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A new vaccine lowers blood pressure in hypertensive people, a study shows. The finding breaks ground in a field dominated by drug therapy.
Surges in blood pressure make physical exertion possible, but chronically elevated pressure spells trouble. Scientists have entertained the idea of immunizing people against high blood pressure for decades, but it hasn't been easy. The only other vaccine to reach the testing stage in people failed to reduce blood pressure.
A vaccine may augment or offer an alternative to blood pressure medications, known to cause side effects.
Several compounds orchestrate blood pressure changes, including a small protein called angiotensin. When cleaved by an enzyme, angiotensin signals blood vessels to constrict, increasing pressure.
Researchers created the new vaccine by binding angiotensin to a harmless fragment of a virus. The protein "is then recognized by the immune system as a virus," says study coauthor Martin Bachmann, an immunologist at Cytos Biotechnology in Schlieren, Switzerland. The immune system makes antibodies against angiotensin and pulls it out of circulation.
Bachmann and his colleagues gave 48 people with mild-to-moderate high blood pressure three injections of the vaccine over 12 weeks. http://louis1j1sheehan.blog.ca/
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Some received higher doses than others. Another 24 volunteers received sham injections. All patients used devices that monitored their blood pressure regularly day and night.
Two weeks after the last shot, those getting a higher dose of vaccine averaged systolic (top number) blood pressure that was 9 points less than those getting the placebo shots, the researchers report in the March 8 Lancet. The diastolic (bottom number) reading dropped only 4 points, a difference that could reflect chance.
However, compared with the sham-injection group, participants getting the higher vaccine dose had reductions of 25 points for the systolic reading and 13 points for the diastolic during early morning, when their risk of stroke is highest.
The antibodies circulate in the body for 17 weeks, less time than most vaccines.
The biggest problem doctors face in treating hypertension is patients' failure to take their pills, says Sheila Gardiner, a cardiovascular physiologist at the University of Nottingham, England. The vaccine approach might offer convenience, she says. "It's definitely better than taking pills day after day."
And though the blood pressure decrease may seem small, Gardiner says, even 5 points in the diastolic reading decreases the risk of heart failure and stroke by one-third.
It remains unclear whether the vaccine could engender a reaction against one's own tissues, says Ola Samuelsson, a nephrologist at Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Göteborg, Sweden. He expects pharmaceutical companies to conduct long-term tests that might answer that question.
The vaccine doesn't appear to be 100 percent effective, he says, and that's just as well. Some angiotensin in circulation would allow blood pressure to crank up in case of trauma.
With Bear Stearns Cos. cratered by a cash crunch, investors turned a nervous eye on the other big Wall Street companies, worried that they, too, could become vulnerable if markets turned against them.
Brokerage shares, already massacred this year, plunged Friday, reflecting the nervousness around firms like Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Merrill Lynch & Co. and Morgan Stanley.
Aside from Bear, whose shares fell 47%, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. incurred the most investor wrath. Shares of the firm, which is Bear's closest cousin on Wall Street, tanked 15%. Investors invoked the 1998 liquidity squeeze that battered Lehman as a reason to bail on the stock.
In a statement Friday, a Lehman spokeswoman said: "Our liquidity position has been and continues to be very strong. We consider the liquidity framework under which we have operated for almost a decade to be a competitive advantage."
Investors were astonished at the speed of Bear's demise, which added to the jitters. http://louisjsheehan.blogstream.com/
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On a conference call Friday, Bear executives said the firm's liquidity suddenly worsened over the past week. Bear's plight indicates how important it is to have enough ready cash on hand to replace liquidity that is withdrawn by creditors.
Sanford Bernstein analyst Brad Hintz explained the nightmare that can befall a broker in a liquidity squeeze. "As lenders demand their money, a broker has no choice but to sell assets and shrink its balance sheet. At some point the liquid assets are all gone and the firm cannot sell the illiquid ones," he said.
Brokerages amass large cash piles -- often called liquidity reserves in their financial statements -- that are meant to see them through rocky periods in the markets. Analysts are now trying to assess whether these liquidity reserves, which measure the amount of high-quality assets that brokerages could easily sell, are sufficient.
Compared with other brokerages, Bear's cash reserve gives it the least cushion for a cash crisis. This same analysis makes Lehman's cash cushion look slimmer than its peers', although on other measures it is just as strong.
Brokerages break out the size of this emergency cash in their financial filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. To gauge its sufficiency, the reserve can be compared to the main type of debt that brokerages rely on to finance their operations. This debt is called collateralized borrowing, because to get the loans the brokerages have to pledge assets as security to the creditor. If these creditors pull back sharply, a brokerage is in deep trouble.
From public comments by Bear executives Friday, it appears much of the liquidity squeeze was caused by a pulling back by creditors that had extended loans based on collateral provided by Bear. These types of creditors "were no longer willing to provide financing," Samuel Molinaro, Bear's chief financial officer, said on the Friday call.
Bear would have been particularly exposed to this withdrawal, because its emergency cash pile was small compared to this debt. On Nov. 30, that cash reserve of $17 billion was only about 17% of the $102 billion owed through secured financings.
If the prices of assets Bear had pledged fell, the brokerage would have had to post a payment to the creditor called margin. http://louis0j0sheehan.livejournal.com/15433.html
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One big purpose for the emergency funds is to have the cash to make margin payments during a credit-markets crisis. "My guess is that Bear did not adequately stress-test and didn't have enough liquidity to meet those margin payments," said Michael Peterson, director of research at Pzena Investment Management.
Like Bear, Lehman is a big bond player and also one of the smaller Wall Street firms. But it is on sturdier ground than Bear, many investors said. "I'm pretty comfortable with Lehman's liquidity," said Mr. Peterson, whose firm owns Lehman shares. "The lessons of 1998 were not at all lost on Lehman."
Aiming to make its balance sheet sturdier after 1998, Lehman became less reliant on short-term borrowing, which can dry up quickly. At the end of November, it had $28 billion in debt coming due in the following 12 months, well below the $34.9 billion in its liquidity reserve. "What gives me comfort right now is that Lehman has very little short-term debt," Mr. Peterson said.
The firm's emergency-cash pile was 19% of its $182 billion in secured financings, putting it below the numbers for Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch. At those firms the emergency cash was 38%, 39% and 34%, respectively, of collateralized financings.
Yesterday, Lehman announced that it closed a new $2 billion unsecured credit line that was "substantially oversubscribed."
In a crunch, Lehman may be able to raise cash by selling another big pool of liquid assets, which is valued at more than $60 billion. Adding that to the liquidity cash reserve gives Lehman a potential $100 billion cash pile, equal to 54% of collateralized financing. http://pub25.bravenet.com/journal/post.php?entryid=23334
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That is ahead of some other brokers and far stronger than Bear's 31%.
In addition, the debt that comes from the collateralized financing typically is matched by a similar loan to another customer, which creates an asset. When offset against each other, the collateralized financing liability becomes much smaller. In Lehman's case, it is about $20 billion, which is only about 60% of its emergency cash.
The smallest voltmeter in the world has produced a shocking revelation: Lurking deep inside an ordinary cell are electric fields strong enough to cause a bolt of lightning.
While it has long been gospel that cell membranes contain strong electric fields, researchers have generally assumed that 99.9 percent of a cell’s volume was electrically dormant. But when University of Michigan biophysical chemist Raoul Kopelman, the tiny voltmeter’s inventor, flooded rat brain cells with the devices, he detected fields as strong as 15 million volts per meter throughout.
This is the first time the voltmeter has been used in a study, and its potential is as exciting as Kopelman’s find. It is roughly one-thousandth the size of any other voltmeter; thousands can fit in a single cell and still take up only one-millionth of the cell’s volume. The device is filled with voltage-sensitive dye that gives off green to red light in proportion to the surrounding electric field. The light is then measured using a microscope, yielding a three-dimensional map of the electric fields.
Kopelman plans to continue using his device to probe cells for clues about what happens when diseases or toxins injure them.
On January 3, 2008, more than a hundred thousand people gathered at the Sri Durga Malleswara temple in southern India, setting the stage for disaster. When the crowd surged forward to garland a statue of the goddess Durga, six were trampled and killed.
Disasters like this kill hundreds of people a year and have typically been hard to prevent. But now an intervention may be at hand, thanks to crowd simulations developed by Paul M. Torrens, a geographer at Arizona State University. http://louis9j9sheehan.blog.com/2841488/
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Torrens’s computer simulations let planners drop a few thousand virtual people into a burning building, then sit back and take notes—with heat coming only from the computer itself. The specific scenarios Torrens creates could show firefighters how to save the most people, tell architects where to place exits or barriers in stadiums, and guide police forces in corralling unruly mobs.
Most traditional methods for simulating the movement of crowds treat individuals as purely physical, with no social or emotional reactions. Torrens’s model, on the other hand, turns each individual into an “avatar” with an artificial mind. Avatars can plan their own route, adjust their path on the fly, and even respond to the body language of fellow cybercitizens who may be jostling them.
Each avatar’s awareness in Torrens’s simulations derives from a “vision cone”—a field of view—that pro–jects into the world of the simulation itself. As the simulated crowd moves, an avatar reacts to anything that comes within its cone, whose dimensions may change depending on how quickly that avatar is moving or whether it is panicked—both speed and panic will make the cone narrower. Also influencing the dimensions of the cone are personal attributes like age, disabilities, and body type. The system relies mostly on the auton–omy of the avatars, enabling Torrens to create realistic computerized simulations for almost any situation or length of time.
The model is already functional, but Torrens, who is funded by the National Science Foundation to the tune of $1.15 million, is busy upping the avatars’ IQs. He is also in talks with a few interested parties, including the Scottsdale, Arizona, police department, which may want the system customized for its internal use. Even the U.S. Department of Justice is reviewing a proposal.
Torrens thinks this is just the start. He sees the day when his simulations could be modified to model disease transmission through casual contact, shopping on a crowded street, or pedestrian safety at a traffic intersection. http://blogs.ebay.com/mytymouse1/home/_W0QQentrysyncidZ526811010
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His latest project: a riot module to test ways of containing civil turmoil.
On the Arantix Mountain Bike from newbie Delta 7 Sports, the typical solid-cylinder tubing has been replaced by an airy, see-through lattice woven from a carbon-fiber composite and bundled in Kevlar string. The resulting gossamer web may look delicate, but pound for pound this quirky construction—called IsoTruss—is stronger than steel, aluminum, and titanium. It’s even stronger than solid carbon composites, the current front-runners among ultralight bike frames.
Like other carbon-fiber frames, this one is baked: Long, thin strands of carbon atoms, organized in a hexagonal pattern and coated with epoxy resin, are put in an oven at 255 degrees Fahrenheit for four hours of curing. Unlike other carbon-fiber frames, though, the Arantix could withstand a direct shrapnel hit. The lattice structure isolates damage to a single element instead of shattering under pressure, Delta 7 says.
Despite all its empty spaces, the handmade Arantix frame costs a hefty $6,995 (a full bike is $11,995). At 2.75 pounds, it falls just short of a featherweight record among mountain bikes, but the IsoTruss easily supports the 200-pound-plus Clydesdale racers that its competitors shun. Our advice? Skip the frame: It would be cheaper (and healthier) to go on a diet.
Could there be another planet lurking in the dark, frigid outskirts of the solar system?
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This isn’t as silly as it seems at first. No, I’m not talking Nibiru or any of that other nonsense (and it is nonsense), I’m talking about an actual planet, Earth-sized or so, that could be orbiting the Sun well beyond Pluto Neptune.
Why would we think there might be one out there?
We see some stars in the midst of forming planets. The stars are surrounded by thick disks of material, and in some we can actually see gaps in the disk, dark rings like the gaps in Saturn’s rings, that we think are due to forming planets gobbling up material in the ring. You’d think the disk would fade away with distance form the star, like our air gets thinner with altitude. But some disks appear to have sharp outer edges. This can be caused by a planet orbiting outside the disk; its gravity sweeps up the material and over time cleans up everything farther out. In one disk, this sharp boundary indicates a planet 200 AU out (an AU is the distance of the Earth to the Sun, about 150 million kilometers or 93 million miles).
Neptune orbits at 30 AU from the Sun, so 200 AU is a long way out. Could a planet like that have formed in our solar system? Maybe. Thing is, while our proto-planetary disk has been gone for billions of years, we do have lots of objects out past Neptune: the Trans-Neptunian Objects (they have lots of names, including Kuiper Belt Objects). These are basically giant balls of ice, some hundreds of miles across. As a group they form a puffy disk of objects stretching from Neptune’s orbit outward… but they seem to abruptly stop past about 50 AU out from the Sun. That’s called the Kuiper Cliff, the cause of which is unknown. Incidentally, it’s not because they’re too faint to see (that is, they’re there but we can’t spot them); at that distance we should have spotted lots of them by now.
Not only that, but a lot of these objects have orbits that are tilted more and are more elliptical than you’d expect if they just formed a long time ago and were left alone. Theyir orbits don’t bring them in very close — they tend to stay outside of Neptune’s orbit — but again, this is something that needs to be explained.
Could it be that there is another massive planet orbiting the Sun, way out there, which has swept up the objects gravitationally, creating the Kuiper Cliff and tossing the iceballs into tilted, oval orbits?
A newly released paper shows that may very well be the case. A team of scientists ran a whole mess of simulations, and found that a small planet (in this case, around half the size of the Earth) could have formed inside Neptune’s orbit (where there was plenty of material in the early solar system), gotten tossed into a bigger orbit by Neptune, and then knocked around the orbits of the iceballs, distorting their orbits and creating the Kuiper Cliff.
This idea is not new, but this new research is a provocative indicator of such a planet’s likelihood of existence. I’m not saying it’s out there, but it’s worth looking for. http://louiscjcsheehan.blogspot.com/
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In fact, I’ve been saying that since about 1998 or so, when I worked on Hubble and was involved with a project that found a truncated disk around another star. I even worked with another astronomer on the team to investigate whether the robotic telescopes used to look for Near Earth Asteroids could spot such a planet.
It’s not all that easy. It wouldn’t be too faint to see, necessarily, but it’s a big sky. At that distance, the planet would move slowly, and the orbital motion would be hard to distinguish given the procedures used by NEA searches. We tried to convince some of them to modify their software to look for Planet X (yes, why not, though now it would be Planet IX), but we were met with mixed success. The fact that no one has discovered this planet shows you that this is still hard to do.
But maybe, just maybe, with this new research we’ll get people looking more seriously. It’s amazing to me that we can understand so much about galaxies and hugely distant objects, but find that there may be surprises waiting for us in our own back yard.
If you've checked the grammar of a Microsoft Word document, you may have encountered a baffling number. The readability formula purports to represent the text's appropriate grade level. But it has its roots in research from 60 years ago.
Before computers, reading researchers attempted to quantify the ease of a work of writing using short excerpts and simple formulas. Despite computing advances, Word still follows the same model: It multiplies 0.39 by the average number of words per sentence, adds that to 11.8 times the average number of syllables per word, and subtracts 15.59 from the total. The result is the supposed minimum grade level of readers who can handle the text in question.
Similar formulas are used by textbook publishers and in dozens of states' guidelines for insurance policies. http://louisijisheehan.blogspot.com/
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Is it possible to quantify the readability of a given text? Do you ever use these formulas? Share your thoughts in the blog comments.
From the beginning, these formulas were known to be problematic. A 1935 paper laid out more than 200 variables that affect readability. Most formulas incorporate just two, and not because they are the most important but because they are the easiest to measure. Then they're mashed together, with weights set according to how the formulas work on standard texts.
"Everyone is waiting for this magic bullet that's very easy," says Karen Schriver, who runs an Oakmont, Pa., communication-design research company. But her experience with clients who have overly relied on these formulas have suggested that "maybe it's just a stupid idea."
Noting that the same passage's score can differ by three grade levels or more, depending on the formula, readability consultant Mark Hochhauser says, "One of the things the field really needs is an updated formula."
Even neurolinguist G. Harry McLaughlin says of his own, widely used SMOG Readability Formula, "The theoretical basis is c---."
The formulas treat writing as a mere collection of words and spaces. Word meaning and sentence structure don't figure. George Weir, a philosopher and computer scientist at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, says Word's readability test thinks grade-schoolers could handle the nonsense passage, "Acuity of eagles whistle truck kidney. Head for the treacle sump catch and but. What figgle faddle scratch dog and whistle?" Similarly, "Had lamb little a Mary" and "Mary had a little lamb" score identically.
I asked Micro Power & Light Co., which sells readability-testing software, to evaluate a memorable 2004 Wall Street Journal front-page article. Four different formulas found it to be comprehensible to 10th-graders, thanks in part to its short sentences. http://louiskjksheehan.blogspot.com/
The reason for the frequent periods: The article was about a new book written without verbs, and the article mimicked its subject, making for intentionally tough reading.
Word length is an imperfect measure. "Important" and "elephant" are long words that are easy for most readers, Dr. Schriver notes. Conversely, frustrated crossword solvers encounter plenty of uncommon three-letter words, such as adz, auk and lea. She adds that no formulas account for document layout -- even short sentences with lean words are challenging when printed in an eight-point type.
The formulas have their defenders. Readability consultant William DuBay calls them "good enough," and adds, "They've been extremely beneficial for millions of readers." Among other uses, they were implemented to simplify newspaper writing a half-century ago, he says.
Some researchers are trying to make the formulas better, using new databases and computing power. Prof. Weir aims to create a formula that incorporates the frequency of words and word combinations in typical English writing, meaning "the" and "adz" finally can be distinguished.
Several more-advanced readability formulas already have been developed. None are as convenient, or as criticized, as the Flesch-Kincaid formula Microsoft uses. Developed by readability researcher Rudolf Flesch in 1948, it was modified by psychologist J. Peter Kincaid in a study for the U.S. Navy in 1975, using reference passages. "Do not swing, twirl, or play with the nightstick" is part of a passage deemed appropriate for seventh-graders. Instructions that included, "All the jet streams of the Northern Hemisphere have their southern analogues" required a college degree.
The formula was tweaked once more by Microsoft when the company incorporated it into Word in 1993. Grade-level scores were capped at 12. Reed Shaffner, Microsoft's product manager for Word, told me that the formula was changed in 2003, at least for Windows users. http://louis1j1sheehan1esquire1.blogspot.com/
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Those users can see results up to grade level 14, while Mac users won't get results above level 12.
Why cap the results at all? "It's a user-experience thing," Mr. Shaffner says. Essentially, Microsoft is concerned about the readability of readability-formula results.
Prof. Kincaid, who today is the head of a modeling and simulation program at the University of Central Florida, tried unsuccessfully to get the formula corrected years before it finally was. Nevertheless, when he wants to use his own formula, he lets Word do the calculation.
That's rare. "I write long sentences and no computer is going to tell me how to write," Prof. Kincaid says. "I'm going to write the way I want to write."
"With all his unashamed enthusiasm, Elagabalus was not the man to establish a religion; he had not the qualities of a Constantine or yet of a Julian; and his enterprise would perhaps have met with little success even if his authority had not been annulled by his idiosyncrasies. The Invincible Sun, if he was to be worshipped as a sun of righteousness, was not happily recommended by the acts of his Invincible Priest."
Contemporary or near-contemporary historians sealed the reputations of many of the Roman emperors shortly after their deaths. Among the good ones were Augustus, Trajan, Vespasian and Marcus Aurelius. Those with names that have lived in infamy include Nero, Caligula, Domitian and Elagabalus.
"At the same time, he will learn of the Romans' discernment, in that these last [Augustus, Trajan, Vespasian, Hadrian, Pius, Titus and Marcus] ruled long and died by natural deaths, whereas the former [Caligula, Nero, Vitellius and Elagabalus] were murdered, dragged through the streets, officially called tyrants, and no man wishes to mention even their names."
During this time he caused the murder of his co-ruler, his brother Geta, and his supporters, raised the pay for soldiers, waged campaigns in the East where Macrinius was to have him assassinated, and implemented the (Constitutio Antoniniana 'Antonine Constitution'). http://louis2j2sheehan2esquire.blogspot.com/
The Antonine Constitution was named for Elagabalus whose imperial name was Varius Avitus Bassianus Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. It extended Roman citizenship throughout the Roman Empire.
Macrinus Easily Rises to the Imperial Purple
Caracalla had appointed Macrinius to the influential position of praetorian prefect. Because of this lofty position, three days after Caracalla's murder, Macrinius, a man without senatorial rank, was powerful enough to compel the troops to proclaim him emperor.
Less competent as military leader and emperor than his predecessor, Macrinius suffered losses in the East and wound up making settlements with the Parthians, Armenians, and the Dacians. http://louis2j1sheehan2esquire.blogspot.com/
Defeats and Macrinius' introduction of a two-tiered pay for soldiers made him unpopular with the soldiers.
Caracalla's mother had been Julia Domna of Emesa, Syria, second wife of the emperor Septimius Severus. She had conceived the idea of propelling her great-nephew to the throne, but ill health prevented her involvement. The grandson of her sister Julia Maesa was Varius Avitus Bassianus who would soon be known as Elagabalus.
Sir Ronald Syme calls one of the biographies of the time, Aelius Lampridius' The Life of Antoninus Heliogabalus, a "farago of cheap pornography." One of the contentions made by Lampridius is that Julia Symiamira (Soaemias), Julia Maesa's daughter, had made no secret of her liaison with Caracalla. In the year 218, Varius Avitus Bassianus was performing the hereditary family function of high priest of the sun god whose worship was popular with the troops. A family resemblance to Caracalla probably led them to believe Varius Avitus Bassianus (Elagabalus) the illegitimate son of the more popular emperor Caracalla.
"The artful Maesa saw and cherished their rising partiality, and readily sacrificing her daughter's reputation to the fortune of her grandson, she insinuated that Bassianus was the natural son of their murdered sovereign. The sums distributed by her emissaries with a lavish hand silenced every objection, and the profusion sufficiently proved the affinity, or at least the resemblance, of Bassianus with the great original."
One of the legions near their family hometown proclaimed Elagabalus emperor, naming him Marcus Aurelius Antoninus on May 15, 218. Other legions joined the cause. Meanwhile, still other troops rallied to defend Macrinius. http://louis3j3sheehan3esquire.blogspot.com/
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On June 18 Elagabalus' faction won in battle. The new emperor was 14.
*I don't remember the source of that Syme quote. It is referred to on The Toynbee Convector.
"I can't imagine that many people went in for this kind of prank. Having said that, I suppose Elagabalus' guests were relieved to have been subjected to something so relatively harmless!"
As emperor, Varius Avitus became known by the Latinized version of the name of his Syrian god El-Gabal. Elagabalus also established his god as the principal one of the empire. He further alienated Rome by taking honors upon himself before they had been awarded him -- including substituting his name for that of Macrinius as consul.
In both the message to the senate and the letter to the people he styled himself emperor and Caesar, the son of Antoninus, the grandson of Severus, Pius, Felix, Augustus, proconsul, and holder of the tribunician power, assuming these titles before they had been voted, and he used, not the [na]me [of Avitus,] but that of his [pretended] f[ather]... [and] commanded that if anyone resisted him, he should call on the soldiers for assistance....
Herodian, Dio Cassius, Aelius Lampridius and Gibbon have written about Elagabalus' femininity, bisexuality, transvestism, and forcing a vestal virgin to break vows that were so solemn any virgin found to have violated them was buried alive.
He appears to have worked as a prostitute and may have sought the original transgendering operation. If so, he didn't succeed. When he tried to become a gallus, he was convinced to undergo circumcision, instead. http://louis4j4sheehan4esquire.blogspot.com/
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To us the difference is immense, but to Roman men, both were humiliating.
Although Elagabalus killed many of his political enemies, especially supporters of Macrinius, he wasn't a sadist who tortured and put an inordinate number of people to death. He was an attractive, hormonally charged teen with absolute power, the high priest of an exotic god and a Roman emperor from Syria who imposed his eastern customs on Rome. J.B. Bury believes that with the universal citizenship grant of Caracalla, a universal religion was necessary. The time for a unified religion may have been right when Elagabalus tried to institute it, but because of his flamboyance and failure to behave like a proper Roman, he failed. It was another century before Constantine could impose a universal religion.
Ultimately, like most of the emperors of the period, Elagabalus was killed by his soldiers, after less than four years in power. He was 17. His first cousin Alexander Severus, also from Emesa, Syria, succeeded him.
His father Calpornius held both civic and clerical offices when Patrick was born to him in the late fourth century (c. A.D. 390). Although the family lived in the village of Bannavem Taberniaei, in Roman Britain, Patrick would one day become the most successful Christian missionary in Ireland, its patron saint, and the subject of legends.
Patrick's first encounter with the land to which he would devote his life was an unpleasant one. He was kidnapped at age sixteen, sent to Ireland, and sold into slavery. While Patrick worked there as a shepherd, he developed a deep faith in God. One night, during his sleep, he was sent a vision of how to escape. http://louis6j6sheehan6esquire.blogspot.com/
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So much he tells us in his autobiographical Confession.
Unlike the work of the same name by the theologian, Augustine, Patrick's Confession is short, with few statements of religious doctrine.
In it Patrick describes his British youth and his conversion, for, although he was born to Christian parents, he did not consider himself Christian before his captivity. Another purpose of the document was to defend himself to the very Church that had sent him to Ireland to convert his former captors. Years before Patrick wrote his Confession, he wrote an angry Letter to Coroticus, the British King of Alcluid (later called Strathclyde), in which he condemns him and his soldiers as compatriots of the demons, because they had captured and slaughtered many of the Irish people Bishop Patrick had just baptized. Those they didn't kill would be sold to "heathen" Picts and Scots. Although personal, emotional, religious, and biographical, these two pieces and Gildas Bandonicus' Concerning the Ruin of Britain (De Excidio Britanniae) provide the main historical sources for fifth century Britain.
Upon Patrick's escape from his approximately six years of slavery, he went back to Britain, and then to Gaul where he studied under St. Germain, bishop of Auxerre, for twelve years before returning again to Britian. There he felt a calling to return as a missionary to Ireland. He stayed in Ireland for another thirty years, converting, baptizing, and setting up monasteries.
Sources
orb.rhodes.edu/encyclop/early/origins/rom_celt/Romessay.html
Sub-Roman Britain: An Introduction
Christopher Snyder looks at the sources for early Britain, particularly in the writings of Patrick and Gildas.
Gildas: from Concerning the Ruin of Britain (De Excidio Britanniae)
From Medieval Sourcebook, chapters 23-26 of Gildas' work on the fall of Britain.
Gildas
Ecole Glossary entry on Gildas the Wise who was born c. 500 in Arecluta, Strathclyde, and traveled in Ireland, besides writing his history of the Celts in Britain.
Various legends have grown up concerning St. Patrick, the most popular of the Irish saints.
St. Patrick was not well-educated, a fact he attributes to early captivity. Because of this, it was with some reluctance that he was sent as missionary to Ireland, and only after the first missionary, Palladius, had died. Perhaps it's because of his informal schooling in the meadows with his sheep that Patrick came up with the clever analogy between the three leaves of the shamrock and the Holy Trinity. http://louis8j8sheehan8esquire.blogspot.com/
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At any rate, this lesson is one explanation for why St. Patrick is associated with a shamrock.
St. Patrick is also credited with driving the snakes out of Ireland. There were probably no snakes in Ireland for him to drive out, and it is very likely that the story was meant to be symbolic. Since Patrick converted the heathen, the snakes are thought to stand for the pagan beliefs or evil. Where he was buried is a mystery.
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Among other places, a chapel to St. Patrick at Glastonbury claims he was interred there. A shrine in County Down, Ireland, claims to possess a jawbone of the saint which is requested for childbirth, epilectic fits, and to avert the evil eye.
While we don't know exactly when he was born or died, this Roman British saint is honored by the Irish, especially in the United States, on March 17 with parades, green beer, cabbage, corned beef, and general revelry. While there is a parade in Dublin as the culmination of a week of festivities, Irish celebrations on St. Patrick's Day itself are predominantly religious.
Basics About Hercules (Greek: Heracles/Herakles): Hercules was a half-brother of Apollo and Dionysus because their father was Zeus. Zeus, disguised as Alcmene's husband Amphitryon, paid a conjugal visit to Hercules' mother, Alcmene. Hercules and his twin, mortal, half-brother, Iphicles, son of Alcmene and the real Amphitryon, were in their cradle when a pair of snakes visited them. Hercules happily strangled the snakes, possibly sent by Hera or Amphitryon, thereby launching an extraordinary career that included the well-known 12 labors Hercules performed for his cousin Eurystheus.
Here are more of Hercules' deeds and feats with which you should be familiar.
Instruction of Hercules: Hercules was talented in many areas. Castor of the Dioscuri taught him to fence, Autolycus taught him to wrestle, King Eurytus of Oechalia in Thessaly taught him archery, and Orpheus' brother Linus, son of Apollo or Urania, taught him to play the lyre. [Apollodorus.]
Cadmus is usually attributed with introducing letters into Greece, but Linus taught Hercules, and the not very academically inclined Hercules broke a chair over Linus' head and killed him. Elsewhere, Cadmus is credited with killing Linus for the honor of introducing writing to Greece. http://louis1j1sheehan1.blogspot.com/
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[Source: Kerenyi, Heroes of the Greeks]
Hercules and the Daughters of Thespius: King Thespius had 50 daughters and wanted Hercules to impregnate them all. Hercules, who went hunting with King Thespius each day, was unaware that each night's woman was different (although he may not have cared), and so he impregnated 49 or 50 of them. The women gave birth to 51 sons who are said to have colonized Sardinia.
Hercules and the Minyans: The Minyans were exacting a heavy tribute from Thebes -- the usually cited birthplace of the hero -- while it was ruled by King Creon. Hercules encountered the Minyan ambassadors en route to Thebes and cut off their ears and noses, made them wear their bits as necklaces, and sent them back home. The Minyans sent a military force, but Hercules defeated it and freed Thebes from the tribute.
Creon rewarded him with his daughter Megara for his wife.
The Augean Stables Reprised, With Dishonor: King Augeas had refused to pay Hercules for cleaning his stables during the 12 Labors, so Hercules led a force against Augeas and his twin nephews. Hercules contracted a disease and asked for a truce, but the twins knew it was too good an opportunity and so continued to try to annihilate Hercules' forces. When the Isthmian Games were about to begin, the twins set out for them, but by this time, Hercules was on the mend. He dishonorably attacked and killed them, and then went to Elis where he installed Augeas' son, Phyleus, on the throne in place of his treacherous father.
Madness of Hercules: Euripides' tragedy Hercules Furens is one of the sources for the madness of Hercules. The story, like most of those involving Hercules, has confusing and contradictory details, but in essence, Hercules, returning from the Underworld in some confusion, mistook his own sons, ones he had with Creon's daughter Megara, for those of Eurystheus. Hercules killed them and would have continued his murderous rampage had Athena not lifted the (Hera-sent) madness or ate. Many consider the 12 Labors Hercules performed for Eurystheus his atonement. Hercules may have married Megara to his nephew Iolaus before leaving Thebes forever.
Fight With Apollo: Iphitus was the son of Apollo's grandson Eurytus, father of the beautiful Iole. In Book 21 of the Odyssey, Odysseus obtains the bow of Apollo when he helps in the hunt for Eurytus' mares. http://louis3j3sheehan3.blogspot.com/
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Another part of the story is that when Iphitus came to Hercules looking for the missing dozen mares, Hercules welcomed him as a guest and then hurled him to his death from a tower. This was another dishonorable murder for which Hercules needed to atone. The provocation may have been that Eurytus denied him the prize of his daughter that Hercules had won in a bow-shooting contest.
Possibly in search of atonement, Hercules arrived at the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi, where the murderer was not allowed sanctuary. Hercules took the opportunity to steal the tripod and cauldron of Apollo's priestess.
Apollo came after him and was joined by his sister. On Hercules' side, Athena joined the fight. It took Zeus and his thunderbolts to put an end to the fighting, but Hercules still hadn't made atonement for his act of murder.
* Apollo, Asclepius, and Admetus
Omphale: For atonement Hercules was to endure a similar term to the one Apollo had served with Admetus. Hermes sold Hercules as a slave to the Lydian queen Omphale. In addition to getting her pregnant and tales of transvestism, the story of the Cercopes and the Black-bottomed Hercules comes from this period. Omphale (or Hermes) also set Hercules to work for a treacherous robber named Syleus. With wanton vandalism Hercules demolished the thief's property, killed him, and married his daughter Xenodike.
Deianeira: The final phase of Hercules' mortal life involves his wife Deianeira, daughter of Dionysus (or King Oineus) and Althaia.
* Exchange and the Maiden
When Hercules was taking his bride home, the centaur Nessus was to ferry her across the Euenos River. The details are varied, but Hercules shot Nessus with poisoned arrows when he heard the screaming of his bride being ravaged by the centaur. The centaur persuaded Deianeira to fill her water jug with blood from his wound, assuring her it would be a potent love potion should Hercules' eye ever start to wander. http://louis1j1sheehan1esquire.blogspot.com/
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Instead, it was a potent poison. When Deianeira thought Hercules was losing interest and preferring Iole to herself, she sent him a robe drenched in the centaur's blood. Hercules put it on and his skin burned.
* Poisoned Clothing
He wanted to die, but was having trouble finding someone to set his funeral pyre alight so he could self-immolate. Finally, Philoctetes or his father agreed and received Hercules' bow and arrows as a thanks offering. These were essential for the Greeks in the Trojan War. As Hercules burned he was taken to the gods and goddesses and gained full immortality and Hera's daughter Hebe for his final wife.
In 1957, marketing executive James Vicary claimed that during screenings of the film Picnic, the words “eat popcorn” and “drink Coca-Cola” were flashed on the screen every five seconds for 1/3,000 second—well below the threshold of conscious awareness. Vicary said soda and popcorn sales spiked as a result of what he called “subliminal advertising.”
Psychologists had been studying subliminal messages since the late 19th century. It was Vicary’s ideas, presented in Vance Packard’s 1957 best seller, The Hidden Persuaders, that catapulted the concept of subliminal advertising into the public consciousness. Even though in a 1962 interview with Advertising Age Vicary admitted that the amount of data he’d collected was “too small to be meaningful,” subliminal messages continued to attract public—and commercial—interest.
In 1974, the FCC held hearings about the perceived threat of subliminal advertising and issued a policy statement saying that “subliminal perception” was deceptive and “contrary to the public interest.”
Concerns about subliminal advertising continued for decades. As recently as 2000 during the presidential race, the Republican National Committee ran an ad attacking the policies of Al Gore in which the word rats briefly flashed on the screen. Many suspected subliminal intent, which the ad’s creator denied.
Matthew Erdelyi, a psychology professor at Brooklyn College, says that while Vicary’s methods were controversial, new studies continue to suggest the use of subliminal perception in advertising could be effective. “There’s a lot of interest, but the subject matter is a little bit taboo,” he says. Still, if subliminal messages in advertising have a resurgence in the future, “nobody should be terribly surprised.”
THE STUDY
“Emotional Well-Being Does Not Predict Survival in Head and Neck Cancer Patients” by James Coyne et al., published in the December 1, 2007, issue of Cancer.
THE QUESTION
Do emotions influence a cancer patient’s prognosis? In one of the largest, longest, and most controlled studies of its kind, researchers investigated whether the emotional state of cancer patients has any relationship to their survival.
THE METHODS
University of Pennsylvania psychologist James Coyne and his colleagues followed 1,093 adults, all of whom had advanced head and neck cancer with nonspreading tumors. http://louis4j4sheehan4.blogspot.com/
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All patients received standardized medical care through clinical trials run by the Radiation Therapy Oncology Group (RTOG).
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Clcik here!
At the start of the study, the participants completed a 27-item questionnaire used to evaluate the physical, social, and emotional quality of life in people with cancer and other chronic diseases. Five items targeted emotional state, asking patients to rate, on a scale of 0 to 4, the extent to which statements like “I feel sad” and “I am losing hope in my fight against my illness” had been true for them over the past seven days. The researchers then calculated a score for each person’s initial emotional well-being.
Coyne tracked patients for an average of nine years, until they either dropped out of the study or died. The study reported 646 deaths. Once the records for the participants were complete, researchers analyzed the data. “We were surprised to find absolutely no relationship” between emotion and survival, Coyne says.
The researchers then looked at emotion and survival in greater detail, examining data for the most buoyant optimists, the most despondent individuals, and patients with complicating factors like smoking. In none of these analyses did emotional well-being affect survival. Because the study was so large and long, it gathered far more information than previous investigations of emotion and cancer survival. In smaller studies, Coyne says, it can be difficult to tell whether deaths were related to a factor like emotion or were simply due to chance.
While the huge pool of subjects and the controlled clinical trial conditions give the study statistical heft, Coyne acknowledges a few limitations. Having only people with head and neck cancers in the study eliminates the variability of a group suffering from different forms of the disease, but it also eliminates information about whether patients with other forms of cancer would show the same results. http://louisjsheehan.blogspot.com/
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Additionally, patients had to be judged “mentally reliable”—able to follow instructions and keep appointments—in order to qualify for the clinical trials, so their emotional scores might not represent the full spectrum of psychological states among cancer patients.
THE MEANING
Coyne says this is the most in-depth study of its kind, and until a study with a similar sample size proves otherwise, he is convinced there is no conclusive relationship between emotional well-being and cancer survival. Many cancer patients struggling to maintain a positive outlook—and fearing that their lives depended on it—have contacted Coyne to express relief that their survival may not be dependent on their emotions. “Having a positive outlook is not going to extend the quantity of life,” Coyne says. “Not everybody is capable of being positive when they have cancer.”
STATS BEHIND THE STUDY
• A 2004 study found that 72 percent of the public and 86 percent of cancer patients believe psychological factors affect cancer survival. Only 26 percent of oncologists agree.
• About 25 percent of breast cancer patients who joined support groups told researchers in a 2005 study that they attended to improve their immune systems.
• Four previous studies indicate that people with better psychological function do survive longer with cancer—but four others suggest that a healthier psychological condition predicts shorter survival time. More than a dozen studies have found no relationship between the two variables.
• A 2007 study found that the emotional, physical, and social questionnaire Coyne used is effective at predicting depression.
• Major depression afflicts about 25 percent of all cancer patients.
• The two clinical trials in Coyne’s study were conducted by the RTOG, which had a $13 million budget in 2007 and is funded by the National Cancer Institute.
• The American Cancer Society cited 1.4 million new cases of cancer in the United States in 2007 and more than 500,000 cancer deaths, with about 11,000 due to head and neck cancer.
SECOND OPINION
While this study attempts to correct factors that muddied previous research, few experts think the question of cancer and emotion is closed. Stanford psychiatrist David Spiegel notes that coping strategies are an important part of the picture and that they were not addressed by Coyne’s research. http://louis5j5sheehan.blogspot.com/
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He points to a study of breast cancer patients that provides evidence that survival has to do more with how people deal with emotions than how they feel. (Coyne believes the sample size in that study was inadequate and says larger studies oppose Spiegel’s contention.) Spiegel says support groups and other therapies might improve outcomes by helping patients manage stress and improve communication with doctors. Coyne acknowledges the possibility that psychological support could affect survival by mechanisms other than emotional well-being but says no methodologically sound study has yet shown a relationship.
The patient is unconscious; an ice pick protrudes from each eye socket. When the doctor steps back to take a photograph, one of the ice picks slips. The patient’s life ends in that instant. The doctor, unfazed, moves along to his next demonstration.
The doctor is Walter Freeman, pioneer of the infamous transorbital lobotomy, and the PBS documentary “The Lobotomist” tells the gruesome story of his rise and fall.
Freeman, the laboratory director at a mental hospital, spent many late nights bent over the dissecting table at the morgue. He was convinced that mental illness had its roots in the brain but couldn’t find any consistent differences between the brains of healthy and mentally ill individuals. Then he heard of a radical new treatment for mental illness: drilling into the skull and disconnecting the frontal lobe. The Portuguese neurologist Egas Moniz won the Nobel Prize in 1949 for inventing that procedure, but Freeman made it faster, easier, and more portable.
By the mid-1940s, Freeman was touring the country performing dozens of ice-pick lobotomies each day. He used picks from his own kitchen and carpenter’s hammers. Sometimes, for kicks, he’d operate left-handed. Physicians who gathered to watch would throw up and pass out—but patients often got better. Freeman could turn people who were smearing feces on walls and cowering naked under furniture into calm and docile citizens.
Unfortunately, along with their madness, they lost their personalities. http://louis2j2sheehan.blogspot.com/
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Freeman fell from institutional favor in the mid-1950s, when long-term studies began to reveal his technique’s failings and drugs like Thorazine came to market. In response he moved his practice west and began to operate on new kinds of patients: discontented housewives, for example, and unruly children. One was four years old.
“The Lobotomist” raises questions that remain urgently relevant in an age when pharmaceutical companies help define what it means to be mentally ill. “Is the absence of pain what we should look for? The absence of caring? The absence of anxiety?” journalist Robert Whitaker asks in the film. “Is that a good thing—or is that what makes us human?”
Papa Freud didn’t leave his psychoanalytic offspring without issues. In Revolution in Mind: The Creation of Psychoanalysis (HarperCollins, $32.50), psychiatrist George Makari traces analysis from its birth trauma and jittery adolescence through a conflicted young adulthood. He reveals the constantly shifting landscape of analytic trends, the roundelay of alliances and betrayals, schools—and reform schools—of thought. Collaborations. Fallings-out. One colleague thought Sigmund Freud was actually planning to murder him over a disagreement.
All the Big Names, and lots of lesser ones, make appearances. Many anecdotes, predictably, deal with sex. Felix Salten, the author of Bambi, wrote porn under an alias. Philosopher Otto Weininger, Makari tells us, “recommended a complete renunciation of sexuality even for propagation, published his magnum opus, and promptly committed suicide later that year.”
Some analysts held that masturbation caused madness; others thought it cured madness. Some were fanatical teetotalers, others wild libertines. One was even dubbed “the Pied Piper of carnality.” A major pillar of the early psychoanalysis movement, repeatedly accused of child molestation and other sexual excesses, fled his homeland; another famous analyst died in jail.
There were ethnic, racist, sexist, and religious hissy fits: Women were emotion machines destined for hysteria; blacks were inherently uncivilizable. Zurich’s Protestant analysts (Jung) maintained a tense relationship with Vienna’s Jewish group (Freud). Freud’s sexually perplexed protégé Fritz Wittels wrote, “As Sancho Panza rides behind Don Quixote, so syphilis behind Christianity.” Hungarian Jewish-born Max Südfeld, writing as Max Nordau, “believed Jews were disproportionately degenerate. To ameliorate this hereditary curse, Nordau lamely advised the practice of gymnastics.” Gymnastics? Pole-vault your way to stability? And what, exactly, does that pole represent?
Makari’s story portrays Freud as a complex, driven, troubled, egotistical visionary intent on establishing a legitimate new science but also a canny politician lusting for fame and success. http://louis0j0sheehan.blogspot.com/
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To that end, the author writes, Freud was not above “borrowing” others’ ideas, adapting them to his own theories, even undermining colleagues’ contributions if he felt they threatened his primacy. Freud eventually admitted that—despite the most purely Freudian self-analysis in history—even he was not immune to the forces of repressed sexuality.
1) It’s a barred spiral.
You might know that the Milky Way is a spiral galaxy, perhaps the most beautiful galaxy type. You’ve seen ‘em: majestic arms sweeping out from a central hub or bulge of glowing stars. That’s us. But a lot of spirals have a weird feature: a rectangular block of stars at the center instead of a sphere, and the arms radiate away from the ends of the block. Astronomers call this block a bar, and, you guessed it: we have one.
Is fact, ours is pretty big. At 27,000 light years end-to-end, it’s beefier than most bars. Of course, space is a rough neighborhood. Who wouldn’t want a huge bar located right downtown?
2) There’s a supermassive black hole at its heart.
At the very center of the Galaxy, right at its very core, lies a monster: a supermassive black hole.
We know it’s there due to the effect of its gravity. Stars very near the center — some only a few dozen billion kilometers out — orbit the center at fantastic speeds. They scream around their orbits at thousands of kilometers per second, and their phenomenal speed betrays the mass of the object to which they’re enthralled. Applying some fairly basic math, it’s possible to determine that the mass needed to accelerate the stars to those speeds must tip the cosmic scales at four million times the mass of the Sun! Yet in the images, nothing can be seen. So what can be as massive as 4,000,000 Suns and yet not emit any light?
Right. A black hole.
Even though it’s huge, bear in mind that the Galaxy itself is something like 200 billion solar masses strong, so in reality the black hole at the center is only a tiny fraction of the total mass of the Galaxy. And we’re in no danger of plunging into it: after all, it’s 250,000,000,000,000,000 kilometers away.
It’s thought now that a supermassive black hole in the center of a galaxy forms along with the galaxy itself, and in facts winds blown outward as material falls in affects the formation of stars in the galaxy. So black holes may be dangerous, but it’s entirely possible the Sun’s eventual birth — and the Earth’s along with it — may have been lent a hand by the four million solar mass killer so far away.
3) It’s a cannibal.
Galaxies are big, and have lots of mass. If another, smaller galaxy passes too close by, the bigger galaxy can rip it to shreds and ingest its stars and gas.
The Milky Way is pretty, but it’s savage, too. It’s currently eating several other galaxies. They’ve been ripped into long, curving arcs of stars that orbit the center of the Milky Way. Eventually they’ll merge completely with us, and we’ll be a slightly larger galaxy. Ironically though, the galaxies add their mass to ours, making it more likely we’ll feed again. http://Louis2J2Sheehan2Esquire.US
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Eating only makes galaxies hungrier.
4) We live in a nice neighborhood…
The Milky Way is not alone in space. We’re part of a small group of nearby galaxies called — get ready to be shocked — the Local Group. We’re the heaviest guy on the block, and the Andromeda galaxy is maybe a bit less massive, though it’s actually spread out more. The Triangulum galaxy is also a spiral, but not terribly big, and there are other assorted galaxies dotted here and there in the Group. All together, there are something like three dozen galaxies in the Local Group, with most being dinky dwarf galaxies that are incredibly faint and difficult to detect.
5) … and we’re in the suburbs.
The Local Group is small and cozy, and everyone makes sure their lawns are mowed and houses painted nicely. That’s because if you take the long view, we live in the suburbs. The big city in this picture is the Virgo Cluster, a huge collection of about 2000 galaxies, many of which are as large or larger than the Milky Way. It’s the nearest big cluster; the center of it is about 60 million light years away. We appear to be gravitationally bound to it; in other words, we’re a part of it, just far-flung. The total mass of the cluster may be as high as a quadrillion times the mass of the Sun.
6) You can only see 0.000003% percent of it.
When you got out on a dark night, you can see thousands of stars. But the Milky Way has two hundred billion stars in it. You’re only seeing a tiny tiny fraction of the number of stars tooling around the galaxy. In fact, with only a handful of exceptions, the most distant stars you can readily see are 1000 light years away. Worse, most stars are so faint that they are invisible much closer than that; the Sun is too dim to see from farther than about 60 light years away… and the Sun is pretty bright compared to most stars. http://louis-j-sheehan.net/page1.aspx
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So the little bubble of stars we can see around us is just a drop in the ocean of the Milky Way.
7) 90% of it is invisible.
When you look at the motions of the stars in our galaxy, you can apply some math and physics and determine how much mass the galaxy has (more mass means more gravity, which means stars will move faster under its influence). You can also count up the number of stars in the galaxy and figure out how much mass they have. Problem is, the two numbers don’t match: stars (and other visible things like gas and dust) make up only 10% of the mass of the galaxy. Where’s the other 90%?
Whatever it is, it has mass, but doesn’t glow. So we call it Dark Matter, for lack of a better term (and it’s actually pretty accurate). We know it’s not black holes, dead stars, ejected planets, cold gas — those have all been searched for, and marked off the list — and the candidates that remain get pretty weird (like WIMPs). But we know it’s real, and we know it’s out there. We just don’t know what it is. Smart people are trying to figure that out, and given the findings in recent years, I bet we’re less than a decade from their success.
8) Spiral arms are an illusion.
Well, they’re not an illusion per se, but the number of stars in the spiral arms of our galaxy isn’t really very different than the number between the arms! The arms are like cosmic traffic jams, regions where the local density is enhanced. Like a traffic jam on a highway, cars enter and leave the jam, but the jam itself stays. The arms have stars entering and leaving, but the arms themselves persist (that’s why they don’t wind up like twine on a spindle).
Just like on highways, too, there are fender benders. Giant gas clouds can collide in the arms, which makes them collapse and form stars. The vast majority of these stars are faint, low mass, and very long-lived, so they eventually wander out of the arms. But some rare stars are very massive, hot, and bright, and they illuminate the surrounding gas. These stars don’t live very long, and they die (bang!) before they can move out of the arms. http://louis2j2sheehan.us/Blog/Blogger.aspx
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Louis J. Sheehan Esquire
Since the gas clouds in the arms light up this way, it makes the spiral arms more obvious.
We see the arms because the light is better there, not because that’s where all the stars are.
9) It’s seriously warped.
The Milky Way is a flat disk roughly 100,000 light years across and a few thousand light years thick (depending on how you measure it). It has the same proportion as a stack of four DVDs, if that helps.
Have you ever left a DVD out in the Sun? It can warp as it heats up, getting twisted (old vinyl LPs used to be very prone to this). The Milky Way has a similar warp!
The disk is bent, warped, probably due to the gravitational influence of a pair of orbiting satellite galaxies. One side of the disk is bent up, if you will, and the other down. In a sense, it’s like a ripple in the plane of the Milky Way. It’s not hard to spot in other galaxies; grab an image of the Andromeda galaxy and take a look. At first it’s hard to see, but if you cover the inner part you’ll suddenly notice the disk is flared up on the left and down on the right. Andromeda has satellite galaxies too, and they warp its disk just like our satellite galaxies warp ours.
As far as I can tell, the warp doesn’t really affect us at all. It’s just a cool thing you may not know about the Milky Way. Hey, that would make a good blog entry!
10) We’re going to get to know the Andromeda galaxy a lot better.
Speaking of Andromeda, have you ever seen it in the sky? It’s visible to the naked eye on a clear, dark, moonless night (check your local listings). It’s faint, but big; it’s four or more degrees across, eight times the apparent size of the Moon on the sky.
If that doesn’t seem too big, then give it, oh, say, two billion years. Then you’ll have a much better view.
The Andromeda Galaxy and the Milky Way are approaching each other, two cosmic steam engines chugging down the tracks at each other at 200 kilometers per second. Remember when I said big galaxies eat small ones? Well, when two big galaxies smack into each other, you get real fireworks. Stars don’t physically collide; they’re way too small on this scale. But gas clouds can, and like I said before, when they do they form stars. So you get a burst of star formation, lighting up the two galaxies.
In the meantime, the mutual gravity of the two galaxies draw out long tendrils from the other, making weird, delicate arcs and filaments of stars and gas. It’s beautiful, really, but it indicates violence on an epic scale.
Eventually (it takes a few billion years), the two galaxies will merge, and will become, what, Milkomeda? Andromeway? Well, whatever, they form a giant elliptical galaxy when they finally settle down. In fact, the Sun will still be around when this happens; it won’t have yet become a red giant. Will our descendants witness the biggest collision in the history of the galaxy?
That’s cool to think about. http://louis4j4sheehan4esquire.blogspot.com/
Incidentally, I talk about this event a whole lot more, and in a lot more detail, in my upcoming book Death from the Skies! In case you forgot about that.
Until then, these Ten Things should keep you occupied. And of course, I only wanted to list ten things so I could give this post the cool title. But if there’s something you find surprising about the Milky Way, leave a comment! I don’t want to hog all the fun.
So, while Democrats scuffle, it's time for Republican Sen. John McCain to start thinking about picking his running mate.
Here's what he needs in a vice-presidential sidekick: A younger politician who is viewed as a potential president, and also can help win the South, woo social conservatives, and shore up Sen. McCain's weaknesses on economic policy. Oh, and being a woman would be nice, too.
The person who perfectly fits that description doesn't exist, of course, meaning this will be an interesting choice. It takes on greater importance for Sen. McCain because of the simple and unavoidable fact that he is 71 years old, and will be 72 by Election Day.
That inevitably invites questions about whether his running mate would be a suitable president. (Interesting trivia: Sen. McCain turns 72 on Aug. 29, one day after the Democratic national convention ends and three days before the Republican one begins. Which party will make a bigger fuss about his birthday?)
One could make a case for Sen. McCain making his choice early, to defuse the age issue a bit and draw attention away from the Democratic race. But the Democrats are busy slicing and dicing each other in their prolonged battle for their party's nomination, so maybe there's no advantage for Sen. McCain in drawing attention away from that.
Right now, there's no sign Sen. McCain is in a big hurry. He's just ordered advisers to undertake an in-depth study of how other candidates have gone about picking running mates. "It's going to be a big decision because it's going to be the first time voters are going to look at his decision-making process," says Scott Reed, who ran Republican Bob Dole's 1996 presidential campaign.
The vetting and guessing process already is under way, so it's a good time to look at three groups of contenders:
Fellow senators. There's a surprisingly short list of possibilities among Sen. McCain's Senate colleagues. He is friendly with Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback, who is beloved by social conservatives, and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who has been a voice of intelligence and reason on the fight against terrorism. But Sen. Brownback didn't deliver Kansas for Sen. McCain (former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee won there), and Sen. Graham is probably only the second-most-plausible possibility out of South Carolina. (See governors below.)
The most intriguing Senate possibility is Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, who is reliably conservative and would give Republicans a bit of diversity that might help them in a year when Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are battling to represent the other side. But Sen. Hutchison represents a state that Republicans are highly likely to win anyway, and she isn't well known nationally.
Fellow presidential hopefuls. Former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson seems unlikely because, among other things, at age 65 he doesn't project the kind of youth desired to offset Sen. McCain's age. http://louis3j3sheehan3esquire.blogspot.com/
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Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
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Louis J Sheehan
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Louis J. Sheehan
Former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani got along famously with Sen. McCain after dropping out of the race, but he actually would exacerbate doubts among social conservatives.
Mr. Huckabee showed great strength in two areas where Sen. McCain needs help: He's strong among social conservatives and in the South, where he beat Sen. McCain several times. But he may be too socially conservative for a general-election audience -- and would he be seen as presidential?
In many ways, the best running mate for Sen. McCain, on paper at least, might be former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. As a former businessman, his strength would be the domestic economy, which could be crucial in a campaign that may well be run in the midst of a recession. He won over economic conservatives in his own presidential effort, and he looks and sounds presidential.
But it never appeared that he and Sen. McCain much liked each other, so the big question is whether the chemistry is, or could be, right.
Governors. Interesting possibilities here. Charlie Crist of Florida is popular in his home state, one central to the general election, and was an important McCain backer. He isn't well known and scrutinized nationally, though.
Mark Sanford of South Carolina is young (47), with some Washington experience from his days in the House of Representatives, and he is popular among the party's economic conservatives for his crusades against government spending. Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, says Gov. Sanford is "perfect ideologically, solid on spending. He's governed as governor the way McCain says he'd govern as president." Haley Barbour of Mississippi would reassure party regulars of all stripes, but his background as a lobbyist is a problem.
Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, who matches Gov. Sanford in relative youth (also 47), was an early McCain backer and is deft on the kinds of real-world economic issues that aren't exactly Sen. McCain's strength. Mr. Norquist recently sang his praises for vetoing a state transportation plan that included tax increases. And Minnesota is an important swing state (though Gov. Pawlenty's support wasn't enough to prevent Sen. McCain from losing the state's caucuses to Mr. Romney).
Finally, here's an intriguing possibility: How about Louisiana's new governor, Bobby Jindal? He definitely provides youth (age 36), is a former Rhodes scholar who's actually worked on health-care reform while running Louisiana's health agency, and has experience in the House. As an Indian-American, he'd go a long way toward defusing the Republican Party's current image as anti-immigrant, and he's Catholic to boot, which helps with a key constituency. OK, he's probably too young -- but he sure is articulate and that, plus his nontraditional ethnic background, makes him appear to be a kind of Republican version of Sen. Obama.
The first South Korean astronaut, Yi So-yeon, is set to launch in April on a Russian rocket headed for the International Space Station.There are several stories here. One is that she is the first Korean astronaut, which is cool. The second is that she replaces Ko San, who was slated to be the first, but broke some rules the Russians have set. They appear to be minor infractions involving training manuals — the first was he sent a manual home by accident, he says, and a second violation involved getting a manual he was not supposed to receive — but the Russian space agency takes those rules seriously, and after formally apologizing twice, I don’t blame Korea for replacing him.
The third story is that Dr. Yi is young — 29 — and has a PhD in bioengineering. Wow. I had just gotten my degree when I turned 29, but I wasn’t also training to be an astronaut!
The fourth aspect of this is that Dr. Yi a woman. I wish this weren’t news, but a casual perusal of the list of space-travelers makes it clear it is. The good news is, in my opinion, soon this won’t be news. Women will travel in space as much as men, and eventually we’ll be an egalitarian space-faring species.
I look forward to that time very much, and so I wish Dr. Yi a good launch and journey, and hope that one day her travels won’t be news any more.
The symptoms of some genetic diseases are so nonspecific that it can take years for a child to be diagnosed. Even when a doctor suspects a specific disorder, such as Noonan syndrome, a developmental disorder that can affect the skeletal system, heart, eyes, language, and speech, but usually not intelligence, testing can cost thousands of dollars and sometimes requires months to complete. http://louis3j3sheehan3esquire.blogspot.com/
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Peter Hammond of University College London is developing a faster, potentially cheaper approach that uses computer analysis to spot facial characteristics associated with a variety of genetic disorders.
Hammond first projects a pattern of thousands of dots onto a patient’s face and then takes photos of the face from different angles with a digital camera, capturing the positions of the dots. Software converts the data into a three-dimensional “map” of the person’s face and compares this map to models of the face shapes linked with various genetic syndromes, including Noonan, Williams, and Fragile X. If the computer analysis indicates, for example, wide-set eyes, low ears, a small jaw, and drooping eyelids, the program might match it with Noonan syndrome, which often includes these features. Among children with one of the genetic disorders for which Hammond has compiled a face shape model, this technique has demonstrated greater than 90 percent accuracy.
So far, Hammond has modeled 12 of the 30 disorders he has studied. But your hospital might not be able to afford a scan machine yet. Custom-made to Hammond’s specs, they cost $40,000 to $60,000 each.
Russian Jewish oligarchs seem to embrace Israel. The major reason behind their interest to the Promised Land is its non-extradition statute: Israeli law generally bans rendering a Jew to foreign prosecution. Israel is also notoriously lax on money laundering and foreign tax evasion: police investigate money laundering only when it coincides with a major tax evasion in Israel. Another reason why Russian oligarchs love Israel is because she is a backwater village to them susceptible to inexpensive takeover.
Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs invariably participate in those countries’ elections; large business there is inseparable from politics. The costs and difficulties involved in Russian and Ukrainian politics dwarf those of Israel. It is not unusual for a Ukrainian oligarch to spend $10-30 million for his own tiny party in parliamentary elections; contributions to large parties, especially in Russia run much higher. Parliamentary seats are sold at $4-10 million apiece. In comparison, the power in Israel comes on the cheap. Russian oligarchs see Israel as a political investment opportunity. For them, it is not only or even primarily a matter of profiting from politics, but mostly a way to realize their dreams of power. http://louis1j1sheehan1esquire1.blogspot.com/
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They come so close to power in Russia and Ukraine but are always vulnerable to anti-Semitic rulers. In Israel, the oligarchs can finally dominate.
Israeli politics is very provincial. Even a no-one called Netanyahu rose to power by hiring American campaign managers and investing relatively little in advertising. Peace Now became prominent by using forty-year-old tricks of political campaigning. Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs possess vastly more sophisticated experience of managing political campaigns and imagine they can influence Israeli politics efficiently.
The oligarchs are way smarter than average Israeli politicians; it’s hard to find a person sillier than an average MK. But it takes luck rather than genius to become an oligarch in Russia, and the magnates often overestimate their political power. The oligarchs are proverbially hapless in politics, consistently losing their political investment on the advice of cheating campaign managers.
Thus we see Michael Cherny and Vadim Rabinovich investment in Lieberman going sour: after short-term success, Lieberman the phony predictably loses his support base. Cherny and Rabinovich bet on a commonsense idea of militant Russian identity in Israel, but once that idea failed to bring Lieberman’s electorate substantial improvement, they weren’t able to redefine his platform. With Likud making inroads into Lieberman’s Russian audience, and ad hoc parties such as the Pensioners’ taking their share of Russian voters, Lieberman’s project is doomed. Lieberman will retain some supporters, bent on taking him for messiah, but their number would guarantee him only an insignificant position in the Knesset. It is possible that Lieberman can heat up his voters with demagoguery once again, but his trend is downward. Lieberman’s case is the first Israeli instance of a widespread Ukrainian phenomenon: parties which depend on lone oligarchs are doomed. The oligarchs cannot allow their parties to be strongly anti-government, and so the parties lose their opposition identity, become mild and unattractive for voters. Lieberman’s oligarchic sponsors do not rationally depend on Israeli government as they make money elsewhere, but so far they habitually avoid alienating the ruling establishment.
Or consider a Jew with an odious last name, Gaydamak (gaydamaks are the worst anti-Semitic strain of Cossacks). He partners with KGB/ FSB in many businesses, from Soviet foreign debts to weapons sales, but now miraculously converted into Israeli philanthropist. Gaydamak was always frank about his social and eventually political ambitions in Israel. After the years of being derogatory called “Arkasha” by his KGB overseers, Gaydamak wants to become a political boss. http://louis6j6sheehan6esquire.blogspot.com/
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Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
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Louis J Sheehan
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His entourage of Israeli advisors is laughable, though; they play the king rather than trying to make him. In Israeli political vacuum, Gaydamak’s bizarre political party can get even 14 seats, but will hardly enter the Knesset in subsequent elections. Messianically minded Jews have elected a number of such single-session parties, and almost none of them staged a comeback. Gaydamak’s sensible social slogans target voters across the political spectrum, thus making him dangerous to every politician. Upon entering the Knesset, Gaydamak would likely be ostracized by fellow politicians. He can make a decent political figure: not prone to petty corruption and not very left.
Like other very rich Jews, Gaydamak cannot be right or Jewish: such stance would offend his Gentile friends and business partners. Olmert likewise describes Bush whose peace process kills the Jewish state as very friendly; Jewish values and interests are an uncivil obstacle in the friendly chat of ex-Jews with fellow Gentiles. It is impolite to stubbornly insist on Abraham’s right to Hebron and Jacob’s right to Schem when a friendly powerful Gentile wants to help you out of that mess with Arabs that his predecessors set up. It is ludicrous to speak of Jewish choosiness, truth of Judaism, and religious right to the land at business meetings and debauch parties. Gaydamak, accordingly, spends money to alleviate the harm done by defeatism rather than helps to achieve the victory; he helps Sderot refugees rather than outpost settlers.
Lev Levaev comes very close to being the fifth column. His major income source, trade in Russian diamonds, wholly depends on Putin’s whim; Levaev, therefore, have to carefully dance to Putin’s tune. And so Levaev sponsors the alien Russian culture in Israel; instead of integrating the Russian Jews into Israeli milieu, they are kept distinct. Levaev also fosters political ties between Israel and anti-Semitic Russia; his role is especially dangerous because of his contacts in the highest political echelons of Israel. Levaev cooperates with Putin and, for example, on Angola diamonds – with Mossad’s ex-chief Mossad Danny Yatom. It is plausible that he acts as a link between them, essentially abetting a high treason. Levaev, like other oligarchs, is left: an aggressive, religiously charged Jewish state is not good for his business. Superficially, Levaev supports Chabad charities, but his own shopping malls work on Shabbat. The Jewish schools Levaev sponsors in Russia and Ukraine are thinly disguised assimilationist shops which teach formalized religion, hateful to the children, instead of the real Judaism and Jewish values. Levaev is a typical religious atheist who separates God from business. Like Vyacheslav Kantor and so many others, Levaev chose the respectful position of Putin’s court Jew instead of simply being a person true to Judaism.
The latest Russian Jewish oligarch who established connection with Israel is Roman Abramovich. He survived Putin’s purges of Jewish oligarchs, and exhibits absolute loyalty to the Russian regime; a shred of loyalty to anti-Semitic Russia amounts to treason against Israel. Abramovich is far richer than any other Israeli oligarch and, considering his extravagant spending habits, can reach almost any political goal, if only temporarily. There is no doubt that Abramovich would be as left and pro-Russian as the other oligarchs. He has a history of social mega-projects in Chukotka, a far Siberian region where he serves as absentee governor. Abramovich is therefore likely to follow in Gaydamak’s steps, starting with huge cocktail parties and ending with pompous welfare projects. Given Abramovich’s track record of keeping low political profile in Russia, he is unlikely to exhibit political ambitions in Israel.
Putin’s tremendous influence on Russian Jewish oligarchs presents a problem. Putin is very different from previous Russian leaders: he is not a nomenclature bureaucrat who carefully charts his course, but a petty KGB officer turned corrupt businessman turned politician turned tsar. Putin is, in a sense, rootless; he lacks political fundamentals. His thinking is that of the proverbial “new Russian” businessman, entirely lacking strategic dimension. The nearest Western analogy is of a spoiled and not particularly bright child who suddenly became a large company’s CEO. Putin is unpredictable; he makes moves based on curiosity and desire to show his power. Now the Putin-controlled Jewish magnates can establish control over Israel. They can spend much more on elections than any Israeli party, and invest more in the electoral-oriented welfare than any charity. In all likelihood, the MAPAI-built security apparatus of Israel would grind the oligarchs. And we shouldn’t pity them.
Alex Vines, a former U.N. arms inspector whose investigations contributed to many of the U.N.'s accusations, said that in Angola's civil war, Mr. Bout supplied weapons to both the government and rebels of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, or Unita. http://louis-j-sheehan.org/page1.aspx
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"He was a very pragmatic fellow," said Mr. Vines, who is now head of the African program at Chatham House, a think tank in London. Mr. Vines said he saw Mr. Bout's planes and evidence of their fraudulent registrations, but never Mr. Bout himself.
Those who have tracked Mr. Bout for years were surprised at the apparent carelessness that helped the U.S. sting succeed. U.S. Treasury officials have placed sanctions on Mr. Bout's companies and on his associates in recent years, and they have frozen some of his assets. A November email U.S. prosecutors say was from Mr. Smulian hints that those sanctions may have been having an effect. "Our man has been made persona non-G[rata] -- for the world through the UN....All assets cash and kind frozen, total value is around 6 Bn USD, and of course no ability to journey anywhere other than home territories."
So extensive was Mr. Bout's network that U.S. military officials said in 2005 that they had contracted with companies that used Mr. Bout's cargo companies to ferry materials for the military and its contractors to Iraq, following the U.S. invasion. U.S. officials said they weren't aware beforehand that Mr. Bout's companies were involved. His companies also have shown up carrying humanitarian aid for the U.N. in Africa.
Mr. Bout is a colorful figure who rarely showed himself in public, and he is believed to have inspired the 2005 film "Lord of War."
In 2006, he appeared on a Russian government-run television channel to dismiss allegations against him. Investigators from the U.S. and U.N., he said, had conflated him into an international bogeyman of gun-running. "Every time, it's the same story, the same repetition," he told English-language program Russia Today. "I can even call it a witch hunt."
Mr. Bout said he had given up the air-transport business because of the accusations against him. He told the Russian channel that he had seen the Hollywood film in which Nicholas Cage plays a morally bereft arms dealer believed to be modeled on Mr. Bout and that it was "a bad movie." http://louis-j-sheehan.com/page1.aspx
He added: "I'm sorry for Nicholas Cage."
Others note that while Mr. Bout's arrest could be significant, it's just a step.
"Viktor Bout is not the only person accused of trafficking arms in violation of U.N. embargoes," said Brian Wood, http://louis-j-sheehan.biz/page1.aspx
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who analyzes arms and security issues at Amnesty International in London. "He's most certainly a businessman in a chain." http://louis-j-sheehan.biz/
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new paper just published by a team of planet-hunters shows that theoretically speaking, not only can Alpha Centauri have planets, it should have them.
A bit of background: Alpha Cen is actually a binary star, with one star much like the Sun (called Alpha Cen A) and the other a bit cooler (Alpha Cen B). A third star, Proxima Centauri, orbits very far out from the central binary.
Alpha Cen is the closest star system to the Sun that we know of, at a distance of 4.3 light years, or roughly 40 trillion km (24 trillion miles). Since it’s close, it’s one of the most common stars used in science fiction.
Planet formation around one star in a binary can be tricky; the disk from which the planets form can be disrupted by the presence of another star. However, a team of astronomers including Javiera Guedes and Greg Laughlin used computer simulations to see how planets could form in the Alpha Cen system specifically. They did what’s called a Monte Carlo test, running the simulation over and over again with slightly different input parameters every time (like, disk density, composition, and so on).
Remarkably, what they found is that they got a terrestrial (rocky) planet about the size of Earth orbiting Alpha Cen B every single time, and in many cases was at the right distance from the star to have liquid water.
Holy Haleakala.
A planet like that would be difficult to detect if it exists, but not impossible. In fact, not only do we have the tech right now to do it, but paper co-author Debra Fischer is looking for such a planet. It’s possible that we may find such a planet in just a few more years.
It’s difficult to say what that would do for awareness of astronomy; I can’t help but think it would make a huge splash. First, to find a planet orbiting the nearest star, and second, an Earth-like planet… wow. Still, since the result is still only theoretical, it’s too early to get too excited about this.
Viktor Anatolyevich Bout[1] (Russian: Виктор Анатольевич Бут) (born January 13, 1967 in Dushanbe, Tajik SSR, Soviet Union) is a Russian former KGB major and arms dealer, [2] nicknamed "the Merchant of Death".[3] Bout is suspected of supplying arms to the Taliban and Al Qaeda and of supplying huge arms shipments into various civil wars in Africa with his own private air fleet.[4] He is the subject of a book by that name written by Douglas Farah and Stephen Braun[5] (Bout is not the first to bear the title: it appeared in a premature obituary of Alfred Nobel, which ultimately inspired him to create the Nobel Prizes). According to Lee S. Wolosky, he is "the most powerful player in the trafficking of illegal arms." [2]
Recent reports suggest he is also operating in Iraq using front companies and Cargo Airlifts (Airline Transport, Air West, Aerocom and TransAvia Export). Bout came to officials' attention in the 1990s, when he was accused of supplying arms to rebels in West Africa after a cease-fire agreement had been brokered. At that time he owned or was using many airlines, including Air Cess and Centrafrican, which were later forced to shut down by authorities. He also supplied arms to the deposed regime of Charles Taylor in Liberia.
In May 2006, when 200,000 AK-47 assault rifles allegedly went missing in transit from Bosnia to Iraq, one of Bout's airlines was the carrier.[6] Bout's business partner is Hasan Čengić, the former Deputy Prime Minister of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, according to Slobodna Bosna and Douglas Farah.[7][8]
Yuri Orlov, Nicolas Cage's character in the 2005 film Lord of War is said [9][10][11] to be partially based on Viktor Bout.
Viktor Bout was arrested in Bangkok, Thailand on March 6, 2008, 5 days after Colombian government found the computer of FARC's (Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia) leader alias "Raul Reyes" in a long term camp site in Ecuador .[12]
Contents
[hide]
* 1 History
* 2 Fugitive status
* 3 Arrest
* 4 In the media
* 5 Arms dealings
* 6 References
* 7 See also
* 8 External links
[edit] History
Viktor Bout is a former Soviet military major who retired from the service in 1993 and became an international arms dealer [2]. Often referred to as the Embargo Buster, Bout made a significant amount of money selling illegal arms to countries that the UN has placed arms embargoes on. He first appeared on the radar when he sold weapons to African nations in civil wars under such embargoes.
Little is known about Bout before his military career, other than he was born to two Russian parents in 1967. According to his official passport, he was born in Dushanbe, USSR, which is now Tajikistan. However, Bout stated in a 2002 radio interview that he was born near what is now Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, and a 2001 South African intelligence file listed him as Ukrainian in origin[13][14]. After military training, he worked at a Russian military base in Vitebsk as a navigator. His duties expanded, eventually including the training of commando troops of the Russian Air Force.[15] In 1991 Bout graduated from the prestigious Soviet Military Institute of Foreign Languages in Moscow. He is said to be fluent in 6 languages, including Russian, Uzbek, English, French and Portuguese. After this he became a translator for the Soviet Army in Angola. In the same year the military base he was serving at was dissolved due to the collapse of the Soviet Union and Bout and his colleagues found themselves highly trained, but without jobs. He then started the Transavia Export Cargo company, which aided Belgian soldiers in Somalia in 1993. Russian sources have claimed that, in return for a cut of the profits, Bout was staked three Antonovs by the GRU of which he may well have been a member, given his association with the GRU school of foreign languages. Another of his early clients was the Islamic State of Afghanistan (later it was known by the name the Northern Alliance). Between 1992 and 1995, Bout made an alleged $50 million from supplying several Afghan groups.[16] This helped him grow his empire.
In 1995 Bout established the Trans Aviation Network Group in the Belgian city of Oostende. The company delivered weapons to the Islamic State of Afghanistan, but this relationship came to an end when the Taliban drove that government out of Kabul and reduced its control to just a few northern provinces. In May 1995 one of his shipments for the Afghan government was intercepted by the Taliban. In August 1995 the crew of this shipment escaped (or was released) from Afghanistan and soon after that Bout had a new customer: the Taliban.[17]
During this period Bout lived in Belgium, even purchasing a mansion and several luxury cars, as well as an apartment in Moscow. But in 1997 newspaper reports revealed his shady business, prompting Belgian authorities to investigate.[18] Bout moved to Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates; here he founded his United Arab Emirates company, which would become his main base of operations. Bout is alleged to have used Sharjah International Airport as well as airfields in the neighboring emirates of Ajman and Ras Al Khaimah as transshipment points for arms traveling to Africa and Afghanistan as late as 2002[19]. In 1995 he founded another company that would become synonymous with his dealings. Air Cess was based in Equatorial Guinea and registered in Liberia and was Bout's main way of supplying arms to African conflicts. Bout seems to have sold to any group that could pay him for his weapons. US and UN officials say that Bout smuggled thousands upon thousands of assault rifles, grenade launchers, bullets and other weapons to African conflicts in Angola, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Kenya, Liberia, Libya, Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Sudan, Swaziland and Uganda.[20]
Most weapons smuggled into Africa came via Bulgaria, which Bout visited frequently between 1995 and 2000. From July 1997 to September 1998 Bout reportedly smuggled an estimated $14 million of weapons into Africa. In 2000 Bout also delivered helicopters, anti-aircraft guns and armored vehicles to Liberia. Bout also established Air Cess in Miami, Florida, in 1997. The company operated until September 2001, when it was dissolved. [21]
Viktor has essentially done business with anyone irrespective of ideology, often contracted on both sides of a war. As well as some of the more controversial customers such as the Taliban or Charles G. Taylor, the UN and the US have also paid for his services.[14][22]
His nicknames, namely the 'Embargo Buster' and 'Merchant of Death', were coined by former British Foreign Office minister, Peter Hain. Upon reading the 2003 UN report on Bout's activities, Hain said: "Bout is the leading merchant of death who is the principal conduit for planes and supply routes that take arms, including heavy military equipment, from east Europe, principally Bulgaria, Moldova, and Ukraine, to Liberia and Angola. The UN has exposed Bout as the center of a spider's web of shady arms dealers, diamond brokers, and other operatives, sustaining the wars."
[edit] Fugitive status
Viktor Bout only became a high priority for international authorities when his African arms dealings became very prominent. His criminal profile in the public eye reached a high-water mark with the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Bout supplied weapons to the Taliban, which has close ties to al-Qaeda. This placed Bout on a top-priority list for U.S. officials.
Years of dealing in arms, however, has allowed Bout to build a large network of business and political contacts. The United Arab Emirates eventually caved in to co-operate on capturing Bout. Bout's business dealings were careful and complicated, making it hard for authorities to assess, for instance, which airplanes are his and which are operating illegally. Constantly moving the locations of himself and his companies, not to mention frequent re-registering—often illegally—his aircraft has made it hard for US and Interpol authorities to build a case against him. He was finally charged prior to 9/11. Before then he had lived openly in Moscow, as his warrant for arrest by Interpol had not been taken seriously by Russia. In 2002 both Belgium and Interpol issued warrants for his arrest. When the heat was turned up, Bout fled to Russia, where he remained protected by the Russian Constitution which does not allow extradition of citizens to foreign nations. The UN has banned Bout from international travel and frozen his foreign bank accounts.
Bout is said to have at least five passports and several aliases. He resided in Russia with his wife, Alla, and her father, "Zuiguin." According to a UN report, "information from the United States suggests that his wife’s father, 'Zuiguin,' at one point held a high position in the KGB, perhaps even as high as a Deputy Chairman."
[edit] Arrest
Viktor Bout was arrested in Bangkok, Thailand on March 6, 2008 during an arms sting set up by US DEA agents in Thailand. Thai police acted on an arrest warrant issued by the US government, which accuses Mr Bout of supplying weapons to Colombia's FARC rebels. He is currently awaiting deportation proceedings. Sources in Colombia and Spain claim that his arrest was made possible thanks to the information available from computers seized during the military operation that ended with the death of Raul Reyes (see 2008 Andean diplomatic crisis). [23]More Information .
[edit] In the media
Viktor Bout has always professed his innocence, saying he is just a businessman. He was interviewed by Peter Landesman for the Süddeutsche Zeitung (October 24, 2003).[24] He also appeared on Moscow radio station Ekho Moskvy, saying "I have never supplied anything to or had contacts with the Taliban or al-Qaida."[21]
In 2005 the movie Lord of War, starring Nicolas Cage as the character Yuri Orlov, was released. This movie is partially based on Bout.
In 2007 Stephen Braun and Douglas Farah published a book about Bout entitled Merchant of Death: Money, Guns, Planes, and the Man Who Makes War Possible.[5]
[edit] Arms dealings
Some of Bout's alleged arms customers include:
* Northern Alliance (Afghanistan)
* Taliban (Afghanistan)
* Abu Sayyaf (Philippines)
* UNITA (Angola)
* RUF (Sierra Leone)
* Charles Taylor (Liberia)
* FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia)
In addition to his services as an arms dealer and importer/exporter of weapons and ammunition, Viktor Bout has allegedly offered some sort of private military assistance to the Afghan Northern Alliance and United States in those countries' on-going war on terrorism. According to journalists Stephen Braun and Douglas Farah, Bout approached the American intelligence community (specifically the FBI, possibly the CIA as well) sometime after the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center with a contract of services to help combat the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.[25] While the American agencies have not disclosed their final decision on the matter, documentation has been obtained by Braun and Farah which indicated that these agencies were interested enough to allow Bout to fly to the United States on at least two occasions for face-to-face discussions of his sales pitch. (It is important to note that trips of this nature would have required a temporary waiver of his American travel ban, evidence of which Braun and Farah also claim to have obtained.)
Mount Graham is a mountain in southeastern Arizona in the United States, in the Coronado National Forest. It is the highest mountain in the Pinaleño Mountains. The mountain reaches 10,720 feet (3,267 m) in height, attaining the highest elevation in Graham County. It is twentieth of the 57 ultra prominent peaks of the lower 48 states, and the first of the five in Arizona.
[edit] Mount Graham Observatory
Large Binocular Telescope on Mount Graham.
Large Binocular Telescope on Mount Graham.
Mount Graham, with some of the clearest skies in the world, is home to the Mount Graham International Observatory area, where multiple organizations have set up large telescopes in a few separate observatories.
The United States Congress authorized construction of observatories on the mountain in 1988, but there has been outcry from some Native American groups, who consider the site to be sacred. Environmental groups, including the Sierra Club also opposed the construction projects on Mount Graham as the summit was thought to be one of the few remaining habitats of the Mount Graham Red Squirrel. Astronomers working in the area often faced protest and the threat of physical violence.[citation needed] Acts of sabotage were also threatened, but most of the protests remained peaceful.
Mount Graham was selected from a survey of 280 potential mountain sites on the basis of astronomical considerations such as clear skies, low light pollution, low atmospheric water vapor, and ease of access and support. Mount Graham is in the Sonoran desert climatic zone along with established sites such as Kitt Peak, Mount Hopkins and Mount Lemmon; its intrinsic climatic properties are those which have made the desert southwest so productive for astronomy for almost a century. Mount Graham does, however, have the additional advantages of greater altitude and very low light pollution. Unlike rival sites outside the continental United States, it has excellent logistics: sufficient area for several telescopes, a pre-existing paved highway, good connections by air and road, and a high level of local technical support.
The only astronomical site characteristic not considered in the initial survey was image sharpness (astronomical seeing) since there is no generally accepted method of doing this other than by making in situ measurements. The image sharpness on Mt. Graham has, therefore, been the subject of a ten year study carried out by Dr. Richard Cromwell, Dr. Nick Woolf, and others. These studies first identified the Emerald Peak region as the best general area on Mount Graham for an observatory, because it provides good image sharpness and space for telescopes. In the second study phase, measurements were made of seeing differences between various locations within the 150-acre Mt. Graham scientific research area.
All of the telescope sites which Steward Observatory has tested extensively within the 150-acre Mt. Graham Astrophysical Research Area, around Emerald Peak, provide excellent astronomical seeing. Several years of data show that the typical image size for a large telescope located 25 meters above the ground is about 0.6 arcseconds; this compares favorably with the image quality at the Multiple Mirror Telescope on Mount Hopkins in Southern Arizona. The table below shows that the Emerald Peak sites are also competitive on a worldwide basis (other data provided by the observatories concerned).
Comparative Image Sharpness
Site Median Seeing
Mauna Kea Observatory 0.45
Emerald Peak sites (range) 0.55-0.63
MMT (Mt. Hopkins/summit) 0.60
European Southern Obs. (VLT site) 0.66
Magellan (Las Campanas) & ESO (La Silla) 0.76
Studies have demonstrated that two atmospheric layers contribute most of the image blurring or seeing. A high level (10km) layer contributes about 0.5 - 0.53 arc seconds and a thin (20m) boundary layer at roughly tree height contributes most of the remainder and accounts for local seeing differences. By suitable design of the telescope, the effects of this boundary layer can be minimized. This has, of course, been accommodated in the LBT design.
Among the Emerald Peak sites, the site of the 1.8-m Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope (VATT), the smallest of the telescopes of the MGIO, yields the poorest image sharpness (median 0.63 arcseconds at a height of 25 meters). A request to place the LBT, the largest telescope in the first phase of the MGIO, at the best of the potential sites for the telescope (peak 10298, median seeing 0.55 arcseconds at 25 meters) was turned down by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service because they felt the Phase I telescopes should remain clustered. The next best site, Emerald Peak (10477), with a seeing of 0.59 arcseconds median at 25 meters) was then requested. The request was approved in December 1993. While peak 10298 was preferred on the basis of image quality alone, the LBT will be fully competitive at Emerald Peak, which better satisfied other important criteria besides image quality.
The VATT is now operational at Emerald Peak and measures of image sharpness at that telescope are beginning to provide some "real life" calibration of the test data. The VATT which is placed ten meters above ground is now regularly achieving image sharpness around 0.75 arcseconds even without thermal control of the mirror (still to be installed). After adjustment to 25 meters, the predicted image sharpness for LBT may be slightly better than shown in the table above 1.
The Mt. Graham site thus combines the familiar advantages of existing southwestern sites with very good image sharpness, low light pollution, an altitude high enough for infrared work and an existing paved access highway. It is essentially unique in its astronomical qualities at least in the continental United States.
A Russian arms dealer thought to have inspired the lead character in the blockbuster film Lord of War was arrested in Bangkok today.
Viktor Bout, 41, was detained while allegedly attempting to buy weapons for Colombian rebels.
Dubbed "the merchant of death", he has been accused of breaking UN embargoes since the early 1990s by selling arms to conflict-torn regions in Africa and around the world.
Thai police said today that Mr Bout had been arrested in a Bangkok hotel. "He was attempting to procure weapons for Colombia’s FARC rebels”, the arrest report said.
Related Links
* Exposed: the Somalia arms boycott breaker
* The battle to break Britain's crime lords
According to the United Nations and the US Treasury Department, Mr Bout has sold arms or brokered deals that have helped fuel wars in Afghanistan, Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Sudan.
In 2006, the US Treasury Department seized his cargo planes and froze other assets.
Mr Bout, a former Soviet air force officer, has repeatedly denied the allegations against him.
It is believed that he was the model for the arms dealer played by Nicholas Cage in the 2005 film Lord of War.
A report by Amnesty International published in the same year accused Mr Bout of being “the most prominent foreign businessman” involved in trafficking arms to UN-embargoed destinations from Bulgaria, Slovakia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan and other countries.
Today, the human rights organisation questioned why Mr Bout had been able to continue his alleged gun-running for so many years.
Oliver Sprague, of Amnesty International UK, said: “While we welcome the fact that Viktor Bout has finally been arrested, why has it taken so long for this to happen?
“This is exactly why an international arms trade treaty is needed. Such a treaty would close loopholes that gun-runners like Viktor Bout so easily exploit for their own gain."
Stephan Rapp, Chief Prosecutor at Sierra Leone’s UN-backed war crimes court, welcomed the arrest: “It’s very good news for justice and for international law enforcement.”
He accused Mr Bout of using his international network to smuggle arms through neighbouring Liberia to fuel Sierra Leone’s 1991-2002 civil war.
In 2000, Peter Hain, then the Foreign Office minister responsible for Africa, publicly condemned Mr Bout in the House of Commons as “the chief sanctions-buster” and “a merchant of death”.
Mr Hain today welcomed news of his arrest in Thailand: “I exposed him in the House of Commons when I was a Foreign Office minister, using parliamentary privilege regarding intelligence by M16.
“He has been for many years a merchant of death, flying arms in the late 1990s into Sierra Leone, Angola and the Congo. I tried working with the security intelligence services to disrupt his activities when I was in the Foreign Office and we were partially successful.
“After I named him in Parliament, it did damage his lethal activities but he still had too many friends in Moscow as an ex-KGB agent."
Every winter since 1917, people in Nenana, a village 55 miles southwest of Fairbanks, have wagered on the exact moment that the ice breaks up on the nearby Tanana River. For the 450 townsfolk, the annual Alaska ice lottery, called the Nenana Ice Classic, is a financial lifeline that offers some their year's only employment. Winners last year shared a jackpot of $303,272.
But for many geophysicists, the contest itself is something more valuable than any monetary prize.
Can the Nenana Ice Classic provide evidence of global warming? Share your views with fellow readers in a forum.
The Ice Classic has given them a rare, reliable climate history that has documented to the minute the onset of the annual thaw as it shifted across 91 years. By this measure, spring comes to central Alaska 10 days earlier than in 1960, said geophysicist Martin Jeffries at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks -- and that trend is accelerating. "The Nenana Ice Classic is a pretty good proxy for climate change in the 20th century," Dr. Jeffries said.
The local ice lottery is further evidence of a long warming trend affecting lakes and rivers throughout the Northern Hemisphere, reported by University of Wisconsin researchers who analyzed newspaper archives, transport ledgers and religious records dating back to the 16th century. Seventeen lakes in Europe, Asia and the U.S. with records going back 150 years are thawing, on average, 13 days earlier now than when first recorded, said Wisconsin lake scientist Barbara Benson.
[Nenana]
Associated Press
Volunteers help lift the Nenana tripod on the Tanana River as part of the Nenana Ice Classic.
In Nenana, climatology is folk art. There are no laser altimeters, seismometers or strain gauges to monitor the ice flow. Instead, there is a 26-foot-high pyramid of painted spruce logs anchored in the crust of river ice. When the ice breaks up, the contraption collapses. A trip wire triggers a siren and stops a clock on shore.
"This data didn't come from a long-term planned scientific monitoring scheme. This was a home-grown effort by people to pay attention to what was going on in the world," said Duke University ecologist Raphael Sagarin, who analyzed the lottery records. "It speaks to a larger issue in climate-change science."
By happenstance, the snowbound surveyors who founded the event in 1917 set up a system that today can help researchers begin to understand the interplay of climate, land-use changes, solar cycles, ocean currents and fluctuating levels of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane. The natural variations of weather can mask long-term trends, especially in regions where records are sparse.
Lately, the world weather has been especially perplexing, influenced by the cold ocean temperatures of a La Niña current in the equatorial Pacific.
ON THIN ICE
[Ice]
Between 1846 and 1995, lake and river ice around the northern hemisphere froze progressively later and thawed incrementally earlier, providing historical evidence of a world-wide long-term warming trend, researchers at the University of Wisconsin's Center for Limnology discovered.
In Science, the scientists reported that later freezes and earlier thaws translate into air temperatures increasing at about 1.2°C per 100 years. In the journal Oceanography and Limnology they analyzed 65 lakes and rivers in the Great Lakes region and determined that the thawing trend has accelerated in recent years.
Lakes in New England thaw more than a week earlier now than in 1850, the U.S. Geological Survey reported. Between 1850 and 2000, lake ice thawed 9 days earlier in northern and mountainous areas of New England and by 16 days in more southerly locations. The researchers catalogued ice-out dates for 29 New England lakes. In Alaska, the Nenana Ice Classic makes an annual lottery of the spring thaw, offering people the chance to bet of the precise time the winter ice on the Tenana River breaks up.
For Earth's land areas, 2007 was the warmest year on record. This year, record cold is more the norm. Global land-surface temperatures so far are below the 20th-century mean for the first time since 1982, according to the National Climatic Data Center. Last month in China, snowstorms stranded millions of people, while in Mumbai, officials reported the coldest day in 46 years.
Yet, England basked in its fourth-warmest January since 1914, the British Met Office reported. The crocus and narcissus at the U.K.'s Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew flowered a week earlier than last year -- 11 days ahead of their average for the decade and weeks ahead of their pattern in the 1980s. In Prague, New Year's Day was the warmest since 1775.
"It is difficult to judge the significance of what we are seeing this year," said Kew researcher Sandra Bell. "Is it a glitch or is it the beginning of something more sinister and alarming?"
Seeking the order underlying so much variation, scientists have combed generations of farm records, maple-sugaring notes, bird-watchers' logs, botanical files, museum indexes and religious documents. Assembling a mosaic of incremental shifts, researchers believe they detect the effects of rising temperatures on seasonal rhythms touching on hundreds of species.
"The year-to-year variation confuses people," said University of Wisconsin freshwater-ice expert John Magnuson. "Over the long-term -- 150 years -- the trend is unmistakable."
After studying notes kept by amateur pond-watchers, for instance, scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey concluded that lakes in the New England highlands now thaw almost two weeks earlier than in 1850, a sign of a warming climate.
This spring, the behavior of Nenana's frozen river is anyone's guess. Last Sunday, lottery workers were out on the ice -- already 41 inches thick -- setting up the spruce pyramid, anticipating a breakup in late April or May. They celebrated the construction with fireworks, sled-dog races and a fur-hat contest.
Over the decades, the river ice has confounded predictions. Some players have bet based on computer analysis of past temperatures and ice thickness; others have looked to sunspot activity.
None of them have won.
"Sometimes I use birthdays and sometimes I pull numbers out of a hat," said lottery manager Cherrie Forness. "We almost won one year. It was a second away from our minute. But a second away doesn't count."
As of March 9, admission to the Roman Forum will no longer be free, according to Tony da Roma on Slow Travel. The current Colosseum and Palatine Hill combination ticket will also include admission to the Roman Forum and will now be valid for two days.
The ancient Roman Forum is a huge complex of ruined temples, basilicas, and arches. It was the ceremonial, legal, social, and business center of ancient Rome. Allow at least two hours to wander around the site. You can get a good overall view of the site from behind the Capitoline Hill museums. The Roman Forum is one of Rome's Top Ancient Sites.
Lenten and New Year's Celebrations in March
Martius (March), the Roman month devoted to and named after the god of war, Mars, was so filled with celebrations -- fasti -- that there was a special day in it to rest from the festivities. It wasn't exactly like a month with nothing but weekends. There were happy occasions, but there were also fasts and a day for bloodletting. There was even a parade of pines or palms. If it's beginning to sound slightly familiar, it should. Easter and Lenten activities bear striking similarities with the first month of the (pre-Julian calendar) year -- March.
Ides of March
Most of us are familiar with March as the month with the ominous soothsayer's warning to Gaius Julius Caesar about the Ides.
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Perhaps Caesar should have been out enjoying a picnic to honor the goddess Anna Perenna. Her celebration was at the first full moon of the new year -- by definition, the Ides of March. Public and private sacrifices were offered in her sacred grove on the Via Flaminia.
* Julius Caesar
* Roman Calendar
Anna Perenna
The Festival of Anna Perenna occurs on the Ides of March. The identity of Anna Perenna (or Porenna) is a mystery, but she may be a personification of the year. Ovid tells two stories about her, but they may be his inventions. In one, Anna was an old woman who gave cakes to the plebeians when they seceded (494 B.C.). In the other, she is Dido's sister who was driven from Carthage to Latium after Dido's suicide. In Latium, she incurred the wrath of Aeneas' wife, fled, and was carried off by Numicus, god of a stream. When Aeneas' servants went out searching for her, they followed her tracks to the river bank where they discovered she had been turned into a water nymph.
In her article on Ovid's treatment of the Ides of March in his Fasti, Carole Newlands says Anna Perenna's festival included the drunkenness and sexual and verbal freedoms typical of carnivalesque holidays like Lupercalia and Saturnalia. At Anna Perenna's festival, reversal of typical Roman dignitas includes inversion of gender roles as when a drunken old woman drags along a drunken old man.
* Plebeians and Secession
* Dido
* "Transgressive Acts: Ovid's Treatment of the Ides of March," by Carole Newlands. Classical Philology, Vol. 91, No. 4. (Oct., 1996), pp. 320-338.
Kalends
The first day of the Roman month was the Kalends. In March, the Kalends coincided with the beginning of spring and New Year's Day (until Gaius Julius Caesar reformed the [k]alendar). The New Year was celebrated as the festival of Juno Lucina, also called the Matronalia. Juno Lucina was a goddess of light and childbirth, with a temple in a grove on the Esquiline Hill devoted to her. The name Lucina probably derives from the Latin word for grove (lucus) rather than light, as was assumed in antiquity because they thought that at childbirth a child was brought to the light. Women celebrated the Matronalia at her temple. They prayed to Juno and her son Mars, and fêted their female slaves. Men also gave presents to their wives.
* Matronalia
* Juno Lucina
Feriae Martis
Mars' birthday fell on the Kalends. The salii, his priests, were divided into two groups (sodales) of 12 men each who, following the etymology of their name from the Latin salire, would leap or dance in procession at festivals to Mars. The salii were of ancient, pre-Republican origin, patrician, and chosen for life from families with living parents (like the Vestal Virgins). Headquartered in the Curia Saliorum on the Palatine Hill, they were charged with caring for the shields (ancilia) of Mars, and singing and dancing through Rome beating swords on the shields, at the beginning and end of the war season, in March and October. The salii's celebration in honor of Mars (Feriae Martis) lasted 24 days.
* Vestal Virgins
* Mars
Fast and the Day of Blood
March 16th marked the end of the carnival celebration which had started with the Terminalia celebration on the 23d of February. Like Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday), it was the end of a feast period and beginning of a fast, only with the Romans, the celebration was in honor of Dionysus, Jupiter, and Mars.
A 9-day fast preceded the Dies sanguinis 'Day of the Blood'. On the 22 of March, a procession of palms or a pine tree was brought to the shrine of Cybele so that the pine could be worshiped as a god. Two days later, at the Day of the Blood, the priests of Cybele slashed themselves and spun around to sprinkle her statue with blood. Afterwards, the priests washed the statue in the Almo River, a Tiber tributary.
* Cybele
Rest
Two days later, there was a much needed day of rest for the fasti (festival days) weary Romans.
Print Sources:
* Lesley Adkins and Roy A. Adkins, Dictionary of Roman Religion. Facts on File, Incorporated, 1997.
* H.H. Scullard, Festivals and Ceremonies of the Roman Republic. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981.
In Pre-Columbian times the Indigenous people, in what is now known as Nicaragua, were part of the Intermediate Area located between the Mesoamerican and Andean cultural regions. This has recently been updated to include the influence of the Isthmo-Colombian area. It was the point where the Mesoamerican and South American native cultures met.
Nicaragua was inhabited by Paleo-Indians as far back as 6000 years ago.[2] This is confirmed by the ancient footprints of Acahualinca, along with other archaeological evidence, mainly in the form of ceramics and statues made of volcanic stone like the ones found on the island of Zapatera and petroglyphs found in Ometepe island. At the end of the 15th century, western Nicaragua was inhabited by several indigenous peoples related by culture and language to the Mayans.[3] They were primarily farmers who lived in towns, organized into small kingdoms. Meanwhile, the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua was inhabited by indigenous peoples, mostly chibcha related groups, that had migrated from what is now Colombia. They lived a less sedentary life based on hunting and gathering.[4]
The people of eastern Nicaragua appear to have traded with and been influenced by the native peoples of the Caribbean, as round thatched huts and canoes, both typical of the Caribbean, were common in eastern Nicaragua. In the west and highland areas, occupying the territory between Lake Nicaragua and the Pacific Coast, the Niquirano were governed by chief Nicarao, or Nicaragua, a rich ruler who lived in Nicaraocali, now the city of Rivas. The Chorotega lived in the central region of Nicaragua. These two groups had intimate contact with the Spanish conquerors, paving the way for the racial mix of native and European stock now known as mestizos.[3] However, within three decades an estimated Indian population of one million plummeted to a few tens of thousands, as approximately half of the indigenous people in western Nicaragua died from the rapid spread of new diseases brought by the Spaniards, something the indigenous people of the Caribbean coast managed to escape due to the remoteness of the area.[3]
[edit] The Spanish conquest
Colonial architecture of the city of Granada, Nicaragua
Colonial architecture of the city of Granada, Nicaragua
In 1502, Christopher Columbus was the first European known to have reached what is now Nicaragua as he sailed south along the Central America isthmus. On his fourth voyage Columbus sailed alongside and explored the Mosquito Coast on the east of Nicaragua.[5] The first attempt to conquer what is now known as Nicaragua was by Spanish conquistador Gil González Dávila,[6] whose Central American exploits began with his arrival in Panama in January 1520. González claimed to have converted some 30,000 indigenous peoples and discovered a possible transisthmian water link. After exploring and gathering gold in the fertile western valleys González was attacked by the indigenous people, some of which were commanded by Nicarao and an estimated 3,000 led by chief Diriangén.[7] González later returned to Panama where governor Pedrarias Dávila attempted to arrest him and confiscate his treasure, some 90,000 pesos of gold. This resulted in González fleeing to Santo Domingo.
It was not until 1524 that the first Spanish permanent settlements were founded.[6] Conquistador Francisco Hernández de Córdoba founded two of Nicaragua's principal towns in 1524: Granada on Lake Nicaragua was the first settlement and León east of Lake Managua came after. Córdoba soon found it necessary to prepare defenses for the cities and go on the offensive against incursions by the other conquistadores. Córdoba was later publicly beheaded following a power struggle with Pedrarias Dávila, his tomb and remains were discovered some 500 years later in the Ruins of León Viejo.[8]
The inevitable clash between the Spanish forces did not impede their devastation of the indigenous population. The Indian civilization was destroyed. The series of battles came to be known as The War of the Captains.[9] By 1529, the conquest of Nicaragua was complete. Several conquistadores came out winners, and some were executed or murdered. Pedrarias Dávila was a winner; although he had lost control of Panama, he had moved to Nicaragua and established his base in León. Through adroit diplomatic machinations, he became the first governor of the colony.[8] The land was parceled out to the conquistadores. The area of most interest was the western portion. Many indigenous people were soon enslaved to develop and maintain "estates" there. Others were put to work in mines in northern Nicaragua, few were killed in warfare, and the great majority were sent as slaves to other New World Spanish colonies, for significant profit to the new landed aristocracy. Many of the indigenous people died as a result of disease and neglect by the Spaniards who controlled everything necessary for their subsistence.[6]
[edit] From colony to nation
Corn Island off the Atlantic Coast was originally a British protectorate until it was ceded along with the rest of the Mosquito Coast to Nicaragua
Corn Island off the Atlantic Coast was originally a British protectorate until it was ceded along with the rest of the Mosquito Coast to Nicaragua
In 1538, the Viceroyalty of New Spain was established. By 1570, the southern part of New Spain was designated the Captaincy General of Guatemala. The area of Nicaragua was divided into administrative "parties" with León as the capital. In 1610, the Momotombo erupted, destroying the capital. It was rebuilt northwest of what is now known as the Ruins of Old León. Nicaragua became a part of the Mexican Empire and then gained its independence as a part of the United Provinces of Central America in 1821 and as an independent republic in its own right in 1838. The Mosquito Coast based on the Caribbean coast was claimed by the United Kingdom and its predecessors as a protectorate from 1655 to 1850; this was delegated to Honduras in 1859 and transferred to Nicaragua in 1860, though it remained autonomous until 1894. Jose Santos Zelaya, president of Nicaragua from 1893-1909, managed to negotiate for the annexation of this region to the rest of Nicaragua. In his honour the entire region was named Zelaya.
Founding members of the Deutsche Club in Nicaragua
Founding members of the Deutsche Club in Nicaragua
Much of Nicaragua's politics since independence has been characterized by the rivalry between the liberal elite of León and the conservative elite of Granada. The rivalry often degenerated into civil war, particularly during the 1840s and 1850s. Initially invited by the Liberals in 1855 to join their struggle against the Conservatives, a United States adventurer named William Walker (later executed in Honduras) set himself up as president of Nicaragua, after conducting a farcical election 1856. Honduras and other Central American countries united to drive him out of Nicaragua in 1857, after which a period of three decades of Conservative rule ensued.[10]
In the 1800s Nicaragua experienced a wave of immigration, primarily from Europe. In particular, families from Germany, Italy, Spain, France and Belgium generally moved to Nicaragua to set up businesses with money they brought from Europe. They established many agricultural businesses such as coffee and sugar cane plantations, and also newspapers, hotels and banks.
[edit] United States involvement (1909 - 1933)
See also: Occupation of Nicaragua and Nicaragua Canal
Augusto César Sandino
Augusto César Sandino
In 1909, the United States provided political support to conservative-led forces rebelling against President Zelaya. U.S. motives included differences over the proposed Nicaragua Canal, Nicaragua's potential as a destabilizing influence in the region, and Zelaya's attempts to regulate foreign access to Nicaraguan natural resources. On November 18, 1909, U.S. warships were sent to the area after 500 revolutionaries (including two Americans) were executed by order of Zelaya. The U.S. justified the intervention by claiming to protect U.S. lives and property. Zelaya resigned later that year. U.S. Marines occupied Nicaragua from 1912 to 1933,[11] except for a nine month period beginning in 1925. From 1910 to 1926, the conservative party ruled Nicaragua. The Chamorro family, which had long dominated the party, effectively controlled the government during that period. In 1914, the Bryan-Chamorro Treaty was signed, giving the U.S. control over the proposed canal, as well as leases for potential canal defenses.[12] Following the evacuation of U.S. marines, another violent conflict between liberals and conservatives took place in 1926, known as the Constitutionalist War, which resulted in a coalition government and the return of U.S. Marines.[13]
From 1927 until 1933, Gen. Augusto César Sandino led a sustained guerrilla war first against the Conservative regime and subsequently against the U.S. Marines, who withdrew upon the establishment of a new Liberal government. Sandino was the only Nicaraguan general to refuse to sign the el tratado del Espino Negro agreement and then headed up to the northern mountains of Las Segovias, where he fought the US Marines for over five years.[14] The revolt finally forced the United States to compromise and leave the country. When the Americans left in 1933, they set up the Guardia Nacional (National Guard),[15] a combined military and police force trained and equipped by the Americans and designed to be loyal to U.S. interests. Anastasio Somoza García, a close friend of the American government, was put in charge. He was one of the three rulers of the country, the others being Sandino and the mostly figurehead President Juan Bautista Sacasa.
After the US Marines withdrew from Nicaragua in January 1933, Sandino and the newly-elected Sacasa government reached an agreement by which he would cease his guerrilla activities in return for amnesty, a grant of land for an agricultural colony, and retention of an armed band of 100 men for a year.[16] But a growing hostility between Sandino and Somoza led Somoza to order the assassination of Sandino.[17][18][15] Fearing future armed opposition from Sandino, Somoza invited him to a meeting in Managua, where Sandino was assassinated on February 21 of 1934 by the National Guard. Hundreds of men, women, and children were executed later.[19]
[edit] The Somoza Dynasty (1936 - 1979)
Anastasio Somoza García and his sons Anastasio Somoza Debayle and Luis Somoza Debayle
Anastasio Somoza García and his sons Anastasio Somoza Debayle and Luis Somoza Debayle
Nicaragua has seen many interventions by the United States. It has also experienced long military dictatorships, the longest one being the rule of the Somoza family for much of the 20th century. The Somoza family came to power as part of a US-engineered pact in 1927 that stipulated the formation of the National Guard to replace the small individual armies that had long reigned in the country.[20] Somoza deposed Sacasa and became president on Jan. 1, 1937 in a rigged election.[15]
Nicaragua was the first country to ratify the UN Charter,[21] and declared war on Germany during World War II. No troops were sent to the war but Somoza did seize the occasion to confiscate attractive properties held by German-Nicaraguans, the best-known of which was the Montelimar estate which today operates as a privately-owned luxury resort and casino. [22]
Street scene of Managua city centre prior to the 1972 earthquake
Street scene of Managua city centre prior to the 1972 earthquake
Somoza used the National Guard to force Sacasa to resign, and took control of the country in 1937, destroying any potential armed resistance.[23] Somoza was in turn assassinated by Rigoberto López Pérez, a liberal Nicaraguan poet, in 1956. After his father's death, Luis Somoza Debayle, the eldest son of the late dictator, was appointed President by the congress and officially took charge of the country.[15] He is remembered by some for being moderate, but was in power only for a few years and then died of a heart attack. Then came president Rene Schick whom most Nicaraguans viewed "as nothing more than a puppet of the Somozas".[24] Somoza's brother, Anastasio Somoza Debayle, who succeeded his father in charge of the National Guard, controlled the country, and officially took the presidency after Schick.
Nicaragua experienced high economic growth during the 1960s and 1970s largely as a result of industrialization,[25] and became one of Central America's most developed nations despite its political instability. Due to its stable and high growth economy, foreign investments grew, primarily from U.S. companies such as Citigroup, Sears, Westinghouse and Coca Cola. However, the capital city of Managua suffered a major earthquake in 1972 which destroyed nearly 90% of the city creating major losses.[26] Some Nicaraguan historians see the 1972 earthquake that devastated Managua as the final 'nail in the coffin' for Somoza. The mishandling of relief money also prompted Pittsburgh Pirates star Roberto Clemente to personally fly to Managua on December 31, 1972, but he died enroute in an airplane accident.[27] Even the economic elite were reluctant to support Somoza, as he had acquired monopolies in industries that were key to rebuilding the nation,[28] and did not allow the elite to share the profits that would result. In 1973 (the year of reconstruction) many new buildings were built, but the level of corruption in the government prevented further growth, and the ever increasing tensions and anti-government uprisings slowed growth in the last two years of the Somoza dynasty.
[edit] The Nicaraguan revolution
Main article: FSLN
Cuban President of The Council of State Fidel Castro in Nicaragua, with former and current President Daniel Ortega (1980)
Cuban President of The Council of State Fidel Castro in Nicaragua, with former and current President Daniel Ortega (1980)
In 1961, a young student, Carlos Fonseca, turned back to the historical figure of Sandino, and along with 2 others founded the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN).[15] The FSLN was a tiny party throughout most of the 1960s, but Somoza's utter hatred of it and his heavy-handed treatment of anyone he suspected to be a Sandinista sympathizer gave many ordinary Nicaraguans the idea that the Sandinistas were much stronger.
After the 1972 earthquake and Somoza's brazen corruption, mishandling of relief, and refusal to rebuild Managua, the ranks of the Sandinistas were flooded with young disaffected Nicaraguans who no longer had anything to lose.[29] These economic problems propelled the Sandinistas in their struggle against Somoza by leading many middle- and upper-class Nicaraguans to see the Sandinistas as the only hope for removing the brutal Somoza regime. On January 1978, Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, the editor of the national newspaper La Prensa and ardent opponent of Somoza, was assassinated.[30] This is believed to have led to the extreme general disappointment with Somoza. The planners and perpetrators of the murder were at the highest echelons of the Somoza regime and included the dictator's son, “El Chiguin”, the President of Housing, Cornelio Hueck, the Attorney General, and Pedro Ramos, a close Cuban ally who commercialized blood plasma.[30]
The Sandinistas, supported by much of the populace, elements of the Catholic Church, and regional and international governments, took power in July of 1979. Somoza fled the country and eventually ended up in Paraguay, where he was assassinated in September 1980, allegedly by members of the Argentinian Revolutionary Workers Party.[31] The Sandinistas inherited a country in ruins with a debt of U.S.$1.6 billion dollars, an estimated 50,000 war dead, 600,000 homeless, and a devastated economic infrastructure.[32] To begin the task of establishing a new government, they created a Council (or junta) of National Reconstruction, made up of five members – Sandinista militants Daniel Ortega and Moises Hassan, novelist Sergio Ramírez Mercado (a member of Los Doce "the Twelve"), businessman Alfonso Robelo Callejas, and Violeta Barrios de Chamorro (the widow of Pedro Joaquín Chamorro). The preponderance of power, however, remained with the Sandinistas and their mass organizations, including the Sandinista Workers' Federation (Central Sandinista de Trabajadores), the Luisa Amanda Espinoza Nicaraguan Women's Association (Asociación de Mujeres Nicaragüenses Luisa Amanda Espinoza), and the National Union of Farmers and Ranchers (Unión Nacional de Agricultores y Ganaderos).
[edit] Sandinistas and the Contras
Main articles: FSLN, Contras, Iran-Contra scandal, and Nicaragua v. United States
Upon assuming office in 1981, U.S. President Ronald Reagan condemned the FSLN for joining with Cuba in supporting Marxist revolutionary movements in other Latin American countries such as El Salvador. His administration authorized the CIA to begin financing, arming and training rebels, some of whom were the remnants of Somoza's National Guard, as anti-Sandinista guerrillas that were branded "counter-revolutionary" by leftists (contrarrevolucionarios in Spanish).[33] This was shortened to Contras, a label the anti-Communist forces chose to embrace. Eden Pastora and many of the indigenous guerrilla forces, who were not associated with the "Somozistas," also resisted the Sandinistas. The Contras operated out of camps in the neighboring countries of Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south.[33] As was typical in guerrilla warfare, they were engaged in a campaign of economic sabotage in an attempt to combat the Sandinista government and disrupted shipping by planting underwater mines in Nicaragua's Corinto harbour,[34] an action condemned by the World Court as illegal.[35][36] The U.S. also sought to place economic pressure on the Sandinistas, and the Reagan administration imposed a full trade embargo.[37]
U.S. support for this Nicaraguan insurgency continued in spite of the fact that impartial observers from international groupings such as the European Union, religious groups sent to monitor the election and observers from democratic nations such as Canada and the Republic of Ireland concluded that the Nicaraguan general elections of 1984 were completely free and fair. The Reagan administration disputed these results however, despite the fact that the government of the United States never had any observers in Nicaragua at the time.[38][39]
After the U.S. Congress prohibited federal funding of the Contras in 1983, the Reagan administration continued to back the Contras by covertly selling arms to Iran and channeling the proceeds to the Contras (The Iran-Contra Affair).[40] When this scheme was revealed, Reagan admitted that he knew about the Iranian "arms for hostages" dealings but professed ignorance about the proceeds funding the Contras; for this, National Security Council aide Lt. Col. Oliver North took much of the blame. Senator John Kerry's 1988 U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations report on Contra-drug links concluded that "senior U.S. policy makers were not immune to the idea that drug money was a perfect solution to the Contras' funding problems."[41] According to the National Security Archive, Oliver North had been in contact with Manuel Noriega, a Panamanian general and the de facto military dictator of Panama from 1983 to 1989 when he was overthrown and captured by a U.S. invading force.[42] He was taken to the United States, tried for drug trafficking, and imprisoned in 1992.[43]
The Reagan administration's support for the Contras continued to stir controversy well into the 1990s. In August 1996, San Jose Mercury News reporter Gary Webb published a series titled Dark Alliance, linking the origins of crack cocaine in California to the contras.[44] Freedom of Information Act inquiries by the National Security Archive and other investigators unearthed a number of documents showing that White House officials, including Oliver North, knew about and supported using money raised via drug trafficking to fund the contras. Sen. John Kerry's report in 1988 led to the same conclusions, however, major media outlets, the Justice Department, and Reagan denied the allegations.[45]
[edit] Politics
Main article: Politics of Nicaragua
Politics of Nicaragua takes place in a framework of a presidential representative democratic republic, whereby the President of Nicaragua is both head of state and head of government, and of a pluriform multi-party system. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and the National Assembly. The Judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature.
[edit] 1990s and the post-Sandinista era
Multi-party democratic elections were held in 1990, which saw the defeat of the Sandinistas by a coalition of anti-Sandinista (from the left and right of the political spectrum) parties led by Violeta Chamorro, the widow of Pedro Joaquín Chamorro. The defeat shocked the Sandinistas as numerous pre-election polls had indicated a sure Sandinista victory and their pre-election rallies had attracted crowds of several hundred thousand people.[46] The unexpected result was subject to a great deal of analysis and comment, and was attributed by commentators such as Noam Chomsky and S. Brian Willson to the US/Contra threats to continue the war if the Sandinistas retained power, the general war-weariness of the Nicaraguan population, and the abysmal Nicaraguan economic situation.
Violeta Barrios de Chamorro in 1990 became the first female president democratically elected in the Americas.
Violeta Barrios de Chamorro in 1990 became the first female president democratically elected in the Americas.
On the other hand, P. J. O'Rourke wrote in "Return of the Death of Communism", "the unfair advantages of using state resources for party ends, about how Sandinista control of the transit system prevented UNO supporters from attending rallies, how Sandinista domination of the army forced soldiers to vote for Ortega and how Sandinista bureaucracy kept $3.3 million of U.S. campaign aid from getting to UNO while Daniel Ortega spent millions donated by overseas people and millions and millions more from the Nicaraguan treasury . . ."[47]
Exit polls of Nicaraguans reported Chamorro's victory over Ortega was achieved with only 55%.[48] Violeta Chamorro was the first woman to be popularly elected as President of a Latin American nation and first woman president of Nicaragua. Exit polling convinced Daniel Ortega that the election results were legitimate, and were instrumental in his decision to accept the vote of the people and step down rather than void the election. Nonetheless Ortega vowed that he would govern "desde abajo" (from below),[49] in other words due to his widespread control of institutions and Sandinista individuals in all government agencies, he would still be able to maintain control and govern even without being president.
Chamorro received an economy entirely in ruins. The per capita income of Nicaragua had been reduced by over 80% during the 1980s, and a huge government debt which ascended to US$12 billion primarily due to financial and social costs of the Contra war with the Sandinista-led government.[50] Much to the surprise of the US and the contra forces, Chamorro did not dismantle the Sandinista People's Army, though the name was changed to the Nicaraguan Army. Chamorro's main contribution to Nicaragua was the disarmament of groups in the northern and central areas of the country. This provided stability that the country had lacked for over ten years.
In subsequent elections in 1996 Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas of the FSLN were again defeated, this time by Arnoldo Alemán of the Constitutional Liberal Party (PLC).
In the 2001 elections the PLC again defeated the FSLN, with Enrique Bolaños winning the Presidency. However, President Bolaños subsequently charged and brought forward allegations of money laundering, theft and corruption against former President Alemán. The ex-president was sentenced to 20 years in prison for embezzlement, money laundering, and corruption.[51] The Liberal members who were loyal to Alemán and also members of congress reacted angrily, and along with Sandinista parliament members stripped the presidential powers of President Bolaños and his ministers, calling for his resignation and threatening impeachment.
President of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, Celebrating May 1, 2005, in the Plaza of the Revolution in Havana, Cuba. President Ortega is currently serving his second term.
President of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, Celebrating May 1, 2005, in the Plaza of the Revolution in Havana, Cuba. President Ortega is currently serving his second term.
The Sandinistas alleged that their support for Bolaños was lost when US Secretary of State Colin Powell told Bolaños to keep his distance from the FSLN.[52] This "slow motion coup" was averted partially due to pressure from the Central American presidents who would fail to recognize any movement that removed Bolaños; The U.S, the OAS, and the European Union also opposed the "slow motion coup".[53] The proposed constitutional changes that were going to be introduced in 2005 against the Bolaños administration were delayed until January 2007 after the entrance of the new government. Though 1 day before they were enforced the National Assembly postponed their enforcement until January 2008.
Before the general elections on 5 November 2006, the National Assembly passed a bill further restricting abortion in Nicaragua 52-0 (9 abstaining, 29 absent). President Enrique Bolaños supported this measure, but signed the bill into law on 17 November 2006,[54] as a result Nicaragua is one of three countries in the world where abortion is illegal with no exceptions, along with El Salvador and Chile.
Legislative and presidential elections took place on November 5, 2006. Daniel Ortega returned to the presidency with 37.99% of the vote. This percentage was enough to win the presidency outright, due to a change in electoral law which lowered the percentage requiring a runoff election from 45% to 35% (with a 5% margin of victory).[55]
[edit] Departments and municipalities
Main articles: Departments of Nicaragua and Municipalities of Nicaragua
Departments of Nicaragua
Departments of Nicaragua
Nicaragua is a unitary republic. For administrative purposes it is divided into 15 departments (departamentos) and two self-governing regions (autonomous communities) based on the Spanish model. The departments are then subdivided into 153 municipios (municipalities). The two autonomous regions are Región Autónoma del Atlántico Norte and Región Autónoma del Atlántico Sur, often referred to as RAAN and RAAS, respectively. Until they were granted autonomy in 1985 they formed the single department of Zelaya.[56]
1. Boaco (Boaco)
2. Carazo (Jinotepe)
3. Chinandega (Chinandega)
4. Chontales (Juigalpa)
5. Estelí (Estelí)
6. Granada (Granada)
7. Jinotega (Jinotega)
8. León (León)
9. Madriz (Somoto)
10. Managua (Managua)
11. Masaya (Masaya)
12. Matagalpa (Matagalpa)
13. Nueva Segovia (Ocotal)
14. Rivas (Rivas)
15. Río San Juan (San Carlos)
16. RAAN (Bilwi)
17. RAAS (Bluefields)
[edit] Geography
Main article: Geography of Nicaragua
See also: Volcanoes of Nicaragua and Wildlife of Nicaragua
Nicaragua occupies a landmass of 129,494 km² - roughly the size of Greece or the state of New York and 1.5 times larger than Portugal. Close to 20% of the country's territory is designated as protected areas such as national parks, nature reserves and biological reserves. The country is bordered by Costa Rica on the south and Honduras on the north, with the Caribbean Sea to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west.
Nicaragua has three distinct geographical regions: the Pacific Lowlands, the North-Central Mountains or highlands and the Atlantic Lowlands.
[edit] Pacific lowlands
Turtles are common in many beaches of Nicaragua when on a yearly basis they collectively arrive at the same time on the same beach to lay their eggs. They are protected by the Nicaraguan government in National Parks
Turtles are common in many beaches of Nicaragua when on a yearly basis they collectively arrive at the same time on the same beach to lay their eggs. They are protected by the Nicaraguan government in National Parks
Located in the west of the country, these lowlands consist of a broad, hot, fertile plain. Punctuating this plain are several large volcanoes of the Marrabios mountain range, including Mombacho just outside Granada, and Momotombo near León. The lowland area runs from the Gulf of Fonseca to Nicaragua's Pacific border with Costa Rica south of Lake Nicaragua. Lake Nicaragua is the largest freshwater lake in Central America (20th largest in the world),[57] and is home to the world's only freshwater sharks (Nicaraguan shark).[58] The Pacific lowlands region is the most populous, with over half of the nation's population. The capital city of Managua is the most populous and it is the only city with over 1 million inhabitants.
Nicaragua is known as the land of lakes and volcanoes, pictured here are three volcanoes from the Chinandega department, El Chonco, San Cristobal and Casitas
Nicaragua is known as the land of lakes and volcanoes, pictured here are three volcanoes from the Chinandega department, El Chonco, San Cristobal and Casitas
In addition to its beach and resort communities, the Pacific Lowlands is also the repository for much of Nicaragua's Spanish colonial heritage. Cities such as Granada and León abound in colonial architecture and artifacts. Granada, founded in 1524, is the oldest colonial city in the Americas.[59]
[edit] Central highlands
Guardabarranco (Turquoise-browed Motmot): the national bird.
Guardabarranco (Turquoise-browed Motmot): the national bird.
This is an upland region away from the Pacific coast, with a cooler climate than the Pacific Lowlands. About a quarter of the country's agriculture takes place in this region, with coffee grown on the higher slopes. Oaks, pines, moss, ferns and orchids are abundant in the cloud forests of the region.
Bird life in the forests of the central region includes Resplendent Quetzal, goldfinches, hummingbirds, jays and toucanets.
Toucan is a common bird in Nicaragua´s Rainforests
Toucan is a common bird in Nicaragua´s Rainforests
[edit] Atlantic lowlands
This large rainforest region, with several large rivers running through it, is very sparsely populated. The Rio Coco is the largest river in Central America, it forms the border with Honduras. The Caribbean coastline is much more sinuous than its generally straight Pacific counterpart. Lagoons and deltas make it very irregular.
Nicaragua's Bosawas Biosphere Reserve is located in the Atlantic lowlands, it protects 1.8 million acres (7,300 km²) of Mosquitia forest - almost seven percent of the country's area - making it the largest rainforest North of the Amazon in Brazil.[60]
Nicaragua's tropical east coast is very different from the rest of the country. The climate is predominantly tropical, with high temperature and high humidity. Around the area's principal city of Bluefields, English is widely spoken along with the official Spanish and the population more closely resembles that found in many typical Caribbean ports than the rest of Nicaragua.
A great variety of birds can be observed including eagles, turkeys, toucans, parakeets and macaws. Animal life in the area includes different species of monkeys, ant-eaters, white-tailed deer and tapirs.
[edit] Economy
Main article: Economy of Nicaragua
Nicaragua's economy ranks as 61st freest economy, although it is 1.7% lower than in 2006, it ranks 14 (out of 29) in the Americas. Nicaragua's economy is 62.7% free with high levels of fiscal, government, labor, investment, financial, and trade freedom.[61] Nicaragua is primarily an agricultural country, but light industry (maquila), tourism, banking, mining, fisheries, and general commerce are expanding. Nicaragua's agrarian economy has historically been based on the export of cash crops such as bananas, coffee, sugar, beef and tobacco. At present agriculture constitutes 60% of its total exports which annually yield approximately US $300 million.[62] In addition, Nicaragua's Flor de Caña rum is renowned as among the best in Latin America, and its tobacco and beef are also well regarded. Nicaragua also depends heavily on remittances from Nicaraguans living abroad, which totaled $655.5 million in 2006. During the war between the Contras and the Sandinistas in the 1980s, much of the country's infrastructure was damaged or destroyed.[63] Inflation averaged 30% throughout the 1980s. After the United States imposed a trade embargo in 1985, which lasted 5 years, Nicaragua's inflation rate rose dramatically. The 1985 annual rate of 220% tripled the following year and skyrocketed to more than 13,000% in 1988, the highest rate for any country in the Western Hemisphere in that year. Since the end of the war almost two decades ago, more than 350 state enterprises were privatized, reducing inflation from 33,500% in 1988 to 9.45% in 2006,, and cutting the foreign debt in half.[64]
A 1000 Córdoba banknote, which was re-printed with a value of 200,000 Córdobas during the inflationary period of the late 1980s.
A 1000 Córdoba banknote, which was re-printed with a value of 200,000 Córdobas during the inflationary period of the late 1980s.
Though sources give slightly differing data on the country's gross domestic product (GDP), Nicaragua ranks among the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere, along with Bolivia, Honduras and Haiti.[65][66] According to the CIA Fact Book, inflation averaged 8.1% from 2000 through 2006. As of 2007, Nicaragua's inflation stands at 9.8%. The World Bank also indicates moderate economic growth at an average of 5% from 1995 through 2004. In 2005 the economy grew 4%, with overall GDP reaching $4.91 billion. In 2006, the economy expanded by 3.7% as GDP reached $5.3 billion. Forty eight percent of the population in Nicaragua live in poverty (2005 est), unemployment is 5.6%, and another 46.5% are underemployed (2007 est.).
As in many other developing countries, a large segment of the economically poor in Nicaragua are women. In addition, a relatively high proportion of Nicaragua's average homes have a woman as head of household: 39% of urban homes and 28% of rural homes.
Maderas and Concepcion Volcanoes, popular tourist destination in Nicaragua.
Maderas and Concepcion Volcanoes, popular tourist destination in Nicaragua.
Coffee is one of Nicaragua´s most important exports. It is exported worldwide throughout The Americas, Europe, Asia and as far as Australia.
Coffee is one of Nicaragua´s most important exports. It is exported worldwide throughout The Americas, Europe, Asia and as far as Australia.
The country is still a recovering economy and it continues to implement further reforms, on which aid from the IMF is conditional. In 2005 finance ministers of the leading eight industrialized nations (G-8) agreed to forgive some of Nicaragua's foreign debt, as part of the HIPC program. According to the World Bank Nicaragua's GDP was around $4.9 US billion dollars. Recently, in March 2007, Poland and Nicaragua signed an agreement to write off 30.6 million dollars which was borrowed by the Nicaraguan government in the 1980s. [67]
According to the World Bank, Nicaragua ranked as the 62nd best economy for starting a business making it the second best in Central America, after Panama.[68]
The Nicaraguan unit of currency is the Córdoba (NIO) and was named after Francisco Hernández de Córdoba, its national founder.
[edit] Components of the economy
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in purchasing power parity (PPP) in 2007 was estimated at $18.17 billion USD.[69] The service sector is the largest component of GDP at 56.9%, followed by the industrial sector at 25.9% (2006 est.). Agriculture represents only 17.1% of GDP (2007 est.). Nicaraguan labor force is estimated at 2.262 million of which 29% is occupied in agriculture, 19% in the industry sector and 52% in the service sector (est. 2007).
[edit] Tourism
Pacific beaches in Nicaragua
Pacific beaches in Nicaragua
Main article: Tourism in Nicaragua
Tourism in Nicaragua is booming, it is currently the second largest industry in the nation,[70] over the last 7 years tourism has grown about 70% nationwide with rates of 10%-16% annually.[71] Nicaragua has seen positive growth in the tourism sector over the last decade and is expected to become the first largest industry in 2007. The increase and growth led to the income from tourism to rise more than 300% over a period of 10 years.[72] The growth in tourism has also positively affected the agricultural, commercial, and finance industries, as well as the construction industry. Despite the positive growth throughout the last decade, Nicaragua remains the least visited nation in the region.[73][74]
Every year about 60,000 U.S. citizens visit Nicaragua, primarily business people, tourists, and those visiting relatives.[75]Some 5,300 people from the U.S. reside in the country now. The majority of tourists that visit Nicaragua are from the U.S., Central or South America, and Europe. According to the Ministry of Tourism of Nicaragua (INTUR),[76] the colonial city of Granada is the preferred spot for tourists. Also, the cities of León, Masaya, Rivas and the likes of San Juan del Sur, San Juan River, Ometepe, Mombacho Volcano, the Corn Islands, and others are main tourist attractions. In addition, ecotourism and surfing attract many tourists to Nicaragua.
According to TV Noticias (news program) on Canal 2, a Nicaragua television station, the main attractions in Nicaragua for tourists are the beaches, scenic routes, the architecture of cities such as León and Granada and most recently ecotourism and agritourism, particularly in Northern Nicaragua.[71]
[edit] Demographics
Main articles: Nicaraguans and Demographics of Nicaragua
[edit] Population
Evolution of the Nicaraguan population. (1961-2003)
Evolution of the Nicaraguan population. (1961-2003)
According to the CIA World Factbook, Nicaragua has a population of 5,570,129; 69% mestizo, 17% white, 9% black and 5% amerindian. Nicaraguan demographics reflected a different composition prior to the Sandinista revolution of 1979. Most of the migration during the years that followed were primarily of white upper or middle class Nicaraguans. A growing number of these expats have been returning after, though a vast majority remains living abroad for the most part. There is also large and ever growing expatriate (expat) community of people of all ages,[77] the majority of whom move for business, investment or who are retirees. The expat communities include people from United States, Canada, Europe, Taiwan, and other countries, the majority have settled in Managua, Granada and San Juan del Sur.
The most populous city in Nicaragua is the capital city, Managua, with a population of 1.2 million (2005). As of 2005, over 4.4 million inhabitants live in the Pacific, Central and North regions, 2.7 in the Pacific region alone, while inhabitants in the Caribbean region only reached an estimated 700,000.[78] The population is 54% urban and many Nicaraguans live abroad, outside of Nicaragua.
[edit] Ethnic groups
Nicaraguan boys in the American Nicaraguan School.
Nicaraguan boys in the American Nicaraguan School.
Nicaraguan women at a concert in Managua.
Nicaraguan women at a concert in Managua.
An Afro-Nicaraguan.
An Afro-Nicaraguan.
The majority of the Nicaraguan population is Mestizo and White. Exactly 69% are Mestizos (mixed Amerindian and White) and 17% are White with the majority being of Spanish, German, Italian, or French ancestry. Mestizos and Whites mainly reside in the western region of the country and combined make up 86% of the Nicaraguan population, approximately 4.8 million people.
About 9% of Nicaragua's population is black, or Afro-Nicaragüense, and mainly reside on the country's sparsely populated Caribbean or Atlantic coast. The black population is mostly of West Indian (Antillean) origin, the descendants of indentured laborers brought mostly from Jamaica when the region was a British protectorate. Nicaragua has the largest Afro Latin American population in Central America with the second largest percentage. There is also a smaller number of Garifuna, a people of mixed Carib, Angolan, Congolese and Arawak descent.
The remaining 5% are Amerindians, the unmixed descendants of the country's indigenous inhabitants. Nicaragua's pre-Colombian population consisted of many indigenous groups. In the western region the Nicarao people, whom the country is named after, were present along with other groups related by culture and language to the Mayans. The Caribbean coast of Nicaragua was inhabited by indigenous peoples who were mostly chibcha related groups that had migrated from South America, primarily present day Colombia and Venezuela. These groups include the Miskitos, Ramas and Sumos. In the nineteenth century, there was a substantial indigenous minority, but this group was also largely assimilated culturally into the mestizo majority. In the mid-1980s, the government divided the department of Zelaya - consisting of the eastern half of the country - into two autonomous regions and granted the black and indigenous people of this region limited self-rule within the Republic.
[edit] Immigration
Palestinian Nicaraguans celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Nicaraguan revolution in Managua waving Palestinian and Sandinista flags.
Palestinian Nicaraguans celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Nicaraguan revolution in Managua waving Palestinian and Sandinista flags.
In the 1800s Nicaragua experienced several waves of immigration, primarily from Europe. In particular, families from Germany, Italy, Spain, France and Belgium immigrated to Nicaragua, particularly the departments in the Central and Pacific region. As a result, the Northern cities of Esteli, Jinotega and Matagalpa have significant fourth generation Germans. They established many agricultural businesses such as coffee and sugar cane plantations, and also newspapers, hotels and banks.
Also present is a small Middle Eastern-Nicaraguan community of Syrians, Armenians, Palestinian Nicaraguans, Jewish Nicaraguans, and Lebanese people in Nicaragua with a total population of about 30,000. There is also an East Asian community mostly consisting of Chinese, Taiwanese, and Japanese. The Chinese Nicaraguan population is estimated at around 12,000.[citation needed] The Chinese arrived in the late 1800s but were unsubstantiated until the 1920s.
Relative to its overall population, Nicaragua has never experienced any large scale wave of immigrants. The total number of immigrants to Nicaragua, both originating from other Latin American countries and all other countries, never surpassed 1% of its total population prior to 1995. The 2005 census showed the foreign-born population at 1.2%, having risen a mere .06% in 10 years.[78] This is not to say that immigrants were not important to the evolution of Nicaragua or the Nicaraguan society.
[edit] Culture
Main article: Culture of Nicaragua
See also: Literature of Nicaragua and Music of Nicaragua
Nicaraguan women wearing the Mestizaje costume, which is a traditional costume worn to dance the Mestizaje dance. The costume demonstrates the Spanish influence on Nicaraguan clothing.
Nicaraguan women wearing the Mestizaje costume, which is a traditional costume worn to dance the Mestizaje dance. The costume demonstrates the Spanish influence on Nicaraguan clothing.[79]
Nicaraguan culture has strong folklore, music and religious traditions, deeply influenced by European culture but enriched with Amerindian sounds and flavors. Nicaraguan culture can further be defined in several distinct strands. The Pacific coast has strong folklore, music and religious traditions, deeply influenced by European. It was colonized by Spain and has a similar culture to other Spanish-speaking Latin American countries. The Caribbean coast of the country, on the other hand, was once a British protectorate. English is still predominant in this region and spoken domestically along with Spanish and indigenous languages. Its culture is similar to that of Caribbean nations that were or are British possessions, such as Jamaica, Belize, The Cayman Islands, etc. The indigenous groups that were present in the Pacific coast have largely been assimilated into the mestizo culture, however, the indigenous people of the Caribbean coast have maintained a distinct identity.
Celebrating the annual "Alegria por la vida" Carnaval in Managua, Nicaragua
Celebrating the annual "Alegria por la vida" Carnaval in Managua, Nicaragua
An example of typical Nicaraguan artisans which are sold in markets all over the country
An example of typical Nicaraguan artisans which are sold in markets all over the country
Nicaraguan music is a mixture of indigenous and European, especially Spanish, influences. Musical instruments include the marimba and others common across Central America. The marimba of Nicaragua is uniquely played by a sitting performer holding the instrument on his knees. He is usually accompanied by a bass fiddle, guitar and guitarrilla (a small guitar like a mandolin). This music is played at social functions as a sort of background music. The marimba is made with hardwood plates, placed over bamboo or metal tubes of varying lengths. It is played with two or four hammers. The Caribbean coast of Nicaragua is known for a lively, sensual form of dance music called Palo de Mayo which is very much alive all throughout the country. It is especially loud and celebrated during the Palo de Mayo festival in May. The Garifuna community exists in Nicaragua and is known for its popular music called Punta.
Distinctive traditional costumes and dance from a very renowned folk dance from Nicaragua, El Güegüense.
Distinctive traditional costumes and dance from a very renowned folk dance from Nicaragua, El Güegüense.
Literature of Nicaragua can be traced to pre-Columbian times with the myths and oral literature that formed the cosmogonic view of the world that indigenous people had. Some of these stories are still know in Nicaragua. Like many Latin American countries, the Spanish conquerors have had the most effect on both the culture and the literature. Nicaraguan literature has historically been an important source of poetry in the Spanish-speaking world, with internationally renowned contributors such as Rubén Darío who is regarded as the most important literary figure in Nicaragua, referred to as the "Father of Modernism" for leading the modernismo literary movement at the end of the 19th century.[80] Other literary figures include Ernesto Cardenal, Gioconda Belli, Claribel Alegría and Jose Coronel Urtecho, among others.
El Güegüense is a satirical drama and was the first literary work of pre-Colombian Nicaragua. It is regarded as one of Latin America's most distinctive colonial-era expressions and as Nicaragua's signature folkloric masterpiece combining music, dance and theater.[80] The theatrical play was written by an anonymous author in the 16th century, making it one of the oldest indigenous theatrical/dance works of the Western Hemisphere.[81] The story was published in a book in 1942 after many centuries.[82]
[edit] Language
Main articles: Languages of Nicaragua and Central American Spanish
A sign in Bluefields in English (top), Spanish (middle) and Miskito (bottom).
A sign in Bluefields in English (top), Spanish (middle) and Miskito (bottom).
Spanish is spoken by about 90% of the country's population. In Nicaragua the Voseo form is common, just as in other countries in Central and South America like Honduras, El Salvador, Argentina, Uruguay or coastal Colombia. Spanish has many different dialects spoken throughout Latin America, Central American Spanish is the dialect spoken in Nicaragua. In the Caribbean coast many afro-Nicaraguans and creoles speak English and creole English as their first language. Also in the Caribbean coast, many Indigenous people speak their native languages, such as the Miskito, Sumo, Rama and Garifuna language.[83] In addition, many ethnic groups in Nicaragua, such as the Chinese Nicaraguans and Palestinian Nicaraguans, have maintained their ancestral languages, which are minority languages, while also speaking Spanish or English. These minority languages include Chinese, Arabic, German, and Italian, among others.
Nicaragua has a total of 3 extinct languages, one of which was never classified. Nicaraguan Sign Language is also of particular interest to linguists.
[edit] Religion
Main article: Religion in Nicaragua
Religion affiliation in Nicaragua
The Metropolitan Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Managua
Religion Percentage
Roman Catholic 58.5%
Evangelical 21.6%
Moravian 1.6%
Jehovah's Witnesses 0.9%
None 15.7%
Other1 1.6%
1 Includes Buddhism, Islam, and Judaism among other religions.
Source: 2005 Nicaraguan Census[84]
Religion is a significant part of the culture of Nicaragua and forms part of the constitution. Religious freedom, which has been guaranteed since 1939, and religious tolerance is promoted by both the Nicaraguan government and the constitution. Bishops are expected to lend their authority to important state occasions, and their pronouncements on national issues are closely followed. They can also be called upon to mediate between contending parties at moments of political crisis.[85]
Although Nicaragua has no official religion it is nominally Roman Catholic. Practicing Roman Catholics are no longer the majority and are declining while evangelical Protestant groups and Mormons are growing rapidly have been growing since the 1990s. There are also strong Anglican and Moravian communities on the Caribbean coast.
Roman Catholicism came to Nicaragua in the sixteenth century with the Spanish conquest and remained, until 1939, the established faith. Protestantism and other Christian denominations came to Nicaragua during the nineteenth century, but only during the twentieth century have Protestant denominations gained large followings in the Caribbean Coast of the country. Popular religion revolves around the saints, who are perceived as intermediaries between human beings and God. Most localities, from the capital of Managua to small rural communities, honor patron saints, selected from the Roman Catholic calendar, with annual fiestas. In many communities, a rich lore has grown up around the celebrations of patron saints, such as Managua's Saint Dominic (Santo Domingo), honored in August with two colorful, often riotous, day-long processions through the city. The high point of Nicaragua's religious calendar for the masses is neither Christmas nor Easter, but La Purísima, a week of festivities in early December dedicated to the Immaculate Conception, during which elaborate altars to the Virgin Mary are constructed in homes and workplaces.[85]
[edit] Cuisine
A dish containing gallopinto, tajadas, fried cheese and cabbage.
A dish containing gallopinto, tajadas, fried cheese and cabbage.
Main article: Cuisine of Nicaragua
The Cuisine of Nicaragua is as diverse as its inhabitants. It is a mixture of criollo style food and pre-Columbian dishes. When the Spaniards first arrived in Nicaragua they found that the Creole people present had incorporated foods available in the area into their cuisine.[86] Despite the blending and incorporation of pre-Colombian and Spanish influenced cuisine, traditional cuisine changes from the Pacific to the Caribbean coast. While the Pacific coast's main staple revolves around local fruits and corn, the Caribbean coast's cuisine makes use of seafood and the coconut.
Gallopinto is Nicaragua's national dish, it consists of red beans and rice. The dish has several variations including the addition of coconut oil and/or grated coconut which is primarily prepared on Nicaragua's Caribbean coast. Most Nicaraguans begin and end every day with Gallopinto, it is also thought to have originated in Nicaragua, however there is some controversy about the origins of this dish.
[edit] Main staple
As in many other Latin American countries, corn is a main staple. Corn is used in many of the widely consumed dishes, such as the nacatamal, and indio viejo. Corn is not only used in food it is also an ingredient for drinks such as pinolillo and chicha as well as in sweets and desserts. Nicaraguans do not limit their cuisine to corn, local grown vegetables and fruits have been in use since before the arrival of the Spaniards and their influence on Nicaraguan cuisine. Many of Nicaragua's dishes include fruits and vegetables such as jocote, mango, papaya, tamarindo, pipian, banana, avocado, yuca, and herbs such as cilantro, oregano and achiote.[86]
[edit] Education
Main article: Education in Nicaragua
See also: Universities in Nicaragua and List of Schools in Nicaragua
Literacy Campaign Propaganda Poster
Literacy Campaign Propaganda Poster
Education is free for all Nicaraguans.[87] Elementary education is free and compulsory, however, many children in rural areas are unable to attend due to lack of schools and other reasons. Communities located on the Caribbean coast have access to education in their native languages. The majority of higher education institutions are located in Managua, higher education has financial, organic and administrative autonomy, according to the law. Also, freedom of subjects is recognized.[88]
Nicaragua's higher education consists of 48 universities and 113 colleges and technical institutes which serve student in the areas of electronics, computer systems and sciences, agroforestry, construction and trade-related services.[89] The educational system includes 1 U.S. accredited English-language university, 3 Bilingual university programs, 5 Bilingual secondary schools and dozens of English Language Institutes. In 2005, almost 400,000 (7%) of Nicaraguans held a university degree.[90] 18% of Nicaragua's total budget is invested in primary, secondary and higher education. University level institutions account for 6% of 18%.
When the Sandinistas came to power in 1979, they inherited an educational system that was one of the poorest in Latin America.[91] Under the Somozas, limited spending on education and generalized poverty, which forced many adolescents into the labor market, constricted educational opportunities for Nicaraguans. A 1980 literacy campaign, using secondary school students, university students as well as teachers as volunteer teachers, reduced the overall illiteracy rate from 50.3% to 12.9% within only five months.[92] The key large scale programs of the Sandinistas included a massive National Literacy Crusade (March-August, 1980), social program, which received international recognition for their gains in literacy, health care, education, childcare, unions, and land reform.[93][94] In September 1980, UNESCO awarded Nicaragua with the “Nadezhda K. Krupskaya” award for their successful literacy campaign. This was followed by the literacy campaigns of 1982, 1986, 1987, 1995 and 2000, all of which were also awarded by UNESCO.[95]
[edit] Sports
Batter of the Fieras del San Fernando, a Nicaraguan professional baseball team.
Batter of the Fieras del San Fernando, a Nicaraguan professional baseball team.
Baseball is the most popular sport played in Nicaragua. Although some professional Nicaraguan baseball teams have folded in the recent past, Nicaragua enjoys a strong tradition of American-style Baseball. Baseball was introduced to Nicaragua at different years during the 19th century. In the Caribbean coast locals from Bluefields were taught how to play baseball in 1888 by Albert Addlesberg, a retailer from the United States.[96] Baseball did not catch on in the Pacific coast until 1891 when a group of mostly students originating from universities of the United States formed "La Sociedad de Recreo" (Society of Recreation) where they played various sports, baseball being the most popular among them.[96] There are five teams that compete amongst themselves: Indios del Boer (Managua), Chinandega, Tiburones (Sharks) of Granada, Leon and Masaya. Players from these teams comprise the National team when Nicaragua competes internationally. The country has had its share of MLB players (including current Texas Rangers Pitcher Vicente Padilla), but the most notable is Dennis Martínez, who was the first baseball player from Nicaragua to play in Major League Baseball. [97] He became the first Latin-born pitcher to throw a perfect game, the 13th in major league history, against the Dodgers in 1991.[98]
Boxing is the second most popular sport in Nicaragua.[99] The country has had world champions such as Alexis Argüello and Ricardo Mayorga among others. Recently, football has gained some popularity, especially with the younger population. The Dennis Martínez National Stadium has served as a venue for both baseball and soccer but the first ever national football stadium in Managua is currently under construction.[100]
Pre-Colombian period
Panama had a rich Pre-Colombian heritage of native populations whose presence stretched back over 11,000 years.[citation needed] The earliest traces of these indigenous peoples include fluted projectile points. These evolved into significant populations that are best known through the spectacular burials of the Conte site (dating to c. AD 500-900) and the polychrome pottery of the Coclé style. The monumental monolithic sculptures at the Barriles (Chiriqui) site were another important clue of the ancient isthmian cultures. Prior to the arrival of Europeans, Panama was widely settled by Chibchan, Chocoan, and Cueva peoples, among whom the largest group were the Cueva. There is no accurate knowledge of size of the indigenous population of the isthmus at the time of the European conquest. Estimates range as high as two million people, but more recent studies place that number closer to 200,000.[citation needed] Archaeological finds as well as testimonials by early European explorers describe diverse native isthmian groups exhibiting cultural variety and suggesting people already conditioned by regular regional routes of commerce.
[edit] Spanish colonization
Panama was settled by the Spanish. In 1819, under the leadership of the then-colonel in command, José de Fábrega, it declared its independence from Spain. It then joined Simón Bolívar's Republic of Gran Colombia (1819-1831), a federation made up of Venezuela, New Granada and Ecuador. When this dissolved in 1830 (formally in 1831), Panama became a province of New Granada (later to be renamed Colombia).
[edit] Independence
On 3 November 1903, Panama broke off from Colombia. The US gunboat Nashville prevented the Colombian military from sailing to Panama. An assault through the dense Panamanian jungle was impossible. The President of the Municipal Council, Demetrio H. Brid, the highest authority at the time, became its de facto president, appointing a Provisional Government on 4 November to run the affairs of the new republic. The United States, as the first country to recognize the new Republic of Panama, sent troops to protect its economic interests. The 1904 Constituent Assembly elected Dr. Manuel Amador Guerrero, a prominent member of the Conservative political party, as the first constitutional President of the Republic of Panama.
The Chagres river
The Chagres river
In November 1903, Phillipe Bunau-Varilla—a French citizen who was not authorized to sign any treaties on behalf of Panama without the review of the Panamanians—unilaterally signed the Hay-Bunau Varilla Treaty which granted rights to the United States to build and administer indefinitely the Panama Canal, which was opened in 1914. This treaty became a contentious diplomatic issue between the two countries, reaching a boiling point on Martyr's Day (9 January 1964). The issues were resolved with the signing of the Torrijos-Carter Treaties in 1977.
[edit] Military dictators
The original intent of the founding fathers was to bring peace and harmony between the two major political parties (Conservatives and Liberals). The Panamanian government went through periods of political instability and corruption, however, and at various times in its history, the mandate of an elected president terminated prematurely. In 1968, a coup toppled the government of the recently elected President Arnulfo Arias Madrid.
While never holding the position of President himself, General Omar Torrijos eventually became the de facto leader of Panama. As a military dictator, he was the leading power in the governing military junta and later became an autocratic strong man. Torrijos maintained his position of power until his death in an apparent airplane accident in 1981. The accident has been said to be an American-led assassination.
After Torrijos's death, several military strong men followed him as Panama's leader. Commander Florencio Flores Aguilar followed Torrijos. Colonel Rubén Darío Paredes followed Aguilar. Eventually, by 1983, power was concentrated in the hands of General Manuel Antonio Noriega.
Manuel Noriega came up through the ranks after serving in the Chiriquí province and in the town of Puerto Armuelles for a time. He was a former head of Panama's secret police and was an ex-informant of the CIA. But Noriega's implication in drug trafficking by the United States resulted in difficult relations by the end of the 1980s.
Bianca Jagger (born Bianca Pérez-Mora Macías [1] on May 2, 1950 [2], in Managua, Nicaragua) is a social and human rights advocate. Jagger is a Council of Europe Goodwill Ambassador, Chair of the World Future Council and Chair of the Bianca Jagger Human Rights Foundation, and a member of the Director's Leadership Council of Amnesty International US. [2]
She was formerly married to Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones.
(Numerous other sources via a Google search state that she was born Blanca Moreno de Macias on May 2, 1945, in Managua, Nicaragua.)
Contents
[hide]
* 1 Biography
o 1.1 Marriage to Mick Jagger
* 2 Activism
* 3 Awards
* 4 Films
* 5 References
* 6 External links
[edit] Biography
Jagger's father was a businessman and her mother a housewife. They divorced when Bianca was ten and she stayed with her mother, who had to take care of four children on a small income. When Bianca was studying political science at the Paris Institute of Political Studies, she demonstrated against the Somoza regime after the massacre of students perpetrated by Somoza's National Guard. In Paris, she also became acquainted with French literature, among which especially Voltaire, Rousseau and Camus influenced her. She has also been fascinated by Gandhi's non-violent success and the eastern philosophy at large. She traveled extensively in India. She received a scholarship to study in France and became involved with actor Michael Caine. In addition to her extensive charitable works, in the 1970s and early 1980s, Bianca Jagger had a public reputation as a jet-setter and party-goer, being closely associated in the public mind with New York City's nightclub Studio 54. She has had relationships with two US Democratic politicians, Robert Torricelli and Christopher Dodd.[1]
[edit] Marriage to Mick Jagger
She met Mick Jagger at a party after a Rolling Stones concert where he reportedly impressed her with his French. On May 12, 1971, while she was four months pregnant, the couple married in a Roman Catholic ceremony in Saint Tropez, France, and she became the first wife of Mick Jagger. At this time Jagger became concerned with women's rights. The couple has one daughter, Jade Jagger (born on October 21, 1971), but divorced in 1980.
[edit] Activism
In early 1979, Jagger visited Nicaragua with an International Red Cross delegation and was shocked by the brutality and oppression that the Somoza regime carried out there. This persuaded her to commit herself to the issues of justice and human rights.
In the 1980s, she worked to oppose US government intervention in Nicaragua after the Sandinista revolution. She has also opposed the death penalty and defended the rights of women and of indigenous peoples in Latin America, notably the Yanomami tribe in Brazil against the invasion of gold miners. She spoke up for victims of the conflicts in Bosnia and Serbia. Her writings were published in several newspapers (including the New York Times and the Sunday Express). From the late 1970s she collaborated with many humanitarian organizations including:
* Amnesty International, she is a member of the Executive Director's Leadership Council
* Human Rights Watch/America (member of the advisory committee)
* Coalition For International Justice (member of the advisory committee)
* Indigenous Development International (special adviser)
* People for the American Way (board member)
She is also a member of the Twentieth Century Task Force to Apprehend War Criminals. She also gave a reading at the start of the memorial service in London's Westminster Cathedral, which was timed to coincide with the funeral in Brazil of Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes, who was shot eight times on a tube-train after being mistaken for a suicide bomber in London. In March 2007 she became involved with Sarah Teather and the campaign to close Guantanamo Bay.
On December 16, 2003 she was nominated Council of Europe Goodwill Ambassador.[3]
On July 7, 2007, Jagger presented at the German leg of Live Earth in Hamburg.
On May 12, 2007 she was elected Chair of the World Future Council.
[edit] Awards
For her work, Jagger has earned several awards,[2] including:
* Honorary Doctorate of Humanities degree from the Stone Hill College in Massachusetts in 1983
* 1994 United Nations Earth Day award
* Hispanic Federation of New York City’s Humanitarian Award
* 1996 Woman of the Year Title from the Boys Town of Italy
* 1996 Abolitionist of the Year Award from the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty
* 1997 Green Globe award from the Rain Forest Alliance
* 1997 Amnesty International USA Media Spotlight Award for Leadership
* 1998 American Civil Liberties Union Award
* 2000 Champion of Justice Award
* 2003 International Award from International Services
* 2004 World Achievement Award from Mikhail Gorbachev
* 2004 Right Livelihood Award
* 2006 World Citizenship Award from The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
* 2006 Office of the Americas Peace and Justice Award.
On November 1, 1997, she was inducted to the Hall of Fame in Miami Children’s Hospital Foundation.
[edit] Films
Bianca Jagger also appeared in several movies:
* Cocksucker Blues (1972)
* The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash (1978, as Martini)
* The American Success Company (1979; as Corrine)
* The Cannonball Run (1981, as sheik's sister)
* In Our Hands (1984)
* C.H.U.D. 2 (1989)
* The Party's Over (2003, a documentary movie on American politics)
Little is known about the physical structure of a magnetar, because none are close to Earth. Magnetars are somewhere around 20 kilometres in diameter. Despite this, they are many times more massive than our Sun. Magnetars are so compressed that a thimbleful of its material is estimated to weigh over 100 million tons.[1] Most magnetars recorded rotate very rapidly, at least several times per second.[3] The active life of a magnetar is short. Their strong magnetic fields decay after about 10,000 years, after which point activity and strong X-ray emission cease. Given the number of magnetars observable today, one estimate puts the number of "dead" magnetars in the Milky Way at 30 million or more.[4]
Quakes triggered on the surface of the magnetar cause great volatility in the star and the magnetic field which encompasses it, often leading to extremely powerful gamma ray flare emissions which have been recorded on Earth in 1979, 1998 and 2004.[5]
[edit] Magnetic field
Magnetars are primarily characterised by their extremely powerful magnetic field, which can often reach the order of 10 gigateslas. These magnetic fields are millions of times stronger than any man-made magnet, and quadrillions of times more powerful than the field surrounding Earth.[6] As of today, they are the most magnetic objects ever detected in the universe.[5][7]
A magnetic field of 10 gigateslas is enormous. Earth has a geomagnetic field of 30-60 microteslas, and a neodymium based rare earth magnet has a field of about 1 tesla, with a magnetic energy density of 4.0 x 105 J/m3. A 10 gigatesla field, by contrast, has an energy density of 4.0 x 1025 J/m3, with an E/c2 mass density >104 times that of lead. The magnetic field of a magnetar would be lethal even at a distance of 1000 km, tearing tissues due to the diamagnetism of water. It has even been said that at a distance halfway to the moon, a magnetar could strip information from a credit card on Earth.[8]
As described in a 2003 Scientific American cover story, remarkable things happen within a magnetic field of magnetar strength:
X-ray photons readily split in two or merge together. Also, when entering the magnetic field, photons of polarized light change speed (and therefore wavelength). Since the field can prevent electrons from vibrating as they normally do in response to light, light waves can slip past electrons without losing energy. Empty space itself experiences vacuum birefringence, gaining the ability to split light into different polarizations (like an immaterial version of a calcite crystal).[2]
The field also stretches atoms into long cylinders. In a field of about 105 teslas atomic orbitals deform into cigar shapes. At 1010 teslas, a hydrogen atom becomes a spindle 200 times narrower than its normal diameter.[2]
[edit] Formation
When, in a supernova, a star collapses to a neutron star, its magnetic field increases dramatically in strength (halving a linear dimension increases the magnetic field fourfold). Duncan and Thompson calculated that the magnetic field of a neutron star, normally an already enormous 108 teslas could, through the dynamo mechanism, grow even larger, to more than 1011 teslas (or 1015 gauss). The result is a magnetar.[9]
The supernova might lose 10% of its mass in the explosion. In order for such large stars (10–30 solar masses) not to collapse straight into a black hole, they have to shed a larger proportion of their mass— perhaps another 80%.
It is estimated that about 1 in 10 supernova explosions results in a magnetar rather than a more standard neutron star or pulsar.[10]
On February 21, 2008 it was announced that NASA and McGill University researchers had discovered neutron star that morphs from a pulsar to a magnetar. This indicates that magnetars are not merely a rare type of pulsar but may be a (possibly reversable) phase in the lives of at least some pulsars.[11]
[edit] History
[edit] 1979 discovery
On March 5, 1979, a few months after the successful dropping of satellites into the atmosphere of Venus, the two Soviet spacecrafts that were then drifting through the solar system, were hit by a blast of gamma ray radiation at approximately 10:51 EST. This contact raised the radiation readings on both the probes from a normal 100 counts per second to over 200,000 counts a second, in only a fraction of a millisecond.[2]
This burst of gamma rays quickly continued to spread. Eleven seconds later, Helios 2, a NASA probe, which was in orbit around the Sun, was saturated by the blast of radiation. It soon hit Venus, and the Pioneer Venus Orbiter's detectors were overcome by the wave. Seconds later, Earth received the wave of radiation, where the powerful output of gamma rays inundated the detectors of three U.S. Department of Defence Vela satellites, the Soviet Prognoz 7 satellite, and the Einstein Observatory. Just before the wave exited the solar system, the blast also hit the International Sun-Earth Explorer. This extremely powerful blast of gamma ray radiation constituted the strongest wave of extra-solar gamma rays ever detected; it was over 100 times more intense than any known previous extra-solar burst.[5]
[edit] Known magnetars
On 27 December, 2004, SGR 1806-20 (artist's conception shown) released a burst of gamma rays so powerful that it had effects on Earth's atmosphere, at a range of over 50,000 light years.
On 27 December, 2004, SGR 1806-20 (artist's conception shown) released a burst of gamma rays so powerful that it had effects on Earth's atmosphere, at a range of over 50,000 light years.
Examples of known magnetars include
* SGR 1806-20, located 50,000 light-years from Earth on the far side of our Milky Way galaxy in the constellation of Sagittarius.
* SGR 1900+14, located 20,000 light-years away in the constellation Aquila. After a long period of low emissions (significant bursts only in 1979 and 1993) it became active in May-August 1998, and a burst detected on August 27, 1998 was of sufficient power to force NEAR to shut-down to prevent damage and to saturate instruments on BeppoSAX, WIND and RXTE.
* 1E 1048.1-5937, located 9,000 light-years away in the constellation Carina. The original star, from which the magnetar formed, had a mass 30 to 40 times that of the Sun.
Russian businessman Viktor Bout was arrested by Thai police in a U.S. sting operation after years of slipping past accusations that he operated an arms-trafficking network that fueled wars from Africa to the Balkans to Asia.
Thai security officers escort alleged arms dealer Viktor Bout following his arrest yesterday on charges of conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization.
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Agents from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration had been trying for nearly a year to lure Mr. Bout into showing up to finalize a fictitious $5 million deal to deliver a cache of guns and surface-to-air missiles to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia guerrillas, or FARC, according to U.S. officials.
Mr. Bout, 41 years old, was arrested in Thailand yesterday along with an associate, Andrew Smulian, on charges of conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, http://louis-j-sheehan.org/
according to court documents unsealed by federal prosecutors in New York's Southern District. U.S. authorities said they planned to seek the men's extradition to the U.S.
Mr. Bout said in the past that he was unaware of any illegal content in cargo shipped by his operations, and he has repeatedly denied his companies did anything but legitimate business. He said on Russian television in 2006 that he had http://louis1j1sheehan1esquire.us/page1.aspx
given up the air-transport business because of arms-trading allegations.
Some Conversations Recorded
U.S. authorities said paid informants negotiated the FARC deal in meetings, email and telephone conversations in locations including the Dutch island territory of Curaçao, Denmark and Romania. With the help of local police, the DEA recorded some of the conversations conducted via cellphones secretly provided by U.S. authorities and email addresses set up for the sting.
One of the informants had worked with Mr. Bout in the mid-1990s, including in an aborted operation in which Mr. Bout allegedly wanted the informant to fly on an arms drop in Chechnya, according to the court documents.
Mr. Bout was caught in a trap similar to the one U.S. drug agents used last year to catch reputed arms smuggler Monzer al-Kassar. Mr. Kassar, who is Syrian, is being held in Spain. U.S. authorities have requested extradition.
A DEA official said an undercover agent infiltrated Mr. Bout's inner circle and a close aide persuaded Mr. Bout to proceed with the putative FARC deal. "It was a realistic scenario that convinced him that he could go forward," the official said.
Mr. Bout has been sought since 2002 on an Interpol warrant for alleged money laundering after he drew attention for what the United http://louis1j1sheehan1esquire.us/
Nations said was his role funneling arms that fueled conflicts involving Liberian dictator Charles Taylor, Taliban-ruled Afghanistan and the genocidal conflict in Rwanda.
Through a series of companies registered in the Middle East, the U.S. and elsewhere, Mr. Bout ran one of the largest private-aircraft fleets, mostly huge Soviet-era cargo planes. A U.S. Treasury report said he had a reputation in the smuggling world for being able to deliver anything, anywhere, anytime.
"Viktor Bout provided the means with which barbaric regimes and murderous warlords have been able to carry out their horrendous acts," said Alex Yearsley, of human-rights group Global Witness, which has tracked Mr. Bout's alleged role in trading arms for so-called conflict diamonds in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Angola and Congo. "For years, he was delivering cargoes of death."
U.S. claims of his willingness to do business with the FARC rebels come as Colombia is in a standoff with Ecuador and Venezuela over a Colombian military raid on a rebel camp just inside Ecuadorian territory last week.
It was in Africa that Mr. Bout's planes gained profile throughout much of the 1990s. According to the U.N., the planes carried weapons to anyone who would pay, in conflicts across the continent.
Alex Vines, a former U.N. arms inspector whose investigations contributed to many of the U.N.'s accusations, said that in Angola's civil war, Mr. Bout supplied weapons to both the government and rebels of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, or Unita. http://louis-j-sheehan.org/page1.aspx
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"He was a very pragmatic fellow," said Mr. Vines, who is now head of the African program at Chatham House, a think tank in London. Mr. Vines said he saw Mr. Bout's planes and evidence of their fraudulent registrations, but never Mr. Bout himself.
Those who have tracked Mr. Bout for years were surprised at the apparent carelessness that helped the U.S. sting succeed. U.S. Treasury officials have placed sanctions on Mr. Bout's companies and on his associates in recent years, and they have frozen some of his assets. A November email U.S. prosecutors say was from Mr. Smulian hints that those sanctions may have been having an effect. "Our man has been made persona non-G[rata] -- for the world through the UN....All assets cash and kind frozen, total value is around 6 Bn USD, and of course no ability to journey anywhere other than home territories."
So extensive was Mr. Bout's network that U.S. military officials said in 2005 that they had contracted with companies that used Mr. Bout's cargo companies to ferry materials for the military and its contractors to Iraq, following the U.S. invasion. U.S. officials said they weren't aware beforehand that Mr. Bout's companies were involved. His companies also have shown up carrying humanitarian aid for the U.N. in Africa.
Mr. Bout is a colorful figure who rarely showed himself in public, and he is believed to have inspired the 2005 film "Lord of War."
In 2006, he appeared on a Russian government-run television channel to dismiss allegations against him. Investigators from the U.S. and U.N., he said, had conflated him into an international bogeyman of gun-running. "Every time, it's the same story, the same repetition," he told English-language program Russia Today. "I can even call it a witch hunt."
Mr. Bout said he had given up the air-transport business because of the accusations against him. He told the Russian channel that he had seen the Hollywood film in which Nicholas Cage plays a morally bereft arms dealer believed to be modeled on Mr. Bout and that it was "a bad movie." http://louis-j-sheehan.com/page1.aspx
He added: "I'm sorry for Nicholas Cage."
Others note that while Mr. Bout's arrest could be significant, it's just a step.
"Viktor Bout is not the only person accused of trafficking arms in violation of U.N. embargoes," said Brian Wood, http://louis-j-sheehan.biz/page1.aspx
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who analyzes arms and security issues at Amnesty International in London. "He's most certainly a businessman in a chain." http://louis-j-sheehan.biz/
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Whooping Cough is an infection of the respiratory system and characterized by a “whooping” sound when the person breathes in. In the US it killed 5,000 to 10,000 people per year before a vaccine was available. Vaccination has transformed this and between 1985-88 fewer than 100 children died from pertussis. Worldwide in 2000, according to the WHO, around 39 million people were infected annually and about 297,000 died. A graph is available showing the dramatic effect of introducing vaccination in England.
The infection occurs most with children under the age of one when they are immunized or children with faded immunity, normally around the age 11 through 18. The signs and symptoms are similar to a common cold: runny nose, sneezing, mild cough, and low-grade fever. After a spell, they might make a “whooping” sound when breathing in or vomit. Adults have milder symptoms, like prolonged coughing without the “whoop.” The patient becomes most contagious during the catarrhal stage of infection, normally 2 weeks after the coughing begins. It may become airborne when the person coughs, sneezes, or laughs. Pertussis vaccine is part of the DTaP (diphtheria, tetanus, acellular pertussis) immunization. The paroxysmal cough precedes a crowing inspiratory sound characteristic of pertussis. (Infants less than 6 months may not have the typical whoop.) A coughing spell may last a minute or more, producing cyanosis, apnoea and seizures.
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A prolonged cough may be irritating and sometimes a disabling cough may go undiagnosed in adults for many months.
Bordetella pertussis also produces a lymphocytosis-promoting factor, which causes a decrease in the entry of lymphocytes into lymph nodes. This can lead to a condition known as lymphocytosis, with a complete lymphocyte count over of 4000/μL in adults or over 8000/μL in children.
The world is a better place because of “UFO Hunters,” a new series on Wednesday nights on the History Channel.
Not because the program is particularly good; in fact, it’s as silly and scientifically shaky as a creature feature from the Eisenhower era. But the mere presence of the series means that we collectively have not completely succumbed to the worship of science and Wall Street. If even one person is watching this show, it proves that humans can still give themselves over to the unexplainable, the mysterious, the fantastical. It means that we have not abandoned the notion that there might be something beyond ourselves.
Yes, that’s piling a lot of baggage onto “UFO Hunters,” but we might as well, since otherwise this series doesn’t have much excuse for existing. Documentaries and pseudodocumentaries examining old claims of visitations from space have been around forever. Most strike the same ominously breathless tone, and all reach the same vague nonconclusions. http://louis-j-sheehan.info/page1.aspx
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How tired is the genre? Not only did the Sci Fi Channel offer its own program last week using a similar premise, but — cue the italic typeface pioneered by the old “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” strip — it also had the exact same title as the History Channel series!!!
In the History Channel’s offering, the investigators are led by Bill Birnes, publisher of UFO Magazine. The team’s opening case, seen last week, was intriguing enough. It involved a 1947 incident in Washington State in which boaters on Puget Sound claimed to have seen hovering aircraft that looked, at least in the show’s re-creation, like inner tubes. One inner tube, apparently having engine trouble, spewed molten slag down onto the boat, and a military plane that came to retrieve samples of the slag a few days later crashed on its way home. The History Channel’s investigators visited the sites, hinted at a lot of possibilities and ultimately clarified none of them.
Mr. Birnes and his colleagues add to the campy feel of the series by not being very good actors, trying in vain to make the discoveries that they no doubt researched ahead of time appear spontaneous on camera. Their awkwardness is good. It gives the show license to indulge in all sorts of spurious revelations and disingenuous teasers, and it relieves the audience of the responsibility of taking any of it seriously.
UFO HUNTERS
History Channel, Wednesday night at 10, Eastern and Pacific times; 9, Central time.
Enceladus is named after the Titan Enceladus of Greek mythology. It is also designated Saturn II or S II Enceladus. The name Enceladus – like the names of each of the first seven satellites of Saturn to be discovered– was suggested by William Herschel's son John Herschel in his 1847 publication Results of Astronomical Observations made at the Cape of Good Hope. http://louis-j-sheehan-esquire.us/page1.aspx
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He chose these names because Saturn, known in Greek mythology as Cronus, was the leader of the Titans. The adjectival form of the name is either Enceladean or Enceladan (both are used with roughly equal frequency).
Features on Enceladus are named by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) after characters and places from the Arabian Nights. Impact craters are named after characters, while other feature types, such as Fossae (long, narrow depressions), Dorsa (ridges), Planitia (plains), and Sulci (long parallel grooves), are named after places. 57 features have been officially named by the IAU; 22 features were named in 1982 based on the results of the Voyager flybys, and 35 features were approved in November 2006 based on the results of Cassini's three flybys in 2005.Examples of approved names include Samarkand Sulci, Aladdin crater, Daryabar Fossa, and Sarandib Planitia.
Enceladus was discovered by Fredrick William Herschel on August 28, 1789, during the first use of his new 1.2 m telescope, then the largest in the world. Herschel first observed Enceladus in 1787, but in his smaller, 16.5-cm telescope, the moon was not recognized. Due to Enceladus' faint apparent magnitude (+11.7m) and its proximity to much brighter Saturn and its rings, Enceladus is difficult to observe from Earth, requiring a telescope with a mirror of 15–30 cm in diameter, depending on atmospherical conditions and light pollution. Like many Saturnian satellites discovered prior to the Space Age, http://louis1j1sheehan1esquire.us/page1.aspx
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Enceladus was first observed during a ring crossing, when Earth is within the ring plane during Saturnian equinox. During these periods, Enceladus is easier to observe due to the reduction in glare from the rings.
Prior to the Voyager program, the view of Enceladus improved little from the dot first observed by Herschel. Only its orbital characteristics, along with an estimation of its mass, density, and albedo, were known.
Planned Cassini encounters with Enceladus
Date Distance (km)
February 17, 2005 1,264
March 9, 2005 500
March 29, 2005 64,000
May 21, 2005 93,000
July 14, 2005 175
October 12, 2005 49,000
December 24, 2005 94,000
January 17, 2006 146,000
September 9, 2006 40,000
November 9, 2006 95,000
June 28, 2007 90,000
September 30, 2007 98,000
March 12, 2008 52
June 30, 2008 84,000
August 11, 2008 54
October 9, 2008 25
October 31, 2008 200
November 8, 2008 52,804
November 2, 2009 103
November 21, 2009 1,607
April 28, 2010 103
May 18, 2010 201
The two Voyager spacecraft obtained the first close-up images of Enceladus. Voyager 1 was the first to fly past Enceladus, at a distance of 202,000 km on November 12, 1980. Images acquired from this distance had very poor spatial resolution, but revealed a highly reflective surface devoid of impact craters, indicating a youthful surface. Voyager 1 also confirmed that Enceladus was embedded in the densest part of Saturn's diffuse E-ring. Combined with the apparent youthful appearance of the surface, Voyager scientists suggested that the E-ring consisted of particles vented from Enceladus' surface.
Voyager 2 passed closer to Enceladus (87,010 km) on August 26, 1981, allowing much higher resolution images of this satellite.These images revealed the youthful nature of much of its surface, as seen in Figure 1. They also revealed a surface with different regions with vastly different surface ages, with a heavily cratered mid- to high-northern latitude region, and a lightly cratered region closer to the equator. This geologic diversity contrasts with the ancient, heavily cratered surface of Mimas, another moon of Saturn slightly smaller than Enceladus. The geologically youthful terrains came as a great surprise to the scientific community, because no theory was then able to predict that such a small (and cold, compared to Jupiter's highly active moon Io) celestial body could bear signs of such activity. However, Voyager 2 failed to determine whether Enceladus was currently active or whether it was the source of the E-ring.
The answer to these and other mysteries would have to wait until the arrival of the Cassini spacecraft on July 1, 2004, when it went into orbit around Saturn. Given the results from the Voyager 2 images, Enceladus was considered a priority target by the Cassini mission planners, and several targeted flybys within 1,500 km of the surface were planned as well as numerous, "non-targeted" opportunities within 100,000 km of Enceladus. These encounters are listed at right. So far, three close flybys of Enceladus have been performed, yielding significant information concerning Enceladus' surface, as well as the discovery of water vapor venting from the geologically active South Polar Region. These discoveries have prompted the adjustment of Cassini's flight plan to allow closer flybys of Enceladus, including an encounter in March 2008 which will take the probe to http://louis-j-sheehan.com/
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within 50 km of the moon's surface. A planned extended mission for Cassini includes seven close flybys of Enceladus between July 2008 and July 2010, including two passes at only 50 km in the later half of 2008.
The discoveries Cassini has made at Enceladus has prompted several studies into follow-up missions. In 2007, NASA performed a concept study for a mission that would orbit Enceladus and would perform a detailed examination of the south polar plumes. The concept was not selected for further study. The European Space Agency is also exploring plans to send a probe to Enceladus in a mission to be combined with studies of Titan.
Enceladus is one of the major inner satellites of Saturn. It is the fourteenth satellite when ordered by distance from Saturn, and orbits within the densest part of the E Ring, the outermost of Saturn's rings, an extremely wide but very diffuse disk of microscopic icy or dusty material, beginning at the orbit of Mimas and ending somewhere around the orbit of Rhea.
Enceladus orbits Saturn at a distance of 238,000 km from the planet's center and 180,000 km from its cloudtops, between the orbits of Mimas and Tethys, requiring 32.9 hours to revolve once (fast enough for its motion to be observed over a single night of observation). Enceladus is currently in a 2:1 mean motion orbital resonance with Dione, completing two orbits of Saturn for every one orbit completed by Dione. This resonance helps maintain Enceladus' orbital eccentricity (0.0047) and provides a heating source for Enceladus' geologic activity.
Like most of the larger satellites of Saturn, Enceladus rotates synchronously with its orbital period, keeping one face pointed toward Saturn. Unlike the Earth's moon, Enceladus does not appear to librate about its spin axis (more than 1.5°). However, analysis of the shape of Enceladus suggests that at some point it was in a 1:4 forced secondary spin-orbit libration.This libration, like the resonance with Dione, could have provided Enceladus with an additional heat source.
The E Ring is the widest and outermost ring of Saturn. It is an extremely wide but very diffuse disk of microscopic icy or dusty material, beginning at the orbit of Mimas and ending somewhere around the orbit of Rhea, though some observations suggest that it extends beyond the orbit of Titan, making it 1,000,000 km wide. However, numerous mathematical models show that such a ring is unstable, with a lifespan between 10,000 and 1,000,000 years. Therefore, particles composing it must be constantly replenished. Enceladus is orbiting inside this ring, in a place where it is narrowest but present in its highest density. Therefore, several theories suspected Enceladus to be the main source of particles for the E Ring. This hypothesis was proven by Cassini's flyby.
There are actually two distinct mechanisms feeding the ring with particles.The first, and probably the most important, source of particles comes from the cryovolcanic plume in the South polar region of Enceladus. While a majority of particles fall back to the surface, some of them escape Enceladus' gravity and enter orbit around Saturn, since Enceladus' escape velocity is only 866 km/h. The second mechanism comes from meteoric bombardment of Enceladus, raising dust particles from the surface. http://louis-j-sheehan.biz/
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This mechanism is not unique to Enceladus, but is valid for all Saturn's moons orbiting inside the E Ring.
Enceladus is a relatively small satellite, with a mean diameter of 505 km, only one-seventh the diameter of Earth's own Moon. Its dimensions would allow the satellite to be placed inside a state such as Arizona or Colorado, or the British Isles (see picture), although as a spherical object its surface area is much greater, just over 800,000 square km, almost the same as Mozambique, or 15% larger than Texas.
Its mass and diameter make Enceladus the sixth most massive and largest satellite of Saturn, after Titan (5150 km), Rhea (1530 km), Iapetus (1440 km), Dione (1120 km) and Tethys (1050 km). It is also one of the smallest of Saturn's spherical satellites, since all smaller satellites except Mimas (390 km) have an irregular shape.
Enceladus has a shape of a flattened ellipsoid; its dimensions, calculated from pictures taken by Cassini's ISS instrument, are of 513(a)×503(b)×497(c) km with (a) corresponding to the diameter between sub- and anti-Saturnian poles, (b) to the diameter between the leading and trailing poles, and (c) to the distance between the north and south poles.
Voyager 2, in August of 1981, was the first spacecraft to observe the surface in detail. Examination of the resulting highest resolution mosaic reveals at least five different types of terrain, including several regions of cratered terrain, regions of smooth (young) terrain, and lanes of ridged terrain often bordering the smooth areas. In addition, extensive linear cracks and scarps were observed. Given the relative lack of craters on the smooth plains, these regions are probably less than a few hundred million years old. Accordingly, Enceladus must have been recently active with "water volcanism" or other processes that renew the surface. The fresh, clean ice that dominates its surface gives Enceladus probably the most reflective surface of any body in the solar system with a visual geometric albedo of 1.38.[6] Because it reflects so much sunlight, the mean surface temperature at noon only reaches -198 °C (somewhat colder than other Saturnian satellites).
Observations during three flybys by Cassini on February 17, March 9, and July 14 of 2005 revealed Enceladus' surface features in much greater detail than the Voyager 2 observations. For example, the smooth plains observed by Voyager 2 resolved into relatively crater-free regions filled with numerous small ridges and scarps. In addition, numerous fractures were found within the older, cratered terrain, suggesting that the surface has been subjected to extensive deformation since the craters were formed. Finally, several additional regions of young terrain were discovered in areas not well-imaged by either Voyager spacecraft, such as the bizarre terrain near the south pole.
Impact cratering is a common occurrence on many solar system bodies. Much of Enceladus's surface is covered with craters at various densities and levels of degradation. From Voyager 2 observations, three different units of cratered topography were identified on the basis of their crater densities, from ct1 and ct2, both containing numerous 10–20 km-wide craters though differing in the degree of deformation, to cp consisting of lightly cratered plains. http://louis-j-sheehan.de/
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This subdivision of cratered terrains on the basis of crater density (and thus surface age), suggests that Enceladus has been resurfaced in multiple stages.
Recent Cassini observations have provided a much closer look at the ct2 and cp cratered units. These high-resolution observations, like Figure 6, reveal that many of Enceladus' craters are heavily deformed through viscous relaxation and fracturing. Viscous relaxation causes craters and other topographic features formed in water ice to deform over geologic time scales due to the effects of gravity, reducing the amount of topography over time. The rate at which this occurs is dependent on the temperature of the ice: warmer ice is easier to deform than colder, stiffer ice. Viscously relaxed craters tend to have domed floors, or are recognized as craters only by a raised, circular rim (seen at center just below the terminator in Figure 6). Dunyazad, the large crater seen in Figure 8 just left of top center, is a prime example of a viscously relaxed crater on Enceladus, with a prominent domed floor. In addition, many craters on Enceladus have been heavily modified by tectonic fractures. The 10-km-wide crater right of bottom center in Figure 8 is a prime example: thin fractures, several hundred metres to a kilometre wide, have heavily altered the crater's rim and floor. Nearly all craters on Enceladus thus far imaged by Cassini in the Ct2 unit show signs of tectonic deformation. These two deformation styles—viscous relaxation and fracturing—demonstrate that, while cratered terrains are the oldest regions on Enceladus due to their high crater retention, nearly all craters on Enceladus are in some stage of degradation.
Voyager 2 found several types of tectonic features on Enceladus, including troughs, scarps, and belts of grooves and ridges.[24] Recent results from Cassini suggest that tectonism is the dominant deformation style on Enceladus. One of the more dramatic types of tectonic features found on Enceladus are rifts. These canyons can be up to 200 km long, 5–10 km wide, and one km deep. Figure 7 shows a typical large fracture on Enceladus cutting across older, tectonically deformed terrain. Another example can be seen running along the bottom of the frame in Figure 8. Such features appear relatively young, as they cut across other tectonic features and have sharp topographic relief with prominent outcrops along the cliff faces.
Another example of tectonism on Enceladus is grooved terrain, consisting of lanes of curvilinear grooves and ridges. These bands, first discovered by Voyager 2, often separate smooth plains from cratered regions. An example of this terrain type can be seen in Figures 6 and 10 (in this case, a feature known as Samarkand Sulci). Grooved terrain such as Samarkand Sulci are reminiscent of grooved terrain on Ganymede. However, unlike those seen on Ganymede, grooved topography on Enceladus is generally much more complex. Rather than parallel sets of grooves, these lanes can often appear as bands of crudely aligned, chevron-shaped features. In other areas, these bands appear to bow upwards with fractures and ridges running the length of the feature. Cassini observations of Samarkand Sulci have revealed intriguing dark spots (125 and 750 m wide), which appear to run parallel to narrow fractures. Currently, these spots are interpreted as collapse pits within these ridged plain belts. http://louis1j1sheehan.us/
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Figure 9: High-resolution mosaic of Enceladus' surface, showing several tectonic and crater degradation styles. Taken by Cassini on 9 March 2005.
In addition to deep fractures and grooved lanes, Enceladus has several other types of tectonic terrain. Figure 9 shows sets of narrow fractures (still several hundred metres wide) that were first discovered by the Cassini spacecraft. Many of these fractures are found in bands cutting across cratered terrain. These fractures appear to propagate down only a few hundred metres into the crust. Many appear to have been influenced during their formation by the weakened regolith produced by impact craters, often changing the strike of the propagating fracture.[33][34] Another example of tectonic features on Enceladus are the linear grooves first found by Voyager 2 and seen at a much higher resolution by Cassini. Examples of linear grooves can be found in the lower left of the figure at top and Figure 10 (lower left), running from north to south from top center before turning to the southwest. These linear grooves can be seen cutting across other terrain types, like the groove and ridge belts. Like the deep rifts,
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they appear to be among the youngest features on Enceladus. However, some linear grooves appear to be softened like the craters nearby, suggesting an older age. Ridges have also been observed on Enceladus, though not nearly to the extent as those seen on Europa. Several examples can be seen in the lower left corner of Figure 7. These ridges are relatively limited in extent and are up to one km tall. One-kilometre high domes have also been observed.[33] Given the level of tectonic resurfacing found on Enceladus, it is clear that tectonism has been an important driver of geology on this small moon for much of its history.
Two units of smooth plains were also observed by Voyager 2. These plains generally have low relief and have far fewer craters than in the cratered terrains and plains, indicating a relatively young surface age. In one of the smooth plain regions, Sarandib Planitia, no impact craters were visible down to the limit of resolution. Another region of smooth plains to the southwest of Sarandib, is criss-crossed by several troughs and scarps. Cassini has since viewed these smooth plains regions, like Sarandib Planitia and Diyar Planitia at much higher resolution. Cassini images show smooth plain regions to be filled with low-relief ridges and fractures. These features are currently interpreted as being caused by shear deformation. The high resolution images of Sarandib Planitia have revealed a number of small impact craters, which allow for an estimate of the surface age, either 170 million years or 3.7 billion years, depending on assumed impactor population.
The expanded surface coverage provided by Cassini has allowed for the identification of additional regions of smooth plains, particularly on Enceladus' leading hemisphere (the side of Enceladus that faces the direction of motion as the moon orbits Saturn). Rather than being covered in low relief ridges, this region is covered in numerous criss-crossing sets of troughs and ridges, similar to the deformation seen in the south polar region. This area is on the opposite side of the satellite from Sarandib and Diyar Planitiae, suggesting that the placement of these regions is influenced by Saturn's tides on Enceladus.
Images taken by Cassini during the flyby on July 14, 2005 revealed a distinctive, tectonically-deformed region surrounding Enceladus' south pole. This area, reaching as far north as 60° south latitude, is covered in tectonic fractures and ridges. The area has few sizable impact craters, suggesting that it is the youngest surface on Enceladus and on any of the mid-sized icy satellites; modeling of the cratering rate suggests that the region is less than 10–100 million years old. Near the center of this terrain are four fractures bounded on either http://louis3j3sheehan.blogspot.com/
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side by ridges, unofficially called "Tiger stripes". These fractures appear to be the youngest features in this region and are surrounded by mint-green-colored (in false color, UV-Green-near IR images), coarse-grained water ice, seen elsewhere on the surface within outcrops and fracture walls. Here the "blue" ice is on a flat surface, indicating that the region is young enough not to have been coated by fine-grained water ice from E ring. Results from the Visual and Infrared Spectrometer (VIMS) instrument suggest that the green-colored material surrounding the tiger stripes is chemically distinct from the rest of the surface of Enceladus. VIMS detected crystalline water ice in the stripes, suggesting that they are quite young (likely less than 1,000 years old) or the surface ice has been thermally altered in the recent past. VIMS also detected simple organic compounds in the tiger stripes, chemistry not found anywhere else on the satellite thus far.
One of these areas of "blue" ice in the south polar region was observed at very high resolution during the July 14 flyby, revealing an area of extreme tectonic deformation and blocky terrain, with some areas covered in boulders 10–100 m across.
The boundary of the South Polar Region is marked by a pattern of parallel, Y- and V-shaped ridges and valleys. The shape, orientation, and location of these features indicate that they are caused by changes in the overall shape of Enceladus. Currently, there are two theories for what could cause such a shift in shape. First, the orbit of Enceladus may have migrated inward (from the article: "the lack of any plausible mechanism for increased flattening"), leading to an increase in Enceladus' rotation rate. Such a shift would have lead to a flattening of Enceladus' rotation axis.Another theory suggests that a rising mass of warm, low density material in Enceladus' interior led to a shift in the position of the current south polar terrain from Enceladus' southern mid-latitudes to its south pole.Consequently, the ellipsoid shape of Enceladus would have adjusted to match the new orientation. One consequence of the axial flattening theory is that both polar regions should have similar tectonic deformation histories. However, the north polar region is densely cratered, and has a much older surface age than the south pole. Thickness variations in Enceladus' lithosphere is one explanation for this discrepancy. Variations in lithospheric thickness are supported by the correlation between the Y-shaped discontinuities and the V-shaped cusps along the south polar terrain margin and the relative surface age of the adjacent non-south polar terrain regions. The Y-shaped discontinuities, and the north-south trending tension fractures into which they lead, are correlated with younger terrain with presumably thinner lithospheres. The V-shaped cusps are adjacent to older, more heavily cratered terrains.
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Following the Voyager encounters with Enceladus in the early 1980s, scientists postulated that the moon may be geologically active based on its young, reflective surface and location near the core of the E ring. Based on the connection between Enceladus and the E ring, it was thought that Enceladus was the source of material from the E ring, perhaps through venting of water vapor from Enceladus' interior. However, the Voyagers failed to provide conclusive evidence that Enceladus is active today.
Thanks to data from a number of instruments on the Cassini spacecraft in 2005, cryovolcanism, where water and other volatiles are the materials erupted instead of silicate rock, has been discovered on Enceladus.
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The first Cassini sighting of a plume of icy particles above Enceladus' south pole came from the Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) images taken in January and February 2005, though the possibility of the plume being a camera artifact stalled an official announcement. Data from the magnetometer instrument during the February 17, 2005 encounter provided a hint that the feature might be real when it found evidence for an atmosphere at Enceladus. The magnetometer observed an increase in the power of ion cyclotron waves near Enceladus. These waves are produced by the interaction of ionized particles and magnetic fields, and the frequency of the waves can be used to identify the composition, in this case ionized water vapor. During the next two encounters, the magnetometer team determined that gases in Enceladus's atmosphere are concentrated over the south polar region, with atmospheric density away from the pole being much lower. The Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph (UVIS) confirmed this result by observing two stellar occultations during the February 17 and July 14 encounters. Unlike the magnetometer, UVIS failed to detect an atmosphere above Enceladus during the February encounter when it looked for evidence for an atmosphere over the equatorial region, but did detect water vapor during an occultation over the south polar region during the July encounter.
Fortuitously, Cassini flew through this gas cloud during the July 14 encounter, allowing instruments like the Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer (INMS) and the Cosmic Dust Analyser (CDA) to directly sample the plume. http://louis2j1sheehan2esquire.blogspot.com/
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INMS measured the composition of the gas cloud, detecting mostly water vapor, as well as minor components like molecular nitrogen, methane, and carbon dioxide. CDA "detected a large increase in the number of particles near Enceladus," confirming the satellite as the primary source for the E ring. Analysis of the CDA and INMS data suggest that the gas cloud Cassini flew through during the July encounter, and was observed from a distance by the magnetometer and UVIS, was actually a water-rich cryovolcanic plume, originating from vents near the south pole.
Visual confirmation of venting came in November 2005, when ISS imaged fountain-like jets of icy particles rising from the moon's south polar region. (As stated above, the plume was imaged before, in January and February 2005, but additional studies of the camera's response at high phase angles, when the sun is almost behind Enceladus, and comparison with equivalent high phase images taken of other Saturnian satellites, were required before the plume could be confirmed. The images taken in November 2005 showed the plume's fine structure, revealing numerous jets (perhaps due to numerous distinct vents) within a larger, faint component extending out nearly 500 km from the surface, thus making Enceladus the fourth body in the solar system to have confirmed volcanic activity, along with Earth, Neptune's Triton, and Jupiter's Io.
The combined analysis of imaging, mass spectrometry, and magnetospheric data suggests that the observed south polar plume emanates from pressurized sub-surface chambers, similar to geysers on Earth. Because no ammonia was found in the vented material by INMS or UVIS, which could act as an anti-freeze, such a heated, pressurized chamber would consist of nearly pure liquid water with a temperature of at least 270 K, as illustrated in Figure 14. Pure water would require more energy to melt, either from tidal or radiogenic sources, than an ammonia-water mixture. Another possible method for generating a plume is sublimation of warm surface ice. http://louis-j-sheehan.com/
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During the July 14, 2005 flyby, the Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS) found a warm region near the South Pole. Temperatures found in this region range from 85–90 K, to small areas with temperatures as high as 157 K, much too warm to be explained by solar heating, indicating that parts of the south polar region are heated from the interior of Enceladus. Ice at these temperatures is warm enough to sublimate at a much faster rate than the background surface, thus generating a plume. This hypothesis is attractive since the sub-surface layer heating the surface water ice could be an ammonia-water slurry at temperatures as low as 170 K, and thus not as much energy is required to produce the plume activity. However, the abundance of particles in the south polar plume favors the "cold geyser" model, as opposed to an ice sublimation model.
Alternatively, Kieffer et al. (2006) suggest that Enceladus' geysers originate from clathrate hydrates, where carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrogen are released when exposed to the vacuum of space by the active, tiger stripe fractures. This hypothesis would not require the amount of heat needed to melt water ice as required by the "Cold Geyser" model, and would explain the lack of ammonia.
Prior to the Cassini mission, relatively little was known about the interior of Enceladus. However, results from recent flybys of Enceladus by the Cassini spacecraft have provided much needed information for models of Enceladus's interior. These include a better determination of the mass and tri-axial ellipsoid shape, high-resolution observations of the surface, and new insights on Enceladus's geochemistry.
Mass estimates from the Voyager program missions suggested that Enceladus was composed almost entirely of water ice.[24] However, based on the effects of Enceladus's gravity on Cassini, its mass was determined to be much higher than previously thought, yielding a density of 1.61 g/cm³. This density is higher than Saturn's other mid-sized icy satellites, indicating that Enceladus contains a greater percentage of silicates and iron. With additional material besides water ice, Enceladus's interior may have experienced comparatively more heating from the decay of radioactive elements.
Castillo et al. 2005 suggested that Iapetus, and the other icy satellites of Saturn, formed relatively quickly after the formation of the Saturnian sub-nebula, and thus were rich in short-lived radionuclides. These radionuclides, like aluminium-26 and iron-60, have short half-lives and would produce interior heating relatively quickly. Without the short-lived variety, Enceladus's complement of long-lived radionuclides would not have been enough to prevent rapid freezing of the interior, even with Enceladus' comparatively high rock-mass fraction, given Enceladus' small size. Given Enceladus's relatively high rock-mass fraction, the proposed enhancement in 26Al and 60Fe would result in a differentiated body, with an icy mantle and a rocky core. Subsequent radioactive and tidal heating would raise the temperature of the core to 1000 K, enough to melt the inner mantle. However, for Enceladus to still be active, part of the core must have melted too, forming magma chambers that would flex under the strain of Saturn's tides. Tidal heating, such as from the resonance with Dione or from libration, would then have sustained these hot spots in the core until the present, and would power the current geological activity.
In addition to its mass and modeled geochemistry, researchers have also examined Enceladus's shape to test whether the satellite is differentiated or not. Porco et al. 2006 used limb measurements to determine that Enceladus's shape, assuming it is in hydrostatic equilibrium, is consistent with an undifferentiated interior, in contradiction to the geological and geochemical evidence.[2] However, the current shape also supports the possibility that Enceladus is not in hydrostatic equilibrium, and may have rotated faster at some point in the recent past (with a differentiated interior).
Seen from Enceladus, Saturn would have a visible diameter of almost 30°, sixty times more than the Moon visible from Earth [48]. Moreover, since Enceladus rotates synchronously with its orbital period and therefore keeps one face pointed toward Saturn, the planet never moves in http://louis-j-sheehan.biz/
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Enceladus' sky (albeit with slight variations coming from the orbit's eccentricity), and cannot be seen from the far side of the satellite.
Saturn's rings would be seen from an angle of only 0.019°, and would appear as a very narrow, bright line crossing the disk of Saturn, but their shadow on Saturn's disk would be clearly distinguishable. Like our own Moon from Earth, Saturn itself would show regular phases, cycling from "new" to "full" in about 16 hours. From Enceladus, the Sun would have a diameter of only 3.5 minutes of arc, nine times smaller than that of the Moon as seen from Earth.
An observer located on Enceladus could also observe Mimas (the biggest satellite located inside Enceladus' orbit) transit in front of Saturn every 72 hours on average. Its apparent size would be at most 26 minutes of arc, about the same size as the Moon seen from Earth. Pallene and Methone would appear nearly star-like. Tethys would reach a maximum apparent size just above one degree of arc, about twice the Moon as seen from the Earth, but is visible only from Enceladus' anti-Saturnian side when it is at closest approach.
Albert Einstein is big business. Walk into any science museum store and you’ll find Einstein magnets, posters, spoons, books, CDs, finger puppets and dolls—all offered for a price. For the second year running, Forbes ranked Albert Einstein fifth on the list of top-earning dead celebrities, with $18 million worth of Einstein product changing hands. But how does this enterprise—this Einstein Inc.—work, and where does all the money go?
The vast majority of Einstein-generated cash comes from a single company—Disney-owned Baby Einstein, whose toys and educational DVDs can be found wherever there’s a onesie or a pacifier for sale. Royalties from these products plus the animated television show Little Einsteins add up to a hefty sum without even using the great physicist’s image or ever mentioning his work. True Einstein connoisseurs, meanwhile, can enjoy the quiet thrill of returning home from the gift shop with a new Einstein calendar for tracking personal space-time and Einstein sticky notes for jotting down brilliant ideas while Einstein looks down from a poster on the wall. Parched lips? You can apply some Einstein Lip Therapy (more on this later).
Yet just as Einstein’s universe was a warped, dimpled, and deformed affair, so too is the landscape of Einstein commerce. Amid all the coffee mugs and other paraphernalia, there’s a vastly complicated side to the enterprise left in Einstein’s wake. To make almost anything Einstein—be it product, product name, or advertisement —you must first get past a small but powerful cabal that has included a marketing firm in Beverly Hills, the upper echelon of Israel’s Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and a company owned by another Forbes top earner (a living one): Bill Gates. This formidable group can put the kibosh on a wide range of Einstein products, flying, perhaps, http://louis2j2sheehan.us/Blog/Blogger.aspx
in the face of the “free, unhampered exchange of ideas” that Einstein favored in “all spheres of cultural life.”
All of this was set in motion with Einstein’s death in 1955. Under the terms of his will, his estate eventually went to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJ), where he had been one of the first governors. Long after his death, new laws in the United States gave the university exclusive postmortem rights to profit from the Einstein name and image and the control of the Einstein “brand.” To represent its interests in Einstein’s commercial worth, the university worked with The Roger Richman Agency in Beverly Hills, whose mission was to protect the estate interests of such legendary figures as the Wright brothers, Rudolph Valentino, and Sigmund Freud. Einstein was in excellent company when, in April 2005, Richman was purchased by Corbis, a photo agency founded and owned by Microsoft’s Bill Gates.
Over the years, Richman and Corbis have protected the Einstein image with threats to anyone who came within a quark of using anything Einstein without approval. Take Quoteland.com. David Borenstein started the quotation reference site when he was 15, back in the heady days of the Internet boom. The site featured several Einstein quips that enlightened and entertained its visitors without incident for two years. But when Borenstein began to offer engravings of the Einstein quotes, he received a letter from the Richman agency on behalf of HUJ that began, “It has come to our attention that you are operating the Web site Quote–land.com, Inc., noting several quotes of Dr. Einstein.” Soon after, “we got the phone call threatening us with fire and brimstone,” says Borenstein, who now works in computational genomics at MIT. “They were asking us to hand over all our records and a percentage of anything I’d made on the site. We hadn’t sold a single Einstein quote at that point.” Though a lawyer friend assured Borenstein that he was in the clear, he did not relish a costly legal battle. He removed the quotes and soon after sold the site. “It’s directly against the principles that Einstein seemed to stand for,” Borenstein says.
Tony Rothman, a faculty member at Princeton University, was equally surprised and indignant when, shortly before his book Everything’s Relative: And Other Fables From Science and Technology went to press, his editors decided to nix the cover photo of Einstein. http://louis2j2sheehan.us/page.aspx
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Though Wiley, the publisher, had paid Corbis to use the photo of Einstein holding a pipe and looking heavenward, it had not paid to use Einstein’s image in general and feared the litigation power of the Einstein estate. Rothman was appalled. “Bill Gates is getting richer off Einstein—I find this totally absurd,” he says. “Do these laws make any distinction between ‘celebrity’ celeb–rity and a scientist’s celebrity?
“Suppose I were at a conference and I took a picture of Niels Bohr and Einstein. What if Einstein gave me a picture of himself? Would I have to pay to use it?”
The answer is mostly yes, says attorney Jaime Wolf, whose law firm represents the estates of Allen Ginsberg, Buddy Holly, Janis Joplin, and Diane Arbus, among others. “Every living person has a right to protect use of his or her image, and in some states they can even leave this right to the heir of their choosing,” he explains. The only real question is whether use is considered editorial or commercial. Einstein photos accompanying an article about him need abide only by copyright laws (which is why DISCOVER can feature Einstein on this month’s cover). But for those adverbially challenged “Think Different” Apple ads featuring the great physicist, it was either pay HUJ its licens–ing fee or expect to get sued—and lose.
Einstein’s may be an extreme case, but it is not unique. Many estates protecting the worth of a deceased celebrity’s image employ “a bloody-nose strategy,” Wolf says: “Make an example of some unauthorized use to show the other kids that you won’t hesitate to come down hard.” The cover of a book about Einstein’s ideas clearly falls in the editorial camp, he explains, but the fact that the cover of Rothman’s book was changed may indicate how much of a wallop the estate can have.
Some companies are afraid even to talk about their Einstein products. Stephan Shaw, founder of the Unemployed Philosophers Guild, refuses to discuss his group’s Einstein doll or finger puppets, though he is willing to speak openly about its products based on Nietzsche, Freud, and others. David Wahl, a spokesman for Accoutrements, which produces an Einstein action figure, also refuses to go into his relationship with Corbis, Bill Gates, or HUJ, much less what changes the university may or may not have insisted on for the toy. http://louis4j4sheehan4esquire.blogspot.com/
Even an Einstein impersonator in New Jersey is unwilling to discuss this subject for fear of opening “a can of worms.” However, another Einstein impersonator (or “character of speech,” as he calls it) is less worried. A resident of California, Arden Bercovitz works under the business name “Einstein Alive” and pulls in $10,000 for a package of two corporate keynote speeches plus a visit to a local school. “As long as you don’t libel the personality—as a writer, as a creator, as a performer—you are free to treat the character any way your imagination allows,” he asserts.
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Only a small and privileged handful of merchants are free to use the Einstein name (though not the image) without worry. Ben Einstein, for instance, is lucky enough to share the physicist’s last name and therefore may sell his Einstein Lip Therapy with abandon. And M. Jay Einstein fearlessly sells insurance through his business, Einstein Associates. In fact, having already established themselves in the spheres of cosmetics and insurance, Einstein Cosmetics and Einstein Associates could conceivably take HUJ to court were the university to sanction, say, an “Eye-nstein” eyeliner or start offering an attractive life-insurance plan.
For many other Einstein product developers, it’s not the threats that discourage them so much as the cost. Smaller manufacturers hoping to obtain a license from Corbis legitimately are likely to find the price tag a bit steep.
“When I heard what the licensing fee was, I freaked out,” says Ingrid Sinyor, founder and president of Euro–graphics, a poster manufacturer in Canada. To print five Einstein posters, with a run of 5,000 each, Sinyor says she paid Corbis $20,000 in licensing fees in addition to $5,000 for the images themselves. “We’ll probably lose money on them, but we were too much into it; we couldn’t just pull out. And it’s a good thing to have,” Sinyor says. “The only safe thing is to deal with really dead artists,” she adds, referring to those whose estates’ rights have lapsed. For instance, Eurographics has had no legal trouble selling merchandise featuring the faces of Van Gogh or Beethoven.
But most manufacturers are unlikely to get as far as Eurographics did. A second hurdle for Einstein product hopefuls is the size of their business. “Corbis will never return our phone calls,” says Terry Powers, president of ComputerGear, which sells computer-related novelties and gifts. (Corbis denies the assertion, saying such calls are returned.) Although the company’s Web site carries many Einstein items—from a polo shirt to a “relativity” watch that conveniently does not feature the face of Einstein—it is not enough to satisfy the “rabid fan base” of Einstein enthusiasts.
“We get calls literally every day,” says Martin Cribbs, the director of rights representation at Corbis. “And the vast majority are small companies that want to do an Einstein key chain or something like that. Ninety-nine http://louis3j3sheehan3esquire.blogspot.com/
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percent of those get turned away. We’re not in the business of one-off Einstein novelty items.”
Even if a company hoping to make an Einstein yarmulke manages to assemble the cash and to get a call back from Corbis, it must leap a final hurdle: getting approval from HUJ. Every single reproduction of an Einstein likeness or creation of an Einstein product must be approved by the university, and, according to several manufacturers, the process is extremely demanding.
“They are very, very strict,” says Anton Skorucak, president of the Xump science store. He tried to produce an Einstein watch, he says, but it was rejected by HUJ. Eurographics’ Sinyor had hoped to print a poster of the famous photo of Einstein with his tongue out, but with a tongue stud Photoshopped into the image.
“The whole thing of piercing, which has become so much a thing of young culture —for my generation...I would not disinherit my daughter if she did it, but it is offensive,” says Hanoch Gutfreund, former president of HUJ and one of three people charged with approving or rejecting Einstein product proposals. “If not for that, we would have had no problem.” HUJ, he says, has no set guidelines for what it takes for a product to earn approval. The judgments are made by analysis and intuition. “In some cases, such decisions are made based on your own cultural background—it’s not always something you can define—a kind of common taste.”
As for whether the whole product-driven enterprise runs counter to the spirit of Einstein, Gutfreund points out that the man himself was an avid fund-raiser for the university. “It’s not like the Hebrew University is doing something that would make Einstein turn in his grave,” he says.
The university’s bonanza will eventually come to an end. While laws governing trademark and copyright vary among countries and states, under California law Einstein’s publicity rights extend just 70 years after his death, through 2024. In an effort to maintain its grip on all things Einstein, Corbis and HUJ have trademarked the Einstein name and image. But a trademark will hold up in court only if the company has a history of producing a product. So the items that HUJ rejects today may be what the rest of the world will be free to produce in 16 years. It is a merchandising catch-22: Turn down those Einstein hankies now and fans may be free to blow their noses—all the more enthusiastically, no doubt—into unauthorized, unlicensed hankies when the time comes. Deny an Einstein whoopee cushion today and you may see tomorrow’s Einstein enthusiasts
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gleefully raspberry each other with little fear of litigation.
Let’s hope those Einstein boxers are worth the wait.
For much of 2005 and 2006, headlines about bird flu were sensational (“Virus 911”), fearmongering (“Bird Flu: We’re All Going to Die”), and plentiful, running in major papers daily. The H5N1 strain that swept through Asia showed a limited—but alarming—ability to cross over to humans, with a high fatality rate among those infected. Labs raced to study the virus, researchers coordinated their efforts, and a national pandemic strategy was announced in the United States. Bird flu has since drifted off the media radar. Are we in the clear?
Nope. The United Nations, the World Bank, and thousands of researchers remain worried. According to Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for In–fectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, “We are going to have another pandemic. It will occur. It’s something we can’t emphasize enough.” The fear is echoed by a U.N. and World Bank report on bird flu preparedness, released in December 2007, which states that current risks are as high as in mid-2005.
Researchers have made headway in understanding the H5N1 virus; they have created new vaccines and are looking into other possible treatments, such as using antibodies from survivors. But in the United States, some worry that if a wave of flu hits, there won’t be enough tubing, blood bags, and needles for basic supportive care. The good news is that with only 340 cases of avian flu and 209 deaths reported worldwide since 2003, there is still time to prepare.
Global ocean levels have risen by 4 to 10 inches over the past 100 years. How much more will they rise in 10 years? What about in 50?
This kind of question is critical for planning future coastal development, but taking the measurements necessary to make predictions can be difficult and downright risky for human surveyors, who could be smashed by falling chunks of ice the size of the Empire State Building.
So send in a bot, says David Holland, an oceanographer at New York University, who teamed up with the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) to deploy a five-foot-long autonomous submarine beneath an iceberg off the coast of Greenland. Called the Slocum underwater glider, the sub propels itself through water with a single-stroke piston, thereby conserving most of its energy for data collection.
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Sensors under the port-side wing measure conductivity (to find the salinity of the water), temperature, and depth, sending the data to processors within the sub.
Icebergs are difficult to navigate, even for a sophisticated machine like this. In the pitch-black shadow under the iceberg, the Slocum glider has no access to satellite GPS and no visual markers to verify that it is following its intended path. To help the glider get and keep its bearings, the NRC plans to test an acoustic beacon system whose components would be placed underwater at strategic points around an iceberg, allowing the glider to triangulate by sound.
By collecting data on how much and how quickly Greenland’s ice is melting, Holland hopes to create a computer model that will simulate and forecast glacial melt—and the future rise in sea levels—around the world.
To the dismay of environmentalists, coal is still king in the U.S. electricity market. Nearly 50 percent of the electric power in this country comes from burning coal to create steam that drives electricity-generating turbines. Coal-burning power plants in the United States emit about 2.1 billion tons of carbon dioxide each year—nearly 17 percent of worldwide coal emissions—and finding technologies that reduce those emissions in the United States and China, which burns even more coal than we do, is crucial to combating global warming. One oft-cited but little-used solution is to catch carbon dioxide as it is released from smokestacks and pump it underground into rocks capped by impermeable shale, a process called carbon capture and storage. The worry is that the injected material could leak and bubble to the surface, negating the whole point of the process.
Now, a British geologist’s study suggests sandstone could rapidly absorb the gas, potentially providing a safe, leakproof reservoir. Last year, Bruce Yardley, a professor at the University of Leeds in I, for example,Hi Lou,
I believe that there are miracle workers out there. But administration really orchestrats a lot of what teachers can and cannot do. Often the teacher who excells but receives negative comments and reaction from the union and their peers. Very few get credit for anything they do. Administration will always take the credit for it if the successes are in their favor. I, for example, created over 15 web sites and taught special ed kids how to create their own sites [before "my space"] . This was after school. The administrator never praised me for it. In fact the next year he shut down all labs and got rid of the computers because, I think, he was intimidated by someone who knew more than he did. Ironically most teachers, are intimidated when it comes to computers. One woman from LOng Beach taught for three years until her book ws published. She came out with a movie called "Freedom Fighters." SHe spent her own money to buy books, paid for trips, paid for a guest speaker. As a result she got castigated by the union, peers, and even got divorced. She now gives expensive seminars. She never lasted long in the field to really know how it is. Mr. Keaten in "Dead Poet's Society" lost his job trying to be unique. He became the scape goat. Joe Clarke, high school principal, from New Jersey was arrested and put in jail when he locked the school doors to keep out the drug dealers and bad elements. In essence the system works against you. Most of us are just trying to keep out jobs and survive. This is probably not what you want to hear. I wish that I had gone into law and taught at a technical school or community college instead.
SURGICAL PROCEDURE:
Laparoscopic cholecystectomy.
PREOP DIAGNOSIS:
Signs and symptoms included:
Digestive disturbances
Tenderness on pressure over gallbladder
Pain to back and right shoulder
Pathology: suffering from stones.
Diagnosis: Symptomatic non-acute cholelithiasis.
• Patients are fasted for approximately 8 hours before elective operations.
• Routine administration of intravenous antibiotics for prophylaxis against wound infections is not mandatory in uncomplicated cases of cholelithiases.
• Prior to induction of anesthesia, deep venous thrombosis prophylaxis should be utilized.
[Bib: A page 192.]
POSTOP DIAGNOSIS:
Symptomatic non-acute cholelithiasis.
Although major complications are rare, cardiopulmonary complications may occur as is the case in any major abdominal operation. Additionally, other rare possible complications include:
Bile duct injury
Bile leaks
Biliary stricture
Hemorrhage
Perforated bladder
Retained stones
Pancreatitis
Wound infections
Incisional hernia
Duodenal injury
Hepatic Artery injury
Damage to structure of Porta Hepatis
Atelectasis
[Bib: A page 189.]
Assuming there are no complications, postoperative care consists of:
• Clear liquids are resumed postoperatively and the patient progresses to a regular diet as tolerated.
• No activity or work restrictions are placed on the patient depending upon the degree of abdominal tenderness; the patient is encouraged to return to work within one week.
• Nausea and mild shoulder discomfort from diaphragmatic irritation may occur in the early postoperative period.
[Bib: A page 192.]
PREOP DIAGNOSTIC STUDIES:
History and physical.
Simple cholelithiasis resulting from obstruction of the infundibulum of the gallbladder or the cystic duct does not normally result in laboratory abnormalities. Serum bilirubin is usually normal unless there is a concomitant obstruction of the common bile duct.
Plain radiographs of the abdomen are rarely useful in diagnosing cholelithiasis.
Transcutaneous ultrasound of the upper right quadrant should be the diagnostic tool of choice in patients with suspected biliary pathology. Ultrasound is 95% sensitive and 98% specific in detecting gallstones and may demonstrate thickness of the gallbladder wall, pericholecystic fluid collections, choledococolothiasis, sludge, polyps, microcalcifications, and the diameter of the common bile duct. Additionally, the physician may also evaluate the right kidney, liver and pancreas. It should be noted that computed tomography (CT) is not as useful in evaluating biliary disease as is ultrasound.
[Bib: A page 183.]
TYPE OF ANESTHESIA:
The operation is performed under general anesthesia.
After induction of anesthesia, a urinary bladder catheter and a naso/orogastiric tube are generally placed to decompress these hollow organs
[Bib: A page 184.]
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SUTURE MATERIALS/CLOSING:
(DESCRIBE ABSORBABLE/NONABSORBABLE, MONOFILAMENT/MULTIFILAMENT)
• All port sites larger than 5 mm must be closed to reduce the risk of herniation.
• The incisions were anesthetized locally.
Bupivacaine with Epinephrine.
• The fascia of the umbilical incision was closed with large absorbable sutures.
0-Vicryl is a multifilament absorbable suture.
• The skin of the subxiphoid umbilical incisions was closed with subcuticular sutures.
4-0 Vicryl is a multifilament absorbable suture.
• Bandaids/medipore 2 2/3 inches were applied to each incision.
[PIC Sheet]
TIES
PERITONEUM:
FASCIA:
SUBCUTANEOUS:
SKIN/SUBCUTICULAR:
OTHER:
I am unaware that any ties were used.
ELECTROSURGICAL UNIT
TYPE: bovie pencil
MONOPOLAR/BIPOLAR: monopolar
SETTINGS: 25, sometimes done at 30
PLACEMENT OF DISPURSIVE PAD: leg/thigh
ESU TIP USED: coated blade
INSTRUMENT SET(S):
Complete gallbladder tray
Laparoscopic bin
Minor basin set
Camera tray
Scope warmer tray
[Bib: D page 77.]
SUPPLIES
BLADES: #11
PACKS: Laparoscopic Choly pack; C-Arm drape
DRESSINGS: Bandaids/medipore 2 2/3 inches
Basic pack
Towels
Basin set
Cleaning kit (defogger)
Padding for elbows and ankles
Sony paper for printing photographs
Dr. A. always uses compression stockings
Prep set
Gloves
Gown
[Bib: D page 77.]
DESCRIBE PREPPING PROCEDURE:
Dr. A. wanted the abdomen prepped in standard fashion with betadine applied 3 times. The betadine was applied from the midline-axilla down to (but not including) the pubic symphysis and down to the table at the sides.
[Bib: D page 76.]
MEDICATIONS/IRRIGATIONS:
(LIST MEDICATION AND ROUTE OF ADMINISTRATION)
.9% saline via hanger
H2O 1000 mL
.9% saline 1000 mL for injection
Syringe 10 cc luerlock
Syringe 20 cc luerlock
Syringe 30 cc luerlock
Leurlock plug m/f
A ½ inch needle
0.25% Bupivacaine with Epinephrine
[PIC Sheet.]
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SPECIAL EQUIPMENT:
(CATHETERS, DRAINS, PACKING)
• Two 5 mm ports
• Two 10 mm ports
• Three 5 mm ratcheted graspers
• One 5 mm scissor (Metz)
• One 5 mm hook cautery
• One 5 mm curved dissector
• One 10 mm claw grasper
• One entrapment sack
• One loop ligature
• Video cart
• C02 insufflator
• Slave monitor
• A seal
• Disposable clip appliers (one medium, one large)
• 2000 cc suction canister
• Foley catheter 18 Fr with urimeter kit
• Scope warmer
• Suction apparatus
[Bib: A page 185.]
POSITIONING
PATIENT POSITIONING:
Supine. Arm on armboard.
OR BED POSITION:
The table was initially placed in Trendelenburg between 5 and 10 degrees to facilitate the establishment of the C02-pneumoperitineum. Then the patient was positioned in a 30 to 40 degree Reverse Trendelenburg and was further rotated to the left by 15 – 20 degrees. These movements/repositionings allowed the colon and duodenum to fall away from the liver’s edge and the falciform ligament and the liver (both lobes) to be examined. The inferior margin of the liver was also more easily visualized so as to locate the gallbladder. In most surgeries the gallbladder is visible beyond the edge of the liver but, sometimes, the gallbladder can only be seen after adhesions are removed and/or after elevating the liver.
[Bib: B page 90.]
POSITIONING SUPPLIES AND EQUIPMENT:
Adjustable OR bed
Armboards
Footstool
[PIC Sheet]
DRAPPING PROCEDURE:
Squared off towels around the abdomen. Laparotomy drape /sheet with tape removed.
[Bib: D page 76.]
DESCRIBE SURGICAL PROCEDURE:
(IF AN ORGAN(S) WAS/WERE REMOVED, WHAT STRUCTURES WERE LIGATED TO REMOVE THE ORGAN(S)?)
(WHAT INSTRUMENTS WERE USED?)
(COUNTS?)
ANATOMY:
See attached drawings.
[Bib: E pages 12 – 39.]
COUNTS:
1. When all items open on backtable and before mayo set-up.
2. Closing 1: at closing of peritoneum/first layer of cavity.
3. Closing 2: at closure of fascia.
4. Closing 3: initiation of skin closure.
Port Placement - CO2-pneumoperitineum 10 mm Trocar
A CO2-pneumoperitineum was created to facilitate safe placement of trocars into the abdomen; 15 mmHg is a conventional benchmark. The CO2-pneumoperitineum can be created using either an open or closed technique. If hemodynamic compromise were to develop, the CO2-pneumoperitineum would be emptied until vital signs return to normal.
At the infraumbilical skin fold an incision of approximately 1.5 cm horizontally was made to place the CO2-pneumoperitineum port.
Next, the retroperitoneum posterior to the umbilicus and the pelvis were viewed to ensure there was no injury resulting form the trocar/sheath with a 10 mm laparoscope/camera. While there, the pelvic viscera, anterior surface of the intestines, omentum and stomach were visualized and no abnormalities were noted.
Two 5 mm Subcostal Ports
The surgeon next placed two 5mm subcostal ports in the upper right quadrant.
The first port was placed in the anterior-to middle axillary line between the 12th rib and the iliac crest inferior to the gallbladder fundus/liver edge.
The second 5 mm port was placed midway between he axillary sheath and the xiphoid process.
These two ports allowed the use of grasping forceps to retain/secure the gallbladder. The lateral grasping forceps were used to elevate the liver’s edge to clearly expose the fundus of the gallbladder. The dissecting forceps were then used to raise the most dependent portion of the fundus. The grasping forceps were then used to push laterally and cephaladly to roll up the entire right lobe of the liver so as to expose the porta hepatis and the gallbladder. Adhesions in this area are generally avascular and were lysed bluntly with dissecting forceps by slowly stripping them in the direction of the infundibulum; any vascular adhesions would be lysed with the hook cautery.
After the infundibulum was exposed, grasping forceps were placed through the midclavicular trocar for traction on the neck of the bladder.
The Second 10 mm Trocar
The last trocar was placed through a longitudinal incision in the midline of the epigastrium near the location of the gallbladder (the size of the left liver lobe can also influence placement). This trocar was angled to the right of the falciform ligament aiming toward the gallbladder.
Exposure
The fundus was now retracted superiorly to the infundibulum. The gallbladder was placed under tension and away from the common bile duct in the inferolateral direction. With the fundus and neck of the gallbladder under tension, a fine-tipped dissecting forcep was used to gently pull away the overlying fibroareolar structures from the gallbladder infundibulum and Hartmann’s pouch starting on the gallbladder and pulling the tissue toward the porta hepatis.
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Dissection
The peritoneum was lysed. The hepatocystic triangle (a.k.a. Calot’s triangle) was placed under tension and exposed by retracting the gallbladder infundibulum inferiorly and laterally while pushing the fundus superiorly and medially. Often there is a lymph node overlying the cystic artery which, if there, is removed; if so, electrical current is used to achieve hemostasis.
The infundibulum of the gallbladder was stretched superiorly and medially even as the fundus was pushed superiorly and laterally to expose the reverse of the hepatocystic triangle (the area between the cystic duct, the common hepatic duct, and the right lobe of the liver). It was critical to precisely locate the junction between the infundibulum and the origin of the cystic duct. The tip of the hooked-shaped cautery was used to probe and expose the duct. The cystic artery is often separated from the surrounding tissue now (but can be separated later depending upon the individual’s anatomy). The cystic duct was now dissected as it was anteriorly in the field.
Cholangiography
Some surgeons now perform a static or fluoroscopic cholangiography for evaluation of the stones at this juncture. (I did not see any of this.)
Cystic Duct
The Cystic duct was then doubly clipped near its junction with the common bile duct and then was divided. Care was taken to avoid injuring surrounding structures with the clips. Great care was taken to avoid clipping the common bile duct; if this were to prove to be too risky, a loop or suture would have been used instead of clips.
Cystic Artery
The infundibulum of the gallbladder was placed under tension and the cystic duct was bluntly dissected, then clipped proximally and distally and divided by sharp dissection.
Care was taken to not confuse the right hepatic artery with the cystic artery.
The ligations of the duct and cystic artery were examined to confirm that neither bile nor blood is leaking, that the clips are secure, and that the clips close the entire lumen without attaching any of the adjacent tissue. Irrigation and suctioning were used to remove debris. The grasping forceps in the midclavicular trocar were repositioned on the proximal end of the gallbladder at Hartman’s pouch. The infundibulum was retracted superiorly and laterally and also away from its hepatic bed. The tissues that tethered the neck of the gallbladder were inspected to ensure no other sizeable tubular structures were in this immediate area. The hepatic fossa was divided and coagulated (both small vessels and lymphatics were coagulated). On rare occasion, a blood vessel or small duct will require the placement of another clip.
Gallbladder Dissection
As necessary, any tears in the gallbladder wall may be clipped or looped to prevent stone leakage or additional bile leak.
As always (i) the hepatic fossa and porta hepatis were monitored for any blood and/or bile leakage, (ii) the clips were monitored for stability, and (iii) small bleeding points were coagulated with electrocautery, and (iv) the liver was examined for hemostasis. Further, irrigation assists with the visualization at this juncture.
The gallbladder was then separated with electrocautery. With the tissue connecting the gallbladder to the fossa placed under tension, the surgeon used electrocautery (typically the hook) set at 25 (sometimes 30) to divide and coagulate the tissue.
The dissection of the gallbladder continued from the infundibulum to the fundus with intermittent repositioning of the midclavicular grasping forceps proximal to the plane of dissection to allow maximal contraction until the gallbladder was attached only by a narrow and thin tissue.
Finally, the little remaining attachments to the gallbladder were lysed.
Removal
The laparoscope was transferred to the midepigastric port.
The gallbladder was removed via the umbilicus under direct visualization from the laparoscope. The umbilical port was used because there are no thick muscle layers at this point and there is only one fascial plane that must be crossed. Additionally, if an incision needs to be enlarged because of the size of the stones, extending the umbilical incision causes less postoperative pain than does extending any of the other incisions.
At Harrisburg, I have always seen the use of an entrapment bag. The grasper forceps were used to place the gallbladder into the entrapment sack. The gallbladder-containing entrapment sack was then withdrawn through the umbilical port. This left the neck of the gallbladder on the anterior abdominal wall and the distended fundus within the abdominal cavity.
If the gallbladder were to be enlarged due to stones or bile, a suction catheter could have been used for aspiration before the entrapment sack’s withdrawal. As an alternative, stone forceps could have been placed into the gallbladder to extract or crush overly large stones. Rarely, the incision must be enlarged to remove larger stones.
The gallbladder was a specimen.
[Bib: A pages 186 – 191, B pages 90 – 94, C pages 192 – 194.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
A =
Laparoscopic Surgery, Principles and Procedures, 2nd Edition. Edited by D.B. Jones, J.S. Wu, and N.J. Soper. Pages 181 – 196 (2004).
B=
Laparoscopic Surgery of the Abdomen, B.V. MacFayden, Jr. as Senior Editor. Pages 87 – 99 (2004).
C=
Laparoscopic Surgery, by Cueto-Garcia, Jacobs and Gagner. Pages 191 – 195 (2003).
D=
Pocket Guide to the Operating Room, 2nd Edition. M.A. Goldman. Pages 74 – 79. (1996).
E=
Atlas of Minimally Invasive Surgery, by Jones (MD), Maithel (MD) and Schneider (MD). Pages 12 – 39 (2006).
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The holidays are over. Resolutions are wearing thin. It's a time of year when many people wonder if they have a drinking problem.
More than 30% of Americans engage in risky drinking at some point in their lives, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. But there's no consensus on exactly what an "alcoholic" is. Even Alcoholics Anonymous relies on alcoholics to diagnose themselves.
Researchers have made up dozens of screening tests over the years. According to one developed for Johns Hopkins University Hospital years ago that still pops up on the Web, I'm "definitely an alcoholic" because I answered yes to at least three of 20 questions: I "crave a drink at a definite time of day" (evenings, mostly) and drink alone (sometimes) and drink to "escape from worries or troubles" (doesn't everyone who drinks?).
But Alcoholscreening.org3 says I'm "below the range usually associated with harmful drinking or alcoholism" since I have only a glass or two of wine when I drink.
The authoritative American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM-IV, separates alcohol abuse from alcohol dependence, based partly on the problems the drinking causes. You qualify for a diagnosis of "abuse" if you've done any one of these in the past year: drunk alcohol in hazardous situations, like driving; kept drinking despite social or interpersonal problems; had legal problems related to alcohol or failed to fulfill major obligations at work, school or home because of drinking.
You've moved on to "dependence" if you've done any three of these seven: drunk more or longer than you intended; been unable to cut down or stop; needed more alcohol to get the same affect; had withdrawal symptoms without it; spent more time drinking or recovering; neglected other activities or continued to drink despite psychological or physical problems.
Experts long believed that abuse progressed to dependence, which almost inevitably became chronic and relapsing -- but that was based on observing severely addicted people in treatment programs. Several large new surveys have shown that drinking patterns in the general population are much more varied, with milder forms of dependence. Some 43% of daily heavy drinkers don't fit into either DSM-IV category, according to one big national sample, even though they are setting themselves up for serious health and addiction problems.
Abuse vs. Dependence
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"Some people will abuse alcohol -- driving drunk, for example -- but they only drink heavily once a month. They can remain stable for a long time and not progress to dependence," says Mark L. Willenbring, director of the division of treatment and recovery research at the NIAAA. "And people can be dependent and not have abuse problems at all. They're successful students. They're good parents, good workers. They watch their weight. They go the gym. Then they go home and have four martinis or two bottles of wine. Are they alcoholics? You bet. And the goal is to get treatment for these folks, earlier, that is acceptable and attractive and effective."
To that end, some experts want the DSM-V -- the new edition now being compiled -- to combine abuse and dependence into a single "alcohol-use disorder" that ranges in severity, taking into account harmful drinking patterns and other symptoms. The aim is for simmering problems to be spotted sooner.
As one former treatment counselor says, "The conventional wisdom held that alcoholics had to hit bottom before they could get better. We'd like to raise that bottom so that people don't have to fall as far before they get help."
[Health]
Many heavy drinkers are very high-functioning -- until they can't function anymore. "Alcoholics can be high achievers in the short run, because they're driven and compulsive," says Charlie, a New York attorney who, like all AA members, wants to remain anonymous. Charlie was drinking about a fifth of Johnnie Walker most nights when it began to show. "I'd tell my secretary I was in a meeting with a client, but I'd be home and only starting to feel human by about noon. Then I'd try to do eight hours of work in four hours," he says. This went on for seven years, until he finally went into rehab. He's been sober now for 26 years.
Charlie says many heavy drinkers, especially those who grew up around alcoholics, set a private benchmark in their denial. "They say to themselves, 'As long as I'm not making a fool of myself in a bar, or drinking in the morning, or as long as I'm still showing up for work, then I'm not an alcoholic.'"
You know you've hit bottom, he adds, "when your behavior spirals downward faster than you can lower your standards."
Thinking You're Immune
Ruth, a nursing supervisor in Las Vegas, hid her quart-a-day whiskey habit from work for about five years -- "until my husband and my employer both invited me out of those positions at the same time," she says. "That got my attention."
Both of Ruth's parents died of alcohol-related illnesses, but she thought her medical training would protect her from getting seriously addicted. Doctors and clergy who drink heavily often have the notion that they are somehow immune to the problems they see in others, she observes, and affluent people can pay others to take care of them. "People with less money and less education often get the message faster," she says, now that she's been sober for 37 years.
NIAAA officials say that in recognizing a drinking problem, the label "alcoholic" is less important than harmful patterns of drinking, which they describe as drinking too much, too fast or too much, too often.
Too much, too fast means consuming more than four drinks in two hours for men, and more than three in two hours for women. That's a level that, on average, makes people legally drunk and impairs brain function. (A standard U.S. drink, by the way, is 12 oz. of beer, 5 oz. of wine or a 1.5 oz. shot of 80 proof spirits, according to government agencies.)
Even if you stay within those limits each day, you can be drinking too much, too often, if you have more than 14 drinks a week for men, and more than 7 for women. That's the kind of chronic use that raises the risks of a long list of health problems, including liver and cardiovascular disease, pancreatitis, dementia, depression and numerous cancers.
How those weekly drinks are distributed is also important. "If you drink seven drinks in two days, that's hazardous -- you're drunk two days a week," says Ting-Kai Li, the NIAAA's director. "If you drink two a day for seven days, that's not harmful. In fact, it may even be beneficial for some people, lowering their cardiovascular risk."
Individual responses to alcohol vary, of course, based on genetics, brain chemistry, metabolism and other factors. Your risk is already elevated if you have a family history of alcohol abuse, have health problems such as depression, take certain medications or you started drinking at an early age. "If you have a family history or other co-morbidity, then the general advice is, don't drink at all," says Dr. Li.
If you're worried that you may be drinking too much, you've already met a key criterion on some screening tests. (Like the old saying about mice in your house, if you think you have a problem, you probably do.)
Counting drinks very carefully to stay within the limit can be a sign of trouble too, says Ruth. "The glass keeps getting bigger and bigger or you forget to add the mixer." She suggests trying to go 30 or 60 days without drinking. "If it doesn't bother you, you're OK. But if you're desperate for that 30 days to end, or you can't make it, then get help." She suggests trying one of AA's public information meetings. "If you're not an alcoholic, you can't catch it from them," she says.
Your family doctor is another place to start. The NIAAA recently issued a guide for primary-care physicians (www.niaaa.nih.gov/guide4) to enlist their help in spotting alcohol problems. It starts with a single screening question: How many times in the last year have you had more than five drinks (four for women) in a day? If the answer is even once, doctors are advised to discuss the risks of harmful drinking with their patients, along with steps patients can take to cut back, including new medications that can help curb alcohol cravings.
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In Remission
The encouraging news from the NIAAA's recent research is that many people do cut down or quit on their own. "That's the real mind blower," says Dr. Willenbring. "Only about 15% of the people who develop alcohol dependence in their lifetime have the severe, relapsing form. Most people -- 72% -- have a single episode [of addiction] lasting on average three or four years and then they go into remission and stay there. A lot of them are abstaining." For many people, that spate of heavy drinking happens in college -- the peak years are 18 to 24, says Dr. Willenbring. "Then they mature out of it and get on with their lives."
For those who don't, alcoholism, however it's defined, is still a profound problem, and the third leading cause of preventable death in the U.S., after smoking and obesity. But being aware of your risks and cutting down now if you need to may prevent you from becoming one of those statistics.
A blaze of X-rays from the center of our galaxy is the burp following a gargantuan (and rather messy) cosmic feast, astronomers reported in February: A massive black hole there devoured something the size of the planet Mercury, and in the process, let loose an outburst so intense that we still see the echoes six decades later.
When matter falls into a black hole, it grows hot and glows brilliantly before vanishing into oblivion. These days the Milky Way’s central black hole, called Sagittarius A*, seems fairly placid. But over the past five years, NASA’s orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory has monitored “light echoes”—X-rays bouncing off nearby molecular clouds and reflecting back toward Earth—showing that Sagittarius A* had a planet-size banquet not so long ago. “It was about one thousand times brighter than anything we’ve seen from this black hole,” says Caltech astronomer Michael Muno, who led the project. “It’s possible that it could have been a larger mass that fell in.”
Based on the distance of the molecular clouds from Sagittarius A*, astronomers calculate that the original X-ray that burst from the black hole’s lunch must have lit up Earth’s skies 60 years ago—but astronomers did not have the necessary X-ray telescopes back then. Chandra has detected similar, far smaller black-hole snacks since 2000.
When the black hole starts its next planet-size meal, though, the light show will be hard to miss: Muno estimates the X-rays will be 100,000 times brighter than anything seen before. “It would be a spectacular thing to look at,” he says.
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Chinese researchers announced in March that they had created glass that can be bent into right angles without shattering. But this isn’t glass as we know it: The new glass is opaque, twice as strong as window glass, and made of metal.
As solids, metals have an orderly atomic structure; in liquid metals, the arrangement becomes random, as in glass. To create metallic glass, scientists supercool liquid metals, effectively “freezing” the random array in place. These bulk metallic glasses, or BMG, are two to three times stronger than the crystalline form of the metals.
Superstrong BMG has already been used in the manufacture of high-tech golf clubs and tennis rackets; in 2001, the collector on NASA’s Genesis spacecraft, which caught particles from the solar wind, was made of BMG.
But since the 1980s, when scientists began making BMG, the materials have exhibited a fatal flaw. Paradoxically, the stronger they are, the more vulnerable they are to cracks, says Wei Hua Wang, a physicist who helped develop the new glass at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. A tiny fracture in the original type of BMG spreads quickly and becomes catastrophic.
To create a glass that is both strong and flexible, Wang and his colleagues altered an existing BMG recipe, combining zirconium, copper, nickel, and aluminum. Realizing that small changes in the metal mixture would lead to large variations in brittleness, they sought a combination that would keep cracks from spreading. “The plasticity of the glass is very sensitive to the composition,” Wang explains.
After two years, the scientists produced bendable BMG. It contains hard areas of high density surrounded by soft regions of low density. The result: When a crack begins in one place, it dissipates quickly in the surrounding regions, leaving the whole flexible.
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New Jersey gets all the bad press... which is further testament to how slimy Pennsylvania politics is --
Most priests take a vow of poverty, but bankruptcy records show that the Rev. Joseph F. Sica, a Scranton-area priest, took out enough loans to live large if he wanted to.
On an annual salary of $13,200, Sica amassed debts totaling more than $218,000. Most of that debt was owed to First Community National Bank, whose chairman is Sica's longtime friend Louis DeNaples.
DeNaples, a casino owner, is the subject of an ongoing Dauphin County grand jury investigation. Sica was arrested this week on a perjury charge that accuses him of lying to that same grand jury.
Since Sica's arrest, more details have emerged about the priest's financial relationship with DeNaples. Sica, who has been a priest since 1982, filed for bankruptcy in April 1997. The case was dismissed in June that year.
When Sica filed for bankruptcy, he was making $880 per month and had $250 in his checking account. Still, he was able to receive $147,702 in the form of loans from DeNaples' bank.
At the time of the filing, the priest owed First Community National Bank the following: $16,500 on a car loan for Sica's 1996 Eddie Bauer Chevy Blazer; more than $77,000 for a personal loan; and $54,000 for another personal loan.
Both of the personal loans were used for family expenses, according to court documents.
When Sica was arrested on Tuesday, he had $1,000 in cash on him, prosecutors said. He also owns a 2007 Jeep that has been paid off.
Sica's attorney Jane Penny would not comment on the bankruptcy case.
Kevin Feeley, DeNaples' spokesman, said that he was not in a position to discuss the priest's finances. He did say that First National Community Bank conducts all of its transactions in a standard business fashion and is regulated by a number of state and federal agencies.
The loans have piqued First Assistant District Attorney Fran Chardo's curiosity. Chardo pointed to Sica's salary and the size of the loans.
"I don't know how someone qualifies for that sort of credit on that salary," Chardo said. "It would be relevant to our inquiry."
It may be relevant to the grand jury investigation, but Sica's relationship with DeNaples and his subsequent arrest have no bearing on whether the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board made the right call in giving DeNaples a slots license, said former board Chairman Tad Decker.
Although Sica appeared at several regulatory hearings with DeNaples, Sica never testified before the board and was not a character witness for DeNaples.
"We didn't consider him as a factor, at least in my mind," Decker said.
The only thing that would change Decker's mind on whether DeNaples should have been given a license is an indictment and conviction.
"I think people should emphasize the word convicted of a crime," Decker said. "The board will do what it has to do. We dealt with what we had in front of us. There was nothing in front of us that suggested Mr. DeNaples was unsuitable before that time."
Sica also isn't dwelling on the criminal charges against him. The priest, who was leaving the Dauphin County Courthouse on Friday, said that he was doing fine and he has received support and prayers from friends.
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If Olga Shugar has a regret, it is that she will never see the fear of imminent death in the eyes of Theodore Solano, the man who murdered her 18-year-old daughter.
Shugar, of St. Petersburg, Russia, said she had hoped that Solano would be executed for the 1993 slaying of Natalia Andreevna Miller, a Russian immigrant he had wed in a marriage of convenience.
Instead, Shugar and her daughter Vera sat in a Cumberland County courtroom Friday, watching grim-faced as Solano, 49, pleaded no contest to third-degree murder and kidnapping charges in return for a 17- to 40-year state prison sentence.
It was Shugar's first glimpse of Solano, a convicted sex offender.
What she felt, she said, was revulsion.
"It was not a human being. It was not an animal," Shugar said. "It was strange."
She said she had hoped Solano would receive the death penalty and experience the "horror" her daughter must have felt as he strangled her.
President Judge Edgar B. Bayley's sentencing of Solano under a plea agreement fashioned by District Attorney David Freed was perhaps the final act in what was Cumberland County's most vexing cold case.
Miller's nude and battered body was found by hunters in woods along Whiskey Springs Road in Cumberland County's South Middleton Twp. in December 1993.
For more than a decade, investigators chased a series of fruitless leads. They weren't even able to identify Miller, who for years was known only as Jane Doe 24-275.
Freed said police even sent information from the woman's contact lenses to optometrists nationwide in hope of making an identification.
Finally, in 2004, they tied Solano, of Irondequoit, N.Y., to the slaying through DNA taken from semen and blood found on Miller's corpse, Freed said. Solano was required to provide a DNA sample to a police central records system because of a sex crime conviction.
Only then were local authorities able to identify Miller and notify Shugar, who on Thursday went with Coroner Michael Norris for her second visit her daughter's grave in Middlesex Twp.
Shugar fought back tears as she spoke of Natalia, an honor student and accomplished painter and pianist whom the Russian government had sent to study in Italy, France and the U.S.
While in the U.S., Shugar said, Natalia fell in love with an American student. Natalia turned 18 in 1993 and emigrated, intending to marry the American, but the romance fell apart, Shugar said.
In June 1993, Natalia met and married Solano, a carpenter and building contractor who was living in the Washington, D.C., area.
Freed said Solano's one-page prenuptial agreement with Miller stated that both were free to seek an uncontested divorce at any time.
Shugar said Natalia called Solano "my pink piggy" and seemed happy during her frequent phone calls home.
Then, her daughter abruptly stopped calling. Shugar said Solano denied knowing what had happened to Natalia and refused repeated demands to call the police.
Freed said investigators aren't sure what prompted Solano to kill Miller. They believe he strangled her with a brown leather belt, a piece of which was found beneath her body, he said.
Solano had no ties to the midstate and apparently dumped Miller's body at random, Freed said.
He said the plea deal was struck to ensure Solano will spend most, if not all, of the rest of his life in prison.
Freed initially sought a first-degree murder conviction and the death penalty.
"There's nothing pleasant about resolving a murder case," he said. "We just hope this resolution will help [Miller's] family to go on."
Solano, who had been in county prison since 2005, apologized to Miller's family, but didn't admit to committing the murder.
He told Bayley he is a born-again Christian and will spend his prison time spreading the Gospel.
"I've come to the realization that this is my highest calling," Solano said.
Bayley, visibly angry, told Solano that Miller's slaying was "as despicable and heinous as I've ever seen."
Miller's sister, Vera, said nothing will make up for her slaying.
"It doesn't matter how long he will be in prison," she said. "She is dead. And he will be alive."
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TIMELINE
# Early 1993: Russian student Natalia Andreevna Miller comes the U.S. to marry an American she met while studying abroad. The relationship collapses.
# June 1993: Miller weds Theodore Solano in the Washington, D.C., area. Authorities describe it a marriage of convenience.
# Dec. 10, 1993: Miller's nude and battered body is found in South Middleton Twp. Cumberland County Coroner Michael Norris determines she had been raped and strangled.
# January 1994: Authorities bury Miller in LeTort Cemetery in Middlesex Twp. They still don't know her identity, so the grave marker bears the notation "Jane Doe 24-275."
# 1994-2003: Despite running down leads, investigators are unable to identify Miller.
# January 2004: Solano is charged in the murder and Miller is identified. Authorities say DNA in semen and a blood stain found on her body is linked to Solano, who is serving prison time in New York on child pornography charges.
# July 6, 2005: Investigators unveil a Russian-style headstone bearing Miller's photograph for her grave. Her mother, Olga Shugar, comes from St. Petersburg, Russia, to attend the ceremony.
# Friday: Solano pleads no contest to third- degree murder and kidnapping charges in return for a 17- to 40-year state prison sentence.
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