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Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
September 17, 2003
Garner Ted Armstrong, Evangelist, 73, Dies
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Garner Ted Armstrong, a silver-haired television evangelist known for his easy charm and dark message, died on Monday in Tyler, Tex. He was 73.
The cause was complications of pneumonia, his son Mark said. http://louisjsheehan.blogstream.com
Mr. Armstrong was the son of the evangelist Herbert W. Armstrong, who called himself the ''only apostle of our time'' and used radio to build a ministry that eventually reached millions with its message of the imminent end of the world to be followed by the second coming of Christ. An advertising man, he called his denomination the Radio Church of God. http://louisjsheehan.blogstream.com
Garner Ted Armstrong took the story into the television age. Speaking extemporaneously and informally, he brought wry humor to his apocalyptic forecasts, which were routinely peppered with actual news reports of disasters.
He was at first reluctant to follow in his father's footsteps, but by the 1950's had become the star of the radio and television programs of his father's church, by then renamed the Worldwide Church of God. Both programs were called ''The World Tomorrow,'' with the radio version heard on 360 stations on five continents and the television version seen by 20 million people on 165 stations.
In addition to spreading a spiritual message, the church grew materially to include Ambassador College in Pasadena, Calif., and a sizable publishing operation. By the end of the 1970's, The New York Times reported that it took in more than $70 million a year, more than Billy Graham and Oral Roberts combined.
The narrative of Mr. Armstrong's life had elements of biblical stories and some that recalled Elmer Gantry, the lustful evangelist of Sinclair Lewis's novel.
The most dramatic event came in 1978, when his father excommunicated him because of doctrinal disagreements and accusations of sexual misconduct that were widely reported in the news media. Six years earlier, he was taken off the air for four months after it was discovered that he had been engaged in an extramarital affair, according to the reference book Contemporary Authors.
After his excommunication, Mr. Armstrong formed another church, the Church of God International. But he was asked to step down as leader of that church in 1995 after a Texas woman accused him of sexually assaulting her during two massage sessions. He then formed the Intercontinental Church of God, remaining its president until his death.
No criminal charges were ever filed in the incident.
But with each division, Mr. Armstrong's reach lessened. At the end, he was on about 100 cable television stations and a handful of radio stations.
The rift with his father never healed, in part because Garner Ted had accused Herbert of stealing millions from his own church.
''I tried repeatedly to call him and get in touch with him through letters, but he refused to talk to me,'' the younger Mr. Armstrong said in an interview with The Associated Press at the time of his father's death, at 93, in 1986.
''My biggest regret is not being able to see my father face to face during these past years,'' he said.
Garner Ted Armstrong was born on Feb. 9, 1930, in Portland, Ore. His father saw his birth as a miracle, because his wife had recovered from an anemic condition shortly before he was born. Herbert Armstrong dedicated his newborn son to God ''for him to use as he had need,'' he said in his privately printed autobiography.
In October 1933, Herbert made his first radio broadcast in Salem, Ore. Early the next year, he published the first Plain Truth magazine on mimeographed paper.
The theology he espoused was the same his son would later hold, even as he moved between churches. It blended fundamental Christianity with some tenets of Judaism and Seventh-Day Sabbath doctrine; it departed from mainstream Christianity in rejecting the Trinity and regarding Christmas and Easter as pagan holidays; it held that Anglo-Saxons are the lineal descendants of the 10 lost tribes of Israel.
Members gave the church 10 percent to 40 percent of their income, a tradition Garner Ted continued.
He graduated from high school in Eugene, Ore., in 1947, the year that his father moved his religious headquarters to Pasadena because of the broadcasting facilities there.
Mr. Armstrong joined the Navy in 1948, partly to escape his father's authority. After his honorable discharge, he worked in his father's mail processing office. He entered the church's Ambassador College in 1952.
The next year, he underwent a spiritual conversion and was baptized in his father's church, and married Shirley Hammer, who survives him, along with their sons, Mark, David and Matthew. All live in Tyler.
A daily feature on Mr. Armstrong's Web site is news that may portend the end of the world. Yesterday's report included a water crisis in the Russian Far East, cholera in Liberia and the death of 200 civilians in the Congo. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Thursday, December 25, 2008
exhibit 6.exh.01 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
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Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire . Mental-health workers have long theorized that it takes grueling emotional exertion to recover from the death of a loved one. So-called grief work, now the stock-in-trade of a growing number of grief counselors, entails confronting the reality of a loved one's demise and grappling with the harsh emotions triggered by that loss.http://louis0j0sheehan0esquire.wordpress.com
Two new studies, however, knock grief work off its theoretical pedestal. Among bereaved spouses tracked for up to 2 years after their partners' death, those who often talked with others and briefly wrote in diaries about their emotions fared no better than their tight-lipped, unexpressive counterparts, according to psychologist Margaret Stroebe of Utrecht University in the Netherlands and her colleagues.
In most cases, "the bereaved have to cope with their loss in their own time and their own way," the researchers conclude in the February Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. "There was no evidence that talking about the loss with others and disclosing one's emotions facilitated [psychological] adjustment."
The new findings are consistent with evidence that psychotherapy benefits only the small proportion of bereaved individuals who suffer from severe, unrelenting yearning for a deceased person and seek out professional help (SN: 1/14/95, p. 22).
In one of their new studies, the researchers contacted 105 widows and 23 widowers about 3 months after their spouses had died. Participants, all under age 66, completed questionnaires that asked about their psychological health and how much they had talked about their loss and related feelings. The volunteers also completed the questionnaires 1 year, 1� years, and 2 years after their partners' deaths.
Bereaved individuals exhibited an overall improvement in mood and outlook over the 2 years, the researchers say. Those who frequently discussed their emotional lives with friends and family experienced no signs of speedier adjustment, such as a larger reduction in depression.http://louis0j0sheehan0esquire.wordpress.com
In the second study, 66 widows and 53 widowers completed questionnaires on their psychological health and emotional disclosure between 4 and 8 months after their partners' deaths. They were then randomly assigned to write in a diary each day for a week or placed in a control group that didn't keep a diary. Diary participants, in three groups, were told to write about bereavement-related emotions, daily problems related to the spouse's death, or a mix of feelings and problems.http://louis0j0sheehan0esquire.wordpress.com
Six months later, bereaved participants in the two groups reported a comparable reduction in psychological distress. Also, people who had kept diaries for that 1 week reaped no apparent gains in physical health; they visited their physicians just as often as those who hadn't, the researchers report.
Moreover, diary writing yielded no special benefits for individuals whose partners died unexpectedly rather than after a long illness or for those who said they liked to disclose their feelings rather than keeping them secret.
Other research suggests that grief work may do more harm than good if it fosters the expression of negative emotions, remarks psychologist George A. Bonanno of Columbia University. For example, he has reported that bereaved spouses who most readily show anger and other negative emotions in their facial expressions encounter the most problems adjusting to their loss. In contrast, those who spend relatively little time trying to comprehend their loss and cite mainly positive feelings about a deceased spouse exhibit the best adjustment, Bonanno says.
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire . Mental-health workers have long theorized that it takes grueling emotional exertion to recover from the death of a loved one. So-called grief work, now the stock-in-trade of a growing number of grief counselors, entails confronting the reality of a loved one's demise and grappling with the harsh emotions triggered by that loss.http://louis0j0sheehan0esquire.wordpress.com
Two new studies, however, knock grief work off its theoretical pedestal. Among bereaved spouses tracked for up to 2 years after their partners' death, those who often talked with others and briefly wrote in diaries about their emotions fared no better than their tight-lipped, unexpressive counterparts, according to psychologist Margaret Stroebe of Utrecht University in the Netherlands and her colleagues.
In most cases, "the bereaved have to cope with their loss in their own time and their own way," the researchers conclude in the February Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. "There was no evidence that talking about the loss with others and disclosing one's emotions facilitated [psychological] adjustment."
The new findings are consistent with evidence that psychotherapy benefits only the small proportion of bereaved individuals who suffer from severe, unrelenting yearning for a deceased person and seek out professional help (SN: 1/14/95, p. 22).
In one of their new studies, the researchers contacted 105 widows and 23 widowers about 3 months after their spouses had died. Participants, all under age 66, completed questionnaires that asked about their psychological health and how much they had talked about their loss and related feelings. The volunteers also completed the questionnaires 1 year, 1� years, and 2 years after their partners' deaths.
Bereaved individuals exhibited an overall improvement in mood and outlook over the 2 years, the researchers say. Those who frequently discussed their emotional lives with friends and family experienced no signs of speedier adjustment, such as a larger reduction in depression.http://louis0j0sheehan0esquire.wordpress.com
In the second study, 66 widows and 53 widowers completed questionnaires on their psychological health and emotional disclosure between 4 and 8 months after their partners' deaths. They were then randomly assigned to write in a diary each day for a week or placed in a control group that didn't keep a diary. Diary participants, in three groups, were told to write about bereavement-related emotions, daily problems related to the spouse's death, or a mix of feelings and problems.http://louis0j0sheehan0esquire.wordpress.com
Six months later, bereaved participants in the two groups reported a comparable reduction in psychological distress. Also, people who had kept diaries for that 1 week reaped no apparent gains in physical health; they visited their physicians just as often as those who hadn't, the researchers report.
Moreover, diary writing yielded no special benefits for individuals whose partners died unexpectedly rather than after a long illness or for those who said they liked to disclose their feelings rather than keeping them secret.
Other research suggests that grief work may do more harm than good if it fosters the expression of negative emotions, remarks psychologist George A. Bonanno of Columbia University. For example, he has reported that bereaved spouses who most readily show anger and other negative emotions in their facial expressions encounter the most problems adjusting to their loss. In contrast, those who spend relatively little time trying to comprehend their loss and cite mainly positive feelings about a deceased spouse exhibit the best adjustment, Bonanno says.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
spain 5.spa.000300 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
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The tumult of the Spanish Inquisition, which began over 500 years ago, has echoed down through the generations of people living on the Iberian peninsula in a remarkable way. A new genetic study has revealed that many current Spaniards have Sephardic Jewish or North African heritage, indicating that their ancestors converted to Christianity during the religious upheaval of the 15th century in order to remain in Spain. http://louis6j6sheehan6esquire.wordpress.com The study showed that one in ten Iberians has a North African ancestor, while one in five had Jewish forebears.
This melting pot probably occurred after centuries of coexistence and tolerance among Muslims, Jews and Christians ended in 1492, when Catholic monarchs converted or expelled the Islamic population, called Moriscos. Sephardic Jews, whose Iberian roots extend to the first century AD, received much the same treatment. “They were given a choice: convert, go, or die,” says Mark Jobling, a geneticist at the University of Leicester, UK. Some of those that became Christian would have ended up contributing genes to the Iberian pool [New Scientist]. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
For the study, published in the American Journal of Human Genetics [subscription required], biologists analyzed the Y chromosomes of 1,140 men living on the Iberian peninsula. http://louis6j6sheehan6esquire.wordpress.com They developed a genetic signature of Sephardic men from communities founded by Jews who migrated from Spain after 1492, as well as one for Moroccan men; then they looked for those genetic traces in the Iberian population. Because most of the Y chromosome remains unchanged from father to son, the proportions of Sephardic and Moorish ancestry detected in the present population are probably the same as those just after the 1492 expulsions [The New York Times].
Researchers say the findings offer a glimpse back into Spanish history, and helps refute the creed presented by generations of Spanish monarchs: that Spanish civilization is fundamentally Catholic and that other religious and ethnic groups left few traces. Studies such as the new one “tell the true history of everyone’s ancestors and not just the history book lessons of kings and queens,” says James Wilson, a population geneticist. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
The tumult of the Spanish Inquisition, which began over 500 years ago, has echoed down through the generations of people living on the Iberian peninsula in a remarkable way. A new genetic study has revealed that many current Spaniards have Sephardic Jewish or North African heritage, indicating that their ancestors converted to Christianity during the religious upheaval of the 15th century in order to remain in Spain. http://louis6j6sheehan6esquire.wordpress.com The study showed that one in ten Iberians has a North African ancestor, while one in five had Jewish forebears.
This melting pot probably occurred after centuries of coexistence and tolerance among Muslims, Jews and Christians ended in 1492, when Catholic monarchs converted or expelled the Islamic population, called Moriscos. Sephardic Jews, whose Iberian roots extend to the first century AD, received much the same treatment. “They were given a choice: convert, go, or die,” says Mark Jobling, a geneticist at the University of Leicester, UK. Some of those that became Christian would have ended up contributing genes to the Iberian pool [New Scientist]. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
For the study, published in the American Journal of Human Genetics [subscription required], biologists analyzed the Y chromosomes of 1,140 men living on the Iberian peninsula. http://louis6j6sheehan6esquire.wordpress.com They developed a genetic signature of Sephardic men from communities founded by Jews who migrated from Spain after 1492, as well as one for Moroccan men; then they looked for those genetic traces in the Iberian population. Because most of the Y chromosome remains unchanged from father to son, the proportions of Sephardic and Moorish ancestry detected in the present population are probably the same as those just after the 1492 expulsions [The New York Times].
Researchers say the findings offer a glimpse back into Spanish history, and helps refute the creed presented by generations of Spanish monarchs: that Spanish civilization is fundamentally Catholic and that other religious and ethnic groups left few traces. Studies such as the new one “tell the true history of everyone’s ancestors and not just the history book lessons of kings and queens,” says James Wilson, a population geneticist. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Thursday, December 4, 2008
ozone 4.ozo000011 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
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Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire. In healthy infants, even ozone concentrations well below those allowed by federal law trigger asthmalike symptoms, a new study shows. http://www.blog.ca/user/Beforethebigbang
The finding indicates that federal limits on this pervasive pollutant, a prime constituent of smog, don't protect infants "from rather severe respiratory symptoms," says epidemiologist Elizabeth W. Triche of the Yale University School of Medicine. http://www.blog.ca/user/Beforethebigbang
Triche's team recruited 691 women with 3-to-5-month-old infants from nonsmoking households around Roanoke, Va. Sixty-one moms had asthma, signaling that their babies were at high risk for developing the disease. The researchers collected daily respiratory data, as reported by the mothers, on all the children for 83 days in summer—the peak ozone season—and then correlated the infant's symptoms with outdoor measurements of several air pollutants.
As ozone values climbed, so did the risk of wheezing and troubled breathing in the babies, Triche's team reports in the June Environmental Health Perspectives. The other pollutants, such as fine particulates, didn't show that correlation.
For each 11.8 parts per billion (ppb) increase in average daily concentrations in ozone, the likelihood of wheezing increased by 41 percent in all the infants and 91 percent in those with asthmatic moms. Each 11.8 ppb increase in ozone also increased the risk of labored breathing by almost 30 percent for all kids and more than doubled it in babies with asthmatic moms.
These findings dovetail with those that Triche's group reported 3 years ago in 6-to-12-year-old children. The big difference: Those children had asthma. In the new infant study, she notes, "children were not asthmatic." Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire. In healthy infants, even ozone concentrations well below those allowed by federal law trigger asthmalike symptoms, a new study shows. http://www.blog.ca/user/Beforethebigbang
The finding indicates that federal limits on this pervasive pollutant, a prime constituent of smog, don't protect infants "from rather severe respiratory symptoms," says epidemiologist Elizabeth W. Triche of the Yale University School of Medicine. http://www.blog.ca/user/Beforethebigbang
Triche's team recruited 691 women with 3-to-5-month-old infants from nonsmoking households around Roanoke, Va. Sixty-one moms had asthma, signaling that their babies were at high risk for developing the disease. The researchers collected daily respiratory data, as reported by the mothers, on all the children for 83 days in summer—the peak ozone season—and then correlated the infant's symptoms with outdoor measurements of several air pollutants.
As ozone values climbed, so did the risk of wheezing and troubled breathing in the babies, Triche's team reports in the June Environmental Health Perspectives. The other pollutants, such as fine particulates, didn't show that correlation.
For each 11.8 parts per billion (ppb) increase in average daily concentrations in ozone, the likelihood of wheezing increased by 41 percent in all the infants and 91 percent in those with asthmatic moms. Each 11.8 ppb increase in ozone also increased the risk of labored breathing by almost 30 percent for all kids and more than doubled it in babies with asthmatic moms.
These findings dovetail with those that Triche's group reported 3 years ago in 6-to-12-year-old children. The big difference: Those children had asthma. In the new infant study, she notes, "children were not asthmatic." Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Monday, November 24, 2008
windpipe 88.win.1003 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
In a pioneering new treatment, doctors created a tailor-made new windpipe for a woman out of donor tissue and the woman’s own stem cells, and say the new, transplanted trachea has been accepted by the woman’s immune system as a natural part of her body without the use of powerful immune-suppressing drugs. Martin Birchall, one of the surgeons, said the transplant showed “the very real potential for adult stem cells and tissue engineering to radically improve their ability to treat patients with serious diseases. We believe this success has proved that we are on the verge of a new age in surgical care” [The New York Times]. Similar treatments could soon be tried on transplants of other hollow organs, like the bowel, bladder, and reproductive tract, he said.
The 30-year-old patient, Claudia Castillo, had failing airways and severe shortness of breath due to a bout with tuberculosis. By March of this year, Castillo’s condition had deteriorated to the point where she was unable to care for her children. Removing a lung was one treatment option, which would have allowed her to live, but seriously impaired her quality of life [Forbes.com]. She opted instead for this experimental treatment, in which doctors took a piece of trachea from an organ donor and transformed it into a structure that now appears native to her body.
As described in the journal Lancet [subscription required], researchers used strong chemicals and enzymes to wash away all of the cells from the donor trachea, leaving only a tissue scaffold made of the fibrous protein collagen [BBC News]. They then grew colonies of stem cells, taken from Castillo’s bone marrow, and “seeded” the outside of the tissue scaffold with those cells, which began to grow into the cells that normally surround the windpipe. Four days after the seeding, surgeons grafted in the refurbished structure, replacing Castillo’s damaged trachea. http://Louis-j-sheehan.com
Researchers say the surgery was a complete success: Castillo, who lives in Spain, had no complications from the surgery and left the hospital after 10 days. She is returning to normal activities and even called her doctors from a night club to say she had been out dancing all night, the researchers said [Reuters]. Castillo has not taken any immunosuppressant drugs, and doctors say the chance of her new windpipe being rejected is zero percent.http://Louis-J-Sheehan.biz
The enthused surgeon Martin Birchall said that in 20 years time, virtually any transplant organ could be made in this way. US scientists have already successfully implanted bladder patches grown in the laboratory from patients’ own cells into people with bladder disease. The European research team … is applying for funding to do windpipe and voice box transplants in cancer patients. Clinical trials could begin five years from now, they said. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
In a pioneering new treatment, doctors created a tailor-made new windpipe for a woman out of donor tissue and the woman’s own stem cells, and say the new, transplanted trachea has been accepted by the woman’s immune system as a natural part of her body without the use of powerful immune-suppressing drugs. Martin Birchall, one of the surgeons, said the transplant showed “the very real potential for adult stem cells and tissue engineering to radically improve their ability to treat patients with serious diseases. We believe this success has proved that we are on the verge of a new age in surgical care” [The New York Times]. Similar treatments could soon be tried on transplants of other hollow organs, like the bowel, bladder, and reproductive tract, he said.
The 30-year-old patient, Claudia Castillo, had failing airways and severe shortness of breath due to a bout with tuberculosis. By March of this year, Castillo’s condition had deteriorated to the point where she was unable to care for her children. Removing a lung was one treatment option, which would have allowed her to live, but seriously impaired her quality of life [Forbes.com]. She opted instead for this experimental treatment, in which doctors took a piece of trachea from an organ donor and transformed it into a structure that now appears native to her body.
As described in the journal Lancet [subscription required], researchers used strong chemicals and enzymes to wash away all of the cells from the donor trachea, leaving only a tissue scaffold made of the fibrous protein collagen [BBC News]. They then grew colonies of stem cells, taken from Castillo’s bone marrow, and “seeded” the outside of the tissue scaffold with those cells, which began to grow into the cells that normally surround the windpipe. Four days after the seeding, surgeons grafted in the refurbished structure, replacing Castillo’s damaged trachea. http://Louis-j-sheehan.com
Researchers say the surgery was a complete success: Castillo, who lives in Spain, had no complications from the surgery and left the hospital after 10 days. She is returning to normal activities and even called her doctors from a night club to say she had been out dancing all night, the researchers said [Reuters]. Castillo has not taken any immunosuppressant drugs, and doctors say the chance of her new windpipe being rejected is zero percent.http://Louis-J-Sheehan.biz
The enthused surgeon Martin Birchall said that in 20 years time, virtually any transplant organ could be made in this way. US scientists have already successfully implanted bladder patches grown in the laboratory from patients’ own cells into people with bladder disease. The European research team … is applying for funding to do windpipe and voice box transplants in cancer patients. Clinical trials could begin five years from now, they said. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
goat 883.goa.1 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
People began to domesticate wild goats at least 10,000 years ago in the Zagros Mountains of western Iran, according to a new study. It indicates that at that time, villagers in the area experimented with ways of controlling herds. These early domesticators primarily slaughtered male goats that had not reached their reproductive prime, leaving mature males to breed with a herd's adult females, say the researchers.http://louissheehan.bravejournal.com/
Goats in these early managed herds probably looked much like wild goats, both physically and genetically, say Melinda A. Zeder of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., and Brian Hesse of the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Over time, isolation of managed herds and the introduction of selective breeding produced changes in domesticated goats, the two anthropologists propose.
Some researchers have argued that declines in overall body size of goat skeletons unearthed at two ancient village sites in the Zagros Mountains reflect early domestication.
However, goats from these sites, Ganj Dareh and Ali Kosh, fall within the size range of a sample of modern wild-goat skeletons, Zeder found in a preliminary study. The Ganj Dareh and Ali Kosh samples contain a large proportion of bones from young males, the scientists report in the March 24 Science. Previous investigators at the sites had excluded these bones—which had not developed fully but still were larger than comparable bones of fully grown females—from body-size estimates for adult goats. Because more females than males reached maturity, these calculations mistakenly portrayed the villagers' animals as much smaller than wild goats, Zeder and Hesse assert.
Evidence that people had primarily killed young male goats came as no surprise to Hesse. He had previously theorized that early herders mainly killed young males for meat and kept most females and a few older males as breeding stock. In contrast, hunters interested in a quicker return on their effort often targeted the largest males in a herd or killed many animals at once, Hesse had proposed. http://louissheehan.bravejournal.com/
The researchers determined that Ganj Dareh was inhabited about 10,000 years ago, for a span of no more than 100 to 200 years. Settlement of Ali Kosh occurred 500 to 1,000 years later and lasted about 500 years. Radiocarbon analyses generated age estimates from tiny fragments of bone and charred seeds found in a range of soil layers at both sites. http://louissheehan.bravejournal.com/
Emergence of a warmer, wetter climate in western Asia 15,000 years ago instigated a spread of grasslands and a resurgence of animals such as sheep, goats, and pigs, Zeder holds. Soon, people there took the first steps toward domestication by searching for ways to manage animal herds, in her view.
People began to domesticate wild goats at least 10,000 years ago in the Zagros Mountains of western Iran, according to a new study. It indicates that at that time, villagers in the area experimented with ways of controlling herds. These early domesticators primarily slaughtered male goats that had not reached their reproductive prime, leaving mature males to breed with a herd's adult females, say the researchers.http://louissheehan.bravejournal.com/
Goats in these early managed herds probably looked much like wild goats, both physically and genetically, say Melinda A. Zeder of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., and Brian Hesse of the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Over time, isolation of managed herds and the introduction of selective breeding produced changes in domesticated goats, the two anthropologists propose.
Some researchers have argued that declines in overall body size of goat skeletons unearthed at two ancient village sites in the Zagros Mountains reflect early domestication.
However, goats from these sites, Ganj Dareh and Ali Kosh, fall within the size range of a sample of modern wild-goat skeletons, Zeder found in a preliminary study. The Ganj Dareh and Ali Kosh samples contain a large proportion of bones from young males, the scientists report in the March 24 Science. Previous investigators at the sites had excluded these bones—which had not developed fully but still were larger than comparable bones of fully grown females—from body-size estimates for adult goats. Because more females than males reached maturity, these calculations mistakenly portrayed the villagers' animals as much smaller than wild goats, Zeder and Hesse assert.
Evidence that people had primarily killed young male goats came as no surprise to Hesse. He had previously theorized that early herders mainly killed young males for meat and kept most females and a few older males as breeding stock. In contrast, hunters interested in a quicker return on their effort often targeted the largest males in a herd or killed many animals at once, Hesse had proposed. http://louissheehan.bravejournal.com/
The researchers determined that Ganj Dareh was inhabited about 10,000 years ago, for a span of no more than 100 to 200 years. Settlement of Ali Kosh occurred 500 to 1,000 years later and lasted about 500 years. Radiocarbon analyses generated age estimates from tiny fragments of bone and charred seeds found in a range of soil layers at both sites. http://louissheehan.bravejournal.com/
Emergence of a warmer, wetter climate in western Asia 15,000 years ago instigated a spread of grasslands and a resurgence of animals such as sheep, goats, and pigs, Zeder holds. Soon, people there took the first steps toward domestication by searching for ways to manage animal herds, in her view.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
disorder ooo.dis.ww3 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
Several studies have noted that an inner brain structure, the hippocampus, is unusually small in individuals who, after surviving extraordinary threats, experience flashbacks, nightmares, and other symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN-ESQUIRE.US A new investigation, in the November Nature Neuroscience, indicates that some of these people possess an undersized hippocampus before they ever develop PTSD.
This finding challenges the theory that hormonal responses to traumatic events shrink the hippocampus, a brain area implicated in memory and in the learning of fear responses (SN: 6/3/95, p. 340).
Psychiatrist Mark W. Gilbertson of Harvard Medical School in Boston and his colleagues studied 40 pairs of identical twins in which one brother had been a Vietnam combat veteran and the other had stayed at home. After the war, PTSD afflicted 17 combat veterans. None of the veterans' brothers developed PTSD.
Magnetic resonance imaging scans identified a smaller hippocampus, relative to total brain size, in those with PTSD than in other combat veterans. In the PTSD group, the hippocampus reached its lowest relative size in men with the most severe psychiatric symptoms. A comparably small hippocampus appeared in the twin brothers of men with PTSD, but not in brothers of other veterans. LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN-ESQUIRE.US
A small hippocampus may predispose a person to form intense, long-lasting emotional responses to sights, smells, and other stimuli associated with traumatic events, the scientists theorize. LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN-ESQUIRE.US
Trauma-induced atrophy of the hippocampus may still occur and perhaps contribute to PTSD, comments Stanford University biologist Robert M. Sapolsky. For instance, he notes an earlier study of different Vietnam veterans by Gilbertson and his team. They found a small hippocampus in those who survived severe combat trauma, whether or not PTSD later occurred.
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