Amber

Chemawinite or cedarite is an amber-like resin from the Saskatchewan river in Canada. Conversely, daycares with an "infant room" providing infant care will call all their charges in the infant room "infants" even if they are older than a year and/or walking; they will sometimes use the term "walking infant". Schraufite is a reddish resin from the Carpathian sandstone, and it occurs with |jet in the Cretaceous rocks of the Lebanon; ambrite is a resin found in many of the coals of New Zealand; retinite occurs in the lignite of Bovey Tracey in Devonshire and elsewhere; whilst copaline has been found in the London clay of Highgate in North London. Even if not standing and walking, children older than one year are often no longer considered to be an infant and called a toddler regardless of whether they can actually toddle. Many other fossil resins more or less allied to amber have been described. While there is no defined end to infancy, babies are traditionally called "toddlers" when they start to walk. Besides succinite, which is the common variety of European amber, the following varieties also occur:. Fees for transportation and entrance fees at locations such as amusement parks or museums are often waived.

These Central American ambers are formed from the resins of Legume trees (Hymenea) and not conifers. Their social presence is different from that of adults, and they may be the focus of attention. Blue amber is recorded in the Dominican Republic. As is the case with most other young children, infants are usually treated as special persons. A fluorescent amber occurs in the southern state of Chiapas in Mexico, and is used extensively to create eye-catching jewellery. Infants cry as a form of basic instinctive communication to their parents when in need of feeding or when in discomfort. Amber and certain similar substances are found to a limited extent at several localities in the United States, as in the green-sand of New Jersey, but they have little or no economic value. Babies cannot walk, although more mature infants may crawl; baby transport may be by perambulator (stroller or buggy) or on the back or in front of an adult in a special bag, cloth or cradle board.

It was re-created in 2003. Parents have to pay attention to the baby's action so they can learn the signals. It is presumed lost. Babies can learn to signal to the parents when it is time to urinate or defecate by turning or making some noises. What happened to the room beyond this point is unclear. These techniques assert babies can control their bodily functions at the age of six months and they are aware when they are urinating at even earlier age. The room was hidden in place from invading Nazi forces in 1941, who upon finding it in the Cathrine Palace, disassembled it and moved it to Königsberg. Infants are incontinent, therefore diapers are generally used in industrialized countries, while methods similar to elimination communication [1] are common in third world countries.

The Amber Room was a collection of chamber wall panels commissioned in 1701 for the king of Prussia, then given to Tsar Peter the Great. Infant formula does not provide these immune substances and in places with poor quality water supply, subjects the infant to an increased risk of disease. Amber was carried to Olbia on the Black Sea, Massilia (today Marseille) on the Mediterranean, and Hatria at the head of the Adriatic; and from these centres it was distributed over the Hellenic world. Breastfeeding provides infants with many natural immune substances and isolates the infant from most bacteria or other contaminations in the local water supply. Some of the amber districts of the Baltic and North Sea were known in prehistoric times, and led to early trade with the south of Europe. Sometimes a wet nurse is hired to feed the infant. Amber has indeed a very wide distribution, extending over a large part of northern Europe and occurring as far east as the Urals. If the mother is unable to breast feed, or does not want to, infant formula is used in Western countries.

On the shores of the Baltic it occurs not only on the German and Polish coast but in the south of Sweden, in Bornholm and other islands, and in southern Finland. Infants have a sucking instinct allowing them to extract the milk from the nipples of the breasts or the nipple of the baby bottle. On the other side of the North Sea, amber is found at various localities on the coast of the Netherlands and Denmark. As infants age, and their appetites grow, many parents choose from a variety of baby foods to feed the child. Cromer is the best-known locality, but it occurs also on other parts of the Norfolk coast, as well as at Great Yarmouth, Southwold, Aldeburgh and Felixstowe in Suffolk, and as far south as Walton-on-the-Naze in Essex, whilst northwards it is not unknown in Yorkshire. Feeding is done by breastfeeding or with special industrial milk, "infant formula". Rolled pieces of amber, usually small but occasionally of very large size, may be picked up on the east coast of England, having probably been washed up from deposits under the North Sea. This epidemiological indicator is recognised as a very important measure of the level of healthcare in a country because it is directly linked with the health status of infants, children, and pregnant women as well as access to medical care, socio-economic conditions, and public health practices.

It is still believed to possess a certain medicinal virtue. Major causes of infant mortality include dehydration, infection, congenital malformation, and SIDS. Beads of amber occur with Anglo-Saxon relics in the south of England; and up to a comparatively recent period the material was valued as an amulet. Infant mortality can be subdivided into neonatal death, referring to deaths in the first 27 days of life, and post-neonatal death, referring to deaths after 28 days of life. A remarkably fine cup turned in amber from a bronze-age barrow at Hove is now in the Brighton Museum. Infant mortality is the death of infants in the first year of life. It has been found in Mycenaean tombs; it is known from lake-dwellings in Switzerland, and it occurs with neolithic remains in Denmark, whilst in England it is found with interments of the bronze age. A newborn has a developed sense of smell at birth, and within the first week of life can already distinguish the differences between the mother’s own breast milk and the breast milk of another female.

Amber was much valued as an ornamental material in very early times. Newborns can respond to different tastes, including sweet, sour, bitter, and salty substances, with preference toward sweets. True amber is sometimes coloured artificially. Conversely, loud or sudden noises will startle and scare a newborn. Amber has often been imitated by other resins like copal and kauri, as well as by celluloid and even glass. The sound of other human voices, especially the mother’s, can have a calming or soothing effect on the newborn. This pressed amber yields brilliant interference colours in polarized light. This may explain why people will unknowingly raise the pitch of their voice when talking to newborns.

The product is extensively used for the production of cheap jewellery and articles for smoking. For unknown reason, newborns usually respond to a female’s voice over a male’s. The pieces are carefully heated with exclusion of air and then compressed into a uniform mass by intense hydraulic pressure; the softened amber being forced through holes in a metal plate. Therefore, although a newborn’s ears may have some mucous and fluid, he or she can hear sound from birth. Small fragments, formerly thrown away or used only for varnish, are now utilized on a large scale in the formation of "ambroid" or "pressed amber". While still inside the mother, the infant could hear many internal noises, such as the mother’s heartbeat, as well as many external noises including human voices, music and most other sounds. Cloudy amber may be clarified in an oil-bath, as the oil fills the numerous pores to which the turbidity is due. However, the newborn has a preference for looking at other human faces above all else.

Two pieces of amber may be united by smearing the surfaces with linseed oil, heating them, and then pressing them together while hot. Usually anything that is shiny, has sharp contrasting colors, or has complex patterns will catch an infant’s eye. When gradually heated in an oil-bath, amber becomes soft and flexible. When a newborn is not sleeping, or feeding, or crying, he or she may spend a lot of time staring at random objects. During the working much electricity is developed. While this may not be much, it is all that is needed for the infant to look at the mother’s face when breastfeeding. In working amber, it is turned on the lathe and polished with whitening and water or with rotten stone and oil, the final lustre being given by friction with flannel. Newborn infants have unremarkable vision, being able to focus on objects only about 18 inches directly in front of their face.

Some of the best qualities are sent to Vienna for the manufacture of smoking appliances. The need to suckle is instinctive and allows newborns to feed. The variety most valued in the East is the pale straw-coloured, slightly cloudy amber. Newborns may comfort themselves by sucking their thumbs, or a pacifier. It is regarded by the Turks as specially valuable, inasmuch as it is said to be incapable of transmitting infection as the pipe passes from mouth to mouth. Gentle rocking back and forth will oftentimes calm a crying infant, as will massages and warm baths. Amber is extensively used for beads and other ornaments, and for cigar-holders and the mouth-pieces of pipes. Newborns can feel all different sensations, but respond most enthusiastically to soft stroking, cuddling and caressing.

The sea-worn amber has lost its crust, but has often acquired a dull rough surface by rolling in sand. While older babies are considered "cute", newborns can be "unattractive" by the same criteria and first time parents may need to be educated in this regard. The nodules from the blue earth have to be freed from matrix and divested of their opaque crust, which can be done in revolving barrels containing sand and water. Thus prototypical older babies look very different. The pit amber was formerly dug in open works, but is now also worked by underground galleries. Newborns lose many of the above physical characteristics quickly. At the present time extensive mining operations are conducted in quest of amber. Occasionally, hospitals may apply triple dye to the umbilical stub to prevent infection, which may temporarily color the stub and surrounding skin purple.

Systematic dredging on a large scale was at one time carried on in the Kurisches Haff by Messrs Stantien and Becker, the great amber merchants of Königsberg. The umbilical stub will dry out, shrivel, darken, and spontaneously fall off within about 3 weeks. Divers have been employed to collect amber from the deeper waters. After birth, a physician will cut the umbilical cord, leaving a 1-2 inch stub. Sometimes the searchers wade into the sea, furnished with nets at the end of long poles, by means of which they drag in the sea-weed containing entangled masses of amber; or they dredge from boats in shallow water and rake up amber from between the boulders. The umbilical cord of a newborn is bluish-white in color. Pieces of amber torn from the sea-floor are cast up by the waves, and collected at ebb-tide. In either case, this is considered normal and will disappear in time.

Although amber is found along the shores of a large part of the Baltic Sea and the North Sea, the great amber-producing country is the promontory of Samland, now part of Russia. Females may actually discharge milk from their nipples, and/or a bloody or milky-like substance from the vagina. In the Dominican Republic exists a type of amber known as the Blue Amber. This is caused by naturally-occurring maternal hormones and is a temporary condition. Bony amber owes its cloudy opacity to minute bubbles in the interior of the resin. The breasts may also be enlarged, even in male infants. The so-called black amber is only a kind of jet. A newborn’s genitals are enlarged and reddened, with male infants having an unusually large scrotum.

Enclosures of pyrites may give a bluish colour to amber. The newborn may also have Mongolian spots, various other birthmarks, or peeling skin, particularly at the wrists, hands, ankles, and feet. Impurities are quite often present, especially when the resin dropped on to the ground, so that the material may be useless except for varnish-making, whence the impure amber is called firniss. Newborns are wet, covered in streaks of blood, and coated with a white substance known as vernix caseosa, which is hypothesized to act as an antibacterial barrier. The abnormal development of resin has been called succinosis. As soon as the newborn begins to breathe, usually within a minute or two, the skin’s color returns to its normal tones. Sometimes the amber retains the form of drops and stalactites, just as it exuded from the ducts and receptacles of the injured trees. Immediately after birth, a newborn’s skin is oftentimes grayish to dusky blue in color.

Fragments of wood frequently occur, with the tissues well-preserved by impregnation with the resin; while leaves, flowers and fruits are occasionally found in marvellous perfection. The scalp may also be temporarily bruised or swollen, especially in hairless newborns, and the area around the eyes may be puffy. Even hair and feathers have occasionally been represented among the enclosures. Amongst fair-skinned parents, this fine hair may be blond, even if the parents are not. In most cases the organic structure has disappeared, leaving only a cavity, with perhaps a trace of chitin. Some may be nearly bald while others may have very fine, almost invisible hair. The resin contains, in addition to the beautifully preserved plant-structures, numerous remains of insects, spiders, annelids, crustaceans and other small organisms which became enveloped while the exudation was fluid. Likewise, not all infants are born with lush heads of hair.

It is improbable, however, that the production of amber was limited to a single species; and indeed a large number of conifers belonging to different genera are represented in the amber-flora. Lanugo disappears within a few weeks. Goppert named the common amber-yielding pine of the Baltic forests Pinites succiniter, but as the wood, according to some authorities, does not seem to differ from that of the existing genus it has been also called Pinius succinifera. It may be particularly noticeable on the back, shoulders, forehead, ears and face of premature infants. R. Some newborns have a fine, downy body hair called lanugo. H. Special exercises sometimes advised by physicians may assist the process.

Relics of an abundant flora occur in association with the amber, suggesting relations with the flora of Eastern Asia and the southern part of North America. This will usually return to normal on its own within a few days or weeks. It appears, however, to have been partly derived from yet earlier Tertiary deposits (Eocene); and it occurs also as a derivative mineral in later formations, such as the drift. During labor and birth, the infant’s skull changes shape to fit through the birth canal, sometimes causing the child to be born with a misshapen or elongated head. The Baltic amber or succinite is found as irregular nodules in a marine glauconitic sand, known as blue earth, occurring in the Lower Oligocene strata of Sambia in Kaliningrad Oblast, where it is now systematically mined. These “soft spots” are known as fontanels; and the two largest are the diamond-shaped anterior fontanel, located at the top front portion of the head, and the smaller triangular-shaped posterior fontanel, which lies at the back of the head. It enables the distinction between baltic amber and non-Baltic varieties because of a specific carbonyl absorption and it can also detect the relative age of an amber sample. At birth, many regions of the newborn’s skull have not yet been converted to bone.

An effective tool for Amber analysis is IR spectroscopy. While the adult human skull is about 1/8 of the total body length, the newborn’s is twice that. Its specific gravity varies from 1.05 to 1.10. A newborn’s head is very large in proportion to the rest of the body, and the cranium is enormous relative to his or her face. Succinite has a hardness between 2 and 3, which is rather greater than that of many other fossil resins. The Apgar score is a measure of a newborn's transition from the womb during the first ten minutes of life. True Baltic amber is distinguished by its yield of succinic acid, for many of the other fossil resins which are often termed amber contain either none of it, or only a very small proportion; hence the name succinite proposed by Professor James Dwight Dana, and now commonly used in scientific writings as a specific term for the real Prussian amber. The average total body length is 14-20 inches (35.6-50.8cm), although premature newborns may be much smaller.

The aromatic and irritating fumes emitted by burning amber are mainly due to this acid. The average weight of a full-term newborn is approximately 7 ½ pounds (3.2kg), but can be anywhere from 6-10 pounds (2.7-3.6kg). True amber yields on dry distillation succinic acid, the proportion varying from about 3 to 8%, and being greatest in the pale opaque or bony varieties. A newborn’s shoulders and hips are narrow, the abdomen protrudes slightly, and the arms and legs are relatively short. Heated rather below 300°C, amber suffers decomposition, yielding an "oil of amber", and leaving a black residue which is known as "amber colophony", or "amber pitch"; when dissolved in oil of turpentine or in linseed oil this forms "amber varnish" or "amber lac". . Heating amber will soften it and eventually it will burn, which is why the German word for amber is bernstein. The term can technically also apply to premature infants and postmature infants, as well as full term newborns.

The average composition of amber leads to the general formula C₁₀H₁₆O. A human infant which is less than 28 days old is a newborn. As amber matures over the years, more polymerization will take place as well as isomerization reactions, crosslinking and cyclization. A newborn infant is known as a neonate (neonatal, neonatus) after the final stage of gestation throughout the first three months. Labdanes are tetrameric terpenes (C₂₀H₃₂) and trienes which means that the organic skeleton has three alkene groups available for polymerization. The term infant is also used as formal/legal term for minor; that is, a child in general. Amber is a macromolecule by free radical polymerization of several precursors in the labdane family, communic acid, cummunol and biformene ^[1]. It is commonly used as a slightly more formal word for baby (the youngest category of child).

Amber is heterogeneous in composition, but consists of several resinous bodies more or less soluble in alcohol, ether and chloroform, associated with an insoluble bituminous substance.
The word infant derives from the Latin word in-fans, meaning "unable to speak". During the fourteenth century, the Teutonic Knights controlled the production of amber in Europe, forbidding its unauthorised collection from beaches on the Baltic coastline under their jurisdiction, and punishing breakers of this ordinance with death. ISBN 0881661775. There is also strong evidence for the theory that the Baltic coasts during the advanced civilization of the Nordic Bronze Age was the source of most amber in Europe, for example the amber jewelry found in graves from Mycenaean Greece has been found to originate from the Baltic Sea. Pregnancy, Childbirth, and the Newborn: The Complete Guide, Meadowbrook Press, MN, 1991. Tacitus in his Germania talks about the Aesti people as the only ones to gather amber from the Baltic Sea. Simkin, Penny, et al.

Pliny the Elder complains that a small statue of amber costs more than a healthy slave. Amber was mentioned by Homer, Aristotle, Plato and others. The German word is Bernstein. The Old Hebrew חשמל hashmal seems to have meant amber, although Modern Hebrew uses Arabic-inspired ענבר `inbar.

By Latin writers amber is variously called electrum, sucinum (succinum), and glaesum or glesum. This property, first recorded by Thales of Miletus, suggested the word "electricity", from the Greek, elektron, a name applied, however, not only to amber but also to an alloy of gold and silver. True amber has sometimes been called kahroba, a word of Persian derivation signifying "that which attracts straw", in allusion to the power which amber possesses of acquiring an electric charge by friction. The name comes from the Arabic عنبر, ʻanbar, probably through Spanish, but this word referred originally to ambergris, which is an animal substance quite distinct from yellow amber.

. Most of the world's amber is in the range of 30–90 million years old. Although not mineralized it is sometimes considered and used as a gemstone. Amber is a fossil resin much used for the manufacture of ornamental objects.

Most of the Burmese amber is worked at Mandalay into rosary-beads and ear-cylinders. Burmite and simetite agree also in being destitute of succinic acid. The Burmese amber is yellow or reddish, some being of ruby tint, and like the Sicilian amber it is fluorescent. The mines were visited some years ago by Dr Fritz Noetling, and the mineral has been described by Dr Otto Helm.

It occurs in the Hukawng valley, in the Nangotaimaw hills, where it is irregularly worked in shallow pits. It is found in fiat rolled pieces, irregularly distributed through a blue clay probably of Miocene age. Until the British occupation of Burma but little was known as to its occurrence, though it had been worked for centuries and was highly valued by the natives and by the Chinese. Burmite is the name under which the Burmese amber is now described.

The amber of Sicily seems not to have been recognized in ancient times, for it is not mentioned by local authorities like Diodorus Siculus. Moreover, yellow amber after long burial is apt to acquire a reddish colour. It has even been supposed that amber passed from Sicily to northern Europe in early times - a supposition said to receive some support from the fact that much of the amber dug up in Denmark is red; but it must not be forgotten that reddish amber is found also on the Baltic, though not being fashionable it is used rather for varnish-making than for ornaments. It has been conjectured that the ancient Etruscan ornaments in amber were wrought in the Italian material, but it seems that amber from the Baltic reached the Etruscans at Hatria.

Amber is also found in many localities in Emilia, especially near the sulphur-mines of Cesena. It is remarkable for its fluorescence, which in the opinion of some authorities adds to its beauty. This beautiful material presents a great diversity of tints, but a rich hyacinth red is common. It occurs in Miocene deposits and is also found washed up by the sea near Catania.

Simetite, or Sicilian amber, takes its name from the river Simeto or Giaretta. According to Gheorghe Murgoci the Romanian amber is true succinite. Sulphur is present to the extent of more than 1%, whence the smell of sulphuretted hydrogen when the resin is heated. The nodules are penetrated by cracks, but the material can be worked on the lathe.

Roumanite, or Romanian amber, a dark reddish resin, occurring with lignite in Tertiary deposits. Allingite, a fossil resin allied to succinite, from Switzerland. Krantzite, a soft amber-like resin, found in the lignites of Saxony. Glessite, a nearly opaque brown resin, with numerous microscopic cavities and dusty enclosures, named from glesum, an old name for amber.

Beckerite, a rare amber in earthy-brown nodules, almost opaque, said to be related in properties to gutta-percha. Stantienite, a brittle, deep brownish-black resin, destitute of succinic acid. The name comes from Gedanum, the Latin name of Gdańsk at the Baltic Sea. It is often covered with a white powder easily removed by wiping.

Gedanite, or brittle amber, closely resembling succinite, but much more brittle, not quite so hard, with a lower melting point and containing no succinic acid.