Disappearance of Nicole Morin

On July 30, 1985, eight-year-old Nicole Louise Morin left her penthouse apartment on the 20th floor of an apartment building in the Etobicoke borough of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, to meet a friend in the lobby for a swim date. She never arrived and has not been seen or heard from since. The Toronto Police Service launched the biggest missing-person investigation in their history, forming a 20-member task force and investing more than 25,000 man-hours following up leads. No physical evidence has ever been found to solve the disappearance. While it is now considered a cold case, Toronto police and missing-child organizations continue to keep it in the public eye in an effort to garner fresh leads. They have produced several video re-enactments of Morin's last known movements and released age-enhanced photographs coinciding with anniversaries of her disappearance.
Early life.
Nicole Louise Morin was born on April 1, 1977. She was the only child of Arthur (Art) and Jeanette Morin, who had married 12 years before her birth. Morin had brown hair and brown eyes. At the time of her disappearance, she was tall and weighed .
In July 1985, Morin was living with her mother in a 20th-floor penthouse apartment in the Etobicoke borough of Toronto. Her father lived in Mississauga. Morin was on summer vacation from Wellesworth Junior School, where she was in Grade 3.
Disappearance.
On July 30, 1985, at approximately 10:30 am, Morin went down to the lobby of her building to pick up the mail. She returned to the apartment to get ready for a planned swim date with a friend. The pool was located in the rear of their building complex. Before leaving the apartment, she spoke to her friend via the intercom and said she would meet her in the lobby shortly. She left the apartment at about 11 am wearing a peach-colored, one-piece bathing suit, green hairband, and red canvas shoes; she carried a plastic bag containing a white T-shirt, green and white shorts, suntan lotion, hairbrush, a peach-colored blanket and a purple beach towel.
Fifteen minutes later, the friend buzzed her apartment to ask why Morin had not met her yet. Nicole's mother Jeanette, who was busy with small children in a daycare group that she ran in her apartment, assumed that Morin had gone to the pool herself or was playing with other children at the rear of the complex. She did not call the police to report a missing child until about 3:00 pm.
Investigation.
The police investigation initially involved "active searches and canvassing" of all of the apartments in the complex. The first day, police set up roadblocks around the building and circulated vehicles with public address systems to alert neighbourhood residents to the missing child's description. Knocking on every door in Morin's 429-unit complex, police entered apartments even if no one answered the knock. After a woman who lived in the building identified Morin from a photograph, police determined that Morin had travelled down the elevator and entered the lobby. From there, however, no other evidence was found as to Morin's whereabouts.
The next day, additional Toronto Police Service officers were brought in, and a "police dragnet consisting of mounted horsemen, marine units, helicopters and foot patrols" began combing the area near Highway 27, which was in the vicinity of the apartment building. Tracking dogs were also brought in to explore the building's underground garages, utility rooms, storage units, and sump pump rooms. A neighbor recalled seeing an unidentified blonde woman with a notebook on the floor that Nicole's apartment was located on, about 45 minutes before the disappearance. Police sought her as a possible witness, but she was never identified, nor did anyone come forwards claiming to be her. More than 900 neighborhood residents joined the search. The newly formed Toronto Crime Stoppers organization took on the disappearance as its first significant case. This organization posted a $1,000 reward, printed posters, and produced a video re-enactment of Morin's last known movements which aired on television several weeks later. The "Toronto Star" printed 6,000 copies of a poster showing Morin's picture and the phone number of the Metro Toronto Police. Three thousand copies of a watercolour sketch of Morin were commissioned by the Toronto police and distributed to police departments, post offices, and local stores.
The search was the biggest missing-person investigation in the history of the Toronto Police Service. Toronto police formed a 20-member task force which remained active for nine months. They invested 25,000 man hours following up leads. By November, police had questioned about 6,000 individuals, including hundreds of sex offenders. The first year's investigation cost an estimated $1.8 million. The police also offered a $100,000 reward for Morin's safe return, a reward that is still applicable today.
Police cleared all family members and acquaintances from suspicion. An unexplained note was found in the apartment on which Morin had written in pencil a few months earlier: "I'm going to disappear".
Although police discouraged it, Art Morin raised funds to hire a private investigator. He also left his job, set up an office, and searched for clues for his missing daughter in Canada and the United States. He moved back in with Jeanette after Nicole's disappearance, but the couple permanently separated in 1987. Jeanette consulted with a psychic in Calgary in her own effort to locate her daughter.
In 2004, researchers for a Belgian organization known as Fondation Princesses de Croÿ et Massimo Lancellotti announced that they had tentatively matched photographs of Morin seen on a Canadian police website with pictures on a Dutch website that advocates for sexually-abused children. Using biometrical analysis, the researchers claimed a strong resemblance between Morin and a child in a pedophile network in Zandvoort.
Despite the years of investigations and thousands of leads, no physical evidence has ever been uncovered to solve the disappearance.
Ongoing efforts.
While the case is considered a cold case, Toronto police and missing-child organizations continue to keep it in the public eye in an effort to garner fresh leads. Several video re-enactments of Morin's last movements have been produced, including a 2007 television re-enactment for "GTA's Most Wanted". For the 29th anniversary of the disappearance in 2014, the Toronto Police Video Unit produced a re-enactment which was also screened at Mac's Convenience Stores throughout the province of Ontario.
For the 30th anniversary of the disappearance in 2015, Toronto police organized a 5K run called Nicole's Run at Centennial Park in Etobicoke. The event included a candlelight vigil. In addition to raising awareness of the case, the run collected $3,000 in donations for the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, which operates a missing-child website.
In 2019, on the 34th anniversary of the disappearance, the Toronto police's missing-persons unit released an age-enhanced picture of Morin suggesting what she might look like in her early 40s.
In 2001, Toronto Crime Stoppers disseminated an age-enhanced photograph of Morin as a woman in her mid-20s to more than 1,000 Crime Stoppers programs in 17 countries via the internet. Child Find Ontario has also endeavoured to maintain public awareness of the case by arranging for Morin's picture, physical description, and age-enhanced photographs to appear "on electronic screens in Esso gas stations, billing envelopes from Rogers Cable and the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Toronto Transit Commission display screens, and on the back of transport trucks".
Morin's mother Jeanette died in 2007. Her father still lives in the Etobicoke area.


Nevus sebaceous of Jadassohn


Coalescer

A coalescer is a technological device performing coalescence. They are primarily used to separate emulsions into their components via various processes; operating in reverse to an emulsifier.
There are two types of coalescers. Mechanical coalescers use filters or baffles to make droplets coalesce while electrostatic coalescers use DC or AC electric fields (or combinations).
Mechanical coalescers.
A coalescer which operates by method of physical alteration or involvement of a droplet is influenced by "mechanical", or physical, means. A more common type of coalescer, mechanical coalescers are applied in oil and gas industries worldwide for removal of water or hydrocarbon condensate. While coalescers by definition function as a separation tool for liquids, they are commonly used, and mistakenly referred to, as filters.
In the area of compressed air purification, coalescing filters are used to separate liquid water and oil from compressed air using a coalescing effect. Coalescence (physics) shows how Coalescing filters operating at lower temperatures and high pressures work better. These filters additionally remove particles. The most commonly used media in this case is Borosilicate micro-fiber.
In the Oil and Gas, Petrochemical and Oil Refining industries, Liquid-Gas coalescers are widely used to remove water and hydrocarbon liquids to <0.011 ppmw (plus particulate matter to <0.3 um in size) from natural gas to ensure natural gas quality and protect downstream equipment such as compressors, gas turbines, amine or glycol absorbers, molecular sieves, PSA's, metering stations, mercury guard beds, gas fired heaters or furnaces, heat exchangers or gas-gas purification membranes.
In the Natural Gas industry, gas/liquid coalescers are used for recovery of lube oil downstream of a compressor. All liquids will be removed but lube oil recovery is the primary reason for installing a coalescer on the outlet of a compressor. Liquids from upstream of the compressor, which may include aerosol particles, entrained liquids or large volumes of liquids called "slugs" and which may be water and/or a combination of hydrocarbon liquids should be removed by a filter/coalescing vessel located upstream of the compressor. Efficiencies of gas/liquid coalescers are typically 0.3 Micron liquid particles, with efficiencies to 99.98%.
Liquid-liquid coalescers can also be used to separate hydrocarbons from water phases such as oil removal from produced water. They have been also used in pyrolysis gasoline (benzene) removal from quench water in ethylene plants, although in this application, the constant changing of cartridges can lead to operator exposure to BTX (benzene, toluene and xylene), as well as disposal issues and high operating costs from frequent replacement.
Electrostatic coalescers.
Electrostatic coalescers use electrical fields to induce droplet coalescence in water-in-crude-oil emulsions to increasing the droplet size. The squared dependence of droplet diameter in Stokes Law, increase the settling speed and destabilizes the emulsion. The effects on the water droplet arise from the very different dielectric properties of the conductive water droplets dispersed in the insulating oil. Water droplets have a permittivity that is much higher than the surrounding oil. Furthermore, water with dissolved salt is also a very good conductor. When an uncharged droplet is subjected to an AC electric field the field will polarize the droplet creating an electric field around the droplet to counteract the external field. As the water droplet is very conductive the induced charges will reside on the surface. The droplet has no net charge but one positive and one negative side. Inside the droplet the electric field is zero. When two droplets with induced dipoles gets close to each other, they will experience a force pulling the droplets closer until they coalesce.
In oil production, co-produced water is mixed with the oil in choke valves and process equipment producing water-in-oil emulsions. The amount of water increases during the production life of the reservoir. The emulsions are destabilized using gravitational separators, and the settling rates are increased by applying heat, demulsifiers, and AC electric fields. The AC electric field gives rise to attractive forces between water droplets and increases the probability of coalescence at contact. According to Stokes law, the settling rate increases proportionally with the square of the drop diameter. By promoting coalescence of small water droplets, the settling rate can be greatly increased. The water content is normally reduced to <0.5 vol% if this is the final treatment stage before the crude oil is exported.
Typical electrocoalescers are large settling tanks containing electrodes and operates under laminar-flow conditions with bare electrodes that may be vulnerable to short circuiting. An alternative to this type of coalescer is a flow through pre-coalescer that is installed upstream in a separator tank. In the Compact Electrostatic Coalescer. droplet coalescence is achieved by applying AC electric fields (50–60 Hz) to water-in-oil emulsions under turbulent-flow conditions. The turbulence increases the collision frequency between the water drops. The electrodes are insulated to prevent short circuiting, and permits water contents of up to 40% as well as water slugs. The equipment is a separate flow-through electrostatic treatment section installed upstream of a gravity separator to improve the performance. By keeping the treatment and settling sections separate, a compact electrostatic coalescer can be obtained that can also be retrofitted.
Liquid-liquid coalecers are also widely used in oil refining industry to remove the last traces of contaminants like amine or caustic from intermediate products in oil refineries, and also for the last stage dewatering of final products like kerosene (jet fuel), LPG, gasoline and diesel to <15 ppmw free water in the hydrocarbon phase. These coalescers are often electrostatic type, in which a DC electrical field encourages the water droplets to coalesce thus settling by gravity.


Disappearance of Kyron Horman

Kyron Richard Horman (born September 9, 2002) is an American boy who from Skyline Elementary School in Portland, Oregon, on June 4, 2010, after attending a science fair. Local and state police, along with the FBI, conducted an exhaustive search for Horman and launched a criminal investigation but have not uncovered any significant information regarding the child's whereabouts. His disappearance sparked the largest criminal investigation in Oregon history.
Background.
Kyron Richard Horman was born September 9, 2002, in Portland, Oregon, to Desiree Young and Kaine Horman, an engineer for Intel. Desiree and Kaine Horman divorced eight months into her pregnancy with Kyron, with Desiree citing irreconcilable differences. The two had been granted shared custody of Kyron until 2004, but when Desiree was diagnosed with kidney failure that required extensive medical intervention, Kaine took over full custody; notwithstanding this fact, Desiree still remained an active part of Kyron's upbringing.
In 2007, Kaine married Terri Moulton (born March 14, 1970), a substitute teacher originally from Roseburg, Oregon. Kaine became romantically involved with Terri around 2001 when he and Desiree were in the midst of divorcing. Kaine and Terri married in 2007 while in Kauai. In December 2008, Terri gave birth to a daughter, Kiara. Meanwhile, Kyron was a student at Skyline Elementary School near Forest Park.
Disappearance.
On June 4, 2010, Kyron was taken to school by his stepmother, Terri, who then stayed with him while he attended a science fair. Terri stated that she left the school at around 8:45 a.m. and that she last remembered seeing Kyron walking down the hall to his first class. However, he was never seen in his first class, a math class, and was instead marked as absent that day.
Terri's statements to the police indicate that, after leaving the school at 8:45 a.m., she ran errands at two different Fred Meyer grocery stores until about 10:10 a.m. Between then and 11:39 a.m., Terri stated that she was driving her daughter around town in an attempt to use the motion of the vehicle to soothe the toddler's earache. Terri said that she then went to a local gym and worked out until about 12:40 p.m. By 1:21 p.m., she had arrived home and posted photos of Kyron at the science fair on Facebook.
At 3:30 p.m., Terri and her husband, Kaine, walked with their daughter, Kiara, to the bus stop to meet Kyron. The bus driver told them that the boy had not boarded the bus after school, however, and to call the school to ask his whereabouts. Terri did so, only to be informed by the school secretary that, as far as anyone there knew, Kyron had not been at school since early that day and that he had accordingly been marked absent. Realizing then that the boy was missing, the secretary called 9-1-1.
Initial search efforts.
The search efforts for Kyron were extensive and primarily focused on a radius around Skyline Elementary and on Sauvie Island, approximately away. Law enforcement did not disclose their reasons for searching the area where they did, which included a search of the Sauvie Island Bridge.
On June 9, 2010, the Horman family, who had initially refused to speak with the media, released a statement to the press:
On June 12, around 300 trained rescuers were on the ground searching wooded areas near Skyline Elementary. The search for Kyron, which spanned over ten days, was the largest in Oregon history, and included over 1,300 searchers from Oregon, Washington, and California. A reward posted for information leading to the discovery of Kyron, which was initially $25,000, expanded to $50,000 in late-July 2010.
Legal proceedings.
In late June 2010, in the midst of the investigation into Kyron's disappearance, Kaine Horman was reportedly told by investigators that Terri had offered their landscaper, Rodolfo Sanchez, "a lot of money" to kill him. Sanchez testified in a deposition that Terri approached him to help kill her husband in January 2010, five months before Kyron's disappearance but when Terri's attorney Stephen Houze asked if Terri asked him to kill her husband, he said no. Investigators convinced Sanchez to confront Terri while wearing a wire, but they were unable to obtain any evidence and could not make an arrest. On June 28, Kaine filed for divorce and obtained a restraining order against Terri. The divorce was granted and Terri was eventually granted supervised visitation with her daughter.
During this time, Terri failed two separate polygraph examinations regarding Kyron's disappearance. In August 2010, it was announced that law enforcement were searching for an individual allegedly seen by two witnesses sitting inside Terri's truck outside Skyline Elementary the day of Kyron's disappearance. Bruce McCain, a former sheriff for the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office, told CBS News: "The identity of that second person, if he or she existed, could be critical in determining what happened to Kyron after 9 a.m. on June 4."
Meanwhile, in July 2010, a Multnomah County grand jury subpoenaed several friends of Terri Horman, including DeDe Spicher, whom Young and Kaine Horman described as having "been in close communication with Terri" and "providing Terri with support and advice that is not in the best interests of our son." According to law enforcement, Spicher was "extremely cooperative" and allowed a search of her property and car, as well as enduring three hours' worth of questioning from detectives. On the day of Kyron's disappearance, Spicher abruptly left her work gardening for a homeowner at their residence on Germantown Road in Northwest Portland around 11:30 a.m., and returned around 90 minutes later. She also allegedly helped Terri purchase an untraceable cell phone. During this time, Spicher told journalists: "There's this horror that my friend is going through. If I thought for a second that she was capable of [foul play], I would not have been there. She would not have been my friend in the first place."
In early August 2010, both Young and Kaine were subpoenaed and testified during the grand jury, as well as the school principal of Skyline Elementary. In December 2010, it was reported by "The Oregonian" that the grand jury had yet to provide compelling evidence yielding a potential indictment. By November 29, 2010, search efforts in Kyron's case had cost an estimated $1.4 million according to county commissioners, and yielded 4,257 tips.
In May 2017, it was reported by KGW that a secret grand jury panel continued to hear evidence in Kyron's disappearance, and had convened on multiple occasions. During the report, Kyron's case was described as still "active and ongoing." Two months later, in July 2017, law enforcement conducted further searches along Skyline Boulevard, but the searches yielded no results. In June 2018, Horman's mother, Desiree, posted on the official Find Kyron Horman Facebook page: "Stay tuned, something big is coming, I promise you."
Lawsuit against Terri Horman.
On June 1, 2012, Kyron's mother, Desiree Young, filed a civil lawsuit against Terri claiming that she was "responsible for the disappearance of Kyron." The lawsuit attempted to prove that Terri had kidnapped Kyron on the day he disappeared. Young sought $10 million in damages from Horman. On August 15, 2012, a federal court judge denied a motion by Terri to delay the lawsuit.
In early-October 2012, Spicher refused to answer 142 questions during a deposition regarding Young's lawsuit. Among these questions were ones regarding Spicher's whereabouts on June 4, 2010, and her contact with Terri that day. She also declined to identify a photo of Kyron, whether she had met him before or not, and whether she knew his father, Kaine.
During testimony provided by Kaine Horman in a separate hearing the same year, he stated that police had told him they "have more probable cause to think Terri Horman was involved in Kyron's disappearance than they did two years ago." On July 30, 2013, it was announced that Young had dropped the lawsuit against Terri so as not to interfere with the ongoing police investigation.
Depiction in media.
Terri Horman appeared as a guest on "Dr. Phil" in 2016, during which she told Phil McGraw: "I was advised from the beginning by law enforcement, by my husband at the time, by attorneys in the beginning, not to say anything. I've always wanted to. I've asked multiple times to speak out and have not been allowed." She denied having any involvement in Kyron's disappearance, and also stated her belief that he was kidnapped, adding: "There was a man in a white pickup truck, Ford, parked on Highway 30 at the 7-Eleven, which is not near the school. He was acting very strangely and he was addressed by one of the employees because he had been pacing back and forth in front of the 7-Eleven for about an hour."
"Boy Missing: The Search for Kyron Horman", written by Rebecca Morris, was released in May 2020. The book claims Kyron's regular bus driver, a classmate, and two of the classmate's family members witnessed Kyron walk through the school parking lot with Terri Horman and her infant daughter on June 4, 2010.
"Vanished from School," season 2, episode 2, of the television show "Real Life Nightmare" on Discovery ID explores the case. The episode aired November 15, 2020.


Electronic visit verification

Electronic visit verification (EVV) is a method used to verify home healthcare visits to ensure patients are not neglected and to cut down on fraudulently documented home visits. Beginning January 1, 2020, home care agencies that provide personal care services must have an EVV solution in place or risk having their Medicaid claims denied, under a mandate included in the 21st Century Cures Act.
While the federal mandate sets key data points that must be collected and electronically verified, states create their own systems. State governments decide how to gather and report data that EVV vendors use, and whether to include additional EVV compliance rules.
History.
Electronic visit verification was created to help cut down on fraud and ensure that people receive the documented care they need. EVV was designed to help verify that services billed for home healthcare are for actual visits made. The passing of the Affordable Care Act signed into law in 2010 made provisions for the cut down of fraud and over-payments, requiring states to stop Medicaid payments to providers when there is credible evidence of fraud. At least 10 states implemented an office of inspector general to oversee Medicaid fraud investigations, with many moving towards a system of verifying home healthcare visits in order to help reduce fraud.
Several states have introduced electronic visit verification with some mandating it for home healthcare. In January 2014, Illinois became the first state to mandate the use of EVV when the Department of Human Services required it for its home services program. As of June 1, 2015, the Texas Health and Human Services Commission mandates that electronic visit verification be used for all home healthcare visits billed to the state. The state of Ohio began the process of implementing an electronic verification system that would be used starting in 2016. It estimated the use of EVV will save the state approximately $9.5 million in its first two years of use. Other states that use but do not mandate EVV include Louisiana, Alaska, and Tennessee.
Electronic visit verification is widely used throughout the healthcare industry, not solely by government entities. Companies use it for compliance and quality assurance. Employers of home healthcare providers use it to verify employee's locations as well as document patient care. It can also be used to verify hours of work and document time sheets for healthcare workers.
Health care fraud.
Health care fraud includes health insurance fraud, drug fraud, and medical fraud. Health insurance fraud occurs when a company or an individual defrauds an insurer or government health care program, such as Medicare (United States) or equivalent State programs. The manner in which this is done varies, and persons engaging in fraud are always seeking new ways to circumvent the law. Damages from fraud can be recovered by use of the False Claims Act, most commonly under the "qui tam" provisions which rewards an individual for being a "whistleblower", or relator (law).
Tracking software.
Electronic visit verification is mainly done through the use of GPS tracking and computer software. It can also include the use of telephone based systems where healthcare workers can call-in from each location. GPS can be used to track the location of nurses, or a "check-in" system can be used requiring healthcare providers to clock in when they are at a home visit.
EVV is also used by employers to track employees and determine their compensation. Electronic visit verification software integrates with payroll systems that allow companies to verify payroll of its nurses. Many EVV software providers employ a cloud-based system that integrates with a mobile app to coordinate schedules, billing, payroll, communication, and patient documentation. Nurses can update patient files with the system while also submitting working hours to their employers. In contrast, companies such as First Data provide a telephone and computer-based system for verification, similar to the system implemented in the state of Texas in 2015.


International Emergency Nursing

International Emergency Nursing is a peer-reviewed nursing journal covering emergency healthcare. It is published quarterly by Elsevier and is an official publication of the European Society of Emergency Nurses and the Faculty of Emergency Nursing. It was established in 1993 as Accident and Emergency Nursing and obtained its current title in 2008. The current editor-in-chief is Heather McClelland.


Susan Wray

Susan C. Wray is professor of cellular and molecular physiology at the University of Liverpool. She also serves as the first vice president of the International Union of Physiological Sciences (IUPS) and is president of the Federation of European Physiological Societies (FEPS). She was the founding editor-in-chief of "Physiological Reports". and is the first editor-in-chief of "Current Research in Physiology". She serves as director of the centre of better births in Liverpool Women's Hospital which was opened in 2013 with funding of £2.5 million with the objective of basic scientists working together with clinicians on problems during pregnancy. Along with , she leads the Harris wellbeing preterm birth centre. Wray is the director of the University of Liverpool Athena SWAN and team leader for the institute of translational medicine. Her primary research interests are in smooth muscle physiology, reproductive medicine and cell signalling.
Education.
After attending Chadderton Grammar School for Girls, Wray received her Bachelor of Science degree in physiology and, in 1979, her PhD from University College London for research investigating gestational changes in the connective tissue of the uterus.
Career and research.
After postdoctoral research at UCL she moved to the University of Liverpool in 1990 where she was promoted to professor in 1996 and served as head of the department of physiology from 2004 to 2008. Wray's early research focused on changes of connective tissue in the uterus during and after pregnancy. She then helped develop spectroscopic methods to characterize metabolism in human neonates. Since moving to Liverpool, she has focused on the relationship between metabolism and function in smooth muscle. In particular, she has elucidated the effects of pH on contractility. In order to elucidate the underlying mechanisms, she performed some of the first measurements of intracellular calcium in smooth muscle. Subsequent work into the relationship between calcium and excitability led to new understanding of the origin of the refractory period in the ureter. Her translational work has led to measurements of lactate to predict labour outcome and to the use of bicarbonate to increase the pH of the mother and thereby increase the strength of uterine contractions, reducing the requirement for caesarean sections. She has also shown that problems of labour experienced by obese mothers can be explained by impaired smooth muscle contractility. In 2015, she demonstrated a novel mechanism whereby repetitive, transient episodes of hypoxia increase uterine contractions during labour. Her work has also investigated the use of plant-derived cyclotides as well as modifications to the natural hormone oxytocin to serve as templates for novel compounds to accelerate labor. Some of her research can be seen in a video of one of her lectures.
Women in Science.
Wray has been engaged with gender equality and mentoring throughout her career. She is an academic champion for the Higher Education Foundation AURORA Women in Leadership Scheme. She gave the inaugural Athena Swan Lecture at Edge Hill University in 2016. She also worked on the SUSTAIN initiative for women in science. With Tilli Tansey she co-edited the book "Women physiologists: centenary celebrations and beyond" for The Physiological Society which includes forewords by Julia Higgins and Susan Greenfield. This book has been used as a source to encourage the writing of more Wikipedia articles about women physiologists.
Awards and honours.
Wray was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci) in 2002, an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (FRCOG) in 2006 and a member of the Academia Europaea (MAE) in 2008. She was awarded the Joan Mott Prize Lecture by The Physiological Society in 2006 and elected as an honorary member of the Physiological Society in 2015. In 2012 she was nominated a knowledge hero by the "Liverpool Echo"'.


Ernest Starling

Ernest Henry Starling (17 April 1866 – 2 May 1927) was a British physiologist who contributed many fundamental ideas to this subject. These ideas were important parts of the British contribution to physiology, which at that time led the world.
He made at least four significant contributions: 1. In the capillary, water is forced out through the pores in the wall by hydrostatic pressure and driven in by the osmotic pressure of plasma proteins (or oncotic pressure). These opposing forces approximately balance; which is known as Starling's Principle. 2. The discovery of the hormone secretinwith his brother-in-law William Baylissand the introduction of the word hormone. 3. The analysis of the heart's activity as a pump, which is known as the Frank–Starling law. 4. Several fundamental observations on the action of the kidneys. These include evidence for the existence of vasopressin, the anti-diuretic hormone. He also wrote the leading textbook of physiology in English, which ran through 20 editions.
Rising to prominence.
Ernest Starling became a medical student at Guy's Hospital, London, in 1882 (when he was 16). He had a brilliant career there and set his sights on becoming a Harley Street physician. But the science behind medicinephysiologyattracted him much more; he spent a long vacation in Wilhelm Kühne's laboratory in Heidelberg, studying the mechanisms of lymph formation and convinced himself that he could become a physiologist. At that time such a job description did not exist in Britain. Guy's had no physiological laboratories, but Starling's enthusiasm changed all this, and he published nine papers on lymph and capillary function between 1893 and 1897. He showed that there are opposing forces across the capillary wallan outward movement of water due to hydrostatic pressure (derived from the heart's contraction) and an inward movement, secondary to the osmotic pressure of the plasma proteins within the capillary. Without awareness of these forces, the physician cannot begin to understand such conditions as edema. The inward and outward forces are often referred to as "Starling forces". They established him as a serious contributor. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1899.
Hormones.
Starling enjoyed collaborating with William Bayliss (1860–1924), who was on the staff of University College London (UCL), and together they published on the electrical activity of the heart and on peristalsis. In 1891, when he was 25, Starling married Florence Amelia Wooldridge, the widow of Leonard Charles Wooldridge, who had been his physiology teacher at Guy's and died at the age of 32. She was a great support to Starling as a sounding board, secretary, and manager of his affairs as well as mother of their four children. In 1893 Bayliss married Gertrude, Starling's beautiful sister, so the two were brothers-in-law. When Starling was appointed professor at UCL in 1899, the scientific family was even closer. Bayliss and Starling were in the newspaper's headlines when involved in the Brown Dog affair, a controversy relating to vivisection.
Bayliss and Starling investigated pancreatic secretion, which at that time was believed to be entirely under nervous control. They showed that whenever food or acid was put into the duodenum some blood-borne stimulus was released, causing the pancreas to secrete. They called this substance secretin and Starling proposed that the body produces many secretin-like molecules, and in 1905 proposed that these substances should be called hormones. By doing this, he began a whole new biological subject, which became known as endocrinology.
Medical education.
Starling felt passionately about many subjects, one of which was medical education. He found the lack of science behind medical practice intolerable, and when in 1910 a Royal Commission (The Haldane Commission) was set up to improve medical education, Starling was an enthusiastic contributor. One of the consequences of the Commission was the establishment of medical units in London teaching hospitals: clinical practice supported by laboratory research is now taken for granted in every large institution. For this we must thank Starling's and William Osler's evidence given before the Haldane Commission.
The law of the heart.
The physiological discovery most often associated with Starling is the Law of the Heart. Occupying two years of his life (1910–1912) his investigations examined how the heart increased its output in response to more blood entering the organ, which increases the size of the chambers during filling. For this work he made use of the anesthetized dog, in an experimental arrangement known as the heart-lung preparation. This played an important role in subsequent experiments, when he was not primarily interested in blood flow. Starling was unaware of previous work by a German physiologist, Otto Frank, using the isolated frog heart. Frank showed that the longer the heart-muscle fibers were stretched the stronger the contraction. He did this with no interest in the circulation as a whole, so his finding have to be taken in parallel with Starling's, so it became the Frank–Starling law.
World War I.
During the 1914–1918 war, Starling first was involved in research into poison gases. As a commissioned officer he found the organization of the matter chaotic and on several occasions was very outspoken to his war office superiors. This did his prospects no good at all. Many of his distinguished contemporaries received knighthoods. Starling was awarded a CMG. He resigned from the army in June 1917 and finally was able to undertake war work that utilized his abilities. As chairman of the Royal Society Food (War) Committee he was instrumental in setting up rationing that provided needed calories and also the nutritional supplements then known. Rationing actually improved nutrition in wartime Britain. Germany had a similar food shortage during the war, but coped with it disastrously.
Post-war.
Starling returned to UCL at the end of the war. His wartime experiences had left him with a scathing vision on how the country was run, and in particular the educational system. He was especially outspoken on public (the British designation for private) school education. And particularly the teaching of classics themes: "After nine years, nine-tenths of the boys can read neither Latin nor Greek. They may have acquired a few catchwords or allusions to classical mythology, but they can give no account of the manner in which the Greeks lived, or the part played by Greek philosophy in the evolution of modern ideas, or in the way in which western government has been founded on Roman inventions."
During the 1920s he was very busy doing experiments and his reputation attracted distinguished collaborators. Many of these involved the heart-lung preparation. It was used to investigate the control of blood pressure (with G. V. Anrep), the activity of insulin (with F. P. Knowlton), and renal function (with E. B. Verney). In 1923–24 the American embryologist, George Washington Corner worked with Starling in his laboratory. In 1920, Starling was found to have colonic cancer, and the surgeon Arbuthnot Lane removed half of his colon. It seriously limited his exceptional physical activities: he gave up mountaineering, for example.
The Nobel Committee.
Starling's relationship with the Nobel Prize is of interest. He was first proposed for the prize in 1913 by Otto Loewi (who won a Prize himself in 1936). Starling's subject was hormones, with secretin being prominent. The assessor, J. E. Johansson, decided that Starling should receive the prize, but not yet. No prize was given during World War I. In 1920 August Krogh, a Danish physiologist, was rewarded for his work on capillaries (his findings were not actually as significant as Starling's had been, twenty years before: but the significance of ‘Starling forces’ in the capillary had not become apparent). In 1926, Starling was proposed again, this time for his work on the kidney. On this occasion, Johansson felt that Starling's hormone studies should have been rewarded. But by then the experiments had been done almost a quarter of a century before, and Johansson felt that the prize should be given for recent discoveries. He had forgotten that it was he who had put Starling's work on the back burner in 1913. Subsequent British Laureates (such as Gowland Hopkins and Charles Sherrington) were given the prize for work they had done twenty or thirty years before. But by this time Johansson was no longer involved with the awarding of the prize.
Death.
The exact circumstances of Starling's death are far from clear. He was on a pleasure cruise in the West Indies, but when his ship (a banana boat called "Ariguani") tied up in Kingston harbour he was found to be dead. He was apparently travelling by himself, and there were no friends or relations at his funeralin pouring rainin Kingston, Jamaica. No autopsy was performed, so the cause of his death which one may presume to be cancer secondary to his colon tumourwas never established. His passing marked the end of an outstanding contributor to medical science. In the words of Henry Dale "All had found him a generous comrade and leader, and it is impossible to think of physiology in the last thirty years without Starling as the central figure of inspiration … his courage was indomitable, his energy and his passion for knowledge flouted all restraint."
Descendants.
Two of his great-grandchildren, Boris Starling (born 1969) and Belinda Starling (1972–2006) are writers.


Schizophrenia International Research Society

The Schizophrenia International Research Society is an academic organization with a global scope, devoted to the study of schizophrenia and related disorders.


Robert Knowles (parasitologist)

Robert Knowles (30 October 1883 – 3 August 1936, Calcutta) was a British parasitologist, known for his discovery, with Biraj Mohan Das Gupta, of the "Plasmodium" species now known as "Plasmodium knowlesi".
Biography.
Knowles matriculated at Downing College, Cambridge and graduated in 1905 with B.A. Receiving medical education at St Mary's Hospital, London, he was made M.R.S.C in 1907 and L.R.C.P. Lond. in 1907. As a British officer in the Indian Medical Service he was made lieutenant on 1 February 1908, captain on 1 February 1911, major on 1 August 1919, and lieutenant-colonel on 1 August 1927; upon his death in 1936 he held the rank of colonel. He became a professor of protozoology at the Calcutta School of Tropical Medicine in 1928. Knowles was the director of the Calcutta School of Tropical Medicine from 1933 to 1935; in the directorship his predecessor was Hugh William Acton and his successor was Sir Ram Nath Chopra.
"P. knowlesi".
Giuseppe Franchini published in 1927 what is generally believed to be the first description of the "Plasmodium" species now known as "P. knowlesi". At the Calcutta School of Tropical Medicine, in 1931 H. G. M. Campbell detected "P. knowlesi" in a macaque imported from Singapore. Campbell showed his discovery to his supervisor L. Everard Napier, who injected the strain into three monkeys, one of which developed symptoms of malaria. Aware of the Protozoological Department's search for a monkey malaria strain, Napier and Campbell gave the infected monkey to the physician Biraj Mohan Das Gupta, working under Knowles. Das Gupta maintained the "Plasmodium" species by serial passage in monkeys until Knowles returned from leave. In 1932, Knowles and Das Gupta published their description of the "Plasmodiium" species and their account of how it could be transmitted from monkey to human by blood passage to three human volunteers. The "Plasmodium" species was named "Plasmodium knowlesi" by Sinton and Mulligan in 1932. The first natural infection of "P. knowlesi" in humans was observed in 1965.


Family Tracing and Reunification

Family Tracing and Reunification (known as FTR) is a process whereby disaster response teams locate separated family members and reunite them following natural and human catastrophes. During major crises, children can become separated from their families for a wide range of reasons, and government disaster relief agencies as well as NGOs have developed inter-agency procedures to return children, and other vulnerable people, to their families.
Mobile technology.
UNICEF has developed a tool called RapidFTR that uses smartphones to register and monitor children who have become separated during a natural disaster or conflict, with a view to reunifying children with their parents. While the tool has been assessed as having some benefits, it has reportedly encountered significant challenges relating to relevance of the design and heavy dependence on internet in contexts with limited access. The RapidFTR platform showed some promise and was used to track displaced children after Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, but has been phased out in the more sizable South Sudan response in favour of more contextually suitable methods of registering separated families and managing related data.
References.
Charnley, Helen M., and Josefa Langa. 'Community Based Interventions For Separated Children In Mozambique: The Family Tracing And Reunification Program.'. Community Alternatives: International Journal of Family Care (1994): n. pag. Web. 19 Feb. 2015.


Abraham Holland

Abraham Holland (died 18 February 1626) was an English poet. He was the son of the translator, Philemon Holland, and the brother of the printer, Henry Holland. His best known work is the "Naumachia", a poem on the Battle of Lepanto in 1571.
Early life and education.
Abraham Holland was one of the ten children of the translator Philemon Holland and his wife, Anne Bott (1555–1627), the daughter of William Bott ("alias" Peyton) of Perry Hall, Handsworth, Staffordshire. Holland was a grandson of the Marian exile, John Holland (died 1578), rector of Great Dunmow, Essex. Holland had six brothers and three sisters, including the printer Henry Holland, the print publisher Compton Holland (died 1622), William Holland (1592–1632), a surgeon whose treatise on gout, "Gutta Podagrica", was published posthumously in 1633, and Elizabeth Holland, who married a London merchant, William Angell.
Holland was educated like his father at Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating BA in 1617.
Career.
Holland's first published work was a Latin elegy on John Harington, 2nd Baron Harington of Exton, who had died on 27 February 1614. The elegy was included in "Heroologia Anglica", a two-volume illustrated work in folio printed in 1620 by Holland's brother, Henry Holland.
In 1622 Holland published in quarto a long poem describing the 1571 Battle of Lepanto entitled "Naumachia; or, Holland's sea-fight". The volume contained commendatory verses by Michael Drayton, among others, and was dedicated to George Gordon, then Earl of Enzie, son and heir to George Gordon, 1st Marquess of Huntly, and a favourite of King James, who had him educated with his own sons, Prince Henry and Prince Charles. According to Cummings, the poem is written in 'the overblown manner associated with Lucan'.
Another poem by Holland, the satirical "A continued just inquisition against paper persecutors", was appended to "A Scourge for Paper-Persecutors" (1625). The latter was a reprint by Holland's brother, Henry, of John Davies of Hereford's "Scourge of Folly" of 1611.
Death and legacy.
Holland died of the plague on 18 February 1626, perhaps at Chelsea, where he appears to have lived for a time. Following his death his brother Henry published a collection of his poems, entitling it "Hollandi Posthuma". Included in it were an elegy on King James, an elegy on Henry de Vere, 18th Earl of Oxford, a lengthy poem on the 1625 plague in London, an epistle to his father, Philemon Holland, who was in ill health at the time, as well as various epistles, translations of the Psalms in verse, and his own epitaph. The collection was described as having been delivered to Henry on the day of Abraham Holland's death.
Some of Holland's poems were reprinted in the years following his death. The "Naumachia" was reprinted in some copies of the "Posthuma", and in some copies of his father Philemon Holland's translation of Xenophon's Cyropaedia printed in 1632. Holland's 1625 poem on the plague from the "Posthuma", under a new title, "London Looke-Backe", was appended to "Salomon's Pest-House or Towre-Royall...By I. D." (1630).
Ashmole MS 36–7 f. 157 contains a poem by Holland addressed 'To my honest father, Mr. Michael Drayton, and my new, yet loved friend, Mr. Will. Browne'.


Cat genetics

Cat genetics describes the study of inheritance as it occurs in domestic cats. In feline husbandry it can predict established traits (phenotypes) of the offspring of particular crosses. In medical genetics, cat models are occasionally used to discover the function of homologous human disease genes.
The domesticated cat and its closest wild ancestor are both diploid organisms that possess 38 chromosomes and roughly 20,000 genes. About 250 heritable genetic disorders have been identified in cats, many similar to human inborn errors. The high level of similarity among the metabolisms of mammals allows many of these feline diseases to be diagnosed using genetic tests that were originally developed for use in humans, as well as the use of cats in the study of the human diseases.
An example of a mutation that is shared among all felines, including the big cats, is a mutant chemosensor in their taste buds that prevents them from tasting sweetness, which may explain their indifference to fruits, berries, and other sugary foods. In some breeds of cats congenital sensorineural deafness is very common, with most white cats (but not albinos) being affected, particularly if they also have blue eyes. The gene responsible for this defect is the KIT gene and the disease is studied in the hope that it may shed light on the causes of hereditary deafness in humans. Mutations in this gene also causes white spotting.
Since a large variety of coat patterns exist within the various cat breeds, the cat is an excellent animal to study the coat genetics of hair growth and coloration. Several genes interact to produce cats' hair color and coat patterns. Different combinations of these genes give different phenotypes. For example, the enzyme tyrosinase is needed to produce the dark pigment melanin and Burmese cats have a mutant form that is only active at low temperatures, resulting in color appearing only on the cooler ears, tail and paws. A completely inactive gene for tyrosinase is found in albino cats, which therefore lack all pigment. Hair length is determined by the gene for fibroblast growth factor 5, with inactive copies of this gene causing long hair.
The Cat Genome Project, sponsored by the Laboratory of Genomic Diversity at the U.S. National Cancer Institute Frederick Cancer Research and Development Center in Frederick, Maryland, aims to help the development of the cat as an animal model for human hereditary and infectious diseases, as well as contributing to the understanding of the evolution of mammals. This effort led to the publication in 2007 of an initial draft of the genome of an Abyssinian cat called Cinnamon. The existence of a draft genome has led to the discovery of several cat disease genes, and even allowed the development of cat genetic fingerprinting for use in forensics.


Michelle Richardson

Michelle Richardson is a fictional character in the British teen drama "Skins". She is played by April Pearson.
Characterisation.
Michelle is portrayed initially as primarily interested in serving her boyfriend Tony Stonem's needs and in "looking shaggable" which she places as her primary function, compared with Jal Fazer's interest in the clarinet. She is very confident in her appearance; on the "Skins" website in a Myspace-style "about me" section, she protests that her photos have not been Photoshopped, and that she is "this gorgeous in real life". She is well aware that Tony's friend, Sid is in love with her, and sometimes wonders if he would be a better boyfriend than Tony. She is often angry at Tony for him calling her "nips" in reference to her nipples, and protesting that her breasts are uneven.
Despite lack of academic interest, she is very talented with languages. It is stated that she is very skilled with languages and seems to be fluent in French and Spanish. Also, in the first episode of Series One, she seems to understand Italian when it is spoken near her. It is also hinted in the last episode of series 2 that her oldest/longest known friend is Chris Miles when she says she first met him when she was 7. However, on the Skins website she states that she and her best friend Jal have been in the same class since they were 4.
On Michelle's MySpace page she says that her favourite musicians are Stevie Nicks, Peaches and Eminem, but she doesn't like Keane and James Blunt. Her favourite films are "Mean Girls", "The Emperor's New Groove" and "The Last Seduction", and her favourite television series are "One Tree Hill", "Scrubs" and "Extreme Makeover"; stating the latter brings her to tears.
Michelle was one of the original characters from Jamie Brittain's original concept for the series. He has stated in an interview that her name was originally Annie. She, Sid and Tony were the characters in Brittain's novel he wrote as a teenager, but never finished. Jamie Brittain has said that while his original story line wasn't strong enough, he believed the characters were strong enough to carry in a television series.
Character history.
Series 1.
In the first episode Michelle has convinced one of her best friends, Cassie Ainsworth, to take friend Sid's virginity, at her boyfriend Tony's request. In " she starts to worry about Tony's interest in posh girl Abigail Stock, and in ", she laments that she feels Tony who she loves will never love her in the way Sid does. In "", as an experiment, Tony kisses Abigail at a concert before Michelle's eyes to prompt her to angrily break up with him, especially when she "catches" him fondling Abigail backstage. After a brief run in with some chav girls where she's assaulted, emotional and upset, she tells Sid she believes he was in on her humiliation and becomes angry with him as well. Tony urges Sid to try to score with Michelle on the rebound, and just as Michelle appears to find comfort in him, Tony appears and forces Sid to watch as he takes Michelle back instantly, affirming his power over them both.
In ", she and her best friend Jal attempt to reconnect while on a school trip in Russia, going out to a bar and getting incredibly drunk. Believing she is passed out, Tony attempts to seduce Maxxie Oliver although Michelle is in the same room. However, she is completely conscious, and witnesses everything up until Maxxie abruptly stops, just before Tony tries to go further sexually. The next day on the plane home, Michelle doesn't confront Tony immediately, but rather tries to get him to tell her first by subtly probing him, but he fails to confess.
Michelle finally breaks up with Tony at the start of the next episode ". When Jal questions if Tony cheated "again", Michelle is hurt when she finds out that Jal has known about Tony's past infidelity (which includes Abigail, who Tony promised he never cheated with), and has never told her. Maxxie also comes to Michelle, where he apologises and begs her not to tell anybody what had happened in Russia. Although Michelle becomes depressed and even gets caught by Angie drinking in the school supply room, she is adamant about not seeing Tony, and has been ignoring his pursuits to get her back. Meanwhile, at home she is becoming hugely annoyed with her mother's latest husband, Malcolm, feeling that he uses her mother, in addition to his rude habits.
At school, she gets the chance to confront Abigail, and is introduced to Abi's brother, Josh. Tony later tries to talk to Michelle, and she asks him to "prove" that he loves her completely, but he is unconvincing. Michelle then turns to Sid on the rebound, as she is well aware that he has been in love with her for many years. She discovers that Sid, surprisingly, has come to love her as just a friend, so she takes him to see Cassie — Sid's true love — who has gone back into rehab after a suicide attempt. At the rehab clinic, she bumps into Josh once again, who asks her out on a date.
Michelle finds that she genuinely enjoys her time with Josh, and is able to have an equal conversation with him, unlike Tony who she describes as difficult to talk to. She learns that Josh's mother, a psychiatrist, medicates him, but otherwise their relationship progresses nicely. Meanwhile, Tony has been spying on her, and eventually sabotages her and Josh's developing relationship by sending lurid pictures of Abigail from Josh's phone to Michelle. Michelle finds comfort with Jal, but is both distraught and disgusted with Josh—figuring the photos were related to his mental illness. Later, after helping to repair her mother and stepfather's hollow relationship, Tony makes another futile attempt to regain Michelle as his girlfriend, in spite of a slightly better attempt to explain that he loves her—however Michelle rejects him.
In the series finale, Michelle briefly visits Tony's sister Effy Stonem, who was just recently involved in an incident orchestrated by Josh to get back at Tony for the events in the episode "Michelle". Although Effy doesn't speak, Michelle asks her why Tony hurt her, but Effy genuinely doesn't know. Michelle shows Effy some affection before leaving. Later in the episode Michelle attends with Jal to friend Anwar Kharral's 17th birthday party. Tony comes as well, along with Effy, but neither of them actually go inside. Effy calls Tony a "wanker" for hurting Michelle, and he finally calls her on his phone to confess his love to her. Michelle listens to the phone while crying, and just as Tony crosses the street, he is hit by a bus. Michelle can be seen calling presumably an ambulance at the end of the episode.
Series 2.
In the second series, it is learned that Michelle has had no contact with Tony during the six months after his accident. Instead she has been drinking at bars, flirting with men, and presumably having sex as well. It is clear that she is confused how to approach the situation with Tony, although she is quite aware that what she has been doing is wrong. In addition to her problems with Tony, her relationship with Sid is strained, an example of this being seen when Sid catches Michelle dancing with two guys and snogging at a club, to which she runs away guilty and humiliated having been seen. Later in the episode, through an emotional confession to Sid, we learn that Michelle has gone to see Tony only once since the accident.
School eventually resumes and Michelle is now in her final year of college. In an "Unseen Skins" episode, Maxxie encourages Michelle to sign up for the school play ("Osama! The Musical"). Although Michelle declines because of stage fright, she eventually auditions where she shows she has an aptitude for singing, and eventually gets the lead role alongside Maxxie. During a kissing scene during rehearsal between Maxxie, Sketch – Maxxie's stalker – puts Michelle's life into danger when she purposely drops a heavy stage light out of jealousy.
Later at a costume fund-raising party for drama, Michelle wears a costume modeled on Princess Leia, only to be insulted by Abigail, who is also dressed as Leia. To make matters worse she came to the party with Tony, who is dressed as Luke Skywalker. Michelle is hurt that Tony dressed "for" Abigail, although Tony is unclear himself of the circumstances of his costume, let alone his relationship with Abigail. Michelle takes Tony into a private area where she confronts Tony as to why he took Abigail to the party. We learn that Abigail has been convincing Tony that she is his girlfriend, not Michelle. After both a failed attempt at seducing Tony and being deeply hurt that Tony doesn't remember her, Michelle comes to realisation that Tony isn't the same person anymore.
When word gets around that Sketch was assaulted by their Drama teacher, Bruce—a false story made up by Sketch—Michelle shows kindness and compassion when she attempts to befriend her and invites her to sit with her during lunch. Michelle learns Sketch's true nature only when she gives her pills that make her sick, causing her to drop out of the school play just moments before the show (and subsequently fulfilling the role).
In episode 4 Michelle once again asks Tony how much he remembers, however he doesn't remember much if anything about their relationship at all. When Michelle tries to seduce Tony, Tony has developed an erectile dysfunction, which frustrates Michelle and prompts her to slap him, blaming him for his accident and subsequent condition. Although she apologises, she tells Tony she cannot wait for him and the two officially end their relationship. Before leaving Tony gives her an early birthday gift, and Michelle invites him along on her birthday camping trip, to which he declines.
Meanwhile, we learn that her mother has ended her relationship with Malcolm, and has recently married one of her clients, Ted. They have also moved in with him into his newly renovated upscale home, which Michelle dislikes greatly. To make matters worse, Ted has a spoiled daughter named Scarlett—who are alarmingly too close for comfort for Michelle—who decides she'd move in as well.
At school, Scarlett wins Michelle's friends over with her charm and sex appeal. When she invites herself on the camping trip, offering the use of her car, Michelle feels annoyed. On the trip she feels alone and irritated with Scarlett's presence there, and finds comfort from both Sid and Maxxie. Later that night she catches Scarlett trying to seduce Sid, and finally decides to confront her. However she learns that Scarlett isn't as much of a bad person as she pretends to be, and goes after Sid instead.
In an intense moment, Sid expresses his grief to Michelle over his recently deceased father, and the two of them kiss and make love for the first time with each other on the beach. They decide to keep their relationship private, feeling that they're not ready to tell their friends, and preferring to spend more time with each other. However, after returning to Sid's home where they passionately attempt to have sex in Sid's bedroom, they're interrupted by Sid's girlfriend Cassie, who has been watching the entire time from Sid's bed.
Cassie blatantly announces to the gang of Michelle and Sid's new relationship, much to everyone's surprise. Tony pretends not to care, however Jal is angered that Michelle didn't tell her since she's her best friend. Michelle and Sid remain, even if apologetically, together however.
It isn't until one night at a club, at the end of the episode "Tony", Tony confronts Michelle and Sid in the bathroom stall during sex. Tony, who is finally ready, tells Michelle that they're meant to be together, opposed to her and Sid, who is meant to be with Cassie. Sid admits that he isn't in love with Michelle anymore, leaving Michelle both shocked at Sid's change of heart and Tony's sudden determination.
In "Effy", Tony spends the episode trying to reach Michelle, who is ignoring his many phone calls and text messages. It is apparent that she wants nothing to do with him, especially after he ruined her relationship, and even sends the watch he got her for her birthday back to him. However Effy gets the watch fixed, engraved with the word "forever", and sends it back to Michelle, finally softening Michelle enough to answer Tony's phone call. At the very ending of the episode, she answers the phone, with merely "I love you too" before hanging it up again.
In the next two episodes leading up to the finale we learn that Michelle and Tony are trying to take their relationship "slow" and to not "make a thing of it". She's worried about their relationship what with exams interfering, and Jal's time of need ever since the death of friend Chris, keeping them apart. Although she proclaims to still be angry about the situation, her and Tony seem genuinely happy together, if not a bit sheepish in each other's presence. Tony can be seen bringing her flowers, walking her to class, and carrying her books—their relationship is progressing.
However, in the finale of the series, Michelle receives her A-levels: 2 As and 1 B, and she has plans to further her studies at York, whereas Tony plans on attending Cardiff. There is tension between the two as they inwardly struggle how they'll deal with their relationship, what with their plans on going to separate universities. In the last moments of the series' finale, Michelle and Tony reflect on their relationship in a private moment, leaving the audience dubious whether they're going to continue their relationship or say goodbye forever.


Do Re Mi (Nirvana song)

"Do Re Mi" is a song by American rock band Nirvana, written by vocalist and guitarist, Kurt Cobain. It first appeared on the band's rarities box set, "With the Lights Out", released in November 2004. A second version appears on the deluxe edition of "", released in November 2015.
Origin and release.
Originally titled "Dough, Ray and Me" and then "Me and my IV," the song officially released as "Do Re Mi" is one of the last-known Cobain compositions. Cobain's widow, Courtney Love, began mentioning the song in interviews shortly after Cobain's death in April 1994, naming it as one of his "three completed, finished" unrecorded songs, along with "Opinion" and "Talk to Me." In a 1994 "Rolling Stone" interview, she told interviewer David Fricke:
"The third one, I can’t sing. It’s too fucking good. Every part of it is really catchy. He was calling it 'Dough, Ray and Me.' I thought it was a little corny. It was the last thing he wrote on our bed. The chorus was 'Dough, Ray and me/Dough, Ray and me,' and then it was 'Me and my IV.' I had asked him after [Cobain's suicide attempt in Rome, Italy] to freeze his sperm. So there’s this whole thing about freezing your uterus."
In 2002, Jim DeRogatis was allowed to listen to the song and other unreleased recordings in Love's living room, and described it as boasting "a beautiful, Beatlesesque melody in the tradition of 'About a Girl'; a standout track from "Bleach". In addition to an endearingly rough guitar solo, its other outstanding feature is the moaned/whined/chanted repetition of "Dough/Ray/Me, Do/Re/Mi" over and over during a long and climactic finale". In addition to the "solo acoustic demo taped in [Cobain's] bedroom" that he heard and described in the article, DeRogatis stated that a four track version, featuring Cobain on drums and vocals, Nirvana second guitarist Pat Smear on guitar, and Hole guitarist Eric Erlandson on bass, was also recorded.
The solo acoustic demo of the song was released, under the title "Do Re Mi," on the band's rarities box set, "With the Lights Out", in November 2004. The same version was re-released on the band's compilation album " in November 2005.
A medley of previously unreleased demo versions, over 10 minutes long, appears on the deluxe edition of ", released in November 2015.
To date, no version of the song featuring the re-written "Me and my IV" lyrics has been released.
Reception.
Dan Weiss of "Spin" described "Do Re Mi" as Cobain's "best posthumously released song — take that 'You Know You're Right.'" Collin Brennan of "Consequence of Sound" called it "the finest Cobain composition that never saw the light of day during his lifetime" and wrote, "If Paul McCartney was born a few decades later and opted for dirty flannel instead of a moptop, this is the kind of tune he might have spawned."


Linda Koo

Linda Chih-ling Koo (born 1954 in Thailand), is a Chinese cancer epidemiologist and former lecturer at the University of Hong Kong. She is known for her studies on the relationship between indoor pollution, dietary factors, and lung cancer in China.
Research.
Her research has included examining the link between passive smoking and lung cancer, finding no association between the two.
Alleged tobacco industry links.
She has been criticized for her ties to the tobacco industry, which attempted to recruit her as a consultant because she had said she thought that lung cancer was mainly caused by dietary factors.
Her critics have also argued that she has acted as a consultant to the tobacco industry, which often cited her research on confounding factors to argue that passive smoking might not cause lung cancer. In a confidential 1989 industry memo, Covington & Burling lawyer John Rupp wrote that "‘‘we have reestablished a productive ongoing working relationship with Dr. Linda Koo, who is the single most prominent ETS scientist in all of Asia. Although Dr. Koo...cannot afford formally to join our group, the ability we have developed to consult with her should pay substantial dividends." Both Koo and the tobacco industry have responded that she has never acted as a paid tobacco industry consultant.
1992 plagiarism controversy.
In 1992, Koo's University of Hong Kong colleague Lam Tai-hing was found guilty of plagiarizing Koo's questionnaire, which she had devised with her colleague John Ho to study lung cancer among nonsmoking Chinese women. This guilty verdict was upheld by the Court of Appeal the following year, whereupon the University subsequently announced that Tai-Hing would be investigated by a university committee. In 1995, this committee found Tai-Hing not guilty of "disgraceful or dishonorable" conduct, a decision which Koo and Ho appealed to a judicial review later that year. On October 24, 1995, the university rejected Koo and Ho's appeal.


Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health

The Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, more commonly known as the Florey Institute, is an Australian medical research institute that undertakes clinical and applied research into treatments for brain and mind disorders and the cardiovascular system. The Institute's areas of interest include Parkinson's disease, stroke, motor neurone disease, traumatic brain and spinal cord injury, addiction, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, brain development in premature babies, Huntington's disease, depression, schizophrenia, brain function in health and disease, heart failure, and dementia.
Affiliated with the University of Melbourne and the Austin Hospital, the Institute is located in the Melbourne suburbs of and in Victoria. It is the largest brain research group in the southern hemisphere and employs approximately 600 staff and students. The Institute is led by its Director, Professor Steven Petrou, who specialises in the underlying electrophysiological basis of genetic childhood epilepsies.
History.
The origins of the institute are based on the 1947 work of the founder, Dr. Derek Denton, and the investigation of the team of scientists, Prof R D Wright, Prof J P Coghlan and Prof Marelyn Wintour-Coghlan into the control of salt and water balance in health and disease.
The Institute was formally established in 1971 by the Victorian Government and named in honour of Howard Florey, an Australian Laureate of the 1945 Nobel Prize in Medicine who helped to isolate the active principle of penicillin and developed the first manufacturing process for the antibiotic. The Institute conducted research into physiological control of body fluid and electrolyte balance, especially the regulation of the adrenal salt-retaining hormone, aldosterone; micro measurement of hormones; hybridization histochemistry; instincts that control ingestion; and the Relaxin hormone.
Previously known as the Howard Florey Institute of Experimental Physiology and Medicine, in 1997 the Institute’s focus broadened to encompass brain disorders. From 1997 to 2007, the neuroscientist Professor Frederick Mendelsohn AO, led the institute.
On 1 July 2007 the legislation that created the Howard Florey Institute of Experimental Physiology and Medicine was repealed, and the Florey amalgamated with the Brain Research Institute and the National Stroke Research Institute to become collectively known as the Florey Neuroscience Institutes (FNI). As part of the amalgamation process, a new research facility was constructed to house the FNI, the Mental Health Research Institute and researchers from the University of Melbourne. In 2012, with the amalgamation of the Mental Health Research Institute and the Florey Neuroscience Institutes, the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health was formed. Research now includes psychiatric conditions such as depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, and on neurodegenerative illnesses, particularly Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease.


Thomas Dawson (physician)

Thomas Dawson (1725?–1782) was an English physician.
Life.
Born about 1725, he was the son of Eli Dawson, a dissenter, and was educated in Kendal, at the dissenting academy of Caleb Rotheram. Initially minister of a congregation at the Gravel Pit Meeting-house in Hackney parish, he went to Glasgow College in 1749, and graduated M.D. there 8 June 1753.
Dawson went into practice in London, occasionally going round the wards of Guy's Hospital. He was elected physician to the Middlesex Hospital 1 February 1759, but only held the post for two years. On 22 December 1762 he was admitted a licentiate of the College of Physicians of London. Two years later (3 October) he was elected physician to the London Hospital, and continued there till 5 September 1770.
Dawson used to see patients at Batson's coffee-house in Cornhill. He died 29 April 1782.
Works.
In 1774 Dawson published "Cases in the Acute Rheumatism and the Gout, with cursory Remarks and the Method of Treatment". It suggested doses of tincture of guaiacum during the painful stage of both rheumatic fever and gout; guaiacum was then being used for chronic rheumatism, and Richard Brocklesby had previously made related experiments. His other work was "An Account of a Safe and Efficient Remedy for Sore Eyes and Eyelids", London, 1782.
Family.
Dawson married on 29 May 1758 Miss Corbet, a patient of his.


Disability Living Allowance

Disability Living Allowance (DLA) is a social security benefit in the United Kingdom paid to eligible claimants who have personal care and/or mobility needs as a result of a mental or physical disability. It is tax-free, non-means-tested and non-contributory. The benefit was established by the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992, integrating the former benefits Mobility Allowance and Attendance Allowance and introducing two additional lower rates of benefit. Prior to 2013 it could be claimed by UK residents aged under sixty five years. However, the benefit was phased-out for the majority of claimants between 2013 and 2015 and replaced by a new Personal Independence Payment. DLA can still be claimed by children under sixteen and can still be received by existing claimants who were aged sixty five or over on 8 April 2013.
Eligibility.
DLA is restricted to people who fall into all of the following categories:
Usually, to qualify for Disability Living Allowance (DLA) for children the child must:
Children under the age of three.
Individuals can qualify for DLA whether or not they are working. Earnings do not affect the amount of DLA received. People who are terminally ill typically qualify for the highest rate of Care component of DLA under what is termed "special rules".
Care component.
DLA care component is paid at one of three rates: lowest, middle and highest. From April 2021 the rates are:
Lowest rate eligibility.
Individuals are entitled to the lowest rate care component if they are so severely disabled that they:
Middle rate eligibility.
Individuals are entitled to the middle rate care component if they are so severely disabled that they:
Highest rate eligibility.
Individuals are entitled to the highest rate care component if they meet one of the day conditions "and" one of the night conditions for the middle rate care component.
Mobility component.
DLA mobility component is paid at one of two rates: lower and higher. From April 2021 the rates are:
Lower rate eligibility.
Individuals are entitled to the lower rate mobility component if they are so severely mentally or physically disabled that they cannot walk outdoors on an unfamiliar route without guidance or supervision from another person most of the time.
Higher rate eligibility.
Individuals are entitled to the higher rate mobility component if they:-
Mobility allowances (usually using the Motability scheme) are structured to provide persons with disabilities with mechanical aids to their mobility, which may include wheelchairs, scooters, or automobiles.


Familial disseminated piliform hyperkeratosis


Smoking in Vietnam

Smoking in Vietnam is highly common, with an estimated 50% of men and 5% of women using tobacco, an estimated 18 million smokers. 47 million non-smokers in Vietnam are also regularly exposed to tobacco smoke. Vietnam’s Health Education and Communication Center estimates that 40,000 people die annually in Vietnam from first or second hand smoking, and that if nothing is done 10% of the Vietnamese population will have died from smoking by 2030. Smoking is an integral part of Vietnamese culture and exchanging cigarettes is seen as a common greeting.
Thuốc lào.
A popular historic form of smoking in Vietnam is called Thuốc lào, where the highly potent leaves of the "Nicotiana rustica" plant (called Thuốc lào) are smoked through a water pipe which is called điếu cày. A "hít" of thuốc lào is followed by a flood of nicotine to the bloodstream that induces strong dizziness that lasts several seconds, with even heavy cigarette smokers reportedly have had trouble with the smoke and high nicotine content. Side effects commonly include nausea and vomiting.
Smoking Thuốc lào poses serious injury and health risks, and is considered far more dangerous than cigarette consumption. There are several instances of individuals choking to death or suffering sudden respiratory failure due to the sudden inhalation of large amounts of smoke. Despite the risks of Thuốc lào it remains popular in the central and northern parts of the country, especially with minority and rural groups.
Perception and modern day.
Many Vietnamese historical figures, such as Ho Chi Minh, were smokers. Smoking is often associated with being manly and educated in Vietnam. Smoking Thuốc lào has come to be perceived by some youth as a sign of being cultured.


Andrea Vendramin

Andrea Vendramin (1393 – May 5, 1478, both Venice) served as Doge of Venice, 1476–78, at the height of Venetian power, the only member of the Vendramin family to do so. His mother, Maria Michiel, and his wife Regina Gradenigo, both came from Dogal families. He had served as Venetian Procurator in Rome, and his brief reign was largely concerned with the end of the Second Turkish–Venetian War. He probably died of plague.
The process of his election as Doge resulted in a divisive split in the Council, that resulted in bad feelings: in 1477 Antonio Feleto was imprisoned, then banished, for remarking in public that the Council of the Forty-One must have been hard-pressed to elect a cheesemonger Doge. The diarist Malipiero noted that Andrea Vendramin at the time of his election was worth 160,000 ducats, after allowing for 6 to 7000 ducats with which he had endowed each of six daughters, in order to procure politically influential sons-in-law. In his youth, he and his brother Luca, in joint ventures, used to ship from Alexandria enough goods to fill a galley or a galley and a half, Malipiero recorded in retrospect: even his factors grew rich managing his affairs.
He has a large monumental wall-tomb, generally agreed to be "the most lavish funerary monument of Renaissance Venice", in the basilica of Santi Giovanni e Paolo, the usual burial-place of Doges, which was executed by Tullio Lombardo (1493), though Andrea del Verrocchio competed for the commission. It was originally intended for the church of Santa Maria dei Servi. However the portrait in the Frick Collection by Gentile Bellini, inscribed with his name, is now considered to be of his successor, Doge Giovanni Mocenigo.
He was interred in the Basilica di San Giovanni e Paolo, a traditional burial place of the doges. After Andrea's death, his widow married his brother, Luca.
For other Andrea Vendramins, see the article on the family


Kamala Nimbkar

Kamala Vishnu Nimbkar (January 5, 1900 – August 29, 1979), born Elizabeth Lundy, was an American-born occupational therapist in India.
Early life.
Elizabeth Lundy was born in Mount Holly, New Jersey the daughter of Joseph Wilmer Lundy and Bessie Morris Roberts Lundy. Her father was a Quaker businessman. She attended the Quaker George School, and earned a bachelor's degree in economics at Barnard College in 1926. She returned to the United States later in her forties, to study occupational therapy at the Philadelphia School of Occupational Therapy.
Career.
Before college, Lundy worked as a secretary on a statistical study of coal miners, for the Pennsylvania Bureau of Mines. In India after she married, Nimbkar taught kindergarten by the Froebel method, and started several schools in that tradition. She is credited as founding the first school for occupational therapy (OT) in India in 1948, when she started the OT department at KEM Hospital. In 1958 she founded a second school for OT in Nagpur. She was also founder of the All India Occupational Therapists Association (AIOTA) in 1952, and served as the association's president until 1959. In 1960 she founded the Indian Society for the Rehabilitation of the Handicapped, and was its secretary-general until the 1970s.
In 1957 she represented India at an international conference on rehabilitation, held in Indonesia. She visited Baltimore therapy programs in 1959. In 1965, she attended a reunion of patients and therapists from the Toomey Pavilion, a respiratory clinic in Cleveland, Ohio, hosted by Gini Laurie. At a conference in Australia in 1972, she was honored with the Lasker Award by the International Society for the Rehabilitation of the Disabled.
She edited and published AIOTA's journal, "Indian Journal of Occupational Therapy" from 1955, and "The Journal of Rehabilitation in Asia" from 1959. She also wrote articles for other scholarly journals. Her book, "A New Life for the Handicapped: A History of Rehabilitation and Occupational Therapy in India", was published posthumously in 1980.
Personal life.
Lundy met her husband Vishnu Nimbkar, an Indian businessman, in New York, converted to Hinduism, and moved with him to India in 1930. She lived at the Sabarmati Ashram, the residence of Mahatma Gandhi, for several months upon arrival. She died in 1979, aged 79 years, in India. Some of her letters are in her father's papers at Swarthmore College. Her son is B. V. Nimbkar, and one of her granddaughters is Nandini Nimbkar, both noted agricultural scientists. A secular, Marathi medium school in Phaltan, Kamala Nimbkar Balbhavan, is named for her.


Charlotte Haug

Charlotte Haug (born 21 May 1959) is a Norwegian physician and editor, former editor of the "Journal of the Norwegian Medical Association".
Haug graduated as dr.med. in infection immunology from the University of Oslo in 1999, and eventually as Master of Science in health research from Stanford University. She edited the "Journal of the Norwegian Medical Association" from 2002 to 2015.


Eurosurveillance

Eurosurveillance (Euro surveillance : bulletin Européen sur les maladies transmissibles = European communicable disease bulletin) is an open-access medical journal covering epidemiology, surveillance, prevention and control of communicable diseases with a focus on topics relevant for Europe. The journal is a non-profit publication and is published by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.
History.
"Eurosurveillance" was jointly funded by the European Commission, the Réseau national de santé publique (later, Institut de Veille Sanitaire now Agence nationale de santé publique) in Paris, France, and the Public Health Laboratory Service (later, Health Protection Agency and Public Health England now UK Health Security Agency) in London, England, and a pilot issue was published in 1995. In 2005, collaboration started with the newly established European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) in Stockholm and a weekly epidemiological bulletin was published. Two years later, in 2007, "Eurosurveillance" was transferred entirely to ECDC, which has published the journal since. Karl Ekdahl became the newly appointed Editor in Chief in 2008 and since 2011, Ines Steffens has been Editor in Chief of the journal.
Scope.
Articles in "Eurosurveillance" concern infectious disease events and trends in Europe, but also reports on developments of importance to Europe. The journal targets all those concerned with communicable disease epidemiology, prevention and control as well as public health professionals and decision-makers at all levels, medical practitioners, microbiologists, veterinarians and scientists in this field and members of the relevant health organisations. The journal publishes preliminary outbreak reports and alerts in the form of rapid communications, as well as in-depth analyses of outbreaks and epidemiological disease patterns based on surveillance data and scientific studies.
Publishing model.
Since its beginning, the "Eurosurveillance" is an open access online journal that does not charge article processing fees. The opinions expressed by authors contributing to "Eurosurveillance" do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the ECDC or the editorial team or the institutions with which the authors are affiliated. The journal's website does not host any form of commercial advertisement.
Indexing.
The journal is indexed and in databases such as: PubMed/MEDLINE, PubMed Central (PMC); Scopus, EMBASE, EBSCO databases, Science Central, Web of Science and Google Scholar.
Metrics and impact.
According to the "Journal Citation Reports", the journal has a 2019 impact factor of 6.454, ranking it 6th out of 93 journals in the category "Infectious Diseases". , the Scopus-based Scimago Journal Rank (SJR) ranks Eurosurveillance 67th of 2,754 journals in the category "Medicine (miscellaneous)".
Scientific seminars.
Since 2011, on the occasion of the 15th anniversary, "Eurosurveillance" has been holding annual scientific seminars at the European Scientific Conference on Applied Infectious Disease Epidemiology. Invited speakers are renowned public health experts and scientists; the seminars aim to stimulate a discussion about important public-health-related scientific developments.


Pseudoglandular squamous cell carcinoma


Jack Cole (artist)

Jack Ralph Cole (December 14, 1914 – August 13, 1958) was an American cartoonist best known for creating the comedic superhero Plastic Man, and his cartoons for "Playboy" magazine.
He was posthumously inducted into the comic book industry's Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1991 and the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 1999.
Early life.
Born in New Castle, Pennsylvania, Cole—the third of six children of a dry goods-store owner and amateur-entertainer father and a former elementary school-teacher mother—was untrained in art except for the Landon School of Illustration and Cartooning correspondence course. At age 17, he bicycled solo cross-country to Los Angeles, California and back. Cole recounted this adventure in an early self-illustrated professional sale "A Boy and His Bike" (which has often been cited as appearing in "Boys' Life" magazine, but in fact the source of this article is unknown, but speculated to have likely appeared in Cole's hometown newspaper). Back home, Cole took a job at American Can and continued to draw at night.
Career.
Early work.
In 1936, having married childhood sweetheart Dorothy Mahoney soon after graduating high school, Cole moved with his wife to New York City's Greenwich Village. After spending a year attempting to break in as a magazine/newspaper illustrator, Cole began drawing for the studio of the Harry "A" Chesler, one of the first comic-book "packagers" who supplied outsourced stories to publishers entering the new medium. There, Cole drew such features as "TNT Todd of the FBI" and "Little Dynamite" for Centaur Publications comics such as "Funny Pages" and "Keen Detective Funnies". He produced such additional features as "King Kole's Kourt" (under the pseudonym Geo. Nagle), "Officer Clancy", "Ima Slooth", "Peewee Throttle", and "Burp the Twerp: The Super So-An'-So" (the latter two under the pseudonym Ralph Johns).
Golden Age of Comic Books.
Lev Gleason Publications hired Cole in 1939 to edit "Silver Streak Comics", where one of his first tasks was to revamp the newly created superhero Daredevil. Other characters created or worked on by the prolific tyro include MLJ's The Comet in "Pep Comics"—who in short order became the first superhero to be killed—and his replacement, the Hangman.
After becoming an editor at Lev Gleason and revamping Jack Binder's original Golden Age Daredevil in 1940, Cole was hired at Quality Comics. He worked with Will Eisner, assisting on the writer-artist's signature hero The Spirit—a masked crime-fighter created for a weekly syndicated newspaper Sunday supplement and reprinted in Quality Comics. At the behest of Quality publisher Everett "Busy" Arnold, Cole later created his own satiric, Spirit-style hero, Midnight, for "Smash Comics" No. 18 (Jan. 1941). Midnight, the alter ego of radio announcer Dave Clark, wore a similar fedora hat and domino mask, and partnered with a talking monkey—questionably in place of the Spirit's young African-American sidekick, Ebony White. During Eisner's World War II military service, Cole and Lou Fine were the primary "Spirit" ghost artists; their stories were reprinted in DC Comics' hardcover collections "The Spirit Archives" Vols. 5 to 9 (2001–2003), spanning July 1942 – Dec. 1944. In addition, Cole continued to draw one and two-page filler pieces, sometimes under the pseudonym Ralph Johns, and a memorable autobiographical appearance in "Inki," which appeared in "Crack Comics" #34.
Plastic Man.
Cole created Plastic Man for a backup feature in Quality's "Police Comics" #1 (Aug. 1941). While Timely Comics' quickly forgotten Flexo the Rubber Man had preceded "Plas" as comics' first stretching hero, Cole's character became an immediate hit, and "Police Comics" lead feature with issue #5. As well, Cole's offbeat humor, combined with Plastic Man's ability to take any shape, gave the cartoonist opportunities to experiment with text and graphics in groundbreaking manner—helping to define the medium's visual vocabulary, and making the idiosyncratic character one of the few to endure from the Golden Age to modern times. Plastic Man gained his own title in 1943.
By the decade's end, however, Cole's feature was being created entirely by anonymous ghost writers and artists—including Alex Kotzky and John Spranger—despite Cole's name being bannered. One last stint by Cole himself in 1949 and 1950 could not save the title. "Plastic Man" was cancelled in 1956 after several years of reprinting the Cole material, and new stories by others.
Additionally, Cole and writer Joe Millard created the lighthearted feature "The Barker", starring carnival barker Carnie Callhan. Introduced in "National Comics" #42 (May, 1944), the feature spun off into a 15-issue comic of its own (Autumn 1946 - Dec. 1949)
"Playboy".
Cole's career by that time had taken on another dimension. In 1954, after having drawn slightly risqué, single-panel "good girl art" cartoons for magazines, using the pen name "Jake", Cole became a cartoon illustrator for "Playboy". Under his own name, he produced full-page, watercolored gag cartoons of beautiful but dim girls and rich but equally dim old men. Cole's art first appeared in the fifth issue; he would have at least one piece published in "Playboy" each month for the rest of his life., So popular was his work that the second item of merchandise ever licensed by Playboy (after cufflinks with the famous rabbit-head logo) was a cocktail-napkin set, "Females by Cole", featuring his cartoons. Cole biographer Art Spiegelman said, "Cole's goddesses were estrogen soufflés who mesmerized the ineffectual saps who lusted after them."
"Betsy and Me".
In 1958, Cole created his own daily newspaper comic strip, "Betsy and Me", which he sold to the Chicago Sun-Times Syndicate. The strip began on May 26 and chronicled the domestic adventures of nebbishy Chester Tibbet as narrator, his wife Betsy, and their 5-year-old genius son, Farley. For it, Cole utilized "a simplified style," historian Ron Goulart wrote, "reminiscent of the drawing in the UPA animated cartoons." "Betsy and Me" ran for two-and-a-half months before Cole's self-inflicted death; his last daily was published on September 6 and his last Sunday on September 14. In the final Cole daily, Betsy and Chester are seen signing up for a brand-new tract house in Sunken Hills. The syndicate hire advertising artist Dwight Parks, who had been trying to sell his own strip about a philosophical hobo.
Death.
On August 13, 1958, Cole got in his Chevy station wagon, purchased a rifle, and fatally shot himself in the head. On the day he died, Cole mailed a suicide note explaining the reasons for his suicide to his wife Dorothy. The coroner deemed that letter too personal and did not enter it as evidence at the ensuing inquest. The only explanation Dorothy Cole publicly gave was "We had had an argument before." She subsequently remarried, and disappeared from public view. Cole also wrote a suicide note to his editor and father figure, Hugh Hefner, which was printed in Art Spiegelman's biography of Cole, "Jack Cole & Plastic Man: Forms Stretched To Their Limits". The note reads:
Gravett notes that while Cole owed Hefner money, his estate would cover this debt. Cole did not participate in the "Playboy" lifestyle, though the evening before his suicide, he did drink a substantial amount at a "Playboy" office party.
The reason why the 43-year-old Cole killed himself remains one of the greatest mysteries in 20th Century American cartooning, according to journalist Paul Gravett. Cole was in the prime of a celebrated cartooning career, complete with praise for his sophisticated gag cartoons in "Playboy", and gaining increasing visibility for his newspaper strip "Betsy and Me", R. C. Harvey described the suicide as "one of the most baffling events in the history of cartooning".
Legacy.
Cole was posthumously inducted into the comic book industry's Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1991 and the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 1999.
Cole's story "Murder, Morphine and Me", which he illustrated and possibly wrote for publisher Magazine Village's "True Crime Comics" No. 2 (May 1947), became a centerpiece of psychiatrist Dr. Fredric Wertham's crusade against violent comic books. Wertham, author of the influential study "Seduction of the Innocent", cited a particular panel of the story's dope-dealing narrator about to be stabbed in the eye with a hypodermic needle as an example of the "injury-to-the-eye" motif.
In 2003, writer-artist Art Spiegelman and artist Chip Kidd collaborated on a Cole biography, "Jack Cole and Plastic Man: Forms Stretched to Their Limits," a portion of which had been published in "The New Yorker" magazine in 1999.


Porcupine man


Hyperkatifeia

Hyperkatifeia is defined as hypersensitivity to emotional distress in the context of opioid abuse.
Hyperkatifeia and Opioid-induced hyperalgesia can be seen with long-term use of illicit street opioids e.g. heroin, and prescription opioids e.g. hydrocodone and oxycodone during withdrawal.