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The truth behind the restaurant industry [quiz]

Most of us enjoy the occasional meal out with friends and loved ones, but what many of us don’t think about when we eat out is the well-being of a restaurant’s employees. While the common image of a “restaurant employee” is the server, there are others in the restaurant industry who also face the hardships of working in the restaurant industry: discrimination, low wages, and lack of benefits. All these contribute to a dark side of the restaurant industry, and some restaurants are fighting to change the status quo. Do you know the truth behind the restaurant industry?

Headline Image Credit: Public domain via Pixabay.

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Cornetist memories: A Q&A with Hannah McGuffie

Our instrument of the month for February is the popular and melodic cornet. We sat down with Hannah McGuffie, Senior Marketing Manager for History and Science and lifelong cornetist, to talk about the joys and challenges of the instrument.

When did you first start learning to play the cornet?

I was 7 or 8 – you can start playing a cornet when you get your adult front teeth!

What first made you choose the cornet?

My older brother played a cornet, and where I grew up brass banding is very popular, so a lot of my friends played brass instruments too. The local schools also had a very good music service so I had lessons in primary and secondary school.

Do you play in any ensembles, bands, or orchestras?

Yes, I play in a brass band in Kidlington. We play concerts throughout the year and compete against other bands in the local area. We rehearse twice a week.

What has been your most memorable concert and why?

There are a lot to choose from, but I think the most memorable has to be my wedding. My band travelled all the way up to Saddleworth to play at the ceremony and then at the reception afterwards. Someone just ‘happened’ to have a spare cornet and so I was forced to join in with a few numbers in all my finery. I think all the guests enjoyed it though (and I did too).

Cornet by Janet Ramsden, CC BY 2.0 via Flickr

How do you prepare for a performance or concert?

We often have a lot of extra rehearsals and also separate rehearsals by section as opposed to full band rehearsals, so it can be quite intense. A good warm up beforehand is advisable, as you can be performing for over two hours with very little break in between pieces.

What are your fondest musical memories?

I have a lot of fond memories of the Whit Friday contests back home, people cheering you down the street and seeing famous bands playing for free.

What is your favourite piece to perform?

I really enjoy overtures and classical pieces, as I find them more relaxing than hardcore brass band marches. It’s also fun to play more modern things too though, to lighten the mood, especially at concerts – we have a Tom Jones medley that goes down rather well.

Do you get nervous before a performance?

Sometimes – it depends if I have a tricky couple of bars to play, or if I am playing a solo. I get quite nervous playing the Last Post on Remembrance day as there’s nowhere to hide on that one.

What is the most challenging thing about playing the cornet?

You have to practise a lot to keep your standard of playing up, which as you get older (I find) is a lot harder when there are lots of other pressures on your time.

What advice would you give to someone starting to learn the cornet?

It’s a very versatile instrument, and if you decide you prefer swing/ big band music, you can always switch to a trumpet. Reading music generally is a great skill to have, and it is a good instrument to learn on.

Featured image credit: Cornet by r.g-s, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Flickr.

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How English became English – and not Latin

English grammar has been closely bound up with that of Latin since the 16th century, when English first began to be taught in schools. Given that grammatical instruction prior to this had focused on Latin, it’s not surprising that teachers based their grammars of English on that of Latin. The title of John Hewes’ work of 1624 neatly encapsulates its desire to make English grammar conform to that of Latin: A Perfect Survey of The English Tongve, Taken According to the Vse and Analogie of the Latine. Since English is not derived from Latin, and has a very different grammatical structure, this is not a helpful model.

Despite this, eighteenth century grammarians persisted in imposing the Latinate structure on English, as shown in this treatment of the English noun declension by Wells Egelsham in A Short Sketch of English Grammar (1780):

Image provided by author.

Where Latin nouns have different endings for these various cases, English makes no distinction between the nominative, accusative, dative, vocative, and ablative cases. To describe English in this way is to introduce a whole set of unnecessary and unhelpful categories. Not all grammarians of this period were in thrall to the model of Latin; American lexicographer Noah Webster (1758-1843) dismissed the contention that the only way of truly grasping English grammar was by first learning Latin grammar as “a stupid opinion”.

Despite Webster, the Latinate model survived into the twentieth century in the English classroom. H. W. Fowler, whose Modern English Usage (1926) was the most influential guide of the 20th century, read Classics at Oxford and spent some time as a Classics teacher before turning to lexicography. His linguistic prescriptions are soaked through with edicts derived from Latin grammar. The Latin use of the nominative case following the verb to be prompts Fowler to condemn English constructions such as it is me; according to Fowler, this ‘false grammar’ should properly be it is I. Fowler’s prescription continues to find loyal adherents today (if you are one – try saying it out loud); ironically, it is probably to blame for the widespread overcompensation (or ‘hypercorrection’) which leads to the preference for incorrect I in phrases such as ‘between you and me’.

Gwynne’s Grammar (2013) continues this tradition; it is shot through with references to Latin grammar and draws extensively on its terminology. In an article published in The Telegraph on 16 January 2016, Gwynne advocated a series of reforms to our education system, including having English grammar taught by Latin teachers – it seems not to matter whether they have any training in English grammar – “against the background of Latin grammar”.

‘Latin Letters’ photo, by Tfioreze. CC-BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

This focus on Latin also helps to explain why usage pundits are so concerned with preserving what they deem to be the correct (by which they mean the etymological) meanings of words derived from Latin and Greek, insisting that decimate means reduce by a tenth (from Latin decimus ‘tenth’), a dilemma must be a choice between two propositions (from Greek di ‘twice’ + lemma ‘premise’), unique must mean one of a kind (from Latin unus ‘one’). But since these words have been used in English for centuries, there is no reason why we should insist on preserving their etymological meanings. How often do you find yourself needing to describe the destruction of something by exactly a tenth, or choosing between precisely two alternatives? More usually, these words are employed to refer to mass destruction or a difficult problem, and have been since they were first borrowed into English in the 17th century.

In his Proposals for Perfecting the English Language (1742), Thomas Cooke lamented that English cannot hope to imitate the excellence of Latin with its gerunds – nouns formed from verbs. Knowing how to identify gerunds continues to function as the hallmark of a sound grammatical education today, despite the fact that they have little significance for English grammar. A grammar test published in The Telegraph newspaper in April 2013 asked its readers to determine which of the following is correct: “Are you happy with my/me teaching you English grammar?” The correct answer was given as my, on the grounds that teaching is a gerund and therefore requires a possessive pronoun. But, in a well-concealed footnote, the author subsequently conceded that the alternative is also correct, since teaching could just as easily be considered a present participle. Since both are permissible, one might be forgiven for wondering what the point of the question was in the first place.

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Shebang, by Jingo!

The lines above look (and sound) like identical oaths, but that happens only because of the ambiguity inherent in the preposition by. No one swears by my name, while Mr. Jingo has not written or published anything.

Nowadays, jingoism “extreme and aggressive patriotism” and jingoist do not seem to be used too often, though most English speakers still understand them, but in Victorian England, in the late nineteen-seventies and some time later, the words were on everybody’s lips. After the siege of Plevna and the town’s surrender—the bloodiest battle of the Russo-Turkish war—in 1878 (see one of the pictures below), in every pub people sang the song that reached the streets from music halls: “We don’t want to fight, but, by Jingo, if we do, / We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men, we’ve got the money too.” It is for that reason that the origin of Jingo and by Jingo suddenly aroused universal curiosity. However, by jingo predates 1878 by centuries. As early as 1861, a correspondent to Notes and Queries asked: “Who is apostophised by this very common [!] exclamation?” In 1880, a man remembered that sixty or so years before the small boys sang a country song about a dog called Bingo. The end of it was: “Now is not this a sweet little song? / I swear it is, by Jingo! / J with an I, / I with an N, / N with G, / G with an O, / I swear it is, by Jingo!” This song has once been referred to in an attempt to explain the origin of the game (lotto) bingo.

The Apotheosis of War

The exclamation by jingo was known to Harris Barham. He made use of it in The Ingoldsby Legends, which were published serially in 1837 and ended up in thousands of homes in the book editions of 1840 and 1842. Today even English professors rarely open those versified tales, but they are delightful reading, due to the author’s humor, skillful rhyming, and an occasional sprinkling of slang. One of the legends deals with St. Gangulphus, rendered in English as Gengulphus or Gengolphus. The story tells of a priest who traveled to the Holy Land and returned, greeted with suspiciously exaggerated tenderness by his wife. In the evening, she and the priest’s “clerk” see to it that Gengulphus eats and drinks too much. When he falls asleep, they strangle him, and the villainous clerk wounds him in the thigh. The wound turns out to be deadly. Gengulphus is buried, but, when people open “the casement,” the body appears whole and he “looks as sound as a trout.” The tale ends with a description of many miracles attributed to the murdered man and the advice to travelers not to stay away from their wives for too long. In a footnote, Barnham explained that Gengulphus’s name had given rise to the exclamation by Jingo. This etymology was obviously offered tongue in cheek.

Well-read antiquarians discovered the exclamation in the works of Jonathan Swift and Oliver Goldsmith. (The funniest quotation is from Thomas Hood: “Never go to France, / Unless you know the lingo; / If you do, like me, / You will repent, by Jingo!”) Many representative examples appeared in Murray’s OED, which traced the phrase to the end of the last quarter of the sixteenth century. This date could be pushed back to 1661; in the passage quoted by F. Adams (Notes and Queries, 9/I, 1896, p. 350) “Hey, Boys—Gingo…” occurs. Why at that time people began to swear by an obscure person named Jingo or Gingo remains unknown. The same can be said about the origin of the word, but, as we will see below, the case is not quite hopeless.

St. Gangulphus, the apocryphal eponymous ancestor of all jingoists.

Among those who tried to guess the origin of the exclamation by Jingo we find such important individuals as A. L. Mayhew (who kept an unusually low profile in the discussion), the self-confident Walter W. Skeat, the unforgiving and almost ruthless Frank Chance (one of the extremely few scholars who was able to take down Skeat a peg or two), the widely read but unreliable E. Cobham Brewer, and the unwavering but courteous Colonel W. F. Prideaux. (I decided to make use of qualifying epithets, because I have lived with those people for decades, recognize their style, and sometimes even know their addresses. Most of them are now forgotten, so that their names mean nothing to the modern reader. Yet it is always useful to imagine the face behind a name.)

All kinds of conjectures on the origin of Jingo have been proposed. Gengulphus’s name is uppermost among them. For a long time Skeat firmly believed in this derivation. But Frank Chance demolished it (apparently, once and for all): not only is it hard to trace Jingo to Gengulphus phonetically; the saint is virtually unknown in France, so that his popularity in England would nearly impossible to explain. Chance mentioned St. Gingue, a likelier source of Jingo, but did not develop this idea.

Here I would like to mention Robert Burns’s phrase by jing in Halloween, in the scene of burning nuts (“While Willie lap, and swore by jing, / ’Twas just the way he wanted” (lap “leapt, leaped”). In the poem, jing rhymes with fling, and some people thought that Burns meant by jingo but dropped o for the sake of rhyme. However, Burns’s rhyme is invariably precise, and editions do not add an apostrophe to jing (they just gloss by jing as “a petty oath”). A man from Edinburgh wrote in 1880:

“Not being an etymologist, I can give no derivation for this word jing, but think it may be the same as is found in that other common expression in Scotland, jing-bang: ‘A horse went off jing-bang’, or ‘the whole thing came down jing-bang’, meaning with precipitancy and noise. Scotch boys may have therefore adopted by jing as ‘an oath of meikle might’ simply from the idea of noise and force which the other phrase suggests.”

I have the uneasy feeling that that’s all there is to it. The whole jingbang (that is, the whole kit and caboodle) is a relatively well-known slang phrase. Perhaps the obscure shebang, today also known mainly from the phrase the whole shebang, is “ultimately,” as etymologists like to say, a variant of the whole jingbang, not improbably, under the influence of Irish shebeen “an illicit bar” (or was it simply a blend of shebeen and jingbang?). St. Jingo appears to be a member of the same shebang (jingbang). People used the oath by jing and then added o to jing, as they did in bingo, doggo, kiddo, possibly in lingo, and later in weirdo. This is how St. Jingo, an apocryphal figure, a ghost saint, must have been born.

The other guesses about the origin of by jingo are as follows:

from Jove, Jupiter, or even Jesus, whose name appears in oaths disguised beyond recognition (compare by George!);
from the Basque word for “God”;
from Jirnigo, “a corruption from je renie Dieu [“I deny God”], a watchword of the rebels from the war of the Jacquerie”;
from Persian jang “war”;
as a contraction of Je su-son-of God;
from Gingko, the name of the sacred tree of Japan (see its image at the top of this post) or from Jingo, the name of the Empress of Japan who lived almost two thousand years ago;
since one of the earliest uses of jingo occurs in Oldham’s satire on the Jesuits (1679: “Hey, jingo, sirs! What’s this?”), the word may be a pun on Loyola’s name Ignatius, that is, Inigo.

Some of those hypotheses are clever, some are sheer nonsense (those are given above in bold), but by the living Jingo! I think they are all wrong.

Image credits: (1) Gingko Tree. CC0 via Pixabay. (2) The Apotheosis of War by Vasily Vereshchagin, 1871. Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. (3) Heiliger Gangolf. Illumination from the Passionary of Weissenau (Weißenauer Passionale); Fondation Bodmer, Coligny, Switzerland; Cod. Bodmer 127, fol. 66v, by unknown master or ‘Frater Rufillus’, 1170-1200. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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World Cancer Day – a reading list

Every year, World Cancer Day aims to save millions of preventable deaths, by raising awareness and education about the disease. Whether you are a health professional, a carer, patient, policy-maker, or simply looking to get involved – we can all do our bit to help reduce the global burden of cancer. On average, each day, 20,000 deaths around the world are caused by cancer. World Cancer Day offers the chance to reflect on what you can do to reduce the influence that cancer has on individuals, families and communities. With this in mind, we have compiled a reading list of chapters and articles for all those looking to better understand the make-up, management, and impact of cancer. Read on, and help beat cancer…

The Cancer Prevention Manual: What is cancer?

Now in its second edition, The Cancer Prevention Manual tackles the myths in the media about what causes cancer, and focuses on the facts – backed up by medical and scientific research. It provides a guide to all the major issues in cancer prevention, and gives the reader information to inform their lifestyle choices, to reduce the risk of cancer.

Psychosocial Care of the Adult Cancer Patient, by D. R. Nicholas

Psychosocial Care of the Adult Cancer Patient: Case examples and calls for action

As life expectancy for patients with cancer grows, so too does the need to take care of the psychological and mental health needs of cancer patients. Evidence-based interventions allow psychologists and counsellors to help cancer patients and their families understand cancer and deal with the distress that cancer can bring.

Oxford Textbook of Global Public Health: Cancer epidemiology and public health

The development of cancer epidemiology has formed the basis for knowledge about the causes of cancer and possible preventive strategies. The number of new cases of cancer which occurred worldwide in 2012 has been estimated at about 14,090,000, but significant advances in epidemiology might lead to the avoidance of a sizeable proportion of these human cancers.

QJM: An International Journal of Medicine: The use of adjunctive traditional Chinese medicine therapy

Traditional Chinese medicine is widely used in the treatment of patients with cancer, however no large-scale clinical studies have evaluated whether such medicines improve survival rates for patients diagnosed with head and neck cancer. This study suggests that adjunctive therapy with traditional Chinese medicine results in better survival outcomes.

Oxford Handbook of Oncology, edited by Cassidy, Bassett, Spence, Payne, and Morris-Stiff.

Oxford Handbook of Oncology: Aetiology and epidemiology

This valuable handbook has been extensively updated, reflecting current policies in cancer care, making it an essential resource for students and practitioners in oncology. The easy-to-use format of the handbook ensures vital information can be accessed quickly, while also providing further reading for those wishing to gain a more detailed understanding.

British Medical Bulletin: Management of melanoma

Melanoma is a potentially curable cancer, but around 20% of patients will develop disease which is beyond surgical clearance. Rising incidence, alongside breakthroughs in understanding its molecular biology and successful therapies related to the disease, now demand a more proactive, integrated approach to melanoma management.

Mayo Clinic Internal Medicine Board Review: Oncology – understanding the history, diagnosis and treatment of cancers

The Mayo Clinic Internal Medicine Board Review helps us to understand the diagnosis and treatment of both tumours and malignancies of unknown primary origin. Included in this specialist Oncology chapter are focuses on breast, cervix, colon, lung, ovary, prostate and testicle tumours, head and neck cancers, as well as the identification of complications and emergencies.

Cancer Control: Strengthening the global community for cancer control

Cancer Control, by J. M. Elwood and S. B. Sutcliffe

For low and middle income countries, reliance on high cost solutions to cancer treatment (often designed for other environments) cannot be the way forward. So what is the solution? Simon Sutcliffe and Mark Elwood discuss population-based cancer control, and what it could mean for future progress in advancing global cancer care.

Annals of Oncology: Phase I trials in oncology – a new era has started

Oncology drug development is constantly changing, and early phase trials are currently being challenged with the arrival of multiple new therapies. These include not only novel targeted therapies, but also active immune therapies, antibody-drug conjugates, and adoptive cell transfers. This means that now is the time for a profound rethink of strategy.

Challenging Concepts in Oncology: Care of unknown primary

This case-based guide to oncology delves into real-life cases, guiding the reader through scenarios with helpful learning tools including ‘Learning points’, ‘Clinical tips’, and ‘Evidence base’ boxes, which highlight the key features of each case study.

Oxford Textbook of Palliative Medicine: Clinical Psychology in Palliative Care

Oxford Textbook of Palliative Medicine, edited by Cherny, Fallon, Kaasa, Portenoy, and Currow

In aiming to reduce psychosocial distress and maintain quality of life in patients and their caregivers, various psychological interventions are identified and discussed in this chapter. Such interventions can help with the fear of death and dying, manage anxiety, and reduce feelings of isolation, sadness, despair, and depression.

Oxford Textbook of Oncology: Biomarker identification and clinical validation

The latest edition of this indispensable text offers a multidisciplinary approach to oncology: offering insights into the growth and development of cancer cells, key principles of oncology, as well as treatment and support for the cancer patient.

Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health: Evolutionarily stable anti-cancer therapies by autologous cell defection

Using game theory, this research in Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health suggests an evolutionarily stable anti-cancer therapy using modified cancer cells to treat cancer, causing spontaneous tumour collapse. This will mean less evolution of resistance – and hopefully, improved treatment outcomes.

Featured Image Credit: ‘Book, Old, Clouds’ by Bonnybbx. CC0 Public Domain, via Pixabay.

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Happy new year, China: Recent economic booms and busts

The Chinese New Year begins on 8 February, ushering out the year of the sheep (or goat, or ram) and bringing in the year of the monkey. People in China will enjoy a week-long vacation and will celebrate with dragon dances and fireworks. Given the financial fireworks emanating from China, this is a good time to briefly review some of the major economic news coming out of the Middle Kingdom.

Chinese stock markets had a rocky start to 2016. On 4 January (a Monday and the first trading day of 2016), share prices on the Shanghai stock market fell by 6.9% from their 31 December close. Two days later, prices fell by 7%. On both occasions, the declines were severe enough to lead authorities to suspend trading. By 15 January, the Shanghai Composite index had fallen about 20% from its 31 December level (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Shanghai Stock Exchange Composite Index, December 30, 2015-January 20, 2016 by Richard Grossman. Used with permission.

The fireworks were not confined to China, but spread to the world’s major financial markets. Stock market indices in the United States, Britain, and Japan fell between 7 and 10% between 31 December and 15 January (see Figure 2).

Figure 2: US, UK, and Japanese stock indices, December 31, 2015-Januaruy 15-2016 by Richard Grossman. Used with permission.

Why did Chinese financial markets get a hangover before the New Year festivities?

China appears to be in the early stages of a cyclical slowdown. ‘Appears’ because it is unclear how severe the downturn is or how far it has progressed, due to the notorious unreliability of China’s official statistics. The poor quality of statistics stems in part from the difficulty of gathering statistics in a large, diverse, developing economy. Some of it emanates from the fact that Chinese official statistics are widely believed to be manipulated to present the impression of steady growth. The Economist notes the “…eerie stability of key indicators … In year-on-year terms, growth over the past six quarters has been 7.2%, 7.2%, 7%, 7%, 6.9% and 6.8%. Such a tight clustering is improbable.”

For those tempted to argue that misleading statistics are hardly the stuff of economic collapse, it is worth recalling that the European sovereign debt crisis erupted in October 2009, when Greece’s actual budget deficit was revealed to be twice the previously (mis)reported official figure.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that Chinese growth has slowed by a percent or two, to a still respectable 5-6%. Even though this decline is not sharp, the ends of cyclical booms can be fraught with danger if they end in a ‘bust.’ That is because economic booms are often accompanied by increasing indebtedness, as individuals and firms increase their borrowing to finance the many profitable opportunities that characterize a booming economy. The longer and more robust the boom, the further down the list of worthwhile projects investors will go until, by the end of the boom, they may have financed some pretty dodgy investments.

When the economic expansion ends—as all economic expansions eventually do—borrowers may find it hard to service their debts, particularly those taken on to finance questionable projects. When borrowers default, the financial institutions that provided the money may be caught short, along with all of their creditors. At the moment, it is unclear how much further China’s cyclical contraction has to go, and so it may be premature to sound the ‘boom-bust’ alarm.

Short-term cyclical issues aside, China is facing a number of severe structural issues. On the economic side, policy makers need to resolve how to manage the combination of exchange rate, capital flow, and monetary policies, how to foster well-governed financial markets that are free from excessive government intervention, and—as noted above—how to generate reliable economic statistics. On the political side, corruption continues to weaken the economy, as does the cognitive dissonance of a system in which citizens’ economic freedoms are not matched by their political freedoms.

Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (US), China / U.S. Foreign Exchange Rate [EXCHUS]. Public domain via FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis , January 21, 2016.

China has incredible potential. Since the introduction of economic reforms in 1979, Chinese economic progress has been nothing short of astounding. During the last 35 years, China’s real gross domestic product has increased by an average of 10% per year. According to the World Bank, some 679 million Chinese were lifted out of extreme poverty from 1981 to 2010. And China is now the world’s largest economy, manufacturer, importer, exporter, and holder of foreign exchange reserves. Nonetheless, there are enough warning signs to suggest that difficult times may be ahead.

It’s time for China to make some new year’s resolutions.

Featured image credit: Lanterns China street by NattySttey. Public domain via Pixabay.

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Geography in the ancient world

Imagine how the world appeared to the ancient Greeks and Romans: there were no aerial photographs (or photographs of any sort), maps were limited and inaccurate, and travel was only by foot, beast of burden, or ship. Traveling more than a few miles from home meant entering an unfamiliar and perhaps dangerous world. Celestial bodies could provide orientation to the north and south, but there was no way to determine east and west except by dead reckoning. Yet despite this, Greeks, beginning in the sixth century BCE, were able to travel far and wide, and by the third century BCE had determined the size and shape of the earth, using nothing but mathematics and simple tools.

It is probable that the enclosed nature of the Mediterranean assisted in early exploration, since its coasts could be explored relatively easily, something that was done by the sixth century BCE. Sailors were also the first to determine an essential nature of the earth: that its surface was not flat but curved, obvious from the sinking of coasts below the horizon as one left port. Eventually Greek seamen left the Mediterranean and explored down the West African coast, north into the Arctic, and determined the route from the Red Sea to India. Overland travel was more difficult, but central Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, and parts of southern Asia were known by the Roman period. All things considered, it was amazing that Greeks and Romans traveled as far as they did.  Although there was no sense of “exploration” (in the modern sense) in antiquity, those who needed to travel—traders, merchants, and military and political personnel—were able to collect a vast amount of data about the surface of the earth and its peoples.

Greeks, beginning in the sixth century BCE, were able to travel far and wide, and by the third century BCE had determined the size and shape of the earth, using nothing but mathematics and simple tools.

Yet scholars wondered about other things: what was the actual size and shape of the earth? How much of it had actually been covered? These were issues more scientific than a matter of exploration. Since sailors had determined that the earth was curved, it eventually fell to Pythagorean theorists to theorize it must be a sphere: how else could its curvature, visible in all directions when at sea, be explained? This was one of the most remarkable leaps of imagination from classical antiquity, almost totally counter-intuitive, but nonetheless correct. By the fourth century BCE Aristole pointed out that if one sailed west from the entrance to the Mediterranean (at the ancient Pillars of Herakles, the modern Straits of Gibraltar), one would eventually reach India, a concept of great interest to Renaissance explorers such as Columbus.

But how big was the earth? Just how far was it west from the Pillars to India? In another amazing feat of ancient scholarship, Eratosthenes of Kyrene in the second half of the third century BCE was actually able to determine this, aided by two simple circumstances. Simple observation had determined that at Syene (the first cataract of the Nile) the sun was directly overhead at the summer solstice, and no shadows were cast. From Syene the Nile flowed due north to its mouth at the great city of Alexandria, where, on the summer solstice, the sun was still somewhat in the south, creating shadows whose angle could be determined. Using a measuring stick, called a gnomon, it was possible to create a great triangle from Alexandria to the sun (based on the angle of the shadow), and back to Syene, where (since there were no shadows) a right angle existed. Since the distance from Syene to Alexandria had been carefully measured, and two angles of the triangle were known, it was possible to determine what portion of the earth’s circumference was represented by the angle at Alexandria. This is a simplified summary of Eratosthenes’ technique, which enabled him to calculate that the circumference of the earth was 252,000 stadia, remarkably close to the accurate figure.

Eratosthenes also invented the word “geography,” and using his techniques, it was now possible to create a grid system and plot the location of almost any point on the surface of the earth. Krates of Mallos, in the second century BCE, created the first globe of the earth. But it was soon realized that the earth was immense in its size and that despite the extensive travels of Greeks (and eventually Romans) to what seemed to be the ends of the earth, the known world was only a small part of the earth: Syene was far to the south, but still well north of the equator, and the farthest north Greek settlements, on the north shore of the Black Sea, were only halfway to the North Pole. Yet further exploration of the southern hemisphere and whatever existed west of the Pillars of Herakles was left to Renaissance explorers. But one cannot diminish the importance of Eratosthenes’ feat, using nothing but his eyes, some realities of geography, and a measuring stick.

An essential part of classical scholarship is the evidence that survives today and which enables modern readers to learn about the world of antiquity. Eratosthenes’ actual treatises, his Geography and Measurement of the Earth, are long lost. But we are lucky to have surviving an amazing work, another Geography, written by Strabo of Amaseia and completed during the first two decades of the first century CE. It is one of the most lengthy works surviving from Greek antiquity, and has within it almost everything that has been described previously in this summary, and much more. It is through Strabo that we learn about Pythagorean theories on geography, Eratosthenes, Krates’ globe, Syene, and Greek explorers to the ends of the earth. The Geography of Strabo can be a difficult read, but it itself is a truly amazing work that reveals the astonishing feats of ancient geographers.

Featured image credit: By MagentaGreen, translated by Deu (File:Eratosthenes world map). CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

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Metastatic cells colonize implantable scaffold in mice

Cancer treatment’s biggest failings occur in the metastatic setting, when metastatic cells escaping from the primary tumor colonize and attack critical organs. Much about how cells colonize distant tissues as opposed to remaining in the primary tumor or in circulation without settling in one place remains unknown. But a new bioengineered device could offer insights.

The device is a small implantable scaffold about the size of a pencil eraser that draws metastatic cells out of the blood. It was codeveloped by scientists from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. When implanted into a mouse model of human breast cancer, the scaffold functioned as a micrometastatic niche. Migrating cancer cells colonized the scaffold, and in a further unexpected finding, mice with the implant had nearly 90% fewer lung metastases than control mice given a sham operation but not the implant itself. The discrepancy between metastatic burdens in treated and control mice suggests that the scaffold served as a therapeutic decoy that protected other organs from breast cancer’s spread, according to study coauthor Jacqueline Jeruss, MD, director of the University of Michigan Breast Care Center. The study appeared last September in Nature Communications.

“We haven’t had a tool that allows us to discriminate between circulating tumor cells [CTCs] that may not affect outcomes and metastatic cells that impact on pathology elsewhere in the body,” she said. “Now we can identify signals that are specific to the metastatic cells and learn more about what makes them unique.”

The research builds on evidence that cancer’s dissemination to particular sites in the body isn’t random, but occurs instead when migrating cells originating from the primary tumor flock to a premetastatic niche populated by other cell types—namely, macrophages, myeloid-derived suppressor cells, neutrophils, and inflammatory monocytes—that suppress antitumor responses.

Jeruss’s husband and collaborator Lonnie Shea, PhD, chair of biomedical engineering at the University of Michigan, constructed the scaffold from polylactide-co-glycolide, a microporous polymer also used to make surgical sutures, grafts, and medical implants. According to Shea, the scaffold was engineered to mimic a premetastatic microenvironment.

“You can think of it as a sponge,” he said. “Blood vessels grow through and around the device, which in turn attracts immune cells that promote metastatic growth.”

Jeruss, Shea, and their colleagues implanted the scaffold into the fat pads of mice inoculated with 231BR cells derived from a human patient with triple-negative breast cancer. Then at 14 and 28 days, they, looked for metastases in the scaffold by using a noninvasive technology called ISOCT (inverse spectroscopic optical coherence tomography). According to Northwestern professor Vadim Backman, PhD, an author on the study, ISOCT is label free, making it possible to hunt for metastases without prior knowledge of the cells or pathways involved. Rather than look for molecular tags on cell receptors, Backman looked for the telltale structural changes that metastatic cells were making to promote their own growth. For instance, metastatic cells remodel collagen and other matrix proteins that adjacent cells deposit. That activity produces nanoscale alterations that Backman could detect and measure to infer how many metastatic cells were present in the scaffold while it was still in the mouse’s body.

Cancer cells invaded the scaffold but not the fat pads of control mice, indicating that it had performed as predicted.

“The research needs to replicated, but the results so far point to an intriguing tool for isolating metastatic subclones for further analysis,” said Lisa Carey, MD, a professor in breast cancer research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who was not involved in the study. “At the moment, we still rely on biopsies, which is challenging.”

Carey was also intrigued by the scaffold’s ability to reduce tumor burdens in the lung. She suggested that it might have clinical uses in slowing or delaying metastatic progression. Jeruss had already shown in research dating back to 2008 that if women present with high-stage disease, their long-term prognosis is poor regardless of how well they do in primary treatment.

“Our hope,” Jeruss said, “is that early intervention when the metastatic disease burden is still low would translate to longer progression-free survival time.”

According to Shea, women would be implanted with the scaffold upon completing therapy for breast cancer, and the implant would be checked noninvasively every 3–6 months.

But according to Daniel Hayes, MD, clinical director of the Breast Oncology Program at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center and incoming president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, no evidence yet indicates that screening asymptomatic women who complete primary breast cancer treatment for occult metastases improves overall survival.

“We already treat micrometastases with adjuvant therapy for years before they are ever detectable,” he said. Other tests for detecting occult metastases are already available; Hayes said—for instance, the CellSearch test for CTCs (in whose development Hayes participated). But although they have prognostic value, CellSearch results rarely change treatment practice beyond what’s indicated by standard measures, such as lymph node status. Moreover, switching from one chemotherapy to another in women with high CellSearch counts is generally ineffective, suggesting that such women are resistant to chemotherapy.

Results from the scaffold might lengthen lead times to detection beyond what’s afforded by detecting CTCs, but “longer lead times might just push us back to the adjuvant setting when we give treatments that we already know work,” Hayes said.

Yet Hayes said that he’s optimistic that the scaffold could isolate an important cell: those that transition from the rigid epithelial CTCs picked by CellSearch to the more flexible mesenchymal cells that colonize tissues.

“We know that patients with CTC counts higher than 5 have a poor prognosis,” Hayes said. “But we don’t know if that’s because of CTC cells per se or because CTCs reflect an additional sublayer of EMT [epithelial–mesenchymal transition] cells that we can’t easily detect.”

EMTs have stem cell–like properties, and studying them might reveal new drug targets applicable to the metastatic setting.

Along with Massimo Cristofanilli, MD, associate director for precision medicine and translational research at Northwestern’s Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center, Jeruss is exploring clinical studies that use the scaffold to delay metastatic progression. Cristofanilli said that two studies are under discussion: the first in the metastatic setting and then another in a more curative setting.

“We know that spreading of metastatic disease occurs early at the time of clinical diagnosis,” Cristofanilli said. “Stage III patients already have CTCs in peripheral blood and they’re associated with a worse outcome. If we can combine standard neoadjuvant therapy with this approach, we might eliminate the migration and recirculation of CTC stem cells. The next frontier is to focus on metastases, and this clever new device gives us an additional tool.”

A version of this blog post first appeared in Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Featured image credit: Atypical carcinoid tumor of lung metastatic to the adrenal gland Case 255 by Yale Rosen. CC BY-SA 2.0 via Flickr. 

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Solidarity: an art worth learning

Can solidarity exist? Or is it just a fantasy, a pious dream of the soft of heart and weak of brain? Gross inequality, greed and prejudice: these manifestations of selfishness which stalk our world may seem to invite our condemnation and to call for an alternative – but what if they are part of the natural order? It is a widely-held presumption that our egotism is hard-wired in our nature, and that a genuinely selfless act is almost an impossibility. In a hostile review of a recent study of altruism, an American professor of humanities, Mark Hunter, wrote that an attack on capitalism is ‘an attack on human nature.’ Running counter to the liberal individualistic norm, however, research in biology and in psychology indicates that the human gene contains both selfish and altruistic tendencies.

As the psychologist Richard Crisp explains, the brain, which prefers an easy life, tends to default to a lazy position of self-immunising insularity. But studies of individuals who have exposed themselves to the unfamiliar and adapted to strangers – such as students who have lived for a significant period abroad – have shown a positive correlation between such testing experiences and the ability to solve problems in business and diplomacy. When the ego is suppressed in order to comprehend and to accommodate the unfamiliar, there is positive feedback in the brain’s capacity. How the balance between these propensities, respectively to self-protection and to openness to others, will be struck in a given moment is dependent upon the surrounding culture. Here the evidence of history has much to show – and, perhaps, something to teach.

History has been tragically absent from the current debates surrounding the identity of Europe and its capacity to respond to large-scale migration. The Home Secretary Theresa May’s recent statement that “when immigration is too high, when the pace of change is too fast, it’s impossible to build a cohesive society” brings into sharp focus what is at stake today in the question about the possibility of solidarity. The former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, famously declared that “there is no such thing as society”, and by her particular emphasis on self-help did much to make that a self-fulfilling prophecy. The use of history by politicians across the spectrum tends to be opportunistic and misleading. A telling instance is the Conservatives’ ‘Big Society’ agenda, designed to offload public services from central government to ‘the local community’: a conveniently hypothesised solidarity supposedly rooted in a history of neighbourliness and mutual support. The policy draws also upon an essentialised notion of religion: as the Party leader David Cameron claimed in 2014, “Jesus invented the Big Society 2000 years ago: I just want to see more of it.”

The truth is that over hundreds of years these questions concerning human nature and the possible conditions of society have been debated extensively in national and local forums, leaving a rich legacy for those prepared to pay attention. One fertile context in which the issues were explored was that of the guilds of medieval Europe. Although we are now more familiar with guilds that were linked to particular trades, the majority of these organisations brought together, in voluntary association, men and women of diverse crafts and, to varying degrees, of different backgrounds. The appeal of the guilds – and there were many of them: 30,000 in late-medieval England alone – derived partly from their festive celebrations but even more from their moral standing: the ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ were required to be morally virtuous and trustworthy citizens, and membership therefore served as a guarantee of good standing. To the recent immigrant to a town, lacking the support of family or neighbours, this status was an invaluable basis of trust.

  It is a widely-held presumption that our egotism is hard-wired in our nature, and that a genuinely selfless act is almost an impossibility.

But it was recognised that neither brotherhood nor virtue was a natural condition: both had to be worked for, and the rules and practices of the guilds embodied a practical ethics directed at these goals. A core aim was the deliberate cultivation, as a value in its own right, of friendship. Typical was the declaration of the brothers and sisters of a fourteenth-century London guild of St James that they undertook ‘to nourish more love between them.’ In their promotion of friendship amongst their members and between these and others outside the association whom they helped in various ways, the guilds anticipated those philosophers who have recently called for an ‘ethics of care’ which puts a value not on the particular benefit to any party in a relationship, but on the quality of the relationship in itself. In the age of Facebook, ‘friends’ are not hard to come by – but we risk losing sight of a different kind of mutuality, based upon a conscious effort to open up to another person, which entails the uncomfortable possibility of being changed by that experience.

The guilds placed value at the same time upon the collectivity and upon the individual member. This historical example can help us to break the dualistic model, under which we have laboured for too long, in which ‘the individual’ is opposed to ‘the community.’ As modern research is demonstrating, the medieval guilds were rooted in a more realistic understanding of human nature which, in order to survive, needs to face both inwards and also outside itself. They showed realism, too, in their conception of ‘community’ not as a fixed or simple state, but as the challenge of a shared responsibility. (As the political philosopher Roberto Esposito reminded us, the word ‘community’ derives from the Latin cum: ‘with’ and munus: ‘burden’). The recognition of such a common responsibility is widespread across diverse cultures: whether described in religious or secular terms, the shared concern is always with a perceived need to defend certain human values. Within that framework, the members of the guilds were able to develop multiple identities: loyalty to the association co-existed with personal concerns, family ties, neighbourhood identity, and participation in the kingdom or city-state.

There is a close parallel with the Muslim concept of the umma: an idea of universal belonging in a culture of shared human values, within and alongside which other loyalties can also exist. (That instance has been brought tellingly to bear within the current debate on migration by an essay by Faiz Sheikh and Samanthan May in Religion in Diaspora: Cultures of Citizenship, ed. Jane Garnett and Sondra L. Hausner). The model of the umma does not preclude the possibility of liberal citizenship, nor does that of the medieval guilds deny the unique personality of the individual. But both challenge the monopolistic hegemony of individualism. Their example deserves our attention.

Headline image credit: Map of Britain  circa 1250 by Matthew Paris. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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Music therapy and Arts Based Research

Arts Based Research offers a new and diverse method for inquiring about the world around us. Whether examining social sciences or healthcare, this field offers a different approach and establishes an innovative framework for inquiry. We spoke with Professor Jane Edwards, the guest editor for a special issue of the Journal of Music Therapy, about her perspective on this emerging field.

How did you get involved in Arts Based Research (ABR)?

As a young academic I spent a lot of time thinking about how music and health intersected, not just through my discipline and profession of music therapy but more broadly within everyday life and in related disciplines such as neuroscience, sociology, and psychology. As my interest grew I founded a research group at the University of Limerick launched by Professor Even Ruud of the University of Oslo.

How did the Music & Health Research Group get started?

This research group was initially comprised of myself, Dr Simon Gilbertson (now at University of Bergen), and Dr Alison Ledger (now at University of Leeds). The group hosted many international meetings including the European Science Foundation funded Music and Health meeting in in 2004, and in 2009 the meeting at which the International Association for Music & Medicine formed. This quickly became a highly active organization for interdisciplinary exchange about all aspects of music in healthcare with biennial conferences in countries around the world. As the Music & Health Research Group expanded and then dispersed, with members moving to new work in many countries, multiple opportunities to think about how and where the arts belong in social sciences research were engaged. We continue to find inspiration and support for a range of new concepts and practices.

What is the current state of Arts Based Research (ABR)?

ABR has found a place in many social science and healthcare research endeavors. ABR involves engaging the potential fun and playful messiness of the arts within a constructivist sensibility opening out into new experiences that inspire the creative potential of our humanity. At its core ABR acknowledges that there is an important place for research methods that can facilitate and honor thinking, feeling, and reflecting for all research participants, including the person developing the research and the people who participate or co-research with them. This orientation within the ABR epistemology and practice offers a way to bring multiple perspectives into research processes, and to deepen reflection on data and findings. In the midst of all this playful messiness, novel insights and new dynamics of scholarship are engaged.

Drs. Ledger and McCaffrey address the current state of ABR with four questions: (1) When should the arts be introduced? (2) Which artistic medium is appropriate? (3) How should the art be understood? (4) What is the role of the audience?

Arts Based Research (ABR) integrates the potential fun and playful messiness of the arts with a constructivist sensibility open to new experiences in the creative potential of our humanity. What could be more exciting than integrating and honoring the multiple ways human knowing and perceiving can be explored, represented, and enacted? The Hands by Simon Gilbertson in Journal of Music Therapy, 2015;52:487-514. © the American Music Therapy Association 2015. All rights reserved.

What is the relationship between music therapy and Arts Based Research?

Music therapy as a profession has lagged behind engagement with ABR. One possibility is that music therapy professionals can experience social status anxiety (Cameron, 2014; Edwards, 2015). It can therefore be difficult embrace the creative and seemingly less scientific option of ABR. As Einstein and Forinash (2013) have noted ABR can be challenging because of the, “[f]ear that art is not enough and will not be understood” (p. 84). I suggest that many music therapists would love the expansion of opportunities for reflective research practice ABR offers, and have much to gain in entering this conversation. What could be more exciting than integrating and honoring the multiple ways human knowing and perceiving can be explored, represented, and enacted?

How is Arts Based Research applicable in a practitioner setting?

Professor Simon Gilbertson’s work is a great example of creative engagement with ABR through his research study of practitioner experiences. During one interview, clinicians’ hands were submerged in an alginate solution and cast in the position that they recalled from that prior moment. I found myself wondering what the Institutional Review Board thought of his ethics application.

Another great example is Dr McCaffrey’s doctoral research. New researchers will likely appreciate the problem solving which is described when encountering uncertainty within the research process, and the ways in which arts based methods offer a pathway through to remaining engaged and open to the experience of a research participant.

You are serving as a guest editor for a special issue on Arts Based Research for the Journal of Music Therapy. What did you consider when approaching this issue?

Accepting a recent opportunity to serve as guest editor for the Journal of Music Therapy, the first music therapy journal to focus an entire issue on Arts Based Research (ABR), gave me an opportunity to call upon my colleagues and showcase some of the aspects unique to this way of researching. Music therapy has opportunities for great gain in entering this conversation, not by leaving anything behind but integrating and honoring the multiple ways human knowing and perceiving can be explored, represented, and enacted. ABR integrates the potential fun and playful messiness of the arts with a constructivist sensibility open to new experiences in the creative potential of our humanity. This special issue of the Journal of Music Therapy (Volume 52, Issue 4) elaborates broad concepts for the arts as foundational processes within research inquiry.

Featured image: Colorful G-clef. (c) proksima via iStock.

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