2.1 The Major Constituents of the Atmosphere

Few things are as sure as the air: it is all around us, invisible, odorless, and essential to all life on Earth. Its very uniformity made the ancient Greeks classify it as one of the four basic elements: earth, water, fire, and air. Yet the air is actually a combination of gaseous elements that have a remarkable uniformity in terms of their contribution to the whole. While Earth's atmosphere has no definitive ending point, but instead thins out to near nothingness several hundred kilometers above the surface, virtually all of the atmosphere exists below100 km. The constituent elements are primarily nitrogen and oxygen, with a small amount of argon. Below a height of about 86 kilometers, the three main gaseous elements, which together account for about 99.9% of the total atmosphere, exist in essentially constant proportion to the total: nitrogen comprises 78% of air by volume, oxygen comprises 21% of air by volume, and argon comprises another 0.9%.

2.2 The Minor (Trace) Constituents of the Atmosphere

The remaining 0.1% of the atmosphere consists of the trace constituents. These include water vapor, carbon dioxide, ozone, methane, various oxides of nitrogen, neon, and helium. They are called trace gases because they exist in small amounts.

Near the surface, water vapor can be as high as 2-3% of the gaseous portion of the atmosphere in a warm ground fog. (The 0.1% figure cited above for trace constituents is a global average.) In the stratosphere, the layer of the atmosphere where temperatures increase with height and vertical motions are weak, water vapor is typically a few parts water per million molecules of air by volume (ppmv). Ozone can be vanishingly small near the surface and as high as 10 ppmv in the stratosphere. Typical global averages of the other trace gases in descending order are: carbon dioxide (0.03% or 300 ppmv), neon (0.002% or 20 ppmv), helium (5 ppmv), and methane (1.7ppmv).

2.2.1 Water vapor -- Essential to all life, water in the lowest level of the atmosphere in various forms (vapor, liquid, solid) creates many of the observed weather features, like clouds, rain, snow, ice, and fog. As we shall see, this lowest level of the atmosphere is called the troposphere, and it is separate from the next highest level, called the stratosphere. Water vapor concentrations can vary, as stated above, from nearly 3 percent at the surface to almost nothing high up, depending on weather, altitude, and season. As a consequence of its properties and its abundance in the troposphere, water vapor concentration is one of the most important considerations in understanding meteorology and climate.

Water vapor amounts in the stratosphere are much lower, typically on the order of 4 to 6 parts per million by volume (0.004 to 0.006 %). Yet even this water vapor plays a significant role in the energy budget of the atmosphere. Water vapor is radiatively active, absorbing and reradiating the thermal (or infrared) energy from the surface. It also plays a key role in the formation of particles in the stratosphere, such as aerosols and at very low temperatures, special types of clouds known as polar stratospheric clouds.

2.2.2 Methane -- Though methane has a global average of just 1.7 ppmv of air in the well-mixed layer of the lower atmosphere, it displays, like other trace gases, considerable spatial variation in concentration at the surface. Near its source regions, concentrations are much higher; in sink regions, concentrations are lower than the global average. Two source regions for methane are feedlots, specifically, cattle flatulence, and rice paddies. Both sources reside at the surface. As a result, methane at higher altitudes must be mixed up from below. Such vertical mixing of air in the stratosphere is relatively slow, thus limiting the supply of methane there. On the loss side, reactions of methane with the hydroxyl radical OH reduce its concentration in the stratosphere below the global average of 1.7 ppmv.

2.2.3 Ozone -- Ozone is critical to life on earth because it blocks harmful ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the Sun reaching the surface. Ozone absorbs harmful UV radiation from the Sun in the 200-300 nanometer (i.e. 2-3 x 10-7 meter) wavelength region (see Chapter 4). In so doing, ozone is responsible for life as we know it. Ozone forms 10 to 40 kilometers above the ground in a region where intense UV radiation from the Sun breaks apart (photodissociates) the diatomic oxygen molecule O2. Absorption of solar radiation occurs in the stratosphere, causing it to be warmer than it would otherwise be. Indeed, it is because of this ozone layer that the temperatures rise with height, giving rise to the structure of the stratosphere. It is contrasted with the troposphere (see Section 3).

Ozone is formed by the reaction of an O atom (created by the photodissociation of O2) and an O2 molecule to form O3. In addition to creating ozone, UV radiation also destroys it, as do a number of chemical reactions. Although ozone is constantly being created and destroyed, the amount of ozone at a given location remains relatively constant. This amount of ozone, also known as the steady state concentration of ozone, peaks at roughly 5 x 1012 molecules per cubic centimeter at around 30 km in altitude. Considerable natural variation in ozone occurs, however, due to transport.

Ozone is also produced at the surface in two ways, both of which are related to human activities. One way is in the form of photochemical smog that arises from industrial pollution reacting with sunlight. Another is in so-called "biomass burning". This refers to burning of jungle, savannah, and existing farm land. It is primarily due to human agricultural needs, though lightening can also trigger wildfires that result in biomass burning-related ozone creation. These forms of ozone are unhealthy, while stratospheric ozone, by blocking dangerous UV light, is essential for life on Earth's surface. Our focus here is on this beneficial ozone created by energetic UV light, principally in the stratosphere.

2.3 Trace Species as Greenhouse Gases

The trace gases gases such as carbon dioxide, water vapor, ozone, and methane, as well as the manmade chlorofluorocarbons (CFC's), are all also categorized as "greenhouse gases." This is because each one of them has the ability to affect Earth's energy balance and change the temperature at the surface and in the atmosphere. They do this through the way in which they absorb incoming shortwave energy (radiation) from the sun and reradiate it upwards and downwards as longwave radiation in the form of infrared or thermal energy, which we can feel as sensible heat.

How they do this, and what is meant by longwave and shortwave radiation is explored in depth in Chapter 4.

2.4 Trace Greenhouse Gas Trends

Trace gases like methane, carbon dioxide, and CFCs are all increasing in our atmosphere. Figure 2.01 shows a plot of methane measurements made in Cape Meares, Oregon between 1979 and 1992 which shows roughly a 3% increase in just 5 years. (Figure taken from Khalil, et al, 1993.) The measurements are in parts per billion by volume, or ppbv.

Other measurements of methane from all over the globe show a similar trend. Measurements of the chemical composition of bubbles in ice cores dug up in the Arctic and Antarctic show that methane concentrations remained constant at about 0.7 ppmv for thousands of years and the increase has only occurred relatively recently on geological time scales. The current global average is 1.7 ppmv.

Likewise are chlorofluorocarbons concentrations increasing. Unlike the other trace gases, CFC's do not occur naturally. They have been used in spray propellants, as well as various refrigerator and air conditioning coolants and cleaning solvents. CFC's have been shown to play a role in stratospheric ozone destruction. It is over Antartica that their ozone-destroying ability via a series of catalytic reactions is best known. This is explored in depth in Chapters 5 and 11.

2.5 Additional Atmospheric Components: Aerosols and Ions

In addition to gaseous species in the atmosphere, there are suspended solid or liquid particulates as well. Known as aerosols, they are typically on the order of magnitude of micrometers to millimeters in size. Dust, sea salt, and volcanic emissions are natural sources for aersols. Sulfur dioxide from volcanic eruptions and from power plant emissions react to form tiny sulfuric acid droplet aerosols. These particles form cloud condensation nuclei for cloud water droplets and frozen cloud ice crystals. Sulfuric acid droplets high in the stratosphere for the so-called Junge Layer. Aerosols are also involved in the formation of polar stratospheric clouds (PSC's) composed of water and hydrates of nitric acid. Aerosols may have significant atmospheric consequences due to their influence on Earth's radiation balance. PSC's are intimately connected to the well-known Antarctic polar ozone hole via heterogeneous chemical reactions that are explored in Chapter 11. Aerosols also influence the global radiation budget by scattering visible wavelength solar radiation and absorbing infrared (thermal) radiation emitted by Earth and the atmosphere.

Another atmospheric component is ions. Ions are compounds that are electrically imbalanced due to the gain or loss of electrons. They are present at all altitudes in the atmosphere, though they are produced by different phenomena. In the troposphere, ions are produced by lightning, cosmic rays, and the decay of radioactive elements in Earth's crust. In the stratosphere and mesosphere, charged particles (protons) from the Sun can penetrate and cause some ionization of chemical compounds.

2.6 Evolution of Earth's Atmosphere

So where did Earth's atmosphere come from anyway?

The solid Earth first condensed from the gas and dust of the primordial solar nebula, along with the Sun and its other retinue of planets and their satellites, about 4.5 billion years ago. The embryonic or proto-Earth swept up the material of the gaseous solar nebula in a process of accretion over many millions of years. Collisions with meteors and comets were intense and frequent. Occasionally, there were collisions with very large bodies, called planetesimals, which blew apart the proto-Earth, only to have it recoalesce, the heavier materials (like nickel and iron) sinking below the ligher, carbon containing elements. Many of the gases now present on Earth were carried here via collisions with these other celestial bodies. Eventually, the bombardment subsided as the growing Earth swept up most of the smaller bodies and remaining gases in its orbit around the infant Sun. Heavier gases became trapped in the congealing molten rocks. Lighter gases captured by Earth, such as methane, ammonia, and hydrogen, formed Earth's first atmosphere. Completely anoxic or lacking in oxygen, it is known as the primary atmosphere. The intense ultraviolet radiation present in the early solar system broke apart the methane and ammonia molecules, freeing hydrogen atoms. Being light in weight, the hydrogen was able to escape Earth's atmosphere, leaving Earth depleted in hydrogen.

Meanwhile, gases originally trapped below the surface began to enter the atmosphere through volcanic eruptions and other openings in the crust. The atmosphere began to fill with carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and water vapor. Oceans developed as water vapor condensed and fell as rain in ceaseless storms. Large amounts of carbon dioxide was removed from the atmosphere and sequestered in carbonate rocks and in sea water. Photolysis of carbon dioxide and water vapor yielded some atmospheric oxygen. Initially, however, every oxygen atom that was produced reacted quickly with rocks on the surface and gases already present in the atmosphere. Life developed early on in the oceans. Initial life forms on the planet were various types of bacteria for thrived in the anoxic environment. Oxygen therefore did not begin to accumulate in Earth's atmosphere until simple photosynthetic plants (types of algae) and cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) appeared, which produced oxygen as a byproduct.

The presence of free oxygen in the atmosphere is itself intimately associated with the development of these algal and cyanobacterial life forms. Their appearance about 2.5 billion years ago allowed carbon dioxide to be removed from the atmosphere and replaced with free oxygen (O2).

As oxygen built up, so too did ozone. In Figure 2.02, we see a simulation of the possible evolution of life together with the evolution of oxygen and ozone in Earth's atmosphere [taken from Wayne, R.P., Chemistry of Atmospheres, New York: Oxford Press, 1991, p. 404].

Models of the chemical balance of ozone and the evolution of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere indicate that the atmosphere reached the 50% level of ozone about 1 billion years ago. At this time, oxygen was still just a fraction of a percent of what it is today. By about 400 million years ago, the atmospheric content of oxygen and ozone probably closely resembled present values. The first land animals also arose about 400 million years ago. Some scientists have hypothesized that the development of higher life forms was necessarily linked to the evolution of the protective ozone layer.


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Primary biliary cirrhosis Content Supplied by NHS Choices

Primary biliary cirrhosis, or primary biliary cholangitis (PBC), is a long-term liver disease in which the bile ducts in the liver become damaged.

This gradually leads to a build-up of bile in the liver, which can damage it and eventually lead to scarring (cirrhosis).

PBC doesn't always cause any symptoms in the early stages, but some people may experience:

  • fatigue (extreme tiredness)
  • itchy skin
  • dry eyes and mouth
  • pain or discomfort in the upper right corner of their tummy

Many people are only diagnosed with PBC after a problem with their liver is picked up during a routine blood test that is carried out for another reason.

Read more about the symptoms of PBC and diagnosing PBC.

What causes PBC

Bile is a liquid produced inside the liver that is used to help digest fats and remove toxins from the body. It passes out of the liver through small tubes called bile ducts.

In PBC, for reasons not fully understood, the immune system (the body's natural defence against infection and illness) mistakenly attacks the bile ducts.

This gradually causes the bile ducts to become swollen and scarred, obstructing the flow of bile out of the liver. Bile then starts to build up in the liver, which damages it and may lead to cirrhosis.

Read more about the causes of PBC.

Who is affected

It's not clear how many people are affected by PBC in the UK. Estimates vary from around 15,000 to 20,000 people.

The rates of PBC in the UK are higher than in some other parts of the world. The reason for this is unknown.

About 90% of those affected are women and most cases are diagnosed in people aged 40-60, although PBC can be diagnosed at any age from 20 onwards.

How PBC is treated

PBC is a progressive condition, which means the damage to the liver can get steadily worse over time. The rate at which PBC progresses varies between individuals. In some cases, it can take decades.

If not treated, the liver can become damaged to such an extent that it no longer works properly. This is known as liver failure and it can be fatal.

There are medications that can help slow the progression of the condition and help relieve the itchiness associated with it. In cases where there is extensive liver damage, a liver transplant may be required.

Read more about treating PBC and the complications of PBC.

Symptoms of primary biliary cirrhosis

Primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC) often doesn't cause any symptoms in the early stages and many people are only diagnosed with the condition during tests carried out for another reason.

People who do have symptoms may experience:

  • fatigue (extreme tiredness) - this is the most common symptom, and can have a significant impact on your daily activities
  • dry eyes and mouth
  • problems sleeping at night and feeling very sleepy during the day
  • pain or discomfort in the upper right corner of the tummy
  • dizziness when standing up (postural or orthostatic hypotension)

Some people may also have symptoms of conditions that often occur alongside PBC, such as an underactive thyroid (hypothyroidism).

For unknown reasons, there is often little association between the severity of symptoms and the degree of underlying liver damage. Some people with PBC have severe symptoms even though tests show that their liver is not severely damaged, while tests may reveal that others with no or mild symptoms may have significant liver damage.

Advanced PBC

Medication can usually help to delay liver damage in people with PBC, but if the liver does become extensively damaged (cirrhosis), you may have additional symptoms.

These can include:

  • dark urine and pale stools
  • a tendency to bleed and bruise more easily
  • problems with memory and concentration

Read more about the symptoms of cirrhosis.

Causes of primary biliary cirrhosis

The exact cause of primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC) is unknown, although it is widely thought to be the result of a problem with the immune system.

Autoimmune condition

Most experts believe that PBC is an autoimmune condition. This means that something goes wrong with the immune system (the body's natural defence against infection and illness) and it attacks healthy tissue instead of fighting off infection.

In cases of PBC, the immune system sends specialised cells that usually kill bacteria and viruses to the bile ducts.

These cells damage the surface of the bile ducts, which gradually become scarred and disrupt the flow of bile out of the liver. This increases the amount of bile in the liver, which over time can cause it to also become extensively damaged and scarred (cirrhosis).

This damage can gradually cause the liver to lose its function. As the liver plays a vital role in filtering out impurities and toxins from your blood, loss of liver function is potentially fatal.

It is not known what causes the immune system to malfunction and attack the bile ducts.

Other autoimmune conditions

People with PBC are often more likely to also have another autoimmune condition. For example, they may also have:

  • an underactive thyroid (hypothyroidism) - where the thyroid gland does not produce enough hormones
  • rheumatoid arthritis - a condition that causes pain and swelling in the joints
  • scleroderma - a condition that affects connective tissue (the supporting tissues of the body), causing hard, puffy and itchy skin
  • autoimmune hepatitis - a very rare cause of long-term hepatitis, where the immune system attacks the liver
  • Sjögren's syndrome - a condition in which the immune system attacks the body's tear and saliva glands
  • Raynaud's phenomenon - a common condition that affects the blood supply to certain parts of the body, usually the fingers and toes
  • coeliac disease - a common digestive condition where a person has an adverse reaction to gluten because the immune system mistakes substances found inside gluten as a threat to the body

Increased risk

Although the reason why some people develop PBC is not clear, it's thought that your genes may make you more susceptible to developing the condition and that it is triggered by something else.

There is some evidence to suggest that certain things can increase your chances of developing PBC. These are explained below.

PBC occurs mostly in women. Less than one in 10 cases of PBC occur in men.

One theory for this is that the immune system may be affected by the female sex hormone, oestrogen.

Family history

Having a close relative with PBC means you are more likely to develop the condition yourself.

For example, if you are female and your mother has or has had PBC, you are much more likely to develop PBC than someone who has no relatives with the condition. However, the risk is still low.

Possible triggers

Certain things may trigger PBC in people with a genetic tendency. These include:

  • infections - such as a urinary tract infection (UTI)
  • hormone replacement therapy (HRT) - a treatment used to replace the female hormones that a woman's body no longer produces because of the menopause
  • using nail varnish or cosmetics
  • smoking cigarettes or having a history of heavy smoking
  • living near to where toxic waste has been dumped

However, none of these have been proven as definite triggers of PBC. Most people who are exposed to them will not develop the condition. There is nothing to suggest that you should reduce your exposure to these triggers to lower your risk of developing PBC.

Diagnosing primary biliary cirrhosis

In many cases, a suspected diagnosis of primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC) is made after having a blood test for another, unrelated condition.

Blood tests

Damage to the bile ducts and liver leads to an increase in enzymes produced by your liver. The high level of enzymes can be detected by certain routine blood tests.

A diagnosis of PBC can usually be confirmed by checking your blood for anti-mitochondrial antibodies (AMAs). In PBC, AMAs are produced by the immune system (the body's natural defence against infection and illness). They are present in around 95% of people with PBC.

You may also have a high level of bilirubin in your blood. Bilirubin is a yellow substance produced when red blood cells are broken down. The liver usually "takes up" bilirubin from the blood and it is passed out of your body in urine.

If there is something wrong with your liver or bile ducts, bilirubin cannot be moved into the bowel and leaks back out into the blood. This shows up on a blood test.

Ultrasound scans

You may also have an ultrasound scan to help rule out other problems with your bile ducts, such as a blockage caused by bile duct stones.

This is a painless scan, similar to the scan carried out during pregnancy, that involves using a probe that emits high-frequency sound waves to create an image of the inside of your tummy.

An ultrasound scan can also be used to assess the stiffness of your liver and identify any scarring (cirrhosis).

Liver biopsy

You may sometimes be referred for a liver biopsy. This involves removing a small sample of liver tissue so it can be studied under a microscope.

Most liver biopsies can be carried out under local anaesthetic to numb your skin. The sample is obtained using a long needle inserted through your tummy.

A liver biopsy is not always necessary to diagnose PBC, because it is usually confirmed by the presence of AMAs, but it can be used to assess the extent of damage to your liver and, increasingly, suggest the right treatment for you.

Treating primary biliary cirrhosis

The aim of treatment for primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC) is to prevent liver damage as much as possible and reduce your symptoms.

All types of liver disease, including PBC, can be helped by following some general health advice. You should:

Not following this advice could speed up the progression of your condition. It may also affect whether you can have a liver transplant, if you need one. For example, you may not be offered a liver transplant if you drink more than the recommended daily limits of alcohol.

Avoid certain medications

Besides the medications below, you should also be careful about taking some medicines if you have PBC because the damage to your liver can affect its ability to process certain medications.

For example, you may need to avoid non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) such as aspirin, although paracetamol can usually be taken safely.

Ask your doctor about any medications you should avoid and inform any health professional who is treating you that you have PBC, particularly if they suggest taking medication.

Ursodeoxycholic acid

Ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA) is the main treatment for people with PBC. It can help prevent or delay liver damage in most people - particularly if you start taking it in the early stages of the condition - although it doesn't improve symptoms such as itchy skin or fatigue (extreme tiredness).

Once you start taking UDCA, it is likely you will need to take it for the rest of your life. Regular blood tests may be carried out to monitor your liver function and you will be assessed after a year to see if you have responded sufficiently. If not, you may need additional treatment.

Side effects

One possible side effect of UDCA is weight gain. People gain an average of 2.3kg (5lbs) during the first year of taking the medication, although most people don't gain any more weight after this.

Other side effects can include diarrhoea, nausea, vomiting and thinning hair.

Treating itchiness

Colestyramine (previously called cholestyramine) is a medicine widely used to treat the itchiness associated with PBC.

It usually comes in sachets of a powder that can be dissolved in water or fruit juice. It is a good idea to take the powder with fruit juice, because it has an unpleasant taste.

You may need to take colestyramine for several days before your symptoms begin to improve.

If you are taking UDCA as well as colestyramine, you should avoid taking them at the same time because colestyramine will affect how your body absorbs UDCA. You should take UDCA at least one hour before colestyramine, or four to six hours afterwards.

This also applies to any other medicines you are taking. Your GP can give you further advice about this.

Constipation is a common side effect of colestyramine, although this usually improves once your body gets used to the medicine. Other side effects can include bloating and diarrhoea.

If you are taking colestyramine on a long-term basis, the medicine may affect your body's ability to absorb vitamins A, D and K from food. In such cases, taking additional vitamin supplements may be beneficial. Your GP can advise you on whether you would benefit from taking vitamin supplements.

Alternative treatments for itching

See your GP if your itchiness does not improve after taking colestyramine. Alternative medicines are available, such as an antibiotic called rifampicin and a medication called naltrexone.

These are usually only prescribed by a specialist such as a hepatologist (liver specialist), but your GP can refer you if necessary.

It's thought that the female hormone oestrogen may make itching worse. Oestrogen is found in some types of hormonal contraceptives, such as the combined contraceptive pill. Therefore, you may want to consider using a different type of contraceptive, such as condoms.

Regularly using moisturisers to stop your skin becoming dry may also help reduce itchiness.

Managing fatigue

At the moment, no medications are available to specifically treat the fatigue caused by PBC. Your GP may want to rule out and treat any other possible causes for your tiredness, such as anaemia (a lack of red blood cells) or depression, as fatigue is a difficult symptom to treat.

You should try to exercise whenever possible, but you may need to pace yourself and limit your daily activities to a manageable level. Adjusting your daily routine around fatigue (which is often worse later in the day) can make a big difference to your quality of life.

If you have difficulty sleeping, sleep hygiene measures may help. These include avoiding caffeine, nicotine and alcohol late at night, and maintaining a comfortable sleeping environment.

Treating dry mouth and eyes

If you have a dry mouth and eyes, your GP may recommend eye drops containing "artificial tears" or saliva substitute products.

You should also make sure you maintain a good standard of oral hygiene and visit your dentist regularly because having a dry mouth can increase your risk of tooth decay.

Liver transplant

A liver transplant may be recommended if it's thought that the liver damage may eventually reach the stage where your life is at risk.

Planning for a liver transplant often begins before significant damage to the liver has taken place because:

  • the average waiting time for a liver transplant is 145 days, so it's important to start searching for a suitable donor as soon as possible
  • the better your general state of health, the greater the chance of a successful transplant, so a transplant should ideally be carried out while you are still relatively healthy

Having a liver transplant resolves a number of symptoms, most typically itchiness. Fatigue, however, is usually persistent.

Like all organ transplants, liver transplants carry a risk of complications. One of the most serious complications is that your immune system may reject the donated liver, which could be life-threatening. You will usually need to take medication to suppress your immune system for the rest of your life to reduce this risk.

The success rates of liver transplants for people with PBC are generally better than most other liver diseases. Studies have found that more than 90% of people who have a liver transplant for PBC are still alive after a year and more than 80% will live at least another five years.

There is a risk of PBC developing in your new liver, but this isn't usually a major concern because it often takes a long time to develop.

Complications of primary biliary cirrhosis

If primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC) is not treated or reaches an advanced stage, it can cause other potentially serious problems.

For reasons that are unknown, people with PBC are at an increased risk of developing osteoporosis. This is a condition in which the bones become weak and brittle.

A DEXA scan, which is a type of X-ray that measures the density of your bones, may be carried out when you are diagnosed with PBC and regularly thereafter to monitor the condition of your bones.

Your GP may prescribe vitamin D and calcium supplements to help maintain your bone strength.

You may also be advised to exercise regularly, with a particular focus on weight-bearing exercises such as running, dancing and aerobics, because this can help reduce your risk of osteoporosis.

In some cases, you may also need more specific treatment, such as bisphosphonates. This is a medication that slows the rate at which bone is broken down by the body, which can help maintain bone density and reduce the risk of a fracture.

Read more about treating osteoporosis and preventing osteoporosis.

Portal hypertension and varices

Portal hypertension is increased blood pressure inside your liver as a result of damage and scarring (cirrhosis), making it harder for blood to move through it.

For your blood to return from your liver to your heart, new blood vessels start to open up, usually along the lining of your stomach or oesophagus (the long tube that carries food from the throat to the stomach). These new blood vessels are known as varices.

The walls of these varices are quite fragile and in some cases can split open and bleed.

This can cause gradual, long-term bleeding, which can lead to anaemia (a lack of red blood cells), or it can be sudden and severe, causing you to vomit blood and pass stools that are very dark or tar-like.

If you vomit blood or have very dark stools, you should go to your local GP surgery or your nearest accident and emergency (A&E) department immediately.

Portal hypertension can sometimes be managed with a type of medication known as beta blockers, which can help reduce your blood pressure, although a procedure to seal the varices using an endoscope (a narrow tube with a camera at the end that is passed down your throat) may be recommended in some cases.

If you have portal hypertension, you may also develop a build-up of fluid in your abdomen (stomach) and around your intestines. This fluid is known an ascites.

One of the problems associated with ascites is the risk of infection in the fluid (spontaneous bacterial peritonitis). This is potentially a very serious complication and can be fatal.

Hepatic encephalopathy

One of the most important functions of the liver is to remove toxins from your blood. If your liver is unable to do this due to cirrhosis, the levels of toxins in your blood can increase and lead to a condition called hepatic encephalopathy.

Symptoms of hepatic encephalopathy can include:

  • agitation
  • confusion
  • disorientation
  • muscle stiffness
  • muscle tremors
  • difficulty speaking
  • in very serious cases, coma

Hepatic encephalopathy may require admission to hospital. In hospital, your body functions will be supported while medication is given to remove the toxins from the blood.

Hepatic encephalopathy is very uncommon in PBC and must be distinguished from concentration and memory problems linked to fatigue.

Vitamin deficiencies

Bile produced by the liver plays an important role in digestion, particularly in digesting fats. As the flow of bile out of the liver is obstructed in people with PBC, the condition may occasionally cause problems absorbing "fat-soluble" vitamins - including vitamins A, D, E and K.

The medication colestyramine, often used to reduce the itchiness associated with PBC, can also affect your body's ability to absorb some of these vitamins from food.

Significant deficiencies in these vitamins can cause problems such as:

  • difficulty seeing in poor light
  • reduced bone density (osteopenia)
  • nerve damage (peripheral neuropathy)
  • muscle weakness
  • a tendency to bleed or bruise easily

If you're not getting enough of one or more of these vitamins, you doctor may recommend taking supplements.

Liver cancer

If you have PBC, the progressive damage to your liver slightly increases your risk of developing liver cancer.

Therefore, regular screening may be recommended to look for signs of cancer because the earlier the cancer is diagnosed, the greater the chance there is of curing it.

Screening will typically involve regular ultrasound scans and blood tests.

Read more about diagnosing liver cancer.


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Authorities employ various mechanisms to regulate (encouraging or discouraging) certain behaviors in general. Governing or administering agencies may for example codify rules into laws, police citizens and visitors to ensure that they comply with those laws, and implement other policies and practices which legislators or administrators have prescribed with the aim of discouraging or preventing crime. In addition, authorities provide remedies and sanctions, and collectively these constitute a criminal justice system. Legal sanctions vary widely in their severity, they may include (for example) incarceration of temporary character aimed at reforming the convict. Some jurisdictions have penal codes written to inflict permanent harsh punishments: legal mutilation, capital punishment or life without parole.

The sociologist Richard Quinney has written about the relationship between society and crime. When Quinney states "crime is a social phenomenon"[1] he envisages both how individuals conceive crime and how populations perceive it, based on societal norms.[citation needed]

The label of "crime" and the accompanying social stigma normally confine their scope to those activities seen as injurious to the general population or to the State, including some that cause serious loss or damage to individuals. Those who apply the labels of "crime" or "criminal" intend to assert the hegemony of a dominant population, or to reflect a consensus of condemnation for the identified behavior and to justify any punishments prescribed by the State (in the event that standard processing tries and convicts an accused person of a crime).

Usually a natural person perpetrates a crime, but legal persons may also commit crimes. Conversely, nonpersons such as dogs cannot commit crimes.[2]

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By Steven Hastings Paige

Tantrics use their sexuality as a method of exposing themselves to higher consciousness. Sound Tantrics further study the effect of sexuality ,sound, and body movement to draw themselves towards metaphysical unity. Where cultures are infused with music and dance, sex has a relationship to both.
Music and dance cultures have a different relationship to sexuality that is not easily understood from the vantage point of Western values. We as Westerners have viewed primitive musical erotic ceremonies as an abandonment of ethical and moral structure. Yet within the cultural context of the dance society these experiences are the essence of communal unity and support. Very little research has been done about the effect of repetitive kinesthetics, music, and feminine sexual experience. In our exploration of Sound Tantric culture and sexuality we propose some very innovative views about what sexuality is and how we experience it.
This on line book is for the lay reader without cost. It's not written in argumentative style or scholarly form. It is presented in small segments of inspirational thought and suggested activities so the reader can validate what is presented here quickly through personal experience. We tried to write simply enough for most readers to absorb the material within their own limited time frames.
We experience love through a torrent of impressions, emotions, and physical sensations. Our ally and guide through these experiences is our psyche or subconscious. The Sound Tantras is a crystallization of impressions and facts to strengthen and empower the feminine psyche, to create balance between the masculine and feminine experience of love, and to impress upon the reader the richness of Sound Tantric culture .
The relation of rhythm and timing as an instigator of ecstatic states is very poorly understood in the West. Very little literature supports female sexuality as being deeply time dependent. Even the vast literature available about primitive sexual rituals passes over the elements of time and rhythm with little attention. Much of our Western culture is concerned about sex . We are obsessed about sex. Like a store bought apple waxed and grown for looks with little taste, Western sexuality is often devoid of the subtlety and compassion for the psychic experience of sex while extolling the virtues of physical sex without emotional content.
When sexual movement is pre-conditioned physically through the kinesthetic memory of dance and induced into the primal psychic timing of the individual it becomes a passageway into deep undifferentiated connectedness between individuals and the world. The complex process of body-mind interaction is positively regulated by cyclical experiences of pleasure. Safely harmonizing us with the rhythms of nature around us and our own body rhythms.
Pleasure, rhythm, and movement are used to direct consciousness toward unity in Sound Tantric culture. Subconscious goals become community goals through psychic integration of the dancer or musician to the world around them. body-mind interactions are orchestrated toward community goals and harmony with natural cycles. Life becomes pleasure positive and rhythmically oriented.
Sound Tantric culture establishes rhythmical interconnections as the seed of all experience. Music and rhythm are molded into all life experiences validating them deeply. Sexuality experienced through rhythm and kinesthetic conditioning of Sound Tantric culture validates personal release in the body and mind simultaneously. We drop our intellectual governing mechanisms to live for a moment in the' real time' experience of our sensations. In a cohesive social setting this is not moral abandonment. It is personal intuitive abundance and physical ecstasy graced by communal support.
Western society has lived in fear of the cohesive power of Sound Tantric culture. The spiritual values of Sound Tantric culture are integrative, relational and adaptive. Western spiritual values are intellectually territorial, fixed and institutionalized. They are two different mediums of spiritual expression. Both are valid for particular individuals.
To understand the spiritual medium of Sound Tantric cultures we need to know some basics about how they operate. What molds their experiences and values? To give you some immediate background in dance culture we have arranged the following questions and answers to give you some understanding and definition of dance culture life-styles mentioned in this book. The answers will help you better comprehend the ideas we present:

What is Sound Tantric culture?
When dance, theatrics, and live music are learned and expressed by everyone in a close knit community for spiritual and emotional solidarity, then you have by our definition a Sound Tantric culture.

Where do you find Sound Tantric culture?
Sound Tantric culture is a human universal. It's found on the Hopi Mesas of New Mexico to the jungles of Indonesia. It's where cultures develop meditative music, trance kinesthetic, and sexuality to activate consciousness towards community goals and harmony with the natural world.

What are the ritualistic universals of Sound Tantric culture?
Everyone is a participant. Music and dance are used to unify ceremonial consciousness. Rhythmic entrainment is used to dramatically express tribal solidarity. Repetitive dance movements physiologically condition participants. Metaphorical allies are dramatically called upon to teach and direct the ceremonies.

What is the difference between tribal ceremonies and Western contemporary dance forms?
Most contemporary music and dance is recorded or written. Sight read music and choreographed dance are the norm in Western culture. Sound Tantric culture ceremonies are neither written down or recorded. They are passed down from generation to generation . Live music and live dance is the norm. There is a subtle balance between trained form and improvisation. Master dancers and musicians are mimicked during the actual ceremonies.

Where can we find Sound Tantric culture in the West?
The largest Sound Tantric culture movement in our society has been the "Grateful Dead " Movement. Club movements like Hip Hop, Trip Hop, Acid Jazz, World Beat Music, Reggae, And Ska all incorporate elements of Tribal Dance Music yet fall short of communal integrated involvement. Dance is often too heavily choreographed in the west to be used for kinesthetic release. Live music is divided between players and audience unlike Sound Tantric culture.

How does Sound Tantric culture use Rhythm and Movement?
Rhythm and repetitive movement are used as group meditative tools. Dance is used to re-train and condition the mind-body, alter physical states, and trigger personal inner dialogue. Master dancers and musicians encourage and support these ceremonial conditions through theatrics and meditative awareness. Musicians observe and catch the dancers gestures in musical support. Live music is necessary for these experiences.

What is the importance of poly-rhythms and cross-rhythms in ceremony?
Cross rhythms from several set meditative players draws the listener into actively participating in mental mediation of the musical center. Counterpoint, and improvisations breathe in and out with rhythmical solidarity. The wave like departures transport the active listener or dancer into personal subconscious communion with the group experience. The cross rhythms are said to be the crossroads between the spirit world and the human world.

What triggers hypnotic kinesthetic states in the dancers?
There are several common triggers: emotional support, long cycles of motor conditioning repetitive dance movements, musical theatrics, rhythmical support of long dance cycles through chanting or playing rhythm on percussion instruments, and the calling upon of metaphorical allies to assist the human participants.

What role do these states play in community relations?
These states set the emotional tone of the community and subconsciously bond the participant to the communal experience creating a community standard of intrinsic cooperation. Where there is deep, meditative, musical cooperation it follows that there is social cooperation. These ceremonies are seldom used for narcissistic self gratification or gain of personal power. Instead they encourage personal goals to be in harmony with communal goals, ancestral history and cosmic forces.

What role does sexuality play in dance culture?
Sound Tantric culture is intrinsically feministic because it relies on the medium of timing. Timing and natural rhythms are basic to the feminine experience. Sexual energy invigorates cyclical consciousness and feminine body-time. It is well known that sexual energy regulates the feminine cycle through pheromone triggering. The natural world dialogues with feminine sexual timing. In Sound Tantric culture that dialogue is venerated.

This is possibly a beginning introduction to Sound Tantric culture for you. You can follow our innovative ideas and compare them to your own experiences. This is how we would like you to determine the validity of what we propose here. We hope that we can inspire you, like we are, to be sympathetic to our view of the feminine experience and its inter-relatedness to our individual and cultural well-being.
Please pay a visit........The Sound Tantras Work Book

if you have any comments regarding this article please share them with the author, Steven Hastings Paige.
this article was written by Steven Hastings Paige, and TIF uses it with his kind permission. All rights regarding it belong to him, and we suggest obtaining his permission before reprinting it.
But he is a really nice guy, and that shouldnt be a problem.
click here to continue with C A U T I O N


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Ornaments in print

Background As a part of an ongoing project on the Venetian archive a huge number of books and manuscripts have been digitized. Obviously there is a need for automatic processing of these. One particular task is recognition and classification of ornaments found in these documents.

Example of a page with ornaments
Example of a page with ornaments

The important thing to know about the ornaments is that they were printed with hand-carved wooden blocks. That, of course, makes each ornament unique and provides a way to find the books with the same ornaments, i.e. classify them by publisher. This can be used to track the geographic origin of a particular book, approximate period of printing and potentially identify the counterfeits. The problem The first step for all tasks described above is to identify the ornaments on the pages, and separate them from the text. For that we could identify separated areas on the page and extract their features to classify them as either text or ornaments.

We want to get segmentation like this one

With the segmentation above we could see at the area of each “box” or average intensity inside the box and other features can be used to differentiate text from ornaments. However, to obtain the segmentation as above is a nontrivial task. More complicated ornaments can have small separate pieces that could really look like text in terms of the features that we described. To get the initial segmentation we identify the contours that stand out in contrast from the background. There is an example of typical result.

965 contours found in the ornament. Each contour is colored randomly.

Notice how many contours are completely separated from each other, they don’t intersect and can be even into non-intersecting boxes. If you take a small contour out, without its surroundings it may very well be classified as a word or letter. So, the problem becomes quite obvious — we need to aggregate the polygons that are parts of one ornament, so we would get something bigger, something that can’t be confused with text. The challenge One can imagine many different ways to combine all the pieces of the ornament, it doesn’t seem that hard. But the problem is that as soon as we start merging different contours, we have a risk of merging text contours with each other, or even text with ornaments if they are located near each other. This may cause another classification mistake: confusing text for the ornament. Hence there is an obvious trade off: quality — we shouldn’t aggregate text too much, vs quantity — we want to merge everything that comes from one ornament. The algorithm The first thing we do is removing the contours that are completely inside another contour. With the examples you’ve seen above there are a lot of very small, precise contours that are located in the middle of the big ornament and we want to get rid of those. Now, to actually aggregate something we should look at the contours that are close to each other in some sense. Our first idea came from observing contours like the following one:

One particularly big contour

As you can see the contours can be really big and complex, sometimes they literally wrap around some other parts of the ornaments. Therefore we decided to take convex hulls of the contours and try to use them further. With the example above we get the following hull, which covers a big part of the ornament already. bigPolygonConvex Let’s say we have these convex polygons, we removed everything that was inside some bigger polygon. The next step is to try and combine the polygons that are “close” to each other in some sense. The obvious thing is to combine intersecting polygons, but unfortunately it proves to be too “aggressive and leads to text from different lines getting merged. And this really undesirable as it results in contours that no longer have the shape specific to words or groups of letters. Our final version of algorithm loops over all polygons and check if the convex hull of a particular one intersects with some other polygon, not its convex hull. If it does, we create a new polygon as a convex hull of all the points in the intersecting polygons, add to the polygon list and remove two intersecting ones. This second step is repeated until convergence. Complexity The initial number of the contours identified on the page can reach up to 2000. Our algorithm tries to identify the contours that should be merged. So, in the worst case we have to consider all possible pairs of contours. But then we have to repeat the process, as we created new polygons on the first iteration, and they can be merged further. The described process in general requires cubic (in the initial number of polygons) number of pairwise polygon “checks.” And each check is non-trivial operation by itself (we are taking the convex hull of a polygon), so overall that made the naive implementation too slow. We improve the performance using the observation that very often polygons tend to “grow” further and further, absorbing many small pieces of ornament.

Notice the big polygon in the lower right part

We keep the list of all polygons. As soon as we merge two of them, we remove them from the list, and try to merge everything else with the new, bigger polygon.  So, this way we quickly decrease the number of the polygons we are looping over. And we are “checking” the most promising polygons first. This approach proved to be ~50x times faster than the naive implementation, dropping the time needed for one page to seconds. The aggregation quality

Comparison between the algorithm and existing word segmentation technique. Notice the incorrect merger on the right, while algorithm doesn’t combine the lines.

We find only 380 cases of possibly incorrect mergers on 192467 initial polygons —less than 0.2% error rate. And most of these cases actually account for noise: text from different lines can be connected due to blots and scanning artifacts. We also run the algorithm only ornaments to see, what is the effect of aggregation. Note, that many ornaments do actually consist of many separated pieces, and one should not expect to always get one big merged polygon. Results are: 90 000 polygons before aggregation, 15 000 after. So, on average we get the reduction by a factor of 6

The classification

We find the following results for classification accuracy:  tableEven though the accuracy was very high initially, we were able to achieve some visible improvement. One interesting detail for further study is that by aggregation we changed in some way the “average” contour. So, the features that we used for the classification before might need to be reconsidered to get an even better performance.

  1. Herbert Edelsbrunner (1987). Algorithms in Combinatorial Geometry. Springer-Verlag. ISBN 0-89791-517-8.

    Parker, Algorithms and Data Structures in C++ , ISBN-13: 978-0849371714


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Therapy and Counseling in 12866: Saratoga Springs, NY.

Find a therapist near you in 12866. Counselors in Saratoga Springs, New York are ready to help, contact 24/7.

Philip Kolba, MA

Siri Sokol, D.S.M. Ordained Minister

Wellness Coaching

12866 is a zip code located in Saratoga County and part of Saratoga Springs, New York. It has a land area of 67.017 square miles.  The population of 12866 is 36,915 people.


April 2017

Give The Gift Of Food
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A gift basket is an idea if you don’t know what to get for someone or if the person has what they need and doesn’t have anything specific on a wish list. Food gift baskets are ideal for all ages and for both genders as you can mix and match the items that are in the basket. You could design a basket with a theme, such as a dinner that the person likes or items that are used for breakfast. Try to find a basket that will match the theme, adding a few small gifts as well, such as a mug or baking supplies.

A breakfast basket is often the easiest to make. You can include almost anything that would be enjoyed at the beginning of the day. Muffin mixes, pancake mixes and oatmeal are examples of what you can include that most people enjoy. You could also add a few types of coffee or tea as well as a mug or two. Don’t include items that need to be refrigerated or fresh fruits as these will likely get warm before the basket is delivered.

Someone who likes to cook would enjoy a basket that is made with spices and condiments. You could include a few tools for cooking, such as a whisk or measuring cups. The items that you add should be those that the cook would use to season or add flavors to foods instead of the ordinary salt and pepper.

Watching a movie is a favorite thing to do by many people. Create a basket that contains food items that can be enjoyed while watching a movie and even a movie or two that the person would enjoy. Add popcorn, a few soda bottles, candy boxes and small bags of chips to give a variety while enjoying the film. An idea for the basket would be to put everything in a large popcorn container. The one with a sweet tooth would enjoy a basket that is made with a variety of cakes, cookies and candies. You could also add a baking pan or cupcake pan so that the person can make their own sweet creations.…

Why Do EBT Card Holders Get To Eat Better Than Me?
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Family Health Centers
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Community+Health+CenterMost mother and father are excited when our kids strategy commencement from high school. Ideal initiatives will embrace those who involve collaborations between well being centers and different neighborhood companions that broaden entry to health care while additionally addressing at least one different critical community want, similar to affordable housing, access to wholesome meals, job coaching, colleges, elder care, and different community wellness projects.

The principal campus and two branch campuses provide Continuing Education for self-enchancment or GED lessons as well as Customized Training for potential workers of firms that join that program for help with worker interviewing, hiring , and training and to receive tax credit.. This is a program that a growing number of colleges offer and contains Basic Skills and Work Readiness Fire, Law, and Emergency Services personnel might enroll and take lessons for certifications.

As seen by way of the extensive analysis that Mental Health America did in 2015, mental health and substance abuse issues are very prevalent in the United States, making there a huge want for the unfavorable stigma on psychological well being and substance abuse to go down and also for insurance coverage companies to comply with the federal parity laws.

In 2001, the Department of Health and Human Service’s Office of the Inspector General launched a report concluding that twenty-seven p.c of psychiatric providers supplied to nursing house residents were medically unnecessary, and implied that it is inappropriate to provide cognitively impaired nursing dwelling residents with psychological remedy(in Karlin & Duffy, 2004).…


Any company with GAAP-based financial statements is expected to comply with SFAS 144, now known as ASC 360.

SFAS 144 identifies impairment as the condition that exists when the carrying amount of a long-lived asset (asset group) exceeds its fair value. It further says that an impairment loss shall be recognized only if the carrying amount of a long-lived asset (asset group) is not recoverable and exceeds its fair value.

The definition of fair value as defined in SFAS 157 is: the price that would be received to sell an asset or paid to transfer a liability in an orderly transaction between market participants at the measurement date.

SFAS 144 and Accounting Standards Codification ASC 360 (Property, Plant and Equipment)

As part of SFAS No. 144 "Accounting for the impairment or Disposal of Long-Lived Assets" Cambridge Partners assists companies by performing an initial impairment test of a company's long-lived assets. If the results of the initial test (Step 1) determine that the carrying values (CV) of the long-lived assets are not recoverable from their undiscounted cash flows (UCF), then recognition of impairment may be required.

Failing a SFAS No. 144 Step 1 test, each long-lived asset group's discounted cash flows are then compared with their fair value and any impairment loss measured as the difference between the excess of their carrying amounts over their fair values.

It is customary to perform a SFAS 142 "Goodwill and other Intangible Assets" impairment test in tandem with a SFAS 144 analysis. As outlined in SFAS No. 142, the procedure for measuring goodwill impairment is a two-step process. The first step is to test whether the carrying value of goodwill may be impaired; if impairment exists, then the second step analysis is performed to measure the amount of impairment.

When to test a long-lived asset for recoverability

According to SFAS 144, a long-lived asset (asset group) shall be tested for recoverability whenever events or changes in circumstances indicate that its carrying amount may not be recoverable. The following are examples of such events or changes in circumstances:

  1. A significant decrease in the market price of a long-lived asset (asset group)
  2. A significant adverse change in the extent or manner in which a long-lived asset (asset group) is being used or in its physical condition
  3. A significant adverse change in legal factors or in the business climate that could affect the value of a long-lived asset (asset group), including an adverse action or assessment by a regulator
  4. An accumulation of costs significantly in excess of the amount originally expected for the acquisition or construction of a long-lived asset (asset group)
  5. A current-period operating or cash flow loss combined with a history of operating or cash flow losses or a projection or forecast that demonstrates continuing losses associated with the use of a long-lived asset (asset group)
  6. A current expectation that, more likely than not, a long-lived asset (asset group) will be sold or otherwise disposed of significantly before the end of its previously estimated useful life.


Glaucoma is a condition that causes damage to your eye’s optic nerve and gets worse over time. It’s often associated with a buildup of pressure inside the eye. Glaucoma and may not show up until later in life.

Glaucoma usually occurs when pressure in your eye increases. This can happen when eye fluid isn’t circulating normally in the front part of the eye.

For most people, there are usually few or no symptoms of glaucoma. The first sign of glaucoma is often the loss of peripheral or side vision, which can go unnoticed until late in the disease Glaucoma usually occurs in both eyes, but it may involve each eye to a different extent.

In its early stages, open-angle glaucoma has no obvious symptoms. As the disease progresses more blind spots develop in the peripheral (side) view. These points can go undetected until the optic nerve has had serious damage, or until an ophthalmologist through a complete eye exam detects it.

  • Severe pain in the eye or forehead
  • Redness of the eye
  • Decreased vision or blurred vision
  • Vision rainbows or halos
  • Headache
  • Nausea
  • Vomiting

People with “normal tension glaucoma” can have their eye pressure within normal ranges, but show signs and symptoms of glaucoma, such as blind spots in their field of vision and optic nerve damage.

Some people may not have symptoms of glaucoma, but may have a higher than normal eye pressure (called ocular hypertension). These patients are considered as “glaucoma suspects,” and should be carefully evaluated by an ophthalmologist.

To diagnose glaucoma, the doctors at Carroll Vision Center will test your vision and examine your eyes through dilated pupils. The eye exam typically focuses on the optic nerve which has a particular appearance in glaucoma. In fact, photographs of the optic nerve can also be helpful to follow over time how the optic nerve appearance changes as glaucoma progresses. The doctors will also perform a procedure called tonometry to check the eye pressure.

A visual field test is often performed to determine if there is loss of side vision. Glaucoma tests are painless and take very little time.

The diagnosis of glaucoma is a clinical decision made by the doctors at Carroll Vision Center. It involves evaluation of risk factors for glaucoma, the clinical examination, and the interpretation of the tests.

The modern goals of glaucoma management are to avoid glaucomatous damage to the optic nerve, and preserve visual field and total quality of life for patients, with minimal side effects.

Treatment for open-angle glaucoma usually involves eyedrops that lower the pressure inside the eye. Decreasing eye pressure in open-angle glaucoma slows the progression of the disease and helps prevent further vision loss.


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Hypatia – Jennifer McWeeny Interview

Miranda Pilipchuk: Tell us about yourself.

Jennifer McWeeny: Well I’m an associate professor of philosophy at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. I live in Boston. And I did my graduate work first at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa studying comparative philosophy and then I received my Ph.D. from the University of Oregon.

MP: How do you define feminism?

JM: I think feminism is resistance against all forms of oppression—whether that’s sexism, racism, heterosexism, classism, ableism, speciesism. And I really think the defining question of our time is: are we going to ignore or accommodate all the oppression that’s around us, or are we going to resist it? And I think feminists are people who say that we need to take a stand against that oppression. I know that there are some young women, whom I have in my classes, who resist the label “feminism” because, I think, of the way that the meaning of feminism gets misinterpreted as “man-hating” or something like that, and I would really encourage those students to go to the feminist texts themselves, and use their own minds to figure out what feminism is and what feminists believe, and not just take anyone’s words for it, but look at the feminist sources themselves.

MP: What initially drew you to feminist theory?

JM: Actually, I remember the moment really well when I first identified myself as a feminist. It was between high school and college—it was the summer between high school and college, and I was sitting out in my parents’ driveway reading Marilyn French’s novel, The Women’s Room. And when I first started reading the book I wouldn’t have called myself a feminist, but after I finished the last page, I’ve called myself a feminist ever since. And I think what it was in that book is that what Marilyn French does is she shows us all these little aspects of women’s lives, from simple things from being dismissed at school as sort of the only woman in her graduate program, to spending long hours taking care of children while her husband goes off and does creative work, to abuse and assault. And sort of when I saw all of those pieces together, I started to see harm to women as a structural issue, rather than just as an individual harm to this individual woman. And I think once I started to see the structure that oppresses women in society, and others, I—after that I couldn’t but help to call myself a feminist. And so I continue to be attracted to feminist theory because I think it gives us, gives me, a sense of hope for change, and also, I like the companionship of working with other people against oppression as well.

MP: Your work often has a pluralistic focus. Can you tell us a bit about pluralist philosophy?

JM: There are many names for this kind of theorizing that combines two or more distinct intellectual traditions. Some call it comparative philosophy, some call it pluralistic philosophy, cross-cultural philosophy, even inter-disciplinary or multi-disciplinary types of theorizing. And for me, what that kind of thinking does is, first of all I think it can bring more rigor to the philosophical enterprise because you’re not just limited with one range of sources or one methodology but you can move between all these different sources and different methodologies. And what I think that does is it brings out certain assumptions so you’re able to see the assumptions that come from your disciplinary training and decide whether you want to employ them or not. So, for example, feminists have long criticized the tradition in Western philosophy of mind-body dualism, and separating out the mind from the body and thinking of those as two distinct substances. But if you look to, for example, Asian philosophical traditions like Buddhism, they have—Buddhism has a long tradition of theorizing non-duality and explaining non-duality. And so if you limit yourself to just what you were trained in, in the academy of the United States for example, you’re really missing out on all these rich philosophical resources from other traditions. So whenever I theorize, I make a self-conscious effort to not just go to what I’m expected to go to by my disciplinary training, but who is actually talking about this issue, and bringing them together for what I think is a richer and more creative philosophical project.

MP: Can you explain to us the general idea behind your article “Topographies of Flesh”?

JM: So in this piece, I’m trying to answer the age old question of what brings oppressed people together to resist oppression? What are the similarities between oppressed people? More specifically, how would we define the group “women”? Right? How would we define that group? And in the history of feminist theory, I think there have been many unsatisfactory answers to that question. From the obvious essentialist answer, that says well, all women—something that says all women have a uterus, or all women have the capacity to bear children, and therefore that’s why we’re connected. Well first of all, those statements are always untrue; there are exceptions to those. Not all women have a uterus, not all women can bear children. And second of all, I’m not really sure that that those biological aspects are really what would drive a connection for political resistance. Other answers have said, okay it’s not what’s in our biological bodies, but it’s the fact that we’re all oppressed by the same system. And I find that answer unsatisfactory because it puts all the focus on the oppressor and the oppressive system. And where are the oppressed, resistant people in this system? Where are they in terms of having the possibility of forging their own connections with each other? There’s also a third unsatisfactory answer which I think is: well nothing really connects us, we just choose, in a very self-conscious way, to be connected with each other. But I think that that answer really misses the fact that we are in bodily relationships with each other. And we get a lot of our interrelational meaning from those bodily relationships. And so what I try to do in this paper is answer the question of why are the oppressed connected to each other, without falling into the essentialist answer or without denying the body altogether. So I want to say there’s something about our embodiment that makes us have the possibility for connection with each other. And if we deny that, because we want to avoid essentialism, we’re actually going to miss out on the very impetus for feminist action, which is bodily connection and difference. And so that’s what I try to do in this paper is describe a theory of connection between oppressed being that is not essentialist, does not center the oppressor in the narrative, and that also can make sense of privileges and oppression amongst the oppressed because we’re not all similarly situated in the same place. So that’s my project in this piece.

MP: The concept of topography plays an important role in your article. Can explain what topography is, and what motivated you to focus on this concept?

JM: So, when I was a—I took a break between my masters and my Ph.D. in philosophy and took a year off. And I went up to Alaska and was guiding in the wilderness there. And one of my favorite activities in the whole world is to do backpacking, where you put a tent and a stove and everything you need to survive on your back and then you just disappear for ten days out into the wilderness and engage with the world. And so, when I would do that, up in Alaska, there aren’t any trails, you just set off into the tundra and you have to navigate your way, using a compass perhaps, but what I really relied on were these topographic maps that show—. And, and what a topographic map does is it shows the three dimensions of a landscape in two dimensions. So it’s a flat map, but once you learn how to read it, it shows where all the mountains and valleys are on a landscape, so the closer that the lines are together, the steeper the grade. So once you get it by keying in the map to your bodily experience, you can really see the depth and complexity of a landscape in the topographic map. So, fast forward to the present when I’m trying to theorize the complexity of social relations and, I’m trying to respond to a call for depth and thickness that comes out of the phenomenologists like Merleau-Ponty and Simone de Beauvoir, and also, Latina feminists like María Lugones, and ask us to really take into account how complex and thick and deep the social is. So I thought, what we really need as theorists is a type of map that can show us all the complexity and depth of the social just like a topographic map shows us all the complexity and depth of a physical landscape. And so that’s how I really got the imagery of what we need is something that will allow us to visual the complexity of the social. Now, I think that—I’m well aware that maps and cartography are related to colonialism and conquest and therefore it’s problematic to use this notion. But I also think that a topographic map undermines a lot of the things that are problematic about cartography. For example, María Lugones criticizes mapping from looking from above, and not really understanding a social landscape from within that landscape, and not being able to get all the nuances of that landscape. So I think when we take into account another dimension in our mapping of the social, we can frustrate some of the colonialist legacies of this notion of mapping and use a new creative project to give ourselves a tool to really think about the landscape of the social.

MP: Your article argues for a return to ontological projects. Can you describe the problem of ontology? What inspired you to rethink ontology?

JM: I think the most basic way that I think of ontology is in terms of categories and groups and classes of things. And probably the most basic distinction that we have—ontological distinction that we have, is the human-animal distinction. And we separate out humans from other animals and then often times relationships of power get mapped onto that categorization, and hierarchies get mapped onto that categorization. And so, I think the question of ontology is: does the categories that we have—or do the categories that we have, like human, animal, woman, man, homosexual, do they actually map onto reality itself? Do they actually represent reality? Nietzsche famously said that all concepts, and all words, are in some sense a lie because they render general and abstract what is actually radically particular. This is another—you see this is also in Buddhist philosophy, that the world, reality, is made up of these unique particulars, these moments, and these unique entities, and then we actually lie to ourselves or trick ourselves or put ourselves in an illusion by calling these a name and trying to render them permanent so that we can manipulate them. And so, I’m very influenced by that line of thinking—that when we look at ontology, we have to look at the particularity of people and see if the category actually matches that, and if it doesn’t then revise the category. And so, that’s really what I’m trying to do in this project—is say, okay, just because we’re all called women, does that mean that we necessarily connect with each other? Or just because we’re all called human, does that mean that we connect with each other more than a human connects with a nonhuman animal? And my answer to those is no, not necessarily. The category doesn’t make the connection. What makes the connection is bodily proximity, and the opportunity to be in relation with each other, and to affect each other. That’s what makes the opportunity for connection. So I think that feminism since the 70s, feminist theory in particular, has really sort of shied away from these ontological questions, because there are real risks to dealing with them. One is the risk of essentialism, that if you say anything is alike about two bodies then you risk being an essentialist, which I think we all see the—or many of us see the problems in that. The other is that if you start giving an account of, say, what a woman is from your perspective, you risk centering your own perspective or a privileged perspective and ignoring or not hearing all of the other diverse perspectives that are included in that grouping. And so you risk homogenizing the experience of being a woman. So I think because of these fears, feminism has sort of sidestepped these ontological questions, and I think that’s really to our detriment, because as I said before, the real impetus for connection with each other are our face-to-face, body-to-body relationships. And if we don’t theorize those, then I think we’re really missing out on the impetus for feminist activism.

MP: You draw on three different areas of philosophy to make your argument: phenomenology, ecofeminism, and postcolonial theory. What inspired you to bring these three together?

JM: I first came up with the question of wanting to look at the ontology of the human-nonhuman animal connection, or how those two categories are related. And so, I just looked at what are the schools of thought that are where this question is at the forefront? Ecofeminism is an obvious candidate, where ecofeminism is trying to theorize, or is theorizing the connections between the oppression of women and the oppression of nature, and in so doing, also needs to theorize what kinds of beings are being oppressed, and what the relationships are between them. So ecofeminism was an obvious place to look. Also, post-colonial, or what I would call decolonial, theory, especially in the works of, say, María Lugones and her modern colonial gender system, is really trying to think through the category—the categories of human and animal. And she says that that category is the most important hierarchy in colonial modernity, the human-animal division and that’s how beings get divided and beings who get mapped onto the animal side of that hierarchy get devalued in several ways. So, again that was an obvious place to look. And then, I’m very drawn to phenomenology in general, because—especially, Merleau-Ponty and Beauvoir—because they’re thinkers of ambiguity. And so they want to hold the tensions inherent and experienced together at the same time. So a person is both a subject for themselves who acts in a world, and a person is also an object for others who has things done to them. And rather than choose one side or the other, what I really like about these philosophers of ambiguity is that they hold that tension together in experience, and try to theorize how someone can be both subject and object, active and passive, mind and body, free and determined, at the same time. And so, again I thought when I’m trying to think through the relationships between humans and nonhuman animals, that this kind of complexity, especially complexity in terms of theorizing a body, as what Beauvoir and Merleau-Ponty call “flesh”—so, not just a body that can have things done to it, but as a flesh that is animated, so both material and also spiritual, mental, intellectual at the same time. So, I saw that complexity present in phenomenology as a ready resource to engage with these other traditions of ecofeminism and decolonial theory. And I think that bringing those three together gives us a very different kind of insight than had we just looked at this question from a phenomenological approach or a decolonial approach or an ecofeminist approach. And, so, in a way, bringing those three traditions together is forming coalitions—not just an intellectual coalition, but a political coalition. It’s not just people on the margins who are theorizing these kinds of things, there’s actually several people on the margins theorizing that, and if we can bring them together, we can have both an intellectual and political coalition.

MP: One of the central themes in your article is the link between women and animals. Why is this link significant?

JM: One of the main points that, that I’m trying to convey in the article is that we are always in a position to harm other beings. We often deny that, we often pretend that’s not the case, but we—I think we always are in—given the complexity of our contemporary world and the way that economic systems work in our contemporary world—that we are always in a position to harm someone else, if not actively harming another person. I think nonhuman animals are an obvious example—that even vegans and people who abstain from using animal products cannot avoid using animal products completely in our world. And so, I think all of us have a relationship with nonhuman animals where we harm them. And so, here’s a ready example for us to think about what that means. And we get a lot of benefits from harming animals: through our food, through clothes we wear, through medical research, all of these kinds of things. And so, what does it mean to be in that position of privilege vis-à-vis the harm of another being? And so I think it’s a paradigm case for feminism that might be, that might allow us to see some of the intricacies of feminist issues better than when we’re talking about how one woman harms another. So it’s a different lens with which to look at this problem. I think there’s another, there’s another connection that I’ve seen, especially in terms of—I’ve worked in activism with survivors of sexual assault and domestic abuse—and what I’ve seen in that activism is, I often see survivors of abuse who were abused as children have really deep connections with nonhuman animals. And I haven’t seen any empirical studies about that connection, but, speculating, my sense is I think that there’s something about being harmed when you don’t have the voice to express yourself, when you don’t have sort of intricately developed consciousness that can rationalize or make sense of the abuse. That would connect a child who was abused with an animal who was being harmed. And so I—that was in the back of my mind when I was writing this paper, with my work with survivors of abuse, and seeing how there can be this deep connection between these two very different—seemingly different—types of beings, a coalition even, made in the recognition of perhaps a shared type of bodily experience. And so, that’s another reason why I turned to look at this connection.

MP: You mention that you became a vegan after reading Beloved. What inspired you to make this change?

JM: So there’s also a—personal questions that I was wrestling with that I worked out over the course of this paper. And I wanted—I became a vegan at a young age after reading Beloved and specifically this scene, that I discuss in the article, where Sethe is pushed down behind the barn when she’s pregnant and she’s assaulted by the boys on the plantation, and they take her milk from her lactating breasts as she’s pregnant. And there was just something about that, the way that Morrison describes that scene that—I don’t think it was all of a sudden because I had been thinking, questioning my relationship to animals before that, but I do think there was something about that scene that shifted my perception radically, and shifted my perception of ontological categories. Before I witnessed that scene as a reader, I thought of animals—nonhuman animals—as very different from me: ontologically different from humans, worthy of different kind of treatment, not as worthy of the ethical treatment that I would provide other humans. Then I witnessed this scene in Morrison’s novel and my perception of nonhuman animals was completely changed. I saw them immediately on the same level as humans, in the same category. So when I had once saw two categories before I now saw one. So all the ethical consideration that I would need to give to other humans, with this shift in perception, I suddenly realized that I needed to afford that to nonhuman animals as well. I couldn’t anymore retain the idea that they were a separate category. And so I’m really grateful for the way that different theorists and writers can engage one another and show each other,—describe the particularity of experience in a way that allows someone to shift their perception like that. And that’s something that I aim for in my own work, is to really get into the particularity of an experience and see what that does for other people.

MP: Your article states that feminism can be a creative project. What kind of possibilities can a creative feminism lead to?

JM: I think that feminism must be a creative rather than a critical project. I think—I’ve seen a lot of feminist literature, including some of my own work, that criticizes mainstream power structures, mainstream ways of theorizing, mainstream ways of categorizing the world, or conventional understandings. And I think those criticisms are well-founded, but I think that what a critical feminism does is it still centers the ontology of the oppressor, or the ontology of the oppressive structure. And what we need to do as feminist is we really need to create, create and express, new ontological visions, or our own ontological visions—visions that come from the lives of the oppressed and the resistant. It’s one thing to criticize dualism, for example, it’s an entirely different thing to envision what non-dualism looks like or what a non—,ethics grounded in non-duality looks like. We don’t have to start from scratch; as I said there are all—other traditions that address things in different ways. But it is a creative project to be able to move among all that difference and produce a type of positive vision. So rather, I think that feminists move forward best when, rather than criticizing others, we sit down together, in a coalition, and create our own visions, and create visions that accord with reality, that are really describing the reality that the oppressed-resistant experience, and also visions that can move us forward, create imaginative visions that haven’t happened yet or seem impossible, visions that we need for activism. So that’s something that I’m striving for in my own feminist theorizing, is trying to really do the detail work of creating a vision, even though it’s risky, because other people might criticize it, and also, because, you know, it might not actually fit, or it might be wrong. But I think that risk is necessary for feminism to really take hold of our imaginations.

MP: What is the most important point you hope your readers will take away from your article?

JM: The most important point for me is that I want readers to realize that often times we approach questions of ethics and oppression and harm by assuming our own innocence and then being defensive if we’re implicated in oppression. And I think that’s the—exactly the wrong place to start when it comes to theorizing oppression and harm. I think we need to start with the recognition that in a globalized society, we are all harming other beings all of the time. And that much of the—much of what enables that harm is the fact that we deny it or mask it or try to pretend that we’re not harming other beings. Right?! This is why slaughterhouses are not in the middle of a city where people can see them; most people have never seen a slaughterhouse in their life. Right, so, I think that we engage in a lot of practices to diminish the harm that,—or diminish our recognition of the harm that we do to others. And I don’t think we should bring that practice into our theorizing. I think we can produce a much richer feminism and provide a much more solid ground for ethics if we start with the belief that we are harming others. So let’s figure out who we’re harming, what the extent of that harming—that harm is, and what the possibility for change is. How do we stop participating in these harmful cycles? What do we do when we gain privilege from another’s oppression or another’s harm? Those are the questions that I think feminism needs to address, that we should start with the, with the recognition that we are all connected to each other in lines of privilege and exploitation and oppression. And now, what do we do with that landscape? And so that’s part of what I’m trying to do in the paper is to really expose those types of landscapes that we are so invested in denying and pretending that they’re not there. And once we expose that, then I have a lot of hope that we can develop an ethics or a political theory that will be really fruitful and move us ahead towards a better world, and a more liberatory future.

MP: Do you have any advice for the next generation of feminist scholars?

JM: My advice is that in the 21st century I think it’s so easy to avoid or escape face-to-face relationships with one another. We can turn to technology, we can be so busy with our work, we can recede to the isolation or solitude of theorizing and abstraction. And I would really encourage the next generation of feminists to begin their theorizing in face-to-face, body-to-body encounters. That is where the—that is where the work of feminism takes place, that is where the vision of feminism takes place. I always say to myself when I’m writing, you can’t be a phenomenologist if you don’t have any experiences. Right?! You can’t theorizes experience if you never go out into the world and have experience. So, I think part of being a philosopher is to really get the most out of life in terms of experience. And even the difficult, uncertain, confusing parts of life, go out and seek those face-to-face encounters, then theorize about them, you know. But make that theory begin in the face-to-face encounter because I think that is really—that’s where ethical action lies, that’s where political actions lies, and that is where we can find connection with each other. We also have the possibility to harm each other in those face-to-face encounters but that’s why we have to go out and, and explore them and, and learn how to participate in them in ways that is truly going to support collective liberation of all of us.

Transcribed by Bailey LePage


Reflections on the New Year

We're into the Holiday Season! I can't believe it's December already. How many of you feel that way, too? How does time passing always seem to surprise us? These thoughts caused me to pause and reflect. And December is certainly a great time for some perspective.

2013 was a fairly terrible year for me. While I had the opportunity to begin 2 businesses that I feel are really my purpose, it's been a tough year. I'm really looking forward to 2014! While I know I'm not just going to wake up on January 1 with everything better/fixed/perfect, there is something refreshing about that new start.

Why do we wait for January 1 to make or appreciate this new beginning? I know I'm guilty of it. But each day is a new day. Each day is an opportunity to take an action that will bring you closer to your goal. Each morning gives you a chance to say "Today, I'm going to be my best self."

I think part of the reason we wait for January 1 is, it gives us time to prepare. The problem is, if you have a goal, and you wait to take action on it, that procrastination becomes habit with your goal. When you know you have a goal, start working towards it! You don't need to wait for a calendar or a time. Take steps forward immediately. Don't make procrastination part of your routine. Make action your default setting.

Waiting for the New Year also gives us momentum and energy from others. It's easier to be encouraged to make a change and work towards it when the intentions and energies of those around you are also focused on change. We encourage and motivate each other. If you like the change energy that surrounds the New Year, try to create that energy in your life daily. Surround yourself with people who are working towards their goals. Be with people who encourage you and motivate you daily. Surround yourself with positive, goal-oriented energy every day of the year!

It's so easy to get caught up in the day-to-day activities and let the time just pass us by. And then we get here, to the holidays and December, and wonder where the year went. I don't want to live another year like that.

I want to appreciate the moments, really LIVING in them. I want to take action every day that brings me closer to my goals. I want each day to be the start of a new year and a chance to become better.