doctor or specialist in the past year (P ≤ 0.0001 for all). Health insurance costs The proportion of family income spent on out-of-pocket private insurance premiums and family medical costs was higher for people with low income, regardless of diabetes status. Using median premium costs, people 18–64 years of age with diabetes who had an income of ≤$34,000 spent 12.2% of their family income on private premiums whereas counterparts with an income of ≥$100,000 spent 3.0% of their family income on private premiums (data not shown). Similar trends were seen for diabetic people ≥65 years of age and for people in both age-groups without diabetes. When using mean health insurance premium costs, a less conservative approach, a greater discrepancy between low and high income earners was shown for people with diabetes 18–64 years of age (22% for income ≤$34,000 vs. 4% for income ≥$100,000). For medical costs, people with diabetes 18–64 years of age who had family income ≤$35,000 spent 6.0% of their income on medical care compared with their counterparts with family income ≥$100,000 who spent 1.9% of their income on medical care costs. Health insurance coverage among people with diabetes compared with coverage for people without diabetes has not been examined in national data for a couple of decades. We found that nearly all diabetic and nondiabetic adults ≥65 years of age had health insurance, mainly attributable to having Medicare benefits. Although the majority of adults 18–64 years of age had health insurance coverage, a significant proportion was uninsured (15% of those with diabetes and 22% of those without). This represented ∼2 million adults 18–64 years of age with diabetes who were not insured, ∼5% of the total uninsured population in the U.S. (1). This is a large public health concern given that the diabetic population needs routine care to prevent serious diabetes-related complications. The financial burden of diabetes both to society and to the individuals with diabetes is substantial. Significantly more adults 18–64 years of age with diabetes had Medicare, Medicaid, or other public insurance compared with their counterparts without diabetes, putting a strain on government-funded insurance mechanisms (7). Although almost all diabetic adults ≥65 years of age had Medicare, most supplemented Medicare with private insurance, which may be a financial burden, especially for those with limited income. Thus, although the majority of people with diabetes have health insurance coverage, a large proportion apparently lacks adequate coverage, requiring supplemental insurance to obtain additional preventive and maintenance health services. Several changes in health insurance coverage have occurred over the past two decades. Although the proportion of diabetic individuals with health insurance coverage was similar in 1989 (92%) (5) and 2009 (90%, herein), the absolute number of people with diabetes who were uninsured rose over threefold, from 600,000 to 2.02 million. With no improvement in the rate of health insurance coverage among diabetic individuals and the rise in the prevalence of diabetes, the burden of diabetes in terms of costs to society has significantly increased over this 20-year period. Second, although the proportion of people with health insurance coverage remained higher over time for people with diabetes, the gap in the proportion covered between people with and without diabetes increased from 5% in 1989 to 9% in 2009; people with diabetes had greater coverage relative to people without diabetes in 2009. People without diabetes may forego insurance because of rising costs, particularly if they are healthy and believe insurance is unnecessary. In addition, adults <65 years of age with diabetes are entitled to Medicare coverage if they have a long-term disability, including end-stage renal disease, which may offset the effect of increasing insurance costs for people with diabetes. Third, the proportion of diabetic adults <65 years of age with Medicare coverage increased from 10 to 14% between 1989 and 2009. In addition, the proportion with private insurance decreased for diabetic individuals of all ages (18–64 years of age, from 69 to 58% between 1989 and 2009; ≥65 years of age, from 69 to 51% between 1989 and 2009). The decrease in private health insurance may be related to rising health insurance costs, greater unemployment over the past decade, and more people living under the poverty threshold. Finally, the most common types of private health insurance plans shifted from fee-for-service plans to PPO plans. In the 1980s and 1990s, health insurance costs increased considerably, and the majority of employer-sponsored fee-for-service plans were replaced with less expensive managed care plans. Our results corroborate previous studies indicating that lack of health insurance coverage is a major barrier to health care access that could, consequently, have detrimental health effects in people with diabetes (2–4). Regardless of diabetes status, seeing a doctor for general care, an eye doctor, or a foot doctor in the past year was more common for those with health insurance. People with hypertension or a heart condition were also more likely to have health insurance; coverage may encourage people to schedule regular medical visits, which provides more opportunities for diagnosis. A study among underserved diabetic patients receiving care at Federally Qualified Health Centers, where care is provided regardless of insurance status, indicated that those with continuous health insurance were more likely to receive LDL testing, a flu vaccine, and/or nephropathy screening (8). In addition, patients who had partial insurance coverage in the past 3 years, regardless of the amount of time insured, were less likely to receive preventive care (9). We also found that health insurance coverage was lower in minorities and people with less education and income. Efforts should focus on increasing health insurance coverage for underserved populations who are often at the highest risk for diabetes complications (10,11). Two primary reasons were stated for U.S. adults <65 years of age not having health insurance coverage. First, high cost was the most common reason for no insurance, a finding supported in previous literature (3). We found that few adults with private insurance had low income, regardless of diabetes status. Among people with private insurance, only 4% of adults had family incomes below the poverty threshold, whereas the majority (68% with diabetes and 71% without diabetes) had incomes well above the poverty threshold (poverty income ratio ≥3.0, a yearly income of ≥$66,000 for a family of four). Furthermore, the proportion of income spent on private insurance premiums and family medical care was higher for low-income people, a result supported in previous work (12). Second, unemployment has significantly increased over the past decade, leaving many without the means to pay for insurance (13). Indeed, we found that job loss or change in employers was the second most common reason reported for not having insurance. Medical expenses for people with diabetes are estimated to be 2.5 times higher than those for people without diabetes (10). The direct costs of diabetes were estimated to be $116 billion in 2007 (14). The 2010 health care reform bill would help cover the majority of the 2 million U.S. adults with diabetes who are uninsured (15). However, it remains to be seen whether these policies would adequately cover diabetic individuals’ medical needs and whether insurance premiums would be affordable for all patients. As part of health care reform, the Pre-existing Condition Insurance Plan would cover people with diabetes who have been uninsured for the past 6 months, with costs varying depending on state of residence, age, and plan type. A major strength of our study is the use of national data, which allows generalization to the U.S. adult noninstitutionalized population. A limitation is that we could not distinguish between type 1 and type 2 diabetes. Nevertheless, we assessed insurance coverage by glycemic medication use and found some differences in coverage for people who were on insulin compared with those who were taking oral or no medications. We could not distinguish people with undiagnosed diabetes. Previous work has shown that people with undiagnosed diabetes have a higher uninsured rate than people with diagnosed diabetes; thus, the percentage with health insurance coverage may be underestimated in this study (16). Our analysis included participants who reported prediabetes and use of insulin (n = 4) or oral medication use (n = 78). It is likely that the participants taking oral medications are using them to lose weight and/or prevent diabetes. Although it is less clear whether the data are valid for the prediabetic individuals reporting insulin use, the inclusion of these participants would not impact the estimates. Finally, we were only able to determine the proportion of people with prescription coverage among those with Medicare or private insurance; the proportion of people with dental coverage could only be determined for those with private insurance. In addition, we could not examine the extent of dental and prescription coverage. In the past 20 years, major scientific advancements have established that achieving and maintaining glucose control as early as possible significantly reduces the onset and progression of diabetes complications (17,18); furthermore, long-term follow-up has shown that glucose control in adults who are at high risk for diabetes is cost-effective (19). In addition, there is evidence that age of diabetes diagnosis, some complications, and mortality have been decreasing over time (20–22). Therefore, with universal coverage of people with diabetes, such as through reformed health care that translates to greater provision of medical care, there is the very real opportunity to reduce the overall burden of diabetes to society. This study provides baseline information on health insurance coverage and, in the future, could be used to evaluate whether health care reform increases the percentage of people with diabetes who have coverage. Health insurance coverage, combined with diabetes education and public health prevention strategies, is fundamental for reducing diabetes complications, increasing the quality of life for people with diabetes, and reducing the economic burden of diabetes-related medical costs. This work was financially supported by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (HH-SN-267200700001G). No potential conflicts of interests relevant to this article were reported. S.S.C. contributed to the research design, analyzed the data, and wrote, reviewed, and edited the manuscript. C.C.C. contributed to the research design and the discussion and reviewed and edited the manuscript. S.S.C. is the guarantor of this work and, as such, had full access to all the data in the study and takes responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis. Parts of this study were presented at the 72nd Scientific Sessions of the American Diabetes Association, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 8–12 June 2012. The findings and conclusions in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. - Received February 6, 2012. - Accepted May 20, 2012. - © 2012 by the American Diabetes Association. Readers may use this article as long as the work is properly cited, the use is educational and not for profit, and the work is not altered. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ for details.

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China’s New Vassal How the War in Ukraine Turned Moscow Into Beijing’s Junior Partner Foreigners must find it hard to believe that the Canadian people, among the richest and most fortunate on earth, should solemnly consider the destruction of their vast estate sprawling across half a continent. But the crisis now facing them in many forms - constitutional, political, economic and, above all, emotional - has deep roots and lessons for free peoples everywhere. Canada became a nation, or its embryo, on July 1, 1867, when four weak, quarrelsome British colonies between the Atlantic and the Great Lakes, fearing the newly powerful American republic on their flank, were united by Queen Victoria and her Parliament at Westminster and allowed to govern themselves. The rudimentary union, whose survival looked dubious, to say the best of it, quickly spread to the Pacific and embraced the second largest national territory in the world. After 110 years of growth, its population numbers some 23 million, basically divided into two separate communities of British and French descent, the former including about 44 and the latter about 28 percent of the total. Various smaller fractions make Canada a nation of racial minorities, always difficult to govern, simple, serene and rustic in tourist advertisements, complex, restive and urban in truth, but managed so successfully on the whole that it now stands with the Western world's Big Seven at their summit conferences. Given such a record, which most nations would envy, why has Canada encountered a time of wrenching trouble? Why is Quebec's provincial government (but so far only a small minority of its voters) determined to withdraw from the union and dismember it? As foreigners may see them, these threats have appeared suddenly, overnight, but their seeds were planted more than three centuries ago when, in 1608, Samuel de Champlain, the first recognizable Canadian, built his rude habitation on the banks of the St. Lawrence and unwittingly seized the central gateway to North America. His brutal raid on the Iroquois, beside the lake that still bears his name, roughly defined the later bisection of the continent. The 49th parallel of latitude, separating the French and English colonies, entered the power struggles of Europe and in 1763, under the Treaty of Paris, France ceded its North American territory to Britain. But it was the American Revolution, more than anything else, that produced the modern Canadian state. To a handful of French colonists were added the exiles of the Revolution, the United Empire Royalists, who established their colonies east and west of Quebec. The boundary between Canada and the United States was not to be securely fixed until the middle of the nineteenth century, after the original English colonies had twice invaded Canada, in 1775 and 1812, without success. But the two nations, north and south of the line, emerged from different circumstances with different goals. Within Canada, the legacy of the original separate French and English colonies remained. Whatever its destiny might bring, the future nation, then hardly imaginable, must live a double life. Its major components could never be amalgamated in more than constitutional terms and only under a flexible, constantly evolving federal system. From the beginning, the Canadian state was an experiment in what is nowadays called bilingualism and biculturalism - a unique experiment of some consequence to mankind. Canada has found no Lincoln to declare its purposes (and happily no Gettysburg to commemorate a civil war) but it is testing whether a nation conceived in duality and dedicated to the proposition that two diverse communities must have equal rights in the same land, can long endure. As most Canadian citizens see it, and as Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau assured the U.S. Congress in a notable speech this past spring, that question will be answered emphatically in the affirmative. The union will survive and flourish but not without some years, perhaps a full decade, of political tension, economic change and, more incalculable, a changed attitude of mind. For Canada, with all its wealth and the unexcelled freedom of its society, a long, arduous journey lies ahead. The experiment, however successful, is not yet complete, nor sufficiently understood even by the average Canadian, much less by foreigners. Though it primarily concerns us, of course, Canada's future involves its next-door neighbor more deeply and directly than the American people have begun to understand. As the late Livingston Merchant, twice Washington's ambassador to Ottawa, often argued, Canada is closer and more vital to the United States than any other foreign nation, and its old friendship should never be taken for granted. And as the late Dean Acheson observed, the reverse is equally true - Canada should not take the United States for granted either. The two nations, locked into a single continent, cannot escape the symbiotic life decreed by history, geography, language, common democratic ideals and daily bread-and-butter business. Across the U.S.-Canadian border moves the world's largest tide of international trade, investment and holiday travel. The United States buys about two-thirds of Canada's huge exports and supplies the same proportion of its imports. Americans in general have yet to realize that they sell far more to Canada than to any other foreign market (and even former President Richard Nixon showed his ignorance of these facts by saying, in a regrettable speech, that Japan was the United States' greatest trading partner). Canada is also an unequaled importer of U.S. capital. American investors own a massive share of the Canadian economy, in some cases entire industries - another fact little understood south of the border and disturbing to the people north of it. Not only the United States but Japan, all members of the European Economic Community and nations of the Third World, possess valuable markets in Canada. Even more imperative than the economic relationship is the fact of interdependent defense in a dangerous world. As Canada lacks the resources to defend itself against overseas attack, and finds its ultimate security under the American nuclear umbrella, so the United States must protect the strategic land mass between itself and possible European or Asiatic aggressors. If the intimate economic, financial and military ties between the United States and Canada are necessary to both, they will never be easy nor automatic in an age of increasing complexity. For saying so, before an American audience, former Prime Minister Lester Pearson was misunderstood and bitterly criticized in the United States, but he had only stated the obvious in order to warn of difficulties ahead. These have appeared from time to time in clashes of specific interest, mostly commercial, but the "mad patches," as Mr. Pearson described them, were always smoothed out by quiet diplomacy and compromise because the supreme interest of the continent, its safety and prosperity, overrode them. While the Trudeau government, in its so-called Third Option, is seeking closer ties with overseas nations to counterbalance its neighbor's oppressive weight, the United States will always be the paramount factor in Canada's foreign policy. American policy has much wider interests, responsibilities and risks throughout the world, but Canadians sometimes fail to appreciate them, just as the American public has not fully grasped the importance of Canada in its own affairs. For all these reasons the United States would instantly feel the shock waves of Canada's partition if it ever happened. After Quebec's departure, what would then be left of the Canadian union, its economic strength, its enormous market, its American-owned industries and its military cooperation? When President Carter remarked (in a studied understatement lest he be accused of meddling in the business of a friendly neighbor) that he preferred to see Canada undivided, he understood how profoundly the three remaining fragments of the union could affect the United States. Three because a sovereign Quebec nation must divide Canada not on the perimeter but in the middle, astride the international artery of the St. Lawrence. The four Atlantic provinces of Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island would be separated from Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia by a constitutional and economic dam on the river that carries their goods and those of the American interior as well. Canada, in short, would split into a kind of East and West Pakistan, its single anatomy fractured beyond repair. No thoughtful Canadian doubts the possible consequences foreseen by former Prime Minister Lester Pearson, who said that Canada was one thing or nothing. He rightly feared that the shattered fragments could not sustain a viable nationality. With their intricate economic organism dissolved, their political dwelling of three centuries in ruins, they might sooner or later seek entry into the American union, confirming the Manifest Destiny which the United States has forgotten and Canada has stubbornly resisted. No American government in its senses should accept with anything but horror pressures or results sure to compound its own domestic and foreign problems. Outside North America, Canada's ongoing debate may not seem to have much significance. The world at large is little interested in the Canadian experiment, the willingness of distinct communities to dwell in one house, even if it is a marriage of convenience. But the same conduct of tolerance and mutual forgiveness must govern many other nations if humanity is to have any chance of peace and a decent life. Canada's ability to preserve such a marriage is the best justification of its identity in defiance of all visible logic. The secret Canadian logic, felt more than it is expressed - a family instinct beyond expression - has overcome every attempt to contradict it. Premier René Lévesque and his Quebec government, however, find no logic, visible or otherwise, in the mixed household. He has pictured it as a "hybrid bicultural monstrosity" - ignoring the fact that his own imagined republic of some six million inhabitants would include an English-speaking population of some 1.2 million. If Canada is monstrous in its differing breeds, so is Quebec. If Quebec has the right to separate "democratically" (Mr. Lévesque's word), can its non-French minority be denied the right to remain in the union? If Quebec remains a true democracy the unadmitted logic works both ways. Mr. Lévesque's French Canadian ideals extend far beyond Quebec. There are minorities of his people, large and small, in all the provinces. But it is only in Quebec that separation from Canada has ever been a serious aspiration. It has appeared there from time to time, mostly as a vague sentiment, since the British conquest of 1759, a conquest in name, not in fact. The French Canadians, then numbering about 60,000, have multiplied more than a hundredfold. They have maintained their own way of life, produced three of Canada's most distinguished prime ministers and always had the power to destroy the union, if they decided to use it, as they did not. The endurance, cohesion and unconquerable vitality of this great people have few equivalents in human history. Despite all their successes, the French Canadians of Quebec, abandoned by their European motherland and frequently ignored by their compatriots, have a sense of isolation, injustice and fear for their language and culture. When an English-speaking continent surrounds them, like an ocean breaking on a solitary island, that fear is understandable. But its corollary should also be clear: Quebec needs the environment of a strong, sympathetic nation to resist the southward magnetic pull of the United States. Canada needs Quebec for the same reason. All the inchoate yearnings of Mr. Lévesque's people found their first effective political instrument in his Parti Québécois. To the nation's amazement, and his own, he won the provincial election of November 15, 1976 - not on the issue of separation, which was deliberately played down, but rather by playing up promises of honest government, economic growth and social reform. Though Mr. Lévesque's sincerity and high talents were respected, even outside Quebec, he could not have won - and then by only 41 percent of the vote - if a notoriously inept government had not defeated itself. Quebec did not vote for separation. It voted for a thorough and necessary housecleaning of its public business. After the election, and until the present day, opinion polls, varying in detail, have found that about 20 percent of Quebec voters are prepared to separate themselves completely from Canada, but that a majority seems to favor a "special status," or semi-independence, for Quebec. The Canadian constitution allows no province to leave the union (though no civil war would be fought to keep Quebec within it), and Mr. Lévesque has no mandate to lead it out. Admittedly Quebec appears to have the material assets to exist independently - an area, a population and a hoard of natural resources greater than those of most members of the United Nations. Independence would mean a reduced living standard, for a time anyhow, but the new leaders of the province, if not its people, are prepared to make that sacrifice for the more precious, non-economic gains of sovereignty, the full liberation of the French Canadian spirit. Mr. Lévesque expects to work patiently to get a mandate for separation, according to a plan first disclosed to a world audience in this magazine when he was still a private citizen.1 At a date not yet fixed he will submit a referendum on Quebec's future to the voters. If they reject his basic separatist policy, a second or even a third referendum will be submitted, the government meanwhile retaining office in disregard of parliamentary tradition and using all its influence, moral and legislative, to make the people change their minds. At this writing the contents of the first referendum are unknown. It could be as meaningful or meaningless as its wording implied. It could offer the clear-cut choice of total separation or a variety of options, such as a Quebec state politically independent yet enjoying a common, free-trade market, and perhaps a common currency, with Canada. Mr. Lévesque has repeatedly argued that a cooperative "economic association" is possible, desirable and ensured in advance. Of course there will always be an association of sorts since Canada is ready to do business with countries all over the world, but a common market, as Mr. Lévesque evidently conceives it, is quite impractical. Even if the dismembered Canadian fragments were willing to negotiate a generous bargain after the wrenching process of separation, they would never accept Quebec's right to veto their tariff policies and trading arrangements with other foreign nations. Nor would Quebec accept their veto. Mainly for this reason the government of the largest province, Ontario, has flatly dismissed Mr. Lévesque's version of a common market as an impossible substitute for the existing common market of Canada, which buys much of Quebec's industrial production. Since all the provinces sell massively to Quebec, they too must suffer if that market is lost or diminished. No region could avoid some loss. Quebec simply does not have the option of leaving Canada and continuing to share its benefits. However Mr. Lévesque's still indistinct economic blueprint is viewed, he faces more than enough strictly provincial issues to require all the administrative capacities of his government. The barren heritage of his predecessors confronts him with acute problems of finance, unemployment, inflation, industrial strife and the need to attract large foreign investment. These problems will not be easily or quickly solved, but Mr. Lévesque has moved rapidly to deal in his own way with a peculiarly sensitive and divisive problem, the use of the French or the English language in Quebec's public schools and private business. There his collision with the federal government, led by a fellow French Canadian, was foreseeable and inevitable. The constitution vests control of education in the provinces and, until fairly recent times, many of them provided teaching only in English. To French Canadians that one-sided system appeared discriminatory and unfair, if legal, since Quebec's English-speaking minority has always been taught in its own language. Gradually the other provinces have tried, in varying degrees, to remove an old and legitimate grievance by establishing classes in French where French-speaking minorities were sufficiently large to justify the cost. In 1969, Parliament passed the historic Official Languages Act, and the federal government undertook to provide its local services in French for French-speaking communities outside Quebec or in English for the Quebec anglophones. The Act was widely misunderstood in the other provinces and did nothing to placate the new Quebec government, which regarded it as mere window dressing. When Mr. Lévesque then introduced a provincial language policy (candidly admitting his own doubts about some parts of it as approved by his cabinet), the federal government, and most of the nation, were shocked by its stringent provisions. It would maintain Quebec's present English schools but would permit only French teaching for children who enter the province from foreign countries or from Canada, unless at least one parent had been previously educated in English and in Quebec. The law would also compel Quebec industries, with minor exceptions, to use French as their language of management and work by 1983. The Lévesque government hopes that these measures will permanently safeguard French, both as a sacred symbol and a necessary tool, but they outrage the Quebec anglophones and deny Mr. Trudeau's doctrine that all Canadians, wherever they live, have the right to educate their children in either of the nation's two official languages. Facing a direct and unprecedented challenge, the most critical in his experience, Mr. Trudeau has considered various options while hoping that the Quebec law would be amended to remove its objectionable clauses. If they are retained (in the debate proceeding as this article was being written), he could disallow the law by a constitutional device never used in modern times. But its use now would play straight into the hands of the Quebec government, which would accuse the Prime Minister of violating provincial jurisdiction, betraying his native province and truckling to the will of the national majority. Or, as he has indicated, the law may be referred to the courts for a test of its constitutionality, depending on its final draft. Mr. Trudeau would prefer a constitutional amendment empowering the federal government to protect the educational privileges of minorities in all parts of the nation. While Quebec is unlikely to accept this proposal, Mr. Lévesque has offered to negotiate a "reciprocal" agreement with any province under which its children, moving to Quebec, would receive English teaching if that province taught French-speaking children in their mother tongue. Mr. Trudeau has urged the English-speaking provinces to reject the offer because, he says, minority language rights in education are basic and non-negotiable. The complicated legal argument is the lesser aspect of the bitter trial of strength under way between the two French Canadian leaders. Mr. Trudeau says that "the proper way to get rid of bad laws . . . is to get rid of bad government. I think the real recourse is to defeat the P.Q. [Parti Québécois] government and that's what they [the Quebec voters] should do if they don't like the government." All the resources of the Liberal Party in Quebec will be mobilized to accomplish that defeat three or four years from now, possibly sooner. Before then Mr. Lévesque's referendum will intervene, with unpredictable results. Meanwhile, the anglophone corporate managers of Quebec, both Canadian and American, protest that the school legislation would damage their industries because English is the language of international commerce. Besides, they say, it would be impossible to bring enough English-speaking experts to Quebec if their children must be educated in French. The Lévesque government is not impressed by the threat of some corporations to move their head offices out of Quebec, brushing it off as an empty bluff. Actually the government's leftist economic and social policies seem more alarming than its language law to most non-French businessmen. The latest dispute inherent in a dual society must be set against the background of one of the world's oldest written constitutions. It is a statute of the British Parliament, the British North America Act, which established Canadian self-government in 1867 (and, incidentally, foreshadowed the Commonwealth of the twentieth century). Though Canada has long been totally independent of Britain, with its own separate monarch who happens to reside in London, only the British Parliament can amend the constitution - and does so, automatically, on the formal request of the Canadian Parliament. Over and over again Canadian governments, federal and provincial, have sought to remove this fictitious but humiliating relic of colonialism and shift the constitution from London to Ottawa. They have never succeeded because they could never agree on a method of future amendment. Twice in the present generation an amending formula was drafted, accepted by all the English-speaking provinces and, at the last moment, vetoed by Quebec. If John C. Calhoun's theory of concurrent majorities did not succeed in the United States, it has worked in Canada even if few Canadians have heard of it. Mr. Trudeau's failure to bring the constitution home is the worst disappointment of his career as a lawyer. As a politician watching the crisis develop, and buying time to deal with it, he has adopted a Fabian strategy of postponement, compromise and conciliation. On the one hand, he reminds the English-speaking provinces that they have not been entirely just to the French Canadians nor have they relieved French Canadian grievances. On the other hand, he tells Quebec that it has every right to preserve its language as long as it treats its non-French minority justly. And he warns that, outside a robust national state, Quebec's language, culture and economy could not survive the pressure of an English-speaking continent. In the nation's crisis his eloquent rhetoric and unequaled prestige are inadequate weapons. To them he has lately added a typical Canadian initiative, a kind of safety valve in the form of a new task force on national unity. This group is headed by two of the most respected men in Canada: John Robarts, the English-speaking former Premier of Ontario, and Jean-Luc Pépin, a French Canadian who sat in Mr. Trudeau's cabinet before his retirement to private life. With less-known representatives from the nation's five distinct economic regions, this grand assize will study regional problems, sort out the possible solutions and propose some method of improving the federal system, perhaps a completely new constitution. As the study begins, two facts are already evident: first, the angry, uncontrollable "English backlash" generally anticipated when the Lévesque government was elected has not yet occurred except within a thin extremist fringe outside Quebec (though it could be provoked by an unchanged provincial language law). Second, and most important, not only Quebec but all the provinces are demanding, and undoubtedly will secure in the end, a decentralization of power through constitutional revision or ad hoc arrangements. Mr. Trudeau, who is attacked by the opposition parties in Parliament for his supposed centralist and authoritarian tendencies, has agreed that more power may have to be transferred to the provinces, despite the fact that they are already more powerful - almost like ten baronies - than the American states. Probably the most difficult question before the Robarts-Pépin task force is how much power the federal government can afford to relinquish without losing not only essential revenue - always a point of contention - but also the ability to govern effectively at all. At the same time that Canada is rethinking its internal balances of power, the country is in the throes of its most profound economic upheaval since World War II. Obviously, the two crises are not unrelated, with Mr. Lévesque conveniently blaming the "bicultural monstrosity" for Quebec's depleted treasury and high unemployment. Politics and economics move in a vicious circle. The federal government is now trying to dismantle its system of direct controls over wages, profits and prices - a system that big business and big labor opposed from the start in 1975. But when the nationwide Canadian Labor Congress refused in mid-August of this year to accept any wage limits in collective bargaining after controls were removed, Mr. Trudeau said they would continue so long as inflation threatened to reach two-digit figures. Though he hopes that government, business and labor, given time for second thoughts, will agree on a consensus of future economic restraints, it is still no more than a hope. The opinion polls show that the public by a large majority want the controls maintained until the danger of a new cost-price explosion has passed. Even if it is avoided in the post-controls period, a still prosperous people will have to rethink their prospects and repair their mistakes. Some crude figures will serve to outline the current state of the economy: a gross national product of $200 billion this year; a three to four percent real growth rate; a federal budget of about $45 billion with a deficit reckoned at six to seven billion dollars; merchandise exports last year of some $38 billion and imports of $37 billion but, with invisible items, a balance-of-payments deficit of $4.3 billion; an inflation rate of eight percent, or more, as against the official target of six percent; unemployment, on average, of eight percent; a dollar fallen from 103 cents in U.S. currency to about 93 cents within a year.2 The Canadian people may well possess the largest per capita raw resources in the world and the skills needed to utilize them. Blame for their misuse is shared by government, business, labor and a public beguiled by unreal expectations. Canada entered the World War in 1939 with a primitive economy, doubled its output and by 1945 was a sophisticated industrial power. It also became an influential secondary member of the United Nations, its peacekeeping efforts in foreign lands widely praised, its wealth envied. But three decades of boom, with short interruptions, led to wild extravagance in government, inflated production costs, a mood of euphoria and finally the hangover of an economic spree. Up to now only the weak, unorganized groups have suffered any serious damage. Most Canadians enjoy one of the world's highest living standards without realizing that it exceeds Canada's immediate means and is too dependent on foreign borrowings, among the largest in the Western nations, to cover the exchange gap. When Mr. Trudeau says that the present demands on the economy must be reduced or it will "go down the drain," his belated warning is muffled by the sound of cash registers in the shopping centers, ignored by the holiday crowds in the airports. Donald MacDonald, the harassed Minister of Finance, tells the public that the next decade cannot be as rich as the last, and tries desperately to curb the government's own inflationary demands, but he is continually pressed to spend more money and stimulate business. Basically, John A. MacDonald's ancient and little changed protective tariff of 1878 (called the National Policy) enabled Canada to build an economy as efficient as any in its processing of the products of its farms, forests, mines and fisheries. But under the protection of the tariff many manufacturing industries, concentrated in Ontario and Quebec, became soft and non-competitive in the world market and accumulated a frightening trade deficit of ten billion dollars last year. Their earlier advantage from a lower Canadian wage scale relative to that of the United States has recently been eroded, in some cases canceled, by labor's insistence on continental wage parity or superiority. Soaring production costs, not scarcity of resources and technical expertise, distorted the economic structure and now make drastic readjustments unavoidable, in the short or medium term at least. For the longer term, Canada must decide if it should shrink its weak industries by tariff reductions and sharper competition, at the risk of temporarily worsened unemployment, in order to expand the strong - a decision soon to face it in the Tokyo Round of GATT and, in terms of domestic politics, a nightmare for any government. Another formidable necessity cannot be evaded. In the next decade Canada plans to spend $800 billion on public and private investment. Unable to raise all this money from domestic savings, it will continue to borrow heavily abroad, thus increasing foreign economic penetration (the nightmare of every "nationalist") and raising the already burdensome cost of external debt. Until the Parti Québécois came to office the Trudeau government, as gauged by public opinion polls, appeared to have no hope of reelection, despite its victory in 1974. The subsequent election of a Conservative government, under a newly chosen young leader, Joseph Clark, was foreseen. But then the whole political climate changed. Ironically, Mr. Lévesque's triumph revived Mr. Trudeau's fortunes, because the Prime Minister looked more able than his competitor to resolve the crisis. Trudeau's party won four Quebec by-elections last spring, the opposition lost an apparently safe seat in Prince Edward Island, and two of its elected members crossed the floor of Parliament to join the Liberals. Assuming that the polls are roughly accurate and that the climate does not change again, Mr. Trudeau could easily win the next election. When an election is called, Mr. Clark will face the reality of his party's virtually total exclusion from French Canada during much of the present century. Apart from his inexperience and bad luck, Mr. Clark is the victim of a history for which he is not in the least responsible. Once strongly Conservative in politics and Catholic in religion, a furious Quebec turned to the Liberal Party when, in 1885, the Conservative government of John A. MacDonald prosecuted, convicted, and rejoiced at the execution of Louis Riel, a deranged French Canadian, following his small abortive rebellion in Saskatchewan. MacDonald, more than any other man, was the nation's architect and is still its unrivaled folk hero, but since his death the Conservative Party has never fully recovered in Quebec from his fatal mistake. Indeed, the illustrious Liberal career of Wilfrid Laurier, Canada's first French Canadian Prime Minister and Quebec's idol, was launched by the backlash against the Conservatives. His success heralded a period of relative harmony between Quebec and the English-speaking provinces. Then, however, in the course of two world wars, Quebec resisted the military conscription enforced by the national English-speaking majority, and old wounds were reopened. Today only three Quebec members sit with Mr. Clark in the House of Commons, and the vagaries and injustice of politics do not alter the fact that no government can govern Canada effectively, or for long, without a minimal beachhead in Quebec, even if it has a majority drawn from the other provinces. No substantial Conservative gains are in sight in Quebec, however. The region from the Great Lakes to the Pacific, on the other hand, has recently elected few Liberals. Thus, Canada lacks, for the time being, a national party of the historic model. Both parties, Liberal and Conservative, have always been uneasy coalitions of conflicting interests like their American counterparts, and so they must be in a diverse nation. Of the two, the Liberal Party has been the more successful thanks to better management, discipline and luck. Since Wilfrid Laurier's arrival in 1896, the Party has held office for 60 years, sometimes with a minority in Parliament. It was founded, early in the nineteenth century, on a creed of laissez-faire, free trade, unrestricted private enterprise and the Darwinian economics imported from Britain's Manchester School. Under Prime Minister Mackenzie King, who won his first national election in 1921, its philosophy was quietly and smoothly reversed to make its long-lived governments the agencies of social reform in bland, unadmitted imitation of the New Deal in the United States. Eventually the Canadian welfare system, replete with Keynesian machinery, was to go further and cost proportionately more than the original plan devised by President Franklin Roosevelt (whom King described as a great man but an economic illiterate). The Conservative Party, at its beginning, stood for the partnership of government and business in MacDonald's National Policy of tariff protection, loyalty to the British Empire and resistance to American influence. Later the Conservative Party too became a party of reform and now indicts liberalism not for its reforming zeal but for grossly mismanaging and stunting the nation's economy. The ideological gap is narrow, but Liberal governments always make sure that they stand slightly to the left of the Conservative opposition and to the right of the minor socialist New Democratic Party. The Liberal Party's expandable Gladstone bag can hold any ambitious politician if he supports its vaguely defined principles and votes for the government in the Commons. Mr. Trudeau thus inherited a political apparatus so broad, eclectic and pliable that he could recently take into his cabinet, with no questions asked, the leading Conservative of Alberta, John Horner, of unimpeachable right-wing credentials and an opponent of the Official Languages Act. To Mr. Trudeau pragmatism is the essence and natural operating method of democracy. "The only constant factor to be found in my thinking over the years," he once explained in print, "has been opposition to accepted opinions. Had I applied this principle to the stock market I might have made a fortune. I chose to apply it to politics and it led me to power - a result I had not really desired, or even expected." After more than nine years in office he relishes power and despite his many admitted blunders and false starts, is deft, often ruthless, in its use - a lonely, enigmatic creature, friendly or truculent as his humor fluctuates, sui generis among Canadian statesmen, past and present. The nation does not understand nor particularly like him, but it admires and has usually supported an intellect without equal in Canadian politics. His reputation abroad is higher than at home where his flaws are more apparent, his brilliance less esteemed. The son of a rich French Canadian father and a Scottish mother, the youthful socialist and world traveler, the Quebec anti-conscriptionist who did not choose to fight in the Second World War, the outdoor athlete of reckless physical courage, the scholar of history, the brooding philosopher and bold gambler in politics has deeply impressed foreign governments and sometimes is painted larger than life in the news media. Strangest of all in this variegated record, he has made himself probably the most influential figure, as the honest broker between whites and blacks, in the Commonwealth. Nevertheless, the great pragmatist has yet to solve any of Canada's basic problems and has frequently misconstrued them. In the summer of 1976, for example, he asserted that French Canadian separatism was "dead" and four months later the separatist Quebec government was elected. He barely escaped defeat in the federal election of 1972 and governed with a minority until 1974. Then he recaptured his majority by denouncing the Conservative policy of compulsory wage-profit-price controls, which in the following year he himself imposed after inflation had passed the two-digit level. Fascinated by John Kenneth Galbraith's books, he said on television that the market system no longer worked and, shortly afterwards, seeking to calm the frightened business community, declared the government's faith in it. As an economic and financial housekeeper his performance has been lamentable, and he knows it. All things considered and all mistakes admitted, given the fact that Canada is the only major nation in the Western world that lacks either an adequate home market, or a joint market like that of Europe, its economic record is something of a prodigy. It reflects the people who made it, their three centuries of work, thrift and common sense, their inarticulate but fierce native pride. Behind today's economic issues and the crisis of politics there looms a momentous human question, and the answer made to it will show whether the unique experiment in duality can long endure. Has the nation's character been permanently changed, or briefly diverted by sudden affluence from the true facts of life in a hard northern land? Do we still have those quiet ancestral virtues that mastered the half continent and fashioned, against the accepted canons of logic, a society blessed with as much freedom and fair opportunity as the world has yet found anywhere? Mr. Trudeau gives his own answer to the final question: the virtues remain, the crisis will reinvoke them and Canada "is greatly strengthened by the very forces which seek to disrupt its unity" - because the separatist challenge has brought a decisive response after the years of indecision. He has often been wrong about daily affairs. But at a time to try men's souls he is right about Canada's goodly future. Our young nation will not close the book of its life when merely the opening chapters have been read and end a pursuit of happiness only well begun. 2 For rough comparative purposes, the figures of production, expenditure and trade deficits should be multiplied by a factor of ten to show the American equivalents.

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Up the road and clearly visible through the window of our first house was a mountain often covered in the rolling mist indicative of most Korean mountains. Ahn mountain, was a constant backdrop of our childhood experiences in South Korea, where at its base we lived in two different homes as well as attended two different schools; Seoul Foreign School and Yonsei University. The mountain, located at the northern reaches of Seoul at the time of the Korean War, played host to continuous battles from both sides. Soldiers from Communist China, Russia and the ethnic Chinese Koreans that made up the Korean People’s Army (KPA) would push south, and take portions of the mountain while South Koreans and its allies, from 21 other nations including the US and Australia would push north to retake the mountain. Heros were made and many died during the attacks, adding to the thick history and mystique of the area. One day as we were walking down the hill from our first house, I pointed to the mountain and said earnestly “My horangi lives in that mountain.” But instead of a passing thought, I continued to mention it every time we walked down the hill for the next several years. The horangi 호랑이 was the the native Korean tiger and was feared by all travelers, especially those going over mountains like Mt. Ahn. In South Korean mythology, the horangi represented courage, pride and strength and many folk stories involved the tiger. I heard many of these stories in my youth, such as “The Tiger and the Magpie” or “The Sun Girl and the Moon Boy,” and they illustrated that although the tiger had great strength, it could be outwitted due to its lack of cleverness. The mountain was a constant source of intrigue for me as a four-year-old and was the first of many mountains in my life that I dreamed of climbing. Every morning, Korean men would climb up the mountain and shout their chants as sun broke over the horizon; the sounds echoing down to the valley below. And sometime during my frequent passing down the mountain side, gazing at its slopes through the window or listening to the chants sounding from above, I set my mind that I was going to climb the mountain as well. One morning I met up with a friend up the street – another young white boy in the land of black hair – and we decided in the spur of the moment that it was time for a grand adventure. We found a small hole in a chain-link fence leading up to the mountain by his house and started climbing. We purposed not to tell anyone, because we knew they would either stop us, or not come along. We also neglected to take any food or water, for we thought that we would be back so soon that those items would not be needed and that we would be back before anyone could notice we were missing. I can remember scrambling up the hill from the fence and climbing up the dirt trail, passing several older Korean men who seemed concerned at the presence of such young boys unaccompanied. When asked what we were doing and if we were lost, we pretended that we couldn’t understand Korean, ignored them and continued on. My only thought was “hopefully these old Korean men don’t kidnap us… or take us back to our home.” I figured both scenarios would end in death… either by a stranger or by our parents. At various intervals in the path up the mountain, there were wood workout stations that we encountered. Stopping at each one, we would attempt to figure out what workout was supposed to be done at each station, often realizing that our boyish frames were too small to even attempt to do the exercise properly. It was around half way up the mountain… thirsty, tired and sure that we would not reach the summit in time to get home with our absence unnoted… that we decided to turn around and head home. From the moment we made that decision, all of the excitement and independence of our covert trip up the mountain melted away. In its place was an overburdening since of fear. It was only at the point that we came to the realization that we had probably been gone for several hours and our absence was sure to have been noticed. Unlike our leisurely pace going up, the weight of fear pushed us rapidly downhill. In our minds, we skillfully dodged the rocks and tree roots. Falls and trips were only a momentary pause – as there was no luxury of time to examine and lament any injury. As we were nearing the bottom of the hill, we were surprised to find a group of people heading up the mountain in search of us. Our meeting was of mixed emotions as recounted by the other boys’ mother: “They were actually quite pleased with themselves with their exploration until they realized the trouble they were in.” And finally the realization of the consequences bestowed upon a missing young boy in a foreign land started to flood my brain. I was certain that the consequences would be swift and certain… like the picture of Isaac and Abraham burned into my memory from a picture Bible somewhere, but with a different ending. I was awash with ideas of how I could act normal and what story I could possibly come up with that would excuse my attenuated absence. Finally arriving home, it was time to face my fate. The first thing I can remember was being exuberantly welcomed home by concerned parents, followed immediately by an inquisition as to my whereabouts. As I watched, phone calls were made to friends to cancel search efforts and relief from all that both of us had been found and safely returned. It was also at that point I realized how much trouble I was really in. Search parties? Boy, I was a goner. And so the inevitable happened. I was sent to my room with instructions to wait there. So I waited. I sat on the edge of the bed in the dark, alternately swinging my legs and bouncing them off the sideboard in a nervous fidget. Then the time came and Dad entered the room. I don’t remember the spanking, although I do know that it was the list of top five memorable spankings I received in my lifetime. Even so, it was deemed a just reward given the circumstances – even from the viewpoint of a young boy. After Dad had left the room and consoled me, I chose to continue crying under my sheets. The pain had passed from the spanking, but the thought that some sympathy from Mom might be bestowed by loudly crying boy was singularly flowing in my head. And so I persisted. Huddled under my ever hotter, sweatier and oxygen deprived sheets, I continued wailing – not in pain, but in a desperate childhood attempt for sympathy. But I could have never expected the events that would happen next. My father, a man of cool and calm who rarely showed emotion, came into the room and untangled me from the covers. It was at that point that I noticed that he was crying. But unlike my crocodile tears, his were real. As he held me close and rocked me back and forth against his chest, he explained how worried he was that I had been kidnapped or worse, and that he loved me and would never want to lose me. And as his tears soaked uncomfortably into my shirt, I found myself switching from needing consolation to giving it. Dad asked me never to run away like that again, and I promised. And I held true to that promise… at least in Korea. To this day, that memory of my father’s tears, his shaky voice and loving words stand as a vivid memory of the man my father was and is. Now a parent myself, those words stand as a yardstick of how I should love and approach my own sons. But in the end, my obsession with the horangi and Mt. Ahn met its conclusion in the most fitting way possible with the experience being summarized by something my mother said. “It was a well intentioned deed to show my strength but like the proverbial tiger, it was not clever.” All around our neighborhood, Mom used to see rats, some as large as cats. Once she saw one waddling down the corridor at Seoul Foreign School and said to a guard, “Uncle, there goes a rat!” “Yea…..” he agreed calmly. “There are many of them.” In our second house, we had an encounter with one of these rats. His first appearance was in our bathtub as my sister was getting ready to bathe. She clambered on top of our Western style toilet and screamed, causing quite a commotion in the house. Dad arrived at the bathroom door with a cleaver in his hand, which lead to an even greater commotion from my sister. Dad managed to catch it in the folds of the bath mat and was whacking at it using the cleaver through the thick cloth, but the rat escaped and was able to scurry away. We searched house but it was nowhere to be found. In an attempt to rid the house of our rat problem, Dad laid and baited traps in the attic. Several days later when the traps were checked, they were all sprung with the bait missing and several pieces of grey fur left in the catch and hammer. Mom thought she heard it limping away in the roof above. The war against the rat then progressed to tar paper. I still remember Dad pulling the backing off of the sticky black substance and placing the sheets down in the attic. Several days later, there was a large mound of fur left on one of the traps, but no rat. We never did see the rat again, but that is probably for the best. We still sit around and talk about the lucky, three legged, half hairless rat in the attic. The second house was also the scene of The Great Rope Incident. Up behind the wall at the second house was a forest of sorts. Many of Korea’s trees had been ruthlessly cut down and shipped to Japan during the Japanese Occupation 1910-1945, and thus, trees were highly protected and could not be cut down without a government official’s permission. Even when a typhoon blew them down they had to be inspected before removal. On the branch of one of our trees my brother had rigged a rope and would spend the afternoon swinging out several feet over the hillside, stopping, and then swinging back to the high ground on the other side. When I followed my brother outside for a turn, he would help me, but then as all brothers do, he tired of helping his persistently whiney little brother do basic tasks. When he was finally tired, he said that we should go inside, but I said that I wanted to keep playing outside for a little longer. “Just don’t try the rope swing alone,” he shouted as he walked down to the house. “Don’t worry, I won’t,” I lied through my teeth. Once he was out of sight, I grabbed the rope at the tallest point I could and leapt off the hillside. One second later, I had an epiphany of pendulum physics. My brother had grasped the rope from a high height and when the rope tightened, he only dropped slightly. I however, had grasped only a short height and as I jumped off, the rope stretched and dragged my feet on the ground behind me. Instead of swinging over the hillside, I found myself swinging head first into a giant grey rock. I thought through my options, but not before the rock started to work through my head. I WAS HIT! I quickly got up and wiped my head with my hand. My hand came back into my field of view with two red fingers. Drat, I thought. Now I am in trouble. The worry about being in trouble quickly passed as I heard several small rhythmic rain drops splashing down against the underbrush. Moving my hand, I caught a drop and red splashed over my palm. I quickly put my palm up to my head to verify the source of my worry was in fact, my head wound. This time the whole thing, my whole palm came back red. Crying and frantic, I started making my way back to the house. Mom, hearing me cry, looked up through the window as she was washing dishes and saw my bloodied face coming down the hill. Dad was immediately summoned and the next thing I knew, I was sitting in a chair with Dad applying gauze and pressure to my wound. Several minutes passed. “The bleeding is not stopping,” Dad said. We might have to go to the hospital. With that statement floating in the air, I lost it. I squirmed. I shrieked. “Please!” I yelled. “I don’t want to go to the hospital. I’ll stop bleeding. I’ll stop bleeding, I promise!” My worked up reaction had the opposite effect on my wound. A couple of minutes later, after the threat of going to the hospital had simmered down for a few minutes, the bleeding stated to wane. Several minutes after that, to my great relief, the bleeding finally stopped. I was cleaned up, patched and given a good talking to. Still to this day, one inch above my right eyebrow, I bear the mark in memory of that day. We lived in South Korea during a critical time in their movement towards democracy, and student demonstrations at universities such as Seoul National University and Yonsei University were an essential part of the pro-democracy movement. While we were there in the 1980s, many student activists in universities struggled against Chun Doo-hwan’s military dictatorship and the aftermath of the 1980 Gwangju Massacre. When Chun Doo-hwan announced the choice of Roh Tae Woo as the next president, this was seen as a deferred process to revise the South Korean constitution to permit direct election of the President. Because of our proximity to Yonsei University the the frequent demonstrations there, it was not uncommon for tear gas to waft up the hillside and into our house. We had a routine of closing all of the windows and waiting for the demonstrations to end and the air to clear. After my burns, Colonel Thar had given my brother a military issue gas mask as a present. So while the rest of the family stayed indoors, my brother would don his gas mask and play basketball outside in the driveway. Incidentally, he would also use his gas mask while cutting onions, which was a creative use of his gift. Another time, the Pioneer Girls group mother led from Seoul Foreign School had planned a meeting at our home on a Saturday. They had arranged a day of hiking on Ahn mountain and a picnic following their return. The girls had just been dropped off at our house and all seemed well when pepper gas began pouring over the hill. Since the group could not safely climb the hill anymore, they decided to stay indoors instead, playing games and inventing activities in our rooms until the demonstrations wound down. Such were the oddities of living overseas. A year after we left South Korea, student demonstrations and the deaths at the hand of the government in June 1987, forced the ruling government to hold elections and institute other democratic reforms which led to the establishment of the Sixth Republic, the present day government of South Korea. Winter in South Korea was cold. Being without a car for the first two years it was often difficult to get to church. After walking down our hill, slipping and sliding on the ice, we would wait on the corner as Dad tried to hail a cab. Some taxi drivers would not stop because there were five of us and it was difficult to squeeze four people in the back. So as we were waiting we would sing folk tunes such as, “Swing low, sweet chariot…”, and hug each other in the wind. On one foray to Southgate Market we decided to take the bus. As usual, it was very crowded so we had to stand. A haraboji or grandfather dressed in a colorful hanbok (native dress) picked me up and seated me on his lap and Mom said I thought nothing of it. I was glad to have a seat, and a warm one at that. Another time when it was just four of us returning home, Mom lost a dress shoe down a storm drain as she disembarked from the bus. A small crowd gathered murmuring their sympathy as she stood one-footed in the snow. Explaining her predicament in Korean to passers-by, one man even knelt on the ground to see if it could be retrieved, but the shoe was lost. Mom walked the rest of the way home one-shoe-off and one-shoe-on through the snow. Winter was cold but also a time of wonder. I can remember the feeling of coming inside after hours of play in the blustering snow and ice: the sensation of reddened skin returning to feeling and life and the way the aroma of food filled the house with an intensity lacking during summer. Even saying that the house was cold during the winter is an understatement. I remember standing next to the kerosene heater that we used to heat one room at a time in our house. Our kerosene heater was a mesmerizing thing. It was warm, it was glowing, it was fire. I could (and did) sit for hours watching the hundreds of tiny blue flames spill through the circular perforated screen. If I would blow lightly on the flame on one side, the pattern of flames would dance across the screen in a wave across the burner. I lost count at the number of times I was told to stay away from the heater, don’t touch the heater, don’t play by the heater. But I was curious, squirmy and active which resulted in a steady stream of burns – normally on my hands. But in my defense, playing elsewhere was a production. I had to don my snow pants and snow jacket to play cards with my sister in the bedroom or layer my clothes further still if I wanted to play outside. Still, sitting there in the house was more fun. I could see my breath in my room without suffering from the wind. Given how cold it was inside of the house, one of the things each of us kids enjoyed was having our beds turned down – namely having a hot water bag put in our sheets before having to get in the covers. Mom would put the tea kettle on the stove and when the water was boiling, she would pour it into a red rectangular bag and cap it with a black screw cap. She would then tuck it into the covers, or we would lie down in bed with the water bag on top of our stomach. There was a chevron non-slip pattern molded on both sides of the bag and I would lay in bed running my fingers back and forth across the sticky, warm, undulating bag until I feel asleep. On one night, it was my brother’s turn to have the hot water bottle, but sometime during the night, it fell out of his bed. The next morning, with the bag missing, we searched for it and found it against the wall of the bedroom; frozen. Mom warned us not to fall out of bed! In the first house, I remembered lying down with our bodies snuggly positioned under the bed Mom and Dad had been given their bedroom. The dust ruffle on their bedspread would trap heat and it would keep us warmer while watching TV. But at the second house this was not an option. It made me realize anew the creativity and wisdom involved in the traditional ondol floor. One time, after we had purchased our car, we were headed to Shiheung for a church service when it began to snow. Since it was dark by that time the roads were as slick as ice. Going over a particularly steep hill in that area, our car began to spin out and slide. I remember Mom shouting, “David!” as we careened down the hill. Inexplicably, although going downhill, the car began to slow. At the bottom of the hill, I remember the car spun once, gently bringing us to a stop one foot from a city bus. I remember looking up into the eyes of all the wide-eyed people staring down. Then we gave a prayer of thanks! The second house marked a transition for us in our lifestyle and in our ministry. It was smaller, so it made entertaining the larger groups of church people more difficult. As a result, we had to travel more, meeting with others in their homes across the city. The house also had a remarkably long driveway so that it was more difficult for people to find. During the cold winters we would spend hours helping Dad shovel snow on the driveway so that we did not have to walk out. But it was also colder, lacking the insulation of the first house and its ondol floors. Dad had to work hard carrying the kerosene heater up and down the stairs. These were just minor inconveniences, but they made life more time consuming. Missionary housing is sometimes a tradeoff between appearance, affordability and productivity. To have the time and energy to preach, teach, mentor and care for one’s family in another country requires a certain amount of stability and provision. We were grateful for God’s safety and provision for us in South Korea, and for the families that continued to support us on the mission field despite our absence. Thanks for following along! If you want to read other stories as part of this series, a full list can be found here: Child in a Foreign Land. If you are interested in following along, we have links for e-mails, Facebook, WordPress and YouTube on the sidebar of the website. If you want to share a link to this story/video, simply choose one of the buttons below this post. © Divergent Life Media, LLC

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Fha stands for What does FHA stand for? FHA stands for Federal Housing Administration, FHA is a subsidiary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The primary goal of the FHA is to promote home ownership in the United States. To do this, the FHA insures mortgages against default by the borrower. What is the difference between a conventional and an FHA loan? Conventional or conventional mortgages often require much higher down payments. What does FHA stand for? FHA stands for Federal Housing Administration. The Federal Housing Administration is a federal agency founded in 1934 that aims to stimulate the housing market by providing affordable mortgages. How does FHA mortgage work? An FHA mortgage works just like any other mortgage because you borrow a certain amount from the lender and repay it, usually over 30 years with fixed-rate mortgages. The main difference is that FHA loans require prepayments and monthly mortgage insurance premiums, often over the life of the loan. What is FHA definition? definition of FGA. FHA stands for Federal Housing Administration. The FHA is a government agency that provides insurance to lenders that provide loans to home buyers. Since Congress established the FHA in 1934, it has enabled millions of homebuyers to purchase homes they might not otherwise qualify for. Why to get FHA loan? One of the main reasons many buyers choose an FHA loan is that FHA requires a lower down payment than most other mortgages. In general, any mortgage with a down payment of less than 20% requires private mortgage insurance, which adds this monthly fee to your monthly mortgage payment. What is the FHA self-sufficiency test? Understanding the FHA Self-Test for 3 and 4 Family Buildings Buy a 3 or 4 family home. The rules are a little more complicated for loans that cover 3 or 4 units. Understand the self-reliance test. To pass the self-sufficiency test, you must demonstrate that 75% of the expected rental income will exceed the monthly amount. Calculation of the net rental income. Can I get a FHA home loan for a multi-unit property? FHA mortgages can be used to obtain multi-family housing. This type of property is desirable because you can not only own your own home, but also pay off your mortgage with significantly lower payments and raise capital much faster. What does fha stand for in real estate zoning Gilberto Fuentes FHA stands for Federal Housing Authority. The FHA is affiliated with the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The primary goal of the FHA is to promote home ownership in the United States. What is FHA mortgage insurance and how does it work? The FHA became part of the Office of Housing of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in 1965. What is the difference between FHA and VA? FGA and VA. FHA and VA loans are classified as non-traditional loans because they are guaranteed by the government. The Federal Housing Administration, commonly known as FHA, provides mortgage insurance for loans made by FHA-approved lenders in the United States and its territories. What is an FHA loan and who qualifies? In fact, the federal government insures loans from FHA-approved lenders to reduce the risk of loss if a borrower defaults on their mortgage obligations. For borrowers interested in buying a home with a low down payment FHA loan, applicants must have a minimum FICO score of 580 to be eligible. What does fha stand for in real estate listings As an agency of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, FHA plays an important role in providing affordable mortgages, especially during difficult economic times. The FHA insures loans and reimburses lenders when borrowers default. Does mean approved FHA what? The phrase "FHA approved" means it conforms to a set of rules set by the agency. The process of becoming an FHA-approved borrower involves a thorough credit and income check. The FHA also requires certain types of properties, such as B. condominiums, to go through a separate approval process. What does HUD have to do with FHA? HUD itself does not guarantee single-family mortgages unless you are a native. Only the FHA insures mortgages for single-family home buyers. The Ministry of Housing and Urban Development primarily supports community development and home ownership through various initiatives. What did the FHA do? - To develop. The FHA was designed to boost the housing market during the Great Depression. - function. To provide flexibility in mortgage terms, the FHA insures mortgages against financial losses. - Advantages. For potential homeowners, the advantage of an FHA mortgage is its flexible lending standards. - Impact on housing construction. What does fha stand for in real estate contract History of the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) The Credit Congress established the Federal Housing Authority in 1934 during the Great Depression. What is FHA amendatory clause and Real Estate certification? FHA Modification Rider and Home Certification Form According to industry sources, the FHA Home Loan Program accounts for up to 50% of the mortgage loans issued to home buyers. The reason for the popularity of FHA mortgages is due to the low down payment, soft loan requirements, and the seller's ability to pay the closing costs of the transaction. What is an'FHA loan'? What is an FHA loan? FHA loans are designed for low to middle income borrowers and require lower down payments and a minimum loan amount than many traditional loans. As of 2018, you can borrow up to the value of a home with an FHA loan, but you need a credit score of at least 580 for that. What is the FHA mortgage program? Founded in 1934 during the Great Depression, the FHA is a government agency that provides mortgage insurance to lenders. Before the FHA was established, housing construction was in trouble. Only four out of ten households owned their own home, and home loans were subject to strict conditions. Is the FHA amendatory form included in the contract? In many sales contracts in the United States, the FHA amendment form is included in the sales contract. However, if the attachment is not included in the purchase agreement, the parties must sign the attachment form as an appendix to the purchase agreement if the buyer receives an FHA (or VA) loan. Who needs to sign the FHA amendatory clause? Buyers, sellers, buying and selling brokers must sign the FHA amendment clause. If the buyer and seller agree on a new sale price due to a low valuation, a separate FHA release clause or other release clause is not required. What is an FHA single family housing appraisal? Mechanical Systems Section The inspector should inspect the mechanical, plumbing and electrical systems of the affected property to ensure they are in good working order. What are FHA loans and how do they work? Here's a quick rundown of FHA loans: what they are, who makes them, how to qualify, how to apply, and how to determine if they're right for you. What does FHA stand for? FHA stands for Federal Housing Administration and FHA is the government agency that insures mortgages. Is an FHA loan right for You? FHA-insured loans can allow buyers to get a mortgage and move into their homes earlier, but borrowers can save money over the life of the loan if they qualify for a traditional loan. In short: is an FHA loan right for me? Does does stand loan fha what for rent The short answer to this question is, "It depends." It all depends on whether that rental loan qualifies for an FHA loan. FHA and HUD loan rules state that rental loans can be considered a legitimate source of down payment, but only if certain standards are met. Can you rent a house with an FHA loan? Can it be rented with an FHA loan? 1 Restriction to Primary Residence. When you take out an FHA loan, you must sign a statement that you will occupy the property as your primary residence for 60 days after taking out. 2 Annual registration obligation. 3 No restrictions on rent payments. 4 Buy another house. Can you use an FHA loan to buy a condo? You cannot use an FHA loan to purchase real estate that will be used to operate a condominium hotel, college or student residence, Airbnb, vacation home, bed and breakfast, vacation home, or other similar short-term employment. Is the initial rent a factor in approving an FHA home loan? Can I rent out my FHA home after closing? After the first period of stay you can rent your living space. When you take out an FHA loan, you must sign a statement that you will occupy the property as your primary residence for 60 days after taking out. If you do not currently live in the house, you are violating the statement signed by you. Does does stand loan fha what for sale FHA stands for Federal Housing Administration. The Federal Housing Administration is a federal agency founded in 1934 that aims to stimulate the housing market by providing affordable mortgages. How do FHA loans work? What is a FHA short sale? These rules begin with the FHA's definition of what it considers a "short sale": "Pre-executive sales, also known as short sales, refer to real estate sales that yield less than the amount of real estate sold and are required by pledgees to agree to release their liens and forgive the lack of property. What is the Federal Housing Administration (FHA)? The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) is the world's largest mortgage insurer and has insured more than 46 million mortgages since its inception in 1934. FHA does not fund loans. Instead, it insures mortgages from FHA-approved lenders. Does does stand loan fha what for 30 You can't be alone when the first one is gone, CalHFA says. The borrower cannot defer the loan if they pay off the FHA loan or refinance with another loan. This is due to the repayment of the FHA loan, usually 30 years from the original date. How much is mortgage insurance on an FHA loan? The FHA loan requires you to pay two types of mortgage insurance premium: the initial mortgage insurance premium (UFMIP) and the annual MIP (billed monthly). The initial MIP is equal to the base amount of the loan (as of 2018). You pay them at closing, or they can be credited. Does does stand loan fha what for 2020 FHA loans are designed for low- to middle-income borrowers and require lower minimum down payments and a lower credit score than many traditional loans. In 2020 you can borrow up to the value of your home with an FHA loan. What are the FHA mortgage insurance premiums in 2020? An FHA loan requires you to pay two types of mortgage insurance premiums (MIPs): an initial MIP and an annual MIP (billed monthly). In 2020, the initial MIP is the base amount of the loan. You can pay or withdraw the initial MIP at closing. Does does stand loan fha what for now What does FHA stand for? FHA simply stands for Federal Housing Administration. This is a popular mortgage type for first-time buyers on the housing market. Does does stand loan fha what for closing What does FHA mean in real estate? FHA is an abbreviation for Federal Housing Administration. Underwriting standards are stricter, meaning there is a greater risk of valuation issues, work assignments, loan refusals (even after receiving a pre-approval letter), and/or last minute closing delays compared to a traditional mortgage. Why do FHA loans fall through before closing? There are literally dozens of reasons why FHA loans can fail before closing. Here are five of the most common reasons. 1. Insufficient Funds When using an FHA loan to buy a home, you must make a down payment equal to or greater than the purchase price. This is the minimum down payment for a Federal Housing Administration mortgage loan. What are the closing costs of an FHA home loan? Closing fees may include lender fees, prepaid items such as overnight interest, and bonus points, if applicable. Some FHA mortgage transactions can allow the borrower to fund a reasonable number of bonus points, while others cannot. What is the FHA Closing Disclosure Document? You must receive the final disclosure document three business days prior to the FHA closing process. This document lists the total costs that you will have to pay after closing. Your mortgage lender will finance an insurance agent to cover your mortgage loan. How to qualify for a FHA loan? - A credit score that meets minimum requirements that vary by lender - good payment history - No bankruptcy history in the past two years - No seizures in the past three years - Debt ratio less than 43% - The house must be your main residence - Stable income and proof of employment. Can I have two FHA loans at the same time? Most people don't qualify for two FHA loans at once unless they move to a new area or significantly expand their family. The general rule of HUD is that a borrower can only have one FHA loan at a time. What is a FHA loan? A Federal Housing Administration (FHA) loan is an FHA-insured mortgage issued by an FHA-approved lender. FHA loans are designed for low to middle income borrowers. They require a lower minimum down payment and a lower credit score than many traditional loans. What is a fha loan and how does it work for real estate The FHA program was created in response to a wave of bankruptcies and defaults in the 1930s to provide mortgage lenders with adequate insurance and stimulate the housing market by making credit accessible and affordable for the homeless, excellent credit or poor payment levels. What are the advantages of an FHA loan? Some of the most attractive features include: Low Down Payment - FHA loans allow you to buy a home with a minimum down payment, as other traditional loan programs may require a higher down payment or require proof of good credit and income. small deposit. What is a fha loan and how does it work pdf Benefits of FHA Loans FHA loans have lower down payment requirements than traditional loans (usually 5% to 20%). FHA loans have lower credit requirements (580 in total for qualified borrowers). FHA loans have less stringent DTI requirements (50% or less) than traditional loans. What exactly are FHA loans? What is an FHA loan? An FHA loan is a special type of home loan that can be used to buy a home, refinance an existing home loan, or renovate a home. FHA named loans came about because the Federal Housing Administration offers insurance to the lenders that make these loans. What to expect with a FHA loan? Keep the following in mind when applying for an FHA loan: Because FHA does not provide direct loans, borrowers always work with a mortgage lender or bank. A borrower's credit score doesn't have to be perfect. The borrower asks for a lower down payment than with a conventional loan. Insurance benefits are applied over the life of the loan. How to get pre-approved for a FHA loan? - Applying for and checking your credit The online application will ask you a number of questions to assess whether you are eligible for a home loan. - View and adjust your mortgage solutions View recommended mortgage solutions and adjust your numbers to your budget. - Receive an acceptance letter When to refinance FHA mortgage? Basically, you have to wait a minimum of 12 months to refinance your FHA loan, or even refinance another type of loan with an FHA loan. You have more options and better interest rates because you have a longer payment history to prove to the lender that you can afford a new loan. Who provides FHA loans? The FHA, or Federal Housing Administration, provides mortgage insurance for loans made by FHA-approved lenders. The FHA insures these loans for single-family and multi-family homes in the United States and its territories. How long are the terms for FHA mortgages? As far as the main options are concerned, FHA mortgages are loans with 15 or 30 year terms. The longest period you can legally tie to the original FHA mortgage is 30 years. With a refinancing, the time it takes to pay off your mortgage can vary, but the original loan has a term of 30 or 15 years. What is an FHA loan interest rate? FHA Loan Interest Rates What is an FHA Loan? An FHA loan is a mortgage insured by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). They are especially popular with first-time home buyers as they allow down payments with a credit score of 580+. What is an FHA loan? An FHA loan is a mortgage loan backed by the Federal Housing Administration. Borrowers are required to pay an insurance premium on a mortgage loan, which reduces the lender's risk if the borrower defaults. Do you have questions about buying, selling or renting during COVID19? Learn more . What are the benefits of an FHA loan? Advantages of FHA loans: low down payments and less strict credit requirements. In general, an FHA loan is one of the easiest types of mortgage because it requires a small down payment and you may not have perfect credit. FHA loans require a down payment percentage for maximum financing. How do I know if a lender is FHA approved? Due to the popularity of the program, many lenders are licensed to provide FHA loans. To determine if your chosen lender is FHA approved, enter your information into the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) loan finder. Who can qualify for an FHA loan? How do I get an FHA loan? How to get an FHA loan? A lender must be approved by the Federal Housing Administration to help you obtain an FHA loan. Find FHA lenders on Zillow and find FHA home loans quickly and easily. Simply apply for a loan and you will immediately receive personalized offers from a marketplace of hundreds of lenders. What is the difference between HUD and FHA? Well, one of the main differences between FHA and HUD is that the former deals with individual buyers while the latter deals with commercial and multi-family housing loans. Is FHA and HUD the same thing? The FHA is the Federal Housing Authority and provides mortgage insurance for loans issued by FHA-approved lenders. FHA is part of HUD. When a home is foreclosed with an FHA-insured mortgage, it is called a HUD home because HUD, not the bank, takes possession of the property. What is fha definition of family member The FHA defines a family member as someone related to the borrower by blood, law, or marriage. These are the people classified as family members, and all of these people are classified as non-resident co-signers: children, parents, or grandparents. What does FHA consider a family member? The FHA defines a family member as someone related to the borrower by blood, law, or marriage. These are the people classified as family members, and all of these people are called non-resident co-signers: children, parents, or grandparents. What is the legal definition of "family member"? - (1) Husband and parents - (2) Sons and daughters and their husbands - (3) Parents and Spouses - (4) Siblings and their husbands - (5) Grandparents, grandchildren and their husbands What does FHA identity of interest mean? Identifying interests means buying a relative's house. In general, the FHA states that any sale of a home from one family member to another requires a 15% down payment. What is the definition of a family member? Relative means the spouse, same-sex partner, custodial parent, non-custodial parent, adoptive parent, adoptive parent, biological parent, stepparent, parent of same-sex spouse, grandparent or grandchild of an employee, or any person with whom the employee has a relationship relationship rather than being a parent. What is a VA loan and how does it work? VA loans mean that a portion of the loan is guaranteed by the U.S. government if the buyer cannot meet the terms of the loan. This is called law. The commission can range from thirty-six thousand to sixty thousand dollars, depending on the amount of the loan. What does VA loan stand for? VA credit. IRRRL stands for Reduced Interest Refinance Loan. You can see it is called Streamline or VA for VA. With the exception of refinancing an existing VA mortgage with adjustable rate (ARM) to a fixed rate, this should result in a lower interest rate. What exactly is a VA loan? A VA loan, also known as a veterans mortgage, is a program developed by the Department of Veterans Affairs to help veterans and their families obtain a mortgage. However, VA does not give any money. Instead, they establish rights, dictate specific mortgage terms, and insure VA loans against default. What are the guidelines for a VA loan? VA loan approval guidelines require military or veterans on active duty to serve at least 90 days on active duty and not be dishonorably discharged. VA loan applicants who served less than 90 days during the war may be eligible for service-related disability. What homes are FHA approved? The Federal Housing Administration, commonly known as FHA, provides mortgage insurance for loans made by FHA-approved lenders in the United States and its territories. The FHA insures mortgages for single-family and multi-family homes, including completed homes and hospitals.

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Summary of Wassily Kandinsky One of the pioneers of abstract modern art, Wassily Kandinsky exploited the evocative interrelation between color and form to create an aesthetic experience that engaged the sight, sound, and emotions of the public. He believed that total abstraction offered the possibility for profound, transcendental expression and that copying from nature only interfered with this process. Highly inspired to create art that communicated a universal sense of spirituality, he innovated a pictorial language that only loosely related to the outside world, but expressed volumes about the artist's inner experience. His visual vocabulary developed through three phases, shifting from his early, representational canvases and their divine symbolism to his rapturous and operatic compositions, to his late, geometric and biomorphic flat planes of color. Kandinsky's art and ideas inspired many generations of artists, from his students at the Bauhaus to the Abstract Expressionists after World War II. - Painting was, above all, deeply spiritual for Kandinsky. He sought to convey profound spirituality and the depth of human emotion through a universal visual language of abstract forms and colors that transcended cultural and physical boundaries. - Kandinsky viewed non-objective, abstract art as the ideal visual mode to express the "inner necessity" of the artist and to convey universal human emotions and ideas. He viewed himself as a prophet whose mission was to share this ideal with the world for the betterment of society. - Kandinsky viewed music as the most transcendent form of non-objective art - musicians could evoke images in listeners' minds merely with sounds. He strove to produce similarly object-free, spiritually rich paintings that alluded to sounds and emotions through a unity of sensation. The Life of Wassily Kandinsky Modernist abstraction could not have asked for a more charismatic and visionary theorist than Kandinsky - the highest ideals he pursued through his many travels and friendships. Progression of Art Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) This breakthrough work is a deceptively simple image - a lone rider racing across a landscape - yet it represented a decisive moment in Kandinsky's developing style. In this painting, he demonstrated a clear stylistic link to the work of the Impressionists, like Claude Monet, particularly evident in the contrasts of light and dark on the sun-dappled hillside. The ambiguity of the form of the figure on horseback rendered in a variety of colors that almost blend together foreshadow his interest in abstraction. The theme of the horse and rider reappeared in many of his later works. For Kandinsky this motif signified his resistance against conventional aesthetic values as well as the possibilities for a purer, more spiritual life through art. Oil on canvas - Private Collection Der Blaue Berg (The Blue Mountain) In this work, the influence of the Fauves on Kandinsky's color palette is apparent as he distorted colors and moved away from the natural world. He presented a bright blue mountain, framed by a red and yellow tree on either side. In the foreground, riders on horseback charge through the scene. At this stage in Kandinsky's career, Saint John's Book of Revelation became a major literary source for his art, and the riders signify the four horsemen of the apocalypse. The horsemen, although an indicator of the mass destruction of the apocalypse, also represent the potential for redemption afterward. Kandinsky's vibrant palette and expressive brushwork provide the viewer with a sense of hope rather than despair. Further, the brilliant colors and dark outlines recall his love of the Russian folk art. These influences would remain part of Kandinsky's style throughout the rest of his career, with bright colors dominating his representational and non-objective canvases. From this figurative and highly symbolic work, Kandinsky progressed further towards pure abstraction. The forms are already schematized from their observable appearance in the surrounding world in this canvas, and his abstraction only progressed as Kandinsky refined his theories about art. Oil on canvas - The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York Hidden within the bright swaths of color and the clear black lines of Composition IV, Kandinsky portrayed several Cossacks with lances, as well as boats, reclining figures, and a castle on a hilltop. As with many paintings from this period, he represented the apocalyptic battle that would lead to eternal peace. The notion of battle is conveyed by the Cossacks, while the calm of the flowing forms and reclining figures on the right alludes to the peace and redemption to follow. In order to facilitate his development of a non-objective style of painting, as described in his text Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1912), Kandinsky reduced objects to pictographic symbols. Through his elimination of most references to the outside world, Kandinsky expressed his vision in a more universal manner, distilling the spiritual essence of the subject through these forms into a visual vocabulary. Many of these symbolic figures were repeated and refined in later works, becoming further and further abstracted as Kandinsky developed his mature, purely abstract style. Oil on canvas - Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfallen, Düsseldorf Commonly cited as the pinnacle of Kandinsky's pre-World War I achievement, Composition VII shows the artist's rejection of pictorial representation through a swirling hurricane of colors and shapes. The operatic and tumultuous roiling of forms around the canvas exemplifies Kandinsky's belief that painting could evoke sounds the way music called to mind certain colors and forms. Even the title, Composition VII, aligned with his interest in the intertwining of the musical with the visual and emphasized Kandinsky's non-representational focus in this work. As the different colors and symbols spiral around each other, Kandinsky eliminated traditional references to depth and laid bare the different abstracted glyphs in order to communicate deeper themes and emotions common to all cultures and viewers. Preoccupied by the theme of apocalypse and redemption throughout the 1910s, Kandinsky formally tied the whirling composition of the painting to the theme of the cyclical processes of destruction and salvation. Despite the seemingly non-objective nature of the work, Kandinsky maintained several symbolic references in this painting. Among the various forms that built Kandinsky's visual vocabulary, he painted glyphs of boats with oars, mountains, and figures. However, he did not intend for viewers to read these symbols literally and instead imbued his paintings with multiple references to the Last Judgment, the Deluge, and the Garden of Eden, seemingly all at once. Oil on canvas - Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow Moscow I (Red Square) At first the move to Moscow in 1914 initiated a period of depression and Kandinsky hardly even painted at all his first year back. When he picked up his paintbrush again in 1916, he expressed his desire to paint a portrait of Moscow in a letter to his former companion, Munter. Although he continued to refine his abstraction, he represented the city's monuments in this painting and captured the spirit of the city. Kandinsky painted the landmarks in a circular fashion as if he had stood in the center of Red Square, turned in a circle, and caught them all swirling about him. Although he refers to the outside world in this painting, he maintained his commitment to the synesthesia of color, sound, and spiritual expression in art. Kandinsky wrote that he particularly loved sunset in Moscow because it was "the final chord of a symphony which develop[ed] in every tone a high life that force[d] all of Moscow to resound like the fortissimo of a huge orchestra." Oil on canvas - The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow The rational, geometric order of Composition VIII is a polar opposite of the operatic composition of Composition VII (1913). Painted while he taught at the Bauhaus, this work illustrates how Kandinsky synthesized elements from Suprematism, Constructivism, and the school's own ethos. By combining aspects of all three movements, he arrived at the flat planes of color and the clear, linear quality seen in this work. Form, as opposed to color, structured the painting in a dynamic balance that pulses throughout the canvas. This work is an expression of Kandinsky's clarified ideas about modern, non-objective art, particularly the significance of shapes like triangles, circles, and the checkerboard. Kandinsky relied upon a hard-edged style to communicate the deeper content of his work for the rest of his career. Oil on canvas - The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York Kandinsky painted this work in his sixtieth year and it demonstrates his lifelong search for the ideal form of spiritual expression in art. Created as part of his experimentation with a linear style of painting, this work shows his interest in the form of the circle. "The circle," claimed Kandinsky, "is the synthesis of the greatest oppositions. It combines the concentric and the eccentric in a single form and in equilibrium. Of the three primary forms, it points most clearly to the fourth dimension." He relied upon the varied possibilities of interpretation for the circle to create a sense of spiritual and emotional harmony in this work. The diverse dimensions and bright hues of each circle bubble up through the canvas and are balanced through Kandinsky's careful juxtapositions of proportion and color. The dynamic movement of the round forms evokes their universality - from the stars in the cosmos to drops of dew; the circle a shape integral to life. Oil on canvas - The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York Influenced by the flowing biomorphic forms of Surrealism, Kandinsky later incorporated organic shapes back into his pictorial vocabulary. Executed in France, this monumental painting relies upon a black background to heighten the visual impact of the brightly colored undulating forms in the foreground. The presence of the black expanse is significant, as Kandinsky only used the color sparingly; it is evocative of the cosmos as well as the darkness at the end of life. The undulating planes of color call to mind microscopic organisms, but also express the inner emotional and spiritual feelings Kandinsky experienced near the end of his life. The uplifting organization of forms in contrast with the harsh edges and black background illustrates the harmony and tension present throughout the universe, as well as the rise and fall of the cycle of life. Last in his lifelong series of Compositions, this work is the culmination of Kandinsky's investigation into the purity of form and expression through nonrepresentational painting. Oil on canvas - Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf Biography of Wassily Kandinsky Wassily (Vasily) Wassilyevich Kandinsky was born in 1866 in Moscow to well educated, upper-class parents of mixed ethnic origins. His father was born close to Mongolia, while his mother was a Muscovite, and his grandmother was from the German-speaking Baltic. The bulk of Kandinsky's childhood was spent in Odessa, a thriving, cosmopolitan city populated by Western Europeans, Mediterraneans, and a variety of other ethnic groups. At an early age, Kandinsky exhibited an extraordinary sensitivity toward the stimuli of sounds, words, and colors. His father encouraged his unique and precocious gift for the arts and enrolled him in private drawing classes, as well as piano and cello lessons. Despite early exposure to the arts, Kandinsky did not turn to painting until he reached the age of 30. Instead, he entered the University of Moscow in 1886 to study law, ethnography, and economics. In spite of the legal focus of his academic pursuits, Kandinsky's interest in color symbolism and its effect on the human psyche grew throughout his time in Moscow. In particular, an ethnographic research trip in 1889 to the region of Vologda, in northwest Russia, sparked an interest in folk art that Kandinsky carried with him throughout his career. After completing his degree in 1892, he started his career in law education by lecturing at the university. Despite his success as an educator, Kandinsky abandoned his career teaching law to attend art school in Munich in 1896. For his first two years in Munich he studied at the art school of Anton Azbe, and in 1900 he studied under Franz von Stuck at the Academy of Fine Arts. At Azbe's school he met co-conspirators such as Alexei Jawlensky, who introduced Kandinsky to the artistic avant-garde in Munich. In 1901, along with three other young artists, Kandinsky co-founded "Phalanx" - an artist's association opposed to the conservative views of the traditional art institutions. Phalanx expanded to include an art school, in which Kandinsky taught, and an exhibitions group. In one of his classes at the Phalanx School, he met and began a relationship with his student, Gabriele Munter, who became his companion for the next 15 years. As he traveled throughout Europe and northern Africa with Munter from 1903 until 1909, Kandinsky familiarized himself with the growing Expressionist movement and developed his own style based on the diverse artistic sources he witnessed on his travels. Kandinsky painted his breakthrough work, Der Blaue Reiter (1903) during this transitional period. This early work revealed his interest in disjointed figure-ground relationships and the use of color to express emotions rather than appearances - two aspects that would dominate his mature style. In 1909, he was one of the founding members of Neue Kunstlervereinigung Munchen (NKVM, or New Artists Association of Munich), a group that sought to accommodate the avant-garde artists whose practices were too radical for the traditional organizations and academies of the time. His paintings became more and more abstracted from the surrounding world as he gradually refined his style. He began titling works Improvisation, Composition, or Impression to further stress their distance from the objective world and continued to use similar titles throughout the rest of his career. In 1911, in response to the rejection of one of Kandinsky's paintings from the annual NKVM exhibition, he and Franz Marc organized a rival exhibition and co-founded "Der Blaue Reiter" (The Blue Rider) - a loose association of nine Expressionist artists that included August Macke, Munter, and Jawlensky. Though their aims and approaches varied from artist to artist, in general the group believed in the promotion of modern art and the possibility for spiritual experience through the symbolic associations of sound and color - two issues very near and dear to Kandinsky's heart. Despite the similarities between the group's moniker and the title of Kandinsky's 1903 painting, the artists actually arrived at the name "Der Blaue Reiter" as a result of the combination of Marc's love of horses and Kandinsky's interest in the symbolism of the rider, coupled with both artists' penchant for the color blue. During their short tenure, the group published an anthology (The Blue Rider Almanac) and held three exhibitions. Additionally, Kandinsky published Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1911), his first theoretical treatise on abstraction that articulated his theory that the artist was a spiritual being that communicated through and was affected by line, color, and composition. He produced both abstract and figurative works at this time, but expanded his interest in non-objective painting. Composition VII (1913) was an early example of his synthesis of spiritual, emotional, and non-referential form through complex patterns and brilliant colors. The outbreak of World War I in 1914 led to the dissolution of Der Blaue Reiter, but, despite their short tenure, the group initiated and deeply inspired the highly influential German Expressionist style. After Germany declared war on Russia, Kandinsky was forced to leave the country. He traveled to Switzerland and Sweden with Munter for almost two years, but returned to Moscow in early 1916, which effectively ended their relationship. In Moscow he courted and married Nina Andreevskaia, the young daughter of a Czarist colonel. While there, he not only became familiar with the art of Constructivists and Suprematists like Vladimir Tatlin and Kazimir Malevich, but also lived in the same building as Aleksander Rodchenko, and met other avant-garde luminaries like Naum Gabo, Lyubov Popova, and Varvara Stepanova. With the October Revolution in 1917, Kandinsky's plans to build a private school and studio were upset by the Communist redistribution of private wealth and instead, he worked with the new government to develop arts organizations and schools. Despite his participation in the development of the officially sanctioned new institutions, he felt increasingly removed from the avant-garde. His search for spirituality in art did not meld with the utilitarian aesthetic advocated by the young government and the artists it embraced. In 1921, when architect Walter Gropius invited Kandinsky to Germany to teach at the Weimar Bauhaus, he accepted and moved to Berlin with his wife, gaining German citizenship in 1928. As a member of the innovative school, Kandinsky's artistic philosophy turned toward the significance of geometric elements - specifically circles, half-circles, straight lines, angles, squares, checkerboards, and triangles. In 1926, he published his second major theoretical work, Point and Line to Plane that outlined his ideas about a "science of painting." In both his work and theory he shifted from the romantic, intuitive expression of his pre-war canvases to an emphasis on constructively organized compositions. Late Period and Death When the Nazis closed the Bauhaus school in 1933, Kandinsky was forced to leave his adopted home in Germany and moved to France, where he remained for the rest of his life. He and his wife Nina settled in a small apartment in a suburb of Paris, Neuilly-sur-Seine, and were granted French citizenship in 1939. While in France, his style again shifted and he experimented with biomorphic forms, which were more organic than the harsh geometric shapes of his Bauhaus paintings. Although he continued to paint until his last year, Kandinsky's output slowed during the war and his art fell out of favor as the referential images of Cubism and Surrealism came to dominate the Parisian avant-garde. Despite his distance from the aesthetic forefront, Kandinsky continued to refine his style and revisited many of his previous themes and styles during this period, synthesizing elements of his entire oeuvre into vast, complex works. His late style combined the expressive palette of his earliest non-objective Compositions from the early 1910s with the more structured elements he investigated while at the Bauhaus as well as the biomorphic forms popularized by the Surrealists, like Joan Miró and Jean Arp. The Nazis confiscated 57 of his canvases during their purge of "degenerate art" in 1937, but despite the Fascist proscription against his art, American patrons - notably Solomon R. Guggenheim - avidly collected his abstract work. His works became key to shaping the mission of the museum Guggenheim planned on opening dedicated to modern, avant-garde art. With over 150 works in the museum's collection, Kandinsky became known as the "patron saint of the Guggenheim." He died in December of 1944 in relative, but serene, isolation. The Legacy of Wassily Kandinsky Kandinsky's work, both artistic and theoretical, played a large role in the philosophic foundation for later modern movements, in particular Abstract Expressionism and its variants like Color Field Painting. His late, biomorphic work had a large influence on Arshile Gorky's development of a non-objective style, which in turn helped to shape the New York School's aesthetic. Jackson Pollock was interested in Kandinsky's late paintings and was fascinated by his theories about the expressive possibilities of art, in particular, his emphasis on spontaneous activity and the subconscious. Kandinsky's analysis of the sensorial properties of color was immensely influential on the Color Field painters, like Mark Rothko, who emphasized the interrelationships of hues for their emotive potential. Even the 1980s artists working in the Neo-Expressionist resurgence in painting, like Julian Schnabel and Philip Guston, applied his ideas regarding the artist's inner expression on the canvas to their postmodern work. Kandinsky set the stage for much of the expressive modern art produced in the 20th century.

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The Internet of Things (IoT) and smart cities have been two very active research fields during recent years, with a considerable amount of resources invested into building related infrastructures, creating large-scale smart city and IoT installations around the world. However, the question remains: how can we utilize such smart city and IoT deployments, in order to produce reliable, economically sustainable and socially fair solutions to create public value? This is especially true in the case of the educational domain, where it is more complex to integrate such solutions, given the restrictions in time and resources in school environments available for carrying out novel activities, in addition to traditional curricula and planned class schedules. At the same time, there is an increasing interest in getting schools involved in raising awareness about climate change and energy efficiency. In this context, the importance of the educational community is evident, both in terms of size and future significance. Today’s students are the citizens of tomorrow, and they should have the scientific and technological skills to respond to challenges like the climate change. The relevance of sustainable energy and energy saving behavior is gaining increasing interest in schools and in educational programs. Indeed, in the last decade schools have been the target of studies, education initiatives as well as energy efficiency actions in several countries. There has also been interest recently regarding the design of educational activities for energy awareness centered around IoT-enabled experimentation approaches. It is a means through which Europe can meet its goals, by equipping citizens, enterprise and industry in Europe with the skills and competences needed to provide sustainable and competitive solutions to the arising challenges . In terms of research questions, given the context mentioned above, which we were interested to answer through our work, the first one would be “how to engage and motivate end-user groups of students to participate in energy-saving educational activities”. The second one would be whether IoT-based and data-driven educational interventions towards sustainability awareness actually work inside the classroom. In other words, we wanted to look into the issue of motivating a school community using either more “soft” methods like gamification, or more technical hands-on ones, like IoT-based educational lab activities to educate students on the subject of sustainability. Having in mind these questions, we discuss here our findings from applying gamification and competition mechanics in an Italian high school, with the purpose of getting the students more engaged into energy-saving activities in the context of a research project (from now on referred to as the Project). We also present an educational toolkit, comprising IoT devices, data directly produced from school buildings, and the Node-RED programming environment. This toolkit allowed us to define educational activities within the school’s computer science curriculum, leveraging IoT devices for environmental data acquisition and the integration with sensor measurements. We describe the organization of the activity and related curricula and educational goals to raise students’ awareness in behaviour-based sustainability. Finally, we report on the experience carried out in both directions in a high school in Italy and conclude by discussing the results in terms of achieved energy savings in the observation period. The activities described here were conducted in this school during 2 school years, 2017-18 and 2018-19. As mentioned above, they include the application of both “soft” (gamification and competition) and “hands-on” (lab kit) mechanisms in order to engage high school students. Section 4 discusses aspects related to gamification and competition, mostly related to activities in the schools during school year 2017-18, while Section 5 discusses aspects related to hands-on lab activities conducted during school year 2018-19. Our results indicate that both approaches can lead to interesting results; in our case, the increased engagement of the students led to both actual energy savings and positive learning outcomes. 2 Related work The European Union is placing a strong focus on energy efficiency with initiatives like Build Up , a portal for energy efficiency in buildings. Overall, the percentage of school buildings among non-residential ones in Europe is around 17% . Regarding the current state of the art in inclusion of sustainability and other related aspects in the educational domain, there is a lot of activity taking place with respect to inclusion of makerspace elements in school curricula, aided by the availability of IoT hardware as well. summarizes recent activity within the Maker Movement approach, presenting relevant recent findings and open issues in related research. discusses a study stemming from a large-scale national testbed in Sweden in schools related to the maker movement, along with the inclusion of maker elements into the school curriculum of Sweden. Furthermore, there is a growing number of research projects and activities that focus specifically on energy efficiency within the educational domain such as ZEMedS and School of the Future . Other recent projects like Charged and Entropy target diverse end-user communities and do not focus specifically on the educational community. Moreover, several recent works focus on university curricula for teaching Internet of Things (IoT) leveraging a learning-by-doing and hands-on approach [23, 6],,, while the design of IoT-enabled educational scenarios in high and junior schools is less investigated. Porter et al. argue that the lack of students’ engineering experiences in primary and secondary education is in part due to the fact that very few teachers have an engineering/technology background and that the collaboration with universities and professionals would help coping with this issue. Along this direction, Gianni et al. report on the usage of a toolkit for rapid IoT application prototyping with a group of high school students. Analogously, proposed the application in schools of a plug-and-play toolkit together with some suggestions for successful implementation of activities in high schools. An educational framework leveraging ubiquitous, mobile and Internet of Things technology for science learning in high schools has been proposed within the UMI-Sci-Ed project, while also investigating students’ stance on IoT-enabled education activities . There are a few examples of IoT-driven educational activities performed with the additional objective of increasing students’ awareness of societal challenges. Tziortzioti et al. designed and experimented data-driven educational scenarios for secondary schools to raise students’ awareness of water pollution. Mylonas et al. proposed an educational lab kit and a set of educational scenarios primarily targeting primary schools for increasing energy awareness within the GAIA Project. is another recent example of a work discussing such issues from a more theoretic standpoint. With respect to gamification utilizing IoT in the context of sustainability, and specifically for energy and water, is a recent survey on the subject. However, although there are several examples of using gamification in this context, there has been little focus so far on the benefits and dynamics of such an approach inside classrooms, an aspect we discuss in this work. 3 Overview of the Deployment Environment The work presented here was conducted in the context of a research project focusing on energy efficiency in educational buildings, employing behavioural change strategies, i.e., not using invasive techniques or retrofitting the buildings with actuators. This project produced a real-world multi-site IoT infrastructure comprising several school buildings in Europe. The schools cover a range of local climatic conditions and educational levels (i.e., from primary to high school), as well as cultural settings (i.e., they are located in different countries). Within this infrastructure, hereafter referred to as GAIA Project IoT Platform, a large number of IoT monitoring endpoints have been installed installed inside classrooms using heterogeneous hardware and software technologies, including different commercial hardware/sensor vendors, as well as open-source solutions. At each site, the following types of measurements are periodically acquired: the power consumption of the whole building and selected rooms/areas, the environmental parameters of selected classrooms and/or laboratories (typically 5-minutes average values), and weather conditions and air pollution levels. These measurements, aggregated at different time granularity (e.g., 5-minute, hour, day, etc.), can be programmatically accessed through a set of REST APIs. A set of software and hardware artifacts have been produced within the project with the aim of experimenting different ways for raising students awareness on sustainability and energy consumption topics, also leveraging data and services provided by the IoT platform made available by the project, In this work we will focus on the following two software tools and the activities that have been designed around them: a web application (from now on called the Challenge) that serves as a playful introduction to sustainability and energy-related concepts for students. It uses gamification mechanisms to increase end-user engagement; an IoT-based educational lab kit that has been setup using open-source technologies. The kit includes already assembled devices and commercial IoT sensors and actuators to allow students complete classes and lab tutorials regarding energy and sustainability. In this work, we chose to focus on a specific high school located in Italy, where both types of activities have been performed. As mentioned in the introduction, the experiences relayed in this work cover a period of 2 school years. 4 Gamification and Competition In this section, we report on our experience in supporting the use of the Challenge in three classes of the target school. Overall, the Challenge is an online application aimed at students, designed to raise energy awareness and act as a playful introduction to sustainability aspects by leveraging gamification mechanics. The core of the application is a set of online Quests, grouped into five subject areas related to energy consumption reduction. The Quests are offered to students as steps of a “journey”, on top of a game “board”. This journey can also be enhanced with Class Activities, which are designed by teachers. For instance, Class Activities can consist in deeper investigation of some topics, energy-saving actions in the real-life, observation of monitoring data provided by the IoT platform, etc. The educational activities supported by the Challenge aim at motivating participants to engage in energy saving topics, by seeing their impact on the school facilities’ energy consumption over the course of the challenge and, finally, competing against other classes and schools. Before introducing the Challenge to the classes, we performed a set of preparatory activities, such as disseminating advertising material in school areas and classrooms, training teachers through workshops, engaging the school principal and the technical staff. We also prepared brief eye-catching material, as an example of class activity created specifically for that school. Then, three classes of the high school started to participate to the activities. They conducted the Challenge Quests individually, while Class Activities were performed in groups. The students played the Challenge after a short introduction about the topics. Class Activities carried out by the classes consisted in analyzing monitoring data regarding the energy consumption and environmental comfort in the school facility, spotting possible rooms for improvement, devising and realizing ways of raising awareness in their school and family communities (e.g., news in the local newspaper, posts on the school web site, production of videos and presentations). The students were divided into 5 groups and, to increase their engagement, students also underwent an evaluation. The teacher decided to assign a mark for the activity that is then accounted in the computation of the student’s final mark for the subject (i.e., physics in this specific example). The way this was computed was interesting because it is based on a peer evaluation mechanism, and it was also proposed by the teachers of the school: first, a grade is assigned to the group as the average of the grades given by the other groups; then a grade is assigned for each member of a group by the other members of the same group. Student’s grade is the weighted average of these two evaluations (25% personal grade and 75% group grade). Such an evaluation mechanism boosted the individual contribution to the group activity and fair cooperation among group members. All students of the three classes took part to the Challenge’s competition and the three classes started to climb on the Challenge’s ranking of participating classes from all the schools participating in the Challenge (over 20 schools in total). They also produced some snapshots like animated GIFs and used a lot the portfolio function of the web application. Overall, the level of engagement due to competition achieved in the school was very high. This was a successful outcome, which, however, can be associated to some unexpected and risky effects, as we experienced in the final days of the competition. Indeed, the classes began to continuously monitor the ranking and at a certain point in time they began arguing on fairness in the Challenge score and behavior of competitors. This issue was raised when they noticed that after months of activities, another surpassed them in the overall score. Essentially, what the students then tried to do amounted to “reverse engineering” the way that the scores were calculated in the Challenge. They basically started to monitor what the other teams were doing, and whether actions from their side had any tangible effect on their school’s overall score. At some point, they limited the possible cases and scenarios for the way scores are calculated. This turn of events could be summarized as an ideal for the Challenge: our end-users were more than just engaged, they were thrilled to participate and out-compete other schools, which they hadn’t even heard of before. Another aspect was that they assumed the way the other school surpassed them in the score was a “trick”, suggesting to us that the score counting method was “unethical”. They noticed that 3 new users were added to a competing school, thus contributing extra points to the overall class score. They were very sensitive to this issue and stated that they were also ready to cancel all the project-related activities, since they perceived the whole project as anti-pedagogical, or even unethical. From their point of view, they were not complaining because they were no longer the best team, but against what they perceived as not fair play. The students also proposed a solution to the score “issue”, as perceived by them. Essentially, the problem was that there was an assumption from the students’ side that new students could be added to a certain school after an initial period and that all students from the other schools had registered early on. As a way to counter such complaints in the future, we setup some measures to reduce the probability of cheating behaviours, namely: i) registrations are allowed only for a limited period, teachers may request an extension providing a motivation, ii) the teacher’s guide to the Challenge has been enhanced asking the teacher to control the identity of users registered to their class. In terms of overall comments about the contribution of gamification to the engagement, apart from the aforementioned aspects in this specific school, in several of the other schools participating in the project we saw increased engagement. Moreover, during 2 school years (2017-18, 2018-19) we also announced 2 “competitions”, where all schools in the project were called to participate and for certain categories they should use the Challenge to score more points or create content to share with their peers. As a general observation, during the time period that the competitions ran, there were very easily identifiable spikes in the end-user activity in the Challenge, as seen in Fig. 2. 5 IoT-enabled educational activity In this section, we will focus on the experience carried out in the design and experimentation of an ”hands-on” IoT educational activity with the twofold objective of (i) increasing students’ awareness on the relevance of behavior change for achieving energy savings through a data-driven approach, thanks to real-world data gathered by the IoT platform made available by the GAIA Project, while also (ii) integrating such IoT-enabled experiment into a upper secondary school curricula. The second aspect, i.e. designing the activity so that it could fit within the educational program of at least of one the subjects offered to students was a key element to encourage teachers in devoting effort to contribute to the design and experimentation as well as in actively engaging students in proficiently taking part to the activity. The activity has been mainly designed to fit in the computer science curricula, although it can be further developed with actions carried out in the framework of additional subjects, such as sciences and physics. More specifically, the activity has been designed as a set of computer science lectures for a class of students of the 4th year of a Scientific Lyceum in Italy. The learning objectives for that year are defined at high level by the Minister of Education111https://www.miur.gov.it/liceo-scientifico-opzione-scienze-applicate (in Italian) and then customized by each teacher. They generally consists in: learning a programming language, basics of coding, data modeling and tool for data access, manipulation and persistence, web programming. Moreover, the use of the acquired knowledge to support a study on topics in science and physics subjects is also welcomed. In this context, the activity was designed to develop the theme of sustainability and energy awareness by first providing students with monitoring data gathered from the environment they live in (e.g. the school hall, the computer science laboratory,etc.) by using the sensor infrastructure deployed within the GAIA Project in a selected set of rooms and areas in the school (see Section 3 and a sensor board (called LabKit) that was given to students to gather environmental parameters in some of the remaining areas. Thanks to these tools, first, the students have access to a real-world dataset, which they can learn to manipulate and query through appropriate tools in order to derive meaningful data about the school environment they live in, related to comfort, resource usage, etc.. Based on such findings, students, with the help of the teachers, can decide on actions for further investigation (e.g., changing their behaviour to save energy, studying the factors that influence the comfort in school environments, etc.). Second, they can enhance the experience with programming tools to develop programs for data manipulation, sharing and visualization. The material we prepared for computer science teachers consists in: the LabKit sensor board, documentation and examples for using a programming environment for developing programs for pushing sensor data from the LabKit to the IoT platform maintained in the GAIA Project and simple web applications for data visualization. Hereafter, we describe theLabKit and the programming environment selected and extended for its usage within the GAIA Project and, then, report on the experience with a computer science class of 22 students. 5.1 Lab Kit and programming tools The LabKit has been assembled utilizing the following components to minimize costs and ease replicability: Raspberry Pi model 3B or 3B+: Raspberry Pi v3; GrovePi, which is an add-on board that couples to the Raspberry to ease the connection of external sensors; GrovePi Sensors, i.e., light, temperature, humidity, sound sensors, together with buzzer, LEDs and a Button; and an LCD screen, allowing an immediate feedback on gathered measurements. We selected Node-RED as a programming environment to be used by students since it is a well known environment that leveraged a flow-based programming environment for easily interconnecting hardware devices, online services and developing IoT applications. Since Node-RED is a visual tool that allows users with minimal programming skills rapidly assembling and deploying an IoT application, it can be used in schools for performing simple experiences with sensors and IoT data processing in classes. Integrating Node-RED with the APIs of the GAIA Project IoT platform, and, optionally, local sensor kits, thus allows enriching the educational activities with the use of real data gathered from the sensor infrastructure, while leveraging a tool supported by a wide open source community and a rich documentation. Node-RED comes with a set of ready-to-use customizable nodes allowing to design and deploy simple applications by simply dragging and dropping nodes from the palette, configuring and connecting them according to the desired flow. On the other side, Node-RED can also be easily extended by developing and adding new nodes to the repository. This extensibility provides a flexible support to the design of educational activities at a customizable difficulty level, which can be adapted to the class level and syllabus. For instance, teachers may assign tasks to students for programming a custom data processing function or graphical widget and add them to Node-RED. In order to foster a data-driven approach, not merely limited to the local usage of the measurements gathered through the LabKit, an additional Node (called GaiaNode) to access sensors and API of the GAIA Project IoT Platform as data sources in Node-RED. The software and documentation is available as open source on GitHub. The GaiaNode plug-in for Node-RED is a set of nodes that allows interacting with the IoT platform of the GAIA Project to retrieve measurements gathered by the fixed sensor infrastructure deployed in the schools involved in the GAIA Project, as well as pushing values of the LabKit sensors (e.g., Raspberry Pi sensors) into the platform. 5.2 Data-driven Education for energy awareness Hereafter we describe one of the educational activities that have been proposed targeting high schools and integrating with the existing computer science curricula. The pedagogical goals aiming at increasing students awareness on energy topics are: awareness, observation, experimentation and action. This goals have been used to inform an IoT-enabled education activity, whose main steps are summarized in Table 1. |Day||Activity description||Educational Goal| |Introductory seminar organized by GAIA Project partners about the topics of energy consumption awareness and carbon footprint calculation||Introduction| |Introduction to the IoT. Definition and examples of deployment and applications from the Web and the GAIA Project||Understanding the concept of IoT and related impact in the everyday life| |Introduction to Node-RED and to the paradigm of Flow-based programming. Notion of node, flow and deployment in Node-RED||Position the Flow-Based Programming paradigm using Node-RED for programming simple applications for data manipulation and delivery.| |Design of some basic Node-RED flow examples. Use of the GaiaNode plugin for accessing IoT resources and measurements. Retrieving energy consumption and energy data of the school||Understanding relevance of extending Node-RED with new nodes. Observation of measurements of energy consumption and environmental parameters in the school.| |Configuration of Raspberry and temperature sensor to monitor the temperature in a selected area (e.g., the computer science laboratory.||Learning setting up and configuring sensor and computing hardware devices. Analyzing and processing measurement data through a spreadsheet| |Develop a Node-RED flow application for creating a virtual sensor resource and pushing LabKit measurements into the GAIA Project platform||Learning programming a virtual sensor application pushing sensor measurements into the GAIA Project IoT platform.| |Develop a web-based Dashboard application to visualize temperature values||Developing programs for data access and visualization leveraging web protocols| |Analysis of monitoring data in different conditions of the lab (lights on/off, windows open/closed, etc.||Experimentation: taking some actions and analyzing the impact on the environment| |Discussion on findings and plan of short-term/long-term actions for further investigation, development, energy saving etc.||Analyzing data, finding issues and countermeasures, assigning priorities| |Action (objective and duration of actions to be decided by students)||It depends on the action decided by the class| The educational activity has been designed by researchers with a computer networks background, with the help of the computer science professor of the high school where the activity was carried out. A total number of twenty two students of the high school participated in the activity. The activity has been carried out weekly in the 2-hour slot of computer science classes from February to end of April 2019. The students chose to monitor the temperature of their computer science laboratory, since they experienced a too high and uncomfortable heat. The availability of the LabKit allowed them monitoring the environmental conditions of the lab and correlating it with outdoor weather conditions retrieved through the GAIA Project IoT Platform. They measured very high temperature values (in the range of C) also in cold days and during night, when heating was supposed to be off. They also analyzed these data while varying the room conditions (windows on/off, curtains open/closed). Since radiators in the laboratory were not equipped with thermostatic valves, they couldn’t turn their observations into direct energy saving actions (e.g., regulating radiators). As an outcome of the discussion on Day 9 they elicited a set of questions and energy-saving proposals and decided to submit them to the school principal. This resulted in a 20-minutes discussion with the principal on pragmatic actions for guaranteeing comfort while achieving energy savings. The discussion was initially focused on the experimental findings in the computer science laboratory and, at the end, was extended to other critical areas of the school. The discussion ended up with a set of actions to be performed by the school principal and ideas for follow-up activities to be performed by students. We gave a questionnaire to students to assess their satisfaction and engagement. The organization of the questionnaire is provided in Table 2 and the statements were derived also taking into account analogous surveys in related work (e.g. . Answers were given in a Likert scale form (1-5). The questionnaire was submitted to the class after the end of the activity. Fig. 3 shows the obtained results. The responses were mostly positive about the satisfaction and engagement in carrying out the activity (i.e., Q1,Q2 Q7,Q9 and Q10). However, responses related to the easiness of the activity (Q6 and Q8) suggest the need for improvements (e.g., distributing the activities within a longer time span, additional documentation/tutorials, etc.). |Q1||I am satisfied with the activity| |Q2||I am pleased with the activity| |Q3||The activity was easy| |Q4||The process of the activity was clear and understandable| |Q5||I was able to follow the tasks of the activity| |Q6||I have the knowledge and ability to follow the tasks of the activity| |Q7||Attending the activity was enjoyable| |Q8||Attending the activity was exciting| |Q9||I was feeling good in the activity| |Q10||I found the activity useful| |Q11||The activity improved my capabilities in science and technologies| |Q12||I liked to observe and use the data and measurements| |Q13||I liked the lab activity with Node-RED and the Raspberry Pi| |Q14||I learned something new by observing and using the data and measurements| |Q15||I learned something new in the lab activity with Node-RED and the Raspberry Pi| Finally, since this activity was part of the computer science education program, at the end of the activity the students had to take an exam for assessment purposes. The exam was a written one and was made of 5 free-text questions (two questions on IoT and flow-based programming concepts, two on Node-RED usage for programming applications, and one question on solutions for sustainability and energy awareness in the school). The scores obtained by the class were are: 2 excellent, 3 good, 6 satisfactory, 7 sufficient, 4 insufficient. On average the class performed better with respect to previous computer science were better than previous exams. According to the teacher, this was probably due to the fact that previous exams have the aim of verifying knowledge acquired through traditional learning methodology on a larger body of content, while our IoT activity required more engagement and part of the content was produced by students themselves. In addition, the IoT activity had the peculiarity that the work was done in group and the collaboration was an incentive for students to perform better and to meet the deadline in order not to damage the other classmates. As a final comment on the activity, the teacher also said that activity was successful in consolidating the relations among students and between class and the teacher. The students have demonstrated an increased engagement with respect to traditional lectures in previous months, thanks also to the awareness that their work was going to have impact on the school environment where they live in. As lesson learnt, the teacher also suggested that the timeplan was too strict and the activity would benefit of additional time resources (e.g., three hours a week instead of two) devoted to the activity. In that specific case, this would mean performing part of the activity within other subjects (physics or science), thus requiring the cooperation of a group of teachers and the enhancement of interdisciplinary aspects. 6 Behaviour-based Energy Savings Since the common objective of the educational activities presented above is energy awareness, in this section we report on an activity planned and performed by students targeting energy savings in a school environment through behaviour change. The following is an example of possible decisions that students can take as an effect of awareness improvement through learning, observation and experimentation steps, as the ones described in Sections 4 and 5. The class decided to focus on the lighting of the main hall as the use-case for targeting energy savings. With respect to luminosity, there is a minimum recommended value of 150 lux for a circulation area as an indoor hall. There are a number of luminosity sensors installed in this specific building. Given that the sensors produce that are highly related to their orientation, which is not optimal for calculating a luminosity average value, the students had to approximate the values they saw through the system. Making a rough estimation, students set a threshold of 400 lux for the values produced by the sensors that they thought it corresponded to “good enough” lighting. Figure4 displays the measurements for power consumed by lights in the hall and luminosity, with the addition of the 400 lux threshold (horizontal line marked in red). Also highlighted in the figure is the interval during which luminosity in the school hall is above the threshold. It is evident that between 10:00AM and 5:00PM the lights should be turned off. This is a recurring situation in this specific school building for a number of months, due to its location (Mediterranean) and orientation; i.e., it is not something that is observed only for a single day or over a short time period. The next step was to act on the plant for turning off the unnecessary lights, while also making sure not to leave any part of the hall in the dark. Lighting should be turned off for sufficient time, in order to be able to observe the change in the data. It was convenient to calculate the average values of the lighting system during a “normal” baseline period and after the intervention. The school analyzed the new data regarding power during the period in which the light was turned off. With the lighting configured as usual, power consumption is at approximately 4.9kW. When the school acted to keep active only what is necessary, the power consumption decreased to 1.9kW, thus saving 3kW in the process. This practically means that 21kWh could be saved during a single day, considering the 7 hours of the interval during which this issue was identified. With such data in hand, students performed simple actions for raising awareness in the school staff for switching off the lights in the hall when not necessary and involved their schoolmates in similar actions in classrooms and laboratories. The potential energy savings analyzed in the previous steps pushed the students to act. They created a set of signs (Fig. 5) aiming at helping the school staff to remember which switches can be turned off when the natural light is enough. They also designed a poster to be placed in all the rooms equipped with a projector by the students: “Please shutdown the computer and the projector when not in use”. Additionally, one of the classes involved produced a short video to encourage their friends and families to join the “battle for environmental care”. This short video gives some simple advice for saving energy and decreasing pollution. Based on achievements due to the short- and medium-term experimental activities, the school wanted to support students in taking further measures within a longer time span, to obtain the best results in terms of energy efficiency. Students observed and analyzed periodically the impact that these changes have in the long term and monitored progress toward the achievement of their objectives. 7 Conclusions and future work The educational community is one of the most interesting target groups for sustainability and energy savings-related activities. The successful introduction of such activities into the curriculum of schools in Europe is still an open issue. In this paper, we have presented our experiences from utilizing mechanisms such as competitions, gamification and IoT-based, hands-on lab activities to increase the engagement of students at a high school in Italy. Our results, produced during a long time period covering two school years, provide some interesting insights regarding the creative ways the aforementioned mechanisms can be used to trigger the interest of high school students. The inclusion of competition and gamification aspects when having students as end-users can increase their engagement rapidly, especially when having students groups or schools compete with each other. Some practical guidelines from our experience are the following: Direct and informal support to teachers: teachers were the gateway to our end-users; having gained the trust and attention of teachers is the first step to establishing a connection with the students as well. Provide short and captivating material: schools tend to have little time available to dedicate to extra-curricular activities, information should be as engaging and codified as possible. Competitiveness is key for engagement but has to be handled with care: in our case, a rapid increase in engagement came close to backfire, as discussed in Section 4. With respect to our future work, we plan to continue this line of research by applying our tools to other school communities in other European countries. - Note: ZEMedS project (Zero Energy MEDiterranean Schools), http://www.zemeds.eu Cited by: §2. - (2017) Predictable influence of iot (internet of things) in the higher education. International Journal of Information and Education Technology 7 (12), pp. 914–920. Cited by: §2. - (2018) A survey on the design of gamified systems for energy and water sustainability. Games 9 (3). External Links: Cited by: §2. - Note: European Web Portal for energy efficiency in buildings, http://www.buildup.eu Cited by: §2. - ((accessed on April, 2019)) CHARGED project, http://www.charged-project.eu/. Cited by: §2. - (2016-05) Design of open-source platform for introducing internet of things in university curricula. In 2016 IEEE 11th International Symposium on Applied Computational Intelligence and Informatics (SACI), Vol. , pp. 273–276. External Links: Cited by: §2. - (Website) External Links: Cited by: §2. - (2018) Makerspace in school - considerations from a large-scale national testbed. International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction 16, pp. 9 – 15. External Links: Cited by: §2. - (2019) Widening the scope of fablearn research: integrating computational thinking, design and making. In Proceedings of the FabLearn Europe 2019 Conference, FabLearn Europe ’19, New York, NY, USA, pp. 15:1–15:9. External Links: Cited by: §2. - (2011) Europe’s buildings under the microscope: a country-by-country review of the energy performance of buildings. Technical report Buildings Performance Institute Europe (BPIE). Note: ISBN: 9789491143014 Cited by: §2. - (2018) Rapid prototyping internet of things applications for augmented objects: the tiles toolkit approach. In European Conference on Ambient Intelligence, pp. 204–220. Cited by: §2, §5.3. - (2018) Investigating secondary students’ stance on iot driven educational activities. In Ambient Intelligence, A. Kameas and K. Stathis (Eds.), pp. 188–203. Cited by: §2, §5.3. - (2016-10) Integrating internet of things (IoT) into stem undergraduate education: case study of a modern technology infused courseware for embedded system course. In 2016 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE), Vol. , pp. 1–9. External Links: Cited by: §2. - (2018) Physical computing with plug-and-play toolkits: key recommendations for collaborative learning implementations. International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction 17, pp. 72–82. Cited by: §2. - (2017) Tiles: a card-based ideation toolkit for the internet of things. In Proceedings of the 2017 Conference on Designing Interactive Systems, pp. 587–598. Cited by: §2. - (2019) An educational iot lab kit and tools for energy awareness in european schools. International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction 20, pp. 43 – 53. External Links: Cited by: §2. - (Website) External Links: Cited by: §5.1. - (2017) Empirical studies on the maker movement, a promising approach to learning: a literature review. Entertainment Computing 18, pp. 57 – 78. External Links: Cited by: §2. - (2017) Building automation and IoT as a platform for introducing stem education in k-12. In ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Cited by: §2. - Note: Towards Zero Emission with High Performance Indoor Environment, http://school-of-the-future.eu Cited by: §2. - (2013) Science europe roadmap, https://www.scienceeurope.org. available online.. Cited by: §1. - (2018) Raising awareness for water pollution based on game activities using internet of things. In European Conference on Ambient Intelligence, pp. 171–187. Cited by: §2. - (2017-11) IoT smart campus review and implementation of IoT applications into education process of university. In 2017 13th International Conference on Electronics, Computer and Computation (ICECCO), Vol. , pp. 1–4. External Links: Cited by: §2.

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“Whenever I introduce Choctaw culture, I am reminded of our Tribal ancestors who still live in our collective memory. The stories of their lives, full of both triumph and tragedy, remind us of our strong Choctaw heritage, and they are the background against which our current renaissance of Choctaw cultural arts, educational achievements, and progressive economic developments are illuminated. What it means to be Choctaw is deeply rooted within each of us. Our identity, ultimately defined by our blood, continues from generation-to-generation. Our strong inner spirit that has sustained us throughout history manifests itself again and again in beautiful and creative ways outwardly towards others.” – Tribal Chief Bealsey Denson, Choctaw Nation – (Excerpt from a Welcome Speech –2004) Directions: Take turns reading aloud the excerpt from the speech made by Chief Denson. Highlight or underline those words and phrases which in your opinion are positive and interpret their meaning in your own words. Prepare a brief description of your culture using as many of the words and phrases you highlighted in Question 1 as you can. The Choctaw: A Concise History 1. The Choctaw are a proud people with an arduous history. Like their neighbors the Cherokee, the Choctaw were forced to move from their land. Theirs is also a history of intrigue and glory. One reason is that their forefathers played an important role during World War I in this country! In the following pages you’ll learn the meanings of: Code talkers, head flattening, and the Green Corn festival. 2. The antecedents of the Choctaw people were part of a very large group of Indians which inhabited the southern and middle Mississippi valley region as much as 4,000-8,000 years ago. Several Spanish expeditions in the early 1500′s might have contacted the Choctaw, but there is no question that Hernando De Soto’s 1540 expedition encountered them: The Choctaw inflicted a significant loss on De Soto’s men in a battle near present-day Mobile, Alabama in 1541, and De Soto’s expedition never recovered from the violent confrontation. 3. As with all of the other American Indian tribes, the Choctaw had always had conflicts with the various neighbors, most notably the Chickasaw. But the coming of the Europeans greatly intensified the wars and battles. 4. Beginning about 1700, both British and French traders vied for trade relations with the tribes, with the Choctaw ending up allied with the French, and the Chickasaw allied with the British. Besides direct conflicts between the British and French (due to their European wars), the traders stirred up many additional wars between the Choctaw and the Chickasaw tribe. The traders also caused conflict between the Choctaw and the Creeks. 5. When the French and Indian War ended in 1763, the Treaty of Paris removed the French from east of the Mississippi River, and the Choctaw became part of Britain’s empire. During the American Revolution, some Choctaw fought for the colonists under Washington and other generals, while other Choctaw fought on the side of the British. 6. Following the American Revolution in 1783, the Choctaw signed the Treaty of Hopewell with the new United States, placing the tribe under the protection of the new government. However, pressure from the white settlers steadily increased, and by 1800, the Choctaw were beginning to cede some of their lands. 7. In 1811, the noted Shawnee chief Tecumseh was attempting to establish an Indian Confederacy to resist further encroachment. He asked the Choctaw to become part of the confederacy, but the Choctaw chose not to join him and attempted to live in harmony with the U.S. Yet throughout this time, pressure on the Choctaw to leave their traditional grounds steadily increased. 8. In 1830, then-President Andrew Jackson forced the Choctaw to be the first tribe to be removed from their homelands and relocated in Oklahoma. Almost 15,000 traveled, while about 5,000 remained behind in Mississippi. Many died along the path, victims of disease, exposure, and malnutrition. 9. The newly removed Choctaw tribe set about building new lives in Oklahoma, establishing schools and churches, drafting written laws and a constitution, and taking on many of the white settler’s ways. 10. During the American Civil War (1861-1865), most of the Choctaw sided with the Confederacy and several Choctaw battalions were raised, though none saw extensive battle. During World War I (1914-1918) many Choctaw fought, and 14 Choctaw men became Indian “code talkers”, using their language for military communications, which could not be deciphered by the German enemy. Exercise 1 Vocabulary Practice: Inference Locate each of the following words in bold in the story; the numbers in parenthesis indicate the paragraphs where the words can be found. Next, try to infer the meanings from the context. Use a dictionary to check your answers. Add and highlight any other new words that you may find. 1. The antecedents of the Choctaw people were part of a very large group of Indians which inhabited the southern and middle Mississippi valley. (2) 2. Several Spanish expeditions in the early 1500’s might have contacted the Choctaw. (2) 3. Beginning about 1700, both British and French traders vied for trade relations with the tribes, (4) 4. The Choctaw ending up allied with the French, and the Chickasaw allied with the British. (4) 5. Pressure from the white settlers steadily increased, and by 1800, the Choctaw were beginning to cede some of their lands. (6) 6. Tecumseh was attempting to establish an Indian Confederacy to resist further encroachment but the Choctaw chose not to join him and attempted to live in harmony with the U.S. Yet throughout this time. (7) 7. President Andrew Jackson forced the Choctaw to be the first tribe to be removed from their homelands. Many died along the path, victims of disease, exposure, and malnutrition. (8) 8. During the American Civil War (1861-1865), most of the Choctaw sided with the Confederacy and several Choctaw battalions were raised.(10) 9. During World War I (1914-1918) 14 Choctaw men became Indian “code talkers”, using their language for military communications, which could not be deciphered.(10) Vocabulary Practice: Sentences With your group, create sentences using the vocabulary words. Exercise 2 Reading Comprehension (True/False) Directions: Read each of the following statements concerning the reading and decide if it is true(T) or false (F). If the statement is false, correct it. In each case, locate the appropriate part in the reading to confirm your answer. 1. The progenitors of the Choctaw lived 4,000-8,000 years ago. 2. The Choctaw won the battle against DeSoto and his men. 3. The battle occurred near what is today known as Georgia. 4. De Soto recovered from the battle. 5. The Choctaws never had conflicts with other tribes until the Europeans arrived. 6. After the French and Indian War ended, the Choctaw remained allies with the French. 7. During the American Revolution, some Choctaws fought on the side of the Americans, while others fought on the side of the British. 8. The British won the Revolutionary War. 9. As more white settlers moved into their territory, the more the Choctaws fought. 10. The Shawnee Chief Tecumseh wanted the Choctaw to join his fight against the whites. 11. In 1830, President Andrew Jackson allowed the Choctaw to remain on their land with his blessings. 12. During the Civil War, 14 Choctaw men became code talkers for the U.S. military. Exercise 3 Questions for Reflection and Discussion 1. Although the colonists were steadily moving into their territory, the Choctaw refused to join Tecumseh and the Indian Confederation. Discuss the possible reasons for their refusal. 2. The Choctaw wanted to live “in harmony” with the white settlers. Discuss your reasons for why this arrangement would have or would not have been possible. 3. Discuss the possible reasons why the Choctaw battled the Chickasaw and the Creek Indians. 4. If the Choctaw had joined The Indian Confederation proposed by Tecumseh, would the situation between the white settlers and the tribes have been different? 5. After all of the maltreatment from the U.S., 14 men from the Choctaw tribe became code talkers for the U.S. military during World War I. Why? Exercise 4 Research Activities Choose a topic from the following list and prepare a presentation for class or for group discussion. • World War I • American Revolution • Civil War • President Andrew Jackson Exercise 5 Writing Activities Directions: Choose one of the following writing activities. Reread the history of the Choctaw and create a time line for them from 1500-1918. Select an event from the Choctaw history and write an essay in which you describe the event in detail. A Choctaw Myth:The Gift Of Tanchi (Corn) Once upon a time there were two Choctaws camped out under a summer moon when they heard a beautiful but sad sound. They walked along the river’s edge following the sound until they came upon a woman standing on a mound of earth. She was very beautiful, surrounded by light, and wore a dress of white decorated with delicate flowers. Now these two Choctaws had very good manners so they asked her right away how they could help her. “I am hungry,” she said with a small sad voice. The men did not have much food but they gave her their entire supper, and they gave it to her happily. The lovely lady ate only a little and thanked them with a promise. “If you will go and tell no one you saw me, I will ask my father, the Great Spirit, to give you a great and wondrous gift. Return to this exact spot at the next moon.” A little breeze suddenly blew by and she was gone. The Choctaws returned to their families and said nothing, even though they wanted to. At the next moon, they quickly returned to the spot but were saddened to see that the woman was not there. But on the exact spot where she stood was a tall green plant with leaves that looked like the swords of the white men. The food this plant gave could be eaten in many different ways, all of which were delicious. The children liked the popcorn it gave best. That plant was the corn plant, of course, a great gift, indeed. Exercise 1. Vocabulary Practice Directions: Circle the meaning closest to that of the boldfaced word from the reading. Use the context of the sentences to help you figure out the meaning of each word. 1. Until they came upon a woman standing on a mound of earth. a- the sandy part of earth b- a small natural hill c- a shape 2. She was very beautiful, surrounded by light. 3. She wore a dress of white decorated with delicate flowers. 4. The children liked the popcorn it gave best. a- popped corn b- crushed corn c- sweet corn 5. The lovely lady ate only a little and thanked them with a promise. 6. I will ask my father, the Great Spirit, to give you a great and wondrous gift. 7. The food this plant gave could be eaten. All of which were delicious. Exercise 2. Questions for Reflection and Discussion Is there a moral to this myth? If so explain it. If there a similar myth in your culture, share it with your group. In a group, create a myth that explains how something came to be. Exercise 3. Writing Activities Directions: Choose one of the following and write about the topic: Write a paragraph in which you explain the reason why the Choctaw created a myth about corn. With the members of your group compose a myth about how another source of food was created. The Choctaw People: Part II Choctaw Culture Then 1. The Choctaw men were hunters using bows and arrows which they made themselves to hunt deer, wild turkey, rabbit, and other small game animals. In addition to hunting, they were also expert fishermen. They used dugout canoes, which were fashioned from hollowed-out logs by the men. The Choctaw used other handmade tools such as nets and fishing spears. Choctaw women were responsible for the farming. They planted and harvested corn, beans, squash and sunflowers. 2. At first, the men and the women wore clothing made from the skins of the animals they hunted. After meeting the Europeans, they adapted clothing such as full skirts, shirts and cloth jackets. Everyone wore moccasins. 3. The Choctaws were known especially for their beautiful river cane baskets and wonderful woodcarvings. However, when they were forced to move from their homes to Oklahoma, the materials that they once used for their traditional crafts were no longer available. To compensate they switched to making beads, creating beadwork belts and similar items. 4. The Choctaws lived in small villages. Their houses were made from mud plaster and rivercane, with thatched roofs. The men enjoyed sports, so they also allocated space in a field for the game of stickball, including wooden benches for spectators. 5. Within the family, women took care of the home and family members, while the men had the responsibility of protecting their homes against intruders. One interesting note is that before a battle the men painted their faces and bodies with bright colors. Some also had tattoos on their arms and legs. The practices of body painting and tattooing were also executed in preparation for festivals and for certain ceremonies. During these occasions, Choctaw women also painted their faces, but they didn’t paint themselves to the extent that the men did. 6. The political system of the Choctaw was relatively simple. There was the family unit, with the father as head. There were several clans, and every family belonged to a particular clan. Each clan was comprised of many families with a leader. For important issues the clans leaders would meet and in this way decisions were made for the entire tribe. 7. In their religion the Choctaw believed in a deity and had many names for him. One of the popular names was Hashi Ikba, which means “Sun Father”. The Choctaw observed many practices; one was called head flattening, which involved attaching a board to the heads of male infants in order to flatten them. This was a common custom among the southeast Indians. The exact reason behind this practice is not clear. 8. One of the most religious ceremonies was the Green Corn Festival. This festival was both a time of thanksgiving and self-purification. The ceremony took place during the summer. In preparation for the celebration the men would clean all of the public areas, and the women cleaned their homes. First, there was a feast to give thanks for the produce and food from the last year. This was followed by a two-day fast, during which time crimes and social conflicts were discussed with the purpose of allowing them to be forgiven. Finally, there was a fire ritual where all fires were extinguished, the tribe had a moment of silence, and then the religious leader would light a fire that symbolized the beginning of a new year. Choctaw Culture Now 1. Although there have been many changes within the culture of the Choctaw, the people work diligently to maintain many of their traditions. 2. The men still hunt but only at specified times, and the women still cook many of the dishes that the Choctaw have enjoyed for generations such as fry bread and hominy. Today there are many grocery stores and supermarkets. 3. Choctaw women still sew and make clothing, although much of the clothes are bought from stores. Many Choctaw wear still wear moccasins, and during religious ceremonies and festivals the people will wear their traditional regalia. 4. The art of basket weaving, and bead work are still practiced. There are centers where children attend sessions to learn how to weave, make baskets and do the beadwork of their ancestors. In addition to this, many of the cultural dances are still taught. 5. The Choctaw live in regular homes and in apartments on tribal land. 6. Within the family both men and women are equal partners. Women still take care of their homes, and many have jobs outside of the home. 7. The Choctaw have a stable but complex Tribal government. The Tribal governmental structure has been in place since 1945. In that year, a Tribal constitution was ratified, and a representative, democratic form of government was established, with equal representation among all Choctaw communities. The government is headed by an elected Tribal Chief, who serves four-year terms. The current leader of the largest group, located in Mississippi, is Chief Beasley Denson. There are several existing communities within the government, including one that exists in Oklahoma. The Tribe also elects a seventeen-member Tribal Council, with those officials serving four-year terms. 8. Today the people are engaged in many thriving business enterprises, including a casino. They also boast a large and successful education system. Women are granted the same positions as men in the work force. 9. High-tech industry located on the Reservation includes Choctaw Geo-Imaging Enterprise and joint projects with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. These are just a few examples of the successful business enterprises in which the Tribe is involved. The tribe continues to grow and flourish. 10. The religious practices of the Choctaw today are complex. Many still celebrate traditional occasions, which include the annual Choctaw Indian Fair that is held each July on the Choctaw Indian Reservation. Spring festivals are also held in each of the Choctaw communities. Thanksgiving brings the annual Choctaw Thanksgiving Feast. All of these events give Tribal members an opportunity to gather as a Choctaw community and celebrate the Tribe’s way of life, including all Choctaw traditions. Exercise 1. Reading Comprehension (True/False/Not Applicable) Directions: Read each of the following statements concerning the reading and decide if it is true, false, or not applicable (NA). Sometimes information may be true but not reported in the reading, in which case the question would not be applicable. If the statement is false, correct it. In each case, locate the appropriate part in the reading to confirm your answer. The Choctaw Then The Choctaw used horses for transportation. European mode of dress was adapted by the Choctaw. After their relocation the Choctaw continued making their traditional baskets. They began creating bead work belts. The men loved sports. Before a battle men tattooed symbols of war on their arms and legs. Women also painted their faces sometimes. Important tribal decisions were made by the Shaman. The women flattened an infants head to make room in his cradle. The Green Corn Festival was the time for thankfulness and self-purification. The Choctaw Today Today, the Choctaw men still use bows and arrows to hunts. Much of the clothing worn by the women today is sewn by hand. Basket weaving and bead work are taught to children. The Choctaw wear their regalia for special occasions only. The Choctaw women are treated as equals to men in the workforce. Some Choctaws are Christians. Exercise 2. Questions for Reflection and Discussion Provide possible reasons for the men painting and tattooing their faces and bodies before a battle. What could have been the significance of having the heads of male infants flattened? What made the Choctaw adapt European style of dress? History of the Choctaw Code Talkers Code talking began in the United States during World War I. The American Military used the complex American Indian languages as code, to keep the German forces from intercepting and decoding American military information. There are variations on the story of how the Choctaw men were discovered speaking their language, while in the military. One version begins as follows: “Captain Lawrence, commander of one of the companies, was strolling through the company area when he happened to overhear Solomon Lewis and Mitchell Bobb conversing in their native Choctaw language. After listening for a few moments, he called Lewis aside. “Corporal,” he asked,” how many of you Choctaw boys do we have in this battalion?” After a conference with Bobb, Lewis told the Captain, “We have eight men who speak fluent Choctaw in the battalion, sir.” * However the story began, it is fact that the Choctaw were the first tribe to be recognized as “code talkers”. There are eight men who were given credit as being part of the original group of Choctaws instrumental in helping the American Military Force win significant key battles, as “code talkers’. All were born in the Choctaw Nation. Unfortunately, there was little mention of the Choctaw Code Talkers after W W I mainly because the men did not discuss their roles during war. Both the term, and the Choctaw association to the term died out. It resurfaced again during World War II, when Navajo speakers were recruited especially by the Marines to serve in their standard communications units located in the Pacific. Today the term code talkers is strongly associated to the Navajo, especially in “Hollywood” movies. One reason given for this is that because the Navajos had a history of fighting wars against the United States, they served as a more “lively” topic for “make-believe” films. This was in contrast to the quiet, organized, agrarian Choctaws, who adapted the American way of government for their own tribal affairs, including the basics of the U.S. Constitution. In addition to the eight men mentioned, there were other Choctaw soldiers who contributed their efforts during the war, and their names were placed on the Choctaw War Memorial which was erected in 1995 at the Choctaw Capitol Building in Tuskahoma, Oklahoma. It includes a huge section of granite dedicated to the Choctaw Code Talkers. Other American Indian Code Talkers for the United States Army during World War II, were the Cherokee, Lakota, Comanche, and Meskwaki soldiers. Questions for Reflection and Discussion 1. In what country did “code talking” begin? 2. During what major event did code talking begin? 3. Which language was first used for code talking? 4. Why was it necessary to transmit messages in code? 5. Why didn’t the Choctaws receive credit as being the first code talkers during WWI? 6. In films today, which tribe is noted as being code talkers? 7. Have the Choctaw Code Talkers been honored ? Where? Teachers’ Guide and Answer Key Note To Teachers: The primary goal of the content of this reading material is to raise students’ awareness of the American Indian people living in the United States today, and to view them as an integral part of American society. My hope is that students will see the Native People of this country as professional workers, students,, parents, and leaders of their communities. The construction of the exercises makes the reading material more of a communicative activity, and help students better understand the content. There are various pre-reading, while-reading and post-reading tasks for each reading selection. Although the majority of the exercises are suggested for group work, especially during class, students can complete the activities independently as homework assignments. At the following class meeting, their responses can be used as the basis for group discussions. The research activities can also be completed individually or as collaborative group projects. I offer some suggestions for some of the activities throughout the lesson. The target language skills for the lessons are primarily reading and speaking, however, tasks for writing, and research activities are also included. These exercises are intended for ESL students, but everyone can use them. Although the reading level is high-intermediate to advanced, teachers can modify the material as needed for their level of learners. Pre-reading Discussion Questions Some possible responses: 1. Positive words and phrases: triumph– strong Choctaw heritage– renaissance of Choctaw cultural arts– educational achievements– progressive economic– development– strong inner spirit has sustained us– beautiful and creative ways– outwardly towards others. 2. Students choice. Exercise 1- Vocabulary Practice: Part A Inference antecedents noun. someone from whom you are descended (but usually more remote than a grandparent) (para. 2) expedition noun a military campaign designed to achieve a specific objective in a foreign country. (para. 2) vied verb compete for something; engage in a contest; measure oneself against others. (para. 4) allied verb joined by treaty or agreement. (para. 4) cede verb relinquish possession or control over. (para. 6) harmony noun compatibility in opinion and action. (para. 7) malnutrition noun a state of poor nutrition; can result from insufficient or unbalanced diet. (para. 8) battalions noun. (in the Military). a ground force unit composed of a headquarters and two or more companies or similar units. (para. 10) deciphered verb To read or interpret ambiguous, obscure, or illegible matter. (para. 10) Vocabulary Practice Part B Sentences – Students choice Exercise 2- Reading Comprehension (True / False) Exercise 3- Questions for Reflection and Discussion The Choctaw were tired of fighting. Maybe they felt it was useless to fight because the white settlers continued to enter their lands. The settlers outnumbered the Indians and they continued to enter the country in vast numbers, trying to live in peace with the settlers would have been possible, as long as the white settlers didn’t encroach on too much of the Choctaw’s land. Power for land, personal vendettas, racial or cultural conflicts. Maybe, there would have been a larger number of Indians, and maybe they would have had a better chance to overpower the settlers. Perhaps at that point in time the Choctaw felt that helping the country of their birth win the war was important. Exercise 4 Research Activities-(Students’ Choice) • World War I • American Revolution • Civil War • President Andrew Jackson Exercise 5 Writing Activities I. Historical Timeline for the Choctaw (1500-1918): 1500s–Might have been first contact with Spaniards 1540– Definite contact with DeSoto 1700s–Choctaw become allies with the British army 1763—End of French and Indian War 1783—End of American Revolutionary War 1800s—Choctaw ceded lands to new government 1811—Choctaw refuse to join Tecumseh’s Indians Confederacy 1830—Choctaw forced to leave their homeland; relocated to Oklahoma (1861-1865)—Civil War and Choctaw sided with the confederacy (1914-19180—World War I- 14 Choctaw men became the first Indian Code Talkers II. Students’ Choice. A CHOCTAW MYTH: THE GIFT OF TANCHI (CORN) Exercise 1 Vocabulary Practice mound – b. surrounded – b. decorated – a. promise – c. wondrous – b. delicious – b. popcorn – a. Exercise 2 Questions for Reflection and Discussion Is there a moral to this myth? “ Be kind to people because you never know to whom you’re speaking”. Exercise 3. Writing Activities Part II: CHOCTAW CULTURE Exercise 1. Reading Comprehension (True / False / Not Applicable) Choctaw Culture Then False (para. 3) False (para. 5) Choctaw Culture Now False (para 3) Exercise 2- Questions for Reflection and Discussion Men painted themselves to appear more fierce to their opponents or for religious purposes. A flat head might have signified great intelligence, or wealth. The Choctaw felt that the European dress was pretty, or they wanted to be part of the culture that was becoming dominant. Choctaw Code Talkers Questions for Comprehension and Discussion 1. The United States. 2. During World War I. 3. The Choctaw language. 4. It was necessary so that the Germans couldn’t decode the U.S.military massages. 5. The Choctaws did not talk to other people about their part in the war. 6. The Navajos are noted as being the first code talkers. 7. Yes. There is a monument located in the Choctaw Capitol.

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Are you searching for the best laptop for aerospace engineering students, then this post is only for you, where all the information will be explained in great detail from beginning to end and at the same time you will also be told about a lot of laptops which Will be very helpful in aerospace engineering. As we all know that laptops have an important role in studies nowadays, without which our studies may never be complete because all our projects, files and data cannot be made without it. Today, even if we have a small task, we do it in the laptop itself because it fulfills both our time and work properly and also saves time. In aerospace engineering, you have to perform operations like CAD (Computer Aided Designing) and CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamic) and for this you need a laptop with latest technology. The software CAD and CFD used here are both quite heavy, so we must have a good laptop to use them. Basic requirment of laptop for aerospace engineering students 1.PROCESSOR: The processor is very important for any laptop, so while choosing the processor, we should always keep in mind that for what purpose we are buying the laptop and in what kind of work we are going to use it. So as here we are taking laptops for aerospace engineering, on which we have to use heavy software, so here you should take only Ryzen 5 or i5 laptops. 2.RAM: This is working processing memory, so the more RAM you have, the more work you can easily do. By the way, you can also take a laptop with 4GB of RAM, but keep in mind that you have to buy a laptop in which you have been given the facility to increase the RAM. Or you should take a laptop with 8GB RAM if your budget is good. 3.Storage: Nowadays, we have a lot of great options available for storage like HDD and SSD. But the wrong choice of storage can also have a great impact on the performance of your laptop, so always you should always take the storage with the built-in storage because the memory not only increases the working capacity of your laptop, as well as it also accelerates the speed of your laptop.That’s why according to us you should take 1TB SSD or 256GB SSD + 1TB HDD where you have to install all your software in SSD and store your important files and data in all this HDD which will also speed up your laptop. Will grow and you will also get more space. 4.Graphics Card: If you’re studying in liberal arts/humanities, life science, economics, then your work can be done with any kind of graphic card like intel and AMD but when it comes to engineering then you cannot go with these two given graphic card. As we are discussing about best laptop for aerospace engineering students then we Can’t compromise in graphic card. 5.Display: Although the display has nothing to do with the performance, but still it is an important topic. While taking a laptop, we should take a laptop with IPS technology, which has 300 nits of brightness because sometimes you may have to project a jake on the site, for which you have to do this. The point should be kept in mind. 7 Best Laptop for Aerospace Engineering Students Lenovo Legion Y740 Acer Predator Helios 300 Acer Predator Helios 300 2020 HP Pavilion Lenovo Legion Y740 Lenovo Legion Y740 laptop is made of a special material with a sleek design that gives a premium feel to its look, along with it you get to see a powerful technology which helps you a lot in your studies. Gaming can be played comfortably in this laptop because you get to see a powerful graphics card and processor in it. This laptop comes with 15.6″ inch Full HD display with LED backlit and anti-glare IPS technology. Apart from this, if you ever had to work on the site or use the laptop outside for any project, then for that you have been given 500 nits here, with the help of which you can do this and also you will get a refreshing rate of 144 Hz. Lenovo Legion Y740 is powerd by intel core i7-9750h 9th generation processor, which has 2.6 GHz base and Turbo Boost Upto 4.5 GHz that ensure multitask with confidence. The processor is more enough to handle work on multiple tab at the same time this types of features are very essential when we are looking for Best Laptop for Aerospace Engineering Students in 2021. On this laptop we get to see a good storage option where you get 256 GB of SSD and 1TB of HDD as well. You should install your software in the SDD and whatever your project work or files and data you have it should be kept in HDD only , this keeps the performance of your laptop intact. Lenovo Legion Y740 comes with dedicated 6GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660Ti graphics card that ensure quickly high quality rendering of images for games and videos. apart from these you can make any kinds of project and 3D design and models with the help of this graphic card. The laptop offers 16GB initial RAM that can be expanded further up to 32GB. 16GB RAM is good enough to take care your heavy software and programming work and also helps during preparing project for the college competition. Many ports given such as Mini DP, HDMI, Ethernet, 2 x USB 3.1 Gen 1, AC adapter, Kensington® lock slot, USB 3.1 Gen 2, Combo audio/mic, Thunderbolt™ 3 Type-C etc. - Build quality is super - Decent screen with IPS features - Weight is just Weight 6.4 pounds (2.90 kg) - Privacy Shutter provides security - Great graphic card - Enough storage for files and software - Super cooling system - Backlit keyboard - No SD card there Acer Predator Helios 300 The performance of this laptop is as good as it is the build and we listed Acer predator in our Best Laptop for Aerospace Engineering Students list. There is a special cooling system in it, due to which you can do heavy task on it, but still it does not affect in its capacity. If you are a student and looking for the best laptop for aerospace engineering, then this laptop is very special for you because on it you get advanced features which will useful in your studies and gaming as well. In this laptop, you will get 11th Generation Intel Core i7-11800H processor, which is considered to be the fastest processor, apart from this 8 cores and 16 threads have been given for multiple tasks, which completes any task very easily. It has Turbo Boost power up to 4.6Ghz which prevents the laptop from being slow down in productivity while at work. Lenovo offers great display because on it we get a 15.6″ inch full HD display which gives high resolution (1920 x 1080). we get a display with IPS LED backlit technology which has a refresh rate of 144Hz It can also be use as a gaming laptops. Here, we are looking for a good RAM and you will be happy to know that on this we will get 16GB DDR4 3200MHz RAM and if you want, you can increase it up to 32GB as per your requirement. But according to us, you probably will not need to increase the RAM because this RAM will do all your programming and designing work without any problem. Lenovo has taken full care of the storage, so we have been given 512GB PCIe Gen 4 storage on it. The facility of increasing the storage is also available on it, which you can increase according to your choice. The special thing about the SSD is that the software we are going to use in it will work very fast and the boot time is also very less due to the laptop’s SSD storage. The best thing about this laptop is that you will get to see the latest 6GB dedicated graphics card of NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 on it. With the help of this graphic card, you will be able to make videos of your project and do things like video editing and photo editing in a pinch, all the heavy games available in the market so far, you can also play them comfortably in this laptop. Meaning that on this laptop you can entertain along with your studies without any problem. We have Ports such as 1- USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C (Thunderbolt 4 and USB Charging), 2- USB 3.2 Gen 1, USB 3.2 Gen 2 (Power-off Charging), 1- HDMI 2.1, Mini DisplayPort 1.4, 1- Headphone/Speaker/Line-out Jack, 1- Ethernet (RJ-45). - 6 hours of battery life - RGB keyboards - Boot time is less than 5 sec - Lightweight and portable - Enough ports - Looks premium and stylish - Audio needs improvement ASUS TUF Gaming F17 ASUS TUF Gaming F17 is designed in such a way that there will never be any heating problem in it as the heatpipe lets the hot air out from both the right and left sides from the rear. As we wants Best Laptop for Aerospace Engineering Students therefore plastic material used in the design of the laptop is of very high quality, so it has the ability to last a long time along with strength. The display of this laptop is 17.3″ inch, which is made of IPS technology, in which you can do both gaming and video editing very comfortably because you will not see any drawback in it. Display has many color modes including low blue night modes that gives you pleasent feeling of viewing with refreshing rate of 144Hz. The Asus TUF offers Intel Core i5-10300H processor that has maximum clock speed of 4.5 Ghz and 8MB cache memory helps to complete task on given time. 4 cores allows to work on multiple tab at the same time and never let laptop’s performance go down. In this Asus laptop, you get to see a good combination of RAM and storage. 8GB DDR4 2933MHz RAM and 512GB PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD Both power up your laptop and with these features you can easily do coding, 3D animation program and create projects that you need in your aerospace engineering. As we all know, ASUS TUF laptop is completely made keeping in mind a gaming laptop, so it is natural to have a poor graphics card inside it, so we have been given NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Ti 4GB GDDR6 graphics card here. Its display rendering is very clean and stunning, which gives you a pleasant experience when you do any work related to the display and it is widely used for as a video editing laptop. Talking about the keyboard, we get to see, full keyboard with number pad. This keyboard is a backlit keyboard which helps you to work in dim or low light and the light of the buttons looks like a charm. key travel distance is decent and properly arranged with proper care. it has many ports: 1-USB 3.2 Type C, 2-USB 3.2 Type-A ports allow for speedy data transfers, 1-USB 2.0 Type-A port, 1-RJ45, 1- Headphone/Speaker , 1-HDMI etc. - Long battery life - Super fast processor - Enough Storage to store data and files - Run heavy software like CAD and more - Decent display with best viewing angle - Best sound quality of speakar - No cons 2020 HP Pavilion If you look carefully at 2020 HP Pavilion, then its build is quite different from other laptops. The designer who created it has made this laptop so attractive that it is very difficult to take your eyes off it. Good plastic material has been used in the laptop, but the quality of the plastic is so good that you can guess by looking at the laptop itself. Here, you get a 16 inch full HD display with 15.6″ inch micro edge. This display gives you a pleasant experience of watching YouTube videos, movies. And you can easily use it outside the house as there is no reflection of light at display and this features must be there when it comes to Best Laptop for Aerospace Engineering Students. HP Pavilion is powered by a powerful CPU like 10th Gen Intel Core i5-10300H processor with a maximum clock speed of up to 5.0GHz. This processor helps you in tasks like gaming, video streaming and projects. If you surf the internet as well as keep other tab open and working on it then this processor is ready to handle it. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 with 4GB dedicated graphics card gives you the best gaming experience as well as helps you in tasks like programming, video and photo editing. The special thing about this graphics card is that you can do projects and CAD related tasks very efficiently and there will be no complaint of display rendering in it. 16GB DDR4 RAM and 512GB SSD is provided. But on this, if you want to increase the RAM, then you have to open the original seal only, which means that there is no other empty slot given for RAM upgradation. On this you get fast boot time and this laptop is completely ready for work like multitask. If you are fond of gaming then you can play all the games very easily from low to medium setting. Its backlit keyboard looks quite attractive and the key travel distance has also been taken care of. You can do accurate typing whether day or night as the backlit keyboard’s brightness is so decent that it will give you a pleasant typing experience. With the HP True Vision 720p HD camera gives you really really clear pictures and even you can make videos for your project without any external camera as this camera is the best at all and the picture quality is super clear. Mainly we are given all types of ports 1-SuperSpeed USB Type-C (DisplayPort), 2 – SuperSpeed USB Type-A, 1- HDMI 2.0, 1- RJ-45, 1 -headphone/microphone combo jack. - Powerful processor - HD webcam - Good battery life - Great storage - Highest RAM - Huge display - Portable laptop - Backlit keyboard - No extra slot for RAM expansion Alienware AW17R3 looks much thinner and special than all the above mentioned laptops. Alienware AW17R3 has been kept in front of you after a lot of scrutiny so that you do not get any shortfall in performance, anyway, when we are searching for Best Laptop for Aerospace Engineering students, then such strong laptop should be our first choice. Alienware offers 17.3” inch screen which is really huge among the given above, it has IPS based as well as LCD technology that ensure safe and clear viewing at any angle with clear color and clarity. At the top we are given 2.0MP Full HD webcam that work super and the picture quality is also good. The laptop comes with a great combination of SSD and HDD such as 256GB SSD given in which we can put our all the software that we are supposed to installed and in 1 TB 7200RPM HDD we must store our other stuff like files, data, project work and videos etc. The storage option given here are enough for aerospace engineering students as they have to work mostly on CAD and CFD software. it has Intel Core i7-6700HQ processor is ready for all types of work and save your time during making projec, creating model for work and in 3D designing etc. the basic clock speed is 2.6 GHz and the maximum clock speed goes up to 3.5GHz that means according to work processor adjust the power and ensure work to be done easily. 6MB cache memory push more energy to the laptop and increase the performance during heavy work such as video editing, photoshop as well as gaming stuff. 4GB GDDR5 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M graphic cardis mostly used for heavy work like gaming and video editing, so we have put this laptop in our list as it will handle CAD and CFD software with ease. you can play all the latest games like CS go, GTA V and many more. In terms of RAM, we can call this laptop one of the powerful laptops because we get to see 16GB DDR4 2133MHz RAM on it, through which we can do multitasking, gaming, content creation very easily, besides these we also do programming work and coding to some extent. The keyboard on it looks quite beautiful though it is a backlit keyboard but the way it is designed never enhances its looks. Touchpad are much responsive and it is a full size keyboard with number pad. Many ports given, SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Ports, RJ-45 Gigabit Ethernet IPv6, Alienware Graphics Amplifier Port, HDMI, Power/DC-in Jack, USB Type-C, Headphone/ Microphone etc. - Big display - Powerfull Processor - MS Office Trial pack - No heating problem arise - Best combination of SSD+HDD - Superfast in terms of performance - Many ports - Ultrathin and portable - lightweight and easy to carry - No cons LG Gram 15Z95P The LG Gram is a lightweight, portable laptop. It is designed to be used for aerospace engineering students 2022. It has a sleek design and is easy to carry around. It is also durable and reliable. The keyboard is comfortable to use and has a good layout. The 15.6-inch screen has a resolution of 1920 x 1080. it means that the screen is capable of displaying a picture that is about 16 million pixels wide. The screen is also capable of displaying a picture that is about 16 million pixels tall. This is why it known as a Full HD (High Definition) display. The laptop has a 1TB SSD which means that you can store lots of data on this laptop. This will allow you to save lots of documents, pictures, videos, music, and more. The RAM is 32GB which is enough to run any software that used in aerospace engineering such as CAD etc. LG gram offers Intel Core i7 processor, you can create and edit documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and more. The Intel Iris Xe Graphics provides you with a fast and responsive experience. You can also watch movies, play games, and more. The unit comes with servel connectivity ports such as 2 USB-C ports with Thunderbolt 4 support, two USB-A 3.2 ports, a full-size HDMI port, a microSD card reader, and a 3.5mm audio jack. - The keyboard is comfortable - The screen is bright and clear - Enough storage - High power RAM - No cons Lenovo Legion 5 The Lenovo Legion 5 offers NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 4GB GDDR6 dedicated graphics card which provides good gaming experience. It has a processor with an Intel Core i5-10300H processor which provides great performance and efficiency. It has a 15.6 inch display with a resolution of 1920×1080 pixels. In fact, the screen is wide viewing angle, anti-glare and has a 120 Hz refresh rate. It is also protected by a scratch resistant coating. The laptop has a storage capacity of 512 GB which can be expanded up to 1 TB. This laptop has a memory capacity of 8 GB RAM DDR4-2933 which is good enough for multitasking and also best for Aerospace Engineering students for their project work and run software like CAD sort of things. The keyboard has full-size backlit keys with 1.5 mm key travel. It has a total of 100% anti-ghosting and soft-landing switches. It has a battery life of 5 hours which is good enough for most of the projects. It has a rapid charge technology which gives you up to 50% charge in just 30 minutes. It has 2 USB Type-C ports, 1 HDMI port, 1 DisplayPort port, 1 LAN port, 1 headphone jack and a mic jack. - Very well-built and good looking chassis - Premium and professional ports - Lenovo warranty is extensible till 4 years - Fan cooling work smooth - Camera quality is poor Conclusion: As we have put the complete list in front of you about Best Laptop for Aerospace Engineering students, in which we have tried to give you detailed information about laptops of 7 different brands, where we told you about some special features which are important while looking for Best Laptop for Aerospace Engineering is very important from the point of view of the students and then keeping in mind that specialty, we have presented our complete list in front of you. All the laptops on this are perfect for your study. You can also do gaming and video editing and programming in all these laptops without any problem.

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Could Hawai‘i’s Endangered Native Crow Be Saved From Extinction? Saving an endangered species can be inspiring, as seen through the comeback stories of the nēnē and Hawaiian monk seals. Yet conservationists have spent decades working to re-establish Hawai‘i’s last remaining crow—the ‘alalā—in the wild. Last year’s crushing setback underscored the challenges facing those working to save these species from extinction. photo: courtesy of san diego zoo global On a typical sunny day last November, I boarded a small commuter plane for Hilo, jammed my carry-on bag in the small overhead space above my small window seat, and hoped no one would occupy the small spot next to me. But the flight was full, and a big man wedged himself beside me, one beefy leg angled into the aisle. He wore board shorts, slippers and a T-shirt with the word “Kalapana” on it. He’d pulled his dark hair streaked with gray threads back into a ponytail, accentuating his strong Polynesian nose. “May I ask you a question?” The words escaped my lips without much forethought. In my hands, I held the book Seeking the Sacred Raven, advance reading for that week’s special events celebrating the imminent release of five captive-bred ‘alalā into the wild. He turned, giving me his full face. “Any chance you’re familiar with the bird known as ‘alalā?” I asked. “I saw one once,” he said. There are few people in the world who have seen the ‘alalā, a dark sooty brown crow with a heavy black bill, fewer still who have seen them in the wild. “Really?” I asked, a tone of incredulity perhaps ringing in my voice. This ‘alalā’s blue eyes indicate that it’s a juvenile. Their eyes darken as they age. photo: courtesy of san diego zoo global “In a dead ‘ōhi‘a tree,” he continued. “I have a photo.” He reached for his pocket before remembering the photo was taken with an old phone he no longer had. It was the bird’s distinct call that captured his attention, unlike anything else in the forest, he said. He was working with a crew of other foresters when they heard it, sometime in the early 2000s. “You realize you may have seen the very last surviving ‘alalā in the wild, right?” I asked. His eyes widened. “I didn’t realize,” he said. Often, when conservation makes mainstream media, it’s good news—nēnē sightings on O‘ahu’s North Shore, the birth of a Hawaiian monk seal in Waikīkī, and the removal of those leviathans hunted long ago, the humpback whale, from the federal endangered species list. In a way, scientists have made saving endangered species seem easy. But last December, we learned it’s not so easy to save an endangered species, even one as intelligent as the tool-using ‘alalā. After decades of successful captive breeding, years of restoring a suitable habitat and months of community outreach, five ‘alalā were released into the wild again. Hawaiian monk seal mom and pup, Kaimana and Rocky, this August. Photo: David Croxford It was a brisk and overcast Wednesday, about halfway up the windward slope of Mauna Loa, the sky further muted by a canopy of ‘ōhi‘a and koa trees in the wet forest of Pu‘u Maka‘ala Natural Area Reserve. At 1:15 in the afternoon, an aluminum mesh panel of a temporary aviary slid back. Within a minute, a hatch-year bird named by Hawai‘i grade schoolers as Kia‘ikūmokuhāli‘i appeared on the lip of the opening. A few seconds later, he hopped onto a tree branch outside the hack tower and, for the first time since 2002, this rare species of crow, Corvus hawaiiensis, flew among a cornucopia of fruiting trees—pilo, ‘ōlapa, māmaki and more. It’s not every day a species extinct in the wild gets reintroduced to its home range. The California condor comes to mind, the black-footed ferret and the Mexican gray wolf, too. Unfortunately, Kia‘ikūmokuhāli‘i’s freedom didn’t last long. Within a week, he and Mana‘olana, the fourth ‘alalā to depart the hack tower, were caught and returned to captivity after three other released birds were found dead, one of starvation and two killed by the ‘io, or Hawaiian hawk. And just like that the forest was silenced again of the squawks, screams, growls and croaks unique to Hawai‘i’s endemic crow. —Biologist Michelle Bogardus “I don’t think any of us ever thought releasing ‘alalā was going to be easy,” Michelle Bogardus told me. She’s a biologist representing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on the ‘Alalā Working Group, a diverse team with members from Hawai‘i’s Division of Forestry and Wildlife, San Diego Zoo Global, Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park, Three Mountain Alliance and Kamehameha Schools, among others. Their goal: Return the species to the wild. “I’m not sure we were prepared to lose the three birds we did in such a short time span, but we all knew there would be some major setbacks along the way. This isn’t a one-year or one-release process. This is going to take a while.” That’s where adaptive management comes into play. Of all the flora and fauna protected by the Endangered Species Act, nearly one-third resides in Hawai‘i. There are two reasons we harbor so many endangered species: One, the size of our island state; and two, our isolation. According to David Quammen, author of The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinction, “Islands are where species go to die.” It’s a dire statement, yes, but it has merit. The very nature of islands—finite geography—constrains population size. What’s more, Hawai‘i’s physical isolation led to a ridiculously high rate of endemism—species found here and nowhere else in the world. When species discovered Hawai‘i hundreds of thousands and millions of years ago, they encountered a new environment. To survive, they had to adapt. In doing so, they evolved into entirely new species, cramming a high biodiversity of life in limited numbers in a limited space. Then, about a thousand years ago, humans stepped ashore in Hawai‘i, and the real challenges began. Once you start studying endangered species in Hawai‘i, whether they be feathered or finned, similar refrains echo. It’s like remixing the same song over and over again. The challenges are habitat degradation, non-native predators, disease and, in cases like the ‘alalā, with small founder populations, possible genetic bottlenecks. Sometimes, too, lack of knowledge. Take nēnē, Hawai‘i’s state bird, descendants of Canada geese. After arriving in Hawai‘i approximately 500,000 years ago, they lost much of the webbing between their toes, allowing them to better maneuver the rough lava terrain. But a few other geese morphed in extreme ways, one veering toward gigantism at four-and-a-half times the weight of nēnē; another with a tortoiselike bill with toothed notches; and another, likely blind, with a wide, flat bill that may have used a strong sense of smell to find food. All were flightless and all went extinct about the time Polynesians settled in the Islands. Nēnē were wiped off all but Hawai‘i Island by the 1950s and seemed destined for the same fate as Hawai‘i’s prehistoric geese until a captive breeding program got busy and successfully hatched goslings. Releases started in 1960, continuing until the mid-1990s. “There were lots of ups and downs,” Joey Mello told me. He got involved with nēnē recovery in 1986 and is currently the state East Hawai‘i wildlife manager. They’d continually release birds but the population kept settling at 500 individuals. Sure, there were predators—rats, cats and mongooses—but “we finally accepted the fact that we had probably been releasing nēnē in the wrong place,” Mello said. The captive birds were being released at the same high elevations where the last remaining wild birds retreated for survival, but that doesn’t mean the higher altitudes were their preferred habitat. “Nēnē probably nested in the lowlands,” Mello said. “I mean, what winter nesting goose would want to have a gosling in 34-degree temperatures in rainy country?” —East Hawai‘i wildlife manager Joey Mello So, in the mid-1990s, efforts turned to habitat restoration and predator control. The last of the captive-reared goslings were released on mongoose-free Kaua‘i at lowland elevations. Today, half the estimated 3,000 nēnē exist on Kaua‘i. Hawai‘i’s state bird claims one of the greatest conservation stories ever told, yet it didn’t come easily. It didn’t come quickly. The lessons learned have been applied elsewhere. On Maui, the critically endangered kiwikiu, a small honeycreeper with a distinctive parrotlike beak, is currently restricted to a single population of 500 individuals on Haleakalā’s windward side; however, their historical range included the leeward slopes, long denuded from years of logging and ranching. Three years ago, the Maui Endangered Forest Bird Project kicked off a monumental effort to re-establish the dry forest, removing the invasive predators and out-planting 43,000 seedlings to prep for the upcoming translocation of kiwikiu to their home habitat. Only 500 kiwikiu remain in the wild, on Haleakalā’s windward side. photo: courtesy of maui forest bird recovery project, zach pezzillo Similar to the flightless ducks, Hawaiian monk seals were eliminated from the main Hawaiian Islands some time ago. However, a population survived in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, what is now part of Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument. Little was known about their life history when Thea Johanos packed up in 1982 for a summer on the island of Lisianski, 1,000 miles northwest of Honolulu. “We didn’t know then how they foraged,” she told me. Johanos is a research wildlife biologist with the Hawaiian Monk Seal Research Program. At first, they attached dive recorders to the ankles of seals. “Then, we partnered with the National Geographic Society and put CritterCams on the backs of seals, and we saw that they were bottom foragers.” Eventually, one seal was discovered diving to depths of 1,650 feet and another recorded 30 straight days at sea before hauling out on land. The seals’ remote habitat made recovery difficult. “When I first started, we just had radios,” Johanos said. “Three times a week, we radioed to say we were still alive. But sometimes the radio would go out, and the Coast Guard would fly over to see if there was somebody on the ground.” Nowadays, field staff communicate via satellite phones and satellite emails, but there’s no internet. No posting selfies to Facebook. Thirty percent of the monk seals alive today can be traced to human efforts—disentangling seals caught in marine debris, reuniting separated moms and pups, and moving weaned pups from areas of low survival to areas of greater survival. But, even with technological improvements in the field, if an animal is sick or injured at remote Lisianski, there’s little a field biologist can do. “If a seal is in need of help—say, an animal is entangled on the reef, and you don’t have the capacity to save it,” Johanos said, “or if there’s a seal that needs rehabilitation and it can’t last until the ship comes [at the end of the season]—then our field camp people have to watch it wither away and die. It’s emotionally taxing for people, and sometimes people burn out.” PHOTOs: COURTESY OF SAN DIEGO ZOO GLOBAL Remote fieldwork can be emotionally tough, but it can also be physically tough. Andre Raine heads the Kaua‘i Endangered Seabird Recovery Project, a relatively new effort compared to these others, that got started in 2006. The first challenge was simply finding the three species of ground-nesting seabirds—Hawaiian petrel, band-rumped storm petrel and Newell’s shearwater—on Kaua‘i’s knife-ridged mountaintops. Raine took over the program in 2011. “The first time I flew in a helicopter over the areas where the birds nest,” he said, “I looked at those huge drop-offs and extremely convoluted terrain covered in dense vegetation, I was like, ‘Wow.’” These remnant mountaintop colonies are the seabirds’ last hold on survival. Unfortunately, their predators often find them easier than do their saviors, the biologists. Every nesting season, Raine installs cameras outside burrows, and every nesting season, he’s captured video evidence of rats raiding nests and cats killing birds. Non-native mammalian predators raise the brunt of conservationists’ ire. Rats. Cats. Dogs. Pigs. Goats. Mongooses. Because Hawai‘i’s native species didn’t evolve with these critters, they don’t have defenses for them. But it’s a tiny non-native predator that’s currently doing the most disconcerting damage to Hawai‘i’s prized honeycreepers, one of the best examples of adaptive radiation in the world. Some five million years ago, about the time the island of Kaua‘i emerged above the sea’s surface, a finchlike species arrived in Hawai‘i and eventually evolved, most dramatically in bill shape and size, into more than 50 other species. Mosquitoes hitched a ride to Hawai‘i aboard whaling ships in the early 1800s. A single bite from an avian-malaria-carrying mosquito can kill a honeycreeper. Today, generally, wherever mosquitoes exist, Hawaiian honeycreepers do not. This is especially problematic on Kaua‘i, where the island peaks at 5,243 feet. That’s only about 750 feet above what’s long been considered the “mosquito line.” But with the Earth’s warming temperatures, that line’s moving up. Ironically, the predator that sent the ‘Alalā Working Group back to the drawing board last December was a natural one, the endangered ‘io. “We’ve learned more about where resident ‘io are across the landscape,” said Jackie Gaudioso-Levita, project coordinator of the ‘Alalā Project, about the work that’s been done this year. Last year’s loss of three ‘alalā hasn’t slowed the effort to get them back into the wild, although this year’s release site will be located in a spot more than four miles away where surveys show fewer ‘io reside. Too, the new location offers a more diverse understory, giving the ‘alalā good protection. This time, the adapted plan also includes a planned release before winter’s rainy weather sets in. (As we went to press in late September, six ‘alalā were released into Pu‘u Maka‘ala Natural Area Reserve.) A mix of sexes was included with two of the 11 birds being Kia‘ikūmokuhāli‘i and Mana‘olana. “We hope these two will be like mentor birds to the rest of the group,” Gaudioso-Levita said. The effort to save the fruit-eating ‘alalā is a sizable one but important to Gaudioso-Levita, citing the ‘alalā’s role as seed dispersers. In fact, ‘alalā are the only extant birds with a bill strong enough to crack open the seed of the hō‘awa, a small native tree with fruits similar to walnuts. “Their diet facilitates forest building and the perpetuation of fruiting plants,” she said. “They can be seen as a keystone species for Hawaiian ecosystems.” In other words, ‘alalā help healthy native forests thrive. —Jackie Gaudioso-Levita,‘alalā project coordinator This group of people working with endangered species share some characteristics in common: positivity, determination, innovation. Raine encapsulated this when he said to me, “You can’t just throw your hands up and walk away.” I heard something similar in Gaudioso-Levita’s voice when she said, “There’s this historical aspect, too. ‘Alalā are basically the living legacy of endemic corvids of the Hawaiian Islands. It’s important to keep the species alive for future generations.” Then, there’s the meaning behind the names of the two surviving ‘alalā. Kia‘ikūmokuhāli‘i’s names translates to English as “guardian of the forest,” and “Mana‘olana’s translates to “hope.” Somehow, both of those seem fitting, a little prescient, even; and I like to think the names portend a good outcome for the ‘alalā. Maybe one day soon, my forester friend will hear an ‘alalā in the wild again. With the aid of San Diego Zoo Global, a more rigorous predator aversion training program is being implemented to teach the ‘alalā to fear ‘io. That may include placing an ‘io within visual sight of an ‘alalā and playing a recorded ‘alalā distress call to trigger the young ‘alalā’s reactionary nature. The training may also include a silhouette of a swooping ‘io. The selection of birds released may well depend on how each responds to the simulated threats.

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The following are some alternatives to products containing gluten: buckwheat, as groats or flour quinoa, as a grain or flour rice, as a grain or flour potato flour soy flour chickpea flour, which is sometimes called gram flour or besan corn, from cornflour to taco shells amaranth millet oats, but. Common Foods That Contain Gluten. Pastas : raviolis, dumplings, couscous, and gnocchi. Noodles : ramen, udon, soba (those made with only a percentage of buckwheat flour) chow mein, and egg noodles. (Note: rice noodles and mung bean noodles are gluten free) Breads and Pastries So much of the processed gluten free food is full of gluten! Just because it's not wheat, bardley or rye doesn't mean it's gluten free. There are about 400 types of gluten! Focus on whole foods and what you CAN have and not what you can't. check out the gluten free society FaceBook page and sign up for Dr. Osborne's newsletter too Gluten lives in wheat, barley, rye, triticale (a cross between wheat and rye), and any product that contains one or more of those grains. If you want or need to avoid gluten, here's the foods to hit and the ones to miss. Why Is Gluten Bad? Gluten doesn't get along with every digestive system A list of gluten free foods to print and take shopping: knowgluten.me All Fruit - for example: apples oranges grapes bananas grapefruit mangoes canned peaches apple sauce dried apricots raisins All Vegetables - for example: tomatoes green and bell peppers mushrooms potatoes cor Gluten is a group of seed storage proteins found in certain cereal grains. Although, strictly speaking, gluten pertains only to wheat proteins, in the medical literature it refers to the combination of prolamin and glutelin proteins naturally occurring in all grains that have been demonstrated capable of triggering celiac disease Gluten is a specific, naturally-occurring protein found in wheat, barley, spelt, and rye. Not all carb-rich foods contain gluten—for example, rice and potatoes are naturally gluten-free. But some foods you've been eating could be giving you a fix of gluten and been initially undetecteduntil now . In baking, gluten gives dough its elasticity and creates that lovely crumb-like texture in bread and cakes About the Regulation. Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) No 828/2014 lays down harmonised requirements for the provision of information to consumers on the absence or reduced presence of gluten in food.. More specifically, this legislation sets out the conditions under which foods may be labelled as gluten-free or very-low gluten.The Implementing Regulation entered into application on. Under the FDA's new labeling rule, gluten-containing grains (such as wheat starch) that have been processed to remove gluten may be allowed in gluten-free foods as long as the total gluten content measures below 20 parts per million. This is probably okay for celiacs, but it may be a problem for those with wheat allergies, Marlisa Brown says We take a look at common foods to include and exclude from a gluten-free diet. Gluten is a protein found in some grains, including wheat, rye, barley and spelt. In baking, gluten gives dough its elasticity and creates that lovely crumb-like texture in bread and cakes The Sandwich - A Nutritious Gluten-Free Travel Food. rez-art / Getty Images. Gluten-free sandwiches stuffed with gluten-free deli meats, cheeses, and vegetables or nut butter with jam are nutritious gluten-free travel foods, full of energy-sustaining nutrients to get you through a long travel day. Avoid carrying sandwiches made with salad-type. Gluten is a protein found in many grains, including wheat, barley and rye. It's common in foods such as bread, pasta, pizza and cereal. Gluten provides no essential nutrients. People with celiac disease have an immune reaction that is triggered by eating gluten Gluten cross-reactive foods may be the surprising root cause of your symptoms! If you are diligently following a gluten-free diet yet still experiencing symptoms of gluten exposure such as brain fog, headaches, digestive issues, rashes, weakness, joint pain, swelling, or fatigue then gluten-cross reactivity just might be the issue Gluten is a protein consisting of soluble gliadins and insoluble glutenins 2 found in specific grain crops, including wheat, barley and rye. Gliadin is the autoimmune trigger in wheat, other prolamins are the triggers in barley (hordein), rye (secalin) and oat (avenin). 3 These can be broken down (naturally occurring in the human digestive. Why Gluten-Free Food Delivery? Put your healthy gluten-free diet on auto, and really begin to thrive. Gluten-free eating no longer has to be a mammoth task, as our gluten-free meal delivery service does the hard work for you. Since 2010, we've been putting together a weekly menu of delicious meals made with organic, fresh fruits, vegetables. Celiac.com 08/19/2020 - The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has ruled that distilled foods and spirits made from gluten-containing grains can be labelled as 'gluten-free.' The FDA ruling covers fermented and distilled foods, or foods that contain fermented or distilled ingredients, which are made using gluten-containing grains such as. Gluten is a type of protein found in grains such as wheat. Some people have problems digesting gluten and find that removing it from their diet helps. Candida is an overgrowth of yeast within the body. It is fairly easy to remove both gluten and yeast from the diet at the same time as they are found in similar foods This article contains a list of 200+ foods you can eat on the gluten-free diet (of course, with a few noted limitations and exceptions). If you're following a medically-necessary gluten-free diet, or you eat gluten free because it makes you feel better, this article can help you find plenty of delicious foods to eat so you never feel deprived Living a Healthy Gluten Free Life. Eating gluten-free is a lifestyle change that comes with its challenges. In order to successfully follow a gluten-free diet, it is essential to have a good understanding of the foods and ingredients that contain gluten Gluten is a fraction of cereal proteins that can not only trigger allergic reactions, but also cause an immune response in people suffering from celiac disease. The only treatment in both cases is a life-long gluten-free diet. It is the responsibility of food producers to protect consumers from the consequences of accidental gluten intake GLUTEN FREE and VEGAN (DAIRY and FIG FREE) Healthy Snacks Care Package (28 Ct): Cookies, Bars, Chips, Fruit, Nuts, Trail Mix, Gift Box Sampler, Office Variety, College Student Care Package, Gift Basket Alternative. 28 Count (Pack of 1) 4.6 out of 5 stars Gluten is a protein found in wheat, barley and rye and is present in any food or drink made from or containing these grains. A gluten-free diet doesn't contain any foods or drinks made from gluten List of Gluten Free Foods. Below you'll discover all the foods that are gluten free. Whether if that's naturally gluten free fruits and vegetables, popular sauces and condiments, candy, soda, alcohol, deli meats, dinner items, etc, you'll find it all in this gluten free foods listing. So with that being said, let's jump straight into it. gluten-free labeling claim if it meets all FDA requirements for a gluten-free food. Some foods and beverages, such as bottled spring water, fruits, vegetables, and eggs, are naturally gluten. Foods that contain gluten should never be eaten by anyone with celiac disease. Ways to eliminate gluten-containing food from your diet: Remove grains that contain gluten from your diet. You shouldn't eat any food that contains wheat, barley, or rye. Keep in mind that wheat has many forms. Avoid products that include bulgur, durum, graham. Eating properly is important and, thanks to ReadyWise, it's possible to eat a healthy and varied diet even during a natural disaster or an emergency event. Aside from offering a wide array of freeze-dried and dehydrated meats, fruits, and veggies, ReadyWise also offers a line of gluten-free entrees and drinks as well Gluten-Free Food Assistance NCA is proud to work with Dr. Schar, who is a champion supporter of the Feeding Gluten-Free program. View GF food assistance resources, including guides to providing GF food and a searchable database of food pantries where you may be able to find GF food Gluten foods are everywhere; for example, most pizza crusts, breads, pies, cakes, cookies, cereals, and crackers contain gluten. Luckily, food manufacturers are adding a wide variety of certified products to the gluten free food list 2017 and beyond, making it far easier to enjoy familiar foods without worry The Gluten Intolerance Group's Gluten-Free Certification Organization (GFCO) is one example of an organization that offers certification to foods with less than 10 ppm of gluten. For people with celiac disease or non-celiac gluten sensitivity, choosing a product with the GFCO label, for example, can make all the difference between good and less. Is Chinese Food Gluten-free? Does Chinese Food Have Gluten? For a quick and simple answer, a lot of Chinese dishes are not gluten-free. There are plenty of places that gluten can show up in many Chinese food dishes, like breading on meats, soy sauce, and all dark-colored sauces like teriyaki, fish sauce, or duck sauce, etc Foods That Can Be Labeled As Gluten-Free Whether a food is manufactured to be free of gluten or by nature is free of gluten, it may bear a gluten-free labeling claim if it meets all. Most fast-food chains don't have a gluten-free menu, but some have upped their game to include gluten-free options. We've narrowed down your best gluten-free foods at popular fast-food chains Many foods, such as soy sauce, processed meats and soups, can contain traces of gluten, and the term wheat-free does not always equal gluten-free. According to the Celiac Disease Foundation, in addition to avoiding obvious sources such as wheat, rye and barley, food ingredients such as malt, dextrin, modified food starch and brown rice. Creating a gluten-free eating plan with foods that have a low glycemic index, or GI, can be a balancing act. Gluten is a protein found in wheat, rye, barley and possibly oats that causes a severe autoimmune reaction in people with celiac disease The gluten-free options are endless these days with so many brands on the market. Never be intimidated by your food allergies or sensitivities! Embrace your inner foodie and find foods that make you happy and feel good Foods That May Have Gluten in Them. Energy bars/granola bars. French fries (battered) Potato chips (the seasoning may contain gluten) Deli lunch meats. Candy and candy bars. Soups (especially cream soups; also look for barley) Multigrain tortilla chips. Salad dressings and marinades (may contain gluten in the form of malt vinegar, soy sauce, or. Gluten. Pronounced: GLOO-tihn. Nutrition. The common name of the glutenin protein commonly found in wheat and other cereals made into breads. It is the tough elastic stuff that holds the air created by the yeast If you follow a gluten-free diet, you know that many foods are naturally gluten-free. But, when it comes to quick snacks and frozen meals, you should be cautious and double check any labels. Luckily, now more than ever, brands are making certified gluten-free foods that are ready-to-eat or at least easy to prepare, and you can find a lot of. Mountain House offers a variety of freeze-dried meals that are certified gluten-free by GFCO. Easily identify gluten-free Mountain House meals by the Gluten-Free logo on the front of our packaging. From camping to backpacking to emergency preparedness or quick meals at home, Mountain House has you covered for any occasion 70 Easy Gluten-Free Meals That The Whole Family Will Enjoy. These gluten-free dinner recipes will be adored by even the pickiest eaters. By Kelsey Hurwitz and Elissa Sanci. Jan 6, 2021. Sure, gluten-free foods are so widespread now that you can find gluten-free English muffins in the freezer section of most grocery stores. However, making them yourself gives you soft English. Printable Gluten Free Food List Published: Nov 7, 2019 Modified: Apr 21, 2020 by Karen Kelly This post may contain affiliate links. Gluten is a protein found in certain grains like wheat, barley, rye, and some oats Awesome Gluten Free Lemon Bars that have the traditional shortbread like crust with the tangy, sweet-sour filling of lemon. This was my Grandmother's recipe that I converted to gluten free. Fantastic on a hot summer day . Spiced with just enough cinnamon and sweetened with maple syrup, these gluten-free muffins are the breakfast treat of the season. View Recipe. Photo by Michael. After being confined to health-food stores for years, gluten-free foods have become the latest food fad. Supermarket aisles abound with products proudly labeled Gluten free, and many restaurants now offer gluten-free options. For people who can't tolerate gluten, a protein found in wheat, rye, and barley, this abundance is a blessing Gluten Free Homemade Meals. 526 likes · 1 talking about this. GLUTEN FREE Fresh Homemade Meals made with love. Having a Celiac son myself Food is prepared in a gluten free safe environment In the absence of direct substitutes, consumers wishing to avoid gluten can adjust their food selections and replace with gluten-containing grains. Examples are foods such as rice cakes, rice-based sides, 100% corn-based tortillas and taco shells, potatoes of all varieties and formats, quinoa and quinoa-based foods When you think of gluten-free food, you probably don't think of fried chicken, and for good reason. So you're probably surprised to see Popeye's on this list. Sadly, the chicken at Popeye's is still off-limits like you'd expect, but luckily there are some things you can eat if your whole crew has decided Popeye's is the choice of the day The gluten-free consumer is an essential customer to the food service industry. Whether for medical necessity or a health and wellness choice, three million American's eat gluten-free and the trend is expanding across the globe. To earn the loyalty of this important niche market, food service establishments must earn their trust a blog about gluten-free living, gluten-free eating, gluten-free baking, gluten-free Christmas, gluten-free food by a coeliac foodie. everyday gluten-free food recipes and ideas for everyday gluten-free eating by a coeliac foodie. Tuesday, 29 May 2018. New website. For more up to date news from me, please visit my newer website: http. Notwithstanding a growth in popularity and consumption of gluten-free (GF) food products, there is a lack of substantiated analysis of the nutritional quality compared with their gluten-containing counterparts. To put GF foods into proper perspective both for those who need it (patients with celiac disease) and for those who do not, we provide contemporary data about cost and nutritional. Gluten is defined as the proteins found in wheat endosperm; a type of tissue produced in seeds that's ground to make flour. Also, contrary to popular belief, gluten is not just in bread, pasta, and baked goods, it is in a large part of everyday foods. Items that have words like flour, wheat, barley, malt, or oats are generally not safe to eat Nowadays, kids like to have junk food instead of healthy home made gluten free food. Visit www.nutritatva.com to purchase online fresh and gluten free foods . Reply Delet Gluten-free food is any foodstuff that doesn't contain gluten, a composite protein found in various grains, namely wheat. Barley, rye, oats, and various other related cultivars also contain gluten, but due to the widespread cultivation and use of wheat around the world, this is the grain that receives the most gluten attention CHILI. Chili is a simple and filling gluten-free camping food. Not only does it feed a crowd, it's high in protein, keeping your campers full all night long. You can use your favorite chili, or my favorite Gluten-Free Chili recipe. Just remember to use an oven mitt when lifting your dutch oven or cast iron pot from the stove or campfire Gluten, also referred to as a vegetable protein, is found in every flour product unless it is specifically made with a gluten-free product, such as rice flour, or labeled as gluten free. Other foods to consider regarding their gluten content are pasta, dumplings and potato bread, which all contain gluten Gluten is an important part of traditional cereal-based foods such as bread and pasta because it confers desirable functional (e.g. strengthening the structure of bread) and sensory (e.g. improved mouthfeel) characteristics important to food manufacturers and consumers (Reference Scazzina, Dall'Asta and Pellegrini 20) Gluten- and dairy-free foods can sometimes be hiding in prepared and packaged foods. Products that are labeled certified gluten free have met strict standards to ensure the food is safe for those with celiac disease or an intolerance.Other foods may say they are gluten-free, but not have the certification Gluten is not a Food Group! Though grains did form the base of the outdated food pyramid, even the food pyramid did not define gluten as a food group by itself. Additionally, there are not any nutrients in gluten that can't be found in higher amounts in other foods. Wheat contains several different classes of proteins Gluten is a composite protein made up of gliadin and glutenin. Gluten is found in the endosperms of some grass-related grains such as wheat, rye, and barley. It gives dough its doughy properties. The food industry refers to gluten as the storage proteins found in all grains. To the medical community, gluten-free refers to storage proteins. Although gluten is a protein that occurs naturally only in a handful of grains (wheat, rye, barley, triticale) it is something that can be found in a variety of foods either due to the presence of extracts or byproducts of those grains, or even through cross-contamination in facilities that process gluten-containing foods alongside ones that don't naturally contain gluten To sum it up. Gluten is a protein found in barley, wheat, and rye (triticale is a cross between wheat and rye) Keep a list of the various names handy to reference. Read labels. Look for ingredients that contain gluten. Avoid foods that list ingredients like oats, which most likely have traces of gluten Gluten-free foods raise blood sugar higher than all other foods — Gluten free products have replaced the gluten with starchy ingredients like tapioca starch, potato starch, corn starch and rice. The gluten is formed during kneading of the bread dough. Kneading causes the gluten strands to get stronger and longer. However, if too much gluten is formed then the bread dough does not stretch so easily. This will cause the bread to become tough and chewy. Relaxing or resting the dough reduces the elasticity of the dough making it easier to. If you have gluten sensitive or need to eat gluten free, but still love junk food, then here are some options for you. Contents [ show] 1 My Personal Top 5 Favorite Gluten-Free Junk Food Snacks. 2 Complete List of Gluten Free Junk Food - Snacks, Ice Cream, Sodas and Candy. 2.1 Gluten Free Snacks. 2.2 Gluten Free Ice Cream. 2.3 Gluten Free Candy Chipotle is the hands-down winner in the gluten free fast-food category. I enjoy how it tastes and the healthy options they have on offer. Chipotle gluten free option #2: Barbacoa Bowl; Chipotle's Barbacoa Bowl with meat, vegetables, pico de gallo, hot tomato salsa, lettuce, and guacamole is also pretty high on my list.. Some Snack Foods are Gluten Free. Some of your favorite snack food is naturally gluten free! In fact some companies, like Frito Lay go out of the their way to cater to the gluten free crowd. As always though, read ingredients when buying packaged food Gluten Free food companies should be focused on creating foods that help those with major health issues caused by gluten exposure. In order to do this successfully, one would expect that the food substitute options should at least be healthy. After all, people needing to go on a gluten free diet are typically extremely sick and the first. Many gluten-free processed foods may use flours low in fiber and protein, which corn is actually a good source of, says Jones. So go with corn flour instead. Use corn tortillas or eat. Gluten Free Baked Oregano Chicken This crispy Gluten-Free Baked Oregano Chicken is an easy-to-make, readily available for lunch. It is quick to whip up, and definitely a crowd-pleaser. This gluten-free chicken recipe is going to be your new favourite gluten-free lunch idea. It's tender, full of flavour, and a healthy meal option for those who.. Gluten free recipes-Gluten is a fairly new term for many and a fairly old one for the others.A protein found in wheat, barley, rye and related cereals, it acts as a binding agent, a sort of glue that brings out the elasticity of the dough.In recent years many Indians have found themselves to be intolerant to this protein and are being diagnosed as Celiac Being vegan and gluten-free can be even more complicated, so we've made sure to include gluten-free vegan recipes in this list. The lowdown on gluten (and gluten-free vegetarian recipes) Over the last decade, gluten-free foods have moved from a niche health food product to a label on half the items in the grocery store A gluten free (GF) diet avoids all food products that contain gluten, this requires excluding all foods made from wheat, rye and barley and oats (not certified as GF). These grains are present in many of the staple foods in the UK diet (e.g., breads, flour, cereals, pasta) that provide a large proportion of the energy, fibre and several of the. Getting Started: A Guide to Celiac Disease and the Gluten-Free Diet, is a comprehensive resource from Beyond Celiac. This new and improved version of the Getting Started Guide contains essential information and resources for both those newly diagnosed with celiac disease or non-celiac gluten sensitivity ('gluten sensitivity') and those. Tang Yuan: Glutinous Rice Balls. Flourless Chocolate Cake. Vegan Black Bean Soup. Garlicky Chicken Gizzards. Vegan Sweet Potato Curry. Keto Peanut Butter Cookies. Air Fryer Sweet Potato Fries. 23. Gluten-free diet: Add these foods. Here are some foods that you must add to your diet for a healthy gluten-free diet: Eggs: Often referred to as a 'superfood', eggs must be a part of one's everyday lifestyle. This versatile food can be added to your breakfast, dinner, lunch, or snack. It is naturally gluten-free so can be enjoyed safely Sticking to a gluten-free diet requires avoiding foods like bread, pasta, and baked goods. But produce, quinoa, rice, buckwheat, and plain cuts of meat are naturally gluten-free. Though a gluten-free diet is essential for people with Celiac disease, it isn't healthy for everyone. Visit Insider's Health Reference library for more advice JOONDALUP, Australia — Gluten-free foods may not be so free of gluten after all, a new study cautions.Researchers in Australia say a common weed, which is actually a popular livestock food source and tennis surface, may be mixing in with crops that specifically avoid this grain protein A food product can only be labeled as gluten-free if it does not contain any of the gluten-containing grains or ingredients derived from these grains. The gluten-free label is not mandatory, so a food that is known to be gluten-free does not have to label itself as such

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Grapefruits and Their Effects: The grapefruit is rich in vitamin C, helps with weight loss, protects against cardiovascular diseases, and has many other positive properties on health. Grapefruits and their effects. For breakfast, dessert, or in juices and salads – their sweet and sour taste ensures a fresh aroma. White And Red Grapefruits The grapefruit ( Citrus paradisi ) is the fruit of the grapefruit tree that grows in subtropical countries. Like oranges, mandarins, and clementines, it belongs to the rhombus family. The sweet and sour citrus fruit is available in two varieties: the white grapefruit, whose flesh is light yellow, and the red grapefruit, whose flesh is pink to red. The grapefruit got its name because the fruits grow close together on the tree, similar to grapes. Other names are Adam’s apple or paradise apple, which is indicated by the Latin name Citrus paradisi. The Difference Between Grapefruit, Grapefruit, and Pomelo Colloquially, the grapefruit is also called grapefruit. Contrary to popular belief, grapefruit is not the same as a grapefruit. Instead, the grapefruit is a cross between grapefruit ( Citrus maxima ) and orange. While the grapefruit is round and has a light yellow-orange skin, grapefruits are more pear-shaped or flattened and have yellow-green skin. Also different from grapefruit is pomelo – a cross between grapefruit and grapefruit. The pomelo, however, is not a separate species but is counted as a grapefruit. It has yellow to pink pulp and a green-yellow skin, so it looks more like grapefruit than grapefruit. The name is also a bit confusing, as pomelo means grapefruit in English and grapefruit in French. It is believed that grapefruit was first discovered in Barbados in 1750. Later it came to Florida, where the main plantations of the USA are located next to California and Texas to this day. The grapefruit is now grown in almost all subtropical areas of the world. Grapefruits – The Nutritional Values, Vitamins, and Minerals Fresh grapefruit consists of around 86% water and is very low in calories (50 kcal per 100 g). It is particularly rich in Vitamin C . Below you will find the nutritional values, vitamins, and minerals per 100 g. For orientation: A grapefruit weighs on average about 270 g ( 2 ). Some people might be tempted to sweeten the grapefruit with sugar if it tastes too bitter. However, 100 g grapefruit already contains around 2.9 mg glucose (grape sugar) and 2.5 mg fructose (fruit sugar). The sugar contained in fruit and vegetables is not harmful, but industrially produced sugar is. Grapefruit and Lycopene Lycopene is a secondary plant substance that gives fruits and vegetables their red color, such as tomatoes, watermelons, and red grapefruits. Red grapefruits contain approx. 3.4 mg lycopene per 100 g. For comparison: tomatoes contain between 0.9 and 4.2 mg lycopene per 100 g. Lycopene is one of the carotenoids. It has an antioxidant, anti-cancer, and preventive effect on cardiovascular diseases. Lycopene is particularly well known in connection with prostate cancer. However, science disagrees about how and whether lycopene can help with prostate cancer, as the results are contrary. Based on a review from 2016, Chinese scientists explained that the study results differed so often because the studies were structured so differently that they could not be compared with one another. Research from Asia and Oceania, for example, showed that lycopene protects against prostate cancer, while studies from other regions of the world have not been able to confirm this. In western countries, the risk of prostate cancer is higher than in Asian countries, which could also play a role. In a new study from 2020, American researchers examined the data of around 28,000 men. Questionnaires showed how often the men consumed tomato products – because tomatoes are one of the foods richest in lycopene. It was found that the consumption of cooked tomato products such as B. Tomato sauce may reduce the risk of prostate cancer. If lycopene is heated, its bioavailability increases, which is why processed tomato products are more effective with regard to lycopene. However, an earlier test-tube study showed that raw red grapefruit also contains relevant amounts of lycopene to inhibit the growth of prostate cancer tumors. Lose Weight With The Grapefruit Traditionally, the paradise apples have long been said to help you lose weight, which is why numerous grapefruit diets are offered on the Internet. What is the truth of the claim that grapefruits are supposed to be a “fat burner”? Mexican scientists have summarized the research results on the influence of plant-based foods on weight in a review. The grapefruit was also examined: Several studies in rats and one in humans have confirmed that the consumption of grapefruit helps with obesity and also lowers the cholesterol level and thereby the risk factors for cardiovascular diseases. In one of the studies, eating half a grapefruit before each meal for 3 months resulted in a weight loss of 1.6 kg in overweight individuals. Exactly how consuming grapefruit leads to weight loss is not yet clear. An obvious possibility would of course be that eating a grapefruit before each meal is simply filling, which means that you then consume fewer calories. However, one study also described the possibility that grapefruit has a positive effect on fat metabolism (lipid metabolism) by breaking down fatty acids. However, the substances in grapefruit that could make this possible have not yet been adequately researched. Secondary plant substances such as B. lycopene, naringin, or furocoumarins (more on this later) can be involved. Another theory is that the fiber pectin is at least partially responsible for the positive influence on weight, as it decreases appetite, stimulates digestion, and stimulates gastric juices. Pectin is also found in other fruits, with citrus fruits having a comparatively high pectin content – especially in the peel and smaller amounts in the skins and pulp. In the peel of citrus fruits, the pectin content is around 34%, in the pulp of grapefruit around 3.14% (for comparison: in apples, it is between 0.14 and 0.96%). Grapefruits lower blood sugar levels In addition to their positive effect on weight, grapefruits also naturally lower blood sugar levels. Naringin is said to be responsible for this. Naringin is a flavonoid, a phytochemical that is also found in grapefruit and pomelos. The bitter substance also gives these fruits their bitter taste. Grapefruits For Diabetes The study mentioned above showed that eating half a grapefruit before each meal helps with obesity and lowers blood sugar levels, which means that less insulin is produced. Participants’ insulin levels fell within two hours of each meal. The grapefruit is therefore considered to be a fruit that can reduce the risk of diabetes. But even with existing diabetes, the grapefruit can be wonderfully integrated into the menu. However, there can be a difference between grapefruit and diabetes medicines, such as B. the active ingredient metformin, interactions occur (further information below in the section “Interactions between the grapefruit and medication”). So if you are already taking medication, grapefruit is often no longer an option as a vital substance-rich component of your daily diet. Grapefruits Could Be Used For Various Diseases Researchers assume that, among other things, the naringin contained in grapefruit is responsible for the many positive properties of health. In addition to the health benefits mentioned above, tests in test tubes showed anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer effects. The researchers also found that grapefruit could help with oxidative stress, bone regeneration, and diseases of the central nervous system such as Alzheimer’s and epilepsy. The research results so far are very promising – unfortunately, there are no studies that have been carried out on the human organism. The Effects of Grapefruit Seed Extract Grapefruit seed extract – made from the ground and peel of grapefruit – is also attracting scientific interest. Various studies show that grapefruit seed extract is an effective remedy against viruses, bacteria, and fungi. Grapefruit seed extract can be used externally, but can also be taken diluted with water. For flu and colds, for example, you can slowly increase the dose from 1 to 3 drops per day up to a dose of 3 to 15 drops taken three times a day. Interactions Between The Grapefruit and Medication Again and again, warnings are given against grapefruit and grapefruit juice, because they can interfere with some drugs, such as the birth control pill, cholesterol-lowering drugs (statins such as Lovastatin), and antihypertensive drugs or heart medication (calcium channel blockers such as amlodipine). The interaction varies from drug to drug: Grapefruits can increase or decrease the effect, increase the risk of side effects and even intensify some drugs so enormously that they become toxic. If the effect is weakened, the desired effect of the drug does not materialize, which can lead to a flare-up of the respective symptoms. This is due, among other things, to the furocoumarins, secondary plant substances that inhibit a certain enzyme in the body, which in turn breaks down active pharmaceutical ingredients in the body. This breakdown function is included in the dosage – if the enzyme is now inhibited, it can no longer break down the drugs as usual, which can lead to an overdose. Interactions With Grapefruit in At Least 85 Drugs In a review, Canadian researchers identified a total of 85 drugs that regularly interact with grapefruit. The results were published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal in 2013. These include antidepressants, blood thinners, and cancer drugs. You can find a list of medicinal substances that interact with grapefruit under the previous link. The mode of action of the furocoumarins is also described in more detail there. So if you are taking one of these medications, check the package insert for information on interacting with the grapefruit or ask your doctor or pharmacist and, if in doubt, do not consume grapefruit, grapefruit juice, or multivitamin juices containing grapefruit. The interactions are also influenced by the amount of grapefruit or grapefruit juice consumed. For some drugs, one grapefruit was sufficient, for others, interactions only occurred through regular consumption of grapefruit or grapefruit juice. For example, in the case of felodipine, an active ingredient that lowers blood pressure, the consumption of a single grapefruit led to three times higher concentrations of an active ingredient in the blood, which can then lead to blood pressure that is too low. Grapefruits During Pregnancy and Breastfeeding If you do not take any medication during pregnancy, grapefruit and grapefruit juice are safe. If you are taking medication, you should read the package insert and ask your doctor. This question is a little more difficult when it comes to breastfeeding. It can be read again and again that the mother should not consume citrus fruits while breastfeeding, as too much acid in the baby’s stool could lead to a sore bottom. However, there is no scientific evidence for this, and not every baby reacts in the same way to different foods. If you are concerned, you could be careful not to eat large amounts of citrus fruit when you start breastfeeding and see how your baby reacts to it first. However, it does not make sense to completely avoid citrus fruits from the start, as infants can also get sore buttocks because of the diaper brand, skincare products, or for other reasons. In addition, your baby knows your eating habits from the long period of pregnancy, so that it might miss regular citrus fruit consumption if you suddenly stop after giving birth. Grapefruits For Gout Anyone who suffers from gout will find information on the Internet that gout patients should better avoid grapefruit – often without justification. In gout, too much uric acid builds up in the blood, which can lead to the formation of tiny uric acid crystals that are now deposited in the joints and cause pain. Uric acid is formed when the body breaks down so-called purines, which is why foods low in purines are advised in gout. However, 100 g of grapefruit contains just 5 mg of purines, while 100 g of chicken wings contains 53 mg of purines. So it cannot be the reason why gout patients are not given grapefruit. Presumably one warns against the grapefruit with gout because one assumes that gout patients always take medication, e.g. B. the gout drug colchicine. The effect of colchicine, however, is enhanced by grapefruit, which could be dangerous, since colchicine is already considered to be rich in side effects. It is best to try to treat gout with holistic measures so that you can do without medication in the future. Because then you can enjoy grapefruits again as you wish. With the right diet, for example, it is possible to naturally lower uric acid levels. Further information can be found under the previous link. Who Shouldn’t Eat Grapefruit In a nutshell, you should be careful when consuming grapefruit if: - You are taking medication. However, it can be assumed that other medicinal products can also interact with the grapefruit, even if nothing is mentioned in the package insert. - Even with other citrus fruits, such as B. bitter oranges (often in orange jam), grapefruit, and limes, interactions are possible, which is why caution should be exercised when consuming them. In a study from 2018, researchers also found that drug interactions can also occur with orange and apple juice, albeit to a lesser extent than with grapefruit. The researchers assume that interactions cannot be ruled out when eating fresh oranges and apples, although this has not yet been investigated in more detail. It is, therefore, best to ask your doctor or pharmacist for any medication and whether there could be any interactions with your diet. - You are taking birth control pills. - Your child gets a sore bottom while breastfeeding. Then go without citrus fruits for the time being to find out if that’s the trigger. - You suffer from histamine intolerance, as grapefruits are considered to be rich in histamine. - You are fructose intolerant. Compared to other citrus fruits like tangerine, grapefruit contains a relatively high amount of fructose (2.5 mg per 100 g compared to 1.3 mg for the tangerine). Everyone else can incorporate grapefruit into their diet with a clear conscience and benefit from the healthy properties of citrus fruit. Buy Grapefruit: Organic or Not The Lower Saxony State Office for Consumer Protection and Food Safety has investigated 2016 Grapefruit samples for residues of pesticides, including two samples from organic farming. Of the total of 24 samples, 21 had residues. A sample from Spain even exceeded the maximum level and should not have been sold at all. Tests were carried out on 20 different pesticide active ingredients. In contrast, the two biosamples showed no residues at all. One of the biosamples came from Israel, the other could not be assigned because the country of origin was not specified. The grapefruits sold in Europe come mainly from Spain, Cyprus, and Israel and are available all year round. When buying grapefruits, look for organic quality. You can tell whether the fruit is ripe when the skin gives way slightly to pressure. Grapefruits From The Glass or From The Can Grapefruits in a jar – for example as jam – or in a can unfortunately no longer have the same healthy properties as they are heated (pasteurized) to preserve them. Vitamin C, Vitamin B1, and B5, for example, are heat-sensitive vitamins and when pasteurizing the food is raised to 60 to 100 degrees to kill bacteria. Vitamins E and K as well as minerals and the secondary plant substance lycopene, on the other hand, are not sensitive to heat. Naringin also only degrades from a temperature of 100 degrees. This is How Grapefruits Are Sored Properly Grapefruits like it cool and dry: They can be kept for up to two weeks at a room temperature of around 20 degrees. If they are stored at 10 to 15 degrees, they can even keep them for several months. This is How Grapefruits Are Processed Grapefruits are very easy to process. Of course, it also depends on what you intend to do with it: If you just want to enjoy the grapefruit unprocessed, halve it in the middle and then cut the individual segments that have grown together along with the white skins. There are even specially curved grapefruit knives for this. You can then simply spoon out the individual pieces. In the end, you can squeeze out the rest of the grapefruit juice and drink it either diluted with other fruit juices or straight. Peel The Grapefruit If you want to process the grapefruit further, peel the grapefruit-like orange: cut off the two ends and cut the remaining peel about six times from top to bottom. Then simply peel off the individual strips. Of course, you can also cut the peel directly with a knife – but then more of the pulp will be lost. In return, there is less of the white skin left that you would otherwise have to uncoil if you don’t want to eat them. Fillet the grapefruit Once you have peeled the delicious fruit, simply cut out the fillets along the white skin. Be sure to collect the grapefruit juice in a bowl because it would be a shame not to drink it. The fillets can then be used wonderfully in salads, for example in a fruity avocado salad. This is How Grapefruits Are Frozen Grapefruits can also be frozen, although a fresh grapefruit tastes much better and can be kept for a long time even without freezing (see above “Storing grapefruits correctly”). In addition, the consistency can change when frozen. If you still want to freeze the paradise apples, there are different options: Either you squeeze out the grapefruit and only freeze the juice, or you cut the fruit into slices, put them in a small container or a freezer bag, and freeze them in this way. You can also freeze the whole fruit in one piece. To do this, wash them thoroughly, pat them dry, put them in a freezer bag and force the air out. It can then be kept for several months in the freezer. Perhaps you would prefer to grow your own grapefruit instead and harvest it fresh? A Grapefruit Tree as a Container Plant Planting an orange tree in a tub on the balcony is not uncommon in our latitudes. You can take care of a grapefruit tree in the same way. The decisive factor in whether you can harvest the fruits is the location: It should be sunny and warm (preferably over 20 degrees). The grapefruit tree is ideally placed in a winter garden or greenhouse. Because it can stay there for the winter. If your grapefruit tree is on the balcony, on the other hand, you have to find suitable winter quarters for it, so that you can enjoy it for the next year as well, because it does not tolerate frost. Ideally, it winters indoors in a bright, unheated location at 5 to 10 degrees. Recipes With Grapefruit If you now feel like incorporating the healthy citrus fruit into your diet more often, here are some suggestions: - Grapefruit juice is incredibly refreshing. If the pure juice tastes too sour for you, you can also mix it with other freshly squeezed fruit juices, such as orange juice, or add it to your smoothie. - Delicious salads can be made from grapefruit fillets. - Grapefruit fillets also taste wonderful in dessert, e.g. B. as a hearty grapefruit cake or in a delicious fruit salad. - For breakfast, you could spoon half a grapefruit and drink the rest of the grapefruit juice. - Add the grapefruit to your muesli in the morning for a delicious kick of freshness. - It might sound strange, but the grapefruit is delicious on the grill too – give it a try!

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