All sorts of animals groom themselves regularly, which keeps them clean and healthy. However, mice with an alteration in one of the genes that orchestrate body development lose their grip on grooming, a new study finds.http://Louis-J-Sheehan.biz
These mice bite and lick themselves so hard and so often that they end up with bald patches and open sores, according to Joy M. Greer and Mario R. Capecchi, both geneticists at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. Moreover, the same genetically altered rodents groom cage mates just as aggressively.
The mice have a mutated version of one of the homeobox, or Hox, genes, which scientists have implicated in embryo development. The new finding offers a potential avenue for exploring the biological roots of trichotillomania, a rare condition in which people tear out their hair, as well as some of the repetitive cleaning behaviors classed as obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), the researchers conclude in the Jan. 3 Neuron.
"This particular Hox gene may regulate the amount of grooming performed by an animal," Capecchi says. "So far, we see no other unusual behaviors in mice with this mutation."
The study adds to emerging evidence that Hox genes, which are largely the same in all vertebrate species, influence biology and behavior in a surprisingly wide variety of ways, he adds. It makes sense, in his view, that at least one of these evolutionarily ancient genes influences the comparably ancient grooming practices of vertebrates.
Greer and Capecchi altered one of the two copies of the Hoxb8 gene in individual mice from an inbred line. This enabled the scientists to compare these animals with others in the line, which shared the same set of genes except for the critical Hoxb8 mutation.
As adults, genetically modified mice displayed bald patches and skin lesions on their bodies. The researchers found large amounts of hair in the rodents' mouths and stomachs.
Videotaping for 24 hours showed that mice with Hoxb8 mutations spent twice as much time grooming themselves as the other mice did. Hoxb8 mice also doggedly groomed their cage mates.
Further evidence of a Hoxb8 influence on excessive grooming came when Greer and Capecchi found that mutant mice didn't have any other condition that might cause such behavior. For instance, the animals were as sensitive to pain as other mice were and had no irritating skin conditions.
Laboratory analyses of the brains of the mutant mice then revealed molecular footprints of Hoxb8 activity in areas that had already been implicated in control of animal grooming and generation of human OCD symptoms, such as compulsive hand washing.
Psychiatrist James F. Leckman of Yale University School of Medicine calls the new finding about the Hoxb8 gene "very exciting." Leckman's group is currently investigating possible effects of other Hox genes on OCD. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
The Hoxb8 mutation described by the Utah scientists may also shed light on body dysmorphic disorder, Leckman holds. In this OCD-related condition, people experience debilitating preoccupations with imagined physical defects.http://Louis-J-Sheehan.biz
Still, the Hoxb8-mutated mice behaved much as people with trichotillomania do, comments psychiatrist Lewis R. Baxter of the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Researchers need to explore whether prescription drugs that ease trichotillomania and OCD trim back grooming in Hoxb8 mice, Baxter says. These medications boost the activity of serotonin, a chemical messenger in the brain. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Greer and Capecchi are already examining whether the mutation that they identified in mice appears in people diagnosed with trichotillomania. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
disease 55.dis.0002 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire. The nasty parasite known as Guinea worm that has plagued humans since the days of the ancient Egyptians is on the verge of being completely eradicated, former president Jimmy Carter declared on Friday. The Carter Foundation has led the effort against Guinea worm, which could soon be remembered as the second disease to ever be wiped out by human efforts, smallpox being the first.
http://louis9j9sheehan.blog.com
There have been fewer than 5,000 cases of the disease in six African countries this year, and on Friday Carter announced two new grants dedicated to wiping out the final hotspots: The British government has pledged $15 million, while the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will contribute $40 million.
Guinea Worm is one of the worst parasites you can get. The worms burrow inside of you, grow to almost three feet long, are incredibly painful, and finally pop out of the skin and have to be reeled out, inch by inch, over many days [The New York Times blog]. The parasites have been found in Egyptian mummies, and the official name for the infection, dracunculiasis, references an archaic-sounding pain: it’s Latin for “affliction with little dragons.” Doctors have no vaccines or medicine with which to combat the parasite; instead they rely on prevention to keep people from getting infected. However, humans are the only host for the parasite, so ending outbreaks in human populations would destroy the worm forever. http://louisjsheehan.blogstream.com
Guinea worm has been found across Africa from Mali to Ethiopia with most current cases in Sudan. Only 4,410 cases were reported worldwide during the first ten months of this year, with 80% found in Sudan [BBC News]. The Carter Center says that when the eradication campaign began in 1986 there were 3.5 million cases in 20 nations. While the enormous progress made thus far is encouraging, Carter Center official Craig Withers says the final hotspots pose a particular challenge. “It is a question of education…. Our staff are having to wade through swamps, sometimes up to their necks, to reach remote villages in Southern Sudan” [BBC News].
The disease is caused by drinking water infected with the larvae of the Guinea worm, which then grow into maturity and mate within the human body cavity. The female then burrows outward towards the skin and emerges in a painful blister; traditionally infected people run to the water to cool the burning pain, which allows the worm to release a new generation of larvae. Educating people to filter water before drinking, drilling wells for clean water and treating infected water with chemicals eliminates contagion. Filter materials have been given out, along with drinking straws with built-in filters that are worn around the neck on a string…. “Once we eliminate it from a particular water hole, it is gone forever,” Carter said. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
http://louis9j9sheehan.blog.com
There have been fewer than 5,000 cases of the disease in six African countries this year, and on Friday Carter announced two new grants dedicated to wiping out the final hotspots: The British government has pledged $15 million, while the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will contribute $40 million.
Guinea Worm is one of the worst parasites you can get. The worms burrow inside of you, grow to almost three feet long, are incredibly painful, and finally pop out of the skin and have to be reeled out, inch by inch, over many days [The New York Times blog]. The parasites have been found in Egyptian mummies, and the official name for the infection, dracunculiasis, references an archaic-sounding pain: it’s Latin for “affliction with little dragons.” Doctors have no vaccines or medicine with which to combat the parasite; instead they rely on prevention to keep people from getting infected. However, humans are the only host for the parasite, so ending outbreaks in human populations would destroy the worm forever. http://louisjsheehan.blogstream.com
Guinea worm has been found across Africa from Mali to Ethiopia with most current cases in Sudan. Only 4,410 cases were reported worldwide during the first ten months of this year, with 80% found in Sudan [BBC News]. The Carter Center says that when the eradication campaign began in 1986 there were 3.5 million cases in 20 nations. While the enormous progress made thus far is encouraging, Carter Center official Craig Withers says the final hotspots pose a particular challenge. “It is a question of education…. Our staff are having to wade through swamps, sometimes up to their necks, to reach remote villages in Southern Sudan” [BBC News].
The disease is caused by drinking water infected with the larvae of the Guinea worm, which then grow into maturity and mate within the human body cavity. The female then burrows outward towards the skin and emerges in a painful blister; traditionally infected people run to the water to cool the burning pain, which allows the worm to release a new generation of larvae. Educating people to filter water before drinking, drilling wells for clean water and treating infected water with chemicals eliminates contagion. Filter materials have been given out, along with drinking straws with built-in filters that are worn around the neck on a string…. “Once we eliminate it from a particular water hole, it is gone forever,” Carter said. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Sunday, December 7, 2008
murder 8.mur.0003 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire. They are old men now, long retired from the state police, but they can't forget a slaying case they never solved. http://louis6j6sheehan.blogspot.com
They are haunted by the memory of Betsy Aardsma, a woman from Holland, Mich., who on Nov. 28, 1969, lay dead before them on a gurney in a hallway of Ritenhour Student Health Center at Penn State University.
"When I retired from the state police, I went to Arizona, but I never let it go," said Ron Tyger, 69, one of the original investigators.
Aardsma was stabbed once in the chest while doing research in the cramped and dimly lit stacks of Pattee Library. As she slumped to the floor, pulling books down on top of herself, her killer pulled out the knife and fled into the night.
Between 30 and 40 state troopers worked on the case, interviewing hundreds of students and following leads around the country, especially to Michigan.
Nothing came of their efforts. And it disturbs them.
"I know these guys want me to solve this," said Trooper Kent Bernier, the current investigator, who at age 40 was born the year before the killing. "They talk to me about it regularly.
"It means a lot to them, because it was a case that hit them square in the face back then. And it's never going to let me go, either," Bernier said.
Betsy Aardsma's friends and teachers said she was among the best America had to offer in the late 1960s.
Artistic and poetic, imbued with liberal ideals and empathy for the underprivileged, she planned to join the Peace Corps after graduating with honors from the University of Michigan in 1969.
But her boyfriend, David L. Wright, wouldn't promise to wait for her, so she dropped those plans and followed him to central Pennsylvania.
Wright began classes at the Penn State College of Medicine in Hershey, while Aardsma enrolled in the graduate English program at Penn State's main campus, taking the bus to Harrisburg on weekends.
She perished in one of the bloodier years of the 1960s, when the Manson family and the Zodiac killer were attacking in California and an unknown serial killer was murdering women around the University of Michigan.
Aardsma's family were relieved she was leaving Ann Arbor. They thought State College would be safe.
Instead, they were about to enter a nightmare that has lasted four decades.
Bright and popular:
Betsy Aardsma was like many other women in small towns across America when she came of age in the mid-1960s.
Intrigued by the larger world, wanting a life of the mind and a life of helping others, she was unsure about being a traditional wife and mother.
Her hometown was founded by Calvinist religious dissidents from the Netherlands in 1847 and was known for being conservative and insular. As the local saying went, "if you're not Dutch, you're not much." It was half joke, half belief.
In the 1960s, Holland had about 25,000 people, predominantly descendants of those original settlers and many, like the Aardsmas, having Dutch names.
The city has two dominant religious denominations, the moderate Reformed Church and the ultraconservative Christian Reformed Church. Both believe God's will determines every event in life, good or bad. Humans are "predestined" at birth for heaven or hell.
Betsy Aardsma's pastor at Trinity Reformed Church told mourners at her funeral that her killing was "God's will," according to one of her friends who was there.
Richard and Esther Aardsma, Betsy's parents, were graduates of Hope College, a Reformed Church liberal arts college in Holland. He worked as a sales tax auditor for the Michigan Treasury Department, and she was a homemaker and former teacher.
The Aardsmas were a solidly middle-class couple, raising their four children in a house on leafy West 37th Street in Holland. Betsy was the second-oldest.
Betsy thrived at Holland High School, leading her class as a sophomore and eventually graduating fifth as a senior. Art, English, and biology were her favorites. Sometimes she planned to become a physician, other times a medical illustrator.
Judith Jahns Aycock recalled that Aardsma loved the colorful English literature teacher Olin Van Lare, who was prone to bursting into tears during moving passages of poetry.
Teachers loved her in return. Verne C. Kupelian, a history teacher who later opened a teen dance club in Holland patronized by Aardsma and her friends, still cherishes a poem she wrote for him.
Dirk Bloemendaal Sr., who taught physiology, a senior-level biology course, recalled that Aardsma was a hard worker in a difficult class, where all students dissected cats.
"I think I ended up giving her a straight 'A' in the class, and it was not an easy class," he said. "She was really the kind of person you love to have in your class."
Aardsma hung out with a group of girls whose names appear in academic honors stories in the Sentinel from junior high through National Honor Society and graduation.
Her best friend was Jan Sasamoto Brandt, a Japanese-American girl whose parents had relocated to Holland from the West Coast during World War II, when many fellow Japanese-Americans on the coast were being interned in camps.
"She was artistic, and I was bright also. But I was more the serious bright and she was more artistic, so I think we balanced each other pretty well," Brandt said.
Aardsma had long reddish-brown hair and hazel eyes. She was 5 feet, 8 inches tall, and slim. She was never short of male admirers, friends recalled, but she wasn't boy-crazy and never stayed with one for long.
Aardsma also had a dark side, sometimes seeming to foresee that her life would be unaccountably short.
A poem she wrote as a high school sophomore, "Why Do I Live?" was cited by her pastor at her funeral as evidence she accepted God's will and embraced death.
'Kind of gutsy':
At some point in late high school or early college, Betsy Aardsma spent a week on a mission program run by the Reformed Church on a Navajo reservation in New Mexico and taught art to what were then called "ghetto" children in nearby Grand Rapids.
That is known from published reports after her death and confirmed by her former brother-in-law Dennis Wegner.
None of her immediate family would agree to interviews for this story. Her sister Carole, now a Reformed Church minister, commented only that, "I've said all I'm going to say." Her younger sister could not be reached.
But friends, teachers and more distant family members like Wegner opened up. Their recollections, along with information already in the public record, enabled this story to be written in detail.
Aardsma entered Hope College in the Honors Program in the fall of 1965, intending to pursue the pre-med program, which has always been one of Hope's strengths.
She would have preferred to start college at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, according to Brandt, who spent all four years there. They even talked about rooming together.
But her family was a Hope College family -- in addition to her parents, her older sister, Carole, was a graduate, and her brother would eventually go. Betsy Aardsma finally agreed to go, too.
"When we came to Hope College, it was really strict," said Tamara Lockwood Quinn, who like Aardsma lived in Voorhees Hall. "Lights out at 9 o'clock, chapel three times a week."
Aardsma's freshman roommate was Linda DenBesten Jones of South Holland, Ill., who recalled her as friendly, accommodating to a fault, fascinating to talk to and perhaps an early feminist.
"She wanted to be a doctor. I think that's pretty feminist," Jones said. "I thought it was kind of gutsy to say you were going to be a doctor. I didn't know anybody else who was going to be a doctor. In the classes she was in, she was one of the few women in it."
Men found Aardsma intriguing, among them fellow Hope student George Arwady, the current publisher of the Newark Star-Ledger newspaper in New Jersey. He recalled being in an honors English class with her and dating her once, but he remembered little else about her.
Aardsma could hold her own in a conversation about just about anything.
"She was always into really deep things and then was just so creative," Margo Hakken Zeedyk said. "She had a real good sense of humor, but at the same time, it was a little dry. Real clever."
But not all her dates were as friendly as Arwady. Jones recalled one date that her mother told the state police about after Aardsma was killed.
"Who had kind of snarled at her one time in the dorm," Jones said. "I remember it. [Betsy] saw that as very sinister and scary. At the time, I thought, oh, come on, he's just kind of dramatic."
Aardsma did OK in pre-med classes, Jones recalled, but decided during that first year that her English classes were far more enjoyable than biology or chemistry.
After her sophomore year, for what her friends believe were academic and social reasons, Aardsma transferred to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
Putting dreams aside:
When she arrived at Michigan in the fall of 1967, the campus was engulfed in the fervor of the anti-Vietnam War movement.
The school had been known for its liberal politics through much of the decade. Students for a Democratic Society was organized there in 1960, and Michigan student Bill Ayers, who became a household name during the 2008 presidential campaign, was a leader of the group that fall.
Aardsma was more drawn to another organization that had a special connection to the University of Michigan, the Peace Corps.
President John F. Kennedy first talked about sending Americans to Third World countries to help fight poverty during an impromptu speech on the Michigan campus in 1960.
http://louis1j1sheehan1esquire.blogspot.com
Aardsma would see in the Peace Corps a way to live out her desire to help the world's less fortunate.
She found herself somewhat lonely, however, when she first moved to Ann Arbor.
Even though her friend Jan Sasamoto Brandt was there, Brandt was in a sorority and the two had started to drift apart during the two-year separation. Aardsma missed her Holland friends but kept in touch through the mail.
"Intellectually, this place is not as alive as it should be," she complained in a letter in September 1967 to high school friend Phyllis "Peggy" Wich Vandenberg, who was at Marquette University in Wisconsin. "I run into asses every day."
But she also encountered "a good number of acutely aware people" and was happy that no matter the type of person, U of M had a lot of them.
In her senior year, she shared an apartment with three other women. It was below an apartment shared by four members of the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity.
One of them was David L. Wright, a son of a psychiatrist from Elmhurst, Ill. Wright, a senior, was pre-med. They had met as juniors, but now their friends pushed the relationship.
"She was just a very brilliant person, extremely smart," said Wright, now a kidney specialist in Rockford, Ill. "Good sense of humor. Just a wonderful person."
As happy as Betsy Aardsma was that final spring in Ann Arbor, she was among many women on campus worried by slayings taking place around them.
Serial killer John Norman Collins, now serving a life term at a prison in Michigan, had resumed killing women in March 1969. Police believe he killed at least four women between March and July 1969.
He was tried and convicted in the summer of 1970 for the last murder, that of Karen Sue Beineman of Grand Rapids.
Meanwhile, Aardsma's boyfriend, Wright, became one of 64 people accepted into the third class at the Penn State College of Medicine in Hershey, which had opened in the fall of 1967.
Aardsma graduated from Michigan with "distinction and honors" in English. But as much as she cared for Wright, she still wanted to join the Peace Corps and go to Africa for a year. She applied and was accepted, according to Wright and Brandt.
It made for an unhappy summer in Holland.
Aardsma initially told Brandt she wouldn't be able to be in her wedding that August because she expected to be shipped off to Africa by then.
That was before Wright decided he wasn't crazy about the idea of his girlfriend going away for a year.
"She asked if I would wait for her and so forth," Wright said. "And I sort of selfishly said, I just don't know what will happen."
Aardsma canceled her Peace Corps plans and decided to follow Wright to Pennsylvania. She enrolled at Penn State, although the graduate English program was at the main campus in State College, nearly a hundred miles from his med school in Hershey.
She put her dreams aside and focused on a career as a teacher -- albeit at the college level -- like her sister Carole and her mother.
Because of the ongoing killings, her family was relieved she was getting out of Ann Arbor.
"When she moved to Penn State, we thought, oh, thank God, she's at a place where she's safe, not out at the University of Michigan," said Wegner, her former brother-in-law.
Premonition of early death:
Penn State's main campus in State College was not entirely tranquil in the fall of 1969.
Since the winter of 1967-68, Penn State had seen protests by black students at the school. The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968, brought matters to a head. About five weeks later, black students took over Old Main.
"I was held prisoner for a half-day," said Charles L. Lewis, a retired Penn State vice president for student services. "They were trying to get attention and held me in a room with a half-dozen of us. Let me out in about four hours."
Students had a list of demands, including raising black enrollment at the main campus to 400 -- out of 26,000 students -- the following fall. They wanted more black professors, graduate students, athletes and coaches.
Meanwhile, Wright and other students at the med school in Hershey, which was still under construction, found themselves living in some of the red brick cottages on the Milton Hershey School campus.
Classes and labs were held in the new, crescent-shaped building that is still the heart of the medical center, which began admitting patients in the fall of 1970.
Aardsma lived with her roommate Sharon Brandt (no relation to Jan Sasamoto Brandt) in Atherton Hall, home of many graduate students on the main Penn State campus. Long-distance telephone calls were still expensive in 1969, so she wrote Wright a letter every day. The last one arrived the morning after her death.
The class that would figure in Aardsma's death was English 501 with professor Harrison Meserole, described as "brilliant, a former concert pianist" by John Swinton, who was a student there in 1969.
Students in Meserole's class learned how to ferret out mysteries that scholars solve, said Swinton, who later joined the English faculty. It was an introduction to research.
"His course was really tough and required an awful lot of library work," he said. "And sometimes a lot of digging in the library. A lot of work in the Rare Books Room, a lot of photocopy perusal."
Aardsma made new friends at Penn State, among them Linda Marsa, another English graduate student.
"She always seemed like a young Katharine Hepburn," Marsa said of Aardsma. "You know, with those kind of angular features and this curly, reddish hair that she pinned up. Lean and lanky with that same kind of sarcastic, funny, witty attitude."
Aardsma spent only eight weeks at Penn State, from her arrival in late September until her death on Nov. 28, but managed to make an impression.
A friend, never identified, told The Associated Press after her death that Aardsma loved black literature, especially the works of James Baldwin. An unidentified professor quoted in the same story said she had "the deep sensitivity of an artist for others' feelings."
Marsa, who called herself a political radical, said she and Aardsma were as one in their opposition to the Vietnam War.
Wegner said in a 1972 news article that Aardsma led a campus discussion group against the war on national Vietnam Moratorium Day, which was Oct. 15, 1969.
Aardsma saw her boyfriend on weekends, taking the bus from State College to Harrisburg and back if he didn't drive up. Wright recalled that about midway through the semester, or about the end of October, she seemed troubled.
Aardsma told him she wanted to move to Harrisburg and enroll in courses there, probably at Penn State Harrisburg.
"In retrospect, when I thought about that, I wondered if she was worried about something up there," Wright said. "My wife's theory is that she just wanted to move things along and be closer."
But according to Wegner, Betsy had previously expressed a premonition of early death in her writings. Around that time, he said, she told her mother, "I don't know why I'm here. I have this weird feeling about being here."
'A certain ambivalence':
Wright said he and Aardsma were never formally engaged, but he probably would have given her a ring that Christmas with a wedding to follow in the summer of 1970.
So at the time of their last visit on Nov. 26-27, 1969, it would have been impossible for her to "break off the engagement." That Aardsma might have angered Wright by doing so has been one of several long-standing rumors in the case, even though the state police accepted the doctor's alibi after intensive interrogation.
Phyllis Wich Vandenberg recalled nothing in the letters she and Aardsma continued to exchange that fall to suggest a break-up was imminent. Dr. Steven Margles, a fellow medical student who lived in the same house as Wright, saw no evidence of trouble in the relationship.
A bigger question, perhaps, is whether Aardsma was eager to get married and become a doctor's wife, which at the time carried a job description that didn't involve an independent career.
There was a Hershey Medical Student Wives Club, at that time. It is mentioned periodically in 1968-69 copies of the medical college's Vital Signs newsletter now in the files of the Derry Twp. Historical Society.
One of the club's stated purposes: "To prepare [members] for their role as physicians' wives."
Aardsma's friend Marsa remembered her asking: "Is this what I want? Do I want the kids and the keys to the Country Squire?" A Country Squire was a Ford station wagon and a symbol of traditional 1960s family life.
Marsa said Aardsma loved Wright and went to visit him often, "but she had a certain ambivalence that I think was very natural."
Aardsma, Wright and perhaps a half-dozen other medical students, male and female, got together for Thanksgiving dinner on Nov. 27 at the house where the handful of female medical students resided. The women cooked, and it was "a real nice time," Wright said.
During that day, Aardsma called her family in Holland to wish them a happy Thanksgiving. Wegner, who with his then-wife, Carole Aardsma, was visiting from Madison, Wis., said everyone got on the phone with her.
Wright said he and Aardsma talked about her staying in Hershey for the weekend, but that he simply had too much studying to do for finals. And she needed to do research in the library for her English 501 paper -- due in less than two weeks -- for Meserole.
That night, Wright drove her to the bus depot in Harrisburg, in the 400 block of Market Street. It was the last time he saw her alive.
"And I always wonder if she had stayed down that weekend what would have happened," Wright said, calling it one of his biggest regrets. http://louis1j1sheehan.blogspot.com
The sound of falling books:
"How is it she didn't scream? This isn't instant death. Even if it's six minutes. You would think she would scream. It's so weird."
--Dr. Steven Margles, friend of David Wright
"I mean, people have talked about, what was she doing there? She was in an area where she was supposed to be, according to what we could discover. She was doing what she was supposed to be doing, and somebody killed her."
-- State police Trooper Kent Bernier
There is much about the stabbing death of Betsy Aardsma that remains a mystery, which is one reason state police and journalists find the case compelling.
Aardsma and her roommate, Sharon Brandt, left Atherton Hall about 10 minutes before 4 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 28, intending to do work at Pattee Library, the main library at Penn State.
Aardsma was wearing a sleeveless red dress over a white cotton turtleneck sweater, which led to speculation she was going to the library to meet someone.
"I didn't know she was wearing that," said Linda Marsa. "That would have definitely been out of character for Betsy. She was pretty casual, if not necessarily hip in the way she dressed. A dress and white cotton shirt on a cold November day to do research in the stacks? That's not normal."
According to Penn State English professor Sasha Skucek, who has researched the Aardsma case for years, they made a brief stop in Burrowes Hall to talk to professor Nicholas Joukovsky, who taught the English 501 class with Meserole.
Then Aardsma and Brandt walked to Pattee Library and parted company.
Aardsma headed for Meserole's office in the basement of Pattee Library. He was the chief bibliographer for PMLA, the journal of the Modern Language Association, and needed to be near the books.
"We had a steady stream of students coming in that afternoon to talk about their research projects," said Priscilla Letterman Meserole, then the professor's secretary and later his wife. Harrison Meserole is dead.
"She had on a red dress," Meserole said. "I remember I complimented her on her dress."
Then Aardsma headed down a narrow staircase into the cramped, dimly lit stacks, the seemingly endless rows of floor-to-ceiling shelves where the books are kept.
Few students -- the police estimate is about 90 -- were in the library on the day after Thanksgiving. Normally, there would have been hundreds.
"There wasn't any kind of real security in the building because it wasn't considered to be necessary," said Wayne Baumgardner, a librarian. "Once [the Aardsma slaying] happened, the university put in major security regulations and things and really tightened up."
Aardsma was on level 2 of what is known as the core area, and after checking in the card catalog walked to rows 50 and 51 to retrieve a book she needed for her research project. The time was between 4:30 and 4:45 p.m.
One of the last people to see her alive was Dean Brungart, an assistant stacks supervisor at Pattee.
He told the Daily Collegian in 1987 that it was close to quitting time when he went to level 2 to get a book. Brungart saw two men chatting near the west end of the core and then passed Aardsma, who was between rows 50 and 51.
The space between the rows is narrow, not large enough for two people to pass unless one turns sideways. At the time, the shelving units extended to the wall, making it impossible to escape if cornered.
Aardsma's killer approached, carrying a hunting-style knife with a one-edged blade 31/2 to 4 inches long, according to the autopsy report. There was no scream, no apparent effort to ward off the blade. Aardsma's hands had no wounds.
The killer plunged the blade through her breastbone -- which doctors said requires real strength and force -- and deep into her chest, severing the pulmonary artery and hitting the heart.
"The findings also suggest that the wound was inflicted with considerable force at the time of a face-to-face confrontation of the victim and the assailant, and that this weapon was held in the right hand of the assailant," Centre County pathologist Dr. Thomas Magnani wrote in his autopsy report.
It was a perfect killing blow, investigators later said. Most state troopers involved in the investigation, however, believe the killer grabbed her from behind before plunging the knife into her chest. It remains unresolved.
The severe internal wound bled almost completely into her lungs. Aardsma's red dress camouflaged the tiny amount of blood that leaked to the outside.
There was no "pool of blood" as later reported in news accounts. She was not sexually assaulted.
The killer pulled out the knife and walked away. Aardsma slumped to the floor of the library, pulling books down on herself as she fell. Magnani estimated she died in about five minutes.
A level above, Brungart heard the sound of falling books through a floor vent, he told the Daily Collegian, but he did not go to investigate.
Perhaps nine people were within 70 feet of Aardsma when she was stabbed, but none, because of the intervening shelves of books, saw anything. Skucek said some of them reported hearing a noise, more a gasp than a scream.
Mary Erdley, a student who knew Aardsma, rose from her desk and walked around the corner. She encountered two men, one of whom said, "Somebody better help that girl." They led her back toward rows 50 and 51 and then vanished.
Erdley had no clue what had happened to Aardsma. She stayed by her side, and over the next 15 to 20 minutes tried to get passing students to help her before anyone would stop, the Centre Daily Times of State College reported Dec. 1, 1969.
A library employee phoned Ritenhour Student Health Center, which was a few hundred yards from Pattee Library.
An ambulance arrived after 5 p.m. By this time, as many as seven people were at the scene, milling about and touching things, according to Bernier, the current investigator. Another librarian was giving Aardsma mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
They still didn't know she had been stabbed. The ambulance attendants assumed Aardsma was still alive and had suffered an epileptic seizure. They took her to Ritenhour, where she was pronounced dead at 5:50 p.m.
'In a daze':
Wegner recalled that the news came as the Aardsmas were finishing supper at their home in Holland that Friday evening.
The Rev. Gordon Van Oostenburg, their pastor at Trinity Reformed Church, came to the front door. He walked in, "with this awful look on his face," Wegner said. "And he told us Betsy was dead."
Ron Cotts, Betsy Aardsma's first cousin, remembered his parents, Louis and Ruth Cotts, receiving a "horrible phone call" about her killing at their home in Michigan City, Ind. The younger Cotts was a Delta Airlines pilot who owned a small plane and was visiting for the holiday.
On Saturday morning, he flew his parents to Holland, picked up Richard and Esther Aardsma, and flew them all to Chicago, a flight of about 200 miles, to catch a plane to State College to bring Betsy's body home.
"Esther and Dick were absolutely silent from Holland, Mich., all the way to Chicago O'Hare," he said. "Almost didn't say a word."
Phyllis Wich Vandenberg, who was living in Washington, D.C., heard the news from her father on Friday night.
While working as a waitress Sunday morning in a restaurant in the DuPont Plaza Hotel, she was horrified to see her first customer of the day looking at a story, "Coed is Murdered In College Library," about her friend's killing on Page 3 of the New York Daily News.
"He was reading it, and on that page ... is a full, huge picture of Betsy!" she said. "I was just stunned. I don't know what would have happened if my dad hadn't called me."
Verne Kupelian, Aardsma's former teacher at Holland High, was living in Columbus, Ohio, and heard the news on Paul Harvey, then a ubiquitous presence on American radio.
"And it shook me," Kupelian recalled. "I called up to Holland to one of the kids, and they confirmed it. I still don't understand it."
The violence of 1969 was underscored two days later by the arrest of the Manson family in California in the Tate-LaBianca murders, which knocked Betsy Aardsma's murder from the headlines in some newspapers.
Her funeral was held Dec. 3, at Trinity Reformed Church in Holland.
David Wright said he thought about not attending the funeral because it was so close to finals, but his family convinced him that he had to go. He sent a dozen roses to the funeral, one of which was placed in Betsy's hands in the coffin.
"But that's pretty much the only thing I remember," he said. "I was sort of in a daze."
And he was upset that the state police seemed to think he might be the killer.
They are haunted by the memory of Betsy Aardsma, a woman from Holland, Mich., who on Nov. 28, 1969, lay dead before them on a gurney in a hallway of Ritenhour Student Health Center at Penn State University.
"When I retired from the state police, I went to Arizona, but I never let it go," said Ron Tyger, 69, one of the original investigators.
Aardsma was stabbed once in the chest while doing research in the cramped and dimly lit stacks of Pattee Library. As she slumped to the floor, pulling books down on top of herself, her killer pulled out the knife and fled into the night.
Between 30 and 40 state troopers worked on the case, interviewing hundreds of students and following leads around the country, especially to Michigan.
Nothing came of their efforts. And it disturbs them.
"I know these guys want me to solve this," said Trooper Kent Bernier, the current investigator, who at age 40 was born the year before the killing. "They talk to me about it regularly.
"It means a lot to them, because it was a case that hit them square in the face back then. And it's never going to let me go, either," Bernier said.
Betsy Aardsma's friends and teachers said she was among the best America had to offer in the late 1960s.
Artistic and poetic, imbued with liberal ideals and empathy for the underprivileged, she planned to join the Peace Corps after graduating with honors from the University of Michigan in 1969.
But her boyfriend, David L. Wright, wouldn't promise to wait for her, so she dropped those plans and followed him to central Pennsylvania.
Wright began classes at the Penn State College of Medicine in Hershey, while Aardsma enrolled in the graduate English program at Penn State's main campus, taking the bus to Harrisburg on weekends.
She perished in one of the bloodier years of the 1960s, when the Manson family and the Zodiac killer were attacking in California and an unknown serial killer was murdering women around the University of Michigan.
Aardsma's family were relieved she was leaving Ann Arbor. They thought State College would be safe.
Instead, they were about to enter a nightmare that has lasted four decades.
Bright and popular:
Betsy Aardsma was like many other women in small towns across America when she came of age in the mid-1960s.
Intrigued by the larger world, wanting a life of the mind and a life of helping others, she was unsure about being a traditional wife and mother.
Her hometown was founded by Calvinist religious dissidents from the Netherlands in 1847 and was known for being conservative and insular. As the local saying went, "if you're not Dutch, you're not much." It was half joke, half belief.
In the 1960s, Holland had about 25,000 people, predominantly descendants of those original settlers and many, like the Aardsmas, having Dutch names.
The city has two dominant religious denominations, the moderate Reformed Church and the ultraconservative Christian Reformed Church. Both believe God's will determines every event in life, good or bad. Humans are "predestined" at birth for heaven or hell.
Betsy Aardsma's pastor at Trinity Reformed Church told mourners at her funeral that her killing was "God's will," according to one of her friends who was there.
Richard and Esther Aardsma, Betsy's parents, were graduates of Hope College, a Reformed Church liberal arts college in Holland. He worked as a sales tax auditor for the Michigan Treasury Department, and she was a homemaker and former teacher.
The Aardsmas were a solidly middle-class couple, raising their four children in a house on leafy West 37th Street in Holland. Betsy was the second-oldest.
Betsy thrived at Holland High School, leading her class as a sophomore and eventually graduating fifth as a senior. Art, English, and biology were her favorites. Sometimes she planned to become a physician, other times a medical illustrator.
Judith Jahns Aycock recalled that Aardsma loved the colorful English literature teacher Olin Van Lare, who was prone to bursting into tears during moving passages of poetry.
Teachers loved her in return. Verne C. Kupelian, a history teacher who later opened a teen dance club in Holland patronized by Aardsma and her friends, still cherishes a poem she wrote for him.
Dirk Bloemendaal Sr., who taught physiology, a senior-level biology course, recalled that Aardsma was a hard worker in a difficult class, where all students dissected cats.
"I think I ended up giving her a straight 'A' in the class, and it was not an easy class," he said. "She was really the kind of person you love to have in your class."
Aardsma hung out with a group of girls whose names appear in academic honors stories in the Sentinel from junior high through National Honor Society and graduation.
Her best friend was Jan Sasamoto Brandt, a Japanese-American girl whose parents had relocated to Holland from the West Coast during World War II, when many fellow Japanese-Americans on the coast were being interned in camps.
"She was artistic, and I was bright also. But I was more the serious bright and she was more artistic, so I think we balanced each other pretty well," Brandt said.
Aardsma had long reddish-brown hair and hazel eyes. She was 5 feet, 8 inches tall, and slim. She was never short of male admirers, friends recalled, but she wasn't boy-crazy and never stayed with one for long.
Aardsma also had a dark side, sometimes seeming to foresee that her life would be unaccountably short.
A poem she wrote as a high school sophomore, "Why Do I Live?" was cited by her pastor at her funeral as evidence she accepted God's will and embraced death.
'Kind of gutsy':
At some point in late high school or early college, Betsy Aardsma spent a week on a mission program run by the Reformed Church on a Navajo reservation in New Mexico and taught art to what were then called "ghetto" children in nearby Grand Rapids.
That is known from published reports after her death and confirmed by her former brother-in-law Dennis Wegner.
None of her immediate family would agree to interviews for this story. Her sister Carole, now a Reformed Church minister, commented only that, "I've said all I'm going to say." Her younger sister could not be reached.
But friends, teachers and more distant family members like Wegner opened up. Their recollections, along with information already in the public record, enabled this story to be written in detail.
Aardsma entered Hope College in the Honors Program in the fall of 1965, intending to pursue the pre-med program, which has always been one of Hope's strengths.
She would have preferred to start college at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, according to Brandt, who spent all four years there. They even talked about rooming together.
But her family was a Hope College family -- in addition to her parents, her older sister, Carole, was a graduate, and her brother would eventually go. Betsy Aardsma finally agreed to go, too.
"When we came to Hope College, it was really strict," said Tamara Lockwood Quinn, who like Aardsma lived in Voorhees Hall. "Lights out at 9 o'clock, chapel three times a week."
Aardsma's freshman roommate was Linda DenBesten Jones of South Holland, Ill., who recalled her as friendly, accommodating to a fault, fascinating to talk to and perhaps an early feminist.
"She wanted to be a doctor. I think that's pretty feminist," Jones said. "I thought it was kind of gutsy to say you were going to be a doctor. I didn't know anybody else who was going to be a doctor. In the classes she was in, she was one of the few women in it."
Men found Aardsma intriguing, among them fellow Hope student George Arwady, the current publisher of the Newark Star-Ledger newspaper in New Jersey. He recalled being in an honors English class with her and dating her once, but he remembered little else about her.
Aardsma could hold her own in a conversation about just about anything.
"She was always into really deep things and then was just so creative," Margo Hakken Zeedyk said. "She had a real good sense of humor, but at the same time, it was a little dry. Real clever."
But not all her dates were as friendly as Arwady. Jones recalled one date that her mother told the state police about after Aardsma was killed.
"Who had kind of snarled at her one time in the dorm," Jones said. "I remember it. [Betsy] saw that as very sinister and scary. At the time, I thought, oh, come on, he's just kind of dramatic."
Aardsma did OK in pre-med classes, Jones recalled, but decided during that first year that her English classes were far more enjoyable than biology or chemistry.
After her sophomore year, for what her friends believe were academic and social reasons, Aardsma transferred to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
Putting dreams aside:
When she arrived at Michigan in the fall of 1967, the campus was engulfed in the fervor of the anti-Vietnam War movement.
The school had been known for its liberal politics through much of the decade. Students for a Democratic Society was organized there in 1960, and Michigan student Bill Ayers, who became a household name during the 2008 presidential campaign, was a leader of the group that fall.
Aardsma was more drawn to another organization that had a special connection to the University of Michigan, the Peace Corps.
President John F. Kennedy first talked about sending Americans to Third World countries to help fight poverty during an impromptu speech on the Michigan campus in 1960.
http://louis1j1sheehan1esquire.blogspot.com
Aardsma would see in the Peace Corps a way to live out her desire to help the world's less fortunate.
She found herself somewhat lonely, however, when she first moved to Ann Arbor.
Even though her friend Jan Sasamoto Brandt was there, Brandt was in a sorority and the two had started to drift apart during the two-year separation. Aardsma missed her Holland friends but kept in touch through the mail.
"Intellectually, this place is not as alive as it should be," she complained in a letter in September 1967 to high school friend Phyllis "Peggy" Wich Vandenberg, who was at Marquette University in Wisconsin. "I run into asses every day."
But she also encountered "a good number of acutely aware people" and was happy that no matter the type of person, U of M had a lot of them.
In her senior year, she shared an apartment with three other women. It was below an apartment shared by four members of the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity.
One of them was David L. Wright, a son of a psychiatrist from Elmhurst, Ill. Wright, a senior, was pre-med. They had met as juniors, but now their friends pushed the relationship.
"She was just a very brilliant person, extremely smart," said Wright, now a kidney specialist in Rockford, Ill. "Good sense of humor. Just a wonderful person."
As happy as Betsy Aardsma was that final spring in Ann Arbor, she was among many women on campus worried by slayings taking place around them.
Serial killer John Norman Collins, now serving a life term at a prison in Michigan, had resumed killing women in March 1969. Police believe he killed at least four women between March and July 1969.
He was tried and convicted in the summer of 1970 for the last murder, that of Karen Sue Beineman of Grand Rapids.
Meanwhile, Aardsma's boyfriend, Wright, became one of 64 people accepted into the third class at the Penn State College of Medicine in Hershey, which had opened in the fall of 1967.
Aardsma graduated from Michigan with "distinction and honors" in English. But as much as she cared for Wright, she still wanted to join the Peace Corps and go to Africa for a year. She applied and was accepted, according to Wright and Brandt.
It made for an unhappy summer in Holland.
Aardsma initially told Brandt she wouldn't be able to be in her wedding that August because she expected to be shipped off to Africa by then.
That was before Wright decided he wasn't crazy about the idea of his girlfriend going away for a year.
"She asked if I would wait for her and so forth," Wright said. "And I sort of selfishly said, I just don't know what will happen."
Aardsma canceled her Peace Corps plans and decided to follow Wright to Pennsylvania. She enrolled at Penn State, although the graduate English program was at the main campus in State College, nearly a hundred miles from his med school in Hershey.
She put her dreams aside and focused on a career as a teacher -- albeit at the college level -- like her sister Carole and her mother.
Because of the ongoing killings, her family was relieved she was getting out of Ann Arbor.
"When she moved to Penn State, we thought, oh, thank God, she's at a place where she's safe, not out at the University of Michigan," said Wegner, her former brother-in-law.
Premonition of early death:
Penn State's main campus in State College was not entirely tranquil in the fall of 1969.
Since the winter of 1967-68, Penn State had seen protests by black students at the school. The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968, brought matters to a head. About five weeks later, black students took over Old Main.
"I was held prisoner for a half-day," said Charles L. Lewis, a retired Penn State vice president for student services. "They were trying to get attention and held me in a room with a half-dozen of us. Let me out in about four hours."
Students had a list of demands, including raising black enrollment at the main campus to 400 -- out of 26,000 students -- the following fall. They wanted more black professors, graduate students, athletes and coaches.
Meanwhile, Wright and other students at the med school in Hershey, which was still under construction, found themselves living in some of the red brick cottages on the Milton Hershey School campus.
Classes and labs were held in the new, crescent-shaped building that is still the heart of the medical center, which began admitting patients in the fall of 1970.
Aardsma lived with her roommate Sharon Brandt (no relation to Jan Sasamoto Brandt) in Atherton Hall, home of many graduate students on the main Penn State campus. Long-distance telephone calls were still expensive in 1969, so she wrote Wright a letter every day. The last one arrived the morning after her death.
The class that would figure in Aardsma's death was English 501 with professor Harrison Meserole, described as "brilliant, a former concert pianist" by John Swinton, who was a student there in 1969.
Students in Meserole's class learned how to ferret out mysteries that scholars solve, said Swinton, who later joined the English faculty. It was an introduction to research.
"His course was really tough and required an awful lot of library work," he said. "And sometimes a lot of digging in the library. A lot of work in the Rare Books Room, a lot of photocopy perusal."
Aardsma made new friends at Penn State, among them Linda Marsa, another English graduate student.
"She always seemed like a young Katharine Hepburn," Marsa said of Aardsma. "You know, with those kind of angular features and this curly, reddish hair that she pinned up. Lean and lanky with that same kind of sarcastic, funny, witty attitude."
Aardsma spent only eight weeks at Penn State, from her arrival in late September until her death on Nov. 28, but managed to make an impression.
A friend, never identified, told The Associated Press after her death that Aardsma loved black literature, especially the works of James Baldwin. An unidentified professor quoted in the same story said she had "the deep sensitivity of an artist for others' feelings."
Marsa, who called herself a political radical, said she and Aardsma were as one in their opposition to the Vietnam War.
Wegner said in a 1972 news article that Aardsma led a campus discussion group against the war on national Vietnam Moratorium Day, which was Oct. 15, 1969.
Aardsma saw her boyfriend on weekends, taking the bus from State College to Harrisburg and back if he didn't drive up. Wright recalled that about midway through the semester, or about the end of October, she seemed troubled.
Aardsma told him she wanted to move to Harrisburg and enroll in courses there, probably at Penn State Harrisburg.
"In retrospect, when I thought about that, I wondered if she was worried about something up there," Wright said. "My wife's theory is that she just wanted to move things along and be closer."
But according to Wegner, Betsy had previously expressed a premonition of early death in her writings. Around that time, he said, she told her mother, "I don't know why I'm here. I have this weird feeling about being here."
'A certain ambivalence':
Wright said he and Aardsma were never formally engaged, but he probably would have given her a ring that Christmas with a wedding to follow in the summer of 1970.
So at the time of their last visit on Nov. 26-27, 1969, it would have been impossible for her to "break off the engagement." That Aardsma might have angered Wright by doing so has been one of several long-standing rumors in the case, even though the state police accepted the doctor's alibi after intensive interrogation.
Phyllis Wich Vandenberg recalled nothing in the letters she and Aardsma continued to exchange that fall to suggest a break-up was imminent. Dr. Steven Margles, a fellow medical student who lived in the same house as Wright, saw no evidence of trouble in the relationship.
A bigger question, perhaps, is whether Aardsma was eager to get married and become a doctor's wife, which at the time carried a job description that didn't involve an independent career.
There was a Hershey Medical Student Wives Club, at that time. It is mentioned periodically in 1968-69 copies of the medical college's Vital Signs newsletter now in the files of the Derry Twp. Historical Society.
One of the club's stated purposes: "To prepare [members] for their role as physicians' wives."
Aardsma's friend Marsa remembered her asking: "Is this what I want? Do I want the kids and the keys to the Country Squire?" A Country Squire was a Ford station wagon and a symbol of traditional 1960s family life.
Marsa said Aardsma loved Wright and went to visit him often, "but she had a certain ambivalence that I think was very natural."
Aardsma, Wright and perhaps a half-dozen other medical students, male and female, got together for Thanksgiving dinner on Nov. 27 at the house where the handful of female medical students resided. The women cooked, and it was "a real nice time," Wright said.
During that day, Aardsma called her family in Holland to wish them a happy Thanksgiving. Wegner, who with his then-wife, Carole Aardsma, was visiting from Madison, Wis., said everyone got on the phone with her.
Wright said he and Aardsma talked about her staying in Hershey for the weekend, but that he simply had too much studying to do for finals. And she needed to do research in the library for her English 501 paper -- due in less than two weeks -- for Meserole.
That night, Wright drove her to the bus depot in Harrisburg, in the 400 block of Market Street. It was the last time he saw her alive.
"And I always wonder if she had stayed down that weekend what would have happened," Wright said, calling it one of his biggest regrets. http://louis1j1sheehan.blogspot.com
The sound of falling books:
"How is it she didn't scream? This isn't instant death. Even if it's six minutes. You would think she would scream. It's so weird."
--Dr. Steven Margles, friend of David Wright
"I mean, people have talked about, what was she doing there? She was in an area where she was supposed to be, according to what we could discover. She was doing what she was supposed to be doing, and somebody killed her."
-- State police Trooper Kent Bernier
There is much about the stabbing death of Betsy Aardsma that remains a mystery, which is one reason state police and journalists find the case compelling.
Aardsma and her roommate, Sharon Brandt, left Atherton Hall about 10 minutes before 4 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 28, intending to do work at Pattee Library, the main library at Penn State.
Aardsma was wearing a sleeveless red dress over a white cotton turtleneck sweater, which led to speculation she was going to the library to meet someone.
"I didn't know she was wearing that," said Linda Marsa. "That would have definitely been out of character for Betsy. She was pretty casual, if not necessarily hip in the way she dressed. A dress and white cotton shirt on a cold November day to do research in the stacks? That's not normal."
According to Penn State English professor Sasha Skucek, who has researched the Aardsma case for years, they made a brief stop in Burrowes Hall to talk to professor Nicholas Joukovsky, who taught the English 501 class with Meserole.
Then Aardsma and Brandt walked to Pattee Library and parted company.
Aardsma headed for Meserole's office in the basement of Pattee Library. He was the chief bibliographer for PMLA, the journal of the Modern Language Association, and needed to be near the books.
"We had a steady stream of students coming in that afternoon to talk about their research projects," said Priscilla Letterman Meserole, then the professor's secretary and later his wife. Harrison Meserole is dead.
"She had on a red dress," Meserole said. "I remember I complimented her on her dress."
Then Aardsma headed down a narrow staircase into the cramped, dimly lit stacks, the seemingly endless rows of floor-to-ceiling shelves where the books are kept.
Few students -- the police estimate is about 90 -- were in the library on the day after Thanksgiving. Normally, there would have been hundreds.
"There wasn't any kind of real security in the building because it wasn't considered to be necessary," said Wayne Baumgardner, a librarian. "Once [the Aardsma slaying] happened, the university put in major security regulations and things and really tightened up."
Aardsma was on level 2 of what is known as the core area, and after checking in the card catalog walked to rows 50 and 51 to retrieve a book she needed for her research project. The time was between 4:30 and 4:45 p.m.
One of the last people to see her alive was Dean Brungart, an assistant stacks supervisor at Pattee.
He told the Daily Collegian in 1987 that it was close to quitting time when he went to level 2 to get a book. Brungart saw two men chatting near the west end of the core and then passed Aardsma, who was between rows 50 and 51.
The space between the rows is narrow, not large enough for two people to pass unless one turns sideways. At the time, the shelving units extended to the wall, making it impossible to escape if cornered.
Aardsma's killer approached, carrying a hunting-style knife with a one-edged blade 31/2 to 4 inches long, according to the autopsy report. There was no scream, no apparent effort to ward off the blade. Aardsma's hands had no wounds.
The killer plunged the blade through her breastbone -- which doctors said requires real strength and force -- and deep into her chest, severing the pulmonary artery and hitting the heart.
"The findings also suggest that the wound was inflicted with considerable force at the time of a face-to-face confrontation of the victim and the assailant, and that this weapon was held in the right hand of the assailant," Centre County pathologist Dr. Thomas Magnani wrote in his autopsy report.
It was a perfect killing blow, investigators later said. Most state troopers involved in the investigation, however, believe the killer grabbed her from behind before plunging the knife into her chest. It remains unresolved.
The severe internal wound bled almost completely into her lungs. Aardsma's red dress camouflaged the tiny amount of blood that leaked to the outside.
There was no "pool of blood" as later reported in news accounts. She was not sexually assaulted.
The killer pulled out the knife and walked away. Aardsma slumped to the floor of the library, pulling books down on herself as she fell. Magnani estimated she died in about five minutes.
A level above, Brungart heard the sound of falling books through a floor vent, he told the Daily Collegian, but he did not go to investigate.
Perhaps nine people were within 70 feet of Aardsma when she was stabbed, but none, because of the intervening shelves of books, saw anything. Skucek said some of them reported hearing a noise, more a gasp than a scream.
Mary Erdley, a student who knew Aardsma, rose from her desk and walked around the corner. She encountered two men, one of whom said, "Somebody better help that girl." They led her back toward rows 50 and 51 and then vanished.
Erdley had no clue what had happened to Aardsma. She stayed by her side, and over the next 15 to 20 minutes tried to get passing students to help her before anyone would stop, the Centre Daily Times of State College reported Dec. 1, 1969.
A library employee phoned Ritenhour Student Health Center, which was a few hundred yards from Pattee Library.
An ambulance arrived after 5 p.m. By this time, as many as seven people were at the scene, milling about and touching things, according to Bernier, the current investigator. Another librarian was giving Aardsma mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
They still didn't know she had been stabbed. The ambulance attendants assumed Aardsma was still alive and had suffered an epileptic seizure. They took her to Ritenhour, where she was pronounced dead at 5:50 p.m.
'In a daze':
Wegner recalled that the news came as the Aardsmas were finishing supper at their home in Holland that Friday evening.
The Rev. Gordon Van Oostenburg, their pastor at Trinity Reformed Church, came to the front door. He walked in, "with this awful look on his face," Wegner said. "And he told us Betsy was dead."
Ron Cotts, Betsy Aardsma's first cousin, remembered his parents, Louis and Ruth Cotts, receiving a "horrible phone call" about her killing at their home in Michigan City, Ind. The younger Cotts was a Delta Airlines pilot who owned a small plane and was visiting for the holiday.
On Saturday morning, he flew his parents to Holland, picked up Richard and Esther Aardsma, and flew them all to Chicago, a flight of about 200 miles, to catch a plane to State College to bring Betsy's body home.
"Esther and Dick were absolutely silent from Holland, Mich., all the way to Chicago O'Hare," he said. "Almost didn't say a word."
Phyllis Wich Vandenberg, who was living in Washington, D.C., heard the news from her father on Friday night.
While working as a waitress Sunday morning in a restaurant in the DuPont Plaza Hotel, she was horrified to see her first customer of the day looking at a story, "Coed is Murdered In College Library," about her friend's killing on Page 3 of the New York Daily News.
"He was reading it, and on that page ... is a full, huge picture of Betsy!" she said. "I was just stunned. I don't know what would have happened if my dad hadn't called me."
Verne Kupelian, Aardsma's former teacher at Holland High, was living in Columbus, Ohio, and heard the news on Paul Harvey, then a ubiquitous presence on American radio.
"And it shook me," Kupelian recalled. "I called up to Holland to one of the kids, and they confirmed it. I still don't understand it."
The violence of 1969 was underscored two days later by the arrest of the Manson family in California in the Tate-LaBianca murders, which knocked Betsy Aardsma's murder from the headlines in some newspapers.
Her funeral was held Dec. 3, at Trinity Reformed Church in Holland.
David Wright said he thought about not attending the funeral because it was so close to finals, but his family convinced him that he had to go. He sent a dozen roses to the funeral, one of which was placed in Betsy's hands in the coffin.
"But that's pretty much the only thing I remember," he said. "I was sort of in a daze."
And he was upset that the state police seemed to think he might be the killer.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
vessels 99.ves.2220003 phenanthraquinone Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
From second to second, blood vessels must alternately constrict and dilate to regulate blood flow. That ability can diminish markedly in rodent vessels exposed to an oily constituent of diesel soot, researchers report.
The team took arteries from rats' thighs and exposed them to the soot chemical phenanthraquinone. http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.NET
Vessels came from female rats that were 6, 14, and 24 months old—comparable to girls approaching puberty, women in their reproductive years, and women over 65 years of age. Half of each age group of animals had undergone ovary-removal surgery, lowering their production of sex hormones and simulating that of postmenopausal women. Vessels of male rats 6 and 24 months old were also tested. http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.NET
The soot agent rendered vessels from 24-month-old males and from all females without ovaries unable to dilate, says study leader Timothy R. Nurkiewicz of the West Virginia University School of Medicine in Morgantown. In 6-month-old males and 14-month-old females with ovaries, phenanthraquinone reduced dilation by 65 percent. Only the youngest females showed no vessel impairment from the chemical. http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.NET
Such findings reinforce the need to consider age and gender when evaluating the toxicity of pollutants, says Nurkiewicz.He presented the findings May 1 at the Experimental Biology meeting in Washington, D.C. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
The team took arteries from rats' thighs and exposed them to the soot chemical phenanthraquinone. http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.NET
Vessels came from female rats that were 6, 14, and 24 months old—comparable to girls approaching puberty, women in their reproductive years, and women over 65 years of age. Half of each age group of animals had undergone ovary-removal surgery, lowering their production of sex hormones and simulating that of postmenopausal women. Vessels of male rats 6 and 24 months old were also tested. http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.NET
The soot agent rendered vessels from 24-month-old males and from all females without ovaries unable to dilate, says study leader Timothy R. Nurkiewicz of the West Virginia University School of Medicine in Morgantown. In 6-month-old males and 14-month-old females with ovaries, phenanthraquinone reduced dilation by 65 percent. Only the youngest females showed no vessel impairment from the chemical. http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.NET
Such findings reinforce the need to consider age and gender when evaluating the toxicity of pollutants, says Nurkiewicz.He presented the findings May 1 at the Experimental Biology meeting in Washington, D.C. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
restful 773.res.00023 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
A good night's sleep seems to clear the brain and help the well-snoozed individual negotiate the flow of daily affairs.
In contrast, a lack of sleep makes it difficult to carry out even mundane acts, such as conversing intelligibly or calculating a waiter's tip. Initial investigations of brain activity in sleepy volunteers as they try to perform verbal and mathematical tasks have yielded intriguing clues about the nature of sleep deprivation.
The new evidence adds to scientific concern over the potentially harmful effects of widespread sleep deficits (SN: 9/25/99, p. 205: http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arc99/9_25_99/bob2.htm). Brain functions tapped during certain types of thought change considerably after a sleepless night, reports a team of neuroscientists led by Sean P.A. Drummond of the University of California, San Diego.
As they try to memorize words, sleep-deprived adults exhibit a pattern of brain activity not previously recorded, Drummond and his colleagues say. This response may reflect the recruitment of a brain system to compensate, at least in part, for neural losses sparked by sleepiness, they suggest.
In contrast, sleep-deprived people display generally lower brain activity while grappling with math problems than they do when rested, says the team. In this case, no new areas of heightened neural activity compensate for the effects of sleepiness.http://louisjsheehan.blogstream.com/
"The effects of sleep deprivation on cognitive performance and related patterns of cerebral activation may depend in part on task-specific demands," the researchers conclude.
During both tasks, functional magnetic resonance imaging scans measured blood-flow changes in specific brain regions. These data provided an indirect index of rises and falls in brain-cell activity.
In one study, published in the Feb. 10 Nature, the researchers evaluated 13 healthy adults, ages 21 to 35, in a sleep laboratory. Each participant tried to memorize short lists of words on the afternoon following a full night's sleep and then after about 35 hours without sleep. Word recall and recognition dropped sharply in the sleep-deprived.
Parts of the prefrontal cortex and temporal cortex showed the most activity in rested individuals, the scientists say. The prefrontal cortex helps coordinate attention and memory for information used in various tasks. The temporal cortex contributes to language comprehension.http://louisjsheehan.blogstream.com/
The scientists had presumed that a lack of sleep would obstruct prefrontal activity, which increases sharply during wakefulness. Contrary to expectations, however, the prefrontal cortex after sleep deprivation exhibited even more activity across a larger area as volunteers studied the lists.
Sleepy participants also displayed blood-flow surges in another brain area, the parietal lobe, but not in the temporal cortex.
The buildup of sleep-promoting substances, such as adenosine, in the prefrontal cortex of sleepy individuals may cause that area to work harder when confronted with a verbal task, Drummond and his coworkers theorize.
In another study, published in the Dec. 16, 1999 NeuroReport, participants performed a series of arithmetic tasks that required subtraction. Parietal regions that were activated in rested participants exhibited blood-flow declines after 35 hours without sleep.http://louisjsheehan.blogstream.com/
Activity in other brain regions remained stable or declined slightly while sleep-needy volunteers worked on the math problems. Participants made more mistakes and omitted more responses when drowsy.
"This is exciting work," remarks sleep researcher David Dinges of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia. "But brain processes involved in sleep deprivation are probably more complex than any current scientific explanations."http://louisjsheehan.blogstream.com/
Alterations of brain activity in sleepy people may reflect the use of new cortical areas to compensate for neural losses elsewhere, Dinges says. However, the observed brain changes may instead result, in part, from impairment of the ability to sustain attention for more than a few seconds, he adds. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
In contrast, a lack of sleep makes it difficult to carry out even mundane acts, such as conversing intelligibly or calculating a waiter's tip. Initial investigations of brain activity in sleepy volunteers as they try to perform verbal and mathematical tasks have yielded intriguing clues about the nature of sleep deprivation.
The new evidence adds to scientific concern over the potentially harmful effects of widespread sleep deficits (SN: 9/25/99, p. 205: http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arc99/9_25_99/bob2.htm). Brain functions tapped during certain types of thought change considerably after a sleepless night, reports a team of neuroscientists led by Sean P.A. Drummond of the University of California, San Diego.
As they try to memorize words, sleep-deprived adults exhibit a pattern of brain activity not previously recorded, Drummond and his colleagues say. This response may reflect the recruitment of a brain system to compensate, at least in part, for neural losses sparked by sleepiness, they suggest.
In contrast, sleep-deprived people display generally lower brain activity while grappling with math problems than they do when rested, says the team. In this case, no new areas of heightened neural activity compensate for the effects of sleepiness.http://louisjsheehan.blogstream.com/
"The effects of sleep deprivation on cognitive performance and related patterns of cerebral activation may depend in part on task-specific demands," the researchers conclude.
During both tasks, functional magnetic resonance imaging scans measured blood-flow changes in specific brain regions. These data provided an indirect index of rises and falls in brain-cell activity.
In one study, published in the Feb. 10 Nature, the researchers evaluated 13 healthy adults, ages 21 to 35, in a sleep laboratory. Each participant tried to memorize short lists of words on the afternoon following a full night's sleep and then after about 35 hours without sleep. Word recall and recognition dropped sharply in the sleep-deprived.
Parts of the prefrontal cortex and temporal cortex showed the most activity in rested individuals, the scientists say. The prefrontal cortex helps coordinate attention and memory for information used in various tasks. The temporal cortex contributes to language comprehension.http://louisjsheehan.blogstream.com/
The scientists had presumed that a lack of sleep would obstruct prefrontal activity, which increases sharply during wakefulness. Contrary to expectations, however, the prefrontal cortex after sleep deprivation exhibited even more activity across a larger area as volunteers studied the lists.
Sleepy participants also displayed blood-flow surges in another brain area, the parietal lobe, but not in the temporal cortex.
The buildup of sleep-promoting substances, such as adenosine, in the prefrontal cortex of sleepy individuals may cause that area to work harder when confronted with a verbal task, Drummond and his coworkers theorize.
In another study, published in the Dec. 16, 1999 NeuroReport, participants performed a series of arithmetic tasks that required subtraction. Parietal regions that were activated in rested participants exhibited blood-flow declines after 35 hours without sleep.http://louisjsheehan.blogstream.com/
Activity in other brain regions remained stable or declined slightly while sleep-needy volunteers worked on the math problems. Participants made more mistakes and omitted more responses when drowsy.
"This is exciting work," remarks sleep researcher David Dinges of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia. "But brain processes involved in sleep deprivation are probably more complex than any current scientific explanations."http://louisjsheehan.blogstream.com/
Alterations of brain activity in sleepy people may reflect the use of new cortical areas to compensate for neural losses elsewhere, Dinges says. However, the observed brain changes may instead result, in part, from impairment of the ability to sustain attention for more than a few seconds, he adds. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Homes 883.hom.333999 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Being environmentally conscious is no guarantee you’ll put your home where you mouth is, a new study finds.
Animals tend to thrive best when given big blocks of land or stretches of water unencumbered by homes, roads, and sewage. So in terms of biodiversity, it’s best to avoid sprawl. Yet in the Teton Valley, a portion of the greater Yellowstone ecosystem straddling the borders of Idaho and Wyoming, people have been building big homes in some of the more environmentally fragile areas — in woodlands, on mountainsides, and along streams.
Disproportionately, people who have been building homes in these more sensitive areas — ones facing the highest risks of losing species diversity — tend to be older, better educated, and more environmentally conscious home buyers than are those in the region’s agricultural or urban communities. People who moved into wilder lands have also tended to live in small households, with just one or two dwellers. But that’s not to suggest they’re tree huggers roughing it in small cabins. Many homes being built in the region's more ecologically fragile areas rival or exceed the size of homes in town, notes conservation biologist M. Nils Peterson of Michigan State University. He led the new study, which identified the home-siting trends.http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-jmbPCHg9dLPh1gHoZxLG.GpS
During the 1990s, the Teton Valley experienced a 74 percent growth in its population (to some 6,000) and 85 percent rise in the numbers of households (to around 2,100). The Michigan State scientists refer to Individuals who grew up in this region as natives, and those drawn here from elsewhere as immigrants.
Peterson's team interviewed residents of more than 400 households to find how they ended up in Teton Valley and what features determined where they settled within it.
Local-born residents tended to live in cities and farmlands and typically said they chose those areas to be near family or in close proximity to jobs.
Immigrants, by contrast, were more likely than local-born residents to say they were drawn by the Valley’s natural resources. They’re also more likely than the native residents to express ecocentric values. On questionnaires, they tended to place humans within ecosystems, not as lords over the natural world.
Among surveyed Valley residents with advanced college degrees, one-quarter had majored in environmental fields such as ecology, forestry, wildlife biology, botany, or zoology.
Overall, they and other surveyed immigrants to the region expressed an appreciation for the interconnectedness of creatures within an ecosystem. So as a group, the people who moved into fragile environments recognized that residential development – such as their home – risked stressing the very natural resources they prized and which had made the vistas in and around their homesteads so attractive.
Did these individuals also recognize the apparent hypocrisy of building in sensitive environments? “Absolutely,” Peterson says. “ In fact, most of them knew they were ‘part of the problem.’”
One recent Idaho Fish and Game retiree, a biologist, had to speak loudly during his interview with Peterson’s team “so his voice would carry over the nail guns that were tacking his new home together.” As the Michigan scientists relate in their new paper, due for publication soon in an upcoming issue of Conservation Biology, that retiree said he thought the biggest threat to the local environment was “the loss of winter range (for mule deer and elk).” He added that “I’ve now become part of [the problem] because my wife won’t live in town.”
Yet Peterson says that “when we talked about development,” such environmentally savvy residents acknowledged to the Michigan scientists that “they want to see development stop” or moves made toward development that’s more “conservation-oriented, where houses are clustered with lots of open space.”
“At first blush” such arguments “don’t seem to make sense,” Peterson says. Then, you think about it a bit more, he says, and the logic of these eco-friendly immigrants becomes understandable if not always defensible.
People trained in forestry appreciate trees. Fisheries biologists can lust over trout streams. Rangeland biologists long to build a home where the buffalo roamed — and where the deer and antelope still play.http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-jmbPCHg9dLPh1gHoZxLG.GpS
But in this area, where there have been no zoning restrictions, willy-nilly development threatens to litter the region with tiny crazy-quilt patches of unimproved wilderness. Hardly a deer’s dream. And the area’s prized cutthroat trout? Over the past 18 years, residential development has led to their near extinction in the Teton River, Peterson’s team reports.
The disturbing bottom line, the researchers argue, is that understanding the fragility of ecosystems and appreciating their value isn’t enough to keep people from potentially despoiling it. Getting even enlightened souls to tread more lightly will appear to take considerably more work – and, potentially, regulations.
Animals tend to thrive best when given big blocks of land or stretches of water unencumbered by homes, roads, and sewage. So in terms of biodiversity, it’s best to avoid sprawl. Yet in the Teton Valley, a portion of the greater Yellowstone ecosystem straddling the borders of Idaho and Wyoming, people have been building big homes in some of the more environmentally fragile areas — in woodlands, on mountainsides, and along streams.
Disproportionately, people who have been building homes in these more sensitive areas — ones facing the highest risks of losing species diversity — tend to be older, better educated, and more environmentally conscious home buyers than are those in the region’s agricultural or urban communities. People who moved into wilder lands have also tended to live in small households, with just one or two dwellers. But that’s not to suggest they’re tree huggers roughing it in small cabins. Many homes being built in the region's more ecologically fragile areas rival or exceed the size of homes in town, notes conservation biologist M. Nils Peterson of Michigan State University. He led the new study, which identified the home-siting trends.http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-jmbPCHg9dLPh1gHoZxLG.GpS
During the 1990s, the Teton Valley experienced a 74 percent growth in its population (to some 6,000) and 85 percent rise in the numbers of households (to around 2,100). The Michigan State scientists refer to Individuals who grew up in this region as natives, and those drawn here from elsewhere as immigrants.
Peterson's team interviewed residents of more than 400 households to find how they ended up in Teton Valley and what features determined where they settled within it.
Local-born residents tended to live in cities and farmlands and typically said they chose those areas to be near family or in close proximity to jobs.
Immigrants, by contrast, were more likely than local-born residents to say they were drawn by the Valley’s natural resources. They’re also more likely than the native residents to express ecocentric values. On questionnaires, they tended to place humans within ecosystems, not as lords over the natural world.
Among surveyed Valley residents with advanced college degrees, one-quarter had majored in environmental fields such as ecology, forestry, wildlife biology, botany, or zoology.
Overall, they and other surveyed immigrants to the region expressed an appreciation for the interconnectedness of creatures within an ecosystem. So as a group, the people who moved into fragile environments recognized that residential development – such as their home – risked stressing the very natural resources they prized and which had made the vistas in and around their homesteads so attractive.
Did these individuals also recognize the apparent hypocrisy of building in sensitive environments? “Absolutely,” Peterson says. “ In fact, most of them knew they were ‘part of the problem.’”
One recent Idaho Fish and Game retiree, a biologist, had to speak loudly during his interview with Peterson’s team “so his voice would carry over the nail guns that were tacking his new home together.” As the Michigan scientists relate in their new paper, due for publication soon in an upcoming issue of Conservation Biology, that retiree said he thought the biggest threat to the local environment was “the loss of winter range (for mule deer and elk).” He added that “I’ve now become part of [the problem] because my wife won’t live in town.”
Yet Peterson says that “when we talked about development,” such environmentally savvy residents acknowledged to the Michigan scientists that “they want to see development stop” or moves made toward development that’s more “conservation-oriented, where houses are clustered with lots of open space.”
“At first blush” such arguments “don’t seem to make sense,” Peterson says. Then, you think about it a bit more, he says, and the logic of these eco-friendly immigrants becomes understandable if not always defensible.
People trained in forestry appreciate trees. Fisheries biologists can lust over trout streams. Rangeland biologists long to build a home where the buffalo roamed — and where the deer and antelope still play.http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-jmbPCHg9dLPh1gHoZxLG.GpS
But in this area, where there have been no zoning restrictions, willy-nilly development threatens to litter the region with tiny crazy-quilt patches of unimproved wilderness. Hardly a deer’s dream. And the area’s prized cutthroat trout? Over the past 18 years, residential development has led to their near extinction in the Teton River, Peterson’s team reports.
The disturbing bottom line, the researchers argue, is that understanding the fragility of ecosystems and appreciating their value isn’t enough to keep people from potentially despoiling it. Getting even enlightened souls to tread more lightly will appear to take considerably more work – and, potentially, regulations.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Memory erased 7743.mem.34 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
As much as you might want to wipe Uncle Frank’s tasteless joke out of your mind but still remember the flavor of Aunt Fran’s pie, memory researchers have always said “fuhgedabboudit!” Now, a genetically engineered mouse suggests it may be possible to erase certain unwanted memories. http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
Sunday, October 5, 2008
unconscious 445572.2w3 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire. Psychological research sparked by a controversial campaign advertisement aired during the 2000 presidential election suggests that a 30-second spot�which briefly flashed "RATS"�may have negatively affected viewers' opinions of Democratic candidate Al Gore. http://louis7j7sheehan.blogspot.com
In one segment of the ad, which was funded by the Republican National Committee, short fragments of the phrase "BUREAUCRATS DECIDE" dance about the screen while a narrator criticizes Gore's prescription-drug plan for seniors. A frame-by-frame analysis of the campaign spot reveals that in one particular image, lasting only one-thirtieth of a second, RATS nearly fills the screen. http://louis7j7sheehan.blogspot.com
Some Democrats cried foul, accusing Republicans of planting subliminal messages�those shown too quickly or faintly to be consciously noticed�to turn voters against Gore. A bevy of Republicans, including then-candidate George W. Bush, dismissed that idea as absurd. Intrigued by the controversy, Joel Weinberger, a psychologist at Adelphi University in Garden City, N.Y., constructed an experiment that mimics the notorious commercial.
For the project, Weinberger and his colleague Drew Westen of Emory University in Atlanta developed a questionnaire in which people visiting an Internet site were asked to rate a purported candidate. After participants viewed the candidate's photo, they rated the contender in relation to 10 statements, such as, "This candidate looks competent" or "I dislike this candidate." Before the photo appeared on the screen, however, the researchers flashed one of four short messages�RATS, STAR, ARAB, or XXXX�for a mere six-thousandths of a second.
Weinberger described the pair's research this week in Denver at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
He and Westen used STAR as an option for the subliminal image because it's RATS spelled backward. They used the word ARAB to investigate whether those who answered the questionnaire held negative stereotypes related to the word. Subjects who viewed XXXX, a presumably neutral nonword, formed the control group for the research. About 250 people took part in the study.
For survey statements that were framed in an affirmative way, such as, "I like this candidate," the subliminal message that participants viewed didn't seem to affect their opinion. However, for statements phrased in a negative manner, participants exposed to RATS, on average, judged the candidate much more harshly than did people who viewed the other three subliminal messages.
Exposure to RATS had the same effect among men and women in the study. In addition, participants who identified themselves as Republicans responded to RATS just as negatively as Democrats did. The good news from this research, says Weinberger, is that the experiment didn't detect an unconscious bias against Arabs among study participants.
The results suggest that negative impressions of candidates may be more easily affected by subliminal messages than positive ones, says Weinberger. However, it's also possible that questionnaire responses for affirmative statements didn't vary significantly because study subjects didn't strongly link STAR with a positive characteristic. More research would be needed to bolster the contention that negative campaigning really works, he notes.
Philip S. Holzman, a Harvard University psychologist, points out that the effects of subliminal messages, once ignored by many scientists, must be studied further. "Otherwise, we're at the mercy of the politicians," he quips. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Saturday, September 27, 2008
megalodon Louis J. Sheehan
The megalodon (pronounced /Ë¡mÉ›.gÉ™.ləˌdÉ’n/ or MEG-a-la-don; meaning "big tooth" or in Greek as μÎγας 'οδόντος) was a giant shark that lived in prehistoric times, between about 18 million to 1.5 million years ago and was the apex predator of its time. The oldest C. megalodon teeth found are about 18 million years old.[1] C. megalodon became extinct in the Pleistocene epoch probably about 1.5 million years ago.[2] It is the largest carnivorous fish known to have existed,[1] and quite possibly the largest shark ever to have lived.
Scientists suggest that C. megalodon could grow to more than 15 metres (49 ft) long. This species is a member of the Lamnidae family but its classification is in dispute and a new genus has been proposed. Fossil evidence has revealed that megalodon fed upon large animals, including the early whales.[2]
Taxonomy
The Swiss naturalist, Louis Agassiz, gave this shark its scientific name, Carcharodon megalodon in 1835,[3] in his research work Recherches sur les poissons fossiles[4] (Research on fossil fish), which he completed in 1843. Due to the dental similarities of the teeth of the great white shark, Carcharodon carcharias, and megalodon, Agassiz proposed Carcharodon as the genus.[3] In-short, this shark is termed C. megalodon by shark researchers. However, it is often dubbed the "mega-tooth shark" or "giant white shark."http://louis_j_sheehan.today.com
[edit] Classification dispute
| Cladogram of the "hastalis hypothesis" highlighting the position of C. megalodon
*Note: The hastalis hypothesis shows that C. carcharias is more closely related to I. hastalis than C. megalodon.[3] |
There is a major disagreement among scientists as to how C. megalodon should be classified.[1][2] The controversy is that whether C. megalodon is a close relative of the extant great white shark or whether the two species are distant relatives. The trend among shark researchers is to dismiss the statement that C. megalodon is a close relative of the great white shark, in favor of citing convergent evolution as the reason for the dental similarity.
[edit] Megalodon within Carcharodon
The traditional view is that C. megalodon should be classified within the genus Carcharodon along with the great white shark. The Carcharodon proponents suggest that C. megalodon and C. carcharias share a common ancestor known as Carcharodon orientalis.[1][3][6]
[edit] Megalodon within Carcharocles
Around 1923, the genus, Carcharocles, was proposed by two shark researchers, D. S. Jordan and H. Hannibal, to classify a very similar shark C. auriculatus. Many marine biologists and paleontologists are now favoring the Carcharocles genus for C. megalodon.[1][2][3][7][8] One reason for this shift is that the teeth of C. megalodon are also similar to the teeth of some sharks that belong to Carcharocles lineage. The Carcharocles proponents suggest that the direct ancestor of the sharks belonging to the Carcharocles genus, is an ancient shark called Otodus obliquus, which lived during the Paleocene and Eocene epochs.[1][7] According to Carcharocles proponents, Otodus obliquus evolved in to Carcharocles aksuaticus,[1][7] which evolved in to Carcharocles auriculatus,[1][7] which evolved into Carcharocles augustidens,[1][7] which evolved into Carcharocles chubutensis,[1][7] which eventually evolved into megalodon.[1][7] Hence, the immediate ancestor of C. megalodon is Carcharocles chubutensis,[1][7] because it serves as the missing link between Carcharocles augustidens and C. megalodon and it bridges the loss of the "lateral cusps" that characterize C. megalodon.[1][7]
Carcharocles proponents also point out that the great white shark is more closely related to an ancient shark Isurus hastalis, the "broad tooth mako," than C. megalodon. This suggestion is given credence by many scientists due to some convincing evidence.[3][8][9] One reason is that the teeth of I. hastalis and C. carcharias are remarkably similar in shape, differing only in that the former lack the characteristic serrations of the latter.[1][3][9]
[edit] Anatomy and appearance
C. megalodon is known primarily from fossil teeth and a few fossilized vertebral centra.[10] As with all other sharks, the megalodon skeleton was formed of cartilage and not bone, resulting in a poor skeletal fossil record.[2] The teeth are in many ways similar to great white shark teeth but are much larger and can measure up to more than 18 cm in slant.[1]
Nevertheless, it is extrapolations from the shape and size of the teeth of C. megalodon when compared with related modern sharks and studies of their physical characteristics, that provide us with our conceptions about what this ancient superpredator might have looked like in life. Thus far, the great white shark has been considered the favored model for the basis for the reconstruction of C. megalodon.[6][10]
[edit] Size estimation
Estimating the maximum size of C. megalodon is a highly controversial subject. An early jaw reconstruction of this shark, developed by Professor Bashford Dean in 1909, indicates a length of more than 25 metres (82 ft), but that jaw reconstruction is now considered to be inaccurate.[10] One reason is that the teeth used as posteriors in this jaw reconstruction were not true posterior teeth. However, several scientists have tried to solve this issue in later years.
In 1973, the ichthyiologist John E. Randall suggested a method to measure the size of the large sharks.[11] According to Randall, the enamel height of the largest tooth in the upper jaw of the shark can be used to determine its total length. He concluded that C. megalodon could grow to 13 metres (43 ft).[11]
However, in 1996, three shark experts, Michael D. Gottfried, Leonard J. V. Compagno and S. Curtis Bowman, questioned the reliability of Randall's method. According to them, shark's tooth enamel height does not necessarily increase in proportion with the animal's total length.[6] Gottfried and his co-workers tried to solve this issue by means of conducting new research and analysis to create a method for measuring the size of large sharks (including C. megalodon) with much greater accuracy, which was published in 1996. The actual method to determine the size is: "Megatooth's" Total Length in meters = [− (0.22) + (0.096) × (Slant height of tooth in [mm])].[6] This method has often been interpreted as: "Megatooth's" Total Length in meters = [(0.96) × (Slant height of tooth in [cm] − (0.22))], because it yields same results.[12] Using this new method, the maximum size of megalodon was calculated to be 15.9 metres (52 ft) with a body mass of more than 50 short tons (45 MT).[6] But this calculation was based on a 168 mm (6⅝ inch) long upper anterior tooth, which was the biggest tooth in the possession of this team at the time. Since then, even larger C. megalodon teeth have been excavated which indicate that the shark could grow to more than 17 metres (56 ft).[1][12][13]
Shark researcher Cliff Jeremiah also has suggested a method to determine the size of the large sharks, including C. megalodon,[1] and his method is considered to be among the most reliable.[1] He suggested that the jaw perimeter of a shark is directly proportional to its total length, with the width of the roots of the largest teeth being a proxy for estimating jaw perimeter. For every centimeter of root width of the largest tooth, he asserts, there was approximately 4.5 feet of the shark. He concluded that C. megalodon could grow up to 18.2 metres (60 ft).[1] Many scientists acknowledge this conclusion.[1][14]
Hence, from the research of several scientists, it is clear that C. megalodon is the largest macropredatory shark that has ever lived and is among the largest fishes known to have existed.[6]
[edit] Jaw dentition
Some scientists including Applegate and Espinosa published an artificial dental formula for C. megalodon in 1996.[10] Several modern C. megalodon jaw reconstructions are based on this dental formula. http://louis_j_sheehan.today.com
The dental formula of C. megalodon is:
| 2.1.7.4 |
| 3.0.8.4 |
As evident from the dental formula, the jaws of C. megalodon contained four different kinds of teeth.[10]
- Anterior - A
- Intermediate - I (In the case of C. megalodon, this tooth appears to be upper anterior and is technically termed as "A3" because it is fairly symmetrical and does not points mesially, but this tooth is still designated as an intermediate tooth.[3] However, in the case of the great white shark, the intermediate tooth does points mesially. This point has often been raised in the Carcharodon vs. Carcharocles debate regarding the megalodon and favors the case of Carcharocles proponents.)
- Lateral - L
- Posterior - P
Paleontologists suggest that C. megalodon had a total of about 250 teeth in its jaws.[1]
[edit] Skeletal reconstruction
Aside from estimating the size of C. megalodon, Gottfried and his colleagues also have tried to determine what C. megalodon might have looked like in real life.[6] After conducting a comprehensive analysis of the available evidence, they concluded that C. megalodon was a very robust shark and it was more massively proportioned than many modern large sharks including C. carcharias due to several reasons including:
- C. megalodon had a more massive, stouter and more strongly developed chondrocranium and jaws than those of modern macropredatory sharks, in order to functionally support a massive and very robust dentition.[6]
- The fins of C. megalodon were significantly larger and thicker because they needed to be adapted for propulsion and control of movements of such a massive shark.[6]
- It had a higher vertebral count than that of any large shark including C. carcharias.[6]
Gottfried and his colleagues eventually developed a model of the entire skeleton of C. megalodon with the above mentioned characteristics, which has been put on display in Calvert Marine Museum at Solomons island, Maryland in USA.[6][7][15]
[edit] Distribution, range and habitat
C. megalodon was a pelagic fish and it thrived in all the oceans of the world in its time, indicating dominance over the marine world. The teeth of this ancient shark have been excavated from many parts of the world, including Europe, North America, South America, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Africa, Malta and India.[1][10]
C. megalodon most likely inhabited warm water regions around the world.[2] Its range would not have been constricted by its reliance on warm waters as the oceans were noticeably warmer during the Miocene and early Pliocene. This would have made it possible for this species to flourish around the world, as evident from the fossil records.
[edit] Paleoecology
[edit] Diet
It is believed that C. megalodon would have had a huge appetite, which would be necessary for sustenance of its enormous bulk.[15] It was contemporaneous with a large variety of marine animals, including various species of whales. Several whale vertebrae and bones have been found with clear signs of large bite marks made by the teeth that match those of C. megalodon.[1][6][10] The teeth of C. megalodon are serrated,[1][3] which would have improved efficiency in slicing the flesh of prey items. Various excavations have revealed C. megalodon teeth lying close to the chewed remains of whales.[6][7] This evidence suggests a predator-prey relationship between C. megalodon and large marine animals including whales [10] (e.g. sperm whales,[1] Cetotherium,[2] and Odobenocetops[16]), sirenians,[1] dolphins,[1] and pinnipeds.[2] Like other sharks, C. megalodon was certainly piscivorous as well.[2][15]
[edit] Behavior
Most sharks are opportunistic predators and rely on a broad spectrum of prey coupled with scavenging. C. megalodon was unlikely to have been an exception to this rule.[2] Some large sharks (including the great white shark) employ ambush strategies against their prey during hunting. A shark usually attacks its prey with great force in the first attempt to inflict maximum possible damage. Then it circles its prey and waits for it to weaken, before dispatching it without facing any resistance. Some paleontologists suggest that C. megalodon also may have employed a similar hunting strategy against large potential prey, like adult whales. Several fossilized flipper bones, and caudal vertebrae of whales have been found with bite marks that were caused by the attacks from C. megalodon.[1][6] This evidence indicates that C. megalodon most likely injured and immobilized its prey by biting off its propulsive structures, before proceeding to feed on it.[1][6]
However, remains of a large prehistoric baleen whale have been excavated from Chesapeake Bay, which provided the first opportunity to quantitatively analyse the feeding behavior of C. megalodon, and this specimen revealed that the attacking behavior of C. megalodon may have been more aggressive than that of the great white shark.[13] One reason is that the shark apparently focused its attack on the bony portions of the prey, which great white sharks generally avoid.[13]
From fossil evidence, juvenile C. megalodon individuals would mostly prefer to attack small-to-medium sized prey, such as porpoises, other sharks, pinnipeds and juvenile whales. Hence, through ontogeny C. megalodon proceeded to hunt larger animals.[6] In addition, fossil evidence suggests that the preferred breeding grounds of C. megalodon were mostly warm coastal regions. http://louis_j_sheehan.today.com
[edit] Extinction hypotheses
There are several hypotheses as to how an apex predator like C. megalodon suddenly became extinct after millions of years of existence. However, the extinction of large-bodied marine predators, such as pliosaurs, mosasaurs, ichthyosaurs and Basilosaurus, are instructive as to the possible mechanism involved.
Scientists believe that C. megalodon disappeared due to a variety of reasons.[2] The geological and climatic conditions of the world when C. megalodon existed, were considerably different from those now. It is possible that these major climatic changes may have been unfavorable for C. megalodon. Some notable climatic shifts are:
- During the late Pliocene and Pleistocene epochs there were significant ice ages,[17][18] which cooled the oceans significantly.[10]
- From the fossil record, whale migratory patterns from the end Pliocene have been reconstructed, suggesting that some species migrated to polar regions, effectively "getting out of the range" of C. megalodon.[2][10]
- Prolonged disturbance of food chains can wipe out predators with massive metabolic requirements. During the Pliocene, some species of whales and dolphins (e.g. Odobenocetops and Cetotherium) became extinct. As these species would most likely have been among the potential prey of C. megalodon,[2] sustaining the dietary requirements of such a large predator would have become increasingly difficult.
- In addition, wide-scale glaciation trapped much of the oceanic salt water during the late Pliocene and Pleistocene through-out the ice ages. At its height sea levels dropped significantly, restricting many shallow coastal areas, that have been thought to serve as breeding grounds for the C. megalodon pups.[2]
Consequently, a hypothesis can be constructed, that at the end of the Pliocene, the polar seas became too cold for C. megalodon to survive. Several species of whales, including cetotheriids, became extinct during the late Pliocene, while some whale species showed a trend towards the cooler polar regions. Many of the shallow warm water regions dried out at that time, that may have been breeding grounds for C. megalodon. As such, these significant disturbances in the ecosystem would have caused major problems for C. megalodon. Being unable to follow the surviving whale species into the polar seas the food supply of C. megalodon lessened, which over time lead to the extinction of the species.[2]
In fiction and popular culture
Ever since the remains of C. megalodon were discovered, it has been an object of fascination. It has been portrayed in several works of fiction, including films and novels, and continues to hold its place among the most popular subjects for fictional works involving sea monsters. It is interesting to note that many of these works of fiction posit that at least some C. megalodon actually survived extinction and lurk in the depths of the ocean. In such works, the megalodon is usually shown to surface from the vast depths of the oceans, either as a result of human intervention or through natural means.
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