The marmots are a genus, ''Marmota'', of squirrels. There are 14 species in this genus.

Marmots are generally large ground squirrels. Those most often referred to as marmots tend to live in mountainous areas such as the Alps, northern Apennines, Eurasian steppes, Carpathians, Tatras, and Pyrenees in Europe and northwestern Asia; the Rocky Mountains, Black Hills, Cascades, and Sierra Nevada in North America; and the Deosai Plateau in Pakistan and Ladakh in India. The groundhog, however, is also properly called a marmot, while the similarly sized but more social prairie dog is not classified in the genus ''Marmota'' but in the related genus ''Cynomys''.

Marmots typically live in burrows (often within rockpiles, particularly in the case of the Yellow-bellied marmot), and hibernate there through the winter. Most marmots are highly social, and use loud whistles to communicate with one another, especially when alarmed.

Marmots mainly eat greens and many types of grasses, berries, lichens, mosses, roots and flowers.

Species

The following is a list of all ''Marmota'' species recognized by Thorington and Hoffman (2005). They divide marmots into two subgenera.

Genus ''Marmota'' – marmots

*Subgenus ''Marmota''

**Alpine Marmot, ''Marmota marmota'' found only in Europe in the Alps, northern Apennines in Italy, Carpathians, Tatras, and reintroduced in the Pyrenees

**Gray Marmot or Altai Marmot, ''Marmota baibacina'' found in Siberia

**Bobak Marmot, ''Marmota bobak'' found from central Europe to central Asia

**Alaska Marmot, Brower's Marmot, or Brooks Range Marmot, ''Marmota broweri'' found in Alaska

**Black-capped Marmot, ''Marmota camtschatica'' found in eastern Siberia

**Long-tailed Marmot, Golden Marmot, or Red Marmot, ''Marmota caudata'' found in central Asia

**Himalayan Marmot or Tibetan Snow Pig, ''Marmota himalayana'' found in the Himalayas

**Menzbier's Marmot, ''Marmota menzbieri'', found in central Asia

**Groundhog, Woodchuck or Whistlepig, ''Marmota monax'' found in most of North America

**Tarbagan Marmot, Mongolian Marmot, or Tarvaga, ''Marmota sibirica'' found in Siberia

*Subgenus ''Petromarmota''

*Hoary Marmot, ''Marmota caligata'' found in northwestern North America

**Yellow-bellied Marmot, ''Marmota flaviventris'' found in southwestern Canada and western United States

**Olympic Marmot, ''Marmota olympus'' endemic to the Olympic Peninsula, Washington, USA

**Vancouver Island Marmot, ''Marmota vancouverensis'' endemic to Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada

Additionally, four extinct species of marmot are recognized from the fossil record:

''Marmota arizonae'', Arizona, U.S.

''Marmota minor'', Nevada, U.S.

''Marmota robusta'', China

''Marmota vestus'', Nebraska, U.S.

History and etymology

Marmots have been known since antiquity. Research by the French ethnologist Michel Peissel makes a claim that the story of "gold-digging ants" reported by the Ancient Greek historian Herodotus, who lived in the 5th century BC, was founded on the golden Himalayan Marmot of the Deosai plateau and the habit of local tribes such as the Minaro to collect the gold dust excavated from their burrows.

The etymology of the term "marmot" is uncertain. It may have arisen from the Gallo-Romance prefix marm-, meaning to mumble or murmur (an example of onomatopoeia). Another possible origin is post-classical Latin, ''mus montanus'', meaning "mountain mouse".

Beginning in 2010, Alaska celebrates February 2 as "Marmot Day", a holiday intended to observe the prevalence of marmots in that state and take the place of Groundhog Day.

Human consumption

Marmots have been eaten for centuries in the native cuisine of Mongolia, where they are called ''tarvaga'', and in particular are used to make a dish called ''boodog''. Hunting of marmots for food is typically done in seasons and time periods when the animals are heavier.

Carriers of plague

Pneumonic plague can be spread by marmots.

Examples of species

References

External links

The Marmot Burrow

International Marmot Network

Category:Ground squirrels * Category:Mammals of North America Category:Mammals of Europe Category:Mammals of Asia

als:Murmeltier ar:مرموط az:Marmot be:Суркі be-x-old:Суркі bar:Murmandl bo:ཕྱི་ལྦགས། br:Moregan bg:Мармоти ca:Marmota cv:Сăвăр cs:Svišť da:Murmeldyr de:Murmeltiere nv:Dilchaʼ el:Μαρμότα es:Marmota eo:Marmoto eu:Marmota fr:Marmotte hr:Svisci io:Marmoto id:Marmot it:Marmota he:מרמיטה jv:Marmut ka:ზაზუნა kk:Суырлар lv:Murkšķis lt:Švilpikai hu:Mormota mn:Тарвага nl:Marmotten ja:マーモット no:Murmeldyr pl:Marmota pt:Marmota ru:Сурки sah:Таарбаҕаннар уустара simple:Marmot fi:Murmelit sv:Murmeldjur tr:Marmot uk:Бабак vec:Marmota zh:旱獺

Sir Michael Gideon Marmot (born 26 January 1945) is professor of Epidemiology and Public Health at University College London.

Career

Michael Marmot was born in London, England. He moved to Australia as a young child and graduated in Medicine from the University of Sydney, Australia, in 1968. He earned a MPH in 1972 and PhD in 1975 from the University of California, Berkeley. He became Fellow of the (English) Faculty of Public Health Medicine in 1989 and was appointed Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health at UCL in 1985. This became a joint Chair, held at UCL and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, in 1990. He became Director of the International Centre for Health and Society (now the International Institute for Society and Health) that he established at UCL in 1994. He was a member of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution and awarded an MRC Professorship in 1995. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1996. In 2004 he was awarded the Balzan Prize for Epidemiology. He was Chair of the WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health from 2005 to 2008.

Research

He conducted ground-breaking studies of health disease and stroke, comparing Japanese people in Japan (high stroke rates, low heart attack rates) with those in Hawaii and California, where, especially in later generations, the disease patterns became reversed after adopting lifestyle, stress and diet changes. He has more recently led the Whitehall Studies of British civil servants, again focusing on heart disease and other disease patterns. His department includes the MRC National Survey of Health & Development, a longitudinal study directed by Professor Michael Wadsworth of people born in Britain in 1946 and followed up since. There are 120 other academic staff in the department.

He has worked closely with the Office for National Statistics and its predecessor the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys, and especially with Abraham Manie Adelstein and John Fox.

Sir Michael Marmot has a special interest in inequalities in health and their causes and has been a government advisor in seeking to identify ways to mitigate them. He served on the Scientific Advisory Group of the Independent Inquiry into Inequalities in Health chaired by Sir Donald Acheson, the former UK chief medical officer. This reported in November 1998. In 2000 he was knighted by Her Majesty The Queen for services to Epidemiology and understanding health inequalities. Internationally acclaimed, Professor Marmot is a Vice President of the Academia Europaea, a Foreign Associate Member of the Institute of Medicine (IOM), and the Chair of the Commission on Social Determinants of Health set up by the World Health Organization in 2005. He won the Balzan Prize for Epidemiology in 2004, gave the Harveian Oration in 2006 and won the William B. Graham Prize for Health Services Research in 2008. In 2008 he became Doctor Honoris Causa of the Université Libre de Bruxelles.

In ''THE STATUS SYNDROME: How your social standing directly affects your health and life expectancy'', he argues that socio-economic position is an important determinant for health outcomes. This result holds even if we control for the effects of income, education and risk factors (such as smoking) on health. The causal pathway Marmot identifies concerns the psychic benefits of "being in control" of one's life. Autonomy in this sense is related to our socio-economic position. Based on comparative studies, Marmot argues that we can make our society more participatory and inclusive in order to increase overall public health.

In 2008, Marmot appeared in ''UNNATURAL CAUSES: Is Inequality Making Us Sick?'', an American documentary series examining the social determinants of health that drew heavily from Marmot's work on the Whitehall Studies.

On 6 November 2008, Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced that the Secretary of State for Health Alan Johnson had asked Sir Michael Marmot to chair a Review of Health Inequalities in England to inform policy making to address health inequalities from 2010. The Review was announced at the launch of the Commission on Social Determinants of Health report ''Closing the Gap in a Generation'', and is due to report in December 2009.

The European Office of the WHO is commissioning a European Review on the Social Determinants of Health and the Health Divide. The Review will be conducted by a Consortium of experts/institutions chaired by Professor Sir Michael Marmot.

The purpose of the review will be to identify the relevance of the findings of the WHO Commission on the Social Determinants of Health (CSDH), the Strategic Review of Health Inequalities in England post 2010 (Marmot Review), and other new evidence to the European context and specificity and translate these into policy proposals.

It will feed into the development of a renewed European Regional Health Policy and contribute to specific aspects of the policy especially where it relates to the social determinants of health. For more information see: http://www.marmotreview.org/european-review-of-hi/description.aspx

Personal life

Sir Michael Marmot has two sons and a daughter and lives in Hampstead, London.

References

External links

Profile at University College London

Whitehall Study II at UCL site

Commission on the Social Determinants of Health

Strategic Review of Health Inequalities in England Post-2010

Profile at The Marmot Review

Fair Society, Healthy Lives: A Strategic Review of Health Inequalities in England Post-2010

Professor Sir Michael Marmot, Chair, Marmot Review

Category:1945 births Category:British academics Category:British Jews Category:Jewish scientists Category:Living people Category:People from London Category:Knights Bachelor

de:Michael Marmot

The graham cracker (, or ; also graham wafer) was developed in 1829 in Bound Brook, New Jersey, by Presbyterian minister Rev. Sylvester Graham. Though called a cracker, it is sweet rather than salty and so it is a cookie—digestive biscuits are the closest approximation. The true graham cracker is made with graham flour, a combination of fine-ground white flour and coarse-ground wheat bran and germ. Graham crackers are often used for making s'mores and pie crusts.

History

The Graham cracker was originally marketed as "Dr. Graham's Honey Biskets" and was conceived of as a health food as part of the Graham Diet, a regimen to suppress what he considered unhealthy carnal urges, the source of many maladies according to Graham. Reverend Graham would often lecture about the adverse effects of masturbation or "self-abuse" as it was commonly called at the time One of his many theories was that one could curb one's sexual appetite by eating bland foods. Another man who held this belief was Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, the inventor of the corn flakes cereal.

Modern use

Many modern "graham crackers" are made of the refined, bleached white flour to which the Rev. Graham was implacably opposed. Some modern commercial graham crackers are no longer considered health food, but have remained popular as a snack food and breakfast cereal with greater amounts of sugar and other sweeteners than in the original recipe, and far less graham flour, often with no whole-wheat flour whatsoever. Cinnamon or chocolate may be added to enhance the flavor of the crackers. Technically, crackers are not really graham crackers unless they are made with graham flour, which is a hard whole-wheat flour in which the constituent bran, germ, and endosperm have been ground separately, the first two coarsely and the third finely. Cinnamon was added for those who did not enjoy the bland taste.

Crust

A graham cracker crust is a style of pie crust made from crushed whole-wheat crackers made from Graham flour, usually flavored and stiffened with butter or vegetable oil. It is the most common crust for cheesecakes. It is increasingly popular for use as a cream pie crust and is imitated by the Oreo-style crusts made from crushed black-cocoa cookies.

See also

Graham Diet

S'more

Digestive biscuit - The British equivalent.

References

External links

"Is it true graham crackers were invented to cure the dread fever of lust?" on The Straight Dope website

Information on Graham Flour and recipes

Bound Brook - Home of the Graham Cracker (describing Rev. Graham as an "eccentric Presbyterian minister" who developed the Graham cracker "to cure the dread fever of lust.")

Category:Crackers (food) Category:1822 introductions Category:Cuisine of the Northeastern United States Category:Foods named after people

Coordinates	35°23′9″N174°1′11″N
name	Alan Alan
birth name	Alan Rabinowitz
birth date	November 1926
occupation	escapologist and magician
signature	}}

Alan Alan (Alan Rabinowitz) (born November 1926) is a retired British escapologist and magician. He originated tricks that have subsequently become familiar features of the repertoire of other performers and he has been honoured by The Magic Circle.

Alan achieved fame through a series of stunts staged for the media. He made headline news in 1949 when a "buried alive" stunt, performed for Pathe News, nearly went wrong. He is credited with devising the burning-rope straitjacket escape, in which he is suspended upside-down from a crane with a length of thick rope doused with petrol, once ignited there is a short time to escape before the rope burns through. He appeared in a number of television magic shows, including ''The Magic of David Copperfield''.. He also "taught" the inmates of Wormwood Scrubs prison how to escape from handcuffs in his performance with a number of other magicians. In more recent years he was seen on Simon Drake's Secret Cabaret.

He was proprietor of Alan Alan's Magic Spot, a magic shop based on Southampton Row, London until its lease expired in the mid 1990s.

Alan's standing and influence in the world of magic was formally recognised in 2006 when The Magic Circle chose him to receive the coveted Maskelyne award for services to British magic.

References

Category:British magicians Category:Living people Category:1926 births