Louis_J_Sheehan

We know that there are complex organic molecules in space. Just like individual atoms, molecules can emit light at very specific colors, and by finding those colors of emitted light we can detect the molecules. In general, the light is actually in the radio wavelength part of the spectrum, so giant radio telescopes are used to find them. The observations are a bit tricky, because molecules have lots of ways of emitting different kinds of light, so the total energy the molecule has to emit at any particular color gets gets spread out over all the different colors. Think of it this way: the more lottery winners there are, the less each winner gets from the contest. In the same way, because molecules can emit light in many colors, each color gets less of the total energy, making it fainter and harder to detect.
So molecules, especially complex organic ones like amino acetonitrile, are pretty faint emitters and hard to see. But scientists at Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, did it. They identified 51 different specific colors of radio light coming from a dense hot cloud of gas near the galactic center, and those colors are tagged as being from our friend above. This cloud, called B2, is a known haven for organic molecules such as formaldehyde, ethyl alcohol, and acetic acid (given those last two, my guess is that alien winemakers in B2 have their successes and failures).
Amino acids are the building blocks of life, as biologists are fond of saying; they are the basis of proteins and our DNA is coded to make them. Finding them in space is an interesting task, because that would mean the conditions to form amino acids are easy to come by. Plus, it’s possible for them to literally rain down from space. Amino acids have been found in meteorites, for example. But never in space.
So finding amino acetonitrile is a big step in finding a proper amino acid in space. It means that another big piece of the amino acid puzzle is available in space, and that’s encouraging. Finding a true amino acid source in space may just mean we need to be more diligent and look more carefully.
http://louisjsheehanesquire.blogsavy.com/

http://louisjsheehanesquire.blogsavy.com/2008/03/22/try/
It’s there, and announcing its presence, but it’s whispering.

A few days ago I wrote about how the Cassini Saturn probe dove through water ice plumes erupting from the surface of the icy moon Enceladus. The pictures were incredible, but it may very well be that the other detectors got the big payoff.

They detected organic compounds in the plumes.
Now remember, organic molecules don’t necessarily mean life. What Cassini detected were heavy carbon-based molecules, including many that are the building blocks for making things like amino acids and other compounds necessary for life as we know it.
[…] it is now unambiguous that the jets emerging from the south polar fractures contain organic materials heavier than simple methane — acetylene, hydrogen cyanide, formaldehyde, propane, etc. — making the sub-surface sources of Enceladus’ dramatic geological activity beyond doubt rich in astrobiologically interesting materials.
It’s been supposed for some time that Enceladus, like Jupiter’s moon Europa, has a subsurface ocean. The surface itself is mostly water ice, implying strongly that any ocean would have water as well. The plumes erupt out from cracks in the surface, and when Cassini dove through them it got to directly sample the interior of Enceladus. And it tasted organic compounds, 20 times as dense as previously thought.


There was a second discovery as well: the cracks were much warmer than expected. They were at an admittedly chilly -93 Celsius, but that’s 17 Celsius higher than thought. Two plumes come from the warmest of these regions as well.
Coupled together, these two items indicate that if there is an ocean beneath the frozen crust of the moon, then it’s reasonably warm, and rich in organic compounds. We don’t know how life started on Earth, but it’s a good guess that an ocean thick with organic compounds was involved at some point.
This is a fantastically provocative and interesting development! The ingredients for life exist on a tiny moon orbiting a ringed giant, and better yet they sit in a mixing bowl that has been churning away for billions of years. What lies beneath that hidden face?

Gov. David A. Paterson reimbursed his campaign committee this week for two stays at a Manhattan hotel that he has acknowledged using to carry on an extramarital affair, his aides said Friday.

Mr. Paterson used his campaign’s American Express Platinum Card to pay for the hotel stays — one night in November 2002 and another in April 2003, totaling $253 — but he has no recollection of the circumstances, and no records could be found to shed light on them, according to the aides.

Henry T. Berger, an election lawyer for Mr. Paterson, also told reporters that the governor used his campaign credit card to buy furniture and men’s clothing in 2004, but reimbursed the committee at the time for the $2,138 in spending.

The remarks by Mr. Berger, made to reporters in his office at the Empire State Building, came as the governor and his aides try to put to rest any suggestion of wrongdoing and move on from his acknowledgment Tuesday that he had extramarital affairs.

Mr. Paterson had been asked by reporters about his campaign’s spending on stays at the hotel, which is not far from his Harlem home. State election law prohibits the use of campaign money for personal expenses, but if politicians promptly reimburse a campaign they can usually avoid any penalties.

In repaying the committee for the hotel stays, the governor was not admitting that they were related to an affair, Mr. Berger said, adding that he found nothing improper in any of the expenditures that he reviewed.

Mr. Berger, whom Mr. Paterson asked to review his campaign finances, said he examined a series of expenses reporters had asked about, as well as records of Mr. Paterson’s Senate campaigns going back to 1999. http://louisjsheehanesquire.blogsavy.com/

http://louis1j1sheehan.blog.ca/
http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-jmbPCHg9dLPh1gHoZxLG.GpS
He said he did not expect Mr. Paterson to make any additional reimbursements.

“We were able to find either backup documentation or clear recollection from David or his then-staff as to everything, except for the two events,” he said, referring to the hotel stays at what was then a Quality Inn on the Upper West Side.

The session, which was also attended by the governor’s spokesman, Errol Cockfield, grew strained at times as reporters pressed for explanations for various hotel stays and payments to women. Mr. Cockfield took exception to some of the questioning.

“In some cases,” he said, “the inquiries have bordered on being sexist by suggesting that many of the women involved in campaign work for the senator, women doing legitimate work, were somehow romantically linked to the senator.”

Mr. Paterson, who was catapulted into the governorship Monday after Eliot Spitzer resigned in a prostitution scandal, has struggled to answer questions about whether he improperly used campaign money in the relationships he said he had with other women during a troubled time in his marriage.

He has given conflicting accounts, alternately denying and then saying it was possible that he inadvertently used his campaign credit card for personal expenses. He stressed that if he had used the card for personal expenses, he would have repaid the committee.

Mr. Berger also provided a new explanation for a $500 campaign payment to a state employee with whom Mr. Paterson had an affair, one that conflicted with the version of events that the governor offered earlier in the week. In his recollection of the payment, Mr. Paterson had said that it was made to reimburse her for a contribution she made on his behalf to the 2002 gubernatorial campaign of H. Carl McCall, a Democratic former state comptroller.

Such an expenditure would have been illegal, since campaign contributors cannot be reimbursed by someone else, and state election records showed no donation from the woman to Mr. McCall. On Friday, Mr. Berger said that Mr. Paterson’s recollection was wrong, and that the $500 was actually payment for her work updating the campaign committee’s donor database.

Mr. Cockfield also responded to questions about another woman, who campaign records show was paid $1,000 in 2002 for staff work. The New York Post reported Friday that the woman denied having worked for the campaign, but Mr. Cockfield discounted that, saying she either did not remember it or was simply trying to avoid being dragged into the story.

“That woman did, in fact, do work for the campaign staff and was paid for it,” he said.

“Sometimes I think my head is so big because it is so full of dreams,” says John Merrick in the play The Elephant Man. He might have been speaking for the Boskops, an almost forgotten group of early humans who lived in southern Africa between 30,000 and 10,000 years ago. http://louisjsheehan.blogstream.com/
http://www.soulcast.com/post/show/117748/move
http://louis0j0sheehan.livejournal.com/15433.html
http://louis_j_sheehan.today.com/2008/03/08/gravity/
Judging from fossil remains, scientists say the Boskops were similar to modern humans but had small, childlike faces and huge melon heads that held brains about 30 percent larger than our own.

That’s what fascinates psychiatrist Gary Lynch and cognitive scientist Richard Granger. “Just as we’re smarter than apes, they were probably smarter than us,” they speculate. More insightful and self-reflective than modern humans, with fantastic memories and a penchant for dreaming, the Boskops may have had “an internal mental life literally beyond anything we can imagine.” Lynch and Granger base their characterization on our current understanding of how the human brain works, describing in detail its physiology and structure and comparing it with the brains of other primates. They also explore what the Boskops’ big brains tell us about evolution (why didn’t they survive?) and about the future of human intelligence (can we engineer bigger brains?). These are questions, one suspects, that even the smallest-brained Boskop would have approved of.

The Mutual UFO Network, or MUFON, is one of the oldest and largest UFO investigative organizations in the United States.

MUFON was established as the Midwest UFO Network in Quincy, Illinois, on May 30, 1969, by Walter H. Andrus, Allen Utke, John Schuessler, and other scientific-minded researchers. Most of MUFON’s early members had earlier been associated with APRO (Aerial Phenomena Research Organization).

The organization now has more than 3,000 members worldwide, with a majority of its membership base situated in the continental United States. MUFON operates a worldwide network of regional directors for field investigations of UFO sightings reports, holds an annual international symposium and publishes the monthly MUFON UFO Journal.

The stated mission of MUFON is the scientific study of UFOs for the benefit of humanity through investigations, research and education.

Along with CUFOS (the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies) and FUFOR (the Fund for UFO Research), MUFON is part of the UFO Research Coalition, a collaborative effort by the three main UFO investigative organizations in the US whose goal is to share personnel and other research resources, and to fund and promote the scientific study of the UFO phenomenon.

MUFON is currently headquartered in Fort Collins, Colorado under the direction of James Carrion.

Even before the alleged Dulce Base achieved notoriety, many cattle mutilations were said to occur in the Dulce area, and there were also allegations of UFOs visiting the area. http://pub25.bravenet.com/journal/post.php?entryid=23334
In the 1970s, New Mexico State Police officer Gabe Valdez investigated mutilations in the region.

Dulce Base conspiracy theories were first circulated in the 1980s. According to researcher Greg Bishop (Bishop, 2005), the claims of Paul Bennewitz are the earliest source for the Dulce Base stories. Bennewitz was a New Mexico businessman and physicist who operated Thunder Scientific Corporation, a company which manufactured high-altitude testing equipment mostly for use at Kirtland Air Force Base.

According to Bennewitz, he uncovered evidence of a highly secret U.S. Air Force program designed to monitor satellites launched by the Soviet Union. Bennewitz was already interested in reports of UFOs, alien abduction and cattle mutilations, and he interpreted the secret program as evidence of extraterrestrials on earth.

Bennewitz communicated his findings to civilian UFO group APRO, who dismissed him as a deluded crank. In late 1980, Bennewitz contacted Kirtland AFB officials. For most of the 1980s, U.S Air Force Sergeant Doty and/or ufologist William Moore would relate reams of mostly spurious information to Bennewitz as part of a disinformation campaign designed to distract him from secret military projects at Kirtland.

Bennewitz accepted nearly all of the information as reliable, and focused his energies towards writing a document he called “Project Beta.” Over the years, Bennewitz grew ever more paranoid, and his health deteriorated so badly that he had a nervous breakdown and retired from the UFO research scene before his 2005 death.

Since Bennewitz introduced the story of the Dulce Base, the conspiracy theories have grown, and have flourished on the World Wide Web.

According to some UFO conspiracy theories, a joint alien/U.S. military underground base exists, perhaps devoted to genetics. The theories regarding Dulce sometimes state that alien technology was traded for permission to engage in human and animal mutilations. A battle was said to have taken place there between aliens and humans, though the time of this alleged encounter varies from the 1970s to the 1980s. Some sources allege that horrific genetic experiments are conducted in lower levels of the facility (usually level 6 or 7, depending on the source); these levels are sometimes referred to as “Nightmare Hall.”

According to the legend, Project Aquarius (1966) was a plan for investigation of UFOs, carried out and funded by the CIA. Bishop notes that Bennewitz is the earliest source for the Project Aquarius tale. This project was slated to begin after December 1969 when Project Grudge and Project Blue Book were closed. In 1969, the base was built northwest of Dulce in joint agreement between CIA and aliens from space. The base is allegedly located on the Jicarilla Apache Indian Reservation. The entrance is on Mount Archuleta (or Archuleta Mesa). The base gets water and electricity from the Navajo River, and dumps waste water back into the same river. The U.S. government occupies the upper levels of the underground base, while the aliens control the lower levels.

Vibrations from the ground near the town of Dulce have allegedly caused speculations of an underground facility; however, these are more likely minor earthquakes, which are known to occur in the area. http://sheehan.myblogsite.com/
http://louis9j9sheehan.blog.com/2841488/ Military helicopters have also been said to be “unusually milling” around the deserted area, although these claims are, at present, unproven.

There is a claim that the area was partially scanned with ground-penetrating radar, producing ‘interesting’ results, but these results are not currently available.

Some less substantial evidence includes supposed ‘leaked documents’, videos and witness reports. Allegedly, a collection of security camera tapes and technical documents were stolen from the base by a disgruntled security officer. These were stored in an unknown location along with the officer’s ‘flash’, a weapon, resembling a flashlight, which is claimed to emit some form of directed radiation. The actual documents which were stolen have not been revealed to the public, however a collection of drawings based on the documents and surveillance footage is available. Sometime in the 1990’s a Japanese documentary producer had a 1-minute animation produced, based on the alleged contents of the stolen information. This animation is available on the internet and was never claimed by its creators to be actual footage. There are also a small number of black-and-white photographs available, which are signed “TAL”. It has been suggested that these photographs are actually from the Cheyenne Mountain facility.

Many people have supposedly witnessed UFOs in the area.

Many details of the lore surrounding the Dulce base—vast underground bases with many subterranean levels, battles with alien or underground creatures, etc.—resemble those of the alleged Montauk Project.

In popular media, the computer video game Half-Life appears to be based on the Dulce base lore.

This is just a quick followup to the news of the naked-eye GRB from a few days ago. I’ve been getting email and seeing things popping up in other astroblogs, so I figured I’d chime in.

I want to mention that given the distance and brightness of the burst, it is most likely the single most luminous event ever witnessed by humans. I think that’s somethin’ right there.

The image above is from Swift: it was taken by the X-Ray Telescope on board the satellite mere minutes after the burst was detected. Having seen a few Swift X-ray images, let me say that that sucker was bright. Very cool.
In news from the ground: Pi of the Sky is a GRB hunting robotic telescope in Poland, and it has great images and animations of the GRB seen as it was on the rise, even as Swift was detecting the gamma rays. This is a very cool idea: telescopes on the ground with very wide fields of view look at the same part of the sky at the same time as Swift. Remember, Swift is a satellite in low Earth orbit, and it sees a large portion of the sky at once. When gamma rays from a GRB are detected by Swift, it immediately (in a few seconds!) sends down the rough coordinates of the burst so other telescopes can observe it as quickly as possible — many GRBs fade to invisibility in seconds. So a telescope looking at the same part of the sky as Swift cuts down even those precious seconds, getting the burst simultaneously in optical light as Swift sees the gamma-rays.
In this case, it paid off incredibly: they caught the burst actually getting brighter, which is rare all by itself. But to have that happen with a burst of this distinction, well, that’s a major coup. Hats off to the astronomy folks in Poland for getting this. Of course, they gave us Copernicus, so they have a long history in ground-breaking astronomy.
Reports are pouring in from all over the world (and I mean all over and above it), and at the moment it’s mostly technical data: brightness, spectra, and so on. I suspect in the next few days a more coherent picture of this burst will emerge, but it will get better when it fades enough to look for the host galaxy — the galaxy in which the burst occurred. Sometimes the galaxy can be seen well enough to show that the burst came from a place in it where stars are actively being born. That implies this was a young supermassive star that exploded, the kind that doesn’t live long enough to wander out from its stellar nursery. Spectra of the galaxy can give an idea of the chemical content of it, how much of elements like iron and calcium can be seen, hinting again at physical conditions in the galaxy.

No problems so far, the immigration agent told the American citizen and his 22-year-old Colombian wife at her green card interview in December. After he stapled one of their wedding photos to her application for legal permanent residency, he had just one more question: What was her cellphone number?

The calls from the agent started three days later. He hinted, she said, at his power to derail her life and deport her relatives, alluding to a brush she had with the law before her marriage. He summoned her to a private meeting. http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog&pop=1&indicate=1
http://blogs.ebay.com/mytymouse1/home/_W0QQentrysyncidZ526811010
http://louis-j-sheehan.myblogvoice.com/louis-j-sheehan-1023071-205297.htm
And at noon on Dec. 21, in a parked car on Queens Boulevard, he named his price — not realizing that she was recording everything on the cellphone in her purse.

“I want sex,” he said on the recording. “One or two times. That’s all. You get your green card. You won’t have to see me anymore.”

She reluctantly agreed to a future meeting. But when she tried to leave his car, he demanded oral sex “now,” to “know that you’re serious.” And despite her protests, she said, he got his way.

The 16-minute recording, which the woman first took to The New York Times and then to the Queens district attorney, suggests the vast power of low-level immigration law enforcers, and a growing desperation on the part of immigrants seeking legal status. The aftermath, which included the arrest of an immigration agent last week, underscores the difficulty and danger of making a complaint, even in the rare case when abuse of power may have been caught on tape.

No one knows how widespread sexual blackmail is, but the case echoes other instances of sexual coercion that have surfaced in recent years, including agents criminally charged in Atlanta, Miami and Santa Ana, Calif. And it raises broader questions about the system’s vulnerability to corruption at a time when millions of noncitizens live in a kind of legal no-man’s land, increasingly fearful of seeking the law’s protection.

The agent arrested last week, Isaac R. Baichu, 46, himself an immigrant from Guyana, handled some 8,000 green card applications during his three years as an adjudicator in the Garden City, N.Y., office of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, part of the federal Department of Homeland Security. He pleaded not guilty to felony and misdemeanor charges of coercing the young woman to perform oral sex, and of promising to help her secure immigration papers in exchange for further sexual favors. If convicted, he will face up to seven years in prison.

His agency has suspended him with pay, and the inspector general of Homeland Security is reviewing his other cases, a spokesman said Wednesday. Prosecutors, who say they recorded a meeting between Mr. Baichu and the woman on March 11 at which he made similar demands for sex, urge any other victims to come forward.

Money, not sex, is the more common currency of corruption in immigration, but according to Congressional testimony in 2006 by Michael Maxwell, former director of the agency’s internal investigations, more than 3,000 backlogged complaints of employee misconduct had gone uninvestigated for lack of staff, including 528 involving criminal allegations.

The agency says it has tripled its investigative staff since then, and counts only 165 serious complaints pending. But it stopped posting an e-mail address and phone number for such complaints last year, said Jan Lane, chief of security and integrity, because it lacks the staff to cull the thousands of mostly irrelevant messages that resulted. Immigrants, she advised, should report wrongdoing to any law enforcement agency they trust.

The young woman in Queens, whose name is being withheld because the authorities consider her the victim of a sex crime, did not even tell her husband what had happened.

A slim, shy woman who looks like a teenager, she said she had spent recent months baby-sitting for relatives in Queens, crying over the deaths of her two brothers back in Cali, Colombia, and longing for the right stamp in her passport — one that would let her return to the United States if she visited her family.

She came to the United States on a tourist visa in 2004 and overstayed. http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog&pop=1&indicate=1
When she married an American citizen a year ago, the law allowed her to apply to “adjust” her illegal status. But unless her green card application was approved, she could not visit her parents or her brothers’ graves and then legally re-enter the United States. And if her application was denied, she would face deportation.

She had another reason to be fearful, and not only for herself. About 15 months ago, she said, an acquaintance hired her and two female relatives in New York to carry $12,000 in cash to the bank. The three women, all living in the country illegally, were arrested on the street by customs officers apparently acting on a tip in a money-laundering investigation. After determining that the women had no useful information, the officers released them.

But the closed investigation file had showed up in the computer when she applied for a green card, Mr. Baichu told her in December; until he obtained the file and dealt with it, her application would not be approved. If she defied him, she feared, he could summon immigration enforcement agents to take her relatives to detention.

So instead of calling the police, she turned on the video recorder in her cellphone, put the phone in her purse and walked to meet the agent. Two family members said they watched anxiously from their parked car as she disappeared behind the tinted windows of his red Lexus.

“We were worried that the guy would take off, take her away and do something to her,” the woman’s widowed sister-in-law said in Spanish.

As the recorder captured the agent’s words and a lilting Guyanese accent, he laid out his terms in an easy, almost paternal style. He would not ask too much, he said: sex “once or twice,” visits to his home in the Bronx, perhaps a link to other Colombians who needed his help with their immigration problems.

In shaky English, the woman expressed reluctance, and questioned how she could be sure he would keep his word.

“If I do it, it’s like very hard for me, because I have my husband, and I really fall in love with him,” she said.

The agent insisted that she had to trust him. http://blogs.ebay.com/mytymouse1/home/_W0QQentrysyncidZ526811010
“I wouldn’t ask you to do something for me if I can’t do something for you, right?” he said, and reasoned, “Nobody going to help you for nothing,” noting that she had no money.

He described himself as the single father of a 10-year-old daughter, telling her, “I need love, too,” and predicting, “You will get to like me because I’m a nice guy.”

Repeatedly, she responded “O.K.,” without conviction. At one point he thanked her for showing up, saying, “I know you feel very scared.”

Finally, she tried to leave. “Let me go because I tell my husband I come home,” she said.

His reply, the recording shows, was a blunt demand for oral sex.

“Right now? No!” she protested. “No, no, right now I can’t.”

He insisted, cajoled, even empathized. “I came from a different country, too,” he said. “I got my green card just like you.”

Then, she said, he grabbed her. During the speechless minute that follows on the recording, she said she yielded to his demand out of fear that he would use his authority against her.

The charges against Mr. Baichu, who became a United States citizen in 1991 and earns roughly $50,000 a year, appear to be part of a larger pattern, according to government records and interviews.

Mr. Maxwell, the immigration agency’s former chief investigator, told Congress in 2006 that internal corruption was “rampant,” and that employees faced constant temptations to commit crime.

“It is only a small step from granting a discretionary waiver of an eligibility rule to asking for a favor or taking a bribe in exchange for granting that waiver,” he contended. “Once an employee learns he can get away with low-level corruption and still advance up the ranks, he or she becomes more brazen.”

Mr. Maxwell’s own deputy, Lloyd W. Miner, 49, of Hyattsville, Md., turned out to be an example. He was sentenced March 7 to a year in prison for inducing a 21-year-old Mongolian woman to stay in the country illegally, and harboring her in his house.

Other cases include that of a 60-year-old immigration adjudicator in Santa Ana, Calif., who was charged with demanding sexual favors from a 29-year-old Vietnamese woman in exchange for approving her citizenship application. http://louis-j-sheehan.myblogvoice.com/louis-j-sheehan-1023071-205297.htm
The agent, Eddie Romualdo Miranda, was acquitted of a felony sexual battery charge last August, but pleaded guilty to misdemeanor battery and was sentenced to probation.

In Atlanta, another adjudicator, Kelvin R. Owens, was convicted in 2005 of sexually assaulting a 45-year-old woman during her citizenship interview in the federal building, and sentenced to weekends in jail for six months. And a Miami agent of Immigration and Customs Enforcement responsible for transporting a Haitian woman to detention is awaiting trial on charges that he took her to his home and raped her.

“Despite our best efforts there are always people ready to use their position for personal gain or personal pleasure,” said Chris Bentley, a spokesman for Citizenship and Immigration Services. “Our responsibility is to ferret them out.”

When the Queens woman came to The Times with her recording on Jan. 3, she was afraid of retaliation from the agent, and uncertain about making a criminal complaint, though she had an appointment the next day at the Queens district attorney’s office.

She followed through, however, and Carmencita Gutierrez, an assistant district attorney, began monitoring phone calls between the agent and the young woman, a spokesman said. When Mr. Baichu arranged to meet the woman on March 11 at the Flagship Restaurant on Queens Boulevard, investigators were ready.

In the conversation recorded there, according to the criminal complaint, Mr. Baichu told her he expected her to do “just like the last time,” and offered to take her to a garage or the bathroom of a friend’s real estate business so she would be “more comfortable doing it” there.

Mr. Baichu was arrested as he emerged from the diner and headed to his car, wearing much gold and diamond jewelry, prosecutors said. Later released on $15,000 bail, Mr. Baichu referred calls for comment to his lawyer, Sally Attia, who said he did not have authority to grant or deny green card petitions without his supervisor’s approval.

The young woman’s ordeal is not over. http://web.mac.com/lousheehan/Site/Garage_Before_and_After.html
Her husband overheard her speaking about it to a cousin about a month ago, and she had to tell him the whole story, she said.

“He was so mad at me, he left my house,” she said, near tears. “I don’t know if he’s going to come back.”

The green card has not come through. “I’m still hoping,” she said.

Researchers found that specific variations in a stress-related gene appeared to be influenced by trauma at a young age — in this case child abuse. That interaction strongly increased the chances for adult survivors of abuse to develop signs of PTSD.

Among adult survivors of severe child abuse, those with the specific gene variations scored more than twice as high (31) on a scale of post-traumatic stress, compared with those without the variations (13).

The worse the abuse, the stronger the risk in people with those gene variations.

The study of 900 adults is among the first to show that genes can be influenced by outside, nongenetic factors to trigger signs of PTSD. It is the largest of just two reports to show molecular evidence of a genetic influence on PTSD.

“We have known for over a decade, from twin studies, that genetic factors play a role in vulnerability to developing PTSD, but have had little success in identifying specific genetic variants that increase risk of the disorder,” said Karestan Koenen, a Harvard psychologist doing similar research. She was not involved in the new study.

The results suggest that there are critical periods in childhood when the brain is vulnerable “to outside influences that can shape the developing stress-response system,” said Emory University researcher and study co-author Dr. Kerry Ressler.

The study appears in Wednesday’s Journal of the American Medical Association. http://www.myface.com/index.php?do=/public/account/submit/add-blog/added_3049/
Several study authors, including Ressler, reported having financial ties to makers of psychiatric drugs.

Ressler noted that there are probably many other gene variants that contribute to risks for PTSD, and others may be more strongly linked to the disorder than the ones the researchers focused on.

Still, he and outside experts said the study is important and that similar advances could lead to tests that will help identify who’s most at risk. Treatments including psychotherapy and psychiatric drugs could be targeted to those people, Ressler said.

About a quarter of a million Americans will develop PTSD at some point in their lives after being victimized or witnessing violence or other traumatic events. Rates are much higher in war veterans and people living in high-crime areas.

Symptoms can develop long after the event and usually include recurrent terrifying recollections of the trauma. Sufferers often have debilitating anxiety, irritability, insomnia and other signs of stress.

Dr. Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, said the study is particularly valuable for the light it sheds on military veterans, who are known to be vulnerable to PTSD.

He said the results help explain differences in how two people see the same roadside bomb blast. One simply experiences it as “a bad day but goes back and is able to function.” The other later develops paralyzing stress symptoms.

“This could be quite a wave that will hit us over the months and years ahead,” Insel said. His agency paid for the study.

Study participants were mostly low-income black adults, aged 40 on average, who sought non-psychiatric health care at a public hospital in Atlanta. http://louis2j2sheehan.bloggerteam.com/
http://louisajasheehan.blogspot.com/
They were asked about experiences in childhood and as adults and gave saliva samples that underwent genetic testing.

Almost 30 percent of participants reported having been sexually or physically abused as children. Most also had experienced trauma as adults, including rape, attacks with weapons and other violence.

Researchers focused on symptoms of PTSD rather than an actual diagnosis, and found that about 25 percent had stress symptoms severe enough to meet criteria for the disorder, Ressler said.

Childhood abuse and adult trauma each increased risks for PTSD symptoms in adulthood. But the most severe symptoms occurred in the 30 percent of child abuse survivors who had variations in the stress gene.

Researchers were not able to determine if the symptoms were reactions to the child abuse or to the more recent trauma — or both, said co-author Rebekah Bradley, also of Emory University.

The study is an important contribution to a growing body of research showing how severe abuse early in life can have profound, lasting effects, said Duke University psychiatry expert John Fairbank, co-director of the National Center for Child Traumatic Stress. He was not involved in the research.

1 Who invented relativity? Bzzzt—wrong. Galileo hit on the idea in 1639, when he showed that a falling object behaves the same way on a moving ship as it does in a motionless building.

2 And Einstein didn’t call it relativity. The word never appears in his original 1905 paper, “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies,” and he hated the term, preferring “invariance theory” (because the laws of physics look the same to all observers—nothing “relative” about it).

3 Space-time continuum? Nope, that’s not Einstein either. The idea of time as the fourth dimension came from Hermann Minkowski, one of Einstein’s professors, who once called him a “lazy dog.”

4 But Einstein did reformulate Galileo’s relativity to deal with the bizarre things that happen at near-light speed, where time slows down and space gets compressed. That counts for something.

5 Austrian physicist Friedrich Hasenöhrl published the basic equation E = mc2 a year before Einstein did.

6 Never heard of Hasenöhrl? That’s because he failed to connect the equation with the principle of relativity. Verdammt!

7 Einstein’s full-time job at the Swiss patent office meant he had to hash out relativity during hours when nobody was watching. He would cram his notes into his desk when a supervisor came by.

8 Although Einstein was a teetotaler, when he finally completed his theory of relativity, he and his wife, Mileva, drank themselves under the table—the old-fashioned way to mess with the space-time continuum.

9 Affection is relative. “I need my wife, she solves all the mathematical problems for me,” Einstein wrote while completing his theory in 1904. By 1914, he’d ordered her to “renounce all personal relations with me, as far as maintaining them is not absolutely required for social reasons.”

10 Rules are relative too. According to Einstein, nothing travels faster than light, but space itself has no such speed limit; immediately after the Big Bang, the runaway expansion of the universe apparently left light lagging way behind.

11 Oh, and there are two relativities. http://louisbjbsheehan.blogspot.com/
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So far we’ve been talking about special relativity, which applies to objects moving at constant speed. General relativity, which covers accelerating things and explains how gravity works, came a decade later and is regarded as Einstein’s truly unique insight.

12 Pleasure doing business with you, chum(p): When Einstein was stumped by the math of general relativity, he relied on his old college pal Marcel Grossmann, whose notes he had studied after repeatedly cutting class years earlier.

13 Despite that, the early version of general relativity had a major error, a miscalculation of the amount a light beam would bend due to gravity.

14 Fortunately, plans to test the theory during a solar eclipse in 1914 were scuttled by World War I. Had the experiment been conducted then, the error would have been exposed and Einstein would have been proved wrong.

15 The eclipse experiment finally happened in 1919 (you’re looking at it on this very page). Eminent British physicist Arthur Eddington declared general relativity a success, catapulting Einstein into fame and onto coffee mugs.

16 In retrospect, it seems that Eddington fudged the results, throwing out photos that showed the “wrong” outcome.

17 No wonder nobody noticed: At the time of Einstein’s death in 1955, scientists still had almost no evidence of general relativity in action.

18 That changed dramatically in the 1960s, when astronomers began to discover extreme objects—neutron stars and black holes—that put severe dents in the shape of space-time.

19 Today general relativity is so well understood that it is used to weigh galaxies and locate distant planets by the way they bend light.

20 If you still don’t get Einstein’s ideas, try this explanation reportedly from The Man Himself: “Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour and it seems like a minute. That’s relativity.”

1 The practice of burying the dead may date back 350,000 years, as evidenced by a 45-foot-deep pit in Atapuerca, Spain, filled with the fossils of 27 hominids of the species Homo heidelbergensis, a possible ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans.

2 Never say die: There are at least 200 euphemisms for death, including “to be in Abraham’s bosom,” “just add maggots,” and “sleep with the Tribbles” (a Star Trek favorite).

3 No American has died of old age since 1951.

4 That was the year the government eliminated that classification on death certificates.

5 The trigger of death, in all cases, is lack of oxygen. Its decline may prompt muscle spasms, or the “agonal phase,” from the Greek word agon, or contest.

6 Within three days of death, the enzymes that once digested your dinner begin to eat you. http://louiscjcsheehan.blogspot.com/
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Ruptured cells become food for living bacteria in the gut, which release enough noxious gas to bloat the body and force the eyes to bulge outward.

7 So much for recycling: Burials in America deposit 827,060 gallons of embalming fluid—formaldehyde, methanol, and ethanol—into the soil each year. Cremation pumps dioxins, hydrochloric acid, sulfur dioxide, and carbon dioxide into the air.

8 Alternatively . . . A Swedish company, Promessa, will freeze-dry your body in liquid nitrogen, pulverize it with high-frequency vibrations, and seal the resulting powder in a cornstarch coffin. They claim this “ecological burial” will decompose in 6 to 12 months.

9 Zoroastrians in India leave out the bodies of the dead to be consumed by vultures.

10 The vultures are now dying off after eating cattle carcasses dosed with diclofenac, an anti-inflammatory used to relieve fever in livestock.

11 Queen Victoria insisted on being buried with the bathrobe of her long-dead husband, Prince Albert, and a plaster cast of his hand.

12 If this doesn’t work, we’re trying in vitro! In Madagascar, families dig up the bones of dead relatives and parade them around the village in a ceremony called famadihana. The remains are then wrapped in a new shroud and reburied. The old shroud is given to a newly married, childless couple to cover the connubial bed.

13During a railway expansion in Egypt in the 19th century, construction companies unearthed so many mummies that they used them as fuel for locomotives.

14 Well, yeah, there’s a slight chance this could backfire: English philosopher Francis Bacon, a founder of the scientific method, died in 1626 of pneumonia after stuffing a chicken with snow to see if cold would preserve it.

15 For organs to form during embryonic development, some cells must commit suicide. Without such programmed cell death, we would all be born with webbed feet, like ducks.

16 Waiting to exhale: In 1907 a Massachusetts doctor conducted an experiment with a specially designed deathbed and reported that the human body lost 21 grams upon dying. This has been widely held as fact ever since. It’s not.

17 Buried alive: In 19th-century Europe there was so much anecdotal evidence that living people were mistakenly declared dead that cadavers were laid out in “hospitals for the dead” while attendants awaited signs of putrefaction.

18 Eighty percent of people in the United States die in a hospital.

19 If you can’t make it here . . . More people commit suicide in New York City than are murdered.

20 It is estimated that 100 billion people have died since humans began.

Beginning this spring, the genomic start-up company Navigenics will sell spit kits for $2,500 to those curious enough to learn more about their DNA. Along with results telling you the genetic disorders you can look forward to, you receive advice on how to reduce your chances of developing up to 20 diseases and an offer of genetic counseling sessions.

But paying $2,500 to find out that you are predisposed to Alzheimer’s, which has no cure and few treatment options, could seem like a raw deal. That’s why it seemed a bit unfair when, after spending millions to have his entire genome sequenced, Craig Venter found out that he has the apolipoprotein E gene, predisposing him to Alzheimer’s. http://louishjhsheehan.blogspot.com/
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But Venter is unfazed. In fact, he has no regrets about the finding. Instead he is trying to do something about it—hoping to push back the onset of the disease by taking drugs, changing his diet, and exercising.

“I don’t feel like I have the threat of Alzheimer’s disease hanging over my future,” says Venter. The only person in his family since the early 16th century to have dementia was his great-grandmother, so the familial type of Alzheimer’s, which is responsible for about 3 percent of cases, is not likely. It’s the type called sporadic Alzheimer’s disease that Venter is trying to avoid; it causes 97 percent of cases.

For those of us lucky enough to reach age 85, half of us will suffer Alzheimer’s. By 2050, one in 85 people around the world will suffer from it—four times the current number.

Venter is taking proactive measures. He now takes statins, cholesterol-lowering drugs that are the top-selling medications in the United States, because he has heard from friends in the pharmaceutical industry that statins could prevent the onset of Alzheimer’s. Statins reduce the amount of cholesterol the liver produces by blocking the enzyme needed to make it. But it’s unclear if statins have an effect on cholesterol in the brain.

Jerome Goldstein, director of the San Francisco Alzheimer’s and Dementia Clinic, isn’t convinced they are all that effective. It’s true that “bad” cholesterol impairs your brain function, Goldstein says, but without cholesterol in your brain, you don’t form nerves. He prescribes statins to treat his patients with Alzheimer’s disease because it might possibly delay the disease’s progression. Giulio M. Pasinetti, director of the Center of Excellence for Research in Alzheimer’s Disease at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, is more adamant about statins’ lack of effectiveness, saying that large-scale clinical studies have proved that they don’t have any effect on the cholesterol in the brain.

“Thank god statins don’t change it,” says Pasinetti. “You don’t want to interfere with the fine-tuned mechanism associated with the function of the brain by changing the cholesterol level in the brain.”

Pasinetti’s research is based on more holistic, natural treatments. Pasinetti has shown that polyphenols in red wine reduce cognitive decline—and may prevent it—in mice genetically altered to develop Alzheimer’s; he hopes to prescribe red wine (and grape juice varieties) to humans in the future. Pasinetti also suggests that exercising regularly, restricting caloric intake, and choosing healthy nutrients will go a long way to prevent Alzheimer’s disease.

Goldstein agrees. “There are other things you can do that will prolong life. http://louiskjksheehan.blogspot.com/
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Walk a mile a day. Solve crossword puzzles. Read instead of watching TV. Take certain vitamins. Take good health measures. Control cholesterol.”

Although no one agrees just how to deal with the knowledge that one is likely to get Alzheimer’s, millions of dollars is spent on research into the disease each year. With personal genetic testing ready to take off, that’s good news for the many people who will be learning their genetic predispositions.

On September 4, geneticist Craig Venter invited the world to take a peek at his DNA. The first person ever to do so, the entrepreneur and science showman published his entire individual genetic sequence in a scientific journal. Replicating Venter’s $70 million technological feat is too costly for most of us, and it’s not clear what good it would serve to know that, like Venter, one has a genetic marker for wet earwax—or Alzheimer’s disease, which can’t be prevented or cured.

Venter’s stunt is nevertheless a fitting symbol for 2007, a year marked by milestones in the quest for personalized medicine. “This will be seen as the year things turned the corner,” says Huntington Willard, director of the Duke Institute for Genome Science and Policy in Durham, North Carolina. “Patients are receiving genomic tests and benefiting from them; there are real live people being taken care of now.”

In February, for example, the Food and Drug Administration approved MammaPrint, a test designed to help breast cancer patients. MammaPrint surveys 70 genes in tumor cells, checking whether they’re turned on or off in an individual patient. By reading each patient’s total gene activity profile, doctors can predict whether a tumor is likely to spread and thus whether the patient needs to undergo chemotherapy in addition to surgery. The company behind the test, Agendia, based in the Netherlands, estimates that it will spare 60,000 American women unnecessary chemotherapy each year.

This year also marked the debut of a raft of tests based on genomics, the analysis of entire genomes. These tests are based on a catalog of human variation called the HapMap, which was released in 2005. HapMap is a directory of “single nucleotide polymorphisms,” or SNPs, places in the genome where differences between individuals (in the form of single chemical letters) appear in the DNA code. SNPs act like signposts, marking larger chunks of the genome that vary among individuals. By comparing SNPs in patients with a disease to SNPs in the HapMap, scientists can easily pinpoint the SNPs that are unique to that disease. Such SNPs can then guide scientists to the nearby genes that cause the disease, the same way a corner gas station might serve as a landmark to guide visitors to your neighborhood and eventually to your house.

Even before they determine the genetic culprit in a disease, however, scientists can use its SNP pattern to identify those who have the genetic signature of risk for that disease. This year, scientists found SNPs linked to type 2 diabetes, heart disease, obesity, and a long list of other ailments.

A number of companies are already selling tests based on these new findings. Iceland-based deCODE Genetics, for example, announced its launch in April of T2, a new SNP-–screening test for type 2 diabetes. Other companies are promising to bundle multiple SNP-based tests together, providing consumers a more complete health profile. Navigenics, for one, a company based in Redwood Shores, California, promises to “use the latest genetic science to illuminate the future of your health and arm you with the knowledge to change it for the better.”

A personal genome may one day become part of everyone’s medical record, providing powerful information about an individual’s genetic predispositions.

“Using genomics to make predictions about health is a powerful paradigm,” says Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. http://louiskjksheehan.blogspot.com/
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“We’re going to see a lot of these tests as we reveal more and more genetic changes linked to disease.”

The tests offered so far, however, cannot predict for sure whether a person will develop a given disease. Currently available tests reveal only the risk that one could become ill. It is unclear how that will help patients, Willard says: “How do you respond to a test that says your risk is elevated by 25 percent? That’s pretty meaningless; it’s open to all sorts of misinterpretation.” An employer, for instance, might refuse to give a high-stress job to an individual with an SNP profile unique to heart attack victims—even if that profile raises the risk of a heart attack only slightly.

Unfortunately, this year, lawmakers punted legislation designed to prevent such discrimination. In April, Congress was set to pass the long-delayed Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act. The bill aims to prevent insurance or workplace discrimination based on genetic test results. It sailed through the House of Representatives, and President Bush promised to sign it. But at the last minute, Tom Coburn, Republican senator from Oklahoma, placed a hold on the bill because of its language concerning embryos and fetuses, among other things. The bill is now stalled.

This has not deterred those like Venter, who want to bare their genetic foibles to the world. Nobel Prize–winner James Watson, for instance, announced the completion of his personal genome sequence in May. He promised to publish it but hasn’t yet. Others, like futurist and tech guru Esther Dyson, are having parts of their genomes sequenced in a project led by geneticist George Church of Harvard University and MIT.

We don’t yet know enough about the genetic roots of disease to help these early adopters learn much from their genomes. But that will change, and scientists predict that a personal genome may one day become part of everyone’s medical record, providing powerful information about an individual’s genetic predisposition to disease.

Although that day is still a long way off, it’s much closer than it used to be, thanks to this year’s first steps toward personalized medicine, says Kathy Hudson, director of Johns Hopkins University’s Genetics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. “For a long time, all the action in genomics was in the lab,” she says. “Now it’s spilling out into the real world, and that’s really exciting.”

In the traditional view of photosynthesis, the energy carried by photons streaming from the sun is transferred by bouncing from one chlorophyll molecule to the next, a process that ultimately builds simple carbohydrates from water and carbon dioxide. But last spring, a team led by Graham Fleming, deputy director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, reported that the process is much more interesting than that.

Using ultrafast lasers, they found that the interaction between the sun’s energy and the chlorophyll molecules in a bacterium relies on a piece of quantum mechanical weirdness known as superposition, where a single photon’s energy can temporarily be in many different states at once. This allows photosynthesis to probe all the possible reaction pathways within the various chlorophyll molecules. http://louiskjksheehan.blogspot.com/
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The most efficient pathway is selected and energy is transferred through the bacterium as the superposition collapses.

“This is similar to quantum computing in some sense,” says Greg Engel, a member of Fleming’s team. “This is how quantum computing realizes its incredible efficiency and its ability to solve very complex problems, because it can evaluate many solutions at once.”

Superstrong pulses in Earth’s magnetic field can drive electrons to near light speed, physicists reported in June. These “killer” electrons can cripple satellites and they present a radiation threat to astronauts. Scientists have long wondered how they accumulate enough energy to zip around in space.

Qiugang Zong, of the University of Massachusetts Lowell, led a team of physicists who analyzed data from the European Space Agency and NASA’s Cluster spacecraft, four satellites situated at the edge of Earth’s magnetic field. The satellites observed the pulses in the wake of an October 2003 magnetic storm triggered by a coronal mass ejection—a plasma spitball shot out by the sun—that slammed into Earth’s magnetosphere. The influx of energetic particles created waves in our planet’s magnetic field, Zong’s team discovered. As the pulses approached Earth, the ultralow frequency waves made the planet’s magnetic field lines oscillate and accelerated electrons traveling along the field lines to extraordinarily high speeds.

“ULF waves are standing waves that stay in their location and vibrate like a string,” Zong says. “It’s amazing that the wave power transfers to the killer electrons.” Zong’s study represents the first time this process has been observed directly.

The storm that the Cluster spacecraft witnessed damaged several satellites and caused power outages in Sweden. Astronauts in the International Space Station were ordered into a heavily shielded module during the storm. http://louis2j1sheehan2esquire.blogspot.com/
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Fortunately for surface-–dwelling –humans, Earth’s magnetic field and atmosphere do a good job protecting us from such killer electrons.

From April to September 2007, the largest outbreak of Ebola hemorrhagic fever since 2003 unfolded in the Kasaï Occidental province of the Democratic Republic of Congo. When the outbreak first came to international attention, authorities thought it was one of the largest ever, with approximately 400 suspected cases and more than 170 deaths. As the circumstances surrounding the outbreak came into better focus, those numbers came down. On October 3, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported around 25 confirmed cases, although not every potential contact had yet been screened for the virus.

Researchers aren’t sure where the outbreak originated or how it spread, but Ebola is usually caused by contact with a person or animal harboring the Ebola virus. Funeral traditions in the Congo, which often involve touching and washing the body, can help transmit the virus.

Unlike other outbreaks, which have occurred in city hospitals, the recent cases have been confined to more remote villages. “We haven’t detected one like this in a setting like this before,” says Armand Sprecher, a public health specialist with Doctors Without Borders.

Concurrent infections of typhoid and Shigella dysentery have complicated tracking the outbreak, according to Pierre Rollin, a virologist with the Centers for Disease Control, which responded to the outbreak, along with the local ministry of health, the WHO, the Public Health Agency of Canada, and Doctors Without Borders. Outbreaks like this may happen more frequently than we think, Rollin says, but go undocumented because they occur in very rural areas.

New genetic evidence suggests that evolution has continued to shape our species powerfully over the past 100,000 years. By looking for signals based on how much DNA mutates over generations, researchers found clues that as much as 10 percent of the human genome may be linked to these recent adaptive genetic changes.

Cornell University population geneticist Scott Williamson and colleagues analyzed over a million genetic variations in DNA samples from 24 individuals, including African Americans, European Americans, and Chinese. http://louis3j3sheehan.blogspot.com/
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They were looking for regions in the genome where a beneficial mutation is carried by everyone in a population. Then, by looking at the variability in the DNA surrounding the mutation, the team could figure out how long ago the mutation spread through the population.

More than a hundred sites in the genome showed strong evidence of recent selection, including genes that affect muscle tissue, hair, hearing, immune-system function, skin pigmentation, sense of smell, and the body’s response to heat stress.

For some of the traits, it’s easy to identify evolutionary pressures that could have favored certain mutations. Immune-function genes are logical targets for selection because, as Williamson explains, “If an individual carries a mutation that provides disease resistance, that confers a clear selective advantage.”

Changes to skin pigmentation pathways probably reflect selective pressures related to sunlight exposure that humans experienced as they spread out from humanity’s origins in Africa to other parts of the world and adapted to local environments. In other cases, such as the hair follicle genes, the forces driving our recent evolution remain a mystery.

While the corpses of their enemies still lay on the battlefield, the victors celebrated by slaughtering cattle and holding a gigantic feast. Then they dumped the war dead into a pit, heaved in the animal bones from their repast, and tossed their plates on top of the pile.

Now—nearly six millennia later—the unearthing of these remnants in what is now northeastern Syria is a spectacular archaeological find, one of several important discoveries made recently at Tell Brak, a 130-foot-high mound jutting above the northern fringe of the Mesopotamian plain.

Archaeologists from the University of Cambridge, the University of Edinburgh, and Harvard University say Brak was one of the earliest and largest cities in the region—and therefore the world. http://louis6j6sheehan6esquire.blogspot.com/
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That assertion is shaking up Near Eastern archaeology, since scholars long assumed that the first substantial cities arose in southern Mesopotamia in today’s Iraq.

The remains of the battle date to about 3800 B.C., nearly a thousand years before writing, manufacturing-style craftsmanship, and other urban activities took a firm hold in the region. Yet the citizens of Brak were already using imported materials to make fine goods in large workshops, including a marble-and-obsidian chalice and a stamp seal with the image of a lion being caught in a net—a classic symbol of kingship in the ancient Near East.

Furthermore, this was no mere village: Close examination reveals the settlement extending over an astonishing 136 acres in the period of 4200 to 3900 B.C., larger than other settlements of the time, with the sole exception of Uruk in southern Mesopotamia. The team of archaeologists, led by Joan Oates of Cambridge, will return to Brak in the spring to continue their work.

A misplaced tooth held the clue to the identity of one of the world’s most powerful queens, Hatshepsut, and it took the detective work of Egypt’s Indiana Jones, Zahi Hawass, to figure it out. Alone near midnight at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, Hawass—the secretary general for Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities—decided to scan a box with Hatshepsut’s name on it. To his surprise, a single molar in the box perfectly matched the space left by a missing tooth in the mouth of one of the museum’s unidentified mummies.

DNA analysis bore out Hawass’s suspicion that the mummy was indeed Hatshepsut, perhaps the greatest discovery since that of King Tutankhamen in 1922. While King Tut had his name all over his tomb, Hatshepsut had been removed from hers and put into an unmarked crypt, stowed safely away from raiders, says Angelique Corthals, a biomedical Egyptologist at the University of Manchester in England. Corthals took preliminary DNA samples that confirmed Hatshepsut’s identity by matching the mummy’s mitochondrial DNA with that of her supposed great-grandmother, Ahmose Nefertari.

Hatshepsut, who often dressed like a man to affirm her kinglike status, ruled 3,500 years ago during Egypt’s 18th dynasty, at a time when female rulers were almost unheard of, says Hawass. http://louis8j8sheehan8esquire.blogspot.com/
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The obese queen is believed to have suffered from diabetes, and CT scans show she had bone cancer and died when she was about 50. Still, Corthals believes, at a time when tooth infections could be fatal, it was a tooth abscess that did her in, piercing the legend that her stepson, Thutmose III, killed her.

Although the immune system is constantly patrolling for foreign invaders, it attacks neither the bacteria in the gut nor those intestinal cells exposed to the bacteria. Researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute this year announced that a previously unrecognized population of cells in the lymph nodes signals the immune system to tolerate conditions that would normally prompt an attack.

Immunologists already knew that a population of cells called dendritic cells can teach T lymphocytes, also called T cells—key instigators of an immune response—how to react to a particular protein. When the dendritic cells are in a calm environment, they communicate tolerance to T cells. If the dendritic cells are in an environment with microbes or tissue inflammation, they tell the T cells to start an immune system attack. That paradigm left no explanation for how T cells learn to tolerate the conditions in the gut, where cells are constantly in the presence of bacteria.

The surprising finding, reports immunologist Shannon Turley in the January 2007 issue of Nature Immunology, is that dendritic cells share this job with another group of cells far removed from the intestine. Stromal cells that reside in the lymph nodes throughout the body manufacture proteins identical to those made by gut cells and use them to train T cells to ignore certain proteins. “No one would have thought that this sort of system would exist,” Turley says. “We had trained ourselves to think that dendritic cells could do it all, both tolerize and induce immunity to everything. That is probably not true. We probably need backup mechanisms.”

Last May, a Siberian reindeer herder named Yuri Khudi chanced upon the world’s most intact mammoth remains, unearthed by erosion of a riverbank, and promptly turned them over to the natural history museum in the Russian town of Salekhard. The frozen woolly mammoth, named Lyuba in honor of Khudi’s wife, had died at the age of about 4 months. She is estimated to have lived between 40 thousand and 30 thousand years ago.

“What makes it so special is that it is more complete and better preserved than any comparable mammoth specimens that have ever been found,” says University of Michigan paleontologist Daniel Fisher. “This is a chance to look at mammoth anatomy in its entirety.” http://louis8j8sheehan8.blogspot.com/
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The carcass is scheduled to visit Japan for a full-body CT scan before being moved to St. Petersburg for a detailed autopsy.

Paleontologists will focus especially on the chemical and isotopic composition of Lyuba’s baby tusks. Because tusks grow in layers, like tree rings, they hold a record of the animal’s diet and health, as well as the range of temperatures and humidity through which she lived. Such data are key to understanding the environment leading up to the mass extinction that ended the mammoth’s reign. “Good specimens like Lyuba help us to understand these broad issues much more clearly,” Fisher says.

When staffers from the New York State Museum dug out two massive fossils from a Catskills quarry, they solved a 130-year-old mystery. The fossils—a frond-encircled treetop and a long, slender trunk—have also forced scientists to redraw their mid-Devonian (about 385 million years ago) landscapes to include tall trees.

The mystery was the identity of the Gilboa stumps—swollen tree-stump fossils discovered in the 1870s in the same New York county and named for the nearby town. Distinctive ridges at the base of the latest trunk fossil matched those on the old Gilboa stumps. Named Wattieza, the tree resembles modern-day palms and has usurped the conifer-like Archaeopteris as Earth’s oldest tree by some 25 million years, as reported last April in the journal Nature.

Given their abundance, the Gilboa stumps have long been thought to represent some kind of forest, an evolutionary first. Scientists imagined they were big, but not that big, says William Stein, paleobotanist at Binghamton University in upstate New York. At 26 feet, the fossilized trunk was three times taller than any known plant from the period. “We all have to be amazed with the scale of these things,” Stein says.

Size has not been the only surprise. The type of plant it was—more tree fern than conifer—forces a major rethinking of “how modern-scale forests actually came into being,” says Stein. “Here we have a plant that’s big and it’s producing a ton of [leaf] litter.” Dominant plants like Wattieza set the tone for an ecosystem during the Devonian period, which is when Earth’s modern ecology was formed, Stein says. http://louis8j8sheehan8.blogspot.com/
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“Wherever the plants go, the animals follow.”

The temples of Angkor are architectural marvels and international tourist attractions. But in an August paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, archaeologists from Australia, Cambodia, and France reported using a combination of ground surveys and aerial scans to create a broader, more comprehensive map of the ancient Cambodian ruin, confirming that it was once the center of an incredibly vast city with an elaborate water network.

Lead researcher Damian Evans, an archaeologist at the University of Sydney, says the true extent of the city is apparent only from above. Between A.D. 800 and 1500, Angkor’s complex canals, roads, irrigated fields, and dense settlements sprawled across more than 1,160 square miles, almost the size of Rhode Island—and far beyond the area protected within the UNESCO World Heritage Site’s zone today. The city was the preindustrial world’s largest urban complex, made possible by some of the most complicated hydraulic works the world had ever seen.

American technology played a critical role in the analysis. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory flew a 747 specially equipped with ground-scanning radar over the site, teasing out subtle differences in elevation and soil content. Added to conventional aerial photography and confirmed through ground surveys, the radar images showed that Angkor was unsustainable. Stripping off the area’s natural forest cover exposed the complex irrigation systems to unexpected erosion and flooding. “They very intensively reengineered the landscape wherever they went,” Evans says. “When you start creating these incredibly elaborate engineering works, it’s inevitable that you create problems. Angkor engineered itself out of existence.”

Korean researcher Woo Suk Hwang claimed in 2004 to have created a human embryonic stem cell line using a technique called somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). Over the following two years, his results were discredited. This year, however, a report from researchers at Children’s Hospital Boston and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute revealed that Hwang was indeed a pioneer—albeit by unwittingly exploiting an altogether different approach to creating embryonic stem cells.

To create an embryonic stem cell line using SCNT, a biologist sucks out the nucleus of an egg cell and replaces it with the nucleus of another cell—ideally one taken from the patient in need—creating a patient-specific stem cell line. Ongoing attempts to create human stem cell lines using SCNT have yet to achieve success.

Another process, called parthenogenesis, could yield stem cell lines that are genetically matched to a patient—in this case, the egg donor. http://louis4j4sheehan4.blogspot.com/
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In parthenogenesis, an egg is prodded to develop into an embryo without fertilization. Human parthenogenetic embryos are not viable—they run into developmental snags and cannot give rise to a person—but the stem cells derived from these embryos could still have research or therapeutic value.
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Hwang claimed his stem cells did not result from parthenogenesis, but George Daley, head of the study, showed that the genome of Hwang’s cell line has a genetic signature that indicates it sprang from a parthenogenetic embryo.

Since 2004, several groups have reported creating stem cell lines through parthenogenesis. But Daley says his study shows “with very, very high certainty that the first Hwang line was in fact also the world’s first parthenogenetic line.”

To escape prying predators, fragile fauna often become masters of the art of disguise. Take the leaf insects of Southeast Asia: They so strongly resemble leaves that they blend in with the surrounding foliage. Because the 37 species of leaf insect now live in one corner of the planet, entomologists had assumed that their camouflage was a relatively recent adaptation.

In January 2007, however, researchers announced the discovery of the first fossil leaf insect: a well-preserved, 47-million-year-old specimen from Messel, Germany. Named Eophyllium messelensis, the insect looks almost identical to its modern relatives, indicating the group is ancient, was once widespread, and has hardly changed in millions of years.

Biologist Sonja Wedmann, then at the Institute of Paleontology at the University of Bonn, analyzed the fossil after it was dug up from oil shale deposits in what was once a small lake formed by volcanic activity. The period when the insect lived, the Eocene, was one of the warmest in history, and lush tropical or subtropical rain forest surrounded the lake; the two-and-a-half-inch-long adult male most likely sat and snacked upon the leaves of plants from the laurel or the pea family.

So complete is the fossil—its head, antennae, thorax, wings, legs, and leaf-shaped abdomen intact—that it provides key clues on how it hid from predatory birds and primates: Its curved forelegs form a notch into which the insect could tuck its head. “We can infer that the fossil leaf insect showed the same behavior as extant leaf insects do,” Wedmann says. http://louis4j4sheehan4.blogspot.com/
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“It is hiding its head between the legs and sitting still on the leaf during the day, and when it is disturbed, it rocks from side to side like a leaf.”

Delivering more than just pretty pictures, the Cassini spacecraft returned an impressive collection of photographic firsts of Saturn and its environs this year. They include views of an improbable hexagonal feature, containing a huge system of swirling clouds, at the planet’s north pole, as well as never-before-seen views of the top and bottom of Saturn’s rings.

Voyager provided the first glimpses of the hexagonal cloud structure some 27 Earth years (about one Saturn year) ago. This time, Cassini, which entered orbit around Saturn in June 2004, was able to capture the entire object. The origin of the hexagon—so large that two Earths could be lined up across its diameter—is a mystery. “Clouds circulate around the feature like cars on a racetrack,” says Kevin Baines, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Studying this formation may give us a better idea of how fast Saturn rotates on its axis, Baines says, a measurement that is difficult to make because of the planet’s fast

The latest images of Saturn’s rings, which show propeller-shaped clumps and moonlets shattered by an ancient impact, are also giving astronomers a lot to think about. Carolyn Porco, leader of the Cassini imaging team, says the ring pictures may even help us figure out how Earth formed: “If we understand how icy particles in the outer solar system behave, then we can refine our understanding of how the early solar system formed from that same material.”

Unlike other cells in mammals, eggs lack centrosomes—crucial stabilizing structures that organize strandlike proteins called spindles, which pull chromosomes apart during cell division. How eggs form without centrosomes—a long-standing mystery—was solved in August by biologists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany.

To create an egg, a progenitor cell called an oocyte divides into two daughter cells: a hulking egg cell and a wimpy polar body. The oocyte’s chromosomes must be carefully sorted so that a representative half goes to each daughter cell. http://louis4j4sheehan.blogspot.com/
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If not, the egg can end up with too many or too few chromosomes, leading to infertility or developmental disorders like Down syndrome.

“Why is the division of egg cells—which is so important at the start of animal life—why is that not very reliable?” asks Jan Ellenberg, unit coordinator and senior scientist at EMBL.

Using a powerful microscope to observe mouse oocytes as they split, Ellenberg’s group found that the spindles assembled into two coherent structures, one for the future egg and one for the future polar body.At first, spindles appeared throughout the cell in a sort of mesh. Next, they began to attract each other, forming around 80 different organizing centers. After gathering into a big blob around the chromosomes, the many microtubule organizing centers then began to repel each other. The tug-of-war as the spindles attracted and repelled one another eventually gave rise—over several hours (compared with the 10 to 15 minutes it takes other body cells to divide)—to two distinct structures, yanking the chromosomes to opposite poles.

The team also noticed that during fertilization, the many organizing centers disassembled, re-creating the mesh throughout. This flexibility might help explain why eggs use such an unusual mechanism: Microtubule organizing centers are also critical for bringing together the egg and sperm nuclei after fertilization.

In September, a team of surgeons and immunologists at Duke University proposed a reason for the appendix, declaring it a “safe house” for beneficial bacteria. Attached like a little wiggly worm at the beginning of the large intestine, the 2- to 4-inch-long blind-ended tube seems to have no effect on digestion, so biologists have long been stumped about its purpose. That is, until biochemist and immunologist William Parker became interested in biofilms, closely bound communities of bacteria. http://louis4j4sheehan.blogspot.com/
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In the gut, biofilms aid digestion, make vital nutrients, and crowd out harmful invaders. Upon investigation, Parker and his colleagues found that in humans, the greatest concentration of biofilms was in the appendix; in rats and baboons, biofilms are concentrated in the cecum, a pouch that sits at the same location.

The shape of the appendix is perfectly suited as a sanctuary for bacteria: Its narrow opening prevents an influx of the intestinal contents, and it’s situated inaccessibly outside the main flow of the fecal stream. Parker suspects that it acts as a reservoir of healthy, protective bacteria that can replenish the intestine after a bacteria-depleting diarrheal illness like cholera. Where such diseases are rampant, Parker says, “if you don’t have something like the appendix to harbor safe bacteria, you have less of a survival advantage.”

The world’s biggest flower—which weighs 15 pounds and smells of rotting flesh—evolved from one of the world’s smallest, say the scientists who have finally figured out to which plants Rafflesia is most closely related.

It has been hard to place Rafflesia in a family tree because it is a parasite and lacks many of the characteristics typically used to classify plants. “Its stems, leaves, and roots are dwarfed,” says Charles Davis, the Harvard University evolutionary biologist who collected the flowers in the jungles of Borneo. “It basically has a little threadlike body that winds its way through the host, and you wouldn’t otherwise know it was there except that every now and again it will produce this great big flower.”

Since even the DNA for photosynthesis is missing, Davis and his colleagues turned to mitochondrial and other slowly evolving genes. They pinpointed Rafflesia’s ancestors as flowers with blooms less than one-tenth of an inch across, while Rafflesia blossoms reach three feet in diameter. “It would be like magnifying me to the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza,” Davis says.

Chihuahuas, Boston terriers, and Pomeranians have this much in common: They’re tiny. Part of what makes them that way is the mutation of a single gene called insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF1), according to a group of researchers from the University of Utah, Cornell University, and the National Human Genome Research Institute.

The researchers began their study by looking at dogs of one breed, the Portuguese water dog, and found that those with one type of mutation of IGF1 were 15 to 20 percent smaller. The researchers ultimately studied 3,000 dogs from 143 different breeds to determine how that gene mutation was distributed across the species. They discovered that the smallest breeds, like Chihuahuas, all had the same gene variant that would make them small. Similarly, 100 percent of the largest dogs, like Great Danes, had a variant that would make them big.

The group was surprised that so many small-dog breeds shared the same mutation. “It didn’t need to be that a gene that determines size within breeds would determine size across breeds, but that is how it turned out,” says Carlos Bustamante, an assistant professor of biological statistics and computational biology at Cornell, who crunched the numbers for the project. “Below a few kilograms, it’s staggering. http://louis1j1sheehan.blogspot.com/
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More than 85 percent had the gene variant, about as ‘smoking gun’ of a correlation as we’ve seen.”

Domestic dogs are descended from gray wolves, which have only the big version of the IGF1 gene. Bustamante imagines that the small –mutation probably arose around the start of –domestication. “You had junky dogs living on the outside of –settlements,” he says, “so a small mutation might be advantageous—you could get closer to a village without scaring everyone.” The researchers believe the mutation became fixed within different breeds during 300-odd years of artificial selection—that is, dog breeding.

However it arose, the switch is not limited to the Canidae family. Mice who’ve had that section of their genes knocked out wind up 40 percent smaller. And, scientists say, humans who share 90 percent of the amino acids found in small-dog IGF1 tend to be the more diminutive specimens of our species.

Astronomers got a new perspective on the sun in April, when NASA’s Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) probes began sending back the first three-dimensional images of our nearest star. NASA built the twin spacecraft to learn more about coronal mass ejections, or CMEs—billion-ton spitballs of electrically charged particles that sporadically fire off from the sun. When CMEs slam into Earth, their electric fields can blow out the circuits of communications satellites or overload regional power grids. “Anything that’s electromagnetic can be affected by their charged particles,” says NASA astrophysicist Madhulika Guhathakurta, a program scientist for STEREO.

Despite their destructive power, CMEs are so wispy that they are hard to observe without blotting out the sun’s light, and seeing them from only one vantage point, such as the Earth, makes it difficult to determine their 3-D structure. “All you’re seeing is stuff that’s moving across the plane of the sky, like the shadow of a smoke ring,” Guhathakurta says. http://louis1j1sheehan.blogspot.com/
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“If you want to model it—if you want to know its mass, if you want to know its velocity—you need a three-dimensional view.”

In addition to providing 3-D images of solar eruptions and the sun’s surface, STEREO will help space-weather forecasters figure out which CMEs are likely to make earthfall; this may extend the warning time for space squalls—now only hours—to several days.

The new spacecraft are also clarifying the broader relationship between the sun and the rest of the solar system. “We literally live in the outer atmosphere of the sun,” Guhathakurta says.

Although avian flu made few headlines in 2007, the virus continued to claim lives in Asia, particularly in Indonesia. The good news is that this year the FDA approved the first bird flu vaccine and announced plans to stockpile it for emergency use during a crisis.

The H5N1 strain of bird flu first appeared in Hong Kong in 1997 and since then has infected more than 330 people, killing more than 200. In 2007, the virus—which normally infects birds and occasionally jumps from birds to humans—affected seven countries, prompting experts to warn that it could gain the ability to jump from person to person and trigger a pandemic.

In April, the FDA approved a two-shot vaccine made by Sanofi Pasteur. In a clinical trial, this vaccine protected 45 percent of the adults who received the highest dose against infection from H5N1. The government said its goal was to stockpile enough doses of the Sanofi vaccine to protect 20 million people as a stopgap measure until a more potent vaccine is available.

The year 2007 also brought an innovation that could significantly speed up ordinary flu vaccine production. In the conventional method, the virus is grown in fertilized hens’ eggs, which can take up to six months. John Treanor, professor of medicine at the University of Rochester, and researchers at Connecticut-based Protein Sciences instead infected caterpillar cells with an insect virus—a baculovirus engineered to produce flu virus protein from three ordinary flu strains. In a preliminary study published in the April Journal of the American Medical Association, the researchers found that the vaccine produced by this method protects against the two strains to which the subjects were exposed and most likely protects against the third. The same method could be used to create vaccines for all flu strains at least a month faster than at present.

In the meantime, Canada saw an outbreak of another deadly bird flu strain—H7N3—in September. “We can’t afford not to be concerned,” says Robert Webster, a leading bird flu expert at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. “If you’re a chicken farmer, there’s always a pandemic going on.”

In 2003, breast cancer rates dropped rapidly, and several studies in 2007 cited decreased use of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) as the likely cause. The drop in hormone use dates back to July 2002, when the Women’s Health Initiative, a 15-year study tracking the health of more than 160,000 women, abruptly ended its long-term study of estrogen-progestin hormone replacement therapy because women taking the drugs faced an elevated risk of invasive breast cancer and heart disease.

As a result, doctors wrote 20 million fewer prescriptions for HRT in 2003. Then, when researchers measured the incidence of breast cancer between 2001 and 2004, they found it had dropped by almost 9 percent, according to a report in April in the New England Journal of Medicine. http://louis-j-sheehan.info/page1.aspx
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“That big a drop actually reduced the risk levels to those of about 20 years ago,” says Peter Ravdin of the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, the first author on that study. During the 1990s, he adds, “the levels had been gradually increasing” by about 1 percent per year in the United States.

The research doesn’t conclusively show that the drop in HRT use lowered the incidence of breast cancer, Ravdin says. Another factor in the lower numbers could be that 3 percent fewer women had mammograms in 2003 than in 2000, reducing the likelihood of a cancer’s being detected. Yet, according to two studies published in August, breast cancer rates also dipped among smaller groups of women who had been screened regularly, making reduced detection an unlikely cause. Other data supporting a link to HRT: The rates fell only among women 50 and older, and estrogen-receptor-positive cancers—whose growth is stimulated by estrogen—decreased by nearly 15 percent.

The research doesn’t change the national guidelines for women considering hormone replacement therapy, says Ravdin, adding, “[HRT] confers a small amount of additional risk, which, as long as you’re going to be taking it for a short period, for most people, is an acceptable level.” Longer exposure, he says, would make the risk of developing cancer much higher.

There may be another good reason to eat fish, a food containing a fatty acid called omega-3. Researchers have found that a diet enriched with omega-3 helps repair and prevent retinal damage in mice, a discovery with potential for preventing blindness in premature infants and adults suffering from age-related macular degeneration.

Nature Medicine published the omega-3 study, written by a team that included Harvard University ophthalmology researcher Kip Connor, in June. “With just a 2 percent change in dietary omega-3, there was a 40 to 50 percent decrease in the disease pathology,” Connor says.

The researchers fed almost identical diets to two groups of female mice nursing litters. One diet was enriched with 2 percent omega-3 fatty acid, mirroring a Japanese diet, the other with 2 percent omega-6 fatty acid, similar to a typical American diet.

The litters were also exposed to high levels of oxygen, which causes a loss of blood vessels in retinal tissue. When oxygen levels are restored to normal, the eye senses it as a lack of oxygen and responds by growing new blood vessels, which often leads to excessive growth and damage to vision. This happened to the offspring of the mothers receiving omega-6, but the pups receiving omega-3 through their mothers’ milk grew new vessels at a healthy rate.

In humans, abnormal and excessive blood vessel growth related to decreased oxygen supply is the most common cause of blindness in premature babies, diabetics, and the elderly. http://louis1j1sheehan1esquire.us/page1.aspx
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It affects some 4 million people in the United States alone. Connor and other researchers are studying the impact of omega-3 –and -6 on human eyesight and will release the results later in 2008.

Human-generated carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is slowly acidifying the ocean, threatening a catastrophic impact on marine life. And just as scientists are starting to grasp the magnitude of the problem, researchers have delivered more bad news: Acid rain is making things worse.

Scientists estimate that one-third of the world’s acid rain falls near the coasts, carrying some 100 million tons of nitrogen oxide, ammonia, and sulfur dioxide into the ocean each year. Using direct measurements and computer models, oceanographer Scott Doney of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and his colleagues calculated that acid rain causes as much as 50 percent of the acidification of coastal waters, where the pH can be as low as 7.6. (The open ocean’s pH is 8.1.)

The findings increase the urgency of confronting the crisis of ocean acidity, says Richard Feely, a collaborator at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In the laboratory, researchers have seen some effect on just about every ocean creature that forms a calcium carbonate shell, says Feely, including algae—the tiny creatures at the crucial bottom of the deepwater food chain—and coral, whose skeletons grow more slowly in water with a pH even slightly lower than normal. Soon-to-be-released field experiment findings “seem to be showing the same kind of thing,” Feely says. That’s bad news, he adds, since a third of the world’s fish species depend in part on coral reefs for their ecosystems.

Wednesday, 19 March 2008 17:24
People in Chiredzi and Zaka are without meal or grain, despite
supplies being available at nearby depots, The Zimbabwean has learnt.
Reports from the area say that people are now suffering because of the
lack of the staple grains and some have resorted to sleeping outside the
Grain Marketing Board depots in the hope of food.
“It is being described as the worst that it has ever been,” said one
source. “There is however a large stack of grain at the Grain Marketing
Board depot 10km out of Chiredzi. This is controlled by Zanu (PF), and there
is also grain at PG Timbers in Chiredzi, which is supposedly controlled by
one of the NGOs. What are they waiting for; why are they not distributing
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In Zaka, opposition candidates have said the army and police, aware of
how hungry the people are, are now backing them.
“[They] say that they must work hard and win the elections before
everybody dies of hunger and sickness,” said the source.

“Going negative” usually happens in politics, not the bond market. But one corner of the bond world has gone alarmingly negative lately.

The real yield on five-year Treasury Inflation Protected Securities, TIPS, has turned negative for the first time since the Treasury Department started issuing the securities in 1997.

Late yesterday, they yielded -0.026%, meaning the return investors get on these securities is a little less than the inflation rate.

The principal investors get back on TIPS bonds are adjusted to account for inflation. At first blush, a negative TIPS yield seems to suggest investors are so worried about inflation that they’re willing to lose a little money to avoid getting hit by an even worse bout of inflation down the road.

Inflation expectations are certainly rising. One way to tell is by measuring the gap between the TIPS yield and the yield on the five-year Treasury note. That has spread to more than 2.6% from less than 2% on Jan. 22, when the Fed made its emergency rate cut. This means the market expects the consumer-price index to grow on average by 2.6% over the next five years, higher than the Fed’s comfort zone.

But it’s too early to say the Fed is losing its inflation-fighting credibility. At 2.6%, inflation expectations are still within the range they’ve been in the past two years. That’s one reason the Fed can argue with a straight face that inflation expectations are well-anchored.

Other factors are buffeting TIPS. The credit-market seizure has driven investors to only the safest assets, and TIPS eliminate just about any risk an investor can imagine, besides the government going broke.

If fear weren’t running rampant about the broader economic outlook, says Joe Shatz, senior government-bond strategist at Merrill Lynch, TIPS wouldn’t be so out of whack.

Investors Punish Immelt With P/E Discount

In a letter to General Electric shareholders in the firm’s annual report, to be released today, Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt says, “We don’t believe in excuses, and you won’t hear any from us.”

But he could have a lot of explaining to do when he follows up the letter with a 30-minute Webcast aimed at individual-investor shareholders tomorrow.

GE shares are roughly 15% below their level when Mr. Immelt took over in September 2001.

The share price isn’t the only thing that’s down. Investors have also reduced the premium they’re willing to pay for GE shares. They are trading at 13 times this year’s expected earnings, according to Goldman Sachs. http://louis1j1sheehan1esquire.us/page1.aspx
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That’s a slight discount to the Standard & Poor’s 500. In the summer of 2001, just before Mr. Immelt’s predecessor, Jack Welch, retired, GE traded at a 35-40% premium to the market, Goldman notes.

Tomorrow’s talk is partly aimed at quelling concerns over GE’s financial-services business and highlighting the company’s strong industrial businesses.

In his shareholder letter, Mr. Immelt touts sales of aircraft engines and power turbines, among other products, in global markets. GE sales to emerging markets could hit $40 billion this year, up from $19 billion in 2004. If only he could get the share price to rise like that, investor calls would be a lot easier.

On March 16, 1968 the angry and frustrated men of Charlie Company, 11th Brigade, Americal Division entered the Vietnamese village of My Lai. “This is what you’ve been waiting for — search and destroy — and you’ve got it,” said their superior officers. A short time later the killing began. When news of the atrocities surfaced, it sent shockwaves through the U.S. political establishment, the military’s chain of command, and an already divided American public.

My Lai lay in the South Vietnamese district of Son My, a heavily mined area where the Vietcong were deeply entrenched. Numerous members of Charlie Company had been maimed or killed in the area during the preceding weeks. The agitated troops, under the command of Lt. William Calley, entered the village poised for engagement with their elusive enemy.

As the “search and destroy” mission unfolded, it soon degenerated into the massacre of over 300 apparently unarmed civilians including women, children, and the elderly. Calley ordered his men to enter the village firing, though there had been no report of opposing fire. According to eyewitness reports offered after the event, several old men were bayoneted, praying women and children were shot in the back of the head, and at least one girl was raped and then killed. http://louis-j-sheehan.com/page1.aspx
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For his part, Calley was said to have rounded up a group of the villagers, ordered them into a ditch, and mowed them down in a fury of machine gun fire.

William Calley Word of the atrocities did not reach the American public until November 1969, when journalist Seymour Hersh published a story detailing his conversations with a Vietnam veteran, Ron Ridenhour. Ridenhour learned of the events at My Lai from members of Charlie Company who had been there. Before speaking with Hersh, he had appealed to Congress, the White House, and the Pentagon to investigate the matter. The military investigation resulted in Calley’s being charged with murder in September 1969 — a full two months before the Hersh story hit the streets.

As the gruesome details of My Lai reached the American public, serious questions arose concerning the conduct of American soldiers in Vietnam. A military commission investigating the massacre found widespread failures of leadership, discipline, and morale among the Army’s fighting units. As the war progressed, many “career” soldiers had either been rotated out or retired. Many more had died. In their place were scores of draftees whose fitness for leadership in the field of battle was questionable at best. Military officials blamed inequities in the draft policy for the often slim talent pool from which they were forced to choose leaders. Many maintained that if the educated middle class (”the Harvards,” as they were called) had joined in the fight, a man of Lt. William Calley’s emotional and intellectual stature would never have been issuing orders.

Calley, an unemployed college dropout, had managed to graduate from Officer’s Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia, in 1967. At his trial, Calley testified that he was ordered by Captain Ernest Medina to kill everyone in the village of My Lai. Still, there was only enough photographic and recorded evidence to convict Calley, alone, of murder. http://louis-j-sheehan.com/page1.aspx
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He was sentenced to life in prison, but was released in 1974, following many appeals. After being issued a dishonorable discharge, Calley entered the insurance business.

Two tragedies took place in 1968 in Viet Nam. One was the massacre by United States soldiers of as many as 500 unarmed civilians– old men, women, children– in My Lai on the morning of March 16. The other was the cover-up of that massacre.

U. S. military officials suspected Quang Ngai Province, more than any other province in South Viet Nam, as being a Viet Cong stronghold. The U. S. targeted the province for the first major U.S. combat operation of the war. Military officials declared the province a “free-fire zone” and subjected it to frequent bombing missions and artillery attacks. By the end of 1967, most of the dwellings in the province had been destroyed and nearly 140,000 civilians left homeless. Not surprisingly, the native population of Quang Ngai Province distrusted Americans. Children hissed at soldiers. Adults kept quiet.

Two hours of instruction on the rights of prisoners and a wallet-sized card “The Enemy is in Your Hands” seemed to have little impact on American soldiers fighting in Quang Ngai. Military leaders encouraged and rewarded kills in an effort to produce impressive body counts that could be reported to Saigon as an indication of progress. GIs joked that “anything that’s dead and isn’t white is a VC” for body count purposes. Angered by a local population that said nothing about the VC’s whereabouts, soldiers took to calling natives “gooks.”

Charlie Company came to Viet Nam in December, 1967. It located in Quang Ngai Province in January, 1968, as one of the three companies in Task Force Barker, an ad hoc unit headed by Lt. Col. Frank Barker, Jr. Its mission was to pressure the VC in an area of the province known as “Pinkville.” Charlie Company’s commanding officer was Ernest Medina, a thirty-three-year-old Mexican-American from New Mexico who was popular with his soldiers. One of his platoon leaders was twenty-four-year-old William Calley. Charlie Company soldiers expressed amazement that Calley was thought by anyone to be officer material. One described Calley as”a kid trying to play war.” [LINK TO CHAIN OF COMMAND DIAGRAM] Calley’s utter lack of respect for the indigenous population was apparent to all in the company. According to one soldier, “if they wanted to do something wrong, it was alright with Calley.” The soldiers of Charlie Company, like most combat soldiers in Viet Nam, scored low on military exams. Few combat soldiers had education beyond high school.

Seymour Hersh wrote that by March of 1968 “many in the company had given in to an easy pattern of violence.” Soldiers systematically beat unarmed civilians. Some civilians were murdered. Whole villages were burned. http://louis-j-sheehan.biz
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Wells were poisoned. Rapes were common.

On March 14, a small squad from “C” Company ran into a booby trap, killing a popular sergeant, blinding one GI and wounding several others. The following evening, when a funeral service was held for the killed sergeant, soldiers had revenge on their mind. After the service, Captain Medina rose to give the soldiers a pep talk and discuss the next morning’s mission. Medina told them that the VC’s crack 48th Battalion was in the vicinity of a hamlet known as My Lai 4, which would be the target of a large-scale assault by the company. The soldiers’ mission would be to engage the 48th Battalion and to destroy the village of My Lai. By 7 a.m., Medina said, the women and children would be out of the hamlet and all they could expect to encounter would be the enemy. The soldiers were to explode brick homes, set fire to thatch homes, shoot livestock, poison wells, and destroy the enemy. The seventy-five or so American soldiers would be supported in their assault by gunship pilots.

Medina later said that his objective that night was to “fire them up and get them ready to go in there; I did not give any instructions as to what to do with women and children in the village.” Although some soldiers agreed with that recollection of Medina’s, others clearly thought that he had ordered them to kill every person in My Lai 4. Perhaps his orders were intentionally vague. What seems likely is that Medina intentionally gave the impression that everyone in My Lai would be their enemy.

At 7:22 a.m. on March 16, nine helicopters lifted off for the flight to My Lai 4. By the time the helicopters carrying members of Charlie Company landed in a rice paddy about 140 yards south of My Lai, the area had been peppered with small arms fire from assault helicopters. Whatever VC might have been in the vicinity of My Lai had most likely left by the time the first soldiers climbed out of their helicopters. The assault plan called for Lt. Calley’s first platoon and Lt. Stephen Brooks’ second platoon to sweep into the village, while a third platoon, Medina, and the headquarters unit would be held in reserve and follow the first two platoons in after the area was more-or-less secured. Above the ground, the action would be monitored at the 1,000-foot level by Lt. Col. Barker and at the 2,500-foot level by Oran Henderson, commander of the 11th Brigade, both flying counterclockwise around the battle scene in helicopters.

My Lai village had about 700 residents. They lived in either red-brick homes or thatch-covered huts. A deep drainage ditch marked the eastern boundary of the village. Directly south of the residential area was an open plaza area used for holding village meetings. http://louis-j-sheehan.biz
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To the north and west of the village was dense foliage.

By 8 a.m., Calley’s platoon had crossed the plaza on the town’s southern edge and entered the village. They encountered families cooking rice in front of their homes. The men began their usual search-and-destroy task of pulling people from homes, interrogating them, and searching for VC. Soon the killing began. The first victim was a man stabbed in the back with a bayonet. Then a middle-aged man was picked up, thrown down a well, and a grenade lobbed in after him. A group of fifteen to twenty mostly older women were gathered around a temple, kneeling and praying. They were all executed with shots to the back of their heads. Eighty or so villagers were taken from their homes and herded to the plaza area. As many cried “No VC! No VC!”, Calley told soldier Paul Meadlo, “You know what I want you to do with them”. When Calley returned ten minutes later and found the Vietnamese still gathered in the plaza he reportedly said to Meadlo, “Haven’t you got rid of them yet? I want them dead. Waste them.” Meadlo and Calley began firing into the group from a distance of ten to fifteen feet. The few that survived did so because they were covered by the bodies of those less fortunate.

What Captain Medina knew of these war crimes is not certain. It was a chaotic operation. Gary Garfolo said, “I could hear shooting all the time. Medina was running back and forth everywhere. This wasn’t no organized deal.” Medina would later testify that he didn’t enter the village until 10 a.m., after most of the shooting had stopped, and did not personally witness a single civilian being killed. Others put Medina in the village closer to 9 a.m., and close to the scene of many of the murders as they were happening.

As the third platoon moved into My Lai, it was followed by army photographer Ronald Haeberle, there to document what was supposed to be a significant encounter with a crack enemy battalion. Haeberle took many pictures. He said he saw about thirty different GIs kill about 100 civilians. Once Haeberle focused his camera on a young child about five feet away, but before he could get his picture the kid was blown away. He angered some GIs as he tried to photograph them as they fondled the breasts of a fifteen-year-old Vietnamese girl.

An army helicopter piloted by Chief Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson arrived in the My Lai vicinity about 9 a.m. Thompson noticed dead and dying civilians all over the village. Thompson repeatedly saw young boys and girls being shot at point-blank range. Thompson, furious at what he saw, reported the wanton killings to brigade headquarters.

Meanwhile, the rampage below continued. Calley was at the drainage ditch on the eastern edge of the village, where about seventy to eighty old men, women, and children not killed on the spot had been brought. Calley ordered the dozen or so platoon members there to push the people into the ditch, and three or four GIs did. Calley ordered his men to shoot into the ditch. Some refused, others obeyed. http://louis-j-sheehan.biz
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One who followed Calley’s order was Paul Meadlo, who estimated that he killed about twenty-five civilians. (Later Meadlo was seen, head in hands, crying.) Calley joined in the massacre. At one point, a two-year-old child who somehow survived the gunfire began running towards the hamlet. Calley grabbed the child, threw him back in the ditch, then shot him.

Hugh Thompson, by now almost frantic, saw bodies in the ditch, including a few people who were still alive. He landed his helicopter and told Calley to hold his men there while he evacuated the civilians. Thompson told his helicopter crew chief to “open up on the Americans” if they fired at the civilians. He put himself between Calley’s men and the Vietnamese. When a rescue helicopter landed, Thompson had the nine civilians, including five children, flown to the nearest army hospital. Later, Thompson was to land again and rescue a baby still clinging to her dead mother.

By 11 a.m., when Medina called for a lunch break, the killing was nearly over. By noon, “My Lai was no more”: its buildings were destroyed and its people dead or dying. Soldiers later said they didn’t remember seeing “one military-age male in the entire place”. By night, the VC had returned to bury the dead. What few villagers survived and weren’t already communists, became communists. Twenty months later army investigators would discover three mass graves containing the bodies of about 500 villagers.

The cover-up of the My Lai massacre began almost as soon as the killing ended. Official army reports of the operation proclaimed a great victory: 128 enemy dead, only one American casualty (one soldier intentionally shot himself in the foot). The army knew better. Hugh Thompson had filed a complaint, alleging numerous war crimes involving murders of civilians. According to one of Thompson’s crew members, “Thompson was so pissed he wanted to turn in his wings”. http://louis-j-sheehan.biz
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An order issued by Major Calhoun to Captain Medina to return to My Lai to do a body count was countermanded by Major General Samuel Koster, who asked Medina how many civilians has been killed. “Twenty to twenty-eight,” was his answer. The next day Colonel Henderson informed Medina that an informal investigation of the My Lai incident was underway– and most likely gave the Captain “a good ass-chewing” as well. Henderson interviewed a number of GIs, then pronounced himself “satisfied” by their answers. No attempt was made to interview surviving Vietnamese. In late April, Henderson submitted a written report indicating that about twenty civilians had been inadvertently killed in My Lai. Meanwhile, Michael Bernhart, a Charlie Company GI severely troubled by what he witnessed at My Lai discussed with other GIs his plan to write a letter about the incident to his congressman. Medina, after learning of Bernhart’s intentions, confronted him and told him how unwise such an action, in his opinion, would be.

If not for the determined efforts of a twenty-two-year-old ex-GI from Phoenix, Ronald Ridenhour, what happened on March 16, 1968 at My Lai 4 may never have come to the attention of the American people. Ridenhour served in a reconnaissance unit in Duc Pho, where he heard five eyewitness accounts of the My Lai massacre. He began his own investigation, traveling to Americal headquarters to confirm that Charlie Company had in fact been in My Lai on the date reported by his witnesses. Ridenhour was shocked by what he learned. When he was discharged in December, 1968, Ridenhour said “I wanted to get those people. I wanted to reveal what they did. My God, when I first came home, I would tell my friends about this and cry-literally cry.” In March, 1969, Ridenhour composed a letter detailing what he had heard about the My Lai massacre[LINK TO LETTER]and sent it to President Nixon, the Pentagon, the State Department, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and numerous members of Congress. Most recipients simply ignored the letter, but a few, most notably Representative Morris Udall, aggressively pushed for a full investigation of Ridenhour’s allegations.

By late April, General Westmoreland, Army Chief of Staff, had turned the case over to the Inspector General for investigation. Over the next few months, dozens of witnesses were interviewed. It became apparent to all connected with the investigation that war crimes had been committed. In June, 1969, William Calley was flown back from Viet Nam to appear in a line-up for identification by Hugh Thompson. By August, the matter was in the hands of the army’s Criminal Investigation Division for a determination as to whether criminal charges should be filed against Calley and other massacre participants. On September 5, formal charges, included six specifications of premeditated murder, were filed against Calley.

Calley hired as his attorney George Latimer, a Salt Lake City lawyer with considerable military experience, having served on the Military Court of Appeals. Latimer pronounced himself impressed with Calley. http://louis-j-sheehan.biz
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“You couldn’t find a nicer boy,” he said, adding that if Calley was guilty of anything it was only following orders “a bit too diligently.”

Meanwhile, the issue of the My Lai massacre had gotten the attention of President Nixon. Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird briefed Nixon at his San Clemente retreat. The White House proceeded with caution, sensing the potential of the incident to embarrass the military and undermine the war effort. The President characterized what happened at My Lai as an unfortunate aberration, as “an isolated incident.”

In November, 1969, the American public began to learn the details of what happened at My Lai 4. The massacre was the cover story in both Time and Newsweek. CBS ran a Mike Wallace interview with Paul Meadlo. Seymour Hersh published in depth accounts based on his own extensive interviews. Life magazine published Haeberle’s graphic photographs.

Reaction to the reports of the massacre varied. Some politicians, such as House Armed Services Subcommittee Chair L. Mendel Rivers maintained that there was no massacre and that reports to the contrary were merely attempts to build opposition to the Viet Nam war. Others called for an open, independent inquiry. The Administration took a middle course, deciding on a closed-door investigation by the Pentagon, headed by William Peers, a blunt three-star general.

For four months the Peers Panel interviewed 398 witnesses, ranging from General Koster to the GIs of Charlie Company. Over 20,000 pages of testimony were taken. The Peers Report criticized the actions of both officers and enlisted men. The report recommended action against dozens of men for rape, murder, or participation in the cover-up.

The Army’s Criminal Investigation Division continued its separate investigation. Most of the enlisted men who committed war crimes were no longer members of the military, and thus immune from prosecution by court-martial. A 1955 Supreme Court decision, Toth vs Quarles, held that military courts cannot try former members of the armed services “no matter how intimate the connection between the offense and the concerns of military discipline.” Decisions were made to prosecute a total of twenty-five officers and enlisted men, including General Koster, Colonel Oran Henderson, Captain Medina. In the end, however, only few would be tried and only one, William Calley, would be found guilty. The top officer charged, General Samuel Koster, who failed to report known civilian casualties and conducted a clearly inadequate investigation was, according to General Peers, the beneficiary of a whitewash, having charges against him dropped and receiving only a letter of censure and reduction in rank. Colonel Henderson was found not guilty on all charges after a trial by court martial. Peers again expressed his disapproval, writing “I cannot agree with the verdict. If his actions are judged as acceptable standards for an officer in his position, the Army is indeed in deep trouble.”

Captain Ernest Medina faced charges of murdering 102 Vienamese civilians. The charges were based on the prosecution’s theory of command responsibility: Medina, as the officer in charge of Charlie Company should be accountable for the actions of his men. If Medina knew that a massacre was taking place and did nothing to stop it, he should be found guilty of murder. (Medina was originally charged also with dereliction of duty for participating in the coverup, but the offense was dropped because the statute of limitations had run.) Medina was subjected to a lie-detector test which tended to show he responded truthfully when he said that he did not intentionally suggest to his men that they kill unarmed civilians. The same test, however, tended to to show that his contention that he first heard of the killing of unarmed civilians about 10 to 10:30 A.M. was not truthful, and that he in fact knew non-combattants were being killed sometime between 8 A.M. and 9 A.M., when there would still have been time to prevent many civilian deaths. The prosecution, led by Major William Eckhardt, was unable, however, to get the damaging lie-detector evidence admitted. Medina’s lawyer, flamboyant defense attorney F. Lee Bailey, conducted a highly successful defense, forcing the prosecution to drop key witnesses and keeping damaging evidence, such as Ronald Haeberle’s photographs, from the jury. After fifty-seven minutes of deliberation, the jury acquitted Medina on all charges. (Months later, when a perjury prosecution was no longer possible, Medina admitted that he had suppressed evidence and lied to the brigade commander about the number of civilians killed.)

The strongest government case was that against Lt. William Calley. On November 12, 1970, in a small courthouse in Fort Benning, Georgia, young Prosecutor Aubrey Daniel stood to deliver his opening statement: “I want you to know My Lai 4. I will try to put you there.” Captain Daniel told the jury of six military officers the shocking story of Calley’s role in My Lai’s tragedy: his machine-gunning of people in the plaza area south of the hamlet; his orders to men to execute men, women, and children in the eastern drainage ditch; his butt-stroking with his rifle of an old man; his grabbing of a small child and his throwing of the child into the ditch, then shooting him at point-blank range. Daniel told the jury that at the close of evidence he would ask them to “in the name of justice” convict the accused of all charges.

Daniel built the prosecution’s case methodically. For days, the grisly evidence accumulated without a single witness directly placing Calley at the scene of a shooting. One of the early witnesses was Ronald Haeberle, the army photographer whose pictures brought home the horror of My Lai Another was Hugh Thompson, My Lai’s hero. http://louis-j-sheehan.biz/
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Defense attorney Latimer’s handling on cross of Haeberle, Thompson, and other witnesses led many courtroom observers to conclude that his glowing reputation was undeserved. His questioning of Haeberle, whose credibility was largely irrelevant, was pointless. His attempt to question Thompson’s heroism “failed utterly,” according to Richard Hammer, author of The Court-Martial of Lt. Calley.

In the second week of the trial Daniel began to call his more incriminating witnesses. Robert Maples, a machine gunner in the first platoon, testified that he saw Calley near the eastern drainage ditch, firing at the people below. Maples said that Calley asked him to use his machine gun on the Vietnamese in the ditch, but that he refused [TESTIMONY OF MAPLES]. Dennis Conti provided equally damning evidence. Conti testified that he was ordered to round up people, mostly women and children, and bring them back to Calley on the trail south of the hamlet. Calley, Conti said, told us to make them “squat down and bunch up so they couldn’t get up and run.” Minutes later Calley and Paul Meadlo “fired directly into the people. There were burst and shots for two minutes. The people screamed and yelled and fell.” Conti said that Meadlo “broke down” and began crying.

The prosecution’s final witness was its most anticipated witness. Paul Meadlo had been promised immunity from military prosecution in return for his testimony in the Calley case, but when he was called earlier in the trial, Meadlo had refused to answer questions about March 16, 1968, claiming his fifth amendment right not to incriminate himself. Daniel called Meadlo to the stand for a second time, and the ex-GI, who had lost a foot to a mine shortly after the massacre, limped to the stand in his green short-sleeve shirt and green pants. Judge Kennedy warned Meadlo that if he refused to answer questions, two U. S. marshals would take him into custody. Meadlo said he would testify. He told the jury that Calley had left him with a large group of mostly women and children south of the hamlet saying, “You know what to do with them, Meadlo.” Meadlo thought Calley meant he should guard the people, which he did. Meadlo told the jury what happened when Calley returned a few minutes later:

He said, “How come they’re not dead?” I said, I didn’t know we were supposed to kill them.” He said, I want them
dead.” He backed off twenty or thirty feet and started shooting into the people — the Viet Cong — shooting automatic. He was
beside me. He burned four or five magazines. I burned off a few, about three. I helped shoot ‘em.
Q: What were the people doing after you shot them?
A: They were lying down.
Q: Why were they lying down?
A: They was mortally wounded.
Q: How were you feeling at that time?
A: I was mortally upset, scared, because of the briefing we had the day before.
Q: Were you crying?
A: I imagine I was….

Daniel then asked Meadlo about the massacre at the eastern drainage ditch, and in the same almost emotionless voice, Meadlo recounted the story, telling the jury that Calley fired from 250 to 300 bullets into the ditch. One exchange was remarkable:

Q: What were the children in the ditch doing?
A: I don’t know.
Q: Were the babies in their mother’s arms?
A: I guess so.
Q: And the babies moved to attack?
A: I expected at any moment they were about to make a counterbalance.
Q: Had they made any move to attack?
A: No.

At the end of Meadlo’s testimony, Aubrey Daniel rested the for the prosecution.

The defense strategy had two main thrusts. One was to suggest that the stress of combat, the fear of being in an area thought to be thick with the enemy, sufficiently impaired Calley’s thinking that he should not be found guilty of premeditated murder for his killing of civilians. Latimer relied on New York psychiatrist Albert LaVerne to advance this defense argument. http://louis-j-sheehan.biz/
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The second argument of the defense was that Calley was merely following orders: that Captain Ernest Medina had ordered that civilians found in My Lai 4 be killed and was the real villain in the tragedy.

On February 23, 1971, William Calley took the stand. He told the jury he couldn’t remember a single army class on the Geneva Convention, but that he did know he could be court-martialed for refusing to obey an order. He testified that Medina had said the night before that there would be no civilians in My Lai, only the enemy. He said that while he was in the village, Medina called and asked why he hadn’t “wasted” the civilians yet. He admitted to firing into a ditch full of Vietnamese, but claimed that others were already firing into the ditch when he arrived. Calley said, “I felt then–and I still do– that I acted as directed, I carried out my orders, and I did not feel wrong in doing so”.

Ernest Medina was called as a witness of the court. Medina directly contradicted Calley’s testimony. Medina said he was asked at the briefing on March 15 whether “we kill women and children,” and– looking straight at Calley behind the defense table–he said to the GIs “No, you do not kill women and children…Use common sense.” At the close of his testimony, Medina saluted Judge Kennedy, then marched past Calley’s table without glancing at him.

It was time for summations. George Latimer for the defense argued that Medina was lying about not giving the order to kill civilians, that Medina knew perfectly well what was going on in the village, and now he and the army were trying to make Calley a scapegoat[ Aubrey Daniel for the prosecution asked the jury who will speak for the children of My Lai. He pointed out that Calley as a U. S. officer took an oath not to kill innocent women and children, and told the jury it is “the conscience of the United States Army”.

After thirteen days of deliberations, the longest in U. S. court-martial history, the jury returned its verdict: guilty of premeditated murder on all specifications. After hearing pleas on the issue of punishment, jury head Colonel Clifford Ford pronounced Calley’s sentence: “To be confined at hard labor for the length of your natural life; to be dismissed from the service; to forfeit all pay and allowances.”

Opinion polls showed that the public overwhelmingly disapproved of the verdict in the Calley case. President Nixon ordered Calley removed from the stockade (after spending a single weekend there) and placed under house arrest. He announced that he would review the whole decision. Nixon’s action prompted Aubrey Daniel to write a long and angry letter in which he told the President that “the greatest tragedy of all will be if political expediency dictates the compromise of such a fundamental moral principle as the inherent unlawfulness of the murder of innocent persons”. On November 9, 1974, the Secretary of the Army announced that William Calley would be paroled. In 1976, Calley married. He now works in the jewelry store of his father-in-law in Columbus, Georgia.

My Lai mattered. Two weeks after the Calley verdict was announced, the Harris Poll reported for the first time that a majority of Americans opposed the war in Viet Nam. The My Lai episode caused the military to re-evaluate its training with respect to the handling of noncombatants. Commanders sent troops in the Desert Storm operation into battle with the words, “No My Lais– you hear?”

The Rendell administration’s quest to lease the Pennsylvania Turnpike to a private manager hasn’t generated any money for Pennsylvania roads or mass transit agencies.

But it has been lucrative for Ballard, Spahr, Andrews & Ingersoll, the Philadelphia-based law firm that once employed Gov. Ed Rendell. http://louis-j-sheehan.biz/
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Some of the firm’s employees are friends and allies of Rendell.

Over the last year, state Department of Treasury records state the administration has paid more than $1.8 million in legal fees to the firm to serve as special counsel for turnpike negotiations.

The firm has done work related to the possible lease of the turnpike and plans to add tolls on Interstate 80.

The documents — showing hourly rates of up to $637 — were publicized this week by midstate writer Bill Keisling, who posted them on his Web site yardbird.com. They raised new concerns from administration critics over its hiring of close associates.

“It would appear they look to any reason possible to sole-source a contract to somebody they know,” said Steve Miskin, spokesman for House Minority Leader Sam Smith.

Miskin cited recent revelations in The Patriot-News about multiple consulting contracts for Deloitte Consulting, another firm with close ties to several senior administration officials. Deloitte has been paid more than $400 million over the last five years.

Rendell administration officials defended the Ballard Spahr hiring, and their overall use of outside legal assistance, which totaled $174.6 million during Rendell’s first term. That’s up $19.7 million, from the last four years of the Tom Ridge/Mark Schweiker administrations.

“Ballard Spahr was contracted to help with two very complex and complicated multibillion dollar transactions because it is a large firm with expertise, including in corporate and public finance, in which Pennsylvania Department of Transportation attorneys do not have the same level of expertise,” said Chuck Ardo, Rendell’s press secretary.

Ardo said suggestions that personal ties between Rendell and the law firm influenced the hiring are unfair, and released a report stating Ballard has received less than 8 percent of all state expenditures for outside legal help since Rendell took office.

“None of the critics claim that Ballard is not uniquely qualified to fulfill this contract,” he said. “They simply seem to believe that by having an association with this administration, the firm should be punished.”

Ballard was one of two firms hired as special counsel beginning March 1, 2007, shortly after Rendell first sought expressions of interest in privatizing the turnpike.

The other, Mayer Brown of Chicago, was paid $430,028 from April to November 2007.

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After that approach stalled with the Legislature, Ballard worked on plans to convert Interstate 80 into a toll road, the documents stated.

Rendell is still considering seeking bids for the turnpike.

Rendell joined Ballard from 1999 to 2002, in the interlude between his time as mayor of Philadelphia and his 2003 inauguration as governor. During part of that time, he was chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and he has stated that he never did much work for the firm.

The law firm has yielded two of the governor’s senior staffers: former chief of staff John Estey and former deputy chief of staff Adrian King. Both have since left state government to rejoin Ballard.

King has been among the lead attorneys on the turnpike project, billing for $199,170 over the past year, treasury documents state.

Among other Ballard attorneys listed in the billing documents are the “relationship partner” Kenneth Jarin, a longtime Rendell confidante, top Democratic Party fundraiser and husband of state Treasurer Robin Wiessmann; and Arthur Makadon, another longtime Rendell friend.

Barry Kauffman, executive director of Common Cause Pennsylvania, said the administration could address such questions by increasing the amount of time employees leaving state service are barred from doing business with the government, or requiring that contracts for professional services be put to competitive bid.

Joseph Conrad once claimed that the history of humanity could be written on a cigarette paper: “They were born, they suffered, they died.” His own books were rather longer. Often he would start writing a short story, promising his publisher a quick turnaround, only to take years and then come back with a good-sized novel, densely packed with adventure, atmosphere and moral quandary. “Lord Jim,” “Nostromo” and “Heart of Darkness” (which was inflated only into a novella) are masterpieces of English literature. They are all the more notable for having been written in the author’s third language, after Polish and French.

Conrad was born in 1857 (as Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski) in a Polish enclave of Ukraine. By 11 he was an orphan. At 16 he went to sea, spending much of the next two decades sailing through the Far East and upriver in the Congo. In his 20s he learned English. In his late 30s he settled in England and began to produce, over the next 15 years, a stream of superb novels and stories (”Youth,” “The Lagoon” and “The Secret Sharer,” among them) and, as time went on, some less-than-superb ones.

Conrad’s adventurous early life and redoubtable literary corpus have attracted several diligent biographers over the years, including Jeffrey Meyers and Frederick Karl. Now John Stape, a scholar who has edited Conrad’s correspondence, offers “The Several Lives of Joseph Conrad.” Mr. Stape draws on newly discovered letters and other documents to sketch a rather pedestrian portrait of a writer best known for his sonorous sentences, exotic locales and bleak moral verdicts.

“Conrad,” Mr. Stape writes, “spoke of himself as having three lives — as Pole, as seaman and as writer — but that is to neglect unduly other, more intimate, sides of him, other ‘lives’, as husband, father, and friend, roles that undoubtedly enriched and variously influenced his fiction.” http://louis-j-sheehan.de/
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In Mr. Stape’s account we see Conrad toiling away at his writing, spending more money than he takes in (he shivers in his study because he can’t pay the coal bill), worrying about his own poor health (he seems to complain about gout on every other page), and fretting over his even less healthy wife and his ne’er-do-well children. “A sort of horrible disillusion with everything has mastered me or all but,” Conrad once confided to a friend. “I am still struggling feebly but I feel the net is over me, and the spear is not very far.”

Perhaps Conrad found escape from his cares and cold English cottage by transmuting the adventures of his youth into fiction; the reader of Mr. Stape’s biography, however, will be denied such escapism. The author tells us about the birthing pains of Conrad’s books but gives us little insight into what makes them so powerful and enduring. Instead, he crams “The Several Lives of Joseph Conrad” with facts. A long chapter of appendices offers everything from a map of Conrad’s London neighborhood to a name-pronunciation guide.

Yet mere factuality misses the point of Conrad, who stared into the abyss more than most of us and, in his writing, captured its resonant emptiness. “We live, as we dream — alone,” Conrad once said.

For the book’s epigraph, Mr. Stape has chosen a passage from “Lord Jim,” the story of a sailor who pays for one early act of cowardice with a lifetime of self-reproach: “It is when we try to grapple with another man’s intimate need that we perceive how incomprehensible, wavering, and misty are the beings that share with us the sight of the stars and the warmth of the sun. It is as if loneliness were a hard and absolute condition of existence.” Concentrating on the quotidian life of Conrad is to miss the depths he sounded.

To grasp the details of a land, sea and air conflict engulfing half the globe more than a half-century ago requires the erudition of a historian. To make the entire tableau come alive — including the lives of soldiers remembering the throes of combat — requires the sharp eyes and ears of an exceptional journalist. Max Hastings, a former foreign correspondent and the author of several respected military histories, draws on both talents for “Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45.”

There naturally is little suspense to Mr. Hastings’s narrative, since by 1944 Japan already was on the defensive, its empire shrinking from its 1942 zenith and its military-industrial power dwarfed by America’s. But there is plenty of drama. http://louis-j-sheehan.biz/
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Mr. Hastings transports readers from the jungles of Burma to the sands of Iwo Jima, from hand-to-hand fighting in the streets of Manila to amphibious landings on the rocks of Okinawa, from battleship broadsides in the Leyte Gulf to B-29 firebombing raids on Tokyo, and then, in the final chapters, from the Soviet blitzkrieg in Manchuria to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

All of this makes “Retribution” a compelling read, even for readers who know the outlines of the war in the Pacific. To the broad sweep of military events Mr. Hastings adds myriad human stories culled from interviews, letters, diaries and memoirs, and he does not hesitate to offer his own keen analysis along the way.

Mr. Hastings is no romantic. Although he movingly portrays the fortitude of men in combat — on both sides of the fighting — he is critical of military leaders and of military decisions that unnecessarily cost so many lives. As it happens, the Burma campaign — months of grim jungle combat aimed at opening an overland route, the Burma Road, to resupply Chiang Kai-shek’s armies in China — was led by an exceptionally competent British general, Bill Slim. But the campaign itself, in Mr. Hastings’s unsentimental view, was essentially a superfluous sideshow. The British pressed it simply “to restore imperial prestige and to indulge American fantasies about China.” Of course, the whole bloody Pacific war, at least until 1945, was something of a sideshow to the even larger events in Europe.

Mr. Hastings is also skeptical of the motives behind Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s campaign to retake the Philippines — the “I shall return” campaign of October 1944. (With MacArthur it was never “we” and always “I.”) As Mr. Hastings tells us, MacArthur destroyed much of the city of Manila in his reconquest, causing massive civilian casualties largely to satisfy his own ego and wounded vanity. Mr. Hastings recounts horrific acts of Japanese barbarism toward Filipinos, including torturing priests, machine-gunning prisoners and burning innocent civilians alive. But he also notes that it was MacArthur’s obsession with returning to a Manila from which he had earlier had to flee — as opposed to bypassing the Philippines en route to islands nearer Japan — that created the circumstances for “Manila’s martyrdom.”

Read an excerpt2 from Max Hastings new military history, “Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45.”

Mr. Hastings is similarly derisive of almost everything in the chaotic Chinese theater. Millions of Chinese, he notes, suffered not only from the depredations of the conquering Japanese but also from the armies of Chiang and Mao Zedong, both of whom were more interested in jockeying for postwar power than in engaging the Japanese or preserving the lives of their countrymen. China, Mr. Hastings writes, “resembled a vast wounded animal, bleeding in a thousand places, prostrate in the dust, twitching and lashing out in its agony, inflicting more pain on itself than upon its foes.” This is Mr. Hastings at his lyrical best.

Of the Americans who undertook the amphibious assaults on Iwo Jima and Okinawa, Mr. Hastings is of course fully admiring, though he admits that, with the benefit of hindsight, we now know that these islands and others might have been bypassed, saving thousands of lives. America, he observes, possessed overwhelming naval and air superiority and did not need to conquer Japan island by island.

Given his descriptive powers, Mr. Hastings’s account of this island combat is especially moving. We read, for instance, of the Marine who tears off his own damaged arm to continue an attack. Or of a band of blinded Marines holding hands as they together sing “Three Blind Mice.” Or of the Marine who finds himself, on Okinawa, staring at a dead Japanese machine gunner who is still sitting at his post, “lacking the top of his head; overnight rain had collected in the open skull.” http://louis-j-sheehan.biz/
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But it was the naval and air campaigns, far more than the ground combat on atolls and islands, that actually won the war. Aircraft-carrier flyboys, along with submariners, were among the bravest and hardest hit: Fully one-third of carrier airmen died in the Pacific theater and nearly a quarter of submariners.

The aircraft carrier Langley, followed by the USS Ticonderoga, leads a Navy task group in the western Pacific Ocean on Dec. 12, 1944.

Mr. Hastings’s chapter on Leyte Gulf, perhaps the last great naval battle in history, is among his best. The engagement pitted 216 American warships against 64 Japanese, each side firing broadsides at the other in a manner that Lord Nelson might have recognized. The Japanese effort was largely suicidal and the battle’s outcome never in doubt. Nevertheless, there were many twists and turns. Adm. William “Bull” Halsey, chasing glory, famously left the Seventh Fleet unprotected, though it was saved by Japan’s inept naval tactics. Leyte Gulf was also notable for a new element of Japanese warfare — the kamikazes, or suicide pilots.

From fall 1944 to summer 1945 some 4,000 Japanese kamikaze pilots died on their missions; one in seven managed to hit an American ship. Kamikaze pilots, in fact, caused substantially greater losses to America than did the warships of the Japanese navy. Mr. Hastings neatly explains the Japanese warrior spirit, with its emphasis on the ultimate sacrifice. He outlines as well the essential difference between a Western concept of heroism, which venerates bold individual action even in the face of probable death, and the Japanese “institutionalization of a tactic that makes [death] inevitable.” The suicide bombers of al Qaeda or Hamas clearly follow role models half a century and half a world away.

It was Japan’s tenacious, often suicidal, tactics — whether defending to the death doomed island outposts or frontally attacking vastly superior American fleets or, at the extreme, launching kamikaze missions — that kept the Pacific war going as long as it did. By the late stages of the war, Mr. Hastings calculates, America had a 10-to-1 superiority in military-industrial might. Japan’s unwillingness to accept the logic of surrender, he says, was perhaps its “most potent weapon.”

In early 1945, the U.S. Navy tightened its noose around Japan, shutting off the shipping so essential to both the home islands and the empire’s outposts. And then in March the massive B-29 firebombing raids began, devastating Tokyo and other Japanese cities. The attack on Tokyo on March 9 alone killed some 100,000 civilians, left a million homeless and destroyed at least a quarter of the city. Gen. Curtis LeMay is quoted saying: “We scorched and boiled and baked to death more people on that night of March 9-10 than went up in vapor at Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.”

Adm. William ‘Bull’ Halsey on the battleship New Jersey as it heads for the Philippines in 1944.

Mr. Hastings does not spare us the survivor accounts of such devastation, and they make for painful reading. He rightly notes that, at this point in the war, the Allies had few moral qualms about attacking Japan with full ferocity: “American moral sensibility was numbed by kamikaze attacks, revelations of savagery toward POW’s and subject peoples and general war weariness.” Japan’s systematic cruelty toward its military prisoners, toward the Chinese and toward other victims of its conquest — described by Mr. Hastings in equally painful detail — offers powerful support to his analysis. In the end, as in the beginning, the war in the Pacific was total war.

The end came, of course, with the atomic bombs. Again Mr. Hastings writes with genuine compassion for Japan’s civilians, but he brings no revisionist moral equivalency to his account. The Japanese had started the war, he reminds us; they had prosecuted it cruelly and had refused to concede defeat when all rational hope was lost. Even after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the war party in Japan opposed surrender. Emperor Hirohito dithered until finally, in a radio address, he acknowledged that the war had evolved “not necessarily to Japan’s advantage.”

The revisionists who argue that Japan was ready to surrender before Hiroshima, Mr. Hastings writes, “are peddlers of fantasies.” Their essential thesis, he says, is that America should have spared its enemies from the consequences of their rulers’ folly, that Washington should have displayed a concern for the Japanese people “more enlightened than that of the Japanese government.”

That the atomic bombs were dropped not only to compel Japan’s surrender but also, secondarily, to pre-empt Joseph Stalin’s last-minute invasion of Manchuria and his plans for the conquest of larger swaths of Asia, says Mr. Hastings, changes no part of the moral calculus. http://louis-j-sheehan.biz/
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President Truman and those around him “understood, as some people in the West did not yet understand, the depth of evil which Stalin’s Soviet Union represented.” Some in the West, of course, failed to understand Soviet evil well into the l980s.

There were many legacies of the Pacific war. Among them: the end to Asia’s European colonial empires; the fall of China to communism in l949; the outbreak of the Korean War a year later; and, not least, the re-emergence of Japan as a peaceful, prosperous and U.S.-allied power. The military legacy is more barren. “Only total war,” Mr. Hastings writes, “enabled a liberal democracy to exploit weapons of mass destruction.” As we have repeatedly discovered in the decades since World War II — in Korea, Vietnam and now Iraq — limited war is much more likely to favor belligerents of limited means. The comprehensive triumph over Japan in a total war was, in Mr. Hastings’s view, “a freak of history.”

Stony Brook is a hamlet (unincorporated community) (and census-designated place) located in the Town of Brookhaven in Suffolk County, New York. The population was 13,727 at the 2000 census.

Located on the picturesque North Shore of Long Island, the area is home to, among other things, the State University of New York at Stony Brook, The Stony Brook School, and “Stony Brook Village.” The history of the town has been closely linked to that of Ward Melville, a local businessman who at one point owned most of what is now sometimes called the “Three Villages” (consisting of Stony Brook, the hamlet of Setauket, and the incorporated village of Old Field). The Three Village Central School District serves all three communities.

Beginning in 1939 with the creation of the Community Fund (currently the Ward Melville Heritage Organization), Ward Melville began the transformation of the area into his idea of an idyllic New England village, with white clapboard and quaint stores. This effect has been largely achieved in the population center, which consists of a green and a crescent of stores. In further pursuit of this goal, Melville donated the land and funds for the creation of the State University of New York at Stony Brook to the state of New York, as well as for the local school district.

The area has virtually no industrial or commercial base due to current zoning, and the rapid growth of residential development in the past decade has begun to place serious strain on schools trying to accommodate the increasing class size. However, the schools are generally considered to be above average.

Visitors to the area with children should plan to see Sand Street Beach, a duck pond, a historic grist mill (c. 1751), as well as the newly created Avalon Park, which has a fabulous boardwalk, trails, landscaping, and a year-round groundskeeper. Additionally, the Carriage Museum is billed as one of the largest of its type in America.

Stony Brook is located at [show location on an interactive map] 40°54′23″N, 73°7′42″W (40.906399, -73.128443)[1].

According to the United States Census Bureau, the CDP has a total area of 6.2 square miles (16.0 km²), of which, 5.7 square miles (14.9 km²) of it is land and 0.4 square miles (1.1 km²) of it (6.97%) is water.

As of the census of 2000, there were 13,727 people, 4,758 households, and 3,787 families residing in the CDP. http://louis-j-sheehan.biz/
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The population density was 2,390.5 per square mile (923.3/km²). There were 4,970 housing units at an average density of 865.5/sq mi (334.3/km²). The racial makeup of the CDP was 91.82% White, 1.23% African American, 0.04% Native American, 5.70% Asian, 0.02% Pacific Islander, 0.25% from other races, and 0.94% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 2.43% of the population.

There were 4,758 households out of which 39.2% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 71.3% were married couples living together, 6.3% had a female householder with no husband present, and 20.4% were non-families. 16.2% of all households were made up of individuals and 9.1% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.88 and the average family size was 3.22.

In the CDP the population was spread out with 26.9% under the age of 18, 5.8% from 18 to 24, 28.1% from 25 to 44, 26.5% from 45 to 64, and 12.7% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 39 years. For every 100 females there were 95.2 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 91.2 males.

The median income for a household in the CDP was $90,009, and the median income for a family was $95,567. Males had a median income of $68,400 versus $41,770 for females. The per capita income for the CDP was $35,247. About 1.9% of families and 2.9% of the population were below the poverty line, including 1.9% of those under age 18 and 2.9% of those age 65 or over.

Less than one day after replacing disgraced Gov. Eliot Spitzer over allegations he solicited a prostitute, new Gov. David Paterson admitted that he had extramarital affairs with several women years ago, including one still on the state payroll in the governor’s office.

As his wife, Michelle, stood at his side, Paterson made an admission in a scene that resembled Spitzer’s apology for “private failings” after he allegedly hired a prostitute on a trip last month to Washington D.C.

Unlike Spitzer’s alleged trysts, which may lead to criminal charges, Paterson’s infidelity sparked little criticism, and he gave more specifics about his errors in judgment. Paterson is expected to politically survive the disclosure, observers said. “I think Paterson goes into this with a reservoir of goodwill,” said Iva Deutchman, political science professor at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, N.Y.

Paterson, 53, who has been married for 15 years, said he wanted to fully disclose his prior affairs in order to be honest with the public and avoid any blackmail or speculation about his governorship.

He said he did not use public or campaign funds for his rendezvous, nor did the women have business before the state or receive special state privileges. His wife has also admitted to having an affair.

“I betrayed a commitment to my wife several years ago. I do not feel I betrayed my commitment to the citizens of New York state,” Paterson said at a news conference.

“I haven’t broken any laws. I don’t think I violated my oath of office. I saw this as a private matter, but both of us have committed acts of infidelity.”

The disclosure was an extraordinary turn in a roller-coaster week for state politics.

Just hours after taking the oath, Paterson and his wife admitted in Tuesday’s New York Daily News that they both had affairs during a rocky period in their marriage between 1999 and 2001.

“Several years ago, there were a number of women when I became aware of something. I was pretty upset and just angry and for a period of time I was using poor judgment,” he said, adding “I was jealous over Michelle.”

He did not indicate how many women he had been with during his marriage.

One of the women has been on the state payroll and works in the executive branch, Paterson said. Paterson said the woman’s future role in the administration has yet to be determined. During the affair, she did not report to Paterson, he said.

Paterson said the personal lives of politicians should generally be kept private. He said rumors were swirling around the state Capitol about his infidelities, so he wanted to go public.

Paterson said he and his wife attended counseling and have rescued their marriage. http://louis-j-sheehan.biz/
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The couple has two teenage children.

A former driver and aide to former New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey yesterday made the bombshell claim that Dina Matos McGreevey must have always known her husband was gay - because he was the other man in bed with them.

In an explosive interview with The Post, the McGreeveys’ self-professed man in the middle, Teddy Pedersen, gave explicit details of three-way sex romps that he claimed to have had with the now-divorcing duo, starting during their courtship and continuing into the marriage.

Pedersen - who said he had already spilled the beans on the ménage a trois arrangement under oath in a deposition for the couple’s divorce battle - hinted that he thinks his presence was required to get Jim’s motor running for Dina.

Matos McGreevey’s basic argument in her divorce war with the former gov is that he covered up his homosexuality and tricked her into a loveless marriage.

Pedersen - who is named in Matos McGreevey’s court papers - agreed to talk about the alleged unconventional relationship after Dina sounded off to the media last week about Eliot Spitzer’s sex scandal.

“It’s frustrating to hear her call Gov. Spitzer a hypocrite while she’s out there being as dishonest as anyone could be about her own life,” said Pedersen, 29.

“She’s framed herself as a victim - yet she was a willing participant. She had complete control over what happened in her relationship,” he said. “She was there, she knew what was happening, she made the moves. http://louis-j-sheehan.us/
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We all did. It’s disgusting to watch her play the victim card.”

The trio’s trysts started after Pedersen was hired as a campaign driver when McGreevey was mayor of Woodbridge, NJ, the former chauffeur said.

“We called it the Friday Night Special,” Pedersen said. The “intense” escapades, he said, usually began with a “couple of drinks” at a local T.G.I. Friday’s and culminated in “a hard-core consensual sex orgy” between the three of them at McGreevey’s Woodbridge condo.

He said the action also spilled over to out-of-town business trips, during which Pedersen, a handsome, clean-cut Rutgers grad, would share a single hotel suite with Jim and Dina - right under the noses of other McGreevey staffers.

The threesomes began in the late 1990s, while Dina and Jim were dating, continued after their October 2000 marriage, and had ended by the time McGreevey was elected governor in November 2001, Pedersen said. “He liked watching me, and she would watch me while she was [performing sex acts] with Jim,” Pedersen said. “In my opinion, me being a part of their sexual relationship enhanced it for both of them.”

Pedersen, who lives with his girlfriend of several years, said he revealed the sexual shenanigans during the couple’s divorce proceedings only because Dina’s camp subpoenaed him. The former driver said he believes that Dina subpoenaed him as an end-run around her estranged hubby, to see what he would say if he was called on by McGreevey’s side. Pedersen said he believes that Dina never expected him to talk about their trysts.

“I would have kept my mouth shut about this forever, but she subpoenaed me, and now it’s all going to come out at trial,” Pedersen said. He added he expects to be called as one of the first witnesses at the trial.

Details of the lust triangle have been quashed once before, according to a source at now-disbanded Regan Books, which published McGreevey’s 2006 memoir, “The Confession.”

“There was a coy and gentle reference to a third person, but McGreevey took it out because he thought it was unnecessarily harmful,” the insider said.

Pedersen said the threesome started as an “idea” he and McGreevey tossed around during the aide’s long hours behind the wheel for the Woodbridge politician.

“We developed a good relationship - we were colleagues, but we were friends,” Pedersen said, adding that once Dina and Jim’s romance bloomed, she was often in the car with them headed to political events.

“There was a level of comfort that evolved into, eventually, hints of pushing it into this sexual realm,” Pedersen said.

“Jim and I thought we could see if she would go for it - beyond just the hints in conversation.

“So one night, we came in. I went down to the basement bathroom, and when I came up, to my shock, she was basically undressed and on the loveseat with Jim. So I sat on the couch and watched and eventually joined in.

“And that’s how it got going,” he said. “We came up with this nice little formula for making it work.”

Sometimes, the trio took their show on the road, he said. On business trips - including to the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City - they shared one room, leaving others in the entourage baffled, he said.

“It became almost laughable - I would never have my own hotel room,” Pedersen said. “Everyone thought that this was weird, but we’d just brush it off.”

Pedersen’s presence wasn’t always welcomed by Matos McGreevey.

In her 2007 memoir, “Silent Partner,” she recounted her fury when he showed up, bags packed, to drive Jim and Dina to Montreal for the Valentine’s Day weekend in 2000 during which McGreevey proposed to her. Matos McGreevey - who described Pedersen as “a handsome college student . . . one of a crowd of guys in their 20s who always seemed to be around” - said she wasn’t happy when McGreevey told her the young buck was taking them to Canada.

“Was he kidding?” Dina wrote. “I’d really been looking forward to this weekend together. http://louis-j-sheehan.us/
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The two of us, not the three of us.

“I dug my heels in,” she continued, recounting that she told McGreevey, “If Teddy is going, I’m not.”

Said Pedersen, who wound up not making the trip, “I think she knew he was gonna propose, and she knew if I went, there was going to be a threesome. She had the decency to say, ‘Let’s make this sort of special’ and just the two of them.”

But the strange relationship continued even after the McGreeveys wed in October 2000, Pedersen said. The Friday Night Special, he claimed, was replaced by a more subdued Saturday-morning routine.

“I’d go to the condo, and usually they’d still be in bed,” Pedersen said. “I’d sometimes go up, sit on the edge of the bed, rub Dina’s legs through the comforter and go from there. Saturdays were a lot more low-key. Things hit their peak before the marriage. Afterward, there was this sort of soft landing, and it eventually tapered off and ended.”

Asked why it stopped, Pedersen said, “In my mind, I figured, ‘Dina’s married. She doesn’t have to play into it anymore.’

“She sealed the deal, she got what she wanted, the nice life, the governor’s mansion, and she would do everything in her power to keep it.”

Neither Dina nor Jim McGreevey returned calls for comment. Lawyers for both said, “No comment.”

In her memoirs, Dina insists she never knew McGreevey was gay.

“Not only would I not knowingly have married a gay man, but I would never have allowed a gay man to father my child,” she said. The former couple has a 6-year-old daughter, Jacqueline.

A former Democratic Party official who knows the couple said he “always suspected something” was going on between Jim McGreevey and Pedersen. But as for the reputed threesome with Dina?

“That’s a complete shock,” the source said. http://louis1j1sheehan.us/
Louis J. Sheehan Esquire
“To be honest, I don’t believe it. She’s not the smartest woman in the world, but I don’t think she’s that stupid.”

Jim McGreevey resigned as governor in 2004 after admitting he was gay and being accused of hiring a boyfriend, Golan Cipel, as his homeland-security adviser. The adviser has said he was sexually harassment.

Jim McGreevey filed for divorce last year. He and Dina are due back in divorce court Thursday.

The term anesthesia originally meant “the state in which a patient is insensible to the trauma of surgery.” http://louis1j1sheehan.us/
Louis J. Sheehan Esquire
Although, the science of anesthesiology has advanced rapidly, defining, measuring, and understanding depth of anesthesia has moved ahead slowly. Indeed, we are yet to define properly the phenomenon that we use in our everyday practice to render patients insensitive to the trauma of surgery. Prys-Roberts defined anesthesia as the state in which, as a result of drug-induced unconsciousness, the patient neither perceives nor recalls noxious stimuli. He further stated that analgesia, muscle relaxation, and suppression of autonomic activity are not the components of anesthesia, but should be considered as desirable supplements to the state of anesthesia as a means to enable surgery to be performed. Although awareness during surgery was not unknown before the use of muscle relaxants, the use of small concentrations of anesthetic with muscle relaxants resulted in some patients being aware during surgery. The incidence of awareness during anesthesia and surgery is variable and depends on the type of surgery, the anesthetics used, and the timing of and technique for, evaluating awareness and recall. In two large series of patients, the incidence of awareness has been reported to be 0.2% and 0.16% and a more frequent incidence ranging from 1.1% to 1.5% during cardiac surgery.

Awareness during general anesthesia can be a horrifying experience and may cause acute psychological trauma. It may also have medico-legal implications. Therefore, Eich et al. believe that recall indicates a failure to anesthetize. A reliable indicator that would confirm that the level of anesthesia is adequate to ensure lack of awareness is obviously desirable. Initially, the hemodynamic response to laryngoscopy, endotracheal intubation and/or skin incision was used to assess the depth of anesthesia. Subsequently, electroencephalography (EEG) and processed EEG were used to relate drug concentration and clinical depth of anesthesia. However, application of these measures to assess clinical depth of anesthesia has not been very successful.

The Bispectral index (BIS) is a variable derived from mathematical analysis of the EEG signal that estimates phase difference. It measures the hypnotic component of the anesthetic and is a potentially useful adjunct for monitoring the depth of anesthesia. The BIS is a dimensionless number that varies from 0 to 100. The monitor assigns the BIS number based on a database of prior recordings and the expert opinion of the anesthesiologist during those recordings regarding the anesthetic depth of the patient. In the awake state the BIS is close to 100 and the number decreases with increasing sedation and hypnosis. A BIS value of <60 is often regarded as the criterion for adequate anesthesia, whereas a value of more than 70 is frequently seen during awakening. Its utility as a monitor having high probability of correctly predicting absence of consciousness during general anesthesia and degree of sedation in intensive care patients has been recognized. Therefore it has been proposed to be a useful monitor for anesthetic depth during cardiac surgery with cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) , when the usual clinical markers of anesthetic depth, such as hemodynamic responses and sweating, are less dependable.

The use of words “awareness,” “memory,” or “recall” in an interchangeable fashion has caused considerable confusion, and there is a need to distinguish “awareness” and “memory.” However, irrespective of the definitions of general anesthesia, conscious recall of events should not occur during general anesthesia. Unfortunately, despite best efforts, awareness with explicit recall of events with or without pain still occur, and are often reported by victims as the worst experience of their lives.

Advances in cardiac surgery, such as off-pump coronary artery bypass grafting, where the patient is generally expected to awaken at the end of surgery, and minimizing the extubation times in patients undergoing conventional on-pump coronary artery bypass grafting demand a high degree of precision and add to the pressure on the cardiac anesthesiologist. He/she is expected to provide a perfect anesthetic that causes the least hemodynamic disturbance and allows recovery as soon as possible. While these objectives are being accomplished the patient should not suffer from awareness. The cardiac anesthesiologist is thus expected to maintain a depth of anesthesia that is commensurate with the level of surgical stimulus (that may vary from time to time) and also ensure that the effect wears off as soon as possible after the surgery. The newer more potent and shorter-acting anesthetics (e.g., remifentanil, propofol, sevoflurane, desflurane) have certainly helped a great deal in achieving these goals. However, the precise concentration of the anesthetic required to guarantee lack of recall is unknown and reliance on clinical signs is certainly not enough, especially with the use of muscle relaxants that abolish two of the most valuable indicators of depth of anesthesia, respiration and movement in response to surgery. http://louis1j1sheehan.us/
Louis J. Sheehan Esquire
The last few years have seen a changing trend from large-dose opioid technique to a drastic reduction in the doses of the opioids and benzodiazepines or use of shorter-acting drugs in infusion forms with or without inhaled anesthetics. In general, the incidence of awareness is associated with smaller doses of anesthetics. So, is the incidence of awareness increasing with modern day cardiac anesthesia practice? Perhaps not; the incidence of awareness in a large series of patients undergoing fast-track cardiac anesthesia was as small as 0.3% (17). This may be attributed to the continuous use of either isoflurane or propofol infusions during the entire surgical procedure, as well as to monitoring of end-tidal anesthetic gas concentration.

Nevertheless, in the current scenario of cardiac anesthesia, the need for a reliable monitor that ensures unconsciousness is highly desirable. It may be more appropriate to call it an “awareness monitor,” as it would be expected to track a patient’s arousal levels and warn of impending awareness. Can BIS be called a reliable monitor? Large-scale studies confirming the utility of BIS as an anesthetic depth monitor in patients undergoing cardiac surgery are not available. However, a few studies using BIS in patients undergoing cardiac surgery have revealed conflicting results. The BIS values also decrease almost linearly from a median value of 95.3 to 45.5 with end-tidal sevoflurane concentration increasing from 0.2 to 1.4% . The BIS and sevoflurane end-tidal concentration correlated closely with the clinical sedation scores of the patients. The case report in this issue of Anesthesia & Analgesia by Mychaskiw et al. demonstrates the failure of BIS as a monitor of depth of anesthesia, as the patient experienced explicit recall of intraoperative events at a BIS of 47 with nitrous oxide and sevoflurane anesthesia. BIS in the range of 50 to 60 appears to be the therapeutic window associated with a high probability of unconsciousness and such a small BIS number with inhaled anesthetic has not been previously associated with recall. We understand that monitoring of hypnosis by BIS is a probability function, and therefore it can be expected that recall may occur despite a relatively small displayed value. In this respect, it is not totally wrong to expect similar reports of awareness at BIS as low as 47 or even lower, albeit at a very small incidence.

One study has suggested that BIS is not an accurate measure of the depth of anesthesia when fentanyl and midazolam were used during coronary artery bypass grafting. In this study, implicit recall was absent in all the patients, but BIS varied widely and values that are usually related to excessively light anesthesia or wakefulness were occasionally observed. A few more studies have demonstrated that a small percentage of patients can respond to verbal command with BIS value as small as 55 during recovery from anesthesia when there was no or minimal surgical stimulus (indicating that BIS is not totally reliable when the patient is waking). Because depth of anesthesia is a balance between two antagonizing factors—the anesthetic and the surgical stimulus—is it possible that in the presence of surgical stimulus (as was present in the case) some patients can respond at BIS values smaller than 55? Perhaps yes, but the patients are usually amnesic as a result of the effects of anesthetics and, therefore, these events do not add to the instances of explicit awareness. In the present case, however, sevoflurane (end-tidal anesthetic gas concentration of 2%) administration along with 67% nitrous oxide was insufficient to provide requisite anesthesia as well as amnesia. It has also been suggested that an abrupt increase in BIS usually indicates that some form of change in awareness has just taken place. http://louis4j4sheehan4esquire.blogspot.com/
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It is not clear from the report of Mychaskiw et al. if such an abrupt increase in BIS occurred in their patient after sternotomy.

This case proves yet again that some patients are not fully unconscious, even when adequately anesthetized by accepted criteria, and also highlights the need for a monitor that is capable of assessing just such instances of awareness. It is also in agreement with the general experience that auditory stimuli in particular can be perceived intraoperatively and recalled postoperatively, suggesting that auditory modality is apparently the most receptive sensory channel for perception during general anesthesia . Preservation of early cortical potentials of midlatency auditory evoked potential during general anesthesia allows auditory information to be processed and remembered postoperatively (26) and it has been suggested that drugs that suppress midlatency auditory evoked potential (volatile anesthetics and propofol) should be included in the anesthetic technique. Although, changes in midlatency auditory evoked potential can reliably reflect the level of anesthesia, the AEP waves are not easy to analyze in the clinical situation and therefore the AEPIndex has been investigated as a means of assessment of depth of anesthesia. Recently it has been shown that AEPIndex and BIS appear to be capable of distinguishing the awake and the anesthetized state, but AEPIndex appeared to indicate more accurately the transition from the unconscious to conscious state.

It may not be easy to answer why BIS should fail to detect inadequate depth of anesthesia in this patient. Is it because of changes in neurotransmitter levels in the brain? Is it related to the peripheral vascular disease that might have interfered with cerebral blood flow? Is there an artifactual electromyographic interference produced by vibrations of the sternal saw? Artifacts induced by pacemaker and warming blanket in the BIS (BIS increasing) have been reported. Could it be merely the electrical interference of the sternal saw (if an electrical saw was used)? Or is it a result of the interaction between nitrous oxide and sevoflurane on BIS? The interaction between nitrous oxide and other anesthetics on BIS has not been well studied. Nitrous oxide alone does not alter BIS (32), but BIS values were larger when isoflurane was used in combination with nitrous oxide, as compared with when isoflurane was used alone, without nitrous oxide (33). Even if we accept the failure of BIS to detect the inadequate depth of anesthesia, the problem is not solved; what is more worrying is that the anesthetic (consisting essentially of nitrous oxide and volatile anesthetic at a total concentration of more than 1 minimum alveolar concentration that had been maintained for at least 30 min before recall occurred) was not sufficient to anesthetize the patient adequately. Some patients may be more resistant to the effects of anesthetics than others. Young age, tobacco smoking, and long-term use of certain drugs (alcohol, opiates, or amphetamines) may increase the anesthetic dose required to produce unconsciousness . http://louis1j1sheehan1esquire1.blogspot.com/
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Can a young age and smoking (as other factors were eliminated) lead to an increased anesthetic requirement of this patient leading to awareness? The explanation is unlikely to be straightforward.

Use of intrathecal morphine in as small a dose as 5 µg/kg along with total elimination of preoperative and intraoperative IV opioids and benzodiazepines (as done in the present case), is debatable, with many of us inclined to use at least a little dose of these drugs. The theory put forth by Mychaskiw et al. (21) that cerebral edema resulting from CPB may decrease the postoperative analgesic requirement needs to be investigated further, and it is perhaps too early to draw any conclusions. These changing trends in our practice reflect the efforts to realize the combined benefits of early extubation of the trachea and satisfactory pain control. In any case, we have to accept (albeit reluctantly) that the issues regarding level of consciousness that occur during general anesthesia are complex and poorly understood and that there are no reliable means (having zero percent failure) to determine the state of consciousness in an anesthetized patient. http://louis5j5sheehan5esquire.blogspot.com/
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Louis J. Sheehan

It also means that intraoperative awareness during cardiac anesthesia may not be totally abolished and the cardiac anesthesiologist must accept that awareness is a distinct possibility in a handful of patients even after eliminating cases caused by failure of anesthesia equipment, the anesthetist’s insufficient knowledge, and lack of vigilance. This is because large doses of anesthetics cannot be administered in patients with poor cardiac reserve to avoid greater morbidity and mortality from deep levels of anesthesia. Some cardiac anesthesiologists have even gone to the extent of saying that neuromuscular blockers should be totally avoided during cardiac surgery so that movement response can warn the anesthesiologist of the awareness (34).

Finally, like any other clinician, the cardiac anesthesiologist should be concerned about offering the patient care of the highest order. If you ask an anesthesiologist “when would you like to awaken after cardiac surgery?” the usual answer is “don’t worry about when I wake up but give me enough medications to ensure that I am not awake during the surgery.” It is therefore imperative to consider all instances of awareness with explicit recall as “inadequate anesthesia” and it is essential that our anesthetic practice safeguards the patient against such apparently escapable suffering. Many arguments supporting the use of depth of anesthesia monitoring are based on cost savings, by reducing either the level of anesthesia or length of stay in the recovery room. No doubt these are welcome and important aspects of our practice, but if by changing practice there is even a slight increase in the possibility of awareness, the purpose will be defeated. The primary aim should therefore be to improve patient care, and if other benefits such as cost savings are achieved in doing so, they should be welcome.

With this perspective, it seems that there is a need to redefine the role of BIS monitoring as well as laying threshold values for BIS at various stages of cardiac anesthesia, such as incision, intubation, and sternotomy. According to a report of 617 patients, incidence of awareness during fast-track cardiac anesthesia has been 0.3% without the use of monitors of depth of anesthesia (17). To prove that the use of monitors of depth of anesthesia (BIS or AEPIndex) can reduce the incidence of awareness, a randomized controlled study of a large magnitude is necessary; 50,000 patients would be needed to show a significant reduction in incidence from 0.2% to 0.1% (3). Such a trial is not impossible and could be completed in 1 yr if 50 cardiac centers doing 1000 cardiac operations per year participate. The differences in the anesthetic techniques should not be a matter of concern, as the ideal monitor of depth of anesthesia is supposed to provide a single yardstick for measuring the performance of all anesthetics. http://louis1j1sheehan1esquire2.blogspot.com/
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
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Louis J Sheehan
Should we look for the reduction in the incidence of awareness that is statistically significant? Perhaps not, because the incidence of awareness should be reduced to as low a level as possible and any decrease should be considered clinically important because in the case of awareness there is always the risk of development of posttraumatic neurosis (6). What could be the acceptable financial repercussions of this philosophy? This can only be determined if we are able to define the acceptable price for patient comfort. Future work using BIS with various anesthetics and their combinations is necessary and we hope that a combined effort by a group of anesthesiologists, psychologists, and others will resolve some of the mysteries surrounding the subject.

For love, some would twist the laws of physics. Short of doing that, mantis shrimp communicate with the other sex by spinning light waves, biologists find. The feat seems to be unique to this animal.

Alone in the animal kingdom, mantis shrimp may use the physics phenomenon of circularly polarized light to signal their presence to—and to see—potential mates.

Light is made of electromagnetic waves. These are electric and magnetic fields that wiggle perpendicular to each other and to a light ray’s direction. Many invertebrates have sophisticated eyes that can detect wavelengths of light invisible to humans. Some, including bees, can also distinguish linearly polarized light. That’s when a light ray’s electric field wiggles not in varying directions, but rather in one precise direction that forms a right angle to the ray.

Researchers now show that mantis shrimp—which actually look more like small lobsters—can tell when light is circularly, rather than linearly, polarized. That means that the electric field twists like a corkscrew as the light ray moves. http://louis1j1sheehan.blog.ca/
The corkscrew can twist right or left—or, in biological terms, be right- or left-handed.

Roy Caldwell of the University of California, Berkeley, suspected that one species of mantis shrimp, Odontodactylus cultrifer, might be able to distinguish circular polarizations. Animals in this species, especially adult males, are rare. But 2 years ago, thanks to a tip from a crustacean enthusiast, Caldwell obtained a 4 inch-long adult male originally from Indonesia.

The shrimp had a fin with shades of red that looked more or less intense when seen through filters for right- or left-handed circular polarization. This trait was rare enough, but not unique in the animal kingdom. Caldwell’s collaborators at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) and the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia also took a closer look at the eyes of O. cultrifer and of two similar species to see whether the animals could distinguish between right- and left-handed polarization.

The researchers found that some of the eyes’ light-sensing cells doubled up as filters, explains Tom Cronin of UMBC. The cells have microscopic structures, like bristles of a toothbrush, that slightly slow light with electric fields parallel to the bristles, but not light with fields that are perpendicular. As a result, the twist of a circularly polarized wave will be flattened into a steady, linearly polarized wiggle, which another layer of sensory cells can then detect. Depending on their arrangement, bristled cells will select right- or left-handed polarization. This parsing enables mantis shrimp to distinguish the two types of light.

Meanwhile, the team trained mantis shrimp to feed from one of a few different tubes based on the circular polarization in the tubes’ reflected light. Results appear online in Current Biology.

Caldwell says the skill, unknown in other animals, most likely helps the shrimp find mates. “It’s the most private communication system imaginable,” he says. http://louis1j1sheehan.blog.ca/
“No other animal can see it.”

Hundreds of years ago in Japan, people offered thanks to the gods by sacrificing a horse or a pig. Horses and pigs, however, were valuable and expensive, so poor folks had a hard time expressing their gratitude. So they came up with a solution: Rather than sacrificing a horse, they would simply draw a painting of a horse on a wooden tablet and hang it in the temple.

Then someone, most likely an impoverished samurai, realized that horses and pigs were hardly the only thing that could be drawn on a tablet. He had the idea of painting something original, something beautiful, something creative. He offered mathematics.

This tablet was hung in the Kinshouzan shrine in the Gifu Prefecture in 1865. It shows 12 different geometric problems. The third problem from the right was presented by a 16-year-old girl.

Hundreds of beautifully painted, multi-colored wooden tablets showing problems and theorems of geometry have adorned Japanese temples. They are called “sangakus,” which simply means mathematical tablets. http://louisajasheehan.blogspot.com/
The text on the tablets is written in an ancient form of Chinese, which was the language of scholars, much like Latin in the West. Only in the past couple of decades have these tablets been translated into modern languages in significant numbers.

A Japanese mathematics teacher, Hidetoshi Fukagawa, has been finding, translating, and researching the tablets. This spring, Fukagawa and Tony Rothman of Princeton University will publish a complete history of sangaku, including photographs of many sangakus that have never before been seen outside of Japan.

“Sangakus are exceptional,” Rothman says. “They’re not only exceptionally beautiful, but the problems are often exceptionally difficult. And the solutions can be very clever. http://louisbjbsheehan.blogspot.com/
Some of the things they do to solve these problems would never have occurred to me.”

The sangakus were made during a period when Japan was mostly isolated from the outside world. The shogun leaders expelled all the foreign missionaries and forbade Japanese from leaving the country on pain of death in the early 1600s. The result was a kind of renaissance in Japan, with a flowering of unique cultural traditions like tea ceremonies, puppet theater, and woodblock prints.

At the same time, the shoguns persuaded the samurai warriors to lay down their weapons and become government functionaries. The pay, however, was low, so the samurai often moonlighted with other jobs. One of these outside jobs was to teach mathematics in the schools.

This tablet was created in 1814, but it was only discovered in 1994 when the temple it was in was about to be destroyed.

Isolated from the development of calculus taking place in the West, these mathematicians and their students created a kind of home-grown geometry with a uniquely Japanese character. Many of the problems were based on origami or folding fans, for example.

Here is an example of a sangaku problem. Take a circle and draw a polygon inside it, with each corner of the polygon on the circle. Choose one of the vertices of the polygon and connect lines from it to all the other vertices, dividing the polygon up into triangles. Within each one of those triangles, draw a circle that just touches each side of the triangle. The sum of the radii of those circles will be constant, no matter which vertex you chose.

One sangaku shows that the sum of the radii of the small circles in each of these drawings will be the same.

Most sangakus simply state the theorem and provide a diagram, but they don’t provide a proof, and this one is no exception. http://louisdjdsheehan.blogspot.com/
The most straightforward way to prove it relies on Carnot’s Theorem, which wasn’t proven in the West until 100 years after the sangaku was created.

Rothman believes that sangakus were not just religious offerings, but “acts of bravado and challenges to other people to solve the problem.” For example, one sangaku proclaims, “‘This answer is correct to 15 decimal places,’” Rothman says. “It’s kind of like, ‘top that if you can!’”

Starting around 1800, several collections of sangaku problems were made into books, including the solutions, so researchers know the original methods for many of the problems. But a couple of sangakus are unsolved to this day. “One of them results in an equation of the 1024th degree,” Rothman says. “A mathematician later got very famous for reducing it to a problem of the 10th degree, but that’s still way too big to solve. We have no idea how they did it.”

The Kaizu Tenma Shrine in the Shiga prefecture has a sangaku under the right eave which contains 30 problems. It’s 10 inches high and 17 feet long.

A few years ago Avishai Dekel gave up chess in favor of mud wrestling. Dekel is a cosmologist and he isn’t known to frequent strip clubs. http://louiscjcsheehan.blogspot.com/
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But there are two types of cosmologists: those who study fundamentals, like the initial conditions and content of the early universe, and those who immerse themselves in the messier problem of galaxy evolution, replete with gas and stars that heat and cool, form jets, make black holes, and sometimes explode.

A computer simulation models how matter may accumulate into large-scale structures, the beginnings of galaxy formation. Illustrated is a patch of the cosmos 100 million light-years across. Yellow lines trace the flow and grouping of matter as it moves toward the red, or densest area, and away from the black, or least dense area.
Martin Rees of the University of Cambridge in England calls the two classes of cosmologists chess players and mud wrestlers. Cosmology is “a fundamental science just as particle physics is,” says Rees. “The first million years [of the universe] is described by a few parameters … but the cosmic environment of galaxies and clusters is now messy and complex.”

Now that the chess players have established those basic parameters—such as the relative amounts of invisible dark matter, even-more mysterious dark energy, and ordinary matter—more cosmologists are turning to the mud. http://louisgjgsheehan.blogspot.com/

Recent surveys of the shapes, colors, and masses of galaxies have put a new focus on the nitty-gritty of galaxy formation.

“Now that we know the cosmological parameters, it’s really time to understand how galaxies form,” says Dekel, of The Hebrew University, Jerusalem. To do that, “we have to trace the gas,” not dark matter, because it’s the gas that forms stars. “That’s where the action is.” The physics of gas interactions, or gastrophysics, is much more complicated than that of dark matter. Gas molecules respond to a host of forces while dark matter is simple to model because it responds predominantly to just one force: gravity. Nonetheless, says Dekel, he is a recent convert to gastrophysics.

Through the 1980s and 1990s, Dekel spent most of his time trying to estimate the density of matter in the universe by mapping the velocities at which galaxies and matter move through the vast invisible reaches of dark matter. Although no one knows what dark matter is made of, it appears to constitute 85 percent of the mass of the universe. And simply because there’s so much of it, the stuff provides the gravitational scaffolding that pulls together ordinary gas-electrons, protons, atoms, and the like—to make stars and galaxies. http://louisijisheehan.blogspot.com/
http://louishjhsheehan.blogspot.com/The behavior of dark matter has thus been considered a reliable map for the path of galaxy formation.

Only a few narrow streams can penetrate through the hot medium to build a galactic disk at the center and form stars. The bigger the halo, the more likely it is to quench star formation because of such heating..

Every galaxy is nestled within a halo of cold dark matter, composed of exotic particles that move much slower than the speed of light. (This relatively slow pace is why this dark matter is dubbed “cold.”)

The halos start out small but continually merge to grow bigger, dictating that all structure in the universe should evolve in the same way, from little to big. The growing clumps of dark matter form the backbone of a cosmic web, with clusters and superclusters of galaxies falling into place along the densest filaments, like paint onto a dark canvas. On the largest scales in the universe, dark matter accounts amazingly well for galactic structure—where and how galaxies concentrate, says Piero Madau of the University of California, Santa Cruz.

But in 2003, Dekel and others became intrigued by a finding about galaxies that dark matter alone could not explain. Astronomers have known since the 1920s that the modern-day universe consists mainly of two galaxy types—young-looking, disk-shaped spirals like the Milky Way, and elderly, football-shaped ellipticals. Ellipticals have a reddish tinge—an indication that they are old and finished forming stars long ago—while spirals have a bluish tinge, a sign of recent star formation.

A few years ago, researchers found that in the universe today, these two populations divide sharply by weight (SN: 5/31/03, p. 341). An analysis of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, which has recorded about 1 million nearby galaxies of the northern sky, revealed that the “red and dead” ellipticals nearly always tip the scales at masses greater than the Milky Way, while the star-forming spirals fall below that weight. http://louiskjksheehan.blogspot.com/

Somehow, star birth was systematically and dramatically quenched in the big guys but proceeded unimpeded in the spiral small-fry.

The puzzle deepened in 2005 when Sandy Faber of the University of California, Santa Cruz, and her colleagues announced that they found the same galactic dichotomy when the universe was 7 billion years old, half its current age. Faber’s team used a spectrometer she designed for the Keck Observatory atop Hawaii’s Mauna Kea to measure the mass of distant galaxies, part of a survey of what composed the universe at 7 billion years. She reviewed the results of the survey, known as Deep-2, at the January meeting in Austin, Texas, of the American Astronomical Society.

At first glance, the dichotomy would seem to conflict with cold dark matter theory. A preponderance of “red and dead” massive galaxies early in the universe might indicate that halos can start out as giants and then break apart into smaller bodies, the opposite trend of what dark matter would produce.

Dekel and his colleagues, including Yuval Birnboim, now at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, in Cambridge, Mass., have an explanation that would fit with cold dark matter theory, but it requires combining gastrophysics with dark matter.

Gas pulled inside a dark-matter halo would normally fall into the center, where it would cool and grow dense enough to make stars. But as the universe ages, dark-matter halos merge and grow more massive, some becoming greater than about a trillion times the mass of the sun.

When a halo reaches this critical value, the stage is set for a galactic divide, according to Birnboim and Dekel. Their calculations and simulations show that the infalling gas rams into the relatively cold, stationary gas already at the halo’s center. The collision creates a long-lasting shock that heats the cold gas, causing it to exert a pressure. That pressure pushes on infalling gas, hurling the material back to the halo’s outskirts, where it remains like some exile in galactic Siberia, unable to coalesce and make stars. As long as the material in the central part of the halo maintains its outward pressure, the supply of fresh gas is choked off, and the galaxy can no longer make stars. http://louis1j1sheehan1esquire1.blogspot.com/

Louis J. Sheehan
Over time, the massive galaxy growing inside the halo’s center, once a hotbed of star birth, becomes red and dead.

Halos that remain less massive—and which therefore beget smaller galaxies—can’t forge such long-lasting shocks. Gas continues to stream unimpeded into the central region, enabling the birth of new generations of stars.

Simulations from several other groups, including those led by Dusan Keres, now at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics; Darren Croton, now at the University of California, Berkeley; Richard Bower of Durham University in England; and Andrea Cattaneo, now at the University of Potsdam in Germany, have come up with similar findings.

“The idea is that big, central galaxies are quenched before [the universe is 7 billion years old] because they are in massive halos … while smaller galaxies are quenched later, if at all, when their parent halos reach the critical mass,” says Dekel.

One remaining puzzle, notes Dekel, is how gas within the center of a massive halo can maintain, for up to 10 billion years of cosmic history, the outward pressure that keeps new gas at bay in the outer halo. He calculates that the pressure might last for only one-tenth that time. Some other source must keep star birth from turning back on.

YOUNG AND OLD. The young spiral galaxy NGC 300, located about 7 million light-years from Earth, is brimming with newborn stars in this combined ultraviolet- and visible-light snapshot. In contrast, the more mature elliptical galaxy NGC 1312, some 62 million light-years distant, is more quiescent.

Again delving into gastrophysics, he and other researchers point to the unusual role that black holes may play in staving off star birth in massive galaxies. Researchers now believe that every massive galaxy houses a central, heavyweight black hole, and that these gravitational monsters wield influence far beyond their immediate surroundings.

Packing the equivalent of millions to billions of suns into a volume no bigger than our solar system, black holes don’t just pull matter in. Energy from the gas and stars spiraling into the hole also creates jets of matter that blast back out a million light-years from the center. In this way, a black hole could act to regulate or even switch off star formation, Dekel says.

Moreover, researchers have found that black holes at galactic centers grow in lockstep with the mass of stars in that galaxy’s hub: The holes always seem to be one five-hundredth the mass of those stars. That prescription means that the most massive galaxies house the heaviest black holes—exactly the ones that are most likely to have jets strong enough to interrupt star formation.

“What’s truly amazing is how tight the correlation seems to be” between the mass of a central black hole and a surrounding galaxy, says Tim Heckman of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. “I don’t think prior to 10 years ago you would have found one astronomer in one thousand that thought black holes had some fundamental part in the formation of galaxies. We still don’t know whether a black hole dictates the formation of a galaxy or the other way around.”

Dekel and Birnboim, along with Jerry Ostriker of Princeton University, recently began entertaining the idea that black holes might not be needed to explain the galactic divide after all. http://louis1j1sheehan1esquire2.blogspot.com/
http://louis9j9sheehan9esquire.blogspot.com/According to their calculations, the heat produced by gas falling into the centers of massive dark-matter halos might be enough to quench the supply of cold, star-forming gas.

A new study goes further back in time than ever before to probe the difference between galaxy types.

Using distant quasars as searchlights, a team led by Art Wolfe of the University of California, San Diego, says its search may have reached back to the era when massive galaxies were still forming stars, before the death knell sounded for these heavyweights.

WELCOME TO THE WEB. The varying density of gas is related to the evolution of structure in the universe and the formation of galaxies. Gas density is shown (increasing with brightness) along with temperature (increasing from blue to red in color). Yellow circles indicate black holes (higher masses indicated by longer diameters). The left image models the universe at about 450 million years after the Big Bang. The early universe still shows a relatively uniform structure. At about 6 billion years (right), the universe has many black holes and a more filamentary structure.

During their 5-year study, Wolfe and his colleagues, including Jason Prochaska of the University of California, Santa Cruz, used spectrometers at the Keck Observatory to study star formation in 143 dense gas clouds, each pierced by radiation from a different quasar. Astronomers generally agree that these clouds, known as damped Lyman-alpha systems, are the likely predecessors of modern-day galaxies. They reveal what those galaxies were like when the universe was only about 2 billion years old.

To assess the star-formation rate in the clouds, the team homed in on the abundance of carbon atoms stripped of a single electron. http://louis2j2sheehan2esquire.blogspot.com/
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Newborn stars readily excite these carbon ions. The higher their abundance, the higher the star formation rate.

The team used spectra of another ion, silicon stripped of one electron, to indicate the masses of the dark-matter halos in which the dense clouds reside.

To the surprise of the researchers, the study revealed that star birth was highest in those clouds that lie within the heaviest dark-matter halos. Those clouds are the likely progenitors of the most massive galaxies today, the team says in an upcoming Astrophysical Journal.

That scenario contrasts with the current universe, “where [massive galaxies] exhibit little, if any, star formation,” says Wolfe. “But that’s just what the Dekel-Birnboim model predicts. That far back [in time], the high-mass galaxies are still forming stars at a high rate.” Moreover, observations of distant galaxies by several researchers, including Chuck Steidel of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, also show that star formation once proceeded at a feverish rate in massive galaxies.

“We go back far enough to see the star-forming phase of the high-mass systems,” says Wolfe. It’s only later, he notes, that star birth shuts down in the high-mass systems, a victim of overheated gas and possible interference by monster black holes.

Dekel, in the meantime, says he hasn’t entirely abandoned his interest in investigating the fundamental properties of the universe. It’s just that the evolution of galaxies provides such a messy, and thus intriguing, canvas for testing his ideas. “I see myself as a chess player who has waded into the mud,” he notes. “And that’s where all the fun is.”

Modern genetics produced a paradox: The more we learn how much DNA we share, the more we are intrigued by the minor biochemical variations that set us each apart — and with good reason.

Tiny differences in genes we have in common make some of us more vulnerable to breast cancer, alcoholism or infections, researchers recently reported. Other variations in genes we share make some of us more resistant to chemotherapy or treatments for heart disease and hypertension.

Any one of 11 variations in a single gene, for another example, can make it harder for commonly prescribed antidepressants to temper our moods, researchers at Munich’s Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry reported in January in Neuron. Any one of nine variations in another gene may double the risk of lupus, University of Alabama scientists said.

Many of these fractional hereditary distinctions are random effects of chance at play. (Any two people are more than 99% the same at the genetic level.) http://louis3j3sheehan3esquire.blogspot.com/
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Broadly speaking, they also arise from the ancient history recorded in the genetic autobiography that we carry in our cells, coded there in billions of characters of DNA. The human genome is a biomedical narrative of migration, disease, conquest and trade. It has been accumulating plot twists and changes since small clans first moved out of East Africa to settle the world tens of thousands of years ago.

In the most detailed look yet at global human variation, two independent research teams — one led by scientists at Stanford University and the other by scientists at the University of Michigan — recently analyzed more than half a million genetic markers across hundreds of people from 51 ethnic groups on five continents. Melding medical genetics and population genomics, they probed kinship, diversity and the underpinnings of disease. “We are tying together what we know about human history with what we see in the human genome,” said University of Utah anthropologist Henry Harpending.

New research in that effort reveals, for example, that Americans of European descent carry more potentially harmful genetic variations than do African-Americans, Cornell University computational biologist Carlos Bustamante and his colleagues reported last month in Nature.

The researchers concluded that this pattern of variation was the legacy of humanity’s first forays into prehistoric Europe, when the venturesome probably numbered a few thousand or less. The hereditary flaws carried by these forebears then became widespread as their descendants expanded into a population of millions.

This year, new studies of human genetic variation around the world have produced genome data nearly 100 times more detailed than previous global assessments, yielding insights into how humanity’s early migrations out of Africa affect us all today.
In Nature, researchers at the University of Michigan last month reported their analysis of more than 500,000 DNA markers occurring across 29 populations on five continents.
In Science, scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine reported last month on 650,000 genetic markers measured across 51 population groups worldwide. http://louis4j4sheehan4esquire.blogspot.com/
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The effect of migration from Africa to Europe can still be seen in the genes of Europeans today, Cornell University researchers reported last month in Nature.
Differences in gene expression between Europeans and Africans affects responses to medications and to infections, University of Chicago researchers reported earlier this month in the American Journal of Human Genetics.
In January, scientists in England, China and the U.S. launched the 1,000 Genomes Project to seek more detailed information about human genetic variation by sequencing the genomes of at least 1,000 people around the world.

Dr. Bustamante compared 10,000 genes shared by 15 African-Americans and 20 European-Americans and found nearly 40,000 individual differences in which a gene’s smallest structural unit — a single DNA base pair — had been altered. Half of them had no measurable effect. Everyone harbors some potentially harmful variations, but, overall, the European-Americans had a higher percentage of those that could be deleterious.

“You cannot say anything at the individual level on the basis of this data,” Dr. Bustamante cautioned. “No one person’s genome is any healthier or better or more fit in an evolutionary sense than any other individual’s.”

Hundreds of genes also behave slightly differently in families of European descent than they do in families of African ancestry, especially those genes involved in producing antibodies and other fundamental cell functions, University of Chicago medical researchers reported this month in the American Journal of Human Genetics.

The Chicago scientists analyzed gene variations to learn why some people are more sensitive than others to the toxic side effects of chemotherapy. http://louis6j6sheehan6esquire.blogspot.com/
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They compared 9,156 genes in 30 Caucasian families in Utah with those in 30 Yoruban families from Ibadan, Nigeria.

All told, they found that 156 shared genes were more active among those of European heritage, while 254 other shared genes were more active among those of African ancestry. No one knows yet what, if anything, the minor variations in levels of gene activity mean medically or if they affect chemotherapy, said Chicago pharmaco-genomics expert Eileen Dolan.

In each instance, “we are comparing the same exact gene in both populations,” she said. “The differences are subtle, not dramatic.”

To delve even more deeply into human variation, scientists in the U.S., England and China in January launched a $50 million effort to catalog in exhaustive detail the DNA of at least a thousand people from around the world. They expect the 1000 Genomes Project, as they call it, to produce 60 times as much genetic sequence data in three years than has been released in all of the last quarter century.

Researchers hope it may help them tailor more effective medical treatments.

Human variation, however, may be more than medicine can easily master. http://louis8j8sheehan8esquire.blogspot.com/
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Researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston reported last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that even crucial genetic mutations in cancer cells, for example, may be different in every patient.

Within hours of President Kennedy’s assassination on Nov. 22, 1963, the CIA had established that Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged killer, had met with Cuban officials at the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City eight weeks before. The CIA had also established that, four weeks after the meeting, Havana had approved a visa for Oswald, even though it normally did not grant visas to American citizens. At the time, Oswald was working under the alias “O.H. Lee” at the Texas Book Depository in Dallas.

Such facts obviously point toward the sinister possibility of foreign involvement in the Kennedy assassination — Cuban involvement. That two CIA sources independently reported seeing a Cuban official giving money to Oswald at Cuba’s embassy in Mexico City only adds force to the possibility. And Fidel Castro himself had said, in the summer of 1963, that if American leaders continued “aiding plans to eliminate Cuban leaders . . . they themselves will not be safe.” As CIA officials knew, such U.S. “plans” — i.e., the CIA’s efforts to assassinate Castro — had continued up to the day of the Kennedy assassination.

So when the Mexican federal police, after the Kennedy assassination, arrested a female employee of the Cuban Consulate who had been in contact with Oswald, the CIA suggested that the Mexicans hold her incommunicado. http://louis1j1sheehan1.blogspot.com/
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The agency also suggested that they ask her such questions as: “Was the assassination of President Kennedy planned by Fidel Castro . . . and were the final details worked out inside the Cuban Embassy?” Thomas Mann, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, alerted Washington that there might be an indictable case against Cuban officials.

Little wonder, then, that the Warren Commission — put together within days of Kennedy’s death to investigate the assassination — asked the CIA to provide it with everything the agency had regarding Oswald’s activities in Mexico. The commission dispatched its top staff members to Mexico to meet with Ambassador Mann and Winston Scott, the CIA’s station chief there. But nothing ever came of this Cuban connection. As we know, the Warren Commision, in its final report, determined that Oswald acted alone. What happened?

For one thing, the CIA had changed its tune by the time the Warren Commission staff members got to Mexico. The agency now claimed that it had learned of Oswald’s activities in Mexico long after the assassination, by way of the FBI, and that stories about a Cuban official giving money to Oswald did not hold up. The Warren Commission concluded that there was no credible evidence of Cuban involvement.

Years later, thanks to congressional investigations, it emerged that the CIA had not been forthcoming with the Warren Commission about what it knew of Oswald’s Mexican activities. Jefferson Morley’s “Our Man in Mexico” brilliantly explores the mystery of this reticence. http://louis3j3sheehan3.blogspot.com/
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Though Mr. Morley is a dogged investigative reporter, he has not discovered any jaw-dropping evidence that will change forever the way we think about the Kennedy assassination, but he uncovers enough new material, and theorizes with such verve, that “Our Man in Mexico” will go down as one of the more provocative titles in the ever-growing library of Kennedy-assassination studies.

The book begins as a straightforward biography of Winston Scott, the CIA station chief in Mexico City in the early 1960s. It is an enthralling account of Scott’s career as one of America’s most accomplished spy masters. Mr. Morley memorably depicts not only Scott’s espionage exploits, from London in World War II to Mexico City at the height of the Cold War, but also his complicated love life and his ambitions as a poet.

“Our Man in Mexico” moves onto murkier ground as it explores Oswald’s movements in Mexico City during Scott’s tenure there. But Mr. Morley has succeeded in ferreting out a wealth of CIA documents that reveal lapses, misreporting and destroyed evidence. He maintains that the CIA once possessed photographs of Oswald entering the Cuban Embassy and audiotapes of wiretaps that picked up Oswald’s conversations with Cuban officials. The evidence is missing, he says; in fact, the disappearance of so much material has led him to conclude that Scott “perpetrated a wide-ranging coverup of CIA operations around Oswald.” But why would Scott have done it?

Mr. Morley advances the theory that the CIA had to cover up an “operation” of its own that employed Oswald. While that theory might explain the holes in the record he encountered, Mr. Morley offers no evidence that such an operation ever existed. Instead he resorts to dredging up the “tantalizing” outline for a proposed novel by an ex-CIA officer in which a character working for the CIA recruits Oswald to assassinate Castro. Using fiction to make a factual argument is dubious enough, but what makes this exercise particularly absurd is the identity of the aspiring novelist: David Atlee Phillips, who testified repeatedly under oath to Congress that he did not know of any CIA plots involving Oswald.

There are, of course, more mundane explanations for the gaps in the CIA’s surveillance of Oswald. Consider, for example, the agency’s inability to produce photographs of Oswald entering the Cuban diplomatic compound in late September 1963, when eyewitnesses attested to his presence there. http://louis2j2sheehan2esquire2.blogspot.com/
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Mr. Morley shows that if Oswald used the public entrance to the embassy, he almost certainly would have been photographed by the CIA. So he concludes the CIA hid the evidence.

But what if Oswald had entered through the embassy’s back garage, which was not covered by the CIA camera? As it turns out, two other investigators, Wilfried Huismann and Gus Russo, researching for their documentary “Rendezvous With Death,” tracked down the guard who was on duty at the garage back then. He recalled seeing Oswald in the garage, explaining that he would have noted the outsider’s presence since Oswald was accompanied by a Cuban intelligence officer.

Winston Scott was naturally aware that the CIA’s surveillance cameras could be avoided by using the embassy’s nonpublic entrances. After the assassination, why didn’t he investigate the reasons behind such limited observation of the site at a time when Oswald was being tracked? My own guess is that Scott realized that a consensus had been reached in Washington according to which Oswald had acted alone, without foreign assistance; in short, there was no need to pursue that avenue of inquiry. He probably also realized that opening up the Cuban angle would lead to embarrassing revelations about the CIA’s earlier operations against Castro. In other words, he acted like a bureaucrat by protecting the government’s secrets.

As with so many of the tangents in the history of the Kennedy assassination, the record of Oswald’s activities in Mexico City is so spotty that we likely will never know what really happened there and can only speculate. http://louisjsheehan.blogspot.com/
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Scott supposedly wrote a memoir in which he refuted the Warren Commission’s conclusions. But shortly after he died in 1971, the manuscript disappeared — at the instruction, Mr. Morley suggests, of CIA Director Richard Helms. Maybe it will surface one day.

Former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon still lies comatose at the Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer where he remains hospitalized. Tuesday marks the former leader’s 80th birthday, and his family plans to mark the day with a symbolic token gift, but little more.

Aside from Sharon’s failing health, the Sharon family finds itself hit with more bad news on the former prime minister’s birthday.

Last week, the Jerusalem Supreme Court denied an appeal by former Knesset Member Omri Sharon, son of the former prime minister, thus not overturning his 2006 conviction for falsifying corporate records and campaign financing offenses.

Sharon is to start serving his seven-month prison sentences for these offenses this week, as well as paying a NIS 300,000 (about $80,000) fine.

Ariel Sharon was hospitalized on January 4, 2006, following a major stroke, and has remained in a coma ever since.

First signs of medical trouble already appeared in December 2006 , when Sharon suffered a minor stroke and was rushed to Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital in Jerusalem. The former prime minister was hospitalized and kept for testing for several days.

Sharon’s doctors held a press conference several days later, in which they announced that tests revealed that the former prime minister had a congenital heart defect that was the likely reason for his stroke. Sharon was to undergo angioplasty several weeks later, but insisted on going home to recuperate in his Sycamore Ranch home in southern Israel instead of staying for observation at the Jerusalem hospital.

The angioplasty on the former PM was scheduled for January 5, 2006. A few days beforehand, however, Sharon felt ill and was rushed to Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital in Jerusalem once again. This, even though Soroka University Medical Center in Be’er Sheva was closer to Sharon’s southern Israel home. Aides reasoned that the Jerusalem hospital was more familiar with Sharon’s medical history, and could better care for him.

Sharon was rushed into surgery at the Jerusalem hospital following a massive bleed into his brain. Surgeons worked tirelessly for seven whole hours to repair the bleed, and save the former prime minister’s life. http://louis6j6sheehan.blogspot.com/
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Sharon had to undergo two additional surgeries and numerous CT scans, but ultimately his condition stabilized. He never regained consciousness, and despite doctor’s efforts to awaken his gradually, remained comatose.

In February 2006, Sharon experienced further health woes, and had to undergo four hours of surgery to repair an ischemic bowel.

Five months after his debilitating stroke he was transferred to the respiratory rehabilitation unit at the Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer, where he will spend his 80th birthday.

Comic books have never really been respected as an art form by the general public.

That being said, it might nevertheless surprise some folks to know that there was a time when comics were seen not only as kiddie fare but as harmful, vile, mind-alteringly dangerous kiddie fare.

That history is recounted in David Hajdu’s excellent new book, “The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic Book Scare and How It Changed America.” http://louis4j4sheehan.blogspot.com/
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Hajdu provides a captivating, insightful and detailed look at how American parents in the 1950s became convinced that the crime, horror and romance comics their kids were devouring would turn them into sociopaths.

He builds his history slowly, taking readers through a basic history of how the medium took shape in America and describing how artists such as Charles Biro and publishers such as EC’s Bill Gaines saw a way to sell books by offering lurid, pulpy stories of criminals, killers, vampires and other monsters.

Parents, psychiatrists and other do-gooders, led by one Dr. Fredric Wertham, whose book “Seduction of the Innocent” accused the industry of being little more than Nazis, feared such material would lead to antisocial behavior.

They began a pogrom of attacks in the media, attempts at censorship through legislation and book burnings in towns, all of which Hajdu recounts with flair.

While Hajdu makes it clear what side he’s on, he nevertheless is careful not to portray the comics industry as being rife with innocents.

He chastises certain people for their naivete and greed, not to mention disregard for seeing their books as anything other than product.

It all came to a somewhat literal head during a congressional hearing in which Gaines, high on diet pills, was asked whether a cover depicting a severed woman’s head could be in “good taste,” Hajdu said.

His answer inadvertently led to the Comics Code, a self-policing organization that proceeded to violently neuter every book on the stands.

Comics quickly lost whatever cultural cache they had and more than 800 talented people lost their jobs as companies folded.

Only Gaines managed to salvage through, taking his humor comic, Mad, and turning it into a 25-cent magazine that still thumbs its nose at popular culture today.

Hajdu’s central conceit is that the comic book was the opening salvo in baby boomer culture wars. He makes a strong point.

The kids who read “Crime Does Not Pay,” after all, would go on to discover rock ‘n’ roll, grow out their hair and protest the Vietnam War.

And yet this sort of cultural battle has occurred throughout history.

People freaked out about the waltz, for example, when it was introduced in the 18th century, calling it vulgar and sinful.

To those who think such censorship scares could never happen in today’s enlightened times, I only ask you to consider the pillorying video games receive today from such upstanding moral folk as Sens. Hillary Clinton and Joe Lieberman.

‘Comic Book Comics’:

If you prefer to have your comic book history told in a more … well, comic book fashion, then perhaps you should pick up a copy of the oddly titled “Comic Book Comics.”

Having explored the lives of deep thinkers such as Nietzsche and Kant in their previous series, “Action Philosophers,” writer Fred van Lente and artist Ryan Dunlavey decided to take on the convoluted and at times controversial history of the comics industry.

“We realized we couldn’t keep [”Philosophers”] going on forever. We were running out of thinkers,” van Lente said during a recent interview. http://louis1j1sheehan.blogspot.com/
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“The one thing we could be certain all comic fans like are comics.”

“Comics” takes a more linear approach than “Philosophers,” starting with the appearance of the Yellow Kid in newspaper pages in 1896, then hurtling forward to the birth of the comic book and animated cartoon while touching on important figures such as Will Eisner, Jack Kirby, Walt Disney and Max Fleischer.

There won’t be any resting on laurels however.

Holy Haleakala! Yesterday, a gamma-ray burst went off that was so bright that had you been looking at the right spot in the sky you could have seen it with just your own eyes!

It’s difficult to put this into the proper context. GRBs are monumental explosions, the exploding of a massive star where most of the energy of the catastrophe is channeled into twin beams of energy. http://members.greenpeace.org/blog/purposeforporpoise
These beams scream out from the explosion like cosmic blowtorches, and for thousands of light years anything they touch is destroyed. Happily for us, GRBs always appear hundreds of millions or billions of light years away.
Let me put this in perspective for you. Imagine a one megaton nuclear weapon detonating. That’s roughly 50 times the explosive yield of the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. Devastating.
The Sun, every second of every day of every year, gives off 100 billion times this much energy. That’s every second. A star is a terrifying object.
In the few seconds that a gamma-ray burst lasts, it packs a million million million times that much energy into its beams. In other words, for those few ticks of a clock the GRB is sending out more energy than the Sun will in its entire lifetime.
There is, quite simply, no way to exaggerate the devastation of a gamma-ray burst.
Yet for all that, they are optically faint due to their terrible distance. At billions of light years away, even the Universe’s second biggest bangs are difficult to see.
So that’s what makes GRB 080319B (the second GRB seen on 2008 March 19) so incredible: distance measurements put it at 7.5 billion light years away, yet it was visible to the unaided eye had you just happened to be looking up at the sky at that moment.
Whoa.
This is the single brightest GRB ever seen in optical light, so as you can imagine reports are pouring in from observatories all over the world right now. Anything this bright must be extraordinary, and you can bet that astronomers will be falling over themselves to observe this incredible event. http://Louis2J2Sheehan2Esquire.US
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We still don’t know enough about GRBS; just what mechanisms focus those beams? We know black holes are at their core, powering these events, but how do the gravity and magnetic fields come together to generate forces like this? How tightly focused are the beams? Do they open at a one degree angle? 5? 10? Why does every GRB behave somewhat differently, with some lasting for seconds and others for minutes?
And why was this one so frakkin’ bright? Was it a more energetic explosion itself, or were we, by coincidence, looking precisely down the center of the beam? If the beam of a GRB is pointed ever-so-slightly away from us, so that the edge nicks us, the GRB will look fainter. By staring down the throat of a GRB we’d see it as bright as it could possibly be. Maybe GRB080319B had us dead in its sights.
Watching the extremes of GRB behavior can help us constrain the more normal aspects of them… if you can even use the word “normal” when it comes to such titanic explosions on these scales. There is a fascination we humans have with such terrible events, an atavistic thrill even when our puny brains can’t comprehend the size and scale of them.
If you want to know what my nightmares look like, then GRBs are a good place to start. http://louis-j-sheehan.net/page1.aspx
I’m just glad there (most likely) aren’t any stars nearby that can do this. I like GRBs… when they’re far, far away.

A startling result from the Cassini mission has just been announced: Titan, Saturn’s giant moon, may have an ocean of water and ammonia under its surface.

The Cassini probe does more than return hauntingly beautiful images. It is equipped with a sort of radar that allows it to map the topographical features of Saturn’s moons. This allows scientists to make accurate studies of the moons’ surfaces, including that of Titan. This in turn gives scientists an excellent set of landmarks, allowing them to study physical characteristics of the moons, including their rotation period.
Titan’s period is well-studied, and Cassini has visited Titan many times. Astronomers used the known landmarks and rotation period of Titan to predict what they will see with each visit… and they found landmarks like lakes and mountains that were far afield of where they were expected, as much as 30 kilometers (19 miles). A solid body will rotate as such, making these features very predictable. If the landmarks weren’t where they should be, then it must mean that Titan isn’t a solid body.
The more detailed story is that the crust, the surface layer of the moon must be decoupled, separate, from the interior. The only way for that to be is for there to exist a liquid layer between the surface and the core. Titan is far too cold and is comprised of the wrong material to have a hot mantle like the Earth does. Instead, scientists think it has an ocean 100 km below its frozen surface. Given the composition of the surface and the known density of Titan, they suspect it is made of liquid water and ammonia. The crust floats over this chilly liquid, and as winds blow on the surface the crust drifts, causing the predictions of landmark locations to be off.
The surface of Titan is loaded with what we call simple organic molecules: ethane, methane, and more. It is shocking, to say the least, to consider what would happen when you mix liquid water and organic compounds. Could there be life swimming deep under the surface of that planet-sized moon?
At the moment — and for the foreseeable future — there is no way to know. The ocean, if it exists, has not yet been confirmed, so we don’t want to put the cart before the horse. A lot of hard work lies ahead for those who study this distant world — seasonal variations in the positions of Titan’s landmarks would indicate that it is indeed the atmosphere blowing over the surface that is changing the rotation of the crust itself, and that in turn would give much credence to the idea of an underground ocean.
If this does pan out, then we will have to add yet another object in our solar system to the short list of worlds where liquid water can and does exist. And given the near-certainty of liquid water below the surface of Enceladus, Saturn will be able to proudly claim at least two them.

Athletes who take human growth hormone may not be getting the boost they expected.

While growth hormone adds some muscle, it doesn’t appear to improve strength or exercise capacity, according to a review of studies that tested the hormone in mostly athletic young men.

“It doesn’t look like it helps, and there’s a hint of evidence it may worsen athletic performance,” said Hau Liu, of Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in San Jose, Calif., who was lead author of the review.
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Growth hormone, or HGH, is among the performance enhancers baseball stars Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte were accused of taking in Sen. George Mitchell’s report. Mr. Clemens denies using the hormone, while Mr. Pettitte admits using it.

The new research has some limitations and sheds no light on long-term use of HGH. The scientists note their analysis included few studies that measured performance. The tests also probably don’t reflect the dose and frequency practiced by athletes illegally using the hormone.

Dr. Liu and his colleagues at Stanford University sought to find out if growth hormone could improve performance. They looked for the best published tests, those comparing participants who got the hormone to those who didn’t get the treatment.

They analyzed 27 studies involving 440 participants. The results were released yesterday by the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Researchers found that those who got the hormone put on about five pounds more of muscle and lost about two pounds more of fat, although the fat loss wasn’t statistically different. The researchers said some of the extra body mass could be fluid buildup.

There was no difference found in strength or exercise stamina between the two groups, but there were only two strength studies and eight that measured exercise.

These days, people really are taking coals to Newcastle.

That flow is part of a vast reorganization of the global coal trade that is making the United States a major exporter for the first time in years — and helping to drive up domestic prices of the one fossil fuel the nation has in abundance.

Coal has long been a cheap and plentiful fuel source for utilities and their customers, helping to keep American electric bills relatively low.

But rising worldwide demand is turning American coal into another hot global commodity, with domestic buyers having to compete with buyers from countries like Germany and Japan.

Environmental concerns have forced some American utilities to cut back on plans for coal-burning power plants.

Nonetheless, spot prices for two benchmark American grades of coal, from central Appalachia and the Powder River Basin of Wyoming, have been rising, with occasional dips, since last spring.

They eased in recent days but are still up by 93 percent and 64 percent, respectively, in the last year, according to figures from Doyle Trading Consultants and Evolution Markets.

How high prices will go, and how quickly the increases will be passed along to electricity customers, remains to be seen.

American utility companies buy almost all their coal on long-term contracts, locking in prices for several years.

But as those contracts come up for renewal, price increases are likely, analysts said.

“Watch out, consumer,” said David M. Khani, a coal analyst at Friedman, Billings, Ramsey Group. http://louis-j-sheehan-esquire.us/page1.aspx

“You’re probably going to see accelerating electricity prices in 2009, 2010 and 2011.”

Coal and utility executives predict that coal will remain the most economical fuel in years to come. But they concede that any significant rise could have an important inflationary impact since coal is used to produce about half the nation’s electric power, and coal is also vital in steel production.

For coal producers, the new demand abroad is good news at a time when coal is under political attack at home. More than 50 proposed coal-fired power plants were delayed or canceled over the last year because of concerns over greenhouse gas emissions.

“This export boom right now is the difference between slow growth in our markets and hyper-expansion in our markets,” said Gregory H. Boyce, chairman and chief executive of Peabody Energy, the world’s largest private coal company. “You have two billion-plus people looking for a better standard of living. The world is energy-short and the U.S. coal sector is beginning to fill that gap.”

Many environmental groups see the rising global trade as an ominous development, however, since it promises to confound efforts to limit global emissions. http://louis-j-sheehan-esquire.us/
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World consumption of coal has increased in recent years by more than 4 percent annually, a major reason that emissions of carbon dioxide are going up, not down. Carbon dioxide is the principal gas implicated in global warming.

“Any rise in coal use around the world is bad news for the environment,” said Alice McKeown, who works on coal issues for the Sierra Club. “The U.S. needs to be a leader on global warming, and increasing our coal exports is moving in the wrong direction.”

The United States will export 7 or 8 percent of its coal production this year, up from about 5 percent last year, industry leaders predicted in interviews. Because of higher prices, the value of coal exports should double, to $3.75 billion.

United States exports of coal grew from 49 million tons in 2006 to about nearly 59 million tons in 2007, according to coal industry statistics, while domestic production increased by 1 percent. Coal executives say they expect exports to reach 80 million tons this year, and with railroad and port improvements, to rise to as much as 120 million tons in the next few years.

“There’s no question that the incremental rise in exports this year has driven the prices up,” said Charles E. Zebula, senior vice president for fuel supply at American Electric Power, one of the country’s largest utilities.

Simultaneously, imports of coal are decreasing gradually as producers in Colombia and Venezuela turn to markets other than the United States for higher prices. http://louis1j1sheehan1esquire.us/page1.aspx
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The shifts are further tightening supplies of coal in the eastern United States, where stiffening regulations and various mine closings have limited output in recent years.

“U.S. coal producers are trying as much as possible to ship coal to the highest bidder, and in many cases that means Europe,” said Gordon Howald, a coal analyst at Calyon Securities. “The once-stodgy coal industry has become an exciting global commodity.”

Great Britain, the country that used its vast coal stocks to pioneer industrial development in the 18th century, has become a major coal importer in recent years, its own industry moribund. With Newcastle-upon-Tyne once being the center of a rich English coal region, the phrase “hauling coals to Newcastle” was a cliché describing an absurd economic proposition.

Nowadays, however, coal arrives regularly at the Port of Tyne from suppliers in the Baltic and South America. American coal goes to other English ports at rising rates; figures from the Commerce Department show that in 2007, United States steam coal exports to the United Kingdom increased by 53 percent and coking coal, used in steel-making, by 20 percent, compared to the previous year.

The boom in coal exports is partially linked to a falling dollar, which makes American coal cheaper on world markets. But there are deeper, longer-term reasons for the world to turn to the United States, which has 27 percent of the world’s coal reserves, more than any country.

As it continues a building spree for coal-fired power plants, China is consuming so much coal that its ability to export is diminishing rapidly; it is expected to become a net importer. Other exporters like South Africa, Indonesia and Vietnam are cutting back for a variety of reasons, including growing domestic needs and local power shortages. Recent flooding in Australia has cut exports, at least temporarily, while an earthquake closed a major mine in Germany.

Meanwhile India is building huge coal plants that will require growing imports, while Russia is using more and more coal to make natural gas available for export.

As a result the pattern of world shipments for coal used for metallurgical and energy purposes is shifting. South Africa and other exporting nations that used to export to Europe are turning to Asia, where coal prices are higher, leaving European markets open for American exports. American coal is making its way to England, Spain, Japan and other countries that traditionally looked elsewhere.

The increase expected this year will make the United States a major global exporter for the first time since the early 1990s. http://louis-j-sheehan.org/page1.aspx
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For years, low-cost producers in Australia, China and other countries grabbed the bulk of the international coal trade. But now the United States is becoming a low-cost producer, in part because the euro and other currencies have gained so much value in relation to the dollar.

In the United States, plans to build new coal-fired plants are being shelved, and bankers are scrutinizing new projects because of uncertainties over future costs of carbon dioxide emissions. Both Democratic and Republican presidential candidates say they favor legislation to control global warming, which would presumably limit such emissions.

As the coal industry sees it, exports could be crucial if the American market starts to shrink. Coal executives are talking about upgrading mines, rail and port facilities to meet increasing world demand.

Just within the last couple of months, Peabody began sending coal from Wyoming to Europe, first by rail to the Mississippi River, then by vessel through the Gulf of Mexico. And for the first time in a decade, the company is shipping coal to Japan from the California coast.

“As U.S. coal demand is constrained because of increasing environmental regulation, coal production in the United States will increasingly go toward overseas buyers,” Chris Ruppel, an energy analyst at Execution, a brokerage and research firm, predicted.

The rise in coal prices has so far been invisible to most American consumers because price increases have yet to hit most utilities.

American Electric Power said it had contracted for more than 90 percent of its coal for 2008 before recent price increases. The company said it expects to spend 13 percent more for coal this year than last, after spending about 5 percent more in 2007 compared with 2006.

“We’re not going to see the spot market price in the customer’s bill today,” Mr. Zebula said. “But clearly the price of the good has gone up and will increase over time.”

Already, there are some signs of rising prices. Appalachian Power and Wheeling Power, both American Electric Power subsidiaries, on Feb. 29 filed papers seeking approval in West Virginia for a 17 percent increase in revenues, mainly to pay for costlier coal. http://louis-j-sheehan.com/page1.aspx
If the request is approved, a residential customer using 1,000 kilowatt hours a month would see his bill increase from $64.55 to $73.94, starting in July.

Kenneth B. Medlock, an energy analyst at Rice University, predicted many more electricity consumers will begin to feel the coal price spike over the next year, particularly in states most dependent on coal, like Kentucky, Illinois and Ohio.

“Their power bill is going to go up, but it also will start to affect the prices of goods they buy at the grocery store,” he added.

The dispute over the “little people” of Flores continues, unabated.

The bones and a single skull of these “little people” are believed to be remains of a separate species of the human family that lived about 18,000 years ago on an island in Indonesia, as the scientists who made the sensational discovery concluded in 2004.

But persistent skeptics have contended in a recent flurry of scientific reports that they were nothing more than modern humans with unusually small bodies possibly malformed by genetic or pathological disorders. http://louis-j-sheehan.biz/page1.aspx
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Neither side is backing off in this sometimes bitter row, which intensified last week with the announcement of the discovery that in Palau, in the Western Caroline Islands of Micronesia, other abnormally small-bodied people had lived long ago. Their bones were found in two caves and described in the online journal PloS One.

Lee Berger, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and his colleagues said the Palauan bones, representing at least 25 individuals, were from modern humans about four feet tall, close in size to some pygmies living in this region of the Pacific. Populations on isolated islands with limited resources often evolve short statures.

The Palauan specimens shared facial, chin and dental traits with the Flores people, the scientists said, but had larger braincases “possibly at the very low end or below that typically observed in modern, small-bodied humans.”

For these and other reasons, the scientists say, these Palauan people, who lived from 1,400 to 3,000 years ago, suggest the possibility that the Flores people were not a distinct species, designated Homo floresiensis, but “simply an island adapted population of Homo sapiens, perhaps with some individuals expressing congenital abnormalities.”

In previous reports and interviews, other skeptical scientists have contended that the extremely small brain size of the Flores people, close to that of a chimpanzee, was more likely a consequence of any number of growth disorders. Teuku Jacob, an Indonesian paleoanthropologist who was one of the first to examine the Flores bones, immediately suspected microcephaly, a genetic condition causing a small head.

This hypothesis has been argued back and forth, and last month an Australian scientist offered another possible explanation. The scientist, Peter Obendorf of RMIT University in Melbourne, reported that an image of the base of the Flores skull showed evidence of an enlarged pituitary gland, suggesting the individual may have suffered from cretinism, which can cause stunted growth and a small brain.

The two principal scientists who advanced the separate-species thesis — Peter Brown, a paleoanthropologist, and Michael Morwood, an archaeologist, of the University of New England in Armidale, Australia — have said they are unmoved by the criticism. And prominent experts on early humans have endorsed the new-species interpretation, including Tim D. White of the University of California, Berkeley, and Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London.

After the publication of Dr. Berger’s findings, Bernard Wood, a paleoanthropologist at George Washington University, said, “Obviously the Flores material came as a bit of a surprise to many of us, but it was not a surprise that might not have been anticipated.”

Dr. Wood, who was not involved in the original research, said the one fairly complete Flores skeleton and other fragments have got “all sorts of intriguing morphology” that distinguishes the individuals from modern humans. http://louis7j7sheehan7esquire.blogspot.com/

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He and a group of other scientists have prepared their own assessment in a report to be published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“All of these exotic explanations being proposed require the suspension of any fragment of common sense,” Dr. Wood said. “They are seeking a much more exotic explanation than the one for a distinct species that looks like an earlier Homo.”

Dean Falk, an anthropologist at Florida State University who has examined casts of the Flores braincase, disputed the microcephaly argument and the Berger paper.

In a study comparing the Flores specimen with known microcephalics, Dr. Falk and researchers at the Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology at Washington University concluded three years ago that the ancient individual did not suffer such a disorder. Its wide brain and frontal lobes, she said, were not like the brains of microcephalics.

“Suites of features from head to feet set the Flores individuals apart from Homo sapiens, which is why this is a new species,” she said in an interview.

William L. Jungers, a paleoanthropologist at the State University of New York at Stony Brook who has worked closely with the Flores researchers, said in an e-mail message that the Berger paper “is really much ado about nothing,” adding that modern human pygmies of the size reported on Palau “are old news in this part of the world.”

Dr. Jungers said that none of these small-bodied humans “are as short as the various individuals of Homo floresiensis” or have similar limb proportions, cranial capacity, jaw anatomy, wrist bones and other characteristics.

The new-species proponents concede that they would have a stronger case if it rested on more than a single skeleton with a skull and assorted bones of about 12 other individuals.

Dr. Berger, whose research at Palau was supported by the National Geographic Society, emphasized in an interview, “I’m not on either side of this debate.” But he defended his report, which he said was preliminary yet based on substantial fieldwork and analysis, as a contribution to “the discussion of modern human variations that has been missing in the Flores debate.” These variations, he added, “occur with high frequency or we would not have found them so readily.”

In an extraordinary news conference on his first full day on the job, Gov. David A. Paterson acknowledged on Tuesday that he had had several extramarital relationships, including one with a state employee, but said he had done nothing illegal and had been faithful to his wife in recent years.

Mr. Paterson said he made the disclosure because he wanted to clear his conscience and avoid being blackmailed. http://louis-j-sheehan.us/Blog/blog.aspx
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He said he hoped his openness about his past affairs would help him to gain the trust of New Yorkers and move forward to focus on governing.

“I didn’t want to be compromised, I didn’t want to be blackmailed, I didn’t want to hesitate taking an action because the person on the other end might hurt me or my family,” Mr. Paterson, a Democrat, said during the tense and often awkward appearance with his wife, Michelle Paige Paterson, at his side. “I just thought this was the time to come forward and reveal this.”

Mr. Paterson said no state funds had been used as he carried out his affairs. He said he may have used his campaign credit card for some expenses that he did not detail, but said, if so, he would have reimbursed his campaign for the spending.

Mr. Paterson’s revelation comes less than a week after Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who was caught on a federal wiretap arranging to meet with a prostitute, resigned, and a former governor of New Jersey, James E. McGreevey, and his estranged wife publicly traded claims about the nature of their sex life together.

Mr. Paterson said he had asked Mr. Spitzer to delay the effective date of his resignation until Monday as he grappled with how much to disclose about his past infidelities.

“I didn’t know that I was even going to be here until last Wednesday,” he said, referring to the office of governor. “I put it back a few days to try and organize things, and this is one of the issues I just want to get straight with New York’s citizens so that they know who their governor is and that their governor takes this office seriously.”

The news conference capped an astonishing 24 hours that began with Ms. Paterson holding the Bible as her husband was sworn in before an ebullient audience of lawmakers in the Assembly chamber as dignitaries, including Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and prominent black politicians, looked on.

Just after the swearing-in, while Mr. Paterson’s supporters were still celebrating, the new administration was plunged into its first crisis, as a Daily News columnist inquired about a past affair and Mr. Paterson and his mostly untested advisers debated how to handle the matter.

The governor and his wife told the columnist that they had each strayed during the marriage, and then Ms. Paterson, an executive at the Health Insurance Plan of New York, canceled a morning appearance in Manhattan and came to the capital to meet the crush of reporters. http://louis-j-sheehan.de/
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While ordinary New Yorkers seemed startled by the emergence of another story of sexual infidelity, reaction to the revelations in Albany was generally supportive, in part because the new governor, a former state senator, has a deep reservoir of good will among lawmakers. It remains to be seen, however, how long Republicans will give him a honeymoon.

“This week has been a whirlwind,” said Senator Kevin S. Parker, a Democrat from Brooklyn. “I think what happened last week with Governor Spitzer was a terrible personal tragedy that then turned into a crisis for this state.”

Mr. Paterson’s revelations, he said, “make him stronger.”

“I think a lot of people admire his forthrightness and his honesty,” he added.

Senator Joseph L. Bruno, the Republican majority leader, said the Patersons’ marital problems were nobody’s business but their own, as he brushed off suggestions that the affair threatened to interfere with the state’s business.

Neither the governor nor his staff would specify when he stopped having the affairs, beyond saying several years ago.

“Several years ago, and there were a number of women,” Mr. Paterson said during the news conference.

He did not supervise the state employee with whom he had an affair, he said, and did nothing to further the woman’s career. Christine Anderson, a spokeswoman for Mr. Paterson, said the state employee worked in the executive branch of the Spitzer administration and was considering whether to continue to work for the new administration.

Campaign finance records indicate that the Paterson campaign paid the woman $500 for work she did for his State Senate campaign several years ago.

It remains unclear if other complications lie ahead for Mr. Paterson.

The governor expressed uncertainty about whether he had used campaign funds to pay for hotel rooms for his assignations, but said he never would have knowingly done so.

Under state law, politicians are barred from using campaign funds for personal expenses. Mr. Paterson’s campaign filings showed a handful of payments over several years to a hotel on West 94th Street, not far from his home, that Mr. Paterson’s office has confirmed he used for an extramarital affair during that period. But he has also said his staff used the hotel on occasion. http://louis2j2sheehan.us/page.aspx

It was not clear on Tuesday who had made use of the hotel rooms.

“I would never use campaign funds for that purpose,” Mr. Paterson said, but then added, “There have been a couple of questions about the campaign funds and I’ll have to check them out. There have been a few times when my credit card didn’t work, I used the campaign credit card and reimbursed it. But I never knowingly used campaign funds.”

While the governor dealt with the intensely personal issue, he also confronted a growing financial crisis. The State Division of Budget said on Tuesday that the nation was in recession, and Mr. Paterson moved late in the day to impose $800 million in new spending cuts, the third retrenchment made by the executive branch since it released its original budget in January and a sign of the precarious nature of the state’s finances. The governor likened it to “a fiscal challenge that we have not seen since the dark days following September 11.”

The governor’s mood was in marked contrast to his joking, effusive appearance in the Assembly chamber during his swearing-in, which included an impersonation of the Assembly speaker.

When he opened his press conference, the governor said: “I betrayed a commitment to my wife several years ago, and I do not feel I’ve betrayed my commitment to the citizens of New York State. I haven’t broken any laws, I don’t think I’ve violated my oath of office, and I saw this as a private matter.”

“This is something I think in a regular marriage we would have been wishing to go to our graves with,” he said, adding, “the reason that we disclosed the truth is so the citizens of New York State would know that when confronted with these questions, that we would be honest.”

Mr. Paterson said he had had affairs at a time when he “was jealous over Michelle” but later said he “didn’t take the actions because I was jealous; I was just trying to explain how I was feeling.”

“I’m not trying to blame anyone,” he added. “I’m not trying to say I was upset, so you can’t blame me. I was just pointing out that this happens to people.”

Mr. Paterson said that he and his wife had sought counseling and had since resolved their marital problems. http://louis2j2sheehan.us/page1.aspx
For her part, Ms. Paterson said “the message I try to teach my children is that a marriage is going to have peaks and valleys, so you want to show them how to get through them and how to work through them, because no marriage is perfect.”

Researchers believe they have figured out why a genetic blood disorder found in the tropics protects against death from malaria.

The disease, alpha thalassemia, causes children to produce abnormally small red blood cells, often rendering them listless from mild anemia — a much smaller threat than malaria, which kills an estimated one million children a year.

Alpha thalassemia is common in tropical parts of Asia, Melanesia and the Mediterranean. The name means “sea blood,” and its connection to the Mediterranean Sea was known to the Greeks.

Parasitologists have known for 50 years that it protects against malaria. They speculated that it somehow blocked the malaria parasite from entering the cell.

But scientists at New York University’s medical school and Oxford University, studying 800 children in Papua New Guinea, found parasites in the blood cells of children with thalassemia.

Life-threatening anemia occurs in children only when their hemoglobin levels drop below 50 grams a liter, and children with thalassemia produce more red blood cells than average, with less hemoglobin per cell.

The scientists propose that this protects them because parasites destroy a smaller percentage of their blood cells.

“It is really remarkable and so simple,” said Karen Day, chairwoman of the department of medical parasitology at N.Y.U.

Population increases in many fast-growing counties, particularly in the South and West, started slowing last year, suggesting that the housing crunch may be forcing many Americans to stay put.

People “are paralyzed in their quest for jobs in growing areas in many parts of the country because the housing market has shut down across the board,” said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

The Census Bureau’s annual estimate of county-population changes covers the 12 months that ended July 1, 2007. http://louis1j1sheehan.us/
Louis J. Sheehan Esquire
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It shows that many Americans continued moving to sunny counties in Florida, Georgia and Arizona, but that the rates were slowing.

The data show a marked deceleration in population growth in several suburban counties that are farthest from urban centers — the kind of counties to which some city residents had flocked in prior years for bigger houses and a different lifestyle. At the same time, urban areas and close-in suburbs were seeing population decreases slow, and in some cases reverse.

“It’s a year of a migration correction, just as there was a correction in the housing market,” said Mr. Frey.

Americans continue to seek out the Sunbelt. The 10 counties with the largest population increases were all in California, Nevada, Arizona and North Carolina.

Maricopa County, Ariz., where Phoenix is located, had the biggest rise in population between July 2006 and July 2007, adding 102,000 people, tallying births, deaths and migration from inside and outside the U.S. That increase, though, was 30,000 fewer than the year before, mostly reflecting fewer people moving there from another county.

The slowdown of county-to-county movement pulled down expansion in other fast-growing counties. Population in California’s Riverside County, which is east of Los Angeles, increased by 66,000 — down from 80,000 between July 2005 and July 2006. In Texas’s Harris County, where Houston is, the population increased by 60,000, less than half the gain between July 2005 and July 2006.

Some formerly highflying counties actually saw population fall. Broward County, Fla., part of the Miami-Fort Lauderdale metropolitan area, added an average of 28,000 residents a year between 2000 and 2005. But the county lost 13,000 residents between July 2006 and July 2007. That was the county’s first population decline recorded by the Census Bureau.

Some cities and suburbs that had been losing people to outer areas saw the exodus slow. Cook County, Ill., which includes Chicago, had lost an average of 16,000 a year between 2000 and 2006. Last year it gained about 4,800. In San Diego, the population rose by 27,000 in the latest period, compared with an average gain of 5,000 a year between 2003 and 2006.

“It’s like the whole system [of migration] is kind of gearing down a little bit,” said Kenneth Johnson, senior demographer at the University of New Hampshire’s Carsey Institute.

Movement from one part of the country to another often slows during economic weakness and sometimes spurs shifts. In the early 1980s, many people fled the industrial Midwest for Texas oil towns, then moved again when the boom ended. Earlier this decade, workers from tech firms in Northern California headed south after the late 1990s tech boom collapsed.

The housing market’s woes, though, are working the other way. Demographers and headhunters suggest people may be staying put because they can’t sell their homes or can’t get financing for new ones.

Dru George, a partner at Austin McGregor, an executive search firm based in Dallas, said that in the past nine months he has had several executives turn down jobs in other places because of the financial hits they would take if they sold their homes. Some are “under water” — that is, they paid more on their houses than they would get selling them — he said.

“I’m doing a search in Austin, and I was speaking with candidates, East Coast, West Coast, in the South,” he said. “A lot of these executives are $300,000 to $400,000 under water on their house. Do they sell it at a loss or stay put? That’s something we see on a daily basis.”

The data also show that some Gulf Coast counties, decimated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, are attracting new residents.

Two of the nation’s fastest-growing counties, on a percentage basis, were in Louisiana. Orleans Parish, La., added 29,000 residents between July 2006 and 2007, after losing 243,000 residents in the year-earlier period. http://louis3j3sheehan3esquire.blogspot.com/
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As the national divorce rate plateaus at historically high levels, many people yearn to understand what makes a successful marriage. This has given rise in recent years to an outpouring of confusing studies and surveys attempting to nail down the odds of particular types of couples staying together.
Which couples have the best chances? Depending on which study you believe — they vary widely in quality — you must get lots of education, earn a lot of money, marry over age 25, live in a Blue State, be white, or be a Presbyterian or a Catholic (but only a faithful one who attends Mass). What doesn’t help: being a born-again Christian, having daughters instead of sons, having divorced parents or being born in Oklahoma. (Pilloried in the media a few years ago for its high divorce rate, Oklahoma has mounted a state-funded marriage-education program that has enrolled 133,000 people so far, an official says.)

As a child of divorced parents who has seen many friends divorce, Maggi Deroian, 29, who is single, wants a happy marriage. To that end, the New York event producer follows the research and makes “rules for my life, based on statistics, that would help minimize my chances for divorce,” she says. What’s frustrating, though, is that many of the studies focus on factors she can’t control, such as family history or race. “Knowing that practicing Catholics who go to church have a lower divorce rate” doesn’t help someone who’s not one, she says.

Many people regularly see a doctor for an annual physical or visit the dentist for an annual cleaning. Now, clinicians at the Center for Couples and Family Research want people to undergo a regular marriage checkup. http://louis1j1sheehan1esquire1.blogspot.com/
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This quiz was developed at the center, based at Clark University in Worcester, Mass., to help couples assess their marital health. Even the best marriages have strengths and weaknesses, and this checklist aims to help identify them. There’s no “score” at the end, where couples discover if their marriage will fail or succeed. Instead, couples are encouraged to identify areas where they can improve their relationship. Take the assessment.
For more information, visit Clark University’s Web site.

The research, adds Erin Stafford, 27, a Fullerton, Calif., image consultant who is also single, “just feeds the fires of insecurity.”

After reviewing a stack of studies, I’ve extracted some findings that are generally helpful:

- Take life’s big steps in mindful order. On average, 43% of first marriages end in separation or divorce within 15 years, a federal study shows. Marrying in your teens or having children out of wedlock are linked to higher rates. Odds improve when you graduate from college first; then marry, then have children. The divorce rate falls as the age of marriage rises through the late 20s, then levels off, says a new study by Evelyn Lehrer at the University of Illinois, Chicago.

Be wary of casual cohabitation. Singles have been scared by studies linking cohabitation before marriage to divorce; however, people who live together are a self-selecting population who may place less value from the start on lifelong monogamy. In a more helpful insight, Scott Stanley at the University of Denver and others have found cohabitation can create an inertia effect — a tendency for cohabiting couples who otherwise wouldn’t marry to slide into marriages of convenience that later hit the rocks. Couples who wait to live together until after they’re engaged tend to avoid comparable problems.

Find a supportive workplace. While blacks tend to divorce at higher rates than whites, Jay Teachman at Western Washington University has found the divorce gap vanishes among couples in the Army, one of the nation’s most race-blind institutions. In the Army, blacks tend to be fairly paid and promoted — and to divorce at the same rate as white civilians. Given the well-documented tendency of workaday emotions to spill over at home, it makes sense to avoid workplaces where the deck is stacked against you.

Act quickly when troubles arise. Women working outside the home have been blamed for higher rates of divorce. In fact, working women leave unhappy marriages at higher rates, but not unions that are happy or average, say preliminary findings by researchers at Ohio State and Stanford universities. “If a woman can support herself, she’s more likely to think it’s viable to leave,” says Stanford’s Paula England. http://louis6j6sheehan6esquire.blogspot.com/
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A countervailing factor: Dual-earner couples tend to share housework and child care more evenly, making marriages happier and offsetting divorce risk, says Stephanie Coontz, author of “Marriage: A History.”

Whatever the case, if your marriage starts to slide, act right away to change damaging behaviors or take counseling or a marriage-education program (findable at www.smartmarriages.com).

Studies aside, the final unit of analysis is the relationship. Ms. Deroian says the best wisdom gleaned from her “quest to solve the question of ‘forever’ ” in marriage came from a cab driver she rode with once who had been married 45 years. When she asked how he and his wife did it, he told her about their travels together, and evenings spent dancing. “At the end of the day,” she says, “you have to take time to enjoy one another.”

Several years after Americans woke up to a bedbug problem, the pest-control industry is rolling out an arsenal of methods that promise an easy yet thorough assault on the bloodthirsty pests.

Bedbugs, which can be difficult to spot, are becoming even tougher to eradicate as they spread and their resistance to some pesticides grows. In response, pest-control companies are adopting new tactics.

Stern Environmental Group LLC, a Secaucus, N.J., company that serves the New York City area, recently started using a technology that sprays the bugs with icy carbon dioxide to kill them. ThermaPure Inc., of Ventura, Calif., uses devices similar to giant hair dryers to heat up a room and bake the bugs to death. Bedbugs & Beyond LLC in New York will remove people’s furniture from their homes and fumigate it with a poisonous gas. Another method uses specially trained dogs to track down tiny bedbugs and their eggs, helping exterminators target spraying. Meanwhile, researchers at the University of Minnesota are studying bedbugs’ behavior in an attempt to develop a trap that simulates a typical victim — a sleeping human.

Professional treatments, including many of the conventional methods still being used, can start at about several hundred dollars and reach into the thousands.

A simple solution to rid a home of the common bedbug, or Cimex lectularius, has proven elusive since the brown, wingless creatures made a resurgence in the U.S. about five years ago. Both entomologists and the pest-control industry say they have seen a rise in infestations of homes and hotels; Steven Jacobs, an urban entomologist at Penn State University who identifies insects for homeowners and pesticide companies, says he now receives about 30 bedbug specimens a year, compared with almost none about five or six years ago.

Bedbugs are slightly smaller than an apple seed and hide in the folds and seams of mattresses and other furniture, emerging at night to feed on a warm-blooded host. Part of what makes bedbugs so tricky to eradicate is that the insects aren’t confined to the bed. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
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They live in drapes, behind wall hangings, in the cracks of wall plaster — and even in light fixtures and electronics. Further complicating matters, a female can deposit the tiny eggs around a room. The bugs are transported from one location to another in luggage or clothing; pest experts say the bugs likely accompany travelers home from hotels or enter a house on secondhand furniture.

Entomologists say it is unclear why the pests have made a comeback, but theories include a more restrained use of other pesticides that in the past might have helped to nab bedbugs, and an upswing in international travel.

Bedbug bites can produce itching welts, but the bugs aren’t known to carry disease. Still, they can be quite a nuisance and take a powerful psychological toll. Some people don’t sleep well for months, worrying that every itch is a bug on them, and many feel ashamed to tell their relatives or neighbors about the problem.

Bedbugs typically have been treated with a class of chemicals known as pyrethroids. Yet entomologists who study bedbug control say the insects have developed some resistance to these chemicals. Other chemicals are more effective but can take longer to work. Mattress encasements may be successful in eliminating bugs — but only from the mattresses.

Companies pitching the latest eradication methods — such as heat or icy sprays — say they are more effective as well as more palatable for people worried about using pesticides. Yet entomologists caution there still are drawbacks: The cold spray might not reach every bug; dogs can miss hiding places high up in a room; and heating might cause bugs to flee to a cooler place in the home. Except for heating, the latest methods usually require the homeowner to go through the onerous process of clearing out rooms, drawers and closets, and washing or dry cleaning all clothing and linens.

“We don’t have any easy method of elimination,” says Michael Potter, a professor of entomology at the University of Kentucky who has observed an increase in bedbugs through his research and work with pest-control companies. “We are looking for the silver bullet.”

While visiting her father’s home over Christmas, Chance Fechtor developed 40 bites on her body that doctors suspected were from bedbugs. Convinced she had brought the bugs home with her, Ms. Fechtor took apart her bed and went though her clothes looking for them. She even starting waking up in the middle of the night and donning a headlamp in hopes of nabbing them.

After doing some research, she came across Advanced K9 Detectives in Milford, Conn., which trains dogs to spot bedbugs. A dog found some bugs in the mattress, the carpet, a drawer and behind a radiator. The house was sprayed with pesticides, and Ms. Fechtor says her Boston-area home has since remained pest-free.

“It was very stressful,” she says. “The idea that there were I don’t how many bugs on me while I was sleeping completely grossed me out.”

Pest-control experts and researchers say dogs can indeed be helpful for finding bedbugs humans might miss or to confirm a treatment has gotten rid of all the bugs. Pepe Peruyero, who last year started training bedbug-sniffing dogs for pest control companies at his J & K Canine Academy in High Springs, Fla., says the cost can be about $200 an hour, depending on home size and travel time.

Another solution is killing the bugs and their eggs by heating a room to between 120 and 140 degrees Fahrenheit for several hours. ThermaPure uses infrared heaters to uniformly heat the room, says President and Chief Executive David Hedman. Treatment costs between $500 and $1,000 per room. (Easily melted items like candles and lipstick must first be removed.)

At the opposite end of the temperature spectrum, Cryonite, made by CTS Technologies, a unit of Venteco PLC in London, aims to eradicate the bugs by dousing them with a snowy spray of carbon dioxide. A drawback: Some bugs can survive if they aren’t directly hit by the spray. Treatments cost between $600 to $700 per room, or as much as 50% more than a conventional chemical treatment, says Douglas Stern, managing partner of Stern Environmental, one of the companies using the method.

Meanwhile, desperate homeowners who don’t want to pay hundreds of dollars are taking matters into their own hands, putting sticky tape on or near their beds to snare the bugs, vacuuming compulsively or ordering do-it-yourself solutions online. Entomologists say tape and vacuuming aren’t likely to eliminate the bugs and over-the-counter products might kill only the bugs that people can see.

“It’s getting the ones that are hiding that is the problem,” says Susan C. Jones, an associate professor of entomology at Ohio State University. Louis J Sheehan
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Groundbreaking research suggests genes help explain why some people can recover from a traumatic event while others suffer post-traumatic stress disorder. Though preliminary, the study provides insight into a condition expected to strike increasing numbers of military veterans returning from combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, one health expert said.

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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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.
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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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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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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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.

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.
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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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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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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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.

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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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