Flash mobs and the ultimate crowd control.(The Culture) - The Christian Science Monitor

Byline: Valerie Minard

Close to 1,000 teens recently flooded into Philadelphia's South End district. The chaos stopped traffic and forced some businesses to close early. Several people were injured.

Although it's unclear why they were there, the phenomenon, known as a 'flash mob,' is started through young people's cellphone text messaging inviting one another to gather at a public place at a certain time. These messages are passed from one individual to the next, eventually reaching hundreds, if not thousands. Although the gatherings may start innocently with a partylike atmosphere, some have erupted into chaos and civil unrest. Internationally based websites are now appearing, inviting people to flash mobs.

Most likely, the majority join the events out of curiosity or boredom and a desire to be part of a community happening. Like other group activities such as soccer matches, World Series games, and political rallies, sometimes an event goes out of control and people get sucked up into an unruly mob mentality. When such events involve young people, news coverage and official comments have suggested that parents need to be stricter and keep closer tabs on their kids' whereabouts. But there's more to dealing with mob thinking than just giving a kid a curfew.

To a degree, each of us has a responsibility to care for our communities and their activities. So if there are disruptive events - or even if one is predicted to happen - we don't need to stand by passively. Through prayer we can affirm the power of the divine harmony to prevent trouble, and can insist on the fact that everyone involved with the activity is in their Father-Mother God's hands. None of us is for an instant separated from God's loving care, guidance, or counsel. We can pray to see them as ultimately God's children, responsive to the good thoughts He is sending them.

God is forever communicating with His sons and daughters - and that includes adults as well as young people - through angel messages. In 'Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,' Mary Baker Eddy described angels as 'God's thoughts passing to man; spiritual intuitions, pure and perfect; the inspiration of goodness, purity, and immortality, counteracting all evil, sensuality, and mortality' (p. 581).

These angels are fully able to counteract instant messages that might lead someone astray. There really is only one God, good, and He created His children to think and act only in a God-like way. Divine Mind's angel messages help remind all of us of our true priorities and duties. God's loving messages give us the ability to be law-abiding and to make wise choices about how to spend our time.

'I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end,' the Bible says (Jer. 29:11). God's thoughts are, in truth, the only thoughts we can think. There is no other Mind or intelligence but His.

Reflecting this Mind, God's children can't be mesmerized into adopting a mob mentality. Nor can they be bored and attracted to destructive deeds. Mind's children possess the clarity and ability to think independently. There is no bad seed or disruptive element in any of them. No one is out of control.

In the Bible, an angry mob threatened to throw Jesus over a hill. But he passed through unharmed. I believe it was the divine law of Love keeping him safe and providing the ultimate crowd control.

Even if it seems that people are not listening, we can trust that the Christ - God's message of love for humanity - is, like a shepherd with his sheep, still with them and will guide them toward good. They can't resist this divine impulsion, just as the flower can't help turning to the sunlight.

This was true for me when I was in high school in the 1970s at the time of the Vietnam War. A friend was active in a social/political organization and invited me to some meetings that included demonstrations. I was totally naive about the connection and went because it seemed like it would be a good time. My parents didn't question the activity because I was a fairly trouble-free kid. Since I was in the Christian Science Sunday School, I was used to praying and asking God for guidance. While I couldn't see anything wrong with the activity, part of me was uneasy about it. Soon after, I discovered some questionable things about the organization while preparing a research paper. And it was clear to me that I should stop my participation immediately.

USPTO ISSUES TRADEMARK: ULTIMATE PROM - US Fed News Service, Including US State News

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Oct. 14 -- The trademark ULTIMATE PROM (Reg. No. 3862285) was issued on Oct. 12 by the USPTO.

Owner: Hearst Communications, Inc. CORPORATION DELAWARE 300 West 57th Street New York NEW YORK 10019.

The trademark application serial number 85015957 was filed on April 16 and was registered on Oct. 12.

Goods and Services: Arranging and conducting of concerts; Arranging of contests; Dance events; Entertainment in the nature of fashion shows; Entertainment services, namely, providing a web site featuring photographic, video and prose presentations featuring school dances, concerts, fashion, beauty, health and fitness, relationships,; Special event planning. FIRST USE: 20080701. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 20080701

Longtime village attorney was the 'ultimate lawyer'.(News) - Daily Herald (Arlington Heights, IL)

Byline: Eileen O. Daday Daily Herald correspondent

A lawyer and trusted confidant to many Northwest suburban municipal officials, has passed away.

Peter Rosenthal was a managing partner of the Chicago law firm Rosenthal, Murphey, Coblentz & Donahue, and the village attorney for Rosemont for 30 years. He died Monday of complications from cancer. He was 60.

As an attorney for Rosemont, Mr. Rosenthal handled legal matters arising from Rosemont's ownership and operation of the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center, the Allstate Arena and the Rosemont Theatre.

Rosemont Mayor Bradley Stephens says his father, the late Mayor Donald E. Stephens, worked closely with Mr. Rosenthal in developing the Village of Rosemont into a business, convention and entertainment center.

'He put us on the map and helped this community succeed,' Stephens says. 'He was always there when we needed him. I can't tell you how many times during staff meetings, we'd say, 'Send it to Peter.'

'His was a calming voice of reason,' Stephens adds, 'who stayed above the fray.'

Mr. Rosenthal was recognized for his expertise in tax increment financing and economic development, as well as aspects of municipal and school affairs, including zoning, civil rights and home rule powers.

However, he still loved to litigate.

Richard Ramello, an attorney with the Rosemont law firm of Storino, Ramello & Durkin, was a co-counsel with Mr. Rosenthal in a recent trial where they successfully defended six Rosemont public safety officers, and the Village of Rosemont, in a multimillion dollar federal civil action trial.

'It was a monthlong trial, dealing with the medical and mental health issues of the plaintiff,' Ramello says. 'Peter handled the expert witness testimony, and was well versed in the subjects. He did an excellent job.'

Over the years, Mr. Rosenthal served many municipal clients, including the Village of Fox River Grove, where he was the longtime attorney.

'I depended on him totally,' said Steve Tasch, former Fox River Grove president. 'Peter was the ultimate lawyer. He knew our village better than anyone and he became part of our community.'

Ironically, while he built his reputation helping to shape many Northwest suburban communities, Mr. Rosenthal was a product of the city. The Hyde Park native was the son of two University of Chicago professors.

His father, Robert Rosenthal, was curator of Special Collections, while his mother, Jane, was a linguist studying the Aztec language and an English professor.

Mr. Rosenthal attended the University of Pennsylvania, earning his undergraduate degree in 1971 and his law degree in 1975 from the University of Michigan Law School.

At the time of his death, he lived in Hyde Park with his wife, Gracemary, and three children, Alexander, Matthew and Eleanor.

Pleasure is ultimate secret of sexuality. (From the President).(Brief Article) - SIECUS Report

As I began to think about this issued of the SIECUS Report on 'Sexual Pleasure,' it occurred to me that as a society our relationship with any kind of pleasure, especially physical, is fraught with numerous contradictions.

We strive for pleasures yet are made to feel guilty when we achieve them. We bombard our young people with images of pleasure yet teach them only about those they should avoid. We keep pleasure as the ultimate secret of sexuality yet assume that when they are old enough (and in a relationship we approve of) all people will be able to have it.

Ours is a society based largely on the idea that new and better products will bring us pleasure and happiness.

If we are rich enough and thin enough we can spend our days in luxurious rooms eating bon bons and having massages. Advertisements tell us that, in the meantime, we can experience some luxury by driving the newest sports car, eating the latest decadent chocolate-covered ice cream bar, and swathing ourselves in the latest fashions.

At the same time, the average consumer is made to feel guilty for enjoying any of these pleasures. For, if we've done so, we have clearly spent too much money and gone off our diet. And for every pleasure we indulge in, we are reminded that much of the world's population goes without simple necessities. Is there any way for us to feel pleasure without simultaneously feeling guilt?

TEACHING GUILT

It is, in fact, this guilt that we teach our young people. Instead of teaching them about things they can do to take pleasure in this world and even in their bodies, we spend much of their education telling them that those things that might bring temporary pleasure are ultimately harmful and should be avoided. We teach our children to avoid drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes. And unfortunately, we often add sexuality to that list.

While alcohol abuse, drug use, and smoking are things we never want for our children, sexuality is a natural and healthy part of life. While adults may disagree about when it is appropriate for young people to explore this part of their lives, almost all parents want their children to have a healthy adult sex life.

Still, too often, schools fear teaching teens about the positive aspects of sexuality. Teachers and administrators ask themselves: Might even mentioning that sexual acts feel good give teens newfound incentive to try them? Do discussions on sexual pleasure implicitly condone those enjoyable behaviors? Will parents complain that the school is encouraging students to experiment? And even though research confirms that education about sexuality does not encourage sexual activity, teachers continue to censor themselves when it comes to the topic of pleasure.

So sexual pleasure is rarely named and, instead, those lessons that do focus on sexuality concentrate on teen pregnancy, HIV, and STDs. Students quietly learn the same lessons that they did about illegal and otherwise harmful substances: This might feel good temporarily but it is dangerous, harmful, and you won't be able to control it.

BUT HOW DO WE LEARN?

Teaching young people about sexuality is usually a responsibility shared by schools and families. When it comes to sexual pleasure, however, families are not necessarily addressing what schools are leaving out.

Being asked to share personal details about their own sex life is an almost universal fear among parents when discussing sexuality with their children. And children, who by nature don't want to see their parents as sexual beings, also often fear being confronted with such information. Few topics have the potential to bring up such discomfort.

Yet if families and schools fail to address the issue, the media and advertisements become the only venue for information about sexual pleasure. Once again the message is that if you are rich enough and thin enough (or buy a particular product), sex will be perfectly choreographed.

Parents need to counter these unrealistic notions of sexual pleasure with honest discussions because only they can impart their own values and those of their communities. And it is our responsibility as sexuality educators to help them do this. We must help them acknowledge the potential for discomfort and assure them that it is possible to discuss sexual pleasure without discussing their own sexual behavior.

Our young people deserve open and honest messages about all aspects of their sexuality. We need to incorporate positive messages about sexuality with public health concerns about STDs and adolescent pregnancy.

Researchers Discover The Ultimate Adult Stem Cell. - Gene Therapy Weekly

2001 MAY 24 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) --

The ultimate adult stem cell appears to have been discovered - a cell in the bone marrow that can transform itself into almost any organ in the body.

The finding was announced in a new study by New York University School of Medicine, Yale University School of Medicine, and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine researchers, published in the May 4, 2001, issue of the journal Cell.

'There is a cell in the bone marrow that can serve as the stem cell for most, if not all, of the organs in the body,' says Neil Theise, MD, associate professor of Pathology at NYU School of Medicine, who co-led the study. 'This is an exciting study. Theoretically, any organ could be repaired using cells generated from this stem cell and bone-marrow-derived cells could be used to target gene therapy to a specific organ.'

In the last three years, a growing number of studies have overturned long-held beliefs about stem cells in the bone marrow. It had been believed that in the adult, these bone marrow cells were committed only to making blood cells. But over the last three years, a growing number of studies have shown that these cells have surprising plasticity, and can transform themselves into mature cells of other organs such as skeletal muscle, bone, and brain.

Theise and Dr. Diane Krause, assistant professor of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology at Yale University School of Medicine, were among the first to show that stem cells can become liver cells, as well, and the first to demonstrate this transformation in humans. Yet, until now, the stem cell from which these mature cells arose hadn't been identified.

In the new study, Dr. Saul Sharkis and colleagues at Johns Hopkins first purified stem cells in the bone marrow of male mice. Then they took just one of these cells and transplanted it into female mice that had their bone marrow destroyed by radiation. Eleven months later, the researchers found that the male cells had settled in the blood and bone marrow of the surviving female animals, using color dyes that light up the Y chromosome and other structures. The Y chromosome is only found in cells from males.

When Theise and Krause looked, they found the male chromosome not only in the bone marrow and blood, as expected, but also in the tissue from the lung, esophagus, stomach, small and large intestines, liver, and skin.

'It had been thought that only embryonic stem cells had such wide-ranging potential,' says Theise of NYU School of Medicine. 'However, this study provides the strongest evidence yet that the adult body harbors stem cells that are as flexible as embryonic stem cells,' he says.

'It's astounding that there are cells in our bone marrow that can become so many different cell types including blood, lung, GI tract, and skin,' says Krause of Yale University. 'The challenges now are to elucidate how these changes occur and to harness these findings to develop therapies for many different human diseases.'

Stem cells in the marrow may be recruited to a damaged organ where they will develop into the mature tissue of that organ in response to certain signals. However, Theise and Krause speculate that any healthy adult cell with an intact genome can be reprogrammed to become a stem cell.

The study had two parts. In the first part, stem cells in the bone marrow were isolated and purified using a protocol developed by Dr. Sharkis. Bone marrow cells from male mice were spun in a centrifuge, partitioning cells according to their weight in a process called elutriation. Then the cells belonging to one of the partitions were exposed to a panel of antibodies that bind specifically to proteins in the cell membrane of mature red and white blood cells. Stem cells don't have these proteins in the membrane.

The cells that bound the antibodies were eliminated and the remaining cells were labeled with a fluorescent color dye that sits tightly between the fatty layers of the membrane of cells. These cells were then injected into female mice that had been irradiated, which destroys the cells in the bone marrow. After two days, the stem cells were recovered from the bone marrow of the female mice, and only those cells with the brightest color were used in the subsequent part of the study. The bright color indicated that the cells had not yet divided, assuring the researchers that these cells had the greatest transformative potential.

In the second part of the study, one of these bright-colored cells was plucked out of solution and transplanted into other female mice that had been irradiated. By killing the bone marrow, the stem cell would be forced to generate cells to repopulate the bone marrow of the recipient female mouse. Thirty female mice received the stem cell and five of the mice survived 11 months. Cells containing Y chromosomes were found in multiple organs in all five of these surviving mice.

At races, police have the ultimate control.(SPORTS)(WEEKEND ATHLETE: RUNNING) - The Washington Times (Washington, DC)

Byline: Steve Nearman, THE WASHINGTON TIMES

At the Army Ten-Miler seven days ago, thousands of runners and spectators found out what has been the case since the first road race was run on dirt streets in America more than a hundred years ago: Race directors do not have ultimate control of their races. The local police do.

In a country deemed safe by our leaders, we live in a time when runners must pass through metal detectors to gain entry onto a course, as if they were boarding an airplane. The lines for makeshift security gates are greater than the lines for the porta-johns.

This is an age when a trained police dog actually was instructed to sniff my hybrid bicycle before I was cleared to cover a road race.

It's an era when public officials immediately will err on the side of safety. An unattended package is as good as a dirty bomb. Close the 14th Street Bridge first. Ask questions later.

Where does this leave the race directors of our most guarded cities like Washington? Where does this leave Jim Vandak of the Army Ten-Miler, who last Sunday morning set into motion a certified, sanctioned road race that ultimately became a recreational fun run?

For all the responsibility Vandak has had over his field of thousands during nearly a decade at the helm, for all the authority he wields one Sunday morning in October of every year, the truth is he is powerless.

We saw that Sunday.

Citing security concerns, the D.C. Metropolitan Police shut down the 14th Street Bridge, which erased much of the last two of Vandak's 10 miles of pavement.

Quick thinking kept the race alive. The key word is 'alive.' The runners show up for a 10-mile race and end up running 11.2 or so.

Live to run another day. Amazing how just 371 days later, there will be another Army Ten-Miler - we hope.

Even after the Army canceled on the heels of September 11 in 2001, even after the Army nearly sacked the race with the sniper on the loose in 2002, there still was an Army Ten-Miler this year. The race has persevered, and so will its participants.

Bailey goes to trials - Mary Kate Bailey of Arlington was the only area runner to qualify for the 2008 Olympic Marathon trials at the Twin Cities Marathon last weekend in Minnesota.

Bailey's 2:46:03 marathon time surpassed the 2:47:00 'B' standard and placed her 10th among the women.

It was another breakthrough personal best race for the 30-year-old, who won Marine Corps last year in 2:48:31.

Susannah Kvasnicka of Great Falls narrowly missed a qualifier with a 2:47:57, while Washington Running Club vice president Genevieve Kiley was close, too, in 2:48:13.

Kvasnicka took more than six minutes off her time from Chicago in 2002.

'I am disappointed [about missing the qualifier] but am trying not to dwell on it too much,' Kvasnicka said. 'We had very bad marathoning weather in Minnesota, and I just wasn't prepared for it. I was not good with my hydration during the race and suffered the last six miles because of it.

'I was sick and dry heaving on and off from mile 20 and did not know if I would finish. Once I did, I was taken to the medical tent by wheelchair. I had a temp of 103 and was severely dehydrated. They believe that I had heat exhaustion. I had hoped to run in the low 2:40s and believe that I would have on a cool dry day.'

Will she rest up and recover from Twin Cities in the coming weeks?

'Believe it or not, I am signed up for Marine Corps [in three weeks],' Kvasnicka admitted. 'My recovery would have to go amazingly well for me to do that, but you never know. I actually don't feel bad physically. My legs are in decent shape.'

Kiley has been to the Olympic trials before, using her personal best 2:44:36 at the 2003 St. George Marathon in Utah to participate in the 2004 Olympic marathon trials in St. Louis, where the 31-year-old Park City, Utah, transplant now living in Arlington finished 49th in 2:47:33.

No male was close to the 2:22:00 qualifier. Chris Banks, a 2004 Olympic trials participant from Alexandria, was under the qualifier through a 1:10:38 half, but he slowed dramatically during the second half of the course, especially the last 10 kilometers, to finish in 2:35:48.

+++++

EVENTS

* Somerset Elementary's Back-to-School 8K Classic - Today, 8 a.m. in Chevy Chase. Information: 301-871-0400.

* Kingstowne Faith 5K - Saturday, 8:30 a.m. in Alexandria. Information: faith5k.org.

* Run for Mental Health 5K - Saturday, 8 a.m. at FitzGerald Tennis Center on 16th & Kennedy streets in Washington. Information: 202-671-4013.

Apprenticeship; the ultimate teen guide.(Brief Article)(Children's Review)(Book Review) - Reference & Research Book News

0810849453

Apprenticeship; the ultimate teen guide.

Paquette, Penny Hutchins.

Scarecrow Pr.

2005

373 pages

$42.00

Hardcover

It happened to me; no.13

HD4885

Intended for high school students, this vocational reference describes 100 plus apprenticeable jobs in the construction, entertainment, health care, maintenance, personal care, production, and protective services industries, social services, and military. Each entry overviews the work performed, the job outlook and wages in the field, apprenticeship programs, and related skills.