A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg  A disease puts us at dis ease.  No one looks forward to being a patient (Latin pati: to endure/suffer), but no one is immune.  It's a sign of our familiarity with the diseases that words relating to them have entered the language as metaphors.

measly  (MEE-zlee, MEEZ-lee) adjective  1.  Ridiculously small or bad.  2.  Infected with measles.

sclerotic  (skluh-ROT-ik) adjective  1.  Hard, rigid, slow to adapt or respond.  2.  Relating to or affected with sclerosis, an abnormal hardening of a tissue or part.  3.  Of or relating to the sclera, the white fibrous outer layer of the eyeball.

As we all know, pumpkins were also among the foodstuffs served at the Pilgrims' first Thanksgiving and, in fact, for many years, members of the Church of England referred to Thanksgiving derisively as "St. Pompion's Day," pompion being the Old English nomenclature for the pumpkin.  Edward Johnson, in his Wonder Working Providence of Scion's Saviour in New England of 1654, wrote that the pumpkin was "a fruit which the Lord fed his people with till corn and cattle increased," and the pumpkin was so widely regarded as a food crop in the Massachusetts colonies that Boston, before it was called Beantown, was known as Pumpkinshire.  By 1780, Yale students were referring to all New Englanders as "Pumpkin Heads," another derisive term derived from the law that required men's haircuts to conform to a cap placed over the head, the ubiquitous pumpkin shell often, apparently, being substituted for the far scarcer caps.  http://www.canadiangardening.com/gardens/fruit-and-vegetable-gardening/five-seductive-vegetables-for-your-garden/a/30105/10 

Colonial New England pumpkin pie was made by cutting a hole in the top of the pumpkin, removing the seeds and then filling the cavity with apples, pie spices, sugar and milk, then baking the whole thing.  These pies were baked without crusts, since wheat was valuable and in short supply.  Bob Gough, a professor of horticulture at Montana State University and MSU Extension horticulture specialist, said he tried this old-time recipe, adding raisins, keeping the apples in large chunks and baking the whole pumpkin (with its top replaced as a lid) at 325 degrees for 2 hrs.  "It was very done, and tasted very good," he said.  http://www.montana.edu/news/562/the-pride-of-the-pumpkin-halloween-fruit-has-respectable-history 

“Universal health coverage is the single most powerful concept that public health has to offer” 

Dr Margaret Chan, Address to the Sixty-fifth World Health Assembly, May 2012  In 2005, all World Health Organization (WHO) member states made the commitment to achieve universal health coverage. The commitment was a collective expression of the belief that all people should have access to the health services they need without risk of financial ruin or impoverishment. Working towards universal health coverage is a powerful mechanism for achieving better health and well-being, and for promoting human development.  In December 2012, a UN resolution was passed encouraging governments to move towards providing universal access to affordable and quality health care services.  As countries move towards it, common challenges are emerging — challenges to which research can help provide answers.  Read The World Health Report 2013 at http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/85761/2/9789240690837_eng.pdf  Read about the World Health Organization at http://www.who.int/en/

Remembering the Ditto and Mimeograph by Harmon Jolley July 27, 2006

When I was at the library recently, I reviewed a 1946 publication by an urban planning agency.  The purple color of the text of the document jogged my memory.  The pages had been printed on a ditto machine.  I had not seen the output from one of those types of printers since the day when I wore a younger man’s clothes.  According to my trusty 1965 World Book encyclopedia, the ditto machine (spirit duplicator) and mimeograph (stencil duplicator) were competing technologies in the document-copying market.  I learn that the mimeograph can be traced to inventor Thomas Edison, who patented a stencil duplicator called “autographic printing.”  Albert Blake Dick invented the mimeograph in 1884, and Wilhelm Ritzerfeld gave us the ditto machine in 1923.  The mimeograph printing process used an ink-filled cylinder and ink pad.  Documents had to be prepared on a special wax-covered stencil on a typewriter which had its ribbon disengaged.  The typewriter thus made impressions in the stencil, which were filled with ink and squeezed onto paper by the mimeograph’s roller.  The stencils could also be used with drawings made by hand.  In contrast, the ditto machine used no ink.  The user typed, wrote, or drew on a ditto master sheet which was backed by a second sheet of paper coated with a dye-impregnated, waxy substance.  The inscribed image appeared on the back of the ditto sheet in reverse.  The ditto machine used an alcohol-based fluid to dissolve some of the dye in the document, and transferred the image to the copy paper.  By college, the modern age of the Xerox copying machine had arrived.  Even after competitors had joined the copying machine market, “Xerox” was used as the name for copies made on any brand of copying machine.  Electronic, computerized copying machines have all but eliminated the humble mimeograph and ditto machine.  The A.B. Dick Company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2004.  The company is now owned by Presstek. I searched the new owner’s Web site, and found that mimeograph and ditto owners can still buy supplies through Presstek.

http://www.chattanoogan.com/2006/7/27/89955/Remembering-the-Ditto-and-Mimeograph.aspx

For 75 years, Finland's expectant mothers have been given a box by the state.  It's like a starter kit of clothes, sheets and toys that can even be used as a bed.  And some say it helped Finland achieve one of the world's lowest infant mortality rates.  It's a tradition that dates back to the 1930s and it's designed to give all children in Finland, no matter what background they're from, an equal start in life.  The maternity package - a gift from the government - is available to all expectant mothers.  It contains bodysuits, a sleeping bag, outdoor gear, bathing products for the baby, as well as nappies, bedding and a small mattress.  With the mattress in the bottom, the box becomes a baby's first bed.  Many children, from all social backgrounds, have their first naps within the safety of the box's four cardboard walls.  Mothers have a choice between taking the box, or a cash grant, currently set at 140 euros, but 95% opt for the box as it's worth much more.   In the 1930s Finland was a poor country and infant mortality was high - 65 out of 1,000 babies died.  But the figures improved rapidly in the decades that followed.  Mika Gissler, a professor at the National Institute for Health and Welfare in Helsinki, gives several reasons for this - the maternity box and pre-natal care for all women in the 1940s, followed in the 60s by a national health insurance system and the central hospital network.  Helena Lee   See pictures at:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22751415 

Literary vocabulary, an alphabetical glossary of literary terms and their definitions.  http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/lit_terms.html

 

Kevin Terris, 22, now can take credit for finding the most complete specimen of a young duck-billed dinosaur, called a Parasaurolophus.  The extremely rare fossil of the 1-year-old plant eater could reveal how the extinct hadrosaurid developed its odd horn-like protruberance during its lifetime.  In high school on a summer field trip, in 2009, Terris wandered along a ridge deep in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah.  He was drawn to a small, mushroom-shaped rock formation, known as a hoodoo.  “I decided to pop under it, and I looked up and saw a small bit of bone sticking out,” said Terris, now a junior studying paleontology at Montana State University.

The Orionid meteor shower peaked Oct. 20-21.  The Orionids occur each year in mid-October when Earth passes through a stream of dust left in the wake of Comet Halley.  Halley returns to our solar system every 76 years, and each time it does, it sheds bits of rocks and dust from its icy nucleus.  These bits of debris burn up in the atmosphere, causing shooting stars to rip across the sky.  Orionids are known for their speed. They travel about 148,000 mph into Earth's atmosphere, according to a NASA report.  Because they move so fast, they can leave glowing "trains" and are more likely than some other meteors to become fireballs -- meteors that glow at least as brightly as Jupiter or Venus in the night sky.  

An alligator snapping turtle has been captured at Prineville Reservoir in Oregon.  First reported by an angler at the popular Central Oregon reservoir, it was the first alligator snapping turtle found in the wild in eastern Oregon.  Alligator snapping turtles can be very aggressive and eat primarily native fish, but also can capture other animals such as ducklings. And it is a safety hazard to people.  It has quite a bite.  According to Simon Wray, An Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife conservation biologist, it probably was released into the reservoir by someone who kept it as a pet.  The alligator snapping turtle is the largest freshwater turtle in North America and can grow to 250 pounds.