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HPRC Fitness Arena: Physical Fitness

Back in action: Regaining peak fitness

Getting back into shape takes dedication and persistence, and doing so safely and correctly may help prevent injuries.

For whatever reason, sometimes we get off track with our fitness regimens—maybe it was an injury, a move, or just life that intervened. Getting back to a peak level of fitness after time away should be done gradually. Injuries such as tendonitis—which could become a long term issue—can occur as a result of doing too much, too fast. The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) recommends increasing duration (minutes of exercise) 5-10 minutes every one or two weeks over the first four to six weeks of an exercise program.

Stress Fracture Prevention: Strengthening the Lower Extremity Muscles

Maintaining strength and flexibility in the lower extremities is one of the many important steps toward decreasing the likelihood of developing the small cracks in a bone commonly known as stress fractures.

There are several risk factors for stress fracture development, but a 2011 article in Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise found that maintaining adequate muscle strength and flexibility in the hips, legs, knees, ankles, and feet is of great importance, especially for women. Here are some exercises from the American Council on Exercise that can help you build strength and flexibility:

Ankle Flexion

Single Leg Push-off

Forward Hurdle Run

Seated Calf Stretch

Standing Dorsi-Flexion (Calf Stretch)

Supine Hamstrings Stretch

Barbell Calf Raises

Jump and Reach

Agility Ladder: Lateral Shuffle

Alternate Leg Push-off

Barbell Jammers

Before beginning any exercise program, however, make sure to consult with a medical professional, especially if you are more than 45 years old.

The lowdown on stress fractures—and how to prevent them

New One Shot One Kill materials now available online

New program materials for the One Shot One Kill (OSOK) performance enhancement program are now available on HPRC’s website!

One Shot One Kill: Want to learn how the elite warrior accomplishes optimal performance time after time, under the most challenging conditions? The HPRC now has new program materials for the One Shot One Kill (OSOK) performance enhancement program online for you to use and download—by yourself or with your unit! One Shot One Kill (Integrative Platform version) is a “warrior-centric” performance enhancement program that warriors can set up and manage on their own. OSOK-IP is designed to enhance performance, hardiness, and resilience. By building on the skills that Warfighters already possess, OSOK aims to translate good Warfighter qualities to outstanding ones. OSOK-IP comes in two versions:

OSOK-IP Solo is a step-by-step integrative training plan, with supplemental materials, that enables the individual Warfighter to pursue this method of Total Fitness on his or her own and reach the optimal level of performance in almost all areas of life.

OSOK-IP Train the Trainer enables your unit to train as a group by selecting one member to learn and present OSOK-IP to the rest of the unit. This section of the website has the full curriculum available to download and even customize OSOK-IP content for your own military culture and unit.

We look forward to your feedback, too. Check out OSOK and let us know what you think!

Back in motion: Can swinging a kettlebell improve back and shoulder pain?

Exercises with strength-training equipment known as kettlebells may provide relief from back, shoulder, and neck pain.

Kettlebells have been used in Europe for years in strength training, and now they’ve become a popular workout tool here in the United States too. The benefit of kettlebells is that they provide the user a wider range of motion than dumbbells do. Kettlebell workouts engage multiple muscle groups at once, making them a great option for getting a whole-body workout in a short time.

Interestingly, the January 26 edition of the New York Times Health Section reported on a Danish study that suggests kettlebell exercises are a promising musculoskeletal therapy for low-grade back and neck pain.

The study involved middle-aged women with low-grade back, shoulder, and neck pain who were randomly assigned to either a regular kettlebell workout or a general-exercise control group. The study did not include those with chronic pain.

According to the Times article, at the end of the study, the group that did the kettlebell exercises reported less pain, as well as improved strength in the trunk and core muscles, compared with the control group. Overall, the study showed exercising with kettlebells reduced lower-back pain by 57% and neck and shoulder pain by 46%.

For those with core-muscle instability or weak core muscles, kettlebells can be a great way to strengthen those muscles (back, abdominal, glutes, quads, hamstrings) and improve posture. However, along with exercise it is imperative to stretch the hamstrings, since this tends to be a major contributor to lower back pain or discomfort.

It’s important to start slow when using kettlebells and seek professional guidance. Like any other exercise equipment, if used improperly, kettlebells can cause serious injury, and their swinging motion can be difficult to control.

How dangerous is too much training?

Too much training with not enough down time and less-than-optimum nutrition can lead to “overtraining” needing weeks or even months of recuperation.

Getting in the best shape of your life requires you to push your training regime to the limit. However, without appropriate rest periods and diet, this can lead to serious conditions known as “non-functional overreaching” (NFO) and “overtraining syndrome” (OTS). What occurs is that your performance begins to decline, even though you are training as hard as ever, and you start to feel tired and “stale.” Read HPRC’s Overview “Overtraining—what happens when you do too much” to learn about the serious implications of these conditions for Warfighters.

Working out with babies

An Army base in Germany includes babies in their workouts!

At the U.S. Army Garrison in Kaiserslautern (Germany), the base is trying to find more ways to include families in physical fitness. They are providing classes— called “Binkies and Babes” —that spouses can do with their babies. These classes are great ways for spouses to workout with their young children, socialize with other military families, and get a great individual workout!

Overseas military families can sometimes find it difficult to both exercise and manage child care. This is one way overseas bases are moving towards Total Family Fitness. Renee Champagne, the Fitness Coordinator for the Army bases in Germany (and a military spouse herself), sees how “working out and staying physically fit may help a spouse cope during a deployment… which in turn could provide peace of mind to the military member downrange.”

For more information, see the article and video on Stars and Stripes.

Add stretching to your fitness warm-up

Although the value of stretching prior to physical exercise is still in question, the consensus seems to be that it is a good idea to include some—done correctly.

The scientific jury is still out on whether stretching prior to vigorous activity really helps prevent training-related injuries, but the scales tip in favor of doing some as part of your warm-up, just in case. HPRC has just added an in-depth review of the research literature and now offers information to help you decide the best way for you to incorporate stretching into your own fitness program. Check our our new Question from the Field, “Stretching during warm-up,” which also offers a link to even more detailed information.

Runners’ trots

There’s a phenomenon runners sometimes experience that’s commonly called “runners’ trots” – otherwise known as diarrhea – that has risk factors and that can possibly be avoided. Although the “trots” usually don’t last long and are generally nothing to worry about, they certainly can be a major annoyance, causing lost time in training or competition and even embarrassment if there is literally “nowhere to go.”

The most common risk factors cited are for those who are young, female, susceptible to irritable bowel syndrome, or lactose intolerant, as well as those who have had a previous abdominal surgery. The things we do to our bodies that reportedly increase risk are high-intensity exercise, dehydration, vertical-impact sports (e.g., running vs. biking), poor conditioning, medication, and diet. Although these are stated in the medical literature as risk factors, a recent study published in the International Sportmed Journal examined the evidence behind each of these risks to see if they hold up under scrutiny – and there’s surprisingly little evidence to support many of the statements about risk factors for developing “runners’ trots.” Most of the evidence was limited and relied on either single studies or multiple studies with varying results but a tendency toward supporting the conclusion.

Here are the conclusions of this evidence-based study:

The only strongly supported evidence was for dehydration to increase the risk of diarrhea. Female gender, younger age, high-intensity training, vertical impact, and medication had limited support and could go either way. Finally irritable bowel, lactose intolerance, previous abdominal surgery, poor conditioning, and dietary factors had very weak support. Keep in mind that little or no evidence does not make something true or false; it just means we have insufficient scientific evidence for any assumption.

So, based on the studies, how can you avoid “runners’ trots?”

  1. The evidence certainly supports staying well hydrated so that the bowel gets an adequate blood supply.

Even though the evidence for doing some things is not strong, they make sense and are not harmful. These include:

  1. Avoid a large meal 3-6 hours prior to running.
  2. Avoid food or drinks that have non-absorbable sweeteners (such as sorbital or sucralose), caffeine, and/or a high fat content.
  3. Don’t ingest concentrated carbohydrates (high glycemic index) before running.
  4. Be aware that energy bars and gels may contribute to the “trots” for some people.
  5. Avoid taking anti-diarrheal medications such as loperamide (e.g., Imodium) or Lomotil, since they can affect the ability of the body to tolerate heat.
  6. Wear loose-fitting clothing to reduce irritation.
  7. If symptoms persist for more than a few days, seek medical attention to be sure there is not an underlying cause.

    Enjoy your run!

    Announcing Family Physical Fitness on HPRC

    HPRC's Family & Relationships section has a new area on family physical fitness. See what it has for you and your family!

    Warfighters have specific physical activity requirements, but their spouses, children, parents, and other loved ones also have physical fitness requirements for their own individual and family missions. HPRC's family section has a new area that summarizes recent guidelines for physical activity for U.S. adults, and children, and identifies military resources, interactive tools, and exercise workouts and videos. Check it out here!

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Thursday, June 11, 2015

Insurgency in India

Insurgency in India is not a rare incident. The country for the last decade has seen many such incidents. We being a patient neighbor keep our heads cool and try to fix the problem with a hope that such incident would not take place deliberately in future. But we have been proved wrong. The Indian army is always alert and confront bravely any such incident. To protect the people the army can take necessary decision. After all, to save the countrymen is to serve the mother. All the political parties are united in such situation and none is agree to negotiate. The moto of all the political parties should be same of the safety and interest of our motherland.

Saturday, May 2, 2015

All Blood types will be Universal donors soon...

Canadian researchers, including one of Indian origin, have now developed a way to transform all donated blood into a neutral type that can be given to any patient.

The researchers have created an enzyme that could potentially pave the way for changing blood types. The enzyme works by snipping off the sugars, also known as antigens, found in Type—A and Type—B blood, making it more like Type—O.

Type-O blood is known as the universal donor and can be given to patients of all blood types. With this enzyme, Jayachandran Kizhakkedathu from the University of British Columbia and colleagues were able to remove the wide majority of the antigens in Type-A and B blood.

“We produced a mutant enzyme that is very efficient at cutting off the sugars in A and B blood, and is much more proficient at removing the subtypes of the A-antigen that the parent enzyme struggles with,” said lead author of the study David Kwan from the University of British Columbia in Canada.

To create this high-powered enzyme capable of snipping off sugars, researchers used a new technology called directed evolution that involves inserting mutations into the gene that codes for the enzyme, and selecting mutants that are more effective at cutting the antigens.

In just five generations, the enzyme became 170 times more effective. While the researchers were able to remove the wide majority of the antigens in Type-A and B blood, before it can be used in clinical settings, the enzyme used would need to remove all of the antigens.

The immune system is highly sensitive to blood groups and even small amounts of residual antigens could trigger an immune response. The findings appeared Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Courtesy: The Hindu

Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Women Empowerment in the society

Gender inequality is the main social issue in India in which women are getting back in the male dominated country. Women empowerment needs to take a high speed in this country to equalize the value of both genders. Uplifting of women in all means should be the utmost priority of the nation. Inequalities between men and women in the society generate lots of problems which become a big obstruction in the way to success of nation. It is the birth rights of the women to get equal value to the men in the society. To really bring empowerment, every woman needs to be aware about their rights from their own end. They need to take positive steps and involve in every activities instead of only involving in the household chores and family responsibilities. They should know about all the happenings in their surroundings and country.
Women empowerment has the power to change many things in the society and country. They are much better than men to deal with certain problems in the society. They can better understand the disadvantages of the overpopulation for their family and country. They are fully able to handle the economic conditions of the family and country through proper family planning. Women are capable enough to handle any impulsive violence in comparison to the men whether in the family or society.
Through women empowerment, it can be possible to change the male dominated country into the equally dominated country of rich economy. Empowering women may easily help to grow each and every member of the family without any extra effort. A woman is considered to be responsible for everything in the family so she can better solve all the problems from her own end. Empowerment of the women would automatically bring empowerment of everyone.
Women empowerment is the better treatment of any big or small problems related to human being, economy or environment. In few last years, the advantages of the women empowerment are coming out in front of us. Women are being more conscious about their health, education, career, job and responsibilities towards family, society and country. They are taking part in the every area and showing their great interest in each field. Finally, after long years of hard struggle they are getting their rights to go ahead on the right track.

Courtesy: India Celebrating

Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Energy Efficiency and The Impact Of Renewable Power

For the better part of the last decade the term 'Global Warming' has been tossed around but just what does it exactly mean? Put simply global warming is the gradual increase in temperature of the Earth's atmosphere. As a result of the greenhouse effect global warming is attributed to harmful carbon dioxide and other pollutants enabling damaging radiation from the sun to pass through into earth's atmosphere. With NASA confirming that over 90% of experts agree that global warming is down to human causes, action must be taken!

Despite many activists and environmental agencies constantly urging people to take control of their carbon footprint, very little is done. From labelling it a 'fad' to declaring that only a (seemingly impossible) joint effort from every country could even remotely begin to reverse effects, global warming has sadly become neglected.

Whether it is the idea that one man can make very little difference to the entire cause or the belief that greener options for the home are far too costly and time-consuming, as a general public we seem to have given up. With constant unpredictable weather conditions and rising temperatures in some of the most unlikely parts of the world, it is important that we start to make changes.

We are each responsible for our own carbon footprints and whether you wish to believe it or not; one positive move could make a great difference. One of the easiest ways in which we can ensure we are more energy-efficient is by switching to using renewable power in our homes...

Renewable energy is named so as, unlike fossil fuels, it will not run out. There are a range of renewable energy options including solar, hydroelectric and wind power which are entirely natural resources that have drastically less impact on the environment.

Solar power is a popular choice for many homeowners but wind energy is fast becoming a leading choice, with a number of countries including the UK and US increasing the number of wind power plants in operation.

With an increasing number of green energy providers in many countries, going green is now incredibly easy and does not cost anywhere near as much as thought.

Although opting for solar panels may seem like the more expensive choice, in the long run your investment could greatly pay off as your home becomes increasingly self-sufficient.

Perhaps not the most popular choice, hydroelectricity is also an effective form of green energy. Using the flow of the water to generate electricity, this is a highly sustainable choice that could easily last for hundreds of years.

Not only will switching to green energy reduce harmful gas emissions, as a nation we will become less reliant upon imported fuels and as a result become more vastly economically developed.
Why not consider switching to a renewable energy provider, in return making your home far more energy-efficient and reducing your carbon footprint? With the temperature of the Earth's atmosphere continuing to increase, including a weirdly warming Arctic, reducing your carbon footprint will only help improve the current state that the global climate is now in.

Courtesy: P W Jones
Blogger Widgets


It was a quiet Friday morning in the U.S. House chambers, with so many empty seats it looked like Congress had already adjourned for the year. But on Dec. 16, the day federal funding for the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom was set to expire, a small group of representatives stood and told their few colleagues in attendance why the commission, which tracks religious persecution abroad, should be reauthorized.

"The Coptic Christians are going through a very difficult time," said Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va. "The Iraqi Christians are being killed. In Tibet, the Buddhists are setting themselves aflame because of persecution. … The Christians in Sudan, in the Blue Nile area, are going through genocide and are being killed because of their faith."

USCIRF, a bipartisan group that monitors religious oppression worldwide and makes suggestions to the White House and Congress on how to respond, is "a beacon of hope" for those areas, Wolf said. And without much ado, despite having delayed the decision to the eleventh hour, the commission was renewed and spared for three more years.

Notwithstanding the empty room, organizations across the country were watching closely to see what happened that day. The commission, organized in 1998 to ensure that religious freedom circumferences the globe, had already started packing their boxes the week before. Their uncertain future didn't have anything to do with their mission — they were caught in a political power play — but still, religious groups across America took the commission's vulnerability as a sign that Congress might no longer value religious freedom abroad.

The implication that freedom of religion might no longer be a priority for the U.S. government was alarming, especially for the American Islamic Congress, a group that subsequently launched an all-out effort to preserve the commission.

Despite criticism in the media that USCIRF had a bias toward rectifying Christian persecution, AIC, a Muslim-American advocacy group, spearheaded a campaign to save it. They wrote letters to the White House, gathered media coverage and lobbied House representatives until they were assured that the commission would be renewed. It was a crusade of dire importance, in AIC's view, one the group wages every day.

"We are dedicated to people from all different faiths to help them guarantee their rights," said Zainab Al-Suwaij, AIC co-founder and executive director. "As a Muslim organization, we are very proud to be working on such a critical issue."

The AIC is one example of the involvement Muslims have in fighting for international religious freedom, but the endeavor doesn't stop with them.

Islam-majority countries have a speckled past when it comes to insuring religious freedom by rule of law, but influential Muslim voices from countries like Egypt, Bosnia and Indonesia are yet rising to call for change, with more modern interpretations of Islamic law that support religious freedom for all. As impacts from the Arab Spring unfold, those voices are in some ways now louder and more poised for influence than ever.

USCIRF guides U.S. responses to religious persecution, and groups like AIC make headway advocating for freedom and creating a better understanding of Islam, but the voices in Muslim-majority countries are the key to creating environments where religious freedom is assured, experts say. For a real, lasting change to occur in Islam, academics say it must come from within.

Unexpected advocates

John Pinna spends his days at AIC in Washington, D.C., working on public policy and advocating for civil rights and religious freedom. But whenever he tells people the nature of his work, and that it is for a Muslim organization, everyone is always surprised.

"The comment I hear most is, 'I didn't know Muslims thought that way,'" says Pinna, director of government and international relations at AIC. "We need to advocate for religious freedom. … It is a fundamental American right, but it is also something that is fundamentally Muslim — being an example for religious freedom and tolerance and advocating for religious rights."

Religious tolerance is close to Zainab Al-Suwaij's heart. As a Shia Muslim living under a Sunni-dominated regime in Iraq, she was discriminated against and persecuted while Shias all around her were jailed or killed for practicing their faith. In the 1991 uprising against Saddam Hussein, she stood in the street, fighting soldiers for her religious rights.

"We wanted the freedom to be able to practice our religion freely and live without wars," Al-Suwaij said from her office at AIC in Washington, D.C. "We ended up in an uprising where over a quarter of a million people got killed."

Al-Suwaij was injured in the fight, shot in the face and neck, but her experience taught her the value of religious freedom and branded her with a desire to spread it to all people. After the uprising failed, she fled to America and eventually started teaching at Yale University. Then, shortly after the attacks on 9/11, Al-Suwaij left her teaching post to organize and create the AIC. She co-founded the non-profit organization with the goal of building interfaith and interethnic understanding.

Today, AIC has offices in Washington, D.C.; Boston; Egypt; Iraq and Tunisia with multi-pronged outreach programs, including a violence prevention campaign launched in Iraq in 2010 to train residents in conflict mediation.

Since 2008, the Egypt office hosts the annual Cairo Human Rights Film Festival to increase awareness and build cross-cultural understanding.

Through a Middle East civil rights initiative, AIC translated a 1958 comic book about Martin Luther King Jr. into Farsi and Arabic. The comic book, which promotes non-violent protesting, was posted on the Internet, then printed and distributed in Egypt. Some credit the book for inspiring nonviolent activism during the Arab Spring.

In Tunisia, AIC is coordinating nine-month-long programs to train civil leaders how to communicate with and mobilize residents.

Because AIC is a Muslim organization, its initiatives are most likely more effective in Muslim communities than non-Muslim initiatives, says American University professor Mohammed Abu-Nimer. But AIC may also be hindered because of its Western ties, he says.

"Their impact is limited because they could be perceived to be an extension of the American government or American society — but nevertheless they have some influence and they can encourage people to follow the path," says Abu-Nimer, who specializes in interreligious conflict resolution.

On the other hand, the U.S. is a good example when it comes to religious freedom, Pinna says, and the AIC holds to that example in its efforts.

"We know if we advocate for religious freedom it's a doorway into women's empowerment, free elections and so forth," Pinna says. "There is a direct line and you don't have to look much further than the United States to see it."

Religious rights in Islam

In a 2007 WorldPublicOpinion.org poll of almost 4,400 people in Egypt, Indonesia, Pakistan and Morocco, an overwhelming majority — 82 percent — agreed that "people of religion should be free to worship according to their own beliefs."

But the question of religious freedom in Muslim-majority countries is a complicated one.

"It really has to do with the specifics," Abu-Nimer says. "Are you asking about the right of Christians to build a church in Egypt? Are you asking about the punishment of those who leave Islam and convert? Or the punishment of a non-Muslim who tries to do missionary work in the country? The attitude is different based on the issue."

Email: achoate@desnews.com


Some of the states hit hardest by the foreclosure crisis aren't spending millions of dollars that the federal government has set aside to help struggling homeowners, a new report shows.

Of $7.6 billion the federal government has provided in the “Hardest Hit Fund” to help homeowners, states have disbursed only $3 billion, according to a report from the Congressional Research Service, a nonpartisan service that provides information to Congress.

The Hardest Hit Fund is one of several initiatives the federal government created in the aftermath of the recession to help families keep their homes. Eighteen states and the District of Columbia have 66 programs that use money from the Hardest Hit Fund, which is allocated to each state depending on various factors, including the impact of the housing crisis in the state and the percentage of residents who are unemployed or underemployed.

CRS found that states have disbursed widely varying percentages of their Hardest Hit money, from 21 percent in Alabama to 84 percent in Rhode Island. Some of the states hit hardest by the foreclosure crisis have distributed the lowest percentages, including Florida (26 percent), Michigan (29 percent), Arizona (34 percent) and California (36 percent).  As of October, Florida still had the nation's highest foreclosure rate. Nevada, which has distributed a little more than half of its Hardest Hit money, had the second highest rate.

In addition to Rhode Island, Oregon and the District of Columbia also disbursed a relatively high percentage of their Hardest Hit money, nearly 70 percent.

The first dollars from the Hardest Hit Fund flowed to California, Arizona, Florida, Nevada and Michigan in February 2010. Those states had the largest declines in home prices and high foreclosure rates. Later in 2010, the federal government expanded the program to 13 states and D.C., all of which had unemployment rates higher than the national average. States are required to submit plans to the Treasury, which administers the program, explaining how they would use the money.

Critics say the Treasury is at least partly to blame for states' low payout rates.  In a separate report in late October, the Office of the Special Inspector General criticized the Treasury for failing to specify how many homeowners states should help.

Last month, the Treasury approved changes to some of these states' Hardest Hit programs:

  • Arizona created a waiver allowing homeowners to receive assistance that exceeds the $2,000 per month cap, but the maximum assistance still can't exceed $48,000.
  • New Jersey reduced the maximum assistance available to homeowners to $24,000.
  • South Carolina received approval to launch a new program that provides up to $36,000 in principal reduction to homeowners when they modify a loan.

These changes were included in the latest monthly report that the Treasury provides to Congress on the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP.

Information about the Hardest Hit initiatives in the 18 states and D.C., including state web sites, fact sheets and quarterly reports, can be found here.


NYC Resources311Office of the Mayor

Official Website of the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation

Prospect Park

The Forests of New York City - Prospect Park

Brooklyn is the least-forested borough in New York City. The bulk of the existing forest, totaling about 100 acres, lies within Prospect Park. When Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903) and Calvert Vaux (1824-95) designed Prospect Park (1865-95), they incorporated two areas of existing forest into the plan. One area, the Midwood, was left largely untouched. Situated below the terminal moraine (a ridge of boulders, gravel, and sand that marks the end of a glacier’s advance) the Midwood is dominated by tulip trees (Liriodendron tulipifera). The other area, the Ravine, is on the moraine and is a series of small hills and kettles (ponds formed by submerged chunks of glacier during the last ice age) with a small stream entrenched in a steep valley. Olmsted and Vaux planted evergreen trees in an attempt to mimic an Adirondack landscape, but over time most of the evergreens died. Native oaks, such as the pin oak (Quercus palustris), as well as non-native Norway maples (Acer platanoides) and sycamore maples (A. pseudoplatanus), have filled in the gaps. The fertile, moist, and well-drained soils of this area make for what is called a “rich forest.”

While there might not be much forest in Brooklyn, 15,000 years ago there was no forest in New York City at all. Glacial activity dominated and vegetation was scarce until the global climate warmed and forced the glacier to retreat. Grasses and mosses grew in its place and their root systems held the sand firm. Successive generations of dead plant material provided organic matter and nutrients to the developing soil, and soil accumulation, combined with continued warming trends, enabled trees to grow. Thick forests began to prevail about 8,000 years ago and, as the vegetation grew and the warming continued, droves of animals began to move from the south into these new ice-free areas.

The forests in Prospect Park are like any other in that they are ecosystems, which are self-sustaining units defined by a complex exchange of energy between plants and animals. The source of energy is the sun, and a forest’s first interaction with the sun is at the canopy layer, the dense, leafy roof of the trees. The trees absorb almost all of the sun’s light – sometimes only one percent filters through to the ground. Consequently, other forest plants have to adapt their structure, leaf emergence, and growth behaviors to get the nourishment they need from such a scarce resource. These smaller plants are divided into understory, shrub, and ground layers.

The ground layer is composed of the lowest growing plants, the wildflowers and ferns. These are the first plants to emerge in spring and many of them are therefore the first to die back. Ground layer plants vary in height from the Canada mayflower (Maianthemum canadense), which carpets the ground, to Joe Pye weed (Eupatorium fistulosum), which can rise to heights of six feet.

As ground layer plants unfurl their leaves, shrub level plant buds burgeon. This layer is made up of woodland shrubs, most of which flower first and then leaf out. Shrubs range in height from the knee-high lowbush blueberry (Vaccinium angustifloium) to the spicebush (Lindera benzoin), which reaches up to ten feet or more into the understory.

The understory is made of small trees such as sassafras (Sassafras albidum) and dogwood (Cornus florida), which flower and leaf out about the same time as shrubs. Trees in the canopy layer generally flower first, often as early as shrub layer species, but their leaves open last. The variety of flora in a forest provides excellent habitat and food sources for animals of all kinds. This self-perpetuating environment, though, can be detrimentally affected by urban factors, such as habitat loss, invasive plant and animal species, pollution and nutrient enrichment, poor awareness, and misuse or abuse of land. For that reason, Parks is actively involved in the management of the city’s forests.

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Flight Patterns

Aircraft primarily depart heading into the wind. So whether an airplane departs to the north (north flow) or the south (south flow) depends on wind conditions. During clear weather in the Puget Sound region, winds tend to flow out of the north necessitating departures to the north. Cloudy or overcast days mean winds tend to flow out of the south necessitating departures to the south. Given our northwest climate, Sea-Tac Airport operates in south flow about 65% of the year.

north flow

South Flow

Both maps represent a typical 24-hour period of jet traffic at Sea-Tac Airport.

PublicVue Flight Tracking Tool

View local area flight tracking and noise information

Download instructions for PublicVue (PDF).

Effects of Weather on Noise

Many atmospheric phenomena can vary the intensity of aircraft noise from day to day at a given location. Noise propagation, or the transmission of sound waves through the air, can be influenced by wind, temperature, cloud cover and fog. These conditions do not describe all weather phenomena and their effects on noise, but may help explain the day-to-day variations in the propagation of aircraft noise.


Our team was informed that the translation for "largues" is missing.

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Spanish-English translation for "largues"

"largues" English translation

Suggest new Spanish to English translation

Similar words

laquear · lardo · larga · largamente · largar · largarse · largo · largometraje · larguero · largueros · largues · larguirucho · larguísimas · laringe · laringoscopios · Larry · larva · las · lasa · lasaña · lascivia

In the English-Korean dictionary you will find more translations.


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© 2009 David Borland
In 2040 the United States of America is officially dissolved by a Constitutional Convention. State referendums
held in 2038 gave citizens the opportunity to decide what new country they would become part of in 2040. This
historic event was a result of unprecedented immigration of Latino’s into the U.S. and at the same time, a vast
emigration of American citizens to new countries. During this same time, drastic climate changes has created
historic draught conditions over most of the Northern Hemisphere, except in the Northern Appalachians, which
is one of the world leader’s in precipitation. This story combines these unprecedented changes of demographic
and water concentrations in the world.
Atlantica, a new country formed from northeastern states of the U.S., now controls the world’s largest man
made aquifer that was built by the U.S. and is located in the Appalachian mountains. Atlantica decides to use
the Aquifer System to gain economic concessions from neighboring countries in violation of its original intent
and mandates established by the U.N. This decision would be a threat to peace in the Northern Hemisphere.
chapter one
beloved homeland in the year 2050.
leaving after he found all the information he wanted.
Late on that Saturday, while continuing his research at the library, he took a break and began walking through
the dark halls. He noticed a sign over one of the rooms that said “Planning Department.” This meant nothing to
him, however it aroused his interest. He entered and switched on the light which exposed a room full of metal
cabinets. He browsed around and noticed one of the cabinets had a nameplate that read, “PLANNING
SCHEMATICS, PITTSBURGH AQUIFER SYSTEM, 2022-2042”. He was overwhelmed with his discovery.


CPT Codes

CPT Codes

Diagnostic Ultrasound examinations require permanently recorded images, clinically appropriate measurements and a written report.

The CPT codes for musculoskeletal ultrasound are:
CPT 76881: Ultrasound, extremity, nonvascular, real-time with image documentation, complete.

CPT 76882: Ultrasound, extremity, nonvascular, real-time with image documentation, limited, anatomic specific.

CPT Guidelines: A limited, anatomic-specific ultrasound examination is performed primarily for evaluation of muscles, tendons, joints, and/or soft tissues. It is a limited examination where a specific anatomic structure such as a tendon or muscle [Moderator Note: or plantar fascia] is being assessed. The code would be used to evaluate a soft-tissue mass that may be present in an extremity where knowledge of its cystic or solid characteristic is needed.

Code 76942: Ultrasonic guidance for needle placement (eg. Biopsy, aspiration, injection, localizationdevice) imaging supervision and interpretation

* Codes are to be used in conjunction with the related ICD9 Procedure codes.

CPT Code/Value search:
To obtain information about Medicare’s relative value payment amount associated with the codes go to:

Download ROI .xls Spreadsheet

It is recommended to always check with your insurance carrier and AMA for updates and guidelines.


Star Style: What Was He Thinking?

Now that Justin Timberlake has embarked on a successful solo career, it appears he's ditched his boy-band look for some edgier ensembles. The outfit he sported at the Soul Train Awards in Pasadena in March tanked, however: Timberlake's sparkly slacks are all wrong with his rugged jacket and toned-down tee.


Thunderbolt logo

Heavy Rain

Shaun Mars is missing. He was last seen playing at a local park, before the rain started to pour. You might assume that he just ran away – his home life wasn’t exactly perfect – and pray that he’ll show up at the door any second now. But deep down, you know he won’t. You know better. He’s been abducted by the Origami Killer, a psychopath who drowns young boys in rainwater and leaves an orchid and a little figurine behind with the corpse. No one knows who this guy is. Thousands of potential leads to follow, hundreds of suspects to interrogate, and not a definitive clue about how to stop a single madman. You’ve got to find him. There is a child locked away somewhere, slowly dying as he clings to the hope that someone will save him.

You’d better think fast, too. It’s raining hard, and the water is still rising.

The search begins with Ethan Mars, the father of the latest victim. His story is tragic; he devolves from a successful architect and family man into a miserable, gibbering shell of a man. You can’t really blame him. How would you feel if your children were kidnapped? What would you do? What could you do? That’s exactly what the Origami Killer wants to know. He’s sent Ethan some instructions, that, if followed correctly, will lead him to Shaun. They start off small, like retrieving another clue from a safebox. But each new task offers something more lethal; he has to choose between aiding or running from the authorities, attacking innocent people, and facing dangers that could easily kill him. They might, depending on how you play. It’s a dark, heart-wrenching tale of just how powerful a motivator love can be. Ethan will do anything to save his son. It’s just a matter of how far you’ll let him go.

He’s not in it alone, either. Heavy Rain is presented through the perspectives of three additional characters. Not only do you get to see the story from the eyes of a desperate father, but from the people hunting the killer as well. Norman Jayden is an FBI profiler who struggles to resolve the case while dealing with a seemingly corrupt and bureaucratic police force. Scott Shelby works independently as a private investigator, interviewing previous victims while trying to uphold some sense of decency in the city’s seedy underbelly. Madison Paige, a journalist, spends her time connecting the evidence together and following her own leads. Though these characters don’t suffer nearly as much as Ethan, their stories remain compelling right through the epilogue. They’ll struggle with substance abuse, the pursuit of the truth, moral integrity, and the necessity of compassion. These dilemmas are compounded by all the clever plot twists and red herrings that pop up once the storylines start to converge. By the time the mystery is solved, none of them will escape unscathed.

That’s assuming that they’ll make it that far. Progressing in this game doesn’t revolve around open exploration, but interacting with everyday objects via quick-time events. All you’ve got to do is follow the arrows on the screen. The tutorial level demonstrates this perfectly; you hold a control stick to get Ethan out of bed, shave and brush his teeth, take a shower, get dressed, and go about his daily business. Things that you take for granted – opening a door, taking a sip from a glass, kissing, using a phone – are all done with button commands. All you’ve got to do is get close enough to the object, and follow the prompt that appears. You can even hold a button to look through the characters’ thoughts, which uncover more options and hints as to what you should do. By the time you’ve manipulated everything, you’ll have uncovered the next plot point. Even when you’re not in control, the commands still show up during the cutscenes; rather than attacking an enemy, you’ll have to follow a prompt to shoot or dodge. It makes Heavy Rain feel less like a game and more like an interactive movie. The story is compelling and emotionally engaging enough to keep you from caring, though.

Most of the time, anyway. It takes a while to get used to the movement mechanics. Pressing a shoulder button lets the characters walk in whatever direction they’re facing, and the analog stick can be used to turn their heads and move accordingly. It can be awkward, especially when you’re in a cramped space and you’re trying to focus on a single object. Even if you do get a handle on it, the characters move in a slow, almost drunken gait. It’s not horrendously bad, but it feels clunky compared to the quick-time events. You might pass up the item completely, forcing you to stumble around and try again. You might be facing the right direction, the game will occasionally ignore your inputs and force you to restart the animation sequence. It’s annoying, especially when you’ve got to hold down multiple buttons at just the right time to work. These miscues rarely happen, but they are jarringly out of place in an otherwise amazing experience.

The game is usually forgiving of any input errors, but you shouldn’t take it lightly. The choices and actions you perform can have a drastic effect on the rest of the story. Something insignificant, like making a phone call or finding a clue, might take things in a completely unexpected direction. The most significant ones don’t show up until the latter half of the game, but even the smallest events could lead to something huge. It’s entirely possible for some of the characters to die far earlier than the final showdown, which can remove or alter whole chapters from the story. There are over twenty endings and alternate cutscenes, all of which are solely dependent on decisions you could have made hours ago. Not all of them are happy, either. Half the fun is going back and figuring out what you could have done differently, and watching things unfold in a new way. It’s this kind of impact that make you feel more connected with the story; you’re not just watching some movie, but playing an active role in its progression as well.

It’s easy to be fooled, though. The game looks amazing. Every last inch of it is stunningly detailed. You’ll understand once you get a screen-full of Ethan’s face. The texture of the skin, the reflection of the light, pupil dilation, hairy chin, slightly furrowed brow, facial expressions… no other game on the PS3 (MGS4, maybe) comes anywhere remotely close to that level of realism. Heavy Rain is an emotional game, so it’s not surprising to see its characters present themselves as such. The stages and audio are just as engaging. Imagine walking through a train station. The bustling waves of people, a dull roar of footsteps, glowing information screens, and sunlight drifting through the windows. But you’re nervous; you can’t handle crowds. You keep bumping into people. You start gasping for breath, and your hands won‘t stop shaking. It’s not so easy to move anymore; you have to shake the entire controller just to take a step forward. And all the while, the music starts pounding louder and louder until you moan hoarsely and curl into a fetal position.

Now that’s atmosphere.

That doesn’t mean this game’s for you. This is hardly the typical game, and you might prefer something a little more traditional. Maybe you don’t want to care that much about the characters. That’s great. Totally understandable. But if you’re open and willing to take a chance, Heavy Rain is worth it. The story is a twisted, chaotic tale of a murderer and the love of a father. Its dark themes force you to look at these ordinary characters in different ways. You’ll be drawn further into it with each passing scene. It turns something as simple as using a phone into a far more meaningful act. The game allows you to interact with its rain-drenched world, shaping its development in ways that you’ll never expect until it’s too late. The clunky movements and awkward controls kill some of the immersion, but the gorgeous graphics and emotionally assaultive scenes will keep you mesmerized. So go ahead, give it a try. Take a walk in the rain.

9 out of 10

The author of this fine article

Gentle persuasion

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Cycle Routes and Trails

Cornwall features many trails which are managed by Cornwall Council. Each one offers something for everyone and will provide you with many hours of enjoyment.


Peptidyl-tRNA hydrolase in Bacillus subtilis, encoded by spoVC, is essential to vegetative growth, whereas the homologous enzyme in Saccharomyces cerevisiae is dispensable

Peptidyl-tRNA hydrolase in Escherichia coli, encoded by pth, is essential for recycling tRNA molecules sequestered as peptidyl-tRNA as a result of pre-mature dissociation from the ribosome during translation. Genes homologous to pth are present in other bacteria, yeast and man, but not in archaea. The homologous gene in Bacillus subtilis, spoVC, was first identified as a gene involved in sporulation. A second copy of spoVC, under the control of the xyl promoter, was integrated into B. subtilis at the amy locus. In this background, interruption of the original gene was possible provided that expression of the copy at the amy locus was induced. When spoVC was interrupted, both vegetative growth and sporulation were dependent on xylose, showing that SpoVC is essential. The role of SpoVC in sporulation is discussed and appears to be consistent with previous hypotheses that a relaxation of translational accuracy may occur during sporulation. The homologous gene in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, yHR189W, has been interrupted in both haploid and diploid strains. The mutant haploid strains remain viable, as do the yHR189W mutant spores obtained by tetrad dis-section, with either glucose or glycerol as carbon source, showing that the yHR189W gene product is dispensable for cell growth and for mitochondrial respiration.

The translation of mRNA by ribosomes is not perfectly processive. Thus, a significant proportion of ribosomes that initiate translation terminate before reaching the stop signal, resulting in the dissociation of peptidyl-tRNA. This phenomenon, often called peptidyl-tRNA ‘drop-off’, is thought to occur at an average frequency of about 3 × 10−4 per codon (Manley, 1978; Jørgensen and Kurland, 1990). In Escherichia coli, the enzyme peptidyl-tRNA hydrolase (Pth) is required for recycling peptidyl-tRNA by cleaving the ester bound between peptide and tRNA (Cuzin et al., 1967; Atherly and Menninger, 1972). In Pth-deficient cells, protein synthesis is arrested, and cells finally die from starvation for essential species of tRNA (Menninger, 1978; 1979), in the first instance for tRNALys, which becomes sequestrated as peptidyl-tRNA and unavailable for protein synthesis (Heurgué-Hamard et al., 1996). Enzymes homologous to E. coli Pth, a protein of 194 amino acids, are widespread in microorganisms, and also appear to exist in higher organisms, including mice and man. Genome sequencing of archaebacteria, on the other hand, does not appear to reveal sequences homologous to the E. coli enzyme. Biochemical studies in Saccharomyces cerevisiae have demonstrated the presence of enzymatic activity that shares some characteristics of Pth in E. coli (Kossel and RajBhandary, 1968; Jost and Bock, 1969). More recently, sequencing of the S. cerevisiae genome has led to the identification of a homologous gene, yHR189W, encoding a protein of 190 amino acids (Ouzounis et al., 1995).

Attempts to purify Pth activity from rabbit reticulocyte lysates have suggested the presence of an enzyme that may fulfil the same role as the enzyme in E. coli but appears, curiously, to use a strikingly different mechanism. Whereas Pth in E. coli is an esterase, the activity isolated from rabbit reticulocytes is a phosphodiesterase that liberates peptidyl-AMP from peptidyl-tRNA (Gross et al., 1992a). On sucrose gradient centrifugation, the activity sediments with an apparent Mr of 65 000, considerably larger than the E. coli enzyme.

In Bacillus subtilis, a gene homologous to E. coli pth is present at 5° on the chromosome and encodes a protein of 188 residues (Ogasawara et al., 1994). The gene, named spoVC, was first identified in studies of B. subtilis mutants affecting sporulation. A mutation affecting spoVC renders B. subtilis temperature sensitive for sporulation; at non-permissive temperature, spo-285 (Ts) mutant cells cease sporulation at stage IV to stage V (Young, 1976), characterized by spore cortex development and coat formation. The behaviour of this mutant suggests that spoVC is expressed long before it assumes a particular role related to sporulation, consistent with the possibility that it might be an essential gene. Here, we show that SpoVC does indeed possess the Pth activity suggested by the homology of the protein to members of the Pth family, as it can complement a thermosensitive pth(ts) mutant in E. coli isolated by Atherly and Menninger (1972). We show rigorously that SpoVC is required for vegetative growth in B. subtilis and discuss the putative relation between Pth activity and sporulation. Finally, we show that the homologous gene in S. cerevisiae is not required for growth.

SpoVC complements an E. coli mutant deficient in Pth

The spoVC gene of B. subtilis is part of a large operon containing 14 open reading frames (ORFs), including several of unknown function. The gene is expressed from a σ37-controlled promoter located shortly upstream from the SpoVC coding sequence (Moran et al., 1981). The high level of amino acid sequence identity (31%) and similarity (49%) between SpoVC and Pth from E. coli strongly suggests that SpoVC should hydrolyse free peptidyl-tRNA and be able to complement the mutant in E. coli affecting pth and showing a thermosensitive growth phenotype (Atherly and Menninger, 1972). To test this hypothesis, the spoVC gene was cloned under the control of the B. subtilis xyl promoter. Expression of spoVC from this plasmid requires xylose in B. subtilis but is constitutive in E. coli. Complementation experiments of the thermosensitive pth mutation in E. coli were performed in two strain backgrounds with differing degrees of thermosensitivity, VH4 and VH805 (Heurgué-Hamard et al., 1996; Menez et al., 2000). In both cases, growth was restored independently of xylose, confirming the ability of SpoVC to complement the E. coli pth mutation.

Bacillus subtilis spoVC expression is required for both vegetative growth and sporulation

No equivalent of the E. coli pth(ts) mutant has been reported in B. subtilis. The spo-285 (Ts) mutant described by Young (1976) displays a block in sporulation but is unaffected during vegetative growth. To test whether spoVC is an essential gene, we deleted the spoVC locus while cloning a second spoVC gene at the amylase locus, under the control of the xylose-inducible promoter. Two plasmids were constructed for this purpose, according to the strategy of Guerout-Fleury et al. (1996). One plasmid (pVC9) was designed to exchange the spoVC locus for an MLS resistance gene, and a second (pVC7) to allow spoVC expression under the control of a xylose-inducible promoter, constructed for integration at the amylase locus (Fig. 1). In a second recombination, spoVC and the downstream gene yabK were replaced by the MLS resistance gene erm. Thus, transformants selected on MLS-xylose lose the entire spoVC gene at its normal locus, resulting in strain BS4 (Fig. 1), in which SpoVC synthesis should depend entirely on the activity of the PxylA promoter. After purification in the absence of xylose, strain BS4 was no longer able to grow, providing strong evidence that the spoVC gene is indeed essential for vegetative growth. In the presence of xylose, BS4 shows a wild-type sporulation phenotype.

Figure 1.

. A. Plasmids pVC7 and pVC9 used for spoVC interruption and integration of xylR , P xylA , spoVC at the amylase locus. MLS resistance in B. subtilis is encoded by erm and ampicillin resistance in E. coli by bla .

B. Strain BS4 derived from recombination of pVC7 and pVC9 at amyE and ctc/mfd loci. Cat represents the gene for chloramphenicol resistance. PxylA and xylR are cloned upstream of the spoVC open reading frame.

Interruption of the yHR189W gene encoding a bacterial-type Pth in the yeast S. cerevisiae

The sequencing of chromosome VIII in S. cerevisiae revealed an ORF (yHR189W) potentially encoding a close orthologue of bacterial Pth (Ouzounis et al., 1995). Compared with bacterial Pth, the putative yeast protein has no significant N-terminal extension, and analysis of the amino acid sequence by the neural network method of Nielsen et al. (1997) for a potential signal peptide that would suggest a mitochondrial location for the protein gave negative results. The ability of the yHR189W gene product to function as Pth was verified by cloning the gene into the plasmid vector pTrc99c under the control of the trc promoter inducible by IPTG and transforming the Pth thermosensitive strain VH4. At the non-permissive temperature of 37°C, growth of VH4 was restored by the recombinant vector and not by the control vector without insert, provided that IPTG was present in the medium.

To determine experimentally whether the gene, called yHR189W, was necessary for either mitochondrial function or normal aerobic cell growth, we attempted to interrupt the gene in order to delete the majority of the coding sequence. The interruption was made by transformation with linear DNA (Baudin et al., 1993) of the two haploid HIS3 strains yIB27 and yIB33, as well as the diploid strain constructed by crossing the two haploid strains. Transformation of the haploid strains as well as the diploid strain gave rise to His+ recombinants, suggesting that yHR189W was not required for viability. To confirm this conclusion, sporulation of the diploid His+ recombinant was induced, and tetrads were dissected. The four spores were viable, and the expected pattern of segregation of the nuclear markers among the spores was confirmed. The presence of inactivated yHR189W in spores T2D and T2A and the absence of the intact gene was demonstrated by Southern blot (Fig. 2). This shows that the normal EcoRV fragment containing yHR189W (see strain yIB27) is replaced by a larger fragment of the expected size in spores T2D and T2A, with both fragments being found in DNA from the diploid strain (2nHis+). The new larger fragment was seen to hybridize to probes specific for both yHR189W and HIS3. The presence of the interruption and the absence of the normal yHR189W gene in the recombinant strains were also verified by polymerase chain reaction (PCR). As peptidyl-tRNA drop-off in bacterial cells is a temperature-dependent process (Cruz-Vera et al., 2000), growth of normal and yHR189W-deleted spores was compared at different temperatures. However, over a temperature range of 28–40°C, no differences in growth rate were detected. Finally, we studied the growth of the four spores on media with glycerol as carbon source; normal growth under these conditions requires active mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation. All four spores grew normally, indicating that the yHR189W gene is not required for normal mitochondrial function.

Figure 2.

. Southern blot analysis of intact and interrupted yHR189W in S. cerevisiae .

A. DNA from the haploid strain yIB27, the diploid strain after recombination as described in the text (His+/His3), and from the four spores of T2 was digested with EcoRV and analysed first with a probe specific for the region of the yHR189W gene, showing the replacement of the normal EcoRV fragment containing yHR189W by a larger fragment when interrupted by HIS3. Expected sizes are shown on the right.

B. The membrane was partially dehybridized and rehybridized with a probe specific for HIS3, showing hybridization only to the larger of the EcoRV fragments. Lane 1 in each case shows a size standard made by labelling a BstEII digest of phage λ DNA.

Earlier studies using a spoVC mutant showed the involvement of the gene product in the process of sporulation in B. subtilis (Young, 1976). Here, we show in a rigorous manner that SpoVC is essential for vegetative growth in B. subtilis and confirm that the protein possesses Pth activity by its capacity to complement a Pth mutant in E. coli. Previously, Pth had only been shown to be essential to cell growth in E. coli (Atherly and Menninger, 1972).

The generally accepted role of Pth is to hydrolyse peptidyl-tRNA that has dissociated from the ribosome as a result of some sort of translational accident. Thus, Pth is not able to hydrolyse peptidyl-tRNA on 70S E. coli ribosomes, although the possibility has not been excluded that dissociation of the ribosomal subunits might expose peptidyl-tRNA remaining associated with the large subunit to the action of Pth. Various proposals have been made regarding the type of event that may lead to peptidyl-tRNA drop-off from the ribosome. Kurland and Ehrenberg (1985) argued that drop-off is an unavoidable consequence of optimizing the opposed requirements for ac-curate aminoacyl-tRNA selection and high translational processivity. They imply that drop-off occurs largely from cognate peptidyl-tRNA–mRNA complexes. Menninger (1977) proposed that drop-off is a cellular strategy to correct translational errors – the ‘ribosomal editor hypothesis’. He supposed that drop-off occurs frequently as a result of erroneous incorporation of an amino acid into the growing polypeptide chain, after a proofreading failure in the ribosomal A-site. The rationale is that the weak interaction between a codon and the anticodon of a non-cognate tRNA fails to be maintained at some point between the peptidyl transfer to the non-cognate aminoacyl-tRNA and the subsequent peptidyl transfer, thereby leading to drop-off. More recently, it has been shown that a significant part of peptidyl-tRNA drop-off results from to a factor-catalysed process during the early stages of polypeptide chain synthesis (Heurgué-Hamard et al., 1998; 2000).

The necessity to recycle tRNA that becomes se-questered as peptidyl-tRNA may depend on the physiological state of the cell, such as the rate of cell division and tRNA synthesis in relation to the rate of peptidyl- tRNA drop-off. During exponential growth, the fraction of individual tRNA species present as free peptidyl-tRNA in the cell will stabilize at levels depending on the relative fluxes feeding and emptying the pools of peptidyl-tRNA, namely peptidyl-tRNA drop-off on the one hand, and Pth activity and tRNA synthesis on the other. Whether or not Pth activity is required for cell growth should depend on the magnitude of the respective rate parameters and the capacity of the cell to support some peptidyl-tRNA, as no proof exists that peptidyl-tRNA is toxic to cells other than by reducing the level of tRNA available for protein synthesis. In contrast, in non-dividing cells, in the absence of new tRNA synthesis, the recycling by Pth of tRNA sequestered as peptidyl-tRNA seems more likely to be essential to cell viability. This may be part of the explanation for the fact that the spo-285 (Ts) mutation in B. subtilis affects sporulation but not vegetative growth.

Recent in vitro studies of peptidyl-tRNA drop-off and of the substrate specificity of Pth tend to confirm that errors in aminoacyl-tRNA selection are a major cause of peptidyl-tRNA drop-off (Dinçbas et al., 1999; Heurgué-Hamard et al., 2000; V. Heurgué-Hamard, unpublished data), as first proposed by Menninger (1977). This suggests a further explanation for the important role of SpoVC in sporulation. Genetic studies in several lower eukaryotes strongly suggest that an increase in translational ambiguity may be a requirement at critical stages of cell differentiation (Picard-Bennoun, 1982; Silar and Picard, 1994). Increased ambiguity is very likely to be accompanied by increased peptidyl-tRNA drop-off and an increased requirement for SpoVC.

It should be pointed out that the thermosensitivity of the spo-285 mutation in sporulation may be a characteristic of peptidyl-tRNA drop-off rather than a property of the mutant enzyme. Thus, recent experiments suggest that Pth activity in the E. coli pth mutant that is thermosensitive for growth varies little with temperature, suggesting that the thermosensitivity must arise as a result of increased drop-off at non-permissive temperatures (Cruz-Vera et al., 2000).

No purification of Pth from S. cerevisiae has been described, but an enzyme has been isolated from the related yeast hybrid strain Saccharomyces fragilis/ Saccharomyces dobzhanskii that was able to hydrolyse N-substituted aminoacyl- or N-substituted peptidyl-tRNAs but not free aminoacyl-tRNAs (Jost and Bock, 1969). We do not know whether this activity is similar to that of the yHR189W gene product in S. cerevisiae. The demonstration that S. cerevisiae can dispense with yHR189W function without loss of viability raises the question as to whether the function of peptidyl-tRNA hydrolysis is essential in this organism, or whether another enzymatic system is present that may recycle tRNAs sequestered as peptidyl-tRNA, as has been suggested from studies in animal cells (Gross et al., 1992a,b). The apparent absence of the bacterial type of Pth in Archaea raises a similar question. The construction of a strain lacking the prokaryotic-like Pth may facilitate identification of such an alternative system in yeast, if it exists. In preliminary experiments, we have shown that cell extracts from a yHR189W-interrupted strain contain an enzymatic ac-tivity that can hydrolyse Ac2Lys-tRNALys and can be separated from ribonuclease activity by ion-exchange chromatography.

Experimental procedures

Bacterial strains

Strains of E. coli K-12, B. subtilis and S. cerevisiae are listed in Table 1. TG1 (Wain-Hobson et al., 1985) was used for shuttle vector cloning. MO1800 was used because it allows efficient xylose induction and facilitates recombination at the amylase locus. Competent B. subtilis cells were prepared and transformed according to the method of Anagnostopoulos and Spizizen, 1961), and sporulation was induced by exhaustion in Difco nutrient broth medium. PCR amplification for cloning was performed on MO963 as wild-type strain.

Table 1. .  E. coli K-12, B. subtilis and S. cerevisiae strains.
E. coli
 TG1 supE, thiD ( Δ lac-proAB) hsd5/F + , traD36, proAB + , lacIq Δ M15 Wain-Hobson et al. (1985 )
 VH4 supE44, thi1, thr1, leuB6, lacY1, tonA21, trp-, pth (Ts) Heurgué-Hamard et (1996)
 VH805 metb, glyV-55, pth (Ts) , recA ::Cm Menez et al. (2000 )
B. subtilis
 MO963 trpC2, pheA1 Frandsen et al. (1999 )
 MO1800 xylA, amyE :: erm F. Arigoni
 BS3 MO1800 , amyE:: pXyl- spoVC This work, BS3 × pVC7
 BS4BS3 spoVC::ermThis work, MO963 × pVC9
S. cerevisiae
 yIB27Mata ura3Δ851, leu2Δ1, his3Δ200, lys2Δ202Laboratory strain
 yIB33Matαtrp1Δ63, hisΔ200Laboratory strain
 yJMM116Mata ura3Δ851, leu2Δ1, yHR189::HIS3, lys2Δ202
 yJMM117Matαtrp1Δ63, yHR189::HIS3
 yJMM118Mata ura3Δ851, leu2Δ1, yHR189::HIS3
 yJMM119/T2AHis+ ura trp lys leu+Spore A tetrad no. 2
 (or T2B, C, D) (or spore B, C, D)

Growth conditions

For E. coli, Luria–Bertani (LB) was used as rich medium. Antibiotics were added as necessary at the following concentrations: ampicillin 200 μg ml−1, tetracycline 12.5 μg ml−1 and chloramphenicol 15 μg ml−1. For B. subtilis, LB was also used as rich medium, supplemented as necessary with chloramphenicol (5 μg ml−1) or spectinomycin (100 μg ml−1), lincomycin (25 μg ml−1) and erythromycin (1 μg ml−1) for macrolide–lincosamide–streptogramin B (MLS) resistance. The Pspac plasmid promoter was induced when necessary by the addition of IPTG to a final concentration of 1 mM. The xylose promoter was induced by the addition of xylose to 50 mM in rich medium. Complementation studies in E. coli pth thermosensitive strains were performed on LB-ampicillin plates at non-permissive temperatures as stated in the text. For S. cerevisiae, the following media were used, YEP-glucose (2%) or YEP-glycerol (3%) as rich medium, complete synthetic medium with supplements as required by auxotrophies and minimum synthetic medium (Adams et al., 1997).

The spoVC locus under xylose control in a spoVC deletion strain

The construction of a strain containing a spoVC gene under xylose control used two plasmids (pVC9 and pVC7), which can recombine with the chromosome by double recombination events. The spoVC gene was amplified using primers spoVCBam (CGCGGATCCAGTTATGTGACTAAGGGAGGA) and spoVCXba (GCTCTAGATTGGTGTAGTATGACTTTGT). The PCR product was cleaved by BamHI and XbaI and cloned with two further fragments: the xylose-inducible promoter and its repressor carried on an XbaI–EcoRI fragment and excised from pDG1832 (Webb et al., 1997); and the amylase recombination sequences, the ‘amy back’ and ‘amy front’EcoRI–BamHI region from pDG1662 (Guerout-Fleury et al., 1996). Ligation of these three fragments creates pVC7, containing resistance genes for ampicillin, spectinomycin and chloramphenicol, from which spoVC expression depends on the xyl promoter (Fig. 1). A region of 1620 nucleotides around spoVC, from ctc to after yabK, was amplified by PCR using the following primers: OlctcBs (GATTCATCTGACCGGAGAAGC) and OlyabKBs (TTGAC GGGGTACAAAAGGACA). The PCR product was then cloned in pDG271 (Stragier et al., 1988) between the PstI and XbaI sites. A HindIII site between the cat and tet genes was eliminated by blunt ligation of StuI–EcoRV termini, resulting in pVC5. The erm resistance region of pDG939 was cloned in pUC19 to allow clonage in pVC5 between the remaining HindIII site and the SmaI site. The resulting plasmid (pVC6) contains the neighbouring upstream and downstream sequence of spoVC and an erm resistance gene present at the spoVC locus. Finally, as the HindIII deletion destroyed resistance to both chloramphenicol and tetracycline in pVC5, a new spectinomycin resistance cassette from pDG1726 (Guerout-Fleury et al., 1995) was cloned in pVC5 between EcoRI and BamHI (yielding pVC8). The spoVC::erm region was then recloned from pVC6 to pVC8 to give plasmid pVC9 (Fig. 1). MO1800 was first transformed with linearized pVC7, selecting for chloramphenicol resistance, screening for loss of MLS and spectinomycin resistance. The resulting strain (BS3) was then transformed with pVC9 linearized by PvuI digestion, selecting on LB-xylose-MLS plates. Loss of spectinomycin resistance was verified, and the resulting strain was BS4 (Fig. 1).

Deletion of yHR189W in S. cerevisiae

The following oligonucleotides were used to amplify the HIS3 gene in order to provide termini (underlined) homologous to the two ends of gene yHR189W. yHR189Wup: 5′-TGGAGAC TAGTGTCTGACCGGGATAGGCAATCCAGAGCCTCA GTACGCTGGAAAGGAAAGCGCGCCTC-3′; yHR189Wlow: 5′-GGCTATGAAATGTACTGAGTCAGAGCACGCCAGG CAGCAGGTTCACTCGCGCTAGGAGTCACTGC-3′.Recombination with deletion of most of the yHR189W gene was performed according to the method of Baudin et al. (1993).

Southern blot

After restriction enzyme digestion, DNA fragments were separated by gel electrophoresis in 0.7% agarose gels. Phage λ DNA digested with BstEII and labelled with [γ-32P]-ATP was used as molecular weight marker. Labelled probes for the yHR189W and HIS3 genes were prepared by PCR amplification of the complete genes followed by labelling with a Ready Prime II labelling kit (Pharmacia) according to the manufacturer's instructions.

This work was supported by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (UPR 9073), Aventis Pharma France (convention de recherche PES0781098), l’Association pour la Recherche sur le Cancer and the Fondation pour la Recherche Médicale.


Creator: Mordecai Richler

A Canadian writer, best known for his stories of Montreal-born Jewish characters, often contrary, argumentative, and morally ambiguous. Although he's primarily remembered as one of Canada's literary bright lights, turning out books like Solomon Gursky Was Here and The Apprenticeship Of Duddy Kravitz, he also wrote children's books like the Jacob Two-Two stories, essays and journalism giving his often crabby views on everything from Israel to Quebec, and even a book about pool. Several of his books have been turned into films, most recently Barney's Version.

Tropes often appearing in Richler's works:


Abstraction Techniques for Configuration Systems

Rainer Weigel, Boi Faltings

In this paper, we address abstraction methods for configuration. Configuration is a design activity where the set of available components and their allowed combinations are known a priori and the goal of the configuration process is to find the sets of components fulfilling the customers wishes and respecting all the compatibility constraints. Abstraction techniques for configuration are becoming more and more important when dealing with the complexity of real world systems. We have developed abstraction methods for finite and discrete constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs) and will describe herein the advantages of using these methods for configuration system. In particular the elaboration of abstraction hierarchies and compacting knowledge using the concept of interchangeability and substitutability on the different levels will be described.


Clinical Care

Polycystic ovary syndrome and women with diabetes

Lifestyle and nutritional management

Patient education and psychological care

Outpatient and inpatient diabetes care delivery

High costs, low awareness and a lack of care - the diabetic foot in Nigeria

Nigeria, with a population of about 128 million people, is Africa’s most populous country. Life expectancy at birth is 47 years; about 60% of the population live below the poverty line. While healthcare structures and institutions are inadequate, and there is a chronic lack of skilled healthcare personnel, diabetes is on the increase. Uncontrolled urbanization is the driving force behind rising obesity levels and a subsequent boom in levels of type 2 diabetes.

Diabetes increases the risks in pregnancy for both the mother and her infant. However, pre-pregnancy advice where possible, detection of undiagnosed or new (gestational) diabetes in pregnancy, and careful management of diabetes throughout pregnancy, with close liaison between healthcare professionals involved in diabetes, obstetric and neonatal care, can all help to achieve the desired outcome of a healthy mother and baby. The Global Guideline only addresses areas of pregnancy care that are commonly affected by the

Protecting eyesight, feet, and the nervous system

Cardiovascular risk, blood pressure, and kidney damage

People with type 2 diabetes suffer badly from heart disease, strokes, and damage to the blood supply to their feet. Indeed, these cardiovascular conditions are the major causes of ill-health and death in people with the condition. A significant proportion of that ill-health is preventable, including by attention to the levels of fats and sugar in the blood, the clotting tendency of the blood, and blood pressure. Raised blood pressure is also responsible for worsening of eye damage and kidney damage in people with type 2 diabetes, and is therefore particularly well worth treating.


How to Stand Out

Your “Scholarship Resume”

Are you ready for your “close-up?” It can be daunting when you are confronted with scholarship application forms that require you to discuss your background, extracurricular activities, or community service work. This process does not have to be excruciating – prepare by thinking of it as building your “scholarship resume.” Scholarship applications are your time to shine, so don’t be modest about your background. Prior to filling out any scholarship applications, take the time to create a list of your career goals, interests, activities, achievements, and any other unique attributes. There are a few approaches to effectively prepare yourself in ways that will boost your profile and distinguish your application from the competition.

Unique Qualifiers

Start by thinking of scholarship applications as a way to showcase your unique qualities: What are your hobbies? Where do you work? Do you volunteer? Do you participate in any sports? Are you a member of any organizations? What else is unique about you? By recognizing certain aspects of your identity, finding scholarships that you qualify for will become easier and creating an outstanding application will be manageable. Unique qualifiers include your employer, ethnicity, disabilities or health conditions, college major, extracurricular activities and athletics, geographic location, standardized test scores, and GPA. Keep in mind that even though there are plenty of available scholarships that do not require good grades, maintaining a higher GPA will still enable you to qualify for more scholarships.

Unique attributes can range from general characteristics like those mentioned above to something as offbeat and specific as your height. Being a vegetarian, bilingual, adopted, a 9/11 victim, or a first-generation student are just a few of the plethora of possible attributes that you can emphasize in your scholarship search and application process.

In addition to yourself, be sure to identify the unique attributes of your family members. Who do your parents or grandparents work for? Which organizations do they belong to? Many organizations and employers provide college scholarships to children and relatives of their employees or members. If you have veterans or military members in your family, you could be eligible for scholarships specifically designed for children and spouses of military members. Also, a large number of scholarship programs are available to students with family members who have battled with cancer or possess another type of health condition or disability.

Clubs and Organizations Related to Your Career Path

Extracurricular activities are a great way to acquire personal experiences that you can write about in your scholarship application. If you haven’t already done so, place your passions and interests at center stage by joining a club or organization related to your hobby, intended major, or future career path. For example, if your dream job is to become the editor-in-chief of a newspaper, then join your school newspaper or contribute to a literary magazine. This will reiterate your passion and commitment to scholarship providers. Clubs and organizations such as DECA, National Honor Society, 4-H, student government, choir, band, and theater are just a few among an abundance of options. Beyond high school, colleges and universities have a considerable amount of clubs and professional student associations that are great scholarship resume builders. Professional student associations allow you to explore a career, attend annual conferences, network, and find internship opportunities. Plus, these organizations often offer scholarship opportunities to their members.

Community Service and Volunteering

Make an impact by getting involved in community service and volunteer opportunities. The meaningful experiences you gain will amplify your presence on your scholarship application. Engagement with your community provides opportunities for personal growth and development and helps you develop important life skills such as time-management, problem-solving, and organization. Show everyone what you are truly passionate about by participating in an activity that aligns with your interests. Do you want to pursue a career as a nurse or doctor? Try volunteering at hospitals, nursing homes, or children’s hospitals. If you love animals, the Humane Society or local animal shelters could be perfect for you. Libraries, museums, homeless shelters, and other nonprofits are always seeking extra hands. Service learning can also be an opportunity for travel; for example, Habitat for Humanity, an organization devoted to building decent and affordable housing, offers service programs around the world. Even if you apply to scholarships that are not volunteer-based, service activities demonstrate well-roundedness, a quality that contributes significantly to your chances of winning.

Leadership Roles

It’s the quality of your experiences, not the quantity. Focus on becoming an active participant and use opportunities to take on roles of responsibility to further demonstrate your commitment to an organization or club. Being an active participant will allow you to draw upon more specific experiences to write about in your scholarship applications, such as overcoming challenges. Leadership positions can make a difference between a lusterless application and an excellent one because they demonstrate that you have initiative and have gained valuable lessons, such as people skills, problem-solving, teamwork, and dealing with conflicts. Opportunities for leadership roles exist in academic and athletic teams, community service and volunteer work, publications, and employment. There are quintessential leadership positions, such as a president, secretary, or treasurer, but unconventional ways of gaining leadership experience include organizing community service projects, joining tutoring or mentoring programs, participating in an event planning committee, or taking leadership development courses.

Completing scholarship applications is a challenging and multi-faceted process, but it doesn’t have to be difficult. Scholarship providers want to see who you are as an individual, so continue to your build scholarship resume by gaining leadership experience, volunteering in the community, joining clubs and organizations, and recognizing your unique attributes. The result: a phenomenal application that will separate you from the masses.

Technical Stuff

Be error-free.

Make it legible.

Follow the directions.

Be punctual.

Your Personal Statement

The personal statement prevails as one of the most common elements of a scholarship application. If the scholarship committee doesn’t ask for a general personal statement, they may ask you to write about a specific subject, such as why you need and deserve the scholarship, your future plans and goals, challenges and obstacles you’ve overcome, why education is important to you, all of these combined, or anything else that the scholarship committee deems important in selecting the winners. Whether you are asked to write a general personal statement, to write about one of the specific topics mentioned above, or to write about a totally different topic, one thing is for sure: you need to make yourself stand out from the crowd!

Because scholarship committees can receive hundreds and even thousands of scholarship applications, it’s essential to make sure your application is unique and memorable. Your personal statement is an excellent vehicle to do just that. It’s one of the only places in a scholarship application where you have the freedom to write more than just straight information and showcase your personality. Here are some tips to get you off on the right foot.

Start with a bang. Make sure the first sentence and/or paragraph of your statement is an attention-getter and offers a great first impression of you.

Sell yourself. Give the scholarship committee some awesome reasons why you are a great choice for a scholarship winner. Don’t be modest; be proud of your achievements.

Tell the truth. Be honest. Write in your own voice and don’t try to make yourself sound smarter with complex words. You don’t want your essay to sound fake.

Don’t be cliché. Avoid using bland words and overused statements that the committee will have already read over and over in other statements. Find unique ways to express your thoughts. Incorporate senses and emotions. Remember, you want to be memorable.

Write actively. Avoid using passive tense. Write in first-person. Use action verbs and be direct with your statements and assertions, especially when referring to your accomplishments.

Be optimistic. Even though you may have encountered hardships and overcome adversity, your goal is not to make the scholarship committee feel sorry for you. Instead, demonstrate how you are a worthy scholarship recipient by explaining how your past experiences helped to make you who you are today, and that you have what it takes to succeed in school and in your future career.

Tailor your statement. Don’t use the same personal statement for every scholarship; tailor it for each scholarship you apply to so it fits the qualifications appropriately.

Make connections. Every scholarship is established for a reason. Read the story behind the scholarship and find out why it was established. Then, in your personal statement, draw connections between yourself and the scholarship background or purpose to show why you would be a perfect recipient.

Follow the directions. Thoroughly read the directions and make sure you’re following them to a T. Be sure you’re appropriately answering the question(s) or addressing the topic(s) that the scholarship committee specified. Stay within any given word or page limits and follow all technical specifications, such as double-spacing and margin settings.

Proofread it. When you are done with the first draft of your statement, proofread it to make sure there are no errors. Spell and grammar check features available in word processors might not catch everything, so don’t rely solely on them. Ask a friend, a parent, a teacher, a guidance counselor, or someone else to look over it for you. In addition to spotting errors, they can also make suggestions for any improvements.

A personal statement can be the difference between winning and losing a scholarship. Now that you know what it takes to make yours amazing, you have a much better chance of winning the scholarships of your dreams.

Purdue Online Writing Lab
UC Denver Scholarship Resource Office


Citizens of the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, and many other western countries require a visa to enter Vietnam. Americans can obtain a 30-day visa from the embassy in Washington, DC, for about US $90, which takes up to seven days to process. For more information, visit Nationals of other countries should visit their home country’s embassy or consulate.

Health and Safety

There are no vaccinations required to enter Vietnam unless you have recently visited a country with a yellow fever epidemic in which case, proof of inoculation is necessary. Malaria, dengue fever, and Japanese encephalitis are all present in rural areas so malaria preventative medication, vaccination against Japanese encephalitis, and insect repellant should be considered. Other recommended shots include typhoid, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, meningitis, and rabies. It is also important that other standard vaccinations such as tetanus are up to date.

Vietnam is generally safe for travelers, with a low crime rate. Pick pocketing is common in the large cities, as is purse snatching by motorbike. When walking or riding, keep your bag close to your chest and don’t have any jewelry, camera or a cell phone that could easily be grabbed. Theft on beaches is also common so remember not to leave your bag unattended.


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The Best Tool Albums of All Time

Tool is considered not only one of the pioneering alternative hard rock bands, but one of the greatest rock bands of all time. List of the best Tool albums, including pictures of the album covers when available. This Tool discography is ranked from best to worst, so the top Tool albums can be found at the top of the list. To make it easy for you, we haven't included Tool singles, EPs, or compilations, so everything you see here should only be studio albums. If you think the greatest Tool album isn't high enough on the list, then be sure to vote for it so it receives the credit it deserves. Make sure you don't just vote for critically acclaimed albums; if you have a favorite Tool album, then vote it up, even if it's not necessarily the most popular.

If you want to know, "What is the Best Tool album of all time?" or "What are the top Tool albums?" then this list will answer your questions. Examples of albums on this list include Ænima and Lateralus.

The Best Tool Albums of All Time Albums


Isolated Monolithic Flyback Regulator

The LT3511 operates over a 4.5V to 100V input voltage range, has a 240mA, 150V onboard power switch and delivers up to 2.5 watts, making it well suited for a wide variety of telecom, datacom, automotive, industrial, and medical applications.

The LT3511 operates in a boundary mode, a current-mode control switching scheme, resulting in +/-5% typical regulation over the full line, load, and temperature range. Boundary mode, also known as critical conduction mode (CrCM), permits the use of a smaller transformer compared to equivalent continuous conduction mode designs. The output voltage is easily set by two external resistors and the transformer turns ratio.

(Linear Technology Corp)


Average Alabama Farmer is Getting Older

Montgomery, AL – A federal census report suggests families or individuals handle most of the farming in Alabama. Most are older who work fewer than 200 acres and make little money. The census suggests some are pursuing farming mainly as a side business. The average age of an Alabama farmer was 56-point-six in 2002, compared to 54-point-seven in 1997. The number of Alabama farms also declined from 1997 to 2002. The census report shows that number dropped about nine percent during that period because more farmland was sold for commercial and residential uses. However, the number of big farms increased. Those contain two-thousand acres or more. The preliminary census data from 2002 comes from the U-S- Agriculture Department.


Since the developer didn't include a makefile you are going to have to make your own, here is a link that will get you started
If I have some time this week I can write one, but I'm going away all next week so time is a bit scarce right now.


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Josephine Meckseper

Born 1964 in Lilienthal, Germany
Lives and works in New York, New York

Through carefully composed installations, photographs, and films, Josephine Meckseper exposes the political ramifications of America’s culture of consumption. In this work, Meckseper uses a video camera to explore Minneapolis’s Mall of America—one of the top tourist destinations in the United States—pausing to examine window displays, sale signs, and dormant rides in its indoor amusement park.

Meckseper then manipulates the footage, employing ironically patriotic red and blue filters—a technique inspired by French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard. The artist also turns the footage on its side and adds a vaguely sinister soundtrack. The result is an abstraction of otherwise documentary images and a sense of alienation and disorientation. The mall becomes a hostile, dangerous place. When Meckseper happens upon a flight simulator attraction in the mall, she includes footage from the fighter pilot movie on display and from the simulator, injecting a military presence—albeit a fictional one. In both the mall and in Meckseper’s video, the experience of war and violence is not only sanitized and stripped of meaning, it is for sale.

Read about the artist

"Women's Work":
--_T Magazine/The New York Times_ (February 2010)

"Art in Review; Josephine Meckseper":
--_The New York Times_ (May 2008)

"Josephine Meckseper":
--_Bomb_ (December 2008)

"Josephine Meckseper with Liam Gillick":
--_Interview_ (November 2008)

"Splitting a Gallery in Half to Focus on Social Strife":
--_The New York Times_ (September 2008)


Investors hail fraud convictions of Baptist foundation officials

Leaders of Baptist Foundation of Arizona found guilty

In verdicts announced July 24 after a ten-month trial jurors found William Crotts, the foundation’s former president, and Thomas Grabinski, its former general counsel, each guilty of three counts of fraud in what was the largest nonprofit bankruptcy in U.S. history when it occurred in 1999.

While investors believed that their money would aid Baptist causes— such as the building of churches—state investigators found that the two men had created a Ponzi scheme, in which new investors’ money was used to pay off earlier investors.

Bonner Magnus of Lufkin, Texas, a 78-year-old retired Southern Baptist pastor, said he and his wife invested about $750,000 with the foundation before investigators began looking into violations of state securities laws.

This article is available to subscribers only.


Prolific writer who blossomed late in life

For much of a career spanning more than 60 years, the writer Elizabeth Jane Howard, who has died aged 90, suffered a certain condescension from literary editors as a writer of “women’s novels”. This did not deter her.

She herself described her readers as “women and educated men”, and expressed “puzzlement” when Margaret Drabble left her out of her 1985 edition of The Oxford Companion to English Literature.

She achieved a triumph in her 70s with The Cazalet Chronicle, a highly praised tetralogy of novels set in the England of 1937-47. The first two books, The Light Years (1990) and Marking Time (1991), became an acclaimed BBC TV series, The Cazalets, in 2001.

She herself thought her work had improved with age. These novels show her maturity as a compelling storyteller, shrewd and accurate in human observation, with a fine ear for dialogue and an evident pleasure in the English language and in landscape. She was thoroughly at home in their setting, which was just the sort of upper-middle-class English family, London locations and country houses in which her own roots lay.

Like the Cazalets, her background was privileged but not easy. She was born in London. Her father, David, was a timber merchant and her mother a former dancer in Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. The family lived in a big house in Notting Hill with a tribe of servants; enchanting summers were spent at her grandparents’ country house in Sussex.

A lack of formal education fed her self-doubt, but she showed great self-discipline and dedication in her chosen profession. Her output was prolific and her books achieved popularity and recognition. Her first novel, The Beautiful Visit (1950), won the John Llewellyn Rhys prize. She went on to write short stories, articles, television plays, film scripts and a book on food. Her other contributions to literary life included organising the Cheltenham and Salisbury festivals. She was made a CBE in 2000.

Her abiding belief that her mother did not like her was to make her, she said, “a tart for affection” for most of her life. Her striking looks, intelligence and varied talents brought her many admirers.

As a young woman she acted and modelled, and later she broadcast, cooked, sewed, gardened and decorated houses with flair and skill. But looking back, she declared that she had made a hash of her life.

She was a bit of a bolter, as she was the first to admit: she married three times. The first, in 1942, was to Peter Scott, later a world-renowned naturalist and at that time a naval officer and war hero. Unhappy in her marriage and feeling unable to give her daughter as good a life as her distinguished husband could, she left them both, an abandonment that brought deep difficulties between mother and daughter for many years, although they found resolution.

Her second marriage, to James Douglas-Henry in 1959, was a disaster of which she could barely speak. Her 18-year relationship with Kingsley Amis, whom she married in 1965, made a gut-wrenching but fascinating public story. For eight years the couple held court to friends and colleagues in a beautiful house in Barnet. But Howard was constrained to take on both housekeeping and nurturing roles, leaving her writing aside. Amis’s two adolescent sons, her brother and mother and a painter friend lived with them.

Years later it pleased her greatly when her stepson Martin Amis expressed gratitude for her contribution to his life as a writer. It was she who spotted ability and ambition in the teenage layabout. She got him reading (Jane Austen was the breakthrough), and thence to Oxford.

After she left the household Amis senior never spoke to her again. His undisguised animosity figured in his late novels, and resurfaced in letters and biographies published after his death. The cruelty, subtlety and sharpness of this drama also proved worthy of her own pen, and the relationship and its protagonists appear several times in her fiction.

In 1990 Howard moved out of London and finally settled in a lovely old house in Suffolk, with some land, a riverbank and an island. There, she wrote, read, gardened, did her beautiful patchwork and tapestry, cherished her dog and her plants, and welcomed her friends, godchildren and family at weekends. Her frank and detailed autobiography, Slipstream (2002), revealed how closely the Cazalet family was modelled on her own.

In her later years she seemed blessed with a peace and pleasure that had hitherto eluded her. She was alone, and made it clear that she would have preferred not to be. But reconciliation had ended the years of estrangement from Nicola, the daughter of her first marriage, and she basked in the affection of her daughter, four grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren, all of whom survive her.

She once admitted that writing was the most “frightening” thing she did, and that she did not enjoy it and had once tried to stop but couldn’t. “When you write something which comes off, it’s a feeling like no other,” she said. “It’s like being visited by something outside yourself.”