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Microgravity Helping Us Understand Immune System’s Tiny Warriors.
Scary threats to human health dominate the news these days. Space travel may help scientists strengthen our bodies’ ability to fight such threats. Two upcoming studies on leukocytes—human defense cells—seek to understand how these tiny warriors mount their defense.
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Salmonella bacteria, a common cause of food poisoning, invade an immune cell.
Credit: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health
Bodie is a ghost town in the Bodie Hills east of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in Mono County, California, United States. It is about 75 miles (121 km) southeast of Lake Tahoe, and 12 mi (19 km) east-southeast of Bridgeport, at an elevation of 8,379 feet (2554 m). Bodie became a boom town in 1876 (146 years ago) after the discovery of a profitable line of gold; by 1879 it had a population of 7,000–10,000.
The town went into decline in the subsequent decades and came to be described as a ghost town by 1915 (107 years ago). The U.S. Department of the Interior recognizes the designated Bodie Historic District as a National Historic Landmark.
Also registered as a California Historical Landmark, the ghost town officially was established as Bodie State Historic Park in 1962. It receives about 200,000 visitors yearly. Bodie State Historic Park is partly supported by the Bodie Foundation.
Bodie began as a mining camp of little note following the discovery of gold in 1859 by a group of prospectors, including W. S. Bodey. Bodey died in a blizzard the following November while making a supply trip to Monoville (near present-day Mono City), never getting to see the rise of the town that was named after him. According to area pioneer Judge J. G. McClinton, the district's name was changed from "Bodey," "Body," and a few other phonetic variations, to "Bodie," after a painter in the nearby boomtown of Aurora, lettered a sign "Bodie Stables".
Gold discovered at Bodie coincided with the discovery of silver at nearby Aurora (thought to be in California, later found to be Nevada), and the distant Comstock Lode beneath Virginia City, Nevada. But while these two towns boomed, interest in Bodie remained lackluster. By 1868 only two companies had built stamp mills at Bodie, and both had failed.
In 1876, the Standard Company discovered a profitable deposit of gold-bearing ore, which transformed Bodie from an isolated mining camp comprising a few prospectors and company employees to a Wild West boomtown. Rich discoveries in the adjacent Bodie Mine during 1878 attracted even more hopeful people. By 1879, Bodie had a population of approximately 7,000–10,000 people and around 2,000 buildings. One legend says that in 1880, Bodie was California's second or third largest city. but the U.S. Census of that year disproves this. Over the years 1860-1941 Bodie's mines produced gold and silver valued at an estimated US$34 million (in 1986 dollars, or $85 million in 2021).
Bodie boomed from late 1877 through mid– to late 1880. The first newspaper, The Standard Pioneer Journal of Mono County, published its first edition on October 10, 1877. Starting as a weekly, it soon expanded publication to three times a week. It was also during this time that a telegraph line was built which connected Bodie with Bridgeport and Genoa, Nevada. California and Nevada newspapers predicted Bodie would become the next Comstock Lode. Men from both states were lured to Bodie by the prospect of another bonanza.
Gold bullion from the town's nine stamp mills was shipped to Carson City, Nevada, by way of Aurora, Wellington and Gardnerville. Most shipments were accompanied by armed guards. After the bullion reached Carson City, it was delivered to the mint there, or sent by rail to the mint in San Francisco.
As a bustling gold mining center, Bodie had the amenities of larger towns, including a Wells Fargo Bank, four volunteer fire companies, a brass band, railroad, miners' and mechanics' union, several daily newspapers, and a jail. At its peak, 65 saloons lined Main Street, which was a mile long. Murders, shootouts, barroom brawls, and stagecoach holdups were regular occurrences.
As with other remote mining towns, Bodie had a popular, though clandestine, red light district on the north end of town. There is an unsubstantiated story of Rosa May, a prostitute who, in the style of Florence Nightingale, came to the aid of the town menfolk when a serious epidemic struck the town at the height of its boom. She is credited with giving life-saving care to many, but after she died, was buried outside the cemetery fence.
Bodie had a Chinatown, the main street of which ran at a right angle to Bodie's Main Street. At one point it had several hundred Chinese residents and a Taoist temple. Opium dens were plentiful in this area.
Bodie also had a cemetery on the outskirts of town and a nearby mortuary. It is the only building in the town built of red brick three courses thick, most likely for insulation to keep the air temperature steady during the cold winters and hot summers. The cemetery includes a Miners Union section, and a cenotaph erected to honor President James A. Garfield. The Bodie Boot Hill was located outside of the official city cemetery.
On Main Street stands the Miners Union Hall, which was the meeting place for labor unions. It also served as an entertainment center that hosted dances, concerts, plays, and school recitals. It now serves as a museum.
The first signs of decline appeared in 1880 and became obvious toward the end of the year. Promising mining booms in Butte, Montana; Tombstone, Arizona; and Utah lured men away from Bodie. The get-rich-quick, single miners who came to the town in the 1870s moved on to these other booms, and Bodie developed into a family-oriented community. In 1882 residents built the Methodist Church (which still stands) and the Roman Catholic Church (burned 1928). Despite the population decline, the mines were flourishing, and in 1881 Bodie's ore production was recorded at a high of $3.1 million. Also in 1881, a narrow-gauge railroad was built called the Bodie Railway & Lumber Company, bringing lumber, cordwood, and mine timbers to the mining district from Mono Mills south of Mono Lake.
During the early 1890s, Bodie enjoyed a short revival from technological advancements in the mines that continued to support the town. In 1890, the recently invented cyanide process promised to recover gold and silver from discarded mill tailings and from low-grade ore bodies that had been passed over. In 1892, the Standard Company built its own hydroelectric plant approximately 13 miles (20.9 km) away at Dynamo Pond. The plant developed a maximum of 130 horsepower (97 kW) and 3,530 volts alternating current (AC) to power the company's 20-stamp mill. This pioneering installation marked the country's first transmissions of electricity over a long distance.
In 1910, the population was recorded at 698 people, which were predominantly families who decided to stay in Bodie instead of moving on to other prosperous strikes.
The first signs of an official decline occurred in 1912 with the printing of the last Bodie newspaper, The Bodie Miner. In a 1913 book titled California Tourist Guide and Handbook: Authentic Description of Routes of Travel and Points of Interest in California, the authors, Wells and Aubrey Drury, described Bodie as a "mining town, which is the center of a large mineral region". They referred to two hotels and a railroad operating there. In 1913, the Standard Consolidated Mine closed.
Mining profits in 1914 were at a low of $6,821. James S. Cain bought everything from the town lots to the mining claims, and reopened the Standard mill to former employees, which resulted in an over $100,000 profit in 1915. However, this financial growth was not in time to stop the town's decline. In 1917, the Bodie Railway was abandoned and its iron tracks were scrapped.
The last mine closed in 1942, due to War Production Board order L-208, shutting down all non-essential gold mines in the United States during World War II. Mining never resumed after the war.
Bodie was first described as a "ghost town" in 1915. In a time when auto travel was on the rise, many travelers reached Bodie via automobiles. The San Francisco Chronicle published an article in 1919 to dispute the "ghost town" label.
By 1920, Bodie's population was recorded by the US Federal Census at a total of 120 people. Despite the decline and a severe fire in the business district in 1932, Bodie had permanent residents through nearly half of the 20th century. A post office operated at Bodie from 1877 to 1942
In the 1940s, the threat of vandalism faced the ghost town. The Cain family, who owned much of the land, hired caretakers to protect and to maintain the town's structures. Martin Gianettoni, one of the last three people living in Bodie in 1943, was a caretaker.
Bodie is now an authentic Wild West ghost town.
The town was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1961, and in 1962 the state legislature authorized creation of Bodie State Historic Park. A total of 170 buildings remained. Bodie has been named as California's official state gold rush ghost town.
Visitors arrive mainly via SR 270, which runs from US 395 near Bridgeport to the west; the last three miles of it is a dirt road. There is also a road to SR 167 near Mono Lake in the south, but this road is extremely rough, with more than 10 miles of dirt track in a bad state of repair. Due to heavy snowfall, the roads to Bodie are usually closed in winter .
Today, Bodie is preserved in a state of arrested decay. Only a small part of the town survived, with about 110 structures still standing, including one of many once operational gold mills. Visitors can walk the deserted streets of a town that once was a bustling area of activity. Interiors remain as they were left and stocked with goods. Littered throughout the park, one can find small shards of china dishes, square nails and an occasional bottle, but removing these items is against the rules of the park.
The California State Parks' ranger station is located in one of the original homes on Green Street.
In 2009 and again in 2010, Bodie was scheduled to be closed. The California state legislature worked out a budget compromise that enabled the state's Parks Closure Commission to keep it open. As of 2022, the park is still operating, now administered by the Bodie Foundation.
California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2 million residents across a total area of approximately 163,696 square miles (423,970 km2), it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the most populated subnational entity in North America and the 34th most populous in the world. The Greater Los Angeles area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nation's second and fifth most populous urban regions respectively, with the former having more than 18.7 million residents and the latter having over 9.6 million. Sacramento is the state's capital, while Los Angeles is the most populous city in the state and the second most populous city in the country. San Francisco is the second most densely populated major city in the country. Los Angeles County is the country's most populous, while San Bernardino County is the largest county by area in the country. California borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, the Mexican state of Baja California to the south; and has a coastline along the Pacific Ocean to the west.
The economy of the state of California is the largest in the United States, with a $3.4 trillion gross state product (GSP) as of 2022. It is the largest sub-national economy in the world. If California were a sovereign nation, it would rank as the world's fifth-largest economy as of 2022, behind Germany and ahead of India, as well as the 37th most populous. The Greater Los Angeles area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nation's second- and third-largest urban economies ($1.0 trillion and $0.5 trillion respectively as of 2020). The San Francisco Bay Area Combined Statistical Area had the nation's highest gross domestic product per capita ($106,757) among large primary statistical areas in 2018, and is home to five of the world's ten largest companies by market capitalization and four of the world's ten richest people.
Prior to European colonization, California was one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse areas in pre-Columbian North America and contained the highest Native American population density north of what is now Mexico. European exploration in the 16th and 17th centuries led to the colonization of California by the Spanish Empire. In 1804, it was included in Alta California province within the Viceroyalty of New Spain. The area became a part of Mexico in 1821, following its successful war for independence, but was ceded to the United States in 1848 after the Mexican–American War. The California Gold Rush started in 1848 and led to dramatic social and demographic changes, including large-scale immigration into California, a worldwide economic boom, and the California genocide of indigenous people. The western portion of Alta California was then organized and admitted as the 31st state on September 9, 1850, following the Compromise of 1850.
Notable contributions to popular culture, for example in entertainment and sports, have their origins in California. The state also has made noteworthy contributions in the fields of communication, information, innovation, environmentalism, economics, and politics. It is the home of Hollywood, the oldest and one of the largest film industries in the world, which has had a profound influence upon global entertainment. It is considered the origin of the hippie counterculture, beach and car culture, and the personal computer, among other innovations. The San Francisco Bay Area and the Greater Los Angeles Area are widely seen as the centers of the global technology and film industries, respectively. California's economy is very diverse: 58% of it is based on finance, government, real estate services, technology, and professional, scientific, and technical business services. Although it accounts for only 1.5% of the state's economy, California's agriculture industry has the highest output of any U.S. state. California's ports and harbors handle about a third of all U.S. imports, most originating in Pacific Rim international trade.
The state's extremely diverse geography ranges from the Pacific Coast and metropolitan areas in the west to the Sierra Nevada mountains in the east, and from the redwood and Douglas fir forests in the northwest to the Mojave Desert in the southeast. The Central Valley, a major agricultural area, dominates the state's center. California is well known for its warm Mediterranean climate and monsoon seasonal weather. The large size of the state results in climates that vary from moist temperate rainforest in the north to arid desert in the interior, as well as snowy alpine in the mountains.
Settled by successive waves of arrivals during at least the last 13,000 years, California was one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse areas in pre-Columbian North America. Various estimates of the native population have ranged from 100,000 to 300,000. The indigenous peoples of California included more than 70 distinct ethnic groups, inhabiting environments from mountains and deserts to islands and redwood forests. These groups were also diverse in their political organization, with bands, tribes, villages, and on the resource-rich coasts, large chiefdoms, such as the Chumash, Pomo and Salinan. Trade, intermarriage and military alliances fostered social and economic relationships between many groups.
The first Europeans to explore the coast of California were the members of a Spanish maritime expedition led by Portuguese captain Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo in 1542. Cabrillo was commissioned by Antonio de Mendoza, the Viceroy of New Spain, to lead an expedition up the Pacific coast in search of trade opportunities; they entered San Diego Bay on September 28, 1542, and reached at least as far north as San Miguel Island. Privateer and explorer Francis Drake explored and claimed an undefined portion of the California coast in 1579, landing north of the future city of San Francisco. Sebastián Vizcaíno explored and mapped the coast of California in 1602 for New Spain, putting ashore in Monterey. Despite the on-the-ground explorations of California in the 16th century, Rodríguez's idea of California as an island persisted. Such depictions appeared on many European maps well into the 18th century.
The Portolá expedition of 1769-70 was a pivotal event in the Spanish colonization of California, resulting in the establishment of numerous missions, presidios, and pueblos. The military and civil contingent of the expedition was led by Gaspar de Portolá, who traveled over land from Sonora into California, while the religious component was headed by Junípero Serra, who came by sea from Baja California. In 1769, Portolá and Serra established Mission San Diego de Alcalá and the Presidio of San Diego, the first religious and military settlements founded by the Spanish in California. By the end of the expedition in 1770, they would establish the Presidio of Monterey and Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo on Monterey Bay.
After the Portolà expedition, Spanish missionaries led by Father-President Serra set out to establish 21 Spanish missions of California along El Camino Real ("The Royal Road") and along the Californian coast, 16 sites of which having been chosen during the Portolá expedition. Numerous major cities in California grew out of missions, including San Francisco (Mission San Francisco de Asís), San Diego (Mission San Diego de Alcalá), Ventura (Mission San Buenaventura), or Santa Barbara (Mission Santa Barbara), among others.
Juan Bautista de Anza led a similarly important expedition throughout California in 1775–76, which would extend deeper into the interior and north of California. The Anza expedition selected numerous sites for missions, presidios, and pueblos, which subsequently would be established by settlers. Gabriel Moraga, a member of the expedition, would also christen many of California's prominent rivers with their names in 1775–1776, such as the Sacramento River and the San Joaquin River. After the expedition, Gabriel's son, José Joaquín Moraga, would found the pueblo of San Jose in 1777, making it the first civilian-established city in California.
The Spanish founded Mission San Juan Capistrano in 1776, the third to be established of the Californian missions.
During this same period, sailors from the Russian Empire explored along the northern coast of California. In 1812, the Russian-American Company established a trading post and small fortification at Fort Ross on the North Coast. Fort Ross was primarily used to supply Russia's Alaskan colonies with food supplies. The settlement did not meet much success, failing to attract settlers or establish long term trade viability, and was abandoned by 1841.
During the War of Mexican Independence, Alta California was largely unaffected and uninvolved in the revolution, though many Californios supported independence from Spain, which many believed had neglected California and limited its development. Spain's trade monopoly on California had limited the trade prospects of Californians. Following Mexican independence, Californian ports were freely able to trade with foreign merchants. Governor Pablo Vicente de Solá presided over the transition from Spanish colonial rule to independent.
In 1821, the Mexican War of Independence gave the Mexican Empire (which included California) independence from Spain. For the next 25 years, Alta California remained a remote, sparsely populated, northwestern administrative district of the newly independent country of Mexico, which shortly after independence became a republic. The missions, which controlled most of the best land in the state, were secularized by 1834 and became the property of the Mexican government. The governor granted many square leagues of land to others with political influence. These huge ranchos or cattle ranches emerged as the dominant institutions of Mexican California. The ranchos developed under ownership by Californios (Hispanics native of California) who traded cowhides and tallow with Boston merchants. Beef did not become a commodity until the 1849 California Gold Rush.
From the 1820s, trappers and settlers from the United States and Canada began to arrive in Northern California. These new arrivals used the Siskiyou Trail, California Trail, Oregon Trail and Old Spanish Trail to cross the rugged mountains and harsh deserts in and surrounding California. The early government of the newly independent Mexico was highly unstable, and in a reflection of this, from 1831 onwards, California also experienced a series of armed disputes, both internal and with the central Mexican government. During this tumultuous political period Juan Bautista Alvarado was able to secure the governorship during 1836–1842. The military action which first brought Alvarado to power had momentarily declared California to be an independent state, and had been aided by Anglo-American residents of California, including Isaac Graham. In 1840, one hundred of those residents who did not have passports were arrested, leading to the Graham Affair, which was resolved in part with the intercession of Royal Navy officials.
One of the largest ranchers in California was John Marsh. After failing to obtain justice against squatters on his land from the Mexican courts, he determined that California should become part of the United States. Marsh conducted a letter-writing campaign espousing the California climate, the soil, and other reasons to settle there, as well as the best route to follow, which became known as "Marsh's route". His letters were read, reread, passed around, and printed in newspapers throughout the country, and started the first wagon trains rolling to California. He invited immigrants to stay on his ranch until they could get settled, and assisted in their obtaining passports.
After ushering in the period of organized emigration to California, Marsh became involved in a military battle between the much-hated Mexican general, Manuel Micheltorena and the California governor he had replaced, Juan Bautista Alvarado. The armies of each met at the Battle of Providencia near Los Angeles. Marsh had been forced against his will to join Micheltorena's army. Ignoring his superiors, during the battle, he signaled the other side for a parley. There were many settlers from the United States fighting on both sides. He convinced these men that they had no reason to be fighting each other. As a result of Marsh's actions, they abandoned the fight, Micheltorena was defeated, and California-born Pio Pico was returned to the governorship. This paved the way to California's ultimate acquisition by the United States.
In 1846, a group of American settlers in and around Sonoma rebelled against Mexican rule during the Bear Flag Revolt. Afterward, rebels raised the Bear Flag (featuring a bear, a star, a red stripe and the words "California Republic") at Sonoma. The Republic's only president was William B. Ide,[65] who played a pivotal role during the Bear Flag Revolt. This revolt by American settlers served as a prelude to the later American military invasion of California and was closely coordinated with nearby American military commanders.
The California Republic was short-lived; the same year marked the outbreak of the Mexican–American War (1846–48).
Commodore John D. Sloat of the United States Navy sailed into Monterey Bay in 1846 and began the U.S. military invasion of California, with Northern California capitulating in less than a month to the United States forces. In Southern California, Californios continued to resist American forces. Notable military engagements of the conquest include the Battle of San Pasqual and the Battle of Dominguez Rancho in Southern California, as well as the Battle of Olómpali and the Battle of Santa Clara in Northern California. After a series of defensive battles in the south, the Treaty of Cahuenga was signed by the Californios on January 13, 1847, securing a censure and establishing de facto American control in California.
Following the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (February 2, 1848) that ended the war, the westernmost portion of the annexed Mexican territory of Alta California soon became the American state of California, and the remainder of the old territory was then subdivided into the new American Territories of Arizona, Nevada, Colorado and Utah. The even more lightly populated and arid lower region of old Baja California remained as a part of Mexico. In 1846, the total settler population of the western part of the old Alta California had been estimated to be no more than 8,000, plus about 100,000 Native Americans, down from about 300,000 before Hispanic settlement in 1769.
In 1848, only one week before the official American annexation of the area, gold was discovered in California, this being an event which was to forever alter both the state's demographics and its finances. Soon afterward, a massive influx of immigration into the area resulted, as prospectors and miners arrived by the thousands. The population burgeoned with United States citizens, Europeans, Chinese and other immigrants during the great California Gold Rush. By the time of California's application for statehood in 1850, the settler population of California had multiplied to 100,000. By 1854, more than 300,000 settlers had come. Between 1847 and 1870, the population of San Francisco increased from 500 to 150,000.
The seat of government for California under Spanish and later Mexican rule had been located in Monterey from 1777 until 1845. Pio Pico, the last Mexican governor of Alta California, had briefly moved the capital to Los Angeles in 1845. The United States consulate had also been located in Monterey, under consul Thomas O. Larkin.
In 1849, a state Constitutional Convention was first held in Monterey. Among the first tasks of the convention was a decision on a location for the new state capital. The first full legislative sessions were held in San Jose (1850–1851). Subsequent locations included Vallejo (1852–1853), and nearby Benicia (1853–1854); these locations eventually proved to be inadequate as well. The capital has been located in Sacramento since 1854 with only a short break in 1862 when legislative sessions were held in San Francisco due to flooding in Sacramento. Once the state's Constitutional Convention had finalized its state constitution, it applied to the U.S. Congress for admission to statehood. On September 9, 1850, as part of the Compromise of 1850, California became a free state and September 9 a state holiday.
During the American Civil War (1861–1865), California sent gold shipments eastward to Washington in support of the Union. However, due to the existence of a large contingent of pro-South sympathizers within the state, the state was not able to muster any full military regiments to send eastwards to officially serve in the Union war effort. Still, several smaller military units within the Union army were unofficially associated with the state of California, such as the "California 100 Company", due to a majority of their members being from California.
At the time of California's admission into the Union, travel between California and the rest of the continental United States had been a time-consuming and dangerous feat. Nineteen years later, and seven years after it was greenlighted by President Lincoln, the First transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869. California was then reachable from the eastern States in a week's time.
Much of the state was extremely well suited to fruit cultivation and agriculture in general. Vast expanses of wheat, other cereal crops, vegetable crops, cotton, and nut and fruit trees were grown (including oranges in Southern California), and the foundation was laid for the state's prodigious agricultural production in the Central Valley and elsewhere.
In the nineteenth century, a large number of migrants from China traveled to the state as part of the Gold Rush or to seek work. Even though the Chinese proved indispensable in building the transcontinental railroad from California to Utah, perceived job competition with the Chinese led to anti-Chinese riots in the state, and eventually the US ended migration from China partially as a response to pressure from California with the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act.
Under earlier Spanish and Mexican rule, California's original native population had precipitously declined, above all, from Eurasian diseases to which the indigenous people of California had not yet developed a natural immunity. Under its new American administration, California's harsh governmental policies towards its own indigenous people did not improve. As in other American states, many of the native inhabitants were soon forcibly removed from their lands by incoming American settlers such as miners, ranchers, and farmers. Although California had entered the American union as a free state, the "loitering or orphaned Indians" were de facto enslaved by their new Anglo-American masters under the 1853 Act for the Government and Protection of Indians. There were also massacres in which hundreds of indigenous people were killed.
Between 1850 and 1860, the California state government paid around 1.5 million dollars (some 250,000 of which was reimbursed by the federal government) to hire militias whose purpose was to protect settlers from the indigenous populations. In later decades, the native population was placed in reservations and rancherias, which were often small and isolated and without enough natural resources or funding from the government to sustain the populations living on them. As a result, the rise of California was a calamity for the native inhabitants. Several scholars and Native American activists, including Benjamin Madley and Ed Castillo, have described the actions of the California government as a genocide.
In the twentieth century, thousands of Japanese people migrated to the US and California specifically to attempt to purchase and own land in the state. However, the state in 1913 passed the Alien Land Act, excluding Asian immigrants from owning land. During World War II, Japanese Americans in California were interned in concentration camps such as at Tule Lake and Manzanar. In 2020, California officially apologized for this internment.
Migration to California accelerated during the early 20th century with the completion of major transcontinental highways like the Lincoln Highway and Route 66. In the period from 1900 to 1965, the population grew from fewer than one million to the greatest in the Union. In 1940, the Census Bureau reported California's population as 6.0% Hispanic, 2.4% Asian, and 89.5% non-Hispanic white.
To meet the population's needs, major engineering feats like the California and Los Angeles Aqueducts; the Oroville and Shasta Dams; and the Bay and Golden Gate Bridges were built across the state. The state government also adopted the California Master Plan for Higher Education in 1960 to develop a highly efficient system of public education.
Meanwhile, attracted to the mild Mediterranean climate, cheap land, and the state's wide variety of geography, filmmakers established the studio system in Hollywood in the 1920s. California manufactured 8.7 percent of total United States military armaments produced during World War II, ranking third (behind New York and Michigan) among the 48 states. California however easily ranked first in production of military ships during the war (transport, cargo, [merchant ships] such as Liberty ships, Victory ships, and warships) at drydock facilities in San Diego, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Bay Area. After World War II, California's economy greatly expanded due to strong aerospace and defense industries, whose size decreased following the end of the Cold War. Stanford University and its Dean of Engineering Frederick Terman began encouraging faculty and graduates to stay in California instead of leaving the state, and develop a high-tech region in the area now known as Silicon Valley. As a result of these efforts, California is regarded as a world center of the entertainment and music industries, of technology, engineering, and the aerospace industry, and as the United States center of agricultural production. Just before the Dot Com Bust, California had the fifth-largest economy in the world among nations.
In the mid and late twentieth century, a number of race-related incidents occurred in the state. Tensions between police and African Americans, combined with unemployment and poverty in inner cities, led to violent riots, such as the 1965 Watts riots and 1992 Rodney King riots. California was also the hub of the Black Panther Party, a group known for arming African Americans to defend against racial injustice and for organizing free breakfast programs for schoolchildren. Additionally, Mexican, Filipino, and other migrant farm workers rallied in the state around Cesar Chavez for better pay in the 1960s and 1970s.
During the 20th century, two great disasters happened in California. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake and 1928 St. Francis Dam flood remain the deadliest in U.S. history.
Although air pollution problems have been reduced, health problems associated with pollution have continued. The brown haze known as "smog" has been substantially abated after the passage of federal and state restrictions on automobile exhaust.
An energy crisis in 2001 led to rolling blackouts, soaring power rates, and the importation of electricity from neighboring states. Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas and Electric Company came under heavy criticism.
Housing prices in urban areas continued to increase; a modest home which in the 1960s cost $25,000 would cost half a million dollars or more in urban areas by 2005. More people commuted longer hours to afford a home in more rural areas while earning larger salaries in the urban areas. Speculators bought houses they never intended to live in, expecting to make a huge profit in a matter of months, then rolling it over by buying more properties. Mortgage companies were compliant, as everyone assumed the prices would keep rising. The bubble burst in 2007–8 as housing prices began to crash and the boom years ended. Hundreds of billions in property values vanished and foreclosures soared as many financial institutions and investors were badly hurt.
In the twenty-first century, droughts and frequent wildfires attributed to climate change have occurred in the state. From 2011 to 2017, a persistent drought was the worst in its recorded history. The 2018 wildfire season was the state's deadliest and most destructive, most notably Camp Fire.
Although air pollution problems have been reduced, health problems associated with pollution have continued. The brown haze that is known as "smog" has been substantially abated thanks to federal and state restrictions on automobile exhaust.
One of the first confirmed COVID-19 cases in the United States that occurred in California was first of which was confirmed on January 26, 2020. Meaning, all of the early confirmed cases were persons who had recently travelled to China in Asia, as testing was restricted to this group. On this January 29, 2020, as disease containment protocols were still being developed, the U.S. Department of State evacuated 195 persons from Wuhan, China aboard a chartered flight to March Air Reserve Base in Riverside County, and in this process, it may have granted and conferred to escalated within the land and the US at cosmic. On February 5, 2020, the U.S. evacuated 345 more citizens from Hubei Province to two military bases in California, Travis Air Force Base in Solano County and Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, San Diego, where they were quarantined for 14 days. A state of emergency was largely declared in this state of the nation on March 4, 2020, and as of February 24, 2021, remains in effect. A mandatory statewide stay-at-home order was issued on March 19, 2020, due to increase, which was ended on January 25, 2021, allowing citizens to return to normal life. On April 6, 2021, the state announced plans to fully reopen the economy by June 15, 2021.
The Arado Ar 234 B Blitz (Lightning) was the world's first operational jet bomber and reconnaissance aircraft. Two Junkers Jumo 004 B turbojets powered this clean, graceful design. Speed made the Blitz virtually immune to attacks from piston-engined Allied fighters. The jet's maximum velocity topped 735 kph (456 mph). Although overshadowed by the more famous Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighter, the relatively few Ar 234s that reached Luftwaffe units before the end of the German surrender provided excellent (if ultimately futile) service, particularly as reconnaissance aircraft.
Development of the Ar 234 began in 1940. The German Aviation Ministry issued an order to Dr. Walter Blume, technical director of the state-owned Arado concern, to design and build a reconnaissance aircraft propelled by the turbojet engines then under development by BMW and Junkers. Rüdiger Kosin led the design team. Largely free from Air Ministry interference, Kosin created a high-wing monoplane with two turbojet engines mounted in nacelles under the wings. The rear fuselage contained two downward-looking recon-
naissance cameras. To reduce weight and free space for larger fuselage fuel tanks, the initial prototype series dispensed with a conventional landing gear in favor of retractable skids mounted beneath the fuselage and nacelles. The airplane would taxi and takeoff atop a wheeled trolley that the pilot jettisoned as the jet left the runway. Ground crews recovered the trolley and refurbished it for the next flight.
Engine problems repeatedly slowed flight testing the first Ar 234. BMW and Junkers both experienced trouble building jet engines in quantities sufficient for both the Me 262 and
Ar 234 programs. Although Arado completed the Ar 234 V1 airframe in late 1942, the Messerschmitt aircraft took priority and claimed the trickle of flight-ready engines that Junkers managed to turn out. Consequently, the Ar 234 V1 did not fly until July 30, 1943.
Before it flew, the Air Ministry directed Arado to redesign the landing gear and give the jet a bombing capability. Kosin and his team enlarged the fuselage slightly to accommodate a conventional tricycle landing gear and added a semi-recessed bomb bay under the fuselage. To allow the pilot to act as a bombardier, Kosin mounted a Lotfe 7K bombsight in the fuselage floor ahead of the control column, which the pilot swung out of his way to use the sight. A Patin PDS autopilot guided the aircraft during the bombing run. The pilot-bombardier used another periscope sight during shallow-angle, glide bombing.
The first prototype for the revised design, designated Ar 234 V9, flew on March 12, 1944. The bomber version, designated Ar 234 B-0, became the first subtype built in quantity. The Air Ministry ordered 200 Ar 234 Bs and Arado built them at a new Luftwaffe airfield factory at Alt Lönnewitz in Saxony. The factory finished and delivered all 200 airplanes by the end of December 1944 but managed to roll out another 20 by war's end. The initial order had called for two versions of the Ar 234 B: the B-1 reconnaissance aircraft and the B-2 bomber but Arado built only the B-2 version. The company converted B-2 airframes into reconnaissance aircraft.
Plans called for more advanced versions of the Arado jet, including the Ar 234 C powered by four BMW 003 A-1 engines and fitted with a pressurized cockpit. Subvariants of the "C" model included the C-3 multi-role aircraft and the C-3N two-seat nightfighter. However, only 14 Ar 234 Cs left the Arado factory before Soviet forces overran the area. The four-engine Ar 234 was, however, the fastest jet aircraft of World War II. Prototypes for the more advanced Ar 234 D reconnaissance aircraft and bomber with provision for a second crewman were under construction but not completed at war's end.
A Luftwaffe pilot flew the first Ar 234 combat mission on August 2, 1944, when Erich Sommer piloted the V5 prototype on a reconnaissance sortie over the Allied beachhead in Normandy. He encountered no opposition. During his two-hour flight, Sommer gathered more useful intelligence than the Luftwaffe obtained during the previous two months. Virtually immune to interception, the Ar 234 continued to provide the German High Command with valuable reconnaissance until nearly the end of the war. The intelligence gathered, however, allowed German military planners to do little more than delay inevitable defeat.
Only one Luftwaffe unit, KG 76 (Kampfgeschwader or Bomber Wing 76), was equipped with Ar 234 bombers before Germany's surrender. As the production of the Ar 234 B-2 increased in tempo during fall 1944, the unit received its first aircraft and began training at Burg bei Magdeburg. The unit flew its first operations during December 1944 in support of the Ardennes Offensive. Typical missions consisted of pinprick attacks conducted by less than 20 aircraft, each carrying a single 500 kg (1,100 lb.) bomb. The unit participated in the desperate attacks against the Allied bridgehead over the Rhine at Remagen during mid-March 1945, but failed to drop the Ludendorff railway bridge and suffered a number of losses to anti-aircraft fire. The deteriorating war situation, coupled with shortages of fuel and spare parts, prevented KG 76 from flying more than a handful of sorties from late March to the end of the war. The unit conducted its last missions against Soviet forces encircling Berlin during the final days of April. During the first week of May the unit's few surviving aircraft were either dispersed to airfields still in German hands or destroyed to prevent their capture.
The National Air and Space Museum's Blitz, an Arado Ar 234 B-2 bomber carrying Werk Nummer (manufacturer's serial number) 140312, was one of nine Ar 234s surrendered to British forces at Sola airfield near Stavanger, Norway. It is the sole surviving example of an Ar 234. The aircraft had been on strength with 9./KG 76 (Ninth Squadron/ bomber Wing 76) during the final weeks of the war, having served earlier with the unit's eighth squadron. It and three other Ar 234s were collected by the famous "Watson's Whizzers" group of the USAAF (United States Army Air Forces) for shipment to the United States. After flying from Sola to Cherbourg, France on June 24, 1945, the four Ar 234s joined thirty-four other advanced German aircraft aboard the British aircraft carrier HMS Reaper for shipment to the United States. The Reaper departed from Cherbourg on July 20, arriving at Newark, New Jersey eight days later. U. S. Army Air Forces personnel reassembled and flew two Ar 234s, including 140312, to Freeman Field, Indiana, for testing and evaluation. The USAAF assigned the foreign equipment number FE-1010 to this Ar 234 for inventory and tracking purposes.
After receiving new engines and replacement radio and oxygen equipment, FE-1010 was flown to Wright Field, Dayton, Ohio, in July 1946 and transferred to the Accelerated Service Test Maintenance Section (ASTMS) of the Flight Test Division. After flight-testing was completed on October 16, 1946, the aircraft remained at Wright field until 1947, when it was moved to Orchard Place Airport, Park Ridge, Illinois. On May 1, 1949, the USAF (United States Air Force after 1947) transferred the Ar 234 and other aircraft at Park Ridge to the Smithsonian Institution. During the early 1950s, the airplanes were finally moved to a new Smithsonian storage facility at Suitland, Maryland to await restoration.
Restoration of the NASM Ar 234 began during 1984 and was completed in February 1989. Because all of the original German paint was stripped off the airframe before the aircraft's transfer to the Smithsonian, restoration specialists applied markings of a typical aircraft of 8./KG 76, the first bomber unit to fly the Blitz. The museum displayed the aircraft during 1993 in the main museum building downtown as part of an exhibit titled "Wonder Weapon? The Arado Ar 234." It is currently in storage at the Paul E. Garber Restoration and Storage Facility awaiting the completion of the museum's new Dulles Center.
Dendritic cells stimulated with adjuvant silicon microparticles interact with T cells.
Courtesy of Rita Serda
Image Details
Instrument used: Nova NanoSEM Family
Magnification: 16,000x
Horizontal Field Width: 18.9 um
Voltage: 10 keV
Spot: 3.0
Working Distance: 4.9 mm
Detector: SE
"gender is performative, brunch is genetic fact, doped up on joe biden "me too" immunity vaccine, individuals drawing are a greater threat to personal wellbeing than tech media platforms, industry and nationalist propaganda, titling art for the lowest common denominator audience is harder than making them look at it", mechanical pencil on bfk, 15inx11in, 2020
For a rapid response to COVID-19 and its growing array of new mutants, Prellis Bio printed 960 synthetic lymph nodes and used them to generate 300 human antibodies that bind to the SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins... all in less than 30 days. This method applies to any new pathogen, viral or bacterial
From today's news: “Three hundred virus-specific IgG antibodies is a tremendous number to have at this stage. Our pipeline for class-switched antibodies has produced an order of magnitude larger pool than the typical antibody development program,” said Erin Stephens, PhD and Director of Tissue Engineering at Prellis.
Notably, the process does not require an infected donor, extensive screening, or generation of antibodies in animals, dramatically reducing the time to produce a targeted library of candidate antibodies to less than one month.
Prellis Bio recently closed a $4.3 million investment round led by Future Ventures, Khosla Ventures, and IndieBio to support the development of human anti-SARS-CoV2 antibodies.
“We funded the formation of an army of synthetic human lymph nodes to identify antibody therapies for SARS-CoV2 and potentially all new pandemic diseases, both viral and bacterial,” said Steve Jurvetson, co-founder of Future Ventures. “It’s like having a surrogate human immune system from hundreds of people without needing to sample from infected patients, offering a rapid response procedure for any pathogen.”
Looking forward, Prellis Biologics is planning to address known mutations in SARS-CoV2 by using their Externalized Human Immune System technology to produce libraries of antibodies that recognize mutations in the SARS-CoV2 virus. “Novel mutations are being found in SARS-CoV2 across the globe. It’s likely that these mutations will impact vaccine and therapeutic antibody efficacy,” says Prellis Founder and CEO Melanie Matheu, PhD. “With our rapid antibody development platform, we can move as quickly as the virus is changing, and we’re planning to get ahead of it.”
Prellis Bio develops synthetic tissue products for R&D, therapeutic production, and organ transplant using its holographic printing system that is capable of matching and accurately replicating human organ and tissue structures. We are dedicated to using synthetic human tissues to cleanly produce therapeutic products and ultimately, solving the global human organ transplant shortage."
JSC2015E089532 (10/03/2015) --- Former NASA astronaut Mark Kelly gives himself a flu shot for an ongoing study on the human immune system. The vaccination is part of NASA's Twins Study, a compilation of multiple investigations that take advantage of a unique opportunity to study identical twin astronauts Scott and Mark Kelly, while Scott spends a year aboard the International Space Station and Mark remains on Earth.
In a range of experiments, scientists have reactivated resting immune cells that were latently infected with HIV or its monkey relative, SIV, in cells in the bloodstream and a variety of tissues in animals. As a result, the cells started making copies of the viruses, which could potentially be neutralized by anti-HIV drugs and the immune system. This advance, published in January of 2020 in two papers in the journal Nature, marks progress toward a widely accessible cure for HIV.
Read more:
www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-supported-scien...
In this image: When a resting immune cell that is latently infected with HIV gets reactivated, the cell starts producing HIV virions (red) that bud and release from the cell (blue).
Credit: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIH
www.racked.com/2017/3/14/14782948/gray-clothes-anxiety
“In his short book Black: The Brilliance of a Non-Color, the French philosopher Alain Badiou describes the two absolutes on either side of gray as “the fatal couple of black and white,” suggesting both the colors’ finitude and their closedness. We know what black and white mean, or think we do. In Western fashion, the pair is associated with formality and fraught social circumstance: the baptismal gown, the business suit, the wedding dress, lingerie. “Black is the sign of the offering of an object,” in this case, the body, Badiou writes. Perhaps gray, then, is the color not of being objectified, but of becoming like an object, a stone statue: obstinate and immune.” ―Kyle Chayka
An NIH-funded mouse study suggests that a high-salt diet may impair the brain. A high-salt diet in mice can increase the number of immune cells releasing IL17 (green), which can negatively affect blood flow in the brain.
More information: www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/hold-salt-gut-react...
Credit: Iadecola Lab, Weill Cornell Medicine, NYC
NIH funding from: National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS)
I learned that youth doesn't make you immune to cancer as a kid when my best friend died from cancer. Years later as a teenager I started getting sick every morning and going to school late every day. I would tell the school I was sick and they would tell me you can't be sick everyday, as if it was an excuse or lie for being late. One teacher told me I would never amount to any thing simply for being late and in her mind probably lying. My doctor would tell me it was normal for teenagers not to be able to eat, to be nauseous around food, have hunger pains and losing weight. Got to the point where I felt like I was going to die and only then would people take me seriously. You really can be sick every day, be young and get cancer. The only reason I was eventually diagnosed with cancer was because my doctor wasn't in one day and I needed to see someone else, shows the importance of getting second opinions and finding doctors that listen. Now I want to use this experience for something good, and try and publish a book of these images to raise money for cancer charity and created a group of light painters who want to help, check out these amazing light painters.
If your interested in light painting check out this new light painting group Shining Light on Cancer. Thanks.
Immunofluorescent image of immune cells surrounding a skin wound, enriched in the beneficial bacteria S. epidermidis.
Beneficial bacteria on mice skin work with the animals’ immune systems to defend against disease-causing microbes and accelerate wound healing, according to new research from NIH scientists, published in January 2018. These insights may inform wound management techniques.
More info: www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-scientists-find...
Credit: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIH
via Playground Markings UK bit.ly/1Zkqlr5
"FDA approves Promacta to treat pediatric patients with chronic immune thrombocytopenic purpura"
Well what a great night over in Coventry at the premier of Immune.
Staged at the Ego Arts Venue for two nights only, and place on the VIP list rubbing shoulders with the film makers and actors was great fun. As a lover of anything film it would have been a great chance to pop off some shots but I was there to chill out and enjoy the atmosphere of the occasion, But than again.
So not wanting to take over the show with the big 5D III, I opted for my little buddy the M3 with the Canon 580EXII on top of the camera bouncing the flash of the ceiling it worked well.
I love it when people just want to have there picture taken so a big thank you to everybody who participated in doing so.
I was not there to take the photos and wished I had done more, its never easy to put the camera down once I've picked it up.
Created for new Jon Hopkins video in collaboration with Craig Ward thecreatorsproject.vice.com/blog/microscopic-images-of-fo...
If all pills were gummies I'd love it! With Covid-19 amongst us it is good to keep your immune system healthy and in tip-top condition. It doesn't hurt to keep that inflammation in check too! These are my favourite brand of Gummies! They don't use gluten or sugar in these which is great! They are also Organic so I know it is healthy.
The first humans emerged on Earth about 4 million years ago, but convincing new evidence from studying human evolution has revealed that a small group of these hominines have been genetically modified by former foreign visitors to create the first Homo sapiens.
Daniella Fenton, researcher and author, studied in depth the oldest origins of humanity and its sudden acceleration in brain development nearly 800,000 years ago, this investigation led to a massive revelation.
Homo sapiens are the creation of ancient astronauts who arrived by wormhole from the young cluster of Pleiades stars 780,000 years ago.
The Australian researcher, who specializes in equine lines and gene expression, has discovered many genetic changes that characterize humans as abnormal when compared to modern primate species, some of which are so extreme that they are better explained by advanced genetic engineering.
WhatIn her book Hybrid Humans: Scientific Evidence of Our 800,000-Year Old Alien Legacy, Daniella Fenton highlights a series of profound changes in genes associated with brain size, neural structures and information processing. These changes include genes that suddenly appear formed from what is called "junk DNA" and gene fragments that have been cut, copied and reinserted.
Fenton indicates the mysterious fusion of Chromosome-2 along with these other changes, about 780,000 years ago, as further evidence of extraterrestrial experimentation. This fusion is found in all human types with large brains, including Neanderthals and Denisovians, but not in other primate species.
She explained that the fusion of chromosome-2 should have been the result of a point error that should have disappeared in subsequent generations or perhaps led to a small population of people with 46 chromosomes among a larger number of people carrying 48 chromosomes. Instead, all humans after 780,000 years ago presented this'mutation'. This strongly implies that there was a huge benefit associated with the merger and that it suddenly appeared in a considerable number of individuals, allowing chromosome-2 to become a permanent and dominant trait. This does not correspond to known natural mutations in the human genome.
Fenton explains, "Someone created a whole generation of breeding pairs that fused chromosome-2. The chromosomal modification is such that it has impacts on brain development, the immune system and reproductive processes.
Humans also carry unique changes in the FOXP2 gene that has changed synaptic connectivity and improved our ability to transform new experiences into routine procedures, which has had a huge influence on our ability to produce meaningful speech. Fenton points out that this change is not seen in other primates and it seems that our creators wanted us to be able to quickly form new habitual behaviours.
Fenton says: "It is not only the genetic changes 780,000 years ago that inform us that Homo sapiens is a species created by extraterrestrials, we have also identified physical materials left by these star beings, materials dated at this same particular time in time".
Fenton offers a detailed explanation of why these visitors got stuck here and why they changed the first hominids in his book.
DNA Was Likely Seeded on Earth
Ancient Mythology Describes Wormholes
ET Past Lives Can Provide Objective Data
Shamans Encounter Aliens in Their Altered States
The wreckage of an ET Craft is Revealed
ET Deliberately Bombarded Prehistoric Earth
Earth was not Always in Human Hands
Clear DNA Evidence of Genetic Engineering
“Millions of people around the world believe we have been visited in the past by extraterrestrial beings. What if it were true? And if so, what if there were clues left behind?”
Thousands of people around the planet claim to have received information from extraterrestrial beings, some of these people even remember living previous lives as non-humans, referring to themselves as – Starseeds.
What if the information these people carry could lead to physical evidence of ancient alien visitation, or identify specific genes implanted into early human ancestors?
Could it be that the star people have already supplied humanity with everything needed to gain full disclosure of the alien presence?
This book offers the definitive answers to these questions and having examined specific claims made by some of these contactees and Starseeds. What we uncovered by following their clues is nothing short of world-changing, paradigm-busting and ushers in a new era on our planet.
We can now reveal to you the specific genetic changes that were carried out to create Homo sapiens 780,000 years ago, including genes that appeared suddenly from ‘junk DNA’ as well as the sudden fusion of chromosome-2. Most spectacular of all your will see photographs of debris from the extraterrestrial mothership that carried the engineers to our planet 780,000 years ago (images are accessed via embedded hyperlinks in the Kindle version).
Contact has occurred, the disclosure is here. Welcome to the bold new future of Earth.
Bruce and Daniella Fenton join us for a fantastic chat about Daniella’s new book, Hybrid Humans – Scientific Evidence of our 800,000-year-old Alien Legacy.
We chat about all the strange coincidences that happened around 800,000 years ago, from the planetary changes, changes in our DNA, crash sites of tektites, and metaphysical/spiritual inner and outer stories of an ET war of sorts. Maybe our deep history is even stranger than we think. We also chat about some of Bruce’s work that led to this research, climate cycles, sunken lands, shamanism, reincarnation, what is shared between neanderthal’s and Denisovans’s, contact through alternate timelines, moldavite and artifacts and much more.
Ancient astronauts travelled through a "wormhole" in the Pleiades star cluster but couldn't survive on Earth, it's claimed.
Extraterrestrials decided instead to "alter the genetic make up" of early human ancestors so they became more intelligent.
The proof is in the fusion of Chromosome-2 around 780,000 years ago based on the book Hybrid Humans written by Daniella Fenton.
Chromosone-2 is found in all large-brained humans, including Neanderthals and Denisovans, but no other primate species.
"The three species went on to become advanced humans with art, culture and increasingly complex technologies," said Mrs Fenton.
"The fusions site in on an active gene which expresses itself in brain structure, immunity and reproductive functions - important systems for upgrading to a new human species.
"Instead of a small number of humans having the fusion and a large group not having it, instead there was a rapid total replacement with all humans on Earth having 46 rather than 48 chromosomes, this tells us it gave enormous benefits to become so dominant.
"Approximately 800,000 years ago human brain size went into a sudden rapid increase in size and complexity which has long been a mystery to archaeologists."
She went on: "This was not the only change at this time and two very extraordinary changes are the sudden appearance of miR-941, which played a crucial role in human brain development.
"The gene is highly active in controlling decision-making and enabling language abilities and appeared suddenly formed out of junk DNA."
What Mrs Fenton claims are the "signature of aliens" is dramatic changes to a neocortex gene called ARHGAP11B – associated with sight and hearing in mammals.
The official explanation for Chromosome-2, the second largest in humans, does not involve aliens.
Researcher JW IJdo concluded Chromosome-2 "marks the point at which two ancestral ape chromosomes fused to give rise to human Chromosome-2."
“Approximately 800,000 years ago human brain size went into a sudden rapid increase in size and complexity which has long been a mystery to archaeologists.”
Daniella Fenton
The Australian author, who studied equine genetic and is a spirtualist and certified shaman, claims to have physical evidence to support the ancient alien theory.
Her husband Bruce is also a writer who worked on the research.
They researched a book called Alcheringa which promotes the theory an alien spaceship exploded in our atmosphere hundreds of thousands of years ago and the survivors, who couldn't survive without the mother ship, engineered Homo sapiens.
Mrs Fenton claims the melted wreckage of the crashed craft explains the mysterious Australites tektite buttons, unexplained dark glass objects thought to be ejected in meteorite impacts.
She claimed that geologists have dated the remains of a 1km sized melted object to around 780,000 years ago.
She added: "According to a NASA study the resulting liquid glass (containing around 80% silica from melted quartz crystal) formed spheres in space which then instantly froze and began to fall into our atmosphere.
"As they entered they heated and melted to form unique button shapes before landing right across Australasia.
"These Australite tektite buttons are unique in the 4.5 billion year history of our planet and remain a total mystery to science because they can’t understand how they formed."
The Hybrid Human theory also believes the alien astronauts arrived from the Pleiades star cluster, thought to contain several thousand stars.It is among the nearest star cluster to Earth and the one which is most visible to the naked eye.
It is believed one planet could exist around the star HD 23514 due to the exceptional number of hot dust particles surrounding it.
Mrs Fenton points to how Pleiades has been referenced repeatedly by various cultures.
She said: "All around the world ancient cultures talk about ancestral beings from the Pleiades and portals that connect those stars with this planet, this includes mythology in Japan, Indonesia, Mexico, American Indians, ancient Egypt, Sumeria and Aboriginal Australia."Amazing cave paintings by Apache Indians which date back thousands of years appear to show aliens and UFOs.
Wilfred Buck, a science educator of the Opaskwayak Cree Nation in Manitoba, Canada, said that Pleiades is our planet's connection to the cosmos.
"We originate from the stars, we are star people," Buck said.
"Once we finish doing what we come here to do, we go back up to those stars."
Another hugely controversial conspiracy theory, by a Dr Ellis Silver, has resurfaced online claiming the human race originated on another planet.
www.dailystar.co.uk/news/weird-news/699147/Human-alien-hy...
• In her new book, Hybrid Humans: Scientific Evidence of Our 800,000-Year-Old Alien Legacy, Australian researcher Daniella Fenton suggests that the fusion of Chromosome-2 into human DNA around 780,000 years ago, thus altering the genetic make-up of early humans to make them more intelligent, was an ‘upgrade’ to the human species by extraterrestrials.
• “Approximately 800,000 years ago human brain size went into a sudden rapid increase in size and complexity which has long been a mystery to archaeologists,” said Fenton. “The gene is highly active in controlling decision-making and enabling language abilities. [It] suddenly formed out of junk DNA.” The Chromosone-2 upgrade is only found in large-brained humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans, and no other primate species. “The three species went on to become advanced humans with art, culture and increasingly complex technologies,” noted Fenton.
• Mrs Fenton and her husband, Bruce Fenton, previously co-authored a book entitled Alcheringa which promotes the theory an alien spaceship from the Pleiades star cluster exploded in our atmosphere hundreds of thousands of years ago. The survivors, who couldn’t survive without the mother ship, engineered Homo sapiens. In the book they claim that the melted wreckage of the crashed craft explains the mysterious Australites tektite buttons, small dark glass objects found across Australia and Asia that geologists have dated to around 780,000 years ago. Says Mrs Fenton, “According to a NASA study, the resulting liquid glass (containing around 80% silica from melted quartz crystal) formed spheres in space which then instantly froze and began to fall into our atmosphere… As they entered they heated and melted to form unique button shapes before landing right across Australasia.”
Ancient astronauts travelled through a “wormhole” in the Pleiades star cluster but couldn’t survive on Earth, it’s claimed.
Extraterrestrials decided instead to “alter the genetic make up” of early human ancestors so they became more intelligent.
The proof is in the fusion of Chromosome-2 around 780,000 years ago based on the book Hybrid Humans written by Daniella Fenton.
Chromosone-2 is found in all large-brained humans, including Neanderthals and Denisovans, but no other primate species.
“The three species went on to become advanced humans with art, culture and increasingly complex technologies,” said Mrs Fenton.
“The fusions site in on an active gene which expresses itself in brain structure, immunity and reproductive functions – important systems for upgrading to a new human species.
“Instead of a small number of humans having the fusion and a large group not having it, instead there was a rapid total replacement with all humans on Earth having 46 rather than 48 chromosomes, this tells us it gave enormous benefits to become so dominant.
“Approximately 800,000 years ago human brain size went into a sudden rapid increase in size and complexity which has long been a mystery to archaeologists.”
She went on: “This was not the only change at this time and two very extraordinary changes are the sudden appearance of miR-941, which played a crucial role in human brain development.
“The gene is highly active in controlling decision-making and enabling language abilities and appeared suddenly formed out of junk DNA.”
What Mrs Fenton claims are the “signature of aliens” is dramatic changes to a neocortex gene called ARHGAP11B – associated with sight and hearing in mammals.
The official explanation for Chromosome-2, the second largest in humans, does not involve aliens.
Researcher JW IJdo concluded Chromosome-2 “marks the point at which two ancestral ape chromosomes fused to give rise to human Chromosome-2.”
The Australian author, who studied equine genetic and is a spirtualist and certified shaman, claims to have physical evidence to support the ancient alien theory.
Her husband Bruce is also a writer who worked on the research.
Daniella and Bruce Fenton
They researched a book called Alcheringa which promotes the theory an alien spaceship exploded in our atmosphere hundreds of thousands of years ago and the survivors, who couldn’t survive without the mother ship, engineered Homo sapiens.
Mrs Fenton claims the melted wreckage of the crashed craft explains the mysterious Australites tektite buttons, unexplained dark glass objects thought to be ejected in meteorite impacts.
Long-term sunlight exposure is known to be associated with the development of skin cancer, skin aging, immune suppression and eye diseases such as cataracts. Sun exposure has also been associated with the timing of melatonin synthesis and reduced risk of seasonal affective disorder. A number of public health organizations state that there needs to be a balance between the risks of having too much and the risks of having too little sunlight. There is a general consensus that sunburn should always be avoided.
Understanding sunlight and the skin
Too much exposure to sunlight is harmful and can damage the skin. Some of this damage is short-term (temporary), such as sunburn. However, allowing your skin to burn can lead to future problems, such as skin cancer due to long-term skin damage.
There are two main types of damaging ultraviolet (UV) sunlight: UVA and UVB. UVA rays penetrate deeper into the skin, damaging the middle layer (the dermis). The dermis contains the elastic tissues that keep the skin stretchy. UVA rays therefore have the effect of ageing the skin and causing wrinkles. UVB rays are absorbed by the top layer of skin (the epidermis). This causes sun tanning but also burning.
Both UVA and UVB rays increase your risk of developing skin cancer. Getting sunburnt is therefore a warning sign that you are putting yourself at risk.
Melanin is the coloured pigment in our skins. When skin is exposed to sunlight, more melanin is produced to help protect the skin against the UV rays. This makes the skin darker - what people refer to as a suntan. Although melanin stops your skin burning so easily, it does not prevent the harmful effects of UV rays.
Who is at risk from the sun?
Everyone is potentially at risk from excessive sun exposure.
People most at risk are those with fair skin, blue eyes, freckles, and red or ginger hair. People with Caucasian (white) skins have less melanin than those with black skins, so are at more risk of burning. However, anyone can get sunburnt, even those with dark skins and higher levels of melanin.
It is not just people who sunbathe who are at risk. Outdoor workers and people simply being outdoors who do not protect their skin are also at risk. This is particularly the case if you live in a country close to the equator, you live or work at high altitude, or you are outside when the sun's rays are strongest (between 11 am and 3 pm).
What are the possible problems from the sun?
Sunburn
Short-term overexposure to sun can cause burning. The skin becomes red, hot and painful. After a few days the burnt skin may peel. A cool shower or bath will help. Soothing creams will help. After-sun lotions cool the skin and contain moisturisers (emollients) to counteract skin dryness and tightness. Any plain emollient can be used on unbroken skin to help with comfort. Paracetamol or ibuprofen will help with pain, if you are able to take them. A mild steroid cream may be advised by a pharmacist or doctor to reduce inflammation in the skin.
You should never allow babies or children to develop sunburn. If they do, you should seek medical advice.
soaked to dry bones
but immune to tears
a sense of fever
and too eager to care
tuned in to a sense of emotion
wont back down to despair
no sense in pulling socks advice
need a touch of tender
not a vampire feeding on sadness
not a martyr desperate for causes
just wanna be a figure of strength
and reassuarnce for i see pain
in the absence of teardrops
still searching for all the cures
and I hope their aint no limits
to prescribe for I'll see the old selves
and hear the chorus of those good souls
An empath is a person who has an acute or highly developed sense of empathy. In the paranormal and in some works of science fiction and fantasy, highly developed empathy is a paranormal or psychic ability to sense the emotions of others. It is distinguished from telepathy, which allows one to perceive thoughts as well. Occasionally empaths are also able to project their own emotions, or to affect the emotions of others.
empath:
The empath's power includes being able to feel another's emotions, and sometimes react to those emotions the way the person actually feeling would. This power does include sometimes projecting the emotions to others. Female empaths are more common, but rarely male empaths have been found. The females are more adept to this power and can control it better, while the males take longer to learn it. This power has been known to take over and cloud the emotions of an empath, leading to seclusion. Only a few empaths are known to be able to control their power fully. (wikipedia)
empathy:
Empathy has many different definitions. These definitions encompass a broad range, from caring for other people and having a desire to help them, to experiencing emotions that match another person's emotions, to knowing what the other person is thinking or feeling, to blurring the line between self and other.[6]
Since empathy involves understanding the emotional states of other people, the way it is characterized is derivative of the way emotions themselves are characterized. If, for example, emotions are taken to be centrally characterized by bodily feelings, then grasping the bodily feelings of another will be central to empathy. On the other hand, if emotions are more centrally characterized by a combination of beliefs and desires, then grasping these beliefs and desires will be more essential to empathy. The ability to imagine oneself as another person is a sophisticated imaginative process. However, the basic capacity to recognize emotions is probably innate[7] and may be achieved unconsciously. Yet it can be trained[8] and achieved with various degrees of intensity or accuracy.
The human capacity to recognize the bodily feelings of another is related to one's imitative capacities and seems to be grounded in the innate capacity to associate the bodily movements and facial expressions one sees in another with the proprioceptive feelings of producing those corresponding movements or expressions oneself.[9] Humans seem to make the same immediate connection between the tone of voice and other vocal expressions and inner feeling.
Empathy is distinct from sympathy, pity, and emotional contagion.[10] Sympathy or empathic concern is the feeling of compassion or concern for another, the wish to see them better off or happier. Pity is feeling that another is in trouble and in need of help as they cannot fix their problems themselves, often described as "feeling sorry" for someone. Emotional contagion is when a person (especially an infant or a member of a mob) imitatively "catches" the emotions that others are showing without necessarily recognizing this is happening.[11]
Scenes outside the D.C. Federal courthouse as Trump arrives for the appeals hearing on Presidential immunity
Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo delivers remarks virtually at the signing of the Enhanced Immunities Agreement with Morocco, from the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C, on September 1, 2020. [State Department photo by Ron Przysucha/ Public Domain]
This microscopy image provided by Dr. Carl June, shows immune system T-cells, center, binding to beads which cause the cells to divide. The beads, depicted in yellow, are later removed, leaving pure T-cells which are then ready for infusion to the cancer patients. Scientists are reporting the first clear success with gene therapy to treat leukemia, using the patients' own blood cells to hunt down and wipe out their cancer. They've only done it in three patients so far, but the results were striking: two appear cancer-free up to a year after treatment, and the third had a partial response. Scientists are already preparing to try the approach in other kinds of cancer.
More about Dr. Carl June and his research - www.med.upenn.edu/apps/faculty/index.php/g275/p2328
Related article: "'Amazing' therapy destroys leukemia in 3 patients" yourlife.usatoday.com/health/medical/story/2011/08/Amazin...
The lymphatic system is part of the immune system where cleansing of blood, and the detoxification of our bodies takes place. A huge network of lymphatic vessels recycles blood plasma by removing fluid from the tissues, filtering it, and carrying it back into the bloodstream.
These are foods to add into your diet to boost the lymphatic system:
* Garlic
Garlic boosts immune function and combats harmful microbes. It improves circulation and aids in the cleansing of toxins. It boosts the function of your lymphatic system and contains antibacterial qualities.
* Citrus
Citrus fruits aid hydration, carry powerful antioxidants and enzymes, and help cleanse and protect the lymphatic system.
“We have been unwitting participants in a global gut remodeling experiment over past 100 years.” — Prof Bruce German, UC Davis
David Kyle, Evolve BioSystems at SynBioBeta 2018
• 80% of immune system associated with gut. The gut is the nursery for immune system
• Huge growth in immune disorders in children: Asthma 4x, Allergy 4x, Diabetes 5x
• Breast milk: 15% of its energy not usable by baby – it feeds the microflora in the gut.
• Baby Bif is missing in western babies. Instead, we see opportunistic pathogens, leading to a different pH of stools (5 vs 6 bad). The ph has shifted over 100 years.
The lymphatic system is part of the immune system where cleansing of blood, and the detoxification of our bodies takes place. A huge network of lymphatic vessels recycles blood plasma by removing fluid from the tissues, filtering it, and carrying it back into the bloodstream.
These are foods to add into your diet to boost the lymphatic system:
* Garlic
Garlic boosts immune function and combats harmful microbes. It improves circulation and aids in the cleansing of toxins. It boosts the function of your lymphatic system and contains antibacterial qualities.
* Citrus
Citrus fruits aid hydration, carry powerful antioxidants and enzymes, and help cleanse and protect the lymphatic system.
Meningeal macrophages (shown in white, red, and blue) are on constant alert against potential threats to brain tissue.
Meningitis, a group of serious diseases which infect the brain’s lining, leaves its mark and can affect the body’s ability to fight such infections in the future. According to a new study published in Nature Immunology, infections can have long-lasting effects on a population of meningeal immune cells, replacing them with cells from outside the meninges that then change and become less likely to recognize and ward off future attacks. The research was supported by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), part of the National Institutes of Health.
Read more:
www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/meningitis-changes-...
Credit: McGavern Lab, National Institute of Neurological Disorder and Stroke/NIH
A drug approved to treat a severe form of asthma dramatically improved the health of people with rare chronic immune disorders called hypereosinophilic syndromes (HES) in whom other treatments were ineffective or intolerable. This finding comes from a small clinical trial led by scientists at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, and conducted through a partnership with the global biopharmaceutical company AstraZeneca. The results were published online on April 3, 2019 in the New England Journal of Medicine.
In this image: Activated eosinophils in the peripheral blood of a patient with idiopathic hypereosinophilic syndrome.
Read more: www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/fda-approved-drug-e...
Credit: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases/NIH
Note: We would love to know how you are re-using our graphics, especially if you are a teacher using them in the classroom. Send us an email: knowablemagazine AT annualreviews DOT org
Nasal vaccines induce an immune response concentrated in the mucosal tissues of the airways, where the Covid-19 virus enters the body. Immune cells such as B cells, T cells and others migrate to mucosal tissues, where they can attack invading viruses quickly. B cells in the mucosa also secrete double-pronged IgA antibodies into the mucus lining the airway, where they can help neutralize viruses even before they enter airway cells.
Read more: "What next-gen Covid-19 vaccines might look like"
Tain is a royal burgh and parish in the County of Ross, in the Highlands of Scotland.
The name derives from the nearby River Tain, the name of which comes from an Indo-European root meaning 'flow'. The Gaelic name, Baile Dubhthaich, means 'Duthac's town', after a local saint also known as Duthus.
Tain was granted its first royal charter in 1066, making it Scotland's oldest royal burgh, commemorated in 1966 with the opening of the Rose Garden by Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. The 1066 charter, granted by King Malcolm III, confirmed Tain as a sanctuary, where people could claim the protection of the church, and an immunity, in which resident merchants and traders were exempt from certain taxes.
Little is known of earlier history although the town owed much of its importance to Duthac. He was an early Christian figure, perhaps 8th or 9th century, whose shrine had become so important by 1066 that it resulted in the royal charter. The ruined chapel near the mouth of the river was said to have been built on the site of his birth. Duthac became an official saint in 1419 and by the late Middle Ages his shrine was an important place of pilgrimage in Scotland. King James IV came at least once a year throughout his reign to achieve both spiritual and political aims.
A leading landowning family of the area, the Clan Munro, provided political and religious figures to the town, including the dissenter the Rev. John Munro of Tain (died ca. 1630).
The early Duthac Chapel was the centre of a sanctuary. Fugitives were by tradition given sanctuary in several square miles marked by boundary stones. During the First War of Scottish Independence, Robert the Bruce sent his wife and daughter to the sanctuary for safety. The sanctuary was violated and they were captured by forces loyal to William II, Earl of Ross who handed them over to Edward I of England.
Tain railway station is on the Far North Line. The station is unmanned; in its heyday it had 30 staff. The station was opened by the Highland Railway on 1 January 1864. From 1 January 1923, the station was owned by the London Midland and Scottish Railway. Then in 1948 the British railways were nationalised as British Railways. After the railways were privatised, the station was served by ScotRail.
Notable buildings in the town include Tain Tolbooth and St Duthus Collegiate Church. The town also has a local history museum, Tain Through Time, and the Glenmorangie distillery.
Tain has two primary schools; Craighill (274 pupils as of April 2011) and Knockbreck (just under 120 pupils as of April 2011). There is also a secondary school, Tain Royal Academy, with 590 pupils as of January 2017.
With conflict looming in the 1930s, an aerodrome large enough for bombers was built next to the town on low alluvial land known as the Fendom bordering the Dornoch Firth.[11] It was home to British, Czech (311 Sqn) and Polish airmen during the Second World War.
It was abandoned as a flying location after the war and converted to a bombing range for the Fleet Air Arm. In 1939 RAF Lossiemouth opened and was used until 1946 when the airfield was transferred to the Admiralty and becoming Royal Naval Air Station (RNAS) Lossiemouth then returning to the RAF in 1972 as an RAF airfield and the Tain range reverted to the RAF. Large parts of the original aerodrome were returned to civilian use after the Second World War and some are still accessible.
Tain Golf Club offers a Championship length links golf course. Overlooking the Dornoch Firth, the course was first designed by Old Tom Morris in 1890.
Tain is represented in the Scottish Football Association affiliated North Caledonian Football League by senior football club St Duthus Football Club during the regular football season.
The Gizzen Briggs are sandbars at the entrance to the Dornoch Firth, and with the right wind, they can be heard at low tide. The so-called "million dollar view" to the north-west of Tain, accessible via the A836 westward towards Bonar Bridge and then the B9176 Struie Road, gives a panoramic view of Dornoch Firth and Sutherland.
Five important castles are in the vicinity – Carbisdale Castle, built for the Dowager Duchess of Sutherland and now a youth hostel; Skibo Castle, once home of the industrialist Andrew Carnegie and now a hotel; Dunrobin Castle, ancestral seat of the Duke of Sutherland (castle and gardens open to the public); Balnagown Castle, ancestral seat of the Clan Ross, restored and owned by Mohammed Al Fayed; and Ballone Castle, restored by the owners of a local crafts business.
Highland Fine Cheeses, run by Ruaridh Stone (the brother of Liberal Democrat MP Jamie Stone), have a factory at Blarliath Farm, Tain.
Just outside Hill of Fearn near Tain lies the site of the medieval Fearn Abbey.
Tain was a parliamentary burgh, combined with Dingwall, Dornoch, Kirkwall and Wick in the Northern Burghs constituency of the House of Commons of the Parliament of Great Britain from 1708 to 1801 and of the Parliament of the United Kingdom from 1801 to 1918. The constituency was a district of burghs known also as Tain Burghs until 1832, and then as Wick Burghs. It was represented by one Member of Parliament (MP). In 1918 the constituency was abolished, and Tain was merged into Ross and Cromarty.
Notable people
Saint Duthac (1000–1065), 11th century saint
Sir John Fraser (1885–1947), surgeon
Peter Fraser (1884–1950), 24th prime minister of New Zealand, was born in Hill of Fearn, near Tain.
George MacKenzie (1886–1957), president of the Institute of Banking, 1941–45
Rev John Munro of Tain, 17th-century religious dissenter, was a minister here.
David Robertson (born 1962), former Free Church of Scotland moderator and Christian commentator, grew up in Portmahomack.
Elizabeth Ness MacBean Ross (1878–1915), physician who was raised here and attended Tain Royal Academy.
John Ross (1726–1800), merchant during the American Revolution
Walter Ross Taylor (1805–1896), served as Moderator of the General Assembly to the Free Church of Scotland in 1884.
Professor Thomas Summers West (1927–2010), an internationally acclaimed analytical chemist, went to school at Tain Royal Academy.
The Highlands is a historical region of Scotland. Culturally, the Highlands and the Lowlands diverged from the Late Middle Ages into the modern period, when Lowland Scots language replaced Scottish Gaelic throughout most of the Lowlands. The term is also used for the area north and west of the Highland Boundary Fault, although the exact boundaries are not clearly defined, particularly to the east. The Great Glen divides the Grampian Mountains to the southeast from the Northwest Highlands. The Scottish Gaelic name of A' Ghàidhealtachd literally means "the place of the Gaels" and traditionally, from a Gaelic-speaking point of view, includes both the Western Isles and the Highlands.
The area is very sparsely populated, with many mountain ranges dominating the region, and includes the highest mountain in the British Isles, Ben Nevis. During the 18th and early 19th centuries the population of the Highlands rose to around 300,000, but from c. 1841 and for the next 160 years, the natural increase in population was exceeded by emigration (mostly to Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand, and migration to the industrial cities of Scotland and England.) and passim The area is now one of the most sparsely populated in Europe. At 9.1/km2 (24/sq mi) in 2012, the population density in the Highlands and Islands is less than one seventh of Scotland's as a whole.
The Highland Council is the administrative body for much of the Highlands, with its administrative centre at Inverness. However, the Highlands also includes parts of the council areas of Aberdeenshire, Angus, Argyll and Bute, Moray, North Ayrshire, Perth and Kinross, Stirling and West Dunbartonshire.
The Scottish Highlands is the only area in the British Isles to have the taiga biome as it features concentrated populations of Scots pine forest: see Caledonian Forest. It is the most mountainous part of the United Kingdom.
Between the 15th century and the mid-20th century, the area differed from most of the Lowlands in terms of language. In Scottish Gaelic, the region is known as the Gàidhealtachd, because it was traditionally the Gaelic-speaking part of Scotland, although the language is now largely confined to The Hebrides. The terms are sometimes used interchangeably but have different meanings in their respective languages. Scottish English (in its Highland form) is the predominant language of the area today, though Highland English has been influenced by Gaelic speech to a significant extent. Historically, the "Highland line" distinguished the two Scottish cultures. While the Highland line broadly followed the geography of the Grampians in the south, it continued in the north, cutting off the north-eastern areas, that is Eastern Caithness, Orkney and Shetland, from the more Gaelic Highlands and Hebrides.
Historically, the major social unit of the Highlands was the clan. Scottish kings, particularly James VI, saw clans as a challenge to their authority; the Highlands was seen by many as a lawless region. The Scots of the Lowlands viewed the Highlanders as backward and more "Irish". The Highlands were seen as the overspill of Gaelic Ireland. They made this distinction by separating Germanic "Scots" English and the Gaelic by renaming it "Erse" a play on Eire. Following the Union of the Crowns, James VI had the military strength to back up any attempts to impose some control. The result was, in 1609, the Statutes of Iona which started the process of integrating clan leaders into Scottish society. The gradual changes continued into the 19th century, as clan chiefs thought of themselves less as patriarchal leaders of their people and more as commercial landlords. The first effect on the clansmen who were their tenants was the change to rents being payable in money rather than in kind. Later, rents were increased as Highland landowners sought to increase their income. This was followed, mostly in the period 1760–1850, by agricultural improvement that often (particularly in the Western Highlands) involved clearance of the population to make way for large scale sheep farms. Displaced tenants were set up in crofting communities in the process. The crofts were intended not to provide all the needs of their occupiers; they were expected to work in other industries such as kelping and fishing. Crofters came to rely substantially on seasonal migrant work, particularly in the Lowlands. This gave impetus to the learning of English, which was seen by many rural Gaelic speakers to be the essential "language of work".
Older historiography attributes the collapse of the clan system to the aftermath of the Jacobite risings. This is now thought less influential by historians. Following the Jacobite rising of 1745 the British government enacted a series of laws to try to suppress the clan system, including bans on the bearing of arms and the wearing of tartan, and limitations on the activities of the Scottish Episcopal Church. Most of this legislation was repealed by the end of the 18th century as the Jacobite threat subsided. There was soon a rehabilitation of Highland culture. Tartan was adopted for Highland regiments in the British Army, which poor Highlanders joined in large numbers in the era of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1790–1815). Tartan had largely been abandoned by the ordinary people of the region, but in the 1820s, tartan and the kilt were adopted by members of the social elite, not just in Scotland, but across Europe. The international craze for tartan, and for idealising a romanticised Highlands, was set off by the Ossian cycle, and further popularised by the works of Walter Scott. His "staging" of the visit of King George IV to Scotland in 1822 and the king's wearing of tartan resulted in a massive upsurge in demand for kilts and tartans that could not be met by the Scottish woollen industry. Individual clan tartans were largely designated in this period and they became a major symbol of Scottish identity. This "Highlandism", by which all of Scotland was identified with the culture of the Highlands, was cemented by Queen Victoria's interest in the country, her adoption of Balmoral as a major royal retreat, and her interest in "tartenry".
Recurrent famine affected the Highlands for much of its history, with significant instances as late as 1817 in the Eastern Highlands and the early 1850s in the West. Over the 18th century, the region had developed a trade of black cattle into Lowland markets, and this was balanced by imports of meal into the area. There was a critical reliance on this trade to provide sufficient food, and it is seen as an essential prerequisite for the population growth that started in the 18th century. Most of the Highlands, particularly in the North and West was short of the arable land that was essential for the mixed, run rig based, communal farming that existed before agricultural improvement was introduced into the region.[a] Between the 1760s and the 1830s there was a substantial trade in unlicensed whisky that had been distilled in the Highlands. Lowland distillers (who were not able to avoid the heavy taxation of this product) complained that Highland whisky made up more than half the market. The development of the cattle trade is taken as evidence that the pre-improvement Highlands was not an immutable system, but did exploit the economic opportunities that came its way. The illicit whisky trade demonstrates the entrepreneurial ability of the peasant classes.
Agricultural improvement reached the Highlands mostly over the period 1760 to 1850. Agricultural advisors, factors, land surveyors and others educated in the thinking of Adam Smith were keen to put into practice the new ideas taught in Scottish universities. Highland landowners, many of whom were burdened with chronic debts, were generally receptive to the advice they offered and keen to increase the income from their land. In the East and South the resulting change was similar to that in the Lowlands, with the creation of larger farms with single tenants, enclosure of the old run rig fields, introduction of new crops (such as turnips), land drainage and, as a consequence of all this, eviction, as part of the Highland clearances, of many tenants and cottars. Some of those cleared found employment on the new, larger farms, others moved to the accessible towns of the Lowlands.
In the West and North, evicted tenants were usually given tenancies in newly created crofting communities, while their former holdings were converted into large sheep farms. Sheep farmers could pay substantially higher rents than the run rig farmers and were much less prone to falling into arrears. Each croft was limited in size so that the tenants would have to find work elsewhere. The major alternatives were fishing and the kelp industry. Landlords took control of the kelp shores, deducting the wages earned by their tenants from the rent due and retaining the large profits that could be earned at the high prices paid for the processed product during the Napoleonic wars.
When the Napoleonic wars finished in 1815, the Highland industries were affected by the return to a peacetime economy. The price of black cattle fell, nearly halving between 1810 and the 1830s. Kelp prices had peaked in 1810, but reduced from £9 a ton in 1823 to £3 13s 4d a ton in 1828. Wool prices were also badly affected. This worsened the financial problems of debt-encumbered landlords. Then, in 1846, potato blight arrived in the Highlands, wiping out the essential subsistence crop for the overcrowded crofting communities. As the famine struck, the government made clear to landlords that it was their responsibility to provide famine relief for their tenants. The result of the economic downturn had been that a large proportion of Highland estates were sold in the first half of the 19th century. T M Devine points out that in the region most affected by the potato famine, by 1846, 70 per cent of the landowners were new purchasers who had not owned Highland property before 1800. More landlords were obliged to sell due to the cost of famine relief. Those who were protected from the worst of the crisis were those with extensive rental income from sheep farms. Government loans were made available for drainage works, road building and other improvements and many crofters became temporary migrants – taking work in the Lowlands. When the potato famine ceased in 1856, this established a pattern of more extensive working away from the Highlands.
The unequal concentration of land ownership remained an emotional and controversial subject, of enormous importance to the Highland economy, and eventually became a cornerstone of liberal radicalism. The poor crofters were politically powerless, and many of them turned to religion. They embraced the popularly oriented, fervently evangelical Presbyterian revival after 1800. Most joined the breakaway "Free Church" after 1843. This evangelical movement was led by lay preachers who themselves came from the lower strata, and whose preaching was implicitly critical of the established order. The religious change energised the crofters and separated them from the landlords; it helped prepare them for their successful and violent challenge to the landlords in the 1880s through the Highland Land League. Violence erupted, starting on the Isle of Skye, when Highland landlords cleared their lands for sheep and deer parks. It was quietened when the government stepped in, passing the Crofters' Holdings (Scotland) Act, 1886 to reduce rents, guarantee fixity of tenure, and break up large estates to provide crofts for the homeless. This contrasted with the Irish Land War underway at the same time, where the Irish were intensely politicised through roots in Irish nationalism, while political dimensions were limited. In 1885 three Independent Crofter candidates were elected to Parliament, which listened to their pleas. The results included explicit security for the Scottish smallholders in the "crofting counties"; the legal right to bequeath tenancies to descendants; and the creation of a Crofting Commission. The Crofters as a political movement faded away by 1892, and the Liberal Party gained their votes.
Today, the Highlands are the largest of Scotland's whisky producing regions; the relevant area runs from Orkney to the Isle of Arran in the south and includes the northern isles and much of Inner and Outer Hebrides, Argyll, Stirlingshire, Arran, as well as sections of Perthshire and Aberdeenshire. (Other sources treat The Islands, except Islay, as a separate whisky producing region.) This massive area has over 30 distilleries, or 47 when the Islands sub-region is included in the count. According to one source, the top five are The Macallan, Glenfiddich, Aberlour, Glenfarclas and Balvenie. While Speyside is geographically within the Highlands, that region is specified as distinct in terms of whisky productions. Speyside single malt whiskies are produced by about 50 distilleries.
According to Visit Scotland, Highlands whisky is "fruity, sweet, spicy, malty". Another review states that Northern Highlands single malt is "sweet and full-bodied", the Eastern Highlands and Southern Highlands whiskies tend to be "lighter in texture" while the distilleries in the Western Highlands produce single malts with a "much peatier influence".
The Scottish Reformation achieved partial success in the Highlands. Roman Catholicism remained strong in some areas, owing to remote locations and the efforts of Franciscan missionaries from Ireland, who regularly came to celebrate Mass. There remain significant Catholic strongholds within the Highlands and Islands such as Moidart and Morar on the mainland and South Uist and Barra in the southern Outer Hebrides. The remoteness of the region and the lack of a Gaelic-speaking clergy undermined the missionary efforts of the established church. The later 18th century saw somewhat greater success, owing to the efforts of the SSPCK missionaries and to the disruption of traditional society after the Battle of Culloden in 1746. In the 19th century, the evangelical Free Churches, which were more accepting of Gaelic language and culture, grew rapidly, appealing much more strongly than did the established church.
For the most part, however, the Highlands are considered predominantly Protestant, belonging to the Church of Scotland. In contrast to the Catholic southern islands, the northern Outer Hebrides islands (Lewis, Harris and North Uist) have an exceptionally high proportion of their population belonging to the Protestant Free Church of Scotland or the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland. The Outer Hebrides have been described as the last bastion of Calvinism in Britain and the Sabbath remains widely observed. Inverness and the surrounding area has a majority Protestant population, with most locals belonging to either The Kirk or the Free Church of Scotland. The church maintains a noticeable presence within the area, with church attendance notably higher than in other parts of Scotland. Religion continues to play an important role in Highland culture, with Sabbath observance still widely practised, particularly in the Hebrides.
In traditional Scottish geography, the Highlands refers to that part of Scotland north-west of the Highland Boundary Fault, which crosses mainland Scotland in a near-straight line from Helensburgh to Stonehaven. However the flat coastal lands that occupy parts of the counties of Nairnshire, Morayshire, Banffshire and Aberdeenshire are often excluded as they do not share the distinctive geographical and cultural features of the rest of the Highlands. The north-east of Caithness, as well as Orkney and Shetland, are also often excluded from the Highlands, although the Hebrides are usually included. The Highland area, as so defined, differed from the Lowlands in language and tradition, having preserved Gaelic speech and customs centuries after the anglicisation of the latter; this led to a growing perception of a divide, with the cultural distinction between Highlander and Lowlander first noted towards the end of the 14th century. In Aberdeenshire, the boundary between the Highlands and the Lowlands is not well defined. There is a stone beside the A93 road near the village of Dinnet on Royal Deeside which states 'You are now in the Highlands', although there are areas of Highland character to the east of this point.
A much wider definition of the Highlands is that used by the Scotch whisky industry. Highland single malts are produced at distilleries north of an imaginary line between Dundee and Greenock, thus including all of Aberdeenshire and Angus.
Inverness is regarded as the Capital of the Highlands, although less so in the Highland parts of Aberdeenshire, Angus, Perthshire and Stirlingshire which look more to Aberdeen, Dundee, Perth, and Stirling as their commercial centres.
The Highland Council area, created as one of the local government regions of Scotland, has been a unitary council area since 1996. The council area excludes a large area of the southern and eastern Highlands, and the Western Isles, but includes Caithness. Highlands is sometimes used, however, as a name for the council area, as in the former Highlands and Islands Fire and Rescue Service. Northern is also used to refer to the area, as in the former Northern Constabulary. These former bodies both covered the Highland council area and the island council areas of Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles.
Much of the Highlands area overlaps the Highlands and Islands area. An electoral region called Highlands and Islands is used in elections to the Scottish Parliament: this area includes Orkney and Shetland, as well as the Highland Council local government area, the Western Isles and most of the Argyll and Bute and Moray local government areas. Highlands and Islands has, however, different meanings in different contexts. It means Highland (the local government area), Orkney, Shetland, and the Western Isles in Highlands and Islands Fire and Rescue Service. Northern, as in Northern Constabulary, refers to the same area as that covered by the fire and rescue service.
There have been trackways from the Lowlands to the Highlands since prehistoric times. Many traverse the Mounth, a spur of mountainous land that extends from the higher inland range to the North Sea slightly north of Stonehaven. The most well-known and historically important trackways are the Causey Mounth, Elsick Mounth, Cryne Corse Mounth and Cairnamounth.
Although most of the Highlands is geographically on the British mainland, it is somewhat less accessible than the rest of Britain; thus most UK couriers categorise it separately, alongside Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man, and other offshore islands. They thus charge additional fees for delivery to the Highlands, or exclude the area entirely. While the physical remoteness from the largest population centres inevitably leads to higher transit cost, there is confusion and consternation over the scale of the fees charged and the effectiveness of their communication, and the use of the word Mainland in their justification. Since the charges are often based on postcode areas, many far less remote areas, including some which are traditionally considered part of the lowlands, are also subject to these charges. Royal Mail is the only delivery network bound by a Universal Service Obligation to charge a uniform tariff across the UK. This, however, applies only to mail items and not larger packages which are dealt with by its Parcelforce division.
The Highlands lie to the north and west of the Highland Boundary Fault, which runs from Arran to Stonehaven. This part of Scotland is largely composed of ancient rocks from the Cambrian and Precambrian periods which were uplifted during the later Caledonian Orogeny. Smaller formations of Lewisian gneiss in the northwest are up to 3 billion years old. The overlying rocks of the Torridon Sandstone form mountains in the Torridon Hills such as Liathach and Beinn Eighe in Wester Ross.
These foundations are interspersed with many igneous intrusions of a more recent age, the remnants of which have formed mountain massifs such as the Cairngorms and the Cuillin of Skye. A significant exception to the above are the fossil-bearing beds of Old Red Sandstone found principally along the Moray Firth coast and partially down the Highland Boundary Fault. The Jurassic beds found in isolated locations on Skye and Applecross reflect the complex underlying geology. They are the original source of much North Sea oil. The Great Glen is formed along a transform fault which divides the Grampian Mountains to the southeast from the Northwest Highlands.
The entire region was covered by ice sheets during the Pleistocene ice ages, save perhaps for a few nunataks. The complex geomorphology includes incised valleys and lochs carved by the action of mountain streams and ice, and a topography of irregularly distributed mountains whose summits have similar heights above sea-level, but whose bases depend upon the amount of denudation to which the plateau has been subjected in various places.
Climate
The region is much warmer than other areas at similar latitudes (such as Kamchatka in Russia, or Labrador in Canada) because of the Gulf Stream making it cool, damp and temperate. The Köppen climate classification is "Cfb" at low altitudes, then becoming "Cfc", "Dfc" and "ET" at higher altitudes.
Places of interest
An Teallach
Aonach Mòr (Nevis Range ski centre)
Arrochar Alps
Balmoral Castle
Balquhidder
Battlefield of Culloden
Beinn Alligin
Beinn Eighe
Ben Cruachan hydro-electric power station
Ben Lomond
Ben Macdui (second highest mountain in Scotland and UK)
Ben Nevis (highest mountain in Scotland and UK)
Cairngorms National Park
Cairngorm Ski centre near Aviemore
Cairngorm Mountains
Caledonian Canal
Cape Wrath
Carrick Castle
Castle Stalker
Castle Tioram
Chanonry Point
Conic Hill
Culloden Moor
Dunadd
Duart Castle
Durness
Eilean Donan
Fingal's Cave (Staffa)
Fort George
Glen Coe
Glen Etive
Glen Kinglas
Glen Lyon
Glen Orchy
Glenshee Ski Centre
Glen Shiel
Glen Spean
Glenfinnan (and its railway station and viaduct)
Grampian Mountains
Hebrides
Highland Folk Museum – The first open-air museum in the UK.
Highland Wildlife Park
Inveraray Castle
Inveraray Jail
Inverness Castle
Inverewe Garden
Iona Abbey
Isle of Staffa
Kilchurn Castle
Kilmartin Glen
Liathach
Lecht Ski Centre
Loch Alsh
Loch Ard
Loch Awe
Loch Assynt
Loch Earn
Loch Etive
Loch Fyne
Loch Goil
Loch Katrine
Loch Leven
Loch Linnhe
Loch Lochy
Loch Lomond
Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park
Loch Lubnaig
Loch Maree
Loch Morar
Loch Morlich
Loch Ness
Loch Nevis
Loch Rannoch
Loch Tay
Lochranza
Luss
Meall a' Bhuiridh (Glencoe Ski Centre)
Scottish Sea Life Sanctuary at Loch Creran
Rannoch Moor
Red Cuillin
Rest and Be Thankful stretch of A83
River Carron, Wester Ross
River Spey
River Tay
Ross and Cromarty
Smoo Cave
Stob Coire a' Chàirn
Stac Polly
Strathspey Railway
Sutherland
Tor Castle
Torridon Hills
Urquhart Castle
West Highland Line (scenic railway)
West Highland Way (Long-distance footpath)
Wester Ross