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South African Journal of Science
On-line version ISSN 1996-7489
Print version ISSN 0038-2353
S. Afr. j. sci. vol.106 n.1-2 Pretoria Jan./Feb. 2010
A window onto the spectacular flora of South Africa
G. Anthony Verboom
Department of Botany, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa
Book Title: Field guide to wild flowers of South Africa
Book Cover:
Edited by: John Manning
Publisher: Struik Nature, Cape Town; 2009, p. 488: R200*/ R220*
The spectacular diversity of South Africa's flora makes a single-volume field guide to the country's wild flowers a mouthwatering prospect - for the amateur plant enthusiast and the professional botanist alike. At the same time, the sheer scale of the flora makes the production of such a field guide seem a mammoth task. Thus, in producing his Field guide to the wild flowers of South Africa, John Manning has taken a bold and exciting step.
Drawing on a profound knowledge of the South African flora, as well as considerable experience in the field guide industry, the fruit of Manning's efforts is a compact and beautifully presented volume. Each of the 1 100 included species is represented by a high quality photograph, a concise description (covering morphology and habitat), a distribution map, and a handy calendar bar indicating flowering time. In addition, Manning has prepared a useful introductory section outlining the main features of South Africa's biomes, as well as the morphological characteristics of the plant families that are represented in the volume. Owing to its broad scope and fine layout, the book will undoubtedly be highly popular and prove useful to a diversity of lay-users. Unfortunately, taxonomic biases will compromise its utility for the professional botanist or serious amateur.
Recognising the impossibility of covering the South African flora in a comprehensive manner, Manning has elected to focus on plant species with 'showy blooms', excluding tree species and graminoids (grasses, restios, rushes and sedges), as well as any other species whose flowers or inflorescences have a diameter < 10 mm. While no omission is desirable, some compromise is unavoidable and, in this context, the decision to exclude trees and graminoids, at least, seems reasonable. Besides the justifications provided by the author in his introduction, it is worth noting that, except in the case of sedges and rushes, these groups are adequately treated by existing field guides, including Dorrat-Haaksma and Linder's Restios of the fynbos, Van Oudtshoorn's Guide to grasses of southern Africa, and Van Wyk and Van Wyk's Field guide to the trees of southern Africa.
What is disappointing, however, is Manning's decision to exclude taxa that are non-arborescent and non-graminoid, but which nonetheless have small flowers or inflorescences. Since such taxa are numerous in the South African flora and include some genera that are locally or regionally abundant, their omission from this guide will be a significant source of frustration for users who desire a fuller picture, if only at genus level, of the flora they are exploring. Writing as a professional botanist, I would have preferred to see broader generic sampling (with small-flowered taxa represented), if necessary with fewer species represented per genus (but retaining enough species to reflect infrageneric variability). At the very least, it would have been worth including some reference to important genera that were not sampled, perhaps with some indication of their differences from the represented genera. Although an illustrated guide to the genera of South Africa's wild flowers, as mooted here, might be useful to the more serious botanist, the rarified sampling of species that it entails could well hold less appeal for the 'occasional' wild flower enthusiast, even though this is, perhaps, Manning's intended audience. Nevertheless, as Manning stipulates, species selection is geared towards representing the 'more common and conspicuous' members of the included genera. Therefore I expect that this guide will provide an excellent service to such an audience.
A feature that distinguishes this guide from other South African wild flower guides is the inclusion of heuristically useful, character-based identification tools. These include a user-friendly, dichotomous key to the main groups of plant families and a searchable table of family level characteristics, termed the 'family finder'. In establishing the linkages between morphological characteristics and specific plant groups, these tools empower the lay-user to identify plants in a predictive manner, making plant identification an exercise in biological detective work. Given their fundamental utility, such tools tend to be under-utilised in field guides to the South African flora, presumably out of a concern that they will frighten-off the average lay-user. Yet, such tools seem unavoidable when dealing with a flora as large and complex as that of South Africa.
How well the identification tools presented in Manning's guide will work in practice, though, remains to be seen. I have a few concerns, particularly in relation to the dichotomous key. For example, I suspect that the description of the 'unusual plants' category is too ambiguous, while the omission of petal fusion as a character in the eudicot key seems surprising. I also found some of the terminology confusing, notably the application of 'symmetrical' and 'two-lipped' to refer, respectively, to radial and bilateral symmetry.
In short, John Manning's new field guide represents a bold attempt to capture the full breadth of the South African wild flower diversity. In this it differs from most existing guides to South African wild flowers, which typically have a regional focus. The wide range of South African flora, however, has necessitated compromises, some of which will limit the utility of Manning's guide for the more serious user. While the omission of grasses, restios and trees is adequately compensated by the existence of other guides focussing on these assemblages, the exclusion of other small-flowered taxa may be potentially problematic. On another level, the distinct advantage of this guide is the introduction of character-based identification tools which empower the lay-user with predictive identification skills.
Postal address:
Department of Botany at the University of Cape Town
H. W. Pearson Building, Upper Campus
University of Cape Town
Rondebosch 7701, South Africa
email: firstname.lastname@example.com
This article is available at: http://www.sajs.co.za
* Book price at time of Review


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" Erik Varekamp studied illustration at the Rietveld Academy for four years between 1984 and 1988, but he did not finish his formal education. In 1984 he also began his ten-year tenure as the assistant of Gerrit de Jager. Together, they made the daily comic 'S.O.S.' for..." [ Read more ]

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Rabbi Brant Rosen leads a congregation in Evanston, Illinois and is co-chair of the Rabbinical Council of Jewish Voice for Peace. He is the author of the new book, Wrestling in the Daylight: A Rabbi's Path to Palestinian Solidarity and blogs at Shalom Rav. He stresses that the views, both in his book and in this interview, are his own and do not represent his congregation. We spoke on Monday December 4 in Washington, DC where he was promoting his book. An abridged version of this interview was published by Inter Press Service.
How has your personal view of Israel changed in the past four years?
I think I've shifted from a liberal Zionist approach—viewing the conflict as two peoples who have two legitimate claims to the land and the only way out of the morass is two states for two people. I believed in the importance of a Jewish state and identified with Israel as a Jew; that was my narrative growing up. I have deep familial relationships in Israel, visited there many times, considered moving there…it was a gradual thing, but the breaking point was Operation Cast Lead in 2008 (Cast Lead was the code name given to Israel's 2008-09 assault on Gaza). I came to realize this was not a conflict between two equal parties but an essential injustice that began with the birth of the state of Israel and continued since that time. It is a case of one very powerful party bending the other to its will.
Once I spoke out about Israel's outrages in Cast Lead, the dominoes really started to fall for me. At first I didn't know where that brought me, and wasn't sure where I stood. As a congregational rabbi I was in a difficult place and people looked to me for guidance. About a year after that, I really reassessed my relationship as a Jew to Israel, to the entire issue, not just Gaza, about Zionism in general. In the blog pieces I wrote for the book I wrote very extensively about my thoughts and my activity during this time. Brian Walt and I started Jewish Fast for Gaza, and we found a number of rabbis who stood with us to launch the initiative to end the blockade of the Strip and search for a just peace. I become more involved in Palestine Solidarity work, reaching out to Palestinians, some of whom were friends and others who were activists in this area, moving beyond my fear of them as "other." So many of them reached out to me when I spoke out on Gaza, and I wanted to learn from them what their experience of this issue was.
On Yom Ha'atzmaut (Israeli Independence Day) I wrote a blog post called "Why I'm not celebrating Yom Ha'atzmaut," basically saying I'm going to observe it as a day of soul-searching, not celebrate it. For Jews around the world it's a sort of civic holiday. What does it mean that our day of community gathering is the day of tragedy for Palestinians? What does it mean that this country was born out of injustice which is continuing, the Nakba? On that day I invited Jews and Palestinians into my home, read about towns and villages that were destroyed or dispossessed and we mourned the loss of them.
That's where I landed. Today, I know where I stand: very much a rabbi in the Jewish community, still serving my congregation still seeing myself motivated by Jewish values, but also as someone who stands in solidarity with Palestinians in their struggle for human rights, equal rights and dignity in land they either live in or seek to return to. I see my Jewish liberation as inextricably bound up with Palestinian liberation. I see Palestine solidarity as the fulfillment of Jewish heritage to stand with the oppressed.
Jewish Voice for Peace is one of the leading groups involved in targeted divestment from Israel's occupation, a part of the Boycott/Divestment/Sanctions movement that seeks to bring public economic and political pressure on Israel. How do you see the future of this movement?
I think the movement is growing by leaps and bounds, attracting more and more people, Jewish and not. When the UNGA vote on Palestinian non-member status hit, it drowned out another story I thought was more important—Stevie Wonder backing out of a concert benefit for the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces. He joins a long list of artists who have cancelled appearances in Israel including Dustin Hoffman, Roger Waters, Brian Eno, Elvis Costello, Annie Lennox and many others.
To create political power, leveraging people power is the best method, and historically, this has been shown to be the case. The fact that Israel is reacting so harshly against it shows its potential. When Hillary Clinton says 3000 new settlements are "not helpful," that doesn't get Israel's attention. But when JVP, SJP and church groups move to get corporations and holding companies to divest from Israel, that's front page news in Israel. That is a sign that this has a great impact, when used in a smart and concerted way.
BDS is not anti-Semitic, and I think the argument that it unfairly singles out Israel from other human rights abusers is disingenuous. The issue is not about what these other horrible regimes do. The issue is that Palestinian civil society has put out this call (in 2005, a broad coalition of Palestinian civil society groups put out a call for boycotts, divestment campaigns and international sanctions against Israel) and the question is do we support them or not. If we think the occupation is intolerable and this call is a smart and ethical response to leverage power to get Israel to cease, then we must support it. The whole idea of "delegitimization" is absurd, as if every state has some special right to legitimacy. The question is not whether Israel is legitimate; it exists and is part of the international community. But if Israel acts in an illegitimate way, citizens around the world have the right and responsibility to leverage what power they can to get it to cease.
You co-chair the Rabbinical Council of Jewish Voice for Peace. Can you explain the difference between JVP and other Jewish peace groups like J Street and why you prefer JVP?
Organizations like J Street are Jewish institutions that seek to create the necessary leverage toward a peace process in the DC political arena. I don't think that is an effective way to exert the necessary leverage. JVP is different, not made up largely of staff and a Board of Directors; it's a membership organization that is doing grassroots organizing, which is a minor part of J Street. I think the only way to build a constituency for peace is through grassroots organizing. It's about coming together with other groups and forming solutions, coming together to say that whatever political solution we come to needs to be based on equal rights, democracy and human rights for all. And because a two state solution is looking more and more unlikely if not impossible, we need to have an open mind to all kinds of solutions. I think J Street, AIPAC and others are hemmed in by a narrow focus on one political solution.
Do you think the recent call by 15 mainstream Protestant leaders of many different denominations for an inquiry into whether US aid to Israel is in compliance with existing US law is a significant new development?
Yes. It was signed by 15 prominent and important church leaders who managed to agree on a significant faith-based statement. I think it's significant because if so many prominent Jewish leaders react as they did, it has to be taken seriously. But most important, the leaders are standing firm and are not backing down despite being excoriated and being called everything up to and including anti-Semites. That is important because up until now covenant on religious relations has been that you can talk about anything BUT Israel. This time they've broken with that. They had been bullied by the Jewish establishment, but this can usher in a new relationship where we can talk about anything, not only these issues but the things we have in common.
I'm proud that JVP stood behind the statement. Jewish leaders said they would walk out of planned interfaith summit, and then demanded a separate summit to discuss these issues. I thought this was very damaging, this is not dialogue. The Church leaders have issued a second statement saying they would be happy to meet with Jewish leaders in response, saying we are not going back on what we said, but we're happy to talk. This is very healthy; this is real dialogue, which occurs when you focus on the painful issues you don't agree on instead of just celebrating the things you have in common. There is a public letter at obamaletter.org has over 10,000 signatures supporting the church leaders' letter. It's very important that Christians see that many Jews do stand with them. The Jewish establishment does not represent the Jewish community. It is much larger and more complex than these unaccountable representatives whose names most Jews don't even know.


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Careful, comics. If you want to call a little person a midget, tease someone with a stutter or use the dreaded "R" word, you will face the wrath of the Comedians with Disabilities Act.
Nina G, a prominent female comedian who stutters, is a social media monitoring fiend. If she catches a comic making a cheap joke at the expense of the disabled community, watch out. (She took Dave Chappelle to task.)
But, the quartet of Northern California stand-ups has developed the kind of camaraderie where they can gently tease each other. They likely will do just that on Thursday, when they perform a free show at Kimball's Carnival in Oakland.
The Comedians with Disabilities Act is made up of Nina, little person Steve Danner, comic in a wheelchair Michael O'Connell and blind stand-up Eric Mee.
I caught up with Mee while he was at his parent's house in Sacramento—when he surprised his brother by being there.
"He's wondering who's here. The door is unlocked. The fireplace is cracked. 'Do I have to get the gun?' Shoot your blind brother; that's cool. I'm kidding," Mee said.
Mee has been performing comedy for about three years and at 23, he's the youngin' of the troupe. He studies communications and journalism at Sacramento State, and would love to do media for the California Dept. of Fish and Game.
Entertainment News
"Faith, family and fishing, the three Fs," is what Mee said got him through a horrible time, when he was stabbed in 2008, and lost most of his sight. But let's not dwell on that, as Eric told me he appreciated that my questions didn't dwell on the cause of his blindness, as most interviewer's queries tend to do.
Comedians who are starting out can benefit by having a buddy to bounce jokes off of to hone an act, and Mee has three.
"I met Steve Danner at a comedy club and we immediately hit it off. I love that guy. Me and my dad have a tough sense of humor. I'll sit through 100 comedians at an open-mic and chuckle here and there. Steve comes on and my dad said we got our $5 worth," Mee said.
"I got excited seeing a little person at a comedy club," he added. "People pass blind people up all day long. People in wheelchairs? They don't care. A little person? Holy crap! I need to get him drunk!"
Danner and O'Connell were already looking for another to add to their line-up—and had even discussed finding a blind comic to perform with.
"Michael and I hit it off. He lives close and we'll do open-mics together," Mee continued. "Nina is the one person I always call for advice. When I have a problem and don't want to go through school, in case it might bite me in the butt, (I call her). She knows all about disability accommodations."
Though the show on Thursday is being billed as uncensored, don't expect Mee to go blue. He started out filthy, he said, but since he got called out by his mother at a show, he's decided to keep it clean.
"I want a 3-year-old to be able to hear my set and still have the parents rolling on the floor," he said.
Mee keeps his recorder with him to record the "stupid things I say in public," that end up in his act.
"Yesterday I was around Bodega Bay where they do charter fishing," he said. "One of the charter boats had a sign that said, '$50 per-person for spreading ashes.' OK, do they charge the stiff, too, or is he included? 'You're gonna charge me $50 for him even though he doesn't come back?'"
Thursday's show also features Steve Lee, Andy Arias and Loren Kraut.
Visit facebook.com/comedianswithdisabilitiesact for more information about the Comedians with Disabilities Act, and here is a link to the show.
Corey Andrew has been interviewing comedians and writing about comedy for the last decade and a half. He recently published the book, "Laugh Lines: Conversations with Comedians." Corey was a writer and performer with Midwest sketch troupe, The NonProphets, before moving to the Bay Area with his family several years ago. If you have ideas for future columns about comedy, you can send them to firstname.lastname@example.com or follow him at twitter.com/coreywrites.


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At Albion, you'll develop a strong foundation in your major—which is essential for your success as an educator. Then you'll add an education certification through our teacher education program, in conjunction with the Fritz Shurmur Center for Teacher Development. Required courses.
Get into the classroom. Right from the start. You'll practice our four essentials for effective teaching—observation, inquiry, reflection, and creativity—while you design and implement lesson plans and eventually teach your own interdisciplinary unit. All this before student teaching. Learn more, and watch our video.
Get certified. We prepare you for elementary and secondary certification, or K–12 certification in French, German, Spanish, and music. And our teacher education program is ranked as one of Michigan's best and nationally recognized. Whether you're thinking of graduate school or entering the field, you'll be more than ready. Certifications.


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Now that I have spoken about "Denialism" on a few radio and television broadcasts, it has become clear that certain questions and comments arise with regularity. Nothing seems to enflame people more than my assertion – conviction really – that we need to use the tools of biotechnology to address the problem of world hunger; more than that, I believe those same tools can help us cope with the rapidly growing population of the earth – within 40 years this planet will have to feed 9 billion people, half again as many as we have today.
I address these issues at length in the book, but for those who see a snippet on television or catch a summary in a review let me just be categorical: I am not opposed to organic food, nor do I see genetically engineered food as a panacea for the problems of the developing world. I buy organic food myself – because I think it tastes good and I live in the part in the rich West where cost is not an issue. I prefer local to organic and while they are often confused, they are not always the same thing. I do not think animals should be raised on hormones and antibiotics and certainly don't think we should eat them if they have been. To be honest, though, I am not as preoccupied with the culinary obsessions of America as I am with the growing hunger that persists in the developing world.
That a billion people go to bed hungry every night – a number that is growing -is one of the abiding scandals of our time. Can genetically altered food make that problem disappear? Of course not. We need good government, less corruption, training, roads, and above all, ample clean water. But I do believe that biotechnology is one of the tools we must employ. Next Monday, the world leaders will come together in Rome for a World Summit on Food Security. As they have before, they will talk about the best way to eliminate hunger. There will be plenty of people screaming that genetically engineered food will kill us all. And plenty will scream back that without that food the developing world won't survive.
Isn't it time to stop shouting into the wind and work together to create a sustainable world that can feed its inhabitants? Let us rely on data and experience to help figure out the best way to do that. Any other approach is bound to fail.


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Ms. O'Gorman is one of the founders of Liberty Tax Service, serving as Vice President of Marketing and Chief Marketing Officer since the company began in 1997. She is responsible for developing brand awareness in every major market in the United States and Canada.
Ms. O'Gorman has created marketing and sales strategies for both franchise development and consumer programs that have led to Liberty's rapid growth and development. The company currently operates more than 4,300 locations in the United States and Canada and has more than 2,000 franchisees in its system. Ms. O'Gorman is also a Liberty Area Developer and Franchisee in the Fort Myers, Florida region.
Prior to beginning Liberty Tax Service, O'Gorman served as Director of Communications for Jackson Hewitt Tax Service from 1989 to 1996. She has over 30 years of experience in advertising, marketing and public relations, and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and Communications from Denison University.


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Circuitry of cells involved in immunity, autoimmune diseases exposed
March 6, 2013
New work from the Broad Institute's Klarman Cell Observatory, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard University, MIT, and Yale University expands the understanding of how one type of immune cell – known as a T helper 17 or Th17 cell – develops, and how its growth influences the development of immune responses. By figuring out how these cells are "wired," the researchers make a surprising connection between autoimmunity and salt consumption, highlighting the interplay of genetics and environmental factors in disease susceptibility. The results of their work appear in three companion papers in Nature this week.
The researchers concentrated on T cells because of their important roles in clearing foreign pathogens and in various autoimmune diseases. "The question we wanted to pursue was: how does the highly pathogenic, pro-inflammatory T cell develop?" said Vijay Kuchroo, co-director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at Brigham and Women's Hospital's Biomedical Research Institute and a Broad associate member. Kuchroo is also a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School. "Once we have a more nuanced understanding of the development of the pathogenic Th17 cells, we may be able to pursue ways to regulate them or their function."
The human immune system is in a state of delicate balance: too little activity leaves a person vulnerable to foreign invaders, but too much activity threatens to harm the body it ought to protect. When this delicate balance is broken, it can lead to autoimmune diseases. But little is known about the molecular circuitry that maintains — or upsets — such a fine equilibrium.
"We wanted to understand how the body gets the right kinds of immune cells in the right amount, and how it keeps those cells at the right activity level so that they are not too active but also not underactive," said Aviv Regev, a Broad Institute core member and an associate professor of biology at MIT. Regev is also an Early Career Scientist at Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the director of the Klarman Cell Observatory at the Broad. "The value in doing an unbiased analysis is that we're able to understand a lot more about the molecular biology at play and identify novel players in this process."
Th17 cells can promote inflammation that is important for protection against pathogens, but they have also been implicated in diseases like multiple sclerosis, psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, and ankylosing spondylitis. Treatment options for some of these diseases, such as psoriasis, include manipulating T cell function.
David Hafler's group at Yale University studies human autoimmune diseases in general and the role of Th17 cells in particular, and has collaborated with Kuchroo's group for many years. "These are not diseases of bad genes alone or diseases caused by the environment, but diseases of a bad interaction between genes and the environment," said Hafler, Gilbert H. Glaser Professor of Neurology, professor of immunobiology, chair of Department of Neurology, and senior author of one of this week's Nature papers.
Some genes have been previously tied to Th17 development, but the research team wanted a more comprehensive view. One of the challenges of studying cell development, however, is that cells, particularly immune cells, change and evolve over time. The researchers chose to take frequent snapshots – 18 over the course of three days – to see what was happening within the T cells as they grew from naïve cells into more specialized Th17 cells. From these snapshots, they used computational algorithms to begin to stitch together a network of molecular changes happening as the cells matured.
With this initial information in hand, the researchers systematically tested their model by silencing genes one-by-one, which could help reveal the most important points in the network and untangle their biological meaning.
To do so, they needed a technology that would allow them to silence genes without perturbing the cells in the process. Although RNA interference (RNAi) is a powerful way to turn off individual genes, most RNAi techniques rely on viruses as delivery vehicles. When scientists tried to perturb the T cells using these traditional techniques, cells either changed or died, limiting the effectiveness of these strategies.
"This was a real challenge," said Kuchroo. "Every time we tried to downregulate a gene with existing technologies, the cell would change. We didn't know if we were looking at the right thing. We needed a new technology – something that could have a dramatic but precise effect."
A solution came from an unlikely source. Harvard professor and Broad associate member Hongkun Park and his lab in the departments of chemistry and chemical biology and of physics had been working on a computer-chip-like structure to interact with brain cells. Co-first authors Alex Shalek and Jellert Gaublomme along with other lab members had developed a bed of silicon nanowires – miniscule needles designed to pierce cells.
"We learned that we could use these needles to deliver molecules into cells in a minimally invasive fashion," said Park. "And as Vijay and Aviv taught me, there are lots of things that this allows you to do that you could not do before. It's been an eye-opening experience."
Just as the thin needle of a syringe can be inserted into the skin and cause no more than a small pinching sensation, nanowires can be inserted into cells, causing minimal disruption. Using this new technology, the team teased apart the network, piece by piece, by deleting each of the key genes required in the development of Th17 cells.
With the help of co-first author Nir Yosef, a postdoc at the Broad and Brigham and Women's Hospital, the team found that Th17 cells are governed by two networks, seemingly at odds with each other: one network positively regulates the cells, coaxing them to increase in number while suppressing the development of other cells. The other negatively regulates them, having the opposite effect.
"It's a system in perfect tension," said Regev. "It both suppresses and promotes Th17 cell creation, keeping the cells at equilibrium."
Through this analysis, one particular gene stood out to the researchers: SGK1. The gene plays an important role in the cells' development, and when turned off in mice, Th17 cells are not produced.
SGK1 had not been described in T cells before, but it has been found in cells in the gut and in kidneys, where it plays a role in absorbing salt.
Based on this, two teams of researchers set out to test the connection between salt and autoimmunity — Kuchroo, Regev, and their colleagues working with mouse cells and mouse models, and Hafler's team working with human cells.
Through efforts led by co-first author and Brigham and Women's Hospital postdoc Chuan Wu, the team found that they could induce more severe forms of autoimmune diseases, and at higher rates, in mice fed a high-salt diet than in those that were fed a normal mouse diet. Kuchroo notes though that the high-salt diet alone did not cause autoimmune diseases – the researchers had to induce disease, in this case by injecting a self-antigen to prompt the mouse immune system to respond.
"It's not just salt, of course," Kuchroo said. "We have this genetic architecture – genes that have been linked to various forms of autoimmune diseases, and predispose a person to developing autoimmune diseases. But we also suspect that environmental factors – infection, smoking, and lack of sunlight and Vitamin D – may play a role. Salt could be one more thing on the list of predisposing environmental factors that may promote the development of autoimmunity."
"One important question is: how can one think of these results in the context of human health?" said Regev. "It's premature to say, 'You shouldn't eat salt because you'll get an autoimmune disease.' We're putting forth an interesting hypothesis – a connection between salt and autoimmunity – that now must be tested through careful epidemiological studies in humans."
The researchers plan to harness the cell circuitry data to identify and follow up on potential drug targets. Kuchroo notes that the published work and future studies are only possible because of the interdisciplinary team brought together by shared questions about cell circuitry.
"We often work in isolation in our areas of expertise, but this is the kind of work I could not have done in my own lab, and that Hongkun and Aviv could not have done in their respective labs," said Kuchroo. "We needed this unique combination of tools and technologies to come together around this problem. Looking forward, we'll need the tools and intellect of different disciplines in order to solve big problems in biology and medicine."
Support for this work was provided by the National Human Genome Research Institute, the National Institutes of Health, National Multiple Sclerosis Society, the Klarman Cell Observatory, Guthy Jackson Foundation, and the Austrian Science Fund.
About the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
The Eli and Edythe L. Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard was founded in 2003 to empower this generation of creative scientists to transform medicine with new genome-based knowledge. The Broad Institute seeks to describe all the molecular components of life and their connections; discover the molecular basis of major human diseases; develop effective new approaches to diagnostics and therapeutics; and disseminate discoveries, tools, methods and data openly to the entire scientific community.
Founded by MIT, Harvard and its affiliated hospitals, and the visionary Los Angeles philanthropists Eli and Edythe L. Broad, the Broad Institute includes faculty, professional staff and students from throughout the MIT and Harvard biomedical research communities and beyond, with collaborations spanning over a hundred private and public institutions in more than 40 countries worldwide. For further information about the Broad Institute, go to www.broadinstitute.org.
About Brigham and Women's Hospital
Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) is a 793-bed nonprofit teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School and a founding member of Partners HealthCare. BWH has more than 3.5 million annual patient visits, is the largest birthing center in New England and employs nearly 15,000 people. The Brigham's medical preeminence dates back to 1832, and today that rich history in clinical care is coupled with its national leadership in patient care, quality improvement and patient safety initiatives, and its dedication to research, innovation, community engagement and educating and training the next generation of health care professionals. Through investigation and discovery conducted at its Biomedical Research Institute (BRI), BWH is an international leader in basic, clinical and translational research on human diseases, involving nearly 1,000 physician-investigators and renowned biomedical scientists and faculty supported by nearly $625 million in funding. BWH continually pushes the boundaries of medicine, including building on its legacy in organ transplantation by performing the first face transplants in the U.S. in 2011. BWH is also home to major landmark epidemiologic population studies, including the Nurses' and Physicians' Health Studies, OurGenes and the Women's Health Initiative. For more information and resources, please visit BWH's online newsroom.
Yosef N et al., Reconstruction of the dynamic regulatory network that controls Th17 cell differentiation by systematic perturbation in primary cells Nature DOI: 10.1038/nature11981
Wu C et al., Induction of pathogenic Th17 cells by inducible salt sensing kinase SGK1 Nature DOI: 10.1038/nature11984
Kleinewietfeld M et al., Sodium chloride drives autoimmune disease by the induction of pathogenic Th17 cells Nature DOI: 10.1038/nature11868


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ACCSC plays a pivotal role in assuring educational quality at our accredited institutions.Read More
The Commission, as part of its member services, has made a concerted effort towards facilitating continuing education and training opportunities for graduates from ACCSC-accredited institutions.
More and more students seeking a quality, career focused postsecondary education are opting to enroll in programs offered by private, for-profit institutions, like ACCSC-accredited institutions, as a means to obtain entry-level skills needed to enter the workforce. However, when these students later seek to continue their education at a traditional college or university, they are often informed that the credit earned from their previous education is not transferable.
As part of our efforts as a recognized accrediting agency, ACCSC has drafted and distributed proposals regarding the importance of establishing fair and equitable transfer of credit policies, and has met with key members of Congress, as well as representatives from organizations across higher education, to discuss increasing the options that are made available to students and graduates from ACCSC-accredited institutions who are interested in continuing their education.
In conducting research, ACCSC developed a Transfer of Credit Policy Agenda which encourages educational leaders to create fair and effective transfer of credit policies that meet the diverse and complex needs of students, and support a student's ability to improve, develop, and advance seamlessly through the nation's higher education system.
The Commission also adopted standards regarding transfer-of-credit policies, including the requirement for ACCSC-accredited institutions to publish its transfer-of-credit policy in its catalog and to clearly communicate the criteria and process for evaluating and accepting credits earned at other institutions for transfer.
Speaker: Christine Galdston, JD, LL.M.
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The following post was written by contributor Erika Szymanski. Read more about Szymanski here.
Trying to give a brief introduction to the viticulture and enology programs at Washington State University (WSU) is a bit like trying to give a brief introduction to wine in general. There's just too much to say, so if the explanation is ever going to be brief, it must also be incomplete. So, bear with me; this is only part of the story.
WSU – initially called the Washington Agricultural College and School of Science, interestingly enough – was founded in 1892 as a land grant institution, which obliged it to provide education for Washingtonians in applied sciences. At the time, 'applied sciences' mostly amounted to various forms of agriculture, including viticulture, and not all that much has changed; agricultural sciences are still its strong suit. When the university first got going, Washington was a major grower of table grapes but had almost no commercial grape wine industry; popular wisdom (or folly, rather) had it that Washington was too cold for Vitis vinifera (the European wine grapes we know and love, as opposed to native American grapes like Concord). That was, of course, poppycock. The trick was figuring out how to protect vines from cold weather and what could be grown in the near-desert eastern parts of the state, and that's exactly what Walter Clore and the other first-generation researchers at WSU did.
Walter Clore – whose name you might recognize from the new partially WSU-sponsored wine and culinary center bearing his name currently under construction in Prosser – came to WSU as a graduate student from Oklahoma in 1934 and almost single-handedly built Washington state's viticulture and enology research endeavors. By 1937 he had research vines planted at the school's Prosser research station, which still exists and where the bulk of WSU's viticulture research still happens. In the '30s and '40s, the focus was mostly on labrusca grapes – Muscats were just about the only viniferas happening here at that time that we'd still recognize – and on improving baseline wine quality: preventing spoilage, keeping incompletely-fermented bottles from exploding on grocers' shelves, and other basics we now take for granted.
Washington's wine quality was mostly sneer-worthy, partially because of a law restricting the sale of non-Washington wine inside the state – little competition meant little incentive to improve – and partially because no one had thought much about the potential for Washington's wine to be any better. Research at the Prosser Irrigation Experiment Station (which still exists, at the same location in Prosser, and is now called the Irrigated Agriculture Research and Experiment Center), mostly led by Dr. Clore, tested hundreds of other varieties and proved that a lot of them did splendidly well in Washington state if you just knew how to care for them properly.
In 1964 the Washington Wine and Grape Growers Council began funding viticulture and enology research at WSU and, while the state and private sources – Washington wine giant Ste. Michelle most prominently – have increasingly picked up the tab, the research partnership between WSU and Washington's wine industry has only grown since then.
WSU has done a lot for you, whether you're a consumer or in the industry, in the vineyard, in the winery, or in sales and marketing. A few examples:
– Dr. Marcus Keller and the rest of the viticulture research team developed a grapevine cold hardiness model that predicts how much damage cold weather will inflict on different, specific grape varieties (the application has been available since the end of 2011).
– Plant pathologists and entomologists are working out how mealy bugs transmit grape leafroll virus, a significant scourge in Washington, and what can be done about it. They've already figured out how powdery mildew was surviving Washington winters and how to go about controlling that problem.
– WSU operates the Clean Plant Center Northwest, the regional source of thoroughly tested, disease-free foundation and certified grapevines for Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. The Clean Plant Center tests for even more diseases and viruses than these states' quarantine laws require.
– WSU offers the only wine business management undergraduate degree in the country.
– Graduate students in food science, plant pathology, horticulture, and entomology are working on problems like how and where Brettanomyces can survive, what different irrigation practices do to tannins in red wine, and the relative effectiveness of different palate cleansers.
It's reasonable to think that the Washington wine industry would still exist if WSU hadn't been part of it; after all, someone else, sooner or later, would probably have started asking the same questions about what the state could do with grapes. But, that speculation aside, WSU is responsible, at least in some part, for every glass of Washington wine you drink. Even if you're a Husky.


text: A Hall of Fame Worthy of Its Name Mention the words "hall of fame" to most people, and they're likely to imagine a stellar baseball player or someone who's written a string of hit songs. But at USDA's Agricultural Research Service, we have a Hall of Fame that isn't about batting averages or popular tunes; it's about changing the world. Edward B. Knipling, Administrator, USDA-Agricultural Research Service, Washington, D.C. Posted in Research and Science Sep 29, 2010 2 Responses


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At the core of scientific visualization is the representation of data graphically - through images, animations, and videos - to improve understanding and develop insight. Data visualizers develop data-driven images, maps, and visualizations from information collected by Earth-observing satellites, airborne missions, and ground measurements. Visualizations allow us to explore data, phenomena and behavior; they are particularly effective for showing large scales of time and space, and "invisible" processes (e.g. flows of energy and matter) as integral parts of the models.
Educational Resources - Search Tool
A Data Support Specialist works with the user community to understand their science needs with the goal of providing support for NASA data and information services. They represent the user in product development and development resources to assist with the user community's needs. This person works directly with users to solve problems using NASA data, or to provide resources to improve understanding of the data.
Mechanical engineers design, develop, build, and test mechanical and thermal sensors and devices including tools, engines, and machines. These are essential systems in platforms in NASA's Earth Science missions, like satellite and airborne missions. Mechanical engineers work mostly in engineering services, research and development, and manufacturing.
Check out our latest installment of women in science with this interview with Shania Sanders, and learn about her journey from an intern to a computer programmer at NASA Langley Research Center.
Data scientists work with data captured by scientific instruments or generated by a simulator, as well as data that is processed by software and stored in computer systems. They work with scientists to analyze databases and files using data management techniques and statistics. From changes in sea level, atmospheric composition, or land use, data scientists help make sense of the petabytes of data that NASA collects and stores.
Visit this link to explore careers in Engineering Technician.
Follow along as NASA visualizer Kel Elkins walks you through three visualizations (Dust Crossing, Typhoon Hagupit, and Aquarius Sea Surface Salinity) and answers questions about his work, education, and career.
Software engineers play an important role at NASA as this field supports the success of our missions on Earth and beyond. This field will continue to grow as it helps NASA address the many challenges that our agency faces.
Chemists study atomic and molecular structures and their interactions.
Scientific data are often represented by assigning ranges of numbers to specific colors. The colors are then used to make false color images which allow us to see patterns more easily. Students will make a false-color image using a set of numbers.


text: Email Story Print Story Preparing to Send Your Food-Allergic Child to School MAY 13, 2011 DENVER — Download the National Jewish Health Food Allergy Action Plan (pdf). The first day of school can be an anxious time for parents as well as their children. It is an especially anxious time for parents of food-allergic children. For many it is the first time that their food-allergic children are on their own, away from their parents, making independent decisions about food. That can be excruciating for parents. "Navigating food allergies in a non-allergic world is a huge challenge, and the first-day of school is a major milestone," said licensed clinical social worker Jennifer Moyer Darr. Ms. Darr works with families at National Jewish Health, helping them cope with the demands of parenting a food-allergic child. "With proper preparation, however, parents can let their children venture out on their own reassured that the school will provide a safe environment. " Ms. Darr offers advice for parents who are sending their food-allergic children to school for the first time, or to a new school Meet with school officials -- early. Don't wait until just before school begins to alert school staff about your child's food allergies. If possible, meet with the principal, teachers, nurse, and cafeteria staff, in the spring or summer before your child starts a new school. Parents can inform school officials about their child's allergies and special precautions that need to be taken. They can also learn from staff about the various measures and precautions schools already have in place for food-allergic children. Below are some questions and talking points for discussions with school officials: Inform them about your child's allergies, symptoms and needs. Ask how the school staff generally manage food allergies. Ask about Epi-pens. Where does the school keep them, who has access to them, and how would my child receive an Epi-pen injection if she needed one? Written Plan. If possible, develop with school staff a written plan for your child that can outline necessary information and actions to prevent exposures, recognize reactions and respond to accidental exposures. Download the National Jewish Health Food Allergy Action Plan (pdf). The Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network (http://www.foodallergy.org) and the American Association of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology (http://www.aaaai.org/patients/food_allergy_guidelines.stm) are also rich sources of all sorts of information about food allergies. Lunch seating. Many schools now have a separate table in the cafeteria for food-allergic children. Although many schools and parents feel safer with separate seating, most school-age food-allergic children can be safe sitting with their classmates at lunch. "Eating is a social activity that takes on more importance as children grow older," said Ms. Darr. "Parents and children need to weigh the issues of safety, anxiety and healthy social interactions when making a decision about where to eat." Studies have shown that common cleaning agents effectively remove peanut butter from cafeteria tables. Research has also shown that skin contact with allergenic foods causes a much milder reaction than eating the food. "The vast majority of moderate to severe allergic reactions to foods are the result of accidentally eating the food," said Dan Atkins, MD, Professor of Pediatrics at National Jewish Health. "Touching the food may cause local contact reactions, but almost never leads to a severe reaction." Children who understand their allergies, are aware of the importance of avoiding potentially allergenic foods, and can be counted on to make safe choices should be able to sit at the table of their choice. Some young children may be prone to taking food off another child's plate or accepting foods given to them by other children. Those children require more supervision and distance from their peers. Sometimes a fully separate table is not necessary. A separate desk at the end of the cafeteria table allows for both increased safety and social inclusion. Although it may not be necessary to sit at a food-allergy table, a child's comfort level and preference should also be considered. Tour the cafeteria. Although many parents pack lunches for their children, others may want to have the school cafeteria as a possible alternative. Talk to food-service staff to learn if they do anything special for food-allergic children, where the food comes from, and precautions they take against cross-contamination to learn what might be safe for a child to eat. Show and tell. If your child is comfortable, it can be valuable to have him tell the class about food allergies. What they are allergic to, foods that contain the allergens, what happens when they have a reaction, what students should do if they see the child having a reaction. Pictures. In the classroom, pictures of a child with a label about his/her food allergy can help alert anyone who enters the room. You can place one on the classroom wall and a smaller one on the child's desk, which can serve as a secondary reminder when snacks are served. Safe snacks. Give the teacher a small supply of safe snacks for your child in case someone brings in an allergenic snack for the class. Media Resources We have many faculty members, from bench scientists to clinicians, who can speak on almost any aspect of respiratory, immune, cardiac and gastrointestinal disease as well as lung cancer and basic immunology. Accomplishments & Awards Annual Report Financials Media Contacts Our team is available to arrange interviews, discuss events and story ideas. Adam Dormuth 303.398.1002 office 970.222.5034 mobile firstname.lastname@example.com Jessica Berry 303.398.1082 office 303.807.9491 mobile firstname.lastname@example.com


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Creating bitmap charts in Django with the ReportLab library
This describes a simple way to create dynamic bitmap charts in Django.
ReportLab's PDF library is well known, but less people are aware that it contains a mature graphics package able to create most kinds of business charts, as well as custom graphical widgets. We've been serving GIF and PNG charts for many years. Doing this within Django has turned out to be trivial; here's an example.
You will need the ReportLab library from http://www.reportlab.com/ And Python Imaging Library (PIL) from http://www.pythonware.com/products/pil/
Also make sure you have compiled the _rl_accel and _renderPM packages. The latter is a sophisticated bitmap renderer with anti-aliasing, font handling and so on. ReportLab's download page has a checker script to tell you what extensions are installed.
Creating a Horizontal Bar chart
The reportlab/graphics framework provides a Drawing object and many Shape objects, which include primitive shapes, and high-level objects like charts and legends. You can easily write your own too if you want to make dynamic bitmap buttons or fancy dashboard apps.
The usual pattern we follow is to create a Drawing class with all of your widgets, some sensible default data, and any visual settings you want. Here is such a class, which has a bar chart and a string for the chart title.
# mycharts.py from reportlab.graphics.shapes import Drawing, String from reportlab.graphics.charts.barcharts import HorizontalBarChart class MyBarChartDrawing(Drawing): def __init__(self, width=400, height=200, *args, **kw): Drawing.__init__(self,width,height,*args,**kw) self.add(HorizontalBarChart(), name='chart') self.add(String(200,180,'Hello World'), name='title') #set any shapes, fonts, colors you want here. We'll just #set a title font and place the chart within the drawing self.chart.x = 20 self.chart.y = 20 self.chart.width = self.width - 20 self.chart.height = self.height - 40 self.title.fontName = 'Helvetica-Bold' self.title.fontSize = 12 self.chart.data = [[100,150,200,235]] if __name__=='__main__': #use the standard 'save' method to save barchart.gif, barchart.pdf etc #for quick feedback while working. MyBarChartDrawing().save(formats=['gif','png','jpg','pdf'],outDir='.',fnRoot='barchart')
Paste this into a file and execute it; you should get 4 chart files written to disk in different formats.
Integrating into Django
Now we add a view to our views.py. This will examine the request for any dynamic parameters, since there's not much point serving a chart that doesn't vary. We'll allow the user to pass in 4 things as GET or POST parameters: a title, a comma-separated list of numbers, and the overall width and height of the image. Everything has a default in our Drawing class anyway, so we only pass through parameters which are present.
You then ask the Drawing to render itself to your favourite bitmap format and generate a response with the right content-type
from django.http import HttpResponse def barchart(request): #instantiate a drawing object import mycharts d = mycharts.MyBarChartDrawing() #extract the request params of interest. #I suggest having a default for everything. if 'height' in request: d.height = int(request['height']) if 'width' in request: d.width = int(request['width']) if 'numbers' in request: strNumbers = request['numbers'] numbers = map(int, strNumbers.split(',')) d.chart.data = [numbers] #bar charts take a list-of-lists for data if 'title' in request: d.title.text = request['title'] #get a GIF (or PNG, JPG, or whatever) binaryStuff = d.asString('gif') return HttpResponse(binaryStuff, 'image/gif')
Finally, you need a URL mapping. In this case I have added this:
(r'^charts/bar/$', 'myapp.views.barchart'),
Now you can start Django, point your browser at the URL with no arguments, and should see the chart. Then try out a few parameters such as
and watch it redraw.
Creating a Line chart
# mycharts.py from reportlab.graphics.shapes import Drawing, String from reportlab.graphics.charts.lineplots import LinePlot from reportlab.graphics.charts.lineplots import ScatterPlot from reportlab.lib import colors from reportlab.graphics.charts.legends import Legend from reportlab.graphics.charts.textlabels import Label from reportlab.graphics.widgets.markers import makeMarker class MyLineChartDrawing(Drawing): def __init__(self, width=600, height=400, *args, **kw): apply(Drawing.__init__,(self,width,height)+args,kw) self.add(LinePlot(), name='chart') self.add(String(200,180,'Hello World'), name='title') #set any shapes, fonts, colors you want here. We'll just #set a title font and place the chart within the drawing. #pick colors for all the lines, do as many as you need self.chart.x = 20 self.chart.y = 30 self.chart.width = self.width - 100 self.chart.height = self.height - 75 self.chart.lines[0].strokeColor = colors.blue self.chart.lines[1].strokeColor = colors.green self.chart.lines[2].strokeColor = colors.yellow self.chart.lines[3].strokeColor = colors.red self.chart.lines[4].strokeColor = colors.black self.chart.lines[5].strokeColor = colors.orange self.chart.lines[6].strokeColor = colors.cyan self.chart.lines[7].strokeColor = colors.magenta self.chart.lines[8].strokeColor = colors.brown self.chart.fillColor = colors.white self.title.fontName = 'Times-Roman' self.title.fontSize = 18 self.chart.data = [((0, 50), (100,100), (200,200), (250,210), (300,300), (400,500))] self.chart.xValueAxis.labels.fontSize = 12 self.chart.xValueAxis.forceZero = 0 self.chart.xValueAxis.gridEnd = 115 self.chart.xValueAxis.tickDown = 3 self.chart.xValueAxis.visibleGrid = 1 self.chart.yValueAxis.tickLeft = 3 self.chart.yValueAxis.labels.fontName = 'Times-Roman' self.chart.yValueAxis.labels.fontSize = 12 self.title.x = self.width/2 self.title.y = 0 self.title.textAnchor ='middle' self.add(Legend(),name='Legend') self.Legend.fontName = 'Times-Roman' self.Legend.fontSize = 12 self.Legend.x = self.width self.Legend.y = 85 self.Legend.dxTextSpace = 5 self.Legend.dy = 5 self.Legend.dx = 5 self.Legend.deltay = 5 self.Legend.alignment ='right' self.add(Label(),name='XLabel') self.XLabel.fontName = 'Times-Roman' self.XLabel.fontSize = 12 self.XLabel.x = 85 self.XLabel.y = 5 self.XLabel.textAnchor ='middle' #self.XLabel.height = 20 self.XLabel._text = "" self.add(Label(),name='YLabel') self.YLabel.fontName = 'Times-Roman' self.YLabel.fontSize = 12 self.YLabel.x = 2 self.YLabel.y = 80 self.YLabel.angle = 90 self.YLabel.textAnchor ='middle' self.YLabel._text = "" self.chart.yValueAxis.forceZero = 1 self.chart.xValueAxis.forceZero = 1
Integrating into Django
Now we add a view to our views.py.
from django.http import HttpResponse def linechart(request): #instantiate a drawing object import mycharts d = mycharts.MyLineChartDrawing() #extract the request params of interest. #I suggest having a default for everything. d.height = 300 d.chart.height = 300 d.width = 300 d.chart.width = 300 d.title._text = request.session.get('Some custom title') d.XLabel._text = request.session.get('X Axis Labell') d.YLabel._text = request.session.get('Y Axis Label') d.chart.data = [((1,1), (2,2), (2.5,1), (3,3), (4,5)),((1,2), (2,3), (2.5,2), (3.5,5), (4,6))] labels = ["Label One","Label Two"] if labels: # set colors in the legend d.Legend.colorNamePairs = [] for cnt,label in enumerate(labels): d.Legend.colorNamePairs.append((d.chart.lines[cnt].strokeColor,label)) #get a GIF (or PNG, JPG, or whatever) binaryStuff = d.asString('gif') return HttpResponse(binaryStuff, 'image/gif')
Finally, you need a URL mapping. In this case I have added this:
(r'^charts/line/$', 'myapp.views.linechart'),
Now you can start Django, point your browser at the URL with no arguments, and should see the chart. Then try out a few parameters such as
and watch it redraw.
The above approach will let you drive a chart by generating img tags with all parameters embedded in them. This will also let the world use you as a chart server, so you might want to implement some authentication on the chart requests.
Very often you are plotting data which mostly exists on the server side. In this case it's inefficient to encode it all in a long URL in the HTML then have this posted back to make the chart. For example, if you run an ISP and are plotting server uptime statistics, presumably the URL or parameters would encode the customer and server ID, and you'd look up all the numeric data or that chart in your view code in a database query.
If you cannot always create a sensible chart from the input, it may be a good idea to create an error handler which returns a rectangular drawing with an error message, because this will usually be called inside an <img> tag and the browser won't display any HTML error messages if it was expecting an image.
The author is pretty new to Django and if there are nicer ways to do this I would welcome feedback...
Learning more about the chart library
The available chart types, widgets and properties are covered in the two Diagra manuals on this page. Enjoy!
If you have questions about the charts rather than the Django integration, ask on the reportlab-users list:


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