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Jan Harold Brunvand

Jan Harold Brunvand (born March 23, 1933) is an American retired folklorist, researcher, writer, public speaker, and professor emeritus of English at the University of Utah.

Brunvand is best known for popularizing the concept of the urban legend, a form of modern folklore or story telling. Urban legends are "too good to be true" stories that travel by word of mouth, by print, or by the internet and are attributed to an FOAF: friend of a friend. "Urban legends," Brunvand says, "have a persistent hold on the imagination because they have an element of suspense or humor, they are plausible and they have a moral."

Though criticized for the "popular" rather than "academic" orientation of his books, The Vanishing Hitchhiker and others, Brunvand felt that it was a "natural and worthwhile part of his job as a folklorist to communicate the results of his research to the public."

For his lifetime dedication to the field of folklore, which included radio and television appearances, a syndicated newspaper column, and over 100 publications (articles, books, notes and reviews), Brunvand is considered to be "the legend scholar with the greatest influence on twentieth-century media."

Early life and education
Brunvand was born on March 23, 1933, in Cadillac, Michigan, to Norwegian immigrants Harold N. Brunvand and Ruth Brunvand. He and his two siblings, Tor and Richard, were brought up in Lansing, Michigan. Brunvand graduated from J. W. Sexton High School in Lansing in 1951.

From high school, Brunvand attended Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan, where, in 1955, he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism. While at Michigan State, he attended a Reserve Officers' Training Corps program and was commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant upon graduation. Brunvand went on to earn a Master of Arts degree in English from the same university in 1957. He briefly served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps at Fort Monmouth and was discharged with the rank of 1st Lieutenant.

Academic career
While attending Michigan State, Brunvand met Richard Dorson, a folklorist and professor, who became a mentor. Brunvand took an undergraduate American Folklore course Dorson offered in the fall quarter of 1954 and, in subsequent semesters, completed two of Dorson's graduate courses in folklore as a special enrollee. The work Brunvand and other classmates did for Dorson's classes included "preparing a large and well organized personal collection of folklore garnered from oral tradition and furnished with informant data and background comments." These papers would later serve as the beginnings of a large archive of folklore housed at Indiana University.

On June 10, 1956, Brunvand married Judith Darlene Ast, also a student at Michigan State University. Four days later, the couple left for Oslo, Norway, where Brunvand attended the University of Oslo on a Fulbright scholarship. He spent the year studying folklore. He started publishing in academic publications during this period, notably a paper on Norwegian-American folklore in the archives of Indiana University and one about the Norwegian folk hero Askeladden. In 1957, Brunvand returned to the United States as a graduate student at Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. He switched majors, from English to folklore, and took a series of classes offered through the university's summer institute. He worked as an archivist in the Indiana University Folklore Archives from September 1958 to June 1960. During this time, he met Archer Taylor, who, as a visiting professor, taught a course on proverbs and riddles. This course, according to Brunvand, "changed his life." Proverbs became one of Brunvand's favorite topics to study and discuss. In 1961, Brunvand's A Dictionary of Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases from Books Published by Indiana Authors Before 1890 was published as Number 15 of the Indiana University's Folklore Series. Of the book, Brunvand says two things: "I've become better at choosing titles since then," and "The price was $3.00, and it was worth every penny of it.

In 1961, Brunvand also received a Ph.D. in folklore from Indiana University. His dissertation, The Taming of the Shrew: A Comparative Study of Oral and Literary Versions (Aarne-Thompson type 901), later published by Routledge in 1991, highlighted his interest in the structure, morphology and typology of the folktale.

Brunvand taught at the University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho, from 1961 to 1965. He served as associate editor of the Journal of American Folklore from 1963 to 1967.

In 1965, Brunvand taught for a year at Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, Illinois, focusing on folktales, folklore and literature, before moving with his wife and four children to the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, where he remained a professor until his retirement in 1996.

By 1967, Brunvand was a member of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association. He had also served as Book Review Editor for the Journal of American Folklore, which he resigned after receiving a Fulbright Scholarship research grant in 1970 to study folklore in Romania. He also won a Guggenheim Fellowship in the Humanities (Folklore and Popular Culture) that same year. Throughout the next decade, Brunvand focused his research on Romanian folklore, with a particular interest in Romanian house decoration. He returned to Romania in 1973-74 and again in 1981, receiving grants from the International Research & Exchanges Board (IREX) to continue his studies. His research would later be published in a single volume collection titled Casa Frumoasa: The House Beautiful in Rural Romania, published by East European Monographs in 2003.

In 1968, The Study of American Folklore: An Introduction was published by W.W. Norton and Company. Brunvand received an Honorable Mention for this book in a 1969 Chicago Folklore Prize competition. The Chicago Folklore Prize is "supported by an endowment established by the International Folklore Association and is awarded annually by the University of Chicago for an important contribution to the study of folklore."

Brunvand's A Guide for Collectors of Folklore in Utah was published by Utah Publications in the American West in 1971.

In the years 1973 to 1976, Brunvand, again, took on the role of associate editor for the Journal of American Folklore. He was named Folklore Fellow by the American Folklore Society in 1974 and was elected president of the organization in 1985.

From 1977 to 1980, Brunvand served as editor of the Journal of American Folklore, with the goal of making the journal more readable and useful to its major audience, American folklorists. He widened the scope of the journal by including articles written by those outside folklore, but whose work was "relevant to that being done by professional folklorists." He wanted to emphasize folklore and literature, folklore and history, folklife, festival and modern folklore.

In 1976, Brunvand's book Folklore: A Study and Research Guide was published by St. Martin's Press. The book, intended for undergraduate folklore students, was a research tool with a bibliographic guide and tips for researching term papers.

Brunvand edited two other textbooks: Readings in American Folklore, published by W.W. Norton and Company in 1979, American Folklore: An Encyclopedia, published by Garland in 1996.

"Mr. Urban Legend"
While teaching folklore at the University of Utah, Brunvand noticed a disconnect with his students and their views toward folklore. "They always seemed to think that folklore belonged to somebody else, usually in the past, that was something quaint and outdated." He began asking his students to think about and discuss stories from their own lives. These stories helped form the basis of a collection which Brunvand later included in several popular books on the topic of urban legends. In 1981, Brunvand's first book devoted to urban legends was published. The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meanings helped to popularize the topic for a student audience. Urban legends, Brunvand explains, are "kissing cousins of myths, fairy tales and rumors. Legends differ from rumors because the legends are stories, with a plot. And unlike myths and fairy tales, they are supposed to be current and true, events rooted in everyday reality that at least could happen." Urban legends reflect modern-day societal concerns, hopes and fears, but are "weird whoppers we tell one another, believing them to be factual."

Over the next two decades, Brunvand added to the collection with "new" urban legends: The Choking Doberman and Other "New" Urban Legends, The Big Book of Urban Legends (which was formatted as a comic book), The Mexican Pet: More "New" Urban Legends, ''Curses! Broiled Again!, The Baby Train: And Other Lusty Urban Legends, Too Good to be True: The Colossal Book of Urban Legends, and The Truth Never Stands in the Way of a Good Story!''. He made several appearances on Late Night with David Letterman and, in 1987, began a twice-weekly syndicated newspaper column called Urban Legends. He participated in countless radio talk shows and dozens of press interviews, educating people about this pass-along folk narrative that, typically involves people misunderstanding or making false assumptions about a story they heard. They forget details and fill in the gaps by inventing what they are missing to make sense of the story. Though criticized for the popular orientation of his books, Brunvand was dedicated to publicizing the field of folklore, exploring the roots of the stories, where possible, and, in some cases debunking them. "Folklorists fill different educational roles," Brunvand told members of The Missouri Folklore Society in 2003, "sometimes in classrooms, but often in a more public forum. I believe that the public and media image of what a folklorist does is in fact part of what we should be doing, whether we were trained specifically for it or not, whether we work in academe or not, and whether we like it or not."

Brunvand and his books became so popular, that, when Richard Wolkomir dubbed him "Mr. Urban Legend" in an article for the Smithsonian, the title was later added to book jackets and other publicity. In an article for Western Folklore, Brunvand mentioned a notice he found on a computer newsgroup dated 1 March 1989, presumably an insider's joke: "I think Jan Harold Brunvand, alleged author of The Choking Doberman, is an urban legend. Has anybody ever actually seen this guy?" A Harvard Lampoon publication, Mediagate, parodied urban legend books with this fake publisher's notice: "Bookman Publishing's Catalog for Fall '87: The Embarrassing Fart and More New Urban Legends by Jan Harold Brunvand. Yet another set of rumors, tall tales, and fourth-hand hearsay compiled by the author of The Vanishing Hitchhiker. Includes more recent urban legends such as the Senile President, the Adulterous Evangelist, and the Smelly Gym Sock in the Big Mac. 233 pages hardbound. $34.95 (Harvard 1988: 229)."

Post-retirement career
Brunvand retired from the University of Utah in 1996, but continued doing some research and writing as professor emeritus of English.

He frequently writes for publications dedicated to skiing, vintage automobiles and fly fishing. Once in a while, Brunvand's hobbies and academic interests intersect, notably with an article in The American Fly Fisher debunking a fake quotation by Thoreau. He writes a series of columns on Seniors Skiing.com.

Brunvand was a guest on National Public Radio's All Things Considered in September 1999. He spoke to Noah Adams about his book Too Good to be True: The Colossal Book of Urban Legends.

His Encyclopedia of Urban Legends, illustrated by Randy Hickman, was published by ABC-CLIO in 2001.

He gave the keynote address at the 2003 meeting of the Missouri Folklore Society. He was a speaker at the World Skeptics Congress in Italy in 2004. His is a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, formerly known as the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. In 2003 Brunvand was awarded CSICOP's Distinguished Skeptic Award.

Brunvand's book Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid: The Book of Scary Urban Legends was published in 2004 by W.W. Norton and Company.

Personal
In 2003, Brunvand entered the Trout Bum Tournament sponsored by Fly Rod and Reel. He participated in the Solo-Angler category. Known during the tournament as the Vanishing Fly Fisher (a nod to his book, The Vanishing Hitchhiker), Brunvand spent 10 days alone fishing some of his favorite spots in Utah: Mammoth Creek, Gooseberry Creek, Price River, and Antimony River (where he "fell twice and bashed his knee, though the injury wasn't anything a cold towel and a cold beer wouldn't fix"). "Day 10," Jim Reilly wrote in an article describing the competition," was the last we heard from Jan. We assume he made it home, but maybe he...vanished."

His favorite hobbies are fly fishing and skiing. He and his wife, Judith, continue to reside in Salt Lake City, Utah.

The Vanishing Hitchhiker
The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meanings is a book intended to introduce the idea of urban legends to the general public. Included in the book are such chilling and humorous stories as "The Vanishing Hitchhiker," "The Economical Car," "The Ghost Airliner," The Girl with the Beehive Hairdo," "The Solid Cement Cadillac," and "The Killer in the Back Seat." Brunvand's approach, according to reviewer Janet L. Langlois, "sensitizes the reader in a highly readable and effective way to both the dynamic narrative process in an urban context and the discipline of folklore and folklife studies." Some of these stories previously appeared in an article Brunvand wrote for the June 1980 issue of Psychology Today. As with Heard About the Solid Cement Cadillac or the Nude in the Camper?, Brunvand categorizes the different legends included in The Vanishing Hitchhiker into classic urban legend types.  For each legend type, Brunvand offers samples that show variations on the legends themselves, historical evidence of how the legend may have originated (often with European or East Asian roots), and an explanation of what the legend might mean in an urban or modern context.

Although recognized by critics for its usefulness as an introductory volume and reference point for expanding the field of folklore, reviewers cautioned that The Vanishing Hitchhiker lacked the depth necessary for people actively researching urban legends. Janet L. Langlois, for example, wondered what criteria Brunvand used in selecting stories for the book, as well as what made the legends American, urban and modern. Reviewer Gary Alan Fine wrote, "The paperback edition makes an excellent supplementary reading for introductory folklore students. It's all good fun, and Brunvand, folklore's Carl Sagan, should thrive and prosper, letting the all-purpose intelligentsia know that folklore is just as much fun as interplanetary travel and not nearly as expensive." To this, Brunvand countered: "I really won't think I have arrived until they refer to Carl Sagan as 'The Jan Brunvand of astronomy.'"

The Choking Doberman
Patricia T. O'Connor, writer for The New York Times, described The Choking Doberman and Other "New" Urban Legends as "a collection of 'urban legends,' fictitious narratives that are passed from person to person in the guise of true stories and sometimes persist until they reach the status of folklore." These stories are bizarre but believable and often attributed to a friend of a friend (FOAF). Like in his book, The Vanishing Hitchhiker, Brunvand provided the reader with a survey of urban legends, stories such as "The Choking Doberman," "The Poison Dress," and "The Death of Little Mikey." Each story, with its accompanying variations, are categorized into themes and motifs: victimized women and children, food and beverage contamination, fearful encounters, sexual embarrassment, and humorous retribution.

Though Robert D. Bethke called The Choking Doberman "the kind of work one immediately wants to share with friends," he also criticized the work for the "rhetorical devises" Brunvand used "apparently to suit the popular market." Critics also pointed out that Brunvand's urban legend books raise a question about race and stereotypes that, to some, are left unaddressed. Bethke wrote "We are told that the stories are projective of American popular culture, but precisely what racial segment of the culture participates in the currency of such stories? Specifically, we are dealing with a phenomenon like the ethnic joke, examples of which are told by target groups, or is the urban legend essentially a mainstream occurrence? I don't think the final word has been written yet on the genre, but Jan Brunvand has made admirable strides toward that end."

The Mexican Pet: "New" Urban Legends
The Mexican Pet: "New" Urban Legends is Brunvand's third book in a series of books about urban legends meant to appeal to a general audience. This time, Brunvand includes stories collected from colleagues, students, professional newscasters and appeals through his own publications, lectures and media appearances. He organized the book in thematic categories: animal stories, automobiles, horrors, contaminations, sex and scandal, crime, and products, professionals and personalities. There are new versions of earlier legends, newly obtained pieces and leftovers from his files. Among the stories included in the book are: "The Mexican Pet," "Cabbage Patch Kids' death certificates," "The Green Stamps." Many of the stories have been disseminated through print and broadcast media.

Brunvand wrote in a 2003 article, "Nowadays it would be naive to ask for mere press releases and print articles when most people turn to websites and on-line databases for information." He recognized that urban legend reference sites, like Snopes.com provide readers with far more timely examples and current information than he could keep up with in his books.

The Study of American Folklore. An Introduction
''The Study of American Folklore. An Introduction'' is a book intended for students of folklore with a particular emphasis on American Folklore as transmitted in the English language. For the purposes of this book, Brunvand defines folklore as "those materials in culture that circulate traditionally among members of any group in different versions, whether in oral form or by means of customary example." The book is divided into three main categories: verbal (dialect and speech habits, proverbs, riddles, tales, rhymes, folk-songs, ballads), partly verbal (superstitions, customs, dances, plays), and non-verbal (gestures, music, handcrafts, folk architecture, food). Within the text, Brunvand provided for the reader information on data collecting methods, a general assessment of folklore material, bibliographic essays, and extensive lists of books and articles. To some, like reviewer Elliott Oring, the classification system used by Brunvand made The Study of American Folklore more of an "index" of American folklore rather than a "study" of it. Reviewer Kenneth Laine Ketner criticized the book for its failure to make explicit the background theory used to evaluate the works and classification system included in the book, contradictions in detail and narrative, its authoritarian tone, and its charismatic or arbitrary approach to knowledge with serious ethnocentric biases. Peter Tokofsky, in his article Introducing Folklore: A Review Essay, suggested that "the longevity and, presumably, continuing strong sales of the Brunvand text seems to confirm that introducing folklore by way of genres remains an effective and, for many, a preferred teaching tool even if it does not reflect the most current theoretical perspectives."

American Folklore: An Encyclopedia
American Folklore: An Encyclopedia is an illustrated volume that contains within its pages more than 500 articles covering American and Canadian folklore and folklife. Subject areas include holidays, festivals, rituals to crafts, music, dance and occupations. The book provides short bibliographies and cross-references for further research.

Selected works

 * A Dictionary of Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases from Books Published by Indiana Authors Before 1890, compiled by Jan Harold Brunvand (Indiana University Press 1961) (ISBN 978-0-253-38015-9)
 * The Study of American Folklore: An Introduction (W.W. Norton & Company 1968, revised 1978, 1986, 1998) (ISBN 978-0-393-97223-8)
 * A Guide for Collectors of Folklore in Utah (University of Utah Press 1971)
 * Norwegian Settlers in Alberta (Canadian Centre for Folk Cultural Studies 1974)
 * Folklore: A Study and Research Guide (St. Martin's Press 1976) (ISBN 978-0-312-29750-3)
 * Readings in American Folklore, edited by Jan Harold Brunvand (W.W. Norton & Company 1979) (ISBN 978-0-393-95029-8)
 * The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meanings (W.W. Norton 1981) (ISBN 978-0-393-95169-1)
 * The Choking Doberman and Other "New" Urban Legends (W. W. Norton & Company 1984) (ISBN 978-0-393-30321-6)
 * The Mexican Pet: More "New" Urban Legends and Some Old Favorites (W. W. Norton & Company 1986) (ISBN 978-0-393-30542-5)
 * Curses! Broiled Again! The Hottest Urban Legends Going (W. W. Norton & Company 1989) (ISBN 978-0-393-30711-5)
 * The Taming of the Shrew: A Comparative Study of Oral and Literary Versions (Routledge 1991) (ISBN 978-0-8240-7149-3)
 * The Baby Train and Other Lusty Urban Legends (W. W. Norton & Company 1993) (ISBN 978-0-393-03438-7)
 * The Big Book of Urban Legends (Paradox Press 1994) (ISBN 978-1-563-89165-6)
 * American Folklore: An Encyclopedia, edited by Jan Harold Brunvand (Taylor & Francis 1996) (ISBN 978-0-8153-0751-8)
 * Too Good to Be True: The Colossal Book of Urban Legends (W. W. Norton & Company 1999, revised 2001) (ISBN 978-0-393-32088-6)
 * The Truth Never Stands in the Way of a Good Story (University of Illinois Press 2000) (ISBN 978-0-252-07004-4)
 * Encyclopedia of Urban Legends (ABC-CLIO, Inc. 2001) (ISBN 978-1-576-07532-6)
 * Casa Frumoasa: The House Beautiful in Rural Romania (Columbia University Press 2003) (ISBN 978-0-880-33528-7)
 * Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid: The book of scary Urban Legends (W. W. Norton & Company 2004) (ISBN 978-0-393-32613-0)

title: Jan Harold Brunvand


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Birch Bayh

Birch Evans Bayh Jr. (January 22, 1928 – March 14, 2019) was an American Democratic Party politician who served as U.S. Senator from Indiana from 1963 to 1981. He was first elected to office in 1954, when he won election to the Indiana House of Representatives; in 1958, he was elected Speaker, the youngest person to hold that office in the state's history. In 1962, he ran for the U.S. Senate, narrowly defeating incumbent Republican Homer E. Capehart. Shortly after entering the Senate, he became Chairman of the Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments, and in that role authored two constitutional amendments: the Twenty-fifth—which establishes procedures for an orderly transition of power in the case of the death, disability, or resignation of the President of the United States—and the Twenty-sixth, which lowered the voting age to 18 throughout the United States. He is the first person since James Madison and only non–Founding Father to have authored more than one constitutional amendment. Bayh also led unsuccessful efforts to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment and eliminate the Electoral College.

Bayh authored Title IX of the Higher Education Act of 1965, which bans gender discrimination in higher education institutions that receive federal funding. He also authored the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act, and co-authored the Bayh–Dole Act, which deals with intellectual property that arises from federal-government-funded research. Bayh voted in favor of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968, as well as the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the confirmation of Thurgood Marshall to the U.S. Supreme Court. He led the Senate opposition to the nominations of Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell, two of Richard Nixon's unsuccessful Supreme Court nominees. Bayh intended to seek the Democratic presidential nomination in 1972, but declined to run after his wife was diagnosed with cancer. He sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976, but dropped out of the campaign after disappointing finishes in the first set of primaries and caucuses.

Bayh won re-election in 1968 and 1974, but lost his 1980 bid for a fourth term to Dan Quayle. After leaving the Senate, he remained active in the political and legal world. His son, Evan Bayh, served as the 46th Governor of Indiana and held his father's former U.S. Senate seat from 1999 to 2011.

Youth and education
Bayh was born in Terre Haute, Indiana, the son of Leah Ward (née Hollingsworth), a teacher, and Birch Evans Bayh, an intercollegiate coach and athletic director. His ancestry included German, English, Scotch-Irish, and Scottish. Bayh spent summers on his grandparents' farm in Shirkieville, Indiana, where he later lived. As a student at New Goshen (Fayette Township) High School, young Birch took part in speaking contests, played baseball and basketball, and won the Indiana 4-H Tomato Championship.

From 1946 to 1948, Bayh served as an MP with the United States Army in occupied Germany following World War II. He excelled in sports, competing as a Golden Gloves boxer in college and taking part in two Major League Baseball tryouts. Bayh graduated from the Purdue University School of Agriculture in 1951, where he was a member of the Alpha Tau Omega social fraternity and senior class president. In 1951, he won Alpha Tau Omega's highest individual collegiate award, the Thomas Arkle Clark Award. He married Marvella Hern in August 1952, and took courses at Indiana State University in Terre Haute for two years while also running the family farm.

Indiana legislature and 1962 U.S. Senate campaign
Bayh's political career began at age 26 with his election to the Indiana House of Representatives in 1954, where he served two years as Speaker and four years as Democratic Floor Leader. At the time, Bayh was the youngest Speaker in Indiana state history. While he served in the legislature, Bayh studied law at Indiana University's School of Law, received his LL.B. in 1960, and was admitted to the Indiana Bar in 1961.

At age 34, Bayh was elected to the United States Senate in the 1962 midterm elections, defeating 18-year incumbent Homer E. Capehart. Capehart was outspoken on the threat of Soviet nuclear missiles being placed in Cuba, and was buoyed by the Cuban Missile Crisis of that October. Bayh's disadvantage was dramatized in the opening scene of the 2000 film Thirteen Days, as President John F. Kennedy rattles a newspaper and asks an aide, "You see this goddamn Capehart stuff?" and the aide responds, "Bayh's going to lose."

Bayh's success was attributed to a vigorous campaign of 300 speeches between Labor Day and the election, and a catchy campaign jingle that taught voters the correct pronunciation of his last name:

"Hey, look him over, He's your kind of guy. His first name is Birch, His last name is Bayh."

For more than four decades — throughout his entire career in politics — Bayh continued to manage the growing of corn and soybeans on his family farm.

Drafter of constitutional amendments
As a freshman senator, Bayh was assigned to the Judiciary Committee and the Public Works Committee. While his service on the Public Works Committee allowed him to assist Hoosiers with various problems, Bayh's work on the subcommittees of the Judiciary Committee had the most lasting effect.

Bayh was serving on the Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments in August 1963 when its chairman, Estes Kefauver, died of a heart attack. Judiciary Committee Chairman James Eastland planned to terminate the subcommittee to save money, but Bayh offered to serve as chairman and pay for its staff out of his Senate office budget. Thus, Bayh assumed the Constitutional Amendments Subcommittee chairmanship less than a year into his first term. As chairman, Bayh was the principal architect of two constitutional amendments.

Presidential disability and succession
After President Dwight D. Eisenhower's health issues in the 1950s, Congress began studying the Constitution's dangerously weak and vague provisions for presidential disability and vice presidential succession. The 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy brought a new urgency to the matter. Bayh introduced an amendment on December 12, 1963, which was studied and then re-introduced and passed in 1965 with Emanuel Celler, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. The resulting Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1967, created a process for an orderly transition of power in the case of death, disability, or resignation of the President, and a method of selecting a vice president when a vacancy occurs in that office. It has since been invoked six times, most notably in the 1973 vice presidential and 1974 presidential succession of Gerald Ford.

In 1968, Bayh wrote One Heartbeat Away, a book about the passage of the Twenty-fifth Amendment. In the foreword, Lyndon Johnson describes the accomplishment as, "He initiated and brought to fruition the first major alteration of Presidential and Vice-Presidential succession procedures since the ratification of the Constitution." The book's preface is by former President Eisenhower, who wrote about the sixteen times there had been a vacancy in the office of Vice President and the measures taken to authorize Vice President Richard Nixon to act in his stead during the illnesses he experienced as president.

Lowering the voting age to 18
As a state legislator in the 1950s, Bayh unsuccessfully worked to lower the voting age in Indiana. He continued his effort in the Senate Judiciary Committee, where he also met opposition. In 1970, a new provision was added to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, lowering the voting age to 18 in all federal, state, and local elections. Then with the 1971 Oregon v. Mitchell decision, the Supreme Court ruled that state and local elections did not have to abide by the lowered voting age, though there would have to be dual elections in the 47 states where the lower federal voting age was not valid. Faced with another constitutional crisis, Bayh's subcommittee quickly began hearings on an amendment to lower the voting age to 18. What became the Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution passed through Congress within weeks of the Supreme Court's decision, and was ratified by the states within months. As such, Senator Bayh is the only person since the Founding Fathers to have drafted more than one amendment to the United States Constitution.

1964 plane crash
On June 19, 1964, Bayh, his wife, Senator Ted Kennedy and legislative aide Edward Moss were on a small plane that crashed near Springfield, Massachusetts. The group was flying from Washington National Airport to the Massachusetts Democratic party's convention, where Bayh was to be the keynote speaker. Senators Bayh and Kennedy were delayed by a vote which passed the Civil Rights Act. It had been held up by a filibuster. At approximately 11 p.m., the plane descended through heavy fog and crashed into an apple orchard. Bayh suffered muscular trauma and his wife fractured two vertebrae, but they were able to walk out of the wreckage. Kennedy was seriously injured, fracturing three vertebrae, breaking ribs and puncturing a lung, while Moss and the pilot, Edwin J. Zimny, suffered fatal injuries. Thrown to the front of the plane, Kennedy could not move from his waist down and could not reply to Bayh's calling, "Is there anybody alive up there? Is anybody alive?" Bayh smelled gas and thought the plane might catch fire and explode, so he went back into the fuselage to check for survivors. At this point, Kennedy called out, "I'm alive, Birch!" and Bayh pulled Kennedy out of the plane to safety. Bayh went back again to check on Moss and Zimny, but they were non-responsive. Bayh and his wife then walked to the road to call for help.

In 1980, Bayh endorsed President Jimmy Carter for reelection, a decision that rankled the staff of Ted Kennedy, who was challenging Carter for the Democratic presidential nomination. Kennedy's campaign adviser Bob Shrum called Bayh "a son of a bitch" in front of Kennedy, but as Shrum wrote in his memoir, "Kennedy was disappointed in Bayh, but he didn't want to hear anyone bitching about him. Bayh, he said, had a pass, and always would."

Equal Rights Amendment
The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), to establish equal rights for men and women under the United States Constitution, was first introduced in 1923 and then in every subsequent Congress for the next fifty years, with little to no success.

In 1970, Bayh witnessed one of these efforts to pass the ERA languish and fail due to poor-wording and "poison pill" conservative amendments. Through his Constitutional Amendments Subcommittee, Bayh drafted a new version of the ERA to be taken up by the 92nd Congress. Bayh based his appeal on extending the rights already guaranteed in the Fourteenth Amendment to a person's gender. The new version immediately won support from two important Senators who had opposed the earlier bill: Ted Kennedy and Robert P. Griffin, the assistant Republican leader. After the House approved its version under the leadership of Martha Griffiths of Michigan, the Senate easily passed Bayh's ERA in March 1972, sending it to the states for ratification. The amendment had seven years to win approval in thirty-eight states. Thirty states ratified the ERA within the first two years, and another four joined in 1974 and 1975. Bayh's home state of Indiana was the final state to ratify the ERA in January 1977, but by then, three states had rescinded their ratification, and three more would do so by the end of 1979. Bayh successfully fought to extend the seven-year ratification period to June 30, 1982, but the Equal Rights Amendment ultimately failed.

Bayh would later say he never anticipated how effective conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly "telling flat-out lies" would be. "[Bayh] says he will never forget," the Associated Press reported, "how she went on Indiana television, set her Social Security card on fire and argued that women would lose constitutional protections if ERA won."

"The Father of Title IX"
Bayh was influential in the addition of Title IX to the Higher Education Act, to give women equal opportunities in public education. Bayh was Title IX's author, the first person to introduce it in Congress, and its chief Senate sponsor. As Bayh was getting the Equal Rights Amendment out of committee, the Higher Education Act of 1965 was on the floor for reauthorization, and on February 28, 1972, Senator Bayh introduced the ERA's equal education provision as an amendment.

In his remarks on the Senate floor, Bayh said, "We are all familiar with the stereotype of women as pretty things who go to college to find a husband, go on to graduate school because they want a more interesting husband, and finally marry, have children, and never work again. The desire of many schools not to waste a 'man's place' on a woman stems from such stereotyped notions. But the facts absolutely contradict these myths about the 'weaker sex' and it is time to change our operating assumptions."

"While the impact of this amendment would be far-reaching", Bayh concluded, "it is not a panacea. It is, however, an important first step in the effort to provide for the women of America something that is rightfully theirs — an equal chance to attend the schools of their choice, to develop the skills they want, and to apply those skills with the knowledge that they will have a fair chance to secure the jobs of their choice with equal pay for equal work".

Title IX became law on June 23, 1972, and is best known for expanding opportunities for female athletes. Bayh has since been called "the father of Title IX."

Haynsworth and Carswell nominations
During the 91st Congress, Bayh successfully led the Senate opposition to two of President Richard Nixon's nominees to the Supreme Court of the United States.

In August 1969, Nixon nominated Clement Haynsworth, a federal judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, to a vacancy on the Supreme Court created by the resignation of Abe Fortas on May 14, 1969. Labor and civil rights leaders, concerned with Haynsworth's conservative record on workers' and civil rights, soon discovered that Haynsworth had recently ruled in a favor of a company in which he owned stock, and after questioning him on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Bayh felt Haynsworth did not recognize his own conflict of interest. By October, Bayh was widely recognized as "the leading opponent" of the nomination, and The New York Times reported how he "worked with his staff into the night to complete a "bill of particulars" of alleged financial conflicts by Judge Haynsworth," ultimately uncovering several additional instances where Haynsworth had conflicts and misled in his Senate Judiciary testimony. Thus, in November 1969, Bayh and 54 other senators rejected the nomination.

On January 19, 1970, Nixon nominated G. Harrold Carswell of Florida, whom the Senate had confirmed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit exactly seven months earlier. Carswell's judicial record was even more conservative then Haynsworth's and generally acknowledged to be mediocre, but after the earlier defeat of the latter's nomination, most doubted there would be another major battle. Then a group of Yale Law School students visited Bayh in Washington and asked how they could help. Bayh suggested that they research every case that Carswell had decided in his judicial career. They did so and reported back that Carswell's civil rights decisions had been reversed sixty percent of the time. With their research in hand, "Bayh led the opposition interrogation of Carswell in the two weeks of committee hearings," United Press International reported. The Senate rejected Carswell's nomination by a vote of 51 to 45.

Nixon publicly criticized Bayh and Senate opponents for overstepping their proper constitutional role, to which Bayh replied in a Senate floor speech by quoting from Article Two of the United States Constitution and calling the President "wrong as a matter of constitutional law, wrong as a matter of history and wrong as a matter of public policy." Harry Blackmun was ultimately nominated and confirmed to fill the vacancy. Bayh later supported and voted to confirm Nixon's nomination of Lewis F. Powell, Jr., whom he knew well from work on the Twenty-fifth Amendment.

In an undated White House memorandum made public on June 27, 1973, Bayh's name appeared on the master list of Nixon's political opponents, a supplement to Nixon's Enemies List.

Electoral College reform
The proposed Constitutional change with which Bayh was most closely associated in his final years in the Senate was his attempt to eliminate the Electoral College (the method of electing the President of the United States) and replace it with a popular vote in the 1960s and 1970s. One of Bayh's proposals passed the House easily but was filibustered in the Senate. In 1977 he introduced reform legislation into the Senate, but it never achieved the required two-thirds vote in either house of Congress. In 2006, he joined the National Popular Vote Inc. coalition, which aims to effect Electoral College reform through an interstate compact. Bayh wrote a foreword to the book Every Vote Equal by John Koza, a co-founder of National Popular Vote.

Prison reform for juvenile offenders
As chairman of the Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, Bayh was the author, sponsor and chief architect of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act, overhauling the youth prison system, including the requirement that juvenile offenders be separated from adults. After chairing 1971 hearings on brutality and corruption in the youth prison system, Bayh introduced legislation in February 1972, which was signed into law in 1974. Besides the deinstitutionalization of noncriminal offenders, it also created the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention within the Department of Justice, to ensure ongoing protections. The landmark legislation was reauthorized in 2002. During the October 3, 1977, signing ceremony for H. R. 6111, an extension of the Runaway Youth Act, President Jimmy Carter noted his discontent with Bayh not being in attendance as he had "been very instrumental in the passage of this act."

1976 presidential campaign
Bayh intended to run for the 1972 Democratic nomination for president, but his wife was diagnosed with cancer and he put his plans on hold. Before her death in 1979, Marvella Bayh became a leading anti-cancer activist.

On October 21, 1975, Bayh announced his candidacy for the 1976 Democratic nomination in a tour of his native state. "People are looking to someone who can talk to them in terms they can understand", he said while struggling with laryngitis that day. With a liberal record and farm boy demeanor, Bayh's candidacy was premised on his 'electability.' His campaign literature was headlined, "Yes He Can." In December 1975, Bayh came within a tenth of a percentage point from receiving the endorsement of the influential New Democratic Coalition, a liberal organization based in New York that helped George McGovern win the 1972 Democratic presidential nomination.

On the eve of the January 19, 1976, Iowa caucuses, Bayh and former Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter were considered the leading candidates. Bayh ultimately finished a distant third behind Uncommitted delegates and Carter, seemingly hindered by his support for women's rights. "Bayh has become the focal point of the [abortion] issue", said the executive director of the National Right to Life Committee, since Bayh opposed a constitutional amendment banning abortion before his subcommittee. Liberal support did not coalesce and Bayh finished third in the New Hampshire primary and then seventh in the Massachusetts primary.

Bayh suspended his campaign on March 4, 1976, after 136 days as a formal candidate. At his final press conference, he said, "I'm not prepared to crawl under a rock and say the future of Birch Bayh is over."

Bayh–Dole Act
In early 1978, the question of who owns government-funded research and who could therefore profit from it became personal for Bayh, as Marvella's cancer returned and the Bayhs learned that a technology that could predict a patient's reaction to chemotherapy was held up by restrictions on patent rights for federally sponsored research discoveries. This was part of a larger problem of stifling promising inventions, with 22 funding agencies disposing of patent rights in 22 different ways at the time.

Bayh invited Senator Bob Dole, a Kansas Republican, to craft a uniform policy. Together, they drafted the university and Small Business Patent Procedures Act, known as the Bayh–Dole Act, which allows United States universities, small businesses, and non-profit organizations to retain intellectual property rights of inventions developed from federal government-funded research. It was signed into law by President Carter on December 12, 1980.

In 2002, The Economist magazine said, "Possibly the most inspired piece of legislation to be enacted in America over the past half-century was the Bayh–Dole Act of 1980." A 2015 study determined that from 1996 to 2013, patent licensing made possible by Bayh–Dole increased gross industry output by approximately $1 trillion, supporting 3.8 million jobs in the United States.

Senate reelection campaigns
Bayh ran for reelection to the U.S. Senate three times. In the 1968 general election, Bayh defeated challenger William D. Ruckelshaus with 51.7% of the vote against a strong Republican tide, becoming only the fourth Indiana Democrat to be popularly elected to a second term in the Senate. In 1974, Bayh narrowly defeated Indianapolis Mayor Richard Lugar, garnering only 50.7 percent of the vote in what was otherwise a disastrous year for Republicans. Two years later, Lugar won Indiana's other Senate seat by ousting Democratic incumbent Vance Hartke.

In 1980, Bayh faced Congressman and future Vice President Dan Quayle. Bayh engaged the challenger in seven debates, and was defeated for reelection in the Republican landslide year, with 46.2% of the vote to Quayle's 53.8%.

Legal practice and business dealings
Returning to Indiana after his defeat in the 1980 election, Bayh founded the law firm of Bayh, Tabbert and Capehart, with offices in Indianapolis and in Washington, DC. Later in the 1980s he began to spend more time in Washington and left this practice. There he worked with several firms, including the well-known Venable LLP. Bayh also served on a number of corporate boards.

Advocacy and honors

In 1981, Bayh joined Robert Drinan, Don Edwards, Edith Green, Patsy Mink and Pat Schroeder to file an amicus brief before the Supreme Court in the case of North Haven Board of Education v. Bell. The brief urged affirmance of the lower court's decision that Title IX proscribes employment discrimination in federally funded education programs. The court agreed. On August 19, 2004, Bayh filed an amicus brief in another case relating to Title IX, Jackson v. Birmingham Board of Education. Bayh urged reversal of the lower court's holding; the Supreme Court agreed, reversing the 11th Circuit and holding that Title IX created a private right of action to parties alleging retaliation for reporting sex discrimination.

On December 23, 2010, Bayh filed an amicus brief in Stanford v. Roche, a case in which the Supreme Court was asked to determine whether the Bayh-Dole Act required that ownership patents for inventions resulting from federally funded research must automatically go to the federal contractor. Bayh argued that "a federal contractor's ownership rights to inventions covered by the Bayh-Dole Act cannot be terminated unilaterally by an individual inventor through a separate agreement purporting to assign the inventor's rights to a third party." The court disagreed, writing that "the Bayh-Dole Act does not automatically vest title to federally funded inventions in federal contractors or authorize contractors to unilaterally take title to such inventions."

Bayh continued to advocate for the direct election of the president, speaking with lawmakers around the country about the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, in which states agree to pledge their presidential electors to the winner of the national popular vote once a majority of presidential electors join the compact. Bayh served on the advisory board of the non-profit, National Popular Vote, Inc.

Bayh served as a member of the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, as co-chair of the University of Virginia's Miller Center National Commission on Presidential Disability and the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, and as founding chairman of the National Institute Against Prejudice and Violence.

In 2003, Indianapolis's historic U.S. Courthouse and Post Office was renamed in Bayh's honor as the Birch Bayh Federal Building and United States Courthouse.

In 2009, Indiana State University named their College of Education after the Bayh family; Senator Bayh was the fourth member of the Bayh family to attend Indiana State University (following his grandmother, father and mother); his late wife, Marvella Hern Bayh, was also an alumna of Indiana State University.

Personal life
Bayh's first wife was Marvella Hern of Enid, Oklahoma. Their son Evan Bayh was born on December 26, 1955. Marvella Bayh died of breast cancer on April 24, 1979. Bayh subsequently married Katherine "Kitty" Halpin in 1981. Their son Christopher was born on July 22, 1982.

Birch and Kitty Bayh resided in Easton, Maryland. He was a fellow at the C.V Starr Center for the study of the American Experience of Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland.

Bayh died of pneumonia on March 14, 2019, in Easton, Maryland, at the age of 91. He is interred at Arlington National Cemetery.

Publications

 * The Making of an Amendment. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company. 1966.
 * One Heartbeat Away: President Disability and Succession. Bobbs-Merrill. 1968. ISBN 9780672511608.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Birch Bayh


text:
Eastcote tube station

Eastcote is a London Underground station in Eastcote in the west of Greater London. The station is on the branch of both the Metropolitan line and Piccadilly line, between  and  stations. The station is located on Field End Road. It is in Travelcard Zone 5.

History
The Metropolitan Railway (Harrow and Uxbridge Railway) constructed the line between and  and commenced services on 4 July 1904 with, initially,  being the only intermediate stop. At first, services were operated by steam trains, but track electrification was completed in the subsequent months and electric trains began operating on 1 January 1905.

Progressive development in the north Middlesex area over the next two decades led to the gradual opening of additional stations along the Uxbridge branch to encourage the growth of new residential areas. Eastcote opened on 26 May 1906 as Eastcote Halt.

On 1 March 1910, an extension of the District line from to connect with the Metropolitan Railway at  was opened enabling District line trains to serve stations between Rayners Lane and Uxbridge from that date. On 23 October 1933 District line services were replaced by Piccadilly line trains. The station was rebuilt between 1937 and 1939 to a design by Charles Holden which features the large cube-shaped brick and glass ticket hall capped with a flat reinforced concrete roof and geometrical forms typical of the new stations built in this period. The station buildings and platforms are Grade II listed.

The station is surrounded by the suburb of Eastcote; the original centre, now known as Old Eastcote is some distance away. The Cavendish Pavilion nearby was a popular destination for outings in the first part of the twentieth century.

Metropolitan line
The Metropolitan line is the only line to operate an express service, though currently for Metropolitan line trains on the Uxbridge branch this is eastbound only in the morning peaks (06:30 to 09:30) Monday to Friday.

The off-peak service in trains per hour (tph) is:
 * 8tph Eastbound to Aldgate via Baker Street (all stations)
 * 8tph Westbound to Uxbridge

The morning peak service in trains per hour (tph) is:
 * 2tph Eastbound to Aldgate via Baker Street (semi-fast)
 * 4tph Eastbound to Aldgate via Baker Street (all stations)
 * 4tph Eastbound to Baker Street (all stations)
 * 10tph Westbound to Uxbridge

The evening peak service in trains per hour (tph) is:
 * 7tph Eastbound to Aldgate via Baker Street (all stations)
 * 3tph Eastbound to Baker Street (all stations)
 * 10tph Westbound to Uxbridge

Piccadilly line
Between Rayners Lane and Uxbridge there is no Piccadilly Line service before approximately 06:30 (Monday - Friday) and 08:45 (Saturday - Sunday), except for one early morning departure from Uxbridge at 05:18 (Monday - Saturday) and 06:46 (Sunday).

The off-peak service in trains per hour (tph) is:
 * 3tph Eastbound to Cockfosters
 * 3tph Westbound to Uxbridge

The peak time service in trains per hour (tph) is:
 * 6tph Eastbound to Cockfosters
 * 6tph Westbound to Uxbridge

Connections
London Buses routes 282 and 398 serve the station.

title: Eastcote tube station


text: User:Hadj

title: User:Hadj


text: Talk:Virgil, Illinois

title: Talk:Virgil, Illinois


text:
Greg Sorbara

Gregory Samuel Sorbara (born September 4, 1946) is a former politician in Ontario, Canada. He was a Liberal member of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from 1985 to 1995, and again from 2001 to 2012 who represented ridings north of Toronto in the city of Vaughan. Sorbara served as a cabinet minister in the governments of David Peterson and Dalton McGuinty.

He resigned from cabinet October 11, 2005, following a police investigation involving his family's real estate development firm and was reinstated on May 23, 2006 after a judge ruled that there was no cause for including Sorbara's name on a search warrant. Sorbara chaired the party's successful 2007 election campaign but announced on October 26, 2007 that he was leaving the cabinet to spend more time with his family but would continue as a backbench MPP. On August 1, 2012, Sorbara announced that he was retiring from the legislature but would stay on as chair of the Liberal's election campaign. Sorbara was chancellor of York University from June 2014 to May 2023, succeeded by Kathleen Taylor.

Family life and legal career
Sorbara was born in Toronto, Ontario in 1946. His father, Sam Sorbara, immigrated to Canada from Italy in the 1920s. Sorbara graduated from St. Michael's College School and attended University of Toronto for four years but left without graduating. In 1967 he joined the Company of Young Canadians in Vancouver, where he met his future partner, Kate Barlow. Later, he completed his education at York University and Osgoode Hall Law School, and began to practise law. His daughter Martina Sorbara is a singer-songwriter.

On October 11, 2005, the RCMP raided the Sorbara Group offices as part of the Royal Group Technologies investigation. The police warrant stated that there were reasonable grounds to believe Sorbara and other directors of Royal Group defrauded the company and shareholders when they bought land in Brampton, that was owned by a subsidiary of the Sorbara Group. Sorbara initially resisted opposition calls for him to step down, but later resigned as Minister of Finance the same day.

In 2017, Sorbara and family donated $5 million to the construction efforts of the Mackenzie Vaughan Hospital.

Political career
In the 1985 provincial election Sorbara ran as the Liberal in the riding of York North, a suburban riding north of Toronto. He defeated Progressive Conservative incumbent William Hodgson by 4,100 votes. The Liberals under David Peterson were able to form a minority government after this election, and Sorbara was appointed Minister of Colleges and Universities and Minister of Skills Development on June 26, 1985.

Sorbara was re-elected in the redistributed riding of York Centre in the 1987 provincial election. On September 29, 1987, he became Minister of Labour with responsibility for Women's Issues. Following a cabinet shuffle in August 1989, he became Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations.

In 1990 the Liberals were upset by the New Democratic Party in the election which followed, though Sorbara won in his riding.

1992 leadership race
On November 14, 1991, Sorbara announced that he was joining the race to replace Peterson as leader of the party. He stated, "We have to stop this province's slide into a low-wage, no-growth economy," and spoke of infrastructure investment. During the convention which was held in Hamilton, Ontario on February 9, he finished third on the first ballot, and remained in this position until dropping from the race after the fourth ballot. Sorbara subsequently refused to support either Murray Elston or Lyn McLeod (the eventual winner) on the fifth and final ballot. and did not seek re-election in 1995.

Sorbara supported Dalton McGuinty's successful bid for the provincial party leadership at the 1996 leadership convention. He did not run in the 1999 provincial election, but was elected Party President over Alvin Curling in November 1999. He later won a 2001 by-election in the redistributed Greater Toronto Area riding of Vaughan—King—Aurora, defeating Progressive Conservative candidate Joyce Frustaglio by almost 10,000 votes. Sorbara delivered a statement in May 2010, supporting the minority Muslim sect, Ahmadiyya, who were recently attacked in Lahore for practicing their faith.

Minister of Finance
The Liberals won the 2003 election, and Sorbara was appointed Minister of Finance in the Ontario Cabinet on October 23, 2003.

Sorbara became involved in a conflict-of-interest controversy not long after his appointment. In late 2003, the Ontario Securities Commission informed Sorbara's office that Royal Group Technologies would be announcing they were under investigation by the OSC. As a former director of Royal Group, this placed Sorbara in a conflict of interest as he also oversaw the OSC. Sorbara could not consult the Premier concerning the conflict of interest as he was restricted by the province's Securities Act from informing anyone else of the impending announcement by the company. Royal Group did not announce the investigation for almost two months.

There were calls for Sorbara to resign after the controversy became public knowledge, but he was cleared of any wrongdoing by the provincial integrity commissioner in August 2004.

On May 18, 2004, Sorbara released the McGuinty government's first budget. The centrepiece was a controversial new Health Premium of $300 to $900, staggered according to income. This violated a key Liberal campaign pledge not to raise taxes, and gave the government an early reputation for breaking promises. The Liberals defended the premium by pointing to the previous government's hidden deficit, and McGuinty claimed he needed to break his campaign pledge on taxation to fulfill his promises on other fronts. This broken promise has created a lasting public relations difficulty for the Liberal Party.

The Ontario Health Premium also became a major issue in the early days of the 2004 federal election, called a week after the Ontario budget. Most believe that the controversy hampered Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin's bid for re-election.

Also controversial was the elimination of coverage for health services not covered by the Canada Health Act including eye examinations and physical therapy. Other elements of the McGuinty government's first budget were a four-year plan to tackle the deficit left behind by the Conservatives, free immunization for children, investments in education and investments to lower waiting times for cancer care, cardiac care, joint replacement and MRI and CT scans.

On May 11, 2005, Sorbara delivered his second budget. The flagship of the budget was the "Reaching Higher" plan. Investing $6.2 billion over four years, the plan increased accessibility for low-income students with loans and grants while funding more enrollments, expanded medical school spaces, and invested in new faculty, graduate scholarships and research.

The budget also projected breaking a vow to balance the future 2007–08 budget. Sorbara instead aimed at balance in 2008–09.

Sorbara also moved to expand infrastructure spending by encouraging Ontario's large pension plans to invest in the construction of new roads, schools and hospitals. Specific projects in the budget included a 10-year expansion of the TTC and Go Transit, 15,000 new affordable housing units and improved border crossings. NDP leader Howard Hampton described this move as "privatization by stealth."

After a cabinet shuffle on June 29, 2005, Sorbara was also named as the Chair of the Management Board of Cabinet.

Sorbara was re-elected to the Legislature in the 2007 election, and subsequently on October 26, 2007, he announced that he no longer wanted to sit in Cabinet, citing he wanted to devote more time for his constituents and his family.

title: Greg Sorbara


text:
Carson Sink

Carson Sink is a playa in the northeastern portion of the Carson Desert in present-day Nevada, United States of America, that was formerly the terminus of the Carson River. Today the sink is fed by drainage canals of the Truckee-Carson Irrigation District. The southeastern fringe of the sink, where the canals enter, is a wetland of the Central Basin and Range ecoregion.

This is mostly included within the Fallon National Wildlife Refuge and the Stillwater Wildlife Management Area. This area serves as an important stopover for migrating waterfowl. The Sehoo Formation is south of the Carson Sink.

Carson Sink and Lone Rock working areas
The Carson Sink and Lone Rock working areas are the northwest portion of both the Carson Sink and the US Naval Fallon Range Training Complex. The Lone Rock working area includes the Bravo-20 range, which has numerous targets for combat aircraft training.

Lone Rock is in the middle of a Bravo-20 live bombing area. It is a solitary pinnacle of rock through the playa and it is held sacred by the Northern Paiute.

History
The Carson Sink was a deep portion of the Pleistocene water body Lake Lahontan, the lakebed of which is now the Lahontan Basin.

The Carson Trail, used during the California Gold Rush across the Lahontan Basin, included a section through the Forty Mile Desert to the first drinkable water on the Carson River. The Carson Sink station of the Pony Express was built in March 1860.

In June 1952 two U.S. Air Force colonels flew a B-25 bomber from Hamilton Field near San Francisco to Colorado Springs, Colorado. While passing over Carson Sink, the two reportedly saw three unknown aircraft fly within 800 yards of their aircraft before speeding out of sight seconds later. Upon landing, the two colonels reported the incident to the Air Defence Command headquarters, who informed them that there were no military or civilian aircraft in the area at the time. The incident was never resolved and is known today as the Carson Sink UFO incident.

In 1984, the natural dike between the Carson Sink and the Humboldt Sink was breached by the Nevada Department of Transportation to prevent Interstate 80 and the town of Lovelock from flooding due to unusually heavy snowfall in the preceding three years. The sinks remained connected by water for three years, until 1987.

title: Carson Sink


text:
Joseph McDowell Jr.

Joseph "Quaker Meadows" McDowell Jr. (February 15, 1756 –July 11, 1801) was an American planter, soldier, and statesman from North Carolina. He was known as "Quaker Meadows Joe" to distinguish him from his cousin Joseph "Pleasant Gardens" McDowell, who was also a legislator and American Revolutionary War officer from North Carolina. The two men are not always clearly distinguished in historical records; both were in the 1780 Battle of Kings Mountain, one as a major in the Burke County Regiment of the North Carolina militia, and the other in a subordinate role as a captain.

Early life
McDowell was born in Winchester in the Virginia Colony on February 15, 1756. His parents were Joseph McDowell, Sr. (1715–1771) who was an Ulster Scot immigrant who was a Presbyterian of Scottish descent from Ballycarry, Ireland (in what has since become Northern Ireland and Virginia Margaret O'Neil (1717–1790) who was Catholic from County Cavan, Ireland. The family moved to Rowan County, North Carolina in 1758. Joseph McDowell grew up on his family's estate, "Quaker Meadows", in Rowan County, North Carolina (in the area that became Burke County in 1777).

Congressional service
He was a delegate to the Hillsborough Convention in 1788 and the Fayetteville Convention in 1789 that approved the U.S. Constitution for North Carolina. McDowell served in the 5th United States Congress from 1797 to 1799. He is sometimes credited as also having served in the 3rd United States Congress (1793–1795), but according to the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, it was his cousin, Joseph "Pleasant Gardens" McDowell, who served at that time. His son Joseph J. McDowell also served in Congress.

Military service
He served in the North Carolina militia during the American Revolution.
 * Major in the 2nd Rowan County Regiment of the North Carolina militia (1776-1777)
 * Major in the Burke County Regiment of the North Carolina militia (1777-1781)
 * Lt. Colonel in the Burke County Regiment of the North Carolina militia (1781-1782)
 * Colonel over the Burke County Regiment of the North Carolina militia (1782-1783)

Known engagements that he participated in included:
 * April 10–20, 1779 Chickamauga Towns
 * June 20, 1779, Battle of Stono Ferry, South Carolina
 * July 15, 1780, Earle's Ford, South Carolina
 * June 20, 1780, Battle of Ramseur's Mill
 * August 18, 1780, Battle of Musgrove's Mill, South Carolina
 * September 12, 1780, Battle of Cane Creek/Lindley's Mill
 * October 8, 1780, Battle of Kings Mountain, South Carolina
 * January 17, 1781, Battle of Cowpens, South Carolina
 * 1782, Cherokee Expedition

Death
McDowell died July 11, 1801 in Burke County, North Carolina. He was buried at the Quaker Meadows Cemetery, Morganton, Burke County, North Carolina.

title: Joseph McDowell Jr.


text:
Chronotherapy (sleep phase)

Chronotherapy is a behavioural treatment that attempts to move bedtime and rising time later and later each day, around the clock, until a person is sleeping on a normal schedule. This treatment can be used by people with delayed sleep phase disorder (DSPD), who generally cannot reset their circadian rhythm by moving their bedtime and rising time earlier. DSPD is a circadian rhythm sleep disorder, characterised by a mismatch between a person's internal biological clock and societal norms. Chronotherapy uses the human phase response to light or melatonin. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine has recommended chronotherapy for the treatment of circadian rhythm and sleep disorders.

Example
Here is an example of how chronotherapy could work over a week's course of treatment, with the patient going to sleep 3 hours later every day until the desired sleep and wake time is reached.

 * Day 1: sleep 3:00 am to 11:00 am
 * Day 2: sleep 6:00 am to 2:00 pm
 * Day 3: sleep 9:00 am to 5:00 pm
 * Day 4: sleep 12:00 pm to 8:00 pm
 * Day 5: sleep 3:00 pm to 11:00 pm
 * Day 6: sleep 6:00 pm to 2:00 am next day
 * Day 7: sleep 9:00 pm to 5:00 am next day
 * Day 8 and thereafter: sleep 12:00 am to 8:00 am next day

While this technique can provide respite from sleep deprivation for people who must wake early for school or work, the new sleep and wake times can only be maintained by following a strictly disciplined timetable for sleeping and rising.

Other forms of sleep phase chronotherapy
A modified chronotherapy is called controlled sleep deprivation with phase advance, SDPA. One stays awake one whole night and day, then goes to bed 90 minutes earlier than usual and maintains the new bedtime for a week. This process is repeated weekly until the desired bedtime is reached.

Sometimes, although extremely infrequently, "reverse" chronotherapy – i.e., gradual movements of bedtime and rising time earlier each day – has been used in treatment of patients with abnormally short circadian rhythms, in an attempt to move their bedtimes to later times of the day. Because circadian rhythms substantially shorter than 24 hours are extremely rare, this type of chronotherapy has remained largely experimental.

Side effects
The safety of chronotherapy is not fully known. While chronotherapy has been successful for some, it is necessary to rigidly maintain the desired sleep/wake cycle thenceforth. Any deviation in schedule tends to allow the body clock to shift later again.

Chronotherapy has been known to cause non-24-hour sleep–wake disorder in at least three recorded cases, as reported in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1992. Animal studies have suggested that such lengthening could "slow the intrinsic rhythm of the body clock to such an extent that the normal 24-hour day no longer lies within its range of entrainment."

title: Chronotherapy (sleep phase)


text:
Talk:Sequence clustering

Untitled
This page was mainly set up to describe and document the ideas and concepts at the cd-hit open source project page.

Hopefully the idea is that people who make similar algorithms can expand this page, while maintaing a central version of the idea involved.

Not sure if that makes any sense, but I am aiming at a kind of open science thing.

--Dan 17:27, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)

title: Talk:Sequence clustering


text:
Light therapy

Light therapy, also called phototherapy or bright light therapy is the exposure to direct sunlight or artificial light at controlled wavelengths in order to treat a variety of medical disorders, including seasonal affective disorder (SAD), circadian rhythm sleep-wake disorders, cancers, and skin wound infections. Treating skin conditions such as neurodermatitis, psoriasis, acne vulgaris, and eczema with ultraviolet light is called ultraviolet light therapy.

Vitamin D deficiency
Exposure to light to wavelengths of 290-300 nanometers enables the body to produce vitamin D3 to treat vitamin D3 deficiency.

Skin conditions

Light therapy treatments for the skin usually involve exposure to ultraviolet light. The exposures can be to a small area of the skin or over the whole body surface, as in a tanning bed. The most common treatment is with narrowband UVB, which has a wavelength of approximately 311–313 nanometers. Full body phototherapy can be delivered at a doctor's office or at home using a large high-power UVB booth. Tanning beds, however, generate mostly UVA light, and only 4% to 10% of tanning-bed light is in the UVB spectrum.

Acne vulgaris
evidence for light therapy and lasers in the treatment of acne vulgaris was not sufficient to recommend them. There is moderate evidence for the efficacy of blue and blue-red light therapies in treating mild acne, but most studies are of low quality. While light therapy appears to provide short-term benefit, there is a lack of long-term outcome data or data in those with severe acne.

Atopic dermatitis
Light therapy is considered one of the best monotherapy treatments for atopic dermatitis (AD) when applied to patients who have not responded to traditional topical treatments. The therapy offers a wide range of options: UVA1 for acute AD, NB-UVB for chronic AD, and balneophototherapy have proven their efficacy. Patients tolerate the therapy safely but, as in any therapy, there are potential adverse effects and care must be taken in its application, particularly to children. According to a study involving 21 adults with severe atopic dermatitis, narrowband UVB phototherapy administered three times per week for 12 weeks reduced atopic dermatitis severity scores by 68%. In this open study, 15 patients still experienced long-term benefits six months later.

Cancer
According to the American Cancer Society, there is some evidence that ultraviolet light therapy may be effective in helping treat certain kinds of skin cancer, and ultraviolet blood irradiation therapy is established for this application. However, alternative uses of light for cancer treatment – light box therapy and colored light therapy – are not supported by evidence. Photodynamic therapy (often with red light) is used to treat certain superficial non-melanoma skin cancers.

Psoriasis
For psoriasis, UVB phototherapy has been shown to be effective. A feature of psoriasis is localized inflammation mediated by the immune system. Ultraviolet radiation is known to suppress the immune system and reduce inflammatory responses. Light therapy for skin conditions like psoriasis usually use 313 nanometer UVB though it may use UVA (315–400 nm wavelength) or a broader spectrum UVB (280–315 nm wavelength). UVA combined with psoralen, a drug taken orally, is known as PUVA treatment. In UVB phototherapy the exposure time is very short, seconds to minutes depending on intensity of lamps and the person's skin pigment and sensitivity.

Vitiligo
About 1% of the human population has vitiligo which causes painless distinct light-colored patches of the skin on the face, hands, and legs. Phototherapy is an effective treatment because it forces skin cells to manufacture melanin to protect the body from UV damage. Prescribed treatment is generally 3 times a week in a clinic or daily at home. About 1 month usually results in re-pigmentation in the face and neck, and 2–4 months in the hands and legs. Narrowband UVB is more suitable to the face and neck and PUVA is more effective at the hands and legs.

Other skin conditions
Some types of phototherapy may be effective in the treatment of polymorphous light eruption, cutaneous T-cell lymphoma and lichen planus. Narrowband UVB between 311 and 313 nanometers is the most common treatment.

Retinal conditions
There is preliminary evidence that light therapy is an effective treatment for diabetic retinopathy and diabetic macular oedema.

Seasonal affective disorder
The effectiveness of light therapy for treating seasonal affective disorder (SAD) may be linked to the fact that light therapy makes up for lost sunlight exposure and resets the body's internal clock. Studies show that light therapy helps reduce the debilitating and depressive behaviors of SAD, such as excessive sleepiness and fatigue, with results lasting for at least 1 month. Light therapy is preferred over antidepressants in the treatment of SAD because it is a relatively safe and easy therapy. Two methods of light therapy, bright light and dawn simulation, have similar success rates in the treatment of SAD.

It is possible that response to light therapy for SAD could be season dependent. Morning therapy has provided the best results because light in the early morning aids in regulating the circadian rhythm. People affected by SAD have low levels of energy and have difficulty concentrating. They usually have a change in appetite and experience trouble sleeping.

A 2007 systematic review by the Swedish agency SBU found insufficient evidence that light therapy was able to alleviate symptoms of depression or seasonal affective disorder. The report recommended that: "Approximately 100 participants are required to establish whether the therapy is moderately more effective than placebo". Although treatment in light therapy rooms was well established in Sweden, no satisfactory, controlled studies had been published on the subject. This led to the closure of a number of clinics offering light therapy in Sweden.

A Cochrane review conducted in 2019 states the evidence that light therapy's effectiveness as a treatment for the prevention of seasonal affective disorder is limited, although the risk of adverse effects are minimal. Therefore, the decision to use light therapy should be based on a person's preference of treatment.

Non-seasonal depression
Light therapy has also been suggested in the treatment of non-seasonal depression and other psychiatric mood disturbances, including major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder and postpartum depression. A meta-analysis by the Cochrane Collaboration concluded that "for patients suffering from non-seasonal depression, light therapy offers modest though promising antidepressive efficacy." A 2008 systematic review concluded that "overall, bright light therapy is an excellent candidate for inclusion into the therapeutic inventory available for the treatment of nonseasonal depression today, as adjuvant therapy to antidepressant medication, or eventually as stand-alone treatment for specific subgroups of depressed patients." A 2015 review found that supporting evidence for light therapy was limited due to serious methodological flaws.

A 2016 meta-analysis showed that bright light therapy appeared to be efficacious, particularly when administered for 2–5 weeks' duration and as monotherapy.

Chronic circadian rhythm sleep disorders (CRSD)
In the management of circadian rhythm disorders such as delayed sleep phase disorder (DSPD), the timing of light exposure is critical. Light exposure administered to the eyes before or after the nadir of the core body temperature rhythm can affect the phase response curve. Use upon awakening may also be effective for non-24-hour sleep–wake disorder. Some users have reported success with lights that turn on shortly before awakening (dawn simulation). Evening use is recommended for people with advanced sleep phase disorder. Some, but not all, totally blind people whose retinae are intact, may benefit from light therapy.

==== Circadian rhythm sleep disorders and jet lag ====

Situational CRSD
Light therapy has been tested for individuals with shift work sleep disorder and for jet lag.

Sleep disorder in Parkinson's disease
Light therapy has been trialed in treating sleep disorders experienced by patients with Parkinson's disease.

Sleep disorder in Alzheimer's disease
Studies have shown that daytime and evening light therapy for nursing home patients with Alzheimer's disease, who often struggle with agitation and fragmented wake/rest cycles effectively led to more consolidated sleep and an increase in circadian rhythm stability.

Neonatal jaundice (Postnatal Jaundice)
Light therapy is used to treat cases of neonatal jaundice. Bilirubin, a yellow pigment normally formed in the liver during the breakdown of old red blood cells, cannot always be effectively cleared by a neonate's liver causing neonatal jaundice. Accumulation of excess bilirubin can cause central nervous system damage, and so this buildup of bilirubin must be treated. Phototherapy uses the energy from light to isomerize the bilirubin and consequently transform it into compounds that the newborn can excrete via urine and stools. Bilirubin is most successful absorbing light in the blue region of the visible light spectrum, which falls between 460 and 490 nm. Therefore, light therapy technologies that utilize these blue wavelengths are the most successful at isomerizing bilirubin.

Photodynamic therapy
Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is a form of phototherapy using nontoxic light-sensitive compounds (photosensitizers) that are exposed selectively to light at a controlled wavelength, laser intensity, and irradiation time, whereupon they generate toxic reactive oxygen species (ROS) that target malignant and other diseased cells. Oxygen is thus required for activity, lowering efficacy in highly developed tumors and other hypoxic environments. Selective apoptosis of diseased cells is difficult due to the radical nature of ROS, but may be controlled for through membrane potential and other cell-type specific properties' effects on permeability or through photoimmunotherapy. In developing any phototherapeutic agent, the phototoxicity of the treatment wavelength should be considered.

Photodynamic cancer therapy
Various cancer treatments utilizing PDT have been approved by the FDA. Treatments are available for actinic keratosis (blue light with aminolevulinic acid), cutaneous T-cell lymphoma, Barrett esophagus, basal cell skin cancer, esophageal cancer, non-small cell lung cancer, and squamous cell skin cancer (Stage 0). Photosensitizing agents clinically-approved or undergoing clinical trials for the treatment of cancers include Photofrin, Temoporfin, Motexafin lutetium, Palladium bacteriopheophorbide, Purlytin, and Talaporfin. Verteporfin is approved to treat eye conditions such as macular degeneration, myopia, and ocular histoplasmosis. Third-generation photosensitizers are currently in development, but none are yet approved for clinical trials.

Antimicrobial photodynamic therapy
PDT may also be utilized to treat multidrug-resistant skin, wound, or other superficial infections. This is known as antimicrobial photodynamic therapy (aPDT) or photodynamic inactivation (PDI). aPDT has been observed to be effective against both gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria such as Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Mycobacterium. aPDT has shown lowered efficacy on some other bacterial species, such as Klebsiella pneumoniae and Acinetobacter baumannii. This is likely due to factors such as cell wall thickness and membrane potential. Many studies utilizing aPDT focus on the application of the photosensitizer through leakage from a hydrogel, which has been found to increase wound healing speed of skin infections through the upregulation of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and hypoxia inducible factor (HIF). This controlled leakage allows for prolonged but limited generation of ROS, lowering the impact on human cell viability due to ROS cytotoxicity. It is unlikely for drug resistance to photosensitizers to form due to the nontoxic nature of the photosensitizer itself as well as the ROS generation mechanism of action, which cannot be prevented outside of hypoxic environments. Certain dental infections (peri-implantitis, periodontitis) are more difficult to treat with PDT as opposed to photothermal therapy due to the requirement of oxygen, though a significant response is still observed.

Increased antimicrobial activity and wound healing speeds are typically observed when PDT is combined with photothermal therapy in photodynamic/photothermal combination therapy.

Photothermal Therapy
Photothermal therapy (PTT) is a form of phototherapy that uses non-toxic compounds called photothermal agents (PTA) that, when irradiated at a certain wavelength of light, converts the light energy directly to heat energy. The photothermal conversion efficiency determines the amount of light converted to heat, which can dictate the necessary irradiation time and/or laser intensity for treatments. Typically PTT treatments use wavelengths in the near-infrared (NIR) spectra, which can be further divided into NIR-I (760-900 nm), NIR-II (900-1880 nm), and NIR-III (2080-2340 nm) windows. Wavelengths in these regions are typically less phototoxic than UV or high-energy visible light. In addition, NIR-II wavelengths have been observed to show deeper penetration than NIR-I wavelengths, allowing for treatment of deeper wounds, infections, and cancers. Important considerations for the development of a PTA include photothermal conversion efficiency, phototoxicity, laser intensity, irradiation time, and the temperature at which human cell viability is impaired (around 46-60 °C). Currently, the only FDA-approved photothermal agent is indocyanine green which is active against both tumor and bacterial cells.

PTT is less selective than photodynamic therapy (PDT, see above) due to its heat-based mechanism of action, but also less likely to promote drug resistance than most, if not all, currently developed treatments. In addition, PTT can be used in hypoxic environments and on deeper wounds, infections, and tumors than PDT due to the higher wavelength of light. Due to PTT activity in hypoxic environments, it may be also used on more developed tumors than PDT. Low-temperature PTT (≤ 45 °C) for treatment of infections is also a possibility when combined with an antibiotic compound due to heat's proportionality with membrane permeability - a hotter environment causes heightened membrane permeability, which thus allows the drug into the cell. This would reduce/eliminate the impact on human cell viability, and aiding in antibiotic accumulation within the target cell may assist in restoring activity in antibiotics that pathogens had developed resistance to.

PTT is typically seen to have improved antimicrobial and wound healing activity when combined with an additional mechanism of action through PDT or added antibiotic compounds in the application.

Light boxes

The production of the hormone melatonin, a sleep regulator, is inhibited by light and permitted by darkness as registered by photosensitive ganglion cells in the retina. To some degree, the reverse is true for serotonin, which has been linked to mood disorders. Hence, for the purpose of manipulating melatonin levels or timing, light boxes providing very specific types of artificial illumination to the retina of the eye are effective.

Light therapy uses either a light box which emits up to 10,000 lux of light at a specified distance, much brighter than a customary lamp, or a lower intensity of specific wavelengths of light from the blue (460 nm) to the green (525 nm) areas of the visible spectrum. A 1995 study showed that green light therapy at doses of 350 lux produces melatonin suppression and phase shifts equivalent to 10,000 lux white light therapy, but another study published in May 2010 suggests that the blue light often used for SAD treatment should perhaps be replaced by green or white illumination, because of a possible involvement of the cones in melatonin suppression.

Ultraviolet
Ultraviolet light causes progressive damage to human skin and erythema even from small doses. This is mediated by genetic damage, collagen damage, as well as destruction of vitamin A and vitamin C in the skin and free radical generation. Ultraviolet light is also known to be a factor in formation of cataracts. Ultraviolet radiation exposure is strongly linked to incidence of skin cancer.

Visible light
Optical radiation of any kind with enough intensity can cause damage to the eyes and skin including photoconjunctivitis and photokeratitis. Researchers have questioned whether limiting blue light exposure could reduce the risk of age-related macular degeneration. According to the American Academy of Ophthalmology, there is no scientific evidence showing that exposure to blue light emitting devices result in eye damage. According to Harriet Hall, blue light exposure is reported to suppress the production of melatonin, which affects our body's circadian rhythm and can decrease sleep quality. It is reported that, in reproductive-age females, bright light therapy may activate the production of reproductive hormones, such as luteinizing hormone, follicle-stimulating hormone, and estradiol

Modern phototherapy lamps used in the treatment of seasonal affective disorder and sleep disorders either filter out or do not emit ultraviolet light and are considered safe and effective for the intended purpose, as long as photosensitizing drugs are not being taken at the same time and in the absence of any existing eye conditions. Light therapy is a mood altering treatment, and just as with drug treatments, there is a possibility of triggering a manic state from a depressive state, causing anxiety and other side effects. While these side effects are usually controllable, it is recommended that patients undertake light therapy under the supervision of an experienced clinician, rather than attempting to self-medicate.

Contraindications to light therapy for seasonal affective disorder include conditions that might render the eyes more vulnerable to phototoxicity, tendency toward mania, photosensitive skin conditions, or use of a photosensitizing herb (such as St. John's wort) or medication. Patients with porphyria should avoid most forms of light therapy. Patients on certain drugs such as methotrexate or chloroquine should use caution with light therapy as there is a chance that these drugs could cause porphyria.

Side effects of light therapy for sleep phase disorders include jumpiness or jitteriness, headache, eye irritation and nausea. Some non-depressive physical complaints, such as poor vision and skin rash or irritation, may improve with light therapy.

History
Many ancient cultures practiced various forms of heliotherapy, including people of Ancient Greece, Ancient Egypt, and Ancient Rome. The Inca, Assyrian and early Germanic peoples also worshipped the sun as a health bringing deity. Indian medical literature dating to 1500 BCE describes a treatment combining herbs with natural sunlight to treat non-pigmented skin areas. Buddhist literature from about 200 CE and 10th-century Chinese documents make similar references.

The Faroese physician Niels Finsen is believed to be the father of modern phototherapy. He developed the first artificial light source for this purpose. Finsen used short wavelength light to treat lupus vulgaris, a skin infection caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis. He thought that the beneficial effect was due to ultraviolet light killing the bacteria, but recent studies showed that his lens and filter system did not allow such short wavelengths to pass through, leading instead to the conclusion that light of approximately 400 nanometers generated reactive oxygen that would kill the bacteria. Finsen also used red light to treat smallpox lesions. He received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1903. Scientific evidence for some of his treatments is lacking, and later eradication of smallpox and development of antibiotics for tuberculosis rendered light therapy obsolete for these diseases. In the early 20th-century light therapy was promoted by Auguste Rollier and John Harvey Kellogg. In 1924, Caleb Saleeby founded The Sunlight League.

From the late nineteenth century until the early 1930s, light therapy was considered an effective and mainstream medical therapy in the UK for conditions such as varicose ulcer, 'sickly children' and a wide range of other conditions. Controlled trials by the medical scientist Dora Colebrook, supported by the Medical Research Council, indicated that light therapy was not effective for such a wide range of conditions.

title: Light therapy


text:
Joseph "Pleasant Gardens" McDowell

Joseph "Pleasant Gardens" McDowell (February 25, 1758 – May 18, 1795) was an American lawyer, soldier, and statesman from Morganton, North Carolina.

His estate was named "Pleasant Gardens", and he was nicknamed "Pleasant Gardens" Joe to distinguish him from his cousin, Joseph "Quaker Meadows" McDowell. The two men are not always clearly distinguished in historical records: both were at the 1780 Battle of Kings Mountain, one as a major leading the Burke County militia, and the other in a subordinate role as a captain. Although "Quaker Meadows" Joe is usually hailed as the Major McDowell who was the hero of the battle, some descendants of "Pleasant Gardens" Joe maintain that it was their ancestor who led the Burke County militia, a claim which is contradicted by contemporary evidence.

"Pleasant Gardens" McDowell was later appointed a North Carolina militia general, and served in the 3rd United States Congress from 1793 to 1795. However, these accomplishments are sometimes credited to Joseph "Quaker Meadows" McDowell, although the Dictionary of American Biography notes that the Congressional directory may be correct.

He was a delegate from Burke County to both the Hillsborough Convention of 1788 and the Fayetteville Convention of 1789 that approved the United States Constitution.

McDowell died on May 18, 1795, on his estate in what was Burke County, North Carolina, but is now part of McDowell County, North Carolina.

title: Joseph "Pleasant Gardens" McDowell


text:
Marfa lights

The Marfa lights, also known as the Marfa ghost lights, are incompletely understood lights regularly observed near Marfa, Texas, in the United States. Onlookers have attributed them to a number of paranormal phenomena, including ghosts, UFOs, and flying dinosaurs, among other things. They are most often seen from a viewing area nearby. Many of the lights there have been determined by to be atmospherically distorted versions of headlights on the nearby Route 67, but some lights as of 2017, including those which move backward, dance around, or disappear suddenly, have not been explained. The Marfa lights have also been speculated to be caused by natural methane reserves, similar to the mechanism which causes will-o'-the-wisps, and as a result of piezoelectric charge created by the igneous rock under Mitchell Flat. A set of cameras maintained by James Bunnell, pointed away from common thoroughfares, detected about 40 apparently "genuine" Marfa lights, meaning those with odd behaviour not explainable as highway lights, over the period 2000 to 2008.

Overview
According to Judith Brueske, the favorite place from which to view the lights is a widened shoulder on Highway 90 about nine miles east of Marfa. The lights are most often reported as distant spots of brightness, distinguishable from ranch lights and automobile headlights on Highway 67 (between Marfa and Presidio, to the south) primarily by their aberrant movements."

Robert and Judy Wagers define "Classic Marfa Lights" as being seen south-southwest of the Marfa Lights Viewing Center (MLVC). They define the left margin of the viewing area as being aligned along the Big Bend Telephone Company tower as viewed from the MLVC, and the right margin as Chinati Peak as viewed from the MLVC.

Referring to the Marfa Lights View Park east of Marfa (coordinates: 30°16'30"N  103°52'59"W), James Bunnell describes Marfa lights as "orbs of light", which change in intensity and color, which can move or remain stationary, splitting or merging. He describes the lights as being usually yellow-orange, but also occasionally other hues including green, blue, and red. He states that they usually fly above desert vegetation but below mesas in the background.

History
The first historical record of the Marfa lights was in 1883 when a young cowhand, Robert Reed Ellison, saw a flickering light while he was driving cattle through Paisano Pass and wondered if it was the campfire of the Apache. Other settlers told him they often saw the lights, but that when they investigated they found no ashes or other evidence of a campsite. Joe and Anne Humphreys next reported seeing the lights in 1885.

The first published account of the lights appeared in the July 1957 issue of Coronet magazine. In 1976 Elton Miles's Tales of the Big Bend included stories dating to the 19th century and a photograph of the Marfa lights by a local rancher.

Bunnell lists 34 Marfa lights sightings from 1945 through 2008. Monitoring stations were put in place starting in 2003. He has identified "an average of 9.5 MLs on 5.25 nights per year", but believes that the monitoring stations may only be finding half of the Marfa lights in Mitchell Flat.

Atmospheric phenomena
Skeptic Brian Dunning notes that the designated "View Park" for the lights, a roadside park on the south side of U.S. Route 90 about 9 miles (14 km) east of Marfa, is at the site of Marfa Army Airfield, where tens of thousands of personnel were stationed between 1942 and 1947, training American and Allied pilots. This massive field was then used for years as a regional airport, with daily airline service. Since Marfa AAF and its satellite fields are each constantly patrolled by sentries, they consider it unlikely that any unusual phenomena would remain unobserved and unmentioned. According to Dunning, the likeliest explanation is that the lights are a sort of mirage caused by sharp temperature gradients between cold and warm layers of air. Marfa is at an elevation of 4,688 ft (1,429 m) above sea level, and temperature differentials of 40–50 °F (22–28 °C) between high and low temperatures are quite common.

Car lights
In May 2004 a group from the Society of Physics Students at the University of Texas at Dallas spent four days investigating and recording lights observed southwest of the view park using traffic volume-monitoring equipment, video cameras, binoculars, and chase cars. Their report made the following conclusions:
 * U.S. Highway 67 is visible from the Marfa lights viewing location.
 * The frequency of lights southwest of the view park correlates with the frequency of vehicle traffic on U.S. 67.
 * The motion of the observed lights was in a straight line, corresponding to U.S. 67.
 * When the group parked a vehicle on U.S. 67 and flashed its headlights, this was visible at the view park and appeared to be a Marfa light.
 * A car passing the parked vehicle appeared as one Marfa light passing another at the view park.

They came to the conclusion that all the lights observed over a four-night period southwest of the view park could be reliably attributed to automobile headlights traveling along U.S. 67 between Marfa and Presidio, Texas.

Spectroscopic analysis
For 20 nights in May 2008, scientists from Texas State University used spectroscopy equipment to observe lights from the Marfa lights viewing station. They recorded a number of lights that "could have been mistaken for lights of unknown origin", but in each case the movements of the lights and the data from their equipment could be easily explained as automobile headlights or small fires. They concluded that due to the rarity of observation of "genuine" Marfa lights, those with odd behaviour not explainable as car lights, more research was necessary to determine their nature.

In popular media
The lights have been featured and mentioned in various media, including the television show Unsolved Mysteries and an episode of King of the Hill ("Of Mice and Little Green Men") and in an episode of the Disney Channel Original Series So Weird. A book by David Morrell, 2009's The Shimmer, was inspired by the lights. The Rolling Stones mention the "lights of Marfa" in the song "No Spare Parts" from the 2011 re-release of their 1978 album Some Girls. Country music artist Paul Cauthen wrote "Marfa Lights," a love song inspired by the lights, for his 2016 album "My Gospel." In the 2019 Simpsons episode "Mad About the Toy", the family visits Marfa. Lisa tries to explain the lights but is prevented by Marge. The Union Trade had a song called "Marfa Lights" on their 2015 album "A Place Of Long Years".

title: Marfa lights


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User talk:Tombom23

Talk to me about anything I've written I guess

title: User talk:Tombom23


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Talk:Financial District (Boston, Massachusetts)

So would you say Dewey Square, &c. are not in the Financial District? --Daniel C. Boyer 17:47, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)