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When North America met South America

When the two continents met at Panama there were lots of animals suddenly competing for the same territory. Who won?

For a very long time, North America and South America were separate land masses. The Pacific Ocean slipped between them, flowing into the Caribbean. The Isthmus of Panama was there, but it was underwater. The two continents didn't touch.

As a result animals on both continents, especially mammals, evolved independently. They didn't, couldn't, interbreed. And yet, both North and South America had mountains, plains, long lazy rivers, deltas and supported similar forms of mammalian life. In fact, when biologists look back at the fossils, they found almost mirror like populations.

North America had horses. They were a little thicker and hairier back then.

South America had a parallel version called "litopterns" with dangly Snuffleupagus-like noses.

North America had elephants and rhinos (gone now, but they once were natives).

South America had Astrapotheres and pyrotheres, who looked quite similar, being tusk-bearing, water-friendly mammals.

North America had a saber-toothed tiger.

So did South America.

Again, while they looked the same, on close inspection you'd find the northern one carried its fetuses in a uterus, while the southern tiger was marsupial; its fetuses grew in an outside pouch.

"This evolutionary convergence was the greatest on land that the world has ever seen," writes biologist E.O. Wilson. The two continents had their own versions of shrews, weasels, cats and dogs. And then 2.5 million years ago, the two continents attached.

Long, long before any humans prowled the hemisphere, the Isthmus of Panama emerged, and all of a sudden it was possible for mammals in the north to meet (and compete) with mammals from the south.

So, as Ed Wilson puts it: "What happens when two full blown, closely similar dynasties meet head on?"

Well, it had to get rough. There was no accommodating everybody. Some of these animals lived in the same kinds of places and ate the same kinds of foods as their new competitors. The land couldn't support both, unless each side somehow managed to avoid the other.

Yet neither side had any obvious natural advantage. They'd survived and struggled to dominate their respective continents. Any gambler would have said, "I'm figuring half the time the northern mammals will prevail, half the time the southerners."

Which is why what actually happened is such a mystery.

According to Ed Wilson, "In general, where close ecological equivalents met during the interchange, the North American elements prevailed." In group after group, the southerners succumbed. Big cats with pouches lost out to big cats with none. South American toxodonts fell away, to be replaced by northern style tapirs and deer.

It wasn't a total rout. South American anteaters persist, so do tree sloths, monkeys. Armadillos have moved deep into Texas.

But overall, the northern mammals were better at invading and adapting. At this point nearly half the mammals in South America (if you count large groups, families and genera) come from lineages that came down from North America over the last 2.5 million years. The losers suffered a losers fate: they disappeared.

But why? What did the northern mammals have that the southern ones didn't?

"No one knows for sure," says Wilson. This is one of those puzzles that biologists keep coming back to, he says.

But they have a notion. The northern continents, America, Europe and Asia have spent eons attaching and detaching. Russia with Alaska, Canada with Greenland, Greenland with its eastern neighbors, Europe with Africa. Northern lands, therefore have regularly exchanged animals, and those animals have had to diversify, compete, adapt. They've had to deal with fierce winters and ice.

South America, on the other hand, since edging off from Africa, spent a long time as an island continent, untouched by other lands. And like Australia, it has produced highly unusual creatures, like kinkajous, guinea pigs, piranhas, weird frogs, toads, turtles, boa constrictors and tall, running birds like rheas — who can thrive because there aren't regular invaders to cope with.

What the northerners have that southerners lack, perhaps, is a tougher life. Northern animals have competed against more, different animals, accommodated more parasites, tested their immune systems in more ways; they've learned to expand more quickly, producing more babies when they need to — and it's that Northern worldliness, say some biologists, that gave them an edge.

But this is only theory. It's only begun to be tested. Thinking about it, I realized there is one southern mammal, a plains creature that stepped out of the southern forests that's been monstrously successful, spilling its offspring everywhere, north, south, east, west, even up...to the moon. We are that creature.

And while we weren't involved in the north/south encounter in the Americas, (we arrived later), technically, we are of African, that is southern, origin, so ... before biologists get too giddy about successful northern mammals, they might remember where they came from.

Just saying.

 

Austerity killing babies in Greece

Thanks to German bankers.

The reorganization of the Greece's health system, under German direction, is advancing. "A final timetable is to be presented in the second half of this year," declared the German Health Ministry (BMG). The German government sees deficits also in the lack of an "effective cost management," but most of all in the lack of "competitive elements." In a "Memorandum of Understanding" (MoU), the BMG and the Task Force for Greece (TFGR) have reached an agreement with the Greek government on the introduction of the highly criticized German-modeled so-called case flat-rates. The criticisms stem from the fact that patients are not being treated in response to their medical needs but on the basis of economic efficiency. The massive consequences the austerity measures are having on the public health in Greece are becoming more evident. A growing number of Greek citizens are losing their health insurance, due to unemployment and therefore must pay medical costs themselves. The shortage of medical aid, for example, has caused an increase of 40 percent in the child mortality rate since 2009. Diseases such as malaria or AIDS are spreading more rapidly. The German government continues to insist on its austerity course in spite of these ramifications.

"Efficiency and Effectiveness"

Within the framework of the EU austerity dictates, Germany took the lead in the reorganization of the Greek health system back in March 2010. "The German Ministry of Health is in support of the Greek government's measures to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of long-term health care, by substantial and effective transformations in the organization of its health system," declared the State Secretary in the Ministry of Health, Stefan Kapferer in February 2011, on the occasion of the signing of the corresponding "Declaration of Intent."[1] The concrete measures had been specified by the German Ministry of Health and the Task Force for Greece (TFGR) in the April 2012 "Memorandum of Understanding" (MoU) with the Greek government. These measures include the introduction of case flat-rates, a change in hospital management structures, the reorganization of the National Organization for Healthcare Provision insurance (EOPYY) and new pricing models for medicine. The German GIZ development aid agency was given the responsibility of the final elaboration of these plans, which thereby opens "new markets in industrialized countries."[2] The German government bought supplementary expertise at the "KSB Clinic Consulting Group" and the "B and K Informatik and Consulting" company.

Profit-Oriented Therapy

According to the German government the Greek health sector is lacking an "effective cost management," but above all it lacks "elements of competitiveness."[3] The introduction of German-modeled case flat-rates is considered a fundamental instrument for overcoming these alleged deficits. By using a remuneration system oriented on the type of illness rather than on the length of hospital stay, the government coalition expects "major advantages" - even though criticisms of this model have been growing for a long time. Doctors have been criticizing that the false incentives, on the one hand, could lead to unnecessary, but lucrative treatments, and, on the other, to premature discontinuation of treatments in less profitable therapies. In addition, no studies have proven that costs are reduced through a reorientation on "Diagnosis Related Groups" DRGs. The German government is not promising overnight effects through DRGs. These would presuppose the implementation of modern, efficiency-oriented hospital management structures, which would be time consuming. "In this situation, short-term, tangible successes are not to be expected," according to a government answer to a parliamentary interpellation in the German Bundestag.[4]

Cut the Health Budget by One-Third

These proposed transformations are being implemented within the framework of the austerity measures being enforced by Berlin. According to the stipulations handed down by the Troika, Greece's health expenditures should not surpass six percent of the country's gross national product - in Germany these expenditures were at 11.3 percent in 2011. Since, as a result of the austerity policy imposed on that country, the Greek GNP has been on the decline for years, the expenditures for the health system are sinking drastically. By 2012, these expenditures were reduced to around 9.5 billion Euros, from 14 billion Euros in 2009.[5] The Greek government has already shut down 46 of its 130 hospitals and cut the budget by 40 percent for those remaining. This has added thousands more to the unemployed created by the devastation of the health sector. The newly founded EOPYY health insurance organization has had its finances cut. This has created billions in debts and is unable to pay the costs of medicine and treatments. Therefore patients must themselves pay, along with approx. 30 percent of their fellow citizens, who had lost their health insurance due to unemployment.

Humanitarian Crisis

In 2012, Greece's Minister of Health, at the time, Andreas Lykourentzos, characterized the negotiations with the Troika as the most difficult period of his incumbency. "The public health system can't be amputated," he warned following the talks.[6] In fact, the imposed austerity measures had a devastating effect on his country's health situation. Sick leaves have already a tendency to increase in times of economic crisis; the austerity policy, therefore, makes the situation even worse. Dr. Giorgos Vichas, speaks of a "humanitarian crisis."[7] Since 2008, the child mortality rate has risen by 40 percent. The number of HIV positive drug users has risen from 10 - 15 in 2007 to 314 in the first eight months of 2012 alone - mainly due to the drastic cutbacks in preventive programs. Malaria and tuberculosis, the West Nile and dengue fevers are continuing to spread. Doctors' initiatives, appealing for donations of medicine and treating patients free of charge are attempting to mitigate the most serious emergencies, but they cannot substantially better the medical situation.

Deadly Shock Therapy

"The interaction between austerity policy, economic shock treatments and deficient social protective measures seems to ultimately lead to an escalation of the health and social crises in Europe," concluded a study by several scholars published in the renowned "The Lancet" medical journal,[8] Epidemiologists, David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu drew the same conclusion in their book "The Body Economic - Why Austerity Kills." This is why the "European Health Alliance" has appealed for a political about face in an open letter to the European Commission. Associations in Germany, for example "Medico International" and the "Association of Democratic Doctors" are protesting against the austerity dictate and its catastrophic consequences.

Expenditures Still too High

The German government does not seem to be impressed by these initiatives. For example, activities to insure a better health insurance protection, surpassing the program set with the TFGR in the "Memorandum of Understanding," are not being planned. "The German government is concentrating its active support on the focal themes set out in the MoU with the Greek government and the TFGR," explains the Chancellery.[9] In the meantime, the Troika has imposed even more drastic cut backs. Following its last "inspection," at the beginning of this month, it has forced the Greek government to agree to take concrete steps - not, for example, to mitigate the dramatic consequences of austerity on the country's health situation - but rather to bring under "control" the still "too high expenditures in the areas of health."[10]

But do the trains run on time?

 

Hmmm

As Paul Harvey used to say, and now for the rest of the story.

During the height of the George Zimmerman trial, when media attention was focused heavily on Stand Your Ground Laws and the question of whether or not a white man would be found not guilty of killing an unarmed African-American teenager, the shooting death of 13 month old Georgia infant Antonio Santigio, also made national media headlines. After the mother, Sherry West, told police that her baby was killed by two black teenagers, the right-wing went crazy with this story. Meme’s about the killing could be found on every social media web-site, public page and in every group where the Trayvon Martin story was discussed. Most of these meme’s showed photos of the infant side by side with one of two accused African-American teenagers.

For months, right wingers have levelled accusations of reverse racism against the President, the DOJ and even the media. There have been outcries of disparity against white people because no prominent politicians spoke out about the case, no protests were held, it was not declared a hate crime, the teens weren’t sent to Gitmo to face terrorism charges and especially because the two were not immediately sentenced to execution. To Republicans and racists, the case appeared to be anecdotal proof of everything they believe about black people; that they are scary, they are dangerous -they are baby murdering monsters. The case was repeatedly cited to “prove” that people like George Zimmerman have every right to gun them down black kids, like Trayvon Martin, at will.

In spite of the social media “outrage” and the right-wing media narrative, however, the Baby Santiago case only illustrates just how prevalent racism really is in the United States. Just days after Sherry West told police her 13 month old was shot and killed by two black teens, West’s 21 year old daughter went to police to tell them that she suspected her mother may have killed her infant brother. Ashley Glassey told CBS News in March, that her mother has serious mental health issues. These include a diagnosis of bi-polar with accompanying schizophrenic tendencies. West also talked with the media about how she was removed from her mother’s care at the age of 8, because of abuse and neglect in the home. Immediately after the shooting, Glassey said West began asking questions about how long it would take her to collect the insurance money. West’s daughter also told both media and police that her mother made conflicting statements to her, regarding the child’s death - including different stories about who was shot first. West’s inconsistencies and suspicious behavior caused her own daughter to tell police and reporters that she suspected her mother was not telling the truth about how the infant was killed. CBS News reported several days later that police had not followed up with Glassey, nor had they taken her statement. A follow-up call by the press to the police, was never returned.

On July 16^th further evidence was released to the public that implicates the parents involvement in the child’s death. Police tests immediately following the shooting revealed gun powder on the hands of both Sherry West and the baby’s father, Louis Santiago. Santiago claimed that he was nowhere near the scene of the shooting. This evidence too, was withheld for months, until the defense attorney in the case demanded that it be released in mid July.

When we look at the Zimmerman case and the Baby Santiago case side by side, what we see is how racism plays out in the United States. When a white man openly admitted to shooting and killing an unarmed black teenager, the public immediately jumped to his defense. On the other hand, when two black teenagers were accused of shooting and killing a white child, the public immediately cried out for their executions. Zimmerman was guilty, the two teens may very well be innocent, but public perceptions about these two cases shows that what matters most is the skin color of the accused killers.

Evidence in the Baby Santiago case seems to point more and more toward the fact that the two black youth accused of this shooting are innocent of the crime they’ve been blamed for. Yet their pictures have been plastered all over social media, and they’ve been labelled  as “baby killers” – a favorite phrase of the right-wing since the day of the shooting. Can we hope that there will be a fair trial for these youth? Can we hope that our justice system will not continue to convict the innocent, while allowing the guilty to go free? Can we hope that the media will report fairly and accurately on this case? Can we hope that the Georgia court system will be fairer and more just than the one in Florida?

And what of Sherry West? If it turns out that a southern white women did in fact kill her own infant in order to collect some insurance money, will American’s show the same level of vehemence they did when they believed it was two black teens who killed Antonio Santiago? Will they still cry out for execution, or will they see the case differently, if the killer turns out to be middle-aged, white and female, rather than young, black and male?

And then there is the question of the jurors. Will there be another jury of all white women, women who have to choose between two scenarios; Did a soft-spoken white, southern woman (whom they surely can identify with) actually shoot her own infant – or the alternative, did two black hoodlum gangsters try to rob her, killing her baby in the process? Can such a jury be found in Georgia that is able to set aside their underlying stereotypes about women, about blacks, about society and of course, about themselves, to listen to facts, examine evidence and come to a just decision?

As the long-standing tradition of racism in the United States is challenged by minorities and non-minorities across the country, the question of whether or not these two young men can hope for justice is a lingering one. There is overt racism, which we see hear every day from politicians, public figures and members of the general population. There is also an undercurrent of racism, one which convicted these two teens without question, from the moment Sherry West first levelled her accusations. It’s the same undercurrent that caused the public to view Trayvon Martin as a threat, even though he was an unarmed teenager, walking home from the candy store. The question is, will racism lead to the conviction of two innocent teens, arrested and tried for a crime they did not commit? Will people finally be able to step back and ask themselves how and why they “knew” those teens were guilty, from the moment they set eyes on them? And then will they finally be able to also ask how and why they just “knew”George Zimmerman wasn’t guilty of murder? Both these cases were tried in the minds of the American public, long before the evidence was heard, before the trials had even begun.

Racism is a threat to every American. The Baby Santiago case may prove that it’s not just the African-American population or the Latino population or the Muslim population, that suffers the consequences. If something does not change, murderers will continue to go free, while innocent people’s lives are destroyed. If our underlying belief system continues to reinforce the idea that the black person is always the guilty party, there’s little to stop people like Sherry West and George Zimmerman, from staging murders of white people or black people, of teenagers and even toddlers of any color, having full confidence that as long as they implicate a black person, no-one will even question their innocence.

The on-off empathy switch for psychopaths

It means that they can be trained, but it also explains other things about them.

Psychopaths do not lack empathy, rather they can switch it on at will, according to new research.

Placed in a brain scanner, psychopathic criminals watched videos of one person hurting another and were asked to empathise with the individual in pain.

Only when asked to imagine how the pain receiver felt did the area of the brain related to pain light up.

Scientists, reporting in Brain, say their research explains how psychopaths can be both callous and charming.

The team proposes that with the right training, it could be possible to help psychopaths activate their "empathy switch", which could bring them a step closer to rehabilitation.

The ability to empathise with others - to put yourself in someone else's shoes - is crucial to social development in order to respond appropriately in everyday situations.

Criminals with psychopathy characteristically show a reduced ability to empathise with others, including their victims. Evidence suggests they are also more likely to reoffend upon release than criminals without the psychiatric condition.

Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterised by superficial charm, pathological lying and a diminished capacity for remorse.

Now scientists have found that only when asked to empathise did the criminals' empathy reaction, also known as the mirror system, fire up the same way as it did for the controls. Without instruction, they show reduced activity in the regions of the brain associated with pain.

This mirror system refers to the mirror neurons in our brain which are known to activate when we watch someone do a task and when we do it ourselves. They are thought to play a vital role in the ability to empathise with others.

Christian Keysers from the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, and senior author of the study, said it could change the way psychopathic criminals were viewed.

"The predominant notion had been that they are callous individuals, unable to feel emotions themselves and therefore unable to feel emotions in others.

"Our work shows it's not that simple. They don't lack empathy but they have a switch to turn it on and off. By default, it seems to be off."

The fact that they have the capacity to switch empathy on, at least under certain conditions, could have a positive side to it, Prof Keysers said.

"The notion psychopaths have no empathy at all was a bleak prospect. It would make it very hard for them to have normal moral development.

"Now that we've shown they have empathy - even if only in certain conditions - we can give therapists something to work with," Prof Keysers told BBC News.

But he explained that it was not yet known how this wilful capacity for empathy could be transformed into the spontaneous empathy most of us have.

Essi Viding from University College London, who was not involved with the study, said it was an extremely interesting finding, but that it remained unclear whether the psychopathic criminals' experience of empathy felt the same as that of the controls.

"It's dangerous to look at brain activation and say that it means they're empathising. They are able to generate a typical neural response, but that doesn't mean they have the same empathetic experience," Prof Viding told BBC News.

"We know they can generate the same response but they do that in an active and effortful way. Under free-viewing conditions they don't seem to. Just because they can emphasise, doesn't mean they will.

"Psychopathic criminals are clearly different. The million-dollar question is whether we can devise therapeutic interventions that would shift them do this more automatically."

Randall Salekin, from the University of Alabama, US, who works with youth offenders said: "These findings fit with much of the treatment I am doing using a mental model program, whereby youth are informed about how the brain works and then asked to make specific plans for improving their lives.

"This study is impressive because it actually shows the brain mechanisms or neural networks involved in activating the inmates' empathy."

 

Virginia Johnson, RIP

Virginia Johnson, of Masters & Johnson fame, has passed.

In my rap song, Sex Behind The Iron Curtain, she got a mention.

In an era when even talking about sex was virtually taboo, Virginia Johnson had a way of putting research subjects at ease, persuading them to participate in groundbreaking investigations that changed the way human sexuality was perceived.

Johnson, half of the renowned Masters and Johnson team, was remembered Thursday as one of the key figures in the sexual revolution. Johnson, whose legal name was Virginia Masters, died Wednesday of complications from several illnesses at an assisted living center in St. Louis. She was 88.

"She has one of the most extraordinary lives of any American woman in the 20th century," said Thomas Maier, author of the 2009 book "Masters of Sex, the Life and Times of William Masters and Virginia Johnson, the Couple Who Taught America How to Love."

"She literally came in without a degree and became one of the most well-known female figures in medicine in her time," Maier said.

Johnson grew up in rural Missouri, near the small town of Golden City. By the late 1950s she was in her 30s and twice-divorced, raising two small children and looking for a job.

She landed work as a secretary in the medical school at Washington University in St. Louis. That's where she met Masters, an obstetrician-gynecologist who hired her as his assistant for his research into human sexuality, studies performed first at Washington University and later at the Masters and Johnson Institute in St. Louis.

It was a strange indoctrination: Masters convinced her that having sex with him was part of the job. They eventually became lovers and wed in 1971. (They divorced 20 years later.)

Over time, Johnson grew from an assistant to co-collaborator. They were a good fit together: Masters had impeccable academic and research credentials, a brilliant scientist but aloof and lacking in people skills. Maier said it was Johnson who managed to recruit the countless volunteers needed for the studies – graduate students, nurses, faculty wives and other participants for what was almost certainly the largest human sexuality experiment ever in the U.S.

"He was a rigorous scientist most comfortable in a white coat," said Dr. Robert Kolodny, who worked alongside the couple for years and was associate director of the Masters and Johnson Institute.

"Ginny had people skills and a warmth about her, and projected an interest in humanity that was a very good foil to his austere scientist demeanor."

In after-hours research, Masters and Johnson shattered basic precepts about female sexuality, including Freud's concept that vaginal – rather than clitoral – orgasm was the more mature sexual response for women.

She took the case studies and asked the uncomfortable questions. Hundreds of couples, not all of them married, participated in the observed research.

That research was later discussed in their 1966 book, "Human Sexual Response." And their 1970 book, "Human Sexual Inadequacy," explored a therapy they'd developed for men and women with sexual problems.

Both books were best-sellers translated into dozens of languages.

Kolodny said Johnson played a major and creative role in devising their sex therapy, which helped people focus on sensation of touch rather than performance. Before Masters and Johnson, Kolodny said, medicine was in the "dark era" when it came to human sexuality

"She gave women sort of permission to honor their own sexuality," Kolodny said.

At the height of their careers, Masters and Johnson were huge celebrities, the topic of late-night talk show hosts and on the cover of news magazines.

Their work had its critics, and it was often frowned upon in some circles in an era when sex was seldom discussed publicly.

"There was a lot of grief," Johnson's son, Scott Johnson, recalled. "There were threats, things of that kind. She was a very strong woman."

As Masters' health was in decline in the 1990s, and Johnson was caring for him, he announced he was divorcing her, leaving her to pursue a sweetheart of his youth. The Masters and Johnson Institute closed in 1994 after Masters retired. He died in 2001.

Scott Johnson said his mother also retired in the 1990s.

But their work still fascinates and resonates. Showtime will debut a TV series in September, "Masters of Sex," based on Maier's book.

"She brought equality to women in the field of sexuality," Maier said. "Their studies underlined the power of female sexuality."

Along with her son, Johnson is survived by her daughter, Lisa Young, and two grandchildren. Private funeral arrangements were pending.

 

But demanding they tap dance bojangles-style between courses was the final straw

Here.

Paula Deen ordered African-American workers to “dress in an old-style Aunt Jemima outfit” and ring a dinner bell, according to a woman who is still employed at the disgraced cook’s Georgia restaurant.

Following Deen’s dramatic fall from grace after her admission that she had used racial slurs, The New York Times‘ Kim Severson went to Savannah to check out the former food network host’s crumbling empire. Severson spoke to Dora Charles, a black cook who helped Deen open her Lady & Sons restaurant over 20 years ago.

“She said, ‘Stick with me, one day if I get rich, you’ll get rich,’” Charles explained. “It just passed me by. You know, I’m not going to run behind her and say, ‘You promised me, you promised me. Where my half? Where my part?’ You know? It wasn’t all about that. Actually, all I was looking for was a good salary.”

But Charles said that when Deen launched her Food Network show, she was was only getting paid $6.50 an hour.

“I told her, at times, I didn’t even have enough money to buy my own medications,” she recalled, demonstrating how Deen once casually tossed a $100 bill at her when she complained that she couldn’t afford her medical bills.

“She was sitting across the table and she said — it didn’t reach me — and she said, ‘Here’s a hundred dollars, go buy your medicine.’”

Severson noted that Deen had admitted during a May 17 deposition that she had wanted to dress waiters likes slaves for a Southern-style wedding.

“Yeah, she wanted [Employee Ineata Jones] ‘Jellyroll’ to dress like that as well,” Charles remarked.

And the slavery theme wasn’t just limited to Deen’s wedding fantasy, according to the Times:

Ms. Deen used Ms. Jones for restaurant theater. At 11 a.m., when the doors opened at the Lady & Sons, she stood in front and rang an iron dinner bell, something she had asked Mrs. Charles to do as well. An image of Ms. Jones doing just that was turned into a postcard sold at Paula Deen stores.

Ms. Jones was also in charge of making hoecakes, the cornmeal pancakes served to every guest. Ms. Deen had designed a station so diners could watch them being made. At both jobs, Mrs. Charles and other employees said, Ms. Deen wanted Ms. Jones to dress in an old-style Aunt Jemima outfit.

“Jellyroll didn’t want to hear that,” Mrs. Charles said. “She didn’t want to do that.”

“I said, ‘I’m not ringing no bell,’” Charles insisted. “That’s a symbol to me of what we used to do back in the day.”

“Do you feel like Paul Deen is racist?” Severson wondered.

“I do, I do,” Charles admitted after a long pause.

“Have you ever heard Paul Deen use the N-word?” Severson asked.

“I’ve heard her used the N-word,” Charles replied. “She say, ‘I tell all y’all n*ggers, that’s what’s wrong with y’all n*ggers now today.’”

Deen’s public relations team has argued that no employee was ever made to dress up like Aunt Jemima and ring a dinner bell.

“Fundamentally Dora’s complaint is not about race but about money,” they said in a statement. “It is about an employee that despite over 20 years of generosity feels that she still deserves yet even more financial support from Paula Deen.”

Both the Times and and New York Magazine, however, obtained promotional photos from Lady & Sons of Ineata Jones wearing an Aunt Jemima-style apron and ringing a dinner bell.

At the time of publication, Charles was reportedly still employed by Deen’s Lady & Sons restaurant, but she said she realized that her time there was almost over. She hopes to one day open her own restaurant.

Iodized salt raised American IQs

One simple process, iodizing salt, raised the average IQ in America 3.5 points. 

Iodized salt is so commonplace in the U.S. today that you may never have given the additive a second thought. But new research finds that humble iodine has played a substantial role in cognitive improvements seen across the American population in the 20th century.

Iodine is a critical micronutrient in the human diet—that is, something our bodies can’t synthesize that we have to rely on food to obtain—and it’s been added to salt (in the form of potassium iodide) since 1924. Originally, iodization was adopted to reduce the incidence of goiter, an enlargement of the thyroid gland. But research since then has found that iodine also plays a crucial role in brain development, especially during gestation.

Iodine deficiency today is the leading cause of preventable mental retardation in the world. It’s estimated that nearly one-third of the world’s population has a diet with too little iodine in it, and the problem isn’t limited to developing countries—perhaps one-fifth of those cases are in Europe (pdf), where iodized salt is still not the norm.

 

Iodine’s Natural Experiment

With this background, then, a group of economists saw a natural experiment: comparing the intelligence of children born just before 1924—the year iodization began—and those born just after. James Freyer, David Weil and Dimitra Politi used military data from the early 1920s, when World War II drove millions of men and women to enlist.

Recruits all took a standardized intelligence test as part of their enlistment. Researchers didn’t have access to the test scores themselves, but they had a clever substitute: smarter recruits were assigned to the Air Forces while the less bright ones went to the Ground Forces. This allowed the researchers to infer test scores depending on which branch a recruit was selected for.

Intelligence data were paired with birthdate and hometown, since iodine levels in the soil and water vary significantly from place to place. To estimate which regions were naturally high-iodine and which were low, the researchers referred to nationwide statistics collected after World War I on the prevalence of goiter.

In all, researchers had sufficient data on about 2 million male recruits born between 1921 and 1927.

Stark Improvements

The economists found that in the lowest-iodine areas—the bottom quarter of the study population—the introduction of iodized salt had stark effects. Men from these regions born in 1924 or later were significantly more likely to get into the Air Force and had an average IQ that was 15 points higher than their predecessors.

Nationwide, that averages out to a 3.5-point rise in IQ because of iodization, the researchers report in a paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research.

The initiative wasn’t without its drawbacks—sudden iodine supplementation among people who are deficient can cause thyroid-related deaths. The researchers estimate that 10,000 deaths in the decades after 1924 were caused by salt iodization.

But on the positive side, iodine deficiency and its symptoms were vanquished almost overnight. And iodine’s mental benefits may even help explain the Flynn Effect, which observes that IQ rose about 3 points per decade in developed countries throughout the 20th century. It’s been thought that improved health and nutrition were the driving forces of the Flynn Effect. Now, it appears that iodine alone was responsible for roughly one decade of that remarkable climb. All the more reason, then, for the rest of the world to follow suit and relegate iodine deficiency to the history books.

 

What did Robert Oswald know?

Interesting article.

A number of researchers have wondered if Lee Oswald's brother Robert knew more that he ever admitted to.  Indeed, his half brother John Pic told the FBI that Robert knew more that he was letting on.  As one researcher told me, Robert wasn't going to be doing any talking from early on to this day.  Robert did publish a book in 1967 regarding his relationship with his brother (Lee: A Portrait of Lee Harvey Oswald by His Brother) and did appear in the several documentaries.  Publicly, he has always stood by the official story and kept a low profile over the years.  

However, his testimony to the Warren Commission, conducted in 1964, reveals Robert's contradictory accounting of events.  A careful reading of the transcript makes it apparent that Robert is not being forthright regarding many issues and this opens up other unexpected mysteries.

The Oswald Trust

Early on, much attention is given to a trust fund set up to accommodate donations given to Marina Oswald, Lee's widow after his death.  The amount was $25,000, supposedly donated from people around country.  Robert was one of the signatories to the trust.  However, this was not the only amount of money Marina received.  Before she was called to give testimony,  in February of 1964, Marina signed a contract with Tex-Italia Films and Cinema International Productions, to appear in a movie about her life.  She was paid a flat fee of $132,350.  Soon after signing the contract, the Tex-Italia Film company shut their doors in Hollywood, never to be heard from again.  No movie about Marina was ever made.  How's that for taking care of the star witness in the case?

However,  it's unlikely that Robert would not have known something about the details of this transaction as close as he was to Marina.  In fact, it's hard to see how the Commission lawyers didn't know about it either.  FBI Director Hoover must have known as he told lead council, J. Lee Rankin, that the FBI was not going to be investigating any of Marina Oswald's financial dealings.  Rankin must have breathed a sigh of relief!  So the kabash was put on this from the beginning and was to be mentioned again, no more.  

It's unknown what Marina Oswald did with this large amount of money or for that matter, where the mysterious men of Tex-Italia Films acquired the funds. 

Marina Speaking English

Robert told the Warren Commission that his sister in law Marina had "limited knowledge" of English and he would communicate with her via hand signals.  As we shall see in the section, this is not true–Marina was a very good English speaker and before he spoke to the Commission, Robert Oswald actually admitted to it.

In December of 1963 Robert gave SA Barnwell Odom a 14-page statement and in it he notes meeting with Marina to discuss a management contract she was about to sign with Jim Martin.  There was a discrepancy in the contract that Marina noted–since she could read English–and discussed this issue in English with Robert.  He'll deny her language skills later.  It should be noted that Jim Martin told the HSCA in 1978 that Marina could understand English quite well (Armstrong p. 340-341). 

And there are other sources regarding Marina and her English speaking.  Robert’s mother Marguerite Oswald said in her Commission testimony that Marina could speak English.  Lee wrote Marina letters in English while in the Soviet Union (Armstrong, p. 339). The so-called "other defector" Robert Webster (who I might add is the spitting image of Lee) said he met Marina while in Moscow in 1959-60 and she spoke in English to him (she denies knowing him).  Also, Marina’s stenographic notebook (CE100) that was found by the Dallas Police is written in English.  They also found other notebooks with her English writing that are now in the National Archives (Armstrong p. 340-341).

So why is Robert Oswald obviously covering for Marina?  He's speaking under oath and perjuring himself in the process.  And no one on the Warren Commission or their staff attorneys outs him on this.  Marina meanwhile, requires the use of an interpreter to answer questions from the Commission during her testimony.  Many researchers consider Marina to be a KGB agent and speaking English too well would be a dead giveaway to the CIA.  Conversely, Lee spoke excellent Russian yet rarely spoke it in Russia.  Likewise, that would give him away to the KGB if he were operating as an agent.  

Basically, Marina had excellent English language skills and was allowed to pull the wool over everybody's eyes.  Robert helped facilitate this charade.   

The  Strange 1947 to 1948 Jump

During the Robert Oswald's questioning by assistant counsel Albert E. Jenner, Jr., the following happens:

Mr. Oswald.  No, sir. I would say at no time it was. In moving up perhaps there to the time of the divorce and everything, I don't remember when Mr. Ekdahl moved out of the house. At that time we were living on Eighth Avenue in Fort Worth. This was during a summer period there. And I think this was the summer after the second year that we attended there this would be the summer of 1947.

Mr. Dulles.  If it is agreeable, I think we will adjourn for just a minute. It is now 11 o'clock.

Coming back from the break, the Commission starts qualifying the exhibits.  When finished, they resume the testimony: 

Mr. Jenner.  At the recess, Mr. Oswald, we were dealing with excuse me. We were dealing with the period of time that you and your mother and your two brothers lived in Benbrook, Tex. This brought us through the summer of 1948, I believe. Am I correct?

Mr. Oswald.  That is correct, sir.

So, a year is lost from the summer of 1947 to the sumer of 1948.  It's unknown what is happening here.  Is this an edit?  And if so, then why?  If not, then Robert is going along with something that he has to know is not true, unless they questioned him about this time span and edited it out of the transcript.  They obviously did not end in 1948 before the break.  

Stripling Junior High

Probably the most controversial part of Robert Oswald's testimony to the Commission.  While talking of Lee's early life, and school attendance, Robert mentions Lee attending W. C. Stripling in Irving, Texas.  However, under the official story, neither Lee nor his mother are supposed to be living there at that time and existing school records have him attending Beauregard Junior High in New Orleans in the fall of 1954.  And this is not the first time Robert makes a mention of Stripling.  In fact, he mentions it three times.  The first is in 1959 to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram upon Lee's defection to the Soviet Union; the second instance is to the Star-Telegram in 1962 upon Lee's return, and the final time in front of the Warren Commission.

In fact, it would have been difficult for any one to have known of this except for Robert mentioning these three times.  Researcher John Armstrong started digging into this and ran across a Frank Kudlaty, the assistant principle at Stripling.  When asked, Kudlaty said he remembered Lee Oswald attending because he was called by the Principle to head to the school Saturday morning (the 23rd) and hand over all records pertaining to Lee Oswald to the FBI agents who were on their way.  This he did, but did not get a written receipt nor did he have the ability to make a photostat of the records.  Lee Oswald apparently was only there for about six weeks in the fall of 1954.  Kudlaty noticed an interesting fact–there was no letter stating where the records were sent to upon Lee Oswald leaving.   Also, there were no loss of six weeks from his records at Beauregard in New Orleans during this time (Armstrong, p. 97-101).

Frank Kudlaty wasn't the only witness either, faculty and former students remembered Lee Oswald attending Stripling.  He lived across the street from the school.  It's easy to remember the kid that gets to go home for lunch. 

It's quite surprising that the attorney  Albert Jenner allowed Robert to pass this by without correction.  The Commission and staff had the records and they knew the answers beforehand; that’s basic lawyering.  Robert was never corrected.  Never the less, it's not the only instance of Lee's school records contradicting.  His records from the fall of 1953 do as well.  One set has him in PS #44 in New York and the other set has him in Beauregard Junior high in New Orleans at the exact same time.

Evidence of Lee Oswald being doubled?

Thanksgiving 1962

This is also known as "family reunion" before the Big Event that occurs a year later, to the day.  It's also an example of odd family behavior.  Gathering for the holiday dinner are Robert, his wife Vada and kids, Lee and Marina and their child June, and half brother John Pic, his wife Margret, and their kids.  Robert would say in an interview years later that it was a "Typical Thanksgiving day for any family."  But there is one person missing.  Their mother, Marguerite.  As Robert stated to the Commission, their mother was not invited, never knew of the gathering, and according to him, her name was never mentioned.

Imagine you have one living parent, she lives nearby and you never invite her to Thanksgiving day dinner.  This has the appearance of deeper levels of family intrigue.  

There are other instances before and after showing Robert's aloofness for his mother.  For example in the summer of 1956 he was engaged to Vada.  He never introduced to her his mother or Lee before the wedding. Vada only met them a few years later.  When Robert was being interviewed in 1959 by Star-Telegram, he was asked where they could get in touch with his mother.  Robert was evasive saying that Marguerite was in seclusion and under a doctor's care.  This is not true and there is no evidence to support this.  The reporter eventually found her and she wasn't tucked away.  

Through these actions, Robert displays an apparent aversion to talking about his mother or associating with her.  It's as if he is ashamed of her.  Others who believe that Marguerite was being impersonated (along with Lee) believe Robert's aversion is to an impostor.  And it's not just his mother, in later years he will have nothing to do with Lee's two daughters either.  

Visiting Lee In Jail

Robert going to visit Lee in jail will be the first time he has seen him since the Thanksgiving gathering from the previous year.  Robert had also experienced more than one shock this day.  Other than seeing his brother arrested for the murder of a police officer and the President of the United States, he also was to learn that Marina had given birth to a second child, Rachel.  Robert never knew that Marina was pregnant, let alone had given birth to a new child.

Most striking is Robert's comments that when get finally to speak to Lee.  He noticed that Lee seems to speak in a "mechanical" way with little visible emotion.  That erie calm that he possessed that all around him noticed.  Robert did too.  Even more striking is Robert's observation, "I was not talking to the Lee I knew."  That Lee was long gone, replaced by another spirit.  Maybe even a different Lee altogether that wanted to be called Harvey.  And maybe it dawned on Robert at some point what had happened.

So What Did Robert Know?

There are hints here and there which are never followed up on such as Robert admitting that he thought Jack Ruby knew Lee before he shot him on live TV.  An interesting line of thought never explored.  Odd things stick out.  Such as in his book on Lee, Robert stated that Lee came home on leave in February 1958 and they went hunting.  But his released Marine leave records show no such occurrence in February of that year.  It’s quite telling when Robert speaks of Lee seeming like a different person altogether.  The brother who he had grown up with, suffered hardships with, who had idolized him, following in his footsteps into the Marines and beyond, was now a totally different man sitting on a barbed-wire fence.

These brothers loved each other.  The drift probably started when Lee went to  Soviet Union, what Robert would later say with a grin as "sowing his oats."  As a former Marine, and no doubt a patriotic American, Robert should have been appalled at this event.  If he was, he's not telling us.  

So Robert Oswald remains a mystery in this affair.  If he has been charged with retaining secrets, along with the burden that must have been, he has done his job well.  Like a good soldier does.

Sweet hydrogen

Hydrogen is a very efficient and clean energy source and would be great for cars. The problem is that hydrogen is also very explosive (think: Hindenberg). If you can develop a process to make hydrogen in your car that would solve a lot of problems. Scientists are working on this.

Hydrogen makes an extraordinarily efficient and clean fuel. Three times as energy-efficient as petrol, Nasa used it to power its space shuttles. It can be used to generate electricity and only produces water as a byproduct.

And yet, scientists are struggling to scale up hydrogen production. Ironically, given hydrogen's green potential, the cheapest and most viable sources are hydrocarbon-based compounds such as natural gas. But liberating hydrogen from fossil fuels creates carbon emissions that outweigh any environmental advantages.

Percival Zhang, professor of bioengineering at Virginia Tech Institute, says that the problem is not just technical but that, sometimes, "scientists have poor imaginations". And so he wants to try something different: why not take advantage of an abundant natural resource, sugar? "Our idea is that simple," he says. "We call the project Sweet Hydrogen."

Biomass – trees, plants and other waste vegetable matter – is an abundant and rapidly renewable source of starch and sugars, that is nowadays used to produce biofuels. Exploiting biomass to produce sugar, and turning that sugar into hydrogen, could lead a change in global energy production.

In 2011, the US consumed 134bn gallons (507bn litres) of gasoline, but "with our technology, just 700m metric tonnes of biomass would be enough to replace the whole yearly [gasoline] production," says Zhang.The last official assessments estimate the availability of crop residues for biomass in the US to be about 157m tonnes per year.

Moreover, recent projections find that by 2030 the total biomass resources (coming from crop residues but also from forests, waste and energy crops) available for energy production will be close to 680m tonnes per year.

"So far there have been two different ways to produce hydrogen," says Zhang. "Either you obtain it by heating fossil fuels, such as methane, or by separating water into oxygen and hydrogen through electrolysis." The first solution produces emissions, while the latter is very expensive. "And you still need fossil fuels to perform electrolysis."

In theory, it is also possible to drive hydrogen production using renewable energy such as solar power, but Zhang says this solution is inefficient and is difficult to scale up because it is very expensive. Current methods based on a conventional photovoltaic cell coupled to an electrolyser for producing hydrogen, cost about €15 per kilogram(£13/kg or $20/kg).

Zhang is studying what he calls a simple alternative. "We can now produce hydrogen from every kind of agricultural waste, from cornstalk to wood chips. These residues have no use in the industry and cannot be recycled."

For years he has been looking for cocktails of enzymes that can break down vegetable matter to produce useful sugars. His team is now able to extract high-purity hydrogen at a relatively mild temperature of 50C. To do so, the scientists extracted enzymes from a range of"extremophile" microorganisms that prosper at temperatures as high as 100C. This particular enzyme cocktail doesn't occur in nature, and when fed a type of sugar called xylose, it can liberate three times as much hydrogen as ordinary microorganisms can achieve. Xylose, also called wood sugar, is abundant in nature, being present in variable quantities in most plants.

Because of its improved efficiency and reduced costs Zhang believes his new model could be easily scaled up. He says: "Our technology will produce energy enough for several applications, including a green revolution in the transportation system. I like to think of the movie Back to the Future – after all, that was the first electric car."

Zhang sees a future in which hydrogen-fuelled electric cars will phase out our dependence on fossil fuels.

There are problems with hydrogen in transport, however: the gas needs to be stored and transferred at high pressure, and it's highly flammable. This has prevented the technology from being implemented in small vehicles.

But Zhang's proposed solution to this problem is simple. "Why should we transport hydrogen? We can transport sugar instead, and perform the reaction in the car or in the service station."

Using solid sugar as raw material, he wants to create cheap bioreactors that will produce hydrogen, as required, using the enzyme cocktail developed at Virginia Tech.

The ultimate test for the method's viability will be the creation of a prototype, but at the moment researchers are still working to obtain maximum efficiency from the reaction.

"In the future, these devices will be small enough to be incorporated in a car, where a fuel cell will then turn the hydrogen into electricity," says Zhang. "Our bioreactors will be a feasible option for small vehicles, but they will also work for big industrial complexes. We are designing the whole system to be very cheap, to scale it up easily."

Although still at an early stage, Sweet Hydrogen and the idea of sugar-fuelled cars have already attracted funds from Shell as well as from a number of research institutes in the US, such as the Biodesign and Bioprocessing Research Center at Virginia Tech, the Department of Energy's BioEnergy Science Center and its Office of Basic Energy Sciences.

"We still need to improve the performance of our enzymes combination in order to improve the overall efficiency of the process," Zhang says. "At the beginning we will look at small markets; but as the technology gets better it will have a much bigger impact in terms of money and emissions saving."

Full moon over Mount Hood