Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire . The number 4 evokes dread among many Chinese and Japanese people. The reason: In the Mandarin, Cantonese, and Japanese tongues, the words for "four" and "death" are pronounced almost identically.
An analysis of U.S. mortality statistics over a 25-year period now raises the provocative possibility that this fear of 4 can literally scare cardiac patients to death. Chinese and Japanese deaths from heart disease rise sharply on the fourth day of each month, a pattern that doesn't occur among whites, according to a study in the Dec. 22, 2001 British Medical Journal.http://Louis-J-Sheehan.de
A particularly high fourth-day peak in cardiac fatalities characterized Chinese and Japanese in California, where large populations of those groups with many elderly members may reinforce traditional superstitions, contends a team led by sociologist David P. Phillips of the University of California, San Diego.
Mortality data can't establish the causes of the recurring fourth-day peaks in Chinese and Japanese cardiac deaths, Phillips acknowledges. "Presently, the only explanation consistent with the findings is that psychological stress linked to the number 4 elicits additional heart-related deaths among the Chinese and Japanese," he says.
Phillips and his colleagues examined daily U.S. mortality data for nearly 210,000 Chinese and Japanese and about 47 million whites from 1973 to 1998.
The scientists focused on days of the Western calendar rather than the traditional lunar calendar of Asian cultures.
First, the team calculated the average daily mortality rate in the first week of each month, when mortality for all groups is typically slightly higher than at other times. From this measure, the investigators predicted the overall mortality rate for each day of that week.
Across the country, Chinese and Japanese suffered 13 percent more cardiac deaths than expected on the fourth day of the month. This figure rose to a 27 percent excess for the large Chinese and Japanese populations of California.
Whites didn't show this effect. Also, no fourth-day mortality spikes occurred for any other disease among the Chinese and Japanese.http://Louis-J-Sheehan.de
Further analysis indirectly supported a role for psychological stress in the fourth-day effect, Phillips says. The excess of heart-disease deaths on the fourth day was far greater if a Chinese or Japanese person was hospitalized than if a person was living in the community. This undermines several alternative explanations for the finding, including relatives' misreporting the day of death and people on the fourth day changing their diet, increasing alcohol use, refusing to take medication, or overexerting themselves.
Age, sex, and marital status also played no apparent role in the fourth-day cardiac mortality spike for Chinese and Japanese people, Phillips adds.
No increase in death rate for any disease occurred on the 13th day of the month for whites. Although regarded as an unlucky number, 13 has no linguistic link to death in the English language, the San Diego researcher says.
It's hard to interpret the new report, remarks psychiatrist Jiang Wei of Duke University Medical School in Durham, N.C. "If this statistical effect is real, we still don't know the biological mechanism for it," she says.
Nonetheless, dread of the number 4 has concrete consequences in Japan and China, according to sociologist Shen Zhao of China's Shandong University. For instance, in both countries, it's not unusual to find hospitals that don't list a fourth floor or number rooms with a 4.
Traditional beliefs, such as fear of the number 4, were discouraged during Communist China's Cultural Revolution but are now making a comeback, Shen says.Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
eye 7.eye.009
Italian researchers may have found a drug to treat amblyopia, or lazy eye. A study published in April in Science [subscription required] has demonstrated that Prozac, or fluoxetine, has one clear beneficial effect on the disorder, at least in rats: It can promote plasticity in the vision-processing part of the brain, a phenomenon formerly observed only in early development.
In children with amblyopia, one eye does not receive enough visual input, which causes the other eye to take over most of the visual processing in the brain. If the input problem is not corrected early in childhood, when the brain is still malleable, it can lead to permanently defective vision or blindness in one eye.
In a two-part study of adult rats treated with fluoxetine at levels comparable to those of people treated for depression, the scientists both induced amblyopia and cured it. First they sealed one eye, essentially instigating a case of untreatable lazy eye in an adult animal. In a second stage, they sealed the good eye of adult rats that had amblyopia. Over the four-week period of treatment with fluoxetine, the rats recovered full vision and behaved as normally sighted animals do. http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.US
The mechanism of the rats’ recovery from amblyopia is uncertain, but the researchers believe that fluoxetine opens pathways to genes that regulate plasticity, allowing modification of neuronal circuitry in the adult animal’s brain. Changing the brain circuitry improves or restores vision. http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.US
Whether the same effect could be attained in the much more complex nervous systems of adult humans is unknown, says José Fernando Maya Vetencourt, the lead author of the study and a researcher in neurobiology at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Italy. “We’re working with adult amblyopic patients to evaluate the possibility,” he says, “but it will take us a few years before we can draw any conclusion.” Maya Vetencourt adds that the findings may also shed light on the treatment effects of antidepressants and on the pathophysiology of mood disorders.
In children with amblyopia, one eye does not receive enough visual input, which causes the other eye to take over most of the visual processing in the brain. If the input problem is not corrected early in childhood, when the brain is still malleable, it can lead to permanently defective vision or blindness in one eye.
In a two-part study of adult rats treated with fluoxetine at levels comparable to those of people treated for depression, the scientists both induced amblyopia and cured it. First they sealed one eye, essentially instigating a case of untreatable lazy eye in an adult animal. In a second stage, they sealed the good eye of adult rats that had amblyopia. Over the four-week period of treatment with fluoxetine, the rats recovered full vision and behaved as normally sighted animals do. http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.US
The mechanism of the rats’ recovery from amblyopia is uncertain, but the researchers believe that fluoxetine opens pathways to genes that regulate plasticity, allowing modification of neuronal circuitry in the adult animal’s brain. Changing the brain circuitry improves or restores vision. http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.US
Whether the same effect could be attained in the much more complex nervous systems of adult humans is unknown, says José Fernando Maya Vetencourt, the lead author of the study and a researcher in neurobiology at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Italy. “We’re working with adult amblyopic patients to evaluate the possibility,” he says, “but it will take us a few years before we can draw any conclusion.” Maya Vetencourt adds that the findings may also shed light on the treatment effects of antidepressants and on the pathophysiology of mood disorders.
Sunday, December 7, 2008
fertility 55.fer.000200 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire. Shortly after the U.S. Civil War, a research expedition encountered a group of Confederate expatriates living in Brazil. The refugees had quickly taken to growing sugarcane on plots of earth that were darker and more fertile than the surrounding soil, Cornell University's Charles Hartt noted in the 1870s. http://louisjsheehan.blogspot.com
The same dark earth, terra preta in Portuguese, is now attracting renewed scientific attention for its high productivity, mysterious past, and capacity to store carbon. Researchers on Feb. 18 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in St. Louis presented evidence that new production of the fertile soil could aid agriculture and limit global greenhouse-gas emissions.
Prehistoric farmers created dark earth, perhaps intentionally, when they worked charcoal and nutrient-rich debris into Amazonian soils, which are naturally poor at holding nutrients. The amendments produced "better nutrient retention and soil fertility," says soil scientist Johannes Lehmann of Cornell. http://louis2j2sheehan.blogspot.com
Charcoal forms when organic matter smolders, or burns at low temperatures and with limited oxygen. Nutrients such as phosphorus and potassium readily adhere to charcoal, and the combination creates a good habitat for microorganisms. The soil microbes transform the materials into dark earth, says geographer William I. Woods of the University of Kansas in Lawrence.
http://louis5j5sheehan5.blogspot.com
If some of today's Amazonian farmers were to use smoldering fires to produce dark earth rather than clear fields with common slash-and-burn methods, they "would not only dramatically improve soil and increase crop production but also could provide a long-term sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide," says Lehmann. http://louis5j5sheehan5.blogspot.com
Slash-and-burn land clearing releases about 97 percent of the carbon that's in vegetation. Smoldering the same fuel to form charcoal releases only about 50 percent of the original carbon, Lehmann previously reported. The rest of that carbon remains in dark earth for centuries. http://louis5j5sheehan.blogspot.com
However, dark earth requires extra nutrients, such as those in compost. International agreements on greenhouse gases don't provide financial incentives for farmers to make the effort to create dark earth, Woods says. http://louis4j4sheehan4.blogspot.com
Nevertheless, ongoing field experiments in Brazil suggest that the fertility associated with terra preta could provide its own incentive, reports Beáta Madari of the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation in Rio de Janeiro.
http://louis2j2sheehan.blogspot.com
Brazil contains a wide range of dark earths with varying compositions. The scientists found differences between the soils used for ancient backyard gardens, which received more nutrients, and soils from distant fields. http://louisjsheehan.blogspot.com
Farmers of the time "certainly would have immediately learned about the properties of that soil, however [it] formed," says anthropologist Michael J. Heckenberger of the University of Florida in Gainesville. But the knowledge about how to make dark earth disappeared after contact with Europeans decimated the indigenous population.Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
The same dark earth, terra preta in Portuguese, is now attracting renewed scientific attention for its high productivity, mysterious past, and capacity to store carbon. Researchers on Feb. 18 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in St. Louis presented evidence that new production of the fertile soil could aid agriculture and limit global greenhouse-gas emissions.
Prehistoric farmers created dark earth, perhaps intentionally, when they worked charcoal and nutrient-rich debris into Amazonian soils, which are naturally poor at holding nutrients. The amendments produced "better nutrient retention and soil fertility," says soil scientist Johannes Lehmann of Cornell. http://louis2j2sheehan.blogspot.com
Charcoal forms when organic matter smolders, or burns at low temperatures and with limited oxygen. Nutrients such as phosphorus and potassium readily adhere to charcoal, and the combination creates a good habitat for microorganisms. The soil microbes transform the materials into dark earth, says geographer William I. Woods of the University of Kansas in Lawrence.
http://louis5j5sheehan5.blogspot.com
If some of today's Amazonian farmers were to use smoldering fires to produce dark earth rather than clear fields with common slash-and-burn methods, they "would not only dramatically improve soil and increase crop production but also could provide a long-term sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide," says Lehmann. http://louis5j5sheehan5.blogspot.com
Slash-and-burn land clearing releases about 97 percent of the carbon that's in vegetation. Smoldering the same fuel to form charcoal releases only about 50 percent of the original carbon, Lehmann previously reported. The rest of that carbon remains in dark earth for centuries. http://louis5j5sheehan.blogspot.com
However, dark earth requires extra nutrients, such as those in compost. International agreements on greenhouse gases don't provide financial incentives for farmers to make the effort to create dark earth, Woods says. http://louis4j4sheehan4.blogspot.com
Nevertheless, ongoing field experiments in Brazil suggest that the fertility associated with terra preta could provide its own incentive, reports Beáta Madari of the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation in Rio de Janeiro.
http://louis2j2sheehan.blogspot.com
Brazil contains a wide range of dark earths with varying compositions. The scientists found differences between the soils used for ancient backyard gardens, which received more nutrients, and soils from distant fields. http://louisjsheehan.blogspot.com
Farmers of the time "certainly would have immediately learned about the properties of that soil, however [it] formed," says anthropologist Michael J. Heckenberger of the University of Florida in Gainesville. But the knowledge about how to make dark earth disappeared after contact with Europeans decimated the indigenous population.Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
universe 99.uni.11 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire. A sublime cosmic mystery unfolds on a mild summer afternoon in Palo Alto, California, where I’ve come to talk with the visionary physicist Andrei Linde. The day seems ordinary enough. Cyclists maneuver through traffic, and orange poppies bloom on dry brown hills near Linde’s office on the Stanford University campus. But everything here, right down to the photons lighting the scene after an eight-minute jaunt from the sun, bears witness to an extraordinary fact about the universe: Its basic properties are uncannily suited for life. Tweak the laws of physics in just about any way and—in this universe, anyway—life as we know it would not exist.
Consider just two possible changes. Atoms consist of protons, neutrons, and electrons. If those protons were just 0.2 percent more massive than they actually are, they would be unstable and would decay into simpler particles. Atoms wouldn’t exist; neither would we. If gravity were slightly more powerful, the consequences would be nearly as grave. A beefed-up gravitational force would compress stars more tightly, making them smaller, hotter, and denser. Rather than surviving for billions of years, stars would burn through their fuel in a few million years, sputtering out long before life had a chance to evolve. There are many such examples of the universe’s life-friendly properties—so many, in fact, that physicists can’t dismiss them all as mere accidents.
“We have a lot of really, really strange coincidences, and all of these coincidences are such that they make life possible,” Linde says.
Physicists don’t like coincidences. They like even less the notion that life is somehow central to the universe, and yet recent discoveries are forcing them to confront that very idea. Life, it seems, is not an incidental component of the universe, burped up out of a random chemical brew on a lonely planet to endure for a few fleeting ticks of the cosmic clock. In some strange sense, it appears that we are not adapted to the universe; the universe is adapted to us.
Call it a fluke, a mystery, a miracle. Or call it the biggest problem in physics. Short of invoking a benevolent creator, many physicists see only one possible explanation: Our universe may be but one of perhaps infinitely many universes in an inconceivably vast multiverse. Most of those universes are barren, but some, like ours, have conditions suitable for life.
The idea is controversial. Critics say it doesn’t even qualify as a scientific theory because the existence of other universes cannot be proved or disproved. Advocates argue that, like it or not, the multiverse may well be the only viable nonreligious explanation for what is often called the “fine-tuning problem”—the baffling observation that the laws of the universe seem custom-tailored to favor the emergence of life.
Physical laws clamor for life: the universe knew we were coming.
“For me the reality of many universes is a logical possibility,” Linde says. “You might say, ‘Maybe this is some mysterious coincidence. Maybe God created the universe for our benefit.’ Well, I don’t know about God, but the universe itself might reproduce itself eternally in all its possible manifestations.”
Taking on Copernicus
Linde is lying in bed, recovering from a bad fall off a bicycle that broke his left wrist. His left hand, bound in a cast, rests on a pillow. Linde is sturdily built, with thick gray hair that flops down over his forehead; you wouldn’t necessarily pick him out as a man who spends much of his time lost in thought about the distant universe. Right now he is ignoring his injury, reciting a long list of some of the cosmic coincidences that make life possible.
“And if we double the mass of the electron, life as we know it will disappear. If we change the strength of the interaction between protons and electrons, life will disappear. Why are there three space dimensions and one time dimension? If we had four space dimensions and one time dimension, then planetary systems would be unstable and our version of life would be impossible. If we had two space dimensions and one time dimension, we would not exist,” he says.
The idea that the universe was made just for us—known as the anthropic principle—debuted in 1973 when Brandon Carter, then a physicist at Cambridge University, spoke at a conference in Poland honoring Copernicus, the 16th-century astronomer who said that the sun, not Earth, was the hub of the universe. Carter proposed that a purely random assortment of laws would have left the universe dead and dark, and that life limits the values that physical constants can have. By placing life in the cosmic spotlight—at a meeting dedicated to Copernicus, no less—Carter was flying in the face of a scientific worldview that began nearly 500 years ago when the Polish astronomer dislodged Earth and humanity from center stage in the grand scheme of things.
Carter proposed two interpretations of the anthropic principle. The “weak” anthropic principle simply says that we are living in a special time and place in the universe where life is possible. Life couldn’t have survived in the very early universe before stars formed, so the universe had to have reached a certain age and stage of evolution before life could arise.
The “strong” anthropic principle makes a much bolder statement. It asserts that the laws of physics themselves are biased toward life. To quote Freeman Dyson, a renowned physicist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the strong anthropic principle implies that “the universe knew we were coming.”
A Wild Profusion
The anthropic principle languished on the fringes of science for years. Physicists regarded it as an interesting idea, but the real action in the field lay elsewhere. And in the late 1970s, Linde, then a professor at the prestigious Lebedev Physical Institute in Moscow, was in the thick of that action. At the time, he wasn’t interested in the anthropic principle at all; he was trying to understand the physics of the Big Bang. Linde and other researchers knew that something was missing from the conventional theory of the Big Bang, because it couldn’t explain a key puzzling fact about the universe: its remarkable uniformity.
Strikingly, the temperature of space is everywhere the same, just 2.7 degrees Celsius above absolute zero. How could different regions of the universe, separated by such enormous distances, all have the same temperature?
In the standard version of the Big Bang, they couldn’t. The universe as a whole has been cooling ever since it emerged from the fireball of the Big Bang. But there’s a problem: For all of it to reach the same temperature, different regions of the universe would have to exchange heat, just as ice cubes and hot tea have to meet to reach the uniform temperature of iced tea. But as Einstein proved, nothing—including heat—can travel faster than the speed of light. In the conventional theory of the Big Bang, there simply hasn’t been enough time since the universe was born for every part of the cosmos to have connected with every other part and cooled to the same temperature.
+++
generated sequence of a universeIn this computer generated sequence, the universe evolves, inflating and expanding its terrain. The gentle valleys represent quiescent cosmic zones where all is stable. The jutting hills and soaring peaks symbolize the inflationary engine of universe creation, where new cosmic realms embody alternate physics and strange life — or none at all.
Courtesy Andre Linde
MIT physicist Alan Guth found a viable, but flawed, solution to the puzzle in 1981. Linde shored up that work shortly thereafter, making improvements to overcome those flaws. In a nutshell, Guth and Linde proposed that the universe underwent a colossal growth spasm in the first instants of its existence, a phenomenon called inflation. Today widely accepted as the standard version of the Big Bang theory, inflation holds that regions of the universe that are currently separated by many billions of light-years were once close enough to each other that they could exchange heat and reach the same temperature before they were wildly super-sized. Problem solved.
By the mid-1980s Linde and Tufts University physicist Alex Vilenkin had come up with a dramatic new twist that remains nearly as controversial now as it was then. They argued that inflation was not a one-off event but an ongoing process throughout the universe, where even now different regions of the cosmos are budding off, undergoing inflation, and evolving into essentially separate universes. The same process will occur in each of those new universes in turn, a process Linde calls eternal chaotic inflation.
Linde has spent much of the past 20 years refining that idea, showing that each new universe is likely to have laws of physics that are completely different from our own. The latest iteration of his theory provides a natural explanation for the anthropic principle. http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.US If there are vast numbers of other universes, all with different properties, by pure odds at least one of them ought to have the right combination of conditions to bring forth stars, planets, and living things.
“In some other universe, people there will see different laws of physics,” Linde says. “They will not see our universe. They will see only theirs. They will look around and say, ‘Here is our universe, and we must construct a theory that uniquely predicts that our universe must be the way we see it, because otherwise it is not a complete physics.’ Well, this would be a wrong track because they are in that universe by chance.”
Most physicists demurred. There wasn’t any good reason to believe in the reality of other universes—at least not until near the beginning of the new millennium, when astronomers made one of the most remarkable discoveries in the history of science.
The Accelerating Universe
In 1998 two teams of researchers observing distant supernovas—exploding stars—found that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. The discovery was baffling. Just about everyone had expected that the cosmic expansion, which started with the Big Bang, must be gradually slowing down, braked by the collective gravitational pull of all the galaxies and other matter out there. But built into the very fabric of space, it seems, is some unknown form of energy—physicists call it simply dark energy—that is pushing everything apart. Many cosmologists were skeptical at first, but follow-up observations with the Hubble Space Telescope, along with independent studies of radiation left over from the time of the Big Bang, have powerfully confirmed the reality of dark energy.
Dark energy appears calibrated for stars, galaxies, and us.
The idea that empty space might contain energy was not the part that surprised physicists. Ever since the birth of quantum mechanics in the 1920s, they have known that innumerable “virtual” particles pop into and out of existence all around us, a sort of quantum white noise, always there but forever beneath our notice. What astonished them was the peculiar specificity of the amount: exactly enough to accelerate expansion, yet not so much that the universe would rapidly rip itself apart. The observable amount of dark energy appears to be another one of those strange anthropic properties, calibrated to allow planets, stars, and us.
“If [dark energy] had been any bigger, there would have been enough repulsion from it to overwhelm the gravity that drew the galaxies together, drew the stars together, and drew Earth together,” Stanford physicist Leonard Susskind says. “It’s one of the greatest mysteries in physics. All we know is that if it were much bigger we wouldn’t be here to ask about it.”
Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg, a physicist at the University of Texas, agrees. “This is the one fine-tuning that seems to be extreme, far beyond what you could imagine just having to accept as a mere accident,” he says. http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.US
The Multiverse on a String
Dark energy makes it impossible to ignore the multiverse theory.Another branch of physics—string theory—lends support as well. Although experimental evidence for string theory is still lacking, many physicists believe it to be their best candidate for a theory of everything, a comprehensive description of the universe, from quarks to quasars. According to string theory, the ultimate constituents of physical reality are not particles but minuscule vibrating strings whose different oscillations give rise to all the particles and forces in the universe. Although string theory is enormously complex, requiring a total of 11 dimensions to work correctly, it is a mathematically convincing way to knit together all the known laws of physics.
In 2000, however, new theoretical work threatened to unravel string theory. Joe Polchinski at the University of California at Santa Barbara and Raphael Bousso at the University of California at Berkeley calculated that the basic equations of string theory have an astronomical number of different possible solutions, perhaps as many as 101,000*. Each solution represents a unique way to describe the universe. This meant that almost any experimental result would be consistent with string theory; the theory could never be proved right or wrong.
Some critics say this realization dooms string theory as a scientific enterprise. Others insist it is yet another clue that the multiverse is real. Susskind, a leading proponent of that interpretation, thinks the various versions of string theory may describe different universes that are all real. He believes the anthropic principle, the multiverse, and string theory are converging to produce a coherent, if exceedingly strange, new view in which our universe is just one of a multitude—one that happened to be born with the right kind of physics for our kind of life.
“Some people would call this the great disaster of string theory, that instead of giving rise to a single theory, it gave rise to something that is so diverse we can never make any sense out of it,” Susskind says. “Others would say, ‘Ah, this is exactly what we need for eternal inflation, for the multiverse, for anthropic thinking, and so forth.’”
* Correction: Due to a formatting error, this number was originally rendered as “101,000.” Return to the corrected sentence.
+++
Prove It
Linde’s recent research has helped solidify the connection between string theory and the multiverse. Some physicists have long embraced the notion that the extra dimensions of string theory play a key role in shaping the properties of new universes spawned during eternal chaotic inflation. When a new universe sprouts from its parent, the concept goes, only three of the dimensions of space predicted by string theory will inflate into large, full-blown, inhabitable spaces. The other dimensions of space will remain essentially invisible—but nonetheless will influence the form the universe takes. Linde and his colleagues figured out how the invisible dimensions stayed compact and went on to propose billions of permutations, each giving rise to a unique universe.
Linde’s ideas may make the notion of a multiverse more plausible, but they do not prove that other universes are really out there. The staggering challenge is to think of a way to confirm the existence of other universes when every conceivable experiment or observation must be confined to our own. Does it make sense to talk about other universes if they can never be detected?
I put that question to Cambridge University astrophysicist Martin Rees, the United Kingdom’s Astronomer Royal. We meet at his residence at Trinity College, in rooms on the west side of a meticulously groomed courtyard, directly across from an office once occupied by Isaac Newton.
Rees, an early supporter of Linde’s ideas, agrees that it may never be possible to observe other universes directly, but he argues that scientists may still be able to make a convincing case for their existence. To do that, he says, physicists will need a theory of the multiverse that makes new but testable predictions about properties of our own universe. If experiments confirmed such a theory’s predictions about the universe we can see, Rees believes, they would also make a strong case for the reality of those we cannot. String theory is still very much a work in progress, but it could form the basis for the sort of theory that Rees has in mind.
“If a theory did gain credibility by explaining previously unexplained features of the physical world, then we should take seriously its further predictions, even if those predictions aren’t directly testable,” he says. “Fifty years ago we all thought of the Big Bang as very speculative. Now the Big Bang from one millisecond onward is as well established as anything about the early history of Earth.”
The credibility of string theory and the multiverse may get a boost within the next year or two, once physicists start analyzing results from the Large Hadron Collider, the new, $8 billion particle accelerator built on the Swiss-French border. If string theory is right, the collider should produce a host of new particles. There is even a small chance that it may find evidence for the mysterious extra dimensions of string theory. “If you measure something which confirms certain elaborations of string theory, then you’ve got indirect evidence for the multiverse,” says Bernard Carr, a cosmologist at Queen Mary University of London. http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.US
Support for the multiverse might also come from some upcoming space missions. Susskind says there is a chance that the European Space Agency’s Planck satellite, scheduled for launch early next year, could lend a hand. Some multiverse models predict that our universe must have a specific geometry that would bend the path of light rays in specific ways that might be detectable by Planck, which will analyze radiation left from the Big Bang. If Planck’s observations match the predictions, it would suggest the existence of the multiverse.
When I ask Linde whether physicists will ever be able to prove that the multiverse is real, he has a simple answer. “Nothing else fits the data,” he tells me. “We don’t have any alternative explanation for the dark energy; we don’t have any alternative explanation for the smallness of the mass of the electron; we don’t have any alternative explanation for many properties of particles.
“What I am saying is, look at it with open eyes. These are experimental facts, and these facts fit one theory: the multiverse theory. They do not fit any other theory so far. I’m not saying these properties necessarily imply the multiverse theory is right, but you asked me if there is any experimental evidence, and the answer is yes. It was Arthur Conan Doyle who said, ‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’”
What About God?
For many physicists, the multiverse remains a desperate measure, ruled out by the impossibility of confirmation. Critics see the anthropic principle as a step backward, a return to a human-centered way of looking at the universe that Copernicus discredited five centuries ago. They complain that using the anthropic principle to explain the properties of the universe is like saying that ships were created so that barnacles could stick to them.
“If you allow yourself to hypothesize an almost unlimited portfolio of different worlds, you can explain anything,” says John Polkinghorne, formerly a theoretical particle physicist at Cambridge University and, for the past 26 years, an ordained Anglican priest. If a theory allows anything to be possible, it explains nothing; a theory of anything is not the same as a theory of everything, he adds.
If the Planck satellite detects bending light, that would be evidence for the multiverse.
Supporters of the multiverse theory say that critics are on the wrong side of history. “Throughout the history of science, the universe has always gotten bigger,” Carr says. “We’ve gone from geocentric to heliocentric to galactocentric. Then in the 1920s there was this huge shift when we realized that our galaxy wasn’t the universe. I just see this as one more step in the progression. Every time this expansion has occurred, the more conservative scientists have said, ‘This isn’t science.’ This is just the same process repeating itself.”
If the multiverse is the final stage of the Copernican revolution, with our universe but a speck in an infinite megacosmos, where does humanity fit in? If the life-friendly fine-tuning of our universe is just a chance occurrence, something that inevitably arises in an endless array of universes, is there any need for a fine-tuner—for a god?
“I don’t think that the multiverse idea destroys the possibility of an intelligent, benevolent creator,” Weinberg says. “What it does is remove one of the arguments for it, just as Darwin’s theory of evolution made it unnecessary to appeal to a benevolent designer to understand how life developed with such remarkable abilities to survive and breed.”
On the other hand, if there is no multiverse, where does that leave physicists? “If there is only one universe,” Carr says, “you might have to have a fine-tuner. If you don’t want God, you’d better have a multiverse.”
As for Linde, he is especially interested in the mystery of consciousness and has speculated that consciousness may be a fundamental component of the universe, much like space and time. He wonders whether the physical universe, its laws, and conscious observers might form an integrated whole. A complete description of reality, he says, could require all three of those components, which he posits emerged simultaneously. “Without someone observing the universe,” he says, “the universe is actually dead.”
Yet for all of his boldness, Linde hesitates when I ask whether he truly believes that the multiverse idea will one day be as well established as Newton’s law of gravity and the Big Bang. “I do not want to predict the future,” he answers. “I once predicted my own future. I had a very firm prediction. I knew that I was going to die in the hospital at the Academy of Sciences in Moscow near where I worked. I would go there for all my physical examinations. Once, when I had an ulcer, I was lying there in bed, thinking I knew this was the place where I was going to die. Why? Because I knew I would always be living in Russia. Moscow was the only place in Russia where I could do physics. This was the only hospital for the Academy of Sciences, and so on. It was quite completely predictable. http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.US
“Then I ended up in the United States. On one of my returns to Moscow, I looked at this hospital at the Academy of Sciences, and it was in ruins. There was a tree growing from the roof. And I looked at it and I thought, What can you predict? What can you know about the future?” Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Consider just two possible changes. Atoms consist of protons, neutrons, and electrons. If those protons were just 0.2 percent more massive than they actually are, they would be unstable and would decay into simpler particles. Atoms wouldn’t exist; neither would we. If gravity were slightly more powerful, the consequences would be nearly as grave. A beefed-up gravitational force would compress stars more tightly, making them smaller, hotter, and denser. Rather than surviving for billions of years, stars would burn through their fuel in a few million years, sputtering out long before life had a chance to evolve. There are many such examples of the universe’s life-friendly properties—so many, in fact, that physicists can’t dismiss them all as mere accidents.
“We have a lot of really, really strange coincidences, and all of these coincidences are such that they make life possible,” Linde says.
Physicists don’t like coincidences. They like even less the notion that life is somehow central to the universe, and yet recent discoveries are forcing them to confront that very idea. Life, it seems, is not an incidental component of the universe, burped up out of a random chemical brew on a lonely planet to endure for a few fleeting ticks of the cosmic clock. In some strange sense, it appears that we are not adapted to the universe; the universe is adapted to us.
Call it a fluke, a mystery, a miracle. Or call it the biggest problem in physics. Short of invoking a benevolent creator, many physicists see only one possible explanation: Our universe may be but one of perhaps infinitely many universes in an inconceivably vast multiverse. Most of those universes are barren, but some, like ours, have conditions suitable for life.
The idea is controversial. Critics say it doesn’t even qualify as a scientific theory because the existence of other universes cannot be proved or disproved. Advocates argue that, like it or not, the multiverse may well be the only viable nonreligious explanation for what is often called the “fine-tuning problem”—the baffling observation that the laws of the universe seem custom-tailored to favor the emergence of life.
Physical laws clamor for life: the universe knew we were coming.
“For me the reality of many universes is a logical possibility,” Linde says. “You might say, ‘Maybe this is some mysterious coincidence. Maybe God created the universe for our benefit.’ Well, I don’t know about God, but the universe itself might reproduce itself eternally in all its possible manifestations.”
Taking on Copernicus
Linde is lying in bed, recovering from a bad fall off a bicycle that broke his left wrist. His left hand, bound in a cast, rests on a pillow. Linde is sturdily built, with thick gray hair that flops down over his forehead; you wouldn’t necessarily pick him out as a man who spends much of his time lost in thought about the distant universe. Right now he is ignoring his injury, reciting a long list of some of the cosmic coincidences that make life possible.
“And if we double the mass of the electron, life as we know it will disappear. If we change the strength of the interaction between protons and electrons, life will disappear. Why are there three space dimensions and one time dimension? If we had four space dimensions and one time dimension, then planetary systems would be unstable and our version of life would be impossible. If we had two space dimensions and one time dimension, we would not exist,” he says.
The idea that the universe was made just for us—known as the anthropic principle—debuted in 1973 when Brandon Carter, then a physicist at Cambridge University, spoke at a conference in Poland honoring Copernicus, the 16th-century astronomer who said that the sun, not Earth, was the hub of the universe. Carter proposed that a purely random assortment of laws would have left the universe dead and dark, and that life limits the values that physical constants can have. By placing life in the cosmic spotlight—at a meeting dedicated to Copernicus, no less—Carter was flying in the face of a scientific worldview that began nearly 500 years ago when the Polish astronomer dislodged Earth and humanity from center stage in the grand scheme of things.
Carter proposed two interpretations of the anthropic principle. The “weak” anthropic principle simply says that we are living in a special time and place in the universe where life is possible. Life couldn’t have survived in the very early universe before stars formed, so the universe had to have reached a certain age and stage of evolution before life could arise.
The “strong” anthropic principle makes a much bolder statement. It asserts that the laws of physics themselves are biased toward life. To quote Freeman Dyson, a renowned physicist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the strong anthropic principle implies that “the universe knew we were coming.”
A Wild Profusion
The anthropic principle languished on the fringes of science for years. Physicists regarded it as an interesting idea, but the real action in the field lay elsewhere. And in the late 1970s, Linde, then a professor at the prestigious Lebedev Physical Institute in Moscow, was in the thick of that action. At the time, he wasn’t interested in the anthropic principle at all; he was trying to understand the physics of the Big Bang. Linde and other researchers knew that something was missing from the conventional theory of the Big Bang, because it couldn’t explain a key puzzling fact about the universe: its remarkable uniformity.
Strikingly, the temperature of space is everywhere the same, just 2.7 degrees Celsius above absolute zero. How could different regions of the universe, separated by such enormous distances, all have the same temperature?
In the standard version of the Big Bang, they couldn’t. The universe as a whole has been cooling ever since it emerged from the fireball of the Big Bang. But there’s a problem: For all of it to reach the same temperature, different regions of the universe would have to exchange heat, just as ice cubes and hot tea have to meet to reach the uniform temperature of iced tea. But as Einstein proved, nothing—including heat—can travel faster than the speed of light. In the conventional theory of the Big Bang, there simply hasn’t been enough time since the universe was born for every part of the cosmos to have connected with every other part and cooled to the same temperature.
+++
generated sequence of a universeIn this computer generated sequence, the universe evolves, inflating and expanding its terrain. The gentle valleys represent quiescent cosmic zones where all is stable. The jutting hills and soaring peaks symbolize the inflationary engine of universe creation, where new cosmic realms embody alternate physics and strange life — or none at all.
Courtesy Andre Linde
MIT physicist Alan Guth found a viable, but flawed, solution to the puzzle in 1981. Linde shored up that work shortly thereafter, making improvements to overcome those flaws. In a nutshell, Guth and Linde proposed that the universe underwent a colossal growth spasm in the first instants of its existence, a phenomenon called inflation. Today widely accepted as the standard version of the Big Bang theory, inflation holds that regions of the universe that are currently separated by many billions of light-years were once close enough to each other that they could exchange heat and reach the same temperature before they were wildly super-sized. Problem solved.
By the mid-1980s Linde and Tufts University physicist Alex Vilenkin had come up with a dramatic new twist that remains nearly as controversial now as it was then. They argued that inflation was not a one-off event but an ongoing process throughout the universe, where even now different regions of the cosmos are budding off, undergoing inflation, and evolving into essentially separate universes. The same process will occur in each of those new universes in turn, a process Linde calls eternal chaotic inflation.
Linde has spent much of the past 20 years refining that idea, showing that each new universe is likely to have laws of physics that are completely different from our own. The latest iteration of his theory provides a natural explanation for the anthropic principle. http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.US If there are vast numbers of other universes, all with different properties, by pure odds at least one of them ought to have the right combination of conditions to bring forth stars, planets, and living things.
“In some other universe, people there will see different laws of physics,” Linde says. “They will not see our universe. They will see only theirs. They will look around and say, ‘Here is our universe, and we must construct a theory that uniquely predicts that our universe must be the way we see it, because otherwise it is not a complete physics.’ Well, this would be a wrong track because they are in that universe by chance.”
Most physicists demurred. There wasn’t any good reason to believe in the reality of other universes—at least not until near the beginning of the new millennium, when astronomers made one of the most remarkable discoveries in the history of science.
The Accelerating Universe
In 1998 two teams of researchers observing distant supernovas—exploding stars—found that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. The discovery was baffling. Just about everyone had expected that the cosmic expansion, which started with the Big Bang, must be gradually slowing down, braked by the collective gravitational pull of all the galaxies and other matter out there. But built into the very fabric of space, it seems, is some unknown form of energy—physicists call it simply dark energy—that is pushing everything apart. Many cosmologists were skeptical at first, but follow-up observations with the Hubble Space Telescope, along with independent studies of radiation left over from the time of the Big Bang, have powerfully confirmed the reality of dark energy.
Dark energy appears calibrated for stars, galaxies, and us.
The idea that empty space might contain energy was not the part that surprised physicists. Ever since the birth of quantum mechanics in the 1920s, they have known that innumerable “virtual” particles pop into and out of existence all around us, a sort of quantum white noise, always there but forever beneath our notice. What astonished them was the peculiar specificity of the amount: exactly enough to accelerate expansion, yet not so much that the universe would rapidly rip itself apart. The observable amount of dark energy appears to be another one of those strange anthropic properties, calibrated to allow planets, stars, and us.
“If [dark energy] had been any bigger, there would have been enough repulsion from it to overwhelm the gravity that drew the galaxies together, drew the stars together, and drew Earth together,” Stanford physicist Leonard Susskind says. “It’s one of the greatest mysteries in physics. All we know is that if it were much bigger we wouldn’t be here to ask about it.”
Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg, a physicist at the University of Texas, agrees. “This is the one fine-tuning that seems to be extreme, far beyond what you could imagine just having to accept as a mere accident,” he says. http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.US
The Multiverse on a String
Dark energy makes it impossible to ignore the multiverse theory.Another branch of physics—string theory—lends support as well. Although experimental evidence for string theory is still lacking, many physicists believe it to be their best candidate for a theory of everything, a comprehensive description of the universe, from quarks to quasars. According to string theory, the ultimate constituents of physical reality are not particles but minuscule vibrating strings whose different oscillations give rise to all the particles and forces in the universe. Although string theory is enormously complex, requiring a total of 11 dimensions to work correctly, it is a mathematically convincing way to knit together all the known laws of physics.
In 2000, however, new theoretical work threatened to unravel string theory. Joe Polchinski at the University of California at Santa Barbara and Raphael Bousso at the University of California at Berkeley calculated that the basic equations of string theory have an astronomical number of different possible solutions, perhaps as many as 101,000*. Each solution represents a unique way to describe the universe. This meant that almost any experimental result would be consistent with string theory; the theory could never be proved right or wrong.
Some critics say this realization dooms string theory as a scientific enterprise. Others insist it is yet another clue that the multiverse is real. Susskind, a leading proponent of that interpretation, thinks the various versions of string theory may describe different universes that are all real. He believes the anthropic principle, the multiverse, and string theory are converging to produce a coherent, if exceedingly strange, new view in which our universe is just one of a multitude—one that happened to be born with the right kind of physics for our kind of life.
“Some people would call this the great disaster of string theory, that instead of giving rise to a single theory, it gave rise to something that is so diverse we can never make any sense out of it,” Susskind says. “Others would say, ‘Ah, this is exactly what we need for eternal inflation, for the multiverse, for anthropic thinking, and so forth.’”
* Correction: Due to a formatting error, this number was originally rendered as “101,000.” Return to the corrected sentence.
+++
Prove It
Linde’s recent research has helped solidify the connection between string theory and the multiverse. Some physicists have long embraced the notion that the extra dimensions of string theory play a key role in shaping the properties of new universes spawned during eternal chaotic inflation. When a new universe sprouts from its parent, the concept goes, only three of the dimensions of space predicted by string theory will inflate into large, full-blown, inhabitable spaces. The other dimensions of space will remain essentially invisible—but nonetheless will influence the form the universe takes. Linde and his colleagues figured out how the invisible dimensions stayed compact and went on to propose billions of permutations, each giving rise to a unique universe.
Linde’s ideas may make the notion of a multiverse more plausible, but they do not prove that other universes are really out there. The staggering challenge is to think of a way to confirm the existence of other universes when every conceivable experiment or observation must be confined to our own. Does it make sense to talk about other universes if they can never be detected?
I put that question to Cambridge University astrophysicist Martin Rees, the United Kingdom’s Astronomer Royal. We meet at his residence at Trinity College, in rooms on the west side of a meticulously groomed courtyard, directly across from an office once occupied by Isaac Newton.
Rees, an early supporter of Linde’s ideas, agrees that it may never be possible to observe other universes directly, but he argues that scientists may still be able to make a convincing case for their existence. To do that, he says, physicists will need a theory of the multiverse that makes new but testable predictions about properties of our own universe. If experiments confirmed such a theory’s predictions about the universe we can see, Rees believes, they would also make a strong case for the reality of those we cannot. String theory is still very much a work in progress, but it could form the basis for the sort of theory that Rees has in mind.
“If a theory did gain credibility by explaining previously unexplained features of the physical world, then we should take seriously its further predictions, even if those predictions aren’t directly testable,” he says. “Fifty years ago we all thought of the Big Bang as very speculative. Now the Big Bang from one millisecond onward is as well established as anything about the early history of Earth.”
The credibility of string theory and the multiverse may get a boost within the next year or two, once physicists start analyzing results from the Large Hadron Collider, the new, $8 billion particle accelerator built on the Swiss-French border. If string theory is right, the collider should produce a host of new particles. There is even a small chance that it may find evidence for the mysterious extra dimensions of string theory. “If you measure something which confirms certain elaborations of string theory, then you’ve got indirect evidence for the multiverse,” says Bernard Carr, a cosmologist at Queen Mary University of London. http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.US
Support for the multiverse might also come from some upcoming space missions. Susskind says there is a chance that the European Space Agency’s Planck satellite, scheduled for launch early next year, could lend a hand. Some multiverse models predict that our universe must have a specific geometry that would bend the path of light rays in specific ways that might be detectable by Planck, which will analyze radiation left from the Big Bang. If Planck’s observations match the predictions, it would suggest the existence of the multiverse.
When I ask Linde whether physicists will ever be able to prove that the multiverse is real, he has a simple answer. “Nothing else fits the data,” he tells me. “We don’t have any alternative explanation for the dark energy; we don’t have any alternative explanation for the smallness of the mass of the electron; we don’t have any alternative explanation for many properties of particles.
“What I am saying is, look at it with open eyes. These are experimental facts, and these facts fit one theory: the multiverse theory. They do not fit any other theory so far. I’m not saying these properties necessarily imply the multiverse theory is right, but you asked me if there is any experimental evidence, and the answer is yes. It was Arthur Conan Doyle who said, ‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’”
What About God?
For many physicists, the multiverse remains a desperate measure, ruled out by the impossibility of confirmation. Critics see the anthropic principle as a step backward, a return to a human-centered way of looking at the universe that Copernicus discredited five centuries ago. They complain that using the anthropic principle to explain the properties of the universe is like saying that ships were created so that barnacles could stick to them.
“If you allow yourself to hypothesize an almost unlimited portfolio of different worlds, you can explain anything,” says John Polkinghorne, formerly a theoretical particle physicist at Cambridge University and, for the past 26 years, an ordained Anglican priest. If a theory allows anything to be possible, it explains nothing; a theory of anything is not the same as a theory of everything, he adds.
If the Planck satellite detects bending light, that would be evidence for the multiverse.
Supporters of the multiverse theory say that critics are on the wrong side of history. “Throughout the history of science, the universe has always gotten bigger,” Carr says. “We’ve gone from geocentric to heliocentric to galactocentric. Then in the 1920s there was this huge shift when we realized that our galaxy wasn’t the universe. I just see this as one more step in the progression. Every time this expansion has occurred, the more conservative scientists have said, ‘This isn’t science.’ This is just the same process repeating itself.”
If the multiverse is the final stage of the Copernican revolution, with our universe but a speck in an infinite megacosmos, where does humanity fit in? If the life-friendly fine-tuning of our universe is just a chance occurrence, something that inevitably arises in an endless array of universes, is there any need for a fine-tuner—for a god?
“I don’t think that the multiverse idea destroys the possibility of an intelligent, benevolent creator,” Weinberg says. “What it does is remove one of the arguments for it, just as Darwin’s theory of evolution made it unnecessary to appeal to a benevolent designer to understand how life developed with such remarkable abilities to survive and breed.”
On the other hand, if there is no multiverse, where does that leave physicists? “If there is only one universe,” Carr says, “you might have to have a fine-tuner. If you don’t want God, you’d better have a multiverse.”
As for Linde, he is especially interested in the mystery of consciousness and has speculated that consciousness may be a fundamental component of the universe, much like space and time. He wonders whether the physical universe, its laws, and conscious observers might form an integrated whole. A complete description of reality, he says, could require all three of those components, which he posits emerged simultaneously. “Without someone observing the universe,” he says, “the universe is actually dead.”
Yet for all of his boldness, Linde hesitates when I ask whether he truly believes that the multiverse idea will one day be as well established as Newton’s law of gravity and the Big Bang. “I do not want to predict the future,” he answers. “I once predicted my own future. I had a very firm prediction. I knew that I was going to die in the hospital at the Academy of Sciences in Moscow near where I worked. I would go there for all my physical examinations. Once, when I had an ulcer, I was lying there in bed, thinking I knew this was the place where I was going to die. Why? Because I knew I would always be living in Russia. Moscow was the only place in Russia where I could do physics. This was the only hospital for the Academy of Sciences, and so on. It was quite completely predictable. http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.US
“Then I ended up in the United States. On one of my returns to Moscow, I looked at this hospital at the Academy of Sciences, and it was in ruins. There was a tree growing from the roof. And I looked at it and I thought, What can you predict? What can you know about the future?” Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
dogon 44.dog.1110 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
The Dogon are a group of people living in the central plateau region of Mali, south of the Niger bend near the city of Bandiagara in the Mopti region. They number just under 800,000.[citation needed] The Dogon are best known for their mythology, their mask dances, wooden sculpture and their architecture. The past century has seen significant changes in the social organization, material culture and beliefs of the Dogon, partly because Dogon country is one of Mali's major tourist attractions.
Geography and history
The Bandiagara Cliffs
The principal Dogon area is bisected by the Bandiagara Escarpment, a sandstone cliff of up to 500m (1,640 ft) high, stretching for about 150km (almost 100 miles). To the southeast of the cliff, the sandy Séno-Gondo Plains are found, and northwest of the cliff are the Bandiagara Highlands. The current population is at least 450,000. Historically, Dogon villages have frequently fallen victim to Islamic slave raiders.[1] Neighboring Islamic tribal groups acted as slave merchants,[2] as the growth of cities increased the demand for slaves across the region of West Africa. The historical pattern has included murder of indignenous males by Islamic jihadists and enslavement of women and children.[1] As early as the 12th century the Dogon people fled west to avoid conversion to Islam and enslavement. LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.NET
At the end of the eighteenth century, the jihads that were triggered by the resurgence of Islam caused slaves to be sought for warfare. Dogon insecurity in the face of these historical pressures caused them to locate their villages in defensible positions along the walls of the escarpment. The other factor influencing their choice of settlement location is water. The Niger River is nearby and in the sandstone rock, a rivulet runs at the foot of the cliff at the lowest point of the area during the wet season.
Dogon art
Dogon wood sculpture, probably an ancestor figure, 17th-18th century
Dogon art is primarily sculpture. Dogon art revolves around religious values, ideals, and freedoms (Laude, 19). Dogon sculptures are not made to be seen publicly, and are commonly hidden from the public eye within the houses of families, sanctuaries, or kept with the Hogon (Laude, 20). The importance of secrecy is due to the symbolic meaning behind the pieces and the process by which they are made.
Themes found throughout Dogon sculpture consist of figures with raised arms, superimposed bearded figures, horsemen, stools with caryatids, women with children, figures covering their faces, women grinding pearl millet, women bearing vessels on their heads, donkeys bearing cups, musicians, dogs, quadruped-shaped troughs or benches, figures bending from the waist, mirror-images, aproned figures, and standing figures (Laude, 46-52). Signs of other contacts and origins are evident in Dogon art. The Dogon people were not the first inhabitants of the cliffs of Bandiagara. Influence from Tellem art is evident in Dogon art because of its rectilinear designs (Laude, 24).
Culture and religion
The majority of Dogon practice an animist religion, including the ancestral spirit Nommo, with its festivals and Sirian mythology. A significant minority of the Dogon practice Islam, and some have been converted by missionaries to Christianity.
The Dogon record their ancestry through a patrilineal system. Each Dogon community, or enlarged family, is headed by one male elder. This chief head is the oldest living son of the ancestor of the local branch of the family. According to the NECEP database, within this patrilineal system polygynic marriages, with up to four spouses can occur.
Hogon
Most men, however, have only one wife; and it is rare for a man to have more than two wives. Formally, wives only join their husband's residence unit after the birth of their first child. Women may leave their husbands early in their marriage, before the birth of their first child. After having children, divorce is a rare and serious matter, and it requires the participation of the whole village. An enlarged family can count up to hundred persons and is called guinna.
The Dogon are strongly oriented toward harmony, and this harmony is reflected in many of their rituals. For instance, in one of their most important rituals, the women praise the men, the men thank the women, the young express appreciation for the old, and the old recognize the contributions of the young. Another example is the custom of elaborate greetings whenever one Dogon meets another. This custom is repeated over and over, throughout a Dogon village, all day. During a greeting ritual, the person who has entered the contact answers a series of questions about his or her whole family, from the person who was already there. Invariably, the answer is sewa, which means that everything is fine. Then the Dogon who has entered the contact repeats the ritual, asking the resident how his or her whole family is. Because of the word sewa is so commonly repeated throughout a Dogon village, neighboring peoples have dubbed the Dogon the sewa people.
Hogon House
The Hogon is the spiritual leader of the village. He is elected between the oldest men of the enlarged families of the village. After his election he has to follow a six-month initiation period, during which he is not allowed to shave or wash. He wears white cloths and nobody is allowed to touch him. A young virgin that has not yet had her period takes care of him, cleans the house and prepares his meals. She returns to her home during the night. After his initiation, he will wear a red bonnet. He has an armband with a sacred pearl that symbolises his function. The virgin is replaced by one of his wives, but she also returns to her home at night. The Hogon has to live alone in his house. During the night, the sacred snake Lébé comes to clean him and to transfer wisdom.
The Dogon maintain an agricultural mode of subsistence, and cultivate pearl millet, sorghum and rice, as well as onions, tobacco, peanuts, and some other vegetables. Marcel Griaule stimulated the construction of a dam near Sangha and incited the Dogon to cultivate onions. The economy of the Sangha region doubled since then and onions are sold as far as on the market of Bamako or even in Ivory Coast. They also raise sheep, goats and chickens. Grain is stored in granaries.
Circumcision
Circumcision Cave Painting
Boys are circumcised in age groups of three years, counting for example all boys between 9 and 12 years old. This marks the end of their youth, and they are now initiated. The blacksmith performs the circumcision. Afterwards, they stay for a few days in a hut separated from the rest of the village people, until the wound has healed. The circumcision is a reason for celebration and the initiated boys go around and receive presents. They make music on a special instrument that is made of a rod of wood and calabashes that makes the sound of a rattle. The village of Songho has a circumcision cave ornamented with red and white rock paintings of animals and plants. Nearby is a cave where music instruments are stored. The newly circumcized men must walk around naked for a moon after the procedure so that their achievement in age can be admired by the citizens of the tribe. This practice has been passed down for generations and is always followed, even during winter.
They are one of several African ethnic groups which practice excision of the female genitalia; see female genital cutting. According to Sékou Ogobara Dolo, at least in the Sangha region, the milder form is practiced. This means that only the clitoral hood is removed, which is similar to male circumcision. Girls are circumsized around the age of 7 or 8 years, sometimes younger. Circumcision for both male and female is seen as necessary for the individual to gain gender. Before circumcision they are seen as 'neuter'.LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.NET
Funeral Masquerade
Due to the expense, their traditional funeral rituals or “damas” are becoming very rare. They may be performed years after the death. Damas that are still performed today are not usually performed for their original intent, but instead are done as a source of entertainment for tourists interested in the Dogon way of life. The Dogon use this entertainment to gain profit by charging the tourists money for what masks they want to see and the ritual itself (Davis, 68). The traditional dama consists of a masquerade that essentially leads the souls of the departed to their final resting places through a series of ritual dances and rites. Dogon damas include the use of many masks and statuettes. Each Dogon village may differ in the designs of the masks used in the dama ritual. Every village may have their own way of performing the dama rituals. The dama consists of an event, known as the Halic, immediately after the death of a person and lasts for one day (Davis, 68). According to Shawn R. Davis, this particular ritual incorporates the elements of the yingim and the danyim. During the yincomoli ceremony, a gourd is smashed over the deceased’s wooden bowl, hoe, and bundukamba, (burial blanket), which announces the entrance of the masks used in this ceremony while the deceased entrance to their home in the family compound is decorated with ritual elements (Davis, 72-73). Masks used during the yincomoli ceremony include the Yana Gulay mask, the Satimbe mask, the Sirigie mask, and the Kanaga mask. The Yana Gulay mask’s purpose is to impersonate a Fulani woman and is made from cotton cloth and cowell shells. The Satimbe mask represents the women ancestors who are said to have discovered the purpose of the masks by guiding the spirits of the deceased into the afterlife. (Davis, 74) The Sirigie mask is a tall mask that is only used in funerals for the men that were alive during the holding of the Sigui ceremony (see below) (Davis, 68). The Kanaga masqueraders, at one point, dance and sit next to the bundkamba which represents the deceased.
The yingim and the danyim rituals each last a few days. These events are held annually to honor the elders that have died since the last Dama. The yingim consists of the sacrifice of cows, or other valuable animals, and large mock battles performed in order to help chase the spirit, known as the nyama, from the deceased body and village and towards the path to the afterlife (Davis, 68). The danyim then takes place a couple of months later. During the danyim, masqueraders perform dances every morning and evening for anytime up to six days depending on how that village performs this ritual. The masqueraders dance on the deceased’s rooftops, throughout the village, and the area of fields around the village (Davis, 68). Until the masqueraders have completed their dances and every ritual has been performed, it is said that any misfortune can be blamed on the remaining spirits of the dead (Davis, 68).
Cults
The Dogon know different cults:
* Sigui: the most important ceremony of the Dogon. It takes place every 65 years and can take several years. The last one started in 1967 and ended in 1973, the next one will start in 2032. The Sigui ceremony symbolises the dead of the first ancestor (not to be confounded with Lébé) till the moment that humanity acquired the use of the spoken word. The Sigui is a long procession that starts and ends in the village of Youga Dogorou and goes from one village to the other during several months or years. All men wear masks and dance in long processions. The Sigui has a secret language that women are not allowed to learn. The secret Society of Sigui plays a central role in the ceremony. They prepare the ceremonies a long time in advance, and they live for three months hidden outside of the villages while nobody is allowed to see them. The men from the Society of Sigui are called the Oloubarou. The villagers are afraid of them and fear is cultivated by a prohibition to go out at night, when sounds warn that the Oloubarou are out. The most important mask that plays a major role in the Sigui rituals is the Great Mask or the Mother of Masks. It is several meters long and is just held up by hand and not used to hide a face. This mask is newly created every 65 years.
* The Amma cult: worships the main, creator god Amma. The celebration is once a year and consists of offering boiled millet on the conical altar of Amma, colouring it white.
Crocodile Totem
* The Lébé cult: worships the sacred snake Lébé, who was the first mortal human being. Lébé was transformed into a snake. The celebration is once a year and takes three days. The altar is a pointed conic structure on which the Hogon offers boiled millet while mentioning in his benediction eight grains plus one. Afterwards, the Hogon performs some rituals in his house that is also the home of Lébé. The last day, all the village men visit all the Binou altars and dance three times around the Lébé altar. The Hogon invites everybody that assisted to drink the millet beer.
* The Binou cult: uses totems, common ones for the entire village and individual ones for totem priests. A totem animal is worshipped on a Binou altar. Totems are for example the buffalo for Ogol-du-Haut, and the panther for Ogol-du-Bas. Normally, nobody will ever be harmed by its own totem animal, even if this is a crocodile as for the village of Amani. Here is a large pool of crocodiles that do not harm any villager. However, a totem animal might exceptionally harm if one has done something wrong. A worshipper is not allowed to eat his totem. For example, an individual with a buffalo as totem is not allowed to eat buffalo meat, but also not to use leather from its skin and even not to see a buffalo die. If this happens by accident he has to organise a purification sacrifice at the Binou altar. Boiled millet is offered and goats and chickens are sacrificed on a Binou altar. This colours the altar both white and red. Binou altars look like little houses with a door. They are bigger when the altar is for an entire village. A village altar has also the ‘cloud hook’, that will catch clouds and make it rain.
* The twin cult: the birth of twins is a sign of good luck. The enlarged Dogon families have cult rituals during which they evoke all their ancestors till their origin, the ancient pair of twins from the creation of the world myth.
* The Mono cult: the Mono altar is at the entry of every village. Unmarried young men celebrate the Mono cult once a year in January or February. They spend the night around the altar, singing and screaming and waving with fire torches. They hunt for mice that will be sacrificed on the altar at dawn.
Dogon villages
Dogon villages have different buildings:
* Male granary: storage place for pearl millet and other grains. Building with a pointed roof. This building is well protected from mice. The amount of filled male granaries is an indication for the size and the richness of a guinna.
A Dogon's male granary
* Female granary: storage place for a woman's things, her husband has no access. Building with a pointed roof. It looks like a male granary but is less protected against mice. Here, she stores her personal belongings such as clothes, jewelry, money and some food. A woman is economically independent and earnings and things related to her merchandise are stored in her personal granary. She can for example make cotton or pottery. The amount of female granaries is an indication for the amount of women living in the guinna.
* Toguna (also called case à palabres): building only for men. They rest, discuss and take important decisions in the toguna. The roof of a toguna is made by 8 layers of millet stalks. It is a low building in which one cannot stand upright. This helps avoiding violence when discussions get heated.
A Toguna
* House for women that have their period: this house is on the outside of the village. It is constructed by women and is of lower quality than the other village buildings. Women having their period are considered to be unclean and have to leave their family house to live during five days in this house. They use kitchen equipment only to be used here. They bring with them their youngest children. This house is a gathering place for women during the evening.
A typical Dogon Village
Languages
Main article: Dogon languages
Dogon has been frequently referred to as a single language. In reality, there are at least five distinct groups of dialects[5] The Dogon language family is internally highly diverse, and many varieties are not mutually intelligible, actually 12 dialects and 50 variations. There is also a secret language Sigui So, which is used by the Society of the Masks during the Sigui ceremonies. Women have no right to learn Sigui So.
It is generally accepted that the Dogon languages belong to the Niger-Congo language family, but there is less certainty about their place within this family. The Dogon group has been linked to the Mande subfamily but also to Gur. In a recent overview of the Niger-Congo phylum, Dogon is treated as an independent branch before Volta-Congo. LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.NET
The Dogon languages show few remnants of a noun class system (one example is that human nouns take a distinct plural suffix), leading linguists to conclude that Dogon is likely to have diverged from Niger-Congo very early. Another indication of this is the Subject Object Verb basic word order, which Dogon shares with such early Niger-Congo branches as Ijoid and Mande.
Dogon and Sirius
Certain researchers investigating the Dogon have reported that they seem to possess advanced astronomical knowledge, the nature and source of which has subsequently become embroiled in controversy. From 1931 to 1956, two French anthropologists, Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen, spent 25 years with the Dogon, during which time they were initiated into the tribe. LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.NET Griaule and Dieterlen reported that the Dogon appeared to know that the brightest star in the sky, Sirius, has a faint companion, Sirius B, which requires a fairly large telescope to be seen. They also claimed that the Dogon appeared to know of the rings of Saturn, and the moons of Jupiter. LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.NET Neither Griaule nor Dieterlen ever presented any verifiable evidence for any of these claims.
The idea was made widespread when author Robert K. G. Temple wrote a book suggesting an extra-terrestrial source for the Dogon's knowledge. LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.NET No additional verifiable evidence was presented. Previously, Griaule and Dieterlen had made no claims on the source of the Dogon's knowledge.
More recently, doubts have been raised about the validity of Griaule and Dieterlein's work. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire The anthropologist Walter van Beek concluded after his research among the Dogon that,
"though they do speak about sigu tolo [which is what Griaule claimed the Dogon called Sirius] they disagree completely with each other as to which star is meant; for some it is an invisible star that should rise to announce the sigu [festival], for another it is Venus that, through a different position, appears as sigu tolo. All agree, however, that they learned about the star from Griaule". Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Griaule's daughter, Genevieve Calame-Griaule, has retorted that criticisms of her father's findings are mostly rooted in speculation. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire An independent assessment is given by Andrew Apter of the University of California. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
[edit]
Geography and history
The Bandiagara Cliffs
The principal Dogon area is bisected by the Bandiagara Escarpment, a sandstone cliff of up to 500m (1,640 ft) high, stretching for about 150km (almost 100 miles). To the southeast of the cliff, the sandy Séno-Gondo Plains are found, and northwest of the cliff are the Bandiagara Highlands. The current population is at least 450,000. Historically, Dogon villages have frequently fallen victim to Islamic slave raiders.[1] Neighboring Islamic tribal groups acted as slave merchants,[2] as the growth of cities increased the demand for slaves across the region of West Africa. The historical pattern has included murder of indignenous males by Islamic jihadists and enslavement of women and children.[1] As early as the 12th century the Dogon people fled west to avoid conversion to Islam and enslavement. LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.NET
At the end of the eighteenth century, the jihads that were triggered by the resurgence of Islam caused slaves to be sought for warfare. Dogon insecurity in the face of these historical pressures caused them to locate their villages in defensible positions along the walls of the escarpment. The other factor influencing their choice of settlement location is water. The Niger River is nearby and in the sandstone rock, a rivulet runs at the foot of the cliff at the lowest point of the area during the wet season.
Dogon art
Dogon wood sculpture, probably an ancestor figure, 17th-18th century
Dogon art is primarily sculpture. Dogon art revolves around religious values, ideals, and freedoms (Laude, 19). Dogon sculptures are not made to be seen publicly, and are commonly hidden from the public eye within the houses of families, sanctuaries, or kept with the Hogon (Laude, 20). The importance of secrecy is due to the symbolic meaning behind the pieces and the process by which they are made.
Themes found throughout Dogon sculpture consist of figures with raised arms, superimposed bearded figures, horsemen, stools with caryatids, women with children, figures covering their faces, women grinding pearl millet, women bearing vessels on their heads, donkeys bearing cups, musicians, dogs, quadruped-shaped troughs or benches, figures bending from the waist, mirror-images, aproned figures, and standing figures (Laude, 46-52). Signs of other contacts and origins are evident in Dogon art. The Dogon people were not the first inhabitants of the cliffs of Bandiagara. Influence from Tellem art is evident in Dogon art because of its rectilinear designs (Laude, 24).
Culture and religion
The majority of Dogon practice an animist religion, including the ancestral spirit Nommo, with its festivals and Sirian mythology. A significant minority of the Dogon practice Islam, and some have been converted by missionaries to Christianity.
The Dogon record their ancestry through a patrilineal system. Each Dogon community, or enlarged family, is headed by one male elder. This chief head is the oldest living son of the ancestor of the local branch of the family. According to the NECEP database, within this patrilineal system polygynic marriages, with up to four spouses can occur.
Hogon
Most men, however, have only one wife; and it is rare for a man to have more than two wives. Formally, wives only join their husband's residence unit after the birth of their first child. Women may leave their husbands early in their marriage, before the birth of their first child. After having children, divorce is a rare and serious matter, and it requires the participation of the whole village. An enlarged family can count up to hundred persons and is called guinna.
The Dogon are strongly oriented toward harmony, and this harmony is reflected in many of their rituals. For instance, in one of their most important rituals, the women praise the men, the men thank the women, the young express appreciation for the old, and the old recognize the contributions of the young. Another example is the custom of elaborate greetings whenever one Dogon meets another. This custom is repeated over and over, throughout a Dogon village, all day. During a greeting ritual, the person who has entered the contact answers a series of questions about his or her whole family, from the person who was already there. Invariably, the answer is sewa, which means that everything is fine. Then the Dogon who has entered the contact repeats the ritual, asking the resident how his or her whole family is. Because of the word sewa is so commonly repeated throughout a Dogon village, neighboring peoples have dubbed the Dogon the sewa people.
Hogon House
The Hogon is the spiritual leader of the village. He is elected between the oldest men of the enlarged families of the village. After his election he has to follow a six-month initiation period, during which he is not allowed to shave or wash. He wears white cloths and nobody is allowed to touch him. A young virgin that has not yet had her period takes care of him, cleans the house and prepares his meals. She returns to her home during the night. After his initiation, he will wear a red bonnet. He has an armband with a sacred pearl that symbolises his function. The virgin is replaced by one of his wives, but she also returns to her home at night. The Hogon has to live alone in his house. During the night, the sacred snake Lébé comes to clean him and to transfer wisdom.
The Dogon maintain an agricultural mode of subsistence, and cultivate pearl millet, sorghum and rice, as well as onions, tobacco, peanuts, and some other vegetables. Marcel Griaule stimulated the construction of a dam near Sangha and incited the Dogon to cultivate onions. The economy of the Sangha region doubled since then and onions are sold as far as on the market of Bamako or even in Ivory Coast. They also raise sheep, goats and chickens. Grain is stored in granaries.
Circumcision
Circumcision Cave Painting
Boys are circumcised in age groups of three years, counting for example all boys between 9 and 12 years old. This marks the end of their youth, and they are now initiated. The blacksmith performs the circumcision. Afterwards, they stay for a few days in a hut separated from the rest of the village people, until the wound has healed. The circumcision is a reason for celebration and the initiated boys go around and receive presents. They make music on a special instrument that is made of a rod of wood and calabashes that makes the sound of a rattle. The village of Songho has a circumcision cave ornamented with red and white rock paintings of animals and plants. Nearby is a cave where music instruments are stored. The newly circumcized men must walk around naked for a moon after the procedure so that their achievement in age can be admired by the citizens of the tribe. This practice has been passed down for generations and is always followed, even during winter.
They are one of several African ethnic groups which practice excision of the female genitalia; see female genital cutting. According to Sékou Ogobara Dolo, at least in the Sangha region, the milder form is practiced. This means that only the clitoral hood is removed, which is similar to male circumcision. Girls are circumsized around the age of 7 or 8 years, sometimes younger. Circumcision for both male and female is seen as necessary for the individual to gain gender. Before circumcision they are seen as 'neuter'.LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.NET
Funeral Masquerade
Due to the expense, their traditional funeral rituals or “damas” are becoming very rare. They may be performed years after the death. Damas that are still performed today are not usually performed for their original intent, but instead are done as a source of entertainment for tourists interested in the Dogon way of life. The Dogon use this entertainment to gain profit by charging the tourists money for what masks they want to see and the ritual itself (Davis, 68). The traditional dama consists of a masquerade that essentially leads the souls of the departed to their final resting places through a series of ritual dances and rites. Dogon damas include the use of many masks and statuettes. Each Dogon village may differ in the designs of the masks used in the dama ritual. Every village may have their own way of performing the dama rituals. The dama consists of an event, known as the Halic, immediately after the death of a person and lasts for one day (Davis, 68). According to Shawn R. Davis, this particular ritual incorporates the elements of the yingim and the danyim. During the yincomoli ceremony, a gourd is smashed over the deceased’s wooden bowl, hoe, and bundukamba, (burial blanket), which announces the entrance of the masks used in this ceremony while the deceased entrance to their home in the family compound is decorated with ritual elements (Davis, 72-73). Masks used during the yincomoli ceremony include the Yana Gulay mask, the Satimbe mask, the Sirigie mask, and the Kanaga mask. The Yana Gulay mask’s purpose is to impersonate a Fulani woman and is made from cotton cloth and cowell shells. The Satimbe mask represents the women ancestors who are said to have discovered the purpose of the masks by guiding the spirits of the deceased into the afterlife. (Davis, 74) The Sirigie mask is a tall mask that is only used in funerals for the men that were alive during the holding of the Sigui ceremony (see below) (Davis, 68). The Kanaga masqueraders, at one point, dance and sit next to the bundkamba which represents the deceased.
The yingim and the danyim rituals each last a few days. These events are held annually to honor the elders that have died since the last Dama. The yingim consists of the sacrifice of cows, or other valuable animals, and large mock battles performed in order to help chase the spirit, known as the nyama, from the deceased body and village and towards the path to the afterlife (Davis, 68). The danyim then takes place a couple of months later. During the danyim, masqueraders perform dances every morning and evening for anytime up to six days depending on how that village performs this ritual. The masqueraders dance on the deceased’s rooftops, throughout the village, and the area of fields around the village (Davis, 68). Until the masqueraders have completed their dances and every ritual has been performed, it is said that any misfortune can be blamed on the remaining spirits of the dead (Davis, 68).
Cults
The Dogon know different cults:
* Sigui: the most important ceremony of the Dogon. It takes place every 65 years and can take several years. The last one started in 1967 and ended in 1973, the next one will start in 2032. The Sigui ceremony symbolises the dead of the first ancestor (not to be confounded with Lébé) till the moment that humanity acquired the use of the spoken word. The Sigui is a long procession that starts and ends in the village of Youga Dogorou and goes from one village to the other during several months or years. All men wear masks and dance in long processions. The Sigui has a secret language that women are not allowed to learn. The secret Society of Sigui plays a central role in the ceremony. They prepare the ceremonies a long time in advance, and they live for three months hidden outside of the villages while nobody is allowed to see them. The men from the Society of Sigui are called the Oloubarou. The villagers are afraid of them and fear is cultivated by a prohibition to go out at night, when sounds warn that the Oloubarou are out. The most important mask that plays a major role in the Sigui rituals is the Great Mask or the Mother of Masks. It is several meters long and is just held up by hand and not used to hide a face. This mask is newly created every 65 years.
* The Amma cult: worships the main, creator god Amma. The celebration is once a year and consists of offering boiled millet on the conical altar of Amma, colouring it white.
Crocodile Totem
* The Lébé cult: worships the sacred snake Lébé, who was the first mortal human being. Lébé was transformed into a snake. The celebration is once a year and takes three days. The altar is a pointed conic structure on which the Hogon offers boiled millet while mentioning in his benediction eight grains plus one. Afterwards, the Hogon performs some rituals in his house that is also the home of Lébé. The last day, all the village men visit all the Binou altars and dance three times around the Lébé altar. The Hogon invites everybody that assisted to drink the millet beer.
* The Binou cult: uses totems, common ones for the entire village and individual ones for totem priests. A totem animal is worshipped on a Binou altar. Totems are for example the buffalo for Ogol-du-Haut, and the panther for Ogol-du-Bas. Normally, nobody will ever be harmed by its own totem animal, even if this is a crocodile as for the village of Amani. Here is a large pool of crocodiles that do not harm any villager. However, a totem animal might exceptionally harm if one has done something wrong. A worshipper is not allowed to eat his totem. For example, an individual with a buffalo as totem is not allowed to eat buffalo meat, but also not to use leather from its skin and even not to see a buffalo die. If this happens by accident he has to organise a purification sacrifice at the Binou altar. Boiled millet is offered and goats and chickens are sacrificed on a Binou altar. This colours the altar both white and red. Binou altars look like little houses with a door. They are bigger when the altar is for an entire village. A village altar has also the ‘cloud hook’, that will catch clouds and make it rain.
* The twin cult: the birth of twins is a sign of good luck. The enlarged Dogon families have cult rituals during which they evoke all their ancestors till their origin, the ancient pair of twins from the creation of the world myth.
* The Mono cult: the Mono altar is at the entry of every village. Unmarried young men celebrate the Mono cult once a year in January or February. They spend the night around the altar, singing and screaming and waving with fire torches. They hunt for mice that will be sacrificed on the altar at dawn.
Dogon villages
Dogon villages have different buildings:
* Male granary: storage place for pearl millet and other grains. Building with a pointed roof. This building is well protected from mice. The amount of filled male granaries is an indication for the size and the richness of a guinna.
A Dogon's male granary
* Female granary: storage place for a woman's things, her husband has no access. Building with a pointed roof. It looks like a male granary but is less protected against mice. Here, she stores her personal belongings such as clothes, jewelry, money and some food. A woman is economically independent and earnings and things related to her merchandise are stored in her personal granary. She can for example make cotton or pottery. The amount of female granaries is an indication for the amount of women living in the guinna.
* Toguna (also called case à palabres): building only for men. They rest, discuss and take important decisions in the toguna. The roof of a toguna is made by 8 layers of millet stalks. It is a low building in which one cannot stand upright. This helps avoiding violence when discussions get heated.
A Toguna
* House for women that have their period: this house is on the outside of the village. It is constructed by women and is of lower quality than the other village buildings. Women having their period are considered to be unclean and have to leave their family house to live during five days in this house. They use kitchen equipment only to be used here. They bring with them their youngest children. This house is a gathering place for women during the evening.
A typical Dogon Village
Languages
Main article: Dogon languages
Dogon has been frequently referred to as a single language. In reality, there are at least five distinct groups of dialects[5] The Dogon language family is internally highly diverse, and many varieties are not mutually intelligible, actually 12 dialects and 50 variations. There is also a secret language Sigui So, which is used by the Society of the Masks during the Sigui ceremonies. Women have no right to learn Sigui So.
It is generally accepted that the Dogon languages belong to the Niger-Congo language family, but there is less certainty about their place within this family. The Dogon group has been linked to the Mande subfamily but also to Gur. In a recent overview of the Niger-Congo phylum, Dogon is treated as an independent branch before Volta-Congo. LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.NET
The Dogon languages show few remnants of a noun class system (one example is that human nouns take a distinct plural suffix), leading linguists to conclude that Dogon is likely to have diverged from Niger-Congo very early. Another indication of this is the Subject Object Verb basic word order, which Dogon shares with such early Niger-Congo branches as Ijoid and Mande.
Dogon and Sirius
Certain researchers investigating the Dogon have reported that they seem to possess advanced astronomical knowledge, the nature and source of which has subsequently become embroiled in controversy. From 1931 to 1956, two French anthropologists, Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen, spent 25 years with the Dogon, during which time they were initiated into the tribe. LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.NET Griaule and Dieterlen reported that the Dogon appeared to know that the brightest star in the sky, Sirius, has a faint companion, Sirius B, which requires a fairly large telescope to be seen. They also claimed that the Dogon appeared to know of the rings of Saturn, and the moons of Jupiter. LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.NET Neither Griaule nor Dieterlen ever presented any verifiable evidence for any of these claims.
The idea was made widespread when author Robert K. G. Temple wrote a book suggesting an extra-terrestrial source for the Dogon's knowledge. LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.NET No additional verifiable evidence was presented. Previously, Griaule and Dieterlen had made no claims on the source of the Dogon's knowledge.
More recently, doubts have been raised about the validity of Griaule and Dieterlein's work. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire The anthropologist Walter van Beek concluded after his research among the Dogon that,
"though they do speak about sigu tolo [which is what Griaule claimed the Dogon called Sirius] they disagree completely with each other as to which star is meant; for some it is an invisible star that should rise to announce the sigu [festival], for another it is Venus that, through a different position, appears as sigu tolo. All agree, however, that they learned about the star from Griaule". Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Griaule's daughter, Genevieve Calame-Griaule, has retorted that criticisms of her father's findings are mostly rooted in speculation. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire An independent assessment is given by Andrew Apter of the University of California. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
[edit]
Sunday, November 16, 2008
attachment 773.att.3 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Children who spend their first few years in institutions without affectionate care, sensory stimulation, or other bare necessities often can't form close relationships. Known as attachment disorder, this condition has attracted intense interest as more people adopt institutionalized youngsters from around the world.
Despite some highly publicized cases in which violent acts were attributed to attachment disorder, its features and causes remain controversial.
An ongoing study of children adopted from Romanian orphanages by British parents outlines a set of behaviors typical of the disorder. Neither defiance nor violence characterizes the group. LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.ORG The work confirms that severe deprivation lies at the core of attachment disorder but doesn't inevitably undermine social functioning, reports a team headed by psychologist Thomas G. O'Connor of the Institute of Psychiatry in London.
Kids between ages 4 and 6 who have attachment disorder disregard their adoptive parents and eagerly approach strangers, and they don't look for their parents in new or scary situations. LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.ORG Such kids also often misinterpret social cues and find it difficult to generate more than superficial interest in others. Published diagnostic criteria for attachment disorder only partially describe this overall clinical picture, O'Connor's group says.
"Our observations of children [with attachment disorder] and interviews with parents attest to the clinical concerns raised about the children's safety and difficulties in establishing relationships with others," the researchers conclude in the June Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
However, nobody knows whether the youngsters' condition will improve as they spend more time in adoptive families, the scientists say. No established treatment exists for attachment disorder.
The researchers conducted home evaluations on 111 Romanian children at ages 4 and 6 who were adopted by 2 years of age and 52 British children adopted by 6 months of age.
Another 48 Romanian children who entered adoptive families between ages 2 and 3½ were evaluated at age 6. At the time of adoption, the Romanian kids had shown malnourishment and other physical signs of severe deprivation. LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.ORG
Children exposed to the most deprivation had the highest rates of attachment disorder. O'Connor's team diagnosed the condition in 4 percent of the British children, 7 percent of Romanian kids adopted by age 6 months, 21 percent of Romanian youngsters adopted between ages 6 months and 2 years, and 31 percent of Romanian children adopted between ages 2 and 3½ years. Attachment disorder, or its absence, usually stayed stable from ages 4 to 6. LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.ORG
Other data suggest that indiscriminate friendliness is the most persistent symptom linked to attachment disorder, remarks psychiatrist Charles H. Zeanah of Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans. His research indicates that among formerly deprived children, unchecked sociability can still affect those who manage to develop close relationships.
Despite some highly publicized cases in which violent acts were attributed to attachment disorder, its features and causes remain controversial.
An ongoing study of children adopted from Romanian orphanages by British parents outlines a set of behaviors typical of the disorder. Neither defiance nor violence characterizes the group. LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.ORG The work confirms that severe deprivation lies at the core of attachment disorder but doesn't inevitably undermine social functioning, reports a team headed by psychologist Thomas G. O'Connor of the Institute of Psychiatry in London.
Kids between ages 4 and 6 who have attachment disorder disregard their adoptive parents and eagerly approach strangers, and they don't look for their parents in new or scary situations. LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.ORG Such kids also often misinterpret social cues and find it difficult to generate more than superficial interest in others. Published diagnostic criteria for attachment disorder only partially describe this overall clinical picture, O'Connor's group says.
"Our observations of children [with attachment disorder] and interviews with parents attest to the clinical concerns raised about the children's safety and difficulties in establishing relationships with others," the researchers conclude in the June Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
However, nobody knows whether the youngsters' condition will improve as they spend more time in adoptive families, the scientists say. No established treatment exists for attachment disorder.
The researchers conducted home evaluations on 111 Romanian children at ages 4 and 6 who were adopted by 2 years of age and 52 British children adopted by 6 months of age.
Another 48 Romanian children who entered adoptive families between ages 2 and 3½ were evaluated at age 6. At the time of adoption, the Romanian kids had shown malnourishment and other physical signs of severe deprivation. LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.ORG
Children exposed to the most deprivation had the highest rates of attachment disorder. O'Connor's team diagnosed the condition in 4 percent of the British children, 7 percent of Romanian kids adopted by age 6 months, 21 percent of Romanian youngsters adopted between ages 6 months and 2 years, and 31 percent of Romanian children adopted between ages 2 and 3½ years. Attachment disorder, or its absence, usually stayed stable from ages 4 to 6. LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.ORG
Other data suggest that indiscriminate friendliness is the most persistent symptom linked to attachment disorder, remarks psychiatrist Charles H. Zeanah of Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans. His research indicates that among formerly deprived children, unchecked sociability can still affect those who manage to develop close relationships.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
liquids 8884.332cfr Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire. A little voltage can jolt existing cars into getting better gas mileage, new research shows. http://Louis2J2Sheehan2Esquire.US
Applying a strong electric field to fuel a moment before it’s injected into the engine’s cylinders boosted fuel efficiency of a Mercedes-Benz 300D from 32 to 38 miles per gallon during six months of road tests — an increase of more than 18 percent, scientists report in the Nov. 19 Energy & Fuels.
Applying a strong electric field to fuel a moment before it’s injected into the engine’s cylinders boosted fuel efficiency of a Mercedes-Benz 300D from 32 to 38 miles per gallon during six months of road tests — an increase of more than 18 percent, scientists report in the Nov. 19 Energy & Fuels.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
small 0000190.43002 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) knows that most of the 1.9 million tons (1.7 million metric tons) of discarded cell phones, computers and televisions, among other electronic goods, went into landfills, because those are the agency's own figures.
The EPA also knows that this so-called e-waste contains cadmium, mercury and other toxic substances, and it is responsible for making sure that lead-laden monitors and television sets with cathode-ray tubes (CRT) are disposed of properly and the parts recycled. But congressional investigators charge that the EPA has failed to even attempt to clean up the mess—or keep it in check. The agency has "no plans and no timetable for developing the basic components of an enforcement strategy," concludes a report released this week by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Congress's investigative arm.
GAO official John Stephenson testified at a House hearing yesterday that his investigators had posed as would-be buyers of CRT waste in Hong Kong, India, Pakistan, Singapore and Vietnam and found at least 43 recyclers willing to export the toxic e-waste from the U.S. in direct violation of EPA regulations. In addition, unlike the European Union (E.U.), the EPA has no regulations concerning the disposal of other types of used electronic devices, despite their dangers. http://ljsheehan.blogspot.com
"This is a failure to enforce even the weak regulations they have," says Democratic Rep. Gene Green of Houston, who introduced a House resolution calling for a ban on the export of e-waste. (Sen. Sherrod Brown (D–Ohio) introduced a similar measure in the Senate.) "EPA is sometimes not as interested in doing what statutorily they should be."
According to the report, the EPA told GAO officials that it prefers "nonregulatory, voluntary approaches" to the growing e-waste problem. "EPA currently has 10 ongoing investigations and the [regional offices] plan to conduct inspections at electronic waste collection and recycling facilities this year," wrote assistant administrators Granta Nakayama and Susan Parker Bodine in response.
When such e-waste is exported to places such as Guiyu in China, it ends up in vast recycling centers where laborers earn a pittance smashing, cracking, melting and cooking old electronic goods to extract the valuable materials they hold, ranging from gold to plastics. But burning off wire insulation, cooking circuit boards and using acid to extract gold all take a health and environmental toll. A study published last year in Environmental Health Perspectives found that children in Guiyu had lead levels 50 percent higher than those in surrounding villages and 50 percent higher than safety limits set by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Lead is known to cause brain damage.
That toll is not confined to China. According to a recent study by chemist Jeffrey Weidenhamer of Ashland University in Ohio, the lead in recalled children's jewelry bears a proportion of tin and copper that are "consistent with an origin from recovered solder." And U.S. prisoners are often exposed to the same conditions working at disassembling e-waste for the government-owned corporation UNICOR Federal Prison Industries in Washington, D.C. "I visited a federal prison in California and I saw prisoners with hammers smashing apart CRT monitors," says Ted Smith, chairman of the advocacy group Electronics TakeBack Coalition. "There are prisoners who have been made ill and a number of prison guards as well."
As a result, at least nine states, including California, Maine and Maryland, have implemented their own controls on the proper handling of e-waste, and the electronics industry has voluntary guidelines to reduce it. "We have a national system to collect and recycle all products we put our name on," says Mark Small, vice president for corporate environment, safety and health at Sony Corporation of America, which has partnered with Waste Management, Inc., to recycle e-waste. "We have eliminated probably 99 percent–plus of the toxic materials in our products. http://ljsheehan.blogspot.com We use lead-free solder and changed the design of TVs from CRT to new [liquid-crystal displays]." http://ljsheehan.blogspot.com
Other companies, such as Apple, Dell and Hewlett-Packard have similar programs, and Samsung is set to launch a free take-back program for all their electronic products, including old televisions, on October 1.
The E.U. in 2002 imposed a comprehensive ban on the export of any e-waste, along with a requirement for producers of such electronic goods to take back used electronics. Violators face fines up to 1.2 million euros or imprisonment. In contrast, the EPA to date has imposed only one fine of $32,500 on a single exporter, according to the GAO report.
But given the difficulty and expense of dealing with e-waste properly, unscrupulous E.U. recyclers have taken to labeling their shipments as used electronics that can be employed in developing countries to bridge the digital divide. "The containers arriving in ports like Lagos [Nigeria] were loaded with 75 percent junk and 25 percent material that could be resold in the marketplace," Smith says. "They take that material that was not salable, dump it and burn it."
He adds: "There are an awful lot of bottom-feeders in this industry."
But some companies, such as Columbus, Ohio–based Redemtech, have found that coping with the more than three billion electronic devices purchased each year by U.S. companies and consumers can be good business. "Per weight of e-waste, 90 percent of it is moderately valuable nontoxics like steel, aluminum, plastics," says Redemtech president, Robert Houghton, which the company handles at one of six plants in North America. The rest is sent to centralized facilities with the safety equipment to handle toxic materials such as lead. "If we send 1,000 pounds of toxic-bearing circuit cards, we expect to have 1,000 pounds of materials liberated."
The volume of e-waste, particularly lead-bearing CRTs, will likely grow exponentially next February, when U.S. television networks switch from analog to digital signals. And it would appear, based on the GAO report, that EPA is not ready to enforce regulations for the proper handling of such toxic materials.
Further, the liquid-crystal display televisions that are likely to replace them contain mercury in the fluorescent lightbulbs inside them. "We don't know how to take out the mercury, let alone deal with it responsibly," Smith says.
In the future, light-emitting diodes might prove a toxic-free alternative, according to Sony's Small. But that would just unleash another onslaught of e-waste if all TV owners were to make the switch again—and much of that would likely end up shipped out of the country. "Only 5 percent of imports are inspected," Small notes. "One can only imagine how many exports are inspected."
"We can't just ship it overseas any longer and pretend it doesn't exist," says Rep. Mike Thompson (D–Calif.) who supports federal e-waste legislation. "It should be regulated to prevent harm to human health and the environment overseas—and right here in this country." Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
The EPA also knows that this so-called e-waste contains cadmium, mercury and other toxic substances, and it is responsible for making sure that lead-laden monitors and television sets with cathode-ray tubes (CRT) are disposed of properly and the parts recycled. But congressional investigators charge that the EPA has failed to even attempt to clean up the mess—or keep it in check. The agency has "no plans and no timetable for developing the basic components of an enforcement strategy," concludes a report released this week by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Congress's investigative arm.
GAO official John Stephenson testified at a House hearing yesterday that his investigators had posed as would-be buyers of CRT waste in Hong Kong, India, Pakistan, Singapore and Vietnam and found at least 43 recyclers willing to export the toxic e-waste from the U.S. in direct violation of EPA regulations. In addition, unlike the European Union (E.U.), the EPA has no regulations concerning the disposal of other types of used electronic devices, despite their dangers. http://ljsheehan.blogspot.com
"This is a failure to enforce even the weak regulations they have," says Democratic Rep. Gene Green of Houston, who introduced a House resolution calling for a ban on the export of e-waste. (Sen. Sherrod Brown (D–Ohio) introduced a similar measure in the Senate.) "EPA is sometimes not as interested in doing what statutorily they should be."
According to the report, the EPA told GAO officials that it prefers "nonregulatory, voluntary approaches" to the growing e-waste problem. "EPA currently has 10 ongoing investigations and the [regional offices] plan to conduct inspections at electronic waste collection and recycling facilities this year," wrote assistant administrators Granta Nakayama and Susan Parker Bodine in response.
When such e-waste is exported to places such as Guiyu in China, it ends up in vast recycling centers where laborers earn a pittance smashing, cracking, melting and cooking old electronic goods to extract the valuable materials they hold, ranging from gold to plastics. But burning off wire insulation, cooking circuit boards and using acid to extract gold all take a health and environmental toll. A study published last year in Environmental Health Perspectives found that children in Guiyu had lead levels 50 percent higher than those in surrounding villages and 50 percent higher than safety limits set by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Lead is known to cause brain damage.
That toll is not confined to China. According to a recent study by chemist Jeffrey Weidenhamer of Ashland University in Ohio, the lead in recalled children's jewelry bears a proportion of tin and copper that are "consistent with an origin from recovered solder." And U.S. prisoners are often exposed to the same conditions working at disassembling e-waste for the government-owned corporation UNICOR Federal Prison Industries in Washington, D.C. "I visited a federal prison in California and I saw prisoners with hammers smashing apart CRT monitors," says Ted Smith, chairman of the advocacy group Electronics TakeBack Coalition. "There are prisoners who have been made ill and a number of prison guards as well."
As a result, at least nine states, including California, Maine and Maryland, have implemented their own controls on the proper handling of e-waste, and the electronics industry has voluntary guidelines to reduce it. "We have a national system to collect and recycle all products we put our name on," says Mark Small, vice president for corporate environment, safety and health at Sony Corporation of America, which has partnered with Waste Management, Inc., to recycle e-waste. "We have eliminated probably 99 percent–plus of the toxic materials in our products. http://ljsheehan.blogspot.com We use lead-free solder and changed the design of TVs from CRT to new [liquid-crystal displays]." http://ljsheehan.blogspot.com
Other companies, such as Apple, Dell and Hewlett-Packard have similar programs, and Samsung is set to launch a free take-back program for all their electronic products, including old televisions, on October 1.
The E.U. in 2002 imposed a comprehensive ban on the export of any e-waste, along with a requirement for producers of such electronic goods to take back used electronics. Violators face fines up to 1.2 million euros or imprisonment. In contrast, the EPA to date has imposed only one fine of $32,500 on a single exporter, according to the GAO report.
But given the difficulty and expense of dealing with e-waste properly, unscrupulous E.U. recyclers have taken to labeling their shipments as used electronics that can be employed in developing countries to bridge the digital divide. "The containers arriving in ports like Lagos [Nigeria] were loaded with 75 percent junk and 25 percent material that could be resold in the marketplace," Smith says. "They take that material that was not salable, dump it and burn it."
He adds: "There are an awful lot of bottom-feeders in this industry."
But some companies, such as Columbus, Ohio–based Redemtech, have found that coping with the more than three billion electronic devices purchased each year by U.S. companies and consumers can be good business. "Per weight of e-waste, 90 percent of it is moderately valuable nontoxics like steel, aluminum, plastics," says Redemtech president, Robert Houghton, which the company handles at one of six plants in North America. The rest is sent to centralized facilities with the safety equipment to handle toxic materials such as lead. "If we send 1,000 pounds of toxic-bearing circuit cards, we expect to have 1,000 pounds of materials liberated."
The volume of e-waste, particularly lead-bearing CRTs, will likely grow exponentially next February, when U.S. television networks switch from analog to digital signals. And it would appear, based on the GAO report, that EPA is not ready to enforce regulations for the proper handling of such toxic materials.
Further, the liquid-crystal display televisions that are likely to replace them contain mercury in the fluorescent lightbulbs inside them. "We don't know how to take out the mercury, let alone deal with it responsibly," Smith says.
In the future, light-emitting diodes might prove a toxic-free alternative, according to Sony's Small. But that would just unleash another onslaught of e-waste if all TV owners were to make the switch again—and much of that would likely end up shipped out of the country. "Only 5 percent of imports are inspected," Small notes. "One can only imagine how many exports are inspected."
"We can't just ship it overseas any longer and pretend it doesn't exist," says Rep. Mike Thompson (D–Calif.) who supports federal e-waste legislation. "It should be regulated to prevent harm to human health and the environment overseas—and right here in this country." Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Monday, September 1, 2008
olfactory Louis J. Sheehan
Most of the brain does fine with its original brain cells, but parts involved in smelling and remembering sometimes need some new recruits.
Nearly all of the cells in the olfactory bulb are replaced, and that refreshing of neurons is required to maintain the shape and volume of the bulb, the researchers report. But mice with shrunken olfactory bulbs had no trouble sniffing out sweet treats, suggesting that a few old neurons are all that’s needed to maintain a sense of smell.
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
A new cosmic crowd has captured the distance and heavyweight titles for galaxy clusters discovered deep in the universe. The record-breaker sits billions of light-years from Earth and weighs about a thousand times the mass of the Milky Way, astronomers report in an upcoming issue of Astronomy & Astrophysics.
BRIGHT SPOTThis XMM-Newton image shows the X-ray signal of the most distant, massive cluster of galaxies, at far right. The telescope’s original target for this observation was an active galaxy — the bright spot in the upper left.ESA XMM-Newton, EPIC, G. Lamer
Sunday, August 24, 2008
c-3po
But one thing Lucas does do well is show a huge variety of life on these various planets. It helps you get an idea of the crazy abundance of different species, and this will probably be closer to the truth than we once imagined it would be.http://ljsheehan.livejournal.com
Robots, or droids, as they are called in Star Wars, seem to be getting a lot more common than they were years ago. Was George Lucas right about them, too?
Well, nowadays we have the Roomba, that's the little robotic vacuum cleaner some people seem to like. Then there's the Honda Asimo robot that looks like an astronaut, which is pretty much as good as C-3PO at getting around. One of the major areas where people have brought robots into the home is with toys. There were those Furby robots from a while back that would talk to you and pick up what you say, and were banned from the Pentagon. You also see a lot of robots designed and built recently to mimic animals, like geckos and dragonflies.
NASA is now developing these softball-size robots—if you recall Luke's lightsaber training with the floating ball that shoots him in Episode IV—that float in zero gravity and maneuver with six fans. They can record temperature and pressure, can go into areas that are too dangerous for astronauts to go into, and be like a canary in a coal mine.
You also see robots fighting wars in Star Wars. We have devices like that deployed in Iraq called SWORDS that can detect roadside bombs, and now they are putting weapons on these. Then there are predator drones, too. There’s also the "Big Dog" army robot in development by DARPA [Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency]; it looks like an Imperial walker but with dog legs. This two-and-half-foot-tall machine keeps its balance even on ice, and it could serve as an equipment-carrying pack robot for soldiers.http://ljsheehan.livejournal.com
What about robotic intelligence and emotions? What are some insights since you published your book?
Science has made huge strides in robot technology since the first Star Wars movie came out, and even just since Episode I was released in 1999. But the main thing robots still lack is intelligence and emotion—we don't have heroic robots like R2-D2 that take on risks, or skittish robots like C-3PO, either. Researchers who are developing artificial intelligence are realizing that emotions are needed to make robots rational; we usually think of these as being opposed to one another, but we need emotions to operate in a useful way. For example, people with frontal lobe disorders have trouble making decisions because, like computers, they go through every possible action before making a move. People with normal brains, though, have a feeling about a situation and that helps them to make a quick decision.
There are ideas to introduce a chemical reward system in robots similar to what humans have, or to program emotional states. If we are in a tough situation, say, stranded on the Star Wars desert planet Tatooine, we focus on survival by pushing ourselves to the limit and being more watchful of our environment. Likewise, robots could quickly "decide" to access their emergency power and shut down nonessential functions. Overall, emotions could make a robot more efficient in achieving its goal.
Saturday, August 16, 2008
State
Recently excavated remains of half-size human ancestors on the Indonesian island of Flores indicate that these ancient individuals belonged to a distinctive species that survived until about 12,000 years ago, which is longer than researchers initially estimated.
The growing cache of fossils of this species, Homo floresiensis, represents at least nine individuals, say archaeologist Michael J. Morwood of the University of New England in Armidale, Australia, and his colleagues. http://Louis2J2Sheehan2Esquire.US The same scientists announced their discovery of H. floresiensis last year (SN: 10/30/04, p. 275: http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20041030/fob1.asp), including a partial skeleton estimated to be around 18,000 years old and other fossils dating from up to 95,000 years ago. All the individuals represented by the fossils were no taller than about 1 meter.
Some scientists argue that the island population might not constitute a new branch of the human tree, but rather represent a population in which everyone had genetic defects that produced abnormally small brains and bodies. In the Oct. 13 Nature, Morwood and his colleagues hold their ground.
"It seems reasonable for [them] to stick to their original hypothesis that H. floresiensis is a new species," remarks anthropologist Daniel E. Lieberman of Harvard University in an editorial published with the new report.
P. Brown
In their latest excavations, Morwood's group recovered all three right-arm bones of the previously reported partial skeleton, the lower jaw of another individual, and leg, arm, shoulder, spinal, toe, and finger bones of yet other individuals. Radiocarbon dating places an arm bone, the radius, at about 12,000 years old and the jaw at around 15,000 years old.
H. floresiensis' diminutive stature, long arms, and nearly chimp-size brain resemble body proportions of australopithecines, Morwood says. That group of human ancestors lived more than 2 million years ago. The Flores population may have directly evolved into a Homo species from an unknown Asian australopithecine, Morwood speculates.
In Lieberman's view, however, the size and shape of the Indonesian creature's teeth and bones signify a closer link to other Homo species than to australopithecines. Some other researchers agree and now suspect that Morwood's team has mistakenly classified H. sapiens fossils as a new species.
Such a small-brained creature could not have made the sophisticated stone tools that have been found among its remains, contends anthropologist Robert D. Martin of the Field Museum in Chicago. Until now, such implements have appeared only at Stone Age H. sapiens sites, Martin says.
Martin proposes that the Flores skull comes from a H. sapiens individual who had microcephaly, a genetic condition that drastically reduces brain size and causes other developmental abnormalities.http://Louis2J2Sheehan2Esquire.US
Anthropologist Robert B. Eckhardt of Penn State University in State College, who examined the Flores partial skeleton and associated remains last February, agrees. Estimates of H. floresiensis' brain and body size by Morwood's team are too low, he says. Among the Flores fossils, the partial skeleton represents a short person who suffered from developmental problems that included microcephaly, Eckhardt argues.
"I'm absolutely, totally confident that H. floresiensis will not last," Eckhardt says.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
bonobos
A new analysis of behavioral traditions practiced by African chimpanzees supports the idea that the animals learn about such activities from others, possibly from newcomers to established communities. Chimps thus exhibit cultural diversity, even if it falls short of the human cultural spectrum, say Stephen J. Lycett of the University of Liverpool, England, and his colleagues. http://louiscjcsheehan.blogspot.com
Researchers have noted 39 behaviors, varying among seven African chimp communities, that they propose as cultural acts (SN: 6/19/99, p. 388). These behaviors revolve around tool use, foraging techniques, and grooming methods. Critics argue that genetic characteristics of different chimp communities, not culturally based learning, may foster distinctive behavioral styles.
Lycett's team examined chimp traditions using cladistics, a technique previously employed to identify branching evolutionary relationships among fossil organisms, spoken languages, and even ancient stone arrowheads. The method involved comparing chimp behaviors with those already reported for closely related bonobos, or pygmy chimps. The researchers defined behaviors shared by chimps and bonobos as having been precursors of those unique to chimps.
Branching patterns of related behaviors appeared in each chimp community and in sets of communities from either eastern or western Africa, the researchers report in the Nov. 6 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. These localized connections among behaviors arose via cultural transmission, they posit. http://louiscjcsheehan.blogspot.com
In contrast, no behavioral pattern was common to eastern and western African chimps. The absence of continentwide structure suggests that no link exists between genetic and cultural differences among chimps.
Cultural traditions spread relatively slowly as female chimps emigrate to nearby groups at sexual maturity, the scientists propose. Female newcomers may also abandon traditions from their native groups in favor of approaches taken by their new comrades, they note. http://louiscjcsheehan.blogspot.com
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
dma
Since the onset of the new media explosion, the newspaper industry has been experiencing one of the slowest (and most discussed) demises in recent history. http://louis_j_sheehan.today.com But according to new research out of Saga University in Japan, old newspapers could be a crucial ingredient in recovering gold and other precious metals from the rising flood of industrial waste brought on by discarded cell phones, laptops, TVs, and other consumer devices. http://louis_j_sheehan.today.com
To test their theory, the research team crushed and washed old newspapers, combined the resulting mush with a chlorine compound, then treated the chlorinated paper with dimethylamine (DMA) and formaldehyde to create a “DMA-paper gel,” which they dried into a powder.
After testing the gel’s ability to absorb the metals in a standard industrial sample (which consisted of old metallic components dissolved in hydrochloric acid), the team found that the gel sucked out over 90 percent of the sample’s gold, platinum and palladium. Even better, the gel was fully reusable afterwards.
Given that we’re tossing around 35 million PCs into landfills, with over three billion cell phones waiting to be discarded, the recycling and reduction of industrial waste is no small environmental issue, and a solution as simple and efficient as old newspapers could be a boon for environmentalists. Which is something even Sam Zell can feel good about.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
late
May 12, Thursday. Late last night, Mr. Byington, a newspaper correspondent, called at my house. He left General Grant’s headquarters at 8 A.M. yesterday. http://louis1j1sheehan1esquire.wordpress.com Reports hard fighting on Tuesday, but represents our troops to have had the best of it. General Robinson, severely wounded, arrived in
Secretary Chase sends me a letter that the Treasury is unwilling to pay bills drawn abroad in coin, and wishes the Department to buy coin and pay the bills independent of the Treasury. In other words, the Treasury Department declines to meet government obligations as heretofore. It is incapable of discharging its fiscal duties, is no longer to be a fiscal but a brokerage establishment for borrowing money and issuing a baseless, fictitious paper currency. These are the inglorious results of the schemes and speculations of our financier, and the end is not yet. There will be a general breakdown under this management.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
china
The Ministry of Public Security (Abbreviation: MPS; Simplified Chinese: 公安部; pinyin: gōng ān bù), headed by the Minister of Public Security, is the principal police authority in the mainland of the People's Republic of China and the agency that is responsible for most of the day-to-day police work in mainland China. http://Louis2J2Sheehan2Esquire.US
The MPS is the main domestic security agency in the People's Republic of China, thus making it the equivalent to the National Police Agency in Japan or national police in other countries. It controls and administers the People's Armed Police. In general, the MPS does not undertake paramilitary functions, which are within the province of the People's Armed Police, nor does it generally conduct domestic intelligence which is the responsibility of the Ministry of State Security. Hong Kong and Macau have their own security bureaus/agencies and police forces. As of 2007, the Minister of Public Security is Meng Jianzhu.
Local municipal police under the MPS used to be usually unarmed in contrast to the agents of the PAP; however since 2006 decision has been taken to issue sidearms to all frontline MPS personnel; the chosen firearm is a 9mm double-action revolver manufactured by the China North Industries Corporation.[1]
There have been many public complaints that the Public Security Bureaus (Abbreviation: PSB; Simplified Chinese: 公安局; pinyin: gōng ān jú), the local extensions of the national MPS, are undermanned and unable to deal with what the public perceives to be the problem of rising crime. Other issues that the PSB has had to deal with in recent years have included insufficient salary, poor training, low morale among the officers, and complaints about abuses of power.
Contents[hide] |
[edit] Organization
The MPS is organized into functional departments assigned to cover areas such as intelligence, police operations, prisons, and political, economic, and communications security. Subordinate to the MPS are the provincial-level public security departments; PS Bureaus and subbureaus at the county level (the bureaus are located in the prefectures and large cities, the subbureaus in counties and municipal districts); and public security stations at the township level. While public security considerations weighed heavily at all levels of administration, the police appeared to wield progressively greater influence at the lower levels of government. http://Louis2J2Sheehan2Esquire.US
The organization of local public security stations could be inferred from the tasks with which the police were charged. Generally, each station had sections assigned to cover population control, pretrial investigations, welfare, traffic control, and other activities. Each also had a detention center.
[edit] Responsibilities and operations
In the 1980s the public security station—the police element in closest contact with the people—was supervised by the public security subbureau as well as by local governments and procuratorates. The procuratorate could assume direct responsibility for any case that it chose, and it supervised investigations in those cases in which the public security station was allowed to conduct investigations. A great deal of coordination occurred among the public security organs, the procuratorates, and the courts, so that a trial was unlikely to produce a surprise outcome.
The public security station generally had considerably broader responsibilities than a police station in the West, involving itself in every aspect of the district people's lives. In a rural area a station typically has a chief, a deputy chief, a small administrative staff, and a small police force. In an urban area it usually has a greater number of administrative staff members and seven to eighteen patrolmen. Its criminal law activities included investigation, apprehension, interrogation, and temporary detention. The station's household section maintained a registry of all persons living in the area. Births, deaths, marriages, and divorces were recorded and confirmed through random household checks. The station regulated all hotels and required visitors who remained beyond a certain number of days to register. All theaters, cinemas, radio equipment, and printing presses also were registered with the local public security station, permitting it to regulate gatherings and censor information effectively. It also regulated the possession, transportation, and use of all explosives, guns, ammunition, and poisons.
Another important police function was controlling change of residence. Without such controls, large numbers of rural residents undoubtedly would move to the overcrowded cities in search of better living standards, work, or education. In April 1984 the State Council issued the Tentative Regulations Governing People's Republic of China Resident Identity. The regulations, to be implemented over a period of years, required all residents over sixteen years of age, except active-duty members of the People's Liberation Army and the People's Armed Police and inmates serving prison sentences, to be issued resident identity cards by the MPS. The picture cards indicated the name, sex, nationality, date of birth, and address of the bearer. Cards for persons sixteen to twenty-five years of age were valid for ten years; those for persons between twenty-five and forty-five were valid for twenty years; and persons over forty-five were issued permanent cards. As of early 1987, only 70 million people had been issued identity cards, well below the national goal. Also, even those with resident identity cards preferred to use other forms of identification.
[edit] Criminal procedure powers
Public security officials also made extensive use of their authority to impose administrative sanctions through two sets of documents. These were the 1957 Regulations on reeducation through labor, which were reissued in 1979 with amendments, and the 1957 Regulations Governing Offenses Against Public Order, which were rescinded and replaced in 1986 by regulations of the same name. Offenders under the Regulations on Reeducation Through Labor might include "vagabonds, people who have no proper occupation, and people who repeatedly breach public order." The police could apprehend such individuals and sentence them to reeducation through labor with the approval of local labor-training administration committees. The 1957 regulations placed no limit on the length of sentences, but beginning in the early 1960s sentences of three or four years were the norm. The 1979 amended Regulations, however, limited the length of reeducation through labor to three years with the possibility of extensions in extraordinary cases. The Regulations Governing Offenses Against Public Order empowered the police to admonish, fine, or detain people for up to fifteen days. Goods illegally in the possession of an offender were to be confiscated, and payment was imposed for damages or hospital fees in the event that injury had been caused.
The criminal laws in force after January 1, 1980, restricted police powers regarding arrests, investigations, and searches. A public security official or a citizen could apprehend a suspect under emergency conditions, but a court or procuratorate was required to approve the arrest. The accused had to be questioned within twenty-four hours and his or her family or work unit notified of the detention "except in circumstances where notification would hinder the investigation or there was no way to notify them." Any premeditated arrest required a warrant from a court or procuratorate. The time that an accused could be held pending investigation was limited to three to seven days, and incarceration without due process was made illegal.
Two officials were needed to conduct a criminal investigation. They were required to show identification and, apparently, to inform the accused of the crime allegedly committed before he or she was questioned. The suspect could refuse to answer only those questions irrelevant to the case. Torture was rendered illegal.
The 1980 laws also provided that in conjunction with an arrest the police could conduct an emergency search; otherwise, a warrant was required. They had the right to search the person, property, and residence of an accused and the person of any injured party. They could intercept mail belonging to the accused and order an autopsy whenever cause of death was unclear.
In July 1980 the government approved new regulations governing police use of weapons and force. Police personnel could use their batons only in self-defense or when necessary to subdue or prevent the escape of violent criminals or rioters. Lethal weapons, such as pistols, could be used if necessary to stop violent riots, to lessen the overall loss of life, or to subdue surrounded but still resisting criminals. http://Louis2J2Sheehan2Esquire.USThe regulations even governed use of sirens, police lights, and whistles.
[edit] Public relations
The relationship between the police officers assigned to neighborhood patrols and the people was close. Police officers lived in a neighborhood on a long-term assignment and were expected to know all the residents on a personal basis. Their task was not only to prevent and punish crime but to promote desirable behavior by counseling and acting as role models. These socially responsible aspects of the police officer's duties were constant responsibilities, and the bond between the public security units and the people was strengthened annually by means of "cherish-the-people" months, during which the police officer made a special effort to help the local people, especially the aged and infirm.
[edit] Recruitment
Police are officially drawn from every segment of the population without restriction as to sex or ethnic origin, though it is commonly believed that Han Chinese are given preference. Selection is based on political loyalty, intelligence, and health, as it is for the PLA. Most recruits have Communist Youth League backgrounds or are former PLA personnel. There is at least one police school in every provincial-level unit, and others are operated by municipalities. Usually those police designated for leadership positions attend the police schools, and patrolmen are trained at the unit and on the job. Legal training is emphasized as a method of improving the quality of the police forces. In 1985 three institutions of higher learning for police personnel were established—the University of Public Security, the University of Police Officers, and the Institute of Criminal Police—offering more than twenty special courses. Students are recruited from the pool of senior middle-school graduates under twenty-two years of age, with a waiver to twenty-five years of age for those who have a minimum of two years' experience in public security work.
| Make/Model | Type | Origin |
| Norinco | QSZ-92 |  People's Republic of China 1996-Present |
| Norinco | 9mm Revolver | People's Republic of China Began in 2006, issued to frontline officers. |
| Norinco | Type 77 | People's Republic of China 1981-Present |
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)