Sofi Oksanen, Purge.

Sofi Oksanen is an author from Finland. She was brought up with a Finnish father and a mother from Estonia. Purge (Puhdistas in Finish) was her first novel to be published in English, although she had won numerous prestigious literary awards in Finland.

Set in a small country called Estonia, which has many cultural links to Finland. Their capitals, Helsinki and Tallinn are just a stones throw away from each other across the Baltic sea – on a map it looks like they are reaching out to each other or Estonia is reaching out for the protection of its elder brother.

Estonia has also been a country steeped in Soviet history, bordered and invaded twice by Russia. The story juggles between two timelines in Estonian history; one in the 1950’s during the Soviet occupation and the other in early 1990’s when Estonia is free.

Purge represents the rich cultural history Estonia has with its neighbouring countries and has an oppressive feel of communism after world war II, of flies and sexual abuse. It tells the story of two brilliant and haunting characters, Zara and Aliide.

The two main protagonist’s stories weave a web of their troubled pasts in the country of abuse by men who hate women and how their lives are intertwined. If they want to survive they must learn to trust each other – something that each of the women have learnt not to do in life! As the story progresses you are willing for them to open up and trust each other to help Zara survive and escape or be purged from their sins!

This is a wonderful, dark story of redemption. I loved researching the places mentioned in the book; Estonia and Vladivostok in Russia. The protagonists are beautiful and tender in their strength and flaws. But this book is also about the rich writing, the depth of detail of the mundane is almost heart stopping as the tension builds and the story develops!

Utopia for Realists

“The inability to imagine a world in which things are different is evidence only of a poor imagination, not of the impossibility of change. In the 1950s we couldn’t conceive that the advent of refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, and, above all, washing machines would help prompt women to enter the workplace in record numbers, and yet they did.”

Rutger Bregman, Utopia for Realists: And How We Can Get There.

Not just white goods that have revolutionised our lives but also big things like the universal right to vote. Big ideas like these were all once considered a utopian ideal, a nice idea but impossible to achieve. But Rutger Bregman asks the question are utopian ideas so difficult to achieve?

This incredible textbook is like Dr Who’s Tardis – the book has so much more inside than you would expect! Rutger looks at the concept of utopia and how important it is in politics, to keep striving for something better in society and how we can get there! It was very interesting to re-think the normal ideas we are brought up with about what work is and why we have work in a society. The importance and relevance of non-traditional or unpaid work. How we have grown up with the acceptance and depressing plight of the homeless.

I was recommended this book at the same time as I was swept along with the emotional vigour of the recent anti-Trump protests in London on his controversial visit to the UK. This experience really made me think about why so many individuals from so many different backgrounds had come together to say things are not ok with the world, that something needs to change! And the best thing is that people are really listening.

Trump Rally

Rutger Bregman’s book delves into history and how we have come to the state of politics we are in now and what we can do to make very real and practical changes in the world. In the past the idea of everyone having the right to a vote was a utopian idea now the idea of a minimum wage is a utopian ideal. This book makes you believe that in the near future we could see this idea as the norm. Rutger shows us that we have come to a point in western countries that we could finally make these changes happen.

This is a very uplifting book giving detailed political ideas of the utopian ideal of a basic income for all. It is a very well thought out and researched book and you are left feeling more positive that there really is a solution to the horrific problems of homelessness and poverty.

Malala; ‘the pride of Pakistan’

Malala Yousafzai at her speech given as the youngest Nobel Prize laureate.

Malala; the ‘pride of Pakistan’ returns to her homeland for the first time in four years, since she was shot in the head by the Taliban as a little girl for having the audacity to stand up for her right to go to school.

“We realise the importance of our voices, only when we are silenced.”

Malala Yousafzai, I Am Malala

Malala was always going to be different from her peers in Pakistan. Her father, Ziauddin owned his own school and believed girls should be educated like boys. When Malala, his first child was born her father was overjoyed. He was confused why people did not throw coins and sweets into her crib, the cultural norm for baby boys or why neighbours came over to commiserate the birth of a daughter with his wife. It was different when his sons were born, and for a man who loved his children equally, he did not understand.

Ziauddin fostered the political will and intelligence in Malala to stand up and fight for her right to an education. She followed her father to political talks, as a young child sitting on his knee and then as she grew older she started to give her own speeches on the importance to society that boys and girls are given the opportunity to a good education.

The Taliban shot Malala in the head on the school bus after school. Two of her friends were also shot and are also living in England. Malala was flown to a hospital in Birmingham due to complications from her head injury. She has lived in Birmingham for the past four years with her family.

Malala’s biography, ‘I Am Malala’ is a very interesting and personal account of her fight to attend school during the era of the Taliban in Pakistan. It is written with the help of one of the world’s leading foreign correspondents, Christina Lamb who helped put a lot of the personal dialogue within a historical context.

In her biography, Malala states that she loves England because it is so calm and quiet. She found it so surprising that here people respect and do not fear the police and no one knows the army general’s name. She finds the solitude and lack of a community spirit in England compared to her home town of Mingora in Pakistan hard. Her loving mother, who is illiterate and can not speak English has especially found it difficult.

Malala loves her home in the Swat valley and wishes to return to Pakistan to continue her fight as a politician for women’s rights and education. At the moment she is studying in Oxford University. Let’s hope Pakistan embraces her as a symbol of resilience and pride and not a symbol of shame or a Western stooge, as some people have called her according to her biography and keep her safe on her first trip home.

Guardian: Malala Returns Home

Oroonoko or the Royal Slave was the first novel to be published in the U.K by a woman. Aphra Behn was one of only three known female playwrights at the time it was written in the 16th Century. Little is known of her life, but it is believed she travelled to Suriname in South America, with her family as a young woman, where the novel is set.

Oroonoko is an African prince who is betrayed by his grandfather and sold into slavery, ironically a trade he commenced in himself before his capture. The book is considered a pre-cursor to the fiction novel as it was written as a biography with no dialogue. Behn probably did take many of the incidences in the novel from her own experiences, but like all novels she probably developed and embellished those experiences to make the story more dramatic. A technique I am sure all fiction writers do.

This is a small book, more a novella really. In its time it would have been considered quite revolutionary in its depiction of the negative implications to the slave trade. At the same time Behn does not strictly condemn slavery as an institution, so engraved is the idea of the importance of slavery to the economy in those days. The prince Oroonoko and his love, Imoinda are described as beautiful with immense integrity. Their beauty however is always in comparison to white people, but the racism of the story must be understood within the time it was written.

The ending of Oroonoko in Suriname is so shocking that I doubt it would ever be written today (spoiler alert). Oroonoko realises that they will never be set free and his unborn child will be born into slavery. He therefore makes the decision to kill his heavily pregnant wife, who agrees to her own murder, believing her death by her husband’s hands to be a cultural sign of his devotion. His attempts at revenge and eventual suicide fails as he weakens from eight days by his wife’s corpse. Instead, Oroonoko is strung up and his nose chopped off, then both of his ears and arm is sliced off too, while he quietly smokes a pipe. A form of passive resistance and pride. Until his smoking arm is cut off and he promptly dies!

The Diary of Anne Frank

This book, like many books, has been on my ‘to read’ list for a long time. I am pretty sure I read this book when I was younger, but I cannot remember. As a teenager growing up in Germany, I do remember how sick I was of learning about the second world war. I loved history, but I wanted to read about the history of the whole world, of the conquistador’s, the blood-letting religion of the Inca’s or the stories of the Pharaoh’s.

My father, who was a military man, deemed it necessary that family holidays were situated at places important to war memorials. I am the only person I know who visited Hitler’s bunker and Eagle’s nest while on holiday as a young girl. I still remember the gold elevator at the Eagle’s nest and the bunkers where he was said to kill himself with Eva Braun. Because of my father’s position in the army I am also one of the few people to have been fortunate enough as a child to have been allowed to visit East Berlin before the wall came down.

I was about fourteen when we visited Auschwitz. I was too young to really understand the atrocities that went on there, but now I am older I feel privileged that a lot of my holidays as a child were so steeped in history. Reading Anne Frank’s diary now, as an adult, held so much of my attention and admiration. Not that the diary entries were amazing, but they were so raw and real for this little girl and it is an amazing privilege to be able to read Anne’s thoughts of her time during the war.

Before I finished this book I did some research on what happened to Anne and her family. After reading so many passionate entries about her dreams of becoming a writer it was heartbreaking that she and her sister, Margot died in a concentration camp just weeks before the camp was released and just months before the end of the war. I wanted her to hang on, to live and be all of the things you know she could have been. Reading such a personal account of someone’s life during the war, especially someone so young, it makes me aware just how much the world has missed out on from all those pointless deaths. Who knows what many of those people could have become if they had survived? Thinking about this when the diary abruptly ends on the 1st of August, knowing that after this last diary entry Anne and her family are found and taken away, made me so sad.

If she had lived, Anne’s jumbled up writing would have developed and matured. But at least Anne did become a published writer, and her diary helped to document the people’s lives during the war and has therefore become a relevant historical document in its own right, and it has also caught the imagination of generations of readers. Anne would have been happy about this.

The Gathering

the hathering

“People do not change, they are merely revealed.”
Anne Enright, The Gathering

The Gathering is the fourth novel by Irish writer Anne Enright, and the first book I have read of hers. It has been my intention to read more Irish literature and you couldn’t get more stereotypically Irish than this book. Veronica and Liam – two siblings from a Catholic family of 12 children. As Veronica travels from Dublin to Brighton to claim her brothers body she recalls bits and pieces of her childhood with her favourite brother.

It was difficult to churn through Anne Enright’s clunky narrative or even warm to the protagonist Veronica, but I did enjoy reading the parts on Veronica’s thoughts on her marriage. I wonder how important our role is as a mother, just how much are we actually needed and how much of what we do is down to pure laziness from our children. When Veronica’s brother, Liam dies she knows that everything will go on with out her. A family death giving her an automatic ‘hall pass’ from her life, and for a short while she can flee from the suffocating responsibilities of a wife and mother and take some time to gather her thoughts.

Anne Enright, The Gathering

The Gathering won the 2007 Man Booker Prize and yet I couldn’t wait for the book to end. I am not a reader who normally shy’s away from gritty stoicism in my book choice, so why did I struggle through this book? It may be because the depressing themes pervading the book seemed to have no point and no summarisation at all. The problem is nothing really happens. In the end there is no story. The Gathering is a well written book, but it is a book written for writers rather than readers. Sometimes I think writers forget why they are writing a book, they write to be read after all and a reader wants a good story; to be entertained, thrilled and maybe even appalled a little, but they want a good story and The Gathering just doesn’t deliver.

That is why a book like The Gathering can have such disparate reviews, on one end of the scale are readers who simply enjoy a good story, the way it is written can easily be forgotten if it is a memorable and enjoyable read and on the other end are the high brow readers who pick a book apart for its structure and prose and the idea of an enjoyable plot line becomes lost and largely unimportant in their pursuit for that elusive of all things, ‘the perfect sentence’.


Collisional dissipation in turbulent weakly-collisional plasmas.

Pezzi O., Perrone D., Servidio S., Valentini F., Sorriso-Valvo L., Greco A., Matthaeus W.H., Veltri P.

II - Fisica della materia
Aula 32B-2 - Mercoledì 19 h 09:00 - 13:00
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The comprehension of the heating of turbulent, weakly-collisional plasmas is a puzzling problem in plasma physics. Indeed, in these systems, the energy is usually transferred by turbulent nonlinear couplings from large to small scales, where energy dissipation eventually occurs. Several collisionless mechanisms have been proposed to explain the energy dissipation. These processes neglect collisions and, hence, lack the final part of the heating process description, related to the irreversible degradation of the information. On the other hand, the presence of distorted far-from-equilibrium structures in velocity space --- routinely observed in both in situ spacecraft measurements and numerical simulations --- enhances the role of inter-particle collisions, thus enabling collisions to play a significant role in degrading the free energy of the particle distribution function into heat. Here we report evidence that fine velocity structures are effectively dissipated by collisions in a time much shorter compared to global non-Maxwellian features, such as temperature anisotropies. To estimate the collisions role in a turbulent scenario, we discuss the results of a numerical campaign of hybrid Vlasov-Maxwell simulations. In these simulations, collisions are initially neglected to generate the kinetic turbulent state, characterized by the presence of coherent structures (vortices and current sheets) and of distorted proton distribution functions. Then, collisions are turned on to describe the inter-play of collisions, which tend to restore the thermal equilibrium, and other collisionless, dynamical processes.


Book Series Edition: The Unwind Series, Part 2

I’m ambivalent about the Unwind series. It contains an interesting dystopia concept and plenty of political and medical criticism, but it’s far from being a perfect book. Actually, several parts felt like hiccups, so acutely off rhythm that you can’t help but notice them. Unwind struggles with character development and maintaining a propelling plot. While the series is interesting, the peculiar plot choices and the passivity of the female characters makes me reluctant in fully recommending this series, even though books one and four are definitely worth a read.

Unlike part one, the following comments below contain spoilers:

That Creepy, Creeeeeeeepy Scene:

What happens when someone is unwind? Many theories get tossed around about this one with everyone choosing to believe that a person is sedated and then put to sleep. If only.

Patients are awake during the unwinding operation! While the patients are sedated, they simply watch as every part of them is harvested, like Hannibal Lector eating your brain while you’re awake. How is this kind of operation possible? Well, science—I guess.

Unlike others, I wasn’t at all prepared for this passage. After reading it, I had to put the book down to process. Unwind isn’t known for its writing, but this particular passage illustrating a teenager’s unwinding is truly one of the most disturbing things I’ve read in a while.

Like, OMG! Girls Chasing Boys! Like. OMG. Girls Chasing Boys?

Risa Ward is smart. She knows fighting is a last resort. Connor quickly picks this up too, allowing him to become the leader of the Graveyard and later represent the ideas of the unwinding resistance movement. Connor matures, as he should, but instead of Connor adopting Risa’s resourcefulness, which would add to their dynamic duo, Connor subsumes her role as the team’s strategist while being leader, but Risa is sidelined as the helpless, stuck in yet another love triangle, girlfriend; her being belongs to everyone but her own.

Unwind robs not only Risa of potential badassery, but many of the other female characters, most who remain in supportive and/or love interest roles:

  • Miracolina; Lev’s love interest.

Although she has all the workings to be this tenacious force in the series (she’s arguably far more committed to her own convictions than Risa), she doesn’t stay in the rotating cast of character for very long. She’s actually the only third-person narrator to drop out of the series. We see her at the end just in time for her to start a long-distance relationship with Lev–because this is what every girl wants after pining for a guy for supposedly two years.

  • Bam (Bambi): She’s in love with Starkey.

Unlike the other girls in the story, Bam’s happy ending doesn’t involve ending up with anyone. She’s Starkey’s second in command and also secretly in love with Starkey. Only when Bam discovers Starkey’s secret harem does she decide to stage a mutiny against Starkey—but she has to have help. Hayden is the brains of the operation and orchestrates the entire kidnapping (and dumping) of Starkey. She’s been Starkey’s second in command for months and a leader in her own right, but she had to go to Hayden for a plan, which wasn’t even a complicated one: drug everyone including Starkey, drop him in the middle of nowhere, and relocate the Stork troops while Starkey’s out cold. She apparently had to go to him.

Every girl has a romantic partner. Even Una, who tragically lost her fiancé, ends up finding love in a guy that has her deceased fiancé’s  hand—and I wish I were kidding

Unwind ascribes stagnant roles to women that only draw emphasis to the male characters. Every significant step forward is made by a man. Connor takes down the flying harvest factory. Lev sacrifices himself on national television, waking people up to the issues of unwinding. Let’s not forget that Risa also was on television two years earlier, outing the corruption of Proactive Citizenry, but no one paid attention to this apparently.

This is a story about people being treated as just a bunch of parts, which subsequently is how the story treats its female characters. The Unwind series represents only a singular, if not poor, interpretation of women.

Change Takes Time

Unwind’s ending delivers promise to a better world. Because of Lev’s stunt—faking a terrorist-clapper bombing so people would shoot him dead—makes the world reexamine the moral consequences of unwinding teenagers.

When Connor, having been rewound, shows up in Washington ready to diplomatically fight the problem, it shows just the beginning of the solution. Rebuilding. Reconstruction. Proper Representation. Laws.  These are things that were introduced and make the ending somewhat satisfying.

Overall, Unwind had its entertaining moments, and made sure everyone in the end got what they ‘deserved,’ but it falls to pieces in its plot and character departments. Although not a well-known series, Unwind does belong on someone’s shelf of dark dystopia, but it is, perhaps, too ‘morbid’for some too read.

Blogger Note:

So sorry for the infrequent posting. To say the least, a number of issues have marred me in the last couple months: Lows, online class, sickness, and horrrrrible reading dry spells. The good news? Online class shall soon end, the sickness is going away, and OMG, I’ve got my reading groove back! Yay! I should be back to posting regularly soon.

Book Series Edition: Unwind Series; Part 1

By now, you’re so done with YA Dystopia books, set in familiar worlds and navigated by unruly, heroic/vigilante/anarchist protagonist characters. And, if it’s YA, there’s definitely a plot to overthrow the tyrannical government or upend a scientific experiment attempting to ostensibly improve humanity. I was done too until I heard about Neal Shusterman’s Unwind series, four books (plus some short stories) that are unnerving: young people made into organ donors—while they’re still alive. To put it mildly, Unwind isn’t for the faint of heart.

In the four-part book series, we mainly follow the characters Connor, Risa, and Levi in a world highly invested in Unwinding: a scientific breakthrough that makes every organ and tissue viable for harvesting and accessible to anyone. People aren’t using the organs from recently deceased people, however. Unwinding uses fresh ingredients from living, young adults between the ages of 13-18. No one’s being hunted, of course. This is all conducted appropriately. The parents give the order to Unwind their child. Some children, called Tithes, are even bred for it. Who would do that? Tired parents. Selfish parents. Uneducated parents. Gullible parents. Basically humans.

Connor is one of the many whose parents have decided to sign the Unwind order and have his organs harvested, except Connor doesn’t go willingly. He escapes from the Juvie cops (special task force that locates Unwind AWOLS), takes a Tithe called Levi hostage, subdues a Juvie cop (which later bites Connor in the ass), and meets the street-smart, orphaned Risa Ward, who’s also sentenced to be Unwind. When things settle, the three meet Sonia, a member of the resistance group against Unwinding. From there, the three of them are on the run. Connor wants to destroy the system of Unwinding. Risa wants to just survive and protect the ones she loves. And Levi wants to find purpose with his life.

The Unwind series omits the distant-future pretense found in other YA Dystopias and is set in our current world, paralleling our science and technology along with our culture (to clarify: the United States.) To make this apparent, Shusterman incorporates articles from real life—which are all legit—about the black market harvesting organs, babies being abandoned, and abortion clinics being closed. Although it can feel like padding at times, the articles remind us of one of our more pressing social issues. In the Unwind universe, a war broke out between the factions of Pro-Life and Pro-Choice. Right now, especially with the presidential campaign, the topic of abortion is more than heated (especially when you have a red-beaten hog insisting women be punished if they have an abortion). There’s certainly a verbal war that’s been happening for years, but it’s not only just talk. We see countless political agendas manifesting in laws, hospital-building regulations, and insurances policies to restrict and deprive women in having the choice to abort fetuses. This wouldn’t be the first time the United States went to war over human rights. What’s to say that won’t happen over women’s choice to terminate pregnancies? Unwind provides us with a terrifying alternative by subjecting young adults to cruel ends. This might seem impossible to imagine, but it’s probably more real than you think.

The Unwinding process and order isn’t necessarily the problem but actually how beneficial it is.  No matter how inhumane it seems (it is), there’s a lot of good that happens when there’s a replete of body parts at our disposal. We’re talking about kids who are paralyzed that could receive new spines and walk again. New pair of eyes for the blind. Amputee veterans who don’t have to use prosthetic limbs. Genetic diseases that could be avoided just by replacing the isolated, affected area (maybe? Still on the fence with this one). These are truly wonderful benefits of Unwinding. It’s also a system that preys on people’s body insecurities and vanity. Plastic surgery becomes obsolete when you can just pick what nose you want on your face. Exercising is beneath anyone who can afford to purchase toned abs (even though I think the science behind this is a bit flakey). The system easily morphs into a corrupt industry perpetuated by profits and people’s egos.

Similar to how I reviewed the Harry Potter series, I’ve included some of my commentary below. Unwind wasn’t a series I consistently enjoyed. There are parts that I didn’t agree with or I thought weren’t executed well. Books one and four had a gripping story and descent characterization; however, books two and three (mainly three) liken to white noise. I will discuss more of the series in Part 2.

The Heartland Wars: Pro-Life and Pro-Choice

I implied earlier that Unwinding was the solution to abortion between the Pro-Life and Pro-Choice factions during the United States’ second civil war named The Heartland Wars. Unwinding actually helped put an end to the war and was invented by a scientist that simply wanted to help people (usually the case). Unwinding prevents overpopulation which the world will need because, after The Heartland Wars, abortions are illegal, thereby, more babies. A woman doesn’t have to keep the child, however. This is what is known as Storking, a law passed that rarely makes anyone’s life happy.

Storking is when a woman leaves her baby at someone’s home and that home is required by law to take custody of the child. The only stipulation that would require the woman to keep the child is if she’s discovered in the act of dropping the baby off. As you can imagine, several families have at least five to ten children per a household, leading to higher stress, not to mention, the financial costs in raising those children. Because abortion is banned, families are forced to adopt children they don’t want.  Kids end up being resented and isolated from the family. In most cases, Storks are given up to be Unwind. Storks are dropped into these circumstances with no rights in a system that is rigged against them.

Unwind points out the problems in having children if we’re only going to expose them to a miserable life and treat them as burdens. I don’t have children and probably never will, but, to me, that type of treatment is damaging to kids and isn’t something they’ll just grow out of. We’re looking at adult-kids feeling ashamed and unwanted, parents feigning affection, and people forced to become parents who may not be parent material (maternal instincts don’t come with the uterus, folks.)

The series discusses just what happens when women do not have any say in their medical choices. Everyone makes different choices—but it’s fairly lousy to have kids suffer that kind of abuse because you were forced to have them instead of wanting them.

Excessive Narration: Filling In Every Gap and Beating Me With a Hammer

When the character Starkey was added, Shusterman created this interesting dichotomy between Starkey and the lead protagonist Connor.  Starkey wasn’t about preserving the peace. In the second book, he’s running from a Juvie Cop, but unlike Connor who knocks out the Juvie cop in book one, Starkey kills the cop. From then on, we study the characterization of these two in terms of hero versus icon. Shushterman employs this similar character contrast with Lev, a fallen Christian, and Miracolina, a devout Christian. These are things I wish were employed more frequently in the series and does reflect Shusterman’s penchant in developing characters.

But then the narration takes a sharp turn and becomes extraneous. The narration broadcasts everything from the viewpoint of a gardener witnessing an attack on a a harvest camp, a girl hiding in the corner before blowing herself up, to, and, I kid you not, an old military plane. I just don’t need that much information.

Creating additional characters to narrate these moments feels like lazy editing in the sense that you haven’t presented enough information and clues to the reader to fill in the gaps. The prose is excessive and encumbers much of the story. It’s by far what makes book three so hard to read. Make use of the characters you already have and expect that they’re not going to know everything. Not everything needs to be said. Let my brain do some of the detective work.

To be continued in Part 2.

Only Ever Yours, by Louise O’Neill

Only Ever YoursOnly a handful of books make me tremble and cringe and Louise O’Neill’s Only Ever Yours is now one of them. Compared to Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Only Ever Yours is a YA dystopian novel about the subjugation of women, their sexuality, and their identity. The women are toxic, undermining, manipulative, narcissistic, insecure, and superficial and that’s only because they were designed this way and are otherwise known as eves—capitalization omitted intentionally. They’re artificially designed women since women are no longer born naturally. Yours feels unending of depravity and acerbic dialogue, with danger and destruction festering like a tumor, but it’s praiseworthy, evocative literature about femininity and gender inequality, nonetheless

Yours begins with freida, an eve who’s about to graduate to become a companion, a concubine, or a chastity. Eves attend a Ceremony to determine if they’re wife material, if they’re suited to a life of physically pleasing men, or if they’re a better fit to teach other future eves. But freida is more concerned about isabel, the #1 eve in the school and her best friend. Isabel suddenly distances herself at the beginning of their 16th year; she drastically falls in the rankings. To survive, freida latches onto the other top ten eves. Aimless and scared, freida herself becomes unraveled, losing weight, sleep, and her mind. Only when she meets Darwin, the #1 male in his class, that freida thinks she has a shot at a good life.

Yours is a subverted version of fairytales. There cannot be a happy ending because that would suggest that there was something right about this world when it’s already incredibly flawed. The politics and ideology of this absolute patriarchal world are long established and indoctrinated into the new generations. The damage to the eves’ psyche is extensive; they’re warped beyond repair. Unlike other YA dystopian novels where the protagonist saves the day or society revolts against the Totalitarian government, this YA dystopian is a bleak, unfavorable outcome to all women. Women aren’t permitted self-discovering or a moment of vulnerability because it may ruin their chances at happiness, which they’ve been fed (by men) to believe it’s in servicing men. They’ve been taught that the previous world, where men and women were allegedly treated as equals, was wrong. O’Neill’s resists the temptation to ostensibly write a favorable ending to preserve the notion that finding Mr. Right is still conforming to a patriarchal system denying women’s rights.

O’Neill captures with prose like butter on warm toast the significance of language and its correlation with gender roles and identity. Language is one of the most revealing trademarks in any culture especially when applied to gender roles. The one I like to bring up the most is how women are often referred to as ‘girls,’ when they are fully grown; however, referring to an adult man as a ‘boy’ is considered insulting or belittling. Yours reflects the derogatory language applied to eves that’s relevant in our culture. For example, the term ‘Feminist’ is seen as offensive in Yours. Too often this word in our culture is misinterpreted as a woman who hates men and is associated with stereotypes of domineering and bra-burning women; it means on a fundamental level a person that believes in gender equality. Yours represents the degradation of women’s value in how they omit capitalization from women’s names, not even considered proper nouns. Permissible to say, however, are ‘slut’ and ‘whore’ and even using the phrase ‘Fat Bitch’ is encouraged to keep an eve’s weight down. Negative reinforcement and shame are instruments used against eves to control them. Everything is tied to the language and circulated to maintain the patriarchy.

As for the characters, a few stand out in the bunch such as freida, isabel, megan, while the others blend together making it hard to differentiate between them, which obviously touches on another point. Personality—beside the chemically manic and barely tolerable vapid eves—is just another thing stripped from them, supplemented by the need to only please men. Freida is no different. Contained in her characterization is a powerful concern and want to appease everyone, the fear of disapproval puppeteering her body and severely influencing her choices. Dictating her choices from the start is her isolation from isabel, from her pack with the group, and from Darwin. She desperately seeks companionship, which in actuality is her need to wash out her latent insecurities and self-hate. So much of Yours, narrated by freida, laments the already troubling negative self-body notions we perpetuate and harsh criticism we throw at anyone’s body we deem flawed. Freida painfully reminds us of our own shortcomings as people and the damaging effects of the beauty industries exploiting this weakness, heavily suggested in Yours mantra, “there’s always room for improvement.” Freida’s counterparts, isabel and megan, exemplify the men’s ideals and embody their purpose. Although most of the novel conceals isabel’s story, megan is affront and mostly manipulative, and she knows it. She simply can’t help it. She was designed this way. All these women are victims of a world that deprives women of choice.

Another aspect of O’Neill’s novel resides in its gender discourse and criticism. Although Yours exists in a fictional world, several of what’s mentioned is all too familiar and upholds in our culture. Most of the eves are mindless caricatures, versions of stereotypes preconceived by men of what they believed was the ideal woman. Yours illustrates this by emphasizing a woman’s appearance as her only value compared to intellect, which the men prefer eves didn’t have. Eves essentially serve only three purposes, which Yours demonstrates in its Ceremony classifications. Everything boils down to a woman’s fertility or sexual performance. A chastity, a women not serving Man, is virtually useless. And while certainly many of these things may appear nonexistent, thinking we’ve evolved passed this, influences of patriarchy remain pervasive in our culture. Women (me) still don’t have complete medical authority over their bodies. Women (me) are still made to feel like pariahs when they abstain from having children. Walking down the street, women (me, again) are catcalled, and when they (me) argue at how uncomfortable it makes them, they’re (us) told their being ‘too sensitive,’ much like Yours does when one of the eves feels hurt. And when a woman is sexually assaulted, we still hear things like, ‘she was asking for it,’ see media circulating stories that make the rapist sympathetic, and the court rules in the rapist’s favor. Yes, Yours is an uncomfortable discussion on the treatment of women, but it’s one that’s necessary and worth having, not just for men but women. Identified in Yours is also the habit of women comparing themselves to others, making undercutting, snide remarks to mar each other’s self-esteem. Yours emphasizes disunity among women, even in Feminism with its tendency to overlook marginalized groups, referenced in the eves practically painting their face in white and a narrator who tries constantly to mask her brown skin. Of course, this is just more social commentary O’Neill adds about the beauty/modeling industry lacking diversity within their models and also the products they market.

I recommend Yours to anyone. If you’ve been shying away from books described as ‘Feministy,’ this is your chance to take the plunge. Although a disturbing, dark, unflinching horrific story, Yours pries our eyes open to discussions otherwise left unsaid, unnoticed, or not even known. Ignorance is not bliss; it’s a costly mistake.


Document Type

The ultrasonicwave propagation in sinusoidally corrugated waveguides is studied in this paper. Periodically corrugated waveguides are gaining popularity in the field of vibration control and for designing structures with desired acoustic band gaps. Currently only numerical method (Boundary Element Method or Finite Element Method) based packages (e.g., PZFlex) are in principle capable of modeling ultrasonic fields in complex structures with rapid change of curvatures at the interfaces and boundaries but no analyses have been reported. However, the packages are very CPU intensive; it requires a huge amount of computation memory and time for its execution. In this paper a new semi-analytical technique called Distributed Point Source Method (DPSM) is used to model the ultrasonic field in sinusoidally corrugated waveguides immersed in water where the interface curvature changes rapidly. DPSM results are compared with analytical solutions. It is found that when a narrow ultrasonic beam hits the corrugation peaks at an angle, the wave propagates in the backward direction in waveguides with high corrugation depth. However, in waveguides with small corrugation the wave propagates in the forward direction. The forward and backward propagation phenomenon is found to be independent of the signal frequency and depends on the degree of corrugation.


You are here

The second episode of RNTV explores how humans and robots interact and communicate. It’s a rapidly growing field that’s trying to keep up with the development of the robots and their many intended uses. Amy visits with researchers from Cornell’s RoboBrain Project to learn about learning. Zoz stops in at a chic hotel in Cupertino, California and encounters a robotic bellhop, named Botlr. Christine and Paul tinker with iRobot’s Create 2 bot and we’ll end up with a visit to the Hoya Robotics Club near Washington, DC. Stay tuned, or at least keep your brain engaged, for lots of great information.

Dig Deeper

RoboBrain is a large-scale computational system that learns from publicly available Internet resources, computer simulations, and real-life robot trials. It accumulates everything robotics into a comprehensive and interconnected knowledge base. Applications include prototyping for robotics research, household robots, and self-driving cars. Learn more. Visit

iRobot Create 2

From beginner programmers to advanced robotics students, Create 2 allows for a variety of programming methods. Use it connected to your laptop, with a microcontroller or come up with your own solutions. You can also go beyond programming and build on to your robot, attaching sensors, electronics, grippers and other cool things. Learn more. Visit

Ocean Explorer

The NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research strives to engage broad audiences to enhance America’s environmental literacy through the excitement of ocean discovery. Increasing this literacy requires high-quality, effective collaborations between ocean explorers and America’s teachers. NOAA regularly forms such collaborations to reach out in new ways to the public to improve the literacy of learners with respect to ocean issues. Learn more. Visit

Intuitive Surgical


Valuta Lauree di secondo livello in Guyana

Master in Guyana 2018

Study in Guyana

Getting Your Education in Guyana

Individuals interested in studying in Guyana can do so. International students are welcome here in most situations. However, limited resources are available. To be successful here, you'll need to learn a bit about the educational system and what you can expect. The government provides education to students living in the country, with most students attending school from age 5 through 16. University education, also provided by the government in some cases, is also available. However, students who are international and wish to study here will likely need to pay for their education.

Though Guyana is one of the poorest countries in the western hemisphere, it is still one of the highest ranking in terms of education. Those that complete schooling tend to move into the workforce or into a trade or vocational school. Others enroll in colleges, which are very specific areas of study. Common options include the Cryil Potter College of Education, School of Nursing, Kuru Kuru Cooperative College, and state-run programs. For those who attend college, the largest option is the University of Guyana. There are two campuses, one located at Tain and the other at Turkeyen. The University of the West Indies is another option for students. Texila American University, another option, is considered a high ranking medical school in the Caribbean, and the only one that provides English-spoken courses.

Students who wish to enroll in higher education in Guyana will need to begin by choosing a school. The school will consider international students when room permits. Generally, students will need to have a 12th grade education or the equivalent to enroll. The school year begins around August, but runs throughout the year with various breaks during the summer, winter, and holidays. Students will need to have a visa to study here, but this is facilitated through the college and the country's tourism industry. It generally does not take long.

In terms of costs, international students will need to pay for schooling. This may be affordable compared to most other western hemisphere courses. Fees range widely from one school to the next, though. Students will also need to demonstrate their ability to pay for any medical expenses they may have as well as living expenses. These are not covered by the school or enrollment.

Why Study in Guyana

Students who wish to make a difference can do so here. For example, the country has a dire need of doctors, with 1 doctor for every 5000 people currently in place. The country is also working on improved agricultural and business infrastructures, also areas that need well qualified professionals. Keep in mind that the country does not have unlimited jobs available, but for those who are very skilled or can fill one of the many needs, it can be very important to choose here to learn and grow. The rich culture, opportunities, and quality education make a difference.

About Guyana

Students who wish to learn and explore the opportunities available in diverse cultures may wish to travel to Guyana. This country offers an interesting perspective to any student who is looking to explore a country that's very different from most traditional Western countries. There are opportunities here for students and those who graduate, but before you jump into this type of program, it's essential to learn what the schools and career options can offer to you.

Introduction to Guyana

Guyana is a smaller country located on the Caribbean coast of South America. It's history dates back to the colonization by the Netherlands, British, and various native people. IT is home to about 735,000 people, but there are 11 recognized languages here though the national language is Guyanese Creole. It sits here Venezuela and Brazil, and on the Atlantic Ocean.

The country is known for many things including its rich resources, especially in timber, gold, and bauxite. It is well known for its sugar production. The country is growing and developing and is a major exporter to Canada, the U.S., and the U.K. In terms of culture, this area is well respected and has the same type of cultural atmosphere as is found in most of the English-speaking Caribbean. It is made up of vibrant rainforests, coastal areas, and various urban centers. It's also known for its West Indie inspired festivals, music, and a passion for sports.

Key Facts About Guyana

  • The climate here is very hot most of the year; it is also quite humid but there are two rainy seasons, running from May through August and November through January.
  • Georgetown is the largest urban city and has a population of 124,000; Most other people live in remote areas and small towns.
  • The country's unemployment rate is high at 11 percent.
  • The cost of living is moderate to low, but resources are limited in many areas.
Curiosità riguardo Guyana

Capital: Georgetown
Official Languages: English
Government: Republic
Population: 735,554
Gross Domestic Product: $6.593 billion
Currency: Guyanese dollar (GYD)
Time zone: (UTC-4)


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Across Literary and Linguistic Diversities

Essays on Comparative Literature

Edited By Goethe Society of India, Madhu Sahni and Mazumdar Shaswati

Comparative literary studies face new challenges today in a world marked by the migration of people, languages, ideas and texts across diverse and increasingly porous borders. The field is restricted by conventional notions of comparativism born in the era of nationalism and colonialism. However, scholars are now provoked to rethink these notions as a result of the social, economic and political forces that drive the contemporary world, which simultaneously draw it into an ever tighter global network and create new, or reassert persisting, lines of division.
What are the conceptual and methodological questions that must engage our attention if comparativism, as recent debates suggest, has to revive its critical potential and chart afresh the future of literary studies? The essays in this volume attempt to rethink comparison in this context through theoretical reflections and concrete comparative analyses. They investigate similarities and differences, connections and references, across diverse literary and linguistic cultures in Indian, German and other European literatures.
This volume is the 2014 Yearbook of the Goethe Society of India.
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Das Erinnern und das Schreiben über das Fremde in der Fremde in einem komparatistischen Rahmen. Die Literarische Welt, Erinnerungen

← 142 | 143 → JYOTI SABARWAL

Willy Haas uses a comparative framework to reconstruct his years of exile in India in Die literarische Welt, Erinnerungen, his autobiography published in 1957, by Paul List. This narrative strategy is applied in the text to bridge differences, be it the film aesthetics of the Bombay Cinema of the 1940s vis-à-vis Weimar Cinema, cultural practices or urban Bombay with its imagery of modernity juxtaposed against the traditional. Though the focus of the article is on depicting this autobiography as a source of studying India as a site in exile literature, an attempt has also been made to trace the development of the autobiography as a genre from Wilhelm Dilthey to the post-structuralists. In this context, issues of authorship and authenticity are also raised in context to two other major autobiographies, namely Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s My Experiments with Truth and Aus meinem Leben. Dichtung und Wahrheit by J.W. Goethe.

Heute gibt es Leute, die mich fragen: ,Aber Sie waren doch viel zu jung, um sich an diese schreckliche Zeit erinnern zu können.‘ Oder vielmehr, sie fragen nicht einmal, sie behaupten es mit Bestimmtheit. Ich denke dann, die wollen mir mein Leben nehmen, denn das Leben ist doch nur die verbrachte Zeit, das einzige, was wir haben, das machen sie mir streitig, wenn sie mir das Recht des Erinnerns in Frage stellen.

— RUTH KLÜGER, weiter leben. Eine Jugend

In Willy Haas’ autobiographischem Werk1 wird die Rekonstruktion des...

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Walter Stockmayer

Walter_StockmayerWalter Hugo Stockmayer (7 April 1914 - 9 May 2004) was an internationally known chemist and university teacher. A former member of the National Academy of Sciences, he was recognized as one of the twentieth century pioneers of polymer science. His specific interest was in theory and experiment for the structure and dynamics of polymer molecules, including various uses of the light scattering method.

Stockmayer became interested in the mathematical aspects of physical chemistry as an undergraduate at MIT. A Rhodes Scholarship brought him to Oxford where he undertook gas kinetics research with D. L. Chapman. Stockmayer returned to MIT for Ph.D. research and pursued his study of statistical mechanics, which he later continued at Columbia University. He returned again to MIT in 1943 to study the theory of network formation and the gelation criterion. Stockmayer increasingly directed his attention to theories of polymer solutions, light scattering and chain dynamics.

After a Guggenheim Fellowship in Strasbourg, France, he returned once more to MIT, then moved to Dartmouth College in 1961. There, he worked primarily on copolymers in dilute solution, established the journal Macromolecules, and collaborated with many Japanese scientists.

Stockmayer is mentioned as a friend of the author in the novel "Breakfast of Champions" by Kurt Vonnegut, and is described as a distinguished pianist and a good skier. A fellowship in honor of Professor Stockmayer was established at Dartmouth College in 1994.


Trading for Dummies!

Trend Management’s Second Quarter Report 2014

As we’re writing this letter in the last week of June, the market is at an all-time high. A friend in the brokerage industry told us, this is the most hated rally in history. Why did he say that? We think it’s because so many people are sitting on too much cash or alternative assets.

Since December 31st, 2012, the market has taken off with only one, seven-percent correction to allow an investor to buy the dip. This is unusual, and won’t last forever. Since the beginning of this bull market, we have been fully invested in stocks, until very recently. What we are thinking about in the investing world is discussed below.

In the past year, we added Exxon Mobile and Royal Gold to all our portfolios. In some accounts, we also added Royal Dutch Petroleum. The theme here is, these companies would benefit from inflation coming back. We think there is an inflation scare coming for our leaders to deal with. We don’t think it will be like the Second Coming of 1980, but will be enough to shake the Federal Reserve’s complacency about printing money. We have stated before, the Fed and politicians in developed countries worldwide want some inflation to help grow their economies. We think they might get it in the next twelve months.

What might cause this? Currently there are so many conflicts in the Middle-East, we have trouble keeping track of them. We think one of them might affect the world’s flow of oil, or the flow of trade. Those are two different subjects to elaborate on.

Everybody knows, a disruption in oil production increases its price. Fear of a potential supply disruption in Russia, Ukraine, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela is rising. The good news is, the U.S. continues to ramp up its oil production. This will put us in a better position than the rest of the world, should the oil supply decrease.

As we have stated in previous letters, the Fed printing money has trumped our concerns about wars and the Middle-East, but it can’t go on forever. At some point, the Fed will pull back the reins on quantitative easing, and it will affect the markets more than we want. We plan to profit from the rally in oil with the stocks listed above. We hope to add more inflation hedges, if we can get them at the right price.

A fear we have, but investors don’t worry enough about right now, is the disruption of trade and the flow of money. The last thirty years have been an unusual period in history, where businesses have been relatively free to build factories in any country they choose. Those companies are also counting on large sales outside the U.S. Money worldwide has been able to flow fairly easily from country to country.

What if those change? What happens? Consider two countries who decided free trade and the flow of money weren’t good ideas: Venezuela and Argentina. Both decided foreign business ownership within their countries was bad for their citizens. They took the assets of some foreign companies and claimed them as their own, without due process. In the Ozarks, we call it stealing. They call it wealth redistribution for the poor. Of course, that isn’t why it was done, but who can argue with helping the poor?

Once some assets are nationalized, other investors ship out their money and capital from those countries, before their governments can seize them. This causes shortages of food, products, and money. Those actions contributed to massive inflation in both countries--now over thirty- percent per year. Venezuelan and Argentine politicians blame the evil corporations for this inflation. They then feel empowered to take more corporate assets to help the poor deal with the high inflation. This cycle continues until the country runs out of foreign exchange, and the economy collapses. At that point, a change in leadership occurs.

We bring this up, not because we anticipate it happening elsewhere in the world to the degree it has in Venezuela and Argentina. It’s to illustrate a gradual shift in the flow of funds can cause an acceleration in inflation, that won’t be predicted by standard economic analysis.

For example, if Asian countries decided to hinder the free flow of capital, it will affect us, because a lot of the goods we consume are manufactured there. We know from the South American countries’ experience, any change in the free flow of capital will raise the cost of products manufactured worldwide, and initiate a pause to quantitative easing. In turn, the end of quantitative easing will slow down the profits we are making in the stock market.

They are related. We bring this up to assure you, we are monitoring this potential development. There won’t be a single, Aha event making this visible to the world. At first, it will be gradual and we hope to catch it. If it occurs, it will initially involve companies who outsource their manufacturing to Asia. As their costs increase, so will ours in the U.S., which is inflationary.

Our final comment pertains to something we’ve observed for a while at Trend. Those who follow Wall Street asset allocators will find it interesting. Ten years ago, pension consultants and asset allocators recommended owning a lot of stocks. In 2003, corporate pension plans had 61% of their money in stocks. Today, it’s 43%. Public pension funds in 2003 had 61% of their money in stocks. Now, it’s 52%. The real shocker is endowment funds: 50% of their money was in stocks a decade ago, decreased to 34%.

Where did the money go? Into alternative assets like hedge funds, tree farms, long-short funds, private equity and other investments, besides plain, old stocks. Since the crash, returns have been poor on those alternative classes, with the exception of private equity. We mention this, because it explains something we have seen in the markets when we allocate your money. Large cap stocks are still fairly valued, but small cap stocks are overvalued. It’s really strange, but we can explain why.

Pension plans own large cap stocks, and as they’re sold to reallocate the money into alternative assets, it has depressed the price of large cap stocks. This trend has occurred due to group- think among public pools of money, advised by consultants. Alternative assets are sexy, unknown to most, and it makes for a great sale. The herd-like selling of large cap stocks created an opportunity for us, and we took it. Hence, your portfolio owns more large cap stocks than usual, because it’s where the most value is.

In time, the flow of funds will return to large cap stocks. An interesting test-case to watch is what Harvard does next. In 2008, it was a leader in using alternative assets and received universal praise for it. Today, Harvard is among the worst-performing endowments out there. If it throws in the towel and goes back to stocks, it will change the way people view this asset class.

In closing, we are aware of the pending merger of Level3 and Time-Warner/Telecom, announced in June. We are waiting for some legal documents to be filed before we comment on it. We will update you in October.

Meanwhile, we have written a long essay on how to improve the U.S. economic system. We decided to save some trees (it’s a long essay) and post it on our website: Fans of macroeconomics will enjoy this essay.

Mark Brueggemann IAR Kelly Smith IAR Brandon Robinson IAR


Driving through puddles on rainy days might seem like an inevitability.

But motorists could face a £5,000 fine for driving through puddles if they splash pedestrians, police have revealed.

The unusual penalty was brought to light after police issued an appeal to find a motorist who soaked a mother after ploughing through a puddle in St Ives, Cambridgeshire.

The mother was with her two children, including one in a pram, on January 4 when a car drove through the 20ft-long puddle and splashed all three.

Under the Road Traffic Act 1988 it is illegal to drive “without reasonable consideration for other persons”, including “driving through a puddle causing pedestrians to be splashed”.

Driving "without reasonable consideration" differs from the offence of driving without due care and attention as it would mean that a third party has been inconvenienced by your driving.

While most people would be handed a fixed £100 penalty the offence can lead to a maximum fine of £5,000 if the driver’s behaviour is found to be “an act of incompetence, selfishness, impatience, or aggressiveness”.

You can also receive between three and nine penalty points on your licence.

National Police Chiefs' Council (NPCC) guidance is that lower level careless driving offences are considered for a fixed penalty with the offender being offered driver education in most cases.

The CPS' charging guidelines cites splashing pedestrians as an example of driving that "amounts to a clear act of incompetence, selfishness, impatience or aggressiveness" and should be charged.

Woman with a child in a pram gets an unwelcomed soaking from a passing car

A spokeswoman for Cambridgeshire Police said: “On Thursday January 4 around noon, a mother was with her two children, one in a pram and the other walking alongside her near the junction of Pig Lane and Greengarth in St Ives.

“Due to the poor weather a very large puddle had built up due to a blocked drain near to the junction which was half way across the road. It was not raining and the puddle, some 20 feet in length, could easily be seen by motorists.

“Unbelievably a motorist drove through the puddle causing the water to soak the three.

In 2005 a Yeoville motorist was fined £150 with three points on his licence after admitting inconsiderate driving.

Jason Evans, 34, was caught by two police officers after he hit a two-inch puddle at 15mph and splashing two workmen.

Confused.com motoring editor, Amanda Stretton added: “Some people might think that driving through puddles is a bit of fun, with others accusing the police in this instance of overreacting.

Drivers could face a £5,000 fine for soaking pedestrians

“If that isn’t enough, it’s also just incredibly rude and drivers can be penalised, quite rightly, with a huge £5,000 fine.


This type of vegetation is typical of poor, shallow, rocky soil with occasional forest fragments. Bamboo groves are common, and the trees tend to be medium sized, up to about twelve meters in height.

The trunks of most of the trees are irregular, making it easier for bromeliads, philodendrons, orchids and vines to attach themselves. Palm trees are rare, except for the buriti (Mauritiella armata). This vegetation is uncommon, due to its peculiar characteristics, but there are bird species that live only in this habitat.


All about Mexico

Mexico Facts | Yucatán | Tekax

The municipality of Tekax is located in the Mexican state of Yucatán. Tekax is populated by 37454 inhabitants.

About 59.02 percent of the population in Tekax are adults older than 18 years. People visit the schools 6 years, but the quote of analphabets is still around 11.5 percent, equal to 4310 individuals.

34066 inhabitants are indigenous people and 22532 individuals older than 5 years speak an indigenous language.

Tekax Localities

Largest cities in Tekax

Becanchén - Population: 1573

Kancab - Population: 2670

Kinil - Population: 1068

Pencuyut - Population: 1411

Tekax de Álvaro Obregón - Population: 23524

Xaya - Population: 1676

Map with the largest cities in the municipality of Tekax


The Bannercall

As the adventurers arrived in Frosthold during the month of the Fading, they learned of King Hrothgar’s bannercall: a call to all the thanes of Winterspire to march their armies to Frosthold.

According to the King Hrothgar, the bannercall was initially called to restore order to Winterspire as increasing numbers of ogres, barbarians, orcs, hags, harpies, kobolds, fiends and many creatures from the feywild have overrun much of the countryside.

Upon further investigation, it was later revealed that King Hrothgar has been aware of Tiamat’s potential return for many years, motivating his conquests during The War of Hrothgar and the real purpose for the bannercall.

Bannercall marches: Frosthold, Hailstead, Westfurt

Bannercall pending: Hrothgar Tower, Stoneheim, Luskan,

Aid from beyond: The Innkeepers, Bulrog (Half-Ogre), Torinn

The Bannercall

Lost Winterspire: Into the Void Valsu Valsu


Yr 2: ‘Trip’ 02.03.18

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After a mad week of weather, we had to unfortunately cancel our class trip in its original form. However, our very adaptable year 2 team prepared trip activities that we could complete at school instead!

First, we looked at 2 different seeds, a sunflower seed and a runner bean seed. We compared the way they looked and felt. There were some similarities but many differences. Then we planted each seed into a pot thinking about what a seed needs to grow well.

After lunch we considered what other living things need to grow well. This led to us building a nest for some new baby birds to help them to grow well. We made a structure from newspaper before using some natural resources like twigs and leaves to create the final cosy nests. They will be moved into the outside space to encourage living things to use them to keep warm in this unusually cold spring.


Reason: Numeric Timing Data in the Sequencer

The Inspector and Tool Window show timing information in a numeric format. Once you understand what these values mean, you can change them to make precise adjustments to one or more notes or automation/controller points.

Here is what you see in the Inspector when you select a note.

The Position (start time) and Length fields comprise four numbers seperated by dots. The numbers indicate, from left to right: bar, beat, 16th, tick.

The number of beats in a bar depends on the current time signature. (four beats to a bar for 4/4 time signature.) There are always four 16th notes to a beat.

But what is a tick? It is a very fine, tempo-dependent measurement of musical time. In Reason, there are 240 ticks per 16th note. That means there are 480 ticks per 8th note and 960 ticks per quarter note.

(Sometimes you may see an asterisk (*) next to the number of ticks. This means that an event was recorded with a resolution greater than 240 ticks per 16th. Reason actually records with a resolution of 15360 ticks per quarter note. The extra resolution uses subticks. If you command-click the asterisk, it will round to the nearest whole tick value.)

You can use the Inspector to adjust several events at once. For example, select multiple notes. Then click the match button to the right of the Position field.

After this, the selected notes all will have the same position as the left-most note.

The match buttons for length, pitch, and velocity work similarly.

Copyright ©2013 John Gibson


Rare light pillars show up over Donogal in Ireland

Beautiful display of light pillars in the sky of Donegal in northwestern Ireland.

A light pillar is an atmospheric optical phenomenon in the form of a vertical band of light which appears to extend above and/or below a light source. The effect is created by the reflection of light from numerous tiny ice crystals suspended in the atmosphere or clouds.

The clip was filmed on March 11, 2018.


Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World

Supernatural punishment: the common denominator

So here’s the question: Is religion evolutionarily advantageous? We can’t ever know for sure what life was like for our prehistoric ancestors, but I hypothesise that supernatural punishment was a very important promoter of cooperation and a way to reduce self-interest, which was vital to the evolution of human societies. As an Atheist, I want to know what the evidence is for this, so here are six pieces of evidence that point towards supernatural punishment as a common phenomenon of religion.

1. Everyday life

I think it’s quite common, even among Atheists, to find that when they do something wrong, they have a worry that their behaviour is observed or watched and known about and judged by someone or something. Of course an Atheist wouldn’t put that down to God or some supernatural agency, but they nevertheless have this feeling that their behaviour is known to something out there. Maybe you don’t feel it. I know I don’t always feel it, but I think it’s something you commonly find especially when the stakes are high. If something terrible has gone wrong, or something really good has gone wrong, people tend to attribute it to some greater force of nature.

2. Cross-cultural evidence

If you look across different societies and religions, the idea of supernatural punishment is very significant. We know all about it in our own culture in the West from the Old Testament in particular, where God was often angry and extremely vindictive against those who did not believe in him or do the things he asked. It’s still there in the New Testament in slightly different ways, but people are still worried about the consequences of their actions. They don’t want to do bad things because they believe there might be bad consequences. Hell is the big one, but it’s not only that. It’s the misfortunes that might happen in your own life. But it’s also the denial of rewards, so we might not fear Hell but we would all like to get to Heaven, and you might not want to do things that jeopardise the chances of getting there.

That is the West, but if you look at Islam or in Buddhism, you find that what you do in this life has serious consequences for you in the afterlife. The eastern religions, such as Buddhism and Hinduism, are particularly interesting because they don’t have a particular supernatural being who’s watching over us and punishing us, but the consequences of karma are just as severe. It’s a mechanical system: If you do good things, it builds up your positive karma, and if you do bad things it builds up your negative karma, and all this goes into your calculations about how you will be reincarnated in the next life. If you’re a very bad person, you might be reincarnated as an ant, and if you’re a very good person, then ultimately you will progress and be reincarnated in higher and higher forms. This supernatural punishment seems to be cross-culturally important, as it’s a feature of all the major world religions.

3. Historical evidence

We observe a fear of God and supernatural punishment in contemporary religions, but if you go back into Ancient times you find the same phenomenon as well. I looked particularly at the Roman and Greek religions, which on the face of it might seem like counter-examples. The Greek gods seem very capricious; they are often vindictive and take revenge and so on, but it doesn’t change the fact that people’s behaviours were in some way guided by the expected consequences that gods might bring on them, as well as the other people on Earth. So it seems that people’s behaviours, even in Ancient religions, were very commonly influenced by their fear of the gods as well. In Ancient Egypt, the afterlife was a significant concern both for the lowly and the elites, and of course they did all sorts of things to try and maximise their chance of getting into the afterlife.

By Wellcome Images. CC BY 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
By Wellcome Images. CC BY 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

4. Ethnographic evidence

World religions and historical religions are fascinating, but they are a very tiny subset of all religions that humanity has ever come up with. It seems that when you compare religions from across small-scale pre-industrial societies, you will again find that there is predominance in a belief of supernatural punishment, and a fear of gods or spirits or ancestors. This is not random, nor a quirk of a particular region or religion, but a systematic belief, which is very tightly associated with following social norms, including not breaking taboos, cooperating, and denying selfish behaviour. Time and again, you find it being important in these societies for promoting cooperative behaviour.

5. Laboratory experiments

We can look in the archives and the field itself, but we can also bring people into laboratories and prime them with religious concepts and see how that changes their behaviour. It turns out that people primed with religious concepts, particularly with concepts of supernatural punishment, will cooperate more. It’s intuitive, but it’s nice to have this evidence from the laboratory, and some of the new studies show that it is particularly negative sanctions that are priming this cooperative behaviour rather than the promise of rewards.

One experiment asked people prior to coming about their own beliefs in God. This didn’t presuppose a particular type of belief, but asked them for their own conception of God and whether it was more of a rewarding God or a mean and watchful God. Those who believed in a meaner God were much more prone to their own cooperative behaviour when they were primed with religious concepts. The title of the paper was “Mean Gods Make Nice People.”

I think the cognitive underpinnings of all this are really important. We can rationalise all this and we can understand it, but it turns out that we are very loathe to give up our primal beliefs about privacy. We are very sensitive to whether we are alone or not and if we’re not sure about this, the Swiss have helped us prove it by inventing toilets with glass walls. You go inside and can see out of it, feeling like you’re in the middle of the street and anyone can see you, but from the outside it’s completely dark. It turns out that people hated this, and couldn’t use them. There was no way they were going to do anything in there with cars whizzing past two feet in front of them and people walking past. The feeling of privacy is something absolutely wired into us and it’s very hard to remove.

6. Polls

When you ask people today about their beliefs, we are all told that secularism is a major phenomenon, which is creeping across the west, but even among self-declared Atheists you find some extraordinary beliefs. For example, beliefs in supernatural phenomena remain pretty high. It varies according to different types of belief, but significant portions of the public fear ghosts and believe that they can communicate with the dead. This is no surprise if we have these cognitive underpinnings that make us believe that there are supernatural agents out there that are observing our behaviour. However, it’s surprising to learn that these beliefs are alive and well even among secular populations. Of course, if you ask people that are religious, there remain very significant proportions of people who believe in the good old-fashioned concepts of Heaven, Hell, and Judgement Day. For several billion people throughout the world, the possibility of supernatural punishment is a real concern.

Image Credit: “The Great Day of His Wrath” by John Martin. Public Domain via WikiArt.

Recent Comments

  1. […] Supernatural punishment: the common denominator – “So here’s the question: Is religion evolutionarily advantageous…? I hypothesise that supernatural punishment was a very important promoter of cooperation and a way to reduce self-interest, which was vital to the evolution of human societies.” […]

  2. Padraig McCarthy

    Is there any human society of any kind, including secular state, where fear of punishment is not a factor?
    Driving along, you see a police speed check ahead – do you immediately look at your speed indicator? Is it to be law-abiding, or is it for fear of a speeding fine?
    Plato’s Republic poses the Ring of Gyges question: if you had that ring which makes you invisible when you turn it inwards, so you would not be caught, would you still act ethically?
    In moral development, fear of punishment is a normal human stage; we perhaps never grow fully out of it. The challenge is to internalise the values protected by the legal and moral codes, whether civil or religious, so we act out of principle and love rather than out of selfishness and fear.

Leave a Comment


Sewing Glossary

Glossary of Sewing Terms
Alteration: A change made to a completed garment to adjust the fit.
Back Stitch: To stitch in reverse; usually over the beginning and end of a seam to prevent the stitches from becoming loose and fabric pulling apart.
Bar-Tack: A very short, tight zigzag stitch used to reinforce small areas of strain.
Baste: To temporarily join pieces of fabric together using long stitches that can be easily removed; done either by hand or machine.
Batting: A lightweight material made of polyester, or any combination of polyester, cotton, wool, or silk, used as layered filler between finished fabric pieces to give fullness or loft.
Bias: A diagonal cross of the lengthwise and crosswise grain of fabric. This is where there is the most stretch.
Bias Tape or Binding: Long strips of fabric cut on the bias, used to envelop the raw edge of a hem or seam. It can be bought prepackaged or made from fabric or scraps. Bias tape is folded on the two lengthwise edges (sometimes the edges are doublefolded).
Blind Hem: A hand hemming technique in which small zigzag stitches are made and hidden between the hem and the garment.
Blocking: The process of straightening fabric before sewing by pulling it so that lengthwise and crosswise grains meet at a 90 degree angle.
Bolt: The common means of packaging fabric for retail sale—the manufactures' length of fabric wrapped around a cardboard frame. A typical bolt of fabric contains 12 - 20 yards (11 - 19 meters).
Clip: A small cut into the seam allowance to allow fabric to bend at curves and points.
Crosswise Grain: The direction of fabric that runs from selvage to selvage or horizontally. Also known as weft.
Dart: The take up of excess fabric, of a determined amount, at the edge of the garment and converging to a diminishing point; indicated by an arrow on a pattern. This design element allows for proper draping in a garment or sewing project.
Design Ease: The added measurement to a garment design to allow for comfort and movement; will vary in garments depending upon the style and suggested fabric.
Dressmakers Ham: A shaped cushion with rounded curves used to press curved seams and darts.
Dressmaker Shears: Scissors that are 8"(21 cm) -10" (26 cm) in length with bent handles which are used for cutting only fabric.
Easing (Ease): Long loose machine stitches sewn in one or two rows to allow fabric to join evenly to another without tucks or gathers when extending threads are pulled. Used most often when sleeves are set in the armhole of a garment.
Edge Stitch: A line of stitching sewn extremely close to a folded edge or a seam line.
Facing: Fabric pieces that are mirror images of garment/project pattern pieces, commonly used to finish openings such as necklines, armholes and front shirt openings.
Fabric Stretch Gauge: The guide printed on the back of the pattern envelope to gauge the appropriate fabric stretch required for the garment design to fit properly.
Fabric Width: The measurement of the fabric from selvage to selvage. Fabrics come in varying widths, however, there are two typical fabric width classifications; 45"(115 cm) and 60" (152 cm).
Fiber Content: The type of natural or man made material that makes up the fabric. The fiber content allows you to know how comfortable the fabric will be, what type of garment it is suited for and what kind of care it will need.
Fold: The edge formed by doubling the fabric when the selvage edges meet or are parallel.
Gathering: Long loose machine stitches sewn in one or two rows to allow fabric to gather when extending threads are pulled. Used most often when gathering sleeve caps or sleeves to a cuff.
Grading Seams: Seam allowances trimmed to graded widths in order to reduce bulk in the seams.
Grain (Grain-line): The direction of a weave in a fabric.
Grain Line Arrows: These mark the direction of the gain-line on patterns to indicate where on the fabric in relation to the grain-line the pattern pieces should be placed.
Hand Sewing Needle: A small instrument, usually made of steel, that has an eye for thread and is used for carrying thread through fabric to make hand stitches.
Hem (Sewing) Gauge: A small plastic or metal ruler with a sliding indicator /guide that is used for measuring and marking hems and buttonholes.
Hemline: The line designated for the bottom edge of the finished hem.
Inseam: The inside seam on pants—runs from the hem of the pant to the point of the crotch.
Interfacing: A type of fabric sewn or fused between the facing and the outside of a garment (as in a collar or cuff) for stiffening and shape retention.
• Woven - has grain line (pattern pieces should be laid out on grain)
• Non-woven - has no grain (pattern pieces may be laid out in any direction)
• Fusible - has a glue-like heat sensitive surface on one side and is ironed on rather than sewn (can be woven or non-woven)
• Non-fusible - must be sewn in (can be woven or non-woven)
Iron: Gliding a heated iron across fabric with a sweeping motion for the purpose of removing wrinkles and/or smoothing the fabric.
Layout: The chart provided in the pattern instructions showing the appropriate placement of pattern pieces on the fabric for cutting.
Lengthwise Grain: The direction of fabric weave that runs parallel to the selvage, or vertically, and is the strongest direction of the weave. Also known as the warp.
Lining: A lightweight silhouette similar to a garment that is placed on the inside of the garment.
Marking: Transferring the various sewing construction symbols from the paper pattern pieces to the fabric.
Marking pen: Specifically used for marking darts, dots, pocket placements etc. on fabric—can be water soluble (washes out with water) or disappearing (fades over time).
Mitering: The process of sewing two seams together that are cut on the bias; often used to match plaids or stripes.
Nap (Pile): The distinct feature on such fabrics as velvet and corduroy that the right side of the fabric has a natural direction of the fibers—the natural direction will feel smoother and the opposite may feel a bit rough and the color may appear different when looking at it from different angles.
Needles: Used for both machine and hand sewing: Hand sewing needles come in sizes 1 through 10; size 1 is the heaviest, size 10 the lightest. Machine needles come in sizes 7 through 18, but the numbers work the opposite way from those of hand-sewing needles, 7 being the lightest and 18 the heaviest.
Notch: A protruding arrow shaped mark on a pattern piece which is used to match two pattern pieces together for precise sewing.
Notions: Any items other than a pattern and fabric that are used to complete sewing projects such as pins, thread, buttons, zipper, etc.
Pattern Grading: The technique of resizing an original pattern into various pattern sizes.
Pins: Used for fastening or joining.
Pin Cushion: A small cushion in which pins may be stuck so they are ready for use.
Placket: An opening or slit in a garment usually on the front of a shirt or on the sleeve above the cuff.
Preshrinking: The pre-washing (and drying) of washable fabric before sewing to avoid shrinkage of the finished garment.
Pressing: The act of using an iron to heat set fabric flat (typically at the seam allowance) by lifting it from the fabric to move it from one position to another.
Pressing Cloth: A cloth that goes between the garment and the iron when pressing to prevent heat damage to the garment, this can be purchased or a scrap of fabric can be substituted.
Right Side: The outside or top side of fabric; usually softer or smoother.
Rotary Cutter: A fabric cutting tool that has a sharp round blade attached to a handle; should be used with an appropriate cutting mat.
Seam: The joining of two pieces of fabric by sewing, usually near the edge of the fabric.
Seam Allowance: The portion of fabric between the seam and the raw edge.
Seam Ripper: A tool with a small curved blade that has a sharp point on one end and a plastic tip on the other end that is used to remove stitches.
Selvage: The narrow tightly woven edge portion of fabric; it runs parallel to the warp.
Sewing Machine Needle: A small steel instrument that has an eye for thread on one end used for carrying thread on a sewing machine; the other end is blunt and is locked or screwed into a shaft above the needle plate of the machine.
Shears: A cutting implement similar or identical to a pair of scissors but typically larger.
Stay Stitching: A straight stitch just inside the seam line that stabilizes a single layer of fabric and allows the seam allowance to be clipped to a corner.
Stitching in the Ditch: Stitching on the outside of the garment through all layers in the groove (ditch) of the seam, or as close as possible to the seam to secure inside waistbands, facings and bindings to the garment.
Straight Pins: Pins used for the temporary joining of materials such as pattern pieces to fabric preparing the layout or to join one fabric piece to another during construction. There are various lengths and widths to accommodate different types of fabrics and projects.
Straight Stitch: A utility stitch on a sewing machine which creates a non-stretch seam; most often used when sewing woven fabrics.
Tailor Tacks: Small hand sewn stitches to mark inside construction details such as darts or pocket placement.
Tape Measure: A pliable measuring instrument; usually made of cloth or paper for necessary flexibility.
Thimble: A pitted cap or cover worn on the finger to push the needle in hand-sewing.
Thread: A filament, a group of filaments twisted together, or a filamentous length formed by spinning and twisting short textile fibers into a continuous strand used for hand and machine sewing.
Trim: To cut away excess fabric.
Top Stitching: A line of stitching sewn on the outside of a garment close to a seam for stability or decoration.
Tracing wheel: An instrument with a smooth-edged, small serrated or needle-pointed wheel mounted on one end of a handle to transfer markings onto paper or fabric.
Tracing paper/Dressmaker's Carbon Paper: Paper which has been coated on one or both sides with white or colored wax or chalk—used in conjunction with the tracing wheel.
Understitching: Straight stitch sewn through seam allowances on facings or bindings close to seam to keep facings and bindings from rolling to outside of garment.
Warp (lengthwise grain)Lengthwise threads that run parallel to the selvage edges of the fabric.
Weft (crosswise grain)Crosswise threads that run perpendicular to the lengthwise grain.
Wooden Point: A tool used to dry-press small, hard-to-reach areas during the sewing process. Also used to push points of collar tips to the maximum.
Wrong Side: The inside or back side of fabric; usually rougher or less finished.
Yoke: A shaped panel of fabric that is topstitched onto or inserted into a garment for decoration or shaping purposes.
Zigzag Stitch: A machine stitch with a continuous "Z" type design that allows seams to stretch; can be used on the raw edge of fabric to prevent fraying.

Daisypath Anniversary tickers

Daisypath - Personal pictureDaisypath Anniversary tickers


Document Type

The unfolded protein response (UPR) is a cascade of intracellular stress signaling events in response to an accumulation of unfolded or misfolded proteins in the lumen of the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). Cancer cells are often exposed to hypoxia, nutrient starvation, oxidative stress and other metabolic dysregulation that cause ER stress and activation of the UPR. Depending on the duration and degree of ER stress, the UPR can provide either survival signals by activating adaptive and antiapoptotic pathways, or death signals by inducing cell death programs. Sustained induction or repression of UPR pharmacologically may thus have beneficial and therapeutic effects against cancer. In this review, we discuss the basic mechanisms of UPR and highlight the importance of UPR in cancer biology. We also update the UPR-targeted cancer therapeutics currently in clinical trials.

Medical Genetics | Oncology


Study Guides (238,281)
Canada (115,055)
Biology (348)
BIO130H1 (88)

55 Pages
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University of Toronto St. George
Jane Mitchell

Membrane fluidity has many factors that affect it: cells that exist in variable environments have to be able to regulate membrane fluidity to survive. By regulating these proteins they can control the fluidity of their membranes.  Temperature: is a very important factor. The Lower the temp the more rigid the lipid bilayer becomes unless cell can compensate. When temp decreases lipids undergo phase transition and they gel and no longer are fluid. You can test these temperatures when they loose fluidity by using the artificial bilayers. There are many different types of lipids with different lengths, tails, saturation… it is a complex mixture, and phase change happens over temp range  Phospholipid saturation: controls fluidity of lipid membranes. The presence of cis double bonds allows membrane to remain fluid at lower temps. They are unsaturated tails of the lipid membranes and create kinks that keep it fluid. If you saturate all tails and remove double bonds, they will become a gel faster. Margarines, which are, saturated fats.  Length of phospholipid tails: shorter tails increase fluidity at lower temperature, tails interact less with one another when they are shorter. The composition of phospholipids in the plasma membranes of two different single-celled organisms isolated from the ocean is examined. Organism A was isolated from the water surrounding a thermal vent where the temperature was 80oC. Organism B was isolated from the ocean floor where the temperature was 4oC. If you were to compare the membrane phospholipids of the two organisms what do you expect to find? A. Organism B will have more saturated phospholipids that also contain shorter hydrocarbon tails. B. Organism A will have more saturated phospholipids that also contain longer hydrocarbon tails. C. Organism A will have more unsaturated phospholipids that also contain longer hydrocarbon tails. D. Organism B will have more unsaturated phospholipids that also contain longer hydrocarbon tails. Lipid movement to the other leaflet, rarely move themselves and use special enzymes to do this Enzymes in cell membrane - flip lipids from one leaflet to other – Phospholipids synthesized in cytosolic leaflet of endoplasmic reticulum and then phospholipid translators translate them to other leaflets – They allow lipids synthesized on one leaflet to flip to lumen to make a proper bilayer – In unhealthy cells undergoing apoptosis you often see membrane blebing situations due to membrane not being synthesized properly. – Help build bilayer flipping lipids form one leaflet to the other – Thinking of how a cell is structured must think about 2 leaflets of bilayer and their relationship to one another o Phospholipid translocators catalyze rapidly lipids from leaflet to the other. o Golgi is budding, Golgi fuses with membrane and exocytosis the contents, as this happens cytosolic face remains in contact with cytosol, and exoplasmic face where head of lipids touch used to touch Golgi, are now contacting the lumen of the vesicle and extracellular environment. o These special proteins have functions where one end needs to be in contact with the cytosol and the other with the extracellular environment. So as the transport process happens you maintain the leaflets of plasma membrane Asymmetry of the Lipid Bilayer of lipid composition Glycolipids are situated on the outer leaflet of plasma membrane where sugar molecules are facing. They are synthesized on lumen face of Golgi, as they are transferred the inside of the Golgi faces the extra cellular environment of the cell. The interact with environment to help:  Protect from harsh conditions with protein glycosylation and other things  Interaction of cell with environment Specific phospholipids are situated on the cytosolic leaflet of PM. It helps specifically binds cytosolic proteins and localized them to the membrane. For example: Phosphatidylserne is bound by protein kinase C involved in intracellular signaling cascades. This is a localizing protein to membrane where it can interact with receptors and transmits signals in the cells. Text book: Membrane Structure The plasma membrane: 1. Encloses the cell 2. Defines it‘s boundaries 3. Maintains essential differences between cytosol and extracellular environment  In eukaryotic cells the membranes of the Golgi apparatus, endoplasmic reticulum, mitochondria… maintain characteristic differences between contents and cytosol.  Ion gradients across membranes synthesize ATP and drive transmembrane movement of solutes to transmit electrical signals.  Plasma membranes also has sensory/receptor proteins so cell can change behavior in response to environment  It is a thin layer of lipids and proteins held together by non-covalent interactions.  The lipid bilayer is the fluid structure of the membrane and is an impermeable barrier to most water-soluble molecules.  Proteins in bilayer meditate all other functions: o Transporting specific molecules o Catalyzing membrane associated reactions like ATP synthesis.
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Professional > Blog > IPPS Blog > March 2018 > Mechanistic Interplay among Peripheral, Spinal and Brain Adaptions to Chronic Visceral Pain

For those of you following our journey through the 3rd World Congress on Abdominal and Pelvic Pain (#WCAPP17), here is another light-bulb lecture explaining the interconnections of chronic visceral pain. The presenter, Melissa A. Farmer, PhD, is a researcher at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University with a long-standing relationship with the International Pelvic Pain Society (the organizer for #WCAPP17). So, needless to say, she has an impressive resume and a passion for understanding pelvic pain. Just check out her wrap sheet. I’ve chosen a few interesting nuggets from her lecture.

By Britt Van Hees
Pelvic Health and Rehabilitation Center, Berkeley, CA

Three Camps

Pain, pain, pain. There are three camps of pain chronification:

Cortical reorganization: occurring in the brain

Spinal central sensitization: occurring at the spinal cord

Nociceptive sensitization: occurring at the sensory nerve level

Each of these camps have their own combination of modifiers that can lead to sensitization.

Pause- so this is where one can get overloaded with information, so I took some creative liberties and decided to draw a picture.

As you see from the drawing, there are several areas where our brain and our body can modify signals related to pain. At the “nociceptor sensitization camp” the sensory nerves can become extra excited, and maybe throw too much input into the nervous system. For example, do you remember the last sunburn you had? Remember how sensitive your skin was- even the slightest touch was immensely painful. Well, now imagine that you don’t have a sunburn but your nerves are sending that same intense signal, as if your tissue was still burned. This nervous system mix up is called allodynia, when normally non-painful stimulus is extremely painful.

At the “stream of spinal central sensitization” the spinal cord can send information upstream, to the brain, or downstream, to the peripheral nerve, to modify signals related to pain. For example, #1 on the list, prolonged dorsal horn firing, is similar to an echo. This is when your hand-nerve yells “watch out” to your spinal cord, and your spinal cord yells to your brain “watch out….watch out….watch out….watch out….watch out… watch out…watch out….” well you get the idea. A single signal potentiates into multiple.

Finally we have the “lake of cortical reorganization”, or in layman’s terms, brain change. Here you can have tidepools of emotional distress or reefs of prior history or insert another water-based metaphor here. Essentially, upcoming signals are then interpreted within the framework of the brain where it decides if it’s enough to produce a pain response. How this all works is a bit murky, pardon the pun, but we do know that our interpretation of nociceptive signals greatly impacts how the brain choose to deal with them.

Somatic vs. Visceral: Crosstalk

Dr. Farmer also touched on the differences between somatic and visceral pain and the crosstalk that can occur between the two.

When comparing sensations from somatic (aka your body) and visceral structures (aka your organs), there are several differences. Somatic pain has a distinct quality, like a sharp or pinching sensation. It correlates specifically to the intensity, duration and location of the stimulus and is caused by tissue injury and inflammation. One easy example of somatic pain is the ankle pain one might experience following a sprain. Conversely, visceral pain is diffuse in quality and generally is found along the midline of the body. It doesn’t have the same on/off switch and tends to correlate very poorly with its stimulus. Just think how you felt the last time you had food poisoning…yah not fun.

Okay, that seems reasonable, now we have some ways to separate out different types of pain. However, sometimes messages can get muddled when somatic and visceral structures start to talk to one another – called crosstalk. This can happen when sensory fibers of pelvic organs synapse close by where other somatic or visceral structures synapse at the spinal cord. You can see how it can get confusing when a problem in one organ might feel like a problem in a completely separate organ or body part.

One case of this is viscero-somatic pain, when a visceral structure creates body pain. A well-known example of viscero-somatic pain is when during a heart attack someone might report significant left arm pain. In the pelvis however, this would look like a patient complaining of low back pain when the stimulus is actually coming from uterine contractions.

This crosstalk can also go the opposite direction, somato-visceral pain. This could happen with vulvar inflammation. A patient may have multiple yeast infections leading to inflammation of the vulva (somato-), but then also experience bladder pain (visceral). And it doesn’t stop there.

Viscero-visceral pain, yup that happens. Stimulus from one organ can be confused with stimulus from another organ. This can even lead to changes in how the organs function. This type of viscero-visceral pain is one explanation for the high prevalence of irritable bowel syndrome in women with endometriosis.

What does this mean for patients?

So now what? All of this can be quite overwhelming. It’s important for both patient and practitioners to educate themselves regarding the different facets of pain. Great resources including Dr. Farmer’s research and books like Explain Pain or Pelvic Pain Explained can be very helpful in help navigating these uncertain waters. Since knowledge is power, the more we understand the cause, the better we can treat pain together.

Thank you again for the enlightening presentation Dr. Farmer! If you want to check out the whole presentation, which we recommend, look here.

Posted by Jennifer Ford on March 12, 2018, 12:00AM

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