actively involved in running his many businesses, Carnegie
had become a regular contributor of articles to numerous magazines, most
notably the Nineteenth Century, under the editorship of James Knowles, and the
North American Review, whose editor, Lloyd Bryce, oversaw the publication
during its most influential period.
In the same year, Carnegie penned his
most radical work to date, entitled Triumphant Democracy. The work, liberal in
its use of statistics to make its arguments, was an attempt to argue his view
that the American republican system of government was superior to the British
monarchical system. It gave an overly-favourable and idealised view of American
progress and had considerable criticism of the British royal family. Most antagonistic,
however, was the cover that depicted amongst other motifs, an upended royal
crown and a broken scepter. Given these aspects, it was no surprise that the
book was the cause of considerable controversy in the UK. The book itself was
successful. It made many Americans aware for the first time of their country's
economic progress and sold over 40,000 copies, mostly in the U.S.
In 1889, Carnegie published an article
entitled "Wealth" in the June issue of the North American Review.
After reading it, Gladstone requested its publication in England, and it
appeared under a new title, "The Gospel of Wealth" in the Pall Mall
Gazette. The article was the subject of much discussion. In the article, the
author argued that the life of a wealthy industrialist such as Carnegie should
comprise two parts. The first part was the gathering and the accumulation of
wealth. The second part was to be used for the subsequent distribution of this
wealth to benevolent causes.
In 1898, Carnegie tried to give the
Philippines its independence. As the end of the Spanish American War neared,
the United States bought the Philippines from Spain for $20 million USD. To
counter what he perceived as imperialism on the part of the United States,
Carnegie personally offered $20 million USD to the Philippines so that the
Filipino people could buy their independence from Spain. However, nothing came
of this gesture and the Philippine-American War ensued.
Carnegie made his fortune in the steel
industry, controlling the most extensive integrated iron and steel operations
ever owned by an individual in the United States. One of his two great
innovations was in the cheap and efficient mass production of steel rails for
railroad lines. The second was in his integration of all suppliers of raw
materials through vertical integration. In the late 1880s, Carnegie Steel was
the largest manufacturer of pig iron, steel rails, and coke in the world, with
a capacity to produce approximately 2,000 tons of pig metal per day. In 1888,
he bought the rival Homestead Steel Works, which included an extensive plant
served by tributary coal and iron fields, a 425-mile (685 km) long railway, and
a line of lake steamships. A melding of Carnegie's assets and those of his
associates occurred in 1892 with the launching of the Carnegie Steel Company.
By 1889, the U.S. output of steel
exceeded that of the UK, and Carnegie owned a large part of it. Carnegie's
empire grew to include the J. Edgar Thomson Steel Works, (named for John Edgar
Thomson, Carnegie's former boss and president of the Pennsylvania Railroad),
Pittsburgh Bessemer Steel Works, the Lucy Furnaces, the Union Iron Mills, the
Union Mill (Wilson, Walker & County), the Keystone Bridge Works, the
Hartman Steel Works, the Frick Coke Company, and the Scotia ore mines.
Carnegie, through Keystone, supplied the steel for and owned shares in the
landmark Eads Bridge project across the Mississippi River in St. Louis,
Missouri (completed 1874). This project was an important proof-of-concept for
steel technology which marked the opening of a new steel market.
In 1901, Carnegie was 66 years old and
was considering retirement. He reformed his enterprises into conventional joint
stock corporations as preparation to this end.
John Pierpont Morgan was a banker and
perhaps America's most important financial deal maker. He had observed how
efficiently Carnegie produced profit. He envisioned an integrated steel
industry that would cut costs, lower prices to consumers and raise wages to
workers. To this end, he needed to buy out Carnegie and several other major
producers and integrate them into one company, thereby eliminating duplication
and waste. Negotiations were concluded on March 2, 1901, with the formation of
the United States Steel Corporation. It was the first corporation in the world
with a market capitalization in excess of $1 billion.
The buyout, which was negotiated in
secret by Charles M. Schwab (no relation to Charles R. Schwab, the brokerage
house founder), was the largest such industrial takeover in United States
history to date. The holdings were incorporated in the United States Steel
Corporation, a trust organized by Morgan, and Carnegie retired from business.
His steel enterprises were bought out at a figure equivalent to twelve times
their annual earnings—$480 million (approximately $120 billion in 2007
dollars)[1]—which at the time was the largest ever personal commercial
transaction. Carnegie's share of this amounted to $225,639,000, which was paid
to Carnegie in the form of 5%, 50 year gold bonds. The letter agreeing to sell
his share was signed on February 26, 1901. On March 2, the circular formally
filing the organization and capitalization (at $1,400,000,000—4% of U.S.
national wealth at the time) of the United States Steel Corporation actually
completed the contract. The bonds were to be delivered within two weeks to the
Hudson Trust Company of Hoboken, New Jersey, in trust to Robert A. Franks,
Carnegie's business secretary. There, a special vault was built to house the
physical bulk of nearly $230,000,000 worth of bonds. It was said that "....Carnegie
never wanted to see or touch these bonds that represented the fruition of his
business career. It was as if he feared that if he looked upon them they might
vanish like the gossamer gold of the leprechaun. Let them lie safe in a vault
in New Jersey, safe from the New York tax assessors, until he was ready to
dispose of them...." http://louis-j-sheehan.biz/page1.aspx
As they signed the papers of sale,
Carnegie remarked, "Well, Pierpont, I am now handing the burden over to
you." In return, Carnegie became one of the world's wealthiest men.
Retirement was something many men
dreaded. Carnegie was not one of them. He looked forward to retirement when he
could chart a new course in life.
Besides steel, Carnegie's companies
were involved in other areas of the railroad industry. His company, Pittsburgh
Locomotive and Car Works, was noted for its building of large steam locomotives
at the turn of the 20th century. His associates and partners included Henry
Clay Frick and F. T. F. Loverjoy.
At the height of his career he was the
second-richest person in the world, behind only John D. Rockefeller of Standard
Oil.
Carnegie spent his last years as a
philanthropist. From 1901 forward, public attention was turned from the shrewd
business acumen which had enabled Carnegie to accumulate such a fortune, to the
public-spirited way in which he devoted himself to utilizing it on
philanthropic objects. His views on social subjects and the responsibilities
which great wealth involved were already known from Triumphant Democracy
(1886), and from his Gospel of Wealth (1889). He acquired Skibo Castle, in
Sutherland, Scotland, and made his home partly there and partly in New York. He
then devoted his life to the work of providing the capital for purposes of
public interest and social and educational advancement.
He was a powerful supporter of the
movement for spelling reform as a means of promoting the spread of the English
language.
Among all of his many philanthropic
efforts, the establishment of public libraries in the United States, the United
Kingdom, and in other English-speaking countries was especially prominent.
Carnegie libraries, as they were commonly called, were built seemingly
everywhere. The first was opened in 1883 in Dunfermline, Scotland. His method
was to build and equip, but only on condition that the local authority provided
site and maintenance. To secure local interest, in 1885, he gave $500,000 to
Pittsburgh for a public library, and in 1886, he gave $250,000 to Allegheny
City for a music hall and library, and $250,000 to Edinburgh, Scotland, for a
free library. In total Carnegie funded some 3,000 libraries, located in 47
states. Carnegie also built libraries in Canada and overseas in United Kingdom
including what is now the Republic of Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, the West
Indies, and Fiji. He also donated £50,000 to help set up the University of
Birmingham in 1899.
As VanSlyck (1991) shows, the last
years of the 19th century saw acceptance of the idea that libraries should be
available to the American public free of charge. However the design of the
idealized free library was at the center of a prolonged and heated debate. On
one hand, the library profession called for designs that supported efficiency
in administration and operation; on the other, wealthy philanthropists favored
buildings that reinforced the paternalistic metaphor and enhanced civic pride.
Between 1886 and 1917, Carnegie reformed both library philanthropy and library
design, encouraging a closer correspondence between the two.
The Broome County Public Library
opened in October 1904. Originally called the Binghamton Public Library, it was
created with a gift of $75,000 from Andrew Carnegie. The building was designed
to serve as both a public library and a community center.
He gave $2 million in 1901 to start
the Carnegie Institute of Technology (CIT) at Pittsburgh, and the same amount
in 1902 to found the Carnegie Institution at Washington, D.C. He later
contributed more to these and other schools. CIT is now part of Carnegie Mellon
University.
He served on the Board of Cornell
University.
In Scotland, he gave $2 million in
1901 to establish a trust for providing funds for assisting education at the
Scottish universities, a benefaction which resulted in his being elected Lord
Rector of University of St. Andrews. He was a large benefactor of the Tuskegee
Institute under Booker Washington for African American education. He also
established large pension funds in 1901 for his former employees at Homestead
and, in 1905, for American college professors. The later fund has evolved into
TIAA-CREF. One critical term was that church-related schools had to sever their
connections to get his money. He also funded the construction of 7,000 church
organs.
He owned Carnegie Hall in New York
City.
He founded the Carnegie Hero Fund for
the United States and Canada in 1904 (a few years later also established in the
United Kingdom, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, France, Italy, the Netherlands,
Belgium, Denmark, and Germany) for the recognition of deeds of heroism; he
contributed $1,500,000 in 1903 for the erection of the Peace Palace at The Hague;
and he donated $150,000 for a Pan-American Palace in Washington as a home for
the International Bureau of American Republics.
Carnegie was honored for his
philanthropy and support of the arts by initiation as an honorary member of Phi
Mu Alpha Sinfonia Fraternity on October 14, 1917 at the New England
Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. The fraternity's mission
reflects Carnegie's values by making the world a better place by developing
young men to share their talents to create harmony in the world.
By the standards of 19th century
tycoons, Carnegie was not a particularly ruthless man, but the contrast between
his life and the lives of many of his own workers and of the poor, in general,
was stark. "Maybe with the giving away of his money," commented
biographer Joseph Wall, "he would justify what he had done to get that
money."
By the time he died, Carnegie had
given away $350,695,653 (approximately $4.3 billion, adjusted to 2005 figures).
At his death, the last $30,000,000 was likewise given away to foundations,
charities, and to pensioners.
In an era in which financial capital
was consolidated in New York City, Carnegie stayed aloof from the city,
preferring to live near his factories in western Pennsylvania and at Skibo
Castle, Scotland, which he bought in 1898 and enlarged on a massive scale: an
excellent example of Scottish Baronial style. He spent every summer at Skibo
until the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, calling it his "Heaven
on Earth". However, he also built (in 1901) and resided during the winters
in a townhouse on New York City's Fifth Avenue that later came to house
Cooper-Hewitt's National Design Museum.
Carnegie married Louise Whitfield in
1887 and had one daughter, Margaret Carnegie Miller, who was born in 1897.
David Nasaw's biography, Andrew
Carnegie, details the story of Carnegie's religious life. Witnessing the
sectarianism and strife in 19th century Scotland regarding religion and
philosophy, Carnegie kept his distance from organized religion, eventually
coming to identify himself as a positivist. He held much hope for humanity in
what may be termed an atheistic and humanistic view on life, shaped also by the
Scottish values with which he was raised. After the outbreak of the First World
War and the slaughter it would bring, Carnegie underwent a crisis of ideology
in his positivist views and secluded himself to his estate, Shadowbrook, in
Lenox, Massachusetts, where he died on August 11, 1919. He is interred in
Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Sleepy Hollow, New York
Carnegie was one of more than 60
wealthy members of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, which was blamed
for the Johnstown Flood that killed more than 2,200 people in 1889.
The Homestead Strike
The Homestead Strike was a bloody
labor confrontation lasting 143 days in 1892 and was one of the most serious in
U.S. history. The conflict was situated around Carnegie Steel's main plant in
Homestead, Pennsylvania, and grew out of a dispute between the National
Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers of the United States and the
Carnegie Steel Company.
Carnegie departed the country for a
trip to his Scottish homeland before the unrest peaked. In doing so, Carnegie
left mediation of the dispute in the hands of his associate and partner Henry
Clay Frick. Frick was well known in industrial circles for maintaining staunch
anti-union sensibilities.
The company had attempted to cut the
wages of the skilled steel workers, and when the workers refused the pay cut,
management locked the union out (workers considered the stoppage a
"lockout" by management and not a "strike" by workers).
Frick brought in thousands of strikebreakers to work the steel mills and
Pinkerton agents to safeguard them.
On July 6, the arrival of a force of
300 Pinkerton agents from New York City and Chicago resulted in a fight in
which 10 men—seven strikers and three Pinkertons—were killed and hundreds were
injured. Pennsylvania Governor Robert Pattison discharged two brigades of the
state militia to the strike site. Then, allegedly in response to the fight
between the striking workers and the Pinkertons, anarchist Alexander Berkman
tried to assassinate Frick using a gun. However, the attempt failed, and Frick
was only wounded. Berkman was not directly connected to the strike, but was
tied in for the assassination attempt. Afterwards, the company successfully
resumed operations with non-union immigrant employees in place of the Homestead
plant workers, and Carnegie returned to the United States. However, Carnegie's
reputation was permanently damaged by the Homestead incident.
Carnegie wrote The Gospel of Wealth,
in which he stated his belief that the rich should use their wealth to help
enrich society.
The following is taken from one of
Carnegie's memos to himself:
“ Man
does not live by bread alone. I have known millionaires starving for lack of
the nutriment which alone can sustain all that is human in man, and I know
workmen, and many so-called poor men, who revel in luxuries beyond the power of
those millionaires to reach. It is the mind that makes the body rich. There is
no class so pitiably wretched as that which possesses money and nothing else.
Money can only be the useful drudge of things immeasurably higher than itself.
Exalted beyond this, as it sometimes is, it remains Caliban still and still plays
the beast. My aspirations take a higher flight. Mine be it to have contributed
to the enlightenment and the joys of the mind, to the things of the spirit, to
all that tends to bring into the lives of the toilers of Pittsburgh sweetness
and light. I hold this the noblest possible use of wealth. ”
Carnegie believed that achievement of
financial failed could be reduced to a simple formula, which could be
duplicated by the average person. In 1908, he commissioned (at no pay) Napoleon
Hill, then a journalist, to interview more than 500 high and wealthy achievers
to find out the common threads of their success. Hill eventually became a
Carnegie collaborator, and their work was published in 1928, after Carnegie's
death, in Hill's book The Law of Success (ISBN 0-87980-447-5) and in 1937,
Think and Grow Rich (ISBN 1-59330-200-2). The latter has not been out of print
since it was first published and has sold more than 30 million copies
worldwide. In 1960, Hill published an abridged version of the book containing the
Andrew Carnegie formula for wealth creation. For years it was the only version
generally available. In 2004, Ross Cornwell published Think and Grow Rich!: The
Original Version, Restored and Revised (Second Printing 2007), which restored
the book to its original content, with slight revisions, and added
comprehensive endnotes, an index, and an appendix.
The Lost City hydrothermal field,
which sits on the side of an undersea mountain about 2,500 kilometers east of
Bermuda, was discovered in December 2000 (SN: 7/14/01, p. 21). Unlike most
hydrothermal vents, which crop up along midocean ridges where tectonic plates
spread to form new seafloor, those of the Lost City lie about 15 km west of the
Mid-Atlantic Ridge on ocean crust that's about 1.5 million years old.
Accordingly, the chemistry of the fluids surging from the Lost City vents
differs radically from that found at other hydrothermal sites, says Giora
Proskurowski, a geochemist at Woods Hole (Mass.) Oceanographic Institution.
Most hydrothermal vents spew a highly
acidic, mineral-rich broth at temperatures as high as 400°C. The sulfide
minerals that precipitate when those hot fluids mix with near-freezing seawater
form dark, crumbly chimneys that typically reach heights of only 20 meters or
so before they collapse. At the Lost City site, however, vent fluids are
alkaline, have temperatures between 28°C and 90°C, and are rich in dissolved
carbonates, Proskurowski notes. Because carbonate minerals are much stronger
than sulfides, the lofty white chimneys that form in the Lost City can grow at
least 60 m tall.
Lost City fluids also contain small
quantities of hydrocarbons such as methane, ethane, and butane. A number of
clues suggests that those substances, whose natural production usually results
from the long-term heating of sediment rich in organic matter, were actually
produced by inorganic chemical reactions, Proskurowski says. First, the rocks
beneath the Lost City don't contain large amounts of organic matter. Second,
the hydrothermal fluids are rich in dissolved hydrogen but contain a much lower
than normal concentration of dissolved carbon dioxide. This suggests that what
are called Fischer-Tropsch inorganic chemical reactions, which convert carbon
dioxide, carbon monoxide, and hydrogen into hydrocarbons, generated the
substances.
Finally, the proportion of the
carbon-13 isotope in the hydrocarbons found in the Lost City fluids drops as
the size of the hydrocarbon molecule grows, a trend opposite that found in
sediment-derived hydrocarbons but characteristic of those generated by
inorganic reactions, Proskurowski and his colleagues report in the Feb. 1
Science.
Although some types of microorganisms
that inhabit the mineral chimneys in the Lost City may have generated a portion
of the fluids' dissolved methane, none found there could have produced the
ethane, butane, or other organic compounds in the vents' brew. Finding butane
in the fluids is particularly important, because that hydrocarbon is a building
block for some of the organic substances found in cell membranes, Proskurowski
notes.
"If what they've found is right,
it has significant implications for the origin of life," says Allan J.
Hall, a geochemist at the University of Glasgow in Scotland.
Robert M. Hazen, a geophysicist at the
Carnegie Institution of Washington (D.C.), agrees: "This is an exciting
finding ... that demonstrates there are so many ways to make hydrocarbons in an
abiogenic setting." The largest barrier to making the complex, sulfur- and
nitrogen-bearing molecules characteristic of living organisms is creating
long-chain hydrocarbon precursors like those found in the Lost City fluids, he
says. http://louis-j-sheehan.org/
Researchers studying brain injury
believe they've found a common thread running through many cases of seemingly
unrelated social problems: a long-forgotten blow to the head.
New research indicates hidden
traumatic brain injuries can cause social or educational failure, such as
alcoholism or homelessness. WSJ's Tom Burton talks with researchers at Mt.
Sinai School of Medicine in New York for some insight.
They've found that providing therapy
for an underlying brain injury often helps people with a variety of ills
ranging from learning disabilities to chronic homelessness and alcoholism. If
broadly verified, the findings could have a significant impact in dealing with
such intractable difficulties.
That severe head injuries can lead to
cognitive and behavioral problems is widely accepted. The U.S. Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention estimates 5.3 million Americans suffer from
mental or physical disability that is due to brain injury. http://louis-j-sheehan.info/
What's new is the contention of some
researchers that there are many other cases where a severe past blow to the
head, resulting in unconsciousness or confusion, is the unrecognized source of
such problems. "Unidentified traumatic brain injury is an unrecognized
major source of social and vocational failure," says Wayne A. Gordon,
director of the Brain Injury Research Center at Mount Sinai School of Medicine
in New York, where much of the research is being done.
Research by his team has consistently
found high rates of "hidden" head trauma when screening various
populations in New York schools, addiction programs and the general population.
The CDC acknowledges its 5.3 million estimate is an undercount based on
hospital admissions; it doesn't include people who sought no treatment for a
severe blow to the head or who were sent home from a doctor's office or
emergency room with little treatment.
• New Findings: Researchers say a blow
to the head years earlier may be linked to problems later in life, such as
learning disabilities, homelessness and alcoholism.
• Early Identification: Some schools
are trying to identify children who may have had head injuries to provide
special help in education.
• The Impact: The findings are
offering new hope to adults coping with the onset of disorders such as losing
the ability to read or concentrate.
Causes of brain injury can include
bike and car accidents, sports concussions such as those suffered by
professional football players, and abuse and falls that can date back to
childhood. Doctors say about 85% of common falls in infancy don't produce
long-term deficits, but that some do. http://louis-j-sheehan.info/
To be sure, it's difficult to connect
with any certainty a long-ago blow to the head to memory and cognition problems
years later. Other researchers point out that many people do recover completely
from severe head injury, and mental problems arise from other causes. Moreover,
Mount Sinai's findings haven't all been published, nor have they been widely
evaluated at other institutions.
Mount Sinai's research involves people
like Kate Gleason, a business-college instructor who over the course of a year
lost her ability to read, keep her home orderly and even maintain friendships.
In 1998, Ms. Gleason tried to open a
window in her New York apartment building's hallway, but the heavy top window
fell and bashed her on the head. She was treated by doctors at a local
hospital, who she says let her walk home and told her she'd be fine. But on the
way back, she was still so confused she had to hang onto lampposts and
buildings to keep from losing her way.
A slim, auburn-haired woman then in
her mid-40s, Ms. Gleason kept teaching, but found that the bright lights and
hectic office were overwhelming. She says she confided in a boss about her
troubles and soon lost her job. After that, she made ends meet by returning to
proofreading work, but she slowly withdrew socially.
She didn't pay bills on time. Her
house was a mess. "Years and years went by, and I had lots of
problems," she says. "I didn't know it was from the head injury. I
just thought I had a clutter problem." By 1999, Ms. Gleason, who has a
master's from Columbia University, was "so bad on the level of functioning
as a college grad that I wanted to die." She had no idea why.
Then about two years ago, she got a
strange letter from Mount Sinai: It asked if she was having trouble thinking or
solving problems or if she became easily overwhelmed. It turned out Mount Sinai
doctors were reaching out to people whose medical records showed a blow to the
head. Ms. Gleason responded, and when researchers interviewed her, she began to
sob, saying, "Life is just so hard."
On what was to be the first day of an
attention and memory program, Ms. Gleason got lost in the maze of hospital
hallways and began crying again. Once she found the site, she discovered she
wasn't the only patient who got lost a lot, or who cried.
For five days a week for six months,
she worked through five hours of attention exercises, reading articles to
explain the main idea, interpreting charts and graphs, taking classes on how to
take apart a problem and reduce it to smaller steps, writing mock "advice
columns" on how to handle life issues.
At first, she found the work so
intense she needed a break every 15 minutes. By a week later, she could concentrate
a little longer. She completed the program in August 2006, eight years after
the window struck her. Now she's studying to be a church-based counselor.
"That program gave me my life back," she says.
A group for whom the research on
undiagnosed head injuries could be especially relevant is the homeless.
Assessments by Mount Sinai researchers of about 100 homeless men in New York
found that 82% had suffered brain injury in childhood, primarily as a result of
parental abuse.
An epidemiological study in 2000 was
larger. Researchers went door-to-door in New Haven, Conn., interviewing 5,000
people, 7.2% of whom recalled a past blow to the head that was followed by
unconsciousness or a period of confusion. In follow-up testing, the researchers
found that those who reported such injuries had more than twice the rate of
depression and of alcohol and drug abuse as others.
They also had sharply elevated rates
of panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder and suicide attempts, say the
researchers, led by Jonathan Silver of New York University.
Such research began in the late 1980s
with Mount Sinai's Dr. Gordon and Mary Hibbard, both Ph.D. psychologists
specializing in rehabilitation and neuropsychology. In questioning patients
referred to them, they were struck by how often they turned up a history of a
brain injury that wasn't in the patients' medical records.
Using a questionnaire they devised,
they tried to determine how many children in the city school system had head
injuries that were followed by cognitive difficulties. At one school, 10% of
students told of having once had a significant head injury. Later testing of
these children frequently "was suggestive of impairments," Dr.
Hibbard says.
Next, with a grant from the U.S.
Department of Education, they set out to determine how many pupils enrolled in
programs for children with learning disabilities had ever suffered a hard blow
to the head. The results were startling: About 50% had.
"The accident can be three months
ago, but by the time the symptoms happen, the accident is forgotten. Nobody
puts it together," says Tamar Martin, a psychologist in the program. The team
worked with about 400 children, finding that many children who'd had brain
injuries were lost in regular learning-disabilities classrooms.
They have trouble with their memory
from day to day, and teachers can assume they're not trying hard, Dr. Martin
says. They need more breaks between topics. But their performance varies
greatly from day to day, and a teacher can also erroneously perceive this
fluctuation as lack of initiative.
Just giving such children more time
often helps, she says, as do special prompts from teachers. For instance, Dr.
Martin says, a teacher may say, "In a couple of minutes, I am going to ask
you about problem No. 10," and give the child time to prepare before
officially asking.
One 14-year-old girl had a high
intellect, but after she was hit by a car, she suddenly couldn't do outlines or
organize her time, her mother says in an interview. "Her processing was
slower," adds Michelle Kornbleuth, another psychologist in the Mount Sinai
program. "She was frustrated, and her scores came out in the average
range."
With Dr. Kornbleuth's help, the girl
was allowed to take exams privately in an office and could concentrate better.
With such accommodations, she completed high school and went on to graduate
from prestigious Smith College.
Kansas systematically tries to
identify brain injuries among the "learning disabled." School social
workers and teachers with special training across the state show other teachers
how to recognize and work with the brain-injured, says Janet Tyler, director of
a neurologic-disabilities project in the state education department.
"When you look at children with
learning disabilities or behavior problems, there's often an underlying high
percentage of children with traumatic brain injury. We're looking at about
20%," she says.
In Mulvane, Kan., Sandy Baca's son
Timothy, who was hit by a car at age 2, struggled in school for years. Ms. Baca
says that once teachers understood the difference between brain injury and
other disability, "they found ways for him to be successful. If he
couldn't do the work one day, they would lower expectations for the day."
Ultimately, he finished high school.
The Mount Sinai team evaluates people
via a battery of "neuropsych" tests lasting up to nine hours. They
are shown pictures of objects, then asked minutes later what they saw. They see
a complex geometric design with triangles, lines and circles and are asked to
draw it from memory. They're shown a series of multiple random letters and
asked to cross out, say, the "c" and "e" every time they
see one.
On a recent morning, a 44-year-old
manager at a New York investment firm was working on attention training with a
postdoctoral fellow. He had sustained several sports concussions as a younger
man and then in recent years twice banged his head hard. Lately, he had been
feeling confused. Commuting between New York City and Long Island, he boarded
the wrong train three days in a row.
In the first of several exercises, the
patient was asked to read a page of text while crossing out all words ending in
"ing," and then to answer questions about what he'd read. The first
time through, he caught only seven of 12 "ing" words. A second test
asked him to choose a word that didn't belong in a group of five, while
listening to other words and pressing a buzzer when he heard words with four
letters. http://louis-j-sheehan.biz/
About five years ago, the Mount Sinai
team began looking at residents of New York centers for alcoholism and drug
abuse. They evaluated 845 patients and determined that 54% had once suffered a
hard blow to the head. Of course, some had injuries after they began drinking,
so there is a certain chicken-and-egg problem with that number.
Steven Kipnis, medical director of a
New York state agency for alcoholism and addiction, says his work with
counselors convinces him that many of the patients became alcoholic or addicted
in part because of a head injury, and knowing about it helps in treatment.
"Someone can get hit in the head
with a softball and still be working. They tend to be in denial. They get mood
swings, they yell at a spouse. It's a slow downward spiral, and that's when
alcohol and drugs" become an option, he says.
The agency has a program specifically
for the brain-injured at the R.E. Blaisdell Addiction Treatment Center in
Orangeburg, N.Y. A counselor there, Steve Oswald, tells of one patient who
dropped out of a general alcoholism program three times before the program for
the brain-injured began, and then successfully completed the program.
In 2006, Mount Sinai's Dr. Gordon
began to work with Common Ground, a New York nonprofit that builds housing for
the homeless. About 70% of 100 homeless people they tested came out in the 10th
percentile or lower for memory, language or attention, says the group's
director of psychiatric services, Jennifer Highley. Questioning uncovered that
82% had a significant blow to the head prior to becoming homeless, usually from
severe parental abuse during childhood. http://louis-j-sheehan.biz/
"People get abused as kids,
making them inattentive in school and sometimes unable to learn," says Ms.
Highley. She says head injury and the emotional fallout from abuse can lead to
alcoholism and addiction, and "that combination creates the inability to
function and often leads to homelessness."
Leonard Robert Palmer published The
Latin Language in 1954. Since then there have been some advances in the Italic
dialects, but it is basically a really good introduction to the linguistics of
Latin. Roughly half the 372-page book is taken up with the linguistic fields of
syntax, phonology, and morphology, and appendices. I've read it through a
couple of times and wanted more. Ad Infinitum - A Biography of Latin, by
Nicholas Ostler, is that more. Especially for the period when the Roman Empire
was dominant, the book is very satisfying. http://louis-j-sheehan.biz/
Since it was published in 2007, it has
all the latest in Etruscan research behind it. Although there are some flaws in
the book, it is, in my opinion, a most satisfying sequel to The Latin Language.
Hibernating bats in New
York and Vermont caves and mines are dying off in thousands from an ailment
that produces a white circle of fungus around their noses. Researchers are
scrambling to find the cause of "white nose syndrome," first noticed
last January. The white ring is a symptom, though not necessarily causal. The
dying bats deplete their fat reserves, and perish months before they should
emerge from hibernation. Bat specialist Alan Hicks, with New York's Department
of Environmental Conservation, called the threat to bats grave and said there was
potential for a "huge spread" among them. Bats can hang together by
the thousands when they hibernate. http://louis-j-sheehan.biz/
State officials are
asking people not to enter caves or mines with bats until researchers
understand how the ailment spreads, though there is no evidence that it is a
threat to humans.
Some so-called fish stories turn out
to be the real thing. In February, New Zealand fishermen plying the waters of
the Ross Sea near Antarctica hauled up a real live sea monster in the very act
of devouring an Antarctic toothfish.
The creature was a colossal squid
(Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni)—yes, bigger than a merely giant squid: It weighed
in at nearly half a ton and measured an estimated 33 feet. “This is the largest
squid ever seen,” says Steve O’Shea, a marine biologist at the Auckland
University of Technology. “But there’s no way we’ve got the maximum specimen.” http://louis-j-sheehan.org/page1.aspx
Remains in the stomach of a sperm
whale caught in 1925 were the first evidence of colossal squid, which are
believed to inhabit the deep, freezing-cold waters around Antarctica. Sperm
whales sometimes bear deep scars that may be the result of violent tussles with
the razor-sharp hook rings of the squids’ tentacles.
When they more closely examine this
recent catch, O’Shea says, they will be able to determine its sex and age,
which should provide a better idea of how large the elusive squid can grow.
O’Shea says he’s excited by the squid carcass but would rather observe one in
the wild: “I want to see it alive more than anything.”
Humpback whales migrate farther than
any other mammal, say researchers who tracked them along their more than
5,000-mile route. But why do they go so far? Although some believe the
humpbacks do it to avoid killer whales, these scientists conclude that water
temperature alone is what guides them. http://louis1j1sheehan1esquire.us/page1.aspx
Researchers at the Cascadia Research
Collective in Olympia, Washington, tracked seven whales—which they recognized
by the markings on their tail flukes—from their summer feeding grounds in the
Antarctic Ocean to their winter breeding grounds off the Pacific coast of
Central America. They also determined sea surface temperatures at similar
breeding grounds all over the world, using satellite readings from the National
Oceanographic Data Center.
The researchers found that humpbacks
reproduce only in warm waters, 70 to 83 degrees Fahrenheit, regardless of
latitude. Coastal upwelling in the Southern Hemisphere results in cool waters
as far north as the equator in the Pacific, driving the whales all the way to
Panama and Costa Rica for the southern winter.
The long journey, contrary to
expectations, may actually end up conserving energy. Calves born in these warm
waters, where they feed exclusively by nursing, can put their energy into
growing rather than into keeping warm. This could make for larger adults that
have more offspring.
“The woods are lovely, dark and deep,”
Robert Frost wrote when moved by the sight of a contemporary forest. But a coal
mine in Illinois has revealed woods that, if not lovelier, are certainly darker
and deeper—and a good bit older.
“You can walk in a single direction
for a long distance, through this bizarre Lord of the Rings, cathedral-like
thing,” says Scott Elrick, a geologist with the Illinois State Geological
Survey, who studied the 300-million-year-old fossilized forest. “As you look
up, you see gray flat shale, impressions on that shale, or entire trees, or
tree stumps. . . . It’s the worm’s-eye view. You’re looking up at what the
forest floor used to look like.” http://louis1j1sheehan.us/
The fossil ceiling, held up by
6-foot-high, 80-foot-wide pillars of coal, goes on for 4 square miles. No other
known preserved forest comes close in size. And thanks to tidal rhythms, the
mud deposited on top of this forest is layered, so years can be counted as with
the rings of a tree. The 15 feet of sediment that blankets the fossils was laid
down in four months—instantaneously in geologic time. The mine runs along a
fault line, leading Elrick to surmise that an earthquake dropped one side of
the fault and caused flooding. Because the subsequent influx of sediment was
“not a catastrophic tsunami thing but more of a slow-motion event, all the
small itty-bitty plants are in place.” http://louis-j-sheehan.de/
The slow pace at which that mud flowed
in preserved an incredible diversity of flora. “We had lycopod trees 6 feet
wide and 100 feet long, ground cover things, sphagnum moss, delicate little
ferns next to these big, huge, honking trees. It’s crazy—we haven’t seen
anything like this before,” Elrick says. At the moment, no one else is likely
to see it either: The mine, now empty of coal, is closed.
When staffers from the New York State
Museum dug out two massive fossils from a Catskills quarry, they solved a
130-year-old mystery. The fossils—a frond-encircled treetop and a long, slender
trunk—have also forced scientists to redraw their mid-Devonian (about 385
million years ago) landscapes to include tall trees.
The mystery was the identity of the
Gilboa stumps—swollen tree-stump fossils discovered in the 1870s in the same
New York county and named for the nearby town. Distinctive ridges at the base
of the latest trunk fossil matched those on the old Gilboa stumps. Named
Wattieza, the tree resembles modern-day palms and has usurped the conifer-like
Archaeopteris as Earth’s oldest tree by some 25 million years, as reported last
April in the journal Nature.
Given their abundance, the Gilboa
stumps have long been thought to represent some kind of forest, an evolutionary
first. Scientists imagined they were big, but not that big, says William Stein,
paleobotanist at Binghamton University in upstate New York. At 26 feet, the
fossilized trunk was three times taller than any known plant from the period.
“We all have to be amazed with the scale of these things,” Stein says.
Size has not been the only surprise.
The type of plant it was—more tree fern than conifer—forces a major rethinking
of “how modern-scale forests actually came into being,” says Stein. “Here we
have a plant that’s big and it’s producing a ton of [leaf] litter.” Dominant
plants like Wattieza set the tone for an ecosystem during the Devonian period,
which is when Earth’s modern ecology was formed, Stein says. “Wherever the
plants go, the animals follow.”
In early 2006, Goldman's
private-equity arm invested 125 billion yen ($1.17 billion) in Sanyo Electric
Co., of Osaka. Goldman, which made the investment with two Japanese financial
institutions, thought it was clear what Sanyo needed to do: focus on strong
areas such as rechargeable batteries and solar panels while selling weaker
units and noncore assets.
The turnaround has been painfully
slow. Sanyo's founding Iue family and the new investors clashed, according to
people familiar with the situation. The family resisted selling many of Sanyo's
far-flung businesses -- ranging from home appliances to a nursing home -- and
has since been ousted.
Sanyo's situation deteriorated further
last month. On Christmas Day, the company announced it had restated its
earnings for six fiscal years.
The revised earnings, which followed
an investigation by Japanese authorities, showed Sanyo had posted big losses at
the parent level in fiscal 2000 and 2001, rather than the profits it had
reported. The Tokyo Stock Exchange placed Sanyo on review for a possible
delisting, though analysts say the company will likely keep its status. Since
Goldman and its partners made their investment, Sanyo's stock has tumbled 57%.
A Sanyo spokesman says the company is
committed to its restructuring and is confident its accounting issues are in
the past.
A spokeswoman for Goldman declined to
comment.
Sanyo's slow rehabilitation and
sliding stock price demonstrate how difficult it is to reinvent Japanese
companies. Many observers thought Sanyo was an obvious choice for restructuring
and that Goldman would navigate the turnaround nimbly. Challenges like those at
Sanyo have discouraged the broader investing community and helped push the
Nikkei Stock Average of 225 companies to its lowest level in more than two
years.
"If you're thinking of big
Anglo-Saxon restructurings with plant closures and swapping of assets, it
doesn't often happen," says Jonathan Allum, a strategist at investment
bank KBC Financial Products. "There's change, but it's slower and it takes
longer."
To be sure, Goldman and its partners,
Daiwa Securities SMBC Co. and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc., aren't
about to lose money. The preferred shares they hold eventually will convert
into common stock at an effective cost of 70 yen a share.
Based on Monday's close of 122 yen,
the investors would earn about 75% on their money. The shares are eligible for
conversion, but the investors have indicated they won't convert them soon.
Goldman's Strategy
Goldman doesn't plan to sell until it
feels the restructuring has been a success, according to people familiar with
the bank's thinking. The New York investment-banking powerhouse wants the deal
-- its biggest in Japan since it put $1.3 billion into Sumitomo Mitsui, a
banking group that is part of the investment syndicate, in 2003 -- to help
attract other Japanese candidates for rehabilitation, a business that is
increasingly active.
Like other Japanese electronics makers,
Sanyo's problems stem from being in too many businesses. While the Goldman-led
investors hoped Sanyo would sell some of those, the company's management has
resisted. In particular, it wants to maintain a strong presence in household
appliances such as washing machines -- which compete against low-cost rivals in
Asia -- as well as in the crowded consumer-electronics space, where it also is
seeing sales shrink. While the company's refrigerators and air conditioners,
among other products, have strong brand awareness in much of the world, they
don't make a profit in some of the countries they operate in, according to
people familiar with the situation.
The company also is hard to manage.
Many of its units have operated almost independently for a long time. The
original management wanted the units to have that freedom so they could adapt
flexibly to changes in the economy and the market.
That has made it difficult to keep
track of all their operations, which exacerbated the company's accounting
difficulties, according to people familiar with the company.
Still, the restructuring is making
some progress. Sanyo has sold its stake in a liquid-crystal-display joint
venture, though it abandoned advanced talks to sell a semiconductor-chip unit.
Last week, the company also signed an agreement to sell its mobile-phone making
business to Kyocera Corp. The price is expected to be about 40 billion yen.
In March, the investors forced out the
Iue family. The new president, a Sanyo veteran named Seiichiro Sano, has the support
of the investor group.
In November, Sanyo announced a
three-year plan that focuses on three main businesses -- energy, electronics
and appliances. The energy business will house Sanyo's two most promising
technologies -- batteries and solar panels -- and is expected to drive the
company's growth.
On Friday, the company said it will
reorganize its reporting lines to give executives at the headquarters direct
responsibility for key divisions.
Sanyo has seen smart growth in its
battery business, which is expected to expand amid growing demand from everyone
from MP3 makers to hybrid automobile makers. Battery revenue rose 16% to 230.4
billion yen -- more than 20% of the company's total sales -- in the fiscal
first half. In that period, the business generated 92% of Sanyo's 24 billion
yen in operating profit, a measure of how much money a business earns before
accounting and tax charges.
And Sanyo has returned to
profitability. The company posted a consolidated net profit of 16 billion yen
in those six months, up from a 3.6 billion yen loss a year earlier. It also
raised its forecast for full-year operating profit.
Sanyo has said it wants to double its
operating profit to 100 billion yen by March 2011, a goal analysts say is
realistic.
Still, analysts worry that a brief
burst of strength doesn't necessarily mean the company will enter a period of
sustainable growth.
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