The Mexican Revolution: a nation in flux - part 2
Villa broke jail on Christmas Eve and was in El Paso when Huerta engineered the coup that overthrew Madero. In February 1913 Huerta staged a fake 10-day artillery duel with a fake rival, Felix Díaz, nephew of the old dictator. The battle was phony only in the sense that Huerta and Díaz were secretly in cahoots -- the loss of life to civilians was all too real. Purpose of the spurious engagement was to create a state of confusion in which Huerta could seize power from Madero. Madero was deposed on the 18th and four days later he and his vice-president, José Pino Suarez, were shot to death after being removed from their jail cells. Nobody believed Huerta's story that the two men had been killed in the crossfire when a rescue was attempted.
A particularly sinister role in Madero's overthrow was played by the U.S. ambassador, Henry Lane Wilson. An aggressive advocate of dollar diplomacy who was temperamentally drawn to Huerta -- both were alcoholics -- Wilson detested Madero and was involved up to his neck in Huerta's consiracy to overthrow him.
Huerta set himself up as a military dictator but soon faced a challenge from the north. His enemies were Pancho Villa, a former federal senator named Venustiano Carranza and an ambitious, iron-willed ex-schoolteacher from Sonora named Alvaro Obregón (link Obregón.) Adding to Huerta's troubles was the U.S. occupation of Veracruz. This action stemmed from Mexico's refusal to give a twenty-one gun salute as an apology for having arrested nine American bluejackets who allegedly entered a prohibited zone in Tampico. Throughout 1913-14 Huerta's forces were steadily driven back toward the capital. The campaign's most memorable engagement was the June 23, 1914 capture of Zacatecas by Villa's superbly equipped División del Norte ("Division of the North"). Zacatecas finished Huerta. He resigned June 15 and two days later he was on a German freighter bound for Spain.
Victory over Huerta did not bring peace but a new clash between revolutionary leaders that pitted Villa and Zapata against Carranza and Obregón. At first Villa-Zapata had the upper hand, with the leaders holding an epic December 4, 1914 meeting in Mexico City following an abortive convention in Aguascalientes. Then the tide began to turn. Carranza's forces, known as the Constitutionalists, had been bottled up in Veracruz but bit by bit, thanks mainly to the superb generalship of Obregón, they began to prevail against the Zapatistas and Villistas.
By April 1915 World War I had been raging for six months. Though Obregón was without formal military training, he studied the trench warfare tactics of the Western Front and used them to defeat Villa in two crucial battles at Celaya, Guanajuato. He then drove Villa north -- losing an arm in one engagement -- and by the end of 1915 Villa was reduced to pretty much what he'd been at the outset of the Revolution: a marauder prowling the Chihuahua sierra.
As for the Zapatistas, they really weren't interested in extending their domain outside their jungly and mountainous home state of Morelos. There the Revolution had been won. They seized Puebla but made no further move toward reducing Carranza's stronghold in Veracruz.
The Carranza-Obregón forces, which now controlled most of Mexico, received a big boost when the United States extended de facto recognition to Carranza on October 19, 1915. This infuriated Villa, who had always been friendly to the U.S., and led to the March 1916 villista raid on Columbus, New Mexico. The attack claimed the lives of eight American soldiers and ten civilians and resulted in the so-called Punitive Expedition of 1916-17, when American cavalry units under General "Black Jack" Pershing wandered through northern Mexico for ten months but completely failed in their attempt to capture Villa.
Carranza, who had been ruling provisionally (he was known by followers as "the First Chief"), officially became president on March 11, 1917, in an election in which he won 797,305 votes against the 11,615 garnered by his closest rival. A month before, on February 5, the Constitution of 1917 was adopted. It was this charter, (link 1917 Constitution) that so infuriated Catholics with its anticlerical provisions.
Although the 1917 Constitution also contained provisions to improve the lot of workers and peasant farmers, these were ignored by the Carranza government. Corruption was endemic and strikes were mercilessly broken. But Carranza did manage to rid himself of a major enemy: Emiliano Zapata. Zapata was slain April 10, 1919, being led into a trap by Col. Jesús Guajardo, a federal officer who set up the ambush by pretending to defect to the Zapatistas.
Obregón had gone into temporary retirement, returning to his native Sonora to raise chick peas. But on June 1, 1919, he declared his candidacy for the June 1920 presidential election. In the fall of 1919 Carranza announced that he would be supporting Ignacio Bonillas, then Mexican ambassador in Washington.
It was a disastrous choice. Bonillas, an M.I.T. graduate, had spent so little of his life in Mexico that political enemies claimed he had difficulty speaking the language of his ancestors. They derisively called him "Meester" Bonillas and the clever Obregón lost no time tapping into this sentiment. During the campaign pro-Obregón railroad workers kept Bonillas from making a scheduled appearance by derailing his train. Deliberately fabricated rumors then went out that Bonillas had canceled the appearance because it interfered with a Spanish lesson he was taking.
Carranza retaliated with a reign of terror against Obregón campaign workers. Obregón, fearing that he was about to be arrested, fled Mexico City and took refuge in Chilpancingo, capital of Guerrero state. On April 20 he announced that he was giving up the presidential campaign and would take arms against Carranza.
The Carranza regime collapsed like a house of cards. While generals went over to Obregón en masse, Carranza and his corrupt followers loaded up an eight-car "Golden Train" with all the money and valuables they could lay their hands on and prepared to leave for Veracruz. During the journey, attacks on the "Golden Train" caused Carranza to abandon it in an attempt to escape on foot. On May 20, in a hut near the Puebla village of Tlaxcalantongo, he was treacherously murdered in his sleep by followers of a local bandit-turned-general named Rodolfo Herrero. Herrero had previously welcomed Carranza and promised him refuge.
On June 1 Governor Adolfo de la Huerta of Sonora was installed by Congress as interim president.
In the regular election, held October 26, 1920, Obregón defeated Alfredo Robles Domínguez, a candidate backed by the Catholic Church, by a 1,131,751 to 47,442 margin. At midnight of November 30, Alvaro Obregón raised his remaining arm and took the oath of office.
The most tumultuous phase of the Mexican Revolution was now over. In a classic application of the natural selection process, the toughest, smartest, and most ambitious of Mexico's revolutionary leaders had successfully eliminated his rivals and was now alone at the top.


Courtesy of the Arkansas Secretary of State’s Office
Born on August 10, 1837, in Maury County, Tennessee, Eagle moved with his family to Arkansas when he was only two years old. The Eagle family, descendants of German immigrants who had settled in Pennsylvania in the colonial era, farmed first in Pulaski County and later outside Lonoke.
In 1859, Eagle was elected deputy sheriff of Prairie County, a position he held when he enlisted in the Fifth Arkansas Mounted Rifles in June 1861. Entering the Confederate ranks as a private, he rose to the rank of captain and saw action at Hominy Creek and Pea Ridge and was taken prisoner at Murfreesboro, Tennessee. In May 1863, he returned to his unit as part of a prisoner exchange and fought in the battles at Jackson, Chickamauga, and Atlanta, where he was seriously wounded in the abdomen. Remarkably Eagle recovered and rejoined his troops after only two months.
It was said that men either found God or lost Him forever during the Civil War. Eagle was among the former. Following the war he studied for the ministry and was ordained as a Baptist preacher. At the same time he managed the family farm, turning it into one of the most prosperous in the state.
In 1872 friends placed Eagle's name in nomination for the state legislature and he was elected. He became actively involved in the Brooks-Baxter dispute in 1874, raising and commanding three companies in support of Elisha Baxter. Eagle married Mary Kavanaugh Oldham of Kentucky in 1882.
Eagle's reputation as a farmer and a minister served him well in politics and contributed to his nomination as the Democratic Party's gubernatorial candidate in 1888. That year the party faced a formidable challenge from a coalition of blacks, Republicans, the Knights of Labor, and agrarian reformers who belonged to the Agricultural Wheel. Eagle won what many regard as the most corrupt election in Arkansas history. His rival C.M. Norwood protested the election results but to no avail. Eagle was re-elected by a larger margin in 1890.
In Eagle's first term the legislature was little inclined to enact the more ambitious items in his agenda which included reforms in taxes, railroad regulation, education, roads, and prisons. His program fared a little better in his second term but the governor did manage over four years to restore a degree of harmony in the Democratic Party. In 1891 the legislature enacted a separate coach law requiring separate accommodations for blacks and whites traveling on public transportation. Eagle did not advocate such a measure, but allowed it to become law.
Next: William M. Fishback


Posted by Bruce Kahl on December 10, 1999
In Reply to: Re: "Push the envelope" posted by Arthur Smith on December 10, 1999
: : I will accept the premise that "push the envelope"
: : originated with airline pilots, but I would like to
: : know in exactly what context: the actual practical
: : mechanics of flying as in the use of the controls
: : relative to a certain aspect of aircraft performance,
: : the theory of flight as in aerodynamics or the
: : efficiency with which the aircraft performs relative
: : to outside forces, or some other practical
: : explanation?
This expression comes out of the US Air Force test pilot program
of the late 1940's.
The envelope refers to a plane's performance capabilities. The limits of the planes ability to fly at speeds and altitudes and under certain stresses define what is known as its performance envelope. It's an "envelope" in the sense that it contains the ranges of the plane's abilities.
"Pushing the envelope" is a good example of how jargon -- the specialized or technical vocabulary of a group or profession -- gradually enters general usage. "Pushing the envelope" comes from the jargon of test pilots, and has actually been around since the end of the Second World War. The "envelope" involved is a sort of visual metaphor for the technical limits of a high-performance aircraft. A graph of such an aircraft's performance would appear as a rising slope as the craft approaches its limits of speed and stress, then fall off rapidly (putting it mildly) when the plane exceeds its capacity and the pilot loses control. Safety, relatively speaking, lies within these limits, or "inside the envelope." A pilot who "pushes the envelope" and tries to exceed the known capabilities of the aircraft risks what engineers delicately term "catastrophic system failure," otherwise known as a crash.
Because "pushing the envelope" had such a esoteric origin, it took a best-selling book -- Tom Wolfe's "The Right Stuff" in 1979 -- and later the popular movie "Top Gun" to introduce it to the general public. Since then it has begun to crop up in increasingly non-technical contexts, to the point where it is now a currently trendy metaphor for simply "pushing it," or testing the limits of what is permissible in a given situation.


DNA typing is an invaluable forensic tool for associating biological evidence with its true source. Generally DNA technology affords the forensic scientist the ability to effectively eliminate individuals who have been falsely associated with a biological sample and to substantially reduce the number of potential contributors to a few (if not one) individuals. When it was initially developed, DNA typing was used predominately to compare an evidence profile directly with the profile from a reference sample(s). Many of these one-to-one comparisons have been extremely useful in assisting to solve crimes. More than a decade ago the capability of DNA typing was substantially expanded by the creation of DNA databases that contain profiles from convicted felons (and now arrestees as well) and profiles from evidence from unsolved cases(1)
. The DNA profiles contained within the forensic indices can be compared, and candidate matches can be investigated further. Indeed, DNA database searching has become another routine way to develop new and often strong investigative leads. The success stories of DNA database search leads are well known for identifying suspects (ultimately perpetrators) and are being used increasingly in post-conviction exoneration cases.
Initially, database searching was applied to direct profile comparisons to generate investigative leads. However, in 2003–2004 the Forensic Science Service demonstrated that the database searching capabilities could be expanded by employing indirect comparisons via an approach known as familial searching(3)
. This type of search led to the identification of Craig Harman through an association with a first-order relative’s DNA profile housed in the United Kingdom DNA Database. The crime involved the heart attack death of a motorist due to a brick thrown through the windshield of the victim’s truck from a bridge above the roadway. A direct comparison of the DNA profile from the brick and profiles in the National Database did not result in any candidate matches. However, 25 similar DNA profiles were identified, and at the top position on the list of candidates was a relative of Craig Harman. Harman voluntarily submitted a reference sample, and his DNA profile was a direct match with that of the evidence. He subsequently pleaded guilty to manslaughter.
"There is good a priori reason to believe that familial searching would have some success. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics Correctional Populations in United States, 1996 report, at least 42.8% of inmates had close relatives who also have been incarcerated."
Anecdotally, familial searching had been carried out previously to the Harman case for years in one-to-one comparison cases in which an evidence profile was sufficiently similar to the evidence. Such similarities often prompted the forensic scientist to suggest to investigators to look for a relative of the suspect. However, the Harman case was the first one in which a DNA database was used to develop the investigative lead. Today there are a number of documented cases where familial searching was successful in identifying the perpetrator(3)
Familial searching is based on the principle that first-order relatives, i.e., siblings, parents, and to a lesser degree even more distantly related relatives (e.g., uncles, aunts and cousins), will share features of their DNA profiles (i.e., alleles) on average more so than do unrelated individuals. While there may be no direct matches when comparing an evidence DNA profile with reference profiles in a DNA database, there can be "near genetic matches" (or better stated "associations") with convicted felon profiles, and one of these candidates may be a close relative of the true source of the crime scene evidence. Familial searching is another tool in the arsenal for developing investigative leads from DNA databases.
There is good a priori reason to believe that familial searching would have some success. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics Correctional Populations in United States, 1996 report(5)
, at least 42.8% of inmates had close relatives (i.e., father, mother, brother, sister, child) who also have been incarcerated. Since DNA profiles of most inmates are entered in the CODIS system (and, for example, the UK Database), familial searching has a great potential to assist law enforcement by identifying an individual in CODIS who may be a close relative of the true source of a forensic sample. Typically, familial DNA database searches are best suited for identification of an individual who could be a sibling of the true source of the evidence sample and identification of an individual who could be the parent or offspring of the true source of the evidence.
Use of familial searching can constitute a powerful law enforcement tool that should increase the number of suspects (and thus perpetrators) identified through forensic DNA technology, and advocates say it already is a legitimate way to develop investigative leads(3)
. Anecdotally, it appears that the use of familial DNA searching in the UK that results in a conviction may be on a performance par with the use of CODIS to produce offender hits that result in conviction(3)
. Bieber et al.(4)
suggested that familial search analysis could increase the cold hit rate up to 40%. Even with its success in identifying true perpetrators via indirect associations in a DNA database search, familial searching is not without its critics, who contend that familial searching simply is an invasion of privacy and merely a genetic fishing expedition by law enforcement. While those against familial searching acknowledge that convicted criminals should lose some privacy rights, they assert that relatives of convicted felons do not have an expectation of a reduced right to privacy. Critics claim that these searches are even more troubling since they constitute an increased discriminatory scrutiny of the low-income and ethnic groups that are overrepresented in the database(6)
The recent identification in California via familial searching of a serial killer suspect shows that this investigative tool could be beneficial to underprivileged groups(7)
. For more than 30 years, a serial murderer—the Grim Sleeper—in Los Angeles remained unidentified. The majority of victims were young African American females (that clearly represented a low-income, minority population group). Yet familial searching linked Franklin via his son who was entered into the California database for a felony weapons charge in recent years. To ensure that the association was a viable lead, the DNA laboratory also typed the evidence and the son for Y STRs. Barring mutation, a father passes his Y STR chromosome intact to his son. Given the discrimination power afforded by current Y STR profiling kits is around 0.999, most false indirect associations can be eliminated(9)
. Thus, when using a Y STR match threshold, rarely would an investigator be incorrect in following up the lead provided by the DNA association. The two Y STR profiles were the same, which strongly supports a paternal relationship between the source of the DNA evidence and Franklin's son. Franklin's DNA profile was a direct match to evidence in the murders over the past three decades. This is strong support of the power of Y STRs in this context.
Even with this success story the debate on the use of familial searching will likely continue. Currently some countries and only two US states (California and Colorado) are openly conducting familial searching; few jurisdictions are moving towards conducting familial searching, and one state (Maryland) has prohibited familial searching of criminal databases. As the debate continues additional questions will likely arise, including:
- Could one make a proportionality argument and that the seriousness of the crime warrants its use (for example in the Grim Sleeper case)?
- Alternatively to the proportionality position, if it is acceptable under serial murder cases, should familial searching be appropriate in other “lesser” crimes? After all there is evidence that a large portion of violent criminals start out by committing lesser crimes.
- Should familial DNA searching be made available to a convicted person who has been afforded post-conviction DNA testing that has not yet “exonerated” him/her because the identity of the source of the forensic unknown DNA profile has not been established, even after a CODIS search?
- Is familial searching any different than using partial information as is done in other settings?
- Does the aura of DNA impede its use—i.e., should DNA be treated differently than other forensic evidence?
- Is a one-to-one comparison case in which a familial association is indicated any different than a familial association obtained by a database search?
- Is legislation required prior to proceeding with a familial search?
- Is there accountability if a CODIS manager or a laboratory analyst discovers a potential suspect who partially matches the evidence and does not report the finding?
- Could the nonreported association constitute Brady material?
- What about the next victim who would not have become a victim if the analyst provided the information?
- Should database managers seek legal advice on what is proper action regarding partial matches or potential associations?
- If a state or jurisdiction desires to implement familial searching, what are the best practices to apply?
With regard to the last question, software is needed that effectively searches databases based on the best-performing parameters. The proposed practices for identifying associations with their false-positive and false-negative rates should be understood(12)
. When possible, Y STR typing should be performed (for male relatives)(11)
In conclusion, there is unequivocal evidence that familial searching will increase the cold hit rate and help solve more cases. Most states legislatively authorized CODIS to be utilized for "criminal identification" purposes. The means used to achieve that purpose are seldom specifically described in the empowering statutes. California and Colorado each implemented familial DNA searching without legislative assistance(3)
. The "Grim Sleeper" case shows that familial DNA searching can be used solely for "criminal identification" purposes (see reference 20 for an extended discussion of this topic(14)
). The prediction is that as more successes such as the Grim Sleeper case are reported, more laboratories will seek to use familial searching. If familial searching is to be implemented it should be performed in a well-thought-out, robust manner. There are some models to follow, and the laboratory should work closely with its legal counterparts to develop an effective plan.
Editor's Note: Learn more about familial searches to solve crimes at the 21st International Symposium on Human Identification, which is being held October 11–14, 2010, in San Antonio, Texas. A panel discussion on October 14 will explore the details of familial searching and focus on the controversy behind the policy. Panelists will include Bruce Budowle, Institute of Investigative Genetics; Rockne Harmon, Alameda County District Attorney’s Office (retired); Jennifer Luttman, Federal Bureau of Investigation; Chris Maguire, Forensic Science Service; and Sonia Suter, George Washington Law School.


May 19, 2008 A vaccine created by University of Rochester Medical Center scientists prevents the development of Alzheimer's disease-like pathology in mice without causing inflammation or significant side effects.
Vaccinated mice generated an immune response to the protein known as amyloid-beta peptide, which accumulates in what are called "amyloid plaques" in brains of people with Alzheimer's. The vaccinated mice demonstrated normal learning skills and functioning memory in spite of being genetically designed to develop an aggressive form of the disease.
The Rochester scientists reported the findings in an article in the May issue of Molecular Therapy, the journal of The American Society of Gene Therapy.
"Our study demonstrates that we can create a potent but safe version of a vaccine that utilizes the strategy of immune response shaping to prevent Alzheimer's-related pathologies and memory deficits," said William Bowers, associate professor of neurology and of microbiology and immunology at the Medical Center and lead author of the article. "The vaccinated mice not only performed better, we found no evidence of signature amyloid plaque in their brains."
Alzheimer's is a progressive neurodegenerative disease associated with dementia and a decline in performance of normal activities. Hallmarks of the disease include the accumulation of amyloid plaques in the brains of patients and the loss of normal functioning tau, a protein that stabilizes the transport networks in neurons. Abnormal tau function eventually leads to another classic hallmark of Alzheimer's, neurofibrillary tangle in nerve cells. After several decades of exposure to these insults, neurons ultimately succumb and die, leading to progressively damaged learning and memory centers in the brain.
The mice that received the vaccines were genetically engineered to express large amounts of amyloid beta protein. They also harbored a mutation that causes the tau-related tangle pathology. Prior to the start of the vaccine study, the mice were trained to navigate a maze using spatial clues. They were then tested periodically during the 10-month study on the amount of time and distance traveled to an escape pod and the number of errors made along the way.
"What we found exciting was that by targeting one pathology of Alzheimer's -- amyloid beta -- we were able to also prevent the transition of tau from its normal form to a form found in the disease state," Bowers said.
The goal of the vaccine is to prompt the immune system to recognize amyloid beta protein and remove it. To create the vaccine, Bowers and the research group use a herpes virus that is stripped of the viral genes that can cause disease or harm. They then load the virus container with the genetic code for amyloid beta and interleukin-4, a protein that stimulates immune responses involving type 2 T helper cells, which are lymphocytes that play an important role in the immune system.
The research group tested several versions of a vaccine. Mice were given three injections of empty virus alone, a vaccine carrying only the amyloid beta genetic code, or a vaccine encoding both amyloid beta and interlueikin-4, which was found to be the most effective.
"We have learned a great deal from this ongoing project," Bowers said. "Importantly, it has demonstrated the combined strengths of the gene delivery platform and the immune shaping concept for the creation of customized vaccines for Alzheimer's disease, as well as a number of other diseases. We are currently working on strategies we believe can make the vaccine even safer."
Bowers expects the vaccine eventually to be tested in people, but due to the number of studies required to satisfy regulatory requirements, it could be three or more years before human trials testing this type of Alzheimer's vaccine occur.
Grants from the National Institutes of Health supported the study. In addition to Bowers, authors of the Molecular Therapy article include Maria E. Frazer, Jennifer E. Hughes, Michael A. Mastrangelo and Jennifer Tibbens of the Medical Center and Howard J. Federoff of Georgetown University Medical Center.
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What happens in week 3?
Three weeks after fertilisation, the different parts of the embryo start to form. Three layers of cells form, out of which all the different organs of the body will develop. Two folds grow along the length of the embryo - these roll up to make the neural tube which eventually becomes the brain and spinal cord. The placenta - the embryo's life-support system - starts to work, delivering nourishment and taking waste products away.


Simaltaneously introduces the joys of treasure hunting and coin collecting
This kit will encourage users to not only find buried coins using a special child-sized metal detector, but also learn about the history of the treasure they unearth by researching them in the included child’s coin guide. Set up a treasure hunt and let participants find, research, classify and store their coins using all the tools included in this kit.
This makes a nice small group activity for classroom use or independent study. Includes junior metal detector, child's coin guide, 2-in-1 magnifier, plastic trowel, 12-pocket coin wallet, small pouch and U.S. quarters coin folder.
Requires two “9-Volt” batteries (not included).
WARNING: CHOKING HAZARD – Small parts. Not for children under 3 years.
Recommended for ages 8+.


Gone are the days when Fred Haise, of the Apollo 13 crew, could remark on how his urine looked as if a golden string of glittering stars as they passed out of the evacuation chamber of the space capsule in which he’d just relieved himself. Or at least gone are the days when Bill Paxton in the character of Haise could say something like that in a movie and be accurate. These days our astronauts drink the water recycled from their pee — and find clever new uses for their poop too.
On the International Space Station, they use an automated system to remove extract water from waste for use once more. On the private Mars shot that will launch in 2018, Inspiration Mars, they will use a simpler, but perhaps more elegant, method: a technique called forward osmosis. Water likes to move to diffuse concentrations whenever possible from high to low, in an effort to even things out. So when it’s confronted with a solution that contains a solution with a high concentration of salt, which has a high osmotic potential, this ticks water off and it will move toward that higher concentration to balance things out. So when urine, which contains lots of water, of course, is put into in a chamber it will pass through the membrane, leaving behind all of the other stuff that makes up urine, leaving the water purified and the salty solution diluted and ready to, yick, drink. I’m sure that any remnant salty taste from the diluted solution will provide the astronauts plenty of reminder of where their water came from (their pee).
The forward osmosis method was tested on the last space shuttle flight, Atlantis in 2011. The problem is, the results showed that in microgravity osmosis worked at only about half the efficiency it does here on Earth, something the mission’s engineers will have to work out. The Inspiration Mars people recently announced that these bags of water and waste will be used in an entirely novel way, to line the space capsule to protect it from cosmic rays.
A quote from a mission member in a New Scientist article on the subject points out that nuclei block cosmic radiation and that water has about three times the amount of nuclei that are found in metals. And since the nuclei block rather than absorb radiated particles, the water won’t become irradiated, keeping it safe to drink. So lining the capsule with bags of water that the crew can also drink should be an efficient and elegant solution to both staving off cosmic radiation and dehydration among the crew.
But what’s more efficient than drinking the water extracted from your own urine? Nothing. When a bag of water is finished off by the husband/wife team that will serve as personnel on the mission, they will use said bag to deposit waste. The osmotic processes will then extract the water for reuse. In the meantime, that bag of waste will go back in the capsule lining to serve as a shield once more, this time filled with poop or pee. And one can only imagine how effective those are at reflecting cosmic rays.


elduce wrote:1. I don't understand 'futurum'. 'To be' can work actively but passively it doesn't make sense. What of the future active participle? is futururum correct?
is the future participle actually. In this textbook, if a verb is intransitive but still has a future participle, then the future participle is given instead of the perfect passive participle as with other verbs. There are a couple other verbs in Wheelock's that have the future participle listed as the 4th principal part, such as fugio, fugere, fugi, fugiturum
; you will know it is the future participle by the -ur- before the ending. The supine stem (4th principal part minus the -um/-us ending) always ends in T or S, so if it ends in R you should already know something is up.
multus, -a, -um
2. How does the comparative for more, many, most work? Always use the Genitive in these instances? Thanks.
plus, gen. pluris
plurimus, -a, -um
With the comparative, plus
, you use the partitive genitive to say "more (of) ____", or "very many (of) ____" if you prefer. This is because the form plus
is really more a neuter noun or substantive adjective, like satis
, etc. You will rarely see plus
in the singular in any cases other than the nominative and accusative (which are indentical), and the dative singular does not exist in classical Latin. The genitive and rarely ablative are mostly restricted to expressions of value (unfortunately not covered in Wheelock's), e.g. ager multo pluris est
"the farm is of much more (worth)".
In the plural, plures, plura
, you just use it like a regular adjective without the partitive genitive.
flebile nescio quid queritur lyra, flebile lingua murmurat exanimis, respondent flebile ripae


Exploring the field of cancer genomics can give a researcher without a sturdy footing in bioinformatics a bad case of information overload. But the potential payoff is high. Cancer researchers have been amassing data on small mutations, copy number variations, epigenetic changes, expression level differences, and clinical features for a number of cancer types since long before the first whole cancer genome sequence (of an acute myeloid leukemia) was completed in 2008. That means researchers diving into the fray today will have more—and higher quality—information at their fingertips than ever before. Yet navigating it won’t be easy, says William Hahn, an associate professor of medicine who studies a number of cancers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. “It’s a huge challenge to know what’s out there and how to use it.”
Much of the available genomic data comes from a handful of large international collaborations. The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), a project of the National Cancer Institute and the National Human Genome Research Institute, oversees the generation of genomic data from quality-controlled samples, most of which have been analyzed using multiple platforms. The UK Cancer Genome Project houses a data collection called COSMIC, the single most comprehensive catalog of somatic mutations in the world. Casting an even wider net, the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) is a one-stop-shopping portal through which you can access data from its 12 member countries, as well as from the TCGA and COSMIC databases.
Once you’ve got the data, the trick is to know what they can and cannot tell you, says Hahn. But whatever type of data you search for, he cautions, your in silico analyses should be considered hypothesis-generating. At the end of the day, you have to go back to the lab or into the clinic to validate them.
The Scientist surveyed freely available data, visualization, and analysis portals for cancer genome information to bring you a start-up guide for integrating the approach into your work.
Is my favorite gene mutated in cancer?
A good starting point is to check for known mutations and other aberrations in your gene of interest. The ICGC Data Portal offers several search routes. Enter a gene name, NCBI accession number, or Ensembl gene ID in the Gene Search field, click through to the Gene Report, and under Mutation Summary you’ll find the mutations and copy number changes detected and their frequency in the tumors analyzed to date. The COSMICsection just below lists somatic mutations, including point mutations, small deletions, and insertions, from the COSMIC database.
Another tack is to look for all the affected genes in a tumor type. In the ICGC Data Portal, you can accomplish this by clicking Genes under Database Search, and from there, selecting the type of cancer you’re interested in as well as optional sub-parameters such as the pathway you’d like to explore. Alternatively, in the TCGA’s Data Portal, you can select Bulk Download from the Download Data menu and retrieve information on somatic mutations, or other data types such as copy number, DNA methylation, and gene expression, for a number of tumor types.
Both ICGC and TCGA data are publicly available, but note that they have already been processed: sequences have been confirmed by various techniques, and patient-identifying information, such as the presence of germline SNPs, has been removed. “By and large, the processed data is our best attempt to provide information that is accurate and has few false positives,” says Lincoln Stein, director of informatics and biocomputing at the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research in Toronto. Researchers can request access to raw data through ICGC’s Data Access Compliance Office if they would like to know the germline SNPs, which could be relevant in studies of cancer risk and cancer drug response.
Also, consider supplementing your ICGC search with an exploration of data sets from other centers, including TCGA’s Data Portal. ICGC only updates the database every few months, whereas TCGA updates as new data become available. What’s more, ICGC does not store TCGA’s raw data—to access it, submit a Data Access Request form to TCGA.
Are the mutations in my favorite gene “drivers” in this tumor type?
Finding a gene mutation in tumor samples is just the beginning. The next step is differentiating the drivers that actually contribute to the cancer phenotype from the passenger mutations that many cancers pick up pell-mell because of their genomic instability.
The frequency of the mutation can provide some clues. “If it’s mutated in 5 or 8 or 10 percent [or more] of cancers, then you say it’s probably important,” Hahn says. It’s harder to judge for less frequently mutated genes, which can still be important to the biology and progression of tumors, he explains, adding that data from rare mutations may not be reliable if your gene has only been sequenced in a few samples. ICGC’s Mutation Summary is one source of mutation frequency data. Another option is the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center’s (MSKCC) cBio Cancer Genomics Portal, a user-friendly site for working with data from TCGA and other data sets. You can query this portal by entering the name of one or more genes. The output is a list of cancer studies of different tumor types; click on a study, and then on View Cancer Study Details, to call up a graphic—referred to as an “oncoprint”—that represents the frequency of genomic alterations.
You can also predict the functional impact (high, medium, low, or neutral) of missense mutations using a tool within MSKCC’s portal called MutationAssessor. Like other methods, MutationAssessor looks at conservation across all the homologs of a protein, but, unlike others, it also takes into account the conservation within just the closest homologs, which is called “specificity.” This gives the tool an advantage in predicting mutations that have a functional impact, particularly those that lead to a change in function rather than a loss or gain of function, says Boris Reva, who developed the tool with colleagues at MSKCC.
If you are in View Cancer Study Details in the MSKCC portal, clicking the Mutations tab takes you to a table with a column labeled Predicted Impact. Clicking on items in this column opens an output table summarizing information about the gene mutation you’re looking at. To see how well conserved the mutated amino acid residue is, click on MSA (multiple sequence alignment) for a sequence alignment with the conservation and specificity score above each amino acid. Alternatively, because MutationAsssessor is also a stand-alone tool, you can enter your mutation of interest in the text box on its site to obtain a similar output table.
What are the genes and pathways that are associated with a tumor type?
Many cancer researchers are looking beyond individual genes to map gene networks. One way to do this is with Regulome Explorer, a set of tools developed by the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, Washington, and MD Anderson Cancer Center at the University of Texas in Houston that provides a wide-ranging view of connections between mutations, expression level changes, and clinical outcomes. The tool is currently loaded with three TCGA data sets, with plans to add more in the next 6 months. To explore networks in which a gene might be involved, select the first tool on the portal page, All Pairs Significance Tests, which looks for pairwise associations. The new window that opens shows a graphical representation of a breast cancer data set, but you can load one of the others by going to the Data menu and clicking Select. In the dialog box on the right, enter your gene of interest in the Label field under Feature 1. Under Feature 2, choose the type of genomic change and the gene for which you want to find associations, then click Filter. Or, you can leave both boxes in Feature 2blank, and view all the genomic associations; mousing over a line tells you the change associated with your gene of interest.
You can do the same analysis of data with a different list of cancer types in MSKCC’s cBio Portal. Just enter your gene—say, Trim2—in the gray field, as before, and click Submit. After you select the tumor type and click View Cancer Study Details, you can review the network of known gene interactions and pathways involving the gene under the Network tab. You can mouse over a gene, represented as a node, to see a color-coded wheel summarizing its mutation, expression, and copy number status. (The color for each alteration is under the Legend tab.)
Of course, many gene networks are unknown. A tool called Dendrix predicts whether genes share a pathway by using an algorithm that searches for genes mutated in a mutually exclusive pattern. To run Dendrix, upload two text files to a server at ccmbweb.ccv.brown.edu/dendrix—one listing all the genes mutated in samples of a particular tumor type (for example, a TCGA data set), and the other listing just the genes you want to analyze. Leave out genes mutated at very high frequency, which skew the results, says Fabio Vandin, a bioinformatician who developed Dendrix with colleagues at Brown University. The completed analysis will be e-mailed to you, usually within a day, as a text file readable via a platform called Cytoscape.
What are the clinical associations with genomic changes?
“When you submit to journals these days, there’s quite a good chance the referees will say, ‘What does this gene mutation do in the clinic to patients?’” says Markus Bredel of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, who studies gene mutations that correlate with short survival times for patients with glioblastoma.
Several university-operated visualization tools can address this question. Oncoprints at MSKCC cBio Portal show survival curves associated with genomic alterations in the Survival tab. Alternatively, the University of California Santa Cruz Cancer Genomics Browser lets you probe associations between an array of clinical parameters and genomic data for many data sets. Click on Cancer Genomics Browser at the top of the menu on the left to be directed to the list of data sets. After choosing a data set, click on the Heatmap box in the tab that appears on the right to view genomic and clinical heat maps. You can explore associations between a clinical feature and genomic changes by clicking the Features button above the clinical heat map. This opens a window in which you can create two patient groups based on various differences, say, in age at diagnosis. Select Student’s T-test from the Statistic drop-down menu and hit Generate Statistics to view all the statistically significant genomic differences between the groups: red bars and green bars indicate that genomic variation is more likely in group 1 or group 2, respectively. You can zoom in to get genomic data from individual samples, which are arranged vertically above the corresponding chromosomal position, says Jing Zhu, who manages the UCSC Cancer Genomics Browser. She encourages researchers who want more information about these clinical parameters to contact her team at firstname.lastname@example.org.


Scotland and Wales are countries, and their parliament and assembly are acknowledgement of that fact. Northern Ireland is also recognised as a political and constitutional entity within the United Kingdom (UK) with its own assembly. For reasons not adequately explained, England is denied recognition as a country or as a political and constitutional entity and the people of England are denied the right to express their will through their own parliament.
The people of England have the same right to a parliament as do the people of Scotland, and they should be equally free to determine their own system of local and regional government. Devolution for England should start with an English Parliament.
The aim of the Campaign for an English Parliament (CEP) is to put the issue of a separately elected English Parliament, with its own Executive, on the political agenda.
The CEP’s strategy is to assemble the most powerful coalition of expert and public opinion possible with a view to securing an English referendum on the question of establishing a Parliament and Executive.
An English Parliament will represent all those for whom England is their chosen or inherited home and who are legally entitled to vote. Read the full policy statement
Ultimately, an English Parliament cannot come about without the co-operation and agreement of the House of Commons. The CEP’s role is working with academics, business groups, trades unions, think tanks and the media to create the conditions where MPs see that there is no alternative to holding a referendum.
We need an English Parliament
- so that England can be recognised politically and constitutionally
- to rebalance the Union!
- to ensure the future existence of England
- to ensure an equal voice in Westminster
- to ensure an equal voice internationally
- to ensure all citizens of the UK have equal representation and enfranchisement
- to represent us when laws are imposed upon us
- to ensure the accountability of MPs
- to assure equality of funding
- to assure equitable taxation
- to allow us to control our own assets
- to deliver government for England that is appropriate for England and of equal value to that of the rest of the UK
- to support and protect English culture
- to prevent the submersion of England into Britain and to separate an English identity from a British identity
- to prevent conflict and to discourage discrimination on the grounds of nationhood.
- because the people of England want it
- because other proposals for England’s future do not answer all the questions arising from the current imbalance.


Over 8,000 websites created by students around the world who have participated in a ThinkQuest Competition.
Compete | FAQ | Contact Us
This concise introduction to the Internet covers the language of the online world : HTML, VRML Java, and CGI. Start with a history of the Internet and then learn about web style: what makes a web page readable, interactive, and worth looking at. The impressive selection of links take you to some of the leaders in web tool development.
RahulThomas Jefferson High School For Science and Technology, Alexandria, VA, United States
WrugRobinson Sec. School, Fairfax, VA, United States
19 & under
Basuki SinghAlcatel Data Network, Ashburn, VA, United States
Arun VedCentury Finance, Silver Spring, MD, United States
Computers & the Internet > Programming
Computers & the Internet > The Internet


1. Reduce our personal carbon footprint by 20 percent in the next year.
2. Stop subsidizing fossil fuels.
3. Mitigate politics and polarization.+
4. Shift towards more vegetarian diets.
5. Scientists better communicate the scientific facts underlying climate change.+
6. Scientists and engineers develop cheap alternative energy sources to reduce dependence on fossil fuels.+
7. Reduce waste water treatment costs.*
8. Reduce costs to absorb CO2 from industrial activities.*
9. Manage the timing, magnitude, and speed of reservoir drawdowns in order to mitigate methane releases to the atmosphere.^
+ http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/591970/ ...
* http://www.typicallyspanish.com/news/publish/ ...


Information on Genital Herpes
General Information and Terminology
The herpes virus which causes both genital herpes and
cold sores is the herpes simplex virus, abbreviated HSV.
There are two types of HSV: HSV-1 and HSV-2. Most oral (i.e,
cold sores) and ocular infections are caused by HSV-1; most
genital infections are caused by HSV-2. However, either can
cause infection anywhere on the body.
The other herpes viruses are the Epstein-Barr virus,
which causes mononucleosis, and the varicella-zoster virus
which causes chicken pox and shingles. Apparently shingles
is an adult recurrence of chicken pox!
In addition, there is something ominous (and often
fatal) called herpes encephalitis in which the herpes
simplex virus infects the brain and spinal cord. Genital and
presumably oral, ocular, and other variants of herpes does
NOT lead to herpes encephalitis.
The technical literature refers to infections as being
primary, initial, or recurrent. A primary infection is one
where blood tests don't show antibodies for HSV-1 or HSV-2
at the time that the infection is diagnosed; i.e., one has
not been previously exposed to the type of herpes for which
one will now be treated. An initial infection is one where
no symptoms of infection have previously been noticed, but
blood tests show antibodies for HSV-1 or HSV-2. A recurrent
infection is just that.
What it's doing when it's doing it
"During a ... primary infection of either type 1 or
type 2, herpes simplex will multiply at the original site of
skin exposure to cause the characteristic sores. Also, very
early in the course of the infection, some viruses will
leave the sores to migrate up the sensory nerve that serves
the site of the sores. These viruses become inactive, or
latent, when they reach the nerve cell center, or ganglion.
Even after the sores have healed, the virus remains in the
ganglia to form a permanent reservoir of infection." During
a recurrence, "the virus becomes reactivated, probably
returns down the same nerve, and multiplies on the skin at
or near the site of the original sore". (5)
Symptoms of a primary episode usually appear (if they
appear) 2 to 20 days after exposure, and last an average of
2 to 3 weeks. However, the first noticeable symptoms of
infection can also appear years after exposure.
"...Early symptoms can include a burning sensation,
pain in the legs, buttocks, or genital area, vaginal
discharge, or a feeling of pressure in the abdominal region.
Within a few days, sores (lesions) appear on the penis, on
the vulva or in the vagina, or around the anus. These small,
red bumps, later develop into blisters or painful open
sores. Over a period of days, the sores become crusted and
Symptoms that often accompany a person's first
infection with herpes can include fever, headache, muscle
aches, painful or difficult urination, and swollen glands."
Generally, the first outbreak is the most severe and
most prolonged. Later outbreaks tend to be less severe, and
the intervals between recurrences tend to lengthen over
time. Sometimes there is no recurrence, but usually there
Reading between the lines, it would seem that most HSV
infections are asymptomatic. In one study of over 2,000
individuals only one-fourth of those with antibodies to HSV-
2 had symptoms which by their own description seemed to the
researchers to be symptoms of herpes. In another group, 57%
had type 2 antibodies, but only 3% "gave histories of any
syndrome compatible with genital herpes". (4)
Transmission - symptomatic and asymptomatic
Herpes is definitely contagious from the time that the
first symptoms of an outbreak occur (i.e., before the
blisters appear) until the sores are completely healed. Once
again, the first outbreak is the most virulent; in
recurrences less virus is present in the sores.
"Herpes infections can be transmitted when any part of
person's body directly touches active herpes virus or sores
containing active herpes simplex virus. Mucous membranes,
such as those in the mouth or genital area, are very
susceptible to herpes invasion. Intact skin is usually
resistant, but skin that is broken or damaged - for example
by cuts, abrasions, burns, eczema, or infection - may easily
be infected by herpes simplex virus" (5)
Asymptomatic transmission is also possible, although
there doesn't seem to be any consensus about how common it
is. Various statements on the subject are:
"Anywhere from 1 to 10 percent, depending on the
population studied." (2)
"Three-fourths of source contacts known to patients
with documented primary infections gave no histories of
genital lesions at the time of contact." (4)
Autoinoculation (spreading the infection from one part
of ones own body to another part) is possible, though not
likely. Once again, it is most likely to occur during a
When there is ANY sign of an outbreak, abstain. Any
signs means a suspicion of discomfort, not the appearance of
sores. Abstain until the sores are healed and the scabs have
While the virus is too large to pass through a condom,
in "real-life" situations their protective value is
uncertain." Possibly spermicidal jellies containing
Nonoxynol 9 have some deterrent effect. Oral acyclovir
reduces virus shedding during an outbreak, and so may reduce
risk of transmission, but is not given as a prophylactic.
(It's expensive, it hasn't yet been determined that it
reduces shedding during asymptomatic phases, and the risks
of long term use are not known).
Vaccines have been under development since the early
80's (at least), but apparently it is extremely difficult to
develop a vaccine against herpes which isn't excessively
hard on whatever takes it. NO VACCINE IS CURRENTLY
The discomfort can be relieved to some extent by
keeping the infected area clean and dry, and by wearing
loose fitting clothing. This may also help the sores to heal
faster. Obviously, avoid touching the sores, since they
contain active virus. Aspirin may provide symptomatic
Oral acyclovir reduces the severity and duration of
primary outbreaks, if taken early enough in the course of
the infection. Maintenance dosages reduce the frequency and
duration of recurrences, but once treatment is stopped the
preventative effect stops also. In recurrences, oral
acyclovir reduces the duration of virus shedding, but has
little effect on the symptoms.
The major hazard is to infants at the time of birth.
Also there is a danger of spontaneous abortion associated
with primary infections during pregnancy. Children delivered
vaginally during the course of a herpes episode are at
considerable risk (estimated 40 to 60 percent) of being
infected. Of the infected infants, more than half develop
fatal diseases. In the presence of active infection, the
infant is generally delivered by C-section, which protects
the infant from infection. The infant cannot be infected
through the mothers bloodstream.
For adults herpes (after the first outbreak) is
generally more of a social catastrophe then a physical one,
although infrequently adults are incapacitated by severe
and/or frequent recurrences.
Herpes is EXTREMELY common. Various statistics are:
"Affects an estimated 30 million Americans. Each year
as many as 500,000 new cases are believed to occur." (1)
"The prevalence of HSV infections (Types 1 and 2) in
the general population is high. Estimates vary from 40 to
100 percent based on random sampling of sera for HSV
(1) The Search for Health. The National Institutes of
Health. Bethesda, Maryland. October, 1988
(2) Herpes: Facts and Fallacies. American Journal of
Nursing. June, 1982
(3) Oral Acyclovir for Treatment and Suppression of Genital
Herpes Simplex Virus. Journal of the American Medical
Association. April, 1986
(4) Epidemiology of Genital Herpes Infections in the United
States - The Current Situation. Journal of Reproductive
Medicine. May 1986.
(5) Genital Herpes. U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services. Sept. 1983.
Herpes Resource Foundation. Provides information, therapy,
etc. Contact them at HELP, P.O. Box 100, Palo Alto, CA 94302
or call (415) 328-7710 or (800) 227-8922.
Technical Information Services, Division of Sexually
Transmitted Diseases, Center for Disease Control, Atlanta,
GA, 30333. Written material available upon request.


Taj Mahal stands on the bank of River Yamuna, which otherwise serves as a wide trench shielding the Great Red Fort of Agra, the centre of the Mughal Empire, until they moved their capital to Delhi in 1637. The Taj Mahal is one of the most beautiful masterpieces of architecture in the world. Agra, situated about 200 km south of New Delhi.
Taj Mahal was under the Muslim Emperors who ruled Northern India between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. The Mughals were the descendents of two of the most skilled warriors in history, the Turks and the Mongols. The Mughal dynasty reached its highest strength and fame during the reign of their early Emperors, Akbar, Jehangir, and Shah Jehan.
Taj Mahal Agra was built by the fifth Mughal emperor, Shah Jahan in 1631 in the remembrance of his second wife, Mumtaz Mahal, a Muslim Persian princess.
She passed while accompanying her husband in Behrampur in a campaign to crush an uprising, after giving birth to their 14th child. Her death firmed the emperor.
When Mumtaz Mahal was alive, she requested the emperor, that he should build the Taj, should not marry again, be kind to their children and he should visit the tomb on her death anniversary. He kept the first and second promises.
Construction began in 1631 and was completed in 22 years. Twenty thousand people were positioned to work on it. It was designed by the Iranian architect Istad Usa and it is best appreciated when the architecture and its adornments are linked to the passion that inspired it.
Having buried her down at Behrampur, it was time to build a tomb there itself. It was virtually impossible to transfer all the marble there, as it would cost a fortune and a lifetime.
So, astoundingly her grave was uprooted and brought to Agra, be transferred to the monument, completed twenty two years later.
The architectural complex is comprised of five main elements: the Darwaza or main gateway, the Bageecha or garden, the Masjid or mosque, the Naqqar Khana or rest house, and the Rauza or the Taj Mahal mausoleum. The actual Tomb is situated inside the Taj.
The Taj rises on a high red sandstone base with a huge white marble terrace on which rests the dome flanked by four narrowing towers. Within the dome lies the jewel-inlaid cenotaph of the queen.
Most impressive are the black and white chessboard marble floor, the four tall minarets at the corners of the structure, and the majestic dome in the middle. The impressive pietra dura artwork includes geometric elements, plants and flowers, mostly common in Islamic architecture
The only uneven object in the Taj is the chest of the emperor, which was built beside the queens, as a late addition.
The dome is made of white marble, and has a background that works its magic of colours through their reflection and transforms the view of the Taj.


One of the big questions—and there are many —that occupy Killam Scholar and kinesiology researcher Walter Herzog is why a muscle generates more force after it is stretched than a muscle that has not changed length. At the heart of this question is the understanding of how our muscles work. If Herzog and his lab are correct, a new model may be needed.
Researcher Tim Leonard is looking for answers. He’s been part of Herzog’s lab for most of his adult life. He started his undergraduate degree at the University of Calgary when he was 17. Since then, he’s enjoyed a successful, productive and well-decorated academic career.
Leonard is the only individual to win the Canadian Society of Biomechanics Award for his master’s degree and for his PhD. He also won the Western Area Association of Grad Studies Award (an association of American and Canadian Universities from the prairies) and the University of Calgary’s J.B. Hyne Research Innovation Award. These awards recognize innovative research as well as the innovative use of technology.
To study the question of stretched muscle force, Leonard had to devise a way to measure the contractile force of a single myofibril, the microscopic building blocks of our muscles. But how do you grab, stretch and measure the spring of something that is only a few microns long?
The challenge led Leonard to upstate New York and Cornell University, where he found the facilities necessary to construct his nanotechnology micro levers. “It’s kind of one of these things you’d see in a science fiction movie,” says Leonard. “You've got people working in these super-clean rooms, dressed up in these puffy suits with slippers on their feet, and masks so they don’t contaminate the air with their hair or skin cells.”
Leonard points out that he didn’t invent the process he used to create his silicon-nitride cantilevers. The real genius was adapting the existing technology to fit his needs. “I really just said, ‘these should be what I need them to be’ and for me it was really just a stepping stone to get to the actual science and so maybe that’s what the awards were for.”
The cantilevers are incredibly tiny and need to be stored and carried in a sealed case, since the force of wind created just by walking across the room would be enough to snap them instantly.
On the microscope slide, the levers become a powerful tool and helped to suggest that there is another actor at work in the stretched muscle contraction problem—titin, the largest known natural protein.
Despite its size, and the fact that we have a lot of it in our muscles, bio-mechanists aren't exactly sure what titin does. “People have looked at it as a spring, or like a big Slinky, that helps keep the proteins lined up,” say Leonard. “But over the last few years there’s been evidence that titin is not just a passive molecular spring, but that it may actually contribute to active sources.”
Leonard thinks that titin could partially contribute to the increase in force in a stretched muscle. “If titin is actually producing a little bit of what we could call active force, that’s quite novel.”
“Quite novel” is a polite way of saying that Leonard’s award-winning research—as part of Herzog’s team—will likely change or at least amend our understanding of how our muscles contract. “I think we could argue that instead of muscle being a two-filament structure, that maybe there’s a third filament, which is titin, and that titin plays a role that’s not purely passive.”
Understanding the role that titin plays in active force production may one day further our understanding of how diseases like cerebral palsy can be more effectively treated, or how we can more effectively train our athletes to go faster, higher and stronger.


- Prayer and Worship
- Beliefs and Teachings
- Issues and Action
- Catholic Giving
- About USCCB
By Jem Sullivan, Ph.D.
What is your family’s favorite meal? Is it a holiday recipe, a simple weeknight dinner, or a gourmet dessert treat?
The Second Vatican Council teaches that “the treasures of the Bible are to be opened more lavishly, so that richer fare may be provided for the faithful at the table of God’s Word “(Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, 51). Is the Bible a special table around which your family gathers, as if for a favorite meal?
As we consider ways to share the Old Testament in the family we discover that the Bible, whether prominently displayed or gathering dust on a shelf, offers rich spiritual nourishment for children, teenagers and adults in your home.
It is said that we live in the Age of Information. The information superhighway moves us through the high speed traffic of news conveyed through television, the Internet, blogs, and instant messaging. We may have instant and high speed access to information at our fingertips. But the search for human happiness and daily wisdom remains. What is the place of the Bible in this Information Age?
The Catechism tells us that, the books of the Old Testament “are a storehouse of sublime teaching on God and of sound wisdom on human life, as well as a wonderful treasury of prayers; in them, too, the mystery of our salvation is present in a hidden way.” (CCC 122, quoting Dei Verbum 15)
Much of the Old Testament takes the form of stories. The way God teaches resounds with human imagination. Through the rich tapestry of biblical narratives we learn about God’s love and fidelity in the face of human doubt, apathy and infidelity. In the drama of the biblical stories is reflected our own journeys of faith with our daily joys, struggles, and hopes.
Old Testament stories are especially compelling for young children who, with their natural capacity for awe and wonder, marvel at the unfolding of God’s saving action and living presence in the world. Biblical stories that reveal weakness and sin are opportunities to discuss, at age appropriate levels, our humanness in light of God’s love and mercy. Through the biblical range of human experiences we learn God’s ways and our response of faith.
To bring the Old Testament to life, assign family members to gather artistic images that depict biblical stories and themes. Let the painting, sculpture, stained glass, or piece of sacred music serve as a discussion starter for family reflection on God’s word expressed in artistic forms.
The Psalms are a rich storehouse of prayers. In spite of overloaded family schedules taking brief moments to pray together the Liturgy of the Hours, whether Morning or Evening Prayer, connects your home to the Church’s rhythm of praise, thanksgiving and intercession. Handy Catholic resources now available make daily praying of Morning and Evening Prayer simple and sustainable.
Finally, lectio divina is another practical way to feast on the Old Testament in your home. This ancient Christian practice is being recovered in our time and strongly encouraged during the 2008 Bishops Synod on the Word of God and in Pope Benedict’s Exhortation following the Synod. Through the steps of lectio divina - reading, meditation, prayer and contemplation - the wisdom of the Old Testament can bear rich fruit in your home and may even become your family’s favorite spiritual food.
- - -
Jem Sullivan, Ph.D., serves as staff to the USCCB Secretariat of Evangelization and Catechesis. She is the author of a Study Guide to the United States Adult Catholic Catechism and The Beauty of Faith: Christian Art and the Gospel published by Our Sunday Visitor, and writes on a variety of catechetical themes.
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Farmers in Wisconsin are constantly looking for ways to improve profitability and productivity of their farming systems while still protecting soil and water resources. Cover crops are one tool that can provide a wealth of benefits into our Wisconsin crop rotations. Cover crops can enhance soil quality by increasing soil organic matter, stimulating greater soil biological activity, reducing soil erosion and utilizing extra soil nutrients.
The University of Wisconsin - Discovery Farms Program has monitored on-farm water quality from crop fields since 2001. Data from several farms across the state show that a significant amount of annual nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment losses occur either before vegetative canopy in the spring or in the fall after crop harvest. Cover crops can provide protection for the soil during critical times when cropland is more vulnerable to nutrient and sediment losses.
Below are factsheets and helpful resources when trying to decide how and when cover crops may fit into your management system.
Video courtesy of Sand County Foundation's YouTube page.
Michigan State University's Cover Crops Education Page
Midwest Cover Crops Council
Frost Seeding Clover into Winter Wheat - Published by University of Wisconsin
Winter Rye after Corn Silage - Published by University of Wisconsin
Also find articles of interest on cover crops in the following newsletters: January and May 2010, June 2009


SARASOTA, Fla. (AP) - A large red tide bloom that's about 12 miles long and six miles wide is lingering off the Charlotte-Sarasota County coastline and killing fish.
The Herald-Tribune (http://bit.ly/Pcv7WP) reports that September and October are the most common months for red tide blooms which are caused by toxic algae.
Area hotel owners and tourism officials are hopeful that the problem won't worsen or spread.
The red tide effects are limited to southern Sarasota and Charlotte counties. No dead fish or bad air quality were reported on beaches north of Venice.
Red tide naturally occurs in the Gulf of Mexico. The bloom is deadly for fish, marine mammals, sea turtles and other sea life.
The toxins also can become airborne and cause breathing problems for people with asthma or other respiratory diseases.
(Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)


First we have the monarch
butterflies. These incredible creatures spend their summer
days in the northern parts and then migrate (leaving for another
place) to the south for the winter. They travel thousands of
miles - some almost 2900 km from Canada to Mexico. Just
looking at a map, you can see how far Canada is from Mexico, but
these little butterflies fly all the way to protect themselves
from the cold winters. Traveling so much certainly does tire
them out, which is why some of them cannot make a return trip.
These butterflies have never been to these foreign places, but
they still make the trip successfully. How do they do it?
A map showing the
monarch butterfly migration.
They travel from Canada to Mexico.
Then there are the Green sea turtles
(or the scientific term is chelonia mydas) who swim for months and
months in the east direction to migrate from a sea in Brazil in South America
to an island called Ascension Island, which is about 3200 km away.
Apparently these turtles were hatched on this island, and after they
grow up in South America, they return to their birthplace, the
Ascension Island, to hatch their own eggs.
Another example is that of some crabs
that are willing to walk about 240 km from deep water to shallow
water, just to lay their eggs.
These creatures have some kind of inborn
compass or instinct that tells them where to go and at
what is the right time for migration. No one has taught them this, most
of them have never been to the new place, but they still manage to
migrate safely. Scientists till today, cannot give good, complete
explanations for these migrations. It probably is just one of
nature's powers and mysteries.....


Health & Medicine - Overview
The Museum's collections of medical science artifacts represent nearly all aspects of health and medical practice. Highlights include early X-ray apparatuses, such as one of Wilhelm Roentgen's tubes, penicillin mold from Alexander Fleming’s experiments, and Jonas Salk's original polio vaccine. More recent acquisitions include the first artificial heart implanted in a human, the earliest genetically engineered drugs, and materials related to David, the "Bubble Boy." Other artifacts range from artificial limbs and implant devices to bloodletting and dental instruments, beauty products, and veterinary equipment. The contents of a medieval apothecary shop and an 1890s drugstore form part of the collections, along with patent and alternative medicines. The collections also document the many differing perspectives on health and medical issues, from patients, family members, doctors, nurses, medical students, and out-of-the-mainstream health practitioners.


Dr. Judy Theriot and the others at University of Louisville Pediatrics are busy.
"A lot of kids with the flu," she said. "A lot of kids with other respiratory viruses."
So with up and down, roller coaster weather - record warm weather early in the week and then a 40-degree drop in 24 hours - you'd think they'd be expecting business to pick up as more people come down with illness. Dr. Theriot said you'd think wrong.
"It has nothing to do with how cold or hot it is or the changes or fluctuation in temperature," she said.
Dr. Theriot said you get colds and the flu because of viruses and viruses have nothing to do with the weather. They're spread through people.
"They cough in your face," she said. "You're around them in closed spaces or you touch infected objects."
So why does the myth of winter colds persist? Dr. Theriot said it's all because of our environment. We're not outside as much, so we have more chances to spread our illnesses.
"They kind of cycle around the world and people catch rhinovirus more in the wintertime but again, it might be from our habits too," she said.
Mom and dad were right about a couple of things: wash your hands and get your flu shot. Dr. Theriot said that really will keep you from getting sick no matter the weather!


Michael Cruz is a great example of someone that has fully embraced the benefits of putting technology to use in a classroom setting. For five years, he taught courses at San Jose State University’s College of Business ranging from web marketing to entrepreneurship. He now focuses on technology and productivity.
| Name: Michael Cruz
Evernote is a great application for educators. It’s usefulness can range from planning a course to delivering a lesson plan to capturing feedback after class. I experimented with using Evernote while I was teaching courses at San Jose State University. It proved to be an excellent classroom companion. Here are some ways to use Evernote to achieve your teaching goals.
As a teacher, my Evernote use falls into three categories:
- Prior to class
- During class
- After class
Prior to class
- Plan and organize your classes with tags: Using tags is a great way to organize your classes on a week-to-week basis or on a class-by-class basis. For example, if you know that there is certain content that has to be taught during the second week of the school year, then for all related content you can use the tag “week 2″. Once you’ve created this system you can keep adding additional items throughout the year.
- Standards database: Compile standards of achievements for your particular grade or subject. You can even share them with teachers, parents, administrators and students using Evernote’s sharing features.
- Professional development: If you use the summer break or vacations to improve your skills or continue your education, keep all your notes, resources, lessons and new ideas learned in Evernote. This also works well for teacher in-services, conferences, workshops and seminars that you attend.
- Classroom templates: Templates are a great way to save time when grading and assessing your students. If you use templates such as grade sheets or student assessment forms, keep them in Evernote so you have them at your fingertips throughout the year.
- Prepare for your absence: Use Evernote’s shared notebooks as a way to keep your class up and running even if you aren’t there. Evernote makes it easy to share a notebook with the substitute teacher. Consider sharing lesson plans, worksheets, answer keys and examples of completed work. This can ensure your class keeps moving even if you aren’t there.
- Share a notebook with your class: After you create a public notebook, share the URL with your class. This way anything you add can be viewed by your students (or their parents). Here’s an example of a public notebook that I created for an entrepreneurship class.
- Whiteboard photos: Taking snapshots of the whiteboard is a favorite use of mine. Take photographs of the whiteboard before the start of the class, and again at the end. This gives you an accurate time stamped snapshot of what you were working on, on any given date. You can title or tag each photo based on the lecture number to make searching for specific photos easier. Also, you can share the photos with students that miss a class, so that they have the day’s notes.
- Keep handouts handy: Keep all of the handouts, worksheets, templates, study guides and assignments that you frequently use in Evernote, where they are easily searchable and accessible.
- Simplify grading: Scan graded tests, including scantrons and add them to Evernote. You can then enter them into your preferred grade-book or spreadsheet when you have time. This is also great if you have a teacher’s assistant. You can share the notebook with them and have them help with the grading process.
- Keep your extracurriculars in order: If you participate in any committees or coach a team, you can use Evernote to keep track of all the different research, notes and information associated with it. Again, shared notebooks are a great way to keep your committee on the same page and makes for an easy way to share collective knowledge about a project.
To get more productivity tips for teachers you can visit my website http://www.michaelcruz.com and sign up for my e-mail list.
Evernote Education Series
- Evernote at School: The Montclair Kimberley Academy’s 1:1 Program, plus Q&A Webinar
- How Evernote helped me through college
- 10 Evernote Tips for School
- How my students started using Evernote
Join the discussion about Evernote for Schools on our forum. Learn from educators and share your own experiences, best practices and tips.


During the last decade the tile industry has reinvented the way ceramic tiles are decorated. With the advent of inkjet technology being incorporated into this process there is no longer a need for screen or roller printing methods, freeing the industry up to many different opportunities. As with screen and roller printing, the image of the design is first scanned, then modified on a computer. However, by utilizing the key advantages of digital imaging the design can be almost instantly transferred to the inkjet printing machine, which is fully equipped with the essential inks to print any design with any desired color.
The non-impact technology that the inkjet printer utilizes enables manufactures to decorate any type of tile, including relief tile, just as easy as traditional flat tile. This is done by using a print style called Drop on Demand (DoD) and by utilizing a special type of printing device called a piezoelectric printhead. These let the printer create an identical picture of the digital image by propelling tiny drops of ink (measured in picoliters) onto the tile. Because the inkjet machines fit perfectly into the manufacturing process, it is no wonder how they improve efficiency, yet allow for a higher degree of customization by allowing virtually an infinite possibility of design.
What We Used Before
In the not too distant past the entire ceramic tile industry were slaves to screen and roller printing. While not bad, technology has since proven these methods to be rather inefficient. Not only are they more time consuming, but they can produce large amounts of waste.
A key benefit of the inkjet printer is not just the fact that you can load an image of almost unlimited length, but at any time during the printing process you can change that image instantaneously. With the older methods your design capability is more limited, and changing designs can prove to be time consuming and expensive. The biggest hindrance of the older methods is that the production line needs to briefly stop while the design is applied to the tile. Because inkjet printing allows a seamless application of the image, it can speed up the production rate up to five times!
You must also consider the green benefit for embracing this new technology. Besides the screen and roller printers taking longer, they must also be replaced from time to time. You must also replace the film, adhesives, chemicals, and emulsion from the process as well, creating an unnecessary amount of waste.
Simply put, an inkjet printer reproduces a digital image by propelling a continuous stream of ink droplets onto the tile. With virtually no setup time, this shortens the period from idea to product immensely. As mentioned earlier, this allows relief tile, as well as fragile tile, to be decorated without any additional effort other than programming in the design.
Although standard inkjet printers are only equipped with enough memory to decorate about 30 12×12 ceramic tiles, like most computers additional memory can be added to create a virtually limitless possibility of unique designs. Factor in the ability to easily adjust to any size and texture and it’s easy to see how inkjet technology is revolutionizing the ceramic tile industry.
Another key factor is that all of your design information can be stored digitally. This allows the manufacturer to reproduce any image with a push of a button, with alterations to the design or size easily changeable.
In today’s market the demand for stone tile is declining as it is now so simple to replicate these images, despite the fact they inherently fluctuate in their design. Not only do you get the same aesthetic cosmetic design, but because the engineered stone is actually technical porcelain it is not only stronger and more durable, but it is much easier on the environment.
Products such as StonePeak’s Limestone Ebony combine the subtle beauty of a soft hue with the uniqueness of the limestone’s design. By using engineered stones you not only receive the green benefits of manufacturing the tile instead of cutting it from a quarry, but Limestone Ebony contains 84% recycled material. Combine this with superior strength of porcelain and a through-body color you have an eco-friendly tile that will look spectacular for a lifetime.


Invasion of Kuwait
Reasons for Invasion
Despite close foreign relations during the Iran-Iraq War, the relationship between Iraq and Kuwait quickly deteriorated after the war. This happened for a number of reasons, many of which can be attributed to blunders and miscalculations by Saddam Hussein.
Kuwait loaned Iraq $8.2 billion during the Iran-Iraq war, a sum that Hussein did not think he would be expected to repay. When Kuwait refused to pardon the debt, the friendship between the two countries began to strain.
Miscommunication with the United States
On July 25, 1990, the Iraqi High Command met with the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, to discuss the military activity of Iraq. In this meeting Glaspie stated that "we have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait."
On the 2nd of August 1990, the Iraqi military invaded Kuwait. Kuwaiti forces resisted, but were quickly over-whelmed. In the air, Kuwaiti Mirage F1 and A-4 Skyhawk pilots claimed to have shot down several Iraqi helicopters, but none of these claims have been confirmed. Following five weeks of aerial bombardment from US and allied warplanes on targets in Iraq and Kuwait, a 4 day ground war started on 23 February 1991, and Kuwait was liberated.


• Whiteboard and whiteboard marker
• Post it notes
• Cut outs, print our characters and make body parts moveable
• Foams letters or magnetic letters (Great for title sequence to add some interest)
• Roll out modelling clay and use cookie cutters
• Modelling clay (Make shapes or characters)
• Toys eg. Legos, action figures
• Objects eg. Stationery, cutlery, buttons, paddle pop sticks
• Create a set out of a box.
• Document change: Set the camera to take photos in intervals and document change eg. The sky, a plant growing etc.
Students have fabulous ideas and the best intentions, unfortunately their abilities can restrict the production of these ideas. Modelling clay characters can be difficult. I found these great people and bird add on pieces to push into clay. They make fabulous creatures without needing any modelling skills (and they are fun to make).
Here are some scaffolding activities I use as an introduction to build confidence:
• With a whiteboard, create the illusion of writing your name with your finger.
• Make a piece of paper fold up and then unfold by itself. (Done by reversing slides)
• Make buttons follow each other in a line
Here are some ideas for animations:
• Convert a fairytale, fable or nursery rhyme.
• Adapt a movie story line
• Create a Music Film clip
• Convey a message ‘Save the Environment'
• Re-write history
• Create characters from a novel students are reading
Here are a few You Tube videos I like to show students to give provide inspiration:
The Animals Save the Planet - Energy Efficient Penguin
(There are many others in this series)
There was a Time
Deadline - Post it Stop Motion
Ping Pong Ball Stop Motion


Unlike some of their American cousins, European cicadas make their appearance annually rather than once every thirteen or seventeen years. This means they are part of the fabric of rural life instead of an occasional noteworthy or horrendous occurrence. Perhaps nowhere are they more loved than in the south of France, in the area known as Provence.
If the rooster, or coq, to use his French title, is the animal kingdom member who is officially symbolic of France, then the cicada, or cigale, is the symbol of Provence. Jean de LaFountaine immortalized him in his "Fables". Most English-language fable collections carry the story of the Ants and the Grasshopper but in the French "Fables de LaFountaine" it is le cigale who passes the glorious days of summer in song.
The cigale is a creature of summertime. Appearing near the end of June in Provence, he is never heard after mid-September. His song (and only the males are heard) may sound monotonous to the uninitiated, but the strident rasp of this tiny lyrist is varied according to the circumstances. Like most male singing, it is a sexual call, sometimes reaching around 160 decibels. As a song of love it is languorous and deep. Alarmed, it becomes raucous and short. To hear this version, carefully catch a cigale and turn him over on his back. Stroke his belly with a blade of grass or a broom straw and he will immediately began to give voice.
”Voice” is perhaps the wrong word to use, as no larynx action is involved. When you have a male on his back as described above, you can actually see the vibrations of the lower chest. This is not sound-producing but sound-modifying; the actual sound is produced in the hollow stomach of the male. It has been compared to the hollow interior of a guitar. The sound itself is produced by the rapid retraction (from 300 to 900 times a second) of a muscle on each side of the "music box". Below 22 degrees Centigrade, the resounding sections of this "music box" lose their elasticity. For this reason the males are silent during rain or after sundown.
What is interesting about this strident creature is that it is completely deaf, having no tympanic features, i.e. no ears. It depends on its eyes to alert itself to the approach of enemies. If you walk into its field of vision it will immediately fall silent. And it has a very large field of vision : It has a pair of huge eyes with 14,000 facets as well as three small stemmed eyes on the top of its head. Males and females are alike in this respect, which leads to the assumption that the mating call is recognized by vibration in the atmosphere rather than by sound itself.
Regardless of how the two sexes find each other, they do, and procreation is abundant. Each female lays between 300 and 400 eggs, depositing them in the dry twig of almost any type of plant after cutting a slit in the bark with a drill, or "rostre" carried on its lower body. Ten eggs are laid at each site.
The female dies soon after this, but the larvae later appear at the same slit in the bark by which the eggs were introduced. After tearing its protective envelope, each individual larva remains suspended until it dries in the sun and takes on a protective hardening of its exterior. It then drops to the ground and burrows into the soil. It will spend four years underground, digging long tunnels in search of roots, from which it sucks sap as nourishment. Both larvae and adults live exclusively on sap of various plants, which is extracted by means of a facial appendage resembling a large soda straw, functioning very much like a syringe.
The larvae undergo several metamorphisms during their time underground. In cold weather they curl up and remain dormant, in hot weather they grow bigger. At this point they are still blind. Finally, one fine day in June, they emerge, cling to small twigs while shedding the grub form, and wait for their wings to dry before starting an adult life of several weeks.
For the entomologist the cicada is a homopterous insect, having four transparent or nearly-transparent wings. The French say that these wings form a "roof" over the insect when they are folded in rest. The French also say (and I don’t know if this is true or not) that cicadas of Provence are the only ones in the world who do not damage the plants they use for nourishment and egg-laying.
As said earlier, the people of Provence are very fond of their cigales. You will often see glazed orange, cream and black ceramic reproductions of the insect, many times life size, attached to the exterior walls of homes. I have several enameled lapel pins in the form of a cigale; unfortunately, outside of Provence, friends ask me why I have a cockroach on my jacket.
Perhaps the true charm of the cigale is that it symbolizes summertime and the people of Provence are people of the sun. After a winter of blustery mistral, the wind that blows incessantly from the north-northwest, after perhaps a December with frost on the ground in the early mornings, perhaps even a January with one or two days of snow, what could be better than to spend a drowsy afternoon in July or August under a spreading plane tree, with the air around you hot and dry, vibrating with the melody of the cigales?


What is Geography?While the word geography is derived from Greek and literally means "to write about the earth," the subject of geography is much more than describing "foreign" places or memorizing the names of capitals and countries. Geography is an all-encompassing discipline that seeks to understand the world - its human and physical features - through an understanding of place and location. Geographers study where things are and how they got there. My favorite definitions for geography are "the bridge between the human and physical sciences" and "the mother of all sciences." Geography looks at the spatial connection between people, places, and the earth.
How is Geography Different from Geology?Many people have an idea of what a geologist does but don't have any idea of what a geographer does. While geography is commonly divided into human geography and physical geography, the difference between physical geography and geology is often confusing. Geographers tend to study the surface of the earth, its landscapes, its features, and why they are where they are. Geologists look deeper into the earth than do geographers and study its rocks, the internal processes of the earth (such as plate tectonics and volcanoes), and study periods of earth history many millions and even billions of years ago.
How Does One Become a Geographer?An undergraduate (college or university) education in geography is an important beginning to becoming a geographer. With a bachelor's degree in geography, a geography student can begin working in a variety of fields. While many students begin their career after achieving an undergraduate education, others continue on.
A master's degree in geography is very helpful for the student who desires to teach at the high school or community college level, to be a cartographer or GIS specialist, of work in business or government.
A doctorate in geography (Ph.D.) is necessary if one wishes to become a full professor at a university. Although, many Ph.D.s in geography continue on to form consulting firms, become administrators in government agencies, or attain high-level research positions in corporations or think-tanks.
The best resource for learning about colleges and universities that offer degrees in geography is the annual publication of the Association of American Geographers, the Guide to Programs in Geography in the United States and Canada.
What Does a Geographer Do?Unfortunately, the job title of "geographer" is not often found in companies or government agencies (with the most notable exception of the U.S. Census Bureau). However, more and more companies are recognizing the skill that a geographically-trained individual brings to the table. You'll find many geographers working as planners, cartographers (map makers), GIS specialists, analysis, scientists, researchers, and many other positions. You'll also find many geographers working as instructors, professors, and researchers at schools, colleges, and universities.