The Tumultuous Sixties: 1968 Around The Globe
In 1964, the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley achieved national visibility with a series of student protests responding to the administration’s decision to ban information tables regarding the Civil Rights Movement. They mark the first time that the civil disobedience tactics of the Civil Rights Movement were brought to a college campus and served as a foundation for future protests such as those against the Vietnam War.
While student protests gained momentum in the U.S., protest movements were also on the rise throughout Western Europe. They reached their culmination in the year 1968, a watershed year that brought about radical political and social changes throughout the world. The beginning of these movements can be traced back to the post-Second World War-era of the 1950s. The significance of the protest movements of this period varied according to the historical context of each country. In West Germany, for instance, the student uprising was the first time that a younger generation confronted its elders and questioned their role during the 12 years of Nazi dictatorship; in Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America protests focused on decolonization.
In this public lecture, Visiting Scholar at UC Berkeley, Christina Gerhardt, will contextualize the tumultuous sixties in post-war society and politics, its importance for the US and Western European countries as well as its alignment with international liberation and solidarity movements. She will also address the question of how and why the protest movements of the sixties are still relevant today.
About the speaker:
Christina Gerhardt is Visiting Scholar at the University of California at Berkeley and Associate Professor of Film and German Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
She is author of Screening the Red Army Faction: Historical and Cultural Memory (Bloomsbury, 2018), about which Kristin Ross wrote: “This informative and well-documented study of the changing representations of the Red Army Faction is a welcome model for how to go about de-provincializing our understanding of the post-war German experience.”
Related to the topic of 1968, she has co-edited the following publications: 1968 and Global Cinema (Wayne State UP, 2018); Celluloid Revolt: German Screen Cultures and the Long 1968 (Camden House, 2019); and 1968 and West German Cinema, a special issue of The Sixties 10 (2017).
She has held fellowships from the Fulbright Commission, the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She has held visiting appointments at Harvard University, the Free University in Berlin and at Columbia University and at the University of California at Berkeley, where she taught previously.
Her writing has been published in the journals Cineaste, Film Criticism, Film Quarterly, German Studies Review, Humanities, Mosaic, New German Critique, Quarterly Review of Film and Video and The Sixties.
Light refreshments will be served.


Identified through genetic studies in drosophila. • Highly conserved in evolution and are very important in animal development
Wnt • Notch • Hedgehog • NFB
Wnts • Wnt proteins released from or presented on the surface of signaling cells act on target cells by binding to Frizzled (Fz)/LDL-related protein (LDR) complex at the cell surface. • Receptors • Frizzled receptors, like GPCRs, are transmembrane proteins that span 7 times the plasma membrane. • Their ligand-binding site is exposed outside the surface of the cell. • Their effector site extends into the cytosol.
Ligands • Their ligands are Wnt proteins. These get their name from two of the first to be discovered, proteins encoded by • wingless (wg) in Drosophila and its homolog • Int-1 in mice.
Fz receptors transduce signals to intra-cellular proteins including Dsh, GSK-3ß, Axin, APC and ß-catenin • Nuclear ß-catenin interacts with lymphoid enhancer-binding factor 1/T cell-specific transcription factor (LEF/TCF) to affect transcription.
In vertebrates, Wnt proteins are inhibited by direct binding to either secreted frizzled-related protein (SFRP) or Wnt inhibitory factor (WIF). • SFRP is similar in sequence to the cysteine-rich domain (CRD) of Frizzled, one of the Wnt receptors.
GSK-3b dependent phosphorylation, ubiquitination and complex formation with the proteins axin and APC are important to regulate the cytoplasmic stability of beta-catenin protein in the wnt-signal transduction pathway
Interaction with TCF transcription factors and the transactivation domains of beta-catenin are instrumental to activate/derepress wnt-target genes in the nucleus.
Complex formation with cadherins and alpha-catenin at the plasma membrane is essential for the role of beta-catenin in cell adhesion. • In vertebrate development, loss of a single Wnt gene can produce dramatic phenotypes that range from embryonic lethality and CNS abnormalities to kidney and limb defects • These diverse phenotypes indicate that the Wnt pathway has distinct transcriptional outputs. • In many cases, the cell, rather than the signal, determines the nature of the response, and up- or down-regulation of Wnt target genes is cell-type specific.
WNT SIGNALING IN CANCER AND HUMAN DISEASE • In adults, mis-regulation of the Wnt pathway also leads to a variety of abnormalities and degenerative diseases
From crypt physiology to colon cancer • Current evidence indicates that the Wnt cascade is the single most dominant force in controlling cell fate along the crypt-villus axis. • In Tcf4 -/- neonatal mice, the villus epithelial compartment appears unaffected but the crypt progenitor compartment is entirely absent, implying that physiological Wnt signalling is required for maintenance of the crypt progenitor phenotype.
The Wnt pathway in colon cancer • The APC gene was originally discovered to be the culprit in a hereditary cancer syndrome termed familial adenomatous polyposis (FAP). • FAP patients, inheriting one defective APC allele, develop large numbers of colon polyps, or adenomas, early in life. • Individual polyps are clonal outgrowths of epithelial cells in which the second APC allele is inactivated.
Mutational inactivation of APC leads to the inappropriate stabilization of b-catenin, implying that the absence of functional APC transforms epithelial cells through activation of the Wnt cascade. • In some cases of colorectal cancer in which APC is not mutated, the scaffolding protein axin 2 is mutant, or activating (oncogenic) point mutations in b-catenin remove its N-terminal Ser/Thr destruction motif.
Multiple studies have used a candidate gene approach to address the nature of the Tcf4 target gene programme in colorectal cancer.
Non-canonical wnt signaling • Involved in different development processes, but its intracellular mediators are ill-known. • In vertabrates, Wnt-11 & Wnt-5a can activate Wnt/JNK pathway (planar cell polarity?) • Wnt/Ca2+ pathway (described only in Xenopus & Zebrafish) • Additional wnt pathways (described only in drosophila)
In drosophila, non-canonical wnt signaling regulates “cell motility” through focal adhesion kinase (FAK)Planar cell polarity involved in tissue engineering • In vertabrates, non-canonical wnt signaling regulates “gastrulation” through protein kinase C (PKC)Planar cell polarity involved in tissue engineering • Wnt/Ca2+ signaling regulates dorso-ventral axis patterning (Wnt5aCa2+CalcineurinNFATActivation of target genesNegative regulation of canonical wnt signalingVentralization)
A brief history • In 1917, Thomas Hunt Morgan described a strain of Drosophila with notches at the end of their wing blades, which result from haploinsufficiency • Notch gene was cloned in the mid-1980s
Notch is an essential gene encoding a signalling receptor that is required throughout development to regulate the spatial patterning, timing and outcomes of many different cell fate decisions in both vertebrate and invertebrate species. • Notch is a single spanning transmembrane protein,which has a modular architecture.
Ligands: Delta1, 3 and 4; Jag1, 2 • Receptors: Notch1-4
Notch signaling has effects in many different organs • •Notch signalling can maintain stem cells or precursor populations in an undifferentiated state • •Notch signalling influences binary cell-fate decisions via lateral or inductive signalling • •A third property of Notch is its ability to influence differentiation and cell-cycle progression
The best known role of notch signaling is in nerve cell development • Nerve cells arise within an epithelial sheet of precursor cells. • Each future nerve cells signals to its immediate neighbours not to develop in the same way at the same time • Lateral inhibition
Lateral inhibition is a contact-dependent signaling that is mediated by the ligand delta. • Delta displayed on the surface of future neural cell binds to notch on neighbours • If the signal is defective, excess production of neurons at the expense of epidermal cell causes lethality.
Processing and Activation of Notch • S1 cleavage occurs within the secretory pathway so that a processed heterodimeric form is transported to the cell surface (furin protease in the golgi apparatus.
Processing and Activation of Notch • S2 cleavage occurs following ligand binding by Delta or Serrate(Jagged in mammals) through their DSL domains (Delta/Serrate/Lag2), and releases a membrane tethered form of the Notch intracellular domain. • The latter is a constitutive substrate for the S3 cleavage, which releases the soluble intracellular domain of Notch (NIc).
NIc is translocatedto the nucleus where it binds via the RAM domainand ankyrin repeats to a transcription factor, Suppressor of Hairless (Su(H)), or CBF1 in vertebrates. • In the absence of a Notch signal, Su(H)/CBF1 can repress transcription through the recruitment of a histone deacetylase (HDAC)
Binding of NIc displaces HDAC and allows recruitment of histone acetylases and the nuclear protein Mastermind,which together activate transcription
The signal is terminated through ubiquitination of NIc by a complex including Sel-10, followed by proteosome-dependent degradation.
The NICD-RBP-Jk complex up-regulates expression of primary target genes of Notch signaling such as HES in mammals, and E(spl) (for Enhancer of Split) in Drosophila. • The HES/E(spl) family is a basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) type trancriptional repressor and acts as Notch effectors by negatively regulating expression of downstream target genes such as tissue-specific transcription factors. • Consistent with this view, HES1 and HES5, for instance, were shown to be upregulated by NICD and necessary to prevent neuronal differentiation of neural precursor cells from mouse embryos
Modulators of Notch signalling • Fringe: regulate notch • Numb: notch inhibitor • Neuralized (E3 ubiquitin ligases): regulate ligand Delta. • Mib (mindbomb): (E3 ubiquitin ligase): function on Delta
Fringe • Fringe encodes a glycosyltransferase that adds O-fucoseglycans to the Notch EGF repeats. • Fringe proteins might differentially modulate the response of Notch receptors to different DSL (Delta,Serrate and LAG2) ligands. Fringe can enhance Delta binding to the notch receptor. Whether fringe modification of Notch inhibits Serrate/Jagged binding is much less certain. Function autonomously
Numb • Numb domains: • 1. PTB domain; N-terminal phosphotyrosine binding domain • 2. proline-rich C-terminal region. • In vitro studies have shown that Numb binds directly to NICD. The Cterminal half of the PTB domain and the N-terminus of Numb are required to inhibit Notch. Numb also has two motifs associated with endocytic proteins. • mammalian Numb (mNumb) localizes to clathrin coated pits and early endosomes, might target endocytosed NICD for proteosomal destruction. • Numb acts either upstream of S3 cleavage site of Notch or inhibit the endocytosis of membrane-bound activated Notch.
Hedgehog Signaling • Sonic • Desert • Indian Hedgehog
Processing of Hedgehog (Hh) precursorprotein • Adding cholesterol to a glycine residue, • Splitting the molecule into two fragments, • Leaving the N-terminalsignaling fragment with an attached hydrophobiccholesterol moiety. • Addition of a palmitoyl group to the N-terminus


Overcoming Drug Dependency
hat do you want for your birthday?" friends of one middle-class fifteen-year old asked.
"Let's do crack," he said.
Within a week this young teenager was smoking $50 worth of crack a day. Soon he was stealing money from his parents to support his habit. He began skipping school classes, and with friends began breaking into homes to steal cash, jewelry and anything that would sell.
"You are willing to do anything to get it," he said. "We just had to get more."
One couple I read about, who tried sniffing cocaine at a party eight years ago, developed a $250,000-a-year habit and ended up selling $80,000 worth of coke a month to support themselves. They came close to destroying themselves.1
According to Mark Gould, M.D., founder of the toll-free National Hotline for cocaine users and victims, "An incredible twenty-two million Americans—one out of every ten—report that they have used cocaine at least once! Every day some 5,000 teenagers and adults try it for the first time!"2
"Twelve million use it a least once a year; almost six million are current users. Young professionals are mortgaging their futures on it, lying and embezzling to assure one more high. Mothers-to-be are sacrificing their unborn babies for the powder's lean pleasure. In the streets, men kill, maim and rob to get another crack at crack. In five years, cocaine-related deaths and emergency-room visits have tripled."3
Not long ago, heroin was the bondage of inner-city users, marijuana was smoked by rebellious middle-class youth, and cocaine was sniffed at high-society parties. Not any more.
Men kill, maim and rob to
get another crack at crack.
Doctors, airline pilots, lawyers, engineers and other highly skilled and professional people are now being caught in the trap of cocaine. The results are tragic. Babies are being born brain damaged. People are experiencing excruciating death, strokes and heart attacks. "But the most chilling characteristic of the drug is the phenomenon called cocaine psychosis, in which people just go crazy."4
Even more alarming is that cocaine "has been boiled down to hard and mean little pellets of crack, giver of euphoria, taker of lives."5
Crack, which is extremely addictive and extremely dangerous, has been described as a vicious cancer, a dread disease that is affecting all levels of society.
The question is, when drugs are so extremely addictive and dangerous, why do people use them? Not only hard drugs but also other drugs such as analgesics, tranquilizers, cigarettes and alcohol? Experts point to a number of deep-seated causes behind the national craving for drugs.
First. The unparalleled breakdown of family life and the emotional pain this causes are taking a huge toll on our society. People turn to drugs to escape their pain.
Second. Our materialistic society, which measures success largely in terms of wealth and possessions, leaves little time for meeting our deeper emotional and spiritual needs.
Third. Our culture has taught many of us to deny and repress our deeper emotions including the emotion of awe. This is the emotion that appreciates the beauty of nature, life and simple things, and puts sparkle into life. When this emotion is repressed, it leaves us feeling empty and bored with life. We then seek the lost sparkle in substitutes—such as fancy cars, houses, materialistic possessions, or alcohol and drugs.
5. All articles on the ACTS International website are by Richard (Dick) Innes unless otherwise noted.
All pages in this site © Copyright 1990-2021 by ACTS International
P.O. Box 73545, San Clemente, California U.S.A. 92673


Fast, Energetic Predator
The blacktip shark inhabits shallow coastal waters near coral reefs as well as estuaries and offshore surface waters. Their favored habitats are muddy bays and island lagoons. During summer some blacktip sharks migrate to cooler waters. This shark gets its name from the pointed snout and black tips on its fins. Blacktip sharks are very social and mostly found in large groups. They tend to be very shy and timid towards other predators.
The blacktip shark can grow up to 8 feet in length - or as long as two 4 year old kids lying head to toe in a straight line. It can weigh up to 300 lbs which is as much as the weight of three thirteen year old boys taken together. The blacktip shark is an extremely fast, energetic predator. With a sleek body and speedy tail, it sneaks up on its prey with ease. It feeds mainly on fish but supplement its diet with skates, stingrays, squids, and some crustaceans. A small group of blacktip sharks often hunt down schools of fish together. They work together to enclose the fish into a tight ball and then attack the trapped prey. Coastal development and commercial fishing are the main threats faced by blacktip sharks. In spite of this, their population has remained fairly stable.


Parents & Friends of Lesbians & Gays (PFLAG)
1972 with the simple act of a mother publicly supporting
her gay son, PFLAG is the nation's largest family and
people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and
queer (LGBTQ) with families, friends, and allies, PFLAG
is committed to advancing equality through its mission
of support, education, and advocacy.
400 chapters and 200,000 supporters crossing multiple
generations of American families in major urban centers,
small cities, and rural areas in all 50 states, the
District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. This vast
grassroots network is cultivated, resourced, and
serviced by PFLAG National, located in Washington DC,
the National Board of Directors, and 13 volunteer
Gay Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD)
GLAAD is a
US non-governmental media monitoring organization
founded by LGBTQ people in the media. Before March 2013,
the name GLAAD had been an acronym for "Gay & Lesbian
Alliance Against Defamation", but became the primary
name due to its inclusiveness of bisexual and
mission, in part, is to amplify the voice of the LGBTQ
community by empowering real people to share their
stories, holding the media accountable for the words and
images they present, and helping grassroots
organizations communicate effectively.
Formed in New York City in 1985 to protest against what
it saw as the New York Post's defamatory and
sensationalized AIDS coverage, GLAAD put pressure on
media organizations to end what it saw as homophobic
On March 24, 2013, GLAAD announced that it had formally
dropped the "Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation"
from their name and would now be known only as GLAAD to
reflect their work more accurately. The name
change is a commitment to incorporate bisexual and
transgender people in their efforts to support the LGBTQ
community in its entirety.
Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network (GLSEN)
(pronounced "glisten") was founded in 1990 by a small,
but dedicated group of teachers in Massachusetts who
came together to improve an education system that too
frequently allows its lesbian, gay, bisexual,
transgender, queer and questioning (LGBTQ) students to
be bullied, discriminated against, or fall through the
cracks. Over 25 years later, that small group has grown
into the leading national education organization focused
on ensuring safe and affirming schools for LGBTQ
We face a pervasive problem with a set of new
challenges. 8 out of 10 LGBTQ students are still
harassed at school each year because of who they are. We
are working to change that. At GLSEN, we want every
student, in every school, to be valued and treated with
respect, regardless of their sexual orientation, gender
identity or gender expression. We believe that all
students deserve a safe and affirming school environment
where they can learn and grow.
We accomplish our goals by working in hallways across
the country (from Congress and the Department of
Education to schools and district offices in your
community) to improve school climate and champion LGBTQ
issues in K-12 education.
National LGBTQ Task Force
The National LGBTQ Task Force advances full freedom,
justice and equality for LGBTQ people. We’re building a
future where everyone is free to be themselves in every
aspect of their lives. Today, despite all the progress
we’ve made to end discrimination, millions of LGBTQ
people face barriers in every aspect of their lives: in
housing, employment, healthcare, retirement, and basic
human rights. These barriers must go. That’s why the
Task Force is training and mobilizing millions of
activists across our nation to deliver a world where you
can be you.
Founded in 1973, we are the country’s oldest national
LGBTQ advocacy group. 40 years ago, most states
had anti-sodomy laws on the books (and enforced them).
That’s what the Stonewall raid was all about. Besides
having laws against it, being lesbian or gay had a
profound stigma and homosexuality was still considered a
mental illness. It was common for parents to send their
child to a mental institution after finding out the
child was gay.
The Task Force played a critical role in the campaign to
eliminate the sickness classification of homosexuality.
It worked to lift the prohibition on federal civil
service employment for gays and lesbians. It strove in
the 1970s to make the Democratic Party responsive to the
gay community. It took the lead in the 1980s in national
organizing against homophobic violence. As AIDS began to
devastate gay male communities, the Task Force shaped
the first serious efforts in Washington to address the
epidemic. It was a founding member of the Military
Freedom Project, which prepared the ground for the
gays-in-the-military debate of 1993. It has worked with
the administrations of presidents from Carter to
Human Rights Campaign (HRC)
Rights Campaign represents a force of more than 1.5
million members and supporters nationwide. As the
largest national lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and
queer civil rights organization, HRC envisions a world
where LGBTQ people are ensured of their basic equal
rights, and can be open, honest and safe at home, at
work and in the community.
As the largest civil rights organization working to
achieve equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender
and queer Americans, the Human Rights Campaign
represents a force of more than 3 million members and
supporters nationwide — all committed to making HRC's
vision a reality.
HRC envisions a world where lesbian, gay, bisexual,
transgender and queer people are embraced as full
members of society at home, at work and in every
Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)
is dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry and to seeking
justice for the most vulnerable members of our society.
Using litigation, education, and other forms of
advocacy, the SPLC works toward the day when the ideals
of equal justice and equal opportunity will be a
SPLC was founded in 1971 by civil rights lawyers to
ensure that the promise of the civil rights movement
became a reality for all. Since then, we’ve won numerous
landmark legal victories on behalf of the exploited, the
powerless and the forgotten.
Our lawsuits have toppled institutional racism and
stamped out remnants of Jim Crow segregation; destroyed
some of the nation’s most violent white supremacist
groups; and protected the civil rights of children,
women, the disabled, immigrants and migrant workers, the
LGBTQ community, prisoners, and many others who faced
discrimination, abuse or exploitation.
Pride represents the leading national organization for
student leaders and campus groups working to create a
safer college environment for LGBTQ students. The
organization is a volunteer-driven network “for” and
“by” student leaders. The primary objective of Campus
Pride is to develop necessary resources, programs and
services to support LGBTQ and ally students on college
campuses across the United States.
It was founded in the Fall of 2001 and launched a year
later in October of 2002. our purpose is to build
future leaders and safer campus communities.
Our mission is to serve LGBTQ and ally student leaders
and campus organizations in the areas of leadership
development, support programs and services to create
safer, more inclusive LGBTQ-friendly colleges and
universities. It exists to develop, support and give
“voice and action” in building future LGBTQ and ally
Campus Pride envisions campuses and a society free of
anti-LGBTQ prejudice, bigotry and hate. It works to
develop student leaders, campus networks, and future
actions to create such positive change.
1998 by the creators of the Academy Award-winning short
film Trevor, The Trevor Project is the leading
national organization providing crisis intervention and
suicide prevention services to lesbian, gay, bisexual,
transgender and questioning (LGBTQ) young people ages
Every day, The Trevor Project saves young lives through
its accredited, free and confidential phone, instant
message and text messaging crisis intervention services.
A leader and innovator in suicide prevention, The Trevor
Project offers the largest safe social networking
community for LGBTQ youth, best practice suicide
prevention educational trainings, resources for youth
and adults, and advocacy initiatives.
│ LGBTQ Information Network │ Established 2017 │


Ankylosing spondylitis (AS) is a type of arthritis that inflames the joints (vertebrae) of the spine. The most commonly affected area of the spine is the sacroiliac (SI) joints in your lower back. This is the joint where the spine connects with the pelvis. The condition affects other joints in the body in some cases including the ribs, shoulders, knees, hips, and feet. AS causes pain, stiffness, and discomfort along the length of the spine. Rarely, AS involves the bowels, eyes, lungs, and heart. Many people who have AS have mild, intermittent pain. Some have constant, severe pain. Some people experience a loss of flexibility in the spine due to AS.
AS is the most common condition belonging to a family of related arthritic conditions known as spondyloarthritis. Other less common names for ankylosing spondylitis are Marie Strumpell disease and Bechterew disease.
Most people first develop AS in their teens or as young adults. Most people with the condition develop it before age 30. About two times more men develop AS than women. Most people who have AS have a gene called HLA-B27. On the other hand, people with the gene do not always get AS. Other genes, including ERAP1 and IL23R, also confer a genetic risk for AS.
Low back pain and stiffness are two of the most common early symptoms of AS. They often develop gradually over weeks or months. Most people with AS describe the pain as diffuse and dull. Pain and stiffness tend to be worse at night, after being sedentary, and in the mornings. Early symptoms include loss of appetite, fever, and discomfort. Light exercise tends to make pain feel better. Rest makes pain feel worse. Eventually the pain may spread up the length of the spine and into the neck. Shoulder blades, ribs, thighs, hips, and heels may eventually be affected.
An enthesopathy is a disorder that affects locations where ligaments and tendons attach to bones. Enthesitis is inflammation of these areas that occurs with AS and causes pain and swelling. Commonly affected areas include the heels, pelvis, sacroiliac joints, and the front of the shinbone. When ribs are affected, a patient may have trouble breathing because it hurts to expand the chest. If enthesitis occurs in the feet, it may make it difficult to walk. The Achilles tendon in the back of the heel is one location that may be affected. Another area that may be affected is the plantar fascia at the base of the heel.
The effects of ankylosing spondylitis go beyond the spine. AS may include joint involvement of the knees, shoulders, and hips. AS may degrade bone leading to osteoporosis. Fatigue is a common in ankylosing spondylitis. Pain and discomfort can interfere with sleep, leading to fatigue. Inflammatory molecules, or cytokines, released in AS make people tired. Cytokines may also lead to anemia. If inflammation impacts the gastrointestinal tract, colitis may occur and lead to weight loss. AS may also cause inflammation that affects the heart, lungs, and eyes. Approximately 33% to 40% of people with AS experience eye inflammation, iritis or anterior uveitis. Rarely, inflammation of the aorta (aortitis) may occur.
The prognosis of ankylosing spondylitis varies. Some people have minor pain and few limitations due to their disease. Some people experience more severe pain and other effects. Almost everyone who has AS experiences periods of exacerbation of symptoms and remissions. People who have other health problems, physically demanding jobs, and those who smoke are more limited by AS. People with severe disease may experience fusing of vertebrae and stiffening of the spine, which may severely limit function. When completely fused vertebrae are visible on an X-ray it is known as bamboo spine. When vertebrae are fused, they are said to be ankylosed. Bony outgrowths (syndesmophytes) may be visible along the spine in areas of inflammation of the ligaments that attach contiguous vertebrae.
Symptoms of ankylosing spondylitis often tend to develop slowly over the course of weeks or months. Sometimes, AS emerges more quickly. Early diagnosis and treatment can help prevent damage and preserve function. If you experience lower back pain or pain in the hips or buttocks for more than a few months, it's a good idea to see the doctor for an evaluation. Inflammation of the SI joints, sacroiliitis, causes pain in the lower back and upper buttocks. Other telltale signs of potential AS are back pain that feels worse in the morning. Pain that is worse with rest, but is better with exercise may also indicated AS. If you are experiencing red, painful eyes, blurry vision, or sensitivity to light, see your ophthalmologist.
Diagnosis of AS may take some time. The doctor will evaluate you, perform a physical exam, and take your medical history. The doctor may order blood tests to check for inflammatory markers and the HLA-B27 gene. The doctor may order imaging tests like X-rays to view the spine and sacroiliac joint or an MRI to view soft tissues and bones. Imaging tests are also useful after diagnosis to monitor the progression of the disease. Inflammatory damage due to spondylitis may be visible on these imaging studies. A rheumatologist is a specialist that diagnoses arthritis and related conditions, including ankylosing spondylitis.
AS is a lifelong condition that cannot be cured. Treatment can provide relieve and help prevent severe complications from spondylitis. Early diagnosis and treatment provide the best opportunity for the most favorable outcome. Ankylosing spondylitis is treated with a variety of medications and lifestyle changes. Exercise, good posture, and adequate sleep can help. Many find physical therapy to be helpful. Gentle stretches, hot and cold packs, and warm baths can ease pain.
A variety of medications are used in the treatment of AS:
Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) alleviate swelling, pain, and stiffness by blocking prostaglandins. This class includes naproxen, aspirin, and ibuprofen.
Corticosteroids are medications that alleviate inflammation. They may be taken orally or injected. Doctors may inject corticosteroids directly into the sacroiliac joint, knee joint, or hip joint.
Disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs) block inflammation and change the way the immune system works to prevent joint destruction. Common DMARDs used to treat AS include methotrexate and sulfasalazine.
Biologic medications are targeted agents that inhibit inflammation that drives disease processes like AS. Etanercept, infliximab, adalimumab, certolizumab, secukinumab, and golimumab are biologics for the treatment of AS. They are either injected or infused.
Eating right and being physically active are helpful to relieve symptoms of AS. Some find that avoiding starchy foods (potatoes, bread, and rice) helps their symptoms. Make sure your diet provides you with adequate protein. Eat lots of fruit and vegetables.
Using weights and other strengthening exercises to build muscles can help because strong muscles support joints better. Do range-of-motion exercises to increase flexibility and improve movement. These exercises can reduce joint stiffness. Exercises that involve stretching and extending the spine may help prevent long-term disability. If exercising is painful for you, try exercising in a pool with warm water.
Ankylosing spondylitis can affect your posture. You can help your condition by maintaining good posture. Check how you stand in the mirror. Stand sideways and glance at yourself. Do you lean forward or backward? Do you slouch? Straighten yourself up and notice the feeling in your muscles when you stand up straight. Straighten your posture whenever you notice that you are not standing up straight. Maintaining good posture may help prevent some of the potential complications associated with AS. Have an ergonomic set up at work to keep strain off your spine.
When you have AS, it's important to keep your spine straight and supported while you sleep. Choose a firm mattress that is not too hard. Sleeping in a non-bent position is best. Avoid using lots of pillows that may overextend your spine and neck. It can be helpful to sleep on your belly without a pillow. If you sleep on your back, use no pillow, a thin pillow, or even a rolled-up towel to support your head and neck. Do not curl your legs up. It is best to keep your legs stretched out straight. Many people who have AS report waking up at night and needing to walk around to get some relief. Tell your doctor if AS interferes with your ability to fall asleep or stay asleep.
One of the big dangers with AS is a loss of flexibility. This, in turn, affects body posture and the function of the spine. If loss of spinal mobility happens early in the course of the illness, AS has a worse prognosis. Physical therapy is a useful way to preserve spinal flexibility and fitness. Regular physical therapy can help prevent postural deformities, increase range of motion, and build muscle strength. Each of these helps decrease pain. Physical therapists also provide patient education and coaching about maintaining good posture and the best positions to sleep in.
Both heat and cold may help relieve AS symptoms. When do you use heat and when do you use cold? Heat is good for stiff joints and tense muscles. If you wake up in the morning and feel stiff, take a warm bath or a shower to loosen tense joints and tissues. Gentle stretching can help, too. Apply a heating pad or an electric blanket to stiff areas. Cold is best used for inflammation, local pain, and swelling. Take a break between icing so you do not damage tissues.
Sitting for long periods of time is not good for anyone, but it's especially hard on people with AS. Sitting in an awkward position increases stress on your back, neck, legs, and arms. This can add pressure to discs in the spine and back muscles. Slouching may lead to strained discs and overstretching ligaments in the back. Ensure you have a good ergonomic set up at work. Sit with your feet flat on the floor. Maintain a 90-degree bend in your elbows. Sit with your buttocks touching the back of your chair. Your chair should have adequate lumbar support to help prevent slouching and strain on your back. Raise your computer screen so your eyes can see the middle of screen when looking straight ahead. Take frequent breaks. An adjustable workstation that allows you to sit or stand when you work can be a good option. Seek help from an occupational therapist if you need advice about how to set up your work space so that it is safe for you. He or she may be able to recommend certain devices to make it easier for you to do your job.
Many people with AS do not have a problem driving. If AS affects your range of motion, it might be hard to turn your head when backing up or looking side to side while driving. If that is the case, there are special mirrors that can help you see without having to turn your head so much. Make sure your headrest is at the proper height for you. It should be at least level with the tops of your ears. On long car trips, pull over and take breaks so you can get out of the car and walk around for several minutes.
Pain and stiffness with AS may make it more difficult to have sex. Medications may help relieve pain. Chronic inflammation of the SI joints or lumbar spine can make sex painful. Try different positions that are more comfortable and place less strain on your back. It's important for you to communicate with your partner openly. Let your doctor know if AS symptoms interfere with sexual function. He or she may be able to prescribe medications to help.
IMAGES PROVIDED BY:
- PDSN / Medical Images
- Medical Images
- Science Source
- Arthritis Foundation: “Using Heat and Cold for Pain Relief.”
- Arthritis Research UK: “Driving and Ankylosing Spondylitis (AS),” “Sex, Pregnancy, Children and Ankylosing Spondylitis (AS).”
- National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases: “Questions and Answers about Ankylosing Spondylitis,” “What Is Ankylosing Spondylitis?”
- Spondylitis Association of America: “Exercise & Posture,” “How Is a Person Affected?” “Most Common Symptoms,” “Physical Therapy and Surgery.”
- Therapeutic Advances in Musculoskeletal Disease: “Axial Spondyloarthritis: Is There Treatment of Choice?”
- UCLA Spine Center: “Ergonomics for Prolonged Sitting.”


Z-Wave is a wireless communication protocol used primarily in smart home networks, allowing smart devices to connect and exchange control commands and data with each other.
With two-way communication through mesh networking and message acknowledgment, the Z-Wave protocol helps alleviate power issues and brings low-cost wireless connectivity to home automation, offering a lower-power alternative to Wi-Fi and a longer-range alternative to Bluetooth.
How Z-Wave works
A Z-Wave network consists of internet of things (IoT) devices and a primary controller, also known as a smart home hub, which is the only device in a Z-Wave network that is usually connected to the internet. When a Z-Wave hub receives a command from a smart home application on a user's smartphone, tablet or computer, it routes the command to its destination device across networks of up to 232 devices -- including the hub.
Using source-routed mesh network technology, Z-Wave signals can hop through other Z-Wave devices to reach the device a user intends to control. Each Z-Wave network accommodates a maximum of four hops.
The Z-Wave protocol operates on the low-frequency 908.42 band in the U.S. and the 868.42 MHz band in Europe. Though interference with other home electronics, such as cordless phones, is possible, the protocol avoids interference with the 2.4 GHz band where Wi-Fi and Bluetooth operate.
Z-Wave offers transmission rates of small data packets using throughput rates of 9.6 kbps, 40 kbps or 100 kbps. The Z-Wave PHY and MAC layers are based on the ITU-T G.9959 global radio standard, and the protocol uses GFSK modulation and Manchester encoding. It also includes AES 128 encryption, IPv6 and multichannel operation.
In terms of identification and authorization, each Z-Wave network is identified by a network ID and each end device is identified with a node ID. The unique network ID prevents, for example, one Z-Wave-equipped house from controlling devices in another similarly equipped house.
Communication between devices ranges from 98 to 328 feet; the 500 Series has a range of 130 feet and the 700 Series 328 feet. Because walls and other dense building materials limit the range, the general deployment best practice is to place Z-Wave devices 50 feet or fewer apart for maximum signal strength.
Using a Z-Wave repeater -- an additional Z-Wave device between other devices -- or using line-powered -- not battery-powered -- devices in the network can also strengthen the signal and help it reach its destination. The maximum range with four hops is estimated to be 600 feet.
In regards to battery life, some 700 Series Z-Wave devices can last up to 10 years on a coin cell battery, while many other battery-powered devices last a year or longer.
All Z-Wave technology is backward-compatible.
To bear the Z-Wave branding, smart home products must become Z-Wave certified. This involves meeting a number of requirements and, most importantly, being interoperable with all other Z-Wave-certified devices.
First envisioned by Danish company Zensys, the Z-Wave protocol began as a light-control system for consumers and evolved into a home automation network mesh protocol implemented on a proprietary system-on-a-chip (SoC). The company aimed to make a simpler, less expensive alternative to existing smart home protocols. Zensys was acquired by Sigma Designs Inc. in 2008.
In 2001, the 100 Series chipset was released, followed by the 200 Series in 2005. In 2013, the 500 Series, also known as Z-Wave Plus, was released, offering a 50% improvement in battery life, 67% improvement in range and 250% more bandwidth, as well as plug-and-play capabilities and standardized, over-the-air updates.
The Z-Wave Alliance, a consortium of industry leaders, manufacturers and integrators aimed at developing and expanding Z-Wave applications and capabilities, was founded in 2005 when members from Intermatic Inc., Leviton Manufacturing Co. Inc., Wayne Dalton, Danfoss and Universal Electronics met with Zensys to discuss the state of home automation protocols. The more than 700 current members include D-Link Systems Inc., Honeywell International Inc., LG Electronics and Verizon, among others.
In 2016, some Z-Wave technology was made open source. Sigma Designs added an interoperability layer to the Z-Wave open source library with the aim to give software developers, manufacturers, hobbyists and academics, among others, the ability to read, use and comment on how Z-Wave works without joining the Z-Wave Alliance or purchasing a Z-Wave development kit. Prior to this, nondisclosure agreements were required, and the specifications were only available to Z-Wave Alliance members and Z-Wave development kit holders.
Sigma Designs also released the Z-Wave S2 security specification, the Z-Wave over IP Specification for transporting Z-Wave signals over IP networks and Z-Ware middleware in 2016.
In 2017, Sigma Designs announced Z-Wave SmartStart, a combination of the Z-Wave protocol and Z-Wave gateway software layers, allowing for preconfiguration and eliminating the need to manually add devices to a Z-Wave home network, as they can automatically connect when powered on.
The 700 Series was announced at the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show and will be available later in the year. This iteration offers a device-to-device range of more than 328 feet and a mesh range of more than 1,312 feet. It also uses a 32-bit Arm Cortex SoC, unlike previous versions that used the 8-bit Intel MCS-51/8051-compatible foundation.
In 2018, Sigma Designs sold Z-Wave to Silicon Labs.
Z-Wave adoption and popularity
In 2002, a reported six Z-Wave-certified devices were available on the market. In 2012, that number rose to 1,000. Currently, in 2018, more than 2,400 Z-Wave-certified devices are available from the more than 700 members of the Z-Wave Alliance.
Z-Wave's website claims it has the largest selection of smart products available across widely recognized brands, and that more than 100 million Z-Wave protocols have been sold for smart homes worldwide.
Today, Z-Wave-certified devices are used for remote control and management in a variety of smart home and IoT devices and applications, including smart thermostats, smart locks, smart lighting, smart sensors, smart plugs and outlets, and smart home hubs.
Z-Wave-certified products are available from brands including ADT, GE, Honeywell, Kwikset, Schlage and SmartThings.
Early on, Z-Wave had a bad security reputation. While it offered AES encryption, there were a number of security incidents involving Z-Wave largely due to implementation errors by manufacturers or manufacturers not using the recommended security in the first place.
In a 2013 Black Hat presentation, hackers demonstrated how to use the Z-Force packet interception and injection tool to identify a critical implementation vulnerability in the Z-Wave security layer. They showed how to compromise an AES-encrypted Z-Wave door lock, which turned out not to be a flaw introduced by Z-Wave, but by the door lock manufacturer. In response, Sigma Designs added additional security test cases to its certification processes.
In a 2016 ShmooCon presentation, two hackers demonstrated how the open source EZ-Wave penetration testing tool could be used to destroy lights and physically damage Z-Wave-certified devices. In their research, the hackers found that only nine of the 33 devices they tested supported AES. In turn, the Z-Wave Alliance made AES 128 encryption mandatory for a device to become certified.
The Z-Wave Alliance mandated Z-Wave-certified devices follow the Security 2 (S2) framework beginning in April 2017. This modified the process from a three-step process in the previous S0 framework to a one-step process in S2.
In an attempt to mitigate man-in-the-middle, distributed denial-of-service and brute-force attacks against Z-Wave devices, S2 uses elliptic curve Diffie-Hellman cryptography and requires a QR or PIN code at the device level for authentication. S2 also implements strengthened cloud communication by tunneling all Z-Wave over IP traffic through a secure TLS 1.1 tunnel.
In May 2018, researchers from Pen Test Partners found a five-year-old software vulnerability in the Z-Wave protocol dubbed Z-Shave, which affected an estimated 100 million SoCs in smart home devices manufactured by more than 2,400 vendors.
In the attack, one device is tricked into believing the other does not support Z-Wave's S2 framework, so it downgrades the device's security to the S0 framework for compatibility. As S0 uses a hardcoded encryption key, hackers in range can potentially intercept communication and smart lock keys to unlock home doors.
Silicon Labs refuted the ability of the attack, claiming that this attack requires close physical proximity to the device during the pairing process, which is done during initial installation or reinstallation. This means the user would have to be present at the time of the attack and would be made aware of a device running S0. The company also stated that it is updating the specification to ensure users get a warning any time a device is downgraded to S0. The user would have to acknowledge and accept the warning to run the system.
Z-Wave vs. Zigbee
Z-Wave and Zigbee are two of the biggest names in smart home communication protocols. Both use short-range, low-power radio signals and mesh network technologies, and both are secured using AES. However, there are some notable differences.
Z-Wave operates on the low-frequency 908.42 band while the Zigbee protocol operates at 2.4 GHz. While the higher frequency allows Zigbee to transmit more data faster -- 40-250 kbps to Z-Wave's 9.6 to 100 kbps -- it reduces the range of the signal. Z-Wave's range of 98 feet is greater than Zigbee's 32-foot range. As an open standard run by the Zigbee Alliance, Zigbee chips are available from multiple vendors, while Z-Wave chips are only available from Silicon Labs.
Zigbee is often perceived as more complex due to its multiple protocols; for example, it offers specifications for smart energy, healthcare, gateways and more -- which historically do not communicate well together. However, the release of Zigbee 3.0 aims to address this issue and address the complexity.
A Zigbee network, which doesn't have a maximum number of allowed hops, can support more than 65,000 devices, while a Z-Wave network, limited to four hops, supports a maximum of 232 devices.
Often considered an either/or situation, many smart home hubs today, including Samsung SmartThings and Wink Hub, support both standards, allowing Zigbee and Z-Wave devices to communicate with each other, so there is no need to choose one over the other.


Kentia palms are one of the most beautiful plants in my opinion. They are native to the Lord Howe island. Currently they are being kept both indoors and outdoors and if provided with proper conditions, they will thrive in both. Lets have a closer look at them.
The soil should be kept moist mostly, so water very regularly and faithfully. However allow it to dry partially before watering it again.
Like most palms, the soil should be well drained and sandy.
Fertilize in the growing season, do not overdo the fertilizer.
It is not very good at tolerating cold. Temperatures below 23 degrees Fahrenheit for extended periods can easily harm your Kentia palm.
The scientific or botanic name of this palm is Howea forsteriana.
Some of its common names are:
and the famous Kentia palm
Kentia palms can easily be propagated by seeds. Just soak the fruit in warm water for a couple of days and then remove the fruit from seeds. Now make sure the seed does not have any fruit particle and place them in growing tray that has rich, well drained soil mix and peat moss. Plant the seeds in soil so that just one third to half of each seed goes below the surface. Now for the germination to occur you must keep the soil moist all the time. Keep it moist, not wet, wet soil can cause seedlings to rot.
Kentia Palm Pictures
Here are some pictures of Kentia palm plantations...


In the late 19th century, filmmakers had a problem they couldn’t have anticipated: how to make a film that lasted more than a few seconds without tearing. In film’s earliest days, this had hardly been an issue. Film was a novelty, and brevity was part of the appeal. It offered spectacle, like glimpses of Annie Oakley shooting or prizefighters competing in the ring—sights people would never be able to see in person.
But after the initial shock wore off, the public wanted something more. They began to understand what it was film had to offer: The seeds of fiction were planted in these short, performed events.
Before film was art, it was machinery. It took years for film to get the kind of legal protection that the other, more prestigious arts enjoyed. In the early days, it was technology, protectable only by patent. As a result, film, as a product, was strange and vulnerable, subject to duping, sabotage, and all kinds of strange patent traps set by Thomas Edison to keep independent filmmakers from gaining power.
Edison hadn’t invented the technology behind the moving picture. In the 1880s, the photographer Edward Muybridge created a sequence of images that, if viewed together in rapid succession, simulated movement. The first functioning camera and projector likewise didn’t come from Edison, but the Lumière Brothers. Edison refined and commercialized their invention, turning film’s focus toward storytelling and away from documentary. He also thought globally. By the mid-1900s anyone with a camera could produce—or just copy—films. Distributing them was another matter. That, Edison knew, was where the money was.
* * *
Enter the Lathams—a father, Major Woodville (a Confederate) and his hard-living sons Otway and Gray. In their quest to film a boxing match and screen it for a paying audience, they invented the Latham Loop, a way of pulling film through the threading device of the camera gently enough not to tear the sprockets—and more importantly, a device that enabled the film to gently spool over from back to front, allowing for longer films. Their projector was called the Eidoloscope, and it had the instant advantage over Edison’s competing product.
From 1891 onward, Edison had tried to corner the new, lucrative market for films. By 1894, he turned to the Lathams, who had asked for financial help in creating a device allowing for longer pictures, with the aim of projecting filmed boxing matches for admission. In 1895, they were successful. In May of that year, as Dan Streible documents in his book Fight Pictures: Boxing and Early Cinema, the Lathams screened a fight between “Young Griffo” and Charles Barnett in New York City in a widescreen format.
The Lathams continued to screen spectacles for the public, until the money ran out. Edison’s protégé, W.K.L. Dickson, distanced himself from both the Lathams and Edison in 1895, just in time to form his own company. He’d call it Mutoscope, soon to be known as Biograph, the studio that would produce some of the most influential narrative films of the early century, among them Birth of a Nation in 1913.
Edison didn’t like competition. His nickelodeons, or “peep shows,” were all the rage in the early aughts, before the problems of screening films for large audiences had been fixed to anyone’s satisfaction. But when the competition started heating up, Edison turned to his patents to squeeze the market. He’d intimidated filmmakers out of competing against him in previous years, so much so that there were more French films on American screens from 1906 to 1909 than American ones.
Edison went further in 1908, by creating the Motion Picture Patents Company, or Film Trust. By joining forces with the other big studios of the day (Dickson’s Biograph excluded) he’d hoped to exert his power against burgeoning independent filmmakers by patenting every part of the film camera down to the sprocket holes. Independent filmmakers didn’t have much in the way of legal recourse against the Edison machine. The Sherman Antitrust Act had passed in 1890, before the earliest films had an audience. Copyright laws wouldn’t take motion pictures under protection until 1912.
But Edison had forgotten something: Dickson’s long-held grudge. Dickson side-swiped Edison, coming up against him with his ownership of the Latham Loop, which Edison, in his rush to power, had somehow forgotten about.
By 1908, the Loop was integral to any film projector and camera—as it remains today. It had been patented by 1902 by Woodville Latham, only to be then sold on the cheap to Ansco (Anthony and Scoville Co.) when the Lathams were running low on money. In 1908, Dickson and Biograph bought up the patent and used it to beat Edison and the MPPC at its own game.
It was a bold move in an increasingly cutthroat industry on the verge of incredible growth—and it meant war.
* * *
Along with the loop patent, Dickson had also devised a “friction feed,” the answer to Edison’s patented sprocket holes. Dickson’s camera punched its own holes as the film wove through the machine. With these innovations, Dickson had proved a match for Edison. They combined forces, forming a powerful conglomerate.
Afterward, the Latham Loop became a pawn in Edison’s battle against independents. In conversation with the author and director Peter Bogdanovich, whose 1971 book Who the Devil Made recorded conversations with early filmmakers, the director Allan Dwan said that it was akin to “selling an automobile and not letting anybody else drive it because you have a patent on putting your foot on the pedal.” Non-compliant competitors found themselves subject to intimidation. When these companies moved out West, according to Dwan, Edison sent gangsters across the country to follow them.
“They always shot at the cameras,” recalled Dwan. “Most companies only had one. Sometimes they’d wait until a fellow was cleaning the camera … and take a shot at it. Anything to destroy it.”
Even when it didn’t work, Edison’s toughs could take as well as they could give. “In La Mesa,” Dwan told Bogdanovich, “a rough-looking character got off the train and looked me up. He said he was sent out to make sure me and my company got out of there and quit making pictures. We took a walk up the road to talk it over. I wanted to get him far enough out of town to see if I couldn’t beat his brains out.” The pair competed at shooting cans off a rock. Dwan bested him, and the tough left town that day. Bound to become the art of the masses, film couldn’t be controlled with the same ruthlessness as big business.
* * *
Fights like those, Dwan recalls, didn’t just set the context for filmmaking, they also provided the setting for the films that would be made in the new climate of the West. Once the independents got used to defending their territory in the West, they found that the setting was conducive to filmmaking on a grand scale. Hollywood was a wilderness at the time—a suburb of Los Angeles that counted on the larger city for its water supply. The town’s climate was ideal for filmmaking: dry heat, open spaces, and consistent, beautiful weather. In the early 20th century, a renegade culture still drove filmmaking, one germane to the West.
The lawless wilderness stuck with film, helping invent one of its earliest and most enduring genres: the Western. By 1909, Westerns (shot in the East) already dominated the big screen. Their appeal would only grow as the industry grew, inside the very climate that had inspired the genres’ tales of greed and lawlessness.
D.W. Griffith was one of the first filmmakers to capitalize upon the myth of West artistically. The first film to be shot completely on location was Griffith’s In Old California, which he made for Biograph in 1910. To Griffith, the West still contained the mythos of American naturalism, first born in the works of Jack London and Frank Norris. For a filmmaker defined early on by his attention to atmosphere, nature, and sunlit outdoor scenes, centering his company in California was obvious.
In a different time, Griffith could have laid claim to intellectual property and made a fortune. After all, he’d invented the close-up. Instead he ended up drunk and dissipated, abandoned by the art form to which he gave life. Griffith’s taste in subject matter, too, ended up betraying him. He’d made films that brought the art form into a kind of maturity, but whose politics left them stuck, of necessity, in the past. His Birth of a Nation remains his defining work—at once a great achievement and shameful embarrassment.
By 1909, a year into the patent wars, Griffith would produce and release A Corner in Wheat the first film to use a narrative technique completely unique to the screen: cutting between scenes not just to advance the story, but to make an intellectual point. “Wheat” was about a tycoon whose greed causes him to die at the hands of his own unfeeling, mechanical creation. In the new decade, Biograph’s influence would fall away, and so would Edison’s, as more and more filmmakers and companies set up in the West. By the 1920s, Hollywood had become something close to what we know it as today—the capital of film production, a place where dreams were shot, cut, and processed. A place into which went blood and sweat, and out of which came the glamorous mandates of a budding American culture, in almost equal measure.
This article appears courtesy of Object Lessons.


Excerpts from Editing Historical Documents: A Handbook of Practice by Michael E. Stevens and Steven B. Burg (Altamira Press, 1997)
The authentic words of men and women from the past offer a way to experience the real thing. Historical documents, carefully selected, clearly explained, and presented in a readable format, provide an immediacy not otherwise found in conventional narratives. Reading the words of men and women who do not know how their own particular lives will play out helps avoid the sense of inevitability found in many history books. First-person historical accounts are equally powerful when ordinary men and women tell their own stories–versions that do not usually make it into history books. They reinforce the idea that history belongs not just to politicians, generals, or doers of great deeds. The publication of historical documents, or documentary editing, is an effective way of making history vivid. (p. 17).
People edit and publish historical documents because they believe these materials have enough significance to merit the time, energy, and money needed to make them accessible to a wider audience. Whether intended as research tools, study aids, or simply pleasurable reading, the basic mission of historical editions is to provide easy access to the unique information contained in original documents. Editors reproduce documents through the creation of facsimiles or transcriptions, make them understandable by providing annotation, facilitate access to them through devices such as indexes, and publish these documents via microforms, computer networks, CD-ROMs, or the printed page. Historical editors do not simply reproduce texts; they also provide readers with the information needed to understand the content of the historical documents. (p. 25)
However small or grand a project, from a single document in a historical journal to a multivolume book edition or a multireel microform edition, documentary editors begin by defining the scope of the project. Whatever the topic, the editor should articulate a clear and well-defined statement of scope that includes a definition of who or what is being documented, the dates under consideration, and the reasons for undertaking the project. By clearly specifying a project’s scope, editors use resources more efficiently and bring coherence to the work of collecting, editing, and publishing documents. (p. 25)
Editors should identify their intended readers and consider the knowledge and expectations they are likely to bring to their work. Accounting for the specific needs of different kinds of readers affects decisions editors make about the selection, annotation and presentation of documents.
Editions aimed at scholars and professional communities will often be tailored toward a knowledgeable audience well versed in the language and background of the subject. Scholarly and professional audiences use documentary editions as research tools and therefore require full and authenticated texts, notes that provide information beyond common historical knowledge, and exhaustive indexes. For scholars, the narrative flow and readability of an edition are secondary to the information contained in the documents. (p. 32)
Editions aimed at audiences of students and general readers are characterized by brevity, readability, and a preference for using narrative rather than academic forms of annotation. Editors of documents aimed at students and general readers strive to make the works readable without sacrificing the accuracy of their content. (p. 33)
Forms of Publication
Each editor decides the form of publication most appropriate for the selected materials, including both the medium in which the documents will be published and whether the documents will be presented as facsimiles, as transcriptions, or in both forms.
Edited documents can be distributed through several different media. Printing documents in a historical magazine or another type of periodical makes them accessible to a wide audience, although the number of publications willing to print historical documents is limited, and they must of necessity limit the quantity of documentary materials. Self-publishing one or more documents in a pamphlet is a fairly easy and affordable way to reach an audience, especially for an institution like a library or a historical society that has a gift shop.
Editors of larger projects may want to publish the results of their work in a book edition, be it a single volume or multivolume set. Book editions are easy to read, compact, and portable and may be read without expensive viewers or computer hardware. When produced on acid-free paper they can have a shelf-life of hundreds of years. Yet books are expensive to produce and require a publishing house willing to take on the costs of printing and distributing the work. (p. 31)
Microfilm editions provide a compact and less costly means of reproducing and preserving large numbers of documents, but viewing microfilm can be hard on the eyes, can produce images that are difficult to read and copy, and furthermore, requires the use of machines. Editors may also consider using computer and scanning technology to put their documents onto computer disks, CD-ROMs, or the World Wide Web (the Internet). The immediate appeal of electronic media is their ability to store vast amounts of information that can be disseminated at a low cost. However, electronic media have an uncertain shelf life, with carefully stored disks and electronic tapes holding data for ten or fewer years and CD-ROMs predicted to last from fifty to 100 years. Furthermore, the fast rate of change in computer technology threatens all electronic media with rapid obsolescence.
Whether publishing documents on the printed page, on microform, or via electronic media, editors must decide whether documents should be presented as facsimiles, as transcribed texts, or in both forms. While many microform and electronic editions present only facsimiles–thus saving the time, labor and expense of transcribing and annotating documents–these editions can be hard to read, difficult to understand, and impossible to search unless the editors mark the texts or provide thorough indexes. Each user, in essence, approaches the documents afresh, without the experience of the editor. In editing documents, the greatest service editions can provide readers is a clean, readable transcribed text, followed closely by a convenient method for gaining access to the information in the documents and explanatory annotation. (p. 32)
Before proceeding too far, you should determine whether the documents are protected by copyright and who holds it. Copyright of unpublished documents is a complex issue, and legislation governing it continues to be revised. As a general rule, it is good to remember that copyright does not reside in the owner of the document but rather in the writer and the writer’s heirs. It is the editor’s responsibility to obtain permission to publish the materials.
Editors decide which documents collected by their projects will be published, and should consider a number of criteria in doing so. On some occasions the choice may be obvious–for example, a short, well-written diary or autobiography; but for many topics a decision must be made between publishing all the collected documents or only a selection. Comprehensive editions provide an invaluable historical resource capable of presenting important documents as well as details of day-to-day life that are seldom available in selected editions. However, not all editors will want or be able to produce comprehensive editions. Editors may produce selective editions as a result of time and financial constraints, space limitations, copyright restrictions that prevent the use of certain documents, or a desire to present only the most interesting or historically significant documents. In deciding whether to produce a comprehensive edition or a selective one, editors should remember that most topics receive treatment in documentary editions only once. Some important figures or topics might have more than one documentary edition, but usually no more than one in a single generation. The existence of an edition may preclude others from securing the requisite financial backing or publishing support and thus may prevent revisitation of the topic for decades. Whenever feasible, editors should seek to produce editions that are as comprehensive as possible and that will make the greatest contribution to modern scholarship. Whether a project publishes all the documents it collects or only a small portion, editors should clearly explain to the readers how the documents that appear in the final work were selected. (p. 41)\
Transcription is the process of converting textual and nontextual elements of original documents into readable, publishable, typescript form. In so doing, editors strive to represent original documents faithfully. All transcription, however, is a form of translation and requires editors to make innumerable decisions about how to present documents. Editors make choices about standardization of the form of the documents (placement of datelines, uniform indentation of paragraphs, etc.) as well as how to emend the text (capitalization and punctuation, etc.). In the past, the typesetting of textual footnotes such as superscripts, subscripts, canceled passages, interlineations, marginalia, drawings, and other marks was costly, and these features were reproduced for only the most important texts or were represented by editorial symbols. Modern typesetting and printing techniques have reduced the difficulty and expense of reproducing unusual textual characteristics, and, as a result, cost is no longer the primary consideration. Instead, editors evaluate the types of documents they will be transcribing, consider the needs of the audience, and then select the form or forms of presentation that best convey the information contained in the document. Transcription methods should be presented in an introductory statement and then consistently implemented. (p. 71)
Proofreading is the process of comparing a transcript of a document against the original text for accuracy of all the textual details, such as correct wording, phrasing, spelling, punctuation, capitalization, paragraphing, and consistent emendation. Proofreading is an essential step in the editing process. Editors must ensure that all parts of the edition, including documents, notes, quotations, headings and titles, have been accurately presented. The text must be rechecked for accuracy whenever errors might be introduced into the final texts. (p. 82)
Most editors standardize the presentation of parts of their documents, creating datelines, placelines, signatures, salutations , or complimentary closings whose placement is consistent from document to document. Uniform presentation helps the reader locate important information such as the dates and recipients. It also helps editors avoid the difficulty and expense of reproducing the irregular physical layout of many documents, elements that are not important to most users and that are best studied in the original manuscripts. Within each document, editors also need to decide to what extent they will emend the text to facilitate its presentation. Some editors intervene only minimally, presenting a near-literal transcription of the text, while others standardize many parts of the document and make significant emendations to produce a text with a modern, standard appearance. The variety of possibilities within expanded transcription requires editors to explain to their readers exactly how they have standardized and emended the documents they publish. (p. 121)
Annotation, the information added by editors to improve the readers’ understanding of historical documents, can serve several different functions. Editors may explain the history of documents; supply missing parts of the text such as a date, place or word; or offer editorial commentary that helps the reader understand the text. Annotation may appear as bracketed insertions in the text, footnotes, endnotes, headnotes, microform targets, or supplemental materials, such as tables, illustrations, charts, glossaries, directories, and introductory essays. Annotation makes the text of documents more readable, clarifies unusual terms, offers background on events and people, supplies missing information, and provides readers with historical context.
The quantity and specificity of annotation will be determined by the needs of the audience, the characteristics of the documents being edited, the resources available for researching and printing annotation, and the judgment of the editors. Editors of complex documents many nee to provide extensive annotation to assist their readers, while easily understood documents may require little annotation. Editions produced for academic audiences may assume a high level of background knowledge and thus provide readers with more technical information, while editions for general audiences may assume their readers have little historical background and thus use their annotation to contextualize and clarify documents. Editors balance the value of providing useful annotation that will enhance the accessibility of documents with the cost of producing and printing notes. Furthermore, excessive annotation may preclude the printing of additional documents and can diminish an edition’s readability by cluttering the page. (p. 157)
Editors carefully design their editions to offer easy access to the documents. For book editions, indexes are the most important tool editors can provide, although document numbers and running heads can also help readers find their way around an edition. Modified indexes and contents lists lead users of microform editions to the desired documents, while electronic links and computerized search engines provide access to electronic editions.
An index includes headings describing the names, places, and major subjects covered within an edition, usually presented in alphabetical order and subdivided into logical subheadings. An indexer should balance the necessity to save space with the need to provide full access to the varied material contained in the edition. Editors strive to provide access to all subjects covered within an edition, even those that may not be related to the main subject of the volume. (p. 199)
For much more on these and other topics, as well as practical examples from a variety of editing projects, consult Editing Historical Documents in its entirety.
The above excerpts from Editing Historical Documents were reprinted with the permission of Altamira Press. (http://www.altamirapress.com)


In the Mongolian taiga, it takes a multi-day off-road trek by car and horse to get to an area called Mengebulag. The boreal forest ecosystem there is home to the Tsaatan people, one of the last groups of nomadic reindeer herders in the world, and both the humans and their animals rely on its ice patches for water and cooling. Today, as the once-stable ice patches melt away, marshy soil comes to the surface, and with it long-preserved archaeological remains—that will quickly degrade once exposed. Now, research published in the journal PLOS One examines the problems that emerge as the ice disappears.
“As the climate is warming, the size of these ice patches is shrinking, and the location at which they are perennial—permanent or recurring—is going up in latitude and elevation,” says William Taylor, an archaeologist affiliated with the Max Planck Institute for Human History in Germany and the University of Colorado, Boulder, and lead author of the paper. “This ice has never melted in known memory.”
Mongolia’s average temperature has increased by about 4 degrees Fahrenheit since 1940, and precipitation has decreased by seven percent, according to a Green Climate Fund report. The decline of the ice patches—which differ from glaciers in both size and the propensity to move—is one of the most obvious impacts of this.
For the Tsaatan, the ice patches provide a reliable source of water, and help keep their reindeer, which are susceptible to overheating, cool and healthy. The vanishing of the ice patches threatens a way of life that has persisted for thousands of years—and with it the record of that history.
“Before animal domestication, Mongolia was a difficult place to live,” Taylor says. “Animal domestication—sheep, goat, cow, camel, but in particular horses, and here, reindeer—really changed the region from a marginal, difficult place to be into an absolute heartland for world civilization and culture.
“The ice is one of these incredibly rare snapshots into the past where things that fall into the ice, especially organic materials that otherwise would disappear in a matter of decades, can make their way into the present day and give us insights,” he adds. “Even though we have this sort of ice patch all over the world, in Mongolia its loss is that much more significant.”
Taylor’s team has so far identified a number of wooden hunting implements, including a willow fishing pole now at the National Museum of Mongolia in Ulaanbataar, that have melted out of ice patches. Documenting even a fraction of these remains is a race against time. Taylor’s team returned to survey the Mongolian portion of the Altai Mountains this year, and hopes to find and document as much as they can before the sites are completely gone, and those deep-frozen organic remains decompose. It’s a sort of windfall for archaeologists—much of this archaeological material would never have been visible otherwise—but for Taylor it comes with a measure of guilt.
“The results are great, but it doesn’t give you excitement because it’s paired with the effects of the melt on people and cultural heritage,” he says. “It’s with a heavy heart that you do the work. Unlike other work we’ve done, this has a sort of moral imperative to it.”
You can join the conversation about this and other stories in the Atlas Obscura Community Forums.


Human kind has inhabitted Earth for thousands of years but until industralisation both, nature and mankind, have lived in perfect armony. Since then, we have enslaved the enviroment and exploited it. Now, we pay the price for our selfishness and we seek for redemption by creating conventions such as environmental awareness. However, the damage is already done, but this doesn’t mean we should ignore it, it means we have to work harder to make The World a kind of heritage for future generations, and that is what The Kyoto Protocol is about.
To get started, we marked ourselves some objectives:
- Every government should undertake to reduce its CO2 emissions
- The industralised countries should reduce in a 40% its emissions for 2020, taking the emissions of 1990 as reference.
- The most developed countries should help the less developed countries to evolve by using renewable energies.
- Although it will affect their growing, these countries in process of development will also have to contribute by developing in a “clean” way.
- By 2020 there should be a document to stop deforestation.
These are just some of the many objectives the protocol put up to the ones who signed it.
There are many ways to reduce the CO2 emissions but one of the most effective one is introducing the nuclear energy which barely uses carbon dioxide but also has its drawbacks and it isn’t socially accepted, however, it is proved to be a very effective solution.
Watch the video below for more information about this global issue.


Date of this Version
In his introduction to Hard Places, Richard Francaviglia admits that "mining landscapes may not be especially pretty to look at." Beauty is in the beholder's eye, and many people would probably agree with the statement; others of us see in these hard places doorways to the past and a better understanding of the present. He goes on to say, "Across the country, mining has left its legacy on the landscape. Mining, in fact, creates its own distinctive topography that may last for thousands of years" (xvii).
Within those statements is the heart of this pioneering study, an analysis of America's mining landscapes. Landscape is defined broadly, as the author explains in his Introduction, a part of the book that must be carefully read. Hard Places successfully addresses three issues: identification of sites; interpretation of processes or forces that shaped the landscape of a mining area; and perception, "what do mining landscapes mean to us as Americans?"


Bicycle riding is a fun recreational activity that can be enjoyed by young and old alike. Unfortunately, many kids do not wear a helmet while riding their bikes because they think that they don’t look cool and will be teased by their friends if they wear a helmet or because it is uncomfortable. This can have tragic consequences to a young life. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that there are about 26,000 children under the age of 20 who sustain traumatic brain injuries in bicycle related accidents.
It does not take an accident with a motor vehicle to result in these severe head injuries. A child can sustain a traumatic head injury simply by falling off a bike and striking his or her head on the ground.
In order to minimize the unnecessary risk of a traumatic brain injury, it is imperative that children, and all bicycle riders for that matter, wear a properly fitted helmet while out enjoying a bike ride. In New Jersey, this is what the law requires. Under New Jersey law, anyone under the age of 17 shall not ride a bicycle unless they are wearing a properly fitted helmet at all times while riding a bicycle on any property opened to the public or used by the public for pedestrian and vehicular purposes. N.J.S.A. 39:4-10.1. A parent can be fined $25 for the first offense and $100 for subsequent offenses if they failed to exercise reasonable supervision or control over the child’s conduct.


Winner, 2021 Glenda Laws Award given by the American Association of Geographers
The first lesbian and queer historical geography of New York City
Over the past few decades, rapid gentrification in New York City has led to the disappearance of many lesbian and queer spaces, displacing some of the most marginalized members of the LGBTQ+ community. In A Queer New York, Jen Jack Gieseking highlights the historic significance of these spaces, mapping the political, economic, and geographic dispossession of an important, thriving community that once called certain New York neighborhoods home.
Focusing on well-known neighborhoods like Greenwich Village, Park Slope, Bedford-Stuyvesant, and Crown Heights, Gieseking shows how lesbian and queer neighborhoods have folded under the capitalist influence of white, wealthy gentrifiers who have ultimately failed to make room for them. Nevertheless, they highlight the ways lesbian and queer communities have succeeded in carving out spaces—and lives—in a city that has consistently pushed its most vulnerable citizens away.
Beautifully written, A Queer New York is an eye-opening account of how lesbians and queers have survived in the face of twenty-first century gentrification and urban development.


To avoid lead poisoning if you have a job or hobby that may expose you to lead:
- Wash your hands a lot, and don't eat or drink around possible lead sources.
- Follow the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety (CCOHS) guidelines for protection from exposure to lead at work. Your employer should provide these guidelines. For more information, go to www.ccohs.ca/oshanswers/chemicals/chem_profiles/lead for the CCOHS information on lead.
- Shower and change clothes and shoes at work before getting in your car or before you come home, to prevent bringing home lead dust on your clothes and hair. Wash work clothes at your workplace if possible. If washing clothes at work is not possible, wash your clothes separately, and avoid contaminating your car and home.
- Move your hobby work space to a place away from your home, and wash and change clothes before getting in your car or returning home.
Current as ofDecember 12, 2018
Author: Healthwise Staff
Medical Review: John Pope, MD - Pediatrics
Brian D. O'Brien, MD - Internal Medicine
R. Steven Tharratt, MD, MPVM, FACP, FCCP - Pulmonology, Critical Care Medicine, Medical Toxicology


Higher Cancer Rates In Under-18 Cell Phone Users (The Philadelphia Bulletin)
Tuesday September 8th, 2009
The great cell phone cover-up may be coming to an end. A new report may finally wake the public up to the brain-cancer risks of cell phones and force necessary preventive measures.
A new report, endorsed by a prestigious group of international scientists, finds that there is a risk of brain tumors from cell phone use, that industry studies underestimate this risk, and that children have much greater risks than adults. The report, therefore, sends a message to four billion users worldwide and to the $4 billion cell phone industry that they may be facing the same kind of bad news that first burst on the scene for the tobacco industry.
This cancer threat of cell phone use has been recognized by some scientists and critics for decades, but has, essentially, been covered up by the cell phone industry and by much of the mainstream media. I asked the primary author of the new report, Lloyd Morgan, a member of the Bioelectromagnetics Society, whether he would describe what’s been going on for so many years as a cover-up. Mr. Morgan told me he would describe it as a spin that amounts to a cover-up.
Cell phones emit electromagnetic radiation - more specifically, radio frequency electromagnetic radiation, which may cause damage to the DNA and may lead to cancer or other medical problems. The study focused on cell phones, but electromagnetic radiation is also produced by many other sources including cordless (or portable) phones, walkie-talkies, ham radio transmitters, and baby monitors. And, there’s also the laptop computer, which, according to Mr. Slesin, should not be kept on your lap. In fact, four years ago, he wrote an article entitled “Keep That Laptop off Your Lap.” He adds any radio frequency (RF) transmitter away from your body.
The report, entitled “Cell phones and Brain Tumors: 15 Reasons for Concern; Science, Spin and the Truth Behind Interphone,” was produced by a group called the International EMF (Electromagnetic Field) Collaborative. The endorsements of the report to date are listed in the report and will be updated on five web sites including that of the Radiation Research Trust, www.radiationresearch.org.
The primary author of the report, Mr. Morgan, put the issue into perspective: “Exposure to cell phone radiation is the largest human health experiment ever undertaken, without informed consent, and has some 4 billion participants enrolled. Science has shown increased risk of brain tumors caused by the use of cell phones, as well as increased risk of eye cancer, salivary gland tumors, testicular cancer, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and leukemia. The public must be informed.”
Another noteworthy statement appears in the report from Chris Woolams, editor of Integrated Cancer and Oncology News: “In a world where a drug cannot be launched without proof that it is safe, where the use of herbs and natural compounds available to all since early Egyptian times are now questioned, their safety subjected to the deepest scrutiny…the idea that we can use mobile telephony, including masts, and introduce WiFi and mobile phones without restrictions around our 5 year olds is double-standards gone mad. I speak, not just as an editor and scientist that has looked in depth at all the research, but as a father that lost his beloved daughter to a brain tumor.”
How does the cell phone industry respond to this report? I thought it would have a detailed rebuttal of the report on “Cell phones and Brain Tumors.” Instead, the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association (CTIA), which represents 275 member companies, sent me an e-mail which contained only general statements on cell phone safety from various government agencies and international organizations. I called CTIA back and left a message that I would like to discuss the specifics of the report and the rebuttal, if any. I have not heard from CTIA as of this writing.
I have been following the issue of cell phone safety for about 20 years with the help of Louis Slesin, the editor of Microwave News, which has been publishing since 1981. It now appears on the web at www.microwavenews.org. I always found Slesin to be a reliable source and he is certainly one of the world’s leading authorities on the subject. He has devoted his life to the study of cell phones and has to be considered one of the foremost heroes in the battle for product safety. He maintains his web site as a public service and relies on voluntary donations to support that work.
He convinced me that we should not discount the possibility that cell phones pose a significant risk and a high priority should be given to efforts to eliminate, control, and minimize the risk. In about 20 years of covering the story, I also got the impression that the industry was not forthcoming about the safety issues and their spokesmen and pronouncements always left me with an uneasy feeling that they were not telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. To this day, I am struck by the responsibility of the critics of cell phone safety and by the irresponsibility of the cell phone industry and the regulatory agencies that are supposed to protect us, such as the FDA.
Mr. Slesin has a perfect summary of the cell phone controversy. He told me we couldn’t be certain that cell phones pose a brain tumor risk, but there is enough evidence that we should take immediate action. He says no one is trying to take away anyone’s cell phone, but it would be easy and virtually cost-free to take precautions. Slesin says the special problem with cell phones is that they are held against the brain. This is magnified by heavy use of cell phones, sometimes hours at a time. And, the risk is greatest for children, who are more vulnerable to damage by cell phones. Slesin recommends they not even be used by children under perhaps 15 years of age. And, this problem is being compounded by the practice of many phone users to drop landline phones, that is, wired phones and rely exclusively on cell phones.
This report being reviewed provides more evidence that the industry is simply not leveling with the public and that many of the industry-financed studies reach suspect results. As to the industry’s not leveling with the public, consider the Interphone study that it is sponsoring. It was promised to be completed four years ago, but is still not done. The European Parliament found the delay was “deplorable.” The design of the study is fundamentally flawed, as well-documented by “Cell Phones and Brain Tumor.” For example, users of cordless phones only were treated as unexposed. But, two independent studies found users of cordless phones had an increased risk of brain tumors. So, excluding such users underestimates the risk of brain tumors. This flaw suggests either ignorance or dishonesty on the part of the researchers running the Interphone Study. Then, there’s the suspicious finding from some parts of the Interphone Study which concluded the use of a cell phone for less than ten years lowers your risk of brain tumors. This suggests the bias was so strong it eliminated enough tumor risk to show decreased incidence. The Interphone studies did find more brain tumor risk after more than ten years of cell phone use. The report notes that the risk was so great it could not be camouflaged even by the bias of the study.
The report lists eight simple steps to substantially reduce your or your children’s exposure to cell phone radiation. They include:
• “When on a call, use a wired headset - not a wireless headset such as Bluetooth - or use in speaker-phone mode, or send text messages.”
• “Keep the cell phone away from your body - particularly pant/trouser or shirt pockets - or use a belt holster designed to shield the body from cell phone radiation, when not in use (stand-by mode).”
• “Avoid use in a moving car, train, bus, or in rural areas at some distance from a cell tower (AKA mast or base station) as any of these uses will increase the power of the cell phone’s radiation.”
• “Use the cell phone like an answering machine. Keep it off until you want to see who has called. Then, return calls, if necessary, using a wired headset or a corded land-line phone, whenever possible.”
• “Avoid use of cell phones inside of buildings, particularly with steel structures.”
• “Do not allow your children to sleep with a cell phone beneath their pillow or at the bedside.”
• “Do not allow your children under 18 to use a cell phone except in emergencies.”
I checked daily newspapers the day after the report came out. I could not find one, according to a Google search, that even mentioned this report and not one that put it on the front-page - other than The Bulletin.
Herb Denenberg has served as the Loman Professor of Insurance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner, and a member of the Pennsylvania Public Utilities Commissioner. He was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, and co-authored major legislation including the Social Protection Act of Puerto Rico and much of the insurance code of Nevada and Wisconsin.


Aluminium is an incredibly useful metal, being lightweight, malleable, and non-corrosive. Its uses range from parts for aeroplanes to packaging for soft drinks. Aluminium does not exist in the familiar metallic state in nature although it is abundant. What is turned into pure aluminium by refineries is bauxite. Bauxite is basically a mixture of aluminium oxides in mixed in with other materials such as silicon and iron oxides as the main impurities in various combinations.
Bauxite is one of the most valuable mineral reserves a country can have, given the modern day demand for aluminium. The countries with especially plentiful supplies include Australia, Vietnam, Guinea and Brazil; although it is common is most tropical and subtropical areas.
Bauxite is usually mined by open cast or strip mining. Rather than tunnelling into the earth these methods involves extracting minerals from an open pit. All the earth covering the minerals is removed by heavy machinery. As you might expect this as an immediate and starkly visual impact on the environment.
The exact effects of bauxite mining are quite specific to the site. It nearly always involves some habitat destruction, soil erosion, loss of biodiversity, or water pollution. These effects can be reasonably short term, and followed by regrowth, or severe and permanent.
Since some of the countries with the most bauxite are also those countries with the greatest biodiversity in tropical forests there can be a substantial trade off between immediate economic gain and good sustainable practices. Unsurprisingly most countries opt for the immediate economic gain of extracting the bauxite as quickly as possible.
Habitat destruction, especially of rainforests, may be the most obvious impact of bauxite mining but it is not the only one. It is not even necessarily the greatest as most bauxite mining is not done in rainforests.
Open cast mining involves the removal of the top layer of soil in order to get at the ores underneath. The resultant soil erosion means that it may be very difficult for vegetation, whether natural or crops, to re-establish itself. This is especially the case if the removed soil is not replaced soon after the mining operation is finished. Some mining companies have a better record of minimising soil erosion than others.
The deforestation and soil erosion can lead to problems associated with flooding, including wastewater being swept into the drinking supply. Associated aluminium refineries, which produce the end product, can render the drinking water supply hazardous. In some cases, usually in colder regions such as Hungary, the mining may be deep enough to interfere with the water table.
Just how destructive bauxite mining will be depends a great deal on the location and how responsible the company concerned is. In the worst cases it can wreck the environment and the lives of local people. In the best cases the land can recover fairly well afterwards.
This of course doesn’t take into full account the environmental cost of refining the ore to turn it into aluminium, which can be equally, if not more, devastating. Bringing the whole thing on to a personal level, these are some very good reasons to recycle. Or, preferably, not buy aluminium cans in the first place.
(By Judith Willson)


Good Shepherd Early Childhood Center
GSECC is housed in the extensive facilities of the Irvington Presbyterian Church. Our non-profit, non-sectarian programs presently serve about 90 students. The programs are based on the Common Core Foundational curriculum of New York State. We also promote learning through play. This well-established early childhood philosophy has always allowed young children to use their inherent sense of curiosity and excitement in a stimulating, intentional and purposeful learning environment. GSECC’s goal is to develop the young child’s social and cognitive skills, self-confidence, and love of learning, thus laying the groundwork for Kindergarten and beyond.
Click on the articles and links below for more information:
• Scientists Say Child's Play Helps Build A Better Brain
• Play and Children's Learning in the Classroom
"Good shepherd has exceeded our expectations for the kids. They have learned so much all while making great friends and having fun."
– Mrs. Christine Lavers, mom of 4 year old
Good Shepherd Early Childhood Center's curriculum is approved by The National Association for the Education of Young Children and is based on NYS's Foundations of the Common Core. We follow the child-centered model of early childhood education. It is accepted that for young children learning and knowledge is best acquired through the experience of exploration and discovery.
Concept development takes place through the child's own actions as he/she interacts with the materials, teachers, and peers in the classroom. Our aim is to enhance learning in all areas; i.e., cognitive, linguistic, social/emotional, physical and moral.
The local elementary school, Dows Lane Elementary School, is routinely consulted to ensure our students will be ready for the next leg of their educational journey.


Digestion and Absorption
So far, we have spent quite a bit of time discussing what to eat, and how much we should consume from each food group. However, it is equally important to understand how our body physiologically reacts to our food and portion choices. After viewing the Digestive System video, use the outline below to discuss the purpose and function of the human digestive system:
- The Digestive Tract
- Appraise the purpose and components of the digestive system during digestion and the absorption of nutrients.
- The Mechanical Aspect of Digestion
- Discuss the key mechanical processes involved with the digestion of a food item of your choice.
- The Chemical Aspect of Digestion
- Distinguish the mechanical and chemical digestive processes and discuss the role of enzymes and other gastric fluids in digesting sugar, starch, fiber, fat, and protein.
- A Letter From Your Digestive Tract
- Review the letter on page 92 of your textbook. Assess the correlation between food choices and digestive disorders and explain how to avoid such disorders.
This assignment must be a minimum of three pages in length (excluding title and references pages) in APA format as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center. Use subheadings to help organize your paper. Include a minimum of two scholarly sources, in addition to the course text, cited according to APA format as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center. At least one of your sources must be from the Ashford University Library.