Voice modification a key piece of transgender care

By Cara Murez, HealthDay News

Graduate programs are now more commonly offering curriculum that includes gender-affirming voice therapy. File Photo by Bill Greenblatt/UPI | License Photo

About eight months after Ari Toumpas, a transgender woman, began the process of transitioning both socially and medically, she began to think about her voice.

A language teacher and graduate student at Ohio State University, Toumpas had been trying some vocal feminization exercises she had discovered online, but was not having success.

A referral from her primary care doctor led Toumpas to Anna Lichtenstein, a gender-affirming voice modification therapist at the university's Wexner Medical Center, which offers a wide range of gender-affirming healthcare services.

"It's been a process of just changing various little things and big things about my life to just make me feel more comfortable living as a human being with a body, and part of that was my voice," said Toumpas, who is 25.

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After 12 weeks of work with Lichtenstein and more practice at home, "I have a lot of comfort with my voice," said Toumpas. "I know what I'm doing with it. It's kind of effortless. I come to my voice each day when I wake up in the morning ... I get in front of my class and I teach, and it's comfortable."

Voice modification is just one piece of gender-affirming care that can help transgender individuals feel more aligned with their bodies.

Lichtenstein said, "We use our voice throughout the day to communicate and as a speech pathologist all my training is in helping people to communicate within the world, with more confidence, more efficiently, feeling successful."

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Communication has a lot of gendered aspects to it, Lichtenstein noted, and the transgender, non-binary, gender-nonconforming patients who Lichtenstein sees in her work come to her for a variety of reasons and with an array of goals.

Some are seeking to not have people identify them as transgender in their community, sometimes because they're concerned about safety. Others want a better sense of control and understanding of their voice. At the same time, some transgender people are not interested in vocal changes. They identify with how they sound, Lichtenstein said.

"But it is definitely within the scope of gender-affirming care, and it's important because gender-affirming care in general can be really lifesaving for people, depending on where they live and what healthcare that they need or are seeking," Lichtenstein said.

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Speech language pathology and voice therapy is itself a very diverse field, encompassing everything from working with pediatric patients who need help with articulation and language fluency to adult patients in acute care as part of stroke recovery.

In Lichtenstein's case, she gradually began adding more transgender adults and youths to her caseload before this work became her primary focus.

'The voice is really personal'

"I really found this interest in providing gender-affirming care and wanted to be the very best, most competent provider that I could be in this area of health for this patient population," Lichtenstein said.

Although Lichtenstein thinks it is not as common for speech therapists to focus on gender-affirming care, there are more speech therapists beginning this work around the United States by adding transgender patients to their existing caseloads.

Graduate programs are now more commonly offering curriculum that includes gender-affirming voice therapy. Specialty trainings also exist for professionals, she added.

It's rare, but possible, to pair voice therapy with surgery. Such surgery can shorten and change the shape of the vocal cords.

But first, the process for voice modification therapy begins with a meeting with a laryngologist to assess a patient's vocal health.

The next meeting is with the speech pathologist, to talk about quality of life and goals.

After that, there are typically 10 (give or take a few) 30- to 45-minute sessions. Lichtenstein works with her patients on understanding and controlling airflow, inflection patterns, pitch, resonance and location of sound.

"I approach it with this scientific vocal health standpoint and work from sound level to word level to sentence level, to reading and conversation," Lichtenstein said.

"And I provide a lot of support for the patients along the way," Lichtenstein continued. "What we're doing is really personal. The voice is really personal. It's very tied to sense of self and sense of identity."

Gender-affirming voice therapy is more frequently sought out by people who are trans-feminine than those who are trans-masculine, Lichtenstein noted.

The reason is because the testosterone taken to transition from feminine to masculine thickens the vocal cords, which can alter and lower the voice. That does not happen when taking female hormones such as progesterone and estrogen.

However, Lichtenstein does see trans-masculine patients who opt out of hormone therapy and want to learn how to use their changing voices or have other issues arise.

A matter of safety

For Toumpas, the decision to do voice therapy was both aesthetic and for safety reasons. She didn't want to experience discrimination or abuse by transphobic people. Her goal was not to be in one of the higher-resonating ranges, but to sound like Greek female singers whose voices she admired.

"I had a lot of aesthetic thoughts about my gender and how I wanted to play with my voice and Anna was very cool in working on those things on the fly," Toumpas said.

A lot of transgender and non-binary people have the shared experience of feeling like their bodies are not truly theirs, said Olivia Hunt, policy director for the National Center for Transgender Equality, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy organization that works to make the United States a safer and friendlier place for transgender people.

For many who pursue medical transition, aligning their body with how they view themselves is a crucial part of living their lives, Hunt said.

It's a matter of dignity and self-actualization, but also an issue of personal safety, Hunt added.

The organization's 2015 survey found that nearly half of all transgender people in America reported being discriminated against, harassed or treated with violence.

"Having other ways to protect yourself to not be outed, not have your transgender status revealed to people that you're interacting with on a casual basis, it can be a safety concern because if your voice is outing you while you're out at the store buying groceries that can lead to completely unnecessary harassment from total strangers who decided that they just want to make life difficult for the trans person," Hunt said.

Hunt also noted that transgender individuals have higher than average unemployment rates, which can also mean lack of access to insurance or limited insurance, making it harder to pay for gender-affirming care, including voice therapy.

Lichtenstein said she always tries to ensure her patients have all the resources they need in place for other gender-affirming services they need, depending on where they're at in their journey, as well as to help them navigate insurance.

She bills to insurance for her sessions, but how well the therapy is covered varies widely by plan and policies that insurance companies make about what care they'll cover. That's an issue the Ohio State team tries to change directly by approaching companies to offer presentations detailing the care and the need for it.

Proposed laws may also affect this type of healthcare for those who need it. Ohio, for example, has two bills proposed in its legislature that would affect the LGBTQ community, including one that would prevent transgender minors from accessing any gender-affirming healthcare if it passes.

"I have teenagers on my caseload who come to me for voice every week and they are who they say they are and all the healthcare services that they are seeking out are services that they need," Lichtenstein said. "So, I think it is very scary that that could potentially become something that is illegal in Ohio."

More information

The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association has more on gender-affirming voice therapy.

Copyright © 2022 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

Canadian Astronomers detect fast radio burst with rare heartbeat-like pulse


The CHIME telescope, located in British Columbia, first detected a rare heartbeat-like fast radio burst called FRB 20191221A in 2019. 

File Photo courtesy of the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment

July 13 (UPI) -- Astronomers have detected a fast radio burst billions of light-years from Earth that is 1,000 times longer than average and has a periodic, repeating pattern akin to a heartbeat, according to a study published Wednesday.

Scientists first discovered the radio burst -- officially dubbed FRB 20191221A -- in 2019 using the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment interferometric radio telescope in British Columbia.

Daniele Michilli, a postdoctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, said the FRB immediately drew his attention because of how unusual it was.

Michilli first led the discovery of the FRB while as a researcher at McGill University.

"This detection raises the question of what could cause this extreme signal that we've never seen before, and how can we use this signal to study the universe," said Michilli, one of the study's co-authors. "Future telescopes promise to discover thousands of FRBs a month, and at that point we may find many more of these periodic signals."

FRBs typically last a few milliseconds, but this one lasts up to 3 seconds and includes a burst of radio waves that repeat every 0.2 seconds in a pattern similar to a heartbeat.

Researchers wrote in their study -- published Wednesday in the journal Nature -- that it is the longest-lasting FRB with the clearest periodic pattern detected to date.

The source of FRB 20191221A is several billion light-years away from Earth, though researchers aren't sure where exactly it comes from. They believe it could be either a radio pulsar or magnetar, both types of neutron stars. Neutron stars are the dense, rapidly spinning, collapsed cores of giant stars.

"There are not many things in the universe that emit strictly periodic signals," Michilli said.

"Examples that we know of in our own galaxy are radio pulsars and magnetars, which rotate and produce a beamed emission similar to a lighthouse. And we think this new signal could be a magnetar or pulsar on steroids," Michilli said.

According to a news release from MIT, researchers hope to record more periodic signals from the source of the FRB as it moves away from Earth. Doing so could help astronomers better measure the rate at which the universe is expanding using the FRB as an astrophysical clock.

"This detection raises the question of what could cause this extreme signal that we've never seen before, and how can we use this signal to study the universe," Michilli said. "Future telescopes promise to discover thousands of FRBs a month, and at that point we may find many more of these periodic signals."

Survivors of mass shootings push for 'real change' in rally at U.S. Capitol

Families and survivors of mass shootings demonstrate outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., Wednesday in a March Fourth rally to ban assault weapons. Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI | License Photo

July 13 (UPI) -- Families and survivors impacted by recent mass shootings across the country marched in Washington, D.C., Wednesday demanding a ban on assault weapons.

The group March Fourth, founded by survivors of the Highland Park, Ill., shooting on July 4, organized the peaceful march to the U.S. Capitol. Demonstrators cried as they walked together in bright orange shirts, in honor of gun violence awareness, chanting "enough is enough."

"I was tired of feeling helpless and trapped as an American citizen raising kids who aren't safe in schools, at concerts, at parades," said Kitty Brandtner, who founded March Fourth. "I just wanted to stand together and scream at the top of our lungs and beg for real change."

Family members and survivors of mass shootings, including the attack in Highland Park, where seven people were killed during a Fourth of July parade and Uvalde, Texas, where the gunman killed 19 children and two adults at an elementary school in May, took turns sharing their stories and demanding lawmakers ban assault weapons.

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"The majority of Americans don't believe civilians should have access to assault weapons. Why is it so hard to pass legislation on this?" Brandtner said to the crowd.

"If there is one question that should be on the forefront of law enforcement minds, what if the gunman never had access to an assault weapon?" said Kimberly Rubio, whose 10 year-old daughter was killed in the Uvalde shooting.

Organizers of March Fourth said the bipartisan Safer Communities Act, signed into law last month by President Joe Biden, does not go far enough. The law requires more in-depth background checks for gun buyers under age 21.

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Ashley O'Brien, who works in Highland Park and traveled to Washington with family and friends, said she is not convinced lawmakers are willing to take action.

"It's simpler than they think. Ban assault rifles now. Pass universal background checks," O'Brien said. "It won't solve everything. But it is a big first step that has to happen, and it has to happen before more people need to experience the trauma of a mass shooting."

RELATED Senate advances bipartisan gun violence bill

March Fourth rally to ban assault weapons

A young girl participating in the March Fourth rally to ban assault weapons holds a "Uvalde Strong" sign outside the Senate office buildings at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., on July 13, 2022. 

Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI | License Photo

Germany: Ministers revamp climate plan after missing targets

With Germany's transportation and housing sectors lagging behind their climate goals, ministers are hoping to introduce more bike lanes and energy-efficient buildings. But climate activists say the plan is too vague.

Plans for Germany's climate plan includes more energy efficient heating systems and expanded bicycle paths as well as electronic vehicle charging stations

German government ministries on Wednesday presented emergency programs to meet the country's 2030 climate goals after two critical sectors, transportation and housing, missed their targets in the last year.

A German court ordered a tightening of the climate protection law in 2021, which prompted the government of former Chancellor Angela Merkel to set more ambitious goals.

Germany's new coalition government, led by the Social Democrats instead of Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU), also presented plans to increase climate protection last year. The current coalition's plan included reforming the utility, manufacturing, construction, transportation and agricultural sectors.
Missing targets

The German Environment Agency in March said the transportation sector's carbon-dioxide emissions were at 148.1 million tons last year, while the target had been 145 million tons.

Construction emissions were at 115 million tons with a goal of 112 million tons.

Transportation, which accounted for nearly one-fifth of all emissions in 2021, has been the slowest to act and deliver on its promised goals. Even with a reduction in travel due to the COVID-19 pandemic, greenhouse gas emissions were only 9.4% less than in 1990.

What are German ministries doing to meet climate goals?

A section in Germany's Climate Action Law gave ministries until July 13 to present programs designed to ensure compliance with the country's annual climate targets.

On Wednesday, the Economy, Transportation and Construction ministries presented their plans.

Transportation Minister Volker Wissing said he wants to expand infrastructure for electric vehicles, such as charging stations. Additionally, the ministry will increase funding to explore ways to increase efficiency through innovating heavy commercial vehicles.

Wissing said, "As transport minister I need to weigh up the goal of protecting the climate as quickly as possible on the one hand, and [on the] other hand keep in mind the mobility needs and acceptance of measures in society."

The ministry also said it planned to allocate €250 million euros ($251 million) to add more bicycle lanes by 2030. It would also promote working from home as part of a "digitization push."

But Wissing, a member of the pro-business Free Democratic Party, stopped short of introducing a highway speed limit, which activists have urged as a means to cut emissions.

In construction, new heating systems installed in buildings would have to include 65% renewable energy from 2024. The government also hopes to renovate existing buildings to make them more energy efficient.

How did climate activists react?

Greenpeace called the ministers' plans "nebulous" and said a general speed limit would achieve concrete emissions cuts.

"Volker Wissing wants to extinguish a burning house with water, but at the same time feeds the flames with petrol. It is not enough just to promote the right thing, he must also ensure that we stop doing the wrong thing," Greenpeace Germany said.

The group also criticized that gas furnaces can continue to be installed in buildings until 2024, arguing that the measure should be in effect immediately so that homeowners switch to less polluting heat pumps.
Germany's climate plan

Berlin wants to see a 65% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.

In 2021, emissions rose 4.5% compared to 2020. Demand for electricity soared and more coal was used for electricity generation due to gas price hikes and a reduction in renewable output.

Compared with 1990, greenhouse gas emissions dropped 39%.

Germany's overall goal is to see the country fully carbon neutral by 2045.

ar/fb (AP, Reuters)

Race to find Brazil Amazon species before they disappear

Since Bolsonaro took power, average annual deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon increased by 75 percent compared to the previous decade

Jordi MIRO
Wed, July 13, 2022 


In a remote part of the Brazilian Amazon, a scientific expedition is cataloguing species. Time is of the essence.

"The rate of destruction is faster than the rate of discovery," says botanist Francisco Farronay, of the National Institute of Amazonian Research (INPA), as he cuts into the bark of an enormous tree and smells its insides.

"It is a race against time."

The largest rainforest on Earth, still largely unexplored by science, is assailed by deforestation for farming, mining and illegal timber extraction.

According to a MapBiomas study last year, the Amazon lost some 74.6 million hectares of native vegetation -- an area equivalent to the entire territory of Chile -- between 1985 and 2020.

The destruction accelerated under the government of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, accused by environmentalists of actively encouraging deforestation for economic gain.

The rainforest is considered vital to curbing climate change for its absorption of Earth-warming CO2.

Since 2019, when Bolsonaro took power, average annual deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon increased by 75 percent compared to the previous decade, according to official figures.

- 'Science denialism' -

"Most plant species in the Amazon are to be found in encroached areas," said Alberto Vicentini, another member of the expedition launched by Greenpeace.

It is estimated that "we do not know 60 percent of the tree species, and every time an area is deforested, it destroys a part of the biodiversity that we will never know," said the INPA scientist.

For their research in this remote part of the northern Brazilian state of Amazonas, the team of took a plane from Manaus, flying over hundreds of kilometers of green forest cut by meandering rivers, to Manicore.

From there, a five-hour boat trip by river for a weeks-long expedition to collect plant samples and observe animal behavior, for which they installed cameras and microphones.

The group includes experts in mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish, trees and flowers. But it is a tough time to be a scientist in Brazil, they say.

"We are living in a moment of science denialism, as we saw with the pandemic in Brazil," with Bolsonaro railing against masks and vaccines, said Vicentini.

"Research institutions in Brazil are under attack by the policies of this government, universities are suffering many cuts," he added.

A sheet of newspaper used by one of the botanists in the group to press a flower has the headline: "Increase in wood extraction in Amazonas" with a photo of two trucks leaving the rainforest loaded with logs.

"There are places where no one has ever been, we have no idea what is there," said INPA biologist Lucia Rapp Py-Daniel.

"Without the resources to investigate, we do not have the necessary information to even explain why we have to conserve" the area, she said.

Resources have been dwindling for a decade -- another phenomenon that has sped up under Bolsonaro, according to critics.

In May, Brazil’s two main scientific societies, the Brazilian Academy of Sciences (ABC) and the Brazilian Society for the Advancement of Science (SBPC) warned that funding for scientific research in the country would be cut by almost 3.0 billion reais (about $560 million) this year.

"We should accelerate the pace of research in the face of the destruction, but instead we are slowing down," says Py-Daniel

Amazon: The tree climbers taking risks for scientific discovery

Jose Raimundo Ferreira, 42, known as Zelao, can scale trees reaching up to 50 metres high in a matter of seconds. He is one of the Amazon’s few expert tree climbers, who help scientists carry out vital research in the world’s richest area of biodiversity – a job with high risk and littles security.

Mass grave, remains of 8,000 Nazi war victims found in Poland

A mass grave containing human ashes equivalent to 8,000 people has been discovered near a former Nazi concentration camp in Poland, the country’s Institute of National Remembrance said.

The institute, which investigates crimes committed during the Nazi occupation of Poland and the communist era, said on Wednesday that the remains were unearthed near the Soldau concentration camp, now known as Dzialdowo, north of Warsaw.

“It’s the evidence of how thoroughly the Germans tried to obliterate the traces of genocide they committed in Eastern Europe,” the Institute said in a statement.

Nazi Germany built the camp when it occupied Poland during World War II, using it as a place of transit, internment and extermination for Jews, political opponents and members of the Polish political elite.

Estimates have put the number of prisoners killed at Soldau at 30,000, but the true toll has never been established.

The grim discovery of approximately 15.8 tonnes (15,800kg) of human ashes means it can be claimed that at least 8,000 people died there, according to investigator Tomasz Jankowski.

The estimate is based on the weight of the remains, with 2kg (4.4lb) roughly corresponding to one body.

The victims buried in the mass grave “were probably assassinated around 1939 and mostly belonged to the Polish elites”, Jankowski said.

In 1944, the Nazi authorities ordered Jewish prisoners to dig up the bodies and burn them to wipe out evidence of war crimes.

Andrzej Ossowski, a genetics researcher at the Pomeranian Medical University, told the AFP news agency that samples from the ashes had been taken and would be studied in a laboratory.

“We can carry out DNA analysis, which will allow us to find out more about the identity of the victims,” he added, following similar studies at former Nazi camps at Sobibor and Treblinka.

US: murder of Jayland Walker was indeed ‘routine’ police practice

Two years after the police murder of George Floyd, racialised police brutality is still tragically ordinary in America.

David A Love
Published On 10 Jul 2022

Demonstrators protest against the Akron police shooting death of Black man Jayland Walker in Akron, Ohio, U.S. July 3, 2022. [Gaelen Morse/Reuters]

The June 27 police murder of Jayland Walker in Akron, Ohio proved yet again what many of us already knew: In the United States, even the most mundane encounter with the police can be deadly for you if you are Black.

The lawyer representing his family said Walker was shot “approximately 90 times”. Body-cam footage released by the police confirmed the count. An initial autopsy showed that the Black man had 60 gunshot wounds on his body at the time of his death.

Walker fled a “routine” traffic stop, authorities said in response. He would be alive today, and his encounter with the police would be truly “routine” if only he did not run.

Of course, these claims do not hold water – for several reasons.

First, there is no guarantee that Walker would be alive if he did not run. Sure, as a Black man, I also tell my son that he should “comply” if he is ever stopped by the police -even when there is no legitimate justification for the stop (as it was allegedly the case with Walker). But I know that compliance does not always save Black people from police brutality.

Second, despite what the police tried to imply, Walker’s encounter with the police was already pretty “routine” for America – indeed, “routine” traffic stops and other “routine” interactions between Black people and security forces routinely end with murder in this country.

But why are Black people still being brutally killed under a hail of bullets for fleeing “routine” traffic stops some two years after the brutal police murder of George Floyd led to global protests demanding this deadly “routine” to come to an end?

The answer, sadly, is simple. Despite all the protests, this tragic routine is showing no signs of changing because by routinely intimidating, harassing and killing people of colour, the American police are doing what it was originally designed to do: Upholding white supremacy.

Indeed, the American police are a product of American enslavement – it was created to address the need to halt slave rebellions. Not too long ago, so-called “slave patrols” were criminalising, brutalising and killing Black people across this country in the name of maintaining order. Today, American police officers are keeping this legacy alive as they criminalise, brutalise and kill Black and other marginalised people.

Today, America is still being policed with a warrior mentality – law enforcement forces are still acting like occupiers and enslavers rather than guardians of communal wellbeing when they are dealing with communities of colour.

That white supremacy has always been and still very much is at the core of American policing is hardly a secret.

There is a fast-growing body of evidence that “a significant number of US police instructors have ties to a constellation of armed right-wing militias and white supremacist hate groups.”

It is therefore not really surprising that Black Americans are more likely to die at the hands of police than others. According to a study published by medical journal Lancet in 2021, between 1980-2019 the highest rate of deaths from police violence occurred for Black Americans, who were estimated to be 3.5 times more likely to experience fatal police violence than white Americans.

And white supremacy is such a core characteristic of law enforcement in America that police officers rarely face any punishment for hurting Black people or taking Black lives.

Timothy Loehmann, the former Cleveland police officer who killed a 14-year-old Black boy named Tamir Rice in 2014, for example, was recently rehired as an officer in the borough of Tioga, Pennsylvania. Loehmann was previously fired from the Cleveland police force, but not for killing Rice. He was dismissed merely for failing to disclose that he was told to resign or face termination for incompetence from a position he previously held with Independence, Ohio police department.

While police officers kill unarmed Black people with impunity – for reasons ranging from fleeing a traffic stop to holding a toy gun – they often manage to arrest white people without much incident or injury even after they commit mass murder.

Indeed, even after he killed seven people and wounded dozens of others during the Independence Day Parade in Highland Park, Illinois earlier this week police officers did not shoot Robert Crimo III, a white man. Instead, they politely asked the assailant, “Do me a favour, get on your knees, get on your knees lay down flat on your stomach.” Similarly, they arrested without incident Payton Gendron, a white supremacist teenager who shot 10 people to death in Buffalo, New York to “prevent Black people from replacing White people”.

The white supremacy of the American police is of course a reflection of white supremacy that is at the core of American society.

Due to America’s racist history, the perception that Black men are “threatening and dangerous” is ingrained in the collective American unconscious. This is undoubtedly contributing to the police’s tendency to be violent towards Black members of the public. In addition, studies have shown Black children – both girls and boys – are perceived as older and less innocent than their white peers, making them more prone to police violence and punishment.

The media also works to criminalise blackness and Black faces and helps create conditions that perpetuate police violence against Black people.

Black Americans, and Black men, in particular, are overrepresented as perpetrators of crime in US news media. Meanwhile, the same media outlets tend to use images and narratives that make white perpetrators of most violent crimes look innocent or at least incapable of taking responsibility for their actions. This feeds into existing stereotypes that people of African American descent are threatening and overall more dangerous than white people.

“The white press, inflames the white public against Black people. The police are able to use it to paint the Black community as a criminal element. The police are able to use the press to make the white public think that 90 percent or 99 percent of the people in the Black community are criminals,” Malcolm X said in 1962, but his words still sound eerily relevant today. “And once the white public is convinced that most of the Black community is a criminal element, then this automatically paves the way for the police to move into the negro community, exercising Gestapo tactics, stopping any Black man on the sidewalk… As long as he is Black and a member of the Black community, the white public thinks that the white policeman is justified in going in there and trampling on that man’s civil rights and on that man’s human rights,” he added.

The murder of Jayland Walker is further proof that the main function and aim of American policing today, as it has been throughout history, is upholding white supremacy. The unprecedented protests against racialised police brutality that followed the murder of George Floyd did not change this fact because they failed the bring about a complete overhauling of existing structures. Only a complete re-imagining of public safety in America and the building of a law enforcement network that is tasked with protecting all Americans equally can bring an end to the violence routinely faced by all communities of colour and especially Black people in this country.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance

.
David A Love
Philadelphia-based freelance journalist, commentator and media studies professor.

Novak Djokovic inaugurates tennis courts at controversial Bosnian 'pyramids'

Recently-crowned Wimbledon champion Novak Djokovic on Wednesday inaugurated tennis courts at a 'pyramid park' in Bosnia that he regularly visits to recharge his batteries.

Agence France-PresseJuly 14, 2022 

Serbia's Novak Djokovic reacts while playing an exhibition match against Croatia's Ivan Dodig in Visoko, Bosnia. AP

Recently-crowned Wimbledon champion Novak Djokovic on Wednesday inaugurated tennis courts at a 'pyramid park' in Bosnia that he regularly visits to recharge his batteries.

The tennis star, known for his new-age spiritual interests, is fond of the hill town of Visoko, where thousands flock every year to what some believe are an ancient man-made pyramid complex with healing powers -- a claim rejected by scientists.

The 35-year-old Serb, who claimed his 21st Grand Slam title on Sunday, visited the site for the first time in 2020 and called it a "paradise on earth".

He has returned to the "Bosnian Pyramid of the Sun" complex at least four times, either alone or with his family, always to be warmly welcomed by the unusual site's founder Semir Osmanagic.

According to Osmanagic, a Bosnian businessman and a self-styled archaeologist, the idea of building a "regional training centre" with two courts was born during Djokovic's last visit in March.

"This is a special day for Visoko, for Bosnia, for the whole region, for tennis, for sport", Djokovic said after arriving at the new courts.

"The message of this day is peace, sport, future and health", he added while several hundred fans seated near a dense forest welcomed him with a big applause.

Unusual show 

The Serbian star played exibition matches with Croatian Ivan Dodig, Aljaz Bedene of Slovenia and Bosnian tennis player Aldin Setkic.

Looking very relaxed, Djokovic staged an unusual show, making the audience laugh by pretending to argue with the referees or trying to "bribe" them.

Ancient civilisation afficionado Osmanagic has claimed for the past 20 years that he has discovered not one, but several pyramids built by a mysterious civilization near Visoko.

For the past few years his teams have been also clearing underground tunnels near the "Pyramid of the Sun" and he boasts of its beneficial effects on the health of visitors.

On arrival, Djokovic visited the new courts and went for a walk into a pine forest, which is a part of the park, with his host.

Djokovic has meditated at the site and during each visit walked kilometres of "energy" tunnels, which are, according to archaeologists, an ancient gold mine.

"Here, we simply feel the energy, each in its own way. For me, this is one of the most energetically powerful places on the planet, of which I have seen many," Djokovic told reporters after the exibition matches.

"I simply feel that every moment spent here fills me with energy and gives me strength for future challenges in tennis and in life," he added.

Ever since Djokovic became a regular, the number of visitors from all over former Yugoslavia has multiplied.

Both Djokovic and his unusual host do not miss the opportunity to underline values of peace, sharply contrasting the constant combative and nationalist narrative pushed by political leaders of the region devastated in the 1990s wars.

And Djokovic's faith in Visoko has given the locals a reciprocal faith in him.

"This man who is so rich that he can spend a vacation on Mars comes here," a souvenir seller near the entrance to the tunnels told AFP.

"He chose Visoko which nobody knew. That is proof enough that there is something there. He cannot be bought."

What is MagicK? Aleister Crowley Explains

ENCHANT

Concerning the unexpected similarities between magicK and psychology in the work of Aleister Crowley

NOTHING UNEXPECTED ABOUT IT

During a time when the prevailing concept of magic was starting to be regarded as a mere spectacle; as a series of tricks and illusions meant for children, multifaceted British occultist Aleister Crowley got to be known as the Last Great Magus of the West.

Crowley was a member of many secret societies, including the renowned Golden Dawn, a place that harbored members as brilliant as Irish poet W.B. Yeats, and where he got to learn the Hermetic corpus of Western magic, especially what is known as Salomonic magic (derived from King Solomon’s method, and supposedly used to summon the spirits that helped him build his temple).

Salomonic magic, often referred to as black magic, posits a complex system for the invocation of angels and demons, and for achieving changes in nature by operating through them. This is the sort of magic that is often represented by the use of spells, incantations and rites.

The enochian language, or “language of the angels”, the Kabbalah, the Goetia, the sigils and other oracular systems such as the runes, comprise the theoretical basis for articulating an intention and its operative resonance in nature. Curiously, however, all this arcane science did not figure into what Crowley himself considered true magick —if anything, he encouraged his pupils to learn all the theory they could only to get rid of it later. For him, magick was fundamentally a psychological system meant to conduct human will towards a complete command over his individuality.

Crowley recognized that the invocation of entities through magick was an inherent part of our psyche. In his Introduction to Lemgeton Clavicula Salomonis he explicitly states, “the spirits of Goetia are part of the human brain.”

He named his system “Thelema”, which means will. And will, as in Schopenhauer’s and Nietzsche’s philosophies, is at the center of his model of nature. Intention, just like concentration or directed flight, is one of the most recurring themes in Crowley’s vision of magick.

Magic, as he explains, is the “Science and Art that provokes Change in conformity with the Will”, and that “all intentional acts are acts of magic.” So, like Schopenhauer, Crowley noted that will had the agency to merge with the primordial flow of the universe —So, in order to act upon nature all that was needed was to channel that will together with intention.

The magus maintained that human beings, by nature, have the capacity to produce changes in their environment, and that the only requirement to prompt this was to follow one´s own path; that is, to do as we wish. In his book Magick in Theory and Practice, Crowley explains:

“Anyone who is forced from his own course, either through not understanding himself, or through external opposition, comes into conflict with the order of the Universe.” He goes on to say that “Magick is the Science of understanding one’s self and one’s own situation. It is the art of applying this knowledge in action.” It seems almost as if his definition of magic could have come from a psychology manual on the importance of self-knowledge.

The secret of Crowley’s system, based on individuality and self-knowledge; or better, on the practice of individuality and self-knowledge, lies in the belief that the individual is a microcosmic image of the universe (or of God). Therefore, if someone applies this understanding by using his intention, he will be using the intention of the universe.

This is, perhaps, how magic operates.

Chinese, Australian astronomers detect key process of binary evolution

CGTN

An illustration of the evolution of the common envelope of binary stars. /CAS

A joint research team of Chinese and Australian astronomers has detected a binary star system ejecting a common envelope, a key process of the binary star evolution that could be of great importance to the studies on the universe's expansion and dark energy.

This is the first time scientists have observed direct evidence of the key process of the evolution of the common envelope of binary stars. The study was published online in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society on Thursday.


Li Jiangdan, the first author of the article from the Yunnan Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), said a sun-like star in a binary system would evolve into a red giant star and would eventually become a hot subdwarf star and then a white dwarf. The research team has found a binary system consisting of a hot subdwarf and a white dwarf, coded as J1920, about 23,000 lightyears from Earth.

In the system, the hot dwarf transfers its mass to the white dwarf via an accretion disk. The two stars get closer and spin with each other faster and faster. About 10,000 years ago, they ejected their common envelope, made up of gas, which is expanding and leaving the binary system at a speed of 200 km per second, Li said.

An illustration of the evolution of the common envelope of binary stars. /CAS

Han Zhanwen, the leader of the Chinese research team and a CAS academic, said the binary system is like a double-yolk egg that is ejecting its egg whites.

"More than 50 percent of the stars in our universe are binaries. Therefore, understanding binaries is an important content of astrophysics," Han said.

Chen Xuefei, deputy director of the Yunnan Observatories, said binaries consisting of a hot subdwarf star and an accreting white dwarf are sources of gravitational wave radiation at low frequencies and possible progenitors of type Ia supernovae if the white dwarf mass is massive enough. Type Ia supernova is regarded by astronomers as the standard candle in measuring distances in the universe.

An animated illustration of the evolution of the common envelope of binary stars. /CAS


Brian Schmidt, the winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics, said, "nearly 25 years ago, we measured cosmic distances with type Ia supernovae and discovered the accelerating expansion of the universe, which implies the existence of dark energy. Across the world, we are now refining our supernova measurements to better understand the expansion so as to glean the nature of dark energy. But to reach such a goal, we need a better understanding of type Ia supernovae. These exploding stars are from binary evolution, where the common envelope phase is crucial for their understanding."

"Common envelopes were first postulated in 1976 and have been widely used as the explanation for double black holes, double neutron stars, double white dwarfs and many other compact binaries. However, until this day, a common envelope has never been seen yet. This new detection provides a way to deepen our understanding of common envelope evolution," said Schmidt.

It is great to see this collaboration between Australian and Chinese astronomers yield such an exciting result, he added.

Zhao Gang, a researcher at the National Astronomical Observatories of the CAS, said this discovery not only fills the gap in the study of binary evolution but also opens up a new research direction, making it possible for astronomers to study the early physical properties and states of dense celestial binary formation and evolution in the near future.

(With input from Xinhua)