Comments by "Stella Maris" (@SuperGreatSphinx) on "ABC News"
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Coma is a state of unconsciousness in which a person cannot be awakened; fails to respond normally to painful stimuli, light, or sound; lacks a normal wake-sleep cycle; and does not initiate voluntary actions.
A person in a state of coma is described as being comatose.
A comatose state may derive from natural causes, or may be medically induced.
A comatose person exhibits a complete absence of wakefulness and is unable to consciously feel, speak, hear, or move.
Clinically, a coma can be defined as the inability to consistently follow a one-step command.
It can also be defined as a score of ≤ 8 on the Glasgow Coma Scale lasting ≥ 6 hours.
For a patient to maintain consciousness, two important neurological components must function.
The first is the cerebral cortex—the gray matter that forms the outer layer of the brain.
The other is a structure located in the brainstem, called reticular activating system (RAS).
Injury to either or both of these components is sufficient to cause a patient to experience a coma.
The cerebral cortex is a group of tight, dense, "gray matter" composed of the nuclei of the neurons whose axons then form the "white matter," and is responsible for perception, relay of the sensory input via the thalamic pathway, and many other neurological functions, including complex thinking.
RAS, on the other hand, is a more primitive structure in the brainstem which includes the reticular formation (RF).
The RAS area of the brain has two tracts, the ascending and descending tract.
Made up of a system of acetylcholine-producing neurons, the ascending track, or ascending reticular activating system (ARAS), works to arouse and wake up the brain, from the RF, through the thalamus, and then finally to the cerebral cortex.
A failure in ARAS functioning may thus lead to a coma.
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The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), formerly the Bureau of Investigation (BOI), is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States, and its principal federal law enforcement agency.
Operating under the jurisdiction of the US Department of Justice, the FBI is also a member of the U.S. Intelligence Community and reports to both the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence.
A leading U.S. counter-terrorism, counterintelligence, and criminal investigative organization, the FBI has jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crimes.
Although many of the FBI's functions are unique, its activities in support of national security are comparable to those of the British MI5 and the Russian FSB.
Unlike the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which has no law enforcement authority and is focused on intelligence collection abroad, the FBI is primarily a domestic agency, maintaining 56 field offices in major cities throughout the United States, and more than 400 resident agencies in lesser cities and areas across the nation.
At an FBI field office, a senior-level FBI officer concurrently serves as the representative of the Director of National Intelligence.
Despite its domestic focus, the FBI also maintains a significant international footprint, operating 60 Legal Attache (LEGAT) offices and 15 sub-offices in US embassies and consulates across the globe.
These foreign offices exist primarily for the purpose of coordination with foreign security services and do not usually conduct unilateral operations in the host countries.
The FBI can and does at times carry out secret activities overseas, just as the CIA has a limited domestic function; these activities generally require coordination across government agencies.
The FBI was established in 1908 as the Bureau of Investigation, the BOI or BI for short.
Its name was changed to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 1935.
The FBI headquarters is the J. Edgar Hoover Building, located in Washington, D.C.
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North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (abbreviated as DPRK or DPR Korea), is a sovereign state in East Asia constituting the northern part of the Korean Peninsula.
Officially, its territory consists of the whole Korean Peninsula and its adjacent islands.
Pyongyang is the nation's capital and largest city.
To the north and northwest, the country is bordered by China and by Russia along the Amnok (known as the Yalu in China) and Tumen rivers; it is bordered to the south by South Korea, with the heavily fortified Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) separating the two.
Nevertheless, North Korea, like its southern counterpart, claims to be the legitimate government of the entire peninsula.
In 1910, Korea was annexed by Japan.
After the Japanese surrender at the end of World War II in 1945, Korea was divided into two zones, with the north occupied by the Soviets and the south occupied by the Americans.
Negotiations on reunification failed, and in 1948, separate governments were formed: the socialist Democratic People's Republic of Korea in the north, and the capitalist Republic of Korea in the south.
An invasion initiated by North Korea led to the Korean War (1950–1953).
The Korean Armistice Agreement brought about a ceasefire, but no peace treaty was signed.
North Korea officially describes itself as a self-reliant, socialist state and formally holds elections.
Various media outlets have called it Stalinist, particularly noting the elaborate cult of personality around Kim Il-sung and his family.
The Workers' Party of Korea (WPK), led by a member of the ruling family, holds power in the state and leads the Democratic Front for the Reunification of the Fatherland of which all political officers are required to be members.
Juche, an ideology of national self-reliance, was introduced into the constitution in 1972.
The means of production are owned by the state through state-run enterprises and collectivized farms.
Most services such as healthcare, education, housing and food production are subsidized or state-funded.
From 1994 to 1998, North Korea suffered a famine that resulted in the deaths of between 240,000 and 420,000 people, and the country continues to struggle with food production.
A sizeable amount of the population is thought to suffer from malnutrition, parasite infestations and food and waterborne diseases.
North Korea follows Songun, or "military-first" policy.
It is the country with the highest number of military and paramilitary personnel, with a total of 9,495,000 active, reserve and paramilitary personnel.
Its active duty army of 1.21 million is the fourth largest in the world, after China, the United States and India.
It possesses nuclear weapons.
North Korea is an atheist state with no official religion, and public religion is discouraged or persecuted.
Both North Korea and South Korea became members of the United Nations in 1991.
International organizations have assessed that human rights violations in North Korea have no parallel in the contemporary world.
North Korea operates re-education and prison camps, akin to the gulag prisons of the Soviet Union.
The concentration camps are used to segregate those seen as enemies of the state and punish them for alleged political misdemeanours, or alleged misdemeanours of relatives as part of the "3 generations of punishment" policy instigated by state founder Kim Il-sung.
Prisoners are frequently subject to slave labour, malnutrition, torture, human experimentation, rape, and arbitrary executions.
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