biology

"A leaflet drops through your letter box advising on ways to avoid contracting and spreading . Your bag is searched as you enter a country on the start of your holiday — and there's a fine of $200 for an undeclared apple. You drive across a disinfectant mat on a visit to a local farm. You call the council for advice on the spreading from your neighbour's garden. You switch to eating after reading about the role of industrial farming in the production of risk. You shudder as you remember the smell of . In many different ways you may have encountered events, practices, procedures, narratives and knowledges contained within the complex issue of ‘biosecurity’."

"In a strict sense, biosecurity involves issues dealing directly with s and s, such as prevention of emergence, loss, accidents, theft, or use, and remediation after pathogenic damage. It addresses procedures and practices to help ensure that s and relevant sensitive information remain secure and out of the hands of terrorists. But we have to be practical. We inevitably pay a price for security."

"The secure and continuous production of and are key to U.S. national security. The introduction of foreign-origin or emerging animal, plant, and human diseases by intentional acts of , terrorism, , or criminal activity can lead to severe consequences for domestic and international s, the economic security of the agricultural community, and food security, and the credibility of responsible state and federal agencies. Early public, animal, plant health, law enforcement, and intelligence assessments and investigations of suspected or confirmed intentional threats are critical additions to existing interagency prevention, response, and management protocols. Forensic microbiology, a multidisciplinary science, is essential to the nation's readiness for responding to a potentially criminal, intentional, or otherwise nefarious incident in the agricultural sector (plant or animal), and of eventual supporting attribution and the prosecution of the perpetrators."

"When most physicians are asked about the realm of biosecurity, they often are able to discuss the subject in broad strokes that include concepts such as bioterrorism, , and s. However, the restriction of knowledge of biosecurity solely to these components does not make the concept adequately concrete; consequently, biosecurity remains a floating abstraction with no firm tie to reality, constraining the ability of physicians to fully converse with government policy makers and the public on this vital national security matter. Biosecurity in the Global Age: Biological Weapons, Public Health, and the Rule of Law, by internationally renowned law professors and David Fidler, provides an opportunity to develop a robust understanding of biosecurity and its role in national and international policy."

"Humanity depends on healthy ecosystems: they support or improve our quality of life, and without them, the Earth would be uninhabitable. However, over the past 50 years, fast-growing demands for food, , water and other s have led to an unprecedented degradation of many ecosystem services so that their ability to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted. Therefore, reversing ecosystem degradation is one of the great challenges of sustainable development. This is by no means a trivial task as it requires action by all actors in society, including governments, industry and individuals. One of the difficulties is that, even if there was a universal commitment to sustainable development, it is still unclear what goods, services and activities are sustainable and how they could be identified."

"... what you can be sure of is that many organisms have declined to the point where they can never do the services for us we want — even if the service is the pleasure of seeing a rare bird."

"Nature underpins human well-being in critical ways, especially in health. Nature provides of nutritious crops, purification of drinking water, protection from floods, and climate security, among other well-studied health benefits. A crucial, yet challenging, research frontier is clarifying how nature promotes physical activity for its many mental and physical health benefits, particularly in densely populated cities with scarce and dwindling access to nature."

"The affinities of all the beings of the same class have sometimes been represented by a great tree. I believe this simile largely speaks the truth. … As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever branching and beautiful ramifications."

"For evolutionary biologists there is something very special about the classification of living organisms, something that is not true of any other kind of taxonomy. It follows from the idea of evolution that there is one uniquely correct branching family tree of all living things, and we can base our taxonomy upon it."

"CLOWN: Are these, I pray you, wind instruments? FIRST MUSICIAN: Ay marry are they, sir. CLOWN: O, thereby hangs a tail. FIRSTMUSICIAN: Whereby hangs a tail, sir? CLOWN: Marry, sir, by many a wind instrument that I know."

"A man may break a word with you, sir; and words are but wind; Ay, and break it in your face, so he break it not behind."

"This Nicholas anon leet flee a fart, As greet as it had been a thonder-dent."

"GLENDOWER: I say the earth did shake when I was born. [...] The heavens were all on fire, the earth did tremble. HOTSPUR: O, then the earth shook to see the heavens on fire And not in fear of your nativity. Diseasèd nature oftentimes breaks forth In strange eruptions. Oft the teeming earth Is with a kind of colic pinched and vexed By the imprisoning of unruly wind Within her womb, which for enlargement striving Shakes the old beldam earth and topples down Steeples and moss-grown towers. At your birth Our grandma earth, having this distemperature, In passion shook."

"Awè bleteth after lomb, Lhouth after calvè cu; Bulluc sterteth, buckè verteth, Murie sing cuccu!"

"Pigeons can be mated for life, and this is a great convenience to the fancier, for thus many races may be kept true, though mingled in the same aviary."

"I think the devil will not have me damned, lest the oil that’s in me should set hell on fire; he would never else cross me thus."

"She’s the kitchen wench, and all grease, and I know not what use to put her to but to make a lamp of her and run from her by her own light. I warrant her rags and the tallow in them will burn a Poland winter. If she lives till doomsday, she’ll burn a week longer than the whole world."

"What tempest, I trow, threw this whale, with so many tuns of oil in his belly, ashore at Windsor? How shall I be revenged on him? I think the best way were to entertain him with hope, till the wicked fire of lust have melted him in his own grease."

"Those at whose birth the feet appeared first, instead of the head, which is considered the most difficult and dangerous form of parturition, are called Agrippae, a word formed from aegritudo, or "difficulty," and pedes (feet). But Varro says that the position of children in the womb is with the head lowest and the feet raised up, not according to the nature of a man, but of a tree. For he likens the branches of a tree to the feet and legs, and the stock and trunk to the head. "Accordingly," says he, "when they chanced to be turned upon their feet in an unnatural position, since their arms are usually extended they are wont to be held back, and then women give birth with greater difficulty. For the purpose of averting this danger altars were set up at Rome to the two Carmentes, of whom one was called Postverta, the other Prorsa, named from natural and unnatural births, and their power over them.""

"In three months the fœtus is nearly three inches long, and weighs about three ounces. Hippocrates says, that it is at this time the motion of the male fœtus begins to be felt by its mother; but that those of the female are not felt till after the fourth."

"Yuri (voice-over): At four and a half months a human fetus has a reptile's tail – a remnant of our evolution. You can fight a lot of enemies and survive but if you fight your biology you always lose."

"[Long] live the difference!"

"Man is the will, and Woman the sentiment. In this ship of humanity, Will is the rudder, and Sentiment the sail: when Woman affects to steer, the rudder is only a masked sail."

"Man does, woman is"

"Vive la différence!"

"Munditias mulieribus, viris laborem convenire"

"When men were men, and women were glad of it."

"The husband’s the pilot, the wife is the ocean, He always in danger, she always in motion:"

"Elegance is proper to women but toil to men"

"Mothers shall suckle their children for two whole years; (that is) for those who wish to complete the suckling. The duty of feeding and clothing nursing mothers in a seemly manner is upon the father of the child. No-one should be charged beyond his capacity. A mother should not be made to suffer because of her child, nor should he to whom the child is born (be made to suffer) because of his child. And on the (father's) heir is incumbent the like of that (which was incumbent on the father). If they desire to wean the child by mutual consent and (after) consultation, it is no sin for them; and if ye wish to give your children out to nurse, it is no sin for you, provide that ye pay what is due from you in kindness. Observe your duty to Allah, and know that Allah is Seer of what ye do."

"Anyone offended by breastfeeding is staring too hard."

"Enough for Him whom Cherubim Worship night and day, A breastful of milk And a mangerful of hay;"

"Thy minnie scorns to suckle thee, thy minnie is an elf, Upon a bed of rose’s-leaves she lies and fans herself;"

"The other as goodly sight I saw, was women travayling the way, or toyling at home, carry their Infants about their neckes, and laying the dugges over their shoulders, would give sucke to the Babes behinde their backes, without taking them in their armes: Such kind of breasts, me thinketh were very fit, to be made money bags for East or West-Indian Merchants, being more then halfe a yard long, and as wel wrought, as any Tanner, in the like charge, could ever mollifie such Leather."

"Fill high the bowl with Samian wine! Our virgins dance beneath the shade— I see their glorious black eyes shine; But gazing on each glowing maid, My own the burning tear-drop laves, To think such breasts must suckle slaves."

"A mother who suckles her children gives herself directly, gives her own body to nourish the children, who are unable to live without it. This is love. So, the workman, who for the welfare of others, wears out his body by toil, and thus brings himself to the verge of death, also gives himself, his body, to nourish others. And such love is possible only to the man for whom, between the possibility of the sacrifice of himself and those beings whom he loves, no obstacle to sacrifice exists. The mother who trusts her child to a foster-mother cannot love it; the man occupied in acquiring and keeping riches cannot love."

"Come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood; Stop up the access and passage to remorse, That no compunctious visitings of nature Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between The effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts, And take my milk for gall, ..."

"Inasmuch as peculiarities often appear under domestication in one sex and become hereditarily attached to that sex, the same fact probably occurs under nature, and if so, natural selection will be able to modify one sex in its functional relations to the other sex, or in relation to wholly different habits of life in the two sexes, as is sometimes the case with insects."

"You bid me lift my mean desires From faltering lips and fitful veins To sexless souls, ideal quires, Unwearied voices, wordless strains:"

"With these came they, who from the bordring flood Of old Euphrates to the Brook that parts Egypt from Syrian ground, had general Names Of Baalim and Ashtaroth, those male, These Feminine. For Spirits when they please Can either Sex assume, or both; so soft And uncompounded is their Essence pure, Not ti’d or manacl’d with joynt or limb, Nor founded on the brittle strength of bones, Like cumbrous flesh; but in what shape they choose Dilated or condens’t, bright or obscure, Can execute their aerie purposes, And works of love or enmity fulfill."

"Don't, you know, as the French say, there are three sexes—men, women, and clergymen?"

"The poets feign that when the world began, Both sexes in one body did remain;"

"Moloch whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen!"

"If sex isn't real, there's no same-sex attraction. If sex isn't real, the lived reality of women globally is erased. ... [E]rasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives."

"... There are three creatures, the squirrel, the , and the bird called the (sitta Europæa), which live much on hazel nuts; and yet they open them each in a different way. The first, after rasping off the small end, splits the shell in two with his long fore-teeth, as a man does this with his knife; the second nibbles a hole with his teeth, so regular as if drilled with a , ...and yet so small that one would wonder how the kernel can be extracted through it; while the last picks an irregular ragged hole with its bill: but as this artist has no paws to hold the nut firm while he pierces it, like an adroit workman, he fixes it, as it were in a vice, in some cleft of a tree, or in some crevice; when, standing over it he perforates the stubborn shell."

"Hazelnut (Corylus avellana L.) belongs to the family and is a popular tree nut worldwide, mainly distributed in the coasts of the Black Sea region of Turkey, southern Europe (Italy, Spain, Portugal, and France), and in some areas of the United States (Oregon and Washington). Hazelnut is also cultivated in some other countries such as New Zealand, China, Azerbaijan, Chile, Iran, and Georgia, among others. Turkey is the world’s largest producer of hazelnuts, contributing ∼74% to the total global production, followed by Italy (∼16%), the United States (∼4%), and Spain (∼3%). Other countries contribute ∼3% to the total production ... Hazelnut is, therefore, the most popular tree nut in Europe. Several commercial hazelnut varieties are available ..."

"‘Jefferson’ is a new hazelnut (Corylus avellana L.) cultivar for the in-shell market. It was released by the Oregon Agricultural Experiment Station in Jan. 2009 as a replacement for ‘Barcelona’. It combines complete resistance to (EFB) caused by the fungus Anisogramma anomala (Peck) E. Müller with high nut yield, large nut size, and good kernel quality. Compared with ‘Barcelona’, Oregon's leading cultivar, ‘Jefferson’ has smaller trees, higher nut yield, and much higher nut yield efficiency. Pellicle removal ratings are better than ‘Barcelona’, and kernel quality is suitable for use in chocolate products and baked goods, although kernel size is larger than ideal for the kernel market. ‘Jefferson’ is recommended for Oregon's Willamette Valley and other areas with a similar climate."

"Sex segregation directly harms many intersex and transgender athletes and would-be athletes. But, these policies also harm many cisgender people who do not see a place for themselves in certain sports because they sense and are told by parents, peers, teachers, and coaches that they do not measure up to the normative masculinities and femininities that we attach to those sports. … [T]he material evidence of binary sex is not always visible, measurable, or stable over time."

"I think I've done quite a good job of integrating male and female attributes. I've since discovered that so many people who don't have intersex conditions do just the same after a midlife crisis. … What I don't understand is why people who are normally so willing to accept that each human being is unique, are suddenly so afraid of variation when faced with the fact that between the conventional extremes of what we understand as being male and female there are endless shades of variety."

"Trans feminists seek to interrogate society’s ingrained assumptions about the social and cultural meanings we ascribe to biology. They also generally incorporate an analysis of intersex people, who do not fit this reductive model, and who have suffered historical and ongoing mistreatment at the hands of a medical establishment obsessed with imposing binary biological sex on to bodies that don’t ‘fit’. The experiences of trans and intersex people show us that not all humans fit perfectly into two clear-cut categories of biological sex; indeed, the belief there are two separate sex categories is itself an erasure of sex variations that occur either naturally or through medical modification."