The Real Alternative

Knowledge of Science Increases Faith in God

The Whirlpool Galaxy (Spiral Galaxy M51, NGC 5...

The Whirlpool Galaxy (Spiral Galaxy M51, NGC 5194) is a classic spiral galaxy located in the Canes Venatici constellation. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By Misam Hasan Naqvi

Everyday, we see so many buildings around us. These buildings are meant for various purposes like residential apartments, offices, schools, colleges, hospitals and shopping malls etc. Whenever we come across a building that is planned out in such a manner that it best serves the purpose for which it is built and also offers maximum facilities and convenience to the people using it, we can easily understand that there was an efficient architect behind it.

No matter how efficiently a building has been designed, there will still be room for improvement. But when we look at the universe, we simply find it to be flawless. No scientist could ever point out that it would have been better had the distance between any two planets been greater.

Our very own earth has everything that is essential for the existence of life. Air, water, soil, gravity, sunlight, plants, animals and so many other bounties which we could not have even imagined, have been made available to us. Now did all this happen on its own or was there some intelligent designer behind all this? Nobel laureate Physicist, Charles Town states, ‘No one can deny that the universe is the outcome of intelligent placing. It is unusual. We, too, are unusual. To make it possible for life to exist, special physical laws are required. So I would say that this is a very special universe. It has been intelligently planned. How can anyone confute that? So, there is indeed a spiritual world; a Creator.’ (Ref: The Speaking Tree column of Times of India).

Many people like Stephen Hawking have argued that it is all due to the consequence of the laws of physics. Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist was quick to agree by stating, ‘Darwinism kicked God out of biology but physics remained more uncertain. Hawking is now administering the coup de grace.’

English: Planets and dwarf planets of the sola...

Planets and dwarf planets of the solar system, sizes to scale. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I agree that a scientific approach may be adopted while trying to understand a natural phenomenon. But science is merely the study of these phenomena and not their creator. Therefore, the study of the creator is beyond the scope of science. But how the study of science will affect the faith of a person depends upon his/her initial understanding of God. If a person thinks that God is sitting somewhere in a physical form, holding a sprinkler to make it rain, then it is quite natural that on learning the true scientific cause behind rains, the person will lose faith in God. But if a person understands that God is the creator of all phenomena, and he has designed all the systems, then that person\’s faith can only become stronger with the increasing knowledge of science. So Darwinism or any other theory cannot pose any threat to faith.

Every time I watch the discovery channel or animal planet, or come to know about the scientific cause of any event through books or magazines, I find that the level of my faith has only increased.

Therefore, every person who believes in God cannot be labeled as irrational or vice-versa. In fact, science is the true means to understand the majesty of the Almighty.

Article Source:

About the Author

Misam Hasan Naqvi is a student of Islamic studies. He is also a qualified journalist.

Was only one Universe Created or is ours one of many Universes?

Wormhole (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By HChanbi

When creationists imagine evolution requires everything to have come from nothing, they really misunderstand what many evolutionists actually believe. There are various evolutionary theories as to how the universe and life came to exist. It may be true that more and more evolutionists believe everything could exist suddenly from nothing without any intelligent input, but others remain unconvinced. Some believe matter has always existed in some form or other. Some can imagine the eternal existence of massive black holes that every so often collide violently and explode into universes that eventually collapse back into other massive black holes waiting another collision to create other universes. Another theory has universes expanding within an ever-increasing vacuum in an infinite expanding cosmos. There is also the possibility that universes come to exist from unbound energies coalescing into matter. What all these evolutionary theories have in common is that they all result in multiverses. With the existence of infinite universes, any argument of fine-tuning becomes a mute point.

If mankind can imagine matter and life originating naturally, what would then motivate anyone to believe in an invisible supernatural being that creates natural worlds? The answer may be as simple as some people not being able to reconcile an eternal natural existence, yet they can imagine some unproven eternal supernatural existence. Certainly the ramifications of infinite universes are profound, but why would we expect anything less from an eternal creator? Would an eternal creator really wait an eternity to suddenly create just one universe?

Black Hole in the universe

Black Hole in the universe (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The intriguing thing about a non-created infinite cosmos with infinite universes is that there must then exist every possible kind of universe infinite times over. There would be infinite universes exactly like ours with people exactly like us living on planets exactly like earth. As incomprehensible as that may be, we can never disprove that possibility. Alternatively, we can believe some omnibenevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient supernatural creator existed eternally in an infinite cosmos and suddenly decided to create a single massive universe and an insignificant planet to test one specially created life-form before deeming them worthy enough to enter into the supernatural realm. Is that really easier to believe?

What creationists fail to understand is that the contention of something coming from nothing is not with scientists that continuously try to understand the possibilities, but rather it is with their own belief of a creator that simply speaks matter into existence. That is truly something from nothing that has no explanation as to how that is possible. Creationists never consider how their invisible creator managed to take nothing and make all the matter in our universe. Moreover, if that creator can easily create a universe, as theists have it, why would that creator only create one? Given the ease of speaking matter into existence, it becomes ludicrous to believe that an eternal and infinitely capable creator would have only created one universe for one special species. It does seem that only self-centered minds can believe that is reasonable. All the while creationists must ignore the prospect that the same mechanism a creator might have used to create something from nothing could be stumbled upon by nature given infinite opportunities.

Article Source:

About the Author

Graduated from WSU with a BSEE. Novice Software Developer. Long time analyst of Biblical doctrines and evolutionary theories.

1 Comment

Random Mutations?

An example of simulated data modelled for the ...

CMS particle detector on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. Two protons collide, producing two jets of hadrons and two electrons. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By Ernie Fitzpatrick

I subscribe to the theory that one can now where they are going if they don’t know from whence they have come. I do not accept the theory that the earth was created in seven literal days one October day in 4011 BCE. Not do I embrace the theory that we are the result of some random mutation and therefore going nowhere or having no control over where we might be headed.

As the sage had warned us, “If if don’t stop going where we are headed we will wind up at that place”.

Newtonian and or conventional science tells us that how we got here was from some mysterious BIG BANG that happened 14 billion years ago. The Large Hadron Collider will supply us with the more detailed answers if we can ever keep that project on line and not blow up CERN and the rest of the world before then. But until then, the best that the scientific community can tell us is that through billions of years of gradual evolution driven by random mutations and genetic accidents, we have thus arrived at where we are today.

And people believe this Darwinian dribble?

If evolution of you and I is driven by random events what hope do we have about the future? Can anyone predict the future? But, if Consciousness is more of the answer to life than matter, we have a totally different ball game to be played here on earth and within the universe. We are consciousness and as we become aware and awakened to what that means we increase our ability to change the direction that we are going. We can be far more than we are because in reality we ARE more than we ARE!.

I am not an accident!

We are not here by accident and if there is a message in the Mayan calendar, the Mayans, and other indigenous cultures, it is that they KNEW, that they were CONSCIOUS, and they were privy to more of who they WERE than we today comprehend. It’s not just about technology and intelligence but about the “opening of the head” to the reality of our being. And as more and more come to that awakening, the future now becomes what it is that WE SAY.

The question is will be AWAKEN before we kill ourselves?

About the Author:

Article Source: Random Mutations?

1 Comment

RELIGION/ADAPTATION: God and the Survival of the Human Species

Creation of the Sun and Moon by Michelangelo, ...

By Robert DePaolo

A Deistic Conflict

Answering the question of whether God actually exists has always been fraught with complications. Part of the problem lies in the fact that ostensible interactions of God – regardless of the particular faith – have been few and far between. Indeed it is hard to argue with the fact that most of the body of religious doctrine has been purveyed by man. On Sinai only The Ten Commandments were issued in person while the various laws in Deuteronomy seem to have been written by various authors, including  Moses, Joshua and a mysterious set of writers often referred to by biblical scholars as The Yahwist, The Elohist, the Deuteronomist and the Priestly Source.  Thus while a large part of religion is based on conversations of one sort or another between a god and a chosen human being it is the latter’s account that is ultimately used as final purveyor of doctrine.

None of this is necessarily denied by even ardent believers. All Christian scholars know that many of the main tenets of the old and New Testaments  considered divinely conveyed in modern times were in fact decided by various councils during the Middle Ages – including the decision to consider Jesus a God rather than a higher-order profit in the mold of Moses, Isiah or Elijah. The premise behind such decisions was at least derived in part from the teachings of Christ so one could infer the councils were simply relying on an original source. After all he said ‘I am the Way’ in John 14:6. On the other hand, in Luke 18:19 he also said, ‘Why do you call me good when that word applies only to God?’ In that instance Jesus was clearly separating himself from the one true God of the Jews, who after all, viewed themselves as monotheists.

Atheists feed off such inconsistencies, arguing, as Draper (1998) did that since much of religious doctrine is man-made, the idea of a God has little to do with the actual existence of a deity. Some, such as Christopher Hitchens (2007) have argued that the world would be a better place if not for a belief in God, this opinion apparently based on a history of religiously-influenced wars and political tyrannies.

In this opinion that is a rather vacuous argument, not only because it ignores the vast number of altruistic acts that have been conducted in the name of religion but also because most moral concepts regarding peace, adhere to law, fairness, and humaneness adopted by the western world have been heavily influenced by religious mores, particularly those inherent in Judao-Christianity.  Echos of old and new testament laws run throughout the English and American Constitutions…for example the reference in Leviticus 24:19 to an eye for an eye runs parallel to the 8th Amendment in the American Constitution on cruel and unusual punishment. Obviously the same parallels exist between modern law and biblical tenets regarding prohibitions against theft, murder and slander.

But an even stronger argument against atheistic thought can be presented by simply considering the history of religion and its historically adaptive value to our species.

In the Beginning

The first modern humans were nomads (Marlowe 2005). Until roughly 8,000 years ago climatic conditions, lack of knowledge, the lack of availability of certain grains (which had to evolve into more resilient form themselves before being arable) ruled out the possibility of agricultural settlements. During that time man wandered the earth, settling into temporary make-shift homes, periodically following herds. Permanence, and all the cognitive and emotional by-products and potentials of that were yet impossible. The nomadic human tribes had limited capacity to carry objects in their travels, thus left most of their tools behind. In effect they were forced to re-make them, which led to a great deal of behavioral redundancy. That left little time to contemplate possibilities, anxieties, and meaning in general despite their having enough cortical brain mass to do so.  As Bronowski (1973) has pointed out, nomadic life allowed little in the way of existential concerns.

Since value is based on necessity, material possessions were not cherished in the nomadic world. Since travel was essential to survival those who, for one reason or other could not press on were left to die – and likely did so without protest. Life for these groups was moment to moment and confined to the immediacy of their circumstances and needs.

Still, the early humans worshipped gods (Narr 2008). The reasons why were probably myriad. First and foremost was probably the size and construction of their brains – which had reached 1500 centimeters. A brain like that, with delineated speech centers, and a capacity to categorize, memorize and communicate socially, would have attributed events to causes and sources (King, 2007), (Gould, 2007) Since large brains tend to correlate with intense social concerns, these attributors would have caste the causes and sources in at least quasi-personal forms – thus the personification of God.

At the root of what might be called a cognitive-God function are the needs to control, reduce uncertainty and press onward.  While many social scientists have discussed the advantage of evolutionary human brain expansion with respect to increased language capacities, cognitive abilities, tool making, art and creativity in general they miss one very salient disadvantage of having a large brain. While a brain with billions of inter-neuronal connections provides a capacity to think and communicate it also creates a greater potential for ‘noise,’ existential uncertainty and consequently a greater need for ongoing resolution. The large brains bestowed on mankind by nature (and God, if you will) thus set in motion the very need for a God-concept. This process likely began with climatic change during the tail end of the Pleistocene (glaciation) era when resources dried up, travel became both more possible but also more treacherous during migrations across frozen tundra.

A small-brained creature would not contemplate such duress, merely experience it in the moment. Its fate would be either to adapt or die. There would be neither any possibility nor any point in hoping, fretting, worrying about ‘what if.’ Conversely, an animal with a brain of 1500 or so centimeters would. Since uncertainty-fostered duress can lead to avoidance behaviors, some sort of endurance-enhancing cognitive capacity would have had to kick in to rein in all that angst. In that time period the adaptive value of God might have been to sustain human motivation through supra-environmental (i.e. spiritual) cognitions and emotions, so that persistence would increase the likelihood of finding food, water and climatic support. In the aftermath of such discovery, the need of a large brain for closure might lead the nomads to thank/appease an overseer to reinforce his investment in the tribe and express gratitude for his or her concern for their well-being.

The combination of attributional and personifying tendencies probably forced a belief in God for the first humans. In that instance religion was not a symbolic, spiritual mindset but a necessary, adaptive form of cognition facilitating persistence and thus aiding in survival. It was conceivably both necessary and inevitable.

Genesis II.

A second God-adaptation possibly arose with the advent of agricultural societies. When people are able to renew a supply of plant foods without necessarily understanding the biology behind the process, they will perhaps view their good fortune as a function of some sort of outside control. That in turn will lead to gratitude and a need to pay homage to the purveyor of this good fortune. Thus the transition from a nomadic to agricultural/urban life style did not require a cognitive/religious transformation. The settlers hoped for crops to grow, had to wait for seasonal and climatically favorable circumstances and when things turned out well they acknowledged the agent responsible and continued to express their gratitude in the hope that the bounty would continue. (Wilkins 2000). Both nomadic and early agricultural religious practices were adaptive because they facilitated persistence and provided uncertainty reduction.

The continued development and expansion of agriculture societies obviously led to profound social changes, including a more sedentary life style and greater social permanence.  Family members could live together for longer periods of time and all inhabitants had more down time to ponder existential questions. A brain previously driven by movement, faced with moment to moment concerns about geography. resources and destinations was now able to look beyond immediate experience. A distinction between concrete experience and ‘meaning’ was drawn. Ideas on the value and importance of life and the trauma of death became more common and more vivid (Erlich 2000), (Gould, McGarr et. al 2007). A greater capacity for suffering was a consequence of that as the inherent tough-mindedness of the nomad morphed into the more tender and sensitive mindset of the permanent settlers.  To cope with internally-driven angst, to persist despite the specter of death, failure, and the potential loss of new-found prosperity required a continued reliance on the cognition/religion paradigm.

So, once again, God came to the rescue, insulating humans against the existential suffering and enabling mankind to adapt to still newer social and environmental circumstances.

Genesis III

Religious evolution did not end there, for another profound change occurred in human society. While agriculture provided stability and control, not all habitable places on earth were equally arable. Some places lacked water resources, others were too cold or mountainous, still others had agricultural potential but residents lacked knowledge of farming techniques. Yet tribal outsiders traveled about – after all, many were still entrenched in the nomadic life style. They were aware of the existence of milk and honey settlements and wanted in on that. As a result another ironic byproduct of societal advancement occurred in the form of tribal invasion. War became all the rage.

The genes of a primate are very parochial. Somehow, in some way these microscopic bio-conglomerates influence behavior in such a way as to serve the local gene pool. Family ties tend to promote loyalty while the presence of strangers tends to invoke hostility. Up the point of tribal invasions, family ties were not only strong but historically crucial. As evidenced in the Old Testament people in the Middle East/North African settlements were well aware of and arguably obsessed with lineage. One reason for this concern with lineage was to prevent contamination of the local gene pool by outsiders. Religious thought favored that mindset, as seen in the long reference list of progenitors and offspring in Genesis. That cognitive-religious mindset was adaptive because it reinforced altruism within the ranks and consequently the survival of all members of the tribal family. That model persisted down through the epochs depicted in the Bible. Indeed without that, Jesus of Nazareth (being ostensibly from the line of David and born by mandate in David’s town of Bethlehem) could not have risen in the ranks.

Yet even extended families are small in number and insufficient to ward off hordes of invaders. A conflict arose. Consanguine groups had to decide between keeping the family intact at the risk of being overrun by vast armies or increasing their numbers and territorial defensive capabilities by assimilating para-familial members into their community. The solution was discovered at some cost. It was that strangers somehow had to be incorporated and welcomed into an extra-familial socio-political structure

In order to achieve these first forays into social integration required nothing less than a socio-political miracle. For this to occur, the behavioral impetus arising from the most basic elements of life  – the genes – had to be overridden. In effect, nurture had to over-take nature. It was not an easy task, which is why a new religious adaptation was needed and why it did occur.

The newest cognitive/religious adaptation was found in the idea of integration and it was exemplified by Judao-Christian, Buddhist and other religious models.  The God of Abraham accepted Ishmael as future leader of a great nation, despite his biological mother (Hagar) being an Egyptian maid. Moses began as an Egyptian prince before ultimately leading the Hebrews. David united the conflicted twelve tribes to form the state of Israel. The story of the Good Samaritan rose above parochial protest. Jesus reached out to the Roman centurion to heal his servant, and included tax collectors and other outsiders into a more compassionate world view, while Buddha traveled about, espousing not just tribal integration but unity among all life forms. All these integrative ideas heralded at different times, in different places the advent of a new model. It was a credo that met with considerable resistance – and still does, but, just as the industrial growth of the western nations (most notably the U.S.A.) occurred through assimilation of immigrant foreigners, so were the urban settlements in the Middle East ultimately sustained in ancient times. In fact the human race was able to adapt as a result of a religiously-driven idea of overriding both genetic and tribal differences.

Protection from invasion was not the only reason for integrative thought but it conceivably originated in the need to survive against enemy attack and it worked.  In that context, God evolved from a parochial figure to one more concerned with the family of man. He taught us, through the prism of human cognition how to get along when it was absolutely necessary to do so.

Throughout history the cognitive and behavioral byproducts of belief in God have enabled us to adapt, persist and deal with changing pressures, threats and trends. In one sense that would seem to render God flexible, adaptable and perhaps even anthropocentrically utilitarian. And of course a belief in God has led to violent, destructive behavior in the course of time. Still, the overall effect of religion has kept Homo sapiens alive and well through thick and thin, in times when the genes, habits and instincts of mankind would not have been nearly enough – and indeed could have led to our downfall. As to the question of God’s existence: it is hard to resolve such a question in our post-Cartesian, empirically-tinged world. Perhaps a better question has to do with God’s legitimacy. In that context, even if religious belief is not genetically hardwired into the human brain as Hamer (2005) suggested, one could argue that since religion has been an inevitable byproduct of human neurology and human need and since it has enabled our species to persist, adapt and survive, it is virtually built into human experience and perhaps into mind as well. Like our penchant for analyzing nature through the medium of mathematics it seems very much within us – just as the prophets insisted.

Cauvin, C. Watkins T. The Birth of the Gods and the Origin of Agriculture. Cambridge University Press

Draper, P. (1998) Evolution and the Problem of Evil. In Philosophy of Religion. Ed. Louis Pojman. Wadsworth Publishing. P. 200

Erlich, P. (2000) Human Nature,Genes, Culture and the Human Prospect. Washington, DC Island Press

Gould, S.J. McGarr, P. Steven, P, Russell, R (2007) Challenges to Neo-Darwinism and its Meaning for a Revised View of Human Consciousness. W.W.Norton & Co.

Hamer, D. (2005) The God Gene: How Faith is Hardwired into our Genes. Anchor Books

Hitchens, C. (2007) God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Twelve/Hachette Book Group, USA Warner Books

Jesus reference re; I am the Way. In John 14:6

Jesus reference re:  Why do you call me good? In Luke 18:19

King, B (2007) Evolving God; A Provocative View on the Origin of Religion. Doubleday Publishing

Lieberman, P. (1984) The Biology and Evolution of Language. Cambridge, Harvard University Press.

Marlowe, F.W. (2005) Hunter-Gatherers and Human Evolution. Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News and Reviews. 14 (2) 54-67

Narr, K.J. (2008) Prehistoric Religion. Britannica On-Line Encyclopedia

Wilkins, j. (Aug 2000) Agriculture and the Rise of Religion. Evolving Thought. Science Blog.

Article Source:

About the Author

Robert DePaolo, MS Clinical Psychology, former Professor of Psychology NH University System, author of five books and many articles on science, religion, politics, psychology and music.

Leave a comment

On The Subject Of God – Part 2

Karma (Photo credit: pixel8 (RCRD))

On the Subject of Karma

About adverse karma

Kind regards from the author to the reader.

On The Subject Of God – Part 1

Image via Tumblr

About words that are not mainstream in society and may mean different things to different people. To help clear this anomaly up and prevent misunderstanding, listed below are these words, their meaning & definition as applied by the author.

ABSOLUTE. Nothing is greater than absolute. It is eternity. It is forever. Religion has named that absolute, God. In spiritual understanding, the invisible source of Creation can be said to be absolute, eternal and never-changing. Out of that Absolute has manifested relative creation (this universe) and everything evolving in it. That non-physical Absolute, is the invisible source & substance of this physical dissolvable universe. Out of that understanding, everything in creation has the potential of that eternal absolute intelligence underwriting its existence.

Clarification: In simple sense, everything comes from something, because nothing comes from nothing. To argue otherwise, is a waste of human intelligence in boot camp. So this Universe and everything in it, must have come from something. That something is called Abstract Absolute Intelligence or God. Everything that exists is the substance of that eternal Intelligence…including the human being with its dissolvable intelligence. That hard to accept statement for some, is their Achilles heel where understanding a new reality is concerned. Because we have to want to understand its reality for it to become a reality.

ABSTRACT: Beyond our physical senses of perception. e.g. sight, taste, hearing, smelling, touch. The word God falls into this category, because the abstract Intelligence of God is beyond the senses and beyond our conscious thought. It is only the creativity of God and what manifests out of that transcendent Intelligence…namely physical Creation and all that is in it, that is available to our physical senses and conscious thought. In that understanding, God does not talk, because it has no physical attributes in its silent abstract domain. Only human beings and other manifested creations out of the Absolute Intelligence of God, talk.

ARCHETYPAL INTELLIGENCE: Archetypal intelligence is spiritual intelligence, it is unseen intelligence, it is the invisible intelligence that underwrites and permeates every biological component of life, every function of the brain. Archetypal intelligence is the source of our universal emotions, personalities, gifts and talents. Archetypal spiritual intelligence is that which life and its biology & chemistry has manifested out of. It the function of the Laws of Nature, to create, maintain & process ‘order out of chaos’ in that archetypal intelligence…and therefore life. Archetypal intelligence can also be called the primordial intelligence of Nature and the invisible constituent of life, its biology, its chemistry, its reproduction (sexuality) and instincts.

ALMIGHTY NATURE: THE COSMIC MIND:  That forms the status quo spiritual intelligence of this universe and everything evolving in it. It is the active spiritual aggregate of Absolute Intelligence, functioning as the invisible source & brain of evolution. It is the cosmic computer processing evolution through the Laws of Nature from the subtlest level of Creation. The human brain and its myriad functions, are but a physical biological created replica of that Cosmic Mind manifesting in life and therefore linked to life…evolving life.

COSMIC: All-encompassing. Permeating in everything. The invisible Laws of Nature that permeate everything in Creation, are Cosmic in their function and value. They are a manifested creation of Absolute Intelligence or God…as is everything in Creation. They invisibly carry out the cosmic process & purpose of evolution…both physical evolution and spiritual evolution. Laws that can be said to be the personal intelligence of impersonal God active in creation.

COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS: Every level of evolution has its specific quality of consciousness & intelligence. Human life at this point of its evolution, only functions out of biological created consciousness that is dissolvable, it dissolves at death. Underwriting that biological created consciousness and its I.Q. potential, is spiritual consciousness and its I.Q. potential. Underwriting spiritual consciousness, is absolute consciousness and its I.Q. potential. The last two levels of consciousness are latent & undeveloped in the human being. The Laws of Nature operate differently in every level (dimension) of consciousness, its Laws change to suite that different level of evolution.

Clarification: Comic Consciousness (or spiritual consciousness) is the next possible stage in the evolution of the human species. All levels & the different qualities of consciousness in them, have many stages of development in the process of their evolution in the human being. Quality of consciousness, is also a variable in mankind and has no relationship to our variable I.Q. potential and its measurement. That means low I.Q. is no bar to the spiritual development of the individual. Spiritual and absolute consciousness is open to all on the path of evolution…unlike our I.Q. segregated education system.

CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE: In spiritual understanding and its reality, the whole of Creation and all that is in it is composed of, is created out of, is interwoven and underwritten by Creative Intelligence. Everything that exists has manifested out of creative-intelligence appearing as different forms & phenomena. So creative-intelligence, is another name for the manifested expression of un-manifest Absolute Intelligence that sources life & creation. At the highest level of creation and evolution, it is the intrinsic nature of God to perpetually manifest, create & diversify…as it is of human beings.

DIVINE: The active creative-intelligence of impersonal uninvolved God can be said to be Divine. The spiritual function of the Laws of Nature are in this category, for they possess pure-creativity directly linked to the Absolute Intelligence of God. They are the active manifested expression of that uninvolved God permeating in everything physical & spiritual. As such, they possess the status of Divine Cosmic Intelligence that sources life.

EVOLUTION: To grow, to continuously change, to adapt & develop, to become more complex. The reality of  physical biological evolution is known & accepted by most in Science & Education. The reality of Spiritual evolution remains unknown to Science & Education and therefore like invisible intangible God, to be denied & dismissed as a reality because of it. A illogical dismissal that is a loss not a gain in the evolution of knowledge, science & education. Denial of the possibility of intelligence greater that our human intelligence, is the biggest stumbling block to human evolution. It is a denial sourced to the immature human ego of a human being, not its intelligence.

TRANSCENDENT: Lying above and beyond any known physical attribute. Beyond thought, beyond life, beyond the Universe. Such is the transcendent Intelligence of God. That is where religion has gone wrong in its understanding of God, because that  uninvolved abstract intelligence has no attribute other than silence. When the thought of the thinker travels back to its internal source, then the individual mind of the thinker has the automatic potential to transcend the thought process. The mind leaves thought behind in physical creation, to arrive at the transcendent source of thought. Namely, Absolute Abstract Intelligence. That automatic outcome is the process, meaning & goal of Correct Meditation.

THE PHYSICAL & SPIRITUAL LAWS OF NATURE: Science has uncovered and uses the physical attributes of the Laws of Nature. The laws of physics, fluids, mathematics, chemistry, aerodynamics etc, are the physical manifestation of the Laws of Nature. But, Science has no knowledge or experience of the spiritual Laws of Nature that underwrite & interact with the physical Laws of Nature to process evolution. Science has no comprehension of the spiritual intelligence that has created & underwrites the physical biology of life. Science & Education only have extensive knowledge of the physical processes of life, not of the spiritual processes that underwrite life, evolution & Nature.

Clarification: In boot camp reality & therefore spiritual reality, it is wrong to blindly experiment on the biology of life, without understanding or comprehending  the interactive intelligence that underwrites its source. Because at this point in time, the toxic to Nature synthetic products pouring out of the science laboratory & technology, are synthetically polluting the means for life. Polluting this planet and the spiritual function of the Laws of Nature to process the evolution of life. Science must learn to acquire, understand, create and work within that reality and its knowledge, if life is to survive on this living planet.

To be continued…

Life Is About Evolution

Evolution by Stupidiotic – congvo via Flickr

By Dee Gibson

English: Conflict Resolution in Human Evolution

Conflict Resolution in Human Evolution (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

About The Author

Article Source:

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 867 other followers


Cloud Storage Options: Object Storage or Block Storage?

cloud storage

The cloud offers the intriguing idea of nearly limitless storage.  For any business that has struggled with an overflowing local hard drive storage, that prospect can certainly be appealing.  Some IT staff, however, may take the arrangement as an unlimited license to store redundant backups and other files that should really be subjected to deduplication.  The goal of such storage arrangements is to make sure that the company will never be put in the position of having necessary data become inaccessible.

Exploring the option of cloud storage can lead companies to consider the possible issues of each approach. This is where working with an experienced IT consultant can guide an organization through the complex waters of cloud storage options. For example, one basic decision that must be made from an educated perspective concerns object storage versus block storage in the cloud.

Object storage is most appropriate for companies that want to access items individually so that they can be retrieved or updated as needed. This approach generally allows companies to use an identifier based on a URL in order to access their cloud storage. The object-by-object storage approach is most effective when entire files need to be accessed at the same time, such as when a business mainly keeps its data in documents, presentations, and scanned images.

When companies need to randomly access bits and pieces of data, such as when pulling information from a database, however, object-based storage may not be the best choice.  In such cases, companies may wish to opt for block storage, which makes it much easier to extract non-file based data.

Another issue in terms of cloud storage that IT consultants can advise on is the prospect of redundant copies.  The need for extra backups of files and file sets is largely dependent on several factors, including the importance of the data and the difficulty of reconstructing from other sources.

When it comes to cloud storage, there are an endless number of factors to consider. Is this the right solution for my organization's environment, does it fit with our business model, is it scalable for my business? Deciding to utilize the cloud for your organization's storage is not a small matter, and should be done with the help of an educated and experienced IT provider. Don't make the decision to go to the cloud alone.

Choosing Your IT Company


Royal Society Publishing

Intraspecific competition drives increased resource use diversity within a natural population

Richard Svanbäck, Daniel I Bolnick

Resource competition is thought to play a major role in driving evolutionary diversification. For instance, in ecological character displacement, coexisting species evolve to use different resources, reducing the effects of interspecific competition. It is thought that a similar diversifying effect might occur in response to competition among members of a single species. Individuals may mitigate the effects of intraspecific competition by switching to use alternative resources not used by conspecific competitors. This diversification is the driving force in some models of sympatric speciation, but has not been demonstrated in natural populations. Here, we present experimental evidence confirming that competition drives ecological diversification within natural populations. We manipulated population density of three-spine sticklebacks (Gasterosteus aculeatus) in enclosures in a natural lake. Increased population density led to reduced prey availability, causing individuals to add alternative prey types to their diet. Since phenotypically different individuals added different alternative prey, diet variation among individuals increased relative to low-density control enclosures. Competition also increased the diet–morphology correlations, so that the frequency-dependent interactions were stronger in high competition. These results not only confirm that resource competition promotes niche variation within populations, but also show that this increased diversity can arise via behavioural plasticity alone, without the evolutionary changes commonly assumed by theory.

1. Introduction

Natural populations are typically variable for a wide variety of morphological, behavioural and physiological traits. Phenotypic variation represents a puzzle for evolutionary biologists, since natural selection is often thought to favour one optimal phenotype and eliminate all others in a population. Consequently, a major goal of evolutionary biology has been to identify processes that maintain phenotypic and genetic variation in natural populations. One possibility is that diversity is maintained by disruptive selection, arising from negative frequency-dependent processes that favour rare phenotypes (Wilson & Turelli 1986; Rueffler et al. 2006). In particular, many models propose that resource competition can promote ecological and phenotypic variation (e.g. Levene 1953; Rosenzweig 1978; Slatkin 1980; Taper & Case 1985; Bürger & Gimelfarb 2004; Dieckmann et al. 2004). This is because rare phenotypes may have access to alternative resources, thereby escaping competition with more common phenotypes (Pfennig 1992; Maret & Collins 1997; Swanson et al. 2003). Perhaps the most familiar consequence of competitive diversification is interspecific character displacement, in which coexisting species diverge in resource use to mitigate the effects of competition (Grant 1972; Dayan & Simberloff 2005). However, intraspecific competition is also thought to maintain intraspecific variation (Roughgarden 1972; Bolnick 2004; Bürger & Gimelfarb 2004), trophic polymorphism (Smith & Skulason 1996) or even drive speciation (Rosenzweig 1978; Dieckmann et al. 2004).

Despite its prominent role in recent theory (Dieckmann et al. 2004), the diversifying effect of intraspecific competition has received few experimental tests (Maret & Collins 1997; Bolnick 2001, 2004; MacLean 2005). Here, we present experimental evidence that competition can increase resource use diversity within a natural population. Resource use diversity, also known as ‘individual specialization’, occurs when a population is composed of ecologically heterogeneous individuals, each of which uses only a subset of the population's overall resource base (Bolnick et al. 2003). Although ecologists have traditionally assumed that conspecific individuals are ecologically equivalent, a large number of studies have shown that apparently generalized species are composed of relatively specialized individuals (Bolnick et al. 2003).

The proximate and ultimate causes of this among-individual variation remain poorly understood: why would conspecific individuals, inhabiting a common environment, choose to use different subsets of the available resources? To answer this question, we first need to examine why an individual might use only a subset of the resources available to it. Such diet selectivity is generally explained by optimal foraging theory (OFT), which assumes that individuals act to maximize their rate of energy intake (Stephens & Krebs 1986). OFT suggests that individuals may ignore certain types of prey when the time required to consume them could be more profitably spent searching for more valuable prey. This theory can then explain individual specialization if phenotypic variation causes individuals to differ in search or handling efficiencies for alternate prey (Bolnick et al. 2003; Svanbäck & Bolnick 2005).

One of the key predictions of OFT is that an individual predator should add new prey types to its diet as preferred prey become scarce (Stephens & Krebs 1986). By extension, these diet changes mean that resource competition may modify the degree of diet overlap among individuals (Svanbäck & Persson 2004; Svanbäck & Bolnick 2005). While the exact result depends on the strength of functional trade-offs, a number of scenarios predict that competition should lead to greater among-individual variation. This occurs when phenotypically different individuals have similar top-ranked prey, but resort to different back-up prey as their preferred ones become scarce (Robinson & Wilson 1998) or if phenotypic variation causes different individuals to add alternate prey more readily than others. As a result, models suggest that resource competition may generally lead to increased diet variation. Consistent with this expectation, the degree of individual specialization is positively related to population density in Eurasian Perch (Perca fluviatilis) over a 9-year natural fluctuation in density (Svanbäck & Persson 2004). A related prediction is that phenotypic variation will be more tightly correlated with diet variation at high competition, when morphological differences lead to greater niche variation among individuals.

The predicted positive relationship between competition and diet variation is a close analogue of the evolutionary theories of competitive diversification (Dieckmann et al. 2004). The key difference is that in the OFT model, competition can drive diversity via changes in foraging behaviour (plasticity) rather than changes in genetic variation (evolution; Svanbäck & Bolnick 2005). Note that plastic and evolutionary are not mutually exclusive, but will tend to operate on different time-scales. In this study, we tested whether the level of competition leads to behavioural diversification in foraging decisions, by experimentally manipulating a natural population of three-spine sticklebacks (Gasterosteus aculeatus). As predicted, the degree of diet variation and the strength of diet–morphology correlations increased with elevated competition.

2. Material and methods

In June 2005, we built ten 9 m2 enclosures made of 1/16 inch. seine net, set in approximately 2 m deep water in Blackwater Lake on northern Vancouver Island, British Columbia (125°35′28″ W, 50°10′19″ N). The surface area of Blackwater lake is 37.5 ha, the perimeter is 6000 m and maximum depth is 28 m. Enclosures were placed in pairs along 0.5 km of shoreline and stocked with wild-caught sticklebacks to generate paired low- and high-density treatments (either 30 or 90 fish per enclosure; LD or HD hereafter). These densities fall within natural densities of stickleback populations (Wooton et al. 2005). After 13 days, we quantitatively sampled prey (benthic invertebrates and zooplankton) in each enclosure by straining 33 l of the water column with a zooplankton net (100 μm mesh) and sifting through 800 cm2 of benthic sediment, 10 cm deep collected with a core sampler. Sticklebacks were trapped the following day, anesthetized and preserved in formalin. One milligram of muscle tissue was stored in RNAlater and used to measure RNA/DNA ratios as an indicator of growth rate (Ali & Wootton 2003). Tissue samples were thawed, rinsed in RNAlater and RNA/DNA ratios measured according to standard ethidium bromide fluorescence procedures (Caldarone et al. 2001). Sticklebacks and prey were also sampled from outside each enclosure pair to serve as a natural baseline (control). This research adhered to the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour/Animal Behaviour Society Guidelines for the Use of Animals in Research, the legal requirements of the country in which the work was carried out and all institutional guidelines.

Stomach contents were identified to the lowest feasible taxonomic level (family or genus) and measured to estimate dry weight. For each enclosure, we used the proportion of dry weight of each prey type in an individual's stomach to estimate its diet breadth using Levins' D (Levins 1968). All stomach contents within an enclosure were then summed to measure the population's diet breadth, also using Levins' D. Finally, we quantified diet variation by calculating the mean overlap between each individual's diet and the population diet (IS; Bolnick et al. 2002). IS ranges from 1 (perfect overlap, no variation) down towards 0 (less overlap, more variation). Stomach contents provide a cross-sectional measure of an individual's diet, which may be biased if the forager is sampling from patchy prey or if the stomach can hold only a few diet items at a time. However, stickleback guts usually contain many items, and the small scale of our enclosures ensured that all individuals were capable of sampling all available prey in much less time than it takes to digest them (more than 6 h; R. Svanbäck 2005, unpublished work). Consequently, the spatial scale makes it unlikely that the observed diet variation is a result of patchy resources or stochastic variation. In addition, significant correlations between morphology and diet suggest that diet variation is not due to stochastic sampling effects. This has been confirmed by studies of stable isotope variation, demonstrating that cross-sectional gut content variation can be a good guide to long-term differences in resource use (Araujo et al. in press; Bolnick et al. submitted).

To check whether density manipulations affected resource competition, we compared benthic and pelagic prey density and diversity, gut fullness and RNA/DNA ratios in HD versus LD using paired t-tests. Gut fullness was measured by calculating the residuals of stomach content mass regressed against body mass. To test our central hypothesis, we used paired t-tests to evaluate whether mean diet overlap (IS) differed between HD and LD. We also compared the mean individual diet breadth and population diet breadth between paired enclosures. All of these tests were repeated to contrast HD or LD against ‘control’ samples taken immediately adjacent to each enclosure pair.

To measure whether competition increased the strength of the correlation between diet and morphology, we photographed each fish for landmark-based geometric morphometrics. We digitized 23 homologous landmarks on the left side of each fish and used TpsRelw (Rohlf 2005) to convert the landmarks to partial warps and uniform scores. Furthermore, we used the same set of landmark coordinates collected from benthic and limnetic sticklebacks from Paxton Lake (R. Svanbäck, unpublished work) and converted them into partial warps and uniform scores together with the experimental fish from Blackwater Lake. We then performed a discriminant function analysis on the basis of separation (classification) of the benthic and limnetic sticklebacks from Paxton Lake. To identify more benthic- and limnetic-like phenotypes from our experiment, we projected the partial warps and uniform scores from the experimental fish on to the benthic–limnetic axis from Paxton Lake sticklebacks (see Eklöv & Svanbäck 2006 for further details on these morphometric methods). We first used all experimental individuals to evaluate whether there was a correlation between morphology and diet. We then used regression to test whether morphologically divergent individuals (large distance from the population centroid) are also ecologically divergent (low diet overlap with the population; PSi; Bolnick et al. 2002) within each enclosure. The absolute values of these regression slopes represent the strength of morphology–diet associations and were subjected to paired t-tests contrasting HD and LD treatments.

3. Results

There was no difference in survival between LD and HD (t4=−0.769, p=0.49). Furthermore, at the end of the experiment, we found no difference in average morphology between LD and HD (t4=0.12, p=0.91) or any difference in morphological variance between LD and HD (t4=1.44, p=0.22). Morphological means and variances also did not differ between either experimental treatment (HD or LD) and wild-caught control fish at the end of the experiment (t4=0.017–1.69, p=0.17–0.99). Thus, the following results of our study are due only to behavioural plasticity and not to any morphological change caused by either differential mortality or morphological plasticity.

Several lines of evidence confirm that manipulating stickleback density modified the strength of resource competition. The HD treatment had significantly lower densities of benthic invertebrates (t4=2.96, p=0.042) and zooplankton (t4=5.64, p=0.005; figure 1). Benthic invertebrate diversity was unaffected by the density treatment (t4=0.53, p=0.62), whereas zooplankton diversity declined in HD treatment (t4=4.99, p=0.008). This reduced prey availability in HD led to reduced residual stomach content mass (t4=4.68, p=0.009) and reduced RNA/DNA ratios (t4=3.52, p=0.025; figure 2), suggesting that fish grew less in HD treatment. LD enclosures were not statistically different from adjoining control samples for all measures of competition, except for zooplankton density which was lower in enclosures (see electronic supplementary material for details). In contrast, HD enclosures showed significantly lower prey availability, stomach contents and growth rates than control samples.

Figure 1

Prey responses to stickleback density manipulations. (a) Zooplankton and (b) benthic invertebrate biomass. (c) Zooplankton and (d) benthic invertebrate diversity, measured with Levins' D. Samples immediately outside each pair of enclosures are presented to indicate the natural base-line state. The different lines represent different pairs of enclosures and their controls.

Figure 2

Tests of whether density manipulation resulted in resource competition among sticklebacks. (a) Relative stomach content mass as a measure of foraging rate. (b) RNA/DNA ratio as a measure of current growth rates in sticklebacks (Ali & Wootton 2003; Dahlhoff 2004). Results for wild-caught fish are presented to indicate the natural base-line state. The different lines represent different pairs of enclosures.

The increased competition in HD enclosures coincided with increased among-individual diet variation (t4=3.44, p=0.026; figure 3). This increased diet variation arose because different individuals shifted to use different previously under-used prey, so that individual diet breadth remained constant (t4=0.90, p=0.42) while the population's total niche breadth increased (t4=−5.23, p=0.006; figure 3). Diet variation and niche breadth in wild-caught fish were similar to that in LD fish and significantly different from HD fish (figure 3; also see supplementary material).

Figure 3

Effect of population density on diet variation among sticklebacks. (a) Mean diet overlap (IS) between individuals and their population's total diet distribution (Bolnick et al. 2002), comparing paired low- and high-density populations in enclosures. Note that high diet overlap corresponds to low diet variation and vice versa. The mean diet overlap for wild-caught (control) fish in the same lake is presented for comparison. (b) Population diet breadth measured with Levins' D and (c) mean individual diet breadth. Note that the y-axis scale in (c) is smaller than in (b). The different lines represent different pairs of enclosures.

Diet variation among individuals was associated with morphological variation: individuals with deeper bodies and shorter gill rakers had a higher proportion of littoral macroinvertebrates in their diet (p<0.001) and a lower proportion of pelagic cladocerans in their diet (p<0.001). As a result, morphologically different individuals tend to be ecologically divergent as well, an association that was consistently stronger in HD than LD enclosures (t4=3.27, p=0.031; figure 4).

Figure 4

Effect of competition on the linkage between phenotype variation and diet variation. The diet/morphology relationship was consistently stronger in high-density enclosures. The value for wild-caught control fish is provided for comparison. The different lines represent different pairs of enclosures.

4. Discussion

Our results confirm that resource competition can lead to increased diet variation among members of a single population (figure 3a). Since intraspecific competition is generally believed to be strong and widespread (Gurevitch et al. 1992), our findings suggest that the dynamics documented here may play a major role in maintaining ecological variation within populations. Such ecological variation is a prerequisite for the frequency-dependent interactions thought to underlie disruptive selection, which in turn maintains genetic diversity (Bürger & Gimelfarb 2004) and might drive speciation (Dieckmann & Doebeli 1999). However, models of competitive speciation tend to assume that the strength of frequency dependence is constant and that competition drives evolutionary divergence (Bürger & Gimelfarb 2004; Dieckmann et al. 2004; but see Taper & Case 1985; Ackermann & Doebeli 2004). In contrast, our results demonstrate that the level of diet variation can change depending on ecological conditions and can arise via behavioural rather than evolutionary divergence. Diet variation increased in under two weeks, commensurate with the time it takes a forager to detect changes in prey availability (Werner et al. 1981), but not with changes in genetic variance over generations. In LD treatments, phenotypically different individuals fed on similar prey types, whereas in HD the same phenotypic differences led to divergent diets. We suggest that this reflects shared resource preferences for prey that become depleted as stickleback density rises, causing phenotypically different individuals to shift onto different alternative prey (Svanbäck & Bolnick 2005). Thus, behavioural decisions made by individual sticklebacks account for the increased correlation between diet and morphology with increased competition.

These behavioural changes are consistent with several predictions of OFT. Although OFT is generally used to explain an individual's resource use, it may be extended to explain diet variation by assuming that search or handling times vary among individuals, perhaps as a function of morphological traits or experience. Foraging theory suggests that resource competition, by reducing the frequency of preferred prey, should lead to increased population diet breadth (Schoener 1971; Stephens & Krebs 1986). A more recent model suggested that this population-level niche expansion might arise via ecological divergence among individuals (Svanbäck & Bolnick 2005), similar to a classical verbal model known as the ‘niche variation hypothesis’ (Van Valen 1965). This should occur when different phenotypes resort to different alternate prey. Consider a simple model where two phenotypes share a single preferred resource, but have different alternate prey (Robinson & Wilson 1998). When the preferred prey are abundant, there is no diet–morphology association. As prey density declines, the two phenotypes increasingly rely on different resources. Thus, competition is expected to increase both diet variations, because increases in population niche breadth should outpace increases in individual diet breadth (Svanbäck & Bolnick 2005). As a result, the correlation between diet and morphology should increase with competition. All three of these predictions were confirmed in our study (figures 3ac and 4). The only discrepancy with foraging theory was our observation that individual niche breadth remained constant rather than increasing as foragers add new prey types to their diet. This contradiction can be understood by realizing that foraging theory predicts an increase in the number of prey taxa that an individual would accept, if encountered. In contrast, our niche breadth measure reflects the diversity of prey actually eaten, which will also depend on prey availability.

In conclusion, our results confirm that resource competition is a diversifying force that can lead to increased niche variation among members of a single population. However, unlike the evolutionary diversification generally thought to result from competitive diversification (Ludwig 1950; Levene 1953; Rosenzweig 1978; Seger 1985; Christiansen 1988; Dieckmann & Doebeli 1999; Bürger & Gimelfarb 2004; Dieckmann et al. 2004), our results arose from changes in foraging behaviour, as the functional importance of morphological variation was exaggerated by declining prey densities. Such behavioural diversification is likely to arise much faster than evolutionary diversification and is easily reversible. It is not yet known how this rapid behavioural diversification might affect subsequent evolutionary dynamics, since existing models of diversification due to competition treat ecological parameters like niche width and frequency dependence as fixed constants (Dieckmann et al. 2004) or allow them to evolve (Taper & Case 1985; Ackermann & Doebeli 2004). On the contrary, our results show that both niche width and frequency dependence can change via behavioural plasticity.

It is possible that behavioural diversification may actually facilitate evolutionary diversification (West-Eberhard 2003). Greater diet variation increases the degree to which competition is frequency dependent, and it is this frequency dependence that drives disruptive selection (Dieckmann & Doebeli 1999; Bürger & Gimelfarb 2004). In addition, the increased correlation between morphology and diet in high competition means that any selection acting on resource use will be more efficiently translated into morphological evolution. In low-competition environments, phenotypic variation may be hidden from the effects of selection on resource use, since all individuals use similar resources. It should be noted that the selection itself may be weaker at low competition (Bolnick 2004). This may allow populations to accrue genetic variation for morphological traits in low-competition environments, because ecological (and fitness) effects only emerge when intraspecific competition intensifies. Our results therefore suggest that theories of competitive diversification and speciation would benefit from a more careful consideration of how changes in the level of niche variation and frequency dependence may affect evolutionary dynamics.

We thank B. Robinson, D. Schluter and two anonymous reviewers for their comments and D. Agashe, E. Caldarone, E. Caldera, M. Hartzler and O. Lau for their help in the laboratory and field. R.S. was funded by the Swedish Research Council, and D.I.B. was funded by the University of Texas at Austin and the National Science Foundation.

View Abstract


2 weeks ago

Bathrooms are seen outside a house in Rio Pardo next to Bom Futuro National Forest, in the district of Porto Velho, Rondonia State, Brazil, September 1, 2015. The town of Rio Pardo, a settlement of about 4,000 people in the Amazon rainforest, rises where only jungle stood less than a quarter of a century ago. Loggers first cleared the forest followed by ranchers and farmers, then small merchants and prospectors. Brazil's government has stated a goal of eliminating illegal deforestation, but enforcing the law in remote corners like Rio Pardo is far from easy. REUTERS/Nacho DocePICTURE 34 OF 40 FOR WIDER IMAGE STORY "EARTHPRINTS: RIO PARDO" SEARCH "EARTHPRINTS PARDO" FOR ALL IMAGES


Review Us

Activator Chiropractic Adjustment

Evolved over 35 years of empirical study and 15 years of clinical research, the Activator Methods Chiropractic Technique uses the latest advances in orthopedic, neurological and chiropractic examinations to seek joint dysfunction in the spinal column and extremities for improved patient care. Because of its effectiveness and gentle nature, the Activator Method has grown to become the world’s most widely used instrument chiropractic adjustment.

How does the Activator chiropractic adjustment work?

Restoring spinal balance safely and successfully has been the driving force behind the Activator chiropractic adjustment. This chiropractic treatment utilizes specific protocols to detect spinal joint dysfunction, analyze leg length inequality, identify issues with body mechanics, and test neurological reflexes. By analyzing results of these examinations, an Activator doctor can initiate the process of restoring spinal balance in the patient, gently and effectively. The Activator Adjusting Instrument is the tool more doctors choose to deliver low-force chiropractic adjustments. This unique hand-held instrument has been studied extensively with results published in hundreds of peer-reviewed research papers, and was designed to give patients a specific and gentle chiropractic adjustment. The Activator provides a controlled, fast thrust that is comfortable for the patient.  In fact, adjustments with the Activator are so quick and measured, the body’s muscles are less likely to resist, allowing for a more precise and accurate adjustment.

Is the Activator chiropractic adjustment right for you?

The low-force thrust of the Activator, and the doctor’s ability to pin point the exact location of the problem, can relieve your pain without any discomfort, cracking or popping usually experienced with traditional manual adjustments.  The Activator chiropractic treatment is so quick and comfortable, even children often look forward to their next visit.  Pregnant patients and older patients with bone-weakening conditions like arthritis and osteoporosis particularly find comfort with the gentle nature of an Activator adjustment over traditional methods.

How frequently will you need Activator chiropractic treatment?

As your partner in health care, we are committed to your general good health. Though some believe that chiropractic care is intended to relieve neck and back pain, it has far-reaching benefits.  A wide variety of health problems stem from spinal imbalance and dysfunction of the spinal joint and nervous system.  Everyday living, stress and old injuries can cause vertebrae to lose their proper position or motion.  The dysfunction can irritate your nervous system, causing pain and nerve interference throughout the body.  By restoring spinal balance, chiropractic care aids the body in healing itself. Frequency of adjustments varies greatly among patients, depending on the severity and duration or your condition, along with the state of your general health.  Once proper alignment is achieved, occasional adjustments are recommended to maintain spinal health.  Similar to routine dental cleanings, or physical examinations, occasional visits to a chiropractor helps prevent back, neck and joint conditions.

Dr. Winchell has earned the highest level of Activator certification, 16 years straight.

Activator requires their certified doctors to re-credential every year to ensure that the Activator technique is applied with the latest advances in technology, science and practical application.  Upon completion of their re-education course, a written and practical exam is performed.  Dr. Winchell has consistently passed his proficiency exams with the highest scores, earning him an Advanced Proficiency rating for 16 years straight.  With the precise delivery of the Activator low-force technique, and an Advanced Proficiency rated doctor who always strives for the best for his patients, you can feel confident that you are getting the best chiropractic adjustment with Dr. Winchell.

Be Sociable, Share!

He saved me from back surgery!

Ron Allen, San Clemente


bite wav,
clips files,
predator movie sound effects,
silly sound effects,
free sound,
free thunder downloads,
sound craft fx 16 16ü θ ũ ý,
heavy music beat for sound effects,
spaceship sound effects,
drumma boy sounds,
cheering gallery sound effect,
shark sound effects,
sounds of the sun,
woo free sound,
jets landing sound wav,
download horn sound,
cool wav files,
the movie sounds,
wav sound clips
Warning - Not Found
Track or SoundPack not found, please try a different option.

To go to the home page of, click here.
sound effects packages,
used mp3,
movie wav sounds,
summer sound effects,
dog barking sound effects,
bicycle bell sound effect,
free wav sound effects,
rocket sound effect free,
sound effect gun fire,
austin powers sounds,
war movie sound effects,
sound effect machine,
party sound effects,
time machine sounds,
free endangered species downloadable sounds,
big ben sound effect,
shark noises,
mp3 audio,
background sound effects,
sounds effects


My watch list

Search Encyclopedia's Encyclopedia of Chemistry provides articles for 64,557 entries from chemistry, pharmaceutics and material sciences as well as related scientific disciplines.

Black pepper

Black pepper Black pepper (Piper nigrum) is a flowering vine in the family Piperaceae , cultivated for its fruit , which is usually dried and used as a spice and seasoning . The same fruit is also used to produce white pepper, red/pink pepper, and green pepper. Black pepper is native to South more

Diamond Diamond is an allotrope of carbon . It is the hardest known natural material and the third-hardest known material after aggregated diamond nanorods and ultrahard fullerite . Its hardness and high dispersion of light make it useful for industrial applications and jewelry . Diamon more

Saffron Saffron () is a spice derived from the flower of the saffron crocus (Crocus sativus), a species of crocus in the family Iridaceae . The flower has three stigma s, which are the distal ends of the plant's carpel s. Together with its style, the stalk connecting the stigmas to the rest of more

Photon In physics , the photon is the elementary particle responsible for electromagnetic phenomena. It is the carrier of electromagnetic radiation of all wavelength s, including gamma ray s, X-ray s, ultraviolet light , visible light , infrared light , microwave s, and radio waves . The ph more

Antioxidant glutathione . The yellow sphere is the redox-active sulfur atom that provides antioxidant activity, while the red, blue, white, and dark grey spheres represent oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, and carbon atoms, respectively. An antioxidant is a molecule capable of slowing or preventing th more


TORONTO -- Former Toronto Maple Leafs captain Rick Vaive has asked that his name be removed from the concussion lawsuit against the NHL.

Vaive's lawyer Trevor Whiffen claims the former 50-goal man wasn't provided with a copy of the claim beforehand and that he would not have agreed to the allegations made against the NHL had he been asked to review its contents.

"Mr. Vaive misunderstood the nature of the proceeding being brought, and believed this claim was similar to the worker's compensation claim being advanced in California on behalf of several former NHL players," Whiffen said in a statement Thursday.


How to best control resistance is a controversial matter. Existing recommendations do not always agree and some recommendations are conflicting. One clear example is the key components of the Swedish intervention mentioned in Maya's recent post—isolation and contact tracing. In this specific study, children were isolated from day-care, sometimes up to a year.

When a physician decides what to prescribe a patient, the expectation that antibiotic treatment will provide some benefit to the patient often outweighs the concern that this use will contribute to the shared problem of antibiotic resistance.

Paul Miller and Michael Dunne are scientists. Dr. Miller is a microbiologist whose training focused on understanding how the genes of bacteria work.


India Studies | Beginning Hindi I
I101 | 3076 | Rebecca Manring

(5 cr.)  Introduction to the Hindi language, the writing system and
basic grammar. Graded exercises and readings leading to mastery of
grammatical structures and essential vocabulary. Development of
reading and writing competence and simple conversations in
films in Hindi.


2/6: TODAY videos, guilt-free desserts, more

Hi, looking to watch the show? Browse this week’s video at today.com/video and find Olympics clips at NBCOlympics.com.

Find more information about the following stories featured on TODAY:


International Association for Cryptologic Research

IACR News Central

To receive your credentials via mail again, please click here.

You can also access the full news archive.

  With sensitive data being increasingly stored on mobile devices and

laptops, hard disk encryption is more important than ever. In

particular, being able to plausibly deny that a hard disk contains

certain information is a very useful and interesting research

separate occasions. In this work, we explore more robust

constructions for hidden volumes and present HIVE, which is

resistant to more powerful adversaries with multiple-snapshot

capabilities. In pursuit of this, we propose the first security

definitions for hidden volumes, and prove HIVE secure under these

possible to achieve ORAM with optimal O(1) communication complexity

and only poly-logarithmic user memory. This is a significant

improvement over existing work and an independently interesting

equipped to provide hidden volume functionality with low overhead

and significantly increased security. Finally, we implement HIVE as

a Linux kernel block device to show both its practicality and

usefulness on existing platforms.

18:17 [Pub][ePrint] Private Database Access With HE-over-ORAM Architecture, by Craig Gentry and Shai Halevi and Charanjit Jutla and Mariana Raykova

  Enabling private database queries is an important and challenging research problem with many real-world applications. The goal is for the client to obtain the results of its queries without learning anything else about the database, while the outsourced server learns nothing about the queries or data, including access patterns. The secure-computation-over-ORAM architecture offers a promising approach to this problem, permitting sub-linear time processing of the queries (after pre-processing) without compromising security.

In this work we examine the feasibility of this approach, focusing specifically on secure-computation protocols based on somewhat-homomorphic encryption (SWHE). We devised and implemented secure two-party protocols in the semi-honest model for the path-ORAM protocol of Stefanov et al. This provides access by index or keyword, which we extend (via pre-processing) to limited conjunction queries and range queries. Some of our sub-protocols may be interesting in their own right, such as our new protocols for encrypted comparisons and blinded permutations.

We implemented our protocols on top of the HElib homomorphic encryption library. Our basic single-threaded implementation takes about 30 minutes to process a query on a database with $2^{22}$ records and 120-bit long keywords, providing a cause for optimism about the viability of this direction, and we expect a better optimized implementation to be much faster.

18:17 [Pub][ePrint] Time-Memory Trade-offs for Index Calculus in Genus 3, by Kim Laine and Kristin Lauter

  In this paper, we present a variant of Diem\'s $\\widetilde{O}(q)$ index calculus algorithm to attack the discrete logarithm problem (DLP) in Jacobians of genus 3 non-hyperelliptic curves over a finite field $\\mathbb{F}_q$. We implement this new variant in C++ and study the complexity in both theory and practice, making the logarithmic factors and constants hidden in the $\\widetilde{O}$-notation precise.

Our variant improves the computational complexity at the cost of a moderate increase in memory consumption, but we also improve the computational complexity even when we limit the memory usage to that of Diem\'s original algorithm. Finally, we examine how parallelization can help to reduce both the memory cost per computer and the running time for our algorithms.

18:17 [Pub][ePrint] One-Way Functions and (Im)perfect Obfuscation, by Ilan Komargodski and Tal Moran and Moni Naor and Rafael Pass and Alon Rosen and Eylon Yogev

  A program obfuscator takes a program and outputs an \"scrambled\" version of it, where the goal is that the obfuscated program will not reveal much

ultimate goal is to argue that if $P \\neq NP$ and program obfuscation is possible, then one-way functions exist.

Our main result is that if $NP \\not\\subseteq ioBPP$ and there is an efficient (even imperfect) indistinguishability obfuscator, then there are

arguments for NP. This, in turn, provides an alternative version of our main result, based on the assumption of hard-on-the average NP problems.

To get some of our results we need obfuscators for simple programs such as CNF formulas.

18:17 [Pub][ePrint] A Simple Cast-as-Intended E-Voting Protocol by Using Secure Smart Cards, by Helger Lipmaa

  We propose a simple cast-as-intended remote e-voting protocol where the security is based on the use of secure (and trusted) smart cards that incorporate incard numeric keyboards and LCD displays, and can perform a limited number of cryptographic operations (like encryption, signing, and random number generation). The protocol, while very simple, is significantly more secure (in the sense of ``cast-as-intended\'\') and convenient to use than the e-voting protocol currently used in Norway. The protocol is developed primarily with the idea of deploying it in Estonia within the next $3$ to $10$ years. Since in Estonia, a vast majority of the population already has ID-cards with digital signing and authentication functionality, and the use of ID-cards is a required prerequisite to participate in Estonian e-voting anyway, our assumption of every voter having a secure hardware token makes sense in this concrete context.

18:17 [Pub][ePrint] Zerocash: Decentralized Anonymous Payments from Bitcoin, by Eli Ben-Sasson and Alessandro Chiesa and Christina Garman and Matthew Green and Ian Miers and Eran Tromer and Madars Virza

  Bitcoin is the first digital currency to see widespread adoption. While payments are conducted between pseudonyms, Bitcoin cannot offer strong privacy guarantees: payment transactions are recorded in a public decentralized ledger, from which much information can be deduced. Zerocoin (Miers et al., IEEE S&P 2013) tackles some of these privacy issues by unlinking transactions from the payment\'s origin. Yet, it still reveals payments\' destinations and amounts, and is limited in functionality.

First, we formulate and construct decentralized anonymous payment schemes (DAP schemes). A DAP scheme enables users to directly pay each other privately: the corresponding transaction hides the payment\'s origin, destination, and transferred amount. We provide formal definitions and proofs of the construction\'s security.

Second, we build Zerocash, a practical instantiation of our DAP scheme construction. In Zerocash, transactions are less than 1 kB and take under 6 ms to verify --- orders of magnitude more efficient than the less-anonymous Zerocoin and competitive with plain Bitcoin.

18:17 [Pub][ePrint] Distributed Smooth Projective Hashing and its Application to Two-Server PAKE, by Franziskus Kiefer and Mark Manulis

  Smooth projective hash functions have been used as building block for various cryptographic applications, in particular for password-based authentication.

In this work we propose the extended concept of distributed smooth projective hash functions where the computation of the hash value is distributed across $n$ parties and show how to instantiate the underlying approach for languages consisting of Cramer-Shoup ciphertexts.

As an application of distributed smooth projective hashing we build a new framework for the design of two-server password authenticated key exchange protocols, which we believe can help to \"explain\" the design of earlier two-server password authenticated key exchange protocols.


37 / 23
      34 / 28
      32 / 29

      Winter driving classes offered

      For a U.P. resident, driving in winter weather is like taking out the trash: you may not love it, but you have to do it, constantly.

      Driving on snowy roads is a treacherous task, but there are some tips to make it safer, and the Keweenaw Research Center teaches classes to help.

      "There is a little theory behind it that if you understand it, it helps you become a better driver even if you've had experience," said KRC Driving Instructor Mark Osborne.

      First thing is to make sure your vehicle is properly equipped with snow tires for extra grip.

      "Grip is really important--if you lose grip, you can't steer," Osborne said.

      Now when you get in your car, there are a couple of first steps you should take to ensure your safety. Step one, put on a good pair of sunglasses since the snow's very bright when the sun reflects off of it. Step two, make sure you are a safe distance from the wheel--not too close, not too far away either. Step three is, of course, buckle up.

      Also, hold the steering wheel at the three and nine o'clock points, for your best range of motion.

      Once you're driving, be aware that you might lose control, and if you fishtail, experts say to steer in the direction your rear is sliding, slow down, and never slam on the breaks.

      Once you know what you're doing, it's really not that hard.

      "I've lived up here for 20 years and it was still enlightening to go to it; a group of engineers, I mean, they can give you so much information on how the car is behaving," said KRC driving student Ruth Ann Smith.

      If you'd like to sign up for a class, go to the Keweenaw Research Center website .


Astronomers estimate that six percent of red dwarfs have a temperate Earth-size planet, as close as 13 light-years away.
Astronomers estimate that six percent of red dwarfs have a temperate Earth-size planet, as close as 13 light-years away. Image credit: D. Aguilar/Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
› Full image and caption
Using publicly available data from NASA's Kepler space telescope, astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics estimate that six percent of red dwarf stars in the galaxy have Earth-size planets in the "habitable zone," the range of distances from a star where the surface temperature of an orbiting planet might be suitable for liquid water.

The majority of the sun's closest stellar neighbors are red dwarfs. Researchers now believe that an Earth-size planet with a moderate temperature may be just 13 light-years away.

"We don't know if life could exist on a planet orbiting a red dwarf, but the findings pique my curiosity and leave me wondering if the cosmic cradles of life are more diverse than we humans have imagined," said Natalie Batalha, Kepler mission scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif.

The research team analyzed 95 planet candidates in the Kepler catalog orbiting 64 red dwarf stars. Most of these candidates aren't the right size or temperature to be considered Earth-like, as defined by the size relative to Earth and the distance from the host star. However, three candidates are both temperate and smaller than twice the size of Earth.

Red dwarf stars are smaller, cooler and fainter than our sun. An average red dwarf is only one-third as large and one-thousandth as bright as the sun. Consequently, the not-too-hot or not-too-cold habitable zone would be much closer to a cooler star than it is to the sun.

"This close-in habitable zone around cooler stars makes planets more vulnerable to the effects of stellar flares and gravitational interactions, complicating our understanding of their likely habitability," said Victoria Meadows, professor at the University of Washington, Seattle, and principal investigator with the NASA Astrobiology Institute. "But, if the planets predicted by this study are indeed found very nearby, then it will make it easier for us to make the challenging observations needed to learn more about them, including whether or not they can or do support life."

The three planetary candidates highlighted in this study are Kepler Object of Interest (KOI) 1422.02, which is 90 percent the size of Earth in a 20-day orbit; KOI-2626.01, 1.4 times the size of Earth in a 38-day orbit; and KOI-854.01, 1.7 times the size of Earth in a 56-day orbit.

Located between 300 and 600 light-years away, the three candidates orbit stars with temperatures ranging from 5,660 to 5,840 degrees Fahrenheit (3,400 to 3,500 degrees Kelvin). By comparison, the temperature of the sun is nearly 5,800 degrees Kelvin (9,980 degrees Fahrenheit).

Kepler is the first NASA mission capable of finding Earth-size planets in or near the habitable zone. Kepler is detecting planets and possible candidates with a wide range of sizes and orbital distances to help scientists better understand our place in the galaxy.

For more information about the discovery, see the full press release .

For information about the Kepler Mission, visit: .

Media Contact

Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Michele Johnson 650-604-6982
Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.


Honda Makes Breakthrough with Carbon Nanotube Development

Honda has been working on a new technology that could lead to a breakthrough in vehicle development.  Initial research by the firm, joined with scientists at Purdue University and the University of Louisville, has shown that microscopic carbon nanotubes may be capable of distributing electricty quicker and more efficiently.

The nanotubes may also be used to create a material that is at least as light as carbon fiber, but stronger than steel.

Researchers currently grow the carbon nanotubes on metal nanoparticles.  The carbon nanotubes form "rolled honeycomb sheets with carbon atoms" at the ends.  The initial research has shown that the nanotubes are 100,000 times thinner than strands of human hair. "When these tiny carbon nanotubes exhibit metallic conductivity they possess extraordinary strength compared to steel, higher electrical properties than copper, are as efficient in conducting heat as a diamond and are as light as cotton," according to a press release.

Honda forsees the new technology affecting the production of batteries, cables, fuel cells, and solar cells, which could lead to more efficient vehicles.  They also believe the findings could lead to advancements in artificial muscles, robotics, and supercapacitors, to name a few.

"Our goal is not only the creation of new and better technologies and products, but to fulfill Honda's commitment to environment sustainability," wrote Honda Research Institute USA project director Dr. Hideaki Tsuru.

Please see press release below for further details.

Write a comment
Show comments
About this article
Automaker Honda
Article type Green
Tags carbon nanotubes, nano, nano technology, nanotubes


Read online
Subscribe to receive a free copy.

Find a NRRTS Registrant

Contact your Legislator

Use the form below to find your senators and representatives:

Switching Companies: What the Employee Can and Cannot Do

Written by Jeffrey S. Baird, Esq.

A generation or two ago, we were a relatively stationary society. It was common for a person to work his or her whole life for one company. Retirement was the company pension. This is no longer the case. We are now a mobile society. Before the average American worker retires, he or she will have worked for a number of different employers. Retirement is not a company pension, but the worker's own 401(k) ... or what is left of it. Although moving from one employer to another is relatively easy in the corporate world, in the health care industry it is trickier and fraught with pitfalls.

Assume John Smith has worked for ABC Mobility, Inc. for the past five years. Now assume effective Sept. 1, 2011, Smith leaves ABC and goes to work for a competitor, XYZ Mobility, Inc. What can Smith do, and what can he not do? As the old saying goes, “The devil is in the details.” Let me explain.

Duty of Loyalty

So long as Smith is an employee of ABC, he has a duty of loyalty to ABC. While an employee of ABC, Smith cannot clandestinely begin working for XYZ.

Proprietary Information

As a long-standing employee of ABC, Smith will have possession of and access to information unique to ABC. This will include customer lists, marketing manuals, lists of referral sources (physicians, rehab clinics, physical therapists), guidelines for measuring and fitting patients, patient compliance guidelines, and personnel manuals. This is information ABC has expended time and money to produce. ABC will consider this information to be proprietary. The law in most states will prohibit Smith from taking this proprietary information with him. State law will determine what information is, and is not, proprietary.

Non-compete Agreement

If Smith has a written employment agreement with ABC, then the agreement may have a non-compete provision in it. A typical non-compete provision will prohibit Smith from competing with ABC for a period of time (e.g., one year) and within a defined geographical radius (e.g., within 100 miles of Des Moines). The non-compete provision must be reasonable as to time and scope. If it is unreasonable — that is, if it is overreaching — then a judge will normally have the right to “reform” the non-compete provision. What this means is the judge will have the right to reduce the time period (e.g., from one year to six months) and/or the geographical scope (e.g., from 100 miles to 50 miles).

A non-compete must be part of an “otherwise enforceable agreement.” Let’s say Smith has a written three-year employment agreement with ABC. However, the agreement states ABC can terminate the agreement upon 30 days’ notice “without cause.” Essentially, this means Smith has a month-to-month contract that is “terminable at will” by ABC. Smith has very few rights under such an agreement. This is not an “otherwise enforceable agreement” that will support a non-compete restriction. On the other hand, assume the agreement is a three-year agreement and ABC may terminate the agreement only “for cause.” Assume “cause” is narrowly defined so ABC cannot terminate Smith unless Smith steps over the line. Such an agreement gives a valuable right to Smith... the right not to get fired unless Smith truly messes up. This type of agreement will normally be considered to be “otherwise enforceable.”

ABC’s legal rights under the agreement can be strengthened if ABC gives additional consideration to Smith. For example, at the time of execution of the agreement, ABC can give to Smith a $5,000 signing bonus, alternatively, 12 months after execution of the agreement, Smith can be entitled to an employee retention payment of $5,000.

HIPAA prohibits ABC and Smith from disclosing “protected health information” (PHI) about a patient unless (i) a statutory exception to HIPAA is met or (ii) the patient gives his written consent to the disclosure. The applicable statutory exception is the “treatment, payment, operations” (TPO) exception. This states ABC and/or Smith can disclose PHI (about a particular patient) to another entity if the disclosure is for the purpose of treatment of the patient, or for submission of claims, or copies (electronically or hard copy) multiple files of patients of ABC, then transmits the files to Smith’s new employer, XYZ. Such transmittal of patient files does not fall within an exception to HIPAA and will likely be construed to be for the purpose of marketing. This would render Smith and XYZ liable for HIPAA violations.

Assume it is Sept. 2, 2011, and Smith has handed to XYZ a list of ABC patients. Can XYZ and Smith call the ABC patients, inform them Smith now works for XYZ, and invite the patients to visit Smith at XYZ? No.

The federal telephone solicitation statute states an home medical equipment (HME) company (i.e., XYZ) cannot call a Medicare beneficiary unless one of the following exceptions are met: (i) the beneficiary has given his written permission to be called; (ii) the HME company has previously sold a Medicare-covered item to the beneficiary, and the phone call pertains to that particular covered item; or (iii) the HME company has sold a Medicare covered item to the beneficiary within the past 15 months and the phone call pertains to other products and services offered by the HME company.

Assume Mary Jones is a 78-year-old customer of ABC. On Sept. 2, 2011, she is a customer of ABC, not a customer of XYZ. XYZ has never sold a Medicare-covered item to Jones. Unless Jones has properly given her prior written permission to XYZ to be called, then neither XYZ nor Smith (on behalf of XYZ) may call Jones. In terms of obtaining the written permission from Jones, the “smell test” applies. For example, Smith cannot call Jones in order to obtain her written permission to be called by XYZ. Simply speaking, Jones’s phone may not ring.

Again, assume on Sept. 2, 2011, Smith hands to XYZ a list of ABC patients. Can Smith go knock on the patients’ doors? No. Smith’s knowledge regarding the names and addresses of the patients emanates from the proprietary information Smith took from ABC. For the same reasoning, XYZ may not send marketing material to the individuals contained on the list of ABC patients. Assume Smith took with him only a list of commercial ABC patients. No Medicare patient is found on the list. The telephone solicitation statute would not apply. However, XYZ may not call the patients, or knock on their doors, or mail marketing material to them because the commercial patients constitute the proprietary information of ABC. Furthermore, even if the list of patients does not contain the names of any Medicare beneficiaries, the federal (or applicable state) “do not call” statute will likely prohibit XYZ from making the calls.

Steps the Former Employer Can Take Against the Departed Employee and His New Employer

ABC should hold an exit interview with Smith. If the parties had previously executed an employment agreement that contains a non-compete provision, then ABC needs to remind Smith of his obligations under the agreement. If Smith will do so, ABC should have Smith sign a document confirming he will adhere to the terms of the non-compete provision. If the parties had not previously executed an employment agreement with a non-compete provision, then ABC should nevertheless remind Smith of his obligations not to abscond with any proprietary information, including customer lists and those other documents described above. If Smith will do so, ABC should have Smith sign a document confirming he will not take any proprietary information with him.

If ABC suspects Smith and XYZ will attempt to contact ABC’s patients, then ABC should attempt to inoculate its patients by forewarning them such a contact may be made. ABC can ask its patients to let ABC know if such contact occurs. If ABC wants to be aggressive, it can ask its patients to send to ABC any correspondence and e-mails from Smith. ABC may even want to ask its patients to save any voicemails from Smith. Likewise, if ABC suspects Smith and XYZ will attempt to contact ABC’s referral sources, then ABC should be proactive and tell its referral sources Smith has gone to work for XYZ, Smith will likely attempt to contact the referral sources on behalf of XYZ, and ABC hopes the referral sources will remain loyal to ABC.

Assume Smith and XYZ are engaging in acts that clearly violate Smith’s non-compete or are infringing on ABC’s proprietary information. What responsive steps can ABC take? One step is for ABC to send a cease and desist letter to Smith and XYZ. The letter will point out the legal basis upon which ABC asserts Smith and XYZ cannot engage in the prohibited acts (e.g., calling or otherwise contacting ABC’s patients). Such a legal basis may include breach of the non-compete provision in Smith’s employment agreement, violation of the state statute prohibiting the improper use of proprietary information, unfair competition, and tortuous interference. The letter will demand Smith and XYZ cease engaging in the prohibited acts, and state failure to do so will result in ABC filing a lawsuit against both of them. The letter will point out if such a suit is filed, then ABC will ask for a temporary restraining order, injunctive relief, actual damages, punitive damages, costs of court and attorney’s fees. While Smith may ignore the cease and desist letter (he likely is not a “deep pocket” and he needs to work), XYZ will be less inclined to ignore the letter. Unless Smith is truly a superstar, XYZ will not be excited about expending the attorney’s fees to defend ABC’s lawsuit. XYZ may be inclined to simply let Smith go. If Smith and XYZ ignore the cease and desist letter, then ABC can proceed with its lawsuit.

If ABC wants to be even more aggressive, it can file a complaint (against Smith and XYZ) with the Office of Civil Rights for the HIPAA violation. ABC can file a complaint with the Office of Inspector General (OIG) for Smith’s and XYZ’s violation of the telephone solicitation statute.

So What Is the Departing Employee Allowed to Do?

All of the discussion above pertains to what Smith and XYZ cannot do and the steps ABC can take to protect itself. Now our discussion turns to what Smith and XYZ can do. XYZ can publish an ad in the local newspaper telling the community Smith has now joined XYZ. XYZ may contact referral sources (sources XYZ knows, not referral sources whose names were given to XYZ by Smith) and notify them Smith has left ABC and has joined XYZ.

A more aggressive move on Smith’s and XYZ’s part will be for Smith to recreate by memory a list of ABC’s patients. XYZ can then mail marketing material to the patients. However, there is risk ABC will assert the recreated list nevertheless constitutes proprietary information. Smith may recreate by memory a list of ABC’s referral sources and then XYZ will contact the referral sources. There is a risk ABC will assert the recreated list constitutes proprietary information. If Smith did not sign a non-compete with ABC, then an aggressive move on his (and XYZ’s) part would be for Smith to take with him a list of ABC’s patients and referral sources and assert under the applicable state statute, the lists do not onstitute proprietary information.

The most prudent course of action for ABC to take when it hires Smith is to have him sign a written employment agreement with a non-compete provision. Let’s say ABC desires for Smith to sign a non-compete a couple of years after he has been working for ABC, this can be done (and the non-compete can be enforceable) so long as ABC offers sufficient independent consideration to Smith for the non-compete. Such independent consideration can include converting Smith’s employment arrangement from “at will” to “terminable for cause.” Regardless of whether Smith signs an employment agreement, it would be prudent for ABC to have Smith sign a document that acknowledges patient names and other patient information, and other types of information, constitute proprietary information and are protected by HIPAA.

The most prudent course of action for Smith is for him to sign nothing. If ABC asks Smith to sign an employment agreement or another type of document, then Smith needs to have an attorney review and advise him regarding the document. When hiring Smith, the most prudent course of action for XYZ to take is inquire if Smith ever signed an employment agreement, or a related document, with ABC. If the answer is “yes,” then XYZ needs to examine the document.

Contact the author

Jeff may be reached at or 806.345.6320.

This article is not intended to be legal advice or legal opinion on any specific facts or circumstances. The contents are intended for general information only.