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"Well played, Mauer," appears to be finished as a catch phrase for MLB The Show with today's naming of Boston's Adrian Gonzalez as the cover star for next year's edition of the game. He displaces the Minnesota Twins catcher Joe Mauer, who held the packshot for the past two years.
Sony dated the game, too, telling the public it will be available March 6. That's per the usual, sports titles normally have fixed dates and baseball's is the first Tuesday of March.
MLB 12 The Show will publish a version for PlayStation Vita, Sony said, and it will take advantage of the new handheld's capabilities.
Adrian Gonzalez Announced as Cover Athlete for MLB 12 The Show [PlayStation Blog]
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Koss PortaPros plugged into my motherboard's onboard audio. Supa hi-end, yo.Show Image
Another ATH-AD700 fan here
Judging from the picture, Grados are just as uncomfortable as Koss Porta Pros. Ear squeezed directly into foam = bad.
It makes me wonder if all those higher-end cans like properly-amped Beyerdynamic DT880s and anything Stax or electrostatic would really be that much of an improvement in gaming
What's the difference between A700 and AD700?
A = closed, AD = open.
From what I read on the DT880 600ohm at head-fi and other places. Gaming wise they are monsters for it, especially for very serious competitive gaming while the DT770s are more of a fun cans. There's a ****load of reviews on the DT880s and gaming in particular the 600s which seem to produce the best sound when properly amp'd, hell even some people are using the Xonar ST and saying it's just fine for amplification but I'm sure there's always someone coming out and saying external only.
Oh and if you have the luxury, going out and testing > all.
Yes! Yes! Let the hate flow though you! lolz Actually, I find my grados to be quite comfy, as all it took was a slight bend of the headband to reduce the squeezing of the ears. I actually tend to forget that I am wearing them. Now I could see if you had a fat head, you might run into problems, but I don't exactly have that problem. In all seriousness though, I will agree with you that when I initially bought the pair they were a little uncomfortable. Yet, I knew that before I actually paid for them, as I tried them on in store and made my comparisons versus many other competing headphones. In the end, I choose audio quality over comfortability. After about a month the headband naturally stretched out and I noticed I was able to wear them for much lengthier periods of time then when initially got them. Now after having these headphones for over half a year and having put over 300 hours into them I can safely say I can easily (and have) wear these all day and night long.
AKG K240 MKII for me as well.Just recently bought them. Love those.
Any reason for no mod? The YouTube looked really easy to convert to 595 which is $50 more expensive on Amazon and two times the MSRP?
Sennheiser HD555s with the 595 mod.
Show Image Emu 0202 USB soundcardPenguin Amp 'Caffeine'- AD8397 opamp- LM6171 ground driver Connected via home-made cable made ofMogami 2549 cable &Neutrik angled stereo mini-jacksAKG K240 MkII
HD580's are great. Love em. Too bad they are out of production.
any reason a non audiophile who uses his droid for workouts or just ad700 to xfi would want to make an altoid cmoy amp?i'm just asking cuz they look cool and i just learned how to solder so i was thinking about buying a kit! but i have absolutely no idea what it's for and what it can do, pretty much total noob. (i just think it'd be fun to solder)
Same here. Hooked up to a NuForce Icon amp...I have a question, by the way. Can you guys tell a difference between 128 kbps MP3 and uncompressed? Or 128 kbps MP3 and 320 kbps?
I can tell the difference
I need to spend some time reading this thread and over at headroom, you guys should post your opinions of what you have. I'd like to get some nice cans in the $100-300 range for use with an amp and some good audio gear that I've recently scored. :biggrin:I use these Ultimate Ears Triple.Fi 10vi (has mic for phone use) on my commutes, doing yard work and general portable use. Picked them up for $100 last year during the Amazon gold box sale and they are one of the best purchases I've ever made. If I lost them I would pay full retail ($350-420ish) to replace them.The Sennheiser HD-202's are my leave at work on my desk phones which I don't use much since getting the Triple.Fi 10's but they are an Excellent budget headphone. Really. For $25 they are very tough to beat and quite comfortable.
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The great pragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty wrote how college professors should do more than just assign text books. One of the books that always makes my list is The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley.
I do not do this to curry favor with students, but I saw something in this story that went beyond politics. I first read this book during my senior year at college, and realized it was the one of the only books that I read cover to cover in four years.
When I realized that a guy in prison could read more books than I did in college, it woke me up. I wanted my students to see that if a man in jail can read more books than they did in school that something was wrong.
Just last semester, I bought a copy and gave it one of my students. I told her that I thought the book would encourage her to read more, but the book is only useful if it is read in its entirety. The beginning of the story is uncomfortable, but gradually gets better.
There is some controversy about how we teach history to younger students, and Malcolm X is back in the news because of it. This is nothing new. School systems went from teaching history to teaching "social studies" as a way to put sentiment over substance, which is not good education policy.
If students want to know about people like Malcolm X, the best way to do it is to read the autobiography. In his own story he is not portrayed as a squeaky clean part of American history. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
It was, however, kind of ironic how some parents were angry that teachers were imposing their opinions on students and not letting them write about this in class. Is this really new?
In 1984, Junior High School 202 social studies teacher Mr. George Kahn had a "Mondale-Ferraro, The Winning Ticket '84" placard stapled to the wall in class. This was outright campaigning in the classroom.
There is a lot to learn there about America in the 1960s in stories like this, some good and some not so good. The best leaders in any community are flawed. But these are gateway books. This gets students into other subject matters. That was the idea I had with my book list and why I keep this book as part of it.
Everything is Awesome!
Go see the Lego Movie, even if you do not have kids. Although, if you do not have a child with you, bring a friend, because that would just be creepy otherwise.
It is a fun movie written at levels for adults and children. Much of the movie is a stylized confusing storyline that gets tied up so perfectly at the end that it makes this a "must see."
This has never been an entertainment column, but the opening song alone makes it awesome.


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Writer extraordinaire Jane Espenson is writing three out of 10 episodes in Torchwood's upcoming fourth season, she told Blastr. In an unusual move for U.S. television, the whole season will be written before the show starts filming, and Russell T. Davies is keeping it tightly plotted. And she adds that she'll be going to new and exciting places with the show:
I love blending tones-mixing the broadly comedic moment in with the darkly dramatic one can heighten both. Torchwood is a show that welcomes that kind of moment. I'm also really eager to play with all the culture-clash material that comes naturally out of the show's pedigree. And I'm especially eager to write material that pushes the boundaries of what can ordinarily be done on television.


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James David Ebert (1921-2001)
James David Ebert studied the developmental processes of chicks and of viruses in the US during the twentieth century. He also helped build and grow many research institutions, such as the Department of Embryology in the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Baltimore, Maryland and the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. When few biologists studied the biochemistry of embryos, Ebert built programs and courses around the foci of biochemistry and genetics, especially with regards to embryology. He eventually directed the MBL's Embryology Course, and later, the MBL itself.
Ebert was born on 11 December 1921 in the town of Bentleyville, Pennsylvania. He attended public schools while growing up and then graduated from Washington and Jefferson College in Washington, Pennsylvania in 1942. Not long after graduation he joined the United States Navy and eventually became a lieutenant. Ebert was stationed on a destroyer in the Pacific Ocean that was attacked by a kamikaze pilot. The destroyer sank and Ebert spent twenty-four hours in the ocean until being rescued. Afterwards, as a biologist, Ebert befriended and trained several Japanese developmental biologists.
In 1946 Ebert began working towards his PhD in developmental biology under the instruction of Benjamin Willier at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. In the same year he married Alma Goodwin, who was a Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency during the war. Ebert received his PhD in 1950 and immediately became a member of the faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. After one year at MIT, Ebert moved to Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. Ebert became an associate professor of zoology by 1955, and he had started a program of experimental embryology. He studied chick embryos and the processes by which the protein make-up of the embryos changed throughout development.
Six years after receiving his PhD, Ebert became the director of the Carnegie Institution of Washington's Department of Embryology, in Baltimore, Maryland. Prior to Ebert's term as director, the department had had three other directors. The Institution's president, Caryl Haskins, had contemplated closing the department and starting something new. However, with some persuasion from Willier, Haskins spoke with Ebert and decided to give him the opportunity to run the department. Ebert and Haskins agreed that the department needed to focus on the study of genes and their regulation as well as the ways cells influence one another. Haskins said that Ebert's youth and enthusiastic personality made Haskins believe that Ebert would provide a fresh perspective to the department.
Ebert argued that it was his job to recognize and to recruit new talent and then support them in their work. He stressed the use of biochemistry and genetics, which in the 1960s blended together to form molecular biology. During this time, Ebert started to study the relationship between muscle cell differentiation and the propensity to infection in the Rous sarcoma virus.
While still director of the Carnegie embryology department, in 1970 Ebert also became the president and nonresident director of the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) at Woods Hole. At the MBL he researched, with Keiko Ozato, the response of murine lymphocytes to mitogens.
In 1977 Ebert ended his term at the Carnegie Department of Embryology, but he remained the director of the MBL. From 1978 until 1987, Ebert lived in Washington, D.C., and he was the president of the whole Carnegie Institution of Washington. As the institution's president, he made the decision to help build a large optical telescope in Chile at Las Campanas Observatory, and he worked towards the creation of a common campus for both Carnegie departments in Washington.
Ebert remained involved with scientific institutions for the rest of his life. When leaving one institution, he found another one to join. He retired from the Carnegie Institution in 1987 and became the president of the Chesapeake Bay Institute at the Johns Hopkins University, where he was a professor of biology for six years. Ebert was elected to many societies including the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Institute of Medicine. He was the vice president of the National Academy of Sciences from 1981 through 1993 and he also chaired its Government-University-Industry Research Roundtable from 1987 through 1993. His colleagues elected him as president of the Society for the Study of Development and Growth, the American Institute of Biological Sciences, and the American Society of Zoologists.
In retirement, Ebert and his wife Alma spent half of each year in Woods Hole and at the MBL. Ebert and Alma died on 22 May 2001 in an automobile accident while en route to Woods Hole.
- DeHaan, Robert L., and James D. Ebert. "Morphogenesis." Annual Review of Physiology 26 (1964): 15–46.
- Ebert, James D. "An analysis of the effects of anti-organ sera on the development, in vitro, of the early chick blastoderm." Journal of Experimental Zoology 115 (1950): 351–77.
- Ebert, James D. "An analysis of the synthesis and distribution of the contractile protein, myosin, in the development of the heart." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 39 (1953): 333–44.
- Ebert, James D. "The effects of chorioallantoic transplants of adult chicken tissues on homologous tissues of the host chick embryo." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 40 (1954): 337–47.
- Ebert, James D. "The formation of muscle and muscle-like elements in the chorioallantoic membrane following inoculation of a mixture of cardiac microsomes and Rous sarcoma virus." Journal of Experimental Zoology 142 (1959): 587–621.
- Ebert, James D., and Ian M. Sussex. Interacting Systems in Development. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970.
- Ebert, James D., and Fred H. Wilt. "Animal Viruses and Embryos." The Quarterly Review of Biology 35 (1960): 261–312.
- Obituaries. "Jim and Alma Ebert." Marine Biological Laboratory. http://www.mbl.edu/news/obit/obit_ebert.html (Accessed December 8, 2007).
- Ozato, Keiko, William H. Adler, and James D. Ebert. "Synergism of bacterial lipopolysaccharides and concanavalin A in the activation of thymic lymphocytes." Cellular Immunology 17 (1975): 532–41.
- Singer, Maxine. "James David Ebert." Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 148 (2004): 124–27.
James David Ebert studied the developmental processes of chicks and of viruses in the US during the twentieth century. He also helped build and grow many research institutions, such as the Department of Embryology in the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Baltimore, Maryland and the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. When few biologists studied the biochemistry of embryos, Ebert built programs and courses around the foci of biochemistry and genetics, especially with regards to embryology.Created: 2008-09-12
Jane Maienschein (1950- )
Jane Maienschein is the daughter of Joyce Kylander and Fred Maienschein, and was born in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, on 23 September 1950. She attended MIT as a freshman and then transferred to Yale University in 1969 when Yale decided to admit women undergraduates. In 1972 she graduated with an honors degree in History, the Arts, and Letters having written a thesis on the history of science. She then attended Indiana University and studied with historian of embryology Frederick B. Churchill, took courses with embryologist Rudolf Raff, and learned how to do embryological laboratory research with Robert Briggs. She received her MA in 1976 and a PhD in 1978, with a pre-doctoral Fellowship at the Smithsonian to study the history of microscopes and microscopy, and an NSF-funded dissertation improvement visit to the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) to reproduce old embryological experiments and soak up the history and resources of the MBL Library and labs. Maienschein's scholarly research focuses on the history and philosophy of developmental biology.
In graduate school Briggs helped Maienschein reproduce historical experiments using the dissertation study of Ross Granville Harrison's 1907 experiments on nerve fiber development. Harrison had asked whether the neuroblast cell (which we would now call a neural stem cell) can reach out and develop its fiber by protoplasmic outgrowth or whether the cell required a pre-established bridge, as many of his contemporaries argued must be the case. Harrison carried out the first ever tissue culture experiment, in which he got the neuroblast cells to grow when transplanted into an artificial medium of frog lymph. Briggs and Maienschein discovered that carrying out the experiment with the techniques Harrison described led to lots of nice bacterial and other unidentified cultures, but not nerve cells. Retracing Harrison's steps revealed that he had taken advantage of being temporarily housed near the bacteriologists at Yale University and had used more sophisticated aseptic techniques than he described.
This work led Maienschein to an analysis of the role of the details of scientific practices and the value of carrying out "practical history," as Edwin Clarke called it. She has also asked questions about the role of experiments in settling (or failing to settle) issues of theoretical debate. Her work in history of embryology has concentrated especially on the late nineteenth and into the twentieth century, including work done at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and on issues of morphogenesis and differentiation related to cell division. This research has led her to study stem cell research and regenerative medicine.
Maienschein is also a dedicated teacher who has received multiple awards, including the Arizona State University Parents Association Professor of the Year Chair, Regents' Professorship, and President's Professorship. In addition, she received the History of Science Society's Joseph H. Hazen Education Prize Award. During the 105th United States Congressional session, in 1997 and 1998, she served as senior science advisor to Congressman Matt Salmon, who served on the Science Committee. She took a group of undergraduates to Washington, which led to their paper presentation at the 150th meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and that led to an invitation to write an editorial for Science. The students' essay on "Scientific Literacy" remains the only publication in Science by undergraduates, and it led to a longer peer-reviewed article in Science Communication.
This personal exposure to the political context of science also led Maienschein to research reflecting more seriously on the social, political, and legal contexts of scientific research. Most productively, this has resulted in collaborative publications and projects with bioethicist Jason Scott Robert and Rachel Ankeny.
Maienschein served as the first president for the International Society for History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology ("Ishkabibble") in 1989–1991, president of the History of Science Society in 2008 and 2009, and in numerous other administrative rolls. She is Director of the Embryo Project, along with Manfred Laubichler.
- Arizona State University. http://www.public.asu.edu/~atjvm/ (Accessed October 24, 2008).
- Arizona State University Libraries. http://knet.asu.edu/research/?getObject=asulib:41285 (Accessed October 24, 2008).
- School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University. http://sols.asu.edu/people/faculty/jmaienschein.php (Accessed October 24, 2008).
Jane Maienschein is the daughter of Joyce Kylander and Fred Maienschein, and was born in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, on 23 September 1950. She attended MIT as a freshman and then transferred to Yale University in 1969 when Yale decided to admit women undergraduates. In 1972 she graduated with an honors degree in History, the Arts, and Letters having written a thesis on the history of science. She then attended Indiana University and studied with historian of embryology Frederick B.Created: 2008-10-24
Charles Otis Whitman (1842-1910)
Charles Otis Whitman was an extremely curious and driven researcher who was not content to limit himself to one field of expertise. Among the fields of study to which he made significant contributions were: embryology; morphology, or the form of living organisms and the relationships between their structures; natural history; and behavior. Whitman served as director of several programs and institutions, including the Biology Department at the University of Chicago, where he helped establish a new style of biology and influenced the work of many researchers of his generation, as well as future ones. He also served as first director of the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole, MA. Besides his considerable achievements with his own scientific research, Whitman was a tireless mentor who had many students who went on to achieve great success in the field of embryology.
Whitman was born in North Woodstock, Maine, to parents Marcia and Joseph Whitman on 14 December 1842. He grew up on a farm and developed an interest in natural history, particularly that of pigeons, at an early age. Whitman's family was typical of the rural area where he grew up, and he was educated in the public school system, but despite his family's lack of money he was highly motivated to receive a college education. Whitman earned money by teaching and tutoring in private schools, and in 1865 he began attending Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. Whitman was enrolled in the accelerated program and finished his degree in 3 years, graduating in 1868 with a BA. After graduation from Bowdoin College, Whitman took a position as Principal of Westford Academy in Massachusetts, where he remained for four years. He then moved to Boston to accept a position as instructor in natural science at English High School. This move was one of great importance, as it was in Boston that he became aware of Harvard University Professor of Zoology Louis Agassiz and enrolled to become one of fifty participants in the first session of the summer marine biology program at the Anderson School of Natural History on Penikese Island in 1873. This experience had a profound impact on Whitman as well as on other of Agassiz's students. In 1874 Whitman joined the Boston Society of Natural History and, after a second summer at Penikese, he decided to dedicate himself to the full-time study of zoology.
In 1875 Whitman went to study in Europe under Anton Dohrn at the Stazione Zoologica in Naples. After working with Dohrn in Naples, Whitman and his fellow Penikese Island student Charles Sedgwick Minot moved to Leipzig, Germany. There, under the direction of parasitologist Rudolf Leuckart, he learned the modern methods of embryology and microscopy. Whitman received his PhD from the University of Leipzig in 1878. His dissertation was "The Embryology of Clepsine (glossiphonia)", with an emphasis on the direct role of cleavage in histogenesis, or the differentiation of cells into specialized tissue and organs during growth. This research was instrumental in laying the groundwork for future studies of cell lineage. Whitman found evidence that leech egg development was completely predetermined. This finding supported the regulative theory of embryo development, according to which the whole embryo regulates the development of each cell, in contrast to the mosaic theory in which each cell develops independently, like a mosaic tile. His discoveries while working with the leech were instrumental to future taxonomical and morphological studies.
In 1879 he was offered a postdoctoral fellowship at the Johns Hopkins University but turned it down when he was invited to become Professor of Zoology at the Imperial University of Tokyo. He only spent two years there, but his short tenure was extremely influential. Eight of Whitman's students there went on to become prominent zoologists, including four who held major chairs, affording him the informal title "father of zoology" in Japan. From November 1881 until May 1882, Whitman returned to the Stazione Zoologica to study the embryology, life history, and classification of the dicyemids which led to the publication of a standard reference work on the parasite in 1883. From 1882 through 1886 Whitman worked as an assistant to Alexander Agassiz at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University. During this time Whitman also served as the editor for the Department of Microscopy at the American Naturalist Magazine. After Harvard, Whitman took the job of tutoring amateur zoologist Edward Phelps Allis, Jr., in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In addition to tutoring Allis, he took on the task of directing the very short lived Allis Lake Laboratory. While there, Whitman oversaw the work of many researchers, including William Morton Wheeler, who went on to become a prominent figure in the study of social insects.
During the summer of 1888 Whitman was invited to direct the newly established Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, a position he held until 1908. In 1889 Whitman left the Allis Lake facility to take the position of Chair of Zoology at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. In 1892 Whitman moved again to become head of the biology department at the newly founded University of Chicago. There Whitman had several students who went on to make names for themselves in embryology. One of the most prominent was Frank Rattray Lillie, who took over as director at the MBL after Whitman and succeeded Whitman at the University of Chicago, as well. Whitman had many embryologist colleagues at Chicago, including Frank Rattray Lillie, Jacques Loeb, Franklin Paine Mall, Albert Davis Mead, Shosaburo Watase, and William Morton Wheeler. Whitman remained at the University of Chicago until his death on 6 December 1910.
Whitman's study of sexual dimorphism, the morphological differences between male and female organisms of the same species, was an influence on Oscar Riddle and his endocrinological research. Whitman's 1898 paper "Animal Behavior" contains many examples of innate, non-learned, behavior. In his later work, he analyzed the relation between innate and learned behavior and the ability of animals to adjust their behavior to new experiences. Whitman saw a similarity of variation in related species, and the trends of evolutionary change in all species from the simplest of organisms to the most advanced. In 1900, when researchers were torn between the theories of mutation and selection, Whitman was a strong proponent of selection.
Whitman published papers and journal articles on every aspect of his work, but is probably best known for his posthumously published three-volume work The Orthogenic Evolution in Pigeons, considered to be the first extensive study in comparative ethology. Whitman was instrumental in the founding of several journals and academic institutions, including the Journal of Morphology, the Biological Bulletin, and the American Morphological Society which, through a merger with the Western Branch of the American Society of Naturalists (known as the Society of American Zoologists in 1901 and 1902), became the American Society of Zoologists in 1902.
Whitman's work significantly impacted the field of embryology. It greatly influenced the researchers of his generation as well as future generations. Whitman made significant contributions in the fields of embryology, morphology, taxonomy, and ethology. He published numerous books and papers in all of these subjects. Whitman was a mentor to biology students in several institutions around the world. Many of the institutions and publications he founded continue to be at the top of the field of embryology today.
- Carr, Harvey A., and Oscar Riddle, eds. Posthumous Works of Charles Otis Whitman. Vol. I–III. Washington DC: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1919.
- Davenport, Charles B. "The Personality, Heredity and Work of Charles Otis Whitman." American Naturalist 51 (1917): 5–30.
- Gilbert, Scott. Developmental Biology, 7th ed. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates Inc., 2003.
- Mayr, Ernst. "Whitman, Charles Otis." Dictionary of Scientific Biography 13: 313–15.
- Newman, Horatio Hackett. "History of the Department of Zoology in the University of Chicago." Bios 19 (1948): 215–39.
- Pauly, Philip J. "From Adventism to Biology—the Development of Whitman, Charles Otis." Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 37 (Spring 1994): 395–408.
Charles Otis Whitman was an extremely curious and driven researcher who was not content to limit himself to one field of expertise. Among the fields of study to which he made significant contributions were: embryology; morphology, or the form of living organisms and the relationships between their structures; natural history; and behavior.Created: 2009-01-21
Frank Rattray Lillie (1870-1947)
Frank R. Lillie was born in Toronto, Canada, on 27 June 1870. His mother was Emily Ann Rattray and his father was George Waddell Little, an accountant and co-owner of a wholesale drug company. While in high school Lillie took up interests in entomology and paleontology but went to the University of Toronto with the aim of studying ministry. He slowly became disillusioned with this career choice and decided to major in the natural sciences. It was during his senior year that he developed his lifelong interest in embryology. Graduating with a BA in 1891 Lillie then moved to the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, to work and study with Charles Otis Whitman, the founding director of the MBL. Lillie collected and studied cell lineage side-by-side with some of the most prominent embryologists of the time: Edmund B. Wilson, Edwin G. Conklin, and Aaron L. Treadwell. Along with his cell lineage studies, Whitman guided Lillie to work on the question of how blastomeres contributed to the formation of organs in fresh water clams.
In 1892 Lillie followed Whitman to the University of Chicago zoology department where Whitman had accepted a chair appointment. In 1894 Lillie graduated with a PhD in zoology. His dissertation was a descriptive study of cell lineage in freshwater mussels. From 1894 through 1899 Lillie worked as an instructor at the University of Michigan. In 1895 he married Frances Crane, sister of Chicago businessman Charles R. Crane. His brother-in-law would soon play a large role in introducing Lillie to the social elite in Chicago and helping to expand the MBL campus. During his marriage Lillie and his wife had five daughters, one son, and three adopted sons. Lillie briefly taught biology in upstate New York at Vassar College before returning to the University of Chicago as an assistant professor of embryology. In 1902 he was made an associate professor followed by a full professor in 1906. In 1908 Lillie published his classic book on chicken embryology, Development of the Chick: An Introduction to Embryology. Along with writing the text, Lillie prepared a large series of serial sections of the chick embryo at various stages to serve as illustrations. With revisions, the text and laboratory manual continue to be used to the present time, serving as one of the best accounts available on bird development.
In 1910 Lillie was made chair of the Department of Zoology. During this time he united the embryology program with the rest of the zoology department. With the combining of the departments, the budgets were also combined and Lillie was able to use his influence to obtain more money for embryological research. In 1931 Lillie was appointed dean of the Division of Biological Sciences at Chicago. After many years of distinguished teaching and research he was made the Andrew MacLeish Distinguished Service Professor of Embryology and the dean of biological sciences. In 1935 he was given emeritus professor status.
Although rarely written about, Lillie was a member of Chicago's Eugenics Education Society, a committee member of the Second International Eugenics Congress, and served on the advisory council for the Eugenics Committee of the United States. In the early 1920s Lillie envisioned an Institute of Genetic Biology that would gather data to examine population problems, public health, and social control, but this never came to fruition.
Lillie is probably best known for his leadership at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole. He organized the MBL's first course in embryology in 1893 and became course director the following year. At that time the MBL consisted of one small building, a few skiffs, and a dock. In 1902 funding for the laboratory was so great that the corporation and board of the MBL considered transferring the laboratory to the Carnegie Institution of Washington to make the MBL Carnegie's permanent marine research laboratory. Lillie and Whitman opposed the transfer and convinced the board to reverse its offer to Carnegie. To this day the MBL remains a laboratory relatively free from layers of outside control.
From 1900 to 1942 Lillie worked tirelessly to improve the laboratories and accommodations for the myriad of scientists who descended on Woods Hole during the summer months. Lillie called upon his brother-in-law to help finance the expansion of the MBL and Crane served as president of the corporation from 1904 through 1924. The Crane laboratory at MBL was named after the man who financed its building. Lillie was instrumental in making the marine laboratory into one of the leading research laboratories in the world. Not only did he serve as president of the corporation from 1925 to 1942 but he also served as Managing Editor of the MBL's scientific publication The Biological Bulletin for twenty-five years.
Lillie was an outstanding administrator and teacher but the depth of his research in embryology and development is also remarkable. His early research primarily dealt with egg cleavage and early development in invertebrates. Although his early cell lineage work was mainly descriptive and comparative, it helped lay the foundation for experimental studies by Wilhelm Roux in 1888 and Hans Driesch in 1891. Lillie heavily influenced his former student and noted embryologist Ernest E. Just to continue working with Nereis to show the relationship of egg cleavage planes to the entry point of sperm.
In 1903 and 1904 Lillie published several papers on his studies of the chick embryo. Included in the papers was discussion about the formation of the amnion and his experiments with cauterizing parts of the embryo to see how further development of parts of the embryo were affected. Lillie had always shown interest in the chick embryo. He was convinced that chick embryos were the best choice for almost any type of experimental work of embryological problems.
From 1910 to 1921 Lillie's research centered on fertilization in the annelid Nereis limbata and sea urchins Arbacia punctulata and Strongylocentrotus franciscanus and S. purpuratus. Lillie proposed that there were specific substances (fertilizin and antifertilizin) secreted by egg and sperm. Part of Lillie's "fertilizin theory" likened the interaction between gametes to that of the lock-and-key fashion of antibodies and antigens. This was notable in that Lillie applied the then current immunological concepts and terminology to that of fertilization.
Lillie's investigation of the factors influencing the development of freemartins (sterile genetic female calves born as a twin to fertile male calves) helped Lillie answer the question of how sexually indifferent embryos at the beginning of development later turn into males or females. Beginning in 1914 Lillie worked with stockmen in the Swift and Company stockyard to obtain fifty-five pairs of in utero fetal twins from freshly slaughtered pregnant cows. In 1917 Lillie published his study in the Journal of Experimental Zoology with the finding that freemartin bovine twins are non-identical and that they share the same placenta, allowing for blood to be freely exchanged between the twin fetuses. A male's testes form early in development and "masculinizing" substances (hormones) are released and circulate through the fused umbilical arteries. Lillie concluded that the freemartin was a genetic female calf that had certain male sexual characteristics due to the action of a fetal male sex hormone. This work led to the concept that once a gene directs a gonad to differentiate into a testes or an ovary, accessory reproductive structures in genetic males develop in the male direction due to the presence of male hormones. Genetic females develop rudimentary reproductive structures because they are not inhibited from developing due to a lack of male sex hormones. Lillie's research with freemartins introduced the notion of the nature and action of sex hormones to embryologists when little was known about hormones. Soon, others at the University of Chicago attempted to produce freemartins in birds ( Benjamin Willier) and mammals ( Carl R. Moore). Castration experiments in fetal mammals in utero and research in the isolation and purification of sex hormones was undertaken in other laboratories at the University of Chicago. The subsequent work stemming from Lillie's freemartin investigation helped form the field of reproductive biology.
Even after retiring from the University of Chicago in 1935, Lillie continued with his sex hormone studies by investigating the physiology and development of bird feathers. He used the Brown Leghorn fowl, a bird that displays a notable sexual dimorphism in feather color and patterns. He collaborated with Mary Juhn and His Wang to discover that embryonic feather papillae all start out with the same background color. Further feather coloration and patterns develop in an orderly fashion in response to both female sex hormones and thyroxin. Part of his research involved using castrated males into which injections of estrogens and thyroxin were given to induce "female" feather colorings in the birds' regenerating feathers.
From 1935 to 1939 Lillie was president of the National Academy of Sciences and in 1935 to 1936 was chairman of the National Research Council. To date he is the only person ever to have held both leadership positions in the two organizations at the same time. Lillie was also appointed chairman of the National Academy of Sciences Oceanographic Committee to study the financing and construction of an Institute of Oceanography. In 1930 he helped secure a three million dollar grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to help locate and build the Oceanographic Institute next door to the MBL. Lillie served as president of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute from 1930 to 1939.
Lillie died of a stroke on 5 November 1947 in Billings Hospital at the University of Chicago, the campus at which his professional life had so intimately been connected. Thus ended the career of one of the world's foremost embryologists and science administrators—a career that science historian Philip J. Pauly identified as having helped make biology the first science in which Americans became internationally recognized.
- Lillie, Frank R. The Problems of Fertilization. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1919.
- Manning, Kenneth J. Black Apollo of Science: The Life of Ernest Everett Just. New York, Oxford University Press, 1983.
- Mitman, Gregg. The State of Nature: Ecology, Community, and American Social Thought 1900–1950. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.
- Moore, Carl R. "Frank Rattray Lillie: 1870-1947." Science 107 (1948): 33–35.
- Pauly, Philip J. Controlling Life: Jacques Loeb and the Engineering Ideal in Biology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.
- Watterson, Ray L. "The Striking Influence of the Leadership, Research, and Teaching of Frank R. Lillie (1870-1947)." American Zoologist 19 (1979): 1275–87.
- Willier, Benjamin. H., Ross G. Harrison, Henry. B. Bigelow, and Edwin. G. Conklin. "Addresses at the Lillie Memorial Meeting Woods Hole." The Biological Bulletin 95 (1948): 151–62.
Frank R. Lillie was born in Toronto, Canada, on 27 June 1870. His mother was Emily Ann Rattray and his father was George Waddell Little, an accountant and co-owner of a wholesale drug company. While in high school Lillie took up interests in entomology and paleontology but went to the University of Toronto with the aim of studying ministry. He slowly became disillusioned with this career choice and decided to major in the natural sciences. It was during his senior year that he developed his lifelong interest in embryology.Created: 2009-07-22
Jacques Loeb (1859-1924)
Jacques Loeb experimented on embryos in Europe and the United States at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. Among the first to study embryos through experimentation, Loeb helped found the new field of experimental embryology. Notably, Loeb showed scientists how to induce artificial parthenogenesis, thus refuting the idea that spermatozoa alone were necessary to develop eggs into embryos and confirming the idea that the chemical constitution of embryos' environment affected their development. Furthermore, Loeb's work showed that scientists could manipulate materials in a laboratory to create, as he called the process, the beginning stages of life.
Jacques Loeb was born in the Prussian town of Mayen to Barbara and Benedict Loeb in 1859. Named "Isaak," he changed his name to "Jacques" just prior to entering the University of Strassburg in 1880. At Strassburg Loeb studied with the physiologist Friedrich Goltz and there he earned his MD in 1884.
Until 1891 Loeb taught and researched at various institutions, including the Naples Zoological Station in the winters of 1889 and 1890. In 1890 he met and married Anne Leonard, an American philologist. Moving to the United States, Loeb taught at Bryn Mawr College for a year prior to accepting an assistant professorship with the University of Chicago in 1892. While at Bryn Mawr Loeb met and initially disliked the young Thomas Hunt Morgan. At Chicago Loeb struggled to get along with Charles Otis Whitman, and to tolerate what Loeb termed the "romantic evolutionism" espoused most prominently by Chicago's John Dewey.
After a decade at Chicago, Loeb moved to the University of California at Berkeley for eight years. In California he experimented at Stanford University's Hopkins Marine Station in Pacific Grove. He then returned east to New York's Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in 1910, working there until he died in 1924. During his career, he conducted many of his experiments at Bryn Mawr, Chicago, Rockefeller, and at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
Loeb's early work at Strassburg was on brain physiology. Having judged the field's dominant theory misguided, he decided to instead study traditional issues in biology such as embryology. He used experiments to answer questions about development and embryology rather than observation alone, which was the common method of biological inquiry. Loeb looked to the scientific practices of physiologists Goltz, Eduard Pflüger, and the eminent plant physiologist Julius Sachs for methodological inspiration.
Loeb worked with Sachs extensively while the former worked at the University of Würzburg for two years starting in 1886. Loeb then developed a correspondence and friendship with the Austrian physicist and philosopher Ernst Mach, whose writings provided the theoretical foundation for Loeb's work. For Loeb, any explanation of phenomena could come only from manipulating the physical structures of things and their chemical makeup. That conception of scientific knowledge, based on physicochemical manipulations, paralleled Wilhelm Roux's mechanistic conception of science encapsulated in Entwicklungsmechanik.
Like Mach, Loeb thought science was not a mere description of nature but was instead a tool for humans to interact with nature. To him, a biologist was like an engineer and organisms were biologists' material. Loeb earned his reputation as a biologist-engineer in 1899 when he published experimental results showing artificial parthenogenesis in sea urchins, in " On the Nature of the Process of Fertilization and the Artificial Production of Normal Larvae (Plutei) from the Unfertilized Eggs of the Sea Urchin".
Artificial parthenogenesis is the human manipulation of egg cells causing embryonic development without spermatozoa. Loeb manipulated unfertilized sea urchin eggs with inorganic solutions of salt water. The result was eggs developing into larvae, or early stage embryos, which he later reproduced using frog eggs. Loeb elaborated on his results in 1913's Artificial Parthenogenesis and Fertilization.
Loeb's 1899 results stirred the popular presses, and many viewed him as a creator of life, perhaps with the ability to engineer new types of organisms. Loeb was never able to create new forms of life, as he intended, but he inspired scientists such as John Howard Northrop, John Broadus Watson, Hermann Joseph Müller, Burrhus Frederic (B. F.) Skinner, and Gregory Pincus. Loeb also contributed to the study of animal tropisms (environment-caused orientation).
Loeb helped transform biology into a largely experimental science. His 1912 The Mechanistic Conception of Life established his reputation as a researcher who treated organisms as machines. In that work, he stated that biologists explain organic phenomena only when they could control those phenomena. Loeb later believed that biologists explain phenomena by detailing the mechanisms, the step-by-step processes, by which a component of an organism achieves its function in physical and chemical terms. In The Organism as a Whole (1916), Loeb discussed how a mechanist could investigate organisms considered as wholes. His commitment to physicochemical explanations led him to study protein chemistry for the last few years of his life. Loeb died in 1924.
- Loeb, Jacques. Artificial Parthenogenesis and Fertilization. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1913.
- Loeb, Jacques. "Mechanistic Science and Metaphysical Romance." Yale Review 4 (1915): 766–85.
- Loeb, Jacques. "On the Nature of the Process of Fertilization and the Artificial Production of Normal Larvae (Plutei) from the Unfertilized Eggs of Sea Urchins." The American Journal of Physiology 3 (1899): 135–38.
- Loeb, Jacques. The Organism as a Whole: From a Physicochemical Viewpoint. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1916.
- Loeb, Jacques. The Mechanistic Conception of Life. Ed. Donald Fleming. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964.
- Pauly, Philip. Controlling Life: Jacques Loeb and the Engineering Ideal in Biology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.
Jacques Loeb experimented on embryos in Europe and the United States at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. Among the first to study embryos through experimentation, Loeb helped found the new field of experimental embryology. Notably, Loeb showed scientists how to create artificial parthenogenesis, thus refuting the idea that spermatozoa alone were necessary to develop eggs into embryos and confirming the idea that the chemical constitution of embryos environment affected their development.Created: 2009-06-10
The Marine Biological Laboratory
The Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) was founded in 1888 in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Woods Hole was already the site for the government's US Fish Commission Laboratory directed by Spencer Fullerton Baird, and it seemed like the obvious place to add an independent research laboratory that would draw individual scientific investigators along with students and instructors for courses. From the beginning, the lab had the dual mission of teaching and research, and from the beginning leading biologists have found their way to this small village on the "heel" tip of Cape Cod.
Supported by trustees who were largely in the Boston area, the lab opened its doors that first year with one small wooden building and great enthusiasm. Advertising was largely word of mouth since the building was still being constructed and the supplies had not yet arrived up to the last minute. Nonetheless, eight students and seven investigators made up the pioneer group in a six week session with a budget of just over $10,000 to build and equip the new laboratory building. With a focus on marine life, Balfour H. Van Vleck served as first instructor for a general zoology course.
The second year brought considerable expansion to six instructors and the addition of botany. After that, the lab was on its way to becoming an international presence in marine biology and eventually in certain defined areas of biology generally. From the beginning, embryology was one of the primary focus areas of the lab, and it has remained so throughout the MBL's 120-plus years. The leadership of the laboratory had a strong embryological interest from the beginning, as did the individual investigators and trustees. Especially when the work was experimental, the emphasis was sometimes labeled "physiology" instead of "experimental embryology" to get at fundamental processes of development.
Charles Otis Whitman served as first director of the lab. He had directed the small private Allis Lake Laboratory near Milwaukee, Wisconsin, then directed the biology program at Clark University, and then the biology program at the University of Chicago. Whitman was an able administrator who inspired people intellectually, and he somehow managed to make things work even when money was short. This is probably due in large part to the talents of Frank Rattray Lillie, who followed Whitman at Chicago and at the MBL where he became Assistant Director and then second Director. Where Whitman left financial matters to hope, saying things like "well, what is money for?," Lillie was an astute manager with support from his wealthy brother-in-law Charles Crane and other individuals and foundations. Whitman and Lillie made a fine team, and they attracted a board of trustees that included top research biologists and also loyal donors. This has remained true, as the MBL has developed a Corporation of research scientists who pay a membership to be part of the group, plus installed a governing Board of Trustees to oversee operations. Despite some challenging times and some tempting take-over offers, the lab has always remained independent; research and instruction both have increasingly come to rely on federal grants and private foundations but the lab has resisted various attempts to make it an arm of a university, the government, or other organizations.
In 1890 the lab started a series of evening lectures that became known as the Friday Evening Lectures. The goals of offering these lectures and advertising them widely to the public were twofold: first to take science to the larger public and increase interest in science, and second to bring specialists together to learn from each other. Lecturers were instructed to make their talks accessible to beginners as well as of value to senior researchers. These were not intended to be courses, but rather to supplement the systematic organized instruction of the courses. For the years 1890–1899, the lectures were published as the Biological Lectures Delivered at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Holl.
Courses included zoology, of course, and botany starting in the second year. In addition, Jacques Loeb added physiology as a focus. By 1893 the lab announced instruction in zoology, botany, embryology, physiology, and microscopical technique. In particular, Whitman was directing a course of lectures in embryology, working with Lillie. The Embryology Course has remained a core part of the MBL instructional offerings since 1893, with additional specialized training programs at different times with different emphases.
From the beginning, individuals or institutions could rent lab space and carry out investigations. Since embryological research drew heavily on comparative studies of marine development, it made sense for universities to send their embryologists to the seashore to do work. As Philip Pauly noted, the combination of doing one's research while summering at the seashore was a tremendously attractive option. The MBL has always been a place for the world's top embryologists to gather in the labs, in lectures, on sailing picnics, and with their families at the beaches. Annual Reports show the range of work done at the MBL, and since 1897 the publication of the Biological Bulletin has added an outlet for research carried out by MBL researchers and others.
For the early decades of the lab, embryological work centered on descriptive and comparative studies, especially cell lineage work that reported the details of each cell division for as long as it could be followed in each organism. Different researchers took up different organisms and compared their results, developing concepts of determinative and regulatory development depending on how much the cell divisions could respond to changing environmental conditions. Edmund Beecher Wilson placed cells at the center of developmental research, with his masterful The Cell in Development and Inheritance (1896; second edition 1900; much revised third edition 1925). Then the early twentieth-century brought experimental embryology, and by the 1950s and 1960s embryology embraced genetics and became known as developmental biology. Leaders such as James Ebert and Eric Davidson led the lab and also the Embryology Course in the direction of studying differentiation through processes like organogenesis or genetic regulation of development, for example.
While other places often gave up the embryos, the MBL has retained an interest not just in the cells and molecules but also in the developing organisms, which exist in specific environments and depend on complex systems of interacting cell signals and environmental cues. The Embryology Course and the investigation carried out in labs has changed over the 120-plus years at the MBL, but the MBL has played an important role in securing the central place of embryos and the value of comparative study of developmental processes. Perhaps being near the organisms and being able to have them delivered directly from the collectors in the Supply Department makes them more real and the interactions of the parts more salient.
Complex systems, modeling, molecules, and physiological systems all join together in the study of marine and related material at the Marine Biological Laboratory. Researchers have gone out to collect their specimens and have kept them alive in the on-demand seawater running through designated pipes. They have studied normal development, pathologies, and experimental conditions. Generation, regeneration, and new generation are on the research agenda. As the Annual Reports show starting with the very first years, the MBL has been a place for leading investigation and instruction in several areas including embryology, neurobiology, and physiology. Over the years, this has placed the MBL in a solid position to develop such diverse promising areas of research as molecular genetics, neuroembryology, and regenerative medicine.
View a timeline of the MBL here.
- Lillie, Frank R. The Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory. Chicago: the University of Chicago Press, 1944. Reprinted as a Supplement to The Biological Bulletin Vol. 174 (1988) available at http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/17426.
- Maienschein, Jane. 100 Years Exploring Life, 1888–1988. Boston: Jones and Bartlett Publishers, 1989.
- Marine Biological Laboratory Annual Reports: available in the MBL Biological Bulletin Vols. 17 and 21–105 at ,http://www.archive.org/details/biologicalbullet01mari and beginning with 2004 at http://www.mbl.edu/governance/gov_annual_report.html.
- Marine Biological Laboratory. Symposium Supplement to The Biological Bulletin Vol. 168 (1985): 1–204.
- Pauly, Philip. "Summer Resort and Scientific Discipline: Woods Hole and the Structure of American Biology, 1882–1925." In The American Development of Biology, eds. Ronald Rainger, Keith R. Benson, and Jane Maienschein, 121–150., Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988.
The Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) was founded in 1888 in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Woods Hole was already the site for the government 's US Fish Commission Laboratory directed by Spencer Fullerton Baird, and it seemed like the obvious place to add an independent research laboratory that would draw individual scientific investigators along with students and instructors for courses.Created: 2008-10-24
Marine Biological Laboratory. Eighty-first report for the year 1978. Ninety-first year.
Annual report of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole. 1978. Includes lists of students, faculty, and researchers.Created: 1979
Marine Biological Laboratory. Eighty-second report for the year 1979. Ninety-second year.
Annual report of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole. 1979. Includes lists of students, faculty, and researchers.Created: 1980
Marine Biological Laboratory. Eighth report for the year 1977. Nintieth year.
Annual report of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole. 1977. Includes lists of students, faculty, and researchers.Created: 1978
Marine Biological Laboratory. Sixty-third report for the year 1960. Seventy-third year.
Annual report of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole. 1960. Includes lists of students, faculty, and researchers.Created: 1961
Marine Biological Laboratory. Fifty-ninth report for the year 1956. Sixty-ninth year.
Annual report of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole. 1956. Includes lists of students, faculty, and researchers.Created: 1957
Marine Biological Laboratory. Eighty-ninth report for the year 1986. Ninety-ninth year.
Annual report of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole. 1986. Includes lists of students, faculty, and researchers.Created: 1987
Marine Biological Laboratory. Ninetieth report for the year 1987. One-hundreth year.
Annual report of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole. 1987. Includes lists of students, faculty, and researchers.Created: 1988
Marine Biological Laboratory. Ninety-first report for the year 1988. One-hundred and first year.
Annual report of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole. 1988. Includes lists of students, faculty, and researchers.Created: 1989
Marine Biological Laboratory. Eighty-fifth report for the year 1982. Ninety-fifth year.
Annual report of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole. 1982. Includes lists of students, faculty, and researchers.Created: 1983
Marine Biological Laboratory. Eighty-fourth report for the year 1981. Ninety-fourth year.
Annual report of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole. 1981. Includes lists of students, faculty, and researchers.Created: 1982
Marine Biological Laboratory. Eighty-sixth report for the year 1983. Ninety-sixth year.
Annual report of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole. 1983. Includes lists of students, faculty, and researchers.Created: 1984
Marine Biological Laboratory. Eighty-eighth report for the year 1985. Ninety-eighth year.
Annual report of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole. 1985. Includes lists of students, faculty, and researchers.Created: 1986
Marine Biological Laboratory. Eighty-third report for the year 1980. Ninety-third year.
Annual report of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole. 1980. Includes lists of students, faculty, and researchers.Created: 1981
Marine Biological Laboratory. Seventy-ninth report for the year 1976. Eighty-ninth year.
Annual report of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole. 1976. Includes lists of students, faculty, and researchers.Created: 1977
Marine Biological Laboratory. Seventy-eighth report for the year 1975. Eighty-eighth year.
Annual report of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole. 1975. Includes lists of students, faculty, and researchers.Created: 1976
Marine Biological Laboratory. Seventy-seventh report for the year 1974. Eighty-seventh year.
Annual report of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole. 1974. Includes lists of students, faculty, and researchers.Created: 1975
Marine Biological Laboratory. Seventy-sixth report for the year 1973. Eighty-sixth year.
Annual report of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole. 1973. Includes lists of students, faculty, and researchers.Created: 1974
Marine Biological Laboratory. Seventy-fifth report for the year 1972. Eighty-fifth year.
Annual report of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole. 1972. Includes lists of students, faculty, and researchers.Created: 1973
Marine Biological Laboratory. Seventy-fourth report for the year 1971. Eighty-fourth year.
Annual report of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole. 1971. Includes lists of students, faculty, and researchers.Created: 1972


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Dog Cancer Dietary Supplements
Veterinarian Reviewed on March 29, 2014 by Dr. Janice Huntingford
Dog Cancer Dietary Supplements
If your dog has been diagnosed with Dog Cancer you will want to ensure that you do everything possible to help them recover and get fit again. Often your vet will advise you to place them on a specific Dog Diet to coincide with their treatments. These diets can help them to build up their immune system and be healthier and fitter to fight the disease. You have to help your dog to build up the strength to fight this disease and they can get better with your help.
Why a specific diet
When your dog has cancer, their cells will begin to be destroyed and quite often so do their vital organs. You want to help to rebuild the tissues that are being destroyed and by giving your dog a diet that is rich in omegas, protein and fatty acids this will help to achieve this. If your dog is lacking fat then the body will have to take it from other places and these are often the organs. Often if your dog is not receiving the right diet and supplements then they will in fact die from organ failure and not cancer.
What supplements are the best?
Dog Omega Fatty Acids and omega 3, 6 and 9 are very important for helping your dog to rebuild the fats in their bodies. Fish oil is often given to dogs as it is high in all of these and can be added easily to their foods. You will be surprised how much your dog loves the fish oil and it really won't be a chore to feed it to them. You should also try to feed your dog animal-based fats and proteins as these can help to rebuild their protein levels. Any food that you choose to give them should be high in meat and when reading the labels on their food you should try to avoid grains.
Changes to your dog's diet
You may need to change the brand of food that you are giving to your dog, as what was important for their diet would have now changed. Although you will still want them to eat healthily, you should try to avoid grains and carbohydrates and provide more meat and high protein foods. Raw meat is very good for them and although you might be worried in the beginning if you start off slowly introducing it then they will be fine. You should aim to give them 75% of meat in their diet and this can be in several different forms.
Other foods to give to your dog
Raw meat in any form is great for your dog with cancer; you can either cube it very small or even mince it for them. Vegetables and fruit can also help and some dogs will love them, others may not be so keen but you could try to include them in their food. Raw eggs are advised as they are high in protein and yogurt and cottage cheese are also very good for your dog. Although you might think the diet seems strange it can benefit your dog and their recovery will be quicker.
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Janice Huntingford, DVM, has been in veterinary practice for over 30 years and has founded two veterinary clinics since receiving her Doctor of Veterinary Medicine at the Ontario Veterinary College, University of Guelph. She has studied extensively in both conventional and holistic modalities. Ask Dr. Jan


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Recipe from Laura Cohen adapted from Epicurious.
"This recipe came out so good…. i even love the topping for a pasta dish…My changes: I did half red cherry tomatoes and half yellow tomatoes for pretty color. I also added a splash of white cooking wine while I cooked the tomato mixture."
Kosher Recipe Ingredients
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 2 pounds tilapia, red snapper, or orange roughy fillets
- 1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley
- 1/2 teaspoon dried crushed red pepper
- 4 cups cherry tomatoes, halved
- 1 cup Kalamata olives or other brine-cured black olives, chopped
- 6 garlic cloves, minced
Directions for this Kosher Recipe
Heat olive oil in heavy large skillet over medium-high heat. Sprinkle fish with salt and pepper. Add half of fish to skillet and sauté until cooked, about 5 minutes per side depending upon thickness of the fish. Transfer fish to platter. Repeat with remaining fish. Add parsley and crushed red pepper to same skillet; sauté 1 minute. Add tomatoes, olives, and garlic; sauté until tomatoes are soft and juicy, about 2 minutes. Season sauce with salt and pepper; spoon over fish.
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This is MABEL, a bipedal robot who currently resides in a lab at the University of Michigan. Although MABEL has no head and needs a guiding bar to navigate its tiny gymnasium, this jogging robot can maintain an eerily human 6.8-mile-per-hour strut.
From the University of Michigan:
MABEL was built in 2008 in collaboration with Jonathan Hurst, who was then a doctoral student at the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. [Michigan professor Jessy] Grizzle and U-M doctoral students Koushil Sreenath and Hae-Won Park have spent the years since ratcheting up MABEL's training. They've been progressively improving the feedback algorithms that enable the robot to keep its balance while reacting to its environment in real time [...]
Few robots can run, and the researchers say no machine but MABEL can do it with such a human-like gait. Its weight is distributed like a person's. It has a heavier torso and light, flexible legs with springs that act like tendons. MABEL is in the air for 40 percent of each stride, "like a real runner," Grizzle said. Other running robots are almost speed-walking. Their so-called flight phase when both feet are off the ground lasts for less than 10 percent of each step.
Although it doesn't look like MABEL will receive the full humanoid robot treatment anytime soon, its creators hope to someday attach these gams to an exoskeleton or some form of off-road transport. Let's get some more walking trucks up in here!
[Via PopSci]


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The nominations for the MTV movie awards are just starting. This year, there's something different, and no we don't mean that they had the very good sense to not to have Russel Brand host again. Mercifully, Andy Samberg of SNL fame will be doing that.
According to MTV the awards, for the first time in history, are now in your hands:
It's time for some serious pop-culture studying because MTV is putting you — and your love of the year's best movies — to work. For the first time in the 18-year history of the MTV Movie Awards, we're opening up the nomination process to fans.
Here's how it'll happen: Starting Monday (April 13), head over to the official Movie Awards site to select the nominees in categories like Best Movie, Best Fight and Best Kiss. You'll be able to pick from a list of more than 200 movies. MTV Mobile users can also make choices in the Best Movie category by texting VOTE to 66333. Voting for this round will close on April 20.
Twilight is among the nominees in these categories:
Best Movie: Twilight
Best Female Performance: Kristen Stewart
Best Male Performance: Robert Pattinson
Breakthrough Female Performance: Kristen Stewart (Dakota Fanning is also nominated for Push)
Breakthrough Male Performance: Both Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner are nominated
Best Villain: Cam Gigandent
Best Kiss: Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart
Best Fight: Robert Pattinson and Cam Gigandet
It's ONLY GOOD TILL APRIL 20th, SO GET OVER THERE AND START NOMINATING!!!!!!


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Chapter one
Election day starts, in the small hours, where the candidate has spent most of his last 626 days: on a plane. Stuck to the gray plastic walls of the pressurized cabin are snapshots of his odyssey across cities and fields, mountains and deserts, continents and oceans. A snowstorm in Iowa, a press conference in Downing Street. Camera crews dozing onboard, Secret Service agents sharing a joke. The candidate signing books, reporters holding audio recorders close to his face. Now, between the empty candy wrappers and the drained beer bottles, he walks back one last time from his spacious first-class section, through his staffers' business class seats, to the coach class of the press. "You know, whatever happens, it's extraordinary you guys have shared this process with us, and I just want to say thank you and I appreciate you," he says, shaking everyone's hand. One reporter asks how he's feeling, but he insists that he won't answer questions. Even obvious ones. He thanks the young TV producers who have trailed his every move from the start, admires the photos on the overhead bins, then pokes fun at a magazine reporter who was parodied on "Saturday Night Live." He gives a birthday kiss to a young photographer, shakes hands with every member of the aircrew, and finishes with a simple farewell: "OK, guys, let's go home."
The last twenty-four hours felt like the longest day of the long campaign. It began with the news that the last living person to raise Barack Obama through childhood, his grandmother Toot, had lost her struggle against cancer. At his penultimate stop in Charlotte, North Carolina, it rains so hard, and for so long, that it's hard to see the streaks running down both his cheeks. They don't come obviously or immediately. Hardened by two years of campaigning and many more years of self-control, his voice never breaks as he announces the news. "Some of you heard that my grandmother who helped raise me passed away early this morning," he says calmly. "Look, she has gone home. And she died peacefully in her sleep, with my sister at her side. So there's great joy as well as tears. I'm not going to talk about it too long, because it's hard a little to talk about." His face remains composed as he talks about the "bittersweet" sensation of losing his grandmother while his campaign draws to a close. He betrays little emotion as he describes her as "a quiet hero" and sketches out her life story. But when he starts to read his stump speech from his teleprompter, when he talks about the broken politics in Washington, he surreptitiously strokes one cheek with his thumb. He condemns eight years of failed Bush policies, and casually strokes the other cheek. Two minutes later, as the crowd chants "Yes We Can," he finally takes a handkerchief out of his pocket and wipes his face down. It is one of the rarest moments of the entire election: a display of raw emotion from a candidate whose mask almost never slips before the dozens of cameras that trail him every day. Even then, at his most vulnerable point, he defers the moment and dissipates its impact.
The cracks in his self-control spread to those closest to him. Standing at the back of a leaking tent in a parched yellow field is the candidate's friend and strategist David Axelrod. "He's at peace with what happened. It wasn't unexpected. He just wishes he had some time to deal with it in his own way," Axelrod says. "But I'm finding this hard right now. The enormity of it all is almost overwhelming. I love him; he's my friend. This election is ridiculously long and there are many stupid things about it. But you really have to earn the presidency. And he's been tested. You can't hide it or fake it."
Yet the candidate has partly passed the test by hiding himself away. By the time he reaches the final campaign rally in Manassas, Virginia, he has regained full control. Close to the site of two Confederate victories in the Civil War, the nation's first major African American nominee — a Democrat, no less — speaks to some 100,000 people at Prince William Fairgrounds. As a community organizer two decades earlier, Obama often feared that no one would show up to his meetings. Now there are so many people the traffic is snarled for hours and miles around. These crowds, he says, have enriched him, moved him, and lifted him up when he was down. Now he's so inspired he tells his signature story from Greenwood, South Carolina. The tale of a little woman who lifted his spirits, on a dismal day early in the campaign, with a simple chant: "Fired Up! Ready to Go!" "It shows you what one voice can do," he concludes. "One voice can change a room. And if a voice can change a room, it can change a city! And if it can change a city, it can change a state! And if it can change a state, it can change a nation! And if it can change a nation, it can change the world!"
Yet at the start of this historic election day, in the early hours of the morning, the candidate seems weighed down. Determined and spirited perhaps, but also crushed with exhaustion and emotion. The gray wisps on his head are now visible from a distance, like the lines scored close to his eyes and across his cheeks. He sounds fired up, but looks ready to drop.
It is one in the morning when he lands at Chicago's Midway airport. The polls have already closed in the small New Hampshire town of Dixville Notch, which has not voted for a Democratic president since 1968, but favors Obama by fifteen votes to six. The candidate walks down the stairs from his plane and steps into his armored SUV to a flash of cameras. Behind him is a new addition to his motorcade: another SUV filled with a black-clad, heavily armed Counter Assault Team.
Obama liked to describe his journey from freshman senator to presidential front-runner as an improbable one. It was also preposterous and quixotic, at least in the judgment of the greatest political minds in the nation's capital. In February 2007, as Obama was readying the formal launch of his campaign, President Bush cast his expert eye across the contenders who wanted to succeed him. Sitting in the yellow oval room of the White House, on the second-floor residence of the executive mansion, the president conceded he had no idea who would win the GOP nomination. But he was clear about the other side. "I think Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee," he said with his feet propped on a glass coffee table. "I'll tell you why. I think she will because I think she has staying power, star power, and money power. She brings a big organization that is well funded right off the bat, and one of the lessons I learned is you have to be able to play the long ball." As for Obama, who was on the verge of announcing his candidacy, Bush was deeply doubtful. "Certainly a phenom and very attractive. The guy is very smart," he said before realizing he sounded like Joe Biden, who had just stepped into the racial minefield for calling Obama "articulate and bright and clean." Bush was so taken aback with the public criticism of Biden that he called in his African American secretary of state Condoleezza Rice. "I don't get it," he said. "Condi, what's going on?" Rice told him what everyone else had said: that white people don't call each other articulate. No matter. Only the tough and battle-scarred could survive, and Obama wasn't one of them. "This primary election process is rough," Bush said, popping an endless stream of peanuts into his mouth. "It's really tough and rightly so. It exacerbates your flaws and tests your character. And I don't think he's been around long enough to stand it. I may be wrong. The process may forge a steel that I didn't anticipate." In some ways the forty-third president was correct: Obama was untested, unforged. Not even his closest aides and friends knew whether he could really survive the trial by fire of a presidential election. There was only one way to find out. Winston Churchill once said, "No part of the education of a politician is more indispensable than the fighting of elections." Well, the education of Barack Obama was protracted and often painful. He was a political upstart, the candidate named Renegade by the Secret Service, and he repeatedly broke the rules. He did not wait his turn to run, and had no resources in the bank when he set out. He sunk his money into lowly fieldwork, and rejected public finance. He took his campaign overseas, and staged his acceptance speech in a football stadium. He kept his tone mostly positive, and spent millions on a prime-time TV show. His middle name was Hussein, and he wasn't even conventionally African American. No, he didn't look like the presidents on the dollar bills, as he once quipped. For that matter, he didn't look or sound like other candidates for president. But he was highly disciplined and driven, supremely self-confident, and he possessed the rare ability to act both as a team player and a star athlete. Although he was a renegade, he was also a cautious and pragmatic one, who played by the rules when he needed them to win. On the surface, his performance was as steady as his resting heart rate of just sixty beats a minute. But his private moods were far more variable: he could be cocky and grumpy, impatient and withdrawn. He was often an inscrutable character. Yet he struck a rare emotional connection with those around him, no matter the size of the crowd or the ego of the person he was wooing.
There was a nagging question that cropped up at the beginning and the end of the election. It was posed at the start of his presidency and will likely be posed as his term finishes as America's commander in chief: who is Barack Obama? The mystery of Obama may seem simplistic but is nonetheless hard to unwrap. Simple questions about a president can still be stubborn and enduring ones: there remains plenty of debate about President Bush's intellect. But while there is a long Bush record to study for clues, there is relatively little that is public about the private Obama. In fact, the best evidence lies in the extraordinary presidential campaign of 2008, in which the candidate exposed himself to intense examination. He wrote one memoir and one highly personal political treatise, both of which were minutely dissected through the course of the election. He debated two dozen times and delivered hundreds of speeches. Yet something remained hidden about his character, suppressed about his moods, deep-rooted about his thoughts. And something remained unsettling for many pundits and voters who couldn't quite pin him down, as a black leader or pop celebrity, as a fiery preacher or closet radical.
In one way at least, his critics were surely correct: Obama lacked Washington experience. But the voters seemed to find reassurance in the way he campaigned, the way he built from scratch the most formidable election machine in history, the way he endured twenty-one months of public examination and private stress. They may not have all the answers about Obama, but the ones they heard and watched seemed satisfying. The 2008 election was by far the biggest undertaking of Obama's life, the only real executive experience on his résumé, and the biggest clue to his future performance as president. It changed America's view of itself, the world's view of America, his friends' view of Obama, and Obama's view of himself. It was a drama of political biography performed on the biggest stage in the world: an outlandish, extraordinary spectacle that veered from inspiration to exasperation, from the mundane to the faintly insane.
This is the making of a president, witnessed from a front-row seat, as it unfolded from its first day to its last. With the help of more than a dozen one-on-one interviews with the candidate and then president — as well as scores of sessions with his trusted aides, friends, and family — this account is an attempt to translate the enigma of Barack Obama, to answer the questions of who he is and what lay behind his rise from freshman senator to forty-fourth president of the United States of America.
Excerpted with permission from "Renegade: The Making of a President" by Richard Wolffe.


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First Invasive Nutria Population Since 2002 Confirmed in Delaware
OutdoorHub 01.22.12
Dover, DE – Following on a lead from an alert fur buyer, biologists with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and U.S. Department of Agriculture's APHIS Wildlife Services have confirmed the presence of an invasive nutria population on a pond near the town of Marydel, Delaware in the west central part of the state.
Nutria are South American semi-aquatic rodents similar to our native muskrat and beaver. Maryland's nutria population was established when nutria escaped or were intentionally released from fur farms in the 1940s. The nutria's destructive feeding habits have resulted in the loss of tens of thousands of acres of marsh to erosion throughout the Chesapeake Bay.
"The destruction that nutria have caused in the Chesapeake Watershed is tremendous. The Division of Fish and Wildlife is committed to ensuring similar destruction does not occur in Delaware," said Joe Rogerson, Deer and Furbearer Biologist with the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC), Division of Fish & Wildlife. "Early detection and a rapid response will be critical in protecting our valuable wetland resource. The Division will be working closely with USDA APHIS Wildlife Services to develop a scientifically-acceptable and appropriate removal strategy for Delaware."
The Chesapeake Bay Nutria Eradication Project (CBNEP) seeks to remove invasive nutria from the Delmarva Peninsula. The project is a partnership of more than two dozen federal and state agencies and institutions along with private landowners, with the USDA handling field operations and investigating nutria sightings reported by the public. The partnership has been successful in eliminating nutria from heavily-infested portions of the Blackwater, Transquaking, Chicamicomico, Nanticoke and Choptank Rivers as well as Fishing Bay, Deal Island and Ellis Bay Wildlife Management Areas.
The team is now turning its attention towards nutria that may have migrated into the headwaters of these rivers as well as other watersheds on the Delmarva Peninsula. Nutria populations have been confirmed in Wicomico, Manokin, and Big Annamessex Rivers. Although isolated reports of nutria have occurred, the recent discovery in Marydel is the first confirmed population in Delaware since the USDA team began operations in 2002.
A landowner adjacent to the Marydel pond reported that a family member had observed several nutria over the past three years, but did not know what the strange creature was. The fur buyer recognized a pelt as nutria and reported this to a USFWS biologist. USDA staff obtained permission from the landowners surrounding the pond to conduct a thorough inspection and found nutria signs throughout the pond, including droppings and damage to shoreline vegetation.
"Several important Chesapeake Bay rivers originate in Delaware. Although we've removed most of the nutria from the main stems of these rivers, finding isolated populations in the headwaters is the key to making sure the nutria don't reinvade," said Steve Kendrot, USDA's Project Leader for the CBNEP. "With only 15 staff to cover the entire Delmarva Peninsula, reports like this from concerned private citizens are invaluable."
"Eradication of nutria is crucial to preserving wetland habitat on the Delmarva Peninsula. We are working closely with the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control and other partners to accomplish this goal," said Genevieve LaRouche, Supervisor for the Chesapeake Bay Field Office, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Residents of Maryland and Delaware can report nutria sightings to the Nuisance Wildlife Hotline at 1-877-463-6497. More information about nutria and efforts to remove them can be found at: Chesapeake Bay Nutria Eradication Project .


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SAMJ: South African Medical Journal
versión On-line ISSN 2078-5135
versión impresa ISSN 0256-9574
SAMJ, S. Afr. med. j. vol.101 no.4 Pretoria abr. 2011
Forced migration and health - diarrhoea among adult Zimbabwean immigrants in Limpopo
Thando P GwetuI; Annette A M GerritsenII; Henry A AkinsolaIII
IMB ChB, MPH, Department of Public Health, University of Venda, Thohoyandou, Limpopo
IIPhD (Epidemiology), Epi Result, Louis Trichardt, and Department of Public Health, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
IIIPhD, Department of Public Health, University of Venda
To the Editor: The political and economic decline in Zimbabwe has forced many Zimbabweans to migrate to neighbouring countries and abroad.1 A large number of Zimbabwean migrants live in poverty in the border region. The high demand for shelter forces some people to create and occupy very basic dwellings2 and cook food in tin cans over fires. Many live in cardboard and plastic shelters, some in the back yards of overcrowded homes where they have to pay rent. Others sleep under trees next to roads or on open fields on farms, at railway stations or on the street.3
Recently many people fled to South Africa from the deadly cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe, which killed more than 2 000 people in 4 months.4 Cholera outbreaks have been experienced in Zimbabwe since October 2008. People who are infected but have no symptoms can carry the disease and cause it to spread.5 Initially most of the cholera cases in South Africa were Zimbabweans seeking health care.6
We show that the conditions under which informal residents live put them at high risk of diarrhoea.
This cross-sectional study assessed Zimbabwean immigrants aged 18 years and over in a convenience sample from five sampling sites. It was conducted over 2 weeks in March 2010 in Louis Trichardt, 115 km from the Zimbabwe border. A questionnaire covering socio-demographic features, living conditions, health risk factors (water quality, sanitation and hygiene) and diarrhoea morbidity was administered to 110 participants forced to migrate due to political concerns, conflict, poverty and lack of jobs. Diarrhoea was defined as 3 or more loose stools in a 24-hour period.
Males predominated (89; 80.9%). The median age for males was 23 years (95% confidence interval (CI) 20 -27 years) and that for females 23 years (95% CI 20 -29 years). With regard to their legal status in South Africa, 83 (75.5%) had temporary asylum permits from the South African Department of Home Affairs. Secondary school was the highest level of education for 84 subjects (76.4%). The median number of people living in the participants' residential premises was 60 (95% CI 18 -153) ('residential premises' refers to an inhabited property within a single yard, consisting of either private housing or a public shelter).
The median duration of the subjects' current stay in South Africa was 2 months (95% CI 0 -12 months). Individual monthly expenditure was low, being less than R300 in 58 cases (52.7%). Medians were used instead of means because the data were skewed.
The prevalence of diarrhoea in this study was 24.5%. The mean number of diarrhoea episodes was 0.38 per person in 2 weeks. For participants with diarrhoea, the most recent episode had lasted 2 days (9 cases, 33.3%), 3 days (8, 29.6%), 1 day (6, 22.2%), 4 days (2, 7.4%) and 7 days (2, 7.4%). The relationships between diarrhoea and labour force status (Fisher's exact test p=0.023), living conditions (Fisher's exact test p=0.050) and monthly expenditure (Fisher's exact test p=0.037) were statistically significant. Other variables evaluated and their relationship with diarrhoea are set out in Table I.
We found evidence of a deficiency in the health of the present immigrant population in Limpopo province. Information on the overall prevalence of diarrhoea in South Africa is lacking, so there is no figure with which to compare the prevalence found in this study. The mean number of diarrhoea episodes was calculated to be 0.38 per person in 2 weeks, which is much higher than the World Health Organization (WHO) estimate for sub-Saharan Africa of 1.29 episodes per person annually.7 This is probably because the WHO estimate is based on the entire population while this study focused on a vulnerable group.
Contrary to what one would expect, subjects with diarrhoea had more labour contract jobs and a higher monthly expenditure than those without diarrhoea. The fact that more of them lived in makeshift houses may have been the main factor contributing to the higher diarrhoea prevalence. Most immigrants generally rely on social welfare for food and accommodation, particularly immediately after entering the country and before getting a job. Once employed, immigrants are expected to move out of the shelter and fend for themselves. Most then move into makeshift houses and spend frugally. This dependence on public social infrastructure support may be dangerous for immigrants in the welfare system. The conditions in the available NGO shelters are generally poor owing to pressure on resources. No data were found in the literature to confirm these findings. The variables identified in this study provided an association, not a causal relationship, which would require a cohort study. Further studies are needed to address the relationship between risk factors and diarrhoea in greater depth.
A surveillance system could provide a way to recognise diarrhoea outbreaks early and prevent further spread. Continuous prevention efforts should include public awareness and educational campaigns on sanitation, hygiene and water quality and methods of household treatment and water and food storage.
1. Rutherford B. Zimbabweans living in the South African Border-Zone: Negotiating, suffering and surviving. Concerned Africa Scholars 2008;80:36-42. [ Links ]
2. Chirwa A, Finger A, Polzer T, Misago J, Schroeder J, Vigneswaran VD, eds. Fact or fiction? Examining Zimbabwean Cross-border Migration into South Africa: Special Report for the Forced Migration Studies Programme and Musina Legal Advice Office. Johannesburg: University of the Witwatersrand, 2007: 1-13. [ Links ]
3. ACT Alert No. 1/07: Vulnerable Zimbabweans in South Africa., Switzerland: Action by Churches Together, 2007. http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/AMMF78ZJMW?OpenDocument&rc=1&cc=zwe (accessed 13 January 2011). [ Links ]
4. Daily cholera updates and alerts. Cholera Country Profile: Zimbabwe. Geneva: World Health Organization, 2009: http://www.who.org/ (accessed 27 February 2010). [ Links ]
5. WHO Cholera Fact Sheet 2. Geneva: World Health Organization, 2007. http://www.who.org/ (accessed 20 February 2010). [ Links ]
6. National Institute for Communicable Diseases. Cholera outbreak in South Africa: Preliminary descriptive epidemiology on laboratory-confirmed cases, 15 November 2008 to 30 April 2009. Communicable Diseases Surveillance Bulletin 2009;7(2):1. http://www.nicd.ac.za/pubs/survbull/surv_bull_may09.htm#head2 (accessed 13 January 2011) [ Links ]
7. Hutton G, Haller L. Evaluation of the Costs and Benefits of Water and Sanitation Improvements at the Global Level. Water Sanitation and Health Protection of the Human Environment. Geneva: World Health Organization, 2004. [ Links ]
Accepted 14 January 2011.
Corresponding author: T P Gwetu (email@example.com)


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In 1960's Greece, a dapper middle-aged American chap named Chester (a groggy but dashing Viggo Mortensen) on holiday with his trophy bride Colette (an effortlessly alluring Kirsten Dunst) spot a charming but suspicious young fellow (a cool Oscar Isaac) eyeing them at various locales. Daringly, Collette confronts him while in line at a rest room and finds out he's an American, too, and a freelance tour guide named Rydel. Much to her husband's chagrin, she's invited Rydel to show them around the markets. The audience already knows Rydel is a bit of a scam artist, pretending to haggle in Greek with the merchants for his clients and pocketing the difference in price or flim-flamming them during monetary exchanges. After a night on the town for dinner and drinks, Chester has Rydel all figured out, though he and his wife have been thoroughly charmed by the con man's company. Later at their hotel, a private investigator comes searching for Chester and sets off a series of unfortunate events that leave the couple in deep trouble and turning to Rydel for help.
The Two Faces of January deals with the duplicity of human beings and the fragility of their relationships. It's adapted from a Patricia Highsmith novel (the author best known for creating the character of Tom Ripley) and is competently scripted and directed by first time helmer Hossein Amini (best known for his sparse and effective Drive screenplay). With its beautiful travelogue vistas and breezy charm, it echoes the highbrow classiness of a bygone era of filmmaking…suspenseful without being salacious, intriguing without a whiff of trashiness.