Many of us have surnames passed down to us from ancestors in England. Last names weren’t widely used until after the Norman conquest in 1066, but as the country’s population grew, people found it necessary to be more specific when they were talking about somebody else. Thus arose descriptions like Thomas the Baker, Norman son of Richard, Henry the Whitehead, Elizabeth of the Field, and Joan of York that, ultimately, led to many of our current surnames.

There are perhaps 45,000 different English surnames, but most had their origins as one of these seven types.

Occupational

Occupational names identified people based on their job or position in society. Calling a man ‘Thomas Carpenter” indicated that he worked with wood for a living, while someone named Knight bore a sword. Other occupational names include Archer, Baker, Brewer, Butcher, Carter, Clark, Cooper, Cook, Dyer, Farmer, Faulkner, Fisher, Fuller, Gardener, Glover, Head, Hunt or Hunter, Judge, Mason, Page, Parker, Potter, Sawyer, Slater, Smith, Taylor, Thatcher, Turner, Weaver, Woodman, and Wright (or variations such as Cartwright and Wainwright) – and there are many more.

This kind of name also gave a clue about whom a servant worked for. Someone named Vickers might have been a servant to Mr. […]

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SAN DIEGO — In a typical last-minute scramble, Jannette Navarro, a 22-year-old Starbucks barista and single mother, scraped together a plan for surviving the month of July without setting off family or financial disaster.

In contrast to the joyless work she had done at a Dollar Tree store and a KFC franchise, the $9-an-hour Starbucks job gave Ms. Navarro, the daughter of a drug addict and an absentee father, the hope of forward motion. She had been hired because she showed up so many times, cheerful and persistent, asking for work, and she had a way of flicking away setbacks – such as a missed bus on her three-hour commute – with the phrase, ‘I’m over it.”

Jannette Navarro at Starbucks.

Newly off public assistance, she was just a few credits shy of an associate degree in business and talked of getting a master’s degree as some of her co-workers were. Her take-home pay rarely topped $400 to $500 every two weeks; since starting in November, she had set aside $900 toward a car – her next step toward stability and independence for herself and her 4-year-old son, Gavin.

But Ms. Navarro’s fluctuating hours, combined with her limited resources, had also turned their lives […]

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A potentially new form of plant communication has been developed by the scientist. With this language, extraordinary amount of genetic information can be shared with each other.

The relationship between a dodder, tomatoes, Arabiopsis, 2 host plants and a parasitic plant was examined by Professor Jim Westwood. For sucking the nutrients and moisture from the host plants, an appendage named haustorium is used for penetrating the plant. It was also found out that RNA is transported between 2 species during this parasitic interaction. Information which is passed down from the DNA, which is the blueprint of the organism is translated.

With his new work, this scope is expanded and the messenger RNA or the mRNA is expanded, through which messages within the cells are sent telling them what actions have to be taken and which proteins have to be coded. It was thought that the mRNA is very short lived and fragile and so it is unimaginable to transfer it between species. However, it was found by Westwood that during this parasitic relationship, there was exchange of 1000s of molecules between both plants. An open dialogue is created between the species through which they can communicate freely.

Jim Westwood, the professor of weed science, […]

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WASHINGTON — Nearly two times a week in the United States, a white police officer killed a black person during a seven-year period ending in 2012, according to the most recent accounts of justifiable homicide reported to the FBI.

On average, there were 96 such incidents among at least 400 police killings each year that were reported to the FBI by local police. The numbers appear to show that the shooting of a black teenager in Ferguson, Mo., last Saturday was not an isolated event in American policing.

The reports show that 18% of the blacks killed during those seven years were under age 21, compared to 8.7% of whites. The victim in Ferguson was 18-year-old Michael Brown. The officer was white.

While the racial analysis is striking, the database it’s based on has been long considered flawed and largely incomplete. The killings are self-reported by law enforcement and not all police departments participate so the database undercounts the actual number of deaths. Plus, the numbers are not audited after they are submitted to the FBI and the statistics on “justifiable” homicides have conflicted with independent measures of fatalities at the hands of police.

Police in Ferguson ignite debate about military tactics
Missouri Highway Patrol […]

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I have been following with increasing concern the conversion of America from an open democratic state with a community friendly police system, to a county of militarized police and smothering surveillance. Perhaps like you I have been watching what is going on in Ferguson, Missouri and have been appalled by images that one might expect to see in a repressive fascist state, but one would never expect to see in the United States. What is on our televisions is the police state that has arisen since 9/11 — ill-trained police over equipped with war material, and a failure of civil leadership are its hallmarks. Is this the country you want to live in? Today’s issue is mostly about this question, which I think is very pressing, if not already too late.

— Stephan

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