#what is their respiratory system how similar is it to ours what is their analog for mitochondria like | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mohanmekap · 5 years

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It is an open sky. I come across the balcony to reach there. It is an absorbing sight to enjoy and visualize all the glittering eye catching stars from the earth. It gives the feeling I am observing the earth from the ground but in reality it is not so. It is a comparable visual interpretation of mine actually, as the earth itself hanging at one side of the universe but we at Earth seem to understand that it is the ground and we are seeing the stars from there. The innumerable starts at the light years away from us can only be visible because of mighty shine of glittering lights and the power they have and though what a pity is, earth is several times smaller than them but still they seem to be several times smaller than earth.

The comparative analogy which brings us to mind that always someone has to be sober in mind and heart to survive all these negative aspects of life which can generate from time to time with no chance of public visuals. There are many meanings to the designs of these stars and in full moon one can see bright moon the sub-planet of us which is glittering from among there with a lovely sign of illumines and thus gives the sense of feeling we are not alone in this already without a sound of long and brilliant universe. I obliged to the grandness of this universe and always dreamt of reaching there as if in the dream and with some specialized vehicle which can go straight and can cross the light years within seconds so I can in my lifetime revolve around entire universe within a 24 hours, can you believe it and also can you sense this part of life where the simple meaning of understanding of various aspects of life is fast becoming a sense of joy and anticipation.

Space journey preparation

In the meantime the idle mind can have many ideas and for this there are side of dreams and vehicle of imagination which goes on for a smoother time and brings into most of the permanent confidence into my mind and for this I am thinking about as the traveler in space and the most worrying aspect of it is that so far no vehicle has been made which can go at such a speed into the space to see the entire universe, can you believe it as we have to travel to see all the glittering stars yet we cannot watch them one by one as most of them are light years away from us and it is always an impossibility to cross the light year distance on the single life? If one star is at such a distance and it is almost impossible to cross the star at a single life and then how can such a journey possible, the only answer is that to develop one such technique where one can find the life to be paused the while at the journey and the person needs to be staying at the paused life so that the rest of time in which he has to live life will be there intact with no hesitation and with no such alternatives and difficulties.

This means scientists have to devise a new strategy in which the life stream of a person would be stagnant for some time while the journey will be there and then when the space shuttle reaches at the respective stars the astronaut would be revived from there and after the short stay he would be to that stage again so that his life would be preserved still he reaches at the other star which is many light years away from the previous star. So, the astronaut will live for temporarily during his stay at various stars and in the meantime in journey something would pass his life for the journey time so that the life would preserve for that specific duration. In journey the astronaut will be in the state of more than sub consciousness in which he would be in the state of half alive or half dead and his respiratory system will come to a slower position just like the Windows 8 sleep function from there he can wake up with ease and with the same functions he has been life before. They will be in the state similar to the dead but they will not be dead and they can wake up instantly after the space journey pauses at some destination of stars as they will have to experiment and understand the nature of stars and the basic information needs to be send to earth to the scientists who were already there at the ground level waiting for any kind of reporting from them.

This is a possibility and the scientists are seriously considering this aspect of human life as it is impossible to cross a star with a normal human life with many light years away. Some stars are 1000 light years away and how can one take such the journey to live at such a lifetime and for this it is always better to have to the go for this class of technique where a person can live for such a longer life in his entire span of living by preserving the time and pausing the time and awaking him from time to time. As in our olden time, there has been examples of countless sages who have been living for more than thousands of years, and how can they live such long lives? They used to do ‘tapasya’ the meditation for long years and it is believed that they used to pause in their life for many centuries and even there would be trees all around them during those time because of their long concentration of staying at one place, this is one form of pausing their life to touch and reach towards the attainment of Lord and for this they have been doing this relentlessly with no pause and attention, this proves they have mastered the art of pausing the life for long years even hundreds and thousands of years to reach nearness to the Lord and for this there is the flash back in the lifetime of ours and for this all these can have achievements and other forms of attainment to create and experiment on such lives.

All these aspects of life must inspire from the brilliant mind of the scientist to create a pause posture of lives otherwise it is almost impossible to live and then the report from different stars while at the space journey so it is always have the better idea to think of creating such lives so that one person can travel all across the universe with ease of mind and heart, there are other forms of lives which the scientists are considering about still all these are primitive part of thinking and it needs to be developed and matured to a perfect setting as it can give the perfect sense of achieving something not in near future but may be after 30 to 40 years.

Sleep Mode in Human life

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jakehglover · 6 years

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‘Vaxxed’ — The Hidden Story of How Vaccine Safety Has Been Undermined and Suppressed

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Can vaccines trigger autism? This is the topic of the film "Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe,"1 directed by Andrew Wakefield and produced by Del Bigtree, an Emmy Award-winning producer of "The Doctors" talk show.

The film became the center of controversy when it was pulled from the Tribeca Film Festival lineup in 2016 by Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal, the two founders of the well-known film festival. According to Rosenthal, other filmmakers had threatened to withdraw their films from the festival if "Vaxxed" was shown.

While De Niro admitted feeling pressured to pull the film, he urged people to see it, saying there are many issues relating to the way the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) evaluates and monitors the safety of vaccines that are not being openly spoken about, and really should be addressed.

Are Vaccines as Thoroughly Researched as Claimed?

The official stance repeated by most mainstream media is that vaccines have been thoroughly researched, that "hundreds" of studies have proven their safety, and that no link between vaccines and health problems, such as autism, have ever been found.

Again and again, you hear that the autism-vaccine link was based on a single study published in 1998 by a now-discredited doctor (Wakefield), and the hypothetical association between vaccines and autism has since been thoroughly and repeatedly debunked. It sounds definitive enough, and is often repeated as established fact. Yet it's far from the whole truth.

Importantly, the vaccine industry has long shied away from evaluating vaccinated versus unvaccinated populations to determine potential differences in general health outcomes. The few independent scientists who have attempted such an investigation have little comfort to give to those who believe vaccines are essential for health, and mandatory use of vaccines by all children is the only way to protect society from disease.

One such study,2 published just last year, examined health outcomes among infants 3 to 5 months old following the introduction of diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (DTP) and oral polio vaccine in Guinea-Bissau, which took place in the early 1980s. This population offered the rare opportunity to compare vaccinated and unvaccinated children due to the way the vaccines were rolled out in the West African country.

Shockingly, researchers discovered "DTP was associated with fivefold higher mortality than being unvaccinated." According to the authors, "All currently available evidence suggests that DTP vaccine may kill more children from other causes than it saves from diphtheria, tetanus or pertussis."

In other words, the researchers concluded that DTP vaccine weakened the children's immune systems, rendering them vulnerable to a whole host of other often deadly diseases and serious health problems.

Other clinical trials in West Africa revealed that a high titer measles vaccine interacted with the DTP vaccine, resulting in a 33 percent increase in infant mortality.3 In this case, the finding led to the withdrawal of that experimental measles vaccine targeting very young infants, but what would have happened had those studies never been done? Clearly, we need many more like them.

In the U.S., the CDC now recommends that children receive 69 doses of 16 vaccines by the time they're 18 years old, with 50 doses of 14 vaccines given before the age of six.4 How does this affect their health? And is anyone actually tracking the health outcomes of children adhering to the federally recommended childhood vaccine schedule and state mandatory vaccination programs?

The answer is no. We do not know if or how all of these vaccinations are affecting the general health and mortality of our children.

We do, however, know that the U.S. has one of the highest infant and maternal mortality rates of any developed nation,5,6 and we also have the highest vaccination rates with 94 to 96 percent of children entering kindergarten having received multiple doses of vaccines.7 This high vaccination rate among kindergarten children, mostly due to state vaccine laws that require vaccinations for school attendance, has been maintained in the U.S. since the 1980s.8

Whistleblower Admits CDC Manipulated Data

A central part of "Vaxxed" storyline centers around William Thompson, Ph.D., a senior scientist at the CDC's National Center for Immunizations and Respiratory Diseases (NCIR), who confessed that he conspired with colleagues to cover up links found between the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism.

According to Thompson, this scientific fraud was committed for the express purpose of covering up potential safety problems so the agency would be able to maintain that the MMR vaccine had been proven safe to give to all children. Thompson explained they simply eliminated the incriminating data, thereby vanishing the link.

How FDA Hid Evidence of Mercury Poisoning

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., chairman of the World Mercury Project, has also released and written about documents showing that officials at the CDC and U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) "knew that infant vaccines were exposing American children to mercury far in excess of all federal safety guidelines since 1999."9 According to Kennedy:

"[T]he regulators realized that a [6]-month-old infant who received thimerosal-preserved vaccines following the recommended CDC vaccine schedule would have received a jaw dropping 187.5 micrograms [mcg] of mercury …

There was no point in time from birth to approximately 16 to 18 months of age that infants were below the EPA guidelines for allowable mercury exposure.

In fact, according to the models, blood-and-body burden levels of mercury peaked at [6] months of age at a shockingly high level of 120 nanograms/liter [ng/L]. To put this in perspective, the CDC classifies mercury poisoning as blood levels of mercury greater than 10 ng/L."

The reason you've never heard about this is because federal health officials concealed it with a statistical trick. By averaging the mercury exposure over a period of six months, the spikes in mercury on the days of vaccination disappeared. By massaging the way the data are reported the effect went from being 12 times over the level of mercury poisoning to being inconsequential. As noted by Kennedy:

"An analogy would be to compare taking two Tylenol tablets a day for a month to taking 60 Tylenol tablets in one day; the first exposure is acceptable, while the other is lethal."

This is why journalists who merely parrot the approved FDA and CDC talking points do readers such a tremendous disservice. Both federal health agencies have been accused of malfeasance and cover-up of important drug and vaccine safety data and, until the truth is known, it is unwise to blindly accept them as the final arbiters of what's safe and what's not.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), which includes the CDC, FDA and NIH, also owns a number of vaccine patents and sells $4.1 billion in vaccines each year while simultaneously being responsible for vaccine regulation, policymaking, monitoring of vaccine safety and promotion of universal use of all CDC-recommended vaccines.

How can these federal health agencies effectively meet all of these different goals when they have inherent conflicts of interest? They cannot. Yet, these conflicts of interest are rarely if ever mentioned by the media.

What You Need to Know About Wakefield's 'Discredited Autism Study'

In the film, Wakefield explains the genesis of his now infamous paper, the so-called "discredited autism study" that vaccine advocates insist is the sole evidence for a link between autism and vaccines.

What many people don't know is that Wakefield and 12 other coauthors of the paper never actually performed a study to ascertain whether the MMR vaccine caused autism. They also did not state that MMR vaccine causes autism in the paper, but simply called for more research into the potential association.

It all began when a mother contacted Wakefield about her son, whose gastrointestinal and autism symptoms began after he received his MMR vaccination. An academic gastroenterologist, Wakefield told her he couldn't help, as he had no knowledge about autism. She insisted, saying her son had terrible digestive problems but no one was taking them seriously.

Wakefield decided to look into it and, in 1998, he and 12 colleagues published a case series paper in The Lancet, reporting that parents of 9 of 12 children, who had been seen for chronic gastrointestinal symptoms, reported their children's health deterioration began shortly after MMR vaccination.

It's important to realize that a case series paper is very different from a case control study. A case series simply describes the experiences of a single patient or group of patients with a similar diagnosis.

As Wakefield points out in his book, "Callous Disregard," the purpose of a case study is to "generate new hypotheses." It is not supposed to determine or investigate possible causality — and Wakefield's paper did not make any causal claims. Rather, he and his colleagues concluded:10

"We have identified a chronic enterocolitis in children that may be related to neuropsychiatric dysfunction. In most cases, onset of symptoms was after measles, mumps and rubella immuni[z]ation.

Further investigations are needed to examine this syndrome and its possible relation to this vaccine."

The paper also explicitly stated that:

"We did not prove an association between measles, mumps and rubella vaccine and the syndrome described …

If there is a causal link between measles, mumps and rubella vaccine and this syndrome, a rising incidence might be anticipated after the introduction of this vaccine in the U.K. in 1988. Published evidence is inadequate to show whether there's a change in incidence or a link with measles, mumps and rubella vaccine."

Was Wakefield's Paper Fraudulent?

Wakefield's paper was eventually retracted after generating massive international controversy and denials by public health officials and doctors giving vaccines to children, who claimed the paper unnecessarily frightened and caused parents to question the safety of MMR and many other vaccines.

But to use Wakefield's case series paper as "proof" that there is no link between vaccination and autism simply because this paper was retracted is grossly misleading.

It wasn't a case-controlled clinical study designed to investigate or determine causation by comparing health outcomes of two different groups of patients; it was merely a case series paper that described similar health outcomes in patients and presented a hypothesis, nothing more.

According to detractors, including Bill Gates, Wakefield's paper was based on fraudulent, completely made-up data, but such accusations have been rebutted by David Lewis, Ph.D.,11 a research microbiologist and director of the Research Misconduct Project12 of the National Whistleblower Center in Washington, DC.

A summary of the Wakefield case can be found on AHRP.org in the article, "How the Case Against Andrew Wakefield Was Concocted."13 In fact, Lewis' investigation led him to accuse The British Medical Journal of institutional research misconduct14 for publishing false accusations of fraud against Wakefield. According to Lewis:15

"Documents recovered from Dr. Wakefield's files during my investigation at the National Whistleblowers Center reveal that a pathologist associated with the study, Dr. Andrew Anthony, interpreted a number of the children's biopsies as evidence of colitis.

Altogether, the evidence contained in Wakefield's files suggested to me that the BMJ's fraud theory was more tabloid news than science."

In the end, what happened to Wakefield is powerful testimony of the danger that research scientists and physicians face if they draw the ire of the vaccine industry, government health officials and medical organizations promoting mandatory vaccination. The threat to one's livelihood is in and of itself a factor that prevents much-needed independent vaccine safety research.

Does Age of Exposure to MMR Vaccine Influence Autism Risk?

According to Wakefield, the history of the MMR vaccine may offer valuable clues to its safety, or lack thereof. The original MMR vaccine was linked to meningitis,16,17,18 and the filmmakers cite research suggested the age of exposure was a significant factor. The younger the patient at time of the vaccination, the higher the risk of developing meningitis.

Wakefield wondered if perhaps there might be a similar age-related link between MMR vaccine and autism. This research was ultimately done by the CDC, and Thompson was part of that team. As explained in the film, CDC whistleblower Thompson ended up contacting Brian Hooker, Ph.D., and advising him on how to obtain this and other vaccine data from the CDC.19

Copies of the files Hooker obtained from the CDC — about 10,000 in all — can be downloaded from the Vaxxed website.20 While Thompson could not legally give the studies to Hooker, he told Hooker to file a citizen's request to the CDC, and guided him on which studies and data sets to ask for.

Among them was a study21 Thompson cowrote that looked at autism rates and time of MMR vaccine administration, and found evidence for a heightened risk for autism when the first MMR dose was given at 15 months — a finding that was subsequently covered up.

A letter22 requesting the retraction of this study has been sent, based on the evidence of fraud presented by Thompson.

Protecting MMR Vaccine Program More Important Than Protecting Children's Health

Wakefield also describes the research he did into the testing and licensing of the MMR vaccine and how, based on that research, he could no longer support the use of the combination MMR vaccine. After he urged parents to avoid the triple vaccine and get the single vaccines (i.e., the individual vaccines for measles, mumps and rubella), demand for the single vaccines dramatically increased.

However, rather than allowing parents to choose between MMR and individual vaccines, the U.K. stopped importing the single vaccines and Merck decided to cease production of the single vaccines in the U.S. This action effectively removed parental choice altogether, compelling parents to use the combination MMR vaccine if they wanted to vaccinate their children.

When Wakefield questioned the rationale behind the U.K.'s decision to eliminate the single vaccines, a senior representative at the British department of health told him that if parents were allowed to choose between the triple MMR and single vaccines, it would destroy the MMR program. "In other words, the concern was for the protection of the program, over and above the protection of children," Wakefield said.

CDC Whistleblower Admits Omitting Data Showing MMR-Autism Link in African-American Boys

Thompson also cowrote a widely cited 2004 CDC study23 that concluded there was no link between the MMR vaccine and autism. However, Thompson admitted this conclusion is actually false, as the team simply excluded the data that showed a link.

According to Thompson, he and the other scientists who worked on the study were pressured "from the top" to come to conclusions that would support the government's policy on MMR vaccine safety. The omitted data, Thompson claimed, showed a distinct link between early MMR vaccination and a risk for the development of autism in young African-American boys.

Hooker published a reanalysis of the 2004 CDC data set in 2014, in the journal Translational Neurodegeneration,24 concluding that African-American boys who receive their first MMR vaccine before the age of 36 months have a 3.36 times greater risk of developing autism, compared to those who receive the vaccine after the age of 36 months. (The CDC's childhood vaccination schedule recommends getting the MMR vaccine between 12 and 18 months.)

For males in general, regardless of race, the risk for autism was 1.69 times greater when MMR was given prior to 36 months of age. Just how was Thompson's team able to hide this rather obvious connection? In short, data was originally obtained on 2,583 children living in Atlanta, Georgia, born between 1986 and 1993.

The original scientific analysis plan specified that school records and/or birth certificates were to be used to obtain race data. By excluding children who did not have a valid state of Georgia birth certificate, they were able to reduce the cohort size by more than 40 percent, and by including fewer subjects — through the introduction of the arbitrary criteria of a valid birth certificate to ascertain race — the statistical power of the findings were eliminated.

How Vaccines May Cause Harm

While a lot of attention has been given to thimerosal, a mercury compound used in some vaccines as a preservative, it's a mistake to think thimerosal is the sole problem when it comes to vaccine safety.

Thimerosal preservatives are not present in live virus vaccines such as MMR, and are not even included in significant amounts in most inactivated childhood vaccines anymore, yet vaccine-related injury and death, including the unexplained big increase in autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders among children in the past three decades, is still a pressing reality.

What's more, vaccine safety is not simply a matter of proving or disproving the link between vaccines in general and autism specifically. There are many other, potentially severe vaccine side effects, including immune system dysfunction, that can lead to or exacerbate any number of health problems.

Examples of other vaccine ingredients and factors related to vaccination that may be harmful to health include:

Lack of research into the safety of the CDC's recommended childhood vaccine schedule that subjects infants and young children to 50 doses of 14 vaccines during the first six years of life, starting on the day of birth, including receipt of six to 10 vaccines on the same day.25

Failure of one-size-fits-all vaccine policies and laws to acknowledge increased individual susceptibility to harm from vaccination that include genetic, biological and environmental high-risk factors often not identified, or, dismissed as unimportant by doctors and other vaccine providers.26

Research27 showing an increase in death following receipt of inactivated vaccines. Aluminum adjuvants might be a factor, but it appears inactivated vaccines may also program your immune system in a way that decreases your body's ability to fight off disease later. To learn more about this, please follow the hyperlink provided.

The gut-brain axis, and the compelling synergy between compromised gut flora and autism, where vaccines can act as a trigger. To learn more, please see the hyperlinks, as I've written about this on previous occasions.

The association between autism increases and the introduction of vaccines using human fetal cell lines and retroviral contaminants.28

The potential for DNA fragments in vaccines to produce an exaggerated and potentially fatal immune response.29

What Do Statistics Suggest About Vaccine Safety?

Barring large-scale studies comparing unvaccinated and vaccinated populations, general health statistics can give us an inkling as to how well the U.S. vaccination program protects our children's health, and it doesn't look promising.

One in 6 children today has a developmental disability,30 which includes ADD/ADHD, autism, hearing loss, learning disabilities, mental and behavior disorders and seizures, which have been associated with vaccine side effects.

Fifty-four percent of children have a diagnosed chronic illness,31,32 including anxiety, asthma, behavioral problems, bone and muscle disorders, chronic ear infections, depression, diabetes, food and/or environmental allergies and epilepsy.

This list again mirrors brain and immune system dysfunction that has been reported following vaccination. The rise in prevalence of these chronic diseases among children and young adults parallels the rise in the numbers of required vaccines, yet promoters of mandatory vaccination insist that these illnesses are in no way associated with vaccinations.

In his book, "Miller's Review of Critical Vaccine Studies," Neil Z. Miller also provides eye-opening information about vaccine safety. He downloaded the entire vaccine adverse event reporting system (VAERS) database and created a program to extract all reports involving infants. In all, the reports of 38,000 infants who experienced an adverse reaction following the receipt of one or more vaccines were extracted.

Another program was then created that was able to determine the number of vaccines each infant had received before suffering an adverse reaction.

Next, reports were stratified by the number of vaccines (anywhere from one to eight) the infants had received simultaneously before the reaction took place. They specifically homed in on serious adverse reactions requiring hospitalization or that led to death. Here's what he found:

Infants who received three vaccines simultaneously were statistically and significantly more likely to be hospitalized or die after receiving their vaccines than children who received two vaccines at the same time

Infants who received four vaccines simultaneously were statistically and significantly more likely to be hospitalized or die than children who received three or two vaccines, and so on all the way up to eight vaccines

Children who received eight vaccines simultaneously were "off-the-charts" statistically in that they were significantly more likely to be hospitalized or die after receiving those vaccines

Children who received vaccines at an earlier age were significantly more likely to be hospitalized or die than children who receive those vaccines at a later age

Why We Must Protect Vaccine Exemptions

All of these facts are why we simply must protect the legal right to exercise voluntary, informed consent to vaccination and to obtain vaccine exemptions in the U.S. We must have the right to choose, which includes the right to refuse one or more vaccines for ourselves or our children if we determine the risks are too great.

Make sure you take action to protect and expand the legal right to make voluntary vaccine decisions in your state by signing up to use the free online NVIC Advocacy Portal.

Moreover, when an individual experiences a deterioration in health after vaccination, doctors need to understand the danger of giving more vaccinations until or unless the vaccine can be conclusively exonerated as a causative or contributing factor to that health deterioration.

Physicians who recommend and administer vaccines to people, particularly to vulnerable infants and children, need to apply the precautionary principle of "first do no harm." This is critically important when the foundation of science supporting the safety of any given vaccine, alone or in combination, for any given individual is so weak — and in some cases, based on outright fraud.

If you haven't watched "Vaxxed" yet, I hope you will take the time to view it now, while you can watch it for free.

As an exclusive offer, Mercola readers will receive 15 percent off the single "Vaxxed" DVD by entering the discount code MERCOLA15 at checkout. Want to share the important information in this film with friends and family? "Vaxxed" 10-packs are now available! To receive free worldwide shipping on the "Vaxxed" 10-pack, enter MERCOLA10PACK at checkout. CLICK HERE to purchase the single DVD or 10-pack of Vaxxed.

from HealthyLife via Jake Glover on Inoreader http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2018/10/13/vaxxed-film-on-vaccine-safety.aspx

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newsglobaltoday-blog · 6 years

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CDC focused on finding 'nightmare bacteria' and preventing their spread: Report

New Post has been published on http://newsglobaltoday.com/2018/04/cdc-focused-on-finding-nightmare-bacteria-and-preventing-their-spread-report/

CDC focused on finding 'nightmare bacteria' and preventing their spread: Report

Germs can cause infections. Germs can spread. Germs can battle back against antibiotics. And germs can share their weapons with other germs.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention communicated on Tuesday the early outcomes of their targeted campaign to identify infections by “nightmare bacteria” – any of several germs that cause infections that are nearly impossible to treat with currently available medications. These germs have defeated all current forms of antibiotics, which leaves doctors and hospitals almost helpless to fight their infections.

Labs in the 50 states and Puerto Rico tested 5,776 selected samples of highly resistant germs for unusual patterns of resistance. One out of every four bacterial samples was found to not only to have some antibiotic resistance, but to carry a gene capable of spreading that resistance. What surprised investigators most was that 221 of these had resistance genes described as “especially rare.” In the next step, CDC officials and local health care providers looked for “colonization” – they tested people in close proximity to the infected person (people who did not have infection themselves) to see if any were harboring the bacteria. Those who harbor an infection-causing organism but do not have an infection themselves are called “carriers.” One in 10 people tested were found to be carriers of the resistant bacteria, and many different species were detected.

Joe Raedle/Getty Images, FILE

A pharmacy manager counts out the correct number of antibiotic pills to fill a prescription, Aug. 7, 2007 in Miami.

This was the first nationwide testing of this magnitude searching out resistant bacteria and their genes. This was only the first part of a focused CDC initiative to address this progressively worrisome health scare.

What should you know about resistant bacteria? There are many classes of “microbes” or microscopic organisms in our environment: bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites. Within these groups, many of the organisms cause no problems (or can even be beneficial) to humans. Microbes that cause disease are sometimes referred to as “pathogens” or more simply as “germs.”

The development of antibiotics to treat pathogen bacteria was a true medical breakthrough. We have been treating infections with antibiotics for over 70 years, and common infections that used to kill are now trivial, since antibiotics fight the bacteria so well. Use of antibiotics decade after decade, though, can make them less effective in the long term.

One reason there are so many antibiotics is that some have always been more effective against certain types of bacteria. You can think of these the same way you think of the many different specialized weapons available to the military for different types of combat.

The concern, however, is that some antibiotics that used to work against certain species of bacteria no longer work in certain strains of that species. And the list is growing. This occurs because bacteria can learn to put up a defense against the antibiotic. This shows up when a bacteria is exposed to an antibiotic it has seen before – or even one similar to it. The bacteria, in essence, has altered slightly, and now can avoid attack by the antibiotic. These “resistance” systems can be incredibly diverse, complex, and even be described as creative. When bacteria “resist” the drug, the germ is not killed as intended, the infection is not treated, though the antibiotic may kill other, less important, bacteria, giving the resistant bacteria free rein to multiply and spread further.

CDC

GRAPHIC: A graphic from the CDC shows how antibiotic resistance happens.

Medical laboratories can test bacteria samples from a patient to determine which antibiotics the bacteria likely will – or will not – respond to. This is called a “resistance pattern.” When a lab finds that a germ is resistant to a class of antibiotics that are typically a good match for that organism, this is called an “unusual resistance pattern” and it can signal bad news – the potential for this germ to become resistant to all, or nearly all, antibiotics in existence.

Some germs gain nicknames based on the major antibiotic they are resistant to: MRSA stands for “methicillin-resistant staph aureus” (this strain has acquired resistance to methicillin, which is a stand-in for all drugs in the penicillin family). CRE stands for “Carbapenem-resistant enterococci”, indicating resistance to one of the more powerful classes of antibiotics available.

A bacteria resistant to multiple classes of powerful antibiotics is “multi-drug resistant.” As Dr. Anne Schuchat, Principal Deputy Director of CDC, describes, these germs cause “resistant infections that are virtually untreatable with modern medicine.” Certain individuals are more likely to get these infections: people who live in nursing homes or other long term care facilities, or those are frequently hospitalized, are at high risk because they live in a setting where many people with infections are close together and germs can be easily shared. They also tend to have a weaker immune system to fight infections when they occur. Young adults with cystic fibrosis are another at-risk group. They have many respiratory infections in their lifetime requiring many courses of antibiotics – and many become carriers of highly-resistant bacteria as a result.

Sometimes the resistant bacteria can be treated with more powerful or less commonly used antibiotics – which can have more toxic effects and be extremely costly to the health care system. Sometimes the only options for treatment are what doctors call “supportive care,” providing measures like oxygen, medications to support blood pressure, or even ventilator or dialysis machines to support failed organs, hoping that the body’s immune system will find a way to fight the infection. Despite these measures, up to 50 percent of nightmare bacteria infections result in death.

If that’s not bad enough, scientists also have learned that germs are doing the equivalent of crowd-sourcing – one bacteria that develops resistance to an antibiotic can “share” the information for that defense system, packaged in DNA that can be passed from one cell to another. Resistance genes, or pieces of DNA, turn regular germs into nightmare bacteria. These genes are the focus of the current CDC effort.

What can be done to stop the spread? Exposure to antibiotics (“studying the enemy”) is how bacteria develop their resistance tools. For that reason, physicians know that antibiotics should only be used when they are needed and antibiotics (which specifically treat germs in the bacteria classification) should NOT be used in an attempt to treat infections caused by other germs — like viruses. For instance, almost all “common cold” infections are viruses, yet patients want to be given something, and often insist on an antibiotic, though it has no chance of affecting the virus. As Dr. Jay Butler described, providers aim to use antibiotics in the “right clinical situations with the right drug at the right dose for the right duration.”

According to the CDC, up to 50 percent of antibiotic prescriptions violates one of these principles.

Another way that antibiotic resistance has spread is through widespread use of antibiotics in food-producing animals for the purpose of accelerating animal growth. Per the CDC website, “antibiotics…should be used in food-producing animals only under veterinary oversight and only to manage and treat infectious disease, not to promote growth.”

What is the CDC doing? In 2016, the CDC launched a landmark antibiotic resistance solutions initiative, dedicating more resources than ever before to preventing the spread of resistant bacteria. The two major features of this initiative are rapid identification of unusual resistance patterns among infection-causing bacteria, and standardized infection control measures in the involved health care facilities, including finding individuals colonized with the same germ and intensifying the steps taken to prevent spread of the most dangerous organisms.

Prevention of infections and the spread of bacteria isn’t a new concept. What is new, however, is the resources available to physicians and other health professionals to do it. Labs have more capacity to test for the presence of germs that carry resistance and get these results quickly. Dr. Schuchat said that the CDC is now “encouraging health care facilities and public health authorities to respond to even single cases of an emerging antibiotic resistant pathogen.” The analogy used by the CDC is that of a fire. In the past, public health authorities have had to dedicate their resources to fighting the wildfires – the most resistant and most widespread of the nightmare bacteria that are already out of control. This naturally has allowed for the development of even more resistant bacteria. With the increased funding available, authorities can respond to many more small “fires” and even “sparks,” to prevent further spread.

In addition to additional funding, the CDC is sending 500 more local staff to partner with facilities around the country when unusual resistance patterns are detected. They described one recent example, when an Iowa nursing home resident had a urinary tract infection. The CDC Antibiotic Resistance Lab Network performed rapid testing which showed unusual resistance. The Iowa department of health worked with the nursing home to do site assessments and identify ways the germ might have spread. They tested other residents in this facility for colonization and found that 5 others were carrying the dangerous bug. They implemented aggressive infection control measures and continued testing patients until the bug was no longer detected.

dpa via AP Images, FILE

A lab assistant holds up a bacterial culture used to determine drug resistance at a lab in Erlangen, Germany, July 21, 2015.

Obviously this is very time- and resource-intensive, which explains why this approach is best applied to germs that are potentially very dangerous. As the CDC leadership pointed out, however, this is more effective (and less costly) if the tools are there to step in immediately after a single case is detected, rather than wait for an outbreak. Per Dr. Schuchat, “These unusual threats are the uncommon or highly resistant germs that have yet to spread throughout the U.S. We are working to get in front of them before they do become common in order to protect patients now and in the future.”

Dr. Jay Butler, Chief Medical Officer and Director of Alaska Division of Public Health and the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (also known as ASTHO), put it another way: “We can’t wait until one case becomes ten or ten cases becomes a hundred. We can intervene early and aggressively to stop spread and to keep these threats out of our states.” He added, “I have heard from my state and local colleagues from across the nation that these resources have been a game changer in their states.”

The work is just beginning. For each resistant bacteria stifled, another is intensifying its own resistance. “We need to do more and we need to do it faster and earlier with each new antibiotic resistance threat,” Dr. Schuchat said. Health care providers and public health officials alike are now more equipped than ever to do just that.

Dr. Kelly Arps is a resident physician in internal medicine at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Kelly is working with the ABC News Medical Unit.

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scottxrt · 7 years

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Webster's Dictionary defines a model

New Post has been published on http://scottxrt.com/websters-dictionary-defines-a-model

Webster's Dictionary defines a model

Webster’s Dictionary defines a model as “a simplified description of a complex entity or process” such as a “computer model” of the circulatory and respiratory systems. The term comes from the Latin root modus, which means “a manner of doing or being; a method, form, fashion, custom, way, or style.” More specifically, the word “model” is derived from the Latin modulus, which essentially means a “small” version of the original mode. A “model” of an object, for example, is typically a miniature version or representation of that object. A “working model” (such as that of a machine) is something which can do on a small scale the work which the machine itself does, or expected to do.

The notion of a “model” has also come to mean “a description or analogy used to help visualize something (as an atom) that cannot be directly observed.” It can also be used to indicate “a system of postulates, data, and inferences presented as a formal description of an entity or state of affairs.”

Thus, a miniature train, a map of the location of key train stations, or a train schedule, are all examples of different possible types of models of a railway system. Their purpose is to emulate some aspect of the actual railway system and provide useful information to better manage interactions with respect to that system. A miniature train set, for instance, may be used to assess the performance of a train under certain physical conditions; a map of key train stations can help to plan the most effective itinerary to reach a particular city; a train schedule may be used to determine the timing required for a particular journey. From this perspective, the fundamental value of any type of model is its usefulness.

Overview of Modeling in NLP

Behavior modeling involves observing and mapping the successful processes which underlie an exceptional performance of some type. It is the process of taking a complex event or series of events and breaking it into small enough chunks so that it can be recapitulated in some way. The purpose of behavior modeling is to create a pragmatic map or ‘model’ of that behavior which can be used to reproduce or simulate some aspect of that performance by anyone who is motivated to do so. The goal of the behavior modeling process is to identify the essential elements of thought and action required to produce the desired response or outcome. As opposed to providing purely correlative or statistical data, a ‘model’ of a particular behavior must provide a description of what is necessary to actually achieve a similar result.

The field of Neuro-Linguistic Programming has developed out of the modeling of human behaviors and thinking processes. NLP modeling procedures involve finding out about how the brain (“Neuro”) is operating, by analyzing language patterns (“Linguistic”) and non-verbal communication. The results of this analysis are then put into step-by-step strategies or programs (“Programming”) that may be used to transfer the skill to other people and content areas.

In fact, NLP began when Richard Bandler and John Grinder modeled patterns of language and behavior from the works of Fritz Perls (the founder of Gestalt therapy), Virginia Satir (a founder of family therapy and systemic therapy) and Milton H. Erickson, M.D. (founder of the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis). The first ‘techniques’ of NLP were derived from key verbal and non-verbal patterns Grinder and Bandler observed in the behavior of these exceptional therapists. The implication of the title of their first book, The Structure of Magic (1975), was that what seemed magical and unexplainable often had a deeper structure that, when illuminated, could be understood, communicated and put into practice by people other than the few exceptional ‘wizards’ who had initially performed the ‘magic’. NLP is the process by which the relevant pieces of these people’s behavior was discovered and then organized into a working model.

NLP has developed techniques and distinctions with which to identify and describe patterns of people’s verbal and non-verbal behavior that is, key aspects of what people say and what they do. The basic objectives of NLP are to model special or exceptional abilities and help make them transferable to others. The purpose of this kind of modeling is to put what has been observed and described into action in a way that is productive and enriching.

The modeling tools of NLP allow us to identify specific, reproducible patterns in the language and behavior of effective role models. While most NLP analysis is done by actually watching and listening to the role model in action, much valuable information can be gleaned from written records as well.

The objective of the NLP modeling process is not to end up with the one ‘right’ or ‘true’ description of a particular person’s thinking process, but rather to make an instrumental map that allows us to apply the strategies that we have modeled in some useful way. An ‘instrumental map’ is one that allows us to act more effectively the ‘accuracy’ or ‘reality’ of the map is less important than its ‘usefulness’. Thus, the instrumental application of the behaviors or cognitive strategies modeled from a particular individual or group of individuals involves putting them into structures that allow us to use them for some practical purpose. This purpose may be similar to or different from that for which the model initially used them.

For instance, some common applications of modeling include:

Understanding something better by developing more ‘meta-cognition’ about the processes which underlie it – in order to be able to teach about it, for example, or use it as a type of “benchmarking.”

Repeating or refining a performance (such as in a sport or a managerial situation) by specifying the steps followed by expert performers or during optimal examples of the activity. This is the essence of the ‘business process reengineering’ movement in organizations.

Achieving a specific result (such as effective spelling or the treatment of phobias or allergies). Rather than modeling a single individual, this is often accomplished by developing ‘techniques’ based on modeling a number of different successful examples or cases.

Extracting and/or formalizing a process in order to apply it to a different content or context. For example, an effective strategy for managing a sports team may be applied to managing a business, and vice versa. In a way the development of the ‘scientific method’ has come from this type of process, where strategies of observation and analysis that were developed for one area of study (such as physics) have been applied to other areas (such as biology).

Deriving an inspiration for something which is loosely based on the actual process of the model. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s portrayal of Sherlock Holmes which was based on the diagnostic methods of his medical school professor Joseph Bell is a good example of this. Deep Structure and Surface Structure

NLP draws many of its principles and distinctions from the field of transformational grammar (Chomsky 1957, 1965) as a means to create models of people’s verbal behavior. One of the essential principles of transformational grammar is that tangible behaviors, expressions, and reactions are ‘surface structures’ which are the result of bringing ‘deeper structures’ into reality.

This is another way of saying that the models we make of the world around us with our brains and our language are not the world itself but representations of it. One important implication of the principles of transformational grammar is that there are multiple levels of successively deeper structures in the structure and organization within any coding system. An important implication of this, with respect to modeling, is that it may be necessary to explore various levels of deep structure, behind a particular performance, in order to produce an effective model of it. Furthermore, different surface structures may be reflections of common deep structures._For effective modeling, it is frequently important to examine multiple examples of surface structures in order to better know or identify the deeper structure which produces it.

Another way to think about the relationship between deep structure and surface structure is the distinction between “process” and “product.” Products are the surface level expressions of the deeper and less tangible generative processes which are their source. Thus, “deep structures” are latent potentials that become manifest in concrete surface structures as a result of a set of transformations. This process includes the selective destruction as well as the selective construction of data.

In this regard, one of the fundamental challenges of modeling comes from the fact that the movement between deep structure and surface structure is subject to the processes of generalization, deletion and distortion. That is, some information is necessarily lost or distorted in the transformation from deep structure to surface structure. In language, for example, these processes occur during the translation of deep structure (the mental images, sounds, feelings and other sensory representations that are stored in our nervous systems) to surface structure (the words, signs and symbols we choose to describe or represent our primary sensory experience). No verbal description is able to completely or acccurately represent the idea it is attempting to express.

The aspects of deep structure which become manifest, are those for which enough missing links (deletions, generalizations, distortions) have been filled in that the potential latent at the level of deep structure is able to complete the series of transformations necessary to become manifest as surface structure. One of the goals of the modeling process is to identify a complete enough set of transforms so that an appropriate and useful expression of the deep structure may be attained. M

Modeling Capabilities

The focus of most NLP modeling processes is at the level of capabilities, the how to level. Capabilities connect beliefs and values to specific behaviors. Without the how, knowing what one is supposed to do, and even why to do it, is largely ineffective. Capabilities and skills provide the links and leverage to manifest our identity, values and beliefs as actions in a particular environment.

The fact that NLP modeling procedures tend to focus on capabilities, by the way, does not mean they only consider that level of information. Often, a gestalt of beliefs, values, sense of self, and specific behaviors are essential to produce the desired capability. NLP maintains that, by focusing on developing capabilities, the most practical and useful combinations of “deep structure” and “surface structure” will be produced.

It is important to keep in mind that capabilities are a deeper structure than specific tasks or precedures. Procedures are typically a sequence of actions or steps that lead to the accomplishment of a particular task. Skills and capabilities, however, are frequently “non-linear” in their application. A particular skill or capability (such as the ability to think creatively, or to communicate effectively) may serve as a support for many different kinds of tasks, situations and contexts. Capabilities must be able to be “randomly accessed,” in that the individual must be able to immediately call upon different skills at different times in a particular task, situation or context. Instead of a linear sequence of steps, skills are thus organized around a T.O.T.E. – a feedback loop between a) goals b) the choice of means used to accomplish those goals and c) the evidence used to assess progress towards the goals.

According to NLP, in order to effectively model a particular skill or performance we must identify each of the key elements of the T.O.T.E. related to that skill or performance:

The performer’s goals. The evidence and evidence procedures used by the performer(s) to determine progress toward the goal. The sets of choices used by the performer(s) to get to the goal and the specific behaviors used to implement these choices. The way the performer(s) respond(s) if the goal is not initially achieved. Levels of Complexity of Skills and Capabilities

It should be kept in mind that capabilities themselves are of different natures and levels of complexity. Some skills and capabilities are, in fact, made up of other skills and capabilities. The ability to “write a book” is made up the abilites relating to the vocabulary, grammar, and spelling of the language in which one is writing, as well as knowledge relating to the subject one is writing the book about. These are often referred to as “nested T.O.T.E.s,” “sub-loops,” or “sub-skills,” because they relate to the smaller chunks out of which more sophisticated or complex skills are built. The capability of “leadership,” for example, is made up of many sub-skills, such as those relating to effective communication, establishing rapport, problem solving, systemic thinking, and so on.

Thus, the modeling process itself may be directes toward different levels of complexity with respect to a particular skills and capabilities.

Simple Behavioral skills would involve specific, concrete, easily observable actions that take place within short periods of time (seconds to minutes). Examples of simple behavioral skills would include: making a particular dance move, getting into a special state, shooting a basket, aiming a rifle, etc.

Simple Cognitive skills would be specific, easily identifyable and testable mental processes which occur within a short period of time (seconds to minutes). Examples of simple cognitive skills would be: remembering names, spelling, acquiring simple vocabulary, creating a mental image, etc. These types of thinking skills produce easily observable behavioral results that can be measured, and provide immediate feedback.

Simple Linguistic skills would involve the recognition and use of specific key words, phrases and questions, such as: asking specific questions, recognizing and responding to key words, reviewing or ‘backtracking’ key phrases, etc. Again, the performance of these skills is easily observable and measurable.

Complex Behavioral (or Interactive) skills involve the construction and coordination of sequences or combinations of simple behavioral actions. Abilities such as juggling, learning a martial art technique, successfully executing a play in a particular sport, making a presentation, acting a part in a film or play, etc., would be examples of complex behavioral skills.

Complex Cognitive skills are those which require a synthesis or sequence of other simple thinking skills. Creating a story, diagnosing a problem, solving an algebra problem, composing a song, planning a modeling project, etc., would be examples of capabilities involving complex cognitive skills.

Complex Linguistic skills would involve the interactive use of language in highly dynamic (an often spontaneous) situations. Abilities such as persuation, negotiation, verbal reframing, using humor, storytelling, doing a hypnotic induction, etc., would be examples of capabilities involving complex linguistic skills. Clearly, each level of skill needs to include and incorporate the abilities, or T.O.T.E.s, employed by the levels preceding it. Thus, it is typically more challenging and involved to model complex skills than simple ones; and it is easier to learn modeling by beginning with simple behavioral and cognitive skills before moving to more complex tasks. Often, however, complex skills can be “chunked down” into a group or sequence of simpler ones.

Modeling Methodology

One of the pivotal parts of the modeling process is the methodology used to gather information and identify relevant features and patterns relating to the T.O.T.E.s of the person(s) being modeled. While standard forms of information gathering, such as questionnaires and interviews, can access some information, they often fall short of identifying the unconscious or intuitive operations used by a human expert. They also often assume or delete important information regarding context.

In addition to questionnaires and interviews, it is often useful and necessary to incorporate more active methods for gathering information such as role plays, simulations, and the ‘real life’ observation of the expert in context. While NLP modeling methodology does employ interveiws and questionnaires, the primary form of modeling in NLP is done by interactively engaging the individual(s) to be modeled in multiple examples of the skill or performance to be studied. This provides the “highest quality” information, and creates the best chance to “capture” the most practical patterns (in the same way that having a living model is generally much more desireable for an artist to work from than a verbal description).

Three Basic Perspectives in Modeling

Modeling often requires that we make a “double” or “triple” description of the process or phenomenon we are attempting to recreate. NLP describes three fundamental perceptual positions from which information can be gathered and interpreted: first position (associated in one’s own perspective), second position (perceiving the situation from the standpoint of another person), and third position (viewing the situation as an univolved observer). All three of these perspectives are essential for effective behavioral modeling.

1st Position 2nd Position 3rd Position Own Point of View Other’s Point of View Outside Observer

Effective Modeling Involves Exploring a Particular Phenomenon or Performance from Multiple Perspectives

There is also a fourth perceptual position, which involves perceiving a situation from the perspective of the whole system, or the “relational field,” involved in the situation.

Because NLP presupposes that “the map is not the territory,” that “everyone forms their own individual map of a situation,” and that there is no single “right” map of any particular experience or event, taking multiple perspectives is and essential skill in order to effectively model a particular performance or activity. Perceiving a situation or experience from multiple perspectives allows a person to gain broader insight and understanding with respect to the event.

Modeling from ‘first position’ would involve trying something out ourselves, and exploring the way that “we” do it. We see hear and feel from our own perspective. ‘Second position’ modeling involves standing “in the shoes” of the person to be modeled, attempting to think and act as much like other person as possible. This can provide important intuitions about significant but unconscious aspects of the thoughts and actions of the person being modeled. Modeling from ‘third position’ would involve standing back and observing the person to be modeled interacting with other people (including ourselves) as an uninvolved witness. In third position, we suspend our personal judgments and notice only what our senses perceive, as scientist might objectively examine a particular phenomenon through a telescope or microscope. ‘Fourth position’ would involve a type of intuitive synthesis of all of these perspectives, in order to get a sense for the entire ‘gestalt’.

Implicit and Explicit Modeling

Skilled performance can be described as a function of two fundamental dimensions: consciousness (knowing) and competence (doing). It is possible to know or understand some activity, but be unable to do it (conscious incompetence). It is also possible to be able to do a particular activity well, but not know how one does it (unconscious comptetence). Mastery of a skill involves both the ability to “do what you know,” and to “know what you are doing.”

One of the biggest challenges in modeling human experts comes from the fact that many of the critical behavioral and psychological elements which allow them to excel are largely unconscious and intuitive to them. As a result, they are unable to provide a direct description of the processes responsible for their own exceptional capabilities. In fact, many experts purposefully avoid thinking about what they doing, and how they are doing it, for fear it will actually interfere with their intuitions. This is another reason it is important to be able to model from different perceptual positions.

One of the goals of modeling is to draw out and identify people’s unconscious competences and bring them to awareness in order to better understand, enhance and transfer them. For example, an individual’s unconscious strategy, or T.O.T.E., for “knowing which questions to ask,” “coming up with creative suggestions,” or “adapting the non-verbal aspects of one’s leadership style,” can be modeled, and then transferred as a conscious skill or competence.

One of the Purposes of Modeling is to Help People to ‘Do What They Know’ and to ‘Know What They Are Doing’

Cognitive and behavioral competences may be modeled either ‘implicitly’ or ‘explicitly’. Implicit modeling involves primarily moving to ‘second position’ with the modeling subject in order to build personal intuitions about that individual’s subjective experience. Explicit modeling involves moving to a ‘third position’ to describe the explicit structure of the modeling subject’s experience so that it may be transferred to others.

Implicit modeling is primarily an inductive process by which we take in and perceive patterns in the world around us. Explicit modeling is essentially a deductive process by which we describe and put those perceptions into practice. Both processes are necessary for effective modeling. Without the “implicit” phase, there is no effective intuition base from which to build an “explicit” model. As NLP co-founder John Grinder pointed out, “It is impossible to make a description of the grammar of a language about which you have no intuition.” On the other hand, without the “explicit” phase, the information that has been modeled cannot be built into techniques or tools and transferred to others. Implicit modeling by itself will help a person to develop personal, unconscious competence with the desired behavior (the way that young children typically learn). Creating a technique, procedure or skill set that can be taught or transferred to others beyond oneself, however, requires some degree of explicit modeling. It is one thing, for example, to learn to spell well, or develop and effective golf swing for oneself; it is another thing to teach other people how to do what you have learned.

NLP, in fact, was born from the union of implicit and explicit modeling. Richard Bandler had been intuitively “implicitly” modeling the linguistic skills of Fritz Perls and Virginia Satir through video tapes and direct experience. Bandler was able to reproduce many of the therapeutic results of Perls and Satir by asking questions and using language in a similar manner as they did. Grinder, who was a linguist, observed Bandler working one day, and was impressed by Bandler’s ability to influence others with his use of language. Grinder could sense that Bandler was doing something systematic, but was unable to explicitly define what it was. Bandler was also unable to explicitly describe or explain exactly what he was doing and how he was doing it. He only knew that he had somehow “modeled” it from Perls and Satir. Both men were inrigued and curious to have a more explicit understanding of these abilities that Bandler had implicitly modeled from these exceptional therapists an understanding that would allow them to transfer it as a ‘conscious competence’ to others. At this point Grinder made the offer to Bandler, “If you teach me to do what you are doing, then I will tell you what you are doing.”

In a very real way, Grinder’s historic invitation marks the beginning of NLP. Grinder’s words encapsulate the essence of the NLP modeling process: “If you teach me to do what you are doing” (if you help me to develop the implicit intuitions, or ‘unconscious competence’, that you possess so that I too can accomplish similar results), “then I will tell you what you are doing” (then I can make an explicit description of the patterns and processes we are both using). Notice that Grinder did not say, “If you let me objectively observe and statistically analyze what you are doing, then I will tell you what you are doing.” Grinder said, “Teach me to do what you are doing.” Modeling arises from the practical and instrumental intuitions that come from “leading with experience.”

Grinder and Bandler were able to work together to create the Meta Model (1975) by synthesizing (a) their shared intuitions about the verbal capabilities of Perls and Satir, (b) direct observations (either in life or through video tape) of Perls and Satir as they worked, and (c) Grinder’s explicit knowledge of linguistics (in particular, transformational grammar).

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theo-westenberger · 7 years

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Embodiment as a Feminist Practice

Contributed by Madison Page, June 13th, 2017

“The body uses its skin and deeper fascia and flesh to record all that goes on around it. Like the Rosetta stone, for those who know how to read it, the body is a living record of life given, life taken, life hoped for, life healed”

Clarissa Pinkola-Estés, Women Who Run with the Wolves

The human body is an organism that relates to and is shaped by its environment. For many of us this fact feels antithetical to our existence. As a dancer, movement facilitator, and Pilates instructor, I know that the sum total of our ontology lives in our bodies and is made manifest through sensation, how we respond anatomically or emotionally to stressors, and through tensegrity, how our muscles, tendons, ligaments, and fascia are in agreement or disagreement with our bones and one another. Thus, daily interactions and actions, relationship to self, others, culture and environment make for structural changes and adaptations in the human organism. Budding embodied research from communities of dance like Axis Syllabus and pioneers of natural movement like Katy Bowman, echo similar truths for how western culture might improve its relationship to the body by means of biomechanically sound exercise and movement. These perspectives establish a collaboration with the human structure as opposed to imposing our cultural and societal will on it.

Here are some facts about the body and the relationship to its environment:

The spine’s natural curves exists because of gravity’s effects on the biggest masses in the body-the head and the pelvis.

Lordosis (the natural curve of the low spine) is caused by the environmental gravitational pressures imposed when a baby stops crawling and learns how to walk.

The basis for nature’s energetic and architectural principles also correspond to movement patterns in the human body.

Our bodies carry a consciousness of who we are: everything we’ve decided to be, but more pertinent to this writing, everything our community has imposed on us and we’ve embodied unconsciously. As a woman in this culture for example, I may (through no fault of my own) unknowingly exaggerate the natural curves of my spine as a point of gaining cultural capital, attention, and sexual advances. Female representation in pop culture shows this posture to be sexy, attractive. From a purely anatomical perspective what might happen to the spine, viscera, and muscle function from prolonged periods of maintaining this posture?

Some repercussions I’ve seen, just to name a few:

abdominals that cannot stabilize such hyperactivity in motion

compressed/ overworked low back (propensity for disc bulging, herniations)

compromised respiratory function (anxious breath pattern: breath cannot travel beyond chest)

inflexible spine

tight hip flexors

weak glutes

compensatory joint instability that will travel above and below the spine

On another spectrum, I too often see women in my classes who have described themselves as giving up on their bodies after a decades long hiatus from exercise. One such client having severe kyphosis (hunchback) and low bone mass, first came into the studio with her eyes cast downward, claiming “she’s never been much of a strong person”. During her sessions, she moves hesitantly, sometimes fearfully, as if she’s bracing herself for what’s to come. Her head permanently cocks to one side as her eyes dart around. She apologizes verbally if I offer an encouraging correction, but her whole body has been apologizing long before she mutters “I’m sorry”. The body acts as a truth-telling device in these instances.

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg made the phenomenon of women apologizing a topic of current conversation, but this issue remains moot without discussion on the implications of how a personality such as this might be perceived. Profuse apologies wouldn’t be that big of a deal if one’s success in American culture wasn’t predicated on an ability to adopt historically masculinist characteristics—drive, self-will, confidence, fast-execution. In short, internalized and externalized sexism puts the female body at greater risk for developing health issues, and I argue is a determinant factor in one’s ability to manifest success and self-satisfaction in daily life.

I propose that feminism begins literally within each body. I suggest that aligning our bodies from our deepest core muscles have massive spiritual, emotional, and sociological implications. With such an activation, I have seen women embody personal power, gut strength, and intuition. I am proposing that we investigate our physical fitness regimens and instead build them from sound anatomical principles and the cyclical nature of the body’s systems.

What if:

We dismantled myths about female body image by investigating the miraculous ways in which our bodies are in a constant process of building up and breaking down?

We moved our upper and lower halves of our bodies more towards the middle?

We replaced physical fitness with a class on finding all the spirals in the body?

Fitness was analogous to nap time?

Artists enjoyed the cyclical nature of an artistic process instead of imposing a product based one?

We discussed over coffee a new discovery that we could feel the weight of our brain for the first time, instead of how much exercise we are getting?

In doing so, we introduce ourselves to ourselves. More deeply, without apology, free from exclusionary ideals. Coming into bodies that have been waiting to be fully activated, fully experienced, for far too long.

Madison Page is a dancer movement person who makes work that, with any luck, examines the relationships between people, process, and performance. Informed by a background in contemporary dance, her work proposes making dances from models of vulnerability and selfhood. She is currently an artist in residence at New Expressive Works in Portland, OR; her dances and collaborations have been featured recently at R/SF Projects (San Francisco), The Hammer Museum with collaborators Samantha Mohr, Caitlin Adams and Chelsea Rector, and Moskowitz Bayse Gallery with playwright Rachel Kauder Nalebuff in Los Angeles. She is a lifelong member of Alexx Shilling’s Modern Dancers of America, and in 2016 performed a live iteration of Shilling’s dance film The Other Side of Stillness with her virtual self at the Dance on Camera Festival at Lincoln Center in New York. She has danced and continues to dance for Laurel Jenkins Tentindo, Kevin Williamson, Carol McDowell, Devika Wickremesinghe, and Caitlin Adams. She is a graduate of the World Arts and Cultures Department at The University of California, Los Angeles, and holds a certificate in Dance Theatre from Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance in London, England.

madisonpagemoves.com

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pressography-blog1 · 8 years

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Laptop Eye Strain Remedy: 8 Recommendations For Vision

New Post has been published on https://pressography.org/laptop-eye-strain-remedy-8-recommendations-for-vision/

Laptop Eye Strain Remedy: 8 Recommendations For Vision

When a number of us had been kids, we strained our eyes to examine books or watch Television shows. These days, though, screens are omnipresent; they’re on our smartphones, tablets, and different hand-held gadgets. Whilst there’s a myriad of different conditions our eyes can develop over time, eye Pressure — When your eyes get tired from severe use — is something we are able to surely prevent.

Laptop Eye Strain

Best Laptops

Here’s what you could do to exercise secure display screen time, and preserve your Vision wholesome and vivid.

1. Lowering The Glare In relation to computers and hand-held gadgets, the reflective glare emitting from those screens also can purpose our eyes to Stress. No longer to say if it’s past due at night time, it can disrupt the production of the sleep hormone melatonin, tricking your frame into questioning it desires to be awake at eleven p.M. Even as many devices include anti-reflective surfaces, it nonetheless won’t be enough to keep away from it totally. Attempt tilting the screen slightly sideways When the use of it as a way to restriction the glare.

2. The 20-20-20 Rule This rule is available for breaking apart a tiresome recurring, that is in particular useful for the ones stuck behind a Pc for lots hours each day; Computer Vision syndrome is clearly an issue. The Mayo Clinic recommends that every 20 minutes, customers have a look at something as a minimum 20 ft inside the distance for 20 seconds at a time; set a timer to remind yourself. every few instances, get up and walk around throughout these breaks to growth movement, which allows your whole body, Now not just your eyes.

3. The Proper Medicine Attempt the usage of eye drops or synthetic tears if you word your eyes grow to be dry of an excessive amount of display time. in case you do show up to wear corrective lenses or contacts, make certain to preserve your prescription modern-day with regular eye checks. in case you locate yourself with common eye fatigue and you’ve ruled out other possible reasons, the problem ought to lie along with your eyesight itself, and you ought to make an appointment with a healthcare expert.

4. Maintaining contemporary Along with Preserving your eyeglasses current, recall your hardware as properly. Many cellphone customers regularly update their devices, which come with the Higher decision. Pill, Laptop, and readers should also improve their equipment regularly to fashions with improved resolution.

5. Modify The Brightness often evaluate the lighting inside the room to the display screen you’re the use of. Reduce the brightness of your screen inside the settings section to combination in Better with the encompassing ambient lights for your environment. This could Not handiest store strength and increase your battery life, it will additionally Reduce eye Stress related to watching these brilliant screens.

6. maintain Them Easy A grimy display screen results in decrease comparison, blurry snapshots, and other troubles that growth the Pressure we placed on our eyes. Easy your displays regularly with endorsed lint-loose clothes and don’t use harsh detergents or sprays.

7. Outdoors lighting fixtures bright lights surrounding you, especially the unflattering fluorescent ones, additionally increase glare that contributes to additional eye Stress. Whilst possible, hold your tool far away from sunlight by the last close by shades on home windows and flip off needless lights in surrounding areas.

8. increase Blinking

Eye Anatomy

Blinking our eyes, like respiratory, is something we do without questioning — however now and again When we’re behind a display, we definitely forget. Make it a point to blink more often Whilst the usage of those gadgets.

The lowest line: These days’ era is all around us and it isn’t going everywhere. Our Imaginative and prescient is invaluable, and we must do our very nice to preserve it for so long as humanly viable.

Laptop Eye Stress Treatment

Laptop use round the arena has grown exponentially and will keep growing. With courageous new principles come some hurdles, as properly, together with Computer Imaginative and prescient Syndrome with its host of Pc eye Strain signs and symptoms. Fortuitously eye Stress from computers does Not cause macular degeneration — as many fitness practitioners in each traditional and opportunity circles reassure us, but it does go away us with some basic fatigue and different minor-league fitness problems. On the subject of Laptop eye Strain Remedy, there are a number of Easy and Innovative matters that can be executed to lessen the severity of the signs and symptoms.

Get a check-up

First, make certain you have the appropriate prescription — in case you wear glasses — or that you are not in need of them earlier than you do something else.

Trade up your paintings station

Some other clean Laptop eye Strain Treatment is to exchange around our Computer workstation. matters such as how a long way away from the Laptop we sit and the way we intention our gaze (either upward or downward), are matters to maintain in thoughts. something else is ambient lights. Does it produce a glare at the Computer display? you may test to peer what feels the most relaxed on each count. This concept varies consistently with the man or woman; what works for me won’t give you the results you want.

Eye Sporting activities

Eyes need workout similar to another muscle, so micro periods of everyday eye Exercises is Another precise Pc eye Strain Treatment. The workout analogy is a superb way to breach this concept. If a bodybuilder would continually training session particular muscular tissues, say his hands as an example, and forget different muscle corporations, he would appearance disproportionate and might be weaker in the regions that he did Not provide interest to. When we fixate our eyes on a two-dimensional image at near proximity for hours on giving up, we need to stability that out with the other. Dr. Weil points out:

“I do think the main cause there’s a lot of nearsightedness is that children spend an inordinate amount of time observing blackboards, books, and Computer displays. They do not spend sufficient time outdoors, looking at remote matters, which keeps the muscle mass that manages distant Vision sturdy and bendy. When searching for something close, all people, adults, and children, wishes to look up frequently and attention on something remote.”

When we are entrenched in work we neglect about what is occurring around us. I’ve determined myself forgetting to breathe, so it’s no wonder that we neglect to blink. One Easy Pc eye Stress Treatment tries to consciously blink as lots as viable, This will assist hold your eyes moistened and functioning optimally.

Relaxation

Whilst your eyes are usually glued to the display screen for extended durations of time, it’s far essential to Relaxation your eyes from time to time. One Simple way of Lowering Pc eye Strain is to honestly take a ruin each twenty minutes or so. in case you are unable to break away, at the least wreck your gaze and attention on a point far away (up to twenty seconds) to balance out the near-up work your eyes are doing with a ways paintings to hold equilibrium. A very Simple and exciting Laptop eye Strain Remedy.

Computer Eyewear and Gaming Glasses

Another preventative to Pc Vision Syndrome is using Pc eyewear or gaming glasses. these glasses employ unique coatings, filters, and hints to assist defend your eyes when you have to apply the Laptop for prolonged durations. The glasses are lightweight, secure, and stylish. Pc eyewear preventatives typically appoint mild magnification detail — near the magnification of low-level reading glasses. it’s far constantly good to talk to your health practitioner in case you are considering employing this method.

Life-style

Vision Problems

Any other foundational Computer eye Stress Treatment is to devour nourishing complete meals eating regimen to feed your eyes — and entire frame — what they need. Ingesting unprocessed ingredients may not pull moisture from the frame. continually make certain to contain Omega 3 fatty acids (cod liver oil is a great supplemental supply) in your health routine.

Sleep greater, No longer much less

Now not getting sufficient sleep can be a capacity irritant. Sleep is an essential duration of repairing all body structures and a scarcity can also cause signs and symptoms in the eyes and other systems, as nicely.

Be Innovative

Get Creative along with your Pc eye Stress Treatment. Dr. Weil of integrative/holistic Medication reputation spoke back the subsequent Whilst requested the question “What ought to one do for Simple eyestrain?” “Rinsing the eyes with a sterile saline solution is good. Cool, wet tea bags pressed on the eyelids are also very soothing.”

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