Alexandr Pavlikov

Stan Lee went on to work for the company that would eventually become Marvel Comics. With artist Jack Kirby, Lee launched the superhero team the Fantastic Four in 1961 and was soon responsible for creating popular characters like Spider-Man, the X-Men, the Hulk and Thor. Lee later worked in a number of comic-related business and multimedia ventures.

Stan Lee was born Stanley Martin Lieber on December 28, 1922, in New York City to Romanian immigrants Celia and Jack Lieber. With part of his childhood spent during the Great Depression, Lieber and his younger brother, Larry, watched his parents struggle to make ends meet for the family.

Lieber, who later shortened his name to "Lee" as a writer, went on to be hired as an office assistant at Timely Comics in 1939 and became an interim editor for the company in the early 1940s. Lee also served domestically in the Army during World War II, working as a writer and illustrator.

In the early 1960s, Lee was called upon by his boss to create a series for Marvel Comics (Timely's new name) that could compete with rival DC Comics' hit title Justice League of America. Citing writing influences like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Jules Verne, and following the encouragement of his wife, Joan, Lee did away with some of the usual superhero conventions. Hence, with artist and co-creator Jack Kirby, the Fantastic Four was born in 1961.

Following the success of the Fantastic Four, a slew of new characters soon sprung from Lee and his Marvel cohorts, including the Hulk, Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, Daredevil and the X-Men.

Lee was particularly known for his dynamism with copy and for imbuing his characters with a sense of humanity, tackling real-world issues like bigotry and drug use, which would influence comics for decades. An outgoing, humorous showman, he also developed a number of slogans as part of his shtick, including a Latin-derived call to rise, "Excelsior!"

Marvel Comics became a highly popular franchise, and Stan Lee was promoted to editorial director and publisher in 1972. He later moved to the West Coast to be involved in Marvel's film ventures and eventually became chairman emeritus.

Lee has become involved in a variety of multimedia projects while also serving as an ambassador for Marvel, even though he has filed lawsuits against the company and been the subject of debate over appropriate compensation for comic creators. The writer has seen Marvel develop into an entity that has inspired blockbuster film entertainment like the Iron Man, X-Men, Thor and The Avengers franchises.

Lee started an intellectual-property company called POW! Entertainment in 2001 and the following year published his autobiography, Excelsior! The Amazing Life of Stan Lee. Later in the decade he received a Medal of Arts honor from President George W. Bush and launched the History Channel show Stan Lee's Superhumans, a series that looked at people with remarkable skills and abilities.

2012 saw more new ventures. Lee co-wrote a graphic novel, Romeo and Juliet: The War, which landed on The New York Times' best-seller list and launched a YouTube channel, Stan Lee's World of Heroes, which features comics, comedy and sci-fi content. At the end of the year, the ever-active Lee turned 90.

Lee endured the loss of his wife of nearly 70 years, Joan, in July 2017. He then gave fans a scare when he checked into a hospital for an irregular heartbeat and shortness of breath the following January. However, the comic book titan was discharged shortly afterward and announced he was ready to resume a full schedule with the latest Marvel feature, Black Panther.

Although things seemed to be humming along nicely for Lee and the Marvel universe, an April 2018 feature in The Hollywood Reporter painted a far different story. According to the publication, Lee's daughter J.C. and other insiders were engaged in a battle over care of the 95-year-old and the future of his estate, the sides pitting Lee against one another and inducing him to dismiss formerly trusted associates. The piece also described J.C.'s tempestuous relationship with Lee, including an incident in which she physically assaulted both of her elderly parents.

Lee died on November 12, 2018 in Los Angeles, California.

Patsy Mink grew up in Hawaii and experienced racial and gender discrimination throughout her life. In 1964, she won election to the U.S. House of Representatives and she used her position in government to create legislation aimed at eliminating barriers for the generations that followed her. Mink died in September 2002. It was too late to remove her name from the ballot in the upcoming congressional election, and she won a resounding posthumous victory in November.

Mink was born Patsy Matsu Takemoto in Paia, Maui, Hawaii Territory, on December 6, 1927, to Suematsu Takemoto and Mitama Tateyama Takemoto. Both sets of her grandparents had left Japan to work on sugar plantations in Hawaii, making Mink a third-generation Japanese American.

Mink grew up on the island of Maui, where she witnessed segregation between white plantation bosses and Japanese American and native Hawaiian workers. She had a brother, Eugene Takemoto. Following the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941, many Japanese Americans on Hawaii were arrested; Mink's father was questioned by authorities but was released.

In 1944, Mink graduated from Maui High School. She was both class president and valedictorian. She pursued undergraduate studies at Wilson College, the University of Nebraska — where she protested racial discrimination in student housing — and the University of Hawaii, which granted her a bachelor's in zoology and chemistry in 1948.

Mink's initial career goal was to become a physician. She applied to multiple medical schools, but none would admit her. After that disappointment, she instead decided to become a lawyer. She enrolled in the University of Chicago's law school, becoming one of two women in her class; her admission may have happened because the university had mistakenly considered her a foreign student. Mink received her degree in 1951.

No Chicago law firm would hire Mink so she and her family relocated to Hawaii. In 1953 she became the first Japanese American admitted to the Hawaii bar; she was also the first woman to be licensed as an attorney in Hawaii. Unfortunately, she still encountered discrimination in her job search, with firms unwilling to hire a woman, a mother or objecting to Mink's interracial marriage (her husband was white). Instead, Mink ended up starting her own private practice.

Not being able to find a job also led to Mink spending more time working with the Democratic Party. The party was then growing in Hawaii, where the pre-statehood government was dominated by Republicans.

In 1956, Mink was elected to Hawaii's territorial House of Representatives. Two years later, she won election to the territorial senate. After Hawaii became a state in 1959, Mink unsuccessfully ran for Congress. She then won a seat in the Hawaii state senate in 1962.

In 1964, Mink was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. She achieved this despite receiving no local party support, a recurring obstacle in her career. When she was sworn in she became the first Asian American woman, the first woman of color, and the second woman from Hawaii to serve in Congress.

Mink's legislative priorities included civil rights, women's rights and support for child care and education. Among her notable accomplishments was Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. She was a co-author of this legislation, which required public schools, colleges and universities to provide gender-equitable treatment in education and other areas receiving federal funding, such as athletics. Mink also pushed for 1974's Women's Education Equity Act.

In addition to legislation, Mink joined with two other congresswomen to protest the fact that they were not allowed access to the congressional gym. In 1970, she testified in opposition to Richard Nixon's Supreme Court nominee George Harrold Carswell, bringing up his refusal to hear a case about a woman who'd been denied a job because she had young children. Mink stated, "I am here to testify against his confirmation on the grounds that his appointment constitutes an affront to the women of America." Her actions helped derail the nomination.

Mink ran for president in 1972, the first Asian American to do so. Her presidential campaign was focused on Oregon, where she, an opponent of the Vietnam War, got on the ballot to garner attention for the antiwar cause.

Mink, who unsuccessfully ran for the Senate in 1976, remained in Congress through 1977. She was selected to serve under President Jimmy Carter as assistant secretary of state for oceans and international, environmental and scientific affairs from 1977 to '78. Mink joined the Honolulu City Council from 1983 to '87. She lost races for governor of Hawaii and mayor of Honolulu before she was again elected to the U.S. House in 1990.

During Mink's second stint in Congress, she focused on preserving legislative achievements such as Title IX. She also co-founded the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus in 1994 and protested against the elevation of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court following Anita Hill's allegations of sexual harassment. Mink remained a member of Congress until her death in September 2002. She posthumously won re-election to Congress in 2002.

While studying at the University of Chicago, Mink met John Francis Mink, a graduate student there. They wed in 1951, and their daughter, Gwendolyn, arrived in 1952.

More than two decades after Mink's daughter was born, Mink discovered that during her pregnancy she'd been an unknowing participant in a study of diethylstilbestrol. DES, a synthetic estrogen, was intended to stop miscarriages, but it also came with multiple health risks, including cancer, for those who were exposed. Mink sued and later reached a settlement in the case.

Mink died at the age of 74 in Honolulu, Hawaii, on September 28, 2002. Her death was the result of pneumonia due to complications from chickenpox.

Following Mink's death, Title IX was renamed the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act. Mink received a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama in 2014. A documentary, Patsy Mink: Ahead of the Majority, recounted Mink's life and achievements. The Patsy Takemoto Mink Foundation aims to continue her life's work.

Bill Cosby dropped out of high school to join the U.S. Navy, and later dropped out of college to become a stand-up comedian. Cosby's first acting assignment, in the espionage series I Spy (1965-68), made him the first Black actor to co-star in a leading dramatic role on network television, as well as the first to earn an Emmy Award. His most successful work, The Cosby Show, appeared on NBC from 1984 to 1992 and was the highest-rated sitcom for several consecutive years. Cosby’s legendary status was tarnished when numerous accusations of sexual misconduct surfaced in 2014. His trial for three counts of aggravated indecent assault ended with a deadlocked jury in June 2017, but he was found guilty after a retrial in April 2018.

Cosby was born William Henry Cosby Jr. on July 12, 1937, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Cosby, the oldest of four boys, grew up in Philadelphia's Germantown neighborhood. At first, the Cosbys were able to get by, financially, but the family's money began to slip when Cosby's father, William Cosby Sr., began drinking heavily. After his father enlisted in the U.S. Navy, Cosby became like a parent to his brothers. Cosby's mother, Anna, worked cleaning houses. He and his family also ended up living in the Richard Allen Homes, a low-income housing project. At the age of 8, Cosby suffered a great loss when his brother James, the second oldest of the boys, died.

With money very tight for his family, Cosby started shining shoes and worked at a supermarket during his middle school years. Despite their hardships, Cosby's mother stressed the value of education and learning. She often read books to Bill and his brothers, including the Bible and works by Mark Twain. A gifted storyteller himself, Cosby learned early on that humor could be a way to make friends and get what he wanted. Cosby excelled at making things up. As one of his teachers once noted, "William should become either a lawyer or an actor because he lies so well.''

In school, Cosby was bright but unmotivated. He liked to tell stories and jokes to his classmates more than he liked to do his schoolwork. One of his teachers encouraged him to put his performing talents to use in school plays, not in her classroom. At home, Cosby listened to a variety of radio programs and started imitating such comedians as Jerry Lewis. He also watched such television performers as Sid Caesar and Jack Benny whenever he could.

While he was more interested in sports than academics — he was active on his school's track and football teams — Cosby was placed in a high school for gifted students after scoring high on an IQ test. But Cosby failed to apply himself and ended up failing tenth grade twice. He switched to Germantown High School, but the academic issues continued. In frustration, Cosby dropped out of high school. He worked several odd jobs before joining the U.S. Navy in 1956.

During his military service, Cosby worked as a medical aide on ships, in several hospitals and at other facilities. He also joined the Navy's track team, where he excelled, especially in the high jump event. Regretting his decision to drop out of school, Cosby earned his high school equivalency diploma while in the service. After leaving the Navy, he went to Temple University via scholarship.

While at Temple, Cosby landed a job as a bartender at a coffee house. He told jokes there, and eventually landed work filling in for the house comedian from time to time at a nearby club. Cosby also performed as a warm-up act for his cousin's radio show. He found inspiration in the works of such comedians as Dick Gregory, an African American comic who often talked about racial issues in his routines. Early in his career, Cosby discussed race in his act as well, but he eventually dropped it from his performances, choosing to focus on telling stories about more general and universal themes.

Nearly halfway through his college career, Cosby decided to drop out to pursue a career in stand-up comedy. He started performing at a place in Greenwich Village, New York, and he toured extensively, winning over fans. In 1963, Cosby made his first appearance on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show, which helped introduce him to a national audience. (Cosby would go on to appear on the show dozens of times.) He also landed a recording contract and that same year released his first comedy album, Bill Cosby Is a Very Funny Fellow ... Right! He won a Grammy Award (Best Comedy Performance) for his next effort, 1964's I Started Out as a Child. For the remainder of the 1960s, Cosby released hit album after hit album, winning another five Grammys. He would later pick up two more for his recordings for children as part of The Electric Company TV series.

In 1965, Cosby also helped pave the way for African American TV performers with a leading role in a TV series. Portraying Alexander Scott, he starred with Robert Culp in the espionage series I Spy. The two spies pretended to be a professional tennis player (Culp) traveling with his coach (Cosby). The show ran for three years, and Cosby received three consecutive Emmy Awards for his work.

Not long after I Spy ended, Cosby starred in his own sitcom. The Bill Cosby Show ran for two seasons, from 1969 to 1971, and featured the comedian as a gym teacher at a Los Angeles high school. A former aspiring teacher, Cosby went back to school at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Around the same time, he appeared on the educational children's series The Electric Company, and developed the animated series Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, which he based on many of his childhood experiences. In 1977, Cosby received a doctorate in urban education from the university, having written his dissertation on Fat Albert. (Cosby had received the degree via nontraditional methods, with his screen work reportedly counting toward course credits.)

On the big screen, Cosby enjoyed box-office success with the 1974 comedy Uptown Saturday Night, co-starring Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte, with Poitier directing. Continuing to attract big audiences, he appeared opposite Poitier in two more comedy hits, Let's Do It Again and A Piece of the Action, in 1975 and 1977, respectively.

Once again turning to his life for inspiration, Cosby began working on a new television series. The sitcom focused on an upper-middle-class African American couple with five children. Each of the children's characters shared some traits of their real-life counterparts. Married since 1964, Cosby and his real-life wife, Camille, had four daughters and one son. (Cosby originally wanted the show to be about a driver and his plumber wife, with Camille joining producers to push for the show to be about a doctor and attorney.) In 1984, The Cosby Show debuted to favorable reviews and strong ratings.

Week after week, The Cosby Show drew audiences with its warm humor and believable situations. Cosby's character, Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable, became one of the most popular dads in television history. He also served as a parental figure to his young co-stars, including Sabrina Le Beauf, Lisa Bonet, Malcolm-Jamal Warner, Tempestt Bledsoe and Keshia Knight Pulliam, as well as Raven-Symoné and Erika Alexander, on set. Phylicia Rashad co-starred with Cosby as his wife, Clair. After being the highest-rated sitcom on TV for several years, the show finally ended its run in 1992.

Over the show's eight-season run, Cosby found time for other projects: He appeared in several films, including Leonard Part 6 (1987) and Ghost Dad (1990). In 1986, Cosby achieved another career milestone — becoming a bestselling author. His reflections on parenting were included in the book Fatherhood, which sold millions of copies. His opus on aging, Time Flies (1987), also enjoyed huge sales. In addition, Cosby enjoyed great popularity as a pitchman, appearing in commercials for such products as JELL-O, for which he had served as a spokesman since 1974.

After The Cosby Show, Cosby continued to work in television. He starred in The Cosby Mysteries, in which he played a retired criminologist who sometimes helped out a detective friend. Then in 1996, he returned to sitcoms with Cosby, re-teaming with former co-star Rashad. They were unable to obtain the same level of success as their earlier effort, but they did enjoy some popularity, staying on the air for four years.

While working on Cosby, the comedian experienced a deep personal loss. His only son, Ennis, was killed in 1997, shot to death while changing a tire on his car on the side of a California highway. Around the same time, Cosby was caught up in a paternity scandal. A young woman named Autumn Jackson claimed that Cosby was her father and tried to blackmail him for $40 million, saying that she would go to the tabloids if she didn't get the money. She was arrested and convicted of extortion, receiving a 26-month prison sentence. (The conviction was later overturned and then reinstated.) Cosby admitted that he had a brief encounter with Jackson's mother, but he claimed he was not Autumn's father.

While coping with these difficult episodes, Cosby took on new professional challenges. He started a series of children's picture books featuring a character named Little Bill in 1997, which also became a children's TV program. A frequent speaker at commencement ceremonies, Cosby shared his advice in 1999's Congratulations! Now What?: A Book for Graduates. He took a serious look at the education system in 2000's American Schools: The $100 Billion Challenge, and paired up with his daughter Erika for 2003's Friends of a Feather: One of Life's Little Fables.

Cosby has received numerous accolades for his work, including multiple Emmy, Grammy, NAACP and People's Choice awards. He was also honored with the 2002 Presidential Medal of Freedom, the 2003 Bob Hope Humanitarian Award and the 2009 Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.

In November 2013, Bill Cosby returned to the small screen with a new special on Comedy Central, Far From Finished. Directed by Robert Townsend, the production marked the comedian's first concert special in three decades.

Cosby made headlines in 2014, not for his comedy, but his alleged misconduct. Over the years, he had faced numerous accusations of sexual assault. Cosby did not have criminal charges filed against him, but he did settle with one of his accusers out of court in 2006 after she launched a civil suit. In 2014, comedian Hannibal Buress brought new attention to earlier allegations by stating that Cosby "raped women" in his routine, according to Vulture.com.

After this incident, Cosby remained silent about these claims. More women soon came forth to claim that the comedian attacked them as well, including model Janice Dickinson. She told Entertainment Tonight that Cosby gave her wine and some type of pill before he allegedly raped her. These accusations led both NBC and Netflix to announce that they were dropping projects that they had with Cosby, with cancellations to come as well for his 2015 stand-up tour. Cosby did not respond directly to the claims. After a National Public Radio interview with Cosby in November 2014, a lawyer said in a statement that the comedian "won't dignify these allegations with any response."

That December, as more accusations of sexual assault surfaced, Cosby spoke to a reporter about the news coverage of the controversy surrounding him. He said that "I only expect the Black media to uphold the standards of excellence in journalism and when you do that you have to go in with a neutral mind," according to the New York Post.

Cosby's wife Camille stood by the comedian as well, issuing a statement in December as well where she positioned her husband as "kind" and "generous" and questioned the media's publishing of accounts from women whose backgrounds hadn't been vetted. Yet in 2015 more women came forth with charges of sexual assault, with there being ultimately dozens of other accusers with allegations of misconduct. Several women, including Dickinson, also filed defamation lawsuits against Cosby.

Then in early July 2015, court documents from 2005 were allowed to be unsealed by a federal judge after an Associated Press request. Testimony from a civil suit issued by Andrea Constand revealed that Cosby had gotten hold of prescription quaaludes during the 1970s with the intention of giving the drugs to women before engaging in sexual activity. During the testimony, due to his attorney's objection, Cosby did not state whether he gave women the drugs without their knowledge. In light of the new information, the comedian did not immediately issue a public statement. Later in the month, The New York Times reported on a related deposition in which Cosby spoke of meetings with a variety of women, admitting to giving drugs as part of his interactions and sexual pursuits.

In late July 2015, New York Magazine ran a multimedia cover story that photographed and individually interviewed 35 of the women who had encounters with Cosby, some of whom were in their teens at the time. The essays have similar details, with most of the women stating that they were drugged without their awareness or consent. Some of the interviewees also recount being directly assaulted.

"We must ask ourselves if the lesson we want to teach our kids is that, again, a woman's voice and body are not valuable or precious or valid," said model/actress Beverly Johnson to People, having also been featured in the New York Mag article. Johnson had stated in a Vanity Fair essay that Cosby had also surreptitiously drugged her during the days of The Cosby Show. "I know my truth, and I hope for a society that is sensitive to the protection of women, regardless of the stakes."

Cosby was to be deposed by Dickinson's team in relation to her defamation suit, but in late November Cosby's attorneys filed a request to have the deposition put on hold. Then in mid-December, in response to a group of seven women suing him for defamation via a Massachusetts court, Cosby filed a federal countersuit stating that said plaintiffs are making "malicious, opportunistic, and false and defamatory" charges. Days later, Cosby sued Johnson for defamation over her allegations of attempted assault.

As a result of the disturbing accusations, numerous colleges revoked honorary degrees awarded to Cosby. Additionally, a statue of the comedian was removed from Disney’s MGM Hollywood Studios park in July 2015.

Although more than 50 women came forward with claims that the legendary comedian and actor had sexually violated and/or drugged them, Cosby managed to fend off the accusations. However, on December 30, 2015, a warrant was issued for Cosby's arrest for the alleged drugging and sexual assault of Andrea Constand in January 2004, a month shy of when the statute of limitations to file legal action would have expired.

On May 24, 2016, a judge in Pennsylvania determined there was enough evidence for the sexual assault case to proceed with a criminal trial. Following pretrial hearings in December, the trial was scheduled to begin the following spring, with Cosby facing a prison sentence of up to 30 years over three counts of aggravated indecent assault.

In June 2017, Constand took the stand to testify about her relationship with Cosby and her version of events. She said she viewed the older comedian as a mentor and, as a gay woman, she had no interest in a romantic relationship. However, during the night in question, she said he provided three pills to help her relax and then proceeded to force himself on her when she was "paralyzed" and unable to resist. The defense countered by highlighting some of the inconsistencies in her explanation and asked why she continued to maintain contact with Cosby if her accounts of being violated were true.

Although testimonies and closing arguments were delivered within six days, it soon became clear that the jury was having difficulty reaching a verdict, as they requested to review evidence multiple times. On June 17, with the jury deadlocked on all three counts following 52 hours of deliberations, the judge declared a mistrial.

Afterward, Cosby's publicist declared the result a "total victory" and lauded his client's restored legacy. However, the prosecution team rejected that depiction of the outcome and promised to bring Cosby back to trial.

In January 2018, while awaiting the retrial, Cosby took the stage at Philadelphia's LaRose Jazz Club for his first public performance since May 2015. Appearing as part of a program honoring jazz musician Tony Williams, Cosby told stories, joked about his diminished eyesight and even played drums with a band, declining to talk about the sexual assault case afterward. The following month, Cosby suffered another devastating loss with the announcement that his daughter Ensa had died from renal disease at age 44.

With his retrial scheduled to begin in April 2018, Cosby's team unsuccessfully sought a 90-day delay after the court agreed to allow the testimony of five women who, along with Constand, had accused Cosby of assault. The defense then attempted to replace Judge Steven T. O’Neill, whose wife had donated to a women's group that planned to rally on behalf of Constand.

The start of the retrial brought the revelation that Cosby had paid his accuser $3.38 million to settle the sexual assault lawsuit she filed in 2005. In his opening statement, prosecuting attorney Kevin Steele told jurors that Constand only sued after it appeared that Cosby would not face charges for his actions, though the defense seized on that transaction as evidence that she was motivated to squeeze as much money as possible out of her former mentor.

The day before Constand's scheduled appearance, model Janice Dickinson was among the five additional women who testified to Cosby's pattern of drugging and assault. Recalling a 1982 incident at Lake Tahoe, she said the famed comedian gave her a pill for cramps during dinner, and later she was unable to move after he climbed on her in his hotel room. Dickinson said she "wanted to punch him in the face" when confronting him about it the following day.

Cosby's team sought to highlight the inconsistencies in Constand's account of events, and even produced a former colleague of hers who testified that they once had a discussion about falsely accusing rich people of indiscretions to earn a payout. Constand denied having any such conversation.

On April 26, one day after beginning deliberations, the jury found Cosby guilty on all three counts of aggravated indecent assault. The 80-year-old, who looked down when the verdict was announced, then unleashed a reported "expletive-laden rant" at Steele, after the district attorney called him a flight risk and asked for bail to be revoked.

Cosby's lead lawyer said they would appeal. "We are very disappointed by the verdict," he said. "We don’t believe Mr. Cosby is guilty of anything."

Due to the verdict, Cosby's name and statue were removed from Television Academy's Hall of Fame and the actor was expelled from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.

On September 25, 2018, Cosby was sentenced to three to 10 years in prison for sexually assaulting a woman in Philadelphia in 2004. Judge O’Neill called Cosby a “sexually violent predator” and declared, "It is time for justice. Mr. Cosby, this has all circled back to you. The time has come."

Cosby filed a formal appeal in June 2019, arguing that it was improper for the judge to permit the testimony of the five women to bolster Constand's case. Late that year, he made headlines for his first interview since being incarcerated, during which he said he would rather serve the full 10-year sentence than to show remorse for crimes he didn't commit. In June 2020, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court agreed on to hear the appeal.

In June 2021, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned Cosby’s sex assault conviction.

Robert Shapiro graduated from Loyola Law School in 1968. Once he opened his own firm in 1972, Shapiro started off on a firm path, often representing famous clients who had minor entanglements with the law. In 1994, he was hired as part of the defense team for O.J. Simpson and became part of what would become known as the "trial of the century." While Shapiro has always had a stellar legal reputation, the O.J. Simpson trial would come to be his ultimate career touchstone.

Robert Shapiro was born in Plainfield, New Jersey, on September 2, 1942. He graduated from the Anderson School of Business at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1965 with a degree in finance and from Loyola Law School, Los Angeles in 1968. At Loyola, he set himself apart from his classmates by winning two American Juris Prudence awards and the school's moot court competition. This earned him the spot as the court’s chief justice. His experience as justice provided him with future connections and showed him that his calling was the courtroom.

In 1969, a year after graduation, Shapiro was admitted to the State Bar of California. In 1970, he married Linell Thomas, with whom he had sons, Brent (1980-2005) and Grant (b. 1984). Shapiro had clerked for the L.A. County District Attorney's Office during his last year of law school. He got his first job there as a public prosecutor, and stayed for nearly three years.

Upon leaving the District Attorney’s office, Shapiro hit the ground running by starting his own practice in 1972. It wasn’t long before he was representing his first famous client: Linda Lovelace, the 1970s porn star who became famous for the film Deep Throat. In early 1974, Shapiro defended Lovelace when she was charged with possession of cocaine and amphetamines in Las Vegas. As cocaine use became rampant in the 1970s, Shapiro gained a reputation for defending famous or rising musicians who had been arrested for doing or possessing illicit drugs.

Other early clients of note included fellow future O.J. Simpson attorney F. Lee Bailey and talk-show host Johnny Carson, who were arrested for drunk driving on the same day. The celebrity client trend continued into the 1990s, when Shapiro defended Christian Brando, son of acclaimed actor Marlon Brando, against manslaughter charges, and negotiated a financial settlement for baseball star Darryl Strawberry, who agreed to vacate his contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers after confessing to a drug habit. But the case of a lifetime was waiting just around the corner.

On June 12, 1994, Nicole Brown Simpson, the ex-wife of O.J. Simpson, and her friend Ron Goldman were found stabbed to death outside Brown's Los Angeles condo. Simpson was a person of interest in their murders, and five days later the police engaged him in a bizarre low-speed chase that was broadcast live nationally for its duration.

Shapiro was hired as a part of Simpson’s defense team and in October 1995, the jury found Simpson not guilty of the murders, sealing Shapiro’s already stellar legal reputation. After the Simpson trial, Shapiro shifted the focus of his practice to the less-sordid white-collar criminal defense arena.

Outside of the courtroom, Shapiro has launched two companies, LegalZoom and Shoedazzle, and has written two bestselling books, The Search for Justice (nonfiction) and Misconception (fiction). Following the 2005 drug-related death of his son Brent, he founded a charity, the Brent Shapiro Foundation, which raises awareness about drug and alcohol addiction.

Barbara Bush — the only woman besides Abigail Adams to be both a wife and a mother to a president of the United States — married George H.W. Bush in 1945. He went on to become vice president in 1981 and president in 1989. That same year, Barbara started the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy. In 2001 her son George W. Bush was inaugurated president. The former first lady passed away at her home in Houston, Texas, on April 17, 2018.

Barbara was born Barbara Pierce on June 8, 1925, in New York City. Her mother, Pauline Pierce, was the daughter of an Ohio Supreme Court justice and dedicated to conservation efforts as a chairwoman of the Garden Club of America.

Her father, Marvin Pierce, was a distant descendant of 14th President of the United States Franklin Pierce and president of the McCall Corporation, which published the well-known magazines McCall’s and Redbook. Growing up in an Episcopalian family in the bedroom community of Rye, New York, Barbara was an athletic and witty child who loved — above all things — to read. She received her primary education at Rye’s Milton Public School and Rye Country Day School before going off to Ashley Hall, a boarding school in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1940.

In 1941 while at home from boarding school on Christmas break, 16-year-old Barbara met her future husband, George H.W. Bush, a 17-year-old senior at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, at a dance. The pair saw little of each other as George finished high school and then served as the U.S. Navy’s youngest combat pilot in World War II, but they wrote faithfully. "Bar," as her friends and family had taken to calling her, dropped out of Smith College in 1944 following her freshman year. After a long-distance relationship and George’s brush with death after his plane was hit during a bombing run in the Pacific, the couple married in January 1945.

After the end of World War II, the newlyweds moved to New Haven, Connecticut, where George enrolled as a freshman at Yale University. The couple's first child, the future President George Walker Bush, was born in 1946. George entered the oil business after his graduation from Yale in 1948 and moved the family to Texas and California. In September 1949, Barbara’s parents were involved in a car accident in which her mother was instantly killed. Since she was pregnant, Barbara was advised not to travel from California to the funeral, and the event left a lasting scar. Three months later, the couple welcomed a second child, a daughter named Pauline Robinson Bush in honor of Barbara’s late mother. In October 1953, the child, nicknamed “Robin,” died of leukemia, leaving Barbara and her husband devastated. It was during this traumatic time that Barbara’s reddish-brown hair turned prematurely white.

The couple’s third child, John Ellis "Jeb" Bush, had been born just prior to Robin's diagnosis. Barbara went on to have two more sons — Neil Mallon Bush in 1955 and Marvin Pierce Bush in 1956 — before giving birth to another daughter, Dorothy "Doro" Bush (named for George's mother), in August 1959. She spent the next two decades primarily dedicating her time to being a wife and mother while volunteering for organizations such as the YMCA and United Way on the side. The couple eventually settled in Midland, Texas, where George found success in the petroleum industry. Barbara also helped her husband's budding career in Republican politics by participating in his campaigns. In 1966 her husband was elected to Congress for the first time, and the following year the Bush family moved to Washington, D.C.

In 1970 President Richard Nixon asked George to give up his seat in the House of Representatives and run for the U.S. Senate in Texas, where he lost to Lloyd Bentsen. After George successfully lobbied Nixon to appoint him U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, the family moved into New York City’s famous Waldorf Astoria Hotel. There, Barbara’s social ease and skill at entertaining made her popular with foreign dignitaries.

In 1973 as the Watergate scandal gripped the country, Nixon asked George to leave his U.N. post and take over the Republican National Committee. Barbara grew concerned that defending the administration could damage her husband’s career. In August 1974, Nixon resigned in disgrace, and Gerald Ford took the reins as president. Given the pick of several diplomatic posts, George chose a position as chief of the U.S. Liaison Office in the People's Republic of China. Barbara traveled abroad for the first time when she joined her husband at his new post. In China, she immersed herself in the culture and studied the language, but the family’s stay there didn’t last long. In 1975 President Ford asked George to return and become director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which had been under fire for its involvement in Watergate and the Vietnam War. Barbara again grew concerned the position could hamper her husband’s future in politics.

During George’s stint in the CIA, and with her children away at school, Barbara fell into a depression. She kept her condition to herself and did not seek medical care. However, the experience gave her a greater understanding and compassion for mental health issues. When George decided to make a run for the White House in 1979, Barbara was back on the campaign trail engaging with voters. In the end, the Bush camp couldn’t overtake the momentum gained by Ronald Reagan, but the nominee chose George as his vice-presidential running mate on the Republican ticket that won a landslide victory in 1980.

After rising through the political ranks, Barbara's husband became vice president under Ronald Reagan in January 1981. As the wife of the vice president, Barbara logged hundreds of thousands of miles representing United States interests abroad, and she forged lasting friendships with foreign heads of state. Her popularity rose during this time, and, motivated in part by her son Neil’s dyslexia, she dedicated herself to supporting a cause that had always been near and dear to her heart: literacy. She set about educating herself on the issues of child and adult illiteracy and became actively involved with several organizations advocating for the cause.

After serving two terms as Reagan's vice president, George embarked on a second run for the presidency. He ran a tough campaign, eventually defeating his Democratic opponent Michael Dukakis. In January 1989, he was sworn in as the 41st president of the United States. As first lady, Barbara placed less emphasis on fashion than her predecessor, Nancy Reagan, even purchasing a pair of $29 shoes to wear to her husband’s inaugural ball. Known for wearing multiple strands of faux beads around her neck, the first lady turned to noted fashion designer Arnold Scaasi for much of her official wardrobe because he understood her practical style.

Adopting the traditional role of a first lady, Barbara stayed out of White House policy decisions and kept her political views private. “I don’t fool around with his office,” she said of her husband, “and he doesn’t fool around with my household.”

The same year she moved into the White House, the first lady was diagnosed with Graves’ disease, a malfunction of the thyroid gland that made her eyes red and puffy. She went through radiation treatment to lessen the effects of the condition, but Barbara’s diagnosis failed to deter her commitment to public service. The first lady started her own literacy organization, the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy, which supports organizations across the United States that teach reading skills to both parents and children. She authored Millie's Book: As Dictated to Barbara Bush, a portrait of the White House as seen from her springer spaniel Millie’s point of view that raised nearly $1 million for literacy programs.

The Bush years in the White House would see a triumphant change in the world with the end of the Cold War, as well as ongoing international turmoil. In 1989 the United States invaded Panama and arrested dictator Manuel Noriega. In August 1990, the president launched Operation Desert Shield and began to assemble a coalition of 34 countries to confront Iraq after its invasion of Kuwait. In November 1990, Barbara and George spent Thanksgiving in Saudi Arabia to visit the thousands of American troops serving in the operation.

The Gulf War, launched in January 1991, was hailed as a victory for allied forces and the Bush administration. Barbara had seen her husband’s popularity and prospects for a second term soar as the troops came home to a warm welcome. In 1992, however, the country suffered an economic slump, and support for the Bush administration plummeted. Meanwhile, a young Bill Clinton seemed to have captured the imagination of voters and momentum in the polls. That November, Clinton defeated the incumbent, and in January 1993, George and Barbara said goodbye to Washington and returned to Texas.

After her White House years, Barbara redoubled her dedication to public service. She continued her commitment to literacy projects, raising millions of dollars for the cause, but she was also able to spend more time with her family, which made a major political comeback in 1998 as George W. won his second term as governor of Texas and Jeb was elected governor of Florida.

In 2000 George W. followed in his father's footsteps and was elected president. In 2004, he was re-elected for a second term. Barbara also provided support for Mitt Romney during his 2012 presidential campaign and for son Jeb Bush who announced a bid for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. Residing with her husband in Houston, Texas, and at their summer home in Kennebunkport, Maine, the former first lady remained active in the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy while serving as an ambassador-at-large for AmeriCares.

Barbara had 17 grandchildren, including twins Barbara and Jenna (from George W. and Laura Bush); George, Noelle and John Ellis (from Jeb); and Lauren (from Neil).

On January 14, 2017, Barbara's husband, the former president, was hospitalized, suffering from "an acute respiratory problem stemming from pneumonia," according to a statement. Barbara was hospitalized just days later on January 18, after experiencing "fatigue and coughing, and was released on January 23. Her husband was discharged from the hospital a week later on January 30. Just days later, the resilient couple attended Super Bowl LI at NRG Stadium in their hometown of Houston. They were cheered on by the crowd when the former president performed the coin toss before the start of the game.

In the following months, Barbara persisted through her battles with congestive heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, but on April 15, 2018, her husband's office issued a statement that said she would no longer undergo medical treatment and instead remain at home with family to "focus on comfort care."

"It will not surprise those who know her that Barbara Bush has been a rock in the face of her failing health, worrying not for herself — thanks to her abiding faith — but for others," the statement said. "She is surrounded by a family she adores, and appreciates the many kind messages and especially the prayers she is receiving."

Two days later, on April 17, 2018, it was confirmed that Barbara had died that evening, at age 92. Her son George W. followed with a statement:

"Barbara Bush was a fabulous First Lady and a woman unlike any other who brought levity, love, and literacy to millions. To us, she was so much more. Mom kept us on our toes and kept us laughing until the end. I'm a lucky man that Barbara Bush was my mother. Our family will miss her dearly, and we thank you all for your prayers and good wishes."

A Chicago native, Ayanna Pressley moved to Boston to attend college, and began her political career working for Congressman Joseph P. Kennedy II, before working for then-Senator John Kerry in various roles for 13 years. Before her election to Congress, where she became part of a group known as “The Squad,” Pressley served as the Boston City Council’s first elected woman of color.

Born in Cincinnati, Ohio on February 3, 1974, and raised in what she described as a “tough” Chicago neighborhood, Ayanna Soyini Pressley is the only child of tenants’ rights organizer Sandra Pressley and Martin Terrell, who struggled with heroin addiction and spent 16 years in and out of prison. Pressley’s father later overcame his addiction and became a published author.

She attended Chicago’s private Francis W. Parker School, where she served as class president from 7th grade through her senior year. A cheerleader and debater, she was selected as her graduating class’s commencement speaker, and was named “most likely to be mayor of Chicago.”

While growing up Pressley also modeled and did voiceover work, even appearing in Planned Parenthood ads that ran on Chicago’s city busses.

In 1992, she moved to Boston, Massachusetts to attend Boston University, but never graduated, withdrawing from the college in 1994 to support her family after her mother lost her job as an executive assistant at Time Warner. After leaving the University, Bush worked as a receptionist and a barback and served banquets at the Boston Marriott Copley Place.

Pressley worked for Congressman Kennedy for two years, first as an unpaid intern in his Roxbury office while in college, and then as a paid staffer helping seniors access Social Security benefits.

After volunteering for then-Senator Kerry’s 1996 reelection campaign, she went on to work for the eventual Secretary of State for 13 years in a variety of roles, including constituency director and political director. “Ayanna was a force,” Kerry told The Boston Globe in 2018. “She had enormous focus and drive, a wonderful, outgoing personality, and believed in public service.”

In 2009, she stepped down as Kerry’s employee to launch an at-large campaign for Boston City Council. When Pressley was elected on November 3, 2009, she made history as the first woman of color ever elected to the council. With successful reelection campaigns in 2011 and 2013, she again made history as the first person of color and the first woman in 30 years to top the ticket. While serving in the role, she created the Committee on Healthy Women, Families, and Communities to spotlight stable families, reduce violence and poverty, and promote women’s issues.

Pressley was elected to represent Massachusetts’ 7th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives in November 2018, unseating 10-term congressman, Michael Capuano. Along with fellow representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, she became known as one of The Squad.

“The Squad, as we define it, is anyone who is building a more equitable and just world,” she told The Washington Post in 2020. “So that is more than four people. The Squad is big. Think of us as representatives of a larger community. The very first one-minute [speech] that I gave on the floor, I said, 'I come as one, and I stand as thousands.' That's Maya Angelou. That's what the Squad is to me. But it's something that some people have tried to negatively co-opt. And, again, to weaponize.”

In January 2020, Pressley revealed in a video for The Root that she has alopecia, the official medical term for baldness, according to the American Academy of Dermatology. "I've only been bald in the privacy of my home and in the company of close friends,” she explained, adding that she felt it was important to be transparent to help others dealing with the same diagnosis.

Pressley shared that her last bit of hair fell out in December 2019. "I am making peace with having alopecia," she said. "I am very early in my alopecia journey. But I'm making progress every day... It’s about self-agency, it's about power, it's about acceptance."

Pressley revealed in 2011 that she had been raped both during childhood and when she was a 19-year-old Boston University student. According to The Boston Globe, she was working as a resident assistant the summer after her freshman year someone she knew raped her, but she never reported the assault because of the social isolation and shame she felt.

She described how the experience shaped her later life in Jessica Valenti and Jaclyn Friedman's January 2020-released anthology, Believe Me: How Trusting Women Can Change the World: “I want a world where survivors are believed and validated and supported. I also want a world where within a generation the number of those impacted by sexual violence plummets.”

Pressley met husband Conan Harris, then the manager of an anti-violence initiative called StreetSafe Boston, in 2011, and the pair married three years later in 2014. She became a stepmom to Harris’ daughter, Cora, calling her role as a “bonus mom” a gift. “It was inferred that by calling Cora my step-daughter, I am creating a distinction or a step down,” she tweeted of her “healthy blended family” in 2019. “There is no distinction in my heart and she is without question my child.”

Before meeting Pressley, Harris, who worked as a public safety aide to Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh before becoming executive director of My Brother’s Keeper Boston, spent 10 years in prison for drug trafficking. In 2020, he testified before the House Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security on barriers to making a successful return from prison and reintegrating into communities.

System of Natural Health

"The fittest survives"

(Herbert Spencer)

"The survival of the fittest" is a philosophy of life not given much attention to these days. Modern ‘high tech’ medicine frequently treats people like a flock of sheep that need a magic pill, which can keep them just healthy enough to function in society. Such an approach never helps however, because it does not take into consideration that in many cases the underlying cause of disease is the unhealthy mind of the ill person, who follows a harmful way of life that inevitably leads to health problems.

The cost of medicine and the spreading of diseases will continue to rise while people continue to neglect the foundations of good health:

1. Maintaining a strong body through physical training, 2. restoring a natural healthy environment in our living areas and work rooms, and 3. replacing harmful, processed foods produced by the American food industry, with natural whole foods - is the only way of living a healthy and productive life.

• Human health: philosophy, physiology, health problems prevention

The idea of "The survival of the fittest" was excellently proven by the neurosurgeon (MD, PhD) Galina Shatalova (Галина Сергеевна Шаталова) (October 13, 1916 – December 14, 2011), when she decided to abandon her in all respects stellar career in conventional medicine and developed the System of Natural Health.

During her work as a clinical researcher in the Research Institute of Neurosurgery named after Nikolay Burdenko (Moscow, Russia), at the age of 59, she experienced two heart attacks. Being well aware that the third attack could be the last one, she began looking for alternative approaches to healing.

The System of Natural Health, which incorporates a very low calorie diet and intensive physical training of the body, was the brilliant results of her search. She not only dramatically changed her lifestyle and healed herself, but also used her system as naturopathy practitioner and helped thousands of ill people to get rid of bad diseases like cancers, diabetes, heart diseases and others and find their way to healthy lifestyle.

She was the author of many books on Natural Health. Her book Vybor Puti (The Choice of the Way), published in 1996, describes her system. The four elements of her System of Natural Health are:

• Correct breathing

• Healthy motion

• Hardening of the organism

• Appropriate nutrition

The house on the sand

(extract from the book "Vibor Puti" part II)

As reader can no doubt notice, a significant place in the first chapter is devoted to nutrition. Why? Firstly, because the composition of food determines to a large extent the chemical composition of the cells of a human body. This, in turn, directly affects all other processes: for example gas exchange, or such as thermoregulation or thinking.

The second reason why I pay much attention to nutrition, is that no other sphere of human activity is associated with so many pseudo-scientific views, bordering on superstition, and not in the least because a holistic coherent science of nutrition is not created in human society up to now, although significant steps were made in this direction. It’s quite sufficient to recollect the works by Pavlov on the physiology of digestion, and not less imortant work by contemporary Soviet scientist Academician A.M. Ugolev, and works in the field of food hygiene by G. Shelton.

The ruling theory of a balanced diet, which is based on average statistical data about the eating habits of the Germans in the middle of the last century, is not the real answer to almost any question related to an obvious fact: if a person daily consumes energy for work and functioning of the organism, it is necessary to compensate this energy consumption. But how? Only at the expense of energy released in the breaking of chemical bonds of alimentative substances. That is considered to be "calorification."

Caloric theory leaves no place in matters of food pluralism. The logic of its argument is straight - the daily diet of human beings should average 2500-3000 kilocalories, and there is no arguing against it. I am sure this is still worth debates.

In the first chapter I named some numbers, let's repeat them. Physicians-"calorists" recommend daily consumption on average of 80-100 grams of protein, 80-100 grams of fat, and 400-500 grams of carbohydrates. If a citizen decides to go solely on vegan food, but is guided with the mentioned standards, he (she) would have to eat about 25-30 pounds of vegetables, fruits and greens a day. If we consider that our stomach can hold about 300-400 grams of food a vegan would have to chew, without ceasing, all day long.

Meanwhile, the whole experience of millions of people, who refused to consume animal protein, i.e. meat, fish, eggs and milk, suggests that nothing like this happens, and vegans eat no more than "normal" people, who cannot imaging his(her) life without meat. And that means only one thing: a man, who consumes plants only, gets a lot lesser number of calories than recommended by "calorists", which indicates the inadequacy of the theory advocated.

In order to save this shaky, built on the sand building, supporters of this theory use all means available. Former Director of the Institute of Nutrition of AMS deceased Academician Alexander Pokrovsky, for example, paid special attention to the relationship between nature of diet and mental abilities. The experiments were conducted on rats. Some got the diet of meat, the others were kept on vegan foods solely. In the experiment both had to find a way out of the maze.

It turned out that the rats treated with meat spent less time. On this basis, the researcher concluded that people, eating meat, are smarter than their fellow-vegans, and therefore the theory of a balanced diet is basically correct. This interpretation is initially false, since it ignores the differences in the brains of rats and human species and the difference in their properties in the diet.

Feeding of each living species has its own peculiarities, which do not affect the mental abilities of animals. Is it possible, for example, to consider a predator being smarter than a monkey? Or assert that the lion is clever than elephant, horse is more stupid than tiger? And, finally, consider the fact that many prominent representatives of the human species, such as Pythagoras and Newton, Leo Tolstoy and Romain Rolland, Ilya Repin were staunch vegans?

On many raises and an example of Americans, people are known to be rationally thinking, which in recent decades have embarked on a vegetarian diet to get rid of the bulk of chronic disease. Even 15 years ago, 30 percent of U.S. residents have refused to consume meat.

Here, in passing, I note that the World Health Organization has reduced the recommended intakes of protein to 29-37 grams per day. And we continue to adhere to the previous standards only, delivering to already overcrowded hospitals more and more new kidney patients suffering from violations of protein metabolism.

Now back to the other "merits" of the theory of balanced nutrition. We stopped at that, before its supporters faced a dilemma how to "cram" 3000 kilocalories into an acceptable, from the standpoint of common sense, quantity of products. The solution was found at concentrations and optimization. Exit, bailout for the theorists and disastrous for us. Their train of thought is understandable in general. If the sugar contained in 100 grams of beetroot will give us only 40 kilocalories, is it not better to isolate it in pure concentrated form, and get about 600 kilocalories per 100 grams.

Same thing with the meat: processed into fat ham it provides 700 kilocalories. You can go through all foods that are produced by the food industry, and make sure that the companies designed exclusively for the destruction of full-needed food to man and turning it into high-calorie, but devoid of life, limited life organic matter. In this connection it is worth recalling that many world-famous scientists believe that the production of the concentrated diet optimizes and causes many chronic diseases, overcoming human society.

"Marathoners"

Article by G.S. Shatalova, published in the Journal "Nature and Man" № 7

(from the site http://www.shatalova.ru/)

Medical science now persistently seeking ways to combat one of the negative consequences of scientific and technological progress - an avalanche-like increase in chronic diseases in humans. But it is becoming more and more obvious that the radical solution to the problem will be instilling a healthy, sustainable lifestyle in people. Today, more than ever, there was a need for a scientific approach to man as a complex biological system, a self-governing public, governed by objective laws of nature. Moreover, the human body is capable not only to regulate and restore the consistency of its internal environment, but also to improve, "if only the relevant conditions have been carried out," as the great I.P. Pavlov says.

I started the search for these "conditions" professionally in the 50's, as Fellow of the Institute of Neurosurgery, Academy of Medical Sciences, and continue this work today. Over the many years of medical practice I have been able to develop the basic elements of an integrated holistic healing of the human body by forces of nature. This system includes a proper diet, breathing, movement, temperature regulation and the appropriate mental attitude. But, of course, each person requires an individual approach.

What is the major of this system? I'll tell you slightly scholarly, but the most accurately – this is choosing the correct functioning of the body energy supply, it should best meet the physiological needs of the man coded by nature.

It is considered that all our energy needs our organism gets exclusively through energy of the food. Ran, for example, hundred-meter race - and spent some amount of calories. And to restore these calories, you need to eat a product containing the same number of calories. And the energy consumption of these products is determined by the methods of calorimetry, as if the wood is burned in a furnace. But is it correct doing so? The food is not wood, and the process of feeding cannot be compared with a simple combustion. I am convinced that by its nature, our body is able to compensate for the loses of energy with low-calorie diet. It's not about calories, but about the biological value of foods in their bioenergetic qualities.

The rationalization of the principles of this system required to conduct a series of experiments - first were experiments on myself, and then on human volunteers. One of the experiments was conducted in 1983. It was conducted under the supervision of an authoritative committee of All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Physical Culture (VNIIFK). In those days, the amateur runners planned to compete in a super marathon run. The distance of 500-kilometer road race was planned to cover by the men within seven days. The racing speed rate was one kilometer in not less than six minutes. About 65-75 kilometers a day. Women should cover half of the distance. An experimental group of volunteers, who had previously been prepared by me on the program of the system of natural healing, were participating in the marathon on general grounds. Volunteers have mastered the technique of dynamic autogenic training, health training, breathing exercises and nutrition on the new bio-energy basis. The food was prepared for them under the supervision of the Commission with specialized recipes. Our group was fed simultaneously with the main group of the participants in the marathon, but at a separate table, which was characterized by colorful dishes, richly decorated with fresh spring greens, vegetables and fruits.

The experimental group was fed with decoctions of herbs, juices, honey, salad vegetables and herbs, fresh porridge on water, bread made from rye flour with grass flour on whig, boiled beans, nuts. On the trail they were offered "candy" from the rolled-up dried fruit and nuts, but athletes did not needed them. The quantity and quality of food quite satisfied athletes. All in all, runners got 28 grams protein, 25 grams fat, 180 grams of carbohydrates, which in total amounted to 1200 calories a day.

But the control and the main group of runners were fed according to the norms of the energy established by Institute of Medical Sciences of the USSR . They consumed 190 grams of protein, the same amount of fat, 1300 grams of carbohydrates, which amounted to 6000 calories a day. Cooking recipes were made according to calorie theory of a balanced diet. Tables laden with food from the delicatessen, meat cuts, sausages, ham, cheese and butter, splints, roast beef or chops with ample side dish, soups, puddings and the like, the most common foods. On the trail they received extra food - oatmeal jelly and crackers. The participants of the experiment were under the vigilant control of the commission, both during the run, and during the meal. Runners of the experimental and control groups o the marathon were weighed regularly. Long columns of numbers filled minutes of the commission. The results exceeded the expectations. Records of the Commission testified that less physically trained athletes of the experimental group were more enduring and did not lose weight as opposed to a control group of athletes that were engaged in the same physical activities and sports indices figures of running, but consuming five times more high-calorie food! Weight of the runners of this group was less stable during the run as well as at its end.

And a remarkable thing. Marathon ended late in the evening and the next morning, all participants of the experimental group were at their usual workplace.

In the All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Physical Culture, where the results of the experiment were discussed and the acts of the commission endorsed, and where I reported on the results of my observations, the experiment was considered unique. It was decided to repeat the experiment with the participation of athletes of the highest category. According to this decision, a master of sports in the run Anna Kharitonova was prepared by a special program to participate in the experiment.

The new experiment also took place in April's marathon in honor of the Cosmonaut Day, this time the distance was 450 kilometers. A representative commission o VNIIFK recorded the results of the run. It is noteworthy that this time the participant of the experimental group sport master Anne Kharitonov reached a record long run, she covered the 450-kilometer distance, finishing in the sixth place among male super marathoners.

During the run the athlete was fed according to the already well-known diet that does not exceed 1200 calories per day, and her body weight remained stable. Unique results and achievements in sports with low-calorie and low-protein diet were achieved in recent years by climbers making the ascent to the mountain peaks, by numerous groups of mountain tourists, and, finally, by the participants of the amateur mass marathons. In the Novosibirsk Akademgorodok it has become a tradition to hold a spring marathon on a low-calorie and low-protein diet.

I admit, I was repeatedly turned to the issue, if I remember the law of energy and matter conservation? I was reminded that for the basal metabolism the human body needs 1200-1700calories, and in addition to this it is necessary to provide energy for its activity. But the point is that by checking the caloric theory of a balanced diet in the light of the law, you can find a number of serious discrepancies between the theory and general practice. The system o the facts does not fit into the Procrustean bed of the theory! And yet this theory has dominated for decades in our country - in the science and practice of nutrition, and in the technology of production of food.

As a result, the diet does not meet the physiological needs of the human body both quantitatively and qualitatively. This is - the main cause of contamination of the internal environment of the organism and the emergence of many diseases. Hence, this puts forward the problem of justification of quantitative and qualitative standards and food hygiene according to the types of natural features of the human body and its social, geographical, climatic and other conditions of life.

Our marathon runners, who have passed on the daily regime of low-calorie food, have begun a joke of calling themselves "dystrophics". Why these "jokes"? They have emerged not by chance, but after the publication by a number of scientists who claim that I have developed a diet which will inevitably lead to malnutrition, because even in a Nazi concentration camp of Dachau prisoners’ caloric intake was significantly higher. In there enthusiasm for high-calorie theory, such authors do not consider one important detail: the food consumed by our super-marathoners is consistent with natural human needs. In Dachau prisoners ate cutlets from sawdust, sprinkled with ersatz sauce. Caloric content of these products is certainly high, but it does not meet the natural needs of human species. It is interesting to know the opinion of my opponents about the question: how much the fatness of the prisoners at Dachau would increase, if they were fed with doubled or tripled amount of the sawdust and, hence, the total caloric intake? Furthermore, I remind the doubters that even Lenin demanded that the basics of assessment of nutritional standards have been based on "... not the number of calories, but on the amount and quality of food" (VI Lenin. Full. Works, Vol. Works ., v. 40, p. 342).

Today, the spontaneous approach to the complex process of nutrition, as part of the total energy exchange of the whole organism, clearly reveals the shortages of calorimetric evaluation of the diet. Calorie - is nothing more but a unit of heat energy released by a substance in the destruction of its chemical bonds in the combustion process. It’s easy to count the number of calories released in the burning of protein, fat and carbohydrate foods, but it’s much more complicated to determine its biological value, digestibility and nutritive value. Energy consumption and expenditures of our bodies require a different approach, because we are not isolated from the environment, like the chamber of the calorimeter.

That is why numerous experiments and observations show that our body is able to compensate for energy expenditures that far exceed the energy content of food consumed. How can this be? I think we have enough evidence to say about the multi-channel energy supply of the human body.

Considering the stereotype of thinking formed by centuries-of old habits and whims of people, it is hard to realize how much you can reduce the amount of food consumed, which fully satisfies the needs of a healthy person with a reasonable way of life. The men misrepresented his views on the need for nutrition to the absurd. For example, in New Zealand, there is a habit to take food seven times a day, consumed with the fantastic amount of meat, eggs, sausages, sandwiches, and other. New Zealanders are beginning to have meals in bed and finish the day by eating before going to bed second, a so-called small dinner, which consists of cold meat, lobster and other eatables.

In India, however, people decided to eat no more than twice a day. The majority of the population - are vegetarians. The national dish - rice with vegetables, with rice and vegetable sauce usually served separately, perhaps, the Indians are aware of the benefits of food combination, and not incidentally their food is plentifully flavored with medicinal herbs. The nation Hunza in northern India is featured with the greatest life expectancy in the world. This nation absolutely does not consume animal food proteins.

It’s possible to observ eating habits of each nation historically associated with geographical location, economy, culture, which do not sufficiently take into account the healthy human physiological needs. For example, in the last century Germany was "famous" with obese people, and they preferred to be ill, but ... overeat. German cooks - the specialists in manufacturing hams, sausages and frankfurters especially diversified diet of meat and all sorts of fish dishes, baked sweet jelly, pies, cakes and more. German cuisine much influenced the diet of our country, it is enough to remember the schnitzel, beefsteaks, romsteaks, roast beef, entrecote, which are famous today not only the price lists of sit down restaurants, but also in our everyday diet.

We forgot about the beautiful Russian cereals, Russian soup, medicinal Russian oat wash-brew, pickled apples, honey and hell kvass, forget the bread on the hop yeast. Lost even more than that, famous kitchen that fed the wonderful heroes of the Russian land.

Unfortunately, the eating habits of people are clogged with bad habits. Became the rule to ginger appetite, combining incompatible products. Food is tinted, salted, sweetened. And we changed the sense of proportion. The excretory system is overloaded at the same time, and the body's internal environment is polluted with not excreted metabolic products. They are deposited in the walls of blood vessels in the intercellular spaces, and finally, in the cell, disrupting metabolic processes. Isn’t it the reason of many of our diseases?

Not once I had to listen intently, wary questions: if a vegetarianism can lead to the extinction of mental abilities. Then I recall the lifestyle and diet of Leo Tolstoy, Alexander Suvorov, Roman Rolland, Jack London, George Bernard Shaw and many other thinkers - followers of the strict vegetarian diet. Personally I do not consume animal protein in the diet for 40 years and do not notice the deterioration of memory.

Some say, how about the classic experiments by A.A. Pokrovsky, who a quarter century ago proved as if the restriction of consumption of animal protein negatively impacts the mental abilities of man? He did not share the view of the great thinkers, vegetarians, who exemplify creative longevity. But the scientist, however, studied the rationality of human nutrition as a kind in experiments .with ... rodents. And proved that the brains of rats are directly related to diet. Consumption of animal protein allowed them to better navigate in the complicated situations. The results of the experiments were mechanically transferred to humans. And up to this day protein diet in our country is calculated in accordance with the classical experiments on rodents!

It seems to me that, besides the lack of correctness in the transfer of the experimental results with rats on human beings in such a fine area, as mental activity, it should be remembered that nature featured a specific program of life and specific nature of nutrition to each kind of animal. For example, nobody would think of feeding a tiger or a lion with grass, as well as a camel or a horse with meat.

Careful study of the table of the comparative anatomical and physiological characteristics of species of animals, it is easy to see that man does not have any signs of a predator. Moreover, for the many thousands of years, when people began to consume meat, the man’s body did not evolutionary change, similar to the signs of a predator.

In studying the characteristics of food consumption in various representatives of the animal world we can note not only the commonality of some physiological parameters, but also a clear distinction of species needs that are programmed by nature. For example, the tiger can eat only fresh meat of the victim, and herbivores have a clear feature of the properties of species of animals: camel prefers camel thorn, elks are not averse to eat young aspen bark, and the horse prefers grain - that is the nature of the program. Do humans have features of the nutrition programmed by the nature?

In experiments with healthy men it can be seen that the optimal diet contains fruits, vegetables, berries, edible wild herbs and vegetable, seeds, nuts, grains, and cereal grains, honey. In that case, if the fresh food was cooked tasty and retained its bio-energetic value, once or twice a day food consumption is enough. Of course, when it is necessary to comply with food hygiene taking into account the anatomical and physiological characteristics of the individual ...

I remember one of my patients - Svetlana. Just a few years ago, this slim, charming young woman with curly hair was on the verge of collapse, chocking under the burden of cardiovascular, pulmonary, gastrointestinal, and skin diseases. Svetlana was ill since childhood. The school constantly liberated her from the physical training. In the university she once tried to run the hundred meters race, but it ended in syncope. After graduation, constant supervision of qualified doctors of the clinic at the Academy of science of the USSR made beneficial effect on her health, but not for long time. Gradually, her medical history was swelling with the records of internists, gynecologists, pulmonologists, gastroenterologists, cardiologists, oncologists, neurologists, dermatologists and other physicians.

Very sick woman with lusterless eyes, with yearly aging puffy face and bloated figure literally breathless due to asthmatic bronchitis, heart disease, inflammation of the gall bladder, pancreatitis, hepatitis, gastritis, spastic colitis, cervical degenerative disc disease of the spine, stomach ulcers and other chronic diseases. Svetlana was a researcher of a rare and interesting profession. She loved her job, but felt that she was becoming a burden on the shoulders of employees, and becoming less and less employable. About the half of the working time of the year she spent in the hospital regime. Her large and friendly family actually lost the mistress, and emergency room physicians have become frequent visitors to their home. All new and new diseases fell in abundance! A growing tumor was revealed In the abdominal cavity, and surgical intervention should not be delayed, but asthmatic bronchitis, severe drug allergy, and almost incessant cold conditions obstructed abdominal surgery.

Oncology surgeon directed the sick woman with a request to improve Svetlana’s health before the upcoming serious operation. But I began to treat her in accordance with my principles. Treatment was ambulatory without job interruption. So a remarkable record in her medical history: the doctor noted a gradual reverse increase of the swell in the abdomen. The need for abdominal surgery no longer existed!"

A year after the start of treatment it appeared that Svetlana was doing so well, that she might go on a long trip in the tropical zone of the ocean. Physicians recorded in the "Seaman's book" unconditional - "healthy." Svetlana is coping with the affairs in the institute, and is busy with the housework at home, but at the same time every day she finds time for a morning run, a special set of movements and breathing, and more. Even winter blizzard does not make her putting on a cap and sweater for jogging wear. Gradually she learned Russian "temper-bag." She feeds according to the diet with consumption of not more than 1000 calories a day.

I love my patient Svetlana and call her "the highest embodiment of the limitless resources of nature." Since Ivan Pavlov defined the place of man in the world in this way.

Yes, people - an integral part of nature. Rightly said. But this is only a part of the truth. After all, we are a reasonable part of nature that is capable to regulate relationship with the environment and transform it. However, transforming the world around him, does the man remember that his actions should commeasure with the general objective and principle of the unity of the material world?

Alas, having a powerful technique, we do not understand quite enough the essence of our relationship with nature. Maybe that's why scientific progress often leads today to negative consequences. We are destroying not only the external area of the dwelling, but also the internal environment of the body, getting the diseases, reducing the period of normal working ability and creative longevity.

In conclusion: the plastic properties of the central nervous system and the human mental activity has a huge opportunity to restore your own body. We have been given the ability to control not only the thoughts and actions, but also the physical condition of the body. Hence, these are our commitment and responsibility to be always at the height of personal abilities. In our country we have the conditions for material support and active developnent of reasonable and normal human needs as the main guarantee of health. We must not forget that this fact today laid the foundation of a strategy to eliminate the mass of chronic diseases. To conclude our conversation, I anticipate possible questions from readers concerning the preservation and promotion of health. Well I'll try to answer them through the magazine. Please, write.

Menu of the super-marathon experimental group

BREAKFAST:

• Decoction of herbs with lemon juice, flavoured with honey.

LUNCH:

• Freshly prepared infusion of rosehips with honey.

• Freshly prepared salads of various vegetables, richly flavoured juice of citrus and fresh spring greens.

• Specially prepared meals from whole cereal grains, richly seasoned with fresh herbs and dried herbs with a little vegetable oil and dried seaweed.

DINNER:

• Tea of the petals of a rose, hawthorn flowers, leaves, magnolia, jasmine flowers and fireweed.

• Freshly made fruit and vegetable juice.

CHOICE OF SUCH COURSES:

• Salad of boiled beets with horseradish, garlic or honey and lemon juice.

• Salad of shredded pumpkin and carrots with sea buckthorn juice with honey.

• Salad of coarsely chopped cabbage or cauliflower with lots of greenery (Served with freshly made peanut sauce with milk or oatmeal with nuts).

• Boiled beans, flavored spices, nuts and garlic.

• Rye bread, mixed with whig, with plenty of grated dried herbs.

1. • Buckwheat porridge cooked in water, without oil.

Брюс Ли (англ. Bruce Lee)

Martial arts master, American and Hong Kong film actor, director, producer, screenwriter, philosopher.

Born on November 27, 1940 in San Francisco (California, USA), in the family of Chinese opera actor Lee Hoi Chen and half-Chinese half-German Grace Lee.

Strictly speaking, he is Lee Jan Fan (translated from Chinese — "come back": the child was born in San Francisco, and the mother wanted her son to return to America again), When the boy grew up, he was given the name Lee Yen Kam ("never sitting still"): after the first filming, the name Lee Sui Lung ("little dragon") appeared. And the name Bruce Lee was on the birth certificate issued at the Chinese hospital in San Francisco.

Not everyone believed that Bruce Lee was actually a boy. The evil spirits knew for sure that Grace had given birth to a girl: the mother and father spent a lot of effort to confuse them, and even gave the child the girly nickname Baby Phoenix. Their first son died, and they decided that they had angered the gods in some way; in China, they believe that the second child in the family should be a girl, and Grace and Lee adopted a poor man's daughter. Then their son Peter was born, then Grace got pregnant again and was restless with worry: according to Chinese beliefs, the second son is also in danger. Newborn Bruce Lee had his ears pierced and was called by his maiden name — it seemed that evil spirits had been deceived.

The children were growing up, and they had to be taught — Bruce Lee and his brothers were sent to a Jesuit college. The Jesuits had been doing missionary work in China for several centuries and knew more about the aborigines than anyone else, but even they could not cope with Bruce Lee.

Small, thin, nimble, Bruce Lee could not sit still, did not want to puzzle over arithmetic and English grammar, and felt great pleasure only when he managed to smash someone's nose. Bruce Lee's former homeroom teacher, Henry's brother, remembering him many years later, assured that he was an unusual child - lively, receptive, intelligent. It was necessary to treat him very gently, to occupy his imagination all the time — then he behaved like a good boy... Apparently, Brother Henry rarely succeeded: several years passed, and Bruce Lee was kicked out of the Jesuit school.

Bruce Lee had a huge craving for self-affirmation, street fights elevated him in his own eyes. He was skinny, shifty and absolutely fearless: the reason for the fight could even be that the boy he met looked at him the wrong way, sighed the wrong way, spat the wrong way, apologized not respectfully enough. Bruce Lee did not pay attention to the height and weight of his enemies, and they beat him twice a day. Lee Hoi Chen, of course, was not a model father, but the bruises on his son's face and the ever-torn clothes got on his nerves. Wailing Grace washed the abrasions and darned the torn shirt, and La lectured Bruce Lee every night: in the end, he was immensely tired of it. Lee Hoi Chen did not give money to the children out of principle, but when Bruce Lee asked to pay for his kung fu lessons, he unexpectedly agreed to himself — he had at least a faint hope that this outrage would ever end.

Bruce Lee chose a tough and aggressive wing chun — according to legend, the creator of the style was a nun who lived in the XV century. (She invented it when she was watching a snake fight with a crane.) The nun taught him the girl Yum Wing Chun, she taught her future husband, he also had students... So the turn came to Yip Man, a former police inspector in Namhae city who escaped to Hong Kong from Mao Zedong's troops. In Hong Kong, Yip Man opened his own school and made a living by making real fighters out of street scamps like Bruce Lee.

Running for five kilometers and hundreds of push-ups, endless blows on a sandbag, acrobatics, fights in full contact when the fist of the enemy with all its strength falls on your unprotected ribs... Training at Ip Men's school shackled his body in impenetrable muscle armor, taught him almost perfect fighting techniques. Bruce tried it out on his classmates, and the results were more than satisfactory.

Soon his parents sent him to another school — there it turned out that classes with Ip Men were good for the child. Of course, he did not become an excellent student, but the senseless mischief that plagued the Jesuit fathers greatly diminished. Young Lee no longer had the strength for leprosy: after practicing wing chun, every bone ached - lightness came only in the fifth year.

But now Bruce Lee has calmed down. He became the king of the school — he was always accompanied by a respectful retinue on the street. Having dealt with his classmates, Bruce Lee took up the English boys: they constantly fought with little Chinese and, as a rule, beat them for nothing. The British were much larger, besides, boxing was taught in their schools, but blows with a knee to the chin, forehead to the nose and elbow to the ear turned out to be a crushing surprise for them. One by one, the rulers of the seas went into a deep knockdown, and with every black eye and bloody nose, Bruce Lee's authority grew: in Hong Kong, they remembered well about the "opium war", looted Beijing and the inscriptions "Dogs and Chinese are not allowed to enter", which had recently disappeared from the central part of the city.

Life smiled on Bruce Lee, and by the age of eighteen he felt almost happy. When he was very young, his father taught him to dance, and now he has won the Hong Kong cha-cha-cha championship, played several children's roles in action movies. No one argued with him on the street. In his free time from fights and training, Bruce Lee took dance lessons. Now he looked like a dandy — carefully slicked and oiled hair, an immaculately ironed black suit (he ironed it himself, not trusting his mother), a narrow tie with an even knot. Either a student of a missionary school, or a dancer from a variety show is an ideal target for a street hooligan who wants to have fun.

Mama's boys were treated unkindly on the streets of Hong Kong. It was nice to spit on a patent leather shoe, pull on a tie. But after that, the impudent man received Bruce Lee's sau-do—favorite blow when the palm of his hand, hardened by many hours of training, falls on the attacker's throat. One day, he regaled three members of the Hong Kong Triad with it, two of whom were hospitalized.

Seventy years ago, the first batch of Chinese was brought to the United States. America was rapidly becoming covered by a network of railways, cheap labor was needed for their construction — poor, hardworking and unrequited Asians were the best suited for this. The best argument in the dialogue with them was considered a right hook: poor peasants from remote Chinese villages, who had never studied martial arts, endured such treatment with Confucian patience. Time passed, morals softened, but laundries and cheap restaurants remained the lot of Chinese Americans — Bruce Lee got a job in one of them.

Bruce Lee soon turned into a movie star. It happened, in general, by chance: TV producer William Dozier was looking for an actor for a role in a new series, a man who studied with Bruce turned out to be next to him — and he got the role. Then he was given a new role, and then bypassed for the sake of an American actor. Bruce Lee was worried — it seemed to him that his film career was not going well, but when he arrived in Hong Kong, his countrymen were ready to carry him in their arms. It turned out that he was wildly popular at home — Lee Jan Fan returned to his hometown in the halo of an American movie star and at the same time a warrior who beat the "white devils".

The wife is Linda Lee Cadwell.

Son - actor Brandon Lee (1965-1993).

Daughter - Shannon (1969).

Bruce Lee died on July 20, 1973 at the age of 33 in Hong Kong.

The actor is buried at Lake View Cemetery in Seattle, Washington, USA.

Bruce Lee died suddenly after taking a headache pill, not having had time to finish the next film "The Game of Death". As the autopsy showed, the swelling of the brain was caused by a hypersensitive reaction to a headache pill. His death was a shock for the whole of Hong Kong — no one could imagine that this man, who was improving his body day and night, could die. After his death, rumors began to spread that he had died in his mistress's bed, but they were not confirmed. Bruce Lee's funeral turned into a citywide, and then all-Asian mourning. Thousands of friends and fans went to pay their last respects to him. Bruce Lee's body was then transported to Seattle, where his family said goodbye to him, and where he was buried. Martial arts fans who stay in Seattle still go to the grave of Bruce Lee to worship. And his last film was shot five years later with the help of understudies, was a huge success and caused a new wave of interest in kung fu and oriental martial arts.

Введение

Нейтрон был открыт в 1932 году. Открытие нейтрона было поворотным пунктом в исследовании ядерных реакций. Так как нейтроны лишены заряда, то они без препятствия проникают в атомные ядра и вызывают их превращения. Итальянский физик Ферми, который первым начал изучать реакции, вызываемые нейтронами, обнаружил, что ядерные превращения вызываются даже медленными нейтронами, движущимися с тепловыми скоростями. Практическое использование внутриядерной энергии оказалось возможным благодаря тому, что фундаментальным фактом ядерного деления является испускание в процессе деления двух-трёх нейтронов. Энергия освобождённых в процессе деления нейтронов имеет различное значение- от нескольких миллионов электрон-вольт до совсем малых, близких к нулю.Только в ядрах нейтрон за счёт взаимодействия с другими нуклонами приобретает стабильность. Свободный же нейтрон живёт в среднем 16 мин. Это было экспериментально доказано лишь после того, как были построены ядерные реакторы, дающие мощные пучки нейтронов.

Радиоактивность – способность радионуклидов спонтанно превращаться в атомы других элементов, вследствие перехода ядра с одного энергетического состояния в другое, что сопровождается ионизирующим излучением. В нормальном состоянии соотношение между количеством нейтронов и протонов в ядре строго определенное. Расстояние между ними, их энергия связи – минимальные, ядро устойчивое. В результате облучения нейтронами (или другими частицами), ядро переходит в возбужденное состояние. Через промежуток времени оно переходит в устойчивое состояние, а избыточная энергия превращается в радиоактивное излучение ядра. Процесс перехода ядер из неустойчивого в устойчивое состояние с излучением избыточной энергии называется радиоактивным распадом.

1. Природа, источники, механизм взаимодействия с веществом, особенности воздействия на организм человека нейтронного излучения

1 .1 Нейтронное излучение

Основными видами радиоактивных излучений при распаде ядер являются:

· гамма – излучение;

· бета – излучение;

· альфа – излучение;

· нейтронное излучение.

Нейтронное излучение . Нейтроны излучаются ядрами при ядерных реакциях, когда полученная извне ядром энергия бывает достаточная для разрушения связи нейтрона с ядром, в результате деления ядер урана. Не имея заряда, нейтроны не взаимодействуют с электрическими полями электронов и ядер при прохождении через вещество и беспрепятственно движутся до столкновения с ядром. А так как размеры ядер неизмеримо меньше самих атомов, то столкновения очень редки и длина свободного пробега даже в твердых телах достигает несколько сантиметров (в воздухе сотни метров).

Рассматривают три вида взаимодействия нейтронов с веществом:

· упругое рассеяние на ядрах – когда часть энергии нейтрона передается ядру, другая часть остается у рассеянного нейтрона. При упругом рассеянии внутренняя энергия ядра не изменяется, она лишь приобретает кинетическую энергию;

· неупругое рассеяние на ядрах – когда внутренняя энергия отдачи изменяется. Ядро становится возбужденным и возвращаясь в нормальное состояние может испустить гамма-квант;

· захват нейтронов ядрами – при захвате нейтронов ядрами образуется сильно возбужденное ядро, которое, возвращаясь в нормальное состояние, может испустить различные частицы.

По энергии нейтроны делятся на тепловые, промежуточные и быстрые. Для защиты от нейтронного излучения применяются материалы, обладающие высокой замедляющей и поглощающей способностью – вода, парафин, графиты, бор, кадмий и т.д.

Основным источником нейтронов является работающий реактор. Под действием нейтронов в реакторе происходит активация теплоносителя, конструкционных материалов, а также продуктов коррозии оборудования и трубопроводов. Образующиеся при этом радиоактивные изотопы являются источниками гамма- и бета – излучений. При делении урана в реакторе образуются осколочные продукты деления обладающие, в основном, гамма- и бета- активностью, а также газообразные продукты деления.

1 .2 Источники излучений на АЭС

Вне зависимости от типа реактора, установленного на АЭС, и ее технологической схемы основными источниками излучения на АЭС являются активная зона реактора, трубопроводы и оборудование технологического контура, бассейны выдержки с отработанным ядерным топливом, системы спецводоочистки и их оборудование, сама защита реактора.

Рис.1 Источники нейтронов.

Источники нейтронов в активной зоне работающего реактора можно подразделить на четыре группы:

· мгновенные нейтроны, т.е. нейтроны, сопровождающие процесс деления ядер горючего;

· запаздывающие нейтроны — испускаются сильно возбужденными ядрами осколков деления;

· нейтроны активации — испускаются при радиоактивном распаде продуктов некоторых ядерных реакций;

· фотонейтроны — образуются в результате (γ, n)-реакций на некоторых ядрах.

Наибольший вклад в дозу облучения, при работе реактора на мощности, вносят мгновенные нейтроны.

Источники нейтронов. Мгновенные нейтроны образуются практически одновременно с делением ядра. Среднее число мгновенных нейтронов при делении 235 U, 233 U, 239 Pu равно 2,5 ±0,03, 2,47 ± 0,03 и 2,9 ± 0,04 соответственно. Запаздывающие нейтроны образуются в количестве, существенно меньшем (0,002 — 0,007 нейтр./деление), и испускаются некоторыми продуктами деления с периодами полураспада 0,18 — 54,5 с.

Энергетическое распределение мгновенных и запаздывающих нейтронов описывается различными эмпирическими формулами, но чаще формулой:

(1)

где S(En ) — количество нейтронов.

En — энергия нейтронов, МэВ.

В области энергий от 4 до 12 МэВ — наиболее важной с точки зрения радиационной зашиты—спектр нейтронов деления можно описать простой экспонентой:

S(En ) = 1,75 ехр (— 0,776 En ), (2)

погрешность этого соотношения не более 15%.

Для целей радиационной защиты необходимо иметь интегральный спектр нейтронов деления, то есть количество нейтронов в спектре нейтронов деления (1) с энергией, превышающей En :

(3)

Для профилактической работы спектр нейтронов деления (рис. 6.2) и интегральный спектр нейтронов деления (рис. 6.3) представляют в виде таблиц, в которых S(En ) и χ(Εn ) нормированы на единицу. Наиболее вероятная энергия нейтронов деления 0,6 — 0,8 МэВ, а средняя — 2 МэВ, максимальная принимается равной 12 МэВ.

В результате взаимодействия нейтронов, образовавшихся при делении с ядрами элементов, входящих в состав активной зоны (упругое и неупругое рассеяние, поглощение, деление), спектр нейтронов деления (рис. 6.2) деформируется и приобретает вид, показанный на рис. 4. В области энергий, соответствующих группе быстрых нейтронов, он практически не отличается от спектра нейтронов деления, в промежуточной области энергий — это спектр замедляющихся нейтронов, то есть 1/En — спектр, а в тепловой и надтепловой областях энергии — спектр Максвелла. Естественно, что на рис.4 показан принципиальный вид спектра, реальный зависит от состава активной зоны, и информацию о нем, так же как и о спектре нейтронов утечки из активной зоны и их количестве (плотности потока нейтронов на поверхности активной зоны), можно получить из результатов расчета физических характеристик активной зоны.

Рис. 4. Спектр нейтронов в активной зоне ядерного реактора.

1.3 Защитные свойства материалов от нейтронного излучения

Защитные свойства материалов от нейтронного излучения определяются их замедляющей и поглощающей способностью, степенью активации. Быстрые нейтроны наиболее эффективно замедляются веществами с малым атомным номером, такими как графит и водородсодержащие вещества (легкая и тяжелая вода, пластмассы, полиэтилен, парафин). Для эффективного поглощения тепловых нейтронов применяются материалы, имеющие большое сечение поглощения: соединения с бором — борная сталь, бораль, борный графит, карбид бора, а также кадмий и бетон (на лимонитовых и других рудах, содержащих связанную воду).

Вода используется не только как замедлитель нейтронов, но и как защитный материал от нейтронного излучения вследствие высокой плотности атомов водорода. После столкновений с атомами водорода быстрый нейтрон замедляется до тепловой энергии, а затем поглощается средой. При поглощении тепловых нейтронов ядрами водорода по реакции H(n,γ)D, возникает захватное γ-излучение с энергией E =2,23 МэВ. Захватное γ-излучение можно значительно снизить, если применить борированную воду. В этом случае тепловые нейтроны поглощаются бором по реакции B(n,α)Li, а захватное излучение имеет энергию E = 0,5 МэВ. Водяную защиту выполняют в виде заполненных водой секционных баков из стали или других материалов.

Кадмий хорошо поглощает нейтроны с энергией меньше 0,5 эВ. Листовой кадмий толщиной 0,1 см снижает плотность потока тепловых нейтронов в 109 раз. При этом возникает захватное γ-излучение с энергией до 7,5 МэВ. Кадмий не обладает достаточно хорошими механическими свойствами. Поэтому чаще применяют сплав кадмия со свинцом, который наряду с хорошими защитными свойствами от нейтронного и γ-излучений имеет лучшие механические свойства по сравнению с чистым кадмием.

Бетон является основным материалом для защиты от излучений, если масса и размер защиты не ограничиваются другими условиями. Бетон, применяющийся для защиты от излучений, состоит из заполнителей, связанных между собой цементом. В состав цемента в основном входят окислы кальция, кремния, алюминия, железа и легкие ядра, которые интенсивно поглощают γ-излучение и замедляют быстрые нейтроны в результате упругого и неупругого столкновений. Ослабление плотности потока нейтронов в бетоне зависит от содержания воды в материале защиты, которое определяется в основном типом используемого бетона. Поглощение нейтронов бетонной защитой может быть значительно увеличено введением соединения бора в состав материала защиты. Конструкция бетонной защиты может быть монолитной (для больших реакторов) или состоять из отдельных блоков (небольших реакторов).

1 .4 Дозиметрия нейтронного излучения

Процессы взаимодействия нейтронов с веществом определяются энергией нейтронов и атомным составом поглощающей среды. Для регистрации нейтронов используют различные виды вторичных излучений, возникающих в результате ядерных реакций или рассеяния нейтронов на ядрах с передачей им энергии. Тепловые и надтепловые нейтроны регистрируют с использованием реакций 10 В(n, α)7 Li, 6 Li(n, α)3 Н, 3 Не(n, р)3 Н, а также деления тяжелых ядер 235 U и 239 Pu.

Пропорциональные счетчики. Если реакция с бором происходит внутри пропорционального счетчика, то результирующие ядра 4 He и 7 Li, разлетающиеся с энергией соответственно 1,6 и 0,9 МэВ, могут быть легко зарегистрированы. Обычно нейтронные пропорциональные счетчики имеют достаточно толстые стенки, счетчики могут заполняться газом BF3 , в котором 10 B входит в молекулу. Тонкий слой твердого вещества B4 C может наноситься на внутреннюю поверхность стенки счетчика(в этом случае в ионизации участвует только одна из частиц, так как другая поглощается стенкой). Поэтому камеры с газовым заполнением BF3 более эффективны, чем камеры с твердым слоем B4 C.Отметим, что вероятность захвата быстрых нейтронов ядром 10 B очень мала. Только тепловые нейтроны захватываются с высокой вероятностью. С другой стороны быстрые нейтроны становятся тепловыми при замедлении. Детектор тепловых нейтронов можно превратить в детектор быстрых, окружив его слоем замедлителя нейтронов, веществом с большим содержанием водорода (например, парафин). Такие"всеволновые" детекторы выполняются из 2— 3 водородсодержащих коаксиальных цилиндрических слоев с внутренним расположением борного счетчика или из нескольких полиэтиленовых шаров различных диаметров — замедлителей, надеваемых на детектор так, чтобы он находился в центре шара.

Рис5 Всеволновой счетчик

Конструкция всеволнового счетчика, который может регистрировать нейтроны в диапазоне от 0,1 до 5 МэВ с постоянной эффективностью, показана на рис5. Счетчик состоит из двух цилиндрических парафиновых блоков (1), вставленных один в другой (диаметр 380 и 200 мм, длина 500 и 350 мм соответственно), между которыми находится экран (2), состоящий из слоя B2 O3 . Экран и внешний цилиндрический парафиновый блок предназначены для уменьшения чувствительности всеволнового счетчика к рассеянным нейтронам, поступающим не с правого торца счетчика. Внутри парафиновых блоков устанавливают пропорциональный борный счетчик (4), который с правого торца закрывается кадмиевым колпачком (5) для экранировки от прямого пучка тепловых нейтронов. Для увеличения эффективности регистрации медленных нейтронов в торцевой части парафина по окружности высверлено несколько отверстий (3). Быстрые нейтроны проникают в парафин, где они замедляются и регистрируются счетчиком. При плотности потока нейтронов1 нейгр /(см2 ·с) скорость счета всеволнового счетчика достигает 200отсч /мин Эффективность борного счетчика h, зависящую от длины рабочего объема l , энергиинейтронов En и давления газа p , можно определить по формуле:

η = 1 - ехр(-0,07 рl /En 1/2 ) (4)

При p = 0,1 МПа, l = 20см, En = 0,0253 эВ, η = 0,9

Камеры деления. Для регистрации нейтронов любых энергий можно использовать деление тяжелых ядер в камерах деления, например 235 U и 239 Pu. Сечения деления для них изменяются незначительно в большом диапазоне энергий нейтронов и имеют наибольшие значения по сравнению с сечениями деления для других радионуклидов. Во избежание самопоглощения продуктов деления, делящееся вещество наносится тонким слоем (0,02 — 2 мг/см2 ) на электроды ионизационной камеры, заполненной аргоном(0,5 — 1,0 МПа).

Рис. 6. Камера деления с высокой эффективностью.

По сравнению с борными счетчиками камеры деления более долговечны и могут работать при высокой температуре. Эффективность камер деления с 235 U равна 0,6%, те значительно ниже, чем для борных счетчиков. Для увеличения чувствительности камер деления к нейтронному излучению необходимо увеличить поверхность электродов камеры. Камера деления с высокой эффективностью имеющая четыре концентрических алюминиевых электрода показана на рис6.

Сцинтилляционные счетчики. Для регистрации быстрых нейтронов широко используют сцинтилляционные счетчики со специальными сцинтилляторами. Быстрые нейтроны при упругом рассеянии на ядрах водорода передают им большую часть своей энергии которая тратится на ионизацию водородсодержащей среды. Поэтому органические сцинтилляторы, содержащие большое количество атомов водорода(например стильбен), обладают высокой эффективностью регистрации быстрых нейтронов.

Рис. 7. Сцинтилляционный счетчик нейтронов с шаровым замедлителем.

Для измерения потока нейтронов в интервале энергий от 10-2 до 107 эВ можно применить сцинтилляционный детектор (рис. 7), который состоит из ФЭУ(4) с экраном(5), предусилителя (6), световода (3), сцинтиллятора 6 LiI(Eu) (2) со сменными полиэтиленовыми шаровыми замедлителями (1).

Трековые дозиметрические детекторы. В дозиметрии нейтронного излучения нашли применение твердотельные трековые детекторы в чувствительном объеме которых регистрируется число треков заряженных частиц. Дозиметрическое применение этих детекторов основано на связи числа треков с дозой излучения.

Активационный метод дозиметрии нейтронов В результате ядерныхреакций,протекающих под действием нейтронов, образовываются радиоактивные ядра При использовании активационного метода измеряют наведенную активность детектора А, равную

(5)

где λ — постоянная распада образующихся радиоактивных ядер;

Nt —число радиоактивных ядер в единице объема детектора при его облучении в течение времени t;

n— число ядер нуклида мишени в единице объема;

φ(E). dE — плотность потока нейтронов, имеющих энергию в интервале от E до E+dE;

σ(Ε) — сечение активации для нейтронов с энергией E в веществе детектора. Пределы интегрирования E1 и E2 соответствуют нижней и верхней границам энергии в спектре нейтронов.

Детекторы нейтронов прямой зарядки. Для измерения плотности потока нейтронов в активной зоне реактора применяются детекторы нейтронов прямой зарядки(ДПЗ). Эти детекторы основаны на первичных эффектах: захвате нейтронов и β-распаде(захват нейтронов сопровождается мгновенным испусканием γ-излучения и эмиссией из возбужденных ядер высокоэнергетических электронов); выходе электроновотдачи и фотоэлектронов при поглощении внешнего γ-излучения.

Индивидуальные дозиметры нейтронов.

В качестве примера приведём индивидуальный аварийный дозиметр.Для определения доз при аварийных облучениях персонала, обслуживающего ядерные реакторы, критические сборки и другие системы, где имеется вероятность непредвиденных превышений критической массы, разработаны термолюминесцентные итрековые детекторы нейтронов, входящие в комплект индивидуальных аварийных дозиметров ГНЕЙС, рис 8.

Рис 8 Конструкция аварийного дозиметра β-, γ- и нейтронного излучения ГНЕЙС

1 — бета-дозиметр, 2 — крышка кассеты индивидуального дозиметра ГНЕЙС, 3 — булавка, 4 — целлулоид, 5 — фотография с инициалами и фамилией, 6—дозиметр промежуточных и быстрых нейтронов, 7 — дозиметры γ~излучения, 8 — дозиметры тепловых нейтронов, 9 — корпус кассеты индивидуального дозиметра ГНЕЙС.

1.5 Влияние нейтронного излучения на организм человека

Внешнее облучениевсего тела, с учетом его вклада в индивидуальные и коллективныедозы является основным на АЭС. Его источники: это γ-излучение ядерного реактора,технологических контуров, оборудования с радиоактивными средами и любые поверхности,загрязненные радиоактивными веществами. Существенно меньший вклад во внешнееоблучение персонала АЭС вносят нейтронное и β-излучение. Человек в процессе своей жизни подвергается облучению как от естественных (природных), так и от искусственных (созданных человеком в результате его деятельности) источников ионизирующих излучений. Из искусственных источников радиации наибольшее значение имеет облучение в процессемедицинских процедур (рентгенодиагностика, рентгено- и радиотерапия). Средняяиндивидуальная доза за счет этого источника составляет около 1,4 мЗв в год. Облучениенаселения за счет глобальных радиоактивных выпадений, после прекращения ядерныхиспытаний в атмосфере в 1963 г. стали уменьшаться, и годовые дозы составили 7% дозы отестественных источников в 1966 г., 2% в 1969 г., 1 % в начале 80-х годов. Следует отметить,что телезритель у цветного телевизора получает среднюю годовую дозу около 0,25 мЗв, чтосоставляет 25% естественного фона.

Эксплуатация АЭС при нормальных режимах приводит к средней эффективнойэквивалентной дозе персонала промышленных реакторов равной 7,5 — 10 мЗв/год, а длянаселения, проживающего вблизи АЭС к средней дозе 0,002—0,01 мЗв/год.

Эти цифры отражают ситуацию при нормальной эксплуатации АЭС. Однако всегдасуществует опасность аварий, последствия которых могут привести к значительно большимпоражениям населения. Возможные величины этих поражений иллюстрируют последствияаварии на Чернобыльской АЭС.

Первое наблюдение установило, что при воздействии ионизирующего излучения на клетку поглощение ничтожного количества энергии может давать значительный биологический эффект. Например, смертельная доза ионизирующего излучения для млекопитающих равна 10 Гр. Поглощенная энергия соответствующая этой дозе повышает температуру человеческого тела не более, чем на 0,00010 C. Причиной гибели организма обычно является поражение какого-либо одного органа, критического в данной ситуации. В диапазоне доз 3 — 9 Гр критической является кровеносная система. Гибель облученного организма наблюдается на 7 —15 сутки после лучевого воздействия. Поражение кроветворения проявляется и при не смертельных лучевых поражениях. При этом снижается количество тромбоцитов, что является одной из причин кровоточивости.

При увеличении дозы радиации до 10 —100 Гр, организмы погибают на 3 — 5 сутки, то есть тогда, когда "костномозговой синдром" еще не успел развиться. Это происходит из- за того, что выходит из строя другой критический орган — кишечник. Он поражается и при меньших дозах, в диапазоне, когда гибель происходит из-за угнетения кроветворения, но при этом "синдром кишечника" не определяет исхода лучевой болезни, хотя и усугубляет ее тяжесть.

При еще больших дозах радиации (200 —1000 Гр), непосредственной причиной гибели облученного организма является массовое разрушение клеток центральной нервной системы. И если построить кривую зависимости сроков гибели облучаемых организмов от дозы облучения, на ней будут отчетливо наблюдаться три характерных участка, соответствующих диапазонам "костномозговой", "кишечной" и "нервной" форм гибели.

Репродуктивная система более радиоустойчива. Тем не менее, в соответствии с законом Бергонье и Трибонда производство сперматозоидов (молодых клеток спермы) у мужчин понижается или прекращается при низких дозах. Доза 250 бэр на гонады (половые органы) приводит к временной стерильности на период до года. Для полной стерильности необходима Доза от 500 до 600 бэр.

Доза 170 бэр на женские гонады приводит к стерильности на период 1— 3 года. Полная стерильность наступает при дозе 300-600 бэр, в зависимости от возраста.

Действие ионизирующего излучения на организм условно можно разделить на соматические и генетические. Соматические эффекты проявляются у самого облученного, а генетические — у его потомства. Разнообразные формы проявления поражающего действия радиации на организм называют лучевой болезнью. С другой стороны, многочисленные исследования радиобиологов показали: малые дозы радиации не только не оказывают угнетающего действия, а наоборот, во многих случаях даже стимулируют жизнедеятельность живых систем (гормезес). В частности у млекопитающих наблюдается: ускоренное развитие, повышенная устойчивость к неблагоприятным условиям, увеличение численности потомства и т.д. По мнению некоторых радиобиологов стимулирующее действие малых доз на человека доказано многими исследованиями (радоновые ванны). По их мнению, вся сумма имеющихся фактов единодушно подтверждает, хотя и не доказывает: существует реальный биологический порог действия ионизирующей радиации.

Clipper is a decentralized exchange (DEX) built for self-made traders instead of hedge funds. Clipper was designed to give traders the best prices anywhere (including fees, slippage and gas) for their small trades (under $10,000) on the pairs they trade the most.

Blockchain technology has given us an amazing number of new projects and widespread innovation. This makes possible the existence of cryptocurrencies and decentralized finance. But recently, many developers have focused on combining decentralized networks and their cross-chain compatibility. If developers are working on a DeFi application on the Ethereum platform, then they may want to expand this application to the Polkadot ecosystem. The same applies to the implementation of DeFi solutions in the Bitcoin blockchain. Clover is a way to fill this gap for greater compatibility when creating and working with blockchains.

Clover Finance was founded in 2020 as a Polkadot blockchain based on Substrate, a web application development framework developed by Parity Technologies, which allows software developers to create decentralized systems. The platform aims to provide an intuitive blockchain infrastructure to reduce the efforts and costs of developers. Clover positions itself as a fundamental level for cross-chain compatibility. Its co-founders, Viven Kirby, Norelle Ng and Burak Kecheli, strive to make the cryptocurrency universe more decentralized.

Clover describes itself as a blockchain operating system. It contains a storage layer, a smart contract layer, a Defi protocol layer and an eApp layer that work in unison to achieve the goal of blockchain interaction.

Let's talk about these levels in more detail

Storage Layer: The storage protocol layer provides distributed storage of DApp data.

Smart Contract Layer: This layer supports the internetwork deployment of smart contracts with a Web 3.0 compatible API. Existing Web 3.0 decentralized applications can be migrated to Clover without any changes.

Defi Protocol Layer: This layer supports various basic DeFi protocols, such as exchange, credit, insurance and others protocols. Developers will also be able to create their own additional DeFi protocols.

eApp Layer: This layer supports the transition from DApp (decentralized applications) to eApp (external applications). Developers can easily create and deploy their own external applications on Clover without the need for other virtual machines or network bandwi dth

Clover provides a framework for creating decentralized applications that work with multiple blockchains. Previously, decentralized applications were developed and used on the Ethereum network. The Clover system will simplify the use of DeFi for developers and ordinary users. Developers strive to ensure the spread of cryptocurrencies and DeFi wherever possible in order to attract a completely new billion-dollar audience of those who are not yet using the new decentralized economy.

Clover Finance was launched on Coinbase Pro in July 2021. The platform has reported on some of the advantages of Clover:

Compatibility with the Ethereum Virtual Machine: Its compatibility with Ethereum, the creator and developer of DeFi, is a huge advantage.

No gas fees for End Users: Removing gas fees for end users and redistributing them improves adoption and simplifies DeFi for new users.

Optimized cross-chain switching: with the help of the Clover application and wallet, users can send, receive, wrap (that is, bring bitcoin and ether to the ERC-20 token format) and deploy cryptocurrencies across all chains.

CLV is really suitable for cross-chain use, as its unique two-way bridge allows you to combine EVM-based Clover addresses and Polkadot-based Clover addresses. This is an incredibly useful development, especially because the Clover app and wallet can connect and collect information from user accounts on multiple dApps. This makes it easier for DeFi users to keep track of their numerous wallets, accounts, and assets.

The CLV token is a universal asset in the Clover Finance ecosystem. It is used as a management token that allows the community to vote for system updates. CLV can also be used to pay transaction fees on the platform. Here are some more options for using the token on the network:

Validation: Users can stake their CLVS to validate transactions in the network validator infrastructure.

Access to the budget: Developers can apply for financing of their projects from the budget.

Purpose: CLV owners can assign their own node validators using one-click deployment.

Deployment: You can use CLV to deploy smart contracts and decentralized applications on Clover.