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|Unconscious Reactions can't be Defined by Reason?
"Rational thought was usually absent from my mind at such times, hence trance." _William Stryon.
"Curse the mind that mounts the clouds in search of mythical kings and only mystical things, mystical things cry for the soul that will not face the body as an equal place, and I never learned to touch for real down, down where the iguanas feel." _Dory Previn.
God dam this dark pit of woe, within this crushing depression;
"For myself, the pain is closely connected to drowning or suffocation-but even these images are of the mark. The pain persisted during my museum tour and reached a crescendo in the next few hours when, back at the hotel, I feel onto the bed and lay gazing at the ceiling, nearly immobilized and in a trance of supreme discomfort. Rational thought was usually absent from my mind at such times, hence trance." (Styron, 1990).
Again, William Styron's words resonate in identification as he describes his experience of depression, and I'm awed by his ability to paint such poignant pictures of the human condition. Who can forget the amazing scene from the movie, of his book Sophie's Choice as Meryl Streep is forced to choose between her son and her daughter, as to which one will face the gas chamber outside those gates of hell at Auschwitz concentration camp. How does any woman make such a choice or any Fascist Intellect so loose connection with humanities heart, its soul, and force it upon her? Dissociation, the Devil's own device perhaps? Or the dark and denied shadow of our instinctive nature, made unnecessarily mysterious by civil societies need of denial, in the long march to a mature civilization?
Could she ever really say how she felt in that awful moment, could she ever consciously acknowledge the instant of that action and its internal motivation? That awful reality of, "Take my little girl - take my baby - take my little girl." Perhaps nature has a way of saving us from such awful conscious realization, removes the reality of searing pain by the minds conscious distance from the felt sense. By evolution's curse and gift, in the impulse of dissociation? The Devils own device, and the reality of our unconscious nature? Is normal conscious awareness founded on a hidden mechanism of dissociation, of denial? We know that the rest of the animal kingdom lives in an instinctual world of pure reflex action, so immersed in the reality of the lived moment, no past or future exists? Its only by a hidden mechanism of dissociation from nature's ever present NOW, that we posses our special gift of self-consciousness. The gift and curse of the human mind?
"Dissociative detachment represents a bottom-line defensive state driven by fear-terror, in which the stressed individual copes by pervasively and diffusely disengaging attention "from both the outer and inner [italics added] worlds" (Allen et al., 1999, p. 164). I have suggested that the "inner world" is more so than cognitions, the realm of bodily processes, central components of emotional states (Schore, 1994). In line with the current shift from cold cognition to the primacy of bodily based affect, clinical research on dissociation is now focusing on "somatoform dissociation."
According to Nijenhuis (2000), somatoform dissociation is an outcome of early onset traumatization, expressed as a lack of integration of sensor motor experiences, reactions, and functions of the individual and his or her self-representation. Thus, "dissociatively detached individuals are not only detached from the environment, but also from the self—their body, their own actions, and their sense of identity".
This observation describes impaired functions of the right hemisphere, the locus of the "emotional" or "corporeal self." According to van der Kolk and colleagues (1996), "Dissociation refers to a compartmentalization of experience: Elements of a trauma are not integrated into a unitary whole or an integrated sense of self" (Schore, 2009 )
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In wanting to write about my own experience of painful depression here, in that rebound reaction I suffered after the first diagnosis and hospitalization. It has taken me many a month of Sunday's to face up to and identify the inner pain of this man's reflection in the mirror. Its there in my face whenever I seek to recall the painful experiences of my past, etched deeply into that dashboard of human emotion, and as I look into the mirror while typing, I can't hide from the truths that reside within my body anymore. I try to of coarse, quick thoughts and typed words have flowed well today as I discharge my internal energies to productive effect.
Yet there is that curious mechanism of denial involved, a curious thinking beyond the good sense of feeling, beyond the complex reality of this moment? I really do need to face what I am inside of me now, face up to the vagaries of chaos, chance and circumstance, to the power of meaningful coincidence that has landed me right here in this particular moment. The coincidence of time and place that now sees me needing to really feel the past, and that fateful moment in front of the mirror thirty one years ago, along with all its ripples within the matrix of consequence. In each instant that I try to feel for embodied memory and bring it up to conscious awareness, I find the rationalized response. These thoughts, words and writing that suggest an automatic dissociation of actual memory. A hidden urge to flee the pain body and escape into thoughts?
|Writing the words "pain body" jogs a memory of reading Eckhart Tolle's brilliant and very popular The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment I walk over to my precious collection of books and retrieve my copy, while telling myself, "he talks a lot about the pain body." "Focus attention on the feeling inside you. Know that it is the pain-body. Accept that it is there. Don't think about it - don't let the feeling turn into thinking. Don't judge or analyze. Don't make an identity for yourself out of it. Stay present, and continue to be the observer of what is happening inside you." (Tolle, 1999).
Thirty one years ago too? How can I consciously remember the actual events and their consequences? It seems so rationally illogical that memory can be retrieved over such a time span, within my conscious mind? Surely life doesn't work that way? Yet my conscious awareness is not the whole picture here? Not the reality of what really makes me tick, perhaps 80% or more of my actualizing function, remains hidden below the surface image I see in the mirror. Looking closer into the mirror now, I try to face my body and its store of unconscious memories, try to feel for my implicit self, that largely non conscious part of me that actually sustains my life, protects me always, from beneath the realm of this very subjective, conscious mind.
A forgotten memory springs to mind now, a time when I was fixing the leaking roof on my mother-in-laws back verandah. "Oh my God, the mother-in-law!" I think. I've always had issues with sensitive skin and at that time my skin was itching like crazy. I'd taken antihistamine tablets the night before to help me sleep instead of scratch the night away. Next morning I'm up on the roof having removed a sheet of iron and still suffering from drowsiness. It was all over before I had any conscious realization of the movement, I'd stepped right into the open gap and fallen through. With no thought whatsoever I'd grabbed onto a roofing beam on the way down, taking my full weight on my right arm and gently dropped to the ground. A second after I landed, realization burst into conscious awareness with a, "wow! How did I do that?"
I shake my head at the richness of this embodied memory, its as though it had been captured on camera by some watching film crew. I think-feel a curious sense of, "is this the deeper me?" Am I connecting aspects of myself somehow kept firmly outside conscious awareness for all these years? Am I really trying to face and feel my instincts here, those millions of years of evolution within my implicit self? Yet in the name of our commonly accepted reason, how could there possibly be an instinct for the experience of depression?
Where's is normality's commonsense in this feeling for memories I ask myself, or is commonsense founded on an unconscious need for denial rather than any solid insights into our true nature? I think about how I learned my particular version of commonsense, how I simply took for granted the socialized norms, about how to be, how to behave. "Did I think about what I am and how I do what I do, during those decades when just getting on with life was an every day action affair? - If another psychotropic medication had not failed me in 2007, would I even have set foot on this path of self education? - If the drug had worked reasonably well would I still be acting with the same old taken for granted assumptions about myself?"
I search through the dozens of PDF docs on this laptop, looking for a good example of the latest science research on human development, which seems to hint at a natural reason for our experience of depression;
"Humans have three principal defense strategies—fight, flight, and freeze. The Polyvagal Theory describes three developmental stages of a mammal's autonomic nervous system: Immobilization, mobilization, and social communication or social engagement. Faulty neuroception might lie at the root of several psychiatric disorders, including autism, schizophrenia, anxiety disorders, depression, and Reactive Attachment Disorder. We are familiar with fight and flight behaviors, but know less about the defense strategy of immobilization, or freezing. This strategy, shared with early vertebrates, is often expressed in mammals as "death feigning." (Porges, 2004).
"In humans, we observe a behavioral shutdown, frequently accompanied by very weak muscle tone. We also observe physiological changes: Heart rate and breathing slow, and blood pressure drops. Immobilization, or freezing, is one of our species' most ancient mechanisms of defense. Inhibiting movement slows our metabolism (reducing our need for food) and raises our pain threshold. But in addition to freezing defensively, mammals immobilize themselves for essential prosocial activities, including conception, childbirth, nursing, and the establishment of social bonds. However, immobilization with fear elicits profound, potentially lethal, physiological changes." (Porges, 2004).
|Consider Styron's description of depression again;
"I feel onto the bed and lay gazing at the ceiling, nearly immobilized and in a trance of supreme discomfort." (Styron, 1990). Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness When viewed along side Steven Porges recent discoveries concerning our unconscious autonomic nervous system, the stimulus for depression's fearful immobilization seems to be yielding to conscious awareness, yet such knowledge is still so new it finds little awareness within the top hierarchy of the medical profession.
Consider a further description by Styron;
"Rational thought was usually absent from my mind at such times, hence trance." (Styron, 1990). Perhaps these words of personal experience are beginning to be understood by some therapists as this example shows, "Excessive parasympathetic branch activity leads to increased energy-conserving processes, manifested as decreases in heart rate and respiration and as a sense of 'numbness' and 'shutting down' within the mind (Siegel, 1999, p.254). Such hypoarousal can manifest as numbing, a dulling of inner body sensation, slowing of muscular/skeletal response and diminished muscular tone, especially in the face. Here "cognitive and emotional" processing are also disrupted." (Hartman and Zimberoff, 2006).
Even in western philosophies cherished talking therapies like CBT, mindfulness has been embraced as a best practice technique for healing emotional anguish. An eastern philosophy of meditation practice underlies these mindful awareness techniques and many now acknowledge that meditation primarily affects the autonomic nervous system, our oldest system of unconscious survival reactions. Styron's personal description of depression certainly resonates deep within me as I recall feelings from my first experience of clinical depression. Looking back, fear and shame seemed to tone the energies of a trance like state, very similar to the previous manic illusions. Pain felt like a tight black band around my head, a feeling of pressure constantly trying to squeeze the life out of me while every shame fueled thought felt like an arrow through my heart to the extent that I just wanted to die.
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Looking into the mirror now I search for felt memories, for unconscious body tensions, trying to feel my instinct for depression. I feel for the activity of my autonomic nervous system through which instinctual activity is mediated, I can feel its electro-chemical affect, most obvious in tingling sensations. After thirty one years I can finally face the pain, feel its spiraling down sensations as I remember the past with a felt sense. Here and now I can face up to those feelings of collapse and resist maintaining and amplifying them through the affect of thinking. I feel the tensions within and let them ease away, not with a mindful focus, but with felt awareness.
Its the kind of felt awareness that the wonderful Gene Gendlin introduced to the world with his Focusing Therapy and his extensive writings on the "felt sense." Watch him explain this strange place where implicit self meets conscious self, when we go inside and attempt to marry the mind to the body;
Education has given me the insight of mind to know what these collapse sensations of the depressive impulse are and resist the urge to amplify them with thoughts. I no longer need to seek the identity of my internalized threat. Its simply my instinctual nervous system and its unconscious experience of life, its my blind watchmaker, as others have sought to label, to metaphor. "The ghost in the Machine?" As I use my mind to try and interpret what I am inside though, I'm searching for my own labels here, my own metaphors and trying desperately to divine the line between my instinctual reaction and mindful reason. Here in front of the mirror I only wish I had Bill Styron's talent for painting such poignant word pictures of the our human condition. I wish I had more than my learned words of objective vocabulary to paint with.
Struggling through that first period of manic depression I did my best to comply with my psychiatrist's wisdom, the Stelazine tablets for my schizophrenia and Serapax for my bewildered confusion and side effect anxiety. Even the trails of MAOI drugs that caused such debilitating side effects as involuntary convulsions, with his warnings about problems of foods like cheese and alcohol consumption, accompanied by a story about a patient who'd suffered a stroke. Jesus! Happy days indeed! Why worry though, just keep taking the pills and keep everybody else happy and relaxed by pretending to feel normal. It is a common experience for long term survivor's of mental anguish problems, that generally speaking the normal world does not want to know about the real experience of mental illness. Its as if people are scared they might catch it?
Yet time does change things and slowly I regained enough motivation to get myself back to work, although self employment seemed more than a step to far. I remember the few short months I spent working for the government, working and sleeping in a railways department workshop. The fear of another panic attack accompanied every single minute of those first weeks of my return to the normal world. Time and experience do allow a desensitization of unconscious expectations though and my conscious awareness of fear subsided. Late in 1980 I managed to find employment within the elevator industry where I'd worked in previous years, as the familiar energies of a grim hard jawed determination returned. The elevator industry is a dangerous one still responsible for many deaths and injuries each year, and I honestly can't recall any concern amongst family, friends or my psychiatrist about the issue of side effects and my particular occupation.
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The edifice of love springs to mind as I write along with thoughts about whether we can ever really know each other, or only how we are affected by each other? Certainly the vagaries of love are brought into sharper focus when one has a history of madness, most people turn away in time, unless we agree to play the normalization game. They say true love is unconditional, its care and concern are beyond the bounds of repayment in kind, yet the stress of mad crisis periods certainly undermined such a concept of love in my experience. Its funny to recall descriptions of my elevator work environment as an exercise in crisis management, when preventative maintenance programs always seemed fail at some point. Psychiatry's efforts with mental illness seem to be very similar, particularly with those hit and miss medications. Perhaps its part of our hard wired nature to seek life in the reaction of the moment though, like how we seek the emotive drama of crisis moments in our favorite TV shows?
The painful frustration of my experience with medical model psychiatrists has always been an unwillingness to go beyond the pale of just managing the crisis periods in my life. As if normality is measured simply by the absence of obvious crisis, so the medications must be working? It feels like they didn't really care or couldn't be bothered with uncovering the core disturbance within me. Nobody seemed to really care what I was going through inside, not really interested in the ongoing pain I felt every day. As long as I acted normal everybody around me could pretend that all was fine, and of coarse I acted, who wants to go back there again, back into hospital and a heavy duty medication regime. I played the normalization game and kept my thoughts and inner feelings to myself, while struggling to climb out of bed every morning.
As I began to recover from the pain, the fear and confusion of that first misdiagnosis, I so wished for an acceptable reason, for a fully coherent explanation that would sooth away my shame. So many times I felt dismissed by my superior brother in his psychiatrist guise, unsupported by my family too, who played the subornation of a rank and status game equally well, "he's a specialist you know! - He knows better than we do?" Looking back with the benefit of hindsight now, with all the self education and thirty one years of experience, I can't help but think about hospital admission scenes. Of all those psychiatrist's rooms and the immediate needs of managing a crisis? What would I do in the same situation if the shoe was on the other foot, how would I react? As a psychiatrist, would I not use my training and education to act without question, would I manage a crisis with the same medications?
Looking back, I do understand that reasoned reaction on the day of my first diagnosis, even the need for the heavy sedation medications of that first hospitalization. What came to trouble and further shame me though, what made me feel like a helpless child was a reluctance to go beyond that reasoned reaction, once normality had been regained and my above average intellect became stable again. I came to hate being treated like a child as much as I did being hospitalized, and I came to despise the unthinking and autonomic rank and status game we all play. Even though it took me decades to learn about and come to feel my own instinctive reactions. The way I automatically play the social ranking and status, judgment game. I even came to understand the security afforded by a status qua of hierarchical social organization and my family's deep need to accept on face value, the medical model of psychiatry's mental illness explanations.
My psychiatrist's explanations which so easily soothed others and gave them some sense of certainty with a "its just a chemical imbalance in your brain," came to trouble me deeply over the years though. Yet it took the last five years of intense self education to understand these self soothing rationalizations as a projection of my internal need for physical security. The simplistic chemical imbalance explanation has a ring of feasibility to it, and was eagerly taken in by my family and friends, helping them to justify a reluctance to enter into any emotionally disturbing conversations. "Don't talk about it, just accept the doctor knows best and take your medication. - Forget about so called emotional issues and move on." Yet the unease remained, hard wired within me and an internalized sense of threat, simply would not and cannot, just go away. I remember the famous phrase from the spin doctors of the CIA during the Vietnam war, "deception is the art of plausibility." Truth and facts are not vital for an acceptable story, only plausibility, for people's own self soothing needs will do the rest.
I remember too, the Judge I fronted in 2007 and his palpable reaction to hearing an estimated thirty to forty percent of people, do not benefit from ongoing medication. Even though he'd rubber stamped applications for involuntary hospitalization for years, he'd never heard this statistic before. He was decidedly uncomfortable to be shaken from a belief, that mental illness lapses in remission were simply due to people not taking their medications. Such are the norms of a self soothing consensus reality? So as I look into the mirror again trying to feel the source of my own self soothing rationalizations here, can I feel the primary stimulus of an essential need to feel secure? After all my self education can I really sense the reality of that deep internal need and its affection for the hierarchy of a social order? A need for a sense of mental certainty as a projection of my deeply unconscious need to feel physically safe in this very moment? I take Gene Gendlin's advice and go to the murky edge, that place where mind does not know and nothing is clear, the felt sense? I surrender to sensation awareness, Peter Levine's sensate feelings of embodiment. I feel the reality of Eckhart Tolle's, "power of now," feel myself anew in this very moment, this unthinkable, unspeakable moment to which I surrender. I let go of all my habitual muscular tensions, let go of an unconscious "neuroception." I'm safe now, I can feel it!
"In most individuals (ie, those without a psychiatric disorder or neuropathology), the nervous system evaluates risk and matches neurophysiological state with the actual risk of the environment. When the environment is appraised as being safe, the defensive limbic structures are inhibited, enabling social engagement and calm visceral states to emerge. In contrast, some individuals experience a mismatch and the nervous system appraises the environment as being dangerous even when it is safe. This mismatch results in physiological states that support fight, flight, or freeze behaviors, but not social engagement behaviors. According to the theory, social communication can be expressed efficiently through the social engagement system only when these defensive circuits are inhibited." The polyvagal theory: New insights into adaptive reactions of the autonomic nervous system. STEPHEN W. PORGES, PhD.
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In 1981 during the Easter holiday period another event occurred which came to infuse future manic periods with referential ideas and a sense of spiritual wonder. While searching for a bunch of keys dropped down an elevator shaft by one of two young men, I should have lost my life when impaled through the left leg by a protruding piece of inch by inch, angled metal. The elevator should have carried on its down journey and ripped my leg off, yet somehow it stopped pinning me upside down for well over an hour. Presumably I did something to cause the elevator to stop and presumably I was just very lucky it did not move again before the electric power was switched off about an hour later. It certainly surprised official's when the machine simply resumed its downward journey when switched back on some two days later. "Somebody up there must really like you!" My supervisor said when visiting me in hospital.
My wife and I had just negotiated the purchase of our second home where we were going to start a family, so my relief at such a lucky escape had quite an emotional impact. 1982 saw the birth of the first of our four sons, born two years apart and the beginning of a decade of quite resignation to my lot and the experience of mental illness. A second diagnosis came during this time though, along with a huge sense of relief at what we felt was a perfect fit. Perfectly describing my symptomatic behaviors and the typical cyclic energies of a bipolar disorder condition. The psychiatrist's description of a manic depressive certainly seemed to fit me to a tee, and so it was with relish that I started taking my first doses of Lithium in those amazing horse size tablets, "you can break them in two though," the psychiatrist said.
Unfortunately Lithium gave me bigger side effect issues than any other medication I took over a twenty year period. Chronic constipation became a real problem for me as I struggled with its compounded fatigue everyday, and fatigue does not mix well with a dangerous occupation. It was a non average side effect too, as most people experience the opposite bowl problems with Lithium, a knowledge that caused me great frustration and the resentment of, why me? Brought up in a strict disciplinarian household I was always the compliant child and had become an equally compliant adult. Hence my deep frustration and at times deeply felt anguish when an eagerness to embrace my bipolar diagnosis was continually thwarted by side effect intolerance.
I survived that decade by a process of withdrawal, limiting my emotional life by holding myself within the kind of timid shyness that had best suited survival as a child. Holding myself tight in a braced muscular posture of vigilant alert, in an unconscious reaction to my circumstances. Work and the refuge of music were my life during this time, and of coarse the births and childhood's of my own children. I basically worked seven days a week for a decade, notwithstanding another two week hospitalization not long after my bipolar diagnosis. I did my best to come to terms with the medical model of disease, of a lifetime illness that would only be managed with a continuing medication compliance.
Perhaps it is the underlying reality of chaos, chance and circumstance that gives effect to the individual differences in our lives? My intolerance of medications forced me down a different path than the one illuminated by the normal medical model of disease in mental illness? My road to recovery certainly was not made by any conscious, reasoned choice during the first two decades of my madness experience. I had a young family to help support and the stability of normal moods and energies was my most earnest desire during that period, yet I found only bitter disappointment in ongoing medication failures. Further more, nobody seemed to really care how I felt inside, only how I behaved and how they were affected by me. Simplistic advice to pull myself together seemed only to reflect their needs, not the deeper reality of mine. It seems a sad fact of life for people suffering with a depressive urge, that on the surface it looks like and is unconsciously judged as a weakness of character.
Work gave me focus and my family a reason to drag myself around each day even though suicidal ideation was a constant companion. I remember the hundreds of times I've stood on the roof of tall city buildings with that image of the jump always inhabiting the back of my mind, and of coarse in the industry I worked it would have been simple enough to meet with a fatal accident. Of coarse nobody really wants to discuss such thoughts in our everyday normality, the internal energies of a suicidal death wish. "Don't talk about that stuff, its too morbid, too close to the bone, I don't want to hear about it, just get on with your life, will you!" In the 1980's I was still decades away from exploring the reality of my suicidal death wish and understanding its deepest motivation. In the 1980's I still didn't know my bipolar condition was an affective disorder, I mean, "what the hell is an affect?" Back in those days I struggled through a workaday life with the same mechanistic awareness that everyone else does, the same parts like perception that heard the word dopamine and naturally assumed it was just some malfunctioning part of my brain.
I do remember reading some philosopher's lines about a clockwork universe paradigm though, how we are still immersed in mechanistic assumptions of a simple cause and effect perception. I remember too the continuing bewilderment and helpless confusion inherent in the lack of relief from my inner tensions, provided by a plethora of psychotropic medications. I remember the feelings of loss, of helplessness and despair compounded by a normal worlds fearful reluctance to discuss the deeper realities of our internal motivations. Here in this present moment I face myself again, trying to feel the actuality of my experience and not simply pass over it, with that "I know, I know," part I call my mind?
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Time changes everything though and chaos, chance and circumstance find stability in the long run? Such indescribable influences urged me on with an underlying motivation that has navigated me here somehow. Not with any reasonable logic or with any simple cause and effect sense of objectivity, but something deeper still. Something I struggle to articulate using the normal words/metaphors of our evolved language. Something deeper and wider than my everyday needs of immediate perception with its rationalized thoughts of an obvious and black or white reason? An underlying systemic reality of our true nature perhaps, and not a simple one thing causes another thing, mechanical logic?
The Great Nature vs Nurture Debate?
As it was, I struggled through the decade of the 1980's keeping myself relatively stable by withholding so much of my positive energies for life, by holding onto that habitual muscular constriction of cowering defeat, which had kept me safe during a fear motivated childhood. My father had a volcanic rage inside him you see, often lashing out at an easy target to relieve his own pent up frustrations. Like his son, he suffered from a bitter unspeakable dissonance within the reality of his lived experience. Far to often forced to deny his innate capacities, his God given abilities, he played the inequitable game of social rank and status.
In a generational learning of emotional expression he simply passed his own experience on to me as his father had to him. Three generations of Grandfather, father and son acted out a learned emotional expression, not with any conscious reason or logic, but in unconscious stress reactions. Each generation denying accusations of blind rage by seeking the double bind forgiveness of unconscionable actions. I was still to ignorant to have any conscious awareness of this when I began to raise my own son's with the same knee jerk reactions to their boyish exuberance. I simply reacted just like my father had in matters of childhood discipline. Undoubtedly I took out my own frustrations with my life, by discharging pent up emotions through the mechanism of projection, finding easy and accepting targets in my children, just as many a proceeding generation had done. Its just the way our unconscious emotional learning works, at a deeper level of instinctual reactions?
I remember when my third son was about three years old and I dismissed his clamor for attention when returning home from work one day. He reacted in turn with anger at my instant and unthinking disavowal of his needs, and for the first time I actually caught myself reacting without reason, simply acting out my own internal frustrations. Perhaps our ongoing evolution involves a process of uncovering these often blind emotional reactions with each family generation. Perhaps the great gift of our current level of mass education is a rising bar of family dialogue, of dinner table discussion.
Multigenerational Transmission Process:
The concept of the multigenerational transmission process describes how small differences in the levels of differentiation between parents and their offspring lead over many generations to marked differences in differentiation among the members of a multigenerational family. The information creating these differences is transmitted across generations through relationships. The transmission occurs on several interconnected levels ranging from the conscious teaching and learning of information to the automatic and unconscious programming of emotional reactions and behaviors.
Relationally and genetically transmitted information interact to shape an individual's "self."
The combination of parents actively shaping the development of their offspring, offspring innately responding to their parents' moods, attitudes, and actions, and the long dependency period of human offspring results in people developing levels of differentiation of self similar to their parents' levels. However, the relationship patterns of nuclear family emotional systems often result in at least one member of a sibling group developing a little more "self" and another member developing a little less "self" than the parents." The Bowen Center.org
I can only wish the bar had been a bit higher at our dinner table during generations of childhood. My Dad was a simple and honest man though and despite his unpredictable, rage-full urge to frighten the life out of me, it is with warmth that I recall his reply when I asked why he so often reacted with such bad temper, "it makes me feel better," he replied. I only wish we could have shared such an honest and open discussion about the true nature of our relationship, talked beyond our unspoken agreement not to mention such emotionally upsetting issues. Perhaps the same unspoken agreement which pervades and sometimes poisons a normal social world?
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There's always a flip side to circumstance though, depending on which way we look at life? I ended up using my bipolar socially phobic condition to read away the hours of relative isolation during that first decade of my mental illness experience. I recall wondering through many a book shop looking for some fruit that might feed my philosophical desires, my deep need to understand myself. Carl Jung was one such feed and the equally giant intellect of Joseph Campbell another, I remember reading every volume of Jung's work I could get my hands on. Jung's contribution to the common lexicon of popular language is now legend of coarse, although it took me another decade and half to feel the roots to his meaning, in the notion of a complex.
Campbell became a personal hero with his life story of reading his way through the great depression, an example I've tried to follow. He'd spent the years of what so many considered a complete disaster, reading book after book on American Indian spiritual history, along with anything he get his hands on from around the world. He came out this great period of economic depression and personal tragedy for so many, as one of worlds leading experts on mythology and religion.
In the 80's I waded through his four volume work on the origins of the worlds religions, in his landmark, "The Masks of God." How many of us have been beguiled by his influence on modern film makers through his legendry knowledge of metaphor myth's, legend's and our universal mythology of the human soul. His "Hero with a Thousand Faces," inspired George Lucas and the epic movie franchise "Star Wars," and how many of this generation have not felt those universal metaphors work their subliminal magic while watching the movie "Avatar." The hero's journey is now well recognized among script writers as a guaranteed hit with all movie goers, as the well known hero's and villain's act out the unconscious human archetypes on the big screen.
I started this chapter with a heading about unconscious reactions beneath our so-called reason, my intention is to question the nature of my fall into depression after my first experience of psychosis. Through examples of great writer's and excerpts from recent science journals I have attempted to suggest that our common assumptions of a disease like mental illness, are misguided. I've suggested that the average psychiatrist's reaction to a crisis of mental anguish and abnormal behavior, is as much motivated by unconscious reaction, as it is any insightful analysis of a patient's experience. In chapter eight I pointed out my difficulty in describing my inner experience using my learned and taken for granted vocabulary, with its object like labels and metaphors of an observable external world.
I suggest that my first psychiatrist had similar difficulty and used his learned concepts of mental illness when making his lightning quick judgment of my experience. In his challenge to respond to a crisis situation he relied on his education to inform his actions, which I suggest was a reasoned reaction, rather than any insightful judgment within those challenging moments. I further suggest that the average psychiatrist is about as self-aware as any average person is, and owns no special powers of insightful judgement to justify a high social rank and status. Indeed we should always question our motives for choosing our profession, as some point out. "Some people become doctors out of concern and empathy for others, while some sign up for the power and social prestige, not to mention the money." There seems to be a false assumption in society that higher education somehow equips the individual with a higher state of self-awareness? An assumption about the real-life value of education which seems to have distorted the consensus view from the 1980's on-wards. A period when traditional values for the wisdom of experience, increasingly gave way to the power of the university degree, and more and more concepts about life, than our traditional folk-lore wisdom. And where are we now?
There is mounting evidence that our taken for granted subjective perceptions are founded on denied instinctual reactions. It is also becoming increasingly obvious to many therapists who work outside the mainstream of psychiatric care, that the nervous system and the body cannot be so myopically dismissed when treating mental illness. Mainstream psychiatry's focus on the brain and its chemical activity alone are now standing in denial of the latest systems theories and their application to the understanding of human development, and our behavioral motivation.
Unfortunately our everyday common assumptions seek a simple mental certainty via short self-soothing explanations, with short plausible statements that are easily digested. As I pointed out above, our self soothing reactions will latch onto any plausible explanation in an unconscious urge of self-deception? It seems we are more interested in maintaining our established comfort-zone (homeostasis) than confronting the deeper truths to our inner reality? "Don't talk about emotional stuff, you might upset somebody," and so we enact the daily rituals of a socialized denial, in a group need to maintain an established homeostasis of consensus reality? Consider;
Living organisms are self-replicating and self-sustaining dynamic chemical systems. They obtain energy from, and information about, their environment – including its chemical, physical, geological, and biological components. A feature that distinguishes living from non-living matter was identified by Claude Bernard. This is homeostasis – the maintenance of a constant internal environment despite changes in the external environment. A second feature of all known life, first proposed explicitly by Schleiden and Schwann, is that living things are composed of spatial compartments, called cells. Cellular homeostasis requires a system of integrated feedback and feedforward, producing adaptive responses to, and anticipation of, ultimately uncontrollable changes in the properties of the outside world. As life evolves, it extends its reach by maintaining its constant internal environment in new external environments, previously inhospitable." Redox Homeostasis in the Emergence of Life. On the Constant Internal Environment of Nascent Living Cells, _John F. Allen, Ph.D
Is it this unconscious need for the maintenance of an established homeostasis which distorts the consensus reality, and allows a denial of instinctual judgment, in our mind reading diagnosis of other human beings? The false premise of "I think therefore I am," which continues the use of denial as the main emotional tool, in the progress of human civilization? Our long history of suppressing innate affect/emotion from early childhood on? Consider Silvan Tomkins huge and largely ignored contribution to our awareness of "affect," and the ever shifting sands of our affective states of being?
Because the free expression of innate affect is extremely contagious and because these are very powerful phenomena, all societies, in varying degrees, exercise substantial control over the free expression of the cry of affect. No societies encourage or permit each individual to cry out i.e, rage or excitement, or distress or terror wherever and whenever they wish. Very early on, strict control over affect expression is instituted and such control is exerted particularly over the voice, whether used in speech or in direct affect expression.
If all societies suppress the free vocalization of affect, what is it that is being experienced as affect? It is what I have called backed-up affect, it can be seen in children trying to suppress laughter by swallowing a snicker, or by a stiff upper lip when trying not to cry (anti affects?) or by tightening the jaw to suppress anger. In all these cases, one is holding one's breathe as part of the technique of suppressing the vocalization of affect.
We do not know what are the biological and psychological prices of such suppression of the innate affective response. It seems at the very least that substantial psychosomatic disease might be one of the prices of such systemic suppression and transformation of the innate affective responses. Further there could be a permanent elevation of blood pressure as a consequence of suppressed rage, which would have a much longer duration than an innate momentary flash of expressed anger."
Exploring Affect: The Selected Writings of Silvan S Tomkins: Studies in Emotion and Social Interaction
In our reasoned reactions, are we guilty of maintaining and amplifying the mind's foundation, as a fundamental dissociation from nature? As many now point out, there would no conscious awareness at all, without some degree of dissociation, without this mechanism we'd still be stuck in pure reflex reactions, just like the rest of the animal kingdom. In the example of Sophie's Choice I asked what could possibly allow a fascist intellect to so loose the felt connection to his heart and soul, and force such a monstrous choice upon any woman? Dissociation? The Devil's own device, perhaps? The darker shadow of our instinctual nature, made unnecessarily mysterious by civil societies need of denial in a consensus reality based on our mismatched vocabulary, of an object-awareness of the external world? An objects "out-there," awareness which has distorted the reality of our nature, in this long march to mature self-awareness?
Consider psychiatry's use of the ice pick lobotomy so routinely used not so very long ago, and ask yourself if ECT treatments or the chemical cosh of psychotropic medication is a huge leap forward? What happens when the bright intellectual spends so much time in their head, that they unknowingly loose connection with the heart and soul, and will not face the body as an equal place, how do they learn to touch for real down, down where the iguanas feel?
Styron, W, 1990, "Darkness Visible a memoir of Madness," Vintage Books, USA.
Styron, W, 1979, "Sophie's Choice," Corgi Books, USA.
Attachment Trauma and the Developing Right Brain: Origins of Pathological Dissociation. Allan N. Schore.
Tolle, E, 1999, "The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment," New World Library, USA.
Porges, S, W, 2004, "NEUROCEPTION: A Subconscious System for Detecting Threats and Safety," University of Illinois at Chicago.
Hartman, D and Zimberoff, D, 2006, "Healing the Body-Mind in Heart-Centered Therapies," Journal of Heart-Centered Therapies, 2006, Vol. 9
Chapter Twelve:>>


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Massey University researchers have made the first observations of the internal structure of volcanic flows, which are responsible for fifty per cent of volcanic fatalities and endanger half a billion people worldwide.
Co-authored by Dr Eric Breard and Dr Gert Lube from Massey's Institute of Agriculture and Environment, the paper Coupling of turbulent and non-turbulent flow regimes within pyroclastic density currents has been published in Nature Geoscience.
Pyroclastic density currents (also called pyroclastic flows) are formed during volcanic eruptions and send avalanches of fast-moving clouds of hot ash, rock and gas down the flanks of volcanoes. For years, the inner workings of these flows have been a hotbed of debate between earth scientists, geophysicists, and applied mathematicians, each offering their own explanations of what may be occurring inside.
The infamous city of Pompeii is just one example in a long line of life-claiming incidents involving these flows and Dr Lube describes them as, "amongst the most destructive phenomena on Earth.
"Pyroclastic flows are the most common and lethal volcanic threat, and by analysing the internal structure we are laying the foundations to understand how they will behave in an eruption," says Dr Lube.
The research sought to create a quantitative view inside the flows to define how the two separate transport regimes (non-turbulent underflow and fully turbulent ash cloud-regions) were able to harmonise and control the severity of the flow itself. However, measuring the inside of an avalanche of several tonnes of rock, gas and ash has proven impossible because of the heat and destructive force of the flows.
"We decided that if they could not see inside one of these flows, then maybe we could replicate one," says Dr Lube.
This involved using Massey's one-of-a-kind eruption simulator to synthesise the natural behaviour of the flows in unique large-scale experiments. The simulator works by dropping ash and pumice down a narrow channel while high-speed cameras and sensors capture the data.
The results indicated that the currents met in a previously unrecognised turbulent middle zone, meaning there were not two currents but three.
"Inside this middle zone, the gas-particle mixture behaved fundamentally different from the turbulent suspension cloud above and the particle-rich avalanche of pumice below. Instead, the volcanic particle spontaneously associated in a pattern of dendritic particle clusters called mesoscale clusters.
"Intriguingly, these mesoscale turbulence clusters control how the internal structure and the damage potential of pyroclastic flows evolves during volcanic event," says Dr Lube.
"This opens a new path towards reliable predictions of their motion, and will be particularly topical for hazard scientists and decision makers, because they will lead to major revisions of volcanic hazard forecasts and ultimately more effective measures for keeping people safe," says Dr Lube.
"This research replaces the existing theories and long-standing paradigms that have underpinned how we understand and ultimately protect people against the flows."The research represents a cross-campus and international collaboration effort that is funded through the Royal Society Marsden Fund and the Natural Hazards Research Platform. Massey University Professor Jim Jones and Dr Anja Moebis are contributing co-authors of the paper. Massey researchers also received support from scientists from the University of Auckland, Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta and the State University of New York.
Click here for full article.
Created: 06/09/2016 | Last updated: 06/09/2016
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subset: commoncrawl


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Apparently Toyota's new rear wheel drive platform underpinning the Toyota FT-86 will spawn a small sports sedan that will be somewhere in between the BMW 1-Series and the 3-Series in size.
And from what Autocar UK is inferring according to Japanese market sources, it seems this sedan has more likelihood of making it to production compared to the FT-86 Coupe. Seems that the FT-86 has been pushed back to 2013 due to economic reasons.
We may end up never seeing the FT-86 in production despite it looking so very production ready. But we may end up seeing a platform stablemate with four doors instead. Look after the jump if you want to enjoy a photo gallery of the good-looking FT-86 again.
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[zenphotopress number=99 album=545]
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text:
Blackheads develop when hair follicles are accumulated with sebum (oil produced by the sebaceous gland), dead skin cells, and dirt, resulting in clogging of skin pores.
Blackheads appear black not because of dirt collected. Rather, the black color is due to the oxidation of skin oil by atmospheric oxygen. The oxidized oil ends up at the skin pore by the end of this process and carries a black tinge to them.
Thus, people of oily skin type are more prone to blackheads as their sebaceous glands usually produce excess oil which will collect more dirt and then clog the pores. The accumulated oil is oxidized, making the tips of the skin appear black.
People of other skin types can suffer from blackheads as well, mostly on the nose as it tends to produce more oil.We here at 101 Skin Care Tips have compiled a list of some of the best remedies that will help you to naturally remove blackheads from your nose and face.
- Almond and Yogurt
Yogurt minimizes large skin pores and inhibits various acne bacteria while almond is a mild natural exfoliant that helps get rid of bacteria, dead skin cells and excess sebum that block the pores.
To prepare this recipe, grind 4–5 almonds into slightly rough powder, then mix it with 1 tablespoon of fat-free yogurt.
Gently massage the resulting paste on your nose with clean fingertips for 2–3 minutes.
Allow the paste to sit on your nose for about 15 minutes before washing off with tepid water.
Splash with cold water to promote closure of skin pores, then pat your skin dry. Finally, moisturize your skin with a good oil-free moisturizer or olive oil.
2. Almond and Rose Water
Add 1 teaspoon of almond powder to an adequate amount of rosewater.
Rub the resulting mixture on your nose and allow it to air dry.
Next, rinse it off with tepid water, then splash your skin with cold fresh water to close pores.
3. Steaming
Steaming is a simple yet efficient way to get rid of blackheads of nose since it opens up skin pore, thus facilitates the removal of any impurity.
After steaming your skin, rub the blackhead area with a clean towel for 1–2 minutes, then splash it with cold fresh water to close the opened pores.
4. Sandalwood Powder, Turmeric, and Milk
Thoroughly mix ½ teaspoon of turmeric and ½ teaspoon of red sandalwood with a sufficient amount of milk until you get a thick paste.
Slightly massage the paste on blackhead area for about 2–3 minutes and allow the paste to dry completely. Finally, rinse off with tepid water then splash with cold water.
5. Salt, Lemon, Honey, and Yogurt
To make this recipe, mix 1 teaspoon each of the following ingredients i.e. table salt, lemon juice, and yogurt with ½ teaspoon of honey until you obtain a consistent paste.
Slightly massage the paste on blackhead area of your nose for 3–5 minutes, then let the paste sit for about 2 minutes. Next, rinse off with tepid water to wash away oxidized sebum, dirt, and dead skin cells then splash with cold fresh water to close skin pores.
Finally, pat your skin dry and apply a good oil-free moisturizer to combat any dryness. To quickly achieve the desired result, repeat these procedures at least twice a week. This natural ingredient can effectively eliminate blackheads on nose.
6. Green Tea
Simply add a teaspoon of powder of dried green tea leaves to fresh water to form a consistent paste.
Gently rub the paste on blackhead area of your nose for 3–4 minutes.
The green tea acts to cleanse your oily skin from the inside out and clean any clogged pores.
Finally, wash off with tepid water then splash your skin with cold fresh water to close the pores. This is among the most well-known ingredients for removing pollutants, dirt, and debris from clogged skin pores thus is beneficial to treat blackheads.
7. Baking Soda and Water
Dissolve 1 tablespoon of baking soda into an adequate amount of fresh water and slightly massage the resulting solution to the affected area of your nose.
Let it dry naturally for 10–15 minutes then wash out with tepid water.
For an astounding result, repeat these steps once to twice a week.
8. Rice and Milk Scrub
First, soak 1 tablespoon of rice grains in a sufficient amount of milk for 4 hours, then thoroughly grind them to obtain a thick paste.
Gently massage the paste on blackhead area of your nose in a circular motion and avoid vigorous rubbing.
Finally, rinse off with tepid water and splash your skin with cold fresh water to close pores.
9. Cinnamon, Lemon, and Turmeric
First, mix 1 teaspoon of cinnamon powder with 1 teaspoon of lemon juice, then sprinkle a pinch of turmeric powder into the mixture. Massage the mixture on your nose, let it rest for 10–15 minutes before washing it off.
Repeat these steps daily until you achieve astounding results.
10. Clay and Apple Cider Vinegar
Mix 1 teaspoon of bentonite clay into an adequate amount of apple cider vinegar until you get a consistent, thick paste.
Gently rub the paste on your nose with your clean fingertips. Allow it to air dry completely for 15–20 minutes then wash out with tepid water. Finally, splash your skin with cold fresh water, pat it dry, and apply a good oil-free moisturizer to combat any dryness.


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This July 13-14, Oxford University Press and Investment Claims convened the First Annual Oxford Investment Claims Summer Academy at St. Anne's College, the University of Oxford. Co-chaired by Diane Desierto, Ian Laird, and Frederic Sourgens, the Academy brought together a select expert group of academic and practitioner delegates to discuss the legitimacy of investor-state arbitration in the context of continuous and often virulent political criticism. The method and structure of the Academy departed from a traditional presentation format. Instead, the Academy as the first gathering of experts of its kind acted as a laboratory for open and rapid discussion of frontier issues among all participants. As a result of this format, the Academy constructively explored both traditional text-based and context-sensitive solutions for these frontier issues. ICJ Judge James Crawford's keynote address to the delegates aptly captured the spirit of the open and critical discussion when noting that while there is little in the way of feasible alternative to investor-state arbitration and much to lose by its abolition. Bench, bar, and ivory tower must find it in them to become better stewards of this mode of international dispute resolution. In particular, there is an urgent need to address weaknesses made visible by the first two decades of sustained arbitral and annulment jurisprudence. With the depth of engagement at the inaugural session, the co-chairs are planning to hold the Academy again in the summer of 2016.
The Academy was divided over two days into five panels and three research discussions. The panels addressed the nature of consent to investor-state arbitration, concerns relating to the impartiality of investor-state tribunals, the nature of applicable law in investor-state arbitration, and the handling of evidence by investor-state tribunals. The research discussions engaged the appropriate use of human rights and public policy in international economic law and the practice of treaty interpretation evolving in investor-state arbitration. The Academy closed with a summary panel addressing whether, as US Senator Elizabeth Warren charged, investor-state tribunals are in fact "rigged pseudo-courts".
The first panel addressed the nature of consent to investor-state arbitration and the consequent timing and nature of vesting of investor rights. The panel thus asked whether states consenting to investor-state arbitration remained at liberty to alter their bargains pursuant to traditional rules of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties or whether reasonable investor reliance could frustrate such attempts. It discussed various alternative conceptions of consent and vesting from delegated authority theories to third party beneficiary accounts to a unilateral act approach. The discussion addressed the repercussions of these theories for proposals currently discussed in the European Union to use traditional treaty rules to modify and terminate certain investment treaties as one practical application of the panel discussion. Borzu Sabahi moderated the session with discussion leaders Andrea Bjorklund, and Frederic Sourgens.
The Academy next considered the chapters immediately relevant to investment treaties from Diane Desierto's Public Policy in International Economic Law, The ICSCR in Trade, Finance, and Investment (OUP: 2015). The session amply elucidated the role of, and considered account for, human rights obligations in framing public policy questions in the application of investment treaties. It importantly pointed to the need of expanding the cognitive horizon of both academics and practitioners beyond seeing investment treaties, and their relationship to human rights conventions, as purely dispute-driven instruments and instead utilize them in informing procurement and investment-design decisions. Freya Baetens provided her review of the book, and led the Academy participants and the author in discussion.
The second panel addressed the perception of bias in investor-state arbitration. It asked whether accusations of systemic bias of the arbitral bench were well-founded and what if any corrective measures would be feasible. The discussion concluded that while there were certain systemic issues arising from multiple repeat appointments of arbitrators, these issues evidenced path dependence of counsel and parties in international arbitration rather than bias of international arbitrators. The panel further mulled that any institutionalization of investor-state dispute resolution in a court or appellate mechanism would exacerbate rather than alleviate current problems and do little to increase the diversity, in origin and outlook, of the investor-state bench. Ian Laird moderated this session, joined by discussion leaders Martins Paparinskis and Meriam Al Rashid.
The third panel addressed the question whether the law applicable to investor-state disputes functionally should be considered as a form of international public law. During the panel, delegates discussed particularly the implications of applying the rules of state responsibility and the law of treaties to disputes involving non-state actors as parties. The panel also discussed ongoing efforts at codifying a lex mercatoria publica and the likely impact upon investor-state arbitration. Diane Desierto moderated the panel with discussion leaders Todd Weiler and José Antonio Rivas.
The fourth panel focused on the treatment of evidence by investor-state tribunals. It addressed the extent to which there were limitations on the free use of evidence by international tribunals. It focused particularly upon the evidentiary issues in the context of corruption allegations, discussing relevant means, standards and burdens of proof. The panel further addressed the potential of legitimacy issues arising out of poorly reasoned awards particularly in the context of allegations of corruption. Frederic Sourgens moderated the panel led by discussion leaders Kaj Hobér and Teddy Baldwin.
The Academy next welcomed Richard Gardiner, who discussed the second edition of the highly influential Treaty Interpretation (OUP: 2015). Ian Laird and Richard Gardiner provided a detailed appraisal of the strengths and weaknesses of investor-state tribunals in applying classic principles of treaty interpretation in the investor-state context. Part of this session will shortly be available for view on www.investmentclaims.com.
The Academy closed with an appraisal of whether US Senator Elizabeth Warren's accusation that BIT tribunals were little more than "rigged pseudo-courts" had merit, in light of the Academy proceedings focusing on critical jurisdictional, procedural and merits issues. It explored the political context of increased radicalization on both sides of the Atlantic as one cause of the criticism. It pointed out that much of the criticism had an idealized view of domestic governance structures in transitional economies – and even too rosy a view of governance structures in many advanced economies. The panel noted that the acerbic criticism levelled at investor-state arbitration was not in the least anomalous when compared to other international dispute resolution bodies. The Academy thus concluded that views regarding international dispute resolution, as such, had taken a decidedly negative turn since its heyday in the immediately post Cold-War era. But with the increased need for international dispute resolution in the investor-state realm and beyond, these currently popular parochial views seemed to many of the delegates worthwhile contesting. Andrea Bjorklund moderated this session, with discussion leaders Michael Nolan and Diane Desierto.
The Academy expert delegates were H.E. Judge James Crawford (International Court of Justice) (keynote); Diane Desierto (Hawai'i) (co-chair); Ian Laird (Crowell & Moring LLP) (co-chair); Frederic Sourgens (Washburn) (co-chair); Dapo Akande (Oxford); Meriam Al-Rashid (Pinsent Masons); Freya Baetens (Leiden); Teddy Baldwin (Baker & McKenzie); Eirik Bjorge (Oxford), Andrea Bjorklund (McGill); María Angélica Burgos (Gómez-Pinzón Zuleta); Kabir Duggal (Baker & McKenzie); Filippo Fontanelli (Edinburgh); Richard Gardiner (University College London); Kaj Hobér (Uppsala); Michael Nolan (Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP); Martins Paparinskis (University College London); José Antonio Rivas (Arnold & Porter); Borzu Sabahi (Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle LLP); and Todd Weiler (independent counsel and arbitrator).


text:
The Microsoft Office Enterprise Project Management (EPM) Solution is ideal for organizations that need strong coordination and standardization between projects and project managers, centralized resource management, or higher-level reporting about projects and resources.
In a competitive business climate, your organisation's ability to efficiently align resources and business activities with strategic objectives can mean the difference between succeeding and just surviving. To achieve strategic alignment, organisations are increasingly managing their activities and processes as projects - in essence, projectizing their business - to monitor performance more closely and make better business decisions about their overall work portfolio. By planning and tracking projects with clarity and precision, organizations can respond with greater agility to the demands of a fast-changing business environment.
Making your strategic goals a reality requires technology that is robust enough to support your core business and yet flexible enough to accommodate your existing processes. The Microsoft Office Enterprise Project Management (EPM) Solution provides this infrastructure, so your organization can gain visibility, insight, and control its portfolio of projects, as well as improve productivity, reduce cycle times, decrease costs, and increase quality.
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Strengthen Collaboration Across the Enterprise for Improved Productivity
Effective communication is essential to achieve project success. With clear communication processes, team members can share knowledge, work together smoothly to complete tasks and deliverables, and respond quickly to change.
Project teams, however, are becoming more dispersed - both organisationally and geographically - threatening productivity and elevating the need for technology that can meaningfully connect team members to maintain coordination and quality.
The Microsoft Office EPM Solution provides an infrastructure that strengthens collaboration and accountability among all levels of the organisation.
- Empower managers and project teams to make timely, informed decisions by giving them Web-based access to real-time business-critical project data.
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Click here to download a brochure on Enterprise Project Management.


text:
released 17 march 2010
1. Lhasa
2. Cold Flowers
3. Hide-and-Seek
4. Double and Down
5. Song for Lisa
6. Mirage
7. Inward
8. Meditation
9. Point of no return
Stefano Roncarolo, a young and virtuoso Italian bass player, and Sandro Marinoni, flautist and trombonist. We recorded a very interesting project titled Mirage.
Info and contact:
Download options:
download complete album
download cover art
audio stream
WM104 @ Last.fm
WM104 @ LegalTorrents
WM104 @ Free Music Archive
Mirage by Stefano Roncarolo & Sandro Marinoni is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Netherlands License.


text: Home > Advocacy > Comments Comments to CMS Supporting Inclusion of HSCT for Sickle Cell Disease in the National Coverage Determination Page ContentMay 29, 2015Dear Dockets Manager:The AABB Center for Cellular Therapies strongly supports including hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) for sickle cell disease (SCD) in National Coverage Determination (NCD) 110.8.1. Coverage in the NCD is crucial to ensure access to curative therapy for patients with sickle cell disease, and we appreciate that CMS has opened the National Coverage Analysis to allow stakeholders to provide valuable feedback on this important topic. Allogeneic HSCT is currently the only curative therapy available for patients with Sickle Cell Disease. Unfortunately, the lack of CMS coverage prevents patients from receiving the treatment they need. This is especially problematic because a high percentage of patients with SCD participate in governmental payer health care coverage plans. This barrier to receiving potentially curative therapy has been cited as one of the factors responsible for the significant underutilization of this therapeutic modality in management of patients with severe sickle cell disease. AABB requests that CMS expand the National Coverage Determination to include HSCT in patients with SCD. AABB is an international, not-for-profit association representing individuals and institutions involved in the field of transfusion medicine and cellular therapies including hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. The association is committed to improving health by developing and delivering standards, accreditation and educational programs that focus on optimizing patient and donor care and safety. AABB membership consists of nearly 2,000 institutions and 8,000 individuals, including physicians, nurses, scientists, researchers, administrators, medical technologists and other health care providers. AABB members are located in more than 80 countries.The AABB Center for Cellular Therapies appreciates the opportunity to comment on the National Coverage Determination. If you have additional questions please contact me at email@example.com. Sincerely,Naynesh Kamani, MDVice President, Center for Cellular Therapies & Research


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OROVILLE — A wildfire safety fair is planned 10 a.m.-1 p.m. Thursday at Home Depot, 2150 Third St. in Oroville.
The fair is on building construction for fire prevention, and is put on Home Depot in partnership with the Butte County Fire Safe Council.
A number of building product manufacturers will be present, along with the Fire Safe Council, the California Conservation Corps and the North Valley Animal Disaster Group.
Topics include defensible space, evacuation preparedness plans, forest health, tips for protecting your home from wildfire, and building materials.


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I am not a morning person. Like, not in any sense of the word.
But thanks to daylight saving time, my butt is out of bed well before the break of sunrise this winter.
It's been a few weeks now, and I can't really admit that I've gotten "used to it," as my more athletic runner and biker friends say. They do it almost every day. But I do drag myself from bed at 5 a.m. now because if I don't, then I don't have any opportunity to ride during the week with real, natural sunlight at my back.
The shorter days during winter in Florida means it's usually dark before I clock out and leave the cubicle for the day. We do have lights on one arena at the farm, but for whatever reason, I much rather ride under the sun.
I really love the morning moments I have with Belinda when I first arrive at the farm. She's usually awake, but happy to rubbed and loved on in her dark stall. I just like that's she's soft, fuzzy and warm.
I like to be completely tacked up just as the stars are beginning to fade away, and the purple night sky is starting to catch fire at the edges. I'm in the saddle before there's enough light for the trees to cast shadows on the ground.
Belinda, my Hanoverian mare, is slow to get going on these early morning rides. But after a long warm up, we tend to have great, easy hacks. I think she enjoys getting her work out out of the way at the beginning of the day, too.
I've noticed that when I ride early in the mornings now, I feel great all day. I'm bright and energetic by the time I walk into the office. I'm more productive and focused. I go to bed dreaming of the next morning ride, and how pretty the arena looks at the start of a new day's glow.
That is, until the alarm goes off at 5 a.m. the next day.


text:
I'm a sucker for simple & plain tees over the summer. Easy and pairs well with just about every bottom piece in the closet!
Outfit Details:
Tee: Option 1 | Option 2 | Jeans: Option 1 | Option 2 via ASOS | Necklace (Shoxie) available here | Shoes (Jimmy Choo). Enjoy and have a great week. x
28 Comments
Love the shoes!!!
My look
love this look
Me too!
I like
You make it look so easy!
Lovin' this mix on you!
Love, love the jeans!
Man, I love your hair. Trying to get mine to grow like that.
A Solo Travel Lifestyle…Travel, Fashion, Beauty
Simplicity is always sexy! Love it!
If I am ever in your neighborhood I would raid your closet… you have been warned.. xoxo
Ha! Thank you, ladies 🙂 Anytime Labo Ojomo 🙂
Have you ever done a hair tutorial? Products used, natural hair tips.
Still one of my favorite look. Relaxing with jeans and high heel 🙂
The necklace and heels are a nice touch to this classic and simple outfit. You look great!
Such a classic look. Will always be vintage in my eyes. ~ Go Girl!
I love a good relaxed ripped jean
This is known as bone sense of beauty
LOVE it!
Fav look
I looove the hair.
Love It!!!!!
The look is casual but sexy. Pretty women like pretty things. http://t.co/51UnZvCqOx
Always like look on you
love it so simple I like!


text:
I posted an analysis of Jose Valverde's early-season troubles on THT Live yesterday.
Also, Dan Brooks (Jnai) has been doing some very good work with PITCHf/x over at the Sons of Sam Horn discussion board. His PITCHf/x wiki is well worth checking out.
As part of the discussion of Dan's work at the Book blog, I made a chart of pitch speed vs. spin deflection angle for a typical right-handed pitcher.


text:
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Export 23 results:[ Author] Type Year
Filters: Author is Jeurissen, Ben [Clear All Filters]
"Counting the number of fiber orientations in diffusion MRI voxels using constrained spherical deconvolution", 2nd meeting of the ISMRM Benelux Chapter, Utrecht, The Netherlands, January, 2010.
"Brain Tissue Types Resolved Using Spherical Deconvolution of Multi-Shell Diffusion MRI Data", ISMRM, 22nd Scientific Meeting and Exhibition, Milan, Italy, pp. 973, May, 2014.
"Bootstrap methods for estimating uncertainty in Constrained Spherical Deconvolution fiber orientations", ISMRM, 16th Scientific Meeting and Exhibition, Toronto, Canada, pp. 3324, May, 2008.
"Improved analysis of brain connectivity using high angular resolution diffusion MRI", Department of Physics, vol. PhD in Sciences: University of Antwerp, pp. 208, 03/2012. Download thesis book (35.42 MB)
"Assessing inter-subject variability of white matter response functions used for constrained spherical deconvolution", ISMRM 23th Annual Meeting, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, vol. 23, pp. 2834, 2015. Download abstract (780.16 KB)
"Estimating the number of fiber orientations in diffusion MRI voxels: a constrained spherical deconvolution study", ISMRM, 18th Scientific Meeting and Exhibition, Stockholm, Sweden, May, 2010.
"How to make sure you are using the correct gradient orientations in your diffusion MRI study?", ISMRM, 21st Scientific Meeting and Exhibition, Salt Lake City, USA, pp. 2047, April, 2013.
"Can residual bootstrap reliably estimate uncertainty in fiber orientation obtained by spherical deconvolution from diffusion-weighted MRI?", 14th Annual Meeting of the Organization of Human Brain Mapping, vol. 41, Melbourne, Australia, June, 2008.
"Probabilistic fiber tracking using the residual bootstrap with constrained spherical deconvolution", Human Brain Mapping, vol. 32, issue 3, pp. 461 - 479, March, 2011.
"Tissue-type segmentation using non-negative matrix factorization of multi-shell diffusion-weighted MRI images", ISMRM 23th Annual Meeting, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, vol. 23, pp. 349, 2015. Download abstract (1.11 MB)
"Fiber Tracking on the 'Fiber Cup Phantom' using Constrained Spherical Deconvolution", MICCAI workshop on Diffusion Modelling and the Fiber Cup (DMFC'09), London, United Kingdom, 2009.
"Investigating the prevalence of complex fiber configurations in white matter tissue with diffusion magnetic resonance imaging.", Human Brain Mapping, vol. 34, no. 11, pp. 2747-66, 2013.
"Fiber Tractography on a Crossing Fiber Phantom using Constrained Spherical Deconvolution MRI", Liège Image Days, Liège, Belgium, 2008.
"Registration based correction of DWI gradient orientations", ISMRM, 19th Scientific Meeting and Exhibition, Montreal, Canada, May, 2011.
"Multi-tissue constrained spherical deconvolution for improved analysis of multi-shell diffusion MRI data", NeuroImage, vol. 103, pp. 411–426, 2014.
"Probabilistic Fiber Tracking using the Residual Bootstrap with Constrained Spherical Deconvolution MRI", ISMRM, 17th Scientific Meeting and Exhibition, Honolulu, USA, April, 2009.
"Assessing the implications of complex fiber configurations for DTI metrics in real data sets", ISMRM, 20th Scientific Meeting and Exhibition, Melbourne, Australia, pp. 3584, May, 2012.
"Diffusion MRI fiber tractography of the brain", NMR in Biomedicine, 2019.
"Correction of DWI gradient orientations using registration techniques", 3rd meeting of the ISMRM Benelux Chapter, Hoeven, The Netherlands, January, 2011.
"Automated correction of improperly rotated diffusion gradient orientations in diffusion-weighted MRI", Medical Image Analysis, vol. 18, no. 7, pp. 953-962, 2014.
"Estimation of Uncertainty in Constrained Spherical Deconvolution Fiber Orientations", 5th IEEE International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging: From Nano to Macro, Paris, France, pp. 907-910, 2008.
"HARDI-based methods for fiber orientation estimation", ISMRM, 20th Scientific Meeting and Exhibition, Melbourne, Australia, pp. 3585, May, 2012.
"Processing multi-shell diffusion MRI data using MRtrix3", Front. Neuroinform. Conference Abstract: Second Belgian Neuroinformatics Congress, 2015.


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Positively Pregnant: Evaluation and Refinement of a mobile phone app
Pregnancy is a time of change—physical, social, financial, psychological. Many important parts of life are changing, all at the same time. These changes can be exciting and joyful, but also challenging and stressful.
We have been working to develop a mobile phone app called "Positively Pregnant" to help pregnant women to manage the challenges and changes of pregnancy and use this time to reflect on strengths, supports, stresses, and strategies—what works for you to thrive and cope with whatever life brings? If you participate in this research, you will receive a copy of the mobile phone app that you can try out for the rest of your pregnancy (and beyond, if you want), and we will ask you to give us feedback about the app, and about your health behaviours and levels of stress and distress over the next few months, until your baby is one month old.
The purpose of this project is to try out and evaluate Positively Pregnant, to see how helpful it is, and what suggestions people have to make it better. Positively Pregnant has four different types of modules in it; there are some (called "Know Yourself") that help you to take inventory and assess yourself, some (called "Conversations") that provide suggestions for things you and your partner or support person could talk and think about in preparation for parenting, activities (called "Do Something") that are things you can to relax and to manage stress and improve wellbeing, and some information (called "Find Out") about the social and emotional side of becoming a mother. If you're in the study, you can look through the app and use anything you think you would find helpful. You aren't required to do any particular part.
We will ask for your input in three ways.
- First, the app will collect information on what modules you use and what you enter into the app. This information will be linked to a unique ID the app creates; you won't put your name into the app.
- Second, we will ask you to fill out some questionnaires online (you can do it on your phone or a computer) before you start using the app, and at three points after that (when you are about 24 weeks pregnant, 36 weeks pregnant, and a month after the baby is born). They will ask about how you are feeling, your health behaviours, your feedback on the app, and (in the last one) you experience of birth and early parenting. Each survey takes about 10-15 minutes to complete.
- Third, after you've been using the app at least a month or so, we will invite you to a focus group to give us feedback and suggestions on the app. A focus group is a small group discussion with several other women who are also pregnant and using the app. We will take notes and use the ideas to help improve the app.
Your feedback will all be anonymous, you don't need to answer any question you prefer not to, and you can withdraw at any time.
This study has been reviewed and approved by the University of Waikato School of Psychology Research Ethics Committee. If you have any questions or concerns about your rights as a participant in this research study, you can contact the chair of that committee, Rebecca Sargisson (email@example.com).
If you have any questions, please feel free to ask! The leader of this project is Carrie Barber, phone number 07 837 9221; e-mail address firstname.lastname@example.com.
Thank you for your interest in finding out about this project!


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Government's role in industrial cluster development
Md. Joynal Abdin
The Daily Sun on February 7, 2016
Cluster development is considered as an effective tool for fostering economic growth. Industrial clusters are considered as one of the most effective mechanism for spurring income and employment growth especially by the micro, small and medium size enterprises. Industrially developed or progressing countries have separate policy for industrial cluster development. But in Bangladesh industrial cluster development concept is comparatively a newer one. Previously the government was considering Export Processing Zone (EPZ), Special Economic Zone (SEZ) as a means for promoting export and industrialisation. EPZ concept has many success stories in Bangladesh. But their scope is very limited and expensive for countrywide industrialisation. On the other hand SEZ concept is still in the conceptual stage in Bangladesh.
Michel Porter, father of the industrial cluster concept defines a cluster as a 'geographically proximate group of interconnected companies, suppliers, service providers and associated institutions in a particular field, linked by externalities of various types'. In Bangladesh, SME Foundation has defined (for the 1st time) SME cluster as 'a cluster having a concentration of 50 or above enterprises producing similar products or services and is situated within an adjoining geographical location of 5-kilometer radius and having a common set of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats'.
There are 177 naturally grown SME Clusters allover Bangladesh that developed on the basis of availability of raw materials, skilled manpower and indigenous technical knowhow of local people. These clusters have passed a long way to create demand of their products in the existing market to build supply chain networks, linking up the enterprises horizontally or vertically based of their nature of businesses. Most advantageous position of the SME Clusters over EPZ or SEZ concept is that they have existence in every avenues of business of their own. The role of government or development agencies would be to identifying their growth barriers and addressing those in a proper way. It is very easier to provide industrial infrastructures in a particular location for 50 enterprises than same number of diverse enterprises. It is comparatively easier to create expertise of a half-known person than that of a newly-known or unknown one.
SME Clusters of Bangladesh are located in 51 districts with representatives from every region. Therefore, development of SME clusters could facilitate balanced development of the country and reduce people's pressure on the cities especially Dhaka and other divisional towns. There are many promising and export potential clusters. They can be introduced with formal channels of doing international business. It is the government's turn to take and implement a comprehensive SME Cluster Development Policy and deploy a dedicated regulatory body for cluster development. Previously many development partners, NGOs and government agencies like BSCIC, SME Foundation have undertaken cluster development initiative in a piecemeal basis. They have achievements as beginners but how long we will stay in the position of a beginner with this important national issue. We should have a dedicated specialised body or at least a strong team to actively look after SME Cluster development with cordial support from the highest authority of the country.
Why cluster development is so important? Industrial cluster is important because it includes not only the concentration of output producing enterprises, but also input suppliers, output buyers, various service providers and in some cases government and non-governmental institutions. It provides a competitive but mutually beneficial environment for the enterprises to become more competitive and profitable. It reduces amount of investment of a particular entity, offers different segmental inputs and output of a product's value chain. Availability of inputs, specialised labour and various services in a cluster helps in reducing costs of doing business within clusters. Internal competition ensures specialisation of labours and improved quality of products.
Naturally grown cluster is a widely available phenomenon in every type of economy in a developing or a developed country. High-tech industry cluster of Bangalore in India, the wine cluster in Chile and the Sialkot surgical instruments cluster in Pakistan are examples of many naturally grown clusters. Cluster development policy can be upgraded through supplying local and regional services that cannot be provided by the market itself. Cluster development policy can focus on identification and analysis of naturally grown industrial clusters, collection of updated information about problems and prospects of each cluster, cluster development action plan, proper monitoring and evaluation mechanism, sustainability mechanisms and internationalisation or local network etc.
Ministry of industries should take initiatives for enacting a cluster development policy. The National Committee for Industrial Development can play role as a facilitator. The BSCIC, SME Foundation, Bangladesh Bank, BITAC, BCSIR etc. can be the stakeholder organisations for cluster development. We should remember that piecemeal activities of different organisation cannot substitute a dedicated body for cluster development. The government should establish a dedicated body for cluster development like BEPZA or establish a specialised department in SME Foundation or BSCIC or the Prime Minister's office to look after the cluster development issue effectively. Cluster development should be one of the most priority issues for the government for generating employment, creating self-employment opportunities and entrepreneurship development, increasing GDP growth, revenue earnings and reducing poverty in the country.


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Pro-Life Americans Should Take Cue from Chick Flick
The recent battles on Capitol Hill over both Sonia Sotomayor and healthcare convinced me that pro-life Americans should take a cue from a popular chick flick. Chick flicks, for those unfamiliar, are a genre of movie escapism written and marketed to women and a guilty pleasure for many otherwise thoughtful types. A hit movie newly out on DVD recently proclaims a shocking truth to women who make excuses for the bad behavior of men with whom they date. That fact is: if he lies, cheats and treats you disrespectfully, "he's just not that into you."
The movie evokes cringes as one recognizes realistic scenes of bright women and men making humiliating mistakes and errors in judgment. In 2008 many pro-life Americans made a horrific error in judgment. Exit polling from the presidential election sponsored by Beliefnet.com showed that twenty percent of those voting for Obama defined themselves as "pro-life." According to Christianity Today, twenty five percent of self-identified evangelical or born-again Christians voted for President Obama.
Why? Most of these same folks turned out in both 2000 and 2004 for George Bush. The reasons for this change of heart are complicated, as in any relationship breakup. They may have been reacting to the war or over-spending by Republicans or any number of scandals or maybe the spark was gone. Or maybe they were seduced!
Its okay, admit it. He's cute, he's smart, he's likable and he's charismatic. He promised change and faithful attention to some of the issues men and women of faith care about, such as poverty. One Christian conservative professor even wrote a book proclaiming that truly living like Jesus includes a vote for Obama. Good to know.
However, pro-lifers have been wronged. This lover who showed so much original ardor for you lied and it started on the honeymoon. On January 23, 2009, one day after the 36th March for Life and on the President's third day in office he issued an executive order reversing U.S. policy that prohibited the use of US funds to promote or pay for abortions abroad.
In March, he restored funding to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) that had been frozen due to their support of organizations that promote and even coerce poor women in other countries to have abortions. He opened the door for the federal funding of research that requires the destruction of human embryos and canceled the Bush "conscience clause" regulation that protected health care
workers from being penalized for refusing to participate in providing abortions.
The President has meticulously chosen advisors and top administration officials that have outstanding pro-choice credential. Including the Secretary of HHS, Kathleen Sebelius who is in charge of the nation's healthcare system. Make no mistake; in Washington, people are policy.
Then of course there is his latest appointment to the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, who has already said in her Senate confirmation hearing that Roe v. Wade is settled law and that there is a constitutional right to privacy. Americans United for Life's research of her record warns that she is far more radical then even former Justice Souder.
There are many other "indiscretions" but let's cut to the Mac daddy of all slights: heath care reform. The Obama Administration is pushing relentlessly and recklessly for government run healthcare that would force almost all healthcare plans to include unlimited number of abortions for any reason and would make Americans complicit in these abortions due to the pooling of premiums. The current legislation on the table, the House "tri-committee" bill and the Senate Kennedy bill, amounts to the largest expansion of abortion in U.S. history. How could he? He said he l oved me?
My fellow pro-lifers, grab a tissue and listen up. The truth is, he's not scared to get into a relationship, he hasn't lost your number, and he is not simply busy. Noooo! He is in bed with someone else. That's right! President Obama LOVES the abortion lobby. He takes their money and their calls but more importantly he does their bidding. So wake up and smell the popcorn.
Apparently President Obama doesn't think abortion "is above his pay grade." He is 100% dedicated to the idea that babies in the womb are not life and deserve no protection. Don't get mad; get even.
Get involved in backing truly pro-life candidates and let Congress know what you think. Finally in 2012 break up with Obama. It hurts but he's just not that into you!


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Take care of you,
I have a small sample of the 'Forbidden Fruit' one that I received in a Redpawpaw box a few months back. Will have to dig it out and give it a try :)ReplyDelete
Keen to know what you think mayday - in my book there's something missing from it that would make it absolutely DIVINE, but I can't put my finger on what that something is...Delete
I must say Forbidden Fruit and Japanese Spa sound right up my alley! I love body washes, but it takes me forever to get through stuff! Trying to hustle through my existing stash so I can go buy a few from Bath and Body Works! :)ReplyDelete
Honestly hon y9u can't go wrong with either of them - they'll cost you less than a fiver, so it doesn't even matter if you're not so enamoured ♥ Will be checking out Bath and Body Works for sure xxxDelete
Oh gosh...I think I need to come and stay at your place for 4 months so i can try a new shower gel each day.....im loving your collectionReplyDelete
You're more than welcome dear Fawn - just give me 3 weeks to get the second shower sorted, I've had to put some of these in the cupboard temporarily till the tiling man does his thing lol...Delete
Every time I read your Body Washaholic series posts I add another body wash to my "must try" list. This time I really want to try Japanese Spa.ReplyDelete
Well I do so hope you like it F&FL - I love recommendations from friends, but they don't always make the cut with my nose, we're all so different hey? It's a lovely one though, really quite special, just like you ♥Delete
I love reading these Blogs of yours Kats!! I have been using Body Wash non-stop lately and love reading which ones you are using and loving! I have been loving the Palmer's Range lately....have a Coconut one and a Tropical one too. I also have a few Lush Limited Edition ones I use them off and on but don't want to use them up just yet LOL.......I spotted Snow Fairy in your photo......Do you like it?? I have that one plus Rose Jam, So White and Hot Toddy!!
Hey sweetiepie, thanks for dropping by, and so happy you're enjoy my ravings lol. I've tried the Palmer's tropical one, in fact I reviewed it in Part 4, lovely and refreshing :-) I LOVE the smell of Show Fairy, but I do think it's way WAY overpriced - I'll blab about it in Part 9, which will be up early next month. I haven't even sniffed the other ones you mentioned - time to visit Lush again I'd say ha ha ♥Delete


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What products and services does Toshiba TEC Australia offer to the customers?
Toshiba TEC Australia, a subsidiary of Toshiba TEC Corporation (Japan), offers a complete package from consulting and system design to system installation, operation and maintenance. The product range includes electronic point-of-sale (POS) systems, electronic cash registers, electronic scales, barcode printers and POS peripherals with access to a wide range of software products through our detailed and skilled dealer network.
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