SAN FRANCISCO, October 2008 – 2009 is a history making year for All-American Rose Selections (AARS, rose.org). For the first time, an AARS award-winning rose was created to support breast cancer awareness. The 2009 AARS award winning rose, Pink Promise has been selected to represent the National Breast Cancer Foundation, to help extend women's lives through education and early detection.

Pink Promise is a hybrid tea rose whose beauty is enhanced by the contrast of its large brilliantly formed pink blossoms set against lush dark green foliage. Along with its stunning appearance, Pink Promise has excellent disease resistance, flourishing in many climates. Pink Promise is a highly fragrant rose which fills any room with a deliciously fruity scent. Pink Promise will officially represent a continual blooming promise of compassion and awareness.

 “I have always been a lover of roses and Pink Promise symbolizes the beauty and hope that we at the National Breast Cancer Foundation wish for all women,” said Janelle Hail, Founder and CEO of the National Breast Cancer Foundation.  “Nothing expresses that hope and beauty more than a rose and I am very touched that the National Breast Cancer Foundation has been chosen for such an honor.”

The National Breast Cancer Foundation’s mantra is “Help for Today…Hope for Tomorrow” and Pink Promise intends to spread that message with each bloom for years to come,” said Jim Coiner of Coiner Nursery who hybridized Pink Promise. “I am so proud we created a rose that is not just easy to maintain and beautiful in the garden but also represents an important cause. I want this rose to be a symbol of hope in gardens across America.”

To be chosen as an “AARS Winner,” the new 2009 roses thrived during two years of comprehensive testing in 23 gardens nationwide. In fact, these roses flourished in 15 categories including the ability to resist disease, overall beauty and general ease of maintenance. Each winning rose bears the AARS red-rose seal of approval that ensures gardeners the plants will grow beyond expectations with little maintenance. Pink Promise was hybridized by Jim Coiner and introduced by Coiner Nursery of LaVerne, Calif.

About National Breast Cancer Foundation (www.nbcf.org)
The National Breast Cancer Foundation extends women's lives through education about breast cancer and early detection. The organization provides hope to women and families affected by breast cancer through a community of caring support and encouragement that enables those diagnosed with breast cancer to have fulfilling lives during their treatment and afterward.

About All-America Rose Selections (www.rose.org)
AARS is a nonprofit association of rose growers and introducers dedicated to bringing exceptional, easy-to-grow roses to gardeners across the county. AARS operates the world’s most rigorous plant trial program via a network of more than 20 official test gardens throughout the country and representing all climate zones. This sophisticated evaluation process results in a new crop of AARS winning roses each year, guaranteeing that only the best make it into your garden. AARS strives to identify roses that are easy to grow, and evaluates plants on more than 15 qualities, including disease resistance, vigor and fragrance.  Look for the AARS red rose logo as a seal of approval identifying the best roses on the market.

Contact:
Julia Young
Ruder Finn/West
(415) 249-6777
youngj@ruderfinn.com

Testing available at sites throughout Louisiana

BATON ROUGE— Take the Test! Take Control!  This is the key message of this year’s National HIV Testing Day, set for June 27.  The day is dedicated to encouraging people to find out their HIV status and helping those who are positive access treatment and reduce the risk of transmitting the virus to others.

In Louisiana, the Department of Health and Hospitals – Office of Public Health’s HIV/AIDS Program and its partners from around the state will work toward promoting the benefits of getting tested early and decreasing the stigma associated with testing in communities at risk.

Test sites throughout the state will be offering extended testing hours on National HIV Testing Day.  A list of activities in each region of the state is attached.  Testing is at no-cost and open to everyone.

Louisiana ranks as fifth highest in the nation in AIDS case rates, with over 16,282 people living with HIV/AIDS at the end of 2008.  In 2007, Baton Rouge ranked third out of 98 metropolitan areas in AIDS case rates; New Orleans ranked second.  Another 5,000 Louisiana residents are estimated to be living with HIV but are unaware of it. 

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that more than one million people in the U.S. are now living with HIV, and approximately 25 percent are unaware of their HIV infection. 

“The decision to take the test is the first step in taking responsibility for your health and the health of others with whom you may be intimately involved,” said Beth Scalco, director of the Office of Public Health HIV/AIDS program.  “The CDC recommends routine HIV screening of adults, adolescents and pregnant women.”

National HIV Testing Day is organized by the National Association of People with AIDS, in partnership with the CDC and other national and local entities across the country.

For more information on National HIV Testing Day events or locations for HIV screening, contact the Louisiana Statewide HIV/AIDS Infoline at 1-800-99AIDS9 (or 1-800-992-4379).

The Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals strives to protect and promote health statewide and to ensure access to medical, preventive and rehabilitative services for all state citizens. To learn more about DHH, visit http://www.dhh.louisiana.gov

Crisis Management Services

For Further Information Contact:
Louisiana Office of Mental Health - State Headquarters
Bienville Building
628 North 4th Street
Baton Rouge, LA 70802
Phone: (225) 342-2540
Fax:  (225) 342-5066

More on this in Health & Fitness 5 Ways to Get Better Sleep 7 Steps to a Good Night's Rest What We Can Learn From Our Dreams

Your mom was right: You need your sleep—maybe more than even she knew. She likely didn't know what the research now tells us—that lack of sleep has been linked to obesity, cancer, heart disease, and low immune response.

Caught a cold lately? Consider this: A recent study in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine showed that if you sleep less than seven hours a night, you have a three times higher risk of getting a cold than if you sleep more than eight hours. Scientists at Carnegie Mellon University asked 153 healthy adult men and women about their sleeping habits, then dosed them with nasal drops containing rhinovirus—one of the viruses responsible for the common cold. The virus took hold more readily among the less-rested. Lack of sleep, the researchers suggest, may have weakened their immune systems.

Other research has linked sleep to heart health. The Journal of the American Medical Association recently published a study showing that people in their 30s and 40s who get less sleep are more likely to develop plaque in the arteries of their hearts early in life.

The study followed 495 people aged 35 to 47 for five years. At the outset, CT scans showed that they were all healthy, with no evidence of heart disease. But five years later, follow-up scans revealed that more than one in 10 had developed calcifications in their arteries—a sign of early heart disease—and there was a clear link to their sleep habits.

Among those who got at least seven hours of sleep, only 6 percent had calcifications. The number rose to 11 percent in those who slept five to seven hours. And for those who got the least amount of sleep—fewer than five hours—it was 27 percent.

In fact, getting just one more hour of sleep, the study's authors say, "decreased the odds of calcifications by 33 percent." The additional hour, they noted, had benefits comparable to reducing systolic blood pressure (the higher number) by 16.5 points.

The researchers cannot explain exactly how lack of sleep contributes to calcium in the heart. They suggest that less sleep may be related to generalized inflammation and to having higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol in the blood.

In recent years, multiple studies have looked at the relationship between sleep and obesity. In one, researchers from the University of Warwick Medical School in Coventry, England, reviewed studies conducted worldwide that examined sleep duration and obesity in more than 600,000 adults and 30,000 children.

In an article published in Sleep, the team concluded that every lost hour of sleep is associated with a discrete increase in BMI (body mass index, the formula that calculates how overweight you are based on your weight and height).

Scientists still have not determined what lack of sleep has to do with putting on weight. Some cite inflammation reactions. The less you sleep, the stronger the trigger for inflammation. Others contend that those who sleep less have other unhealthy lifestyle habits, which may be partly responsible for their weight gain. Yet other experts focus on the activation of the hormones leptin and ghrelin in response to lack of sleep. These hormones can affect appetite and, as a result, increase the amount of food you consume.

How much sleep should you get? There is no magic number. Individual needs vary, and age also plays a role. Use the recommendations below as a guideline.

How many hours do you need?

• Toddlers 12-14 hrs
• Preschoolers 11-13 hrs
• School-age children 10-11 hrs
• Adolescents 9-10 hrs
• Adults 7-9 hrs

Source: The National Sleep Foundation

[ page ]

I knew not 'twas so dire a crime
  To say the word, 'Adieu';
But this shall be the only time
  My lips or heart shall sue.

That wild hill-side, the winter morn,
  The gnarled and ancient tree,
If in your breast they waken scorn,
  Shall wake the same in me.

I can forget black eyes and brows,
  And lips of falsest charm,
If you forget the sacred vows
  Those faithless lips could form.

If hard commands can tame your love,
  Or strongest walls can hold,
I would not wish to grieve above
  A thing so false and cold.

And there are bosoms bound to mine
  With links both tried and strong:
And there are eyes whose lightning shine
  Has warmed and blest me long:

Those eyes shall make my only day,
  Shall set my spirit free,
And chase the foolish thoughts away
  That mourn your memory

[edit] Introduction

Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs? Embosomed for a season in nature, whose floods of life stream around and through us, and invite us by the powers they supply, to action proportioned to nature, why should we grope among the dry bones of the past, or put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe? The sun shines to-day also. There is more wool and flax in the fields. There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own works and laws and worship.

Undoubtedly we have no questions to ask which are unanswerable. We must trust the perfection of the creation so far, as to believe that whatever curiosity the order of things has awakened in our minds, the order of things can satisfy. Every man's condition is a solution in hieroglyphic to those inquiries he would put. He acts it as life, before he apprehends it as truth. In like manner, nature is already, in its forms and tendencies, describing its own design. Let us interrogate the great apparition, that shines so peacefully around us. Let us inquire, to what end is nature?

All science has one aim, namely, to find a theory of nature. We have theories of races and of functions, but scarcely yet a remote approach to an idea of creation. We are now so far from the road to truth, that religious teachers dispute and hate each other, and speculative men are esteemed unsound and frivolous. But to a sound judgment, the most abstract truth is the most practical. Whenever a true theory appears, it will be its own evidence. Its test is, that it will explain all phenomena. Now many are thought not only unexplained but inexplicable; as language, sleep, madness, dreams, beasts, sex.

Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul. Strictly speaking, therefore, all that is separate from us, all which Philosophy distinguishes as the NOT ME, that is, both nature and art, all other men and my own body, must be ranked under this name, NATURE. In enumerating the values of nature and casting up their sum, I shall use the word in both senses; — in its common and in its philosophical import. In inquiries so general as our present one, the inaccuracy is not material; no confusion of thought will occur. Nature, in the common sense, refers to essences unchanged by man; space, the air, the river, the leaf. Art is applied to the mixture of his will with the same things, as in a house, a canal, a statue, a picture. But his operations taken together are so insignificant, a little chipping, baking, patching, and washing, that in an impression so grand as that of the world on the human mind, they do not vary the result.

Nature

To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and what he touches. One might think the atmosphere was made transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime. Seen in the streets of cities, how great they are! If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.

The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible; but all natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence. Nature never wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort her secret, and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection. Nature never became a toy to a wise spirit. The flowers, the animals, the mountains, reflected the wisdom of his best hour, as much as they had delighted the simplicity of his childhood.

When we speak of nature in this manner, we have a distinct but most poetical sense in the mind. We mean the integrity of impression made by manifold natural objects. It is this which distinguishes the stick of timber of the wood-cutter, from the tree of the poet. The charming landscape which I saw this morning, is indubitably made up of some twenty or thirty farms. Miller owns this field, Locke that, and Manning the woodland beyond. But none of them owns the landscape. There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet. This is the best part of these men's farms, yet to this their warranty-deeds give no title.

To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth, becomes part of his daily food. In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows. Nature says — he is my creature, and maugre all his impertinent griefs, he shall be glad with me. Not the sun or the summer alone, but every hour and season yields its tribute of delight; for every hour and change corresponds to and authorizes a different state of the mind, from breathless noon to grimmest midnight. Nature is a setting that fits equally well a comic or a mourning piece. In good health, the air is a cordial of incredible virtue. Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear. In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life — no disgrace, no calamity (leaving me my eyes), which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground — my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space — all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. The name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign and accidental: to be brothers, to be acquaintances, master or servant, is then a trifle and a disturbance. I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature.

The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister, is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me, and I to them. The waving of the boughs in the storm, is new to me and old. It takes me by surprise, and yet is not unknown. Its effect is like that of a higher thought or a better emotion coming over me, when I deemed I was thinking justly or doing right.

Yet it is certain that the power to produce this delight, does not reside in nature, but in man, or in a harmony of both. It is necessary to use these pleasures with great temperance. For, nature is not always tricked in holiday attire, but the same scene which yesterday breathed perfume and glittered as for the frolic of the nymphs, is overspread with melancholy today. Nature always wears the colors of the spirit. To a man laboring under calamity, the heat of his own fire hath sadness in it. Then, there is a kind of contempt of the landscape felt by him who has just lost by death a dear friend. The sky is less grand as it shuts down over less worth in the population.

Apperception

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Look up apperception in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Apperception (Latin ad + percipere, to perceive) has the following meanings:

• In epistemology, it is "the introspective or reflective apprehension by the mind of its own inner states."^[1]

• In psychology, it is "the process by which new experience is assimilated to and transformed by the residuum of past experience of an individual to form a new whole."^[2] In short, it is to perceive new experience in relation to past experience.

Example 1: We see a fire (visual perception). By apperception we correlate the appearance of fire with past experiences of being burned. Having combined present and past experience we realize this is a situation in which we should avoid placing our hand in the fire and being burned.^[3]

Example 2: A rich child and a poor child walking together come across the same ten dollar bill on the sidewalk. The rich child says it is not very much money and the poor child says it is a lot of money. The difference lies in how they apperceive the same event -- the lens of past experience through which they see and value (or devalue) the money.^[4]

In philosophy, Kant distinguished empirical apperception from transcendental apperception. The first is "the consciousness of the concrete actual self with its changing states", the so-called "inner sense". The second is "the pure, original, unchangeable consciousness which is the necessary condition of experience as such and the ultimate foundation of the synthetic unity of experience" (Otto F. Kraushaar in Runes^[5]).