Fake and real Chromium browser: the difference between them
Chromium project was launched by Google Chrome creators a while ago. It provides Chromium’s source code for free for anyone who is willing to use it and modify it. Unfortunately, such open-source projects can be easily misused by frauds who seek to create fake Chrome copycats that function as adware.
Nowadays, there are various versions of Chromium virus. Most widespread parasites are eFast, Cassiopessa, Chedot, Olcinium and Tortuga. These fake browsers usually spread via software bundles, sneaking into victim’s computer without one’s knowledge. These deceptive programs do not miss the chance to replace existing Chrome shortcuts with their own ones. Consequently, the user starts using the bogus browser while thinking it’s the genuine one.
Activity of Chromium viruses
These bogus browsers typically are ad-supported. They can come in a bundle with several dangerous browser extensions that are responsible for delivering a daily dose of third-party ads to the victim.
What is even worse is that these browsers employ tracking cookies and web beacons to monitor victim’s activities, analyze them, grab useful information such as victim’s IP, search queries, browsing history, geolocation of the device and transmit such data to remote servers. Later, collected data might be shared with third-parties or used for selection of targeted ads.
Spot a Chromium virus and uninstall it the right way
If you suspect that your browser was replaced with a fake copy of Chromium, you need to perform a simple check:
- Open the browser;
- Type this into the address bar and hit Enter: chrome://about or chrome://settings/help.
- If the page won’t load, give an error, or display a different name than Chromium/Google Chrome, scan your PC with anti-malware immediately.
We strongly suggest that you stop the activity of such programs by uninstalling them. The 2-Spyware team provides useful instructions on how to remove Chromium virus – we believe that you will find them useful.
Keep deceptive programs away from your PC
Fake Chromium browsers are mostly distributed via software bundles. To prevent installing them, the first thing you need to realize is that any free program available to download on the web can be a software package, despite that it looks like an individual program.
It is recommended that you download programs to your computer only after checking the reliability of the download source. However, once you have the file on your PC, open it to see its installation wizard. Follow the process and read all information the installer provides.
The magic trick that helps to keep potentially unwanted software at bay is very simple. You just have to switch software installation settings from Default/Standard to Custom/Advanced and deselect all optional programs and files.


Have you seen the new California Academy of Sciences building in Golden Gate Park?
It has a space age-looking green roof.
Yes, these are pictures of the actual roof. Any ideas what the gray strips with wire over them are? Here's a close up:
We were told they are the pathways that allow people to walk through for maintenance or study. The gray rocks are lightweight pumice or lava rock. They could also be for drainage.
Although we saw different types of plants growing on the roof, the most common are perennial strawberries.
Why would anyone want a green roof? We learned that the roof helps moderate the temperature of the building, creates less water run off during rains, and supplies food for wildlife.
Although green roofs have been around for a long time, these roofs are designed with modern materials and are often used on much larger and more complicated building than in the past. If you like the idea of a green roof, here are some ideas for activities:
1. Research green roofs and then design and create your own small green roof model. Two things to consider are the weight of the planting materials (the lighter the better) and how to make sure the bottom layer doesn't leak. Experiment with different materials and see how long they last. Google Sketch-up is a free software that makes designing easy and fun.
2. Find out which plants are used on green roofs in your area and try growing some in small containers, such as flats. Experiment with similar plants. See if you can find a type of plant, or mix of plants that grow well in roof conditions. Sedums are often popular green roof plants, but my son is trying the ground cover dichondra on his model green roof.
3. See how a green roof changes the temperature of the building it covers. Compare the temperatures inside a box covered with plants versus one with standard insulation versus an uncovered box. Look at the range of temperatures over time, if possible.
4. Look at how much water runs off a green roof versus a conventional roof during a rain storm. Think about how you would test this and design and experiment. Can you collect the run off?
5. Investigate what kinds of wildlife are attracted to green roofs. The California Academy of Sciences' roof had a bee hive on it.
We'd love to hear about your green roof projects.
For more information, try:
Green Roof Design Lesson for grades 9-12 at Science NetLinks
Research Paper of Green Roofs, which gives history and details for construction


How often do you find yourself struggling to make an important decision? Perhaps it’s a major life decision such as moving to a new city or switching career paths. You weigh the pros and cons of your decision but the answer is never quite clear.
You desire a sense of purpose but seem to be stuck in neutral as you witness others pass you by. You have become reactive to the events in your life instead of proactively engaging with them that best aligns with what is most important to you. Success seems obtainable but the blueprint is not quite clear.
So what separates those that are successful in life from everyone else? All successful people have values that help them achieve their goals. Their values provide a framework for decision making that can be relied on instead of defaulting to their emotional state when a difficult decision is needed to be made. So if you want to make better decisions in your own life, then it is necessary to first understand your core values.
What Are Core Values?
To be honest, I don’t like the term “core values”. The term seems to be often tainted by organizations and governments that plaster them on billboards and posters for positive PR but fail to adhere to them. But whether or not you acknowledge the term, everyone holds a set of core values (or personal values) that guide them through their life.
Your core values are what you truly believe. They are not what you are expected to believe, be it from your parents, teachers or culture. They are derived from our personal experiences that help shape how we come to view the world. To know your core values is to know what is most important in your life.
If you are constantly making decisions based off of external circumstances and peer pressure then you are living a life determined by other people’s expectations instead of your own. Maybe you have a vague idea about what you value, but you have never put in serious thought about what they actually are. When you don’t have your core values explicitly defined, you default to your emotions to make the decisions for you.
So how do you define your values? Chances are, you already have adopted many values from other sources in your life such as from religion, culture and the societal norms of your time. These values are often rooted in wisdom and have been vetted over time, but you would be doing yourself a disservice to blindly adhere to what you were taught without careful self-examination.
Defining Your Core Values
This is a time for private self-reflection. I recommend that you grab a pen and paper and give yourself 20 minutes to think deeply about this (Seriously, stop reading and grab a pen and paper before you continue).
To get a better understanding of what you truly value you need to reflect on what gives you a sense of self-worth and adds structure to your life. In other words, what is truly important to you? Think back to when you have felt fulfilled or when you are the happiest. That means that if something is important to you, write it down. It doesn’t matter if it’s not socially acceptable or what you want other’s to think of you. It’s important that you be honest with yourself. Your goal is to determine your top five most important core values. Do not go over five values, if you think everything is important then nothing is actually important.
After you have narrowed your list down to your top five, it is time to prioritize them from most important to least important. It isn’t uncommon for your core values to complement each other but it is still necessary to rank them to help you get a better understanding of what is most important to you.
To help guide you in this exercise, I have listed my own personal list as well as 58 example values below that you can pick from (but feel free to create your own if they are more applicable). Once you have established your list, feel free to modify it based off of your own experiences. This is only meant to serve as a springboard for your mind to think about what your core values are at this stage in your life. There are no right or wrong answers and it is likely that your values will change along with your goals and expectations as you age.
My Core Values
As you can see from my list, I currently value making decisions in life that will allow me more freedom in the future (whether it be when, where, how and what I work on). I also value self-development, which is a big reason why I started this blog. I have found that the act of hashing my thoughts out on paper is the only way for me to organize my monkey mind and decipher what it is I actually want in life. My physical fitness is also of high importance to me since it allows me the ability to pursue peak mental performance in the work that I do.
So from reading my top five list, you can gather that I highly value my personal education to provide my future self with the necessary skills to succeed. My ideal form of success is to be able to control what I get to work on in life. It is this luxury of pursuing curiosities about myself and the world around me that is my ultimate pursuit.
Core Values List
- Acceptance: to be open to and accepting of myself, others, life, etc.
- Adventure: to be adventurous; to actively seek, create, or explore novel or stimulating experiences
- Assertiveness: to respectfully stand up for my rights and request what I want
- Authenticity: to be authentic, genuine, and real; to be true to myself
- Beauty: to appreciate, create, nurture, or cultivate beauty in myself, others, the environment, etc.
- Caring: to be caring toward myself, others, the environment, etc.
- Challenge: to keep challenging myself to grow, learn, and improve
- Compassion: to act with kindness toward those who are suffering
- Conformity: to be respectful and obedient of rules and obligations
- Connection: to engage fully in whatever I am doing, and be fully present with others
- Contribution: to contribute, help, assist, or make a positive difference to myself or others
- Cooperation: to be cooperative and collaborative with others
- Courage: to be courageous or brave; to persist in the face of fear, threat, or difficulty
- Creativity: to be creative or innovative
- Curiosity: to be curious, open-minded, and interested; to explore and discover
- Encouragement: to encourage and reward behavior that I value in myself or others
- Equality: to treat others as equal to myself, and vice versa
- Excitement: to seek, create, and engage in activities that are exciting, stimulating, or thrilling
- Fairness: to be fair to myself or others
- Fitness: to maintain or improve my fitness; to look after my physical and mental health and well-being
- Flexibility: to adjust and adapt readily to changing circumstances
- Forgiveness: to be forgiving toward myself or others
- Freedom: to live freely; to choose how I live and behave, or help others do likewise
- Friendliness: to be friendly, companionable, or agreeable toward others
- Fun: to be fun-loving; to seek, create, and engage in fun-filled activities
- Generosity: to be generous, sharing, and giving, to myself or others
- Gratitude: to be grateful for and appreciative of the positive aspects of myself, others, and life
- Honesty: to be honest, truthful, and sincere with myself and others
- Humility: to be humble or modest; to let my achievements speak for themselves
- Humor: to see and appreciate the humorous side of life
- Independence: to be self-supportive, and choose my own way of doing things
- Industry: to be industrious, hard-working, and dedicated
- Intimacy: to open up, reveal, and share myself — emotionally or physically — in my close personal relationships
- Justice: to uphold justice and fairness
- Kindness: to be kind, compassionate, considerate, nurturing, or caring toward myself or others
- Love: to act lovingly or affectionately toward myself or others
- Mindfulness: to be conscious of, open to, and curious about my here-and-now experience
- Open-mindedness: to think things through, see things from others’ points of view, and weigh evidence fairly
- Order: to be orderly and organized
- Patience: to wait calmly for what I want
- Persistence: to continue resolutely, despite problems or difficulties
- Pleasure: to create and give pleasure to myself or others
- Power: to strongly influence or wield authority over others, e.g., taking charge, leading, organizing
- Reciprocity: to build relationships in which there is a fair balance of giving and taking
- Respect: to be respectful toward myself or others; to be polite, be considerate and show positive regard
- Responsibility: to be responsible and accountable for my actions
- Romance: to be romantic; to display and express love or strong affection
- Safety: to secure, protect, or ensure safety of myself or others
- Self-awareness: to be aware of my own thoughts, feelings, and actions
- Self-care: to look after my health and well-being, and get my needs met
- Self-control: to act in accordance with my own ideals
- Self-development: to keep growing, advancing, or improving in knowledge, skills, character, or life experience.
- Sensuality: to create, explore, and enjoy experiences that stimulate the five senses
- Sexuality: to explore or express my sexuality
- Skillfulness: to continually practice and improve my skills, and apply myself fully when using them
- Spirituality: to connect with things bigger than myself
- Supportiveness: to be supportive, helpful, encouraging, and available to myself or others
- Trust: to be trustworthy; to be loyal, faithful, sincere, and reliable
How to Make Better Decisions
Now that you have your top five values written down, it is important that you have them saved somewhere so that you can review them in the future. I have mine written down on an index card that’s taped to my mirror as well as in Evernote so that I always have access to them. My goal is to read them every morning so that they naturally become ingrained in my mind.
These values provide me a mental framework to base future decisions off of instead of defaulting to my emotional state of the moment. They also work as a proverbial GPS, making sure that my life stays on track with my values and self-identity.
Once you have a clear understanding of what is important to you, it becomes much easier to start taking daily action to live a purpose-filled life aligned with your values. By constraining yourself to five values, you actually open yourself up to freely pursue what you ultimately desire. These values will give you the foundation to build a more productive and successful life – one decision at a time.


EPA Can Help You Keep It Clean in a World with COVID-19
Virus-killing myths, like gargling salt water, are floating around as fast as toilet paper has flown off the grocery store shelves.
When those shelves are restocked, what is effective for cleaning surfaces in residential, commercial, and industrial environments? The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ("EPA") has released a list of EPA-registered disinfectant products that have qualified for use against SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19.
Along with hand washing and social distancing, cleaning and disinfecting with effective products are an important part of slowing the spread of the virus. The EPA published the list with other important information on disinfectant products and links to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to inform the public and help reduce the spread of COVID-19. According to the EPA's accompanying press release, coronaviruses are "enveloped viruses, meaning they are one of the easiest types of viruses to kill with the appropriate disinfectant product. Consumers using these disinfectants on an enveloped emerging virus should follow the directions for use on the product's master label, paying close attention to the contact time for the product on the treated surface (i.e., how long the disinfectant should remain on the surface)."
How do we know the listed products are effective and not a scam? The EPA developed its Emerging Viral Pathogen program in 2016 to allow manufacturers to voluntarily provide EPA with data to show their products are effective against viruses. The purpose of the program was to gather the information through a pre-approval process so that if an outbreak occurs, companies with pre-approved products can make off-label claims for the use of the products against the outbreak virus. That planning proved fruitful: the use of the program was triggered for the first time for SARS-CoV-2 on January 29, 2020.
The EPA's list includes recognizable products such as Clorox Multi-Surface Cleaner + Bleach and Lysol Brand Bleach Mold and Mildew Remover but is not meant to serve as an agency endorsement of any particular product as there may be additional disinfectants it has not reviewed that do meet the program's criteria. The EPA recommends to consumers to check if the EPA registration number that is on the product's label ("EPA Reg. No.") is included on the program list of disinfectants for use against SARS-CoV-2 to ensure the product can be used effectively. Products can be marketed and sold under different brand names, but if they have the same EPA registration number, they are the same underlying product and can be used.


It’s that time of year when we all seem to have extra candy lying around. Instead of eating it all (or sending it to work with dad) why not use some of it to experiment with?! We’ve always loved “playing” with our extra candy from Halloween so use these experiments as a starting point. From there, let the kids continue on their own and come up with their own versions of the experiments. Sometimes the best learning comes from open ended exploring!
One of our favorite and most colorful experiments involves Skittles and some water. Add a bit of water to a plate and place a few Skittles around the plate.
You can watch the color start to dissolve from the candy and go into the water.
It’s fun to watch more of the color fill the water.
If you leave it long enough without disturbing the plate the “s” from the Skittle will float to the top of the water, unlike the Skittle which sinks.
While the candy shell dissolves, the edible paper that the S is created out of doesn’t and instead floats to the top.
You can take this experiment a step farther and try out some chromatography (a technique used to separate different parts of a solution) if you have older kids. Using the ink in the water try this experiment out.
Another way to use the Skittles to add a little art fun into the science is to place a coffee filter on a plate, add Skittles and then a few drops of water using a straw.
The color will again dissolve from the candy and this time absorb into the coffee filter. Remove from the plate and allow to dry. Did the colors mix?
Then take it further by trying some other things. Use salt water or warm water. Does salt water change the results? Does changing the temperature of the water to warm water change the results?
What about those chocolate candies? An easy, fun experiment you can do with your kids is to determine which candies will sink and which will float. Ask your kids why they predicted each outcome.
Then, after you conduct your experiment talk about why each candy sank and why some of them floated. Are there pockets of air in the candy? Don’t stop with chocolate, add in any kind of candy you find around the house to the experiment!
How about some bubbling action? You can use baking soda to determine if your candy is acidic. Start by placing candy in a bit of water and allow it to soak for a bit. Crush it up if it needs to be. Or try the experiment with both, using the same type of candy crushed and whole to see the difference.
Then, add a small spoonful of baking soda.
Do you see any bubbles forming? If there are any bubbles, the candy is somewhat acidic. Sour candies usually produce the most bubbles! The acid in the candy reacts with the baking soda to create carbon dioxide gas (which is why you see bubbles). You won’t get the same reaction you do when using baking soda with vinegar, but you’ll definitely see some reaction with the more sour types of candy.
Like these experiments or want to find some more? Check it out here! Or if you would like to look at some of our other adventures while homeschooling with Bridgeway Academy, check out my blog here.


Although the start of the school year might seem like an odd time to discuss play, it is in facts a critical time to do so. As school starts, demands on children’s time increase significantly, typically leaving much less time for play, especially unstructured play.
Yet play is a vital to child development. As Dr. Kenneth Ginsburg explains in an article in Pediatrics:
‘Play allows children to use their creativity while developing their imagination, dexterity, and physical, cognitive, and emotional strength. Play is important to healthy brain development. It is through play that children at a very early age engage and interact in the world around them.… Undirected play allows children to learn how to work in groups, to share, to negotiate, to resolve conflicts, and to learn self-advocacy skills…. Play is integral to the academic environment…. It has been shown to help children adjust to the school setting and even to enhance children’s learning readiness, learning behaviors, and problem-solving skills.’
In other words, play is essential to the healthy development of children, and it enhances children’s capacity to succeed in school.
In addition, play is not just a good idea, it is also a human right—one that has been recognized since the beginning of the human rights movement. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the foundational document of the human rights movement adopted in 1948, states that: “Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay” (Article 24). The U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child—the most comprehensive treaty on children’s rights and the most widely-accepted human rights treaty in history—establishes that governments must “recognize the right of [every] child to rest and leisure, to engage in play and recreational activities appropriate to the age of the child and to participate freely in cultural life and the arts.”
There is a reason why certain things—from education to free speech to prohibitions on torture—are recognized as rights. They are deeply connected to the dignity inherent in each human being. Play and its breadth of developmental benefits sustain and enhance human dignity. As policy makers, educators, and parents, our job is to ensure we secure every child’s right to play. And if we join them sometimes, we might even have fun too.
For more on play, here’s a link to a great source on play and its benefits: momlovesbest.


Nalini Nadkarni is seen in her lab in Salt Lake City holding a barbie created to look like her.
When Nalini Nadkarni was a kid, she’d run home from school, climb into one of the eight maple trees in her parents’ backyard and spend an afternoon there with an apple and a book.
That time in the treetops set the tone for the rest of her life: She’s now a forest ecologist at the University of Utah who’s dedicated her career to studying rain forest canopies.
She’s also always looking for new ways to get people interested in science, from fashion made with nature imagery to science lectures at the state prison.
"I’ve tried for years and years to bring the science I do and understand to people outside of academia,” she said.
Her childhood memories made her particularly interested in reaching children.
After her own 6-year-old daughter asked for a Barbie, Nadkarni decided to re-fashion the iconic dolls as a scientist-explorer in rubber boots rather than high heels.
"Lots of girls, and some little boys, love Barbie,” Nadkarni said. "It’s almost aspirational, they want to be Barbie.”
That was about 15 years ago. Nadkarni said Barbie-maker Mattel wasn't interested in the idea then, so she decided to redo dolls herself, using gear she collected.
She scoured thrift stores and eBay for Barbie dolls and enlisted help from volunteer seamstresses. She called the creation "Treetop Barbie" and began selling them at cost on her website.
Last year, Mattel began working with National Geographic to create a new line of scientist Barbies. Nadkarni has a longstanding relationship with National Geographic, so when the non-profit reached out for help, she quickly agreed.
Nadkarni joined a team of female scientists advising Mattel as it made the line of dolls that includes a marine biologist, astrophysicist, photojournalist, conservationist and entomologist.
Sales began in the summer. As a thank-you, Mattel sent Nadkarni a one-of-a-kind doll with tree-climbing gear and full dark hair woven with strands of white that made the doll resemble the scientist.
For Nadkarni, the company's investment in the dolls reflects a broader cultural shift toward recognizing women in science, math and technology that could spark an appreciation for science even among kids who don't end up entering the field.
Mattel said in a statement that the purpose of Barbie dolls for the last 60 years has been to "inspire the limitless potential in every girl,” pointing out that Barbie was portrayed in other science and math-based careers long before the new line, including as an astronaut in 1965.
"Barbie allows girls to try on new roles through storytelling by showing them they can be anything and, through our partnership with National Geographic, girls can now imagine themselves as an astrophysicist, polar marine biologist and more," said Lisa McKnight, general manger of Barbie Dolls for Mattel.
It's not known, though, how career Barbies might affect kids' aspirations. A 2014 study by Oregon State University found that girls who played with the dolls told researchers they could do fewer jobs than boys - even if they played with a doctor Barbie.
The study didn't examine the girls' reasoning, but researchers speculated that Barbie might be an inherently sexualized doll, said associate professor Aurora Sherman, who worked on the paper.
Putting the same doll in a professional outfit likely won't do much to change perceptions about what women can do, she said. But it might help to use it as a starting point for conversations about women in science and math.
"Its really going to depend on how that doll is experienced, and what adults are doing to drive home that message," she said.
Eating grapes can help protect against sunburn and ultraviolet (UV) skin damage and natural components found in the fruits known as polyphenols are thought to be responsible for these beneficial effects, according to a new study.
With adolescence comes a sense of newfound freedom and a desire to experiment and learn. Teenage years are also a time for bodily changes, acne breakouts, and fun with makeup.
Women who used permanent hair dye or straighteners, or applied straighteners to others, had a higher risk of developing breast cancer than women who weren’t exposed to the products.
After whistleblower Frances Haugen leaked internal company research suggesting Instagram's negative effect on teenagers, the Meta-owned photo-sharing platform on Tuesday launched a 'Take a Break' and other safety features for teenagers.
Two astronauts from the United Arab Emirates – Mohammad Al Mulla and Nora Al Matrooshi – will train with them, according to a report.
Ali Ahmed Haylan, 69, the oldest graduate of Jordan's Al Albayt University, stated that he waited 48 years to obtain his degree in political science, after he finished high school in 1973 in the scientific department, with a success rate of 81%.


Definition of Grecianized
1. grecianize [v] - See also: grecianize
Click the following link to bring up a new window with an automated collection of images related to the term: Grecianized Images
Lexicographical Neighbors of Grecianized
Literary usage of Grecianized
Below you will find example usage of this term as found in modern and/or classical literature:
1. American Journal of Archaeology by Archaeological Institute of America (1887)
"1, 2, 3 are a more stylistic and a more grecianized expression of the ... still more stylistic, still more grecianized, expressions of the Rhodian forms. ..."
2. An Outline History of the Roman Empire (44 B. C. to 378 A. D.) by William Stearns Davis (1911)
"In Egypt, on the confines of that caste-bound, conservative land, had been founded the great grecianized city of Alexandria. ..."
3. A Text-book in the History of Education by Paul Monroe (1905)
"... for this work is the first formulation by a Roman of the grecianized educational ideal. Each of these general periods divides into two sub-periods. ..."
4. The Christian Examiner (1858)
"To say that a man was grecianized, was equivalent to saying with us that a man is Frenchified or Germanized. It meant that he was a sort of dandified pedant ..."
5. The Encyclopaedia Britannica: “a” Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, Literature edited by Hugh Chisholm (1910)
"Here there were many rick and flourishing Greek colonies or grecianized towns, such as T»r» turn, Paestum and Capua, ready to welcome the new art u к ..."


Seeing through the Dark
Suma Satish-Chandra, MS biology '09, is looking at evolution through a different set of eyes. Under the guidance of Professor David Carlini, she has spent the past two years investigating the nature of eyesight in tiny freshwater-dwelling crustaceans called amphipods. Like many members of the animal kingdom, these shrimp-like creatures use opsin, a protein found within the retina's photoreceptor cells, to help them convert photons of light into electrical signals that their brains interpret as images.
Satish-Chandra is examining an amphipod species that resides in both surface and underground water throughout the eastern United States. The stark distinction between these two environments causes differences in the evolution of the entirely light-dependent opsin protein. By studying the opsin gene sequences and expression in these organisms, Satish-Chandra has observed the development of genetic differences between the two populations and generated a better understanding of the evolutionary processes that may ultimately lead them to evolve into two unique species.
To observe these genetic differences in the two populations, Satish-Chandra first isolated the opsin DNA sequence from the entirety of the amphipod's genome by designing DNA primers—small sequences of RNA that complement a region upstream and downstream of the opsin gene. Satish-Chandra then used a technique called polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to isolate and amplify the sequences, leaving Satish-Chandra with strands of DNA that contain only the opsin gene.
Using American University's DNA sequencer, Satish-Chandra then read out the sequences for members of each population and searched for distinct differences between them. Because the population within cave systems no longer needs its opsin protein, Satish-Chandra says that individuals from this population that accumulate detrimental opsin gene mutations are more likely to pass on these mutations than their surface cousins, since detrimental opsin mutations would endanger their survival. Therefore, Satish-Chandra explains, it would make more sense for the surface population's opsin sequence to be more constrained over evolutionary time, and therefore far more functional, due to the population's life in the daylight.
Satish-Chandra completed her degree this December and is planning to return to her native India. There, she aims to work in the fast-paced world of Indian biotechnology, hoping to work in her home country as a research associate at one of India's biotech or research institutes.
—Adapted from "Seeing through the Dark: Suma Satish-Chandra Traces Evolution of the Opsin Gene," by Chelsea Babcock, Catalyst, Fall 2009.


Is there any proof that Joseph of Arimathea went to the British Isles to procure tin and took the young Jesus with him? I came across this claim presented as historical research with a significant amount of “documentation” from ancient sources. I was not aware of any evidence for the “missing” years of Jesus’ life.
I had to do a little research on this, because I had never heard of this legend. And I call it legend for good reason. There is NO evidence at all to support this. It is the result of pure speculation. The only source I could find on this was from an Anglican Church (The Church of England) writer who, although he is biased, would himself admit that the story is the combination of speculation and sheer invention. This author speculates that some Jewish Christians in the first century had investments in the tin trade. This seems to me a bit unlikely, but not impossible. The problem with it is that there is no evidence it is true. The only historical fact in the entire story is that in the first century a large proportion of the tin available for making bronze in the Roman Empire did come from Cornwall in England. I have not seen the particular claim you make reference to (although it may be the one below), but I would imagine that this is the “documentation” you are referring to.
This Anglican author goes on to further speculate that it was these Jewish Christians who founded the Christian Church in England even before it came to Gaul. The problem with this speculation is that it is in fact pure speculation–without corroborating evidence. In any case, the author moves from speculation to pure invention (not invention by the author but by others) in the twelfth century when it was proposed that one of these supposed Jewish Christian traders was Joseph of Arimathea. Even more of a stretch–stretching things to the breaking point–English tale-tellers proposed that Jesus was a relative of Joseph of Arimathea and that he traveled with him to England as a teenager. To put this fable together, four assumptions which are totally without any basis in fact must be called upon:
1. That Jews in Palestine were involved in the tin trade in the first century.
2. That Joseph of Arimathea was involved in that trade.
3. That Jesus was related to Joseph. and
4. That Joseph took Jesus with him to Cornwall in England on one of this trips there.
That anyone would believe this fable is evidence that this person is really quite gullible. You did the wise thing, which is to be skeptical and ask if it has any basis in fact. The answer is no, it does not.
We do not know what Jesus did from the time he was twelve until he started his ministry at about the age of 32 or 33. Christians would do well to ignore all speculations in this topic. In an evidence-free zone such as this, unscrupulous authors will step in to offer interesting fiction, but we would do well to ignore such fiction. If God wanted us to know what happened to Jesus in his teens and twenties, presumably he would have told us in the Scripture.
I am including a paragraph on this story from a web site that I found. Every single thing is this paragraph is pure nonsense. Every claim, other than the fact that tin was mined in England is either pure speculation or utter invention. By the way the Talmud does NOT, I repeat, does NOT make Joseph of Arimathea the uncle of Mary. This goes beyond invention to pure lying. Or to put it as graciously as possible, the author includes as fact a claim which he found somewhere and accepts without making any effort whatsoever to confirm its truthfulness.
Joseph of Arimathea was the UNCLE of the Virgin Mary, as he was the younger brother of her father. This made him the GREAT UNCLE of Jesus Christ; the TALMUD records this fact. This was why he was the one who asked Pilate for the body of Jesus after the crucifixion; he was the legal guardian of Jesus, because Jesus’ step-father Joseph the carpenter had died in Jesus’ youth.
Joseph of Arimathea was a very wealthy tin merchant, and may have been the richest man in that part of the world at that time. He made many trips to Britain where he had tin mines. It is possible that Jesus Himself accompanied Joseph on voyages there during His childhood. Many ancient records testify to this.
In 36 A.D. Joseph and Mary and other disciples were exiled from Israel in a boat without oars for the crime of being believers in Christ. The boat drifted to Marseilles, France where they disembarked, and eventually went to Britain, where Joseph became the first Christian missionary, establishing Christianity on that continent FAR BEFORE Augustine arrived with Catholicism.
Source: Database on Ancestry.com
This nonsense is taken from the following web site: https://www.genealogieonline.nl/en/demmers-harmeijer-extended-family/I11065.php
Joseph Of Arimathea was born about 0038 BC in Arimathea, Judea, Israel, son of Matthat and Daughter Of Eleazar. He was married to Anna, they gave birth to 1 child. He died on July 27, 1982 in Abbey Of Glais, Glastonbury, Wales, Uk. This information is part of Demmers-Harmeijer Extended Family by Henny Carlisle on Genealogie Online.
Here is a more scholarly treatment of the legend of Joseph of Arimathea: http://www.bbc.co.uk/thepassion/articles/joseph_of_arimathea.shtml


"This method makes it possible to clearly differentiate between the five types of tea – something that is often not easy to do by eye alone – by using analysis of the leaves' mineral content and then mathematically processing these data", José Marcos Jurado, co-author of the study and a researcher at the US, tells SINC.
The technique makes it possible to distinguish between the five main tea varieties (white, green, black, Oolong and red) using chemometrics, a branch of chemistry that uses mathematics to extract useful information from data obtained in the laboratory.
Firstly, the concentrations of the chemical elements in the leaves were determined using 'inductively-coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy', which showed the most abundant elements to be calcium, magnesium, potassium, aluminium, phosphorus and sulphur.
Other essential elements were also identified in the tea, such as copper, manganese, iron and zinc, according to this study, which has been published online in the journal Food Chemistry.
Once the mineral content of the leaves was established, probabilistic neural networks were used to find out which type of tea a sample belonged to. These networks are "mathematical algorithms that mimic the behaviour of the neurons in the human nervous system in order to process the information", the expert explains.
This generates a model that receives an input signal (chemical data) and produces an output one, making it possible to predict the type of tea in the sample with a probability of 97%.
The second most commonly drunk beverage in the world
Tea is the second most commonly drunk beverage in the world after water, and this has been the case since 2700BCE. This infusion is prepared from the plant Camellia sinensis. The five tea varieties result from the different kinds of preparation process that the leaves are subjected to after being harvested.
White tea is a non-fermented tea made up of new buds and leaves that are protected from sunlight as they grow in order to limit chlorophyll production. Green tea is another unfermented tea, but it is made by using older green leaves.
The Oolong and black tea varieties are made by fermenting the leaves, although in the first case these are completely fermented, while black tea undergoes an intermediate controlled fermentation process of between 10% and 70%.
Red, or Pu-erh, tea is a fermented product obtained from another variety of the plant, Camellia sinensis var assamica, which is cultivated in the Chinese region of Yunnan.
The health benefits of the leaves of this plant are well known. Aside from acting as an antioxidant, diuretic and relieving hypertension, it is also an important source of essential elements such as aluminium, copper, zinc, calcium and potassium.
James S. McKenzie, José Marcos Jurado y Fernando de Pablos. "Characterisation of tea leaves according to their total mineral content by means of probabilistic neural networks". Food Chemistry 123 (3): 859�, 2010. Doi: 10.1016/j.foodchem.2010.05.007.
SINC | EurekAlert!
The balancing act: An enzyme that links endocytosis to membrane recycling
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Transforming plant cells from generalists to specialists
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In recent years, lasers with ultrashort pulses (USP) down to the femtosecond range have become established on an industrial scale. They could advance some applications with the much-lauded “cold ablation” – if that meant they would then achieve more throughput. A new generation of process engineering that will address this issue in particular will be discussed at the “4th UKP Workshop – Ultrafast Laser Technology” in April 2017.
Even back in the 1990s, scientists were comparing materials processing with nanosecond, picosecond and femtosesecond pulses. The result was surprising:...
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A multi-institutional research collaboration has created a novel approach for fabricating three-dimensional micro-optics through the shape-defined formation of porous silicon (PSi), with broad impacts in integrated optoelectronics, imaging, and photovoltaics.
Working with colleagues at Stanford and The Dow Chemical Company, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign fabricated 3-D birefringent...
In experiments with magnetic atoms conducted at extremely low temperatures, scientists have demonstrated a unique phase of matter: The atoms form a new type of quantum liquid or quantum droplet state. These so called quantum droplets may preserve their form in absence of external confinement because of quantum effects. The joint team of experimental physicists from Innsbruck and theoretical physicists from Hannover report on their findings in the journal Physical Review X.
“Our Quantum droplets are in the gas phase but they still drop like a rock,” explains experimental physicist Francesca Ferlaino when talking about the...
The Max Planck Institute for Physics (MPP) is opening up a new research field. A workshop from November 21 - 22, 2016 will mark the start of activities for an innovative axion experiment. Axions are still only purely hypothetical particles. Their detection could solve two fundamental problems in particle physics: What dark matter consists of and why it has not yet been possible to directly observe a CP violation for the strong interaction.
The “MADMAX” project is the MPP’s commitment to axion research. Axions are so far only a theoretical prediction and are difficult to detect: on the one hand,...
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Sometimes you find you have pain long after your injury has healed. If you have pain, tingling and numbness, swelling, or sensitivity to touch in an area that was affected by an injury, you might have developed Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy (RSD). This is a serious condition that requires medical attention.
Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy or RSD is a chronic pain condition that involves damage to the nerves. Although RSD is the common name, it’s also called Complex Regional Pain Syndrome or CRPS. These two names refer to the same condition.
RSD is not a psychological condition. Despite what people may say, the pain is not “in your head.” It’s caused by an actual injury and is associated with impairment to the nerves. There are two types of RSD:
- Type I: This is associated with injuries that don’t directly damage the nerves and do not leave ay detectable nerve lesions. However, the nerves are thrown into a state of “dysregulation” or impairment.
- Type II: Sometimes called causalgia, this is associated with injuries that cause direct damage to the nerves.
Most people suffering from RSD have Type I, and experience extreme pain even though the nerves were not directly hurt. If left untreated it can cause serious disability.
RSD usually develops following some sort of injury. It’s commonly caused by a car, motorcycle or bicycle crash/collision, but can also follow any kind of injury. It can also be caused by anything that might irritate the nerves, for example, carpal tunnel, stroke, shingles or severe arthritis.
Exactly RSD develops is not well understood. The most likely explanation is that the injury irritates or excites the nearby nerves, causing them to send incorrect pain signals to the brain and surrounding tissue. The body then responds to the perceived “pain” with swelling and sensitivity as if it is real damage. The swelling only puts more pressure on the nerves, potentially creating a feedback loop that develops into chronic pain.
Pain is not the only symptom of RSD. Complete symptoms may include:
- Reddening or paling of the affected area
- Swelling and tenderness
- Thinning of the bones in the affected area
- Pain that starts mild or intermittent but becomes serious and persistent
- Changes to the skin including areas of hard, thick shiny skin
- Loss of motion or function or the affected area
These symptoms typically begin in the area affected by the initial injury, usually just one limb or one hand or foot. As time goes on they may spread.
Since there is no cure for RSD, there are a variety of methods used to treat the symptoms, which can lead to its remission. The chance of remission is best when the condition is caught early. If treatment can start in the first three months, there is a good chance of improving the symptoms and preventing the condition from progressing. If not, RSD is more likely to become permanent, and can cause irreversible changes to the body.
The treatment of RSD involves two approaches:
- Physical therapy
Of the two, physical therapy is shown to have the greatest benefit. The goal of physical therapy is to rehabilitate the area by restoring motion and function, and decreasing its extreme sensitivity.
Medication may include pain medicine, anti-inflammatories, or nerve blocking medicines, among others.
If you or a loved one are experiencing RSD because of another party’s negligent or reckless conduct, let us help. Our goal is to secure the compensation you deserve so that you can focus on your physical and emotional recovery. Contact us today.


Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have now taken a major step toward creating artificial intelligence—not in a robot or a silicon chip, but in a test tube. The researchers are the first to have made an artificial neural network out of DNA, creating a circuit of interacting molecules that can recall memories based on incomplete patterns, just as a brain can.
“The brain is incredible,” says Lulu Qian, a Caltech senior postdoctoral scholar in bioengineering and lead author on the paper describing this work, published in the July 21 issue of the journal Nature. “It allows us to recognize patterns of events, form memories, make decisions, and take actions. So we asked, instead of having a physically connected network of neural cells, can a soup of interacting molecules exhibit brainlike behavior?”
The answer, as the researchers show, is yes. Continue reading


Once we had the shoes cut out, students placed their shoe on the appropriate spot on the graph in the hallway.
Today we went out into the hallway and discussed our data. First, I had the students write down something that they noticed about the graph. They noticed some great things! One thing that I did not notice at first, but one of the kids pointed out was that we had two numbers 21 cm long, and 22 cm long that at first glance looked like they had different results (we later put up sticky notes), they actually had the same number in each column. This led to a great discussion!


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The Changing Pattern of Healthcare in India
Tuesday, April 5, 2016
The evolution of healthcare in India over the past 25 years has been a mixed bag. While key health metrics such as the infant mortality rate (IMR) and maternal mortality ratio (MMR) have come down substantially, healthcare expenses have shot up—a direct fallout of lower public health spending. The government’s allocation to healthcare as a percentage of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) has fallen to 1.05% in 2015-16 from 1.47% in 1986-87.
IMR has fallen to 41 per 1,000 live births in 2013 from 88 in 1990, according to a United Nations report ‘Levels and Trends in Child Mortality’ released in 2015. Similarly, according to a World Health Organization (WHO) report released in 2014, MMR in India has declined from 560 deaths per 100,000 live births in 1990 to 190 in 2013.
“Evidence from the ground supports this. We have made gains in maternal and child health by establishing public health systems in rural areas. The investments made through National Rural Health Mission (now under National Health Mission) have paid dividends in this area,” said Vandana Prasad, national convener, Public Health Resource Network and formerly with the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights.
But India has failed its citizenry when it comes to expenses on healthcare. Health surveys by the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) show that since the 1990s, the dependence of Indians on private healthcare has risen sharply. In 1986-87, 60% of people availed of public health services and the rest private healthcare, according to the 42nd NSSO report. But by 2014, this trend was reversed, with only 41% availing of public healthcare, according to the 71st NSSO report released last year. The decline in dependence on public healthcare is sharper in urban areas—from 60% in 1986-87 to almost 32% in 2014.
- Health Care


37% of UK carbon emissions come from heating – domestic, public and commercial, and industrial. About 85% of the heating comes from gas. In its Net Zero report, the Committee on Climate Change argues that we must reduce carbon emissions from heating to zero.
There are two routes to cut carbon emissions from heating, reducing the demand and decarbonising the supply.
In a previous blog, I argued that we should drive the demand for domestic space and hot water heating to the absolute minimum and decarbonise the rest. So what is happening in the world of heat supply? What are the approaches, and what progress are we making?
Decarbonising heat supply
At a recent conference on the Future of Heat, the main focus was on decarbonising heat supply. There are benefits to this approach. It works at the level of national infrastructure and tries to keep the complex transition away from the eyes of the consumer. Instead of having to deal with 29 million households, asking them to make long payback investments in an uncertain world, a smaller number of national utility companies, used to handling complex engineering projects over many years, tackle the problem.
One approach is to keep the gas network but to switch from fossil methane to alternative renewable gases. The main options are:
- biomethane – from anaerobic digestion of organic waste
- synthetic natural gas (SNG) – from pyrolysis of organic waste
- hydrogen – using excess renewable energy
We can use biomethane and SNG in our existing infrastructure with no changes in consumer equipment. By injecting them directly into our storage and transport networks, we can transition from fossil methane to ‘green’ methane as production increases.
However, no matter where the methane comes from, burning it still releases CO2 and methane is a powerful greenhouse gas if it escapes. Unless combined with some form of carbon capture, it can never reach net-zero emissions.
Creating a hydrogen energy system
Hydrogen is more interesting gas. Emissions at point of use are zero, although it means changing heating equipment to use it. The challenge with hydrogen is in production, storage and transport.
The current production method for hydrogen is steam methane reformation, reacting water and methane to produce hydrogen and CO2. This consumes a lot of energy and releases CO2, so is not a route to decarbonise heating. We can also generate hydrogen by electrolysis using excess renewable electricity. Hydrogen becomes both a clean energy source and a useful form of storage for spare renewable electricity.
Clean hydrogen is an active area of research. Companies like ITM Power have demonstrated ‘power-to-gas’ systems where hydrogen is injected into the gas network and burned alongside the methane. At the other end of the scale, the Hydrogen 100 project is looking at the challenge of creating a pure hydrogen demonstration network at three demonstration sites. The goal is to tackle the commercial and safety challenges and to provide ‘social proof’ of the viability of hydrogen networks. By 2100 we could transition to 100% ‘green’ hydrogen.
There are many alternative technologies and pathways to decarbonising heat supply through alternative gases; analysed in a report from Imperial College, London. The key takeaway is that there is no unique solution. We will see a slow transition to a decarbonised gas grid using different options based on geography, key resources and end-user demand. Whichever technologies are in use, the UK’s gas grid will be a useful storage battery for renewable energy. A recent report shows that by varying the pressure in the pipeline network, we should be able to provide short-term storage for over 370 GWh.
Heat networks make decarbonisation easier
An alternative route to decarbonisation is heat networks. Supplying heat from a central station through a network of pipes is far more common in European countries than in the UK. Denmark has 31,000 km of heating pipes, reaching 63% of the population. In Copenhagen, 98% of homes use a heat network. They cut carbon emissions by 40% compared to gas boilers and consumer costs by about the same amount.
With a central generation point to inject heat into the network, it is easier to switch to a low carbon heat source. Heat companies in Denmark plan to be using 100% renewable energy by 2030.
Unlike other utilities, heat networks in the UK are not regulated. This is a barrier to wider deployment as there are fewer protections for consumers and less confidence from investors in return on capital. As a speaker from the Association for Decentralised Energy said: “this leads to a Catch 22 – anyone who wants to connect to a heat network likely won’t connect unless the heat network is already built, and anyone who wants to build a heat network will find it hard to build without connections”.
“Catch 22 – anyone who wants to connect to a heat network likely won’t connect unless the heat network is already built, and anyone who wants to build a heat network will find it hard to build without connections”
Hybrid heat pumps
Heat pumps are another distributed approach to low carbon heating, but they place stress on the electricity network during winter, especially if homes are not properly insulated. The Freedom Project has experimented with hybrid systems that use both heat pumps and gas boilers. Using smart control systems, you can minimise emissions by switching between gas heating and heat pumps depending on demand and the minute by minute electricity generation mix.
Hybrid heat pumps deliver savings on energy bills, are easy to retrofit to homes both on and off the gas grid and offer lower carbon heat than using a heat pump alone.
As a transition technology bridging between our current systems and net zero carbon heating, hybrid heat pumps could be part of the overall solution.
There is no single solution but a mixed economy
“all pathways for decarbonisation of heat are of similar cost, so what matters is what can be delivered in the real world… we need to get on with it”
David Joffe of the Committee on Climate Change pointed out what was, for me, one of the key messages from the conference – “all pathways for decarbonisation of heat are of similar cost, so what matters is what can be delivered in the real world… we need to get on with it”.
There is no single solution to the decarbonisation of heat. We will need a mixed economy where multiple technologies contribute to the goal. Energy efficient homes and decarbonised heat sources are not alternatives. It is not a choice of one or the other, we must focus on both.


Remembering Immigrants in the Military
Giselle Carson May 31, 2018 in Immigration
“I gave my heart to the Americans and thought of nothing else but raising my banner and adding my colors to theirs.” – Marquis de Lafayette
Did you know that immigrants are a significant presence in our military? This isn’t a recent phenomenon.
By the 1840s, half of all military recruits were foreign-born. They made up 20% of the Union Army during the Civil War. And half a million immigrants served in the armed forces during World War I, thirteen of whom won the Medal of Honor.
Today, approximately 25,000 non-citizens serve in the US military, with about 5,000 non-citizens joining each year. These heroes serve because they love the United States. Many become citizens while deployed or after they serve. In fact, between 2001 and 2017, over 109,000 immigrants became citizens while wearing the uniform of the US military.
Many of these men and women go on to make the ultimate sacrifice and die for our country. Let us remember military personnel of every ethnicity who fought and fight for the freedom we enjoy today.
The Marks Gray Immigration Team is thankful for the bravery and sacrifice of these men and women, and we hope you and your family had a wonderful Memorial Day holiday!


Who’s ready for a little science? It’s pretty awesome science, if that helps get you excited. Apparently, scientists in Europe have successfully turned carbon dioxide into jet fuel using water and solar energy. What sort of wizardry is this? Here’s how it works.
Basically, what happens is you get a bunch of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere along with a lot of water. Throw them into a contraption that harnesses the sun to provide heat, and then crank it up to over 2000 degrees Celsius. The molecules start to break up, and you’re left with oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon monoxide. Next, you have to get rid of the oxygen (release it into the air) or the whole thing might blow up in the last step. Finally, the hydrogen/carbon monoxide mixture (which is called syngas) can be turned into fuel using the Fischer-Tropsch process. The end result is the same fuel you have today. Science!
This sounds too good to be true. After all, water, carbon dioxide, and the sun are three ingredients which are not going to run out. Well, you know, the sun will run out in billions of years, but whatever. And while water is a scarce resource here in California, that’s probably why you don’t build the plant here. There will always be a supply of water somewhere, and if salt water can be made to work (certainly at a higher cost), then even better. As for carbon dioxide, well, we want to pull that out of the air anyway. So this is excellent in that regard.
With all that being said, it really is too good to be true… for now. The biggest issue is the sheer cost of doing this and the low yield of the process. It is horribly inefficient right now with a process efficiency of only 1.73 percent. That means you need a ton of water and carbon dioxide along with a silly amount of energy to make a little bit of fuel. Scientists think that this process could become economically viable if they can get efficiency into the neighborhood of 15 percent. That’s a long way to go. Even then, it would take a facility of 1 km2 to produce just over 5,000 gallons of fuel. That’s not a lot. So we’d need some serious efficiency gains here to make this really work.
There are also environmental issues to consider. It is a carbon neutral process because you’re pulling carbon dioxide out of the air for this. That means when you burn the fuel, it just goes right back. That’s very different than when you pull something out of the ground and then add carbon dioxide to the air when you burn it, because that is carbon dioxide that wasn’t there before. That being said, there have to be some environmental impacts to this process. They used something called ceria (cerium oxide) to extract the oxygen. I have no idea if that has an environmental impact. And of course, just building the massive facility required for something like this would have an impact. But overall, it would be a tremendous breakthrough if the efficiency can be improved.
It seems to me that the thing that’s really innovative here is the idea that you can use solar energy to power this process. The rest of the concepts aren’t really new, but using a solar reactor means you dramatically improve the long term value here. That’s why it seems to be very green, especially in comparison to the options we use today.
If the challenges can be overcome, this will allow the creation of fuel from a virtually unlimited supply of basic materials. That’s pretty cool. But as with most sustainable alternative fuels, we’re a long way away from being able to actually put it into serious, widespread use.
(Tip of the Hat to Airline Weekly)


“I can’t express anger. I grow a tumor instead.”
You live in a majorly stressed out world. You’re never very far from a ringing cell phone or a guilt-inducing laptop. Traffic makes you flip out. And as if stressing out over lines, health, your job, your grades, or global terrorism wasn’t enough, along comes the APS Observer with one more thing in your life to stress out over: Stress.
Stress, to put it bluntly, is bad for you. It can kill you, in fact. Medicine used to be skeptical that the mind could have a direct effect on the body, but any doubt of that has, alas, gone the way of the dinosaur or the relaxing weekend. Study after study now reveals that stress causes deterioration in everything from your gums to your heart and can make you more susceptible to everything from the common cold to cancer. The mind-body connection is real, and it is powerful, and thanks to new research crossing the disciplines of psychology, medicine, neuroscience, and genetics, the mechanisms underlying the connection are rapidly becoming understood.
The first clues to the link between stress and health were provided in the 1930s by Hans Selye, the first scientist to apply the word “stress”— then simply an engineering term — to the strains experienced by living organisms in their struggles to adapt and cope with changing environments. One of Selye’s major discoveries was that the stress hormone cortisol had a long-term effect on the health of rats. Cortisol has been considered one of the main culprits in the stress-illness connection, although it plays a necessary role in helping us cope with threats.
When an animal perceives danger, a system called the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (or HPA) axis kicks into gear: A chain reaction of endocrine signals beginning in the hypothalamus results in the release of various hormones — most notably epinephrine (“adrenaline”), norepinephrine, and cortisol — from the adrenal glands above each kidney. These hormones boost heart rate, increase respiration, and increase the availability of glucose (cellular fuel) in the blood, thereby enabling the famous “fight or flight” reaction. Because these responses take a lot of energy, cortisol simultaneously tells other costly physical processes — including digestion, reproduction, physical growth, and some aspects of the immune system — to shut or slow down.
The HPA axis is a self-regulating (homeostatic) mechanism, a lot like a thermostat. Stress hormones act back upon the hypothalamus to inhibit production of more signaling chemicals, thus causing less stress hormones to be released down the line. When occasions to fight or flee are infrequent and threats pass quickly, the body’s stress thermostat adjusts accordingly: Cortisol levels return to baseline (it takes 40-60 minutes), the intestines resume digesting food, the sex organs kick back into gear, and the immune system resumes fighting infections. But problems occur when stresses don’t let up — or when, for various reasons, the brain continually perceives stress even if it isn’t really there.
Stress begins with the perception of danger by the brain, and it appears that continued stress can actually bias the brain to perceive more danger by altering brain structures such as the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and amygdala, which govern the perception of and response to threat. Prolonged exposure to cortisol inhibits the growth of new neurons in the mPFC, an area that ordinarily acts to inhibit the HPA axis, and can cause increased growth of the amygdala, the portion of the brain that controls fear and other emotional responses. The end result is heightened expectation of and attention to threats in the environment (see Fox et al., 2007).
Stress hormones also inhibit neuron growth in parts of the hippocampus, a brain area essential in forming new memories. In this way, stress results in memory impairments and impairs the brain’s ability to put emotional memories in context (Sapolsky, 1994). Think of it this way: Too much stress and you forget not to be stressed out. These brain changes are thought by some researchers to be at the heart of the link between stress and depression — one of stress’s most devastating health consequences — as well as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
The best known of stress’s health impacts are on the heart. The idea that stress directly causes coronary heart disease has been around since the 1950s; although once controversial (or thought to be mediated solely by behavioral responses like smoking or overeating), the direct stress-cardiac link is now well-documented by many studies. For instance, men who faced chronic stresses at work or at home ran a 30 percent higher likelihood of dying over the course of a nine-year study; in another study, individuals reporting neglect, abuse, or other stressors in childhood were over three times as likely as nonstressed individuals to develop heart disease in adulthood (Miller & Blackwell, 2006).
Stress appears to be cumulative. Although when we think of stressors we might think of big things like abuse, illness, divorce, grieving, or getting fired, it is now known that the little things — traffic, workplace politics, noisy neighbors, a long line at the bank — can add up and have a similar impact on our well-being and our health. People who report more minor irritants in their lives also have more mental and physical health problems than those who encounter fewer hassles (Almeida, 2005). And recent research shows that PTSD may be the result of stressors adding up like building blocks, remodeling the plastic brain in a cumulative rather than a once-and-for-all fashion (Kolassa and Elbert, 2007).
To designate the cumulative wear and tear on physical systems due to long-term overactivation of the stress response, Rockefeller University neuroendocrinologist Bruce McEwen (1998) developed the concept of “allostatic load.” Studies showing serious health consequences of allostatic load on the rest of the body’s systems are numerous and growing. Besides heart disease, PTSD, and depression, chronic stress has been linked to ailments as diverse as intestinal problems, gum disease, erectile dysfunction, adult-onset diabetes, growth problems, and even cancer. Chronic rises in stress hormones have been shown to accelerate the growth of precancerous cells and tumors; they also lower the body’s resistance to HIV and cancer-causing viruses like human papilloma virus (the precursor to cervical cancer in women; see Antoni & Lutgendorf, 2007).
Adding insult to injury, stress may even have a self-perpetuating effect. Depression and heart disease, for example, are not only the results of stress, but also causes of (more) stress. Consequently, the chronically stressed body can appear less like a thermostat than like a wailing speaker placed too close to a microphone — a feedback loop in which the stress response goes out of control, hastening physical decline with age.
Tuning the Stress Response
Growing evidence shows that our sensitivity to stress as adults is already “tuned,” so to speak, in infancy. Specifically, the amount of stress encountered in early life sensitizes an organism to a certain level of adversity; high levels of early life stress may result in hypersensitivity to stress later, as well as to adult depression. A history of various stressors such as abuse and neglect in early life are a common feature of those with chronic depression in adulthood, for example (see Gillespie & Nemeroff, 2007).
At McGill University in Montreal, Michael J. Meaney and his colleagues have studied mother and infant rats, using rat maternal behavior as a model of early life stress and its later ramifications in humans. The key variable in the world of rat nurturance is licking and grooming. Offspring of rat mothers who naturally lick and groom their pups a lot are less easily startled as adults and show less fear of novel or threatening situations — in other words, less sensitivity to stress — than offspring of less nurturant mothers. The same thing is true of offspring of naturally less nurturant mothers who are raised (or “cross-fostered”) by more nurturant ones. By the same token, low-licking-and-grooming rat mothers are themselves more fearful than the more nurturant rat moms; but again, female offspring of those non-nurturant mothers foster-parented by nurturant mothers show less fear and are themselves more nurturant when they have pups of their own. This indicates that the connection between maternal nurturance and stress responsiveness is not simply genetic, but that fearfulness and nurturance are transmitted from generation to generation through maternal behavior (Parent et al., 2005).
A mechanism responsible for this tuning of the stress response is found at the “top” part of the HPA axis. One of the signaling chemicals released by the hypothalamus in response to stress is called CRF (for corticotropin-releasing factor — so-named because its function is to tell the pituitary gland to release another hormone, corticotropin, or ACTH, which in turn signals the adrenal glands to kick into action). Adult rats who had been well licked and groomed as pups show inhibition of CRF receptors in the amygdala (Parent et al., 2005).
In its extreme form, the human equivalent of low licking and grooming is child abuse and neglect. Research on abuse and neglect in humans and its connection to anxiety disorders, depression, and PTSD in later life shows the same CRF-mediated mechanism. Elevated levels of CRF are found in the cerebrospinal fluid of individuals with depression, and people who have committed suicide have been found to have changes in the frontal cortex consistent with chronic elevation of CRF (Gillespie & Nemeroff, 2007). More subtly, the degree of maternal care predicts trait anxiety and the responsiveness of an individual’s HPA axis to stress. In one study, adult children of Holocaust survivors showed altered HPA response and higher PTSD incidence, indicating that responsiveness to stress can be transmitted behaviorally from generation to generation in humans, as in other animals (Yehuda et al., 2000).
A Good Response Gone Bad
The vicious cycle of stress hormones biasing us to perceive more threat and react with an increased stress response might seem like some kind perverse joke played by nature — or at least a serious design flaw in the brain. But it makes better sense if we take the brain out of its modern, urban, “civilized” context.
The stress response is a necessary response to danger. For animals, including most likely our hominid ancestors, behavioral transmission of individual differences in stress reactivity from parents to offspring makes sense as an adaptation to fluctuating levels of danger in the environment. Animals raised in chronically adverse conditions (e.g., high conflict, material deprivation) may expect more of the same in the near future; so in effect the maternal treatment of offspring attunes them to the level of stress they may expect to encounter in their lives (Parent et al., 2005). As such, a response that seems baffling and counterproductive in a modern, civilized context may make more sense in the context of our distant evolutionary past.
Even depression has been theorized as playing an adaptive role in certain contexts. The inactivity, lack of motivation, loss of interest in pleasurable activities like sex, and withdrawal from social relationships experienced by depressed people closely resemble “sickness behavior” — the energy-saving lethargy activated by the immune system in response to infection (see Miller & Blackwell, 2006). In a natural setting, the hopeless attitude of depression may be the most adaptive for an organism infected with a pathogen: The best strategy for survival is not to expend energy fruitlessly and become exposed to predators, but to hunker down, hide from threats, and direct energy to immune processes where it’s needed.
According to Stanford neuroendocrinologist Robert Sapolsky, who has studied stress in baboon troops, it is the relative safety from predators and high amounts of leisure time enjoyed by some primates — including humans — that has transformed these useful biological coping mechanisms into a source of pointless suffering and illness (Sapolsky, 1994). (Yes, it turns out that baboons suffer from depression and other stress-related disorders, just like people do.)
The great challenge in stress psychology — and the necessary precursor to developing interventions against stress’s harmful effects — has been understanding the mechanisms by which thoughts and feelings and other “mental” stuff can affect bodily health. For many years, it was believed that the main causal link between stress and disease was the immune suppression that occurs when the body redirects its energy toward the fight-or-flight response. But recent research has revealed a far more nuanced picture. Stress is known to actually enhance one important immune response, inflammation, and increasingly this is being seen as the go-between in various stress-related diseases.
Ordinarily, inflammation is how the healthy body deals with damaged tissue: Cells at the site of infections or injuries produce signaling chemicals called proinflammatory cytokines. These cytokines in turn attract other immune cells to the site, to help repair it. Cytokines also travel to the brain and activate the HPA axis, and they are responsible for initiating sickness behavior. Overactive cytokine production has been found to put individuals at greater risk for a variety of aging-related illnesses (Robles, Glaser, & Kiecolt-Glaser, 2005).
Cytokines may be an important mediator in the relationship between stress and heart disease. When the arteries feeding the heart are damaged, cytokines induce more blood flow, and thus more white blood cells, to the site. White blood cells accumulate in vessel walls and, over time, become engorged with cholesterol, becoming plaques; these may later become destabilized and rupture, causing heart attacks (Miller & Blackwell, 2006). Cytokine action also has been implicated in the link between stress and depression. People suffering from clinical depression have shown 40–50 percent higher concentrations of certain inflammatory cytokines. And about 50 percent of cancer patients whose immune responses are artificially boosted through the administration of cytokines show depressive symptoms.
The close connection between inflammation and both depression and heart disease has led some researchers to theorize that inflammation may be what mediates the two-way street between these two conditions: Depression can lead to heart disease, but heart disease also often leads to depression (Miller & Blackwell, 2006). Sleep may be part of this puzzle too, as disturbed sleep, which often goes with anxiety and depression, increases levels of proinflammatory cytokines in the body (Motivala & Irwin, 2007).
Not everyone responds the same way to stress. Personality traits like negativity, pessimism, and neuroticism are known to be risk factors for stress-related disease, as are anger and hostility.
In the late 1950s, Friedman and Rosenman (1959) identified a major link between stress and health with their research on the “Type A” personality: a person who is highly competitive, aggressive, and impatient. This personality was found to be a strong predictor of heart disease, and later research clarified the picture: The salient factors in the relationship between the Type A personality and health are mainly anger, hostility, and a socially dominant personality style (for example, tending to interrupt other people when they are talking; see Smith, 2006). When negative emotions like anger are chronic, it is as if the body is in a constant state of fight or flight (with the allostatic load this state entails).
There is now evidence that another trait associated with success-striving in the modern world — persistence — may also lead to health problems in some circumstances. When goals are not readily attainable, the inability to detach from them may produce frustration, exhaustion, rumination on failures, and lack of sleep. These in turn activate harmful inflammatory responses that can lead to illness and lowered immunity (Miller & Wrosch, 2007).
The bottom line: Woody Allen’s neurotic character who grows a tumor instead of releasing his anger isn’t far from the truth.
By the same token, studies have shown that optimistic people have lower incidence of heart disease, better prognosis after heart surgery, and longer life. The effects of a positive attitude on immunity were shown in a study by APS Fellow and Charter Member Sheldon Cohen, Carnegie Mellon University, and his colleagues, in which individuals were exposed to a cold virus in a laboratory setting and watched over six days. Those with a positive emotional style were less likely to develop colds than were individuals with low levels of positive affect (Cohen & Pressman, 2006). (Note that researchers like Cohen distinguish low levels of positive affect from negative affect — a low level of positive affect does not necessarily mean a high level of negative affect, and vice versa.) Positive affect was also found to be correlated with reduced symptom severity and reduced pain. Conscientiousness also has been found to predict longevity (see Smith, 2006). Cohen’s research earned him APS’s top honor, the James McKeen Cattell Award, in recognition of his contributions toward understanding the effects of social and environmental stress on human behavior and health and the impact of his research across a range of fields.
The Future: Behavioral Genetics
Personality and environmental factors are not the whole story when it comes to stress. The next frontier of stress research is the rapidly growing field of behavioral genetics. Modeling the interaction of genetic and environmental influences is no longer a matter of weighing the relative input of nature and nurture. The two intertwine in subtle and complicated ways, with environments affecting gene expression, and vice versa, throughout life. Thus, the current watchword is “stress-diathesis” models, in which environmental stressors have varying impact on individuals due to preexisting inherited vulnerabilities.
One major advance in this area was the discovery by APS Fellow and Charter Member Avshalom Caspi, University of Wisconsin, and his colleagues of a link between stress sensitivity and a particular gene called 5HTTLPR. This gene controls a protein that regulates the amount of the neurotransmitter serotonin (5HTT) available in the synaptic cleft (space between neurons). Individuals possessing two “short” variants (or alleles) of this gene and who also had experienced five or more stressful life events were more likely to have a depressive episode than similarly stressed individuals who had two “long” alleles of the gene (Caspi et al., 2003). In other words, a certain genetic makeup seems to increase risk for a serious illness through the mechanism of increased sensitivity to stressful occurrences.
Nathan Fox, University of Maryland, and his colleagues subsequently reported that children with two short alleles of the 5HTTLPR gene whose mothers also reported receiving low social support were more likely to show behavioral inhibition (fearfulness and a tendency to withdraw) at age 7. Those receiving high support did not show the tendency, and those with the long alleles but receiving low support also appeared “protected” by their genetic makeup. Behavioral inhibition may put a child at risk for mental illness in later life (Fox et al., 2007).
Genetic predisposition to stress sensitivity may in some cases become a self-fulfilling cycle. Fox and colleagues found that some very behaviorally inhibited children were regarded by their mothers as hard to soothe and received less care and sensitivity as a result; this in turn tuned up the child’s sensitivity to stress through the alterations in the mPFC and amygdala mentioned earlier. In the model Fox and colleagues propose, genetically influenced temperament in early childhood influences the quality of caregiving children receive, which in turn shapes a child’s attention bias to threat.
A Cup Half Full
So Nietzsche’s strenuous view of life, “whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger,” just plain isn’t true. Stressors that don’t kill you in the short run may yet shorten your life or drastically lessen its quality.
But quit your moping and look on the bright side: The newly refined science of stress could lead to new drug therapies that can control stress or inhibit its effects on health. Also, depression and anxiety are not only results of stress, but also causes, and existing therapeutic and medical treatments for these conditions can help change how people perceive threats, put their life challenges in context, and cut stressors down to manageable size. The cycle doesn’t have to be vicious, in other words.
What’s more, the confirmation that the mind directly affects the body can work as much in our favor as it does to our detriment, as the personality-and-stress research above indicates. As APS Fellow Carol Dweck, Stanford University, has argued, personality is mutable (see Herbert, 2007); if our outlooks and beliefs about ourselves can be changed, so (theoretically) can our vulnerability to life’s slings and arrows.
The bottom line: Stress is not inevitable. Even with more than one’s fair share of vulnerability genes, there’s plenty of room to take one’s life and one’s mind in a less stressful direction. Relaxation techniques such as meditation and yoga, for example, have been confirmed to quell stress demons. Even if you are a determined workaholic glued to your cell phone or a fearful and angry urban neurotic like Woody Allen, stress-reduction methods are readily available to cope with stress in the short term and even alter perceptions of stressors in the long term.
Meyer Friedman, co-discoverer of the link between “Type A” behavior and heart disease, is a case in point. A self-described Type-A personality, Friedman wound up suffering a heart-attack at age 55. He made the conscious choice to change his ways in accordance with his own discoveries — including following his own prescription by reading the classics. To get more in touch with his slow, patient, and creative side, he read Proust’s languid seven-volume opus Remembrance of Things Past three times. In short, he trained himself to relax and enjoy life, and he had the last laugh at stress by living to the ripe old age of 90. ♦
|The Social Side of Stress
Any kind of frustration or challenge can cause stress, but by far the most powerful stressors, as measured by physiological stress responses, are those caused by disrupted or absent social relationships (Koolhaas, de Boer, & Buwalda, 2006). Loss of friends and loved ones, inadequate nurturance, and social isolation all have major impact on health and well-being.
At the University of Chicago, APS President John Cacioppo and Louise Hawkley have studied the health effects of social isolation, an increasingly common malady in the modern world. Among their findings are that lonely older adults show more arterial stiffening and higher blood pressure than their nonlonely counterparts and that the association between loneliness and blood pressure increases with age (see Hawkley & Cacioppo, 2007, for a review).
Cacioppo and Hawkley also found that loneliness directly impacts the HPA axis. In middle-aged and older adults (but not young adults), loneliness is associated with higher levels of epinephrine in the blood, and lonely people of all ages show elevated levels of cortisol. By desensitizing the mechanism whereby cortisol turns off more cortisol production, the social isolation frequently experienced by older adults may hasten physical decline (Hawkley & Cacioppo, 2007). Lonely individuals of all ages also have poorer sleep than nonlonely people and therefore get less of sleep’s essential restorative benefits.
Humans and other social animals particularly seek the company of others when facing threats — both for safety and for social support. The general affiliative response — what APS Fellow and Charter Member Shelley Taylor, UCLA, has called “tending and befriending” (Taylor, 2006) — is mediated by the hormone oxytocin. Oxytocin rises during times of separation or disrupted social relations. Just as the familiar “adrenaline rush” of epinephrine induces the familiar fight-or-flight reaction, it is oxytocin that causes us to desire company and social togetherness. It may be especially important in females, reflecting their different reproductive and survival priorities from those of males — i.e., caregiving (tending offspring) and lessening social tensions through friendly overtures (befriending).
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ATLANTA—Michael Brown, Eric Garner, 12-year-old Tamir Rice.
As a series of high-profile killings of Black men and boys by police officers shook the country, Atlanta child psychologists and longtime colleagues Dr. Marietta Collins, Dr. Marianne Celano and Dr. Ann Hazzard wanted to do something to spark conversations about racial injustice, counter negative stereotypes and encourage young people to embrace people of all races, cultures and backgrounds. Collins, Celano and Hazzard decided to write a children’s book that tackles not only police shootings but systematic racism going back centuries.
The trio, who met more than 25 years ago as faculty members at Emory University School of Medicine, started penning a book titled Something Happened in Our Town about two years ago. The book features two families — a white family and a Black family — as they both discuss a police shooting of a Black man.
Published by Magination Press, which is the children’s book imprint of the American Psychological Association, the new book, which retails for $16.99 (U.S.), was originally scheduled to be released later this summer, but was moved up after the shooting of 22-year-old Stephon Clark in the yard of his grandmother’s home. Sacramento, Calif., police said officers believed he was holding a gun, but only a cellphone was recovered. No charges have been filed against the two police officers in Clark’s case — or against the police officers in the cases of Brown, Garner and Rice. The shooting of Clark sparked protests and outrage.
The book, designed for children ages 4-8, is direct in its approach. It begins like this:
Something bad happened in our town. The news was on the TV, the radio and the internet. The grown-ups didn’t think the kids knew about it. But the kids in Ms. Garcia’s class heard some older kids talking about it, and they had questions.
The book discusses a police shooting, and then parents and children have a conversation about a pattern of racial bias and injustice in our country. The authors said they wanted to make clear that police killings of unarmed Black children and men should not be viewed as flawed action on the part of individual police officers, but as a consequence of the broader problem of structural racism. The book discusses ways to confront and change this pattern, and in the book, they use the pattern of a metaphor to illustrate the point. The white mother asks her daughter, Emma — suppose you had a birthday party and invited everyone in your class except the black kids.
“They would be sad,” Emma said. “Or mad.”
“And YOU would be missing out, because you never know who is going to be your best friend,” said Liz, her sister.
When the book switches to a Black family, a young boy named Josh is troubled by the news of a police shooting.
His father tells him there are many cops, Black and white, who make good choices, but adds, “We can’t always count on them to do what’s right.”
The book includes an extensive resource guide with multiple pages devoted to helping parents with everything from how to address racial bias with children to how to respond if your child tells a racist joke or makes a sweeping comment about Black boys in class.
“We don’t want families to just read the book,” said Collins, who is Black and who worked on Emory’s Transforming Community Project (TCP), an initiative to document the university’s past and confront current challenges around the issue of race. “We want it to be interactive. We want it to be a springboard for conversations about bias and prejudice.”
When asked about the current state of racial justice and harmony today, Collins, who recently retired from Emory and now works as the director of behavioural medicine at Morehouse School of Medicine, responded:
“It’s definitely not better.”


I suggest using a more clearcut example.
See how this works.
I'm having a lot of trouble with this one homework problem on sequences. I am given two statements, one is true and one is false. I need to identify the false one and give an example of why it is false.
a) If (a(n)) is not bounded above, then (a(n)) diverges to infinity.
b) If (a(n)) diverges to infinity, then (a(n)) is not bounded above.
Here are the definition we were given word-for-word:
A sequence (a(n)) is bounded above if there exists a U within real numbers such that a(n) <= U for all n within natural numbers.
A sequence (a(n)) diverges to infinity if for all U within real numbers, there exists N within natural numbers so that a(n) >= U for all n >= N.
Right now I'm thinking that (a) is the false one, with a(n) = n*sin(n) as an example. It is not bounded above, but there is no point where a(n) is always greater than or equal to some U, as it is periodically increasing and decreasing, so it does not diverge to infinity. Does this make sense?


Juneteenth is the annual celebration of emancipation. It’s celebrated in June as news of slavery’s end hadn’t reached Texas and much of the Confederate South until June of 1865. Places to hosts such celebrations were scarce in Texas, so a gathering of prominent Black leaders pooled their resources to create Houston’s Emancipation Park.
Richard Brock, Elias Dibble, Richard Allen, and Jack Yates raised $800, a high sum at the time, to buy 10 acres of land to use for Juneteenth gatherings. For quite some time in the late 1800s, that’s all the land was used for but things changed after the turn of the century. For much of the early part of the century, it was the only park and swimming pool that Black families could use in the segregated state.
As the years rolled on, the park’s quality began to erode tremendously so Houston ended celebrations in 2007. Several state and local organizations collaborated on ways to revive the park. The effort to do was spearheaded by Black architect Teri Canada of the Perkins Will firm.
Over the weekend, a $33.6 million renovation announced last summer was finalized and the park was rededicated for Juneteenth and regular use.
OST/Almeda Corridors Redevelopment Authority, The Emancipation Park Conservancy, The Friends of Emancipation Park, and the City of Houston Parks and Recreation Department. ESPA of Houston, and M2L Associates of Houston all partnered to bring the park back to life. It now features a performance space, an entry plaza explaining the park’s historic roots, an expanded children’s playground and much more.
It is the oldest park in Houston and in the state of Texas.