Blog dedicated primarily to randomly selected news items; comments reflecting personal perceptions
Friday, January 31, 2014
Italy battles floods as bad weather batters Europe
BBC News online -- 31 January 2014
Mariko Oi reports on the severe weather that has hit parts of Europe
Areas of Italy and France are on flood alert as heavy rain brings chaos to parts of Europe.
Hundreds of people were forced to evacuate their homes in the
Italian city of Pisa as the Arno river threatened to burst its banks on
Friday.
High seas are expected to cause widespread flooding along France's Atlantic coast.
Meanwhile, deep snow drifts left dozens of people stranded in Serbia.
Local officials declared a state of emergency and deployed
rescue teams to help travellers trapped in their vehicles. Snow storms
and strong winds have been sweeping across Eastern Europe.
The Arno river in Pisa threatened to burst its banks
Houses in Landerneau, western France, have been flooded by the Elorn river
Parts of the countryside near Pisa are completely submerged
Italian media said a stretch of medieval wall measuring about
30m (95ft) in the town of Volterra, in the province of Pisa, collapsed
as a result of heavy rain.
The French department of Finistere, in the west of the
country, was placed on red alert as forecasters warned of huge waves and
extensive flooding. Ten other French departments were also on alert for
rising water levels.
At least two people died and scores had to be airlifted to safety after floods hit south-eastern France earlier this month.
Severe storms have been battering Europe for much of January.
"The researchers also find parts of the human genome that are deficient in Neanderthal alleles (bits of DNA), implying active removal during evolution." "This result suggests that Neanderthal DNA reduced male fertility when transferred to a modern human genetic background, and these incompatibility alleles were therefore eliminated." Harvard Medical School study, published in journal Nature
Pierre Andrieu/AFP/Getty Images Most
people whose ancestors are from Europe or Asia inherit 1% to 3% of
their genes from Neanderthals — heavy-set, early humans that have been
extinct for roughly 30,000 years.
So, one can suppose that the hypothesis that held sway decades ago that female Homo sapiens could never carry Neanderthal-fathered babies to full term because of the size of the baby's cranium -- causing death in childbirth to both mother and child -- and that Neanderthal females had no problems carrying to full term resulting in birth babies fathered by Homo sapiens males since no such difficulty arose as they were physically broader (and Homo sapiens' cranium was smaller), is not the issue here.
Although the article does speak of issue, as it happens. The issue being the minuscule provenance of modern humankind with its three percent of genes inherited from those primitives called Neanderthals, early human prototypes who lived in the last Ice Age in Central Asia and Europe, and who haven't been seen anywhere since, for the past 30,000 years. But for the minuscule remnants that remain within populations whose ancestors were originally from Europe or Asia.
A new genetic analysis produced by scientists with the Harvard Medical School, has produced a study hypothesizing that no active genes were left in modern men in two areas, resulting from Neanderthal primitive heritage. No genes were passed down expressing themselves (seen to be present) in the testes. The modern male reproductive mechanism is absent Neanderthal presence. Which, they point out, owes its presence to Homo sapiens' genetic influence.
The study authors consider this to be a classic instance of "hybrid sterility", seen most clearly and popularly in horse-donkey matings producing mules, very nice animals, but incapable of reproducing. Cross-breeding leading to sterility. And so it is with the breeding cross between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals away back when, according to these geneticists. Evolution, they point out, halts carriers of specific genes from reproducing.
According to Earl Brown, a geneticist with the University of Ottawa, the Neanderthal inheritance would have meant random gene selection scattered across human chromosomes. Some offspring might have the capacity to reproduce and some would not, eventually causing an editing-out of sex-related male genes. What did we inherit then from Neanderthal forefathers/mothers? A sharing of some hair and skin genes.
Interpreted by geneticists as an evolutionary advantage -- to avoid having African hair and skin in the cool climate of a Europe that is sun-deprived, unlike the Continent of Africa, where dark skin was an evolutionary protection against the ravages of human skin exposed to hot, relentless sun. It's still up in the air how much cerebral grey matter was inherited through the Neanderthal link, though. Once thought to be mulishly dull, they've since been brain-washed, so to speak.
New findings have been discovered to rehabilitate their image, so forget about calling your brutish neighbour a Neanderthal; the insult no longer works within the scientific community where cave paintings and tools were discovered to have been the work of Neanderthals.
"I can't stress enough how enlightened the Canadian regulatory process towards these types of [genetically modified] foods is -- it has truly been fantastic." "There is a fear of the unknown in the U.K. I think people here viewed genetically modified food as a new technology that wasn't controlled enough to be able to say for certain that there were no risks associated with it, and I think the traits that were originally engineered for in plants, such as herbicide resistance or insect resistance, didn't offer consumers anything tangible in terms of an advantage." Professor Cathie Martin, plant biologist, John Innes Centre, Norwich, U.K.
Well I saw the thing comin' out of the sky
It had the one long horn, one big eye
I commenced to shakin' and I said "ooh-eee"
It looks like a purple eater to me - Sheb Wooley
Tests showed the shelf life of the tomatoes more than doubled from after genetic modificationPhoto: PA
Genetically modified purple tomatoes lovingly grown in a greenhouse in Leamington, Ontario in a regulatory climate in Canada that permits the presence of such fruits, bears no resemblance to the fear-climate of "Frankenfoods" prevailing throughout Europe where the regulatory climate is fraught with suspicion. For this British plant biologist, what she sees as a biologically enlightened attitude toward the science of genetic manipulation represents a breath of fresh air.
Not that there aren't an abundance of environmental, green, GMO-averse-horror-struck groups of determined activists in Canada shrieking with dismay at the proliferation of GMO corn and corn products everywhere they look, forever on the lookout for what they consider these dreadful aberrations on the food scene that will never pass muster for their dinnerplates. But that's another story altogether...other than the fact that GMO-avoidance among certain groups is universal.
With so many naturally endowed tomato varieties on the market, people will say, why introduce of all things, a purple tomato? Before addressing that question, how about contemplating the fact that most of the tomato varieties available on supermarket shelves today have undergone some type of bioscientific interference to make them what they are today, from producing sweeter specimens, to those hardy enough to travel long distances, and any number of alterations in between.
Through actually producing tomatoes that have undergone genetic splicing and other kinds of manipulation for the introduction of traits and supplemental nutritional benefits, plant scientists have simply sped up what nature herself does through recombinant DNA; in nature's way to enhance adaptation to environmental stressors, in humankind's fiddling to add nutrients for human consumption.
As to the matter of why purple tomatoes? Well, as nutritious and full of vitamins and minerals bright orange/red tomatoes are, purple varieties are even more so. A substance named anthocyanins is found in the skins of fruits with purple colour; plums, blueberries, blackberries, eggplants, for example. Mice on a diet of genetically modified purple tomatoes were found through tests to live 30% longer than those fed red tomatoes.
The purple variety as well, has been found to contain anti-inflammatory properties. The European Union is loathe to approve genetically modified food crops, and has held back from doing so for a decade and a half. European public opinion polls validate huge public opposition to genetically modified foods. The hypothesis is that the mad cow outbreak of the 1990s led to that public fear, although the dread disease resulted from feeding livestock offal from dead animals.
Professor Martin is delighted to have reached a partnership agreement enabling her purple tomato seeds to be grown in a huge greenhouse is Leamington, with New Energy Farms. "The farm is covered in snow at the moment so you can't really see much of it. What we have found, actually, is that there is a lot of research in [British] universities where there is really interesting products being developed that haven't been taken to market -- and so we are looking at taking that final step", explained Paul Carver, the company's CEO.
Human medical trials are next on the agenda once the Leamington crop has been harvested and transformed into purple tomato juice. Since that juice is a seedless extract, it will bypass GM environmental regulations when shipped to the UK since a seedless product is not capable of reproducing, and therefore the risk of 'contamination' of the environment is absent.
The juice product is destined for the United Kingdom for testing. A group of people has been enlisted who are at risk of cardiovascular disease. Presumably the results will further enhance the tenuous position of the purple tomato on the future marketplace shelf space as a fruit with special health enhancing properties. A North American launch is tentatively planned in the next two or three years.
That in itself will represent an interesting experience in general uptake.
The clockwork motion of the heavens has brought us another treat: The
dark silhouetted Moon sliding across the fiery disk of the Sun, as seen
from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory just hours ago:
SDO orbits the Earth, staring at the Sun 24/7. Every now and again the geometry lines up such that the Moon appears to move in front of the Sun,
creating what astronomers call a transit (on Earth we’d call these
solar eclipses). They usually last for a half hour or so, but this one
lasted 2.5 hours! The video shows the Sun using SDO’s far-ultraviolet
filter (30.4 nanometers, for those geeks keeping tabs), and was taken on
Jan. 30, 2014, from 13:15 to 16:15 UTC (08:15 to 11:15 Eastern U.S.
time). Note that the Moon’s path is an arc; that’s due to the combined
orbital motions of the Moon and SDO around the Earth.
The geometry of the orbits of SDO, showing
how it can see a lunar transit while we on Earth completely miss it.
Click to explicate.
Drawing by Phil Plait, used by permission
And we get a bonus: At 16:11 UTC, a sunspot erupted in a moderately strong M6.6 flare!
This blasted material off the surface of the Sun, creating a lovely (if
terrifying) prominence of ionized gas flowing along the magnetic field
lines of the star.
Just minutes after the transit finished, a moderate flare erupted from the left side of the Sun.
"The common cold is so common, adults get, on average, two to three a year, kids get six a year and elderly people about one. [And while Vitamin C] may provide some benefit in people under physical stress (e.g. marathon runners or soldiers in sub Arctic environments), [29 trials involving over 11,300 people where vitamin C was tested for cold prevention found] no meaningful benefit in the average patient." Dr. Michael Allan, associate professor, department of family medicine, University of Alberta
The "average adult would need to use Vitamin C for 10 or 15 years to prevent one cold", is but one little tidbit of information resulting from a new review on the prevention and treatment of the common cold. The review saw publication this week in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. The common cold's impact "on society and health care is large", said Dr. Allan, who with Bruce Arroll of the University of Auckland, New Zealand, authored the review.
Antihistamine-decongestant combinations for adults, they write, may offer "small to moderate" relief of symptoms, but nasal irrigation, humidified air, garlic, Chinese herbal medicines and echinacea? Forget it, the relief experienced is hardly to be noticed. There goes common wisdom; uncommonly unhelpful, not only inadequate but downright useless, according to the good doctors.
The common cold:
"An acute, self-limiting viral infection of the upper respiratory tract involving the nose, sinuses, pharynx and larynx."
It is a condition whose symptoms tend to peak in one to three days, lasting from seven up to ten days. Infections lingering three weeks are not usual, but yet not entirely uncommon. Within the adult community, risk factors of 'catching' that common cold rest with stress and poor sleep. Entirely different for preschoolers for whom the primary risk factor is attending a daycare centre.
How to avoid contracting the virus? You've heard this advice ad infinitum: Wash Your Hands!
Apart from frequent hand-washing, zinc may prove to be of benefit in reducing the number of colds per year, particularly in children. The authors note two randomized controlled trials from Iran which tested zinc sulphate supplements of 10 mg or 15 mg daily and which appeared to produce fewer colds in winter months among the zinc group than among the placebo group.
Despite which, Dr. Allan said, "I certainly don't want to be telling parents to put their children on zinc every day to prevent the common cold. The research is not very robust."Then why, distinguished doktor, even mention it?
Those studies suggest zinc may shorten cold duration in adults by some 1.5 days, with mixed results. "Kids in these studies did not get a benefit, but adults did", he said, cautioning that zinc should never be used via nasal spray. "A few cases have linked it to the loss of smell".
Probiotics? May be helpful preventing upper respiratory tract infections in children and adults. Ginseng's role in preventing colds remains "questionable" since results from several studies provided "inconsistent results."
What, then does work? Antihistamines combined with decongestants have small to moderate effects on adult cold symptoms. But over-the-counter decongestants, antihistamine-decongestant combinations or cough suppressants give no benefit to children "and Health Canada recommends against their use in children under the age of six years".
Three randomized controlled trials on the other hand, looking at the use of honey for children with coughs demonstrated a measurable but small benefit in children over a year. (Honey should never be given to children younger than a year in age.) One dose (2.5 mg to 10 mg) of honey at bedtime seems to help improve children's coughing and therefore their sleep, as well.
Acetaminophen and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs can help relieve aches and pain and fever though Ibuprofen is slightly better at treating fever in children. Workdays lost to illness or caring for a sick children accounted for $25-billion a year in the United States alone.
"The Munoz and Machado families will now proceed with the sombre task of laying Marlise Muniz's body to rest and grieving over the great loss that has been suffered." "May Marlise Munoz finally rest in peace, and her family find the strength to complete what has been an unbearably long and arduous journey." Heather L. King, Jessica Hall Janicek, lawyers for Munoz family
FILE - In this Friday,
Jan. 3, 2014 file photo, Erick Munoz stands with an undated copy of a
photograph of himself, left, with wife Marlise and their son Mateo, in
Haltom City, Texas. John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth, issued a
statement Sunday, Jan. 26, 2014 that said the hospital it will remove
life support from Marlise Munoz, following a judge’s order that it was
misapplying state law to disregard her family’s wishes. The statement
did not say when the hospital would pull life support. (AP Photo/The
Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Ron T. Ennis, File)
- See more at:
http://www.timescolonist.com/brain-dead-pregnant-texas-woman-taken-off-life-support-unclear-if-case-will-spark-law-change-1.802516#sthash.qOVUbW8w.dpuf
Eric Munoz stands with an undated copy of a photograph of himself, left, with wife Marlise and their son Mateo Ron T. Ennis/The Associated Press
Judge R.H. Wallace Jr., of state District Court in Tarrant County, Texas was in agreement with the two lawyers, King and Janicek, representing Ms. Munuz's family, arguing that the John Peter Smith Hospital within the JPS Health Network misinterpreted Texas law. Ms. Munoz's husband Erick Munoz and her parents had asked the court to order the doctors in whose care their brain-dead wife and daughter was being kept on 'life support' because of a pregnancy, to have that support immediately terminated.
The hospital had agreed that Ms. Munoz was brain dead, meeting clinical criteria for brain death two days after being brought to the hospital in late November where she collapsed from a supposed pulmonary embolism. The hospital barred her husband and family from having her taken off a ventilator because she was at the time 14 weeks pregnant. It had been her wish to be removed from life support should such a situation arise, but the hospital's interpretation of an ambiguous Texas law dictated she 'not be permitted to die' while carrying a live fetus.
That she had already tragically died appeared to be of no concern to the hospital in their decision-making. "JPS Health Network has followed what we believed were the demands of a state statute", commented Jill Labbe, a hospital spokeswoman. On Friday, state district judge R.H. Wallace ordered she be removed from life support machines; the state law as it stood obviously did not apply to her because she was brain dead, and therefore legally dead.
The 31-year-old mother of a young boy who entered hospital with her second pregnancy at fourteen weeks' gestation, would have recoiled in horror at the nightmare that was to unfold when she suffered an apparent blood clot in her lungs, leading her life to slip away from her. At the time that the judicial decision was finally made to free her from the fantasy of 'life support', she was 22 weeks' pregnant, the fetus she was carrying identified as hugely abnormal.
Credit: Family photo
Erick Muñoz shared this image of his late wife Marlise playing in the pool with their son, Mateo.
Larry Thompson, an assistant district attorney, pointed to a section of the state penal code stating someone could commit criminal homicide by causing the death of a fetus and a recently passed bill banning abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy should be taken into account on the theory that a fetus was capable of feeling pain at that stage. "[The law] must convey legislative intent to protect the unborn child, otherwise the Legislature would have simply allowed a pregnant patient to decide to let her life, and the life of her unborn child, end", he wrote in court documents. Lawyers for Ms. Munoz's husband asked the judge to consider whether hospitals would as a result be expected to build intensive-care units specifically for the purpose of ensuring that women on life support carry pregnancies through to term.
For two months the ethical, legal battle was fought over the right of a family to have their dead wife and child removed from the absurdity of maintaining a non-functioning, non-autonomous body as a breeding nest for an undeveloped fetus. Tests had divulged that the fetus was "distinctly abnormal, not viable, suffering from hydrocephalus and possibly a heart problem. The lower extremities were so deformed that gender could not be determined.
The National Black Prolife Coalition and Operation Rescue, both insisted the fetus deserved to be nurtured toward birth. People subscribing to belief that this was a situation that should be allowed to come to the 'natural conclusion' that the birth of the fetus would represent, offered to adopt the resulting infant, despite the disabilities anticipated.
The Texas law dating from 1989 as an obvious backlash to abortion rights in the United States, remains unclear. The single sentence, "A person may not withdraw or withhold life-sustaining treatment under this sub-chapter from a pregnant patient", says nothing about the indignity to a human body utilizing it as a nurturing chamber even while the nurturer has been deprived of life; a bizarre and grotesque caricature of a humane, caring law.
"This changes the game. The room is effectively germ free. Now I can say to a patient -- after 30 years of being in the infectious-disease business -- 'Welcome to your room, this room is safe, it's really safe." Dr. Dick Zoutman, Queen's University infectious-disease specialist, co-inventor of the AsepticSure technology
"It's an extremely important problem. There is no question that so-called superbugs, antibiotic-resistant organisms, are increasing around the world, despite our best efforts. There is no question that so-called superbugs, antibiotic-resistant organisms, are increasing around the world, despite our best efforts." Dr. Andrew Simor, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Toronto
"We were able to come out of the outbreak in a record short time. [Eliminating the bacteria in two days, opposed to a typical weeks-long process.] The cost to the hospital is [usually] absolutely tremendous when you're in an outbreak, because you've got extra security, you've got extra cleaning, you've got extra equipment being used." Dr. Michael De La Roche, chief of infection control, Quinte Health Care
Afrazier blogspot.com
The new apparatus that Dr. Zoutman invented along with Dr. Michael Shannon, is a system proving to be a winner in the universal battle by hospitals against the perplexing incursion and dangerous contamination of super-bugs. The device is placed in the centre of a room, the door then closed and sealed with adhesive sheets, the fogger turned on from the exterior by remote control.
A Belleville hospital, under the aegis of Quinte Health Care, used the device that pumps contaminated rooms full of antiseptic vapour, killing every bacteria it comes in contact with. Since the successful decontamination on an infected ward the floor has been free for an unheard-of six-month period of episodes of patients being infected by Methocillin-resistant Staphylococus A (MRSA), a bacteria linked to the deaths of 2,200 patients in Canada on an annual basis.
The process has been named "terminal clean". The concept itself is not new, there are other cleaning tools similar to AsepticSure dispersing various chemical mists to kill bugs with special ultraviolent light; there are antimicrobial building materials and even the use of cleaning robots. Typically hospitals task cleaning staff to scour rooms to destroy germs, but tight budgets and inadequate staff training along with heavy workloads can mean "the cleaning may not be ideal", commented Dr. Michael Gardam the University Health Network in Toronto.
The terminal clean process decontaminates a room with a 99.9% bacterial-clean success rate. Curtains are washed along with any other movable objects and floors are scrubbed as well as walls, yet there are such countless bacteria present, enough manage to re-surface to spread again. Systems similar to the new AspeticSure disperse hydrogen peroxide (HP), but the new innovation replaced the aerosol with ozone and some hydrogen peroxide, a combination that efficiently kills microbes to 100% eradication.
After the prototype use of AsepticSure at the Belleville Hospital by Dr. Zoutman where he is chief of staff, over 100 swabs were taken in the ward and there was no trace of the superbug left behind. Six months later, not one patient has tested positive for MRSA, a world first according to Medizone International which has a stake in the outcome and how hospitals receive this new cleaning protocol.
Califnornia-based Medizone International has agreed to market AsepticSure.
One of Canada's largest hospital networks, Toronto's UHN, has not yet been persuaded that the use of AsepticSure is worth the $100,000 each system costs. They seem more in favour of other "no-touch" systems using HP vapour or ultravioletlight, undecided whether they too may be worth the $20,000 to $50,000 cost per unit. Sunnybrook awaits more testing of such testings in hospital environments before committing to the substantial investment
Sometimes, I’m pretty happy our planet circles a relatively calm,
normal star. Because when I look at stars like EZ Canis Majoris (aka WR
6, HR 2583, HD 50896, and other aliases), I think that things around
here could be a lot less conducive for life.
Why? Because this:
The nebula Sharpless 2-308 around the violently unstable star EZ Canis Majoris. Click to embiggen.
Photo by Jess Huisted, used by permission
Pretty, isn’t it? But the beauty belies a true monster.
This photo was taken by Jeff Husted, an astrophotographer who observes in the western U.S. It shows the star EZ CMa
(for short), the star just left of center of that ethereal glowing
bubble of gas. It’s what’s called a Wolf-Rayet star, one of the more
terrifying beasts in the galaxy’s menagerie. It’s a star that started
out life with more than 40 times the mass of the Sun, which made it
super-hot and extraordinarily luminous. Stars like that can be hundreds
of thousands of times as bright as the Sun! A planet orbiting it as
close as the Earth to the Sun would be cooked to a vapor pretty rapidly.
Wolf-Rayet stars lead short, violent lives. They’re so bright that
pressure from light itself can blow material off the surface, leading to
strong winds of gas blasting out from the star. Some time ago, EZ CMa
blew out just such a wind, which expanded away from the star in a
roughly spherical manner. It slammed into the gas floating in between
the stars, sweeping it up and heating it, creating that magnificent
bubble. The gas cloud itself is called Sharpless 2-308.
Phil Plait writes Slate’s Bad Astronomy blog and is an astronomer, public speaker, science evangelizer, and author of Death from the Skies!
It’s when I look at the numbers that this starts to make my brain
tingle. The distance to EZ CMa is difficult to determine, but it’s most
likely about 5,000 light years away. Even from that stunning
distance—that’s 50 quadrillion kilometers (30 quadrillion
miles)—the star is almost bright enough to be seen with the naked eye.
If the Sun were that far away, you’d need a pretty good telescope to see
it at all.
In the sky, as seen from Earth, Sharpless 2-308 is bigger than the full Moon. That means it must be a staggering 60 light years across. That’s huge.
When a star like the Sun dies, it might blow a bubble (called a
planetary nebula) a couple of light years across. The wind from EZ CMa
is more like a cosmic gale.
The structure of the bubble is interesting. It’s brighter on one side
than the other, and you may notice the star is off-center in that
direction as well. That’s probably not a coincidence. I suspect the star
is moving rapidly in space toward the left in this photo, and so the
speed of its wind is faster in this direction as felt by the gas around
it. That means the gas piles up more in that direction, making it look
brighter.
The weird blister next to the bright section is probably a blowout, a
place where the outside gas is thinner. Like a weak spot on a balloon,
the wind from the star pushed through there more easily, expanding and
rupturing it. Essentially the bubble has popped there, the gas from the
star poking through the shell of gas piled up around it. We see this sometimes in the rapidly expanding debris in a supernova explosion, too.
When I contacted Husted about his photo, he asked me an interesting
question: Are there any stars inside that bubble? The answer is
emphatically yes. In our local neighborhood, stars are about 4 light years apart on average. EZ CMa is located in a region with a much denser stellar population,
and with the bubble being dozens of light years across, it must enclose
hundreds of stars. Thousands. It’s a weird thought, made even more
bizarre to think that from their viewpoint, the bubble might be almost
invisible! To them, it would be spread out over the entire sky, its
light diluted almost to nothing. Some of those tendrils and filament
might be visible in deep exposures, but I suspect the overall bubble
might go unnoticed to any alien astronomers.
Unless they were clever. The gas also emits X-rays,
and is actually pretty luminous: In X-rays alone, it gives off as much
energy as our Sun does at all wavelengths! If the aliens had X-ray
telescopes, they might notice they’re immersed in the glow of Sharpless
2-308.
And here’s the kicker to this whole thing: EZ CMa doesn’t have long
to live. Soon enough—in some thousands of years, more or less— it’ll
explode. That’s what Wolf-Rayet stars do. And when it does it’ll be a huge
explosion, blasting out as much energy in a few weeks as the Sun will
over its entire 10-billion-year lifetime. At 5,000 light years distant
it’s too far to hurt us, but wow, what a sight that will be. It’ll
easily outshine Venus in our night sky, and be visible to telescopes all
over (and above) Earth. It would be a big boon to astronomy, to see
such a thing … and a reminder to everyone, once again, that with our own
relatively quiet and even-tempered Sun, we have it pretty good.
"The last time I saw Dave alive he was relaxed and smiling, sat in the sun. His intention was to gear up and jump after watching our flight." "A rescue helicopter -- located Dave's body and confirmed he had died from massive injuries resulting from impacting rocks at high speed. Death is believed to have been instantaneous." "Sitting around our campfire the night before Dave's death he could not have been happier. He talked about his life, his work, and the day's jumping with equal enthusiasm. It is my belief that he loved where he was in life." Ralph Greenaway, base jumper
David Stather, who lived and worked in Calgary as a pulmonary
specialist, died Friday BASE jumping near the Grand Canyon. (Ralph
Greenaway/Basejumper.com)
"He pushed himself a lot at work. And, I think, recreationally to do some of these extreme things. "I think, maybe it was always in the back of our minds a little, [the base jumping] but he always struck us as someone who was very cautious. I know that's paradoxical given what he was doing, but he always said that nobody packs his chute but him. And I got the sense that he was very cautious and very experienced." Dr. Paul MacEachern, Calgary
Dr. David Stather, 41, worked in Calgary as a pulmonologist. (University of Calgary)
Work, as it happens, was at the faculty of medicine, University of Calgary. Dr. David Stather was considered to be a pioneering doctor as a respirologist who had received a number of awards and fellowships. He was a clinical assistant professor specializing in the study of lung diseases, and very adept at broncoscopy, use of a minuscule camera on a long tube, meant to perform internal examinations of the human lung.
"It took him over ten years to get the training needed to do that job, so he's not someone who can be easily replaced. He went at things full tilt, just like his hobbies", said Dr. MacEachern of his colleague. Dr. Stather was engaged for an increase in use of medical simulators in the field of teaching new physicians how to diagnose lung diseases. And he was in the process of pioneering new methods of treatment for a rare condition where a ball of fungus forms in diseased lungs.
No one, it appears, in deference to the preferred values and priorities of the dead man, and focused on honouring his life while obviously regretting his death at such a young age, offered the opinion that his death seemed rather senseless, a complete and total waste. At the very least he was unmarried, had no children, but his promise in his chosen medical field has certainly been cut short.
He would occasionally entertain his medical colleagues showing them skydiving videos featuring himself. He never admitted to them that he was also a seasoned base jumper, an activity that only the most blase would not acknowledge to represent high risk. Base jumpers typically leap off cliffs, mountains or towers, learning through experience the split-second decision when to trigger their parachutes. It is considered a sport, but one that is illegal in most countries.
Dr. Stather, the gregarious thrill-seeker and medical professional, leaped to his death last Friday. He and some buddies had surreptitiously driven deep into Navajo territory near the Grand Canyon. The Navajo are not fond of thrill seekers courting death. They demand permits from anyone thinking of crossing into Navajo nation territory. Base jumping, moreover, is explicitly forbidden on its territory according to their website.
"It's so remote that you can't keep track of who is going in and out of there. It's a one-hour drive on dirt roads to the edge of this canyon from [the nearest] highway. There's no way to keep track of who is going in and out of those areas", explained Detective Pat Barr of the Coconino County Sheriff's Office. Adding that a Norwegian man leaped to his death about a year earlier, at the very same spot.
On this thrilling trip for these dedicated base jumpers Dr. Stather had already exercised his franchise to taunt death by leaping into a 4,000-foot canyon, gliding in his wingsuit before deciding to pull the cord on his chute. It was his third jump that proved to be his very last. He was in the process of following his two friends who had already made the leap, to the bottom of the canyon.
His two friends waited for him to jump and join them. But he never did arrive. And it was later that they saw his bright wingsuit encasing his shattered body on a ledge overlooking the confluence of the Colorado and the Little Colorado Rivers, about 25 km east of the Grand Canyon Village. Darren Strocher who teaches skydiving near Calgary said only about a dozen base jumpers are located in Alberta.
"For the most part, nobody wants to teach anybody because it's dangerous", he said. A classic understatement.
Bangor University
This is Ming the clam. It’s 507 years old — or
anyway, it was 507 years old in 2006, when researchers who suspected it
might be impressively ancient got kind of carried away trying to figure
out just how old it was, and killed it. It’s like an O. Henry story, but with bivalves.
The researchers who discovered Ming had to open it up to check their
theory that it was around 405 years old. At the time, they were
satisfied that the clam died for science — but now, better dating
methods have made clear that their earlier results were published in
haste, and in fact Ming was a full 100 years older than previously
thought. (Fortunately, its nickname — after the Ming dynasty in China,
in power in 1601 when the clam was thought to have been born — is still
accurate now that we know it’s been around since 1499. The Ming dynasty
stuck around for a really long time, presumably to give future
clam-namers some wiggle room.)
Like trees, clams are dated by growth rings, but in a clam as old as
Ming, the rings are packed really tightly and hard to count with
accuracy. Scientists had opened Ming up so they could count the rings
inside the hinge of its shell, usually considered the best place to look
— but on re-dating, it turned out that the rings on the outside of the
shell were larger and easier to count, and those rings indicated the
new, older age. Which of course adds to the irony, since there may have
been no need to open the clam to see how old it was.
Ming wasn’t the oldest living thing on earth; that title belongs to a
patch of sea grass in the Mediterranean. But until its ironic demise,
it might have been the oldest animal. (Some sponges might outstrip it,
but do we really think sponges count? I mean LOOK at them.)
At least it died adding a drop to the bucket that is scientific
knowledge: Oxygen isotopes in Ming’s growth rings can give scientists a
picture of ocean temperature over time, adding to our store of data
about climate change. And some think Ming might be holding the secret to
longevity, too. We’re guessing it’s “don’t get killed by
over-enthusiastic scientists.”
This is a repost of what I wrote last year during this difficult
week for NASA. But I stand by every word, and it is just as important
now as it was then, and, I think, will continue to be.
Today marks the second in a week of three tragic anniversaries in
space exploration. On Jan. 27, 1967, we lost three astronauts in the
Apollo 1 fire. On Feb. 1, 2003, seven astronauts died when Columbia
broke apart upon re-entering Earth’s atmosphere. And Jan. 28, 1986, is
when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded, killing all seven astronauts
on board.
All three of these events were horrible. All three were the results
of unlikely chains of events that seemed inevitable afterward. All three
sparked immense debate over the dangers and value of exploring space.
And all three should show us how important it is that we carry on that exploration.
Phil Plait writes Slate’s Bad Astronomy blog and is an astronomer, public speaker, science evangelizer, and author of Death from the Skies!
There are two ways to look at why slipping loose the surly bonds of
Earth is so critical. One is practical. Going into space has given us
tremendous advantages in life. Global communication. Weather
forecasting. Technology spinoffs that have generated vast economies. The list goes on and on.
How many dangerous regimes have collapsed because we can directly see
and talk to those being oppressed? How many lives have been saved by
advance knowledge of crippling weather events? How much have our lives
improved due to the wonderful technology generated? The money spent on
space exploration has literally paid us back manifold.
That argument alone is more than enough to support both automated and crewed space exploration. But there’s more.
We are a species of explorers. It’s in our blood, in our makeup. We
crave to see what’s around the next corner, what’s over that hill,
what’s next in our adventure. Sometimes we learn something massively
important, and sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we come home to tell the
tale, and sometimes we don’t. Exploration has fantastic rewards, and
grave dangers. But fulfilling our need to explore is its own goal.
The practical benefits of exploration are our sustenance, but the
adventure itself is the flavor. The price we pay for this, sometimes, is
counted in human lives. And it’s a terrible price. But we must continue
to explore because it’s a part of us.
The very fact that so many people are so deeply affected by these
events shows just how profoundly space exploration reaches into us. Any
event involving large multiple deaths in a single, searing moment is
going to resonate with us, and certainly watching it live on television
will magnify that feeling. But in this case, we hold astronauts to a
higher level. Like with any dangerous occupation that makes life better
for others, risking their lives is part of the job requirement.
At first, it feels like this makes these losses cut even more. But
it’s ironic: The astronauts themselves knew the risks and downplayed the
significance of them potentially being killed. They thought it was
worth the risk, or else they wouldn’t have done what they did. That
doesn’t make their loss any easier, but it shows us that we must carry on—who could convey that message better than the ones who themselves sit on top of those rockets?
There are many reasons we lose lives exploring space. It’s inherently
difficult and dangerous, a hostile environment that takes supreme and
envelope-pushing effort even to reach. And there will always be human
errors, those caused by carelessness, rush, politics, greed, and simple
mistakes. We can minimize these risks in many ways, but over time, the
odds of these mistakes leading to tragedy become inevitable.
The only way to absolutely minimize these risks is to stop exploring.
And that’s unacceptable. Ships are safe in the harbor, but that’s not what ships are for.
I hope that we have learned from your experience, I hope that we have
become better through your experience, and that, while we will never
forget what happened to you, we will also remember what you were trying
to do, and what you did do.
By James GallagherHealth and science reporter, BBC News
Exposure
to a once widely used pesticide, DDT, may increase the chances of
developing Alzheimer's disease, suggest US researchers.
A study, published in JAMA Neurology, showed patients with
Alzheimer's had four times the levels of DDT lingering in the body than
healthy people.
Some countries still use the pesticide to control malaria.
Alzheimer's Research UK said more evidence was needed to prove DDT had a role in dementia.
DDT was a massively successful pesticide, initially used to
control malaria at the end of World War Two and then to protect crops in
commercial agriculture.
However, there were questions about its impact on human health and wider environmental concerns, particularly for predators.
It was banned in the US in 1972 and in many other countries. But the World Health Organization still recommends using DDT to keep malaria in check.
DDT also lingers in the human body where it is broken down into DDE.
The team at Rutgers University and Emory University tested
levels of DDE in the blood of 86 people with Alzheimer's disease and
compared the results with 79 healthy people of a similar age and
background.
The results showed those with Alzheimer's had 3.8 times the level of DDE.
However, the picture is not clear-cut. Some healthy people
had high levels of DDE while some with Alzheimer's had low levels.
Alzheimer's also predates the use of DDT.
The researchers believe the chemical is increasing the chance
of Alzheimer's and may be involved in the development of amyloid
plaques in the brain, a hallmark of the disease, which contribute to the
death of brain cells.
Prof Allan Levey, the director of the Alzheimer's Disease
Research Centre at Emory, said: "This is one of the first studies
identifying a strong environmental risk factor for Alzheimer's disease.
"The magnitude of the effect is strikingly large, it is
comparable in size to the most common genetic risk factor for late-onset
Alzheimer's."
Fellow researcher Dr Jason Richardson added: "We are still
being exposed to these chemicals in the United States, both because we
get food products from other countries and because DDE persists in the
environment for a long time," .
Dr Simon Ridley, the head of research at the charity
Alzheimer's Research UK, said: "It's important to note that this
research relates to DDT, a pesticide that has not been used in the UK
since the 1980s.
"While this small study suggests a possible connection
between DDT exposure and Alzheimer's, we don't know whether other
factors may account for these results.
"Much more research would be needed to confirm whether this particular pesticide may contribute to the disease."
"I firmly believe it is not a matter of if this will help cancer patients -- but when this becomes a standard of care." "It's not ready for prime time." "This is the first time that someone has shown that this approach is effective and yet it has been asked, 'What took you so long?'" Dr. Robert Korneluk, Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute
Dr. Korneluk is referring to a combined therapy he is crediting with the refined potential to act as a new, more effective, less toxic cancer treatment. Its simplicity appears to have arisen from one of those scientific Eureka! moments; using previously-designed therapies in tandem for optimum effect. And CHEO institute researchers are anticipating setting up trials for their combination therapy.
Other laboratories world-wide, along with drug companies have been busy working on new discoveries into feasible treatments that extend the lives of cancer patients, improving their quality of life in the process. But it is these Ottawa-based researchers who have come up with the concept of the combined therapy which they say promises to be highly effective against cancer, and as a special bonus safe for children.
And potentially useful for many types of cancer.
Their breakthrough was to combine two types of treatments that were thought of as standalones. With the mindset that using them together could conceivably speed the evolution from lab discovery to treatment. That both agents in the combined therapy have proven themselves safe, they consider to be a huge step in the right direction.
The concept combines two experimental cancer treatments; viral therapy, which also was pioneered at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, led by Dr. John Bell, along with IAP (inhibitor of apostosis protein)-based therapies targeting cancer genes, another therapy discovered at CHEO 19 years earlier. Both of these therapies are yet in trial stages, viewed as alternatives to radiation and chemotherapies.
This discovery uses a drug that can knock out the genes that make cancer cells "bullet proof" giving it an extra push by priming the body's immune response, explained Dr. Korneluk. That these experimental therapies, unlike radiation and chemotherapy are not toxic; they don't kill white blood cells, patients don't lose their hair, is a decided bonus of inestimable value.
The researchers, whose new combination therapy details saw publication on Monday in Nature Biology, are hugely excited about the potential to treat cancer without incurring those dramatic side effects. The therapies that target cancer causing genes and oncolytics (cancer-fighting viruses), create a synergistic (amplified) cancer killing effect, many times more effective than each of these therapies used separately.
They saw a cure rate of up to 90% on experimental mice. But as with all similar such experiments resulting in perceived breakthroughs on animal models, this is only the beginning. It will take years before the protocol ever sees general use, once the experimental stage has moved on to human models and the results assessed, then authorization for use by federal license-granting agencies received.
Irving Finkel, British Museum curator and
author of “The Ark Before Noah,” has found a 4,000-year-old tablet that
describes the materials and measurements for building Noah’s Ark.
It also describes the Ark in a way never before conceived by archaeologists—as round.
Finkel writes in a museum blog post of
his discovery. He was at a press conference to promote his book, when
Douglas Simmonds approached him with a tablet given to him by his
father. His father had picked up some artifacts from Egypt and China
after the war in the late 1940s.
The tablet “turned out to be one in a million,” said
Finkel. Dating from 1750 B.C., it tells the Babylonian “Story of the
Flood.” The Babylonian story, and its similarities to the story
recounted in the Book of Genesis, were already known, but this table
“has startling new contents,” Finkel said.
He lists off some of the materials a God told the
Babylonian Noah to use for his ark: “Quantities of palm-fibre rope,
wooden ribs and bathfuls of hot bitumen to waterproof the finished
vessel … The amount of rope prescribed, stretched out in a line, would
reach from London to Edinburgh!”
The ark would have had an area of about 2.2 miles squared
(3.6 kilometers squared)—about the size of one and a half football
fields—with walls 20 feet high.
The aspect of the description that most stunned Finkel,
however, is that the ark was round. He said: “To my knowledge, no one
has ever thought of that possibility.”
Finkel told the Associated Press that the tablet is “one of the most important human documents ever discovered.”
"All my friends said Canada was the best place. There are good opportunities for work, and soon I would be able to bring my family to live with me." Zeny Delmado, Philippine-Toronto nanny
"The entire Filipino community in Canada numbers about 400,000. Most can trace their immigration to the LCP, [Canada's Live-in Caregiver Program] either as direct applicants or family. "The export of labour is the Filipino government's policy to resolve its economic problems, but it's also an instrument in the trafficking of Filipino women. By design, Canada's LCP is part of this trafficking by receiving the goods. There's no thought to the consequences." Filipino-Canadian activist Cecilia Diocson, founder, Philippine Women's Centre of B.C. "We had no childhoods. Our moms were looking after other people's children in countries we couldn't even visit." Karen Marita, 19, single mother, Philippine shantytown slum
"Our mothers left for money, so we could have better futures. It's how this foreign migration is sold. But we have no futures here." Jocelyn Cabigas, teen single mother of two, Barangay Catmon slum, Manila
Canada has developed an immigration initiative titled the Live In Caregiver Program (LCP) because of which many Filipino women view migrating to Canada as a home worker as their first choice. In Canada higher-than-average salaries prevail under the LCP, along with better working conditions, not to be compared to the injustices suffered by Filipinos working in Middle East Countries and places like Hong Kong where their presence is viewed as a license for abuse.
Relatives
of Filipino workers in Saudi Arabia protest against the conditions
their family members face working in the oil-rich kingdom. Bullit Marquez / AP
Under Canada's LCP a number of conditions must be met before those working within the program can be considered permanent residents. These are largely women from the Philippines whose families live in severely deprived socio-economic conditions with a scarcity of employment to serve their fundamental human survival needs. But the women arrive in Canada alone, leaving their children back in the Philippines with a husband or other close family members to care for them.
Until they finally receive permanent residency, none of these women is able to apply to have their husbands and children join them in Canada. And since the process for permanent residency takes years for completion, requiring two years of residency home work before an application can be filled, and then a wait of years before the approval is finally validated, it is a heartbreakingly long interval before family reunification.
It is, to begin with, the opportunity to achieve citizenship that constitutes the mos emphatic draw to Canada for these nannies forced to seek employment abroad and in so doing suffering separation from those whom they love and who love them. Roughly 100,000 Filipino women have been accepted into the LCP since early 1990, representing almost 90% of any nationality signed onto the program. Over ten thousand Filipinas arrived annually at its peak, recently declined to about 6,000.
For the past forty years the Philippines has developed an assertive labour-export program. According to the Philippines Overseas Employment Administration, in 2012 almost one and a half million Filipinos left to work abroad, a figure that takes into account only those with documented work permits so the true figure is likely double the official one. Without the money sent home by workers abroad the country would be in dire financial straits.
Overseas Foreign Workers (OFWs) account for about $5-billion sent back home annually to the Philippines. Their sacrifices are considered heroic by the Government of the Philippines. The Philippine Social Welfare Department has tracked the human cost of its foreign worker program. Reporting that the long separation and absence from families of the mother working abroad has resulted in 40% of those families experiencing social problems.
High school dropout rates are common, along with unwanted teen pregnancies and destructive drug use, the severity of the situation commensurate with the length of time the children are deprived of their mothers' presence. Although workers in Canada are treated humanely in comparison with the situation they face in many other countries of the world taken to task by human rights groups, the situation remains a dismal one for those involved.
Toronto-area MP Olivia Chow of the NDP put forward a motion in 2009 as a private member's bill in the House of Commons to consider caregivers entering Canada in just the same way as entrepreneurs are treated; issuing permanent residency on arrival, and in this way paving the way for a much earlier family reunification. The motion was never brought to a vote, expiring during the last federal election.
"We can't have it both ways. We can't take the talents of others and force them to leave their children behind. We need to see workers as not just economic units, but their families. It's how we build healthy communities." She charges that the citizenship enticement makes light of the long wait and separation, banking on the desperation of people for employment to support their families to win the battle of needed home care workers in Canada.
The women who do make that decision to leave their homes and their country and their children behind know that they are embarked on a work trip abroad that involves great personal risk. They call it 'Pakikipagsapalaran", and they accept the risk as Canada's immigration bureaucrats point out.
But sometimes the imagination is beggared by the realities of life, when people simply cannot imagine how dreary and empty life can become when faced with a catastrophic loss of quality of life, the cost of economic mobility.
Phil Plait writes Slate’s Bad Astronomy blog and is an astronomer, public speaker, science evangelizer, and author of Death from the Skies!
My friend Jeff Medkeff was an astronomer and asteroid hunter. Shortly before he died*,
he named a passel of asteroids for some well-known skeptics, and I was
incredibly honored to be among them. Asteroid 2000 WG11 (165347) became known as 165347 Philplait. It’s a kilometer or so across, and (like me) slightly eccentric; it orbits the Sun on an elliptical path between Mars and Jupiter.
Another friend of mine, Amy Mainzer,
is the Principal Investigator of the NEOWISE (née WISE) mission, a NASA
spacecraft dedicated to looking for near-Earth asteroids. She hinted
she had something she wanted to give me over the holidays, and I had a
suspicion what it was… and it turns out I was close.
WISE never got good images of Philplait due to orbital issues and a
full Moon. However, other observatories had better circumstances. Amy
pulled a few strings, and managed to put together some fantastic images
of the rock!
The shot at the top is from the Pan-STARRS observatory,
c/o Larry Denneau, and shows the asteroid in 2011 moving across a
backdrop of stars. The telescope tracks the stars, so the moving
asteroid appears as a series of dots. It was observed four times, each
time with a different filter — that helps determine things like size
— and that’s why it looks like it’s flying the rainbow flag.
This next image is also very cool:
Spacewatch observed my little buddy as well. Click to embiggen.
Photo by Bob McMillan and Jeff Larsen / Spacewatch / LPL / UArizona
That’s from Bob McMillan and Jeff Larsen of Spacewatch / LPL / UArizona, and shows observations made in late October 2011. Again, different filters give it a multi-hued look.
This inspires me to try to see it for myself with my own telescope. Others have before,
but it seems appropriate for me to try. It’s on the other side of the
Sun right now, but later this year it might be worth the effort.
It’s surreal to see those dots, and know they show the reflected
light from some 200 billion tons of rock slowly orbiting the Sun over
300 million kilometers away. It’s even odder to think that a couple of
centuries from now, that rock may be visited by someone, maybe mined for
materials, or just logged as a potential moving hazard crossing the
usual space lanes used by tourists as they head out for their stay at
Hotel Titan. The celestial body bearing my name will long, long outlive
the human body bearing it.
… which gives me an interesting thought. What person will be the
first to visit an asteroid named after them? And perhaps in a macabre
twist, with space travel getting easier and cheaper over time, I suspect
it’s inevitable that someone will eventually have their ashes sent to
their astronomical namesake. It’ll cost a fortune, but then some folks
do have that kind of money.
Which gives me a second interesting thought. Hey, Elon Musk, call me! I have an idea.
My very sincere thanks to Amy, Bob, Jeff, and Larry for doing this for me. I am moved and honored!
* Jeff Medkeff was a terrific guy, and beloved in many
communities. In his honor, the Atlanta Star Party is held every year
the night before Dragon Con around Labor Day. It’s one of my favorite events of the year, and the money raised goes to charity.
"His teachers are really excited because they can't wait to see where he is in ten or fifteen years. They feel he has the ability to go to college or university." "It is not for everybody -- don't for a second think that our lives are easy. What we have learned from Oliver, what we have seen him do, and his determination is something you don't see in all children, and as hard as it is to raise differently-abled children ... we would do it again and again without a doubt." "There is nowhere else we would want to be and we do not have a single regret for the decisions we have made. We would do it all over again in a heart beat. And that is thanks to Oliver." Melissa Lumley-Pfeil
Bruno Schlumberger / Ottawa Citizen
Oliver is five years old now. When he was six months old, Melissa and Sue Lumnley-Pfeil first came across him. He was, at that time, in palliative care at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario. And they had gone there for treatment for their own child, Zoey, born in 2007 with an undiagnosed rare genetic syndrome. It was there, where their daughter Zoey was receiving treatment, and they were staying at Rogers House, that they met "skinny, bald" Oliver.
Deprived of oxygen for 20 minutes during a traumatic birth procedure, he was initially pronounced dead, and then resuscitated. And like their own daughter, he was extremely fragile, an infant with multiple special needs, in palliative care. The two women, concerned over the welfare of their tiny daughter, were immediately drawn to the little boy. Sue is a nurse, and Melissa a social worker. They indicated their interest in adopting Oliver, then in foster care.
Warned of the extreme difficulties involved in raising a child with such extensive special needs, they confidently assured the social workers they were prepared to meet all contingencies; they wanted to adopt the child and that was that. They felt that their daughter and the little boy had formed some kind of link and they wanted it to be a permanent link, themselves included. And the two children did become close.
But while Oliver thrived, gaining weight and advancing, Zoey's condition deteriorated. And she died at four years of age. Oliver still 'talks' about her. And so do his two younger biological sisters, Madison, five, and Libbie, four. They too joined the family just months after Zoey's death in 2012. In mourning, the women were informed Oliver's sisters were in foster care, hoping for permanent homes. At first loath to commit so soon after Zooey's death, they finally succumbed and adopted the two girls.
Oliver is immensely distanced from the often distressed hypersensitive infant the women had brought home to become their son. They speak of him as a "social butterfly". He is eager to amuse and tells a joke with the aid of the communications system that helps him speak. "Why did the kids throw the butter in the air? Because they wanted to see butter fly."
He has the use of a motorized wheelchair and controls it using his feet and his head. Wearing a T-shirt with the admission printed on it of "Boy Genius", he moves his eyes across a special screen. The eyes have it. This is a Dynavox communications system mounted on the front of his power wheelchair, using infrared lighting following Oliver's eye movements. When his eyes connect with the touch screen it speaks for Oliver.
He is now at grade level at the Ontario Children's Treatment Centre, attending senior kindergarten. The youngest child in Ontario to use eye-gaze technology he plays sledge hockey and baseball. He spends two hours daily travelling from his home in Almonte to attend school and receive treatment and support at the Ontario Children's Treatment Centre. "He is an amazing little boy", school principal Leslie Walker says.
His parents plan to send him to the elementary school in Almonte down the street from where they live, next year. This is the school his two younger sisters go to.
The Arno river in Pisa threatened to burst its banks
Houses in Landerneau, western France, have been flooded by the Elorn river
Parts of the countryside near Pisa are completely submerged
