Wales is a country, part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Bristol Channel to the south, it had a population in 2011 of 3,063,456 and has a total area of 20,779 km2. Wales has over 1,680 miles of coastline and is mountainous with its higher peaks in the north and central areas, including Snowdon, its highest summit; the country has a changeable, maritime climate. Welsh national identity emerged among the Britons after the Roman withdrawal from Britain in the 5th century, Wales is regarded as one of the modern Celtic nations. Llywelyn ap Gruffudd's death in 1282 marked the completion of Edward I of England's conquest of Wales, though Owain Glyndŵr restored independence to Wales in the early 15th century; the whole of Wales was annexed by England and incorporated within the English legal system under the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542. Distinctive Welsh politics developed in the 19th century. Welsh Liberalism, exemplified in the early 20th century by Lloyd George, was displaced by the growth of socialism and the Labour Party.
Welsh national feeling grew over the century. Established under the Government of Wales Act 1998, the National Assembly for Wales holds responsibility for a range of devolved policy matters. At the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, development of the mining and metallurgical industries transformed the country from an agricultural society into an industrial nation. Two-thirds of the population live in South Wales, including Cardiff, Swansea and the nearby valleys. Now that the country's traditional extractive and heavy industries have gone or are in decline, Wales' economy depends on the public sector and service industries and tourism. Although Wales shares its political and social history with the rest of Great Britain and, while a majority of the population in most areas speaks English as a first language, the country has retained a distinct cultural identity. Both Welsh and English are official languages. From the late 19th century onwards, Wales acquired its popular image as the "land of song", in part due to the eisteddfod tradition.
At many international sporting events, such as the FIFA World Cup, Rugby World Cup and the Commonwealth Games, Wales has its own national teams, though at the Olympic Games, Welsh athletes compete as part of a Great Britain team. Rugby union is seen as an expression of national consciousness; the English words "Wales" and "Welsh" derive from the same Old English root, a descendant of Proto-Germanic *Walhaz, itself derived from the name of the Gaulish people known to the Romans as Volcae and which came to refer indiscriminately to inhabitants of the Western Roman Empire. The Old English-speaking Anglo-Saxons came to use the term to refer to the Britons in particular; the modern names for various Romance-speaking people in Continental Europe have a similar etymology. In Britain, the words were not restricted to modern Wales or to the Welsh but were used to refer to anything that the Anglo-Saxons associated with the Britons, including other non-Germanic territories in Britain and places in Anglo-Saxon territory associated with Britons.
The modern Welsh name for themselves is Cymry, Cymru is the Welsh name for Wales. These words are descended from the Brythonic word combrogi, meaning "fellow-countrymen"; the use of the word Cymry as a self-designation derives from the location in the post-Roman Era of the Welsh people in modern Wales as well as in northern England and southern Scotland. It emphasised that the Welsh in modern Wales and in the Hen Ogledd were one people, different from other peoples. In particular, the term was not applied to the Cornish or the Breton peoples, who are of similar heritage and language to the Welsh; the word came into use as a self-description before the 7th century. It is attested in a praise poem to Cadwallon ap Cadfan c. 633. In Welsh literature, the word Cymry was used throughout the Middle Ages to describe the Welsh, though the older, more generic term Brythoniaid continued to be used to describe any of the Britonnic peoples and was the more common literary term until c. 1200. Thereafter Cymry prevailed as a reference to the Welsh.
Until c. 1560 the word was spelt Kymry or Cymry, regardless of whether it referred to the people or their homeland. The Latinised forms of these names, Cambrian and Cambria, survive as lesser-used alternative names for Wales and the Welsh people. Examples include the Cambrian Mountains, the newspaper Cambrian News, the organisations Cambrian Airways, Cambrian Railways, Cambrian Archaeological Association and the Royal Cambrian Academy of Art. Outside Wales, a related form survives as the name Cumbria in North West England, once a part of Yr Hen Ogledd; the Cumbric language, thought to have been rel
Taxus brevifolia, the Pacific yew or western yew, is a conifer native to the Pacific Northwest of North America. It ranges from southernmost Alaska south to central California in the Pacific Coast Ranges, but with isolated disjunct populations in southeast British Columbia and in north to central Idaho; the Pacific yew is a small to medium-sized evergreen tree, growing 10–15 m tall and with a trunk up to 50 cm diameter more. In some instances, trees with heights in excess of 20 m occur in parks and other protected areas, quite in gullies; the tree is slow growing, has a habit of rotting from the inside, creating hollow forms. This makes it difficult and sometimes impossible to make accurate rings counts to determine a specimen's true age. Damaged by succession of the forest, it ends up in a squat, multiple leader form, it has thin scaly brown bark, covering a thin layer of off-white sap wood with a darker heartwood that varies in color from brown to a magenta/purplish hue to deep red. The leaves are lanceolate, dark green, 1–3 cm long and 2–3 mm broad, arranged spirally on the stem, but with the leaf bases twisted to align the leaves in two flat rows either side of the stem except on erect leading shoots where the spiral arrangement is more obvious.
The seed cones are modified, each cone containing a single seed 4–7 mm long surrounded by a modified scale which develops into a soft, bright red berry-like structure called an aril, 8–15 mm long and wide and open at the end. The arils are mature 6–9 months after pollination; the seeds contained in the arils are eaten by thrushes and other birds, which disperse the hard seeds undamaged in their droppings. The male cones are globose, 3–6 mm diameter, shed their pollen in early spring, it is dioecious, but occasional individuals can be variably monoecious, or change sex with time. Pacific yew grows in varying types of environments. Pacific yew is shade tolerant; the tree's shade tolerance allows it to form an understory, which means that it can grow along streams providing shade to maintain water temperature. Taxus brevifolia var. reptaneta. Although T. brevifolia is a tree as described above, T. brevifolia var. reptaneta is a shrub variety that occurs in the mid to upper elevation range of the typical variety, 3,500 to 4,000 ft at its southernmost occurrence in the Klamath Mountains region, at lower elevations further north.
It is distinguished from young trees of the typical variety by its stems creeping along the ground for a short distance before ascending upwards and by the branches growing off to one side of the stem the upper side. The epithet reptaneta is from the Latin reptans which means “creeping and rooting,”, what this variety does. Unlike the typical variety, thicket yew grows in abundance on open sunny avalanche shoots or ravines as well as in the forest understory, it occurs along forest margins. In northwestern Montana, a variant of the thicket yew does not ascend upwards; this is the ancestral form. Taxus brevifolia var. reptaneta has been arbitrarily indicated synonymous with typical yew, T. brevifolia. Though the two varieties may be genetically distinct, some botanists recognize species or varieties only if they have different geographically ranges. For example, T. mairei var. speciosa, which occurs with the typical variety in southern China in 10 of 13 provinces, was rejected because “there is no geographic reason” for recognizing it though it appears genetically distinct.
Taxus brevifolia var. reptaneta has been proposed to be elevated to subspecies status without justification or explanation. Such a change would cause considerable confusion in view of the subspecies rank having been used in the genus Taxus for defining geographically separated subspecies of a single species. Further, it has been recommended that taxonomists be discouraged from “elevating a ‘variety’ to a ‘subspecies’ unless there is sufficient scientific evidence to warrant such an elevation,” and that “it is crucial to provide continuity.”Taxus brevifolia var. polychaeta. Typical Taxus brevifolia, like most species in the genus produces a single ovule on a complex scaly shoot, composed of a primary shoot and a secondary short shoot. To the casual observer they appear as one funnelform shoot with an ovule at the apex. However, Taxus brevifolia var. polychaeta differs from var. brevifolia in producing a longer primary shoot with as many five secondary shoots. The epithet, polychaeta, is in reference to the primary shoot resembling a polychaete worm.
Variety polychaeta appears to be rare. It may have been extirpated from the type locality—around Mud Bay near Olympia, Washington—as a result of urban expansion, it is known from northern Idaho and Sonoma County, California. As in the case with thicket yew, worm yew has been indicated
The McKenzie method is a comprehensive method of care used in physical therapy. New Zealand physical therapist Robin McKenzie, OBE developed the method in the late 1950s. In 1981 he launched the concept which he called Mechanical Diagnosis and Therapy – a system encompassing assessment and treatment for the spine and extremities. MDT categorises patients' complaints not on an anatomical basis, but subgroups them by the clinical presentation of patients. Research has found that the McKenzie method has, at most, limited benefit for helping alleviate acute back pain, it is of no benefit for chronic back pain. A 2019 systematic review, which included high-reliability research, compared the effectiveness of treating chronic lower back pain using the McKenzie method versus manual therapy; the results showed that in the short-term and long-term, the McKenzie method was more effective than manual therapy. The results of a meta-analysis conducted in 2018 indicate that the McKenzie method for chronic back pain was more effective for increasing work capacity than just physical activity.
In acute back pain, there was no difference between other interventions. According to a meta-analysis of clinical trials in 2006, treatment using the McKenzie method is somewhat effective for acute low back pain, but the evidence suggests that it is not effective for chronic low-back pain. A 2012 systematic review agreed with this, finding that centralisation occurred more in acute patients compared to subacute and chronic. Centralisation was found to be more common in younger patients. Cervical centralisation was observed in only 37% of patients. A 2006 systematic review into the clinical evidence of the McKenzie method's ability to treat spinal pain concluded that the McKenzie method decreased short-term to a higher degree than other standard treatments including: "nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, educational booklet, back massage with back care advice, strength training with therapist supervision, spinal mobilization". At the intermediate term follow-up there was no statistical differences among therapies.
A report published in 2008 noted only marginal benefits over an assessment and advice-only group at the short-term follow up mark, 6 month, 1 year. A 2010 study concluded that the McKenzie method "does not produce appreciable additional short-term improvements in pain, function or global perceived effect". A 2006 systematic review of the literature assessed whether or not the McKenzie method treated Lower back pain more than passive therapy, advice to stay active, flexion exercises, others; the assessment concluded that there were no clinically significant benefits compared with the passive therapy and advice to stay active in those with acute lower back pain. The McKenzie method consists of two components used to treat musculoskeletal conditions: assessment and intervention; the assessment component of the McKenzie method uses repeated movements and/or sustained postures in a single direction to elicit centralisation. In spinal patients centralisation refers to a pattern of pain level response, characterised by decreased or abolished pain symptoms, experienced sequentially, first to the left and right of the spine, abolished pain symptoms in the spine altogether.
The assessment portion attempts to discover “directional preference”, which identifies the pattern of lumbosacral movement in a single direction that results in centralisation and subsequent abolishment of pain symptoms in the spine and the return of proper range of motion. The intervention component of the McKenzie method is the corresponding repeated and/or sustained flexion and extension movements as prescribed by the assessment component. "Everything I know. I did not set out to develop a McKenzie method, it evolved spontaneously over time as a result of clinical observation’’ - Doctor Robin McKenzie. The McKenzie method has its roots in a single event in 1956 that led to increased experimentation of certain movement in order to elicit what is now known as the centralisation phenomenon. A patient, experiencing pain on the right side of his lower back buttock, laid down on doctor McKenzie's treatment table; the patient ended up lying in significant lumbar extension for around five minutes, meaning his back was bending backward because the head of the table had been raised for a previous patient.
After ceasing this sustained position in lumbar extension the patient noted the pain on the right side of his body had experienced surprising and significant improvement. This led McKenzie to continuously experiment with specific movement and movement patterns to treat chronic lower back pain and bring about centralisation of pain symptoms. Over the years of experimentation in Robin McKenzie’s career, he noted patterns of symptom relief in response to prescribed spinal movements and positions and developed a classification system to categorise spinal pain problems. McKenzie went on to write and publish books so people could manage and treat their own back pain, such as “Treat Your Own Back” first published in 1980, with the latest edition being published in 2011; the McKenzie Method referred to as Mechanical Diagnosis and Therapy is a method of assessing and treating spinal back pain and related extremity pain most through the use of specific repeated movements and appropriate prevention measures.
The method puts an emphasis on self-care after initial clinical visits. There are four major steps when it comes to proper McKenzie method therapy: assessment, tre