of the United States Good morning. I Don't have any opening statement, but I just figured that it might be a good idea to can in here and get your questions now And then I won't have to tonight at the press party at the White House The president your secretary of defense has said that Syria sponsored and directed the attack against the US Marines in October and many officials in your administration have said Privately that Iran has been behind attacks in Kuwait and in Lebanon My question sir is are we going to retaliate against the governments of Syria or Iran? No, we have taken a position and it is our policy that if this continues We're not there to shoot first or to enter into combat But i'm never going to send our men any place where they wouldn't be allowed to defend themselves And i've it's been our policy that if they are attacked they will defend Now we've seen these instances Of being attacked and we have retaliated as nearly as we can against those who have actually done the attacking and uh We Want no conflict with syria Certainly we're not there to enter into a war and we continue to try and communicate and negotiate with them to Let them know that They'll stop shooting at us. There won't be any problems between us How if Iran is the government of Iran? The ayatollah, homeania is behind some of this How do we convince Iran to stop it? No The best evidence that we have we couldn't go into court and say that the homeania ordered this But what we do know is that a group that has been taking credit for these attacks Uh, I just claim that they're responsible for many of them is a group that seems to be of some size That is definitely with an iranian Uh connection now Whether that's with the government or that they just are iranians and they seem to be Well, they voice things that would indicate that they're interested in the kind of a of a holy war They are a sect in the islamic world Mr. President, you said last saturday in your radio address that you would keep the marines in lebanon until that country had internal stability Sir that country respectfully has never had internal stability Isn't that the kind of open-ended commitment That will mean many more marines dying and years and years of an american involvement there No, I think we're making more progress than appears On the surface and the original goal was The withdrawal of the foreign forces And then the reinstitution of the government of lebanon and Helping them as we have to train and raise a force in which they can assume control over their own territory The multinational force they felt was absolutely necessary and they still feel that way to be able to Do some Maintaining of order as they would then have to move out toward their borders once the foreign forces have gone Now this is still the goal still the thing that we're trying to do In janeva there was progress made where even those who were opposing each other within the country the opposing factions Recognized the gemile government and agreed upon that government now The thing of the multinational force what i'm trying to say is there are two ways in which they could be withdrawn One of them would be That we achieve our goal The second would of course would be if there was such a Collapse of of order that there was that it was absolutely certain that there was no solution to the problem There would be no reason for them to stay there Consider withdrawing the marines if it appeared that the gemile government could not extend its authority beyond bay root And could not create some kind of coalition We're getting into hypotheticals now of what situation i'm simply saying that if there was a A complete collapse and there was no possibility of restoring order There would be no purpose in the multinational force But let me call to your attention that it's not just us That all of the nations of the multinational force within a matter of days recently Have reaffirmed Their determination that the mission is sound and that they're That we're all going to stay there Well helen isn't there growing political pressure for you to pull out very fairly soon and aren't we We lost our role as peacemaker and into a role of peacekeeper into a role of escalating violence My question is there are reports that you will pull the troops out Before the political convention of this summer I've seen those reports quoting unnamed sources again. Well, here's a named source and I will tell you now No decision that i'm going to make and anything of this kind Is related To the election or the conventions or anything political as a matter of fact On all major issues. I have reiterated More than once to our cabinet that I don't want to hear the political ramifications of any major issue and on this one There is no harder Job or part of this job Then putting our forces, let me say some place where these young men and women could be endangered and certainly there What we do in that regard is not based on any political consideration You meant of course if I run for reelection You'll know january 29th, won't you Uh, no, Helen. No, there's just no way That political the politics could be considered in an issue of this kind where the lives of Our young people in middle in uniform are involved Yes, and then i'm going to move back there We thought you were supposed to be in a budget meeting this morning, sir Although we're certainly delighted you came to see us instead Does that mean that you've already decided the basics of next year's budget? Will there be a contingency tax as secretary reagan suggested the other day? He seemed pretty solid on it. Well the Canceling of the budget meeting this morning was just for another reason. No, we're not close to any decision These are meetings in which we take up various segments of the budget preliminary Estimates and so forth So they can be handled anytime within the next few days, but with regard to a contingency tax Uh, first of all, I tell you there won't be any tax in 1984 um The thing is that's always been back of the contingency tax And I think this is what don reagan was saying Was that such a tax would only be considered On the basis of getting the spending reductions that we must have This whole matter of Looking only at the deficits out there, and I don't minimize them I've been preaching too long for a quarter of a century now against deficit spending and having these deficits but The deficit is a symptom of the problem A result of the problem The problem is the federal government is taking too big a percentage from the private sector Of the gross national product and the answer to Getting rid of deficits and not running up more deficits Comes with reducing that percentage that the federal government is taking Now if you get to the absolute point in which government cannot be any further reduced in size and cost And then it is still out of line With revenues You would have to make an adjustment on that side, but the If you would look at it Actually when a government is taking too much money Then it has got to do it. It's got to match that with one of two ways It's got to do a tax or it's got to reduce government cost one or the other and Or it's got to borrow I should say Now either way you're taking more money from the private sector whether you borrow it or whether you tax it And the real answer is to cure the disease which is to get government down to a percentage figure That is consistent with having a sound economy Well, sir, a number of economists including mr. Feldstein have said that it's because of your military spending and your tax cuts That we have these deficits and the taxes some kind of taxes are going to be the only answer I think that's been a little out of context also I reviewed the whole situation where mr. Feldstein spoke on that and he made an answer that I think any one of us could have made The answer he was said that well, yes if you If the defense budget budget were reduced and if you hadn't tried this Tax thing reduced revenues for taxes. Yes, the budget would be or the deficit would be smaller He did not say that it would be right to do those things either to increase the tax or to reduce the defense spending Now let me point out that some 20 years ago during the Kennedy administration Defense spending was 47.8 percent of our budget We're under 29 percent With regard to defense spending. We're spending about double on social reforms and social programs As to a percentage of the budget as was spent in those kennedy years. So Just to count the number of dollars You have to look at defense and say what is necessary for our national security And then if there's anything unnecessary, yes eliminated, but if everything there is necessary Sound thinking for our national security, then you can't reduce beyond that point I gotta go back to the back of the room here On arms on arms control. Do you expect to do anything take any positive measure to bring the soviets back to the negotiator? Yes, we're trying we are trying to stay in communication with them and I have to believe that they will come back because it is to their advantage to come back and They stand again as much or more than anyone in Coming back to those talks. So we're still determined on the reduction particularly of nuclear weapons And I am determined that once you start down that path We must come to the realization that those weapons should be outlawed worldwide forever 1984 be a year for a summit perhaps Um Are you trying to ask whether i'm going to be busy in 1984 or not? I uh When the time is right you don't go by what is a time period that is right for it when there is an opportunity and Evidence that we can achieve something that there is an agenda that can go on the table in which some gains can be made for both sides Then you have a summit You don't have one just to say that you've had a summit because too many people get disappointed Now he says that I've taken the last question Could I just volunteer some information though? I'm sorry that none of you maybe one of you that I didn't call on would have asked about Mr. Meese and hunger You were Well, let me just let me just say I'll volunteer instead of an opening statement a closing statement on that I believe the manner in which that's been treated. I great many of you Is totally out of context with the entire interview Which he gave The policy and my own feeling in this administration is that if there is one person in this country hungry That is one too many and we're going to do what we can To alleviate that situation and I happen to know that he feels the same way now One journalist the other night on one of the weekend talk programs Said that we should be out on the front steps of the white house Cheering those private agencies that are providing Meals and providing evening dinners and lunches and so forth To the needy. Well, I may not be out in the front steps shouting But you bet I'm cheering them as a matter of fact This is part of our private initiative program. We've done everything we can to encourage this wherever possible We have supplied surplus foods to them Because even whatever we've done we're doing more To feed the hungry in this country today That has ever been done by any administration more money is being spent more people are getting food stamps All of these things we're doing but This private sector aid is essential also Because where government can justify providing the necessities There is a need also as there's always been to help provide some of those Things over and above bare necessity that make life worth living And the private sector is doing that and doing it splendidly not only with the meals being served but with Food distribution centers and we're helping there also but The that and it all ties into the commission that Some have said well why don't we know that people are hungry? That wasn't the purpose of the commission and i'm waiting now for the january report We get anecdotes that some of you have reported on individual cases or something of people that are hungry What we want to find out is why Is it a lack of or a fault in our distribution system at the government level? Or is it that there are people out there who don't know what's available to them or how to Find their way to a government program? Or is there What i think i've i've covered most of what it could be that they don't know How to find this or that we somehow are bungling Bureaucratic wise in Making out of distribution. This is what we want to find out. Is there something we can resolve? So that there won't be anyone either through their own ignorance of what's available Or through falling between the cracks in a bureaucratic process That we can resolve that and see that there is no one overlooked Who's hungry? You know the statement was that people might be be going through a soup kitchen for Because that they wanted to do it. You you don't think that's that's happening I think was distorted in the reporting of that and that That i'll only take because it was part of my statement that i'm going to run before you ask any more questions That I think this was where there was something out of context for example We know That there are people who are not deserving of welfare who have been getting welfare and one of our jobs has been And not too well understood to weed out Because every time someone who has the means and yet is subsisting on the help of their fellow citizens Is doing that They are reducing our ability to care for the truly needy So we try to clean up there. Well, if that's true there I'm sure that it must be true In these private groups the difference is that these very worthwhile charitable efforts and the part of churches and community groups unions and others that are doing this they have no way to Establish eligibility they can't set a rule and say we're going to quiz you and determine whether They have to accept that people that come and ask for help Must be needful But on the other hand if there are people who will cheat with regard to getting welfare I think it's possible that some might be cheating in this other But that doesn't mean that you close down the private groups because i'm quite sure That the vast majority of the people who seek aid there It is of benefit to them and their families What this answer was pretty all inclusive that they were going there. They had the money They didn't want to pay Oh, we know as we had some anecdotal incidents too that we knew about


Hello everybody, welcome to our talk on Assessing environments against cloud native security best practices We are going to be talking about some work that Pratik and I have both done in the CNCF tag security group Called the cloud native security controls project So really quickly who are we so I'm there on the right. My name is John Zola I am the CTO and co-founder of a company called CISO We do security consulting stuff and I'm based out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania I'm a huge fan of open source and that's why I took up leading the controls project It's kind of the short term for the cloud native security controls catalog I just can consider that the controls project and I'm also a sands instructor So I do some instruction on cloud native and DevOps things Myself Pratik Ljotiya. I'm a cloud security engineer at reddit I'm helping to keep the deployment secure at reddit from a cloud and Kubernetes perspective I'm based out of Denver right near the mountains do a lot of hiking there and Again, I'm a big fan of open source as well and I do contribute to several projects within the CNCF ecosystem I Also run the local CSA Colorado chapter with the cloud security Alliance where we do monthly meet-ups on talks various technical sessions So if you're based in Colorado, please hit me up after this This is a quick look at the things that we'll be talking in the talk today This is the agenda. We'll be dividing this into two phases Phase one is the work which has been already accomplished and completed And the phase two is the work in progress and a road map looking forward So can I do a quick show of hands? How many of you are in the infosec security side of the role a Few and then how many of you are on the compliance and the auditing side a couple. Yeah so You know a lot of us since CNCF tax security started Since everyone has been doing Kubernetes security we've been trying to accomplish a lot of best practices and Coming up with what's the best way to secure our ecosystem the biggest challenge here is how do we convince our auditors and The compliance team that hey, we are actually following the right set of controls and our system is compliant to the security best practices Interestingly, you know ever since tax security Started, you know, we've come up with a lot of white papers and reference architectures as a community So we have like the cloud native security white paper. We have the software supply chain white paper the serverless architecture white paper and We keep getting questions on that. Hey Our you know, we've we are somewhere here in the journey to securing our Kubernetes workloads and Now our compliance team is throwing a lot of buzzwords at us, you know ISO to the ISO 27001 SOC to FedRAMP high-trust PCI and they're asking us to reports on whether our Kubernetes A setup is compliant to that and the challenges, you know These frameworks the language is Challenging and difficult to understand for traditional security engineers and we don't know how best to answer their Answer the compliance team on whether we are following the guidelines and and whether our system is compliant or not so with that, you know, we have the CNCF controls working group where We have a set of goals that you know, we started with To accomplish based on the problems that we've been seeing around this The main idea here is that we want to be assessing the existing controls in the cloud native security space and come up with a standard and unified audit framework which allows Which allows engineers to map their their security architecture to the existing Well established established standards and you know output it in like machine readable format so it can be optimized as well In terms of phase one We have like a standard set of controls mapped out ready and we have mapped it to the NIST 853 standards So, you know the typical old meme where we say hey We have a set of kind of controls and standards, but we need one more like Universal standard which covers all so it's like hey now we have 15 competing standards So that is not Something that we try to do we have not come up with like yet another standard What we've done is we've taken the existing standards Available within the cloud native security Ecosystem such as the security white paper and the supply chain security white paper These are the two major white papers that we've targeted around and the idea is to be a lot of this white papers are in terms of Paragraphs and a lot of information on what you should be doing So the idea is to be providing this in terms of a checklist along with a Categorization of where exactly this fits in your deployment So with the existing work that has already been completed We have a set of roughly 200 controls from these two white papers And this is now available in Excel format You know the format are most of our compliance and all the team loves them as well as the markdown format and each of these controls have a Assurance level and a risk category defined This helps you to prioritize which controls you want to be targeting first And then along with the set of controls we have provided some guidance around the implementation as well so say for example Secrets should not be stored in you know certain Kubernetes resources then the guidance is okay This is what you should be using other you should be using the cool Kubernetes secret objects or More importantly using something like a secrets manager for better security So this is sorry yeah, so this is what the mapping looks like We have the controls defined in terms of categorization whether they fall under like storage Deploy time runtime Securing the artifact itself and they provide details on which white paper they've originated from and what exactly is the control being defined And then the second part there is mapping to the 853 controls so each control in the white paper has been mapped to a set of controls within the NIST framework With details on like you know exact identifier like cm2 si 7 So that compliance and audit team can easily identify which control is being met and which NIST control is actually being met by a security control The idea is to be mapping this to you know a lot more Standards as well, and we are definitely looking for more people to join us Or if you have feedback on the existing work done Then please find us later, and we'd be happy to have you in the working group so that We can have your expertise to map this controls to a lot more frameworks With that John for the face to yeah, thanks pretty so what pretty close talking about was what we've done so far Right what we've done so far is take those white papers and distill it down into a list of about 200 things Did a little cross mapping a little implementation guidance things like that, and that's great That's really just a start so what we have done recently is kicked off phase two of this project Which we expect to take much longer to accomplish and may not ever be finished And we have a kind of a goal statement for this new phase Right we're trying to assess the control status of cloud native environments and share the output and machine readable formats So that means we are looking to automatically perform assessments of runtime environments or To assess the evidence that might have been collected during a build process or things like that and Identify whether or not you are doing things that are recommended in these white papers and The real goal is to make compliance toil at companies that use this framework kind of look like that Right toil is one of my favorite terms, and I use it a lot No nobody want it's not a positive term right it's not a thing that we want to be doing we don't want to toil Right, and so we know that there will be ups and downs there'll be spikes you have an audit You might have some additional toil some paperwork some bureaucracy you might have to do that will always exist But our goal is to kind of reestablish a new baseline towards the bottom there, right? So we want to get compliance toil down to a more manageable level and At the same time improve our security observability of these environments So as we're automating these different bits of evidence Session and reports that we can do we want to know about our environments better We want to actually make the security posture of the companies where we're doing this better And so how do we get compliant the toil related to compliance down and the observability about your security environment up? well, that is by Assessing these controls in your environment and then sharing that I'll put in a machine readable format so we can map together so That's a lot and so we tried to narrow down the scope of this project And I don't think we succeeded because our scope is currently all of the CNCF projects So that's fairly broad right there are a lot of different ways that we're going to be looking at Implementing this and we're in the very early stages of that. This is what our project looks like right now We manage everything in open as you can expect for a CNCF tag group to do we have some things done some things in progress and Something still to do we have a lot of design work ahead of us and implementation Our goal is to begin doing a few different proof of concepts of this assessment and build on the shoulders of others and to also Collaborate with other projects are lots of projects within the CNCF that are doing different levels of this sort of an assessment And then there are projects outside of the CNCF which are assessing CNCF projects for this sort of a work Our goal is not to reinvent the wheel. We want to go to where that work is happening and improve it and make it better That will likely Result in us pushing some of our changes upstream into different frameworks those frameworks could be other tools It could actually be other compliance frameworks themselves So working where if you can see you probably can't see that but on there There's things like collaborate with the CIS collaborate with CSA collaborate with NIST There's a lot of different collaborations that we're doing on the what the benchmarks and the frameworks themselves to continually make those better as Well as assessing these runtime tools these CNCF projects at runtime for Compliance or evidence or things along those lines So that's pretty much the story. That's where we're going Here is our call to action So if you are interested in collaborating and doing any of this sort of work I'd suggest going to the CNCF tag security issue 845. That is where we are tracking all of this phase to work There's everything you need to know in that issue regarding when we meet how we meet we meet on a standard zoom chat We have a Channel in the CNCF slack tag security controls So feel free to jump in that and ask any questions that you have And there is a talk that I wanted to give a shout out to that is going to be happening on Thursday at 11 a.m This is if anyone has anyone heard of guac This was just kind of released. All right. Yeah, just a couple. This was just kind of released I think Google did a blog post on it recently and there's been a few others It's a it's another tool one of the collaborations that we have and something that we see as a potential place to identify Whether the evidence collected is the evidence required for an environment and if people are following these best practices So definitely check that talk out. It's going to be interesting and they're gonna have a lot more than 10 minutes to talk with you All about that project That's it for this lightning talk. Were there any questions from the group? Yeah, can I get a microphone up here? Thank you. Hello Thank you for this talk. I think this is the work that you both are doing is very relevant to the work that We have also been doing in the policy work group Because what we did last year, this is the community's policy work group is we published a white paper on policy management and you know, how you represent best practices as policies and Get to a more desired configuration state, etc Right and then this year what we have started embarking on is how do you apply that to achieve business goals such as regulatory compliance, right? So I think that intersects very well with what you are doing So we should definitely chat So we have a maintainer track On Thursday where we are actually going to be talking about our thoughts on how to apply that to compliance, so So let's collaborate. I think that's all I'm saying. Yeah, that sounds great 100% Yeah, we've been finding as we talk more about this There's a lot of people working on this and I'm not interested in 15 new solutions to this one problem I would much rather have everybody kind of piling on in one area kind of like we did with Kubernetes Lots of people collaborating and making Kubernetes better. Let's make this this solving this problem So are you are you doing this in the context of any specific work group or any? Tag security Yeah, so at the CNCF level kind of broader because the policy work group is a sub Yeah, it's under the severe the same groups. Okay, so let's talk. Thank you. Yeah, 100%. Thank you Great, I think we might have time for one more question one more. All right anybody else Yeah, like that just one second It would seem likely that there are situations where There are multiple Configurations at the nuts and bolts level which could satisfy a higher level vaguer compliance How do you handle those do you like say these are the three ways you can do it or do you pick one and then my other question is is Versions are constantly changing you have to like redo this every time a new version of one of your covered projects comes out I feel sorry for you. Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of work to be done here So there's not only versions of the software that we're assessing and the software we're using to do those assessments But there's also versions of the white papers that we're basing these assessments off of so the cloud native security white paper has version One and version two out and version three is in the works So we are one of the other things that we're doing is care and feeding for this mapping that we've already done and we have version One done we have version two In review we also have feedback on version one in review And we are working with the version three of the white paper as well to to collaborate with that So this version is the white paper versions of the software So all everything is version pinned as far as those assessments go And then your first question was the white papers are necessarily broad There may be many ways to accomplish the control that's defined in those white papers. How do we do it? Well? We don't we don't choose we don't pick This is the only way to do it We're not kind of that opinionated instead. We're saying there are many ways to do it This is one of them this and add another way to assess Compliance and there are likely going to be lots of ways that you could achieve a compliance that this project would not identify as Necessarily compliant, so we're not going to be making a compliant not compliance assessment. It's more so Likely compliant or compliant or we don't know right so we're gonna start with a very like uncertain assessment to start Yeah, yeah, that's so that's where the mappings and things like that come in and that gets really difficult I'll just say that there's a lot of work going on right now in the mapping space because different organizations perform mappings differently So we did a mapping to 853 CIS does a lot of mapping CSA does mapping and the methods that those mappings follow are all different so There's like composability. There's set operations lots of different ways that mappings could be accomplished and how strong those mappings are Depends So that's kind of just where we are as an industry. So great. Thanks everybody


Welcome to this deeper dive into genomic context methods. The goal of genomic context methods is to identify functional associations between genes, that is, which genes work together, based on nothing but a collection of genomes. These methods are included in the string database, which you can learn more about in this brief introduction to the string database. The first type of genomic context method to be developed was based on gene neighbourhood. The idea is that in prokaryotes you have so-called operons where you have multiple protein products being encoded by a single polycystronic transcript. They can be identified by looking for runs of genes and genomes, that is, a set of genes sitting next to each other being transcribed in the same direction. The problem is that this can easily happen by random chance. Genomes sit next to each other in the genome and there is a 50-50 chance of two neighbouring genes pointing in the same direction. One way to address this is to look for intergenic distances. If two genes sit far from each other, there might be a promoter in between and they may not be an operon. Conversely, if two genes sit very close to each other, like in the lower example, there is no space for a promoter and they almost have to be an operon. The other option is to look for evolutionary conservation of the operons. That is, look at draws a number of different genomes and see if it is evolutionarily conserved over long distances that these genes sit together in runs. You can also look for bi-directional promoters. That is, instead of looking for just genes pointing in the same direction, you can look for divergent transcription of two genes that sit next to each other. In this case, you may have a single promoter in between that regulates both. Very often what you see is that you have on one side a transcription factor and on the other side other targets. And these form a feedback loop where the transcription factor regulates both its own expression and the other target genes. Interestingly, this kind of bi-directional promoter unit is also seen in eukaryotes, not just in prokaryotes. A completely different type of genomic context method is the gene fusion method. The idea is that if you have two genes in one organism, sitting, encoded in completely different places in the genome, possibly even on different chromosomes, you can have a gene fusion event happen and have a single fusion gene like this. The fusion gene will encode a fusion protein which will typically be a multi-domain protein. The problem is again, fusions can happen by random chance even though it's much less common than for gene neighborhood. But more importantly, they can stem from annotation errors. Especially in eukaryotes where you have entrance, you can easily accidentally fuse two neighboring genes and think that it is a fusion gene. When biologically it is in fact not. One way to address that is to look at multiple species and see if you can find the same fusion protein in not just one genome, but multiple genomes. And even better, you can look at this in combination with a species tree and see if it's just one group of genomes that have this fusion protein or whether you have in fact had multiple independent fusion events happen between the same two genes. The problem is that fusions are relatively rare events and observing multiple independent fusions of the same two genes is therefore even more rare. The last method I want to cover is phylogenetic profiling. The idea is that you can look at the presence-absence patterns of genes like this where you have the red, the yellow and the green and each row corresponds to a different genome. If like here they have identical presence-absence profiles or similar presence-absence profiles, you can infer that they likely work together in a functional unit. So what you do is to calculate profile similarity which could for example be done using the GerCard index. You can gain even more power by making use of the sequence similarity by not just having a simple presence-absence profile, but instead calculating a best hit profile where you quantify how similar is the best hit for this gene in each other genome in your database. And then calculate the Pearson correlation coefficient instead of the GerCard index for these profiles. In either case, you have the problem of genome redundance. That is, you can have many very similar genomes, for example, different strains of the same species being sequenced. And these are of course evolutionarily dependent, meaning that they are not independent observations. And you can easily get very similar profiles just because of a gene being present in one species and not anywhere else. One way to address this is by using tree-based methods. What you do is a gain to take a species tree and put it next to the profiles. And then instead of just counting how many genomes have each gene and how good is the overlap, you can quantify the number of independent evolutionary events in terms of gene losses or gene gains that are needed to explain the similarity. Problem is, this does not address what I call lifestyle similarity. It does address evolutionary similarity, but it doesn't address that for example intracellular parasites will tend to have very similar profiles just because they lose the same set of genes that they no longer need because they steal metabolites from the host. For this reason, String instead uses the SVD-Fi algorithm. We first calculate a best-hit matrix quantifying how good is the best hit for each gene in the genome of interest in every other genome in String. And then use singular value decomposition to calculate a reduced latent space in which we calculate peers and correlation coefficients. That way we're effectively compressing the genomes that are very similar regardless of whether it's because of them being different strains of the same species or them being, for example, intracellular parasites. I want to end on a real example. Imagine you're interested in this particular gene in streptomyces. You can search across all the different genomes and find the best hit and you really only find a good hit in one specific other genome. You can go and do the same search for all the other genes in your genome of interest and rank these profiles by how similar they are to the query gene originally. That way you can get a rank list of genes like this where you see that the query gene was a putative secreted cellulase and most of the other genes are also putative secreted enzymes that break down sugar bonds plus a couple of likely transcriptional regulators or DNA binding proteins that likely regulate the expression of all the others on the list. It turns out that in this specific case there's not much putative about it. This is the cellular zone. It's a set of extracellular enzymes that are secreted by cells in order to break down cellulose outside the cell into smaller sugar units that can be imported into the cells and then metabolized further. That's all I wanted to say about genomic context methods. If you want to learn more about how they are integrated with other types of evidence in the string database, go have a look at this presentation. Thanks for your attention.


CHAPTER XXX It was near midnight, Raphael had been sitting some three hours in Miriam's inner chamber, waiting in vain for her return, to recover if possible, his ancestral wealth to convey it, without a day's delay, to Cyrene, and if possible, to persuade the poor old Jewess to accompany him, and there to soothe, to guide, perhaps to convert her was his next purpose, and all events, with or without his wealth, to flee from that accursed city, and to be counted impatiently the slow hours and minutes, which detained him in an atmosphere, which seemed reeking with innocent blood, black with the lowering curse of an avenging God. More than once, unable to bear the thought, he roasted apart, and leave his wealth behind, but he was check again, by the thought of his own past life. How had he added his own sin to the great heap of Alexandrian wickedness? How had he tempted others, pampered others in evil? Good God, how had he not only done evil with all his might, but had pleasure in those who did the same? And now, now he was reaping the fruit of his own devices. For years, past merely to please his lust of power, Miss Anthropic scorn, he had been malting that wicked, or rusty's, wicketer, than he was even by his own base, will and nature, and his puppet had avenged itself upon him. He had prompted him to ask Hypat his hand. He had laid half in sport, half an envy of her excellence, that foul plot against the only human being whom he loved, and he had destroyed her. He and not Peter was the murderer of Hypatia. True, he had never met her death. No, but had he not meant for her worse than death. He had never foreseen. No, but only because he did not choose to foresee.  Who can, and who dare, even if he could withdraw the sacred veil from those bitter agonies of inward shame and self-approach, made all the more intense by his clear and undoubting knowledge that he was forgiven? What dread of punishment, what blank despair could have pierced that great heart so deeply as did the thought that the God whom he had hated and defied had returned him good for evil and rewarded him not according to his inquitities? That discovery, as Ezekiel of old, had warned his forefathers, filled up the cup of his self-loathing, to have found at last the hated and dreaded name of God, and found that it was love, to possess Victoria, a living human likeness, however imperfect of that God, and to possess her in a home, a duty of purpose, a fresh clear life of righteous labor, perhaps a final victory, that was his punishment, that was the brand of cane upon his forehead, and he felt it greater than he could bear. But at least there was one thing to be done, where he had sinned, there he must make amends not as propetation, not even as a restitution, but simply as a confession of the truth, which he had found, and as his purpose shaped itself he longed and prayed that Mary might return, and make it possible. And Maryam did return. He heard her pass slowly through the outer room, learn from the girls who was within, order them out of the apartments, close the outer door upon them, at last she entered and said quietly, Welcome I have expected you, you could not surprise old Maryam, the tariff told me last night, that you would be here.   Your son? Yes, my son, safe at last, mine at last, I can prove it now, the son of my womb, though not the son of my vows, and she laughed hysterically. My child, my hair, for whom I have toiled and hoarded for three and thirty years, quick, here are my keys, and that cabinet are all my papers, all I have is yours.  Go quick, take your riches and away, no, stay one moment, just one little moment that the poor old wretch may feast her eyes, with the sight of her darling once more before she dies. Before you die, your son, God of my fathers, what is the meaning of all this, Miriam? This morning I was the son of Ezra, the merchant of Antioch. His son in hair, his son in hair, he knew all at last, we told him on his deathbed, I swear that we told him, and we adopted you. We, who, his wife and I, he craved for a child, the old miser, and we gave him one, a better one than ever came of his family, but he loved you, accepted you, though he did know all. He was afraid of being laughed at after he was dead, afraid of having it known that he was childless, the old dotard. No, he was right, trued you in that, after all. Who was my father, then, interrupted Rayfiel and utter bewilderment? The old woman laughed a laugh so long and wild that Rayfiel shuddered, sit down at your mother's feet, sit down, just to please the poor old thing. Even if you do not believe her, just play at being her child, her darling, for a minute before she dies and she will tell you all, perhaps there is time yet. And he sat down, what if this incarnation of all wickedness were really my mother, and yet why should I shrink thus proudly from the notion, am I so pure myself as to deserve a pure source, and the old woman later hand fondly on his head, and her skinny fingers played with the soft locks as she spoke hurriedly and thick. Of the house of Jesse, of the seat of Solomon, not a rabbi from Babylon to Rome dare deny that, a king's daughter I am, and a king's heart I had, and half like Solomon's own, my son.  I crave for wisdom, renown, power, power, power, and my nation refused them to me, because forsooth I was a woman. So I left them. I went to the Christian priests, they gave me what I asked, they gave me more. They pampered my woman's vanity, my pride, my self-will, my scorn of wedded bondage, and bade me be a saint, the judge of angels and archagels, the bride of God, liars, liars, and so, if you laugh, you kill me, right-feel, and so, Maryam, the daughter of Jonathan, Maryam, of the house of David, Maryam, the descendant of Ruth and Rakab, of Rachel and Sarah, became a Christian nun, and shut herself up to see visions and dream dreams, and fattened her own mad self-conceit upon the impious fancy that she was, the spouse of the Nazarene, Joshua Bar-Joseph, whom she called Jehovah Ishii, silence. If you stop me a moment, it may be too late. I hear them calling me already, and I made them promise not to take me before I had told all to my son, the son of my shame. Who calls you, asked, gray-feel. But after one strong shudder, he ran on, unheeding. But they lied, lied, lied. I found them out that day. Do not look up at me, and I will tell you all. There was a riot, a fight between the Christian devils and the heathen devils, and the convent was sacked. Gray-feel, my son, sacked. Then I found out their blasphemy. Oh, God! I shrieked to him, Gray-feel. I called on him to rend his heavens and come down, to pour out his thunderbolts upon them, to cleave the earth and devour them, to save the wretched helpless girl who adored him, who had given up father, mother, kinsfolk, wealth, the light of heaven, and hood itself. For him who worshiped, meditated over him, dreamed of him night and day. And Gray-feel, he did not hear me. He did not hear me. He did not hear the.  And you knew it for what it is, cried Gray-feel through his sobs, as he thought of Victoria and felt every vein burning with righteous wrath. There was no mistaking that test was there. For nine months I was mad. And then your voice, my baby, my joy, my pride, that brought me to myself once more. And I shook off the dust of my feet against those gallean priests, and went back to my own nation, where God had sent me from the beginning. I made them, the rabbis, my father, my kin. I made them all receive me. They could not stand before my eye. I can stake people, do what I will, Gray-feel. I could. I could make you emperor now, if I had but time left. I went back. I palmed you off on Ezra as his son. I and his wife, and made him believe that you had been born to him while he was in Byzantium. And then to live for you. And I did live for you. For you I traveled from India to Britain, seeking wealth. For you I toiled, hoarded, lied, intrigued, won money by every means, no matter how base. For it wasn't not for you. And I have conquered.    I watched you glorify it in you. In your cunning, your daring, your learning, your contempt for these gentle hounds. You felt the royal blood of Solomon within you. You felt that you were a young lion of Judah, and made the jackals who followed to feed upon your leavings. And now your only danger is past. The cunning woman is gone, the sorceress, who tried to take my young lion in her pitfall, and has fallen its to the mists of it herself. And he is safe and returned to take the nations for a prey, and grind their bones to powder as it is written. He couched like a lion. He lay down like a lioness as well.  Stop, said Rayfuel. I must speak, mother. I must. As you love me, as you expect me to love you, answer.  Speak. Did I not tell you that I was no more a Christian? Had I remained one who can tell what I might not have done? All I, the Jewish, dare do was fool that I am. I have forgotten all this time the proof, the proof. I need no proof, mother. There were there enough, said Rayfuel, as he clasped her hand between his own, and pressed it to his burning forehead. But the old woman hurried on.  How did you obtain that? I stole it. Stole it, my son, as thieves steal, and are crucified for stealing. What was the chance of the cross to a mother yearning for her child, to a mother who put round her baby's neck three and thirty black years ago, that broke in a gate, and kept the other half next to her own heart by day and night? See, see how they fit.  Look, I say, and she thrust the talisman into his hands.   Farewell, my son. Kiss me but once, once my child, my joy. Oh, this makes up for all. Makes up even for that day, the last on which I ever dreamed myself, the bride of the Nazarene, where I feel felt that he must speak now or never, though it cost him the loss of all his wealth and a mother's curse. He must speak, and not daring to look up, he said gently, men have lied to you about him, mother. But has he ever lied to you about himself? He did not lie to me when he sent me out into this world to find a man and sent me back again to you with the good news that the man is born into the world. But to his astonishment, instead of the burst of bigotet indignation, which he had expected, Maryam answered in a low confused, abstracted voice, and did he sent you hither? Well, that was more like what I used to fancy him. A grand thought it is, after all, a Jew, the king of heaven and earth. While I shall know soon, I loved him once, and perhaps, perhaps, why did her head drop heavily upon her shoulder? He turned, a dark stream of blood was flowing from her lips. He sprang to his feet. The girls rushed in. They tore open her shawl and saw the ghastly wound, which she had hidden with such iron resolution to the last. But it was too late. Maryam, the daughter of Solomon, was gone to her own place. Early the next morning, Raphael was standing in serials and to room, awaiting an audience. There were loud voices within, and after a while a tribune, whom he knew well hurried out, muttering curses. What brings you here, friend? said Raphael. The scoundrel will not give them up, answered he in an undertone. Give up whom? The murderers. They are in sanctuary now at the Caesar room. Orestes sent me to demand them, and this fellow defies him openly. And the tribune hurried out. Raphael, sickened with disgust, half turned to follow him. But his better angel conquered, and he obeyed the summons of the deacon, who absurd him in. Cyril was walking up and down, according to his custom, with great strides. When he saw who was his visitor, he stopped short with the look of fierce inquiry. Raphael entered on business at once, with a cold, calm voice. You know me doubtless, and you know what I was. I am now a Christian catechumen. I come to make such restitution as I can, for certain past ill deeds done in the city. You will find among these papers the trust deeds for such a yearly sum of money as will enable you to hire a house of refuge for a hundred fallen woman, and give such dowries to 30 of them yearly as will enable them to find suitable husbands. I have set down every detail of my plan on its exact fulfillment depends the continuance of my gift. Cyril took the document eagerly, and was breaking out with some commonplace about his pious bed-of-villains, when the Jew stopped him. Your holiness, compliments are unnecessary. It is to your office, not to yourself, that this business relates. Cyril, whose conscience was ill enough at ease that morning, fell abashed before Raphael's dry and quiet manner, which be spoked as he well knew, reproof more severe than all open-up ratings. So, looking down, not without something like a blush, he ran his eye hastily over the paper and then said in his blandest tone, My brother will forgive me for remarking that while I acknowledge his perfect right to dispose of his charities, as he will, it is somewhat startling to me as metropolitan of Egypt to find not only the Abba Isidore of Pellusium, but the singular defender of the plebs, a civil officer implicated too in the late conspiracy associated with me as co-st trustees. I have taken the advice of more than one Christian bishop on this matter. I acknowledge your authority by my presence here. If the scriptures say rightly, the civil magistrates are as much God's ministers as you. I am therefore bound to acknowledge their authority also. I should have preferred associating the prefect with you in the trust. But as your dissensions with the present occupant of that post might have crippled my scheme, I have named the defender of the plebs, and have already put into his hands a copy of his document. Another copy has been sent to Isidore, who is empowered to receive all monies from my Jewish bankers in Pellusium. You doubt, then, either my ability or my honesty, said Cyril, who was becoming somewhat netled. If your holiness dislikes my offer, it is easy to admit your name and the deed. One word more, if you deliver up to justice the murders of my friend Hypatia, I double my bequest on the spot. Cyril burst out instantly. Thy money perish with thee.  I offer to give you the means of showing more mercy, provided that you will at first do simple justice. Justice, cried Cyril. Justice, if it be, just that Peter should die, sir. See first whether it was not just that Hypatia should die, not that I can past it. As I live, I would have given my own right hand that this had not happened. But now that it is done, let those who talk of justice look first in which scale of the balance it lies. Do you fancy, sir, that the people do not know their enemies from their friends?  Ignorance, brutal lust, grinding slavery from which the Son of God died to free them, from which they are painfully and slowly struggling upward to the light of day? You, sir, if you be a Christian catechumen, should know for yourself what would have been the fate of Alexandria had the devil's plot of two days since he succeeded. What if the people struck too fiercely? They struck in the right place. What if they have given the reins to passions fit only for heathens? Recall like the centuries of heathendom which bred those passions in them, and blame not my teaching, but the teaching of their forefathers, that very Peter. What if he have for once given place to the devil, and avenged where he should have forgiven? Has he no memories which may excuse him for fancing, in a just perioxism of dread, that idolatry and falsehood must be crushed at any risk? He who counts back for now three hundred years in persecution after persecution, martyrs, sir, martyrs, if you know what that word implies, of his own blood and kin, who when he was but a seven years boy, saw his own father made a sightless cripple to this day, and his elder sister, a consecrated nun devoured alive by swine in the open streets at the hands of those who supported the very philosophy, the very gods which Hypatia attempted yesterday to restore. God shall judge such a man, not I, nor you. Let God judge him, then, by delivering him to God's minister. God's minister, that heathen an apostate prairie effect? When he has expiated his apostasy by penance and returned publicly to the bosom of the church, it will be time enough to obey him. Till then he is the minister of none but the devil, and no ecclesiastics shall suffer at the tribunal of the infidel. Holy writ forbids us to go to law before the unjust. Let the world say, if me, what it will. I defy it, and it is rulers. I have to establish the kingdom of God in the city, and do it, I will. Knowing that other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Christ. Wherefore you proceed to lay it afresh, a curious method of proving that it is laid already. What do you mean, Assyril and Greeley? Simply that God's kingdom, if it exists at all, must be a sort of kingdom considering who is the king of it, which would have established itself without your help sometime since, probably indeed. If the scriptures of my Jewish forefathers are to be believed before the foundation of the world, and that your business was to believe that God was king of Alexandria, and had put the Roman law there to crucify all murderers, ecclesiastics included, and that crucified they must be courtingly, as high as Ham on itself. I will hear no more of this, sir. I am responsible to God alone, and not to you. Let it he enough, that by virtue of the authority committed to me, I shall cut off these men from the Church of God, but I saw them excommunication for three years to come. They are not cut off, then, it seems, as yet.   Not in the least, most august, sir. But I should have fancied that, according to my carnal notions of God's kingdom and the Church, they had cut off themselves most effectually already from the moment when they cast away the spirit of God, and took to themselves the spirit of murder and cruelty, and that all which your most just and laudable excommunication could effect, would be to inform the public of that fact. However, farewell, my money shall be forthcoming in due time, and that is the most important matter between us at this moment. As for your client Peter and his fellows, perhaps the most fearful punishment, which can befall them, is to go on as they have begun. I only hope that you will not follow in the same direction. I, cried Cyril, trembling with rage, really, I wish your holiness. Well, when I say so, if my notions seem to you somewhat secular, yours forgive me. Seem to the somewhat atheistic, and I advise you to honestly take care, last while you were busy, trying to establish God's kingdom. You forget what it is like by shutting your eyes to those of its laws, which are established already. I have no doubt that with your holiness's great powers, you will succeed in establishing something. My only dread is, that when it is established, you should discover, to your horror, that it is the devil's kingdom, and not God's. And without waiting for an answer, Ray feel about himself out of the august presence, and sailing for Baran's that very day, with Udemyon, and his negro wife went to his own place, there to labor, and to succor, a sad and stern, and yet a loving and a much loved man for many a year to come. Chapter 30 Every Man to His Own Place, Part 2 And now we shall leave Alexandria also, and taking a forward leap of some 20 years, see how all other persons mentioned in this history went, likewise, each to his own place. A little more than 20 years after, the wisest and holiest man in the east was writing of Cyril just deceased.  May it come to pass by your prayers, that he may obtain mercy and forgiveness, that the immeasurable grace of God may prevail over his wickedness. So wrote Theodora in days when men had not yet intercalated into Holy Rit that line of an obscure modern hymn which proclaims to man the good news that there is no repitence in the grave, let that it be as it may. Cyril has gone to his own place, what that place is in history, but is too well known. What it is in the sight of him, unto whom all live forever, is no concern of ours.  Arrives surely with the scribes and Pharisees of old sooner or later at their own place. True, he and his monks had conquered, but Hypatia did not die unevenged. In the hour of that unrighteous victory, the Church of Alexandria received a deadly wound. It had admitted and sanctioned those habits of doing evil that good may come of pious intrigue, and at last of open persecution which are certain to creep in, wheresoever men attempt to set up a merely religious empire independent of human relationships and civil laws to establish in sort of a theocracy. And by that very act confess their secret disbelief that God is ruling already, and the Egyptian Church grew year by year, more lawless and inhuman, freed from enemies without, and from the union which fear compels, it turned its fear off, critic. Inward, to pray on its own vitals, and to tear itself in pieces by a voluntary suicide with mutual enthemas and exclusions, till it ended as a mere chaos of idolatrous sex, persecuting each other for metaphysical propositions, which to her false were equally heretical in their mouths, because they used them only as watch words of division. Orthodox or unorthodox, they knew not God, for they knew neither righteousness nor love nor peace.  Till Amroul and his Muhammadians appeared, and whether they discovered the fact or not, they went to their own place. Through the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small, though he stands, and waits with patience, with exactness grinds he all. And so found in due time the philosophers, as well as the ecclesiastics of Alexandria, twenty years after Hypatia's death philosophy was flickering down into the very socket. Hypatia's murder was its death blow, in language tremendous and unmistakable, philosophers had been informed that mankind has done with them, that they had been weighed in the balances, and found wanting, and if they had no better gospel than that to preach, they must make way for those who had, and they did make way. We hear little or nothing of them to their wisdom, henceforth, except that Athens, or Procleus, Marinos, Isidor, and others kept up the golden chain of the Platonic succession, and descended deeper and deeper, one after the other, into the realms of confusion, confusion of the material, with the spiritual, of the subject with the object, the moral with the intellectual self-consistent in one thing only, namely in their exclusive Pharisees, utterly unable to proclaim any good news for man as man, or even to conceive of the possibility of such, and gradually looking with more and more complacency on all superstitions, which did not involve that one idea, which alone they stated, namely the incarnation, craving after signs and wonders, dabbling in magic, astrology, and barbarian fetishisms, bemoaning the fallen age, and barking couriously at every form of human thought except their own, writing pompous biographies full of bad Greek, worse taste, and still worse miracles.  The last scene of their tragedy was not without a touch of pathos. In the year 629, Justinian finally closed by imperial edict, the schools of Athens. They had nothing more to tell the world, but what the world had yawned over a thousand times before. Why should they break the blessed silence by any more such noises? The philosophers felt so themselves. They had no mind to be martyrs, for they had nothing for which to testify. They had no message for mankind, and mankind no interest for them. All that was left for them was to take care of their own souls, and fancying that they saw something like Plato's ideal republic in the pure monotheism of the gubrus, their philosophic emperor, the kosru, and his holy cast of magi. Seven of them set off to Persia to forget the hateful existence of Christianity in that released ideal. Alas for the facts, the purest monotheism they discovered was perfectly compatible with biography and ferocity, luxury and tyranny, serails and bow strings, incestuous marriages and corpses exposed to the beasts of the field, of the fowls of the air, and unreasonable fear for their own necks. The last seven sages of Greece returned home where he hearted into the Christian empire from which they had fled, fully contented with the permission which the kosru had obtained for them from Justinian to hold their peace, and die among decent people, so among distant people they died, leaving behind them as their last legacy to mankind. Simplicis's commentaries on Apectus and Crigidon, an essay on the art of egotism by obeying which, whosoever lest, may become as perfect a Pharisee as ever dark in the earth of God, peace be to their ashes, they are gone to their own place. Wolf II had gone to his own place wherever that may be. He died in Spain full of years and honors at the court of Adolf and Placidia, having resigned his sovereignty into the hands of his lawful chieftain and having lived long enough to see Godric and his younger companions in arms settled with their Alexandrian brides upon the sunny slopes from which they had expelled the vandals and the Suvi. To be the ancestors of bluest-blooded Castilian nobles, Wolf died as he had lived a heathen. Placidia, who loved him well, as she loved all righteous and noble souls, had succeeded once in persuading him to accept baptism. Adolf himself acted as one of his sponsors, and the old warrior was in the act of stepping into the font when he turned suddenly to the bishop and asked where were the souls of his heathen ancestors.  Wolf drew back from the font and threw his bare skin cloak around him. He would prefer if Adolf had no objection to go to his own people, and so he died unbaptized and went to his own place. Victoria was still alive and busy, but Augustine's warning had come true. She had found trouble in the flesh. The day of the Lord had come, and vandal tyrants were now the masters of the fair cornlands of Africa. Her father and brother were lying by the side of Rayfuel, Abin Ezra, beneath the ruined walls of Hippo, slain long years before, in the vain attempt to deliver their country from the evading swarms. But they had died the death of heroes, and Victoria was content, and it was whispered among the downtrodden Catholics who clung to her as an angel of mercy that she too had endured strange misery and disgrace, that her delicate limbs bore the scars of fearful tortures, that a room in her house into which none ever entered but herself contained a young boy's grave, and that she passed long nights of prayer upon the spot, where lay her only child, martyred by the hands of Aryan persecutors. Nay, some of the few who, having dared to face that fearful storm, had survived its fury, asserted that she herself, amid her own shame and agony, had cheered the shrinking boy onto his glorious death, but though she had found trouble in the flesh, her spirit knew none, clear-eyed and joyful, as when she walked by her father's side on the field of Osia, she went to and fro among the victims of vandal, rapine, and persecution, spending upon the maimed, the sick, the ruined, the small remnants of her former wealth, and winning by her purity and her piety, the reverence and favor, even of the barbarian, conquers, she had her work to do, and she did it, and was content, and in good time, she also went to her own place. Abbot Pambo, as well as Ascenius, had been dead several years, the abbot's place was filled by his own dying command, by a hermit from the neighboring deserts, who had made himself famous for many miles round, by his extraordinary austerities, his ceaseless prayers, his loving wisdom, and it was rumored by various cures, which could only be attributed to miraculous powers, while still in the prime of his manhood he was dragged, against his own entreaties from a lofty cranny of the cliffs, to reside over the laura of Cictus, and ordained a deacon at the advice of Pambo, by the bishop of the diocese, who three years afterwards took on himself to command him to enter the priesthood. The elder monks considered it an indignity to be ruled by so young a man, but the monastery drove and grew rapidly under his government, his sweetness, patience, and humility, and above all his marvelous understanding of the doubts and temptations of his own generation, soon drew around him all, whose sensitiveness or waywardness had made them unmanageable in the neighboring monasteries, as to David in the mountains, so to him. Everyone who was discontented and everyone who was oppressed gathered themselves, the neighboring abbots were at first inclined to shrink from him, as one who ate and drank with publicans and sinners, but they held their peace. When they saw those whom they had driven out as reprobates, laboring peacefully and cheerfully under Philemon, the elder generation of Cictus too saw with some horror the new influx of sinners, but their abbot had but one answer to their reprensrence. Those who are whole need not a physician, but those who are sick. Never was the young abbot heard to speak harshly of any human being. When thou halt tried in vain for seven years, he used to say, to convert a sinner, then only wilt thou have a right to suspect them of being a worse man than thyself, that there is a seed of good in all men, a divine word and spirit striving with all men, a gospel and good news which would turn the hearts of all men. If abbots and priests could but preach it all right, was his favorite doctrine and one which he used to defend, when at rare intervals he allowed himself to discuss any subject from the writings of his favorite theologian. Clement of Alexandria above all, he stopped by Sturmer Buke, any attempt to revile either heretics or heathens, on the catholic church alone he used to say, lies the blame of all heresy and unbelief, for if she were but for one day that which she ought to be, the world would be converted before nightfall. To one class of sins indeed he was inexorable, all but ferocious, to one class to the sins namely of religious persons, in proportion to any man's reputation for orthodoxy and sanctity. Philemon's judgment of him was stern and pitiless, more than one's events, proved him to have been unjust when he saw himself to be so. None could confess his mistake more frankly or humiliate himself for it more bitterly, but from his rule he never swerved, and the Pharisees of the Nile dreaded and avoided him as much as the publishers and sinners loved and followed him. One thing only in his conduct gave some handle for scandal, among the just persons who needed no repotence. It was well known that in his most solemn devotions, on those long nights of unceasing prayer and self-discipline, which won him a reputation for superhuman sanctity, there mingled always with his prayers the names of two women, and when some worthy elder, taking courage from his ears, dared to hint kindly to him that such conduct caused some scandal to the weaker brethren. It is true, answered he, tell my brethren that I pray nightly for two women, both of them young, both of them beautiful, both of them beloved by me, more than I love my own soul, and tell them moreover that one of two was a harlot, and the other a heathen, the old monk laid his hand on his mouth and retired. The remainder of his history, it seems, better to extract from an unpublished fragment of the Hagguleogia nylotheca of Gradio Colicitris tabinaticus, the greater part of which valuable work was destroyed at the taking of Alexandria under Armu A.D. 640. Now, when the said Abbot had ruled the monastery of Sectis seven years, with uncommon prudence, resplendent in virtue and in miracles, it befell that one morning he was late for the divine office, whereon a certain ancient brother, who was also a deacon, being sent to ascertain, the cause of so unwonted a defection found the holy man extended upon the floor of his cell, like Balam in the flesh, though far differing from him in the spirit, having fallen into the trance, but having his eyes open, who not daring to arouse him, sat by him until the hour of noon, judging rightly that something from heaven had be fallen him, and at that hour the saint arising without astonishment said, Brother, make ready for me the divine elements that I may consecrate them, and he asking the reason wherefore the saint replied that I may partake thereof with all my brethren ere I depart hence for no assuredly that within the seventh day I shall migrate to the celestial mansions, for this night stood by me in a dream, those two women whom I love and for whom I pray, the one clothed in a white, the other in a ruby colored garment, and holding each other by the hand, who said to me that life after death is not such a one as you fancy, come therefore that and behold with us what it is like, troubled at which words this deacon went forth yet on account not only of holy obedience, but also of the sanctity of the blessed Abbot, did not hesitate to prepare according to his command the divine elements which the Abbot having consecrated distributed among his brethren, reserving only a portion of the most holy bread and wine, and then having bestowed on them all the kiss of peace, he took the patent and chalice in his hands, and went forth from the monastery towards the desert whom the whole fraternity followed weeping, as knowing that they should see his face no more, but he, having arrived at the foot of a certain mountain, stopped, and blessing them, commanded them that they should follow him no farther, and dismiss them with these words, as ye have been loved so love, as ye have been judged so judge, as ye have been forgiven so forgive, and so ascending was taken away from their eyes. Now they, returning astonished, watched three days with prayer and fasting, but at least the eldest brother, being ashamed like Elshema, before his entreaties of Elijah's disciples, sent two of the young men to seek their master, to whom befell a thing noteworthy and full of miracles, for ascending the same mountains where they had left the Abbot, they met with a certain Moorish people, not a verse to the Christianity, who declared that certain days before a priest had passed by them, burying a patent and chalice, and blessing them in silence, proceeded across the desert, in the direction of the cave of the Holy Amma, and they inquiring who this Amma might be, the Moors answered that some twenty years ago their head arrived in those mountains a woman, more beautiful, than had ever before seen in that region, dressed in rich garments, who after a short sojourn among their tribe, having distributed among them the jewels, which she wore, had embraced the aromatic life and sojourned upon the highest peak of a neighboring mountain, till her garments failing her, she became invisible to mankind, saving to a few women of the tribe who went up from time to time to carry her offerings of fruit and meal, and to ask the blessing of her prayers, to whom she rarely appeared, veiled down to her feet in black hair of exceeding length and splendor. Hearing these things, the two brethren, doubted for a while, but at last, determining to proceed, arrived at sunset of the said mountain, where behold a great miracle, for above an open grave freshly dug in the sand, a cloud of vultures and obscene birds hovered, whom two lions, fiercely contending, drove away with their talons, as if from some sacred deposit therein they wrenched, towards whom the two brethren, fortifying themselves with the sight of the Holy Cross, ascended, whereupon the lions as having fulfilled the term of their guardianship retired, and left to the brethren a sight which they beheld with astonishment, and not without tears. For in the open grave lay the body of Philemon the Abbot, and by his side wrapped in his cloak, the corpse of a woman exceeding beauty such as the Moors had described, whom embracing straightly as a brother or sister, and joining his lips to hers, he had rendered of his soul to God, not without bestowing on her, as it seemed the most holy sacrament for by the graveside stood the patent and the chalice emptied of her divine contents. Having beheld which things awhile in silence they considered that the right understanding of such manners pertained to the judgment seat above, and was unnecessary to be comprehended by men consecrated to God, whereon filling in the grave with all haste, they returned weeping to the Lara, and declared to them the strange things which they had beheld, and whereof I the writer, having collected these facts from sacrosanct and most trustworthy mouths, can only say that wisdom is justified of all her children. Now before they returned, one of the brethren searching the cave wherein the holy woman dwelt, found there neither food, furniture, nor other manners, saving one bracelet of gold, of large size, and strange workmanship, engraven with foreign characters, which no one could decipher, the witch bracelet being taken home to the Lara's skytis, and there dedicated in the chapel to the memory of the holy Alma, proved beyond all doubt the sanctity of its former processor, by the miracles which its virtue worked, the fameware of spreading abroad throughout the whole Thybod, drew innumerable crowds of suppliants to that holy relic, but it came to pass after Vandalic persecution, wherewith Humoric and Geneseric the king devastated Africa, and enriched the Catholic Church with innumerable martyrs, that certain wandering barbarians of the Vandalic race imbued with the Aryan pravati, and made insolent by success, boiled over from the parts of Maritania into the Thybod region, who plundering and burning all monasteries and insulting the consecrated virgins at last, arrived even at the monastery of Skytis, where they not only, according to their impious custom, defiled the altar and carried off the sacred vessels, but also bore away that most holy relic, the chief glory of the Lara, namely the bracelet of the Holy Amma, impiously pretending that it had belonged to a warrior of their tribe, and thus expounded their writing thereon in Graven. For Amalic Amal's son, Smid, Troll's son made me, wherein whether they spoke truth or not, yet their sacrilege did not remain unpunished. For attempting to return homeward toward the sea, by a way of the Nile, they were set upon while waited upon with wine and sleep, by the country people, and to a man miserably destroyed, but the pious folk, restoring the holy gold to its pristine sanctuary, were not unrewarded for sense that day it grows glorious with ever-fresh miracles, as of blind restored to sight, paralytics, to strength, demoniacs, to sanity, to the honor of the Orthodox Catholic Church, and of its ever-blessed saints. So be it, Pelgia and Philemon, like the rest, went to their own place, to the only place where such and such days could find rest, to the desert and the hermit cell, and then forward into that fairyland of legend and miracle, wherein all saintly lives were destined to be enveloped for many a century, henceforth. And now, readers, farewell, I've shown you new foes under an old face, your own likenesses in toga and tunic, instead of coat and bonnet. One word before we part, the same devil who tempted these old Egyptians tempts you, the same god who would have saved these old Egyptians if they had willed, will save you if you will. Their sins are yours, their error is yours, their doom yours, their deliverance yours, there is nothing new under the sun. The thing which has been, it is that which shall be, let him that is without sin among you cast the first stone, whether at Hypatia or Pelgia, Miriam or Raphiel, Cyril or Philemon. End of chapter 30. End of Hypatia by Charles Kingsley.


Rational regulation of electrochemical reconfiguration and exploration of activity origin are important for electrocatalysis. Here, a novel COSY-204 at MZine tubular catalyst is rationally designed to achieve rapid complete reconfiguration engineering during the hydrogen evolution reaction process. This article was authored by Luchi Wang, Isinhao, Liming Deng, and others.