title: Dirofilaria immitis

text: After treatment, the dog must rest, and exercise is to be heavily reduced for several weeks so as to give its body sufficient time to absorb the dead worms without ill effect. Otherwise, if the dog is under exertion, dead worms may break loose and travel to the lungs, potentially causing respiratory failure and sudden death. According to the American Heartworm Society, the administering of aspirin to dogs infected with heartworms is no longer recommended due to a lack of evidence of clinical benefit, and aspirin may be contraindicated in several cases. Aspirin had previously been recommended for its effects on platelet adhesion and the reduction of vascular damage caused by the heartworms.


title: Dirofilaria immitis

text: The course of treatment is not completed until several weeks later, when the microfilariae are dealt with in a separate course of treatment. Once heartworm tests are negative and no surviving worm is detected, the treatment is considered a success, and the patient is effectively cured.


title: Dirofilaria immitis

text: Surgical removal of the adult heartworms as a form of treatment may also be indicated, especially in advanced cases with substantial heart involvement and damage.


title: Dirofilaria immitis

text: Prevention of heartworm infection can be obtained through a number of veterinary drugs. The drugs approved for use in the US are ivermectin (sold under the brand names Heartgard, Iverhart, and several other generic versions), milbemycin (Interceptor Flavor Tabs and Sentinel Flavor Tabs) and moxidectin (Simparica Trio) administered as chewable tablets. Moxidectin is also available in both a six-month and 12-month sustained-release injection, ProHeart 6 and ProHeart 12, respectively, administered by veterinarians. This injectable form of moxidectin was taken off the market in the United States due to safety concerns in 2004, but the FDA returned a newly formulated ProHeart 6 to the market in 2008. ProHeart 6 remains on the market in many other countries, including Canada and Japan. Its sister product, ProHeart 12, is used extensively in Australia and Asia as a 12-month injectable preventive. It was approved for use in the United States by the FDA in July 2019. Topical treatments are available, as well. Advantage Multi (imidacloprid plus moxidectin) Topical Solution, uses moxidectin for control and prevention of roundworms, hookworms, heartworms, and whipworms, as well as imidacloprid to kill adult fleas. Selamectin (Revolution) is a topical preventive likewise administered monthly, and can also be used to control fleas, ticks, and mites.


title: Dirofilaria immitis

text: Preventive drugs are highly effective, and when regularly administered, have been shown to protect more than 99% of dogs and cats from heartworm. Most compromises in protection result from the failure to properly administer the drugs during seasonal transmission periods. In regions where the temperature is consistently above 14 °C (57 °F) year-round, a continuous prevention schedule is recommended.


title: Dirofilaria immitis

text: Due to newly emerging resistant strains of heartworms, which no macrocyclic lactone (heartworm prevention) can protect against, the American Heartworm Society recommends dogs be on a repellent and a heartworm preventive. The repellent, such as Vectra 3-D, keeps mosquitoes from feeding on the dog and transmitting the L stage worms. If a dog is bitten, the heartworm preventive takes over when administered. If a mosquito feeds on a heartworm positive dog on a repellent, they do not live long enough for the microfilaria they ingested to molt into the infective L larva. Vectra 3-D was tested using thousands of mosquitoes infected with the resistant heartworm strain JYD34. In the control group that was given only a placebo, every dog contracted heartworms. In the experimental group that was given only Vectra 3-D, two of eight dogs contracted heartworms and had an average of 1.5 adult worms each. In the experimental group given both heartworm prevention and Vectra 3-D, one dog was infected with L stage larvae that did not mature into adulthood due to the heartworm prevention. Using a repellent and a prevention is at least 95% effective.


title: Dirofilaria immitis

text: Ivermectin, even with lapses up to four months between doses, still provides 95% protection from adult worms. This period is called the reach-back effect. Since dogs are susceptible to heartworms, they should be tested annually before they start preventive treatment. Annual heartworm testing is highly recommended for pet owners who choose to use minimal dosing schedules. Testing a dog annually for heartworms and other internal parasites is a fundamental part of a complete heartworm prevention program, and is also recommended for dogs who are already on a monthly prevention program.


title: Dirofilaria immitis

text: While dogs are a natural host for "D. immitis", cats are atypical hosts. Because of this, differences between canine and feline heartworm diseases are significant. The majority of heartworm larvae do not survive in cats, so unlike in dogs, a typical infection in cats is two to five worms. The lifespan of heartworms is considerably shorter in cats, only two to three years, and most infections in cats do not have circulating microfilariae. Cats are also more likely to have aberrant migration of heartworm larvae, resulting in infections in the brain or body cavities.


title: Dirofilaria immitis

text: The infection rate in cats is 1–5% of that in dogs in endemic areas. Both indoor and outdoor cats are infected. The mosquito vector is known to enter homes.


title: Dirofilaria immitis

text: The vascular disease in cats that occurs when the L larvae invade the pulmonary arteries is more severe than in dogs. A syndrome related to this inflammatory reaction has been identified in cats: heartworm-associated respiratory disease, which can occur three to four months after the initial infection, and is caused by the presence of the L larvae in the vessels. The subsequent inflammation of the pulmonary vasculature and lungs can be easily misdiagnosed as feline asthma or allergic bronchitis.


title: Dirofilaria immitis

text: Obstruction of pulmonary arteries due to emboli from dying worms is more likely to be fatal in cats than dogs because of less collateral circulation and fewer vessels. Heartworms can live for 2 to 3 years in cats.


title: Dirofilaria immitis

text: Acute heartworm disease in cats can result in shock, vomiting, diarrhea, fainting, and sudden death. Chronic infection can cause loss of appetite, weight loss, lethargy, exercise intolerance, coughing, and difficulty breathing. Some cats' immune systems are able to clear a heartworm infection, though the immune system response can cause many of the same symptoms. Also, even if the infection resolves, respiratory damage can cause some symptoms to persist beyond it.


title: Dirofilaria immitis

text: Diagnosis of heartworm infection in cats is problematic. Like in dogs, a positive ELISA test for heartworm antigen is a very strong indication of infection. However, the likelihood of a positive antigen test depends on the number of adult female worms present. If only male worms are present, the test will be negative. Even with female worms, an antigen test usually only becomes positive seven to eight months after infection. Therefore, a cat may have significant clinical signs long before the development of a positive test. Heartworm-associated respiratory disease can be found in cats that never develop adult heartworms and therefore never have a positive antigen test.


title: Dirofilaria immitis

text: An antibody test is also available for feline heartworm infection. It will be positive in the event of exposure to "D. immitis", so a cat that has successfully eliminated an infection may still be positive for up to three months. The antibody test is more sensitive than the antigen test, but it does not provide direct evidence of adult infection. It can, however, be considered specific for diagnosing previous larval infections, and therefore fairly specific for heartworm-associated respiratory disease.


title: Dirofilaria immitis

text: X-rays of the chest of a heartworm-infected cat may show an increased width of the pulmonary arteries and focal or diffuse opacities in the lungs. Echocardiography is a fairly sensitive test in cats. Adult heartworms appear as double-lined hyperechoic structures within the heart or pulmonary arteries.


title: Dirofilaria immitis

text: Heartworm prevention for cats is available as ivermectin (Heartgard for Cats), milbemycin (Interceptor), or the topical selamectin (Revolution for Cats) and Advantage Multi (imidacloprid + moxidectin) topical solution. Ivermectin, milbemycin, and selamectin are approved for use in cats in the US.


title: Dirofilaria immitis

text: Arsenic compounds have been used for heartworm adulticide treatment in cats, as well as dogs, but seem more likely to cause pulmonary reactions. A significant number of cats develop pulmonary embolisms a few days after treatment. The effects of melarsomine are poorly studied in cats. Due to a lack of studies showing a clear benefit of treatment and the short lifespan of heartworms in cats, adulticide therapy is not recommended, and no drugs are approved in the US for this purpose in cats.


title: Dirofilaria immitis

text: Treatment typically consists of putting the cat on a monthly heartworm preventive and a short-term corticosteroid. Surgery has also been used successfully to remove adult worms. The prognosis for feline heartworm disease is guarded.


title: Dirofilaria immitis

text: Dirofilaria are important medical parasites, but diagnosis is unusual and is often only made after an infected person happens to have a chest X-ray following granuloma formation in the lung. The nodule itself may be large enough to resemble lung cancer on the X-ray, and requires a biopsy for a pathologic assessment. This has been shown to be the most significant medical consequence of human infection by the canine heartworm. Patients are infected with the parasite through the bite of an infected mosquito, which is the same mechanism that causes heartworm infection in dogs.


title: Dirofilaria immitis

text: "D. immitis" is one of many species that can cause infection in dogs and humans. It was thought to infect the human eye, with most cases reported from the southeastern United States. However, these cases are now thought to be caused by a closely related parasite of raccoons, "Dirofilaria tenuis". Several hundred cases of subcutaneous infections in humans have been reported in Europe, but these are almost always caused by another closely related parasite, "Dirofilaria repens", rather than the dog heartworm. There are proven "D. immitis" infections, but humans rarely get infected with heartworms due to the larvae never fully maturing. When the heartworm microfilariae migrate through the skin, they often die since heartworms cannot survive in a human host, even if they make it into the bloodstream. Once the heartworms die, the immune system in the human body reacts to their tissue with inflammation as it tries to destroy the heartworms. When this happens, the condition is called pulmonary dirofilariasis. Heartworms in humans is not a serious problem unless they are causing pain, discomfort, and other noticeable symptoms.


title: Death of Rey Rivera

text: The body of Rey Rivera was found on May 24, 2006, inside the historic Belvedere Hotel in the Mount Vernon neighborhood of Baltimore, Maryland. Although the event was ruled a probable suicide by the Baltimore Police Department, the circumstances of Rivera's death are mysterious and disputed.


title: Death of Rey Rivera

text: Rey Omar Rivera was born on June 10, 1973, to Angel and Maria Rivera. At the time of his disappearance, Rivera was a 32-year-old finance writer for The Oxford Club as a video contractor. Rivera and his wife Allison had relocated from California to Baltimore to work for his longtime friend Porter Stansberry as a writer and videographer for Stansberry's investment company, Stansberry & Associates Investment Research, a subsidiary of Agora Publishing. Rivera had stopped working for the company six months prior to his death in May 2006, but according to Stansberry, did freelance work for another subsidiary of Agora Publishing.


title: Death of Rey Rivera

text: Rivera went missing from his residence on May 16, 2006, after receiving a phone call from the Agora Publishing switchboard, according to a guest staying at the Rivera home at the time. After several days of searching for clues on Rivera's whereabouts, his wife's parents found his car located in a parking lot off of Saint Paul Street in Mount Vernon near his workplace. Rivera's coworkers went to the top of a parking structure near where the car was discovered, and noticed a hole in the roof of the south wing of the Belvedere Hotel. Police soon discovered Rivera's partially decomposed body inside the conference room under the roof's hole.


title: Death of Rey Rivera

text: As police began to analyze the case, numerous aspects seemed odd about Rivera jumping off the main roof of the Belvedere Hotel. Partly due to the hotel's mansard roof, there was a considerable horizontal distance between the hotel tower and the location of the hole in the lower roof. The vertical fall of approximately 177 feet (building height 188 ft = 57 meters) would have taken approximately 3.3 seconds. This suggests if he did come from the roof, and traveled a horizontal distance of 43 feet (13 meters) before impact, he would have had to have a horizontal speed of 10 miles per hour which is between a fast jog and a sprint for an average fit male wearing sports shoes. Rey was wearing flip flops or barefoot and would have had a maximum run up of just over 15 feet or 5 meters (2.5 seconds).


title: Death of Rey Rivera

text: An additional theory is that Rivera may have jumped from a ledge several floors below the roof, but it would have been difficult for Rivera to access the ledge from the privately owned condominiums and offices that had windows onto the ledge.


title: Death of Rey Rivera

text: Rivera's eyeglasses and phone were found relatively intact on the lower roof near the hole. Because circumstances surrounding the incident are unclear, the medical examiner marked Rivera's manner of death as "undetermined".


title: Death of Rey Rivera

text: According to Stansberry's publicist, "There was no gag order or direction given to employees to not speak to the press, law enforcement or any other party." After searching the house for evidence, Allison found a note behind Rivera's computer. The confusing note included the names of prominent figures in Hollywood, movie titles, Freemasonry quotations, and additional ramblings. The Federal Bureau of Investigation analyzed the note and ruled it not to be suicidal in nature. Police would soon step back from their investigation into the case after ruling Rivera's death as a probable suicide.


title: Death of Rey Rivera

text: In 2021, new theories about the case emerged in a new investigation carried out by the forensic expert, Miryam Moya, which invalidates the theory of suicide, focusing on the hit-and-run as a possible cause of death. Her research has been published in the book "Rey Rivera, Suicide or Homicide?".


title: Rockland County, New York

text: Rockland County is the southernmost county on the west side of the Hudson River in the U.S. state of New York. It is part of the New York metropolitan area. It is about from the Bronx at their closest points. The county's population, as of the 2020 United States Census, is 338,329, making it the state's third-most densely populated county outside New York City (after Nassau and neighboring Westchester Counties, respectively). The county seat is New City. Rockland County is accessible via the New York State Thruway, which crosses the Hudson to Westchester at the Tappan Zee Bridge ten exits up from the NYC border, as well as the Palisades Parkway five exits up from the George Washington Bridge. The county's name derives from "rocky land", as the area has been aptly described, largely due to the Hudson River Palisades. This county is home to one of the most prominent towns in American history. Congers, NY is home to the stepping grounds of Commander-In-Chief George Washington.


title: Rockland County, New York

text: Rockland County is the smallest county by area in New York outside New York City. It comprises five towns and nineteen incorporated villages, with numerous unincorporated villages (sixteen) and hamlets. Rockland County is designated as a Preserve America Community, and nearly a third of the county's area is parkland. The county has the largest Jewish population percentage of any U.S. county, at 31.4%, or 90,000 residents. Rockland also ranked 31st on the list of highest-income counties by median household income in the United States, with a median household income of $82,534 according to the 2010 census.


title: Rockland County, New York

text: The area that became Rockland County was originally inhabited by Algonquian-speaking Native Americans, including Munsees, or Lenni Lenape. The Tappan tribe had a particularly noteworthy presence in the area, extending from present-day Nyack, south to Sparkill and Tappan, down the Hackensack River valley through present-day Bergen County, NJ, and also along the Palisades and Hudson shore all the way down to present-day Edgewater, NJ.


title: Rockland County, New York

text: In 1609, Henry Hudson was the first major Dutch explorer to arrive in the area. Hudson, thinking he had found the legendary "Northwest Passage", sailed on the "Half Moon" up the river that would one day bear his name, and sailing through the area that is now Haverstraw before exploring north towards what is now Albany.


title: Rockland County, New York

text: In the years before 1664 when the area was formally a Dutch colony called New Netherland, present-day Rockland did not have formal European settlements. However, individuals did explore the area and made transactions with Tappan tribe for land with the idea that it could have future use. For example, in 1640, Dutch Captain David Pietersz. de Vries purchased from natives the area where the Sparkill Creek flows into the Hudson River.


title: Rockland County, New York

text: In 1664, the British Crown assumed control of New Netherland from the Dutch. In June 1664, the Berkeley-Carteret land grant established the colony of New Jersey, dividing present-day Rockland and Bergen Counties into separate political areas. The northern border of New Jersey was placed in a straight line from the Delaware River at present-day Port Jervis to the Hudson River at 41 degrees even North latitude, where the Palisades Cliffs pause and give way to Sneden's Landing in Orangetown. The state line remains there to this day, though various disagreements along the exact border were had over the years.


title: Rockland County, New York

text: In the 1670s, permanent Dutch settlers began to arrive with land grants, starting with the Tappan area. These settlers were eager to escape "city life", moving from Manhattan to Rockland. A number of unique, Dutch-style red sandstone houses still stand, and many place names in the county reveal their Dutch origin.


title: Rockland County, New York

text: In 1683, when the Duke of York (who became King James II of England) established the first 12 counties of New York, present-day Rockland County was part of Orange County, known then as "Orange County South of the Mountains". Orangetown was created at the same time under a royal grant, originally encompassing all of modern Rockland County. Around this time, as the English began to colonize Nyack and Tappan, the Native Americans began to leave Rockland in search of undisturbed land further north.


title: Rockland County, New York

text: The natural barrier of the Ramapo Mountains and the size of the county made carrying out governmental activities difficult. At one point, two governments were active, one on each side of the Ramapo Mountains, so Rockland split off from Orange in 1798 to form its own county. That same year, the county seat was transferred from Tappan to New City, where a new courthouse was built.


title: Rockland County, New York

text: Haverstraw was separated from Orangetown in 1719, and became a town in 1788; it included the present-day Clarkstown, Ramapo, and Stony Point. Clarkstown and Ramapo became towns in 1791, followed by Stony Point in 1865.


title: Rockland County, New York

text: During the American Revolution, when control of the Hudson River was viewed by the British as strategic to dominating the American territories, Rockland had skirmishes at Haverstraw, Nyack, and Piermont, and significant military engagements at the Battle of Stony Point, where General "Mad" Anthony Wayne earned his nickname. George Washington had headquarters for a time at John Suffern's tavern, the later site of the village of Suffern. British Major John André met with American traitor Benedict Arnold near Stony Point to buy the plans for the fortifications at West Point. André was captured with the plans in Tarrytown on his way back to the British lines; he was brought to Tappan for trial in the Tappan church, found guilty, hanged, and buried nearby. Still another important chapter in the story of the Revolution was written on May 5, 1783, when General Washington received Sir Guy Carleton at the DeWint House, where they discussed terms of a peace treaty. Two days later, Washington visited Sir Guy aboard a British war vessel H.M.S Perseverance. On this day, the king's navy fired its first salute to the flag of the United States of America.


title: Rockland County, New York

text: In the decades following the Revolution, Rockland became popular for its stone and bricks. Many buildings in New York City were built with bricks made in Rockland. These products, however, required quarrying in land that many later believed should be set aside as a preserve. Many unsuccessful efforts were made to turn much of the Hudson Highlands on the northern tip of the county into a forest preserve. Union Pacific Railroad president E. H. Harriman, though, donated land and large sums of money for the purchase of properties in the area of Bear Mountain. Bear Mountain/Harriman State Park became a reality in 1910 when Harriman's widow donated his lands to the state, and by 1914, more than an estimated one million people a year were coming to the park. After World War I, Rockland County became the most important sausage-making hub in New York.


title: Rockland County, New York

text: In 1911, Letchworth Village, an institution for the mentally disabled opened in Rockland County near Thiells. The institution gained national infamy in 1972, when an investigation by Geraldo Rivera revealed the patients there to having been housed in neglectful conditions. Letchworth closed in 1996.


title: Rockland County, New York

text: Rockland remained semirural until the 1950s, when the Palisades Interstate Parkway, Tappan Zee Bridge, and other major arteries were built. In the decades that followed, the county became a maturely developed suburb of New York City. As people moved up from the five boroughs (particularly the Bronx in the early years) the population flourished from 89,276 in 1950 to 338,329 in 2020.


title: Rockland County, New York

text: Rockland County lies just north of the New Jersey-New York border, west of Westchester County (across the Hudson River), and south of Orange County. Its east border is formed by the Tappan Zee portion of the Hudson River. The county's terrain ranges from 1,283' (391m) ASL on Rockhouse Mountain (northwest of Lake Welch) to approaching sea level along the Hudson River. According to the US Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 199.34 sq mi (516 km), of which 173.55 sq mi (449.49 km) are land and 25.79 sqmi (66.80 km) (13%) are covered by water. It is the state's smallest county outside the five boroughs of New York City.


title: Rockland County, New York

text: About 30% of Rockland County is devoted to parkland, belonging to either the five towns, incorporated villages, the state, or the county. These parks provide walking and hiking trails, ballfields, dog runs, historic sites, ponds, streams, salt marshes, and equestrian trails. Some popular state parks include Bear Mountain State Park on the northernmost tip of the county, Harriman State Park, also along the county's northern boundary, and Nyack Beach State Park along the Hudson River, with trails connecting to Rockland Lake State Park. The county hosts numerous public and private golf courses, with the towns of Orangetown, Ramapo, Stony Point, and Haverstraw all operating public golf courses within their towns. The Palisades Interstate Park Commission operates two golf courses in Rockland Lake State Park. Notable private courses in the county include Paramount Country Club, Manhattan Woods Golf Course (designed by PGA great Gary Player), and Rockland Country Club (Sparkill).


title: Rockland County, New York

text: As of the 2020 United States Census., 338,329 people and 100,438 households were residing in the county. The population density was 1,950/sq mi (753/km). The 107,002 housing units averaged 617/sq mi (238/km).


title: Rockland County, New York

text: Of the 107,002 households, 38% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 63% were married couples living together, 10% had a female householder with no husband present, and 23% were not families. Around 19% of households were made up of individuals, and 8% had someone living alone who was 65 or older. The average household size was 3.0 and the average family size was 3.5.


title: Rockland County, New York

text: The county's age distribution was 28.4% under 18, 8% from 18 to 24, 28% from 25 to 44, 24.30% from 45 to 64, and 12% who were 65 or older. The median age was 36 years. For every 100 women, there were 95 men. For every 100 women age 18 and over, there were 91 men.


title: Rockland County, New York

text: The median income for a household was $93,024 and for a family was $80,000. Males had a median income of $58,000 versus $39,000 for females. The per capita income for the county was $39,286. The mean, or average, income for a family in Rockland County is $73,500 according to the 2004 census. About 6% of families and 12.5% of the population were below the poverty line, including 14% of those under age 18 and 8% of those age 65 or over.


title: Rockland County, New York

text: As of the 2000 United States Census., 286,753 people, 92,675 households, and 70,989 families were residing in the county. The population density was 1,652/sq mi (638/km). The 94,973 housing units averaged 547/sq mi (211/km). Residents live closer together than the census numbers indicate, as 30% of the county is reserved as parkland. About 9% of residents reported speaking Spanish at home, 5% Yiddish, 3% French-based creole, 1.5% Italian, 1.3% Tagalog, 1.3% Hebrew, 1.2% French, and 1% Russian. Other languages spoken at home by at least 1000 people include Malayalam, Korean, Chinese, German, and Polish.


title: Rockland County, New York

text: The county is home to several Blue Ribbon School of Excellence Award winners, awarded by the U.S. Department of Education:


title: Rockland County, New York

text: The county is home to several colleges and universities. - State University of New York (SUNY): - Rockland Community College - Suffern, NY


title: Rockland County, New York

text: The Tappan Zee Bridge connects South Nyack in Rockland County and Tarrytown in Westchester County across the Hudson River in the Lower Hudson Valley of New York. The old bridge was replaced with a new span in 2017.


title: Rockland County, New York

text: The county is served by several major highways, including Interstate 87/287 (the New York Thruway), opening from Suffern to Yonkers in 1955. The old Tappan Zee Bridge opened the same year, connecting Rockland and Westchester, allowing Rockland County's population to grow rapidly. The Palisades Interstate Parkway, a project of master planner Robert Moses, and built between 1947 and 1958, connects the county directly to the George Washington Bridge due south. The Garden State Parkway opened in 1955, connecting New Jersey to I-87/287.


title: Rockland County, New York

text: The Transport of Rockland operates several local bus routes throughout the county, and the express bus Hudson Link routes to city centers and train stations in Tarrytown and White Plains in Westchester County. TOR provides connections to other neighborhood bus operations – Minitrans and connections to private commuter lines, Rockland Coaches and Short Line providing service to northern New Jersey and New York City.


title: Rockland County, New York

text: NJ Transit/Metro-North Railroad operates the Port Jervis Line, which stops at the Suffern Railroad Station and Sloatsburg Station, and the Pascack Valley Line, whose stops include Pearl River, Nanuet, and Spring Valley. in their respective hamlets and village of the same name. Connections on this line are available at Secaucus for service to Penn Station in Midtown Manhattan and service to the Meadowlands Sports Complex in East Rutherford, New Jersey. The southern terminus of both lines is Hoboken Terminal in New Jersey, where connections can be made to several NJ Transit bus lines, ferries, and PATH trains to New York City.


title: Rockland County, New York

text: Until 1958, Rockland County's eastern side was served by the New York Central Railroad's passenger service on the West Shore Railroad from Weehawken, New Jersey, opposite midtown Manhattan up through Tappan, West Nyack, Congers, and Haverstraw, on to the West Hudson shore cities of Newburgh, Kingston, and Albany. The service ran to West Haverstraw, in the north of the until 1959. The Erie Railroad ran train service on the Northern Branch through the southeastern corner of the county to Nyack up to 1966.


title: Rockland County, New York

text: NY Waterway operates a ferry service between Haverstraw and Ossining in Westchester County for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Commuters take the Transport of Rockland's Ferry Express route to the Haverstraw ferry terminal for service to Metro-North's Hudson Line service to Grand Central Terminal. Ferry service is typically suspended in the colder months when the Hudson River freezes over, and commuters must take shuttle buses across the Tappan Zee Bridge.


title: Rockland County, New York

text: All of Rockland County falls within the 17th Congressional District, along with central and western Westchester County. The district is represented by Congressman Mike Lawler.


title: Rockland County, New York

text: Rockland County government is led by a county executive. Republican Ed Day was first elected in 2013 and re-elected in 2017 & 2021. The previous county executive was Republican C. Scott Vanderhoef, who was re-elected in 2009 to his fifth four-year term. Day is the third county executive in Rockland history, with Vanderhoef having defeated the incumbent, John T. Grant (D), in 1993. Prior to 1985, Rockland County did not have a county executive.


title: Rockland County, New York

text: Rockland County has a county legislature made up of 17 members, elected from single-member districts. The Chairman of the Legislature is Democrat Jay Hood Jr. In the November 2019 election Republicans gained one seat, reducing the Democratic majority from 10–7 to 9–8. As of January 2020, the legislators are:


title: Rockland County, New York

text: The five towns of Rockland County are led by town supervisors and town boards. The villages encompassed in the towns are led by mayors and village trustees.


title: Rockland County, New York

text: There are three types of general trial courts in Rockland County: the New York Supreme Court, the County Court, and the Justice Courts. The Supreme Court is the trial level court of the New York State Unified Court System, which presents some confusion as the Supreme Court is the highest court of appeals in the federal system, as well as in most states (the Court of Appeals is the highest court in New York). The Supreme Court has broad authority over all categories of cases, both civil and criminal. Generally, the Supreme Court in Rockland County hears civil cases involving claims in excess of $25,000. While the Supreme Court has jurisdiction over criminal cases in most counties, this is handled by the County Courts. In Rockland, however, the Supreme Court does exercise jurisdiction over some criminal cases.


title: Rockland County, New York

text: The County Court is inferior to the Supreme Court and is authorized to hear criminal cases that have occurred in the county as well as limited jurisdiction over civil cases. The County Court handles felony cases exclusively and shares jurisdiction with the town and village justice courts on misdemeanor cases and other minor offenses and violations. The County Court's jurisdiction on civil cases is limited to those involving less than $25,000.


title: Rockland County, New York

text: Each of the towns and 15 of the villages have Justice Courts, which mostly hear routine traffic ticket cases, especially from the New York State Thruway and the Palisades Interstate Parkway. They also handle drunk driving charges, lower-level criminal misdemeanor matters, and occasionally perform arraignment on felonies (most felony proceedings are heard in County Court). These courts generally handle the highest volume of cases.


title: Rockland County, New York

text: Like most of the Hudson Valley, Rockland County historically voted Republican but in recent years narrowly voted Democratic. Between 1892 and 1992, Rockland County only voted Democratic three times–Lyndon B. Johnson's landslide victory of 1964, Franklin Delano Roosevelt's landslide victory in 1936 (in which it was the only New York City suburb to vote Democratic), and Woodrow Wilson's first campaign in 1912. Rockland shifted Democratic in 1992, and has since voted Republican once, in 2004 for George W. Bush. Despite this shift, national elections have remained close in Rockland County as compared to neighboring Westchester County, which has witnessed dependable double-digit Democratic victories since the 1990s.


title: Rockland County, New York

text: Rockland County hasn't voted for a popular vote loser since 1976, tied for the longest streak in the country with St. Joseph County, Indiana, and Caddo Parish, Louisiana. In 2016 and 2000, it voted for Hillary Clinton and Al Gore, respectively, both of whom lost the electoral college but won the popular vote. The longest bellwether county for electoral college victors is Clallam County, Washington.


title: Rockland County, New York

text: According to Scorecard.org, which integrates data from different sources including the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in 2002, Rockland County ranked among the worst 10% in the United States in terms of air releases. Recent EPA statistics show that a total of 66 presently active Rockland County facilities are currently regulated. In Scorecard's list of Top 10 polluters from 2002, the Lovett generating station in Tompkins Cove is the top polluter, releasing 1,523,339 pounds of toxic emissions. Studies were released in 2000 and in 2004 by the Clean Air Task Force to study the impacts of power plant emissions in the United States. This data for Rockland County shows that a total of $2,150,800 was paid in compensation for numerous illnesses caused by power plant pollution, including asthma attacks, heart attacks and death. The Lovett generating station was closed and dismantled prior to 2014. From 2015 to 2018, the Haverstraw Quarry owned and managed by CRH Tilcon and Oldcastle Materials was heavily fined for air and water pollution, including over-blasting, over-excavating, non-viable use of its NESCO unhealthy dust suppression systems and lethal dust & water runoffs into protected waterways. In the period from 2017 to 2020, Suez experienced instances of discolored water and odor complaints. During 2020, the Rockland County Health Dept. and New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) Conservationfound/investigated and informed Suez of untreated polluted water at Tilcon operated discharge points at a stream that flows into Lake DeForest. After discovery, Tilcon stopped pumping the waste. Higher cancer rates in Rockland County as compared to Manhattan associate towards drinking water quality, aging drink water infrastructure/storm drain runoff concerns.


title: Rockland County, New York

text: Recently, COVID-19 pandemic was first confirmed to have reached Rockland County on March 6, 2020. After the areas of Spring Valley and Monsey were identified as having the highest infection rates, County Executive Ed Day requested that state emergency management declare those areas a closed containment zone. As of July 4, 2021, there are a total of 47,027 COVID-19 cases and 966 deaths. At 14,450 cases per 100,000, Rockland had the greatest density of COVID-19 cases of any New York county. 47% of the population and 58% of the eligible population (aged 12 and over) have been vaccinated. The Orthodox Jewish community, the largest in the country, have some of the lowest vaccination rates in the state; Monsey's is the lowest in the state, at 17.8%, as of June 15, 2021.


title: Rockland County, New York

text: News reports confirmed that the first known case of polio in the United States in a decade was discovered in Rockland County in July 2022.


title: Rockland County, New York

text: In 2014, Clarkstown created a first-of-its-kind in New York State 2.3-megawatt solar system consisting of about 4,300 panels on top of a closed, highly regulated, flat shadeless 13-acre section of the former garbage landfill in West Nyack. The unit is sized to generate 3 million kilowatt-hours annually – enough power to supply about 200 homes, that provides one-third of the electric needs of the Town of Clarkstown government. The Clarkstown solar field project is at the maximum size that is currently allowed by New York State. The installation was projected to save taxpayers as much as $4 million over 30 years by reducing the amount of the town's annual electric bill – which is about $2 million and produce 10 percent of all the electricity that O&R gets through solar power. The project was installed in summer 2014, coming online in October.


title: Rockland County, New York

text: Paul W. Adler, the chairperson of the Rockland County's Jewish Community Relations Council, said in a 1997 "New York Times" article that "There are two reasons villages get formed in Rockland. One is to keep the Hasidim out and the other is to keep the Hasidim in."


title: Rockland County, New York

text: There are five towns in Rockland County. The most populous is Ramapo at 148,919, while the least populous is Stony Point, at 14,655, according to the 2020 US Census.


title: Rockland County, New York

text: There are eighteen incorporated villages in Rockland County after the April, 2022, dissolution of the Village of South Nyack, twelve of which are located at least partially in the town of Ramapo, and none of which are in Stony Point. There are seventeen Census-designated places and seven Hamlets within the five towns of Rockland County.


title: Battle of Hong Kong

text: The Battle of Hong Kong (8–25 December 1941), also known as the Defence of Hong Kong and the Fall of Hong Kong, was one of the first battles of the Pacific War in World War II. On the same morning as the attack on Pearl Harbor, forces of the Empire of Japan attacked the British Crown colony of Hong Kong, without declaring war against the British Empire. The Hong Kong garrison consisted of British, Indian and Canadian units, also the Auxiliary Defence Units and Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps (HKVDC).


title: Battle of Hong Kong

text: Within a week the defenders abandoned the 2 of the 3 territories of Hong Kong (Kowloon and New Territories) on the mainland, and less than two weeks later, with their last territory Hong Kong Island untenable, the colony surrendered.


title: Battle of Hong Kong

text: Britain first thought of Japan as a threat with the ending of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance in 1921, a threat that increased throughout the 1930s with the escalation of the Second Sino-Japanese War. On 21 October 1938 the Japanese occupied Canton (Guangzhou) and Hong Kong was surrounded. British defence studies concluded that Hong Kong would be extremely hard to defend in the event of a Japanese attack, but in the mid-1930s work began on improvements to defences including along the Gin Drinkers' Line. By 1940, the British determined to reduce the Hong Kong Garrison to only a symbolic size. Air Chief Marshal Sir Robert Brooke-Popham, the Commander-in-Chief of the British Far East Command argued that limited reinforcements could allow the garrison to delay a Japanese attack, gaining time elsewhere. Winston Churchill and the general staff named Hong Kong as an outpost, and decided against sending more troops. In September 1941, they reversed their decision and argued that additional reinforcements would provide a military deterrent against the Japanese and reassure Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek that Britain was serious about defending the colony.


title: Battle of Hong Kong

text: The plan for the defence of Hong Kong was that a delaying action would be fought in the New Territories and Kowloon peninsula to allow the destruction of vital infrastructure and stores there. The Gin Drinker's Line was expected to hold out for at least three weeks, following which all defenders would withdraw to Hong Kong Island which would be defended and use of the harbour denied until reinforcements could arrive from Singapore or the Philippines.


title: Battle of Hong Kong

text: According to the history manual of the United States Military Academy: "Japanese control of Canton, Hainan Island, French Indo-China, and Formosa virtually sealed the fate of Hong Kong well before the firing of the first shot". The British military in Hong Kong grossly underestimated the capabilities of the Japanese forces and downplayed assessments that the Japanese posed a serious threat as 'unpatriotic' and 'insubordinate'. US Consul Robert Ward, the highest ranking US official posted to Hong Kong in the period preceding the outbreak of hostilities, offered a first-hand explanation for the rapid collapse of defences in Hong Kong by saying that the local British community had insufficiently prepared itself or the Chinese populace for war besides highlighting the prejudiced attitudes held by those governing the Crown Colony of Hong Kong: "several of them (the British rulers) said frankly that they would rather turn the island over to the Japanese rather than to turn it over to the Chinese, by which they meant rather than employ Chinese to defend the colony they would surrender it to the Japanese".


title: Battle of Hong Kong

text: According to Ward, "when the real fighting came it was the British soldiery that broke and ran. The Eurasians fought well and so did the Indians but the Kowloon line broke when the Royal Scots gave way. The same thing happened on the mainland." Colonel Reynolds Condon, a US Army assistant military attaché who witnessed the battle and was taken prisoner by the Japanese, wrote up his observations on military preparedness before the commencement of hostilities and on the execution of operations thereafter.


title: Battle of Hong Kong

text: The 5/7th Battalion, Rajput Regiment took up garrison at Hong Kong in June 1937 followed by the 2/14th Battalion, Punjab Regiment in November 1940. Indian troops were also incorporated within several overseas regiments as for example the Hong Kong Singapore Royal Artillery Regiment which had Indian (Sikh) gunners. The Hong Kong Mule Corps was staffed almost entirely by Dogras and Punjabi Muslims. Medical personnel from the Indian Medical Service tended to those injured in combat. Ex-servicemen from India serving as security guards in Hong Kong also suffered "appallingly huge" casualties.


title: Battle of Hong Kong

text: Coastal defence batteries, including those at Stonecutters Island, Pak Sha Wan, Lyemun fort, Saiwan, Mount Collinson, Mount Parker, Belchers, Mount Davis, Jubilee Hill, Bokara, and Stanley, provided artillery support for ground operations until they were put out of action or they surrendered. Hong Kong and Singapore Royal Artillery, which was raised with troops recruited from Undivided India, also suffered heavy casualties during the Battle of Hong Kong and are commemorated with names inscribed on panels at the entrance to Sai Wan War Cemetery: 144 killed, 45 missing and 103 wounded.


title: Battle of Hong Kong

text: In late 1941, the British government accepted an offer by the Canadian Government to send a battalion of the Royal Rifles of Canada (from Quebec) and one of the Winnipeg Grenadiers (from Manitoba) and a brigade headquarters (1,975 personnel) to reinforce the Hong Kong garrison. "C Force", as it was known, arrived on 16 November on board the troopship and the armed merchant cruiser . A total of 96 officers, two Auxiliary Services supervisors and 1,877 other ranks disembarked. Included were two medical officers and two nurses (supernumerary to the regimental medical officers), two Canadian Dental Corps officers with assistants, three chaplains and a detachment of the Canadian Postal Corps. A soldier of the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps (RCAMC), had stowed away and was sent back to Canada.


title: Battle of Hong Kong

text: The Royal Rifles had served only in the Dominion of Newfoundland and New Brunswick, prior to posting to Hong Kong. The Winnipeg Grenadiers had been deployed to Jamaica. Few Canadian soldiers had field experience, but were nearly fully equipped. However, the battalions had only two anti-tank rifles, and no ammunition for 2-inch and 3-inch mortars or for signal pistols. These were intended to be supplied after they arrived in Hong Kong. Nor did C Force receive its vehicles, as the US merchant ship "San Jose" carrying them was, at the outbreak of the Pacific War, diverted to Manila, in the Philippine Islands, at the request of the US Government.


title: Battle of Hong Kong

text: The Royal Navy presence at Hong Kong was little more than a token display of defence, with three World War I vintage destroyers, four river gunboats, a new but almost unarmed minelayer and the 2nd Motor Torpedo Boat Flotilla.


title: Battle of Hong Kong

text: There were 40 Royal Marines attached to HMS "Tamar" (a shore station). When the battle began, the Royal Marines fought against Japanese forces in Magazine Gap, alongside HKVDC and Royal Engineers. Commanding officer, Major Giles RM instructed his men to defend the island "to the last man and last round".


title: Battle of Hong Kong

text: The Royal Air Force station at Hong Kong's Kai Tak Airport (RAF Kai Tak) had only five aeroplanes: two Supermarine Walrus amphibious aircraft and three out-dated Vickers Vildebeest torpedo-reconnaissance bombers, flown and serviced by seven officers and 108 airmen. An earlier request for a fighter squadron had been rejected and the nearest fully operational RAF base was in Kota Bharu, Malaya, nearly away.


title: Battle of Hong Kong

text: The Chinese Military Mission to Hong Kong, initiated in 1938, was headed by Rear Admiral Chan Chak and his aide Lieutenant Commander Henry Hsu. It had the objective of co-ordinating Chinese war aims with the British in Hong Kong. Working with the British police, Chan organized pro-British agents among the population and rooted out triad factions that were sympathetic to the Japanese.


title: Battle of Hong Kong

text: A squad of Free French under Captain Rodéric Egal, of the Free French in Shanghai who happened to be in Hong Kong when the battle broke out, fought alongside the HKVDC at the North Point power station. They were all World War I veterans (as were the local HKVDC) and acquitted themselves well.


title: Battle of Hong Kong

text: Defending the New Territories were the 2nd Battalion, Royal Scots in the west, the 2/14th Punjab in the center and the 5/7th Rajput in the east. In front of them was a thin screen of 2/14th Punjab infantry supported by four Bren Gun Carriers and two armored cars and engineers at Sheung Shui and Tai Po. At 04:45 on 8 December 1941 (Hong Kong Time), roughly 2.5 hours after the Attack on Pearl Harbor (which happened at 07:49 Hawaii Time or 02:19 Hong Kong Time the next day because of International date line) Radio Tokyo announced that war was imminent and General Maltby and Governor Young were informed. At 05:00 the engineers detonated their charges destroying bridges on likely invasion routes.


title: Battle of Hong Kong

text: Japanese forces had been assembling north of the Sham Chun River since the beginning of December. The Japanese attack began at 06:00 when the IJA 230th, 229th and 228th Regiments (arranged from west to east) crossed the Sham Chun River. In the west the 230th Regiment advanced towards Yuen Long, Castle Peak Bay and Tai Mo Shan. In the center the 229th Regiment advanced from Sha Tau Kok towards Chek Nai Ping and across Tide Cove to Tai Shui Hang. In the east the 228th Regiment crossed at Lok Ma Chau and Lo Wu and advanced towards Lam Tsuen and Needle Hill.


title: Battle of Hong Kong

text: At 08:00 the Japanese bombed Kai Tak Airport. Two of the three Vildebeest and the two Walruses were destroyed by 12 Japanese bombers. The attack also destroyed several civil aircraft including all but two of the aircraft used by the air unit of the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps. The RAF and air unit personnel from then fought on as ground troops. The Pan-Am Airways flying boat ""Hong Kong Clipper"" was dive-bombed and destroyed. The Japanese also bombed Sham Shui Po Barracks causing minimal damage.


title: Battle of Hong Kong

text: The first significant exchanges of fire were at 15:00 when 2/14th Punjab engaged the IJA who had crossed into Laffan's Plain. 2/14th Punjab eliminated several IJA platoons at 18:30 just south of Tai Po and HKVDC armored cars and Bren Gun Carriers also successfully engaged IJA forces. Despite these successes the 2/14th Punjab withdrew towards Grassy Hill in the afternoon to avoid being outflanked and the IJA forces advanced down the Tai Po Road towards Sha Tin. Late that night all units were ordered to withdraw to the Gin Drinker's Line.


title: Battle of Hong Kong

text: On 9 December the 2nd Royal Scots held in the west, a reserve company of the 5/7th Rajputs moved forward to Smuggler's Ridge, the HKVDC held Fo Tan and the 2/14th Pujab held at Tide Cove. By 13:00 the IJA 228th Regiment had reached Needle Hill and its commander Colonel Doi was reconnoitring the Shing Mun Redoubt area of the Gin Drinker's Line which he found to be unprepared for an attack. Despite the area being outside of his regimental boundary he developed an attack plan and began moving his men into position. The redoubt was defended by A Company, 2nd Royal Scots supplemented by other units giving a total strength of three officers and 39 soldiers. The defenders and the nearby D Company, 5/7th Rajputs conducted patrols north of the redoubt and around Needle Hill but failed to detect the two IJA battalions in the area or the 150 man attacking force which had crossed the Jubilee Dam and was in position just below one of the redoubt's pillboxes. At 23:00 the defenders detected movement and opened fire as the IJA began their attack. As the Japanese progressively overran the complex of trenches and tunnels, many of the defenders found themselves locked in the redoubt's artillery observation post (OP). Pillbox 402 was destroyed by IJA sappers at 02:30 on the 10th and the rest of the 3/228th Regiment joined the assault moving through the redoubt and into valley, running into the 5/7th Rajputs who were moving to support the redoubt. The 5/7th Rajputs forced the Japanese back towards the redoubt. The Japanese eventually blew open the OP, capturing the 15 survivors. Artillery at Stonecutter's Island and Mount Davis pounded the redoubt until 05:00, but apart from one position which held out until the afternoon the redoubt was lost. The IJA had lost two soldiers in the attack.


title: Battle of Hong Kong

text: At 21:30 on the 9th and HMS "Scout" were ordered to leave Hong Kong for Singapore, successfully evading the IJN blockade. Only one destroyer, HMS "Thracian", several gunboats and a flotilla of MTBs remained. Between 8 and 10 December, eight American plus a number of Chinese pilots of the China National Aviation Corporation (CNAC) and their crews flew 16 sorties between Kai Tak Airport and landing fields in Namyung and Chongqing (Chungking), the wartime capital of the Republic of China. The crews evacuated 275 persons including Mme Sun Yat-Sen, the widow of Sun Yat-sen and the Chinese Finance Minister Kung Hsiang-hsi.


title: Battle of Hong Kong

text: On 10 December the IJA 228th Regiment continued to move troops into the Shing Mun Redoubt while sending out small patrols along the rest of the line, but otherwise failed to capitalize on their success. Maltby saw the loss of the redoubt as a disaster that undermined the entire defensive line and the 2nd Royal Scots were ordered to counterattack at dawn on the 11th, but their commander Lieutenant Colonel S. White refused on the basis that it had no chance of success.


title: Battle of Hong Kong

text: At dawn on the 11th the IJA 228th Regiment attacked Golden Hill and were engaged by the 5/7th Rajputs supported by fire from HMS "Cicala". D Company, 2nd Royal Scots counterattacked and regained the hill. At midday, Maltby having decided that the New Territories and Kowloon were untenable and that the defense of Hong Kong island was the priority, ordered the evacuation of all his forces. Demolition works were carried out and the 2nd Royal Scots and supporting forces withdrew south to Sham Shui Po Barracks and Jordan pier, while the 5/7th Rajputs withdrew to Ma Yau Tong where they would hold Devil's Peak peninsula protecting the narrow Lye Moon Passage. The guns on Stonecutter's Island were destroyed and the base abandoned that night.


title: Battle of Hong Kong

text: Also on the morning of the 11th the IJA landed on Lamma Island and were engaged by guns of Jubilee Battery and Aberdeen Battery. That afternoon the Japanese attempted a landing near Aberdeen Island but were driven off by machine gun fire.


title: Battle of Hong Kong

text: The 2/14th Punjab were to join the Rajputs on the Ma Yau Tong line, but during their march on the night of 11/12 December became split up, with one group reaching the Devil's Peak area while the other descended into Kai Tak and marched into Kowloon on the morning of the 12th, where they were engaged by the IJA 3/320th Regiment which had infiltrated into the area. The Punjabis fought their way down to Tsim Sha Tsui and were evacuated by Star Ferry. HMS "Tamar" was scuttled in the harbor to prevent its use by the Japanese. On the night of the 12th the 5/7th Rajputs withdrew from Ma Yau Tong further down the Devil's Peak peninsula and at 04:00 on the 13th they began boarding boats to take them to Hong Kong island with the evacuation being completed by the morning of 13 December 1941.


title: Battle of Hong Kong

text: Maltby organised the defence of the island, splitting it between an East Brigade and a West Brigade. The West Brigade commanded by Brigadier John K. Lawson had its headquarters at the top of Wong Nai Chung Gap, a strategic passage between the north and south of the island. The West Brigade comprised the 2/14th Punjab covering the shoreline from Causeway Bay to Belcher's Point; the Winnipeg Grenadiers defended the southwest corner of the island and Lawson's headquarters; the Middlesex Regiment was dispersed across 72 pillboxes along the island shoreline; the 2nd Royal Scots reinforced by the HKVDC were held in reserve at Wanchai Gap; and the HKVDC had companies located at High West, Mt Davis, Pinewood Battery, Magazine Gap, Jardine's Lookout and Aberdeen Naval Base. The East Brigade commanded by Brigadier Cedric Wallis had its headquarters at Tai Tam Gap. The East Brigade comprised the 5/7th Rajputs holding pillboxes along the northeast shoreline with a company and their headquarters in the hills behind Taikoo Dockyard and a reserve company in Tai Hang; the Royal Rifles of Canada defended the island's northeast all the way around to Stanley; and two companies of the HKVDC were located at Tai Tam and Pottinger Gap.


title: Battle of Hong Kong

text: On the morning of 13 December a Japanese delegation crossed the harbor to offer terms of surrender, which were rejected. The Japanese then began an artillery bombardment of Hong Kong Island disabling one of the 9.2-inch guns on Mt Davis and hitting Belcher's Fort in Pok Fu Lam. On the 14th Japanese artillery destroyed a 3-inch gun at Mt Davis. On the 15th Japanese artillery moved to targeting pillboxes and other defensive positions along the shoreline. The Japanese mounted six air attacks on positions on the west of island and bomb damage forced the abandonment of Pinewood Battery.


title: Battle of Hong Kong

text: On the morning of the 17th the Japanese again offered terms of surrender which were rejected. That night a reconnaissance team from the IJA 3/229th Regiment successfully explored the Taikoo area. The IJA had moved its forces closer to Hong Kong Island with the 23rd Army headquarters at Tai Po and the 38th Division near Kai Tak.


title: Battle of Hong Kong

text: On 18 December the Japanese bombardment of the island shoreline increased and the oil storage tanks were hit. The IJA forces were organized into two assault units: the west assault unit comprised the 228th and 230th Regiments and would leave from the Kai Tak area; and the east assault unit comprised the 229th Regiment (less 1/229th held as Divisional reserve) and would leave from the Devil's Peak area. The attack order was issued at 18:00 and at 20:00 the first wave from the 2/228th and 3/230th began paddling towards the Taikoo Dockyard and sugar refinery under cover of artillery fire. As they approached the shore the boats were illuminated by searchlights and fired on by the 5/7th Rajputs. The boats scattered and both battalion commanders were wounded so Colonel Doi crossing with the second wave assumed command of the assault. At 21:40 the artillery barrage moved to targets further inshore and at 21:45 the 3/230th landed at North Point, followed by the 2/228th. At 21:38 the 2/229th landed at Sai Wan and the 3/229th landed at Aldrich Bay. By midnight all six IJA battalions were ashore, but were held up on the beaches by barbed wire, fire from the 5/7th Rajputs and the general confusion of night operations. The Japanese eventually moved inshore overwhelming the Rajputs, bypassing or destroying the strongpoints as they generally headed towards the high ground. Maltby believing that the landing only comprised two battalions and was a diversion for a direct assault across the harbor on Victoria sent minimal reinforcements to block any IJA movement west towards Victoria and five HKVDC armored cars to protect the East Brigade headquarters. The 2/230th moved west towards Victoria but was stopped by an HKVDC, Free French and miscellaneous force in the North Point Power Station led by Major John Johnstone Paterson. Radioing for assistance, Maltby sent an HKVDC armored car and a platoon from the 1st Middlesex, but they were ambushed on the way and only nine men made it to the station. The Japanese then directed artillery fire on the station and the surviving defenders withdrew at 01:45 continuing to fight the Japanese on Electric Road and King's Road until all were killed or captured.


title: Battle of Hong Kong

text: In the early hours of 19 December the IJA 3/229th moved uphill towards Mt Parker, while the 2/229th moved southeast towards the Lyemun fortifications. The 2/229th engaged a platoon of the Royal Rifles sent to check on A Company of the Rajputs and then quickly overwhelmed the Fort's garrison. The 2/229th then captured Sai Wan Battery killing six gunners from the HKVDC 5th Anti-Aircraft Battery and then proceeded to bayonet 20 prisoners, with only two surviving. The Royal Rifles attempted to retake the Victorian era Sai Wan Fort with two platoons, but were unable to scale the walls and lost nine killed. A company from the 2/229th entered the Salesian Mission in Shau Kei Wan, which was being used as a dressing station and they proceeded to kill all those inside, however four men survived. According to Captain Stanley Martin Banfill of the Royal Rifles, who witnessed his men being executed, the leading Japanese officer stated that "Order is all captives must die". The rest of the 2/229th were engaged by C Company, Royal Rifles who inflicted heavy casualties, but the Japanese were able to move past the Canadian while also inflicting heavy losses forcing C Company to withdraw leaving only A Company on Mt Parker. At 03:00 a platoon from D Company was sent to reinforce Mt Parker, but they became lost in the dark and only arrived at 07:30 to find over 100 Japanese on Mt Parker and A Company withdrawing and so Mt Parker was abandoned to the Japanese. In addition to East Brigade's infantry losses, the coastal batteries at Cape D'Aguilar and Cape Collinson were abandoned, while a number of 965 Battery's guns were destroyed in error or left to the Japanese. Wallis withdrew his headquarters from Tai Tam Gap to Stanley.


title: Battle of Hong Kong

text: In the West Brigade area Lawson sent three platoons from the Winnipeg Grenadiers forward to block the IJA advance from their landing sites, deploying one platoon on each of Jardine's Lookout and Mt Butler and one forward on Wong Nei Chung Gap Road. Meanwhile, the 3/230th was advancing along Sir Cecil's Ride on the side of Jardine's Lookout, the 2/230th towards Jardine's Lookout, the 2/228th advanced on the other side of Jardine's Lookout, the 1/228th moved through Quarry Gap and the 3/229th advanced up Tai Tam Reservoir Road. The Japanese swept aside the weak infantry screens and while pillboxes inflicted casualties the Japanese were able to bypass such strongpoints and captured Jardine's Lookout. At 06:20 Pillbox PB1 occupied by No. 3 Company, HKVDC fired on an estimated 400 IJA advancing along Sir Cecil's Ride. Several IJA battalions advancing along the catchwaters captured the anti-aircraft positions on Tai Tam Reservoir Road east of Wong Nei Chung Gap, after a heavy firefight. In the early morning Lawson brought forward A Company, Winnipeg Grenadiers to recapture Jardine's Lookout and they then successfully retook Jardine's Lookout, but only for a couple of hours before the hill fell after an intense artillery bombardment and frontal assaults by IJA 230th and 228th Regiment. The IJA forces descended from Wong Nei Chung Reservoir and attacked the police station and Postbridge House at the summit of Wong Nei Chung Gap. By 07:00 the 3/230th closed in on the West Brigade headquarters, Maltby sent A Company, 2nd Royal Scots to reinforce them approaching up Wong Nei Chung Gap Road, but only 15 men made it through while a group of sailors approaching from the south up Repulse Bay Road were also ambushed. The 3/230th cleared out positions south and east of the headquarters despite fire from HKSRA artillery in Happy Valley. At 10:00 Lawson radioed that his headquarters were surrounded and that he was "going outside to shoot it out", he and his entire command group were then hit by Japanese machine gun fire from across the gap and Lawson died of blood loss on the hill behind his bunker. By midday only elements of D Company, Winnipeg Grenadiers and British and Chinese engineers held positions above the West Brigade Headquarters, while Pillboxes PB 1 and PB 2 on the lower slopes of Jardine's Lookout continued to resist.


title: Battle of Hong Kong

text: At 08:45 six MTBs assembled off Green Island and then moved east in pairs into Hong Kong Harbour to attack boats transporting IJA soldiers across the harbour. As they neared Kowloon Bay MTB 7 attacked three Japanese boats, sinking two and damaging others before being disabled by Japanese fire and towed out by MTB 2. MTB 9 damaged a further four Japanese boats.


title: Battle of Hong Kong

text: At 13:30 Maltby issued Operation Order No. 6 for a general counterattack to commence at 15:00. A and D Companies, 2/14th Punjab were to attack east towards North Point to relieve the HKVDC still holding out there, however the order never reached them. Headquarters Company, Winnipeg Grenadiers, the rest of 2/14th Punjab and the 2nd Royal Scots were to attack east from Middle Gap towards Wong Nei Chung Gap, but the Royal Scots were late and so the HQ Company moved along the front of Mt Nicholson separately. D Company, 2nd Royal Scots and D Company, Winnipeg Grenadiers were then ordered to advance up Wong Nei Chung Gap Road, but were hit by Japanese fire from Jardine's Lookout and were pinned down for the rest of the day. By 18:00 PB1 and PB2 were abandoned. At 22:00 a Japanese counterattack on Mt Butler was repulsed by A Company, Winnipeg Grenadiers.


title: Battle of Hong Kong

text: At 02:00 on the 20th the Royal Scots attacked the police station at the top of Wong Nei Chung Gap, but were repulsed as was another attack an hour later. An attack on Jardine's Lookout by C Company, 2nd Royal Scots also failed. Maltby ordered Headquarters Company, Winnipeg Grenadiers to advance on Wong Nei Chung Gap, but they suffered heavy casualties before being stopped 300m short of the road, they then moved back along Black's Link and encountered approximately 500 unprepared Japanese and proceeded to attack them. At 15:00, after exhausting their ammunition, A Company, Winnipeg Grenadiers on Mt Butler surrendered to the Japanese, however in a final exchange of fire Sergeant-major John Robert Osborn smothered a Japanese grenade with his body, an action for which he was later posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross. By 17:45 elements of the HKSRA under Major Edward De Vere were ordered to attack the police station. The attack was launched at 22:00 supported by two armored cars. This attack was successful and the unit managed to recapture the police station , but only for a few hours until the Japanese captured the police station using reinforcements from Stanley Gap( the old name for the Tai Tam Reservoir Road.


title: Battle of Hong Kong

text: The new West Brigade commander Colonel H.B. Rose of the HKVDC developed a plan to retake the Gap using 2nd Royal Scots and the Winnipeg Grenadiers. B Company, Winnipeg Grenadiers was brought from Pok Fu Lam in the afternoon, but was unable to locate the 2nd Royal Scots who had inexplicably moved off the eastern slopes of Mt Nicholson. This lapse allowed Colonel Doi to order three companies of the 1/228th to occupy Mt Nicholson in the afternoon under cover of a rain storm. B Company, Winnipeg Grenadiers moved in two columns in the dark and rain around the north and south of Mt Nicholson, meeting up above the gap which was to be their starting point for the next day's attack. However they were then engaged by the Japanese and all their officers and NCOs and 29 men became casualties and they retreated around the north of Mt Nicholson.


title: Battle of Hong Kong

text: Elsewhere on the 20th, the 2nd and 3rd battalions, 229th Regiment had advanced down the Tytam Road and captured the X roads, Red Hill and Bridge Hill. They captured the 4.5 inch battery at Red Hill, which was abandoned the previous day. A handful of British civilians who were at the nearby pumping station were blindfolded and bayonetted at the beach in front of the pumping station. Meanwhile, the Japanese in the area south of Tai Tam Reservoir and into the hills above Repulse Bay where they encountered a company from the Royal Rifles and two HKVDC platoons preparing to attack towards Wong Hei Chung Gap from Violet Hill. Maltby sent A Company, 2/14th Punjab to support the forces in Repulse Bay, but they were engaged by a Japanese force on Shouson Hill and were forced to retreat with their commander Colonel Kidd killed in the action. Further east the 1/229th and 2/228th advanced from Tai Tam and Sai Wan towards Stanley. HMS "Cicala" which had been providing gunfire support in Deep Water Bay was hit by Japanese bombers and sank in the Lamma Channel.


title: Battle of Hong Kong

text: At 09:15 on the 21st Wallis launched a new attack into Tai Tam to try to reach Wong Nei Chung Gap, with D Company, Royal Rifles, No. 1 Company, HKVDC, a medium machine gun section and two Bren Gun Carriers advancing from Stanley Mound. They were soon hit by Japanese mortar fire from Red Hill and then engaged by infantry from 1/229th and 1/230th on Bridge Hill and Red Hill. By 1400 hours, the Commonwealth forces managed to capture the summit of Bridge Hill, the X roads and the summit of Red Hill. The Japanese quickly rushed reinforcements from Tai Tam Gap, such as two Type 94 Tankettes. These tankettes were fired upon by a British machine gun on Bridge Hill, and the tankettes retreated back to Tai Tam Gap. Even of this success, by 17:00 all the officers in the Commonwealth counterattacking force had been wounded and the force withdrew towards Stanley. On the north shore elements of the 230th Regiment pushed west reaching Victoria Park, while Japanese artillery bombarded the Naval Dockyard. Maltby ordered a further attack on Wong Nei Chung Gap by a force comprising four platoons, but when the commanded saw the IJA forces in the area he cancelled the attack.


title: Battle of Hong Kong

text: On the 22nd the 2/229th moved west from Shouson Hill and captured PB14 on the shore of Deepwater Bay from elements of the 1st Middlesex and then proceeded to behead all the prisoners. Two battalions of the 229th attacked the Repulse Bay Hotel while the 1/229th and 1/230th pushed the remnants on East Brigade back into the Stanley peninsula. The East Brigade formed three defensive lines: the first line was composed of elements of the 1st Middlesex, three companies of the Royal Rifles and one company of the HKVDC supported by one 2-pounder gun; the second line at Stanley Village comprised two companies of the 1st Middlesex, a company of the HKVDC and the Stanley company of the HKVDC supported by two 18-pounder and 2-pounder guns; and at Stanley Fort were two HKVDC artillery batteries and two Royal Artillery batteries with two 18-pounder, two 3.7-inch and 9.2-inch and 6-inch coastal guns. On the north shore West Brigade forces struggled to hold the line from Causeway Bay, through Leighton Hill, Happy Valley and Mount Cameron down to Bennett's Hill on the south of the island. At midday the Japanese attacked Stanley Mound and Sugarloaf Hill defended by units of the Royal Rifles, after repulsing several attacks, low ammunition forced the defenders to withdraw. The Japanese began their assault on the southern flank of Mt Cameron inflicting severe losses on B Company, 2/14th Punjab, but the penetration was stopped by a counterattack by B Company, 4/7th Rajputs. In the north, after intensive artillery bombardment the Japanese broke through the defensive line south of Leighton Hill at 22:00, forcing the defenders to start abandoning their positions and retreat west to avoid encirclement.


title: Battle of Hong Kong

text: At 08:00 on the 23rd the 5/7th Rajputs fell back leaving the 1st Middlesex units on Leighton Hill isolated and the Japanese bombarded them with mortar fire. Meanwhile, the remaining defenders on the north shore retreated west to Mount Gough. With the main water reservoirs now controlled by the IJA and with artillery damage to pipes, water supplies began to run out.


title: Battle of Hong Kong

text: On the 24th the Royal Rifles were withdrawn to the defensive lines at Stanley. The IJA forces attacked down the Tai Tam Road but were repulsed. A second attack began at 21:00 supported by three Type 94 tankettes, two of which were destroyed by 2-pounder fire. The outer defensive line broke and No 2 Company HKVDC was forced back to Stanley Village with heavy losses. At midnight the Japanese pedrt. On the north shore the 230th Regiment advanced through Wanchai, meeting resistance at the China Fleet Club but this was soon overcome and the regiment advanced on the dockyard. In Happy Valley the remnants of the 5/7th Rajputs were pushed back from the Happy Valley Racecourse, off Mount Parish and out of Wanchai Market.


title: Battle of Hong Kong

text: On Christmas morning, Young informed Chan of his intent to surrender. Chan intended to break out and was given command of the five remaining MTBs; 68 men, including Chan, Hsu, and David Mercer MacDougall were successfully evacuated to Mirs Bay where they contacted Nationalist guerrillas and were escorted to Huizhou. For this feat Chan was made an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire.


title: Battle of Hong Kong

text: By the afternoon of 25 December 1941, it was clear that further resistance would be futile and at 15:30 Governor Young and General Maltby surrendered in person to General Sakai at the Japanese headquarters on the third floor of the Peninsula Hotel. At Stanley, Wallis refused to surrender without a written order and this was received by him at 02:30 on the 26th. Isolated pockets held out even longer, the Central Ordnance Munitions Depot (known as "Little Hong Kong") surrendered on 27 December. This was the first occasion on which a British Crown Colony had surrendered to an invading force. The garrison had held out for 17 days. This day is known in Hong Kong as "Black Christmas".


title: Battle of Hong Kong

text: The Japanese officially reported 675 men killed and 2,079 wounded; western estimates go as high as 1,895 dead and 6,000 casualties overall. Allied casualties were 1,111 men killed, 1,167 missing and 1,362 wounded (sources vary; other figures given include 1,045 killed, 1,068 missing and 2,300 wounded, as well as 1,560 killed or missing). Allied dead, including British, Canadian and Indian soldiers, were eventually interred at Sai Wan Military Cemetery and the Stanley Military Cemetery. Total battle casualties of "Indian Other Ranks" is given to be 1164 out of a total of 3893 military personnel from India who were garrisoned in Hong Kong. The 5/7 Rajput bore the heaviest losses recorded amongst the 6 combat regiments during the battle of Hong Kong: 156 killed in action or died from wounds, 113 missing, and 193 wounded. The 2/14 Punjab had 55 killed in action or died from wounds, 69 missing, and 161 wounded. C Force casualties in the battle were 23 officers and 267 other ranks killed or died of wounds, including five officers and 16 other ranks of the brigade headquarters, seven officers and 123 men of the Royal Rifles and 11 officers and 128 men of the Winnipeg Grenadiers. C Force also had 28 officers and 465 men wounded. Some of the dead were murdered by Japanese soldiers during or after surrender. Japanese soldiers committed a number of atrocities on 19 December, when the aid post at the Salesian Mission near Sau Ki Wan was overrun. A total of 1,528 soldiers, mainly Commonwealth (predominantly Indians and Canadians), are either buried or commemorated there. There are also graves of other Allied combatants who died in the region during the war, including some Dutch sailors who were re-interred in Hong Kong after the war.


title: Battle of Hong Kong

text: At the end of February 1942, the Japanese government stated that numbers of prisoners of war in Hong Kong were: British 5,072, Canadian 1,689, Indian 3,829, others 357, a total of 10,947. They were sent to:


title: Battle of Hong Kong

text: Of the Canadians captured during the battle, 267 subsequently perished in Japanese prisoner of war camps, mainly due to neglect and abuse. In December 2011, Toshiyuki Kato, Japan's parliamentary vice-minister for foreign affairs, apologised for the mistreatment to a group of Canadian veterans of the Battle of Hong Kong.


title: Battle of Hong Kong

text: Civilians were interned at the Stanley Internment Camp. Initially, there were 2,400 internees although this number was reduced, by repatriations during the war. Interned persons who died and prisoners executed by the Japanese are buried in Stanley Military Cemetery.


title: Battle of Hong Kong

text: Most of them were killed after capture via beheading. *At least six officers and a number of other men were killed after capture at Maryknoll Mission. Four members of the 8th Coastal Regiment RA may have been killed here as well; estimates of the number of men murdered vary from 11 to 16.


title: Battle of Hong Kong

text: Isogai Rensuke became the first Japanese governor of Hong Kong. This ushered in the three years and eight months of Imperial Japanese administration.


title: Battle of Hong Kong

text: The 38th Infantry Division departed Hong Kong in January 1942. The Hong Kong Defence Force was established during the same month, and was the main Japanese military unit in Hong Kong throughout the occupation.


title: Battle of Hong Kong

text: During the over three and a half years of occupation by the Japanese, an estimated 10,000 Hong Kong civilians were executed, while many others were tortured, raped, or mutilated. The local population in the rural New Territories, a mix of Hakka, Cantonese and other Han Chinese groups, waged a guerrilla war with limited success. The resistance groups were known as the Gangjiu and Dongjiang forces. The Japanese razed several villages in reprisal; the guerillas fought until the end of the Japanese occupation. General Takashi Sakai, who led the invasion of Hong Kong and served as governor for some time, was tried as a war criminal and executed by a firing squad in 1946.


title: Battle of Hong Kong

text: Battalions from both Indian Army regiments earned Battle Honours for the defence of Hong Kong. In his despatch, Major-General C. M. Maltby, wrote about the conduct of troops under his command in Hong Kong and mentions the 5/7 Rajput Regiment: "This battalion fought well on the mainland and their repulse of the enemy attack on Devil's Peak was entirely successful. The full force of the enemy's initial attack on the island fell on this battalion and they fought gallantly until they had suffered heavy casualties (100% of British Officers and most senior Indian Officers being lost) and were run over".


title: Battle of Hong Kong

text: The Cenotaph in Central commemorates the defence as well as war-dead from the First World War. The shield in the colonial Emblem of Hong Kong granted in 1959, featured the battlement design to commemorate the defence of Hong Kong during the Second World War. This Coat of Arms was in place until 1997, when it was replaced by the regional emblem. After the war, Lei Yue Mun Fort became a training ground for the British Forces until 1987, when it was vacated. In view of its historical significance and unique architectural features, the former Urban Council decided in 1993 to conserve and develop the fort into the Hong Kong Museum of Coastal Defence.


title: Battle of Hong Kong

text: The memorial garden at Hong Kong City Hall commemorates those who died in Hong Kong during World War II.


title: Somatosensory system

text: In physiology, the somatosensory system is the network of neural structures in the brain and body that produce the perception of touch (haptic perception), as well as temperature (thermoception), body position (proprioception), and pain. It is a subset of the sensory nervous system, which also represents visual, auditory, olfactory, and gustatory stimuli.


title: Somatosensory system

text: Somatosensation begins when mechano- and thermosensitive structures in the skin or internal organs sense physical stimuli such as pressure on the skin (see mechanotransduction, nociception). Activation of these structures, or receptors, leads to activation of peripheral sensory neurons that convey signals to the spinal cord as patterns of action potentials. Sensory information is then processed locally in the spinal cord to drive reflexes, and is also conveyed to the brain for conscious perception of touch and proprioception. Note, somatosensory information from the face and head enters the brain through peripheral sensory neurons in the cranial nerves, such as the trigeminal nerve.


title: Somatosensory system

text: The neural pathways that go to the brain are structured such that information about the location of the physical stimulus is preserved. In this way, neighboring neurons in the somatosensory cerebral cortex in the brain represent nearby locations on the skin or in the body, creating a map, also called a homunculus.


title: Somatosensory system

text: Merkel cell nerve endings are found in the basal epidermis and hair follicles; they react to low vibrations (5–15 Hz) and deep static touch such as shapes and edges. Due to having a small receptive field (extremely detailed information), they are used in areas like fingertips the most; they are not covered (shelled) and thus respond to pressures over long periods.


title: Somatosensory system

text: Tactile corpuscles react to moderate vibration (10–50 Hz) and light touch. They are located in the dermal papillae; due to their reactivity, they are primarily located in fingertips and lips. They respond in quick action potentials, unlike Merkel nerve endings. They are responsible for the ability to read Braille and feel gentle stimuli.


title: Somatosensory system

text: Pacinian corpuscles determine gross touch and distinguish rough and soft substances. They react in quick action potentials, especially to vibrations around 250 Hz (even up to centimeters away). They are the most sensitive to vibrations and have large receptor fields. Pacinian corpuscles react only to sudden stimuli so pressures like clothes that are always compressing their shape are quickly ignored. They have also been implicated in detecting the location of touch sensations on handheld tools.


title: Somatosensory system

text: Bulbous corpuscles react slowly and respond to sustained skin stretch. They are responsible for the feeling of object slippage and play a major role in the kinesthetic sense and control of finger position and movement. Merkel and bulbous cells - slow-response - are myelinated; the rest - fast-response - are not. All of these receptors are activated upon pressures that squish their shape causing an action potential.


title: Somatosensory system

text: The postcentral gyrus includes the primary somatosensory cortex (Brodmann areas 3, 2 and 1) collectively referred to as S1.


title: Somatosensory system

text: BA3 receives the densest projections from the thalamus. BA3a is involved with the sense of relative position of neighboring body parts and amount of effort being used during movement. BA3b is responsible for distributing somatosensory information, it projects texture information to BA1 and shape and size information to BA2.


title: Somatosensory system

text: Region S2 (secondary somatosensory cortex) divides into Area S2 and parietal ventral area. Area S2 is involved with specific touch perception and is thus integrally linked with the amygdala and hippocampus to encode and reinforce memories.


title: Somatosensory system

text: Parietal ventral area is the somatosensory relay to the premotor cortex and somatosensory memory hub, BA5.


title: Somatosensory system

text: The insular cortex (insula) plays a role in the sense of bodily-ownership, bodily self-awareness, and perception. Insula also plays a role in conveying info about sensual touch, pain, temperature, itch, and local oxygen status. Insula is a highly connected relay and thus is involved in numerous functions.


title: Somatosensory system

text: The somatosensory system is spread through all major parts of the vertebrate body. It consists both of sensory receptors and sensory neurons in the periphery (skin, muscle and organs for example), to deeper neurons within the central nervous system.


title: Somatosensory system

text: All afferent touch/vibration info ascends the spinal cord via the dorsal column-medial lemniscus pathway via gracilis (T7 and below) or cuneatus (T6 and above). Cuneatus sends signals to the cochlear nucleus indirectly via spinal grey matter, this info is used in determining if a perceived sound is just villi noise/irritation. All fibers cross (left becomes right) in the medulla.


title: Somatosensory system

text: A somatosensory pathway will typically have three neurons: first-order, second-order, and third-order.


title: Somatosensory system

text: Photoreceptors, similar to those found in the retina of the eye, detect potentially damaging ultraviolet radiation (ultraviolet A specifically), inducing increased production of melanin by melanocytes. Thus tanning potentially offers the skin rapid protection from DNA damage and sunburn caused by ultraviolet radiation (DNA damage caused by ultraviolet B). However, whether this offers protection is debatable, because the amount of melanin released by this process is modest in comparison to the amounts released in response to DNA damage caused by ultraviolet B radiation.


title: Somatosensory system

text: The tactile feedback from proprioception is derived from the proprioceptors in the skin, muscles, and joints.


title: Somatosensory system

text: The receptor for the sense of balance resides in the vestibular system in the ear (for the three-dimensional orientation of the head, and by inference, the rest of the body). Balance is also mediated by the kinesthetic reflex fed by proprioception (which senses the relative location of the rest of the body to the head). In addition, proprioception estimates the location of objects which are sensed by the visual system (which provides confirmation of the place of those objects relative to the body), as input to the mechanical reflexes of the body.


title: Somatosensory system

text: Fine touch (or discriminative touch) is a sensory modality that allows a subject to sense and localize touch. The form of touch where localization is not possible is known as crude touch. The posterior column–medial lemniscus pathway is the pathway responsible for the sending of fine touch information to the cerebral cortex of the brain.


title: Somatosensory system

text: Crude touch (or non-discriminative touch) is a sensory modality that allows the subject to sense that something has touched them, without being able to localize where they were touched (contrasting "fine touch"). Its fibres are carried in the spinothalamic tract, unlike the fine touch, which is carried in the dorsal column.


title: Somatosensory system

text: As fine touch normally works in parallel to crude touch, a person will be able to localize touch until fibres carrying fine touch (Posterior column–medial lemniscus pathway) have been disrupted. Then the subject will feel the touch, but be unable to identify where they were touched.


title: Somatosensory system

text: The somatosensory cortex encodes incoming sensory information from receptors all over the body. Affective touch is a type of sensory information that elicits an emotional reaction and is usually social in nature, such as a physical human touch. This type of information is actually coded differently than other sensory information. Intensity of affective touch is still encoded in the primary somatosensory cortex and is processed in a similar way to emotions invoked by sight and sound, as exemplified by the increase of adrenaline caused by the social touch of a loved one, as opposed to the physical inability to touch someone you don't love.


title: Somatosensory system

text: Meanwhile, the feeling of pleasantness associated with affective touch activates the anterior cingulate cortex more than the primary somatosensory cortex. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data shows that increased blood-oxygen-level contrast (BOLD) signal in the anterior cingulate cortex as well as the prefrontal cortex is highly correlated with pleasantness scores of an affective touch. Inhibitory transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) of the primary somatosensory cortex inhibits the perception of affective touch intensity, but not affective touch pleasantness. Therefore, the S1 is not directly involved in processing socially affective touch pleasantness, but still plays a role in discriminating touch location and intensity.


title: Somatosensory system

text: Tactile interaction is important amongst most animals. Usually, tactile contact between two animals occurs through stroking, licking, or grooming. These behaviours are essential for the individual’s social healthcare, as in the hypothalamus they induce the release of oxytocin, a hormone that decreases stress and anxiety and increases social bonding between animals.


title: Somatosensory system

text: More precisely, the consistency of oxytocin neuron activation in rats stroked by humans has been observed, especially in the caudal paraventricular nucleus. It was found that this affiliative relationship induced by tactile contact is common no matter the relationship between the two individuals (mother-infant, male-female, human-animal). It has also been discovered that the level of oxytocin release through this behaviour correlates with the time course of social interaction as longer stroking induced a greater release of the hormone.


title: Somatosensory system

text: The importance of somatosensory stimulation in social animals such as primates has also been observed. Grooming is part of the social interaction primates exert on their conspecifics. This interaction is required between individuals to maintain the affiliative relationship within the group, avoid internal conflict and increase group bonding. However, such social interaction requires the recognition of every member in the group. As such, it has been observed that the size of the neocortex is positively correlated with the size of the group, reflecting a limit to the number of recognizable members amongst which grooming can occur. Furthermore, the time course of grooming is related to vulnerability due to predation to which animals are exposed to whilst performing such social interaction. The relationship between tactile interaction, stress reduction and social bonding depends on the evaluation of risks that occur during conducting such behaviours in the wild life, and further research is required to unveil the connection between tactile caring and fitness level.


title: Somatosensory system

text: A variety of studies have measured and investigated the causes for differences between individuals in the sense of fine touch. One well-studied area is passive tactile spatial acuity, the ability to resolve the fine spatial details of an object pressed against the stationary skin. A variety of methods have been used to measure passive tactile spatial acuity, perhaps the most rigorous being the grating orientation task. In this task subjects identify the orientation of a grooved surface presented in two different orientations, which can be applied manually or with automated equipment. Many studies have shown a decline in passive tactile spatial acuity with age; the reasons for this decline are unknown, but may include loss of tactile receptors during normal aging. Remarkably, index finger passive tactile spatial acuity is better among adults with smaller index fingertips; this effect of finger size has been shown to underlie the better passive tactile spatial acuity of women, on average, compared to men. The density of tactile corpuscles, a type of mechanoreceptor that detects low-frequency vibrations, is greater in smaller fingers; the same may hold for Merkel cells, which detect the static indentations important for fine spatial acuity. Among children of the same age, those with smaller fingers also tend to have better tactile acuity. Many studies have shown that passive tactile spatial acuity is enhanced among blind individuals compared to sighted individuals of the same age, possibly because of cross modal plasticity in the cerebral cortex of blind individuals. Perhaps also due to cortical plasticity, individuals who have been blind since birth reportedly consolidate tactile information more rapidly than sighted people.


title: Somatosensory system

text: A somatosensory deficiency may be caused by a peripheral neuropathy involving peripheral nerves of the somatosensory system. This may present as numbness or paresthesia.


title: Somatosensory system

text: Haptic technology can provide touch sensation in virtual and real environments. In the field of speech therapy, tactile feedback can be used to treat speech disorders.


title: Somatosensory system

text: Affectionate touch is present in everyday life and can take multiple forms. These actions, however, seem to carry specific functions even though the evolutionary benefit from such a wide range of behaviours is not entirely understood. Researchers investigated the expression patterns and characteristics of 8 different affectionate touch actions - embracing, holding, kissing, leaning, petting, squeezing, stroking, and tickling - in a self-report study. It was found that the affectionate touch has distinct target areas on the body, different associated affect, comfort-value, and expression frequency based on the type of touch action that is performed.


title: Somatosensory system

text: Besides the rather obvious sensory consequences of touch, it can also affect higher-level aspects of cognition such as social judgements and decision-making. This effect might arise due to a physical-to-mental scaffolding process in early development, whereby sensorimotor experiences are linked to the emergence of conceptual knowledge. Such links might be maintained throughout life, and so touching an object may cue the physical sensation to its related conceptual processing. Indeed, it was found that different physical properties - weight, texture, and hardness - of a touched object can influence social judgement and decision-making. For example, participants described a passage of a social interaction to be harsher when they touched a hard wooden block instead of a soft blanket prior to the task. Building on these findings, the ability of touch to have an unconscious influence on such higher-order thoughts may provide a novel tool for marketing and communication strategies.


title: Lollipop

text: A lollipop is a type of sugar candy usually consisting of hard candy mounted on a stick and intended for sucking or licking. Different informal terms are used in different places, including lolly, sucker, sticky-pop, etc. Lollipops are available in many flavors and shapes.


title: Lollipop

text: Lollipops are available in a number of colors and flavors, particularly fruit flavors. With numerous companies producing lollipops, the candy now comes in dozens of flavors and many different shapes. Lollipops can range from very small candies bought in bulk and given away as a courtesy at banks, barbershops, and other locations, to very large treats made from candy canes twisted into a spiral shape.


title: Lollipop

text: Most lollipops are eaten at room temperature, but "ice lollipops", "ice lollies", or "popsicles" are frozen water-based lollipops. Similar confections on a stick made of ice cream, often with a flavored coating, are usually not called by this name.


title: Lollipop

text: Some lollipops contain fillings, such as bubble gum or soft candy. Some novelty lollipops have more unusual items, such as mealworm larvae, embedded in the candy.


title: Lollipop

text: Other novelty lollipops have non-edible centers, such as a flashing light embedded within the candy; there is also a trend, principally in North America, of lollipops with sticks attached to a motorized device that makes the candy spin around in one's mouth.


title: Lollipop

text: Some lollipops have been marketed for use as diet aids, although their effectiveness is untested, and anecdotal cases of weight loss may be due to the power of suggestion. Flavored lollipops containing medicine are intended to give children medicine without fuss.


title: Lollipop

text: Actiq is a powerful analgesic lollipop whose active ingredient is fentanyl. Often, patients utilizing large amounts of opioid pain medication take Actiq lozenges on a handle in order to control breakthrough cancer pain.


title: Lollipop

text: The idea of an edible candy on a stick is very simple, and it is probable that the lollipop has been invented and reinvented numerous times. The first confectioneries that closely resemble what we call lollipops date to the Middle Ages, when the nobility would often eat boiled sugar with the aid of sticks or handles.


title: Lollipop

text: The invention of the modern lollipop is still something of a mystery but a number of American companies in the early 20th century have laid claim to it. According to the book "Food for Thought: Extraordinary Little Chronicles of the World", they were invented by George Smith of New Haven, Connecticut, who started making large hard candies mounted on sticks in 1908. He named them after a racehorse of the time, Lolly Pop - and trademarked the lollipop name in 1931.


title: Lollipop

text: The term 'lollipop' was recorded by English lexicographer Francis Grose in 1796. The term may have derived from the term "lolly" (tongue) and "pop" (slap). The first references to the lollipop in its modern context date to the 1920s. Alternatively, it may be a word of Romany origin being related to the Roma tradition of selling candy apples on a stick. "Red apple" in the Romany language is "loli phaba".


title: Lollipop

text: The main ingredient in a standard lollipop is sugar. Sugars are fully hydrated carbon chains, meaning that there is a water molecule attached to each carbon. Sugars come in two forms; straight-chain and ring form. When sugars are in straight-chain form, aldehyde and ketone groups are open which leaves them very susceptible to reaction. In this state, sugars are unstable. In ring form, sugars are stable and therefore exist in this form in most foods, including lollipops.