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This story was updated at 3:45 p.m. EDT. Sally [...] students at one of her Sally Ride Science events, she was a motivational and inspiring leader. She was a friend to all explorers, and she will be deeply missed. Roger Launius, Space History Curator at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum She was highly significant in a lot of ways. As the first American woman to fly in 1983, that's significant in and of itself. Beyond that, she was involved in both Columbia and Challenger accident investigations, and was critical to the recovery from both of those accidents. Her report on leadership at NASA in the aftermath of Challenger was really significant. That's where she laid out, really for the first time, the idea that had been floating for a while — mission to planet Earth, which is now Earth science. It had not been a major part of NASA's efforts prior to that time, but has become incredibly significant since. She's an enormously significant voice for children's investigation in science and technology, and especially for girls. It's quite a tragedy we've lost her." Maria Zuber, Lead Scientist for NASA's Grail Moon Mission (Sally Ride Science operates Grail's MoonKam for students) Sally was an icon in the history of space exploration. She realized the great honor associated with being the first American woman in space and used her notoriety to promote education. Her influence in inspiring students to pursue careers in science and technology is one of her many extraordinary achievements. In her role as an astronaut and as an educator Sally changed the lives of countless young people and that will be her legacy. Scott Hubbard, Stanford University professor, B612 Foundation Program Architect and former NASA "Mars Czar" Over the last 9 years I was fortunate to work with Sally on the Columbia Accident Board, as a sponsor for Sally Ride Science, and most recently as a reviewer of my book. Sally was kind-hearted, gracious, a strong role model for young women in science and a thoughtful scientist. I am profoundly grateful to have known her and had the opportunity to work with her over the years. Lon Rains, Chairman, Coalition for Space Exploration Today

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Boffins build smallest drone to fly itself with AI Hand-sized quadrotor packs a neural network A team of computer scientists have built the smallest completely autonomous nano-drone that can control itself without the need for a human guidance. Although computer vision has improved rapidly thanks to machine learning and AI, it remains difficult to deploy algorithms on devices like drones due to memory, bandwidth and power constraints. But researchers from ETH Zurich, Switzerland and the University of Bologna, Italy have managed to build a hand-sized drone that can fly autonomously and consumes only about 94 milliWatts (0.094 W) of energy. Their efforts were published in a paper on arXiv earlier this month. At the heart of it all is DroNet, a convolutional neural network that processes incoming images from a camera at 20 frames per second. It works out the steering angle, so that it can control the direction of the drone, and the probability of a collision, so that it know whether to keep going or stop. Training was conducted using thousands of images taken from bicycles and cars driving along different roads and streets. DroNet was previously deployed on a Parrot Bebop 2.0 drone, a larger commercial-off-the-shelf drone. In the older model the researchers worked on, the drone had to be in radio contact with a laptop running DroNet on a high-powered processor. Now, all the number crunching is done directly on the PULP (Parallel Ultra Low Power) platform developed by ETH Zurich and the University of Bologna, using GAP8, a chip based on the architecture of RISC-V open-source processors, about the size of a five-eurocent coin. “Computation is fully on-board, from state-estimation to navigation controls. This means, nano-drones are completely autonomous. This is the first time such a small quadrotor can be controlled this way, without any need of external sensing and computing. The methodology remains however almost unchanged using steering angle and the collision probability prediction [in DroNet],” Loquercio told The Register. DroNet is deployed by performing the most computationally intense kernels of the algorithm in parallel across eight of the R

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The croton (Codiaeum variegatum) appears to have it all: colorful foliage, nearly limitless leaf forms and a cultish following. But these plants have a drawback—they're difficult to please indoors. In their native habitats, crotons like humid, warm conditions with dappled light and plentiful water. The problem indoors is typically temperature; when it is too cold, they start losing leaves. However, crotons are well worth the effort because a well-grown croton is an explosion of color. Best Growing Conditions for Crotons - Light. Crotons need bright, indirect light. They do not like unfiltered, direct sunlight, but thrive in dappled sunlight. Vibrant colors depend on bright light. - Water. Keep them evenly moist in the summer and reduce watering in the winter to biweekly. Mist frequently during the growth period. - Temperature. Keep the room above 60 F and do not expose to cold drafts. - Soil. A well-drained potting soil is perfect. - Fertilizer. Apply slow-release pellets or liquid fertilizer during the growing season. Crotons are easily propagated with stem cuttings. Use a rooting hormone to increase the odds of success. Crotons sometimes produce "sports," or shoots that are completely different from the parent plant. These can be potted up independently. Crotons do not grow well from seed as the plant is unstable, and the offspring won't resemble the parent. Only cuttings produce a plant that is identical to the parent. Repot a croton in spring when needed. Use a container only one size larger than the plant's current container. Put 1 to 2 inches of damp peat-based potting soil into the new container. Turn the croton on its side and gently slide it out of its container. Set it in the new pot and fill in around the roots with potting soil. Water the plant and add additional soil if needed to bring the soil level to about an inch below the rim of the new container. There are hundreds of croton varieties with names like Dreadlocks, Ann Rutherford, Mona Lisa and Irene Kingsley. For a plant with this incredible diversity, it

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Since April, thousands of people have applied to take a one-way trip to Mars. Following further stages of selection and training, the plan is for the first four astronauts to lift off in 2022. After a seven-month journey they will settle permanently on the red planet to conduct scientific experiments and do whatever it takes to survive. Meanwhile, the rest of us will be able to watch their lives unfold on reality TV. The Mars One programme is daring but is it realistic? Nasa is sceptical about a private one-way mission and instead plans to send more rovers followed by a manned return mission sometime in the 2030s. Others have questioned Mars One's business model, technical feasibility and the health risks posed by radiation. On top of these concerns, Martian colonists will face extreme psychological conditions. Mars One claims to have discussed its plans "with experienced and respected psychologists" but doesn't name them or refer to any supporting evidence. At the same time they have called for applicants who are resilient, adaptable, curious, trusting and creative but without saying why these particular traits are the most important, how they will be measured, or how the standards for selection will be set. Even Professor Raye Kass, who appears to be one of their few advisers on mental health issues, offers little more than anecdotes as evidence for the psychological feasibility of the programme. Existing research suggests that the colonists will face at least four major psychological challenges. Individually, each of these is serious enough to raise a red flag. In combination, they are a disaster waiting to happen. The Mars One colonists will be the most isolated humans to have ever lived. Because of their distance from Earth, real time interaction with people back home will be impossible – the shortest delay for sending transmissions will be about 10 minutes. For the rest of their lives they will be able to interact directly with only their fellow colonists, who will increase from three people in the first two years to 23 people after 10 years. These circumstances will probably cause mental illness in at least some of the colonists. Decades of research shows that prolonged social isolation in astronauts can lead to depression, insomnia, anxiety, fatigue, boredom and emotional instability. Mars One believes that selecting applicants with the right attitude will help prevent such problems.

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Since April, thousands of people have applied to take a one-way trip to Mars. Following further [...] As Kass puts it: It all starts with attitude. Think of it. When a person finds herself, or himself, on Mars, with no way of being able to come home, and potentially questioning the decision that they have made, what is going to ground them in the choice they have made? But we know that even the most highly trained astronauts suffer the side effects of isolation – and these are people who know they will be coming home, and who have years (sometimes decades) more experience than the Mars One crew will have. Professor Nick Kanas, a Nasa-funded expert in the psychological effects of space exploration, says that when Earth is out of view for an extended time, "crewmember psychology may result in increased feelings of isolation, homesickness, dysphoria, or even suicidal or psychotic thinking." The notion that "attitude" will somehow inoculate the colonists against these conditions is at best naive, at worst irresponsible. How will the Mars One programme react when a colonist who was deemed psychologically fit suffers a major breakdown after years of isolation, with no way to get home? Who will be responsible then? A life on Mars will be a life indoors. The atmosphere is unbreathable and the global temperature averages -60C. From the moment they land, the colonists will spend at least 80% of their time within units that offer about 50 square metres per person – that's the size of two average-sized bedrooms. Consider a normal day in your own life and the variety of environments you find yourself moving between, as well as the different sensory experiences you take for granted. Compared with Earth, the colonists will live out their entire lives with a fraction of this exposure. Not surprisingly, long-term confinement in a small space is associated with many of the same problems triggered by social isolation: depression, anxiety and cognitive impairment, among other symptoms. Animal studies show that captivity can stunt the normal development of young primates, leading to abnormally high fear and reduced exploration behaviours. What does this say about the side effects for children being born and raised in such an environment? Loss of privacy While the colonists go about their business, Earth will be watching them 2

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Since April, thousands of people have applied to take a one-way trip to Mars. Following further [...] 4-7. We already know that surveillance can cause stress, fatigue, depression and anxiety, which will add even more weight to an already extreme mental health burden. The Mars One team has made no public comment on the effects of combining the risk factors of social isolation and confinement with surveillance, but we do know that the programme depends on the money raised by reality TV contracts. So presumably the show must go on. What happens when the colonists get fed up with the interplanetary Truman Show and turn the cameras off? Will Mars One be forced to abandon them? Lack of mental health services Perhaps the most worrying concern is that the colonists won't have real-time access to mental health services such as counselling and psychotherapy. Recent studies have found that simulated psychotherapy via an automated computer programme called Deprexis can yield small-to-moderate benefits in depression, but this approach is only about 50% as effective as normal psychotherapy. And given that the colonists are likely to suffer from a wider range of psychological problems than depression, automated mental health interventions simply won't cut it. Where does all this leave us? Mars One may be audacious and media-savvy but it is built on a psychological vacuum. In addition to the issues raised here, the planners have given no visible consideration to how they will address the lack of modern medicine, sexual relationships, pregnancy, raising children, ageing and death. And that's not even considering the public trauma on Earth that would follow a televised tragedy on Mars. Mars One is either ignoring the psychological consequences of colonisation or failing to disclose them. Either way, if their plan goes ahead – and for the sake of the colonists we might hope that it doesn't – then Nasa's manned mission in the 2030s may well be dubbed Mars Rescue.

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Octávio Luiz Motta Ferraz To address any complex issue in a large and diverse geographical region of the world is always a daunting and risky task. Latin America is no exception. Despite the semblance of uniformity that the use of the term “Latin American” often misleadingly imparts, the truth is that there is no such thing as a homogeneous bloc of countries occupying the territory running from the border between the United States and Mexico down to Uruguay, plus a few islands in the Caribbean Sea. Not even a single language is shared, let alone a broader “Latin American culture.” We are dealing with a large region spanning 20 million square kilometers (13% of the earth’s land surface), including very poor countries such as Haiti, middle-income ones such as Peru, Colombia, and Brazil, and relatively wealthy ones such as Uruguay and Argentina. There are democracies at different levels of maturity and stability alongside authoritarian regimes, as well as a diverse range of political-economic systems, from socialist Cuba to economically liberal Chile. Health systems also vary significantly in their structures (from national health services in Brazil to social security and public insurance schemes in Mexico and Colombia), coverage, and quality. As an influential historian has recently claimed, the idea of Latin America should have probably vanished by now. But he also acknowledges that “[t]he term is here to stay, and it is important.” The topic addressed in this special section—the judicial enforcement of health rights—inevitably reflects this remarkable diversity. Despite some interesting common trends, no “Latin American model” of health litigation emerges, unsurprisingly, from the growing but still limited studies of the past few decades (including those published in this issue). On the contrary, there is significant variety in terms of the magnitude of the phenomenon, its main characteristics, its potential causes, the impact it has on equity and health systems, and the emerging initiatives in reaction to the phenomenon. Why Latin America? What seems to unite many in Latin America and beyond is the perception that health litigation is particularly acute and often problematic in the region. Concern with the rise of health litigation is of course not unique to Latin America, but some of the traditional worries about judges interfering in the realm of public policy seem more intense in that region. This is due largely

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Octávio Luiz Motta Ferraz To address any complex issue in a large and diverse [...] to what some describe as an “explosion” of litigation experienced in some of the region’s countries (thousands of cases in Costa Rica, and hundreds of thousands in Colombia and Brazil) and a heightened disposition of judges to enforce the right to health through strong remedies in comparison to non-Latin American countries. Studying judicialization in Latin America therefore seems to provide an ideal opportunity for us to extract broader lessons about this growing phenomenon, which is affecting an increasing number of countries throughout the world. Yet the literature on the topic, both in Latin American languages and in English, though growing, is still rather limited and, additionally, beset by the lack of a clear analytical framework to guide us in identifying the salient issues in need of empirical research and in drawing more robust conclusions that may assist in potential reform if and where it is needed. The inspiration for this special section was the desire to enhance the body of research dedicated to understanding the phenomenon of health litigation as it relates to both of these aspects—in other words, not only regarding the specific knowledge about what goes on in specific countries but also with regard to refining our analytical framework to assess the phenomenon wherever it occurs. The importance of context and empirical data Right to health litigation has attracted the attention of scholars, policy makers, politicians, and the general public for two interrelated reasons. Both have to do with the involvement of the courts in the realm of public policy in general and health policy in particular. The first relates to what we might call the democratic legitimacy of that involvement and pits those who see it as always inappropriate—a frontal breach of the principle of separation of powers—against those for whom the very recognition of health as a legal right, especially when done through the constitution, automatically legitimizes the participation of courts. The latter disagree among themselves, however, about the exact manner in which courts ought to intervene, with proposals ranging from more deferential and procedural approaches to more assertive and substantive ones. The second line of reasoning has to do with what actually happens when courts interfere—that is, the impacts, good or bad, of judicialization. Some have drawn attention to the potentially negative effects of judicial involvement, such as distortions of rational health policies

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Octávio Luiz Motta Ferraz To address any complex issue in a large and diverse [...] and the worsening of health inequities. Others have stressed the role that judicialization can play in enhancing state accountability and citizens’ participation, especially in the health systems of countries where democratic control is weaker. I believe that the effects of right to health litigation, as with any complex phenomenon, can be both positive and negative and are likely to vary significantly from country to country. The legitimacy of courts’ involvement in health policy is also strongly dependent, in my view, on highly contextual factors related to the operation of courts (including the impacts of judicialization) and, more broadly, the structure and operation of the political and health systems of particular countries. The legitimacy question therefore cannot be settled in isolation from these empirical and contextual factors as if it were a matter of pure normative theory—that is, of determining the correct meaning of the principle of separation of powers. Latin America illustrates this point nicely. It seems increasingly clear from emerging empirical data that the judicialization of health in different Latin American countries reveals quite different pictures concerning both legitimacy and impacts. Take, for instance, Costa Rica and Brazil. We know that in both countries claims for medicines make up a large proportion of right to health litigation, that these claims are overwhelmingly individual in nature, that courts are very receptive (in other words, the success rates are quite high), and that a significant proportion of these medicines are not incorporated into the public health system, often for not passing mainstream priority-setting criteria. Yet it would be a mistake to jump to the conclusion that, in both places, judicialization is therefore mostly illegitimate and produces largely negative impacts. We need to know much more about each of these countries to build a comprehensive picture of judicialization—and once we have that, important differences are likely to emerge. Moreover, such differences may (I would even say are likely to) lead to different conclusions about the legitimacy and impacts of judicialization in these countries. A few brief examples may help us here. Whereas in Costa Rica anyone can petition the Sala IV (the chamber of the Supreme Court that deals with right to health litigation) directly and without the need to be represented by a lawyer, in Brazil legal representation is compulsory: cases must start in local courts

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Octávio Luiz Motta Ferraz To address any complex issue in a large and diverse [...] and can go all the way up to the Supreme Federal Tribunal, the fourth and last instance of the judicial system, in a lengthy and costly process. These differences in the judicial system are likely to result in easier access to courts in Costa Rica, which, in turn, will likely affect the socioeconomic profile of claimants, or those who benefit directly from successful litigation. Other important differences related to the operation of the health system seem relevant. As empirical data show, Costa Rica displays a strong commitment, at least in comparative terms, to the funding of its health system. Government health expenditure is consistently around 7% of the gross domestic product (GDP), almost double the upper-middle-income country average. In per capita terms, this amounts to almost US$1,000 (in terms of purchasing power parity), which is more than two-and-a-half times the upper-middle-income country average and one-and-a-half times the global average. As a result, out-of-pocket expenditure is low and private health insurance plays a very small role, about 1% of total health sector financing, which is much lower than the upper-middle-income country average of 7% and the global average of 15%. In Brazil, despite the constitutional recognition of health as a fundamental right (in contrast to Costa Rica) and the largest state-funded national health service in the world in terms of beneficiaries (the Unified Health System), the funding commitment is much weaker. Government health expenditure barely reaches 4% of GDP, amounting to around US$400 in per capita terms, significantly lower than Costa Rica. Given such funding disparities, it is not surprising that Costa Rica’s public health system is much more comprehensive than that of Brazil, despite the fact that both are upper-middle-income countries with similar levels of wealth (both around US$14,000 GDP per capita). It is plausible to assume that the greater comprehensiveness of Costa Rica’s health system is partly responsible for the better health of the Costa Rican population. Brazil is indeed well behind Costa Rica in many important health indicators, as illustrated in Figure 1.

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Octávio Luiz Motta Ferraz To address any complex issue in a large and diverse [...] Differences in the operation of the health system, such as those just highlighted, are also relevant for a comprehensive and robust analysis and assessment of the legitimacy and impacts of right to health litigation in specific countries. As Olman Rodríguez Loaiza, Sigrid Morales, Ole Frithjof Norheim, and Bruce M. Wilson plausibly claim in their paper in this special issue, given Costa Rica’s reasonably well-funded, comprehensive, and well-functioning health system, it seems difficult to conclude that the high volume of right to health litigation in that country is “a response to an ineffectual, inefficient health care system.” But the same hypothesis cannot be discarded so easily in Brazil and other countries. These are just two brief examples of how variables in the structure and operation of the judicial and health systems of different countries will likely affect the analysis and assessment of the legitimacy and impacts of the judicialization of health. Even within the same country, especially if it is large and diverse (Brazil immediately comes to mind), the judicialization of health is likely to display different characteristics across subnational regions. Which data are relevant? The still limited but growing number of in-depth studies of countries and regions within countries, especially those with reliable empirical data, are very important for those pursuing a better understanding of the judicialization of health. Some of the papers in this special issue add to this welcome trend. Loaiza et al.’s contribution analyzes all 98 successful medication cases filed in Costa Rica in 2016 in light of priority-setting criteria from the public health literature on the topic. According to these criteria—which combine severity of the health condition, effectiveness, and cost-effectiveness—medication (or any other health intervention) can be classified into four priority groups: high, medium, low, and experimental. They find that 62% of the successful cases fall into groups that the public health literature would consider of clearly low priority—that is, low-priority (53%) and experimental drugs (9%). Another interesting finding of their study is that these medications share some common characteristics: “they are new on the market, have a very high cost compared to their benefits (often 3–5 times Costa Rica

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Octávio Luiz Motta Ferraz To address any complex issue in a large and diverse [...] ’s GDP per capita), target severe conditions such as cancer or rare diseases, and are similarly disputed in countries with much higher levels of health care spending (such as the UK and Norway).” Lucía Berro Pizzarossa, Katrina Perehudoff, and José Castela Forte’s article on Uruguay is another important and welcome contribution along similar lines, and on a country that has featured much less in the literature than some of its counterparts. They look at a sample of 42 judicial claims (amparos) for medicines decided in Uruguay in 2015. As also found in studies in Brazil, Colombia, and Costa Rica, the success rate in these claims was high (74%), as was the percentage of claims for “off-formulary” drugs (drugs not incorporated into the medicines lists of the Uruguayan health system). Although they do not perform the same analysis of priority carried out by Loaiza et al., they do report that in at least eight claims (19% of their sample), drugs assessed and rejected by the Uruguayan health system as cost-ineffective (namely cetuximab, lenalidomide, and sorafenib) were nonetheless granted by the courts. These and another three drugs in the ten most claimed and granted in Uruguayan courts (abiraterone, ibrutinib, and TDM1–trastuzumab) are also in Loaiza et al.’s Costa Rican study. The first five are classified as low priority, and the last as medium priority. The analytical framework of these two studies reveals a promising way forward in our quest to better understand judicialization’s legitimacy and impacts. Knowing exactly what health benefits are claimed in court, whether they are part of the health package offered in the country, and how they rank in terms of priority-setting criteria is an essential precondition for a solid analysis of the phenomenon. It would be very welcome if future studies from other countries experiencing high levels of health litigation collected such data. Both studies reach plausible conclusions about the potential negative effects of court orders that grant off-formulary and low-priority interventions. Loaiza et al.

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Octávio Luiz Motta Ferraz To address any complex issue in a large and diverse [...] highlight two: (1) it may become more difficult for the health system to negotiate price reductions, and (2) individuals suffering from similar conditions may receive unequal treatment if judicial orders end up benefiting only those who go to court. Pizzarossa et al. emphasize this second risk further: “successful plaintiffs inevitably receive and consume more health system resources than those who do not seek treatment through the courts.” But it is also important to be aware of the limitations of this analytical framework. It provides merely a crucial starting point for discussion, not a final verdict of the legitimacy and impacts of judicialization. As Loaiza et al. appropriately warn, their suggested priority-setting criteria is not a “gold standard.” Although there is growing consensus in the literature about what should be taken into consideration when setting priority in health (such as the severity of the condition, effectiveness of treatment, and cost-effectiveness of treatment), “reasonable people may disagree on their relative weight and on the classification of new medications.” This brings up what is perhaps the most difficult obstacle in the effort to find an appropriate framework to evaluate the legitimacy and impacts of judicialization. When disagreement about priority setting is rife, as it tends to be in most complex fields —and health is certainly one of them—how to determine the correctness of specific priority-setting decisions? This is fundamentally what judges are being called on to do in all these cases in Costa Rica, Uruguay, and other countries where plaintiffs challenge the health system’s refusal to provide them with a certain health benefit. If we accept, as I think we must, that disagreement is bound to happen in many cases, then the question becomes whether and how courts should interfere with the decisions made by the public authorities in charge of running the health system on behalf of the population. This is, of course, the perennial and intractable issue raised by courts’ increasing involvement in social policy that I mentioned earlier. All other contributions to this special issue grapple with it from different and interesting perspectives. What role for courts? The difficulty—or impossibility in the view of many—is thus to define the exact content of the right to health in terms of the specific health benefits individuals are entitled to under conditions

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Octávio Luiz Motta Ferraz To address any complex issue in a large and diverse [...] of resource limitation and disagreement about priority-setting criteria. Should the courts get involved? If so, how? Christopher Newdick and Keith Syrett have both been grappling with these questions for a long time and have already made seminal contributions to the debate. In their papers in this issue, they explore innovative frameworks and approaches to their longstanding concerns about judicialization. Newdick’s paper starts with a bleak warning. If we thought that setting priorities in health was an intractable task, it is going to become even harder in the future. This is due to pressures on both sides of the equation: fewer resources due to diminishing revenue-raising capacity of states under the grips of austerity and increasing health needs due to higher longevity and chronic illnesses among populations. In such a context, he argues, judges will be called on even more often to resolve the intensifying distributive tensions that are likely to arise. His aim is not to present a solution but rather to offer what he calls a “resource allocation rights matrix” to assist in the debate. The matrix combines two core dichotomies (individual versus community rights and substantive versus procedural remedies) to produce four possible conceptions of the right to health and corresponding remedies: community rights and procedural remedies; individual rights and procedural remedies; community rights and substantive remedies; and individual rights and substantive remedies. Given the inescapability of opportunity costs generated by the need to set priorities, he argues that the logic of community rights and procedural remedies, which draws strongly on Norman Daniels and James Sabin’s accountability for reasonableness framework, is the most compelling, while the individual rights and substantive remedies logic, prevalent in some Latin American countries, is the least. But he clarifies that the former should not always prevail over the others. Special circumstances may call for the other approaches, such as exceptional clinical reasons (individual/procedural), serious cases of hardship for entire groups (community/substantive), and limited trust between resource allocators and the judiciary (substantive/individual). He helpfully illustrates each of these approaches with concrete examples from different jurisdictions

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Octávio Luiz Motta Ferraz To address any complex issue in a large and diverse [...] across the world and finishes by arguing, persuasively in my view, that his matrix helps illuminate the costs and benefits of judicial policy and urging judges to be more transparent about which approach they adopt and why. This seems to chime with both Loaiza et al.’s and Pizzarossa et al.’s papers, which question the lack of coherent justification in decisions in Costa Rica and Uruguay. Moreover, both adopt what Newdick would call the individual rights and substantive remedy approach, the most problematic one in his view. Syrett’s article calls for the “[d]evelopment and clarification of the normative basis of the right to health in a manner which would enable courts to respond sensitively and appropriately to conditions of scarcity.” This would entail, in his view, finding a “middle ground” between the two prevalent extremes: one that rejects the very possibility or usefulness of a rights-based approach to health and thus “seems to attach insufficient weight to the right [to health] as a claim in law,” and another that sees that right as an absolute claim and thus “accords insufficient weight to the opportunity costs of giving effect to the right.” Such task, he admits, is “manifestly a highly demanding [one],” yet cannot be avoided in a climate of ever-growing contestation and litigation about access to scarce health resources, not only in Latin America but across the globe. In his exploratory endeavor, he looks into the prospects for proportionality, a “relational” conception of rights, and a “deliberative democracy” role for courts as potential “pathways through which this challenge might be addressed.” All face important challenges, as he admits, but could, with further development, provide a sound basis for progress. Out of the three pathways proposed by Syrett, proportionality seems to me the most problematic. Some have persuasively criticized its usefulness in yielding specific answers even to the classical bilateral conflicts involved in civil liberties (for example, liberty versus security, and freedom of expression versus privacy). In polycentric distributive conflicts such as those involved in social and economic rights, the likelihood of indeterminate results seems significantly higher. Pro

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Octávio Luiz Motta Ferraz To address any complex issue in a large and diverse [...] portionality thus seems incapable of either replacing or adding to the priority-setting criteria and the disagreement around them, discussed above. The relational reading of the right to health seems very plausible to me and in line with cherished public health ideas of equity and community or public interest. Yet, as Syrett properly alerts, “many will doubt whether this approach is consonant with ideas of rights at all.” The deliberative democracy pathway, rather than an alternative to the other two, seems more like a compromise that may be able to incorporate what Syrett calls a “culture of justification” embedded in the other two, “permitting proper judicial consideration of the interconnectedness of individual rights to health care and obligations to the community in circumstances of scarcity.” Yet, as Syrett admits, it would need much further development and testing than he is able to provide in his contribution. Aquiles Ignacio Arrieta-Gómez’s contribution on Colombia provides interesting insights from someone who has witnessed, from the inside, the workings of one of the most innovative and respected constitutional courts. He provides a detailed account of the landmark Decision T-760 of 2008, a structural ruling on the right to health in which the court ordered the state to remedy the inequality that existed between the more comprehensive contributory system and the subsidized system, which had lower benefits coverage. He also describes setbacks that followed T-760 but concludes, on a positive note, that the decision had at least three positive effects: “it helped establish the constitutional roots of the right to health and its justiciability (a living reform of the Constitution); it guaranteed better access to necessary health services; and it ensured that public health policies are rights oriented, including through the promotion of reasonable limits and public participation in decision making.” Judicialization beyond courts The two contributions focused on Brazil, by Danielle da Costa Leite Borges and Regiane Garcia, invite us to lift our gaze from courts in order to see some important developments happening elsewhere, often neglected in the literature on judicialization. Borges’s piece discusses improvements in what she calls “health governance,” which health litigation has indirectly helped promote. She focusses on two fronts

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Octávio Luiz Motta Ferraz To address any complex issue in a large and diverse [...] : (1) the creation of the National Commission for the Incorporation of Technologies in the Public Health System in 2012 and (2) several local and national initiatives aimed at reducing the need for litigation through different types of cooperation between the executive and judiciary. As she persuasively argues, “the creation of [the national commission] brought substantial improvements to the institutionalization of [health technology assessment], especially as compared to the old decision-making process.” The system has become “more transparent, participatory, and accountable,” which, in her view, “can contribute to the advancement of fairness in the health system … by making drugs available to the population at large and not only to individual claimants.” In terms of judicial-administrative cooperation, she highlights two recent initiatives: the creation of “advisory health committees” composed of permanent civil servants of the state health authority in the fields of medicine, nursing, pharmacy, nutrition, and management to provide technical advice to judges in right to health claims, and the establishment of mediation and conciliation centers, where health claims are mediated by a social worker who connects health authorities and claimants to assess the merits of the claim and try to reach a solution out of court. Both were initially adopted in the state of Rio de Janeiro but are now being extended to other states in the country. As Borges argues, although these developments are still too recent and not much data are available on them, they hold the potential to improve the fairness and efficiency of the Brazilian public health system and to contribute to the “dejudicialization” of health—that is, to decrease the large number of cases that end up in Brazilian courts. It is interesting to note, here, that Loaiza et al.’s contribution also discusses a similar new process that has been adopted in Costa Rica. The authors are actually able to empirically test whether involving outside medical expertise has improved the Sala IV’s health rights jurisprudence by comparing successful health rights litigation claims for medications before and after the rollout of this process. Their conclusion is that it has not, but the blame seems to lie more on the type of the expertise used (the Cochrane review, which does not include cost-effectiveness analysis) than in the judges

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Octávio Luiz Motta Ferraz To address any complex issue in a large and diverse [...] , who tend “to follow the vast majority of these recommendations.” A similar study on Brazil when data becomes available would be very welcome. Garcia’s piece focuses on an aspect of the right to health that seems even less discussed in the literature on judicialization: the participation of citizens in health policy decisions. After arguing that participation is a legal right both in Brazilian and international law, she goes on to describe the results of her doctoral empirical research project on the functioning of the Brazilian National Health Council (NHC), the participatory body created to comply with the requirement of “community participation” established in article 198 of the Constitution. Through naturalistic observations of NHC meetings and semi-structured interviews with various NHC members during 2012–2015, she attempted to shed light on three main questions: “whether the composition of the NHC facilitated citizen participation, whether the NHC was successful in considering group needs and systemic concerns, and whether the law hinders the NHC’s ability to carry out its mandate.” Her tentative conclusion, necessarily limited by the scope of her research (“a small-scale study focusing on the experiences of 26 NHC members”), is that the NHC is a “particularly important mechanism for participation because it facilitates the inclusion of marginalized communities and the consideration of system-wide concerns.” Whether these concerns are then translated into concrete health policies and lead to improved access and better population health is something that Garcia was not able to establish but seems important to determine through future research. Given the strong, and perhaps growing, body of opinion (see Newdick, Syrett, and Pizzarossa et al. in this issue) that courts should at least review the reasonableness of allocative decisions and that one of the crucial criteria is “participation,” we ought to know much more than we currently do about the working and effectiveness of institutional mechanisms for participation such as the Brazilian NHC studied by Garcia. Sofía Charvel, Fernanda Cobo, Silvana Larrea, and Juliana Baglietto’s contribution also looks beyond the courts. They conduct a useful mapping of the legal instruments on priority setting in Brazil, Costa Rica, Chile, and Mexico with a view to determine the extent

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Octávio Luiz Motta Ferraz To address any complex issue in a large and diverse [...] to which each reflects the elements of transparency, relevance, review and revision, and oversight and supervision, which they take from Daniels and Sabin’s accountability for reasonableness framework and Sarah Clark and Albert Weale’s social values framework. Their conclusion is that while all four countries fulfill these elements to some degree, there is significant variability in how they do so and improvements are needed in several areas. Perhaps the most homogenous findings are on the element of transparency. As the authors state, “it is difficult to find the information online and … the information is not updated as required by law.” Moreover, the fragmentation of priority-setting systems—in other words, the lack of a single priority-setting mechanism—“makes even more complex the task of understanding how priority setting is performed.” In all other elements, variations and gaps are found in different countries, leading the authors to invite “countries to improve their legal frameworks.” This mapping and analysis of the legal framework is certainly interesting and valuable, yet one should avoid conclusions about the actual fairness of priority-setting institutional mechanisms based only on what the law states. As those familiar with social-legal scholarship could argue, “law on the books” can and often does diverge from “law in action.” Analysis of how priority setting actually takes place in each country is therefore important to allow us to know how effective these legal frameworks really are. Most Latin American countries have recognized the right to health not only in their domestic law (often in the constitution) but also through international treaties, such as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the Protocol of San Salvador of the Organization of American States. Moreover, out of the current 23 countries that have ratified the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights—an important new complaint mechanism—no fewer than 7 are from Latin America (Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Ecuador, Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Honduras), and another 4 have signed but not yet ratified the treaty (Chile, Paraguay, Venezuela, and Guatemala). Judicialization studies tend to focus on national courts, for several understandable reasons. The explosion of litigation in some countries takes place in these courts;

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Octávio Luiz Motta Ferraz To address any complex issue in a large and diverse [...] many countries have included the right to health in their national constitutions, and domestic courts tend to focus on constitutional norms rather than international law; and the debate on the legal status and force of international human rights law, especially in the field of social and economic rights, still rages. Nonetheless, domestic courts in some countries are paying increasing attention to international human rights law, and it may thus become more relevant to look into the role of international human rights law when studying judicialization. This may be particularly so in those countries that have ratified the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and have thereby agreed to be subject to recommendations following the adjudication of individual or group complaints. Pizzarossa et al.’s study of Uruguay, one of the first countries to ratify the Optional Protocol, uses the interpretation of the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights regarding minimum core obligations and non-discrimination as their framework to evaluate judicialization in that country. They seem to find the Uruguayan courts wanting in both areas when it comes to granting off-formulary low-priority drugs to claimants. Another contribution to this issue that focuses on international law is that of Laura Pautassi. She studies the reports submitted by seven countries (Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Mexico, Paraguay, and Uruguay) to the working group responsible for examining state parties’ compliance with the Protocol of San Salvador, as well as the observations and recommendations made by the working group’s experts. Her focus is on what she calls the “cross-cutting” category of access to justice, which she claims is a “key component of the right to health.” It is interesting that in a region known for its high volume of litigation, one of her main findings is that there is “a lack of recognition regarding the need to ‘enable’ access to justice.” This seems to reinforce the point about the significant diversity of the phenomenon across Latin America. Health improvement in Latin America: The role of rights and litigation Most Latin American countries have made progress in the past three decades in terms of the well-being of their populations—some have made considerable progress, others not as much. In terms of the Human Development Index (HDI), the only

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Octávio Luiz Motta Ferraz To address any complex issue in a large and diverse [...] country still in the “low human development” group is Haiti (0.493 in 2015), but even that represents an almost 20% improvement over its 1990s situation (0.408). All other countries are well above 0.55, the threshold for “medium human development”; many are in the “high human development” group (that is, above 0.7); and some score as high as 0.827 (Argentina) and 0.847 (Chile), placing them in the “very high human development” bracket. When we focus on the health components of the HDI, we also see significant progress. In life expectancy, for instance, no Latin American country is below 60 anymore, with Haiti (54.6 in 1990 and 63.1 today) and Bolivia (55.1 in 1990 and 68.7 today) having improved their situations. In addition, life expectancy in Chile (82), Costa Rica (79.6), and Cuba (79.6) is above that of the United States (79.2) and similar to that of the United Kingdom (80.8). Most other Latin American countries clutter around 75 and 76, with the regional average at 75.2. Infant mortality has also fallen significantly: Haiti has decreased from a staggering 101 per 1,000 live births in 1990 to 52.2 today; Bolivia from 85.6 to 30.6; and Guatemala from 59.8 to 24.3. All other Latin American countries have rates under 20 (indeed, Uruguay, Costa Rica, and Cuba have rates under 10). It is of course true that these are country averages that disguise inequalities—sometimes significant ones—among the population. Yet the scale of some of the progress is such that it could not have happened without improving the lives of those at the bottom of the socioeconomic pyramid as well. That progress has occurred everywhere

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Octávio Luiz Motta Ferraz To address any complex issue in a large and diverse [...] , that it varies among countries, and that there is still a lot to be done in all of them is clear. What is much more complex to establish is whether the right to health has had any role and, if so, of what precise nature, in such progress. Here, we must distinguish between three different ways in which the right to health may feature in such an impact analysis: as a moral claim, as a legal right, and as a justiciable guarantee. As a moral claim, the right to health imposes moral duties on society to ensure that the right is respected. This is how the right to health has been invoked, for instance, at least since the 1940s, most notably in the 1946 Constitution of the World Health Organization and, later, in the 1978 Declaration of Alma-Ata. When transformed into a legal right (“legalization”), as most countries have increasingly done since the 1970s through either the ratification of international treaties or the adoption of domestic legal instruments (often the national constitution), that moral claim becomes part of the law—it acquires a legal status that, depending on the context in which it operates, may add some clarity and strength to the moral idea. As a justiciable guarantee, it is supposed to acquire a further layer of potential protection through the possibility of being invoked in courts (“judicialization”). It seems clear that the right to health as a moral idea has played a significant role in the improvement of the health conditions of the population in Latin America described above. As Rifat Atun et al. show, the pioneering health system reforms in Latin America—aiming “to expand access to health services, improve health outcome, and increase financial risk protection”—were strongly inspired by the idea of health as a human or a citizen’s right, and such reforms have played a direct role in the improvement of the health outcomes of the population. To quote the authors: Along with economic development and rising incomes, improvements in health systems and universal health coverage have contributed to improved health outcomes for women (reduced maternal mortality ratio) and children (reduced under-5 and infant mortality rates … ) and for communicable diseases such as malaria, neglected tropical diseases, and tuberculosis,

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Octávio Luiz Motta Ferraz To address any complex issue in a large and diverse [...] which predominantly affect the poor. Whether the legalization and judicialization of the right to health can strengthen or accelerate the progress is less clear. Some of the most comprehensive and high-quality health systems in the world are in countries where the right to health has not been expressly legalized via domestic legislation (for example, the United Kingdom), suggesting that, at least in those countries, legalization may not be an important determinant of respect for the right to health. In many Latin American countries, however, there is a widespread belief that legalization, particularly through the constitution (“constitutionalization”), provides further protection to the moral idea of health as a human right and further guarantees against recalcitrant governments. The same is often thought of judicialization. If the government is unwilling to comply with its duties correlated to the right to health, citizens can go to the judiciary to force implementation. If that option is not available (that is, if the right to health is non-justiciable), an important source of motivation for the state to comply with its duties is thought to be lost. The problem is that the real world of health policy practice and, in particular, priority setting (that is, the allocation of limited resources among virtually unlimited and growing health needs) is much more complicated than the neat theoretical universe of rights and duties. As briefly discussed above, such complexity affects significantly our ability to reach a consensus on the correctness of specific priority-settings decisions or, to put it in legal terms, our ability to determine with precision the content of the right to health. This in turn makes the assessment of the legitimacy and impacts of the phenomenon of judicialization more difficult. However, this complexity should not demotivate us from continuing the effort of collecting and analyzing more data and refining our analytical framework to help us better understand this fascinating phenomenon. The contributions of this special issue take us further in that direction. Some of the papers in this special section were presented during two conferences in 2017, at Georgetown and King’s College London law schools. The guest editors are grateful to both law schools for the funding provided. Octávio Luiz Motta Ferraz is a reader in transnational law, co-director of the Transnational Law Institute, and

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Octávio Luiz Motta Ferraz To address any complex issue in a large and diverse [...] an affiliate of the Brazil Institute at King’s College London. He was formerly a senior research officer for the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to health. Please address correspondence to Octávio Luiz Motta Ferraz. Email: email@example.com. Competing interests: None declared. Copyright © 2018 Motta Ferraz. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/), which permits unrestricted noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. . See 2018 Index of Economic Freedom, Index: Central, South America show mixed progress on economic freedom (January 14, 2014). Available at https://www.heritage.org/index/press-release-south-america. . M. Tenorio-Trillo, Latin America: The allure and power of an idea (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), p. 3. . R. Iunes, L. Cubillos-Turriago, and M. L. Escobar, Universal health coverage and litigation in Latin America (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2012). . A. E. Yamin and S. Gloppen (eds), Litigating health rights: Can courts bring more justice to health? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), pp. 76, 87–88. . M. Tushnet, Weak courts, strong rights: Judicial review and social welfare rights in comparative constitutional law (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), pp. 227, 264. . J. King, Judging social rights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). . O. Ferraz, “The right to health in the courts of Brazil: Worsening health inequities?,” Health and Human Rights Journal 11/2 (2009), pp. 33–45

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Octávio Luiz Motta Ferraz To address any complex issue in a large and diverse [...] . . A. E. Yamin and F. Lander, “Implementing a circle of accountability: A framework for judiciaries in enforcing health-related rights,” Journal of Human Rights 14/3 (2015), pp. 312–331. . O. L. M. Ferraz, “Harming the poor through social rights litigation,” Texas Law Review 89/7 (2011), pp. 1643–1668. . O. F. Norheim and B. M. Wilson, “Health rights litigation and access to medicines: Priority classification of successful cases from Costa Rica’s Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court,” Health and Human Rights Journal 16/2 (2014), pp. 47–61; see also their contribution in this issue. . P. Slon, Universal health coverage assessment: Costa Rica (Ottawa: Global Network for Health Equity, 2017). Available at http://gnhe.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/GNHE-UHC-assessment_CostaRica.pdf. . United Nations Development Programme, Human development report 2016: Human development for everyone (New York: United Nations Development Programme, 2016). . For a recent discussion of divergence in findings within Brazil, see the exchange between O. L. M. Ferraz, “Moving the debate forward in right to health litigation,” Health and Human Rights Journal 18/2 (2016), pp. 265–268 and J. Biehl, M. P. Socal, and J. J. Amon, “Response: On the heterogeneity and politics of the judicialization of health in Brazil,” Health and Human Rights Journal 18/2 (2016), pp. 269–271. . G. Calabresi and P. Bobbitt, Tragic choices (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1978). . C. Newdick, Who should

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Neatly dressed in blue Capri pants and a sleeveless top, long hair flowing over her bare shoulders, Mary Schweitzer sits at a microscope in a dim lab, her face lit only by a glowing computer screen showing a network of thin, branching vessels. That’s right, blood vessels. From a dinosaur. “Ho-ho-ho, I am excite-e-e-e-d,” she chuckles. “I am, like, really excited.” After 68 million years in the ground, a Tyrannosaurus rex found in Montana was dug up, its leg bone was broken in pieces, and fragments were dissolved in acid in Schweitzer’s laboratory at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. “Cool beans,” she says, looking at the image on the screen. It was big news indeed last year when Schweitzer announced she had discovered blood vessels and structures that looked like whole cells inside that T. rex bone—the first observation of its kind. The finding amazed colleagues, who had never imagined that even a trace of still-soft dinosaur tissue could survive. After all, as any textbook will tell you, when an animal dies, soft tissues such as blood vessels, muscle and skin decay and disappear over time, while hard tissues like bone may gradually acquire minerals from the environment and become fossils. Schweitzer, one of the first scientists to use the tools of modern cell biology to study dinosaurs, has upended the conventional wisdom by showing that some rock-hard fossils tens of millions of years old may have remnants of soft tissues hidden away in their interiors. “The reason it hasn’t been discovered before is no right-thinking paleontologist would do what Mary did with her specimens. We don’t go to all this effort to dig this stuff out of the ground to then destroy it in acid,” says dinosaur paleontologist Thomas Holtz Jr., of the University of Maryland. “It’s great science.” The observations could shed new light on how dinosaurs evolved and how their muscles and blood vessels worked. And the new findings might help settle a long-running debate about whether dinosaurs were warmblooded, coldblooded—or both. Meanwhile, Schweitzer’s research has been hijacked by “young earth” creationists, who insist that din

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Neatly dressed in blue Capri pants and a sleeveless top, long hair flowing over [...] osaur soft tissue couldn’t possibly survive millions of years. They claim her discoveries support their belief, based on their interpretation of Genesis, that the earth is only a few thousand years old. Of course, it’s not unusual for a paleontologist to differ with creationists. But when creationists misrepresent Schweitzer’s data, she takes it personally: she describes herself as “a complete and total Christian.” On a shelf in her office is a plaque bearing an Old Testament verse: “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” It may be that Schweitzer’s unorthodox approach to paleontology can be traced to her roundabout career path. Growing up in Helena, Montana, she went through a phase when, like many kids, she was fascinated by dinosaurs. In fact, at age 5 she announced she was going to be a paleontologist. But first she got a college degree in communicative disorders, married, had three children and briefly taught remedial biology to high schoolers. In 1989, a dozen years after she graduated from college, she sat in on a class at Montana State University taught by paleontologist Jack Horner, of the Museum of the Rockies, now an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution. The lectures reignited her passion for dinosaurs. Soon after, she talked her way into a volunteer position in Horner’s lab and began to pursue a doctorate in paleontology. She initially thought she would study how the microscopic structure of dinosaur bones differs depending on how much the animal weighs. But then came the incident with the red spots. In 1991, Schweitzer was trying to study thin slices of bones from a 65-million-year-old T. rex. She was having a hard time getting the slices to stick to a glass slide, so she sought help from a molecular biologist at the university. The biologist, Gayle Callis, happened to take the slides to a veterinary conference, where she set up the ancient samples for others to look at. One of the vets

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Neatly dressed in blue Capri pants and a sleeveless top, long hair flowing over [...] went up to Callis and said, “Do you know you have red blood cells in that bone?” Sure enough, under a microscope, it appeared that the bone was filled with red disks. Later, Schweitzer recalls, “I looked at this and I looked at this and I thought, this can’t be. Red blood cells don’t preserve.” Schweitzer showed the slide to Horner. “When she first found the red-blood-cell-looking structures, I said, Yep, that’s what they look like,” her mentor recalls. He thought it was possible they were red blood cells, but he gave her some advice: “Now see if you can find some evidence to show that that’s not what they are.” What she found instead was evidence of heme in the bones—additional support for the idea that they were red blood cells. Heme is a part of hemoglobin, the protein that carries oxygen in the blood and gives red blood cells their color. “It got me real curious as to exceptional preservation,” she says. If particles of that one dinosaur were able to hang around for 65 million years, maybe the textbooks were wrong about fossilization. Schweitzer tends to be self-deprecating, claiming to be hopeless at computers, lab work and talking to strangers. But colleagues admire her, saying she’s determined and hard-working and has mastered a number of complex laboratory techniques that are beyond the skills of most paleontologists. And asking unusual questions took a lot of nerve. “If you point her in a direction and say, don’t go that way, she’s the kind of person who’ll say, Why?—and she goes and tests it herself,” says Gregory Erickson, a paleobiologist at Florida State University. Schweitzer takes risks, says Karen Chin, a University of Colorado paleontologist. “It could be a big payoff or it could just be kind of a ho-hum research project.” In 2000, Bob Harmon, a field crew chief from the Museum of the Rockies, was eating his lunch in a remote Montana canyon when he looked up and saw a bone sticking out of a rock wall. That bone turned out to be

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Neatly dressed in blue Capri pants and a sleeveless top, long hair flowing over [...] part of what may be the best preserved T. rex in the world. Over the next three summers, workers chipped away at the dinosaur, gradually removing it from the cliff face. They called it B. rex in Harmon’s honor and nicknamed it Bob. In 2001, they encased a section of the dinosaur and the surrounding dirt in plaster to protect it. The package weighed more than 2,000 pounds, which turned out to be just above their helicopter’s capacity, so they split it in half. One of B. rex’s leg bones was broken into two big pieces and several fragments—just what Schweitzer needed for her micro-scale explorations. It turned out Bob had been misnamed. “It’s a girl and she’s pregnant,” Schweitzer recalls telling her lab technician when she looked at the fragments. On the hollow inside surface of the femur, Schweitzer had found scraps of bone that gave a surprising amount of information about the dinosaur that made them. Bones may seem as steady as stone, but they’re actually constantly in flux. Pregnant women use calcium from their bones to build the skeleton of a developing fetus. Before female birds start to lay eggs, they form a calcium-rich structure called medullary bone on the inside of their leg and other bones; they draw on it during the breeding season to make eggshells. Schweitzer had studied birds, so she knew about medullary bone, and that’s what she figured she was seeing in that T. rex specimen. Most paleontologists now agree that birds are the dinosaurs’ closest living relatives. In fact, they say that birds are dinosaurs—colorful, incredibly diverse, cute little feathered dinosaurs. The theropod of the Jurassic forests lives on in the goldfinch visiting the backyard feeder, the toucans of the tropics and the ostriches loping across the African savanna. To understand her dinosaur bone, Schweitzer turned to two of the most primitive living birds: ostriches and emus. In the summer of 2004, she asked several ostrich breeders for female bones

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Neatly dressed in blue Capri pants and a sleeveless top, long hair flowing over [...] . A farmer called, months later. “Y’all still need that lady ostrich?” The dead bird had been in the farmer’s backhoe bucket for several days in the North Carolina heat. Schweitzer and two colleagues collected a leg from the fragrant carcass and drove it back to Raleigh. As far as anyone can tell, Schweitzer was right: Bob the dinosaur really did have a store of medullary bone when she died. A paper published in Science last June presents microscope pictures of medullary bone from ostrich and emu side by side with dinosaur bone, showing near-identical features. In the course of testing a B. rex bone fragment further, Schweitzer asked her lab technician, Jennifer Wittmeyer, to put it in weak acid, which slowly dissolves bone, including fossilized bone—but not soft tissues. One Friday night in January 2004, Wittmeyer was in the lab as usual. She took out a fossil chip that had been in the acid for three days and put it under the microscope to take a picture. “[The chip] was curved so much, I couldn’t get it in focus,” Wittmeyer recalls. She used forceps to flatten it. “My forceps kind of sunk into it, made a little indentation and it curled back up. I was like, stop it!” Finally, through her irritation, she realized what she had: a fragment of dinosaur soft tissue left behind when the mineral bone around it had dissolved. Suddenly Schweitzer and Wittmeyer were dealing with something no one else had ever seen. For a couple of weeks, Wittmeyer said, it was like Christmas every day. In the lab, Wittmeyer now takes out a dish with six compartments, each holding a little brown dab of tissue in clear liquid, and puts it under the microscope lens. Inside each specimen is a fine network of almost-clear branching vessels—the tissue of a female Tyrannosaurus rex that strode through the forests 68 million years ago, preparing to lay eggs. Close up, the blood vessels from that T. rex and her ostrich cousins look remarkably

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Neatly dressed in blue Capri pants and a sleeveless top, long hair flowing over [...] alike. Inside the dinosaur vessels are things Schweitzer diplomatically calls “round microstructures” in the journal article, out of an abundance of scientific caution, but they are red and round, and she and other scientists suspect that they are red blood cells. Of course, what everyone wants to know is whether DNA might be lurking in that tissue. Wittmeyer, from much experience with the press since the discovery, calls this “the awful question”—whether Schweitzer’s work is paving the road to a real-life version of science fiction’s Jurassic Park, where dinosaurs were regenerated from DNA preserved in amber. But DNA, which carries the genetic script for an animal, is a very fragile molecule. It’s also ridiculously hard to study because it is so easily contaminated with modern biological material, such as microbes or skin cells, while buried or after being dug up. Instead, Schweitzer has been testing her dinosaur tissue samples for proteins, which are a bit hardier and more readily distinguished from contaminants. Specifically, she’s been looking for collagen, elastin and hemoglobin. Collagen makes up much of the bone scaffolding, elastin is wrapped around blood vessels and hemoglobin carries oxygen inside red blood cells. Because the chemical makeup of proteins changes through evolution, scientists can study protein sequences to learn more about how dinosaurs evolved. And because proteins do all the work in the body, studying them could someday help scientists understand dinosaur physiology—how their muscles and blood vessels worked, for example. Proteins are much too tiny to pick out with a microscope. To look for them, Schweitzer uses antibodies, immune system molecules that recognize and bind to specific sections of proteins. Schweitzer and Wittmeyer have been using antibodies to chicken collagen, cow elastin and ostrich hemoglobin to search for similar molecules in the dinosaur tissue. At an October 2005 paleontology conference, Schweitzer presented preliminary evidence that she has detected real dinosaur proteins in her specimens. Further discoveries in the past year have shown that the discovery of soft tissue

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Neatly dressed in blue Capri pants and a sleeveless top, long hair flowing over [...] in B. rex wasn’t just a fluke. Schweitzer and Wittmeyer have now found probable blood vessels, bone-building cells and connective tissue in another T. rex, in a theropod from Argentina and in a 300,000-year-old woolly mammoth fossil. Schweitzer’s work is “showing us we really don’t understand decay,” Holtz says. “There’s a lot of really basic stuff in nature that people just make assumptions about.” Young-earth creationists also see Schweitzer’s work as revolutionary, but in an entirely different way. They first seized upon Schweitzer’s work after she wrote an article for the popular science magazine Earth in 1997 about possible red blood cells in her dinosaur specimens. Creation magazine claimed that Schweitzer’s research was “powerful testimony against the whole idea of dinosaurs living millions of years ago. It speaks volumes for the Bible’s account of a recent creation.” This drives Schweitzer crazy. Geologists have established that the Hell Creek Formation, where B. rex was found, is 68 million years old, and so are the bones buried in it. She’s horrified that some Christians accuse her of hiding the true meaning of her data. “They treat you really bad,” she says. “They twist your words and they manipulate your data.” For her, science and religion represent two different ways of looking at the world; invoking the hand of God to explain natural phenomena breaks the rules of science. After all, she says, what God asks is faith, not evidence. “If you have all this evidence and proof positive that God exists, you don’t need faith. I think he kind of designed it so that we’d never be able to prove his existence. And I think that’s really cool.” By definition, there is a lot that scientists don’t know, because the whole point of science is to explore the unknown. By being clear that scientists haven’t explained everything, Schweitzer leaves room for other explanations. “I think that we’re always wise to leave certain doors open,” she says. But schweitzer’s interest in the long-term preservation of molecules and cells

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Periodontal disease, commonly known as gum disease, is the most common adult dental affliction. About 30% of the population experiences gum disease, and it's the number one cause of tooth loss in adults. Many denture cases begin as a result of the ravages of this condition. While not curable, it is controllable. But it requires a focused strategy, similar to managing other chronic conditions such as high blood pressure or diabetes. Gum disease can advance in stealth mode with few signs or symptoms in early stages. Many patients diagnosed with this condition find themselves surprised at the quiet damage progressing in their mouths. In simple terms, consider the gums and bone around your teeth as the foundation where they sit. Just like a house, the foundation must be sound regardless of the beauty of the house. When the foundation crumbles, the rest of it goes too. What Causes Gum Disease? Our mouths provide a home to millions of bacteria, both beneficial and harmful. Bacteria form a sticky substance, plaque, that adheres to the teeth. Brushing and flossing aim at removing plaque before it mineralizes into tartar. Tartar becomes a colony for more bacteria and adds to their population, pumping out toxins into the gums. Gums react to this bacterial invasion with an inflammatory response under the direction of the immune system. Around the base of each tooth, a small collar of gum tissue exists that forms a small crevice or pocket. This warm, dark environment provides a perfect habitat for deeper tartar and bacterial penetration, with their toxins seeping into the base of the collar. Early inflammation results in bleeding gums, known as gingivitis. Bacteria left untreated and undisturbed successfully create a chronic infection in the gum collar. In many cases, the bone begins to deteriorate around the teeth as the bacteria burrow deeper into the gums. While gums may be slightly tender at this stage, there's generally minimal discomfort as the bone dissolves. More than 50% of the bone around your teeth can disappear before any signs of looseness or pain begin to appear. The bone around teeth never regenerates, so this loss becomes permanent and harder to control as the bacteria hide deeper into the gums. Untreated gum disease leads to

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Periodontal disease, commonly known as gum disease, is the most common adult dental afflict [...] abscess and generalized tooth loss in many advanced cases. We draw on objective clinical data to form a gum disease diagnosis and to grade the condition. The small collar of gum around each tooth usually sits 2-3 millimeters deep, a small crevice easily cleaned by floss or toothpicks. Dr. Troy or our hygiene team can measure and chart multiple areas using a small measuring device. If these measurements register beyond 3 millimeters and include bleeding areas, the disease is present. Deeper findings indicate more advanced disease than shallower readings. Dr. Troy will also consider the texture and shape of your gums, and any movement detectable in each tooth. It's also vital to examine the levels, shape, and density of the bone around your teeth on digital x-rays. By drawing together numerous findings, a clear picture forms about your gum condition. After establishing a diagnosis defining the severity of gum disease, a personalized treatment plan can be developed with you. In milder forms with little or no bone loss, one or two visits with our hygiene team may bring the condition under control. When you leave our office with a strategy for daily home care and an established schedule for maintenance, little additional treatment may be needed. If the inflammation has advanced with measurable bone loss, a proactive approach halting the destruction should be strongly considered. Often we will suggest gentle numbing of your gums for your comfort during the deeper cleaning process. One area at a time undergoes meticulous cleaning above and below the gum line, usually over several visits. The infected collar or pocket around each tooth, including the mineralized tartar, must be carefully cleaned out with hand and ultrasonic instruments. Polishing of the teeth to establish glassy surfaces that help repel stain and plaque accumulation usually finishes this initial therapy. Dr. Troy may suggest a medicated rinse, an electric toothbrush, a Waterpik, or other specific strategies to help you with your ongoing efforts. Remember, gum disease can be controlled but not cured. Dedicated daily efforts must be consistent to control the disease. Regular home care is critical to arrest the progression of gum disease. Within a few hours of a careful cleaning,

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Periodontal disease, commonly known as gum disease, is the most common adult dental afflict [...] the bacteria begin to repopulate and adhere to the teeth. Plaque left undisturbed will start to harden and mineralize within 24 hours. And deeper gum pockets require even more diligence to prevent the bacteria from burrowing further into the foundation of your teeth. Since the deepest sections of gum pockets previously damaged by bacteria can be difficult to reach at home, a particular maintenance schedule with us proves essential. We can customize your plan to include 2, 3 or 4 visits a year depending on the severity of disease and its response to treatment and home care. If our combined efforts don't halt your gum disease, we will suggest referral to a trusted specialist, known as a periodontist. With specialized training in many gum conditions, further treatment may be recommended. Current research continues to establish clear links between bacterial disease in your mouth and ailments in other parts of the body. Studies show a link between oral bacteria and conditions such as heart disease, stroke, arthritis, Alzheimer's, and certain types of cancers. The integration of oral and general health has never been better understood than it is currently. Bleeding gums provide a direct pathway into the bloodstream, a journey that toxic oral bacteria can quickly take. In fact, if bleeding gums connected into one single patch, it would create a 2 x 2-inch square. If an open wound of this size existed on your skin, infection would be a concern. Bleeding, infected gums offer this open door to your body and sit saturated in colonies of bacteria. This helps explain why researchers continue to identify oral bacteria deposits in various areas of our bodies. Diabetes and other auto-immune disorders lower the body's ability to fight infection, allowing uncontrolled gum disease to advance faster and with more destruction. Research also confirms that the inflammation in the mouth can aggravate diabetes, making it harder to control. This two-way relationship between two chronic conditions emphasizes the importance of optimal oral health.

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Jupiter’s moon Io is peppered with volcanoes, the hottest, most active volcanoes in our solar system. Sizzling vents spew plumes of gas and dust as much as 400 km high. They surge, spit, subside and surge again, non-stop. The towering plumes, outlined by graceful arcs of rising and falling ash, are eerily beautiful. Their tops jut into space, freezing. Beneath them, scientists believe, it snows. Sulfurous flakes crystallize in the plume-tops and drift gently down to coat Io’s colorful terrain. High above the falling snow something unexpected happens: At the apex of the plumes, some of the ash and dust that ought to turn around and fall … doesn’t. Defying gravity, it keeps going up, not slowing but accelerating, 2 times, 10 times, hundreds of times faster than a speeding bullet, away from Io and into deep space. Passing spacecraft beware: Io is shooting at you. The Ulysses spacecraft, a joint mission of NASA and the European Space Agency, made the discovery in 1992 when, approaching Jupiter, it was hit by a breakneck stream of volcano dust. “What a surprise,” recalls Harold Krueger of the Max Planck Institute in Heidelberg, the principle investigator for Ulysses’ dust detector. “We expected to encounter dust,” he says. The solar system is littered with flakes from comets and asteroids. “But nothing like this.” The dust came in a tight stream, like water from a garden hose, and it was moving extraordinarily fast, about 300 km/s (670,000 mph). “This makes it some of the fastest-moving material in the solar system,” says Krueger, “second only to the solar wind.” Fortunately the dust-bits were small, similar in size to particles in cigarette smoke, so they didn’t penetrate the ship’s hull in spite of their extreme velocity. At first, no one suspected Io. Ulysses was 100 million kilometers from Io when the stream blew by, supposedly beyond the reach of volcanic plumes. Plus

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Jupiter’s moon Io is peppered with volcanoes, the hottest, [...] , the speed of the dust didn’t make sense. Particles emerge from Io’s vents traveling 1 or 2 km/s, not 300 km/s. Baffled, researchers considered several possibilities: Could Jupiter’s dark rings be responsible? There’s plenty of dust there, but how could rings manufacture fast-moving jets? Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 was another suspect. The comet flew so close to Jupiter in 1992 that it was torn apart. Comets are known to produce streams of dust, but not so fast as the stream that hit Ulysses. NASA’s Galileo spacecraft eventually solved the puzzle. Like Ulysses, Galileo was pelted by dust when it approached Jupiter in 1995. Unlike Ulysses, which merely flew past the giant planet, Galileo settled into orbit. As data accumulated over a period of years, scientists were able to correlate volcanic activity with dust events, and they showed, furthermore, that dust streams were modulated by Io’s orbital motion. The source was definitely Io. Regarding the extreme velocity of the dust: “Jupiter is responsible for that,” explains Krueger. Jupiter is not only a giant planet, but also a giant magnet, which spins once every 9 hours and 55 minutes. Spinning magnetic fields produce electric fields, and the electric fields around Jupiter are intense. Io-dust, like dust on your computer monitor, is electrically charged, so Jupiter’s electric forces naturally accelerate the grains. 300 km/s is no problem. In 2000 when the Cassini spacecraft sailed past Jupiter en route to Saturn, it too was hit. Cassini’s dust detector is more capable than Ulysses’. In addition to mass, speed, charge and trajectory, it can also measure elemental composition. Cassini found hints of sulfur, silicon, sodium and potassium–all signs of volcanic origin. “This raises an interesting possibility,” says Krueger. “We can analyze the hot interior of Io from a great distance

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In order to fly in space, astronauts need to make a few sacrifices, like drink their own urine. Yuck? Don’t worry, it’s totally safe. Astronauts are a resourceful bunch. They’re the best of the best of the best of the best. They’re ready to do whatever it takes to get the job done. WHATEVER IT TAKES, INCLUDING DRINKING PEE. They live on the International Space Station for the better part of a year, where air, food and water are precious resources. Sometimes you take a hit for the team back. Every drop of water on the International Space Station was carried there from Earth, by rocket, possibly in someone’s bladder. The cost of launching a single kilo into orbit can be over $10 grand. Do a little back of the tp math and the value of a single kilogram of water in space is worth almost as much as a kilogram of yellow gold here on Earth. That’s actual money gold, and not pee joke gold. The punchline is astronauts need to conserve water. For the longest time, there wasn’t any way to take conservation to the “next level”. All the “waste water” including pee produced on the station was just held, possibly uncomfortably and resulting in dancing, and it needed to be disposed of. In 2009, NASA got serious about conserving water and launched the Water Recovery System to the International Space Station. What is it with you guys and names? I would have shot for “Precycling Internal Solution System” just for the acronym. In fact, that’s what we’re using now. Ever since, astronauts have been drinking their own urine like Captain Redbeard Rum on Blackadder. Generally after it’s been purified by the recovery system, or if you prefer “peecycled”. Outside of that I’m sure accidents happen, and whatever they get up to in their own time is their business. Speaking of which, Here’s a video of beloved Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield demonstrating the P.I.S.S system. It takes all water vapor, sweat, and grey water produced and excreted by astronauts and turns it back into drinkable water. On Earth,

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In order to fly in space, astronauts need to make a few sacrifices, like [...] you can clear dirty water by boiling it. Collect your steam on a cold surface, pure, pee free and ready for drinking again. Pro tip, this process actually requires gravity, which isn’t readily available when you’re in free fall. The Recovery System looks like a big spinning keg, which creates artificial gravity. It’s heated and steam is produced. Dirt and contaminants such as the most purified pee molecules are pushed to the edges of the drum while the steam is carried away. The artificial gravity isn’t perfect, and only 93% of the water can be recovered this way. This means that dirty waste water builds up inside the space station and needs to be flushed with the rest of the trash. Astronauts can’t peecycle everything on the space station, trash does build up. They’ve got a solution for this too. The most recent cargo delivery spacecraft is always left attached to the space station. Instead of doing laundry, which would use up their precious water and is super boring. Seriously, if you went to the trouble of sending me to space and asked to me wash my clothes I’d get a little snippy. Astronauts do what the rest of us only dream about. They just wear their clothes until they’re totally worn out. Then throw their laundry into the excess module. Once it’s completely filled with pee, laundry, food remnants, and other, uh… stuff, the spacecraft detaches from the station and re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere where it’s incinerated. No fuss, no muss. Also, clearly for this episode, we’re only going as far as pee jokes as poop jokes are off the table. Yes, astronauts are drinking their pee. They close their eyes and remind themselves it’s just pure water. Completely safe and delicious to drink. No pee molecules left here. As astronaut Koichi Wakata said, “Here on board the ISS, we turn yesterday’s coffee into tomorrow’s coffee”. Would you be willing to drink the water produced by the Water Recovery System? Tell us in the comments below.

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When it comes to health benefits fish continues to line up high on the positive side. There’s the omega-3 fatty acids found in all fish and especially the fatty fish. Omega – 3’s help promote heart health and aid in prevention of heart disease making them a positive choice. Recent FDA advisory, however, indicate that pregnant women and women considering pregnancy should not eat shark, swordfish, king mackerel or tile-fish because they could contain enough mercury to harm an unborn infant’s nervous system. According to the advisory issued by FDA “seafood can be an important part of a balanced diet for pregnant women and those of childbearing age who may become pregnant. FDA advises these women to select a variety of other kinds of fish — including shellfish, canned fish, smaller ocean fish or farm-raised fish — and that these women can safely eat 12 ounces per week of cooked fish. A typical serving size of fish is from 3 to 6 ounces.” Fish can contain hefty amounts of oils called Omega-3 fatty acids, also known as DHA. Scientists have long known that DHA is important for eye and brain development, but now they believe it’s linked to advanced brain growth both before and after birth. The problem with these particular species of fish is that they live for a long time, giving time for higher amounts of contaminants to accumulate in their tissues, according to the FDA. Bacteria in both fresh and salt water convert mercury into methylmercury, a neurotoxic chemical that can cause brain damage, memory loss, personality change, tremors, spontaneous abortion, and damage to a developing fetus. Fish absorb and ingest the mercury and methylmercury, and store it in their tissues. Mercury is naturally occurring, but half of the mercury in the environment comes from smokestack emissions, incinerators, and coal-fired power plants. The new advisory states that women who may become pregnant, pregnant women and nursing mothers should: - Not eat any shark, swordfish, king mackerel, or tilefish - Eat only two average servings (6 ounces per serving for adults) a week of fish that are lower in mercury, including shrimp, canned light tuna,

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People who are exposed to pesticides may face an increased risk of liver cancer, a new meta-analysis suggests. Pesticide exposure was associated with a 71 percent increased risk of liver cancer, according to the meta-analysis, which was presented on April 3 at the American Association for Cancer Research's annual meeting in Washington, D.C. The findings have not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal. Liver cancer is the sixth most common cancer in the world, and the No. 2 cause of cancer deaths (behind lung cancer), said lead study author Hamdi Abdi, a cancer research fellow at the National Cancer Institute. [10 Do's and Don'ts to Reduce Your Risk of Cancer] There are several well-established risk factors for liver cancer, Abdi told Live Science. These include chronic infections, such as hepatitis, and alcohol-related liver diseases. But the researchers think that pesticides could also play a role in the development of this cancer. Indeed, studies done in animals have shown that exposure to pesticides could lead to liver cancer by damaging DNA, among other ways, Abdi said. In the new meta-analysis, the researchers looked at 16 studies that included more than 480,000 participants in Asia, Europe and the U.S. All of the studies included at least some information on the participants' individual levels of pesticide exposure and looked at how this exposure might affect a person's risk of the most common type of liver cancer, called hepatocellular carcinoma. The researchers defined "pesticides" in a very broad sense, including insecticides and herbicides, Abdi said. The finding that pesticide exposure was associated with a 71 percent increased risk of liver cancer isn't an "extreme value," Abdi noted. More research is needed to zero in on specific types of pesticides and their effects on liver cancer, she said. The findings are preliminary, Abdi said, and one limitation of the analysis was that the researchers found only 16 studies done to date that met their criteria for inclusion. "This highlights the need for more large-scale, prospective studies," she added. Another limitation was that most of the studies included in the meta-analysis didn't offer precise data about the amounts of p

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The fascinating history of the Ottoman Empire is the subject of a new BBC series fronted by Rageh Omaar. The title of the series tries to sneak in a rather contentious point as a given – Europe’s Muslim Emperors. Some mistake, surely? While large swathes of Europe did fall under Ottoman rule, for centuries this rule was deeply resented, and the powers of Europe, or at least most of them, did their best to expel the invader. Even if the Ottoman Turks may have ruled parts of Europe, their civilisation was not European, but Asiatic. As someone once said: “Turkey has always represented a different continent, in permanent contrast to Europe.” It would make sense to describe the Turkish Sultans not as European, but anti-European. To be fair, the programme did not gloss over the reasons for Turkish difference. The Ottoman Empire (let us not forget the origins of Turkic peoples in central Asia) had more in common with the Chinese Empire than the Roman. The Topkapi Palace in Istanbul bore more than a passing resemblance to the Forbidden City: both were the preserves of eunuchs and concubines. But the Turkish system was far more ruthless than the Chinese. The concubines were all slaves, and because it was forbidden to enslave one’s fellow Muslims, they were Christians who were enslaved and then forcibly converted to Islam. As for the civil servants and soldiers of the Empire, they were Christian boys, taken from their homes and converted to Islam by being forcibly circumcised. True, some of these orphans had glittering careers, but this should not disguise the cruelty of the system. This levy, known as the devsirme, carried on until the beginning of the 18th century. This way of recruiting members of the privileged caste, rather than relying on noble families, or feudal loyalties, as in Europe, must have been one of the reasons why the Ottomans were so successful in the short term. There were no better fighters than these traumatised boys, when they grew up. But in the long run one suspects that this practice must have been one of the reasons why the Empire declined so markedly from the late seventeenth century onwards. Cruelty is never a good policy

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The fascinating history of the Ottoman Empire is the subject of a new BBC series fronted by R [...] . The same may well have been true of the dynasty. As a male line the Ottomans endured for centuries, thanks to polygamy, but this came at a high price. The concubines were chosen for their beauty alone, and the claustrophobic atmosphere of the harem was hardly healthy. The death rate among the children these women bore the Sultan was high, perhaps due to poor sanitation, and each reign ended with a massacre of all the new Sultan’s brothers, as possible rivals were eliminated. Mehmed III had nineteen of his half-brothers killed on his accession in 1595. Many of the later Sultans were idle, or half-witted, or both, and quite dominated by their mothers. The later Sultans hardly ever left Istanbul, or indeed the walls of their places. One only has to read the later history of the Ottoman court to realise that polygamy is a very bad thing indeed. The Ottomans also perfected a divide and rule approach to their subject peoples; they were allowed a certain degree of freedom in return for tribute, and the head of each confessional community would be held accountable for misbehaviour. Hence the hanging of the Orthodox Patriarch Gregory V from his own gateway on Easter Sunday 1821, because he was blamed for the Greek revolt of that year. This sort of multi-culturalism has won a few politically correct admirers in our own times, but it has to be remembered that there was a steady stream of converts to Islam throughout the Balkans, as people wished to evade the tax on non-Muslims, as well as having their sons taken away from them. And it should not be forgotten that the subject peoples turned against their Turkish overlords in the end; and that the Turks themselves resorted to ethnic cleansing in Anatolia in 1915, massacring one million Armenians. As a multicultural experiment, the Ottoman Empire ended very badly indeed. It should not be surprising therefore that even today, as the programme made clear, people in the Balkans and Greece regard the Ottoman era as anything but a golden age. Ottoman domination imposed three

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PROVIDENCE – The General Assembly is considering legislation that would encourage further development of renewable energy in the state while more strictly regulating the price of power from wind turbines, solar arrays and other similar generators. Three bills aimed at land-based renewable energy systems were approved by legislative committees this week. They will be voted on by the House on Thursday and by the Senate next Tuesday or Wednesday. The bills, especially one that creates guidelines for what’s known as distributed generation, would boost clean power in the state, said Chris Kearns, a lobbyist for Alteris Renewables, an installer of wind turbines and photovoltaic systems. “It will help create a market in Rhode Island,” he said. “It’s definitely a game-changing piece of legislation.” Distributed generation is essentially the development of small renewable-energy projects throughout the power grid. Supporters say that locating energy sources at strategic sites, such as places where electricity usage is high, takes stress off transmission lines because they can reduce the amount of power that has to be carried in from farther away. In turn, these small systems increase the overall reliability of the power grid. The proposed legislation would create a state board that would set standard prices for distributed-generation projects, depending on what type of renewable-energy technology they use and how much energy they would produce. Putting in place set prices would bring predictability to the market. The bill emerged from the Small Business Renewable Energy Task Force, a legislative group headed by Rep. Deborah Ruggiero, D-Jamestown, Middletown, that has been working since last fall on ways to help develop clean power in the state. The bill was introduced by Ruggiero in the House and by Sen. Joshua Miller, D-Cranston, in the Senate. The second piece of legislation comes in response to a case before the Division of Public Utilities and Carriers that was opened after a complaint about the way a wind turbine owned by the Town of Portsmouth sells energy to the power grid. Under an agreement with utility National Grid, the town sells power from the turbine at a retail rate that is higher than what other power generators charge. The turbine has been able to charge the higher price because it has been classified as a net-metering facility. Strictly speaking, an energy producer

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The first recorded school shooting in the United States took place in 1840, when a law student shot and killed his professor at the University of Virginia. But the modern fear dawned on April 20, 1999, when Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris killed 12 classmates and a teacher, and then themselves, at Colorado’s Columbine High. Since then, the murder of children in their classrooms has come to seem common, a regular feature of modern American life, and our fears so strong that we are certain the next horror is sure to come not long after the last. The Education Department reports that roughly 50 million children attend public schools for roughly 180 days per year. Since Columbine, approximately 200 public school students have been shot to death while school was in session, including the recent slaughter at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. (and a shooting in Birmingham, Ala., on Wednesday that police called accidental that left one student dead). That means the statistical likelihood of any given public school student being killed by a gun, in school, on any given day since 1999 was roughly 1 in 614,000,000. And since the 1990s, shootings at schools have been getting less common. The chance of a child being shot and killed in a public school is extraordinarily low. Not zero — no risk is. But it’s far lower than many people assume, especially in the glare of heart-wrenching news coverage after an event like Parkland. And it’s far lower than almost any other mortality risk a kid faces, including traveling to and from school, catching a potentially deadly disease while in school or suffering a life-threatening injury playing interscholastic sports. We sometimes seek protection from our fears in ways that put us in greater peril. In responding to the Parkland shooting, we may be doing just that to our kids. Statistics seem cold and irrelevant compared with how the evil of a school shooting makes us feel. The victims are children, and research on the psychology of risk has found that few risks worry us more than threats to kids. Parents who send their precious children to school each morning are relinquishing control over their safety; that same research has found that lack of control makes any risk feel more threatening. The parents

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The first recorded school shooting in the United States took place in 1840, when a [...] at Columbine and Sandy Hook and Stoneman Douglas placed their faith in the school systems, trust that was cruelly violated — and mistrust fuels fear, too, for the parents and all of us. We don’t really think about risk in terms of 1 in 10, or 1 in 100, or 1 in 1 million in the first place. And when we do see such numbers, the only thing we think is, “My kid could be the one,” so even the tiniest risk appears unacceptably high. That powerful combination of psychological characteristics moots any suggestion that fear of a certain risk is irrationally excessive. Numerically, maybe. Emotionally, not at all. That’s the thing about risk. We assess it less on the likelihood of the outcome and more on the emotional nature of the experience involved in getting to that outcome. The probability of dying doesn’t matter as much as the way you die. That’s why the infinitesimally low risk of being eaten by a shark scares millions of people out of the ocean, and why vanishingly rare plane crashes scare travelers into their cars and trucks (a statistically riskier way to get around). School shootings also trigger powerful emotions that swamp the odds. And the more frightening a risk feels to you and me, the more coverage it usually gets in the news media, which focuses on things most likely to get our attention. Rare events with high emotional valence often get coverage disproportionate to their likelihood, further magnifying our fears. As a result of what the cognitive sciences call “the awareness heuristic” — a mental shortcut we use to quickly assess the likely frequency of things we don’t know much about — the more readily an event leaps to mind from our memory, or the more persistently it’s in the news, the more emotionally powerful and probable it feels. School shootings and the debate about gun control are prime examples. A threat feels more threatening if it’s getting a lot of attention. The constant drumbeat of negative news in general — the possibility of nuclear war, terrorism, a bad flu season, hate crimes, climate change — makes the world feel like a darker, more threatening place than it

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The first recorded school shooting in the United States took place in 1840, when a [...] actually is, which makes us more fearful overall. (Media analyst George Gerbner called this “mean world syndrome.”) School shootings don’t happen in isolation but in the context of worrying news about all sorts of things. The problem with all of this is what our excessive fears could lead to. Having more guns in schools, as President Trump advocates — or more guns anywhere — increases the likelihood of gun violence. At a Georgia high school this month, social studies teacher Randal Davidson locked himself in a classroom and fired his handgun through a window when authorities tried to open the door. In 2014, a Utah teacher carrying a concealed handgun shot herself in the leg in a school restroom. There are many other similar examples. The Parkland tragedy itself teaches that more guns don’t automatically mean more safety: The school was patrolled by an armed guard. Another effect of this disproportionate fear is to direct attention to the risks we’re most afraid of and away from those that actually pose the greatest threat. Far more kids are shot outside school than in one — 7,100 a year between 2012 and 2014 , or 19 every day (compared with about 60 shootings at schools each year, according to the Gun Violence Archive). More than 1,000 of them die. Fear focused on military-style “assault” rifles diverts attention from the larger issue of gun control, which has much more to do with the lethality of guns generally than with what the machine looks like. Fear also leads us to do things in pursuit of safety that may do more harm than what we’re afraid of in the first place. Think about the psychological effects on kids from all those lessons about when to run, how to hide, directions from their parents to call home if a shooting occurs. A few children have even brought guns to school, saying they wanted to protect their classmates . What happens to children’s ability to learn if they spend their time in the classroom wondering, even if only occasionally, who’s going to burst in and open fire? What does the chronic stress of such worry do to their health? What do constant messages of potential danger in a place that’s supposed to be safe do to

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Did you know high school students have been investigating important environmental questions at both the ALNC and Edna Taylor Conservation Park? La Follette High School students in the AP Environmental Science class have been conducting field studies in these local habitats for the past 5 years. This year La Follette Biology 2 students also got in on the action. The Instructional Purpose of the AP Environmental Science class projects was, “through presentations and discussion, students will demonstrate knowledge of ecological concepts and field data analysis.” Students spent the semester looking at water quality and biodiversity data in different ways. - The students researched and analyzed study plots across Edna Taylor and ALNC and developed research questions of their own choosing. - The students developed research questions, immersed themselves into learning about the topic, studied and used various methods for data collection (i.e. bird ID, insect sweeps, Google Mapping tools, dissolved oxygen measures, biotic index, pH), determined results and conclusions, developed abstracts, and relayed findings through posters and presentations. - They factored in a variety of interesting variables, including differences in restoration measures and practices of ALNC vs. Edna Taylor, and impacts of urbanization (proximity to homes and neighborhoods, runoff, pesticide usage, pollution, etc.). - They analyzed biodiversity by studying: varieties and native vs. non-native plants, species of birds, and orders of insects. In addition to learning about the process of scientific inquiry and investigation, the students noticed some interesting conclusions: - Different findings between ALNC and Edna Taylor – edge effect, different rates of biodiversity - Fewer invasive plants at ALNC than ET = Increased biodiversity in insects at ALNC - Most common bird sightings were Redwing Blackbirds, American Robins, Cowbirds, and Canada Geese, but a few interesting less common sightings: - Scarlet Tanager - Baltimore Oriole - Rose-breasted Grosbeaks - Hooded Mergansers - Sandhill Cranes Several students mentioned increased understanding of and concern for environmental issues (like invasive species, pollution, and biodiversity) and plans to continue studying science.

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Saturday, July 23, 2011 PUT THE GLASS DOWN TODAY Once, a professor began his class by holding up a glass with some water in it. He held it up for all to see and asked the students, 'How much do you think this glass weighs?' '1 pound!' ....'2 pounds!' .....'3 pounds!' ......the students answered. 'I really don't know unless I weigh it,' said the professor, 'but, my question is: What would happen if I held it up like this for a few minutes?' 'Nothing' the students said. 'OK what would happen if I held it up like this for an hour?' the professor asked. 'Your arm would begin to ache' said one of the students. 'You're right, now what would happen if I held it for a day?' 'Your arm could go numb, you might have severe muscle stress & paralysis; have to go to hospital for sure' ventured another student. All the students laughed. 'Very good. But during all this, did the weight of the glass change?' Asked the professor. 'No,' replied the students.' 'Then what caused the arm ache; the muscle stress? Instead, what should I do?' The students were puzzled. 'Put the glass down' said one of the students. 'Exactly!' said the professor. 'Life's problems are something like this. Hold them for a few minutes in your head; they seem OK. Think of them for a long time; they begin to ache. Hold them even longer; they begin to paralyze you. You will not be able to do anything.' It is important to think of the challenges in your life, but EVEN MORE IMPORTANT to 'put them down' at the end of every day before you go to sleep. That way, you are not stressed, you wake up every day fresh, strong, can handle any issue, any challenge that comes your way! Remember friend- PUT THE GLASS DOWN TODAY!

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Research Many Colleges Before You Make Your Decision College is more than just something after high school. Actually, college life is different in nearly every way. The decisions you make will impact you throughout the rest of your life. You must plan everything and be prepared for whatever you encounter. Take a water bottle to class with you. Staying hydrated is something you need to do all day long. This is even more crucial if your classes run one right after another and you just do not have the time to hydrate or eat. Drinking water frequently during the day can help you remain focused and energized. Look for a water fountain to refill your water bottle as necessary. Prior to the day that classes begin, become familiar with your schedule as well as the location of your classes. Figure out how many minutes or hours you will need to make it each class to the next and plan accordingly. Make note of the bathrooms and other places you will need to go. Eat breakfast on test days. Even a simple, small breakfast such as yogurt or a piece of fruit will help. If you’re hungry, you won’t be able to think straight. Getting something to eat before a test will help you to keep your energy level up and make it easier to focus on the work at hand. In the first semester, get at least a general education requirement to get it over with. Often students are faced with classes that are needed for graduation, yet do not want to take them. This makes it important to get it finished sooner than later. You don’t want to have to take classes with the kids when you’re a senior! To save time and money, try taking the bus to campus. It may be just as quicker or quicker than driving. In fact, you can even save some time because you don’t have to search for an available parking space. On top of that, you’ll save a ton of money! Taking the bus will also help protect our environment. Don’t buy your books until after your first class. You may learn that certain books you thought were needed are not necessary. This can be the case for online classes in particular. Many times, online readings and lectures will be enough to succeed in the class. Go for classes that make you think, rather than easy grade classes. When you work your brain, you’ll find great benefits. You’ll gain

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Research Many Colleges Before You Make Your Decision College is more than just something after [...] a lot more out of a harder class and they are often more beneficial for your future. Always purchase used textbooks. College books cost quite a bit, and cost even more brand new. You will save a lot of money by buying them used. Being a good notetaker is critical. Taking notes in and of itself aids in learning. Your study time will be more beneficial once you have the information solidified in your head. Even if you feel like you know the information, make a habit of writing these types of notes. Never submit the first draft of a paper. Allow yourself time to make revisions. Writing second drafts of your papers is a great way to improve quality. If you choose to write a second draft, be sure you proofread it and get it just right. When you do this, your paper will contain all necessary information. Making good friends will not happen overnight. Making friends can be as simple as showing up early to class. This allows you to have a few moments to speak to your classmates before class. It’s an excellent way to break the ice and start a conversation. Don’t bring a lot of stuff with you if you are going to live in a dorm. Dorm rooms are small and any extra room will make your living space more comfortable. Draft a list that includes basic items and keep to it as you shop. Look for space-saving storage options and compact designs. Going away to college for the first time can be exciting and intimidating, but don’t worry. As long as you put the effort in, you’ll be successful in the end. There will be lots of temptations at school, but you need to remember you are there to learn and your decisions affect your future. NOw that you know a bit more about what college is like, start your plan! College is a time in your life when you have to understand what things are all about.

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You will need a bucket with some soil in it, a bowl of clean warm water, a couple of towels and some soap. (It is a lot but it is worth it!) Show the children the bucket of soil and add water to it to make mud. Ask them who likes to get muddy. Bring out one child, ask them their (name) and ask them to get their hands all muddy. Say the problem about getting muddy is that we need to get clean again. Why does (name) need to get clean. Among answers, there will hopefully be: Because if they don't they'll make other people muddy, they'll get sick from germs, the mud will stick onto them. Talk about how many Christians use Lent as a time to look at mud - not the mud on the outside, but the mud on the inside of our lives: - unkind things - unkind words - we want people to be fair to us, but we are not always fair to them - we sometimes don't do the right thing because we are frightened of what others will say - we tell lies and then further lies to get ourselves out of the lies we have already told - we don't say sorry, or we take people for granted And we realise that we need to clean up. The problem is that we can't clean ourselves up. We try to be good, to pull our socks up, but it never seems to work. Give (name) a clean white towel and ask them to clean themselves up. They simply get more muddy and the towel gets muddy. Ask a teacher, or get someone sensible to come to front, and help (name) wash their hands in the water and dry them with a clean towel. As they are having their hands washed, say how Christians believe that we can't make ourselves clean on the inside, but that we need Jesus to make us clean. Jesus is the only person who can really clean us on the inside. He forgives us and he can start to get rid of the inner mud, if we ask him. Finish with a prayer thanking God for his forgiveness because of Jesus, and asking him to make us clean on the inside

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When war broke out in Europe and Asia in 1939, the War Department suggested to the National Guard that their 111th Cavalry convert to another branch of service. The age of the horse as a combatant had passed. Thus, the officers and non-commissioned officers of the command jointly selected coast artillery. In 1940, the 111th was re-designated the 200th Coast Artillery Regiment (AA) and the 158th was reorganized as the 104th Anti-Tank battalion. On January 6, 1940, these units, along with the 120th Engineer Regiment, were called to active duty for a one-year training period that became the prelude to some of the earliest combat experienced by American troops in World War II. New Mexico in the 1940s also began to play a critical role in the emerging relationship between science and the military, which would grow rapidly in the decades to follow. This started with the testing of the variable-timed, radio, proximity-fused artillery shells that would be crucial to protecting the Navy's ships from Kamikazes and to the Army's defense of Bastogne, Belgium in 1944. Airplanes were suspended over the desert mesa near Kirtland between the tallest wooden towers in the world and used for targets. The importance of the proximity fuze to the successful outcome of the Second World War is best stated by those who witnessed its effectiveness. James V. Forrestal, Secretary of the Navy said, "The proximity fuze has helped blaze the trail to Japan. Without the protection this ingenious device has given the surface ships of the Fleet, our westward push could not have been so swift and the cost in men and ships would have been immeasurably greater." Prime Minister, Winston S. Churchill was quoted with "These so-called proximity fuzes, made in the United States. . , proved potent against the small unmanned aircraft (V-1) with which we were assailed in 1944." And Commanding General of the Third Army, George S. Patton said, "The funny fuze won the Battle of the Bulge for us. I think that when all arm

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Some of my favorite architectural images of all time come from a series of photos taken by Fred R. Conrad for the New York Times, showing the remains of an 18th-century ship that was uncovered in the muddy depths of the World Trade Center site, a kind of wooden fossil, splayed out and preserved like a rib cage, embedded in the foundations of New York City. Although it’s almost embarrassing to admit how much I think of this—hoping, I suppose, that some vast wooden fleet will someday be discovered beneath Manhattan, lying there in wait, disguised as basements, anchored quietly inside skyscrapers, masts mistaken for telephone poles, perhaps even slowly rocking with the tidal rise of groundwater and subterranean streams—it came to mind almost immediately while re-reading a short book by art historian Indra Kagis McEwen called Socrates’ Ancestor. Really more of an etymological analysis of spatial concepts inherited from ancient Greece, from the idea of khôra to the myth of Icarus, McEwen’s book has at least two interesting moments, the first of which relates directly to ships. [Image: Greek triremes at war, via Pacific Standard]. “At one important point in its history,” she writes, “Athens literally became a fleet of ships.” When Themistocles evacuated Athens in 481 B.C. in the face of the Persian threat, the entire city put out to sea, taking with it its archaion agalma [or cult statue] of Athena Polias. And when, according to Plutarch, a certain person said to Themistocles “that a man without a city had no business to advise men who still had cities of their own” Themistocles answered, It is true thou wretch, that we have left behind us our houses and our city walls, not deeming it meet for the sake of such lifeless things to be in subjection; but we still have a city, the greatest in Hellas, our two hundred triremes. That is, the city took to the waves, physically and literally abandoning solid ground—leaving the earth behind, we might say—to go mobile, en masse, cutting through the water like Arm

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Some of my favorite architectural images of all time come from a series of photos taken by Fred R [...] ada from The Scar, novelist China Miéville‘s “flotilla of dwellings. A city built on old boat bones.” In The Scar, Miéville envisions “many hundreds of ships lashed together, spread over almost a square mile of sea, and the city built on them… Tangled in ropes and moving wooden walkways, hundreds of vessels facing all directions rode the swells.” Incredibly, in the very origins of Western urbanism, this offworld—or at least offshore—scenario actually played itself out, with the evacuation and subsequent becoming-maritime of the entire city of Athens, Greece. The whole city just picked up, left dry ground, and sailed off for the horizon. Briefly, McEwen’s book has at least one other detail worth mentioning here: a comparison between ancient shipbuilding techniques and weaving—or, as she says, “the way ancient shipwrights assembled their craft is clearly analogous to the techniques of weaving. To edge-join planks with mortise-and-tenon joints is, essentially, to interlace pieces of wood.” In the shipyard, planks laid in one direction were fastened to other planks by tenons that penetrated, or interlaced, the planks at right angles in order to bind them together. Similarly, on a loom, the warp threads (analogous to planks) extended in one direction are bound together by weft threads (analogous to tenons and pegs) traveling orthogonally, which interpenetrate the warp threads at right angles to make the cloth. The word histos, she points out, which can mean “anything set upright, is at once the mast of a ship and a Greek loom… Histos or histion is the web woven on the loom, and histia also are sails.” [Image: “The first builders wove their walls.” From Socrates’ Ancestor by Indra Kagis McEwen]. This was translated into an architectural technique, she suggests. Citing the historical conjecture of Vitruvius, who wanted to discover where and how architecture truly began, McEwen adds that “the first builders wove their

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Growing Apricots Successfully Planting Dig hole at least one foot greater in diameter than the total spread of roots the depth of the longest root. Fill in lower 2 inches of hole with mixture of 50% native soil and a 50% mix of Soil Booster and 1-2 cups of Earthworm Castings . Press this mixture down firmly. Create a mound in the center of the hole with the soil mixture. Set tree upright in hole with stem in center. Spread out roots as evenly as possible over the mound of soil and back-fill mixture around all roots. Fill in hole completely and add 1 cup of fertilizer at this time (see below for recommendation). Make a basin for holding water by building a circular ridge around the diameter of the hole and fill slowly with water. The water will settle the soil around the roots. The graft should be positioned about 2 inches above ground level, facing north. Watering Water when the soil 6 inches below the surface is just barely moist. Apply enough water to wet the soil 3 to 4 feet deep. Mature trees will require less watering, but should still get regular water during summer. Feeding Feed three to four times during the growing season with a balanced fertilizer (16-16-16) such as E.B. Stone All Purpose Plant Food or E.B. Stone Citrus and Fruit Tree Food . Avoid fertilizers too high in nitrogen as they will stimulate leafy growth at the expense of fruit production. It is not necessary to fertilize during the dormant season. When to Expect Fruit: New whips are about 2 years old, so small crops will begin in about 2 years. Pruning: The success of any deciduous fruit tree depends a great deal upon the initial training it receives the first three years. These instructions apply to all deciduous fruit trees except pecans and walnuts. 1 st Year Cut off the main leader or central stem 30” from the ground. If there are any lateral (side) branches make the cut 30” above a good strong lateral branch. Select two other lateral branches, one about 8” below the top branch, the other 16” below. Make your selection of these branches so that when you look down the tree from directly above, the three

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Growing Apricots Successfully Planting Dig hole at least one foot greater in diameter [...] branches spiral equally. By selecting branches spaced in this manner, the tree will develop a crotch that is less apt to split in later years. Head back any remaining branches to one-half of their original length. As the tree grows, allow only 2 buds on each branch to develop; one at the end and one halfway between the end and the base. Let these branches grow to their full development without further summer pruning and rub off any shoots that may appear on the trunk as suckers. 2nd Year Choose six well developed branches and cut back about two-thirds of their length. Cut just above a strong bud or lateral branch. Head back all other lateral branches to one-half of their length. To prune mature trees, remove dead, diseased and disoriented wood, especially those growing in towards the center of the tree. Keep the center open to light and air circulation. Apricots bear on fruiting spurs that live for three to four years. The majority of fruit is borne on one-year-old wood. Thinning is vital for apricots as the wood is brittle. Thin annually when fruits are ½” to ¾” across. Leave 5-6” between fruits. This ensures proper tree health, and ample subsequent crops. Pests and Diseases Scale are insects that appear as crusty bumps. Young scale (crawlers) can be found a month after full bloom. Both can be killed with Summit Year Round Spray Oil , or smothered with Neem Oil. Bacterial Leaf Spot. Spray with Liquicop as soon as leaves shed in fall and again in spring as buds begin to fatten. In fall, remove and destroy infected twigs, old fallen fruit and leaves in which the disease organisms can survive the winter. Brown Rot. Blossoms and young leaves wilt, decay and turn brown. Apply Liquicop at detection and three weeks before harvest if needed (be sure to wash treated fruit). Clean up and destroy all debris regularly. Peach tree Borers. Holes appear in trunk and crotches. A thick gummy substance may ooze from holes. Apply an insecticide containing chlorpyrifos to trunk and lower branches (do NOT spray fruit or fol

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According to legends, it is one of 9 sons of a dragon, which can distinguish between good and evil. It is sometimes included in the list of four noble animals, along with the Chinese dragon, phoenix and tortoise - instead of the tiger. As a rule this animal is depicted having a few horns, green and blue scaly skin, hooves of a deer, the head of a dragon and a bear's tail. In some aspects it resembles Western unicorns. Like the European unicorn, Chi Lin symbolizes longevity and prosperity. It is believed to live for at least 2000 years. The Chinese believe that it is always lonely, and appears only during the reign of an outstanding ruler or when a great sage is born or dies; for instance, it was seen shortly before the birth and death of Confucius. It can only be seen by the chosen ones. It is considered a harbinger of happiness. On his back, Qilin may have babies. Legends state that it brings extraordinary children from heaven. Like the stork in the European tradition, in China it brings a long-awaited heir to the happy parents. It is also mentioned in connection with some important events in the history of China. For instance, five thousand years ago one Chinese emperor was sitting on the shore near the Yellow River, when he saw Qi Lin. The dirty water of the river turned crystal clear green. Chi Lin stood before the emperor, stomped on a rock three times, and spoke to the emperor in a voice similar to a temple bell. When Qilin turned to leave, the emperor saw magic signs on his back, and copied them. According to legends, this is how the first written language appeared in China. The mention of this mythical animal goes back to the days of Confucius. Back then, it had a more peaceful appearance. When walking, it did not cause any harm even to insects (like the image of the Lamb in Christian mythology). When stepping on the grass it did not crush it. It fed on magic grasses. It could walk on water and fly. Carved on gravestones, it would protect from evil spirits, as well as accompany the dead to heaven. However, over time it changed its appearance and symbolism - once a symbol of peace and gentleness, it also acquired the features of power and strength.

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Natural sounds are represented as spectrotemporal modulations in human auditory cortex The question of how the human auditory cortex represents complex natural sounds is one of the most fundamental ones in cognitive neuroscience. While previous studies have documented a number of tonotopically organized areas occupying the primary and non-primary auditory cortices, there are additionally studies that have shown preference to other sound features, such as sound location and speech sound category, in specific auditory cortical areas. Furthermore, there are findings in animal models suggesting that auditory cortical neurons are selective to various types of spectrotemporal sound features, however, it has not been known whether there are topographic representations of spectrotemporal features, a model that could potentially explain how complex natural sounds are represented in the human auditory cortex. In their recent study, Santoro et al. (2014), analyzed data from two previous functional magnetic resonance imaging experiments where a rich array of natural sounds had been presented to healthy volunteers. They then tested between three computational models, where the first model assumed that auditory cortex represents sounds as spectral/frequency information, the second model assumed that auditory cortex represents sounds as temporal information and third model assumed that sounds are represented as sets of spectrotemporal modulations. The results indicate that natural sounds are represented with frequency-specific analysis of spectrotemporal modulations. Furthermore, in anterior auditory cortex regions analysis of spectral information was found to be more fine-grained than in posterior auditory cortical areas, wherein temporal information was, in turn, found to be represented more accurately with rather coarse representation of spectral information. In sum, the authors provide a very exciting approach to testing how well alternative computational models, inspired by neurophysiological findings obtained in animal research, can predict hemodynamic data collected during presentation of a various natural sounds. Taken together, the results offer a very interesting vantage point into how natural sounds could be represented in the human auditory cortex. It is easy to predict that the approach and findings will generate wide interest and help further research efforts to significantly step forward, especially given the increasing popularity of the use of naturalistic stimuli in neuroimaging research. Reference: Santoro R, Moerel M, De Martino F, Goebel R, Ugurbil K, Yacoub E, Formisano E. Encoding of natural sounds at multiple

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Man reading a manuscript on the roof of Djingareyber Mosque, Timbuktu. (Source) Once a thriving centre of learning and culture, Timbuktu is home to notable architecture and one of the world’s greatest collections of ancient manuscripts. A West African city with a name long synonymous with the unknown edges of the world, Timbuktu flourished from trade in salt, gold and ivory and was part of the Mali Empire of the 14th century. Its Sankore University, together with a thriving book trade and the presence of numerous famous scholars established the city as a renowned scholarly centre in Africa. On the southern edge of the Sahara Desert, north of the River Niger, a city of beige towers and dusty roads appears out of the sand. Its reputation is heavy with the weight of nearly a millennium’s worth of history. For centuries it’s been blessed - and cursed - by rumors of being a hidden paradise. It has passed from the hands of a famed sultan to invading northerners to European imperialists, growing from a tiny nomadic outpost to a major cultural hub. Over the course of its history, the desert city was famed for being dense with gold, for being impenetrable, and for bearing witness to one of the great ecological calamities of the 20th century. Even now, in the age of Google Maps, its name is synonymous with the unknown edges of the world: welcome to Timbuktu." "Timbuktu, French Tombouctou, city in the western African country of Mali, historically important as a trading post on the trans-Saharan caravan route and as a centre of Islamic culture (c. 1400–1600). It is located on the southern edge of the Sahara, about 8 miles (13 km) north of the Niger River. The city was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1988. In 2012, in response to armed conflict in the region, Timbuktu was added to the UNESCO List of World Heritage in Danger." Encyclopædia Britannica. Timbuktu has become a byword for the farthest corner of the earth. But it was once

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Man reading a manuscript on the roof of Djingareyber Mosque, Timbukt [...] an important cultural and artistic center. Put us on the ground during its golden age." The mosque Djenne - a great clay monument of Timbuktu, Mali (Source) The Rise of Timbuktu as a Centre of Learning "Musa's legacy today is tremendous, both in terms of his crazy monetary exploits and for things like creating one of the world's best libraries and universities in the city of Timbuktu, but until recently, few people knew this incredible man's name." (Source) According to Al-Djazairi, until the Western intrusion, some African parts, under the aegis of Islam, and acting as great trading centres, became during the high middle ages great centres of civilisation. Mali was one such place. As the remotest place on the gold road, Mali became famous in the Mediterranean world in the 14th century. Its ruler, known as the Mansa Musa (r. 1312-37), reached legendary proportions. He was one of three Mansas to go on the hajj (proof of both power and stability of the Mali state, as the pilgrimage took over a year.) He travelled with 80 or 100 camels, ‘each weighed down with 300 pounds of gold. It was the ritual magnificence and wealth of the court of Mali that impressed beholders. "Everything about the Mansa exuded majesty." On his return from his pilgrimage to Makkah in 1324, Mansa Musa brought back with him the Muslim poet and architect, Es Saheli, who built the famous mosques and learning academies of Timbuktu and Gao. Timbuktu, then, was seen as a great centre of learning. The news of the Mansa's splendour reached Europe, and in Majorcan maps from the 1320s, and in the lavish Catalan Atlas of 1375, the ruler of Mali was portrayed like a Latin monarch, save only for his black face: Everything about the Mansa exuded majesty... Bearded, crowned and throned, with pan

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Man reading a manuscript on the roof of Djingareyber Mosque, Timbukt [...] oply of orb and sceptre, he is perceived and presented as a sophisticate not a savage: a sovereign equal in standing to any Christian prince..." This is a close up view of a famous Catalan Atlas drawn by Abraham Cresques in 1375 in Europe, which depicts Emperor Mansa Musa (Source) The Scholars of Timbuktu Like many of the learning centres of the golden age of Muslim Civilisation, TImbuktu boasted many scholars. Some of the key names included Modibo Mohammad Al Kaburi, Al Qadi Al Hajj, Abu Abdallah And Ag Mohammad ibn Mohammad ibn Uthman, Sheik Sidi Abu Al Barakaat Mahmud ibn Umar ibn Aqit, Al Moctar Ag Mohammad ibn Utman, Abd Arahman Ag Mohammad ibn Utman, Abu Al Abbas Ahmad Buryu ibn And Ag Mohamad ibn Utman, Abu Abdallah And Ag Mohammad ibn Al Moctar ‘n-Nahawi, Al Moctar ibn Mohammad ibn Al Moctar ‘n-Nahawi ibn And Ag Mohammad, Ahmed Baba Es Sudane, Mohammad Bagayogo Es Sudane Al Wangari Al Timbukti and many more.* Many Timbuktu scholars possessed personal libraries of hundreds or thousands of books. Scholars offered instruction inside mosques such as Sankore, Sidi Yahya, and Jingerer Ber, the largest mosque colleges in Timbuktu, but most scholars imparted knowledge to students in a special room in their own homes, which also housed their books. Masters delivered authorization to teach specific texts to their students.The prestige of the authorization depended on the pedigree of a scholar. The expectation still today is that a scholar authorized by a famous master who himself is a former student of another famous master to transmit knowledge will have more solid credentials than a scholar taught by a less famous master." Imaginary potrait of Ahmed Baba (Source) Here comes the sand To cover everything - But before it does, I honour an

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Man reading a manuscript on the roof of Djingareyber Mosque, Timbukt [...] African Teacher, Of Ahmed Baba I must sing Ahmed Baba of Timbuktu Abu al-Abbas Ahmad ibn Ahmad al-Takruri Al-Massufi al-Timbukti, otherwise commonly known as Ahmad Baba for short, was a well-known teacher, professor, philosopher, Arabic grammarian and an author of over forty books and various works. Ahmad Baba's work ranged from biographies to commentaries - and he was one of the most celebrated professors. He was also the last Chancellor at the University of Sankore, Timbuktu. The University of Sankore has been compared to other higher education universities during Muslim civilisation such as Al-Azhar in Egypt, Al-Qayrawan in Tunisia, Al-Qarawiyyin in Morocco and Qurtuba University in Spain. It is also said to be a source of pride amongst African-Caribbean communities worldwide as it was a great intellectual institution dating back to civilisations in Mali, Ghana and Songhai particularly during the 12th to 16th centuries. Ahmad Baba (also spelled as Ahmed Baba or Ahmet Baba), like many scholars, naturally spent much of his time reading as he did writing and his personal library consisted of over 1,600 different volumes. From "Ode to Ahmad Baba" by Natty Mark Samuels The Guardian: "A worker stands over examples of ancient Islamic manuscripts at Ahmed Baba Library in Timbuktu, Mali - Ben Curtis/AP" The wooden protrusions... The Sankore Madrasah is also remarkable for its large pyramidal mihrab (Source) Learning Institutions of Timbuktu At one of the most southerly points of the Muslim lands was the University of Sankore, in Timbuktu, and it was the intellectual institution of Mali, Ghana, and Songhay. It developed out of the Sankore Mosque, founded in 989 by the eru-dite chief judge of Timbuktu, Al-Qadi Aqib ibn

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Man reading a manuscript on the roof of Djingareyber Mosque, Timbukt [...] Mahmud ibn Umar. The inner court of the mosque was in the exact dimension of the Ka'bah in holy Mecca. A wealthy Mandika lady then financed Sankore University, making it a leading center of education. It prospered and by the 12th century, student numbers were at 25,000, an enormous amount in a city of 100,000 people. The university had several independent colleges, each run by a single master. Subjects included the Quran, Islamic studies, law, literature, medicine and surgery, astronomy, mathematics, physics, chemistry, philosophy, language and linguistics, geography, history, and art. It was not all cerebral, as the students also spent time learning a trade, the business code, and ethics. These trade shops offered classes in business, carpentry, farming, fishing, construction, shoemaking, tailoring, and navigation. The highest "superior" degree, equivalent to a Ph.D., took about ten years, and produced world-class scholars who were recognized by their publications and for their erudition. The Ph.D. thesis was called Risaleh (literally meaning "letter"), and those graduating with this degree were named Ayatullah, as they still are in the theological Shiite centers Qum (Iran) and Najaf (Oraq). Sankore's achievement in higher education is important to Muslim civilisation even though it was less known in comparison to Al-Azhar, Al-Qayrawan, Al-Qarawiyyin and Qurtuba Universities. From "1001 Inventions The Enduring Legacy of Muslim Civilization" [School Zone - Universities Section] and "The University of Sankore, Timbuktu" by Zulkifli Khair Sankore Mosque that houses the University Campus in Mali Manuscripts of Timbuktu Ancient Timbuktu was a center of Islamic learning. It had libraries full of manuscripts. The manuscripts were handwritten in Arabic, the language of Islamic scholars. In modern times, about seven hundred thousand ancient manuscripts still remain in Timbuktu

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Man reading a manuscript on the roof of Djingareyber Mosque, Timbukt [...] .The manuscripts are kept in public and private libraries. They cover topics such as mathematics, chemistry, astronomy, medicine, history, and religion. Many of the manuscripts are in danger of being lost. Age has made their pages brittle. The paper crumbles when it's touched. Insects, moisture, and mold have also damaged the manuscripts. Officials in Timbuktu are collecting money to preserve the manuscripts and store them in better conditions." "Timbuktu" is something of a metaphor for a long tradition of Islamic learning and writing in West Africa that is subsumed (and sometimes lost) in the fabled name of the northern Malian city. This was well illustrated in the recent crisis in Timbuktu when international alarm was rightly sounded over the possible destruction of manuscripts. The much larger manuscript repositories of this literary tradition in Mauritania, and the equally important collections in Niger and Nigeria, for instance, had no part of the story. These many manuscript collections, separated by multiple national borders, of course represent a single Islamic scholarly heritage (that is, in part, linked to Timbuktu). But this can only be demonstrated by examining the most commonly found teaching texts found in manuscript collections across West Africa. From "Lecture on Timbuktu Manuscripts at Al-Furqan Foundation" Timbuktu Manuscripts or (Tombouctou Manuscripts) is a blanket term for the large number of historically important manuscripts that have been preserved for centuries in private households inTimbuktu, Mali. (Source) If Timbuktu was the bright star, the central phenomenon in the teaching constellation, the other centres of learning were complimentary satellites of often equal brilliance. Daily Mail: Forgotten: The ancient city of Chinguetti, in the west-African nation of Mauritania, is home to around 6,000 ancient manuscripts To name but a few renowned scholars of African origin in Muslim civilisation, one can observe the great works of zoologist Al-Jahiz, geographer Al-Idrisi, mathematicians such as Labana of Cordoba, Muhammed ibn Muhammed

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Man reading a manuscript on the roof of Djingareyber Mosque, Timbukt [...] al-Fulani al-Kishnawi, Abu Kamil Shuja ibn Aslam, al-Qurashī, al-Hassār, Ibn al-Yāsamīn, Ibn Mun‘im; founder of the Al-Qarawiyyin university Fatima al-Fihri, important figures like Nana Asma’u, Sheikh Abdul al-Amawi, Al-Hajj Salim Suwari, King Idris Alooma; inventor Abbas Ibn Firnas and many more by exploring the Muslim Heritage website. From "African contributions to Muslim Civilisation" Postcard published by Edmond Fortier showing Sankoré Mosque in Timbuktu, Mali 1905-06 (Source) Timbuktu on the news NewYork Times: A cache of African manuscripts stored in Abdel Kader Haidara’s home, 2009. Credit Brent Stirton/Getty Images Reportage (Source) BBC News Timbuktu damage to Mali historic sites 'underestimated' CNN News Opinion: Timbuktu tomb attack is an attack on our humanity by Irina Bokova National Geographic 'Badass Librarians' Foil al Qaeda, Save Ancient Manuscripts The Globe and Mail Why the Timbuktu case is a breakthrough for International Criminal Court Huffington Post Destroying History Is Now Being Charged As A War Crime Telegraph Radical Islamist asks forgiveness for vandalising ancient monuments of Timbuktu The Guardian From Timbuktu to Grimsby, heritage deserves to be restored and revered BBC Four The Lost Libraries of Timbuktu Evacuation Manuscripts Timbuktu (Source) Timbuktu seen from a distance by Heinrich Barth’s party, 1853 (Source) Evacuation Manuscripts Timbuktu (Source) View of Timbuktu by Heinrich Barth 1858 (Source) Evacuation Manuscripts Timbuktu (Source)

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Surprising Kinships, a New and Unconventional Look at Animal Classifications (Wednesday, November 6, 2013 IN FRENCH) As part of the Montréal Space for Life Lecture Series, professor and biologist Hervé Le Guyader, will give a lecture at the Jardin botanique de Montréal, entitled Des parentés insoupçonnées, la classification traditionnelle du monde animal revue et bouleversée (Surprising kinships, a new and unconventional look at animal classifications). An unconventional look at animal classifications Did you know that you are more closely related to a mushroom than a flower? That crocodiles are more closely related to birds than to lizards? That dinosaurs are still in our midst? This is what emerges from a completely new way of classifying the animal world that has turned conventional ideas upside down over the past thirty years. In his lecture, Hervé Le Guyader will look in particular at the origins of the polar bear to illustrate how difficult and surprising the use of modern techniques founded on genetic decoding of animals can be. Hervé Le Guyader, a research scientist who is passionate about systematics Professor Le Guyader is interested in biodiversity and the history of theories of evolution, systematics, anatomy and comparative embryology. His research focuses on cnidarians and ctenophora, which include jellyfish, sea anemones and corals. He is the author and co-author of several books including Penser l’Évolution (2012) and Classification phylogénétique du vivant, vol. 1 (2006) and vol. 2 (2013). A professor of evolutionary biology at the Université Pierre-et-Marie-Curie in Paris and the École Doctorale “Diversité du Vivant”, Professor Le Guyader has also been in charge of several campaigns for marine and terrestrial biodiversity, including Santo 2006, which took place in 2006 on the island of Santo in the archipelago of Vanuatu in the western Pacific Ocean.

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Tuesday, May 17, 2011 Elizabethan Embroidery Primer The Elizabethan era, (1558-1603,) was a beautiful time for embroiderers as they began to experiment with more colors, designs and three dimensional work. Embroidery was seen in many venues of fashion, including coifs and cauls, partlets, shifts and shirts, jackets, aumonieres and sweetbags, as well as household items such as cushions, sheets and blankets. During this era, the use of raised embroidery was at a pinnacle. Stitches such as the detached buttonhole, hollie point and trellis became popular; as they were not sewn into the underlying fabric but were instead anchored to the preceding rows of stitching, could be padded as the embroidery progressed, allowing for a slightly raised effect. There are two basic three forms of Elizabethan embroidery, raised and flat. Of the raised stitching, there are two styles, as well, padded designs such as flowers and leaves and designs which are partially detached, such as the wings of a butterfly or the outer side of a peapod. Basics of Embroidery: The first step in creating an embroidered piece is to choose your equipment. Though Elizabethan embroidery was found on a variety of items, most background fabrics were linen canvas grounds. If you consider yourself a beginning embroiderer, chose linen that has a larger weave and is a bit heavier in weight. Until you are familiar with your own tension, heavier weight background fabrics will buckle less from the weight and tension of the embroidery threads. The thread that you chose for embroidery is also an important consideration. For beginners, DMC floss is easy to use, relatively inexpensive, and it is not far off in appearance from the silk threads that were used in period. Another important consideration to make involves whether to frame the background fabric. While many embroiderers use a hoop to keep the fabric even and taut, a hoop can actually damage the fibers of linen. A more period method, which is forgiving with linen, would be the use of a frame. Sc

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Tuesday, May 17, 2011 Elizabethan Embroider [...] roll style frames can be found at most sewing and art stores. They can be used with a stand, or simply held as you would a hoop. To stretch the linen ground, you can either baste it to a background fabric, which is then held in place by the bars of the frame, or you can “sew” the ground fabric to the bars, keep an even tension to stretch the fabric. Period patterns are highly comprised of florals, birds, insects such as butterflies, peapods and geometric borders. If you would like to produce a period style piece of embroidery, you can easily find portraits and pictures of extant garments in books on the subject and on online websites. I have included a listing of resources on the last page, for this purpose. There are many methods for transferring your pattern onto the fabric background. The most common period method is often referred to as “pierce and pounce” or “pounce and prick.” The pattern would be drawn onto a piece of parchment. The embroiderer would then take a blunt needle and prick holes along the drawn lines. When this was done, the parchment would then be laid onto the ground fabric and a bag of charcoal would be pounced along the design. When the parchment was lifted from the fabric, charcoal dots would be left on the fabric revealing the pattern design. This method can be quite messy, however. More modern methods of transferring patterns are less messy and time consuming. You can find cheap disappearing ink pens at sewing stores. You can even use a pencil, if the embroidery will be opaque enough to hide the lines. You can also draw the pattern onto tissue paper, which is then pinned to the ground fabric. As you embroider along the pattern, the tissue paper can be torn away. There are five common, basic stitches used in Elizabethan embroidery, though many more were used during this period. The most common are the running stitch, chain stitch, split stitch, stem stitch and detached buttonhole. The running stitch is simply a line of stitching, where the needle maintains a direction, and the stitches are accomplished with

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Tuesday, May 17, 2011 Elizabethan Embroider [...] an in/out motion. The chain stitch uses a single strand in loops to resemble a chain. The needle comes up through the fabric where the thread is held into place to make a loop, and then the needle is inserted back into the hole where it emerged, and back up at the opposite end of the loop. The chain stitch is an outlining stitch, also used for stems on floral patterns. The split stitch produces a similar design as the chain, except that the needle is brought up through the working thread to create the chain effect. This stitch is more flat than the chain, and is used prominently for filling on aumonieres, sweet bags, and background stitching. The stem stitch is also good for outlines, as it creates smooth curves. The stem stitch was also used for outlines. It is achieved by working from left to right with small stitches, resulting in a “twisted” appearance. It can be used as filling, if the lines of stitching are sewn closely together. The detached buttonhole stitch is a filling stitch, and is the basic stitch most commonly used for raised embroidery. This stitch is worked over a foundation line; for partially detached pieces, a couched outline is laid first, and the detached buttonhole stitch is then anchored onto the couched thread, which can be snipped free from the ground fabric to partially detach the piece. To work this stitch, insert the needle from top to bottom, into the stitch directly above the work area. As the needle is pulled through the stitch, it stays over the working thread, much like a buttonhole or blanket stitch. As each row progresses, it will anchor into the row before, leaving the area between the stitching and the fabric open. For a raised design, stuff this pocket with padding while the rows are progressing. With all of these stitches, you want to keep your tension consistent as you progress, in order to keep your rows even. Your thread will twist; allow it to untwist every so often or your stitches will warp and become uneven. This is an example of a coif I have been working on, using Eliabethan embroidery stitches.

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Setting Up TSQLConnection Go Up to How To Perform Database Procedures In order to describe a database connection in sufficient detail for TSQLConnection to open a connection, you must identify both the driver to use and a set of connection parameters the are passed to that driver. Identifying the driver The driver is identified by the DriverName property, which is the name of an installed dbExpress driver, such as ASA, ASE, Datasnap, Db2, Firebird, Informix, InterBase, MSSQL, MSSQL9, MySQL, Odbc, and Oracle. These databases use Dynalink drivers, which are partially written in Delphi. For Dynalink drivers, the driver name is associated with these files: - The dbExpress driver. This is a dynamic-link library with a name like dbx*.dll. For example, the Interbase driver DLL begins with "dbxint" and the Oracle driver DLL begins with "dbxora". - The dynamic-link library provided by the database vendor for client-side support. The relationship between these files and the database name is stored in a file called dbxdrivers.ini, which is updated when you install a dbExpress driver. Typically, you do not need to worry about these files because the SQL connection component looks them up in dbxdrivers.ini when given the value of DriverName. When you set the DriverName property, TSQLConnection automatically sets the LibraryName and VendorLib properties to the names of the associated dlls. Once LibraryName and VendorLib have been set, your application does not need to rely on dbxdrivers.ini. (That is, you do not need to deploy dbxdrivers.ini with your application unless you set the DriverName property at run time.) Specifying connection parameters The Params property is a string list that lists name-value pairs. Each pair has the form Name is the name of the parameter, and Value is the value you want to assign. The particular parameters you need depend on the database server you are using. However, one particular parameter, Database, is required for all servers. Its value depends on the server you are using. For example, with InterBase, Database is the name of the .gdb file, with ORACLE it is the entry in TNSNames.ora, while

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Setting Up TSQLConnection Go Up to How To Perform Database Procedures In order [...] with DB2 it is the client-side node name. Other typical parameters include the User_Name (the name to use when logging in), Password (the password for HostName (the machine name or IP address of where the server is located), and TransIsolation (the degree to which transactions you introduce are aware of changes made by other transactions). When you specify a driver name, the Params property is preloaded with all the parameters you need for that driver type, initialized to default values. You can also add other connection parameters to the Params string list, according to your application's needs. For example, to provide Multiple Active Result Set (MARS) support to a SQL connection using the MSSQL driver, you must add a key called Mars_Connection and set its value to True. Another useful parameter for a SQLite database connection is FailIfMissing is set to True, the database connection will fail if the database does not exist. Otherwise, if FailIfMissing is False, the database is created, if it does not exist. The ColumnMetaDataSupported connection property for a SQLite database indicates whether the sqlite3 library was compiled with the SQLITE_ENABLE_COLUMN_METADATA C-preprocessor symbol defined. By default, this property is True for Windows, and False for MacOS. Params is a string list, at design time, you can double-click the Params property in the Object Inspector to edit the parameters using the String List editor. At run time, use the Params.Values property to assign values to individual parameters. Naming a connection description Although you can always specify a connection using only the DatabaseName and Params properties, it can be more convenient to name a specific combination and then just identify the connection by name. You can name dbExpress database and parameter combinations, which are then saved in a file called dbxconnections.ini. The name of each combination is called a connection name. Once you have defined the connection name, you can identify a database connection by simply setting the ConnectionName property to a valid connection name. Setting ConnectionName automatically sets the DriverName and Params properties. Once ConnectionName is set, you can edit the Params property to create temporary differences from the saved set of parameter values, but changing the DriverName

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Setting Up TSQLConnection Go Up to How To Perform Database Procedures In order [...] property clears both Params and ConnectionName. One advantage of using connection names arises when you develop your application using one database (for example, Local InterBase), but deploy it for use with another (such as ORACLE). In that case, DriverName and Params will likely differ on the system where you deploy your application from the values you use during development. You can switch between the two connection descriptions easily by using two versions of the dbxconnections.ini file. At design time, your application loads the DriverName and Params from the design-time version of dbxconnections.ini. Then, when you deploy your application, it loads these values from a separate version of dbxconnections.ini that uses the "real" database. However, for this to work, you must instruct your connection component to reload the DriverName and Params properties at run time. There are two ways to do this: - Set the LoadParamsOnConnect property to True. This causes TSQLConnection to automatically set DriverName and Params to the values associated with ConnectionName in dbxconnections.ini when the connection is opened. - Call the LoadParamsFromIniFile method. This method sets DriverName and Params to the values associated with ConnectionName in dbxconnections.ini (or in another file that you specify). You might choose to use this method if you want to then override certain parameter values before opening the connection. Using the Connection Editor The relationships between connection names and their associated driver and connection parameters is stored in the dbxconnections.ini file. You can create or modify these associations using the Connection Editor. To display the Connection Editor, double-click the TSQLConnection component. The Connection Editor appears, with a drop-down list containing all available drivers, a list of connection names for the currently selected driver, and a table listing the connection parameters for the currently selected connection name. You can use this dialog to indicate the connection to use by selecting a driver and connection name. Once you have chosen the configuration you want, click the Test Connection button to check that you have chosen a valid configuration. In addition, you can use this dialog to edit the named connections in dbxconnections.ini: - Edit the parameter values in the parameter table to change the currently selected named connection. When you exit the

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Babies speak a language that not everyone understands. But, if you study the rhythm of those little kicking feet and listen to the melody of their strange gurgling noises you’ll soon realise that, despite their lack of vocab, these miniature people have quite a lot to say. Research tells us that babies learn best from the important people around them. When we respond, babies are rewarded by being answered with more conversation and attention from you. Here are two ways you can help babies turn those noises, facial expressions and gestures into words. - Seeing eye to eye Being a very small person in a very big world can be overwhelming at times. There are just so many blobs of colour and movement to look at. Make sure you move in a bit closer and make it easier for them to focus on your face. They love hearing your voice, smelling your smell and seeing your smile. Once you’ve got their attention you’re going to see their eyes light up. You can see those moments of wonder and recognition getting bigger and bigger as they get older. Remember to keep your pace slow for these chats and repeat sounds and words often. - Let the conversations begin! Have you ever heard of parentese? Parentese is that slower, higher-pitched, overly exaggerated way of speaking to babies that you see most adults using. We open our eyes wider, put on big smiles, and over-enunciate the words we’re saying. It’s our in-built way of talking to young babies and they tune in to this kind of talking at an early age. Babies are sensitive to loudness, rhythm and a tuneful voice so it is this type of talk that’s most likely to get your baby’s attention. Even with tiny babies, the more you talk the more they concentrate. Sometimes they’ll lock their gaze on your mouth and watch as the words come out. Pretty soon they’ll be babbling and gurgling back. They’ve got lots to tell you!

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Build on your child’s literacy skills with our tips to prompt them to write their own stories creative writing is an important skill, and a rewarding activity. Kids creative writing prompts from one of the very few 2nd generation homeschooling families with fun ideas and activities. Exciting ideas to inspire creative writing activities for kids from one of the very few 2nd generation homeschooling families. Find and save ideas about creative writing for kids on pinterest | see more ideas about writing prompts for kids, description writing and sentence starters for stories. Find details about every creative writing the time is now offers weekly writing prompts in thereafter becoming an iconic children’s bath toy and. A large list of creative writing prompts, ideas, lists, and creative writing resources for list of creative writing prompts and for children your. Tips and printable animals worksheeets designed to encourage children in their creative writing. When faced with a blank paper, many kids have a blank mind to match fun writing prompts for children may be all they need to inspire creative writing. How to improve your child's creative writing skills the ability to write well is vitally important to your child's success in life writing well can help your child succeed academically and. A number of ideas which can be used as a stimulus for creative writing dreams chapter to give the children some ideas to get some creative ideas. Be fun for any child find other creative writing helps here are ideas that will kick-start writing with kids there's a new holiday to help kids stay creative. The thing is that i'm working with hard-of-hearing children and i must in creative writing to think creative ways for generating wonderful ideas. Story starters for kids | see more ideas about handwriting ideas, writing prompts and writing ideas. Do you want to inspire your students to write great narratives, essays, and reports check out these grade-specific writing topics organized by mode (explanatory, creative, and so on) or. Help your students develop their imaginations with these story starters for kids, blank creative writing templates and creative writing prompts. Here are 365 creative writing prompts to help what was a favorite hiding spot for you as a child i will send your blog along to my many creative writing. 7 ways to get kids writing (and cool writing prompts for kids writing (and cool writing prompts for kids) cool daily writing prompts

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The question of law in blockchain-based systems is important and sometimes controversial. Many participants in the virtual currency and blockchain marketplace, from individuals to large banks, agree that top-down regulation would be a crippling mistake. Individuals, decentralized autonomous organizations and large corporations all want to use blockchain technology in ways that help sustain themselves financially, which means reliability in the relationships made in virtual space. The guiding principles of soft legal code and freedom of contract provide reference tools to help shape these relationships. Issue: How can entities create reliable, enforceable deals while minimally infringing contracting parties’ liberty? Rule: When faced with doing business in new or lawless territory, modern commerce and governments turn to soft legal code and relationship by contract to provide a minimally restrictive, reliable framework. Analysis: The blockchain is analogous to new territory for doing business that has no existing law. The law has encountered such situations in recent history. The Restatements. Common law develops at the trial level, through the recording of individual cases built into an ever-growing body of permanent jurisprudence. Common law works like a blockchain, an immutable, flexible authority machine. Over time, the rules of common law transactions grew so complex that it became important to write them down in order to use them. The Restatements of Law, especially the comments to it, try to give a consensus of the current state of common law and act as guiding principles. They are a secondary source of law, persuasive but not mandatory authority for judges and lawyers who might face a novel situation in their own jurisdictions. The Restatements did not remain without primary authority function. Restatements gave territories that needed law a place to start. In the twentieth century, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Northern Mariana Islands territories had no legal system. They both needed a nonrestrictive framework from which to start, a flexible common law system that allowed commerce to flow rather than a regulatory civil code. The islands’ answer was to adopt the Restatements as common law and evolve it, case-by-case, to suit the individual territory’s needs. The UCC. The United States faced expansion of commerce issues in the mid-twentieth century. The varying state of contract law across the country made commerce cumbersome and limited the ability of large companies to plan and utilize resources across jurisdict

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The question of law in blockchain-based systems is important and sometimes controversial. Many participants in the [...] ions. At the same time, contract law was growing more complex by the day and the human lawyer’s job of anticipating and planning contingencies became difficult. The Uniform Commercial Code was the solution: a code that provided for predictability in transacting business. The UCC itself is not law and does not operate at the federal level. It is a model that states copied and enacted in their own legislatures, tweaking the code where necessary. It gave judges and lawyers a reasonable, predictable decision-making rubric to apply to complex business processes. The UCC was an improvement over the Restatements of Contracts because the UCC added functionality. The UCC and contract law emphasize that contracting parties are free to make any agreement they want, but complying with the UCC makes agreements more functional. The UCC acts as a gap-filler and a best practices guide. For example, if a creditor goes through the steps outlined in UCC Article 9 (Secured Transactions) when repossessing and reselling collateral, the creditor is entitled to a judicial presumption of a commercially reasonable sale. The UCC continues to function and change to support U.S. business needs in commercial contracts. UNIDROIT and UNCITRAL. As global commerce grew in volume, complexity and diversity, businesses and governments struggled with issues not unlike those faced by blockchain commerce today. One organization that developed out of the early League of Nations was International Institute for the Unification of Private Law (UNIDROIT). Authority is a complicated issue in international commerce, and when making contracts, parties wanted to avoid the “home field” advantage of having one jurisdiction’s law control a contract. International business law is ideally voluntary, private law created by contract. It is important for the parties to set their relationships up carefully, in a way that models known best practices and fairness, especially if the contract fails. The UNIDROIT idea was soft legal code, an evolution of secondary sources like the Restatements and functional model code like the UCC into a more flexible, less intrusive tool that provided an alternative to territorial legal systems. “The UNIDROIT Principles are a useful alternative to the choice of both the domestic law of one of the parties and the law of

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How Floatation Can Help Your Heart It’s no exaggeration: maintaining heart health is one of the most important factors affecting wellness and longevity. Heart disease is the number one cause of death in the United States, with some pretty scary statistics: 1 out of every 4 deaths is attributed to heart disease. Heart disease affects people from all different backgrounds and across all income levels. It’s an unfortunate common denominator in this country. It’s common knowledge that healthy eating and exercise can help keep your heart in good shape. Sadly, the relationship between stress and heart disease, such as blood pressure, heart rate, and weight distribution, is less well known. Along with diet and activity, floatation therapy can help protect your heart from disease. Stress Is Bad for the Heart Stress is a major contributing factor to heart disease. Stress itself creates problems in the body, such as increased blood pressure and an increased likelihood for blood clots. Both of these can increase one’s chances for developing heart diseases. Consistently high levels of stress hormones such as cortisol also wreak havoc on the body. Elevated levels of stress hormones raise the heart rate. Cortisol also causes higher concentrations of fat in the abdominal region. Abdominal fat puts the most stress on the heart and increases a person’s risk of heart disease. The way we cope with stress is a secondary problem. Many people turn to unhealthy and heart-damaging behaviors to manage anxiety, such as smoking, illicit drugs, alcohol abuse, and binge eating. Reducing Stress Naturally Floatation therapy helps lower stress and promotes better heart health. Floating naturally lower blood pressure, heart rate, and levels of the stress hormone cortisol. Furthermore, floatation therapy has no negative side effects. By reducing stress through floating rather than heart-damaging behaviors like drinking alcohol and smoking, floaters get the benefits of stress relief naturally without any of the drawbacks of unhealthy or unsafe methods. Magnesium and Insulin Floatation therapy uses water that contains Epsom salts rich in magnesium. As a floater relaxes, he or she is absorbing this magnesium through the skin. Magnesium helps the body process insulin, which lowers a person’s risk of developing type 2 Diabetes.

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Researching the origin of Valentine's Day, I found that the holiday did not begin as a loving tribute to commemorate the anniversary of St. Valentine's death or burial--which probably occurred around A.D. 270. Like Halloween, Valentine's Day can be traced to pagan beginnings. In this case, the Roman holiday was known as Lupercalia. In truth, the Christian church may have decided to place St. Valentine's feast day in the middle of February in an effort to "Christianize" Lupercalia. Lupercalia is believed to have started at the time of the founding of Rome (traditionally 753 B.C.) or even before. Lupercalian festivities continued until Pope Gelasius I outlawed them in 494CE. Then, the Church instituted the Purification of the Blessed Virgin, and the feast day of St Valentine was added to the calendar two years later. The Romans celebrated Lupercalia on the ides of February, or February 15. The event was a festival dedicated to Faunus, the Roman god of fertility and forests, as well as to the Roman founders, the twin boys Romulus and Remus. History of the Roman Founders According to legend, the grandfather and great-uncle of the twins, Romulus and Remus were Numitor and Amulius, who between them divided the wealth and kingdom of Alba Longa (a city founded by Aeneas' son Ascanius), but then Amulius seized Numitor's share and became sole ruler. To prevent retaliation by the offspring of his brother, Amulius made his niece, Rhea Silvia a vestal virgin. Vestal virgins of the ancient convent could be buried alive if they violated their chastity vows, so Amulius assumed that Rhea Silvia would remain childless. But, when it was discovered that the virgin had been impregnated by the god Mars, Amulius's plans went awry. Rhea Silvia's life was spared because of the special pleading of Amulius' daughter Antho, but Amulius still kept her imprisoned. Of course, Amulius wished to have Romulus and Remus killed, so

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Researching the origin of Valentine's Day, I found that the holiday did not begin as a [...] he ordered that the infant twins be drowned in the river Tiber. But, through a miraculous series of natural interventions, the boys survived. The infant orphans washed ashore by a wild fig tree where they were found by Lupa, a she-wolf, who suckled them and raised them with her mate. Finally, the shepherd Faustulus and his wife Acca Larentia found the twins living in their feral state, took them in, and raised them as their own children. Upon reaching adulthood Romulus and Remus discovered their true identities, and set out to avenge themselves on their wicked great-uncle. Having killed him, they decided to build a city in the place where they had been born. Each brother decided to rule one part of the city. They each chose a hill from which to rule the new Eternal City of Rome. This explains the name of the festival, Lupercalia, or the "Wolf Festival." Lupercalia was held near what became known as the cave of Lupercal on the Palatine Hill -- the central hill where the she-wolf kept Romulus and Remus. The rites of the festival were directed by the Luperci, the "brothers of the wolf (lupus)", a corporation of sacerdotes (priests) of Faunus, dressed only in a goatskin, whose institution is attributed to Romulus and Remus. To begin the festival, the Luperci would gather at a sacred cave where the infants Romulus and Remus were believed to have been cared for by the she-wolf. The Vestal Virgins, who cultivated the sacred fire, brought sacred mola salsa (salt wafer) made from the first ears of last year's grain harvest to the occasion. These wafers were sprinkled over the head of the animal sacrifices: two male goats, for fertility; and a dog, for purification. The priests then sacrificed these animals. Next, two young patrician Luperci were led to the altar to be anointed on their foreheads with the sacrificial blood of the animals, which was wiped off the bloody knife with

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Researching the origin of Valentine's Day, I found that the holiday did not begin as a [...] wool soaked in milk. This ceremony has been interpreted as an act of death and rebirth ritual in which the "signature" with the bloody knife is the death of the previous condition of "secular" while cleaning with milk (infant nutrition) represents rebirth in the new condition of priesthood. After this, the two new "priests of the wolf" were expected to smile and laugh. (Why laugh? Don't ask me. I guess this is about the only "cool" Roman noble reaction to this kind of messy treatment.) A huge feast followed, after which the Luperci cut the goats' hides into strips, dipped them into the sacrificial blood, and handed the goat hides to the two, now naked, young men. The bloody hides were known as februa. In fact, the month of February is derived from the Latin februare, "to purify" (meant as one of the effects of fever, which has the same linguistic root). The two new initiatives, each leading a group of all the other priests, then ran around the walls of the old Palatine city, the line of which was marked with stones, to inspire fertility and harvest. With the goat thongs in their hands, they gently struck the crop fields and the bystanders who crowded near. Scholars believe that in this second part of the festival, Luperci were themselves both goats and wolves: (1) first, as goats they were infused with the fertility of the animal (considered sexually potent), and (2) second, they become wolves in the last part of the rite. These historians say running around the hill should be read as an invisible fence created by magical incantations of primitive shepherds to protect their flocks from the attack of wolves, the same offer of the goat was to appease the hunger of wolves attacking. Roman girls and women particularly welcomed the touch of the hides, and they would line up on the route to receive lashes from these "whips." This lustration (light flogging) was supposed to ensure fertility, prevent sterility in women and ease the pains of childbirth. Some even bared their flesh

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Researching the origin of Valentine's Day, I found that the holiday did not begin as a [...] to get the best results of the "love lashing." As anyone might expect, this merriment was often accompanied by much rowdiness and horse-play. And, naturally, love was "in the air." Greek historian Plutarch described Lupercalia this way: "Lupercalia, of which many write that it was anciently celebrated by shepherds, and has also some connection with the Arcadian Lycaea. At this time many of the noble youths and of the magistrates run up and down through the city naked, for sport and laughter striking those they meet with shaggy thongs. And many women of rank also purposely get in their way, and like children at school present their hands to be struck, believing that the pregnant will thus be helped in delivery, and the barren to pregnancy."Later in the day, according to some historians, young women in the city would place their names in a big urn. The city's bachelors would each choose a name and become paired for the year with his chosen woman. These matches often ended in marriage. Many historians dispute the Romans employment of this lottery. The popular image of the origins of Valentine's Day found in the rule of Roman emperor Claudius II certainly differs from the origins of the celebration of Lupercalia. So, are we now celebrating a holiday more like Valentine's or Lupercalia Day? Most know the popular story of the holy priest Valentine who lived during the time Claudius ruled Rome. Then, the empire was involved in many bloody, unpopular campaigns, and the emperor found it difficult to recruit the male populace into joining the military, so he believed Roman men were adverse to leaving their loved ones and their families. To get rid of the problem, Claudius banned all marriages and engagements in Rome. But, the priest Valentine, realizing the injustice of the decree, defied Claudius and continued to perform marriages for young lovers in secret. And, even though Valentine eventually lost his head for his illegal activities, he became a popular martyr and a saint as the savior of love and romance. What does Valentine's Day mean to most lovers today? It seems to me the holiday has become very commercial – a rather “

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Researching the origin of Valentine's Day, I found that the holiday did not begin as a [...] offhand” obligation-type occasion filled with token purchases of flowers, Hallmark cards, candy, and other material objects meant to remind couples of their renewed vows of love. And, it seems love today has many detached definitions. From the platonic to the hedonistic, love abounds, yet Valentine's Day seems to sell out more and more to the sexy and the sensual aspects of affection. In this manner, perhaps unintentionally, people in the 21st century seem to celebrate Valentine's Day in the pagan “Lupercalia” style. I'm not saying people today search for successful means to increase their fertility on February 14; however, I am saying the basic connection with food, wine, celebration, nakedness, and sensual/sexual attraction is strong during this time of the year. I think most of those pursuing new love this Valentine's Day consider the celebration more of a “hot” holiday than a “romantic” holiday. Adults are fascinated with the sensual allure of pagan celebrations. So many now celebrate Halloween with particular fervor. Would these same folks enjoy a return to the wild abandon of Lupercalia this Valentine's Day? Would they see modern connections with the spirit and craziness of the Wolf Festival? I wonder in these shockingly explicit mainstream media days of 50 Shades of Grey how many real life Christian Greys and Anatasia Steeles bent on exploring their erotic, secret desires would find Lupercalia exciting and fun. Especially the new, sexually adventurous women seemingly so fixated on this raw and erotic, no-holds-barred descriptions in 50 Shades that were once taboo to “good girls”? After all, Anastasia herself voices what many women think about the E.L. James series of books: “This is wrong, but holy hell is it erotic.” Those goat-skin whips stick in my mind. Speculation abounds as to the reason for the striking with the thongs or lagobola. Perhaps the Luperci struck men and women to sever any deadly influence they were under. Although playfully striking women is thought to have been a fertility measure, there was also a

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Researching the origin of Valentine's Day, I found that the holiday did not begin as a [...] decided sexual component. If the act was to ensure fertility, it could be that the striking of the women was to represent penetration. Obviously the husbands wouldn't have wanted the Luperci actually copulating with their wives, but symbolic penetration, broken skin, made by a piece of a fertility symbol (goat), could be effective. 50 Shades of Grey, the wildly successful best seller, features female protagonist Anastasia Steele, a college-age virgin who has never been kissed (Never kissed? Oh, did I tell you the book is fiction?), who meets Christian Grey, the 27-year-old billionaire CEO of Grey’s Enterprises Holdings.Upon further acquaintance with Grey, and later on, in a developing relationship with him, Anastasia finds out that there is a darker side to "control freak" Christian, quoted as being "fifty shades of fucked up." Despite this, she falls in love with Christian and finds herself in a complicated yet passionate submissive relationship with him. (And, believe me, she "submits" it all in the name of love.) I was thinking. Could Christian be defined as a modern-day Faunus, the Roman god? Faunus is often associated with the Greek Satyr, a mythical creature with a goat-tail, goat-like ears, and sometimes a goat-like phallus. A Satyr is known to sing a melody straight from the human soul that feeds higher feelings. As Dionysiac creatures, they are lovers of wine and women, and they are ready for every physical pleasure. They roam to the music of pipes, cymbals, castanets, and bagpipes, and they love to dance with the nymphs, young maidens they often pursue. Certainly, one may describe Christian's looks with the cliché of a “Roman God.” In the book, he is unbelievably handsome with his “tousled hair” and “expensive body wash.” Yet, he is also unbelievably kinky. (Yes, you must consider the sarcasm of a “kinky” guy named Christian.) Christian lost his virginity

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Researching the origin of Valentine's Day, I found that the holiday did not begin as a [...] to a dominatrix when he was fifteen, and, after five years as her submissive, he became a dom himself. (I kind of thought he would be more likely to be super-submissive after five years, but something evidently caused this role reversal.) He used his vast wealth to turn a room in his penthouse apartment into a virtual dungeon, nicknamed the “Red Room of Pain.” And he wants to share his love of BDSM (and fine wine, classical music, and Bruce Springsteen) with Anastasia. Does Anatasia (By the way, the name is Greek for “resurrection.), through the guile and control of Christian, become a willing nymphomaniac, a wildly hypersexual being? While Christian and his virgin Ana start out with “vanilla” sex acts, they gradually add spanking, bondage, riding crops, and other sexual objects into their repertoire. Of the use of the riding crop while being in bondage, Anatasia says... “At the touch of leather, I quiver and gasp. He walks around me again, trailing the crop around the middle of my body. On his second circuit, he suddenly flicks the crop, and it hits me underneath my behind … against my sex … The shock runs through me, and it’s the sweetest, strangest, hedonistic feeling … My body convulses at the sweet, stinging bite. My nipples harden and elongate from the assault, and I moan loudly, pulling on my leather cuffs.” Is this love or confusion or what? Ana believes all this “Dominant and Submissive” stuff really confuses what she calls her Inner Goddess -- the adventurous, sex-crazed part of her psyche that eggs her on to go farther with Christian. Here are some of the nympho-maniacal deity’s best moments from the book: * “You beguile me, Christian. Completely overwhelm me. I feel like Icarus flying too close to the sun.” * “My inner goddess is doing the merengue with some salsa moves.” * My inner goddess sits in the lotus position looking ser

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Researching the origin of Valentine's Day, I found that the holiday did not begin as a [...] ene except for the sly, self-congratulatory smile on her face.” * “My inner goddess jumps up and down with cheer-leading pom-poms shouting yes at me.” * “My inner goddess looks like someone snatched her ice cream.” On the opposite side of Ana’s psyche is her prudish, super-judgmental subconscious. Here are a couple of her most judgmental moments in the book: * “My subconscious purses her lips and mouths the word ‘ho.’ I ignore her.” * “Sitting beside me, he gently pulls my sweatpants down again. Up and down like whores’ drawers, my subconscious remarks bitterly. In my head, I tell her where to go.” In conclusion, maybe I see the Lupercalia connection with 50 Shades entirely wrong. No matter what time in history, it seems dealing with love and sex in all their mysterious forms provokes new means of stimulation to achieve varied forms of satisfaction. We know the ancient Romans were no prudes when it came to sex. Fertility rites were intertwined with pleasures of all sorts, yet these people did have sexual norms and strictures on sexual transgressions. As much as we might like to think that love and sex today have gone to Hades in a Louie Vuitton handbag, maybe “kinky” is in the eye of the device holder. We, too, maintain some definite cultural rules. So, enjoy “love” with your partner this Valentine's Day, no matter how you choose to celebrate the emotion. Maybe a mixture of soft romance and red-hot passion would serve you well. And, if I see some of you running naked down the street swinging whips of goat skin, I'll understand your howling exultation. “Look, dear, there goes another one of those wild Luperci dudes mending invisible fences! Look at that long februa he's swinging.” “Look, dear, there goes another one of those wild Luperci dudes mending invisible fences! Look at that long februa he's swinging.” Be sure to read this great article "Whip My Roman Sex

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What is unconscious bias? Our unconscious mind is a powerful and super fast processor of information. The subconscious mind can process something like 500,000 bits of info per second, vastly more than the conscious mind, and it does so without us realising it. For example, when you meet someone for the first time, within a 30th of a second, and without having to consciously think about it, your brain will tell you whether you are speaking with a male or female, as well as their likely race and age. The brain will make further associations by the way they are dressed, their haircut and accent, etc. From the moment we are born we build models and pictures of the world. We categorise everything around us to a model we already hold. These patterns are influenced by our upbringing, education and social environment. So where does gender play its part? Gender generalisations form at a very young age and help us explain our complex world. These generalisations do not reflect personal values or life experience, but they are very powerful. You only need to observe children playing or have a conversation with them to understand how their young minds are already categorising information and forming biases. So what is being done about Gender Equality? In 2013 the Gender Equality Index was launched by the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE). The Index monitors progress of gender equality across EU member states. It measures gender gaps and levels of achievement across the member states relating to work, money, knowledge, time, power, health, and violence against women. More information and a copy of the Report can be accessed here. How can we help? Our aim is to raise awareness of unconscious gender bias. We do this by working with women and men at the individual, team and organisation levels. If you’re interested in finding out more about the work we do in this area, please contact us. Why not keep in touch … We’d love to let you know what we’re up to in this area and more. Please subscribe to our newsletter. Our unconscious brains also routinely delete, distort and generalise information to deliver to our conscious brains something manageable, which means our unconscious mind has limitations. This video from McKinsey explains how our mind works perfectly … As part of its 17 goals to Transform the

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Posted by Brigham and Women's Hospital July 3, 2012 The Fourth of July is a time for celebration in the United States (US), often synonymous with the tradition of fireworks displays. However, this celebratory day has become a dangerous one, with fireworks causing thousands of injuries in the US around this time each year. In 2010, about 1,900 people were seen at an emergency room for firework-related injuries in the 30 days surrounding Independence Day. At Brigham and Women’s Hospital, physicians note having seen multiple burns, amputations, and eye injuries over the years – ranging from minor burns to devastating disfiguring injuries, and even death. “The combination of crowds of people, alcohol consumption, and often dark settings provide a hazardous mix, making fireworks use even more dangerous,” explains Dr. Robert Riviello, associate surgeon in the Division of Trauma, Burns and Surgical Critical Care at BWH. The basic message, says Dr. Riviello, is to enjoy the public display of fireworks, leaving the danger to professionals who are trained and knowledgeable. All fireworks should be avoided. “Even sparklers, which are often given to children, are extremely dangerous,” said Dr. Riviello, noting that they can reach temperatures of 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. “It’s like giving your child a torch,” he explains. If you do sustain a burn from a fireworks display, don’t underestimate the potential severity of the condition. There are three categories of burns: - First degree burn: The mildest burn, it causes pain, reddening of the skin, and minor swelling. - Second degree burn: Characterized by heightened pain, redness, swelling, and blistering of the skin. - Third degree burn: The area feels numb and appears white, brown, and leathery or charred. First degree burns should be treated by running cool water over the burn and applying aloe or burn cream. For second and third degree burns, seek medical attention immediately. In addition to being dangerous, Dr. Riviello reminds people that fireworks are also illegal in many states, including Massachusetts. Turn to your local news providers to find out where and when fireworks displays for the public

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Transcript of etiquette in pride and prejudice specifically the middle class because they had the money to receive and education the importance of. Austen’s pride and prejudice her novels center on the importance of marriage as one of life’s most important choices and life the requirement of money. Darcy’s pride and self-importance is later explained to pride and prejudice depicts the typical value of regency marriages to be pride & prejudice essay. Pride and prejudice by nancy posey and marriage have remained favorites austen completed the first draft of pride and prejudice, which. Outside of the genteel world we see in pride and prejudice money and status that highlight coupled with women’s increased dependence on marriage for. Join now log in home literature essays pride and prejudice the importance of marriage in jane austen austen, the importance of marriage austen's pride. Jane austen’s persuasion essay in today’s world the more education you had marriage in jane austen’s pride and prejudice. Social class in pride and prejudice english literature essay in pride and prejudice because it is easily noticed today the importance of money and. Women in pride and prejudice research papers examine the role of the women in the novel custom research papers on the 19th century women of austen's era. Sample a+ essay how to cite this pride and prejudice is, first and foremost discuss the importance of dialogue to character development in the novel. Free essay: pride and prejudice: importance of a successful marriage in american society today, marriage is based mainly off of love and affection this idea. Pride and prejudice essays and research papers | examplesessaytodaybiz pride and prejudice marriage essay importance of money in pride and prejudice. Pride and prejudice and the into the economics of family life and marriage in the early importance of how remember and think through recent events. Struggling with themes such as society and class in jane austen’s pride and prejudice is so concerned about money take great pride in their. The role of marriage in jane austen's 'pride and prejudice' - katrin term paper or essay i want to show the importance of marriage in women’s eyes in the. Standards and where class and social standing was of immense importance relating to money and class handled in pride

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The break-up of the Soviet Union was one of the most unusual events in history. Never before had an empire this powerful and vast given up its power and allowed the dissolution of its internal core (the Soviet Union) and its tributary states (Eastern Europe) so quickly and without a fight. The Ottoman empire went into a process of disintegration that lasted several centuries and was punctuated by numerous wars, both with western powers and Russia, and numerous struggles for national independence (Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria). The Habsburg empire dissolved after four years of the hitherto largest conflict in history. The same is true of the Russian empire and the Hohenzollerns’. But the Soviet Empire gave way almost entirely peacefully and without a fight. How did that happen? A slender volume by Wisła Suraska (How the SovietUnion disappeared, Duke University Press, 1998) tries to answer the question. It is important to explain what the book is not. It is not a book about Communism and economics. It does not try to answer (at least, not directly) the question about successes and failures of Communism nor does it deal with economics at all. It is remarkable that the book does not contain a single number. It is a book written by a political scientist and it focuses on internal political determinants of the Soviet collapse. It is a very well and clearly written volume. The key conclusion of Suraska, enounced in italics in the last chapter, is that the break up is due to “the general failure of communist regimes--their inability to build a modern state” (p. 134). It is “the state weakness, rather than its omnipotence [that] stalled communist project of modernization and, most notably, Gorbachev’s perestroika” (p. 134). Lest somebody believe that Suraska is a partisan of state power, let me explain that what she means is that the arbitrary nature of Communist state, overseen by the Communist party, prevented it from ever developing a responsible and impersonal machinery of Weberian bureaucracy. Such a machinery that follows well-known and rational rules cannot be established if the power is arbitrary. And without such a machinery, the project of modernization is doomed. But this still does not explain why the country (the USSR) broke up

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The break-up of the Soviet Union was one of the most unusual events in history. Never before [...] . It broke up, she argues, because of a Brezhnevite equilibrium that—lacking a functioning centrally-controlled state apparatus and forsaking the use of terror—consisted in the creation of territorially-based fiefdoms. The power at the center depended on having peripheral supporters and these peripheral supporters gradually took over most of the local (in the USSR case, republican) functions. They could be dislodged only by the application of mass terror as when, under Stalin, the center actively fought the creation of local centers of power, either by “purging” the leaders or by shifting them constantly between the regions in order to prevent accumulation of power. But Brezhnevite equilibrium consisted precisely in “decentralizing” power to local “barons” who would then support the faction in the center that gave them most power. When Gorbachev tried to recentralize decision-making in order to promote his reforms, he was obstructed at all levels and eventually figured out that without the republican support he could accomplish nothing. This is why, as Suraska writes, at the last Party congress in 1991, he outbid his competitors (Yegor Ligachev) by formally bringing all regional party bosses into the Politburo and thus effectively confederalizing the Party and the country. But even that proved too little too late as the largest unit, Russia under Yeltsin, became, together with the Baltic republics, the most secessionist. Suraska rightly adds to this vertical de-concentration of power the ever-present wariness and competition between the Party, the secret services (KGB) and the Army. The triangular relationship where two actors try to weaken and control the third contributed to the collapse. She sees the beginning of the end of the Army’s role in Politburo’s decision, strongly promoted by Andropov (then the head of KGB), not to intervene in Poland in 1980-81. Andropov’s positon (according to the transcripts of the Politburo meetings) that “even if Poland falls under the control of “Solidarity” …[non-intervention] will be

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The break-up of the Soviet Union was one of the most unusual events in history. Never before [...] ” (p. 70) was grounded in the belief that every Soviet foreign intervention (Hungary 1956, Czechoslovakia 1968) reinforced the power of the Army and thus, if KGB were ever come on top, Army must not be in the driver’s seat. The ultimate weakness of the Party could be, as Suraska writes, seen in the final denouements in the Soviet Union and Poland: in one case, the top party post went to a head of the secret police, in the other case, to the head of the Army. In perhaps the most original insight, Suraska deals with the ideology of Gorbachev and the first entirely Soviet-raised and bred generation that came to power in the mid-1980s. They were influenced by post-Marxist thinking where democracy or its absence were simple external (or non-essential) features: democracy was a sham since the “real power” resides elsewhere. “Armed” with this belief and the 1970 ideas of convergence of the two systems plus (in my opinion) millenarian Marxist view that Communism represents the future of mankind, they began to see no significant contradictions between the two systems and trusted that even the introduction of democracy would not affect their positions. Thus, in an ironic twist, Suraska, who is thoroughly critical of both Marxist and post-Marxist theories, credits the latter (p. 147) for bringing to an end the Marxist-based regimes. In the penultimate chapter Suraska quickly and very critically reviews different theories that purported to explain the Communist state: modernization theory, totalitarianism, bureaucratic theory, are all found wanting. Suraska’s conclusion, stated in the beginning of this text, is then expounded in the last chapter revealingly entitled “Despotism and the modern state”. There, in a final note worth pointing out, Suraska discusses Communist rejection of the state and its rules-bound procedures (which make Communists ideological brethrens of anarchists) and compellingly argues for the complementarity of “council (“soviet”) democracy and central planning. Both eviscerate the state

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Read over your rubrics (self-evaluation) for this task before you complete the activities. Click on the arrow and use the BACK button on your browser to return to this page and Before you begin this task, be sure to practice the skills you learned in Part I. Click on the arrow to go over Part I. this task, you'll use more tools. You'll add a slide to your presentation and delete that slide. You'll also enter graphics to slides. the presentation you saved in Part I as "yourinitialspp1.ppt." [Remember that you can go back and forth between this page and your presentation. Just press the ALT key and click the TAB key on your Let's add an image, or graphic, to you presentation title page. Right-click on the graphic below. list of options will come up. Select "SAVE PICTURE AS." When the SAVE box comes up, save the image to your desktop or into your where you saved it so that you can copy it into your presentation. The name of the image should be "title.gif" because it will be the image in your title page. to your PP presentation's title page. On your Menu Bar, Select INSERT -> PICTURE -> From File the image appears, hold down the left mouse button on the picture and drag it between the Title and Subtitle of the slide. (You can drag images anywhere on the When you click on the picture, you'll notice that small dots appear on the sides. Those are called "HANDLES." You can make the picture bigger or smaller or you can change its proportions. If you drag the left and right handles your picture will be wider or narrower. Top and bottom handles make it taller or shorter. If you want to keep the proportions of the picture, use the handles on each corner. Drag the mouse toward the middle. with different sizes for your image. You can always undo your actions by clicking on the UNDO icon or pressing CONTROL Z on your keyboard. SAVE your presentation. are a few more icons that you'll see on your main toolbar. Try each one out. As long as you don't save your presentation as you play with the

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Read over your rubrics (self-evaluation) for this task before you complete the activities [...] icons, you can always go back to your original slide (CONTROL+Z or the UNDO button). You can always close the presentation and open it again. It will open to the slides you save the last ||Create a new presentation (Also ||Open an existing presentation ||Save the presentation (Also ||Print the current presentation ||Spell check the presentation ||Copy selected text (Also ||Paste cut or copied text (Also ||Undo the last action (Also ||Add a new slide to the presentation (Also Control+M) ||Change the zoom percentage Microsoft PowerPoint Help ||Access the Office Assistant ||See additional toolbar buttons You should see a DRAWING Toolbar like the one below. It helps you change the colors of shapes and text, add arrows, and more. you don't see the Drawing toolbar when you click an image, open it from VIEW on your menu bar. a new slide and select the BLANK Slide Layout. (You learned that earlier.) on AUTO SHAPES on the toolbar. Notice all of the choices you have! Draw different shapes, add text, and change play with different icons . We'll delete that slide later. example, select a triangle from the shapes in that toolbar and draw it on the slide by dragging the cursor. You can fill the shape with colors (Paint Bucket), color the borders (Paint Brush) and increase the size of the borders (Stacked lines). Choose the 3-dimension icon and give it a shadow. To see each change, the object MUST be selected. If you see a little green circle above the shape, you can drag that around and rotate the shape. Below is an example of a slide with different instead of saving this "play" file, let's delete it from your 1: Look at the icons on the left and bottom part of you screen. The five buttons give you the different view modes you can use while you work. The buttons and related view modes are: Slide Sorter View Slide Sorter View When the slides

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Ottoman Empire / Rulers / Mehmed 2 Fatih (1432-1481) Ottoman sultan 1444-1446, and a second time 1451-1481. His byname means in Turkish "the Conqueror". Sultan Sultan Mehmed 2 Fatih. Mehmed was sultan twice. The first time was a very problematic period, as his court was weakened by the conflict between his grand vizier Candarli Halil and the 2 viziers Zaganos and Sihabeddin. And along the borders, Christian crusaders were attacking from north (near Varna (today's Romania)). It was his father, the abdicated sultan Murad 2 who first defeated the crusaders, and later returned to office in order to bring stability back to the empire. While Mehmed's first period as sultan was a flop, his return was a great one, and he is counted among the greatest of the Ottoman sultans. In addition to conquering Constantinople, he put great emphasis on culture, science and law. He brought some of the greatest European minds to his court, built libraries, colleges, and invited peoples of different races and religions to move to Istanbul (as Constantinople was named) thereby creating the foundations for the greatness for this city in centuries to follow. His success and fame was for a time so strong that he assumed the title Kayser-i Rum (Roman Caesar). 1432 March 30: Born in Edirne as son of sultan Murad 2 and a slave girl. 1444: According to the tradition of the sultan's sons, he is sent to Manisa (near Izmir) for training. His father abdicates, and gives the throne to Mehmed when he is only 12 years old. The task proves to be very difficult for the boy, as there are many tensions inside the empire as well as serious threats along the border. 1446 May: Against the Mehmed's will, Murad returns to power, in order to bring stability to the empire. 1451 February 18: Following his father's death

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Ottoman Empire / Rulers / Mehmed 2 Fatih (1 [...] earlier this month, Mehmed ascends the throne for the second time. His authority in the empire was at this point far from established. The first group he had to take control over, were the Janissaries a group that had been strong enough to play a crucial part in getting him removed from power 5 years earlier. 1452: Mehmed is in the preparation of conquering Constantinople. He manages to sign favourable peace treaties with Venice and Hungary, in order to make them neutral. He starts several important projects to prepare for war, like building the fortress of Bagazkesen in order to control the Strait of Bosphorus, and constructing 31 galleys and building canons and cast guns of a calibre yet unknown in Europe. 1453 April 6: The siege of Constantinople starts, despite the heavy opposition of grand vizier Candarli. May 29: Constantinople gives in, and is sacked by the Ottoman troops. May 30: Mehmed stops the looting of Constantinople, coverts the Hagia Sophia into a mosque, and starts planning for the new city, which would be known as Istanbul. This day he also has his grand vizier Candarli arrested, and later executed. A big effort is put into repopulating Constantinople, encouraging Greek and Genoese traders to return, deporting Muslims and Christians to Istanbul, and promote religious institutions for Jews, Armenians and other Christian groups. 1473 August 11: Strategically, this day Mehmed achievs his most important victory ever (and more important than the victory over Constantinople, which was important principally symbolically). He defeats the Turkmen leader Uzun Hasan at Bashkent. Mehmed has now full control over Anatolia. 1481 May 3: Dies in Hunkarçayiri near Maltepe, near Istanbul.

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Why Having Pets Can Help Your Health Owning pets — especially the ones who crave our affection — is one of the best ways to find companionship and beat the blues that can get you down when you’re spending too much time on your own. Studies have shown that having a furry friend can also drastically improve your health and overall wellbeing. Now, I’m not suggesting that people with debilitating allergies to dogs should run out and buy one because the positives of owning a dog outweigh the negatives of being allergic to them, and I’m not saying that you should buy a pet purely for the health benefits, either. That being said, having a pet that you care about (and who cares about you), or choosing to adopt a pet because you want companionship can have remarkable effects on your health, and here are just a few. Dogs keep you moving. You can’t exactly put your pet fish on a leash and go for a stroll, but if you have a dog that you can walk — or even a cat you can chase around the house — you’ll be getting more exercise than your pet-less counterparts without even realizing it. A study by the National Institute of Health and Welfare found that people who owned dogs were vastly more likely than others to get in 30 minutes of exercise five times a week, which is the recommended amount of exercise a person should get. They can lower your stress levels & help your heart. On top of the benefits your heart will receive from playing with your pet regularly, the very act of owning a dog can help lower your stress levels and reduce your risk for heart disease. Dogs have a calming effect on humans, and the simple act of petting a dog can lower your blood pressure. Also, by reducing your stress levels, pets can decrease the amount strain on your heart. Having a pet can boost your immune system. Okay, this benefit is really only for babies, but it’s an important one. If you’re looking to have children, also having a dog in the house can prove beneficial for the baby’s immune system, particularly reducing issues with asthma and allergies. During their first year of life, babies with dogs (or cats) in the house have lower rates of colds and ear infections as compared to babies without them, and the best practice is to introduce the dog and baby before the baby

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