Category: Science

Discrimination!

Showing how very easy it is to be drawn into poor advice.

A close friend, who for all the right reasons has to remain nameless, recently sent me the following:

Self-performed C P R

Because we care for you!!!

1. Let’s say it’s 7:25 pm and you’re going home (alone of course) after an unusually hard day on the job.

2. You’re really tired, upset and frustrated.

3. Suddenly you start experiencing severe pain in your chest that starts to drag out into your arm and up in to your jaw. You are only about five km from the hospital nearest your home.

4. Unfortunately, you don’t know if you’ll be able to make it that far.

5. You have been trained in CPR, but the guy that taught the course did not tell you how to perform it on yourself.

6. HOW TO SURVIVE A HEART ATTACK WHEN ALONE?

Since many people are alone when they suffer a heart attack without help, the person whose heart is beating improperly and who begins to feel faint, has only about 10 seconds left before losing consciousness.

7. However, these victims can help themselves by coughing repeatedly and very vigorously. A deep breath should be taken before each cough, and the cough must be deep and prolonged, as when producing sputum from deep inside the chest.

A breath and a cough must be repeated about every two seconds without let-up until help arrives, or until the heart is felt to be beating normally again.

8. Deep breaths get oxygen into the lungs, and coughing movements squeeze the heart and keep the blood circulating. The squeezing pressure on the heart also helps it regain normal rhythm. In this way, heart attack victims can get to a hospital.

9. Tell as many other people as possible about this. It could save their lives!

10. A cardiologist says if everyone who gets this mail, kindly sends it to 10 people, you can bet that we’ll save at least one life.

11. Rather than sending jokes, please..contribute by forwarding this mail which can save a person’s life!

12. If this message comes around to you more than once, please don’t get irritated. You should be happy that you have many friends who care about you and your well-being.

I thought that it would be good to pass this on to all you dear readers; a la Point 11. So I did a quick web search to find a reliable and authentic source for this advice. Very quickly I came to the American Heart Association’s website and read the following:

Cough CPR

Updated:Dec 10,2014

The American Heart Association does not endorse “cough CPR,” a coughing procedure widely publicized on the Internet. As noted in the 2010 American Heart Association Guidelines for Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation and Emergency Cardiovascular Care, “cough CPR” is not useful for unresponsive victims and should not be taught to lay rescuers.During a sudden arrhythmia (abnormal heart rhythm), it may be possible for a conscious, responsive person to cough forcefully and repetitively to maintain enough blood flow to the brain to remain conscious for a few seconds until the arrhythmia is treated. Blood flow is maintained by increased pressure in the chest that occurs during forceful coughs. This has been mislabeled “cough CPR,” although it’s not a form of traditional resuscitation.

Why isn’t “cough CPR” appropriate in CPR training courses?
“Cough CPR” should not be taught in lay-rescuer CPR courses because it is generally not useful in the prehospital setting. In virtually all lay-rescuer CPR courses, the finding that signals an emergency is the victim’s unresponsiveness. Unresponsive victims will not be able to perform “cough CPR.”

Are there situations when “cough CPR” is appropriate?
“Cough” CPR may be considered in settings such as the cardiac catheterization laboratory where patients are conscious and constantly monitored (for example, with an ECG machine). A nurse or physician is also present who can instruct and coach the patients to cough forcefully every one to three seconds during the initial seconds of a sudden arrhythmia. However, as this is not effective in all patients, it should not delay definitive treatment.

This content was last reviewed on 11/14/2014.

AHA Recommendation

The best strategy is to be aware of the warning signs for cardiac arrest – sudden loss of responsiveness and no normal breathing – and respond to them by calling 9-1-1.

At the same time this item on WikiPedia came up in the search:

Cough CPR is the subject of a hoax email that began circulating in 1999.^{[citation needed]} It is described as a “resuscitation technique” in which through prolonged coughing and deep breathing every 2 seconds, a person suffering a cardiac dysrhythmia immediately before cardiac arrest can keep conscious until help arrives (or until the person can get to the nearest hospital). Neither the American Heart Association nor the American Red Cross endorses cough CPR during a heart attack.^[1].

This confusion appears to revolve primarily over the public’s failure to discriminate between a heart attack, cardiac arrest and cardiac dysrhythmias. A heart attack occurs when an occlusion (e.g. blood clot) of an artery in the heart slowly causes tissue to die. This can result in chest pain and discomfort, and requires immediate medical attention to resolve the occlusion by emergency surgery or cardiac clot-busting drugs. A cardiac dysrhythmia is primarily an electrical problem within the heart, and is sometimes treated with electrolytes, vagal maneuver, or electrical cardioversion. Many dysrhythmias may herald an impending heart attack.^{[medical citation needed]}

So good people, be careful and make a note of the AHA’s recommendation above.

Because our dogs need us to be around for ever!

Dogs are dirty – Thank Goodness!

A fascinating new study offering insight into the health of our gut!

It doesn’t take too much imagination to appreciate that living in a house and sharing it with nine dogs and four cats doesn’t lend itself to perfect hygiene! Indeed, just yesterday morning we found evidence of mice in one of our bedroom cabinets. Plus both the bedroom and the main living room are never completely free of fleas, as my skin attests to. Then let’s not even speak of the hair and dust around the house!

Plus we live in a very rural location and the dog traffic in and out of the house is a consequence of our lifestyle choices that we do accept (99% of the time! 😉 ).

But possibly living a healthier life as a consequence of our ‘dirty’ animals was not something that would have ever crossed my mind until now, thanks to a recent essay published over on The Conversation site.

Read it and come to your own conclusion. It is republished within the generous terms of The Conversation; viz:

We believe in the free flow of information. We use a Creative Commons Attribution NoDerivatives licence, so you can republish our articles for free, online or in print.

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If being too clean makes us sick, why isn’t getting dirty the solution?

January 13, 2016 5.59am EST

Author: William Parker, Associate Professor of Surgery, Duke University

Wash up. Riccardo Meneghini/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND.

Today rates of allergic, autoimmune and other inflammatory diseases are rising dramatically in Western societies. If that weren’t bad enough, we are beginning to understand that many psychiatric disorders, including depression, migraine headaches and anxiety disorders, are associated with inflammation. Perhaps the most startling observation is that our children are afflicted with the same inflammatory problems, contributing to the fact that over 40 percent of US children are on medications for some chronic condition.

And the cause, according to the “hygiene hypothesis,” is that being too clean causes a malformation of the immune system, leading to a wide range of inflammatory diseases. The original idea was that decreased infections in childhood due to hygiene led to a weak immune system, prone to become allergic and inflamed.

If the problem is that we are too clean, then, hypothetically, the issue can be easily resolved. We just need to get dirty, right? Wrong.

Getting dirty doesn’t help our immune system and generally makes inflammation worse. Much worse. That means there is something very wrong with the hygiene hypothesis.

Biodiversity is the real issue

What we actually have is a biodiversity problem. Our clean, indoor-centered lives and a Western diet rich in processed foods have depleted our biomes – the bacteria and worms that naturally live in our bodies, our guts in particular. These organisms play a role in the development and regulation of our immune systems, and scientists have identified the loss of biodiversity as being central to the high rates of inflammatory disease in the developed world.

Giving up soap won’t help your biome. Bar of soap via http://www.shutterstock.com.

The hygiene hypothesis was right…in its day

An increase in inflammatory disorders, like allergies, was first observed about 150 years ago among the aristocracy in Europe, then reached the entire population of the industrialized world by the 1960s, and seems only to have climbed steadily since then.

When trying to understand why inflammatory diseases increased in the late 1800s and throughout the 20th century, scientists put their finger on things such as toilets and water treatment facilities. In those days, having a toilet was “hygiene.”

But times change. After generations of living with toilets and water treatment facilities, some of the wildlife in our bodies has been driven to the point of extinction. Our loss of contact with the soil due to indoor working environments has further depleted the wildlife of our bodies. And the typical Western diet doesn’t help either.

Even if you were to never use soap again for the rest of your life, you would not recover the wildlife your body is missing. Many of the lost organisms of our body don’t exist in North America in the wild, and others you simply won’t come across in your daily life.

On top of tremendous social difficulties imposed by a lack of soap, you’d likely increase your exposure to a lot of aggravating and even dangerous germs. The bacteria and viruses deposited on your shopping cart handle or the light switch at a hotel are generally not good. Those are often the germs of modern society that cause infection and inflammation. Your immune system would remain inflamed, and perhaps be even more agitated than before.

So what exactly are we missing? For practical purposes, it’s important to divide the wildlife of our bodies into two groups: microbes and more complex organisms such as worms. Microbes and worms affect our immune systems in different ways and both are important to be healthy. Biodiversity is the key.

A healthy crop of microbes and a few good worms

What would the gut biomes in our hunter-gatherer ancestors have looked like? A study by Jeffrey Gordon at Washington University in St. Louis showed that people living in modern preindustrial societies had more diverse micriobiome compositions than people living in the United States today. Seventy bacterial species Gordon found in preindustrial people’s biomes were present in very different amounts from those found in the modern U.S. participants.

While each group may have been exposed to different kinds of bacteria in their day-to-day life, the primary reason for the difference in diversity was attributed to diet. The preindustrial folks ate a diet rich in corn and cassava, compared to a U.S. diet rich in animal fat and protein.

And you might think that antibiotics are an issue, but they are usually less of a long-term problem for biodiversity. They can deplete bacteria in the gut microbiome, but the dangerous and disease-inducing tailspin is generally temporary. The microbiome usually recovers quite nicely, for the most part, although some lingering effects can remain.

The second group of organisms that we need are intestinal worms called helminths. These worms are called mutualists, because they benefit from us and we benefit from having them hanging around in our intestines. They used to naturally live in our gut. In fact, only 150 years ago most people in the West had intestinal worms that helped regulate immune function and prevent inflammatory disease. The culprit here isn’t diet, but cleanliness and sanitation.

Eat some fiber. Ali Karimian/Flickr, CC BY-SA.

If getting dirty won’t help your biome, what can you do?

When it comes to bacteria, a healthy diet is the critical ingredient. We can actually achieve a good mixture of gut bacteria very similar to that of our hunter-gatherer ancestors by adopting a good diet high in fiber and low in processed foods. The right diet helps the good bacteria in your gut flourish, and might make it easier for new varieties of good bacteria to take root.

In addition, there are some products that might, in theory, support a more hunter-gatherer-like bacterial flora, by exposing us to the kind of bacteria we don’t encounter anymore, but they haven’t been tested in clinical trials.

Probiotics, generally formulations of bacteria such as bifidobacteria and lactobacilli that grow readily in milk, are safe to use unless patients are severely ill. They could help support biodiversity in our guts if we need to take antibiotics.

Worms are a bit more challenging. There are two schools of thought on how to help helminth-less guts: one is to figure out what makes good worms good for us, and develop a drug that can do the same thing. The other is just to have these good worms living in your intestines.

Personally, I don’t think we can replicate complex biological relationships using a drug. My view is that modern medicine will eventually embrace the actual worm or maybe complex single-celled organisms called protozoans that work the same way, but research in this field is still in the early stages of development.

In the meantime, some intrepid people are going straight for the worm. As in actually acquiring worms in their gut. The challenge for these adventurers is to find a worm that has more benefits than disadvantages.

For instance, the same species of worm can have different effects in different people. The human hookworm, for instance, is commercially available and easily cultured at home. It has been found to treat multiple sclerosis and severe airway hypersensitivity but can also cause severe gastrointestinal distress in many patients.

For now, most individuals interested in immune health will focus on those factors that are risk-free, like avoiding chronic psychological stress, eating well and exercising, and watching out for vitamin D deficiency. These factors, all within our control, are important for avoiding a wide range of inflammation-related diseases, including allergy, autoimmunity, depression and cancer.

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It seems to me that another solution is having more and more dogs and fully embracing them into our lives.

My case rests!

The secret of our happiness.

It’s both obvious, and yet it is not!

Anyone who has more than a single dog around them knows how a group of dogs, even just a couple, are fantastic companions. Extending that line of thought brings one immediately to the realisation that a person who lives on their own yet has a dog never experiences the loneliness of a person who lives on their own ‘sans chien’.

So hold that notion in your mind as I introduce an item that was recently published on the Care 2 Living Healthy blogsite. It was called, in part, What really makes us happy and is republished here within the terms of Care 2.

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A 75-Year Study Reveals What Really Makes Us Happy

By: Becky Striepe, January 8, 2016

Robert Waldinger directed a 75-year study looking at what makes us happy. It boils down to three things, and they’re not the things we tend to think are going to make us happy. His TED Talk about the study findings challenges our most common life goals.

When you ask most people what would make them happy, their answers tend to cluster around achievement. Maybe they think they’d be happier if they were rich or famous. Or maybe they feel like success in their careers would bring them true happiness.

Unlike many studies on happiness, the Harvard Study of Health Development happened in real time. The researchers didn’t rely on memories of past events. Instead, this project—passed down from research team to research team for 75 years—followed a group of 724 men through their lives. They were interviewed every two years, and got complete physicals at every check-in.

When the project began, 268 of the men were sophomores at Harvard University, where the study took place. The other 456 men were inner-city Boston high school students.

Waldinger was the study’s fourth director and in his talk he explains some of the interesting findings about happiness. He says happiness boils down to three things, but if you wanted to sum it up even more succinctly, you could say this: What really makes us happy is social connection.

Waldinger says there are three main lessons about what really makes us happy that come from this study:

Social connections are critical to our mental and physical health. Whether it’s relationships with family, friends or neighbors, people who have social connection are happier and healthier. In fact, he says, loneliness is toxic. People who want these relationships but lack them are not only not as happy but they experience worse health.
Your number of friends doesn’t matter. What matters most is the quality of your relationships, not the quantity. People with loving relationships in their lives, not just from spouses, but friends or other family members, had overall better health. Quality of relationships was a better predictor of later-life health than markers we tend to focus on, like cholesterol levels.
Quality relationships are good for brain health. People who have quality relationships in their lives have better memory as they age. People without quality relationships were more likely to experience cognitive decline as they grew older.

He defines a quality relationship as one where you feel like you can count on the other person. He says that doesn’t mean never fighting. It means an overall sense of security.

When you hear these results, they sort of seem like a no-brainer, right? But when the study began, 80 percent of participants said being rich would make them happy. We know on some level that relationships are a key to happiness, but we tend to discount their full importance. Why? Waldinger gets into that in his talk, as well (at around 12:15, if you want to skip ahead). You can watch it in full right here:

Published on Nov 30, 2015

What makes us happy and healthy as we go through life?
If you want to invest in “the good life,” where should you put your time and energy? Robert Waldinger answers these questions with lessons learned from a 75-year-long study of adult life that started in the late 1930s and continues to this day.
Robert Waldinger is a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and Zen priest. He directs the Harvard Study of Adult Development at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and teaches at Harvard Medical School.

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Thus while this study does not refer to dogs, nonetheless a dog or two (or nine!) does provide a wonderful social connection, as all those who know and love dogs will attest to.

A tiny bite of this could kill your dog!

Please read, digest and share as widely as you can!

Fellow author, Deborah Taylor-French, recently posted a stark warning for all dog owners. Deborah wrote on her blog, Dog Leader Mysteries, the following:

1 thing more toxic than chocolate for dogs

More toxic than chocolate?

Yes, and it’s everywhere.

Please visit my guest blog post on 4Knines blog “One common thing that is more toxic than chocolate for dogs” Then please comment! Of course, after you comment, I’d love it if you would share far and wide for the love and lives of dogs. After working on this post for about a month I shared it as a guest post so that it may reach a larger audience of dog lovers, beyond my WordPress blog.

(I also can’t resist including the following photograph of Deborah and Syd that was in that post!)

So the balance of my post today is a full republication of Deborah’s guest post as it appeared over on 4knines blog.

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One Common Thing That is More Toxic Than Chocolate for Dogs!

By Deborah Taylor-French | Dog Info

What could be more toxic than chocolate?

Actually, I didn’t know the answer until I did the research. The startling fact that thousands of products contain this substance stymied me. There are no warning labels for pet owners. Because these products are made for people, hundreds of dogs and cats suffer when adults or children leave these foods and products where pets can ingest them.

This substance naturally develops in grapes and onions. Is also an ingredient often added to gum, candy, mouthwash, toothpaste, and ear medications for children, plus it is added to many prepared foods.

Gum, candy, peanut butter all harmless, right?

WRONG! What is okay for people to eat, proves toxic for pets. Chocolate and nuts are two examples of what people can eat, yet can be lethal for pets. Xylitol damages dogs’ livers. In both people and canines liver failure often means the end of life.

A Tiny Bit Could Kill Your Dog…

In an article in The Wall Street Journal, Mark Maremont reported that, “Besides gum, xylitol is used by manufacturers in products including mints, gummy vitamins, toothpaste, specialty peanut butter and melatonin sleep aids—in part because it has about two-thirds the calories of sugar and is safer than sugar for diabetics. Some gum makers cite studies showing dental-health benefits.”

“A type of sugar alcohol extracted from plants, xylitol is well-tolerated by humans, but in dogs causes a sudden release of insulin, resulting in low blood sugar and potentially leading to seizures and brain damage. It also can cause liver failure.” Xylitol has been added to literally thousands of products. It is safe in these many products for people, but it kills dogs and cats.”

Toxin Levels for Pets in Xylitol Products

Hershey’s Ice Breakers contain 10 times the pet toxic Xylitol level per piece

“Xylitol makes up more than half the weight in certain Ice Breakers flavors, about 1.2 grams of xylitol per piece, according to Hershey’s consumer helpline. That’s about 8 to 10 times the amount of xylitol in some other popular gums. A pack of the brand, introduced in 2006, contains 40 pieces.”

Hard candies, breath mints, toothpaste, tooth whiteners, mouthwash, some jams and jellies all contain xylitol. The U.S.A. Federal Drug Administration does not require warning labels on any of these sweet treats.

As reported in the Wall Street Journal article, “A toxic dose of xylitol—enough to potentially cause low blood sugar or other symptoms—is 0.1 grams per kilogram of the dog’s weight.”

one piece of Xylitol could be toxic for a 26-pound dog
one piece is 12 times as toxic as a piece of dark chocolate the same weight
100 times as harmful to dogs as milk chocolate

from Mark Maremont, “Sweetener in Gum Is Causing Surge in Accidental Dog Poisonings” The Wall Street Journal, November 2, 2015.

“Xylitol is extracted from plant material and is available as an ingredient (additiive) in more and more foods, but the amount naturally occurring in foods is very small. In addition to gum, xylitol can now be found in some hard candies, chocolate, table syrup, jams, and jellies.” WebMD.com/ supplements/xylitol

What other health risks does xylitol pose for pets?

“…some animal studies have shown tumor growth resulting from high doses of xylitol over long periods.…” – WebMD Warning for Dog Owners

“If you are a dog owner, be aware that xylitol can be toxic to dogs, even in small amounts”

chewable vitamins
Nicorette Gum
IceBreakers
Peanut Butter (some brands)
chocolate
tooth paste
Xlear Nasal Spray

Note: This list is far from complete.

Please read the labels on anything you put on pet level in your car and home. Dogs love sweets.

Keep these foods containing xylitol away from pets:

onions
garlic
onion like shallots, green onions, etc.
peanut butter
grapes
raisins
chocolate
anything baked with xylitol

Xylitol Poisoning Affects Canine and Feline Livers

Xylitol may kill pets that ingest it. If you suspect your dog of eating any items made with this toxin, immediately rush your pet to a veterinarian.

Symptoms of Poisoning

loss of balance
difficulty breathing
difficulty walking
refusal to drink
refusal to eat
unconsciousness

Please help dog lovers and cat lovers by sharing.

Here’s hoping all dog lovers will receive benefit from my second guest post on 4Knines’ blog. Ready to save pets’ lives? Please share this with dog and cat lovers everywhere. Spread the word about this natural substance, artificially introduced to our homes in dozens of products. Please share and discuss the threat to pets’ health and lives from ingesting even a small amount of xylitol.

Have you had a pet that ingested xylitol? Add to our discussion in the comment section.

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As has been said, please share this as far and wide as you can!

Any experiences or other details that you have please make them known as a comment to this post.

I am what I learn!

Reflections on the old and the new.

So here we are on the last day of 2015, the cusp of a new year and who knows what the next twelve months have in store.

All I am going to do is to reflect on the huge potential our modern ‘wired-up’ world offers for learning.

Most will know the saying, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”

But it is wrong!

Here at home, where a number of the dogs are in their old age (Pharaoh is the equivalent in age of 100 human years; one dog year being approximately the same as eight human years) Jean and I see no difficulty in these elderly dogs learning new tricks. Staying with Pharaoh, as an example, his hearing is pretty poor now but he has learnt a whole range of hand signals in recent months and he still communicates very well with us.

There is much in this new world that concerns me and I know I am not alone with this view. But the rewards of reading the thoughts of others right across the world are wonderful beyond measure.

Here’s a tiny dip into some fascinating items and articles that have graced my in-box in just the last twenty-four hours.

Eckhart Tolle’s Moment Reminder: “As far as inner transformation is concerned, there is nothing you can do about it. You cannot transform yourself, and you certainly cannot transform your partner or anybody else. All you can do is create a space for transformation to happen, for grace and love to enter.”
Val Boyco, “Everything comes to us that belongs to us, if we create the capacity to receive it.” ~ Rabindranath Tagore
John Zande in his Sketches on Atheism, “Theism’s most potent, pervasive, irresistibly enchanting gift to frightened but otherwise sane individuals is a belief—a promise—that upon their death they will go home.”
Mother Nature Network, “7 ways to meditate while you move – If you don’t have time for sitting meditation, give one of these active meditations a try.”
George Monbiot, (on the UK floods), “These floods were not just predictable. They were predicted. There were clear and specific warnings that the management of land upstream of the towns now featuring in the news would lead to disaster.”

and my final selection:

Patrice Ayme: (from an essay on Brain & Consciousness) “The best microprocessors you can buy in a store now can do 10 to the power 11 (10^11; one hundred billions) operations per second and use a few hundred watts,” says Wilfred van der Wiel of the University of Twente in the Netherlands, a leader of the gold circuitry effort. “The human brain can do orders of magnitude more and uses only 10 to 20 watts. That’s a huge gap in efficiency.”

So here’s to a new year of wonderful new learnings. And let me leave you with this additional message for 2016.

Namely that The Nation weekly journal are celebrating their 150 years of publishing the magazine. They recently published a 150th Anniversary edition and the front editorial is written by Katrina Vanden Heuval. There is a ‘break out’ to one side on Page 2 of that editorial that reads:

Change is inevitable, but the one constant in The Nation‘s history has been a faith in what can happen if you tell people the truth.

Finding out the truth and sharing it so we can all see what can happen is my wish for 2016.

Happy New Year to all of you, and to all of your friends and loved ones.

Beagle puppies would like a loving New Year!

Please, please sign this petition to stop Beagle puppies being bred for slaughter!

Not going to add anything more than to republish in full a recent CARE2 Petition.

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Stop the Beagle puppy animal testing breeding facility!

BY: Jen Johnson
TARGET: Greg Clark, Secretary of State for Communities and Local government

Unless we take action to stop it, a new puppy farm will open in the UK with the purpose of breeding beagles for animal testing experiments.

Click here to sign the petition demanding the government revoke its approval for this horrific facility.

According to the National Anti-Vivisection Society, dogs taking part in scientific experiments are made to inhale toxic substances through masks, force feed through tubes, and are strapped in harnesses while being injected with drugs.

The facility is owned by a US firm and would be Britain’s second facility for breeding beagles specifically to be cut open and experimented on while still alive.

The other facility breeds 3,000 beagles for animal testing each year.

Dozens of celebrities have spoken out against this farm. Join Ricky Gervais, Queen guitarist Dr Brian May and Downton Abbey’s Peter Egan: sign this petition to demand the government stop the construction of a new cruelty-laden dog breeding facility.

PLEASE SIGN NOW

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As at 09:30 PST yesterday, the target of 310,000 supporters of the petition was just short by 761 persons. Fingers and toes crossed that by the time this post is published the target will have been met. I know there are many caring readers of this blog who wouldn’t hesitate for a moment to sign the petition.

Thank you!

Moments in history

You can blame John Zande for today’s post!

John left an intriguing question as a comment to yesterday’s post.

Oh to have a time machine!

Tell me, Paul, if you did have one, a time machine, what three moments in history would you visit?

It really grabbed Jean and me and we spent quite a few minutes during the day kicking around ideas. At first, it was easy just to do a web search on epic moments in history and see if any of them related to me. But that seemed too easy. So I have picked three that do connect with my life.

May 8th, 1945

I was born on November 8th, 1944. I was born in North London (Acton). It was the period of the Second World War when the V2 rockets were landing all around. Take, for example, the incident just eleven days after my birth, when on the 19th November, 1944 a V2 landed in Wandsworth causing much damage and many fatalities around Hazlehurst Road and Garratt Lane. Spend a moment reviewing who died, and their ages, in that bombing.

So I was precisely six months old when the armistice was announced on May 8th, 1945. As Wikipedia describes it:

Victory in Europe Day, generally known as V-E Day, VE Day or simply V Day was the public holiday celebrated on 8 May 1945 (7 May in Commonwealth realms) to mark the formal acceptance by the Allies of World War II of Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender of its armed forces.[1] It thus marked the end of World War II in Europe.

On 30 April, Adolf Hitler, the Nazi leader, committed suicide during the Battle of Berlin. Germany’s surrender, therefore, was authorised by his successor, Reichspräsident Karl Dönitz. The administration headed by Dönitz was known as the Flensburg Government. The act of military surrender was signed on 7 May in Reims, France and on 8 May in Berlin, Germany.

I would have loved to witness, by being in the crowd that day, the King and Queen acknowledging the end of the war in Europe.

tdih-may08-HD_still_624x352 — May 8, 1945: King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, with Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret, are joined by Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

Nevertheless, that day in May, 1945 has been memorable for me for all of my life. Because my mother, who is still alive today, aged 96, (still living in London but spending Christmas with my sister in Cape Town, by the way), held me in her arms and said aloud: “My dear Paul, you are going to live!” I grew up with those loving words deeply rooted within me.

2. Stonehenge – too many moons ago!

For reasons that I am not entirely clear about, I have always been fascinated by the stars. From the point of view of using the stars to help me navigate strange parts of the world, both on land and at sea. I grew up regarding Polaris, the North Star, almost as a companion. Later in my life when sailing solo from Gibraltar to The Azores, a distance of just under 1,150 nautical miles, on a Tradewind 33 yacht, despite having an early GPS unit it was backup to me using a sextant to maintain (some) awareness of my position.

Tradewind 33 - Songbird of Kent. My home for five years. — Tradewind 33 – Songbird of Kent. My home for five years.

(Reminds me of a anecdote when I was crewing on a privately-owned East Coast Essex fishing smack. I was asking Bill, the owner, why he always laid his thumb on the position on the chart in response to the question, “Where are we?” Bill’s reply: “That’s as accurate as anyone can be!”)

In 1969, when I was driving across the desert plains of Australia, often with inhabited places more than a 150-mile radius away (the Simpson Desert especially coming to mind) the Southern Cross seemed to keep me grounded and remind me that I was making progress.

Back when I was living just outside Totnes in South Devon, my frequent drives up to London along the A303 took me past Stonehenge in Wiltshire.

The December solstice happens at the same instant for all of us, everywhere on Earth. This year the solstice occurs on Tuesday December 22nd at 04:49 GMT (Universal time) with the sun rising over Stonehenge in Wiltshire at 08:04.

THE EARLIEST MONUMENT

It is possible that features such as the Heel Stone and the low mound known as the North Barrow were early components of Stonehenge,[3] but the earliest known major event was the construction of a circular ditch with an inner and outer bank, built about 3000 BC. This enclosed an area about 100 metres in diameter, and had two entrances. It was an early form of henge monument.[4]

Within the bank and ditch were possibly some timber structures and set just inside the bank were 56 pits, known as the Aubrey Holes. There has been much debate about what stood in these holes: the consensus for many years has been that they held upright timber posts, but recently the idea has re-emerged that some of them may have held stones.[5]

Within and around the Aubrey Holes, and also in the ditch, people buried cremations. About 64 cremations have been found, and perhaps as many as 150 individuals were originally buried at Stonehenge, making it the largest late Neolithic cemetery in the British Isles.[6]

Taken from here.

I would have loved being present at Stonehenge when the builders finally were able to stand back and see the Sun “speak” to them at the first Solstice after that point in its construction.

It seems to me to be a most magical place yet Stonehenge offers a mathematical and rhythmic foundation to that magic.

3. First man into space – 12th April, 1961

It was, of course, Yuri Gagarin, who made the first complete orbit of Planet Earth in space.

I would have given anything to be in his seat (and suit). For to look out and see our planet as a small object in an enormous outer space would have to change one’s perception of almost everything; for evermore.

exo-planet-earth-from-space

My wish for the New Year is that we recognise our place both in history and on our Planet Earth, and care for it as the sole, beautiful home that we have.

Now that global recognition would be a moment in history that I would want to experience before I die!

(Thanks John for inspiring me to jot down these thoughts!)

Our Winter Solstice.

Is the moment of publishing this post.

I thought it would make a nice change to publish tomorrow’s post a little earlier than usual. To be precise to publish it on Dec. 22, at 04:48, Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Or in our local Pacific Standard Time (PST) UTC-8 hrs or 20:48 Dec. 21., i.e. 20:48 on the evening of the 21st December. (I am seeing the exact time being declared as 04:48 or 04:49 UTC depending on what you read.)

Granted that the Northern Hemisphere tends to deliver the worst of the Winter weather after the shortest day, it still is good to know that for the next six months, the hours of daylight, in the Northern Hemisphere, will be increasing.

My inclination to write a post on the topic was greatly influenced by a most beautiful post over on Val Boyco’s blogsite. It was called And Winter Came. Here’s the video that Val included in her post.

Isn’t that a most beautiful few minutes!

Impossible to top that!

But I can continue including an informative item that was published over on Mother Nature News, and is republished here within the terms of MNN.

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8 things to know about the winter solstice

From when it happens to why, here’s your crash course on the shortest day of the year.

By: Melissa Breyer, December 18, 2015

Hello, winter. (Photo: psynovec/Shutterstock)

“A day without sunshine is like, you know, night,” quipped Steve Martin – and indeed, even a day with less sunshine can feel a bit dark. Our world depends on the light radiating from that big star we traipse around, and when it’s in short supply, we feel it. But if you count yourself amongst those who don’t love waking up before the sun rises and getting off work after it has set, things are about to lighten up. Hello, winter solstice!

Although winter is really just beginning, we can at least say goodbye to these short little days we’ve been suffering (and don’t let the door hit you on the way out). With that in mind, here’s a collection of curious facts to celebrate the long-awaited return to longer days.

1. There are actually two winter solstices every year 

It’s sometimes easy to be hemisphere-o-centric, but the other side of the planet gets a winter solstice too. With the planet’s orbit tilted on its axis, Earth’s hemispheres swap who gets direct sun over the course of a year. Even though the Northern Hemisphere is closer to the sun during the winter, it’s the tilt away from the sun that causes cold temperatures and less light — which is when the Southern Hemisphere is toasty. So while our winter solstice is on Dec. 21 or 22, the Southern Hemisphere celebrates the same on June 21 or 22.

Here’s how that looks from space (kind of):

2. The winter solstice happens in the blink of an eye 

Although the solstice is marked by a whole day on the calendar, it’s actually just the brief moment when the sun is exactly over the Tropic of Capricorn that the event occurs.

3. Which is why it happens on different days in the same year

What? Yes! In 2015, the solstice happens on Dec. 22, at 04:49 on the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) time clock, the time standard that the world regulates its hours by. Which means any location that is at least five hours behind UTC should break out the party hats on Dec. 21. For example, in the United States the winter solstice happens on Dec. 21 at 11:49 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. The rest of the time zones can welcome longer days beginning on the 22nd.

4. It’s the first day of winter … or it’s not, depending on whom you ask

Meteorologists consider the first day of winter to be Dec. 1, but ask an astronomer — or just about anyone else — and they’ll likely answer that the winter solstice marks the start of the season. There are two ways to look at it: meteorological seasons and astronomical seasons. Meteorological seasons are based on the annual temperature cycle, explains NOAA, while astronomical seasons are based on the position of the Earth in relation to the sun.

5. It’s a time of gloriously long shadows

Shadows are at their playful best on the solstice. (Photo: Mike Page/flickr)

If you’re inclined to take pleasure in the little things, like shadows that seem cast from a funhouse mirror, then the winter solstice is the time for you. It’s now that the sun is at its lowest arc across the sky and thus, shadows from its light are at their longest. (Imagine a flashlight directly above your head and one hitting you from the side, and picture the respective shadows.) And in fact, your noontime shadow on the solstice is the longest it will be all year. Relish those long legs while you can.

6. Full solstice moons are rarer than blue ones

Since 1793, the full moon has only occurred on the winter solstice 10 times, according to the Farmer’s Almanac. The last one was in 2010, which was also a lunar eclipse! The next full moon on a winter solstice won’t be until 2094.

7. There’s a Christmas connection

Since Christ wasn’t issued a birth certificate, there’s no record of the date when he was supposed to have been born. Meanwhile, humans have been celebrating the winter solstice throughout history — the Romans had their feast of Saturnalia, early German and Nordic pagans had their yuletide celebrations. Even Stonehenge has connections to the solstice. But eventually Christian leaders, endeavoring to attract pagans to their faith, added Christian meaning to these traditional festivals. Many Christmas customs, like the Christmas tree, can be directly traced to solstice celebrations.

8. It’s a reminder to thank Copernicus

Will the real Saint Nick please step forward? (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

The word “solstice” comes from the Latin solstitium, meaning “point at which the sun stands still.” Since when has the sun ever moved?! Of course, before Renaissance astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (aka “super smartypants”) came up with the ‘ol heliocentric model, we all figured that everything revolved around the Earth, sun included. Our continued use of the word “solstice” is a beautiful reminder of just how far we’ve come and provides a nice opportunity to give a tip of the hat to great thinkers who challenged the status quo.

And now go have some hot cocoa. Happy winter!

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Only one way to close. That is with this picture of the sun perfectly aligned with the stones at Stonehenge in Wiltshire, UK at the moment of the Winter Solstice.

Stay safe and warm wherever you are.

The next post from Learning from Dogs will be published at 00:00 PST Wednesday, 23rd December.

First puppies born through IVF.

There’s more to this than initially meets the eye.

I’m back to another ScienceAlert article although this story has been widely reported including by our local newspaper, the Grants Pass Daily Courier. This is about in vitro fertilisation (IVF).

Now I am sure that I share with countless others a poor understanding of what IVF is. Here’s a Wikipedia extract:

In vitro fertilization or fertilisation (IVF) is a process by which an egg is fertilised by sperm outside the body: in vitro (“in glass”). The process involves monitoring and stimulating a woman’s ovulatory process, removing an ovum or ova (egg or eggs) from the woman’s ovaries and letting sperm fertilise them in a liquid in a laboratory. The fertilised egg (zygote) is cultured for 2–6 days in a growth medium and is then implanted in the same or another woman’s uterus, with the intention of establishing a successful pregnancy.

Obviously that applies to women.

A quick web search revealed that the IVF procedure is commonly used in livestock. Here’s a graphic example of that (literally):

IVFProcedure

All of which leads nicely in to the Science Alert story.

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ivf-dogs-1_1024

These are the world’s first puppies born through IVF

Cutest science ever.

PETER DOCKRILL 11 DEC 2015

The world’s first litter of puppies born through in vitro fertilisation (IVF) represents the culmination of decades of research and has resulted in seven adorable pups called Cannon, Red, Green, Cornelia, Buddy, Kiwi and Ivy le Fleur.

But the achievement goes beyond almost intolerable cuteness. The researchers say successfully breeding puppies via IVF opens the door for saving endangered canid species and using gene-editing techniques to eradicate heritable diseases in dogs.

“Since the mid–1970s, people have been trying to do this in a dog and have been unsuccessful,” said Alex Travis, a reproductive biologist from Cornell University.

To develop the litter of pups, the researchers had to fertilise eggs from donor mothers with sperm from donor fathers in the lab, before transferring the embryos to a host female. 19 embryos were transferred to the host female in total, who gave birth to seven healthy pups.

Two of the pups came from a beagle mother donor and a cocker spaniel father donor, and the other five came from two pairings of beagle mothers and fathers.

The team had to overcome a number of challenges to make the process work. Picking the right time to collect mature eggs from the female oviduct proved difficult, as dogs’ reproductive cycles occur only twice per year typically. The researchers found delaying the egg collection by one day resulted in greater fertilisation than previous attempts.

An additional barrier was preparing the sperm for fertilisation, which is normally performed by the female tract. But the researchers found they could simulate these conditions by adding magnesium to the cell culture. “We made those two changes, and now we achieve success in fertilisation rates at 80 to 90 percent,” said Travis.

The researchers’ IVF process, described in PLOS One, will enable conservationists to store the semen and eggs of endangered canids and also help protect rare dog breeds.

“We can freeze and bank sperm, and use it for artificial insemination,” said Travis. “We can also freeze oocytes, but in the absence of in vitro fertilisation, we couldn’t use them. Now we can use this technique to conserve the genetics of endangered species.”

The IVF process should also lead to better genome-editing techniques in the future. This issue is particularly pertinent in light of the way that humans have bred dogs over many centuries. With the paired selection of mates for desired traits leading to detrimental genetic baggage due to inbreeding, this gives researchers a chance to eliminate diseases that certain breeds are now predisposed to.

“With a combination of gene-editing techniques and IVF, we can potentially prevent genetic disease before it starts,” said Travis.

We don’t always hear a lot about endangered canid species, but here are five candidates that this research will helpfully be able to help sooner rather than later.

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If you are like me and rarely follow the links in online stories then let me alert you to the last one. It’s an article in Scientific American that opens, thus:

The 5 Most Endangered Canine Species
By John R. Platt on May 9, 2013

Domesticated dogs are some of the most popular animals on the planet, but their cousins in the wild aren’t always as beloved. For thousands of years humans have persecuted wolves, jackals, dingoes, foxes and other members of the family Canidae, pushing many species into or close to extinction. Here are five of the most endangered canine species and subspecies, three of which only continue to exist because a few people and organizations have taken extraordinary efforts to save them.

I don’t have copyright permission to offer more. So all I will do is to list the names of those five most endangered species:

The Ethiopian wolf
The Mexican gray wolf
The red wolf
Darwin’s fox
Island fox

Do go here and read the full article. And let’s not forget that our lovely dogs are not the full canine story.

Friendship between dogs.

A remarkable report about how dogs share.

Apologies for the short intro but my internet connection is still not 100% and I didn’t want to fuss around and lose the window in which to present this fascinating article on ScienceAlert sent to me by Dan Gomez.

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DSCN55181_1024

Dogs give food to their ‘friends’ in first-of-its-kind study

Treats for everybody! But more for pals.
PETER DOCKRILL 17 DEC 2015

Voluntary acts of kindness and positive outward gestures without thought of reward are two of the more redeeming aspects of human society, but to what extent do these prosocial behaviours exist in other animals?

A new study by researchers in Austria suggests that dogs are prosocial among their own kind too, with an experiment involving the voluntary offering of food between the animals showing that dogs also understand the concept of giving.

“Dogs and their nearest relatives, the wolves, exhibit social and cooperative behaviour, so there are grounds to assume that these animals also behave prosocially toward conspecifics,” said Friederike Range, an ethnologist at the Messerli Research Institute. “Additionally, over thousands of years of domestication, dogs were selected for special social skills.”

But measuring prosocial behaviour in dogs isn’t easy, says Range, because they’re so very social with humans. It can be difficult to tell between seemingly prosocial acts and behaviours that could actually just be the dog obediently reacting to cues and unintended communications from researchers.

So to take people out of the equation as much as possible, Range and his colleagues conducted an experiment where two dogs were set up by themselves in cages side by side. One of the dogs, called the donor dog, had the ability to extend one of two trays toward a receiver dog, using its mouth to pull on a string.

One of these trays contained a treat, while the other was empty. The dogs had been trained over weeks to understand how the tray-pulling system worked, and the donor dog in each instance knew that it would receive nothing itself if it gave the treat to its fellow canine (other than the pleasure perhaps of knowing it had done a kindness to its counterpart).

The researchers found that dogs, in the absence of any ulterior motive, do indeed exhibit prosocial behaviour, by voluntarily giving food to other dogs. But, having said that, they can be accused of preferential treatment.

“Dogs truly behave prosocially toward other dogs. That had never been experimentally demonstrated before,” said Range. “What we also found was that the degree of familiarity among the dogs further influenced this behaviour. Prosocial behaviour was exhibited less frequently toward unfamiliar dogs than toward familiar ones.”

In other words, dogs look out for their friends more than they do random strangers, but the same could be said of our own prosocial behaviour. Humans have the capacity for kindness, but we demonstrate it more frequently with those with which we are more familiar.

The findings are reported in Scientific Reports, but now that we know dogs are prosocial, that of course means there are other puzzles for the researchers to solve. Why do dogs act this way? Is it a result of domestication, their cognitive complexity, or has it been shaped by the species’ reliance on cooperative activities, such as foraging together? As dog lovers, we can’t wait to hear the answers.

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What amazing creatures they are!

Cough CPR

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