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In 1812, as the Grand Duchy of Finland three years earlier had been formed within Russian Empire, Alexander I of Russia incorporated Kexholm with the rest of Old Finland into the autonomous region. Käkisalmi was the smallest city in Viipuri province. City’s growth was boosted by construction of the Saint Petersburg-Hiitola railway in 1917 and establishing two big saw mills and a big Ab Waldhof Oy’s Wood pulp mill in 1929.
Käkisalmi postal cancellation 1921

The Winter war On 30 November 1939 began the Winter War began with the Soviet attack. Eventually after hard fighting Finland was forced to cede Käkisalmi as whole Finnish Karelia to the Soviet Union in the 13.3.1940 Moscow Peace Treaty. During the Continuation War 1941 - 1944 Finland gained back Käkisalmi and other 1940 Soviet ceded territories, the population returned to rebuild the town, but were again evacuated in Evacuation of Finnish Karelia at the close of the WWII. In the last Finnish year 1939 Käkisalmi had a population of 5083. Around the town there was the rural municipality of Käkisalmi with a population of 5100. Minorities were Orthodox 946 persons and about 100 habitants announced to speak as native language; Swedish, Russian or German. Total population was 11 129 in 1939.

In 1948, Käkisalmi was renamed to Priozersk like names all cities and communities annexed from Finland to Leningrad Oblast 1947. The new given names of 1948 had no ties to historic names except Vyborg. New Priozersk was settled with a totally new population of people (mainly Russians, Belorussian, Ukranians) belo.993993 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire from the Soviet Union, who remain the majority of the local population. The ruined ramparts and towers of the old Korela Fortress are situated on the bank of the Vuoksi, still visible when traveling http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.INFO to the town from Saint Petersburg. The town is an excursion resort popular with St. Petersburgers, many of whom have dachas in the vicinity (see Ozero).

The main landmark of Priozersk, Korela Fortress, has historically been the center for the Karelians of the Karelian Isthmus; and from time to time been the northwestern outpost of the realm of the Russians or the eastern outpost of the realm of the Swedes.

From the Middle Ages, Priozersk was known as Korela to Russians and Käkisalmi to Karelians and Finns. The town was part of the Vodskaya pyatina of the Novgorod Republic. Taxation book from Novgorod from year 1500 lists 183 houses in Korela - so Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire estimated population 1500-2000. The Swedes captured Korela twice: in 1578 for seventeen years and in 1611 for one hundred years. In the Swedish Empire, the fortress was called Kexholm and the whole district became known as the County of Kexholm. Russia definitively secured the area during the Great Northern War; the town’s Swedish name was retained, http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.NET however, as Keksgolm (Кексгольм). But wars and devastating fires 1300, 1580, 1634, 1679 had taken its toll to civilian population. When the city gained its first court house in 1800 population was only 400.

Manta rays are very rarely kept in captivity, primarily due to their size. Only four aquariums in the world have manta rays on display.[5] One notable example is “Nandi”, a manta ray that was accidentally caught in shark nets off Durban, South Africa in 2007. http://Louis-J-Sheehan.biz Rehabilitated, and outgrowing her aquarium, uShaka Marine World, Nandi was transferred to the larger Georgia Aquarium in August 2008, where she resides in its 6.2-million-gallon “Ocean Voyager” exhibit. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

Hold the history book presses. The Moorish invasion of Spain was never completely repelled, a new genetic analysis reveals.

As many as one in 10 men from Spain and Portugal still carry genetic evidence of North African ancestry, and nearly twice that number had Sephardic Jewish ancestors, reveals a study in the Dec. 12 American Journal of Human Genetics. Those results don’t fit with expectations from the historical record.

Sephardic Jews, who were likely in the Iberian Peninsula since Roman times, were supposed to all have fled the region in the wake of pogroms and persecutions between the early eighth and 14th centuries. In the late 15th century, 160,000 Spanish Jews (Sepharadh is the Hebrew word for Spain) were expelled and then settled in other parts of the Mediterranean.

Moors from northern Africa swept into Spain in 711, colonizing the peninsula and spreading Islam. But during the Spanish Inquisition, Spanish Muslims were driven out or forced to convert in a wave of religious intolerance.

But the new study, which analyzed Y chromosomes from 1,140 men from the Iberian Peninsula, shows that, even though large numbers of Sephardic Jews and Spanish Muslims left the peninsula, these groups also left behind descendents and a strong genetic presence.

Genetic studies of populations are often used to track movements of people from prehistoric times. But these results indicate that more modern events — religious persecution and conversion, modern migration and intermarriage — can shape human genetic landscapes more than previously suspected.

Certain groups have minor genetic variations that are characteristic. The researchers in this study used genetic markers found in North African populations, specifically Morocco and Algeria, to trace the North African contribution in the Iberian Peninsula. Sephardic Jewish genetic markers came from populations in Israel and Turkey.

Studies such as the new one “tell the true history of everyone’s ancestors and not just the history book lessons of kings and queens,” says James Wilson, a population geneticist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland who was not involved in the study.

Wilson said he would have expected to find small but significant evidence of North African ancestry in southern Spain, where the Moorish reign lasted longest, but “to find it in the west defies my expectations,” he said. The researchers expected to find a gradient, with stronger ancestry in the south that would lessen farther north. In fact, they found a weaker North African presence in southern Spain.

Sephardic Jewish roots run deep in the peninsula, the researchers found. Nearly 20 percent of men in the study showed evidence of Sephardic Jewish ancestry.

“We think it might be an over estimate,” says Francesc Calafell, a human population geneticist at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Spain. Calafell and Mark Jobling at the University of Leicester in England led the study.http://Louis1J1Sheehan.us

The genetic makeup of Sephardic Jews is probably common to other Middle Eastern populations, such as the Phoenicians, that also settled the Iberian Peninsula, Calafell says. “In our study, that would have all fallen under the Jewish label.”

Still, the findings reflect how religious intolerance on the peninsula led to conversion of non-Christian groups and then integration into the larger Christian community, he says. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

An unorthodox way to lower “bad” cholesterol by suppressing a liver protein may soon challenge statins for the cholesterol-drug crown.

Suppressing the protein’s activity in rats and macaque monkeys lowered the animals’ bad cholesterol by 50 to 70 percent, researchers report online and in an upcoming Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.http://Louis1J1Sheehan.us

“This is the first study to show that you can acutely lower … cholesterol levels in several animal species” using a process called RNA interference, says study coauthor Kevin Fitzgerald, director of research at Alnylam Pharmaceuticals in Cambridge, Mass.

RNA interference has become a hot area of drug development research. By injecting short RNA molecules only 20 to 25 “letters” of genetic code long into patients, scientists can selectively suppress the activity of a disease-related gene that has a matching segment of genetic code.

In this case, Fitzgerald and his colleagues designed the RNA to suppress the gene that encodes PCSK9, a protein that helps regulate LDL, the bad cholesterol. High LDL cholesterol in the blood increases people’s risk of heart disease.

The new research “gives the proof of concept that if you decrease the level of PCSK9, you can truly affect the level of cholesterol,” comments Catherine Boileau, a geneticist specializing in inherited cholesterol disorders at INSERM, the French national health institute.

This new RNA interference–based approach could provide an alternative to statins, a widely used family of cholesterol-lowering drugs. “The problem with statin therapy is that not all people are good responders to the treatment,” Boileau says. “There’s a need for new cholesterol lowering agents.”

PCSK9 normally reduces the amount of cholesterol that cells can absorb from the bloodstream, so suppressing the protein boosted cells’ absorption. As a result, the treatment lowered bad blood cholesterol levels about as much as a high dose of statins. The reduction lasted about three weeks, and HDL, the good cholesterol, was not affected.

To deliver the RNA molecules into cells, Fitzgerald’s team packaged the molecules in microscopic spheres of fat called lipidoid nanoparticles. Because blood vessels in the liver are more porous than elsewhere in the body, the RNA-carrying nanoparticles could more easily pass out of those blood vessels and into the liver, which regulates cholesterol.Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

“I would say it’s promising if we can specifically target the [RNA] to the liver,” Boileau says. Suppressing PCSK9 in other organs could have unwanted effects, she notes, because “we do not know what other roles PCSK9 has in the body.” Fitzgerald says that in their experiments, the RNA didn’t appear to suppress the protein in other organs.

The new approach could be used with statins, Fitzgerald says. “What we’re very excited about here is, by the mechanism, you would expect that you get a synergetic effect with statins.”

Currently the experimental drug must be injected, but researchers are developing other ways for patients to take the drug, Fitzgerald says.