usandi, who has researched the impact of climate
change on Indonesia, estimated sea levels would rise by an average of 0.5 cm a
year until 2080, while the submersion rate in Jakarta, which lies just above
sea level, would be higher at 0.87 cm a year.
A study by the UK-based International Institute for
Economy and Development (IIED) said at least 8 out of 92 of the outermost small
islands that make up the country's borders are vulnerable.
TOO MANY ISLANDS TO COUNT
Less than half of Indonesia's islands are inhabited
and many are not even named. Now, the authorities are hastily counting the
coral-fringed islands that span a distance of 5,000 km, the equivalent of going
from Ireland to Iran, before it is too late.
Disappearing islands and coastlines would not only
change the Indonesian map, but could also restrict access to mineral resources
situated in the most vulnerable spots, Susandi said.
He estimates that land loss alone would cost
Indonesia 5 percent of its GDP without taking into account the loss of property
and livelihood as millions migrate from low-lying coastlines to cities and
towns on higher ground.
There are 42 million people in Indonesia living in
areas less than 10 meters above the average sea level, who could be acutely
affected by rising sea levels, the IIED study showed.
A separate study by the United Nations Environment
Programme in 1992 showed in two districts in Java alone, rising waters could
deprive more than 81,000 farmers of their rice fields or prawn and fish ponds,
while 43,000 farm laborers would lose their job.
One solution is to cover Indonesia's fragile
beaches with mangroves, the first line of defense against sea level rise, which
can break big waves and hold back soil and silt that damage coral reefs.
A more expensive alternative is to erect multiple
concrete walls on the coastlines, as the United States has done to break the
tropical storms that hit its coast, Susandi said.
Some areas, including the northern shores of
Jakarta, are already fitted with concrete sea barriers, but they are often
damaged or too low to block rising waters and big waves such as the ones that
hit Jakarta in November.
"It will be like permanent flooding,"
Susandi said. "By 2050, about 24 percent of Jakarta will disappear,"
possibly even forcing the capital to move to Bandung, a hill city 180 km east
of Jakarta.
(Editing
by Megan Goldin)
WASHINGTON
- One of the most complete dinosaur mummies ever found is revealing secrets
locked away for millions of years, bringing researchers as close as they will
ever get to touching a live dino.
The fossilized duckbilled hadrosaur is so well
preserved that scientists have been able to calculate its muscle mass and learn
that it was more muscular than thought, probably giving it the ability to
outrun predators such as T. rex.
While they call it a mummy, the dinosaur is not
really preserved like King Tut was. The dinosaur body has been fossilized into
stone. Unlike the collections of bones found in museums, this hadrosaur came
complete with skin, ligaments, tendons and possibly some internal organs,
according to researchers.
The study is not yet complete, but scientists have
concluded that hadrosaurs were bigger — 3 1/2 tons and up to 40 feet long — and
stronger than had been known, were quick and flexible and had skin with scales
that may have been striped.
"Oh, the skin is wonderful,"
paleontologist Phillip Manning of Manchester University in England rhapsodized,
admitting to a "glazed look in my eye."
"It's unbelievable when you look at it for the
first time," he said in a telephone interview. "There is depth and
structure to the skin. The level of detail expressed in the skin is just
breathtaking."
Manning said there is a pattern of banding to the
larger and smaller scales on the skin. Because it has been fossilized
researchers do not know the skin color. Looking at it in monochrome shows a
striped pattern.
He notes that in modern reptiles, such a pattern is
often associated with color change.
The fossil was found in 1999 in North Dakota and
now is nicknamed "Dakota." It is being analyzed in the world's
largest CT scanner, operated by the Boeing Co. The machine usually is used for
space shuttle engines and other large objects. Researchers hope the technology
will help them learn more about the fossilized insides of the creature.
"It's a definite case of watch this
space," Manning said. "We are trying to be very conservative, very
careful."
But they have learned enough so far to produce two
books and a television program. The TV special, "Dino Autopsy," will
air on the National Geographic channel Dec. 9. National Geographic Society
partly funded the research.
A children's book, "DinoMummy: The Life,
Death, and Discovery of Dakota, a Dinosaur From Hell Creek," goes on sale
Tuesday and an adult book, "Grave Secrets of Dinosaurs: Soft Tissues and
Hard Science," will be available in January.
Soft parts of dead animals normally decompose
rapidly after death. Because of chemical conditions where this animal died,
fossilization — replacement of tissues by minerals — took place faster than the
decomposition, leaving mineralized portions of the tissue.
That does not mean DNA, the building blocks of
life, can be recovered, Manning said. Some has been recovered from frozen mammoths
up to 1 million years old, he said. At the age of this dinosaur, 65 million to
67 million years old, "the chance of finding DNA is remote," he said.
A Manchester colleague, Roy Wogelius, who also
worked on the dinosaur, said "one thing that we are very confident of is
that we do have some organic molecular breakdown products present." That
look at chemicals associated with the animal is still research in progress.
Matthew Carrano, a paleontologist at the
Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, said he could not comment in
detail about the find because he had not seen the research. But, he added,
"Any time we can get a glimpse of the soft anatomy of a dinosaur, that's
significant."
The findings from Dakota may cause museums to
rethink their dinosaur displays.
Most dinosaur skeletons in museums, for example,
show the vertebrae right next to one another. The researchers looking at Dakota
found a gap of about a centimeter — about 0.4 inch — between each one.
That indicates there may have been a disk or other
material between them, allowing more flexibility and meaning the animal was
actually longer than what is shown in a museum. On large animals, adding the
space could make them a yard longer or more, Manning said.
Because ligaments and tendons were preserved, as
well as other parts of Dakota, researchers could to calculate its muscle mass,
showing it was stronger and potentially faster than had been known.
They estimated the hadrosaur's top speed at about
28 miles per hour, 10 mph faster than the giant T. Rex is thought to have been
able to run.
"It's very logical, though, that a hadrosaur
could run faster than a T. rex. It's a major prey animal and it doesn't have
big horns on its head like triceratops. Hadrosaurs didn't have much in the way
of defense systems, so they probably relied on fleet of foot," Manning
said.
Dakota was discovered by Tyler Lyson, then a
teenager who liked hunting for fossils on his family ranch. Lyson, who is
currently working on his doctorate degree in paleontology at Yale University,
founded the Marmarth Research Foundation, an organization dedicated to the
excavation, preservation and study of dinosaurs.
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Although avian flu made few headlines
in 2007, the virus continued to claim lives in Asia, particularly in Indonesia.
The good news is that this year the FDA approved the first bird flu vaccine and
announced plans to stockpile it for emergency use during a crisis.
The H5N1 strain of bird flu first
appeared in Hong Kong in 1997 and since then has infected more than 330 people,
killing more than 200. In 2007, the virus—which normally infects birds and
occasionally jumps from birds to humans—affected seven countries, prompting
experts to warn that it could gain the ability to jump from person to person
and trigger a pandemic.
In April, the FDA approved a two-shot
vaccine made by Sanofi Pasteur. In a clinical trial, this vaccine protected 45
percent of the adults who received the highest dose against infection from
H5N1. The government said its goal was to stockpile enough doses of the Sanofi
vaccine to protect 20 million people as a stopgap measure until a more potent
vaccine is available.
The year 2007 also brought an
innovation that could significantly speed up ordinary flu vaccine production.
In the conventional method, the virus is grown in fertilized hens’ eggs, which
can take up to six months. John Treanor, professor of medicine at the
University of Rochester, and researchers at Connecticut-based Protein Sciences
instead infected caterpillar cells with an insect virus—a baculovirus
engineered to produce flu virus protein from three ordinary flu strains. In a
preliminary study published in the April Journal of the American Medical
Association, the researchers found that the vaccine produced by this method
protects against the two strains to which the subjects were exposed and most
likely protects against the third. The same method could be used to create vaccines
for all flu strains at least a month faster than at present.
In the meantime, Canada saw an
outbreak of another deadly bird flu strain—H7N3—in September. “We can’t afford
not to be concerned,” says Robert Webster, a leading bird flu expert at St. Jude
Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. “If you’re a chicken
farmer, there’s always a pandemic going on.”
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The matter that makes up everything we
can see or touch, either on Earth or beyond, is exceedingly rare, cosmically
speaking. Most of the material in the universe is something called dark matter,
mysterious stuff that doesn’t emit or reflect light and doesn’t interact with
what we think of as ordinary matter. It reveals its presence only by its
gravitational effects, guiding the evolution of the early universe and still
affecting the motion of galaxies. Earth-based experiments have attempted to
detect dark matter particles, but so far they have drawn a blank.
Astronomers, however, have had a
better year, continuing to find evidence of the crucial role dark matter plays
in shaping the visible cosmos. Thanks to about a thousand hours of observation
by the Hubble Space Telescope, scientists have compiled a dark matter map of a
tiny slice of the sky, about two square degrees of the entire sky’s
40,000-square-degree span. The map, which was published in the journal Nature
last January, confirmed a central prediction of modern astrophysics: Galaxies
formed in, and remain bound to, enormous clouds of dark matter.
In the early universe, astronomers
believe, dark matter provided the gravitational scaffolding on which ordinary
matter coalesced and grew into galaxies. According to these dark matter
theories, as the visible galaxies formed, some of the matter surrounding them
should have clumped together into hundreds of small satellite galaxies, most of
which should survive today. But the observed number of satellite galaxies is
only a fraction of what the theory predicts. “We should see about a hundred to
a thousand, but up to 2005, there were only 12,” says Marla Geha, an
astrophysicist at Yale University. Astronomers call it the missing satellite
problem.
Astronomers had speculated that the
existence of small, dark matter–dominated satellite galaxies might solve the
problem, but there was no evidence that any such galaxies existed.
Last spring, Geha and Josh Simon, a
colleague at Caltech, used the 10-meter Keck II telescope on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea
to study the mass of eight newly discovered satellite galaxies, detected over
the last two years by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, an ongoing effort to make a
detailed map of a million galaxies and quasars. Geha and Simon found that these
satellite galaxies were much fainter and smaller in mass than the other known
satellites—and 99 percent of their mass was in the form of dark matter. Given
that the galaxies found by Geha and Simon have such high concentrations of dark
matter, it’s likely that many other satellite galaxies could be 100 percent
dark matter.
“We expect some to be undetectable,
with no stars or gas,” says Geha. “There are indirect ways of finding the dark
matter satellites, but it will take more work.”
Some astrophysicists believe that dark
matter particles may occasionally annihilate each other, producing bursts of
high-energy gamma rays. If the Milky Way has dark matter satellites, and if
they do emit gamma rays, the Gamma-Ray Large Area Space Telescope, scheduled
for launch in February, might detect them.
Dark matter may also be responsible
for creating the most awesome objects in the universe: the enormous black holes
believed to lurk in the center of nearly every large galaxy. Tom Theuns and
Liang Gao, astronomers at Durham University in England, used a computer model
last year to study how two types of dark matter, known as warm and cold, may
have influenced the formation of the very first stars in the universe—and the
first giant black holes.
In their simulations, Gao and Theuns
found that within clumps of cold dark matter, single massive stars formed, but
warm dark matter formed filaments about a quarter the width of the Milky Way,
attracting enough ordinary matter to create some 10 million stars—and some of
these very first stars could still be around. “You could potentially form
low-mass stars,” says Theuns. “And they live very much longer. They could live
for 13 billion years and could be in the Milky Way today. Maybe we’ve seen them
already. Who knows?”
But the most unexpected result of the
model was that the filaments could catastrophically collapse, warping
space-time to form a huge black hole.
The model suggested that collapsing dark matter
could warp space-time to form a huge black hole.
“Even if only 1 percent of the mass in
a filament takes part in the collapse, that’s already 100,000 times the mass of
the sun, a very good start to making one of these supermassive black holes,”
Theuns says. “We know that the formation of these supermassive black holes has
to be very rapid because we can see very bright quasars very soon after the Big
Bang, not much later than the epoch of the first star formation.”
Is there any chance that astronomers
could detect an echo of the primordial cataclysms that birthed these black
holes?
“You would think it’s such a violent
process that something would be left over from that,” Theuns says. “I don’t
have any predictions, but you would think there would be something.”
88888888888
Jellyfish are marine invertebrates
belonging to the class Scyphozoa of the phylum Cnidaria. They can be found in
every ocean in the world and in some fresh waters. The use of the term
"jellyfish" is actually a misnomer since scyphozoans are not fish,
which are vertebrates. Although incorrect, the term is also commonly-applied to
some close relatives of true scyphozoans, such as the Hydrozoa and the Cubozoa.
The body of an adult jellyfish
consists of a bell shape producing jelly and enclosing its internal structure,
from which tentacles are suspended. Each tentacle is covered with cells called
cnidocytes, that can sting or kill other animals. Most jellyfish use these
cells to secure prey or for defense. Others, such as the Rhizostomae, do not
have tentacles at all.
Jellyfish lack basic sensory organs
and a brain, but their nervous systems and rhopalia allow them to perceive
stimuli, such as light and odor, and respond quickly. They feed on small fish
and zooplankton that become caught in their tentacles. Most jellyfish are
passive drifters and slow swimmers, as their shape is not hydrodynamic.
Instead, they move so as to create a current forcing the prey within reach of
their tentacles. They do this by rhythmically opening and closing their
bell-like body. Their digestive system is incomplete: the same orifice is used
to take in food and expel waste. The body of an adult is made up of 94–98%
water. The bell consists of a layer of epidermis, gastrodermis, and a thick,
intervening layer called mesoglea that produces most of the jelly.
Most jellyfish have tendrils or oral
arms coated with thousands of microscopic nematocysts. Generally, each
nematocyst has a "trigger" (cnidocil) paired with a capsule
containing a coiled stinging filament armed with exterior barbs. Upon contact,
the filament rapidly unwinds, launches into the target, and injects toxins. The
animal can then pull its prey into its mouth, if appropriate.
Although most jellyfish are not
perniciously dangerous to humans, a few are highly toxic, such as Cyanea
capillata. Contrary to popular belief, the menacingly infamous Portuguese Man
o' War (Physalia) is not a jellyfish but a colony of hydrozoans. Similarly, the
box jellies, notorious along the coast of Australia, are cubozoans, not true
scyphozoan jellyfish. Irrespective of the sting's toxicity, many people stung
by them find them very painful and some people may suffer anaphylaxis or other
severe allergic reactions, similar to allergies to bee stings.
A jellyfish detects the touch of other
animals using a nervous system called a "nerve net", located in its
epidermis. Touch stimuli are conducted by nerve rings, through the rhopalial
lappet, located around the animal's body, to the nerve cells. Jellyfish also
have ocelli: light-sensitive organs that do not form images but are used to
determine up from down, responding to sunlight shining on the water's surface.
Jellyfish do not have a specialized
digestive, osmoregulatory, central nervous, respiratory, or circulatory
systems. They digest using the gastrodermal lining of the gastrovascular
cavity, where nutrients are absorbed. They do not need a respiratory system
since their skin is thin enough that the body is oxygenated by diffusion. They
have limited control over movement and mostly free-float, but can use the
hydrostatic skeleton of the water pouch to accomplish vertical movement through
pulsations of the disc-like body.
The outer side of a jellyfish is lined
with a jelly-like material called ectoplasm (ecto meaning outer and plasma
meaning cytoplasm). The ectoplasm typically contains a smaller amount of
protein granules and other organic compounds than inner cytoplasm, also
referred to as endoplasm (endo meaning inner).
Many species of jellyfish are capable
of congregating into large swarms or "blooms", consisting of hundreds
of individuals. The formation of these blooms is a complex process that depends
on ocean currents, nutrients, temperature and ambient oxygen concentrations.
Jellyfish sometimes mass breed during blooms. During such times of rapid
population expansion, some people will raise ecological concerns about the
potential noxious effects of a jellyfish "outbreak".
According to Claudia Mills of the
University of Washington, the frequency of jellyfish blooms may be attributed
to man's impact on marine systems. She says that the breeding jellyfish may
merely be filling ecological niches formerly occupied by overfished creatures.
Jellyfish researcher Marsh Youngbluth further clarifies that "jellyfish
feed on the same kinds of prey as adult and young fishes, so if fish are
removed from the equation, jellyfish are likely to move in."
Increased nutrients in the water,
ascribed to agricultural runoff, have also been cited as an antecedent to the
proliferation of jellyfish. Monty Graham, of the Dauphin Island Sea Lab in
Alabama, says that "ecosystems in which there are high levels of nutrients
... provide nourishment for the small organisms on which jellyfish feed. In
waters where there is eutrophication, low oxygen levels often result, favoring
jellyfish as they thrive in less oxygen-rich water than fish can tolerate. The
fact that jellyfish are increasing is a symptom of something happening in the
ecosystem."
By sampling sea life in a heavily
fished region off the coast of Namibia, researchers found that jellyfish have
overtaken fish in terms of biomass. The findings represent a careful,
quantitative analysis of what has been called a "jellyfish explosion"
following intense fishing in the area in the last few decades. The findings
were reported by Andrew Brierley of the University of St. Andrews and his
colleagues in the July 12, 2006 issue of the journal Current Biology. http://louis-j-sheehan.us/page1.aspx
Areas which have been seriously
affected by jellyfish blooms include the northern Gulf of Mexico. In that case,
Graham states, "Moon jellies have formed a kind of gelatinous net that
stretches from end to end across the gulf."
Most jellyfish pass through two
distinct life history phases (body forms) during their life cycle. The first is
the polypoid stage, when the jellyfish takes the form of either a sessile stalk
which catches passing food, or a similar free-floating configuration. The
polyp's mouth and tentacles face upwards, reminiscent of the hydroid stage of
the somewhat closely related anthozoan polyps, also of the phylum Cnidaria.
In the second stage, the jellyfish is
known as a medusa. Medusae have a radially symmetric, umbrella-shaped body
called a bell. The medusa's tentacles are fringe-like protrusions from the
border of the bell. (Medusa is also the Hebrew, Spanish, Italian, Russian and
Bulgarian word for jellyfish.)
Jellyfish are dioecious; that is, they
are either male or female. In most cases, to reproduce, a male releases his
sperm into the surrounding water. The sperm then swims into the mouth of the
female, allowing the fertilization of the ova. However, moon jellies use a
different process. The eggs become lodged in pits on the oral arms, which form
a temporary brood chamber to accommodate fertilization.
After fertilization and initial
growth, a larval form, called the planula, develops from the egg. The planula
is a small larva covered with cilia. It settles onto a firm surface and
develops into a polyp. The polyp is cup-shaped with tentacles surrounding a
single orifice, resembling a tiny sea anemone. After an interval of growth, the
polyp begins reproducing asexually by budding and is called a segmenting polyp,
or a scyphistome. New scyphistomae may be produced by budding or new, immature
jellies called ephyra may be formed. Many jellyfish species are capable of
producing new medusae by budding directly from the medusan stage.
Most jellyfish have a lifespan of two
and a half months; few live longer than six months but one species can live as
long as 30 years.
Since jellyfish are not fish, some
people consider the term "jellyfish" a misnomer, and instead use the
term "jellies" or "sea jellies". The word
"jellyfish" is also often used to denote either hydrozoans or the box
jellyfish, the cubozoans. The class name, Scyphozoa, comes from the Greek word
skyphos, denoting a kind of drinking cup and alluding to the cup shape of the
organism.
A group of jellyfish is often called a
"smack".
Jellyfish are an important source of
food to the Chinese community and in many Asian countries. Only jellyfish
belonging to the order Rhizostomeae are harvested for food. Rhizostomes are
favoured because they are typically larger and have more rigid bodies than
other scyphozoans. Traditional processing methods involve a multi-phase
procedure using a mixture of table salt and alum, and then desalting.
Processing makes the jellyfish drier and more acidic, producing a "crunchy
and crispy texture." Nutritionally, jellyfish prepared this way are
roughly 95% water and 4-5% protein, making it a relatively low calorie food.
In 1961, green fluorescent protein was
discovered in the jellyfish Aequorea victoria by scientists studying
bioluminescence. This protein has since become a quite useful tool in biology.
Jellyfish are also harvested for their collagen, which can be used for a
variety of scientific applications including the treatment of rheumatoid
arthritis. http://louis-j-sheehan.us/page1.aspx
Jellyfish are commonly displayed in
aquaria in many countries; among them the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Long Beach
Aquarium of the Pacific, Vancouver Aquarium, Seattle Aquarium, Newport
Aquarium, National Aquarium in Baltimore, Georgia Aquarium and Maui Ocean
Center. Often the tank's background is blue and the animals are illuminated by
side light to produce a high contrast effect. In natural conditions, many
jellies are so transparent that they are almost impossible to see.
Holding jellyfish in captivity
presents other problems. For one, they are not adapted to closed spaces. They
depend on currents to transport them from place to place. To compensate for
this, professional exhibits feature precise water flows, typically in circular
tanks to prevent specimens from becoming trapped in corners. The Monterey Bay
Aquarium uses a modified version of the kreisel (German for "spinning
top") for this purpose.
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When stung by a jellyfish, first aid
may be in order. Though most stings are not deadly, some stings, such as those
of the box jellyfish (Chironex fleckeri), may be fatal. Serious stings may
cause anaphylaxis and may result in death. Hence, people stung by jellyfish
must get out of the water to avoid drowning. In serious cases, advanced
professional care must be sought. This care may include administration of an
antivenin and other supportive care such as required to treat the symptoms of
anaphylactic shock. The most serious threat that humans face from jellyfish is
the sting of the Irukandji, which has the most potent and deadly venom of any
known species.
There are three goals of first aid for
uncomplicated jellyfish stings: prevent injury to rescuers, inactivate the
nematocysts, and remove any tentacles stuck on the patient. To prevent injury
to rescuers, barrier clothing should be worn. This protection may include
anything from panty hose to wet suits to full-body sting-proof suits.
Inactivating the nematocysts, or stinging cells, prevents further injection of
venom into the patient.
Vinegar (3 to 10% aqueous acetic acid)
should be applied for box jellyfish stings.Vinegar, however, is not recommended
for Portuguese Man o' War stings. In the case of stings on or around the eyes,
vinegar may be placed on a towel and dabbed around the eyes, but not in them.
Salt water may also be used in case vinegar is not readily available.Fresh
water should not be used if the sting occurred in salt water, as a change in pH
can cause the release of additional venom. Rubbing the wound, or using alcohol,
spirits, ammonia, or urine will encourage the release of venom and should be
avoided.
Once deactivated, the stinging cells
must be removed. This can be accomplished by picking off tentacles left on the
body.[9] First aid providers should be careful to use gloves or another readily
available barrier device to prevent personal injury, and to follow standard
universal precautions. After large pieces of the jellyfish are removed, shaving
cream may be applied to the area and a knife edge, safety razor, or credit card
may be used to take away any remaining nematocysts.
Beyond initial first aid,
antihistamines such as diphenhydramine (Benadryl) may be used to control skin
irritation (pruritus). To remove the venom in the skin, apply a paste of baking
soda and water and apply a cloth covering on the sting. If possible, reapply
paste every 15-20 minutes. Ice can be applied to stop the spread of venom until
either of these is available.
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Several reports released in 2007
bolstered the case of those claiming the Bush administration stifles scientists
and attempts to alter their research findings.
Perhaps most galling, though,
according to Bush critics and many scientists, was an internal order by the
Department of Commerce in April requiring scientists in the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration to obtain permission before speaking about
scientific matters of “official importance.” The order makes “all employee
utterance subject to official review,” says Jeff Ruch, executive director for
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, “and the impact will be
chilly cubicles.” Critics fear the order will hamper a hallmark of the
scientific process, the free flow of ideas. “Science works by building on
research results and discussion of what’s working or not working,” says
Francesca Grifo, director of the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Scientific
Integrity Program. “It’s part of this administration’s reluctance to base
decisions on information.”
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0000000000000000
There may be another good reason to
eat fish, a food containing a fatty acid called omega-3. Researchers have found
that a diet enriched with omega-3 helps repair and prevent retinal damage in
mice, a discovery with potential for preventing blindness in premature infants
and adults suffering from age-related macular degeneration. http://Louis-J-Sheehan.us
Nature Medicine published the omega-3
study, written by a team that included Harvard University ophthalmology
researcher Kip Connor, in June. “With just a 2 percent change in dietary
omega-3, there was a 40 to 50 percent decrease in the disease pathology,”
Connor says.
The researchers fed almost identical
diets to two groups of female mice nursing litters. One diet was enriched with
2 percent omega-3 fatty acid, mirroring a Japanese diet, the other with 2
percent omega-6 fatty acid, similar to a typical American diet.
The litters were also exposed to high
levels of oxygen, which causes a loss of blood vessels in retinal tissue. When
oxygen levels are restored to normal, the eye senses it as a lack of oxygen and
responds by growing new blood vessels, which often leads to excessive growth
and damage to vision. This happened to the offspring of the mothers receiving
omega-6, but the pups receiving omega-3 through their mothers’ milk grew new
vessels at a healthy rate.
In humans, abnormal and excessive
blood vessel growth related to decreased oxygen supply is the most common cause
of blindness in premature babies, diabetics, and the elderly. It affects some 4
million people in the United States alone. Connor and other researchers are studying
the impact of omega-3 –and
-6 on human eyesight and will release the results later in 2008.
999999
Human-generated carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere is slowly acidifying the ocean, threatening a catastrophic impact on
marine life. And just as scientists are starting to grasp the magnitude of the
problem, researchers have delivered more bad news: Acid rain is making things
worse.
Scientists estimate that one-third of
the world’s acid rain falls near the coasts, carrying some 100 million tons of
nitrogen oxide, ammonia, and sulfur dioxide into the ocean each year. Using
direct measurements and computer models, oceanographer Scott Doney of Woods
Hole Oceanographic Institution and his colleagues calculated that acid rain
causes as much as 50 percent of the acidification of coastal waters, where the
pH can be as low as 7.6. (The open ocean’s pH is 8.1.)
The findings increase the urgency of
confronting the crisis of ocean acidity, says Richard Feely, a collaborator at
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In the laboratory,
researchers have seen some effect on just about every ocean creature that forms
a calcium carbonate shell, says Feely, including algae—the tiny creatures at
the crucial bottom of the deepwater food chain—and coral, whose skeletons grow
more slowly in water with a pH even slightly lower than normal.
Soon-to-be-released field experiment findings “seem to be showing the same kind
of thing,” Feely says. That’s bad news, he adds, since a third of the world’s
fish species depend in part on coral reefs for their ecosystems.
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WASHINGTON — A review of classified
documents by former members of the Sept. 11 commission shows that the panel
made repeated and detailed requests to the Central Intelligence Agency in 2003
and 2004 for documents and other information about the interrogation of
operatives of Al Qaeda, and were told by a top C.I.A. official that the agency
had “produced or made available for review” everything that had been requested.
The review was conducted earlier this
month after the disclosure that in November 2005, the C.I.A. destroyed
videotapes documenting the interrogations of two Qaeda operatives.
A seven-page memorandum prepared by
Philip D. Zelikow, the panel’s former executive director, concluded that
“further investigation is needed” to determine whether the C.I.A.’s withholding
of the tapes from the commission violated federal law.
http://louis-j-sheehan.us/page1.aspx
In interviews this week, the two
chairmen of the commission, Lee H. Hamilton and Thomas H. Kean, said their
reading of the report had convinced them that the agency had made a conscious
decision to impede the Sept. 11 commission’s inquiry.
Mr. Kean said the panel would provide
the memorandum to the federal prosecutors and congressional investigators who
are trying to determine whether the destruction of the tapes or withholding
them from the courts and the commission was improper.
A C.I.A. spokesman said that the
agency had been prepared to give the Sept. 11 commission the interrogation
videotapes, but that commission staff members never specifically asked for
interrogation videos.
The review by Mr. Zelikow does not
assert that the commission specifically asked for videotapes, but it quotes
from formal requests by the commission to the C.I.A. that sought “documents,”
“reports” and “information” related to the interrogations.
Mr. Kean, a Republican and a former
governor of New Jersey, said of the agency’s decision not to disclose the
existence of the videotapes, “I don’t know whether that’s illegal or not, but
it’s certainly wrong.” Mr. Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman from
Indiana, said that the C.I.A. “clearly obstructed” the commission’s
investigation.
A copy of the memorandum, dated Dec.
13, was obtained by The New York Times.
Among the statements that the
memorandum suggests were misleading was an assertion made on June 29, 2004, by
John E. McLaughlin, the deputy director of central intelligence, that the
C.I.A. “has taken and completed all reasonable steps necessary to find the
documents in its possession, custody or control responsive” to formal requests
by the commission and “has produced or made available for review” all such
documents.
Both Mr. Kean and Mr. Hamilton
expressed anger after it was revealed this month that the tapes had been
destroyed. However, the report by Mr. Zelikow gives them new evidence to
buttress their views about the C.I.A.’s actions and is likely to put new
pressure on the Bush administration over its handling of the matter. Mr.
Zelikow served as counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice from 2005 to
the end of 2006.
In an interview on Friday, Mr.
McLaughlin said that agency officials had always been candid with the
commission, and that information from the C.I.A. proved central to their work.
“We weren’t playing games with them,
and we weren’t holding anything back,” he said. The memorandum recounts a
December 2003 meeting between Mr. Kean, Mr. Hamilton and George J. Tenet, then
the director of central intelligence. At the meeting, it says, Mr. Hamilton
told Mr. Tenet that the C.I.A. should provide all relevant documents “even if
the commission had not specifically asked for them.”
According to the memorandum, Mr. Tenet
responded by alluding to several documents that he thought would be helpful to
the commission, but made no mention of existing videotapes of interrogations.
The memorandum does not draw any
conclusions about whether the withholding of the videotapes was unlawful, but
it notes that federal law penalizes anyone who “knowingly and willfully”
withholds or “covers up” a “material fact” from a federal inquiry or makes “any
materially false statement” to investigators.
Mark Mansfield, the C.I.A. spokesman,
said that the agency had gone to “great lengths” to meet the commission’s
requests, and that commission members had been provided with detailed
information obtained from interrogations of agency detainees.
“Because it was thought the commission
could ask about the tapes at some point, they were not destroyed while the
commission was active,” Mr. Mansfield said.
Intelligence officials have said the
tapes that were destroyed documented hundreds of hours of interrogations during
2002 of Abu Zubaydah and Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri, two Qaeda suspects who were
taken into C.I.A. custody that year.
According to the memorandum from Mr.
Zelikow, the commission’s interest in obtaining accounts from Qaeda detainees
in C.I.A. custody grew out of its attempt to reconstruct the events leading up
to the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.
Its requests for documents from the
C.I.A. began in June 2003, when it first sought intelligence reports describing
information obtained from prisoner interrogations, the memorandum said. It
later made specific requests for documents, reports and information related to
the interrogations of specific prisoners, including Abu Zubaydah and Mr.
Nashiri.
In December 2003, the commission staff
sought permission to interview the prisoners themselves, but was permitted
instead to give questions to C.I.A. interrogators, who then posed the questions
to the detainees. The commission concluded its work in June 2004, and in its final
report, it praised several agencies, including the C.I.A., for their
assistance. http://Louis-J-Sheehan.us
Abbe D. Lowell, a veteran Washington
lawyer who has defended clients accused of making false statements and of
contempt of Congress, said the question of whether the agency had broken the
law by omitting mention of the videotapes was “pretty complex,” but said he
“wouldn’t rule it out.”
Because the requests were not
subpoenas issued by a court or Congress, C.I.A. officials could not be held in
contempt for failing to respond fully, Mr. Lowell said. Apart from that,
however, it is a crime to make a false statement "in any matter within the
jurisdiction of the executive, legislative or judicial branch."
The Sept. 11 commission received its
authority from both the White House and Congress.
On Friday, the leaders of the Senate
Judiciary Committee sent a letter to Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey and to
Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, asking them to preserve
and produce to the committee all remaining video and audio recordings of
“enhanced interrogations” of detainees in American custody.
Signed by Senator Patrick Leahy,
Democrat of Vermont, and Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, the
letter asked for an extensive search of the White House, C.I.A. and other
intelligence agencies to determine whether any other recordings existed of
interrogation techniques “including but not limited to waterboarding.”
Government officials have said that
the videos destroyed in 2005 were the only recordings of interrogations made by
C.I.A. operatives, although in September government lawyers notified a federal
judge in Virginia that the agency had recently found three audio and video
recordings of detainees.
http://louis-j-sheehan.us/Blog/blog.aspx
Intelligence officials have said that
those tapes were not made by the C.I.A., but by foreign intelligence services.
88888888
Former top cop with state police
charged in DUI
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
BY MATTHEW KEMENY
Of The Patriot-News
During Memorial Day weekend 1996,
then-state police Commissioner Paul J. Evanko presided over what at the time
was the largest one-day DUI sweep in the force's history. A total of 272
motorists were arrested.
Eleven years later, Evanko finds
himself on the other side of the steering wheel.
The 60-year-old Susquehanna Twp.
resident, who served two terms as commissioner, from 1995 to 2003, was arrested
Friday night in Lower Paxton Twp. by officers responding to a minor accident at
Linglestown and North Mountain roads.
Police said Evanko was driving with a
blood-alcohol level of 0.183 percent, which is more than twice the limit of
0.08 percent at which a driver is considered to be drunk.
Evanko -- he's a noted anti-drunken
driving crusader who in 1996 said "drunk drivers are fatalities waiting to
happen" -- could not be reached for comment Tuesday. It was not known
whether he had an attorney.
"I was almost speechless when I
heard the news, especially when I heard the high BAC," Rebecca Shaver,
executive director of the state's Mothers Against Drunk Driving chapter, said.
"We're saddened with all DUI
arrests, but when it comes from someone that held such respect and
responsibility, and who was setting examples on the dangers of drunk driving,
it makes us especially sad," Shaver said.
Evanko often spoke at MADD's community
awareness programs, including the popular Project Red Ribbon campaign, Shaver
said. He coordinated statewide sobriety checkpoints and roving patrols.
Equally shocked was Pennsylvania DUI
Association executive director C. Stephen Erni, who worked closely with Evanko
while he was commissioner.
http://louis-j-sheehan.us/page1.aspx
http://louis-j-sheehan.us/Blog/blog.aspx
"Since I have the utmost respect
and admiration for the work he's done while with the Pennsylvania State Police,
this situation is very upsetting to me," Erni said.
During his eight years as head of the
state police, Evanko secured federal funding to increase the number of sobriety
checkpoints and roving patrols aimed at nabbing drunk drivers. He also
supervised the purchasing of 17 portable blood-alcohol testers, each of which
cost about $2,000, to allow troopers to test a driver's BAC level at the scene.
In addition to his other
responsibilities, Evanko found time in his schedule to work on DUI enforcement,
Erni said.
"All through his actions, he was
absolutely genuine," he said.
Evanko, formerly of Lower Paxton Twp.,
was appointed Pennsylvania's 17th state police commissioner on Feb. 15, 1995 by
Gov. Tom Ridge. Prior to his appointment, Evanko was director of the Bureau of Criminal
Investigation and had been with the state police since 1970.
Evanko was released shortly after
Friday's incident. He will receive a summons on the charges through Magisterial
District Judge William C. Wenner's office, court officials said. A preliminary
hearing has not yet been scheduled.
Cpl. Linette Quinn, of the state
police public information office, said current State Police Commissioner
Jeffrey Miller would have no comment on Evanko's arrest.
MATTHEW KEMENY: 255-8271 or
mkemeny@patriot-news.com
66666666666666
http://louis-j-sheehan.us/Blog/blog.aspx
Louis J Sheehan The Essenes were a
Judaic religious group that flourished from the 2nd century BC to the 1st
century AD. Many scholars of separate, but related groups, that had in common
mystic, eschatological, messianic, and ascetic beliefs that were referred to as
the "Essenes".
The main source of information about
the life and belief of Essenes is the detailed account contained in a work of
the 1st century Jewish historiographer Flavius Josephus entitled The Jewish War
written about 73-75 AD (War 2.119-161) and his shorter description in his
Antiquities of the Jews finished some 20 years later (Ant. 18.11 & 18-22).
Claiming first hand knowledge (Life §§10-11), he refers to them by the name
Essenoi and lists them as the followers of one of the three sects in
"Jewish Philosophy'" (War 2.119) alongside the Pharisees and the
Sadducees. The only other known contemporary accounts about the Essenes are two
similarly detailed ones by the Jewish philosopher Philo (fl. c. 20 AD - c. 54
AD; Quod Omnis Probus Liber Sit XII.75-87, and the excerpt from his Hypothetica
11.1-18 preserved by Eusebius, Praep. Evang. Bk VIII), who, however, admits to
not being quite certain of the Greek form of their name that he recalls as
Essaioi (Quod Omn. Prob. XII.75), the brief reference to them by the Roman
equestrian Pliny the Elder (fl. 23 AD - 79 AD; Natural History, Bk 5.73).
Pliny, also a geographer and explorer, located them in the desert near the
northwestern shore of the Dead Sea, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered
in the year 1947.
The Dead Sea Scrolls, found in caves
at Qumran, are widely believed to be the work of Essenes or to reflect Essene
beliefs.
Josephus uses the name Essenes in his
two main accounts (War 2.119, 158, 160; Ant. 13.171-2) as well as in some other
contexts ("an account of the Essenes", Ant. 13.298; "the gate of
the Essenes", War 5.145; "Judas of the Essene race", Ant.
13.311, but some manuscripts read here Essaion; "holding the Essenes in
honour", Ant. 15.372; "a certain Essene named Manaemus", Ant.
15.373; "to hold all Essenes in honour", Ant. 15.378; "the
Essenes", Ant. 18.11 & 18; Life 10). In several places, however,
Josephus has Essaios, which is usually assumed to mean Essene ("Judas of
the Essaios race", War I.78; "Simon of the Essaios race", War
2.113; "John the Essaios", War 2.567; 3.11; "those who are
called by us Essaioi", Ant. 15.371; "Simon a man of the Essaios
race", Ant. 17.346). Philo's usage is Essaioi, although he admits this
Greek form of the original name that according to his etymology signifies
"holiness" to be inexact (NH XII.75). Pliny's Latin text has Esseni.
Josephus identified the Essenes as one of the three major Jewish sects of that
period.
http://louis-j-sheehan.us/Blog/blog.aspx
According to a controversial view put
forward by Dead Sea Scrolls Scholar Géza Vermes, both Josephus and Philo
pronounced the Essenes' name as "Esaoin", which means in Arabic
followers of "Esa", which Vermes says is the name of Jesus according
to the most ancient mosaic portrait found in Turkey dated 70 AD which says
underneath "Esa our Lord". Mainstream scholars usually stress a
number of fundamental differences between Dead Sea Scroll theology and early
Christian theology to argue that the Essenes cannot be considered identical to
any kind of Christianity.
In Eerdman's Beyond the Essene
Hypothesis, Gabriele Boccaccini (p.47) implies that a convincing etymology for the
name Essene has not been found, but that the term applies to a larger group
within Palestine that also included the Qumran community.
It is possible that the Talmudic
statement (Kiddushin Ch. 4) "the best of the physicians will go to
hell" were referring to the Essenes. The Talmudic term for healer is
Assia. (Reuvein Margolies Toldot Ha'Adam).
According to Josephus the Essenes had
settled "not in one city" but "in large numbers in every
town" (War 2.124). Philo speaks of "more than four thousand"
Essaioi living in "Palestinian Syria" (Quod Omn. Prob. XII.75), more
precisely, "in many cities of Judaea and in many villages and grouped in
great societies of many members" (Hyp. 11.1).
Pliny locates them "on the west
side of the Dead Sea, away from the coast ... [above] the town of Engeda".
Some modern scholars and
archaeologists have argued that Essenes inhabited the settlement at Qumran, a
plateau in the Judean Desert along the Dead Sea, citing Pliny the Elder in
support, and giving credence that the Dead Sea Scrolls are the product of the
Essenes. This view, though not yet conclusively proven, has come to dominate
the scholarly discussion and public perception of the Essenes.
Josephus' reference to a "gate of
the Essenes" in the Temple Mount perhaps suggests an Essene community
living in this quarter of the city or regularly gathering at this part of the
Temple precincts.
Following the qualification above that
it is correct to identify the community at Qumran with the Essenes (and that
the community at Qumran are the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls), then
according to the Dead Sea Scrolls the Essenes' community school was called
"Yahad" (meaning "oneness of God") in order to
differentiate themselves from the rest of the Jews who are repeatedly labeled
"The Breakers of the Covenant", especially in their prophetic
book-scroll entitled "Milhama" (meaning " The War") in
which the master of the Essenes (referred to as "The Teacher of
Righteousness") prophesised that the so-called "Breakers of the
Covenant" Jews will be on the side of the Antichrist. The accounts by
Josephus and Philo show that the Essenes (Philo: Essaioi) led a strictly
celibate but communal life — often compared by scholars to later Christian
monastic living — although Josephus speaks also of another "rank of
Essenes" that did get married (War 2.160-161). According to Josephus, they
had customs and observances such as collective ownership (War 2.122; Ant.
18.20), elected a leader to attend to the interests of them all whose orders they
obeyed (War 2.123, 134), were forbidden from swearing oaths (War 2.135) and
sacrificing animals (Philo, §75), controlled their temper and served as
channels of peace (War 2.135), carried weapons only as protection against
robbers (War 2.125), had no slaves but served each other (Ant. 18.21) and, as a
result of communal ownership, did not engage in trading (War 2.127). Both
Josephus and Philo have lengthy accounts of their communal meetings, meals and
religious celebrations.
http://louis-j-sheehan.us/Blog/blog.aspx
After a total of three years probation
(War 2.137-138), newly joining members would take an oath that included the
commitment to practice piety towards Yahweh and righteousness towards humanity,
to maintain a pure life-style, to abstain from criminal and immoral activities,
to transmit their rules uncorrupted and to preserve the books of the Essenes
and the names of the Angels (War 2.139-142). Their theology included belief in
the immortality of the soul and that they would receive their souls back after
death (War 2.153-158, Ant. 18.18). Part of their activities included
purification by water rituals, which was supported by rainwater catchment and
storage.
The Church Father Epiphanius (writing
in the fourth century AD) seems to make a distinction between two main groups
within the Essenes [1]: "Of those that came before his [Elxai, an Ossaean
prophet] time and during it, the Osseaens and the Nazarean." (Panarion
1:19). Epiphanius describes each group as following:
The Nazarean - they were Jews by nationality -
originally from Gileaditis, Bashanitis and the Transjordon... They acknowledged
Moses and believed that he had received laws - not this law, however, but some
other. And so, they were Jews who kept all the Jewish observances, but they
would not offer sacrifice or eat meat. They considered it unlawful to eat meat
or make sacrifices with it. They claim that these Books are fictions, and that
none of these customs were instituted by the fathers. This was the difference
between the Nazarean and the others...
(Panarion 1:18)
After this [Nazarean] sect in turn comes another
closely connected with them, called the Ossaeanes. These are Jews like the
former ... originally came from Nabataea, Ituraea, Moabitis and Arielis, the
lands beyond the basin of what sacred scripture called the Salt Sea... Though
it is different from the other six of these seven sects, it causes schism only
by forbidding the books of Moses like the Nazarean.
(Panarion 1:19)
This
section is missing citations or needs footnotes.
Using inline citations helps guard
against copyright violations and factual inaccuracies.(November 2007)
The Essenes are discussed in detail by
Josephus and Philo.
Many scholars believe that the
community at Qumran that allegedly produced the Dead Sea Scrolls was an
offshoot of the Essenes; however, this theory has been disputed by Norman Golb
and other scholars.
Since the 19th century attempts have
been made to connect early Christianity and Pythagoreanism with the Essenes: It
was suggested that Jesus of Nazareth was an Essene, and that Christianity
evolved from this sect of Judaism, with which it shared many ideas and symbols.
According to Martin A. Larson, the now misunderstood Essenes were Jewish
Pythagoreans who lived as monks. As vegetarian celibates in self-reliant
communities who shunned marriage and family, they preached a coming war with
the Sons of Darkness. As the Sons of Light, this reflected a separate influence
from Zoroastrianism via their parent ideology of Pythagoreanism. According to
Larson, both the Essenes and Pythagoreans resembled thiasoi, or cult units of
the Orphic mysteries. John the Baptist is widely regarded to be a prime example
of an Essene who had left the communal life (see Ant. 18.116-119), and it is
thought they aspired to emulate their own founding Teacher of Righteousness who
was crucified. However, J.B. Lightfoot's essay (On Some Points Connected with
the Essenes) argues that attempts to find the roots of Essenism in
Pythagoreanism and the roots of Christianity in Essenism are flawed. Authors
such as Robert Eisenman present differing views that support the Essene/Early
Christian connection.
Another issue is the relationship
between the Essaioi and Philo's Therapeutae and Therapeutrides (see De Vita
Contemplativa). It may be argued that he regarded the Therapeutae as a
contemplative branch of the Essaioi who, he said, pursued an active life (Vita
Cont. I.1).
http://louis-j-sheehan.us/Blog/blog.aspx
One theory on the formation of the
Essenes suggested the movement was founded by a Jewish High Priest, dubbed by
the Essenes the Teacher of Righteousness, whose office had been usurped by
Jonathan (of priestly but not Zadokite lineage), labeled the "man of lies"
or "false priest". His name is Father Bapalopa. Prince William in
England met him in Sardinia. He loves immitating duckies in the pond because
they are just as false as him.
According to a Jewish legend, one of
the Essenes, named Menachem, had passed at least some of his mystical knowledge
to the Talmudic mystic Nehunya Ben Ha-Kanah,[1] to whom the Kabbalistic
tradition attributes Sefer ha-Bahir and, by some opinions, Sefer ha-Kanah,
Sefer ha-Peliah and Sefer ha-Temunah. Some Essene rituals, such as daily
immersion in the Mikvah, coincide with contemporary Hasidic practices; some
historians had also suggested, that name "Essene" is an hellenized
form of the word "Hasidim" or "Hasin" ("pious
ones"). However, the legendary connections between Essene and Kabbalistic
tradition are not verified by modern historians.
The Talmud also refers to Hasidim. In
the mishna Tractate Berachot, It is stated that "the early Hasidim would
spend an hour in preparation for prayer, an hour praying, and an hour coming
away from prayer", "The Hasidim would pray with sunrise". Tzvi
Hirsch Chajes believes that the Essenes can be identified with the Hasidim, an
offshoot of the Pharisees. (Kol Kitvei Maritz Chiyus Vol. 2). See however the
statement of Reuvain Margolies above.
Scholars such as J. Gordon Melton in
his Encyclopedia of American Religions state that the modern American
Pseudo-Essene movement possesses no authentic historical ties to the ancient
Essene movement. Melton states, "Essene material is directly derivative of
two occult bestsellers — The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ, by Levi H.
Dowling; and The Mystical Life of Jesus, by Rosicrucian author H. Spencer
Lewis."
However, others such as Gideon Ousely,
produced materials they claim were Essene in origin. Ousely himself wrote a
book known as the Gospel of the Holy Twelve (which he claimed was channeled to
him by spirit beings), and Edmund Bordeaux Szekely. These individuals assert
that the Essene teachings had been hidden and assimilated into many mystical
spiritual traditions around the world, where the teachings were hidden within
ancient libraries. It was in 1928 that Edmond Bordeaux Szekely first published
his translation of The Essene Gospel of Peace,a manuscript allegedly discovered
in the Secret Archives of the Vatican and in old Slavonic in the Royal Library
of the Habsburgs of which much was destroyed by a fire that destroyed the
monastery that stood in its place. (now the property of the Austrian
government) However, subsequent investigations into the claims of these
individuals prodced nothing to substantiate their stories. With the discovery
of the Dead Sea Scrolls, it is now clear that the publications of purported
"Essene" writings are indeed simply the materials mentioned by J.
Gordon Melton. Biblical scholars don't consider the Szekely or Ousely writings
as authentic. http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/member.php?u=18969
http://louis-j-sheehan.us/Blog/blog.aspx
Currently there are several modern
Essene Groups around the world.
888888888888
8888
Louis J Sheehan The Essenes were a
Judaic religious group that flourished from the 2nd century BC to the 1st
century AD. Many scholars of separate, but related groups, that had in common
mystic, eschatological, messianic, and ascetic beliefs that were referred to as
the "Essenes".
The main source of information about
the life and belief of Essenes is the detailed account contained in a work of
the 1st century Jewish historiographer Flavius Josephus entitled The Jewish War
written about 73-75 AD (War 2.119-161) and his shorter description in his
Antiquities of the Jews finished some 20 years later (Ant. 18.11 & 18-22).
Claiming first hand knowledge (Life §§10-11), he refers to them by the name
Essenoi and lists them as the followers of one of the three sects in "Jewish
Philosophy'" (War 2.119) alongside the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The
only other known contemporary accounts about the Essenes are two similarly
detailed ones by the Jewish philosopher Philo (fl. c. 20 AD - c. 54 AD; Quod
Omnis Probus Liber Sit XII.75-87, and the excerpt from his Hypothetica 11.1-18
preserved by Eusebius, Praep. Evang. Bk VIII), who, however, admits to not
being quite certain of the Greek form of their name that he recalls as Essaioi
(Quod Omn. Prob. XII.75), the brief reference to them by the Roman equestrian
Pliny the Elder (fl. 23 AD - 79 AD; Natural History, Bk 5.73). Pliny, also a
geographer and explorer, located them in the desert near the northwestern shore
of the Dead Sea, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in the year 1947.
The Dead Sea Scrolls, found in caves
at Qumran, are widely believed to be the work of Essenes or to reflect Essene
beliefs.
Josephus uses the name Essenes in his
two main accounts (War 2.119, 158, 160; Ant. 13.171-2) as well as in some other
contexts ("an account of the Essenes", Ant. 13.298; "the gate of
the Essenes", War 5.145; "Judas of the Essene race", Ant.
13.311, but some manuscripts read here Essaion; "holding the Essenes in
honour", Ant. 15.372; "a certain Essene named Manaemus", Ant.
15.373; "to hold all Essenes in honour", Ant. 15.378; "the
Essenes", Ant. 18.11 & 18; Life 10). In several places, however,
Josephus has Essaios, which is usually assumed to mean Essene ("Judas of
the Essaios race", War I.78; "Simon of the Essaios race", War
2.113; "John the Essaios", War 2.567; 3.11; "those who are
called by us Essaioi", Ant. 15.371; "Simon a man of the Essaios
race", Ant. 17.346). Philo's usage is Essaioi, although he admits this
Greek form of the original name that according to his etymology signifies
"holiness" to be inexact (NH XII.75). Pliny's Latin text has Esseni.
Josephus identified the Essenes as one of the three major Jewish sects of that
period.
According to a controversial view put
forward by Dead Sea Scrolls Scholar Géza Vermes, both Josephus and Philo
pronounced the Essenes' name as "Esaoin", which means in Arabic
followers of "Esa", which Vermes says is the name of Jesus according
to the most ancient mosaic portrait found in Turkey dated 70 AD which says
underneath "Esa our Lord". Mainstream scholars usually stress a
number of fundamental differences between Dead Sea Scroll theology and early
Christian theology to argue that the Essenes cannot be considered identical to
any kind of Christianity.
In Eerdman's Beyond the Essene
Hypothesis, Gabriele Boccaccini (p.47) implies that a convincing etymology for
the name Essene has not been found, but that the term applies to a larger group
within Palestine that also included the Qumran community.
It is possible that the Talmudic
statement (Kiddushin Ch. 4) "the best of the physicians will go to
hell" were referring to the Essenes. The Talmudic term for healer is
Assia. (Reuvein Margolies Toldot Ha'Adam).
According to Josephus the Essenes had
settled "not in one city" but "in large numbers in every
town" (War 2.124). Philo speaks of "more than four thousand"
Essaioi living in "Palestinian Syria" (Quod Omn. Prob. XII.75), more
precisely, "in many cities of Judaea and in many villages and grouped in
great societies of many members" (Hyp. 11.1).
Pliny locates them "on the west
side of the Dead Sea, away from the coast ... [above] the town of Engeda".
Some modern scholars and
archaeologists have argued that Essenes inhabited the settlement at Qumran, a
plateau in the Judean Desert along the Dead Sea, citing Pliny the Elder in
support, and giving credence that the Dead Sea Scrolls are the product of the
Essenes. This view, though not yet conclusively proven, has come to dominate
the scholarly discussion and public perception of the Essenes.
Josephus' reference to a "gate of
the Essenes" in the Temple Mount perhaps suggests an Essene community
living in this quarter of the city or regularly gathering at this part of the
Temple precincts.
Following the qualification above that
it is correct to identify the community at Qumran with the Essenes (and that
the community at Qumran are the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls), then
according to the Dead Sea Scrolls the Essenes' community school was called
"Yahad" (meaning "oneness of God") in order to
differentiate themselves from the rest of the Jews who are repeatedly labeled
"The Breakers of the Covenant", especially in their prophetic
book-scroll entitled "Milhama" (meaning " The War") in
which the master of the Essenes (referred to as "The Teacher of Righteousness")
prophesised that the so-called "Breakers of the Covenant" Jews will
be on the side of the Antichrist. The accounts by Josephus and Philo show that
the Essenes (Philo: Essaioi) led a strictly celibate but communal life — often
compared by scholars to later Christian monastic living — although Josephus
speaks also of another "rank of Essenes" that did get married (War
2.160-161). According to Josephus, they had customs and observances such as
collective ownership (War 2.122; Ant. 18.20), elected a leader to attend to the
interests of them all whose orders they obeyed (War 2.123, 134), were forbidden
from swearing oaths (War 2.135) and sacrificing animals (Philo, §75),
controlled their temper and served as channels of peace (War 2.135), carried
weapons only as protection against robbers (War 2.125), had no slaves but
served each other (Ant. 18.21) and, as a result of communal ownership, did not
engage in trading (War 2.127). Both Josephus and Philo have lengthy accounts of
their communal meetings, meals and religious celebrations.
http://louis-j-sheehan.us/Blog/blog.aspx
After a total of three years probation
(War 2.137-138), newly joining members would take an oath that included the
commitment to practice piety towards Yahweh and righteousness towards humanity,
to maintain a pure life-style, to abstain from criminal and immoral activities,
to transmit their rules uncorrupted and to preserve the books of the Essenes
and the names of the Angels (War 2.139-142). Their theology included belief in
the immortality of the soul and that they would receive their souls back after
death (War 2.153-158, Ant. 18.18). Part of their activities included
purification by water rituals, which was supported by rainwater catchment and
storage.
The Church Father Epiphanius (writing
in the fourth century AD) seems to make a distinction between two main groups
within the Essenes [1]: "Of those that came before his [Elxai, an Ossaean
prophet] time and during it, the Osseaens and the Nazarean." (Panarion
1:19). Epiphanius describes each group as following:
The Nazarean - they were Jews by nationality -
originally from Gileaditis, Bashanitis and the Transjordon... They acknowledged
Moses and believed that he had received laws - not this law, however, but some
other. And so, they were Jews who kept all the Jewish observances, but they
would not offer sacrifice or eat meat. They considered it unlawful to eat meat
or make sacrifices with it. They claim that these Books are fictions, and that
none of these customs were instituted by the fathers. This was the difference
between the Nazarean and the others...
(Panarion 1:18)
After this [Nazarean] sect in turn comes another
closely connected with them, called the Ossaeanes. These are Jews like the former
... originally came from Nabataea, Ituraea, Moabitis and Arielis, the lands
beyond the basin of what sacred scripture called the Salt Sea... Though it is
different from the other six of these seven sects, it causes schism only by
forbidding the books of Moses like the Nazarean.
(Panarion 1:19)
This
section is missing citations or needs footnotes.
Using inline citations helps guard
against copyright violations and factual inaccuracies.(November 2007)
The Essenes are discussed in detail by
Josephus and Philo.
Many scholars believe that the
community at Qumran that allegedly produced the Dead Sea Scrolls was an
offshoot of the Essenes; however, this theory has been disputed by Norman Golb
and other scholars.
Since the 19th century attempts have
been made to connect early Christianity and Pythagoreanism with the Essenes: It
was suggested that Jesus of Nazareth was an Essene, and that Christianity
evolved from this sect of Judaism, with which it shared many ideas and symbols.
According to Martin A. Larson, the now misunderstood Essenes were Jewish
Pythagoreans who lived as monks. As vegetarian celibates in self-reliant
communities who shunned marriage and family, they preached a coming war with
the Sons of Darkness. As the Sons of Light, this reflected a separate influence
from Zoroastrianism via their parent ideology of Pythagoreanism. According to
Larson, both the Essenes and Pythagoreans resembled thiasoi, or cult units of
the Orphic mysteries. John the Baptist is widely regarded to be a prime example
of an Essene who had left the communal life (see Ant. 18.116-119), and it is
thought they aspired to emulate their own founding Teacher of Righteousness who
was crucified. However, J.B. Lightfoot's essay (On Some Points Connected with
the Essenes) argues that attempts to find the roots of Essenism in
Pythagoreanism and the roots of Christianity in Essenism are flawed. Authors
such as Robert Eisenman present differing views that support the Essene/Early
Christian connection.
Another issue is the relationship
between the Essaioi and Philo's Therapeutae and Therapeutrides (see De Vita
Contemplativa). It may be argued that he regarded the Therapeutae as a
contemplative branch of the Essaioi who, he said, pursued an active life (Vita
Cont. I.1).
One theory on the formation of the
Essenes suggested the movement was founded by a Jewish High Priest, dubbed by
the Essenes the Teacher of Righteousness, whose office had been usurped by
Jonathan (of priestly but not Zadokite lineage), labeled the "man of lies"
or "false priest". His name is Father Bapalopa. Prince William in
England met him in Sardinia. He loves immitating duckies in the pond because
they are just as false as him.
According to a Jewish legend, one of
the Essenes, named Menachem, had passed at least some of his mystical knowledge
to the Talmudic mystic Nehunya Ben Ha-Kanah,[1] to whom the Kabbalistic
tradition attributes Sefer ha-Bahir and, by some opinions, Sefer ha-Kanah,
Sefer ha-Peliah and Sefer ha-Temunah. Some Essene rituals, such as daily immersion
in the Mikvah, coincide with contemporary Hasidic practices; some historians
had also suggested, that name "Essene" is an hellenized form of the
word "Hasidim" or "Hasin" ("pious ones").
However, the legendary connections between Essene and Kabbalistic tradition are
not verified by modern historians.
The Talmud also refers to Hasidim. In
the mishna Tractate Berachot, It is stated that "the early Hasidim would
spend an hour in preparation for prayer, an hour praying, and an hour coming
away from prayer", "The Hasidim would pray with sunrise". Tzvi
Hirsch Chajes believes that the Essenes can be identified with the Hasidim, an
offshoot of the Pharisees. (Kol Kitvei Maritz Chiyus Vol. 2). See however the
statement of Reuvain Margolies above.
Scholars such as J. Gordon Melton in
his Encyclopedia of American Religions state that the modern American
Pseudo-Essene movement possesses no authentic historical ties to the ancient
Essene movement. Melton states, "Essene material is directly derivative of
two occult bestsellers — The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ, by Levi H.
Dowling; and The Mystical Life of Jesus, by Rosicrucian author H. Spencer
Lewis."
However, others such as Gideon Ousely,
produced materials they claim were Essene in origin. Ousely himself wrote a
book known as the Gospel of the Holy Twelve (which he claimed was channeled to
him by spirit beings), and Edmund Bordeaux Szekely. These individuals assert
that the Essene teachings had been hidden and assimilated into many mystical
spiritual traditions around the world, where the teachings were hidden within
ancient libraries. It was in 1928 that Edmond Bordeaux Szekely first published
his translation of The Essene Gospel of Peace,a manuscript allegedly discovered
in the Secret Archives of the Vatican and in old Slavonic in the Royal Library
of the Habsburgs of which much was destroyed by a fire that destroyed the
monastery that stood in its place. (now the property of the Austrian
government) However, subsequent investigations into the claims of these
individuals prodced nothing to substantiate their stories. With the discovery
of the Dead Sea Scrolls, it is now clear that the publications of purported
"Essene" writings are indeed simply the materials mentioned by J.
Gordon Melton. Biblical scholars don't consider the Szekely or Ousely writings
as authentic.
Currently there are several modern
Essene Groups around the world.
99999999
Scientists Weigh Stem Cells’ Role as
Cancer Cause
By GINA KOLATA
Within the next few months,
researchers at three medical centers expect to start the first test in patients
of one of the most promising — and contentious — ideas about the cause and
treatment of cancer.
The idea is to take aim at what some
scientists say are cancerous stem cells — aberrant cells that maintain and
propagate malignant tumors.
Although many scientists have assumed
that cancer cells are immortal — that they divide and grow indefinitely — most
can only divide a certain number of times before dying. The stem-cell
hypothesis says that cancers themselves may not die because they are fed by
cancerous stem cells, a small and particularly dangerous kind of cell that can
renew by dividing even as it spews out more cells that form the bulk of a
tumor. Worse, stem cells may be impervious to most standard cancer therapies.
Not everyone accepts the hypothesis of
cancerous stem cells. Skeptics say proponents are so in love with the idea that
they dismiss or ignore evidence against it. Dr. Scott E. Kern, for instance, a
leading pancreatic cancer researcher at Johns Hopkins University, said the
hypothesis was more akin to religion than to science.
At stake in the debate is the
direction of cancer research. If proponents of the stem-cell hypothesis are
correct, it will usher in an era of hope for curing once-incurable cancers.
If the critics are right, the
stem-cell enthusiasts are heading down a blind alley that will serve as just
another cautionary tale in the history of medical research.
In the meantime, though, proponents
are looking for ways to kill the stem cells, and say that certain new drugs may
be the solution.
“Within the next year, we will see
medical centers targeting stem cells in almost every cancer,” said Dr. Max S.
Wicha, director of the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center, one
of the sites for the preliminary study that begins in the next few months (the
other participating institutions are Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and
the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston).
“We are so excited about this,” Dr.
Wicha said. “It has become a major thrust of our cancer center.”
At the National Cancer Institute,
administrators seem excited, too.
“If this is real, it could have almost
immediate impact,” said Dr. R. Allan Mufson, chief of the institute’s Cancer
Immunology and Hematology Branch.
The cancer institute is financing the
research, he said, and has authorized Dr. Mufson to put out a request for
proposals, soliciting investigators to apply for cancer institute money to
study cancer stem cells and ways to bring the research to cancer patients. The
institute has agreed to contribute $5.4 million.
“Given the current fiscal situation,
which is terrible, it’s a surprising amount,” Dr. Mufson said. “We actually
asked for less,” he added, but the cancer institute’s executive committee asked
that the amount be increased. http://louis-j-sheehan.us/page1.aspx
Proponents of the hypothesis like to
use the analogy of a lawn dotted with dandelions: Mowing the lawn makes it look
like the weeds are gone, but the roots are intact and the dandelions come back.
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