In this article I will describe a basic aspect of homeopathy’s spiritual understanding of health and disease: the view that disease arises from a fixed adaptation to a past situation that no longer exists in the present.
Homeopaths view health and disease as states of being that are either appropriate for the situation (healthy) or inappropriate for the situation (unhealthy). The state of being that we adopt from moment to moment can be regarded a ‘posture’ that is either suitable or unsuitable for the present moment of existence. An unsuitable posture kept for too long manifests as chronic disease, whereas a short-lasting one causes acute symptoms or weakens the organism until it is susceptible to infectious influences.
Disease arises from memory of a past state that no longer exists
Conventional medicine is based on a materialistic view of life. Health is compared to a well-functioning machine, while disease is viewed as a malfunction in some part of the machine.
Homeopathy is based on a spiritual view of life. Health is the ability to respond freely and creatively to all situations encountered throughout life, whereas disease is any restriction on this ability.
Samual Hahnemann, the originator of homeopathy, discovered through lifelong clinical observation that disease could often be traced to a ‘mistunement’ created during a past stressful episode in the life of the organism or its ancestors. He concluded that the memory of this past state was the real cause the suffering that we experienced through physical and psychological symptoms.
Health is the flexibility to successfully adapt to all life situations
Rajan Sankaran (author of The Spirit of Homoeopathy) describes disease as an “unsuitable posture… adopted by the organism in order to survive in a perceived situation.”
What is a “perceived situation”? To answer this, let’s first look at an example he gives of a real situation:
If you are lifting a heavy bag and you have to walk with that heavy weight, in order that your back does not break, you have to bend in the direction opposite to the bag. So, your body adopts a posture to survive in this situation. This posture is healthy, it is going to do you good, in this situation it is needed, and as long as the bag is heavy, the posture has to be maintained.
Hence, we see that posture is an adjustment. As long as this adjustment is in proportion to the existing situation, as long as it is suitable to this situation, and as long as the situation or exciting factor remains, this adjustment cannot and should not be corrected.
Life can be viewed as a series of adaptations: one situation flows into another, and each time a different posture is adopted to suit the new situation. Health is the flexibility to correctly adapt to any situation that arises throughout our life journey.
An unhealthy posture arises from adaptation to a perceived situation that is not really present. This adaptation can be either inappropriate for the situation or appropriate for the situation but of disproportionate intensity. Sankaran illustrates these possibilities as follows:
When a man is being chased by a lion, the posture of running fast, being afraid, etc. is appropriate since his survival depends upon it. However, if a man is in the same state without a lion chasing him, or he adopts the same posture even if a little dog chases him, or he is in such a pain that he cannot think (a reaction far in excess of what is needed in the situation) then this state is to be removed by treatment.
The unsuitable posture is hidden behind physical and psychological symptoms
So long as an unhealthy posture is held over from the past, the person is precluded from adopting an appropriate posture for the present situation. This is considered a state of disease in homeopathy, whether or not there are clear physical or psychological symptoms that warrant medical treatment. This means, on the one hand, that homeopathy is a powerful healing tool in cases where the patient feels distress yet there are no discernible medical abnormalities.
On the other hand, during the clinical encounter between patient and homeopath the disease state does not automatically reveal itself as an unhealthy posture. In most clinical situations the patient will present with vague discomfort or with one or more physical and psychological complaints. During the homeopathic intake the homeopath must therefore ask many questions in order to lead the patient to reveal the unsuitable posture that he or she continuously adopts in all life situations.
This posture, which most of us do not have a direct awareness of, is the underlying reason for the existence of the clinical complaint that induces people to seek homeopathic treatment in the first place.
How do unsuitable postures arise?
An unsuitable posture originates from an adaptation to a past situation that is maintained even though it is no longer applicable to the situation. This happens when the past situation has exceeded the organism’s resilience. Such situations generally fall into one of the following categories:
- a past traumatic event,
- childhood or cultural habits that have powerfully impressed themselves on the organism, or
- inherited spiritual impressions — known in homeopathy as “miasms” — that long ago left their mark on one’s parents or earlier ancestors.
Resilience can be understood by analogy with a steel spring: just as a steel spring can be bent and absorb many small shocks and still recover its original form, a person can absorb many stresses yet maintain his underlying state of health throughout the stressful period. But beyond a certain threshold, excessive stress deforms the spring and causes it to lose its elasticity. A person exposed to excessive stress will likewise carry the spiritual impression or ‘deformation’ due to the past stress and will no longer be fully ‘elastic’ and responsive to the present situation.
Homeopathic treatment frees us from unsuitable postures
We all continually adopt postures in order to survive in different life situations or in an attempt to create a reality that we imagine to be desirable. But if we remain fixed in a posture that is no longer appropriate for the situation (for any of the reasons cited earlier) to the point that we are unable to respond appropriately to situations that arise in the present, we may then become aware of an uncomfortable sensation at the level of our spirit. If we do not free ourselves of the fixed posture eventually we experience more obvious psychological discomfort, physical symptoms, or both.
In Sankaran’s words:
Disease is thus seen as an affection of the whole person, as a posture adopted as a survival mechanism to suit a particular situation which does not exist at the moment. This posture makes us react to the present in an unsuitable way due to our false perception of it. Such an unsuitable and disproportionate reaction to the situation naturally causes a constant stress on the organism, and the stress aggravates the pathology or brings the tendency to a particular pathology into activity.
Health is the ability to feel OK in all situations. A posture is an adaptation for feeling OK under a specific situation. Unless one is able to switch postures freely from moment to moment, a person will only feel OK when the fixed posture happens to coincide with (be suitable for) the situation.
In terms of the model I’ve just presented, homeopathic treatment releases the hold of the unsuitable posture that prevents free-flowing adaptation to the present moment. By raising awareness of the inappropriateness of the fixed posture to the point that a person can choose to abandon it in favour of another posture, homeopathic remedies assist in the release of inappropriate life habits that manifest physically or psychologically. Once this happens, full resilience is restored and the person is able to handle life as it comes — adopting appropriate postures as needed and shifting away from them as soon as the situation is over — without undue stress.
Read related articles:
- The 7 Essential Factors in Forecasting the Length of Homeopathic Treatment of Chronic Diseases
- Medical Suppression of Symptoms and Its Homeopathic Cure
- Diving Into “The Spirit of Homoeopathy”
- This is Why Homeopaths Emphasize Clinical Results over Theory
- The Influence of Vitalism on Naturopathic Medicine
- The Distinction Between Classical Homeopathy and Naturopathic Medicine
- The How and What of Homeopathic Remedies
- The Followup Appointments
- Basics of the Homeopathic Prescription
- Basics of Homeopathic Case Analysis


The Invisible Gardener's
Natural Pest Control Center
Click here to hear Andy talk
about Organic and Natural Home Pest Controls on his radio shows.
If you decide not to use a raised bed
then you must prepare the area first.
Draw a plan for what you want to grow in your raised
bed. Keep the tallest on one side with the smallest to the opposite side. If you have more
then one raised decide which plants will grow where. Change this design
every year so as not to grow the same plants in the same place year after
Choosing a location for your raised bed is very important. The
location needs to be close to the kitchen to provide easy access for the
cook. The location must provide at least 6 to 8 hrs direct sun,
with the more the better. Must have proper drainage. So take a
walk around your place and see if you can pick the perfect spot.
Another consideration is water, it must have a close source.
Never use city water in your raised bed. Many
cities have chlorine (or ?) in their city water. Chlorine kills
bacteria, that is what it does best. However an organic garden requires
natural bacteria in order to function correctly. A garden filter will help
keep your garden alive! You will notice an increase in in
worms and in the gardens overall health. You can make your own
garden filter by converting your shower filter. Info on a gardening filter
is coming, ask me about it.
Putting together the Raised Bed
A good raised bed should be at least 4ft x 10 ft x 12 inches high x at
least 2 inches thick. Use non treated wood. The wood can
be screwed together for easy break down when needed. If you have
gophers in your area, you will want to screen the bottom
with extra heavy chicken wire. The size of the bed depends on the
area and amount of space you have to use. An ideal situation is to have two or
more raised beds. One 4ft x 12ft x 12 inches x 2 inches can produce enough food for
a family of four. More beds allow you to rotate the beds and allow one bed to grow
green cover which can be turned over.
Filling in the Raised Bed
The following should fit just right into the raised bed. You will have to use what you
find in your area. Start out with a good layer of old horse manure. To this I add either
LLama pellets or Rabbit pellets (nature's time released fertilizer). Add 20 lbs of rock
dust or any other trace mineral source. Add 20 lbs bone meal, 20 lbs alfalfa meal and 2
bales aged wood. Mix well. Water well (water slowly to allow soil to absorb). To this
mixture add 500 lbs compost (if you have it) other wise add enough old horse manure to fill
up to 4 inches from the top. Add another 2 bales aged wood or KRA wood product or any
light soil. Add another 20 lbs rock dust, 20 lbs bone meal, 20 lbs alfalfa meal. The aged
wood will insure the PH will be at the right place. A good PH for the garden is 6.5 to
6.8. Blend everything in together, watering as you go. Finally add enough mulch to fill the
raised bed up to the top. Remember that this soil will settle after a few days, so keep a
few bags of mulch handy to fill to top when needed.
The Invisible Gardener
Tell Em Andy Sent Ya!
March 9, 2013
dont panic its organic gardening


Given that SAD is so tied to the seasons and to sunlight in particular, you might predict that people who live in places with cold, dark winters would be more likely than people living in sunny climes to experience SAD. You'd be right.
For example, the rate of SAD in New Hampshire has been estimated at 10%, whereas less than 2% of people living in Florida suffer with the condition. In fact, I've known many patients over the years who only developed SAD when they left places like Florida to live further north.
In this way, SAD is the quintessential environmental disorder -- no winter, no SAD. But that is not the whole story.
Like all psychiatric conditions, SAD occurs at the intersection of genes and environment, of nature and nurture. This point has been brought home by several remarkable studies showing that people in Iceland have remarkably low rates of SAD, despite living in one of the darkest winter environments on earth.
Even more remarkably, people of Icelandic descent living in the prairie provinces of Canada have far lower rates of SAD than their fellow non-Icelandic Canadians, which greatly strengthens the argument that Icelandic people carry an as-yet-undiscovered genetic factor that protects against SAD.
We don't know what causes SAD, although abnormalities in multiple brain regions have been repeatedly observed in studies. The neurotransmitter serotonin seems to be implicated, as does melatonin, one of the hormones most involved in the onset and offset of sleep. Perhaps most intriguingly, several studies suggest that the eyes themselves might contribute to the risk of developing SAD, given that the eyes of people with SAD respond differently to light.
There also seems to be a strong association between being affected by the seasons and having heightened creative abilities.
I was a practicing psychiatrist before I fully admitted to myself that I suffered from mild SAD. In fact, I didn't really believe it until I bought my first light box and turned it on one fall.
The results were amazing. Thirty minutes in front of a bright light (10,000 lux to be exact) and my brain and body felt like they'd been transported back to summer. My mind knew it wasn't true, but that didn't matter; the melancholy was gone.
Of course, my experience is hardly unique, and if you suffer from winter depression you really owe it to yourself to buy a light box and give it a try. You might also look into dawn simulators, which have also been shown to treat SAD.


Definition of Cires
1. cire [n] - See also: cire
Click the following link to bring up a new window with an automated collection of images related to the term: Cires Images
Lexicographical Neighbors of Cires
Literary usage of Cires
Below you will find example usage of this term as found in modern and/or classical literature:
1. Letters on South America: Comprising Travels on the Banks of the Paraná and (1843)
"... Martinez y cires—Don Agustin Saenz and his polacca— Smuggling—The way of endowing brides. THE population of Corrientes, in character and class, ..."
2. The Policy Paradox in Africa: Strengthening Links Between Economic Research by Elias Ayuk, Mohamed Ali Marouani (2007)
"To date, about 120 rural economy PhD-holders have been trained through this program and cires gained international recognition in research and training. ..."
Other Resources Relating to: Cires


Earth from Space: The Tibesti Mountains
About this Image
The Tibesti Mountains, located mostly in Chad with the northern slopes extending into Libya, are captured in this image, acquired on March 4, 2012 by Envisat’s MERIS instrument. The mountains’ highest peak is Emi Koussi – pictured here as a circular structure in the lower-right portion of the dark area. The westernmost volcano is Toussidé. Our satellite view shows the dark peak with lava flows extending to the left. The white depression to the southeast gets its colour from the accumulation of carbonate salts, creating a soda lake. Surrounding the Tibesti Mountains, the sands of the Sahara appear like orange, yellow and white brushstrokes.


Overcoming perceived GIS resource limitations
This module (Teaching with GIS) is designed to highlight GIS concepts that may be added to many geoscience topics and exercises. In particular, we focus on using GIS at the level of introductory geoscience; however, many of the exercises and concepts may be applied in upper level courses as well. We will attempt to answer the following questions:
Do I need to be a GIS wizard to introduce GIS concepts in my courses?
Answer: No! There are numerous web-based mapping utilities, some of which are specifically designed for geoscience applications. In addition, consumer-grade GPS devices and mapping software are both cheaper and easier to learn than the professional GIS/GPS tools.
Many students new to geoscience are unfamiliar with mapping concepts that we take for granted as professional scientists. Even simple geographic and cartographic concepts can help them understand more complex GIS tasks at a later stage. The introduction of hands-on map creation/interpretation exercises and the associated terminology can greatly enhance the learning experience of the students.
Aren't the hardware and software requirements of GIS prohibitive at the introductory level?
Answer: No! There are many options that may be pursued despite resource limitations or student difficulties with computer tasks. Below are some ideas on what can be accomplished with different levels of resource availability or student background. Keep in mind that this site is focused on how we can introduce GIS within existing introductory geoscience courses:
Hardware-limited options—There is little or no access to computers/internet or GPS receivers by students and/or instructor within the classroom. The students often have access to computers and the internet in public labs or have personal computers. Faculty usually have access to the internet on their computers and may have access to some GIS software.
- Instructor generates maps for exercises/labs utilizing online resources
- Utilize traditional paper maps (e.g. geologic maps) to introduce concepts of data-driven maps
- Assign homework exercises that access online resources from student-owned or campus computer labs
Software-limited options—Some access to computers/internet and GPS receivers, but little or no GIS software for student/instructor use in or out of the classroom.
- Instructor generates maps for exercises/labs from online sources or GIS software. Note that there is GIS shareware available (e.g. GRASS (more info) ).
- GPS use in lab exercises, particulary field labs
- Shareware utilities to download GPS data to computer
- MS Excel or other software used to analyze and plot data in x-y coordinates (convert from lat/lon in GPS software)
- Manual digitization of data locations
- Paper maps or using graphics editing software
No hardware/software limitations—easy access to computers/internet, GPS receivers, and GIS software in and out of the classroom.
- All of the more limited options listed above are possible
- Student use of GIS hardware/software/data in classroom or lab
- Possibilities limited only by time for GIS within the syllabus


Pulmonary hypertension (PH) refers to a condition in which high blood pressure exists within the vessels of the lungs. Normally, venous (low oxygen) blood returns from the body to the right side of the heart where it is pumped to lungs via the pulmonary arteries. Breathing brings oxygen to venous blood in the lungs, turning it into arterial (high oxygen) blood. Arterial blood returns to the left side of the heart through the pulmonary veins where it is subsequently pumped to the rest of the body.
Healthy pulmonary arteries of the lungs are elastic, expanding and contracting with each beat of the heart. In PH, arteries stiffen and thicken, leading to increased resistance to blood passing through the vessel thereby increasing pressure. Higher pulmonary pressure can lead to shortness of breath, low oxygen levels, chest pain, near-fainting/fainting, heart rhythm problems, and in its more advanced form, heart failure.
Pulmonary hypertension was previously classified as primary (without obvious cause, or idiopathic) or secondary (occurring as a result of another disease). Although this terminology is still referenced in medical text, the revised World Health Organization classification system does away with these definitions and instead divides PH into 5 different categories based upon mechanism of disease.
PH can occur in isolation or, more commonly, with diseases of the lungs and heart. PH in the absence of other diseases is very rare and generally idiopathic or familial in nature. This kind of PH is referred as pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH).
PH is commonly associated with a variety of lung conditions characterized by low oxygen levels. These include emphysema, asthma, interstitial lung disease, chronic pulmonary blood clots or sleep apnea. When pulmonary hypertension arises from cardiac conditions such as heart failure, heart valve disease, or congenital heart disease, it is referred to a pulmonary venous hypertension.
Other important disease states associated with PH include connective tissue diseases (scleroderma, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis), sarcoidosis, hyperthyroidism, liver disease, sickle cell disease and bone marrow disorders. Amphetamine use such as meth or the diet drug Fen-Phen has been linked to the development of PH. Oftentimes multiple causes of PH are present.


- Conditional culture
- F W Preece, Adelaide, 1938
Conditional culture is the manifesto of the Jindywoorobak position. Here, Ingamells saught to 'free Australian art from whatever alien inlfuences trammel it'. This involved a 'recognition of environmental values', a de-Europeanising of artistic language and an incorporation of Aboriginal cultural forms into the European-Australian understanding of land.
'Commentary' by Ian Tilbrook follows Ingamell's essay.


Adapting pediatric psychology interventions: lessons learned in treating families from the middle East.
ABSTRACT Pediatric psychologists are increasingly called upon to treat children from non-Western countries, whose cultures may contrast with a Western medical setting. Research on cultural adaptations of evidence-based treatments (EBTs), particularly for individuals from the Middle East, is sparse. To address this need, we discuss clinical issues encountered when working with patients from the Middle East.
Synthesis of the literature regarding culturally adapted EBTs and common themes in Middle Eastern culture. Case vignettes illustrate possible EBT adaptations.
Integrating cultural values in treatment is an opportunity to join with patients and families to optimize care. Expectations for medical and psychological treatment vary, and collaborations with cultural liaisons are beneficial.
Critical next steps include systematic development, testing, and training in culturally adapting EBTs in pediatric medical settings. Increased dialogue between clinicians, researchers, and cultural liaisons is needed to share knowledge and experiences to enhance patient care.


Karuk Tribe: Learning from the First Californians for the Next California
Editor's Note: This is part of series, Facing the Climate Gap, which looks at grassroots efforts in California low-income communities of color to address climate change and promote climate justice.
This article was published in collaboration with GlobalPossibilities.org.
The three sovereign entities in the United States are the federal government, the states and indigenous tribes, but according to Bill Tripp, a member of the Karuk Tribe in Northern California, many people are unaware of both the sovereign nature of tribes and the wisdom they possess when it comes to issues of climate change and natural resource management.
“A lot of people don’t realize that tribes even exist in California, but we are stakeholders too, with the rights of indigenous peoples,” says Tripp.
Tripp is an Eco-Cultural Restoration specialist at the Karuk Tribe Department of Natural Resources. In 2010, the tribe drafted an Eco-Cultural Resources Management Plan, which aims to manage and restore “balanced ecological processes utilizing Traditional Ecological Knowledge supported by Western Science.” The plan addresses environmental issues that affect the health and culture of the Karuk tribe and outlines ways in which tribal practices can contribute to mitigating the effects of climate change.
Before climate change became a hot topic in the media, many indigenous and agrarian communities, because of their dependence upon and close relationship to the land, began to notice troubling shifts in the environment such as intense drought, frequent wildfires, scarcer fish flows and erratic rainfall.
There are over 100 government recognized tribes in California, which represent more than 700,000 people. The Karuk is the second largest Native American tribe in California and has over 3,200 members. Their tribal lands include over 1.48 million acres within and around the Klamath and Six Rivers National Forests in Northwest California.
Tribes like the Karuk are among the hardest hit by the effects of climate change, despite their traditionally low-carbon lifestyles. The Karuk, in particular have experienced dramatic environmental changes in their forestlands and fisheries as a result of both climate change and misguided Federal and regional policies.
The Karuk have long depended upon the forest to support their livelihood, cultural practices and nourishment. While wildfires have always been a natural aspect of the landscape, recent studies have shown that fires in northwestern California forests have risen dramatically in frequency and size due to climate related and human influences. According to the California Natural Resources Agency, fires in California are expected to increase 100 percent due to increased temperatures and longer dry seasons associated with climate change.
Some of the other most damaging human influences to the Karuk include logging activities, which have depleted old growth forests, and fire suppression policies created by the U.S. Forest Service in the 1930s that have limited cultural burning practices. Tripp says these policies have been detrimental to tribal traditions and the forest environment.
“It has been huge to just try to adapt to the past 100 years of policies that have led us to where we are today. We have already been forced to modify our traditional practices to fit the contemporary political context,” says Tripp.
Further, the construction of dams along the Klamath River by PacifiCorp (a utility company) has impeded access to salmon and other fish that are central to the Karuk diet. Fishing regulations have also had a negative impact.
Though the Karuk’s dependence on the land has left them vulnerable to the projected effects of climate change, it has also given them and other indigenous groups incredible knowledge to impart to western climate science. Historically, though, tribes have been largely left out of policy processes and decisions. The Karuk decided to challenge this historical pattern of marginalization by formulating their own Eco-Cultural Resources Management Plan.
The Plan provides over twenty “Cultural Environmental Management Practices” that are based on traditional ecological knowledge and the “World Renewal” philosophy, which emphasizes the interconnectedness of humans and the environment. Tripp says the Plan was created in the hopes that knowledge passed down from previous generations will help strengthen Karuk culture and teach the broader community to live in a more ecologically sound way.
“It is designed to be a living document…We are building a process of comparative learning, based on the principals and practices of traditional ecological knowledge to revitalize culturally relevant information as passed through oral transmission and intergenerational observations,” says Tripp.
One of the highlights of the plan is to re-establish traditional burning practices in order to decrease fuel loads and the risk for more severe wildfires when they do happen. Traditional burning was used by the Karuk to burn off specific types of vegetation and promote continued diversity in the landscape. Tripp notes that these practices are an example of how humans can play a positive role in maintaining a sound ecological cycle in the forests.
“The practice of utilizing fire to manage resources in a traditional way not only improves the use quality of forest resources, it also builds and maintains resiliency in the ecological process of entire landscapes” explains Tripp.
Another crucial aspect of the Plan is the life cycle of fish, like salmon, that are central to Karuk food traditions and ecosystem health. Traditionally, the Karuk regulated fishing schedules to allow the first salmon to pass, ensuring that those most likely to survive made it to prime spawning grounds. There were also designated fishing periods and locations to promote successful reproduction. Tripp says regulatory agencies have established practices that are harmful this cycle.
“Today, regulatory agencies permit the harvest of fish that would otherwise be protected under traditional harvest management principles and close the harvest season when the fish least likely to reach the very upper river reaches are passing through,” says Tripp.
The Karuk tribe is now working closely with researchers from universities such as University of California, Berkeley and the University of California, Davis as well as public agencies so that this traditional knowledge can one day be accepted by mainstream and academic circles dealing with climate change mitigation and adaptation practices.
According to the Plan, these land management practices are more cost effective than those currently practiced by public agencies; and, if implemented, they will greatly reduce taxpayer cost burdens and create employment. The Karuk hope to create a workforce development program that will hire tribal members to implement the plan’s goals, such as multi-site cultural burning practices.
The Plan has a long way to full realization and Federal recognition. According to the National Indian Forest Resources Management Act and the National Environmental Protection Act, it must go through a formal review process. Besides that, the Karuk Tribe is still solidifying funding to pursue its goals.
The work of California’s environmental stewards will always be in demand, and the Karuk are taking the lead in showing how community wisdom can be used to generate an integrated approach to climate change. Such integrated and community engaged policy approaches are rare throughout the state but are emerging in other areas. In Oakland, for example, the Oakland Climate Action Coalition engaged community members and a diverse group of social justice, labor, environmental, and business organizations to develop an Energy and Climate Action Plan that outlines specific ways for the City to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and create a sustainable economy.
In the end, Tripp hopes the Karuk Plan will not only inspire others and address the global environmental plight, but also help to maintain the very core of his people. In his words: “Being adaptable to climate change is part of that, but primarily it is about enabling us to maintain our identity and the people in this place in perpetuity.”
Dr. Manuel Pastor is Professor of Sociology and American Studies & Ethnicity at the University of Southern California where he also directs the Program for Environmental and Regional Equity and co-directs USC’s Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration. His most recent books include Just Growth: Inclusion and Prosperity in America’s Metropolitan Regions (Routledge 2012; co-authored with Chris Benner) Uncommon Common Ground: Race and America’s Future (W.W. Norton 2010; co-authored with Angela Glover Blackwell and Stewart Kwoh), and This Could Be the Start of Something Big: How Social Movements for Regional Equity are Transforming Metropolitan America (Cornell 2009; co-authored with Chris Benner and Martha Matsuoka).


John Langley Howard was a revolutionary regionalist painter known for depicting labor and industry in California as well as his reverence for the natural world. Howard took a strong stance on social and environmental issues and used his art to communicate his strong emotional response toward each of his subjects.
Table of Contents
John Langley Howard was born in 1902 into a respected family of artists and architects. His father, John Galen Howard relocated the family to California in 1904 to become campus architect of the University of California, Berkeley. It was only after attending the very same campus his father helped to create, that Howard suddenly decided he wanted to pursue a career as an artist and not an engineer as previously planned. Following this decision, Howard enrolled in the California Guild of Arts and Crafts in Oakland and then transferred to the Arts Students’ League in New York City.
At the school, he met Kenneth Hayes Miller who supported Howard’s attitude because the “taught the bare rudiments of painting and composition, and stressed the cultivation of the ultra-sensitive, intuitive approach” (Hailey 56). After saving his money, Howard travelled to Paris for six months to seek out his own artistic philosophy. However, it quickly became apparent to Howard that he placed more value on pure talent than professional training. In 1924, Howard left art school to pursue his career and marry his first wife, Adeline Day. He had his first one-person exhibition at the Modern Gallery in San Francisco in 1927. Shortly after, he attempted portraiture.
Following the start of the Depression, Howard found himself appalled by the social conditions and began to follow “his own brand of Marxism.” Howard and his wife began to attend meetings of the Monterey John Reed Club, discussing politics and social concerns. Soon, the artist became determined to communicate society’s needs for the betterment of the future. His landscapes began to include industry and its effects to the surrounding region. In 1934, Howard was hired through the New Deal Public Works Art Project to create a mural for the inside of Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco depicting California industry. The project called for twenty-seven artists to be hired to paint frescos inside the newly erected monument funded by philanthropist Lillie Hitchcock Coit. Each artist was to depict a scene central to California living, including industry, agriculture, law, and street scenes of San Francisco.
Howard’s completed fresco drew notorious attention for showing an unemployed worker reading Marxist materials, a gathered group of unemployed workers, and a man panning for gold while watching a wealthy couple outside of their limousine. In a nearby mural by Bernard Zakheim (1896-1985), Howard himself was used as a model. He is shown crumpling a newspaper and grabbing a Marxist book from a library shelf. This soon led to the artists being linked to a local group of striking dock workers. They were accused of attempting to lead a Communist revolution. Howard’s murals as well as the work of Clifford Wight (1900-1960) and Zakheim became highly scrutinized, and the uproar over the works led to a delay in opening Coit Tower. In order to protect their work from being defaced or completely destroyed, the muralists chose to sleep outside the tower. The SF Art Commission ultimately cancelled the opening of Coit Tower as a result of the controversy and did not open it until months later.
During this time, Howard relocated his family to Santa Fe, New Mexico citing his son’s health concerns for almost two years before returning to Monterey in 1940. Following the onset of World War II, he had a renewed interest in landscape and soon ceased to include social commentary within his work, thus removing the human figure from his paintings. The artist divorced his first wife in 1949. In 1951, Howard’s art took another turn when the artist painted The Rape of the Earth which rallied against the destruction of nature by technology, making Howard one of the first “eco-artists.” During the same year he also married sculptor Blanche Phillips (1908-1976). He began illustrating for Scientific American Magazine and used this medium to refine his technique.
Howard’s landscapes began turning to “magic realism” or “poetic realism” as Howard preferred to call it. This method is described as the use of naturalistic images and forms “to suggest relationships that cannot always be directly described in words” (Aldrich 184). His aim was to communicate a poetic and spiritual connection with the landscape depicted. Overall, Howard lived in more than 20 different locations during his career.
In 1997, Howard attended the dedication of Pioneer Park at Coit Tower and was the only surviving member of the twenty-seven muralists included in the original project. The murals were restored by the City of San Francisco in 1990 after water damage and age dictated the need for restoration. Howard died at the age of 97 in his sleep at his Potrero Hill home in 1999.
II. AN ANALYSIS OF THE ARTIST'S WORK
“I think of painting as poetry and I think of myself as a representational poet. I want to describe my subject minutely, but I also way to describe my emotional response to it…what I’m doing is making a self-portrait in a peculiar kind of way.” – John Langley Howard
John Langley Howard was widely considered a wanderer and a free spirit. While Howard did receive academic training from the California Guild of Arts and Crafts in Oakland and the Arts Students’ League in New York City, he chose to align himself with instructors whose opinions of art education matched his predetermined beliefs. These teachers included Kenneth Hayes Miller (1876-1952) who valued an analytical, bare bones approach to art instruction and supported greater personal development of intuitive talent. Howard expressed this viewpoint stating that:
“I want everything to be meaningful in a descriptive way. I want expression and at the same time I want to control it down to a gnat’s eyebrow. I identify with my subject. I empathize with my subject” (Moss 62).
In the 1920s, Howard became known as a Cezanne-influenced landscape artist and portraitist. Tempera, oil, and etching became his primary media while his subject matter turned to poetic and often spiritually infused imagery which would resurface later in his career. Earth tones and very small brushstrokes were utilized, allowing Howard to refine his images.
Howard exhibited frequently with his brothers Charles Howard (1899-1978) and Robert Howard (1896-1983). Critic Jehanne Bietry wrote of their joint Galerie Beaux Arts show that: “of (the Howard brothers), John Langley is the poet, the mystic and the most complex…there predominates in his work a certain quality, an element of sentiment that escapes definition but is the unmistakable trait by which one recognizes deeper art” (Hailey 60). It is significant that a critic would accurately take note of Howard artistic aims at such an early stage because what Bietry describes ultimately became the primary focus of Howard’s career.
Howard experienced a dramatic change in medium when he was commissioned to paint a mural for the Coit Tower WPA project in 1934. The project was Howard’s first and only mural and provided the artist with an outlet for his newly discovered Marxist social beliefs. While Howard supported a political agenda rather explicitly in his image, his focus on deeper subject matter permeates throughout the work. Most important to Howard is “the idea of human conflict that [he] pictorializes and deplores – man’s tragic flaw manifest again in this particular situation” (Nash 79). Howard’s work had progressed steadily into the realm of social realism until the backlash against the Coit Tower murals led him in a new direction.
Howard abandoned explicit statements of social commentary and returned to his roots as a landscape painter. However, this did not prevent the artist from illustrating important issues because he then became one of the first “eco-artists.” Through his painting, Howard investigated the role of technology on the environment and used the San Francisco Bay Area as well as Monterey to demonstrate his point of view. He continued following his original artistic tendencies by delving into “magic realism” or “poetic realism” which utilized the spiritual connection that Howard sought to find within his work. Art critic Henrietta Shore recognized the balance that Howard achieved within his work, stating that he “is modern in that he is progressive, yet his work proves that he does not discard the traditions from which all fine art has grown” (Hailey 65). Overall, Howard’s career presents a unique portrait of individual expression and spiritual exploration.
1902 Born in Montclair, New Jersey
1920 Enrolls as an Engineering major at UC Berkeley
1922 Realizes he wants to be an artist
1923-24 Attends Art Students’ League in New York
1924 Leaves art school
1924 Marries first wife, Adeline Day
1927 First one-person exhibition held at The Modern Gallery, San Francisco
1928 First child, Samuel born
1930 Daughter Anne born
1934 Commissioned to Paint Coit Tower mural, San Francisco
1940 Studies ship drafting and worked as a ship drafter during World War II
1942 Serves as air raid warden in Mill Valley, CA
1949 Divorces his first wife
1950 Teaches at California School of Fine Arts, San Francisco
1951 Marries second wife, sculptor Blanche Phillips
1951 Moves to Mexico
1951 Paints The Rape of the Earth communicating his eco-friendly stance
1953-1965 Illustrates for Scientific American magazine
1958 Teaches at Pratt Institute Art School, Brooklyn, NY
1965 Moves to Hydra, Greece
1967 Moves to London
1970 Returns to California
1979 Blanche Phillips dies
1980 Marries Mary McMahon Williams
1999 Died in his sleep at home San Francisco, California
California Palace of the Legion of Honor, CA
City of San Francisco, CA
IBM Building, New York, NY
The Oakland Museum, CA
The Phillips Collection, Washington D.C.
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA
Security Pacific National Bank Headquarters, Los Angeles, CA
Springfield Museum of Fine Arts
University of Utah, UT
1927 Modern Gallery, San Francisco, CA
1928 Beaux Arts Gallery, San Francisco, CA
1928 East-West Gallery, San Francisco, CA
1928-51 San Franciso Art Association, CA
1935 Paul Elder Gallery, San Francisco, CA
1936 Cincinnati Art Museum, OH
1936 Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA
1939 Golden Gate International Exposition, Department of Fine Arts, Treasure Island, CA
1939 Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA
1941 Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, PA
1943 Corcoran Gallery, Washington D.C.
1943 M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, CA
1946-47 Whitney Museum, NY
1947 Rotunda Gallery, City of Paris, San Francisco, CA
1952 Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, PA
1956 Santa Barbara Museum of Art, CA
1973 Capricorn Asunder Gallery, San Francisco, CA
1974 Lawson Galleries, San Francisco, CA
1976 de Saisset Art Gallery and Museum, CA
1982 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Rental Gallery, San Francisco, CA
1983 California Academy of Sciences, CA
1983 Monterey Museum of Art, CA
1986 Charles Campbell Gallery, San Francisco, CA
1987 Martina Hamilton Gallery, NY
1988 Oakland Museum, CA
1989 Tobey C. Moss Gallery, CA
1991 M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, CA
1992 Tobey C. Moss Gallery, CA
1993 Tobey C. Moss Gallery, CA
California Society of Mural Painters’ and Writers’ and Artists’ Union
Carmel Art Association
Club Beaux Arts
San Francisco Art Association
Society of Mural Painters
Marin Society of Artists
Monterey John Reed Club
Anne Bremer Memorial Award for Painting, San Francisco Art Association
First Prize, Pepsi-Cola Annual “Portrait of America”
First Prize, San Francisco Art Association
Award, City of San Francisco Art Festival
Citation for Merit, Society of Illustrators, New York
- 1. Aldrich, Linda. “John Langley Howard.” American Scene Painting: California, 1930s and 1940s. Irvine, Westphal Publishing: 1991.
- 2. Hailey, Gene. “John Langley Howard…Biography and Works.” California Art Research Monographs, v. 17, p.54-92. San Francisco: Works Progress Administration: 1936-1937.
- 3. Moss, Stacey. The Howards, First Family of Bay Area Modernism. Oakland Museum: 1988.
- 4. Nash, Steven A. Facing Eden: 100 Years of Landscape Art in Bay Area. University of California Press: 1995.
IX. WORKS FOR SALE BY THIS ARTIST


The Geological Perspective On Global Warming: A Debate
Dr Colin P. Summerhayes, Vice-President of the Geological Society of London
Dear Dr Peiser,
In the interest of contributing to the evidence-based debate on climate change I thought it would be constructive to draw to your attention the geological evidence regarding climate change, and what it means for the future. This evidence was published in November 2010 by the Geological Society of London in a document entitled “Climate Change: Evidence from the Geological Record”, which can be found on the Society’s web page.
A variety of techniques is now available to document past levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, past global temperatures, past sea levels, and past levels of acidity in the ocean. What the record shows is this. The Earth’s climate has been cooling for the past 50 million years from 6-7°C above today’s global average temperatures to what we see now. That cooling led to the formation of ice caps on Antarctica 34 million years ago and in the northern hemisphere around 2.6 million years ago. The cooling was directly associated with a decline in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. In effect we moved from a warm “greenhouse climate” when CO2, temperature and sea level were high, and there were no ice caps, to an “icehouse climate” in which CO2, temperature and sea level are low, and there are ice caps. The driver of that change is the balance between the emission of CO2 into the atmosphere from volcanoes, and the mopping up of CO2 from the atmosphere by the weathering of rocks, especially in mountains. There was more volcanic activity in the past and there are more mountains now.
Superimposed on this broad decline in CO2 and temperature are certain events. Around 55 million years ago there was a massive additional input of carbon into the atmosphere – about 4 times what humans have put there. It caused temperatures to rise by a further 6°C globally and 10°C at the poles. Sea level rose by some 15 metres. Deep ocean bottom waters became acid enough to dissolve carbonate sediments and kill off calcareous bottom dwelling organisms. It took over 100,000 years for the Earth to recover from this event. More recently, during the Pliocene, around 3 million years ago, CO2 rose to levels a little higher than today’s, global temperature rose to 2-3°C above today’s level, Antarctica’s Ross Ice Shelf melted, and sea level rose by 10-25 metres.
The icehouse climate that characterised the past 2.6 million years averaged 9°C colder in the polar regions and 5°C colder globally. It was punctuated by short warm interglacial periods. We are living in one of these warm periods now – the Holocene – which started around 11,000 years ago. The glacial to interglacial variations are responses to slight changes in solar energy meeting the Earth’s surface with changes in: our planet’s orbit from circular to elliptical and back; the position of the Earth relative to the sun around the Earth’s orbit; and the tilt of the Earth’s axis. These changes recur on time scales of tens to hundreds of thousands of years. CO2 plays a key role in these changes. As the Earth begins to warm after a cold period, sea ice melts allowing CO2 to emerge from the ocean into the atmosphere. There it acts to further warm the planet through a process known as positive feedback. The same goes for another greenhouse gas, methane, which is given off from wetlands that grow as the world warms. As a result the Earth moves much more rapidly from cold to warm than it does from warm to cold. We are currently in a cooling phase of this cycle, so the Earth should be cooling slightly. Evidently it is not.
The Geological Society deduced that by adding CO2 to the atmosphere as we are now doing, we would be likely to replicate the conditions of those past times when natural emissions of CO2 warmed the world, melted ice in the polar regions, and caused sea level to rise and the oceans to become more acid. The numerical models of the climate system that are used by the meteorological community to predict the future give much the same result by considering modern climate variation alone. Thus we arrive at the same solution by two entirely independent methods. Under the circumstances the Society concluded that “emitting further large amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere over time is likely to be unwise, uncomfortable though that fact may be.”
Dr Colin P. Summerhayes
Vice-President Geological Society of London and Emeritus Associate Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge.
8 February 2013
Professor Robert Carter and Professor Vincent Courtillot respond:
Dear Dr Peiser,
Thank you for your invitation on behalf of the Foundation to reply to Dr Summerhayes’ letter about geological evidence in relation to the hypothesis of dangerous anthropogenic global warming (DAGW) that is favoured by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
We are in agreement with many of Dr Summerhayes’ preliminary remarks about the geological context of climate change. This reflects that a large measure of scientific agreement and shared interpretation exists amongst most scientists who consider the global warming issue.
Points of commonality in the climate discussion include:
* that climate has always changed and always will,
* that Earth has often been warmer than it is today, and that its present climatic condition is that of a warm interglacial during a punctuated icehouse world,
* that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and warms the lower atmosphere (though debate remains as to the magnitude and timescale of the warming),
* that a portion of human emissions are accumulating in the atmosphere,
* that a global warming of around 0.5°C occurred in the 20th century, but that there has been no global temperature rise over the last 16 years.
The first two points are rooted in geological evidence (as discussed in more detail by Dr Summerhayes), the third is based upon physical principle and the last three are mostly matters of instrumental measurement (i.e. observation). Despite the disparate scientific disciplines involved, all these points are relevant to achieving a quantitative understanding of climate change, together with several other disputed scientific matters such as those that we discuss below.
One of the disputed scientific matters is represented by Dr Summerhayes’ assertion that cooling over the last 34 million years “was directly associated with a decline in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere”.
The word “associated” is ambiguous. It may simply mean that temperature and CO2 were correlated, in the sense that their trends were parallel. But as everyone knows correlation is not causality and whether one drives the other, or the two are driven by a third forcing factor, or the correlation is the result of chance, requires careful analysis and argument. Though it may be true that a broad correlation exists between atmospheric CO2 content and global temperature, at least on some timescales, it remains unclear whether the primary effect is one of increasing CO2 causing warming (via the greenhouse effect) or of warming causing CO2 increase (via outgassing from the ocean). We are familiar with the argument that the currently decreasing carbon isotope ratio in the atmosphere is consistent with a fossil fuel source for incremental CO2 increases, and therefore with the first of these two possibilities, but do not find it compelling because other natural sources (soil carbon, vegetation) also contribute isotopically negative carbon to the atmosphere.
A second area of uncertainty, related to the point just discussed, is the rate, scope and direction of the various feedbacks that apply during a natural glacial-interglacial climatic cycle. Dr Summerhayes provides a confident, and perhaps plausible, account as to how changing insolation (controlled by orbital change), melting sea-ice and increasing CO2 and CH4 jointly drive the asymmetrical glacial-interglacial cycles that have characterised recent planetary history. However, our knowledge of the climate system and its history currently remains incomplete; some of the forcing mechanisms and feedbacks may not be known accurately, or even at all. For example, we do not yet know whether clouds exert a net warming or cooling effect on the climate. Similarly, variations in ultraviolet radiation and high-energy particle emission from the Sun, in atmospheric electricity and in galactic cosmic rays may all play larger roles in controlling climate change than is currently assumed, yet these effects are absent from most of the current generation of deterministic computer models of the future climate. The temperature projections made by these models may well be affected by our ignorance of the magnitude, the sign, or even the existence of some of the forcings and feedbacks that are actually involved.
Thirdly, Dr Summerhayes also briefly discusses the issue of sea level change. He quotes an estimated increase of 15 m in sea level associated with a temperature increase of 6–10°C 55 million years ago. He then quotes a range of 10–25 m rise for a 2–3°C warming 3 million years ago. To this we might add the further examples of the 125 m sea level rise that has accompanied the 6°C temperature rise since the last glacial maximum, and the 0.2-m rise associated with the ~0.5°C 20th century warming. It appears from these examples that a 1°C temperature rise can be associated with a sea level rise of as little as 0.4 m or as much as 8 m, and all values in between! This indicates an uncertainty in our understanding of the temperature/CO2/sea-level connection that surely lessens its value for contributing to policy formulation.
Figure 1. Temperature curve reconstructed from oxygen isotope measurements in a Greenland ice core over the last 10,000 years (Lappi 2010 after Alley,2000).
Fourth, and last, Dr Summerhayes says that because orbitally-forced climate periodicity is currently in a cooling phase “the Earth should be cooling slightly. Evidently it is not”. The statement is tendentious, because whether Earth is seen to be cooling or warming depends upon the length of climate record that is considered. Trends over 1, 10, 100 or 1000 years are not the same thing, and their differences must be taken into account carefully. We reproduce two figures that may be used to demonstrate that Earth is currently not warming on either the longer-term millennial timescale (Figure 1) or the short-term decadal/meteorological timescale (Figure 2). We note also that on the intermediate centennial timescale (1850–2010) the temperature trend has been one of a slight (0.5°C) rise. In assessing which of these timescales is the “proper” one to consider in formulating climate policy, we observe that the results conveyed in Figure 2 have little scientific (and therefore policy) meaning unless they are assessed in the context of the data in Figure 1.
Figure 2. Mean temperature of lower atmosphere: HadCRUT4 annual means 1997-2011
We acknowledge that the data in Figure 1, which are drawn from a Greenland ice core, represent regional rather than global climate. But a similar pattern of Holocene long-term cooling is seen in many other records from around the world, including from Antarctic ice cores. Also, evidence for a millenial solar cycle has been accumulating over the past years, and, representing that rhythm, the Medieval Warming (also called Medieval Climatic Optimum) appears to have been both global and also warmer than today’s climate.
Regarding Figure 2, the data demonstrate that no warming has occurred since 1997. In response, some leading IPCC scientists have already acknowledged that should the temperature plateau continue, or turn into a statistically significant cooling trend, then the mainstream IPCC view will need revision. It is noteworthy, too, that over the 16 years during which global temperature has remained unchanged (1997-2012), atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have increased by 8%, from 364 ppm to c.394 ppm. Given a mixing time for the atmosphere of about 1 year, these data would invalidate the hypothesis that human-related carbon dioxide emissions are causing dangerous global warming. In any case, observed global temperatures are currently more remote than ever from the most recent predictions set out in IPCC AR4.
The areas of uncertainty in the prevailing argument over DAGW are therefore not only geological but also instrumental and physical. Current debate, which needs to be resolved before climate policy is set, centres on the following three issues:
* whether any definite evidence exists for dangerous warming of human causation over the last 50 years,
* the amount of net warming that is, or will be, produced by human-related emissions (the climate sensitivity issue), and
* whether the IPCC’s computer models can provide accurate climate predictions 100 years into the future.
In assessing these issues, our null hypothesis is that the global climate changes that have occurred over the last 150 years (and continue to occur today) are mainly natural in origin. As summarised in the reports of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), literally thousands of papers published in refereed journals contain facts or writings consistent with this null hypothesis, and plausible natural explanations exist for all the post-1850 global climatic changes that have been described so far. In contrast, no direct evidence exists, and nor does the Geological Society point to any, that a measurable part of the mild late 20th century warming was definitely caused by human-related carbon dioxide emissions.
The possibility of human-caused global warming nonetheless remains, because carbon dioxide is indubitably a greenhouse gas. The major unknown is the actual value of climate sensitivity, i.e. the amount of temperature increase that would result from doubling the atmospheric concentration of CO2 compared to pre-industrial levels. IPCC models estimate that water vapour increases the 1°C effect that would be seen in a dry atmosphere to 2.5-4.5°C, whereas widely cited papers by Lindzen & Choi (2011) and Spencer & Braswell (2010) both describe empirical data that is consistent with negative feedback, i.e. sensitivity less than 1°C. The conclusion that climate sensitivity is significantly less than argued by the IPCC is also supported by a range of other empirical or semi-empirical studies (e.g., Forster & Gregory, 2006; Aldrin et al., 2012; Ring et al., 2012).
Gathering these various thoughts together, we conclude that the risk of occurrence of damaging human-caused global warming is but a small one within the much greater and proven risks of dangerous natural climate-related events (not to mention earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis and landslides, since we are dealing here with geological topics). Moreover, the property damage and loss of life that occurred in the floods in the UK in 2007; in the 2005 Katrina and 2012 Sandy storms in the USA; and in deadly bushfires in Australia in 2009 and 2013 all attest that even wealthy and technologically sophisticated nations are often inadequately prepared to deal with climate-related hazard.
The appropriate response to climate hazard is to treat it in the same way as other geological hazards. Which is to say that national policies are needed that are based on preparing for and adapting to all climate events as and when they happen, and irrespective of their presumed cause. Every country needs to develop its own understanding of, and plans to cope with, the unique combination of climate hazards that apply within its own boundaries. The planned responses should be based upon adaptation, with mitigation where appropriate to cushion citizens who are affected in an undesirable way.
The idea that there can be a one-size-fits-all global solution to deal with just one possible aspect of future climate hazard, as recommended by the IPCC, and apparently supported by Dr Summerhayes on behalf of the Geological Society, fails to deal with the real climate and climate-related hazards to which all parts of the world are episodically exposed.
Professor Robert (Bob) Carter
Professor Vincent Courtillot
14 February 2013
Aldrin, M. et al. 2012. Bayesian estimation of climate sensitivity based on a simple climate model fitted to observations on hemispheric temperature and global ocean heat content. Environmetrics, doi:10.1002/env.2140.
Alley, R.B. 2000. The Younger Dryas cold interval as viewed from central Greenland. Quaternary Science Reviews 19: 213–226
Forster, P.M. & Gregory, J.M. 2006. The climate sensitivity and its components diagnosed from Earth radiation budget data. Journal of Climate 19, 39-52.
Lappi, D. 2010. 65 million years of cooling
Lindzen, R.S. & Choi, Y-S. 2011. On the observational determination of climate sensitivity and its implications. Asia-Pacific Journal of Atmospheric Sciences 47, 377-390.
Ring, M.J. et al. 2012. Causes of the global warming observed since the 19th century. Atmospheric and Climate Sciences 2, 401-415.
Spencer R. W. & Braswell, W.D. 2010. On the diagnosis of radiative feedback in the presence of unknown radiative forcing. Journal of Geophysical Research 115, D16109.


Chinese orbital docking starts long march to space station
US commie hunt jumpstarted taikonaut takeoff
China has successfully launched an unmanned capsule into orbit and is beginning to maneuver it into place for the nation’s first orbital docking.
State media reports that a Shenzhou-8 capsule successfully blasted off from China’s launch platform in the Gobi desert atop an upgraded Long March-2F rocket, watched by Chinese vice premier Zhang Dejiang. It was successfully inserted into its planned orbit, and ground control is now beginning to shift it into position to dock with the Tiangong-1 – "Heavenly Palace-1" – module that has been in orbit since September.
If all goes to plan, the capsule will perform China’s first space docking in two days’ time, 343km above the planet’s surface. After a number of practice docking maneuvers, the capsule will then return to earth for examination and testing.
Successful docking will be crucial if China is to reach its goal of putting a space station into orbit by 2020. Under the plans that are currently public, the station will be a small affair in comparison to the International Space Station or the de-orbited Soviet Mir platform – but out of tiny acorns mighty oak trees grow.
In pure technology terms, the Chinese space program looks relatively unsophisticated. After all, US astronaut Neil Armstrong managed the first space docking in 1966 during the Gemini 8 mission. The Soviets managed it in 1969, and by 1975 the two countries were docking with each other’s crafts. It wasn’t until 1970 that China even got a satellite into orbit – although it’s now been selling orbital delivery to other countries for over 25 years.
The Middle Kingdom wouldn’t have made it this far if it hadn’t been for the 1950s McCarthy-era panic over communist infiltration in America. Qian Xuesen, one of America’s foremost rocket engineers in the 1930s and 1940s, and cofounder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the US, was arrested in the US after visiting his parents on mainland China in 1950. Accused on the flimsiest of evidence of being a communist, and despite the strong efforts of his university, Caltech, Qian was deported to China in 1955.
Qian, who died at the age of 98 in 2009, is hailed as the father of Chinese rocketry, and was his country's first – and originally only – rocket engineer. He built a group of engineers on his return to China, and helped develop a variety of military systems, including the Silkworm anti-ship missile, as well as building China’s successful Long March boosters. ®


Authorities in Japan have evacuated the area around a nuclear power plant after its reactor's cooling system failed following Friday's massive earthquake. Pressure began building overnight at the Fukushima Daiichi plant north of Tokyo, prompting officials to consider venting radioactive vapor on Saturday. The situation has prompted analysts to debate whether nuclear power is safe to use in earthquake-prone regions.
Japan has 55 nuclear power plants that produce nearly one-third of the country’s electrical output. Its also lies in one of the most seismically active zones in the world, known as the Pacific Ring of Fire.
Nuclear waste specialist Kevin Kamps at nuclear watchdog Beyond Nuclear says these two factors put Japan at a big risk. "An earthquake that damages multiple levels of the safety systems can lead to a troubled situation very quickly."
Kamps said the worst case scenario for the Fukushima Daiichi plant would be what happened at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine in 1986, when the radioactivity escaped to the outside environment, causing environmental and health hazards across portions of Europe. He said Japan should consider other energy options.
"There are much safer sources of electricity; renewables, like wind and solar, could not suffer catastrophic disasters like this that endanger entire regions with hazardous radioactive releases."
Analyst Jeremy Gordon with the World Nuclear Association, however, said overall the situation is not one in which Japan would need to abandon this major source of electricity. He said Japan's nuclear plants are built with multiple safety layers and earthquakes in mind.
"The engineering standard goes so far beyond what you would ever expect, and the regulations go far beyond what you would ever expect. The end result is that the power plants are extremely robust."
Gordon said a powerful earthquake that struck the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant in 2007 is an example of the effectiveness of nuclear power plant safety measures.
"They were hit really hard and there was damage within the plant and it took a long time to repair everything. But the safety system stayed in place and there was no nuclear risk from that earthquake."
Kamps said the Fukushima Daiichi situation, though, should be a wake-up call to the Japanese government and the world about the dangers of nuclear power plants. This can include radiological contamination of the environment and genetic damage, cancer and a wide spectrum of disease within people.
"A nuclear disaster anywhere is a nuclear disaster everywhere. We saw that at Chernobyl with significant nuclear fallout blanketing Europe in all directions for many hundreds of miles. We even saw fallout here in the United States," said Kamps.
But Gordon believes Japan has no other sustainable energy options. "It's been using nuclear power since 1966 and its main reason for doing that is because it doesn’t have any energy resources of its own at home. It doesn't have coal. It doesn't have gas. So it needs a sustainable and controllable domestic source of energy."
Greenpeace nuclear policy analyst Jim Riccio says the consequences of nuclear power need to be considered. "I think it's a good reminder, we've been focusing a lot lately on the downsides of nuclear in terms of its finances, there are other downsides beside the financial downside, potential for a meltdown and I think it should give people pause before they pursue new reactors here in the United States and around the world."
The International Atomic Energy Agency estimates that 20 percent of the world's nuclear reactors are in areas of significant seismic activity.


Volvo is working on an animal detection system to help make its cars safer in rural areas.
The new system uses the same radar and camera technology as Volvo's Pedestrian Detection with Full Auto Brake application, which is available on its:
•XC70 • S80
A warning sounds if an animal is detected on the road ahead, and if the driver fails to act, the car’ brakes are applied to either bring the vehicle to a halt or slow it down significantly.
Volvo says that, in Sweden alone, more than 40,000 accidents involving wild animals are reported every year.
Most collisions with animals happen at dawn, dusk, or during dark winter months, so the new system is being developed with full functionality in these conditions.
Volvo’ engineers also plan to 'teach' the system to recognise different animals. As part of the process, a team spent time at a safari park recording film sequences and the behavioural patterns of moose and deer. This is to help ensure the system responds to large animals – such as horses and deer – that pose the greatest risk to drivers and passengers.
A launch date has yet to be confirmed.
Our reviews are based on hard data and thorough testing in the real world.
Up to the minute news from around the globe


|Life depends on an essentially continuous exchange of
mass and energy between living organisms and their environment.
Human impact on this vital exchange has occurred on a global or
macroclimate scale. Understanding the physical principles
involved in heat transfer and absorption in the atmosphere is critical
to understanding how these physical factors affect living
organisms. The specific objectives of this section are to explain
the properties of heat transfer, and to describe laboratory activities
that can be used at a variety of academic levels with only slight
Described below are three series of experiments performed in
the laboratory to address questions that emphasize the underlying
principles of heat transfer. These hands-on experiments focused
on principles that relate to conduction and convection. The object was to identify the method of heat transfer
through solids, liquids, gases, and between boundaries.
Understanding these concepts gave us a better understanding of how heat
is transferred between our environment and living
organisms. These experiments were used as an integral part
of the workshop, which consisted of reflections on redesigning or
modifying lab exercises to fit personal needs of workshop
teachers. These exercises could be adapted for middle
school, high school, and college level courses.
The methods utilized for the three experiments involved increasing
or decreasing the temperature of a solid or liquid, and where
applicable, observing the motion of a dye caused by the changes in
temperature and density of the medium.
|Modes of Heat Transfer:
- Conduction: heat transfer resulting from direct contact
between substances of different temperatures; heat is transferred
from the high-temperature substance to the low by direct molecular
- Convection: heat transport by a moving fluid (gas of
liquid). The heat is first transferred to the fluid by
conduction, but the fluid motion carries the heat away.
- Radiative exchange: heat transfer via electromagnetic
waves, the amount of radiant energy emitted, transmitted, or
(Figure from Microsoft Encarta)
Return to Top
Laboratory Apparatus for Labs 1-3
|Lab 1: Heating
from Below: Convection
In this experiment, water was heated from below to produce
convection. Although the atmosphere is composed of air, this
experiment was relevant to atmospheric motion as well. The lower
atmosphere (troposphere) is mostly heated from below because the
oceans and continents absorb radiation from the sun and then transfer
some of the resulting heat energy to the lower atmosphere.
In Lab 1, a beaker was heated (see figure below). Thermometers were placed in 1/2 cm
below water surface and 1/2 cm above the bottom of the beaker.
The temperature was recorded at 30 second intervals. Drops of
dye were added to the bottom of the beaker between intervals.
After three minutes the beaker was removed from the hot plate and
temperature reading recorded for another five minutes.
Convection was visualized by observing the motion of the
The motion of the dye was circular from bottom to top and returning to
the bottom of the beaker. The energy from heating created a less
dense liquid at the bottom, thus causing the upward motion of the
dye. Upon reaching the surface, the dye was now in the denser
medium and therefore returned to the bottom. This motion is an
example of convection. This phenomenon is evident in the motion
of wind. The difference in densities and kinetic movement of the
water molecules driven by temperature change resulted in the movement of
air molecules. This lab can be used at lower levels to
demonstrate simple properties of heat transfer and convection.
At higher levels, this lab illustrates these basic principles, and
could be extended to address more complex applications related to
convection such as the Coriolis
1. Explain the process by which the water is heated.
2. Describe the motion of the water as made visible by the
3. Why does convection occur?
4. Did convection cease? When? Why?
Environmental Applications of Principles
of Radiative Exchange, Conduction and Convection (Figure from E. Zerba, Princeton University; email@example.com)
Return to Top
|Lab 2: Conduction
Comparison of this experiment with the first illustrated the
difference between the rate of heat transfer by conduction and that of
convection. It also illustrated the difference in heat
capacities between water and the solid materials of the
Lab 2 was configured similarly to Lab 1, but looked at the effect of
heating and cooling temperature difference using sand of equal weight
as water used in experiment 1. No dye was used in this experiment, as convection was not a
The temperature difference between the top and bottom layers of sand
indicated that sand heats and cools at a faster rate compared to
water. When the beaker was removed from the heat, the
temperature continued to increase via conduction from the bottom of the
beaker. This lab exercise is useful for demonstrating the concept of conduction to lower level students. Upper level
students can use this lab to make the connections between conduction and
heat capacity of various substances related to heat transfer that occurs between the
earth's surfaces and the surface of living organisms.
1. Is there any convection in the sand? Explain.
2. Why did the temperature recorded by the lower thermometer
continue to rise dramatically after the heating ceased?
3. On the basis of heat capacity, explain why the temperature
changes for the sand and water were different.
4. Using what you have observed in the two experiments, predict
whether a cold front will lower temperatures more at inland locations
or on the coast. Explain your answer.
Return to Top
|Lab 3: Cooling From Above
In lakes and oceans, convection is generally the result of cooling
from above rather than heating from below. This was demonstrated
by adding ice to the water.
Using an experimental setup that allowed
measurement of temperature at the top and the bottom of a beaker of
water, ice was added to the top of the beaker. This experiment
illustrated the concept that at 4 °C, water
has higher density and sinks. Convection was
visualized by the movement of dye added to the bottom of the beaker
which was displaced by the cooler more dense water.
This lab demonstrates several physical principles associated with heat
transfer, including density, kinetic molecular theory, and
convection. On a larger scale, this laboratory exercise
demonstrates the process by which seasonal turnovers occur in ponds
and lakes. At
lower levels, teachers may choose to discuss physical principles of
heat transfer only, while at upper levels, teachers may choose to
integrate this small-scale investigation with the study of climate
processes and lake nutrient stratification and mixing.
1. Why does ice float?
2. Is there any evidence of convection? Why does or does
it not occur?
3. Draw a diagram to explain how seasonal turnover occurs in a
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Introduction to Enzymes
The following has been excerpted from a very popular Worthington publication which was originally published in 1972 as the Manual of Clinical Enzyme Measurements. While some of the presentation may seem somewhat dated, the basic concepts are still helpful for researchers who must use enzymes but who have little background in enzymology.
Enzyme Kinetics: Energy Levels
Chemists have known for almost a century that for most chemical reactions to proceed, some form of energy is needed. They have termed this quantity of energy, "the energy of activation." It is the magnitude of the activation energy which determines just how fast the reaction will proceed. It is believed that enzymes lower the activation energy for the reaction they are catalyzing. Figure 3 illustrates this concept.
The enzyme is thought to reduce the "path" of the reaction. This shortened path would require less energy for each molecule of substrate converted to product. Given a total amount of available energy, more molecules of substrate would be converted when the enzyme is present (the shortened "path") than when it is absent. Hence, the reaction is said to go faster in a given period of time.


Origin: Ger < dial. form of rücken, the back (see ridge) + sack < OHG sac (see sack)
See rucksack in American Heritage Dictionary 4
Origin: : dialectal Ruck, back (from Middle High German rück, ruck, from Old High German hrukki; see sker-2 in Indo-European roots)
Origin: + Sack, sack (from Middle High German sac, from Old High German, from Latin saccus; see sack1).
Learn more about rucksack


AP U.S. History
Doing the DBQ: In-class practice
Read the directions at the top of the page and the question. Think about the question, then read it again. Pay attention to the language of the question and consider what it requires you to do.
BEFORE READING THE DOCUMENTS, MAKE A LIST OF FACTS YOU KNOW THAT ARE RELEVANT TO THE QUESTION AND TIME PERIOD. This is your outside information.
You have fifteen minutes to read the documents. As you read, underline significant passages and make marginal notes, particularly including facts NOT in the documents but relevant to them and the question.
After reading the documents, re-read the question and be sure you understand what it asks you to do. Go back to the question as often as necessary to keep the central issue or issues in mind.
Group the documents into as many as three groups or according to the criteria posed by the question. BE AWARE OF CHANGE OVER TIME. This may be an alternative to the organization suggested by the question. If you cannot categorize a document, omit it for the time being.
Based on your understanding of the question and the documents, draft a thesis statement – just a statement with a framework – don’t worry about background now.
Create an outline for the thesis, noting which documents you will use in each paragraph.
Add outside information from your notes to the outline in appropriate places. Each paragraph must have outside information. If you do not have enough outside information, think harder about the subject of the question, the time period and/or the documents.
Reconsider the documents you could not classify earlier; can you now fit them into the organizational system you have created for the question? If not, omit them.
Draft a complete thesis paragraph for a potential essay. Include content- relevant background information.
Draft a topic sentence for each paragraph and list the documents and outside information you would use in each. Be ready to explain your choices to the class tomorrow.


The Beer House
Having thus far cultivated the bog-trotter by washing and currying his person, forming his movements, refining his manners, and giving him some ideas of delicacy of behaviour, it now remained to introduce him in a knowledge of politics; and for this purpose, as he could not read the Gazettes, or other publications, it became necessary to give him the opportunity of oral information on political questions: and as attending the debates of congress, and hearing only in the galleries, would not put it in his power to join occasionally, in the debates, and exercise himself in speaking; the attending private clubs, or spending evenings occasionally at beer houses, seemed the more eligible means to be adopted Accordingly, an evening after this, the Captain taking him to a beer house, and occupying a bench, called for a mug of ale, and bade Teague attend to the conversations that were going forward.
The redemption of what are called certificates was at that time the subject of debate. It is well known to the readers of the present day in America, but which perhaps will not be so well understood when this work comes to be read an hundred years hence, that the United States, having incurred debts during the war with Great Britain, and being unable at that time to discharge them, could only give certificates of the respective sums due to the several creditors: these they did give to the soldiers of their army, to those from whom they had purchased articles, or who had rendered any service: The prospect not being immediate of the public being in a condition of taking up these, and the necessity of may of the holders pressing, they had transferred their right in the certificates for a fourth, fifth, or sixth of their nominal value; in some cases, at a much lower rate. --The question was, whether, under these circumstances, the original holder should be bound by the contract, and transferee ought to take the whole sum from the public.
It was stated on one side, that it was the folly of the holder to make the contract. There was no fraud or imposition in the case; what he did was with his eyes open. There was no undue advantage on the part of the purchaser, for he took no more than the place of the holder; and the bargain was fair and equal on both sides. The one had a present certainty which he preferred: the other an uncertainty of a greater sum, of which he chose to run the risk. The purchaser who gave credit to the bills of the states, stood in a better point of view than the holder, who distrusting payment, had parted with them.
On the other side it was contended, that the certificates being only the evidence of the debt, the receiving that was no payment; that real service was rendered, and real payment should be made; that the purchaser discovered a distrust of the credit of the government as well as the holder, in not giving the full value, and therefore stood on no better ground; that from the prevailing ideas under which these contracts were made, the holder did conceive himself parting with these securities at an under value, and the purchaser, as obtaining them at that rate, but neither had an idea that the loss on the one hand, or the advantage on the other, could be so great as on the principle of the provision made for the discharge of the public debt it had come to be; that for these and other reasons measures ought to have been adopted of a discrimination between the original holders and the transferees.
Teague had listened attentively, and, contrary to the injunction of the Captain, with his mouth open. He would willingly have taken a part in the debates, but the Captain, thinking the subject too abstruse to begin with, did not seem to approve of it, and shaking his head, repressed the disposition of the bog-trotter.
The next topic of argument was that of the assumption of the state debts. In order to understand this, we must state, that, in carrying on the war against Great Britain, contracts were made, and debts incurred, on the faith of the confederate states, by their representatives in congress, and this was called the continental debt. At the same time, contracts were made and debts incurred, on the faith of individual states, by their representatives in the state legislature, and this was called the state debt. This whole debt, continental and state, had been thrown into one mass, and the payment assumed by the Congress. The policy of this measure was now canvassed. On the one side it was contended, that as the whole debt, continental or state, was payable by the United States, each state paying the quota apportioned by the resolves of the former congress, and having credit for what state debt contracted on account of the war, was over or beyond this quota, the question was no more than this, whether the ways and means of raising money for the discharge of its proportion of the state debt, should remain with any state, as was before in the case of furnishing its quota; or whether the United States, assuming the debt in the first instance, should take upon themselves to discharge the whole; that it came to the same thing, as the debt was payable by the whole, and the only question was, with whom it should lie to devise ways and means, to discharge it; that the system of finance became more simple, when the United States assumed the whole, and provided for the payment by ways and means of their own at once; that it would contribute to the energy and secure the establishment of the federal government, to have that government the immediate debtor of the whole amount.
To this was answered, that each state was a better judge of the ways and means, within itself, for the raising money to discharge its debt; and while the United States, now having command of the imposts, should necessarily take upon them to collect and provide for the discharge of the continental debt, properly so called; yet it might be left with each state as before, to collect and pay over what is called the state debt; receiving credit from the United States, and having a right to draw from thence, any overplus of that proportion which by the resolves of the former congress they ought to pay of the whole debt.
The Captain thinking this subject also above the comprehension of the Irishman, was not willing that he should speak yet.
The next topic was that of the incorporation of the bank of the United States, some contending that no power was given by the constitution to the general government to incorporate banks; others asserting, though not expressly, yet under the article of paying debts, &c. and making laws necessary for that purpose, it was by implication given.
The Captain thought this also above the reach of Teague, and obliged him to be silent.
The next subject of argument was the policy of the war carrying on against the Indians. By some it was contended that an Indian was a good creature, simple and inoffensive, like a young child; that you might put your finger in his mouth and he would not bite; that by speaking softly and kindly, and giving him victuals and drink, and leggins, and breech-clouts, and blankets, you might do what you please with him; that when you gave him ammunition and fire-arms, he would go out and kill turkies, and shoot down squirrels, and bring you in a deer now and then; and there was no such thing as an Indian stealing a horse, or burning a house, or taking a scalp, unless you had first stolen his horse, or burnt his house, or taken his scalp; that when you made a treaty with these people, they had such a love of Justice, such a sense of honour, such a perfect command of themselves, and their young men, that there was no danger of their departing from the treaty.
On the other hand it was advanced, that, as a savage differed little from a beast of prey; a wolf, or a panther of the woods; was rude, his passions violent, attached to no farm, cultivating no art; his only amusement or sense of honour war, or hunting, the image of war; his sense of Justice little, his sense of honour none at all; no government in his state of society; no security for individual or national engagements; that fear pervading the mass, by reaching the feelings, and apprehensions of each individual was the only principle by which they could be governed; that instead of giving goods, as heretofore, it became us to retaliate by a heavy war.
Such were the arguments on each side of this question; when the Captain looking at Teague, and observing that he was anxious to advance his opinion, assenting with a bow, or inclination of his head, he seemed to signify that he might speak.
But before we hear him, it will be necessary to observe, that during the preceding arguments, the company had taken notice of him, as he sat beside the Captain with a mug of beer before them; and had wondered in their own minds who he could be; for though he was a little brushed up by this time, as may be supposed, having been at the levee, and taught to dance, and received lessons of delicacy; nevertheless, there was still and uncouthness in his appearance that could not be all at once shaken off.
He therefore the more easily engaged attention, when raising his voice, he began as follows:
Plase your anours, said he, I have heard of dese Indians, when I was tratting wid de Captain my master.-- I came acrass one odem, who affered a hundred dallars for my scoolp; he was going to a traty here abouts. But my good master de Captain took my part, and didnt let him take it aff; de vile savages! O! I have heard of dese Indians, plase your anours, dey come out of de woods, and stale shape, like de rabbers in Ireland, and burn houses, and take scoolps; trade wid dese! I would trate wid dem, wid a good shelelah, or tomahawk to break der heads. Give dem goods! by Shaint Patrick, I would give dem a good bullet hole in deir faces; or shoot dem trough de backside for deir pains. If I was in Cangress, and God love your shouls, I wish you would put me dere, I would make a law to coot dem aff, every one odem. O! if my uncle Phelim, and my cousins Dennis and Dermot, and my brother Murtock, and de oder boys was here, we would chase dem, as you would chase one of deir own shape; and keep dem aff de country, and send dem home to ate paratoes. God love your shouls, raise a good party and go out upon dem, and bring dem to de coort, and not let dem be staling shape, and taking scoolps from de poor people.
You tink to plase dem, by spaking good words to dem. Spake a good cudgel upon der heads, and bid dem be asy dear honies, and keep at deir homes, and plant paratoes, and be hangd in deir own country; plase your anours. Trate wid dem! Trate wid de wolves or de bears, dat roon troo de woods: I would trate wid a good knock in deir troat, and be doon wid dem.
From the manner in which he spoke, of having been in danger of losing his scalp, and the Captain rescuing him, it was understood that he had been in a campaign against the Indians, and his fervour was excused, and thought natural. Those particularly who were for using force against the savages, thought the Irish gentleman had spoken very well.
Encouraged with this success, the bog-trotter was confirmed in his opinion, that he was fit for any political appointment; and the Captain himself, began to entertain better hopes of his advances than he had yet done.


Karst diagram courtesy of Vancouver Island University.
Although the Cowling Arboretum does not exhibit any karst topography, much of Southern Minnesota does. Karst is a geological feature formed by the dissolution of soluble bedrock such as carbonates like limestone and dolostone. Karst formations lead to the formations of caves, disappearing streams, underground streams, sinkholes and other landforms in Southern Minnesota. The longest cave system in the world, the Mammoth-Flint Ridge Cave System in Kentucky was formed through the dissolution of carbonate rocks in its karst area.
Karst country in Southern Minnesota coincides with the Driftless Area that covers Southeastern Minnesota, Northwestern Iowa and Western Wisconsin. Glacial drift no younger than 500,000 years old has been discovered in Southern Minnesota Driftless Area, meaning it has not been glaciated in that time. Other geologists believe that the Driftless Area has not been glaciated in at least 2 million years. However, the Driftless Area has been subject to glacial lake outburst floods when titanic lakes like proglacial Lake Duluth began to cataclysmically drain about 9,500 years ago.
Karst forms when slightly acidic water meets a weakly soluble carbonate rock. Rainwater acidifies ever so slightly as it passes through the atmosphere and takes up CO2. As rainwater travels through the soil it picks up more CO2 and forms a weak carbonic acid solution, which readily dissolves carbonate rocks over time. Limestone is removed from the site in the form of calcium and bicarbonate.
A good way to spot a karst sinkhole in Southern Minnesota is to look for a tree covered area in the middle of a farmer’s field that she is wise not to plow.
- Callum McCulloch '15, for the Cole Student Naturalists