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A Body of Work: An Anthology of Poetry and Medicine, ed. Corinna Wagner and Andy Brown
My review of A Body of Work: An Anthology of Poetry and Medicine, ed. Corinna Wagner and Andy Brown has appeared on the BSLS website
This entry was posted in Books and tagged book review, medical humanities, poetry, Poetry and Medicine, Poetry and Science on 27/03/2017 by michaelwhitworth.
#bookadayUK (24): Hooked me into reading
As Biblicists know, eating an apple can get you into all kinds of trouble. I'm not writing about the work that first hooked me into reading, because that was Ted Hughes's The Iron Man, and I've already written about it. The work that took my reading to a new level was T. S. Eliot's group of short poems 'Preludes'. I'd been a voracious reader at primary school, but lost interest between 11 and 16 because no-one could recommend anything suitable for me. Then a couple of works grabbed my interest during my O-level years.
The first was Edwin Muir's 'The Horses', which we covered as a poem in our anthology, Rhyme and Reason. I wrote an essay on it, had a spine-tingling moment when I realised that it was a kind of parallel creation myth, and the teacher was lavish in her praise. (She didn't even grade it; just wrote 'Superb'. You could overdo that kind of praise, but it was an important endorsement and confirmation.)
The other encounter happened by accident in the last lesson one Friday afternoon; spring or early summer, I'd guess. The teacher, Mrs Harris, was off sick, and the lesson was being covered by a youthful, likeable Geography teacher, Mr Koenig. I was hungry (my packed lunches were never big enough), and realised I still had an apple in my bag, so figured that I might as well eat it. The chairs were arranged in double horseshoe configuration, so even though I was on the outer row, there wasn't a great deal of cover. I was spotted, and as a punishment, Mr Koenig took an old anthology from the cupboard, found a poem by a poet I'd never heard of and told me to write an essay on it: write about the urban imagery in 'Preludes' by T. S. Eliot. He must have done English Lit at A-level, to be able to identify a suitable topic with such speed. At first I was resentful, as eating when you're hungry didn't seem such a terrible thing to do, and I'd never before been set a punitive essay or subjected to any 'demerit' or detention. But at home, when I began to read the poems, and still more when I began to write about them, I was really blown away: the tone and manner were completely different from anything else we'd done.
My guess is this must have been the spring of my O-level year. I can't remember whether there were any other Eliot poems in the anthology, but somehow I must have found out more about him. At the point when I left secondary school I was signed up to do science A-levels at sixth-form college (Maths, Biology, Chemistry, Physics), with a vague plan of going on to do a medicine degree; but over the summer I started to feel that I needed some expressive, artistic dimension to my studies, so after the O-level results came I phoned the sixth-form and swapped one of the science subjects for English Literature. At some point in September of that year, I bought Eliot's Collected Poems; I wrote the date September 1984 in it, but nothing more precise. I remember distinctly buying it in Wallingford, a small market town ten miles from home where we didn't shop very often; or rather, I remember beginning to read it in the car on the way home. Within a year I'd dropped another science subject, and set myself on studying English at University, now with the unusual subject combination of Chemistry, Maths, and English.
My copy, bought September 1984
This entry was posted in Books and tagged bookaday, modernism, poetry, Preludes, T. S. Eliot on 24/06/2014 by michaelwhitworth.
#bookadayUK (22): Out of Print
Pig Cupid, a small pamphlet of poems in response to Mina Loy's 'Songs to Johannes', was where I first became aware of this neglected modernist poet. That was in 2000; later, when Lawrence Rainey's Modernism anthology came out (2005), I read her for the first time, and was amazed by 'Parturition' in particular, for the way it connected intense physical experience with philosophical abstractions. Rainey's selection led me to what remains the most readily obtainable selection her poetry, and undoubtedly the best place to start, The Lost Lunar Baedeker, ed. Roger Conover (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1996; later published by Carcanet). But tantalisingly, what Conover wasn't able to include in that selection, given that he wished to include annotations and an introduction, was Loy's autobiographical poem 'Anglo-Mongrels and the Rose'. He had included it in an earlier collection of her work, The Last Lunar Baedeker (Jargon Society, 1982), a beautifully made and hefty book that now re-sells for equally hefty prices.
You can get a good feel for Loy's poetry without reading 'Anglo-Mongrels', but nevertheless, it attempts something quite different: an autobiography. And it's an autobiography that explores where personhood comes from, so rather than beginning with Loy's childhood, it begins with her parents: her Hungarian-born Jewish father, Sigmund Felix Lowy, and her English mother, Julia Bryan. And her presentation of them isn't straightforward: Sigmund becomes 'Exodus', and Julia is initially named 'English Rose', later to become 'Ada'. In consequence, we see them as types rather than individuals, she 'simperiing in her / ideological pink', and he something of Jewish stereotype, 'loaded with Mosaic / passions that amass / like money.' Mina Loy herself is born twenty pages into the poem (it's about sixty pages long in total) and is referred to as 'Ova'; her later lover Arthur Cravan is presented at the moment of his birth as 'the male fruit / of a Celtic couple', and is named 'Colossus'. The narrative doesn't carry the main characters far beyond their early childhoods and formative impressions. While 'Anglo-Mongrels and the Rose' is by no means perfect as autobiographical poetry, it's a singular and striking experiment that deserves to be more widely read.
This entry was posted in Books and tagged Anglo-Mongrels, bookaday, Mina Loy, modernism, poetry on 22/06/2014 by michaelwhitworth.
#bookaday (14): An old favourite
The occupational hazard of being a lecturer is that some literary favourites are also on the reading list, and so they become encrusted with layers of pedagogical questions, and it's hard to return to the moment when they were genuinely new and personal. Sometimes that's great: you re-read the text and it now contains memories not of your own personal reactions, or not only, but of conversations you've had and people you've known; passages connect back to insightful commentaries in student essays. But sometimes it can prevent you having a personal relationship to the text, and then it's a relief that not everything is teaching fodder.
The texts that are least encrusted are the ones that I read between the start of my A-levels and the end of my BA degree, and which I've never or scarcely ever taught. I was first introduced to the Metaphysical Poets at sixth-form college, King James's College, Henley-on-Thames. At that date Oxford had an entrance exam for English Literature, and those of us thinking of applying were advised to do additional reading beyond the syllabus and prepare for the exam. The Metaphysicals were considered ideal Oxford-exam material, and it appears that in May 1985 I bought Jack Dalglish's 1961 edition of them in preparation for the exam that November.
That the Metaphysicals were considered suitable suggests that T. S. Eliot still exerted considerable influence over ideas of what was considered erudite. (Though a student in the year above me who had successfully applied to St Hugh's reported that her interviewer interrupted one response by saying 'I don't want to know what T. S. Eliot said; what do you think?') Scarcely two and a half pages into Dalglish's Introduction he has quoted Eliot's 1921 'The Metaphysical Poets' ('A thought to Donne was an experience ….'), and by the end of the third page, there he is again ('the intellect was at the tip of his sense.') Over the page, we encounter the inevitable example, the famous pair of compasses from 'A Valediction, forbidding mourning'. Oxford tutors marking the entrance exam must have been heartily sick of compasses.
But although my critical judgements were probably neither well informed nor refined, I'm glad to have had that early introduction to the Metaphysicals and above all to John Donne. It was in Dalglish's anthology that I first encountered 'A nocturnal upon S. Lucies day' and its end-of-year melancholy, and Holy Sonnet xiv, 'Batter my heart, three person'd God', which I loved for its breaking of regularities ('knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend'). He's brilliant at coming up with dramatic opening lines that draw you into the poem, though to my surprise I see Dalglish's anthology doesn't include 'Mark but this flea, and mark in this..'. There's an amazing range of tones and voices in Donne's poetry, even in Dalglish's selection. There's also a great deal of what looks like adolescent angst: ideal material for a seventeen-year old.
Dalglish's notes I don't remember, though I'm sure I must have used them: if we got any additional tuition for the Oxford exam, it was no more than a class or two. Dalglish seems very concerned to assert the masculinity of the poems ('vigorous' comes up a lot, and there's at least one 'sinewy') and keen to remind us of their connection to normal speech. Here the ghost of F. R. Leavis also haunts the text: Dalglish studied under Leavis at Downing College, Cambridge, from 1946-48. I think it was already clear that this was an ancient and foreign critical idiom; I seriously hope I never commended anything for being vigorous, sinewy, or tough. The edition itself I remember fondly, for all that the cover looks austerely pedagogic: it was printed on good paper, and the margins allowed plenty of space for annotation.
This early encounter gave me a good foundation: I went back to Donne in the second-year of my degree, now armed with the Penguin Complete English Poems and a Penguin selection of the sermons, and wrote an essay that was positively New Critical in its fascination with imagery of circles, loops, and spheres. I taught Donne a little when I was first at Bangor in seminars on the first-year Jacobean literature module; just enough to revive my interest and not so much as to taint him. And insofar as I'm planning to write a book on the neo-metaphysicals of the 1920s and 1930s (Herbert Read, Michael Roberts, William Empson, and others), they're still with me, 'vigorous' as ever.
This entry was posted in Books and tagged bookaday, Jack Dalglish, John Donne, Metaphysical Poets, poetry on 14/06/2014 by michaelwhitworth.
#bookadayUK (17): Future Classic
'It is only by hindsight' that a classic may be known, wrote T. S. Eliot: if we adhered to that position, the idea of a 'future classic' would be a meaningless one. It's certainly a difficult question, and not only because it's always risky to make such predictions. Notoriously, in 1932 in New Bearings in English Poetry, F. R. Leavis notoriously announced that the poet Ronald Bottrall would be one of the greats; in a revised edition in 1950 in the face of Bottrall's almost complete disappearance, Leavis retracted the prediction. It's difficult for me to choose a future classic, because part of my interest in the question of 'the classic' derives from an interest in book history, and the book-historical perspective tends to emphasise the extrinsic factors in the making of classics: are they put on syllabuses? do they have powerful promoters in academia and in the world of publishing? From the book-historical perspective, the classic is denoted by a style of paratext, best known in the UK in the forms used by Penguin Classics and Oxford World's Classics. Such observations in themselves don't help predict what will become classics, though they point to relevant factors: if part of the raison d'être of a classic edition is to provide notes, then for a text to become a classic, a kind of linguistic or cultural change must have intervened that justifies annotation. That doesn't mean that any text that requires annotation has the potential to become a classic. The status of Ulysses as classic is jeopardised by its needing more annotation than can be contained in a single volume, and by the editor's choice of what to annotate risking the appearance of arbitrariness. After editing Ulysses for World's Classics, Jeri Johnson gave a lecture entitled 'Editing Ulysses: The Nightmare from which I am trying to awake.'
Ankhi Mukherjee's essay '"What is a Classic?: International Literary Criticism and the Classic Question' (PMLA [2010]) doesn't remove 'the classic' from extrinsic factors, but clarifies some issues in ways that book-historical approaches don't. While those texts chosen to go into editions of 'classics' look very much like part of the canon, Mukherjee reminds us that the classic might have qualities which make it sit uneasily in the canon. Certainly if we conceive the canon as presupposing an interconnected tradition, one in which relationships of inheritance and indebtedness predominate, then the classic might be admitted despite its failure to fit in. In Harold Bloom's definition of the classic, it has qualities of 'strangeness', 'a mode of originality that either cannot be assimilated, or that so assimilates us that we cease to see it as strange'. I'm cautious about the second clause and the assumptions about community that are rolled into 'us', but the idea that the classic is singular and resistant to assimilation is one that I'm happy to work with. Another way of putting this is that it's like Michel Foucault's idea of the 'founders of discursivity' (in 'What is an Author? [1968]). Writers like Freud or Marx 'are unique in that they are not just the authors of their own works. They have produced something else: the possibilities and rules for the formation of other texts.' However, when Foucault tests this concept against a literary example — Ann Radcliffe, as founder of the Gothic novel — he finds her wanting, not because her example wasn't enormously generative, but because the real founders of discursivity also enable 'a certain number of divergences' from their example. Likewise, Bloom's non-assimilable author generates not just developments of her mode, but texts that work in opposition to it. It's much easier to demonstrate the fact of opposition when one is working in fields of theoretical propositions, like psychoanalysis or linguistics, and much harder in a field where, if there is a rationale at all, it is buried in the practice.
Mukherjee also proposes that the classic exists in a relation of co-dependence with literary criticism: 'the classic is that which survives critical questioning, and it in fact defines itself by that surviving' (Mukherjee, p.1028). This raises a question of how narrowly or widely we should define 'critical questioning': does it mean only academic writing, or only prose writing operating within a recognised critical idiom, or could it be extended to include the kind of critical questioning undertaken by creative rewriting of earlier works? A robust definition of the classic would have to envisage the survival of the concept even in a world where academic literary criticism had never existed or had ceased to be.
An older humanist mode of literary criticism would have spoken of classics as embodying timeless and universal human values. That sort of answer doesn't seem viable any more: definitions of the timelessly placelessly human have all too often embodied the culturally specific outlooks of the definer. It's one thing to hope for united humanity; it's another to define its essential characteristics. Moreover, defining classics in terms of human values tends to favour lyric poems speaking in a recognisable human voice, or realist narratives depicting recognisable human situations. Those are enormously interesting kinds of writing, with great internal variety, but there's more to literature than they can encompass. Shakespeare's plays and the Canterbury Tales are readily absorbed, but its harder to justify fantastic works like The House of Fame or Paradise Lost.
Tom MacCarthy's Remainder (2005) struck me as one possible future classic, because it feels very fresh and original and yet also familiar, as Beckett had written without existential angst and in a recognisable modern south London setting; but thinking about the distinction between the classic and the canonical, I wonder whether Remainder, because of the suggestion of Beckett, might not be canonical rather than classic. It's impossible to anticipate what critical questioning it might face, and whether it might survive it, and part of the problem here is of not knowing where MacCarthy's career might take him. (The novel that followed it, C (2010), was highly acclaimed, but I haven't yet found the time to read it; there's another novel now complete in manuscript.) If we're thinking about extrinsic factors, MacCarthy seems to have influential backers, and Zadie Smith's widely cited 'Two Paths for the Novel' argues for his direction being the one with a future.
I'm more comfortable making predictions in the field of poetry, so, with some reluctance about the exercise, and the ghosts of Leavis and Bottrall looking down on me, I'd suggest that J. H. Prynne's poetry has the necessary qualities to survive. For all that he's indebted to Charles Olson and Edward Dorn, Prynne has consistently invented new ways of writing poetry that go far beyond the production of poems that are in themselves inventive and constantly surprising. Put alongside Foucault's demanding comparison of Ann Radcliffe with Freud, Prynne's inventiveness might place him equal only to Radcliffe, but to an imaginary Radcliffe who invented not just Gothic but the marriage plot novel, the condition-of-England novel, and the sensation novel. And as I say, with literary discourses, it's much harder to determine whether a later writer is working within the terms established by their predecessor. As well as being some sort of a founder of discursivity, Prynne has also written works that startle in their range of reference and in their juxtapositions. Whether it will survive critical questioning is harder to predict because we don't know what questions critics might pose, and in the short term will be less important than whether later poets wish to follow his example. And it's clear that his example has been enormously important to several generations of poets.
I've found the earlier volumes (Kitchen Poems, Day Light Songs, The White Stones, Brass, Wound Response, which date from c.1968-1974) the more rewarding to read, though The Oval Window (1983) is magical. In reading Prynne I've benefitted from the guidance of N. H. Reeve and Richard Kerridge's Nearly Too Much: The Poetry of J. H. Prynne (1995), and it may be that their extended treatment of The Oval Window is why it works for me; there's no comparable guide to the later volumes, and it's notable how many critical accounts of his work treat the late 1960s work as if it were typical of the whole; in the later work syntax becomes increasingly compressed and unreliable as a guide.
Ten years ago John Carey expressed outrage that Randall Stevenson had declared Prynne rather than Philip Larkin to be the most important English poet of the late twentieth century (in Stevenson's The Last of England? (2004), his volume in the Oxford English Literary History; I've forgotten the exact terms in which Carey framed the comparison). It's hard (consulting the index of the volume) to find Stevenson making the comparison quite as starkly as this, though it's true to the broad drift of his account. Carey's preference is entirely consistent with the populist and anti-modernist line he took in The Intellectuals and the Masses (1992), in which accessibility outweighs other considerations. My guess is that Carey's future classics would speak to universal human values and would do so in a register not far removed from everyday English speech. I'd argue that literature can do more than speak everyday English, and that Prynne's poetry has shown us several ways of doing it.
This entry was posted in Books and tagged Ankhi Mukherjee, bookaday, classic, J. H. Prynne, poetry, What is a Classic? on 13/06/2014 by michaelwhitworth.


Keep the promise of your eternal salvation close with this striking message. This epoxy filled keyring presents the gospel message with a stunning visual image of the cross. A sturdy split metal ring keeps all your keys secure. Romans 5:8 is engraved on the back.
About "Keyring: You on His Mind, Romans 5:8"


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Fat cell hormone boosts potential of stem cell therapy
Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have the potential to differentiate into a range of different cell types, including bone, fat and muscle cells. But it's their ability to stimulate the repair of damaged tissue that has captured the interest of researchers worldwide, with MSCs demonstrating therapeutic effects in the treatment of conditions such as heart disease, liver cirrhosis, and diabetes.
However, despite the success of several clinical trials, researchers have struggled to explain the sometimes variable results of MSC therapy.
In a recent study published in Molecular Therapy, a research team led by Osaka University investigated possible reasons for the inconsistent outcomes of MSC therapy, showing that host factors and not just the MSCs themselves may be to blame.
"We recently reported that adiponectin, a beneficial hormone secreted by fat cells that plays a role in muscle regeneration, binds to receptor protein T-cadherin on cell surfaces," explains lead author Yuto Nakamura. "Given that T-cadherin is abundant on the surfaces of MSCs, we investigated whether adiponectin is involved in the regenerative activity of MSCs in a model of heart failure."
Adiponectin is found in high concentrations in blood and has been shown to stimulate the production of exosomes, small membrane-bound vesicles that carry proteins, lipids and DNA between cells. Interestingly, exosomes secreted by stem cells carry signals that stimulate the repair of recipient cells.
By first measuring exosome production in a cell culture-based system, the researchers confirmed that increasing amounts of adiponectin led to a corresponding increase in the abundance of MSC-derived exosomes, which was reliant on the expression of T-cadherin.
Injection of the MSCs into mice suffering from heart failure resulted in a significant improvement in left ventricular cardiac function, which was associated with the increased number of exosomes in circulation. Most importantly though, cardiac function following MSC therapy could be further strengthened by the increases of adiponectin level in blood.
"Together, our assays showed that MSCs exert their therapeutic effects on cardiac function through the production of exosomes, which is influenced by host plasma adiponectin levels and is reliant on MSC T-cadherin expression," says study corresponding author Shunbun Kita.
"Given these results, drugs such as a PPARγ agonists, which increase adiponectin production, could be administered in combination with MSC therapy to significantly enhance the therapeutic potential—not only for severe heart failure, but also for a variety of diseases involving tissue damage, including COVID-19-associated acute respiratory distress syndrome."
And in case you were wondering, it turns out that too much fat is actually detrimental to adiponectin production, so doctors won't be prescribing a high fat diet any time soon!

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Manitoba Music and FortWhyte Alive are teaming up this month to present the Manitoba Music Winter Songwriter Retreat. The co-writing retreat will bring nine emerging songwriters together to strengthen their songwriting chops through collaboration at a secluded lakeside field station and architecturally unique cabins at FortWhyte Alive, March 29-31.
The three-day session features a diverse group of songwriters spanning several genres, including Adam Hanney, Ariane Jean, Attica Riots' Bobby Desjarlais, À La Mode's Dominique Lemoine, Jeff Bruce of Jicah/Colour Revolution, Jordan St.Cyr, Quinton Blair, Raine Hamilton, and Moon Tan's Adrian Dyer.
Music fans will get a rare chance to witness the collaborations live on stage in a special Manitoba Music Songwriter Concert at Alloway Reception Centre, home to the Buffalo Stone Café at FortWhyte Alive on April 9, where all nine songwriters will share their co-written tunes. Doors for the event open at 7:30 p.m., showtime is 8 p.m., and tickets are $9 (available in advance via FortWhyte Alive).
By the end of the retreat, each songwriter will have added three new songs to their catalog. Previous sessions, supported by the Songwriters Association of Canada, have yielded stellar results. Ruth Moody's collaboration with Royal Canoe's Matt Peters and producer Derek Norton, "We Can Only Listen, was featured on her JUNO Award-nominated album, The Garden. Western Canadian Music Award-winning producer Arun Chaturvedi and Sony/ATV Music Publishing artists Phil Deschambault and Heather Longstaffe, have all received multiple placements in film, television, and commercials based on music conceived at the retreat.


The New York Times International Luxury conference celebrates its fifteenth year by returning to France for the 2015 event, which will take place from November 17-18 at the grand Trianon Palace, Versailles.
With 'Luxury Beyond Product' as the title, the organisers claim the event will bring together "some of the biggest names in fashion and the arts to discuss the myriad ways brands connect with consumers in an ever-more competitive luxury world".
Speakers will explore the question of how "emotional returns lead to economic returns" and whether this can or cannot be measured.
Marco Bizzarri, chief executive of Gucci, will be among the speakers.
Handbag Trend Alert – Sequin Handbags.


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BOOM! Studios invites readers to hunt the rich in space in Know Your Station
BOOM! Studios, Comic News
BOOM! Studios announced today KNOW YOUR STATION, a brand new five-issue limited series from the highly acclaimed writer Sarah Gailey (Eat the Rich, Magic for Liars), with star artist Liana Kangas (TRVE KVLT) that takes a stab at the ultra-wealthy, their dreams of escaping the very planet they've put in peril, and the consequences of a future that might not be so far away, available in December 2022.
Death is the great leveler, even for the 1%… the wealthiest people in the solar system abandoned the Earth for a private sanctuary in space, leaving the rest of us to die amidst cataclysmic climate change. But the ultra-wealthy won't be safe for long…
A murderer is on the loose, specifically targeting the super-rich! Soon, Elise, an employee of the Avulsion Corporation, is wrapped up in a deadly investigation, with each issue of this outrageously macabre series featuring a new, diabolically different kill!
Hugo Award winner and bestselling author Sarah Gailey is an internationally published writer of fiction and nonfiction. Their nonfiction has been published by Mashable and the Boston Globe. Their short fiction credits include Vice and The Atlantic. Their debut novella, River of Teeth, was a 2018 Hugo and Nebula Award finalist. Their highly acclaimed debut original comic book series, Eat the Rich, with BOOM! Studios launched in 2020, and they are currently the series writer for The Vampire Slayer from BOOM! Studios. Their bestselling adult novels, Magic For Liars, The Echo Wife, and Just Like Home are available now.
"I could not be more excited to explore new frontiers of wealth and violence in KNOW YOUR STATION, a series in which space is no longer the one place that hasn't been corrupted by capitalism," said Gailey. "Working with Liana Kangas to develop this series has been a source of incredible creative joy, and there couldn't be a better home for this story than BOOM! I am just thrilled to get to work with Liana to shine a light on the gory inner workings of the 1%."
Liana Kangas is a comic artist and writer living in Memphis. Liana is the artist and co-creator of TRVE KVLT with IDW and She Said Destroy with Vault Comics, as well as the co-writer/co-creator of Seeds of Eden with TKO. Liana has drawn for Star Wars Adventures, Razorblades, Blondie and Joan Jett graphic novels with Z2, Archie Comics, and 2000AD, as well as being the cover artist on titles from Image, IDW, Vault Comics, Oni Press, and others. You can learn more about Liana on lianakangas.com and social media @lianakangas.
"Getting to work with a phenomenal editorial team and favorite prose writer of mine, Sarah Gailey, is quite the foundation for my excitement to construct and create with them on this epically gruesome series," said Kangas. "There's something to be said about watching someone mysteriously murdering billionaires AND stick it to the man—but IN SPACE? Sign me up."
KNOW YOUR STATION #1 features main cover art by series artist Kangas, and variant covers by highly acclaimed illustrators Jenny Frison (Poison Ivy), Becca Carey (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Jenn Woodall (Space Trash) and more.
Tags: BOOM! Studios
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Burj Khalifa Dubai – a modern architectural wonder, is a megatall skyscrapper in Dubai.Emaar Properties took 1.5 billion USD to boast a whooping 163 stories building.
Interesting Fact: An average of 250,000 gallons of water every day is supplied to Burj Khalifa , and can reach an electrical demand equal to that of 360,000 100-watt bulbs burning at once.
Prominent celebrities, sportsmen, politicians and artists are among the many visitors to Burj Khalifa's popular observation deck.
Burj Khalifa also hosts a hotel – Hotel Armani envisions by the fashion icon Giorgio Armani, this hotel has a private entrance and occupies 11 floors of Dubai's iconic skyscraper!
Construction of the Burj Khalifa began in 2004, with the exterior completed five years later in 2009. As part of a new development called Downtown Dubai, this building was opened in 2010. And breaking numerous height records, including its designation as the tallest tower in the world.
Outside, WET Enterprises designed a fountain system at a cost of Dh 800 million (US$217 million). Illuminated by 6,600 lights and 50 coloured projectors, it is 270 m (900 ft) long and shoots water 150 m (500 ft) into the air, accompanied by a range of classical to contemporary Arabic and world music.
An outdoor observation deck, named At the Top, opened on 5 January 2010 on the 124th floor. At 452 m (1,483 ft), it was the highest outdoor observation deck in the world when it opened. Also the 124th floor observation deck features the electronic telescope, an augmented reality device developed by Gsmprjct° of Montréal, which allows visitors to view the surrounding landscape in real-time, and to view previously saved images such as those taken at different times of day or under different weather conditions.
Landscape architects SWA Group designed an 27-acre park surrounding Burj Khalifa. The flower of the Hymenocallis, a desert plant is the inspiration behind the design of the park. At the centre of the park is the water room, which is a series of pools and water jet fountains. Benches and signs incorporate images of Burj Khalifa and the Hymenocallis flower.
Water collected from the building's cooling system are used for watering plants. The system provides 68,000,000 L (15,000,000 imp gal) annually!
If you are planning on visiting Dubai anytime soon – then dont miss out on visiting Burj Khalifa – its a modern visual architectural masterpiece that is worth a dekho!
Wondering what is inside of Burj Khalifa Dubai? Here is an interesting video we found on YouTube.
And here is a view from the the top of the observatory deck!
If you are planning on visiting Dubai anytime soon – do not forget to check the great offers and packages we have got for you here.
Tagged al burj dubai, Burj Khalifa, dubai. Bookmark the permalink.


You should start organizing your move 6 weeks prior to your ideal move date. Try and schedule your move during the off-peak season or outside of the months from May-September. Many moving companies will accommodate last-minute moves as well, so don't think that just because you're starting your moving late in the game, it can't be accomplished.
The best way to choose a moving company is through extensive research. Start by asking friends, family and neighbors for reputable companies. When you narrow your choice down to a few options, research them thoroughly. Are they registered with the Better Business Bureau? Do they have a lot of complaints filed against them? Find out their credentials. Then have at least three in-home written estimates performed, and choose the moving company who best fits your needs and budget.
Do I really need an in-home estimate?
Yes. Otherwise, you can be hit with unforeseen charges later on in the move. It also gives you a better idea of the total cost of the move, as well as allows the movers to better accommodate your belongings.
There are typically three options for packing: self-pack, custom packing and full-service packing. For do-it-yourselfers, self-pack is a common option. This means all of your belongings are packed by you. Custom packing is when the moving company only packs highly-valuable or fragile items such as antiques, artwork and collectibles, while you are responsible for packing the rest. Full-service packing is when the moving company packs your entire home, alleviating you of the entire task. Most people think self-pack is the most cost-effective, but depending on how much you have to pack and the cost of moving supplies, a full-service pack may be more time and cost-effective.
You should not pack plants, food or any hazardous materials. You should also carry any irreplaceable items or valuables with you instead of packing them. Jewelry, money and other irreplaceable items should not be included in your truck shipment.
What documents and contracts should I receive from the moving company?
You should receive Your Rights and Responsibilities and Ready to Move brochures from your moving company. Before your shipment is transported, you should obtain an Order for Service outlining the moving services requested. You should receive a Bill of Lading when your shipment is loaded, which is the receipt of the contract arranged with your moving company.
What happens if my items are lost or damaged during shipment?
Before shipping, you should opt for one of two types of valuation coverage provided by the moving company to protect you if your items are damaged or lost. Released value coverage comes at no additional cost to you, but it provides the bare minimum compensation should anything happen. You will only receive .60/lb, which is not typically sufficient. Full replacement coverage costs extra, but will fully compensate you by repairing, replacing or providing a monetary settlement for lost or damaged items. If your moving company does not provide valuation coverage, it is likely a disreputable company.


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import { useCallback } from 'react';

import useTranscriptActivityElementsRef from './useTranscriptActivityElementsRef';

export default function useGetTranscriptActivityElementByID() {
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  return useCallback(
    activityID => {
      const { element } = activityElementsRef.current.find(entry => entry.activityID === activityID) || {};

      return element;
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


You are cordially invited to join us for a trunk show with Saint Crispin's April 23rd and 24th from 11:00 am – 7:00 pm. Mr. Phillip Car Managing Director of Saint Crispin's will be here to present the collection.
Founded in 1992 Saint Crispin's is recognized as a leader in design and craftsmanship of fine European footwear. As such they only work with very fine selected partners around the world.
Headquartered in Austria and made in Romania all Saint Crispin's shoes are handcrafted by a small team of artisans, craftsmen and women. Their shoes are quite possibly as close to a bespoke fit as you will find in a ready to wear shoe. And while that may sound like a big statement, in our opinion these shoes are top flight all the way.


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→ What's On → Concert | Music
Joe Bonamassa is one of the most celebrated performing musicians of today. As a two-time GRAMMY-nominated artist who recently achieved his 21st #1 album on the Billboard Blues Chart, Redemption, Joe is only in his early 40s and has already become a living legend with an astounding multi-genre catalogue of music. Collectively, Bonamassa has over 30 albums to date with studio and live recordings, collaborative albums with blues sensation Beth Hart, and the adventurous side projects Black Country Communion and Rock Candy Funk Party.
A prolific writer who is always on the hunt to expand his eclectic musical horizons, Bonamassa has a limitless work ethic whether it's in studio, on the road, or working with other artists to spur new music. Most recently, Joe shows off his producing chops on Reese Wynans & Friends' Sweet Release album, Reese's first solo album in his 50- year career which the critics hail as 'Electrifying,' 'extraordinary' and 'classic.'
He's been featured in several publications from Esquire and Parade to Rolling Stone and American Songwriter, as well as on the covers of Guitar Player, Vintage Guitar, Guitarist and Classic Rock Magazine.
Backed by a stellar band of legendary musicians including Late Night with David Letterman's Anton Fig (drums), Nashville recording legend Michael Rhodes (bass), Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee and Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble member, Reese Wynans (piano/organ), Paulie Cerra (sax) and Lee Thornburg (trumpet). The band also features our very own Mahalia Barnes, Jade MacRae and Juanita Tippins on backing vocals bringing a whole new life to the show which will feature brand new songs alongside career-spanning favourites.
"I am really looking forward to coming back to play for the fans in Australia who have always supported me,"explains Joe. "They are amazing!"
Date: Monday 23rd September 2019
Venue || Location
Palais Theatre Events 13 Events
⊜ Lower Esplanade St Kilda | Map
Palais TheatreLower Esplanade, St Kilda, , 3182
✆ Event: 136 100 | Venue: 03 9525 3240 | Box Office 136 100
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Under the brand name Membrana Pulsemaster offers this easy-to-use conductivity measurement device to meet her customer's research requirements.
Pulsemaster's Membrana can analyse solids and liquids for analytical and research purposes.
The Membrana system consist of a conductivity measurement device and multiple treatment chambers.
The system is compact and portable, easy-to-use and gives instant results.
The Membrana system consist of a conductivity measurement device and multiple treatment chambers suitable for all kind of solids and liquids.


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Gratiot es una villa ubicada en el condado de Licking en el estado estadounidense de Ohio. En el Censo de 2010 tenía una población de 221 habitantes y una densidad poblacional de 651,36 personas por km².

Geografía
Gratiot se encuentra ubicada en las coordenadas . Según la Oficina del Censo de los Estados Unidos, Gratiot tiene una superficie total de 0.34 km², de la cual 0.34 km² corresponden a tierra firme y (0%) 0 km² es agua.

Demografía
Según el censo de 2010, había 221 personas residiendo en Gratiot. La densidad de población era de 651,36 hab./km². De los 221 habitantes, Gratiot estaba compuesto por el 98.64% blancos, el 0.45% eran afroamericanos, el 0% eran amerindios, el 0% eran asiáticos, el 0% eran isleños del Pacífico, el 0% eran de otras razas y el 0.9% pertenecían a dos o más razas. Del total de la población el 0% eran hispanos o latinos de cualquier raza.

Referencias

Enlaces externos

Villas de Ohio
Localidades del condado de Licking

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Biotechnology Science Fair Project
What are Genetically Modified Organisms
Title: What are Genetically Modified Organisms?
Subject: Biotechnology
Project Type: Descriptive
Awards: 2nd place, Canada Wide Virtual Science Fair (2003)
Description: This project describes how both genetically modified plants and animals are created and side effects that genetic modification cause. A questionnaire was composed in order to find out what does the average person think and know about genetic modification.
A genetically modified organism (GMO) or genetically engineered organism (GEO) is an organism whose genetic material has been altered using genetic engineering techniques. These techniques are generally known as recombinant DNA technology. With this technology, DNA molecules from different sources are combined into one molecule to create a new set of genes. This DNA is then transferred into an organism, giving it modified or novel traits.
Examples of GMOs are highly diverse, and include transgenic (genetically modified by recombinant DNA methods) animals such as mice, fish, transgenic plants, or various microbes, such as fungi and bacteria. The generation and use of GMOs has many reasons, chief among them are their use in research that addresses fundamental or applied questions in biology or medicine, for the production of pharmaceuticals and industrial enzymes, and for direct, and often controversial, applications aimed at improving human health (e.g., gene therapy) or agriculture (e.g., golden rice). The term "genetically modified organism" does not always imply, but can include, targeted insertions of genes from one into another species. For example, a gene from a jellyfish, encoding a fluorescent protein called GFP, can be physically linked and thus co-expressed with mammalian genes to identify the location of the protein encoded by the GFP-tagged gene in the mammalian cell. These and other methods are useful and indispensable tools for biologists in many areas of research, including those that study the mechanisms of human and other diseases or fundamental biological processes in eukaryotic or prokaryotic cells.
For More Information: Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs)
Biotechnology Science Fair Projects
Genetic Engineering Science Fair Projects
Biotechnology Award Winning Projects
Biotechnology Experiments


Midterm Election Ballot Amendments: What's up with the Right to Hunt and Fish Amendment?
Do you think the right to hunt should be protected by the NC state constitution?
This election cycle, North Carolinians will be voting on six constitutional amendments, one of which is the Right to Hunt and Fish Amendment. The amendment would upgrade hunting and fishing to a constitutional right, designating "public hunting and fishing [to] be the preferred means of managing and controlling wildlife." Restrictions on hunting and fishing would be prohibited, except to comply with wildlife conservation and management laws.
At UNC's Science Policy Advocacy Group (SPAG), we highlighted the quoted language from the amendment, wondering: Are voters being asked to make a decision motivated by wildlife conservation science or by politics? While the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services claims that hunting is a wildlife management tool, this largely depends on local context based on hunting regulation and the species in question.
To answer this question in North Carolina, we consulted resources at the NC Wildlife Resources Commission. While NC has a Deer Management Assistance Program, a recent publication on the Wildlife Restoration Program states that the primary contribution of hunters is financial. In addition to the state taxes we all pay, hunters contribute to conservation funds through hunting licenses and excise taxes on arms, ammunition, and equipment. The Wildlife Commission uses those funds to purchase and manage habitat lands, restore wildlife species, conduct research, and survey wildlife populations. In fact, the increase in game populations (turkey, quail, fox, black bear, etc) is desirable because it incentivizes a growth in the popularity of hunting, which would in turn maintain revenue streams for conservation. The report does not mention hunting's impact on wildlife population control in NC, and a search of academic literature yielded no results on the topic.
So hunting is an important financial tool for wildlife management, rather than a tool for wildlife population control. However, there's also no evidence that anyone wants to reduce hunting licenses. If anything, because of the important funds generated by hunting, NC has a Hunter Heritage program to try to reverse declines in the number of people who hunt.
Which brings us back to the ballot amendment – what are we really voting for?
A "yes" vote supports creating a state constitutional right to hunt, fish, and harvest wildlife, affording it the same protection as free speech. This would mean the NC General Assembly would have the sole power to regulate hunting and fishing. In comparison, a "no" vote opposes codifying this right in the state constitution, maintaining having a license as a privilege.
In the end, it's unclear what exactly this amendment would accomplish besides adding another amendment. Of all the ballot amendments, this is the one toward which state legislators feel the most ambivalent. Some democratic state representatives believe the amendment is politically motivated to draw more conservative voters to the polls who may misunderstand the amendment to mean that their ability to hunt and fish is vulnerable. This would help shore up votes for Republicans across the state.
This article is not a referendum on hunting, which, it turns out, is a prime example of how recreational activities can be leveraged to support conservation and science. However, we find this amendment uses misleading language about the efficacy of hunting itself as a wildlife management tool in NC to create unnecessary legislation.
Peer edited by Izzie Newsome.
While the shock of an electric eel sounds like more of a medical nightmare than a fortunate asset, researchers at the University of Michigan were inspired to simulate the power of these slick creatures in hope of creating power sources for a variety of medical devices. With society's heavy reliance on technology, it's not surprising that medical treatments have continued to rely more and more on electrical devices including wearable and implantable sensors, pacemakers, and prosthetics. Just as with any piece of technology, these devices require an electrical power source. However, medical devices face the added requirement of being biocompatible, meaning they must function safely and effectively in the human body. Eel-inspired power sources may achieve this goal of being biocompatible while supplying medical devices with the electricity they need to function.
The inspirational efficiency with which an eel uses its electrical shock, to help catch prey and protect itself against predators, is the result of natural selection. Electrophorus electricus, know commonly as a knifefish or an electric eel, possesses an electric organ that extends through the back 80% of its body. The organ contains parallel stacks of special cells called electrocytes. When a situation arises that warrants a shock from the eel, its nervous system generates an electric current by activating thousands of electrocytes at the exact same time. As the cells are activated, the positively charged sodium and potassium ions, in and around the cells, move toward the head of the eel. The movement of these ions allows each of the electrocytes to act like small batteries. The activated end that lost the ions has a negative charge, while the opposite side that acquired the sodium and potassium ions carries a positive charge. The battery-like cells can each generate a small, innocuous voltage (less than that of a AAA battery). But when combined, the eel's shock can be over 600 volts! For reference, a US household outlet supplies 120 volts. While a significant portion of this voltage is lost to the water around the eel, its prey or attacker will still get a nasty shock.
The University of Michigan team has successfully created an artificial electric organ that can potentially be used by humans to power devices. To make the electrical power supply biocompatible, it was necessary to efficiently mimic the features of the eel's electric organ. This was achieved by preparing hydrogel membranes that could be layered to replicate the structure of the organ. To mimic the movement of ions in and out of the cells, the hydrogels were filled with dissolved table salt, which is made of sodium and chlorine ions. Half of the cells were designed to allow only positively charged sodium ions out and the other half would only allow negatively charged chlorine ions to exit. The gels containing the salt water were alternated on the membrane sheet with gels containing pure water, which allows the sodium and chlorine to move in opposite directions. This flow of ions generates an electric charge with an electrical potential of 110 volts. While this voltage is less than that of the inspirational eel organ, in its current state the artificial organ may be sufficient to power some low-power devices.
Though pleased with the engineering of a potentially biocompatible power source, the researchers acknowledge that there are plenty of opportunities to improve its design. By increasing the efficiency of these artificial organs, researchers believe their utility will increase, as they will become more suitable for use in combination with implantable devices.
Peer edited by Erika Van Goethem.
Scientific societies, such as ASBMB, provide opportunities for trainees to travel to Washington, D.C. and meet with policymakers.
Recently, the federal budget for the fiscal year (FY) 2019 (beginning October 1st, 2018) was released. Shockingly, the initial plan called for brutal cuts to basic research funding agencies—slashing the budget of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) by 27% and 29%, respectively. While Congress subsequently lifted spending caps to compensate for these losses, the budgets of both the NIH and NSF will now remain stagnant at levels for FY2017.
Although catastrophic funding losses have been avoided, these flat budgets are still worrisome. When adjusted for inflation, a stable budget equates to a decrease in funding. Furthermore, three health research institutes currently located in the Agency of Healthcare and Human Services and the CDC will be terminated and their successors will be created within the NIH. The relocation of these institutes without an increase in NIH funding will further strain the budget.
Numerous scientific societies have responded with criticism to the federal government's budget proposal. A statement from The Society for Neuroscience (SfN) highlighted the public's support for scientific research funding and emphasized that adequate funding is critical to combat devastating diseases, such as Alzheimer's. Likewise, a press release from the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) expressed concern regarding America's ability to lead in science and innovation amidst stagnant funding.
Educating elected officials on the importance of scientific research is a key focus of scientific societies. ASBMB sponsors an opportunity for graduate students and postdocs to travel to the capital and meet with Congress through their annual Hill Day. Societies also encourage local action. For example, the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) compiles an advocacy toolkit to guide members through the process of contacting local representatives, scheduling meetings and organizing lab tours. On the UNC campus, the Science Policy Advocacy Group (SPAG) is a resource for graduate students and postdocs to gain skills in science communication and advocacy through outreach events, workshops and seminars.
At the core of science advocacy is the ability to communicate why science is necessary. While the significance of developing new cancer therapies is clear, the importance of basic science research is still often misunderstood. Basic science research is often described as "curiosity-driven" and asks fundamental questions such as: "How do cells move?" This basic research provides a thorough understanding of cellular processes that is critical for later medical innovations. In the 1990s, Yoshinori Ohsumi observed an unusual structure in yeast cells when he starved them. His work in yeast was essential for uncovering the mechanism behind autophagy, a recycling pathway in the cell. Today, researchers know that defects in autophagy result in cancer, Parkinson's Disease and Type 2 Diabetes, and Ohsumi was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2016.
Ohsumi's story demonstrates that breakthroughs in basic science are critical for breakthroughs in medicine. Yet, proper funding must be secured before further innovations in either field can occur. As a result, it is critical to create a culture that both understands and values scientific research.
Peer edited by Kelsey Miller.
Earlier this year, the U.S. government released the Climate Science Special Report. This document describes the state of the Earth's climate, specifically focusing on the U.S. If you are someone who is interested in environmental science or policy, you may have thought about reading it. But where to start? The report contains fifteen chapters and four additional appendices, so reading it may seem daunting. We published this summary of the report to provide a brief introduction to climate change, and to provide a starting point for anyone who wants to learn more.
"Climate change" is a phrase that has become ubiquitous throughout many aspects of American and global society, but what exactly is climate change?
Like weather, climate takes into account temperature, precipitation, humidity, and wind patterns. However, while weather refers to the status of these factors on any given day, climate describes the average weather for a location over a long period of time. We can consider a climate for a specific place (for example, the Caribbean Islands have a warm, humid climate), or we can consider all of Earth's climate systems together, which is known as the global climate.
Depending on where you live, you may have seen how weather can change from day to day. It may be sunny one day, but cool and rainy the next. Climate change differs from changes in weather because it describes long-term changes in average weather. For example, a place with a changing climate may be traditionally warm and sunny, but over many years, become cooler and wetter. While weather may fluctuate from day to day, climate change is due to gradual changes that occur over long periods of time. Climate is viewed through an historical lense, comparing changes over many years. Though we may not notice the climate changing on a daily basis, it can have drastic effects on our everyday lives. It can impact food production, world health, and prevalence of natural disasters.
Summary of the potential physical, ecological, social and large-scale impacts of climate change. The plot shows the impacts of climate change versus changes in global mean temperature (above the 1980-1999 level). The arrows show that impacts tend to become more pronounced for higher magnitudes of warming. Dashed arrows indicate less certainty in the projected impact and solid arrows indicate a high level of certainty.
The major factor determining the Earth's climate is radiative balance. Radiation is energy transmitted into and out of the Earth's atmosphere, surface, and oceans. Incoming radiation most often comes from light and heat energy from the Sun. Earth can lose energy in several ways. It can reflect a portion of the Sun's radiation back into space. It can also absorb the Sun's energy, causing the planet to heat up and reflect low-energy infrared radiation back into the atmosphere. The amount of incoming and outgoing radiation determines the characteristics of climate, such as temperature, humidity, wind, and precipitation. When the balance of incoming and outgoing radiation changes, the climate also changes.
Scientists agree that it's extremely likely that human activity (via greenhouse gas emissions) is the dominant cause of the increase in global temperature since the mid-20th century.
There are some natural factors that can influence climate. The main ones are volcanic eruptions and the El Niño Effect. Volcanic eruptions emit clouds of particles that block the Sun's radiation from reaching the Earth, changing the planet's radiative balance and causing the planet to cool. The El Niño Effect is a natural increase in ocean temperature in the Pacific Ocean that leads to other meteorological effects. The increase in ocean temperature off the coast of South America leads to higher rates of evaporation, which can cause wind patterns to shift, influencing weather patterns worldwide. Together, these factors influence climate, so when they differ from the norm, they can contribute to climate change.
It is true that climate change can occur naturally and it is expected to happen slowly over long periods of time. In some cases, the climate can change for a few months or years (such as in the case of a volcanic eruption), but the effects of these events are not long-lasting. However, since the Industrial Era, the factor contributing most to climate change has been an anthropogenic driver, meaning one that is being caused by human activity. The primary cause of climate change since the Industrial Era has been the presence of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The main greenhouse gases are carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O). These gases are problematic because they remain in the Earth's atmosphere for a long time after they are released. They trap much of Earth's outgoing radiation, leading to an imbalance of incoming and outgoing radiation energy. Because the Earth's atmosphere is holding on to all that energy while still receiving irradiation from the Sun, the planet heats up. This is called the greenhouse effect, because it is similar to what happens in a greenhouse—the Sun's energy can get in, but the heat cannot get out. The greenhouse effect has intensified due to the greenhouse gases that are released during our modern industrial processes. This has caused the Earth's climate to begin to change.
Who contributed to the Climate Science Special Report?
The report was written by members of the American scientific community, including (but not limited to) the National Science Foundation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the US Army Corps of Engineers, and multiple universities and national labs. They analyzed data from articles in peer reviewed scientific journals—that is, other scientists read these articles before they were even published to check for questionable experiments, data, or conclusions—as well as government reports and statistics and other scientific assessments. The authors provided links to each source in citation sections at the end of each chapter. They combined everything they learned into this one comprehensive document, the Climate Science Special Report.
What can we learn from this report?
First of all, the report reveals that the Earth is getting warmer. The average global surface temperature has increased about 1.8°F (1.0°C) since 1901. This may seem like a small change, but this increase in temperature is enough to affect the global climate. Sea levels have risen about eight inches since 1900, which has led to increased flooding in coastal cities. Weather patterns have changed, with increased rainfall and heatwaves. While the increased rainfall has been observed primarily in the Northeastern U.S., the western part of the U.S. has experienced an increase in forest fires, such as those that have devastated California this year. Such changes in weather patterns can be dangerous for those who live in those areas. They can even damage infrastructure and affect agriculture, which impacts public health and food production. These changes mainly result from greenhouse gases, namely CO2, that humans have emitted into the atmosphere.
Where can I go to read the report myself?
You can find a link to the main page of the report here. There is also an Executive Summary, which was written for non-scientists. While the rest of the report contains some technical language, it is generally accessible, and contains visuals to help readers understand the data. If you are interested in gaining a better understanding of Earth's climate and how it's changing, we encourage you to take a look at the Climate Science Special Report to learn more.
Peer edited by Amanda Tapia and Joanna Warren.
Looking for a New Year's Resolution? Shrink Your Plastic Footprint!
Plastics are nearly unavoidable. From the plastic bottle of water you grab walking into a meeting to the money in your wallet, plastics are ubiquitous. However, evidence is accumulating that heavy plastic use takes a hefty toll on the environment, especially the world's oceans, which are the repository of nearly 4.8-12.7 million tons of plastic each year (about five bags of plastic for every foot of coastline in the world). Much of this marine plastic comes from litter that washes down storm drains into the oceans, but it can also be blown from landfills to end up in the ocean. Marine wildlife including fish, birds, seals, turtles and whales consume startling amounts of plastics, not only because these plastics look like dinner but because they often smell like it too. Dangers of plastics to marine animals include entanglement and intestinal perforation or blockage which can cause nutrient starvation—marine animals starving on a stomach stuffed with plastic. Researchers estimate that 90% of sea birds and half of all sea turtles have consumed plastics.
Millions of tons of plastic waste winds up in the ocean each year.
More recently, the alarm has been raised about microplastics, small plastics and plastic fibers less than 5 mm in size. Microplastics can come from the degradation of larger plastics and from washing clothing containing synthetic fibers. Microplastics act like magnets for chemicals the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) calls "Persistent Bioaccumulative and Toxic Substances" (PBTs). PBTs build up in the bodies of marine organisms and can harm us when we consume seafood. Though other potential dangers of microplastics to the environment are not clear yet, it has been shown that the decomposition of plastics can release toxic chemicals including bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical which disrupts hormone balances and may be linked to human health concerns including diabetes, behavioral disorders like ADHD, and cancer. Researchers at the University of Missouri-Columbia have shown that some of the same adverse health effects occur in fish exposed to BPA, indicating a risk to marine food chains and ecosystems. It is clear that we do not yet know the full impact of plastics in our oceans—but that the dumping of plastic waste into marine ecosystems is not without consequences.
Although some solutions to the plastic crisis have been floated (excuse the pun) including giant plastic-collecting booms which collect large plastic debris in the ocean and plastic-munching bacteria, these approaches are only beginning to be implemented and have limitations. This is where we come in — preventing more plastics from getting into the ocean is an important first step. Simply recycling our plastics may not be enough: one professor of economics cites plastics as one of the least valuable recyclable items due to the high energy and resource costs of processing them. As a result, it is imperative to focus on reducing, rather than recycling plastics.
Here are 100 ways to reduce your plastic use, ranging from reusable coffee cups to making your own deodorant to avoid the use of plastic packaging—an idea that doesn't stink. Another way to track your plastic use is to accept the Plastic-Free Challenge—a social media challenge that lets you share your commitment to reducing your plastic footprint with all your followers. A good way to get started is to keep track of how much plastic you use and strive to reduce this amount every week. If you want to think bigger than your own plastic footprint, you can call your representatives about measures like plastic bag bans in your city and about funding research for equipping water treatment facilities to deal with microplastic-contaminated effluent. This year, I'll be making it my New Year's resolution to reduce my plastic consumption: a small change in habits that can add up. Let's face it, I was never going to make it to the gym, anyway.
Peer edited by Erica Wood.


Yesterday (February 28) I cycled, in near freezing conditions, to a pond I call "Hob's Eye Pool".
It is a farm reservoir that was stocked in the early 1980s to deal with a weed problem. Now it is a popular day and match ticket water, and although it's not really my cup of tea, because of the split fins and damaged mouths of the carp, etc, I reasoned that it would be my best chance for action, given the carp there breed like carp, and the head of fish is pretty high. My best "bag" there, to use matchman's parlance, was around 140lbs, but that's not very unusual there. As I say, it's a place I fish when I want to test out ideas, or when conditions absolutely rule out anywhere else. In short, it is a "runs water"; not that there were many runs today.
Given Herefordshire's snow alert, I had the pool entirely to myself: which is a most unusual state of affair at Hob's Eye. The snow didn't fall, but the freezing rain did. To be honest, within one hour of arriving I considered packing up. I was damp, despite the waterproofs, and I was cold, without any form of shelter, - due to my eccentric mode of transport!
I stuck it out, however, trying out various ideas, but all to no avail. The break came, however, when a double-figure common - with clear scale damage on the shoulders- rolled immediately before me, just 3ft from the side, and as silently as a suitor in a harem.
To my right lay willows, - many with branches in the water. The carp seemed to have been facing this direction and I decided to try flake on a size six, under a medium sight-bob, and to cast under those trees.
This worked, in that I soon caught two small commons – not the double, alas – and I was pleased that I was able to strike firmly and cleanly, because I've been suffering from RSI in my right arm, on and off.
All went quiet again, until I noticed tiny bubbles under an overhanging tree to my right, and a slight but discernible "rocking" to the water.
I threw in a few handfuls of broken prawn and sweetcorn, and I baited with a broken prawn, tipped with a single golden grain.
Half an hour later, just as I was giving up hope, the bob twitched once then vanished. I struck into a reasonably heavy weight, but there was no screaming run. Perhaps the fish was half asleep, due to the cold? I looked at the impressive bend in my rod, and wondered if it might just be the double I had seen. Sure enough, a decent common, with scale damage on its shoulders, rolled before me. It rolled a few more times, inbetween a few apathetic rushes, and before long it was in the net.
I removed the fang twister hook from the roof of its mouth and studied this old warrior, with its slightly damaged mouth, split fins and tatty scales. It was not a pretty fish, unlike the stunners of "The Other Pool"; but on a day like today, I was more than pleased to have caught it.
By the way, regular readers will have noticed that the dates at the bottom of postings are"out". It's a glitch which I don't know how to fix, and so in future I shall give the dates of session in the copy itself, to avoid confusion.


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Indoctrinating the Green religion and its threat of hell on earth 11
There was a time, between the mid 1960s and the collapse of the Evil Empire around 1990, when little children were raised by "progressive" parents to fear that a terrible nuclear war was about to destroy all life on earth, starting at any moment, and all because the Western world was armed with nuclear weapons. The instilling of terror in the poor tots could not start early enough in the passionate opinion of hippie and New Left moms and dads. Ghoulish lullabies were sung to babies about carrion crows sitting on their cradles.
By winning the Cold War, the wicked West – led by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher – put an end to that scam. Though maybe not to the effects of the dread deeply implanted in two or three generations of children.
What is it with the Left that it wants to instill anxiety and fear in their kids? Do they want their nights riven with shrieks as junior wakes hysterical from a nightmare? Seems so.
They're at it again. This time the bed-time story – and the day time lesson – is that the earth is about to heat red hot, boiling oceans are about to rise and flood the continents, all the cuddly white polar bears will drown (because they cannot swim and have to to dwell on ice floes which will melt under them), the tops of the mountains will lose their pretty caps of snow, fish will mutate into Jesus Christ or Charles Darwin, and all because the wicked West won't stop using aerosol cans, herding flatulent cows, driving motorcars, and breathing out.
This is from Front Page, by Mary Grabar:
Under [Arne Duncan's] watch the Department of Education has become a propaganda arm used to influence the next generation to accept the idea of catastrophic man-made climate change as per the UN, the Environmental Protection Agency, and such groups as the National Wildlife Federation.
In a multi-pronged approach, the Department is teaming up with various non-profit and government organizations and curriculum companies to promote "fun" contests and activities for students, while promoting the next phase of Common Core "State Standards" — in science.
For example, the Department's latest Green Strides newsletter (February 28) announced three contests for K-12 students who display their agreement with the government's position on climate change.
In that newsletter, the Department of Education announced that another federal agency, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency [EPA], and its National Environmental Education Foundation, have "launched an exciting video challenge for middle school students called Climate Change in Focus". In this contest, middle school students are asked to make a video that "expresses why they care about climate change and what they are doing to reduce emissions or to prepare for its impacts". To win loyalty to the EPA, it is announced that winning videos will be highlighted on the EPA website. The effort sounds like the kids' cereal box promotions of yore: the top three entries will receive "cool prizes like a solar charging backpack", winning class projects will receive special recognition for their school, and the first 100 entrants will receive a year's subscription to National Geographic Kids Magazine.
Another contest, National Wildlife Federation's Young Reporters for the Environment, invites students "between the ages of 13-21 to report on an environmental issue in their community in an article, photo or photo essay, or short video". Entries should "reflect firsthand investigation of topics related to the environment and sustainability in the students' own communities, draw connections between local and global perspectives, and propose solutions".
Students are also encouraged to make nominations for "Champions of the Earth", a "UN-sponsored award for environment, Green Economy, and sustainability". …
Students already get exposed to climate change and sustainability in textbooks which are bought with taxpayer funds, as well as in videos and online materials produced by taxpayer-supported Public Broadcasting. Many students, of course, have had to sit through Al Gore's documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. …
The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) — the next phase of Common Core — will make the situation worse, however. Students will be even less capable of distinguishing science from propaganda. These standards, like those for math and English Language Arts, were produced by Achieve, a nonprofit education group started by corporate leaders and some governors.
Started by lefties is our guess. Sensible decision to be "non-profit". Who would buy their product?
As in the standards for English Language Arts and math, the NGSS are intended to be transformative, or as Appendix A states, "to reflect a new vision for American science education". They call for new "performance expectations" that "focus on understanding and applications as opposed to memorization of facts devoid of context".
In plain words, indoctrination – teaching what to think, instead of education – teaching how to think.
And they can even manage to do this with the teaching of Mathematics. Wow!
It is precisely such short shrift to knowledge (dismissively referred to as "memorization") to which science professors Lawrence S. Lerner and Paul Gross object. The standards bypass essential math skills in favor of "process", they asserted last fall at the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation blog. [They said that] Common Core standards, in all disciplines, are written with a lot of fluff to conceal their emptiness. …
Lerner and Gross condemn the "slighting of mathematics", which does "increasing mischief as grade level rises, especially in the physical sciences". Physics is "effectively absent" at the high school level. … [They] attack the "practices" strategy, as an extension of the "inquiry learning" of the early 1990s, which had "no notable effect on the (mediocre) performance of American students in national and international science assessments".
With some sarcasm, they write, "It is charming to say 'students learn science effectively when they actively engage in the practices of science'." However, … beginners don't and can't "practice" [science] as do experts. The practices of experts exploit prior experience and extensive build-up in long-term memory of scaffolding: facts, procedures, technical know-how, solutions to standard problems in the field, vocabularies — of knowledge in short.
Not only do the Next Generation Science Standards shirk the necessary foundations in math and science knowledge, but they explicitly call for including ideological lessons, such as "Human impacts on Earth systems".
For grades K-2, students are to understand, "Things people do can affect the environment but they can make choices to reduce their impact." In grades 3 through 5, students will learn "Societal activities have had major effects on the land, ocean, atmosphere, and even outer space. Societal activities can also help protect Earth's resources and environments." …
The objective, of course, is not teaching legitimate science, but indoctrination.
Amazingly, ten states have already voluntarily adopted the Standards.
Such efforts, coordinated by the Department of Education, threaten the future of science itself.
When will this lunacy pass? We venture to state our secret conviction, hoping the all-powerful EPA Gestapo is not listening:
The planet we live on is not under any existential threat. And if it were, there's not a thing anyone could do about it.
So sleep well, children. Happy dreams.
Posted under Climate, Commentary, education, Environmentalism, United Nations, United States, War by Jillian Becker on Monday, March 10, 2014
Tagged with Achieve, Arne Duncan, climate change, Common Core, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), indoctrination, Lawrence S. Lerner, man-made global warming, Margaret Thatcher, Mary Grabar, National Wildlife Federation, Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), Nuclear Armageddon, Paul Gross, Ronald Reagan, the Cold War
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Golden years of an aging terrorist 0
Mr and Mrs Bill Ayers are terrorists. Once a terrorist, always a terrorist. Once a murderer, always a murderer.
The San Francisco Police Department Park Station bombing occurred on February 16, 1970, when a pipe bomb filled with shrapnel detonated on the ledge of a window at the San Francisco Police Department's Golden Gate Park station. Brian V. McDonnell, a police sergeant, was fatally wounded in its blast. Robert Fogarty, another police officer, was severely wounded in his face and legs and was partially blinded. In addition, eight other police officers were wounded.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, "Investigators in the early '70s said the bombing likely was the work of the Weather Underground …"
An investigation was reopened in 1999. A San Francisco grand jury looked into the incident, but no indictments followed.
In early 2009 conservative advocacy group America's Survival Inc. advocated for a murder charge against Bill Ayers [founder/leader] of the Weather Underground. In connection with a press release, the group released a letter from the San Francisco Police Officers Association endorsing an earlier allegation by Larry Grathwohl, a former FBI informant within the Weather Underground, that "there are "irrefutable and compelling reasons" that establish that Ayers and his wife, Bernadine Dohrn, are responsible for the bombing."
The case has yet to be solved and remains an active case.
Also from Wikipedia:
In late 1975, the Weather Underground put out an issue of a magazine, Osawatamie, which carried an article by Dohrn, "Our Class Struggle", described as a speech given to the organization's cadres on September 2 of that year. In the article, Dohrn clearly stated support for communist ideology:
"We are building a communist organization to be part of the forces which build a revolutionary communist party to lead the working class to seize power and build socialism. […] We must further the study of Marxism-Leninism within the WUO [Weather Underground Organization]. The struggle for Marxism-Leninism is the most significant development in our recent history. […] We discovered thru our own experiences what revolutionaries all over the world have found — that Marxism-Leninism is the science of revolution, the revolutionary ideology of the working class, our guide to the struggle […]"
According to a 1974 FBI study of the group, Dohrn's article signaled a developing commitment to Marxism-Leninism that had not been clear in the group's previous statements, despite trips to Cuba by some members of the group before and after Weather Underground was formed, and contact with Vietnamese communists there. [!]
While on the run from police, Dohrn married another Weatherman leader, Bill Ayers, with whom she has two children. … In the late 1970s, the Weatherman group split into two factions, the "May 19 Coalition" and the "Prairie Fire Collective", with Dohrn and Ayers in the latter. The Prairie Fire Collective favored coming out of hiding, with members facing the criminal charges against them, while the May 19 Coalition continued in hiding. A decisive factor in Dohrn's coming out of hiding were her concerns about her children.
The couple turned themselves in to authorities in 1980. While some charges relating to their activities with the Weathermen were dropped due to prosecutorial misconduct, Dohrn pled guilty to charges of aggravated battery and bail jumping, receiving probation.
After refusing to testify against ex-Weatherman Susan Rosenberg in an armed robbery case, she later served less than a year of jail time.
This is from an article by Mary Grabar at PJ Media today:
At a "fireside chat" that followed his speech to the Association of Teacher Educators on Sunday morning, February 17, Bill Ayers, co-founder of the terrorist group the Weathermen and retired "distinguished professor of education" from the University of Illinois at Chicago, expressed his gratitude that the Atlanta Hyatt Regency Hotel did not "buckle" and reveal to callers when and where he would be speaking during the conference. There were no protestors, and no visible police. Few would have guessed that Ayers's speech would come at 9:45 on a Sunday morning. …
Education, in the real sense, is the least of Ayers's concerns. …
Ayers's real concern, and the concern of many in the educating educators industry, which trains and certifies future teachers, is turning classrooms into spaces for activism on behalf of what is called "social justice." As they do this, they gloss over the violent past and revolutionary Marxist goals of its purveyors. Ayers has repeatedly called himself a communist with a small "c," and the Weathermen were involved in several bombings. …
I read a report of his speech on February 26 at Minnesota State University, where he is to be scholar in residence. The news report said he spoke about "education reform," but the quotations from his talk were the same as what I heard in Atlanta. Ayers quoted his mother: "'Education is God's work.'" He also said, "'Education can shape your destiny, and can shape the destiny of a people,'" quoting his father (the wealthy and politically powerful chairman of Commonwealth Edison, Thomas Ayers of Chicago).
Ayers also re-used his observations from his visit to apartheid schools in South Africa. Among the pearls cast over and over in books, articles, and speeches was this one dutifully reported in the North Dakota paper: "every child should receive the same education in the U.S." And this one: "'Every human being is entitled to an education that will develop the whole human personality.'"
No kidding. But where is the substance?
The answer, of course, is that there is none. Ayers attempts to subvert education and to turn students into foot soldiers for the Revolution. Teachers, he said in Atlanta, should teach "authenticity," "initiative," "courage," and how to "engage in dialogue." Ayers's speech, like his books and articles, was a stream-of-consciousness pastiche of slogans, rallying cries, anecdotes, and loose references to poetry. …
"We are world-changers, one student at a time," Ayers told his appreciative audience. "World-changers," of course, have no time for such matters as measuring student academic achievement, adhering to standards, or ensuring that teachers are knowledgeable in their subject areas. In fact, Ayers considers testing and regularly scheduled class periods to be symptomatic of a prison-like system. For Ayers, education is "naturally cooperative." He quipped, "The idea that education is competition makes what hair I have left curl." Titles of panel sessions were in line: "Making the Most of History: Teaching Historical Empathy Across the Content Area," "Encouraging Equity and Social Justice in a Diverse Society," and "Cultivating Student Learning: Critical Elements for Enhancing a Global Community of Learners and Educators via Teacher Reflectivity." …
The Association of Teacher Educators claims to be "devoted solely to the improvement of teacher education for both school and campus-based teacher educators." Founded in 1920, ATE represents over 650 colleges and universities, 500 major school systems, and the majority of the state departments of education. Based in the Washington, D.C., area, it "represents its members' interests before governmental agencies and educational organizations," and has two voting seats on the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education.
So bureaucrats, at both public and private institutions, issuing expense checks for $300-plus in registration and membership fees, plus airfare, hotel rooms, meals, and miscellaneous expenses no doubt justify such expenses under "professional development."
In spite of the fancy accommodations and warm reception by the education establishment, Ayers told his admirers, "I have a history of being marginalized," a reference to the controversial association with Barack Obama during the 2008 campaign. (The project they worked on together, C, with its Ayers-designed radical curriculum, failed miserably to improve educational outcomes for intended beneficiaries, Chicago inner-city students.)
Still, Ayers presents himself as one of the beleaguered world-changers, teachers who have a "mind wrecking and bone crunching" task. But there is a moral satisfaction: If you want to do something "useful," without making six figures, become a teacher, he said. Shortly before he retired, he, of course, was earning a base salary $126,000. Ayers also made frequent trips for speaking and "research" gigs, courtesy of Illinois taxpayers, as I learned from his records. He served on numerous dissertation committees, especially at Georgia Southern University.
Now in retirement, Ayers apparently enjoys a lifestyle that requires even less work than he had as a distinguished professor of education. (His syllabi indicated none of the traditional time-consuming assignments that we professors are used to, but instead "deep" in-class discussions and "reflective" projects.)
Ayers presents a curriculum of questions like "Who am I? What am I here for?" (verbatim). He promotes group work to address such questions. He suggested that education professors ask their students to clarify their own values by writing down three qualities they would bestow on all human beings. Students should work in small groups to come to agreement and then in a larger group to come to agreement. The goal? Learning respect for others and for self, and a "love for humanity."
Teaching has turned into community organizing, I realized. Bill Ayers is the mentor. I learned at one panel that some schools now are 24-hour "community centers," complete with dental care services. Teachers, who have no memory of the 1960s or 1970s (and thus of traditional education), are enjoined to go into the "community," to teach students how to talk to parents, to be a "bridge," to go to churches and neighborhood association meetings, and to visit students' homes. The atmosphere was suffused with do-goodism that indicated an alarming violation of teacher-student boundaries, especially in the last session I attended, where two area public high school English teachers with formerly "undocumented" students, both girls, discussed how they used their classes for advocacy on behalf of illegal aliens.
The weekend was surreal. Ayers studiously avoided any references to his violent past, glossing over facts in his anecdote-filled speech. The North Dakota newspaper reporter described Ayers in the sanitized manner these educators would have used: as an "educational reform advocate and former anti-war activist."
At the "fireside chat," Ayers gave suggestions for "How to survive till the Revolution" with "anarchist calisthenics," at any time during the day when an administrator is not looking over shoulders. …
It's for the kids: "Every kid deserves to get a well-rested and well-paid teacher," said Ayers. The way to pay for it has not changed since the 1960s, though: "close the Pentagon."
He gave both his congratulations and sympathies to a doctoral student from Baylor University for being at a Baptist institution. Her academic field in education is — a direct quotation — "transformative citizenship."
Ayers's mentee Barack Obama is in the White House and going after the military.
Ayers is the "2013 College of Education and Human Services visiting scholar," delivering the public address and meeting with several classes and discussing curriculum with faculty at Minnesota State University, Moorhead — with security, faculty salaries, overhead, and everything else state and federal taxpayers support to keep a public university going.
It was an education professor, Steve Grineski, who invited Ayers to come and spread his ideas to future teachers and other students.
Today, Ayers is a grandfather and a senior mentor to such professors and students. Who would have thought back in the 1970s, during his days as a fugitive from the law, that he would spend his golden years basking in such glow?
The trouble is that in an era that has a Barack Obama as President of the United States it is not unexpected at all, but highly expectable, that a terrorist who has learnt nothing with age and experience should be respected, honored, privileged, and handsomely paid to teach children that the very society which is treating him so generously must be transformed into a Communist … what? What would his word be? Paradise?
Posted under Commentary, communism, education, Terrorism, Videos by Jillian Becker on Friday, March 8, 2013
Tagged with Jeremiah Wright, Mary Grabar, Police sergeant Brian V. McDonnell, Robert Fogarty, Susan Rosenberg, Terrorist Bernadine Dohrn, Terrorist Bill Ayers, The Association of Teacher Educators, The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, The Weather Underground, The Woods Foundation
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Who is John de Ruiter? Canadian spiritual leader charged with sex crimes - Reports
Police in Edmonton, Alberta noted they arrested Ruiter and charged him with sexually assaulting four women in different incidents between 2012 and 2020
Authored by: TN World Desk
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A self-styled messianic leader in western Canada has been charged with four counts of sexual assault. 63-year-old John de Ruiter, who is the leader of a multi-million dollar spiritual organisation, led the College of Integrated Philosophy in Edmonton for decades.
Police in Edmonton, Alberta noted they arrested Ruiter and charged him with sexually assaulting four women in different incidents between 2012 and 2020, as per BBC. Police described Ruiter as a 'self-appointed spiritual leader'.
According to reports to police, Ruiter happened to tell certain female members of his group that he 'was directed by a spirit to engage in sexual activity with them and that engaging in sexual activity with him will provide them an opportunity to achieve a state of a higher being or spiritual enlightenment'.
Human trafficking case: Romania court extends detention of influencer Andrew Tate, his brother
'Shocked': Swati Maliwal demands justice as wrestlers accuse WFI chief of sexual harassment
Police have reason to believe that there may be more victims and urged them to come forward.
Notably, Ruiter worked as a shoemaker and a junior pastor in Alberta before developing his own teachings.
He describes himself as the 'living embodiment of truth'. Ruiter, however, is not trained or certified as a psychologist or therapist, as per reports.
Who is BJP MP Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, accused by wrestlers Vinesh Phogat, Sakshi Malik of sexual abuse?
Man lynched for resisting daughter's molestation in West Bengal's Howrah
He became famous for weekly meetings in which he would only stare silently at his followers for long periods of time.
A rep for Ruiter told BBC in a statement that he will fight the charges in court.
The group's website noted that Ruiter will return to work at the college this week.
Zaba Walker, a spokeswoman for Ruiter, informed in an email to the BBC that he 'intends to vigorously contest these charges in a court of law'.
"This situation is deeply impactful for those who know Mr de Ruiter," she added.
canada spiritual leader


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Mindfulness practices also associated with fewer adverse events, research shows
Posted Jan 24, 2023 10:30 AM CST
A group performs breathing and movement exercises as part of a class. (Getty Images/Ridofranz)
For the first time, research has shown that low- or no-cost mindfulness exercises can be just as effective at treating anxiety as medication. A study published in November in JAMA Psychiatry shows those instructed to become aware of one's breath, focus on different parts of the body, and move with awareness of the body experienced the same decrease in anxiety as those who received the anti-anxiety medication escitalopram, better known as Lexapro, reports the Washington Post. To begin the eight-week study, 276 adults were split into two groups, one to receive 10mg to 20mg of escitalopram and one to complete 45 minutes of daily exercises, a weekly 2.5-hour class with a mindfulness teacher, and a one-day mindfulness retreat.
To start, both groups recorded a similar anxiety score out of seven: 4.51 for the medication group and 4.44 for the mindfulness group, amounting to a moderate level of anxiety. At the end of the study, both scores had declined 20% to 3.09 on average, signaling a mild level of anxiety, per the Post. Though mindfulness practices have long been known to help with anxiety, this is the first time such treatments have been shown to be as effective as standard first-line treatments, study author and psychiatrist Elizabeth Hoge, director of the Anxiety Disorders Research Program at Georgetown University, tells the Post. However, a 2011 study found an eight-week mindfulness program was as effective at preventing a relapse of depression as antidepressants, per CNN.
"It's like a skill you practice," Hoge tells CNN. "People learn to have a different relationship with their thoughts ... to just let go of the thoughts." She notes mindfulness interventions will be better than medication for some people, particularly those who experience negative side effects. According to the study, 78.6% of participants randomized to the escitalopram group experienced at least one adverse event, and 8% dropped out of the study. On the other hand, just 15.4% of participants randomized to the mindfulness group experienced at least one adverse event and none dropped out. "We can't yet predict who will do better with which type of treatment," Hoge tells the Post. "But there's nothing that says you couldn't do both at the same time." (Read more mindfulness stories.)


The Empire of Arogencia – A brilliant story written by a good friend. she's jus started to translate years worth of work onto WordPress from various documents.
The Drawing of the Words – Kathy704 freely admits "I can't draw, but I do." What she *can* do is read. Her blog combines my love of reading with her commitment to sketching.
Flanging – By Mike Sherer – This blog is about the metal fabrication plant where Mike has worked for 43 years, the work he does there, the people he has worked with, and things that have happened. It is a blue collar perspective of life in America during the past five decades.
ERRE Art – Art, illustrations and writings by Roberto Sannibale.
Procrastinator's Day Off – Great blog by UK based cartoonist JIF.
Mx Dozana Art – A blog mainly about Graphic Design and Digital Art. Digital paintings by Mx Devon Rockafellor.
The Art Voyager – A virtual journey in the world of art and culture, travel and leisure. Buckle up and stay tuned!
Parred Design – A multi-disciplinary design student on a Masters program, passionate about tattoos, culture and making things.
Robert Charboneau – poetry, drawing and sketches by Nevada based artist Robert Charboneau, author of 'The Good News Comes to Athens'.
The Strong Collection – A blog which aims to inspire an enduring love of art in children by filling their homes with creativity. It is our own virtual gallery, showcasing the contempory artists we have come to love, as well as our collection of arty ideas, experiences, and inspiration for making art a part of life as a family.
CraftyArtistKC – A blog that will hopefully expand your creative horizon as well as inspire you to create something new every day. From art supply reviews to step by step tutorials, you are sure to find something for all ages.
Wobbly Lines – Wishart has just retired and decided to spend their free time learning to draw. This blog will chart progress and will also show links to tutorials. The Gallery section displays art, animation and photography.
If you would like to share then get in touch. Send a link to your blog, it's title and a brief description of what people can find there and I'll put it up.
Once your blog has been added I will send you a link.


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package editor;

/**
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}