One major goal of integrative and comparative biology is to understand and explain the interaction between the performance and behavior of animals in their natural environment. The Caviomorph, Octodon degu, is a native rodent species from Chile, and represents a unique model to study physiological and behavioral traits, including cognitive and sensory abilities. Degus live in colonies and have a well-structured social organization, with a mostly diurnal–crepuscular circadian activity pattern. More notable is the fact that in captivity, they reproduce and live between 5 and 7 yr and show hallmarks of neurodegenerative diseases (including Alzheimer's disease), diabetes, and cancer.

Two OM workers strike up a friendship with a server in a local café and give him a valuable gift.

The Hope of Israel outreach team visits Yoqneam, a biblical city without a church.

Are we really going to bet that we can go back to life as normal without proper coronavirus tracking in place?

A group of 16 people from a church in USA sees lives changed during their short-term outreach in Kiel, Germany.

London, England, May 1, 2020 / 05:00 am (CNA).- The metropolitan archbishops of England and Wales acknowledged the pain of Catholics who cannot receive the sacraments because of the coronavirus lockdown in a message issued Friday. 

In the message, entitled “A People who Hope in Christ”, published May 1, the archbishops said that while livestreamed Masses nourished faith, they were no substitute for public liturgies.

“None of us would want to be in the situation in which we find ourselves,” they wrote. “While the livestreaming of the Mass and other devotions is playing an important part in maintaining the life of faith, there is no substitute for Catholics being able to physically attend and participate in the celebration of the Mass and the other sacraments.”

Writing on behalf of the Catholic bishops of England and Wales, the five archbishops continued: “Our faith is expressed powerfully and beautifully though ‘seeing, touching, and tasting.’ We know that every bishop and every priest recognizes the pain of Catholics who, at present, cannot pray in church or receive the sacraments. This weighs heavily on our hearts.” 

“We are deeply moved by the Eucharistic yearning expressed by so many members of the faithful. We thank you sincerely for your love for the Lord Jesus, present in the sacraments and supremely so in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.” 

“The bishops and priests of every diocese are remembering you and your loved ones at Mass each day in our churches as we pray ‘in hope of health and well-being.’ We thank our priests for this faithfulness to their calling.”

Nevertheless, the archbishops said, the Catholic community had to play its part in preserving life and seeking the common good amid the pandemic. Restrictions on public liturgies would therefore have to remain in place until they are lifted by the government.

The U.K. is among the countries worst affected by the pandemic. With a population of 67 million, the U.K has had more than 172,000 documented coronavirus cases and 26,700 deaths as of May 1, according to Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center.

The archbishops emphasized that Church officials were in talks with public health agencies and the government about the reopening of churches, which were closed March 24. 

“As the government’s restrictions are relaxed step by step, we look forward to opening our churches and resuming our liturgical, spiritual, catechetical and pastoral life step by step,” they said. 

“This will also be of service to those beyond the Catholic Church who depend on our charitable activity and outreach through which much goodness is shared by so many volunteers from our communities...”

“Together with Catholics across England and Wales, we desire the opening of our churches and access to the sacraments. Until then, we are continuing to pray and prepare.”

The message was signed by Cardinal Vincent Nichols of Westminster, Archbishop Malcolm McMahon of Liverpool, Archbishop Bernard Longley of Birmingham, Archbishop George Stack of Cardiff and Archbishop John Wilson of Southwark.

The archbishops concluded: “May the peace of the risen Lord reign in our hearts and homes as we look forward to the day we can enter church again and gather around the altar to offer together the Sacrifice of Praise.”

God sets a young Polish man free from drugs and enables him to forgive his father who abandoned him.

By Dr. Grazie Pozo Christie

Coronavirus is only the latest iteration of an age-old human affliction. Even now, with the benefit of advanced medical science, our reaction – our confusion, our fear – is not so different from how our ancestors experienced recurrent and terrifying onslaughts of plague, cholera, and yellow fever across the ages. We can learn from the courage and ingenuity of those who travelled this road before us.
 
Consider the work of Dr. Carlos Finlay in Cuba. In 1880 he hypothesized, and then worked to prove his hypothesis, that yellow fever, a disease that regularly decimated coastal populations up and down the Americas, was spread by infected mosquitos. Those mosquitos came to our shores in the 17th century on African slave ships and attacked portal communities in the tropics as well as cities like New Orleans and Philadelphia. The resulting epidemics occurred with oppressive regularity in the summer months, to the people’s great dread, with mortality rates as high as 50 percent. The impact was tremendous – not only in the milllions of lives lost and the wretchedness this caused, but in economic gains and opportunities wiped out or delayed (the Panama Canal).
 
Connecting the transmission of the deadly virus to its source or vector was a decisive step forward in the long struggle against yellow fever. It preceded the development of a vaccine by more than 60 years. Here's how it happened: A young doctor, Carlos Finlay, returned to his home in Havana one night, exhausted, after caring for a Carmelite priest dying of yellow fever. Realizing he had forgotten to say his daily rosary, he sat in his armchair, sweating in the oppressive heat, fingering his beads and swatting at a bothersome mosquito. Suddenly, inspiration pierced his depression and weariness: Could the mosquito, like the one annoying him that moment, be transmitting the infection from person to person? If so, this was marvelous. One could not fight the brutal steamy summer air – the miasma – but one could fight mosquitos.
 
Inspiration, however, was not enough to proceed. Courage and even heroism would be needed to prove Finlay’s hypothesis. These were at hand, thanks to 57 young Jesuit priests and brothers who volunteered as experimental subjects. As each arrived from Spain to staff the Colegio de Belen, newly founded by Queen Isabel II of Spain, he was met by Finlay, carrying a test tube filled with mosquitos that had just fed on a patient sick with yellow fever. Taking their lives in their hands, these Jesuits allowed themselves to be bitten for the sake of their fellow human beings. Three died of the bite, but all 57 were willing to do the same.
 
Subsequent experiments supported Finlay’s hypothesis. Although a vaccine to definitively eradicate the disease would not come for decades, Finlay’s insight helped man to co-exist safely with yellow fever until that time. The incidence of yellow fever in Cuba dropped precipitously through mosquito control. Standing water, a breeding ground for the noxious pests, was eliminated where possible or treated aggressively with insecticides where not. Panama, where tens of thousands of workers had already died of the disease while building the canal followed Cuba’s lead. The last Panama Canal worker to die of yellow fever came in 1906.
 
There are important lessons for us here -- first and foremost, lessons in resourcefulness and valor. 
 
Already, thousands of human minds are, today, tenaciously working to find a solution to Covid-19. They’re persisting without respite, persisting through depression and fatigue, to find a way forward. Just as Dr. Finlay did.
 
And, you can depend on it, inspiration is sure to strike again.
 
You can also see today the same kind of valor that animated the Jesuit volunteers who let the infected mosquitos bite them. You see it in the countless men and women who keep showing up for work at nursing homes or crowded food production lines. Their examples help us all to keep up and increase our courage so we can join them as we ease back into our normal daily lives.
 
As we face the moment when we too realize that we have no choice but to go back out into the world of work and personal interactions, we can take hope from contemplating our predecessors’ success in confronting yellow fever. Like us, they dreamed of a vaccine. But they didn’t lock themselves away until it was developed. They found a way to steel themselves and then to steal the deadly efficiency away from the virus that plagued them. A century later, we can do the same.

Long-term OM workers organize weekends of intercessory art, helping community connect creativity and prayer.

An OM worker visits an islamic university while trying to build a deeper relationship with a religious friend.

OM Ships International celebrates five years of God’s faithfulness through the ministry of Logos Hope around the world.

OBJECTIVES:

Reduce postoperative hypothermia by up to 50% over a 12-month period in children’s hospital NICUs and identify specific clinical practices that impact success.

On 1 July 350 teens and leaders poured into the University of Queensland, Australia, for five days of fun and discipleship.

OM worker is amazed to see God change lives, as he peers over his book table on a busy Muslim street in Australia.

OM Panama team members share on a live radio talk show about the upcoming International Intensive School of Missions.

A man goes from being sought by gangsters to being sought by God.

Lighthouse Ministries builds a kitchen to transform a community in Panama.

Investors like something different.

Andy Lowndes, music detective for dementia charity Playlist for Life

What is it?

Alan Scott, creative director at Johnstons of Elgin

It’s been a nerve-wracking few years for the traditional auto industry. One Silicon Valley VC firm speculates on its future in an interview with Bloomberg.

OM EAST and a local partner prepare to send copies of the Right Choices Bible to the Nenets tribe on the Yamal Peninsula.

THE Murray window is closing but Tennis Scotland appear to be diving through it just in time. Failing to adequately capitalise on the ongoing successes of Andy and Jamie has been a long-time frustration of the family, with mum Judy vehement in her criticism of the governing bodies for their inertia.

A look at how racism is being tackled in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

Sir Trevor Brooking hails a special second annual UEFA Grassroots Day.

Within just a few weeks, the corona crisis has led to a collapse of over 90 percent of flight operations in the capital region. In light of this dramatic situation, the Flughafen Berlin Brandenburg GmbH (FBB) Executive Board concluded a works agreement ...

The Dahme-Spreewald administrative district’s local building inspection authority confirmed the completion of the passenger terminal (Terminal 1) at BER following completion of the construction work.

James Morton's pave rustique recipe will likely become a lockdown favourite, says Ella Walker.

Producer Jermaine Baker has decided to do his part in the fight against COVID-19 in Jamaica. He has donated funds from the first-quarter earnings from his latest project, the JA Bounce rhythm, to support this cause.

OM Costa Rica has been hoping to initiate a sponsorship programme in the indigenous reservation of Talamanca. Now, they’re finally starting to see it happen.

Three children are named after OM team members who have left an impact on one woman's life.

WHEN we eventually emerge from lockdown the first thing most people will want to do is hug their nearest and dearest, but for some they will be running to their hair stylist to sort out the unruly mass of top of their head.

AROUND five people a day are being seen at Covid hubs across Scotland as demand for the service declines.

The nutritional and immunologic properties of human milk, along with clear evidence of dose-dependent optimal health outcomes for both mothers and infants, provide a compelling rationale to support exclusive breastfeeding. US women increasingly intend to breastfeed exclusively for 6 months. Because establishing lactation can be challenging, exclusivity is often compromised in hopes of preventing feeding-related neonatal complications, potentially affecting the continuation and duration of breastfeeding. Risk factors for impaired lactogenesis are identifiable and common. Clinicians must be able to recognize normative patterns of exclusive breastfeeding in the first week while proactively identifying potential challenges. In this review, we provide new evidence from the past 10 years on the following topics relevant to exclusive breastfeeding: milk production and transfer, neonatal weight and output assessment, management of glucose and bilirubin, immune development and the microbiome, supplementation, and health system factors. We focus on the early days of exclusive breastfeeding in healthy newborns ≥35 weeks’ gestation managed in the routine postpartum unit. With this evidence-based clinical review, we provide detailed guidance in identifying medical indications for early supplementation and can inform best practices for both birthing facilities and providers.

SCOTS have been urged to give up smoking and cut down their alcohol consumption in a bid to reduce “complications linked to conroavirus”.

Dandelion Cafe

Baker’s Delight

The ingenuity of Scotland’s independent food sector, and its determination to keep feeding us in these testing circumstances, is remarkable. Restaurants and cafés have gone down the takeaway route, small artisan suppliers who lost overnight all their catering customers have rapidly reconfigured their business around home delivery. Farmers who previously struggled to attract supermarket shoppers have never been so busy. Farmer’s markets have adapted to sell delivered or collected vegetable b

MY mother was known for her pizza but they were never round, not when we were growing up anyway. She would pull them from the ancient coal-fired cast iron range in the living room on long blackened oblong trays, the dough she had spent the day making puffed and undulating but always thin and super chewy.

Calabash African Restaurant

An amazing God-given tool to mobilise and inspire people to make a difference: Global Village.

At the heart of missions lies a passion for justice. In every community in which OM is involved, working for justice for the oppressed and vulnerable is part of ministry.

Small outreach teams will share the life-changing message of the gospel with hundreds of women in brothels and on the street this Easter.

Caerlaverock Castle

OM worker Sokhem shares his testimony of leaving Buddhism to follow Jesus.

We look back on the past lives of Sauchiehall street.

Clachan Bridge