Tag Archives: News

Krauthammer on Chavez

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“I hate to be ungracious, but I will be. He was a thug.”

‘Driving’ a new pair of arms: Neurology, recovery and rehabilitation

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‘Driving’ a new pair of arms: Neurology, recovery and rehabilitation.

Brendan Mar­rocco, an Iraq War vet­eran who lost all four limbs in a road­side bomb attack, was recently released from a Bal­ti­more hos­pital after receiving a double-​​arm trans­plant. Northeastern University news office asked Christo­pher Hasson, a sen­so­ri­motor con­trol expert and a newly appointed assis­tant pro­fessor in the Depart­ment of Phys­ical Therapy, to explain the brain’s role in the long recovery and reha­bil­i­ta­tion process.

Marrocco received the double-arm transplant six weeks ago and has already reported movement in the elbow of his left arm. What is the brain’s role in learning how to control a novel object, which in this case is a new pair of arms? A human arm is mar­velously complex—and presents a for­mi­dable con­trol problem for the brain. The scale of this problem is best illus­trated by com­par­ison with dri­ving a car. With an auto­matic trans­mis­sion you have three things to con­trol: The steering wheel turns the car left or right, the gas pedal speeds up the car, and the brake slows it down. Healthy adults learn the basics of dri­ving rel­a­tively quickly, but fine-​​tuning takes much longer and can only be achieved through many hours of prac­tice. During this fine-​​tuning process the brain refines its knowl­edge of how the car responds to con­trol actions. In Marrocco’s case, he must learn to “drive” his new arms; how­ever, the con­trol problem explodes in com­plexity. For each arm he must learn to con­trol motions at three joints with 12 mus­cles; if you include the hand that adds at least 14 more joints and more than 20 more mus­cles. Imagine trying to learn to drive a car with more than 30 dif­ferent con­trols! For­tu­nately, Mar­rocco has a head start, as he has had prior expe­ri­ence con­trol­ling arms. This may explain why he learned to per­form basic move­ments rel­a­tively quickly. How­ever, fine-​​tuning his con­trol will take much longer. You are the principal investigator of Northeastern’s Neuromotor Systems Laboratory, in which you study how movement control in older adults is affected by age-related changes in the neuromuscular system. How will Marrocco’s relative youth—he is only 26 years old—contribute to the recovery and rehabilitation process? Although it’s nat­ural to think that a rel­a­tively young adult such as Mar­rocco would have a clear advan­tage over someone who is older, age may not be a crit­ical factor in terms of the motor learning aspects of recovery. It was once widely thought that after you reach adult­hood the struc­ture of your brain sta­bi­lizes and becomes fixed, and there­fore older adults would have dif­fi­culty learning new skills as their brains are more resis­tant to change.

Read more at: http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-02-pair-arms-neurology-recovery.html#jCp

Read more at: http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-02-pair-arms-neurology-recovery.html#jCp

Adoration for Reparation for Sexual Abuses by Priests – Vatican

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John Thavis posted in Catholic News Service:

The Vatican is hosting two hours of  Eucharistic Adoration “in reparation for abuses committed by priests and for the healing of this wound within the church.”The service in St. Peter’s Basilica this Saturday will feature an hour of silent adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, an hour of prayer and meditation, and a solemn blessing at the end.

The unusual initiative was organized by Catholic university students in Rome. Sources said the event was originally planned for the small Church of St. Anne inside Vatican City, but that it was moved to St. Peter’s at the suggestion of Cardinal Angelo Comastri, who is archpriest of the basilica.

Today is a Great and Glorious Day

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Today is a great and glorious day, a day in which to love with all praise and thanksgiving our Lord and His Most precious Mother. Today two holy events meet, the Ascension of the resurrected Jesus and the first of the apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima on May 13th in Portugal.

From Pope Benedict XVI’s address  in Portugal:

In truth, the times in which we live demand a new missionary vigour on the part of Christians, who are called to form a mature laity, identified with the Church and sensitive to the complex transformations taking place in our world. Authentic witnesses to Jesus Christ are needed, above all in those human situations where the silence of the faith is most widely and deeply felt: among politicians, intellectuals, communications professionals who profess and who promote a monocultural ideal, with disdain for the religious and contemplative dimension of life. In such circles are found some believers who are ashamed of their beliefs and who even give a helping hand to this type of secularism, which builds barriers before Christian inspiration. And yet, dear brothers, may all those who defend the faith in these situations, with courage, with a vigorous Catholic outlook and in fidelity to the magisterium, continue to receive your help and your insightful encouragement in order to live out, as faithful lay men and women, their Christian freedom.

Nuclear Dreaming

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Charles Krauthammer summarizes the dangers lost on a naive President Obama in “Obama’s Nuclear Posturing, Part Deux”.

Danger:

  • Iran “is frantically enriching uranium to make a bomb, and which our own State Department identifies as the greatest exporter of terrorism in the world.”
  • ” Syria has just been discovered transferring lethal Scud missiles to Hezbollah, the Middle East’s most powerful non-state terrorist force. This is the same Syria that was secretly building a North Korean-designed nuclear reactor until the Israeli air force destroyed the facility three years ago.”
  • Pakistan “is adding to the world’s stockpile of fissile material every day.”
  • Pakistan’s “own secret service, the ISI, is of dubious loyalty, some of its elements being sympathetic to the Taliban and thus, by extension, to al-Qaeda.”
  • A “softening of the U.S. nuclear deterrent posture (sparing non-proliferation compliant states from U.S. nuclear retaliation if they launch a biochemical attack against us)
  • “Iran is about a year away from acquiring the fissile material to make a nuclear bomb. Then, only a very few years until weaponization.”

Jimmy Akin: Evil Monster Update

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Jimmy Akin follows up:

I’d like to thank The Anchoress and Andrew Sullivan for linking my previous piece on Cardinal Ratzinger and the Murphy case, and for the kind things they said about it.

There is more to say about the story. Quite a bit, actually. In particular, I’ll be responding to Sullivan, and I’ll be able to report on the German story, but first there are some additional facts to get on the table regarding the Wisconsin one.

Let’s start with a piece by Fr. Thomas Brundage (pictured), who writes:

I was the Judicial Vicar for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee from 1995-2003. During those years, I presided over four canonical criminal cases, one of which involved Father Lawrence Murphy. Two of the four men died during the process.

Interesting that Brundage says two of the four men died during the process. Contrary to what you would think from press reports, Murphy appears to be one of the two, given what shortly will become clear.

In any event, a 50% death rate seems to indicate aggressive prosecution of men even when they are quite old or in ill health. So already a picture is forming of Brundage as presiding over a vigorous court.

He has not been pleased with the New York Times’ (and other outlets’) reportage on the Murphy case:

As I have found that the reporting on this issue has been inaccurate and poor in terms of the facts, I am also writing from a sense of duty to the truth.

The fact that I presided over this trial and have never once been contacted by any news organization for comment speaks for itself.

Yeowch!

In 1996, I was introduced to the story of Father Murphy, formerly the principal of St. John’s School for the Deaf in Milwaukee. It had been common knowledge for decades that during Father Murphy’s tenure at the school (1950-1974) there had been a scandal at St. John’s involving him and some deaf children. The details, however, were sketchy at best.

Courageous advocacy on behalf of the victims (and often their wives), led the Archdiocese of Milwaukee to revisit the matter in 1996.

“Courageous advocacy” suggests that there was a struggle requiring courage to get the Archdiocese of Milwaukee to act, presumably this involved the argument that Fr. Murphy’s crimes were committed long ago and that he was no longer in the diocese. Nevertheless . . . Continue reading →