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Anavex: Research Report Reveals Cardioprotective Action of Sigma-1 Receptor Agonists
Findings Correlate with Positive Phase 1 Safety Data for ANAVEX 2-73
NEW YORK – March 4, 2014
Anavex Life Sciences Corp. ("Anavex" or the "Company") (OTCQB: AVXL) is encouraged by the findings of a research report published in the current issue of peer-reviewed scientific journal Life Sciences. Among its conclusions, the report reveals that sigma-1 receptor (S1R) agonists play an important role in the prevention, delay or reduction of heart disease. These findings correlate with the positive electrocardiogram (EKG) parameters in the successfully completed human clinical Phase 1 safety trial of ANAVEX 2-73, an orally available S1R agonist drug candidate developed to treat Alzheimer's through potential disease modification. ANAVEX 2-73 has also shown highly encouraging synergy with donepezil, the world's best-selling Alzheimer's drug, and a Phase 1b/2a clinical trial of this combination, ANAVEX PLUS, is planned for the first half of 2014.
"The findings from this new study are thought to be exceptionally important because the advanced age of Alzheimer's patients makes them more susceptible to heart disease," said Christopher U. Missling, PhD, President and Chief Executive Officer of Anavex. "For this reason, the cardioprotective effect displayed by sigma-1 receptor agonists could positively impact the safety of Alzheimer's drug candidates like ANAVEX 2-73, which target the sigma-1 receptor. The findings in this report also provide further evidence of the beneficial effect of sigma-1 receptor agonists on neuroprotection and cell preservation."
It is possible that ANAVEX 2-73 will have a similar beneficial effect on heart cell mitochondria as it recently demonstrated the ability to repair mitochondrial functionality in the hippocampus, the part of the brain involved with learning, memory and emotions. Mitochondrial dysfunction has been consistently reported as an early cause of Alzheimer's disease.
Research Report Findings
The Life Sciences report describes the significant correlation between reduced S1R expression in the heart and impaired cardiac function. It concludes that S1R stimulation by agonists pharmacologically promotes anti-hypertrophic (reduction in abnormal organ or tissue enlargement) and cardioprotective action through mitochondrial calcium transport and ATP production. Hypertrophy can ultimately progress to ventricular dilatation, contractile dysfunction and heart failure.
The mitochondria of the cardiac muscle, which is essential for ATP generation, produces the energy used to maintain cardiac muscle contractile function. As such, mitochondrial dysfunction promotes development of heart failure.
According to the study, fluvoxamine and other S1R agonists directly stimulate the S1R in heart muscle (cardiomyocyte), thereby rescuing the cardiac dysfunction. The report also suggests that stimulation of both heart and brain S1R plays an important role in the protection from heart disease.
The report, entitled "Fluvoxamine rescues mitochondrial Ca2+ transport and ATP production through sigma 1-receptor in hypertrophic cardiomyocytes," was authored by Dr. Kohji Fukunaga and colleagues from the Department of Pharmacology, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan and the Division of Molecular Cardiovascular Biology, Department of Pediatrics, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, Ohio.
Anavex Life Sciences Corp. (www.anavex.com) is a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company engaged in the development of novel drug candidates to treat Alzheimer's, CNS diseases and various types of cancer. ANAVEX 2-73, an orally available drug candidate developed to treat Alzheimer's through potential disease modification, has undergone an initial Phase 1 human clinical trial and was well tolerated in doses up to 55mg. Results from pre-clinical studies indicate that ANAVEX 2-73 demonstrates anti-amnesic and neuroprotective properties. A highly encouraging synergistic effect has also been observed between ANAVEX 2-73 and Aricept® (donepezil). The combined therapeutics ANAVEX PLUS produced up to 80% greater reversal of memory loss in Alzheimer's disease models versus when the drugs were used individually. Anavex is a publicly traded corporation quoted as AVXL.
Statements in this press release that are not strictly historical in nature are forward-looking statements. These statements are only predictions based on current information and expectations and involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Actual events or results may differ materially from those projected in any of such statements due to various factors, including the risks set forth in the Company's most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date hereof. All forward-looking statements are qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement and Anavex Life Sciences Corp. undertakes no obligation to revise or update this press release to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof.


A Crowdfunded Chocolate Factory: Let's Remake the Economy!
Many have probably dreamed about owning a chocolate factory. Here's the story of the chance to do so collectively, adding to local economies and receiving delicious dividends.
A new website will offer journalistic investigation into uncovering the sources of corruption in politics and what we can do about them.
Donor-Advised Funds, or DAFs, are a rapidly growing staple in the giving of individual donors. But they are also controversial. This important original article by IUPUI's Patrick Rooney explores how their use may affect the charitable money flows in our modern giving landscape.
Even if a local institution starts out with a focus on profitmaking, that does not mean it must stay that way.
A grant for crowdfunding nonprofits to invest in solar energy, one that provides dividends to the donors and covers general operating costs, is a singularly innovative award.
Local governments are turning to crowdsourcing to finance public services. Apparently, while residents may be resistant to city and state tax hikes, they are likely to donate money to government if they can have some say over where it goes. But how does this impact the role of government and resident participation?
Crowdpac, a new online platform for potential political candidates, helps people find candidates to support by ranking them on issues, helping users clarify their own stances on issues, and matching them for donations.
As a Baltimore alternative weekly was set to shut down, an effort was launched to save the journalism it produced.
Universities have a history of successful campaigns attracting six-figure gifts, but a few schools have focused on small donations from current students or recently graduated alumni.


First choose "Network and Sharing Center" from the Control Panel. Then choose "Set up a new connection or network".
Then select the "Connect to a workplace".
Now you should enter the server address of your Kovurt account. You will see those details on the email we sent to you. For the "Destination name" box you can type "Kovurt".
Next you should enter your username and password – we sent you those details by email. Then click "Create".
Click the "Close" button to return to the "Network and Internet" screen.
In the "Connect to a network" screen, you should see the Kovurt connection that you have just created.
Right-click on the Kovurt connection document, and choose "Properties" from the menu.
You are now finished! To connect/disconnect to Kovurt, right-click on the connection icon (viewable at Change adapter settings) and select connect/disconnect.


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All forms of therapy, Counselling & Coaching involve observation of the self, as naked emotional beings. Without total honesty the desire for truth & innocence over shame, guilt and ego, the journey will be fraught with obstacles. Take courage and tell the truth faster.
This is the only spirit required to begin the journey of change.
We all have a working idea of the self, we know 'who we are ' or think we do. Our identity is often based on our work status or the visual – not the unseen emotional spread.
We understand that we possess an individual identity, that it matters greatly to us, and that it is one of the means by which we function in society. This personal identity is complex. It is made up of traits that we are born with and views that we acquire as we go through life. Some aspects of our identity are essentially permanent, others are subject to change. Identification for official purposes is often controversial because it does not acknowledge this complexity and variability.
Authority's challenge 'Who are you?' is easily satisfied with a signature or a PIN number. The deeper question 'who, really, am I?' remains much harder to answer.
urbanLIFECLASS offers opportunities for all genders and sexualities to explore the spiritual, intuitive, creative self within our lives, and the work we endeavour to produce.


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'I don't care about being popular with politicians': Patricia Karvelas prepares to go off-script
By Thomas Mitchell
November 29, 2021 — 8.06am
Patricia Karvelas says the best advice she ever received was from broadcaster Fran Kelly, which is fitting because from next year she'll be taking over from the industry veteran as the host of Radio National's breakfast show.
"Fran Kelly told me to listen carefully because the conversation can go in any direction based on what the person is telling you," Karvelas says.
Patricia Karvelas will replace Fran Kelly on RN Breakfast. Credit:Scott McNaughton
And now listeners can expect a change in direction as Karvelas replaces Kelly, who has been at the Breakfast helm since 2005.
"I am not a very scripted person. I can be pretty fearless and I do not care about being popular in a political interview. I care about getting to the heart of the issues. I just want the answer and I think people respect that," Karvelas says.
The Greek-Australian journalist, who has two daughters with her longtime partner, believes her multicultural experience will add a new layer to RN Breakfast.
"My background is different to people who have come before me, not just Fran, those before us and I think that's a good thing to have a diversity of hosts with different backgrounds and experiences. I understand this country in a way that differs from others, so I hope I can bring a fresh perspective to this show," she says.
Fran Kelly is moving on from Radio National breakfast but will remain with the ABC. Credit:ABC/Steven Siewert
"I want RN Breakfast to be appointment radio, the sort of radio that you have to shush your kids in the car because you need to hear the answer to the questions being asked. Fran does that now, but we execute it differently. We may have a different style but we are both committed to getting the answers, and that's what people can expect."
Karvelas, whose appointment was announced on Monday morning, said she also helped to bring a younger audience to RN Breakfast without alienating the show's long-term listeners.
"I do want to build an audience of people who are in my demographic; I'm not young, I'm not old, but I'm somewhere in the middle," says Karvelas, who is in her early 40s.
"People in their 30s and 40s care about the world around them, but they're busy and need an accessible radio show that curates the big discussions for them. I have always believed that ABC's traditional audiences are very important, and I think I have a great rapport with them. It's more about straddling both demographics, growing a new one, but respecting your current one."
Karvelas is currently the host of Radio National's drive show and will step into her new role early next year, swapping late nights for early mornings.
"I'm an early bird, so this is perfect for me; it's funny how negative people are about the early morning. Obviously, it's a little earlier than I currently wake up, but the truth is I can't wait," Karvelas says.
Kelly, who has been the host of Radio National's breakfast show for 17 years, hangs up her headphones on Thursday. However, the 63-year-old will return to the ABC in some capacity next year after a break.
Following the announcement, Kelly said Karvelas was a natural fit for RN Breakfast and the show would be in very capable hands.
"Her boundless energy and strong journalistic instincts, coupled with her personal warmth and extraordinary work ethic mean she has what it takes to keep the program doing what it does best – driving the daily news agenda and bringing the audience along on a wild ride of politics, popular culture, social issues, science, sport and music," Kelly said.
Having spent the last seven years anchoring RN Drive, Karvelas says the opportunity to host RN Breakfast fulfilled a long-held ambition.
"I have been hungry for a bigger role; the afternoon news cycle is different to the morning; in the morning, you can set the day's agenda, that's what I'm ready to do," Karvelas says."Fran's decision to move on from this role was perfect timing from where I am at, especially as we go into an election year."
The Morning Edition newsletter is our guide to the day's most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up here.
Thomas Mitchell is a culture reporter at The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via Twitter or email.
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The Auld Kendal Gold Perique Hand Rolling Tobacco is made in the heart of the lake district in true British spirit. The finest tobacco leaves are sourced from the finest tobacco producing nations before being blended and prepared in the Kendal Tobacco factory.
The Auld Kendal Gold Perique Hand Rolling Tobacco is a brand new blend introduced in 2016 for the hand rolling connoisseur looking for something a little different. The blend uses the unrivaled Gold Virginia that Gawith and Hoggarth are famous for blended carefully with a good helping of the luxurious Louisiana Perique. The result is a clean smooth smoking tobacco with unique spicy flavour in the background.


Anyone know about the new parole "rules". My boyfriend says things have changed. Now, the parole plan has to be approved BEFORE the offender is paroled he says. The parole officer will check the facility first before the plan is approved by parole.
Hmmmm. New York always approves the situation before allowing the inmate out.
I guess I am with nimuay here...unless OP is discussing a change that the plan has to be confirmed before the file went to the Board for a vote. But even that wouldn't make much sense due to it wasting too much time of field staff who are ALREADY overworked (and often under-staffed).
Typical process here in Texas is that the unit interviewer gets the plan and it is included in the Case Summary that goes to the Board. IF the Board approves the release, then the plan is farmed to the appropriate field office for plan approval. Sometimes this may be a week or two after the vote and sometimes it could be months down the road if the vote required an in-prison program to be completed prior to release. Only if there is an approved plan will the actual release be scheduled.
Yes, from what I understand they have to have an approved place to live before they get paroled. No more paroling out to extended stay hotels, etc.
Does a home visit happen before the hearing?


Below you will find part numbers for F5s BIG-IP License Upgrades on the pre iSeries hardware. For prices, and special discounts Contact WorldTech IT for a Quote. We'll take the time to understand your environment, needs, and current projects to ensure you're buying the right F5 Networks Solution.
Note 2: When adding a license upgrade to a BIG-IP product, services must be added. The license will take on the service level of the host product. For service pricing, see section "Service and Support for Application Delivery Products". Service cost for the license upgrade is calculated as a percentage of product starting price, same as with hardware platforms.


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June's Big Winners Enjoy Juggernaut Successes
Four lucky players put the 'big' in 'big win' when fortune smiled upon them with some enjoying successive successes this June.
The first jumbo big win of the month was achieved by Austrian player Judit on the Wolf Gold slot game. Her four consecutive bets which amounted to €70 led to four consecutive big wins totalling up to €4,235.
35-year-old Todd from New Zealand was the next to enjoy successive big wins on the same day but on two different sets of reels. He started off on the Deadwood xNudge slot game where his $1 bet shot down a big win of $2,670.15 before moving on to the Toshi Video Club slot game where he scored a big win of $1,442.28 with a $1.20 bet.
Meanwhile, Sebastian from Germany who only recently joined EmuCasino and made his first deposit had an amazing start to his time here when his €3 bet crowned him with a €12,000 big win on the Eye of Cleopatra slot game.
Closing out the month was a big win streak achieved by Johnnie, a 43-year-old Canadian player who played the Buffalo Hold and Win slot game and was richly rewarded. Four of his spins which totalled up to $245 herded big wins amounting to $12,858 for him.
These were significantly large big wins especially in those cases where they came from such small bets so it's safe to say that June went very well for these lucky individuals. Perhaps they will be just as fortunate next month.
Beginner's Luck Leads to Two Days of Big Wins for New Player
One player recently had the best possible start to her EmuCasino adventure when big win after big win came rolling in for two straight days. Fresh off getting registered at EmuCasino on 29 March 2 [...]
A Kiwi's Surprise Big Win 'Howl' On His First Day
There's something to be said about beginner's luck and one player certainly lived up to the cliché. Adam, a new player from New Zealand, recently joined EmuCasino as a new member and promptly [...]


There are a number of procedures for filing your company's tax return and paying the tax due. We set out the basic elements here but at Malcolm Piper & Company, we can prepare the necessary returns and advise on the tax payments due for your company in the Birmingham area.
If your company in the Birmingham area do not hesitate to contact us at Malcolm Piper & Company if you require any further information about Corporation Tax Self Assessment.


Over the last decade use of mobile phones has turned out to be one of the most indispensable necessities in our lives, and Etah is not an exception to this. In fact, a huge number of mobile phone dealers as well as repair and services centres in Etah, located throughout the city and its adjoining communities, are offering mobile phone services to the people here. Many of the mobile service centres in Etah serve as the customer care centres for a specific brand of cell phones like BSNL, Nokia, Samsung, Blackberry, HTC, Micromax, LAVA, Motorola, LG and many others, whereas several other mobile service centres of Etah deal with complete repair and services of mobile phones of all brands. These mobile repair shops also deal into recharge coupons, mobile phone chargers, cell phone batteries, various other trendy mobile phone accessories and essential electrical devices or electronic gadgets like photocopiers. These centres usually operate 6 days a week and remain closed either on Sundays or on Tuesdays. These stay open from around 9.30 or 10 o'clock in the morning till 6.30 or 8 o'clock in the evening.


January is a time when many of us start thinking about what we want from the year ahead of us. What do we want to achieve? Where do we want to go? What do we want to do? The statistics surrounding New Years Resolution's are diabolical and for most people by the time they read this post many of those plans will have fallen by the wayside. There is lots we could talk about regarding goal setting and habit formation and there is a great body of work around this by people like Tony Robbins and Charles Duhigg. However I wonder if it is more useful to turn our thinking to a more fundamental question. Rather than asking "what do we want to do?", what would happen if instead we asked ourselves "who do we want to be?"? Instead of planning to run three times a week or make 25 sales calls a day, what if we focused on being a runner or being a sales superstar?
We use identity statements all the time but often without much thought. "I'm a father". "I'm an HR Business Partner". "I'm Senior Vice President of Sales EMEA". They might be useful labels but in reality they don't tell us much about what the role entails. And therein lies their downfall and at the same time their shining beauty. Used in the right way, these identity statements present a huge opportunity. We get to choose. We get to decide how we play the part. Rather than asking ourselves if we are capable of fulfilling the role, we can start to think about how we are going to fulfil it in our own authentic way.
When I was training to be an actor one of the crucial steps to creating a character was drawing up a list of characteristics. You had to decided what the character was like. Was he brave? Was he smart? Was he naive? These qualities then informed the way in which you played the part. In simple terms, the sort of energy the character approached a situation with was dictated by these characteristics. A confident character enters a room in a very different way to a timid one. When we take time to define our roles, we can choose our characteristic which in turn help to shape our outcomes. You get very different results if you focus on being a committed, powerful and dynamic athlete, rather than just attempting to go to the gym three times a week.
So, instead of writing resolutions this year, I've defined the roles I want to play in my business and personal life and for each of those roles I have chosen at least three characteristics. Two weeks into January and I'm making progress in all areas. It's less about ticking boxes and working to complete isolated activities and more about taking a holistic approach to the sort of person I want to be and the impact I want to have on the world. The roles are helping me to focus my attention and not get distracted by shiny objects and the characteristics are helping me bring the right kind of energy to my activities. The added bonus is that if I miss a workout or succumb to a biscuit with my cup of tea I can look for other ways to fulfil my chosen role rather than beating myself up for falling off the wagon and failing in my chosen task. After all, no matter what role we decide to play, we're only human and our failures as well as our success are what make us who we are.
Take some time out! The importance of connection.
It's been a hectic few months. I'm not complaining at all. I've had the pleasure of training some amazing delegates and speaking at some brilliant events and now it's time for a rest. I'm taking next week off and I can't wait! Of course I'm looking forward to a few lie-ins and the thought of not checking my emails is very appealing but I'm most excited about the extended opportunity to connect – with myself, with my loved ones and with my environment. It might sound a bit fluffy but connection is so important for our wellbeing and happiness and it's a fundamental ingredient for high performance.
It may sound selfish, however, the key to being truly connected is time for yourself. If you're not in touch with your own sense of purpose, your values and your emotions, then it's impossible to make anything more than a superficial connection with those around you. If you want to function at a higher level, you have to be in deep connection with the things you are trying to achieve. If what you are doing doesn't make you want to jump out of bed in the morning, then it's unlikely that you'll stick to the plan when temptations or opportunities for procrastination present themselves.
Now don't get me wrong, you don't have to love every little task you do, you just have to understand how each step you are taking is part of the overall journey you have chosen to embark on. I spent a good chunk of yesterday going through the business accounts. If I'm honest it's the part of being an entrepreneur that I enjoy least. However, I know that if I want to succeed in my mission of helping people reconnect with the spoken word, I need to have a viable business that makes money and being on top of the numbers is an essential part of that.
Next week I plan to carve out some quality time each morning to focus on the bigger picture and prepare myself for the exciting challenges that lie ahead. I find that the knock on effect of this is that once I've had my "thinking time" I can be much more present and connected with my family. I get to really enjoy the time we spend together without getting distracted by the "work noise" that pops into my head. I'm the first to admit that I often find it difficult to switch off – I love what I do – so working in this way allows me to stay connected to all parts of my life by simply choosing where I place my focus. And I don't just do this during the holidays. Whenever possible I start the day with planning time and some headspace, so that by the time I reach the office or the training room I am ready to hit the ground running.
One of the biggest objections I hear when I talk with people about the importance of connection is "I don't have time". We tend to wake up in the morning and get straight on the treadmill of life. We spend our work day moving between meetings, phone calls and emails without taking the time to breathe. Not only do we fail to make time for ourselves, we fail to make time for others too. We tend to see our interactions with colleagues and customers as transactional rather than transformational. When we do this we miss a massive opportunity.
The old adage that time is our only finite resource is often overused. What's vital to remember though is that we are free to choose how we use it. If you had to find 10 minutes in your day to do something of "life or death" importance, you would. Of course you would also have to let something else slip to do it - that goes without saying. So what we're really talking about is not a lack of available time but our choice of priorities. What value do you place on connection and what are the benefits of making it non-negotiable? It might be easier to have superficial "yes" or "no" conversations with colleagues and team members but what could be gained by going beneath the surface and working for deeper understanding? Getting out from behind your desk at lunchtime and seeing the world around you will create infinitely more opportunities and spark infinitely more ideas than eating a sandwich at your desk hunched over Facebook. We must take responsibility for creating space in our life. No one else can do it for us.
I'm often asked by people how they can have more "presence" for me the answer is very simple, make sure you're "in the moment", not connected to something that has just happened or to something that's coming up in the future. In this video I share a simple tool that I use to help me create moments of true presence everyday.
Put it into practice and let me know how you get on in the comments box below.
When you're an expert (I believe we're all experts in our individual fields) it's very easy to forget that the person you're talking to probably isn't. They haven't had your experiences and they possibly aren't as passionate about your subject matter as you are. Rather than broadcast your knowledge at your audience it is important to share it with them. I think we have to take responsibility when we communicate. How can we translate what we are saying into language that the people we are talking to can understand? What examples can you give or questions can you ask that will resonate? For example, when one Financial Advisor started talking about Asset Management, Estate Planning and my projected Net Worth, whilst I had a relatively solid idea of what he was talking about, I felt nervous that I hadn't quite understood and stupid for not being more knowledgeable. When another asked me to start thinking about my dream lifestyle, the type of house I'd like to live in when I retired and how many holidays I wanted to take each year, I felt excited and empowered. There are many ways to crack an egg. Choose the method that your audience prefers rather than defaulting to your own preference.
Every industry on the planet has it's own language. It might be very subtle but if you listen hard enough you'll start to hear words and phrases that you use regularly and instantly understand, which have little or no meaning to the outside world. Whilst these act as a short cut when everyone in the conversation is fluent with the terminology, to anyone outside of the circle hearing this language can be incredibly isolating. When I work with clients on presentations I always ask them to remove all acronyms and "technical speak" completely. Not only does this make it much easier for the lay-people in the audience to understand what you're talking about, it also ensures that you give proper weight to the terminology that you use. ROI, SIPP, FSA, ISA, IHT, LTV, NI, HMRC – without proper context it's all just alphabet soup!
If you're worried you might be losing your audience a natural tendency is to speed up in order to get things over and done with quickly, or to bombard people with information in order to reaffirm your expert status. In fact you should try to do the opposite. Slow down and say less. It takes people time to digest and process new information. In order to give ideas meaning and give ourselves a chance of remembering new things we need to create connections and pictures in our minds. That requires space, especially with complex concepts. Better to make three key points that land, than to introduce seven topics which all go over people's heads. You shouldn't leave your audience exhausted and scrambling to keep up. Instead give them less information and more time to internalise what they are hearing. Trust the people that you are speaking to, if you've created the right environment and they need more information they'll ask questions. If you've ever spent an hour on the phone with a Financial Advisor who loves the sound of their own voice you'll know I'm right!
Have you got any tips or tricks for communicating complex ideas? Do you think I'm talking simplistic nonsense? I'd love you to join the conversation by commenting in the box below.
Get more confident. Make more sales. Increase your influence.
It's been a busy few weeks. Since November 1st I've been up and down the East Coast Mainline more times than I care to remember, delivered 10 days of training for a total of 152 delegates, been photographed for a magazine feature, run my first ever webinar, compered a 3-day conference for 300 people and won a small business award. The most exciting thing of all though, has been meeting and working with three of my heroes. This month I've been lucky enough to spend time with Sir Clive Woodward (World Cup winning rugby coach), Richard Reed (founder of, in my opinion, one of the coolest companies in the UK, Innocent Smoothies) and Daniel Priestly (author of the best selling books Key Person of Influence, Entrepreneur Revolution and Oversubscribed).
When I spoke with them, all three shared some amazing insights into business, performance and success, however the most striking thing for me was how evangelical all three of them were about the need to have a coach or mentor if you want to achieve your dreams.
When you think about it, it's obvious. Look at any olympic athlete, premiership football team, Hollywood actor or FTSE 100 CEO, they all have coaches and mentors, people who can offer an outside perspective, help them to focus on the important tasks and ultimately enable them to perform at the top of their game. If you've ever been lucky enough to work with a personal trainer, you'll know how much quicker you get the results you are looking for compared to turning up at the gym on your own, floating about from machine to machine and doing whatever exercises take your fancy.
Why is it then that so many "normal people" don't see coaching as important and urgent? They see it as the icing on the cake rather than the foundation for success. So many business owners put off investing in themselves until they're making more money – If a football club waited until they'd won a few games before they bothered getting a Manager, you'd think they were mad! So many companies offer their staff training if they hit their targets, rather than offering their staff training to make sure they hit their targets – If the GB cycling team had just gone out for a few practice rides whenever they felt like it and waited to employ Dave Brailsford and his team until after they'd won a few races, they would never have taken gold at London 2012. So many talented individuals wait to work on their "soft skills" until they get promoted – If Rene Zellweger had waited to get a voice coach to work on her English accent until after the Bridget Jones movie was a box office hit, there would have been no box office hit.
The "normal' approach doesn't work. Extraordinary people have a coach. It helps move the dial in the right direction. It holds you to account. It makes you show up as the best version of yourself. For the last twelve months I've been working with not one but three coaches and it's been a complete game changer for me. There have been moments when I have questioned the financial investment. There have been moments when I've wanted to hide from their scrutiny. There have been moments when I felt like I was too busy to make time for our sessions. But ultimately it's made me better at what I do. It's helped me serve my own clients better and it's enabled me to have a month like November.
The reality is that we don't invest in a coach to learn a technique or a methodology, we invest in a coach to achieve a result. My one-to-one clients don't come to me to improve their presentation skills and performance. Not really. They come to me to get more confidence, make more sales, become better leaders, achieve expert status, negotiate better deals and have more influence.
As we head into December it's time to start reflecting on the year that's past and planning for the year to come. Don't just take my word for it… If you want to make 2016 your best year yet, listen to Sir Clive Woodward, Richard Reed and Daniel Priestly… Get a coach!
If you're interested in finding out how you can work with me to kick start your year click HERE. If I'm not the right fit, that's fine, I just urge you to get out there and find someone who is. You won't regret it.
On Monday I overheard my daughter playing in her cot. She was completely engrossed in a magical world of her own creation. I put a short post about my observations on Facebook and my wall exploded. The need for us adults to engage our imaginations seemingly struck a chord.
Yesterday I spent the day teaching a group of engineers the art of storytelling. At first I worried that it might be a hard sell, too far removed from their world of facts and figures. I couldn't have been more wrong. Their desire to play, to connect with each other on a simpler, more human level was inspirational.
So why is imagination important? And what are the creative lessons that we can take from the world of make-believe and the arts, that can help us succeed in business?
To quote Plato "You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation". When we play, we allow ourselves to connect. We let our guards down and become more human. Play helps us build relationships. Think back to your school days, I bet you can remember the kids who were on your sports team or in your orchestra better than the kids who were in your biology class. Why? Because through the collective experience of playing together, you created stronger bonds. Play is also fun. It provides variety, makes us feel good and boosts performance. When we take time out of the "norm" to do something different, we recharge our batteries. There's a reason why Pixar animators can decorate their offices in any way they choose… What would happen if rather than looking at problems in a linear way, we were prepared to see them through the eyes of a child and play with them until we found a better solution?
The imagination is one of the most powerful tools in our tool kits but all too often it's left rusting at the bottom of the bag. I believe that the more we engage with it and dare to use it, the more happy, successful and prosperous we will be.
Keep shining, and creating and flexing and playing!
In this video I want to share my PowerPoint do's and don'ts…. and when I say PowerPoint I mean any presentation software including Prezi and Keynote.
I know that a lot of people use these presentation tools and used well they can be excellent. Unfortunately, all too often, I see people making easily avoidable mistakes with the software. In this video I'll share with you some simple tips that will help you connect with your audience and get them to engage with your presentation.
Tip no.1: Don't read the bullets!
Power point and other presentation tools are there to help you reinforce your messages, to give the audience the key points that you want them to take away. Don't use your slides as a script. It's distracting and boring for the audience, as they know what's coming before the words have even come out of your mouth.
If you start to put lines and lines of text onto your slides your audience will try and read it. As soon as you flip to a new slide filled with words you lose the focus of the audience as people try and read all the information that you put on the screen behind you.
I really encourage you to use pictures. Images stay with us much more powerfully than text and if we associate what you are saying with the image that you put on the screen, we are much more likely to remember it.
Don't let PowerPoint upstage you. We don't want people to remember the PowerPoint, we want them to remember you and what it is you said. Use your Power Point to enhance your presentation, but remember, Power Point isn't your presentation. You are your presentation: the words you speak and the connection that you make with your audience.
I'd love to hear your views on how to get the most out of PowerPoint, so please share your comments with me in the box below.
Many public speakers have really great ideas and with fantastic content. However, they are ruining their performance by not using their space like a pro. In this video I am going to show you some simple tips to help you own your stage when presenting and look completely comfortable and in control.
What most people do is see a podium and think "right, I am going to stand behind it". Actually, that's the worst thing that you can do. What you are doing by standing at the podium and leaving all that space in the middle of the auditorium is giving your PowerPoint slides "centre stage". Just remember that the audience has come to listen to you. So, step out from behind the podium and find yourself connecting with them.
My tip here is to find yourself still and calm in a place that you feel safe. Find a place of stillness, a place of recovery and know that this is the centre point that you are going back to. This does not mean that you shouldn't ever walk up and down or engage with people in the audience, but after that, know where are you coming back to and find that place of stillness.
There is nothing worse than walking into an auditorium and seeing someone giving a great speech and watching them look up to their PowerPoint slides. This distracts your audience and gives all the focus to the words on the screen, which takes the focus away from you. Please don't let your PowerPoint slides steal the show! I've got loads of tips on this topic so will deal with it in more detail in an upcoming video.
I hope that you find my tips on "how to own your stage when speaking" useful. Please share your comments with me in the box below and I'd love to hear about any other tricks that work for you.


Producer/singer/songwriter ASKYA blends Folk x Electronic with airy vocals meeting electronic textures. ASKYA locked himself away the past year to write and teach himself production, whether in a Swiss mountain cabin or by the ocean in his hometown. Moving between Zurich, Switzerland and Margaret River, WA, ASKYA writes songs with a sense of vulnerability that reflect experiences far beyond his years. His first two singles garnered immediate traction, being placed in multiple top-tier Spotify playlists worldwide. ASKYA now has a fresh perspective and is an emerging artist to watch.
Ryan Edmond was taught cornet from a young age by his grandfather. It was only over the past few years living in Sweden he began singing/songwriting and recording.
Now being back home in Western Australia he is focusing on finishing his first album, inspired by the contrasts of living in the two different countries. The first single of the album will be released in the coming months.


Is there a moment in history when a work receives its ideal interpretation? Or is perpetual negotiation required to preserve the past and accommodate the present? The freedom of interpretation, Charles Rosen suggests in these sparkling explorations, exists in a delicate balance with fidelity to the identity of the original work.
Journeys into Darkness 2014 г.
A Curious Invitation 2012 г.
Heinemann Advanced Shakespeare: Measure for Measure 2000 г.


Many Australians have chosen sparkling water as an alternative to soda since it offers the pleasant fizziness of soda without empty calories, high sugar content, and chemical additives.
Drinking sparkling water seems like a good idea – it combines our natural need for hydration with no-calories (if unflavoured) and natural water.
However, sparkling water has recently been in the news for having acid levels higher than that of regular water.
And studies have shown that a higher level of acidity in beverages may threaten tooth enamel.
The reason for this is chemical– when carbon dioxide is dissolved in water to create carbonation, it produces carbonic acid, which comes with the risk of eroded tooth enamel.
How Could Sparkling Water Be Harmful?
Carbon dioxide turns into carbonic acid (this is what gives your drink that tingly feeling).
In laboratory studies, this acid can erode tooth enamel.
If your tooth enamel is eroded, teeth become prone to tooth sensitivity and other serious dental problems as the protective layer of your teeth are weakened.
And issues with sparkling water become much more severe if they are flavoured because flavouring usually means extra sugar or citric acid.
The study concluded that sparkling waters were dramatically less erosive than soda, although sparkling water was not compared to plain water.
A study from 2007 came to a different conclusion. Researchers soaked teeth in seltzer-filled containers for half-an-hour to measure the effect of sparkling water on enamel.
In fairness, this is a fairly unrealistic study, as very few drinks remain in a mouth for more than a few minutes, and they do not "soak" the teeth.
So, the data suggests that mineral water is either minimally or slightly erosive even in circumstances that are worst for the teeth.
What all this science adds up to is that sparkling water may present a theoretical risk of tooth erosion, but you'd have to drink an awful lot of it over a very long period to harm your teeth.
These effects are worse if the sparkling water is flavoured or contains sugar, but the damaging effects of sugar are already well known.
Instead of an all-or-nothing approach to sparkling water, use the following strategies to make your sparkling water consumption safe.
Don't drink it constantly. The main threat from carbonated beverages comes from continuous consumption. The best beverage you can drink is plain fluoridated water, as it gives your teeth a break from contact with acid.
Decrease sparkling water contact with teeth. The quicker a drink gets past your teeth, the less contact there is. This decreases erosion time and allows saliva is allowed to neutralise the acid in your mouth. So don't slowly sip – drink quickly, and then move on.
Drink it with a meal or snack. Eating stimulates the flow of acid-neutralising saliva.
Don't swish. Don't hold or swish carbonated water in your mouth.
Rinse with regular water after drinking sparkling water.
Use a straw. A straw keeps fluid away from your teeth.
Chew Xylitol gum. Sugar-free Xylitol gum helps battle acidity in your mouth.
Brush your teeth after 30 minutes. Don't brush just after drinking acidic drinks – they temporarily weaken the teeth. But after 30 or 40 minutes it is a good strategy.
Warner Lakes Dental wants your visit to be the quickest and most convenient dental experience possible. From parking to treatment, we try to make the entire process as simple and painless as possible.
From routine check-ups and cleans to root canals, extractions, and cosmetic procedures, Warner Lakes Dental is your partner in dental health.
We want you to enjoy the Dental Health Week, and beyond, with a stunning smile and healthy mouth, teeth, and gums!
Call (07) 3448 0162 or visit us at Warner Lakes Medical Precinct 1185B Old North Rd in Warner.


Project: Banner ads. Role: Design, production. Challenge: To design small, but powerful advertisements for a hotel that follow a strict set of branding guidelines. Software: Photoshop.
Project: Facebook ad. Role: Design, production, image selection and preparation. Challenge: To design a ad that adheres both to branding for the Mother's Day campaign and corporate branding. Software: Photoshop.
Project: Online banner advertisement. Role: Design and production. Challenge: To create a banner that advertises the store's sweepstakes promotion, while adhering to branding for both the film and store. Software: Photoshop.
Project: Email banner ads. Role: Design and production. Challenge: To drive traffic to the store, while reflecting in-store, online and print branding. Software: Photoshop and Illustrator.
Project: Facebook ad. Role: Design, production, image selection and preparation. Challenge: To design an ad that successfully drives traffic into the restaurant for this event. Software: Photoshop.
Project: Skyscraper banner ads. Role: Design, production. Challenge: To create ads that promote and build interest for special events at the restaurant. Software: Illustrator, Photoshop.
Project: Online newspaper advertisements. Role: Design and production. Challenge: To design a simple online ad that conveys the personality and sophistication of the bistro in a small amount of space. Software: Photoshop.
Project: Animated web advertisement. Role: Concept, design, development and image preparation. Challenge: To drive traffic to the site to find out more and ultimately enter the sweepstakes. Software: Animate, Photoshop.
Project: Web header advertisement. Role: Design and production. Challenge: To design a simple, but eye-catching ad that drives traffic to the web site. Software: Photoshop and Illustrator.
Project: Web advertisement. Role: Concept, design, development and image preparation. Challenge: To create a simple animated ad that drives viewers to the site to make holiday bookings. Software: Flash, Photoshop.


And for the lazy finish to a weekend of eating (last weekend!), a fine Sunday called for a brunch ride up the coast.
Waikanae felt about the right stopping distance, so a return visit to Long Beach was the go.
Long Beach is a peaceful spot at the beach with pleasant outdoor areas (next door to The Front Room), including a mini glass-house growing tomatoes and seedlings.
The brunch options that appealed were the Long Beach toasted muesli with house made mascarpone, and the strawberry brioche french toast (also with house made mascarpone).
Both were delicious, although the mascarpone was the texture of runny cream rather than the expected thicker cheese-like texture.
The coffee was good, and the service welcoming and friendly.
The lunch and dinner menus look good too, so another place worth a side excursion to if passing Waikanae.
With a wee wander up over the dune opposite to check out the sea after, what more could you ask for a cruisy weekend brunch.
40 Tutere Street, Waikanae Beach.


Happy Friday everyone! I am so happy for the weekend!
Did you see my new Travel section? I started off by sharing the first part of my Turks and Caicos vacation last year - I hope you guys don't mind a few different posts sprinkled in with my regular beauty posts!
I finally got my free Benefit brow sample - and I got the new Gimme Brow. I love Gimme Brow so I am happy to try this sample! It is in my shade too which is great!
This month's theme is "Camp Glam"! Boxycharm always includes a product card explaining the products they have received - I like product cards in subscription boxes; it is a lot more convenient than going online right away.
Happy Manicure Tuesday - my son's basketball practice is now on Monday nights so I'm really going to do my nails in advance, or we may be seeing a lot of Manicure Tuesdays on the blog for a bit!
This week I am really excited to try nail stamping! I tried this technique over 10 years ago from a mall kiosk and it did not work for me, but recently I have been seeing some beautiful stamping nail art and new I had to try it again!
I love how cute are these little birdie stamps?!
My skin has not been great lately - I have some new products that I have been waiting to try, but I have to wait until my skin calms down first!
I figured it was time to pull out all the stops and use my absolute FAVORITE skin-repairing mask!
Restore your skin's moisture levels with the Dr.Post Snail Aquaring SOS Mask- an intense hydrating mask especially created for dry skin, featuring the best of oriental medicine. This age-old oriental formula is used to provide much needed hydration and balance.


general information on the Welcome@FU program is available in German as well as English language. For general questions not directly relating to Chemistry courses, please check these pages. Also, you find links for registration there.
chemistry and biochemistry are two related, but independent course programs. If you are interested in biochemistry courses, please click here. The contact person in biochemistry is Dr. Jens-Peter Fürste.
the chemistry bachelor program has opened all lecture courses and the corresponding excercises for refugees. Please note, however that the bachelor program is in German and thus requires German language proficiency.
the chemistry master program instead is a bilingual program and can be done in English language. Again, the lecture courses and excercises are open to refugees. If you wish to participate in a course of the master program, please be advised that the master program is a consecutive one building on our bachelor program. Therefore, you should have studied chemistry before and need to come with an equivalent knowledge.
unfortunately, we are not able to offer practical laboratory courses, as space restrictions apply and because you will not have proper insurance as a guest of the university.
If you are interested in any course of our bachelor or master program, please register on the Welcome@FU page mentioned above. Prof. Christoph Schalley is coordinating our program for refugees and is available to provide advice on what courses you might take. Please contact him by email to make an appointment.


text:
St. Paschal Baylon
From his childhood Saint Paschal seems to have been marked out for the service of God. Amid his daily labors as a shepherd, he found time to instruct and evangelize the rude herdsmen who kept their flocks on the hills of Aragon. At the age of twenty-four he entered the reformed Franciscan Order near the town of Monfort, Spain, where he remained, out of humility, a simple lay brother, occupying himself by preference with the roughest and most servile tasks.
He was distinguished by his ardent devotion and love for the Blessed Sacrament. He would spend hours on his knees before the tabernacle, often being raised from the ground in the fervor of his prayer. And there, from the authentic and eternal Truth, he drew such stores of wisdom that, unlettered as he was, he was considered by all a master in theology and spiritual science.
Shortly after his profession he was sent to Paris on business connected with his Order. The journey was full of perils, owing to the hostility of the Huguenots, who were numerous at the time in the south of France; and on four separate occasions Paschal was in imminent danger of death at their hands. Twice he was taken for a spy; but it was not God's will that His servant should obtain the crown of martyrdom which he so earnestly desired, though he regarded himself as unworthy of it. He returned in safety to his convent, where he would later die in the odor of sanctity in 1592.
Multitudes witnessed the miracles which took place during the three days his body was exposed for veneration. He was canonized in 1690, and in 1897 declared patron of all Eucharistic congresses and confraternities.


This is a small application which downloads and installs Big Fish Games titles. (demo and complete versions). Note that there is a native OSX port of the Big Fish Games Manager client, but it only supports games ported to Mac.
19/11/2015 · I can confirm that the game will not run either by starting it in the Big Fish Manager or by going the Mystery Case Files: Dire Grove directory in Program Files (x86).
On 29th July Windows 10 is launched and my current windows 8.1 PC is already asking me to reserve this free update.. I have seen a couple of people asking if this game will be compatible with the new version of Windows but haven't seen a response.


We describe a simple denotational semantics, using possible worlds, for a call-by-value language with ML-like storage facilities, allowing the storage of values of any type, and the generation of new storage cells. We first present a criticism of traditional Strachey semantics for such a language: that it requires us to specify what happens when we read non-existent cells. We then obtain our model by modifying the Strachey semantics to avoid this problem.
We describe our model in 3 stages: first no storage of functions or recursion (but allowing storage of cells), then we add recursion, and finally we allow storage of functions. We discuss similarities and differences between our model and Moggi's model of ground store. A significant difference is that our model does not use monadic decomposition of the function type.


text:
Assaulting teammate lands Shahadat Hossain in a five-year ban
By Mannan Khan
Bangladesh pacer Shahadat Hossain is finding himself in hot waters as the tall fellow has been banned by the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) for five years, with two years serving as a suspension period. Not only that, the 33-year old cricketer has been handled a fine worth BDT 100,000. This happened as he assualted a teammate during a match of the National Cricket League (NCL).
While featuring in a contest between Dhaka and Khulna, Shahadat physically assaulted spinner Arafat Sunny Jr after an argument over shining the ball. Other players intervened to cool the matter and restrained the paceman. In addition to that, Shahadat was withdrawn from the game. For his ban, the skillful pacer can appeal by November 26.
Being 33, the ban comes at an extremely wrong time for Shahadat as the age is not on his side. Moreover, his dream of getting back to donning the national colors has been hit badly as the discipline issue has left the cricketing board fuming. It remains to be seen how things fare for him in future.
#Bangladesh


Get your web design site off to a flying start with the help of this WordPress theme. It is spiced up with touches of material design, which is the hottest trend of today. Adding more interest and style to the page's look, it keeps harmony with white content sections that bring content to focus. Cherry Framework provides ease of fine-tuning the theme via an intuitive admin panel and embedding content via multiple shortcodes. Its responsive layout will make your projects at everyone's fingertips, from users of smartphones to people surfing the Internet via desktops. This web design WP theme is also WPML-ready, which will help you translate your site interface and, therefore, bring it to the international scale.
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If you purchase the product at a 'Buyout price' it guarantees that you are the last person to buy this template from us. It means that this Creative Design Agency WP theme may have been sold before a couple of times (see 'Downloads' number in item's properties) but only you and people who bought the template before you will own it. After this kind of purchase the template is being permanently removed from our sales directory and is never available to other customers again. The buyout purchase license allows you to develop the unlimited number of projects based on this template, but the template should be customized differently for every project.
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Thank you for your interest in graduate education at the University of Chicago. By submitting this form and telling us a little more about your interests, you will receive information regarding graduate study highlighting different programs, students, and faculty. We look forward to introducing you to the breadth of the UChicago experience.
Thank you for your interest in the Master of Arts Program in Latin American & Caribbean Studies! Please complete the form below to learn more about the MA program and to stay up to date on UChicago graduate admissions information.
Are you interested in SROP/SREU programs?
What are your interests within Latin American & Caribbean studies?
The Latin American & Caribbean Studies MA program is a joint program between the Humanities Division and the Social Sciences Division. Typically, students interested in this program will apply through the Division that best matches their planned theoretical approach to their studies. Which division fits your perspective best?


text:
I would like to receive information on Bloomsbury Popular Music and related Bloomsbury products
Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World
33 1/3 Series
Scholarly Books
About Bloomsbury Popular Music
Encyclopedia Articles (5)
Armenian Duduk Music (1)
Rabiz (1)
Performance Techniques (2)
Social Phenomena (1)
Rabiz
Jonathan Mccollum
Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World Volume X : Genres: Middle East and North Africa
Encyclopedia Articles
...Rabiz is a late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century song genre that is very popular among youth in Armenia and the Armenian diaspora. It embraces a range of styles with a particular emphasis on pop ballad and rap styles, with lyrics...
Armenian Duduk Music
...The Armenian duduk (or tsiranapohk 'apricot tree pipe') is one of the oldest double reed aerophones in the world, dating back to 1000 BC. The duduk is perhaps, organologically speaking, the only 'true' Armenian instrument that has...
Armenian Folk Music
...This article deals with the Soviet impact on Armenian folk music during and after Soviet rule in Armenia. It should be noted that 'folk' music, in this context, was often performed by experts and distributed through commercial recordings...
Andy Nercessian
Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World Volume VI : Locations: Africa and the Middle East
Continuum, 2016
...Population: 2,991,360 (2004) The republic of Armenia is a small landlocked country of 11,000 sq miles (28,200 sq km) in Southwest Asia. It is bordered by Georgia to the north, Turkey to the west, Azerbaijan to the east and Iran...
...Yerevan Population: 1,281,000 (1999) Yerevan is the capital of Armenia. The beauty of the city has long been the subject of the most well-known songs in Armenia and the Armenian diaspora. While Armenia...


Indoor Percussion Europe | We are Indoor Percussion!
Indoor Percussion Europe (IPE) would like to welcome you to an exciting European Percussion Competition of performance and entertainment; a competition where the sole focus is on Indoor Percussion and nothing else.
IPE is a European based non-profit organization that guides the competitive development of the Indoor Percussion activity throughout Europe. Started in 2007, IPE is governed by a board of volunteers whose mission and goal is to promote the growth of the percussive arts through competition, performance and to encourage goodwill, good sportsmanship and camaraderie through such activities.
Whether you're looking for answers, would like to solve a problem, or just want to let us know how we did, please contact us!


An international conference has been told Queensland paramedics have respirators to protect them against bird flu.
Darren Hall headed a pandemic planning project for the Queensland Ambulance Service.
He says masks with a variety of filters were handed out after researchers studied paramedics' attitudes towards the threat of bird flu.
"They've conducted a study into the perceptions of paramedics and paramedics have said quite clearly they wanted effective personal protective equipment, they wanted good notification, they wanted communication and those sorts of things would enable them to come to work and do those sorts of things," he said.
Disturbing news from a study published in The Lancet. Not only does H5N1 attack the lungs, brain and other key organs, it can also infect foetuses.
• Influenza A H5N1 should be considered in patients who are febrile with an URTI and a know history of exposure to sick or dead poultry, wild birds, other ill people, travel to an endemic area, or in someone whose work entails handling samples.
• Isolating all hospitalized patients who are under evaluation for influenza A, following the same precautions as those used for severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS. This includes a room with negative air pressure, and contacts gowning, gloving and using eye shields.
• Viral replication is long, and has been noted to continue up to 15-17 days following onset of symptoms. The virus has been detected in respiratory secretions, saliva, blood and stools.
Researchers from Beijing University studied tissue from a man, a woman, and her fetus to determine how the virus affects different organs in the body. The two adults had died as a result of the bird flu virus.
The researchers were able to detect the H5N1 virus in the lungs, throat, lymph nodes, brain cells, and in the cells of the placenta. In the fetus, both viral genetic material and antigens were found in the lungs, and immune system and liver cells.
A story from the VoA details some of the latest discoveries about why the H5N1 virus is proving so deadly to humans. While the story says H5N1 in humans has a fatality rate of 60%, in Indonesia, Egypt and Vietnam it has proven much higher, reaching 87%.
...little has been known about exactly what H5N1 does to the human body, according to Ian Lipkin, professor of neurology and pathology at the Columbia University in New York.
Lipkin is senior collaborator on a paper by international researchers who studied the bodies of two individuals who had died of the avian flu. He says the avian flu affects primarily the lungs, causing a surprising amount of damage.
But in addition to the lungs, Lipkin says, investigators found H5N1 had spread to the gastrointestinal tract, and the infection was also discovered in the brain and in the reproductive tract.
Lipkin says it appears the severe and widespread damage to the body inflicted by the virus H5N1 may be caused by the body's immune system going into overdrive - a phenomenon that some call a "cytokine storm."
We're going to be writing about microbiologist Professor Kennedy Shortridge in the next week, so we thought as way of an introduction, we'd go back to the Hong Kong outbreak of H5N1, where the reality of a coming human bird flu pandemic first grabbed world headlines and brought Professor Shortridge to international prominence for his fight against the spread of the virus.
The outbreak of avian flu in Hong Kong continues to ring alarm bells and dominate headlines worldwide. The H5N1 influenza A virus has been confirmed in 16 people and is suspected in another four cases. Four people have died, and three remain in a critical condition.
Because these are the world's first reported human cases of a flu strain previously known to infect only birds, fears have been raised that the virus might spark a flu pandemic. There are too many unanswered questions, however, for anyone to be sure. For example, researchers have yet to determine the original source of the virus, the mode of transmission from birds to humans, whether human to human transmission is possible, what the incidence is in Hong Kong, whether fowl or animals apart from chickens are affected, whether anyone in mainland China has been infected with the disease, and the rate at which the virus is mutating.
The outbreak began in early May, when a 3 year old boy died from respiratory failure secondary to viral pneumonia. When scientists at Hong Kong's Department of Health could not identify the strain they sent specimens to centres in Britain, the United States, and the Netherlands. By August all had identified the strain as H5N1, a typically avian virus. The second case was not confirmed until November. According to Professor Kennedy Shortridge, a microbiologist at the University of Hong Kong, the H5N1 strain was first isolated by the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries in Hong Kong after an outbreak in 6800 chickens on three farms between late March and early May last year. "The overall mortality rate exceeded 70%, and on two farms the mortality rate came close to 100%," he said.
Researchers at the University of Hong Kong are working with the World Health Organisation to identify the reservoir of the H5N1 virus in poultry and animals by testing domestic and wild birds, as well as dogs, cats, rats, and any other animals that have close contact with humans, for the presence of the H5N1 virus.
Professor Shortridge said that rigorous follow up is essential, and few animals can be ruled out at this stage: "The virus has cropped up under different circumstances, and so little is known about it. If the virus is shed through faeces, as has been suggested, then in theory there could be a lot of virus in the environment. Humans can be infected–perhaps other animals can be infected as well. At the moment we don't know."
Until now it had been thought that new strains of human flu (variations of H1, H2, or H3) emerge after the virus's genes have been reassorted in pig cells with genes from strains of human or avian flu, or both. Pigs are considered a mixing vessel because they have avian, human, and swine flu receptors. But the H5N1 virus, a purely avian strain, has leapt directly from bird to humans.
According to Ms Reynolds, this is significant because it is a new disease in humans, who have no resistance to the virus. "If it becomes efficient in transmitting from human to human then the entire world is vulnerable, and there is the potential for a pandemic." However, she added: "There is no way to predict whether or not this will happen. The virus could go away, it could mutate and become more potent, or it could mutate and become more benign."
It was in microbiology classes that the germ of an idea began to smoulder.
That germ had its genesis when, as a little boy, my mother told me how, in our country town, in the great influenza pandemic of 1918-19, a man on a horse-and-cart would call from the street for the bodies of those who had died from influenza. Her story was compelling, her concern was compelling.
During this pandemic, some 20 to 40 million died worldwide. The major concern was that a virus with the same potential for human devastation could arise again.
Comprehending death rates of 1/100 to 1/50 almost beggars belief. They need to be viewed against the nutritional deficits and social dislocation of the time.
Her story and such figures had a tremendous impact upon me. While in London in the late 1960s, fortuitous findings on animals, some originally from Hong Kong, led me to suspect a possible connection between animals and influenza pandemics. The seeds were sown – leading me to The University of Hong Kong in 1972 to explore this, with the ideal of getting ahead of the next pandemic.
This led me into the field of influenza ecology. At that time, and for many years, it was regarded by many as an academic curiosity – but it was an interesting exercise worth pursuing nevertheless.
As the years rolled by, there was increasing evidence of interspecies transmission of influenza viruses noted by Hong Kong and other groups. Circumstantial evidence for the role of avian influenza viruses in the origin of human influenza pandemics was increasing.
...the world has many problems in spite of the great advances in science and technology.
We should be moving into a higher order of human development but we are not.
This does not make any sense – it is almost as if human development, rather than going forward, is in some ways, going backwards. Loneliness abounds, we could treat our fellow human beings better, we could treat our wonderful animals better, we should treat this fragile planet better.
Somewhere in this equation, this unsatisfactory situation, the world is being subjected to the added pressures of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases. In the past 50 years or so, infectious, zoonotic viral diseases have left their mark on the world, for example, HIV/AIDS, haemorrhagic fevers such as Ebola, West Nile, influenza H5N1 "bird flu", SARS. Other avian influenza viruses are waiting in the wings.
The world is under serious threat from infectious diseases. It is as if Nature holds all the aces, but really we should be in partnership with Nature.
In the current influenza situation, the potential threat to the global community is great – to humans, to poultry and to bird life. While such a situation apparently did not exist prior to 1997, a global catastrophe extending beyond humans is within the realm of the possible. All the more so, since poultry is now the major meat protein worldwide.
I am increasingly convinced that if we are ever going to deal with zoonotic diseases at source, we will need to have a better relationship with animals – all animals – an intrinsically important step in itself toward improving human development. A sobering thought here is that pandemic influenza is now regarded as a non-eradicable zoonotic disease.
A higher aspiration in human development is that we might look forward to the time when ALL disease is eliminated. This will mean upping the stakes to take in all of Nature. As I have said in one of my publications "Only when we are at peace with Nature, will disease begin to melt away".
Sure, this is a pious hope – I believe bringing infectious diseases to heel is within the realm of the possible and we must start somewhere.
The nanobiotechnology industry is setting it sights on H5N1 as a future market for a new generation of vaccines.
The claims made in this press release are remarkable, and sound pretty well absurd. At least, they're absurd until they've been scientifically, conclusively proven, and that's a long way off.
In short, NanoViricides Inc, according to this press release, claim have come up with something better than human-produced antibodies. That is, they are claiming the antibodies that attack and destroy foreign invaders, like flu viruses, in the human body are close to being superseded by nanotechnology.
Remember, this is a press release, aiming to sell the idea of what they're working, and to prepare the public to accept the idea that what the human body produces to protect itself is not enough when it comes to bird flu, even if it's not true.
For the biotech and nanobiotech industries, the H5N1 virus is the biggest and most profitable potential new market to come along since the HIV virus.
"Just like antibodies, nanoviricides™ have ligands that attach to the virus particle. However, unlike antibodies, nanoviricides complete the task of taking the virus apart. This is clearly visible in our electron microscopy (EM) studies," said Anil R. Diwan, Ph.D., President of the Company.
"Nanoviricides do not suffer from the major problems of antibodies and of vaccines as antiviral strategies," said Dr. Diwan. Antibodies are relatively specific to a particular virus strain or subtype. It is well known that HIV and influenza viruses among many others, quickly escape antibodies. Vaccines depend upon the development of antibodies by the host, and thus, cannot protect efficiently against such changed viruses, as evidenced for influenzas.
FluCide™-I is a broad-spectrum nanoviricide drug candidate based on a well-known ligand to which influenza viruses of all types must bind and cannot escape. Many other viruses and virus families also bind to this ligand and FluCide-I is expected to work against such viruses as well.
FluCide-HP is a broad-spectrum nanoviricide drug candidate based on well known "signature regions" called "polybasic sites" on all HPAI influenzas including H5N1 and H7N3. If the virus mutates in this region to escape FluCide-HP, its pathogenicity will decrease and it will no longer be a dangerous epidemic threat. FluCide-HP has also shown very high efficacy against the unrelated rabies virus, which possesses similar signature regions.
For now, I remain vastly skeptical.
The bird flu virus has returned to China, if it was ever eradicated to begin with.
...tests on tissue samples at a provincial government lab show the presence of the highly pathogenic H5N1 virus.
As of September 14, almost 33,000 ducks had been slaughtered in an attempt to contain the outbreak.
China has reported 25 human cases of bird flu since 2003, 16 of them fatal.
Agriculture Minister Muhyiddin Yassin said surveillance and laboratory tests since June have fulfilled conditions set by the World Organization for Animal Health, or OIE, to declare the country free of the virulent H5N1 bird flu virus.
"The prompt action by the Veterinary Services Department to stamp out the bird flu outbreak according to the protocol had been effective," the national news agency Bernama quoted Muhyiddin as saying. "We had conveyed the matter to the OIE, which gave the green light for Malaysia to be declared free from the disease."
Muhyiddin's aide, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to make public statements, confirmed the comments.
Malaysia on June 5 confirmed its first bird flu outbreak in more than a year after tests on some 60 birds that died in Sungai Buloh, near the country's commercial capital, Kuala Lumpur, showed they had the H5N1 virus.
Several villagers with flu-like symptoms were hospitalized, but they tested negative for bird flu.
Before the last incident, Malaysia had reported an outbreak of the H5N1 strain in March 2006 in chickens in a northern village. The government had previously declared the country free of bird flu in June 2006.
New scientific discoveries keep eating away at the prophecy that "bird flu," avian influenza type H5N1, will become readily transmissible from human to human and unleash a disastrous pandemic.
* Laurie Garrett, former Newsday reporter, now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Paul Ehrlich of pandemics...speaks of H5N1 as a "tidal wave over humanity."
* University of Minnesota School of Public Health professor Michael Osterholm estimated 180-360 million deaths worldwide simply by extrapolating the estimated death toll from the Spanish flu of 1918-19 to today's world population.
* But the winner is Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University, who claimed on ABC News's Primetime, "We could have a billion people dying worldwide."
Those were the kinds of mega-death predictions and fear campaigning that led to governments across the world committing tens of billions of dollars to stock-piling relatively unproven 'antidotes' to bird flu infection, like Tamiflu.
While Fumento claims that "lefty" blogs amplified those dire predictions, and increased The Fear, he fails to mention that it was the massive corporate media entities like CNN, the New York Times and Fox News that really pumped up The Fear.
Fumento also fails to mention that few have personally profited more from global Tamiflu sales than former US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, who pocketed more than $5 million in cash from selling the stock he had snapped up in an American research company a few years before 'Bird Flu Pandemic Will Kill Millions And Millions' headlines started filling newspapers in 2004 and 2005. President Bush was also a key player in promoting the 'reality' of a coming bird flu pandemic in the last quarter of 2005.
...Evidence continually mounts that while there may well be another flu pandemic of some sort, there's virtually no chance it will be H5N1. Recently reported research from David Finkelstein and his colleagues at St. Jude Hartwell Center in Memphis, Tennessee, is just the latest nail in the chicken coop.
The researchers analyzed almost 10,000 avian H5N1 sequences and almost 14,000 human sequences, including those of seven dead Indonesians who apparently caught the virus from another human. They looked for specific amino acids either more likely to appear in human flu virus proteins or in avian virus proteins. Reporting their results in the journal Virology, they found no sequence that even approached the mutations in the flu viruses that caused the three pandemics of the 20th century, including Spanish Flu.
In all, they identified 32 clear-cut changes in influenza viruses that differentiated a human H5N1 strain from that in birds, yet none of the viral samples from humans had more than two of those changes. "We think they need to get to 13 [mutations] to be truly dangerous," Finkelstein told Reuters. He characterized his finding as "reassuring."
The viral strain's discovery in poultry dates back not to 1997, as we're constantly told, but rather to 1959, when it was identified in Scottish chickens.
....humans have been exposed to this thing for half a century with no evidence it's become the least bit more contagious to them. Small increases in the counted numbers of human cases over the last four years are probably nothing more than an artifact of better reporting. Better disease reporting, by the way, is generally regarded as good news.
One of the reasons why we started this blog two years ago was to report on the science and research that disputes the claims of a "not if but when" global bird flu pandemic. It took the Fumento piece to remind us just how few of those stories and reports there has actually been in the media over the past 24 months (outside of subscription only medical publications).
It is a strange depiction of the mainstream media then to highlight the fact that news stories reporting that a bird flu pandemic may be wholly unlikely are actually quite hard to find, online at least.
Whereas, reports from any scientist who wants to ramp up the projected death toll from a bird flu pandemic (any takers for more than one billion?) gets onto the wire services and into hundreds of newspapers around the world within hours.
Maybe the old newspaper catch-cry of "If It Bleeds, It Leads" should now be "If It Sneezes, It Leads".
About 500 chickens in the south Russia's Krasnodar Territory have died of bird flu, a local official said Tuesday.
The outbreak was detected at a poultry farm in the town of Razdolny Sunday. A spokesman for the territorial veterinary service said a regional laboratory has identified the lethal H5N1 virus in the dead birds, and that measures are being taken to contain the spread.
"The decision has been made to destroy 22,000 birds at a farm where chickens died over the weekend," he said. He did not say how many birds were on the farm in total. Tests are ongoing, and may take up to seven days to produce conclusive results. A local prosecutor said criminal charges might be pressed against the farm's managers.
The Russian Ministry for Emergency Situations warned last month of a danger of bird flu outbreaks in the Chelyabinsk Region, in the south Urals.
Indonesia's Health Minister Siti Fadillah Supari said the research findings had "misled the public".
"It's pure logic... If there had been human-to-human transmission, it would have already swept the country and killed thousands," Supari told a news conference.
"Our scientists have already determined that the 2006 outbreak on North Sumatra was not a case of human-to-human transmission."
Bird flu is endemic in bird populations in most parts of Indonesia, where millions of backyard chickens live in close proximity to people.
While it is largely an animal disease, experts fear the virus could mutate and spread from human to human, turning into pandemic that could kill millions.
Contact with sick fowl is the most common way for humans to contract the disease.
Supari said tests done in WHO laboratories in Atlanta on virus samples from Bali showed the virus had jumped from animal to humans.
"There is nothing to worry about, so far Atlanta has not issued any alarm," she said after the news conference.
The US study's claims should be questioned, examined and debated, but I'm not too sure if Supari's "pure logic" argument is altogether correct.
While contact with infected poultry would appear to be the most likely way for a human to become infected by H5N1, there have been other instances where bird to human, and then human to human spread is the most likely scenario for how others have become infected.
In the case of the North Sumatra outbreak, in April, 2006, some 80% of family members who showed symptoms of infection are believed to have died from the virus, and only one member of the family traveled outside of the fairly isolated village where the deaths occurred.
Also, Indonesian and WHO medical specialists were on the ground within days of the scale of the outbreak becoming known, and most of the villagers were put onto anti-virals, and quarantined.
The North Sumatran H5N1 deaths may well have been the result of human to human spread of the virus, but as the local population was small, isolated and fairly quickly locked down, there would appear to be little opportunity for the virus to continue to spread and infect, and kill.
Clearly, Supari would be right if the bird flu virus had mutated into a far more easily communicable and deadlier strain. But from the WHO statements I recall reading at the time, they reported no significant mutation in the virus samples they collected from the dead and samples from those who became infected but survived.
So what happens to a city when an extremely deadly bird flu pandemic hits Sydney, Australia?
This is a subject I'm now exploring in an online serialized novel called 'ED Day'.
The story is told in the form of a near daily journal by one of a few hundred survivorsl, and details how these survivors find themselves 'trapped' in the centre of Sydney, after the pandemic wipes out millions of people.
It's a massive exaggeration of even the very worst case scenarios for death tolls from a bird flu pandemic, but it's fiction, and to tell the story I want to tell I needed to wipe out most of Sydney's human population. Unfortunately.
I started writing this novel in late 2006 and posted a few chapters onto a forum at MySpace, inviting readers to criticize and discuss what they were reading. The reaction was mostly positive, but as a writer I found the experience unique and remarkable.
Work got in the way of doing more with the novel, but I've decided to impose a running deadline on getting the novel written by publishing three or four chapters a week, basically as they're written, first draft, no rewrites. There's no full outline of the novel, and I have at best a vague idea of where I want this story to go. But it's already taking on a life of its own.
On Tuesday, the novel will go into the history of how the bird flu virus began to spread human to human, how it reached Sydney, and what happened during the three 'waves' of the pandemic.
I hope all my regular readers here will come and have a look at the novel and follow it as its published online.
I would also hope that you feel free to comment on what you read, and don't hold back pointing out factual errors about H5N1 or discussing the way the pandemic unfolds in the novel.
Obviously, as the novel is fiction, not everything will be based on known scientific fact, but I'm planning to explore how World Health Organisation and UN guidelines for dealing with a pandemic outbreak play out for the people of Sydney.
Regular postings of news to the Bird Flu Blog will continue at their usual rate of frequent to infrequent.
Bird Flu Pandemic : How Close Did We Come?
Another story covering the US research that claims human to human transmission of the bird flu virus did occur in Indonesia in 2006, when eight members of the same family caught the virus, killing seven.
Researchers from the University of Washington have studied the case of a woman on the Indonesian island of Sumatra who caught the H5N1 bird flu virus from poultry in May last year.
Professor Ira Longini, who led the research, says they have confirmed that not only did she pass the virus on to her 10-year-old nephew, it was then transmitted to other relatives.
Seven of eight family members who caught the disease were soon dead.
"This proves there is person-to-person transmission in this case, in that setting, in Indonesia, northern Sumatra," he said.
Professor Longini says this shows there is a serious threat of a bird flu pandemic.
"It could happen and will happen eventually, and this simply confirms this particular H5N1 virus is capable of person-to-person transmission," he said.
"The other thing it says is that we need to be very vigilant to find these clusters, to assess whether there's transmission and to stop transmission as quickly as we can each time they arise.
"We're going to see strains of influenza that are capable of causing pandemics arising, probably avian strains, and that will happen for sure, there's no doubt about it."
Professor Longini says in this case, a pandemic may have been averted because of the quick action of health authorities or, statistically at least, it could have been luck.
He said because the sample group was so small, it was impossible to say how fast the disease could have spread in the workplace or the street.
But he says that in the home, it was a fast mover.
"It had about a one-third chance of transmitting from person to person due to close contact in that household setting," he said.
Other scientists say the research confirms their suspicions about the disease.
Dr Alan Hampson is a member of the World Health Organisation's (WHO) Pandemic Taskforce and an adviser to the Australian Government on influenza.
"This study has looked at the dynamics of the spread of the virus in the family environment in Sumatra and has come down with the conclusion that it clearly does show person-to-person transmission," he said.
"We had already believed that that was probably the case and we haven't had confirmation through analysis of the viruses.
"The information relating to those viruses is information that's held in Indonesia, so we haven't seen that, but what we do believe, from people who have seen the information, is that that too indicated that it was person-to-person spread and that the virus was changing as it spread from one person to another, as we would expect it to do."
Dr Hampson says the Sumatra case could have become a pandemic.
Up to 650,000 people could die in England and Wales if there were a flu pandemic, according to a Home Office document that outlines plans for dealing with an outbreak, including measures for mass burials and refrigerated storage of bodies.
Ways of dealing with mass casualties are likely to be overwhelmed at the height of a pandemic, with up to 22% extra deaths at its height, the report warns.
The officials say that even under prudent projections there could be 320,000 deaths.
"Cemetery managers are likely to want to move to provision of common graves, which would allow interments to be undertaken more quickly." Coffin makers might have to limit the types and sizes of coffins to meet the demand.
The scale of the death toll from a flu pandemic never fails to stun.
In Bali, you don't talk about bird flu. And if you do talk about it, you say it's no big deal, poses no threat and nobody should be too worried about it.
Outbreaks of bird flu, particularly human deaths (of which there has been two, possibly three, in August) related to H5N1 infection, have a nasty habit of impacting on the tourist trade. And tourism is the lifeblood of Bali today.
As the Jakarta Post points out, in this revelatory article, "it is very rare to hear someone talk frankly about the threat of bird flu on the island".
In his research he came across the daunting discovery that the virus in Bali had crossed over to mammals, such as pigs, dogs and cats.
He became somewhat unpopular on the island, which at the time had just begun to recover from the aftermath of the terrorist bombings of 2002 and 2005.
Bali's government officials and politicians not only dismissed Mahardika's findings, but also criticized the validity of his research.
Despite his skeptics' doubts, and claims that his lab did not comply with bio-security standards, Mahardika was confident with his findings.
Some six months after issuing his warning, a bird flu outbreak in poultry spread across the island -- from Bali's southern Jembrana regency, to west Klungkung regency and the capital city, Denpasar.
Bali's first human victim of the bird flu virus died on Aug. 12, with a second death on Aug. 21, increasing the nation's death toll to 83 out of 105 cases -- the highest fatality rate from H5N1 in humans in the world.
"There was political apathy," he said. "This is the social cost of our ignorance".
He said as a Balinese-Hindu, he believes there is "Atma" (an essential divinity) within all humans. "In my study of molecular biology, I have often asked myself if god put Atma in DNA."
He became aware of the avian influenza virus in 2003 -- when the virus was first detected in Bali and had taken Indonesia's first H5N1 victim in Tangerang, Banten.
"I started to follow the development of the virus and had the chance to do extensive research in 2005," he said.
The island of Bali -- an area of only 5,000 square kilometers and inhabited by 3.2 million humans, who live alongside approximately 12 million fowl and 900,000 pigs -- is a potential breeding ground for the virus.
"It might seem an exhausted thing to say, but public participation is the only way we can fight this virus," he said.
With NGO experience under his belt, Mahardika set up a model program for bird flu awareness.
"My students and I held an educational campaign in Sedang village, in Denpasar. For a period of three months, we conducted campaigns aimed at educating elementary school children and villagers on the bird flu virus. It worked. When there was a bird flu outbreak in the village, they managed to contain it to only nine households," he said.
"There should be an ongoing campaign to combat this virus. Poultry should not be allowed to roam freely in neighborhood areas anymore. All chickens should be fenced in and separated from pigs. The public markets (where they are sold) should be reorganized ... live fowl should no longer be sold there."
Mahardika said the possibility of a pandemic was no longer a question of if, but when.
"Now is the only time humans have the chance to prevent a pandemic," he said.
"We didn't have a chance with AIDS because it spread quietly and unseen, but bird flu is different -- we have the chance to contain it.
"It is in our hands -- we can either do something about it or remain in denial."


Learn about DNA and DNA technology.
People living in Australia generally speak English but add to it a wonderful accent and distinct vernacular. Indigenous languages, of which there are close to seventy, are still spoken but quickly disappearing. If preserving indigenous languages is of interest to you, a study broad in Australia program might be a wonderful opportunity to help save native languages.
The currency in Australia is the dollar but not the green one. Be sure to trade your green dollars for colorful Australian ones once you've arrived. Australia makes most of its money through an open-market economy that operates much like that in the United States. Its economy is broad and diverse but distinguishes itself by utilizing an abundance of natural resources and being one of the world's largest exporters of wine. If you've ever had an interest in tending to vineyards, turning grapes into wine, bottling products or selling an in-demand product, Australia might be the perfect place for you. Be sure to contact the Australian consulate or embassy prior to your visit if you want to live, study, and work in Australia; you'll need to secure a passport, study visa and work visa.
If studying history, promoting peace and serving justice are elements of interest to you in your studies; a study abroad in Australia program might be the perfect fit for you. The country's political and social dynamics will add to the intrigue of your visit, and if you aren't fluent in a foreign language, this could be a great study abroad destination for you to explore.
Studying abroad in Australia doesn't require you to learn a new language, but there are still many new phrases and meanings for you to discover during your adventure.
Australia boasts natural wonders like the Great Barrier Reef. Study abroad in Australia and you could become a certified scuba diver and explore the amazing beauty the Reef has to offer.
Performance arts in Australia are a beloved tradition and well funded by the federal government. Enrich your appreciation for the arts and attend any one of the several operas offered throughout each region.
Australia is abundant in cultural dynamics derived from Aboriginal, Dutch and English influences. Studying the conjoining of these cultures will surely be an interesting and eye-opening experience.
Australian society is generally laid-back, friendly and full of opportunities for new adventures, unexpected friendships and inspiring activities.
Study abroad in Australia programs introduce you to the fabulous life of an Aussie. Australia is home to the world-famous outback (which means Australia consists mostly of deserts) but has one of the world's most diverse eco-systems. Tropical rainforests, deserts and alpine regions provide homes to spectacular animals like koalas, kangaroos, wombats, platypuses and kookaburras while plains and lowlands provide homes to grove after grove of delightfully smelling eucalyptus trees. The climate in Australia is suitable for taking a traditional Australian walk-about or participating in traditional sports like surfing, boating, diving, cricket, field hockey, rugby and netball.
Famous destinations like the Sydney Opera House, the National Gallery of Victoria and the Darwin Festival of the Northern Territory join a collection of others to display the arts, histories and music of the regions. Natural beauties like the Great Barrier Reef, Mount Augustus and Kakadu National Park conspire to make one lose track of time; while cultural activities, like government-supported performance arts, aboriginal dances and singing and paintings on rocks, barks and caves, conjoin to bring Australia's history to life. When you study abroad in Australia you'll be witness to a plethora of cultural offerings.
You'll also be eating wonderful food during your time as a study abroad student. Traditional Australian cuisine is inspired by its British and Aboriginal roots. Local vegetables, meats and grains combine with the seasonings and sauces of England to create well-loved Australian fare. Traditional roasts and wines are summoned to celebrate Sundays and meat pies, Billy tea and smoked meltwurst give visitors a taste of various regions. If eating emu eggs, mincing your meat, and smothering your toast with vegemite and chutney sound like intriguing options, then consider studying abroad in Australia. Your taste buds will thank you!
Australia's roots are steeped in a reverence for the land and a belief in the dreamtime. These indigenous cultural beliefs blended with the influences of western Anglo-Celtic culture create an environment unique to Australia. The eventual gold rush and ensuing Eureka Rebellion led to the transformation of governance in Australia and eventually enabled each of its Aboriginal, Dutch and English populations to live in relative peace. Causing enduring peace between the indigenous and immigrant cultures of Australia is an ongoing challenge but serves to enrich the bold and dynamic culture of the region.
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