AcharyaChanakya/simple-wikipedia huggingface dataset:
Pulmonary hypertension or PH is a condition where there is high blood pressure in the lungs. This condition makes it hard to breathe. Some people with the condition need extra oxygen. This condition can also make a person dizzy and become easily tired. Some people with the condition faint easily. The symptoms get worse when exercising or working hard. Pulmonary hypertension is a serious condition, and it can be fatal. The condition makes it harder for the heart to pump blood. Because the heart has to work harder, it can also become sick. Some people who are very sick may need a lung transplant or a heart-lung transplant to live. Pulmonary hypertensions full name is pulmonary arterial hypertension even though most people call it pah, ph or pha.
People with pulmonary hypertension have difficulty breathing. They also tire easily. Some of them faint easily too. They might have chest pain. Some patients have swelling of the feet and ankles. These symptoms get worse during exercise or hard work.
Because many diseases can make it hard to breathe, a doctor must learn about the patient's background. This helps the doctor to treat the patient, even if the patient has another disease. The doctor also does several tests. Pulmonary hypertension makes the heart sound different. One test is to measure the blood pressure inside the "pulmonary artery", the blood vessel that goes from the heart to the lungs.
In order to establish the cause, the physician will generally conduct a thorough medical history. A detailed family history is taken to determine whether the disease might be familial. A history of exposure to cocaine, methamphetamine, alcohol leading to cirrhosis, and smoking leading to emphysema are considered significant. Physical examination is performed to look for typical signs of pulmonary hypertension including a loud P2 (pulmonic valve closure sound), (para)sternal heave, jugular venous distension, pedal edema, ascites, hepatojugular reflux, clubbing etc.
In pulmonary hypertension, the blood vessels in the lungs become too narrow. The blood pressure in the lungs becomes high. The heart works very hard to pump blood through the narrow blood vessels. Later on, the blood vessels in the lungs become hard and thick. The heart must work harder.
The heart can work so hard that it becomes sick. This is called heart failure. The sick heart cannot pump blood well. Less blood goes to the lungs, so the blood gets less oxygen. This makes it hard to breathe. This gets worse when exercising or working hard.
The most common cause of pulmonary hypertension is left heart failure. This causes pulmonary "venous" hypertension. This leads to pulmonary edema, or fluid build-up in the lungs.
Many illnesses can cause pulmonary "arterial" hypertension (PAH).
When a person has pulmonary hypertension without any other cause, this is called "idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension" or IPAH.
When a family history exists, the disease is termed "familial pulmonary arterial hypertension", (FPAH). IPAH and FPAH are now considered to be genetic disorders linked to mutations in the "BMPR2" gene, which encodes a receptor for bone morphogenetic proteins, as well as the "5-HT(2B)" gene, which codes for a serotonin receptor.
In medicine, pulmonary hypertension (PH) is an increase in blood pressure in the pulmonary artery or lung vasculature, leading to shortness of breath, dizziness, fainting, and other symptoms, all of which are exacerbated by exertion. Depending on the cause, pulmonary hypertension can be a severe disease with a markedly decreased exercise tolerance and right-sided heart failure. It was first identified by Dr Ernst von Romberg in 1891. It can be one of five different types, "arterial, venous, hypoxic, thromboembolic," or "miscellaneous".
Although the terms primary pulmonary hypertension (meaning of unknown cause) and secondary pulmonary hypertension (meaning due to another medical condition) still persist in materials disseminated to patients and the general public, these terms have largely been abandoned in the medical literature. This change has occurred because the older dichotomous classification did not reflect pathophysiology or outcome. It led to erroneous therapeutic decisions, i.e. treat "primary" pulmonary hypertension only. This in turn led to therapeutic nihilism for many patients labeled "secondary" pulmonary hypertension, and could have contributed to their deaths. The term "primary pulmonary hypertension" has now been replaced with "idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension". The terms "primary" and "secondary" pulmonary hypertension should not be used any longer. Further details are in the Classification section below.
The most common cause of pulmonary hypertension is left heart failure leading to pulmonary "venous" hypertension. This may be due to systolic or diastolic malfunction of the left ventricle or due to valvular dysfunction such as mitral regurgitation or mitral stenosis. It usually manifests as pulmonary edema.
Common causes of pulmonary "arterial" hypertension (PAH) include HIV, scleroderma and other autoimmune disorders, cirrhosis and portal hypertension, sickle cell disease, congenital heart disease, thyroid diseases, and others. Use of weight loss pills such as Fen-Phen, Aminorex, fenfluramine (Pondimin), and phentermine led to the development of PAH in the past.
Whatever the initial cause, pulmonary hypertension involves the tightening of blood vessels connected to and within the lungs. This makes it harder for the heart to pump blood through the lungs, much as it is harder to make water flow through a narrow pipe as opposed to a wide one. Over time, the affected blood vessels become both stiffer and thicker, further increasing the blood pressure within the lungs and impairing blood flow. In addition, the increased workload of the heart causes thickening and enlargement of the right ventricle, making the heart less able to pump blood through the lungs, causing right heart failure. As the blood flowing through the lungs decreases, the left side of the heart receives less blood. This blood may also carry less oxygen than normal. Therefore, it becomes harder and harder for the left side of the heart to pump to supply sufficient oxygen to the rest of the body, especially during physical activity.
Because pulmonary hypertension can be of 5 major types, a series of tests must be performed to distinguish pulmonary "arterial" hypertension from "venous, hypoxic, thomboembolic," or "miscellaneous" varieties.
A physical examination is performed to look for typical signs of pulmonary hypertension. These include altered heart sounds, such as a widely split S or second heart sound, a loud P or pulmonic valve closure sound (part of the second heart sound), (para)sternal heave, possible S or third heart sound, and pulmonary regurgitation. Other signs include jugular venous distension (enlargement of the jugular veins), peripheral edema (swelling of the ankles and feet), ascites (abdominal swelling due to the accumulation of fluid), hepatojugular reflux, and clubbing.
Further procedures are required to confirm the presence of pulmonary hypertension and exclude other possible diagnoses. These generally include pulmonary function tests, blood tests, electrocardiography (ECG), arterial blood gas measurements, X-rays of the chest (followed by high-resolution CT scanning if interstitial lung disease is suspected), and ventilation-perfusion or V/Q scanning to exclude chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension. Biopsy of the lung is usually not indicated unless the pulmonary hypertension is thought to be due to an underlying interstitial lung disease. But lung biopsies are fraught with risks of bleeding due to the high intrapulmonary blood pressure. Clinical improvement is often measured by a "six-minute walk test", i.e. the distance a patient can walk in six minutes. Stability and improvement in this measurement correlate with better survival.
Although pulmonary arterial pressure can be estimated on the basis of echocardiography, pressure sampling with a Swan-Ganz catheter provides the most definite measurement. PAOP and PVR can not be measured directly with echocardiography. Therefore, diagnosis of PAH requires a cardiac catheterization. A Swan-Ganz catheter can also measure the cardiac output, which is far more important in measuring disease severity than the pulmonary arterial pressure.
Normal pulmonary arterial pressure in a person living at sea level has a mean value of 12–16 mm Hg (1600–2100 Pa). Definite pulmonary hypertension is present when mean pressures at rest exceed 25 mm Hg (3300 Pa). If mean pulmonary artery pressure rises above 30 mm Hg (4000 Pa) with exercise, that is also considered pulmonary hypertension.
Diagnosis of PAH requires the presence of pulmonary hypertension with two other conditions. Pulmonary artery occlusion pressure (PAOP or PCWP) must be less than 15 mm Hg (2000 Pa) and pulmonary vascular resistance (PVR) must be greater than 3 Wood units (240 dyn•s•cm or 2.4 mN•s•cm).
In 2003, the 3rd World Symposium on Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension was convened in Venice to modify the classification based on the new understanding of disease mechanisms. The revised system developed by this group provides the current framework for understanding pulmonary hypertension.
The system includes several improvements over the former 1998 Evian Classification system. Risk factor descriptions were updated, and the classification of congenital systemic-to pulmonary shunts was revised. A new classification of genetic factors in PH was recommended, but not implemented because available data were judged to be inadequate.
The Venice 2003 Revised Classification system can be summarized as follows:
The terms primary and secondary pulmonary hypertension (PPH and SPH) were formerly used to classify the disease. This led to the assumption that only the primary disease should be treated, and the secondary variety should be ignored in favor of treating only the underlying illness. In fact all forms of pulmonary arterial hypertension are treatable. Unfortunately, this classification system still persists in the minds of many physicians, and probably leads to many patients with being denied treatment. This nihilistic approach to pulmonary arterial hypertension may also contribute to underdiagnosis. It is estimated that there are about 100,000 patients with PAH in the US, but only 15-20,000 have been diagnosed. Many others have been misdiagnosed as COPD, asthma, or congestive heart failure.
The term primary pulmonary hypertension (PPH) has now been replaced with idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension (IPAH) in much of the medical literature. However, some physicians continue to use the older classification inappropriately.
IPAH is a rare disease with an incidence of about 2-3 per million per year and a prevalence of about 15 per million. Women are almost three times as likely to present with IPAH than men.
Other forms of PAH are far more common. In scleroderma the incidence has been estimated to be 6 to 60% of all patients, in rheumatoid arthritis up to 21%, in systemic lupus erythematosus 4 to 14%, in portal hypertension between 2 and 5%, in HIV about 0.5%, and in sickle cell disease ranging from 20 to 40%.
Diet pills such as Fen-Phen produced an annual incidence of 25-50 per million per year.
Treatment is determined by whether the PH is arterial, venous, hypoxic, thromboembolic, or miscellaneous. Since pulmonary "venous" hypertension is synonymous with congestive heart failure, the treatment is to optimize left ventricular function by the use of diuretics, beta blockers, ACE inhibitors, etc., or to repair/replace the mitral valve or aortic valve.
In PAH, lifestyle changes, digoxin, diuretics, oral anticoagulants, and oxygen therapy are considered "conventional" therapy, but have never been proven to be beneficial in a randomized, prospective manner.
High dose calcium channel blockers are useful in only 5% of IPAH patients who are "vasoreactive" by Swan-Ganz catheter. Unfortunately, calcium channel blockers have been largely misused, being prescribed to many patients with non-vasoreactive PAH, leading to excess morbidity and mortality.
Three major pathways are involved in abnormal proliferation and contraction of the smooth-muscle cells of the pulmonary artery in patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension. These pathways correspond to important therapeutic targets in this condition and play a role in determining which of three classes of drugs—endothelin receptor antagonists, phosphodiesterase type 5 inhibitors, and prostacyclin derivatives—will be used.
Prostacyclin (prostaglandin I) is commonly considered the most effective treatment for PAH. Epoprostenol (synthetic prostacyclin, marketed as Flolan®) is given via continuous infusion that requires a semi-permanent central venous catheter. This delivery system can cause sepsis and thrombosis. Flolan® is unstable, and therefore has to be kept on ice during administration. Since it has a half-life of 3 to 5 minutes, the infusion has to be continuous (24/7), and interruption can be fatal. Other prostanoids have therefore been developed. Treprostinil (Remodulin®) can be given intravenously or subcutaneously, but the subcutaneous form can be very painful. Iloprost (Ilomedin®) is also used in Europe intravenously and has a longer half life. Iloprost (marketed as Ventavis®) is the only inhaled form of prostacyclin approved for use in the US and Europe. This form of administration has the advantage of selective deposition in the lungs with less systemic side effects.
The dual (ET and ET) endothelin receptor antagonist bosentan (marketed as Tracleer®) was approved in 2001. Two selective endothelin receptor antagonists (ET only) are in the final stages of approval: sitaxsentan and ambrisentan. Sildenafil, a selective inhibitor of cGMP specific phosphodiesterase type 5 (PDE5), was approved for the treatment of PAH in 2005. It is marketed for PAH as Revatio®. Tadalafil (currently marketed as Cialis® for erectile dysfunction) is currently is Phase III trials. Vasoactive intestinal peptide by inhalation should enter clinical trials for PAH in 2007. PRX-08066 is a serotonin antagonist currently being developed for hypoxic pulmonary hypertension.
Atrial septostomy is a surgical procedure that creates a communication between the right and left atria. It relieves pressure on the right side of the heart, but at the cost of lower oxygen levels in blood (hypoxia). It is best performed in experienced centers. Lung transplantation cures pulmonary arterial hypertension, but leaves the patient with the complications of transplantation, and a survival of about 5 years.
Pulmonary thromboendarterectomy (PTE) is a surgical procedure that is used for chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension. It is the surgical removal of an organized thrombus (clot) along with the lining of the pulmonary artery; it is a large and very difficult procedure that is currently performed in a few select centers. Case series show remarkable success in most patients.
Treatment for hypoxic and miscellaneous varieties of pulmonary hypertension have not been established. However, studies of several agents are currently enrolling patients. Many physicians will treat these diseases with the same medications as for PAH, until better options become available.
The NIH IPAH registry from the 1980s showed an "untreated" median survival of 2–3 years from time of diagnosis, with the cause of death usually being right ventricular failure (cor pulmonale). Although this figure is widely quoted, it is probably irrelevant today. Outcomes have changed dramatically over the last two decades. This may be because of newer drug therapy, better overall care, and earlier diagnosis (lead time bias). A recent outcome study of those patients who had started treatment with bosentan (Tracleer®) showed that 86% patients were alive at 3 years. With multiple agents now available, combination therapy is increasingly used. Impact of these agents on survival is not known, since many of them have been developed only recently. It would not be unreasonable to expect median survival to extend past 10 years in the near future.
There are three different time zones called Eastern Standard Time Zone:
The Decameron is a collection of 100 short stories. It was written by the Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio around 1350. In the book, ten friends, seven young women and three young men, leave the city of Florence because of the plague and stay in a large house in the countryside. Each day, they entertain each other by taking turns to tell stories. The stories are of different types. Some are romantic, some are erotic, some are comedies and some are tragedies.
Other writers have used the stories for ideas. Many paintings have been done which illustrate the stories. The picture to the right shows a scene from the story of "The Pot of Basil" in which Isabella buries the head of her murdered lover Ferdinand inside a potplant.
Lung transplant
Commodity is a term with distinct meanings in both business and in Marxian political economy. For the former, it is a product, that is traded solely on the basis of price. For Marxian political economy it means wares offered for exchange.
In the world of business, a commodity is a product, good or service that is traded based solely on its price, rather than quality and features. Examples include: electricity (most users of electric power are only concerned with energy consumption; only a minority of users are concerned with the quality and technical details of voltage and frequency deviations), wheat, bulk chemicals such as sulfuric acid, metals, and even orange juice.
In the original and simplified sense, "commodities" were things of value, of uniform quality, that were produced in large quantities by many different producers; the items from each different producer are considered as of the same value.
Wheat is an example of a soft commodity. Wheat from many different farms comes together. Generally, it is all traded at the same price; wheat from farm A has not another price than wheat from farm B. Some uniform standard of quality is assumed. (There may be various standards leading to different pools: one say for genetically modified wheat, and one for unmodified wheat.)
Markets for trading commodities can be very efficient, particularly if the division into pools matches demand segments. These markets will quickly respond to changes in supply and demand to find a price.
In classical political economy and especially Karl Marx's critique of political economy, a commodity is simply any good or service offered as a product for sale on the market. Some items are also seen as being treated "as if" they were commodities, e.g. human labour or labor power, works of art and natural resources, even though they may not be produced specifically for the market, or be non-reproducible goods.
Marx's analysis of the commodity is intended to help solve the problem of what establishes the economic value of goods, using the labor theory of value. This problem was extensively debated by Adam Smith, David Ricardo and Karl Rodbertus-Jagetzow among others. Value and price are not equivalent terms in economics, and theorising the specific relationship of value to market price has been a challenge for both liberal and Marxist economists.
To understand the concept of a commodity, consider a chair. It is a commodity if the chair is a tradeable product of human work possessing a social use-value. By contrast, a fallen log of deadwood sat upon in the forest is not a commodity, as it was not produced by human work for the purpose of trade. A chair created by a hobbyist as a gift to someone is not a commodity. Nor is a chair a commodity (as a chair) if its only use would be as scrap firewood (unless one purchases a chair specifically to chop it up for fire wood). A chair that nobody could sit on has no use-value, and cannot be a commodity (unless it has an ornamental value, e.g. in a doll's house).
Commodity market
Commodity markets are markets where raw or primary products are exchanged. These raw commodities are traded on regulated commodities exchanges, in which they are bought and sold in standardized contracts.
This article focuses on the history and current debates regarding global commodity markets. It covers physical product (food, metals, electricity) markets but not the ways that services, including those of governments, nor investment, nor debt, can be seen as a commodity. Articles on reinsurance markets, stock markets, bond markets and currency markets cover those concerns separately and in more depth. One focus of this article is the relationship between simple commodity money and the more complex instruments offered in the commodity markets.
See List of traded commodities for some commodities and their trading units and places.
The modern commodity markets have their roots in the trading of agricultural products. While wheat and corn, cattle and pigs, were widely traded using standard instruments in the 19th century in the United States, other basic foodstuffs such as soybeans were only added quite recently in most markets. For a commodity market to be established, there must be very broad consensus on the variations in the product that make it acceptable for one purpose or another.
The economic impact of the development of commodity markets is hard to over-estimate. Through the 19th century "the exchanges became effective spokesmen for, and innovators of, improvements in transportation, warehousing, and financing, which paved the way to expanded interstate and international trade."
Historically, dating from ancient Sumerian use of sheep or goats, or other peoples using pigs, rare seashells, or other items as commodity money, people have sought ways to standardize and trade contracts in the delivery of such items, to render trade itself more smooth and predictable.
Commodity money and commodity markets in a crude early form are believed to have originated in Sumer where small baked clay tokens in the shape of sheep or goats were used in trade. Sealed in clay vessels with a certain number of such tokens, with that number written on the outside, they represented a promise to deliver that number. This made them a form of commodity money - more than an "I.O.U." but less than a guarantee by a nation-state or bank. However, they were also known to contain promises of time and date of delivery - this made them like a modern futures contract. Regardless of the details, it was only possible to verify the number of tokens inside by shaking the vessel or by breaking it, at which point the number or terms written on the outside became subject to doubt. Eventually the tokens disappeared, but the contracts remained on flat tablets. This represented the first system of commodity accounting.
However, the Commodity status of living things is always subject to doubt - it was hard to validate the health or existence of sheep or goats. Excuses for non-delivery were not unknown, and there are recovered Sumerian letters that complain of sickly goats, sheep that had already been fleeced, etc.
If a seller's reputation was good, individual "backers" or "bankers" could decide to take the risk of "clearing" a trade. The observation that trust is always required between market participants later led to credit money. But until relatively modern times, communication and credit were primitive.
Classical civilizations built complex global markets trading gold or silver for spices, cloth, wood and weapons, most of which had standards of quality and timeliness. Considering the many hazards of climate, piracy, theft and abuse of military fiat by rulers of kingdoms along the trade routes, it was a major focus of these civilizations to keep markets open and trading in these scarce commodities. Reputation and clearing became central concerns, and the states which could handle them most effectively became very powerful empires, trusted by many peoples to manage and mediate trade and commerce.
Commodity and Futures contracts are based on what’s termed "Forward" Contracts. Early on these "forward" contracts (agreements to buy now, pay and deliver later) were used as a way of getting products from producer to the consumer. These typically were only for food and agricultural Products. Forward contracts have evolved and have been standardized into what we know today as futures contracts. Although more complex today, early “Forward” contracts for example, were used for rice in seventeenth century Japan. Modern "forward", or futures agreements, began in Chicago in the 1840s, with the appearance of the railroads. Chicago, being centrally located, emerged as the hub between Midwestern farmers and producers and the east coast consumer population centers.
"Hedging", a common (and sometimes mandatory) practice of farming cooperatives, insures against a poor harvest by purchasing futures contracts in the same commodity. If the cooperative has significantly less of its product to sell due to weather or insects, it makes up for that loss with a profit on the markets, since the overall supply of the crop is short everywhere that suffered the same conditions.
Whole developing nations may be especially vulnerable, and even their currency tends to be tied to the price of those particular commodity items until it manages to be a fully developed nation. For example, one could see the nominally fiat money of Cuba as being tied to sugar prices, since a lack of hard currency paying for sugar means less foreign goods per peso in Cuba itself. In effect, Cuba needs a hedge against a drop in sugar prices, if it wishes to maintain a stable quality of life for its citizens.
In addition, delivery day, method of settlement and delivery point must all be specified. Typically, trading must end two (or more) business days prior to the delivery day, so that the routing of the shipment (which for soybeans is 30,000 kilograms or 1,102 bushels) can be finalized via ship or rail, and payment can be settled when the contract arrives at any delivery point.
U.S. soybean futures, for example, are of standard grade if they are "GMO or a mixture of GMO and Non-GMO No. 2 yellow soybeans of Indiana, Ohio and Michigan origin produced in the U.S.A. (Non-screened, stored in silo)," and of deliverable grade if they are "GMO or a mixture of GMO and Non-GMO No. 2 yellow soybeans of Iowa, Illinois and Wisconsin origin produced in the U.S.A. (Non-screened, stored in silo)." Note the distinction between states, and the need to clearly mention their status as "GMO" ("Genetically Modified Organism") which makes them unacceptable to most "organic" food buyers.
Similar specifications apply for orange juice, cocoa, sugar, wheat, corn, barley, pork bellies, milk, feedstuffs, fruits, vegetables, other grains, other beans, hay, other livestock, meats, poultry, eggs, or any other commodity which is so traded.
The concept of an interchangeable deliverable or guaranteed delivery is always to some degree a fiction. Trade in commodities is like trade in any other physical product or service. No magic of the commodity contract itself makes "units" of the product totally uniform nor gets it to the delivery point safely and on time.
Cotton, kilowatt-hours of electricity, board feet of wood, long distance minutes, royalty payments due on artists' works, and other products and services have been traded on markets of varying scale, with varying degrees of success. One issue that presents major difficulty for creators of such instruments is the liability accruing to the purchaser:
Unless the product or service can be guaranteed or insured to be free of liability based on where it came from and how it got to market, e.g. kilowatts must come to market free from legitimate claims for smog death from coal burning plants, wood must be free from claims that it comes from protected forests, royalty payments must be free of claims of plagiarism or piracy, it becomes impossible for sellers to guarantee a uniform delivery.
Generally, governments must provide a common regulatory or insurance standard and some release of liability, or at least a backing of the insurers, before a commodity market can begin trading. This is a major source of controversy in for instance the energy market, where desirability of different kinds of power generation varies drastically. In some markets, e.g. Toronto, Canada, surveys established that customers would pay 10-15% more for energy that was not from coal or nuclear, but strictly from renewable sources such as wind.
However, if there are two or more standards of risk or quality, as there seem to be for electricity or soybeans, it is relatively easy to establish two different contracts to trade in the more and less desirable deliverable separately. If the consumer acceptance and liability problems can be solved, the product can be made interchangeable, and trading in such units can begin.
Since the detailed concerns of industrial and consumer markets vary widely, so do the contracts, and "grades" tend to vary significantly from country to country. A proliferation of contract units, terms, and futures contracts have evolved,
combined into an extremely sophisticated range of financial instruments.
These are more than one-to-one representations of units of a given type of commodity, and represent more than simple futures contracts for future deliveries. These serve a variety of purposes from simple gambling to price insurance.
The underlying of futures contracts are no longer restricted to commodities.
Building on the infrastructure and credit and settlement networks established for food and precious metals, many such markets have proliferated drastically in the late 20th century. Oil was the first form of energy so widely traded, and the fluctuations in the oil markets are of particular political interest.
Some commodity market speculation is directly related to the stability of certain states, e.g. during the Gulf War, speculation on the survival of the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Similar political stability concerns have from time to time driven the price of oil. Some argue that this is not so much a commodity market but more of an assassination market speculating on the survival (or not) of Saddam or other leaders whose personal decisions may cause oil supply to fluctuate by military action.
The oil market is, however, an exception. Most markets are not so tied to the politics of volatile regions - even natural gas tends to be more stable, as it is not traded across oceans by tanker as extensively.
Developing countries (democratic or not) have been moved to harden their currencies, accept IMF rules, join the WTO, and submit to a broad regime of reforms that amount to a "hedge" against being isolated. China's entry into the WTO signalled the end of truly isolated nations entirely managing their own currency and affairs. The need for stable currency and predictable clearing and rules-based handling of trade disputes, has led to a global trade hegemony - many nations "hedging" on a global scale against each other's anticipated "protectionism", were they to fail to join the WTO.
There are signs, however, that this regime is far from perfect. U.S. trade sanctions against Canadian softwood lumber (within NAFTA) and foreign steel (except for NAFTA partners Canada and Mexico) in 2002 signalled a shift in policy towards a tougher regime perhaps more driven by political concerns - jobs, industrial policy, even sustainable forestry and logging practices.
Commodity thinking is undergoing a more direct revival thanks to the theorists of "natural capital" whose products, some economists argue, are the only genuine commodities - air, water, and calories we consume being mostly interchangeable when they are free of pollution or disease. Whether we wish to think of these things as tradeable commodities rather than birthrights has been a major source of controversy in many nations.
Most types of environmental economics consider the shift to measuring them inevitable, arguing that reframing political economy to consider the flow of these basic commodities first and foremost, helps avoids use of any military fiat except to protect "natural capital" itself, and basing credit-worthiness more strictly on commitment to preserving biodiversity aligns the long-term interests of ecoregions, societies, and individuals. They seek relatively conservative sustainable development schemes that would be amenable to measuring well-being over long periods of time, typically "seven generations", in line with Native American thought.
However, this is not the only way in which commodity thinking interacts with ecologists' thinking. Hedging began as a way to escape the consequences of damage done by natural conditions. It has matured not only into a system of interlocking guarantees, but also into a system of indirectly trading on the actual damage done by weather, using "weather derivatives". For a price, this relieves the purchaser of the following types of concerns:
"Will a freeze hurt the Brazilian coffee crop? Will there be a drought in the U.S. Corn Belt? What are the chances that we will have a cold winter, driving natural gas prices higher and creating havoc in Florida orange areas? What is the status of El Niño?"
Weather trading is just one example of "negative commodities", units of which represent harm rather than good.
"Economy is three fifths of ecology" argues Mike Nickerson, one of many economic theorists who holds that nature's productive services and waste disposal services are poorly accounted for. One way to fairly allocate the waste disposal capacity of nature is "cap and trade" market structure that is used to trade toxic emissions rights in the United States, e.g. SO2. This is in effect a "negative commodity", a right to throw something away.
In this market, the atmosphere's capacity to absorb certain amounts of pollutants is measured, divided into units, and traded amongst various market players. Those who emit more SO2 must pay those who emit less. Critics of such schemes argue that unauthorized or unregulated emissions still happen, and that "grandfathering" schemes often permit major polluters, such as the state governments' own agencies, or poorer countries, to expand emissions and take jobs, while the SO2 output still floats over the border and causes death.
In practice, political pressure has overcome most such concerns and it is questionable whether this is a capacity that depends on U.S. clout: The Kyoto Protocol established a similar market in global greenhouse gas emissions without U.S. support.
This highlights one of the major issues with global commodity markets of either the positive or negative kind. A community must somehow believe that the commodity instrument is real, enforceable, and well worth paying for.
A very substantial part of the anti-globalization movement opposes the commodification of currency, national sovereignty, and traditional cultures.
The capacity to repay debt, as in the current global credit money regime anchored by the Bank for International Settlements, does not in their view correspond to measurable benefits to human well-being worldwide. They seek a fairer way for societies to compete in the global markets that will not require conversion of natural capital to natural resources, nor human capital to move to developed nations in order to find work.
Some economic systems by green economists would replace the "gold standard" with a "biodiversity standard". It remains to be seen if such plans have any merit other than as political ways to draw attention to the way capitalism itself interacts with life.
While classical, neoclassical, and Marxist approaches to economics tend to treat labor differently, they are united in treating nature as a resource.
The green economists and the more conservative environmental economics argue that not only natural ecologies, but also the life of the individual human being is treated as a commodity by the global markets. A good example is the IPCC calculations cited by the Global Commons Institute as placing a value on a human life in the developed world "15x higher" than in the developing world, based solely on the ability to pay to prevent climate change.
Accepting this result, some argue that to put a price on both is the most reasonable way to proceed to optimize and increase that value relative to other goods or services. This has led to efforts in measuring well-being, to assign a commercial "value of life", and to the theory of Natural Capitalism - fusions of green and neoclassical approaches - which focus predictably on energy and material efficiency, i.e. using far less of any given commodity input to achieve the same service outputs as a result.
Indian economist Amartya Sen, applying this thinking to human freedom itself, argued in his 1999 book "Development as Freedom" that human free time was the only real service, and that sustainable development was best defined as freeing human time. Sen won The Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel in 1999 (sometimes incorrectly called the "Nobel Prize in Economics") and based his book on invited lectures he gave at the World Bank.
Political economy
Political economy was the original term for the study of production, the acts of buying and selling, and their relationships to laws, customs and government.
It developed in the 17th century as the study of the economies of states which placed the theory of property in the theory of government.
Some political economists proposed the (first introduced by John Locke, developed by Adam Smith and later Karl Marx), according to which "labour" is the real source of value. Many political economists also looked at the accelerating development of technology, whose role in economic and social relationships grew ever more important.
In late 19th century, the term "political economy" was generally replaced by the term economics, which was used by those seeking to place the study of economy on a mathematical basis, rather than studying the relationships within production and consumption.
In the present, "political economy" means a variety of different, but related, approaches to studying economic and political behavior, which range from combining economics with other fields, to using different fundamental assumptions which challenge those of orthodox economics:
Because political economy is not a unified discipline, there are a variety of studies that use the term which have overlapping subject matter, but radically different viewpoints.
Sociology is the study of the effects of involvement in society on individuals as members of groups, and how this changes their ability to function. Many sociologists begin from a framework of production determining relationship drawn from Karl Marx.
Anthropology often studies political economy by studying the relationship between the world capitalist system and local cultures.
Psychology is frequently the fulcrum around which political economy centers, in that it deals with decision making, not as being a black box whose effects are seen only in price decisions, but as being a source of study, and therefore the assumptions in a model of political economy.
History since it documents change over time, is often used as a means of arguing in political economy, and often historical works have a framework of political economy which they assume or argue as the basis for the narrative structure.
Economics, because it studies activity and price relationships and the effects of scarcity, grew out of political economy. It is often used "in" political economy to argue policy effects and study the results of actions, and it is often "in opposition" to political economy, in that many, if not most, practicing economists see political economy as being a hindrance to the operation of economic forces. From the point of view of political economy, economics is a branch of the entire study, and economics has, at its basis, a theory of political economy which should be open to examination.
Law since it concerns the creation of policy, or the mediation of policy ends through political acts which have specific individual results, is seen, in political economy, as both political capital and social infrastructure, on one hand - and as the result of the sociology of a society on the other.
Constitutional economics is the academic sub-discipline of economics and constitutionalism. It is often described as "the economic analysis of constitutional law." Constitutional economics tries to explain the selection of different constitutional rules "limiting the choices and activities of economic and political agencies." This is different from the approach of traditional economics. Also, constitutional economics studies how well economic decisions of the state agree with the existing constitutional economic rights of its citizens." For example, proper distribution of economic and financial resources of the state is a big question for every nation. Constitutional economics helps finding a legal mechanism to solve this problem.
Ecology is often involved in political economy, because human activity is one of the single largest effects on the environment, and because it is the suitability of the environment for human beings which is one of the central concerns of most human beings. The ecological effects of economic activity on the environment have spurred the creation of a great deal of research studying means of changing the incentives balance of the market economy. This work is particularly controversial in its interaction with economics, since it questions the fundamental econometric assumptions of market economics and their basic validity.
The My Lai Massacre (pronounced IPA: [mi.˧˩˥'lɐːj˧˧], Thảm sát Mỹ Lai, Thảm sát Sơn Mỹ) was the killing of hundreds of civilians by United States troops at the village of My Lai, Vietnam on March 16, 1968. A memorial in My Lai lists the names of 504 victims.
Before the massacre, U.S. troops were told that all of the "true" civilians would be at the market and the remaining people would be members of the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam. When the soldiers got to the village they did not find any NLF troops. Despite this, many troopers began to kill the villagers, mainly elderly people, women, and children.
The killings were stopped by an American helicopter pilot.
The killings were covered up by the United States Army, but eventually 26 soldiers were charged with being involved in the killings. However, only one, Lieutenant William Calley was found guilty.
The massacre caused public opinion in the United States to shift further towards wanting peace and wanting to get American troops out of Vietnam.
Henry II of England
Henry II of England, also known as Henry II Curtmantle (Le Mans, France, 5 March 1133 – Chinon, France, 6 July 1189) was also Count of Anjou, Count of Maine, Duke of Normandy, Duke of Aquitaine, Duke of Gascony, Count of Nantes, Lord of Ireland and, at various times, controlled parts of Wales, Scotland and western France. He was as much concerned with his empire in France as he was with England.
Henry was the son of Geoffrey V, Count of Anjou and Empress Matilda. He married Eleanor of Aquitaine in 1152 and was crowned king in 1154. His children included the future kings Richard, who would later lead many battles, and John. Although he was King of England, he never learnt the English language because his family had come over from Normandy in 1066. They spoke Norman French. Henry was intelligent and well educated. He spoke Latin fluently, which was the language of educated people in Europe at that time. All documents and laws were written in Latin.
Henry II fought against his brother Geoffrey in Montsoreau in 1152. Henry II's succession to the English throne was agreed in 1153. He finally came to the throne in 1154 upon Stephen I's death. He reduced the power of the barons who had become very powerful in Stephen's reign, and in 1166 introduced trial by jury.
Henry had an impact on law and order. Henry was unhappy at the law not being applied the same way across England. His changes helped to develop the common law. Laws would be applied in the same way in all towns and villages, so everyone was treated the same and with fairness. To do this, Henry made a number of changes:
Trial by Jury was a safer alternative to trial by ordeal, which could result in injury or death. In 1215, after Pope Innocent III banned priests from overseeing ordeals, jury trials became the most common way of judging criminals.
One of the big events that happened during his rule was the killing of Thomas Becket. Henry and Becket were old friends who found themselves in dispute once Becket became the Archbishop of Canterbury. Their dispute was over the role of the Church in England. Becket was trying to increase the power of church courts that had lost power when Henry had made major changes to the legal system. Four knights killed Becket in Canterbury Cathedral. Legend say that the knights had heard Henry say, "Who will rid me of this turbulent (rebellious) priest?"
Henry's first son, William, Count of Poitiers, died as a baby. In 1170, Henry and Eleanor's fifteen-year-old son, Henry, was crowned king (another reason for Henry's arguing with Thomas Becket, who did not agree with the Henry being crowned). Young Henry never ruled and is not in the list of the kings and queens of England; he became known as Henry the Young King so he was not confused with his nephew Henry III.
Henry and his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, had five sons and three daughters: William, Henry, Richard, Geoffrey, John, Matilda, Eleanor, and Joan. Henry tried to take Eleanor's lands from her (and from their son Richard). This led to conflict between Henry on the one side and his wife and sons on the other.
Henry also had many children outside of his marriage, including William de Longespee, Earl of Salisbury, whose mother was Ida, Countess of Norfolk; Geoffrey, Archbishop of York, son of a woman named Ykenai; Morgan, Bishop of Durham; and Matilda, Abbess of Barking.
Henry had constant struggles and battles against the French King Louis VII of France, but also many conflicts with his own wife and sons. His legitimate children were, he said, "the real bastards". When they were not fighting each other, they were fighting Henry. First Richard and young Henry fought their father for possession of lands they had been promised. They were defeated, and fined heavily. Later Eleanor and young Henry led a civil war against King Henry (1173/74). This Henry also won, just. Richard finally defeated Henry in a battle for Anjou (1189). Richard had the help of Philip II, who was now King of France.
Weak, ill and deserted by all except an illegitimate son, Henry died in France in 1189 aged 56. He ruled for 35 years and was succeeded by Richard.
Damascus (sometimes called the city of Jasmin) is the capital city of Syria. IIn Arabic, its name is Dimashq (دِمَشْق‎). It is the largest city in Syria with about 4.8 million people living there. Damascus is thought to be one of oldest cities in the world that still has people living in it. It is believed that people started living in Damascus as long ago as 8000 BC to 10,000 BC (12000 years ago).
Damascus is about 50 miles inland from the Mediterranean Sea, sheltered by the Anti-Lebanon Mountains.
Damascus used to play an important role as an important trade center. Now it is not because of political development in the region as well as the development of modern trade. Most goods produced in Damascus, as well as in Syria, are distributed to countries of the Arabian peninsula. Damascus also holds an annual international trade exposition in the fall since 1955.
There are many universities in Damascus, one public university: Damascus University. while other universities are private, such as the Syrian Private University and the aljazeera Private University.