JOHN ARCHIBALD WHEELER
In 1990, Wheeler has suggested that information is fundamental to the physics of the universe. According to this 'it from bit' doctrine, all things physical are information-theoretic in origin.
Wheeler: It from bit. Otherwise put, every 'it'—every particle, every field of force, even the space-time continuum itself—derives its function, its meaning, its very existence entirely—even if in some contexts indirectly—from the apparatus-elicited answers to yes-or-no questions, binary choices, bits. 'It from bit' symbolizes the idea that every item of the physical world has at bottom—a very deep bottom, in most instances—an immaterial source and explanation; that which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes–no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and that this is a participatory universe.

Wheeler was awarded the Wolf Prize in Physics in 1997.

Wheeler has speculated that the laws of physics may be evolving in a manner analogous to evolution by natural selection in biology. "How does something arise from nothing?", he asks about the existence of space and time (Princeton Physics News, 2006). He also coined the term "Participatory Anthropic Principle" (PAP), a version of a Strong Anthropic Principle. From a transcript of a radio interview on "The anthropic universe"
Wheeler: We are participators in bringing into being not only the near and here but the far away and long ago. We are in this sense, participators in bringing about something of the universe in the distant past and if we have one explanation for what's happening in the distant past why should we need more?Martin Redfern: Many don't agree with John Wheeler, but if he's right then we and presumably other conscious observers throughout the universe, are the creators — or at least the minds that make the universe manifest.

UNUSUAL TYPE OF HYPERTHYROIDISM

They are three well_recognised forms of hyperthyroidism
1. Graves' diseases (diffuse toxic goiter offen associated with exophthalmos)
2.Plummer's diseases (toxic multinodular goiter )
3.Toxic uninodular goiter (toxic adenoma )
This three types of hyperthyroidism are usually recognised easily by careful physical examination and radioisotope thyroidal scanning when other less common forms of hyperthyroidism have been excluded.
Additional types of hyperthyroidism listed by Committee on Nomenclature of the American Thyroid Association, are only rarely recognised clinically.
We have observed examples of some of these uncommon forms of hyperthyroidism and several varieties not specifically listed by the Committee on Nomenclature.
Since the etiology of the hyperthyroidism and appropriate treatment are quite variable, recognition of these rare forms of a common disorder is important. Some of these clinically situations represent variation of the common forms of hyperthyroidism with aspects that are potentially confusing and diagnostically challenging.
The purpose of this report is to review these less common varieties of hyperthyroidism from our own experience and that reported by others.
Iodide-induced hyperthyroidism was first recognised following the widespread use of iodine for goiter prophylaxis.
In 1925 Kimball reported his experience of 309 patients in whom hyperthyroidism was thought to occur the following the administration of iodine.
Most of these patients had long-standing goiters which were clinically or microscopycally adenomatous (multinodular). He emphasized that hyperthyroidism seemed related to the addition of prophylactic amounts of iodine to salt in only six of this case(2%) and that all others had received large amount of iodine(5-10 drops of Lugol's solution per day ot its equivalent).
More recent report have suggested that even small amounts of iodine may cause hyperthyroidism when previous iodine deficiency was present.
The following case demonstratest that patients with multinodular goiters of long duration living in area without endemic iodine deficiency, may develop hyperthyroidism after receiving large doses of iodine.
SOURCE FROM:
http://journals.lww.com/md-journal/Citation/1973/05000/Unusual_Types_of_Hyperthyroidism.2.aspx

PROF. EMMETT LEITH

Prof. Emmett Leith was born in Detroit, Michigan, on March 12, 1927, and received all three of his degrees, B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. in physics, from Wayne State University, in 1949, 1952, and 1978, respectively. He spent his entire 50-year professional career at the University of Michigan. He was first employed as a research assistant (1952–1956) and then promoted to a research associate (1956–1960) at Willow Run Laboratories (WRL). In 1960, his research group at WRL was moved to the University of Michigan Institute of Science and Technology where he became a research engineer. He was appointed an associate professor of electrical engineering in 1965 and promoted to full professor in 1968.
In 1963, Emmett and Upatnieks introduced the technique of diffuse illumination to demonstrate the first high-quality holograms of three-dimensional objects. In Emmett’s own words: “We … found that the images formed from such holograms produced startling images, fully 3-D, without the need for viewing with special glasses, and had all of the usual properties of actual objects, including full parallax. One could move one’s head and peer ehind obscuring structures to see what was hidden behind, just as if one were viewing the actual objects.” When they presented their results publicly at the Annual Optical Society of America Meeting in the spring of 1964, they created quite a sensation.
Emmett Leith was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1982. In addition to this honor, he received many awards, including the National Medal of Science (1979), the IEEE Morris Liebmann Memorial Award (1968), the Stuart Ballantine Medal of the Franklin Institute (1969), the R.W. Wood Prize of the Optical Society of America (1975), the Frederic Ives Medal of the Optical Society of America (1985), and the Gold Medal of the SPIE (1990). Emmett supervised the research of 43 Ph.D. students at Michigan, and he regularly taught a variety of courses on basic optics and optical signal processing.
Emmett’s work on SAR and holography had an enormous technical impact and was a major driving force in shaping the field of optical signal processing. In addition to his educational and scientific contributions, his work spurred many commercial applications that now comprise a multi-billion dollar industry. Emmett, a humble individual by nature, loved his work and remained active in his field until the time of his death.

THE MAN BEHIND HOLOGRAM TECHNOLOGY

Holography dates from 1947, when British / Hungarian scientist Dr. Dennis Gabor developed the theory of holography while working to improve the resolution of an electron microscope.
About Dr. Dennis Gábor(Adapted from his autobiography)Dr. Dennis Gábor(b. 1900, Budapest - d. 1979, London)Nobel Prize in Physics, 1971 for his investigation and development of holography.
Dr. Dennis Gábor was born in Budapest (Hungary) on 5 June 1900. He studied electrical engineering first in Budapest, later in Berlin from Techniscje Hochschule, where he finished his academic education with the award of Doctorate of Engineering in 1927. His doctorate work was the development of one of the first high speed cathode ray oscillographs and in the course of this, made the first iron-shrouded magnetic electron lens. In 1927 he joined Siemens & Halske AG Berlin, where he started investigations on gas discharges and plasmas. The most far reaching result of his six years with Siemens & Halske was his invention of the molybdenum tape seal, which is used to this day in all high-pressure quartz-mercury lamps. In what Dennis calls his “first lesson in serendipity,” he invented the mercury lamp while attempting to develop a cadmium lamp which proved unsuccessful.
In 1934 Gabor went to the British Thomson-Houston Co. Research Laboratory, Rugby, England, on an inventor’s agreement. . His work on gas discharge tubes gave him recognition in the BTH Research Laboratory where he remained until 1948. He also developed a system of stereoscopic cinematography, and in the last year at BTH carried out the basic experiments in holography, called “wave front reconstruction”.
On January 1, 1949 he joined the Imperial College of Science & Technology in London, first as a Reader in Electronics, and later as Professor of Applied Electron Physics, until 1967. From 1949-67 Gabor carried out some 20, mostly experimental, investigations with his Ph.D. assistants. They cleared up the “Langmuir Paradox”; the surprisingly fast apparent establishment of Maxwellian distributions of electrons in a low-pressure plasma, which had worried Gabor for 25 years. They also made a Wilson cloud chamber, in which the velocity of particles became measurable by impressing on them a high frequency, critical field, which produced time marks on the paths, at the points of maximum ionization. They also developed: a holographic microscope; a new electron-velocity spectroscope; an analogue computer which was a universal, non-linear “learning” predictor, recognizer and simulator of time series; a flat, thin color television tube; and a new type of thermionic converter. Theoretical work included communication theory, plasma theory, magnetron theory, and a scheme of fusion.
After his retirement in 1967 he remained connected with the Imperial College as a Senior Research Fellow and became Staff Scientist of CBS Laboratories, Stamford, Conn. where he collaborated with the President, life-long friend, and father of the color television, Dr. Peter C. Goldmark, in many new schemes of communication and display. Though he was always a passionate scientist and inventor, he was almost equally interested in social problems. In his spare time he wrote the books Inventing the Future (1963), Innovations (1970), and The Mature Society (1972).He wrote, “Though I still have much unfinished technological work on my hands, I consider this as my first priority in my remaining years.”(Editor’s Note: He passed away on 9 July 1979 in London.)

BRIEF HISTORY OF HOLOGRAM
1947: Denis Gabor invents theory of holography
1960: Invention of laser helps hologram development
1962: Leith and Upatnieks make first laser hologram of toy train and bird
1977: Royal Academy stages Light Fantastic show
2003: Stephen Benton, inventor of credit card holograms, dies

SUBRAHMAYAN CHANDRASEKHAR

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1910-1995). Born in Lahore, then a part of British Colonial India, in 1910, theoretical astrophysicist Chandrasekhar was elected to the Academy only two years after he became a US citizen in 1953. Chandrasekhar was noted for his work in the field of stellar evolution, and in the early 1930s he was the first to theorize that a collapsing massive star would become an object so dense that not even light could escape it. Although this finding was greeted with some skepticism at the time it was announced, it went on to form the foundation of the theory of black holes, and eventually earned him a shared Nobel Prize in physics for 1983. In addition to his work on star degeneration, Chandrasekhar contributed important theorems on the stability of cosmic masses in the presence of gravitation, rotation, and magnetic fields; this work proved to be crucial for the understanding of the spiral structure of galaxies. From the time he came to the US in 1936 until his death in 1995, Chandrasekhar was affiliated with the University of Chicago and its Yerkes Observatory.
SOURCE FROM:
http://www.nationalacademies.org/history/members/chandrasekhar.html

SCIENCE ACHIEVEMENT

Frederick Griffith
In 1928 Frederick Griffith, British microbiologist, made a series of unexpected observations while performing an experiment with the disease-causing bacteria pneumococcus and laboratory mice. Griffith's experiment dealt with two strains of the bacteria pneumococcus. One was a virulent strain with a smooth polysaccharide coat necessary for infection and colonies of this strain appear smooth. The other was a non-virulent strain with a rough coat that could not cause infection and colonies of the strain appear rough.
Griffith injected one group of mice with the smooth virulent strain and these mice died after a few days. He then injected another group with the rough non-virulent strain and these mice continued to be healthy. Griffith took a heat-killed strain of the virulent bacteria and injected it into mice and observed that they did not die. Griffith's fourth experiment was to inject heat treated, killed, smooth virulent strain mixed with the non virulent rough strain. He injected this mixture and found that after a few days the mice died. The blood of the dead mice showed high levels of virulent pneumococcus. Griffith theorized that some type of transformation takes place from the virulent to the non-virulent strain for it to synthesize a new polysaccharide coat.
GENETIC TRANSFER MATERIAL :DNA

Oswald Theodore Avery

Oswald Avery, Canadian physician and bacteriologist, found that the agent responsible for genetic transferring is the nucleic acid DNA and not protein as most biochemists theorized at the time. In 1944 Avery and his coworkers, McCarty and MacLeod, discovered the "transforming principle."
The Experiment
1.First they treated the bacteria with centafugation(BY CENTRIFUGAL), which eliminates large cellular pieces. The result: bacteria still transformed
2.Added protease(ENZIME), which removes all proteinsThe result: bacteria still transformed
3.Treated the bacteria with deoxyribonuclease(ENZIME), which eliminates all DNA The result: no transformation in the bacteria
The trio concluded that DNA is the cause of transformation, where in this experiment virulence is inherited.

John James Richard Macleod
James Macleod, the Scottish physiologist who is most known for his work on carbohydrate metabolism and insulin, was born on September 6, 1876 in Cluny, Scotland. He was the son of Reverend Robert Macleod. After his family moved to Aberdeen he attended Aberdeen Grammar School and then Marischal College of the University of Aberdeen to study medicine. In 1898 he obtained his medical degree with honors and was awarded the Anderson Traveling Fellowship. That year he published his first paper which was on the phosphorus content of muscle.
Macleod worked for a year at the Institute for Physiology at the University of Leipzig, Germany. The following year he was made demonstrator of Physiology at the London Hospital Medical School, and in 1902 was given the position of Lecturer in Biochemistry at the same school. That same year he was granted the McKinnon Research Studentship of the Royal Society until 1903 when appointed Professor of Physiology at the Western Reserve University at Cleveland, Ohio. In 1905 Macleod first became interested in carbohydrate metabolism especially in patients with the disease diabetes. He published thirty-seven papers on carbohydrate metabolism and an additional twelve papers on the experimentally produced glycosuria. He published a textbook on diabetes mellitus, the most common form of diabetes, which is the result of the body's failure to process the sugar glucose. When glucose can not be correctly stored and used, the level of glucose with the bloodstream rise, which cause serious complications. Diabetes mellitus was fatal during this time period.
During the winter session of 1916, Macleod was Professor of Physiology at McGill University, Montreal. In 1918 he was elected Professor of Physiology at the University of Toronto, Canada along with Director of the Physiological Laboratory and Associate Dean of the Faculty of Medicine. It was that this university that he did his work with insulin. Macleod and his research team found that the pancreas secretes insulin, which regulates the amount of glucose in the body's cells. Research revealed diabetes mellitus to be a failure of the pancreas to produce insulin. Frederick Banting, a Canadian surgeon came to Macleod in 1921 and asked for help in isolating insulin. He gave Banting laboratory access, dogs for experiment subject and medical student Charles Best as an assistant. Banting and Best performed a series of experiments, surgically changing the dog's pancreas. They extracted the insulin producing cells and then removed the insulin from these cells. They injected the insulin into the dog that was now artificially made diabetic. Observations showed that the injections controlled glucose levels in the dogs. Macleod and Canadian biochemist James Bertram Collip worked with Banting and Best to refine methods of removing and purifying insulin. In 1922, Banting and Best injected their insulin into a fourteen year old diabetic boy, which successfully treated his condition. Macleod publicly announced their discovery in February of 1922 and the patent for manufacturing of the pancreatic extract was approved. All financial proceeds of the patent went to the British Medical Research Council and the discoverers were given no payment. Banting and Macleod were jointly awarded the 1923 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine. They both shared the prize money with Best and Collip.
Macleod was appointed Regius Professor of Physiology at the University of Aberdeen in 1928 and he held that position along with Consultant Physiologist to the Rowett Institute for Animal Nutrition until his death. Throughout his life, Macleod wrote eleven books and monographs. In 1932 he returned to his research and work on the possibility that the central nervous system plays a role in the cause of hyperglycemia. After experimenting on rabbits, Macleod concluded that stimulation of gluconeogenesis in the liver occurred via the parasympathetic nervous system. He also did work on air sickness, purine bases and electric shock. James Macleod died March 16, 1935.

Alfred Day Hershey
Alfred Hershey, the American geneticist, was born December 4, 1908 in Owosso, Michigan. He attended Michigan State University and in 1930 received his B. S. in chemistry and 1934 his Ph. D. in bacteriology. In that same year he was given the position of research assistant at the Department of Bacteriology of Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri. Hershey was promoted to instructor in 1936, assistant professor in 1938 and associate professor in 1942.
Throughout the 1940's Hershey worked with Italian microbiologist Salvador Edward Luria and German physicist Max Ludwig Henning Delbruck performing experiments with bacteriophages, which are viruses that infect bacteria. They organized the "Phage Group", a team of bacteriophage researchers who met every year at Cold Spring Harbor to discuss their work and advances. While Hershey and Delbruck were working together in 1946, they observed that when two different strains of bacteriophages have infected the same bacteria, the two viruses may exchange genetic information. They then produce offspring with different infective natures than either parent had. This was the first example of GENETIC RECOMBINATION in viruses.
He moved to Cold Spring Harbor, New York to join the Carnegie Institution of Washington's Department of Genetics in 1950. In 1952, Hershey and American geneticist Martha Chase performed their famous "blender experiment." Using a kitchen blender, they separated the protein coating from the bacteriophage's nucleic acid core. They injected nucleic acid into the bacterial cell and found that the acid itself caused replication and transmission of genetic information, not its protein components. This proved that genes are made of the nucleic acid DNA. One year later James Watson and Francis Crick announced the double-helix structure of DNA and a theory on how genetic material is passed. He then became director of the Carnegie Institution, renamed Genetic Research Unit at Cold Spring Harbor in 1962. Hershey's later research helped the development of vaccines for polio, measles and mumps. Hershey was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine, along with Luria and Delbruck, for their discovery on the replication of viruses and their genetic structure. He retired from active research in 1972 but was a constant figure around the lab until his death in May of 1997.

SOURCE FROM:
http://library.thinkquest.org/20465/griffith.html
http://library.thinkquest.org/20465/avery.html
http://library.thinkquest.org/20465/macleod.html
http://library.thinkquest.org/20465/hershey.html

BELOUSOV-ZHABOTINSKY REACTION

Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction
A Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction, or BZ reaction, is one of a class of reactions that serve as a classical example of non-equilibrium thermodynamics, resulting in the establishment of a nonlinear chemical oscillator. The only common element in these oscillating systems is the inclusion of bromine and an acid. The reactions are theoretically important in that they show that chemical reactions do not have to be dominated by equilibrium thermodynamic behavior. These reactions are far from equilibrium and remain so for a significant length of time. In this sense, they provide an interesting chemical model of nonequilibrium biological phenomena, and the mathematical models of the BZ reactions themselves are of theoretical interest.
An essential aspect of the BZ reaction is its so called "excitability" — under the influence of stimuli, patterns develop in what would otherwise be a perfectly quiescent medium. Some clock reactions such as Briggs–Rauscher and BZ using the chemical ruthenium bipyridyl as catalyst can be excited into self-organising activity through the influence of light.
The discovery of the phenomenon is credited to Boris Belousov. He noted, sometime in the 1950s (the dates change depending on source, but it ranges from 1951 to 1958), that in a mix of potassium bromate, cerium(IV) sulfate, propanedioic acid and citric acid in dilute sulfuric acid, the ratio of concentration of the cerium(IV) and cerium(III) ions oscillated, causing the colour of the solution to oscillate between a yellow solution and a colorless solution. This is due to the cerium(IV) ions being reduced by propanedioic acid to cerium(III) ions, which are then oxidized back to cerium(IV) ions by bromate(V) ions.
Belousov made two attempts to publish his finding, but was rejected on the grounds that he could not explain his results to the satisfaction of the editors of the journals to which he submitted his results. His work was finally published in a less respectable, non-reviewed journal.
Later, in 1961, a graduate student named Anatol Zhabotinsky rediscovered this reaction sequence;[2] however, the results of these men's work were still not widely disseminated, and were not known in the West until a conference in Prague in 1968.
There are a number of BZ cocktails available in the chemical literature and on the web. Ferroin, a complex of phenanthroline and iron is a common indicator. These reactions, if carried out in petri dishes, result in the formation first of colored spots. These spots grow into a series of expanding concentric rings or perhaps expanding spirals similar to the patterns generated by a cyclic cellular automaton. The colors disappear if the dishes are shaken, and then reappear. The waves continue until the reagents are consumed. The reaction can also be performed in a beaker using a magnetic stirrer.
Andrew Adamatzky, a computer scientist in the University of the West of England reported on liquid logic gates using the BZ reaction.
Investigators are also exploring the creation of a "wet computer", using self-creating "cells" and other techniques to mimic certain properties of neurons.

MEDERMA FOR REDUCING SCAR

Mederma is an onion-extract-based topical gel produced by Merz Pharmaceuticals of Greensboro, North Carolina. Mederma's marketing claims it can make scars "softer, smoother, and less noticeable. One 2006 clinical trial found no statistically significant change in hypertrophic scar appearance from products of this type compared to the standard petrolatum emollient. while a 1999 pilot trial found an onion extract gel less effective than the petrolatum.
Though Mederma appears to do better than nothing at all, it does no better than cheap emollients which simply keep the skin moist.
Effectiveness
One 2006 clinical trial found no statistically significant change in hypertrophic scar appearance from products of this type compared to the standard petrolatum emollient. while a 1999 pilot trial found an onion extract gel less effective than the petrolatum. In 2010 a 54-person trial funded by Merz found that an onion extract cream improved the appearance of stretch marks.
Basic research and animal testing suggest the gel could be effective. A 1996 study into the therapeutic values of onion and garlic found that they may act as an anti-inflammatory and bacteriostatic and in 2002, researchers found that Mederma improved collagen organization after injury in rabbits.

Active Ingredient
Allium cepa, trademarked by Mederma as Cepalin (not to be confused with cephalin) is the active content of mederma derived from an onion called Allium cepa Linn[10], a readily available[11] and highly researched bioflavonoid with antihistamine and antiproliferative effects on both normal and malignant cells. This product is labeled as made in Germany, or originally developed in Germany.

Full Ingredients
Water (purified), PEG-4, Aloe Barbadensis Leaf Juice, Allium Cepa (Onion) Bulb Extract, Xanthan Gum, Allantoin, Methylparaben, Sorbic Acid, Fragrance.

Similar product
Merz Pharmaceuticals also produces Contractubex for scars, which also contains onion extract in addition to other ingredients. Contractubex has reportedly been found effective in clinical trials.

ADDITION:
WHAT IS ALLANTOIN?
Allantoin is a chemical compound with formula C4H6N4O3. It is also called 5-ureidohydantoin or glyoxyldiureide. It is a diureide of glyoxylic acid. Named after the allantois, an amniote embryonic excretory organ in which it concentrates during development in most mammals except humans and higher apes, it is a product of oxidation of uric acid by purine catabolism. After birth, it is the predominant means by which nitrogenous waste is excreted in the urine of these animals. In humans and higher apes, the metabolic pathway for conversion of uric acid to allantoin is not present, so the former is excreted. Recombinant rasburicase is sometimes used as a drug to catalyze this metabolic conversion in patients. In fish, allantoin is broken down further (into ammonia) before excretion. Allantoin is a major metabolic intermediate in many other organisms including plants and bacteria.

Applications
Allantoin is present in botanical extracts of the comfrey plant and urine from cows and most mammals. Chemically synthesized bulk allantoin is nature-identical, safe, NON-TOXIC,compatible with cosmetic raw materials and meets CTFA and JSCI requirements. Over 10,000 patents reference allantoin. Manufacturers cite several beneficial effects for allantoin as an active ingredient in over-the-counter cosmetics: a moisturizing and keratolytic effect, increasing the water content of the extracellular matrix and enhancing the desquamation of upper layers of dead skin cells, increasing the smoothness of the skin; promoting cell proliferation and wound healing; and a soothing, anti-irritant, and skin protectant effect by forming complexes with irritant and sensitizing agents. It is frequently present in toothpaste, mouthwash, and other oral hygiene products, in shampoos, lipsticks, anti-acne products, sun care products, and clarifying lotions, various cosmetic lotions and creams, and other cosmetic and pharmaceutical products.

WHAT IS METHYLPARABEN?
Parabens are a class of chemicals widely used as preservatives in the cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries. Parabens are effective preservatives in many types of formulas. These compounds, and their salts, are used primarily for their bactericidal and fungicidal properties. They can be found in shampoos, commercial moisturizers, shaving gels, personal lubricants, topical/parenteral pharmaceuticals, spray tanning solution and toothpaste. They are also used as food additives.
Their efficacy as preservatives, in combination with their low cost, their long history of safe use and the inefficacy of natural alternatives like grapefruit seed extract (GSE), probably explains why parabens are so commonplace. They are becoming increasingly controversial, however, and some organizations which adhere to the precautionary principle object to their everyday use.

PROPOFOL,THIOPENTAL,SEVOFLURANE,ISOFLURANE IN ANESTHESIA

Part I: propofol, thiopental, sevoflurane, and isoflurane - A randomized, controlled trial of effectiveness byMyles PS, Hunt JO, Fletcher H, Smart J, Jackson T.Department of Anaesthesia and Pain Management,Alfred Hospital, Prahran, Austalia.p.myles@alfred.org.au Anesth Analg. 2000 Nov;91(5):1163-9
ABSTRACT

When compared with thiopental and isoflurane, propofol and sevoflurane are associated with a faster return to wakefulness after anesthesia. Yet their wider usage in inpatient surgery has been restrained by concerns regarding their acquisition costs and by lack of studies demonstrating improved patient outcome. We randomly allocated 453 adult surgical inpatients to one of four anesthetic regimens (thiopental-isoflurane, propofol-isoflurane, propofol induction and maintenance, or sevoflurane induction and maintenance) and measured their rate and quality of recovery. We found no significant differences in the rate and quality of recovery between groups. Propofol was associated with more pain on injection (P: < 0. 0005), but less cough during induction (P: = 0.003), and less early postoperative nausea and vomiting (P: = 0.003). We could not detect any significant advantages with propofol and sevoflurane, when compared with thiopental and isoflurane in adults undergoing elective inpatient surgery. Implications: Propofol and sevoflurane do not offer any significant advantages over thiopental and isoflurane in adults undergoing elective inpatient surgery.

Propofol. A review of its pharmacodynamic and pharmacokinetic properties and use as an intravenous anaesthetic byLangley MS, Heel RC.ADIS Drug Information Services, Manchester. Drugs. 1988 Apr;35(4):334-72.
ABSTRACT
Propofol is an intravenous anaesthetic which is chemically unrelated to other anaesthetics. Induction of anaesthesia with propofol is rapid, and maintenance can be achieved by either continuous infusion or intermittent bolus injections, with either nitrous oxide or opioids used to provide analgesia. Comparative studies have shown propofol to be at least as effective as thiopentone, methohexitone or etomidate for anaesthesia during general surgery. The incidence of excitatory effects is lower with propofol than with methohexitone, but apnoea on induction occurs more frequently with propofol than with other anaesthetics. Additionally, a small number of studies of induction and maintenance of anaesthesia have found propofol to be a suitable alternative to induction with thiopentone and maintenance with halothane, isoflurane or enflurane. Propofol is particularly suitable for outpatient surgery since it provides superior operating conditions to methohexitone (particularly less movement), and rapid recovery in the postoperative period associated with a low incidence of nausea and vomiting. When used in combination with fentanyl or alfentanil, propofol is suitable for the provision of total intravenous anaesthesia, and comparative studies found it to be superior to methohexitone or etomidate in this setting. Infusions of subanaesthetic doses of propofol have been used to sedate patients for surgery under regional anaesthesia, and also to provide sedation of patients in intensive care. In the latter situation it is particularly encouraging that propofol did not suppress adrenal responsiveness during short term studies. If this is confirmed during longer term administration this would offer an important advantage over etomidate. Thus, propofol is clearly an effective addition to the limited range of intravenous anaesthetics. While certain areas of its use need further study, as would be expected at this stage of its development, propofol should find a useful role in anaesthetic practice.

60 years thiopental byHempel V.Anasthesie I und Zentrallabor,Krankenanstalten Konstanz.Anasthesiol Intensivmed Notfallmed Schmerzther. 1994 Nov;29(7):400-7
ABSTRACT

In 1994, thiopentone has been in clinical use as an induction agent for 60 years. For this reason, a literature review is given dealing with its chemical properties and pharmacokinetics with special regard to plasma protein binding, recommended speed of injection, diaplacentar transfer to the foetus in Caesarean section and the transfer to breast milk. The pharmacodynamics of thiopentone are reviewed with emphasis on the effects on the CNS, the cardiovascular system, the respiratory system, renal function, liver and the effect in porphyria. Its side effects such as local reactions and release of histamine are also reviewed. The clinical importance of thiopentone in anaesthesia induction and the present state of cerebral protection are discussed, as well as the results of controlled trials comparing thiopentone to other induction drugs. Thiopentone has the main disadvantage of a slow elimination resulting in minor CNS depression, which seems of very limited clinical importance. In most respects thiopentone seems to be comparable to its younger competitors.

The pharmacology of isoflurane byEger EI 2nd. Br J Anaesth. 1984;56 Suppl 1:71S-99S. ABSTRACTThe physical and pharmacological properties of the structural isomers isoflurane and enflurane differ from each other and from those of other potent inhaled anaesthetics. The minimum alveolar concentration (MAC) for isoflurane (1.15%) is one-and-one-half times that for halothane (0.75%) and two-thirds that for enflurane (1.7%). The blood/gas partition coefficient (1.4) for isoflurane is lower than the coefficients for all other potent inhaled agents. Despite this lower blood solubility, induction of anaesthesia is slightly faster with halothane because of isoflurane's mild pungency. Enflurane depresses ventilation more than isoflurane, which in turn is slightly more depressant than halothane. All these agents dilate constricted bronchi, and thus are useful in the anaesthetic management of patients who have asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Isoflurane has the largest circulatory margin of safety of all potent halogenated agents; it produces the least myocardial depression at a given multiple of MAC. Isoflurane may increase heart rate, particularly in younger patients, and occasionally is associated with tachycardia. It decreases total peripheral resistance, thereby decreasing systemic arterial pressure. Although results from one study suggest that isoflurane may produce a "steal" or coronary blood flow in patients with coronary artery disease, results from other studies suggest that, even in the presence of coronary artery disease, coronary blood flow to all parts of the heart remains as adequate with isoflurane as with other anaesthetics. Greater concentrations of isoflurane (1.6 MAC) increase cerebral blood flow less than does halothane. Isoflurane does not produce convulsive activity, but can produce profound muscle relaxation. It enhances the action of tubocurarine or pancuronium, and (to a lesser extent) vecuronium or atracurium. The enhancement is comparable to that produced by enflurane. Less enhancement is produced by halothane or nitrous oxide-narcotic. Only 0.17% of isoflurane taken up in man appears as urinary metabolites. This resistance to biodegradation may explain the minimal or absent hepatotoxicity and nephrotoxicity of isoflurane.

Sevoflurane: an ideal agentfor adult day-case anesthesia? byGhatge S, Lee J, Smith I.Department of Anaesthesia, Keele University/University Hospital of North Staffordshire, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, UK.Acta Anaesthesiol Scand. 2003 Sep;47(8):917-31
ABSTRACT

Sevoflurane has several properties which make it potentially useful as a day case anaesthetic. Following induction of anaesthesia with propofol, awakening from sevoflurane is faster compared to isoflurane, faster or similar compared to propofol and comparable (in the majority of studies) to desflurane. Subsequent recovery and discharge is generally similar following all agents. Sevoflurane may also be used to induce anaesthesia, which is generally well-received and causes less hypotension and apnoea compared to propofol. When used as a maintenance anaesthetic, the incidence of postoperative nausea and vomiting after sevoflurane is comparable to other inhaled anaesthetics, but this complication appears more common after inhaled inductions. The tolerability and low solubility of sevoflurane facilitate titration of anaesthesia and may reduce the need for opioid analgesia, which in turn may limit the occurrence of nausea and vomiting.

Molecular mechanisms of anesthesia byUeda I. Anesthesia Service and Research,VA Salt Lake City Health Care System,University of Utah School of Medicine,Salt Lake City, UT, USA. issaku.ueda@m.cc.utah.edu Keio J Med. 2001 Mar;50(1):20-5
ABSTRACT FOR THE MOLECULAR MECHANISMS OF ANESTHESIA IN HUMAN

Anesthesia was a blessing to humankind. It is a miracle that simple molecules such as chloroform (CHCl3), diethyl ether (CH3.CH2.O.CH2.CH3), or nitrous oxide (N2O) induce a state of unconsciousness where patients can tolerate surgery. The diversity of the structures of these molecules indicates that there are no common receptors. The action of anesthetics is nonspecific and physical. After the demonstration by Meyer and Overton that anesthetic potencies correlate to their solubility into olive oil, the nonspecific lipid theories monopolized anesthesia theories for almost a century. The dominance of lipid theories invited repulsions against the nonspecificity idea. Protein theories that stress receptor bindings became the top mode. Nevertheless, the wide varieties of anesthetic molecules and the wide varieties of responding systems are difficult to reconcile with the specific interaction concept. This article discusses the recent progress and controversies on the molecular mechanisms of anesthesia. Anesthetics are unique drugs in pharmacology. They affect all macromolecules. The only comparable drugs are disinfectants. Both are nonspecific drugs. We use alcohols and phenols to wipe off the injection sites. We do not use penicillin or any other antibiotics for this purpose, because they are specific binders. Interestingly, these two nonspecific drugs opened the window for the modern medicine.

Sedation and anesthesia mediatedby distinct GABA(A) receptor isoforms byReynolds DS, Rosahl TW, Cirone J, O'Meara GF,Haythornthwaite A, Newman RJ, Myers J, Sur C, Howell O, Rutter AR, Atack J, Macaulay AJ, Hadingham KL, Hutson PH, Belelli D, Lambert JJ,Dawson GR, McKernan R, Whiting PJ, Wafford KA.Merck Sharp & Dohme Research Laboratories,The Neuroscience Research Centre,Harlow, Essex CM20 2QR, United Kingdom.J Neurosci. 2003 Sep 17;23(24):8608-17
ABSTRACT FOR SPECIFIC MECHANISMS IN CELL THEORY

The specific mechanisms underlying general anesthesia are primarily unknown. The intravenous general anesthetic etomidate acts by potentiating GABA(A) receptors, with selectivity for beta2 and beta3 subunit-containing receptors determined by a single asparagine residue. We generated a genetically modified mouse containing an etomidate-insensitive beta2 subunit (beta2 N265S) to determine the role of beta2 and beta3 subunits in etomidate-induced anesthesia. Loss of pedal withdrawal reflex and burst suppression in the electroencephalogram were still observed in the mutant mouse, indicating that loss of consciousness can be mediated purely through beta3-containing receptors. The sedation produced by subanesthetic doses of etomidate and during recovery from anesthesia was present only in wild-type mice, indicating that the beta2 subunit mediates the sedative properties of anesthetics. These findings show that anesthesia and sedation are mediated by distinct GABA(A) receptor subtypes.
SOURCE FROM:
http://www.general-anaesthesia.com/comparisons.html

Illustrating the modern anesthesia conceptFramework for the components of anesthesia
This paper presents a graphical framework, which illustrates the modern anesthesia concept, and has been developed according to published scientific theories. It is aimed as an educational tool to visualize what aspects we need to bear in mind when touching the topic of adequacy of anesthesia. Such a framework may be helpful in understanding various components of anesthesia, effects of anesthetics, as well as drug interactions.
The traditional way to visualize anesthesia was to draw a triangle, and then place the terms hypnosis, analgesia, and relaxation in its three corners. However, such a picture was rather simplified, and new theories have further developed the anesthesia concept. In the clinical review articles of this web journal, there is a more detailed information of the evolution of the modern anesthesia concept.
Kindly see the attached figure and note the conceptual circle which has been divided in two.

-On the left side, there are the two cortical anesthesia components (unconsciousness and amnesia).
-The right side semi-circle displays the three subcortical components of anesthesia
(antinociception, motor stability, and autonomic stability).

In the following text, each of the five components will be addressed in more in detail.

CORTICAL COMPONENTS
The cortical components of anesthesia refer to the effects of the anesthetic agents in the brain, particularly in the cerebral cortex, where cognitive processes take place.

Unconsciousness
In this conceptual framework, the term unconsciousness has been taken to denote a component of anesthesia. In this context, many traditional terms have been tried, though not always quite correctly. Some of these terms include "awareness", "wakefulness", "hypnosis", and "depth of anesthesia". In the context of anesthesia, the term consciousness has been defined as a state of awareness of the outside world [1]. Therefore, unconsciousness refers to the lack of this awareness.
Many researches regard unconsciousness as the key component of general anesthesia and hence, much scientific effort has been focused on qualifying anesthesia according to that component. As unconsciousness is a cortical component, obvious indicators for levels of unconsciousness are some forms of neurophysiological measurements of the cortical activity of the brain. Typically, processed EEG and auditory evoked potentials (AEP) have been suggested for this purpose, and there are numerous studies which link them to clinical measures of unconsciousness.
Selected scientific articles have been included in the bibliography listings of the Clinical Window WEB Journal (CWWJ), and more insight into the topic will be given in its clinical articles.

Amnesia
Scientific articles have appeared [2] showing that the sedative and amnesic effects of anesthetic agents actually are two separate phenomena. This makes it clear that amnesia usually occurs at lower drug concentrations than loss of consciousness. [3]
Concerning amnesia, it is important to realize that there are two types of memory: explicit and implicit.Explicit memory refers to the conscious recollection of actual events. Hence, when the patient is considered to be aware during anesthesia, explicit memory plays a role. Implicit memory, on the other hand, is not accessible to conscious mind. However, it has an important influence on human behavior. Moreover, Lubke has shown that some memory formation can occur even during adequate anesthesia [4,5].

SUBCORTICAL COMPONENTS
The subcortical anesthesia components also play an important role. They maintain autonomic and motor stability, and also ensure antinociception.

Antinociception
Antinociception refers to inhibition of the nociceptive processing in the nervous system. Analgesia is the treatment to provide antinociception. In adequate anesthesia, the role of antinociception is crucial; it makes surgical operations possible, and it reduces immediate and long-term negative consequences related to those procedures. With inappropriate analgesia, nociception might cause unfavorable responses of the autonomic nervous system, and involuntary movements in the patient.
Incidentally, in the context of general anesthesia, it is actually not quite ‘correct’ to talk about pain. Merely, the sensation of pain means conscious perception of noxious stimulation. Hence, by that definition, without consciousness, there is no pain.

Motor stability
One of the objectives of general anesthesia is to ensure that the patient does not move involuntarily. In fact, in some procedures like in ophthalmic or neurosurgery, unexpected movements might even compromise patient safety.
Hence, muscle relaxation can be considered as important component of adequate anesthesia. Most often, neuromuscular blocking agents can achieve motor stability, but there are other anesthesia drugs, e.g. inhalation agents, which work to the same direction.
Whenever neuromuscular blocking agents are used, modern practice is to monitor level of neuromuscular block by a peripheral nerve stimulator. Today’s technology allows for an objective assessment of an evoked response, making it possible to maintain steady surgical block and ensure safe restoration of muscle strength at emergence of general anesthesia.
As Rampil has pointed out, movement response of an anesthetized patient seems not to be a cortical phenomenon, but is initiated at the level of the spinal cord [6]. Hence, if the anesthetist takes a patient’s unexpected movement as indication of inadequate hypnosis, that interpretation may not necessarily be true.

Autonomic stability
Autonomic stability is an important component of the adequate anesthesia. In that context, stability of blood circulation is crucial, as sudden hemodynamic changes may indicate nociception, thus being a sign of inadequate analgesia. Concerning an anesthetized patient with a compromised cardiovascular system, it is evident that major hemodynamic variations may no be well tolerated, and all drugs including anesthetics need to be administered by careful titration.

SOURCE FROM:
http://www.clinicalwindow.net/cw_issue_07_article3.htm

CRYO-ELECTRON MICROSCOPE

Cryo-electron microscope 'sees' atoms for first time

(PhysOrg.com) -- UCLA researchers report in the April 30 edition of the journal Cell that they have imaged a virus structure at a resolution high enough to effectively "see" atoms, the first published instance of imaging biological complexes at such a resolution.

The research team, led by Hong Zhou, UCLA professor of microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics, used cryo-electron microscopy to image the structure at 3.3 angstroms. An angstrom is the smallest recognized division of a chemical element and is about the distance between the two hydrogen atoms in a water molecule.
The study, the researchers say, demonstrates the great potential of cryo-electron microscopy, or Cryo-EM, for producing extremely high-resolution images of biological samples in their native environment.
"This is the first study to determine an atomic resolution structure through Cryo-EM alone," said Xing Zhang, a postdoctoral candidate in Zhou's group and lead author of the Cell paper. "By proving the effectiveness of this microscopy technique, we have opened the door to a wide variety of biological studies."
With traditional light microscopy, a magnified image of a sample is viewed through a lens. Some samples, however, are too small to diffract visible light (in the 500 to 800 nm range, or 5,000 to 8,000 angstroms) and therefore cannot be seen. To image objects at the sub-500 nm scale, scientists must turn to other tools, such as atomic force microscopes, which use an atomically thin tip to generate an image by probing a surface, in much the same way a blind person reads by touching Braille lettering.
With electron microscopy, another sub-500 nm technology, a beam of electrons is fired at a sample, passing through empty areas and bouncing off dense areas. A digital camera reads the path of the electrons passing through the sample to create a two-dimensional projection image of the sample. By repeating this process at hundreds of different angles, a computer can construct a three-dimensional image of the sample at a very high resolution.
Zhou is faculty director of the Electron Imaging Center for Nanomachines (EICN) at UCLA's California NanoSystems Institute, which is using cryo-electron microscopy to create 3-D reconstructions of nano-machineries, nano-devices and biological nano-structures, such as viruses.
Structurally accurate 3-D reconstructions of biological complexes are possible with cryo-electron microscopy because the samples are flash frozen, which allows them to be imaged in their native environment, and the microscope operates in a vacuum, because electrons travel better in that environment. The Cell paper focused on a structural study of the aquareovirus, a non-envelope virus that causes disease in fish and shellfish, in an effort to better understand how non-envelope viruses infect host cells.
"We are extremely excited about the recent breakthrough achieved by Hong Zhou and his team at the EICN lab," said Leonard H. Rome, senior associate dean for research at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and associate director of the California NanoSystems Institute. "The ability to understand the structure of viruses at an atomic level will open avenues for manipulating them for use in drug delivery and propel numerous innovations in treatments of diseases. UCLA is fortunate to have such specialized instrumentation and the expertise of Professor Zhou and his team to take advantage of these marvelous microscopes."
Viruses can be classed into two types: envelope and non-envelope. Envelope viruses, which include influenza and HIV, are surrounded by an envelope-like membrane which the virus uses to fuse with and infect a host cell. Non-envelope viruses lack this membrane and instead use a protein to fuse with and infect cells. This process was poorly understood until Zhou's study.
"Through better knowledge of virus structures, we hope to engineer medications in three ways," Zhou said. "If we understand how viruses work, first we can identify small molecules or drugs that block their infection; second, we can engineer ultra-stable and non-infectious virus-like particles as optimal vaccines; and third, we can alter their characteristics so that instead of delivering a disease, viruses could deliver medications.
"Indeed, we are working with UCLA physicians and engineers to engineer viruses for gene therapy and drug delivery," he said. "In essence, we hope to take advantage of millions of years of evolution that have made viruses incredibly effective delivery platforms."
From the high-resolution 3-D images produced with the cryo-electron microscopy, Zhou's group was able to determine that the aquareovirus employs a priming stage to accomplish cell infection. In its dormant state, the virus has a protective protein covering, which it sheds during priming. Once the outer shell has been shed, the virus is in a primed state and is ready to use a protein called an "insertion finger" to infect a cell.
The team's study ushers in a new era of structural biology for understanding important biological processes. The group was able to discover this functionality because of the accurate structural model produced through cryo-electron microscopy. In addition to producing a high-resolution 3-D image of samples, the technology allows samples to be imaged in their native environment, so the structural model is faithful to the original sample. From a technical point of view, this work also demonstrates the power of cryo-electron microscopy in obtaining 3-D structures of biological complexes without needing to grow a crystal.

SOURCE FROM:
http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=924673187568069099
More information: http://www.cell.com/abstract/S0092-8674(10)00360-0

CHINA HISTORY

1.Yuanmou Man
On May 1, 1965, Chinese scientists found two teeth and some coarse stone tools in Yuanmou county, Henan province. Scientists determined that these are leftovers from primeval humankind, about 1.7 million years ago. They are called "Yuanmou people". They were the ever known earliest humankind that lived in China.

2. Lantian Man, Peking Man
For more than 50 years, primeval relics of humankind had been found in more than 20 places on China's mainland , from Liaohe in the north to Zhujiang in the south; most of them were found in the Yellow River and the Changjiang River valley. The "Lantian people"(the first illustration is the restored skull of Lantian People") found in Shaanxi province and the famous "Peking Man" are among them. China is the country in the world where most relics of primeval humankind were found. During the early 20th century, at the cave in Longgu hill, Zhoukoudian, southwest of Beijing, bones of primeval humankind were found. They lived 700 to 200 thousand years ago. The "Peking Man" retained the features of apes, but they could use tools in labor. They were humans. They used stones to strike and to make coarse stone tools. The era when such stone tools were used is called "Old Stone Age". They also cut down branches to make bat. Stone tools and bats were the earliest tools that humankind used in labor, and to be able to make tools is the fundamental factor for distinguishing humankind from animals. The "Peking Man" used natural fire. They used fire to bake foodstuff, and to make light and keep warmth, also to scare away beasts. The use of fire strengthened their ability to conquer Nature, was a great progress in the evolution of humankind.The "Peking Man" lived in a hostile environment and used simple and coarse tools. Individuals could not survive by their own efforts. They worked together in groups of several persons each, and shared fruits of labor-they lived a social life, but it was hard. This is also one characteristic of the early human society in primeval time.

3. Upper Cave Man
18,000 years ago, in the same region of the "Peking Man", there also lived another primeval humankind. Their outlook was almost alike to modern men. Their bones were found in a cave on top of the Longgu hill; that's why they are called the "Upper Cave Man". The Upper cave man still used ground stone tools, but they knew how to polish and drill holes on stone, and they also knew how to make bone needles and the other similar instruments. They also made ornaments. The Upper cave man knew how to make fire by hand. Fishing, hunting and collecting were their major productive labor.The social unit where the Upper cave man lived was a "clan" linked by genealogy. One clan had only several dozen persons descented from a common ancestor. They used common tools in collective labor, and shared foods among the members, and they lived together. Such a living unit is called "clan commune". Members of the clan relied on collective efforts to struggle against Nature. Human society was, by that time, in the "clan commune" stage of primitive society.

1. Yangshao Culture
In the Middle and Lower Yellow River Valley is YangShao Culture.Here agriculture was practiced. Pottery was made with geometric patterns and baked at 1000-1500 degrees C. No potter's wheel. A lot of pigfarming. No horses.
The first evidence of a neolithic culture in China was discovered at Yangshao, in Henan Province, in 1921. In1953, during construction of a factory at Banpo, near the city of Xi'an in Shaanxi Province, a neolithic village belonging to the Yangshao Culture was accidentally uncovered. This village covered an area of two and a half acres. Careful excavation recovered an area of two and a half acres. Careful excavation revealed the tresence of 45 houses, 200 storage pits, needles, tools, arrowheads, fish hooks and six kilns. There were also 174 adult graves, 76 children's graves and 37 funerary urns. The Nelolithic people of Banpo hunted, fished, cultivated millet, cooked their food and raised pigs as domestic animals.Especially note worthy was their gray or red pottery. THe red pottery was painted with black geometrical designs and occasionally with pictures of fish or human faces. Because the potter's wheel was unknown at that time, the vessels were probably fashioned with strips of clay. The Yangshao Culture, also referred to as the "Painted Pottery" Culture, flourished between 6000 B.C. and 5000 B.C.

2. Longshan Culture
In the Middle and Lower Yellow River Valley is Longshan Culture. (Wheel-made pottery. Divination and Ancestrial worship.)
In 1928, another Neolithic culture was discovered at Longshan, in Shandong Province. The Longshan Culture was more advanced than the Yangshao Culture and probably flourished about a thousand years later, between 5000 and 4000 B.C. People of the Longshan Culture also hunted, fished and planted grain. They probably domesticated the pig, dog and ox. They mad e stone tools such as axes and knives as well as bone necklaces and bracelets. They also made a exquisite black pottery, probably with the potter's wheel. Their pottery was not painted but was decorated with rings, either raised or grooved.The Longshan Culture, because of its distinguished pottery, has been called the "Black Pottery" Culture. It was probably the predecessor of the Xia and Shang Dynasties.Recent research has persuaded some authorities that the Yangshao and Longshan Cultures were not separate and distinct. These scholars now believe that the Longshan Culture was in fact a later development of the Yangshao Culture.

3000-2070 BC (Three Rulers & Five Emperors)

The Xia Dynasty ( 2070-1600 BC )
The first prehistoric dynasty is said to be Xia, from about the twenty-first to the sixteenth century BC. Until scientific excavations were made at early bronze-age sites at Anyang, Henan Province, in 1928, it was difficult to seperate myth from reality in regard to the Xia. But since then, and especially in the 1960s and 1970s, archaeologists have uncovered urban sites, bronze implements, and tombs that point to the existence of Xia civilization in the same locations cited in ancient Chinese historical texts. At minimum, the Xia period marked an evolutionary stage between the late neolithic cultures and the typical Chinese urban civilization of the Shang Dynasty.
The Xia Dynasty is traditionallly supposed to have begun with the reign of Yu the Great and ended with the fall of Jie,lasting for more than 400 years, from approximately the 21st century BC to a little earlier to the 16th century BC. THere were altogether seventeen kings in fourteen generations. According to an ancient version of history, however, it was not Yu, but his son Qi, who founded the dynasty.Towards the end of the Xia Dynasty, social contradictions and confict grew sharper. Tradition has it that in the 16th century BC, the last ruler of Xia, Jie, abused his power and increased oppression. He exhausted the resources of the people to build palaces and pavilions for himself. The people were also forced to go to war.Filled with hatred for Jie, the people could no longer put up with his despotic rule and fled in large numbers. Even his court officials cursed him and wished his death, although that might mean that they themselves would perish.Shang Tang sezed this opportunity. took a revolt and finally overthrew the Xia Dynasty and founded the house known as the Shang Dynasty.

The Shang Dynasty ( 1600-1046 BC )
The Shang Dynasty has the earliest recorded written history. The Shang (16th-11th century BC) lasted over 500 years, with 31 kings belonging to 17 generations.Thousands of archaeological finds in the Huang He , Henan Valley --the apparent cradle of Chinese civilization--provide evidence about the Shang dynasty, which endured roughly from 1700 to 1027 B.C. The Shang dynasty (also called the Yin dynasty in its later stages) is believed to have been founded by a rebel leader who overthrew the last Xia ruler. Its civilization was based on agriculture, augmented by hunting and animal husbandry. Two important events of the period were the development of a writing system, as revealed in archaic Chinese inscriptions found on tortoise shells and flat cattle bones (commonly called oracle bones or), and the use of bronze metallurgy. A number of ceremonial bronze vessels with inscriptions date from the Shang period; the workmanship on the bronzes attests to a high level of civilization.

A line of hereditary Shang kings ruled over much of northern China, and Shang troops fought frequent wars with neighboring settlements and nomadic herdsmen from the inner Asian steppes. The capitals, one of which was at the site of the modern city of Anyang, were centers of glittering court life. Court rituals to propitiate spirits and to honor sacred ancestors were highly developed. In addition to his secular position, the king was the head of the ancestor- and spirit-worship cult. Evidence from the royal tombs indicates that royal personages were buried with articles of value, presumably for use in the afterlife. Perhaps for the same reason, hundreds of commoners, who may have been slaves, were buried alive with the royal corpse.

Shang Tang had spent 17 years in fighting against the Emperor Jie before he overthrew the Xia Dynasty. When he came to the throne, he was found to be a good and virtuous ruler. He was always thinking of the good for his people. He was full of benevolence not only for his people, but also for the animals. Hehas been considered as a model ruler and his example was imitated by every monarch. He was succeeded by his grandson Tai Jia.In the whole period of the Slave-Owning System in the Shang Dynasty, struggles for the throne occurred many times, and the internal contradictions of the nobility intensified. Misery spread wide among the people, and the dynasty declined. There were thirty-one kings in seventeen generations. The last two kings were Di Yi and Di Xin. Di Xin or Zhou, the king of Shang, is known in history as a cruel and debauched tyrant. He devised many cruel laws and means of torture, oppressing and expoiting the slaves and common people. Building luxurious palaces and gardens, he led a debauchery life. By the end of the dynasty, King Zhou set aside the old nobles and only favored those congenial to him. This aggravated the contradictions among the nobility and caused internal dissention. The intensification of class contradictions brought about great confusion. Taking advantage of the opportunity, King Wu of the Zhou Dynasty launched an attack and overthrew the Shang Dynasty. The account of the fall of the Shang Dynasty that appears in traditional Chinese histories follows closely the story of Xia.

Zhou Dynasty ( 1046 - 256 BC )

The last Shang ruler, a despot according to standard Chinese accounts, was overthrown by a chieftain of a frontier tribe called Zhou ,which had settled in the Wei Valley in modern Shaanxi Province. The Zhou dynasty had its capital at Hao , near the city of Xi'an ,or Chang'an , as it was known in its heyday in the imperial period. Sharing the language and culture of the Shang, the early Zhou rulers, through conquest and colonization, gradually sinicized, that is, extended Shang culture through much of China Proper north of the Chang Jiang ( to Yangtze River ). The Zhou dynasty lasted longer than any other, from 1027 to 221 B.C. It was philosophers of this period who first enunciated the doctrine of the "mandate of heaven" (tianming ), the notion that the ruler (the "son of heaven" ) governed by divine right but that his dethronement would prove that he had lost the mandate. At the same time, it was considered that the mandate was a reflection of people's will. The doctrine explained and justified the demise of the two earlier dynasties and at the same time supported the legitimacy of present and future rulers.

The term feudal has often been applied to the Zhou period because the Zhou's early decentralized rule invites comparison with medieval rule in Europe. At most, however, the early Zhou system was proto-feudal, being a more sophisticated version of earlier tribal organization, in which effective control depended more on familial ties than on feudal legal bonds. Whatever feudal elements there may have been decreased as time went on. The Zhou amalgam of city-states became progressively centralized and established increasingly impersonal political and economic institutions. These developments, which probably occurred in the latter Zhou period, were manifested in greater central control over local governments and a more routinized agricultural taxation.

In 771 B.C. the Zhou court was sacked, and its king was killed by invading barbarians who were allied with rebel lords. The capital was moved eastward to Luoyang in present-day Henan Province. Because of this shift, historians divide the Zhou era into Western Zhou (1027-771 B.C.) and Eastern Zhou (770-221 B.C.). With the royal line broken, the power of the Zhou court gradually diminished; the fragmentation of the kingdom accelerated. Eastern Zhou divides into two subperiods. The first, from 770 to 476 B.C., is called the Spring and Autumn Period , after a famous historical chronicle of the time; the second is known as the Warring States Period (475-221 B.C.).

Western Zhou ( 1046 - 770 BC )

Western Zhou period covered twelve emperors lasting for about 275 years. Wu Wang (1046 BC in power), or King Wu, entered the capital of Shang without fierce resistance. He opened the prisons and set free the prisoners. He also opened the granaries and distriduted the things among the people. The treasures and luxuries found in Zhou Xin's palace were used in rewarding the officers and soldiers of the Zhou army and also distributed among the people. Those women assembled in Zhou Xin's harem were allowed to return to their families.Personal qualities and great affability assisted him in gaining the sympathy of his people. Latter he was assisted by his brother Dan, known in literature as Zhou Gong.When he died, he was succeeded by his son, known in history as Cheng Wang, or King Cheng.Cheng Wang was only thirteen when he came to the throne. His uncle, the Duke of Zhou, a man of large ability, aprofound statesman and a most conscientious an upright prince, was appointed regent by Wu Wang before his death. Soon a serious rebellion took place in the east part of the Empire. This regent took it upon him self to suppress it and succeeded in doing so in two years. The enemies circulated rumors that the Duke of Zhou was not loyal to the Emperor. These got to the ears of Cheng Wang and temporarily estranged him from his uncle. But soon everything cleared up. The Emperor, reassured of his uncle's loyalty, reinstated him in all his honors. The Duke proved himself worthy of the confidence and turned out to be an excellent organizer of the state machinery.When Cheng Wang was seventeen, the Duke of Zhou resigned his office as regent and handed over the government to him. In his reign,Cheng Wang made a visitation to different parts of his empire. He investigated whether the unreclaimed parts of the country were being opened for cultivation, whether persons of good character were being put into office to the exclusion of the bad. Where these things were being attended to, he rewarded the chiefs, and where were not, he punished them.He built a new city at modern Luoyang to serve as an auxiliary Zhou capital.He died after a happy reign of thirty-seven years.King Li (878-827 BC) was exceedingly cruel in his treatment of those that opposed him. A universal terror reigned, and no one dared to express his opinion to his neighbor and when men walked the streets they could only greet each other with their eyes, for they were afraid, lest their simplest actions might be misinterpreted by spies, and they should be put to death. At lenghth the nobles rose jointly in rebellion, and had the king banished in 841 BC, leaving the government to the dukes of Zhou and Zhao. 841 BC is the earliest year which Sima Qian recorded in his Historical Record.King You (781-770 BC) was a bad and unprincipled man. He made the famous beauty Baosi his consort, and to whom he became completely enslaved. She seemed to delight in inciting the Emperor to the wildest acts of folly. He lit a System of beacons, which were lighted in times of extreme danger, and the feudal vassals were bound. When they saw these signals, theyhurried with all speed to the capital to assist the emperor with the collected forces. He did this simply to make the woman smile. During King You's reign, the dynasty's power and prestige had declined sharply. The neighboring peoples made continuous attacks. He lost control of the capital. As a result, King You was slain and Baosi carried offf by those barbarians, and the Western Zhou came to an end. Since then, the dynasty is known as Eastern Zhou.

--Eastern Zhou

Spring & Autumn Period ( 722-481 BC) / Warring States Period (403-221 BC )
After the capital was sacked by barbarians from the west, the Zhou moved east, thus neatly dividing the Zhou dynasty into eastern and western periods. As might be expected, the power of the Zhou declined somewhat. The so-called Spring & Autumn period, named after a book (The Spring and Autumn Annals) that provides a history of period saw a proliferation of new ideas and philosophies. The three most important, from a historical standpoint, were Daoism, Confucianism, and Legalism.
Daoism is a can be a very frustrating philosophy to study. It is based on study of the Dao, literally translated, "the Way." For starters, the oldest great book of Daoism, the Dao de Jing, The Way and Virtue, was allegedly written by a man named Lao-zi. However, we don't know 1) if Lao-zi was his real name, 2) if Lao-zi ever actually existed, and 3) if the book is even the work of one author. Then there are the texts themselves. The first line of the Dao de Jing can be translated as "The Way that can be walked is not the enduring and unchanging Way." It can also be translated as "The Way that can be known is not the true Way," as well as several other translations that, while all having the same general paradoxical meaning, are all different. It is also full of other cryptic and paradoxical sayings, like "The more the sage expends for others, the more does he possess of his own; the more he gives to others, the more does he have himself." Daoists loved this kind of stuff; the story about the man dreaming he was a butterfly, then waking up and wondering if he was a man or a butterfly dreaming about being a man is classic Daoism. Daoism profoundly influenced the later development of Cha'an (also known as Zen) Buddhism.

Confucius, who lived about five hundred years before Christ, basically believed that moral men make good rulers and that virtue is one of the most important properties that an official can have. He also believed that virtue can be attained by following the proper way of behaving, and thus placed a great deal of stress on proper. Most of what is considered 'Confucianism' was actually written down by a disciple named Mencius, who also believed that all men were basically good. Confucius also codified the status of the ruler in Chinese political thought; the Emperor was the Son of Heaven (while Heaven in a Western context is a place, Heaven in the Chinese context is a divine/natural force) and had the Mandate of Heaven to rule.

Legalism derived from the teachings of another one of Confucius' disciples, a man named Xun-zi. Xun-zi believed that, for the most part, man would look out for himself first and was therefore basically evil (remember, this is more than two thousand years before Adam Smith argued that self-interest is what makes markets work and is therefore good). Consequently, the Legalists designed a series of draconian laws that would make a nation easier to control. The fundamental aim of both Confucianism and Legalism was the re-unification of a then divided China, but they took difference approaches. Confucianism depended on virtue and natural order; Legalism used a iron fist. Legalism has been called "super-Machiavellian;" this is not unwarranted, as it called for the suppression of dissent by the burning of books and burying dissidents alive (maltreatment of the opposition is nothing new in China; because the system starts with the idea that the Emperor is the Son of Heaven and has the Mandate of Heaven to rule, there is no such thing as legitimate dissent and thus no concept of "loyal opposition"). Legalism advocated techniques such as maintaining an active secret police, encouraging neighbors to inform on each other, and the creation of a general atmosphere of fear. In fact, many of the same tactics that the Legalists approved of were later employed by Hitler, Stalin, and Mao.

The politics of the Warring States period were much the same as those of the Spring & Autumn period; the major difference was that while in the earlier period, armies were small and battles lasted only a day, much like in pre-Napoleonic wars, the later period featured what modern strategists would call "totalwar." Massive armies (half a million per army was not an uncommon figure), long battles, sieges, were all common features of the Warring States battlefield.

221-207 B.C.
The Qin Dynasty ( 221-207 BC )
The tenuous authority of the Zhou ended in the 3rd century BC, when the state of Qin, for the first time, unified China after Qin's conquoring its six duchies. The First Exalted Emperor Qin Shihuang ruled only from 221 to 207 BC, and isremembered above all for his tyranny and cruelty. At the same time, the Qin Dynasty developed administrative institutions that were to remain features of the Chinese state for the following 2000 years.The state of Qin grew in power during the 5th and 4th centuries BC. In 246 BC the state conquered present-day Sichuan and proceeded todo likewise with the remaining kingdoms that stood in its way. Much of what came to constitute China Proper was unified for the first time in 221 B.C. In that year the western frontier state of Qin, the most aggressive of the Warring States, subjugated the last of its rival states. (Qin in Wade-Giles romanization is Ch'in, from which the English China probably derived.) Once the king of Qin consolidated his power, he took the title Shi Huangdi ( First Emperor), a formulation previously reserved for deities and the mythological sage-emperors, and imposed Qin's centralized, nonhereditary bureaucratic system on his new empire. In subjugating the six other major states of Eastern Zhou, the Qin kings had relied heavily on Legalist scholar-advisers. Centralization, achieved by ruthless methods, was focused on standardizing legal codes and bureaucratic procedures, the forms of writing and coinage, and the pattern of thought and scholarship. To silence criticism of imperial rule, the kings banished or put to death many dissenting Confucian scholars and confiscated and burned their books . Qin aggrandizement was aided by frequent military expeditions pushing forward the frontiers in the north and south. To fend off barbarian intrusion, the fortification walls built by the various warring states were connected to make a 5,000-kilometer-long great wall. What is commonly referred to as the Great Wall is actually four great walls rebuilt or extended during the Western Han, Sui, Jin, and Ming periods, rather than a single, continuous wall. At its extremities, the Great Wall reaches from northeastern Heilongjiang Province to northwestern Gansu. A number of public works projects were also undertaken to consolidate and strengthen imperial rule. These activities required enormous levies of manpower and resources, not to mention repressive measures. Revolts broke out as soon as the first Qin emperor died in 210 B.C. His dynasty was extinguished less than twenty years after its triumph. The imperial system initiated during the Qin dynasty, however, set a pattern that was developed over the next two millennia.

Western Han ( 206 BC - AD 9 )
After a short civil war, a new dynasty, called Han (206 B.C.-A.D. 220), emerged with its capital at Chang'an. The new empire retained much of the Qin administrative structure but retreated a bit from centralized rule by establishing vassal principalities in some areas for the sake of political convenience. The Han rulers modified some of the harsher aspects of the previous dynasty; Confucian ideals of government, out of favor during the Qin period, were adopted as the creed of the Han empire, and Confucian scholars gained prominent status as the core of the civil service. A civil service examination system also was initiated. Intellectual, literary, and artistic endeavors revived and flourished. The Han period produced China's most famous historian, Sima Qian ( 145-87 B.C.?), whose Shiji ( Historical Records) provides a detailed chronicle from the time of a legendary Xia emperor to that of the Han emperor Wu Di ( 141-87 B.C.). Technological advances also marked this period. Two of the great Chinese inventions, paper and porcelain, date from Han times.
The Han dynasty, after which the members of the ethnic majority in China, the "people of Han," are named, was notable also for its military prowess. The empire expanded westward as far as the rim of the Tarim Basin (in modern Xinjiang-Uyghur Autonomous Region), making possible relatively secure caravan traffic across Central Asia to Antioch, Baghdad, and Alexandria. The paths of caravan traffic are often called the "silk route" because the route was used to export Chinese silk to the Roman Empire. Chinese armies also invaded and annexed parts of northern Vietnam and northern Korea toward the end of the second century B.C. Han control of peripheral regions was generally insecure, however. To ensure peace with non-Chinese local powers, the Han court developed a mutually beneficial "tributary system" . Non-Chinese states were allowed to remain autonomous in exchange for symbolic acceptance of Han overlordship. Tributary ties were confirmed and strengthened through intermarriages at the ruling level and periodic exchanges of gifts and goods.
After 200 years, Han rule was interrupted briefly (in A.D. 9-24 by Wang Mang or , a reformer), and then restored for another 200 years. The Han rulers, however, were unable to adjust to what centralization had wrought: a growing population, increasing wealth and resultant financial difficulties and rivalries, and ever-more complex political institutions. Riddled with the corruption characteristic of the dynastic cycle, by A.D. 220 the Han empire collapsed.

A.D. 9-24 Xin (Wang Mang interregnum)
A.D. 25-220 Eastern Han

The Three Kingdoms (221-280 AD)
This is the most exciting epoch of the whole Chinese history. It is full of romance and heroism and hard fighting and great generalship such as have never been exhibited since then. It is to us what King Arthur and his knights of the round table are to the English. To the Western it suggests the great age of chivalry in medieval Europe. The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, one of the most popular classic novels in China, gives a most vivid description of the struggles of this period. The first and the largest of the three kingdoms, the Wei, embraced the central and northern provinces with its capital at Luoyang. The second, named the Wu, controlled the province of south of the Yangtze, with its chief city at Nanjing. The third, called the Sichuan Han, ruled over the large Province of Sichuan, having the seat of government at Chengdu.The Three Kingdomsexisted side by side. Cao Cao cleared off Yuan Shao's remaining forces and brought the entire middle and lower Huanghe River valley under his control. The southern-based Sun Quan, who had carried on the cause poineered by his father and elder brother, was claimed to be connected with the Han royal house, was also preparing for a bid for power.In 208, Cao Cao led a massive force southward to capture Jingzhou, chase Liu Bei around, and pose a direct menace to Sun Quan. At Zhuge Liang's advice, Liu Bei and Sun Quan decided to put up joint resistance to Cao Cao. The allied forces of Sun Quan and Liu Bei launched an all-out attack and crushed Cao's hostile army which was much advantageous in number. After Cao Cao pulled back to his northern base, Sun Quan consolidated his position in the south while Liu Bei seized Jingzhou Prefecture and later took Yizhou in the west. And so a situation arose in which the country was divided and ruled by the three feudal lords.After Cao Cao's death in 220, his son Cao Pi, proclaimed himself Emperor of Wei, with Luoyang as his capital. The following year, Liu Bei declared himself Emperor of Han with Chengdu as his capital. In 222, Sun Quan called himself Emperor of Wu with the capital at Jianye. Three kingdoms-- Wei, Shu and Wu-- are known as the Three Kingdoms in Chinese history.

220-265 -- Wei, 221-263 -- Shu, 229-280 -- Wu

A.D. 265-316 Western Jin
A.D. 317-420 Eastern Jin

The Song Dynasty
established by Liu Yu and the three successive dynasties of Southern Qi, Liang and Chen are known as the Southern Dynasties. They had the same capital location at Jiankang. Liu Yu, later known as Emperor Wu Di, was the most powerful ruler of the South since the Eastern Jin period. After he ascended the throne in 424, Emperor Wen Di continued Liu Yu's policy and focused on stengthening the court, developed the economy in the Changjiang River valley. It showed relative stability during his 30-year reign.Inthe early Song period, there were five states in the north, the Western Liang, Northern Liang, Northern Yan, Western Qin and Xia. In 386, Tuoba Gui, a member of the Tuoba clan of the Xianbei tribe, set up the state of Northern Wei. In 399, he proclaimed himself emperor, later known as Dao Wu Di. In 439, Emperor Tai WuDi of the Northern Wei conquered Northern Liang and unified the northern that had been divided and ruled by the Sixteen States.From 450 to 589, there had undregone considerable turmoil in the struggles for power.From the time of Emperor Wen Di of Song, many venerable Buddhist monks came to China from the west, and Buddhism of various sects flourished during the Southern and Northern Dynasties.During the Sixteen States period, the Former Liang and the Northern Liang were the Buddhist centers in the north. Buddhist monks in the south lumped Buddhism and Xuan Xue together in their parching. Large numbers of Buddhist monasteries were built in the north, with over 1,300 in Luoyang alone and more than 30,000 throughout the domain of the Northern Wei. Yungang, Longmen and Dunhuang are all world-famous for their engravings. Apparently, Buddhism was gaining ground both in the south and the north.The Southern Dynasties laid greater claim to fame in literature and historical studies than did the Northern Dynasties. In literature, poetry enjoyed popularity in the south. Xie Lingyun was famous for his nature poems. Bao Zhao wrote many poems which exerted some influence on the renowned Tang Dynasty poet Li Bai. Of the literary works of the Northern Dynasties, the best-known is the Song of Mu Lan.

420-588 Southern Dynasties 386-588 Northern Dynasties
420-478 -- Song386-588 386-533 -- Northern Wei
479-501 -- Qi 534-549 -- Eastern Wei
502-556 -- Liang 535-557 -- Western Wei
557-588 -- Chen 550-577 -- Northern Qi
557-588 -- Northern Zhou

The Sui Dynasty ( 581- 618 AD )
The Sui Dynasty (581-618 AD) was shortlived, but its accomplishments were many. Yang Jian, the Chinese-Tuoba general who established the dynasty, was given the title Wendi, the 'Cultivated Emperor'. He began administrative reform, modeling much of it on the earlier Han institutions; the civil service was strengtherned at the expense of aristocratic privilege; and land reform was undertaken. All of this, along with revisions of the law code, was to serve as the basis for the institutions of the Tang Dynasty that followed fast on the heels of the Sui's colapse.The Sui went into rapid decline under the rule of Wendi's son, Yangdi. His massive public works in restoring strategically important sections of the great Wall and establishing the Grand Canal (which did much to achieve the economic cohesion of China) were clearly aimed at strengthening the empire. However, a prolonged and costly campaign against a kingdom in Southern Manchuria and Northern Korea ended in defeat and this put an enormous burden on the national coffers and fanned the flames of revolt. The Sui Dynasty fell in 617 to domestic rebels led by Li Yuan.

The Tang Dynasty ( 618 - 907 BC )

Faced with disastrous military setbacks in Korea and revolt on the streets, Yangdi was assassinated by one of his high officials. Meanwhile, another Sui official , posted in the border garrison of Taiyuan, turned his troops back on the capital. His name was Li Yuan (known posthumously as Gaozu) and he was to establish the Tang Dynasty (618-907), commonly regarded by the Chinese at the most glorious period in their history.Gaozu's grab at dynastic succession was not without contest, and it was to take 10 years before the last of his rivals was defeated. Once this was achieved, however, the Tang set about putting the house in order. A pyramidal administration was established, with the emperor at its head, two policy-formulating ministries and a Department of State Affairs below this, followed in turn by nine courts and six boards dealing with specific administrative areas. In a move to discourage the development of f fegional power bases, the empire was divided into 300 prefec-I lures (zhou) and 1500 counties (xian), a regional breakdown that persists to this day.The accession of Gaozu's son, Taizong (600-649), to the imperial throne saw a continuation of the early Tang's successes. He was one of the greatest emperors in China's history and virtually the creator of the Tang Dynasty. Military conquests re-established Chinese control of the silk routes and contributed to an influx of traders, producing an unprecedented 'internationalization' of Chinese society.The major cities of Chang'an, Luoyang and Guangzhou (formerly Canton), as well as many other trading centres, were all home to foreign communities. Mainly from Central Asia, these communities brought with them new religions, food, music and artistic traditions. Later in the Tang Dynasty, foreign contact was extended to Persia, India, Malaysia, Indonesia and Japan. By the 9th century the city of Guangzhou was estimated to have a foreign population of 100,000.Buddhism also flourished under the Tang. Chinese pilgrims, notably the famous wanderer Xuan Zang, who was the most famous traveller and translator of Buddhist scriptures in Tang Dynasty , made their way to India, bringing back with them Buddhist scriptures that in their turn brought about a Buddhist renewal. Translation, which until this time had expensively sini-sised difficult Buddhist concepts, was undertaken with a new rigor , and Chinese Buddhist texts increased vastly in number. One of the consequences of this, however, was a schism in the Buddhist faith.In reaction to the complexity of many buddhist texts being translated from Sanskrit, the Chan School (more famously known by its Japanese name, Zen or Nokori) arose. Chan looked to bypass the complexities of scriptural study through discipline and meditation, while another Buddhist phenomenon, the Pure Land School (later to become the most important form of Chinese Buddhism), concerned itself with attaining the 'Western Paradise'.For the Chinese, the apex of Tang Dynastic glory was the reign of Xuanzong (685 - 761 ), known also by the title Minghuang, or the 'Radiant Emperor'. His capital of Chang'an was one of the greatest cities in the world, with a population of over one million. His court was a magnet to scholars and artists throughout the country, and home for a time to poets such as Du Fu and Li Bai, perhaps China's two most famous rhymers. His reign similarly saw a flourishing of the arts, dance and music, as well as a remarkable religious diversity.Some might say that all this artistic activity was an indication that the empire was beginning to go a bit soft at the core. Xuanzong's increasing preoccupation with the arts, Tantric Buddhism, Taoism, one of his consorts Yang Guifei and whatever else captured his fancy, meant that the affairs of the state were largely left to his administrators.An Lushan, a general in the northeast, took this opportunity to build up a huge power base in the region, and before long (755) he made his move on the rest of China. He led the rebellion and took Chang'an. Emperor Xuan Zong fled in panic towards Sichuan. The fighting, which dragged on for nearly 10 years, overran the capital and caused massive dislocations of people and millions of deaths. Although Tang forces regained control of the empire, it was the beginning of the end for the Tang.Tang power gradually weakened during the 8th and 9th centuries. In the northwest, Tibetan warriors overran Tang garrisons, while to the south the Nanzhao kingdom centred in Dali, Yunnan, posed a serious threat to Sichuan. Meanwhile, in the Chinese heartland of the Yangzi region and Zhejiang, heavy taxes and a series of calamities engendered wide-ranging discontent that culminated in Huang Cao, the head of a loose grouping of bandit groups, ransacking the capital.From 907 to 959, until the establishement of the Song Dynasty, China was once again racked by wars between contenders for the mandate of heaven. It is a period often referred to as the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period.

A.D. 907-960 Five Dynasties
907-923 -- Later Liang
923-936 -- Later Tang
936-946 -- Later Jin
947-950 -- Later Han
951-960 -- Later Zhou

A.D. 907-979 Ten Kingdoms

The Song Dynasty ( AD 960-1279 )

But in 960 a new power, Song (960-1279), reunified most of China Proper. The Song period divides into two phases: Northern Song (960-1127) and Southern Song (1127-1279). The division was caused by the forced abandonment of north China in 1127 by the Song court, which could not push back the nomadic invaders.
The founders of the Song dynasty built an effective centralized bureaucracy staffed with civilian scholar-officials. Regional military governors and their supporters were replaced by centrally appointed officials. This system of civilian rule led to a greater concentration of power in the emperor and his palace bureaucracy than had been achieved in the previous dynasties.
The Song dynasty is notable for the development of cities not only for administrative purposes but also as centers of trade, industry, and maritime commerce. The landed scholar-officials, sometimes collectively referred to as the gentry, lived in the provincial centers alongside the shopkeepers, artisans, and merchants. A new group of wealthy commoners--the mercantile class--arose as printing and education spread, private trade grew, and a market economy began to link the coastal provinces and the interior. Landholding and government employment were no longer the only means of gaining wealth and prestige.
Culturally, the Song refined many of the developments of the previous centuries. Included in these refinements were not only the Tang ideal of the universal man, who combined the qualities of scholar, poet, painter, and statesman, but also historical writings, painting, calligraphy, and hard-glazed porcelain. Song intellectuals sought answers to all philosophical and political questions in the Confucian Classics. This renewed interest in the Confucian ideals and society of ancient times coincided with the decline of Buddhism, which the Chinese regarded as foreign and offering few practical guidelines for the solution of political and other mundane problems.
The Song Neo-Confucian philosophers, finding a certain purity in the originality of the ancient classical texts, wrote commentaries on them. The most influential of these philosophers was Zhu Xi ( b1130-1200), whose synthesis of Confucian thought and Buddhist, Taoist, and other ideas became the official imperial ideology from late Song times to the late nineteenth century. As incorporated into the examination system, Zhu Xi's philosophy evolved into a rigid official creed, which stressed the one-sided obligations of obedience and compliance of subject to ruler, child to father, wife to husband, and younger brother to elder brother. The effect was to inhibit the societal development of premodern China, resulting both in many generations of political, social, and spiritual stability and in a slowness of cultural and institutional change up to the nineteenth century. Neo-Confucian doctrines also came to play the dominant role in the intellectual life of Korea, Vietnam, and Japan.
960-1127 -- Northern Song
1127-1279 -- Southern Song
A.D. 916-1125 Liao
A.D. 1038-1227 Western Xia
A.D. 1115-1234 Jin

The Yuan Dynasty ( AD 1271 - 1368 )

By the mid-thirteenth century, the Mongols had subjugated north China, Korea, and the Muslim kingdoms of Central Asia and had twice penetrated Europe. With the resources of his vast empire, Kublai Khan ( 1215-94), a grandson of Genghis Khan ( 1167-1227) and the supreme leader of all Mongol tribes, began his drive against the Southern Song. Even before the extinction of the Song dynasty, Kublai Khan had established the first alien dynasty to rule all China--the Yuan (1279-1368). Although the Mongols sought to govern China through traditional institutions, using Chinese (Han) bureaucrats, they were not up to the task. The Han were discriminated against socially and politically. All important central and regional posts were monopolized by Mongols, who also preferred employing non-Chinese from other parts of the Mongol domain--Central Asia, the Middle East, and even Europe--in those positions for which no Mongol could be found. Chinese were more often employed in non-Chinese regions of the empire.
As in other periods of alien dynastic rule of China, a rich cultural diversity developed during the Yuan dynasty. The major cultural achievements were the development of drama and the novel and the increased use of the written vernacular. The Mongols' extensive West Asian and European contacts produced a fair amount of cultural exchange. Western musical instruments were introduced to enrich the Chinese performing arts. From this period dates the conversion to Islam, by Muslims of Central Asia, of growing numbers of Chinese in the northwest and southwest. Nestorianism and Roman Catholicism also enjoyed a period of toleration. Lamaism (Tibetan Buddhism) flourished, although native Taoism endured Mongol persecutions. Confucian governmental practices and examinations based on the Classics, which had fallen into disuse in north China during the period of disunity, were reinstated by the Mongols in the hope of maintaining order over Han society. Advances were realized in the fields of travel literature, cartography and geography, and scientific education. Certain key Chinese innovations, such as printing techniques, porcelain production, playing cards, and medical literature, were introduced in Europe, while the production of thin glass and cloisonne became popular in China. The first records of travel by Westerners date from this time. The most famous traveler of the period was the Venetian Marco Polo, whose account of his trip to "Cambaluc," the Great Khan's capital (now Beijing), and of life there astounded the people of Europe. The Mongols undertook extensive public works. Road and water communications were reorganized and improved. To provide against possible famines, granaries were ordered built throughout the empire. The city of Beijing was rebuilt with new palace grounds that included artificial lakes, hills and mountains, and parks. During the Yuan period, Beijing became the terminus of the Grand Canal, which was completely renovated. These commercially oriented improvements encouraged overland as well as maritime commerce throughout Asia and facilitated the first direct Chinese contacts with Europe. Chinese and Mongol travelers to the West were able to provide assistance in such areas as hydraulic engineering, while bringing back to the Middle Kingdom new scientific discoveries and architectural innovations. Contacts with the West also brought the introduction to China of a major new food crop--sorghum--along with other foreign food products and methods of preparation.

The Ming Dynasty ( AD 1368-1644 )
Rivalry among the Mongol imperial heirs, natural disasters, and numerous peasant uprisings led to the collapse of the Yuan dynasty. The Ming dynasty (1368-1644) was founded by a Han Chinese peasant and former Buddhist monk turned rebel army leader. Having its capital first at Nanjing which means Southern Capital) and later at Beijing ( or Northern Capital), the Ming reached the zenith of power during the first quarter of the fifteenth century. The Chinese armies reconquered Annam , as northern Vietnam was then known, in Southeast Asia and kept back the Mongols, while the Chinese fleet sailed the China seas and the Indian Ocean, cruising as far as the east coast of Africa. The maritime Asian nations sent envoys with tribute for the Chinese emperor. Internally, the Grand Canal was expanded to its farthest limits and proved to be a stimulus to domestic trade.
The Ming maritime expeditions stopped rather suddenly after 1433, the date of the last voyage. Historians have given as one of the reasons the great expense of large-scale expeditions at a time of preoccupation with northern defenses against the Mongols. Opposition at court also may have been a contributing factor, as conservative officials found the concept of expansion and commercial ventures alien to Chinese ideas of government. Pressure from the powerful Neo-Confucian bureaucracy led to a revival of strict agrarian-centered society. The stability of the Ming dynasty, which was without major disruptions of the population (then around 100 million), economy, arts, society, or politics, promoted a belief among the Chinese that they had achieved the most satisfactory civilization on earth and that nothing foreign was needed or welcome.
Long wars with the Mongols, incursions by the Japanese into Korea, and harassment of Chinese coastal cities by the Japanese in the sixteenth century weakened Ming rule, which became, as earlier Chinese dynasties had, ripe for an alien takeover. In 1644 the Manchus took Beijing from the north and became masters of north China, establishing the last imperial dynasty, the Qing (1644-1911).

The Qing Dynasty ( AD 1644-1911 )

Although the Manchus were not Han Chinese and were strongly resisted, especially in the south, they had assimilated a great deal of Chinese culture before conquering China Proper. Realizing that to dominate the empire they would have to do things the Chinese way, the Manchus retained many institutions of Ming and earlier Chinese derivation. They continued the Confucian court practices and temple rituals, over which the emperors had traditionally presided.

The Manchus continued the Confucian civil service system. Although Chinese were barred from the highest offices, Chinese officials predominated over Manchu officeholders outside the capital, except in military positions. The Neo-Confucian philosophy, emphasizing the obedience of subject to ruler, was enforced as the state creed. The Manchu emperors also supported Chinese literary and historical projects of enormous scope; the survival of much of China's ancient literature is attributed to these projects.

Ever suspicious of Han Chinese, the Qing rulers put into effect measures aimed at preventing the absorption of the Manchus into the dominant Han Chinese population. Han Chinese were prohibited from migrating into the Manchu homeland, and Manchus were forbidden to engage in trade or manual labor. Intermarriage between the two groups was forbidden. In many government positions a system of dual appointments was used--the Chinese appointee was required to do the substantive work and the Manchu to ensure Han loyalty to Qing rule.

The Qing regime was determined to protect itself not only from internal rebellion but also from foreign invasion. After China Proper had been subdued, the Manchus conquered Outer Mongolia (now the Mongolian People's Republic) in the late seventeenth century. In the eighteenth century they gained control of Central Asia as far as the Pamir Mountains and established a protectorate over the area the Chinese call Xizang but commonly known in the West as Tibet. The Qing thus became the first dynasty to eliminate successfully all danger to China Proper from across its land borders. Under Manchu rule the empire grew to include a larger area than before or since; Taiwan, the last outpost of anti-Manchu resistance, was also incorporated into China for the first time. In addition, Qing emperors received tribute from the various border states.

The chief threat to China's integrity did not come overland, as it had so often in the past, but by sea, reaching the southern coastal area first. Western traders, missionaries, and soldiers of fortune began to arrive in large numbers even before the Qing, in the sixteenth century. The empire's inability to evaluate correctly the nature of the new challenge or to respond flexibly to it resulted in the demise of the Qing and the collapse of the entire millennia-old framework of dynastic rule.

Republican China

The republic that Sun Yat-sen () and his associates envisioned evolved slowly. The revolutionists lacked an army, and the power of Yuan Shikai () began to outstrip that of parliament. Yuan revised the constitution at will and became dictatorial. In August 1912 a new political party was founded by Song Jiaoren ( 1882-1913), one of Sun's associates. The party, the Guomindang ( Kuomintang or KMT--the National People's Party, frequently referred to as the Nationalist Party), was an amalgamation of small political groups, including Sun's Tongmeng Hui (). In the national elections held in February 1913 for the new bicameral parliament, Song campaigned against the Yuan administration, and his party won a majority of seats. Yuan had Song assassinated in March; he had already arranged the assassination of several pro-revolutionist generals. Animosity toward Yuan grew. In the summer of 1913 seven southern provinces rebelled against Yuan. When the rebellion was suppressed, Sun and other instigators fled to Japan. In October 1913 an intimidated parliament formally elected Yuan president of the Republic of China, and the major powers extended recognition to his government. To achieve international recognition, Yuan Shikai had to agree to autonomy for Outer Mongolia and Xizang (). China was still to be suzerain, but it would have to allow Russia a free hand in Outer Mongolia and Britain continuance of its influence in Xizang.
In November Yuan Shikai, legally president, ordered the Guomindang dissolved and its members removed from parliament. Within a few months, he suspended parliament and the provincial assemblies and forced the promulgation of a new constitution, which, in effect, made him president for life. Yuan's ambitions still were not satisfied, and, by the end of 1915, it was announced that he would reestablish the monarchy. Widespread rebellions ensued, and numerous provinces declared independence. With opposition at every quarter and the nation breaking up into warlord factions, Yuan Shikai died of natural causes in June 1916, deserted by his lieutenants.
Nationalism and CommunismAfter Yuan Shikai's death, shifting alliances of regional warlords fought for control of the Beijing government. The nation also was threatened from without by the Japanese. When World War I broke out in 1914, Japan fought on the Allied side and seized German holdings in Shandong () Province. In 1915 the Japanese set before the warlord government in Beijing the so-called Twenty-One Demands, which would have made China a Japanese protectorate. The Beijing government rejected some of these demands but yielded to the Japanese insistence on keeping the Shandong territory already in its possession. Beijing also recognized Tokyo's authority over southern Manchuria and eastern Inner Mongolia. In 1917, in secret communiques, Britain, France, and Italy assented to the Japanese claim in exchange for the Japan's naval action against Germany. In 1917 China declared war on Germany in the hope of recovering its lost province, then under Japanese control. But in 1918 the Beijing government signed a secret deal with Japan accepting the latter's claim to Shandong. When the Paris peace conference of 1919 confirmed the Japanese claim to Shandong and Beijing's sellout became public, internal reaction was shattering. On May 4, 1919, there were massive student demonstrations against the Beijing government and Japan. The political fervor, student activism, and iconoclastic and reformist intellectual currents set in motion by the patriotic student protest developed into a national awakening known as the May Fourth Movement (). The intellectual milieu in which the May Fourth Movement developed was known as the New Culture Movement and occupied the period from 1917 to 1923. The student demonstrations of May 4, 1919 were the high point of the New Culture Movement, and the terms are often used synonymously. Students returned from abroad advocating social and political theories ranging from complete Westernization of China to the socialism that one day would be adopted by China's communist rulers. Opposing the WarlordsThe May Fourth Movement helped to rekindle the then-fading cause of republican revolution. In 1917 Sun Yat-sen had become commander-in-chief of a rival military government in Guangzhou () in collaboration with southern warlords. In October 1919 Sun reestablished the Guomindang to counter the government in Beijing. The latter, under a succession of warlords, still maintained its facade of legitimacy and its relations with the West. By 1921 Sun had become president of the southern government. He spent his remaining years trying to consolidate his regime and achieve unity with the north. His efforts to obtain aid from the Western democracies were ignored, however, and in 1921 he turned to the Soviet Union, which had recently achieved its own revolution. The Soviets sought to befriend the Chinese revolutionists by offering scathing attacks on "Western imperialism." But for political expediency, the Soviet leadership initiated a dual policy of support for both Sun and the newly established Chinese Communist Party ( CCP). The Soviets hoped for consolidation but were prepared for either side to emerge victorious. In this way the struggle for power in China began between the Nationalists and the Communists. In 1922 the Guomindang-warlord alliance in Guangzhou was ruptured, and Sun fled to Shanghai (). By then Sun saw the need to seek Soviet support for his cause. In 1923 a joint statement by Sun and a Soviet representative in Shanghai pledged Soviet assistance for China's national unification. Soviet advisers--the most prominent of whom was an agent of the Comintern, Mikhail Borodin--began to arrive in China in 1923 to aid in the reorganization and consolidation of the Guomindang along the lines of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The CCP was under Comintern instructions to cooperate with the Guomindang, and its members were encouraged to join while maintaining their party identities. The CCP was still small at the time, having a membership of 300 in 1922 and only 1,500 by 1925. The Guomindang in 1922 already had 150,000 members. Soviet advisers also helped the Nationalists set up a political institute to train propagandists in mass mobilization techniques and in 1923 sent Chiang Kai-shek ( Jiang Jieshi in pinyin), one of Sun's lieutenants from Tongmeng Hui days, for several months' military and political study in Moscow. After Chiang's return in late 1923, he participated in the establishment of the Whampoa ( Huangpu in pinyin) Military Academy outside Guangzhou, which was the seat of government under the Guomindang-CCP alliance. In 1924 Chiang became head of the academy and began the rise to prominence that would make him Sun's successor as head of the Guomindang and the unifier of all China under the right-wing nationalist government. Sun Yat-sen died of cancer in Beijing in March 1925, but the Nationalist movement he had helped to initiate was gaining momentum. During the summer of 1925, Chiang, as commander-in-chief of the National Revolutionary Army, set out on the long-delayed Northern Expedition against the northern warlords. Within nine months, half of China had been conquered. By 1926, however, the Guomindang had divided into left- and right-wing factions, and the Communist bloc within it was also growing. In March 1926, after thwarting a kidnapping attempt against him, Chiang abruptly dismissed his Soviet advisers, imposed restrictions on CCP members' participation in the top leadership, and emerged as the preeminent Guomindang leader. The Soviet Union, still hoping to prevent a split between Chiang and the CCP, ordered Communist underground activities to facilitate the Northern Expedition, which was finally launched by Chiang from Guangzhou in July 1926.
In early 1927 the Guomindang-CCP rivalry led to a split in the revolutionary ranks. The CCP and the left wing of the Guomindang had decided to move the seat of the Nationalist government from Guangzhou to Wuhan. But Chiang, whose Northern Expedition was proving successful, set his forces to destroying the Shanghai CCP apparatus and established an anti-Communist government at Nanjing in April 1927. There now were three capitals in China: the internationally recognized warlord regime in Beijing; the Communist and left-wing Guomindang regime at Wuhan (); and the right-wing civilian-military regime at Nanjing, which would remain the Nationalist capital for the next decade.
The Comintern cause appeared bankrupt. A new policy was instituted calling on the CCP to foment armed insurrections in both urban and rural areas in preparation for an expected rising tide of revolution. Unsuccessful attempts were made by Communists to take cities such as Nanchang (), Changsha (), Shantou (), and Guangzhou, and an armed rural insurrection, known as the Autumn Harvest Uprising, was staged by peasants in Hunan Province. The insurrection was led by Mao Zedong ( 1893-1976), who would later become chairman of the CCP and head of state of the People's Republic of China. Mao was of peasant origins and was one of the founders of the CCP.
But in mid-1927 the CCP was at a low ebb. The Communists had been expelled from Wuhan by their left-wing Guomindang allies, who in turn were toppled by a military regime. By 1928 all of China was at least nominally under Chiang's control, and the Nanjing government received prompt international recognition as the sole legitimate government of China. The Nationalist government announced that in conformity with Sun Yat-sen's formula for the three stages of revolution--military unification, political tutelage, and constitutional democracy--China had reached the end of the first phase and would embark on the second, which would be under Guomindang direction.

The People's Republic of China

On October 1, 1949, the People's Republic of China was formally established, with its national capital at Beijing. "The Chinese people have stood up!" declared Mao as he announced the creation of a "people's democratic dictatorship." The people were defined as a coalition of four social classes: the workers, the peasants, the petite bourgeoisie, and the national-capitalists. The four classes were to be led by the CCP, as the vanguard of the working class. At that time the CCP claimed a membership of 4.5 million, of which members of peasant origin accounted for nearly 90 percent. The party was under Mao's chairmanship, and the government was headed by Zhou Enlai ( 1898-1976) as premier of the State Administrative Council (the predecessor of the State Council).
The Soviet Union recognized the People's Republic on October 2, 1949. Earlier in the year, Mao had proclaimed his policy of "leaning to one side" as a commitment to the socialist bloc. In February 1950, after months of hard bargaining, China and the Soviet Union signed the Treaty of Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Assistance, valid until 1980. The pact also was intended to counter Japan or any power's joining Japan for the purpose of aggression.
For the first time in decades a Chinese government was met with peace, instead of massive military opposition, within its territory. The new leadership was highly disciplined and, having a decade of wartime administrative experience to draw on, was able to embark on a program of national integration and reform. In the first year of Communist administration, moderate social and economic policies were implemented with skill and effectiveness. The leadership realized that the overwhelming and multitudinous task of economic reconstruction and achievement of political and social stability required the goodwill and cooperation of all classes of people. Results were impressive by any standard, and popular support was widespread.
By 1950 international recognition of the Communist government had increased considerably, but it was slowed by China's involvement in the Korean War. In October 1950, sensing a threat to the industrial heartland in northeast China from the advancing United Nations (UN) forces in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea), units of the PLA--calling themselves the Chinese People's Volunteers--crossed the YaluJiang River into North Korea in response to a North Korean request for aid. Almost simultaneously the PLA forces also marched into Xizang to reassert Chinese sovereignty over a region that had been in effect independent of Chinese rule since the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911. In 1951 the UN declared China to be an aggressor in Korea and sanctioned a global embargo on the shipment of arms and war materiel to China. This step foreclosed for the time being any possibility that the People's Republic might replace Nationalist China (on Taiwan) as a member of the UN and as a veto-holding member of the UN Security Council.
After China entered the Korean War, the initial moderation in Chinese domestic policies gave way to a massive campaign against the "enemies of the state," actual and potential. These enemies consisted of "war criminals, traitors, bureaucratic capitalists, and counterrevolutionaries." The campaign was combined with party-sponsored trials attended by huge numbers of people. The major targets in this drive were foreigners and Christian missionaries who were branded as United States agents at these mass trials. The 1951-52 drive against political enemies was accompanied by land reform, which had actually begun under the Agrarian Reform Law of June 28, 1950. The redistribution of land was accelerated, and a class struggle landlords and wealthy peasants was launched. An ideological reform campaign requiring self-criticisms and public confessions by university faculty members, scientists, and other professional workers was given wide publicity. Artists and writers were soon the objects of similar treatment for failing to heed Mao's dictum that culture and literature must reflect the class interest of the working people, led by the CCP. These campaigns were accompanied in 1951 and 1952 by the san fan ( or "three anti") and wu fan ( or "five anti") movements. The former was directed ostensibly against the evils of "corruption, waste, and bureaucratism"; its real aim was to eliminate incompetent and politically unreliable public officials and to bring about an efficient, disciplined, and responsive bureaucratic system. The wu fan movement aimed at eliminating recalcitrant and corrupt businessmen and industrialists, who were in effect the targets of the CCP's condemnation of "tax evasion, bribery, cheating in government contracts, thefts of economic intelligence, and stealing of state assets." In the course of this campaign the party claimed to have uncovered a well-organized attempt by businessmen and industrialists to corrupt party and government officials. This charge was enlarged into an assault on the bourgeoisie as a whole. The number of people affected by the various punitive or reform campaigns was estimated in the millions.
SOURCE FROM:
http://www.chinavoc.com/history/index.asp