text:
Altaic Languages
Summary and Keywords
"Altaic" is a common term applied by linguists to a number of language families, spread across Central Asia and the Far East and sharing a large, most likely non-coincidental, number of structural and morphemic similarities. At the onset of Altaic studies, these similarities were ascribed to the one-time existence of an ancestral language—"Proto-Altaic," from which all these families are descended; circumstantial evidence and glottochronological calculations tentatively date this language to some time around the 6th–7th millennium bc, and suggest Southern Siberia or adjacent territories (hence the name "Altaic") as the original homeland of its speakers. However, since the mid-20th century the dominant view in historical linguistics has shifted to that of an "Altaic Sprachbund" (diffusion area), implying that the families in question have not sprung from a common source, but rather have acquired their similarities over a long period of mutual linguistic contact. The bulk of "Altaic" has traditionally included such uncontroversial families as Turkic, Mongolic, and Manchu-Tungusic; additionally, Japanese (Japonic) and Korean are also frequently seen as potential members of the larger Altaic family (the entire five branches are sometimes referred to as "Macro-Altaic").
The debate over the nature of the relationship between the various units that constitute "Altaic," sometimes referred to as "the Altaic controversy," has been one of the most hotly debated topics in 20th-century historical linguistics and a major focal point of studies dealing with the prehistory of Central and East Eurasia. Supporters of "Proto-Altaic," commonly known as "(pro-)Altaicists," claim that only divergence from an original common ancestor can account for the observed regular phonetic correspondences and other structural similarities, whereas "anti-Altaicists," without denying the existence of such similarities, insist that they do not belong to the "core" layers of the respective languages and are therefore better explained as results of lexical borrowing and other forms of areal linguistic contact.
As a rule, "pro-Altaicists" claim that "Proto-Altaic" is as reconstructible by means of the classic comparative method as any uncontroversial linguistic family; in support of this view, they have produced several attempts to assemble large bodies of etymological evidence for the hypothesis, backed by systems of regular phonetic correspondences between compared languages. All of these, however, have been heavily criticized by "anti-Altaicists" for lack of methodological rigor, implausibility of proposed phonetic and/or semantic changes, and confusion of recent borrowings with items allegedly inherited from a common ancestor. Despite the validity of many of these objections, it remains unclear whether they are sufficient to completely discredit the hypothesis of a genetic connection between the various branches of "Altaic," which continues to be actively supported by a small, but stable scholarly minority.
Keywords: comparative linguistics, historical linguistics, Turkic languages, Mongolian languages, Manchu-Tungusic languages, Korean language, Japanese language, Altaic languages, linguistic reconstruction, etymology
1. The Altaic Hypothesis: A Brief Overview
Although there is no single narrow definition of "Altaic" in linguistics, in a broad sense all specialists generally accept it as a blanket term, covering a certain number of language families that are spread across Central Asia and the Far East and share a large, hardly coincidental number of structural and morphemic similarities. Depending on their interpretation of these similarities, linguists speak of either an "Altaic language family" (or "macrofamily"), or of an "Altaic Sprachbund" (diffusion area). The first of these hypotheses surmises the existence of an ancestral language ("Proto-Altaic"), spoken in prehistoric times and eventually giving rise to much of the modern linguistic diversity of the Asian continent. The second, conversely, presumes that such an ancestral language never existed, and that the similarities between modern "Altaic" languages are due to extended periods of linguistic convergence, over which individual words and typological features were traded back and forth between formerly unrelated languages.
The linguistic term "Altaic" is generally assumed to have been introduced in the 1840s by Matthias Alexander Castrén (Georg, Michalove, Manaster Ramer, & Sidwell, 1999: 74), one of the first scholars to apply relatively strict linguistic criteria of comparison to large agglomerations of Siberian and Far Eastern languages, previously grouped together on superficial (sometimes just geographical) grounds into such vague taxa as "Tatar" (Johann von Strahlenberg in the 18th century), "Scythian" (Rask, 1834), or "Turanian" (Müller, 1855). In the understanding of Castrén and several other scholars, "Altaic" included such widespread families as Finno-Ugric, Samoyed, Turkic, Mongolian, and Manchu-Tungusic; this larger unit was later renamed "Ural-Altaic," while "Altaic" was confined to the narrower "core" grouping of Turkic, Mongolian, and Manchu-Tungusic. The term itself implied the existence of an ancestral language, whose original homeland was provisorily identified by early scholars as the region of the Altai Mountains in Central Asia.
Despite the comparatively early appearance of the hypothesis itself, the field of "Altaic linguistics" as a subdiscipline of historical linguistics was not firmly established until the early 20th century, by which time the groundwork for it was laid down both methodologically (with the rise of the Neogrammarian school of historical linguistics) and substantively, with the accumulation of descriptive data on the relevant languages as well as significant research on the comparative grammars and vocabularies of Turkic and Mongolian. The original model of the Altaic theory came into being through the pioneering works of Gustav J. Ramstedt, Nicholas Poppe, Boris Vladimirtsov, Pentti Aalto, and several other scholars; their reconstruction of Proto-Altaic usually focused on establishing regular phonetic correspondences and lexical etymology, but could also include proposals on certain aspects of Altaic morphology, as well as speculations on further connections between Altaic and other language families, such as Uralic, Indo-European, and Dravidian.
The Altaic theory in its "Ramstedt-Poppe" version was seen as the dominant thread in Altaic linguistics until approximately the middle of the 20th century, when it came under heavy criticism from a new generation of scholars, wishing to apply more rigorous criteria to the verification of the hypothesis, particularly in the light of new advances in the fields of areal linguistics and Central Asian philology. Propelled by the works of Gerard Clauson, Gerhard Doerfer, and several other specialists, the opposite viewpoint—namely, that the so-called "Altaic" languages do not satisfy the conditions that are usually demanded from genetically related languages—gradually replaced the idea of "Proto-Altaic" as the mainstream stance on the issue, whereby the general research focus largely shifted from such issues as phonetic correspondences and lexical cognates between the various branches of "Altaic" to the issue of detecting lexical borrowings and typological structural parallels that may have arisen over several millennia of language contact.
Nevertheless, the idea of "Altaic" as a genetic unity whose ancestral state can still be partially reconstructed by properly applying the classic historical-comparative method was far from dead, and the late 20th and early 21st century have seen some major revisions of the old "Ramstedt-Poppe" model. Of these revisions, arguably the most well-known and the most thorough has been that of the so-called "Moscow School" of historical linguistics; taking into consideration the numerous criticisms of Clauson, Doerfer, and others, Russian scholars have offered more complex solutions to some of the old problems, which require carefully filtering between secondary (areal) similarities and true historical cognates. This newly improved methodology was employed to produce the single largest corpus of Altaic etymologies since the early days of Ramstedt and Poppe (Etymological Dictionary of the Altaic Languages [EDAL] by Sergei Starostin, Anna Dybo, and Oleg Mudrak). Despite this, general reception of the dictionary was largely skeptical, since, in the opinion of many specialists, the new model was beset with even more methodological problems and errors of judgment than the old one. A detailed attempt by Martine Robbeets to filter out the unconvincing etymologies of EDAL and reduce the superfluous evidence to a core set of several hundred phonetically and semantically robust etymologies (Robbeets, 2005) has been positively evaluated by some scholars (e.g., Bernard Comrie), but did little to shatter anti-Altaicist incredulity; today, the understanding of "Altaic" as a purely areal term continues to be more widespread than its genetic interpretation (although in 2010 Johanson & Robbeets, in order to avoid confusion, proposed a new term, "Transeurasian," to refer to the same language families without surmising a necessary genetic relationship between any of them).
The "Altaic debate" between the relative minority of "pro-Altaicisists" and majority of "anti-Altaicists" has become one of the most controversial issues of modern historical linguistics, since its resolution has significant implications for the understanding of the prehistory of some of the world's most widely spoken and popular languages. Different positions on the problem of Altaic may also reflect different views on the general methodology of comparative linguistics, especially when applied to language families whose genetic and/or areal relations go back so deep in time that conventional methods can no longer be employed without substantial reservations; it may be argued that the entire field of macro-comparative linguistics, to an extent, depends on future progress in the resolution of the Altaic controversy to provide the necessary theoretical and methodological pointers.
2. Internal Structure of Altaic
In the original understanding of M. A. Castrén and several other scholars, "Altaic" was a huge linguistic grouping, spread across most of the Asian continent and including at least five different branches: Fenno-Ugric, Samoyed, Turkic, Mongolian, and Manchu-Tungusic. This grouping was soon renamed "Ural-Altaic," implying that Fenno-Ugric and Samoyed (Uralic) were much closer related to each other than to any of the three other branches, and by the early 20th century, only the "Altaic" core of Turkic, Mongolian, and Manchu-Tungusic was seen as a proper working hypothesis, with scholars like Ramstedt and Poppe dedicating their efforts to establishing regular correspondences between these three families while remaining largely agnostic about the idea of a larger "Ural-Altaic."
Already in the 19th century some scholars have argued (largely on typological than truly historical grounds) that such language isolates (in reality—small language groups or "macro-languages") as Korean and Japanese might also be related to the rest of "Altaic." The Korean connection, in particular, was explored in depth by Gustav Ramstedt (1949–1953), who first tried to link Korean to Turkic, Mongolian, and Manchu-Tungusic through regular phonetic correspondences and etymological cognate sets. The possible connection with Japanese was first explored in detail in the works of Roy Andrew Miller (1971) and later supported by Sergei Starostin (1991) on the basis of lexicostatistical and etymological argumentation.
On the whole, there are relatively few points of general consensus between past and present supporters of the Altaic hypothesis on the constituency and especially on the internal classification of this family. Any model of Altaic must necessarily involve a "core" of Turkic, Mongolian, and Manchu-Tungusic ("Micro-Altaic," "Narrow Altaic," "core Altaic," or simply "Altaic" as such). Expanded models that add Korean and, less frequently, Japanese are sometimes called "Macro-Altaic" to avoid confusion, although the Moscow school (Sergei Starostin, Anna Dybo, etc.) rarely uses this term, preferring to apply the original nomination of "Altaic" in all cases.
Attempts at including other potential constituents within "Altaic" have been rather few. The Uralic family is today regarded as either completely unrelated to Altaic or related to it on a higher level ("Ural-Altaic" or "Nostratic"). In an old classification model by John Street (1962), Japanese and Korean are seen as a separate "sister" family of Altaic proper, to which Street also assigned the isolated Ainu language; however, the relationship with Ainu was not further supported by any significant proponents of "Macro-Altaic."
To some extent, Street's model would later be adopted by Joseph Greenberg (2000), who, in his survey of deep-level genetic relations between the languages of Eurasia, declared "Micro-Altaic" (Turkic/Mongolian/Manchu-Tungusic) and Japanese-Korean-Ainu as two distantly related branches of a large "Eurasiatic" macrofamily. It should be noted that the Altaic hypothesis is frequently discussed and evaluated in larger contexts, such as Greenberg's "Eurasiatic," or the similar, but earlier and more substantial "Nostratic" hypothesis of Vladislav Illich-Svitych and Aharon Dolgopolsky (see, e.g., Dolgopolsky, 1998), according to which Altaic itself forms a single branch of a much larger taxon that also includes Indo-European, Uralic, Dravidian, Kartvelian, and Afro-Asiatic. Although "Nostratic"/"Eurasiatic" is an even more controversial hypothesis than "Altaic," some linguists actually regard it as more promising, e.g. Sergei Yakhontov, who has argued, based on a uniform comparison of lexical and grammatical evidence, that the various branches of "Micro-Altaic" should all be included into "Nostratic" independently of each other.
Arguably the most thoroughly elaborated (though not necessarily the most popular) model of "Altaic" in existence today is that of the Moscow school of comparative linguistics, as put together by Sergei Starostin in the late 1980s and finalized in EDAL by Starostin, Anna Dybo, and Oleg Mudrak. This model includes all five potential branches (Turkic, Mongolian, Manchu-Tungusic, Korean, and Japanese) and, on the basis of lexicostatistical and glottochronological calculations, offers the following scenario:
(1) the original split of Proto-Altaic is dated to approximately the end of the 6th millennium bc, with an initial separation into a "Western" (Turco-Mongolian) and an "Eastern" branch (Koreo-Japanese). The intermediate position of Manchu-Tungusic remains unclear, since the numbers of distinctive isoglosses that it shares with both the Western and the Eastern branches are comparable;
(2) the bifurcation of both Turco-Mongolian and Koreo-Japanese must have taken place somewhere around the 4th millennium bc. This means that all five constituents of Altaic already formed separate linguistic entities as early as six thousand years ago, making the hypothetical protolanguage very difficult to reconstruct as compared to such younger (and commonly accepted) linguistic families of Eurasia as Indo-European, Uralic, or Dravidian.
Some linguists that generally reject the Altaic hypothesis remain sympathetic towards parts of the hypothesis; for instance, J. Marshall Unger (1990) has published on "Macro-Tungusic," a hypothetical Far Eastern family consisting of Korean, Japanese, and Manchu-Tungusic, while at the same time refusing to admit a further connection with Turkic and Mongolian. However, such opinions are quite rare next to the vast majority of scholars who either support "Altaic" as a whole (or at least the "Micro-Altaic" tripartite model of Turkic, Mongolian, and Manchu-Tungusic) or completely reject the idea that a genetic link between any two of its potential branches has been proven or may be proven with definitive evidence.
3. General Characteristics of "Proto-Altaic"
Most proponents of the Altaic hypothesis generally agree that Proto-Altaic, if it ever existed, must have disintegrated at a relatively early date, i.e. that Proto-Altaic is significantly older than the majority of non-controversial protolanguages, such as Proto-Indo-European or Proto-Uralic; depending on methodology and/or personal intuition, this date of disintegration may be pushed back anywhere from 6000 bc to 8000 bc or even earlier. At the same time, rigorous reconstruction of Proto-Altaic is significantly hindered by lack of early documented sources (the earliest written monuments for "Macro-Altaic" are Turkic inscriptions from the 8th century and Old Japanese texts from around the same time) and by the fact that most of the branches of Altaic themselves began to disintegrate not earlier than 2,000 years ago—implying a temporal gap of no less than 6,000 years between the reconstructed Proto-Turkic, Proto-Mongolian, Proto-Manchu-Tungusic, etc., and their hypothetical common ancestor.
As a direct result of this situation, most Altaicists, past or present, significantly differ in their opinions on both the structural properties and the phonemic, morphemic, and lexical inventory of Proto-Altaic. Outside of a very small core of "fundamental" Altaic etymologies, most of them proposed already in the pioneering studies of Ramstedt and Poppe, and an equally small list of generally trivial phonetic correspondences between directly matching phonetic segments (such as Proto-Altaic *k = Proto-Turkic *k, Proto-Mongolian *k, Proto-Manchu-Tungusic *k, etc.), there are few elements of Proto-Altaic reconstruction over which a complete consensus would exist in "pro-Altaic" circles: evidence adduced by one researcher is easily criticized by another due to such methodological issues as insufficient rigor in establishing regular phonetic correspondences or questionable semantic matching.
Arguably the most well-known, "classic" model of Altaic is still the one represented in the works of G. Ramstedt and N. Poppe: the early-to-mid-20th century idea of Altaic, as it was envisioned by these two scholars, was supported by their unquestionable authority as major specialists in the languages of Central and East Asia. Later, that model was most significantly revised in the works of Soviet/Russian scholars—beginning with V. M. Illich-Svitych in the 1960s and ending with a group of linguists representing the "Moscow school" of historical linguistics under the leadership of Sergei Starostin; the phonology and lexicology of Proto-Altaic as presented in their Etymological Dictionary of the Altaic Languages (2005) represents such a radical departure from the old Ramstedt/Poppe model that the two should be discussed back-to-back for a better comparative perspective.
4. Comparative Altaic Phonology
As a rule, the phonological systems of present day Altaic languages are not very complicated: according to the World Atlas of Linguistic Structures, their consonantal inventories range from "average" to "moderately small," while vowel quality inventories tend to be either "average" or "large," the latter being a direct consequence of complex rules of vowel harmony that operate in most continental Altaic languages and produce additional sets of vocalic sounds which frequently obtain phonemic status. The phonological proto-system that Ramstedt and Poppe had suggested for their common ancestor also reflected these typological features.
Regarding consonants, Poppe (1965), largely following Ramstedt, reconstructed a typologically plausible system of 18 original consonants that consisted of four voiceless stops (*p, *t, *č, *k), their voiced (*b, *d, *ǯ, *g) and nasal (*m, *n, *ɲ, *ŋ) correlates, one fricative (*s), one palatal glide (*j), and two pairs of resonants (*l1, *l2, *r1, *r2). Some of the most important sound shifts that were assumed to have taken place between the disintegration of Proto-Altaic and the beginning of disintegration of its three major branches included:
—the lenition of *p to *h in Proto-Mongolian and its complete disappearance in Proto-Turkic (the so-called "Ramstedt-Pelliot law"), e.g. Proto-Altaic *pal/i/ŋa "palm (of hand)" → Turkic *āja, Mongolian *haliɣa, but Manchu-Tungusic *paliŋa;
—the merger of Proto-Altaic *d, *ǯ, and *y into a single palatal glide *j in Proto-Turkic, e.g. Proto-Altaic *dēl "mane" → Mongolian *del-, Manchu-Tungusic *del-, but Turkic *jēl;
—the merger of Proto-Altaic *l1 and *l2 → *l, *r1, *r2 → *r in Mongolian, Manchu-Tungusic, and Chuvash (the earliest divergent branch of Common Turkic) as opposed to the preservation of their phonemic identity in Narrow Turkic (without Chuvash), where the first element of each pair is preserved as a resonant (*l, *r), while the second becomes a post-alveolar fricative (*š, *ž).
The last of these hypotheses has become a major point of controversy in itself, being directly related to the long-running dispute in comparative Turkology between supporters of the "rhotacism" hypothesis (which supports the reconstruction of *š, *ž on the Proto-Turkic level, with subsequent development to *l, *r in Chuvash) and the "zetacism" hypothesis (which seeks to reconstruct these phonemes as an additional pair of resonants, e.g. *ly, *ry, preserved as resonants in Chuvash, but shifting to fricative articulation in the rest of Turkic).
Analysis of the Turkic data in the light of the Altaic theory seems to favor the "zetacism" hypothesis: cf. the difference between such forms as Mongolian *doluɣa-, Manchu-Tungusic *dala-, Turkic *jālga- (Chuvash śula-) "to lick," reflecting Proto-Altaic *l1, and Mongolian *dal-da "hidden," Manchu-Tungusic *dali- "to cover, hide," Turkic *jaly- (or *jaš-) "to close," reflecting Proto-Altaic *l2. There are, however, some well-known examples of "zetacists" with a strong anti-Altaic stance, e.g. Gerhard Doerfer (1984), who points out that the resolution of this debate has no direct bearing on the Altaic hypothesis; among other things, the increase of phonetic similarity between the reconstructed Turkic and Mongolian forms can also be interpreted as an argument in favor of mutual borrowing between these two families.
In later works, this reconstruction has been altered in numerous details. The most significant change concerned the system of stops: following upon an original idea by V. M. Illich-Svitych, the "Moscow school" has argued in favor of a triple, rather than binary, opposition in the stop system, reconstructing Proto-Altaic *p, *ph, *b; *t, *th, *d, etc. This was largely due to a revision of the traditional reconstruction of Proto-Turkic: as a rule, researchers would not acknowledge the archaic nature of the phonological opposition between word-initial voiced and voiceless consonants, despite such an opposition actually existing in some of the attested Turkic languages (Oghuz branch and some others). Although Illich-Svitych's proposal to reconstruct *d- and *g- as separate Proto-Turkic phonemes remains controversial among Turkologists, it has been generally endorsed by Altaicists, who claim that it is well supported by external (Mongolian and Mancu-Tungusic) data.
The vocalic system of Proto-Altaic was reconstructed by Poppe as consisting of nine short vowels and their long correlates, best preserved in Proto-Turkic and heavily simplified in Mongolian and Manchu-Tungusic. Assuming that progressive vowel harmony, by which vowels of the second syllable partially assimilate to those of the first one, operated already on the level of Proto-Altaic, Poppe did not specifically concern himself with reconstructing vocalic oppositions in the second syllable, even though many nominal and verbal stems in Mongolian and Manchu-Tungusic have a bisyllabic structure.
Poppe's vocalic inventory was to some extent preserved in the "Moscow School" version of Altaic, although some of the vowels were reinterpreted as diphthongs: the resulting system consists of five basic vowels (*a, *e, *i, *o, *u) and three diphthongs (*i̭a, *i̭o, *i̭u). The most important difference is that most Altaic roots in this version of the hypothesis are reconstructed as bisyllabic CVCV-type stems where the second V can be any of the five basic vowels, but not a diphthong, thus *aga "rain," *biju "to be," *dilo "year," etc. The complexity of vocalic correspondences between different branches is explained by the assumption that vocalism of the first syllable is regularly "colored" by the vocalism of the second one during the transition from Proto-Altaic to its daughter languages; however, in a radical departure from previous models of analysis, systematic vowel harmony as such is not projected onto Proto-Altaic itself. Rather, it is assumed that vowel harmony arose in Proto-Turkic, Proto-Mongolian, etc., independently as part of a global areal tendency that operated in the "Altaic region."
An attempt to reconstruct certain prosodic features of Proto-Altaic was first undertaken by researchers of the "Moscow school," primarily Sergei Starostin, who, in his investigation of the Macro-Altaic hypothesis, suggested a complex system of regular correspondences between vowel quality in Proto-Turkic and Proto-Manchu-Tungusic, on one hand, and pitch accent (tones) in Korean and Japanese, on the other hand. Based on this research, the authors of EDAL reconstruct Proto-Altaic as a language with pitch accent, where each syllable could be characterized by either a high or a low tone, and phonologically relevant vowel length. However, this is the only aspect of Proto-Altaic reconstruction which crucially depends on the acceptance of "Macro-Altaic" rather than the traditional "Micro-Altaic" hypothesis, and is therefore viewed with suspicion by the majority of Altaicists outside the "Moscow school."
5. Comparative Altaic Grammar
The main emphasis in Altaic studies has usually been on comparative phonetics and lexicon rather than on grammar. Anti-Altaicists usually criticize this as a major flaw of the theory (see below), but from a pro-Altaicist perspective, the two most likely reasons for this are the comparatively old "age" assumed for Proto-Altaic, hindering the reconstruction of paradigmatic evidence; and the fact that Altaic languages are typically agglutinative, allowing for long strings of productive grammatical suffixes that rarely fuse with the root and are on the whole relatively unstable in historical terms—many grammatical morphemes in modern Altaic languages can be reliably traced back to formerly autonomous auxiliary words that must have undergone grammaticalization at relatively late dates.
Nevertheless, some research has been carried out over the years on possible connections between grammatical morphemes that are reconstructible for Proto-Turkic, Proto-Mongolian, etc. and are not easily traced back to independent words, suggesting the possibility of being inherited directly from a Common Altaic state. For instance, following up on elements of research by such Altaicists as Nicholas Poppe, Karl Menges, and Murayama Sichiro, the authors of EDAL summarize earlier proposals and add their own ones on several such connections in the area of nominal declension, e.g. a possible plural suffix *-th- (→ Turkic *-t, Mongolian -d, Manchu-Tungusic *-ta/n/~ *-te/n/, Japanese *ta-ti, Korean -tɨ-r), a possible genitive marker in *-ɲV (→ Old Turkic -ŋ, Mongolian *-n, Manchu-Tungusic *-ŋi, Old Japanese -no, Middle Korean -ɲ), a dative/locative marker in *-du ~ *-da (→ Old Turkic locative/ablative ‑ta ~ -da ~ -te ~ -de, Mongolian dative/locative -da, Manchu-Tungusic dative *-du, locative *-dā) and several other short morphemes that could have functioned as postpositions or case endings in Proto-Altaic.
For verbal affixes, no such list has been proposed in EDAL, but this situation has been largely remedied in a string of publications by Martine Robbeets, culminating in a summarizing monograph (Robbeets, 2015) in which the author claims to have identified no fewer than 19 common auxiliary verbal morphemes of Altaic ("Transeurasian") heritage, relatively well preserved in daughter branches and showing signs of an original paradigmatic organization. Among these is the negative auxiliary verb *ana-, the denominal verb suffix *-lA-, the causative marker *-ti-, the reflexive-anticausative marker *-pU-, the fientive marker *-dA-, and several other morphemes denoting aspect, valency, and derivation.
One of the strongest arguments in favor of Altaic has been generally recognized as the extreme similarity of the pronominal systems in its main branches (although there have also been attempts on the part of anti-Altaicists to suggest alternate explanations through borrowing and diffusion): cf. Proto-Turkic *bẹ (genitive stem *me-n) "I" = Proto-Mongolian *bi (genitive *mi-n) "I" = Proto-Manchu-Tungusic *bi "I"; Proto-Turkic *sẹ (genitive stem *se-n) "you (sg.)" = Proto-Mongolian *či (genitive *či-n) "you" = Proto-Manchu-Tungusic *si "you." In EDAL, the corresponding protoforms are reconstructed as Proto-Altaic *bi "I" and *si "you." Other pronominal stems suggested for Proto-Altaic in the same source on the basis of evidence from at least three branches are the demonstrative stems *ko "this," *tha "that," *i and *o "this, that" and the interrogative stems *kha "who," *ŋ(i̭)V "what."
No special attempts at reconstructing any of the aspects of Proto-Altaic syntax have been undertaken so far, although from a purely typological perspective, it may be suggested that Proto-Altaic had Subject—Object—Verb word order, since this is the pattern that is most commonly featured in modern and historically attested Altaic languages.
6. Basic and Cultural Lexicon of Altaic
According to lexicostatistical calculations performed by "Moscow school" Altaicists, all subbranches of "Macro-Altaic," as represented by their reconstructed proto-languages, share at least 20% common etymological matches on the so-called Swadesh list (100 items pertaining to the most stable sphere of the basic lexicon). Although the Altaic hypothesis has been sometimes criticized for failing to produce enough material that would be reconstructible for the basic lexicon layer of Proto-Altaic (see next section), already the "classic" works of Ramstedt, Poppe, and others contain enough comparanda to populate a representative list, and the etymological corpus has been significantly enlarged in EDAL.
Some examples of basic lexical items that the authors of EDAL reconstruct for Proto-Altaic with evidence from at least three out of five branches include: (a) body parts: *ni̭ā "eye," *khi̭oŋa "nose," *khila "hair," *mōjno "neck," *palga "foot," *čhajǯV "breast," *phejɲe "bone"; (b) natural objects: *phi̭olo "star," *mi̭ūri "water," *ti̭ōĺi "stone," *khāpha "tree bark," *li̭apha "leaf"; (c) adjectives, including color terms: *khi̭obarV "dry," *zejna "new," *si̭ājri "white," *karu "black," *puli "red"; (d) verbs: *ǯē "to eat," *ŋēni "to go," *ŋūju "to sleep," *deka "to burn." There is also a rather large number of binary basic isoglosses between Turkic and Mongolian, on one hand, and between Korean and Japanese, on the other, leading the authors to suggest that these pairs may have shared intermediate common ancestors (Proto-Turko-Mongolian and Proto-Japanese-Korean) that introduced lexical innovations of their own before disintegrating further.
The authors of EDAL go as far as to reconstruct a complete system of numerals from 1 to 10 for Proto-Altaic (*bi̭uri "1," *ti̭ubu "2," *ŋi̭u "3," *tōj- "4," *thu "5," *ɲu "6," *nadi "7," *ǯa "8," *khegVnV "9," *či̭obe "10"), although the last three items are represented exclusively by matches between Manchu-Tungusic and Japanese and may be considered later areal isoglosses.
A huge number of "culture-specific" etymologies have also been amassed in the field of comparative Altaic lexicology. According to an analytical study by Anna Dybo (2013), the Proto-Altaic landscape was represented by numerous terms denoting various types of "hills," "low mountains," "slopes," "rocks," "ravines," "valleys," "rivers," "sandbanks," "currents," "islets," etc.; it is much more difficult to suggest credible matches for terms having to do with desert or seaside landscapes. Flora and fauna terminology are, along with various not particularly diagnostic terms, represented by such words as "cedar," "pine tree," "ash tree," "juniper," "deer," "elk," "badger," "sable," "hare," "wolverine," all of which could indicate a possible homeland somewhere in Southeast Siberia (in a taiga-like environment).
The lexical corpus reconstructed in EDAL contains a large number of terms that refer to hunting and fishing activities ("to hunt," "to lie in ambush," various terms for dogs, bows, arrows, etc.), which would be consistent with the supposed taiga habitat. More controversial are terms that could be semantically interpreted as referring to elements of agriculture and herding, such as "to cultivate/earth," "grain," several terms denoting cereals, "to graze," "cow," "small cattle," "horse," and even "harness" and "bridle": they seem poorly compatible with the hypothesis of a Proto-Altaic unity around the 6th millennium bc. Alternately, from a pro-Altaicist perspective some of these matches could be explained as traces of areal "Wanderwörter" that spread across at a later date, confused with inherited terms, or, alternately, as terms that independently acquired new "cultural" meanings in daughter languages after the disintegration of Proto-Altaic (for instance, names used for wild cereals could be carried over to their domesticated equivalents).
7. Criticism of the Altaic Hypothesis
Despite the best efforts of supporters of the Altaic hypothesis, ever since the first significant increase of "anti-Altaicist" publications in the middle of the 20th century it has steadily remained out of favor with "mainstream" comparative-historical linguistics. One important reason for this is that the methodology employed by Altaicists often finds itself at odds with methods favored by "narrow" specialists, working on the history of any particular hypothetical member of "Altaic" (Turkologists, Mongolists, Koreanists, etc.). For instance, a Turkologist working exclusively on Turkic languages will offer a solution that will seem best compatible with the corpus of Turkic data, whereas an Altaicist is likely to offer an alternate solution that may not be optimal in an exclusively Turkic context, but will seem more reasonable when viewing Turkic as a descendant of Proto-Altaic; a transparent example of such a conflict has been described above, in the section on Comparative Altaic Phonology ("zetacism" vs. "rhotacism").
The principal objections against Altaic have been summarized in numerous publications, the most important of them voiced by such notable scholars as G. Clauson, G. Doerfer, D. Sinor, A. Vovin, S. Georg, and several others. However, since they apply in different degrees to different models of Altaic, it is usually necessary to indicate which particular model of "Altaic" (the original 18th–19th-century studies, the "classic" Ramstedt/Poppe version of the theory, the "Moscow School" model, or something else) suffers the most from these criticisms, which may themselves be grouped into six types:
(1) Criticism on typological grounds. Since languages from different branches of "Altaic" share numerous typological similarities on many levels (word order, agglutinative morphology, root and stem structure, vowel harmony, etc.), such similarities in themselves, especially in the early days of the "Ural-Altaic" hypothesis, seemed to suggest the possibility that these languages might have descended from a single common ancestor, from whom they had inherited all these features. However, modern historical linguistics explicitly rejects hypotheses of genetic relationship based on typological grounds, since it has been established that, given even a relatively small time interval, typological features can easily spread across unrelated languages in a state of intense linguistic contact.
On the other hand, it should be noted that neither the Ramstedt/Poppe model nor any later variation on the Altaic theory relies on typological considerations as evidence in favor of Altaic (the "Moscow School" model even goes as far as to reject vowel harmony in Proto-Altaic altogether, claiming that it must have arisen independently after the original split), relying instead on comparisons of actual lexical and grammatical morphemes. The idea that "Altaic" is still being promoted and defended on typological grounds today is a relatively common misunderstanding, widespread among non-specialists rather than serious "anti-Altaicists."
(2) Criticism on basic lexicon grounds. Going back to the works of G. Clauson, this argument against Altaic states that, despite the seeming wealth of etymological comparanda, very few convincing parallels are found in the lexical layer that is particularly important for proving genetic relationship, namely, the basic lexicon. As pointed out by Clauson, basic lexicon parallels found in the "Ramstedt/Poppe model" of Altaic are not only few in number on the whole, but also tend to be weakened by irregular phonetic correspondences. Numerous similarities between, e.g., Turkic and Mongolian languages in their "cultural" layers, contrasted with the relative paucity and poor quality of such comparanda as body part terms, basic landscape terms, and other items on the Swadesh list, should rather be interpreted as a result of areal convergence than descent from a common ancestor.
This line of criticism was directly tackled by linguists of the "Moscow school," where lexicostatistical quantification of evidence is viewed as exceptionally important for convincingly demonstrating genetic relationship. Once the system of phonetic correspondences was revised and a new etymological corpus was created, the authors of EDAL claimed to have shown that, contrary to the objections of Clauson and other "anti-Altaicists," the percentage of basic lexicon matches between the five branches of "Macro-Altaic" was actually quite high (cf. some examples of reconstructions listed above). However, these new matches were, in their turn, criticized by a new generation of "anti-Altaicists" for much the same reasons as the old ones (primarily the uncertainty of phonetic correspondences used to justify the etymologies).
(3) Criticism on phonetic grounds. As a rule, "pro-Altaicists" claim that they work in the Neogrammarian pattern, searching for rigorous sound correspondences between compared items to prove the non-accidental nature of the links between them; tables of such correspondences are always adduced in major monographs on the Altaic hypothesis. Nevertheless, most models of Proto-Altaic phonology have been regularly criticized for numerous flaws, such as incompleteness of the proposed systems, typologically dubious solutions, unconditioned splits of reflexation in daughter languages, and frequent violations of the suggested phonetic laws, overlooked by Altaicists in order to maximize the numbers of etymological cognates between the various branches of Altaic.
(4) Criticism on grammatical grounds. Defenders of the Altaic theory often hold differing views on the grammatical properties of Proto-Altaic, but nobody has succeeded so far in reconstructing a credible paradigm of nominal declension or verbal conjugation that would be comparable, for instance, with the success achieved in the reconstruction of such paradigms on the level of such uncontroversial families as Proto-Indo-European, nor has a complete working model of the system of morphemes that were used for nominal and verbal derivation been proposed (EDAL has a large list of short derivational suffixes postulated for Proto-Altaic, but their alleged functions remain mostly unclear). This is seen as a particularly serious flaw by those linguists who regard grammatical evidence and grammatical reconstruction as evidence of the highest order for proving a hypothesis of genetic relationship.
(5) Criticism on areal grounds. Arguably the most commonly voiced objection against the Altaic theory is its inability to convincingly distinguish between inherited linguistic elements and similarities that may have had an areal origin. It is a well-known historical fact that many of the alleged daughter branches of Altaic were heavily influenced by one another over the past 2,000 years: cases of particularly intense linguistic contact involve numerous Turkic borrowings into Mongolian and vice versa (beginning in the 13th century), numerous Mongolian borrowings into Manchu (and, through Manchu, into the other Tungusic languages), and, in the context of "Macro-Altaic," a significant influence of Korean language on Japanese in the middle of the 1st millennium ad. Since the phonetic systems of the concerned languages are typologically similar, many of the "Altaic" etymologies proposed in the original "Ramstedt/Poppe model" have indeed been discredited as erroneous projections of late-period contacts onto a much deeper level of language relationship.
In more recent versions of the Altaic theory, such as the "Moscow school" version presented in EDAL, a special set of filters has been introduced to distinguish recent borrowings from ancient cognates, based primarily on setting up different systems of correspondences for borrowings and inherited lexicon (for instance, Proto-Mongolian *h- corresponds to Proto-Manchu-Tungusic *p- in inherited Proto-Altaic etyma, but to Manchu-Tungusic word-initial zero in etyma that were borrowed from Mongolian already after the loss of *h- in Northern Mongolian dialects after the 14th century, etc.). However, while such filters may indeed be useful to stratify chronologically different lexical layers in the compared languages, they do not disprove the possibility that the allegedly "inherited" terms may simply represent earlier cases of borrowing that took place between the ancestors of Turkic, Mongolian, Manchu-Tungusic, and other "Altaic" languages in early history or even in prehistoric times.
(6) Criticism on grounds of general methodology. Supporters of the Altaic theory are often criticized for being over-permissive and subjective in their approach to data, usually choosing a "pro-Altaic" solution in cases when the evidence is really ambiguous. In return, "pro-Altaicists" frequently accuse their opponents of a "splitter" approach, in which genetic relationship of two or more linguistic units is only considered acceptable once all other options (such as accidental similarities and/or areal contact) have been disproved beyond the smallest degree of doubt—something that is barely possible when dealing with time depths on a scale of more than five or six millennia.
On the whole, Altaic linguistics is rich with open debate, triggered by each new significant publication in the field. Despite the fact that more than half a century of detailed discussions on the issue have not resulted in any form of scientific consensus, such discussions are generally acknowledged to be of great theoretical and methodological importance, as they lead to new insights on the capacities and limitations of the comparative method in recovering elements of human linguistic prehistory that predate relatively "easily" reconstructible proto-languages (such as Proto-Indo-European or Proto-Semitic). In their turn, any new breakthroughs in the methodology of comparative linguistics, including such areas as quantitative methods, diachronic semantics, typology of phonetic change, etc., will be of the utmost importance to the resolution of the ongoing "Altaic controversy."
8. Critical Analysis of Scholarship
Available literature on the Altaic problem is not only extremely vast (not to mention scholarly works on the various branches of Altaic, which are even more numerous), but also tends to be highly subjective, usually written from a strongly expressed "pro-Altaic" or "anti-Altaic" perspective, so that making specific recommendations for getting an objective picture and keeping up to date with the latest progress in Altaic linguistics is not an easy task. Here we list only a very small selection of available works, focusing on either "landmark" publications or general studies with large bibliographies, from which the reader may proceed to more specialized publications if necessary.
For a general overview of the various "Micro-Altaic" languages and their respective philological traditions, De Rachewiltz and Rybatzki (2010) may serve as a good entry point. A brief history and summarization of the Altaic hypothesis may be found in two short, but highly informative papers that, in a rare occasion, try to maintain a neutral, objective stance: Vovin (1999) and Georg et al. (1999).
The classic "Poppe / Ramstedt model" of Altaic which still remains more popular among certain Altaicists than the newer "Moscow school" model is, of course, best described in the works of Nicholas Poppe and Gustav Ramstedt themselves, most accessibly in Poppe (1965). Less than a decade after the publication of that work, Altaic was integrated with Japanese evidence in Miller (1971), still arguably the most significant English-language study on the possible Altaic origins of that language. Various criticisms of this model are scattered through the works of Gerard Clauson, Gerhard Doerfer, and other scholars; among other works, the essays collected in Sinor (1990) provide some good insights into the nature of these criticisms.
Since the early 1990s, a series of new important studies on the Altaic problem have been written by scholars belonging to the so-called Moscow school of comparative linguistics, most importantly, Sergei Starostin, Anna Dybo, and Oleg Mudrak. Many of these studies are in Russian, but their culminating effort—"Etymological Dictionary of the Altaic Languages" (EDAL), written by all three authors—is easily available in English and may serve as a representative indicator of the current state of affairs in Altaic etymology. However, it should not be taken at face value, and is best consulted along with critical works written from both a "pro-Altaicist" perspective (e.g., Robbeets, 2005) and an "anti-Altaicist" one. Concerning the latter, a good summarizing example of contemporary thought on the Altaic problem is a comparison of Vovin (2005) (detailed, multi-faceted criticism of EDAL from all possible points of view) and Dybo and Starostin (2008) (an equally detailed reply to all of Vovin's points).
Links to Digital Materials
The Tower of Babel: Includes a full searchable version of "Etymological Dictionary of the Altaic Languages," as well as a collection of freely accessible publications on Altaic linguistics.
Monumenta Altaica: A large number of textual resources on Altaic linguistics.
Further Reading
Benzing, Johannes. (1953). Einführung in das Studium der altaischen Philologie und der Turkologie. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.Find this resource:
De Rachewiltz, I., & Rybatzki, V. (2010). Introduction to Altaic philology. Turkic, Mongolian, Manchu. Leiden, The Netherlands, and Boston: Brill.Find this resource:
Dolgopolsky, Aharon. (1998). The nostratic macrofamily and linguistic palaeontology. Oxford: The McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.Find this resource:
Georg, S., Michalove, P. A., Manaster Ramer, A., & Sidwell, P. (1999). Telling general linguists about Altaic. Journal of Linguistics, 35, 65–98.Find this resource:
Menges, Karl H. (1995). The Turkic languages and peoples. An introduction to Turkic Studies (2nd, rev. ed.). Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.Find this resource:
Miller, Roy Andrew. (1996). Languages and history: Japanese, Korean, and Altaic. Bangkok: White Orchid Press.Find this resource:
Poppe, N. (1965). Introduction to Altaic linguistics. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.Find this resource:
Robbeets, Martine. (2005). Is Japanese related to Korean, Tungusic, Mongolic and Turkic? Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.Find this resource:
Robbeets, Martine, & Bisang, Walter. (Eds.). (2014). Paradigm change. The Transeurasian languages and beyond. (Studies in Language Companion Series 161.) Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Find this resource:
Robbeets, Martine, & Cuyckens, Hubert. (Eds.). (2013). Shared grammaticalization. With special focus on the Transeurasian languages. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Find this resource:
Sinor, Denis. (1990). Essays in comparative Altaic linguistics. Bloomington: Indiana University.Find this resource:
Vovin, Alexander. (2001). North East Asian historical-comparative linguistics on the threshold of the third millennium. Diachronica, 18(1), 93–137.Find this resource:
De Rachewiltz, I., & Rybatzki, V. (2010). Introduction to Altaic philology. Turkic, Mongolian, Manchu. Leiden, The Netherlands, and Boston: Brill.Find this resource:
Doerfer, G. (1984). The problem of rhotacism/zetacism. Central Asiatic Journal, 28, 36–42.Find this resource:
Dybo, A. (2013). Language and archeology: Some methodological problems. 1. Indo-European and Altaic landscapes. Journal of Language Relationship, 9, 69–92.Find this resource:
Dybo, A., & Starostin, G. (2008). In defense of the comparative method, or the end of the Vovin Controversy. Aspekty komparativistiki 3 (pp. 119–258). Moscow: RSUH Publishers.Find this resource:
Georg, S., Michalove, P. A., Manaster Ramer, A., & Sidwell, P. (1999). Telling general linguists about Altaic. Journal of Linguistics, 35, 65–98.Find this resource:
Greenberg, Joseph. (2000). Indo-European and its closest relatives: The Eurasiatic language family. 1: Grammar. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Find this resource:
Johanson, L., & Robbeets, M. (Eds.). (2010). Transeurasian verbal morphology in a comparative perspective: Genealogy, contact, chance. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.Find this resource:
Miller, R. A. (1971). Japanese and the other Altaic languages. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.Find this resource:
Müller, Max. (1855). The Languages of the Seat of War in the East. With a Survey of the Three Families of language, Semitic, Arian, and Turanian. London: Williams and Norgate.Find this resource:
Poppe, N. (1965). Introduction to Altaic linguistics. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.Find this resource:
Ramstedt, G. J. (1949–1953). Studies in Korean etymology. 2 vols. Helsinki: Suomalais-ugrilainen Seura.Find this resource:
Rask, Rasmus K. (1834). Afhandling om den finniske Sprogklasse. In R. K. Rask (Ed.), Samledetildels forhen utrykte afhandlinger af R. K. Rask 1 (pp. 1–46). Copenhagen: Det Poppske Bogtrykkeri.Find this resource:
Robbeets, M. (2005). Is Japanese Related to Korean, Tungusic, Mongolic and Turkic? Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.Find this resource:
Robbeets, M. (2015). Diachrony of verb morphology: Japanese and the Transeurasian Languages. Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter.Find this resource:
Sinor, D. (1990). Essays in comparative Altaic linguistics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Find this resource:
Starostin, S. (1991). Altaiskaja problema i proiskhozhdenije japonskogo jazyka (The Altaic problem and the origins of the Japanese language). Moscow: Nauka.Find this resource:
Starostin, S., Dybo, A., & Mudrak, O. (2003). Etymological dictionary of the Altaic languages (3 vols.). Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.Find this resource:
Street, John. (1962). Review of N. Poppe, Vergleichende Grammatik der altaischen Sprachen, Teil I. Language, 38, 92–98.Find this resource:
Unger, J. Marshall. (1990). Summary Report of the Altaic Panel. In Linguistic Change and Reconstruction Methodology. Edited by Philip Baldi (pp. 479–482). Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Find this resource:
Vovin, A. (1999). Altaic, so far. Migracijske teme, 15(½), 155–214.Find this resource:
Vovin, A. (2005). The end of the Altaic controversy. Central Asiatic Journal, 49(1), 71–132.Find this resource:


text:
Those of you who were excited to follow Berlusconi's trial for soliciting an underage prostitute will have to wait a little longer — after a hearing of just 10 minutes today, proceedings were adjourned until May 31. Berlusconi fans gathered outside the courthouse (incongruously, in a gazebo), and one said of the charges, "It's just dirt. They are trying to throw dirt at our prime minister." However, a man in a Berlusconi mask countered, "I am angry because they will never sentence him. The law is not equal for everyone. If I steal an apple, I go to jail." If a guy in a Berlusconi mask wanted my apple, I would probably give it to him, because I would be frightened.
Berlusconi's Trial Adjourned Til May 31

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Possible Duplicate:
Complex Lie group without faithful real representations?
We know that for a matrix (linear) Lie group $G$, we define it to be a closed subgroup of $GL(n,\mathbb{C})$. But Lie groups are defined as manifolds in $\mathbb{R}^n$ for some $n$, in general. The question is that, do we know any Lie group which is not a matrix Lie group? Thank you very much.


text:
Reporters Tell Attorney General Eric Holder They Won't Agree To 'Off The Record' Meeting As Scale Of Journalist Spying Expands
from the thousands-and-thousands deptA few quick updates on the continuing saga of the DOJ's highly questionable spying on the communications of reporters. First up, we find out that the AP is claiming that the DOJ's scooping up of phone records wasn't nearly as limited as some people have suggested, but rather contained records for "thousands and thousands" of phone calls. Remember, the DOJ's own guidelines say that any such record retrieval must be very targeted rather than broad.
Of course, as all of this was happening, a sympathetic story leaked to the press, claiming that Eric Holder feels tremendous remorse for the specific case of the spying on James Rosen. Though, as you read the details, it sure sounds a lot more like "political expediency" rather than honest "remorse."
The sweeping seizure of the AP phone records had thrown Justice on the defensive. But at least in that case Holder had some personal insulation; having been interviewed by the FBI, he'd recused himself from the investigation and, thus, had not personally signed off on the subpoenas. In the Fox case, however, Holder knew he bore a direct measure of responsibility. He had approved a search-warrant application that equated a reporter's newsgathering activities with criminal conduct. That put Holder at the center of the brewing controversy, all while the Obama administration was being buffeted over allegations that the IRS had targeted conservative groups and by the continuing Benghazi tempest.However, he supposedly is upset that his public image is not reflective of what he thinks of himself.
By week's end, Holder knew he had to be proactive in stemming the criticism and restoring the department's credibility with the press. He and his advisers began exploring ways to reform the Justice Department's internal guidelines for investigating leaks to safeguard the media against overly intrusive tactics. (Obama announced a review of the guidelines during a major speech on counterterrorism last Thursday.) Meanwhile, on Friday, Holder made a round of calls to Capitol Hill in an attempt to mollify concerned lawmakers. In calls to Sens. Charles Schumer (D-NY), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Holder said he understood why there had been such an outcry over his department's actions. As one of Holder's advisers put it, the message was: "Look we get it. We understand why this is so controversial, and we're ready to make changes to find the right balance." At the same time, Holder enlisted their help to get a media-shield law passed in Congress. (On Sunday, Schumer announced the formation of a bipartisan "gang of eight" to press for the legislation.)
But sources close to the attorney general says he has been particularly stung by the leak controversy, in large part because his department's—and his own—actions are at odds with his image of himself as a pragmatic lawyer with liberal instincts and a well-honed sense of balance—not unlike the president he serves.Of course, one way to avoid being accused of such things is... you know... not to do them in the first place.
In response, Holder announced that he'd be holding a meeting with news organizations to go over the DOJ's guidelines on getting access to such information. But, he couldn't even do that correctly. After announcing that this meeting would be off-the-record, a variety of news organizations, including the NY Times and the Associated Press announced they would not attend.
Of course, they could just attend and then "leak" the results. What would Holder do in response?
Filed Under: attorney general, eric holder, off the record, reporters, spying
Companies: associated press, ny times


text:
The PRAS26 Series magnetic angle sensors for automated applications offer an absolute output signal over the entire 0 to 360° measurement range. The sensor's constant wear-free operation is through the use of an external position magnet. The device's flat housing is made of heat-resistant materials, such as thermoplastic and epoxy glass fiber. Completely encapsulated electronics withstand strong shocks, vibration, and moisture penetration. The sensor is equipped with the analog outputs 0.5 to 4.5 V, 0.5 to 10 V, or 4 to 20 mA.
ASM Sensors Inc., (630) 832-3202
Hide comments


text:
HOUSTON -- The clouds were low. The sea was rough. A cacophony of shouting men and the constant boom of exploding shells filled the air. Waves of American, British and Canadian soldiers landed on Normandy's beaches. The hospital ship filled rapidly with the injured, and the USS Texas began taking on casualties.
Through the battle smoke, they gazed from the landing craft and saw security: an enormous red, white and blue flag.
In honor of the 70th anniversary of the June 6, 1944, invasion, the flag that was aloft will go on public display Friday for the first time since World War II in an exhibit at the Houston Museum of Natural Science thanks to a crewman who gifted the flag.
"It was a firsthand witness to one of the most epic battles in history," said Andy Smith, manager of the vessel that is now a memorial in the Port of Houston called the Battleship Texas. The USS Texas also was present when the American flag was raised at Iwo Jima in 1945.
The USS Texas' 17-by-9 foot battle flag was raised on its mast June 5, as 156,000 Allied soldiers prepared to cross the English Channel and face the Germans. The USS Texas, which already had fought in World War I, was tasked with drawing enemy fire so the troops could land, Smith said.
The flag told the other Allied powers this ship was a friend. Working in unison, the crew fired more than 255 rounds of 14-inch shells in just 34 minutes. The rounds came so fast and so furiously, the troops on the beach were relieved when they saw the USS Texas and its constant barrage, Ernest Hemingway described as a correspondent for Colliers magazine.
"She's firing, and she's moving, and she gets as close to the shore as she can," Smith said. "Part of her mission is to be a target."
The days pass in a blur of fighting. By June 25th the USS Texas, flag unfurled, is at Cherbourg, battling to capture the port city. On the bridge is navigator Emil Saul, helmsman Chris Christiansen and dozens of crewmen. Suddenly, there was an explosion.
"We got struck there. Wiped out completely," said Saul, remembering the moment when the German shell destroyed the bridge.
Christiansen was killed, and 11 were wounded, including Saul, who spent nearly three years in the hospital recovering.
The crew, though, didn't forget. They awarded Saul the massive battle flag, a token for his sacrifice.
For years, as Saul finished school, got married, raised two daughters and enjoyed a long career with the Coast Guard, the massive wool and linen flag with just 48 stars remained carefully folded in storage.
"I loved it and was so proud of it and it was so beautiful," Saul, now 89 and living in Charlotte, North Carolina, said. "I really thought about how it's going to last ... or it's going to be destroyed."
So, in 1992 he donated the flag to the Battleship Texas.
But Smith worried that Houston's heat, humidity and sunlight could damage the artifact.
"You think of the flag that flew at Fort McHenry, the Star Spangled Banner, the flag that was raised at Iwo Jima -- it's at that level of significance," Smith said.
The years passed, and the flag remained hidden.
Now, due to a collaboration between Smith and the Houston Museum of Natural Science, which has the space and conditions to display the flag, it will be the centerpiece of a D-Day anniversary exhibit.
"We are losing these crew members at an alarming rate ... the veterans of World War II are dying off regularly," Smith added. "We just don't know how much longer we have and we really wanted to get this flag viewable to those guys."
Plushnick-Masti can be followed on Twitter at https://twitter.com/RamitMastiAP


text:
You're more likely to find Pete Wentz behind a laptop than a guitar these days.
In addition to his role as one half of the L.A.-based electronic duo Black Cards, the former Fall Out Boy bassist spends his time DJ-ing at clubs and parties (and the occasional corporate event). Wentz DJed at Angels & Kings in the Hard Rock Hotel, which he co-owns, and at Paris Club's upstairs club, Studio Paris, during Lollapalooza in August. And he will return to Chicago for Gateway Green's Green Tie Ball, which raises money to create and maintain landscapes around the city, Saturday at A. Finkl & Sons.
What are Wentz's keys to playing a successful DJ set? Here are the Wilmette native's dos and don't's:
Know your audience: "I usually have an 'A' batch of songs that I'm pretty sure will work after guessing what type of crowd it will be. The 'B' batch is wishful thinking: 'I really want to play these, but we'll see.' I'll also have a backup 'C' batch — these are the songs that will go off no matter what the crowd looks like."
Go early: "If there are other people DJ-ing before me, I'll get there early to see the vibe of the crowd. And if the DJs play a song I was going to play, people might get tired of it. You have to be ready to call an audible."
Choose wisely: "A couple times, I've been caught with my pants down. I remember one time I was playing with Train at this really big corporate function and (the people in the crowd) didn't know the songs as well as I thought they would. I played a Lil Wayne-Morrissey mashup … It was not going off. You can see the momentum start to not go off. No matter what age group people are, there are a brave few who start dancing: 'I'm going to dance. I don't care what people think.' You can build on that or kill that vibe really quickly with the wrong two songs in a row."
Variety is good: "My songs are all over the place. I grew up on oldies. My dad played The Temptations and The Four Tops, and I got into a lot of Michael Jackson and Guns N' Roses. I think people who just know me from my band think I don't like pop music. The truth is I love pop music. I think it's great when it's a little eclectic, like Miike Snow and Robyn."
Avoid obscurity: "I don't try to find stuff people don't know. I think there's a fine line. DJs who think 'Wow, people will think it's so cool that I know this song' run the risk that only one person knows the song."
Latest Entertainment
Don't rely on your reputation: "People know who you are, so you get a little grace period for a few minutes: 'I'll give it a shot.' After that, it doesn't matter who you are. There will be crickets."
Showmanship doesn't always work: "It depends on what number of drink I'm on. I think it depends on the crowd, as well. I feed off the crowd. I played a correspondents' dinner in (Washington) D.C. four years ago and was stage-diving at a party where people were wearing penguin suits. Not sure how well it went over. I think I was crowd-surfing and realized 'Oh, it's not that kind of party.'"
Don't play your own songs: "I don't think I ever do. If I'm playing somewhere and someone showed up like Gabe (Saporta) from Cobra Starship, I've played a Cobra Starship song. But you can see the person thinking, 'This is kind of dorky.' It's dorky to play your own songs. Every once in a while a place will use my song as my intro and I cringe. I think I would (play them) if (Fall Out Boy singer) Patrick (Stump) was there and could sing it, maybe. … Nah, I still wouldn't. Maybe if I did party songs, it would be different."
Twitter @aboutluisgomez


text:
Discover the functional highlights in the BMW 4 Series Gran Coupé.
You need the Adobe Flash Player in order to use some of the features of the BMW UK website. Please make sure that Flash is installed and activated. If you have not yet installed Flash, you can download it free of charge from the Adobe website.
Discover more about how the BMW 4 Series Gran Coupé came to be.
2+1 rear seating: Two exclusive individual outer seats with height-adjustable headrests ensure comfort in the back of the BMW 4 Series Gran Coupé leaving enough space for a third rear-seat passenger.
Available as an optional extra, the 40:20:40 split-folding rear seat bench creates numerous transportation possibilities. A matching ski and snowboard bag is also available from Genuine BMW Accessories.
With a maximum luggage compartment capacity of 1,300 litres, the BMW 4 Series Gran Coupé offers ample space in the boot.


text:
Release True Story in Top QualityNow you can watch full True Story in high quality with duration 100 Min and has been aired on 2015-04-17 with MPAA rating is 128.
- Original Title : True Story
- Movie title in your country : True Story
- Year of movie : 2015
- Genres of movie : Thriller, Drama, Mystery,
- Status of movie : Released
- Release date of movie : 2015-04-17
- Companies of movie : Plan B Entertainment, Regency Enterprises, New Regency Pictures,
- Countries of movie : United States of America,
- Language of movie : English,
- Durationof movie : 100 Min
- Average vote of movie : 5.9
- Youtube ID of movie : Y_NiP_bqlns
- Translation of movie : EN,ES,DE,NL,RU,FR,ZH,PT,EL,TR,HE,DA,
- Actors of movie :Jonah Hill (Michael Finkel), James Franco (Christian Longo), Felicity Jones (Jill Barker), Maria Dizzia (Mary Jane Longo), Ethan Suplee (Pat Frato), Conor Kikot (Zach Longo), Charlotte Driscoll (Sadie Longo), Stella Rae Payne (Madison Longo), Robert John Burke (Greg Ganley), Byron Jennings (Judge Odenkirk), Gretchen Mol (Karen), Betty Gilpin (Cheryl), Seth Barrish (Blaise), Robert Stanton (Jeffrey Gregg), Michael Countryman (Coroner), Steve Routman (Jack Pool), Genevieve Angelson (Tina Alvis), Adam Mucci (Courtroom Sheriff), David Wilson Barnes (Corey Douglas), William Jackson Harper (Zak Rausch), Sam Rosen (Steve Mensah), Mara Hobel (Jail Receptionist), David Pittu (Marcus Lickermann), Auden Thornton (Lena), Ngo Okafor (Ibrahim), Uchenna Onuaguluchi (Madou), Maryann Plunkett (Maureen Duffy), Joseph Harrell (Visiting Room Guard #1), Mike Houston (Visiting Room Guard #2), Kohl Sudduth (Police Officer), Rosemary Howard (Jury Forewoman), Joel Garland (Dan Pegg), Dana Eskelson (Joy Longo)
Movie synopsis of True Story :
Full Streaming True Story in HD Format with movie plot "A drama centered around the relationship between journalist Michael Finkel and Christian Longo, an FBI Most Wanted List murderer who for years lived outside the U.S. under Finkel's name." in best look. Full Streaming True Story in HD Format by push of the button above.
Play full with title True Story full and free movie streaming in top video format. Watch full with title True Story free an fun at here. Right now, you are able to see that hundreds many people searching for free True Story movie and watch it on their sweat household with web connection. Be happy, you can reach tons of content members which became tired of waiting intended for dvds within the mail, and it's simple to watch totally free True Story. You can find new on the net movie, and Download full it without cost in each of our site. It truly is fast, uncomplicated, free and on top of that to try out. Watch now True Story on the net movie devoid of downloading. You can view online movie streaming in HD high quality in 100 Min length. Check out trailer movie and as well full movie of True Story go through the button below to see these film.
... Free True Story in HD Quality 1080p ...
Director : Rupert Goold, Screenplay : David Kajganich, Producer : Dede Gardner, Producer : Anthony Katagas, Producer : Jeremy Kleiner, Director of Photography : Masanobu Takayanagi, Editor : Nicolas De Toth, Editor : Christopher Tellefsen, Screenplay : Rupert Goold, Executive Producer : Arnon Milchan, Executive Producer : Brad Pitt, Original Music Composer : Marco Beltrami, Casting : Douglas Aibel
Of course, now you can watch movie involving True Story 100 % length and find the link to this film True Story in top video format.


text:
Consensus Report
The Arctic in the Anthropocene: Emerging Research Questions (2014)Polar Research Board
Each report is produced by a committee of experts selected by the Academy to address a particular statement of task and is subject to a rigorous, independent peer review; while the reports represent views of the committee, they also are endorsed by the Academy. Learn more on our expert consensus reports.
With rapid change unfolding throughout the Arctic, the need for actionable Arctic science has never been greater. A warming climate is reshaping Arctic ecosystems, bringing changes such as the loss of sea ice and glaciers, thawing of permafrost, and changing snow patterns. These shifts challenge Arctic citizens who must adapt to new environmental conditions, and have significant global implications. This report identifies emerging research questions important for understanding how environmental and societal transitions will affect the Arctic and the rest of the world. It also assesses what is required to address these questions, and points to the need to translate research findings into practical information that can help guide management and policy decisions.
This video was made to highlight the findings of the report.
View the archived video of a webinar held about this report here.
Key Messages
- The rapid pace of Arctic change is raising new questions and driving new interactions. The report identifies questions focused on the evolving Arctic that investigate the transition to the "new normal" of reduced ice and snow and the cascade of impacts this will have on systems that depend on frozen ground and water. Arctic societies are also changing rapidly, especially in the political realm as indigenous people achieve greater autonomy in some regions.
- Many aspects of the Arctic have been unknowable, in large part because ice cover has blocked access and presented a major barrier to research. Loss of sea ice and technological advances now allow research in new fields, new geographical areas, and throughout the year. At the same time, rapid change can lead to the loss of geological features or cultural sites. Research is needed to explore what could be found as ice barriers diminish -- and what could be forever lost amid rapid change.
- The Arctic is connected to the rest of the world by air and water currents, by animal migrations and invasive species, and by societal interactions. Climatic and meteorological connections in particular have far-reaching implications globally; for example, through rising sea level due to mass loss of the Greenland Ice Sheet. Outside pressures influence Arctic residents and the experiences of Arctic cultures can inform and be informed by those of indigenous peoples elsewhere.
- Humans have lived in the Arctic for millennia, shaping their surroundings and making use of what the Arctic has to offer. But in recent decades, the human environment has shifted greatly, including political and economic integration with nation-states and less obvious trends such as the urbanization of Arctic peoples. Research is essential to understand the drivers of change, their implications, and options for response.
- In order to identify new research directions when the need arises, arctic scientists will need long-term observations to identify changes and surprises without delay, and flexibility in funding to move quickly when a significant event occurs.
- Enhanced cooperation, among researchers, between agencies, among nations, across disciplines, between Arctic residents and visiting scientists, and with the private sector, is needed to answer the emerging research questions identified in this report. No single agency, organization, or country can take on all research topics in the Arctic. Some research questions are too broad, or involve such extensive field efforts that they cannot be resolved solely by researchers from a single country, or supported by a single funding source.
- Long-term observational data are essential for detecting change and for putting research findings into context. There are, however, insufficient long-term observation efforts underway and little coordination among those that do exist. It is thus difficult to distinguish large-scale patterns from localized ones, or to connect findings in one discipline to those in another.
- Data management requirements have often been underfunded, resulting in poor quality metadata, a lack of long-term archiving, or other shortcomings that greatly reduce the utility of data. Our understanding of the Arctic as a system has evolved through the ability to compare data sets from disparate fields and regions in order to see connections and commonalities. But data management is often left to individuals or to separate efforts depending on agency, program, discipline, or other parameters.
- New technologies allow new approaches to research in many fields. Among the most promising recent developments is a host of autonomous mobile sensors for the ocean and atmosphere that can be deployed relatively easily and inexpensively. At the same time, it is critical that current capabilities are sustained, including ships, satellites, and research stations.
- Arctic research depends on sufficient human capacity, including scientists trained in the necessary fields who are capable of interdisciplinary collaboration. Additionally, Arctic residents can offer a great deal to research efforts.
- Society's ability to address emerging research questions in the Arctic is closely tied to the way research funding is organized. Given the emerging research questions and implementation challenges identified in this report, pressures are growing for support of comprehensive systems and synthesis research, non-steady-state research, social science, stakeholder-initiated research, international research, and long-term observations.
- Getting more from Arctic research may best be pursued by enhancing the ways we make use of that research. Collaboration is needed -- not just among scientific disciplines, or between scientists and those who live in the Arctic, but also with and between decision makers to better understand what they require and how scientific results are factored with other considerations to produce decision outcomes.


text:
We've talked about the FDA regulating mobile apps several times here on Smart Phone Health Care.
And now, a new debate on this topic has surfaced — Who should regulate mHealth apps?
Currently, the question is should the FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health be in charge of regulation, or should an entirely new department be created? Some believe that special attention needs to be given to mHealth, including Rep. Mike Honda. He is introducing a bill called "Healthcare Innovation and Marketplace Technologies Act," which proposes creating the "Office of Mobile Health." Several sources state that this bill will "ensure that competition, innovation, and entrepreunership in the mobile app market" won't be subject to the "regulatory issues" that are usually applied to "traditional, non-software device types."
As is expected, there are mixed feelings on this, but according to The FDA Law Blog, this "proposed bill is likely to be welcome by many mobile app developers – in particular the same or startup ones who still wonder why their products would be subject to FDA regulatory oversight at all."
The article finishes with this:
So the question still remains as to whether medical mobile apps should be regulated by FDA's CDRH, another office independent CDRH, or simply an office separate from FDA altogether."
They option they failed to mention though, is the possibility of no regulation at all. Regulating mHealth apps could very well stifle creation. If there are a whole bunch of rules and regulations put in place, many would-be app creators may not want to go to the effort of getting approved, and some ideas may never go further. It's definitely something to think about. Personally, if the only options are to be regulated by the CDRH, or have an mHealth office created, the mHealth office would be more preferable. Then there would be more focus on getting apps and devices regulated quickly and efficiently, and hopefully more willingness to work with app creators. And, if it is true that competition and innovation won't be affected negatively, it might not the worst thing ever. We'll see.


text:
Born Anxious is a homegrown clothing label with two objectives, to make the clothes as comfortable as possible, whilst also remaining planet friendly, and to hold important information that will aim to help not only the child, but also the caregiver as well when required. As an autism mum myself, I have thought about what could help me and other caregivers whilst trying to be as generic as possible within the designs, alongside giving those the opportunity to personalise their products as well.
Photos by @stevencarterhewson


text:
Manhattan Beach Pier
Manhattan Beach Pier
from 29.00
Add To Cart
High Quality Paper Prints:
Images are printed on high quality satin photo paper. Glossy also available on request. Trust me, satin look fabulous.
MDF Block mounting Prints:
Guys from Snappy Snaps convinced me that this is better than canvas and I think they're right. It's UV and water resistant and look awesome! Block mounting to 12mm MDF board can create simple and effective displays for prints.
Payments are handled securely through Stripe payments system.
All parcels are shipped from London, UK via Post Office International Standard Delivery.
Europe: 3-5 working days
Rest of the world: 5-7 working days
Any Questions? Contact me please here.


text:
Hi, sorry I haven't been on line for a while now. I need to catch up with all your lovely pictures.
I have finished a couple of quilts just recently and thought I would let you see what I have been up to.
The Rocking Horse quilt is taken from a pattern that my friend saw and really wanted me to do this for her. All hand quilted.
I hope you like it.
Rocking Horse


text:
CEO Compensation
#9 John T Chambers04.13.11, 06:00 PM EDT
- Total Compensation
- $37.90 mil
- 5-Year Compensation
- $170.34 mil
- Education:
- College: West Virginia University BS '71
- Graduate School: Indiana University MBA '76
Performance Vs. Pay
|John T Chambers
|Cisco Systems
|190 / 196
|6-Year Annual Total Return
|6-Year Average Compensation
|$38.89 mil
|6-Year Return Relative To Industry
|6-Year Return Relative To Market
|Relative returns: 100 equals the market or industry.
John T Chambers's Compensation vs. Technology Hardware & Equipment Medians
|$0.38 mil
|$0.90 mil
|$4.60 mil
|$2.00 mil
|$1.33 mil
|$1.18 mil
|Stock Gains
|$31.59 mil
|$0.00 mil
|Total Compensation
|$37.90 mil
|$5.97 mil
John T Chambers Ownership Of Cisco Systems
|Industry Medians
|Stock Owned (% Of Co)
|Stock Owned
|$58.0 mil
|$0.01 mil
Cisco Systems's Stock Performance
|Total Return During Tenure
|Relative to Market
Cisco Systems
- (CSCO: quote, news)
- 170 West Tasman Drive
San Jose, CA 95134-1706
- www.cisco.com
Complete Coverage | Complete Rankings
Methodology: Compensation rank is based on total compensation for latest fiscal year. Total compensation for each chief executive includes the following: salary and bonuses; other compensation, such as vested restricted stock grants, LTIP payouts and perks; and stock gains, the value realized by exercising stock options. Efficiency rank is based on our chief executive's performance/pay score. Ranks are given only to chief executives who have a six-year tenure and six-year compensation history. The most efficient rank is 1 and least efficient is 196.
Footnotes: Compensation data is from the latest available proxy statements filed through Mar. 25, 2011. Total returns and value of stock owned (including all classes) is based on Mar. 18, 2011 stock price. Compensation percent change is based on combined salary and bonus. Annualized total return during tenure covers the tenure of the executive or from the time of the IPO or available stock history. Relative to market is the ending value of $100 invested in the stock, divided by the ending value of $1 invested in the S & P 500 (a score of 100 = the S & P 500). NA: Not available or not applicable.1Annualized. 2Four-year total. 3Three-year total. 4Less than 0.01%. 5Prior-year data. 6New chief executive; compensation may be for another executive office. 7Less than $100,000. 8Includes shares indirectly held. *Return is for less than tenure.
Sources: Company SEC filings; Interactive Data, LionShares and Thomson Reuters Fundamentals via FactSet Research Systems; Forbes.
Photo: Brian Harkin/Getty Images


text: Join SLAM! Wrestling's Matt Bishop starting at 8:15 p.m. ET for a live chat to preview tonight's Monday Night Raw. We'll discuss the fallout from Money in the Bank, speculate on who the new general manager could be and also take a look at what's on tap for tonight's show. Then, join Bishop again immediately following the conclusion of Raw for discussion of the show.


text:
Widow: Man who killed Texas pastor mentally ill
FOREST HILL, Texas (AP) — The widow of a man who beat a pastor to death at his Fort Worth-area church says her spouse was mentally ill.
Shanellia Birdow says she does not know why Derrick Birdow attacked the minister Monday. Speaking at a prayer vigil for the Rev. Danny Kirk Sr. Tuesday night, she described her spouse as "really sick" and "mentally ill."
Investigators say Derrick Birdow rammed his car into the Greater Sweethome Missionary Baptist Church and beat the pastor to death with an electric guitar. Police used a stun gun on Birdow, who was later found dead in a patrol car.
Shanellia says her husband had sought treatment at a hospital a couple of days before the attack.
Kirk's funeral is set for Saturday at Great Commission Baptist Church in Fort Worth.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


text:
The sub-sub-plot of the day was the story that the GOP had proposed attaching a Chained CPI requirement to a fiscal cliff deal. Basically, this means that the annual cost-of-living adjustment in Social Security would be lower than it is now.
Liberals hate the idea because it's a benefit cut.
And now as the GOP isn't pushing it anymore either (for now). John McCain went so far as to call it a "losing hand."
Marco Rubio went so far as to say that while the GOP is not pushing for these cuts, Obama is.
The thing is, if there's ever going to be a politically palatable cut to Social Security, this is probably it, since it's pretty technical, and nobody will get what it is, and it doesn't sound like a cut.
As Phil Klein points out, if the GOP can't even get behind this tweak, there's very little hope for anything substantive in the big picture.
There are two big stories with entitlement cuts.
One is that politicians are open to them in theory, but then don't want their fingerprints on the weapon when it's time to do the deed.
The other is that it's usually Republicans that end up killing entitlement tweaks. Every time DC gets close to a "grand bargain" (something which Obama would clearly be willing to sign off on), Boehner or his caucus kills it.
And that makes sense. If you're the party of fighting deficits, then you have a lot of lose politically by taking deficit reduction off the table in the form of actual progress.


text:
Alpha Delta Pi ~ ΑΔΠ
Open Motto: "We Live For Each Other"
Mascot: The Lion (nicknamed Alphie)
Jewel: The Diamond
Colors: Azure Blue and White
Flower: Woodland Violet
Alpha Delta Pi was founded as the Adelphean Society - on May 15th, 1851 - by Eugenia Tucker Fitzgerald. It was the first secret society for college women and was founded at Wesleyan Female College in Macon, Georgia. Actually, an interesting fact about Wesleyan College, is that it was the first college in the world to grant degrees to women. A student's day at Wesleyan College was very structured and all the women who attended were from progressive and educated families. Eugenia Tucker enlisted the help of her dearest friends when creating this sorority; Elizabeth Williams Mitchell, Ella Pierce Turner, Octavia Andrew Rush, and Sophoronia Woodroff Drews. According to the Alpha Delta Pi Sorority website, Eugenia wrote in her diary, "The society shall be called Adelphean and shall have for its object the mental, moral, social and domestic improvement of its members."
In 1905 the Adelphean Society changed its name to Alpha Delta Phi (AΔΦ) and it later had to change again because there was already a men's fraternity of the same name at universities where they wanted to start chapters. In 1913 the organization became Alpha Delta Pi (ΑΔΦ). There are currently 140 chapters.
In 1979 Alpha Delta Pi adopted the Ronald McDonald House as the national philanthropy. Since that time they have been able to contribute over 5 million dollars to this worthy cause. In the 1983 the Alpha Delta Pi Foundation was established. This foundation was put in place, "...to provide essential resources for Alpha Delta Pi Sorority's educational, leadership and philanthropic activities which improve the lives of women and the communities they serve."


text:
LAWRENCEVILLE, N.J. (AP) Freshman Shane Richards missed just one shot en route to 19 points and Rhamel Brown posted a double-double in Manhattan's 62-51 win over Rider on Sunday in Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference play to snap a three-game skid.
Brown finished with 10 points and 10 rebounds. Richards was 7 of 8 from the field, 4 of 5 from 3-point range and made his only free throw for Manhattan, which led 29-26 at halftime and shot 55 percent (11 of 20) in the second half to pull away.
Jonathon Thompson scored 18 points on 7 of 9 shooting for Rider (11-11, 6-4) but the rest of the team shot a combined 12 of 31. The Broncs also converted just 6 of 22 3-point attempts.
Manhattan (6-14, 4-6) registered a 33-21 rebounding advantage, outscored Rider 24-14 in the paint and got 37 points off the bench.


text:
So this is a piecewise defined function I have that I need to talk about:
f(a,b) = \left\{
\text{open} & : \text{RMSD}_\text{s-open}\ge6, \text{RMSD}_\text{closed}\ge6\\
\text{closed} & : \text{RMSD}_\text{closed}\le2 \\
\text{semiopen} & : \text{RMSD}_\text{s-open}\le2\\
\text{transition} & :f(a,b)\notin\{\text{open}, \text{closed}, \text{semiopen}\} \\
So what's the way to align up the colons (conditions) so that it looks all nice and pretty?
Also, if I want to describe transition to be the value of the function when none of the conditions of the previous 3 are satisfied, is the way I wrote it out with
f(a,b) not belonging to the set
{open,closed,semiopen} a good way of writing it? seems really unprofessional...


text:
Osteoporosis is a disease that causes weak, thinning bones. This leaves the bones at greater risk of breaking. The bones most often affected are the hips, spine, and wrists.
The exact cause for osteoporosis is unknown. But a number of factors contribute to the disease including:
- Aging. Bones become less dense and weaker with age.
- Race. White and Asian women are most at risk. But, all races may get the disease.
- Body weight. People who weigh less and have less muscle are more at risk for this condition.
- Lifestyle factors. Lack of physical activity, caffeine use, excessive alcohol use, smoking, dietary calcium, and vitamin D deficiency may all increase your risk.
- Certain medicines. Some medicines may increase your risk.
- Family history. Having a family history of bone disease may increase your risk.
Osteoporosis affects over 10 million Americans over the age of 50. Women are 4 times more likely to get osteoporosis than men.
Another 34 million Americans older than age 50 have low bone mass (osteopenia). This group is at a greater risk for osteoporosis.
Low estrogen is one of the main causes of bone loss in women during and after menopause. Women may lose up to 20% of their bone mass in the 5 to 7 years after menopause.
People with osteoporosis may not get any symptoms. Some may have pain in their bones and muscles, particularly in their back. Sometimes, a collapsed vertebra may cause severe pain, decrease in height, or spinal deformity.
The symptoms of osteoporosis may look like other bone disorders or medical problems. Always talk with your healthcare provider for a diagnosis.
Your healthcare provider will review your personal and family medical history and do a physical exam. Other tests include:
- Bone density test (bone densitometry). Measurement of the mass of bone in relation to its volume to find the risk of getting osteoporosis.
- Blood tests. These tests are done to measure calcium and potassium levels.
- FRAX score. A score given to estimate the risk of a fracture within 10 years. The score uses the results of a bone density test as well as other factors.
- X-rays. This test uses electromagnetic energy beams to make images of tissues, bones, and organs onto film.
Women are encouraged to do the following:
- Review lifestyle practices with their healthcare providers regularly.
- Have their personal risk for falls checked at least once a year after menopause.
- Have their height and weight checked yearly.
- Get checked for the development of a rounded humped in the spine and back pain (kyphosis).
Your healthcare provider will figure out the best treatment for you based on:
- How old you are
- Your overall health and medical history
- How sick you are
- How well you can handle specific medicines, procedures, or therapies
- How long the condition is expected to last
- Your opinion or preference
The goals of managing osteoporosis are to:
- Decrease pain
- Prevent fractures
- Minimize further bone loss
Some of the ways to treat osteoporosis are also ways to prevent it. They include:
- Maintain a proper body weight.
- Increase walking and other weight-bearing exercises.
- Cut down on caffeine and alcohol.
- Stop smoking.
- Get enough calcium through diet and supplements, including Vitamin D.
- Prevent falls in older adults by installing hand railings, or assistive devices in the bathroom or shower.
- Ask your healthcare provider about medicines that may help.
The FDA has approved these medicines to maintain bone health in women with osteoporosis at menopause:
- Estrogen replacement therapy (ERT) and hormone replacement therapy (HRT). ERT reduces bone loss, increases bone density, and reduces the risk of hip and spinal fractures in postmenopausal women. However, a woman considering ERT should talk with her healthcare provider first. Research found several important health risks associated with this therapy. For many women, the risks of ERT outweigh the benefits.
- Biophosphonates. These medicines reduce bone loss, increase bone density, and reduce the risk of fractures.
- Selective estrogen receptor modulators (SERMS). This medicine helps prevent bone loss.
- Parathyroid hormone. This medicine is a form of parathyroid hormone. It is approved to treat men and postmenopausal women who are at high risk for fractures. It helps form bone.
- Monoclonal antibody. This medicine is given by injection under the skin. It's approved for women with osteoporosis at high risk for fractures. It's also used for women who are being treated with cancer medicines that can weaken bones.
An osteoporosis rehab program can be vital to a full recovery. It can help you obtain the best possible bone health and quality of life. The focus of rehab is to decrease pain, help prevent fractures, and minimize further bone loss.
To help reach these goals, programs may include the following:
- Exercise programs and conditioning to increase weight-bearing and physical fitness
- Techniques to manage your pain
- Nutritional counseling to improve calcium and vitamin D intake and decrease caffeine and alcohol intake
- Use of assistive devices to make you safer at home
- Education, especially prevention of falls
These rehab programs can be done on an inpatient or outpatient basis. Many skilled people are part of the team, including:
- Chaplain
- Dietitian
- Internist
- Occupational therapist
- Orthopedist/orthopedic surgeon
- Physiatrist
- Physical therapist
- Psychologist/psychiatrist
- Recreational therapist
- Rehabilitation nurse
- Social worker
- Vocational therapist
- Osteoporosis is a disease that causes weak, thinning bones. This leaves the bones at greater risk of breaking. The bones most often affected are the hips, spine, and wrists.
- Women are 4 times more likely to get osteoporosis than men due to a decrease in estrogen.
- Risk factors for osteoporosis include aging, race, body weight, and taking certain medicines.
- The goals of managing osteoporosis are to decrease pain, prevent fractures, and minimize further bone loss.
- For postmenopausal osteoporosis in women, the FDA has approved medicines to maintain bone health.
- Rehab programs can help regain bone health.
Tips to help you get the most from a visit to your healthcare provider:
- Know the reason for your visit and what you want to happen.
- Before your visit, write down questions you want answered.
- Bring someone with you to help you ask questions and remember what your healthcare provider tells you.
- At the visit, write down the name of a new diagnosis, and any new medicines, treatments, or tests. Also write down any new instructions your healthcare provider gives you.
- Know why a new medicine or treatment is prescribed, and how it will help you. Also know what the side effects are.
- Ask if your condition can be treated in other ways.
- Know why a test or procedure is recommended and what the results could mean.
- Know what to expect if you do not take the medicine or have the test or procedure.
- If you have a follow-up appointment, write down the date, time, and purpose for that visit.
- Know how you can contact your healthcare provider if you have questions.


text: Share: Comments Print August 14, 2014 at 3:42 PM Washington health exchange says computer, payment problems resolving Posted by Beth Kaiman The Associated Press Officials at Washington's health exchange say they're making progress on fixing the computer problems that have kept thousands of people from using their new health insurance. At a meeting of the Health Benefit Exchange Board on Thursday, the agency's associate operations director reported that nearly 7,700 people have had their payment issues resolved. Bob Finnegan did not know how many accounts they represent. The exchange has reported billing problems with about 6,000 accounts. Most of those accounts include multiple members of one family. Finnegan says the problems have been fixed through a combination of things. Some were resolved by going account-by-account and manually correcting entries. Others were corrected through software fixes. Another 171 code fixes are scheduled to be made within the next few weeks.


text:
I found these prints among my parents papers. I remember seeing them when I was younger and I asked my mother about them. She said they were her mothers (Anna Bartels) and I inquired who was the painter. She said it was "a cousin" The pictures are scenes in Hamburg, Germany
The man was Helmut Clausen. With my research I found that Helmut was a first cousin of my mother. Helmut's father was married to my grandfather's sister, Lily Schridde. Helmut's fathers name was Fritz Clausen.
I did a Google search for his name AND artist but did not find anything on the Internet. I have the prints matted and will find somewhere to hang them in my house.
They are all shades of blue and gray. I wondered if those were the colors he liked or if Hamburg is gray most of the time. The interesting part is I also do watercolor painting as a hobby. I plan to start painting again after retirement.
Will post more in this series later.