2017 U.S. Women's Chess Championship - Final Results (Very Late - Sorry, Darlings!)

Mea culpa!  I totally lost track of the U.S.'s premiere female chess event, held in St. Louis, Missouri in the beautiful (but small!) Chess Club and Scholastic Center of St. Louis.

Without further ado (as if you didn't know!), the winner is:

WGM SABINA-FRANCESCA FOISOR (2272).

Foisor took clear first place with a score of 8.0/11.  Well done, and congratulations.

Here is a dramatic description of the final game, which took place less than three months after WGM Foisor's mother, IM Cristina Foisor (five-time Romanian women's chess champion) in January, 2017.  Tensions mounted as Foisor and her fiance' watched in the downstairs commentary room and waited for the results of IM Nazi Pakidze's game to see if there would be a play-off.

Cross-table (final) with results/standings:

Cross table after round 11

Rank	Name	Rating	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	Score
1	WGM Foisor, Sabina-Francesca	2272	x	½	0	1	1	½	0	1	1	1	1	1	8.0
2	IM Paikidze, Nazi	2369	½	x	1	0	½	0	½	1	1	1	1	½	7.0
3	GM Krush, Irina	2444	1	0	x	½	½	0	½	1	½	1	½	1	6.5
4	IM Zatonskih, Anna	2451	0	1	½	x	½	0	1	½	½	1	0	1	6.0
5	WGM Sharevich, Anna	2257	0	½	½	½	x	1	½	½	½	0	1	1	6.0
6	WIM Yu, Jennifer R	2196	½	1	1	1	0	x	0	½	½	0	½	1	6.0
7	WCM Feng, Maggie	2162	1	½	½	0	½	1	x	0	½	½	½	1	6.0
8	WGM Abrahamyan, Tatev	2364	0	0	0	½	½	½	1	x	½	1	½	1	5.5
9	WGM Nemcova, Katerina	2359	0	0	½	½	½	½	½	½	x	1	1	½	5.5
10	WFM Virkud, Apurva	2262	0	0	0	0	1	1	½	0	0	x	1	1	4.5
11	WFM Yip, Carissa	2234	0	0	½	1	0	½	½	½	0	0	x	1	4.0
12	WIM Nguyen, Emily	2173	0	½	0	0	0	0	0	0	½	0	0	x	1.0

Generated by Swiss Master for Windows on 09-04-2017 at 17:43

It was a tough outing for WFM Carissa Yip, the player I chose to eyeball this year to see how she'd do.  No doubt lack of age and experience, despite her extensive (and impressive) record of play, had a lot to do with her overall performance.  She is only eleven, after all.  At eleven, I was dancing to the Four Seasons and Bobby Rydell on the radio and experimenting with Annette Funicello hairstyles, har!  I also was skinny and cute (but had awful hair!), and sassy as all get out, and had my first serious boyfriend, Jimmy Celeste (sigh, so Italian and so handsome),  just so you know.  My games were cribbage and five card stud, deuces wild, with Grandpa Newton.

The chess baton seems to have been passed to a younger generation of players, most of whom do not have the kind of international experience necessary to really get their ELOs "up there," if you know what I mean.  Sadly, I see a decline in the overall quality of female chessplayers on our national scene, not an improvement.  We lose too many to the practicalities of life - such as - MAKING A LIVING and RAISING FAMILIES!  Drives me INSANE, this drift backwards, not forward.

Okay, end of my angst session.

The China Institute Presents a New Gallery Show/Program: Dreams of the Kings

WOW! I would love to see this.  Hmmm....

Discover China Through Art (DCTA)
Program in conjunction with the exhibition
Dreams of the Kings: A Jade Suit for Eternity, Treasures of the Han Dynasty from Xuzhou

May 30 – November 12, 2017

Discover China Through Art (DCTA), China Institute Gallery’s innovative art education program for groups, will introduce participants to our new exhibition Dreams of the Kings: A Jade Suit for Eternity, Treasures of the Han Dynasty from Xuzhou. Each group visit consists of a three-part program featuring an introductory video presentation, a docent-led gallery tour, and a hands-on art workshop, all of which can be adapted for different age groups and interests.

By exploring great collections from the Xuzhou museum at close range in the Gallery, participants will see a rare jade burial suit, terracotta performers, and carved stone animal sculptures. These objects are extraordinary testimony to customs and beliefs surrounding life and death during the Western Han Dynasty (206 BCE – 8 CE).
Two workshops are offered:
I. Color and Decorating Workshop (K – 3rd grade)
II. Pattern Making Workshop (3rd grade – adult)

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Schedule: Available for booking weekday
Mornings 10:30 AM-12:00 PM & Afternoons 1:30 PM-3:00 PM
Please reserve a tour at least two weeks in advance of the requested date.
Please contact us for evenings and weekends programs.

Speaker Name
Gallery Docents

Fee: Weekdays: $120 per group
Evenings & weekends: $160 per group
Up to 30 participants per group; we can accommodate 2 groups at one time

Contact: Yue Ma 212-744-8181 x 147 or by email at yma@chinainstitute.org

About Discover China Through Art (DCTA)

Discover China Through Art (DCTA) is an innovative art education program that China Institute Gallery offers to schools and the general public. Created in 1992, DCTA introduces audiences to Chinese art and culture through a three-part interactive program that complements the Gallery’s exhibitions. The participants experiment with Chinese art through an introductory video presentation, a docent-led gallery discussion, and a hands-on art workshop. It is in these popular workshops that our participants experience Chinese art up close and have the opportunity to learn and apply fundamental techniques.

The program also offers special Chinese art and culture workshops in between of exhibitions, which consist of an interactive video presentation and an experimental hands-on workshop.

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Discover China Through Art is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

Hales Corners Chess Challenge XXV! It's Tomorrow, Darlings!

Update April 22, 2017:

Hi darlings!  Great news!  Got the final count of chess femmes from the wonderful folks at Southwest Chess Club who run the Hales Corners Challenges, and there are FIVE chess femmes in the Open Section and EIGHT chess femmes in the Reserve Section, out of 73 players, for a total participation rate  of 17.8%!!!!!!!! (Notice I'm using Trumpian punctuation here - he actually stole the idea from me, I've been doing THAT for years, as you all know, darlings :))  Other than scholastic events, I cannot think of any other event in which female players make up such a large percentage of players.  WHOOP WHOOP!  I'm proud of you, ladies!
_________________________________________________________________

Hola everyone!  Happy spring, which in Milwaukee is always celebrated by the Hales Corners Chess Challenge, at least in my little corner of the world :)

Goddesschess first began providing prize money to the HCCC way back in Challenge VIII, and we've consistently improved our prizes and increased the amounts since that time.  We have also been successful in achieving our goal, with the eager cooperation of the people of the Southwest Chess Club, of increasing the participation of female chessplayers in the tournaments, and we now can brag of some of the highest percentages of female participation in open mixed tournaments in the US.  That's something to be proud of, and our female players have made it possible!

This year, Challenge XXV is TOMORROW!!!!!!  You can find all of the details here.

Goddesschess prizes are awarded in addition to any other prize that a female participant may qualify for, they are not mutually exclusive.  (In October HCCC, Goddesschess also provides two special prizes for male players in honor or our late webmaster and partner, Don McLean).  For Challenge XXV, we offer the following incentives to participating female chessplayers:

Open:

$50 per win; $25 per draw; $80 prize for a perfect score of 4.0
Entry fee paid if top scorer participates in next HCCC

Reserve:

$20 per win; $10 per draw; $40 prize for a perfect score of 4.0
Entry fee paid if top scorer participates in next HCCC

I haven't played at the Olympia Resort but I understand it is a great playing venue and provides very nice accommodations for those staying overnight.  So -- please come out and join us, and help us once again make good on increasing our female chessplayer rate of participation in Goddesschess sponsored events!

Fingers crossed we have the best participation rates of ALL players ever!  Good luck to all.  I'll be following along on the SWCC blog.

Mary Magdalene: Not a Prostitute, But Deliberately Maligned As One

In honor of Marys everywhere, and mindful of the Goddess Eostre holiday coming soon, this, from The Washington Post!

On Easter, Mary Magdalene will be maligned as a prostitute. Except she wasn’t

Petula Dvorak, Columnist April 13 at 6:02 PM

Here’s who Mary Magdalene was: one of Jesus Christ’s original followers, the last to stay with him while he was nailed to the cross and, Christians believe, the first to see his empty tomb and his resurrection.

Here’s who she wasn’t: a reformed or forgiven prostitute. Yet on Easter Sunday, Christianity’s holiest day, that’s exactly how she will be described in some sermons and how she continues to be portrayed in much of popular culture. The woman dubbed in the Bible the “Apostle of the Apostles” has spent two millennia being reduced to a seductress.

In some ways, Mary Magdalene’s story is the story of modern women everywhere.

From the relentless focus on the looks of female leaders to the nude photos being circulated of female Marines, women who dare to work among men as equals get sexualized and marginalized.

In Mary Magdalene’s case, it’s a 2,000-year-old slut-shaming that a group of Christian women is trying to stop. The Junia Project, a California group preaching egalitarian theology, is using social media to spread its public service announcement: “As you preach this Sunday, please note: Mary Magdalene was NOT a prostitute. Thank you.”

They have to be proactive. Even a popular Easter sermon on the Sermon Central website repeats the myth. “Mary Magdalene was a forgiven prostitute,” reads the second line of the sermon reminding people what to remember about the first Easter.

Hollywood loves casting Mary Magdalene as a sex worker. She was a hooker in “Jesus Christ Superstar” in 1973, in “The Last Temptation of Christ” in 1988, in “The Passion of the Christ” in 2004 and even in last year’s “Risen.” It’s a delicious story, Jesus being so cool that he even forgives a prostitute. It’s “Pretty Woman” in the tunics-and-sandals age.

Gail Wallace, one of the co-founders of the Junia Project, hates the way Mary Magdalene gets maligned. "For me, the bottom line is that we are fed up with the way women’s stories in the Bible have been retold in a way that sexualizes them unnecessarily and in ways that aren’t supported by the biblical texts,” she said.

Biblical scholars and historians have been trying to make the same point for decades. The Catholic Church acknowledged and tried to correct the widespread misperception in 1969 [after having spent only 1,500 years or so lying about Mary to their ignorant parishioners]. But somewhere along the telephone game that is Christian history, the prostitute label stuck.

“Women looking to the Bible for inspiration already have limited choices of female role models,” wrote Chicago nun and professor Barbara Bowe, before her death in 2010. “When we suddenly cut Mary Magdalene off at the knees and turn her into some kind of evil sex pervert, we deprive men and women, but especially women, of a figure with whom they can identify.” Kate Wallace Nunneley, another of the Junia Project’s co-founders, said she saw the Mary Magdalene myth repeated in modern seminary texts, too.

That’s okay, though. Because now Team Mary’s got the Internet. And every year, after the Junio Project runs their PSA about Mary Magdalene on social media, they hear from people about what was said in church. “Around Easter is really one of the only times in general evangelicalism that women get preached about,” Nunneley said. “After we first ran that PSA . . . we heard from so many women who said they still heard [the myth]. One woman told me, ‘I sent this to my pastor and he still preached about her being a prostitute.’ ” This is, of course, part of a larger debate about the way women are treated in other arenas.

Take those women in the Marines who have been serving their country in the most macho branch of the military. How did the guys who couldn’t handle their success deal with it? They circulated nude pictures of them. Even after they were busted, they kept at it.

Nunneley considers that the modern parallel to Mary Magdalene. “As we see with the story about the women in the Marines, their personhood gets overlooked and the men want to only focus on their sexuality,” she said.

It’s an old story. A tired story. And it’s time for it to end.

If You Could Improve Your Chess Winning Performance by Up to 15%, Would You Take a Drug to Do So?

This just scares me no end:

On Cognitive Doping in Chess (and Life)
The Atlantic Magazine (online)
James Hamblin
March 21, 2017

Have you ever wanted to play better chess? To think and work more effectively, seeing moves 10 steps ahead? Vanquishing opponents with mental energy to spare? Well now you can, with cognitive-enhancement drugs.

That’s how the first half of the pharmaceutical commercial might go. The small-print, fast-talking second half would say that limitations apply. Some of the drugs are addictive and likely to alter one’s sleep habits and heart rate and general sense of self. The drugs don’t work if you don’t know how to play chess.

For professional chess players, though, medicinal “neuro-enhancement” (as it’s sometimes dubiously known) could bring in somewhere between 6 and 15 percent more wins. That’s according to the first large study of “highly skilled tournament chess players” comparing their performance in states of medication and sobriety—a study that the World Chess Championship’s publication World Chess has called “landmark” and “groundbreaking.”

A collaborative experiment from researchers throughout Germany and Sweden led by psychiatrist Klaus Lieb at the University of Mainz found that two prescription medications improved chess-winning rates: modafinil (sold most commonly as Provigil) and methylphenidate (sold as Ritalin).

2017 U.S. Women's Chess Championship

It's that time of year and once again the Scholastic Center and Chess Club of St. Louis is hosting the 2017 U.S. Women's Chess Championship.

This year, a field of twelve of the U.S. top female chessplayers will compete over 11 rounds.  Rounds: March 28 - April 9, 2017.  The women will be competing for total prizes of $100,000.  Nice, but not the $194,000 the male players will be competing for in their separate championship (SEXIST, as always).

This year I'll be monitoring the progress of Carissa Yip.

By the way, Gata Kamsky really needs a haircut.  Geez, dude - too scraggly by half.

Prizes:

Place	Prize	Place	Prize
1st	$25,000	7th	$5,000
2nd	$18,000	8th	$4,000
3rd	$13,000	9th	$3,500
4th	$10,000	10th	$3,000
5th	$8,000	11th	$2,500
6th	$6,000	12th	$2,000
Total Prize Fund		$100,000

In addition, the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis will sponsor the “$64,000 Fischer Bonus Prize”. Any player that finishes the U.S. Championships field with a perfect 11-0 score shall be awarded an additional $64,000.

The players list.

You'll be able to follow the action live on U.S. Chess Champs.  The link isn't working yet so I didn't include it.

Last Night Lady Liberty Went - Dark...

Twitterland went nuts, of course.  Had she been deliberately switched off as a "message of solidarity" in support of today's nation-wide "A Day Without a Woman?"  Was it just an electrical glitch, as the National Park Service later said it was?  Was it symbolic of the Fascist darkness that has taken control of our White House and our Congress -- Lady Liberty protesting this horror now being inflicted upon her free people of the United States?  I know what I think.



From The Washington Post, March 8, 2017.

Board Games Studies: UPDATES

Hola darlings!

March is roaring in like a lion here in Milwaukee - literally!  Since yesterday the winds have been non-stop with gusts up to 45 mph.  My poor humble abode has been battered by endless branches and all those leaves from last autumn I thought my neighbors had disposed of properly have magically reappeared in my backyard, sideyard on the north and driveway on the south.  Yikes!

Tiny Maison Newton is creaking and groaning like the old lady I've become, alas!  Well, I still color my hair and I still have the complexion of a 15 year old (without the acne) and will be eternally beautiful in my own mind (don't look at me unless you don't have your glasses on or can't see straight, that helps, too), but the rest of me - OY - what a mess!

Be that as it may, I am still on numerous mailing lists and although my paper writing days and deep research into board games and what not are now gone, mostly expired with the death of beloved Mr. Don, a few days ago I received a notification from the Board Games Studies folks -- a new Colloquium!!!

FIRST OF ALL, I have some listed links to Board Games Studies websites, but have been lazy and have not checked to see if they are current and working.  Probably won't either, I'll be honest.  I'm frying other fish these days.

So, I'm taking the lazy woman's way out and simply present you with what may be a new (I think) Board Games Studies website.  Is is THE Board Games Studies? - don't know, but it does appear to have the right stuff on/in it.  So, make a note, if you like.

I also don't remember - and again, am too lazy to check, if I ever put up a link to these -- some back issues of the Board Games Studies Journal.

SECOND OF ALL, let's get to that announcement of Board Games Studies Colloquium XX, shall we, whoop whoop!

It is a veritable "Who's Who" of board games researchers and historians. Lots and lots of female presenters -- GLAD TO SEE THAT!  A great mix of scholars from all around the world.

A long-time friend of Goddesschess, whom we affectionately call Stooping Wolf (okay, Isis named him, not me, I would have called him something like Sexy-Eyed Fox), Dr. Ulrich Schadler, is giving a presentation on May 18th on Goddesschess' old enemy, H.J.R. Murray!  Ugh, Stooping Wolf, how could you:  Murray's Classification of Board Games.

Equally impressive, but not so handsome as Sexy-Eyed Fox, er, Dr. Schadler, is the opening presentation on May 17th by Dr. Irving Finkel, an Assistant Curator at the British Museum: Princes on the Floor of the Playroom.  Did something get lost in translation -- I have NO idea what that could possibly be about, maybe something to do with children playing war games on a nursery floor with toy soldiers???  Who knows - only those in attendance and those who will be able to (hopefully) eventually buy (if ever produced) the bound volume of programs presented (if they can afford it).

Isis suggested we both bankrupt ourselves and go to the Colloquium first, and then take a leisurely on-and-off train trip through Europe before heading to our Cathars Country tour in France in mid-June.  But one must be practical.  By the time this windstorm here is over (sometime on Thursday, so the current forecast says), I may very well need to replace my roof.  Sigh.

And knowing Isis, she might very well end up spending the entire Colloquium at the hotel suite, ensconced in splendor on the feather bed, watching romantic movies and eating chocolates all day, and out dancing and partying with the PhDs all night, while I trudged dutifully from presentation to presentation only to collapse in brain exhaustion at the end of the day on the sofa in the suite, shooting Zzzzz's at the ceiling.  And, maybe, would recover from my jet-lag on day five!  Nah...ain't gonna happen, Isis.

One interesting side note:

The first meeting place - a sort of "meet and greet and let's get friendly, heh heh heh" time for presenters and attendees will be held at the - get ready for it ---

I'm not joking, darlings:

Tue 16 May

17.00: Pre-Colloquium Boardgame Café Meet-Up

Bastard Café
Huset, Rådhusstræde 13, Ground Floor, 1466 Copenhagen K

BASTARD CAFE!

OMGODDESS, laughing my butt off -- great exercise, by the way.  Helps keep one young :)  Ha ha ha ha ha HA!  Ouch!

Explorers Emerge from the Honduran Jungle Triumphant in Finding "The White City" - and Infected with a "Flesh-Eating" Disease

There are adventures a-plenty still to be had, folks, if you want to take some hikes through Mother Nature.  Note to self:  HELL NO!

From The Washington Post
Lia Kvatum
March 5, 2017

This adventurer found the trip worth it - despite the flesh-eating disease

As great adventure stories go, this one ticks all the boxes: a legendary “lost” city, in an impenetrable jungle, and even a curse.

Douglas Preston’s latest book, “The Lost City of the Monkey God,” chronicles the feats of a team of explorers as they harness cutting-edge technology and old-fashioned daring to find a city rumored to have been built more than 1,000 years ago in a remote region of Honduras by an unknown culture.

The book also describes the parting gift the jungle bestowed on Preston and several of his colleagues: mucosal leishmaniasis, a parasitic “flesh-eating” disease common to the tropics.

Preston, a prolific author and journalist, was part of the 2015 expedition that located the ruins of an ancient city. Rumors of La Ciudad Blanca (the White City), also known as the City of the Monkey God, had swirled for decades; many people went in search of it, but all, save one party, returned disappointed.

In 1940, a debonair gent by the name of Theodore Morde was sent out in search of the fabled city by George Gustav Heye, an obsessive artifact collector. Traveling with Morde was geologist Laurence Brown, a university classmate of his. Four months later, they emerged from the jungle seemingly triumphant and replete with artifacts.

As it turns out, they were lying. They never discovered a city; the artifacts had been found elsewhere or purchased. Nevertheless, the story spurred on other explorers. One was Steve Elkins, a documentary filmmaker. Preston learned of his obsession with finding the city in 1996. Elkins had explored the area previously and had come up empty-handed. Preston was intrigued, and asked to write about Elkins’s quest.

In 2010, Elkins began putting together an expedition to sweep the area from the air using LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging), a remote sensing method that uses lasers. This technology allowed Elkins to view the ground beneath its dense canopy of rain forest. The project came together in 2012, and much to everyone’s surprise, the images revealed evidence of a widespread but largely unknown culture.

"We knew, based on the LiDAR images, that we’d found a lost city,” Preston said during a recent telephone interview. “What I didn’t realize was just how difficult it would be on the ground."

With the support of the Honduran government, an on-the-ground expedition was launched in February of 2015. The exact destination remains a secret, but it’s located within La Mosquitia, a vast region of rain forests in the midst of jagged mountains. There are no roads. The team was flown in by helicopter and had to hack a path through the jungle using machetes.

Preston said it was unlike anything he had experienced. “It was like being underwater, the foliage was so dense."

The jungle was home to large, venomous snakes and a bevy of insect species small in size but mighty in power. “It’s a real hot zone of diseases,” Preston said.

A seasoned traveler, Preston thought he had prepared himself. “I got a bunch of shots,” he said, “and a whole laundry list of precautions to take and things to avoid.” Team members wore head-to-toe protective clothing and doused themselves in DEET. “Even with all of the precautions, it can be hard to protect yourself,” said Michael Manyak, a urologist who specializes in expedition medicine. “With insects especially, you have to be very strict about repellent and clothing and netting."

Honduran Special Forces soldiers accompanying the expedition roast a deer over their campfire. (Douglas Preston).  Note:  Commonly called "macho men," this sub-species of human male
is also known as Homo Mentula Stultus.  Or, as we say in Milwaukee, dumb-ass dildoheads.

But “given the prevalence of disease-carrying insects, you’re still likely to get bit,” said Manyak, who prepares travelers for treks around the world. “We were massacred by insects,” Preston said. “I’d get into my tent at night, and I was just crawling with them. By the time we left, I was covered in bites."

Preston spent eight days in the jungle. An incredible adventure, to be sure, especially because the team found what they were looking for: a long-abandoned city as well as dozens of artifacts. But — enter the curse! — something found them: mucosal leishmaniasis. Left unchecked, this parasitic disease can spread, migrating to the soft tissues of the face.

Leishmaniasis is caused by about 20 species of protozoan parasites known collectively as leishmania. There are three main types: cutaneous, visceral and mucosal. What kind of leishmaniasis one gets depends on the species of parasite that infects you as well as the response of the body. The infection is spread mainly through the bite of a sand fly.

According to the World Health Organization, more than 90 species of sand fly transmit leishmaniasis. If a female sucks blood from an animal infected with the disease and then bites another, the disease can spread. There is no vaccine nor preventive medicine. And with the sand fly’s small size, large numbers and penchant for biting at night, camping out in the rain forest greatly increases one’s chances of an encounter.

About six weeks after leaving Honduras, Preston noticed a lesion that would not heal. Several of his fellow explorers reported the same. The National Institutes of Health confirmed what the travelers suspected: leish.

Worldwide, leishmaniasis affects millions of people. Most infections result only in skin lesions or ulcers, which go away on their own and are relatively harmless. These sores can last months or even years, and can cause scarring, but it won’t kill you. Another common form, visceral leishmaniasis, is almost always fatal if left untreated. It attacks and destroys the internal organs.

There are treatments, but the process is complicated. Depending on the strain of leishmania you contract, the most effective treatment will differ. Determining which strain is a puzzle, too. Doctors can narrow down which variety is most likely based on where you have recently traveled. They may be able to take a culture from the lesion or use a procedure known as polymerase chain reaction, which allows detection and identification of leishmania DNA.

With mucosal leishmaniasis, the type that Preston had, the parasites can migrate to the mucosal tissues of the mouth and nose. Although they are often referred to as flesh-eating, the parasites don’t consume tissue. Rather, the body has a profound immune response, eventually deforming and destroying the nose and mouth.

Preston’s doctors determined that the best option for him was amphotericin B, used originally to treat systemic fungal infections. It’s also effective against mucosal leishmaniasis, but the treatment is not pleasant. [Note:  Oh for pete's sake, is there ANY treatment for an illness that can actually be called "pleasant?"]

"Oh, it’s bad,” Preston said. “You know that old saying ‘the cure is worse than the disease’? Well, this isn’t even a cure, it’s just a beat-back.” This means that Preston and his fellow sufferers won’t be cured of the disease, but the medicine will kill enough of the infection that the ulcer heals and the body’s defenses can keep the disease at bay. Preston said he received the medicine intravenously in daily treatments that lasted from four to five hours.

"Doctors sometimes call it ‘amphoterrible,’ ” Preston said, “because of what it does to the body. It can really screw up your kidneys, so they’ll only give it to you as long as your kidney function stays above 40 percent."

Preston said he endured it for six days.

"Well, the first thing,” he said drily when asked about the treatment, “is that you feel like your body is on fire.” He continued, “then you feel like you’re suffocating, and for some people, you get this psychological reaction where you’re sure you’re going to die.” He paused. “I didn’t get any of those, though. I was lucky."

Nevertheless, he will always have the infection.

"The very general answer,” says David Sacks, an expert on leishmaniasis, “is that these are chronic infections. We are good at finding vaccines that work better than the body does on acute infections, like measles or polio. But with these long-lived infections, like leishmaniasis, we have yet to find a vaccination that works any better than the body’s own natural responses."

It also costs a lot to develop and manufacture treatments. Because most people who need them are poor, there is very little financial incentive for drug companies to devise them.

Preston considers himself extremely lucky — both for the trip he took and for the treatment he received for leishmaniasis. “I’ve been to many jungle areas in my life,” he said, “but I’ve never seen anything so stunningly untouched.” Besides, he says, “I feel great. And I would have much rather have gotten leish than be bitten by one of those big snakes."

In addition, the trip resulted in a successful book: “The Lost City of the Monkey God” made it to the top five on the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list after it was published in January.

Sad News - IM Cristina Adela Foisor of Romania Passed Away at Age 49

IM Foișor won the Romanian Chess Championship five times, three of which were consecutive: 2011, 2012, and 2013. She represented Romania numerous times at the Women’s Chess Olympiad. She competed in the Women's World Chess Championship in 2001, 2006, 2010 and 2012. 

May she rest in eternal peace in the hands of the Great Mother.

From The Romania Journal online

International chess master Cristina Adela Foisor dies at 49

Posted by: Alina Grigoras Butu in SPORTS January 24, 2017

International chess master Cristina Adela Foisor died on Sunday aged 49, after a hard fight with a terminal disease.

She was expected to represent Romania at the Women’s World Chess Championship due in Tehran in February.

Cristina Foisor was born on June 7, 1967 in Petrosani and she will be buried in her home town on Thursday. She died on January 22 at the Timisoara County Hospital after several days of coma.

During her career, she won 5 national senior titles and more medals in team competitions. The great master chess player has  taken part in 14 Olympiads since 1988. Foisor represented the AEM Timisoara chess club, with which she won a gold medal and two silver medals at the European Champion Cup.

“She passed away after an unfair fight with a merciless disease, with her own shield and refuge being the CHESS until the last moment (…) Thank you, Cristina for everything you’ve given to chess and to life and we promise to keep you memory alive!,” reads the press release by the Romanian Chess Federation.

Cristina Adela Foisor, a graduate of the Mathematics Faculty of the Timisoara University and a teacher later on, fully dedicated to chess together with her husband, coach and international master Ovidiu Foisor, and with her two daughters, great chess master Sabina-Francesca Foisor (born in 1989, settled down in the USA) and FIDE master Mihaela-Veronica Foisor (born in 1994).

2017 FIDE Women's World Chess Championship - Final

Alas, GM Kosteniuk lost her match against GM Muzychuk 0 - 2, having seemed to have been working toward a win in Game 1.  She was therefore knocked out of the match and Muzychuk advanced to the final round.

Meanwhile, India's GM Harika Dronavalli battled and battled WGM Tan Zhongyi, only to lose 4 to 5, with Zhongyi advancing.

So we have a new women's world chess champion with whom I am not familiar, but then, I'm concentrating on local chess efforts these days, not so much on the FIDE stuff going on.  I wish her lots of luck, I hope the other women do wise things with their prize money (what they get to keep of it, that is, after FIDE takes its cut and miscellaneous "taxes" are paid, and - whatever)  and get the hell out of Iran ASAP.

Website.

The final round:

Round 6 - 

Round 6 - Game 1
SNo.	Name	Result	SNo.	Name
2	Muzychuk Anna	1/2-1/2	1	Tan Zhongyi
Round 6 - Game 2
SNo.	Name	Result	SNo.	Name
1	Tan Zhongyi	1-0	2	Muzychuk Anna
Round 6 - Game 3
SNo.	Name	Result	B	Name
2	Muzychuk Anna	1-0	1	Tan Zhongyi
Round 6 - Game 4
SNo.	Name	Result	SNo.	Name
1	Tan Zhongyi	1/2-1/2	2	Muzychuk Anna
Round 6 Tie-break
	Game 1 25'10
SNo.	Name	Result	SNo.	Name
2	Muzychuk Anna	1/2-1/2	1	Tan Zhongyi
	Game 2 25'10
SNo.	Name	Result	SNo.	Name
1	Tan Zhongyi	1-0	2	Muzychuk Anna

New Species of Human Discovered in China? Possibly...

From The Washington Post
Ben Guarino

March 3, 2017

Skulls found in China were part modern human, part Neanderthal; possibly new species

Modern humans outlasted the Neanderthals by about 40,000 years and counting. But don’t pat yourself on the back too firmly for outliving those troglodytes. Neanderthals crafted tools and tamed fire. They cared for their dead. Animal horns and blackened fire pits encircling the remains of a Neanderthal toddler suggest a 42,000-year-old funeral rite. If a Neanderthal indeed wore a talon necklace, as a collection of polished eagle claws indicate, they beat us to jewelry, too. Perhaps one of your ancient ancestors found the claw necklaces sexy: Some scientists theorize humans gave Neanderthals genital herpes and tapeworm parasites. Their proportions, however, remained distinctly Neanderthal. Neanderthal bodies were shorter and stockier, more Gimli son of Gloin than Gigi Hadid. Their skulls were built differently, too, with a few features — like heavy brow ridges — particularly unlike ours. Which makes a pair of newly described skulls something of a wonder. The partial skulls have features up to this time unseen in the hominid fossil record, sharing both human and Neanderthal characteristics. “It is a very exciting discovery,” as Katerina Harvati, an expert in Neanderthal evolution at the University of Tübingen in Germany, who was not involved with the research, told The Washington Post. “Especially because the human fossil record from East Asia has been not only fragmentary but also difficult to date.” Excavators dug up the skull cap fragments in 2007 and 2014, in Lingjing, located in China’s Henan province. The diggers discovered two partial skulls in a site thought to be inhabited 105,000 to 125,000 years ago, during an epoch called the Pleistocene. The owners of the skulls were good hunters, capable of fashioning stone blades from quartz. Ancient bones of horses and cattle, as well as extinct woolly rhinoceros and giant deer, were found strewn near the skull remains. Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and at Washington University in St. Louis described the skulls as having a “mosaic” of features. Writing Thursday in the journal Science, they noted similarities with three groups: The brow ridges of the skulls were modest and the skull bone mass was reduced, like features of early modern humans living in the Old World. The skulls had a broad and flat brainpan, like other eastern Eurasian humans from the mid-Pleistocene epoch. Their semicircular ear canals and the enlarged section at the back of the skull, however, were like a Neanderthal’s. “Eastern Asian late archaic humans have been interpreted to resemble their Neanderthal contemporaries to some degree,” Xiujie Wu, an author of the study at the Chinese Academy of Sciences‘ Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, said in a statement. “Yet it is only with the discovery of two human crania,” she said, “that the nature of these eastern Eurasian early Late Pleistocene archaic humans is becoming clear.” The large brains of these archaic humans ruled out Homo erectus and other known hominid species, the scientists wrote. The researchers were vague about what they thought the species might be, describing them only as archaic humans. But Wu told Science Magazine that the fossils could represent “a kind of unknown or new ar­chaic human that survived on in East Asia to 100,000 years ago.” Other experts speculated that these skull caps could represent a little-known human relative: the mysterious Denisovans, a species that currently exists only as sequenced DNA taken from finger bone and a tooth found in a Siberian cave. Thought to live some 100,000 to 50,000 years ago, the Denisovans shared genetic material with humans as well as Neanderthals. A 2015 analysis of the specimen scraps indicated that the Denisovans lived for some 60,000 years side-by-side with Neanderthals and humans in Asia. (That humans interbred with Neanderthals is, of course, old news. Many humans who have Eurasian ancestry carry bits of Neanderthal DNA, around 2 to 5 percent of it, within their genes. In the process of swapping DNA, Neanderthals lent us genes for bad skin while boosting our immune responses.) The cranial remains “show an intriguing combination of Neanderthal-like as well as archaic features,” Harvati said. “This would be the combination that one would expect based on the ancient DNA analysis of Denisovans, who were closely related to Neanderthals.” The paper did not mention Denisovans, the study authors said, because DNA extraction attempts failed to yield genetic material. But the lack of even a nod toward the Denisovans in the new report was a point that Philipp Gunz, an evolutionary anthropologist at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, found surprising. The fossils, which Gunz called “remarkable,” as he told The Post, “certainly look like what many paleoanthropologists (myself included) imagine the Denisovans to look like.” Time may tell — if scientists can pull off a successful laboratory analysis. “Unfortunately, however, it is not possible to infer skull morphology from ancient DNA directly,” Gunz said. “I therefore hope that future studies will be able to extract ancient DNA from these or similar specimens.”

GM Alexandra Kosteniuk in Final Four at 2017 Women's World Chess Championships

Unfortunately, the female players were forced to wear hajib in order to play in Iran.  PUKE.  Some players sat out, saying no thanks to this woman-hating "custom."

But I'm rooting for Alexandra, a long-time friend of Goddesschess, whoop whoop!  She chose to participate, as did many other highly ranked female chessplayers.

FIDE coverage link.

The Semifinal matches of the Women's World Chess Championship started in the Espinas Palace Hotel (Tehran) on February 23.

Four players continue competing for the chess crown: Tan Zhongyi (China) faces Harika Dronavalli (India), and Alexandra Kosteniuk (Russia) meets Anna Muzychuk (Ukraine). These matches consist of two games with the following time control: 90 minutes for 40 moves, then 30 minutes for the rest of the game, plus 30 bonus seconds after each move. If the match is tied 1-1, it is continued on the tie-break with quicker time controls.

The game Tan Zhongyi-Harika Dronavalli was level until move 21, when Harika decided to change the pawn structure, after which Tan Zhongyi got a pleasant King side initiative. It seems Black had enough resources to defend the position but probably Indian player underestimated the danger. White managed to bring all his pieces to organize killing attack on the opponent's King.

Anna Muzychuk tried to surprise Alexandra Kosteniuk by choosing French Defence, the rare guest in her games, but it didn’t work out as former world champion was perfectly ready. Inaccurate 10... Qc7 let White to gain a long-term initiative out of the opening and after 19.Na6 Alexandra Kosteniuk got a position with a pawn up.
After the first time trouble it turned out that White’s win is debatable.
It was not possible to find a non-human line 43.Kg1!! fe 44.Qe5!! with victory and after "normal" 43.Nd4 the character of the game has changed as Black started to create threats against White’s King.

Nevertheless, it looked like Alexandra is not risking to lose this game at any moment but the tables were turned after 56.Ne5? Anna immediately responded with 56...Ng5 and White cannot defend against two threats Re5 with Nf3 and Nh3. A few moves later former World Champion had to resign. In a post-game interview Anna Muzychuk called her victory “a miracle”.

The second game of semifinal will be played at 3 p.m. local time on 24th of February. Alexandra Kosteniuk and Harika Dronavalli will obviously try to equalize the score.