text:
Pterotrachea coronataRoger R. Seapy
Pterotrachea coronata attains the largest size (to 385 mm) among the Pterotracheidae and has the most streamlined body shape. The proboscis is long and pointed, terminating in a small buccal mass. The trunk is long and slender, with ventro-lateral folds of cutis anterior to the swimming fin that form a concave bib. The visceral mass is long and slender (the highest length to width ratio in the genus), and the basal part of its length is deeply imbedded in the posterior end of the trunk. The tail is large and laterally flattened, creating a broad surface area that aids in burst swimming, attributable to strong side-to-side flexion of the trunk and tail. During burst swimming, the proboscis is tucked into a ventral groove in the anterior one-half of the trunk created by the ventro-lateral folds of cutis. When viewed dorsally the eyes have a rectangular shape with a retinal base somewhat wider than the lens; shape similar to that in P. scutata. A small fin sucker is located on the mid-ventral surface of the swimming fin in males only. The geographical distribution is cosmopolitan in tropical to subtropical waters.
Brief Diagnosis:
A species in the genus Pterotrachea with the following characteristics:
- Body shape streamlined for burst swimming, produced by side-to-side flexion of the elongate trunk and the laterally flattened tail
- During burst swimming the slender, elongate proboscis is tucked into the ventral groove formed by the ventro-lateral folds of the cutis
- Eyes rectangular in dorsal view, with the retinal base somewhat wider than the lens
- Visceral mass slender and elongate
- Swimming fin sucker small and only in males
- Body morphology
- Body length greatest among the pterotracheids (to 385 mm)
- Streamlined body shape; trunk elongate and cylindrical, tail large and laterally flattened (see title illustration)
- Proboscis long, slender and cylindrical, tapering to a small buccal mass (see title illustration)
- Eye shape rectangular in dorsal view, with retinal base somewhat wider than the lens; very similar in appearance to that in P. scutata. In Hawaiian P. coronata the average eye length to width ratio = 2.2, decreasing from 2.5 in small to 1.9 in large individuals (Seapy, 1985)
- Visceral nucleus long and narrow (see photograph below and title illustration). The shape contrasts markedly with the shorter, tear-drop shape of the visceral nucleus in P. scutata and P. hippocampus (see the respective species pages). In Hawaiian P. coronata the ratio of length to width averages 5.6 and ranges from 4.1-7.2 (Seapy, 1985).
- Visceral nucleus imbedded in the cutis, with only the tapered, pointed end extending above the posterior end of the trunkClick on an image to view larger version & data in a new window
Figure. Posterior portion of body in a female Pterotrachea coronata, viewed from the left side. Note the gills projecting dorsally and the long egg string that extends below the visceral nucleus toward the lower right. Note also the linear arrangement of the developing embryos in the transparent mucus sleeve (click on photograph for enlarged view). ©
- Swimming fin closer to the visceral nucleus than to the head, with the anterior end of fin just anterior to the midpoint of the trunk (see title illustration)
- Small sucker located medially on ventral margin of the swimming fin and present only in males
- Tail terminates in a pair of small, laterally-flattened lobes (see title illustration), between which emerges an elongate filament (see photograph below). In specimens collected by plankton nets and transferred to preservatives, the filament is usually missing; due either to damage during capture or subsequent detachment during preservation
- Shell present only in larvae and is lost following metamorphosis
- Larva unknown, but probably is represented by either larva 2 or larva 3 of Richter (1968); see the Pterotrachea page
- Radular morphology similar to that in the other species in the genus; the median cusp is conspicuously broader and longer than the lateral ones (see the Pterotrachea page)
The largest individual recorded to date (365 mm) is attributable to a specimen collected at Shelly Beach, Bermaqui, New South Wales; as reported by Libby Hepburn in the Atlas of Life in the Coastal Wilderness (http://www.alcw.org.au/index.php/2012/12/biggest-carinaria-yet/). The estimated body length was determined from the meter tape in the photograph.
Figure. Largest recorded specimen of Pterotrachea coronata (OAL = 365 mm). The animal was washed ashore at Shelly Beach, Bermaqui, New South Wales, southeastern Australia. Additional photographs are available at http://www.alcw.org.au/index.php/2012/12/biggest-carinaria-yet/.
Swimming behavior has been observed in the field by R. Gilmer (cited in Lalli and Gilmer, 1989). Animals exhibited different behavior during daytime and nighttime hours. During the day animals swam with their ventral sides directed upward (see title illustration), which facilitates visual location of prey silhouetted against the lighted surface waters. Active swimming occurred when animals were observed pursuing prey or when they were disturbed by scuba divers (and, presumably, by "natural" predators). At other times they appeared to be neutrally buoyant, floating curled into loose balls. At night animals also appeared to be neutrally buoyant, but were oriented with their ventral sides directed downward with or without slow undulation of the swimming fin. In this position animals hypothetically could locate bioluminescent prey beneath them
The tail of Pterotrachea coronata is large and laterally flattened, creating a broad surface area that aids in burst swimming, which involves strong side-to-side flexion of the trunk and tail. During burst swimming, the proboscis is tucked into a ventral groove created by the ventro-lateral folds of the cutis in the anterior half of the trunk. An excellent photograph of an animal exhibiting burst swimming was obtained by Olivier le Corre while diving in Villefranche Bay in the Meditteranean Sea. Click on the photograph for an enlarged view, and note the right-side flexion of the body posterior to the swimming fin and the tail filament streaming posteriorly from between the tail lobes
Figure. In-situ photograph of Pterotrachea coronata swimming rapidly upward. © 1993 O. le Corre
Pterotrachea coronata was studied by Denton and Shaw (1961) to determine how these animals are able to achieve neutral buoyancy. The authors found that body fluids obtained by centrifugation of the gelatinous tissues had a lower density than sea water, attributable to the replacement of heavier sulfate by lighter chloride ions. The sulfate ion concentration in the body fluids was shown to be about three-fourths that in sea water.
Results from a study by Pafort-van Iersel (1983) of the diel vertical distributions of carinariids and pterotracheids along a north-south transect in the mid North Atlantic Ocean indicated that Pterotrachea coronata ranges through the epipelagic into the upper mesopelagic zone. The samples upon which the study was based were collected with paired 1-m2 and 8-m2 opening-closing, rectangular midwater trawls at depth intervals of 50-100 m, 100 m intervals between 100 and 500 m, and 500-1,000 m. Among the daytime tows a total of eight specimens were collected from 100-200 m, fourteen from 200-300 m, thirteen from 300-400 m, with none below 400 m. In the nighttime tows two individuals were recorded from 50-100 m, 52 from 100-200 m, twelve from 200-300 m, and none below 300 m. These results suggest a nocturnal vertical migration of about 100 m from a depth range of 200 to 400 m (the upper mesopelagic zone) during the day to 100-300 m at night. Because only two specimens were captured in the 50-100 m tows at night (with none collected during the day), the diel depth range of P. scutata appears to be mostly limited to depths below 100 m.
Denton, E. J. and T. I. P. Shaw. 1961. The buoyancy of gelatinous marine animals. Journal of Physiology, London 161: 14P-15P (Proceedings).
Lalli, C. M. and R. W. Gilmer. 1989. Pelagic snails. The biology of holoplanktonic gastropod mollusks. Stanford University Press, Stanford. 259 pp.
Pafort-van Iersel, T. 1983. Distribution and variation of Carinariidae and Pterotracheidae (Heteropoda, Gastropoda) of the Amsterdam Mid North Atlantic Plankton Expedition 1980. Beaufortia 33: 73-96.
Richter, G. 1968. Heteropoden und Heteropodenlarven im Oberflächenplankton des Golfs von Neapel. Pubblicazioni della Stazione Zoologica di Napoli 36: 346-400.
Richter, G. and R. R. Seapy. 1999. Heteropoda, pp. 621-647. In: D. Boltovskoy (ed.), South Atlantic Zooplankton. Backhuys Publishers, Leiden.
Seapy, R.R. 1985. The pelagic genus Pterotrachea (Gastropoda: Heteropoda) from Hawaiian waters: a taxonomic review. Malacologia 26(1-2): 125-135.
About This Page
California State University, Fullerton, California, USA
Correspondence regarding this page should be directed to Roger R. Seapy at
Page copyright © 2010
Page: Tree of Life Pterotrachea coronata Authored by . Roger R. Seapy. The TEXT of this page is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License - Version 3.0. Note that images and other media featured on this page are each governed by their own license, and they may or may not be available for reuse. Click on an image or a media link to access the media data window, which provides the relevant licensing information. For the general terms and conditions of ToL material reuse and redistribution, please see the Tree of Life Copyright Policies.
- First online 18 August 2008
- Content changed 17 July 2010
Citing this page:
Seapy, Roger R. 2010. Pterotrachea coronata http://tolweb.org/Pterotrachea_coronata/28738/2010.07.17 in The Tree of Life Web Project, http://tolweb.org/. Version 17 July 2010 (under construction).


text:
Outfit a niche in your Michigan home for wine tasting, and let the uncorking begin.
It doesn't get more authentic than this 19th-century black walnut and oak wine tasting table from France's Burgundy region. $2,600. L'ESPRIT FRENCH COUNTRY ANTIQUES AND ACCESSORIES, HARBOR SPRINGS. 231-526-9888, LESPRIT.COM.
Schott Zwiesel's Tritan-crystal wine glasses were designed by renowned sommeliers to open up the aroma and fl avor of the pour. CRYSTAL CRATE AND CARGO, BEULAH. STEMWARE GLASSES $10.95 EACH. 800-787-7366, CRYSTALCRATE.COM.
Buy the February 2010 issue of Traverse, Northern Michigan's Magazine and get this colorful display of how to create a wine tasting room!
Display your favorite wines in this handsome 15-bottle metal wine rack. $105. THE COTTAGE GARDEN, 205 E. FRONT STREET, TRAVERSE CITY. 231-929-9005, COTTAGEGARDENTRAVERSE.COM.
No room for a wine cellar? The Sub-Zero 424 wine storage stores up to 46 bottles in two precisely controlled temperature
zones. STARTS AT $3,527. FOR LOCAL DEALERS, VISIT SUBZERO.COM.
Mementos of the pour, cork crave to be saved. But where? Try this French antique bon bonne verre (used in France for transporting wine). $325. L'ESPRIT FRENCH COUNTRY ANTIQUES AND ACCESSORIES, HARBOR SPRINGS. 231-526-9888, LESPRIT.COM.
All wines shown courtesy of the Cherry Stop in Traverse City. thecherrystop.com

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Ethiopia court found former senior opposition figure Yonatan Tesfaye guilty of terrorism charges
Mahlet Fasil
The Federal High court fourth criminal bench has passed a guilty verdict against Yonatan Tesfaye, former opposition Blue Party public relations head.
Yonatan Tesfaye
Yonatan was first arrested in December 2015, barely a month after the first wave of a year-long #Oromoprotests erupted. He was held incommunicado during the pre-trial weeks and was subsequently charged in May 2016 under Ethiopia's infamous anti-terrorism proclamation (ATP).
Yonatan has been defending the charges against him since then. The charges of 'encouragement of terrorism', stipulated under article six of the ATP, were largely drawn from his Facebook activism during the protests. According to article six of the ATP, "Whosoever publishes or causes the publication of a statement that is likely to be understood by some or all of the members of the public to whom it is published as a direct or indirect encouragement or other inducements to them to the commission or preparation or instigation of an act of terrorism…" is subject to terrorism charges.
He had presented several defense witnesses, including prominent opposition party leaders from the Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC), Bekele Gerba and Dr. Merera Gudina, who are in jail at the time of their testimony fighting charges of terrorism and multiple criminal charges respectively, and journalist Eskendir Nega, who is serving 18 years in prison for terrorism-related charges.
In addition, Yonatan's close friend Ephrem Tayachew, his father Tesfaye Regassa, and his sister Gedamnesh Tesfaye as well as academicians from the Addis Abeba University (AAU), including the outspoken philosopher Dr. Dagnachew Assefa and Dr. Yaqob Hailemariam have all appeared in court to testify in defense of Yonatan's innocence.
However, on May 16, 2017 the court in its verdict overruled all defense testimonials by upholding prosecutors' accusations. Yonatan's sentencing is adjourned to May 25, 2017.
Yonatan could face from ten to 20 years rigorous prison term in a federal prison; however, the court ruled that he can appeal for a minimum sentence.
***According to new information Addis Standard received, after the sentencing is handed over, Yonatan's defense team, led by his lawyer Shibiru Belete, is planning to object to the verdict and appeal for the charges to be reduced to criminal charges.
Source: Addisstandard


text:
Gathered in a circle by Boulder Creek on a windy summer night, about 40 volunteers, supporters and staff members of the Boulder County AIDS Project remembered the 157 local men and women who have died from AIDS.
The Boulder County AIDS Project and the Interfaith AIDS Coalition of Boulder County sponsored Sunday's local walk and memorial, which were part of the 30-year-old International AIDS Candlelight Memorial held around the world.
"We're here to remember, honor and celebrate the lives that were lost," said David Ensign, Boulder County AIDS Project's board president.
The walk through downtown Boulder included a stop at the Boulder County Courthouse and ended at the AIDS Memorial Garden along Boulder Creek. Students in Boulder County's Sexual Health AIDS Awareness Peer Education program took turns at each stop reading the names of those who died.
"It's such an important cause and it impacts so many people," said Kennedy Berry, a peer educator who's graduating from New Vista High School. "It's important for people to be reminded."
Boulder's Morgan Taylor said he thought he was HIV positive, but got tested on Friday and learned that he's not. When he thought he was HIV positive, he said, he was surprised by the discrimination he experienced.
"There's still stigma," he said. "It's so wrong."
Joining the walk was law clerk Stephen Spano, who is making a cross-country bike ride from San Francisco to New York to raise money and awareness for San Francisco's AIDS Legal Referral Panel.
"It's something I believe in," he said.
At the memorial by Boulder Creek, Rev. Pat Bruns, senior pastor at First United Methodist Church, spoke about the importance of supporting those living with HIV and AIDS.
"We are going to work together to end the marginalization of those with HIV," he said.
Barbara Middleton, a First United Methodist Church member and a social worker, said she's lost friends to the disease.
"There are too many names," she said.
Lafayette's Vyckee Keyes, a Boulder County AIDS Project volunteer, brought her husband and middle school daughter to the event. She said her adult son is gay, and she's also lost friends to the disease. The first, she said, was a 19-year-old who died in 1990.
Her focus is on prevention and education.
"A lot of people don't realize that HIV and AIDS are still a really big deal," she said.


text:
· Current Space Weather Conditions
· Solar Activity
· Geomagnetic Activity
· Space Weather Observations
· Space Weather Warning Information
· Korean Space Weather Monitor
· Related Links
Solar Activity
Geomagnetic Activity
Space Weather Observations
Space Weather Warning Information
1. Earth's Magnetosphere
The Earth's magnetic field, which is generated by convection of liquid metals in the outer core of the Earth, plays a pivotal role in shielding the Earth from risks of space weather such as electromagnetic waves and plasma flowing out of the Sun and cosmic rays scattered in space. The boundary between solar wind and the Earth's magnetosphere is called âmagnetopauseâ and, from that boundary toward the interior, the Earth is being protected against dangers of space weather. The shape of the Earth's magnetosphere is not a round dipole due to plasma and interplanetary magnetic field flowing out of the Sun. Instead, it has the shape that the part near the Sun is compressed and the opposite part is long loosened. Because of this, the shape of the Earth's magnetosphere is incredibly variable depending on the status of solar wind. The Earth's magnetosphere is disturbed by space weather conditions. Magnetopause compression and magnetic storms are the two main interruptions.
2. Magnetopause Compression
When a colossal coronal mass ejection and high speed solar wind develop from the Sun, the Earth's magnetic field to shield the Earth from risks of space weather gets more compressed than usual. If the magnetopause gets more compressed than a geostationary orbit does, the geostationary orbit satellite will be exposed to the danger of solar wind, not being able to be protected by the Earth's magnetic field. Also, if a satellite is positioned outside of the magnetopause, the overall operation of the satellite can be affected by communications disruption and damages on the satellite itself by the solar high energy particles.
3. Geomagnetic Storm
A geomagnetic storm is a temporary disturbance of the Earth's magnetism on a large scale all over the world. This disturbance can be for some hours or for some days depending on its scale. The direct cause of the geomagnetic storm is an electric current produced by enormous quantities of plasma injected from the Sun. The electric current is called âring currentâ and it drastically decreases the strength of the horizontal component of the Earth's magnetic field. The Kp Index and the Dst Index monitor this strength change. When a geomagnetic storm occurs and significantly decreases the strength of the Earth's magnetic field, it makes a change in electromagnetism of satellite orbits and affects the satellites themselves and their operation. It also causes injection of radiation into the vicinity of polar airways. If this change in the Earth's magnetic field has an impact on the ionosphere, it will disturb GPS signal receptions and telecommunications which can cause interruptions in satellite communications and aeronautical operational communications.


text:
What's the matter with Colorado Springs?
When the so-called Black Forest Fire ignited near Colorado Springs on June 11 and quickly spread across 14,000 acres of forested neighborhoods -- destroying more than 500 houses, killing two people and forcing thousands to evacuate -- it was an obvious tragedy draped in orange flame retardant.
But let's keep in mind, a political disconnect contributes to wildfires like this. It can be found in Colorado Springs and many other Western communities, even though it's not widely acknowledged.
Climate change increasingly drives the monster wildfires -- the science is well established by now. So is the fact that industrial and vehicle emissions are driving climate change. Yet many of the scorched communities continue to elect climate-change "skeptics" to Congress, who use their federal power to suppress climate science and block attempts to slow the pace of climate change.
Colorado Springs, for instance, hosted another monster last summer, the 18,000-acre Waldo Canyon Fire, which also killed two people while destroying 347 homes and forcing more than 30,000 to evacuate. The Waldo Canyon Fire was considered the most destructive in Colorado's history, until this summer's Black Forest Fire surpassed it and claimed the title. Both of these Colorado Springs fires were ignited by people, accidentally or on purpose, but conditions linked to climate change -- record-breaking heat waves and prolonged drought turning vegetation to tinder that's aching to burn -- caused them to become monsters.
And who does Colorado Springs, a conservative military town, elect to Congress? Republican Rep. Doug Lamborn. Since the local voters sent Lamborn to Congress in 2006, he's taken predictable stands against gun regulations, abortion, gay rights, taxes and regulations. He also uses his political muscle to ignore climate change, while backing the oil and coal industries that generate a great deal of the carbon emissions that are causing climate change.
As the flames spread through the Black Forest area in his district, Lamborn's congressional website expressed concern for the victims, providing maps of the evacuation area and information on how evacuees could get assistance. Meanwhile, his website's "Energy & Environment" section says there's an "urgent" need to "ramp up domestic production of oil and gas right now." It touts his many efforts on that front, including a "historic bill" he sponsored and pushed through the House in 2011-12, the so-called PIONEERS Act (H.R. 3408) -- a proposal to loosen regulations to "open up oil shale (development) in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming, open up the Outer-continental shelf to oil and gas production for most of the continental United States, open up Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to energy production (and) require the Keystone Pipeline project to be approved" to enable more development of Canada's oil sands, the worst kind of oil in terms of carbon emissions.
Lamborn is also proud of another bill he introduced, the "Streamlining Permitting of American Energy Act of 2012" (H.R. 4383), which would not only loosen regulations on drilling, but would also make it more difficult for environmentalists to challenge the drilling with lawsuits.
Lamborn co-sponsored the aptly named Free Industry Act (H.R. 97) in 2011, trying to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency "from regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant and from implementing global warming regulations." In 2009, he sponsored H.R. 945, which called for the U.S. government to be wary of international treaties in which many nations vow to limit greenhouse gas emissions. And he voted against the 2009 "cap-and-trade" bill that sought to set up a system for limiting U.S. carbon emissions (the House passed that bill, but it stalled in the Senate -- the closest Congress has come to limiting carbon emissions).
As for the other regulatory path toward limiting carbon emissions -- a new tax on carbon, a proposal now resurfacing in Congress and the Obama administration -- Lamborn has signed a pledge organized by Americans for Prosperity, a front for the oil billionaire Koch brothers, vowing to block any carbon tax.
And how about wind and solar power and energy conservation -- the other key paths of action on climate change? Lamborn has voted against federal subsidies for all three.
Basically, as the wildfires burn through Colorado Springs, they're an indication of what the local voters can expect if they continue to elect a congressman who's taking a path toward having more fires like this for many decades to come. The same political disconnect shows up in many other conservative Western communities that are hit by fires and other consequences of climate change, including the pine beetle "epidemic" that's killing the current generation of lodgepole pines on millions of acres in the West along with the whitebark pines that are a crucial food source for grizzly bears (lots of dead trees = more fuel for the fires).
The Republican Western Congressional Caucus, for instance, frequently opposes government actions on climate change, and its list of members includes not only Lamborn, but also Colorado representatives Scott Tipton, Cory Gardner and Mike Coffman; Wyoming Rep. Cynthia Lummis; Utah representatives Jason Chaffetz, Rob Bishop and Chris Stewart; Arizona representatives Trent Franks, Paul Gosar, Matt Salmon and David Schweikert; New Mexico Rep. Steve Pearce; Oregon Rep. Greg Walden; Idaho representatives Mike Simpson and Raul Labrador; Nevada representatives Mark Amodei and Joe Heck; Washington representatives Doc Hastings and Cathy McMorris Rodgers; Montana Rep. Steve Daines; and California representatives John Campbell, Jeff Denham, Kevin McCarthy, Tom McClintock, Buck McKeon and Devin Nunes. All of those states, and many of those congressional districts, have been hit by monster wildfires in recent years.
These Western politicians, and many other conservatives the West sends to Congress, fall into Lamborn's pattern, taking stands against any form of cap-and-trade, against EPA regulations on greenhouse gas emissions, against a carbon tax, against international treaties for action on climate change, against subsidies for wind and solar energy, against fuel efficiency standards for vehicles, and for oil and gas subsidies and more drilling pretty much everywhere.
Just last summer in Pearce's district -- the southern half of New Mexico -- thousands of people breathed unhealthy, smoky air and dealt with all the other fallout from the largest fire in New Mexico's history (the Whitewater-Baldy Complex Fire, which spread over nearly 300,000 acres of forest), as well as the most destructive fire in New Mexico's history (the Little Bear Fire, which destroyed more than 250 buildings while spreading over 44,000 acres). Pearce -- who held the House seat from 2003 to 2008, took a break for an unsuccessful run for a Senate seat, and then won re-election to the House in 2010 -- also expresses concern over wildfires on his website ... while condemning the scientific consensus on climate change as "crap."
Walden's district in southeast Oregon was hit by last summer's Long Draw Fire, which spread over more than 500,000 acres of sagebrush that provided ranchers with livestock grazing and sage grouse with nesting habitat -- reportedly the biggest Oregon fire in 150 years. The Oregon sagebrush was so primed to burn, again with climate change as a factor, 300,000 acres burned in a single night. Voters there have been electing Walden to Congress since 1999, and he's among the signers of the Koch brothers' pledge to never support a carbon tax.
Idaho's two representatives in the House, Simpson and Labrador, might've gotten soot on their clothes if they came within range of two big blazes in their state last summer -- the Mustang Complex Fire, which spread over more than 340,000 acres, and the Trinity Ridge Fire, which covered 146,000 acres. Voters who elected them have also had to deal with the 300,000-acre Long Butte fire in 2010, and the 650,000-acre Murphy Complex Fire in 2007. Yet Simpson and Labrador oppose a carbon tax and oppose meaningful carbon regulations.
In Arizona, Sen. John McCain joined many members of the Western Congressional Congress in opposing the key 2009 "cap-and-trade" bill. McCain's state got hit by the 538,000-acre Wallow Fire in 2011 -- the largest fire in Arizona's history, surpassing the 2002 Rodeo-Chedeski Fire, which had set the record at 468,000 acres. Arizona voters have been electing McCain to Congress -- first the House, and then the Senate -- since 1982.
These modern monsters are hugely expensive. A single wildfire can rack up more than a hundred million dollars of damage, and the total property damage from all of the fires now averages more than $1 billion per year. On top of that, the federal government now spends an average of more than $2 billion per year of taxpayer money on fighting the wildfires, and state governments spend an average of more than $1 billion. And beyond the monetary costs, the fires claim the lives of many firefighters as well as the lives of residents. Ecologically, the burned forests and sagebrush won't recover for many decades, if they ever do, given the trends of climate change. In yet another double-whammy, the fires convert the vegetation into more atmospheric carbon, yet another factor increasing the pace of climate change.
The main policy these politicians have for addressing the wildfires isn't practical on a large scale: They often vote for spending taxpayer money on thinning forests to reduce the risk, on behalf of loggers and people who choose to have houses in the woods, but we can't thin the forests fast enough and extensively enough to keep ahead of climate change.
All of this is in the vein of Thomas Frank's ground-breaking 2004 book, What's the Matter with Kansas? The book argued that conservative voters in that Midwestern state elect politicians who screw them over, and the argument was so compelling, the title of the book has become a slogan applied to many political analyses.
Democratic voters also elect politicians who screw them over, of course. Those examples include the deregulation of banks and Wall Street, a key factor in the current burst-bubble economy, as well as the impractical portion of our regulations and social-welfare programs, and the unsuccessful Vietnam War, which our nation got into under the leadership of Democrats in Congress and the White House.
But as the Democratic voters and their politicians see the monster wildfires -- in their districts and everywhere else -- generally they recognize that the flames are linked to climate change. The disconnect in the conservative districts makes climate change a partisan issue, and it prevents meaningful action on the crisis.
Meanwhile, scientists predict that worsening climate change will drive more and more monster wildfires, especially in the West. A recent National Research Council study says that for every degree Celsius (1.8 degree Fahrenheit) of temperature increase, the size of the area burned in the Western U.S. could quadruple. I wonder, when will the conservative voters make the connection?
Ray Ring is an HCN senior editor based in Bozeman, Montana.
The Black Forest Fire photo is a U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Jonathan C. Thibault, released by the Fort Carson Public Affairs Office, via Flickr user DVIDSHUB.


text:
Lawyers for the families of children and adults killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School disclosed Monday that child pornography was found in electronic files sent to them by conspiracy theorist Infowars host Alex Jones.
The pornography was found in email metadata files Jones' attorneys turned over to the families' lawyers as part of the discovery process of a defamation lawsuit, which was filed in a Connecticut court last year in response to discussions on Jones' show about the school shooting being a hoax.
Jones' attorney, Norman Pattis, said the child pornography was in emails sent to Jones that were never opened, and he denied Jones did anything wrong. Pattis said federal authorities are investigating who sent the emails.
Appearing angry on his web show based in Austin, Texas, Jones accused one of the families' lawyers, Christopher Mattei, of planting the child pornography in the files to frame Jones. He also offered a $1 million reward for information on who sent the emails containing child porn.
In a motion filed in Waterbury Superior Court on Monday, lawyers for the families accused Jones of threatening Mattei by naming him on the show, showing his photo, and wrongly accusing him of planting the child pornography. The motion will be discussed at a court hearing on Tuesday. Pattis denied that Jones threatened Mattei.
"Total war! You want it, you got it!" Jones said on the show while talking about Mattei, a Democrat who ran unsuccessfully for state attorney general last year. "I'm not into kids like your Democratic party. … So get ready!"
Other lawyers for the families, William Bloss, Alinor Sterling, and Matthew Blumenthal, said in the motion that they notified the FBI about the numerous child porn images.
The two sides have been battling over documents and discovery issues in the lawsuit for months.
"Unfortunately, this drama has taken on a life of its own with each side parrying for the position," Pattis said.
The families of eight victims of the 2012 shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, and an FBI agent who responded to the massacre are suing Jones, Infowars, and others for promoting a theory that the shooting was a hoax. A 20-year-old gunman killed 20 first-graders, six educators, and himself at the school after having killed his mother at their Newtown home.
The plaintiffs said they have been subjected to harassment and death threats from Jones' followers because of the hoax conspiracy.
Jones has since said he believes the shooting occurred.


text:
Burberry took further strides in the digital universe Monday, pushing its spring women's show in London out across 11 social networks, its own digital flagship and through 13 live-streams on outdoor screens set up in locales from New York's Times Square to Hong Kong's Worldwide House.
The push was part of a partnership with Apple, featuring the tech giant's iPhone 5S. Apple approached Burberry to exclusively use the iPhone 5S to capture images and video before, during and after the show, and Twitter's real-time reach resulted in tens of millions of impressions for content relating to the event. This also marked the first time that Burberry used photos taken with a mobile device to broadcast on large-scale outdoor screens.
RELATED STORY: Burberry Prorsum RTW Spring 2014 >>
The brand saw 1,200 retweets of the show's finale photo and more than 3,000 retweets for a picture featuring Harry Styles. Due to the success of Burberry's behind the scenes #beautybooth, which the company launched at the previous women's show, models Cara Delevingne and Jourdan Dunn posed for and posted personalized messages to Burberry's more than 2.6 million Twitter followers. A 15-second finale video on Instagram garnered nearly 18,000 likes in a matter of hours (Burberry currently has 960,000 followers on Instagram).
The content was disseminated among the platforms where Burberry maintains a digital presence — including Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Japan's Sumally and China's Sina Weibo, Douban and Youku.
A screen in Times Square live-streamed the show, as did 11 additional screens along Cromwell Road in London and one in Hong Kong.
"Social media is as important as search, as print, as outdoor, because you're reaching a totally different consumer," said Angela Ahrendts, Burberry's chief executive officer, in an interview with WWD after the show. "You can either put it out there or let them say whatever they want, but we prefer to lead the conversation, fill it with rich content, to start a higher level discussion. And why not? I think that's great branding today."
The ceo said she's "not 100 percent [sure] what will come of it, but we'll see."
Immediately following the show, looks from the runway went on sale at burberry.com, which is fully optimized for mobile devices. The site is also selling a slew of show-related handbags, techcessories and the Burberry Nails collection containing the six colors — pale grape, sage green, rose pink, mink, pale yellow and dusky mauve — through Sept. 30. The oversize Petal clutch (with an interior pocket designed expressly for the iPhone 5S) is available in 34 colors and materials, from a $1,695 pink leather version with lavender shearling trim to a $1,250 translucent turquoise style with hand-applied rubber flowers. Forty-six different iPhone 5S cases — also compatible with the iPhone 5 — range in price from $265 to $365. The Runway Made to Order service, originally introduced in February, saw an evolution this season — and customers now have the option of purchasing timepieces and nail polish.
Ahrendts declined to comment on how return on investment will be measured on any digital fashion week programs, or what role social media plays in Burberry's overall digital marketing spend.
Digital observers have noted that the company appears to have scaled back on its investment in social media, devoting fewer dollars to promoted posts and ads on Facebook, while pumping more capital into e-commerce operations.
The exception is China, where the brand is still working hard to bolster its social media profile.
"I mean, if you look at some of the social media stats coming out of China today — three times more people are on social media than there are even in America, so it's another medium to communicate, to show people your brand image, who you are in your way," Ahrendts said.


text:
|Judy Garland's Ruby Slippers - The most beautiful pair of shoes in movie history.
|Welcome, Guest. Please Login or Register
|Welcome to Lao Friends. This is a place to hang out and meet friends from all over the world. We hope you enjoy your stay here, and feel free to post your comments on our forum.
Lao Pride | Lao Pride Forum | Lao Babes | Lao Girls | Lao Photos | Lao Pictures | Vientiane Life | Lao Sites | Lao Websites
Lao Videos | Poo Sao | Wat Phu | Khop Jai | Free Musical E-Cards | Judy Garland as Dorothy | Judy Garland's Ruby Slippers
The Wizard of Oz darling, Judy Garland became the biggest star in the world, for her extraordinary performance as Dorothy.
|General Category
|Last Post
General Lao Friends Board
This is the board for General Discussions.
Moderator: Admin Saovaluck
9th Apr, 2016 at 4:07pm
In: ฺBusiness inquiry
By: Joe
Special Announcements
Special announcements by the Administrator.
Moderator: Admin Saovaluck
18th Mar, 2013 at 10:43am
In: Meaning of the stars next...
By: Admin Saovaluck
Judy Garland became a household name after her role as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz.
|Forum Statistics
The forum contains a total of 98 Posts within 43 Topics.
The most recent post is ฺBusiness inquiry (9th Apr, 2016 at 4:07pm).
View the most recent posts on the forum.
The most users ever online was 415 on 14th Jan, 2023 at 11:12am.
The most members ever online was 5 on 14th Oct, 2012 at 6:46pm.
The most guests ever online was 415 on 14th Jan, 2023 at 11:12am.
The most search engines ever online was 52 on 20th Mar, 2015 at 2:19pm.
|The newest 10 Board Topics
|Users Online
Members: 0
Guests: 26
Search Engines: 1
Dotbot Research (1)
lllll Miss Administrator
lllll Global Moderator
Lao Friends » Powered by YaBB 2.5 AE!
YaBB Forum Software © 2023. All Rights Reserved.


text:
Domaine de Bellivière - Keeping it Real in the Northern Loire
The northern most vineyards in western France are in the Loire Valley appellations of Jasnières and Coteaux du Loir. The Chenin Blancs from these places have never been as sought after as those from Vouvray, Montlouis, or Savennières. Probably because this is a difficult region to grow wine grapes - it's cold and ripeness does not come easily. And there hasn't exactly been a plethora of inspired grower/producers either.
In the late 1990's inspired wine making came to Jasnières and Coteaux du Loir in the form of Eric and Christine Nicolas who own and operate Domaine de Bellivière. They are firmly in the healthy farming/natural winemaking camp. When they replant they use sélection massale or cuttings from old vines (as opposed to using clones), they plow all of their vineyard surface to aerate and to remove weeds (as opposed to spraying with herbicides), they harvest entirely by hand, and fermentation is achieved via naturally occurring yeasts. They have been fully organic since 2005 and as of 2008 farm their entire estate biodynamically.
All of this is meaningless, though, if the wines don't taste good. Well, they taste very good, sometimes great. There are sweet wines made in vintages that promote botrytisized grapes, but the workhorses of the Domaine in the white wine department are the four dry to off-dry Chenin Blancs, two from Coteaux du Loir and two from Jasnières. The Coteaux du Loir wines are L'Effraie (The Owl) from younger vines, and Vieilles Vignes Éparses (Scattered Old Vines) from vines of between 50-80 years old, scattered among several different plots. The Jasnières wines are Les Rosiers from younger vines and Caligramme, another old vines cuvée.
Of Bellivière's wines, the Jasnières are more accessible, more typical in their Chenin Blanc character, and more expensive. The single finest Bellivière wine I've had is the 2006 Rosiers (haven't tasted the other 06's yet though). I guess you might say that the Jasnières wines are "better." But in general I prefer Bellivière's Coteaux du Loir wines because of their unique terroir stamp.
L'Effraie and Vieille Vignes Éparses both show classic Chenin Blanc characteristics - aromas and flavors that include wool, wax, quince and other orchard fruit, herbs, honey, and minerals. But they show something else too, something that I have experienced in no other wine: distinct aromas of what I would call fir tree and wintergreen. Even in a hot and ripe vintage like 2005 when the wines were richer and sweeter than usual, these trademark aromas were still evident amidst all of the fruit.
If you're interested in Loire whites, all of these are definitely worth trying. Here are notes from bottles I drank in the past few months:
2004 Domaine de Bellivière Coteaux du Loir L'Effraie, $22. An incredibly strange wine, but I love it. This is all about fir trees and herbs - wintergreen, mint, bay leaves. The palate is fresh, not oxidized, and still kind of grippy. This has a long life ahead of it and I wish I had more. It reminds me of Oregon's Clear Creek Douglass Fir Eau de Vie.
2005 Domaine de Bellivière Vieille Vignes Éparses, $18 (because Chambers Street has it on closeout for some reason - it should be closer to $30). Like the 2004, this wine is bursting with fir notes. As per the vintage, this wine is fuller and thicker than the 2004, and I don't think that's a good thing in this case - the lithe intensity of the '04 made more sense to me. Decent acidity, a smoky herbal finish, this paired beautifully with my friend Adam's roast pork shoulder stuffed with lemon rind and capers.
2005 Domaine de Bellivière Jasnières Les Rosiers, $18 (again, closeout at Chambers Street). This has a lot of residual sugar and not enough acidity to elevate the wine. It is good, but not memorable. I preferred 2004 of this wine, and prefer the Coteaux du Loir wines in 2005.
2006 Domaine de Bellivière Jasnières Les Rosiers, not yet released. A much more complete wine than the 2005, this one shows its beautiful honeyed fruit but also a thick layer of minerals. It is on day 3 when the wine really begins to open up, showing broad and expansive flavors of classic Chenin wool, lime, and gorgeous delicate bitter honey. Super fresh and with good acidity, this is delicious wine that will age gracefully.
Bellivière's wines are imported by Louis/Dressner Selections.


text:
Originally dubbed "Cetaphil Cleansing Lotion", the first product was invented by a pharmacist in 1947 for dermatology needs. In its early years, Cetaphil Cleansing Lotion was only available from select pharmacists but quickly became a highly recommended product by dermatologists, pediatricians, and other healthcare professionals for common skin conditions. Due to consumer demand, more drugstores began selling the increasingly popular cleanser and by the 1980s it was available at all major retail stores across North America.
Cetaphil® Gentle Skin Cleanser still uses the original formula developed in 1947. It remains in high demand, with about one bottle sold every minute – proving the popularity of our Gentle Power!


text:
Just because I can actually watch the news doesn't mean we need to get away from our core duties of answering life's big questions.
In today's exciting episode, we're going to find out the celebrity with the worst fake accent.
Our first nominee paid attention to the small details, you have no idea where he's supposed to be from.
Leon the Professional.
A few years ago told me he was supposed to be Italian, I had always thought he was Russian and I couldn't figure out why he worked for Italians.
Next, a non-movie showing but no bad accent list would be complete without its inclusion.
Madonna's 'British' accent.
That makes me giggle every time.
Another non-movie entry, Sean Connery doing a Scottish accent.
He makes me laugh every time. His accent is like Michael Jackson's nose or skin color, it changes a lot over the years.
The next entry is so spectacularly bad, I would bet that it got some casting type fired, perhaps a whole slew of them.
Seriously, who thought Keanu Reaves doing Ted 'Theodore' Logan doing a British accent was a good idea?
The only reason that one didn't win was because it just felt too cruel and the hilarity of it is reward enough.
I could have made this whole thing about the bad accents in Destry Rides Again, but too many were just bit roles. Everybody had an accent and they were all associated with a different country or region of Europe and not a one of the accents matched the region they claimed.
In that vein, Ladies, Gentlemen, people who read this blog, I give you the winner of the worst accent by someone we're supposed to take seriously………………….
Marlene Dietrich as
Lili Von Schtupp….Frenchy!
I love that movie, but the director obviously had a fever and the only prescription was more
cowbe... bad accents.


text:
June 11, 2010— -- A year and a half after traveling abroad, one might think he's free and clear of infection.
But a 25-year-old man in California headed to the emergency room last year with a burning feeling and something squiggling under the white of his eye.
Doctors at the Highland General Hospital Department in Oakland, Calif., immediately started investigating what creature had decided to make its home under the man's skin. They reported on their discovery in the June issue of the Annals of Emergency Medicine and kept his identity anonymous.
Doctors learned he recently returned from a trip to Central and South America. But they realized it was a trip he made to Equatorial Guinea in Central Africa two years earlier on which he got the infection.
For the previous 18 months, the Loa loa worm or Loaiasis (African eye worm) had been crawling underneath his skin causing itchy lesions in its wake, Dr. Shannon Moffett and Dr. Charlotte Page Wills reported in the journal article.
The man couldn't tell what was causing the itchy blotches until it crawled under the layers of skin in his eyeball.
"It moves at a centimeter an hour. It keeps just migrating through the skin," said Dr. David Freedman, director of the University of Alabama at Birmingham Traveler's Health Clinic.
Freedman explained the Loa loa worm infects only humans, but it relies on flies to jump from host to host. A chrysops fly may bite one person who is infected with Loa loa, pick up the larvae from the bite and then transfer them to the next person it bites.
The larvae grow into worms, procreate and lay more larvae that travel in the person's blood stream.
"It will take a period of six months or more for the larvae to become full size and move around," said Freedman. "Once these worms become adults they live for five or 10 years."
Depending on how severe the Loa loa infestation is, doctors can treat it with a drug called diethylcarbamazine. The drug "is available only from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which released it for 10 cases in 2007," the authors wrote.
1) The Loa Loa Worm
"I wouldn't say that this is a rare occurrence," said Freedman, speaking of the tropical diseases brought into the United States. "The population with this is mostly returning Peace Corps volunteers."
While there may be only a few cases like this in the U.S., infectious disease experts say that doesn't mean the United States is free from serious parasites -- some which even may cause blindness.
"There are high rates of parasitic infection in the U.S., especially among African American and Hispanic Americans living in poverty," said Dr. Peter Hotez, editor-in-chief of PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases.
Take, for example, toxocariasis -- a parasite that's passed from dog or cat feces, which Hotez said is often picked up on unclean sidewalks or in playgrounds in the city or country.
"It's a parasitic worm infection that I estimate occurs among 3 million African Americans living in poverty," said Hotez. "It's carried by dogs, and it's associated with asthma and developmental delays."
Hotez said it's possible that a child infected with Toxocara might live their whole life getting asthma treatments, but not be diagnosed with the parasite that actually caused symptoms in the first place.
Each year, more than 700 people infected with Toxocara experience permanent vision loss, according to the CDC.
Hotez said two other infections -- toxoplasmosis and congenital cytomegalovirus (CMV) which can cause deafness and psychomotor retardation -- infect people in the United States.
In May 2010, Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., introduced a bill to Congress that would push the Health and Human Services department to investigate and address these parasites in the U.S.
"If these infections were occurring among wealthy people in the suburbs, we would not tolerate it," said Hotez, of the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Tropical Medicine at the George Washington University and Sabin Vaccine Institute in Washington, D.C.
Indeed some of the more noticeable reports about parasites come from travelers abroad, who often are shocked and disgusted by their infections.
Below is a list of some of the more common parasites to avoid at home and around the world, along with some expert advice on how to rid yourself of the worms.
2) The Human Bot Fly
Tara Dairman, 30, was confused by a painful itching on her scalp this December after returning from months abroad in Central and South America.
"I thought the bite was really weird when we got home because we were in Indiana and it was cold," said Dairman.
Dairman quickly found she had been infested with not one, but two painful parasites in her scalp. Her run-in with a blood-sucking bug happened in the jungle of Belize, but there are plenty of parasites one can catch in the United States."We're pretty sure that they came from the jungle in Belize," Dairman said of the two bot fly larva that embedded themselves in her scalp.
Dairman and her husband, Andrew Cahill, 30, already had plenty of bot fly (Dermatobia hominis) bites from the trip. But little did the couple know the bot fly lays its eggs in a more insidious way.
"They actually capture a mosquito or a tick and they lay their eggs on their stomachs," said Dairman. The bot fly then releases the mosquito or tick and hopes it will find a good host -- like Dairman -- to bite.
The warmth of the blood the mosquito sucks from the body prompt the bot-fly eggs to hatch. The larvae then embed themselves in the skin either through the new insect bite or a hair follicle, according to the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.
As if that's not bad enough, the larvae start to grow spikes on its body to keep hosts like Tara from pulling them out as they feed on her flesh.
"They have these little barbs in them so either when they move or when they're feeding it feels like this hot needle stabbing into you," said Dairman.
Days after the first symptoms, Dairman discovered she had a second itchy, painful spot on her head that caused a lot of pain.
But Cahill couldn't see what Dairman was talking about. With some Internet searches the couple matched Dairman's symptoms to the notorious bot fly. They also read the best way to find the larvae is to try and deprive them of oxygen.
Put on some form of grease, in this case Vaseline, and the larvae will burrow upwards and fight for air.
The couple would have visited a dermatologist, but wanted to see if they could do it without paying hundreds of dollars for a visit.
"Since we quit our jobs to go traveling we don't have health insurance to cover us in the United States, we only have insurance for emergencies," said Dairman.
If you're fast enough you can grab them with tweezers and (painfully) pull them out. Cahill however, found it was better to suffocate them first.
"We covered them with New-Skin for the night to cut off their air supply," Cahill wrote on their blog, "Andy and Tara's World." "New-Skin is basically fingernail polish that is meant to go on small cuts and scrapes for protection. This morning when we got up, we peeled the New-Skin off one of them and the dead worm was visible."
Dairman said she'd go back to Belize, even after her experience with the bot fly.
"Belize is terrific. So I'd certainly recommend it to anyone," said Dairman. "I think this is really rare."
3) Fish Tapeworms
For a spare few aficionados of raw fish, the delicacy they love can lead to a very unwelcome visitor -- the kind that takes up residence in your intestines.
Anthony Franz was one such case. In the summer of 2006, he went to a Chicago area hospital carrying a 9-foot tapeworm that had come from his digestive tract.
Franz, who was not available for comment, filed a lawsuit against an Illinois seafood restaurant for $100,000 last spring.
"Basically we discovered that this particular tapeworm was caused from uncooked seafood, particularly salmon," said Franz's attorney, Gregory Leiter. "That's what he brought into the hospital."
Franz is one of the small but growing number of tapeworm victims in cities across the world who are discovering (or rediscovering) that some of the most popular fish can host parasites.
Fortunately, the number of people who have a story similar to Franz's is still relatively low; a recent study in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases pegged the number at just 1 per 100,000 people in Kyoto, Japan in 2008.
But as sashimi and other raw fish dishes grow in popularity, experts say such cases could become more common.
"Usually, with this particular warm it produces discomfort, some pain, and it can produce anemia," Dr. Felipe C. Cabello, professor of Microbiology and Immunology at New York Medical College in Valhalla, told ABCNews.com.
The worm rarely poses an imminent danger to health, Cabello said. But he added that its presence can leave its host drained.
"The parasite sucks the vitamin B12, and the person with the parasite does not have enough," said Cabello. "This is a worm that can reach 25 feet and it might take months, a year to grow."
4) Taenia Solium
For Rosemary Alvarez, it was a diagnosis that brought both relief and revulsion.
The relief came when Alvarez, a 37-year-old Phoenix resident, learned from her surgeon that her neurological symptoms had not been caused by a brain tumor, as her doctors had initially suspected.
But the revulsion soon followed -- when the surgeon said her balance problems, her difficulty swallowing and the numbness in her left arm had been caused by a worm he had just pulled out of her brain.
"She was deteriorating rather quickly, so she needed it out," Dr. Peter Nakaji, a neurosurgeon at the Barrow Neurological Institute at St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center, told ABC News.
But when Nakaji cut into Alvarez's brain to extract what he thought was a tumor, he instead found a parasite living in her brain -- a tapeworm called Taenia solium, to be precise.
"I was actually quite pleased," said Nakaji. "As neurosurgeons, we see a lot of bad things and have to deliver a lot of bad news."
Unfortunately, it is difficult to avoid the worm, which usually only infects pigs. Nakaji said Alvarez's hygiene habits were probably not to blame. It was more likely that someone, somewhere, had served her food tainted with the feces of a person infected with the pork tapeworm parasite.
Parasitologists say that while brushes with the pork tapeworms remain relatively rare, they endure in certain areas of the country.
"We've got a lot more of cases of this in the United States now," said Raymond Kuhn, professor of biology and an expert on parasites at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C. "Upwards of 20 percent of neurology offices in California have seen it."
And the eggs of the worm are nothing if not resilient.
"These eggs can live for three months in formaldehyde," said Kuhn. "You got to think, sometimes, a person is slapping lettuce on your sandwich with a few extra add-ons there."
5) Lice and Bedbugs
"Don't let the bedbugs bite."
What once might have been a facetious nighttime saying became pretty good advice for New York City commuters in 2008, as an official with the city's Department of Housing, Preservation and Development told an audience that the city's subway trains and stations may have been infested with the insects.
The New York City Transit Authority immediately defended itself. But Edward Brownbear, lead education instructor for the housing department and the city's top bedbug authority, reportedly said that he himself had seen the bugs on the wooden benches of Manhattan's Union Square station and The Bronx's Fordham Road station -- as well as on the clothing of a passenger on a train.
At least one Manhattan pest control professional agreed at the time that bedbug infestation had been a growing problem in the city's subway system.
"I've been talking about it for five years," said Jeffrey Eisenberg, president of Pest Away Exterminating, adding that he had personally reported bedbug sightings to subway administrators seven to eight years before.
Efforts to track the critters have revealed that, after a long decline, bedbugs have rebounded in the United States in recent years. This is partly because of increased international travel. The tiny, nocturnal insects are able to live in both fibers and wood. They are also known for their bites, which cause itchy bumps on the skin.
But the bite can lead to more than an itch. According to reports from the U.S. Public Health Service, bedbugs are known to carry dozens of infectious diseases, from smallpox to the flu.
And where people are, the bugs are sure to follow, said Cindy Mannes, spokeswoman for the National Pest Management Association.
"If you think about large groups of people, in many cases this is how bedbugs are transported," Mannes said at the time. "I know they've been found in movie theaters and other strange places."
6) Guinea Worm
The horrific nature of a Guinea worm infection is perhaps best captured in its Latin name -- Dracunculus medinensis. Roughly translated, the term means "little dragon of the Mediterranean."
Despite its small size, the Guinea worm can cause excruciating pain. The pest infects a human host through contaminated drinking water. The larvae of the worm mature in one's stomach and reproduce in the intestines. The mature female worms migrate to the surface of the skin. There, the worms embed themselves, growing up to three feet in length.
Primarily found in the Middle East and many African countries, the Guinea worm enjoys a colorful history shared by few other parasites. It has been found during the dissection of Egyptian mummies and is well documented in ancient texts. There are even possible references to it in the Old Testament.
Some even believe that the Guinea worm was the inspiration for the design of the caduceus -- the serpent-entwined staff that is now the symbol of the medical profession. The theory springs from the fact that in the ancient world, the proper removal of the worm involved grabbing the exposed tail and gradually winding the body of the worm around a stick -- as pulling too hard would cause the worm to break, resulting in infection and inflammation. Thus, some believe, the symbol of the parasite twisted around a stick became synonymous with the healing arts.
Fortunately, public health efforts appear to have largely turned the tide against Guinea worm infections. According to statistics compiled by The Carter Center http://www.cartercenter.org/health/guinea-worm/index.html -- the disease-fighting nonprofit organization founded by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter -- eradication efforts have reduced the number of cases reported in 20 African nations from 3.5 million in 1986 to just a few thousand last year. And some hope that the disease will be completely eradicated within the next few years.
7) Malaria
Arguably the deadliest parasite ever known to man, a microscopic organism known as Plasmodium is responsible for the disease known as malaria. The disease is spread by mosquitoes, and each year between 350 million and 500 million people worldwide fall ill from it, according to statistics from the CDC. Of those stricken, more than a million die.
Those infected with malaria generally have fever, headache, and vomiting, starting 10 to 15 days after contracting the disease from a mosquito bite. The deadliest form of the parasite, called Plasmodium falciparum, can rapidly threaten the lives of its victims by disrupting blood supply to vital organs.
The deadly nature malaria has put it in the crosshairs of global health organizations and charitable institutions alike.
"Malaria still kills more than 1 million people every year," said U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon during a speech on World Malaria Day in April 2008. "The toll it is taking is unacceptable -- all the more so because malaria is preventable and treatable."
And the solutions for this devastating disease are simple ones. Bednets, insecticides and inexpensive antimalarial drugs all go a long way in the areas where it still threatens humans, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa.
8) Chagas Disease
For many, infection with Chagas disease takes place in the dead of night.
When the lights go out in many of the adobe and mud homes inhabited by the rural poor in Central and South America, the triatomine beetle -- also known as the "kissing bug" -- creeps out from the crevices in walls and ceilings, seeking out warm, sleeping bodies.
The bug got its seemingly-romantic nickname because it is attracted to its victims' faces. At night one's face is generally uncovered and gives off body heat. The insect sucks one's blood through a long proboscis. As it feeds, it defecates -- and spreads the disease.
Within the fecal matter of the bug lives an organism known as Trypanosoma cruzi. And if this parasite enters the bloodstream -- perhaps when a sleeping victim wakes up and inadvertently rubs it into the new, itchy wound left by the beetle -- it can lead to Chagas disease, an infection that is both lifelong and life-threatening.
While early symptoms of the illness include nonspecific symptoms such as fever, fatigue, body aches and headache, the chronic phase of the disease can be deadly. At its worst, the disease can lead to heart failure and sudden death.
While most of the 8 to 11 million victims of Chagas live in Mexico and Central America, it is also seen in poor Hispanic households in southern states and along the Mexican border. Exactly how many in the country are infected is a matter of contention; estimates range from a few thousand to up to a million.
Chagas is just one of an array of diseases that disproportionately affect the poor -- and it was one of the diseases highlighted in a recent report titled "Neglected Infections of Poverty in the United States of America."
"The fact that these neglected infections of poverty represent some of the greatest health disparities in the United States, but they remain at the bottom of the public health agenda, is a national disgrace," said Dr. Peter Hotez, author of the analysis and executive director of the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases in a press release.
Reports from the Associated Press contributed to this article.


text:
In his robust Inside The NFL Notebook below, NFL Network's Albert Breer touches on multiple topics, including (click on each link to take you directly to the topic):
» Four things he's looking forward to in Week 16.
» One highly dangerous team as the playoffs approach.
» A prediction on Jon Gruden's future.
» And much more, beginning with a look at why Kyle Shanahan is on the head-coaching fast track ...
Chris Cooley was cut by the Washington Redskins on Aug. 28. The veteran tight end then returned to the team on Oct. 22.
It's pretty tough for him to comprehend what transpired in the eight weeks in between.
"When I got back, it was a new offense," Cooley recounted recently. "The learning curve for me was drastic. I missed seven games. The last game I didn't play was against the Giants. I watch all the games and I'm in tune to what we're doing, [but] I couldn't have called a third of the plays in that game. I couldn't have told you what they were, what the responsibilities were. The way they'd grown from Week 1 to Week 7 was unreal."
So is the ascension of Redskins offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan on lists of potential head-coaching candidates. And Cooley's explanation hints at the primary reason why.
After leading a middling offense his first two years in Washington (ranked 18th and 16th in the league) under his father, the younger Shanahan retrofitted the traditional scheme Mike Shanahan has run around the talents of Robert Griffin III, for whom the 'Skins yielded a ransom to draft. Kyle installed concepts that Griffin ran at Baylor, mixed them with the old stuff, and created a unique attack designed to put his rookie quarterback in the best spot to prosper quickly. It worked. To wit:
Exihibit A: Griffin's 104.2 rating, 66.4 completion percentage and 18-to-4 TD-INT ratio.
Exhibit B: Washington now ranks fourth in total offense.
Exhibit C: With Griffin out in Week 15, it was easily adjustable to fit Washington's other rookie quarterback, Kirk Cousins.
"He's definitely exaggerating a little bit, just talking like Cooley does," Kyle Shanahan said over the phone, when apprised of his tight end's comments. "The whole basics of the zone read, we'd worked on that, did it really hard, put time into it from a Football 101 standpoint starting in OTAs, going from normal formations, getting the O-line right, getting the quarterback and running backs on the same page with the ballhandling. What Cooley saw was the simple ways to do it. That was the first couple games."
From there, the Redskins have kept defenses on their toes not by changing the concepts, but expanding the looks.
It's working. Washington topped the league in rushing at the quarter pole, stood second both at the midway point and after Week 12, and has risen back up to first since. So at this point, the idea that other teams would simply "catch up" to the problems the Redskins have created with their unique attack looks shaky.
"We've added moving parts -- out of crazy formations, running guys across the formation, bringing receivers in the backfield," Kyle continued. "Each week, we add to it. We got most wild with it the first time we played the Giants. To me, a lot of it is illusion. And it all goes back to what we've already done. The teaching has never really changed. The window dressing has. We can make it look like a lot of different stuff."
Kyle Shanahan's motivation to innovate here, more so than within the actual schematics, helps explain why he will draw interest from other clubs in need of a head coach this offseason. The 33-year-old chose to base his offense around the talent on hand, rather than forcing the talent to adapt to his ways. Which is to say he's inventive enough to be adapatable, something that would help any coach get the most out of his players.
In Griffin's case, Kyle said, "When we studied him, we saw a lot of things he did well, but (the zone-read) is what he did best, and we weren't going to take that away from him." So the Redskins went about trying to take what Griffin did best and make it something the offense could do well.
The interesting thing is that as Kyle Shanahan compiled tape of Baylor -- as well as the Tim Tebow-quarterbacked Denver Broncos, the Cam NewtonCarolina Panthers and the Vince Young Tennessee Titans, to see how NFL defenses were combatting the option -- neither he nor any other Redskins coach consulted with any outside coach or option guru.
"I'm kinda glad we didn't," Kyle said. "Because of that, we had to look at it hard, study more tape, and we wound learning it better and coming up with our own impressions."
Daniel Jeremiah says Kirk Cousins is just one of the men who kept the Redskins on track without RG3. **More ...**
As you might expect, he scoffs at the notion that it's any kind of gimmick.
Kyle explains that the offense forces defenses to account for 11 players rather than 10, since the quarterback is part of the play. This opens up things everywhere else on the field. Washington runs, by Kyle's count, about nine plays per game off the read-option and the threat it creates. And when the Redskins are running it -- not playing off it -- an extra gap is created. It plays the angles and is built to put defensive guys in bad spots, which, he reminds, is offensive football.
Kyle concedes it can't be all you do in the NFL. But it can be an important element, so long as you can keep your quarterback upright.
"We don't want Robert to get hit, but the thing I've noticed is that people notice when he gets hit running the ball," Kyle Shanahan said. "But they don't realize how violent it is in the pocket. ... He doesn't get hit like (Matt) Schaub did or Rex (Grossman) did. Robert will do that (dropback) stuff, but with the threat of the zone-read, and the fact that he's not sitting there, defensive linemen aren't teeing off on him. It's not the same."
Still, to make it work, the Redskins have built in rules for Griffin. In scramble situations, he's only to run when he's not accounted for by the defense. And in most of those spots, he's told to use the angles and run to the sideline. They're coaching him to slide some, and get out of bounds more -- on option plays, too.
Kyle Shanahan also mentions that Griffin's two injuries this year came on scrambles, not designed runs.
Mike Shanahan told me earlier in the season that he expects the offense to be in a state of evolution for the first three years of Griffin's career, something evident in the way Kyle's running things. And maybe the best thing? In part because both the option looks and the old offense are rooted in zone-blocking concepts, it's easy to go back and forth in scheme, which allowed the Redskins to smoothly transition to Kirk Cousins last week. But again, the idea remains the same.
"You can't just turn it on and become a pocket passer. Most guys who are have been since they were born," Kyle Shanahan said. "They've been throwing from the pocket and reading coverages since Day 1. Robert's such a good athlete that he hasn't had to do that. He understands football, and he can do it. He works at it, and the way he thinks and works, he's gonna be good at everything. This is just what he does best now."
It doesn't take Amos Alonzo Stagg to recognize that. But it did take skill, and guts, to build it like this.
Four things I'll be looking for on Sunday
1) Seeing which New York Giants team shows up. The easy comparison to draw for this year's Giants is last year's Giants, who needed to beat the Jets and Cowboys in the final two weeks of the regular season to make the playoffs -- just like the 2012 team has to beat the Ravens and Eagles over the next two weeks to get in. It's easy to forget that the high-wire act hasn't always worked to the favor of Tom Coughlin's team. In 2010, New York suffered an unsightly Week 15 loss (just like last year and this year), blowing a 31-10 fourth-quarter lead to Philly and turning the final two games of that season into must-wins. The next week, Eli Manning threw four picks in a blowout loss to Green Bay, which took the final playoff spot from the Giants on a tiebreaker and wound up winning the whole thing. And in 2009, the Giants lost their final two games to fall to 8-8 and out of the postseason. "I don't think we want it to happen. It's just something that happens," Hakeem Nicks told me, when asked about these spots the Giants put themselves in. "You don't like to dwell off last year. But at the end of the day, we know what we can do, we know what we're capable of doing." Capable? Yes. A sure thing? Not even close.
2) The New England Patriots' onslaught. The Pats go to Jacksonville frothing at the mouth after their first loss in two months, still clinging to hopes that Denver could trip up and they could grab one of the AFC's two byes. And as much as the loss to the San Francisco 49ers must sting, New England still reached the end zone on four straight possessions to surmount a 28-point deficit against the league's most feared defense. The reason? The standard, as Deion Branch explained to me, couldn't be higher: "There's no need to play this game if you don't strive for perfection. And we know there will be mistakes made. But we have to focus on being a little more consistent and controlling the things we can control. You can look at the film, and I'm pretty sure the guys would say, 'When we were stopped, it was us. It was nothing they were doing.' And that's the stuff that makes you mad." They'll be plenty mad, and chances are that anger will add up to a lot of points against the lowly Jags.
3) Russell Wilson vs. the San Francisco 49ers' defense. The Seattle Seahawks' electrifying rookie has really only had two face-in-the-pavement games as a pro: at St. Louis in September and at San Francisco in October. Since that bad night at Candlestick, Wilson hasn't had a game where he threw more picks than touchdown passes and the Seahawks are 5-2. And at home, he continues to be off-the-charts good, with a completion percentage of 61.3, a TD-INT ratio of 12-to-1 and a 118.4 passer rating. Sunday night, he gets the chance to atone against San Francisco, with the Niners visiting Seattle. And listening to Pete Carroll, it's clear so much more is expected now. "For a team, we were just trying to get the offense going and not screw it up and make sure he could keep growing," Carroll said after the 50-17 win over Buffalo in Toronto. "We're past that now." As is the case with Griffin in Washington, Seattle has fostered Wilson's development by incorporating option and moving-pocket elements that allow him to play more instinctively. San Francisco's defense, which wasn't happy with its second-half lull in New England and will look to reestablish its dominance, will provide a good gauge for how far Wilson has come.
4) Ben Roethlisberger's big day. So maybe it's one of those "How was play otherwise, Mrs. Lincoln?" things to say, but Roethlisberger was pretty solid in Dallas, outside of the disastrous interception to Brandon Carr. And there's reason to believe the Pittsburgh Steelers will be mighty dangerous as a No. 6 seed (remember 2005?) if they do get into the tournament. Amazingly enough, it's still all in their hands. The biggest hurdle in getting there comes this week, with the Cincinnati Bengals' rugged defense paying a visit to Pittsburgh. This is when Roethlisberger must show his growth within Todd Haley's offense. Put the overanalysis of Big Ben's postgame words aside. Everyone knew this wasn't always going to be the smoothest relationship-building effort, because Haley can get hot and Roethlisberger can be immature and headstrong. But for the most part, I'm told, the two guys have navigated it fine. Sunday's reaction from Roethlisberger was simply a matter of emotion. Both men know they'll be judged on what happens between the lines. And this Sunday will go a long way in deciding how the bottom line here is written.
Three conclusions
1) The Steelers -- and others -- can learn from Washington thriving behind Kirk Cousins. I'd expect that Cousins' name will be floated out there plenty this offseason as a potential answer for someone at quarterback. But to trade him would defeat Washington's purpose in drafting him, which was to add a valuable piece at a bargain-rate and backstop an athletic quarterback with a player who can win games as a pinch-hitter. Sunday's an example of why the Redskins would be more likely to hang on to Cousins for three years, maybe draft another quarterback in 2014, then deal him off for picks in 2015 (when he has one year left on his rookie deal). Imagine if the Steelers had such a player. Pittsburgh has done so much correct over the years, but one mistake has been its reluctance to develop a young player to back up Roethlisberger, whose playing style subjects him to a beating. The Steelers have drafted just two quarterbacks, Omar Jacobs and Dennis Dixon, since Roethlisberger got there, and it's cost them games the last two years. You have to wonder if the Colts, Niners and Seahawks will think about drafting a backup at the position next year, too, based on the ways they employ their young signal-callers.
2) It's time for a clean-break between the New York Jets and Mark Sanchez. One Tennessee Titans official watching Monday night's game referred to the quarterback as "awful" and asked, "How do they have six wins?" It's not hard to see: Sanchez looks like a defeated player. But some in the NFL don't see him as a totally lost cause. "He may benefit from a change of scenery," said one AFC executive. "I think what's done is done, and mentally, the program in New York may have taken its toll and killed his confidence, especially when you have the innuendo that the organization may not have had total faith in you. A fresh start and a team that wants you can invigorate some confidence. But now, you know what he is: a quarterback who will do far better when he has a run game and a defense that will just let him be the bus driver." And that's the problem in New York. When you've invested in a player like the Jets have in Sanchez, that's simply not enough.
3) The Green Bay Packers are dangerous as ever. And that's despite the bone-headed decision to run that throwback on the punt return, a debacle that added tense moments to what should've been a comfortable win. Jordy Nelson told me at the end of November that this season was unfolding in a fashion "very similar" to 2010. Nelson added that "you can't rely on it, but you know there's a chance." Same as then, the Packers are dealing with a ton of injuries now, and getting hot at the right time. They've won eight of nine, and done so despite injuries to Clay Matthews, Charles Woodson, Greg Jennings and Nelson, among others. They've shown depth, and a versatility to win games in different ways. And their presence, potentially, as the third seed in the NFC shows the strength of the conference, with that side of the bracket promising to be as competitive as we've seen it in years.
Two college players to watch this week
1) BYU pass rusher Ezekiel Ansah (vs. San Diego State, Poinsettia Bowl, Thursday, 8 p.m. ET, ESPN): This 6-foot-6, 270-pound specimen arrived at BYU as a track athlete from Ghana in 2008, and first went out for the football team in 2010. This fall, in his first season starting, he posted 57 tackles, 13 tackles for losses, 4.5 sacks and eight pass break-ups. "He's very intriguing," an AFC executive said. "Very high upside factor, but risk from his lack of a football background and pedigree. If you hit with him, I see a lot of potential." I asked an NFC exec if this is like Jason Pierre-Paul -- another ridiculously talented edge player who was very raw coming out of college -- and the answer was simply, "Yes." You'll be hearing plenty about this kid in the coming months.
2) Washington CB Desmond Trufant (vs. Boise State, MAACO Bowl Las Vegas, Saturday, 3:30 p.m. ET, ESPN): The younger brother of Seahawks CB Marcus Trufant and Jets CB Isaiah Trufant, Desmond Trufant is "probably a third- or fourth-round prospect and the best player in that (bowl) game," according to an NFC exec. The aforementioned AFC executive said Trufant has "cover skills, speed and quickness, average size and some limitations in strength, but can run and cover." Boise's passing game, though it might not be quite what it's been in the past, should provide Trufant with a good final shot to effect his stock positively going into the evaluation process.
One prediction
Jon Gruden will remain in the booth. The rumor mill has been spinning furiously, as it so often does, around the former Raiders and Buccaneers head coach. And there are plenty of whispers out there connecting him back to Philadelphia, which was his final stop as an assistant -- he was offensive coordinator there under Ray Rhodes -- before he got the Raiders job in 1998.
I personally think he stays out another year. At least.
Harrison: Week 16 Power Rankings
A new team at the top, a new team at the bottom and plenty of action in between. Elliot Harrison reshuffles the deck. **More ...**
At this point, Gruden's been out four seasons, which is just two less than Bill Cowher. My sense now is that Gruden has become, in some ways, just like Cowher. Both men have a ring and a legacy that certainly could be enhanced, but is also secure. They make oodles of money, even if it's not quite coaching money, to do a fraction of the work they did on the sidelines.
I do believe Gruden probably has the bug, the need to coach, more than Cowher does. But because of his circumstances, and how comfortable he has things for his family, to me, it boils down to one undeniable fact for both guys: It'd take a lot to pry them from the lives they now lead.


text:
TPC Nation Planner - Arctic Animals
This weekly kit has been created for the TPC nation planner.
You can find the #TPCNATIONPLANNER here: https://tpcnationshop.com/collections/budget-book
The stickers all measure 1.5" wide and will fit in most " standard " planners.
All sheets are available a la carte as well as a bundle.
a full kit will come with 2 sheets.
If you would like to purchase sheets a la carte, please look at the photos to see what stickers are found on each sheet.
009 - Full boxes and date covers
010 - function boxes
Stickers are printed premium weatherproof sticker paper (unicorn paper) and kiss cut to perfection.
Please read ALL shop policies including FAQs before purchasing! Please keep in mind that sometimes colors on the screen will differ from the actual product depending on monitor settings. Because of the nature of handmade items, each sheet may not be exactly perfect, but has been carefully overlooked for noticeable flaws.
Thank you for visiting The Penny Pages!
Copyright © 2019 by Destiny McLean from ThePennyPages
All rights reserved. All illustrations, artwork, graphic, characters, logos, and/or design in this listing are the copyrighted works of Destiny McLean for ThePennyPages. Any unlawful redistribution, reproduction, alteration, or transmission of any illustrations, artwork, graphic, characters, logos, and/or design on this site in any form or by any means, including but not limited to photocopying, downloading, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the artist is strictly prohibited and punishable by Canadian, US, and international copyright laws.