Peripheral Arterial Disease free essay sample

A discussion on peripheral arterial disease, also known as PAD, a chronic condition in which arteries that supply blood to the legs become blocked by a buildup of plaque. The following paper examines the symptoms, diagnosis and treatment of PAD, a form of atherosclerosis, a progressive disease characterized by fatty deposits in the inner layer of the arteries, which gradually narrows the artery. The writer particularly focus on Raynauds one of the forms of PAD which causes fingers and toes to turn blue and white with cold . Its important to remember that many people have PAD without having any symptoms. Such individuals are at higher risk for a stroke or heart attack. Research indicates that the risk for dying from heart disease is six times higher for people who have PAD, and PAD patients have a 30 percent risk of dying from a cardiovascular-related problem within five years after the initial diagnosis of PAD (University of Penn Health System). We will write a custom essay sample on Peripheral Arterial Disease or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page It is essential that anyone who has health problems or a lifestyle that could lead to PAD be aware of the symptoms of this potentially life-threatening disease, as see a doctor for any problems. Peripheral arterial disease can be controlled in most cases. People only need to be aware of the signs.

The Types Of Ruin A Revolution In Animal Farm Essays - British Films

The Types Of Ruin A Revolution In Animal Farm Essays - British Films The Types Of Ruin A Revolution In Animal Farm The Types to Ruin a Revolution in Animal Farm There are the infamous examples of Stalin and Hitler in history in which someone takes abuse of power for their own personal gain. George Orwell emphasizes this idea of the abuse of power through animals in his novel Animal Farm. The characters of Napoleon, Squealer, the dogs, and Boxer all symbolize important types of people in the making and breaking of a revolution. Animal Farm contains the theme that there will always be some group of people who will contaminate an idealistic revolution for their own gain. The main character in Animal Farm who takes advantage of the stupider animals and completely ruins the Revolution is Napoleon, a pig. Napoleon loves power and chases away another pig with power, Snowball, so he can be the sole ruler. Napoleon symbolizes the people of the world who will do anything to be in control. One especially famous example of this type of person is the character Macbeth from William Shakespeare's Macbeth. Macbeth murdered the king, killed innocent people, and sacrificed his morals in order to become king. This type of person is needed in order for an idealistic revolution to be corrupted. Through the character of Napoleon, George Orwell emphasizes that there will always be someone willing to commit heinous deeds in order to become leader, dictator, or tyrant The pigs of the farm are much smarter then the rest of the barn animals and take up the job as the thinkers and planners. The other animals are the workers and diligently believe anything the pigs tell them. The abuse of power begins when they notice that the apples and milk start disappearing. Sqealer, the public speaker pig, explains this to the worker animals: You do not imagine, I hope, that we pigs are doing this in a spirit of selfishness and privilege? Many of us actually dislike milk and apples. I dislike them myself. Our sole object in taking these things is to preserve our health. Milk and apples (this has been proved by Science, comrades) contain substances absolutely necessary to the well-being of a pig. We pigs are brainworkers. The whole management and organization of this farm depend on us. Day and night we are watching over your welfare. It is for your sake that we drink that milk and eat those apples. Do you know what would happen if we pigs failed in our duty? Jones would come back! Yes, Jones would come back! (p52) This is only the only the beginning, as the pigs keep taking more for themselves and leaving less for the rest of the animals. Eventually the worker animals are worse of then when they were with Mr. Jones. They are worked to death and on the verge of starvation because of the greed of the pigs. Orwell uses this suffering as an example of the extent some people will go to for personal gain. As any reader can see, Squealer had an important part in this process. Squealer symbolizes the public relations man who will say anything to get what he wants - kind of like a lawyer. Squealer is the most handy with words and can convince the worker animals of anything. He is even able to continually convince them that they remember things wrong. Squealer alters the past to the convenience of his idol, Napoleon. A squealer is needed for any man or animals rise to power, to brainwash the public into believing their leader is god. Orwell uses the character of Squealer to prove that there will always be a group of people who take a Revolution and corrupt it for their own personal gain. And then there are the dogs. Early in the novel , while Snowball is working on literacy for the entire farm, Napoleon steals some puppies sand raises them to be his guard dogs. The dogs symbolizes the Secret Police or law enforces that are needed to force the animal workers, or public, to do as the leader demands. The dogs are responsible for Napoleons rise to power. They look up to him as an master: It was noticed that they wagged their tails to him as the other dogs had been used to do to Mr. Jones. (p68) The dogs are also the type of people who can be easily brainwashed into believing that their master is God. They are the ones who do the dirty work. It is partly the terrorism of the dogs

Sainburys Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Sainburys - Essay Example 92). Sainsbury’s was founded in 1869. Today it has over 1,000 stores, including 440 convenience stores, and employs around 150,000 employees. Sainsbury plc had revenues for the full year 2012 of 22.29bn. This was 5.65% above the prior years results. Sainsbury is one of the top food retailers in the UK. From the data above it can be easily understood that the company is growing leaps and bounds. However in the last couple of years just like most of the companies, Sainsbury also had to combat the economic downturn. A part from the financial aspect, Sainsbury also needs to adapt to the changing consumer behaviour. The study looks to deliver a probable marketing plan for the company keeping economic volatility in mind. PEST stands for political, economic, social and technological. All these factors are treated as the external of macro environmental factors. Such factors cannot be controlled by the company. However, these factors tend to have a direct on the business strategy of the companies (Kotler, 2001, p. 25). The political factors of UK are likely to have significant effect on the performance of Sainsbury. Presently the government’s debts and the consumer debts are quite high. This has affected the buying behaviour of the consumers. Therefore the company not only has to operate in such tricky market conditions, but also has to develop business gradually. Economic factors affect the businesses highly as these factors influence the cost, demand, profitability and price. During the present economic slowdown the unemployment rate and inflation in food prices are two factors to look out for. Due to the dual affect of inflation and high unemployment rate, the demand for Sainsbury products may decrease. This may slow down the production of food products creating a viscous circle. Therefore the company should look to focus on expansion into new growing markets to manage the risks related to the slowdown of the economy. Today the

Information management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words - 2

Information management - Essay Example Its primary focus in the past years has been becoming a wellness, health and a nutrition company through the new acquisitions and existing brands (Dickersbach et al. 2009, p181). The brand portfolio of Nestle covers almost all the beverage and food categories. These categories include nutrition (healthcare, infant, weight and performance management), dairy and milk products, breakfast cereals, ice cream, beverages, coffee, chocolate, culinary products (cooking aids, prepared dishes, sauces), pet care, bottled water, and confectionery. Many of these brands have category leadership in the local and global market. Among the international best-known brands include Nestea, Purina, Nescafe, Maggi, Nestle and Buitoni. Revenues for Nestle exceeded 100 billion United States dollars for the year 2007 (Dickersbach et al. 2009, p181). The company is run through a decentralized group of companies that promote and rely on the organizational learning of the Group. The headquarter offers guidance, consultancy, and leadership to the local and regional organizations. Identification of the opportunities within the Businesses and Markets are done by the central competence units and they help the local management in the improvement of business performance (Dickersbach et al. 2009, p181). The company has numerous supply chains, a number of methods for predicting demand and infinite variety of ways of collecting payments and invoicing customers. The complexity of these processes has become very difficult to manage and they have been a bottleneck for the company. The Nestlà ©Ã¢â‚¬â„¢s Chief Executive, Peter Brabeck standardized the operations around the world in 2003 in order to overcome some of the difficulties faced by the company. GLOBE (Global Business Excellence programme) was then initiated and its aim was to bring all the Nestlà ©Ã¢â‚¬â„¢s operations to utilize a single computer system for all of its financial, manufacturing and sales operations (Barnes

Television Essay Example for Free

Television Essay Disadvantages of television: 1. Television is a sort of time-consuming thing Instead of spending time on meaningful activities, many people tend to watch TV all day long. They waste time in watching their favorite programs on TV. This habit distracts them from their work, study, relationships and so on. 2. Television is a health hazard to people, especially to children Spending too much time on watching television can cause many diseases such as refractive error of the eyes (especially nearsightedness), obesity, heart attack, spine disease, mental disorder, etc. According to a report of Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne, Australia, which was published on Circle magazine, people who watch TV for more than 4 hour a day have a higher risk (80%) of dying from heart disease compared with those who watch less than two hours. In addition, sitting in front of TV for a long time without doing any exercise, and eating unhealthy food (snack, pizza, chip, etc) leads to obesity easily. Furthermore, radiation, X-rays, electronic beam, and other rays generated from TV have bad influence on users’ health, especially their eyes. 3. Television also broadcasts some inappropriate programs Even though many programs provide useful things for people, there are still some which have bad influence on their psychology, especially children and teenagers. More and more violent and â€Å"hot† scenes have appeared on TV. Children and teenagers, who have not completely developed awareness and psychology yet, tend to imitate characters’ behaviors on TV. So, that is not a good idea to let children and teenagers watch these things. 4. Television helps spread false advertisements Not all advertisements appearing on TV are reliable. Many companies are willing to pay a large amount of money to have their products been be popular on TV, even low-quality products. As you can see, the people in ads are always attractive: women are always very beautiful and sexy; men are always handsome and manly; and they always love a particular product which seems very good. Therefore, customers (usually housewives) will be attracted by these ads and desire to own it; they are likely to spend money on those products. disadvantage of television** The television has a lot of advantages, but like all scientific inventions, while it provides a lot of entertainment and knowledge to us it also has some disadvantages. The main disadvantage of television is that by providing indoor entertainment to people it has decreased the level of social interaction between people. It has especially adversely affected family ties, because while in earlier years when there was no television, children and parents spent more quality time together, now they are just glued in front of the television and dont give a lot of time to each other. It can also influence kids in a bad way if they watch the programs full of violence and crime, but then that can be monitored by the parents and they can see to it that they do not watch anything that influences them negatively. As I see it, the major disadvantage of television is that it has weakened family bonds. *** It can cause you to gain weight Its pretty intuitive that spending the evening parked in front of the T.V. doesnt burn a lot deal of calories. In fact, sitting quietly in front of the television set burns a paltry 68 calories per hour. Not exactly a formula for good health and fitness. Combine that with the high calorie snacks most people consume while watching that suspenseful television sit-com and you can see how watching T.V. can quickly pack on the pounds. One smart move not many people make is to exercise while they watch television. If more people parked an exercise bike in front of the T.V. instead of a recliner, the world would be a healthier place. ***It wastes time Television watchers should keep a log of the hours they choose to sit in front of the boob tube. After they experience the shock of realizing how much time theyve wasted, they could then make a list of ways to use that time more productively. Some suggestions might be: spend time with family, friends, and pets; start a part-time business; meditate or pray; play a sport; or pick up a hobby. They just might discover theres more to life than whats happening on the latest reality show. You can bet when people come to the end of their life they dont regret not having watched more T.V. 5.Watching TV has become bad habbits of human being. We require some kind of etiquate to educate the human beings for watching TV execessively without getting the advantages of the same. We have lost all our old heritage to socialise the environment. Watching TV does not involve the person participation actively. In sub-conscious mind we just go on watching the subject without involving our active mind. We are also loosing the social activities as well as outdoor activities which gives boosting effect on human mind. We should generate awareness among the people about the disadvantage of watching the TV. Although this great invention of science has played major role in human life to give more comfort as well as information human requires for his developement but in my view disadvantages has also played vital role to destroy of old age heritage which in fact scientifically proven that outdoor as social activities gives metal and physical satisfaction. As we are well our that our encestors have develope sense of visualising the events happening at far distant places. This has happend because human has practiced his body in such a that they can see adn visualise the thing before the events take place. But TV may not give this opportunity to develope the human mind. Watching TV has become habbit and some time we do not prefer to visit relatives and friends house and also do not prefer to be visited by them. We would like to generate the awareness in the human being to visulaise this drawback in order to avoid untoward incident to happen in futre and repent on this activity at later date. We must develope and generate a group who can devote the time to make people aware about the outcome of this activity. *..* It Can Cause You To Gain Weight It’s pretty intuitive that spending the evening parked in front of the T.V. doesn’t burn a lot deal of calories. In fact, sitting quietly in front of the television set burns a paltry 68 calories per hour. Not exactly a formula for good health and fitness. Combine that with the high calorie snacks most people consume while watching that suspenseful television sit-com and you can see how watching T.V. can quickly pack on the pounds. One smart move not many people make is to exercise while they watch television. If more people parked an exercise bike in front of the T.V. instead of a recliner, the world would be a healthier place. *..* It Wastes Time Television watchers should keep a log of the hours they choose to sit in front of the â€Å"boob tube†. After they experience the shock of realizing how much time they’ve wasted, they could then make a list of ways to use that time more productively. Some suggestions might be: spend time with family, friends, and pets; start a part-time business; meditate or pray; play a sport; or pick up a hobby. They just might discover there’s more to life than what’s happening on the latest reality show. You can bet when people come to the end of their life they don’t regret not having watched more T.V. *..* It Makes You Dumber To be assured of this, all you have to do is tune in to some of the popular reality shows to witness the dumbing down of America. A study conducted in 2005 and published in the Archives of Adolescent and Pediatric Medicine showed that kids who had their own television set scored lower on mathematics tests. Several other studies have supported this premise. It’s important to set a good example for the kids of today by encouraging them to read and engage in the arts rather than park themselves in front of the television set. *..* It Promotes Passivity Television allows its audiences to live vicariously through the situations and lives of fictional characters. It’s far easier for a television viewer to experience the thrill of a television character’s success than it is to go out and create success on their own terms. This is particularly detrimental to children and teenagers who need to develop a strong sense of self and a purpose in life. Television encourages passivity. There’s no doubt that television view does have its benefits if carefully selected programs are viewed. It’s a way to stay informed about what’s happening in the world. Plus, there are variety of channels that offer educational programming where you learn new skills ranging from cooking to crafts. The trick is to not let television overtake your life or the life of your family to the exclusion of other more important activities. Let television be a treat rather than a daily ritual. CHILDREN from disadvantaged families watch more television than children from higher socio-economic backgrounds, research has found. The joint study by the Australian Institute of Family Studies and the University of New England also found that a third of Australian children aged over two are spending more than the recommended two hours a day watching TV. AIFS researcher Dr Ben Edwards said while childrens television watching was low in the first year, by two to three years of age, television occupied a significant portion of a childs time, particularly for those from lower socio-economic families. At critical ages for child development, when children are under three years old, the more disadvantaged the childs background, the more likely it was that they would watch television for more than two hours, he said.By the time children were aged between four and five, the proportion of children from disadvantaged backgrounds watching more than three hours of television a day was more than double that of children from advantaged backgrounds. The research also found that children from higher socio-economic backgrounds spent more time reading. Among the most disadvantaged families, 41-47 per cent of children were not read to at all, compared with only 15-22 per cent of children in the most advantaged families. Dr Edwards said the findings could help explain the means through which social advantage is transmitted across generations because, he argues, longer TV viewing can encroach on other learning and developmental opportunities such as reading and imaginative play. Four years ago, Carmel and Jesper Nielsen, from Prahran, began restricting their childrens TV viewing to weekends only. Their children now watch about six hours of TV a week. Computer games are limited to two hours a week. Basically, we felt it was displacing that creative and imaginative play as well as physical activity and, just as importantly, when they were watching TV there was very little family interaction, Ms Nielsen said. She said while it was initially difficult to reduce their childrens TV viewing, they are now just as happy to play with their toys or play sport outside.

Edwin Muirs Poem The Horses Essay -- Horses Edwin Muir Essays

Edwin Muir's Poem "The Horses" "The Horses" is a poem by Edwin Muir. It tells the story of a world ravaged by nuclear war, where the few survivors live hopelessly in a desolate reality. Their outlook is changed by the arrival of the horses, a relic of the past which lets them rediscover humanity's bond with nature. "The Horses", as well as being a very beautiful and moving poem, has an important message to convey. The poet uses various methods to illustrate this. Throughout the poem, there are many biblical references. The nuclear war is described as a "seven days war", which is an allusion to Genesis, the creation and destruction of the world in seven days. This idea is furthered by the use of the phrases "our fathers' land" and "our fathers' time". The word 'covenant' has connotations of the 'Arc of Covenant', the Israelites sacred vow to God. And later in the poem, the horses are described as appearing from their own 'Eden', another biblical reference. This illustrates the importance of the poem's subject matter, by introducing a parallel to the Bible. It bears a resemblance to when God flooded the world, to wipe out all sin and allow the few on Noah's Ark to rebuild a new, better world. This poem also shows the totality of nuclear war. Although there are survivors, the ammount of death and destruction is immense. It takes so little time to destroy the world, in a way a punishment for mankind's vanity and arrogance. Technology, for so long thought to be a d...

Fluke, or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings Chapter 1~2

For Jim Darling, Flip Nicklin, and Meagan Jones: extraordinary people who do extraordinary work Fluke (flook) 1. A stroke of good luck 2. A chance occurrence; an accident 3. A barb or barbed head, as on a harpoon 4. Either of the two horizontally flattened divisions of the tail of a whale PART ONE The Song An ocean without its unnamed monsters would be like a completely dreamless sleep. – JOHN STEINBECK The scientific method is nothing more than a system of rules to keep us from lying to each other. – KEN NORRIS CHAPTER ONE Big and Wet Next Question? Amy called the whale punkin. He was fifty feet long, wider than a city bus, and weighed eighty thousand pounds. One well-placed slap of his great tail would reduce the boat to fiberglass splinters and its occupants to red stains drifting in the blue Hawaiian waters. Amy leaned over the side of the boat and lowered the hydrophone down on the whale. â€Å"Good morning, punkin,† she said. Nathan Quinn shook his head and tried not to upchuck from the cuteness of it, of her, while surreptitiously sneaking a look at her bottom and feeling a little sleazy about it. Science can be complex. Nate was a scientist. Amy was a scientist, too, but she looked fantastic in a pair of khaki hiking shorts, scientifically speaking. Below, the whale sang on, the boat vibrated with each note. The stainless rail at the bow began to buzz. Nate could feel the deeper notes resonate in his rib cage. The whale was into a section of the song they called the  «green » themes, a long series of whoops that sounded like an ambulance driving through pudding. A less trained listener might have thought that the whale was rejoicing, celebrating, shouting howdy to the world to let everyone and everything know that he was alive and feeling good, but Nate was a trained listener, perhaps the most trained listener in the world, and to his expert ears the whale was saying – Well, he had no idea what in the hell the whale was saying, did he? That's why they were out there floating in that sapphire channel off Maui in a small speedboat, sloshing their breakfasts around at seven in the morning: No one knew why the humpbacks sang. Nate had been listening to them, observing them, photographing them, and poking them with stick s for twenty-five years, and he still had no idea why, exactly, they sang. â€Å"He's into his ribbits,† Amy said, identifying a section of the whale's song that usually came right before the animal was about to surface. The scientific term for this noise was  «ribbits » because that's what they sounded like. Science can be simple. Nate peeked over the side and looked at the whale that was suspended head down in the water about fifty feet below them. His flukes and pectoral fins were white and described a crystal-blue chevron in the deep blue water. So still was the great beast that he might have been floating in space, the last beacon of some long-dead space-traveling race – except that he was making croaky noises that would have sounded more appropriate coming out of a two-inch tree frog than the archaic remnant of a superrace. Nate smiled. He liked ribbits. The whale flicked his tail once and shot out of Nate's field of vision. â€Å"He's coming up,† Nate said. Amy tore off her headphones and picked up the motorized Nikon with the three-hundred-millimeter lens. Nate quickly pulled up the hydrophone, allowing the wet cord to spool into a coil at his feet, then turned to the console and started the engine. Then they waited. There was a blast of air from behind them and they both spun around to see the column of water vapor hanging in the air, but it was far, perhaps three hundred meters behind them – too far away to be their whale. That was the problem with the channel between Maui and Lanai where they worked: There were so many whales that you often had a hard time distinguishing the one you were studying from the hundreds of others. The abundance of animals was a both a blessing and a curse. â€Å"That our guy?† Amy asked. All the singers were guys. As far as they knew anyway. The DNA tests had proven that. â€Å"Nope.† There was another blow to their left, this one much closer. Nate could see the white flukes or blades of his tail under the water, even from a hundred meters away. Amy hit the stop button on her watch. Nate pushed the throttle forward and they were off. Amy braced a knee against the console to steady herself, keeping the camera pointed toward the whale as the boat bounced along. He would blow three, maybe four times, then fluke and dive. Amy had to be ready when the whale dove to get a clear shot of his flukes so he could be identified and cataloged. When they were within thirty yards of the whale, Nate backed the throttle down and held them in position. The whale blew again, and they were close enough to catch some of the mist. There was none of the dead fish and massive morning-mouth smell that they would have encountered in Alaska. Humpbacks didn't feed while they were in Hawaii. The whale fluked and Amy fired off two quick frames with the Nikon. â€Å"Good boy,† Amy said to the whale. She hit the lap timer button on her watch. Nate cut the engine and the speedboat settled into the gentle swell. He threw the hydrophone overboard, then hit the record button on the recorder that was bungee-corded to the console. Amy set the camera on the seat in front of the console, then snatched their notebook out of a waterproof pouch. â€Å"He's right on sixteen minutes,† Amy said, checking the time and recording it in the notebook. She wrote the time and the frame numbers of the film she had just shot. Nate read her the footage number off the recorder, then the longitude and latitude from the portable GPS (global positioning system) device. She put down the notebook, and they listened. They weren't right on top of the whale as they had been before, but they could hear him singing through the recorder's speaker. Nate put on the headphones and sat back to listen. That's how field research was. Moments of frantic activity followed by long periods of waiting. (Nate's first ex-wife had once commented that their sex life could be described in exactly the same way, but that was after they had separated, and she was just being snotty.) Actually, the wait here in Maui wasn't bad – ten, fifteen minutes at a throw. When he'd been studying right whales in the North Atlantic, Nate had sometimes waited weeks before he found a whale to study. Usually he liked to use the downtime (literally, the time the whale was down) to think about how he should've gotten a real job, one where you made real money and had weekends off, or at least gotten into a branch of the field where the results of his work were more palpable, like sinking whaling ships – a pirate. You know, security. Today Nate was actively trying not to watch Amy put on sunscreen. Amy was a snowflake in the land of the tanned. Most whale researchers spent a great deal of time outdoors, at sea. They were, for the most part, an intrepid, outdoorsy bunch who wore wind- and sunburn like battle scars, and there were few who didn't sport a semipermanent sunglasses raccoon tan and sun-bleached hair or a scaly bald spot. Amy, on the other hand, had milk-white skin and straight, short black hair so dark that the highlights appeared blue in the Hawaiian sun. She was wearing maroon lipstick, which was so wildly inappropriate and out of character for this setting that it approached the comical and made her seem like the goth geek of the Pacific, which was, in fact, one of the reasons her presence so disturbed Nate. (He reasoned: A well-formed bottom hanging in space is just a well-formed bottom, but you hook up a well-formed bottom to a whip-smart woman and apply a dash of the awkward and what you've got yo urself is†¦ well, trouble.) Nate did not watch her rub the SPF50 on her legs, over her ankles and feet. He did not watch her strip to her bikini top and apply the sunscreen over her chest and shoulders. (Tropical sun can fry you even through a shirt.) Nate especially did not notice when she grabbed his hand, squirted lotion into it, then turned, indicating that he should apply it to her back, which he did – not noticing anything about her in the process. Professional courtesy. He was working. He was a scientist. He was listening to the song of Megaptera novaeangliae (â€Å"big wings of New England,† a scientist had named the whale, thus proving that scientists drink), and he was not intrigued by her intriguing bottom because he had encountered and analyzed similar data in the past. According to Nate's analysis, research assistants with intriguing bottoms turned into wives 66.666 percent of the time, and wives turned into ex-wives exactly 100 percent of the time – plus or minus 5 percent factored for post-divorce comfort sex.) â€Å"Want me to do you?† Amy asked, holding out her preferred sunscreen-slathering hand. You just don't go there, thought Nate, not even in a joke. One incorrect response to a line like that and you could lose your university position, if you had one, which Nate didn't, but still†¦ You don't even think about it. â€Å"No thanks, this shirt has UV protection woven in,† he said, thinking about what it would be like to have Amy do him. Amy looked suspiciously at his faded WE LIKE WHALES CONFERENCE 89 T-shirt and wiped the remaining sunscreen on her leg. † ‘Kay,† she said. â€Å"You know, I sure wish I could figure out why these guys sing,† Nate said, the hummingbird of his mind having tasted all the flowers in the garden to return to that one plastic daisy that would just not give up the nectar. â€Å"No kidding?† Amy said, deadpan, smiling. â€Å"But if you figure it out, what would we do tomorrow?† â€Å"Show off,† Nate said, grinning. â€Å"I'd be typing all day, analyzing research, matching photographs, filing song tapes –  » â€Å"Bringing us doughnuts,† Nate added, trying to help. Amy continued, counting down the list on her fingers, â€Å"- picking up blank tapes, washing down the trucks and the boats, running to the photo lab – ; â€Å"Not so fast,† Nate interrupted. â€Å"What, you're going to deprive me the joy of running to the photo lab while you bask in scientific glory?† â€Å"No, you can still go to the photo lab, but Clay hired a guy to wash the trucks and boats.† A delicate hand went to her forehead as she swooned, the southern belle in hiking shorts, taken with the vapors. â€Å"If I faint and fall overboard, don't let me drown.† â€Å"You know, Amy,† Nate said as he undressed the crossbow, â€Å"I don't know how it was at Boston doing survey, but in behavior, research assistants are only supposed to bitch about the humiliating grunt work and lowly status to other research assistants. It was that way when I was doing it, it was that way going back centuries, it has always been that way. Darwin himself had someone on the Beagle to file dead birds and sort index cards.† â€Å"He did not. I've never read anything about that.† â€Å"Of course you didn't. Nobody writes about research assistants.† Nate grinned again, celebration for a small victory. He realized he wasn't working up to standards on managing this research assistant. His partner, Clay, had hired her almost two weeks ago, and by now he should have had her terrorized. Instead she was working him like a Starbucks froth slave. â€Å"Ten minutes,† Amy said, checking the timer on her watch. â€Å"You going to shoot him?† â€Å"Unless you want to?† Nate notched the arrow into the crossbow. He tucked the windbreaker they used to  «dress » the crossbow under the console. It was very politically incorrect to carry a weapon for shooting whales through the crowded Lahaina harbor, so they carried it inside the windbreaker, making it appear that they had a jacket on a hanger. Amy shook her head violently. â€Å"I'll drive the boat.† â€Å"You should learn to do it.† â€Å"I'll drive the boat,† Amy said. â€Å"No one drives the boat.† No one but Nate drove the boat. Granted, the Constantly Baffled was only a twenty-three-foot Mako speedboat, and an agile four-year-old could pilot it on a calm day like today. Still, no one else drove the boat. It was a man thing, being inherently uncomfortable with the thought of a woman operating a boat or a television remote control. â€Å"Up sounds,† Nate said. They had a recording of the full sixteen-minute cycle of the song now – all the way through twice, in fact. He stopped the recorder and pulled up the hydrophone, then started the engine. â€Å"There,† Amy said, pointing to the white fins and flukes moving under the water. The whale blew only twenty yards off the bow. Nate buried the throttle. Amy was wrenched off her feet and just caught herself on the railing next to the wheel console as the boat shot forward. Nate pulled up on the right side of the whale, no more than ten yards away as the whale came up for the second time. He steadied the wheel with his hip, pulled up the crossbow, and fired. The bolt bounced off the whale's rubbery back, the hollow surgical steel arrowhead taking out a cookie-cutter plug of skin and blubber the size of a pencil eraser before the wide plastic tip stopped the penetration. The whale lifted his tail out of the water and snapped it in the air, making a sound like a giant knuckle cracking as the massive tail muscles contracted. â€Å"He's pissed,† Nate said. â€Å"Let's go for a measurement.† â€Å"Now?† Amy questioned. Normally they would wait for another dive cycle. Obviously Nate thought that because of their taking the skin sample the whale might start traveling. They could lose him before getting a measurement. â€Å"Now. I'll shoot, you work the rangefinder.† Nate backed off the throttle a bit, so he would be able to catch the entire tail fluke in the camera frame when the whale dove. Amy grabbed the laser rangefinder, which looked very much like a pair of binoculars made for a cyclops. By taking a distance measurement from the animal's tail with the rangefinder and comparing the size of the tail in the frame of the picture, they could measure the relative size of the entire animal. Nate had come up with an algorithm that, so far, gave them the length of a whale with 98 percent accuracy. Just a few years ago they would've had to have been in an aircraft to measure the length of a whale. â€Å"Ready,† Amy said. The whale blew and arched its back into a high hump as he readied for the dive (the reason whalers had named them humpbacks in the first place). Amy fixed the rangefinder on the whale's back; Nate trained the camera's telephoto on the same spot, and the autofocus motors made tiny adjustments with the movement of the boat. The whale fluked, raising its tail high in the air, and there, instead of the distinct pattern of black-and-white markings by which all humpbacks were identified, were – spelled out in foot-high black letters across the white – the words BITE ME! Nate hit the shutter button. Shocked, he fell into the captain's chair, pulling back the throttle as he slumped. He let the Nikon sag in his lap. â€Å"Holy shit!† Nate said. â€Å"Did you see that?† â€Å"See what? I got seventy-three feet,† Amy said, pulling down the rangefinder. â€Å"Probably seventy-six from where you are. What were your frame numbers?† She was reaching for the notebook as she looked back at Nate. â€Å"Are you okay?† â€Å"Fine. Frame twenty-six, but I missed it,† he lied. His mind was shuffling though a huge stack of index cards, searching a million article abstracts he had read to find some explanation for what he'd just seen. It couldn't possibly have been real. The film would show it. â€Å"You didn't see any unusual markings when you did the ID photo?† â€Å"No, did you?† â€Å"No, never mind.† â€Å"Don't sweat it, Nate. We'll get it next time he comes up,† Amy said. â€Å"Let's go in.† â€Å"You don't want to try again for a measurement?† To make the data sample complete, they needed an ID photo, a recording of at least a full cycle of the song, a skin sample for DNA and toxin figures, and a measurement. The morning was wasted without the measurement. â€Å"Let's go back to Lahaina,† Nate said, staring down at the camera in his lap. â€Å"You drive.† CHAPTER TWO Maui No Ka Oi (Maui Is the Best) At first it was that old trickster Maui who cast his fishing line from his canoe and pulled the islands up from the bottom of the sea. When he was done fishing, he looked at those islands he had pulled up, and smack in the middle of the chain was one that was made up of two big volcanoes, sitting there together like the friendly, lopsided bosoms of the sea. Between them was a deep valley that Maui thought looked very much like cleavage, which he very much liked. And so, to that bumpy-bits island Maui gave his name, and its nickname became â€Å"The Cleavage Island,† which it stayed until some missionaries came along and renamed it â€Å"The Valley Island† (because if there's anything missionaries do well, it's seek out and destroy fun). Then Maui landed his canoe at a calm little beach on the west coast of his new island and said to himself, â€Å"I could do with a few cocktails and some nookie. I shall go into Lahaina and get some.† Well, time passed and some whalers came to the island, bringing steel tools and syphilis and other wonders from the West, and before anyone knew what was happening, they, too, were thinking that they wouldn't mind a few cocktails and a measure of nookie. So rather than sail back around the Horn to Nantucket to hoist noggins of grog and the skirts of the odd Hester, Millicent, or Prudence (so fast the dear woman would think she'd fallen down a chimney and landed on a zucchini), they pulled into Lahaina, drawn by the drunken sex magic of old Maui. They didn't come to Maui for the whales, they came for the party. And so Lahaina became a whaling town. The irony of it was that even though the humpbacks had starting coming to birth their calves and sing their songs only a few years earlier, and in those days the Hawaiian channels were teeming with the big-winged singers, it was not for the humpbacks that the whalers came. Humpbacks, like their other rorqual brothers – the streamlined blue, fin, sei, minke, and Bryde's whales – were just too fast to catch in sailing ships and man-powered whaling boats. No, the whalers came to Lahaina to rest and recreate along their way to Japanese waters where they hunted the great sperm whale, who would literally float there like a big, dumb log while you rowed up to it and stuck a harpoon in its head. It would take the advent of steamships and the decimation of the big, floaty-fat right whales (so named because they did float when dead and therefore were the  «right » whales to kill) before the hunters would turn their harpoons on the hum pbacks. Following the whalers came the missionaries, the sugar farmers, the Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos, and Portuguese who all worked the sugar plantations, and Mark Twain. Mark Twain went home. Everyone else stayed. In the meantime, King Kamehameha I united the islands through the clever application of firearms against wooden spears and moved Hawaii's capital to Lahaina. Sometime after that Amy came cruising into the Lahaina harbor at the wheel of a twenty-three-foot Mako speedboat with a tall, stunned-looking Ph.D. sprawled across the bow seat. The radio chirped. Amy picked it up and keyed the mike. â€Å"Go ahead, Clay.† â€Å"Something wrong?† Clay Demodocus was obviously in the harbor and could see them coming in. It wasn't even eight in the morning. He was probably still preparing his boat to go out. â€Å"I'm not sure. Nate just decided to call it a day. I'll ask him why.† To Nate she said, â€Å"Clay wants to know why.† â€Å"Anomalous data,† Nate said. â€Å"Anomalous data,† Amy repeated into the radio. There was a pause. Then Clay said, â€Å"Uh, right, understood. That stuff gets into everything.† The harbor at Lahaina is not large. Only a hundred or so vessels can dock behind her breakwater. Most are sizable, fifty- to seventy-foot cruisers and catamarans, boats full of sunscreen-basted tourists out on the water for anything from dinner cruises to sport fishing to snorkeling at the half-sunken crater of Molokini to, of course, whale watching. Jet-skiing, parasailing, and waterskiing were all banned from December until April, while the humpbacks were in these waters, so many of the smaller boats that would normally be used to terrorize marine life in the name of recreation were leased by whale researchers for the season. On any given winter morning down at the harbor at Lahaina, you couldn't throw a coconut without conking a Ph.D. in cetacean biology (and you stood a good chance of winging two Masters of Science working on dissertations with the rebound). Clay Demodocus was engaged in a bit of research liars poker with a Ph.D. and a naval officer when Amy backed the Mako into the slip they shared with three tender zodiacs from sailing yachts anchored outside the breakwater, a thirty-two-foot motor-sailor, and the Maui Whale Research Foundation's other boat (Clay's boat), the Always Confused, a brand-new twenty-two-foot Grady White Fisherman, center console. (Slips were hard to come by in Lahaina, and circumstances this season had dictated that the Maui Whale Research Foundation – Nate and Clay – perform a nautical dog pile with six other small craft every day. You do what you have to do if you want to poke whales.) â€Å"Shame,† Clay said as Amy threw him the stern line. â€Å"Nice calm day, too.† â€Å"We got everything but a measurement on one singer,† Amy said. The scientist and the naval officer on the dock behind Clay nodded as if they understood completely. Clifford Hyland, a grizzled, gray-haired whale researcher from Iowa stood next to the young, razor-creased, snowy-white-uniformed Captain L. J. Tarwater, who was there to see that Hyland spent the navy's money appropriately. Hyland looked a little embarrassed at the whole thing and wouldn't make eye contact with Amy or Nate. Money was money, and a researcher took it where he could get it, but navy money, it was so†¦ so nasty. â€Å"Morning Amy,† said Tarwater, dazzling a perfectly even, perfectly white smile. He was lean and dark and frighteningly efficient-looking. Next to him, Clay and the scientists looked as if they'd been run through the dryer with a bag of lava rock. â€Å"Good morning, Captain. Morning Cliff.† â€Å"Hey, Amy,† Cliff Hyland said. â€Å"Hey, Nate.† Nathan Quinn shook off his confusion like a retriever who had just heard his name uttered in context with food. â€Å"What? What? Oh, hi, Cliff. What?† Hyland and Quinn had both been part of a group of thirteen scientists who had first come to Lahaina in the seventies (â€Å"The Killer Elite,† Clay still called them, as they had all gone on to distinguish themselves as leaders in their fields). Actually, the original intention hadn't been for them to be a group, but they nevertheless became one early on when they all realized that the only way they could afford to stay on the island was if they pooled their resources and lived together. So for years thirteen of them – and sometimes more if they could afford assistants, wives, or girlfriends – lived every season in a two-bedroom house they rented in Lahaina. Hyland understood Quinn's tendency to submerge himself in his research to the point of oblivion, so he wasn't surprised that once again the rangy researcher had spaced out. â€Å"Anomalous data, huh?† Cliff asked, figuring that was what had sent Nate into the ozone. â€Å"Uh, nothing I can be sure of. I mean, actually, the recorder isn't working right. Something dragging. Probably just needs to be cleaned.† And everyone, including Amy, looked at Quinn for a moment as if to say, Well, you lying satchel of walrus spit, that is the weakest story I've ever heard, and you're not fooling anyone. â€Å"Shame,† Clay said. â€Å"Nice day to miss out on the water. Maybe you can get back with the other recorder and get out again before the wind comes up.† Clay knew something was up with Nate, but he also trusted his judgment enough not to press it. Nate would tell him when he thought he should know. â€Å"Speaking of that,† Hyland said, â€Å"we'd better get going.† He headed down the dock toward his own boat. Tarwater stared at Nate just long enough to convey disgust before turning on his heel and marching after Hyland. When they were gone, Amy said, â€Å"Tarwater is a creep.† â€Å"He's all right. He's got a job to do is all,† Clay said. â€Å"What's with the recorder?† â€Å"The recorder is fine,† Nate said. â€Å"Then what gives? It's a perfect day.† Clay liked to state the obvious when it was positive. It was sunny, calm, with no wind, and the underwater visibility was two hundred feet. It was a perfect day to research whales. Nate started handing waterproof cases of equipment to Clay. â€Å"I don't know. I may have seen something out there, Clay. I have to think about it and see the pictures. I'm going to drop some film off at the lab, then go back to Papa Lani and write up some research until the film's ready.† Clay flinched, just a tad. It was Amy's job to drop off film and write up research. â€Å"Okay. How 'bout you, kiddo?† Clay said to Amy. â€Å"My new guy doesn't look like he's going to show, and I need someone topside while I'm under.† Amy looked to Nate for some kind of approval, but when he simply kept unloading cases without a reaction, she just shrugged. â€Å"Sure, I'd love to.† Clay suddenly became self-conscious and shuffled in his flip-flops, looking for a second more like a five-year-old kid than a barrel-chested, fifty-year-old man. â€Å"By calling you ‘kiddo' I didn't mean to dimmish you by age or anything, you know.† â€Å"I know,† Amy said. â€Å"And I wasn't making any sort of comment on your competency either.† â€Å"I understand, Clay.† Clay cleared his throat unnecessarily. â€Å"Okay,† he said. â€Å"Okay,† Amy said. She grabbed two Pelican cases full of equipment, stepped up onto the dock, and started schlepping the stuff to the parking area so it could be loaded into Nate's pickup. Over her shoulder she said, â€Å"You guys both so need to get laid.† â€Å"I think that's reverse harassment,† Clay said to Nate. â€Å"I may be having hallucinations,† said Nate. â€Å"No, she really said that,† Clay said. After Quinn had left, Amy climbed into the Always Confused and began untying the stern line. She glanced over her shoulder to look at the forty-foot cabin cruiser where Captain Tarwater posed on the bow looking like an advertisement for a particularly rigid laundry detergent – Bumstick Go-Be-Bright, perhaps. â€Å"Clay, you ever heard of a uniformed naval officer accompanying a researcher into the field before?† Clay looked up from doing a battery check on the GPS. â€Å"Not unless the researcher was working from a navy vessel. Once I was along on a destroyer for a study on the effects of high explosives on resident populations of southern sea lions in the Falkland Islands. They wanted to see what would happen if you set off a ten-thousand-pound charge in proximity to a sea lion colony. There was a uniformed officer in charge of that.† Amy cast the line back to the dock and turned to face Clay. â€Å"What was the effect?† â€Å"Well, it blew them the fuck up, didn't it? I mean, that's a lot of explosives.† â€Å"They let you film that for National Science?† â€Å"Just stills,† Clay said. â€Å"I don't think they anticipated it going the way it did. I got some great shots of it raining seal meat.† Clay started the engine. â€Å"Yuck.† Amy untied the bumpers and pulled them into the boat. â€Å"But you've never seen a uniformed officer working here? Before now, I mean.† â€Å"Nowhere else,† Clay said. He pulled down the gear lever. There was a thump, and the boat began to creep forward. Amy pushed them away from the surrounding boats with a padded boat hook. â€Å"What do you think they're doing?† â€Å"I was trying to find out this morning when you guys came in. They loaded an awfully big case before you got here. I asked what it was, and Tarwater got all sketchy. Cliff said it was some acoustics stuff.† â€Å"Directional array?† Amy asked. Researchers sometimes towed large arrays of hydrophones that could, unlike a single hydrophone, detect the direction from which sound was traveling. â€Å"Could be,† Clay said. â€Å"Except they don't have a winch on their boat. â€Å"A wench? What are you trying to say, Clay?† Amy feigned being offended. â€Å"Are you calling me a wench?† Clay grinned at her. â€Å"Amy, I am old and have a girlfriend, and therefore I am immune to your hotness. Please cease your useless attempts to make me uncomfortable.† â€Å"Let's follow them.† â€Å"They've been working on the lee side of Lanai. I don't want to take the Confused past the wind line.† â€Å"So you were trying to find out what they're up to?† â€Å"I fished. No bites. Cliff's not going to say anything with Tarwater standing there.† â€Å"So let's follow them.† â€Å"We actually may get some work done today. It's a good day, after all, and we might not get a dozen windless days all season here. We can't afford to lose a day, Amy. Which reminds me, what's up with Nate? Not like him to blow off a good field day.† â€Å"You know, he's nuts,† Amy said, as if it were understood. â€Å"Too much time thinking about whales.† â€Å"Oh, right. I forgot.† As they motored out of the harbor, Clay waved to a group of researchers who had gathered at the fuel station to buy coffee. Twenty universities and a dozen foundations were represented in that group. Clay was single-handedly responsible for making the scientists who worked out of Lahaina into a social community. He knew them all, and he couldn't help it – he liked people who worked with whales – and he just liked it when people got along. He'd started weekly meetings and presentations of papers at the Pacific Whale Sanctuary building in Kihei, which brought all the scientists together to socialize, trade information, and, for some, to try to weasel some useful data out of someone without the burden of field research. Amy waved to the group, too, as she dug into one of the orange Pelican waterproof cases. â€Å"Come on, Clay, let's follow Tarwater and see what he's up to.† She pulled a huge pair of twenty-power binoculars out of the case and showed them to Clay. â€Å"We can watch from a distance.† â€Å"You might want to go up in the bow and look for whales, Amy.† â€Å"Whales? They're big and wet. What else do you need to know?† â€Å"You scientists never cease to amaze me,† Clay said. â€Å"Come hold the wheel while I get a pencil to write that down.† â€Å"Let's follow Tarwater.†